Misc Commentary For 11/05/04

05 Nov, 2004 by John Hawkins

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— So Arafat’s about to kick the bucket? Suits me just fine. I only regret that terrorist vermin is going to die in a bed instead of violently like so many of his victims.

I know some people worry about what will happen after Arafat dies, but face it, Arafat is just about the worst option imaginable. Here’s one of the most murderous terrorists on the planet, who refuses to make peace with Israel, who turned the apparatus of the failed “Palestinian state” into a machine designed to produce new terrorists, and yet in Europe he’s treated like a peacemaker thwarted by war loving Israelis. As long as Arafat rules, there can never be peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Whatever comes after Arafat will be — in the long term — better than anything “Mr. Nobel Peace Prize” could have ever delivered. Will there be Civil War? Better that the Palestinians kill each other than the Israelis. Plus, the more they fight amongst each other, the more likely it is that they’ll get “fought out” and ready to seriously pursue peace. Will Hamas or some other group of terrorists take over? Maybe, but if they do, there will be no reason for Israel, Europe, or the US to treat Palestinian leadership as anything other than the terrorists. Even that would be an improvement over what we have today, which is terrorists masquerading as statesmen.

— There’s a lot of talk about whether or not Bush’s victory constitutes a “mandate” for his agenda. I’m from the school of thought that says that if you win, act like you have a mandate. I say that because if you’ve won, that means the majority of people support your agenda on the whole and if what you’re doing works, you’ll pull in a few new voters from the other side after it’s implemented.

— According to the The American Spectator, the Kerry campaign pulled a Nixon style dirty trick on election day…

“According to at least three sources, one inside the Kerry campaign, and two outside of it, but with ties to senior Kerry advisers, some of the “early polling numbers” were in fact direct reports from Kerry campaign or Democratic Party operatives on the ground in such critical states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. According to a Washington lobbyist with knowledge of the numbers, the numbers were packaged together so as to appear to be exit poll results. They were then scrubbed through several sources to land in the lap of sympathetic bloggers who these operatives believed would put the numbers up with little question.”

That echoes something Jonah Goldberg said on election day,

“Okay. I’ve now got a third source. Here’s what I feel comfortable saying. Those numbers with Kerry leading by 20 in PA were definitely from the Kerry campaign.”

However, I would note that whoever burned those “sympathetic bloggers” like Wonkette somehow managed to trick Drudge as well because his numbers were identical to hers.

Of course, that may explain why Drudge put the numbers up and yanked them soon after. But, if Drudge suspected he was faked out, why didn’t he say anything about it? And if the Kerry campaign was actually leaking fake numbers — which is a bottom of the barrel, sleazy trick — who was responsible for it?

Hey Drudge, Wonkette, there’s no need to protect a source who deliberately used you. Let the world know who fed you these numbers…

— Since the election is over, I thought it was time to talk about the elections in Iraq, the draft, and whether we can really help Iraq become a Democracy. The truth is that I expect there are going to be elections in Iraq in January, there isn’t going to be a draft, and I believe Iraq is on the way to becoming a Democracy. Note that I’m saying exactly what I said before the election, after the election. That’s a new concept huh? Too bad the polls don’t do it more often…

— Here we are, days after a big Republican victory at the polls, and we already have Arlen Specter betraying Republicans by threatening to block pro-life judges from the Supreme Court. When conservatives were outraged by that, Specter started backtracking, but it’s too late for that. We didn’t win at the polls just so that our own guys could turn around and undercut us right off the bat.

So what can you do about it? Specter is going to be the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee…unless conservatives can stop him. So contact your Senator, drop a line to the White House, let the members of the Judiciary Committee know how you feel.

— I’ve been reading a lot of left-wing websites over the last few days in part to see if I can get a sense of why they believe they lost the election. After the 2002 election, there were schools of thought…

1) The party is too far to the left and we need to come back to the center to win.
2) We didn’t fight hard enough. We’ve got to be more liberal, appeal to the base, and get nasty with the GOP.

Within a few days, #2 won out.

This time, there seem to be much deeper divisions on the left and there’s a lot more soul searching going on. The schools of thought this time around are…

1) We didn’t fight hard enough. We’ve got to be more liberal, appeal to the base, and get nasty with the GOP.
2) The election was rigged, we had no chance before we began.
3) A) We’re out of touch with what the majority of the country thinks and we need to change our message
B) We’re out of touch with what the majority of the country thinks and they’re idiots who can’t understand that we’re geniuses.
C) We’re out of touch with what the majority of the country thinks, let’s move to another country.
4) The party is too far to the left and we need to come back to the center to win.

It’ll be interesting to see how things play out this time around.