"Why on earth would we expect the corporate powers and their lobbyists, who make billions by selling out the middle-class, to just give up their power because we ask them nicely?" ~ John Edwards

When John Edwards puts down his comb, he sharpens his rhetoric against the "corporate greed" so dear to the heart of Peggy Noonan and it frightens her. He also denounces what he calls a "small group of profiteers" dominating American life – the very people that Noonan speaks for – and that threatens her.

"Corporate greed and the very powerful use their money to control Washington and this corrupting influence is destroying the middle class." is Edwards' message that challenges the powers that be.

It is a message that can only be delivered by someone that, to quote Noonan, “has two of ‘em’.”

Did it take “two ‘em’” for Bush to give the oil companies huge tax breaks this year? Did it take “two of ‘em’” for Cheney to give billions in wasted and unaccounted for no-bid contracts to Halliburton at taxpayer expense?

What scares pitiful Peggy so much is not that John Edwards looks in a mirror, it’s what he sees when he does – a man willing and ready to fight for the middle class, and someone who has the courage to challenge the small group of “profiteers” that the Wall Street Journal editorial board represents.

To put it in the blunt sexual innuendo that Noonan seems to relish, it’s the size of John Edwards' balls that concern her, not the lack of them.

Having spent the recent holiday with a relative who watches Fox News exclusively, and reads the WSJ editorial page religiously (Noonan is her favorite), I was informed that the decision as to who to vote for would rest upon the answer to this question: who would be the best person to “stand up” to Putin. That was the sole criteria – who would be able to face our enemy directly and make them back down – all other issues were secondary for this "fundamentalist" Christian who believes that there is a "war on Christmas."

This is how “conservatives” are framing the election, knowing full well that “national security” is the only issue where they have a chance of gaining support. To do so, they need to confuse and conflate “machismo” with “competence” – and after 7 years of a tough-talking Bush supported by a retinue of tough-talking neo-cons that may be more difficult than they think.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the public is catching on that competence and testosterone levels are two completely different things.

She did mention the Huckster: “Mike Huckabee gets enough demerits to fall into my not-reasonable column.”

She can’t bring herself to mention those demerits though because it’s his use of “religion” she would be attacking.

Funny how Mike’s “religion” suddenly makes even the “magic dolphin lady” uncomfortable, it didn’t used to:

“Mr. Reagan would not have dismissed the story of the dolphins as Christian kitsch, but seen it as possible evidence of the reasonable assumption that God’s creatures had been commanded to protect one of God’s children…. But then he was a man.”

Wolcott has more on Noonan and the importance of religion for her at the link below.

http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=3

http://tinyurl.com/2xeckd

If another “big bad thing” happens, Noonan says, we must have a president we “trust” and that’s why she says Clinton is “not reasonable.”:

“Mrs. Clinton is the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure of my lifetime. Yes, I include Nixon. Would she be able to speak the nation through the trauma?”

It appears that Noonan has conveniently forgotten the “trust” level of the current occupant of the White House. A poll earlier this year found that an overwhelming 63% said they “cannot trust the Bush administration to honestly and accurately report intelligence about possible threats from other countries?”

Can Bush speak the nation through another national trauma? Noonan doesn’t appear concerned about that.

She’s far more concerned that Edwards combed his hair while collecting his thoughts for a debate. This action, as polls show, did not translate into a lack of “trust” toward Edwards – what, ostensibly, Noonan is supposedly most concerned about.

She conveniently avoids that point, opting instead to focus on the “superficial” while forgetting the actual point she was trying to make – about “trust.” That’s probably wise since both Clinton and Edwards are far more trusted than President Bush is.

http://tinyurl.com/2vw3j6

The refusal to even answer these questions (by Giuliani, Thompson and Huckabee) brought this admonishment from Ron Paul:

“What are they trying to hide?.... Why are they embarrassed to answer the questions?”

I think we know the answer to that: they all explicitly embrace the theories of an all-powerful executive expounded by Bush, Cheney, Addington and Yoo.

Considering his answers, another question that comes to mind is this: why wasn’t Mitt Romney embarrassed to answer the questions?

Does he regret that he did? Wouldn’t he have been better off hiding his true positions on these issues like those who refused to answer them?