Coincidentally, Governor Barbour spoke right before David at CPAC.

Yesterday the Washington Times published an article on the continuing conflicts over foreign policy within the GOP and the Conservative Movement. NewsReal Blog‘s Editor-In-Chief David Horowitz was quoted:

David Horowitz, a prominent member of the party’s neoconservative wing, said his own views are changing and he has come around to Mr. Barbour’s position.

“I agree with Haley Barbour and am not surprised that he too has come to this conclusion,” Mr. Horowitz said. “Afghanistan is now our longest war, in large part because we are trying to remake a nation which has barely emerged from the seventh century, and in many respects has not. It was our mistake in Iraq.”

The Times did not include David’s full quote explaining his position. Here it is:

I agree with Haley Barbour and am not surprised that he too has come to this conclusion. Afghanistan is now our longest war in large part because we are trying to remake a nation which has barely emerged from the 7th Century, and in many respects has not. It was our mistake in Iraq. The Iraq war was justifiable 1) as a defense of international order against a dictator who had violated a truce and 17 UN Security Council Resolutions and was determined to build weapons of mass destruction; and 2) as a successful effort to remove a monster. We should have gone in, arrested the Iraqi leaders complicit in the war crimes against the Kurds, and quickly got out. We are not a nation that can occupy a country for a long time and do it with a good conscience (as the old colonial powers could), and we cannot sustain a long war and do it successfully. I disagree with Barbour in suggesting that al-Qaeda is our only enemy. Our enemy is radical Islam and this includes the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hizbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to name the most prominent forces engaged in a holy war against the West.

This is a theme that David wrote about previously at FrontPage in an article titled “Why I am Not a Neo-Conservative.” Andrew Sullivan distorted one of David’s points, prompting a response here at NewsReal Blog.

Also notable in the Times article is the way that David’s views are juxtaposed with those of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. In February during the debates over Egypt David challenged Kristol for his unfounded attacks on Glenn Beck’s skepticism of the revolts.

I first wrote back in July about the growing foreign policy fissures within the Conservative Movement’s hawkish wing. What we’re seeing right now is a widening divide between the traditional neo-conservative establishment (most represented by the heirs of Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz at The Weekly Standard and Commentary) and the anti-Jihad movement (most visibly represented by Robert Spencer, Andrew McCarthy, Pamela Geller, us here at the Freedom Center, and recently promoted by Beck.)

The divide can be summarized in both movements’ reactions to one fact: 84% of Egyptians believe apostates from Islam need to be executed. The traditional neo-conservative establishment ignored that fact in their embrace of the revolts in Egypt. (Apparently traditional neoconservatives are so eager to remove one tyrant that they don’t care if a worse one steps in to fill the void.) The Anti-Jihad movement was more clear-eyed in realizing that “democracy” in such a country would be many things but “freedom” is not one of them.

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Hat tip to The Washington Times for appreciating the significance of this particular party list.

The Times reports today about who did and didn’t make the cut for President Barack Obama’s first state dinner. Noticeably absent are top Republican lawmakers. Who did make the list? Well, Oprah Winfrey, for one.

Although many in mainstream media will attempt to discount the significance of the invite list – who made Obama’s A-List and who didn’t – the fact is this list is a solid representation of Obama’s vanity and skewed priorities in Washington.

So far, according to the Times, we know one Republican did get an invitation –

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell received an invitation but decided to skip the dinner.

“Sen. McConnell is with his constituents this week and will be at Kentucky events tomorrow and tomorrow night,” Don Stewart, the senator’s communications director, said Monday.

But the list of top congressional Republicans stiffed by the Administration is longer and says far more about Obama’s notion of bipartisan leadership in Washington.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner won’t be there; he’s on Thanksgiving break and home in Ohio. His deputy, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, also didn’t get an invitation to the dinner.

The president didn’t invite his 2008 rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, even though Mr. Obama the candidate pledged a post-partisan presidency.

Hollywood, however – according to some reports and rumors – will be well represented.

According to rumors, talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Mr. Obama during the campaign, will be attending. Reports emerged Monday that Hollywood will be in the house: DreamWorks partners David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, along with Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton and WME Entertainment Agency co-CEO Ari Emanuel, will attend, according to deadline.com.

Attorney General Eric Holder, and by extension his boss President Obama evidently believe that African-Americans in a small community in North Carolina – a population comprised of 65% blacks, mind you – are too stupid to vote for a Democrat (no self-respecting black person would EVER vote for a Republican, mind you!) unless that candidate is identified as such on the ballot with a ‘D’ next to his name.  The Washington Times reported yesterday that the Justice Department ruled that the town of Kinston, NC must identify local candidates with their party affiliation in order to preserve racial justice.  The town voted last year to do away with the notation of party affiliation on ballots for local offices by a margin of nearly 2-to-1.  Quoting from the story:

“The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their ‘candidates of choice’ – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.  The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.”

Stop to consider the implications of that ruling for a moment.  Notice the clumsy attempt to implicate supposedly racist whites, who won’t vote for a black candidate it is claimed, unless said candidate is identified as a Democrat!  This in a town of 23,000 people, 65% of whom are black.  Also note that according to the story, no one the Times interviewed in Kinston could remember a Republican winning office there.  Mr. Holder, who told us back in February that we are a nation of cowards when it comes to discussions about race, evidently believes that to ensure that blacks are represented by their “candidate of choice”, which of course will ALWAYS be a member of the Democrat Party, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that blacks, whom he apparently considers to be dullards by nature MUST HAVE DEMOCRAT CANDIDATES IDENTIFIED on ballots in order to choose “correctly”.  If this isn’t the vile racism of low expectations, I don’t know what is.  Let’s revisit Mr. Holder’s condescending lecture on race relations from this past February, shall we?

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”

Hmmm….  cowards, eh?  What exactly do you MEAN by this statement, Mr. Holder?  Could it be that you believe African-Americans really have not advanced very far from “the plantation” after all, and therefore must be led by the nose to do what is in their own interest, which of course would include always voting for Democrats?  Is THIS your twisted idea of the state of American blacks in 2009?  The stomach turns.

In a broader sense of course, this decision by the Obama Justice Department is of a piece with Obama’s many other pronouncements regarding the need to “level the playing field” in America – an America he evidently considers to be inherently unjust, unfair and oppressive to minorities.  Now that he has been anointed however, he’s set about the hard work of rescuing the nation from the flawed vision of our Founders.  Consider this excerpt from a 2001 interview on Chicago public radio:

“As radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.” (emphasis added)

How long will many conservatives remain afraid to publicly acknowledge the self-evident truth that Eric Holder, Anita Dunn, Van Jones, Ron Bloom, Valerie Jarrett, Ezekiel Emanuel, Mark Lloyd, et. al. share Obama’s radical vision of a fundamentally transformed America?  Obama is not naive.  He is not simply an empty suit being manipulated by a shadowy, nefarious political machine operating in the background.  Obama is INTENTIONALLY destroying America’s free-market economy, creating chaos, and attempting to redistribute wealth to its “rightful owners”, whom he feels have been wronged by this nation’s fundamentally flawed Constitution.  He intends to rip it up and rewrite it.  America’s proletariat has found its champion in Barack Obama.  God help us.

“I think this whole thing is bogus,” Beck told the newspaper’s morning radio show, “America’s Morning News.”

“They moved too fast, too quietly. The president is not involved. Until you start going to the people at the top … the people connected to the White House, you cannot clean up this mess.”

Activists working for the left-wing character-assassination factory known as Media Matters for America are beside themselves, fuming with rage that the Washington Times dares to report on Beck’s view of the panel. According to the leftist smear artists:

For the third time in the past two weeks, The Washington Times has allowed Glenn Beck to dictate its coverage by presenting his attacks on progressives as news. A September 25 article was premised entirely on Beck’s opinion that ACORN’s internal ethics investigation is “bogus” because its advisory board members are “the worst of the worst,” without providing any actual evidence that would undermine the investigation’s integrity.

In fact Beck has provided proof backing up his arguments on recent shows.

“OK, it’s not an “investigation” per se — that would be crazy; that would make too much sense,” said Beck. Instead, Democratic lawmakers have “asked for a ‘comprehensive report’ on all activities and funding surrounding ACORN; whether or not Congress violated the Constitution in voting to de-fund ACORN, and if the two kids who went undercover violated any laws.”