The Council Has Spoken!! This Week’s Watcher’s Council Results

JoshuaPundit on Jan 25 2013:

The Council Has Spoken! has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.

Before we get started, let me remind you that there’s now a seat available on the Watcher’s Council up for grabs.

We’re currently looking at candidates, so if you’re interested, think you qualify or want to find out more about what’s involved in being part of the longest established blogging group of its kind, simply leave a comment with site URL and your e-mail address (which won’t be published) on any article over at Joshuapundit.

These don’t come up all that often and when they do they usually fill up quickly, so don’t snooze.

There’s a great deal of discussion going on among self-identified conservatives and Republicans about how to rebrand the party, gets its message out and change what appears to be its image

This week’s winner, Bookworm Room’s To win the future, conservatives need to give voters a positive image of a can-do America and a can-do Republican Party lays out her blueprint for that process in her usual witty and erudite style. Here’s a slice:

For the past four years, conservatives have been fighting a relentlessly rearguard, defensive action. For those same four years, conservatives have lost every rearguard, defensive action that they’ve fought. Or if they haven’t actually lost, the best that they’ve managed is a stalemate that stalls Progressivism, but doesn’t advance conservative values. Even the stunning 2010 “shellacking” proved ineffective, as shellackings really only work if you take over Congress entirely, rather than just getting half of it.

Conservative also don’t seem to be faring too well in the culture wars. To use abortion as just one example, in the 2012 election, conservatives lost the chance to take over Congress when Progressives successfully demonized two Republican Senate candidates who are pro-Life. More than that, it seems as if, contrary to past trends showing that Americans are inclined to a pro-Life view, a recent poll gave a definitive victory to American support for abortion.

Ironically, right up until the 2012 election, many conservatives (myself included) thought that these tactics would work. We believed that a jobless recovery (a stock market that benefited from Obama’s crony capitalism, even as more and more people became unemployed), creeping inflation, flabby home sales, depreciating savings, rising medical costs, and all the other signs of a sick economy, would turn voters against Obama.

We also thought that proofs of corruption (Fast and Furious), incompetency (Benghazi), and crony capitalism (Solyndra), would turn voters against Obama. They didn’t.

Sure we knew that Romney, although a good and intellectually brilliant man, was only a decent candidate, but we thought that, given all of Obama’s failures and dishonesty, Romney’s charisma deficit wouldn’t be a problem. And had Romney been a Democrat, it really wouldn’t have been a problem. He was a Republican, though, which meant that sterling character and brilliant economic chops were inadequate to fend off the extraordinarily vicious character assassination that the White House and the media launched against him.

We conservatives hadn’t counted on Americans buying such disgusting canards or ignoring ugly facts, but they did. Between the media running interference, general disinterest from voters more fascinated by Honey Boo Boo and Jersey Shores than by politics, and Americans’ probable fear of voting a black man out of the White House, conservatives got to watch Obama win

again.

In the wake of Obama’s victory, conservatives in the media and in the blogosphere have responded by amping up their previous tactics. Considering that Obama won’t be running again in 2016, spending all of our political capital and emotional energy attacking him doesn’t seem like a good use of resources. Be that as it may, conservatives are Obama is still Target No. 1. There certainly is a lot to get fired up about, most notably the way in which Obama seized upon Sandy Hook as an excuse to seize guns. Nothing will come of it, of course, since there are too many Democrats who like guns too, but Obama has successfully framed the issue to be one of life- and child-loving Democrats squaring off against gun-crazed, child-murdering Republicans.

Rather than running about like headless chickens who are still trying to peck the President to death with details, we might do better focusing on very specific weaknesses and not letting those weaknesses vanish from the public eye. To me, the most obvious are (a) the economy and (b) his handling of Benghazi.

In our non-Council category, the winner with a very different kind of article was Caroline Glick with Bye Bye London submitted by Joshuapundit. She recently participated in a debate in London about Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines and relates what happened there. Do read it.It’s an eye opener.

And forgive me if I not-so-humbly add I saw this coming some time ago, and if anything it’s even more relevant than it was 7 years ago. Europe will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.

OK, here are this week’s full results. Only Gay Patriot was unable to vote this week, but was not subject to the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 votes! Bookworm Room – To win the future, conservatives need to give voters a positive image of a can-do America and a can-do Republican Party
• Second place with 2 votes – The Right Planet - The Left’s War on the Bill of Rights
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Noisy Room -There’s No Truth In The News And No News In The Truth
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Political Commentator – The hit and run President!
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Simply Jews - What Jonathan Freedland doesn’t get
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD-Saudi Royal Stability
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Rhymes With Right-What This Chinese Dissident Has To Say About America’s Second Amendment
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Gay Patriot – What President Obama Should (But Likely Won’’t) Say Today
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Razor – How Colin Powell is a Racist
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Joshuapundit – Obama’s 2nd Inaugural – Darkness at Noon
• Fifth place with 1/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi – A Wild Cristina Kirchner

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Caroline Glick - Bye Bye London submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place with 2 votes – Buckhorn Road – The Militia Is… submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion – Veteran stands up for 2nd Amendment at Chicago anti-gun forum submitted by VA Right!
• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes -Gregory Mann/Africa Is A Country - France in Mali: The End of the Fairytale submitted by The Razor
• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes Sultan Knish -The Authenticity of Fake submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes - Mark Steyn – Fake dead girlfriends and fake debt limits submitted by The Noisy Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Policymic – Mali War: French Are Hypocrites For Rushing In With Military Aid submitted by Simply Jews
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Robert Tracinski/Real Clear Politics – Barack Obama is Boring submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Tom Ricks/Best Defense – The Obama administration’s inexplicable mishandling of Marine Gen. James Mattis submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Victor Davis Hanson – Hagel, Brennan, and the Obama View of the Middle East submitted by The Watcher
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Strategist – Google in North Korea: Pyongyang kowtow or smart diplomacy? submitted by The Political Commentator

Honorable Mentions

• The Pirate’s Cove – Warmist Worries About Coral Which Apparently Thrives In Cold Water
• Maggie’s Notebook – Did Memphis Police, the Mafia and YIKES! the U.S. Army Conspire in the Assassination of MLK?
• Ask Marion – The Communist Takeover Of America – 45 Declared Goals

See you next week! Don’t forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week’s Watcher’s Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day and with short takes and weigh in…don’t you dare miss it. And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter…..’cause we’re cool like that!

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After Supporting Obama's Campaign, Powell Now Skeptical of President's Spending Priorities

Colin Powell, who broke ranks with the Republican Party last year to endorse Barack Obama, is now concerned that the president's agenda is increasing the size of government and the federal debt to alarming levels.

Colin Powell, who broke ranks with the Republican Party last year to endorse Barack Obama, now worries that the president's agenda is increasing the size of government and the federal debt to alarming levels.

"I'm concerned at the number of programs that are being presented, the bills associated with these programs and the additional government that will be needed to execute them," the former secretary of state told CNN in an interview to air Sunday.

Powell offered the president some standard Republican advice:

"The right answer is, give me a government that works, keep it as small as possible," said Powell, who said he stays in touch with Obama and has spoken to him recently.

Obama wants to overhaul the health care system and take on climate change while also helping the country emerge from the recession.

"I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president -- and I've talked to some of his people about this -- is that you can't have so many things on the table that you can't absorb it all. And we can't pay for it all," Powell said.

"And I never would have believed that we would have budgets that are running into the multi-trillions of dollars, and we are amassing a huge, huge national debt that, if we don't pay for in our lifetime, our kids and grandkids and great grandchildren will have to pay for it."

It's not a new theme for Powell.

He complained about the government's size and intrusiveness in his 1996 speech to the Republican National Convention. He said then that the nation no longer could afford more entitlements, higher taxes and more bureaucracy. In the interview with CNN's "State of the Union" that is to air Sunday, Powell said he hasn't changed his mind.

"Keep it as small as possible. Keep the tax burden on the American people as small as possible, but at the same time, have government that is solving the problems of the people," he said.

He said Obama "has to start really taking a very, very hard look at what the cost of all this is. And how much additional bureaucracy and will it be effective bureaucracy."

CNN released excerpts of the interview in advance of the broadcast. - The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

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RESISTING O'S WORLD - STICK TO YOUR GUNS, REPUBLICANS

Gen. Colin Powell is wrong to say that the Republican Party must move to the center: Now is not the time to try for triangulation.

This is a time for the party to stand firm on its principles until this nation again comes around to the GOP's way of thinking. This process will be driven by the consequences of President Obama's program.

The challenge brought by Obama is no longer just theoretical: He means to pass the ultimate leftist agenda and has the votes to do so.

As a result, our nation will be unrecognizable well before the 2010 elections. Business will march to a beat drummed in Washington. The top producers will be hounded by confiscatory taxation. A majority will pay nothing or receive government welfare. Our health-care system will be destroyed. Illegal immigrants will be well on their way to citizenship.

Obama's brave new world will be the subject of the 2010 elections. We believe that his Congress will be swept from power as a result.

We think that inflation will join a lingering recession -- giving us recess-flation -- and that high unemployment will continue. Voters will recognize the damage to their health care as bureaucrats weigh in to prevent them from getting the care they need. Our security and defense failures may well have cost us Pakistan, and the nightmare of a nuclear-armed terrorist state may have already come true (even before Iran).

All America will be watching the Obama fallout, and Republicans must be seen as a clear alternative -- a strong voice for reversal of the harm the president will have inflicted -- if they are to benefit from this catastrophe.

If the GOP is seen as a moderate force, a party just looking to split the difference, voters will cynically conclude that there is no distinction between the parties.  

There is a season for triangulation and a season for confrontation. When America faces a new challenge -- such as what the financial crisis now poses -- we look to the left and right for new answers. We want the debate to rage. Those who seek to paper over are ignored. Such was the fate of the first President Bush in 1992 and of Sen. John McCain in 2008.

But once the debate has raged and the alternatives have been fleshed out, voters want a consensus, a Hegelian synthesis, on how to move in a new direction. They want to extract the best from each alternative and combine them. This is triangulation (a term coined by Dick).

To ignore the demand for synthesis and insist on continuing the debate is to suffer the fate of Sen. Bob Dole in 1996 and Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

This process -- polarization, debate, synthesis and action -- is how America has always moved ahead. We are not Japan; we use the debate to see the options. And we are not Italy or France; we come to conclusions and act upon them, eventually leaving the debate far behind.

Now another great debate has been born. The thesis is democratic socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism.

The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It's up to the Republicans to fight along these lines. Compromise is not an option, yet.

At some point, the synthesis will set in. But now is the time for clear alternatives and sharp disagreement. Only later can we hope to extract America from the leftist clutches into which it has fallen.

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the New York Post on May 9, 2009