Sic Semper Tyrannis

New Virginians and the Republican Party

"Despite his efforts to reach out to black, Hispanic, Asian and other minority groups in his campaign for governor, Robert F. McDonnell's decisive victory Tuesday was largely the result of his overwhelming support among white voters.

According to exit polling, 67 percent of white voters backed the Republican over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds. He got a larger share of the white vote than any Republican in Washington Post exit polls dating to 1994, with the exception of President George W. Bush in 2004.

One in four nonwhite voters statewide went for McDonnell, about average for Republicans in Virginia with the exception of last year's history-making election, when one in five nonwhite residents voted for Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

McDonnell won big in many of the increasingly diverse Washington suburbs. But his scant support from minorities, despite his efforts, suggests a challenge for the GOP as it tries to retain power in a state that is a destination for immigrants"  Washpost

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The author of this piece seems to assume that "immigrants" to Virginia will be or remain Democrats.

As I have argued previously, American "immigrants" to Virginia in the Washington area self-distribute on the two banks of the Potomac on the basis of a perceived conservative legal, cultural and business environment in Virginia as oppsed to a more Liberal set of attitudes in Maryland and the District of Columbia.  That outcome was reflected in the voting of the recent gubernatorial election in Virginia.

The issue of the eventual political "destination" of non US origin immigrants to the Commonwealth of Virginia is a different issue.  The supposition that immigrants from abroad somehow are inherently inclined to liberal politics is probably wrong.  Latino immigrants are typically anchored firmly to family, church and community.  Indian and East Asian immigrants are prominent in our communities as professional people and business owners.  The values of these groups converge with the middle of the road moderate conservatism of Virginians generally. 

Why should we not think that in a generation the politics of new Virginians from abroad will not be much like that of the 67% of "white" people in Northern Virginia who voted for McDonnell?

Message for the Republican Party - Don't go chasing immigrant votes too hard.  They will come to you.  Remember who "brought you to the dance."  pl

PS  Alexandria and Arlington are special cases that I will discuss sometime.

Politics really ARE local in Virginia.

As I expected, little has changed in Virginia.

The red places (most) are still firmly red and the blue places (few) are still blue.  The Democratic Party enclave on the Potomac remains a beachhead but only that.  Other than there, Deeds won among his neighbors in Bath and Allegheny Counties (a matter of courtesy), among black voters in traditional Democratic constituencies and in the little university community "islands" scattered across the state.

The Commonwealth remains reliably conservative in the bone deep attachment of the people to their own values, traditions and way of doing things.  Moderation, moderation, moderation; that is the touchstone in Virginia politics.

The crazed preachers do not win statewide races here and neither do their proteges.  The only serious threat to McDonnell's ascendancy was his bizarre association with Pat Robertson's university, but, on balance, he, and his family looked so familiar that people just overlooked that.

The Republican problem in Virginia in the past has been party apparatus driven candidate choices.  That collection of the defeated and discredited have reflected the national party's dream of becoming a majority through "outreach" and the delusions of the country club crowd that runs the state's party apparatus rather than the clear preferences of those who vote in all those red, red counties.  I have not forgotten the chilly reception that Earley received at the Republican convention in '01 in Richmond when he was nominated to run for governor against Mark Warner.  He spoke with fervor of his beliefs.  He spoke in half a dozen languages as he accepted the nomination.  Lao, Spanish, Cambodian, etc.  The crowd of delegates from all those red, red counties got quieter and quieter as he dug the "hole" deeper and deeper.  I left the convention convinced that he would lose and he did.

The lesson that the Republican Party in Virginia should learn from all this is that "you have to go home with the one(s) who brought you to the dance."   pl

How it is that Bob McDonnell will be the next Va. governor.

"...an improvement for Deeds in the critical Northern Virginia region, where he now holds a 56 to 43 percent lead in the left-leaning Washington suburbs. But that lead is swamped by significant and growing deficits in every other region of the state.

McDonnell appears to be in a particularly dominant position in the state's rural west, an area the Democrat had labeled "Deeds Country" because it includes his Bath County home. Although Deeds has devoted considerable resources to the region, he trails there 63 to 36 percent.

Obama's approval rating is at its low point in that part of the state: 46 percent of registered voters in the western areas give him positive marks. And opposition to the proposed changes to the nation's health-care system peaks at 58 percent.

Statewide, 53 percent oppose the efforts at health-care reform; 43 percent are supportive. "   Washpost

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The data on page A-18 of today's Washington Post says to me that Virginia remains much as it has been.  McDonnell is way ahead everywhere in the commonwealth except for the Democratic Party dominated enclave along the Potomac River.  Alexandria city and Arlington County are his only real areas of strength and that is not enough.

The state still prefers conservative governance.  Deeds, by no means a liberal in the Northern sense, is trailing McDonnell even in Bath County, his home.  Deeds is ahead in the riverine zone here, but even that support is not as enthusiastic as it have been expected to be.

The last general election (2008) was strongly affected by revulsion against the Bush Administration and the novelty of Obama's candidacy.  Both of those phenomena are past and the groups that turned out to vote against Bush's ghost and for Obama have lapsed into the passivity that characterizes them politically.

To compound the Demcrats' problem, Bob McDonnell reads well all over the state, (including up here in Alexandria and Arlington) as an authentic Virginian, something important to a region (dare I say a people?) where identity still matters.

Both the Democrats and Republicans have failed in the past to understand Virginia.  They still do.  The Republicans just got lucky this time in their choice of candidate.

The Democrats should take comfort in the probability that McDonnell wold have beaten Terry McAuliffe even  more severely.  pl

 

So, what's the goal in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama?

In descending order of importance and precedence these are the steps involved in planning for war.

- National purpose (what are we about?)

- National goals (what do we want?)

- National policy (what will we do about that?)

- Grand Strategy (civil and military action)

- Strategy (over-all military action)

- Resourcing the strategy (how much, how many to accomplish the strategy?)

- Tactics (fighting)

Each succeeding step is supposed to proceed from the previous step. That's the way you are supposed to plan, folks.  That's what they teach you at a War College.  War Colleges are typically the most senior service school of any armed force.  Lieutenant colonels and colonels are carefully selected to attend such schools. 

The idea contained in the array of terms above is that military strategy and campaign plans are the product of goal setting by echelons of government above the military.

In the case of US actions in Afghanistan, there seems to be a chaos of voices confusing this logical and orderly process of planning.

The basic contest over policy in Afghanistan is between those who insist that to reduce the Islamist danger to the USA, Afghanistan must be made into something fundamentally different than what it has been (the counterinsurgents) and those others who think (like Biden) that something less ambitious will accomplish the same thing.

What is the goal, Mr Obama?  What is the goal?  pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/world/14biden.html?_r=1&hp

Not their kind of town, Chicago!

"In making his pitch, the president had said that a nation shaped by the people of the world "wants a chance to inspire it once more." Never before had a U.S. president made such an in-person appeal, and Obama's critics will doubtlessly see the vote as a sign of his political shortcomings.

"I urge you to choose Chicago," Obama told members of the International Olympics Committee, many of whom he later mingled with as some snapped photos of him on their cell phones.

"And if you do — if we walk this path together — then I promise you this: The city of Chicago and the United States of America will make the world proud," the president said." Yahoonews.

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$50 million dollars in costs sunk seeking the games and a great deal of private money to be made if they had the games.  Those were the stakes.  For that possible gain, the prestige of an already diminished president was wagered, and lost.

What we have learned from this is that the president is not his own man.  His first inclination was to send his wife to appeal for the prize.  That would have been wise.

Now we know that the Chicago money that drove his campaign is still very much in the driver's seat.

That is bad news.  pl

They had a lean and hungry look.

Andrew Bacevich has an oped piece in today's Post that closely parallels my own views on what to do about Afghanistan and the takfiri jihadi threat generally. 

Senators Jim Webb and Jon Kyl debated this point on "Meet the Press" today.  Webb argued for presidential freedom of action in deciding policy and Kyl argued that Obama should do what the generals want him to do.

I listened to the talking heads on Fox News Sunday and was struck by Senator Kit Bond's apparent support of the putative resistance of at least some flag officers to the authority of the president of the United States.  Bond spoke strongly in favor of having Generals McChrystal and Petraeus explain to Congress what their opinion is (as opposed to the opinion of the president/commander in chief) as to what the policy and strategy of the United States should be.

This is actually an incitement to mutiny.

Why?

The Congress has certain functions with regard to the armed forces of the United States.  They are delineated in the Constitution and have to do with organization, funding, acquisition of equipment and supplies and the establishment of a military legal system, that kind of thing.  The powers of Congress with regard to war policy and strategy do not exist.  The Congress has no authority at all with regard to operations.  The Congress can refuse to declare war, but when was a declaration of war last thought necessary?

The armed forces are commanded by the president.  Mullen, McChrystal and Petraeus and everyone else in the armed forces are the military subordinates of the president and not of anyone in the Congress nor of the Congress collectively.  Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and their friends in the Civil War Congress created a "Joint Committee on the War" in order to use the testimony of various Union Army generals against Lincoln.  What a disaster that was!  What an inducement to the poltical vanities and ambitions of the brass!

In demanding the testimony of the generals independent of the establishment of policy by the president, the Congress is encouraging the generals and admirals to publicly oppose the independence of action of their constitutional commander.  What a foolish thing to do.

People like Senator Bond are implying by their statements that McChrystal should be treated as an equal by the commander in chief and that the president should defer to the opnion of this general or any other general.  Have we given up believing in the principle of civilian control of the military?

Obama might change his mind with regard to strategy?  Emerson said that "Consistency is a virtue of small minds."  

He was right.  pl

Addison Graves Wilson, Sr. (Joe for some reason)

I am on record as a supporter of Barack Obama the politician as saying that Wilson needed to do a greater penance than his half-hearted apology for insulting the president. 

On the other hand, I can only ask why it is necessary to attack the South as a whole because this man Wilson is an ill mannered fool.

He belongs to the "Sons of Confederate Veterans" (SCV) and therefore must be an evil person?  The SCV seeks to memorialize their ancestors for the good that was in them.  What a thought, that there could have been good in them!  Incidentally the SCV is seeking to recruit African-American members whose ancestors (black or white) served with the South (soldiers or not).  Ah, but that is merely an evasion...

The "Southern Poverty Law Center," formerly "Klan Watch" told Matthews, lord of "Hardball," that  the SCV has been ruled by extremists these last five years? (I don't know what happened to Matthews at Chapel Hill but it must have been awful)  After Katrina he advocated the reimposition of direct federal rule in the South (to finish the job left undone by the first two rounds of Reconstruction).

What if Wilson were from Ohio, Oklahoma, Indiana or Kansas?  What?  There are no racists in these places?  If that were so, would there be this broadcast attack on a whole people? 

My ancestors who served with the Armies of the Potomac and the Cumberland would probably cheer Matthews on.  I am disgusted.  pl

Preston Brooks, Joe Wilson and the Palmetto State

Mr. Wilson of South Carolina is representative of a long line of hotheads from that place. 

Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death with a cane on the floor of the US Senate while a friend held other senators at bay with a pistol.  Brooks was also from South Carolina.  The reaction in South Carolina was mixed, "joy and jubilation."  Well wishers from across the state sent Brooks new and better canes to replace the one he broke over Sumner's head.  What was Sumner's offense?  He had made a foolish and insulting speech.

A few years later South Carolina led the South out of the Union because Lincon had been elected president on the basis of a majority in the Electoral College but only a plurality in the country wide popular vote. Virginia eventually and reluctantly followed rather than fight the rest of the South.  Hundreds of thousands of deaths were suffered and a there was a hundred years of economic blight in the South.

Last night Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted "you lie!" at the president of the United States during his address to the Congress on health care issues.

For shame, sir!  For shame!  You apologized?  There should be some greater penance than that.

If we can not be civil even as we disagree, then we are nothing but a mob.

pl

"RED ALERT :: Obama Planning Israel Ambush at Next UN Opening!"

RED ALERT :: Obama Planning Israel Ambush at Next UN Opening! Several sources have informed One Jerusalem that the Obama Administration is planning to significantly step up the pressure on Israel by announcing a comprehensive plan for Israel and the Palestinians at the opening of the United Nations General in September. Picture this: The anti-Israel nations of the world surrounding President Obama as he demands that Israel give up sovereignty over Jerusalem, abandon settlements, and recognize a terrorist state on the West Bank. If this happens, Israel will be isolated from the rest of world in a very dramatic manner. Help stop it by joining One Jerusalem! The first sign that something was up came when Egyptian President Mubarak said that the Obama Administration was ready to propose a plan in September, and the White House rushed to dampen expectations by declaring that they are nowhere near to readying a plan. Our sources confirmed that the Obama administration is contemplating this ambush of Israel at the United Nations. At the moment, friends and supporters of Israel can help derail this insidious plan by helping to publicize the intentions of the Obama administration. Join One Jerusalem Now! Spread the news to family and friends. Forward this mail and encourage them to sign up! By focusing public attention to this ambush, we can help avert it. Change Email Address Send To Friend Unsubscribe You are currently subscribed to this mailing as [EMAIL] One Jerusalem, 136 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016

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Shulamit Aloni on American "anti-Semites"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUGVPBO9_cA

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/aloni.html

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090366.html