On Thursday, a suicide car bomber hit a truck carrying Frontier Constabulary troops through a crowded area of Mingora, killing 19 soldiers and a civilian, and wounding 35.

The devastating attack underlined the worsening security situation in Pakistan, particularly in the conservative region near the border with Afghanistan where militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida increasingly hold sway. The rise of militancy in the region has shaken the authority of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in its war on terror. ~AP

Andy McCarthy throws a fit:

Can someone explain to me what is “conservative” about a revolutionary movement that seeks, by mass-murder, to overthrow the established order and set up a tyrannical sharia state?

First of all, McCarthy has read something that isn’t in the story.  The story refers to the “conservative region near the border with Afghanistan.”  As those even a little familiar with these Pashtun borderlands know, the society there is very conservative, certainly by the standards of local tribal customary practice and religion.  According to their traditions, they are the conservatives in Pakistan.  The story was not even describing the Taliban or Al Qaeda.  It was describing the region.  Perhaps McCarthy might argue that its customary conservatism or lack of it is irrelevant to the story and should not have been included, but a good argument can be made that it is precisely this local traditionalism and adherence to patterns of loyalty that take priority over ties to the state that make this region such a valuable area in which pro-Taliban and Al Qaida forces can operate.  Interestingly, later versions of the story have eliminated the designation “conservative” from the relevant sentence, though they have applied it to another, neighbouring region.

Another blow to the imagined Giuliani-Huckabee juggernaut: Club for Growth President Pat Toomey draws a line in the sand and declares Huckabee totally unacceptable as a veep nominee.  So a certain claim that Huckabee was “acceptable to all factions” wasn’t strictly accurate. 

It must be gratifying for the head of an organisation that doesn’t actually win many primary contests to throw its weight about in the ’08 race.  Who knows?  This may have some significant impact.  The spectacle of leading fiscal conservatives declaring Huckabee to be the political equivalent of a leper while the social conservatives hem and haw over whether or not they will actually reject Giuliani is an object lesson in the real priorities of the GOP and the conservative coalition.  When push comes to shove, keeping taxes down is a lot more important than protecting life, and the people who are concerned about the latter are supposed to suffer being ignored meekly and put up no resistance.  If you have ever raised tax once, even if it was to repair what were once Arkansas’ decrepit highways (and as someone who used to have to drive on them every year, let me tell you, they used to be really bad), you are an outcast.  That this gets everything entirely backwards with respect to the relative electoral strength of the different factions within the GOP is obvious: the social-cons bring in a lot more voters and put up with a lot more deviations from their preferred positions than economic conservatives ever have. 

Yet, not surprisingly, the party of corporations and the moneyed interest will sooner pay attention to the econo-cons and tell social conservatives to be quiet and play nice.  This may be the cycle when social conservatives have finally had enough.  Time will tell.

While catching up with my Rasmussen polling news, I came across an interesting July survey figure: 60% of Americans have a favourable opinion of Israel, and 26% have an unfavourable opinion.  The crosstabs of that survey offer some interesting data on where public support for Israel comes from.

More Republicans tend to have a favourable view (68%) than Democrats (58%).  That’s not so surprising.  Some big differences emerge between generations among men.  71% of men 40+ have a favourable view, compared with only 51% of men under 40.  Among women, favourable opinion of Israel is roughly the same: 53% for women 40+ and 56% for women under 40.  The groups with the highest unfavourable rating are 18-29 year olds at 35% vs. 55% favourable and 30-39 year olds at 32%.  Fav/Unfav ratings track income level pretty closely, so that among the lowest income groups unfavs are high (e.g., 38% among those earning less than $20K) and quite low among the wealthiest (12% among $100K+ earners).

The crosstabs (sorry, subscription only) on the latest (10/23) Rasmussen survey of likely GOP New Hampshire voters show a few interesting things.  Rasmussen has a pretty good reputation for accuracy when it comes to predicting the actual outcomes, so their data are worth considering seriously. 

First of all, the overall numbers: Romney 28%, Giuliani 19%, McCain 16%, Huckabee 10%, Thompson 6%, Paul 3% and Hunter and Tancredo at 2% apiece.  14% remain unsure.  That theoretically makes it a pretty wide-open race.  Almost any candidate could break through and pick up one of the top three slots, but he would need to start making his move now.  The primary is just a little over two months away, and could conceivably could be moved closer. 

Bizarrely, McCain performs best among 18-29 year olds (28%).  In that same age group, Romney follows with 18% (significantly underperforming his overall numbers) and Hunter with a surprising 8%.  Giuliani straggles along with 6% with everyone else tied at 4%.  Why on earth McCain would generate so much excitement among young voters, I truly cannot imagine. 

Romney receives pretty even levels of support in the high twenties from all other age groups, and Giuliani receives his stronger support (25%) from the 40-49 year olds while scoring in the high teens and low twenties with the rest.  McCain’s next-best age group is the 65+ group (20%), scoring in the low and mid-teens with everyone else.  Huckabee does best among 30-39 year olds (12%).  Paul receives roughly the same low level of support from all age groups.   

Sickeningly, Romney and Giuliani have a 83% and 78% favourable ratings among those who identify as conservatives.  In this, they do much better than the others. 

On the war, typically, two-thirds support staying “until the mission is complete” and 32% support some form of withdrawal, either within one year (24%) or immediately (8%).  Perhaps not surprisingly, women voters are more inclined towards withdrawal (37%).  18-29 year olds are most in favour of withdrawal (41%), while the strongest supporters of staying in Iraq are the 50-64 year olds (70%).  In a divided field of hawks, it’s conceivable that Paul could bring in at least two-thirds of the withdrawal vote and place a respectable second.  But it isn’t happening yet.

Part of that is the irrational preferences of many of the withdrawal voters: 31% of Giuliani supporters favour withdrawal now or within a year; 25% of McCain supporters favour the same; 32% of Romney voters support withdrawal; 21% of Huckabee’s take the same view.  For many of these likely voters, their preferred candidate’s position on the war seems to have no relation to their support.

Thompson has accomplished something once thought impossible—he now has higher negative ratings among Republican Primary Voters than McCain. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of those likely to vote in New Hampshire’s primary have an unfavorable opinion of the former Tennessee Senator. ~Rasmussen Reports

So his victory in New Hampshire is looking a little less probable.  I should stop making campaign predictions.  Failing that, candidates should pay me not to predict their future victories.

”It’s not my mission in life to prove to anybody how hungry I am,” he [Thompson] said during an interview in a dark-windowed SUV on his way to the Zachariah fundraiser. “This is not a pie-eating contest.” ~The Miami Herald

Apparently his four or five-minute speech last week didn’t impress too many people.

Charles Kesler wrote:

[T]he GOP has its own looming problem. Sticking with the surge buys time but little else. What comes after the surge? The answer is the 2008 elections, which the party will lose, and deserve to lose, if it doesn’t separate itself from the administration’s stand-pat case for the war…. Conservatives have to prove that they can reason their way to an improved policy on Iraq, as on other issues. And they need to do so soon, before the primaries are over effectively in February or March.

Wehner at Commentary‘s Contentions blog responds:

Professor Kesler insists that “sticking with the surge buys time but little else.” But how does he know?

Most of Wehner’s post is a detailed demonstration that he doesn’t actually understand what Kesler meant by this.  When Kesler refers to “time,” Wehner takes him quite literally, as if the time being “bought” were somehow separate from improved security.  He takes him so painfully literally that you have to wonder whether this is another exercise in the new Contentions blogging habit of deliberately misconstruing others’ statements and then reacting vehemently against the falsified version that the Contentions blogger created out of thin air.  

I imagine that Prof. Kesler knows this because “buying time”–for political reconciliation, training of Iraqi security forces and reconstruction–through moderately improved security was the entire rationale of the “surge.”  If there are some additional benefits arising from the “surge,” they were unexpected and unintended.  (If unrelated things happened, such as the Anbar Awakening, that’s all very well, but is something quite distinct.)  Buying time was the goal of the “surge.” 

In other words, even if you credit that the “surge” has succeeded, you have to have something with which you can follow the “surge,” because the “surge” was necessarily a temporary, stopgap measure designed to shore up a deteriorating situation.  Improved security (the “calmer and safer nation” bit of Wehner’s response) is the temporary benefit that is what actually buys time.  Because the improvements are going to be temporary, the time that has been purchased at great price needs to be used constructively and wisely.  What is the standard response to this?  It is: the “surge” is working!

Wehner then thinks that he has somehow undermined Kesler by saying that the latter probably did not anticipate the Anbar Awakening, but then essentially no one in America anticipated this “Awakening,” which was why it was especially remarkable.  He then demonstrates that he doesn’t know what the word strategy means:

But of course the administration does not have a “stand-pat” policy; the Petraeus strategy is a significant break with the Rumsfeld-Sanchez-Abizaid-Casey strategy that preceded it.

He is referring to plans of tactical deployments and operations.  He is not referring to different strategies.  His response is a perfect embodiment of what Prof. Kesler calls the “stand-pat case for war” and a good example of the kind of thinking that will sink the GOP come next year.

For something completely different, here is Satrangi Re from Dil Se, the most romantic suicide bomber movie you’re likely to see.

Barack, on the other hand, did not, and he did it at a time when it was very risky for him in the midst of a highly contested U.S. Senate primary, to stand up and tell the truth about what he saw and what he felt would be a disastrous consequence. ~Michelle Obama

Yes, it takes a lot of guts to run on an antiwar platform in Illinois, where the war was always an unpopular idea, in a Democratic primary.  As a recent AP story said:

Still, he was never too far out on a limb:

_ Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois voted against Bush on Iraq in 2002 and breezed to re-election shortly after Obama’s signature speech.

_The Chicago Sun-Times published an October 2002 poll under the headline “Illinois is not ready for war.”

The survey found that more than half of voters in the Democratic-leaning state wanted more proof that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction before the United States waged war.

Iraq wasn’t a major issue in the race, according to several Illinois political observers.

“What he was saying in October 2002 — and this takes nothing away from him; he’s a very impressive guy — was not a risky thing,” said Chris Mooney, political science professor at the University of Illinois in Springfield.

“Not risky at all.”

So where does that leave Obama?  If he’s actually inexperienced, and he’s not a great political risk-taker and he’s never been tested in a serious general election fight against stiff Republican competition, what does he have to offer?  I mean, really, what is there?

Even Obama’s wife will not speak directly about She Who Must Not Be Named:

You’ve got a number of the candidates [bold mine-DL] who went with conventional wisdom, and in the face of the evidence that was before them, they took the easy route, they voted for what felt like a popular war.

Now, it’s true that there are a “number of candidates” in the Democratic field who voted for the war.  There’s really only one of them today (Edwards having virtually covered himself in sackcloth and ashes over his vote) that poses a serious problem for Obama.  And he and his campaign literally will not say who that candidate is.  In case all this indirect, subtle hinting has made you forget, it’s Clinton.