“I think we ought to give our children the best we possibly can and I think we’re moving in that direction,” says renowned political operative James Carville. ”Yes, I’m very excited about it.”

Reason caught up with the Louisiana native at the New Orleans kickoff event for National School Choice Week (NSCW), which runs from January 22-28 and features hundreds of events around the country designed to increase support for allowing parents to pick what schools their children attend. The Big Easy was the ideal location for the event as all children attend schools of choice in New Orleans, a radical – and so far incredibly sucessful – response to decades of failed approaches and the devasation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

Carville emceed an event that also featured performers such as The Temptations, Trombone Shorty, and Ellis Marsalis along with speakers such as MSNBC’s Michelle Bernard, former Arizona education head Lisa Graham Keegan, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

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The following is a transcript of audio recorded in the secret underground lair of Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. Due to the seditious nature of the conversation between Ms. Clinton and several top Democratic strategists, many Bothans died to give us this information.

HILLARY:  I announce next week. What’s my rationale for opposing Obama while hedging my bets and remaining Secretary of Stasis?

HOWARD WOLFSON:  No rationale is necessary, Excellency. This is about a woman’s right to choose.

HILLARY:  Correct. The decision to contend is between me and my spin doctor.

PAUL BEGALA:  You’ll alienate the black vote if you attack Obama, Mistress.

HILLARY:  How do I campaign without criticizing him?

ANN LEWIS:  Go positive, your Majesty. Commend his Muslim roots, his readiness to nuke Pakistan if he’s disrespected, his “Buy American” initiative encouraging drug cartels to shop here for their arms needs.  You’ll appear generous while planting doubts.

HILLARY:  Wonderful!  He rejects my “compliments,” he looks petty. Serpenthead?

JAMES CARVILLE:  Exalted One, reach out to our loyal media familiars to push this meme — under Obama, the poor may be obese and own iPads and SUVs, but their children are still going to bed hungry. (more…)

Back in mid-June, Leslie Gelb floated an idea in an op-ed piece that he published in The Wall Street Journal. After the midterms, he argued, when Robert Gates resigned his position as Secretary of Defense, Hillary Clinton should be given the job in preparation for making her the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2012. As a booby prize – Gelb spoke, of course, in more flattering terms – Joe Biden could be made Secretary of State.

Apart from fact that it requires one to suppose that a man known as “loose lips,” notorious for blurting out the first thing that comes into his mind, would make a decent Secretary of State, Gelb’s suggestion made a certain amount of sense. President Obama was no longer popular; Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill had a considerable following that would be far more likely to come to the polls in 2012 if she were on the ticket; and it had long been obvious that Barack Obama held his Vice-President in contempt.

With these facts in mind, in a post back in July, I noted the criticism leveled at President Obama by erstwhile supporters of Hillary Clinton such as Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and James Carville. And I then raised the possibility that President Obama might seize upon the occasion of Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to catch her father at a time when, as everyone knows, a man from Arkansas can deny no one a favor and that he might then close the deal suggested by Gelb and get the husband of his Secretary of State to call off the attack dogs unleashed by the Clinton family.

Soon thereafter, however, I learned that Chelsea and her intended – the son of a former Congressman convicted on 31 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud and known to law enforcement agencies as Fast-Talkin’ Eddie – had chosen not to invite the current President of the United States to their wedding. In an update to my post noting this ominous fact, I speculated that this might mean that Slick Willie, Fast-Talkin’ Eddie, and the Ragin’ Cajun were planning to go to the mattresses.

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Something ominous is happening within the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama will soon have to start paying attention. For weeks now, James Carville has been railing against the Obama administration’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf. On Tuesday, Ed Rendell, Governor of Pennsylvania, added further fuel to the flames by issuing a warning. If Obama did not start pulling troops out of Afghanistan in July, 2011 as promised, he predicted that there would be a political insurrection within the party and that the President might face a primary challenge. It is in no way surprising that the Republicans have revived Hillary Clinton’s famous “3 a.m.” political advertisement and have given it a new spin, for they smell blood in the water. “Hillary was right,” they say. After the oil spill, the proverbial telephone rang and rang and rang, and the President . . . golfed, partied with celebrities, and went on vacation again and again.

Carville and Rendell have this in common. They are Democrats; they are fiercely partisan; and they were strong supporters of Hillary Clinton during the primaries back in 2008. Their maneuvers should perhaps be read in light of an op-ed piece that Leslie Gelb published in The Wall Street Journal back in the middle of June, suggesting that, when Robert Gates retires, Hillary be made the first female Secretary of Defense; that, in 2012, she be put on the ticket in place of Joe Biden; and that Biden be awarded the booby prize and be named Secretary of State.

I have no idea whether Gelb ran his piece past the Clintons before publishing it. But I would not be surprised. He, too, is a restless, frustrated, critical Democrat on the outs, and the scenario that he paints is by no means ridiculous. Joe Biden is not an asset, and Barack Obama views him with obvious disdain. Bill Clinton is a talented campaigner and a master in the art of staging comebacks, and in 2012 Hillary might be able to turn out a host of white women to vote for Obama who would otherwise sit on their hands.

As it happens, on Saturday, President Obama will have a priceless opportunity that he would be ill-advised to pass up. On that fateful day, in Rhinebeck, New York, on the estate of John Jacob Astor IV, if the rumors are borne out, Chelsea Clinton will marry Marc Mezvinsky in the presence of 400 of their parents’ best friends. And, although Bill Clinton is not a Sicilian, he would certainly be hard-pressed on so auspicious a day to deny anyone who asked of him a favor – least of all a sitting President of the United States who came to him, saying, May their first child be a masculine child!

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“A House Divided against itself cannot stand.”

When Lincoln prophesied in such terms, he did so to a nation ruptured by the most violent political schism in its History.  Thank providence A. Lincoln possessed the commanding charisma, and granite leadership to galvanize his base at such a time.  The young Republican Party knew no other loyalties and saw no other future than that of a perfect union.

Times change, but politics stay shockingly the same.  Just as important today is a president’s own party support.  This bellwether of presidential stamina has collapsed on our current administration and the inevitable flames of criticism flicker shockingly close to the door of the Oval Office.  The closest to the president have broken rank, even if off the record, and have begun the deconstruction of the agenda of the POTUS.

Krauthammer wisely warned us not to underestimate Barack Obama.  This is sage political advice for such a dynamic political creature as BHO.  However, the abandonment of faith in his followers has the clandestine potential to hemorrhage his agenda.  Just notice the backlash he received this week from his racial fumble.

Let us disseminate the recent revolt against the president by his own party.

“I can’t say that the president is fully behind me…He is not someone who has experienced what I have experienced through life, being a person of color”

Shirley Sherrod

“I never thought I would say this, but even I’m unsure what President Obama really believes.  Instead of outsourcing decisions to Congress, he should spell out his bottom line. That is what leaders are for.”

-Obama Advisor, asked to remain anonymous

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I had this movie fantasy about Obama. He would be whining to his closest associates like David Axelrod or Valerie Jarrett and there would be an open microphone. The American people would finally hear him express his utter disdain for them. Then everything would change!

My fantasy scene comes from “A Face in the Crowd” a 1957 drama starring Andy Griffith. Our future loveable Sheriff Andy Taylor played an entertainer from Arkansas, Lonesome Rhodes, who was in reality a mean-spirited, drunk. He was rescued from a jail cell with his guitar and charmed small town radio. Then he rose to national fame on the new miracle of TV. His public persona was crafted by others as an everyman who understood their hopes and dreams. People tuned in and bought the products he advertised even if every once in a while he went off script and betrayed his manipulative power. At first the public just laughed and bought more.

It was the beginning of the age of television and a cautionary tale about the power of mass media. One character realizes it potential for political power and calls TV ‘the greatest instrument of persuasion in the history of the world” Another more concerned character comments” you have to be a saint to stand all the power that little box can give you”

“A Face in the Crowd” may seem to be all about entertainment if it weren’t for the fact Lonesome Rhodes is persuaded to support a Presidential candidate and have him on his TV show. Lonesome understands what it could mean to join the powers of the mass media and politics. He tells his girlfriend” “Marcia you just wait and see. I’m gonna be the power behind the President… and you’ll be the power behind me” Of course later on he dumps Marcia for a teenage baton- twirler but that is another part of the plot.

Obama is a creation of the media. They loved him for giving a great speech in front of those fake columns. It was a TV set!

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From today’s Politico:

As the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history has played out on Obama’s watch, the environmental movement has essentially given him a pass — all but refusing to unleash any vocal criticism against the president even as the public has grown more frustrated by Obama’s performance.

About a dozen environmental groups took out a full page ad in the Washington Post Tuesday – not to fault Obama over the ecological catastrophe but to thank him for putting on hold an Alaska drilling project. “We deeply appreciate your decision. . .,” the ad says to Obama.

“President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,” Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope told the Bangor Daily News last week. “He obviously did not take the crisis in the Minerals Management Service adequately seriously, that’s clear. But his agencies have done a phenomenally good job.”

Some say there’s little doubt that if a spill like the one in the Gulf took place on former President George W. Bush’s watch, environmental groups would have unleashed an unsparing fury on the Republican in the White House. For their liberal ally, Obama, they seem willing to hold their tongues.

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If you’ve been watching the fiasco surrounding the oil spill in the gulf, you already know the mainstream media meme that has cropped up around it. “Yes, President Obama has failed to stop the spill thus far,” the press tell us. “Yes, he’s demonstrated that his promises of supreme competence were overblown. Yes, his leadership has become so questionable that even James Carville has attacked him for it. Yes, some of the alternatives being offered in spite of all of this are being ignored, and yes, President Obama has failed to inspire confidence among everyday Americans about his ability to handle this crisis. But one thing we will not deny is that President Obama cares. He is a man of deep humanity, and deep empathy (and where have we heard that word before) for the suffering of those affected by the spill, and he cares.”

What I am about to ask will require readers to engage in a supreme act of charity: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, all the evisceration which Rush Limbaugh and every other conservative commentator have piled on this administration, all the evidence that the media will never believe anything but the very best about this President even as he takes this country down the road to serfdom at a speed that would make Dale Earnhardt Jr feel queasy, and despite all the emotionless, meaningless, platitude-laden babble that the President has been spewing since the spill began, I want the readers to assume, just for the sake of argument, that the media is telling the truth. Despite what appear to be severe rhetorical and emotional shortcomings in his speeches and his own bearing, imagine that underneath the hyper-rational mask, President Obama really does care.

So what?

Has that “caring” done anything to stop the spill? Has it given President Obama one single, solitary constructive idea about how to solve the problem (other than “Plug the Hole,” that is)? Does President Obama have the ability to fly out to the Gulf Coast and, like Ma-Ti in Captain Planet, dissolve the oil with nothing but the magically empathic effusions of his beating heart? And if not, then even if we concede that President Obama cares about those affected by this crisis,  how is that remotely relevant to his ability to solve it? As per the usual liberal tag line, we are expected to believe that President Obama’s good intentions alone should assuage us of his competence, but have they done anything at all? The answer is as devastating as it is obvious: No.

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[Note: This is part of an ongoing series about the Clinton Redux, the Obama Administration and their political wars against Americans. Click here for Part I]

As Big Government reported here, the Clintonistas have reunited to take down the tea party movement. The same tactics they used in the 1990’s to keep the Clintons in power are now being used to keep the Democrats in power. It was only a matter of time when President Bill Clinton would fire a round to vilify the tea party movement. That time has come.

It happened last week when the former President used the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, where 168 men, women and children were killed, to smear the tea party participants. In a New York Times op-ed President Clinton wrote:

“… we should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them…. Civic virtue can include harsh criticism, protest, even civil disobedience. But not violence or its advocacy. …. the line was crossed in Oklahoma City. In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again.”

For months tea party participants have gathered at peaceful rallies across the county but in President Clinton’s narrative these gatherings are reminiscent to Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist, who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building.

His smear reminded me of a prophetic warning that Linda Tripp of Lewinsky-Clinton fame told me years ago: “If you believe nothing else, believe this. If the Clintons can do it to me, they can do it to you.”

Looks like she was right.

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Stanley Greenberg and James Carville claim that the Republican Party has peaked too soon. Incredibly, Greenberg says that “when we look back on this, we’re going to say Massachusetts is when 1994 happened.” Stan’s only claim to expertise in the 1994 elections, of course, is that he’s the guy who blew it for the Democrats. Right after that, President Clinton fired both of the flawed consultants and never brought them back again.

Their latest pitch is that the highpoint of the GOP advance was the Scott Brown election and that, from here on, things will “improve slightly” for the Democrats.

Once again, Carville and Greenberg are totally misreading the public mood. Each time the Republican activists battle, they become stronger. Their cyber and grass roots grow deeper. The negatives that attach to so-called “moderate” Democratic incumbents increase. And each time Obama, Reid and Pelosi defy public opinion and use their majorities to ram through unpopular legislation, frustration and anger rise.

Were Obama’s ambitions to slacken, perhaps a cooling-off might eventuate. But soon the socialist financial takeover bill will come on the agenda, followed by amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap-and-trade and card-check unionization. Each bill will trigger its own mobilization of public opposition and add to the swelling coalition of opposition to Obama and his radical agenda.

And, all the while, the deficit will increase, interest rates will rise and unemployment will remain high.

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Last week, former President Clinton was rushed to the hospital in New York for an emergency heart operation. Medical experts said the procedure was “relatively routine” and predicted Clinton would make a full recovery and be back to his regular schedule soon. To the public, at least, that schedule revolves chiefly around earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. In fact, some Clinton associates cited the work in Haiti as exacerbating his heart condition. Clinton money man, Terry MacAuliffe, even noted that Clinton’s Haiti work continued right up until the operation:

Democrat colleague Terry McAuliffe said Mr Clinton had participated in a conference call on earthquake relief efforts as he was wheeled into the operating theatre.

We’ll take Terry’s word on that. But, Big Government has learned of at least one other conference call/meeting around this time. A meeting of former Clintonistas and senior Democrat political operatives to coordinate a push-back to the burgeoning tea party movement. Consider it a Democrat party relief effort.

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Back in early May, James Carville gleefully published a book entitled 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.

In part, an extended rant against George W. Bush and his administration, it also purported to show that “the Republicans are going to keep getting spanked again and again for forty more years because we’re right and they’re wrong, and Americans know it.”

Of course, Carville added, “the Republicans have been down before, and the Democrats have won Congress before, and we’ve still managed to lose.” But, he continued, “this time we strung our policies together into a coherent, appealing narrative. And we did it with the help of the historically diverse, historically Democratic young people who will be the foundation for a lasting Democratic majority.”

This may have seemed a plausible claim late in 2008 or early in 2009 — when the ragin’ Cajun sent off his book to Simon & Schuster. By the time of publication, however, the Republicans in Congress had shown that they still had some fight in them, and the Tea-Party Movement had already made its appearance.

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The always enjoybable Byron York has this (funny?) piece in today’s Washington Examiner:

Are you, by chance, a conservative? A Republican? Did you vote for John McCain last November, as well as the GOP candidate in your local congressional race?

If your answer to these question is yes, then you are very, very strange — and perhaps not even fully American. At the very least, you’re not one of the rest of us.

If you don’t believe it, just read “The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans,” a new report by Democracy Corps, the political research firm run by Democratic operatives James Carville and Stanley Greenberg.

“The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America,” write Carville and Greenberg. Conservative Republicans, according to the Democracy Corps research, don’t trust Barack Obama; are scared by the speed with which the president and Democrats in Congress are attempting to enact new programs; don’t like government takeovers of business; and believe that many of their fellow Americans don’t fully appreciate the threat posed by the Democratic agenda.

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[Ed Note: This is the first post to run at BigGovernment. It was published two-years ago today. It still seems relevant.]

In 1995, President Bill Clinton stood before the nation and proclaimed, “The era of big government is over.” The following year, the federal budget deficit stood at 1.4% of GDP. Thirteen years later, in 2008, the deficit had doubled, to just over 3% of GDP. This year, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal budget deficit will equal 11.4% of GDP.

As George Will would say, “Well.”

This is the real source of our “summer of discontent.” Yes, millions of Americans spent the month of August holding Tea Parties, attending town halls, organizing, marching and protesting against ObamaCare, i.e. Congressional and Administration proposals to reconstruct the entire health care sector. But to suggest that health care alone is at the root of this backlash is to miss the forest for the trees. To paraphrase Democrat strategist James Carville, “It’s the big government, stupid.”

Since last September when the financial markets stumbled, we’ve seen a Wall Street bailout, government takeovers of AIG, Citigroup, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Chrysler, and numerous banks. The Federal Reserve has opened its discount window to almost all-comers and has taken the unprecedented step of aggressively buying up the federal government’s own debt. Congress rushed through a “stimulus to nowhere,” moved closer to a “cap-and-trade” remake of the energy sector and openly talked about higher taxes and more regulation. (more…)