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Who Is The Real Obama? A Uniter or Divider? By Morton Kondracke | May 7th, 2010 | PERMALINK President Barack Obama certainly is not a socialist — let alone a communist — as some of his far-out detractors claim. But he and his aides certainly are in populist “whack industry” mode. From BP to banks, health insurance companies to special interest lobbyists, Obama & Co. pass up no opportunity to slash and bash — except when they are asking for industry cooperation or appealing for national unity. The dichotomy between one rhetorical mood and the other is so pronounced that...

While the Republican party is on track to score big victories in 2010, it's in grave danger of committing long-term suicide unless it's rescued from right-wing madness. Riding a wave of anger at Democrats for spending too much and failing to solve the nation's economic crisis -- yet -- Republicans may even capture control of the House this year. But consistent -- sometimes ugly -- opposition to immigration overhaul, resistance to climate change remedies, hostility toward gay rights, incendiary language at tea party rallies and waging primaries as ideological purification rituals all represent long-term threats to the party. So does...

It used to be easy to predict who the next Republican presidential nominee would be. It was decided by primogeniture: The next oldest guy in line got to be the king. It’s not so easy looking to 2012, with former Vice President Dick Cheney out of the running and a woman, soon-to-be former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in.And I do believe she’s in — damaged in her chances, maybe, but fully intending to make a run and very popular with the shrinking hard core of the GOP.In the Democratic Party, primogeniture sometimes applies, as with Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and...

Liberal health reform advocates have talked about ramming a reform plan — including a Medicare-like public insurance option — through the Senate with only 51 Democratic votes. But a leading Senate player says it won’t work.

It's the end of the road for The Beltway Boys, Fox News Channel's Saturday evening political chat with newsmen Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke. Whispers hears that the show has run its course. A Fox spokesman confirmed this when contacted for comment. No replacement has been named. Theirs was a fun mix of the week's politics, a peppy version of some of the other Saturday media political reviews. They talked about "hot stories," the week's big events, and sized up personalities in the "Ups and Downs" segment. While it's now off the air, those in the know say that Barnes...

Given last year's election results, major immigration reform ought to pass in 2009 – but first, the incoming Obama administration has to decide what to do about some draconian policies put into place by the Bush administration. After failing to pass its own reform bill in 2007, Bush & Co. launched a policy of high-visibility workplace raids, mass deportation and rigorous employment verification designed to show that they were tough on illegal immigration. President-elect Barack Obama denounced the raids during the campaign, but canceling George W. Bush's policies could open the new administration to charges that it's "soft" on enforcement...

For the sake of national security and national unity, President-elect Barack Obama should put a stop to efforts to investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for anti-terror "war crimes." The motive behind such efforts is not - as claimed - "truth" or "justice," but political vengeance. Republicans hated President Clinton and a GOP-dominated House impeached him. Many Democrats hate George W. Bush with equal or even greater passion, but they demurred on the idea of impeachment - mainly because the action against Mr. Clinton hurt the GOP more than it hurt Mr. Clinton. But now Bush-haters are calling for the...

How can the Republican Party rebound? The first step would be to quit letting Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham set its agenda. A second step would be for congressional Republicans to actually try to help President-elect Barack Obama succeed in addressing the country's dire problems – offering better ideas where appropriate and opposing just when necessary, not reflexively. And the third – maybe the biggest one – would be for GOP governors to use their posts to show the country how conservatives can solve problems, especially the dismal state of American education and its menacing cousin, lagging American...

How can the Republican Party rebound? The first step would be to quit letting Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham set its agenda. A second step would be for Congressional Republicans to actually try to help President-elect Barack Obama succeed in addressing the country’s dire problems — offering better ideas where appropriate and opposing just when necessary, not reflexively. And the third — maybe the biggest one — would be for GOP governors to use their posts to show the country how conservatives can solve problems, especially the dismal state of American education and its menacing cousin, lagging American...

Here is video of the Fox News All-Stars tonight, September 1, 2008, where Mort Kondracke tried to use the news that Sarah Palin's daughter is expecting as a platform to attack her for supporting abstinence education in public schools. Bill Kristol was outraged and let Kondracke know it. . . . (see video at link)

Mort Kondracke is every inch a lowlife

Mort Kondracke said on Fox tonight that Palin is not qualfied to be VP. He also thinks Obama is presidential material because he's been running for the job for three years.

Maybe the biggest question of the 2008 presidential campaign is "Who is Sen. Barack Obama really?" Of late, the mystery is deepening. It's customary for presidential candidates to move to the center for the general election after they've pandered to their party's base in the primaries -- but the Illinois Democrat has claimed not to be your customary candidate, but someone who was going to usher in a new politics. He has eloquently promised "change we can believe in," but lately he's changing his tune on so many issues it's becoming a legitimate question: Can voters really believe in him?

What's the cause of $4 for a gallon of gasoline? To listen to Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail -- and also some Republicans -- the answer is "price gouging," "speculation," "oil companies" or "the failed policies of George Bush and Dick Cheney." Everything is getting blamed except the well-documented obvious: the law of supply and demand. The history of U.S. energy policy is that Democrats have refused to increase supply and Republicans have refused to curtail demand. They are both to blame for $4 gasoline -- and they'd better get together to keep Americans from paying $200...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) got an answer from Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) Tuesday on his proposal for 10 town hall-style debates: Not going to happen. That's too bad - and, the fewer there are, the more Obama should suffer for it politically. The town halls not only would give ordinary citizens a chance to ask the candidates some pointed questions (see suggestions below), but - because they would be nationally televised - they would let voters nationwide see how the candidates handle challenges from across the political spectrum. When Obama was debating Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and - in...

And yet, McCain can’t bank on Democratic disarray. Despite polls showing him doing surprisingly well against Obama, historical patterns show he’s in perilous territory. Professor Alan Abramowitz of Emory University has developed an “electoral barometer” based on just three variables for predicting election outcomes, and it suggests that McCain is all but certainly set to lose this year. In an article last week on University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball Web site, Abramowitz declared that “it appears very likely that the Republican party is dealing with the dreaded ‘triple whammy’ in 2008: an unpopular president, a weak economy...

Unless the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has caused him more damage than is evident, it’s impossible to see how Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) can lose the popular vote, the delegate race or the Democratic nomination to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.). Specifically, I’ve calculated the possible popular vote in eight of the nine remaining primaries (excluding Guam), giving Clinton the benefit of every doubt, and can’t see how she gains more than 150,000 votes on Obama ��" not enough to catch him except in the most extreme circumstances.

Judging by his agile performance at Tuesday's Iraq hearings, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) now is opting for the famous George Aiken formula from Vietnam days: Declare victory and get out. Or, rather, as an update on the late Vermont Republican's 1966 idea, Obama would declare the situation in Iraq "manageable" and drastically reduce American forces -- possibly, he suggested, to just 30,000. Of the three presidential candidates displaying their intellectual wares in questioning Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, Obama surely was the most subtle and shrewd. He also gave a bit of a hint of...

Mort Kondracke got one thing right: Rush Limbaugh would go Krakatoa . . . The resident moderate of The Beltway Boys has counseled John McCain to offer the VP slot to Christie Todd Whitman. Mort made his move during the show-ending "Buzz" segment. MORTON KONDRACKE: Two new McCain Veep ideas: first, he should offer the Vice-Presidency to Colin Powell, who may well not take it. If not Powell, then Christie Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey. Rush Limbaugh would go Krakatoa but independents will like it, women will like it, and so will African-Americans, the whole package.

The rough treatment Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is giving Sen. Barack Obama may be good, real-world training if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee and gets elected, but in the meantime she’s helping Republican Sen. John McCain. She may well have cut an actual campaign ad for McCain when she said at a national security event last week, "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience. I have a lifetime of experience. And Sen. Obama made one speech in 2002." McCain also could reprise Clinton’s "red phone" ad in a campaign against Obama — but then, he could also use the...

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is absolutely right, as he said in his Philadelphia speech on Tuesday, that Americans are "hungry" for his "message of unity." But his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- and not only that, but his whole liberal-populist agenda -- raises profound questions whether he is capable of delivering on it. By choosing -- and sticking with -- the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his spiritual adviser, Obama has damaged his ability to heal the nation's racial wounds. And his agenda offers nothing that will attract Republicans and end political polarization. In the 1960s, black Americans had...

THERE'S a two-word answer to Lou Dobbsism, defined as the terror that immigration and free trade are destroying the American middle class. One is "innovation." And the second is "investment." Innovation - the continued development of new products and techniques - has been and will be America's opportunity to stay ahead of global competition. And innovation requires investment - in research, education and health care - to keep U.S. companies and workers competitive. Three new tracts, by "New Democrat" economists Edward Gresser and Robert Shapiro, and by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, counter Dobbsian pessimism with the case for...

Mort Kondracke: Hillary Can Lose Nomination Thursday, November 29, 2007 10:09 AM By: Phil Brennan Article Font Size Hillary Clinton's prospects of capturing the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and going on to take the White House are "a lot less certain" than they used to be, a top political journalist says. Noting that while Clinton would almost certainly be her party's nominee should she win the Iowa caucuses January 3, Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Capitol Hill's influential "Roll Call," wrote that it is now easy to see her losing that crucial first primary contest. Moreover, he predicts "if she...

DEMOCRATS, liberal historians and even a majority of U.S. voters already consider George W. Bush a "failed" or "poor" president - in fact, perhaps, "the worst president in American history."

TWENTY years ago, during the Reagan administration, I encountered a young producer at National Public Radio who said she and her husband had decided not to have children because they were convinced they'd die in a nuclear war. Immediately, I told her, "Please, have children. There's not going to be a nuclear war." I have no idea what she did. Today, I might give the same advice, but not so swiftly. Children born into the 21st century face a far more perilous future than those in the 20th century - partly because adults now seem to lack the courage and...

A chance encounter in the lobby of the National Press Club suggests that it's possible — not likely, but possible — that immigration reform could pass this year. Prospects are grim because House Republicans seem dug in on their plan to fight illegal immigration, period, while the Senate wants to combine border and workplace enforcement with work permits and an opportunity for illegal immigrants to become legal residents and citizens.

Enough already! It's harmful enough that ideological conflict and partisan politics are preventing this country from solving its long-term challenges on health care, fiscal policy and energy. Now it's threatening our national survival. I do not exaggerate. Bush hatred has reached such intensity that CIA officers and other bureaucrats are leaking major secrets about anti-terrorism policy and communications intelligence that undermine our ability to fight Islamic extremism. Would newspapers in the midst of World War II have printed the fact that the United States had broken German and Japanese codes, enabling the enemy to secure its communications? Or revealed how...

Enough already! It's harmful enough that ideological conflict and partisan politics are preventing this country from solving its long-term challenges on health care, fiscal policy and energy. Now, it's threatening our national survival.I do not exaggerate. Bush-hatred has reached such intensity that CIA officers and other bureaucrats are leaking major secrets about anti-terrorism policy and communications intelligence that undermine our ability to fight Islamic extremism.Would newspapers in the midst of World War II have printed the fact that the U.S. had broken German and Japanese codes, enabling the enemy to secure its communications? Or revealed how and where Nazi spies...

The best thing that can be said about the call by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to censure President Bush is that practically none of his colleagues is backing him up. Democrats are not, as he charges, "cowering" in the face of possible Republican allegations that they are pro-terrorist. Rather, they don't want to distract attention from the main Democratic assaults on Bush and the GOP - that he's "incompetent" and that Republicans are in "disarray."Moreover, as The New York Times reported Thursday, Feingold's move is being used by Republicans, right-wing talk show hosts and conservatives in general to motivate the...

Neal Boortz had an interesting blog entry today about a Bush impeachment. He thinks it will happen if the Democrats take over the House. Boortz is not the first to mention the specter of impeachment. Mort Kondracke has been talking about it as well. As I have written time and again, the political landscape is not such that we can expect the Democrats to retake the House. The economy is too strong, there are too few open seats, and Bush is not sufficiently unpopular. Pundits on both sides tend to extrapolate from a given point in time under the assumption...

"I think it's important to point out," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told me in an interview, "that there's no evidence that this is a program designed to achieve political ends or do something nefarious." He was talking about the National Security Agency's warrantless "domestic spying" program, and I couldn't agree with him more. Despite the alarms sounded by the American Civil Liberties Union, former Vice President Al Gore and various Members of Congress, "there hasn't even been a hint" that the program is targeted at domestic dissidents or innocent bystanders, Chertoff said. It's designed to find and stop terrorists....

President Bush has executed a positive turnaround in his political fortunes through a combination of forceful advocacy, fortunate events and help from his critics. His average approval rating in polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com (RCP) bottomed out at 37 percent just prior to Veterans Day. Now, it’s 42.6 percent — not great, but heading (for him) in the right direction. The reversal seems to be attributable to his vigorous defense of his Iraq policy, plus a decline in gasoline prices and favorable economic news and evidence that Democrats are mired in defeatism about the war. He’s also been aided by fading...

I think this has been a disastrous week for the Democrats across the board. When they're not incoherent, then they're defeatist.... And then we have John Kerry who's back in the picture. Made another speech today... He comes up with this agenda, which sounds exactly like the Bush agenda... He pretends as though Bush is doing nothing to foster democracy around the world, somehow, Jordan...Bahrain...Qatar...Egypt -- are moving toward democracy, he says, as if it's on their own. And the Bush Administration has had nothing to do with pushing it.

As bad as Republican fortunes look at the moment, party leaders and the Bush White House believe the GOP will retain control of Congress in the 2006 elections. In part, they think Democrats can't assemble an alternative agenda that's sufficiently attractive, and they think President Bush has a strategy to come back from the political doldrums. Keys to the strategy include an effort to win back support for the war in Iraq and action to deal with border security and illegal immigration, plus a new domestic agenda to be unveiled in the State of the Union address in January. But...

November 18, 2005 Will Democratic Charges That Bush 'Lied' Lead To His Impeachment? By Mort Kondracke The 2006 election is shaping up to be a bitterly fought referendum on President Bush - to the point where, if Democrats win, they just might impeach him. The "I-word" so far is mainly tossed around in the left-wing blogosphere: Barbra Streisand is calling for impeachment on her Web site, for example, as is an unofficial "progressive" site called Democrats.com. But Democratic accusations that Bush lied to get the United States into the Iraq war would seem to lead logically to demands for his...

It's downright scary to contrast the antics of Senate leaders on and around the floor Tuesday with a hearing the following day in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.It's scary because the juvenile, angry, partisan and divisive behavior of the leaders more likely represents the future of American governance than the serious, adult and bipartisan civility of the committee.Without prior notice, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unleashed a sneak attack on the GOP leadership Tuesday, calling the Senate into a rare closed session and charging that the Bush administration had "manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to...

Embedded in a much-discussed and brilliant new analysis of U.S. political polarization is this sad fact: The moderate near-majority of Americans is left out of our political process. As Democrat scholars William Galston and Elaine Kamarck point out, self-identified moderates have outnumbered conservatives and liberals consistently for the past 30 years. And yet liberals, just 20 percent of the electorate, dominate the Democratic Party while conservatives, at 33 percent, own the Republican Party. The remaining, moderate 47 percent is forced to choose between ever-widening extremes. “Our politics is more polarized than the people themselves,” Galston and Kamarck write in...

It's time for President Bush to demonstrate leadership on immigration before the issue splits his party and the country any further. The White House has been holding briefings on a comprehensive immigration package, with a view to unveiling a proposal this fall. But its plans may have been delayed by a mix of hurricanes, energy prices and his latest Supreme Court nomination. This sort of delay has happened before: Bush planned to announce an immigration plan shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Homeland security concerns have delayed it ever since. In the interim, the continuing flood of illegal...

It’s hard to tell who’s in worse political shape right now: President Bush or Congressional Democrats. Polls show deep skepticism with Bush, but it’s not clear that Democrats can take advantage.Historically speaking, the 2006 midterm elections should be a bonanza for Democrats. Since World War II, the party out of power has picked up an average of 34 House and five Senate seats in a president’s sixth year in office.Polls indicate that Bush is now presiding over an unpopular war, and that’s almost always bad for the incumbent party.An early August Gallup poll showed that, by 54 percent to 44...

Political moderates predominate in the U.S. electorate, but the two parties are increasingly captives of their extremes. Will the moderates ever rise up and assert themselves? In the Republican Party, they ought to do so by defending Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) against right-wing attacks for bucking President Bush (and Christian conservatives) over embryonic stem-cell research. Republican moderates also ought to start speaking up for "emergency contraception" before the right makes banning it a litmus test of party loyalty. Someone in the GOP ought to tell Bush that "intelligent design" is not a true scientific theory on a par...

Unless they can't help themselves, it strikes me as political madness for Democrats to declare that the Iraq war is an "intractable quagmire" or a "grotesque mistake." If the war turns out to be a disaster — and let's pray it doesn't — then voters will repudiate Republican foreign policy in 2006 and 2008, and Democrats will be the beneficiaries. So why should some Democrats now be acting as though they want to see their country lose a war? Why should they say things that may undermine the morale of U.S. forces and our Iraqi allies and contribute to a...

Democrats can bask, if they wish, in President Bush's gloomy poll ratings. But it's hard to see how they will win the next election without a positive program. So far, from Social Security to energy to judicial nominations to House ethics, the Democratic position on the leading issues of the day is: "No!" Bush and Congressional Republicans are clearly in bad shape in the public's mind. Bush has not made the sale on his Social Security reforms. Gas prices are soaring. The stock market has fallen nearly 500 points since his inauguration. Growth is slowing. As a result, the Realclearpolitics.com...

After the 2004 election, many prominent Democrats agreed that they had to learn to talk the language of religion and show respect for religious voters if they were to broaden the party's appeal. But the minute Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., signed on to participate in a religious-right rally against the Senate filibuster, prominent Democrats such as Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada flew into a rage. Kerry declared before Frist had said a word that he would "appeal to religious division" and "invoke faith to rewrite Senate rules to put substandard,...

Since 1964, thanks to taxes, lawsuits, social pressure and prevention programs, the percentage of Americans who smoke has dropped from 65 percent to 25 percent. It's time to tackle obesity just as aggressively. Libertarians, the fast-food industry and advocates for the obese object to "nanny-statism" and discriminatory incentives to fight the obesity epidemic. But in all likelihood, we'll need negative as well as positive pressure to slim America back down to a healthy size. Lawsuits like the one pending against McDonald's aren't my preferred solution — they'll likely benefit trial lawyers more than consumers — but taxes on the fat...

Before Senate Republicans and Democrats plunge into so-called "nuclear" conflict over President Bush's judicial nominations, why not try something traditional: extended debate? Bush has sent up a batch of appeals court nominees. Democrats and their allies brand several of them "out of the mainstream" or "right wing" and threaten to filibuster them, as they did 10 nominations in the previous Congress. In response, Republicans threaten to change Senate rules - by simple majority vote, not the two-thirds required - to prevent judicial filibusters and allow them to be approved by simple majorities, not three-fifths. And in response, Democrats have vowed...

Robert Scales admits he's biased. He's a ground soldier. He won a Silver Star as a 24-year-old artillery captain at "Hamburger Hill" in Vietnam. He commanded ground troops, and the Army War College, before retiring as a major general. He's a ground-combat theoretician with a Ph.D. in history and five books to his credit, including a well-reviewed new one, "The Iraq War: A Military History." He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the 19th century British Army because he believed, in 1976, that America's future wars would be close-combat encounters like Vietnam, not all-forces strategic conflicts like World War II or...

No doubt Morton Kondracke poured his heart into "Saving Milly: Love, Politics, and Parkinson's Disease," a book about the long, lingering illness and eventual tragic death of his wife, Millicent. But as translated into a CBS movie, "Saving Milly," the story becomes strangely dry and emotionless, even when the symptoms worsen and the heroine struggles bravely to survive -- standard cues, in this kind of film, for the audience to haul out the hankies. The movie, at 9 tomorrow night on Channel 9, stars Madeleine Stowe as the flinty and defiant Milly and Bruce Greenwood, outfitted with the proper pair...

(CBS TV movie; airing March 13, 2005) Bruce Greenwood and Madeleine Stowe star as two real people - political journalist Morton Kondracke and his activist wife Milly, whose love affair and ultimate marriage was drastically altered when she was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1987. Morton Kondracke is the executive editor of Washington, D.C.'s Roll Call, and the film will chronicle his battle with alcoholism, and how his wife's illness turned him around into a supporting spouse and caretaker, as well as an outspoken political advocate. Michael J. Fox will be appearing as himself in an epilogue to the film,...

President Bush's 2005 inaugural address was one of the most exhilarating ever delivered — but also one of the most disconcerting. The address was soaringly eloquent, audaciously idealistic and deeply reverent. Yet its content was so breathtakingly ambitious as to verge on hubris. The president set nothing less than this as the standard by which his tenure will be judged: "America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout the world, and to all inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength — tested, but not weary — we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom." This was a...

If President Bush is going to keep his promise to spend political capital on a bold second-term agenda, he should include comprehensive immigration reform that offers deserving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. To do so, he'd have to face down a noisy, but not large, anti-immigrant claque in the Republican Party that's determined to use the threat of terrorism as an excuse to, in effect, erect "Stay Out!" signs at the U.S. border, even to restrict legal immigration. In reality, creating a process to legalize illegals would help homeland security by allowing law enforcement agencies to concentrate on border...