State & Local Politics

Years ago, Dennis Hopper directed a movie about a Hollywood crew that went to the Amazon jungle to shoot an action film. After they left, a tribal chief had a movie camera fashioned out of vines and pretended to be directing movies. It came to mind during the recent G-20 meeting of global leaders in Pittsburgh. Last year historian Niall Ferguson made the credible claim that there is no G-20. There is only a G-2, America and China, or Chimerica, or possibly only a G-1, China.

This new phase of post-global, self-serving pseudo-events and -organizations, like Bill Clinton’s puerile Global Initiative or The (obsequious) Elders, carries all of the convincing authenticity of a Cindy Crawford infomercial. But in the reelection of Angela Merkel as prime minister, Germany has stepped away from the pack and opened a portal with fresh and new potential.

Read more...

If anyone ever doubted that the president of the United States doesn't stay involved in the politics of his party and the candidates who want to run on his coattails, they are sorely mistaken.

In a brazen (and foolish) move this weekend, President Barack Obama let it be known that he doesn't think current New York Gov. David Paterson (D) is fit to continue as governor once his term expires. In fact, he thinks the current leader is a millstone about his party's neck there, and the sooner he's gone, the better for Empire State Democrats.

Read more...

Timing is everything in politics — and how many posts have I started with that sentence? But seriously, President Barack Obama and his political team knew that when they told Gov. David Paterson (D) he was sinking like a stone in New York and should abandon his gubernatorial race next year, this was something that would make the papers.
 
Indeed, according to a New York Times account, Paterson even said he would drop out, but then reversed course after it made the paper Sunday — he seems to think the Obama team leaked it. Apparently Paterson was given the word by an associate last Monday when Obama was making a big financial speech on Wall Street and had noticeably excluded him.

Read more...

At the 2009 Value Voters Summit this past week, Mitt Romney directly addressed President Barack Obama’s incomprehensible and fatally flawed decision, unprecedented in the American political tradition, to tax future generations. In an administration quickly marked for its wistful look to the past, Obama’s decision brought to mind 15th-century Russia. Is that why they call them czars?

"Putting such a spirit-crushing, back-breaking debt burden on our children is unworthy of our national character," Romney said. "That is why I believe that this spending and borrowing is not just economically irresponsible, it is morally wrong."

Read more...

I received lots of comments and mail about an entry here Thursday relating Ron Paul to Sarah Palin in a political atmosphere where 43 percent consider themselves independents. Many were from Paul supporters who didn’t like the connection. Others did. Glen, who says he has supported Paul for 20 years and Palin for one possibly got closest to the current reality: “I think Palin and Paul have a lot in common,” he wrote. “They are both libertarians, but they come to it from different approaches. Paul is an erudite scholar on both economics and foreign policy. Palin comes at it from the heart and from the gut. She is a natural libertarian who believes in limited government, free markets and individual liberty just because it’s right.”

Read more...

As The Pundits Blog’s Charlie Law was first to point out, The Shout — Joe Wilson’s spontaneous live Tweet, “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s speech last week — bore some déjà vu resemblance to another episode: “In 1856,” he wrote, “one of Wilson's predecessors in the House, Rep. Preston Brooks of Edgefield, S.C., thrashed Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner with a cane in the halls of the U.S. Senate, leaving Sen. Sumner permanently disabled.”

Then as now, New York responded. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd thought she heard the South Carolina congressman essentially calling Obama "boy."

Read more...

As a native South Carolinian, I'm afraid I have to acknowledge that we've got a history of this kind of thing.

In 1856, one of Wilson's predecessors in the House, Rep. Preston Brooks of Edgefield, S.C., thrashed Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner with a cane in the halls of the U.S. Senate, leaving Sen. Sumner permanently disabled.

Read more...

The Montana State Supreme Court will rule today on a case that could declare the Treasure State’s constitution the first in the union to guarantee a right to physician-assisted suicide.

Plaintiffs believe Section 4 of Montana’s constitution, which declares, “The dignity of the human being is inviolable,” extends this right on the basis that terminally ill people lack access to this dignity. Setting aside the legal arguments and the practical difficulties of having such a right (see Zeke Emanuel’s excellent piece), there is also a more fundamental moral question at stake about the limits of individual liberties. If the court rules the Montana constitution guarantees the right to die, it will markedly overstep the bounds of personal liberty and unfairly infringe on a community’s right to affirm the value of life.

Read more...

First, Sarah Palin took the podium with John McCain just one year ago. The shock, hostility, hysteria and denial among the defenders of the conventional seemed almost akin to that of the Native Americans when they first looked over the Atlantic and saw Columbus’s Tall Ships on the horizon. Then there was "Twilight" and a whole brand-new generation of arrogantly noble and great-looking vampires and their like 30 million swooning 13-year-old girls who had never even heard of Bob Dylan. (WTF?) And their 30 million boyfriends. Then there was Ron Paul. Then there was Mark Sanford, who first refused a federal bailout with the ridiculous claim that his boat wasn’t sinking. Then the April tea parties and Rick Perry and Ted ("Cat Scratch Fever") Nugent. Then those town hall disturbances; those blue-haired mavens packing Glocks.

And there’s more just ahead. Get ready. Visualize the Congress without Chris Dodd and with libertarian gold bug Peter Schiff in his place. Visualize California without Barbara Boxer and with Carly Fiorina in her place. Visualize John Oxendine, a 10th Amendment sovereigntist, as governor of Georgia. Visualize the movie "2012," which opens Friday the 13th, November, 2009. Visualize the end of the world. Visualize Glenn Beck.

Read more...

In Saturday’s New York Times, Bob Herbert reflects some of the anxiety supporters and loyalists are feeling about Obama. If it turns out that he’s wrong, he writes, “hold onto your hats. Because right now there is no Plan B.”

First call here one year ago was that Obama would be a moment rather than a movement, a feel-good respite before a new political era, as Carter was to Reagan. Obama unquestionably fulfills the hopes and yearnings of a hundred years and completes unfinished business since the Civil War. But a period that fulfills an old historical promise is anticlimax to the main event long ago. Its relevance to our day resonates only to contrast the entirely new political culture which will rise just ahead. Ideas expressed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry over the weekend in a Wall Street Journal interview headlined “Fiscal Conservatism and the Soul of the GOP” could show the way to the new approach. Read more...