HALF-FULL REPORT 11/11/11

Published November 11, 2011 | By Jack Kelly

The glass seems half empty this week.

The story that’s gotten the most coverage, is, again, the charges of sexual misconduct against Herman Cain. A new accuser came forward, an old one was identified. Both have credibility issues, which I discussed in my second column for the week.

In that column , I emphasized the bias and hypocrisy of the news media. But many in the Washington political establishment, Republican as well as Democrat, seem afraid of Herman Cain.

Mr. Cain’s latest accuser, Sharon Bialek, hired as her attorney celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred. Karl Rove said hiring Ms. Allred enhances Ms. Bialek’s credibility. Ms. Allred is a very liberal Democrat who has made thinly sourced or completely bogus charges against Republicans in the past. That Ms. Bialek chose Ms. Allred to be her lawyer should cast doubt on Ms. Bialek’s veracity. Rove’s statement shows how desperate he is to derail the Cain train.

He isn’t alone. Politico almost certainly got its scoop from opposition researchers for a rival candidate. The Cain campaign suspects Perry. The Perry people say it was the Romney people.

Romney says the charges against Cain are serious, and he must address them. But just because a charge is serious doesn’t mean it’s true. And once you’ve said you’ve done nothing improper, as Mr. Cain has, what more is there to say?

A rival Republican may gain temporary advantage by smearing Cain. But he/she is playing with fire. There are many good reasons for not supporting Cain for president. His ignorance of foreign affairs is appalling. His team seems more suited to running a circus than a presidential campaign. But if Cain is brought low by wholly unsubstantiated charges from people of dubious credibility, we can be sure the eventual GOP nominee will be subjected to the same.

It’s typically Democrats who play the politics of personal destruction. Helen Smith, psychologist wife of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, warns conservatives not to play into Saul Alinsky’s hands .

Ms. Krausharr’s resume, Ms. Allred’s involvement, and Zero’s fondness for Alinsky make the Obama campaign a plausible suspect. Zero was elected to the Senate, you’ll remember, after his strongest GOP opponent withdrew following a sex scandal. And for 200 years the uncorroborated accusation of a white woman has been all the excuse Democrats have needed to lynch a black man.

The Cain sex scandal was not, of course, the most important news of the week. That could be Italy going the way of Greece . Europe induces sloth and indolence , and shouldn’t expect a bailout, said the chairman of China’s sovereign wealth fund.

China may not be able to bail out Europe even if it wanted to. Walter Russell Mead thinks the week’s most important story is the Conference Board’s forecast of sharply slowing growth in China.

“If China’s growth decelerates that fast, that far, the biggest question in world politics won’t be how the rest of us will accommodate China’s rise. The question will shift to whether China can last.”

Of course, thanks to Jack Wheeler, TTPers already know all about this, and more.

There were developments this week in scandals the news media consider less important than Mr. Cain’s travails.

*Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday on Gunwalker. What he told the senators was substantially different from what he has said before. Sen. John Coryn, R-Tex, was not impressed . He ate Holder alive when the AG tried to blame the scandal on former President George W. Bush.

Holder is refusing to make available 11 of 12 witnesses Congress wants to interview, says Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia. Justice also refused a request for Obamacare documents pertaining to a possible conflict of interest by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan .

Dennis Burke, the former U.S. attorney in Arizona and protege of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, aka Big Sis, admitted smearing an ATF whistleblower.

Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, hammered DOJ again over its lies.

*Emails prove the White House lied when it said Solyndra owner George Kaiser didn’t lobby for more bailout money. Other emails say “Slow Joe” Biden had an orgasm over the Solyndra loans.

The Department of Energy has been bailing out solar firms in Spain , too.

*The National Labor Relations Board is planning to operate without any Republican members , skirting the law. “We screwed up the economy,” says an NLRB lawyer .

When Afghan President Hamid Karzai said last month that if Pakistan were to go to war with the United States, Afghanistan would side with Pakistan, not many journalists here paid attention.

The deputy commander for training Afghan security forces, U.S. Army Major General Peter Fuller , did. Afghan leaders are corrupt, incompetent, double dealing ingrates, he said in an interview last week.

That’s the truth. On Monday, MajGen. Fuller was fired for telling it. Military writer Carl Prine, an Iraq war vet (and a friend of mine) is incensed . It’s hard to win a war when our leaders live in a Politically Correct fantasyland. Pete Hegseth, founder of Vets for Freedom, who is now serving in Afghanistan, provides a sitrep here .

Today (11/11) is Veterans Day. Thank one if you see one. Yesterday was the Marine Corps’ birthday. My beloved Corps was born in a bar (the Tun Tavern in Philadelphia). Its first mission was to the Bahamas. Gotta love ‘em.

The IAEA finally saw evil in Iran this week. Despite this, Ron Paul wants to offer the mullahs an olive branch. How can a guy who is so right about economic issues be so wrong about everything else?

And do you remember that 2007 intelligence report which claimed, falsely, that Iran had stopped its nuclear program? Zero has promoted its authors.

Big Labor wants approval of the Keystone Pipeline , which would transport oil from Canada’s oil sands to Texas, because about 20,000 jobs are involved. The Envirowhackos are fighting it, tooth and nail. So Zero has postponed a decision until after the 2012 elections. Leading from behind isn’t just for foreign policy.

The 2011 elections Tuesday were a mixed bag.

In Ohio, big labor won repeal of Gov. John Kasich’s bill curbing the power of public employee unions by a wide margin. A referendum opposing the individual mandate in Obamacare passed by a wider margin. Repeal won in all of Ohio’s 88 counties , including heavily Democratic Cuyahoga (Cleveland).

In Virginia , Republicans gained two seats in the state senate to forge a 20-20 tie, which gives the GOP effective control, since LtGov. Bill Bolling is a Republican. The GOP also gained seven seats in the House, giving them a two-thirds majority. Republican gains in the senate were muted by redistricting done when Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature. But the GOP now has unified control of state government for only the second time since the Civil War.

In New Jersey , Democrats gained a seat in the state Assembly. There was no change in the state senate. The Democrat gain “came thanks to redistricting,” said the Newark Star Ledger.

In Maine, voters rejected a Republican effort to overturn same day voter registration.

In Mississippi, pro-lifers lost a referendum, but Republicans took control of the Mississippi house for the first time since Reconstruction . The national news media focused on the first, ignored the second.

Labor won in Ohio because it outspent the good guys, $20 million to $6 million, and used the money to lie effectively :

“They easily convinced people that a vote for Kasich’s reform was a vote to burn your own house down and assist in your own mugging. And so naturally, today, the chirping media is filling the birdcages with songs of how the Ohio vote signals a possible Obama comeback, gives hopes to the Dems, etc,” said Michael Walsh.

The law did go too far, Kevin Holtsberry thinks.

On cue, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne said the election results indicate a backlash is building against conservative overreach. But liberal Time Magazine columnist Karen Tumulty thinks the results in Virginia are a warning sign to Obama. Kim Strassel agrees .

Labor’s victory in Ohio “is a reminder to conservatives that we’re still a long way from closing the deal,” says Mark Steyn . To close the deal, we need to learn from the tactics of the left.

It’ll be harder for conservatives to close the deal if we nominate a lousy candidate for president. But after Wednesday’s debate in Michigan, many conservatives said the GOP field may not be as bad as they thought previously.

“These candidates aren’t half bad,” said Kathryn Lopez of National Review. “It was, overall, an impressive show, with the candidates showing a remarkable resilience in responding, with precise information, to subjects rapidly shifting; with so-called moderators moving beyond the artless to the indecent, trying to bait candidates,” said Hadley Arkes . “The Republican candidates are improving; they are answering questions (hostile questions!) crisply and smoothly,” agreed Burton Folsom . “For the first hour or so of the debate, everyone seemed sharp, with crisp answers and very little to criticize,” said Ed Morrissey .

And then Gov. Perry’s brain froze .

This was the worst moment in a presidential debate he’d ever seen, said Michael Barone. Perry’s performance was “the most devastating of any modern primary debate," said Larry Sabato .

“Perry campaign is over,” Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake said he was told by a top Perry fundraiser. “Stuck a fork in himself,” another prominent Perry supporter said in an email .

Jack Wheeler still holds out hope for Perry. “I think he may still be in play, especially given the vigor which Our Side is trying to invite him out of the game. They wouldn’t be expending the energy if he weren’t still a threat,” he said in an email to me.

But at week’s end, there was more talk of Perry dropping out than of Cain dropping out. So if the Hermanator is felled by the smear campaign, the last Not Romney left standing will be Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, as usual, performed best in the debate. “Newt is doing something interesting and maybe profound: he is trying to run for president according to an older model that stresses substance over sound bytes and gimmicky, targeted campaign strategy,” said Steven Hayward .

But we musn’t forget Newt has more baggage than Amtrak.

It’s only a matter of time before Gingrich leads in the polls, predicts John McCormick of the Weekly Standard. If so, for resurrection of the politically dead, it’ll rival Lazarus rising from the tomb.

There’s lots more stuff going on, but I’m out of space and out of time. Maybe next week the glass will be half full.