Just received word from from a reader that the Obama campaign is withdrawing from two Jewish debates:

Claiming they do not like recent RJC [Republican Jewish Coalition] advertisements, the Obama campaign has formally instructed all of its representatives to cancel their scheduled appearances with any representative of the RJC. Former Congressman Mel Levine (CA) yesterday informed the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center that he would no longer show up for his scheduled debate this Sunday against RJC California Director Larry Greenfield. State Representative Josh Shapiro (PA) informed Temple Sinai that he would not participate in a forum with RJC Philadelphia Director Scott Feigelstein.

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks asks, “What is the Obama campaign afraid of? Why is the Obama campaign afraid to have this conversation?”

I guess the Obama campaign is afraid to confront the concerns of American Jews, many of whom are wary about a candidate who one day tells a pro-Israeli group that Jerusalem must remain undivided, only to retract his statement the next.

Pro-Obama bloggers and their media cheerleaders have made much of Sarah Palin’s failure to talk to the adversary press. Will they now fault the Obama campaign for avoiding tough questions from Jewish Republicans?

No sooner did Joe the Plumber become a folk hero for conservatives, articlating the Republican message on the economy and job creation better than our party’s presidential nominee, than he becomes subject to rabid attacks from the left.

Kind of sounds like the hazing we go through when we come out to our gay friends as conservatives.

They ridicule him for not having a license without bothering to mention that in Ohio, “he only needs [one] for commercial work, not residential work.“  And they bring up his tax lien.

Ol’ Doc Sullivan is even making an issue of the fact that Joe is not his first name.  Turns out it’s his middle name.  Given that Daniel is my middle name, guess Andrew’ll be coming after me for having all (but a handful) of my friends call me Dan or Daniel.

Tom Elia observes that Joe’s getting “the treatment” for criticizing “a Chicago Democrat running for president.”  Jim Geraghty spells out that treatment:

This is the way our opponents operate now. Destroy anyone who stands in your way. Humiliate them. Make sure that anyone else who ever wants to skeptically question Barack Obama knows that every last bit of their dirty laundry will be aired for all the world to see. Bristol Palin, Trig Palin, — hey, it’s all fair game. They’ve got to make an example of them. Show them that this sort of dangerous speech won’t be allowed in the New America

As Glenn Reynolds observes, the media have “done more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they’ve done on Barack Obama in two years.”

Just as we gay Republicans find our views more closely scrutinized more regularly savaged* than those of our gay peers who toe the left-wing line.

UPDATE:  Greg Pollowitz:  “I can almost guarantee there will be far more national MSM coverage of Joe’s tax problems than there was of Charlie Rangel’s “no hablo” tax defense.”  Sad truth of media bias, critic of the media’s anointed candidate gets less scrutiny the the Democratic chaiman of the House Committee which writes our tax laws.  And the tax problems of the latter are more relevant to his work.

UP-UPDATE: Michelle Malkin writes: “But Team Obama will grasp at any straw to bring this guy down.” Read the whole thing!

More updates after the jump. (more…)

I recall reading that up until the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan gave many (most?) of his speeches off-the-cuff, with only a few 3″ by 5″ cards highlighting the main points he had wanted to hit.  (I was able to confirm that he gave at least one speech, his very well received address to the Republican National Convention in 1976 “without notes.”

Otherwise, various google searches on this have come up blank.  Can any reader confirm this for me?  Thanks.

Yesterday, to the question of whether Sarah Palin is Ronald Reagan, Glenn Reynolds answered in the negative:

Though Reagan was portrayed as an amiable dunce, he in fact spent many years working out his ideas before running for President. Palin hasn’t done that yet. She has considerable natural talent as a politician, but she’s no Ronald Reagan. Then again, neither was Ronald Reagan, at 44.

While I have compared Palin to the Gipper, calling her Reaganesque, I agree with that assessment.  She is considerably younger now (nine years younger in fact) that Reagan was when he “launched” his political career with his 1964 speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign.

Called “The Speech” because of its seminal importance in the Gipper’s career, it served as a distillation of the many ideas he had been working out over the previous decade or so. For Palin to become like Reagan, many of whose natural political talents she shares, she is going to have to embark on a process similar to his.

By and the large, the Gipper educated himself about political philosophy and economic freedom, reading widely. She should follow his path and explore the classics of free-market conservatism. She could enhance her own education by reaching out to leading experts in various field, perhaps inviting them to the Naval Observatory (should she win) or to Alaska (should she lose) for seminars similar to those former California Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon, Jr. organized for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the outset of his presidential campaign.

What defined Reagan was a combination of natural political talents, charisma and a commitment to a set of ideas.

While it is the working out of those ideas which distinguishes Palin from the Gipper, it is the commitment to ideas which distinguishes Barack Obama from the Great Communicator.  While Reagan embraced conservative ideas in his bids for the White House, the successful ones as well as the unsuccessful ones, Obama has pretty much run from his liberal record in the current campaign.

Contrast the speeches which launched each man onto the national stage.  While Reagan’s 1964 speech serves as a criticism of “Great Society” liberalism with reference to specific policies (and their problems) with praise for Goldwater’s free market approach, Obama’s Speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004 was, in the words of David Freddoso, “all cotton candy:”*

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Welcome Instapundit Readers! While you’re here, you may want to check out my post comparing Palin and Obama to Reagan, building on a point Glenn made yesterday.

Anticipating John McCain’s defeat (which I am not yet ready to concede), many, particularly on the left, contend that the conservative movement which enjoyed its heyday in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan’s Administration and in the 1990s with a Republican Congress, will finally come to an end.

What these doomsayers* miss is that, in many ways, the conservative movement is now stronger than it ever was.  Rush Limbaugh, his radio show amplified by his web presence, is now joined on the air by countless other thoughtful conservatives and right-leaning libertarian voices, including Bill Bennett, Larry Elder and Laura Ingraham.  The conservative blogosphere has joined the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, National Review and The Weekly Standard as sources of conservative opinion.

Should McCain lose, they will becoming increasingly powerful.  Expect Rush’s audience to soar.  Even our readership will increase, as gays who become disgusted with how the national gay groups fawn over a Democratic president (as did HRC over Clinton in the 1990s), will be looking for a place where their views are articulated.

Radio talk show host Mike Koolidge said as much in an email to conservative bloggers (which I quote with his permission):

People like Michelle Malkin, and Rush, and everyone on this list (and thousands of others who nobody knows yet) will become MORE relevant than ever if Obama wins.  We will grow exponentially in influence, just like Rush did after Clinton was elected.  Country first, yes, but I firmly believe this will be the dawning of a new age of conservative mainstream influence (*cue Hair soundtrack), beyond talk radio and blogs (with those as a base, of course)

It’s not just blogs and talk radio. In the debate on the financial sector bailout, the Republican minority and not the party in power was the source of new ideas. When Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sketched out his plan to bail out the financial sector, Democrats tacked on some of the standard notions from their playbook, such as limiting executive pay and providing a slush fund for their favored interest groups, but didn’t come up with any bold new initiatives.

In the most recent crisis, we saw an intellectual fervor among the GOP caucus such as we hadn’t seen since the Contract with America. Even George Will, mostly cynical about the GOP nowadays, took notice:

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