Beyond Anti-Semitism

By Alan Caruba

I read Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent call to European Jews to move to Israel in the wake of the attacks in Paris and in Copenhagen. “Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” was Netanyahu’s message to those considering leaving their home nations.

By 2012 about 43% of the world’s Jewish community lived in Israel, making it the country with the largest Jewish population. The bulk of the rest of the world’s Jewish population lives in the United States and the remainder are scattered among other nations.  

When it declared its sovereignty in 1948 Israel quickly filled with Jewish immigrants from the surrounding Arab nations that made it clear they were not welcome even if their families had lived there for generations. Now they are extending their hatred to Arab Christians.

These days Israel’s population numbers 7,821,850. For years Israel has been welcoming Jewish immigrants from nations that include Russia, Ethiopia, Ukraine, and France; even some from the U.S. As incidences of anti-Semitism increase in Europe, Netanyahu’s invitation is being answered by more Jews seeking a respite from the hatred they are encountering.

Jews represent less than 0.2% of the world's population.

In the U.S., unless you live in a major urban center or its suburbs, you are not likely to encounter too many Jews. According to the 2015 World Almanac and Book of Facts® there are 5,439,000 Jews in North America and 13,862,000 worldwide.

So why are we witnessing attacks on Jews? Writing in The Wall Street Journal on January 15, 2015, Ruth R. Wisse, a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, warned that “If we mistakenly imagine that this is ‘about’ Jews, however, we fall into the trap that anti-Semitism sets for us by deflecting attention from perpetrators to victims.”

“The trail of terror leads not to the Jews but from those who organize against them…In every case, Jews are convenient targets standing in for the liberalizing aspects of individual freedom, democratic governance and modernity complete with its anxieties. Anti-Jewish politics aims at the tolerant societies in which Jews flourish.”

Therein lays the danger in President Obama’s resistance to identifying the terrorists and acts of terrorism around the world as fundamentally Islamic. Do all Muslims hate Jews? Probably not, but enough do to support radical Islamism in the millions and their hatred extends to Christians and all other infidels, unbelievers.

One thing is for sure. As reported on June 3, 2014 in The Wall Street Journal, “from 2010 to 2013, the number of jihadist groups worldwide has grown by 58%, to 49 from 31; the number of jihadist fighters has doubled to a high estimate of 100,000; and the number of attacks by al Qaeda affiliates has increased to roughly 1,000 from 392.” Those numbers are increasing.

CNS News.com reported in November 2014 that “The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60% compared to the previous year—from 11,133 to 17,958—with four Sunni Muslim extremists groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities” according to the Global Terrorism Index, a project of the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The failure to defeat the jihadist groups can only lead to the increasing danger of an attack on the U.S. homeland, but it will also ensure that such attacks occur throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East wherever there are large Muslim populations.

On September 29, 2014, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly. “It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam. Typically its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds—no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of the world. You know the famous American saying, ‘All politics is local’? For militant Islamists, ‘All politics is global’ because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world.”

When Netanyahu addresses the U.S. Congress next month, his message will surely be the same, but with one difference. He will focus on the insane prospect of an Iran, the source of terrorist acts against the U.S., since the Beirut bombing of our Marine barracks there in 1983.

What Obama does not grasp is that Netanyahu wants the U.S. to cease its insane support for a nuclear Iran. He wants to protect his nation, but what he also wants to do is to save Iranian lives because Iran will not be permitted to reach a point where it can annihilate Israel.

This goes beyond the anti-Semitism that has flourished for millennia and goes straight to the question of whether Israel and the U.S. can survive an inevitable attack and whether the rest of the world can avoid slipping into a new Dark Age rooted in the seventh century.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Hating Humanity by Opposing Science

By Alan Caruba

They don’t want to admit it, but we know it’s true. There are countless organizations that hate humanity enough to do everything in their power to put a stop to anything that might benefit it. Their focus is on the use of science to improve and protect our lives.

A recent example is the discussion over the need to ensure youngsters are vaccinated against measles. When I was a child, the great fear parents had was polio and, when the vaccine was created against it, it ceased within my lifetime to be a major health threat. Measles, too, went from being a common disease in my youth to where it occurred rarely.

Even so, some idiots keep spreading the lie that vaccinations can cause autism. That was enough for some parents to fail to vaccinate their child. In other cases, children brought here from foreign nations where vaccination is not as widespread as here can and do cause outbreaks like the one at a California amusement park. It is occurring in other states as well. A disease like measles exists with a life force of its own to spread as widely and rapidly as possible.

On February 14, the Wall Street Journal carried an article, “First Genetically Modified Apple Approved for Sale in U.S.” The previous day I received an email from Friends of the Earth (FOE) citing the apple and bewailing the fact that “Like other GMO’s, this apple won’t be labeled and regulators are relying on assurance from the company that made the apple that it’s safe for human consumption and the environment.”

Why won’t it be labeled? Because it poses no harm to anyone’s health.

What FOE wants to do is create obstacles to genetically modified foods, but the World Health Organization is on record saying that “GM foods currently available on the international market have passed safety assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.”

Listen to what a farmer has to say about GMOs. Larry Cochran is the president of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers. “Most people don’t even know what GMO stands for, but for me as a farmer it’s just another way of speeding up the breeding process. I have a boss, Mother Nature, who does her own form of GMO breeding, whether it’s new races of disease or insects that have evolved. She’s always changing the rules. If we in agriculture want to be able to feed the world’s population, we have to be able to grow more food on less land, and I believe GMOs can help me do that.”

In a December 31, 2014 commentary posted on the Daily Caller, Mischa Popoff, an expert on the organic food sector, the author of “Is it Organic?” and a policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, pointed out that “GMOs meanwhile have NEVER caused any health problem at any level.”

Popoff’s book reveals what a scam organic farming is and, if you have had a choice between organic or not in the supermarket, you will instantly realize organic is much more expensive. Why? Because it does not use GMOs or other means to protect their crops against drought, weeds, or insect predation.

“The real goal for organic activists,” says Popoff, “is to ban GMOs outright the way DDT was banned in 1972, a terrible move by these very same activists which resulted in more deaths from mosquito-borne malaria in the Third World than were cause by both world wars.”

Fear of GMOs is spread monthly by countless articles condemning genetic modification. As Amy Paturel notes in an article on WebMD.com, “The World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Medical Association all say these crops are safe as, and often safer than, foods changed the old-fashioned way, such as when a new plant is bred from two different types.”

The irony of all the efforts to scare people in the fashion that the Friends of the Earth and comparable groups are trying to do—calling for labeling of GMO foods—is that the new apple has received approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The producer has voluntarily asked the Food and Drug Administration to likewise determine its safe consumption. What’s new about it? It does not turn brown after you cut it into slices by shutting off the enzyme that initiates the browning process. It also resists bruising. All good news for consumers.

It is essential that companies that purchase large quantities of food products not fall prey to the anti-GMO lies. A biotech potato, Simplot, is also less susceptible to black spots from bruising and has lower levels of sugar and asparagine. Despite DOA approval, McDonald’s decided not to use it and it is a company that buys 3.4 billion pounds of potatoes a year.

If farmers and ranchers are going to be able to feed the Earth’s human population of seven billion and growing, GMOs hold the key to avoiding widespread hunger while at the same time offering products like Golden Rice that would prevent a half million kids from going blind and dying every year due to Vitamin-A deficiency in the Third World. 

As Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder who left the organization when he realized it was operating from an anti-science, anti-capitalism agenda, warns, “There is now an anti-intellectual element that doesn’t care about people. There is no logic or science involved—only ideology and ignorance.”

People live longer, healthier lives these days because of the discoveries of science. Genetic modification is just one of them. Vaccines are another. The Friends of the Earth and others who oppose such advances want you to die because they believe humans are a plague on the Earth.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Are We Seeing History Repeat Itself?

By Alan Caruba

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is the famed quote of George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher (1863-1952).  I am beginning to think that the world is making its way toward a future that repeats the horrors of the last century’s wars and earlier times when Europeans battled Islam to free Jerusalem, to protect their homelands in Europe, and to eject Muslims from Spain.

In his book, “Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7^th to the 21^st Centuries” historian Paul Fregosi documented the history of Islam and its attacks on European nations, characterizing jihad as “essentially a permanent state of hostility that Islam maintains against the rest of the world.” It is a Muslim sacrament, a duty they must perform.

Occurring at the same time is the agenda of the global environmental movement and on February 4 Christina Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves; which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history."

"This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” (Italics added) 

Figueres was wrong. The objective of the 1917 Communist revolution that began in Russia and Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958-1961) was the same that is now being openly embraced by the United Nations in 2015. The result of both was the death of millions.

Humanity is under attack from an Islam that intends to impose its barbaric seventh century Sharia law and from the environmental movement’s intention to end capitalism and replace it with the income distribution central to Communism.

Both spell a terrible future for the people of the world.

The President of the United States is devoted to pursuing both of these goals as the defender of Islam and the opponent of “income inequality.”  We have twenty-two months to survive Barack Obama’s remaining time in office.

Obama was first elected on the promise to end the U.S. engagement in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. After many years Americans welcomed the prospect of ceasing the loss of lives and billions those wars represented. With the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) they are now seeing the true price of that policy. Just because we don’t want to fight a war doesn’t mean our enemy will cease to pursue it.

We are at a critical moment in time because it is evident that Obama wants to provide Iran the opportunity to build its own nuclear weapons arsenal. It is a time as well when the military capability of the U.S. has been diminished to what existed before the beginning of World War II. All of Europe and much of Asia would have fallen under the control of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan if the U.S. had not stepped up to the task of defeating them.

Relentlessly, Obama has done everything he can to reduce the size of our military fighting force and the ships, planes and other weapons needed to protect our security or support that of our allies. He has withdrawn the U.S. from its position of global leadership and left behind allies that no longer trust us and enemies who no longer fear us.

Raymond Ibrahim of the Middle East Forum wrote on February 5 that “approximately 100 million Christians around the world are experiencing the persecution by Muslims of all races, nationalities, and socio-political circumstances.”  

At the same time, we are witnessing a new exodus of Jews from Europe, mindful of the Holocaust in the 1940s.  According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2013 the Jewish population worldwide was approximately 14 million. Just over 6 million reside in Israel, another 6 million are U.S. citizens, and the rest are in Europe and elsewhere around the world. What has not changed from the last century, however, is the level of anti-Semitism and it appears to be on the rise.

What we are witnessing is a full-scale attack on the West—Christianity and Judaism—and upon Western values of morality, democracy, and freedom.

Whether it will erupt in a new world war is unknown, but if history is a guide, we are moving in that direction.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Cartoon Round Up

 

 

 

 

 

The Worst U.S. President Ever!

President's Day - February 16, 2015

By Alan Caruba

I won’t be around to see it, but I have little doubt that future historians and others will conclude that President Barack Hussein Obama was the worst President ever to serve in that office.

The reason is simple enough. His decisions on domestic and foreign affairs have already demonstrated his astonishing incompetence. His major contribution may in fact be to ensure that the voters elect conservatives in the next two or more elections to come. If he is remembered for anything it well may be the emergence of the Tea Party movement whose influence has been seen over the course of two midterm elections.

One cannot help but think of such things as President’s Day, February 16, reminds us of Washington and Lincoln, both of whom were born during this month. For most it is just a day on which there are a variety of sales pegged to it. For all of us, however, it acknowledges the two Presidents without whom there would not be a United States of America.

Presidents Washington, Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt are routinely ranked at the top of the lists of those judged to have been of greatest service to the nation and, not incidentally, all three presided over wars that led to and maintained America’s sovereignty.

When I have read about Washington’s life, I am always impressed by the man and, not surprisingly, so were his contemporaries, the men he commanded over the long course of the Revolutionary War. The Americans of his time had the highest regard for him. It was Washington who set the pattern of only serving two terms. When the American artist, Benjamin West, told England’s King George III of Washington’s decision, the king said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

In his 1796 farewell address, Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.”

Imagine a modern politician talking of religion and morality as the basis of political prosperity—least of all Obama who has disparaged Christianity and protects Islam.

America was particularly blessed and fortunate in its earliest years to have a succession of men who demonstrated extraordinary intelligence, courage, and moral integrity. Following Washington there was John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. Few nations have been so blessed as ours.

One can only examine Lincoln’s life with a sense of wonder as he rose from humble beginnings to the role of keeping the Union intact in the face of the secession of southern states and the horrendous war that followed. Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865 and on April 14 Lincoln was assassinated by an actor, John Wilkes Booth. His death was the occasion of the first American national funeral as cities and towns did their best to out-do one another to honor him. It took his death for people to realize the magnitude of what he had achieved.

The advice Lincoln offered in his time is just as important, if not more so, in ours:

“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt and, earlier, Theodore Roosevelt, are also highly ranked among the Presidents. Both men shared a zest for the job, enjoying it. Teddy regretted announcing that he would not run for a third term (which he did with the Bull Moose Party) and FDR ran and won four times! He did so during the Great Depression and World War II.

Two other families played a role in the presidency, the Adams and, in the modern era, George H.W. Bush was the 41^st President and George W. Bush was the 43^rd. It is popular to disparage both men, but history may come to another judgment.

 

President Obama has brought nothing to the presidency except his Marxist theology. He was the least prepared in terms of experience in the workplace and his elections have been more about the manipulation of public opinion and his two terms have been an endless succession of lies.

His signature legislation, ObamaCare, has undermined the nation’s healthcare system. His solution to the Great Recession added more debt in his six years in office than the combined debt of every previous President up to Clinton and did not stimulate the economy as promised.

His ignorance of history and of current events is vast. Google "what does Obama know?" and you will find many articles that document this.

 

He has been protected by a liberal mainstream media, but the voters have seen through that and have turned political power in Congress over to the Republican Party.

One thing is for sure. On future President’s Days, Obama will barely be noticed when Americans look back on those who did much to address the great issues and challenges of their times.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Obama's Dangerous Iran Nuke Deal

By Alan Caruba

The Feb 10 Wall Street Journal editorial asked “Has the U.S. already conceded a new era of nuclear proliferation?” and concluded that “Mr. Obama is so bent on an Iran deal that he will make any concession to get one.”

As we should know by now, President Obama has no negotiating skills and even less understanding of the world the U.S. used to lead by virtue of its military power and democratic values.

If he succeeds in getting a deal, absent Congress doing anything about it, the Wall Street Journal says it will result in “a very different world than the one we have been living in since the dawn of the nuclear age. A world with multiple nuclear states, including some with revolutionary religious impulses or hegemonic ambitions, is a very dangerous place.”

Yes, but. We already live in such a world and the real question is whether, absent their “revolutionary” rhetoric, shouting “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” do those at the top levels of the Iranian ruling structure want to risk having their nation destroyed if they were ever to use nuclear weapons?

No nation on Earth has done so since the U.S. ended the war with the Japanese Empire with two atom bombs rather than put at risk the lives of our troops in an invasion. Why do we think Iran would use their nukes if they acquired them?

The short answer is that the United Nations has passed six resolutions to deny Iran the capability of developing a military nuclear program and the current negotiations, the P5+1, while led by the U.S., are joined by Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Nations in the Middle East and around the world are inclined to think the Iranian leadership would use such weapons. Obama is intent on ignoring their judgment.

If you want to know why Iran continues to be involved in negotiations to restrict its nuclear weapons agenda, you need to know that the U.S. will release $11.9 billion to Iran by the time the talks are concluded in June. That’s the figure cited by our own State Department.

On January 21, the U.S. released $490 million, the third such payment since December 10. For sitting at the negotiations table, Iran will secure $4.9 billion in unfrozen cash assets via ten separate payments by the U.S. It had received $4.2 billion in similar payments under the 2013 interim agreement with the U.S. and was given another $2.9 billion by the Obama administration last year in an absurd effort to get them to agree to end their effort to become a nuclear power.

In a sense there are several Iran’s. There is the Iran of the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard, both committed to the Islamic revolution that brought the present day Iran into being in 1979. They value having a nuclear weapons capability no less than the U.S. or other nations do.

Then there are the Iranian realists who would far prefer a detente between the U.S. and Iran because they believe it would be in both our interests. These are the voters who elected Hassan Rouhani in 2013 to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has served in office from 2005. They represent some 70% of its citizens would want peace, trade and normal relations with the U.S. Their leaders, however, have thoughts of hegemonic power in the Middle East to advance Shiite Islam.

The problem is that many of the Iranian leadership do not speak in terms other than an utter contempt for the U.S. and with an outspoken enmity for any nation that opposes the expansion of Islam. In late January, one of its newspapers, Kayhan, reported that “Professors, students and employees at the Imam Sadeq University, condemning the insults against the prophet of Islam by Charlie Hebdo…demand closure of the French embassy in Tehran.”

The demonstrators carried placards read, “I am not Charlie, I am the innocent child of Gaza”, “Death to America”, “Death to Israel”, “Death to Britain”, “Death to France”, ‘Death to Wahabism” and comparable signs all indicative of Iran’s hostility to any response to the terrorism it has sponsored for decades since the Islamic Revolution was initiated there in 1979.

On January 23, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad-Javad Zarif, addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying “I do not believe that ten years of confrontation will have had any benefits for anyone. Ten years of sanctions has yielded 19,800 contrifuges, exactly that which the sanctions wanted to halt.” 

There is no question that sanctions and the long negotiations have reduced Iran’s capacity to create nuclear weapons agenda. The current negotiations, however, are signaling an abandonment of that policy.

At Friday prayers in late January, Hojjat al-Eslam Zazem Sediqi told those in attendance “Our statesmen should know the enemy, should know with whom they are dealing and negotiating with…You are speaking with wild beasts which do not show mercy to (anyone) young or old, and who insult the Prophet, the most sacred of sacred.”

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDC) maintains a constant monitoring of Iranian news media and government outlets. The reported news out of Iran paints a picture of fire-breathing zealots against a moderate political class and population. The question is whether the zealots will have the final word.

On January 28, Ali Alfoneh, a FDC senior fellow, authored a policy brief that concluded that “Even in the unlikely event that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his negotiating team reach a nuclear agreement with international negotiators, its implementation may well fall to the Islamic Revolutionary Corps…The IRGC’s vociferous opposition to nuclear concessions and improving ties with the West raises serious questions over whether future Iranian governments will uphold any nuclear deal that the current one signs.”

There are two major power centers in Iran, the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the IRGC. Rouhani is routinely referred to as “a moderate.” As Alfoneh noted, “Meanwhile, Rouhani’s cabinet is torn between public demands for jobs and human rights, the creeping infiltration of the IRGC, and the Supreme Leader’s dogged attempts to maintain the status quo at all costs.”

In late January, the Democrats on Capitol Hill, led by Robert Menendez (D-NJ) gave Obama another two months to reach a deal before they vote for new sanctions. In the House, progressives are urging their colleagues to hold off moving any legislation that would tighten economic penalties on Iran. At this point, the only thing that has worked has been sanctions and the return of frozen funds, a form of bribery.

Meanwhile, Iran has taken credit for the training and arming of Shiite rebels who overthrew the leadership in Yemen. Iran also supports the Hezbollah in Lebanon that is threatening Israel from the area of the Golan. In reprisal for a recent attack, Israel responded with an air strike that killed an Iranian general. None of this helps position Iran as a potential peaceful partner.

This is why John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, has invited Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address a joint session of Congress. He did so without consulting the White House, but we should keep in mind that Obama released five Taliban generals from Gitmo without consulting Congress.

Netanyahu will spell out what he has said in the past. A nuclear Iran is an existential and a potentially catastrophic threat to Israel. He will likely point out that it is a threat to Saudi Arabia and all the other nations in the Middle East and worldwide.

The question is whether we are dealing with rational people leading Iran or not. In the end, we are asked to assume that even the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards want to live, want their children and grandchildren to live, and want their nation to continue. That is what Obama is betting on. The problem with that is that Islam puts a high value on martyrdom.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

President Christie?

By Alan Caruba

I was born, raised and have lived in New Jersey most of my life. That does not, however, make me an expert on Chris Christie, our Governor and currently one of the contenders for the Republican nomination to run for President in 2016.
 

His major claim to fame is that he has been twice elected in a very Democratic state and has had to deal with a very Democratic legislature. What is rarely mentioned is that the way he has done this is to issue several hundred vetoes to a point where, if the Democrats want anything passed, they have to make sure he likes it. This is also not to say that they haven’t worked with him to rein in the public service unions and address pension reform. To his credit he has vetoed countless liberal measures from gay marriage to a ban on hog gestation crates.
 

That said, New Jersey still has lots of taxes, lots of regulations, and lots of people who retire and move to Florida. It also, so I am told, has an “attitude.” Texans may say “Don’t mess with Texas”, but in New Jersey we don’t even have to issue such a warning. It is, after all, the home of the fictional Tony Soprano of HBO fame. In truth, it is a place filled with friendly, happy people, so long as you mind your manners.
 

In a curious fashion, Chris Christie embodies that attitude. He is a skilled orator when he wants to be. As a former U.S. Attorney he “made his bones” by putting a lot of Mafia guys in jail and doing the same for some high ranked Garden State politicians. That was so refreshing the voters decided to elect him Governor. In 2013 he was re-elected with 60% of the vote.
 

In the wake of 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, Christie’s embrace of President Obama when he came to New Jersey for a photo op caused a lot of Republicans to criticize him, but Christie was being a political pragmatist, knowing that the state was going to need a lot of federal funding to help rebuild from the devastation that had incurred. Even so, he has not been forgiven for it.
 

The Democrats have been desperate to find something that would reduce his popularity and “Bridgegate” became the vehicle when one of his staff stupidly messed with the traffic to the George Washington Bridge, presumably for political reasons. He called a press conference and for more than an hour answered every question he was asked, denying any personal knowledge and participation. The staffer was fired.
 

Despite that, the non-event was engineered to fester through lengthy legislative investigations that proved he was telling the truth. In addition, Christie has faced a largely hostile state press, led by the largest daily, the Star-Ledger that pathetically derides him in some fashion in every issue, usually on page one.
 

Beyond New Jersey I suspect that few voters really have any idea who he is despite his efforts to fashion the national recognition he will need to have a shot at the GOP nomination. Unlike Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker whose reputation is based on his solid conservative values in a largely liberal state, Christie is mostly known for his public personality; entertaining, but combative.
 

For hardcore conservatives, Christie is not conservative enough even though he is pro-life, against assisted suicide, and opposed to equal-pay laws, et cetera. He did secure a property-tax cap, but was unable to get the Democratic legislature to cut income tax rates. He has been criticized on Second Amendment issues favoring a ban on concealed carry and limits on ammunition magazines from 15 to ten bullets. Significantly, he vetoed a state exchange to implement ObamaCare.
 

Christie is now a national political celebrity and proceeding with a campaign to be the Party’s nominee. We shall see his name among the polls as his rankings rise or fall. That doesn’t mean voters have any real idea who he is or what he stands for.
 

That was the theme of Wall Street Journal columnist, Kimberly A. Strassel’s “What’s the Big Idea, Christie?” on February 5. She opined that “His best shot is therefore to look forward and wow conservatives with a full-throated economic and tax-reform agenda—especially since nobody has much of an idea what a Christie agenda would encompass.”
 

“Conservatives are vaguely aware that he has done useful things in the Garden State. Some like his style. But they also know he’s from, well, New Jersey, and that’s made them open to rumors they’ve heard about his positions on climate change, gun control, and social issues. Some wonder if he’s a big-business, Northeast Republican.”
 

Politically I think the nation has been moving more into the conservative political zone and we can thank President Obama for that, but Strassel is right when she says Christie has to select a few major issues and hammer them to gain the kind of support he will need to secure the nomination.
 

As Strassel notes “The measure of a Christie run won’t be whether he can outtalk or outglitter his putative Republican primary competitors. It will come entirely down to whether he can outmatch them on substance.”
 

I like him, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

© Alan Caruba, 2015