Daily Digest |  |
- Will political history repeat itself in Virginia?
- In the Middle East, Discredited Myths Never Die
- The Deep Unpopularity of Kamala Harris
- Supreme Court to review major abortion case
- Terrorist propaganda, AP style: A case study
| Will political history repeat itself in Virginia? Posted: 17 May 2021 04:43 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) In 1993, Republican George Allen won the Virginia gubernatorial race and replaced a term-limited Democratic governor. The next year, the GOP romped to victory in the midterm congressional elections. In 2009, Republican Bob McConnell won the Virginia gubernatorial race and replaced a term-limited Democratic governor (Tim Kaine). The next year, the GOP “shellacked” the Democrats in the midterms. Both the 1994 and 2010 elections rebuked a first-term Democratic president. The outcomes in Virginia in 1993 and 2009 foreshadowed these results. Can the GOP candidate for governor of Virginia win this year? This seems like a longshot. The Commonwealth has changed considerably since 2009. It is now a Blue state. Nonetheless, this Washington Post article suggests that Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee, has a decent shot at winning. The Post’s Robert McCartney thinks the political climate in Virginia today is similar to 2009 in that (1) now, as then, there seems to be a backlash against the Democratic president and (2) now, as then, Republicans are exceptionally determined to win. It also helps that Youngkin is, in McCartney’s words, “an effective retail campaigner who is comfortable on stage.” Also, he’s quite rich. The personal fortune of the former CEO of the Carlyle Group investment firm is estimated at $254 million. McCartney quotes a Democratic operative as saying, “it will be a very competitive race.” But the polls show Youngkin’s likely opponent, former governor Terry McAuliffe, with a large lead. McAuliffe is a likeable scoundrel, in my view (and, of course, a leftist), but Virginia voters see him as mostly likeable. He was popular when he left office (due to term limits). The Democrats are lucky that McAuliffe is still ambitious enough to be running again. But the other side of the coin is that if he loses, there will be all the more reason for Democrats to panic. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is doing its best to undermine Youngkin by repeatedly asking him if he believes Joe Biden was elected legitimately, and then picking at the candidate’s answers. The Post says that Youngkin has changed his tune — unwilling to affirm Biden’s legitimacy before he was nominated, but willing to concede it now. The Post wants Youngkin to alienate either die-hard Trump supporters by conceding Biden’s “legitimacy” or some segment of mainstream voters by disputing it. I don’t think mainstream voters care much about how Youngkin answers the question. The Post may be obsessed with Trump’s attack on the 2020 election, but mainstream voters have moved on. Die-hard Trump supporters apparently haven’t. That’s okay with me. But if they decline to back Youngkin for not fully buying Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 race, they deserve four more years of Terry McAuliffe. As noted earlier, though, Virginia Republicans are very hungry for victory this year. In the end, therefore, I don’t think Youngkin stands to lose many votes for refusing to “litigate” the 2020 election. And Trump, for his part, seems to be fine with Youngkin. McCartney concludes his article with this warning (or upbeat note, depending on one’s perspective):
    |
| In the Middle East, Discredited Myths Never Die Posted: 17 May 2021 04:05 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) The current round of violence that was initiated by Hamas firing thousands of rockets into Israel is depressing on a number of fronts, not least because we are once again hearing brain-dead shibboleths from the White House. After a four-year respite under President Trump, ignorance again reigns. Today Jen Psaki was pressed by White House reporters on why President Biden had not yet called for a cease fire. She bobbed and weaved, saying that “we all know” that the only way to end violence is “for there to be a two-state solution.”
Really? How do we all know that? The Arabs were offered a two-state solution in 1948, and they turned it down, preferring to try to destroy Israel and kill the Jews. They have made the same choice consistently over the last 73 years. And if Gaza were a “state,” why would Hamas be any less prone to launch missiles against Israel? As it turned out, shortly after Psaki was grilled on a cease-fire the White House let it be known that Biden had spoken with Benjamin Netanyahu and had, in fact, called for a cease-fire:
This acknowledgement puts Biden on his party’s right wing on this issue, and has led to withering condemnation from the Democratic Party’s mainstream.
This is the weird false equivalence that we see all the time where Israel is concerned. How about if the world’s “leaders” demand that Hamas “make every effort to ensure the protection of [Israel’s] innocent civilians”? But that wouldn’t make sense, since the whole point of Hamas’s terrorist offensive is to kill innocent civilians. The Palestinians have sown the wind, and yet the world’s prime concern is that they not reap the whirlwind. Why? Similarly, world “leaders” tell Israelis that their response to Hamas’s thousands of rockets must be “proportionate,” which means, apparently, that no more Palestinians than Israelis should die. Evidently Israelis are supposed to downgrade their own competence to match Hamas’s primitive, if brutal, rocketry. This is a standard never before known to warfare. If you are attacked by an enemy, it is appropriate to respond with overwhelming force so as to devastate your enemy and disable him from further attacks, not at the least cost to your enemy, but at the least cost to your own citizens. See, e.g., the U.S. response to Japanese and German aggression in World War II. Hamas started this war, and Israel has every right to inflict maximum damage until it is satisfied that Hamas can never again pose a threat. Of course, for reasons I will never understand, that is not how things play out in the Middle East. I suppose Israel will stop too soon, under pressure from “world leaders” and public opinion, and leave Hamas more or less intact to fight again another day. This is, I think, the real reason why the “cycle of violence” that is such a cliche in the region persists.   |
| The Deep Unpopularity of Kamala Harris Posted: 17 May 2021 02:21 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) To me, Kamala Harris was one of the mysteries of the 2020 election cycle. She seemed to check a lot of boxes, and I saw her as an attractive candidate who had a good shot–maybe the best–at the Democratic presidential nomination. Instead, her campaign crumbled out of the starting gate, and notwithstanding ample initial fundraising, she didn’t make it to the Iowa caucuses. Despite having a number of superficial advantages, to paraphrase the old joke about dog food, the voters just didn’t like her. Harris caught a major career break when Joe Biden more or less committed to having a black woman as his running mate, leaving Harris as the obvious choice, but she didn’t seem to take much advantage of it. With the elderly, frail Biden making few campaign appearances, one might have thought that Harris would be more visible on the campaign trail. Then again, maybe the Democrats didn’t want her to expose the hollowness of Biden’s excuses for staying out of sight. In any event, her vice-presidential run seems to have done little or nothing to enhance Harris’s standing with the electorate. Now, a YouGov poll finds Harris under water, with 41% viewing her favorably and 48% unfavorably. The Washington Examiner points out that this negative perception contrasts strongly with other recent vice presidents. Dick Cheney, Mike Pence and Joe Biden himself, in 2009, all polled quite a bit better at a similar stage. Harris has never shown much skill or appeal as a politician. Her path to the top in California, essentially a one-party state at this point, was paved by her illicit relationship with Willie Brown. I am not sure what it is about Harris that repels voters, but it should scare the Democrats. It is highly unlikely that Joe Biden will be a candidate for re-election in 2024, assuming he survives that long. The Examiner comments:
Heck, Tulsi Gabbard destroyed Harris on the debate stage. But in all likelihood, the Democrats are stuck with her. If Biden dies or becomes incapacitated between now and 2024, Harris will be the incumbent. If Biden survives but graciously steps down after one term, it would be fratricidal for the Democrats to try to push Harris aside and nominate someone else. So, for better or worse, the Democrats are probably stuck with her.   |
| Supreme Court to review major abortion case Posted: 17 May 2021 12:06 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) The U.S. Supreme Court has granted the state of Mississippi's certiorari petition in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The petition concerns Mississippi's Gestational Age Act, enacted in 2018, which allows abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age only in medical emergencies or in instances of severe fetal abnormality. The question the Court agreed to review is: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” The Court did not agree to review two other questions raised in Mississippi’s petition. The first is whether the validity of a pre-viability law "should be analyzed under [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey's 'undue burden' standard or [Whole Woman's Health v.] Hellerstedt's balancing of benefits and burdens." Ed Whelan notes that after Mississippi filed its petition, Chief Justice Roberts, in a decisive concurring opinion, rejected the premise of this question — i.e., that Hellerstedt should be read to have deviated from Casey. (That case is June Medical Services v. Russo). The other question the Court declined to hear is “whether abortion providers have third-party standing to invalidate a law that protects women's health from the dangers of late-term abortions." As to the question it agreed to hear, Ed points out that the Court has already ruled, in Gonzales v. Carhart, that the federal partial-birth abortion law could operate pre-viability. He adds, however, that the Court's ruling in that case expressly "assume[d]" that a state may not "prohibit" abortion "[b]efore viability." Thus, the key in Gonzales v. Carhart was that the law in question did not prohibit the "usual abortion method" for second-trimester abortions. The law now before the Court does. This means the Court will hear argument as to whether at least some pre-viability prohibitions are constitutionally permitted even outside the partial birth context. I won’t hazard a guess as to how the Court will rule in the Mississippi case. My general sense of how the current Court will handle the abortion issue is that it won’t overturn Roe v. Wade, but might well uphold some statutory limits on abortions that it would have rejected, and maybe some it has rejected, in the past.   |
| Terrorist propaganda, AP style: A case study Posted: 17 May 2021 08:49 AM PDT (Scott Johnson) Until I wrote the adjacent post this morning I had forgotten the article I wrote for the February 4, 2008 issue of the Weekly Standard. In the article I took a look at widely circulated AP and Reuters photographs of Yasser Arafat allegedly donating blood to the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I titled the article “He didn’t give at the office.” Weekly Standard managing editor Richard Starr had asked me to examine remarks made by the prominent French journalist Charles Enderlin at Harvard University on January 17, 2008. In the article I summarized Enderlin’s statement as follows:
I then took a look at the two photographs disseminated around the world by the Associated Press:
Here is how I described the photograph disseminated by Reuters:
The second of the two Adel Hana/AP photographs remains accessible online (below). The Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters photograph is accessible online here.
According to his Twitter account, Adel Hana has been a staff photographer for the Associated Press based in Gaza since 1993. According to me, the AP is still in the business of passing off terrorist propaganda as news.   |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Power LinePower Line. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment