Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook") made some predictions and observations that have stood the test of a few months time.
Money quote(s):
"The reason for the increasing shrillness of the attacks is desperation: the liberal establishment has concluded that Obama is vulnerable, possibly even doomed, and of the Republican candidates only Romney appears to be someone they can work with, someone who can grow in office, who will reach across the aisle to continue liberal programs.
Note that Romney has nothing to do with the attacks on Cain. He’s just the guy the media consider to be the lesser of a number of evils. They can work with him."
Dr. Pournelle follows this observation with a reasonable man's analysis of the "charges" then being leveled against then-candidate Cain.
"Newt will be next. Then anyone else who isn’t Romney. The attack machine will be silent on Romney until he is the nominee. Then it will begin again, but it will be a different attack."
11/9
Money quote(s):
"(F)ormer speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, did something revolutionary. He told the truth about the Palestinians. In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an “invented” people, “who are in fact Arabs.”
His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the “Palestinian people” was artificially carved out of the Arab population of “Greater Syria.” “Greater Syria” included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term “Palestinian people” only became widely accepted after 1977.
As Daniel Pipes chronicled in a 1989 article on the subject in The Middle East Quarterly, the local Arabs in what became Israel opted for a local nationalistic “Palestinian” identity in part due to their sense that their brethren in Syria were not sufficiently committed to the eradication of Zionism."
So the latest date is 1977, which would (in Western demographic terms) a generation ago, but in Middle Eastern terms is more like two generations. Long enough for the myth of national consciousness to become a reality.
(Which doesn't make Gingrich a liar.)
"In their view, Gingrich is an irresponsible flamethrower because he is turning his back on a 30- year bipartisan consensus. That consensus is based on ignoring the fact that the Palestinians are an artificial people whose identity sprang not from any shared historical experience, but from opposition to Jewish nationalism.
The policy goal of the consensus is to establish an independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan River that will live at peace with Israel.
This policy was obsessively advanced throughout the 1990s until it failed completely in 2000, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s and then US president Bill Clinton’s offer of Palestinian statehood and began the Palestinian terror war against Israel.
BUT RATHER than acknowledge that the policy – and the embrace of Palestinian national identity at its heart – had failed, and consider other options, the US policy establishment in Washington clung to it for dear life. Republicans like Rubin’s mentor, former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, went on to support enthusiastically Israel’s surrender of Gaza in 2005, and to push for Hamas participation in the 2006 Palestinian elections. That withdrawal and those elections catapulted the jihadist terror group to power.
The consensus that Gingrich rejected by telling the truth about the artificial nature of Palestinian nationalism was based on an attempt to square popular support for Israel with the elite’s penchant for appeasement. On the one hand, due to overwhelming public support for a strong US alliance with Israel, most US policy-makers have not dared to abandon Israel as a US ally.
On the other hand, American policy-makers have been historically uncomfortable having to champion Israel to their anti-Israel European colleagues and to their Arab interlocutors who share the Palestinians’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist."
Being uncomfortable sometimes is just something that goes with the job. As fond as I am of Europeans, I don't expect that I'll always agree with them.
"Throughout the Arab world, Islamist forces are on the rise.
Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power.
The US is no longer seen as a credible regional power as it pulls its forces out of Iraq without victory, hamstrings its forces in Afghanistan, dooming them to attrition and defeat, and abandons its allies in country after country."
This too shall pass.
"Both Rubin and Abrams, as well as Romney, justified their attacks on Gingrich and their defense of the failed consensus by noting that no Israeli leaders are saying what Gingrich said. Rubin went so far as to allege that Gingrich’s words of truth about the Palestinians hurt Israel.
This is of course absurd. What many Americans fail to recognize is that Israeli leaders are not as free to tell the truth about the nature of the conflict as American leaders are. Rather than look to Israel for leadership on this issue, American leaders would do well to view Israel as the equivalent of West Germany during the Cold War. With half of Berlin occupied by the Red Army and West Berlin serving as the tripwire for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, West German leaders were not as free to tell the truth about the Soviet Union as American leaders were."
Interesting parallel that appeals to my inner Cold Warrior.
"When Romney criticized Gingrich’s statement as unhelpful to Israel, Gingrich replied, “I feel quite confident that an amazing number of Israelis found it nice to have an American tell the truth about the war they are in the middle of, and the casualties they are taking and the people around them who say, ‘They do not have a right to exist and we want to destroy them.’”
And he is absolutely right. It was more than nice. It was heartening."
Said (actually written) by an Israeli, writing for the Jerusalem Post. So I'm inclined to accept the sentiment as genuine.
12/12Money quote(s):
"Most of the speculation on the sources’ identities has so far centered on Cain’s Republican opponents. That makes a great deal of sense because they’re the ones who are seemingly most threatened by Cain. Cain himself appears to think one of them bears the blame; he’s been shooting from the hip and accusing Perry consultant Kurt Anderson of being the culprit, although he’s walked back a bit from that charge in recent days.
Or Cain may have other antagonists, perhaps even personal rather than political ones, who possessed the lawsuit information and would like to see him brought him down. As in a detective novel, there’s probably a plethora of possibilities there; a powerful and successful man is likely to make quite a few enemies."
This is likely something that won't be known with any certainty for years, if ever. Still, the Chicago-centric nature of some of the accusers and accusations suggests.....
"One possible source that’s hardly been pointed to is Obama or someone in his camp. But why would Obama bother at this point? In fact, Cain might be a weaker opponent than some of the others, and Obama might even welcome a Cain candidacy.
Then again, perhaps Obama fears it for special reasons of his own. If so, it could be the result of what I’d call the Bobby Rush phenomenon. You may recall that Rush was Obama’s opponent in the 2000 Democratic Congressional primary, and the only person in political life who has (so far) ever gotten the better of Obama.
Rush is a black man of roughly the same age as Cain, although the former is an extreme liberal and the latter a conservative."
Who benefits?
Newt Gingrich benefited most immediately, surging to viability from far back in the Republican pack, but that surge is already tapering off and candidates Romney, Perry, and even Ron Paul are looking viable just before the Iowa presidential caucus. Longer term, obviously the incumbent stands to benefit. Read the whole post.
11/5
