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February 10, 2012
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Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
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Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
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Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
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January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
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Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
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January 13, 2012
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
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January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
July 17, 2008
/ 14 Tamuz 5768
Obama's move to middle is smart politics
By
Clarence Page
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Until recently, one of the biggest raps against Sen. Barack Obama from conservatives was his delicate dance around any issue that might upset his core constituents. How can he claim a break from "politics as usual," they said, if he wasn't willing to upset the left? They can't say that anymore. Now they say he's flip-flopped.
That's OK. If you want to please everybody, you don't belong in politics. Mr. Obama's bigger worry is the old slogan of liberal commentator Jim Hightower, a former Texas officeholder: "There ain't nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow line and dead armadillos."
In recent weeks, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has taken that risky road. He has softened or abandoned his earlier positions on a parade of issues, including wiretaps, abortion, trade with Mexico and Canada, gun control and public funding of his own campaign.
Liberal bloggers, such as Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post, have howled that Mr. Obama is selling out the left. But viewed another way, he's buying into the middle. He's reaching for what former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has called the "sensible center," that big, broad place in the political middle where most American voters live.
Ironically, Mr. Obama's best ally in this venture is his presumptive Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, whose supporters have cast Mr. Obama as a "flip-flopper," just as they branded Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.
Mr. McCain has his own easily remembered flip-flops. He opposed extending President Bush's tax cuts before he more recently favored them. He has softened his opposition on offshore oil drilling. He has shifted to a more punitive stance on illegal immigration after a bill he favored failed to pass.
Much of Mr. Obama's perceived shift in positions comes because he was not pressed hard on the issues earlier. He navigated the primaries as a Rorschach candidate, an ink-blot test in which Democratic voters tended to see what they wanted to see, not always where he actually stood on various issues.
For example, he told NBC's Tim Russert last September that his Iraq pullout plans would be subject to changing "conditions on the ground." That's sensible. A candidate unwilling to consider changing conditions would be castigated as too stubborn.
On another hot-button issue, Mr. Obama said he did not think "mental distress" should qualify as a threat to "the health of the mother" in late-term abortions. Yet there's no question that he's a bigger ally of abortion rights than Mr. McCain, an avowed opponent.
But the issue that filled the e-mail bag on the Obama campaign's social networking Web site, MyBarackObama.com, was Mr. Obama's reversal of his promise to filibuster against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was passed by the House last month. The biggest objection by Mr. Obama and other critics is a provision that would allow federal judges to grant immunity from civil lawsuits to the large telecommunication companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency's now-defunct warrantless wiretapping program.
Mr. Obama invited critics to object on his Web site, and many eagerly - and angrily - wrote in. Yet, as Morton H. Halperin, executive director of the Open Society Policy Center, argued in a New York Times op-ed, "the alternative to Congress passing this bill is Congress enacting far worse legislation that the Senate had already passed by a filibuster-proof margin, and which a majority of House members were on record as supporting."
Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Halperin isn't totally satisfied with the current bill. But Mr. Obama can argue that if he is elected, he has a chance to improve it.
That's why Mr. Obama appears to be following President Richard Nixon's old dictum: Run toward your party's base in the primaries, then move back to the center for the general election. Bill Clinton did the same, calling it "triangulation." Mr. Obama is taking a risk by following the same strategy, but he's smarter to lurch to the middle of the road in midsummer than to risk becoming roadkill in the fall.
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