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Former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson is expected to contest the 2010 GOP primary from California's 19th congressional district. It turns out that Representative George Radanovich, who has held the seat since the Republican earthquake of '94, is retiring. Patterson is expected to run against Radanovich's hand-picked candidate, State Senator Jeff Denham.
Hotline On Call has the report:
One source said Radanovich will back state Sen. Jeff Denham (R) as his replacement. CA Senate districts are actually larger than congressional districts, though Denham's is more closely related to Rep. Dennis Cardoza's (D) neighboring 18th district. Top GOPers had tried to convince Denham to run against Cardoza, though Radanovich's district has a stronger GOP lean.
But Denham is unlikely to get a clean shot at the seat. Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson (R), who had backing from the Club for Growth during his '02 primary against now-Rep. Devin Nunes (R), is also likely to run. One source even suggested that ex-Rep. Richard Pombo (R), who lost his neighboring 11th district to Rep. Jerry McNerney (D) in '06, may be a potential contender as well.
I'm focusing on Mayor Patterson since I'm fairly well-acquainted with him. We attended Fresno State together, both graduating in 1992. He's a super intelligent man with a business background in Christian radio. Although Hotline On Call doesn't mention it, I suspect Patterson is even more conservative than the incumbent. The California Central Valley's been a hotbed of tea party activism this year, and the water crisis has been hammering farmers. Apparently, Radanovich favors the San Joaquin River restoration project, a major Central Valley environmental initiative which is opposed by area farmers. And a recent Miami Herald piece reports that Patterson had signaled his intent to challenge Radanovich in the primary. That, combines with wife Ethie Radanovich health questions, moved the 9th-term congressman to call it quits. According to the Herald's report:
Republicans in California's San Joaquin Valley are girding for a potential intramural clash pitting former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson against incumbent Rep. George Radanovich of Mariposa.
Though Patterson has made no official campaign announcement, Republican and Democratic circles alike are abuzz with anticipation that he will declare his candidacy in early January. Privately, some Valley political activists say they have already been assured Patterson will challenge Radanovich.
"It's certainly going to be an interesting race if he does run," prominent Republican and Fresno Lincoln Club president Michael Der Manouel Jr. noted, though he stressed that no decision can be counted as final until candidacy papers are filed.
Patterson insisted Wednesday that he is still undecided, though he acknowledged he has been "testing the waters up and down the district." Tellingly, he added that he has no interest in running for an open seat in the state Legislature.
"I think I am suited best to be in Congress and that is where I'd love to serve in these times," Patterson said.
A primary race between Radanovich and Patterson would instantly become one of the most closely watched in California, if not the nation. It would likely become expensive, forcing campaign contributors to either choose sides or hedge their bets.
A GOP primary also would almost certainly select the next congressman from the 19th Congressional District. Republicans enjoy a commanding 44-37 percent voter registration advantage in the district, which sweeps through all or part of Fresno, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties.
Patterson's extremely ambitious. Folks mentioned his name for a congressional seat back in the early '90s, before he left the mayor's office. He's apparently a big fundraiser as well, with the support of the local business sector and Club-for-Growth activists. I imagine that State Senator Denham's going to have his hands full.
I last wrote about Steven Clemons in September, when he appeared on CNN opposite Fausta Wertz. The discussion covered developments in Middle East international politics, and especially questions of developing-country nuclear proliferation. Clemons has an analysis up this morning, "The Yemen Brief: Expanding Scope of US Military Engagement Exactly What Bin Laden Wants." The piece also appears at the radical news outlet, Talking Points Memo (via Memeorandum).
I agree with Clemons when he suggests that "President Obama must step back and think about America's current strategic course." But Clemons' preceding passage is deeply problematic:
National security officials in the administration need to go back and read Peter Bergen's Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden in which he recounts many aspects of bin Laden's plan from the Islamic extremist uber-guru's own words - which was to draw the US deeply into the Middle East, and by its presence -- destabilize the governments in the region.
Bin Laden, hiding somewhere in Pakistan, remains the single most significant sculptor of global affairs today, pushing the buttons of an American superpower as well as other regimes, so that they engage in emotional, knee jerk crusades that undermine what is left of a global equilibrium and the perception of American power.
Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and enemies yet to be named win with each new soldier deployed to the Middle East and South Asia.
I have not read the Bergen book, although published in 2001, the thesis that Bin Laden remains at the center of the global al Qaeda organization is badly outdated. While Bin Laden affiliates and family members remain important terrorist actors in global jihad, experts today speak of intense decentralization as the defining element of current international terrorism. As I reported previously, al Qaeda is now a drastically tranformed network of follow-on jihadi cells and copy-cat Islamists. Indeed, the group is actually making a comeback from its decimation in Iraq, when U.S. forces badly degraded the cells operating under Abu Musab al Zarqawi. In 2006, Zarqawi was killed by U.S. bombs in a fighter strike outside of Baqubah. (For more on this, see Frederick Kagan's pathbreaking analysis, "Al Qaeda In Iraq.")
I addressed some of Kagan themes in my recent piece, "Leftists Spin Attempted Northwest Airlines Attack as Evidence of Fake Al-Qaeda Threat." It's simply not true that al Qaeda today can be primarily analyzed in terms of Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda is a "networked consortium" of loosely linked cellular bodies. I cited at my post the work of Audry Kurth Cronin. See especially, "How al-Qaida Ends: The Decline and Demise of Terrorist Groups." Plus, on terrorism more broadly, I discussed Brigitte L. Nacos' text, Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding Threats and Responses in the Post 9/11 World. Be sure to read that post for the changing significance of terrorism post-9/11.
Steve Clemons' entry is certainly valuable in its publication of the Yemeni Ministry of Public Affairs communiqué, "Embassy of the Republic of Yemen Washington, DC Office of Media & Public Affairs." And Clemons is right to indicate that the administration faces serious challenges -- with renewed urgency -- on the national security front. Yet, his analysis is not especially helpful in identifying the types of strategic and tactical problems that late-edition al Qaeda organizations pose for U.S. foreign and military policy. Or at the least, Clemons wanted to begin his discussion from the bottom up, with those "enemies yet to be named." It will be these largely faceless operatives -- increasingly sophisticated and exponentially radical -- who will pose existential dangers to the U.S. and its Western allies in the years ahead.
Plus, be sure to watch Sheila MacVicar's penetrating analysis on al Qaeda in Yemen, especially her discussion of next-stage bomb technologies, "Yemen's New Wave of al Qaeda."
From ABC News, "Did Obama Respond Too Late to Terror Plot? Critics Assail President? Democrats Say the President Reacted Appropriately, Security Reviews Are Important":
The Obama administration has come under fire from critics who said the president waited too long to address the nation publicly about the Christmas Day terror plot, and that his administration has not been tough enough on terrorism.
The mostly partisan attacks came after Friday's attempt by a Nigerian national to blow up Northwest Flight 253 as it approached Detroit. Terror plots in the past have tended to unite the two parties, but recent attacks have departed from that norm.
President Obama has ordered a sweeping review of how the suspect managed to board the flight from Amsterdam, but that has done little to appease his critics.
Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, blamed the Obama administration for taking its eye off the threat of terrorism from abroad.
"I think there's enough blame to go around here," Hoekstra said Monday in an interview with ABC News. "The bottom line is we ended up with a bomb on a plane with a detonator ready to go off. That's totally unacceptable. There's probably failures at every step of the way, in Nigeria, in the Netherlands, and in the overall procedures. Early on in this administration, I think that this administration sent a clear signal that they believed that the threat to the homeland was not as significant as what it really is."
RTWT at the link.
Plus, at Politico, "Handling Problems the Obama Way." (Via Memeorandum.)
See also, Michael Goldfarb, "Damage Control in 5 Easy Steps!," and Flopping Aces, "Is Obama’s Weak Approach to War on Terror Inviting More Attacks?"
