Mitt Romney withdrew from the G.O.P. 2008 primary and Senator John McCain outlined his platform to a crowd of roughly 10,000 people at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) today. Speakers at the thirty-fifth annual CPAC, held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel also included Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressman Ron Paul.
Former Virginia Senator George Allen used his introduction to endorse McCain, saying he was convinced by McCain’s integrity. When McCain finally entered the room, he was greeting by some booing amid the applause.
“I came to political office as a foot soldier of Ronald Reagan,” McCain said, “and I’m as proud of my political heritage now as I was then.”
McCain discussed many issues from fiscal spending, the Iraq War, abortion and Supreme Court appointees. His remarks on immigration elicited jeering and shouts of “No amnesty!” from the audience. But when he mentioned tax cuts, the audience gave McCain a standing ovation.
“The first thing I will do is make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and increase tax cuts for corporations from 25 to 35 percent,” he said.
McCain ended the speech with a reference to his past as a war hero. “I have only found true happiness while serving a cause greater than my self interest…which is our country,” he said, “I love her deeply and never tire of serving her.”
Following Romney’s announcement, some of his supporters traded in their Romney paraphernalia for the McCain posters being handed out.
Last night, as DaJuan Summers scored a career-high 24 points across town and as political junkies watched early Super Tuesday results across campus, a small crowd gathered in the SFS Frat House to listen to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll speak about the on-going crisis in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf’s weaknesses and which 2008 candidates are capable of dealing with Pakistan.
Coll, a staff writer for the New Yorker and a former managing editor of the Washington Post, has been covering Pakistan for 20 years, with his most recent piece, on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, appearing in the Jan. 28 issue of the New Yorker.
Currently, Pakistan’s direction is unclear, Coll said, with the Pakistani Taliban “controlling territory in three-dimensional ways” and Musharraf no longer heading the Pakistani army (”the end of an era”). “There’s something about that character of this moment … that is new,” he said.
Coll went on to call Musharraf “quite a clumsy politician,” pointing to a press conference in which Musharraf seemed to be inventing the roll he would play in the Pakistani government following his resignation as army chief. “Are you saying that in the hopes of if you say it, it will be true?” he asked of Musharraf.
Though at one point Coll said he didn’t want to get too wonky, his speech was sprinkled with references and acronyms that would have been lost upon those without familiarity with the region. Fortunately, the majority of the crowd of 22 (17 guys, only 5 girls) seemed to have little trouble following along as with Coll’s detailed analysis.
Coll also spoke about the U.S.’s relationship with Pakistan, opining that the Pakistani army is much better at managing its relationship with the U.S. than the U.S. is at managing its relationship with the Pakistani army.
“They wake up in the morning and they spend 8 to 10 hours thinking about how to manage [their relationship with the U.S.],” he said. For the U.S. “at best, it’s a 30 minute item in a 6-hour Iraq day, a 3-hour China day.”
At the end of the event, talk turned to the 2008 election. When asked which of the candidates was capable of dealing with Pakistan, Coll gave an answer he jokingly called “mealy-mouthed,” saying that Clinton and McCain both have solid diplomatic experience in South Asia, though he was unsure what McCain’s actual policy would be. As for Obama, Coll said, “His intuition about our place in the world seems to be sound.”
Then Coll was off to watch the primary returns. “Boy, this is the most exciting [election] that I can remember,” he said. “Not on the Republican side, frankly.”
If political pundits have taught us anything this primary cycle, it’s that we shouldn’t be listening to political pundits. McCain, now the G.O.P. front-runner, was declared dead over the summer (his campaign, that is—he’s not that old), the press all but pronounced Hillary the Democratic nominee earlier this year, and the New Hampshire Democratic polls were about as wrong as wrong can be.
Fortunately, Mike Madden over at Salon.com has found one indicator that has been consistently spot-on: our very own Georgetown Hoyas.
As it happens, the Hoyas have been a near-perfect predictor of McCain’s fortunes this year. The last time Georgetown lost a game was the night before the Michigan primary, when Pitt beat them 69-60; the next day, Romney beat McCain. The day of the South Carolina primary, where McCain narrowly beat Mike Huckabee to avenge his 2000 loss to George W. Bush, the Hoyas crushed Notre Dame.
Madden wrote this before the Hoyas played last night and before the primary results came in, so he had a little prediction.
So who do the Hoyas play tonight? Big East bottom-dwellersSouth Florida. Playing in D.C., the Bulls are probably bigger underdogs than Romney is (though his loss to Huckabee in West Virginia, orchestrated by McCain strategists at the last minute, doesn’t bode well for him). If they can pull off the upset, surely Romney can, too. But if the Hoyas hang on to win, as expected, McCain might do the same. Tipoff is at 7:30 p.m. Eastern — just in time for the polls to close.
Prescient, Mr. Madden.
The system will really be put to the test on Saturday though, when the Hoyas play at Louisville and Kansas, Louisiana, and Washington all have their primaries. Given their recent romps of Marquette and Rutgers, I imagine that Louisville is going to put up quite a fight. But rest easy, Senator McCain. No one can stop Big Roy.
Slate published a short piece by one of its interns, a Georgetown senior and Hoya writer named Alex Joseph. Entitled “Confessions of a young Hillary Clinton supporter,” the crux of the piece is that a lot of college students, particularly at Georgetown, support Barack Obama, and that both Clinton and Obama supporters are astonished that a college-age man would support Clinton. Because Joseph supports Clinton, he’s “practically a social pariah.” Quel Horror!
Now, when I decided, after long consideration, to support Barack Obama in the 2008 primary, the first thing I did was purge any Clinton supporters from my social life, just as I did with all conservatives back in High School when I decided I was a liberal. Same thing when the Voiceendorsed Obama a few weeks ago: All the Clinton supporters (and yes, there are a few, and a majority are men) were kicked off the paper!
Below is a new video featuring Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, among others, that splices clips of Barack Obama speaking with various beautiful people who apparently all support him. Worth a look if you like a) Politicians with big ears or b) Movie stars with big breasts.
Senator Ted Kennedy announced his endorsement for Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama at a packed arena at American University on Monday, saying he sensed a “kind of yearning today…[a] kind of hunger to move on and move America forward.” Over 100 journalists were turned away, the American Prospect reports, but intrepid Voice reporter/photographer Yamini Kalidindi was able to find her way inside. By the looks of their (excellent) photo slideshow, it seems the GW Hatchet was among the publications turned away. An update with Yamini’s full report of the event will follow.
Update: Here’s Yamini’s report:
Following his significant victory in South Carolina, Senator Barack Obama received the endorsement of Senator Edward Kennedy, his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, and niece Caroline Kennedy at a rally held today at American University. Sen. Kennedy voiced his commitment to Obama, saying he supports “a president who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal.”
Thousands waited on line to attend this event, some arriving at Bender Arena as early as eight in the morning for an event set to begin at 12:30. While the crowd consisted of a significant number of college students, people of all ages were present. Parents arrived with children 3, 4 years of age riding on their shoulders, while elderly people joined the throngs of youth waiting in the cold.
Despite the difference in age among the audience, the atmosphere remained consistent. From the time doors opened at 10:30, the arena rang with chants of “Obama! Obama! Obama!” closely followed by shouts of, “Can we do it?! Yes, we can!” Edward Kennedy summed up the feelings coursing through the crowd as they waited for Obama to take the podium, stating, he sensed a “kind of yearning today…[a] kind of hunger to move on and move America forward.”
When Obama finally took the stage, he thanked the Kennedys for their support. “If you stand with me in the days to come…if you stand for change,” he told the crowd, “we will change the course of history.”
Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) paid tribute to the civil rights legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King and spoke about President Bush’s final State of the Union Address in the ICC auditorium tonight.
Following an introduction by visibly nervous Hoya guard Jessie Sapp, Rangel praised the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement. He cited the diversity of the Democratic presidential front runners and the growth of the Congressional Black Caucus as evidence of America’s progress towards equality.
Rangel wasn’t as pleased with Bush’s policies, calling them antithetical to King’s vision. Drawing parallels to King’s opposition to the Vietnam War, Rangel attacked the Iraq War and the conduct of the administration as regressive and detrimental to American ideals and interests.
Rangel also addressed the current stimulus package. He claimed that the bill was a poor fix for the supply-side economic policy of the past several years. To conclude his speech, Rangel exhorted the audience to continue on the path of the Civil Rights generation and work for change, concluding that “where the country goes remains in your hands.”
Rangel took a few brief questions, including one from a man advocating a 20% value-added tax (Rangel dismissed the man, asking for a serious question) and one from an intern from his Ways and Means office (Rangel told the audience to direct all remaining questions to the intern), before hurrying out of the auditorium to attend the State of the Union address across town.
That’s what New Yorker reporter George Packer would have you think. He uses the experience of our own Barbara Feinman Todd, Associate Dean of Georgetown’s brand-new graduate journalism program and the reason Georgetown even has what anemic undergraduate offerings do exist, to explain how Senator Hillary Clinton has a “habit of undermining herself, when the worst might have been averted by a little candor and grace—a tendency that has reappeared in the past few weeks.”
Feinman Todd, before and while at Georgetown, worked as a freelance journalist and particularly as a ghostwriter, and her most famous job was working with the then-first lady to write “It Takes A Village.” Clinton didn’t thank her in the book’s acknowledgments, causing a minor scandal at the time, but Packer’s sources, apparently editors at Simon & Schuster, claim that Feinman Todd really did a bad job and didn’t deserve the credit. I e-mailed Feinman Todd, who declined to comment specifically due to a confidentiality agreement, except to say that she believed the piece to be inacccurate. I’m waiting to hear back from Packer about the story, but in the meantime you can read the relevant excerpt after the jump and judge for yourself.
Shortly following the announcement that Heroes star Hayden Panettiere was coming to speak at Georgetown, the GW Hatchet announced their own famous speaker: right-wing cheerleader Ann Coulter. GW apparently hasn’t gotten the memo that, like a small cut on the inside of your mouth, the only way to make Coulter go away is to ignore her. But at least one GW student thinks its a good idea. From the Hatchet:
“We feel that GW is deprived from the conservative movement,” said GW YAF’s [Young American Foundation] President, Sergio Gor. “We feel that our students are lacking the substance of a pure education. We are exposed to bias and all these opinions that are very one-sided, and it really has to be our group that brings in the conservative cause and conservative movement to campus.”
…
“We encourage all our liberal friends to come out and learn,” Gor said. “It’s a huge thing for GW to be having Ann Coulter. She’s one of the biggest stars on the speaker circuit. For us to be having her is a good thing for us.”
For those who need a refresher course on some of the more horrific things Coulter has said, check out the Stephen Colbert-Ann Coulter Challenge, from New York Magazine, in which you try to pick which quotes Colbert said and which quotes Coulter said. (Hint: Colbert didn’t say this: ”Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘Kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and answer to the name Muhammad.’”)
A certain high-ranking person in Washington’s government doesn’t leave home without his or her Glock, according to WUSA anchor Bruce Johnson. This is especially newsworthy since the Supreme Court is going to consider Friday whether to hear a federal appeals court decision that overturned DC’s ban on handguns.
Johnson saw the official’s gun but was told it was legal. He’s making the lame decision not to say who it is until he finds out more about whether the official has a permit. If there is no permit, that official definitely won’t be wearing their gun after seeing Johnson’s post, so he killed the story before it became anything. At least his blogging is crazy:
It’s information that I have been wrestling with for days now. I learned…no make that…I saw for my own eyes… a gun hidden in the backside of a DC Government official…
At this point I’m not sure that it’s necessary to reveal the name or position; I’m seeking advice on this; but I will say this person holds a visible high ranking public position and comes in contact with the public as part of the job. This city official heads an agency that makes decisions that affect us all at some point.
Did the official really have the gun in their back pocket, like Johnson seems to mean? That’s not working under the gun laws–that’s flaunting them.
-Will Sommer, blog editor. Flickr photo from Greenmelinda.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's preeminent newsmagazine since 1969. The opinions expressed in Vox Populi are those of their authors unless specifically stated.
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