The suspense about whether Kansas’ governor might be the Democratic running mate is about over, if reports are true that Barack Obama could be announcing his choice as early as Wednesday. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius exhibited her usual discipline today when asked in Michigan about the veepstakes, saying only, “I think a week from tomorrow we will all know” who the candidate will be. (Well, obviously — that’s the running mate’s night at the convention.) RealClearPolitics thinks Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine may be suiting up. At today’s Eagle editorial board meeting, the board members in attendance offered their predictions: Randy Scholfield is sticking with Joe Biden. Richard Crowson said Sebelius. Mark McCormick said Sam Nunn. And I went with Evan Bayh.
In Rolling Stone, filmmaker Michael Moore offers the Democratic Party six easy steps for how to ensure that Barack Obama loses to John McCain: Keep saying nice things about McCain. Pick a conservative white guy, general or Republican as a running mate. Make Obama sound like a hawk. Forget that this was a historic year for women. Show up to a gunfight with a peashooter. Denounce Michael Moore.
Peter Wehner, a former deputy assistant to President Bush, wrote that it is in conservatives’ self-interest to denounce Jerome Corsi’s new hatchet book, “The Obama Nation.” After noting some of the many factual errors and unsubstantiated claims in the book, Wehner wrote: “Conservatism has been an intellectual home to people like Burke and Buckley. The GOP is the party that gave us Lincoln and Reagan. It seems to me that its leaders ought to make it clear that they find what Dr. Corsi is doing to be both wrong and repellent. To have their movement and their party associated with such a figure would be a terrible thing, and it will only help the cause of those who hold both the GOP and the conservative movement in contempt.”
John McCain is using some of the same arguments against Barack Obama that Hillary Clinton tried, but will he be any more successful? Jennifer Rubin of the New York Observer argues that McCain has some things going for him than Clinton did not.
— The public’s fleeting attention span. “What was new and stunning in January — a mass rally of screaming young people — now seems ho-hum.”
— Continued world instability. “Unlike Clinton, he (McCain) really does have years of foreign policy experience and actually was under enemy fire. His support of the surge has been largely validated by events. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia, McCain seems ready (indeed tailor-made) for the role of commander in chief if we are headed for a redux of the Cold War.”
— Different audience. “A broader-base general electorate may be a harder sell for Obama. Less starry-eyed working-class voters and those in McCain’s age bracket (who turn out in huge number on Election Day) may be the very skeptics to whom McCain can appeal.”
On paper, a Wichita Catholic school won a legal victory last week in a judge’s ruling that its English-only policy didn’t violate a group of Hispanic students’ civil rights.
But U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten made clear in his remarks that St. Anne Catholic School bore its share of responsibility for its poor handling of the controversy.
He said school officials implemented a “one-sided” policy “without consulting with the segment of the school it would impact the most.”
He noted, too, a double standard in enforcing it: “The Caucasian students were not told to go eat lunch with the Hispanic students or participate in their soccer games,” he said. “It was all directed at the Hispanic students.”
And where was the fairness, he asked, in expelling a student, Adam Silva, who had never done anything wrong?
Too bad each side didn’t work harder to understand the other’s position and truly find common ground. Too bad this had to end up in a courtroom.
The school might have won a narrow legal victory. But as the judge suggested, the entire school lost.
The suspense about whether Kansas’ governor might be the Democratic running mate is about over, if reports are true that Barack Obama could be announcing his choice as early as Wednesday. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius exhibited her usual discipline today when asked in Michigan about the veepstakes, saying only, “I think a week from tomorrow we will all know” who the candidate will be. (Well, obviously — that’s the running mate’s night at the convention.) RealClearPolitics thinks Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine may be suiting up. At today’s Eagle editorial board meeting, the board members in attendance offered their predictions: Randy Scholfield is sticking with Joe Biden. Richard Crowson said Sebelius. Mark McCormick said Sam Nunn. And I went with Evan Bayh.
