There Is No Plan

Rick Perry is in the process of dismantling Mitt Romney. He’s sucked the air out of the race, and made it very hard for anyone else to get traction. Bachmann’s initial mo has stalled, Huntsman is finding it hard to get any purchase at all, and Palin would find it very hard to dislodge Perry from front-runner status if she decided – belatedly – to run. She had her chance before he declared, but now he’s in, it’s going to be very heavy sledding (pardon the pun) for her to take a winning bite out of a very restive GOP primary base. Ron Paul is only considered electable by that GOP base, Gingrich is on life-support, and rest of the line-up right now are seat fillers at best.

Of course, it’s early days, and the race hasn’t even begun in earnest, but Thereisnoplan regards Perry as a very, very major threat to Obama. He’s playing dumb for the primaries to help lock up the knuckle-draggers, and has already courted the Evangelical vote with his “The Response” lam-o prayer meeting at an echoing, half-empty Houston Texans Stadium. He’s working the tough Texan BS for the primaries, but my suspicion is you’ll see a much more polished and thoroughly All-American Perry if he gets the nod. His ability to adjust on the fly suggests he’s no fool, and as a cliched American foil to the polyglot professorial Obama, he’ll be very effective. He’s also eminently capable of walking back some of his more outrageous statements about Medicare and Social Security, along with his hints about Secession. He might even turn those switches to his advantage. He can ‘pivot’ to ‘compassionate conservatism’ with ease because of his (totally fake) Evangelical credentials. In short, while he’s got weaknesses, which could lay him low, he’s also got many, many weapons in his arsenal.

And there’s another string to Perry’s bow too. He’s white, which – because he’s facing an African-American President – means he needs a woman or a minority candidate on his ticket. The only two practical choices among women are Palin and Bachmann, both of whom are very bad fits for Perry, which means he’ll go minority, which means he’s almost certain to choose Marco Rubio.

Rubio brings huge power to a Perry led ticket. He’s the young, clean-cut, acceptable face of right-wing lunacy, likely to play a classic protege to the “wise” Perry. He’ll also have naive Latino voters nationwide voting for him in droves, ignoring their own economic and social interests to vote for a guy who speaks Spanish and will play up his heritage every chance he gets. Florida will be a lock, Nevada and the Four Corner states will almost certainly go Red, and even California will be in play, drawing big resources from Obama’s campaign that will have to focus on the North East in the eye of a major economic meltdown.

The threat of a Perry-Rubio ticket highlights a critical issue. It’s become clear that all the attempts to talk the Economy into a recovery have failed, so Obama is now vulnerable from a mainstream GOP candidate, who has the power to reach the center. There are others too. George Allen, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie, are all bad news Republicans with the potential to appeal to Independents. It’s not just Huntsman and Romney who could give Obama a run for his money now.

Obama needs to find his mojo fast, and his Independent direction is the only sure way to go – as distasteful and essentially useless as it is to all sensible supporters of the New Left. Obama’s bloodless, professorial approach to government has proved to be a problem. Just being the only “adult in the room” is not enough to get you elected in America. You need some fire in your belly too, and it’s not certain that the low-energy President hasn’t had it shaken right out of him by the sheer enormity of the task he’s faced over the last two and a half years.

The problem is that a non-ideological centrism is hardly the stuff of whistle-stop fire-branding across America. By definition it’s kind of boring. As much of a contradiction in terms as it might seem, Democrats will have to push hard to claim and hold the centrist ground that seems, more than slightly, to be slipping away. One, shocking and rather distasteful way for bi-partisan obsessed Obama to do that would be to outflank the GOP by putting a Republican on the ticket. Biden has to go. He can’t stand as a presidential candidate in ’16, which means the Democrats would be losing an incumbent advantage should Obama win next year. Biden’s old, he’s regarded poorly, and he’s not ambitious. He should be asked to step aside and will likely accept. That opens the way to an aggressive centrist choice by Obama. The obvious two names are Scott Brown and Jon Huntsman. The only Democrat who comes close to having the same impact would be Jim Webb, but with a GOP guy as Veep, Obama would have no problem establishing his centrist bona-fides, and his choice of running mate could insulate him against what are likely to be vicious “socialist” attacks from the right.

At this point, with the current against the Dems economically and politically, and with the House and Senate likely to stay or go Red next year, regardless of our own brand of Democratic politics, we simply have to hold on to the veto pen, which would be the only thing between America and the serious beginning of the end of its social contract. Thereisnoplan has come to realize that Obama’s dull, technocratic centrism is a far, far better alternative to what the hyenas have in store for us. It’s also the only game in town right now.

Left and Center must unite. We’re fighting a rear-guard action. Little Round Top.  20th Maine. Hold the line or die.

The time to trash the President for his failures is over.

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Jubilation Now. But What Happens in Ten Years?

The liberation of Libya from Gaddafi’s “Green Book” insanity is the beginning of at least a ray of hope that Arabs could begin to catch up with the rest of the developed and developing world. Saudi Arabia is tougher nut to crack, of course, but the last thing that Riyadh wants is to see Libya’s transformation be successful. They’re hoping against hope that tribalism, factionalism, and incompetence deal a blow to its hopes of transformation.

Libya’s proximity to Europe and its huge oil wealth at least give it the chance of bucking the trend so far apparent in the “Arab Spring” that it’s been a rather drab, superficial affair, in which one set of despots has merely given way to another, in uniform, usually.

But behind all the flag waving, behind the obvious success of the US and its Allies in maneuvering Gaddafi out of power with a frankly excellent display of surgical air power, and superb work giving the rebels a semblance of command and control is a horrible specter.

Time.

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Cool it, Cassandra.

So let me get this straight.

The President and a bunch o’ pundits said that if we defaulted on the debt ceiling we would have been downgraded, and cried catastophe whenever they got the chance, with Geithner,  Goldman Sachs’ favorite bagman, leading the chorus of Cassandras.

Putting aside the fact that the debt ceiling was a technicality and that our bills would have continued to be paid over time, we didn’t miss out on the debt ceiling – and we were still downgraded.

So the President’s Debtageddon scenario came to pass.

And what happened?

The markets plummeted – mainly because of some bad economic numbers and the Euro Debt Crisis – and then bounced right up again. Stocks are pretty much where they were. And most importantly – the yield on a 10 year note hit its lowest point in history, as everyone flooded into ‘downgraded’ treasuries.

Moody’s and Fitch’s Rating Agencies ‘shrugged off’ what their buddies at S+Poorhouse decided to do, which is bad news for S+P, who now look like outliers (with the accent on the ‘liars’).

It’s becoming increasingly clear that there would have been no debtageddon, and the President’s use of the threat totally backfired. Read the rest of this entry »

Bring Back Da Man

The wheels are coming off the wagon of the Obama presidency.

He needs to get a grip quick or he’s going to be painted with the Carter curse – that horrible, contagious sense people get that the President is essentially a powerless passenger, lacking will, lacking a decisive, well, plan.

The latest and most strategically crucial mistake he has made was simple and profound. By essentially buying into the false narrative that America is facing a fiscal crisis – which it isn’t – Obama is accepting an impossible task as being decisive in whether he’s re-elected. His job is to pump-up America and explain why we’re not in trouble, not to swallow the GOP narrative that we are.

The view that he’s pathologically wedded to compromise, or a Wall Street stooged are all true but played out. It’s too late to worry about them now. The truth is, he’s the President. And the President has a pen that can at the very least keep the insanity at bay. Yes, he missed a huge opportunity to be the change agent he promised to be.  But what he ‘should’ have done is now a moot point.

We need to get this guy re-elected.  Read the rest of this entry »

About 200km east of the Egypt-Libya border begins the Qattara Depression, a vast low-lying stretch of desert banked by steep cliffs to the North. It’s essentially an impassable, virtually uninhabited world of soft, sinking sand, brittle salt-lakes, and sucking swamps. During WW2 it was regarded as a no-mans land through which any heavy vehicle would disappear into the abyss. Essentially once you were in you’d be lucky to get out.

It’s a useful metaphor for NATO’s involvement in Libya. Four months after our glorious entry in that nasty little desert dogfight, it’s starting to look like we wandered into a military and diplomatic equivalent of the Qattara Depression. By now, it’s beginning to become painfully clear that unless the “Rebels” get real lucky, we’re looking at a massive stalemate. Reports of successful bombing runs by NATO jets have reduced to a trickle. Gaddafi has almost completely adapted to not having air-superiority. Indeed his shift to non-uniformed forces operating out of pick-ups and covered Katusha trucks pretty much leaves NATO air support blind to who is and who isn’t a bad guy. NATO frequently get it wrong and their propaganda war takes a big hit every time. Read the rest of this entry »

A message from your friends at NATO HQ - This Libyan tank did not have its turret blown off during

There’s a nice news nugget rolling around the web right now to the effect that the President “overruled” two White House Constitutional wonks on what constitutes hostilities involving the United States that require the approval of Congress. The case in question was, of course, Libya, and the specifics were whether the turning of Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli into a parking lot constituted ‘hostilities’.

From Qaddafi’s point of view, there’s no doubt that having his outhouses flattened and army tanks turned into burning hulks clearly constitutes ‘hostilities’. But war these days can be fought from a distance. It doesn’t have to be a two-way street anymore. Apart from the accidental loss of an F-15 during the early stages of the air strikes, we have suffered no battle casualties, and nor, as far as we know, have our allies. We have no boots on the ground, and will not be committing combat troops, which means we’re relying on air-power alone to sink the Libyan dictator. All that makes Obama’s and risible ‘constitutional’ argument somewhat defensible.
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It's the most famous house in Pakistan. It could have been just another house for sale in Abbottabad.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that making the killing of the Jihadist Porn King public was a big mistake. Thereisnoplan has been saying this since the attack, generating much mirth amongst friends and associates. But I stand by the notion. Obama screwed up.

If you remember, on the big night back in May, Obama made an unscheduled late night White House appearance to give us all the good news and earn a nice little approval bump in the process. Great theater. Great Politics. Sure, that poll bump has gone, but at least now nobody can accuse the President of not being decisive. He rolled the dice on the killing of UBL and won.

Unfortunately, basking in the glow of the biggest targeted assassination in history has one major strategic downside; as a result, the wheels are definitely coming off the crucial relationship with Pakistan. It needn’t have been so. Read the rest of this entry »

I got your back, you old redneck.

Thereisnoplan Prediction: Tom Coburn will unlock the Deal on the Debt Ceiling and help Obama get re-elected.

It was such a romantic moment. Obama’s first speech to a joint session in ’09. He walks down the aisle of the chamber of the House of Representatives and saves his biggest hug for one of the most conservative senators in the GOP line-up. Tom Coburn, Junior Senator of Oklahoma.  Turns out they’ve been firm friends since Barry first showed up for Senate Orientation back in ’04. They worked together on aisle-crossing bills and helped establish Barry’s bipartisan bona-fides.

Cut to now.

Grover Norquist is frothing at the mouth at the idea that Tom Coburn is in favor of rolling back individual and corporate deductions to help reduce the nation’s massive debt, and go the ball rolling with a handy victory in the Senate on Ethanol subsidies. Old Grovey knows that if Coburn buckles to new taxes, his whole No Tax Pledge in blood deal isn’t worth the toilet paper it’s printed on – and as an added (and thoroughly welcome) aside – he finally gets exposed as the malevolent Kook that he truly is. It won’t be government that’s small enough to be drowned in a bathtub – but his whole cockamamie movement.

Coburn hasn’t made a big deal of the fact that he’s buddies with Barack because that wouldn’t be good for business in today’s supercharged world of political silliness. No doubt the President suggested in the strongest terms that Tom keep their affair on the down-low, for the benefit of both of them. Read the rest of this entry »

I am looking good.

Having essentially capitulated to the GOP / Corporate agenda on health care, financial reform and the nation’s debt “crisis”, Obama is now ‘rising above’ the fray with a savvy opening salvo in the 2012 campaign. It was a good ‘un too. Assassinating Bin Laden has bumped him up a dozen approval points in 48 hours, and put any GOP contenders on the defensive.  They can’t accuse him of being a wuss anymore.

Remove your weakness. That is what good politics is all about.

If only Obama had used more (now demonstrably popular) muscularity to do something useful when he had control of both Houses of Congress, like insist on a public option, cripple the Wall Street succubus when it was down, or raise taxes on the wealthy when he had the chance. Because that would have been ‘change’.  Sadly, instead he prefered to do things the old fashioned, unreconstructed, neo-conservative way, with a big, fat, meaningless statement that makes him look like the tough guy that everyone thinks he isn’t. Putting a bullet in the bad guy’s head is nothing if it’s not Bushlike business as usual.  Wrapping himself in the flag with a completely gratuitous visit to Ground Zero is pure Bush. It’s “Mission Accomplished” all over again, with the slight, but all important difference, that the mission – a far simpler mission – actually was accomplished.

Karl Rove must be proud. This comes right from his playbook.

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He may be crazy but he's not stupid.

Libya, a nation in name only, is in the early stages of a tribally driven and brutal civil war.  But for all the comparisons between Colonel Gaddafi and the other ranter du jour, Charlie Sheen, there is very little that’s deranged about the Colonel. Indeed, he’s probably been prepared for the eventuality that Benghazi would fall for longer than we imagine.

Gaddafi kept the army small and disorganized for precisely the reason we see now. The rebels are too poorly trained and lack the cohesion to beat Gaddafi’s family and tribal led elite units and African mercenaries in a head-on clash. They’re small but far better trained and equipped than the rebels will ever be. Gaddafi’s men also have their backs to the wall. If Tripoli falls, they are clearly dead. Which is why he’s counterattacking to head off the possibility that the urban mob in the capital will turn on him and end the game through the back door. Read the rest of this entry »