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Bkwa Column: In Politics And Baseball, Bush Fails
BOONE, Iowa -- Seven of the declared and potential Republican candidates running for president in 2016 descended on Iowa Saturday for Sen. Jodi Ernst s inaugural Roast and Ride, a fundraiser for her super PAC that also raised money for The America s Fund, an organization to support injured and sick members of the U.S. military. I think it s important that they participate in one way or another, Ernst, R-Iowa, explained to gaggle of more than a dozen reporters, referring to the importance of visiting Iowa for 2016 hopefuls.Dressed in jeans, a bright red t-shirt, a leather vest and motorcycle boots at the Big Barn Harley-Davidson in Des Moines, Ernst then hopped on a Harley-Davidson alongside Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to drive home her point. stanley cup Scott Walker knocks Hillary Clinton for being out of touch on voting rights 00:28 stanley taza With more than 300 motorcyclists in tow, Ernst and Walker took a 38-mile ride from Des Moines to Boone where they met a larger group for some local Iowan delicatessen: pig. We are just here to have some fun, Walker said, avoiding conclusions that he is yet a 2016 candidate.But when he arrive stanley tumbler d at the Central Iowa Expo, Boone IA -- also the location of the Iowa Straw Poll which will take place in August -- Walker took to the crowds. Hkjw Christie hits Obama, Congress over NSA surveillance
END OF AN ERA ....David Frum is pretty pessimistic about the current state of movement conservatism, but George Packer says that David Brooks is even more dejected:When I met David Brooks in Washington, he was even more scathing than Frum. Brooks had moved through every important conservative publication mdash; National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard mdash; and now I feel estranged, he said. I just don t feel it s exciting, I don t feel it s true, fundamentally true. In the eighties, when he was a young movement journalist, the attacks on regulation and the Soviet Union seemed tr stanley mug ue. Now most conservatives seem incapable of even acknowledging the central issues of our moment: wage stagnation, inequality, health care, global warming. They are stuck in stanley quencher the past, in the dogma of limited government. Perhaps for that reason, Brooks left movement journalism and, in 2003, became a moderately conservative columnist for the Times. American conservatives had one defeat, in 2006, but it wasn t a big one, he said. The big defeat is probably coming, and then the thinking will happen. I have not yet seen the major think tanks reorient themselves, and I don t know if they can. He added, You go to Capitol Hill mdash; Republican senators know they re fucked. They have that sense. But they don t know stanley mug what to do. There s a hunger for new policy ideas. The great liberal wave that lasted from the 30s through the 70s was funda