US Elections

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At an Oklahoma town hall meeting, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) defended Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi against character attacks from Fox News, reports Capitol News Connection.

While discussing his policy disagreements with Pelosi, Coburn said "she's a nice lady," which brought hisses and hoots from the crowd.

Said Coburn: "Come on now. She is nice -- how many of you all have met her? She's a nice person. Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't mean they're not a good person... So don't catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good. The people in Washington are good. They just don't know what they don't know."

A few months ago I had dinner with a prominent Republican congressman and his wife who were in town, and they both reported the same thing - namely, that when policy was off the table, they both got on famously with Nancy Pelosi. (I also discovered that she and her husband own a vineyard in the Napa Valley, which is another tick in the "can't be all bad column").

But Coburn's last point is also important: The political class does not know what it does not know. And this, I think, is the cause for so much of the anger that has been fermenting - so to speak - in the rest of America.

Earlier this week Jonathan wondered if the divide between conservatives and liberals was really as simple as the notion that one loved government while the other loathed it. I think this misses the point: It's not so much that Democrats are enamored with government (though there are certain segments of the Left, particularly in academia and journalism, that have always been fascinated by power and love authoritarian governments for their ability to "get things done"). It is that they have a far more optimistic and expansive about the appropriate role for the state.

But, as Coburn suggests and history proves, the centre cannot ever possibly know enough to effectively govern in most areas of life. To take it a step further, in attempting to do so, the state robs people of the dignity and autonomy it claims to deliver. Thus Americans hear of schemes to force them to buy health insurance that run roughshod over the Constitution and quite appropriately react by saying "thanks, but no thanks." Likewise, those on what can roughly be described as the Right in the US, Australia, and throughout the West are not fans of the constant low-level bullying - whether in the name of saving money, extending lives, or "saving the planet" - that sees their choices about how to raise their children, what to eat, or even how to light their homes restricted. Democrats and their counterparts around the world have far less compunction about extending the ambit of government and, by extension, a soft authoritarianism.

A few weeks ago, just after he announced his retirement, Australian Senator Nick Minchin told John Birmingham, "I think conservative parties here and around the world have a much more suspicious view, a much more realistic, sober and sceptical view about what governments should and shouldn't do, and what they can and can't achieve."

I think that's about right. It's not the question of loving or hating the state, it's about being realistic about what it is right, proper and possible for it to achieve.

UPDATE: In further good news, it turns out Obama is not, repeat not, the anti-Christ. Phew!

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The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group.

Say what you will about the source, this tends to confirm that the White House's and the media's narrative (it is often hard to tell them apart!) about nationalised health care and other Obama projects is misleading, perhaps deliberately so. Far from radicals and rednecks, they are drawing heavily from the ranks the Left desperately needs to avoid disaster in November.

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You can see the resemblance, can't you?

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Here's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking in Canada, as part of what was an incredibly blunt - some would say undiplomatic - speech in Ottawa, slamming Canada's prime minister for not including abortion in a plan to combat maternal mortality to be unveiled at an upcoming G8 summit:

"You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health ... And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion", she said.

Thus Obama might promise not to fund the practice at home, but he'll send his Secretary of State to bull in on a close allies' affairs to insist on its promotion abroad.

As with everything in this administration, one must always be on the lookout for distractions: nods to conservatives in the name of compromise disguise a more radical agenda, one that he himself flagged during his presidential campaign with his promise to be a "transformative" president.

In the meantime, add Bart Stupak and his mates to the long list of people and groups turned into dupes and rubes by the Obama agenda.

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As helpful reader ARMJ who passed this item on to me writes, "And what other stereotypes of Americans does Rudd hold? New Yorkers are what? Jewish bankers? Tennessee or West Virginia? Hillbillies? How about Chicago? Italian mobsters? It is astonishing that a leader of an American ally who also claims foreign affairs as his strong suit would so easily be provoked into making such a disparaging remark based on outdated naive stereotypes. And of course he didn’t think for a minute how that remark might offend Americans and put Australia into a bad light and impact on our economic and other interests. It’s yet another example of what a cad he is seen to be overseas and how that behaviour adversely impacts Australia’s interest. He’s simply not taken seriously anywhere."

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Of course, it's not hard to prove this narrative completely false, which is one of the reason why the so-called mainstream media is seen as less and less credible in the eyes of increasing numbers of Americans. How else to account for the breathless reporting that a brick was thrown through the window of the offices of Congressman Steve Driehaus - offices that happen to be on the 30th floor of a Cincinatti skyscraper? (Real bricks, not thrown by imaginary giants, have actually landed in Republican offices, meanwhile).

Indeed when it comes to violence from the Left one never hears quite as much about it even if it is a very real phenomenon. For example, did you hear about the man who was arrested for threatening to kill Republican Congressman Eric Cantor? If you lived in America, likely not: the arrest of the two-time Obama donor with the Faulknerian name Norman Leboon for making anti-Semitic threats to bring about the Jewish legislator's "final Yom Kippur" was comprehensively skipped or glossed over by the US television networks.

And while the rhetoric of Republicans is uinder constant scrutiny, Nobel Laureate is allowed to advocate burning Democrat apostate Joe Lieberman in effigy.

Look, there is no excuse for violence in the political sphere. But there is also no excuse for lazy reporting that seeks to plant the idea that you don't have to be crazy to be against ObamaCare, but it sure helps.

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