MATT LAUER: By all accounts, these are some tough times for the Republican party. Last fall, Democrats took control of both houses of Congress, largely because of opposition to the war in Iraq. In 2006, the Republican party was also hit with distracting scandals involving Congressman Mark Foley's inappropriate e-mails to male congressional pages, and lobbyist Jack Abramoff's corruption case, that brought down several prominent Republican Congressmen. This year, the phone number of Republican senator David Vitter turned up in the records of a Washington, DC escort service, and now, recent polls show voters prefer a Democrat over a Republican by 51 to 27%, and at least one poll found the most popular choice among Republican presidential candidates is "none of the above." The question now: can any of the damage be reversed? Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay served in Congress for 22 years and knows personally how scandals can impact a party. He's also the author of a new book called No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight. Tom DeLay, Congressman, good morning.

TOM DELAY: Good morning, Matt.

LAUER: So, I went through a litany there, and maybe I should start by stepping back. We've got two members out of 49 Republican Senators in office right now embroiled in controversy. So, do we have a party embroiled in scandal or do we have two bad apples?

DELAY: Well, I hate to say this Matt, but you just showed the problem, the double-standard, and you just participated in it. You listed a whole lot of scandals that involve the Republicans, but you didn't mention one Democrat.

LAUER: But you didn't hear me. I also just said do we only have two bad apples or is there a case of an entire party embroiled in scandal?

DELAY: I think in your premise, if you had listed all the Democrats that are having problems right now, it would have been different. You see the Democrats re-elect the people with their problems. Republicans kick them out. If you look at what's going on, it's how you handle it as a party and as a political group. You have right now, Alan Mollohan, a Congressman from West Virginia, who is being investigated by the FBI, and the Democrats have kept him on as chairman of the committee that has oversight of the budget of the FBI. You have William Jefferson-

LAUER: So, you're saying it's a positive thing. Is it a positive thing that the Republicans do this, they weed out immediately?

DELAY: You don't want me to finish it? Because you don't want me to-

LAUER: No, no go ahead.

DELAY: Well, you have William Jefferson caught with $90,000 of marked bills in a freezer. And they did put him of the Ways and Means Committee, but they put him on a highly-sensitive Homeland Security Committee. You have Barney Frank, who was caught with a homosexual prostitute who was re-elected over and over again. Gerry Studds who was caught in a bathroom with an under-aged page and he was re-elected.

LAUER: So, why are people like McCain and Norm Coleman and Mitt Romney immediately distancing themselves from Larry Craig? And let me ask you this -- as someone who has seen personal scandal yourself, and knows what it can do -- when you look back in hindsight, knowing how this of thing plays out in the news cycle -- if you could talk to Larry Craig right now, what advice would you give him?

DELAY: Well, first of all, it's really unfortunate that people rush to judgment like they have. I'm not defending Larry Craig. I have great sympathy for what his wife and his family are going through right now. But the decisions that Larry Craig need to make are up to Larry Craig and his constituents in Idaho. But it takes us off our message, and I grant you that. It takes us off the fact that we are winning in the war in Iraq; that the President is going to stop the Democrats from raising taxes and increasing spending; that we desperately need border security in this country. We need to be talking about those kind of things, rather than this.

LAUER: And we've heard some very public statements, as I just mentioned, from John McCain and Norm Coleman and Congressman Hoekstra there a second ago. If Larry Craig decides to -- as your book title, No Retreat, No Surrender -- stay and fight, ok. What other ways, more subtle ways, do members of his own party -- and from your own experience -- start to deliver the message that it's not going to work?

DELAY: Well, I know Larry Craig, and I think he will make the right decision, that benefits him and his family, and his constituents in Idaho. But if you're not guilty of something, you should fight-

LAUER: But he pled guilty?

DELAY: But then he said he made the wrong decision in doing that. I'm not going to get into the specifics of what he has done. He didn't handle it very well. That's obvious.

LAUER: Given the situation in Washington right now, Congressman, I mean, can Larry Craig pull a Trent Lott? Can he duck under the radar for a while, and give up a powerful position, stay out of the spotlight for a while, and come back, make a comeback?

DELAY: I have no idea, Matt. You asked me to come on to talk about the GOP and politics, not about this man's personal life. Whatever decision he makes, I think it will be the right decision. The point here, though, is the Republicans handle it. They look at it, and when the evidence is right on that someone is guilty, they do something about it. On the other hand, the Democrats don't. And the media, the double-standard in the media is amazing. The feeding frenzy, the sharks in the water that's going on right now because of a Republican. Where is the frenzy on Alan Mollohan from West Virginia or William Jefferson from Louisiana?

LAUER: I think you mentioned William Jefferson. There was an awful lot of coverage of William Jefferson when that story broke, Congressman.

DELAY: Yeah, for just a couple of days and then we went on. In the case of a Republican, believe me, I've experienced this, it's day in and day out in the media, and they write this story over and over and over again. We all know the double-standard in the media. It's amazing.

LAUER: Well, I'm not going to let it, you know, end with that assumption, Congressman, because I clearly don't agree with it, but why don't we just say-

DELAY: You exhibited it, Matt!

LAUER: But you know what, Congressman? I think it's unfair. Because I listed a list of problems and then immediately-

DELAY: All Republicans.

LAUER: Well, we're talking about the Republican party. You just said, I invited you on to talk about the GOP.

DELAY: Because you don't want to talk about the Democrats.

LAUER: So, that's exactly what I started with-

DELAY: Because you don't want to talk about the Democrats.

LAUER: And I also, Congressman, started and then said, 'Is this a misperception, that there is a party embroiled in scandal, when we may just have two bad apples?' That's exactly how I started my first question.

DELAY: No, you started the first question by listing a bunch of Republicans and didn't mention one Democrat.

LAUER: Because we're talking-

DELAY: About the situation that's going on in Washington today, and including both Democrats and Republicans. There are scandals that need to be addressed. Republicans address them, Democrats re-elect them.

LAUER: Alright Congressman, I'll let you have the last word. It's good to have you on.

DELAY: Thank you. Thank you
.

By conventional wisdom, most seem to believe the Democrats should win the presidential election without any difficulty. But, not so fast. Neither of the two leading Democrats, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seem electable to me. This is not because, one is a woman and one is black, but rather because one is this particular woman and the other is this particular black man.

The woman in question is no beloved national figure, no multi-term Congresswoman of solid, centrist views. We're talking about Hillary Clinton, a woman whom some forty per cent of Americans view with extreme distaste and distrust. Despite her strong lead over her closest rivals, she draws the general electorate's highest negative ratings of anyone in the race, Republican or Democrat. When pollsters ask voters if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each candidate, she is the most disliked candidate among her party's contenders.

Because she's the wife of a former president, the very idea of her campaign smacks of nepotism. Because we already know way too much about her private life, the very thought of her and Bill in the White House again is a turn-off. We don't even really know what she stands for because she flip-flops more than John Kerry. Oh, and did I mention that all of her papers in the Clinton Library have locked up until after the election? Yet she is well ahead of the pack.

Her closest competitor, Barack Hussein Obama, isn't the ordinary black politician. He certainly is no Colin Powell who is a national hero with a long distinguished career in the army. He also isn't a civil rights movement leader like the late Dr. King. He is however, very articulate, and has charm and charisma. He has written several books and was at the top of his class at Harvard law school. Obama is the son of a Kenyan father he hardly knew and a white mother from Kansas. He spent part of his childhood in Indonesia - and his middle name is "Hussein". It's an impossible biography, one would imagine, for Middle America to accept. Yet in the first six months of this year Obama raised more money than any other candidate. Let's be completely honest. If Obama were white, he wouldn't even be in this race. He really has no qualifications for the job other than being a well spoken, well educated black man.

There are others, of course. The Democrats could also choose Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, who is certainly admired in his own state. John Edwards, the one-term Senator and former vice-presidential candidate, is still hanging around. But both trail far behind the two leaders of the pack as does Senator Joe Biden. Then there is Dennis Kucinich, whom some say lives in a big hollow tree and spends his time making cookies.

With no Democrat incumbent and no obvious (electable) front-runner, anything can happen.

There are, in my humble opinion, better choices on the Republican side, but none of them are completely without flaws. In the beginning, Senator John McCain was the front runner. He is a war hero, is very well-versed in foreign affairs, and is adored by the Washington press corps. He was doing quite well in the polls in spite of the McCain/Feingold bill, but the ill conceived immigration reform bill has moved him to the rear of the pack where I predict he will remain.

With McCain out of the picture, the new leader (at least for the present) is Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, best known as the man who helped New York recover from the trauma of 9/11. He does have a lot going for him - charisma, energy, fame, but, he to is not without flaws. His biggest negative with Conservatives is the fact that he supports abortion rights. He is also on his third marriage, and has children who don't speak to him. I really don't think multiple marriages will be much of a factor in a country which had a serial adulterer as President for eight years.

Then there is Fred Thompson, a former Senator and Hollywood actor. Thompson has the advantage of looking like a president, having played the president so many times in the movies. Yet, even though he was a Senator, there isn't a lot known about his opinions.

That leaves Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who also looks and sounds very presidential. Voters tend to like Romney; however, he is a Mormon, a religion that most Americans know very little about.

The bottom line is, don't believe anyone who cites conventional wisdom to predict the winner. This might just be the year that conventional wisdom is overturned.

Personally, I don't think going onto Iraq was a mistake, but just for the sake of argument; let's say it was a mistake.  A precipitous withdrawal would compound the error.  I think maybe those who argue for withdrawal seek precisely to compound the error. Failure in Iraq would vindicate the position of those who originally argued that the war would be a mistake and for those who supported the war but later changed their minds. If America loses the war, they win big politically.

We can and must win this war, but to defeat stateless Jihad groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, we must forget our Cold War national security thinking of limited war and instead reassume our strategic offensive posture of World War II.

During the Cold War, our strategy was "Containment", which involved defensively preventing the expansion of the Soviet Empire. The buzz word for containment which sought blockage instead of victory was "limited war".   Even when we entered into offensive warfare on the operational/tactical levels in Korea and Vietnam, our strategic defensive posture was reflected in the end to conflict which we sought.  That, of course, was simply to push the communist invaders back into the northern regions of those countries, while leaving them in power.

To cut-and-run from Iraq is unthinkable when one considers the consequences. To stay and pursue existing "limited war" strategies is likewise unthinkable given the lack of American will for another long drawn out war with no real end in sight.

Look at this from The Moscow Times.  Perhaps the time has come to reassume our strategic offensive posture of World War II with Iran.   What do you think?

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2007/08/21/254.html

 

 

Imagine for a moment, if you can, that there is no more United States, No Mexico, and no Canada. In their place is one big country, the North American Union (NAU), bordered by the Bering Sea to the north and Guatemala to the south. The national borders of the United States have been forever erased. That scenario may sound far-fetched to some, but that is the goal of many very powerful people including President Bush, the Mexican President, and the Canadian Prime Minister.

Most people didn't even notice the fact that supporters of the NAU concept slipped an initiative into the recently defeated immigration reform act. Largely unnoticed because of all the amnesty uproar which ultimately caused the defeat of the Immigration Bill was the statement, "It is the sense of Congress that the United States and Mexico should accelerate the implementation of the Partnership for Prosperity to help generate economic growth and improve the standard of living in Mexico."

The bill called for measures to boost the economy of Mexico, including:
• U.S. support to strengthen Mexico's education and training programs.
• A call for better health care for "poor and underserved" people in Mexico.
• U.S. assistance to "establish a program with the private sector to cover the health care needs of Mexican nationals temporarily employed in the United States."
• The bill also called for U.S. assistance to Mexican businesses and government to eliminate corruption, which it termed, "the single biggest obstacle to development."

This was the first attempt by the Security and Prosperity Partnership "SPP" to go public, and it failed. They had hoped that nobody would notice. We, the American public are not as stupid as they thought, but, they have not given up. We must remain vigilant, because they fully intend to keep trying. There is a huge amount of international capital driving this, and they will not give up easily.

Documents recently obtained by the public interest group "Judicial Watch"' reveal that the SPP are developing plans for U.S. taxpayer-funded initiatives to improve Mexico's infrastructure. These plans include: Facilitating cross-border travel, establishing full Social Security benefits for Mexican aliens working in the United States, and creating a Trans-Texas Corridor superhighway with truck, car, and train lanes running from Mexico to Canada.

Basically, the SPP eliminates the borders. Just as in Europe, once free-flowing cross-border travel and full economic cooperation are established, the next step will be multi-national laws and a multi-national court systems to resolve disputes, with powers that supersedes those of U.S. courts.

As more and more people in the United States are becoming aware of the goals of the SPP, grassroots opposition to the SPP is growing very fast." For example, 12 states are currently considering resolutions opposing the establishment of the NAU. There is a federal effort to block the SPP as well.

It is spearheaded by a resolution, HCR 40, which states, "The United States should not allow the Security and Prosperity Partnership to implement further regulations that would create a North American Union with Mexico and Canada; and the President should indicate strong opposition to these acts or any other proposals that threaten the sovereignty of the United States." The resolution also calls for the U.S. to not "engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement Superhighway System."

The resolution notes that "reports issued by the SPP indicate that it has implemented regulatory changes among the three countries that circumvent U.S. trade, transportation, homeland security and border security functions and that the SPP will continue to do so in the future."

For more information on the same subject, read my BLOG "A Real Conspiracy" posted July 27, 2007.

I read a lot of posts, blogs, and newspaper columns about how the Bush administration is using "The war on Terror" to justify infringing on our rights.   To the people making these remarks, I say it's time for you to wake up.  We are at war, a war that we must win.  This is the first time sense WW2 that losing is simply not an option. 

 When at war, everyone must make a few sacrifices.  The sacrifices these complainers are making are nothing compared to those being made every day by our men and women in the military.   Having said that, here are some comments made by President Clinton about your "rights".

 "If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees." William Jefferson Clinton, August 12, 1993

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans" - William Jefferson Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993

"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." -William Jefferson Clinton, May 29, 1993

"The United States can't be so fixed on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." William Jefferson Clinton, March 1, 1993

"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it." William Jefferson Clinton

 I can't remember reading anything about Clinton infringing on your rights.  Of course, if he did, (and I'm sure he did), you wouldn't have known about it. 

 With the CIA's recent release of documents detailing the agency's abuses in the 1960s and 1970s, the media will no doubt be saying that those illegalities are similar to today's practices.   Wrong!  As a matter of fact, the truth is quite the opposite. The CIA's past abuses illustrate just how legal and properly motivated today's actions by the government are.

 The CIA in those days literally spied on Americans because of their dissident political beliefs, wiretapped reporters to find the source of leaks, broke into homes without having a warrant, incarcerated a defector for no legal reason, engaged in foolish and ill-conceived assassination attempts against foreign leaders, and gave harmful drugs like LSD to subjects without their knowledge or consent. 

 Many of these activities violated criminal laws, and were nearly always ordered or encouraged by presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon, the CIA's actions were not disclosed to Congress because congressional leaders wanted to remain in the dark about questionable CIA activities, giving them deniability.

 In contrast, the Bush White House disclosed its aggressive efforts to combat terrorism to key leaders and committees of Congress and to the courts, which have approved of them except in a few cases where judges have disagreed on how enemy combatants should be handled. If the law were clear cut, we would not have split Supreme Court and appeals court decisions.

 In the case of the Patriot Act, Congress itself enacted the legislation.  In the case of coercive interrogation techniques, Congress recently enacted legislation which still allows the president to order such techniques.  Most important, the administration's actions have been successful in catching terrorists and protecting us.  This is a major reason we have not been attacked in almost six years.