I have a Republican friend – semi-retired from the political business – who frequently notes that the GOP has never had a reckoning with the Iraq War, no process akin to the years long angst and struggle the Democrats had over the decision-making and consequences of the Vietnam War. Last week it seemed like that long delayed process was coming about suddenly – hinged around the fumbling candidacy of former President Bush’s brother and his own efforts to come up with a position on the war. But we can see from yesterday that it won’t be nearly that easy or so quick.
In case you missed it yesterday, the Iraq War watershed seems to still be shedding. We noted last week that Marco Rubio, in seeming to shift gears to say the Iraq War was a mistake, relied on President Bush supposedly saying the same thing when in fact Bush hadn’t. That was a good sign Rubio is still trying to have it both ways; and he stumbled again on the question on the Fox Sunday show yesterday. Read the transcript.
Among the items that President Obama’s new ban on military equipment for police includes:
- armored vehicles on tracks
- weaponized aircraft or vehicles
- firearms or ammunition of .50-caliber or higher
- grenade launchers
- bayonets
- camouflage uniforms
More on the ban here.
Ambassador Joseph Wilson at TPMCafe: Jeb Bush “failed the most basic foreign policy test of his candidacy.”
My favorite part of the latest installment in the Jade Helm hysteria is that Keesler Air Force Base is located smack dab in the middle of Biloxi, so if the military wanted to impose martial law it wouldn’t need to sneak in under the guise of using an abandoned casino and closed school for “training.”
There are so many things going on here: one is the deep, unresolved specter of the Iraq War looming over the Republican party, notwithstanding what seemed like a rapid fire consensus last week that it was a bad idea; another is the fact that Marco Rubio just doesn’t seem like the most cognitively dexterous contender for the Republican nomination. Whatever it is, after seeming to come down on the side of ‘knowing what we know now, it was a mistake’ side of the equation, Rubio went back to the other side of the debate and then stumbled and then got miffed when Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace grilled him on his flip-flop and then apparent re-flip live on this morning’s show.
Bruce Bartlett is a conservative economist and policy hand (very much out of the supply-side and monetarist movement) who I think still considers himself and by rights is a conservative but at this point in his life is very much a dissident and critic of American conservatism. He just published this article ‘How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics.’
Here’s the abstract …
Two married WNBA stars, Brittney Griner and Glory Johnson, have each received seven game suspensions – the league’s longest ban in its history – for a domestic violence incident last month.
