John F. Kennedy’s Dirty Little Election Tricks

Mark Feldstein wrote the following at the Washington Post:

“Fifty years ago next week, Richard Nixon stood uncomfortably on the Capitol’s inaugural platform and watched his rival John F. Kennedy being sworn in as president. “We won” the election, Nixon fumed, “but they stole it from us.”

Indeed, the dirty tricks that helped defeat Nixon were more devious than merely the ballot-stuffing of political lore. In one of the least-known chapters of 20th-century political history, Kennedy operatives secretly paid off an informant and set in motion a Watergate-like burglary that sabotaged Nixon’s campaign on the eve of the election.

It began in the fall of 1960, when the Kennedy campaign spread word that Vice President Nixon had secretly pocketed money from billionaire Howard Hughes, whose far-flung business empire was heavily dependent on government contracts and connections. Reporters for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Time magazine corroborated the allegations, but their editors feared publishing such explosive information in the last days of the tightly fought campaign.

So the Kennedys turned to two crusading liberal columnists, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, who had been attacking Nixon for the past decade. It was “a journalistic atrocity” to conspire with “the Kennedy hawkshaws to help us get the goods on their opponent,” Anderson admitted, but scoring a scoop to destroy Nixon was simply too tempting to pass up.

Anderson dropped by the Washington office of Kennedy lawyer James McInerney. With “a pride that only the diligent investigator can know,” Anderson recalled, the Kennedy operative pulled out “a neatly arranged packet which I devoured unceremoniously.”

The confidential documents revealed how Hughes had funneled to the Nixon family $205,000 (worth about $1.6 million today) using various intermediaries, including one of Nixon’s brothers, to disguise the transaction. Later evidence would show that the vice president had personally phoned Hughes to ask for the money, which was used to help Nixon pay for an elegant, 9,000-square-foot Tudor house in Washington with eight bedrooms, six bathrooms, a library, a butler’s pantry and a solarium.

How did JFK’s campaign obtain this incriminating evidence? By paying the contemporary equivalent of $100,000 to a Los Angeles accountant named Phillip Reiner, one of the Hughes middlemen used to conceal Nixon’s role in the deal. Reiner was a Democrat who recently had had a falling-out with his partners. With his attorney, Reiner had contacted Robert Kennedy, his brother’s campaign manager. Soon after, a break-in occurred at the accountant’s old office – and the Kennedys suddenly acquired a thick file filled with secret records documenting Nixon’s shady deal. (Reiner’s estranged partner filed a burglary report with the police, but the crime was never solved.)

With hard evidence in hand, the Kennedy camp passed the dirt to Anderson.

News outlets around the country trumpeted the revelations in headlines. The political hit inflicted maximum damage on Nixon and reinforced his conviction that his enemies in the press and politics were out to get him.

Days later, Kennedy was elected president by the narrowest margin in American history to that point. Nixon and his advisers blamed the Hughes scandal. Accurate or not, this perception haunted Nixon for the rest of his public life.

Nixon always believed he was the true winner of the 1960 campaign. He called the Kennedys “the most ruthless group of political operators ever mobilized” and said they “approached campaign dirty tricks with a roguish relish” that “overcame the critical faculties of many reporters.”

Indeed, the mysterious break-in to recover Nixon’s incriminating financial documents convinced him that such burglaries were standard practice in national politics. Nixon vowed that he would never be caught unprepared again, and he ultimately established his own corps of hard-nosed operatives to carry out espionage and sabotage, which culminated in the botched break-in a dozen years later at the Watergate office of the Democratic Party.

A half-century afterward, Washington still lives with the residue of the Kennedys’ little-known dirty trick, which helped unleash our modern scandal culture and continues to influence politics and media today.”

Mark Feldstein, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, is the author of “Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture.”

 

Comment:  Before the dirty counting in Illinois and dirty tricks against Richard Milhaus Nixon, was the smear campaign the Kennedy family ran against Hubert Humphrey for the Democratic Party nomination.  

A rumor was spread and caught on to become a law for electing Senator Kennedy President, that a vote for Hubert Humphrey was a vote for BIGOTRY……ie, proof that the country had in the past denied the presidency to  Roman Catholics and now was the time for the voter  prove they weren’t bigots .   Democrats had relied on the Roman Catholic vote  for more than a half a century in local and national politics…..The “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion campaign, and the Al Smith candidacy had stirred up worries, real or otherwise that  authoritarian Catholicism would create an authoritarian America.

The charge of ‘bigot’ if Democrats didn’t vote for Senator Kennedy, was particularly successful in the Democrat primary vote in West Virginia.   Kennedy  won easily giving him the momentum needed to sweep through Wisconsin with the same claim.

I liked Kennedy, but was very upset over the tenor of his campaign.   I decided to vote  for some kind of Socialist Labor Party guy, November, 1960…for some guy whose name was Haas.  

A far worse  dirty trick emanating from the Kennedy family was the myth spread that the President’s assassination arose from right wing frenzy in America……that President Kennedy was more a martyr for the Black cause than a victim of a loner misfit……who happened to be a COMMUNIST and had been living in Cuba…..named Lee Harvey Oswald.      Intellectual criminals of the Left,such as Oliver Stone  have devoted time and skill to perpetuate this LIE.

This last dirty trick is unconscionable.

“Libeling: The Key to the Left’s Success”

Dennis Prager wrote the following article in his today’s Townhall.com  column:

“Last week, following the murder of six people and the attempted murder of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, the American people were given a vivid display of the single most important tactic of the left: libeling opponents. Most Americans have been naively and blissfully unaware of this aspect of the left’s arsenal against the right. But now, just as more Americans than ever before understand the left’s limitless appetite for political power in an ever-expanding state, more Americans than ever before understand that a key to the left’s success is defaming the right.

I do not recall any major American daily attacking another major American daily the way the Wall Street Journal attacked The New York Times last week under the heading “The New York Times has crossed a moral line.” I do not recall Pulitzer-Prize winning Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer ever expressing contempt toward a colleague the way he did against The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman last week. Krauthammer ended his Washington Post column “Massacre, then libel” with this sentence: “The origins of Loughner’s delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman’s?”

People are awakening to the seminal fact of left-wing success: The only way the left can succeed in America is by libeling the right. Only 20 percent of Americans label themselves liberal, let alone left. How, then, do Leftists get elected? And why don’t more Americans call themselves conservative when, in fact, so many share conservatives’ values?

The answer to both questions is that through its dominance of the news media, entertainment media and educational institutions, the left has been able to successfully demonize the right for at least half a century.

The left rarely convinces Americans to adopt its views. What it does is create a fear of the right that influences many Americans to align themselves with the left.

For example, most Americans want to retain the man-woman definition of marriage. Even most voters in liberal Californians want to. The left has not been able to convince even Californians to redefine marriage to include members of the same sex. So what the left did was to declare as “haters” all those who wanted California to retain the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Proposition 8 became “Prop. Hate.”

But the Left’s modus operandi was never as apparent as it was this past week when it took a tragic mass killing of innocents by a violent mentally ill individual and transformed it — within hours — into an attack on the decency of the Right: specifically Sarah Palin, the tea party, Fox News and talk radio.

The same left, led by The New York Times, that warned against making any quick assumptions that Islam had played any role in Maj. Nidal Hasan’s murder of 13 people and wounding of 30 others at Fort Hood, immediately declared that the Arizona murders were largely a result of a “climate of hate” induced by Palin and other conservatives.

It wasn’t true. They knew it wasn’t true. And, yes, it was a libel.

But when you control all the major news media, Hollywood, much of the rest of the culture and most of the high schools and colleges, how are most people one supposed to realize that it is not a valid description of the right?

What makes last week different is this: The left, for the first time, does not have the same monopoly over mass information, and the Republican Party is no longer emasculated. There is talk radio, there is the Internet, there is Fox News and there is a vigorous conservative Republican Party. So, when the left unleashed its libel against the right, claiming that it was responsible for a “climate of hate” that produced Jared Loughner, to its shock, America did not lie down and believe it. Many millions did, as usual. But for those with eyes to see, it was a false accusation, and for many, for the first time, it provided a clear view into how the left operates.

As it becomes ever more obvious that Loughner’s crimes had nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with conservatives, the left will do three things: change the subject by criticizing Palin’s use of the term “blood libel,” (a term whose use by Palin was honorably defended by Professor Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Jewish liberal); deny it ever really blamed the right for the Loughner’s crimes (hoping, with good reason, that Americans have a short memory); and continue to blame the right for creating the “climate of hate” that the left itself has created.

That is why it is important for conservatives and honorable liberals not to allow Americans to forget what the left did last week. It is the key to giving conservatives the good name they deserve. And it is the key to giving the left the name it deserves.”

Comment:  One wonders where these Leftists develop their hates for America, unless on is aware of the teachings within the nationawide Departments at university such a Black Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, and Women’s Studies programs.    What do you think is the base curriculum of these Departments of university expenditure?   What is actually “taught”  here?    What kinds of students with what kind of learnings are produced here?

What does a graduate student of “Vagina Studies” do with her degree?   Who hires her?  NPR?  PBS?  a university’s ecology department?

David Horowitz  published a book, “One Party Classroom” a few years ago……and examined some of the course descriptions….  What is offered is hate mixed in with Marxism 101. 

Is it surprised the today’s American Left wing has abandoned interest in Truth for interest in hating?

Is America’s State Religion “Irreligion”?……It Was Forecast 30 Plus Years Ago

Over 30 years ago an American religious figure presented a view of our American  future, when Irreligion would replace Religion. 

I believe this foresight,   unfortunately,  has become an incredibly accurate one.    Our America has suffered grievously for it.  Do you have the same view?   Please listen to this outstanding video.

It is a sad tale beautifully spoken.  Our Dennis Prager Discussion Group has it included at our Visions and Values tab along with a collection of  Dennis’ Prager U class sessions:

http://vodpod.com/watch/2565215-the-secular-church-neal-a-maxwell

Elected officials know less about the Constitution than the public!

 

 by Ed Morrissey  at HotAir….

“So claims the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which just concluded a five-year study on the American public’s knowledge of its foundational legal document.  The bad news: the general public gets an F, with just a 54% average on the 33-question civics test.  The worse news: those who identified themselves as public officeholders scored an average of five points worse than the general public:

The survey asks 33 basic civics questions, many taken from other nationally recognized instruments like the U.S. Citizenship Exam. It also asks 10 questions related to the U.S. Constitution.

So what did we find? Well, to put it simply, the results are not pretty.

Elected officials at many levels of government, not just the federal government, swear an oath to “uphold and protect” the U.S. Constitution.

But those elected officials who took the test scored an average 5 percentage points lower than the national average (49 percent vs. 54 percent), with ordinary citizens outscoring these elected officials on each constitutional question. Examples:

• Only 49 percent of elected officials could name all three branches of government, compared with 50 percent of the general public.
• Only 46 percent knew that Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war — 54 percent of the general public knows that.
• Just 15 percent answered correctly that the phrase “wall of separation” appears in Thomas Jefferson’s letters — not in the U.S. Constitution — compared with 19 percent of the general public.
• And only 57 percent of those who’ve held elective office know what the Electoral College does, while 66 percent of the public got that answer right. (Of elected officials, 20 percent thought the Electoral College was a school for “training those aspiring for higher political office.”)

There are a couple of caveats about this test. First, the sample for the general public was a robust 30,000 respondents, but the subsample of elected officials only comprised 165 of those. That is a pretty small group from which to extrapolate conclusions about the entire population of elected officials.

Still, these results are less than confidence-building, aren’t they? Of the 165, 33 apparently thought the Electoral College was a school.  Over 80 of the elected officials couldn’t name the three branches of federal government.  The “wall of separation” quote causes quite a few errors in public discourse, most recently in the gotcha question asked of Christine O’Donnell, and to be fair, some Presidents have had some trouble understanding that the power to declare war belongs in the legislature and not the executive branch.

In one sense, this demonstrates that elections don’t always promote our best and brightest — but then again, most of us already knew that much.  But it does call into question how we can expect elected representatives to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States” when many of them appear not to comprehend it — and when many of us don’t comprehend it, either.  The biggest lesson here is that we need to do a much better job of teaching the Constitution in primary education … and that maybe a reading of the Constitution at the beginning of the session of Congress ought to be a regular event, with mandatory attendance.

Update: I thought the public scored 49% and the elected officials 44%, but it was 54% and 49%, respectively.  I’ve corrected it, thanks to Rob Port.”

Comment:   One can recognize the ignorance  when one listens carefully to  national politicians these days.  Obama, even though a lawyer,  is particularly vulnerable and finds its language foreign.   Democrats are oblivious to the Federal Constitution as their compaints  indicated while they were objecting the its reading in the House of Representatives.   Republicans are just tagalongs……a condition they learned dealing with Leftwing professors at college.

U.S. Debt Passes $14,000,000,000,000 at the Federal Level!

 

The following article found at realclearpolitics is  from AP was published at CBS.news: 

“WASHINGTON – The United States just passed a dubious milestone: Government debt surged to an all-time high, more than $14 trillion.

That means Congress soon will have to lift the legal debt limit to give the nearly maxed-out government an even higher credit limit or dramatically cut spending to stay within the current cap. Either way, a fight is ahead on Capitol Hill, inflamed by the passions of tea party activists and deficit hawks.

Today’s debt level represents a $45,300 tab for each and everyone in the country.

Already, both sides are blaming each other for an approaching economic train wreck as Washington wrestles over how to keep the government in business and avoid default on global financial obligations.

Bills increasing the debt limit are among the most unpopular to come before Congress, serving as pawns for decades in high-stakes bargaining games. Every time until now, the ending has been the same: We go to the brink before raising the ceiling.

All bets may be off, however, in this charged political environment, despite some signs the partisan rhetoric is softening after the Arizona shootings.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says failure to increase borrowing authority would be “a catastrophe,” perhaps rivaling the financial meltdown of 2008-2009.

Congressional Republicans, flexing muscle after November’s victories, say the election results show that people are weary of big government and deficit spending, and that it’s time to draw the line against more borrowing.

Defeating a new debt limit increase has become a priority for the tea party movement and other small-government conservatives.

So far, the new GOP majority has proved accommodating. Republicans are moving to make good on their promise to cut $100 billion from domestic spending this year. They adopted a rules change by House Speaker John Boehner that should make it easier to block a debt-limit increase.

The national debt is the accumulation of years of deficit spending going back to the days of George Washington. The debt usually advances in times of war and retreats in peace.

Remarkably, nearly half of today’s national debt was run up in just the past six years. It soared from $7.6 trillion in January 2005 as President George W. Bush began his second term to $10.6 trillion the day Obama was inaugurated and to $14.02 trillion now. The period has seen two major wars and the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s.

With a $1.7 trillion deficit in budget year 2010 alone, and the government on track to spend $1.3 trillion more this year than it takes in, annual budget deficits are adding roughly $4 billion a day to the national debt. Put another way, the government is borrowing 41 cents for every dollar it spends.

In a letter to Congress, Geithner said the current statutory debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion, set just last year, may be reached by the end of March – and hit no later than May 16. He warned that holding it hostage to skirmishes over spending could lead the country to default on its obligations, “an event that has no precedent in American history.”

Debt-level brinkmanship doesn’t wear a party label.

Here’s what then-Sen. Barack Obama said on the Senate floor in 2006: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance the government’s reckless fiscal policies.”

It was a blast by the freshman lawmaker against a Bush request to raise the debt limit to $8.96 trillion.

President Bush won on a 52-48 party-line vote. Not a single Senate Democrat voted to raise the limit, opposition that’s now complicating White House efforts to rally bipartisan support for a higher ceiling.

Democrats have use doomsday rhetoric about a looming government shutdown and comparing the U.S. plight to financial crises in Greece and Portugal. It’s all a bit of a stretch.

“We can’t do as the Gingrich crowd did a few years ago, close the government,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., referring to government shutdowns in 1995 when Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich was House speaker.

But those shutdowns had nothing to do with the debt limit. They were caused by failure of Congress to appropriate funds to keep federal agencies running.

And there are many temporary ways around the debt limit.

Hitting it does not automatically mean a default on existing debt. It only stops the government from new borrowing, forcing it to rely on other ways to finance its activities.

In a 1995 debt-limit crisis, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin borrowed $60 billion from federal pension funds to keep the government going. It wasn’t popular, but it helped get the job done. A decade earlier, James Baker, President Ronald Reagan’s treasury secretary, delayed payments to the Civil Service and Social Security trust funds and used other bookkeeping tricks to keep money in the federal till.

Baker and Rubin “found money in pockets no one knew existed before,” said former congressional budget analyst Stanley Collender.

Collender, author of “Guide to the Federal Budget,” cites a slew of other things the government can do to delay a crisis. They include leasing out government-owned properties, “the federal equivalent of renting out a room in your home,” or slowing down payments to government contractors.

Now partner-director of Qorvis Communications, a Washington consulting firm, Collender said such stopgap measures buy the White House time to resist GOP pressure for concessions.

“My guess is they can go months after the debt ceiling is not raised and still be able to come up with the cash they need. But at some point, it will catch up,” and raising the debt limit will become an imperative, he suggested.

Republican leaders seem to acknowledge as much, but first want to force big concessions. “Do I want to see this nation default? No. But I want to make sure we get substantial spending cuts and controls in exchange for raising the debt ceiling,” said the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

Clearly, the tea party types in Congress will be given an up-and-down vote on raising the debt limit before any final deal is struck, even if the measure ultimately passes.

“At some point you run out of accounting gimmicks and resources. Eventually the government is going to have to start shutting down certain operations,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.

“If we get into a heated, protracted debate over the debt ceiling, global investors are going to grow nervous, and start driving up interest rates. It will all become negatively self-re-enforcing,” said Zandi. “No good will come of it.”

The overall national debt rose above $14 trillion for the first time the last week in December. The part subject to the debt limit stood at $13.95 trillion on Friday and was expected to break above $14 trillion within days.”

Confession:   In the original article at CBS.news  the $14,000,000,000,000 in the headline was printed…thusly:  “$14 trillion”, which I think is very misleading, being only a couple letters bigger than 14 billion.   There is so much more drama in printing out those twelve zeros, don’t you think?

I admit the skewing of the ‘language was done intentionally.  My conservative prejudices pushed me to go for drama here.

Governor Christie Suggests Teacher Contracts Replace Tenure……Pros and Cons

I have featured below a video from HotAir of  a resume of Governor Chris Christie’ crusade for eliminating teacher tenure in the public school.   (While he’s at it why not investigate the corruptions at the college-university level caused by tenure, but that is another issue.

My comments made here are directed mainly at secondary school education and its teachers.  I taught social studies and a foreign language during my 13 years of teaching in high school.

I loudly applaud Governor Christie’ opening the out house door to let the smell out of the public educationsl cess pools passing for educational insitutions today.     What the problems are  should be clearly  identified and the failures carefully and accurately examined before teachers pay the price for school costs and failures.

The public school teacher  is likely  blamed for more school education failure than he or she  deserves. 

The story of  the collapse of public educati0n in America begins at the college-university level where the Bill Ayers leftists and other anti-intellectuals  have been programming what education should be in the American public school system for a long time.  An investigation should also include those who hire teachers and claim sovereignty over the domain of the community public schools.

Still the cleaning house must begin equally  at the university level.

What determines  a successful  classroom teacher?   I know what requirements I would expect.   What should be taught in the American public school.     When should  leftwing propaganda listings of America’s  ‘sins’ at home and abroad begin…..first grade, third grade?   Obama was pushing sex education for first graders.  What listings and regulations  from  the leftwing  Politically Correct encyclopedias  are going to be the Gospels of the day?

When is the last time you, dear reader, have ever looked at a high school curriculum listing?  or reviewed its texts?

Governor Christie recommends contracts to help sort out the better teachers from those weaker….by  eliminating tenure and offering contracts open for review and negotiation after five years or so…..Sounds good….and it is likely an improvement over  tenure for life system now generally in place…(after the usual  three-year initial probation period).

Let me forcast what the school districts will do with those contracted for various years of service…..Governor Christie thinks  districts will hang on to the best teachers through five year contracts.    Not going to happen!!!!

Districts will not hire or rehire for better teachers….They will hire and hang on to the cheapest teachers.  Many school districts have hired their elementary school teachers by this standard for years.  They don’t give them tenure after three years, because they can’t afford it whether the teacher is outstanding or not outstanding.

The better educated in public education today can’t get jobs because their salary level costs too much.  So the beginner college graduate major in education heads  listings of the newly hired nearly everywhere.

Does anyone really think that the high principal would hire the best teachers to work in his or her school?   Are you serious?    Studies have indicated these are among the most dishonest peopls among all the professions.

Should keeping a clean desk be the deciding factor in hiring a teacher?   How is the prinicpal to judge the abilities of someone teaching Chinese?    From my own experience with “principals’, some are decent human beings, that is true.  If they are women often  their strengths center on   hysteria.   If male,  the principal  will obey whatever  department directives are published  forever without review.

Have you ever wondered why so many of your own teachers knew so little about the subjects for which they were responsible to teach?   Who is to blame?

Most teacher-‘cadets’ simply follow orders as told in college-university and in the superintendents’  and principals’ offices.   As it is today, the less they have learned the more  likely they will be hired.  Strapped budgets will always dictate  hiring practices.    Click below to view a video of Governor Chistie and others discussing the problem.   The teacher guy complaining about the rigorous overseeing during the three years of probation before tenure must have been  smoking something before he made that claim……just an opinion.)  

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/01/14/video-christie-goes-after-tenure/

What Leftwing Talk Radio Said Last Week:

“MIKE MALLOY (Thursday 13 Jan 2011 – Hour One – 02:55): Every time one of these right-wing weasels uh uses me – and my twenty-five cent radio program – it’s just amazing! You guys really have to reach! – see, I provide cover for everybody else on the liberal left. Um, but every time it happens, it’s usually the same clowns, most of whom – most of whom had their email addys blocked – but it’s so much fun to read the vile hatred of these Christian white males. Every single one is a Christian white male.

MALLOY (07:44): Rush Limbaugh, straight shooter. Way to go, pig man! Way to go! Choke on your neck fat, you rancid, filthy right-wing freak! Straight shooter, mmm-hmmm!

RANDI RHODES (33:04): She’s become Ann Coulter without the androgyny! OH – Sarah Palin is the female Ann Coulter! Yes! Yes! Yes! Can’t she just go kill a caribou or something? I mean, you know, take Ted Nugent and kill things! Animals!

RHODES (34:47): So Glenn Beck has now become Sesame Street for potential assassins!

Are there examples from the last seven days of conservative talkers calling for their enemies to choke to death? If so, please let us know.”

The above was found at HotAir.

Should Republicans Raise the Debt Limit?

John Hinderaker at  PowerLine offers a good review in his article here:

“I have assumed that a vote to increase the federal debt ceiling is inevitable, on the ground that there isn’t any practical alternative. That is what Republican Congressional leaders have been saying. The general assumption, which was expressed by Senator Tom Coburn this morning, is that the limit will be raised, but Republicans will be able to secure meaningful spending cuts as the condition of their cooperation.

On the morning news shows, however, both Chris Christie and Tim Pawlenty argued that House Republicans should block any increase in the debt limit–a course that in one recent poll was favored by 71 percent of respondents. Christie implied, however, that what he advocates is a bluff:

WALLACE: But you say “put up or shut up.” I mean, it’s one thing for you to close down the government of New Jersey and eat your pizza. It’s another thing for the country, for the U.S. government to default on its credit and to go into debt.

CHRISTIE: Yes, but because I was clear, I didn’t have to close the government, did I? And you know, this is about making the argument and trying to win the argument. And I think if you close down government, in some respects you may have lost the argument.

Now, you have to be ready to do what you need to do if you want to stand by your principles. What happened in New Jersey was we made our argument and the budget was passed two days early and we moved on with our next challenges.

WALLACE: Should the Republicans be prepared to let the country go into default?

CHRISTIE: The Republicans should be prepared to articulate their argument and win the argument, Chris. That’s what they should do. In New Jersey, listen, there have been times when I compromised on things that I wanted.

But I got more than what — more than less, so, you know, it’s all about reading the situation, but the only way you get there is to be absolutely crystal clear with what your position is.

But a bluff can’t work, can it, if the opponent knows you’re bluffing?

Tim Pawlenty, on the other hand, argued that refusing to increase the debt limit is a viable alternative that need not lead to a federal default:

WALLACE: Back in 2005, you allowed the government of Minnesota to shut down for nine days because of a disagreement with the Democratic legislature about taxes and spending. Should congressional Republicans take the same tough stance when it comes to raising the debt limit and federal spending?

PAWLENTY: Well, what I’ve learned, Chris, after eight years of doing in a very liberal place — I love my state, but it’s liberal in terms of spending and government — is you’ve got to draw some lines in the sands. …

And as to the federal government, they should not raise the debt ceiling. I believe they should pass legislation, allow them to sequence the spending as the revenues come in to make sure they don’t default, and then have the debate about what other spending can be reduced.

WALLACE: But you would say to the Republicans up in that building behind me do not raise the debt limit?

PAWLENTY: That’s right. And, in fact, to avoid the default, I would take it one step further, send the president a piece of legislation that authorizes the federal government to sequence the paying of its bills so that we don’t default on the debt obligation and then have the debate about how we reduce the other spending.

Pawlenty has great credibility as a fiscal conservative, and he is no irresponsible firebrand. So if he thinks the Republicans can hold the line on debt, avoid a default, and use the debt ceiling to compel, rather than bargain for, spending cuts, one wonders whether the Republican Congressional leadership is aiming too low.”

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