Our linkfest offering you a buffet of different takes on issues by a variety of websites.
The Dictator is Falling in Libya and some folks can’t say “I told you so” and in fact will want people to forget their words. And the question Republicans face now is how to respond: to cheer or not to cheer. I predict talk show hosts will not cheer and find some negatives and therefore most Republican candidates running for President will follow suit since the talkers now often set the talking points. Steve Benen points to Senator John McCain’s comments and others and calls it the “thank America last crowd.” A MUST READ ROUNDUP by Andrew Sullivan on Gaddafi’s fall HERE.
Tripoli Minus Gaddafi: Some thoughts.
The 2012 Republican Candidate Conservatives Clamor For is Paul Ryan and here’s why.
Will Obama pull an LBJ and Walk Away from a Second Term? Ed Morrissey asks the question. My prediction: No.
The reason: I was in high school in 1968 sitting in DiNicola’s Italian restaurant with my father on the evening LBJ announced. We watched it from a TV set mounted in the wall. But I had an inkling of what was coming. My father was a major printer for Time Magazine, doing a lot of their high quality four color mail advertising. He had told those of us at the table before LBJ talked that someone at Time told him Johnson would not run due to his extremely poor health. So the announcement that shocked everyone — including us at the table — was really not so shocking. In later years it came out that, yes, LBJ was worried about his health and whether he could have served a second term (he would have died in office). I was an LBJ and Vietnam war supporter (a strong one). I don’t think Obama will walk away and emulate that part of LBJ, or for that matter Sarah Palin — particularly if the GOP nominates someone very close to the Tea Party movement or who talks like a member of the country’s talk radio political culture. LBJ did not pass up a second term run only because of Vietnam and poll numbers. He had health issues — and he knew it and had confided in at least one Time bigwig that due to that he would not seek a second term — BEFORE he made the announcement on TV.
FOOTNOTE ON THIS: Morrissey asks a legitimate speculative question. There are legit questions in journalism and blogging to be raised about policy, politics, what may happen and what has happened. What is less worth even reading (so we won’t link) are posts suggesting that Obama should quit due to the economy and poll numbers. Somehow the folks suggesting that didn’t suggest that when a member of their party was in office. But raising serious questions about international policy, what is to come politically and why it is likely or unlikely is useful.
Would It Be Profitable for the GOP to Run on Entitlement Reform? Two GOP bigwigs think so.
Democrat Maxine Waters Has Told the Tea Party Where It Should Go and is the media reaction a double standard? The video of her.
Are Republican’s Set to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class in a move that basically is to do the opposite of whatever Obama is trying to do? One view HERE.
Christine O’Donnell’s Camp Comes Under Fire and again the criticism is coming from Republicans. This is not the first time. Maria Evans, writing in the must-read-for-moderates Frum Forum:
On Monday, August 15, 2011, I issued a press release to set the record straight about an event featuring Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, an event that three time Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell cites in her new book, Troublemaker as an example of how the Delaware Republican Party was snubbing her all of the way back in 2008, when she was the party’s chosen nominee.
For the past nine months, I have been meticulously doing research for a book I’m writing about O’Donnell’s string of failed Senate bids, the Tea Party movement, and the role that national conservative figures like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Jim DeMint had in her primary upset of nine-term congressman, Mike Castle.
The 2008 fundraiser in question wasn’t even on my book researching radar. And why would it be? July 13, 2008 was another candidate’s day, not Christine O’Donnell’s.
I was one of the organizers of the fundraising event for Delaware gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee. As Lee’s communications director and a former member of the media, I was in the habit of recording his appearances in order to provide accurate quotes to the press.
The proof I supplied to dispute O’Donnell’s claim that she was purposefully overlooked, was the unedited audio of the speeches given at the fundraiser, audio that clearly contradicted several of O’Donnell’s statements.
Further down:
The immediate response by O’Donnell and her team was exactly what I expected. They went on the attack. O’Donnell’s hysterically devoted campaign manager, Matt Moran, tried to link me to the state party’s FEC complaint against O’Donnell, a complaint that I found out about after it was filed.
Moran went on to say that I didn’t “deny” that “O’Donnell wasn’t invited to the fundraiser,” and that statement is absolutely true, because I was never asked whether or not she was invited.
In her book, O’Donnell claims that she found out about the July 13, 2008 fundraiser the day before, (that would be July 12, 2008), purely by accident, from Haley Barbour himself, and that her campaign had to scramble to “find out what fundraiser he’s (Barbour) talking about,” and that they had to do an “end-around to arrange for tickets, but we finally got them…”
The day after I issued the press release, on a local radio station where I had once worked as a talk show host, blogger and reporter, O’Donnell said that she “felt sorry” for me and the show’s host, one of her sycophants, called me Mike Castle’s “concubine.”
I was horrified to realize that my 12 year-old son had been listening to the broadcast. “Are you OK, Mom?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I told you yesterday that people were going to say bad things about me, but it’s OK because I’m telling the truth, and when you tell the truth, everything works out.”
“Mom, what’s a ‘concubine’?” he asked with a concerned look on his face.
Read it in full. In her walking off Piers Morgan’s show and later claiming he was doing a “creepy” form of sexual harrassament for asking her about her past assertions, to her hanging up on a radio talk show host, O’Donnell is not merely a joke anymore. She is proving herself to be the kind of person Democrats, many independents and a good chunk of Republicans feel is not needed in office. There is this concept now in politics – you see it all the time in blog and website comments sections, mainstream media websites and hear it from right and left talkers (and yes there are some on the left) — that responding to a different idea or a criticism means using language that would have totally discredited those who used it a mere 10 years ago. Now it’s considered part of the political game — with the emphasis on “game.” But our times are too serious for games now.
The Candidates Iowa Republicans Don’t Want: A poll on Red State.
Dems in Trouble in Special Election to Replace Anthony Weiner? It sounds that way.
More Details On the Bank Loans Due to 2008 Financial Crisis raise more eyebrows.
Tea Party Launches Big Push for Iowa Palin Event: If she’s not running this is a darn good imitation of someone who is. And a political activist in Iowa says she will run. If Palin does get in it would mean Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Palin would be going after a lot of the same voters — which could help Mitt Romney, the candidate who seems as exciting to many GOPers as a day old bowl of cold oatmeal. An operative in Iowa says Palin will be running.
Is John Huntsman the new DNC Spokesman? Right Wing News’ Jon Teach makes the case that he is.
Rick Perry and Evolution: Has evolution passed Perry by?
Joe Biden goes to China and shows U.S. weakness. (h/T RealClearWorld)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.