Sometimes a broken clock is right twice a day. Charles occasionally has some intersting articles. He was in the early days of LGF II our #1 Contributor! Let’s see what Cult Leader has posted that is of interest.
Politics | Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 6:01:10 pm PST
Tod Lindberg, Hoover Institution fellow and Policy Review editor (and informal foreign policy adviser to the McCain campaign), weighs in on the swirling socialcon controversy: The Center-Right Nation Exits Stage Left.
Here’s the stark reality: It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. My Hoover Institution colleague David Brady and Douglas Rivers of the research firm YouGovPolimetrix have been analyzing data from online interviews with 12,000 people in both 2004 and 2008. It shows an overall shift to the Democrats of six percentage points. As they write in the forthcoming edition of Policy Review, “The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats.” This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left.
Some analysts like to explain this shift by pointing to Democratic gains and Republican losses among particular regions and demographic groups, arguing that the GOP has growing problems winning over such areas as the Southwest and such groups as Latinos, educated professionals, Catholics and single women. There’s something to this, but the Republican problem is actually larger and more categorical. In 2004, Republicans and Democrats each constituted 37 percent of the electorate. In the 2006 congressional election, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 38 percent to 36 and won big. This year, the Democrats made up a stunning 39 percent of the electorate, compared with just 32 percent for the Republicans. Add the painful fact that Obama outpolled McCain among independents, 52 percent to 48, and you have a picture of a Republican Party that has lost its connection to the center of the electorate.
Shortly after the GOP convention, McCain looked as if he could still come back. But it was the “maverick” McCain, running against party type, who was winning over independents at that point, not a conservative campaigning as a conservative (compassionate or otherwise).
Perhaps, as Rove says, Obama was running to the center. But can anybody make a serious case that people were mistaking him for a center-right politician?
World | Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 3:03:57 pm PST
Barack Obama’s Middle East adviser Dennis Ross says the Times of London’s report that Obama will support the Arab peace plan concocted by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is false.
Former American peace envoy Dennis Ross, who is a senior advisor to US President-elect Barack Obama on Middle East policy, denied on Monday a Sunday Times report that Obama is planning to base his peacemaking efforts in the Middle East on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
“I was in the meeting in Ramallah,” Ross said. “Then-Senator Obama did not say this. The story is false.”
Uzi Mahnaimi strikes again.
IAEA Springs Into Action
World | Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:57:52 pm PST
More than a year after an Israeli air strike took care of it, the United Nations’ blind, toothless nuclear watchdog thinks there might have been an illicit nuclear reactor in Syria.
VIENNA (Reuters) – A Syrian complex bombed by Israel bore features that would resemble those of an undeclared nuclear reactor and Syria must cooperate more with U.N. inspectors to let them draw conclusions, a watchdog report said on Wednesday.
Obtained by Reuters, the report said “significant” amounts of uranium particles were found at the site by inspectors who checked it in June but it was not enough to prove a reactor was there and further investigation was needed.
The Seamy Story of the ISB Mosque Project
US News | Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:49:00 pm PST
The Boston Phoenix has a huge new piece on the Islamic Society of Boston’s mosque project, a story of government corruption, Islamic extremism, and piles of cash from oil-rich Arab states: Menino’s mosque.
Most locals concede that getting anything of substance accomplished in Boston is a Herculean task. Residents have all but embraced the principle of civic inaction with a perverse kind of local pride. In the end, who you know is probably more important than what you are trying to do. And there is no doubt that little is accomplished without the approval and support of the mayor, Thomas M. Menino.
So it is with the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) near the intersection of Tremont Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard. Better known as the Roxbury mosque, the ISBCC has been in the works for more than 20 years. A few weeks ago it finally opened its doors for prayer — five years late, millions over budget, and still far from complete.
While the story of the building of the Roxbury mosque may not be worthy of a Hollywood epic, it does contain the stuff of a good television drama: community intrigue, religious conflict, media controversy, foreign money, suspicions of extremist ties, and once-cocksure public officials who have since retreated into a zone of silence.
(hat tip: Charles the LGF Cult Leader)
Tags: Politics
