Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has much in common with her Republican House colleague from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann.  Both were elected in years where their party did not do so well, the Democrat in 2004, the Republican in 2006.  And neither has accomplished much during her tenure in the House.

Yet, one major thing, beyond their political ideology distinguishes the two.  The Republican has a far more positive message.  The Democrat’s message is almost like a broken record, Republicans are extreme, they’re out of step, they’re on the fringe.  Democrats have solutions; they’re working to get America moving again and create jobs.

Only problem is she doesn’t readily specify those solutions.

Seems the Democrats brought her on, not to promote Democratic policies, but to attack Republican ones.  Bachmann, by contrast, can make a compelling case for small government principles.  It’s not just her charisma.

These two women help define the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic as we move toward the 2012 election cycle.  It’s too bad that Mrs. Bachmann comes with a lot of baggage.  The appointment of Mrs. Wasserman Schultz suggests that Democrats don’t really have principles to champion — at least not principles they want to champion outside deep blue enclaves along the coasts, surrounding colleges and universities and on a few outposts in and around the Great Lakes.

As is her wont, Jennifer Rubin sums things up:

The bus tour does seem, well, lame. The complaint against Obama these days is that he campaigns but does not govern. His critics say he promises unity but emphasizes partisanship; Republicans argue that he promises a pro-jobs agenda but has nothing left to offer. So what does Obama do? He goes on a tour reinforcing everyone of these digs.

Read the whole thing.

As do the editors of Yahoo! in the feigned shock that the post-partisan healer engages in partisan broadsides:

Perhaps, his attacks against the GOP presidential field are rare, but not his attacks against Republicans.  Such attacks have seemed to define his presidency as least since he reminded congressional Republicans of his victory when they first met after he took office.

We know what the president’s campaign strategy is, how he, as per press reports, intends to destroy presumed GOP frontrunner Mitt Romeny, but we still don’t know what his plan to create jobs is.  Or to balance the budget.

With her Midwestern voice and buoyant manner, Michele Bachmann can easily charm an audience, even over the ether.  Indeed, when I catch clips of on FoxNews and even CNN, she acquits herself quite well, coming across as the PTA leader who speaks for the parents because she has listened and can talk to the teachers because she’s committed.

Reading about her tussle with Tim Pawlenty at the FoxNews debate last week reminded me of another campaign exchange between a charismatic newcomer and a more experienced politician.  In that contest, charisma trumped experience as it did this weekend.

Sometimes in politics, campaign theatrics matter more than executive accomplishments.   Despite his solid record as governor of the Gopher State, in terms of stage presence, Pawlenty couldn’t hold a candle to his fellow Minnesotan.

She’s not the first politician to rise to prominence on the power of her presence rather than her record in office, devoid of accomplishment as it is.  Interesting that unlike other such political figures, she made in rise without the active support of the mainstream media.  Perhaps, the negative portrait they have painted of her has helped her among rank-and-file Republicans.

While I highly doubt that she’ll win the Republican presidential nomination, it’s not unprecedented for a charismatic outsider who has served only a handful of terms in the U.S. House to secure his party’s presidential nomination.  William Jennings Bryan had served only two terms before Democrats nominated him as their party’s standard bearer in 1896.

At least since Bryan, we’ve seen how personality often trumps accomplishment in electoral politics.  Despite Mrs. Bachmann’s many flaws, she does have a compelling presence on the hustings.

I’m headed to Boston for work this morning, and good fortune has given me a few extra minutes before boarding my flight. So you lucky people get the benefit of my random post-Ames GOP nomination thoughts.

First, I’m not surprised that T-Paw dropped out. He was boring and completely boorish in his very personal attacks on Michele Bachmann during last week’s FOX News debate. Second, I am NOT a Bachmann supporter, but I’m pretty pissed off about how she is being treated by the press — liberal and conservative alike. Yes, Byron York — I’m lookin’ at you.

With regard to Bachmann, I see a major flame-out coming for her campaign. That’s all I’ll say about that…

I’m still a Herman Cain fan, I’ve given his campaign some of my hard-earned money, but I just don’t see him catching on as I hoped by now. I hope I’m wrong and he turns it on soon.

I’m told I should be flocking now behind Rick Perry. Sorry, I don’t see “it” yet. Someone please educate me.

In a week from today, I’ll be a South Carolina voter. So hopefully I’ll get a firsthand chance to meet my potential future President. I’m still holding out hope that Marco Rubio & Paul Ryan hear the desperate call of their fellow Americans to defeat Barack Milhous Obama.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Perhaps the best thing about catching CNN at the gym is that it delivers the administration talking points straight. It’s no wonder Larry King found his television home on that network. When he had celebrities, political figures or opinion makers on, he, like Katie Couric interviewing Joe Biden, tossed softball after softball, enabling them to present their side of the story.

Heck, CNN even has an Obama advisor offering political commentary.

Well, I looked up from the elliptical trainer on Saturday to catch Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz telling us that “the entire collection of Republican candidates are totally out of step with what the average American is looking for in terms of solutions.” Out of step, Debbie? She faulted the presidential candidates for being in thrall to the “the extreme right wing fringe.” (She used the word, “extreme” five times in her interview.)

Not once did the folks from CNN, neither the telegenic Don Lemon nor the unsmiling Candy Crowley, ask her a tough question, like say, “What’s the Democratic plan to create jobs?” “Where’s the Democrats’ budget?” Yet, while Democrats still cling to government spending as the solution to all problems, big and small, the American people are increasingly recognizing that government doesn’t have the solutions and prefer less intrusive approaches.

Perhaps the reason CNN doesn’t ask Mrs. Wasserman Schultz about her party’s solutions is they understand that if she doesn’t promote big government approaches, her party will lose its liberal base.  They may also know that if her party doesn’t show a real commitment to deficit reduction, the president’s standing among independents will erode even further (than it already has).

The DNC chair is left to try to win those folks back by calling Republicans extremists on the fringe.  And luckily for her, CNN gives her party a platform to do so, without questioning her assertions.  Or inquiring about her — and the president’s — plan.

This is interesting:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) was peppered Sunday with questions about her thoughts on gay rights, but largely refused to engage them, arguing that those issues aren’t on the front of voters’ minds.

“I am running for the presidency of the United States. I’m not running to be anyone’s judge,” Bachmann said on “Meet the Press.”

The winner of the Ames straw poll this weekend faced aggressive questioning in several of her appearances on the Sunday morning talk show circuit related to her opposition to same-sex marriage and controversial past statements toward gays and lesbians.

. . . .

She’s ducked most questions about her personal opinions toward gays and lesbians, staying on message with a jobs and economy-focused message.

Do like the line about her not running to be anyone’s judge; would be nice if she could build upon that as Herman Cain has.  If she wants to win the votes of socially moderate suburbanites, in both the Republican primaries and general election, she’d going to have to balance her attitudes toward gay people with the public’s increasing social tolerance.

This sidestepping suggests she recognizes how her beliefs could detract from her economic message.  But, she has yet to embrace a live-and-let-live policy consistent with her that message.  A sidestepping step in the right direction perhaps, but not far enough.

Back in 2006, a teenager thug “armed with a hatchet and handgun opened fire inside a New Bedford, Mass., gay bar“. Perhaps, the carnage would have been less had patrons been able to arm themselves.

Now, patrons at gay bars in another commonwealth, that of Virginia, can have greater peace of mind when they wind down.  Gun crimes have dropped at Virginia bars and restaurants after the enactment of a “new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses”:

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found.

Via Instapundit.  Laws which improve the lot of all citizens also help gay citizens.  If all citizens have another tool at their disposal to protect themselves from crime, so too do gay citizens.

Here’s hoping more gay bloggers and gay organizations will take note of the success of Virginia’s law.

Does this post from Glenn Reynolds sum it up?

Narcissists rise to the top because people mistake their confidence and authority for leadership qualities. “However, scientists have discovered that while narcissists are convincing leaders, they are so consumed by their own brilliance that it actually cripples their creativity and often causes them to make bad decisions.”

Just caught this on a friend’s Facebook page:

I do not like this Uncle Sam, I do not like his health care scam. I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books. I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like their secret deals. I do not like ex-speaker Nan, I do not like this ‘YES WE CAN’..I do not like this spending spree, I’m smart, I know that nothing’s free. I do not like their smug replies, when I complain about their lies. I do not like this kind of hope. I do not like it. Nope, nope, nope!

To which I offered this rejoinder:

Did you write this on your own? Or did you post it as a loan? It is cute and wise and smart and short; about a plan we must abort. The government has grown too big, I say, in this and that and every way. We must reduce its size, my friend, or this great debt will never end!

When I was challenged about job creation, I then offered this:

And there are fewer jobs, I say, because the government keeps getting in the way. They increase the cost to hire and grow, the permit process is way too slow. Let’s trust the market, not the state; more spending fails at any rate. People know best how to run lives; that’s how new jobs come and our economy thrives.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Our reader Kurt helped track down the source of the first block quote above:

I found a version of it from March 2010 at this link. That seems to be the oldest one so far, as the others I found came from August or September of last year. That one also credits it as coming from facebook. The headers for this version date it to July 2009. Narrowing Google searches by date produced a number of postings from July and August 2009 on MySpace. I would guess it was probably first sent around via e-mail and posted on facebook around June 2009.

Now, the promoters of today’s Iowa Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa concede has “no official or legal effect”, they call it “a first indicator of the strength of a candidate’s organization and message.” Indeed, media from all over the country are in town to cover the event.

And that is unfortunate. But, maybe then their interest is indicative of a growing hope for new leadership which will bring real change to Washington.

Looking at the participation in last year’s straw poll where Mitt “Romney won with 4,516″ whereas turnout in the 2008 Iowa GOP caucuses (cauci?) was 119,118, Jim Geraghty quips that “it’s quite possible what we’ll see this weekend is the preference of an unrepresentative sample of about 12 percent of Iowa Republican caucus-goers.”

And all this unrepresentative sample of a state which has only gone Republican once in the past six elections could mean the end of several candidates’ bids for the White House.

It seems every time the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) gets themselves in the news, they’re acting to limit our freedom, but this time, they’re standing up against state encroachments on our liberty when challenging an action of San Francisco (San Francisco!) bureaucrats:

Transit officials said Friday that they blocked cellphone reception in San Francisco train stations for three hours to disrupt planned demonstrations over a police shooting.

Officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, better known as BART, said they turned off electricity to cellular towers in four stations from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday. The move was made after BART learned that protesters planned to use mobile devices to coordinate a demonstration on train platforms.

. . . .

The American Civil Liberties Union questioned the tactic.

“Shutting down access to mobile phones is the wrong response to political protests,” the ACLU’s Rebecca Farmer said in a blog post.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said on its website that “BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak.” Mubarak’s regime cut Internet and cellphone services in the country for days early this year while trying to squelch protests demanding an end to his authoritarian rule.

Sounds like the guy who used a machine gun to kill a gnat.  This is not nearly as bad what the then-president did in Egypt, but it does seem a bit authoritarian to inconvenience tens, if not hundreds of thousands of citizens, to prevent demonstrations by a handful of mischievous miscreants.

If they were aware of these protests, why couldn’t they have brought in additional security to the various BART stations.  But, maybe they thought they would seem too heavy-handed.  (Am I the only one seeing the irony here?)

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Thulsa Doom gets it:

. . . not only does it punish the majority for the problems created by a minority, as others have stated, it also prevents the use of cell phones specifically to report emergencies or at the very least to call and warn others to stay away to avoid danger.

If what they fear occurs and protests turn into riots, then that’s when a lot of innocent bystanders are likely going to need their phones quite possibly more than they’ve ever needed them before in their lives.

In the update to my post on the president’s latest plaint about the problems he inherited, I quoted something President Obama said two years ago:

My administration has a job to do as well. That job is to get this economy back on its feet. That’s my job, and it’s a job I gladly accept. I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, ‘Well this is Obama’s economy.’ That’s fine. Give it to me.My job is to solve problems, not to stand on the sidelines and carp and gripe. So, I welcome the job. I want the responsibility.

Emphasis added.  If back then, he recognized his job was to solve problems, to get the economy back on its feet, why then do we, as have to wait for a couple weeks to learn about his proposals to put people back to work?

You’d think a guy who saw that problem-solving was part of his job description, would have a proposal to create jobs near at hand.

It is perhaps serendipitous that shortly after completing Joseph J. Ellis‘s American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, I started Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America.  Let me just say I recommend both books, the latter more than the former.  Each book considers the defining words of our nation’s founding document:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Our Creator has endowed us with the rights to life, liberty and their pursuit of happiness, that is, they come from the hand of God and not that of man.

Governments do not grant us freedom, but they can (and unfortunately do) limit its exercise.

Wherever I read of activists agitating for the freedom to marry (heck, there’s an organization with that very name), I wonder if they’re familiar with the meaning of the Declaration and of the very idea of freedom itself.

Today, the debate on gay marriage is not about granting individuals the freedom to marry an individual of their same sex, but about whether the state should recognize such unions.  When gay couples marry in states (or countries) which grant licenses for such unions and return to states which do not, they do not suffer the fate the Lovings did in the 1960s.  The authorities do not threaten them with arrest, request that they leave the jurisdiction or demand that they live apart.

They merely fail to grant them the privileges they extend to different-sex couples who have secured a marriage license.  Let us bear this in mind as we debate this most important issue.

Let us not turn to the government as the source of our liberty lest we become dependent on state action to take care of those things we can effect on our own — without their intervention, but be ever vigilant against its encroachments on our liberty.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Grizzly Glenn gets my point and build on it:

Perhaps somebody can explain to me how something that is considered a basic human right, requires a license from State. I don’t have a State issued license for life, liberty, or the pursuit happiness. I have a State issued driver’s license because I have met the requirements to receive one. (more…)

The Washington Examiner editors concluded their piece on the healthy, raucous, old-fashioned Republican candidates’ debate held last night in Ames, Iowa “with a caution“:

It’s a long road to the White House in 2012, however, and regardless who becomes the GOP nominee, that candidate will face a formidable opponent willing to do most anything to win. Emphasis on “anything.”

If we’ve learned anything over the past two-and-one-half years, Barack Obama’s rhetoric about beings some new kind of politician able to bridge the partisan gap is just that rhetoric. His record is that of a Chicago politician.

I will shed no tears the day Rick Santorum removes himself from contention for the Republican presidential nomination.  But, his candidacy, quixotic though it may be, has at least done one thing:  helped expose a flawed assumption the media have made in the ongoing debate on gay marriage.

Yesterday, in (on?) National Review’s Corner, this MSNBC headline, “Santorum continues anti-gay rhetoric, takes shot at Bachmann, rest of field” struck Kathryn Jean Lopez. She asked, in the title to her post on the the matter, the same question I ask in the title to this one.

Now, Santorum clearly opposes gay marriage, but that does not necessarily mean he’s anti-gay.  In fact, in 2005, when he was still in the United States Senate, he stood by “director of communications Robert L. Traynham” when the staffer was “outed”, saying in a statement:

Robert Traynham … is widely respected and admired on Capitol Hill, both among the press corps and among the congressional staff, as a communications professional. Not only is Mr. Traynham an exemplary staffer, but he is also a trusted friend confidente to me and my family. Mr. Traynham is a valued member of my staff and I regret that this effort on behalf of people who oppose me has made him a target of bigotry in their eyes.

“It is entirely unacceptable that my staffs’ personal lives are considered fair game by partisans looking for arguments to bolster my opponent’s campaign. Mr. Traynham continues to have my full support and confidence as well as my prayers as he navigates this rude and mean spirited invasion of his personal life.”

Seems a man who is anti-gay might would have fired a staffer on learning he was gay.  The folks at MSNBC err in assuming that because someone is opposed to gay marriage, he must also be anti-gay.

We might have a more civil discussion gay marriage if folks in the media — as well as in the gay community — understood the difference.

While “slamming lawmakers for ‘bickering’ that gets in the way of recovery,” President Obama, Reuters’ Laura MacInnis reports, pledged “to deliver fresh ideas to create jobs“:

“I’m going to be putting out more proposals, week by week, that will help businesses hire and put people back to work,” he told the Michigan event.

But Obama did not immediately spell out any new initiatives beyond renewing his call for Congress to extend a payroll tax cut, advance trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, and deliver patent reform.

Typical Obama. Offer a speech promising new proposals, but fail to offer the specifics. Remember, his much heralded April 13 budget speech? He still hasn’t delivered a plan spelling out the details of his proposal.

Maybe he will indeed spell out some new initiatives in the coming days, but it seems every new Democratic idea comes with a government check attached.

It’s not just the president.  The Democrats don’t really seem to be the party of new ideas, but of the status quo.  They haven’t put forward a plan to address the coming insolvency of Medicare.  And we know that his last plan to put people back to work didn’t work as advertised.

Let’s hope he learns from his mistakes.

According to an AP headline which led Yahoo! last night President Obama [said that] Something is wrong with country’s politics. And gosh, Mr. President, I thought you promised to fix all that, you know with your commitment to a new kind of politics.

Aligning himself with a public fed up with economic uncertainty and Washington gridlock, President Barack Obama declared Thursday: “There is nothing wrong with our country. There is something wrong with our politics.”

His toughly worded message — he said there was frustration in his voice, in case anyone missed the point — came amid a series of polls showing that people are disgusted with political dysfunction and are dispensing blame all around, including on Obama.

Obama aired his frustration with the ways of Washington at an event in Michigan before pivoting to his re-election campaign and a pair of big-money fundraisers in New York City.

Well, that paragraph helps explain why the president bears the lion’s share of the blame for the current political dysfunction.  He’s out politicking, nearly fifteen full months before the general election instead of focusing on his duties as chief executive.  Well, he and I do agree on one thing:

Obama said he told his Michigan audience that it deserves better than what it’s been getting from Washington.

It does indeed.  We can help give the national something better by replacing the man who currently holds the top job in that town.

*Partially

In the past few weeks, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have begun to question their assumption that Barack Obama, this most “remarkable man” would end the acrimonious politics which defined the last years of the previous century and the first years of the current one.  Excavating and building, in his words, “upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans“, he would craft a “new kind of politics.”

Maybe some are finally beginning to realize that the divine image they had of the Chicago Democrat (like the demonic one they had of his predecessor) was based not on his actual accomplishments, but their own eager imagination.  If this guy were such an agent of change, why hadn’t he done anything to reform the notorious political machine in his Illinois hometown?

In his second book, Barack Obama acknowledged that he served “as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”  And project they did.  So, bewitched were they by his rhetoric, that they gave short shrift to his record as Drew Westen acknowledged in Sunday’s New York Times:

Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography . . . .

Via Powerline.

If he does indeed have those qualities about which lefties once waxed eloquent, he has the chance now to show them.  Instead of engaging in pointed partisan attacks on his opponents and fixing his sights on next year’s presidential contest, he should focus on the task at hand, working to effect real reform and craft a budget compromise that can pass a Republican House and Democratic Senate. (more…)

in a piece comparing responses to the riots in London and Los Angeles, Joy McCain gets at the essence of liberal support of gun control:

The left is right to fear firearms, since exercise of that particular freedom and experience of that self-sufficiency (however limited it is in scope) can be a “gateway drug” to other forms of independent thought and action.

It’s all about wresting control from individuals and delivering power to the state, an entity which, they believe, will run by those better and brighter than the common man (or woman) and so better able to tell such commonfolk how to run their lives.

Perhaps that is also why gay leaders refuse to embrace policies (e.g., concealed carry) which would give gay individuals another tool to protect ourselves.

Guess it’s part of that equality notion for the gay community rather than that freedom ideal for gay individuals.  To have equality, they contend, you must needs have a stronger state.

In his post today on Mitt Romney’s appearance at the Iowa State Fair, Michael Barone helps confirm a hunch I had about a registered Democrat heckling the former Bay State Governor:

Democrats are clearly out here to heckle him—perhaps part of the Obama campaign’s (unfortunately named) “kill Romney” strategy–with a handout thanking him for supporting in Massachusetts features of what became Obamacare and with a group of hecklers seated in the front row ready to ask him angry questions, as my Examiner colleague Hayley Peterson describes.

Emphasis added.  When I read that the heckler was a Democrat, I assumed that the Obama campaign (or the president’s minions in the local Democratic Party) dispatched him to raise a ruckus.  Given that “Team Obama reportedly plans a ‘ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background,’” Doug Powers also suspects that they might be maybe “behind today’s little bit of fireworks.”

Although some described Romney as becoming increasingly impatient by the Democrat’s rude rejoinders, I agree with Barone who thought he showed “a certain amount of spunk, especially when he said they should probably vote for someone else.”

And to the heckler I ask this, what is Barack Obama’s plan to strengthen Social Security and Medicare?

Mitt Romney doesn’t have my vote for the Republican presidential nomination (no candidate does as of yet), but he has t least shown that he has the stuff to take on the Obama attack machine.  Good job, governor.