And for those who think we should just shrug because after all it’s only Iraqis killing Iraqis…

The New Neo Posted on by

…I offer this.

Do the Iraqi people deserve this, just because they failed to get along together and turn into a well-functioning democratic state in a decade (less than that, actually, before we pulled out)? Remember also that not all of these murderous marauders are homegrown Iraqis. Some came to Iraq attracted by their correct perception of that country’s weakness bereft of the last vestiges of American protection.

The world is full of barbarism, and we can’t even begin to stop it all. But there is no excuse for our complete pullout so relatively soon after helping to establish a new government in Iraq.

[NOTE: And since Iraq/Vietnam connections keep coming up, the barbarism of the forces taking over Iraq today makes me think of our current Secretary of State John Kerry’s long ago charges slandering American servicemen in Vietnam. This video can’t be embedded, but it’s well worth watching.]

You may have noticed…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that for the last couple of days I haven’t put up any of those lighter posts I often write. I have been so tremendously upset by what has been happening during the trifecta of doom—the Bergdahl exchange, the border children, and now the horror in Iraq—that I just haven’t felt like it.

Those posts will come back soon. Just not today.

The bitter end: Vietnam

The New Neo Posted on by

Anyone watching recent events in Iraq who wants a refresher course on the end of the Vietnam War and our withdrawal from that area would do well to take a look at this article. Here’s one of the most poignant parts, which takes on added significance today:

The epitaph for the U.S. involvement in Indochina had been given earlier that month before the fall of Phnom Penh in neighboring Cambodia. Just days before his execution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodian statesman Sirak Mitak penned a final note to the U.S. ambassador refusing his offer of evacuation.

“I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty”¦You leave and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.

“But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we all are born and must die one day. I have only committed this mistake in believing in you, the Americans.”

A lot of people would say that the Iraqi people have not “chosen liberty.” But I don’t think we have any way of knowing the true figures. For sure, not enough of them have. During the last decade I’ve come to think that’s true of people in this country, too.

Let’s revisit our withdrawal from Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

To refresh your memory, this is how it went down in Iraq in 2011:

The U.S. had tried to extend the presence of our troops past Dec. 31 [2011]. Why did we fail?

The popular explanation is that the Iraqis refused to provide legal immunity for U.S. troops if they are accused of breaking Iraq’s laws…

But Mr. Maliki and other Iraqi political figures expressed exactly the same reservations about immunity in 2008 during the negotiation of the last Status of Forces Agreement. Indeed those concerns were more acute at the time…So why was it possible for the Bush administration to reach a deal with the Iraqis but not for the Obama administration?

Quite simply it was a matter of will: President Bush really wanted to get a deal done, whereas Mr. Obama did not. Mr. Bush spoke weekly with Mr. Maliki by video teleconference. Mr. Obama had not spoken with Mr. Maliki for months before calling him in late October to announce the end of negotiations. Mr. Obama and his senior aides did not even bother to meet with Iraqi officials at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

The administration didn’t even open talks on renewing the Status of Forces Agreement until this summer, a few months before U.S. troops would have to start shuttering their remaining bases to pull out by Dec. 31. The previous agreement, in 2008, took a year to negotiate.

The recent negotiations were jinxed from the start by the insistence of State Department and Pentagon lawyers that any immunity provisions be ratified by the Iraqi parliament””something that the U.S. hadn’t insisted on in 2008 and that would be almost impossible to get today. In many other countries, including throughout the Arab world, U.S. personnel operate under a Memorandum of Understanding that doesn’t require parliamentary ratification. Why not in Iraq? Mr. Obama could have chosen to override the lawyers’ excessive demands, but he didn’t.

He also undercut his own negotiating team by regularly bragging””in political speeches delivered while talks were ongoing””of his plans to “end” the “war in Iraq.” Even more damaging was his August decision to commit only 3,000 to 5,000 troops to a possible mission in Iraq post-2011. This was far below the number judged necessary by our military commanders…

The Iraqis knew about these estimates: U.S. military commanders had communicated them directly to Iraqi leaders…

When the White House then said it would consent to no more than 5,000 troops””a number that may not even have been able to adequately defend itself, much less carry out other missions””the Iraqis understandably figured that the U.S. wasn’t serious about a continued commitment. Iraqi political leaders may have been willing to risk a domestic backlash to support a substantial commitment of 10,000 or more troops. They were not willing to stick their necks out for such a puny force. Hence the breakdown of talks.

Please read the whole thing.

In typical Obamite fashion, Obama wanted to give the semblance of trying while actually undermining what ought to have been his own efforts. That way he could blame the Iraqis for what he’d always wanted to do anyway: completely withdraw.

And why would he want a complete withdrawal? Placate the base, of course. The negotiations were concluded a mere year before the 2012 election. Obama didn’t care what happened to Iraq or the Iraqis, it was all about fulfilling his promise to leave that country, and he was very impatient to do so.

Of course, back when he was campaigning for his first term, he didn’t state it exactly that way (from a speech given by Obama in July of 2008; emphasis mine):

As President, I will pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy…I will focus this strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly [note this is his #1 goal in making America safer]; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century…

True success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future – a government that prevents sectarian conflict, and ensures that the al Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge. That is an achievable goal if we pursue a comprehensive plan to press the Iraqis stand up.

To achieve that success, I will give our military a new mission on my first day in office: ending this war. Let me be clear: we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – one year after Iraqi Security Forces will be prepared to stand up; two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, we’ll keep a residual force to perform specific missions in Iraq: targeting any remnants of al Qaeda; protecting our service members and diplomats; and training and supporting Iraq’s Security Forces, so long as the Iraqis make political progress.

I strongly doubt he even meant what he said back when he said it. It was just stuff to say that sounded good. Whether you believe Obama is actually pro-jihadi, or whether you just believe he doesn’t mind Iraq turning into a cesspool because Obama can then blame the whole thing on Bush is almost irrelevant at this point. The effect is the same.

The Iraq War had to be discredited because the left’s entire philosophy would be threatened by a Bush success. Obama has always known this, and as president he was in a position to bring it about.

Iraq War veterans watch the news in anguish

The New Neo Posted on by

As one would expect, some of the hardest hit Americans are those who spent time fighting in Iraq:

“Going out across the desert I remember the feelings that you have, wondering if you’re going to make it out alive,” Rep. Scott Perry told National Journal. “Right now I wonder what that was all about. What was the point of all that?”

At least the Vietnam War vets who have been feeling similarly for nearly forty years have some company now. Unfortunately, many of those Vietnam vets are suffering flashbacks right now from their own past. Meanwhile, President Obama fiddles before heading away for the weekend:

Says “threat isn’t new”. They’ve been “ramping up” military aide for months. So much for being surprised.

No US troops going to Iraq. Says it’s not “primarily a military” problem. That was true weeks ago. Now it’s very much a military issue.

In short, Obama just wrote off Iraq.

This is naive beyond belief. As I wrote below, I get why we didn’t leave troops behind but to not act in this situation with direct military action is beyond irresponsible. ‘

He’s basically just given ISIS the territory they have (whether they can keep it over the long term is a very different question) and handed the Shia areas to Iran.

In answer to a question he said (bit of a paraphrase here) “events are moving fast on the ground but it will take us days to do our consultations and take any actions”.

And there’s no sense of urgency from Obama about it, either. Or special concern. The reason is pretty clear:

In Washington, President Obama vowed Thursday to keep his options open, but is reportedly reluctant to reengage in Iraq, after touting the end of the war as his chief foreign policy accomplishment.

Pretend it’s no big deal, and then on to the next crisis that erupts.

Further thoughts on the fall of Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

I started this blog right before the 2004 election, and for the first few years a large percentage of my posts were about Iraq. That remained true through all the ups and downs of the surge and the Bush administration. There were times I thought all was lost and there were times I thought that country might stay out of the woods.

But I’ve never wavered from the idea that, had the US and our allies had the understanding of how vitally important it was to set up a functioning post-Saddam government there—to keep it from becoming a haven for terrorists or a satellite of Iran, and to give us a base in the region—the venture could have (not would have) been at least a modest success. It was clear early on, however, that we as a country and the west as a whole lacked the determination to do what it would take, which would have involved—among other things—an occupation that lasted a long time.

Even the Bush administration was unwilling to do that, and the American people were not interested either. But it was with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 that it became crystal clear that it was over. Obama signaled that he would abandon Iraq, and the opposition knew it and bided its time, waiting.

Now it’s almost unbearable to read articles like this one describing the situation there and our willful abdication of even the most minimal help:

White House spokesman Josh Earnest deplored ‘despicable’ acts of violence targeting civilians in Mosul. Mr Earnest said the group has gained strength from the situation in neighbouring Syria.

But the White House is not saying what additional military assistance the US might provide Iraq in response to the siege. Mr Earnest said the US is committed to its partnership with Baghdad but is urging Iraq’s government to take steps to be more inclusive of all Iraqis.

The New York Times, of all papers, has described the situation and Obama’s position on it in very stark terms:

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials.

But Iraq’s appeals for a military response have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011…

The Obama administration has carried out drone strikes against militants in Yemen and Pakistan, where it fears terrorists have been hatching plans to attack the United States. But despite the fact that Sunni militants have been making steady advances [in Iraq] and may be carving out new havens from which they could carry out attacks against the West, administration spokesmen have insisted that the United States is not actively considering using warplanes or armed drones to strike them.

So there was a chance to have staved off this calamity with drones, and Obama refused. Why allow our drones to attack terrorists in Pakistan and not in Iraq? My guess is that Obama figures that whatever bad stuff happens in Iraq can be blamed on Bush, and he can position himself as the un-Bush. Because even if you think that Obama is secretly rooting for the jihadis, that wouldn’t explain this differential reaction.

The WSJ points out:

Since President Obama likes to describe everything he inherited from his predecessor as a “mess,” it’s worth remembering that when President Bush left office Iraq was largely at peace. Civilian casualties fell from an estimated 31,400 in 2006 to 4,700 in 2009. U.S. military casualties were negligible. Then CIA Director Michael Hayden said, with good reason, that “al Qaeda is on the verge of a strategic defeat in Iraq.”

Fast forward through five years of the Administration’s indifference, and Iraq is close to exceeding the kind of chaos that engulfed it before the U.S. surge….

…[The Obama Administration’s] promise of a “diplomatic surge” in Iraq to follow the military surge of the preceding years never materialized as the U.S. washed its hands of the country. Mr. Obama’s offer of a couple thousand troops beyond 2011 was so low that Mr. Maliki didn’t think it was worth the domestic criticism it would engender. An American President more mindful of U.S. interests would have made Mr. Maliki an offer he couldn’t refuse.

All this should serve as a warning to what we can expect in Afghanistan as the Administration replays its Iraq strategy of full withdrawal after 2016. It should also serve as a reminder of the magnitude of the strategic blunder of leaving no U.S. forces in Iraq after the country finally had a chance to serve as a new anchor of stability and U.S. influence in the region. An Iraqi army properly aided by U.S. air power would not have collapsed as it did in Mosul.

In withdrawing from Iraq in toto, Mr. Obama put his desire to have a talking point for his re-election campaign above America’s strategic interests. Now we and the world are facing this reality: A civil war in Iraq and the birth of a terrorist haven that has the confidence, and is fast acquiring the means, to raise a banner for a new generation of jihadists, both in Iraq and beyond.

The WSJ had more faith in the Iraqi troops than I do—I think we would have had to keep some forces there for decades. At any rate, once it became clear there would be no backup, it was all over and just a matter of time.

From Daniel Henninger:

The fall of Mosul, Iraq, to al Qaeda terrorists this week is as big in its implications as Russia’s annexation of Crimea. But from the Obama presidency, barely a peep.

Barack Obama is fiddling while the world burns. Iraq, Pakistan, Ukraine, Russia, Nigeria, Kenya, Syria. These foreign wildfires, with more surely to come, will burn unabated for two years until the United States has a new president. The one we’ve got can barely notice or doesn’t care…

…[T]he Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) isn’t a bunch of bug-eyed “Mad Max” guys running around firing Kalashnikovs. ISIS is now a trained and organized army.

The seizures of Mosul and Tikrit this week revealed high-level operational skills. ISIS is using vehicles and equipment seized from Iraqi military bases. Normally an army on the move would slow down to establish protective garrisons in towns it takes, but ISIS is doing the opposite, by replenishing itself with fighters from liberated prisons…

One might ask: Didn’t U.S. intelligence know something like Mosul could happen? They did…[cites report]…But to have suggested any mitigating steps to this White House would have been pointless. It won’t listen…

In March, Gen. James Mattis, then head of the U.S. Central Command, told Congress he recommended the U.S. keep 13,600 support troops in Afghanistan; he was known not to want an announced final withdrawal date. On May 27, President Obama said it would be 9,800 troops””for just one year. Which guarantees that the taking of Mosul will be replayed in Afghanistan.

Let us repeat the most quoted passage in former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s memoir, “Duty.” It describes the March 2011 meeting with Mr. Obama about Afghanistan in the situation room. “As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Mr. Gates wrote. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”

It’s hard to even read this stuff.

Seen in one of the WSJ comments:

Osama Bin Laden is dead, and Al Qaeda is on the run. Sadly, they are running in force towards Baghdad.

Actually, it’s not al Qaeda, it’s a group that’s supposedly worse.

Denouncing ISIS as ”˜one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world, Stuart Jones, the nominee to be the next US envoy to Baghdad, told US politicians the United States ”˜will continue to monitor the situation closely, and will work with our international partners to try to meet the needs of those who have been displaced’…

The White House National Security Council said only: ‘President Obama promised to responsibly end the war in Iraq and he did’…

That’s the “National Security Council” in the Orwellian sense.

The left no longer counts the bodies in Iraq—that was only of interest when Bush was president. And all of this is, of course, his fault.

Before Obama, no matter who was president, other countries had faith that we would stick with what we started. Except for Vietnam, which was the exception. Now, under Obama, it has become the rule.

Read Richard Fernandez on the debacle that is the Obama administration

The New Neo Posted on by

Read it, but have a good stiff drink by your side.

And lock up all sharp objects. Because if you’re not already profoundly depressed, his essay will depress you.

I can’t quarrel with what he writes; it’s what I would write if I were more gifted. Here are some excerpts:

There’s nothing in place available to stop al-Qaeda. The forces that might have are locked up in the Southwest Asia, sustained at the mercy of Russia and Pakistan. Obama has been faked out; the AQ have gone around him for a layup to the basket. He may lose Iraq and its border with Syria before the year ends. Afghanistan’s fall will follow almost immediately thereafter, behind the last American troops, whose safe exit from the landlocked country is now by no means guaranteed. The Russians lost more than 500 men going out in 1989 ”” and they only had to cross a land border a short distance away.

The only way things could be worse is for US troops in Afghanistan find themselves trapped, denied passage by Pakistan or Russia. Of course that could never happen because the press never considers the possibility and it considers Obama too “respected” for that to occur.

When you add in the Eastern European crisis and the growing expansion of China to the Middle Eastern collapse, it is not hard to see the obvious. Unless a miracle saves Obama, the nation will be facing a global and existential security crisis within a short time…

Obama has presided over the destruction of American influence in the Middle East, the hollowing out of the US economy, the perversion of American intelligence assets and the maltreatment of American veterans.

The shield has been thrown away, the sword has been melted down, the senses dispatched on a leave of absence.

Whether in fulfillment of some childhood psycho-drama, in the service of some bizarre obsession or in pursuit of an imbecilic strategy, Obama has basically made every bad move it is possible to make. For a long time the press covered up this perverted process out of admiration for the creases in his trousers; and so it appeared Obama was going gradually bust. Now we’re in the “all of a sudden” part of the curve. The check’s come back from the bank, bounced.

Just read the whole thing, if you can bear to.

And this sentence expresses something I’ve been thinking ever since hearing about what’s happening now in Mosul:

It’s like Vietnam all over again, except this time the NVA are continuing the attack all the way to New York.

Actually, I’ve thought about that ever since it’s become clear that the left and the MSM would undermine the already difficult and risky Iraq and Afghan wars, and that the American people and its leaders did not have the resolve to resist. In fact, from the moment of 9/11 on, it became increasingly clear that, despite brief periods of exception, we had neither the correct mindset nor the understanding of the implacable nature of the enemy we faced.

Obama is merely the symptom of that—but oh, what a symptom! Very few politicians on left or right would have served us—and the world—so poorly and so malevolently.

The problem of Islamic terrorism and of the entire Middle East has been a knotty and dangerous one for a long, long time, much predating Obama and Bush. But after 9/11 it became clear, up close, and personal. After that it was obvious that it would take a realistic understanding, steely resolve, and unity of purpose to fight it. These we have lacked from the start (“religion of peace”?), although it’s only gotten worse since. Obama has not just been inadequate to the task: he has sabotaged it, eliminating even the very tenuous success that he inherited from the Bush administration.

What is happening in Iraq (and by no means limited to Iraq, but that’s the focus for the moment) is, frankly, a nightmare. These are very dark times, and I see no reason why they won’t get darker. I keep thinking—as I did after 9/11—of this poem by Yeats, written around the time WWII was beginning:

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Cantor to step down as Majority Leader

The New Neo Posted on by

This is good, because he would have been rendered ineffective by his loss:

Cantor (R-Va.) was expected to officially announce his decision at a special meeting of the House Republican conference Wednesday afternoon. He’ll step down after July.

On Tuesday evening, Cantor was upset by little-known Randolph-Macon economics professor David Brat, who had strong Tea Party backing…

Cantor’s shocking defeat instantly put him in the situation of being a lame duck in Congress.

Part of his job description is trying to corral a fractious conference into passing legislation. He also sets the floor schedule and raises millions for Republicans in their re-election campaigns.

His ability to complete all those tasks could have been severely diminished by his lame-duck status.

I have no idea who will replace him. I doubt the Republicans in the House know, either, because this was so unexpected.

Elections have consequences. In this case, though, I’m not sure they’ll be as good as people might think. Whatever disappointments people have had with Cantor, he’s actually a pretty conservative guy compared to those who might end up replacing him.

Spread this video, please: Hillary Clinton on the Taliban Five and American security

The New Neo Posted on by

If and when Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, her Republican opponent had better show part of this clip.

I’m surprised it isn’t being talked about more, because it is positively Obaman in its stupidity and offensiveness, and its contempt for the listener (it also comes across as insincere and unconvincing, but that never stopped Obama either):

Let’s contemplate that in print:

These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.

Hillary must think the American people have forgotten why we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Maybe they have; after all, what difference does it make? And it happened so long ago—twelve and a half years, and even longer ago by the time the 2016 election rolls around. A great many of the voters Hillary expects to appeal to would have been little children back then.

But just as a refresher, the now-ironically-named “Operation Enduring Freedom” was launched in Afghanistan after 9/11 because the Taliban who controlled the country had provided a safe haven for al Qaeda, from which the terrorist group trained and equipped jihadis to wreak havoc around the world, including the US—and including the 9/11 attacks. The masterminds resided in Afghanistan with the Taliban’s cooperation, approval, and protection, and the Afghan war with the US would not have occurred had the Taliban agreed to turn the culprits over and close down al Qaeda operations in their country.

The war was very widely supported because that rationale was well understood at the time. The Taliban Five were imprisoned twelve years ago in relation to that war, because they were among the Afghan Taliban leaders.

So Hillary Clinton’s statement is, to put it bluntly, so much horse manure. She was in the US Senate when this all occurred, and she voted for the war:

Clinton strongly supported the 2001 U.S. military action in Afghanistan, saying it was a chance to combat terrorism while improving the lives of Afghan women who suffered under the Taliban government.

I’m sure the release of the Taliban Five won’t hurt those women, right? And the Five won’t host and support al Qaeda any more? And their release wasn’t a PR coup for both the Taliban and al Qaeda? And none of this could possibly end up affecting the US—any more than it did on 9/11/2001?

Compared to that utterance, it almost seems minor that Clinton uses a ridiculous analogy for Bergdahl’s act of desertion: a sailor falling off a ship. Lame, duplicitous, absurd—and yet Hillary must think Americans will buy that.

I suppose what she really thinks is that it doesn’t matter, because she’s famous and beloved and a women and a liberal, and the Democrats really don’t have many better alternatives. So what difference does it make what claptrap she spouts?

Jonathan Chait on Eric Cantor’s defeat: undocumented

The New Neo Posted on by

I was wondering what the left would have to say about it all—mostly, how the attack on Brat would start to be framed—and this article by Jonathan Chait was instructive but unsurprising in that regard: Brat’s a “Rand-loving right-wing crank.” Well, of course; who isn’t?

But it was the following that I think worthy of note: Chait, seeking to paint Brat as an anti-immigration extremist, wrote that Brat “still uses the old lingo, calling undocumented immigrants ‘illegals.'”

Quelle horreur!

A few years ago I wrote a post about this whole “undocumented” phenomenon, and offered the following PC definitions for other terms as well:

thieves: undocumented owners

prisoners: unpardoned innocents

rapists: unsanctioned sex partners

embezzlers: unpaid workers

prostitutes: unmarried wives

terrorists: un-uniformed soldiers

The left pays particular attention to language, for which we mock them. But it is a deadly serious game, too, because language helps to shape attitudes. The left is well aware of that, and they are fighting on every front, including this one. Brat does well to refuse to concede.

The David Brat “earthquake”

The New Neo Posted on by

The David Brat victory has been widely described as an earthquake. In the political world of DC, I suppose it is. To the rest of us it’s a surprise—pleasant or unpleasant, depending on your politics—but buildings are still standing and nothing has fallen off the shelves yet.

Funny thing how everyone’s ignoring Lindsay Graham’s victory, which appears to give the opposite message of Brat’s. Each race had special circumstances that make it difficult to generalize, but I think we can safely say that Brat’s does indicate a certain anti-DC, anti-incumbent fever that we already knew has been brewing for a long, long time. However, I don’t think it would have made as much difference had Brat himself not been a personable, smart, articulate guy, or if there hadn’t been a lot of anti-illegal-immigration news in the headlines right before the primary. It also helped that the vote was in a single district with a small turnout. In South Carolina, in his statewide contest, Graham faced a slew of opponents all of whom split the opposition vote among them, and that mattered in his victory.

I dismiss the idea that Democratic crossover votes had much effect at all in the Brat race, by the way. The argument offered by DrewM at Ace’s makes tremendous sense to me:

If you think 10,000 Democrats came out to vote for Brat (that’s about 1 in 6 votes cast), you’d think there’d be some sort of evidence of an organized effort. The notion that Democrats “smelled blood in the water” is ridiculous. No one saw this coming. Why would so many Democrats on their own suddenly think they could sway a race that everyone thought would be a Cantor blowout?

I think what will be especially interesting is how the so-called “establishment” Republicans react to this over time. Will Cantor be asked to resign from his post, and who would replace him? Will other Republicans change their amnesty-deal-friendly rhetoric? Or will they look at Graham’s win instead and decide that Brat’s victory was a one-off rather than a trend? I think it more likely that they’re pretty scared right now.

One thing I would hate to see is a civil war in the Republican Party that hurts their chances in 2014. First things first, and first is stopping or at least slowing down this president in the damage he can do before January of 2017. I happen to think that we need more fighters and fewer accommodators, and so far Brat fits the mold of the former rather than the latter, so I’m happy about his victory—just as long as he wins against his opponent in November.

[ADDENDUM: Interesting story about one of Brat’s winning moves.]

The Bum Won

The New Neo Posted on by

Brat’s victory last night made me think of this song from the musical “Fiorello.” I saw it as a child and it was one of my favorites, although it’s hardly ever performed today. It has several really clever songs about politics, including this one that the New York Republican Party guys sing after Fiorello wins a local victory running as a reform candidate against the Democratic Tammany Hall machine candidate.

They never in their wildest dreams expected him to win:

The lyrics are awfully good:

Even without our help, look at the way he won
Everyone sold him short.
(“You think they’ll ask for a recount?”)
We got a winner, but what good is that to us,
Not if he doesn’t feel grateful for our support?
(“You mean no patronage, huh, Ben?”)

I gotta talk to him.
Someone, pinch me, maybe this is just a beautiful dream
I’m in a bad state of shock.
I’d like to know just how the hell it happened
What we did right
Fellas, the whole thing is cock-eyed…

If you liked that one, you may like two more from the show. They hold up very well after all these years.

The first one’s about the nominating process in a lopsided district where the pols think whomever they nominate will inevitably lose:

And the second is about political corruption on trial: