PrintJanuary 4, 2008
Goodbyle Iowa, Hello Obama
Goodbye Iowa for 4 more years. But the Hawkeye State may have crowned the new President this time: Barack Obama. I believe he will be very hard to stop now, both for the nomination and the general election if he is nominated, given how shattered the GOP is (that race is wide open, with a slight edge to John McCain).
This is, in my opinion, very bad news for American national security and for Israel. Our enemies will not disappear because a new President wants to concentrate on stem cell research or global warming or universal health care. Obama is a candidate from the pacifist left side of the Democratic Party with little knowledge of the Middle East (he has spent most of his time in the Senate running for President) and in my opinion, his positions are wrong or naive.
Obama believes we can talk to Iran, and Hamas, and maybe even Al Qaeda, and work with them, if we are more open to their concerns and less aggressive and bullying. And of course we must get out of Iraq quickly (leaving the place for Iran and Al Qaeda to divvy up).
No, there are real bad guys in that part of the world, and they want to kill us, dominate us, obliterate Israel and eventually destroy our western civilization. There is a global jihad, but thinking about it makes many people uncomfortable.
Obama is running as the political messiah, rising above pettiness, and the old politics But I fear the emperor has no clothes. Given the turnout in the Democratic race, almost double the GOP turnout, the passion and excitement appears to be all on one side.
Mike Huckabee has been run down by the GOP establishment and many pundits. I have not joined in that slaughter effort to date. While I think he would be a terrible GOP candidate in a general election, he is tapping into something real as well -- a general uneasiness among many American about their economic future. Obama and Edwards, with his Naderite hateful rhetoric about corporations, also addressed this.
But none of them have real answers to complex problems of energy supply and pricing, trade imbalances, the weak dollar, health care spending and program costs, the rise of China, the power of sovereign wealth funds, and how to spur the economy (taxing the rich more heavily, or shifting the tax burden from the middle class to wealthier Americans will not create economic growth or cut budget or trade deficits.
Richard Baehr is political director of American Thinker.
Richard Baehr is political director of American Thinker.
