Florida’s squishy, big-spending Republican Governor, Charlie Crist jumped into the race for Senate today. He’s already been criticized for being “too moderate,” but many in the party are looking for just that. Crist was endorsed almost immediately by the National Republican Senatorial Commitee, and the media has been all over him. But it’s not going to be that easy. Conservative rising-star Marco Rubio is pledging a tough primary, pitting Republicans that want to spread the conservative ideals of limited government and free markets against the squishy stimulus loving establishment. Rubio shot out this ad right after Crist’s announcement:

From The Daily Beast:

…

“Grateful.”

That’s the word expressed not just by former President Bush, but his staff, as well, on the last flight home aboard on what any other day of the last eight years would have been Air Force One, but today was Special Air Mission 28000.

I can only imagine the blogosphere lighting up with what will be some version of “good riddance.” But while I expected the president’s mood to be defiant, bitter, defensive, or vengeful toward his critics, he was anything but. As he toured the cabin of the airplane throughout the flight, visiting with old friends, family, and staffers, he was filled with equanimity, grace, and a generosity of spirit.

[Read More]

From Politico:

In one of his final actions in the White House, President Bush on Thursday declared Jan. 18 to be “National Sanctity of Human Life Day.”

“All human life is a gift from our creator that is sacred, unique and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world,” reads the presidential proclamation.

“The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent. My administration has been committed to building a culture of life by vigorously promoting adoption and parental notification laws, opposing federal funding for abortions overseas, encouraging teen abstinence and funding crisis pregnancy programs,” the proclamation continues.

“The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women. On this day and throughout the year, we aspire to build a society in which every child is welcome in life and protected in law. We also encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause. History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.”

(h/t Kathryn Jean Lopez)

From Politico:

President Bush is naming a high-powered staff to launch him on a productive post-presidency that, at least at first, will be busy behind the scenes and quiet on the surface.

The Office of George W. Bush will be in Dallas, near his presidential library at Southern Methodist University.

The president plans to write a book, give speeches, help build his presidential library and start a “freedom institute” to prolong his legacy, with a special emphasis on his “freedom agenda” of promoting democracy for the Middle East. [Read More]

h/t TruthCaucus

In his second inaugural address, the president presented his vision for freedom and democracy around the globe. For those that now only remember his presidency as full of blunders, and his speeches full of malapropisms, you have misunderestimated him.

Check back on inauguration day for thank you messages to President Bush from our editors and contributors.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: Bush’s Better World, from The New York Post

That’s what an article by Peter Finn in tomorrow’s Washington Post claims. The statement that “the system of handling evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay is so chaotic that it is impossible to prepare a fair and successful prosecution,” comes from Lt. Col. Darrell Vandeveld, a former Military prosecutor who resigned last year citing “a crisis of conscience.” Vandeveld filed a declaration in federal court yesterday supporting a petition to have the charges against Gitmo detainee Mohammed Jawad withdrawn because he had been “tortured” while in Afghan and subsequently US custody. Jawad was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 after severely wounding two US soldiers and their interpreter in a grenade attack. Military officials have rejected Vandeveld’s claims. Finn cites e-mail correspondence with chief military prosecutor Col. Lawrence Morris who has this to say:

“I am happy to respond under oath to any of the allegations,” Col. Lawrence Morris, chief military prosecutor, said in an e-mailed statement. Vandeveld, he said, “was disappointed when I did not choose him to become a team leader, and he asked to resign shortly thereafter, never having raised an ethical concern during the 9 months I supervised him. I relied on his representations to me about Jawad and other cases I entrusted to him (which included his advocacy of a 40-year sentence for Mr. Jawad the week before he departed).”

According to Finn, military judges in this case as well as in the case of Omar Khadr, have requested to be briefed on the supposed disorganization of evidence in Gitmo prosecutions, and a verdict in Jawad’s case is expected within 30 days.

Seems like Bush Derangement Syndrome stuff to me. It seems liberals and anti-Americans like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are obsessed with this, but no one else is writing about it. As I see it anyone who throws a grenade at US soldiers only deserves the worst. Andrew McCarthy of National Review makes what I think is a pertinent comment while discussing Obama’s plans to close Gitmo at the NYT blog:

[...]the purpose of holding enemy combatants in wartime (which the Supreme Court has repeatedly validated, as recently as the 2004 Hamdi case) is not to prosecute them but to remove them from the battlefield and derive intelligence. Prosecution is incidental to that purpose, and often not practical. If your first imperative in detaining people is the right one (i.e., to defeat the enemy and protect Americans), you are going to detain many people who cannot be prosecuted at all, let alone “swiftly.”

Check back in the morning for updates.

From the Editor of National Review:

President Bush infamously couldn’t or (more likely) wouldn’t identify mistakes he’d made during his presidency at a 2004 press conference. In a newly self-reflective mood in his twilight hours in the White House, Bush has opened up about what went wrong.

In a jaunty performance at his final press conference, he said pursuing Social Security reform instead of immigration reform immediately after the 2004 election was a “mistake,” as was hanging the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the tower of the USS Abraham Lincoln. As he heads to Texas, Bush should reflect on these 10 more important mistakes that shaped his presidency:

…

Oddly enough for a president denounced as an executive monster by his perfervid critics, many of Bush’s mistakes involve not being active enough or taking a stronger hand. How that came to be so with a president who believed so deeply in strong leadership should long occupy Bush, and fair-minded historians. [Read the List]

From the Weekly Standard:

The postmortems on the presidency of George W. Bush are all wrong. The liberal line is that Bush dangerously weakened America’s position in the world and rushed to the aid of the rich and powerful as income inequality worsened. That is twaddle. Conservatives–okay, not all of them–have only been a little bit kinder. They give Bush credit for the surge that saved Iraq, but not for much else.

He deserves better. His presidency was far more successful than not. And there’s an aspect of his decision-making that merits special recognition: his courage. Time and time again, Bush did what other presidents, even Ronald Reagan, would not have done and for which he was vilified and abused. That–defiantly doing the right thing–is what distinguished his presidency. [Read More]

From the President’s Radio Address:

I have been monitoring the situation in the Middle East closely with the members of my national security team. Secretary Rice is actively engaged in diplomacy. And I’ve been in contact with leaders throughout the region — including the King of Saudi Arabia, the King of Jordan, the President of Egypt, the President and Prime Minister of the Palestinian Territories, and the Prime Minister of Israel.

This recent outburst of violence was instigated by Hamas — a Palestinian terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria that calls for Israel’s destruction. Eighteen months ago, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a coup, and since then has imported thousands of guns and rockets and mortars. Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, but Hamas routinely violated that ceasefire by launching rockets into Israel. On December 19th, Hamas announced an end to the ceasefire and soon unleashed a barrage of rockets and mortars that deliberately targeted innocent Israelis — an act of terror that is opposed by the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people, President Abbas.

In response to these attacks on their people, the leaders of Israel have launched military operations on Hamas positions in Gaza. As a part of their strategy, Hamas terrorists often hide within the civilian population, which puts innocent Palestinians at risk.

Read and Listen to the Entire Address Here.

h/t StandWithUS

From The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire:

President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama discussed the situation in Gaza briefly during a telephone call on New Year’s Day, the White House confirmed. That appeared to suggest that U.S. policy on the Gaza conflict might not be as confused as some analysts fear.

From Judson Berger at Fox News:

A number of high-profile convicts are hoping President Bush will grant their clemency requests before leaving office — but the President’s slim history of pardons suggests he’ll remain skeptical.

After the president granted 18 pardons and one commutation earlier this week, a handful of high-profile prisoners — and thousands of others — are still hoping he will grant their appeals before he leaves the White House.

But Bush has proved one of the most cautious presidents in modern history when it comes to exercising his clemency powers.

To date, he has granted 189 pardons and nine commutations. Compare that with the 396 pardons and 61 commutations granted under President Clinton, or the 393 pardons and 13 commutations granted under President Reagan, and Bush’s record signals applicants will have a tough time in the weeks ahead convincing him to overturn the will of the courts. [Read More]

Philip Klein:

Conservatism Can Rise Again

America is not as conservative as it seemed in 2004 and it isn’t as liberal as it looks this morning.

What happened is that four years ago, voters put their trust in one political party to run the country and they didn’t like the results, and so, over the course of two elections, they systematically threw out that political party and turned to a different one. If Democrats disappoint the public, they could be waking up on a not so distant November morning just as devastated as Republicans are today.

Those who are in the profession of writing the first rough draft of history would have us believe that a single election result can signal the end of an intellectual tradition, but actual history instructs us otherwise. This is especially true for conservatism, which rose from the staggering defeat of one its own in 1964, to a glorious triumph 16 years later.

John McCain is an honorable man who sacrificed more for this nation than most of us can imagine, but he’s also eccentric and idiosyncratic. During the campaign, he railed against Wall Street greed and excessive CEO pay on the one hand and against his opponent’s plans to redistribute wealth on the other; he called for a spending freeze while proposing that government spend hundreds of billions of dollars to freeze home foreclosures by partially socializing the housing market.

Of all the ways to put these election results in broader historical context, it’s quite a stretch to equate the defeat of John McCain with the end of conservatism.

At the same time, it would be irresponsible and unhelpful to ignore the severe challenges conservatism faces in both the immediate and long term.

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WHEN HE ENTERED the presidential race nearly two years ago, most conservatives didn’t give Barack Obama a chance against the vaunted Clinton machine. After he finally emerged victorious from the protracted primary, many conservatives clung to the belief that disgruntled Clinton voters and working class whites in rural areas would deny him the presidency. To date, Obama has proven all of the skeptics wrong.

The sooner conservatives realize that Obama is not merely a gifted orator, but an incredibly talented politician with the potential to be a transformational liberal leader, the better prepared they will be to resist his agenda. In a time of economic crisis, with Democrats having overwhelming control of both chambers of Congress, stopping him will be difficult, but it won’t be impossible.

Although Obama has radical liberal roots, he was elected president by papering over his past, and convincing Americans that he was a pragmatic moderate who would cut their taxes and be more fiscally responsible than President Bush. Democrats won Congressional races in traditionally conservative districts in much the same way. If, once in power, Obama and his Democratic allies cater to their liberal base, it will be jarring to Americans who had something different in mind when they voted for the abstract concept of change.

Conservatives won’t thwart Democrats by name-calling, but by articulating to the country why liberal proposals will have disastrous implications, and emphasizing that there is little room left to expand social programs when the government has to fund a $700 billion bailout — just as tax revenue falls as a result of the shrinking economy.

While the network of conservative think tanks, journalists, and activists will have to spend the foreseeable future on defense, trying to contain the march of liberalism, it will also be a time for the movement to engage in long-term thinking, so that it will be in a position to reassert itself when the political conditions are right.

Many conservatives would agree that the basket of issues that led to Ronald Reagan’s historic victory don’t have the salience that they did in 1980, when the top marginal tax rate was 70 percent and the Soviet Union still loomed large. But that’s where the agreement ends.

Some of those who identify themselves as conservatives would have us believe that the conclusion to draw from this is that the era of small government conservatism is over, and that the only option is to fight for a conservative welfare state to replace a liberal welfare state. But that was the driving force behind President Bush’s brand of “compassionate conservatism,” which led us to a fiscal disaster that critics now want to blame on traditional conservatism.

Those of us who still believe in fighting for limited government cannot allow this to happen. It’s one thing for the Republican Party to embrace statism, but once the conservative movement does so at the philosophical level, it will no longer have a reason to exist. If people want big government, they’ll support liberalism — conservatives simply cannot beat the real thing.

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IT WOULD BE ESPECIALLY shortsighted to make such concessions given that conservatives can make small government ideology more relevant to contemporary challenges without abandoning their core beliefs. With all the focus on the financial crisis that hit in this fall, the candidates all but ignored the far more substantial financial crisis that is staring us in the face.

The United States faces a long-term deficit of over $53 trillion that is set to bite us in just a few years, as Baby Boomers begin to retire and current payroll taxes are no longer sufficient to subsidize their retirements. By the time government gets around to doing anything, the choices will be limited. Either lawmakers rein in social programs, or they turn America into a European welfare state, with unconscionable tax rates, high unemployment, a stagnant economy, and a shrinking military budget. Not since Reagan’s landslide in 1980 will there be a better time for conservatives to make the case for a smaller government with limited functions.

Lost in all of this is a discussion of national defense. Liberals would like for us to behave as if the September 11 attacks never happened. They portray the threat of Islamic terrorism as something the Bush administration invented — or, at least, exaggerated — in a cynical ploy to scare up votes.

More than seven years have passed since that fateful day, and so it’s only human nature that Americans would move on and focus on their own economic concerns. But unfortunately, our enemies have not moved on, and if liberalism fails to adequately confront this and other threats to our national security, then just like during the Cold War, it will be up to conservatives to respond.

The road ahead for conservatives is long, dark, and perilous — and there are no guarantees that the movement will reemerge in the years to come or return to its former glory. But it certainly isn’t dead. Not even close.

by Philip Klein – American Spectator [h/t Ramesh Ponnuru]