*Dave Barry’s Year in Review. Priceless. Too much great stuff to excerpt.
*Mark Steyn cautions against
writing New Hampshire off as just another effete decadent coastal latte-swilling gay-marriage weekend home untypical of the conservative heartland, just a Studio 54 in the mountains full of transplanted liberals hitting on coked-up moose as they stagger around in search of a restaurant serving something with arugula. NH delivered Bush’s margin of victory in 2000. It remains the north-east’s still-just-about non-liberal state. If the Republican Party can’t come up with a candidate that has some appeal in New Hampshire, its prospects of winning in November are dramatically reduced.
*From Kevin Drum, grudging acceptance of military progress in Iraq, and a picture-perfect sample of the attitude I described here. And yes, I still think it more likely than not that Hillary pulls this out, although while Iowa didn’t really surprise me that much (the race there had been close for months), I’ve been surprised at how quickly her support in NH seems to have cratered. Speaking of which, Patrick Ruffini and Jay Cost, two of the Right’s savvier campaign observers, lay out how Hillary can win the nomination even after losing New Hampshire, as she is now expected to do. Patrick focuses on the Nevada caucuses, while Jay focuses on the delegate math, particularly the superdelegates.
*Ralph Peters argues that the US Navy should have reacted more aggressively to an obvious provocation by the Iranians in the Gulf on Sunday. He’s clearly right about what the Iranians were trying to do, and I’m generally sympathetic to the power-politics argument that failing to respond to provocations only brings larger ones. On the other hand, you don’t start fights you are not prepared to pursue to the bitter end. As Peters describes it, the encounter came awfully close to the line at which a US Naval commander would need to open fire to protect his vessels, but I don’t buy the idea that we always have to initiate combat over this sort of thing, which is the logical endpoint of Peters’ argument.
Crank, I think the issue is/was the boats were in range for a couple minutes, due to the mechanics of our guns had they run at the US Ships for another 15 seconds we would have been unable to fire on them. That is asking for a Cole sequel; I expect the rules of engagement to be redefined and doubt the Navy will let anyone get as close again.