Tommy Thompson Endorses Van Hollen, Bucher's Chances Severely Hurt
J.B. Van Hollen has been slowly and steadily getting endorsements from Republicans all over the state. Today, he got the biggest endorsement of them all: ex-governor Tommy Thompson:
Getting the public backing of the biggest name in Wisconsin GOP politics is great, but even better for Van Hollen is Thompson "will hold a fundraiser within weeks for Van Hollen." Many Republicans wanted Tommy to run against Sen. Herb Kohl because they knew he could raise enough money to be competitive. Tommy directing campaign bucks at Van Hollen will really help the former U.S. Attorney and increase the financial disparity between him and his opponent Paul Bucher.
Van Hollen has tremendous momentum. From my perspective it's starting to look like an avalanche is about to bury Bucher. Thompson on Van Hollen's side will discourage GOP donors from giving to Bucher out of loyalty, trust, and a little bit of a herd mentality. With Bucher at a serious money disadvantage that will get worse he'll have to strongly confront Van Hollen on all sorts of issues and hope Van Hollen says something goofy like terrorists are running around Wisconsin.
Berlin's Spirit Questions Bush Doctrine
James Pinkerton gets a little too cute with his "talk" with Isaiah Berlin's ghost in an attempt to paint President Bush as a French-style revolutionary (don't tell the French) with little understanding of current world realities. To sum it up Pinkerton/Berlin criticize the President for promoting human freedom as the cure to Man's political problems. For Pinkerton/Berlin that's too single-minded.
However, the idea of liberty is a large, wide-ranging concept. It covers the ability to trade freely with one's fellow man, to speak and protest one's government, to create art free of government sanction, the ability to worship as one pleases, and so on and so on. Freedom is an all-encompassing concept. It's an abstraction of a host of related ideas. With Berlin's words Pinkerton reduces human liberty into "one totalistic thing" something Berlin warns against.
Maybe Pinkerton/Berlin would approve of Thomas Barnett's idea of the pursuit of connectedness, economically, culturally, and politically. Then, that might be playing word games like Pinkerton/Berlin did with freedom.
When President Bush talks about spreading freedom across the globe he doesn't mean there's the one American form or that nations with little history of freedom to instantly become as free as the U.S. No proponents of freedom's expansion believe Iraq, Lebanon, or the rest of the Middle East will become Switzerland anytime soon. Pinkerton/Berlin doesn't offer any words from President Bush to suggest otherwise.