Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Ken Blackwell on the Clinton campaign’s demonization of Barack Obama.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been murdered. More from Hugh Hewitt, Matt Margolis, Jed Babbin, Mark Steyn, Monica Crowley, Rich Lowry, Clarence Page, Michael Medved, New York Times, the Washington Post and AP.

From the New York Times, a fascinating story about a 17-year-old’s ambition to become a filmmaker.

George F. Will on the continued cultural and fiscal success of McDonald’s.

Daniel Henninger on the increasingly bizarre ‘08 election.

Jeff Jacoby and Jay Severin on John McCain’s revived candidacy.

UPDATE: Thomas Sowell on ‘08.

Will Smith gets the Media Matters treatment.

Legendary jazz pianist Oscar Peterson passes away at 82. More from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Bruce Bartlett on racism in the Democrat Party.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets leads the pre-Christmas box office.

Could President Bush actually end his second term on a high note?

The Washington Post on the troubled GOP.

Damn it, I wish Barack Obama was a Republican.

I wouldn’t be surprised if most Republicans felt the same way. If Obama played for the other team, there wouldn’t be any nervousness on the right about the GOP’s prospects for 2008. In terms of charisma, intelligence and ability to project optimism, Obama is the closest thing we have to a new Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately, Obama’s a Democrat–and if he gets his party’s nomination, he could deliver a deathblow to the GOP and to Reagan conservatism next year.

Let’s get one thing out of the way–race will have no impact on Obama in a general election; it will either be a neutral factor, or a beneficial one. Obama has the potential to transcend race in a way we’ve rarely seen in American politics. What Obama is accomplishing right now is what Colin Powell was supposed to have accomplished in 1995-96. (You see why I wish Obama was a Republican!)

No one really regards Obama as a “black man” first–just as no one regarded Michael Jackson as a “black man” first in the ’80s, just as no one regarded Michael Jordan as a “black man” first in the ’90s, just as no one regards Tiger Woods as a “black man” first in the ’00s. Obama is regarded by most folks as simply a man–and to the extent his skin color is a factor at all, it will be a subtly positive one. In a general election, Obama would have the support of folks who feel that his victory would be a sign of racism’s final decline. (This factor also helped Obama’s friend Deval Patrick in his race for governor of once-racially-divided Massachusetts last year.)

How could Republicans campaign against Obama in a general election? I can’t imagine a successful strategy against the man. Pointing out his inexperience? That won’t work: Oprah Winfrey has a point when she notes that “experience” doesn’t mean all that much when such experience simply involves being a veteran hack promoting politics as usual. Attacking his liberalism? Sadly, that won’t work either. It’s been twenty years since a Democrat Presidential candidate lost solely because he was a liberal. Al Gore’s 2000 loss to George W. Bush had more to do with his link to the corrupt Clinton Administration than it had to do with ideology. Liberalism played a role in John Kerry’s 2004 loss, but it was not the central reason for his defeat: Kerry was, among other things, seen as more of a hack than Bush.

Here’s the problem for Republicans: Barack Obama’s ideology is liberal, but his character is conservative.  Most Americans will look at him and say, “He’s never been divorced, he talks openly of his faith in God, and he’s not some wild-eyed Howard Dean moonbat. I like this guy!” That’s the way it works. Today, elections are decided on emotions and image, not issues. Why do you think Clinton did the “I feel your pain” stuff? Why do you think Bush ran around declaring himself a “compassionate conservative”? Why do you think Mr. Emotion himself, Mike Huckabee, has gained so much traction in the Republican primary?

At bottom, average Americans won’t care about Obama’s past drug use or his “progressive” vision. Voters accepted Clinton’s claim that he didn’t inhale, and the electorate accepted Bush despite his past drinking. While Obama is a factory-issue liberal, he, like Clinton in 1992, doesn’t come across as a left-wing nut; thus, Americans won’t necessarily hold his ideology against him.

If Obama wins, it will prove once again that America is not a fundamentally conservative country. I imagine there are some Republicans who think Obama would be easy to beat in a general election. I encourage them to think twice! A country that voted for Clinton twice…a country that didn’t want to see him impeached…a country that gave fifty-nine million votes to a hard-left candidate like Kerry…that’s a country that could, under the right circumstances, elect a guy like Obama.

What’s depressing about Obama is that, if elected, he could easily move the country in a hard-left direction. Who could stand up against him? It’s hard to see a Republican hero rising up to challenge a President Obama. The GOP is a fundamentally divided party, and such divisions will likely get even worse in the wake of an ‘08 loss. It’s now obvious that the GOP is comprised of folks who hate each other; the only reason they’ve stuck together until now is that their hatred for each other is superseded by their loathing of liberalism. Religious/social conservatives are now openly scornful of economic/defense conservatives, and vice versa. The conservative blogs are filled with attacks on religious/social conservatives for supposedly being obsessed with abortion, and on economic/defense conservatives for supposedly taking the religious right’s support for granted.

If Obama wins in ‘08, the Reagan coalition will be rendered null and void, and the Republican Party could become as unpopular as the Democrats were in the 1980s. Lacking a figure such as Reagan or Bush to hold the party together, the GOP could be in for a long time in the political wilderness.

Meanwhile, Obama would be triumphant, using his Presidency to bring back the days of religious liberalism. The religious left lost power in this country after Martin Luther King’s assassination and the end of the war in Vietnam (which many religious liberals opposed); in Obama, Christian progressives see an opportunity to regain control of American politics. The left loves Obama because he can rhetorically link Christian values to liberalism in an effective manner; as President, he could use this gift to turn the country against the religious right.

If Obama gets the nomination, it is a lock that he will win the Presidency. Any negative campaigning by the Republicans will be demonized by the press as thinly veiled racism. Couple that with the likely phenomenon of folks who’ve never voted before registering in massive numbers to support Obama, and you have the strong possibility that Obama could become the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson to win a majority of the general-election vote.

Obama’s nomination would be political Armageddon for the GOP–which is why, if you’re a conservative, you ought to be wishing Hillary Clinton the best of luck in the Democrat primary.

William Kristol on the man who should have won TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year.

Condi Rice takes on Mike Huckabee. Uh-oh. Rice is still revered by the GOP base; this could pose a pretty big problem for Huckabee.

UPDATE: Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh are at odds. More from CBS News, Byron York and National Review.

SECOND UPDATE: More from Ramesh Ponnuru, Fred Barnes, Dean Barnett, the Weekly Standard and the New York Times.