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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.

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...