Posted on 08/16/2010 3:49:50 AM PDT by tobyhill
Dear Republican Party:
Your moment is now.
This weekend, President Obama defended the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque two short blocks from Ground Zero, despite cries of insensitivity from some New Yorkers and accusations of mischief from some pundits. This finally gives you an opportunity to add a powerful national-security cudgel to the message of economic woe you have been pushing as the midterm election approaches.
The political potency of the issue is obvious. Polls overwhelmingly show the President has put himself on the wrong side of public opinion. Opposition to the new facility arouses acute emotion and creates near total unity among relatives of 9/11 victims, first responders, Republican officeholders, potential 2012 presidential candidates, Tea Party members, the Fox News–talk radio–Drudge Report echo machine and many of the highly coveted swing and occasional voters whom you will need at the polls to win in November.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Have the MSM just as suddenly stopped using “optics”?
“Something along the lines of what New York does within its borders is New York’s business. Add a couple of platitudes about how they understand how people can be upset about the current mosque plans and a few comments about how important 1st Amendment rights are for everyone and they’re home free.”
Sounds mealy mouthed. Enough rats will get it wrong that several seats in the house could move. Dems are terrified of this issue. Help them find their inner terror.
Wasn't Morton Halperin investigated on orders of Henry Kissinger (then SecState) on suspicion of treason and/or espionage for the Soviets?
Isn't that the essence of state's rights?
It doesn't get much more high-concept than what Obama is doing, and Republicans are right not to "leave it alone".
But it's not going to work in the 2010 elections because it won't be hard for local candidates to punt the issue and give a bland "I fully support 1st Amendment rights for all people, but the considerations of the local people should have been considered, blah, blah, blah" kind of answer. When ranked against the economy, unemployment, the deficit, and what have you this issue is way down in the list of people's priorities. And harping on this takes time away from things people really care about.
What more evidence do you want that they are right, than being told to back off by a TIME polemicist? TIME being the rag, by the way, that coined the term "Clinton hater".
Maybe it's reverse psychology?
A. I wouldn’t run against it. There is no need to, as talk radio and Fox News will keep the issue alive. Let the anger against Obama fester. Let Obama’s stupidity pull down the Dims. In four weeks is the ninth anniversary of 9/11. This will stay in the news without the help of Republican candidates.
B. I do think we should force Dim candidates to make their position known on Cordoba House. Yes it is a local New York issue, but the President weighed in, so they should as well. Hemming and hawing will look as bad as answering the question.
“Does anyone know why the Twin Towers have not yet been rebuilt?”
I understand they are still arguing about the size of the minarets.
You assume people don't care about the American Experiment, or that Obama is committed to flushing it, and the country.
They care a lot about that, I think, but your commitment to "economic conservatism" and economic determinism is interesting. Very "Rockefeller Republican". It helps explain some other positions you've taken over the years.
it doesn’t require any “harping on it” for a candidate to find an occasion to state a view (succinctly) on this matter and invite the opposing candidate(s) to “clarify” their view on the matter
I’m not saying it will be a lead issue in most races around the country, but it’s not irrelevant and it’s not correct (morally or politically) to regard the fate of Ground Zero as a purely local issue.
Ha! I wouldn’t be surprised given the trash in the WH and the NYC mayor’s office.
I understand they are still arguing about the size of the minarets.
Oooo! Good zing! lol ....
“My question is what would be the legal foundation for preventing it? “
There isn’t. It is about the sensitivities from 9/11 and the fact that the Cordoba group won’t recognize those sensitivities. This isn’t about religion.
Here's what wikipedia's Morton Halperin entry has on that:
Kissinger soon lost faith in Halperin. A front page story in The New York Times on May 9, 1969, stated the United States had been bombing Cambodia, a neutral country. Kissinger immediately called Hoover to find out who might have leaked this information to the press. Hoover suggested Halperin and Kissinger agreed that was likely. That very day, the FBI began tapping Halperin's phones at Kissinger's direction. (Kissinger says nothing of this in his memoirs and mentions Halperin in passing about four times.) Halperin left the NSC in September 1969, after only nine months but the tapping continued until February 1971. Halperin was also placed on Nixon's Enemies List.The last paragraph reveals much about the "loyalties" of that ilk: While in the US government he pushed for American nuclear disarmament at any risk; Later, while in the ACLU, he fights to allow publication of instructions for construction of the bomb, for the rest of the world.He was a friend of Daniel Ellsberg. When Ellsberg was investigated in connection with the Pentagon Papers, suspicion fell on Halperin, who some Nixon aides believed had kept classified documents when he left government service. John Dean claimed that Jack Caulfield had told him of a plan to fire-bomb the Brookings Institution, Halperin's employer, to destroy Halperin's files.
The tapping of Halperin's phone was not revealed until 1973, when it came out in Ellsberg's trial. He sued Nixon and won a symbolic $5 judgment in 1977 for the offense.
Halperin, as Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) office in Washington, defended the right of the The Progressive magazine to publish details on how to construct an atomic bomb.
I'm doubting that most people will look at the issue in the same apolcalyptic manner as you do. The GOP would get more mileage out of illegal immigration than what's happening in New York.
They care a lot about that, I think, but your commitment to "economic conservatism" and economic determinism is interesting. Very "Rockefeller Republican". It helps explain some other positions you've taken over the years.
Concern with core conservative economic values is "Rockefeller Republicanism?" Who knew?
But George Soros approves, and he cant ignore his most fervent money men. How obtuse of the writer not to acknowledge that!
(from Wikipedia)
In October 2004 the Drudge Report published a memo Halperin sent to ABC News staff about coverage of the U.S. presidential election directing them not to "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable" and that both John Kerry and George W. Bush used "distortion" in their campaign, but that Kerry's distortions were not "central to his efforts to win." Halperin was criticized by conservatives who used the memo to reinforce long-standing complaints of media bias. ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider confirmed the authenticity of the memo but stressed Halperin’s fairness and objectivity."
Daisyjane makes a good point about potential property right violations. That said, a case can be made that this building that’s being torn down is part of the battlefield because debris from one of the aircraft landed on it. If a building near a Civil War battlefield had shrapnel marks in it it would likely be considered part of the battlefield or at least a historic site.
(Oh, and didn't Time just get sold to some 91 year old senile billionaire who thinks the rotary dial telephone is the latest communication innovation? Oh wait, that was Newsweak! Well, in any case, the Newsweak sale has established the market value of leftest weekly propaganda rags. Wonder if Time-Warner would sell me "Time" for 99¢? It must be worth at least that if Newsweak is worth $1.00.)
Good point!
Only a moron would make it the core of their campaign, but it should not be off the table. ?This illustrates very clearly how liberals hear “Muslim” and process that word as “warm, fuzzy-wuzzy persecuted minority” and conservatives hear it and think, “decent Muslim or the sort of guy who thinks Hamas is cool?”
Good question.
It’s sad that people like Halperin really think there are people sitting around in the Muslim world thinking, “America is so wonderful...what? The Republican Party opposes a radical imam building a mosque at Ground Zero? Those evil bastards! I’m joining Al-Qaida!”
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