Former U.N. Ambassador and dark horse GOP presidential candidate John Bolton recently talked to Fox News and offered an accurate and useful historical parallel to the threat of ISIS transforming into the Islamic State:
BOLTON: “The first thing you’ve got to do is recognize the threat and understand its nature and decide what your objective is. The president says he’s opposed to all of what he calls violent extremism rather than Islamic terrorism, but let’s just take the example of ISIS. He says our objective is to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS. Well, ultimately is a long time away and degrading it you can do by bits and pieces or you can get serious about it. The problem is the statement of the president’s objective is wrong. Again, to return to the post World War I analogy, Churchill said about the Russian revolution, we should have strangled bolshevism in its cradle. That’s what our strategy should be before ISIS really does create viable Islamic state out of what used to be Syria and Iraq, before Boko Haram takes over huge territory in northern Africa, before Yemen becomes a base to attack the oil producing monarchies on the Arabian Peninsula. We need American leadership here to help the Arab states and other friendly countries in the region defend themselves against this threat, and right now we are not providing any leadership at all. If we don’t define the objective you can hardly have a strategy.
Barack Obama really is the second coming of FDR. Just as we have our grandparents’ Democratic Party and the New Dealers to blame for enabling the rise of a Soviet slave state that led to decades of war and paranoia, we have today’s Democrats and Obamacarecrats, too busy planning their middle class cheap healthcare utopia to notice as new genocidal regimes plot global conquest.
Yesterday, PJ’s co-founder and cherished editor emeritus Roger L. Simon highlighted a new poll at the Drudge Report, and noted the clear front runner:
Yes, it is waaaay early and, yes, it is an online poll, subject to all sorts of fudging, but the presidential poll being run by Matt Drudge at his website may have more to tell us about the state of the Republican presidential nomination race then many are going to want to admit.
First, Scott Walker, drawing an incredible 47% in a field of 13 candidates, no one within 33 points of him, is turning into a true front runner, with all that entails, good and bad. Second, the likes of Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Rick Perry, Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee, and (amazingly) Chris Christie are all doing dreadfully, polling around a piddling one percent of the vote. Palin, Rubio and (again surprisingly — or maybe not) Jeb Bush are not doing a whole heckuva lot. Bush is the best of the lot at a pathetic five percent — and he surely doesn’t suffer from lack of name recognition.
Here’s the poll results as of today:
In the past I’ve been skeptical of Walker, mainly because he’s such a question mark on foreign policy and the only motions I’ve seen so far on it haven’t been encouraging: the early endorsement last year of stealth Jihadist Grover Norquist, one of the most malignant influences on the Republican Party and the Conservative movement for decades.
I’m essentially looking for the Republican governor who looks like he’d have the most ideological seriousness about shrinking the federal government and the best political skills to actually accomplish some of it. (And who would embrace a John Bolton approach to foreign policy and a mostly quiet social policy that appeases social conservatives without riling up secularists and centrists by sounding like a Santorum-style theocrat.) While I’m still sympathetic to Indiana Governor and fellow Hoosier Mike Pence as a potential contender, unfortunately Walker may have the stronger record at defeating destructive political movements. Who among the GOP governors best understands the postmodern Marxists who call themselves “liberals” and have conquered today’s Democratic Party?
Rush Limbaugh made a compelling case for Walker yesterday, arguing that the Wisconsin governor has proven that he knows how to defeat the Left:
“Here’s a guy who’s won 3 elections in 4 years in a blue state. He has neutered the employee’s union, the teacher’s union, he’s got the support of the majority of people in Wisconsin…”
Walker seems to fit the bill so far provided he clearly takes a hawkish, Churchillian, Reaganite, Peace-Through-Strength approach — which Bolton would bring to the ticket.
Who has a better idea for 2016? Who do you want?
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