Raymond Raad, a resident in psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and co-author of a new Cato study, presented evidence showing that the United States leads the world in the development of drugs, medical devices, and other advanced treatments. For instance, between 1969 and 2008, 57 of the 97 Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology — or nearly 60 percent — were awarded to people who did their research in the U.S., and nine of the top 10 medical innovations between 1975 and 2000 were developed here. But … once these products are developed in the U.S., they become widely available and improve health care outcomes around the world.

Read the whole thing, and remember: that’s the system the Democrats are trying to tear down and replace with one more like the European countries that depend almost as heavily on American medical and pharmaceutical innovations as they do on American military protection. In both cases, the arguments for the superiority of a European model that is unsustainable on its own depend on somebody else assuming the role of America. And nobody’s volunteering for the job.

“It really doesn’t matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost,” Thompson said on his radio show today. “I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what’s necessary to win it. His heart’s not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

“Our enemies are now emboldened and our friends are discouraged. We cannot prevail if the American people are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary for an extended effort. The case has not been made to them to justify this effort. The case can only be made by the president. This president is unable or unwilling to make that case,” Thompson said…..

“Take your time, Mr. President,” Thompson said. Unless you have a total change of heart and mind, it really doesn’t make any difference.”

Wars are occasionally won and lost by the complete eradication of one side’s ability to make war. But especially when the war involves a superpower fighting an insurgency, the more usual end - as Fred notes - is when one side loses the will to continue. He’s absolutely right that the United States will lose the war in Afghanistan if it’s not prosecuted by someone who believes in winning it. And there is reason to suspect that Obama, with his talk of “exit ramps,” may be drifting in that direction. It’s not unreasonable to accuse him of being in that place already. The Spectator, over in the UK, observes that Obama’s delay and disinterest in British input doesn’t exactly encourage the Brits to think their help is wanted:

The Afghan issue has made clear the astonishing disregard with which Mr Obama treats Britain . As he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan - a decision which will fundamentally affect the scope of the mission - Britain is reduced to taking a guess. The White House does not even pretend to portray this as a joint decision. It is a diplomatic cold-shouldering that stands in contrast not just to the Blair-Bush era, but to the togetherness of the soldiers on the ground.

But while all of that is well and good, we all know that the United States is capable of pursuing this war to the end if it only has the will to do so - and speaking in the past tense of us having already been defeated doesn’t help that cause, even with the “unless you change” disclaimer at the end. That was true when Harry Reid prematurely and erroneously characterized the Iraq War as lost, and it’s true today, because it allows writers like Ben Smith to paint the GOP criticism of Obama’s weakness and vacillation as somehow equivalent to what Reid did:

Thompson’s words seem to lay the groundwork for Republican opposition to further American engagement in Afghanistan, cast here as halfhearted.

I’m quite sure that’s not how Fred meant it, nor is it likely to be a widespread view on the Right. Republicans want America to win the war in Afghanistan, and to see the things done that are necessary to make that happen. We ought to be careful not to give the opposite impression.

“This is not a decision that I would have made. I think terrorism isn’t just attack, it’s anxiety and I think you feel the anxiety and frustration of New Yorkers who took the bullet for the rest of the country,” he said.

Paterson’s comments break with Democrats, who generally support the President’s decision.

“Our country was attacked on its own soil on September 11, 2001 and New York was very much the epicenter of that attack. Over 2,700 lives were lost,” he said. “It’s very painful. We’re still having trouble getting over it. We still have been unable to rebuild that site and having those terrorists so close to the attack is gonna be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers.”

H/T James Taranto, who wonders why we’re just hearing all this now if the White House warned Paterson six months ago.

The critics’ bases for opposing a trial are numerous, and several of them are reviewed by Erick here. And the polls now show those criticisms are shared by a majority of the nation’s voters and a significant minority even in liberal New York City, with the rest uncertain.

To quickly summarize the case against the trials:

1] The trials are wholly unnecessary; the Administration is holding some enemy combatants without trial and trying others through the military commission system, thus conceding that it has alternatives. As a result, any risks, expenses or other downsides of the trials are being undertaken solely for the purpose of empty symbolism.

2] The trials risk disclosure of sensitive intelligence information and sources. This is the most significant objection of all.

3] The trials create a heightened risk or incentive for a terrorist attack/jailbreak effort in Manhattan.

4] The additional security required to guard against #3 will cost the federal and city governments a fortune, interfere with the administration of justice in a busy federal district and busy federal prison, add to the traffic and delays already extant in lower Manhattan, and place a great burden on the jurors, judge, and prosecutors.

5] The detainees, as they have shown in the past, are especially dangerous to guards, a problem that’s more acute when in transit or in civilian prisons than in a facility like Guantanamo that’s designed to house them.

6] The trials will give these extremists the opportunity to grandstand.

7] There is, inherent in civilian criminal trials and given the likelihood that the defense will seek to play politics with the trial, some risk of one or more acquittals or hung juries that would give a propaganda victory to the terrorists and destroy what little symbolic value the trials have if the defendants are remanded to custody after being acquitted.

8] There is a risk that, to guard against #7, rules and precedents governing criminal procedure will be distorted in ways that have lingering effects on the regular justice system.

9] Trying terrorists in civilian courts perversely rewards their war crimes; they have not earned the rights of either American citizens nor lawful combatants under international law, and should not be granted them.

Well, the polls are in, and the news should not be encouraging to the Administration. First, the Rasmussen poll, conducted nationally:

Fifty-one percent (51%) of U.S. voters oppose the Obama administration’s decision to try the confessed chief planner of the 9/11 attacks and other suspected terrorists in a civilian court in New York City.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 29% of voters favor the president’s decision not to try the suspects by military tribunal at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba where they are now imprisoned. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure whether it was the right decision or not.

Only 30% of Americans said suspected terrorists should have access to U.S. courts…

As Rasmussen notes from prior polls, “Most voters have consistently opposed moving any of the Guantanamo prisoners to prisons in the United States out of safety concerns.” And public awareness is high:

Seventy-five percent (75%) of all voters say they have followed news stories about the decision to try the suspected terrorists in a civilian court at least somewhat closely. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say they have been following very closely. Only six percent (6%) are not following the news about the decision at all.

Locally, the Marist poll of New York City residents (H/T) finds a small plurality of the overwhelmingly Democratic City in favor of the trials - but a significant group opposed, and a larger minority among New Yorkers than nationally who are concerned about the elevated security risks:

45% of residents think it’s a good idea to have the trial in New York City while 41% believe it’s a bad one. 14% just aren’t sure.

What about the risk of future terrorist attacks? Although 47% say the location of the trial will not affect the likelihood of another terrorist attack occurring in New York City, a significant proportion are concerned the trial will put a bull’s eye on the city. In fact, 40% believe having the trial in New York City will increase the possibility of another terrorist attack in the area. 7% think it will be less of a target, and another 6% are unsure about the implications of the trial for the city’s security.

The left-wing response to the criticisms of the trials has been to focus only on point #3 above and essentially throw a tantrum, accusing anyone concerned with the risk of an attack of either cowardice or fear-mongering. As I have explained at some length before, this is shtick, not argument, and especially ridiculous given some of the people making it. Thus, we have people like left-wing activist Greg Sargent getting so wrapped up in their own shtick that they try to spin the Rasmussen poll as a victory, even in the face of the public being against them on the bottom line:

[P]ublic opposition is not a response to all the lurid fearmongering we’ve heard from Rudy Giuliani and other diehard anti-terror warriors. It’s more rooted in a sense that the justice system isn’t a proper venue to prosecute terrorism, because it places suspected terrorists - symbolically, perhaps more than legally - on an equal footing with your run-of-the-mill suspected murderers….While a majority does oppose the trial, it appears that most Americans aren’t quite as fearful of it as Rep. Shadegg is.

Sargent further notes of the Marist poll: “Opposition to trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators in a New York court is almost entirely driven by old, white, and Republican voters.” Well, good thing none of those groups is a significant voting bloc, eh?

A few more such victories, as Phyrrus said, and Obama and his fans are finished.

President Obama, February 24, 2009, justifying his “stimulus” plan to a joint session of Congress:

I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are skeptical of whether this plan will work. I understand that skepticism. Here in Washington, we’ve all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending. And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.

That is why I have asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort - because nobody messes with Joe. I have told each member of my Cabinet as well as mayors and governors across the country that they will be held accountable by me and the American people for every dollar they spend. I have appointed a proven and aggressive Inspector General to ferret out any and all cases of waste and fraud. And we have created a new website called recovery.gov so that every American can find out how and where their money is being spent.

How’s that working out? So badly, now, that even David Obey, the liberal Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee is looking to lay the blame on the Administration before it lands on him. A lot of observers have been assuming all along that with the Democrats currently headed in the direction of a very bad midterm election in 2010, Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, would sooner or later try to triangulate the Congressional Democrats, moving towards the center to let them take the fall for the failures of big-spending, big-taxing, big-regulating, big-bailouts, big-favor-giving liberalism. But maybe at some point, they will triangulate him first.

We’ve already seen how unemployment has just kept getting worse with the stimulus than Obama projected without it (red dots represent the actual unemployment rate, the other two lines are the Administration’s projections):

And we’ve seen how the stimulus is leading state governments themselves into deeper holes, by forestalling tough budgetary choices and encouraging spending on programs that won’t have permanent federal subsidies. And now we are seeing a flood of reports, which I summarized yesterday here and here, proving that the skeptics were - if anything - not skeptical enough; not only has one investigation after another turned up bogus claims of job creation or savings, even under the deliberately elastic definition of “created or saved,” but many of the claimed savings listed on recovery.gov are supposedly in Congressional Districts that don’t even exist. They took $787 billion of our money and sent it to an undisclosed location.

This incompetence - we’ll be charitable for now and assume it’s incompetence - is too much even for David Obey to bear from his own party, as left-wing activist Greg Sargent reports:

“The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes.

“Credibility counts in government and stupid mistakes like this undermine it. We’ve got too many serious problems in this country to let that happen.

“We designed the Recovery Act to be open and transparent and I expect the the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, who oversees the recovery act web site and data to have information that is accurate, reliable and understandable to the American public. Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now.”

Joe Biden, consider yourself messed with.

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There’s one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.

There’s no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government’s recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

In fact, Recovery.gov lists hundreds of millions spent and hundreds of jobs created in Congressional districts that don’t exist.

Read the whole thing (did you know the Northern Mariana Islands had 99 Congressional Districts? Neither did I.) (Background here)

I can’t wait for these guys to run the Census, can you?

More than ten percent of the jobs the Obama administration has claimed were “created or saved” by the $787 billion stimulus package are doubtful or imaginary, according to reports compiled from eleven major newspapers and the Associated Press.

Based only on our analysis of stimulus media coverage in the last two weeks, The Examiner has created this interactive map to document exaggerated stimulus claims. The map, which will be updated as new revelations appear, currently reflects an exaggeration by the Obama administration of about 75,000 jobs, out of the 640,000 jobs supposedly “created or saved.”

Read the whole thing, and don’t miss clicking on the link for the map. Ah, well, it’s only $787 billion, I’m sure there’s more where that came from.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and four others accused in the attacks will be put on criminal trial in New York, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce later Friday.

WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

So, Barack Obama will be staging his own New York production of Chicago, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as Roxy Hart (”You had it coming, you had it coming, you only have yourselves to blame….” ). We will be treated to months upon months of front page headlines giving a platform to this lunatic war criminal. The courthouses and City office buildings in lower Manhattan (City Hall, the state courts, the immigration offices, the Court of International Trade, the US Attorney’s Office, the DA’s office, and the main city office building that does marriage licenses and the like are all within about a two-block radius of the federal courthouses and the Metropolitan Correctional Center) will be snarled with massive security, as if lower Manhattan needs more traffic and more armed men. We’ll have to have pretrial hearings on the inevitable countless motions about how KSM was apprehended and the evidence against him collected, undoubtedly to the detriment of vital sources of intelligence, like when we lost the ability to track Osama bin Laden by cellphone after our tracing of his calls was revealed by a prosecution under the DOJ Criminal Division then headed by…Eric Holder. And that’s even before he starts in on the sob stories about being waterboarded. I’m not seriously concerned that KSM stands any chance of being acquitted, but a hung jury? It only takes one person with extreme political or religious views, one juror who just can’t abide the death penalty (even assuming Obama’s DOJ pursues it). Just imagine the controversy, if there are Muslims in the jury pool, over what questions prosecutors are permitted to ask them and whether they can be challenged. And of course, it sends the message to our enemies that there’s nothing you can do to us that will get you sent through a process rougher than the one we used on Michael Vick or Martha Stewart.

I know I have spoken and written many rough things about Obama, but as Michael Moore would say, most New Yorkers voted for the man - why is he doing this to us?

It’s impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn’t run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don’t buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland. Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another - Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Columbia, you name it - and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it - nothing to show for anything he’s done in foreign affairs. All but ignore democratic protests in Iran while supporting an illegal effort by Honduras’ president to stay on beyond the end of his term. Suddenly complain about corruption and electoral fraud in Afghanistan, while seeking the favor of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Vladimir Putin - heck, Obama endorsed half a dozen people in Chicago more corrupt than Hamid Karzai. On and on and on we go, with President Apology constantly straining to run down his country’s record and talk up the propagandized view of history of its enemies. He’s taken more time to “evaluate” General McChrystal’s recommendations about Afghan policy than it took George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and capture Kabul after September 11. It would be funny if it wasn’t tragically stupid and bound to get people killed. There is no mistake of our past that Obama is unwilling to remake.

If there’s an upside to all this, after months of watching KSM up close, even liberal New Yorkers may be ready to give Dick Cheney a medal.

Here’s the topline result on Simmons vs Dodd:

Former Connecticut Congressman Rob Simmons has an early lead in the Republican primary race for the 2010 U.S. Senate contest and runs better than any other challenger against Sen. Christopher Dodd, topping the Democratic incumbent 49 - 38 percent…

Former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon gets 43 percent to Sen. Dodd’s 41 percent…

Even potential Republican contenders with almost no name recognition and almost no Republican primary voter support give Dodd a run for his money.

Simmons leads a Republican primary matchup with 28 percent, followed by McMahon with 17 percent. No other contender tops 9 percent and 36 percent are undecided.

Connecticut voters disapprove 54 - 40 percent of the job Dodd is doing, compared to a 49 - 43 percent disapproval September 17, and say 53 - 39 percent that he does not deserve reelection.

The poll shows Dodd with a favorable/unfavorable rating of -15 (38-53) among men and -25 (34-59) among Independents, and a re-elect number of -24 (34-58) among men and -32 (30-62) among Independents, the latter mirroring the showing of Jon Corzine and Creigh Deeds among Independents.

It’s still somewhat early to judge whether any of the other Republicans in the race would be electable against Dodd; clearly, Simmons, as a moderate former Congressman, has a very real shot of winning this race, as he’s polling basically where Chris Christie was polling at this stage against Corzine. And bear in mind, this was a poll of registered, not likely voters; the likely-voter screens almost always help the GOP candidate, especially since 2010 will be an off-year election in which polls are consistently showing that voters on the Right are far more motivated and energized. Here’s the poll’s sample:

From November 3 - 8, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,236 Connecticut registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points. The survey includes 474 Democrats with a margin of error of +/- 4.5 percentage points and 332 Republicans with a margin of error of +/- 5.4 percentage points.

I don’t have offhand the overall registration breakdowns for CT. The sample here is 38.3% Democrats, 34.8% Independents and 26.9% Republicans, as compared to 2008 exit polls showing an electorate 43% Democrats, 31% Independents and 27% Republicans. So, Republicans aren’t oversampled here; whether the poll oversampled Independents at the expense of Democrats depends on whether you think 2008 turnout is representative of what the electorate will be going forward.

Anyway, time will tell as to whether the other GOP candidates can credibly challenge Simmons. McMahon is clearly well-funded, and her pro wrestling background suggests some familiarity with the kind of populist appeal that made Jesse Ventura a governor, but Ironman at Next Right, a close observer of the CT political scene, thinks she is a poor stump speaker and too close with Rahm and Ari Emanuel and Lowell Weicker to be trusted, including a $10,000 donation to the DCCC in the fall of 2006 while it was pouring money into CT to help defeat Simmons and Nancy Johnson (McMahon herself didn’t vote in that election). $3 million in state tax credits for WWE and a heavy WWE lobbying presence in the state capitol are also not the kind of resume lines that are likely to help a populist campaign against the goodies-collecting Dodd. All of which adds up to more reason why McMahon will have a long way to go to convince GOP voters that she’s a better option against Dodd than Simmons.

As for Connecticut’s other Senate seat, up again in 2012 and presently held by an incumbent from the Connecticut for Lieberman party, Jay Cost has argued that the 2006 race shows that Lieberman needs to win over Republicans and conservative-leaning independents to keep his job, and that this helps explain his opposition to Obamacare:

18% of all voters [in 2006] were self-identified Republicans who voted for Lieberman. 14% of all voters were self-identified conservatives who voted for Lieberman. Simply put, Lieberman won that 2006 race in large part because conservative Republicans voted for him, not Schlesinger.

This means that Lieberman now has to win over voters well to the right of his old electoral coalition from when he was a typical Democrat. Losing the support of the left means he must go looking for conservatives, whom he managed to find in sufficient numbers three years ago. So, suppose Lieberman antagonizes conservatives in his home state so much that they get behind a more viable candidate in 2012. That Republican wins 20% of the vote rather than 9%. If the Democratic nominee can replicate Lamont’s 39%, Lieberman would lose.

The Q poll strongly supports Cost’s thesis - Lieberman’s poll profile is essentially that of a liberal Republican at this point, and Connecticut voters are far more skeptical of the Democratic health care plan than they are of Obama in general:

By a 51 - 25 percent margin, Connecticut voters say Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s views on issues are closer to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party. There is agreement on this among voters in all parties.

Voters approve 49 - 44 percent of the job Lieberman is doing. He gets 74 - 20 percent approval from Republicans and 52 - 40 percent approval from independent voters, but Democrats disapprove 62 - 31 percent.

Voters say 64 - 29 percent that Democrats should not strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanship if he joins Republicans in a filibuster against the Democrats’ health care reform.

Connecticut voters approve 58 - 35 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, but they disapprove 48 - 45 percent of the way he is handling health care.

Note also that the poll shows that voters trust a Republican over Dodd on the health care issue, 43-37. And this is a liberal northeastern state; today’s Q poll in Ohio, which shows some encouraging news for Rob Portman, has voters disapproving of Obama’s health care plan by 55-36 and Obama’s approval rating running lower than the Democratic Senate candidates.

As a final footnote, recanvassing shows that Bill Owens - who ran against the House health care bill, although he then voted for it as soon as he was sworn in - has lost a significant part of his margin of victory over Doug Hoffman (who also ran against the House bill) in NY-23. Even assuming that the net result of the recanvassing doesn’t lead to any efforts to challenge the legitimacy of Owens’ election, the dwindling margin of victory undermines efforts to make much hay of Hoffman’s loss, and offers yet another data point - from the Northeast, no less - to suggest that support for Democrats and their health care plan is faltering almost everywhere.

If Connecticut is turning into dangerous turf for liberal Democrats and their big government schemes, that should be a sign to encourage opponents of big government everywhere to get in the game.

A funny thing is happening on the way to the impending health care showdown, as the Democrats try to turn the newly-passed House bill into something that can pass both Houses of Congress: Democrats are divided over abortion, and their divisions threaten to wreck the bill. With government-run health care having passed the House with only a 3-vote margin of victory, 60 votes needed in the Senate, and pro-life and pro-choice Democrats both vowing to go to war over the bill’s abortion provisions, the whole legislative initiative can be put at risk by even a small number of defectors.

The Democrats’ divisions over abortion may surprise casual observers. If you’ve tried getting your news from the mainstream media any time in the last three decades or so, you have undoubtedly seen more variations on the headline “Abortion Divides GOP” than you could count. The basic narrative is usually some variant on the notion that the Republican Party would be one big happy family if it weren’t for those awful pro-lifers. The MSM will write stories from this template at the drop of a hat, with the goal of feeding a larger narrative that one side of the abortion debate is “divisive” and that this problem is a Republican problem because being a pro-lifer is synonymous with being a right-wing woman-hating extremist. The idea that there might be broader bipartisan support for the pro-life movement seems never to have occurred to the media.

That’s where this weekend’s vote over the Stupak Amendment, which amended the House version of the health care bill to bar federal health care dollars from being spent on abortions, comes in.

Presumably believing her own rhetoric about pro-lifers being beyond-the-pale extremists whose opinions no longer matter in today’s Democratic-run Washington, Speaker Pelosi had fought for months to resist any efforts to prevent taxpayer dollars from being used to finance abortions under Obamacare. This recalcitrance belied President Obama’s repeated rhetorical efforts to convince the public that the bill was abortion-neutral, and created a political problem even the New York Times was forced to acknowledge: especially since the 2006 and 2008 elections, in which Rahm Emanuel recruited many Democratic candidates to run in districts where the pro-life cause is strong, there are once again a fairly substantial number of Congressional Democrats who call themselves pro-life, and they really do not want to be compelled to choose between voting against a health care bill and voting in favor of taxpayer funding of abortion. The ultimate vote in the House on the Stupak Amendment drew surprising Democratic support: 64 votes, contributing to the measure’s resounding 240-194 victory. This reality came as a shock to pro-choice hardliners like Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro:

[W]hen Pelosi announced late Friday that she would allow an amendment strictly limiting insurance coverage of abortions, it touched off an angry yelling match between DeLauro and another Pelosi confidant, California Rep. George Miller, and tears from some veteran female lawmakers, according to people in the room.

Some of the lawmakers argued that Pelosi was turning her back on a decades-long campaign by female Democratic members in support of abortion rights. Miller rose to Pelosi’s defense, which resulted in an angry confrontation between him and DeLauro, said the sources.

Miller told DeLauro that there were “more pro-life votes in the House than pro-choice” and that abortion-rights advocates had better acknowledge that reality.

By this morning, this was entrenched as a Democratic talking point, as California’s Loretta Sanchez repeated on Morning Joe that even with a wide Democratic majority, pro-lifers are in the majority in the House and the pro-choicers have only about 150 votes.

Now, longtime pro-life activists are justifiably somewhat skeptical that “pro-life” Democrats really ever mean it. While there have at times been true warriors for the pro-life cause in the Democratic Party, notably the late Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey (who fought all the way to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade in 1992), the usual pro-life Democrat tends to be a mushy-middle sort who isn’t up to change the Roe status quo and will choose party loyalty in any difficult battle over, say, the composition of the Supreme Court, but at the same time is willing to sign on to restrictions at the extreme margins of the issue, like partial-birth abortion and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

But the health care bill, by virtue of its intrusive nature, makes neutrality impossible, and thus may have pushed a number of these reluctant pro-lifers into a position where they had no choice but to vote for what they profess to believe. Contrary to what Obama claims, true neutrality is not possible when the government gets so deeply entangled in an area of life as this bill proposes to get the government into the provision of health care. Such a bill cannot be “pro-choice” in the sense of leaving mothers to make their own decision on their own private dime; it can only be pro-abortion, by providing federal subsidies for abortion coverage, or anti-abortion, by denying them where in the past they may have been funded by purely private insurance.

The Stupak Amendment “would bar anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a private plan that covers elective abortion. In addition, under Stupak, the public plans would not be allowed to offer abortion coverage prohibited under the Hyde amendment.” Pro-choicers claim that this is actually an expansion of the Hyde Amendment’s scope and would squeeze out private plans that cover abortion - but they somehow miss that that’s how the bill would work with regard to everything it touches, not just abortion. As Phil Klein puts it:

[T]he need for the controversial measure is a direct consequence of liberal efforts to have the government take over the health care system. The amendment, proposed by Reps. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Joe Pitts (R-PA), would merely extend protections under current law that prevent taxpayer funding for abortion through government health care programs such as Medicaid. The only reason the Stupak-Pitts amendment would apply restrictions to the private market is that the government would be drastically expanding its role in the private market as a result of the health care legislation.

Currently, women are able to purchase private health care plans that cover abortion because it remains a legal procedure and we still have a private market for the sale of health insurance. But if the House Democratic health care bill becomes law, individuals will only be allowed to purchase health insurance through a government-run exchange. And because millions of Americans will be using government subsidies to purchase insurance through the exchange, suddenly lawmakers get to have a say on what kind of private insurance policies individuals can purchase. In addition, the federal government would be directly operating one of the plans, known as the “public option.”

In short, pro-life Democrats were left no other option than to demand a clear affirmative prohibition on the use of federal funds to subsidize abortion. Politico reports that Stupak threatened to vote against the bill unless his amendment was included and that “a big bloc of anti-abortion Democrats were threatening to derail the entire bill unless party leaders agreed to stronger restrictions” demanded by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has pushed for health care legislation but refuses to support it without something on the lines of the Stupak Amendment. In all, 42 Members of the House (including the lone GOP vote for the bill, Joseph Cao) voted for both the Stupak Amendment and the final bill, well in excess of the 3-vote margin for error provided by the bill’s ultimate 220-215 victory. Stupak told the Wall Street Journal that he has more than enough votes to scuttle the whole bill if his amendment is removed:

“We won because [the Democrats] need us,” says Mr. Stupak. “If they are going to summarily dismiss us by taking the pen to that language, there will be hell to pay. I don’t say it as a threat, but if they double-cross us, there will be 40 people who won’t vote with them the next time they need us - and that could be the final version of this bill.”

In the Senate, the health care bill already faces a rocky road; the death of Ted Kennedy and Joe Lieberman’s vow to join the GOP filibuster of the bill leave the Democrats starting with 58 votes (59 if they can get Maine Republican Olympia Snowe to stay on board with the bill), and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson says he needs the Stupak Amendment in the bill to support it:

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) wants to see abortion language as restrictive as the Stupak amendment in the health care reform bill, his spokesman told POLITICO Monday.

“Senator Nelson is strongly prolife and was pleased the Stupak amendment passed with such strong support,” Thompson said in a statement. “He believes that no federal money - including subsidies or tax credits - should be used to buy insurance coverage for abortion. This is a very important issue to Senator Nelson and it is highly unlikely he would support a bill that doesn’t clearly prohibit federal dollars from going to abortion.”

Thompson said Nelson could not support anything less than Stupak amendment.

In terms of strategy, Nelson is still evaluating options, Thompson added.

The last line is significant: the bill needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster but only 50 “yes” votes, and unlike Lieberman, Nelson hasn’t vowed to filibuster. Nor have we heard a firm answer from putative pro-lifers like Gov. Casey’s son, now a Pennsylvania Senator, or from at-risk Senators like Blanche Lincoln who need to face strongly pro-life electorates to get re-elected (Sen. Reid is himself nominally pro-life but not expected to do anything about it).

Lest you believe that the Democrats can hold the wavering pro-lifers in place by maintaining the Stupak Amendment, however, the pro-choice hardliners are also threatening to kill the bill unless it’s removed. As the Washington Post reported:

Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) said she has collected more than 40 signatures from House Democrats vowing to oppose any final bill that includes the amendment — enough to block passage.

“There’s going to be a firestorm here,” DeGette said. “Women are going to realize that a Democratic-controlled House has passed legislation that would prohibit women paying for abortions with their own funds. . . . We’re not going to let this into law.”

The Post’s in-house left-wing activist, Greg Sargent, has a copy of the letter. DeGette has the pledged support of at least one member of the House Democratic leadership:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-choice lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from going to subsidize abortions.

“I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won’t be there,” Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. “And I think we’re all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that’s the case.”

Senate pro-choice Democrats, led by Barbara Boxer, have similarly drawn a line in the sand:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that 60 votes would be needed to strip the current health care bill of its abortion-related language and replace it with a version resembling that passed by the House of Representatives on Saturday. And, in an interview with the Huffington Post, the California Democrat predicted that pro-choice forces in the Senate would keep that from happening.

“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it,” Boxer said. “And I believe in our Senate we can hold it.”

“It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she added. “And it is much more pro-choice than the House.”

Boxer’s reading of the political landscape might seem like the hopeful spin of an abortion-rights defender. But it was seconded by a far less pro-choice lawmaker, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)

“It would have to be added,” sad the Montana Democrat of an amendment that mirrored that offered Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) in the House. “I doubt it could pass.”

Boxer is relying on Senate procedural rules regarding the original bill, as opposed to the conference report, but in either event, as in the House, the battle over the original bill will be a warning shot about what could possibly pass both Houses following a conference:

Currently, the Senate bill’s language would allow for insurers participating in a health care exchange to cover abortions so long as they ensured that federal funds are not used to pay for the procedure. An amendment similar to Stupak['s] effort — which was offered by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) — had already been voted down in the Senate Finance Committee.

To re-introduce such a provision, Boxer said, 60 senators would be required to cut off debate on the floor. And the votes for that, she said, likely won’t materialize.

Some pro-choice Democrats, led by Lynn Woolsey, Chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are not just looking to strip the Stupak Amendment, but calling as well for an investigation of the Catholic Bishops’ role in the Amendment, a posture that effectively would require them to investigate the Bishops’ coordination with 64 of their own Members.

Unsurprisingly, given his extreme record on abortion, President Obama seems to have joined the chorus looking to water down or remove the Stupak Amendment, although in the end it seems unlikely that Obama has much say in the process, given that he’s likely to vote for just about anything he can call a health care bill:

Saying the bill cannot change the status quo regarding the ban on federally funded abortions, the president said, “There are strong feelings on both sides” about an amendment passed Saturday and added to the legislation, “and what that tells me is that there needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we’re not changing the status quo.”

+++

“I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test — that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions, but, on the other hand, that we’re not restricting women’s insurance choices,” he said.

(Asked about the president’s position, press secretary Robert Gibbs refused to offer anything clearer than this)

At the end of the day, for all the conservative hand-wringing over Speaker Pelosi’s short-term tactical victory in allowing a vote on the Stupak Amendment and thus enabling passage of the bill through the House, the political reality remains: there may not be enough votes to pass the final bill with the Stupak Amendment, because of intransigence from pro-choice Democrats, and there may not be enough votes to pass the final bill without the Stupak Amendment, because of intransigence from pro-life Democrats. And that’s even before we get to the fissures among the Democrats and with the public at large over taxes, spending, individual mandates, the public option, tort reform, immigration, and euthanasia.

There are two ensuing lessons for Democrats, if that turns out to be the case. One is that a Democratic majority in this country is only possible if Democrats make real, rather than just rhetorical, concessions to the pro-life movement. And the other is that, for all of the grand ambitions of progressives, any bill that drives this far and this deep into American life is bound to expose long-dormant fault lines in any political coalition.

But the key word there, even in an across-the-board sweep like happened in Virginia, is individual. There remains an ongoing battle on the Right over how Republicans choose which candidates to support - who voters and the national party organs should back in primaries, when and whether to support third party candidacies, etc. It’s a battle intensified by Doug Hoffman’s loss in the NY-23 race after the NRCC-backed candidate, Dede Scoazzafava, ended up swinging the race to the Democrats when she endorsed Bill Owens. But in making sense of such debates, this is a point that cannot be stressed enough: no matter how favorable or unfavorable the overall national climate may be, no matter what ideological compass you want the party to follow, you can’t ever overlook the importance of the individual candidates and the conditions they run in. I said it in 2008 with regard to presidential campaigns, and it’s true as well of races for Governor, Senate or House: ideas don’t run for president, people do.

This point is overlooked by naysayers arguing that this or that position on a particular race is hypocritical or compels a similar result in other races - e.g., if you support the challenger you must always support the challenger; if you support the moderate, you must always support the moderate, etc. Hugh Hewitt eviscerated David Frum in a hugely entertaining segment last week over a column making a similar argument; I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but this excerpt from the Frum column is a sterling example of the kind of blinkered thinking I’m talking about:

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt this week offered a stern condemnation of this fratricide on his popular program, calling the third-party candidate:

“… a wrecker, a selfish ‘look at me’ poser … It takes an outsized ego to look at poll after poll that puts you behind not one but two candidates by more than 10 points and still declare yourself in the hunt.

“Whoops! Sorry, rewind. Fzzzzwwwwvvvvwwwzzzp. That was an editing error. Hugh Hewitt was not blasting Doug Hoffman, the third-party candidate in New York. In fact, Hoffman is the darling of talk radio and Fox News, which have helped to spread Hoffman Fever for the past few weeks.

“No, Hewitt was attacking the third-party candidate in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race, an independent named Chris Daggett who has drawn votes from the official Republican standard-bearer, Chris Christie.

“From the point of view of most Republican commenters online and on the air, party loyalty is a highly variable principle. As they see it, third-party races by liberal Republicans who want to combine environmental protection with fiscal responsibility are selfish indulgences. But third-party races by conservative Republicans who want to combine pro-life appeals with their economic message? Those are completely different. Those are heroic acts of principle.”

This is idiotic. I’ll get to the specific races below, but how can a guy like Frum write this and not notice that Doug Hoffman had a serious chance to win his race - as it turned out, he ran Scozzafava out of the race, drew 45% of the vote and lost a narrow defeat after Scozzafava endorsed his opponent - while Daggett regularly polled below 15% of the vote - often in single digits - and ended up drawing just 6% of the vote in the general election?

Let me illustrate, by discussing several examples from the 2009 and 2010 races, how a principled, pragmatic conservative approach can lead to supporting a variety of different candidates. While I speak only for myself here, I think the approach discussed below is consistent with how many of us at RedState and other conservative outlets think about these things.

NY-23

The hottest debate for now is over the special election in NY’s 23d Congressional District, long held by moderate Republican John McHugh until he stepped down to accept a position in the Obama Administration. The GOP, without a primary, selected as its candidate state assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, but Doug Hoffman challenged her on the Conservative line and ended up running her out of the race before losing narrowly himself. The NRCC spent almost a million dollars backing Scozzafava, who was also backed by Newt Gingrich and other establishment figures, but RedState and other conservative commentators and blogs, including national figures like Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, joined the revolt and lined up behind Hoffman.

In the abstract, a moderate Republican may well have been the better fit for NY-23. But there were a number of practical reasons why Scozzafava was a bridge too far for conservatives (Jay Cost summarizes the broader problems with her selection here). She had longstanding ties to ACORN and its cat’s paw, the Working Families Party of New York. Her husband was a ranking official in a left-leaning union. She wasn’t just a moderate but a liberal on economic and social issues. She turned out to be a thunderingly incompetent candidate. She had no party loyalty to offset her ideological leanings - she refused to promise to remain a Republican in office, held talks about switching parties in the state legislature, and ended up endorsing the Democrat. And conservatives had never been given a voice in the nominating process, so a third party challenge was the only way to revolt against the party establishment’s candidate.

And perhaps worst of all, and a desperately under-covered aspect of this special election as well as the one to fill Kirsten Gillibrand’s seat in New York’s 20th District in April, Scozzafava has spent more than a decade in New York’s State Assembly. ACORN ties are bad enough, but the most radioactive association possible right now in the State of New York is with the notoriously corrupt, dysfunctional state legislature. Yet the GOP ran the State Assembly Minority Leader, Jim Tedisco (a 23-year veteran of the Assembly), for Gillibrand’s seat, and now Scozzafava. Unsurprisingly, in a climate of pervasive anti-Albany sentiment, both went down to defeat in otherwise winnable races. The nominations of Tedisco and Scozzafava represent a catastrophic failure to understand local sentiment. Conservatives who supported Hoffman, while recognizing that he, too, was an imperfect candidate, saw that at least as a political outsider, he’d have the credibility to speak to the populist revolt against the unholy alliance of Big Federal Government, Big State Government, Big Labor, and Big Business against the ordinary taxpayer.

NJ-GOV

In New Jersey, by contrast to NY-23, most of us on the Right fell in behind the more moderate candidate, Chris Christie, against both a primary challenge by Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan and a third-party challenge, mostly from the Right, by Chris Daggett. Again, we would have liked a strongly conservative candidate, but balanced that against a left-leaning electorate that might be more open to a moderate. But in this race, things were different.

First, Christie’s no liberal, just a guy who shied away from taking conservative stances - or, for that matter, detailing very much of his platform at all (he’ll come to office with a strong mandate to fight corruption and resist tax hikes, but anything else he wants to do, he’ll need to sell the voters on from scratch). Second, unlike Hoffman, Daggett jumped into a race where there had already been a full and fair opportunity for a reasonably well-funded and credible primary challenger (Lonegan) to offer the voters a choice, making the selection of Christie inherently more legitimate and a third-party run more obviously sour grapes designed to split the vote (as it turned out, the Democrats ended up doing robocalls for Daggett). Third, while a political novice, Christie’s an impressive guy, a good debater with a regular-Joe demeanor and a hard-won statewide reputation for prosecuting corruption as US Attorney. And fourth, Christie comes to office without any negative baggage in the form of past associations with the activist Left or past positions defending outrageous examples of overspending and overreaching by the federal government.

With the Right mostly united behind him, Christie was able to reach enough independents and moderates to win the race.

Virginia

The primary races were less divisive in Virginia this year, but it’s worth mentioning here: Virginia’s been increasingly dominated by the Democrats, who won the state in the presidential election in 2008, won Senate races in 2006 & 2008, and won the Governor’s races in 2001 & 2005. More than a few voices counselled for moderation in statewide races in Virginia, but the GOP instead picked a slate of unapologetic, bold-colors conservatives (Bob McDonnell for Governor, Bill Bolling for Lt. Governor, and Ken Cuccinelli for Attorney General), each of whom won by nearly a 20-point margin. And local dynamics were a significant factor: the state GOP had lost credibility with the voters for its tax-hiking, big-spending ways, so running moderates would only have underlined the extent to which the party hadn’t learned its lessons.

NY Mayor

In a normal electorate, Republicans would regard Mike Bloomberg as the sort of liberal barely-a-RINO deserving of a primary challenge - besides his left-leaning views on a number of issues, he literally only joins the party for election years, and offers zero support to the party city-wide. Plus, a lot of voters didn’t like his decision to amend the city charter to run for a third term. But not only due to his vast wealth did he avoid a serious primary challenge: New York is an overwhelmingly Democratic city, so running a conservative challenger (even a conservative-on-some-issues candidate like Rudy Giuliani) is a tough sell absent an enormous crisis, plus Bloomberg’s basic managerial competence and the fear of what a liberal Democrat would do on the two biggest issues in City politics (crime and taxes) is enough to convince most NYC conservatives, like me, to fall in (however grudgingly) behind Bloomberg.

FL-SEN

This one I have discussed before at length: the GOP establishment has thrown its weight behind moderate Florida Governor Charlie Crist against conservative former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio in the race to succeed Senator Mel Martinez. There are all kinds of reasons to prefer Rubio: Florida’s been welcoming territory for conservatives for the past decade; Rubio’s both young and experienced (by Senate candidate standards) and a much better speaker than Crist; a Rubio nomination would be a symbol of inclusiveness given his Cuban heritage, an important factor given Florida’s demographics; and while Crist’s overall profile is moderate, he’s made the crucial error of over-associating himself with the Big-everything Obama agenda, including his support for the bloated stimulus bill. On top of that, because Crist is the sitting Governor and hasn’t been willing to criticize the sitting president’s economic agenda, as a matter of campaign strategy he has no Plan B to fall back on if Floridians are unhappy with the state of the state’s economy. Unsurprisingly, Crist’s approval rating has been eroding, leaving Rubio already the stronger candidate in general election matchups against the likely Democratic opponent. And that opponent, Kendrick Meek, is the final piece of the puzzle: he, like other Democrats mentioned as possible challengers, will run not as a moderate but as an arch-liberal, making it much easier for the GOP to run a conservative and still appeal to voters in the political middle.

CA-SEN

The California Senate race to unseat Barbara Boxer is a much tougher call than the Rubio-Crist race. There are a number of reasons why I initially expected to back former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina over California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. First, California’s a liberal state, and Boxer’s an incumbent; despite Boxer’s generally weak poll numbers (she frequently gets less than half of all voters interested in re-electing her, a danger zone for incumbents), either candidate will have a brutally tough road ahead to actually win the race, but the more moderate Fiorina would seem the more natural fit. Second, California and Boxer are especially obsessed with abortion; if I recall correctly, no pro-lifer has won a statewide election in two decades. Third, Fiorina is a woman, a political outsider, a former media darling at HP and much more well-known than DeVore.

But along the way, I ended up siding with a number of other RedStaters in endorsing DeVore. Why? The biggest factor is that I’m just not convinced that Fiorina is a strong candidate - despite the inital good press she was fired for poor performance at HP, and she was sacked by the McCain campaign for her blundering as a spokeswoman. The abortion issue is less of a divide than you might believe; while pro-lifers seem suspicious of her on the issue, Fiorina describes herself as pro-life, so she’ll face the same barrage from Boxer on the issue as DeVore. DeVore, by contrast, seems like an energetic candidate who’s spent a lot more time in the trenches over the past year.

The temper of the times matters. An entrenched incumbent like Boxer can be beaten in a state that normally favors her only if there’s a populist wave to the Right - and the candidate better positioned to ride that wave is Devore, with his ear attuned to the Tea Party movement, not Fiorina, the failed CEO with the golden parachute.

The state of the state party matters too. The California GOP has deep divisions between its persecution-complex-carrying moderate wing and its disaffected conservative activist base. Even if the Senate race is a loss, the best way to fire up the activists - especially against a candidate as famously arch-liberal, nasty, arrogant and dim-witted as Boxer - so as to have them out to vote in the governor’s race and down-ticket races for House seats and the state legislature is to run a candidate who will take the fight to Boxer root and branch, and that factor too favors DeVore. And as discussed below, I expect the more moderate Meg Whitman to win the nomination for Governor and will probably support Whitman. A tag-team of Whitman and DeVore on the ballot is a balanced ticket that shows both wings of the party that they are valued by the state party, and will help defuse momentum for any sort of third-party challenge being mounted by either wing.

CA-GOV

To all appearances, the California Governor’s race is a replay of the Senate race: a moderate, female business executive (Meg Whitman) against a male conservative elected official (State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner). And it’s true: Whitman’s had some awful rookie mistakes (she’s spoken glowingly about Van Jones and her first major political donation, made with warm words, was to Boxer), while Poizner, also a successful business executive in his own right, seems an impressive guy.

But this isn’t the Senate race. Whitman was a massively successful businesswoman as the founder and CEO of eBay, and by all accounts is a fiercely disciplined woman. The Governor’s race is for an open seat, with Arnold Schwarzenegger term-limited, so picking a candidate with a good chance to win is paramount. The absence of Boxer from the race will enable Whitman to run an inherently less polarizing campaign. And, as I said, running one moderate and one conservative statewide will best unify a party that notoriously lacks unity.

I could go on. There will undoubtedly be decisions for conservatives to make in Senate races in states like Illinois and Delaware, for example, that will likely shake out in favor of more moderate candidates; there will be others where it will make more sense to go with a more conservative, more populist candidate. But you get my point: the assessment of which candidate to back in a conservative-vs-moderate race is not one to make on automatic pilot. Even if you prefer to always back the conservative, the practical considerations of each race and each set of candidates needs to be evaluated. This is such an obvious point that it shouldn’t need to be emphasized, but it does.

Obama tried to help Deeds and Corzine, and was unable to do so. He can help nobody but himself. And that fact alone is hugely significant.

Democrats will point to exit polls showing that Obama retains a healthy approval rating among those who went to the polls in today’s two battleground states. But one of the signal exit poll items was pointed out by Jake Tapper: in NJ, which Obama carried by 15 points a year ago, 19% of the voters told exit pollsters they were casting ballots in support of Obama, and 20% against. In other words, even in a very pro-Obama electorate, he was a small net drag on the Democratic candidate, and certainly no help despite campaigning ardently for Jon Corzine.

This is consistent with what we’ve seen nationally: Obama remains personally popular (if far less so than on his Inauguration Day, which remains the high point of his presidency), but his popularity doesn’t rub off on his policies, much less on other Democrats, especially white male Democrats like Deeds and Corzine who have no claim to being historic symbols of national progress. The record turnout among racial-minority and youth voters generated by the 2008 Obama campaign was not replicable in 2009 without his personal presence on the ballot. And of course, the same will be true in 2010, when Obama himself is not personally on the ballot and will again make every effort to explain helpfully to other Democrats that they lost their jobs for reasons unrelated to his precious historic personal popularity.

The revelation that Obama cannot help other Democrats get elected is, of course, bound to affect his ability to govern; he can’t convince wavering “Blue Dog” Democrats that supporting him in return for his campaign appearances in their districts will do any more for them than it did for Jon Corzine or Creigh Deeds. But then, so long as people like Barack Obama, maybe it doesn’t matter so much to him if he actually accomplishes anything. After all, he is “change.” Just don’t expect a lot of Democratic incumbents to consider that a bankable asset in the future.

Monday, at a Creigh Deeds rally, Moran was on hand to prove that there is no cause so lost that he won’t contribute some crazy to it:

U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) likened the Republican ticket in Virginia this year to Afghanistan’s radical Taliban movement in comments broadcast Sunday by WAMU radio.

At a get-out-the-vote rally in Fairfax County, Moran said: “I mean, if the Republicans were running in Afghanistan, they’d be running on the Taliban ticket as far as I can see.”

Of course, when it comes to fighting the actual Taliban, Moran’s position is a lot more, er, nuanced; it turns out that his view of the US military’s presence in Afghanistan is closer to the Taliban’s than to the GOP’s:

Jim Moran, a Democratic member of the US congress, said “the majority of Democrats will continue to support President Obama, but that’s not to say we’re going to continue on the course in which we’re going”.

“Right now we need a better strategy … It is clear that Afghanistan does not lend itself to a military victory, it’s about economic development, it’s about building civil society. The military presence clearly is a problem in itself,” he said.

Still, he added that while Pelosi was right in saying there was “no appetite” for sending more US troops to Afghanistan, “there’s no appetite for taking cod liver oil but sometimes you have a situation where you just have to grimace and swallow it”.

When Bob McDonnell starts blasting the perfidious influence of the Jews, bemoaning the U.S. overthrow of Saddam and complaining that the US military presence in Afghanistan is a “problem,” maybe it will be time to consider comparing him to the Taliban. In the meantime, maybe Jim Moran should stick to pushing around women and children and leave the Taliban-hunting business to people who are serious about it.

“Is this news to you that this guy’s one fry short of a Happy Meal?” asked Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.)

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer defended Robertson, whom he said he knows.

“I think it’s inappropriate and unfair,” the Maryland Democrat said. He decried the “heated rhetoric” that he said interferes with the ability solve problems.

+++

Democrat Dina Titus of Nevada called Grayson’s remarks “a bit extreme and rather sexist.”

Indeed. Read the whole thing, which also addresses Grayson’s improper promotion of a website on the House floor that had links to his campaign fundraising site. Floridians must be so proud of a Democrat who embarrasses even Democrats from New York City and Maryland.

Which brings us to him calling Linda Robertson, a senior advisor to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a “whore”:

Longer video, with the quote starting around 1:50, below the fold:

(I don’t know the genesis of this video, which has some … odd choices for images).

Far be it from me to suggest that Alan Grayson should tone down his act. Hey, he’ll probably get another cookie from his enablers.

Well, there’s been a bunch of polls showing Rubio gaining ground on Crist in the nomination fight, but now Rasmussen reports that Rubio would be a stronger general election candidate, as a new poll shows he would beat the leading Democrat in the race, Congressman Kendrick Meek, by 15 points:

A new Rasmussen Reports survey of Florida voters shows Governor Charlie Crist leading Representative Kendrick Meek by a 46% to 34% margin. In August, Crist led by 19 and in June he was ahead by 21.

Former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio leads Meek by a similar margin, 46% to 31%. In August, Rubio led by 13 percentage points.

Note two things. Number one, while Crist also beats Meek, both men would win handily if the election was held today. That makes the “electability” argument a weak one. Florida is not an overwhelmingly Republican state, but it’s still congenial turf for a conservative, and Meek is a liberal Democrat out of step with the kind of moderates who might look like an otherwise difficult sell for Rubio. Rasmussen notes that Obama’s approval rating in the state is 42%, so a pro-Obama Republican isn’t being pro-Obama out of any necessity.

Second, the trend - Rubio is growing stronger against Meek, while Crist weakens, a trend consistent with their matchup in the primary, as well as with the fact that Rasmussen shows a 10-point drop (from 59% to 49%) in Crist’s approval rating as Governor.

And remember: all this is more than a year from Election Day, while Rubio is still lightly funded (his campaign only recently started coming into good fundraising numbers) and relatively lesser known. As Rasmussen notes, the state’s voters still haven’t developed especially hardened opinions yet as to any of the candidates:

Seventeen percent (17%) of Florida voters have a very favorable opinion of Crist, while 13% view him very unfavorably.

Meek, a fourth-term African-American congressman from a district on Florida’s East coast, is viewed very favorably by 10% and very unfavorably by 12%.

Thirteen percent (13%) see Rubio very favorably, but nine percent (9%) have a very unfavorable opinion of the Cuban-American legislator from Miami.

The Crist campaign is all about a balancing act between two disparate narratives: an air of inevitability in the primary and sufficient desperation about electability in the general to get Republicans to turn away from voting for the better man. Neither of those arguments looks good right now. Sorry, Charlie.

(1) Drive the Taliban from power.

(2) Destroy Al Qaeda’s training and operations bases in the country, while killing or capturing as many of their personnel as possible.

(3) Replace the Taliban with a government that was less repressive, viewed as legitimate by the Afghan people, and would not cooperate with Al Qaeda - a step that inherently involved preventing the revival of the Taliban itself, given its Islamist ideology and thorough integration with Al Qaeda.

Step One was accomplished swiftly in the fall of 2001, and Step Two proceeded apace at the same time; Al Qaeda’s leadership was never wholly destroyed (its very top men appear to have fled to the Waziristan region of Pakistan), nor completely routed from the country, but its bases were destroyed and its ability to project power from Afghanistan to outside countries was essentially crippled.

Step Three was always the diciest as a long-term proposition; as I wrote in early 2003:

Long-term, we would like to establish a secure government in Afghanistan that will consolidate the victory over theocracy and prevent re-establishment of havens for terror. But if we fail in that aim, as we still may, the war will no more be a failure than it is a failure to weed your garden in spring and, the following year, discover new weeds.

We were never going to create an ideal liberal democracy in Afghanistan, given its combination of (among other things) tribal warlord culture, illiteracy and poverty, but without going into the whole 8-year blow-by-blow, the Karzai government has by and large held together in one form or another for 8 years as a mostly-willing ally against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Recently, however, especially since Al Qaeda’s activities in Iraq have been winding down, the Taliban has been gaining more of a foothold, requiring the U.S. to face a choice: step up its own presence, or stand down and allow the Taliban to take its best shot at regaining power.

Now, Obama is putting up trial balloons about giving up on the whole project and accepting the Taliban returning to power as a fait accompli before it has even become one (passively allowing conditions on the ground to worsen and then accept the results as inevitable is Obama’s go-to foreign policy move). But Allahpundit asks one crucial question we need to put to the Taliban to test whether or not it’s completely insane to do this:

Ask them to tell us where Osama, Zawahiri, Abu Yahya al-Libi, and the rest of the gang are hiding; if Omar and the Quetta Shura don’t have that information instantly available, they should be able to get it pretty quickly. Then they pass it to the Pakistanis and the Pakistanis pass it to us and the rest is left to the generals and drone operators….And if the Taliban refuses his demand, whether for reasons of jihadist loyalty or Pashtun hospitality, then there’s your proof that they can never, ever be trusted not to host AQ if we leave them alone in Afghanistan.

We know the answer to that, and presumably so does President Obama. Bill Roggio explains at length why this would never happen, detailing the loyalties and operational integration of Al Qaeda with the Taliban and noting the obvious fact that a U.S. bent on leaving Afghanistan has a lot less leverage than one bent on entering it:

Mullah Omar would not agree to turn over bin Laden [in September 2001] when he was faced with the prospect of imminent annihilation. Surely Omar will not part ways with the terror master now that his prospects for success are greater than they have been in years.

Now, I’m not 100% opposed in theory to allowing bad actors to become parts of the political process if necessary to end a civil war, for example. But this is not a civil war, as Roggio details (really, you need to read his whole strategic overview). It is - and here is the fundamental way in which Right and Left disagree on this - a zero-sum ideological battle in which a U.S. defeat at the hands of Islamist tyrants cannot possibly be viewed as anything but a catastrophic setback. And acceptance of a resurgent Taliban after 8 years of making war to prevent just that would be understood universally as a defeat. Roggio details how Al Qaeda, as it did in Iraq, plays the sort of role in the Afghan war that the Soviet Union did in Vietnam, treating the locals as its proxies in an effort to demonstrate the superiority of its ideological model over that of the U.S., while providing logistical and other support. Any political accomodation that gives state power to an ongoing Al Qaeda proxy and ideological soulmate is a direct threat to U.S. national security, and needs to be treated as such.

The Left, having largely abandoned its long-held pretense of supporting the war against the Taliban, is busy conjuring up excuses for why victory can’t be an option. Some of these are longstanding (Afghanistan is poor and mountainous and disorganized), some more recently stressed (the Karzai government is corrupt, the recent election tainted by fraud - two interesting choices of criticism from supporters of a Chicago machine Democrat to run our own government), but if those weren’t the excuses, there would be others. There are always others. The Left palpably ached for another Vietnam in Iraq, and despite a long, bloody and bitter war at great domestic political cost to the Right, in the end it didn’t get one - instead of a repeat of the fall of Saigon at the hands of the jihad, an elected and relatively pro-American government still stands in Baghdad, and in one form or another looks likely to endure, even if its form and posture may change as the years go by. The same script is being rolled out in Afghanistan; it will be up to this White House to resist it even as it comes from Obama’s own ideological soulmates.

Afghanistan is not Obama’s war; it is America’s, and those of us on the Right want it to succeed and will, by and large, support its aggressive prosecution under a Democratic president. But the corollary is that just as it’s not his war alone to support, it’s not his alone to abandon. Obama promised to see this fight through to the end. The Taliban won’t do the things they’d need to do to switch sides; they remain committed to defeating us, and only America can stop them. Will Obama keep his promise? Or will he back down from Al Qaeda’s unrepentant ally and protector, and treat them as just more guys from the neighborhood?

I can’t top Benjamin Kerstein’s thoroughgoing vivisection of what this all says about Obama, but let me add a few thoughts of my own. And brace yourself as well for a look at Andrew Sullivan’s bizarre attempt to defend the indefensible.

First, the contrast to last week’s Olympic snub is telling. The Olympics would be something of concrete value to the country - small, localized, and dubious value, but at least Obama could have claimed to have brought home the bacon for someone other than himself. That, he couldn’t do. But a cash prize payable personally to Obama, and a bunch of gassy generalities about “hope”? Sure thing! Even the international organizations seem to have figured out what Obama deserves and how to placate him when he gets nothing for his country.

Second, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year in office, like promising to roll back the seas, pledging a net reduction in federal spending, promising no tax hikes for 95% of the American public, and circulating those infamous graphs showing the unemployment rate if the stimulus package was passed (hint: it’s much higher now than Obama’s people said it would be without the stimulus) sets an awfully high bar that Obama is bound to regret setting, for he will inevitably and certainly fall short of it.

Third, even on the Left’s own terms, it’s hard to see what exactly Obama has produced. The war in Iraq has been winding down since before he was elected, but it’s not over. The war in Afghanistan has gotten worse, and the U.S. presence there has escalated. Obama might decide to turn tail anyday now - earlier this week he gave a speech on terrorism that referenced Al Qaeda and multiple locations around the world but pointedly omitted mention of the Taliban or Afghanistan - but as of today, the anti-war movement has zilch to show there either. He hasn’t brought an end to rendition, electronic surveillance or indefinite detention, or closed Guantanamo - simply making our policies in those areas more opaque and less effective doesn’t count. He hasn’t produced anything concrete on “climate change.” The only concessions he’s won have been from the United States, such as dropping missile defense in Eastern Europe in exchange for an unspecified “hey buddy, I owe you one” from Vladimir Putin. Even the statements of the Nobel Committee were basically an affirmation that he was being given it as a form of social promotion: we hope if we give you the prize, it’ll encourage you to get more done.

Unsurprisingly, the most sycophantic reaction comes from Andrew Sullivan. Even Sullivan has to admit the award is “premature,” but then goes on to gush that “this is thoroughly deserved” and

Americans … haven’t fully absorbed the turn-around in the world’s view of America that Obama and the American people have accomplished.

As usual with such statements, Sullivan bypasses evidence and declines to specify who he means by “the world” - Putin? Hugo Chavez? Al Qaeda? The man on the street in Beijing, who has no political voice? - or what sort of results one would expect to see, if in fact “the world” was more favorably disposed towards the United States. Sullivan then ejaculates:

I hope more see both the peaceful intentions and the steely resolve of this man to persevere.

I’m at a loss to think of even a fictional, hypothetical example of Obama displaying “steely resolve,” but whatever gets you through the night, I guess.

This president has done a huge amount to bring race relations in this country to a different place…[the "far right"] know he threatens their politics of division and rule.

Leaving aside what any of that has to do with world peace (Bishop Tutu, he’s not), what place would that be? Henry Louis Gates certainly didn’t seem to think so. I doubt very much that we’re going to see anybody arguing from the Left that any issue of race relations has improved sufficiently under Obama so as to justify an end to race-conscious government policies or policies premised upon arguments about racial inequality. I can predict with 100% confidence that the Left will continue to spend far more time talking about race throughout Obama’s presidency than the Right. All that has changed is the benefit to Obama himself of Obama getting elected.

He has also directly addressed the Muslim world, telling some hard truths, and played a small role in evoking a similar movement of hope and change in Iran, and finally told the Israelis to stop cutting their nose off to spite their face.

One could spend weeks unpacking the untruths in this single sentence, a masterpiece of dishonesty and self-deception for which I can only tip my cap to Sullivan. The Cairo speech was, as I have previously discussed, full of at best half-truths and appalling moral equivalencies, Obama’s response on Iran was far later and more muted than similar statements on Iranian liberty by his predecessor (and the Iran crisis undercut the whole point of his Cairo speech)…but yes, I’ll give him “credit” for disagreeing with the Israeli people and their elected leaders as to matters of Israeli national security.

[W]e were facing a spiral of conflict that, unchecked, could have taken the world to the abyss. I see this prize as an endorsement of his extraordinary reorientation of world politics, and as an encouragement to see it through….[T]his is an attempt to tell us: look up for a moment, see how far we’ve come in pivoting away from global conflict, and give this man a break for his efforts and the massive burden he now bears.

And, in the darkness that still threatens, know hope.

This is hyperbole not on stilts but aloft in a zeppelin, and one can only extend best wishes that Sullivan survives the altitude. And as usual with Obama, it measures his accomplishments entirely by positing an unknowable “but for” world of unimaginable horror, then simply assuming that everything that didn’t happen is a positive accomplishment. He’s being lauded here for peace “created or saved,” the alternative to which is unprovable - the very definition of a faith-based standard of accomplishment. And even on these grounds, Sullivan can’t begin to specify what concrete thing Obama has done or will do, since that would open him to having to move his goalposts when reality intrudes in his castles in the air.

Today, we saw the real fruition of Barack Obama’s international ambitions. He delivered the one thing he’s really good at: accolades and money for Barack Obama.

Now, as a New Yorker, I really would not want the Olympics anywhere near my city, and the Olympics don’t exactly have a grand history of making money for the host city (ask Montreal) or necessarily good press (ask Munich), but I take at face value for the moment that Chicagoans really wanted this one and felt it would be good for the city. Certainly great effort and expense was put into the bid, and many hopes seemed to be riding on it.

I’d questioned Obama’s priorities in making the trip, but now he has a much bigger problem. It’s one thing for the President to make a phone call or two to lend a subtle hand to this sort of effort; that would have been fine with me. But by the President and First Lady both making personal appearances and elevating this to the top news story of the day and a test of personal and national prestige, Obama stood a significant chance of being humiliated, and doing so for what is hard to describe as a critical national interest. Most of us on the Right assumed, whatever we thought of the trip, that Obama would never be fool enough to make it if he didn’t already have deals done to get this in the bag for Chicago. Apparently, we overestimated him.

This is why you don’t publicly stake your prestige on something that’s not (1) hugely important (2) a done deal or (3) ideally, both. All presidents suffer defeats and embarrassments, but you generally don’t walk right into one on an issue of purely local importance to your home city. Obama’s and the nation’s standing in the world can’t help but be chipped away by this; the next time he goes jetting off to a summit or some other international event, people won’t be so quick to assume that he has all figured out in advance how he’s going to get what he wants. That aura, that mystique is a thing of value that the President is supposed to husband carefully for when the nation really needs it. Bush was impotent by the end of his presidency because he’d burned that up, but he had it for the better part of five years. Obama’s losing it already.

What a waste.

H/T