Independence Day edition. Happy birthday, America!
Jonathan Alter:
The Obama-Petraeus relationship is now central to the war in Afghanistan (where last week Petraeus replaced Gen. Stanley McChrystal). But it’s by no means a comfortable dynamic for either man. "The only way we’ll consider this [continuing the war with more troops] is if we get the troops in and out in a shorter time frame," Obama told Petraeus and other advisers in the room that day...
There’s only one problem with betting the smart money on a long commitment: it’s not so smart. Obama has said that we won’t "turn out the lights" in Afghanistan in July 2011; and, indeed, some residual forces will be there for decades. But my reporting during the last several months suggests that a significant withdrawal will begin within, at the most, 18 months to two years.
There are at least three reasons—military, financial, and -political—to take the president at his word that the current commitment of 100,000 troops will be of short duration.
CNN interviews a Republican strategist and <gasp> Ron Bonjean suggests blaming Bush will backfire!! Oh, no!!
Frank Rich:
All men may be created equal, but slavery, America’s original sin of inequality, was left unaddressed in the Declaration of Independence signed 234 years ago today. Of all the countless attempts to dispel that shadow over the nation’s birth, few were more ambitious than the hard-fought bill Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law just in time for another Fourth of July, 46 summers ago.
Darryl Cunningham brilliantly explains homeopathy. Must read.
EJ Dionne:
For some months now, I have been battling against the idea that the Tea Party movement is some brand-new thing in American politics, an independent movement akin to the rebellion led by Ross Perot in the 1990s. Tea Party people, I have been arguing, are simply right-wing Republicans organized under a new banner.
I have not been alone in making this case, of course, and it has been slowly gaining ground, but I hope a new Gallup study will settle the question. Gallup is one of our oldest polling firms and no one’s idea of an agent for the left-wing conspiracy.
Just because we know it doesn't mean everyone knows it.
Washington Times:
But it was Mr. Obama's placement above Reagan that immediately prompted criticism and/or derision from conservatives and Reagan devotees.
Melissa Giller, director of the Reagan Foundation, which runs the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif., downplayed the results' importance, saying, "We see a lot of presidential polls and find they can be very subjective."
None of the Siena surveys have ever placed Reagan in the Top 10.
And your point was what, again? That it's Clinton's fault? Reagan never makes the top 10 because he doesn't deserve to.
Bloomberg:
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, whose remarks suggesting the U.S. will lose the war in Afghanistan have prompted some Republicans to demand his resignation, won praise from Representative Ron Paul.
"Michael Steele should not resign," Paul, a Texas Republican and former Libertarian Party presidential candidate, said yesterday in a statement. "Michael Steele has it right and Republicans should stick by him."
Hey, someone ask Rand what he thinks.
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