My RedState post on Obama, Schumer, and anti-terrorism funding.

Found here.  Short version: it will shock none of you to hear that this administration has no idea how to treat its friends, either. And that’d be true even if it turns out that the administration didn’t cut anti-terrorism funding to NYC just because they’re mad at Chuck Schumer.

Schumer barefaces on Supreme Court picks.

There’s a certain refreshing honesty in Chuck Schumer’s blatantly naked partisanship.  When asked about this statement by Joe Biden in 1992 about George HW Bush getting a Supreme Court pick:

“It would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is underway — and it is — action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over,” Biden, then a Delaware senator and Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in June of 1992. “That is what is fair to the nominee and essential to the process.”

Continue reading Schumer barefaces on Supreme Court picks.

Barack Obama stabs Charles Schumer in the back.

Yes. This is precisely the time for the White House to get into a fight with the next Senate Minority Leader. What a brilliant plan, Barack Obama. Brilliant:

The White House on Wednesday lambasted Sen. Chuck Schumer, calling into question his national security credentials after he criticized the Obama administration over homeland security funding.

[snip]

“At some point Sen. Schumer’s credibility in talking about national security issues, particularly when the facts are as they are when it relates to homeland security, have to be affected by the position that he’s taken on other issues,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest shot back.

Oh, yes, I know: Schumer will take the blow and not say anything, because of the Supreme Court Justice thing. But it’s still funny to watch one of the most powerful men in Washington get lectured to by the lackey of somebody whose own power in Dizzy City declines every. Single. Day.  You think Senator Schumer’s going to remember this one? I bet he might.

Chuck Schumer wants to charge up the gun-control hill again.

Via @RobertBluey: I swear to God, they never learn.

One of the Senate’s top Democrats has promised to renew a push to pass sweeping gun control legislation in 2016.

At an event sponsored by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced that Senate Democrats will “bring a universal background check bill to the floor of the Senate early next year.”

…Senate Democrats could have done this in 2009 when they had sixty votes in the Senate, instead of the forty-five they have now.  Of course, if they had we’d probably have sixty votes in the Senate right now and a President who would have cheerfully signed a repeal bill in 2013. What is Senator Schumer’s victory condition, here? Does he even know?

Moe Lane

CNN: “Will Schumer bring on new Democratic era?”

I believe that the truism is If the title of your article is a question, then the answer is invariably ‘No.’ I actually resist this truism: I like to ask questions in titles, because the other use of that stylistic trick is to mildly unnerve the Other Side with a ominous question.  However, I think that the answer is in this case is still going to be ‘no:’

Sen. Harry’s Reid’s perfunctory announcement on Friday that he won’t seek re-election next year — leaving a vacancy for leadership of the Senate Democrats — was followed, hours later, by a matter-of-fact statement in an interview with The Washington Post:”I think Schumer should be able to succeed me.”

That would usher in a whirlwind of activity on Capitol Hill in the next year as New York’s senior senator prepares to seize the reins of power — and retool the party as a center-left powerhouse that can win and hold a majority in 2016 and beyond.

Continue reading CNN: “Will Schumer bring on new Democratic era?”

Quote of the Day, Chuck Schumer’s Lack Of Vision Suits His Party, Actually edition.

Via Instapundit: we must know of different Chuck Schumers.

There’s a certain lovable quality to Schumer that is hard to avoid even when he is on the other end of the phone yelling at you and threatening never to speak to anyone who works for your newspaper ever again. He works hard and he relishes what he does and I think he is a genuinely patriotic American.

But that makes it all the more tragic that this politician—who Bloomberg is now likening to Lyndon Johnson, writing that he has “been the highest-profile political player for the last decade in the major media centers of New York and Washington”—stands for so little.

Still, it remains true that it’s danged hard to actually say what the Democratic party is for, these days. If the GOP disappeared tomorrow I’d half expect the Democratic party leadership to wander around in a daze until they died from starvation and forgetfulness. :shrug: The price you pay for never having any ideas of your own, I guess.

Chuck Schumer and pretending that the Democratic party is not what it is.

This is an entertaining article on Chuck Schumer by Dan Henninger, but this sentence makes me raise an eyebrow: “With [his speech indicating that Democrats should not have concentrated on Obamacare], Chuck Schumer was sending an audible signal to state and local party bosses around the country and to peeved donors—aghast at the midterm results—that not everyone in Washington has lost his mind to the party’s Occupy-and-windmill wing.” …Only, the Democrats in Washington have collectively lost their minds.  Because talk is cheap.

No, seriously, we have heard this song and dance before. In 2006 and 2008 the Democrats ran a lot of candidates who talked a great game about dealing with American pocketbook issues and finding solutions and whatnot. And the American people elected those candidates… who then turned right around and looted the Treasury for the benefit of their pet causes (called the ‘stimulus’), followed closely by howlingly incompetent, and rapidly-approaching-disastrous*, social-economic engineering (‘Obamacare’).  Chuck Schumer was in on that.  The man has the morals of a cat – which is to say, he has none, but he’s legitimately affectionate towards anyone who feeds him regularly – so it doesn’t surprise me that Schumer now wants off of the Carousel. Continue reading Chuck Schumer and pretending that the Democratic party is not what it is.

Chuck Schumer quietly starts distancing Democrats from Obama for 2016.

I’m just going to summarize it: Senator Chuck Schumer today ever-so-casually indicated that working first on Obamacare was a mistake; that, in fact, Congress should have instead worked on pretty much anything else besides Obamacare; and that Sen. Schumer himself opposed starting first on Obamacare, but all those Obama supporters in the Obama administration were so adamant that Obamacare be put in place right away.  Also: how about that absent-from-the-Obamacare-debate Hillary Clinton, huh?  You know what her middle name isn’t?  That’s right: Obamacare.

I’m being mean, I know*.  But if Chuck Schumer is useful for any one thing it’s in determining just how toxic a politician and/or government program can be.  Based on this article, Barack Obama and his signature** political accomplishment are quite toxic indeed.  And it’s not even 2015 yet!  If Barack Obama’s a lame duck now, imagine how useless he’s going to be a year from now***. Continue reading Chuck Schumer quietly starts distancing Democrats from Obama for 2016.