Meet The New Jefe, Same As The Old Jefe

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is running for re-election in December, said he would call a referendum in 2010 to change the constitution, allowing him to hold office without any term limit.

``If the majority of the people say yes, we'll have to change the constitution so that re-election in Venezuela will be indefinite,'' Chavez, 52, said in a televised speech in Caracas before tens of thousands of red-shirted supporters. ``The people will decide.'' Chavez would have to step down in 2013 under the current constitution if he wins in December.

Just in time, too; with Castro clearly heading for the exits. Can't have our First World progressive academics and glitterati left high & dry, with no anti-American Maximum Leader to slobber over for the next third of a century, now can we?

Your First Things tie-in: Via On The Square, an excerpt of a Weekly Standard piece:

Paul Hollander has over the years chronicled America’s “political pilgrims,” meaning anti-American Americans who do obeisance at the shrines of utopian visionaries from Josef Stalin to Chairman Mao. The shrine du jour is Venezuela, from which luminaries such as Harry Belafone, Jesse Jackson, and Ramsey Clark have returned to report that they have seen the latest future that works. Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy writes in the current Weekly Standard:


When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez met with the Pope earlier this week, he assured Benedict XVI that he is a Christian. And he told the press that he has a special friend who is one too. Sort of.


“Our Bolivarian revolution is very Christian and I have a friend who isn’t Christian, but lately has said he is a Christian in the social aspect: his name is Fidel Castro,” Chávez announced. “I talk to [Castro] a lot about Christ each time we see each other, and he told me recently, ‘Chávez, I’m Christian in the social sense.’”