All Posts Tagged With: "pundits"

Andrew Sullivan has been nominating noteworthy individuals for The Von Hoffman Award, an award given for stunningly wrong political, social and cultural predictions — as determined by readers of The Daily Dish. Here are some of the nominees:

Mark Penn (March 19, 2007) —

“All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050 … I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and values. The right knows Obama is unelectable except against Attila the Hun.”

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Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, March 29, 2008 —

“Barack Obama is on his way to a McGovern candidacy.”

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I really don’t have strong feelings one way or another on Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in Obama’s administration. She’s surely capable. The cynical side of me wonders what the back story is on all of this as well as what problems might result from such a pick, especially given the animosity of Bill Clinton toward Obama. However, the president-elect seems committed to a “team of rivals” in his administration, a concept employed by President Lincoln that I heartedly agree with. (I’ll write more about this in an upcoming post.)

What’s mildly surprising is the level of growing support amongst the right-wing punditry. The Weekly Standard’s Michael Golfarb certainly seems to like the choice:

There appears to be little angst among conservatives at the prospect of Hillary Clinton joining the Obama administration as Secretary of State. The idea was warmly embraced by Henry Kissinger, who our President-elect seems to hold in high-esteem, Governor Schwarzenegger, who likely has no more sway on Obama than the proverbial guy in the neighborhood, and Jon Kyl — surely Senator McCain put in a good word today as well. The love affair that was sparked last spring between Clinton and the Obama-fearing right continues to smolder, surely a surprise to those who suspected that such an unholy alliance couldn’t last beyond the convention. Whether Clinton would accept the job, or why she would want it, is not clear, but the right would be happy enough to have her.

[...]

Clinton would be a fine Secretary of State, and she is likely to be a nuisance to Obama whether she is inside or outside of his administration, but as our top diplomat she could reprise a role that made Powell a kingmaker in this year’s election. And perhaps she could even present the case for war with Iran to an insubordinate United Nations in the event that Obama’s personal diplomacy somehow fails to deter the mullahs from their present course.

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Something in his last sentence jumped out at me: “…perhaps she could even present the case for war with Iran…” Seriously… have we not had enough of war to satisfy our blood thirst at least for a little while? We’re not even finished with the two we’ve got going on right now, which is bankrupting us and stretching our military to the breaking point. Our economy is barely hanging on by a thread and we want to start up another conflict that will surely be more costly than the current conflicts, both in financial terms and in human lives.

If we think Iraq was a challenge, it will pale in comparison to a conflict with Iran. Let’s not make another mistake. Let’s recover from these last seven years first before we dig ourselves into any more war pits.

Jon Stewart looks at the results from the West Virginia primary. Some of the clips of what West Virginian voters had to say were so stunningly pathetic, you can’t help but laugh at the lunacy of it all. Stewart’s satirical take on the campaign is hysterical…

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