Sunday, September 19, 2010

Missing the Point Twice

Here is an article in The Daily Beast which dumps on House Republican deputy leader Eric Cantor, saying all he is good with is money. That is like dumping on a surgeon by saying all he is good with is that his patients get well, that he lacks bed-side manner.

Politics is about two things: charisma and money. To win big you need both. If Cantor is a reliable supplier of money, then people he helps only need charisma. If you don't think that makes him extraordinarily important, you really haven't a clue about politics.

If he lacks bed-side manner (charisma), he probably won't be president. So be it. On the other hand, he could certainly become Speaker of the House when John Boehner moves on. Speaker is no small job, as people like Tip O'Neill and Sam Rayburn have demonstrated.

My second problem with the article is that it begins with this snarky, and possibly anti-Semitic, comment:
What do you need to know about the man who would be King Lite besides the brandished fact that he is the only Jewish Republican in the solar system?
That comment is just plain silly. Roughly half of the well-known neo-con Republicans are Jewish; people like David Brooks and William Kristol, to name only two of many very public figures.