Monday Wake Up Call – December 5, 2016

We’ve entered uncharted territory. Trump had a phone call with the president of Taiwan. Why is that such an issue? Presidents speak to other world leaders all the time, but American presidents have not spoken to the president of Taiwan since 1979. This studied form of non-recognition is at the core of the One-China Policy.

That policy states that there is only one state called “China”, despite the existence of two governments claiming to be China. This diplomatic dance works precisely because everybody agrees to abide by rules that don’t make complete sense.

We learned from experience in Korea and Vietnam, where we acted with hostility to both “two country” standoffs between a communist and a non-communist government. We learned, and then changed the game when it came to the two Chinas. That is, until President-Elect Trump was lured into the Taiwan call by his advisors, John Bolton and Stephen Yates. This from the Guardian: (strike out and brackets by the Wrongologist)

Bolton wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January: “The new US administration could start with receiving Taiwanese diplomats officially at the State Department; upgrading the status of US representation in Taipei from a private ‘institute’ to an official diplomatic mission; inviting Taiwan’s president to travel officially to America; allowing the most senior US officials to visit Taiwan to transact government business; and ultimately restoring full diplomatic recognition.”

Stephen Yates, a former White House aide to Dick Cheney now advising the Trump transition was in Taiwan at the time of [Trump’s] the call. “It’s great to have a leader willing to ignore those who say he cannot take a simple call from another democratically elected leader,” Yates tweeted.

China reacted by saying Trump needs to be educated about the world. Scott Adams, Trump butt-boy, puts it in about the most favorable light possible:

Trump is “setting the table” for future negotiations with China. He just subtracted something from China’s brand that they value, and later he will negotiate with them to maybe give it back in some fashion. Probably in return for some trade concessions.

It didn’t end there. Trump apparently has invited Philippine President Duterte to the White House. Figuring out how to resolve Duterte’s issues with the US, his embrace of China, and his demonstrated abuse of human rights in the Philippines should be high on the new administration’s list of issues. It would have been smart to have the outline of an agreed joint solution in place before rewarding Duterte with a state visit.

And there was Trump’s phone call with the Prime Minister of Pakistan. According to the Pakistani account of the conversation, Trump told Nawaz Sharif that Pakistan is a “fantastic” country full of “fantastic” people that he “would love” to visit as president.

Just awesome, except for Trump ignoring that India, our real partner in that part of Asia, is Pakistan’s enemy. Trump risks appearing to reward Pakistan at the expense of our relationship with India. Again, the US has maintained a balancing act between these two countries, who have a history of war and skirmishes over their disputed border.

The jury is out on what Trump is trying to do, and whether it is based on strategy, or ideology. Speaking with Taiwan’s and Pakistan’s leaders are potentially dangerous moves, as is his engagement with Duterte.

They are also potentially revolutionary. Every out-of-the-box move by Trump challenges norms and potentially blows up longstanding ways of doing things. If you are gonna shake things up, it’s all-important that you understand exactly why we have done things the way we have, and what the implications are of change. We know Trump is an instinctive guy, and not a willing student. The danger is his willingness to overturn complex situations where governmental institutions have had very good reasons for the policy they support.

This is the dark underbelly of Trump’s populism. He was elected to shake things up by voters who dismiss facts, if presented by journalists.

You start by discrediting what came before. You call it elite failure. You shake things up because you can.

Time to wake up, America! Think about Michael Moore’s calling Trump a human Molotov cocktail on NBC’s “Meet the Press”:

Across the Midwest, across the Rustbelt, I understand why a lot of people are angry. And they see Donald Trump as their human Molotov cocktail…I think they love the idea of blowing up the system.

So, let’s wake up today with the Billy Joel song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. The lyrics to this song catalog both personalities and historic events from 1949 until 1989:

We didn’t start Trump’s fire, but get ready, we may very well have to put it out.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sample lyrics:
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

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Iran: WMD 2.0?

The Republicans job of whipping up support to override an Obama veto of the bill to kill the Iran deal got tougher since Kerry just secured limited support for the deal from the Gulf States. The NYT reports that Khalid al-Attiyah, the foreign minister of Qatar, who hosted the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said:

This was the best option among other options…We are confident that what they undertook makes this region safer and more stable.

With that, most Democrats who are on the fence will likely be convinced to support the deal.

Republicans should be convinced as well, but most won’t be. However, one Republican, Pat Buchanan, thinks they are wrong:

It appears that Hill Republicans will be near unanimous in voting a resolution of rejection of the Iran nuclear deal. They will then vote to override President Obama’s veto of their resolution…

Buchanan goes on to say that, if Republicans override the veto, the US will vote in the UN Security Council to lift sanctions, along with the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, and:

A…vote to kill the Iran deal would thus leave the US isolated, its government humiliated, unable to comply with the pledges its own secretary of state negotiated. Would Americans cheer the GOP for leaving the United States with egg all over its face?

And if Congress refuses to honor the agreement, but Iran complies with all its terms, who among our friends and allies would stand with an obdurate America then? Israel would applaud, the Saudis perhaps, but who else?

Now, it seems that applause will not include the Gulf States. Here’s Buchanan’s money quote:

And how is Israel, with hundreds of atom bombs, mortally imperiled by a deal that leaves Iran with not a single ounce of bomb-grade uranium?

Word. Another Republican, David Stockman, (former OMB Director for Reagan) had this to say about the deal and its Republican support: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Indeed, it was the same crowd of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith et.al. [who]…falsified the WMD claims against Saddam Hussein, [and] have been beating the war drums so loudly about the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Stockman concludes: (emphasis by Stockman)

So it needs to be shouted from the rafters at the outset that all the arm-waving and screeching against this deal by the GOP war-mongers and the Israeli lobby is grounded in a Big Lie. The whole Iran-is-after-the-bomb narrative is just WMD 2.0.

Finally, some clear thinking by a few Republicans on Iran.

The Iraq War was one of the most important and damaging episodes in the history of US foreign policy. And everyone remembers that the war was based on a lie, and that the lie was brought to you by Republicans.

Can Republicans explain why their demand for total capitulation by Iran is so well-suited to creating a winning position for the West? How can these Republicans pretend that nothing has happened over the last 15 years that throws their neo-con, chicken-hawk worldview into question?

It’s fair to ask Republicans who championed the Iraq War to explain the differences between the Iraq WMD debacle and the current situation in Iran. If they are compelled to debate why we should bomb or invade, and how that outcome would be any better than it was in Iraq, the debate over the Iran nuclear deal might turn out not to be much of a debate at all.

Sadly, most Republicans are not thinking clearly regarding Israel vs. Iran. In April, the Wrongologist reported on a Bloomberg poll showing that Republicans think that “patriotism” doesn’t mean they must support America’s interests first when it comes to Israel. From Bloomberg:

Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the US should support Israel even when its stance diverges with American interests…Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.

American Republicans said that Israel comes first by a 67/30 margin.

Learn from that, and don’t vote for ANY candidate who says that Israel’s needs come first in the debate about the Iran deal.

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Is a Mob at The Gates?

There is an idea deep in the American psyche that there always is “a mob at the gates”. The mob wants in so that they can take advantage of the good things we have, or they want to lay waste to our culture and way of life. Therefore, we must be vigilant, because our innocence and openness makes us vulnerable to exploitation or infection from outside. This is well-documented in Robert Reich’s 1986 book, Tales of a New America.

We have a history of fearing and demonizing the “others”. It has been a strong weapon in hands of America’s conservatives. In the 1950’s we were visited by McCarthyism. In the early 1950s, conservatives were deeply frightened by Communism’s advances overseas (communists were ruthless and Godless!). By hunting alleged communists in the State Department, suggesting that the real threat lay not overseas but at home, Joseph McCarthy played brilliantly to those fears.

Sadly, the McCarthy period wasn’t the first time in American history that we demonized outsiders who we thought were trying to climb inside the gates. When they tried to get in, we attacked people from their homeland who were already here. We had slavery, followed by Jim Crow. Hyper-nationalists went after German-Americans during World War I, and we rounded up Japanese-Americans during World War II. After McCarthy was discredited, cultural conservatives moved on to “protect” America against supposed internal threats from black militancy, feminism, and the gay-rights movement.

After 9/11, President Bush defended Islam. He called Islam “a faith based upon love, not hate,” and even visited a mosque. In a Presidential debate with Al Gore, Bush condemned the fact that “Arab-Americans are racially profiled.”

But today, would-be Republican presidential candidates are turning on Muslim-Americans. From Peter Bienart in the Atlantic:

In January, the Republican presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal argued that “it is completely reasonable for [Western] nations to discriminate” against Muslims in their immigration policies, on the grounds that radical Islamists “want to destroy their culture.”

In February…Mike Huckabee, declared, “Everything [President Obama] does is against what Christians stand for, and he’s against the Jews in Israel. The one group of people that can know they have his undying, unfailing support would be the Muslim community.”

In March, after New York City announced that public schools would close for two Muslim holidays, Todd Starnes, a Fox News contributor, lamented, “The Islamic faith is being given accommodation and the Christian faith and other religious faiths are being marginalized.”

In fact, Bienart thinks that if George W. Bush were seeking the Republican presidential nomination today, he’d be excoriated for his view of Islam. Why are Republicans more hostile to Muslims and Islam today than they were after 9/11? And why are American Muslims, who in 2000 mostly voted Republican, replacing gays and feminists as the right’s chief culture-war foe?

Could there be a new McCarthyism emerging in the Republican Party?

A 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center found that Republicans were 31 percentage points more likely than Democrats to be “very concerned” about the threat of “Islamic extremism” around the world, and were 25 percentage points more likely to be concerned about Islamic terrorism in the US.

Most conservatives are happy to bomb ISIS or drone the Taliban, but many have lost the appetite for American boots on the ground against Islamic terrorists. And by reconceiving the Islamist danger as a domestic problem, (exactly as McCarthy did with Communism in the 1950’s), conservatives can now appear to fight it ferociously, without having to invade yet another Arab country.

Republicans all across the US have warned that Sharia might be adopted in parts of the US, and that American Christians might thus be subjected to Muslim law. Bobby Jindal said (falsely) that Muslims have established “no-go” zones for non-Muslims in some neighborhoods in Europe, with the implication that they might do the same in the US.

Muslims make up only 1% of the US population. They are not marching in the streets. For the most part, they constitute a small, culturally conservative minority that wants little more than to be left alone. They don’t have the numbers to punish Republicans at the ballot box for demonizing them.

For the rest of us, that makes the immorality of the Republican’s position clear.

Promoting Islamophobia is unlikely to hurt the GOP politically, and it will help them with their base. The February and March 2016 primaries are predominantly in southern states, where Islam is more reviled than elsewhere in the country.

So, look for the rhetoric on culture war issues, including the threat allegedly posed by Muslim-Americans to become even more outrageous in 2016, as Republicans launch their new McCarthyism against the mob both inside, and outside our gates.

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Friday Music Break – April 17, 2015

A new Bloomberg poll indicates that Republicans think that “patriotism” doesn’t mean we should support America’s interests first when it comes to Israel. From Bloomberg:

Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the US should support Israel even when its stances diverge with American interests…Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.

Let’s focus on that again. The poll asks: Given the choice of agreeing with the view that “Israel is an ally, but we should pursue America’s interests when we disagree with them [Israel]” or, alternatively, “Israel is an important ally, the only democracy in the region, and we should support it even if our interests diverge”, Republicans said that Israel comes first by a 67/30 margin.

OK, this shows that we now have evidence that “patriotism” now means something different to Republicans. As Ed Kilgore says:

You can have all sorts of disagreements over what constitutes your country’s interests, of course. But flatly asserting they should be subordinated to another country’s interests is hard to accept from people who have a bad habit of thinking of themselves as the only real Americans.

Maybe Bloomberg’s use of the word “support” in the question created some ambiguity, but that can’t account for the result that 2/3 of Repubs think we should support Israel’s interests over our own.

So if Republicans say we should put the interests of a democratic state located 10,000 miles away, one that is edging up to apartheid as national policy, ahead of the interests of our country, well, that’s that. It’s the new patriotism.

For Republicans, our interests simply can’t diverge from Israel’s. To them, that’s an ontological impossibility, like God making a rock he can’t lift, or Jesus helping the poor.

Aren’t Republicans our flag-waving hyper-patriots? Those who say “love it or leave it”?

Israel is a major ally. One that most Americans support, but since when do patriotic Americans believe that our government should put the interests of a foreign country above the interests of our own?

That used to be called treason.

Unless there is something wrong with the Bloomberg poll, what Republicans believe means we are facing huge trouble domestically. We may be seeing a three thousand mile wide Yugoslavia in the making.

On to music. In recognition of the Israel First Republicans, here is a plea for them to come back, and believe in America again. Let’s watch Journey’s, “Don’t Stop Believing”, from a 2006 live concert in Houston:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video on YouTube here.

Hard to believe that The Sopranos ended 8 years ago.

See you on Sunday.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 11, 2015

Big week. Another black man killed, Hillary announces to no one’s surprise, the anti-Iran deal resistance cranks it up a notch and a Cuban handshake for Mr. Obama.

Let’s start with the cop-involved killing in North Charleston SC. Two memes that appear every time a cop kills an unarmed black man are “one bad apple” and “the victim probably deserved it”. Let’s unpack this: The knee jerk response in some quarters is that since there are so many good cops, and so few bad ones, that the cops who kill merit the benefit of the doubt, particularly when the shooters say they were in fear for their lives. No need to look at a systemic problem in policing.

The second is the steady drip of “facts” that amount to character assassination of the already-dead victim. They had a record, they were late with family support payments, they resisted, or they made a sudden move. Or, a cascade of other facts that indicate the victims were no saints.

But, none of these things merit vigilante justice.

It’ll always be “one bad apple” but that bad apple will most often be a white cop killing a black man. It’ll always be “maybe the victim deserved it”, and it will most often be a black victim who deserved it.

Here is the value of video:

COW Cop Violence

“Comply or die” is the state of the art in policing:

COW Hands Up 2

Republicans want Iran deal to go away. Obama too:

COW No Framework

Chicken Hawks count noses on Iran:

COW War on Iran

 

Iran hears a familiar song and dance:

 

COW Iran Inspector

SS Hillary launches:

COW Hillary Launch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2008, Barack Obama wrapped up the delegates he needed to be the Democratic nominee at a shockingly early point in the campaign. Even a very strong finish by Hillary Clinton did nothing to improve her chances. She was finished before she knew what hit her.

She learned a huge lesson. This time, getting the nomination seems more inevitable, but she’s out of the gate early.

Given the lack of bench strength in the Democratic Party, it’s no wonder that the New Republic worries that she is a single point of failure for Dems.

What could go wrong?

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Sen. Cotton Must Bone Up on Strategy

“Empires are lost when inadequate men become leaders and wage war for base reasons or no reason at all.”Sun Tzu

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) Cotton accused President Obama of a “false choice” between his framework deal on Iran’s nuclear program and war. He then downplayed what would happen if we just bombed Iran: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox. Several days of air and naval bombing against Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction facilities for exactly the same kind of behavior. For interfering with weapons inspectors and for disobeying Security Council resolutions. All we’re asking is that the president simply be as tough in the protection of America’s national security interest as Bill Clinton was.

Who cares what the generals, intelligence analysts and foreign policy experts think after war gaming various scenarios for a war with Iran? Hint: it’s not a pretty outcome.

But, for Sen. Cotton, the only opinion that really matters is Sen. Cotton’s, America’s new military strategist. Sen. Cotton was elected in part because of his prior military service, having served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He left the military in 2013. Sadly, not everyone who was in combat while serving is a strategic thinker. Given his military experience, he should know that geopolitics is not a Hollywood movie.

This guy has a romantic vision of how a “quick war” would proceed. He says it would be a few days of air and naval bombing against Iran’s nuclear facilities. He apparently thinks that Iran would not move against American shipping in the Gulf, against Israel, or even attempt to take out our military in the ME. And our allies? Who would support us, except Israel and Saudi Arabia? And once the party is over, and Iran dusts off and picks up the pieces, they would surely build nuclear weapons. Wouldn’t we then have to bomb them again?

Wouldn’t that make the US a pariah state?

This reminds us that Republicans, in their eagerness for war, often diminish the costs to America of pursuing the military option. Yep, only a four day war, and then we declare victory! Or, longer, and messier, and then what? Consider this:

• “We will be greeted as liberators”
• “Oil revenues will pay for it”
• “There is no insurgency”
• “The insurgency is in its last throes”

It was 12 years ago that pundits and politicians were touting how fast and cheaply we could turn Iraq into a model democracy. Well, the results are in, but they apparently haven’t registered for Sen. Cotton, who needs to come up with some new and better neo-con talking points.

The neo-cons, the hawks and their spokespersons, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have rarely met an international issue that doesn’t require more American military muscle, and this includes Iran. Perhaps Sen. Cotton is auditioning to replace the decaying Sen. McCain or Sen. Graham in the permanent warmongering Senator chair on the Sunday talkies? He is much younger (38) and could conceivably remain on the national political stage for the next 40 years. Would Sunday Show status give him the credibility to run for POTUS like McCain did, and Graham is attempting to do now?

A strategy tip for Sen. Cotton: “Negotiating from a position of strength” doesn’t mean, “We should negotiate only after we have our boots on their necks”, so if they refuse to accept our terms, we crush them, claiming that they wouldn’t negotiate. He thinks that anything that prevents us from exercising the “boot on the neck” option means we’re in a position of weakness. That’s awful on a lot of levels.

How can a smart guy, a Harvard grad, a lawyer, someone with significant military service, get it so wrong when it comes to geopolitics and military strategy? He should know the difference between Iraq and Iran. In Iraq, we had already decimated their military, destroyed their air defense system and made their airspace into a no-fly zone before our 2003 attack. Iran, which despite crippling economic sanctions, still has its air defense systems, its anti-ship missiles, (which, some war games showed can cripple our fleet in the Persian Gulf) and its military is intact.

Iraq was fractured by sectarian division. It has about 31 million people and is 60% the size of Texas.

Iran is not Arab, it is Muslim, and unified. It has 80 million people and is twice the size of Texas.

Sen. Cotton needs to bone up on military strategy and the Middle East.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 5, 2015

What a week! An Iran deal that may lead nowhere, or that may be a reset on our Middle East adventure, and continued blowback on the anti-gay, pro-religious bigotry legislation in Indiana and Arkansas. Couple these things with Easter and Passover, and you have a jam-packed weekend in America.

Easter is a good time to talk about “Homeless Jesus”. It is a sculpture by Timothy P. Schmalz that depicts a homeless person sleeping on a park bench, with holes in his feet. Schmaltz, a Catholic, says that Homeless Jesus is intended as a visual reminder of the passage in the Book of Matthew, in which Jesus tells his disciples,

As you did to one of the least of my brothers, you did unto me.

Here is the statue:

Homeless Jesus

Several casts of the original are installed in the US, Europe and Canada. In Davidson, NC where the photo above was taken in 2014, a woman actually called police the first time she drove by; she thought it was an actual homeless person. Obviously, the irony was lost on her, or maybe she was just more comfortable with a Jesus-as-crucified statue.

Politics deals with power in society, and in the last 50 years, we have made economic class a sub-category of our politics. America’s rampant homelessness goes straight to the heart of the Christian message. Some Republicans should reflect on why they insist on objectifying people (think Mitt’s 47% comment), when we should be helping them as humans in need. Now, it is possible to materially help someone while still objectifying them. From a Christian viewpoint, this is morally wrong.

Link that thought to the current Republican budget. Their planned social safety net cuts are ruinous. Those in need include people with disabilities, under-fed children, abused women, the mentally ill, veterans, and oh yes, the working poor.

When you hear politicians who would deny these funds because “My taxes might go up”, we should ask, what part of Christian teachings, and where on the moral spectrum, do these ideas come from?

So, on to the cartoons of the week.

Jesus takes the fall for Republicans in Indy:

COW Jesus in Indy

 

Republicans retreat to revise legislation after hearing from the Big Guy:

COW God says no

 

Iran deal is framed in eye of the beholder:

COW I won

 

Johnny Volcano doesn’t like Iran announcement:

COW Bomb Iran

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easter eggs may contain better message this year:

COW Easter Peace

 

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Why Are Republicans Actively Undermining Obama’s Foreign Policy?

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule, or ruin, in all events.” – Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Speech

This is a short meditation about the Republican Party. Last week Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took to the Senate floor, to encourage the Israelis to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran:

The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue. Let’s hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful US patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.

Those 22 months would be the remainder of Mr. Obama’s term as president. You can see a video of McCain’s speech here.

And so, the Republican effort to make our foreign policy a partisan mess continues.

You may have heard the phrase, “politics stops at the water’s edge”. That thought dates to 1948, when the idea of a Treaty to establish NATO was debated in Congress. The Senate was controlled by Republicans, Harry Truman was president. Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI) worked with the Truman Administration to create and pass the Vandenberg Resolution, which paved the way for the US to negotiate an agreement with our European allies.

Vandenberg was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and it was he who said “politics stops at the water’s edge”. He helped the Truman administration get bi-partisan support for the Treaty.

You can connect the dots from John McCain’s love affair with Middle East war, to John Boehner’s (R-OH) love affair with Bibi, to Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) letter to Iran, undermining Obama’s negotiations on their nuclear program. In them, we see a complete repudiation of Vandenberg’s principle.

The Lincoln quote should remind us that he was speaking to his fellow Republicans in February, 1860. The issue then was slavery, and it was dividing his party along with the country. Lincoln urged fellow Republicans not to capitulate to Southern demands to recognize slavery as being right, but to “stand by our duty, [opposing slavery] fearlessly and effectively.” But, his comment about “rule or ruin” has resonance today.

As the 2016 presidential race picks up speed, we can expect foreign policy to be the key issue for Republicans. The strategy starts from Mr. Obama’s foreign policy approval ratings holding at 37% in a January 2015 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. As we can already see today, the Republican presidential contenders will inevitably compete to appear more hawkish on foreign policy.

Republicans will run away from the economy and towards their testosterone-laden policy positions of more guns, less butter, lower taxes. The public clearly believes that Mr. Obama should have done more to manage Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, and Yemen. And with so much to be unhappy about, Republicans should have little trouble making the case that it is time for a change.

The ISIS stalemate most likely is helping Republicans. A recent CNN poll finds that 58 % disapprove of his handling of the campaign against ISIS. It will play even better for Republicans if the situation worsens, and Americans grow more frustrated with setbacks, or just a lack of progress. The Republicans will try to lure Mr. Obama into sending in ground troops. If he does, there is a high likelihood of things going wrong, which will only help the Republicans in 2016. The GOP has cards to play on Iran, Syria and ISIS, but sadly, they may only be playing politics, positioning the Democrats for a failure that cannot be explained or papered over in the 2016 election.

The Vandenberg precedent is not a part of our Constitution, so there is nothing illegal about the Republicans abandoning it. It is also a good thing to review principles and historical precedents to see if they are still useful. But the precedents the GOP are so busy abandoning are the guidelines established years ago to allow our representatives to work together, despite their differences, for the good of this country.

This new, more politicized approach will hurt us all.

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