To Peggy Noonan: this is what a character disorder looks like

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Peggy Noonan, being eminently reasonable, as is her wont:

Common sense says a chastened president would acknowledge the obvious””some things aren’t working, he has made some mistakes””and, in Mr. Obama’s case, hit the reset button with Congress. Reach out, be humble. Humility has power. It shows people that you have some give””you get the message, you are capable of self-correcting.

That is not what he’s doing. The president is instead doubling down on hostility, antagonism and distance.

What a mistake. What a huge, historic mistake, not only for him but also for his party.

It’s not a mistake.

Let me explain. First of all, although you’ve come a long way towards understanding Obama compared to 2008, Peggy, you’ve still got a long way to go. You see, Obama doesn’t want to self-correct, because in his mind he’s not done a thing wrong. He’s not just saying it’s not his fault, he really believes it’s not his fault.

In fact, nothing bad is his fault. And everything good is to his credit.

We all are familiar with the word “narcissism.” It is a trait. But it also can be much more than that—a character disorder, a personality disorder. That doesn’t just mean there’s something wrong with a person’s character or personality, either. It means there is something more basic that’s out of whack. It means there’s a leitmotif that runs through the entire personality, something that is usually either unchangeable or very very difficult to change.

For Obama this theme is narcissism, which appears to permeate everything he does.

The mystery is that it would be a mystery to anyone at this point. And yet it appears to be. Hope dies hard, and the idea that Obama can change dies hard as well.

[NOTE: The narcissism problem was so severe with Obama that many people noticed it almost from the start. I was one of them; this post of mine, written in the summer of 2008, was already remarking on it. But I was hardly alone.]

The post-2014-election world according to David Axelrod, annotated

The New Neo Posted on by

Annotated by yours truly, that is.

Here’s Axelrod’s statement (my translations of Axelrod’s words and speculative interpretations of his more candid thoughts are in brackets):

DAVID AXELROD: Well, some of us were concerned about this election [we were all sweating bullets, believe me] because of the turf on which these races were being fought and the historic pattern that wasn’t in favor of the president [don’t blame us; it’s not our fault!!]. Some of the events leading into the election weren’t helpful as well [don’t blame us; it’s not our fault!!]. Absolutely the president should respond [do something, you fool!]. You have to look forward. The important thing is you see Senator McConnell and I assume Speaker Boehner will do the same [if they don’t, I’ll excoriate them, even though under the same circumstances all we would ever say to Republicans would be “F____U! We won!]], suggesting that they want to work together, and I think the president has to test that proposition and has to be forward leaning in doing so [at least, he has to fool the public into thinking that he’s leaning that way].

Perhaps he could [hmmm, is that too many qualifiers—“perhaps” and then “could”?—but Barry, you definitely should] have been more forward leaning yesterday. Politics is all about when your interest align. It may have been in the interest of the Republican Party in the last six years to try and block the president at every turn [their fault; blame them!!), but their brand is degraded by what they’ve done [please keep hating them]. Their numbers are far worse than his and heading into the 2016 election, they have a lot of rehabilitation to do not just to win the presidency if that’s their goal but also to elect a lot of senators who are in blue states, Republican senators, their map is worse from that standpoint than the Democratic map was in 2014 [nah nah nah boo boo Republicans, the worm will turn]. They need to show they can work with this president [why I really can’t say, but it sounds good]. He ought to take advantage of that and see where they can…

I know he wants to keep faith with all of those Americans who want him to act and all those who are suffering with this broken immigration system [we haven’t forgotten you, base, even though you didn’t come through for us on Tuesday].

But the fact is a strong bipartisan bill was passed by the United States Senate [those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, when Reid controlled the Senate]. If I were the president [do you hear me, Barack? This next thing I’m going to say is your best bet right now, in your reduced circumstances], i would go to John Boehner and say i’m willing to withdraw my plan for executive action if you’re willing to put this bill on the floor for a vote. I’ll live with the results of that vote. There’s a very good reason to believe that a majority of members of the House support this bipartisan [Americans love that “bipartisan” BS] Senate bill and while the Republicans are warning about taking what they consider extraordinary action on the part of the president, it’s also extraordinary to keep the House of Representatives from voting on a bill that a majority want to pass [at least, it’s extraordinary when Republicans do it] and so the Speaker if he wants to demonstrate that this is a new era [compared to the when we were in charge], he can do that by putting that bill on the floor. That would obviate the need for any executive action [because we all know that whenever legislatures controlled by the opposite party won’t do what a president says, that president is empowered to do it himself. I think that’s in the Constitution, isn’t it? It’s been awhile since I read it. But then again, I’m not a constitutional scholar like Barack.]

Obama: killing a whole flock of birds with one stone

The New Neo Posted on by

President Obama has a penpal:

President Obama reportedly penned a secret letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month discussing their shared interest in fighting the Islamic State — a development one congressional source told Fox News “f***s up everything.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that, according to people briefed on the letter, Obama wrote to Khamenei in the middle of last month and stressed that any cooperation on dealing with the Islamic State, or ISIS, was tied to Iran striking a deal over its nuclear program. The U.S., Iran and other negotiators are facing a Nov. 24 deadline for such a deal.

I think John Bolton would be best at explaining why this was a bad, bad idea:

Again, one can entertain the old knave/fool question. At best, these people are rank amateurs with the special distinction of thinking they are geniuses and therefore ignoring and/or not even seeking the advice of people who might know what they’re doing. At worst—well, you can fill in the blanks yourself.

The importance of Tim Scott and Mia Love

The New Neo Posted on by

I am especially happy about the victories of Tim Scott, South Carolina’s Senator, and Mia Love, new Representative from Utah’s 4th District.

There’s no way to deny that their race becomes important, if only because Democrats have emphasized race so very much. Sadly, these usually-baseless accusations of Republican racism have become more frequent, not less, since the administration of Barack Obama. Scott and Love are living, breathing refutations of that rhetorical approach, and proof that Republicans only object to black candidates when they are liberals. Conservative black candidates can win even in a place like Utah, which is one of the whitest areas in the US.

I’ve not seen much of Love yet, but I have of Scott, and he’s one smart cookie. Here’s an example of his approach:

The Democratic Party must be shaking in its shoes worrying that black people might actually start listening to someone like Scott.

I have another reason to have special respect for black Republicans such as Scott and Love. By definition, they must be courageous and hyper-adept at defending and explaining themselves. If they are political changers (and quite a few are), they would also tend to be people who have thought long and hard about political principles and made independent and tough decisions. But even if they are not political changers, they are quite obviously people who are not afraid to be different, and who have the courage of their convictions. They have been forged into steel in the crucible of the calumny that’s been heaped on them, not by Republicans but by liberals and the left.

I congratulate both on their well-earned victories.

SCOTUS will probably be facing the music…

The New Neo Posted on by

…on gay marriage, now that circuit courts are split on the issue:

In one sweeping decision, the Sixth Circuit has given all of the states in its geographic region a victory for their bans on both initial marriages of same-sex couples and official recognition of such marriages performed outside of the couples’ home states. By contrast, other federal courts have nullified identical bans in thirteen states just over the past few months, with the prospect that the number would soon rise to sixteen ”” for a total of thirty-five states, plus Washington, D.C., allowing such marriages.

Here’s a summary of the grounds on which the new decision was based:

Under the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, state marriage laws are clearly constitutional.

…State marriage laws easily survive rational-basis review. It is rational to define marriage as a male-female union because (a) governmental recognition of marriage operates to regulate the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse, and (b) it’s reasonable for the people of a state to assess how the benefits and burdens of redefining marriage are playing out in other states before they decide whether to take that step. “Any other approach”> would create line-drawing problems of its own.”

State marriage laws do not reflect animus.

There is no “fundamental right” to SSM.

The judge who wrote the opinion and the one who joined it are Republican appointees; the dissent was written by a Democrat. I would be very surprised if the Supreme Court declines to hear the issue after this, but I have no idea how a SCOTUS decision would go.

Republicans: the not-so-stupid party?

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You think the GOP is a bunch of stupidheads, who won despite themselves? Maybe not:

But none of that would work if Republicans did not get the right candidates, a basic tenet that had eluded them in recent elections. This time, party officials pushed bad candidates out, recruited and coached contenders with broad appeal and resuscitated two flailing incumbents, Roberts and Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi.

Rival organizations also improved coordination with each other and beefed up their opposition research to wreak havoc on Democrats, while the party closed the gap on data, digital and voter turnout programs.

“We had to recruit candidates, and we had to train them,” said Rob Collins, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). “We had to bring back our incumbents. We had to modernize creaky campaigns. And we had to prevent the mistakes that have plagued our party.”

One of the hallmarks of recent elections has been the nomination of Republican candidates who blew what should have been Republican sure wins. This time Republicans don’t seem to have made any obvious mistakes, any unforced errors. That’s part of what a wave election is all about. But it still is possible to make mistakes, and the Republicans usually find a way to do so.

I can’t think of a single race they should have won that they didn’t win. What’s more, they usually won bigger than expected. They won the ones that were supposed to be close. In the close ones that Republicans lost—Brown in NH and Gillespie in Virginia—they nevertheless did much better than expected. And they won a whole bunch of governorships that were a surprise, too.

I don’t think it was all just Obama-hate. The Republican candidates in general were actually better than before, and the party was instrumental in at least some of the machinations that got them there. For example, they recruited Corey Gardner to replace a weaker candidate in Colorado:

In Colorado, Buck, a controversial former Senate candidate, was running again, this time against Sen. Mark Udall (D). And even though party leaders had brought him to Washington to try to smooth out his rough edges, they were working behind his back to replace him with Cory Gardner, a fresh-faced congressman.

The NRSC’s political director, Ward Baker ”” a tough ex-Marine who decorated the office with camouflage netting and sandbags and earned the moniker “Hurricane Ward” for his relentless nudging ”” called Gardner regularly. In February, he got his man ”” and got Buck to step aside by engineering a switch whereby Buck would run for Gardner’s House seat.

“[Democrats] wrote the playbook for Ken Buck ”” and failed to adjust when it wasn’t Ken Buck anymore,” said Brad Dayspring, the NRSC’s communications director.

And remember McDaniel and the huge controversy about the role the party played in his fall? I doubt this will convince people who are still angry about it; you will probably remain angry about it. But McDaniel apparently had a history of (recorded) inflammatory racial remarks that Democrats would have trotted out to destroy him once he was nominated, according to the article, and that was one of the main reasons the party blocked him.

I think the most laudable thing of all might be that the party recognized that Democrat Braley in Iowa was vulnerable, and when Joni Ernst (basically a Tea Party type of candidate) won the nomination they saw her potential star quality. They helped polish her, and unlike the situation with Palin (where they may have damped down some of her unique appeal), this polishing helped make Ernst shine.

No, Republicans haven’t suddenly turned incredibly brilliant at this. But there’s little doubt that 2014 represents a big improvement. It helps, of course, to have the right political climate. But it also helps not to shoot yourself in the foot.

Even in liberalland…

The New Neo Posted on by

…they don’t like driver card:

Measure 88, which would have provided driver cards to those who can’t prove their legal residency, failed by a huge margin in Tuesday’s election [in Oregon].

As of 2 a.m. Wednesday, voters were rejecting the measure 67 percent to 33 percent, with more than 75 percent of ballots tallied.

The measure pitted unions, some business groups and immigrant-rights organizations against a meagerly funded but tenacious campaign that referred the issue to the ballot after it passed the state Legislature and was signed into law by Gov. John Kitzhaber in May 2013.

Some things are too far left even for people in blue states. For Measure 88, it appears that the special interest groups had gotten the Democratic legislators and governor to do their bidding and pass and then sign into law something most people in the state didn’t want, and it was up to the people to block it.

Let’s listen to John Adams

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Commenter “Wolla Dalbo” writes:

Despite our Founders deep knowledge, real world experience and street smarts, their very informed, widespread discussions and debates about how to set up our government, when you think about it, our Constitution and our government, in essence, just assume and rely on the good faith and fidelity of our leaders for them to work, there are no really effective, built in mechanisms to prevent a leader from becoming a tyrant, and those weak tools we do have, also assume that a vigilant and courageous Congress will invoke and implement them.

The assumption is that our leaders””people who we just assume understand and love our country, its history, traditions, and form of government”“will generally obey both the spirit and the letter of our Constitution, our laws, and our traditions, and have the vision and guts to implement them, no matter what.

I agree about the Founders’ deep knowledge—wisdom even. But if they set up the government the way they did, it was not because of any sort of naivete or vague hopefulness about government or its leaders, it was because they realized that there is no way to protect people who have lost their own wisdom and judgment about these things. The Founders tried to put in all the built-in, automatic stops to tyranny they could devise, and they were tremendously clever and creative about it. But they also realized that the task of protecting people was impossible, and that the temptation to go the way of tyranny would be great. Perhaps even unstoppable.

But they tried their best. Maybe even the best anyone could have done.

Let’s hear John Adams:

I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. ”¦ Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.

From the same letter:

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the People, who have… a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers. There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free ‘government’ ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

That last sentence is perhaps the most important. But they’re all pretty important. Adams’ thoughts on this should be prominently displayed and taught in every classroom. But even I, who had a more traditional, old-fashioned education, never learned this sort of thing. Was it thought too difficult, too boring, for kids? Or had the educational system already been taken over by the left, even way back then (remember, I grew up in NYC, where the teachers’ unions were already leftist)?

Getting it

The New Neo Posted on by

Krauthammar gets it. Don’t forget that he’s a psychiatrist, too. Here he was last night, speaking on Obama:

Not sure I agree with him about impeachment, but he makes some good points on that, too. And I agree with just about everything else he said.

David Brat gets it, too. Remember him? He’s the Republican who knocked out Cantor. Brat’s getting ready for DC, and I like his plans:

The responsibility now on the GOP is to execute immediately. To follow the will of the people. To listen to what they just said and to get it right.

The present GOP leadership will need to show their stuff pretty soon. Are they empty suits, beholden to money interests and nothing else, Democrats lite, going along to get along, as many here seem to think? Or are they savvy strategists who will now seize the day to block Obama and move popular conservative initiatives (Keystone, border control, to name just two) forward? Or something in-between?

And will the Democratic leadership be able to keep their troops together, fervently embracing every supposedly nefarious obstructionist tactic the Republicans previously employed and for which the Democrats relentlessly excoriated them?

[ADDENDUM: If you want to know what McConnell and Boehner say are their plans, read this piece of theirs in today’s WSJ. You can Google the title and that should get you past the firewall.

These bills include measures authorizing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will mean lower energy costs for families and more jobs for American workers; the Hire More Heroes Act, legislation encouraging employers to hire more of our nation’s veterans; and a proposal to restore the traditional 40-hour definition of full-time employment, removing an arbitrary and destructive government barrier to more hours and better pay created by the Affordable Care Act of 2010…

Our priorities in the 114th Congress will be your priorities. That means addressing head-on many of the most pressing challenges facing the country, including:

Ӣ The insanely complex tax code that is driving American jobs overseas;

Ӣ Health costs that continue to rise under a hopelessly flawed law that Americans have never supported;

Ӣ A savage global terrorist threat that seeks to wage war on every American;

Ӣ An education system that denies choice to parents and denies a good education to too many children;

Ӣ Excessive regulations and frivolous lawsuits that are driving up costs for families and preventing the economy from growing;

Ӣ An antiquated government bureaucracy ill-equipped to serve a citizenry facing 21st-century challenges, from disease control to caring for veterans;

Ӣ A national debt that has Americans stealing from their children and grandchildren, robbing them of benefits that they will never see and leaving them with burdens that will be nearly impossible to repay.

January will bring the opportunity to begin anew. Republicans will return the focus to the issues at the top of your priority list. Your concerns will be our concerns. That’s our pledge.

Kinda general for the most part, which is understandable, since they have to hash the details out among the members of the Republican caucus in the coming Congress. We’ll see.]

Now let’s look at the state legislatures

The New Neo Posted on by

And you may like what you see:

statelegis14

Republican gains extended to state legislative chambers as well. Before Election Day, the GOP controlled 59 of 98 partisan legislative chambers across the country. On Tuesday, preliminary results showed Republicans had won control of both the Nevada Assembly and Senate, the Colorado Senate and state House chambers in Minnesota, New Mexico, Maine, West Virginia and New Hampshire.

That would give the party control of 67 chambers, five more than their previous record in the modern era, set after special elections in 2011 and 2012.

It also would give Republicans total control of 24 states, in which they hold the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the state legislature (Nebraska’s unicameral legislature is technically nonpartisan, but in practice Republicans control the chamber by a wide margin). Democrats, by contrast, are likely to control all three legs of the governing stool in only six states.

Of course, one of those Democratic states is a mighty big one: California.

[ADDENDUM: John Hinderaker reflects.]