Showing posts with label strange bedfellows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strange bedfellows. Show all posts
Friday, October 13, 2017
Thursday, November 19, 2015
George Will: we should look to Chris Christie
Paris was for all Americans, but especially for Republicans, a summons to seriousness that should have two immediate impacts on the Republican presidential contest. It should awaken the party’s nominating electorate from its reveries about treating the presidency as an entry-level job. And it should cause Republicans to take another look at Chris Christie, beginning with his speech in Florida the day after the Paris attacks.
... security concerns might be Christie’s opportunity. The more disorderly the world becomes, the less luminous is the one credential that supposedly qualifies Hillary Clinton for the presidency. The credential is not her adequate but unremarkable eight-year Senate career. Rather, it is her four years as secretary of state. Recall the question Ronald Reagan posed to voters at the conclusion of his single debate with President Jimmy Carter a week before the 1980 election: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The electorate’s answer was emphatic.
...In a debate 10 months from now, the Republican nominee will ask a variant of Reagan’s question: Is America safer or more respected today, anywhere in the world, than it was when Clinton became secretary of state? Today, Republican voters need to ask themselves a question: Whom do they want onstage asking that question? It is beyond peculiar, it is political malpractice for Republicans to fritter away time and attention on candidates who, innocent of governing experience, cannot plausibly ask that question with properly devastating effect.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-paris-we-should-look-to-chris-christie/2015/11/18/9077dbea-8d58-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html
... security concerns might be Christie’s opportunity. The more disorderly the world becomes, the less luminous is the one credential that supposedly qualifies Hillary Clinton for the presidency. The credential is not her adequate but unremarkable eight-year Senate career. Rather, it is her four years as secretary of state. Recall the question Ronald Reagan posed to voters at the conclusion of his single debate with President Jimmy Carter a week before the 1980 election: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The electorate’s answer was emphatic.
...In a debate 10 months from now, the Republican nominee will ask a variant of Reagan’s question: Is America safer or more respected today, anywhere in the world, than it was when Clinton became secretary of state? Today, Republican voters need to ask themselves a question: Whom do they want onstage asking that question? It is beyond peculiar, it is political malpractice for Republicans to fritter away time and attention on candidates who, innocent of governing experience, cannot plausibly ask that question with properly devastating effect.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-paris-we-should-look-to-chris-christie/2015/11/18/9077dbea-8d58-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Political Islam politics
"CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting.
Not this time.
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.
...Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions.
...At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting.
“Sisi is worse than Netanyahu, and the Egyptians are conspiring against us more than the Jews,” said Salhan al-Hirish, a storekeeper in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “They finished the Brotherhood in Egypt, and now they are going after Hamas.”" [my bolding]
-NYT
Not this time.
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.
...Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions.
...At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting.
“Sisi is worse than Netanyahu, and the Egyptians are conspiring against us more than the Jews,” said Salhan al-Hirish, a storekeeper in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “They finished the Brotherhood in Egypt, and now they are going after Hamas.”" [my bolding]
-NYT
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