
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Feb. 1, 2008
/ 25 Shevat 5768
The Parties Change Places
By
Michael Barone
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Just shy of a month ago, after the first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, it seemed that the Republican Party faced a fluid and fractious nomination contest, while the Democrats faced a clear-cut choice between two not particularly adversarial candidates. What a difference a few weeks can make.
"
Now it seems that John McCain is on an unobstructed flight path to the nomination, facing a few crosswinds but no serious navigation hazards, while the two leading Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are on the collision course, with the winner taking on serious and possibly disabling damage. And this in a year when the standard metrics the job performance rating of the president, judgments about the trajectory of the economy, trends in party identification have seemed overwhelmingly favorable to the Democrats.
How did this happen? Some will give credit to providence, which saw to it that McCain whose candidacy seemed terminal last July 1 was able to duplicate, with lesser percentages, his 2000 victory in New Hampshire, then survive a defeat in his best 2000 state, Michigan, then squeeze out a 33 to 30 percent victory over Mike Huckabee in South Carolina, and a 36 to 31 percent victory over Mitt Romney in Florida. None of which would have been possible without a collapse in Rudy Giuliani's support, which was as widely unpredicted as his earlier rise to the top of the polls. Or without the collapse of the candidacy of 2000 McCain supporter Fred Thompson, who led in polls as a noncandidate but lost the lead before he officially declared.
Even so, McCain now seems a prohibitive favorite for the Republican nomination. He leads in just about all the polls in the big states that vote on Super Tuesday, February 5. Giuliani has bowed out, and Huckabee's election night speech reiterated his respect for McCain. Romney alone has the potential to buy enough ads and possibly derail McCain this week. But big time buys did not win for him in Iowa, New Hampshire, or Florida.
In his victory speech, McCain was at pains to pay respect not only to his rivals but to the concerns of his critics in conservative journals and on talk radio. To his undisputed asset as the longtime and persistent advocate of the surge that has produced such success in Iraq, he added a stern but seldom-before-voiced resolve to appoint judges who would interpret rather than make law. He was paying, for once, and for the time being anyway, heed to his critics at National Review and his boosters at the Weekly Standard. Memo to Rush Limbaugh: You have been heard.
Winning ugly. And what were the Democrats up to when the Republicans were receiving the coordinates of a clear flight path? Heading straight toward each other. The Clinton campaign, defeated in Iowa and nearly in New Hampshire, scraping by in Nevada, and expecting a clobbering in South Carolina, faced a choice between losing clean and winning ugly. What is amusing is that so many liberal commentators were surprised when the Clinton apparat, with the unhesitation of a shark, chose the latter option. Bill Clinton and other Hillary Clinton surrogates got busy playing the race card against Obama. They belittled his victory in South Carolina and profited from her victory in Florida Democratic Party rules forbade candidates to compete where elderly women, Latinos, and Jews, all heavily pro-Clinton (or anti-Obama) constituencies, are heavily represented.
As they will be, to varying extents, in the Super Tuesday states, especially California. Extrapolating from all but one of the Florida results, Clinton will be the big winner there. The exception: Floridians making up their minds at the last minute were evenly split between Obama and Clinton. Disgust over the Clintons' tactics has been a staple of liberal magazines and blogs and evidently inspired Edward Kennedy's endorsement of Obama. Political history mavens will recall that Kennedy, well after he had lost the 1980 nomination to Jimmy Carter, continued his campaign and bitter denunciations all the way to the national convention. Will he urge such a course on Obama? Hillary Clinton may be content to win ugly. But she may find, as Carter did, that a crash on the runway is not an appealing spectacle.
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.
BARONE'S LATEST
The New Americans
Now, more than ever, the melting pot must be used to keep America great. Barone attacks multiculturalism and anti-American apologists--but he also rejects proposals for building a wall to keep immigrants out, or rounding up millions of illegals to send back home. Rather, the melting pot must be allowed to work (as it has for centuries) to teach new Americans the values, history, and unique spirit of America so they, too, can enjoy the American dream.. Sales help fund JWR.
|
JWR contributor Michael Barone is a columnist at U.S. News & World Report. Comment by clicking here.
Michael Barone Archives
© 2006, US News & World Report
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|