The 2011 film The Iron Lady was maddeningly frustrating for many reasons, a big one being that it represents such a missed opportunity. Hollywood won't make another Margaret Thatcher biopic anytime soon, if ever. You get one shot at a big-budget biopic, and you know that thousands, perhaps millions of people will get their view of history from the film, not from the history books. (Go figure, no stockbroker ever jumped out of a high window when the stock market crashed; content warning at link.)
For starters, about a third of the movie was about Thatcher's losing battle with Alzheimer's, and while I can understand the filmmakers' instinct that depicting that would offer an unexpected side of a famous figure, it ended up making large swaths of the film feel like a standard-issue Lifetime Channel what-are-we-going-to-do-with-Mom tear-jerker. But what's even worse is that they waste Meryl Streep — who clearly put a lot of effort into perfecting the mannerisms and tone of Thatcher — in a movie that provides all of the key moments of her career on fast forward. As the New York Times review noted, "'The Iron Lady,'...makes a particular hash of British history, compressing social and economic turmoil into a shorthand that resembles a chronologically scrambled British version of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire.' ('Miners' strike/Falklands War/I can't take it any more . . .')" We see Streep-Thatcher fighting, but rarely getting any sense of why she's fighting these particular battles, and we move on to the next topic before we get any sense of what the consequence was.
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Rand Paul wins The Washington Times-CPAC 2013
Straw Poll
Rand Paul's Speech
Marco Rubio at CPAC
Keep
an Eye On This Man
Dr. Ben Carson
Why We’re Losing the Messaging War
Facing its toughest fight over gun reform in decades, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has stumbled out of the gate.
The powerful gun-lobby group responded to last month's Newtown, Conn., massacre with a defiant press conference calling for more guns in schools, then doubled down this week with an in-your-face web ad that drew President Obama's young daughters into the fray.
To be sure, the NRA — which did not respond to a request to comment for this story — remains an enormous influence on Capitol Hill, and there’s no evidence its actions have increased the likelihood that Obama's ambitious gun-reform agenda can move this year, even through the Democratically controlled Senate.
Yet the public relations missteps have given Obama an opening in the difficult fight by making him look like the more reasonable party, even as it has made the NRA look out of touch with mainstream thinking.
The NRA's web ad in particular – which called President Obama an “elitist hypocrite” because he's pushing tougher gun laws while his daughters receive armed protection – led Republicans to lash out at the group.
“Are the president's kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?" the ads asks.
“To talk about the president’s children, or any public officer’s children, who have –not by their own choice, but by requirement – to have protection, and to use that somehow to try to make a political point is reprehensible,” said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who is seen as a 2016 White House contender.
“Get to the real issues. Don’t be dragging people’s children into this,” the Republican added in comments Thursday. “It’s wrong, and I think it demeans them [the NRA] and it makes them less of a valid, trusted source of information on the real issues.”
Read the rest of the story HERE
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball
16 FOR ’16, PART 1: DEMOCRATS AGAIN HUNGER FOR HISTORY
By Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley
U.Va. Center for Politics
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Before he cast his ballot in 1860, Abraham Lincoln cut off the portion of it pertaining to the presidential race. Lincoln did not campaign for office, nor did he even vote for himself. Back then and for much of the nation’s history, it was considered unseemly to seek the presidency openly, obviously and energetically. It was a hypocritical charade, of course, but also in some ways a useful social myth: “The office seeks the man.” It wasn’t until Franklin Delano Roosevelt that a major party nominee even accepted his nomination in person. Needless to say, the game of charades is over, the social myth has been exploded, and the tradition of non-campaigning has gone the way of the dodo. Campaigns for president are declared and openly waged months before the primary season begins at the start of the election year, and the musing about the next campaign -- and the not-so-hidden organizing -- begins almost immediately after presidential ballots are counted each quadrennium. We’ve just tried to justify what we’re about to do. Even though it’s absurdly early, we couldn’t resist taking our first look at the 2016 presidential contest. This week and next we’re unveiling our initial ratings of the field by offering eight contenders for each party’s nomination. That’s 16 total candidates for 2016, plus a couple of wild cards. We’ll start with the Democrats this week -- Hillary Clinton and everyone else -- and address the Republicans next week, where we’re leaning toward putting a name at the top of the list that might raise some eyebrows. This is the beginning, not the end, of the process. If you think our current ordering of POTUS candidates will stay the same over the next three years, you haven’t been following presidential politics very long. We’re the Crystal Ball, not Nostradamus, and even his quatrains were vague about the distant future. But it’s the fun of the chase, the goal of the game, to conjure up 2016 on the basis of sparse tea leaves at the bottom of the 2013 cup. -- The Editors |
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Democrats made history in 2008. We suspect they will want to do so again in 2016, which is just another reason why Hillary Clinton is such an obvious front-runner for her party’s presidential nomination, as long as she wants it.
After electing the first black president, there is going to be a strong desire on the left to elect the nation’s first woman president. Psychologically, the recent death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher may reinforce this thinking. As an undergraduate female student said to one of us, “The U.K. got its first woman head of government in 1979. It’s more than 30 years later, and the U.S.A. is still waiting for its first woman president.” If this “our turn” sentiment takes hold, it cannot hurt in a nation where women are 52% to 53% of the usual general election turnout.
See more HERE
The next meeting of the Brevard Republican Executive Committee
will be
7350 Lake Andrew Drive,
Melbourne, FL 32940-6613
(321) 631-9494
Chair, BREC
2825 Business Center Blvd.
Wickham Business Park,
Suite A4
Melbourne, FL 32940
(321) 254-0073
Fax: (321) 254-0083
March 18........ New Millenium Conservative Club meeting, Suntree/Viera Library, 6:30 pm.
March 19........ North Brevard Republican Club meeting, La Cita Country Club, Titusville, 7 pm.
March 21........ Republican Women’s Network of South Brevard meeting,
Eau Gallie Yacht Club, 11 am.
March 21........ Brevard Republican Men’s Club meeting, Duran Golf Club, Viera, 7 pm.
March 26........ Young Republican Club meeting, Beef O’Brady’s Restaurant, Satellite Beach,
6:30 pm.
March 28........ Ronald Reagan Clubs meeting, Jimmie’s Restaurant, Rockledge, 7 pm.
Space Coast Florida Republican Winners Club – for information, contact Nancy Baker at
cocoabeachnb@gmail.com.