Blogs for 2008 - Road to the Middle Class

AS HE CAMPAIGNS for the nomination of the Republican Party Senator John McCain certainly does a good job of infuriating the conservative base of the party.

For instance, you’d think, crafty politician that he is, that he’d have learned how not to talk like a Democrat, playing the class warfare card, and all.

But no. Last night at the Republican California debate at the Reagan presidential library, he did a good job running unfold

IT SEEMS incredible that the “maverick” Senator John McCain is the Republican frontrunner. How could this moderate senator from Arizona be leading the the fight for the nomination in the conservative Republican Party?

The answer, I think, came in South Carolina when non-activist conservatives seemed to be going for McCain out of buyer’s remorse. Voters were wondering if they were really right to choose George W. Bush back in 2000. The sensible thing to do seemed to be to vote for McCain.

Anyway, write unfold

Fox Focus Group Response to SOTU

by Christopher Chantrill

IN HIS LAST State of the Union speech President Bush seemed to be a confident man, hardly the broken, failed president that he critics imagine.

And you could tell that from the reactions of the focus group assembled by Frank Luntz for Fox News. Few in the focus group had a positive opinion of the president coming into the speech, but nearly all had a good impression after the speech. Now how could that be?

Could it be that the media (including unfold

Throw Money at Higher Ed?

by Christopher Chantrill

ARIZONA Governor Janet Napolitano want to spend more money on higher education according to Matthew Ladner from the Arizona based Goldwater Institute.

“We must recognize that higher education is something that all Arizona children will need to succeed,” stated Governor Napolitano.

The governor wants to increase funding to double the number of college unfold

"Mansfield Park" Mis-Priced

by Christopher Chantrill

ENOUGH OF politics and race cards. Let’s talk about real issues, like a disastrous TV production of Mansfield Park.

In the golden age of Hollywood the culture snobs like you and I would always sneer at the costume dramas: Marie Antoinette, Queen of France presented with a hairstyle and small talk right out of 1930s popular culture.

There was one comfort. The BBC would never stoop to that sort of thing. Nor would Masterpiece Theater. At least, not when dramatizing Jane Austen.

But as my unfold

Party Splitting Time

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE is accusing everyone else of splitting the party. On the Republican side it started with Mike Huckabee, who seemed to be splitting the evangelicals off from the economic and national-security conservatives. Then it was John McCain splitting national-security conservatives off and seeming to diss the economic conservatives and the social conservatives.

Then the Clinton tag team started playing gender cards and race cards within the Democratic Party by ridiculing and then polarizing Barack Obama.

Then the great unfold

Stimulus Plan Could Be Worse

by Christopher Chantrill

HELICOPTER Money. That’s what Larry Kudlow calls it. The economic stimulus deal between the White House and House leaders announced today primarily amounts to a plan to borrow money from investors and give it to taxpayers. Up to $600 per person and more if you are married with children.

But if you want economic stimulus instead of the satisfaction of “doing something” then the way to stimulate the economy is to lower the unfold

The Economy: Now What?

by Christopher Chantrill

LAST WEEK Wall Street was calling for a cut of 50 basis points in the Fed Funds rate. And just to get the Fed’s attention international markets tanked over the MLK holiday weekend.

So what did the Fed do? Well we all know now. It topped Wall Street and made a 75 basis point cut, reducing the Fed Funds rate to 3.5 percent. A “panic” cut, according to the British media.

Well, yes, but if you look at other short term rates, not out of line.

But we ordinary mortals must wonder: Is this 1929 all over unfold

Why Republicans Don't Appeal to Blacks

by Christopher Chantrill

IN AN ARTICLE about the identity politics now playing at a Democratic presidential debate near you Lisa Schiffren lays out the simple reason why Republicans have never succeeded in attracting black votes.

In my bleeding-heart conservative youth, I once complained to Spencer Abraham — then the head of the Michigan GOP — that Republicans didn’t try hard enough to attract black voters. He repeated the unfold

MLK, Roe, and Conservatism

by Christopher Chantrill

A WEEK AGO presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got herself into hot water by making the point that it is presidents like Lyndon Johnson that write the laws and not activists like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

She has a point. Politicians do tend to come along at the last minute and suck up all the oxygen in the room when they take credit for movements that have been decades in the making.

In my view it is not politicians that count. It is the people who think thoughts and the actors who lead movements and activist unfold

Back of the Bus No More

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S always good to hear the sensible words of the adults after a week or so of ranting and raging by the kids.

So today Charles Krauthammer opines on the LBJ-MLK flap.

You remember. Hillary Clinton said that it is presidents that get things done. It took Lyndon Johnson to pass the civil rights acts of the 1960s.

That is true, and it is true for a shameful reason. Back in the 1960s blacks unfold

Freakologic: Making Life Logical

by Christopher Chantrill

AFTER A stunning success with The Undercover Economist, British economist Tim Harford is out with a new book, The Logic of Life. It’s all about the logical choices that people make in their lives. For instance, how would you think that women react when a lot of men are in prison?

The more men are in prison, the more likely women are to get themselves a job, and the unfold

The Reagan-Bush Era Is Over

by Christopher Chantrill

LAST SUNDAY Newt Gingrich went on George Stefanopoulos’ ABC Sunday show and said that the Reagan era was over. Said Newt:

We are at the end of the George W. Bush era. We are at the end of the Reagan era. We’re at a point in time when we’re about to start redefining — as a number of people started talking about, starting to redefine — the nature of the Republican Party, in response to what the country needs.

unfold

The Bonfire of the Multicultural Vanities

by Christopher Chantrill

DOES NEW York Times columnist David Brooks nail it, or does he nail it? This contest for the nomination of the Democratic Party between a white woman and a black man is turning into a bonfire of the multicultural vanities, he advises.

Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics. A Clinton unfold

Dem Political Poker

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THE LAST generation our Democratic card sharps have had a grand old time playing the race card, or the gender card, or the class card in the nation’s political card rooms. Time after time they cleaned the clocks of poor unsuspecting Republican fish. What great fun it all was!

Until now.

There was always the danger, of course, that one day some ruthless Democrat would decide to play the card on a fellow Democrat for crude political gain. But generations of Republicans have gone to their Maker without it unfold

Primaries Expose Party Splits

by Christopher Chantrill

IN A USEFUL review of the campaign season thus far, Michael Barone finds that the candidates are exposing the fault lines in the two major parties. First the Democrats:

One faction of the Democratic Party is relatively upscale, well-educated, young. This faction is supporting Barack Obama. The other faction is relatively downscale, less-educated, old. This faction is supporting Hillary Clinton.

The mainstream media unfold

Liberal Fascism Over the Rainbow

by Christopher Chantrill

SOMEWHERE over the rainbow
Way up high
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby

Somewhere over the rainbow
States aren’t blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

Some day I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the libs are far behind me
Where programs melt like lemondrops
And shrink below the budget tops
That’s where you’ll find me

Daily when the netrooter
Lib’rals cry
“Fascist Neanderthaler”
Why then, oh why can’t unfold

The World's Cheapest Car: Tata Nano

by Christopher Chantrill

SOME THINGS are more important than politics, as we all know. The children, for example.

Also personal transportation. And today there was a milestone in personal transportation.

You can get a measure of the excitement from Richard S. Chang of the New York Times reporting from India.

Over the course of the New Delhi Auto Expo, which began this week, anticipation had grown to unfold

Clinton Gender Card Threepeat

by Christopher Chantrill

NOBODY EVER accused the Clintons of modesty. So it is not surprising that, in the crisis of New Hampshire, they played the gender card. They did it before, and it worked.

But to play the gender card three times in one weekend. That’s positively Clintonian!

It even got to Andrew Sullivan:

The Clinton machine is now poised to pull every partisan lever and deploy every cheap tactic: the gender unfold

Is the Right Wrong?

by Christopher Chantrill

TEN YEARS ago, Daniel Finkelstein was an advisor to the doomed Conservative government of British Prime Minister John Major. He knew that the Conservatives were going to lose, and that the Conservatives had to change. “Then what are you waiting for?” said an American friend.

Now FInkelstein wants to return the compliment.

What do the Republicans do if they lose? They have to change, and unfold

"Liberal Fascism" Hits the Shelves

by Christopher Chantrill

I GOT AN email today from Barnes & Noble to tell me that my Liberal Fascism is on its way.

But I almost wish I had decided to go out and buy it at the store. Author Jonah Goldberg reports that some buyers are getting the dead fish treatment from the liberal store clerks, as in:

“The clerk made me say the name three times. She looked for it. Couldn’t find it. I made her unfold

Winning the Obama Way

by Christopher Chantrill

THEY SAY that the Clintons invented and patented the politics of personal destruction.

But then there’s Senator Barack Obama. According to Kyle-Anne Shiver in the American Thinker Obama won his first elected office with a bit of fancy footwork. He was running for the Illinois State Senate against the incumbent Alice Palmer. Palmer had failed in a run for Congress and filed to run for her old job. According to unfold

What Is This Thing Called "Change?"

by Christopher Chantrill

DEAR OLD Rush is in better case today than he was Friday, on the day after the Iowa caucuses.

But he confesses to being flummoxed by all this talk of “change.” That’s because, as far as he can tell, a chap like Barack Obama doesn’t represent change at all, but just same-old-same-old adding another layer of government programs on the already rather substantial government program cake.

Rush is thinking like a political activist, not like an ordinary voter.

Voters are not saying that they want to change unfold

The SST BizJet

by Christopher Chantrill

ENOUGH OF the sainted Barack Obama starring in “The Fall of the House of Clinton.” Enough of the end of the Romney campaign. Or is it the mean-spirited John McCain and his Straight Snark Express.

Let’s talk about guy stuff, like a new $80 million business jet that’s designed to carry 12 important executives at Mach 1.6 non-stop for up to 4,600 miles.

Of course, it is nothing to do with prestige and getting there before the ordinary hoi polloi in their airborne Greyhound buses. As unfold

The Horse-race After Iowa

by Christopher Chantrill

THE GLORIOUS thing about presidential politics in the US is that it really is an open process. An outsider really can come in and change the politics of the United States.

Last night two outsider candidates came in and beat the establishment, politics-by-the-numbers candidates.

Of course, Harvard-educated Barack Obama isn’t really such an outsider, and neither is Governor Huckabee. But they certainly cleaned the clocks of insiders Clinton and Romney.

In an unfold

Conservatives Need Not Apply

by Christopher Chantrill

THE AUGUST New York Times has decided to give conservative William Kristol a column on the editorial page. Not a bad idea, you’d think. Kristol represents a fairly centrist big-government conservatism that ought to go down fairly well with the big-government liberals that read the Times.

But you’d be wrong. The NYT readers are beside themselves. Writes Harry Stein, author of How I Accidentally Joined unfold

On the Day Before

by Christopher Chantrill

TOMORROW, Friday, January 3, 2008, they will start counting the first votes in the 2008 presidential election. All the hype will start converting into Ws and Ls.

In the Republican race it seems that the most professional candidate, the guy who has spent the money and built the organization, and plotted the most detailed strategy—Mitt Romney—is challenged by two candidates without much of either.

In Iowa, Mike Huckabee has come to challenge Mitt Romney, but lacking money and organization has had to rely on stunts unfold