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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Nov. 6, 2008 / 8 Mar-Cheshvan 5769

Curtain going up for Campaign of '12

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Now that all that business is settled, we can move on to something important — the Campaign of '12.


Picking candidates four years out is a dinner-party exercise, more fun than Trivial Pursuit but no more enlightening than spin-the-bottle. Nevertheless it's what Washington groupies and junkies do. There's the delicious prospect of what will inevitably be called — gasp! — "a cat fight." Sarah Palin vs. Hillary Clinton. Yum, yum.


This assumes that (a) Gov. Palin wants a career in national politics and has caught an incurable case of Potomac Fever; (b) Barack Obama will reveal himself to be the sweet-talking, seductive empty suit with a feel-good speech for every occasion but maybe a one-reel wonder for all that; and (c) Hillary Clinton didn't really mean it when she said the chances of her trying again are approximately zero. Even a cautious bettor will be tempted to go for this trifecta.


Hillary has only to watch and wait, to see whether Mr. Obama is headed for Mount Rushmore or to the dustbin, where history consigns honey-tongued pretenders. She and Bubba paid their dues, campaigning for the messiah with the appearance of rooting for him, even if they did it with fingers crossed behind their backs. Hillary was hard on the job yesterday in New York, working the lines of New Yorkers waiting to vote. Bubba worked Florida hard enough that he can credibly take credit for what the Democrats accomplished there.


Sarah Palin, on the other hand, still has to prove that she's the real goods with no imminent sell-by date. The press never let up from the hour John McCain introduced her as his running mate, mocking her as "Caribou Barbie" who abandoned her children for politics and failed her husband to march hopelessly out of step with real women. When they roughed her up she didn't whine, and when the press ridiculed her children, she shoved them proudly in their faces, even the little boy with Down syndrome. The governor had been a beauty queen and could still give a good account of herself arrayed against women two decades younger than she, with her dazzling smile, trim ankles, red spike heels and a body that turns every male head. Some women could never forgive her for that.


Not only was she bereft of an Ivy League credential, but she succeeded as a graduate of the University of Idaho, with credits from Hawaii Pacific University, North Idaho College and even a semester at something called Matanuska-Susitna College. She didn't have a master's degree in women's studies from Harvard, nor had she ever taken a course in art appreciation at Stanford. She didn't have a doctorate from Yale in the poetry of Nineteenth-Century Romania, nor had she written a learned paper for the Council on Foreign Relations on the politics of the Third Ten-Year Plan for Agricultural Reform in Uzbekistan. She was begging feminists with fancy credentials who had never accomplished anything to hate her, and they did.


Her smarter critics knew better than to show up at a Palin rally, where crowds bigger than John McCain's and some of them approaching the size of Barack Obama's went bonkers when she stepped up to the platform. The multitudes cottoned to the plain way she talks, her lack of affect. She has the gift. Ronald Reagan had it first, the ability to connect with plain folks, telling it like the unwashed masses think things ought to be. Like Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, she was vastly underestimated early on, and comes across now as the real number.


She didn't have time to polish her act this time. She made the mistake of listening to the men who coached her for the disastrous interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, who asked "gotcha!" questions prepared for them (they didn't know the answers themselves), and only when she "went rogue" did Sarah Palin capture her moment. She can take a lot from John McCain's last hurrah, beginning with a list of people never to hire for the Campaign of 2012.


Anyone can cram for an exam; anybody can memorize the names of the assistant third secretary of the motor pool in Lower Volta or the name of the keeper of the seal of the People's Republic of Western Granola; these are the questions the chattering class uses as the test for intelligence. Sarah Palin has the opportunity to seize the falling flag, to keep it away from the Republican careerists perfectly satisfied to be lickspittles permanently subservient to the majority Democrats. This could be a hoot, this Campaign of '12.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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