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Victor Davis Hanson: Not Over Yet -- Reasons for hope on the first Tuesday in November
The National Review ^ | October 10, 2008 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 10/10/2008 12:43:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Of course, this is a Democratic year. The public is tired of George Bush and eight years of an incumbent administration. War, Wall Street, and the absence of a conservative Reagan-like charismatic figure should make it easy for a Democrat to win the presidency. After a nearly miraculous McCain surge in September, following the Republican Convention and Palin nomination, the Republicans are once again floundering — and a sense of utter despair has now set in among conservatives.

Wall Street melted down. The New York–Washington media elite went ballistic over vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Alaskan mom of five in near suicidal fashion was ordered by the campaign to put her head in the Charlie Gibson-Katie Couric guillotine. A trailing McCain — while sober and workmanlike in the first two debates — failed to close the ring and hammer the agile Obama as a charismatic charlatan.

The result is that with not much more than three weeks left in the campaign, a number of conservatives have all but accepted (if a few not eager for) an Obama victory. Others are angry at the McCain campaign’s supposed reluctance to go after Obama’s hyper-liberal, hyper-partisan Senate record, his dubious Chicago coterie, his serial flip-flops, and his inexperience. And how, most wonder, can McCain regain the lead lost three weeks ago, when the media has given up any pretense of disinterested coverage, time is growing ever more short, prominent conservatives such as George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, and Kathleen Parker have suggested Sarah Palin would be unfit to assume the presidency, and former Romney supporters are raising again their unease with the once again too moderate-sounding McCain?

Yet for all the gloom, there are several reasons why this race is by no means over.

First, it is not clear that panic, hysteria, and the “Great Depression” will continue to be the headlines and lead-ins each night for the next three weeks. We may be soon reaching a bottom in the stock market. Sometime in the next few days, wiser investors should see that trillions of global dollars are now piling up and could begin to prime the economy — and that still valuable stocks, for a brief period, are up for sale at once-in-a-lifetime bargains. With the sudden collapse of oil prices, the West has been given a staggering reprieve of hundreds of billions of dollars in savings on its imported fuel bills. That economy too will result in more liquidity at home. Given the shameless behavior of Wall Street, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it will be unlikely that we will revert soon to the Wild West speculation that had for the last six years transformed the once pedestrian notion of seeing a house as a home and refashioned it into either a politically correct entitlement or a Las Vegas poker chip to be thrown down on the roulette table.

It is still possible that, by the week before the election, there will be a sense of respite rather than continued anger and panic — and any day in which hysteria is not the topic of the day benefits McCain. In this regard, McCain must keep reminding in simple fashion that Freddie and Fannie were catalysts that drew in the Wall Street sharks: crooked officials cooked the books to get mega-bonuses; they got away with their crimes by lavishing money on mostly Democratic legislators (including Obama); and hand-in-glove they all covered — and still are covering — their tracks under a reprehensible politically correct cynicism.

Iraq is no longer the contentious issue of the primaries where Democratic candidates outdid each other in predicting failure, but mirabile dictu turning out to be a clear American victory. No one can now believe that withdrawal by March 2008, as Sen. Obama once advocated, would have been anything but an utter calamity. McCain needs to continue to emphasize the dire consequences of accepting such a defeat. The military is not broken, but now the most experienced, battle-hardened force in the world. Iraq is not, as Joe Biden once demanded, trisected into feuding fiefdoms, but an emerging consensual state. The more Iraq is out of the news, the more the growing public acceptance that it is becoming a success. McCain should continue to ask: Did Americans want victory in November 2008 or defeat in March 2008?

The Ayers controversy is cited by the in-the-tank media as signs of McCain’s desperation. Perhaps. But amid the tsk-tsking, there are also certain deer-in-the-headlights moments among Obama’s handlers.

Why? There are simply too many ACORNs, Ayers, Khalidis, Pflegers, Wrights, et al. not to suggest a pattern unbecoming of a future President of the United States. Obama’s past statements about his relationship with Ayers (and others) simply cannot be reconciled with the factual circumstances of their long association. McCain must focus on Ayers between 2001–2005. Then in the climate of national worry following 9/11, Ayers was on recent record as lamenting that he had not set off enough bombs, and yet until 2005 still in contact with Obama — about what and why, voters might wish to know.

When Iraq and Wall Street were off the front page, Obama went moribund in the last months of the Democratic primary. Why? Not because of racism, or even public weariness with Obama’s hope and change fluff, or his flip-flops, or occasional striking ignorance about basic history and geography. He finally began to wear on the public — as he continues to when events of the day do not smother the attention of the voter — for two reasons.

First, the public tires of all the media slant, the celebrity rants, and the shills in popular culture, that in concert hourly berate, beg, threaten, and ridicule voters on behalf of Obama. We are supposed to accept Obama’s apotheosis, replete with Latinate seal, Greek columns, biblical injunctions about the seas and atmosphere, and prophesies that he is The One whom we have been waiting for. The creepy effect of ordering us to accept our own salvation becomes cumulative. So there is a quiet unease among the voters, as there always is in America, when someone finger-points and lectures them what they must do — or else!

Second, for all the two years of nonstop campaigning, Obama somehow still remains an unknown — and for apparently good reason. He has almost no record in the Senate to speak of — other than one as America’s most predictably partisan and liberal Senator. What is known of his Chicago associates is not reassuring, and so the only defense can be silence rather than exegesis. No one knows anything of his record at Columbia University, how he got into Harvard Law School, or what he was doing until he reached Harvard, or exactly what he did as a community organizer in Chicago, or how a person with no record of legal scholarship was about to be offered tenure at the Chicago Law School. Each doubt in and of itself is of little import, but again in aggregate even the generalities make voters uneasy — especially when they hear of fraud among voter registration drives, swarming radio stations to stifle those critical of Obama, and threatened lawsuits to yank pro-McCain ads.

The odds always were against McCain. And the outcome in these last few days may be seem contingent in large part on breaking news beyond the candidates’ control. Yet McCain still has it within his own power to win the election. Obama’s view of America is mostly rosy emulation of the European Union; McCain’s is to restore fiscal sanity, keep our defenses strong, and ensure that American exceptionalism remains a fact, rather than descends into an empty slogan. In that context, it makes no sense to sneer at McCain for being behind, but a great deal to hope that he isn’t.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2008; ayers; election; electionpresident; elections; mccain; obama; palin; vdh
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To: sandyeggo

ping


21 posted on 10/10/2008 3:00:36 PM PDT by Running On Empty ((The three sorriest words:"It's too late"))
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To: Rockitz

I don’t even believe Rasmussen. No liberal Northern Democrat has won the presidency since FDR. President Clinton (a “centrist” Southerner) needed Ross Perot running interference for him in ‘92 and ‘96. Watch Missouri, that’s where the story is...if Obama isn’t 10+ points ahead of McCain there, he’s toast!!


22 posted on 10/10/2008 3:03:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (Barack Obama: In Error and arrogant -- he's errogant!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Why? There are simply too many ACORNs, Ayers, Khalidis, Pflegers, Wrights, et al. not to suggest a pattern unbecoming of a future President of the United States. “Obama’s past statements about his relationship with Ayers (and others) simply cannot be reconciled with the factual circumstances of their long association. McCain must focus on Ayers between 2001–2005. Then in the climate of national worry following 9/11, Ayers was on recent record as lamenting that he had not set off enough bombs, and yet until 2005 still in contact with Obama — about what and why, voters might wish to know.”


23 posted on 10/10/2008 3:38:19 PM PDT by victim soul
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To: victim soul
In 2006 in PA we were subjected to almost non-stop negative Dem commercials against two Republican incumbents (Senator Santorum, Congresswoman Melissa Hart). Both were smeared as being too close to Bush, and both lost.

When the Dems target your seat and hit you non-stop with negative campaigning, it works in PA. The sheeple vote them out.

24 posted on 10/10/2008 4:21:02 PM PDT by Ciexyz
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
No liberal Northern Democrat has won the presidency since FDR

Except for Jack Kennedy in 1960. Yes he was liberal for his day...prepared to surrender Taiwan's channel islands to a really barbarian Maoist Red China to avoid confrontation (Qemoy and Matsu). Made up the fraudulent "missile gap" (which disappeared a short time after his election). Thought he could just sit down with Khrushchev and make peace but instead had his head handed to him (Vienna). Instituted the "Peace" Corps, which had the effect of radicalizing hordes of idiot American youth by sending them to turd world sh*t-holes and making them feel oh so guilty about what the eeevil Americans had done to these noble savages. Legitimized the regime of Castro for the next forty plus years. Allowed the USSR to build the Berlin wall and didn't even bother to come back from sailing at Hyannis Port when it began.

Just for the record, and those who don't know...

25 posted on 10/10/2008 4:21:08 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Telling the truth about Obama's lying character, suspicious record, and shady associations isn't going "negative". It's "telling the truth"!

By the way, has anybody yet seen a genuine copy of Obama's birth certificate showing he is an natural born American citizen? As that is one of the few Constitutional requirements for being a President, it would seem a slam dunk to demand. The last I heard, the Obama Campaign was fighting tooth and nail in a Pennsylvania court to prevent just that from being produced for that very reason.

Is that being "negative" as well?

26 posted on 10/10/2008 4:42:56 PM PDT by Gritty (Other than Obama's charisma and teleprompter talent, everything screams "Red Alert!"-Don Feder)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Obama's rising poll numbers are, IMHO, manufactured and represent push polls (for the most part when you look at sampling data) by the MSM to offest the growing concern about his associations and intent.

Obama and his cronies in ACORN, the DNC, and the MSM are wholly corrupt and desperate to steal the election if they cannot win it through intimidation and tomfoolery.

Obama has been directly tied and involved with ACORN, for a long time, and through his instrumentality we are seeing our free market and our voting process subverted and deconstructed before our very eyes.

But there is hope, despite what the push polls are saying, and Obama and his campaign and the MSM all know it, and fear it.






I'M VOTING FOR SARAH

27 posted on 10/11/2008 10:27:15 AM PDT by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free...never has been, never will be. (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
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To: All; Jeff Head

Here’s several millions (minimum) of PUMAs, etc..

Hillary Clinton Supporters For John McCain: http://www.hcsfjm.com

Party Unity My A$$ PAC/People United Means Action PAC:
http://blog.pumapac.org

Democrats Against Obama/Nobama ever!
http://democrats-against-obama.org

Just Say No Deal:
http://justsaynodeal.com

Take a look around these sites for a half hour or 45 minutes....(there are hundreds more linked to these, just look for links)


28 posted on 10/11/2008 10:54:34 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (Barack Obama: In Error and arrogant -- he's errogant!)
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To: hinckley buzzard

I nominate this for Post Of The Day!


29 posted on 10/11/2008 11:36:25 AM PDT by Old Sarge (Illic Est Haud Deus)
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To: ChiMark
I’m not worried. This is no time to go negative.

You may as well go to the doctor and have them remove that hook, line and sinker now.

For you have been flim-flammed by the Drive - by's........

30 posted on 10/11/2008 11:48:55 AM PDT by Osage Orange (" I did not have radical relations with that man, William Ayers. " -Barack Hussein Obama)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I would very much like for McCain to campaign as VDH advises.


31 posted on 10/11/2008 10:19:57 PM PDT by TChad
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

With occasional dips into the shadows of despair, I remain guardedly optimistic, for the most part. Every time I see a new poll, I’m discouraged, but every time I look at the internals of a poll, I think “that’s not so bad.”

Anyway, next week I will have a half-day available to manthe phones again.


32 posted on 10/11/2008 10:31:47 PM PDT by cookcounty (Dismissing Ayers as a 1960's radical is like saying Barbara Walters is a 1960's TV dogfood salesman)
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To: prairiebreeze
Who is this, does anybody know? I searched the keyword on FR, came up nothing.

This would be Dr Khalidi Mansour, I think. This youtube vid is a good primer on the relationship:

Barack Obama & Khalid Al-Mansour
This link also has some interesting tidbits on the relationship: The Mansourian Candidate. Happy viewing...if that's the word for it. This guy Mansour makes Rev Wright look downright moderate.
33 posted on 10/13/2008 6:18:21 PM PDT by ishmac (Houston near UST)
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