BrothersJudd Blog

HANDS LIKE A SOCCER PLAYER:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:50:27 -0500

"I Worked Out with Obama!": When the Obama buzz started, Stepp Stewart put his stinky clothes back on. (Karen Araiza, Dec 2, 2008, NBC Washington)

This morning, I was late! I was gonna be on the treadmill (at the Philadelphia Sports Club on Hamilton Street) by 6. It’s more like 6:30.

I run. I’m done. I go to the shower, get all cleaned up and I’m just about to put my lotion on and I hear a rumor that someone is coming. Obama! And he’s gonna be here in 30 minutes!

Girl, I put my sweat-drenched, funky-smellin’ clothes right back on, got right back on the floor and started fakin’ a workout!

All the sudden, people are eyeballing the door. Here comes the secret service.Then here comes Barack, walking up with a baseball cap on. He stops at the front desk. All the sudden, there’s a line of people.

But here I was, sitting on a spin bike that was broken! It’s a prop. But it’s right by the door. I am faking it again, so I can have a good spot at the door!

I get off the bike. He looks me dead in the eye.

He shook my hand. I held onto it as long as I could.

HIS HANDS WERE SOFT AS BUTTER!

DOES A MYSTERY HAVE TO BE SCARY?:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:07:21 -0500

Lost in translation: Authenticity wins over spontaneity in this Swedish-set detective series
Wallander BBC1 (Rachel Cooke, 04 December 2008, New Statesman)

So what of Branagh's turn as Kurt Wallander, Henning Mankell's conflicted Swedish policeman? He's physically rather good, I think, with his red-rimmed eyes and his bed-head hair. He conveys Wallander's quiet disgust at the world beautifully, the distaste on his face never greater than what we might expect to find there had he just eaten an insufficiently fresh herring.

Though Wallander sometimes appears haunted - and who wouldn't be mildly upset if they'd just witnessed a girl setting fire to herself in a field of oilseed rape? - he never slips into dreary self-pity, unlike certain British TV detectives (of course, the schnapps has less effect on him, he being a Swede, than on the denizens of Scotland Yard). Branagh is good at crying - he blubbed expertly as Guy Pringle - and when Wallander does crack, he makes these scant, salty moments so believable, you share the embarrassment of those around him, lips all frozen stiff.

No, the fault here is not Branagh's. The best way I can describe Wallander (Sundays, 9pm) is that it is just one notch off being a detective-show masterpiece - only the notch in question is not something relatively unimportant, like its theme music, but something vital, which has to do with its very essence. It looks beautiful; its production values are cinematic, and, having been filmed on location in Ystad, it has a tremendous sense of place. I could swoon at the interiors, which are crammed with the kind of chic, mid-century Scandinavian furniture that people in Islington sweat blood to buy. Even the police station - sorry, the polisstation - features an excellent abstract mural.

The writing is good and minimalist, and the plotting, too, because its creators have stayed fairly true to Mankell, a fine writer (and one who has sold 30 million books in a hundred countries). The actors are all capable, and one of them - David Warner, as Kurt's father, Povel - exceptionally so. So what's the problem? Why, as our killer scalped one pervert after another, was I not fixed to my seat, peering nervously from behind a strategically placed cushion?

THE ONE WHO BELIEVES JACQUES CHIRAC DEPENDABLE IS THE HEAVYWEIGHT?:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:00:05 -0500

'Cameron's a lightweight' (James Macintyre, 04 December 2008, New Statesman)

What is not publicly known is that there was less agreement when, soon afterwards, the discussion turned substantial in Cameron's Commons office. Obama began by saying that he hoped to work closely with the EU. But, in a crude attempt to demonstrate his Atlanticist credentials, Cameron went on to indulge in what one source has described as an "anti-European diatribe", repeatedly referring to the "anti-Americanism" of EU member states. Cameron apparently told Obama that he would not encounter a more pro-American politician than himself.

If Cameron thought this would impress Obama, he was wrong. It would appear he had failed to study the multilateralist candidate's Berlin speech 48 hours previously. Obama had condemned "voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe's role in our security and our future", and went on: "Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe . . . But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together . . . In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and co-operation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our . . . humanity. That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another."

On meeting Cameron, Obama was, according to diplomatic sources, "distinctly unimpressed", contrary to some reports (excitedly spun by the Conservatives) which suggested that the two men had formed an instant "bond". Instead, I have been told, Obama exclaimed of Cameron after their meeting: "What a lightweight!" He apparently also asked officials about Tory Euroscepticism. Soon, word about the rather awkward encounter between the two self-professed candidates of change made its way quietly round the upper echelons of Whitehall.

A widely read, broad-minded internationalist, Obama has long valued Europe and, asked during the primaries against Hillary Clinton to name the crucial US allies, he instantly placed "the European Union" at the top of the list. Perhaps more importantly, on defining international issues such as the invasion of Iraq (unlike Clinton and certainly unlike Cameron), Obama's position was closer to that of mainstream Europe - which, as led by President Jacques Chirac of France, tended to be more "doveish" than "hawkish".

Dovish? How about "collaborationist"?

SOME OF YOU ARE PROBABLY TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER...:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:18:12 -0500

Undone By Victory: Political Success and the Subversion of Conservative Politics (M. E. Bradford, June 10986, Imprimis)

[T]he most puzzling and pervasive of all the functional shortcomings of the Reagan administration has nothing to do with the timidity of the Office of Presidential Personnel or the unruliness of Senate Republicans. Instead I turn now to a contradiction between potential and result which occurs after capable and loyal people have been appointed and/or confirmed in positions of great importance, to subversion by victory in its most complicated form. Once they are settled in Washington and part of an established government, a terrible transformation in point-of-view and frame-of-reference changes into "something new and strange" otherwise responsible persons. Many of the explanations for this metamorphosis are familiar to most students of contemporary American government—that administrators come to confuse the size, influence, and budget of their department or agency with the interests of the Republic; that they are made defensive by high station and the ponderous machinery of the State; that the kind of prudence which accompanies a sense of achievement lends itself to paralysis and to domination by values accepted as axioms in Washington despite the fact that they are roundly rejected by most of the nation. It is also true that many Reagan appointees sincerely feel that nothing can be done. Inertia often cancels the impact of elections. Yet this calculus only begins to account for the declension which I describe. For most of the Reagan appointees of whom I speak knew full well before they assumed office in Washington that they arrived there as conquerors of an occupied city, a city loyal to defeated and exiled "princes," eager for their restoration and ready at every opportunity to frustrate the "barbarians" now within the walls. They knew, as Reagan supporters, to treat the Capital as a captured place, still infected by an ideological virus planted there more than fifty years ago and nurtured by most of the governments which have controlled it since that time; and they knew the bureaucracy to be made up of their implacable enemies—men and women confident that they are the legitimate government, obliged to absorb and neutralize successive waves of "mere politicians" brought to authority by the accident of election. Even so, for reasons that go deeper than the usual explanations, these realists have often been undone.

The greatest impediment to performance behind the failure of the Reagan regime to change the government delivered into its keeping in a root and branch reformation is that its constituent members have come to think of the status which they enjoy as theirs by nature and not be dint of political labor and popular delegation. Life in Washington, DC causes them to forget why they acquired their offices, and under what conditions. Moreover, while they might wish to pacify their enemies, they have failed to support one another, coveting a respectability offered to them in the environment of the Capital by pretending to be "different from most Republicans" or "most conservatives." The truth is, of course, that such respectability is granted only to those who agree that the Reagan Revolution is no more than a rhetorical device and that only those positions held in common by President Reagan and President Ford can have a place in a responsible Republican government—allowing for small increases, adjustments in fiscal policy, tepid leadership of the Free World in foreign policy and minor tinkering with the War on Poverty. There is a widespread belief among Reagan appointees that only a "soft" style of administration can effect changes which will be accepted because no one notices them until they are in place. According to these worthies, there can be no fundamental assault from the Right on the network of controls by which the State overgoverns almost every detail of our lives. The trouble with this teaching is that it is incongruous as a doctrine for counterrevolution. And the people expected nothing less from elections of 1980 and 1984.

...that the Right didn't consider President Reagan conservative either...until he left office.

IT DOES NEED AN OFFICIAL LANGUAGE...:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:02:51 -0500

German Language 'on the Defensive' (Der Spiegel, 12/04/08)

Does Germany need an official language? It is a question that might surprise some. After all, most would be likely to assume that the country already has an official language: namely, German. And yet, nowhere in the constitution is the idiom enshrined as the nation's official means of communication. At least not yet.

On Tuesday, delegates to the annual Christian Democrat (CDU) party congress, held this time around in Stuttgart, voted to support a constitutional amendment that would enshrine German in the so-called "Grundgesetz" -- or "Basic Law." German, says Peter Müller, who is governor of the south-western state of Saarland, should be "rightfully preserved" in the constitution.

It is a tricky proposition.

...but that language is English.

WHICH TELLS YOU HOW W MANAGED TO GET RE-ELECTED DESPITE A WAR:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:42:31 -0500

A bitter brew for Kerry (Joan Vennochi, December 4, 2008, Boston Globe)

SENATOR John Kerry's fate illustrates the new political order under President-elect Barack Obama: Reward your enemies, not necessarily your friends.

Hillary Clinton, Obama's tough primary opponent, became Obama's choice for secretary of state; Kerry, an avid Obama ally, was passed over. Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, is also a former rival. Yesterday, Obama named Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, another primary challenger, as his pick for commerce secretary.

What's next, Dennis Kucinich as secretary of labor?

If you're too lightweight for this Cabinet, you ought to be tethered.

LEST WE WONDER WHY JESSE JACKSON CRIED WHEN BARACK OBAMA WON:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:16:22 -0500

All Or Nothing (Adrian Kraus, ESPN: ETicket)

In 1958, the University of Buffalo football team won eight of nine regular-season games and was awarded the Lambert Cup as the best small-school program in the eastern United States. Team co-captains Nick Bottini and Lou Reale received the trophy during a Sunday night broadcast of "The Ed Sullivan Show" and dined that evening in Manhattan's famous Toots Shor's Restaurant.

Days later, the Bulls were invited to face Florida State in the 13th annual Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Fla. -- still the school's only bowl bid in 102 years of football.

In anticipation of their trip south, players were measured for new sport coats at The Kleinhans Company in downtown Buffalo. But before fabric for the coats ever was cut, the university learned that the team's two African-American players, starting halfback Willie Evans and reserve defensive end Mike Wilson, were not welcome in Orlando.

The Orlando High School Athletic Association, the Tangerine Bowl Stadium's leaseholder, prohibited blacks and whites from playing together. Despite the protestations of the Orlando Elks Lodge, the bowl game's sponsor, the Bulls would be allowed to participate only if Wilson and Evans did not play.

The university and coach Dick Offenhamer left it to the team to decide whether to accept the bid. The players gathered in a basement room of Clark Gymnasium on the Buffalo campus to take a vote. Bottini and Reale held small paper ballots in their hands, but before they could pass them out, the players spontaneously and unanimously rejected the bid. "We weren't the same team without Willie and Mike," guard Phil Bamford remembers. "Whether they were benchwarmers or stars, we wouldn't have been the same team."

W'S 20/20 VISION AND 50/50 EXECUTION:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:02:27 -0500

God, Man, and the Ballot Box: Why, despite everything, George W. Bush was right about democratization in the Middle East. (Reuel Marc Gerecht, November 24, 2008, The American)

Although the “realists,” who preferred maintaining the authoritarian status quo in the region, still wielded considerable influence, especially in the State Department, the pro-democracy forces had greater momentum—and, in George W. Bush, they had the first American president who believed sincerely in Muslim democracy. For many democracy advocates, Iraq was going to be the great test. Iraqis were supposed to be the most secular of Muslim Arabs, this being perhaps the only positive byproduct of decades of Baathist tyranny. Freed from Saddam’s horrors, thankful Iraqi Arabs might even be able to do the unthinkable: help other Arabs see that there are far worse things in this world than Israelis. [...]

Although critics of the democratization agenda rarely praise Arab dictatorships, they essentially argue that secular autocracies, regardless of their sins, are better than illiberal “Islamic democrats” who hate America and who will either abort or render meaningless future elections once they gain power. In the critics’ view, democracy could easily become a tool of Islamic extremism, rather than an antidote to it. Therefore, we must hold our noses and support, if necessary, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, the West Bank’s Mahmoud Abbas, and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, because après eux, le déluge. In just seven years, we have entered a post-post-9/11 world.

This is a mistake. There is probably no more pressing issue among Middle Eastern Muslims than the increasingly vibrant marriage of Islamism and democracy. Indeed, the coming years will likely see large numbers of Islamists and ordinary Muslims demanding the right to vote. The more one studies Islam’s historic peoples—the Arabs, Iranians, and Turks—the more convinced he becomes that democracy is the only serious, legitimate political ideal on the Muslim horizon, as fundamentalists and Middle Eastern autocrats alike are realizing.

Middle Eastern regimes didn’t amplify their democratic rhetoric in 2004 and 2005 just to appease Washington. It is questionable how much the region’s rulers feared a U.S. administration humbled by Iraq, whose words rarely matched its (punitive) actions. The autocrats were probably more wary of their own populations: the 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon briefly captivated the Middle East, as did the Iraqi national elections a few months earlier.

In the summer of 2007, long after the Bush administration had given up any effort to encourage democracy and protect democratic dissidents in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood released a political platform, the first in its history, designed to help the organization gain ground among the Egyptian people and introduce more philosophical coherence to internal Brotherhood debates about representative government. Slowly but surely it has become the most popular political and cultural force in the country. The publication of its platform indicates that the Brotherhood sees an opportunity to boost its profile in a changing Egyptian political environment— an opportunity that never existed under Gamal Abdel Nasser or Anwar Sadat.

Both American liberals and conservatives, like Middle Eastern autocrats, have been hopeful that the ongoing debate among Muslim fundamentalists about al-Qaeda’s sanguinary zeal—a zeal that has led to far more Muslims being killed than Americans or Israelis—signals the beginning of the end of al-Qaeda’s appeal to the hearts and minds of young Muslims tempted to kill and die for the faith. This hope is probably well founded. A consensus has developed among Arab Muslim fundamentalists that Islamic militants went too far in their embrace of violence in Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Muslims who once condoned the slaughter of innocents as acceptable collateral damage in a righteous cause are now wondering whether God will damn all those who kill believers, even infidels, in his name.

This reconsideration of God, man, and holy war is likely to reinforce fundamentalists’ growing conversation about God, man, and the ballot box. Both discussions revolve around what actions make men and their societies righteous. An increasing number of devout Muslims reckon that democracy is the only means of returning Islamic society to a more virtuous state. Where secular dictatorships have sullied the community’s mores, democracy will aid religion and allow more virtuous men to lead society.

While George W. Bush was quite right about the future of Islam and did much to speed its coming, there are three broad mistakes he made that will have to be corrected as we go forward: (1) he should have gone directly from Baghdad to Damascus--the other Ba'athist regime ought not be tolerated either; (2) he should have used the patriotic yearnings of 9-11 to impose an onerous gas tax in order to help free the region from the curse of oil; and, (3) most difficult of all, he should have recognized that free elections would bring Islamists to power -- Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah -- but that the practice of representative government would moderate them and they are effectively our allies in the Reformation if the Islamic world.

IF WE BECAME DOMINANT WHILE EVERYONE WAS GROWING....

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:47:54 -0500

America Is Not Declining: Demographic and economic trends suggest that the age of American dominance won’t end anytime soon. (Rod Hunter, December 3, 2008, The American)

In Futurecast, economist Robert Shapiro, a founder of the Progressive Policy Institute and now chairman of the consulting firm Sonecon, examines how the relentless forces of demographics and globalization will shape the world of 2020. His analysis suggests that the United States will remain the leading global power. Europe, Japan, and China, meanwhile, have reason to worry.

Demographic trends will have seismic effects on the world’s economies and may even spur domestic conflicts over dwindling resources. Indeed, Shapiro cautions that much of the world is about to confront “the greatest aging of national populations ever seen, along with the smallest relative numbers of working-age people on record.”

In Europe and Japan, where labor forces are already shrinking, fewer workers will have to pay more taxes to support the growing pensioner population, triggering a vicious economic cycle. Workers will have less money to save. That will mean less investment, which will translate into slower productivity growth and sluggish income progress, making it ever harder for the fewer workers to support the pensions of more seniors.

China will face similar challenges. Thanks to its notorious one-child policy, it has the world’s most rapidly aging population: between 2005 and 2020, the number of Chinese aged 65 and over will grow by 65 percent. China does not offer much government support for its elderly, which may lead to unrest, particularly among seniors living in urban centers such as Beijing and Shanghai.

The United States faces a more encouraging demographic future. To be sure, it will need to make adjustments and reform its entitlement programs. But America has maintained higher fertility rates than the countries of Europe and Japan, and its population has been rejuvenated by two generations of high immigration.

...just consider how much more dominant we'll be as the rest decline. Now consider that anyone in those declining states who cares about the future--which is to say, Breeders, Christers, Creationists, etc.--will come here...

MORE:
-ESSAY: The Unique Advantage of the United States (Robert J. Shapiro, June 12, 2008, The Globalist)

THE SKIDS WON'T EVEN BE GREASED:

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:54:34 -0500

Reformists Say President Squandered Oil Cash: Most Iranians complain about high inflation, at over 29 percent, and rising unemployment. (Reuters, December 04, 2008)

"His main campaign slogan was to share oil wealth fairly ... But instead, his economic policies have caused major problems for Iranians, particularly for lower-income people," Mohsen Mirdamadi, the party's secretary-general, told about 400 people at an annual party meeting.

Critics, both reformists and conservatives, including some who backed Ahmadinejad's first presidential bid, say the leader's high spending is to blame for surging inflation that stood at about 11 percent when he took office in 2005.

"Since the (1979 Islamic) revolution, Iran's total oil income has been $700 billion. Over 36 percent of it was earned during the tenure of office by Ahmadinejad," Mirdamadi said. "But inflation and unemployment rates are the highest now."

Mirdamadi said substantial political reform was needed.

"Reforms are the only solution to the economic crisis," Mirdamadi told the audience, which included reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami.

And that money source is a thing of the past, Oil falls to three-year low in Asia (Tamsyn Carlisle, December 04. 2008, The National)

The price of oil has slid towards a four-year low near US$45 a barrel, as US demand continues to tumble amid further deterioration of the world’s biggest economy. [...]

Oil demand has collapsed to such an extent that US petrol prices, net of taxes, have fallen below the cost of crude, so that refiners lose money on every litre of fuel produced.

A good thing for Iran and the other petro states, because: No representation without taxation.

FOR REPUBLICANS, TORTURE IS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE, FOR DEMOCRATS IT'S PERSONAL:

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:05:06 -0500

After Sharp Words on C.I.A., Obama Faces a Delicate Task (MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE, 12/03/08, NY Times)

For two years on the presidential campaign trail, Barack Obama rallied crowds with strongly worded critiques of the Bush administration’s most controversial counterterrorism programs, from hiding terrorism suspects in secret Central Intelligence Agency jails to questioning them with methods he denounced as torture.

Now Mr. Obama must take charge of the C.I.A., in what is already proving to be one of the more treacherous patches of his transition to the White House. [...]

[E]ven some senior Democratic lawmakers who are vehement critics of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies seemed reluctant in recent interviews to commit the new administration to following the Army Field Manual in all cases.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who will take over as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, led the fight this year to force the C.I.A. to follow military interrogation rules. Her bill was passed by Congress but vetoed by President Bush.

But in an interview on Tuesday, Mrs. Feinstein indicated that extreme cases might call for flexibility. “I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible,” she said, raising the possibility that an imminent terrorist threat might require special measures.

It doesn't matter what terrorists know, it matters whether W or the UR is the one finding it out. Exquisite.

WHEREAS, IN ALL OF EUROPE ONLY ONE GUY CAN THROW OVERHAND... (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:35:03 -0500

Knuckleballer Yoshida, 16, signs with new Japan independent league (Associated Press, December 2, 2008)

A 16-year-old Japanese girl signed with a regional baseball team Tuesday, becoming the country's first female professional baseball player.

Eri Yoshida, a knuckleball pitcher, will play for the Kobe 9 Cruise in a new independent league starting in April 2009.

HELPS WHEN W'S GOT YOUR BACK:

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:22:13 -0500

US sets stage for strikes if Pak does not act (Chidanand Rajghatta, 12/03/08, Times of India)

The United States has set the stage for punitive internationally-backed strikes by India against terrorist camps in Pakistan, if Islamabad does not act first to dismantle them, by rejecting President Zardari’s alibi that non-state actors were responsible for the last week’s carnage in Mumbai.

The game-changer, outlined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, robs Islamabad of the fig leaf that Zardari used in his interview on Larry King Live that ''stateless actors'' are holding the whole world hostage and Pakistan was not to blame. Rice said in effect that the excuse does not absolve Pakistan responsibility for terrorist acts that originate from its territory. [...]

The Indian Embassy said later that ''unequivocal condemnation of the (Mumbai) incident and the need for the perpetrators to be held accountable was reiterated,'' at the meetings. It was also indicated that there would be full cooperation and support at various levels, including government, from the US to India as it dealt with the consequences of the incident, it added.

From all accounts, India too appears to be preparing ground for punitive action if Pakistan fails to respond and act adequately.

45:

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:18:31 -0500

Jeb Bush's bid for Senate could clear GOP field (Brendan Farrington, 12/03/08, Associated Press)

Still popular in Florida, former Gov. Jeb Bush said Wednesday that he's interested in the seat Sen. Mel Martinez is giving up, and the field of possible candidates could quickly narrow to make way for the president's younger brother.

Bush, 55, won praise from Democrats and Republicans alike for leading the state through eight hurricanes over a two-year period. He used standardized testing to overhaul the education system, was credited with making government more efficient and lowered taxes to make Florida more business-friendly. [...]

"I hope that Gov. Bush gets in the race. In my personal opinion, he understands public policy better than any other potential candidate looking at that race, by far," said former state House Speaker Allan Bense, who was contemplating his own bid. Bense said he would not run if Bush entered. "It would clear the Republican field, I'm sure."

He's an articulate W or Bill Clinton with his pants on, depending on your view--either makes him formidable.

IT'S NOT JUST THAT HE'S WET ON ABORTION...:

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:13:12 -0500

The RNC Chairman's Race: Updated Handicapping (Marc Ambinder, 03 Dec 2008, The Atlantic)

Who will Sarah Palin endorse for RNC chair? Who's the Palin candidate? Saxby Chambliss's victory has certified the Palin wing of the party as the center of its gravity -- at least, that's how the GOP seems to be treating things. If Chambliss's words are indicative of GOP thinking, Republican activists and conservatives, then Palin must have a pretty tight grip.

The answer to the question is that Palin hasn't endorsed an RNC candidate, and her political advisers aren't saying whether she will. [...]

[Michael] Steele is the semi-celebrity candidate, owing to his Fox News contributorship, his Senate race, and his chairmanship of GOPAC. He's enlisted several prominent GOP consultants, including former RNC political director Blaise Hazelwood and media strategist Curt Anderson, to help his bid. There's a little bit of vendor envy between the Duncan factions and the Steele factions. Steele's biggest demerit isn't his past murkiness on abortion; it's his endorsement of the centrist Republican Leadership Council, a bugbear to party conservatives.

Steele is the best communicator of the bunch, although Dawson, Duncan and Anuzis have all been given informal tryouts on Fox News. He's got the clearest message; being black, he understands explicitly what the party has to do to expand its base without compromising its principals. Anuzis argues that Republicans need a tonal adjustment; what works for a Republican in Michigan isn't going to be what works for a Republican in Mississippi. He's also pushing technology and transparency. Duncan touts his fundraising successes and his knowledge of the party. On the other hand, he's definitely not the change candidate.

...but that he thinks the Reagan amnesty was wrong and opposes the next. Being anti-Latino is no way to return to governance.