The KMT has a pretty serious presidential dilemma: its candidate for the March election, Ma Ying-jeou, is clearly the inferior one. What's the solution? The Hillary Clinton approach....Last week the Taipei Times wrote on the recent spat between Chen and Ma, this the latest scenelet in the long-running tactic of the DPP to portray Ma as weak. Chen said:
Ma should stop pretending that the consensus exists, Chen said, before criticizing the KMT for canceling a plan to delete the consensus from an internal document over pressure from deep-blue supporters.Veteran political blogger A-gu had the transation of thrust and riposte from the pro-KMT Chinese-language paper The China Times:
Chen called on Ma to "have balls and be brave," adding that otherwise he would not be able to resist Chinese military threats if elected president.
Chen also said that Ma lacks a political ideology of his own.
Ma opposed the lifting of martial law, the abolition of Article 100 of the Criminal Code and was in favor of indirect presidential elections at a time when activists were pushing for presidential elections by popular vote, Chen said.
扁馬交鋒，陳水扁總統四日在台南市火力全開，大談當總統要有ＬＰ、要有Guts，不要碰到壓力就退縮，還抨擊馬英九一路走來永遠是慢半拍、站錯邊。扁要馬不要再做「中國夢」，中國國民黨也應該把「中國」兩個字拿掉。
In the latest salvo in the war of words between [President] Chen Shui-bian and Ma ying-jeou, A-bian pulled all the stops in Tainan city today and during a speech said that a president needed balls and guts, that he could not retreat as soon as he met resistance, and attacked Ma for always beeing a step behind and standing on the wrong side. A-bian wants Ma not to keep dreaming the "China dream," and believes the Chinese Nationalist Party should remove "China" from their name.
馬英九辦公室回嗆，陳總統想當「炸彈人」，不顧形象口出惡言，要炸掉自己也炸掉別人，民眾不會上當。
Ma Ying-jeou's office shot back, saying President Chen wishes to be a
suicide bomber, casually uses despicable language and wants to kill himself
along with others, something the people will not accept.
Since Ma is widely perceived as weak -- typically, when I discuss politics with locals that is the one criticism of Ma that even his supporters agree with -- the DPP's approach is probably a wise one.
Most interesting is the KMT's constant attacks on Chen Shui-bian. Like Hillary for the Republicans, Chen engergizes the KMT base in a way that Hsieh does not. By keeping the focus on Chen, the KMT hopes to keep the Blue base stimulated.
[Taiwan] [Chen Shui-bian] [KMT] [DPP] [Ma Ying-jeou]
There should be a betting pool: If (big IF) Ma wins it, how many days will it be before he makes his first pilgrimage to Beijing?
ReplyDeleteBTW: Unrelated ~ but MarketTicker had a good blurb on the dollar drop yesterday:
But the "real deal" was overnight comments by Chinese officials that basically said "we're done putting up with the capital losses in the FX markets, along with Bernanke and Paulson catering to the fraudsters instead of putting a stop to that crap", along with what sure looked to me like a very intentional "message".
"The message" came in the form of an absolutely enormous "unload" of dollars that came "all at once" - every dollar cross in the FX markets was hit instantaneously. This had the smell of a multi-billion dollar dump - this was not "trader reaction" to news, it was an event all on its own, coupled with the news as a means of underlining "someone's" point.
Seems to be something bad is coming down the tracks. The financial stability of the USA is vital to Taiwan's security, but it doesn't look promising. US$ Chart
If Ma wins, he won't make pilgrimage because he has underlings to do it for him.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty nervous about the dollar -- where's the bottom?
Future historians will conclude that Bush was clinically insane. It is hard to imagine any other reason for the Administration's looting of the future of the United States.... or is it that they just don't care because they don't think there will be a world in fifty years anyway, thanks to global warming? I don't understand what passes for thinking there....
Michael
Michael,
ReplyDeleteIs there any reliable polling information in Taiwan ? You wisely warn your readers against believing KMT biased polls, but where can we find relatively balanced polling information ?
I do worry about the US economy, but I don't agree that the dollar issues spell an end to Taiwan's security. Once people refuse to stop funding US debt, the US will be in a lot of pain for a very long time, but there will be a positive aspect to the situation. That is, the Chinese will no longer be able to threaten the US economy if Taiwan becomes an issue. If the Chinese start offloading now, the worst could be past for the US if a war was looming.
ReplyDeleteAs for Bush, we all know he will be gone in two years. I honestly think that all of his selling out recently is due to his desire to see his wars work. He needs help. If a saner president takes the office.... one who is not so committed to Iraq... we might see the situation with respect to Taiwan reverse itself slightly.
Dear Tom,
ReplyDeletethere is some source of survey research data that I will suggest to use. But before coming to this one paragraph on Biases.
There is nothing like unbiased science. Obviously in social sciences the bias is much stronger, especially in politics but even in hard sciences you have a phenomena what is called paradigm that typically leads to strong delays in the falsification of theories since the measured results are filtered so to say interpreted through the "glasses", the fundamental believes that the researcher holds. There are only two types of theories :the one ALREADY falsified and the one that is going to be falsified. Absolute VERITAS does not exist it is a relative concept over time (am sure that many die hard academics will fall of the chair reading this simplified statement)! At a certain point the exception that can not be explained with the applied theory mount up, and somebody comes along throwing the complete paradigm away: that is what the philosophy of science calls a Kuhn Revolution (Thomas Kuhn did the most fundamental thinking on positivism and the development of science).
This being sad one needs to acknowledge that the view of the reality of so called KMT polls and polls of the liberty times or other green flavored or funded groups are all equally serving a purpose.
If you are interested in getting into the fundamentals of the subject you would need only a few things:
1) SPSS what is a statistical program (most data will be in SPSS)
2) Some sound understanding of statistics the metrics and what they mean
3) And a foundational knowledge of quantitative research in social sciences, The methodological foundations so to say.
Just looking at a number from any poll will not tell you much. Asking somebody to answer on a scale form 1 - 5 whether or not he/she is a democrat will not do much neither. One really needs to get into operationalizing complex concepts and testing hypothesis on different samples.
There is a VERY RICH body on survey data in Taiwan!! It all dates back nearly 10 years to a project that started of as a comparative study on voting behavior and value change. Here ins Taiwan it is hosted by Chu Yun Han (who by the way internationally is probably one of the leading figures in the field!) and the data and publications should be available on www.asianbarometer.org I am not quite sure on the data release policies but am shure that they have a whole battery of papers online that you might like.
Best,
Arwed
www.vtlg-asia.com
I thought you want Ma, the Handsome and Great (trademark), to go to hospital for a minor operation to become a real woman, which is like Hillary.
ReplyDeleteWell, my bad...
George Soros has predicted that there will be a serious "correction" in the US economy, sooner than later.
ReplyDeleteAs for Bernanke, he's in Greenspan's shadow, and even Greenspan admitted that the Fed chose to take no action against the shady business practices of US lenders.
My opinion, the US economy has been on shaky legs for years. Just look at the crumbling infrastructure of the country--the decaying highways, the dying national parks, the massive blackouts from old power grids -- New Orleans! There's no money in the bank. And Bush cut taxes down to almost nothing while he spends treasury funds for his imperial wars like a Roman emperor, with little concern how to replinish the coffers. People keep saying he'll be gone soon, but the worst damage has yet to come.
Greenspan stated in his book that Bush has no interest in the economy, never asked questions, never showed interest.
Arwed:
ReplyDeleteThx for the website www.asianbarometer.org. Unfotunately it's not for public use (need to pay to see the result).
There's only one survay they did on Taiwan, and it's on 2001. In a fast pacing society like Taiwan, a 6-year-old survay probably doesn't mean much.
Thanks Arwed,
ReplyDeleteAs I'm trained in the social sciences, I'm familiar with the relative levels of bias (as well as SPSS, although may I suggest the open source R-project as a free alternative) .... in fact, my father trained in astrophysics likes to point out the relative bias of these respective "sciences" quite regularly.
Ideally, I'd love to find a blog that simply publishes chronologically all the major poll results, blue, green or otherwise.