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Edward's losing message

Cal

Well-known member
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=edwards_still_doesnt_get_it&ns=LawrenceKudlow&dt=12/30/2006&page=full&comments=true

So, John Edwards has thrown his hat into the presidential ring.

Unfortunately, he has a losing message.


Democrats know (or at least, I think they know) that their success in the 2006 midterm election was largely a function of their best efforts to imitate Republicans. It was the conservative Blue Dog Democrats who were the tail successfully wagging the entire Democratic dog.

That said, if John Edwards somehow managed to reverse this tide and win his party's nomination, he would lead his party to a crushing defeat in 2008.

For starters, he wants to cut and run from Iraq. Such an ill-conceived policy would leave this budding nation in shambles, with terrorists following us back to the United States. It would extinguish the candle of Iraq's democracy experiment -- an experiment that could still pay enormous dividends if the United States follows through with a bold, new troop surge strategy and a refurbished plan of economic reconstruction. These are the actions that will stabilize Baghdad and their democratically elected government, not cutting and running.

On the domestic side, Edwards fares just as badly. He's recycling an old page from the liberal Democratic playbook, saying that he wants to make fighting poverty the great moral issue of our time. He says he'll accomplish this by taxing the rich in order to help the poor. Oh, really?

Tax capital in order to create new jobs? Huh? Haven't we learned that you can't create new jobs (for the poor or anyone else) without healthy businesses and plentiful new business creation? And that businesses require capital in order to expand? And haven't we learned that punishing success through higher tax rates that make it pay less to work, save and invest will only reduce investment, jobs and prosperity?

Well, Edwards forgets that entrepreneurs, not government, create long-lasting jobs and growth. Rather than government spending, it is economic freedom, through a strong incentive structure inside a market economy, that opens the door to new opportunities so that the non-rich can get rich.

What's more, Edwards has failed to consider that poverty has fallen steadily for decades.

Pro-growth, market-oriented policies launched by Ronald Reagan 25 years ago unleashed record wealth creation and economic growth that continues to this very day. In fact, economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth has shown that total compensation and consumer spending for all five income quintiles have steadily increased over the past three decades.

Furthermore, Alan Reynolds has shown that the percentage of households with income (adjusted for inflation) lower than $35,000 has actually fallen from 52.8 percent to 40.9 percent since 1967. (Wait -- it gets even better.) Households with a real income higher than $50,000 rose from 24.9 percent to a remarkable 44.1 percent.

In other words, the middle class is shrinking because America's families are getting wealthier. And the reason lower-class jobs are vanishing is not due to some Lou Dobbs protectionist conspiracy theory, but because our technologically driven, knowledge-based economic pie keeps expanding.

Edwards doesn't understand that without incentives to reward successful investing, entrepreneurship and risk-taking, everyone gets poorer -- right on down the line. Additional investment taxing is precisely the wrong policy to improve wealth or poverty.

Class warriors on the left are loathe to admit it, but America's poor are also a whole lot less poor when public assistance programs like Social Security, Medicaid, the earned income tax credit and other social benefit plans are included in the poverty data. But Edwards, and others of his misguided ilk, have a nostalgic yearning for the Great Society plans of the mid-1960s. You'll recall that these policies dramatically succeeded by raising poverty and reducing wealth. What a neat idea.

Edwards just launched his campaign in New Orleans with a plea to spend even more taxpayer dollars for that beleaguered city. Well, why not -- we've already thrown $120 billion bucks at it!

Instead of Edwards' hackneyed, 1960s Great Society, anti-poverty approach to New Orleans, the United States and New Orleans would have been much better off had we made the entire city a tax-free zone -- with the tax burden limited only to what people spent or consumed, not what they invested or earned. This supply-side approach would have delivered swift currents of investment. It would have all but guaranteed a swift recovery.

But Edwards appears unable to grasp this. This class warrior fails to recognize that when you slam wealth, you raise poverty. Is that what we really want?


Larry is CEO of Kudlow & Co., LLC, an economic and investment research firm in New York City.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards smiles after announcing his candidacy for president in the backyard of a house in an area affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006. Edwards, part of the pack of a half dozen or more Democrats who hope to break through the hype about front runners Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., during the next year to win the nomination. These second-tier candidates may look more like the presidents who have previously occupied the Oval Office, but know they will have to run a new kind of campaign to get there in 2008.(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) His ultra-liberal approach will elicit only a small niche of support among the ultra lefties in the Democratic Party.
 

schnurrbart

Well-known member
I will only ask you one question concerning the many outlandish things you stated. If we left Iraq tomorrow, you say that this would leave "this budding nation" in shambles. Just exactly what is it as you see it right now? Well, maybe a couple more little questions. Do you really believe that this is political situation and can be handled by, say, more troops? Do you not believe that this is, in reality, a holy, religious civil war and it isn't going to make a bit of difference whether we are there or not?
 

Cal

Well-known member
For starters, he wants to cut and run from Iraq. Such an ill-conceived policy would leave this budding nation in shambles, with terrorists following us back to the United States. It would extinguish the candle of Iraq's democracy experiment -- an experiment that could still pay enormous dividends if the United States follows through with a bold, new troop surge strategy and a refurbished plan of economic reconstruction. These are the actions that will stabilize Baghdad and their democratically elected government, not cutting and running.
Is this what you mean Schnurrbart? Do you doubt that it will follow us home? Much of Iraq is reportedly quite peaceful and beginning to prosper. The Iranians are supplying IEDs and helping to keep things stirred up. We don't want to lose to a madman that wants to be responsible for Armegeddon.
 

Cal

Well-known member
http://www.nysun.com/article/46032

Iran's Secret Plan For Mayhem
By ELI LAKE
Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 3, 2007


WASHINGTON — Iran is supporting both Sunni and Shiite terrorists in the Iraqi civil war, according to secret Iranian documents captured by Americans in Iraq.

The news that American forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was widely reported last month, but less well known is that the Iranians were carrying documents that offered Americans insight into Iranian activities in Iraq.

An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.

Another American official who has seen the summaries of the reporting affiliated with the arrests said it comprised a "smoking gun." "We found plans for attacks, phone numbers affiliated with Sunni bad guys, a lot of things that filled in the blanks on what these guys are up to," the official said.

One of the documents captured in the raids, according to two American officials and one Iraqi official, is an assessment of the Iraq civil war and new strategy from the Quds Force. According to the Iraqi source, that assessment is the equivalent of " Iran's Iraq Study Group," a reference to the bipartisan American commission that released war strategy recommendations after the November 7 elections. The document concludes, according to these sources, that Iraq's Sunni neighbors will step up their efforts to aid insurgent groups and that it is imperative for Iran to redouble efforts to retain influence with them, as well as with Shiite militias.

Rough translations of the Iranian assessment and strategy, as well as a summary of the intelligence haul, have been widely distributed throughout the policy community and are likely to influence the Iraq speech President Bush is expected to deliver in the coming days regarding the way forward for the war, according to two Bush administration officials.

The news that Iran's elite Quds Force would be in contact, and clandestinely cooperating, with Sunni Jihadists who attacked the Golden Mosque in Samarra (one of the holiest shrines in Shiism) on February 22, could shake the alliance Iraq's ruling Shiites have forged in recent years with Tehran. Many Iraq analysts believe the bombing vaulted Iraq into the current stage of its civil war.

The top Quds Force commander — known as Chizari, according to a December 30 story in the Washington Post — was captured inside a compound belonging to Abdul Aziz Hakim, the Shiite leader President Bush last month pressed to help forge a new ruling coalition that excludes a firebrand Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr.

According to one Iraqi official, the two Quds commanders were in Iraq at the behest of the Iraqi government, which had requested more senior Iranian points of contact when the government complained about Shiite death squad activity. The negotiations were part of an Iraqi effort to establish new rules of the road between Baghdad and Tehran. This arrangement was ironed out by Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, when he was in Tehran at the end of November.

While Iran has openly supported Iraqi Shiite militias involved in attacks on American soldiers, the Quds Force connection to Sunni insurgents has been murkier.

In 2003, coalition forces captured a playbook outlining Iranian intentions to support insurgents of both stripes, but its authenticity was disputed.

American intelligence reports have suggested that export/import operations run by Sunni terrorists in Fallujah in 2004 received goods from the revolutionary guard.

"We have seen bits and piece of things before, but it was highly compartmentalized suggesting the Iranian link to Sunni groups," a military official said.

A former Iran analyst for the Pentagon who also worked as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, Michael Rubin, said yesterday: "There has been lots of information suggesting that Iran has not limited its outreach just to the Shiites, but this has been disputed."

He added, "When documents like this are found, usually intelligence officials may confirm their authenticity but argue they prove nothing because they do not reflect a decision to operationalize things."

A former State Department senior analyst on Iraq and Iran who left government service in 2005, Wayne White, said he did not think it was likely the Quds Force was supporting Sunni terrorists who were targeting Shiite political leaders and civilians, but stressed he did not know.

"I have no doubt whatsoever that al-Quds forces are on the ground and active in Iraq," he said. "That's about it. I saw evidence that Moqtada al Sadr was in contact with Sunni Arab insurgents in western Iraq, but I never saw evidence of Iran in that loop."

Mr. White added, "One problem that we all have is that people consistently conduct analysis assuming that the actor is going to act predictably or rationally based on their overall mindset or ideology. Sometimes people don't.

"One example of a mindset that may hinder analysis of Iranian involvement is the belief that Iran would never have any dealings with militant Sunni Arabs. But they allowed hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives to escape from Afghanistan across their territory in 2002," he said.
 
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