Koppel
Mark A. Kilmer’s Political Annotation has some good thoughts on the Nightline bruhaha over reading the names of the war dead.
As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, we should be reading the names of the 150,000+ soldiers who are living and fighing to live and fight another day.
I was willing to think this was a ratings stunt and something Koppel thought was worth doing to honor the dead.
Then I heard Koppel went on Err America to promote the show. Now I conclude that this is more leftwing, anti-war propaganda from the network proven to be the most anti-war of the big three.
Message Boards
Regular Readers are aware that I went to Washington for eight days to a conference on political management. It was a great conference.
One of the consistently repeated elements of the conference was on the need for all candidates to do a message grid.
A message grid is a table consisting of two rows and two columns. The top left quadrant is where you list everything you want everyone to know about you; the bottom right quadrant is where you list what your opponent will mostly say about himself. The top right quadrant is where you list what you want everyone to know about your opponent. The bottom left quadrant is where you list what you expect your opponent to say about you.
The teachers in the school went over this daily. I’ve worked for several campaigns that were disasters. All of those campaigns have one thing in common — no consistent message. A message grid solves that problem. That being said, usually I, as the consultant, am forced to do it myself.
Today, and the reason for no blogging, I sat with my candidate, his wife, and his sister. We spent all day forming the message grid. First, we went through the client’s strengths and weaknesses. Then we formed those into a message grid. Then we pared down the top left quadrant to four basic concepts that we thought would counter every negative. From those four concepts, we analyzed what we thought would be the four major issues and then, for each of the four concepts, came up with a statement of how that concept fit with the issue.
Once we had those compiled, we were able to develop our bumper sticker theme for the campaign.
If you are in politics or law, I highly recommend message grids. They work well with a jury too.
Great Comedy
In what may be a surprising move to some political circles, Democratic Presidential Candidate Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) has issued an invitation to former Democratic Primary rival Rev. Al Sharpton to address this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Boston.
The Late Show
Well, consider this post my personal Late Show. I had to go to Atlanta today for a meeting with the Senate and House GOP Caucus Chiefs of Staff. Then I had to take my wife to Carrollton, GA for a baby shower. It is 11:40 pm and we just got home.
Good night.
Praise For O’Connor
It looks like Sandy Dee still has sense:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Pennsylvania’s newly drawn congressional boundaries, but left the door open to future challenges claiming party politics overly influenced election maps. The court voted 5-4 in favor of the boundaries drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature. State Democrats had challenged the map as being too friendly to GOP candidates. Four court conservatives would have gone even further, by limiting future legal attacks on gerrymandering, the practice of drawing voting districts to favor a political party.
The Convention
Captain’s Quarters also has good thoughts on the lefty plan to disrupt the RNC’s convention. I was going to blog on the topic, but Captain Ed makes my point for me. If the lefty’s do this, it will make Paul Wellstone’s funeral look non-partisan and Bush will be guaranteed victory.
Err America
That;s what Captain’s Quarters calls it. I think it is a good description.
Err America is still having problems, which are highlighted over at Captain Ed’s blog (click the link above).
It’s funny. The leftists who run the station are either in denial or graduates of the Soviet School for Propanda. “No Comrade — they are not starving to death. It’s the new Dostoevsky Diet craze.” “No Comrade, Err America is not bankrupt of money and ideas — it is portraying a struggling image to capture more money from donors and encourage more people to listen.”
This Is Hysterical
A guy is selling his ex-wife’s wedding dress on eBay. You’ve got to check it out.
A Positive SCOTUS Note
This sounds hopeful:
“This is a case about the separation of powers,” U.S. Solicitor Gen. Theodore B. Olson began. He went on to describe a “constitutional immunity” that protects the White House from all legal demands for information, except when the president himself is under a criminal investigation. Olson won a generally friendly reception from the justices. In one exchange, he asked them to imagine a law that would require the Supreme Court to disclose its inner workings. It was a point well-made. The justices enforce a strict rule of secrecy for their internal debates, and Olson said the president deserved the same right to consult in private with outside advisors. . . . I think executive privilege means whenever the president feels that he is threatened, he can simply refuse to comply with a court order,” Scalia told Morrison in one exchange. “He has the power … to say, ‘No, this intrudes too much upon my powers. I will not do it.’ ” The justice added that the president should not even be forced to fight the issue before a judge. . . . Significantly, liberal-leaning Justice John Paul Stevens said he agreed with Olson’s argument that the 1972 law did not authorize lawsuits against the president and vice president. It “does not create a cause of action,” he said. “And the vice president is not an agency.” Stevens also said he was unimpressed with claims that Cheney had talked with Lay or other corporate executives. “What does that prove? Does that make [corporate officials] members of the advisory committee? They may have talked to a lot of people, but I don’t see what that proves.” Justice Stephen G. Breyer, another of the court’s liberals, also said he did not believe the 1972 law authorized lawsuits whenever government officials met with outsiders. “Congress could not possibly have intended to have created that circumstance … putting government in a cocoon when it develops legislative policy,” he said.
Not Hopeful
OpinionJournal has today’s lead editorial from the WSJ. It is worth reading in its entirety. Here is the beginning:
As the Supreme Court weighs the rights of the captured al Qaeda fighters whose cases will be heard today, we hope it won’t forget the rights of the rest of us. Namely, Americans have the right to be protected against enemy attack. This appears to be a more open question than it should be with the current High Court, whose sense of its own importance is such that it just might think it can do a better job of running the war on terror than an elected chief executive. For more than 200 years, the Supreme Court has deferred to the executive branch on matters of national security, especially during wartime, including decisions about how to define and handle the enemy. The test for this Court is whether it will show similar restraint.
I am not hopeful that the Court will restrain itself. It has shown every inclination to serve as final arbiter using the New York Pravda as its rule book.
We need to cut their budget.