Inside the Beltway

PARTISAN PRESLEY

OK. Elvis Presley would have been 75 today. Inquiring minds want to know: Would he have voted Republican or Democrat? The notion already has been addressed by the U.S. Election Atlas, a Massachusetts-based group that tracks national voting patterns.

No typical southern Democrat was he. Presley once visited President Nixon at the White House in 1970, bearing the gift of a Colt .45 pistol and a handwritten letter advising the president, “Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out.” The letter is now part of the National Archives. The Richard Nixon Presidential Library, incidentally, sells several “When Elvis Met Nixon” items, including playing cards, lip balm, mints and a kitchen magnet.

But Elvis himself? After much discussion, some academic observers have concluded “The King” was “a moderate conservative” who appreciated firearms and helped the poor because he grew up poor. His political leanings continue to fascinate. A few comments from an online discussion of same, found at http://uselectionatlas.org:

“He’d vote for Mike Huckabee.”

“He’d be a Republican. I would say he would endorse Fred Thompson.”

“I’m sure he would have contributed a lot to Rush Limbaugh and vice versa.”

“Nobody really knows that much about Presley’s politics. I know he was very patriotic and had disdain for the hippie counterculture, but besides that not much is known. If I had to guess he would probably be a libertarian conservative Republican in the vein of guys like Robert Duvall or maybe even Clint Eastwood although I believe Eastwood would lean more toward libertarianism itself, despite being registered as a Republican. If I had to guess I think Presley would’ve endorsed Mitt Romney or John McCain.”

“Neither Republican nor Democrat: Royalist. (The King Party)”

HOW’D THEY DO?

We need a thesaurus to describe the new and improved White House approach to terrorism: grave, blunt, melodramatic, aggressive, solemn, intense, a little dazed. Very Joe Friday, with some protective posturing and minimal mea culpa mixed in.

President Obama, National Security Adviser John Brennan and Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano rallied together Thursday to review what went wrong during the near-catastrophic Christmas Day terrorist bombing attempt - thus launching a spate of reviews of their performances.

“Didn’t offer much in the way of shock,” says CBS News political reporter Daniel Farber.

“Not necessarily reassuring,” notes CNN analyst David Gergen.

“While I am pleased that the president has acknowledged the breakdown in our system, I continue to urge him to recognize the genuine terrorist threat that our country continues to face. Too often President Obama and Democrats disregard the fact that terrorists are at war with us, which is dangerous thinking in this post-9/11 era,” says Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele.

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