The Republican Contenders and the CNBC Assassination Squad

by Avi Davis

There are two pieces of big news which resulted from the third Republican debate which took place in Colorado on Wednesday night.  The first is that the CNBC moderators were shown to be out of their league.  They lost control of the proceedings early on and never really regained it and then compounded this failure by asking the most pointedly inane personal questions of the candidates, treating them as if they were circus animals being paraded for the network’s and audience’s enjoyment.

Ted Cruz of course slapped their insults right back at them when he lambasted their line of questioning which included crude characterizations of Donald Trump as a cartoon book character, Mario Rubio as an insolvent pauper, Ben Carson as incapable of “vetting” those who appropriate his image and Jeb Bush as a loser because his poll numbers have sagged.   Clearly the CNBC moderators had geared up for a confrontation with the Republican candidates, thinking of every means they could to cast them as interlopers and incompetents.

Is it any wonder then that no less than four of the candidates made specific reference to the nastiness of the questioning and the clear attempt by the moderators to paint those standing of the stage as little more than a group of truculent children with no business contending for the highest office in the land? And Ted Cruz was right to compare the treatment meted out to the Republicans with the way the Democrats had been gingerly handled two weeks prior.  If you remember that was a time when a proudly identified socialist unashamedly called for a political revolution in the United States – and his remarks did not seem to bat a lash on any moderator’s eye.

This is of course of a piece with the generally poor coverage of the Republican race.  Donald Trump, in Oklahoma this week, goaded the cameramen filming him to pan on the 10,000 strong audience he had attracted, knowing, as he said, that the filmed and written reports likely to follow would not mention any more than a handful in attendance. Mario Rubio, questioned about the Sun Sentinel’s editorial in Florida that day which had called for the Senator to resign his seat because he was absent so often from Senatorial proceedings,  illuminated that paper’s bias when he compared the Sentinel’s treatment of Senators Bob Graham,John Kerry and Barack Obama, when they all ran for president (missing far more Senate business than Rubio).  He just laughed at the paper’s hypocrisy.

So here’s the story on the real winners and losers in Boulder on Wednesday night:  The commentators were revealed to be petty, uninformed muckrakers with an axe to grind, trolling for any dirt they could dish up on the candidates;  while the candidates themselves, to a man (and woman) carried themselves with dignity under an assault from their interrogators. A victory for civility over contempt and a triumph of clarity over obfuscation.

One does to have wonder about the commitment of those who run Cable news networks to the ideas of fairness and openness for which they pride themselves as compared to the actual practices of those who sit behind their news desks.  In a fairer world each one of those CNBC  moderators would have been fired after Wednesday’s fiasco- for not only their blatant prejudice, but also for diminishing the American people’s trust in the accuracy of their reportage.

So the moderators lost.  But there was one other loss which occurred on stage that night that went largely unnoticed.

And that is the end of the Bush Era in U.S.politics.  From the time of George Herbert Walker Bush’s  rise to the vice presidency in 1980, until last night, it seemed certain that there would always be a Bush flapping his wings over or near the White House’s gates. It ended last night with Jeb Bush’s attempt to pour coal on the fire that the moderators had already lit under Mario Rubio, when he  suggested that Rubio should resign his Senate seat.  Rubio’s rapier response cut Bush to shreds and left him speechless and vulnerable.  He ended the evening an also ran, his campaign huffing to an abrupt halt.

 

 

Once hailed by both his father and his brother, former presidents of the United States, to be the best politician in the family, he has actually revealed himself to be its worst campaigner –  his lack luster debate performances and less than stellar speeches on the hustings, making him look uncomfortable and out of touch. It cannot be too long before the realization that there will not be a third Bush presidency spanning the last half century dawns on even the most diehard Bush followers and the Bush mint, which has determinedly hammered out two presidents over the past thirty-five years, will be shuttered for good.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of the Intermediate Zone

Pigs at the Trough

In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, the ever reliable columnist Daniel Henniger wrote the following about the first Democratic debate:

“What is striking about the candidates’ economic proposals is how disconnected they are from a private-sector economy. The Democrats have disappeared into a sealed world of public-sector economics, running to wishful thinking, like Bernie Sanders’s “tuition-free” public-college education. In Mrs. Clinton’s version, college would be “debt-free.”

CNN’s uncurious Anderson Cooper didn’t ask the senator how it could be “free.” But Mr. Sanders answered it himself: “I pay for my program, by the way, through a tax on Wall Street speculation.”

It is so fantastic. The Democrats, not least Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, seem to have discovered El Dorado itself in “Wall Street,” a city of infinite gold dust to finance their economic pyramids in perpetuity.”

 

So here we have the absolute irony of the Democrats’ crusade against the evils of capitalism: while happy to drink from the trough when it suits them, they will call for the trough’s removal, eclipse or destruction when the political winds are conveniently blowing their way.

For all the rhetoric about Wall Street and ‘casino capitalism’ from the Democratic candidates, one has to wonder what they actually mean by these terms?   Do they perhaps means entertainment giants such as Time-Warner, Sony Corporation and Viacom – publicly traded corporations on Wall Street whose executives have been major contributors to Democratic causes?  Do they perhaps mean Silicon Valley high fliers such as Google, Oracle and eBay – no strangers to Democratic politics?  Or do they perhaps mean the New York Times Company –  traded on the NYSE,; or the multinational conglomerate, Graham Holdings Company – owner of the Washington Post and many other news outlets – both of whose support the Democratic nominee  will desperately need in his or her quest for the White House

And don’t forget all those Wall Street bankers who are banging on the doors of Democratic Headquarters to be considered for jobs in the new Administration.  It should be remembered that both Hank Paulson  and Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretaries who both who served under Democratic Presidents, had prior storied careers on Wall Street.

El Dorado indeed.

Yet for some reason the same companies and bankers who never seem to tire of getting beaten up by candidates Obama and Clinton, continue to disgorge the dough when slapped on the rump.

Barack Obama raised a record $42.2 million in his 2008 election campaign from Wall Street bankers and financial insiders, and although the amount was considerably less in 2012, the fact that anyone on Wall Street was willing to give him a dime after his four year long jeremiad accusing them of having virtually raped the country, is a marvel in itself.

The truth is that there is a symbiotic relationship between politicians and ‘Wall Street’: One is seeking to buy and grease the passage to power and the other seeking to buy and secure influence.  It doesn’t matter which party it is or who the bankers and corporations may be:   Politicians need Wall Street and Wall Street just as badly needs politicians.

So all rhetoric aside, lets just agree that the political pigs will continue to feed at the financial trough, and the Democrats will continue to pretend to kick the trough away: yet will always quietly and secretly bring it back whenever they think that no one is looking.

 

Avi Davis is  the President of the American Freedom Alliance and  the editor of the Intermediate Zone

Democrats Demonstrate Historical Amnesia

by Avi Davis

One of the most remarkable things about Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas was not the way the candidates sought to differentiate themselves from one another, but rather how much they struggled to make themselves look the same.

Part of this was due to the presence of a 72 -year-old firebrand, whose ideological weight made the stage sag way down to the far left and had all the candidates tumbling in that direction.  Bernie Sanders, with his calls for a political revolution, a crusade against Wall Street, free college tuition for all Americans and the break up of national banks sounded more like Fidel Castro in 1959, than a modern day American presidential contender.  And yet, he received by far the greatest applause of the evening, so long lasting  that at one point  the debate began to resemble a rally rather than a genuine exchange of ideas between thoughtful progressive candidates.

 

 

What is truly remarkable is how little resistance these entirely bankrupt and out- of-date ideas received from the other candidates.  When Jim Webb meekly attempted to challenge Sanders’ wild rhetoric  – pointing out that a political revolution is not exactly on the horizon and that Congress was unlikely to pay for the exorbitant programs Sanders was proposing, his criticisms were met with deafening silence.  Hillary Clinton, the long favored front runner, seemed too busy touting her experience and the fact that she is a female to be much engaged in confronting both Sanders’ and the audience’s silliness.

But letting this stuff go bears consequences.  That is because Sanders now has a national voice – which he may not have had before – and his brand of  socialist propaganda, which would never have passed muster 22 years ago when Bill Clinton faced off against his Democratic challengers, is going to be taken seriously in the upcoming presidential race.

The extraordinary thing is that here we are in 2015, twenty five years after the collapse of the world’s greatest failed experiment in socialism, in a country, by dint of its free enterprise system, which has ensured a greater level of prosperity for a greater proportion of its population, than any other nation in history.  Each one of the candidates harped on the great income disparity between rich and poor ( “the greatest gap since  the 1920s!,” at least three of them howled)  – but its all quite relative.  Even those in the lowest income brackets in our society today live lives of comfort and ease when compared to the existences of those same poor in the 1920s. Cell phones, 50″ television screens, owner-owned cars and a variety of other electronic  possessions can be seen in the homes of the most dirt poor areas of Detroit, New Orleans and East Los Angeles.  While these are not true determinants of income, they are symbols of an affluence that the poor in the rest of the world deeply envy and  why so many are risking their lives as illegal immigrants to cross our borders.

No one on that stage last night should have needed a history lesson in how socialism actually operates in the real world and how it significantly failed millions and upon millions of its adherents in the 20th Century.

 

 

But apparently no one was bold enough to stand up to Sanders and call him out for the ridiculous figure he casts in 21st Century American politics. They were all too busy retreading tired liberal tropes about brutal police tactics, institutional racism, billionaire avarice, climate change exigencies, Republican obstructionism, Wall Street chicanery and pharmaceutical industry malfeasance – all of which form part of Bernie Sanders’ bucket list of complaints against America.

And while Sanders was barking his socialist wares, Hillary Clinton was left free to address the country’s significant problems with broad platitudes. Although CNN host Anderson Cooper admirably continued to grill her about the consuming email scandal and her failures regarding Benghazi, none of her competitors seemed to consider these considerable vulnerabilities to be fair game. Sanders actually offered her a hand out of the furnace, seeming to agree with her that the concern of the country over her honesty and good faith, are not matters worthy of general discussion in Democratic circles but should be remaindered as Republican scare tactics.

The other big winner of the night was Barack Obama.  None of the candidates sought to distance themselves from Obama’s abysmal foreign policy record, the sluggish U.S. economy, his failures to assist his much venerated middle class, nor the Obamacare fiasco that any of them would need to fix immediately should they become President.  Clinton, whom the White House appears not too eager to see as as a presidential successor, went out of her way to avoid attacking Obama’s record and legacy, carefully sidestepping his most egregious failures.

This was the weak and uncourageous field which stood before the American public on the stage in Las Vegas last night.  We deserved and deserve much better.

 

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

 

Ann Coulter’s Helpful Gaffe

by Avi Davis

I have never been a big Ann Coulter fan. It has always appeared to me that her penchant for stirring political acrimony by name calling and ridicule was merely an attempt to mirror the same liberal tactic which so often offends conservatives. Maybe many among us welcomed the unbridled fury she unleashed against our liberal dominated institutions; but for me, her brand of populist rhetoric sank us into the same mire as our adversaries – reducing the debate to a mere game of mud slinging rather than a true struggle over ideas

So now we come to the high water mark of Coulterism: in a tweet during the second GOP Debate, she used an expletive to describe the candidates’ obsession with Israel, qua Jews. Immediately following and in the four days thereafter, her tweet unleashed a barrage of criticism from both the left and right, whose memberships now recognize that within our ranks lurk Buchananites whose support for Israel can never be taken for granted and to whom we must be wary lest we witness a recrudescence of the kind of isolationism which always brings with it the stench of antisemitism.

Coulter has spent a great deal of time trying to back pedal on her tweet but it hasn’t made much difference. The underlying animus remains and there is little chance for her now to disguise it.

But lets forget Coulter for the time being and answer her question:

Why is it that Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz and most of the other candidates ( Rand Paul perhaps excluded) made and  make such a big fuss about Israel, mentioning the defense of Israel almost in the same breath as the defense of the United States?

Perhaps it could be characterized as mere pandering to the heavy Jewish vote in their constituencies -those whom they believe might be disenchanted with the anti- Israel tilt of the Obama Administration and are looking for a realignment.   Or perhaps it has something to do with some of their rich Jewish backers – such as Sheldon Adelson – who can help prop up sagging campaigns.

Actually, neither of these explanations are either true nor accurate. Every one of these candidates has been on record for years expressing unconditional support for the State of Israel and its security needs – and it is for one glaringly simple reason: they believe Israel’s security vouchsafes the United States’ security. Making that connection may not be so patently obvious given the geographical distance between the two countries. But it is abundantly clear to anyone who has heard jihadist rantings in mosques from Oslo to Riyadh – the two countries are regarded as the hydra headed monster whose joint destruction is essential to paving the way for the re-emergence of the Caliphate.

Big Satan and Little Satan – there is really no difference in the minds of America’s enemies – except perhaps in determining which one should be eliminated first. Given this fact, it is perfectly sensible and reasonable to make common cause with an ally who is really on the front lines of the defense of what are essentially American values and whose military and intelligence services stand resolutely in support of U.S national security needs.

So, please, give Ann Coulter her due. She raised an important question that now has been resoundingly answered. And perhaps never again in this campaign will the issue of why we give support to Israel or why we give such untoward attention to Jewish interests, will be asked again. Those interests are clearly American interests and what a great relief to find that that these formidable Republican candidates almost to a man (and now a woman) understand it.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

 

 

Second GOP Debate Brings Some Surprises.

by Avi Davis

The Second GOP Presidential Debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley last night was a wonderful showcase of the great talent in the Republican nominating field. I was deeply impressed with several of the candidates who had not revealed their strengths in the first debate. Included among them was Chris Christie who stood effectively above the fray by calling attention to the pettiness of the exchanges between some of the other candidates and made some forceful points about foreign policy and planned parenthood; Marco Rubio continues to impress me with his remarkably articulate presentation – probably the best extemporaneous orator I have ever witnessed on the American political scene. Mike Huckabee presents as a clear sighted elder statesman who delivered the line of the evening when he reminded his fellow candidates that Ronald Reagan rarely spoke about what he personally could do for America as much as about the American potential for greatness. John Kasich is beginning to emerge from obscurity to present his brand of compassionate conservatism – which of course places him on the moderate ( dare I say “liberal”) wing of his party but positions him well to collect votes of disaffected Democrats.

But Carly Fiorina, to my mind at least, stole the show. Diminutive (at least in comparison to the men on the stage) and the only woman, she displayed a remarkable wit, pluck and was carefully prepared. If her words were rehearsed then it was not noticeable. She came across as confident and informed and very much a leader – clearly a skilled competitor to the others who are now forced to pay her the respect she deserves. Her line about Hilary Clinton – that logging flight time cannot be listed as an accomplishment – is a killer.

Of the others I did not think Scott Walker particularly distinguished himself, despite what other commentators have said. I am still waiting for him to look and sound presidential – that kind of ringing confidence still seems to escape him. Ted Cruz did well. but appears at times a little too stiff and robotic. There is not enough warmth nor personality in his presentation and he lacks the humor and self effacement of other candidates such as Ben Carson – all of which would help humanize him. Rand Paul was the big loser of the night. Diminished by the great Great Diminisher, Donald Trump, himself, he never quite recovered his poise;

Of the front runners, Jeb Bush did much better this time around but I can’t help wondering about his level of preparation and his sometimes faltering delivery. At least he stood up to Trump and did not allow himself to be kicked around again. Ben Carson was amiable, humorous and comfortable – but of all of them, his soft spoken demeanor, while attractive, tends to cast him as the guy you would like as your best friend, but not necessarily as your president.

Then of course there is front runner The Donald. ( Why am I calling him that????). He was warmer and less arrogant this time around and held his own against the others who tried to paint him as a light weight with no defined policies. This is, of course, a mistake. Trump is supremely intelligent and a quick study and what he says is true – what he doesn’t know he will pick up – and with speed. The jury is still out on whether he has the temperament to be president – he hardly ever talks about mustering support in Congress for his policies or of working together cooperatively with anyone. The first thing a President learns upon entering the White House is that no elected leader just pushes a button that gets things done. It takes extensive back slapping and glad handing of people you don’t really like and even consider your enemies.
Will he learn this and would he be able to engage in the political world like other cooperative presidents such as Ronald Reagan – and to a certain extent – Bill Clinton? That should be left to the questioning by hosts in future debates.

So much for presentation . I will talk about the substance of the disagreements on policy between the candidates in a post later today. .

 Avi  Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

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GOP HOPEFULS JUDGED BY NOT WHAT THEY SAY BUT HOW THEY SAY IT

By Avi Davis

Much has already been written about  the characterization of  the 17-strong field of GOP Presidential contenders as a stellar field of candidates, unlike anything seen in recent memory. That observation was only amplified by the first Republican debate on August 6th,making clear that this campaign has already produced a bumper crop – far out shining the measly pickings of only four years earlier.

And since they are off and running it is time to assess the prospects of these men and one woman.  The candidates who will take the lead in this race will not necessarily be those with the most detailed plans for righting the tottering U.S. ship of state; or those with the most refined vision.  It will be those those who can project the self assurance of a president.  What will ultimately matter in these early days will be not so much what the candidates say, but how they say it –  how they look on the stage and how they connect with an audience. Appearances, at this stage, are everything.

If we use these criteria to judge the performances of the first tier debaters on Thursday night ( I did not get a chance to watch the second tier), then the unqualified front runners emerging from the pack are Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Mario Rubio and  Ben Carson.  Cruz, because he was direct in his statements; did not flinch from his previously announced positions and presented a summary which was more targeted and emphatic than anyone else on the stage; Huckabee because he, more articulately than the others,drew attention to the prevailing malaise of the country and the lack of integrity and absence of vision within the country’s current leadership; Rubio, because he shone as the hardscrabble candidate, recounting his fighting struggle from poverty and debt to becoming a resoundingly articulate champion of American values;  And Ben Carson because he was the most likeable individual in the arena – bringing a levity and lightness to an otherwise overly serious discussion, without losing his focus on the gravity of the problems confronting the United States.

On the other hand, the two men who entered the debate as the once presumptive leaders-  Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, fell flat and were largely uninspiring;   Jeb Bush often looked uncomfortable and awkward – and by my reckoning was the least polished and articulate of the speakers;  Scott Walker, who boasts of being just an ordinary guy, actually presented more like an Average Joe, reminding me too often of the actor Chris Parnell who often parodied politicians just like him on Saturday Night Live.

Of the others, Chris Christie did himself no harm when he convincingly roasted Rand Paul over the NSA wire tapping scheme but did not impress as a self assured leader; he was a little too much New Jersey bouncer and less presidential aspirant than he could have been.  His unfortunate positioning on the stage at the beginning of the line of speakers allowed the cameras to catch his girth in full profile; Unfortunate, because Americans, at least in the modern era, do not tend to elect fat men to the presidency.  Rand Paul, receiving a convincing drubbing from Christie, did not recover well and looked rather deflated afterward.  John Kasich came across as a good and honorable man, but not strident in his views nor feisty enough in his demeanour to convince anyone that he would be capable of engaging in mortal combat with the take-no-prisoners Clinton machine.

Which leaves of course the 800 lb. gorilla in the room.  Donald Trump captured the limelight before entering the debate with a populist brand of politics which should be familiar to anyone with a sense of American history.  William Jennings Bryan in the  mid-1890s – and to a certain extent in the two presidential campaigns which followed – became the first candidate to appeal to a wide constituency with a stark, simple message short on specifics but long on bravado.  I thought of him as I watched Trump’s performance.  Trump’s encounter with moderator Megyn Kelly over his characterization of women has now degenerated into a war of attrition between himself and the press, who devoured his tantrum – and his astonishing continued campaign against her – as red meat – in the process turning him into more of a circus act than a leading presidential contender. He must be starting to realize that ‘The Donald’ brand, honed in a spectacular real estate and entertainment career, does not easily mulch down into political capital.  His perpetual frown and surly defensiveness (together with the Megyn Kelly interface and the confusing refusal to disavow a third party stand),transformed him from populist hero into the evening’s bully.  And in the end, no one really likes a bully.

But overall, it was a great evening, full of sparkle and energy and it should give those of us fed up with seven years of our failed experiment in progressivism considerable heart that daring and assertive American leadership , coupled with a return to U.S. greatness, could be just around the corner.

Netanyahu Delivers a Warning

 

Goodbye Mitt

by Avi Davis

The first time I met Mitt Romney, he was Governor of Massachusetts and I was a visiting fellow at Harvard.   A friend, who was a journalist at a Boston paper, invited me to attend a press briefing the Governor was giving regarding his position on gay marriage. During the year I lived in Cambridge, I followed Romney and had become convinced that he was a man with a huge political future before him.

After I met him, I became certain.

Romney stated his position on gay marriage succinctly and forthrightly and  with a measure of sympathy for the gay community.  Yet he stood steadfastly against gay marriage and managed to convince most of us that he was able to read the pulse of the times on the issue.  He seemed to be to be a man of substance and commitment who knew and understood politics. He appeared to know how to deal with a skeptical electorate whose blue state credentials remained unchanged by his election as a conservative Governor. I felt he knew his audience and understood his constituency.

But more than that, I felt he had presence.

Tall, with a fine figure, a winning smile and a warm speaking voice, he presented to me as more telegenic than any prospective presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy.  But in distinct contrast to the true JFK he was, I discovered, a steadfast family man with a committed spiritual life  –  personal characteristics which seemed to mark him apart from most of the conservative politicians I had met.  He had skillfully navigated around the gay marriage issue and although his state sponsored medical insurance plan gave evidence of troubling liberal tendencies, the good grades he had received from conservative pundits – and even from my journalist friend, seemed to suggest that he had the political skills and instincts to compete on a national stage.

It  was with this sense of  the man’s destiny that I eagerly anticipated his candidacy in the GOP primaries in 2008.  When I learned of his exemplary record of achievement at Bain Capital  and of his devoted work in rescuing the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, it became clear that here was a manager who could inspire loyalty and get things done.  Not since Herbert Hoover had a presidential candidate appeared on the national scene with such an abundance of financial acumen and the ability to take charge of large, troubled projects and guide them to completion.

That his candidacy fizzled in 2008 was a disappointment but not a surprise.  I marked it down then to inexperience in the rough water of  national politics. He didn’t seem yet sufficiently toughened for the spitfire tactics of his GOP adversaries nor as well prepared. But I believed that by the time 2012 rolled around, at the still sprightly age of 64, he would have developed the skills to take on his adversaries  with consummate skill, charm the media and the liberal institutions who had so demonized George W. Bush  and deftly slash a path to the GOP nomination and then the White House.

I was wrong.  The brilliant manager of funds and people could not summon those skills to run a brilliant presidential campaign.  He often appeared exhausted by it and not to particularly enjoy the endless amount of glad handing and back slapping that came with the nomination.   There was good reason for such exhaustion.  He had been savaged by the circular firing squad which became the GOP nomination process of that year, with his successes at Bain being used against him by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry who labeled him a ruthless capitalist unconcerned with the lives of ordinary working people and whose jobs he would extinguish with a stroke of a pen.  This was of course a complete fabrication and a selfish, hypocritical tactic.  Yet it had done its damage and the ruthless Obama campaign immediately seized upon it and then relentlessly pounded Romney on the issue for the remainder of the presidential campaign.

The Obamaites went to enormous lengths to spray mud on Romney’s spotless career and personality, even bringing up an episode from three decades earlier when the Romney family moved house and had placed their dog on the roof of the family car during a transfer from one state to another.  The image found a surprising resonance amongst centrists – one of whom told a friend of mine following the election that she could not bring herself to vote for a man who was so cruel to animals.

But the characterization of Romney as a robber baron, gleefully torching companies and then jettisoning their work forces, was the image that adhered and was never sufficiently answered. Rather than launching a counter offensive that aggressively defended his record as a businessman who had contributed immensely to U.S. prosperity in the 1980s and 90s, the Romney campaign let the charges gather force and they began to stick.  They clouded the true character of Romney, a man of great personal integrity and generosity – and created an image of a ruthless capitalist whose only interest as President would be in protecting his rich donors.

The public never got a chance to see the very human side of Mitt Romney and appreciate his truly admirable abilities in earning his self made fortune. The media built an effective barrier to inquisitive eyes and deflected attention to a more nefarious portrait lifted straight out of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Meanwhile, in the general election campaign, Romney faced a failed President who offered one of the weakest presidential records in modern U.S. history. Economic growth was anemic, an extremely divisive national health care law was roiling the nation and in foreign affairs restive rogue nations were taking advantage of the absence of the world’s lone super power from the international stage.  Obama had no other true legislative or foreign policy accomplishments to speak of.  More than even this, during the electoral campaign, the president never articulated a cogent plan for his second term, preferring to use his national platform to demonize his opponent.

Anyone in the swing states or sitting on the fence should have been able to see all this, but they didn’t.  They were not helped in any significant way by Romney’s two final national debate performances.  Whereas he had delivered a stunning blow to Obama in the first debate, outpointing a flat footed Obama at every turn,  in the following contests he failed to go on the offensive and deliver the knock out punch so many were expecting of him.  Instead he landed soft blows, particularly in the third debate, even sounding conciliatory and appreciative of Obama on many foreign policy issues.  Obama seized this gift and used it  to paint Romney as out of touch with ordinary Americans – reinforcing a persistent campaign theme.

Then came Hurricane Sandy which devastated large swathes of the eastern seaboard in the week before the election. Suddenly Barack Obama was able to project himself as the commander -in -chief  he had failed to become in his first four years in office.  Romney, hoping to look reasonable and concerned, suspended his campaign just at the moment he needed it to switch into high gear. And then Chris Christie, the flamboyant GOP governor of New Jersey, nailed his coffin shut by insisting on lauding the president for his participation in his state’s rescue and recovery from the fearful damage left in Sandy’s wake.

The bitter disappointment of election night on November 6, 2012 was compounded when it was discovered that the sophisticated voter turn out software that the Romney campaign had promised to deploy to encourage a stronger younger conservative participation in the election crashed, never to be revived. GOP activists throughout the country were left stranded without  the invaluable information that would have made it possible to rally the GOP base and encourage a march towards a possible victory.

Could Romney have done better? Perhaps. If he had chosen a better campaign team or if he had possessed better luck in not facing such a feckless bunch of GOP contenders in the primaries.

But part of Romney’s failure in 2012 rests at the very least with the man himself.  Despite his family values, great financial accomplishments, executive experience, personal morality and good looks – despite them all – Romney lacked the two things which tend to elevate leaders above mere also rans – charisma and conviction.  He was unable to project the air of a man who had a broad vision for America, who could speak passionately of its history and its mission in the world; who could convince voters that he could capably stand in the shoes of the greatest of American leaders – Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. He failed to compete against Obama’s renowned eloquence – racked with meaninglessness though it is – and his tone of confidence  – false though it is – as matched against his own talents and skills.

This is perhaps because Romney was unable  project true commitment to any particular worldview.  A writer for a Washington weekly, who had been a some time speech writer for candidate Romney, commented to me that up close it was impossible to get any other impression of the man other than one of utter blandness. He came away from his experience thinking that Romney did not believe in very much at all – other than his suitability for being President.  On the campaign trail, his impermeability to new ideas became legendary.  Many other reports indicated that Romney was socially uncomfortable, often aloof  and that he intensely disliked the unrelenting grind of campaigning.

These characteristics would not have differentiated him too greatly from some of the other middling presidents in America’s history.  In the roster of national chief executives it might have ultimately positioned him as a capable steward rather than as an outstanding leader  – alongside men such as William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge or Gerald Ford. But it would have certainly elevated him above the amateurish, churlish and intensely ideological Barack Obama, whose one term presidency would have evaporated as quickly as it had materialized and then consigned by commentators as an aberration in the long line of American patriots and capable chief executives who had previously entered the White House.

Which leads us to the approaching 2016 election and Romney’s decision, announced Friday, not to seek the GOP nomination for a third time.  It was a good decision.  In the two years that have passed since 2012, Romney has not distinguished himself as a firebrand critic of the President – a role which would have undoubtedly done much to overhaul his reputation as a policy wonk;  or as a rigorous fair minded commentator who injected a broad body of knowledge about national policy into his writings.   He wrote no books and made few public appearances – at least ones that garnered national attention.

So how could he have even considered a third run for presidency?  That is one of those imponderable questions that might only be answered by the man himself. Having a strong donor base, a great family and a reputation as a party centrist, was clearly not enough. He needed to prove to us and to himself that he deserved to run for president for reasons other than his mere suitability for the job.

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In the end the United States today does not need another William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge or Gerald Ford.  In a time where the United States leadership is sorely absent in theaters of conflict around the world; when our domestic life is riven by divisions deeper than at any time than perhaps the Civil War; when our deficit has ballooned beyond the imaginings of even the most die hard cynic, the country desperately needs a President who can offer more than platitudes and capable executive experience –  it needs a true leader who can inspire confidence and project a vision which can motivate a great nation to reclaim that greatness.

Sadly Mitt Romney, outstanding individual though he certainly is, is not that man. It is a good thing he recognized this himself and has taken himself out of the running so that a fresh candidate can advance the most vital mission in the world today – the saving of the American republic.

Avi Davis is the President of the  American Freedom Alliance and the editor of  The Intermediate Zone.

The BDS War Against Israel: A Review

by Avi Davis

Authors: Jed Babbin and Herbert London

Paperback: 98 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition

Publication Date:  May 28, 2014

Review Date:  January 14, 2015

The most revealing moment in Jed Babbin and Herbert London’s exposé of the BDS movement comes near the middle of the book, when the authors quote Omar Baghouti, founder and director of Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment Movement – the international effort to isolate Israel economically.  Claiming that his organization accepts Israel’s right to exist but is only focused on applying enough pressure  so that it abandons what it refers to as ‘occupied Palestinian territory’, Barghouti makes clear that even if Israel retreats entirely from the West Bank, the BDS movement will continue on:

“Even if the Israelis remove all their settlements and dismantle their military installations and return to the 1967 borders, the BDS movement will continue because there will still be 5 million  Palestinian refugees who are prevented from returning to their homes.”

With such a statement this Palestinian celebrity makes clear that the Boycott Divestment  and Sanctions Movement is not, as its literature and website declare, concerned with just forcing the State of Israel to give up the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to allow a State of Palestine to come into existence.  Rather it is about the destruction of the Jewish state itself since Bargouti and his international claque are well aware that permitting 5 million or so Palestinian refugees to take up residence in Israel proper can lead to nothing but the tilting of the demographic balance in the Palestinians’ favor.

This is the dirty little secret that such fellow travelers as Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and actresses Emma Thompson and Jane Fonda all wish to hide from you:  they believe that Israel as a Jewish state is illegitimate and should not exist.  Every other statement – about Palestinian rights, justice for the refugees, claims of apartheid like conditions in the West Bank – are all smoke and mirrors to disguise the true agenda behind this malicious movement and its perfervid attempts to drive a wedge between Israel and the rest of the civilized world.

The State of Israel had in fact experienced a boycott movement even before its creation in 1948.  Arab boycotts have existed since the 1920s, aimed at preventing Jewish immigration to what was then Palestine.     Soon after the conclusion of Israel’s War of Independence in January 1949, the Arab League called for a boycott of any dealings of Arab nations with the Israeli government or Israeli civilians; a restriction of any non-Arab corporation or individual who does business with Israel and a prohibition of any Arab League member and its nationals who deal with a company who deals with another company that does business with Israel.

Almost from the beginning the Arab League boycott was a non-starter as within a few years it would have essentially required the 22 Arab nations to stop doing business with the rest of the world.   Today that boycott, still officially in effect, is regarded as a joke since nearly all the Arab countries have found a way to circumvent it.

But the new Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement is not a joke and in the course of its ten years of operation has done real damage – if not to Israel’s booming economy, then to its international reputation.  Springing from the U.N.  Tehran Conference on Racism and the Word Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in September, 2001  several hundred NGOs – such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Doctors without Borders convened to draft a universal declaration against racism.  The latter conference spiraled into an ugly hatefest against Israel – involving  the resuscitation of anti-Semitic canards.   Israel and the United States stormed out in protest.

But the die was cast and being located in South Africa, the locus of so much of the left’s boycott efforts in the 1970s and 80s, the conference provided a perfect opportunity to zero in on what was alleged to be the  apartheid regime of Israel and its brutal handling of Palestinians.  Accusing Israel of having perpetrated war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing, while having also  instituted illegal blockades and partition barriers which , it was claimed, vitiate against international law, the NGOs successfully launched a world wide campaign aimed first at college campuses around the world  and then at major corporations and then governments.

 

To date the movement has had almost no visible  effect on Israel’s trade relations with the rest of the world.  A Knesset report, issued last week, indicated that the minimal impact was due to Israel’s growing high tech ties with countries and corporations around the world, who see no utility in the effort to interfere with Israel’s economic progress:

“So far, the attempts to boycott Israel have not hurt the Israeli economy on the macro scale. … The boycotts are able to hurt largely the end products of certain Israeli brands. However, since the majority of Israeli exports are intermediate goods, there has not been significant harm done to them,” the report said.

However on another level it is success is quite impressive. Its ability to win the support of certain high profile journalists, trade unions, academics, leading actors, actresses and rock stars has given the movement a luster it clearly does not deserve..  These groups and individuals  have been drawn to BDS’ anti-colonial message and its supposed platform for the underdog  – ignoring of course the lies upon which the movement was established as well as the continuing incitement to violence encouraged by Palestinian leaders and terrorist operatives.

Yet, the movement has succeeded in misleading many  influential journalists such as world renown physicist Stephen Hawking and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman into believing that BDS is, simply, an “Intifada propelled by non-violent resistance and economic boycott, seeking to advance a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” However, far from offering solutions, the movement has only served to extend and intensify the conflict as it has encouraged Hamas’ three violent wars with Israel over the past ten years and has justified Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ continuing rejection of any accommodation with Israel.  In the meantime it has demonstrated its complementarity with Palestinian terror, its acceptance of Iranian threats to destroy Israel and the continued Arab resentment of Israel’s prosperity.

As such, BDS is merely a recent variant of centuries -old anti-Jewish boycotts that the Arab powers and other nations once embraced well before the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in 1948.  And in this way it ties directly into traditional antisemitic tropes providing a seamless connection between Tzarist disinformation efforts, Nazi propaganda and the present day campaigns aimed at thedelegitimization of the Jewish state.

Authors Babbin and London provide a fitting exposé of this malign movement, indicating how it is funded, who are its collaborators and where and why it succeeds or fails.

The picture which ultimately emerges is of a cadre of vengeful ideaologues, who hate the West as much as they hate the State of Israel and would be pleased to see both disappear.

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Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of the Intermediate Zone.

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The Retrogressive Progressives of New York

by Avi Davis

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of the State of New York, announced on Wednesday that  he will ban all forms of hydraulic fracturing in his state until further information can be obtain about health and environmental risks of the oil drilling process.  The announcement came on exactly the same day that Russia announced emergency measures to shore up the ruble and to prevent the Russian economy tail spinning into collapse; as well as the day that it was announced  that Cuba and the United States will re-commence diplomatic relations after a 53  year lull.  Both of the latter events can be tied directly to the impact the fracking boom has had on the United States.   The ruble has lost 20% of its value against the dollar after prices for oil collapsed under the weight of the global oil glut.  Cuba, reliant on Venezuela for its energy needs and economic subsidies, faces consequences in the near future as the Venezuelan economy buckles  as its oil fetches lower prices and the American market is saturated with domestic supplies of crude. Adrift, Cuba had little choice but to seek rapprochement with the United States.

 

 

 

But just as Cuomo was self righteously patting himself on the back for having stood up to the oil industry, there were  dozens of newly minted millionaires in formerly lowly North Dakota cashing their checks at the bank ; and in nearby Pennsylvania there are farmers and ordinary landowners who are buying themselves mansions;   The ordinary American citizen has not been passed by either.  He has watched,  astonished, as the cost of a tank of gas has plummeted by up to 30% over the past 12 months.  Throughout the world the fracking revolution, which began only five years ago, is not only reviving the world economy; it is challenging the very economic viability of long term U.S. adversaries such as Russia, Venezuela and, yes, Cuba.

But nobody in the heart of Progressive  America would seem to know any of this.  For it seems that liberal elites in the  State of New York, who have placed inordinate pressure on the Governor to thwart the fracking boom, this extraordinary progress and the optimism it has generated –  opening the world to the idea that the oil resources of the Earth may be limitless – is all a chimera. They are certain that fracking is dangerous for the environment and costly to the health of anyone living  near the vicinity of its wells.

Or are they?

For surely they know that hydraulic fracturing has been proven again and again to be safe – with no adverse health affects in the regions of the country in which it has been applied and at no significant environmental cost.  And some of these reports come from the reliably skeptical Environmental Protection Agency itself.  So as the fracking revolution rolls over the United  States, reviving a moribund economy and injecting a much needed rush of adrenaline into our downcast national mood, the progressives of New York State don’t seem to be too happy about  this  unquestionable form of human progress.  Rather they are quite determined to stand steadfast  against it.

 

But surely they must know this: New York state sits astride the Marcellus Shale Formation, which contains one of the potentially richest sources of natural gas in the country – a resource that could power the state for several hundred years and provide employment to hundreds of thousands.   Cuomo’s ban will be particularly devastating for poor New Yorkers, who can now be expected to struggle with high home heating bills due to expensive imported gas.  If Cuomo and his progressive friends would like an idea of exactly how drilling for natural gas using fracking procedures could help the economy of New York State, perhaps they should should look no further than nearby Pennsylvania.   There they will find, according to the American Petroleum Institute,  energy companies who have generated more than $2.1 billion in state and local taxes since the fracking boom began.  And according to state data, energy employment has more than doubled from 13,059 jobs in the first quarter of 2014  to 28, 229 in early 2014.  The average salary for those jobs is $93,000 per year, which is $40,000 higher than the national average.

And then there are other benefits of the fracking boom.  The United States has seen dramatic reductions in national carbon dioxide emissions, over the past six years –  largely as a result of hydraulic fracturing, which allowed natural gas to become cheap and abundant, and mostly displacing dirtier, higher-emission coal in the generation mix.  And lets not forget  that hydraulic fracturing, and the similar techniques used for “tight oil” drilling, have actually allowed the United States to become the world’s leading oil producer in 2014 and will allow it to become completely oil independent by 2020  – which only strengthens the nation’s geo-political position.

Given this information there are few other conclusions at which to arrive other than the fact New York does not want more natural gas, because it does not want more energy; and it does not want more energy because it fears humans will use it to build more industry; and it does not want more industry because it does not want – wait for it –  more human progress.

For you see more progress means more human development, which means more human intrusion on the natural environment.  And that is the red line which our environmentalists and their progressive allies will not allow us to cross.  Of course you will not hear the Sierra Club propound this philosophy out loud.  But it is written all over their rather limp reasoning for an absolute ban on fracking.

So there you have it.  The retrogressive progressives, determined, at any cost, to resist the juggernaut of fracking that is proving not only good for our economy, good for the environment but also good for maintaining U.S. dominance of the energy markets of the world.  If the U.S. maintains this dominant position, this will be indeed be, not the century of American decline – as so often predicted by the liberal media –  but potentially the greatest  century of American achievement in history where the country reaches its economic zenith.

Its really just too bad that New York State will not be along for the ride.