Tony Blankley from Creators Syndicate

Newt's Past and Future Leadership for 12/14/2011

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Almost all political commentators agree on one thing. The Republican presidential campaign is unlike any we have experienced. It is not a campaign of steady trends and continuities, but rather of emotional reversals and discontinuities. Perhaps this is so because the last 3 to 4 years have been a shocking time of discontinuities and reversals for America. Really, America has been bewildered, sh ...

Updated: Wed Dec 14, 2011

Secular, Liberal Egypt: We Hardly Knew Ya for 12/07/2011

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

One of the nice things about human history is that no matter how much people or their leaders misjudge events and make a hash of things, within a few centuries, the debris is cleared away, and we can have another go at getting things right.

Yes, I am thinking about the Middle East. Whether or not there is a message in that turn of events, I'll leave it to theologians.

At the momen ...

Updated: Wed Dec 07, 2011

How to Break the Partisan Fever for 11/30/2011

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Sunday on "Meet the Press" Colin Powell blamed divisive, poisonous Washington politics on the media and the Tea Party. The essence of Powell's argument was: "Republicans and Democrats are focusing more and more on their extreme left and extreme right. And we have to come back toward the center in order to compromise. ... The media has to help us. The media loves this game, where ...

Updated: Wed Nov 30, 2011

Thanksgiving 2011 for 11/23/2011

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

As we approach the festive season — the elongated, enchanting month from Thanksgiving through Christmas to New Years — my mind has been drifting through various memorable past holidays. Some have been personal — the last one with my father before he died. But one that stands out for historic reasons was Christmas 1991.

It was precisely on Dec. 25, 1991 — 20 years ...

Updated: Wed Nov 23, 2011

An Important New Book for 11/16/2011

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

A just released book, "Bowing to Beijing" by Brett M. Decker and William C. Triplett II, will change forever the way you think about China — even if, like me, you already have the deepest worries about the Chinese threat. As I opened the book, I was expecting to find many useful examples of Chinese military and industrial efforts to get the better of the United States and the We ...

Updated: Wed Nov 16, 2011

GOP Primary Deadlock? for 11/08/2011

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Here's a thought: The GOP presidential primaries may well prove to be inconclusive, with the nominee actually being chosen at the convention in Tampa, Fla., in the fourth week of August next year.

True, it has been generations since a presidential nominating convention actually made that decision, although, admittedly, this idea pops up every four years. The last GOP contested convention ...

Updated: Tue Nov 08, 2011

A Time for Statesmen for 11/02/2011

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Now is a particularly dangerous moment for American national security interests. Not just because threats are growing. Not just because the current administration is making a historic bungle from China to Iraq to Iran to Russia to Europe to Mexico to our historic allies in the Middle East — both Jewish and Muslim. All that would be bad enough.

But the greatest threat to our nationa ...

Updated: Wed Nov 02, 2011

The Administration Slithers Away From Reality for 10/26/2011

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

"No one should miscalculate America's resolve and commitment to helping support the Iraqi democracy.

— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, October 23, 2011

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. "

— George Orwell, May 1945

"We are all capa ...

Updated: Wed Oct 26, 2011

Washington Considers China Trade War for 10/19/2011

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

For the past few years, fear of China's predatory mercantilism has been steadily growing in America, both amongst the public and in elite business and political circles. But last week, for the first time, one could discern the genuine possibility that America might actually do something about it — even if it means a trade war.

It's not that anything new has been revealed about Chin ...

Updated: Wed Oct 19, 2011

Euro-Debt Danger for 10/12/2011

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

How dangerous is the European financial condition? On Monday, while stock markets from the DAX and FTSE to the New York Stock Exchange were up sharply on report of French and German cooperative murmurs regarding sovereign debt negotiations (and on temporary easing of U.S. double-dip recession fears), the financial and political European press were warning of a coming financial crisis of unmatch ...

Updated: Wed Oct 12, 2011

Good GOP Flip-Flops for 10/05/2011

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

William F. Buckley, Jr., founding father of the modern conservative movement, famously asserted his doctrine of voting for the most conservative candidate who is electable.

Let me presume to add an analytic codicil: The GOP and the conservative movement have tended to support the most conservative policies only when they are understood to be conservative and are plausibly supportable by ...

Updated: Wed Oct 05, 2011

President's Foreign-Policy Failures Increase for 09/28/2011

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

President Obama, like most American presidents, is lucky that the public pays little attention to foreign policy and rarely casts its votes on the basis of presidential foreign-policy performance. It required something as dramatic as the November 1979 Iranian seizing of our diplomats as hostages, followed the next month by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to turn Jimmy Carter's foreign policy ...

Updated: Wed Sep 28, 2011

Double-Dip Learning Curve for 09/21/2011

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

In one of the least needed reassurances in modern political history, President Obama's top political man David Plouffe, "told Democrats late last week that the White House would not suffer from overconfidence. 'What I don't want to suggest is that we're sitting around and thinking everything is great,' he said."

With the White House's own economists predicting 9 percent or wors ...

Updated: Wed Sep 21, 2011

Is It Still Good to be the King? for 09/14/2011

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Since the end of World War II, in both the United States and Western Europe, the best way to win a national election has been to be the incumbent political party. But that 3-generation-old predisposition of publics in Western democracies may be coming to an end.

We may well be entering a political epoch in which the best way to win a national election in the West is not to be the party i ...

Updated: Wed Sep 14, 2011

Politics Turns Dangerously Rougher for 09/07/2011

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

In the last few weeks, leading Democrats in Congress have called Tea Party constituents terrorists, said they should go to hell and accused them of wanting to lynch black people. Last weekend, at an event attended by President Obama, the head of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., attacked the Tea Party, screaming, "President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take th ...

Updated: Wed Sep 07, 2011

Obama's Last Economic Policy Chance for 08/31/2011

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

President Obama's post-Labor Day "jobs" speech will be his last chance to launch an economic policy with any chance of manifesting its effect — both economic and political — before the November 2012 elections.

He has three options. In order of descending likelihood they are: a timid hodgepodge of previous proposals, a bold left of center initiative or a turn to free ...

Updated: Wed Aug 31, 2011

The Authoritarian Temptation for 08/17/2011

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

In the weeks during and since the debt-ceiling debate, the media, pushed by the Democratic Party, has peddled the propaganda that our government is broken — because the Republicans in the House of Representatives negotiated a better deal than the liberals wanted.

While it was President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner who, during the debate, said they couldn't assur ...

Updated: Wed Aug 17, 2011

The End of the World Is not Nigh for 08/10/2011

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Except according to the Lord's plans — which are not known to man — the "end of the world" is not nigh, although to listen to politicians and pundits, we should be packed and ready to go by next Thursday.

Recently, the headlines have read like Woody Allen's 1979 "My Speech to the Graduates": "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossr ...

Updated: Wed Aug 10, 2011

Debt Status Quo Triumphs Over Future -- Again for 08/03/2011

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The debt deal, if it sticks, is a triumph for the bipartisan, status quo-clinging Washington establishment. Here is a prediction: Between now and January 2013, total actual spending cuts will be minimal. That will result from the following: (1) The $900 billion deficit reduction is almost all back-loaded to the years beyond 2012. (2) The select committee created by the budget deal will fail to ...

Updated: Wed Aug 03, 2011

Government by Coup de Theatre or the Constitution? for 07/27/2011

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

How have we arrived at this place where the fate of our federal budget — our economy, indeed our capacity to have a functioning federal government — seems to depend on what two men (the speaker of the House and the president) may or may not be secretly talking about in an interior room in the White House?

Meanwhile, elected representatives and senators, kept ignorant of those ...

Updated: Wed Jul 27, 2011