alien & sedition.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
William Donahue, Jihadist
Five Before Chaos has a comprehensive demolition of the towering stupidity at work here. Go read - you'll laugh your ass off.
Why is William Donahue still talking, and why are the media still listening? The anti-semitic racist's latest hissy fit involves a chocolate Jesus, which, according to Donahue, is "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever." Donahue and his fellow terrorists have successfully intimidated the gallery in question into cancelling the exhibition.
Five Before Chaos has a comprehensive demolition of the towering stupidity at work here. Go read - you'll laugh your ass off.
Labels: five before chaos, terrorism, William Donohue
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:44 PM 1 comments
Laffer Curve to Infinity - And Beyond!
Above: The Earth as Viewed from Larry Kudlow
Larry Kudlow is the Last Supply-Sider, which is not as exciting as being the Last Starfighter, but involves nearly as much spaciness.
Anyway, if you're interested, here's Kudlow's take on the GOP presidential field. He is, of course, delighted by Rudy's recent flip-flop in favor of the flat tax. Kudlow only gets loopier as he gets older, and it seems he's happy to have a couple Republican candidates to keep him company:
Above: The Earth as Viewed from Larry Kudlow
Larry Kudlow is the Last Supply-Sider, which is not as exciting as being the Last Starfighter, but involves nearly as much spaciness.
Anyway, if you're interested, here's Kudlow's take on the GOP presidential field. He is, of course, delighted by Rudy's recent flip-flop in favor of the flat tax. Kudlow only gets loopier as he gets older, and it seems he's happy to have a couple Republican candidates to keep him company:
It’s good to see that Republican presidential contenders are focusing on supply-side economics as a pro-growth strategy for their campaigns and presumably, for their presidential vision if elected.I dearly hope that Kudlow gets his way, and the 2008 GOP nominee ignores David Brooks and runs as a supply-sider.
The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel tells the story in her “Tax Talk” column today. Having interviewed the “Big Three” candidates on CNBC’s Kudlow and Company, I agree with Ms. Strassel’s assessment that Mayor Giuliani and Governor Romney have developed the best tax strategies so far. Senator McCain remains a distant third.
Incidentally, Steve Forbes’ endorsement earlier this week of Rudy Giuliani is a significant development. Both Rudy and Romney have strong supply-side tax advisors in their camps. And if economist Kevin Hassett can convince Sen. McCain to slash corporate tax rates, that would surely give the Arizonan a much stronger economic growth platform.
Labels: 2008, economic conservatives, Larry Kudlow, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:33 AM 0 comments
Storm Brewing over Dobson Remarks
Some in the movement are hitting back. Here's GOPUSA President Bobby Eberle, who has been flogging a "Draft Thompson" petition:
At PoliBlog, Steven Taylor likewise wonders whether Dobson doesn't have too much influence:
Of course, the Reverend has more political power in his little finger than do all the Freepers put together. But that power is based on the perception of his ability to marshal grassroots conservatives. If that perception is damaged, his power wanes. Meanwhile, let's not be so quick to say that his attack means that Thompson is no longer the conservative candidate.
There's some pushback by the conservative netroots against James Dobson's calculated attack on Fred Thompson. Dobson, as you'll recall, phoned up US News & World Report to say what a shame it is that Thompson hates the little baby Jesus. The move seemed like a pretty straightforward result of Dobson's quid pro quo with Newt Gingrich: Newt reaffirmed Dobson's status as A-Number One Top Evangelical Honcho by using the Rev.'s radio show to confess his adulterous ways. This put Dobson in the position of being the one to give the green light for evangelicals to support the cancer-suffering-wife-divorcer's candidacy. Dobson's smear of Thompson, who looks to usurp Gingrich's role as the movement conservative favorite who'll ride in on a white horse to do battle with Rudy McRomney, seems like part of the package.
Some in the movement are hitting back. Here's GOPUSA President Bobby Eberle, who has been flogging a "Draft Thompson" petition:
Dobson should NOT play politics with someone’s Christian beliefs, and his unsolicited phone call to U.S. News & World Report seems very strange, indeed.Playing politics with Christian beliefs is of course the entire premise of James Dobson's existence. If being a Christian is a strictly personal matter, then Dobson might as well be doing tent revivals on the Arkansas fairground circuit (and I'm not saying he shouldn't be).
Being a Christian is a PERSONAL decision. It is a relationship between the person and his or her Lord and Savior. The decision to share that relationship publicly is also a PERSONAL decision. Dobson has absolutely no idea what is in Thompson’s heart, and to profess to know is wrong.
At PoliBlog, Steven Taylor likewise wonders whether Dobson doesn't have too much influence:
[W]hile Dobson has the right to support whichever candidate he likes, this is a really good example of the problems some (many?) religious leaders get into when they start trying to be political brokers. By stating who and who isn’t a Christian (by Dobson’s definition, I might add) and linking that to a candidate’s desirability while simultaneously giving support to another candidate who has had questionable moral behavior creates a rather odd synergy. [...]And, as Pam's House Blend noted, Dobson's remarks stirred up a a backlash at Free Republic, where the commenters were in no mood to tolerate the efforts of an old-guard gatekeeper to shut Thompson out. Sample comment:
while Dobson has, as I noted, legitimate policy interests, he should place the reputation of his faith above short-term political gains and for some time, Dobson hasn’t (in my opinion) done a very good job on that front (another recent example would be his dismissive attitude in the Mark Foley scandal).
For Dobson to be so smitten with Gingrich is probably as much about the other candidates as it is about Gingrich, who has never struck me as an especially evangelical fellow (and I have paid close attention to his career for some time). However, Romney is a Mormon, Rudy is, well, Rudy, and the rest haven’t got much of a shot. Since Gingrich was willing to do the mea culpa routine on the radio with Dobson a few weeks back coupled with the lack of an alternative, I guess gave Newt the Dobson slot by default.
Stuff it Dobson. We should be more interested in saving the US than your stupid concept of what a Christian is.This is an interesting dustup because it may prove to be a test of the relative strength of James Dobson vs. the actual conservative grassroots. At the New Republic, Christopher Orr simply assumes that Dobson's smear means the end of Thompson's brief shot at being the conservative candidate. I'm not so sure - the reaction against Dobson, from the right, has been harsh. Grassroots conservatives seem to view Thompson as a genuinely conservative - yet genuinely electable - candidate. And they aren't taking kindly to Dobson's rather transparent hit job on Gingrich's behalf.
Of course, the Reverend has more political power in his little finger than do all the Freepers put together. But that power is based on the perception of his ability to marshal grassroots conservatives. If that perception is damaged, his power wanes. Meanwhile, let's not be so quick to say that his attack means that Thompson is no longer the conservative candidate.
Labels: 2008, conservatives, Fred Thompson, James Dobson, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:25 AM 1 comments Friday, March 30, 2007
Giuliani's Mob Prob
Best post I've seen on this so far is by Bouldin at the Daily Gotham. Read it all, but go around telling your friends about this line:
As you've no doubt already read, it turns out that Giuliani knew that Bernie Kerik was mobbed-up before Kerik was appointed NY Police Commissioner. A little bit of information that America's Mayor claims to have "forgotten."
Best post I've seen on this so far is by Bouldin at the Daily Gotham. Read it all, but go around telling your friends about this line:
People forget dinner reservations, not being told that their nominee for police commissioner has mob ties.
Labels: 2008, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, scandals
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:55 AM 0 comments Thursday, March 29, 2007
Glenn Greenwald Has It All Wrong
Now, David Brooks is easy to mock. His facile stylizing about bobos or momos - or whatever - reduces political analysis to half-baked latte-fueled personal conjecture. And his "national greatness conservatism" concept was aptly derided by Jonathan Chait as "a governing ideology whose one specific programmatic detail was a call for more national monuments." Nevertheless, Brooks's most recent column in the New York Times is an incisive account of the dilemma with which American conservatives are presently faced. And Greenwald, in his justifiable anger at the perfidy and authoritarianism of the Bush administration, misses the point entirely.
Brooks takes on the most common refrain in current conservative discourse: "that in order to win again, the GOP has to reconnect with the truths of its Goldwater-Reagan days." The idea is that Republicans must renew their destiny as the party of small government, personal freedom, and rugged individualism. As Brooks correctly points out, this is political "folly."
His argument is grounded in a sort of rhetorical truism: that Reagansim developed in a context of creeping socialism and decadent government overreach, which it countered with an invigorating dedication to "liberty" as opposed to "power." The 1970s were never as socialized as Brooks portrays them, nor was Reaganism ever as libertarian. Reagan might have broken briefly through the "malaise," but he never represented any fundamental public urge to throw off the shackles of the New Deal. What matters here, though, is the internal narrative of the conservative movement itself. Conservatives, riding the political waves of Reagan's personal popularity combined with their deft exploitation of populist reactions against taxes and civil rights, interpreted their success as a mandate to abolish the welfare state altogether.
That Brooks himself believes in the conservative narrative of that era is beside the point. What matters is that he understands how the popular mood runs strongly in another direction today. Faced with deepening inequality, diminished job security, health care crisis, globalization, global warming, terrorism, instability, and a general atmosphere of risk, Americans are increasingly demanding that government play an active role in providing social insurance.
Go back and read the recent Pew political values poll. It is absolutely devastating to small-government conservatives. American support for activist government - always strong - has increased dramatically since the 1990s. As Brooks himself puts it:
Greenwald reacts vehemently to this thesis: he condemns it as naked authoritarianism. In so doing, Greenwald makes a trio of errors:
The first mistake is an understandable reaction to Brooks's observation that
Greenwald's second mistake is to assume that Brooks is speaking for the conservative movement generally. He argues, for instance, that
The crisis of American conservatism is that the movement's intellectual leaders are committed to a small-government ideology that is fundamentally at odds with both structural and political reality. And here is Greenwald's third mistake: the failure to understand that "compassionate conservatism" was designed as a way to overcome this crisis. It's lost in the pre-history of Bush's reign of disaster now, but recall that when the current president was first elected, he was hardly a model proponent of conservative thought (or, yes, any thought at all). Writing in Commentary in March of 2001, conservative writer Daniel Casse defended Bush as just the kind of "triangulator" needed to save the GOP - a "party in decline" - from its own traditional neglect of issues like Social Security, health care, and education. According to Casse:
Six years later, that skepticism - submerged for a time after 9/11 - has metastacized into full-blown hostility. Compasionate conservatism is bitterly derided as "big-government conservatism," a political and moral black hole into which Bush and Rove have sunk the Republican party. I read conservative publications every day - this theme is an obsession on the right. It's what spurred books like Imposter and The Elephant in the Room. It's what fuels the constant conservative pining for a resurrection of the Reagan Messiah. It's why, when I sat through three days of the National Review's conservative summit, all I heard - again, and again, and again - was self-excoriation of a party and a movement that had lost its way, that was addicted to earmarks and entitlements and to power itself, that needed, somehow, to return to a pure anti-government mentality. It's why John Boehner was ritually humiliated in front of the summit's audience, and why Pat Toomey and Paul Ryan were the weekend's heroes.
Modern conservatism is in crisis. Says Greenwald:
The architects of compassionate conservatism - the Marvin Olaskys and Myron Magnets - are not the same as the architects of the Iraq war. Neither project depended on the other in any fashion - in fact, one might argue, each has undermined the other. The simple, nonideological genius of Karl Rove was to understand how electorally powerful each could be. In the latter case, it was the appeal to nationalism and the silencing of dissent. In the former, it was a mechanism for keeping on board the "pro-government conservatives" who in fact make up the majority of the Republican party's base. (It was also, of course, an experiment in the gradual privatization of government services, but that's for another time).
Conservative movement intellectual leaders were generally perfectly content to ride along on the war bandwagon. But they have regarded compassionate conservatism - big-government conservatism - as an outrageous betrayal of the conservative project. And they spend much of their time denouncing this betrayal. The Rovian faction can be described as "dominant" only in the sense that it currently occupies the White House. It has little intellectual support within the movement, and when the Bush presidency ends, the quixotic small-government conservatives will take the reins again. The next generation of Republican candidates are already kowtowing to them. The impracticality of their agenda may force yet another round of big-government conservatism, but the dynamic is a cycle of crisis, not a bold embrace of expansive government.
There are two reasons I wanted to bring all this up. This first has to do with our opposition: liberals should understand just what a service the Club for Growth is doing for us. By undercutting conservative politicians who might be willing to embrace the possibilities of activist government for domestic risk management, groups like the CfG are weakening the Republican party. A candidate like Mike Huckabee - who is a Brooksian conservative - would be truly dangerous to Democrats; it's a sign of how much power the small-government crowd still have that the strongest GOP presidential candidate is currently so marginalized.
The other thing at stake here is the liberal understanding of the relationship between security and freedom. I've already mentioned Hacker. Greenwald, in demonizing as "Orwellian" Brooks's formulation that "security leads to freedom," is missing how vital this very idea is to progressivism. When Brooks compares "negative liberty" to "positive liberty," what should immediately leap to mind is FDR's own "four freedoms" - which redefined freedom as a positive, as well as negative concept.
"Security leads to freedom" is a liberal idea. The difference between liberals and Brooksian conservatives is that liberals understand where to draw the line against activist government: at the bedroom, and at the point of unnecessary and unilateral war. Without security - a strong safety net and responsible national defense, both of which have been liberal areas of expertise - individual freedom is undermined by inequality and instability. Indeed, one of the most devastating criticisms of neoconservative aggression is that it has made us less secure: unrestrained adventurism tends to sow chaos and ignite resentment, as we have seen in Iraq and around the world. Similarly, the vast expansion of executive power makes Americans less secure in their Constitutional rights. Liberals very much believe that security leads to freedom - but we also understand that true security is grounded in rule of law.
The Bush administration is not representative of the dominant trends in movement conservatism. It is regarded by that movement as a nasty aberration. If we allow ourselves to be lured into thinking that big-government conservatism has become the dominant ideology on the right, we'll be caught with our pants down in 2011 when the small-government conservatives come at us with a hard-hitting plan to rewrite the tax code and dismantle our entitlement programs. We'll fail to understand the dynamics of the health care debate, in which our opponents will be hashing out differences among themselves as to what should be the proper role of government. And when a more coherent Brooksian risk-management conservatism does emerge, we'll fail to recognize it in time.
Most importantly, if we throw the baby out with the bathwater, we will, as a movement, end up deeply regretting it. We will have abandoned one of our own most fundamental liberal principles: that security - grounded in the rule of law and respectful of personal liberty - does, indeed, lead to freedom.
Glenn Greenwald is one of the most cogent analysts of American politics today. His writings have been a beacon in dark times. But, like any mortal, Greenwald sometimes makes mistakes. Consider this an inversion of the stopped-clock analogy: even Glenn Greenwald can be wrong. Not twice a day, but on occasion. This is one of those occasions. His response to the latest column by David Brooks betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamics of modern American conservatism.
Now, David Brooks is easy to mock. His facile stylizing about bobos or momos - or whatever - reduces political analysis to half-baked latte-fueled personal conjecture. And his "national greatness conservatism" concept was aptly derided by Jonathan Chait as "a governing ideology whose one specific programmatic detail was a call for more national monuments." Nevertheless, Brooks's most recent column in the New York Times is an incisive account of the dilemma with which American conservatives are presently faced. And Greenwald, in his justifiable anger at the perfidy and authoritarianism of the Bush administration, misses the point entirely.
Brooks takes on the most common refrain in current conservative discourse: "that in order to win again, the GOP has to reconnect with the truths of its Goldwater-Reagan days." The idea is that Republicans must renew their destiny as the party of small government, personal freedom, and rugged individualism. As Brooks correctly points out, this is political "folly."
His argument is grounded in a sort of rhetorical truism: that Reagansim developed in a context of creeping socialism and decadent government overreach, which it countered with an invigorating dedication to "liberty" as opposed to "power." The 1970s were never as socialized as Brooks portrays them, nor was Reaganism ever as libertarian. Reagan might have broken briefly through the "malaise," but he never represented any fundamental public urge to throw off the shackles of the New Deal. What matters here, though, is the internal narrative of the conservative movement itself. Conservatives, riding the political waves of Reagan's personal popularity combined with their deft exploitation of populist reactions against taxes and civil rights, interpreted their success as a mandate to abolish the welfare state altogether.
That Brooks himself believes in the conservative narrative of that era is beside the point. What matters is that he understands how the popular mood runs strongly in another direction today. Faced with deepening inequality, diminished job security, health care crisis, globalization, global warming, terrorism, instability, and a general atmosphere of risk, Americans are increasingly demanding that government play an active role in providing social insurance.
Go back and read the recent Pew political values poll. It is absolutely devastating to small-government conservatives. American support for activist government - always strong - has increased dramatically since the 1990s. As Brooks himself puts it:
The Democrats have a 15 point advantage in voter identification. Voters prefer Democratic economic policies by 14 points, Democratic tax policies by 15 points, Democratic health care policies by 24 points and Democratic energy policies by 20 points. If this is a country that wants to return to Barry Goldwater, it is showing it by supporting the policies of Dick Durbin.The lesson, to Brooks, is that the "'liberty vs. power' paradigm" of Reaganism must give way to an understanding that "security leads to freedom." As Brooks puts it, "people with a secure base are more free to take risks and explore the possibilities of their world."
Greenwald reacts vehemently to this thesis: he condemns it as naked authoritarianism. In so doing, Greenwald makes a trio of errors:
- He conflates the "security leads to freedom" thesis with neoconservative aggression and the expansion of executive power under Bush;
- He takes Brooks as representative of the conservative movement as a whole; and, by implication
- He takes the Bush/Rove faction as representative of the conservative movement as a whole.
The first mistake is an understandable reaction to Brooks's observation that
President Bush sensed this shift in public consciousness back in 1999. Compassionate conservatism was an attempt to move beyond the “liberty vs. power” paradigm.This point seems to imply that Brooks, by his argument, means to endorse the radical overreach of the Bush administration. But it misreads both Brooks and the political function of so-called compassionate conservatism. Brooks himself is undertaking little more than a conservative articulation of Jacob Hacker's thesis: that government must play an active role in mitigating social risk. The Brooksian version of social risk management would extend beyond economics to social engineering of 'family values' - a vision that one can certainly criticize as overly authoritarian, but which is in no sense an endorsement of neocon adventurism or royalist interpretations of executive privilege. We'll return to this point.
Greenwald's second mistake is to assume that Brooks is speaking for the conservative movement generally. He argues, for instance, that
Brooks admits what has been crystal clear for some time -- namely, that so-called "conservatives" (meaning the contemporary political "Right") no longer believe (if they ever did) that government power should be restrained in order to maximize freedom. That belief system, says Brooks, is an obsolete relic which arose out of the the 1970s, and has been replaced by the opposite desire -- for expanded government power on every front.To suggest that Brooks is somehow "admitting" the secrets of a unitary conservative mentality is comprehensively to misunderstand the conservative movement. Brooks is not the movement's apologist. He is, in this context, an apostate. He is virtually alone among conservative intellectuals in calling for a repudiation of the Goldwater/Reagan mythos.
The crisis of American conservatism is that the movement's intellectual leaders are committed to a small-government ideology that is fundamentally at odds with both structural and political reality. And here is Greenwald's third mistake: the failure to understand that "compassionate conservatism" was designed as a way to overcome this crisis. It's lost in the pre-history of Bush's reign of disaster now, but recall that when the current president was first elected, he was hardly a model proponent of conservative thought (or, yes, any thought at all). Writing in Commentary in March of 2001, conservative writer Daniel Casse defended Bush as just the kind of "triangulator" needed to save the GOP - a "party in decline" - from its own traditional neglect of issues like Social Security, health care, and education. According to Casse:
Bush's theme of "compassionate conservatism," while vague and occasionally tedious, served a clear strategic purpose: disassociating him in the public mind from either the confrontational stance of the Gingrich years or the more libertarian impulses of the Reagan era."Casse's article was written in an attempt to rebut general right-wing skepticism toward the ideologically untrustworthy Bush and his suspiciously unconservative-sounding "compassionate conservatism."
Six years later, that skepticism - submerged for a time after 9/11 - has metastacized into full-blown hostility. Compasionate conservatism is bitterly derided as "big-government conservatism," a political and moral black hole into which Bush and Rove have sunk the Republican party. I read conservative publications every day - this theme is an obsession on the right. It's what spurred books like Imposter and The Elephant in the Room. It's what fuels the constant conservative pining for a resurrection of the Reagan Messiah. It's why, when I sat through three days of the National Review's conservative summit, all I heard - again, and again, and again - was self-excoriation of a party and a movement that had lost its way, that was addicted to earmarks and entitlements and to power itself, that needed, somehow, to return to a pure anti-government mentality. It's why John Boehner was ritually humiliated in front of the summit's audience, and why Pat Toomey and Paul Ryan were the weekend's heroes.
Modern conservatism is in crisis. Says Greenwald:
The dominant right-wing political movement in this country that has spawned and driven the Bush presidency has nothing to do with -- it is in fact overtly hostile to -- the ostensible principles of Goldwater/Reagan small-government conservatism. Though today's so-called "conservatives" exploit the Goldwater/Reagan mythology as a political prop, they don't believe in those principles in any way.The thing is, most conservatives would agree that the Bush presidency has "nothing to do with ... small-government conservatism." They feel as hijacked by so-called "big-government conservatism" as the nation at large does by the Bush regime. This is not to excuse them: my own idee fixe is that the failure of the small-government ideology - and it has, manifestly, failed - has led to a vacuum on the right, which has in turn been filled by power-hungry Rovians and and reckless warmongers, since they have offered the only models for keeping the party together. And there are two points that follow from this: 1) there's no essential contradiction between being a small-government conservative and a warmongering unilateralist; 2) Rovianism is a product of the failure, not the success of the conservative movement.
The architects of compassionate conservatism - the Marvin Olaskys and Myron Magnets - are not the same as the architects of the Iraq war. Neither project depended on the other in any fashion - in fact, one might argue, each has undermined the other. The simple, nonideological genius of Karl Rove was to understand how electorally powerful each could be. In the latter case, it was the appeal to nationalism and the silencing of dissent. In the former, it was a mechanism for keeping on board the "pro-government conservatives" who in fact make up the majority of the Republican party's base. (It was also, of course, an experiment in the gradual privatization of government services, but that's for another time).
Conservative movement intellectual leaders were generally perfectly content to ride along on the war bandwagon. But they have regarded compassionate conservatism - big-government conservatism - as an outrageous betrayal of the conservative project. And they spend much of their time denouncing this betrayal. The Rovian faction can be described as "dominant" only in the sense that it currently occupies the White House. It has little intellectual support within the movement, and when the Bush presidency ends, the quixotic small-government conservatives will take the reins again. The next generation of Republican candidates are already kowtowing to them. The impracticality of their agenda may force yet another round of big-government conservatism, but the dynamic is a cycle of crisis, not a bold embrace of expansive government.
There are two reasons I wanted to bring all this up. This first has to do with our opposition: liberals should understand just what a service the Club for Growth is doing for us. By undercutting conservative politicians who might be willing to embrace the possibilities of activist government for domestic risk management, groups like the CfG are weakening the Republican party. A candidate like Mike Huckabee - who is a Brooksian conservative - would be truly dangerous to Democrats; it's a sign of how much power the small-government crowd still have that the strongest GOP presidential candidate is currently so marginalized.
The other thing at stake here is the liberal understanding of the relationship between security and freedom. I've already mentioned Hacker. Greenwald, in demonizing as "Orwellian" Brooks's formulation that "security leads to freedom," is missing how vital this very idea is to progressivism. When Brooks compares "negative liberty" to "positive liberty," what should immediately leap to mind is FDR's own "four freedoms" - which redefined freedom as a positive, as well as negative concept.
"Security leads to freedom" is a liberal idea. The difference between liberals and Brooksian conservatives is that liberals understand where to draw the line against activist government: at the bedroom, and at the point of unnecessary and unilateral war. Without security - a strong safety net and responsible national defense, both of which have been liberal areas of expertise - individual freedom is undermined by inequality and instability. Indeed, one of the most devastating criticisms of neoconservative aggression is that it has made us less secure: unrestrained adventurism tends to sow chaos and ignite resentment, as we have seen in Iraq and around the world. Similarly, the vast expansion of executive power makes Americans less secure in their Constitutional rights. Liberals very much believe that security leads to freedom - but we also understand that true security is grounded in rule of law.
The Bush administration is not representative of the dominant trends in movement conservatism. It is regarded by that movement as a nasty aberration. If we allow ourselves to be lured into thinking that big-government conservatism has become the dominant ideology on the right, we'll be caught with our pants down in 2011 when the small-government conservatives come at us with a hard-hitting plan to rewrite the tax code and dismantle our entitlement programs. We'll fail to understand the dynamics of the health care debate, in which our opponents will be hashing out differences among themselves as to what should be the proper role of government. And when a more coherent Brooksian risk-management conservatism does emerge, we'll fail to recognize it in time.
Most importantly, if we throw the baby out with the bathwater, we will, as a movement, end up deeply regretting it. We will have abandoned one of our own most fundamental liberal principles: that security - grounded in the rule of law and respectful of personal liberty - does, indeed, lead to freedom.
Labels: conservatives, David Brooks, Glenn Greenwald, progressives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:49 PM 2 comments
Free Trade Means Fair Trade
Meanwhile, free trade regimes will simply fail in the face of political realities if they threaten the safety nets built up by Western nations. The paradigm Rodrik proposes is simple: a trade-off in trade negotiations that takes these complementary forms of self-interest into account:
I do recommend you give the whole article a read.
Following on yesterday's Right-Wing Think Tank Review, here's a good piece in the Financial Times by Dani Rodrik, which points out that the future of free trade itself depends on its ability to accomodate social safety nets in the developed world and modestly protective trade policies in developing countries. As Rodrik says:
If there is one lesson from the collapse of the 19th century version of globalisation, it is that we cannot leave national governments powerless to respond to their citizens. The genius of the Bretton Woods system, which lasted for about three decades after the second world war, was that it achieved such a compromise. Some of the most egregious restrictions on trade flows were removed, while allowing governments freedom to run independent macroeconomic policies and erect their own versions of the welfare state. Developing countries were free to pursue their own growth strategies with limited external restraint. The world economy prospered like never before.Rodrik points out that the most successful developing nations in the current era - China and India - relied on Bretton Woods-like strategies that sheltered their economies during crucial phases and "continue to restrict short-term capital inflows."
Meanwhile, free trade regimes will simply fail in the face of political realities if they threaten the safety nets built up by Western nations. The paradigm Rodrik proposes is simple: a trade-off in trade negotiations that takes these complementary forms of self-interest into account:
When rich and poor nations come together to negotiate the rules of the game they should stop thinking in terms of exchanging market access: "I will open my markets in x if you open yours in y." They should consider ins-tead exchanging policy space: "I will allow you to protect your national social compact if you allow me to engage in development strategies that conflict with WTO and International Monetary Fund rules of good behaviour." The challenge is to design procedures that enable the use of policy space for socially desirable purposes while limiting it for beggar-thy-neighbour purposes.Rodrik concedes that this strategy is not without risks. But a fundamentalist opposition to any form of protectionsim may be even more risky for global trade agreements.
I do recommend you give the whole article a read.
Labels: trade
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:49 PM 0 comments
"Like Hemophiliacs with Chainsaws"
Jonathan Chait tracks the bloody recriminations on the right over Rudy's flat tax flip-flop.
Labels: conservatives, flat tax, Jonathan Chait, Rudy Giuliani
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 6:28 PM 0 comments
As the Immigration Worm Turns
Another paragraph caught my eye:
The immigration issue continues to plague Republican candidates. Under the strain, Mitt Romney recently did what he does best in times of trouble: he flip-flopped:
"I don't think there should be a special pathway to citizenship for those that are here illegally," he said. "It makes no sense at all to have a border which is basically concrete against skill and education but wide open to people to just walk on in who have neither."Bolded text = LOL.
That position sets the former Massachusetts governor apart from a major rival, Arizona Senator John McCain, as well as President George W. Bush, both of whom back a guest-worker plan that gives undocumented workers the opportunity to become U.S. citizens. It also sets him apart from some of his own former positions.
Another paragraph caught my eye:
Romney's decision to shift his stand demonstrates how a big issue sometimes boils up from the voters, forcing candidates to adjust their messages. "For Republicans it's immigration; for Democrats it's trade," Illinois Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record) said March 28 at the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting in Washington. "Both issues reflect the unease Americans feel about the effects of globalization."Good to see Rahm acknowledging the need for the Dems to account for their constituents' concerns on trade. And if Romney needs to change his tune on immigration, so be it. But - and I say this without actually looking at polling data, so I could be off base - it seems to me to be a case of two very different situations. Republicans are being pushed by their base to take a stance on immigration that will actually harm them electorally, while the Democratic base is pushing the party toward a more popular trade policy than the one they had previously embraced.
Labels: 2008, Democrats, immigration, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, Republicans, trade
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:59 AM 0 comments
Right-Wing Think Tank Review - 3/29/07
Free Trade Is Dead, Long Live Free Trade
By Tim Kane
WebMemo No. 1409, pub. 3/27/07
Kane's article assesses the implications of increased skepticism in Congress toward unrestrained free trade agreements. At stake, Kane argues, is the success or failure of the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks. More immediately, the issue is whether Congress will renew the president's trade promotion authority (TPA), which is set to expire on June 30. Noting that the previous renewal, in 2002, passed the House with only a thin majority, Kane worries that a growing protectionist mood in Congress will doom the TPA, thus undermining President Bush's efforts to successfully conclude the Doha round: "Will Congress grant American negotiators the authority to close this multilateral deal?"
The article recounts increased Republican support for measures like the ones blocking the Dubai Port World bid last year, punishing China for pegging the yuan to the dollar, or requiring country-of-origin labeling on imported produce. It also blames "special interest groups ... notably European agribusiness" for "scheming to abort" Doha. But Kane reserves special criticism for what he calls "conditional trade deals" pushed by American politicians:
Nonetheless, from a progressive perspective there are strong arguments for supporting the success of the Doha round. American trade can be made both freer and fairer: for instance, Daniel Tarullo has argued that, by easing some of its domestic agricultural subsidies, the US can both increase American farmers' access to global markets and help improve the lives of farmers in the developing world - which, in turn, would be good for global security. However, as Tarullo notes, the Bush administration "has never shown more than pro forma support" for the Doha round; meanwhile, its strategy of "competitive liberalization," meant to build demand for multilateral trade negotiations through a series of bilateral and regional agreements (such as CAFTA), has accomplished little more than creating distractions and polarization in the trade debate.
Tarullo argues that senior Administration officials should be more involved with the Doha talks. To do so, however, they will need to work with a Democratic Congress. The Administration shut out Democrats during the CAFTA debate, but it can no longer avoid compromise, especially as it is seeking TPA renewal. Contra Kane, labor and environmental standards will be necessary parts of any comprehensive multilateral trade agreement. It is politically unrealistic - a fantasy - to believe otherwise. However, Kane's article attempts to make the case against such standards anyway.
Advancing Freedom in Iran
by Steven Groves
Backgrounder No. 2019, pub. 3/26/07
Groves argues that "there is still an opportunity to bring about peaceful democratic change in Iran." The primary obstacle to such change, according to Groves, is Iran's constitution: "a cancer that must be excised." The constitution renders Iranians' efforts to elect reformers futile, because it creates so many mechanisms for the mullahs to reject the democratic will of the people - for instance, through the authority of the Guardian Council to vet all presidential candidates and to veto any legislation the Council deems contrary to the precepts of Islam. Therefore, says Groves, "the United States should focus its funding and public diplomacy efforts toward supporting a national referendum on Iran's constitution."
Groves criticizes "unrealistic diplomatic 'grand bargains,'" which would seek comprehensive solutions to the multiple disputes between Iran and the West. Such efforts unrealistically assume that there is anything that can persuade Iran to abandon core policy objectives such as the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the "grand bargain" approach would "do little to nothing to advance freedom, democracy, and human rights for the Iranian people."
Instead, says Groves, US policy should turn on a re-interpretation of the 2006 Iran Freedom Support Act, which regulated US sanctions against Iran and financed democracy-promotion efforts.
Groves argues that congressional legislation relating to Iran should "clearly state that the United States government supports a democratic transformation of the Iranian regime." He also advocates for increased public diplomacy efforts, including increasing the amount of "serious analysis and programming" on Radio Farda - or establishing an alternate station for this purpose. Finally, Groves insists on the need for stronger efforts to "squeeze Iran financially," both on behalf of the US Treasury Department, and European nations, who should end government-backed export guarantees that account for an important part of Iran's trade.
The idea of suspending European export guarantees for Iran has been raised by numerous commentators, including Timothy Garton Ash at the Guardian, and Nile Gardiner at Human Events Online. Both of these articles were written in response to the Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors. It's instructive to compare Gardiner's article - which was also posted at Heritage's website - with the Groves piece. Each rejects diplomatic engagement with the regime. Gardiner, however, uses the current hostage crisis as an opportunity to ramp up the right's already-aggressive rhetoric, calling Iran's latest move "a hostile act of war." Without any sense of irony or acknowledgment of the rhetoric churned out by hawks during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, Gardiner neatly reprises the very same claims:
American Enterprise Institute (Sourcewatch profile here)
Arnold, Rush Battle for the Republican Party's Soul
By Kevin A. Hassett
Pub. 3/26/07; also pub. at Bloomberg.com.
Hassett reviews the recent contretemps between California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh. Observing that "the Republican party is at a historical crossroads," Hassett suggests that the Limbaugh-Schwarzenegger dispute perfectly illustrates the major debate within the GOP. And "only one side can win."
The controversy is rooted one of the most fundamental dilemmas in democratic politics: how to balance effectiveness with principle. Because, as Hassett notes, there have been no politicians since Reagan with the political skills to sell unpopular conservative ideas to the general public, Republicans are forced to decide between compromise and ideology.
Hassett notes that Schwarzenegger's recent move to the left, which has included hiring a Democratic chief of staff, agreeing to an increase in the state minimum wage, tackling carbon emissions, and developing a health care program, "has boosted his popularity." The governor's latest job approval ratings are 11 points higher than they were in 2005. However, says Hassett, "popularity might come at the expense of principle." And it is this "sell out" of conservative principle that has led extremist conservatives like Limbaugh to harshly criticize Schwarzenegger.
The governor's response was that "Rush Limbaugh is irrelevant." Unfortunately for the Republican party, however, that does not in fact appear to be the case. Hassett forecasts that the GOP's presidential primary debates will largely involve rehashing the very same kind of dispute - and he believes that, both in those debates and in the general intra-party debate, the Limbaugh faction will win. In other words, the Republicans, with a model for the resurgence of their party on prominent display in California, will reject it and instead choose to further marginalize themselves. (It should be noted that Hassett himself seems to approve of this scenario.)
One final note on the stakes involved: Hassett actually puts this dispute into an important context when he suggests the "compromisers"
Heritage Foundation (Sourcewatch profile here)
Free Trade Is Dead, Long Live Free Trade
By Tim Kane
WebMemo No. 1409, pub. 3/27/07
Kane's article assesses the implications of increased skepticism in Congress toward unrestrained free trade agreements. At stake, Kane argues, is the success or failure of the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks. More immediately, the issue is whether Congress will renew the president's trade promotion authority (TPA), which is set to expire on June 30. Noting that the previous renewal, in 2002, passed the House with only a thin majority, Kane worries that a growing protectionist mood in Congress will doom the TPA, thus undermining President Bush's efforts to successfully conclude the Doha round: "Will Congress grant American negotiators the authority to close this multilateral deal?"
The article recounts increased Republican support for measures like the ones blocking the Dubai Port World bid last year, punishing China for pegging the yuan to the dollar, or requiring country-of-origin labeling on imported produce. It also blames "special interest groups ... notably European agribusiness" for "scheming to abort" Doha. But Kane reserves special criticism for what he calls "conditional trade deals" pushed by American politicians:
"Yes, Peru, Americans will trade ‘freely' with your citizens on the condition that you do X, Y, and Z." This is not the American way; conditional interstate commerce among the United States was made unconstitutional in 1789 precisely because the Founding Fathers recognized the pettiness and gross inefficiency of protectionism.The analogy is a bit confounding, since Congress of course has the authority to regulate interstate commerce - states may not set their own conditions because American citizens are fully enfranchised in a federal government that has the authority to do so. That government in fact has a long history of enforcing labor and environmental standards - the very sorts of "conditions" that Kane is denouncing. There is, of course, no overarching sovereign authority on the global level.
Nonetheless, from a progressive perspective there are strong arguments for supporting the success of the Doha round. American trade can be made both freer and fairer: for instance, Daniel Tarullo has argued that, by easing some of its domestic agricultural subsidies, the US can both increase American farmers' access to global markets and help improve the lives of farmers in the developing world - which, in turn, would be good for global security. However, as Tarullo notes, the Bush administration "has never shown more than pro forma support" for the Doha round; meanwhile, its strategy of "competitive liberalization," meant to build demand for multilateral trade negotiations through a series of bilateral and regional agreements (such as CAFTA), has accomplished little more than creating distractions and polarization in the trade debate.
Tarullo argues that senior Administration officials should be more involved with the Doha talks. To do so, however, they will need to work with a Democratic Congress. The Administration shut out Democrats during the CAFTA debate, but it can no longer avoid compromise, especially as it is seeking TPA renewal. Contra Kane, labor and environmental standards will be necessary parts of any comprehensive multilateral trade agreement. It is politically unrealistic - a fantasy - to believe otherwise. However, Kane's article attempts to make the case against such standards anyway.
Advancing Freedom in Iran
by Steven Groves
Backgrounder No. 2019, pub. 3/26/07
Groves argues that "there is still an opportunity to bring about peaceful democratic change in Iran." The primary obstacle to such change, according to Groves, is Iran's constitution: "a cancer that must be excised." The constitution renders Iranians' efforts to elect reformers futile, because it creates so many mechanisms for the mullahs to reject the democratic will of the people - for instance, through the authority of the Guardian Council to vet all presidential candidates and to veto any legislation the Council deems contrary to the precepts of Islam. Therefore, says Groves, "the United States should focus its funding and public diplomacy efforts toward supporting a national referendum on Iran's constitution."
Groves criticizes "unrealistic diplomatic 'grand bargains,'" which would seek comprehensive solutions to the multiple disputes between Iran and the West. Such efforts unrealistically assume that there is anything that can persuade Iran to abandon core policy objectives such as the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the "grand bargain" approach would "do little to nothing to advance freedom, democracy, and human rights for the Iranian people."
Instead, says Groves, US policy should turn on a re-interpretation of the 2006 Iran Freedom Support Act, which regulated US sanctions against Iran and financed democracy-promotion efforts.
Regrettably, the act stated that U.S. policy was merely “to support efforts by the people of Iran to exercise self-determination over the form of government of their country.” As an official policy position, this statement rings hollow. The United States supports the efforts of the people of every nation in the world to exercise self-determination over their form of government. Instead, the U.S. government should state explicitly what the Iran Freedom Support Act only implies: The United States supports a peaceful democratic transformation of the Iranian regime.This policy would mean using the funding authorized by the Act to "unite the various groups interested in constitutional reform" under a "Rainbow Civil Movement," to support internet outreach and the dissemination of printed material advocating a constitutional referendum, and to "covertly provide cellular phones and other communications devices" to Iranian dissidents.
Groves argues that congressional legislation relating to Iran should "clearly state that the United States government supports a democratic transformation of the Iranian regime." He also advocates for increased public diplomacy efforts, including increasing the amount of "serious analysis and programming" on Radio Farda - or establishing an alternate station for this purpose. Finally, Groves insists on the need for stronger efforts to "squeeze Iran financially," both on behalf of the US Treasury Department, and European nations, who should end government-backed export guarantees that account for an important part of Iran's trade.
The idea of suspending European export guarantees for Iran has been raised by numerous commentators, including Timothy Garton Ash at the Guardian, and Nile Gardiner at Human Events Online. Both of these articles were written in response to the Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors. It's instructive to compare Gardiner's article - which was also posted at Heritage's website - with the Groves piece. Each rejects diplomatic engagement with the regime. Gardiner, however, uses the current hostage crisis as an opportunity to ramp up the right's already-aggressive rhetoric, calling Iran's latest move "a hostile act of war." Without any sense of irony or acknowledgment of the rhetoric churned out by hawks during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, Gardiner neatly reprises the very same claims:
Iran poses the greatest threat to global security of our generation, and the West must be ready to meet the challenge with strength and determination. Not since the rise of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia has the free world been faced with such a grave danger from a state actor. While the use of force is always a last resort, the United States, Great Britain and their allies must be prepared to disarm the Iranian regime if it refuses to back down, with or without the backing of the UN Security Council.It is left to the reader to decide whether Groves is simply a more serious analyst than Gardiner, or whether the two articles represent different formulations of the same underlying approach to Iran.
American Enterprise Institute (Sourcewatch profile here)
Arnold, Rush Battle for the Republican Party's Soul
By Kevin A. Hassett
Pub. 3/26/07; also pub. at Bloomberg.com.
Hassett reviews the recent contretemps between California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh. Observing that "the Republican party is at a historical crossroads," Hassett suggests that the Limbaugh-Schwarzenegger dispute perfectly illustrates the major debate within the GOP. And "only one side can win."
The controversy is rooted one of the most fundamental dilemmas in democratic politics: how to balance effectiveness with principle. Because, as Hassett notes, there have been no politicians since Reagan with the political skills to sell unpopular conservative ideas to the general public, Republicans are forced to decide between compromise and ideology.
Hassett notes that Schwarzenegger's recent move to the left, which has included hiring a Democratic chief of staff, agreeing to an increase in the state minimum wage, tackling carbon emissions, and developing a health care program, "has boosted his popularity." The governor's latest job approval ratings are 11 points higher than they were in 2005. However, says Hassett, "popularity might come at the expense of principle." And it is this "sell out" of conservative principle that has led extremist conservatives like Limbaugh to harshly criticize Schwarzenegger.
The governor's response was that "Rush Limbaugh is irrelevant." Unfortunately for the Republican party, however, that does not in fact appear to be the case. Hassett forecasts that the GOP's presidential primary debates will largely involve rehashing the very same kind of dispute - and he believes that, both in those debates and in the general intra-party debate, the Limbaugh faction will win. In other words, the Republicans, with a model for the resurgence of their party on prominent display in California, will reject it and instead choose to further marginalize themselves. (It should be noted that Hassett himself seems to approve of this scenario.)
One final note on the stakes involved: Hassett actually puts this dispute into an important context when he suggests the "compromisers"
will argue that the country urgently needs to come together to address long-run problems such as the entitlement programs that are headed for financial ruin. That can only be done, it will be argued, if Republicans are willing to compromise with Democrats.As this blog and other observers have repeatedly pointed out, the United States is indeed heading toward a major debate over its fiscal priorities, including taxation and entitlements. Milton Friedmanite movement conservatives are focusing on a showdown over the entire tax code - and, by implication, the future of American entitlements - in 2011. One way or another, there is a major budget gap that will need to be addressed. If the Rush Limbaugh ideologues do indeed triumph over the Schwarzenegger "compromisers," it will have important effects on the politics of the great budget debate when that time comes.
Labels: Iran, Republicans, Right Wing Think Tank Review, trade
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:30 AM 0 comments
Giuliani Gets Nutty
It's good to know that when Giuliani goes around strenuously denouncing things, he doesn't really mean it. Everything Giuliani says is without prejudice to his right to completely contradict himself for later political advantage. To whit:
The New York Times reports on Steve Forbes's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani. I'm sure it's nothing like a quid pro quo, just a coincidental change of heart that's suddenly led Rudy to reverse himself and endorse Forbes's pet crank cause: the flat tax, "something Mr. Giuliani denounced when Mr. Forbes was running for president."
It's good to know that when Giuliani goes around strenuously denouncing things, he doesn't really mean it. Everything Giuliani says is without prejudice to his right to completely contradict himself for later political advantage. To whit:
If there were no federal income tax, “maybe I’d suggest not doing it at all, but if we were going to do it, a flat tax would make a lot of sense,” Mr. Giuliani. [...]Fire up the YouTubes. America's Mayor has performed a magnificent flying forward one-and-a-half somersault flip-flop. And he's landed in a pool of nuttiness.
In 1996, when Mr. Forbes first ran for president, Mr. Giuliani, then the mayor of New York City, disparaged a flat tax in general and Mr. Forbes’s plan in particular. The Forbes plan called for a single tax rate above a certain income, instead of several rates based on income. Mr. Giuliani said that a central part of the proposal, eliminating deductions, would hurt taxpayers in urban areas and reduce tax revenues for populous cities and states.
“You’re giving them more authority, more autonomy, and you’re giving them less resources to deal with the problems,” he said then in an interview with CBS, calling the proposal “a mistake.”
He used stronger language on CNN a few days later, saying the Forbes plan “would really be a disaster.”
Labels: 2008, flat tax, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Forbes
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:02 AM 0 comments Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tom DeLay Is Smoking Grass(roots)
Next to a banner ad for the Bugman's new book (No Retreat, No Surrender - to which, one might add, Just Disgrace), the "About the Blog" blurb makes an earnest pitch:
So, like I said, he's been keeping busy. Eve Fairbanks of the New Republic caught up with the Hammer and found a man determined, apparently, to become the right's version of Kos, Howard Dean, and Eli Pariser - all rolled into one. Besides the blog, his new projects include:
Tom DeLay doesn't just want to grow the conservative grassroots. He wants to rip up the soil, plant his own seeds across the nation, and control every inch of the turf. He wants to be the sun toward which every blade turns. Having been expelled from the corridors of power, DeLay intends to marshal his forces out on the lawn. Fairbanks quotes Paul Weyrich on the Bugman: "He wants to run the outside."
None of it sounds much like real grassroots organizing as you or I know it. It's more like astroturf, on a grand scale. And there's a certain unsettling mania to DeLay's effort. As Fairbanks describes it, the man who once put the fear of God into the Republican Congressional caucus now "sees a need for such harsh discipline in the grassroots." But while he swings around rolling out the plastic turf, his real motives emerge:
Three former conservative leaders of Congress. Three under-employed ideologues. Their machines failed to save them from their own corruption and incompetence. So, with nothing else to do, they've set themselves to building better machines. It's easy to mock - really, delightfully easy - but take this new flurry of activity in the conservative movement as a warning. Armey, Gingrich and DeLay may be politically dead, but they're building armies of zombies to carry on anyway.
America's favorite criminally-indicted exterminator has been keeping busy lately. His blog has come a long way since the days when he had to shut off comments because, well, nobody likes him. Now it's slick, conversational, and steeping in the aura of netroots authenticity. Most of its posts, naturally, seem to involve a fixation with Nancy Pelosi.
Next to a banner ad for the Bugman's new book (No Retreat, No Surrender - to which, one might add, Just Disgrace), the "About the Blog" blurb makes an earnest pitch:
The importance of the blogosphere in shaping and motivating the current conservative movement is unquestionable- not only has it served as an important tool in breaking through the liberal MSM clutter but it has helped to keep our elected officials true to principle.The peculiarly Republican interpretation of "keeping true to principle" has a lot to do with DeLay's own early retirement - not to mention his party's current Congressional exile. DeLay himself was a leader in finding new and often wholly inverted ways to define "principle." He also figured out how to look fabulous in a mugshot - give the man some credit.
This blog is meant to further the online discussion in the marketplace of ideas.
So, like I said, he's been keeping busy. Eve Fairbanks of the New Republic caught up with the Hammer and found a man determined, apparently, to become the right's version of Kos, Howard Dean, and Eli Pariser - all rolled into one. Besides the blog, his new projects include:
- "Tom DeLay's Grassroots Action/Information Network" (not to be confused with Democratic GAIN) - a "a staunch opponent of secular progressive pressure groups and radical leftist agendas wherever they may be found in the United States."
You will also receive insider updates on Mr. DeLay’s schedule including appearances, events, and book signings both in your area and nationally.Lucky you!
- The Coalition for a Conservative Majority, whose website is currently inoperative (link is to a cached version).
For six years now, former leaders of the Clinton Administration have studied and surpassed the conservative grassroots network, creating a liberal coalition unprecedented in its size, scope, and funding. This is the network that beat conservatives in 2006 and handed Congress back to the Democrat Party – and that was just the warm-up. The liberal Shadow Party has been built for one reason: to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States in 2008. They have the money, the organization, and the coordination to do it, and there is no conservative network capable of standing in its path. Until now.That's right folks: the entire progressive movement was built by and for the Clintons. It's fascinating, actually - this is the same mindset that reacts to 9/11 by fixating on Saddam Hussein. Complex phenomena are simplified and personalized - and very often attached to people who in fact have nothing to do with them. Meanwhile, you can almost hear the rumbling low-register voice of the movie trailer: And only one man could stand in their way....
Tom DeLay doesn't just want to grow the conservative grassroots. He wants to rip up the soil, plant his own seeds across the nation, and control every inch of the turf. He wants to be the sun toward which every blade turns. Having been expelled from the corridors of power, DeLay intends to marshal his forces out on the lawn. Fairbanks quotes Paul Weyrich on the Bugman: "He wants to run the outside."
None of it sounds much like real grassroots organizing as you or I know it. It's more like astroturf, on a grand scale. And there's a certain unsettling mania to DeLay's effort. As Fairbanks describes it, the man who once put the fear of God into the Republican Congressional caucus now "sees a need for such harsh discipline in the grassroots." But while he swings around rolling out the plastic turf, his real motives emerge:
DeLay's mission to save the conservative grassroots isn't driven only by an ideological calling, the fulfillment of the American Passion's prophecy. There's also revenge. The activist troops he's now so eager to captain are the very ones that failed to come to his aid enthusiastically enough when he was under siege a year ago. "He was extremely frustrated at the end" of his time in Congress, notes Weyrich, because he "thought that he did not get the kind of support from the outside that he felt he was entitled to." Now DeLay has the chance to take over the grassroots and mold them into an obedient force. Says Weyrich, "He's thinking to himself, If I construct an organization. ...'"Fairbanks interviews a few conservative activists who say that DeLay's efforts are bound to come up against resistance:
Several conservative activists told me they find the idea that they need DeLay's training distasteful, as if he were on a mission to civilize savages. "I don't think it'll work, because conservatives are very individualistic, and they don't take well to people dictating to them what they need to do," says one.I'll let you make your own judgments as to whether that's an accurate portrayal of the conservative psyche. The real problem for DeLay may be that he's not the only disgraced conservative trying to build Conservative Grassroots Machine 2.0. As Fairbanks points out, Dick Armey's got a gang of his own. And we've already mentioned Newt's new network.
Three former conservative leaders of Congress. Three under-employed ideologues. Their machines failed to save them from their own corruption and incompetence. So, with nothing else to do, they've set themselves to building better machines. It's easy to mock - really, delightfully easy - but take this new flurry of activity in the conservative movement as a warning. Armey, Gingrich and DeLay may be politically dead, but they're building armies of zombies to carry on anyway.
Labels: conservatives, movement building, Newt Gingrich, The New Republic, Tom DeLay
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:47 AM 0 comments
Happy Days Are Here Again
America hates New York, reports the New Criterion blog, reports Roy at alicublog. Roy's reaction?
Thank fuck! I was really tired of them pretending not to.Meanwhile, a commenter named "chuckling" - who appears to live somewhere in my own general vicinity - asks: are you talkin' to me?
I can understand why people hate New York. I hate it myself, but not for the BMA. That's one of the few things I actually like about this hellhole -- a stroll around Prospect Park, through the Botanic Garden, and a pass through the museum, especially if there's some anti-religious art or quasi-pornography, which there always is, and especially on a saturday night.Here - indeed - is a man who would not take it anymore. ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:59 AM 2 comments
But Manhattan? All the animals come out there - ivy leaguers, skunk pussy Wellesley grads, stock brokers, tech dweebs, art directors, religious types, tourists in their white shorts, Walt fucking Disney, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I think someone should just take this city and just... just flush it down the fuckin' toilet.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Immigration: Playing with Matches
One thing that wasn't in the memo was how to talk about immigration. But we knew that Luntz and other GOP strategists were planning to use it as their new wedge isssue, just as they had done with gay marriage in the previous cycle. Eventually, Luntz's memo on how to talk about immigration turned up, full of the same kind of carefully-crafted talking points. Luntz insisted that "Americans are not only ready for an overhaul of illegal immigration policy, they are demanding it."
But in one of their more significant political blunders of recent years, Republicans failed to foresee that they would be the ones who ended up getting wedged.
Luntz never quite grasped the way the immigration debate would play out. In his playbook, he insisted on the importance of nationalizing the 2006 elections - drawing a lesson from the GOP setback of 1986, he called for an "umbrella effort to unite voters across the country to keep Republicans in office." Getting bogged down in local issues would be disastrous. Meanwhile, Luntz claimed that his focus groups were going wild over immigration.
His warnings were directed against a Republican establishment that many conservatives feared was out of step with the party's base on this issue. But that establishment - specifically, Rove's White House - saw the field in a way Luntz and his Congressional clients could not. Immigration was not a properly national issue; it was something that resonated very differently in different parts of the country. And it threatened to undercut one of the Rovian/Compassionate Conservative faction's most cherished projects: winning the Hispanic vote and creating the permanent Republican majority.
By ramping up the immigration debate, the Luntzian faction agitated part of the conservative base - thus in turn forcing the hands of many Republican members of Congress from conservative districts. But the numbers never added up to anything but trouble for the national party. The White House, with a very different set of interests, would never give the crackdown crowd what they wanted. It became a disastrous self-fulfilling prophesy for the party's pundits and Congressional delegation, who set the base on fire, only to be themselves consumed by the flames.
And the issue still smolders. Newt Gingrich, who is a master of political rhetoric but sometimes a remarkably incompetent strategist, is putting an English-only proposal at the center of his non-campaign campaign. Debate continues on the right (see this Max Boot thread at Contentions), and the tone suggests that conservatives are deeply frustrated by the dilemma they've caused for themselves.
Meanwhile, Chris Bowers has pointed out that 2006 saw a thirty point shift among Latinos to the Democratic party. To stick with the metaphor from above, Luntz and the other GOP strategists who encouraged the immigration alarmists tried to burn down the Democrats' house - without realizing that, on immigration, their own party was far more flammable.
A couple of years ago, I was doing opposition research for a candidate for Congress out in western New York. I had at my disposal a copy of the Frank Luntz playbook, which had recently been disseminated online. If you haven't read it, I recommend you take a look sometime. The specifics are a bit dated but the techniques are classic Luntz - it's a window into the mind of the GOP Congressional delegation's communications guru. (Sample line: "Remember, it's NOT drilling for oil. It's responsible energy exploration.")
One thing that wasn't in the memo was how to talk about immigration. But we knew that Luntz and other GOP strategists were planning to use it as their new wedge isssue, just as they had done with gay marriage in the previous cycle. Eventually, Luntz's memo on how to talk about immigration turned up, full of the same kind of carefully-crafted talking points. Luntz insisted that "Americans are not only ready for an overhaul of illegal immigration policy, they are demanding it."
But in one of their more significant political blunders of recent years, Republicans failed to foresee that they would be the ones who ended up getting wedged.
Luntz never quite grasped the way the immigration debate would play out. In his playbook, he insisted on the importance of nationalizing the 2006 elections - drawing a lesson from the GOP setback of 1986, he called for an "umbrella effort to unite voters across the country to keep Republicans in office." Getting bogged down in local issues would be disastrous. Meanwhile, Luntz claimed that his focus groups were going wild over immigration.
His warnings were directed against a Republican establishment that many conservatives feared was out of step with the party's base on this issue. But that establishment - specifically, Rove's White House - saw the field in a way Luntz and his Congressional clients could not. Immigration was not a properly national issue; it was something that resonated very differently in different parts of the country. And it threatened to undercut one of the Rovian/Compassionate Conservative faction's most cherished projects: winning the Hispanic vote and creating the permanent Republican majority.
By ramping up the immigration debate, the Luntzian faction agitated part of the conservative base - thus in turn forcing the hands of many Republican members of Congress from conservative districts. But the numbers never added up to anything but trouble for the national party. The White House, with a very different set of interests, would never give the crackdown crowd what they wanted. It became a disastrous self-fulfilling prophesy for the party's pundits and Congressional delegation, who set the base on fire, only to be themselves consumed by the flames.
And the issue still smolders. Newt Gingrich, who is a master of political rhetoric but sometimes a remarkably incompetent strategist, is putting an English-only proposal at the center of his non-campaign campaign. Debate continues on the right (see this Max Boot thread at Contentions), and the tone suggests that conservatives are deeply frustrated by the dilemma they've caused for themselves.
Meanwhile, Chris Bowers has pointed out that 2006 saw a thirty point shift among Latinos to the Democratic party. To stick with the metaphor from above, Luntz and the other GOP strategists who encouraged the immigration alarmists tried to burn down the Democrats' house - without realizing that, on immigration, their own party was far more flammable.
Labels: Frank Luntz, immigration, Republicans
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:55 PM 2 comments
Funny How It Works
Exhibit No. 245 in Who's Calling the Tune v. Who's Dancing.
The Third Estate:
For years the media has practiced a double standard to the advantage of Republicans. Hillary's problem is that she's shrill and calculating, but McCain's is that he's a moderate. Edwards is that he's a pretty boy wealthy hypocrite who doesn't care that his wife has cancer, while Giuliani's is that he's a moderate. Obama's problem is that he's vacuous, crooked, and a liar, while Romney's is that he's, you guessed it, a moderate.And, of course, these just happen to be the very themes with which the conservative media is obsessed.
Exhibit No. 245 in Who's Calling the Tune v. Who's Dancing.
Labels: 2008, Presidential election, The Third Estate
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:04 PM 0 comments
Right on the Road to Nowhere?
Krugman ends by pointing out something that some on the left have noticed, but which few other people - on the right or in the media - seem to have emphasized: the fact that there's a model for Republican resurgence staring everyone in the face, but the conservatives refuse to look at it.
You may already have seen Paul Krugman's piece in yesterday's Times - delicious title: "Emerging Republican Minority." Krugman refers to a recent Pew poll showing that the Democrats have opened a wide lead in party identification. But he also points out that other findings in the poll indicate a serious problem developing for a party religiously devoted to an anti-government philosophy:
Consider, for example, the question of whether the government should provide fewer services in order to cut spending, or provide more services even if this requires higher spending. According to the American National Election Studies, in 1994, the year the Republicans began their 12-year control of Congress, those who favored smaller government had the edge, by 36 to 27. By 2004, however, those in favor of bigger government had a 43-to-20 lead.There is simply no evidence that the American people reject the notion of activist government. In fact, the data show that, after years of conservative rhetoric and disastrous conservative government, Americans want competent activist government more than ever.
And public opinion seems to have taken a particularly strong turn in favor of universal health care. Gallup reports that 69 percent of the public believes that “it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage,” up from 59 percent in 2000.
Krugman ends by pointing out something that some on the left have noticed, but which few other people - on the right or in the media - seem to have emphasized: the fact that there's a model for Republican resurgence staring everyone in the face, but the conservatives refuse to look at it.
Many Republicans still imagine that what their party needs is a return to the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan. It will probably take quite a while in the political wilderness before they take on board the message of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback in California — which is that what they really need is a return to the moderate legacy of Dwight Eisenhower.The project of the modern conservative movement has been to destroy the political imperatives of the Eisenhower era. Schwarzenegger, turning back to that legacy, also turned his back on the entire conservative movement. He now represents everything the movement is designed to destroy. As long as the conservative movement remains at the wheel of the GOP - and there's no reason to believe it'll surrender control any time soon - the party will be headed in the wrong direction, away from the road to resurrection.
Labels: Arnold Schwarzenegger, conservatives, Paul Krugman
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:43 AM 0 comments
Calculating the Iran Crisis
This, of course, will be a conundrum of the right's own making. The Bush administration and their neoconservative enablers have so degraded the US intelligence apparatus, and so undermined the public's faith in the honesty of the executive branch, that as long as Bush remains in office we will simply have no reason to believe that any of his warnings, any of his dire predictions of smoking-guns-as-mushroom-clouds, have any validity at all.
Still, Kurtz estimates that "overall, if this turns into an Iran election, it will help the Republicans." And probably it will, as Democratic frontrunners will feel compelled to reserve judgment on intelligence that could be legitimate - but which they won't be able to analyze for themselves. The Bush administration will have the advantage of being the information gatekeeper on the Iran situation. The GOP candidate will simply have to talk tough. The Democrat will be obliged to account for the possibility that this time there really is a wolf - even while the entire Democratic base throws its hands up in outrage at yet another round of transparent Republican fearmongering.
You can hear Kurtz licking his chops. Look at this framing:
It's a funny little paragraph. I doubt Ayatollah Khomeni gave a damn about Reagan's "fresh political capital." He certainly did like the weapons Reagan's people sold him, though.
And if Iran is racing hard to get the bomb, it's because the Bush administration, in its incompetent and incoherent policies toward Iraq and North Korea, has shown that it's in the interest of card-carrying members of the Axis of Evil to get nukes before the US can invade.
But that's not the narrative we'll hear if Iran becomes the issue next year. The Republicans, once again, will be on message - and the Democrats will be, once again, in a quandary.
At the Corner, Stanley Kurtz says the 2008 election is likely to be more about Iran than about Iraq. Kurtz suggests that the Persian front is about to heat up:
What if Mario Loyola is right, and Iran is likely to expel U.N. inspectors and ramp up its nuclear fuel processing in a matter of months. That will provoke not only a national security crisis, but an American, and global, political crisis. At that point, the key question for every presidential candidate will be what to do about Iran. [...]At that point, predicts Kurtz, "the anti-war left" will point to the lessons of Iraq and "deride all the guesswork as bogus fear-mongering."
By election time, we’ll see a raft of conflicting estimates on just when Iran is likely to get a bomb. None of them will be completely reliable, but there will also be good reason to fear that the worst scenarios are true.
This, of course, will be a conundrum of the right's own making. The Bush administration and their neoconservative enablers have so degraded the US intelligence apparatus, and so undermined the public's faith in the honesty of the executive branch, that as long as Bush remains in office we will simply have no reason to believe that any of his warnings, any of his dire predictions of smoking-guns-as-mushroom-clouds, have any validity at all.
Still, Kurtz estimates that "overall, if this turns into an Iran election, it will help the Republicans." And probably it will, as Democratic frontrunners will feel compelled to reserve judgment on intelligence that could be legitimate - but which they won't be able to analyze for themselves. The Bush administration will have the advantage of being the information gatekeeper on the Iran situation. The GOP candidate will simply have to talk tough. The Democrat will be obliged to account for the possibility that this time there really is a wolf - even while the entire Democratic base throws its hands up in outrage at yet another round of transparent Republican fearmongering.
You can hear Kurtz licking his chops. Look at this framing:
Unfortunately, I wonder if, by the time a new president comes in, it won’t already be too late to stop Iran. Iran no doubt remembers how it sent the hostages home at the start of Ronald Reagan’s new presidency. It greatly feared Reagan’s combination of toughness and fresh political capital. That’s part of why Iran is racing so hard right now to get the bomb.There's a little bit of everything here: Reagan worship, self-aggrandizing tough-guy posturing, dark warnings that the sky is falling and only the Republicans can stop it.
It's a funny little paragraph. I doubt Ayatollah Khomeni gave a damn about Reagan's "fresh political capital." He certainly did like the weapons Reagan's people sold him, though.
And if Iran is racing hard to get the bomb, it's because the Bush administration, in its incompetent and incoherent policies toward Iraq and North Korea, has shown that it's in the interest of card-carrying members of the Axis of Evil to get nukes before the US can invade.
But that's not the narrative we'll hear if Iran becomes the issue next year. The Republicans, once again, will be on message - and the Democrats will be, once again, in a quandary.
Labels: 2008, Iran, Presidential election, Stanley Kurtz
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:12 AM 0 comments Monday, March 26, 2007
All Your Reality Base Are Belong to Us
Chait notes that several Republican Congressmen who do take global warming seriously - Reps. Wayne Gilchrest, Roscoe Bartlett, and Vernon Ehlers - were recently turned down by the Republican leadership for seats on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Bartlett and Ehlers are research scientists. Observes Chait, "Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification."
So on a critical issue - and at a criticial juncture - we find, once again, Republicans failing in their duty to provide constructive leadership because of the overriding conservative refusal to believe in the utility of science or activist government. The qualified members of their own party are undermined by the ideologues. John Boehner knows which side his freedom toast is buttered on - that's why he turned up at the conservative summit to grovel before the very same "intellectuals" who insist that climate change is a liberal fairy tale. They're driving the movement, and the movement is driving the party.
Still, if you understand conservative dynamics and know how to manipulate them, you can use them to your advantage. Thus, Chait points out, John McCain's efforts to address climate change center on his advocacy of nuclear power. Whatever you think of nuclear plants, you have to admire the political insight here:
Good piece by Jonathan Chait at the LA Times yesterday: "Why the Right Goes Nuclear over Global Warming." It's a quick look at the dynamics behind the perverse fact that, as evidence for global warming goes stronger, Republican politicians are actually getting more skeptical. As Chait points out, it's a process largely driven by a small number of hard-core denialist ideologues (the very same ones we cover regularly at this blog):
Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.Emphsis mine. Once again, culture war trumps all.
National Review magazine, with its popular website, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is "Planet Gore." The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue.
Chait notes that several Republican Congressmen who do take global warming seriously - Reps. Wayne Gilchrest, Roscoe Bartlett, and Vernon Ehlers - were recently turned down by the Republican leadership for seats on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Bartlett and Ehlers are research scientists. Observes Chait, "Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification."
So on a critical issue - and at a criticial juncture - we find, once again, Republicans failing in their duty to provide constructive leadership because of the overriding conservative refusal to believe in the utility of science or activist government. The qualified members of their own party are undermined by the ideologues. John Boehner knows which side his freedom toast is buttered on - that's why he turned up at the conservative summit to grovel before the very same "intellectuals" who insist that climate change is a liberal fairy tale. They're driving the movement, and the movement is driving the party.
Still, if you understand conservative dynamics and know how to manipulate them, you can use them to your advantage. Thus, Chait points out, John McCain's efforts to address climate change center on his advocacy of nuclear power. Whatever you think of nuclear plants, you have to admire the political insight here:
In reality, nuclear plants may be a small part of the answer, but you couldn't build enough to make a major dent. But the psychology is perfect. Conservatives know that lefties hate nuclear power. So, yeah, Rush Limbaugh listeners, let's fight global warming and stick it to those hippies!It's not exactly reverse psychology. Call it perverse psychology.
Labels: conservatives, global warming, John McCain, Jonathan Chait
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:21 AM 0 comments
Skeletons in Media May Be Larger than They Appear
At the same time, there's a clear reluctance in the media to look at the dirt. I don't know whether Rudy's got teflon or if it's just journalistic laziness. Even the stories discussing the skeletons packed into his closet seem almost designed to innoculate him.
Take, for instance, this AP article from the weekend. It reviews four of the many issues Rudy should be confronted with, but fails to really examine any of them. For instance, the piece brings up Bernie Kerik's apartment renovations but not his nanny, his Taser International stock, allegations of misuse of police personnel and property, or - especially - Kerik's alleged ties to organized crime.
Likewise, the article mentions Giuliani's "painfully public separation" with Donna Hanover, but not the fact that he cheated on her, mocked her by making public appearances with Judith Nathan, told the media about the divorce before he told Hanover, and fought her in court over who would have the right to live in Gracie mansion. Every divorce is "painful". This one was vicious.
While it may not be the reporter's intent, the overall tone of the article gives the impression that Rudy's various scandals aren't really that big a deal after all. His supporters get plenty of column inches. The piece even features Al Sharpton's criticisms of the mayor. Sharpton is Giuliani's most useful enemy - and articles like this one may be similarly helpful to him.
I tend to bounce back and forth between the "don't underestimate Giuliani" camp and the "Giuliani can't possibly win" camp. Each has a pretty convincing point. The thing is, there's more dirt on the man than on just about any presidential candidate I can remember. Any rival campaign that fails to take advantage of it is verging on criminally incompetent.
At the same time, there's a clear reluctance in the media to look at the dirt. I don't know whether Rudy's got teflon or if it's just journalistic laziness. Even the stories discussing the skeletons packed into his closet seem almost designed to innoculate him.
Take, for instance, this AP article from the weekend. It reviews four of the many issues Rudy should be confronted with, but fails to really examine any of them. For instance, the piece brings up Bernie Kerik's apartment renovations but not his nanny, his Taser International stock, allegations of misuse of police personnel and property, or - especially - Kerik's alleged ties to organized crime.
Likewise, the article mentions Giuliani's "painfully public separation" with Donna Hanover, but not the fact that he cheated on her, mocked her by making public appearances with Judith Nathan, told the media about the divorce before he told Hanover, and fought her in court over who would have the right to live in Gracie mansion. Every divorce is "painful". This one was vicious.
While it may not be the reporter's intent, the overall tone of the article gives the impression that Rudy's various scandals aren't really that big a deal after all. His supporters get plenty of column inches. The piece even features Al Sharpton's criticisms of the mayor. Sharpton is Giuliani's most useful enemy - and articles like this one may be similarly helpful to him.
Labels: 2008, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:05 AM 0 comments
Another Bad Week for McCain
Here he is missing his fundraising targeet (and getting schooled by Romney!).
And here he is bleeding support to Giuliani in his own home state.
By the way, here's a somewhat strange poll. "Democratic insiders" were asked who would be the strongest Republican candidate in the general election, and "Republican insiders" were asked to gauge the Democratic field. I have no idea who these "insiders" were, and I'm not sure their collective judgment is all that sharp.
But I guess that's why I'm not an insider.
You never really know. John Kerry was famously in last place not too long before Iowa last time. So it might not mean anything, but the news is still bad for John McCain.
Here he is missing his fundraising targeet (and getting schooled by Romney!).
And here he is bleeding support to Giuliani in his own home state.
By the way, here's a somewhat strange poll. "Democratic insiders" were asked who would be the strongest Republican candidate in the general election, and "Republican insiders" were asked to gauge the Democratic field. I have no idea who these "insiders" were, and I'm not sure their collective judgment is all that sharp.
But I guess that's why I'm not an insider.
Labels: 2008, John McCain, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:32 AM 0 comments Saturday, March 24, 2007
The Ghost in the Conservative Machine
The cover image, a retouched photo portraying Ronald Reagan with a tear running down his cheek, calls to mind the legendary "Crying Indian" anti-pollution spot of the 1970s. The metaphor seems straightforward: icon of purity distressed to see how later generations have despoiled the landscape.
But Peggy Noonan finds the imagery a little more difficult to process. Her column at the Wall Street Journal, responding to the Tumulty piece but especially to the cover image, both exemplifies and attempts to overcome the tortured relationship of modern coservatives to the Reagan legacy. If you follow the conservative movement for any length of time, you encounter this phenomenon with regularity. Reagan has transcended the role of conservative icon to become a secular saint - even, in many ways, a messiah. It's hardly hyperbole - it's an inescapable conclusion when every aspiring conservative politician is compared unfavorably to the Gipper, when Reagan is the single consensus point of reference in an increasingly fractious movement, and when across the right everyone seems constantly to pine for the return of the One True Conservative.
Noonan has a sense of the political pathology at work here. She argues that while Democrats tend to take inspiration from their FDRs and JFKs, Republicans are "spooked by their greats." This, she observes, is an unhealthy habit for conservatives, who too often find themselves paralyzed, asking themselves "what would Reagan do?" It's holding the right back:
Noonan glibly accepts the conventional conservative wisdom that Reagan was indeed a transformative president. I won't delve into a discussion of whether and how he 'ended the Cold War.' But, as I discussed a few days ago, he certainly didn't achieve anything like the transformation of American political economy that his acolytes like to pretend he did. Broadly speaking he was a likeable guy who left no real domestic legacy. His real legacy was a conservative movement that has found itself both energized and confounded by his example. The right believes that he accomplished great conservative things while riding wave after wave of public acclaim (despite the perfidy of the liberal elites). So why can't they do the same today?
They can't do what Reagan did, because Reagan didn't do what they think he did. Noonan says that Democrats think Reagan had some "strange and secret magic." But insofar as that was the case, he worked his charm on the right as much as upon the population at large. And the spell has lasted.
Better for conservatives if they were to confront the real structural impediments to their agenda, but an honest assessment of those obstacles would inevitably require them to confront the fact that Reagan left them no real example of how to remake American political economy according to conservative ends. On a strictly factual level, many conservatives are aware of this - they can see that the welfare state has grown every year since the New Deal was conceived. But truly admitting that Reagan was unable to shift this paradigm would rob them of the one example upon which they've relied to prove to themselves that such a shift would be possible.
Far too uncomfortable. The easy alternative, for a movement rooted in its own sense of persecution, is to blame the media for making conservatives feel bad. And that's what Noonan does, accusing said media of "mischievously" comparing modern conservatives to the Gipper. In Noonan's narrative, the problem is that conservatives are cowed by a media determined to demoralize them by waving Reagan's image in their faces. What Noonan doesn't mention is that references to Reagan are generated primarily in conservative publications and discourse. It's easier to blame others. But that won't make those nagging thoughts go away.
"Oh dear, oh dear," said Lucy. "And I was so pleased at finding you again. And I thought you'd let me stay. And I thought you'd come roaring in and frighten all the enemies away - like last time. And now everything is going to be horrid."You may have read Karen Tumulty's cover article for last week's Time Magazine - "How the Right Went Wrong." It's a pretty good survey of the state of the conservative movement - I'm happy to say that if you've been reading this blog regularly for the past couple months or so, you should already know most of what Tumulty reports.
"It is hard for you, little one," said Aslan. "But things never happen the same way twice."
-C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian
The cover image, a retouched photo portraying Ronald Reagan with a tear running down his cheek, calls to mind the legendary "Crying Indian" anti-pollution spot of the 1970s. The metaphor seems straightforward: icon of purity distressed to see how later generations have despoiled the landscape.
But Peggy Noonan finds the imagery a little more difficult to process. Her column at the Wall Street Journal, responding to the Tumulty piece but especially to the cover image, both exemplifies and attempts to overcome the tortured relationship of modern coservatives to the Reagan legacy. If you follow the conservative movement for any length of time, you encounter this phenomenon with regularity. Reagan has transcended the role of conservative icon to become a secular saint - even, in many ways, a messiah. It's hardly hyperbole - it's an inescapable conclusion when every aspiring conservative politician is compared unfavorably to the Gipper, when Reagan is the single consensus point of reference in an increasingly fractious movement, and when across the right everyone seems constantly to pine for the return of the One True Conservative.
Noonan has a sense of the political pathology at work here. She argues that while Democrats tend to take inspiration from their FDRs and JFKs, Republicans are "spooked by their greats." This, she observes, is an unhealthy habit for conservatives, who too often find themselves paralyzed, asking themselves "what would Reagan do?" It's holding the right back:
Republicans should take heart from his memory but not be sunk in him or spooked by him. Life moves. Reagan's meaning cannot be forgotten. But where does it get you if it's 1885, and Republicans are pulling their hair out saying, "Oh no, we're not doing well. We could win if only we had a Lincoln, but they shot him 20 years ago!" That's not how serious people talk, and it's not how serious people think. You face the challenges of your time with the brains and guts you have. You can't sit around and say, "Oh what would Lincoln do?" For one thing it is an impractical attitude. Lincolns don't come along every day. What you want to do with the memory of a great man is recognize his greatness, laud it, take succor from it, and keep moving. You can't be transfixed by a memory. Hold it close and take it into the future with you.Which is good advice as far as it goes, but Noonan herself slips right back into the most reflexive conservative habit: she blames it all on the media. "Republicans," she says, "should stop allowing the media to spook them with [Reagan's] memory."
Noonan glibly accepts the conventional conservative wisdom that Reagan was indeed a transformative president. I won't delve into a discussion of whether and how he 'ended the Cold War.' But, as I discussed a few days ago, he certainly didn't achieve anything like the transformation of American political economy that his acolytes like to pretend he did. Broadly speaking he was a likeable guy who left no real domestic legacy. His real legacy was a conservative movement that has found itself both energized and confounded by his example. The right believes that he accomplished great conservative things while riding wave after wave of public acclaim (despite the perfidy of the liberal elites). So why can't they do the same today?
They can't do what Reagan did, because Reagan didn't do what they think he did. Noonan says that Democrats think Reagan had some "strange and secret magic." But insofar as that was the case, he worked his charm on the right as much as upon the population at large. And the spell has lasted.
Better for conservatives if they were to confront the real structural impediments to their agenda, but an honest assessment of those obstacles would inevitably require them to confront the fact that Reagan left them no real example of how to remake American political economy according to conservative ends. On a strictly factual level, many conservatives are aware of this - they can see that the welfare state has grown every year since the New Deal was conceived. But truly admitting that Reagan was unable to shift this paradigm would rob them of the one example upon which they've relied to prove to themselves that such a shift would be possible.
Far too uncomfortable. The easy alternative, for a movement rooted in its own sense of persecution, is to blame the media for making conservatives feel bad. And that's what Noonan does, accusing said media of "mischievously" comparing modern conservatives to the Gipper. In Noonan's narrative, the problem is that conservatives are cowed by a media determined to demoralize them by waving Reagan's image in their faces. What Noonan doesn't mention is that references to Reagan are generated primarily in conservative publications and discourse. It's easier to blame others. But that won't make those nagging thoughts go away.
Labels: conservatives, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan, Wall Street Journal
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:59 AM 1 comments Friday, March 23, 2007
Universal Health Care: Now or Never
Thus the op-ed by Kimberly Strassel in today's Wall Street Journal. Strassel reports a sudden optimism among conservatives - on the health care debate, of all things. The effort to remake health care as a conservative issue got a big boost this week,
Whether the conservative plan for "health savings accounts" is serious or not is a matter for debate. What are conservatives trying to accomplish? Pardon my cynicism, but the least likely possibility seems to be that they are genuinely trying to find an affordable way for all Americans to have adequate health care. Oh, I'm sure a few of them are really after that goal, but not enough to matter.
Another possibility is that conservatives are hoping to use the health savings account concept to undermine any social insurance-based approach to health care. They see another social security about to be born, and they're looking to strangle it in its crib. Yet another possibility is that they simply want to look like they're doing something about health care, for short-term electoral reasons.
This is all pretty surface-level analysis - we'll get into in greater depth soon. The point for now is that the right is now talking about health care, for real. And with increasing enthusiasm:
The health care debate is suddenly far, far more urgent than many Democrats realize. Because if we don't get the public's attention, the other side will.
I'll return to this in much more detail soon, but here's a short version: The Bush administration's "compassionate conservatism," as much as it was mocked by liberals and derided by the right, drew from an important insight about the future of American conservatism - one that the Milton Friedmanites haven't understood. The idea, in part, is that conservatives can no longer ignore issues like health care and public education. Instead, the compassiocons realized, they needed to transform those issues so as to move them onto conservative turf. And while compassionate conservatism, the brand, has been discredited, the concept lives on - and is likely to become even more important.
Thus the op-ed by Kimberly Strassel in today's Wall Street Journal. Strassel reports a sudden optimism among conservatives - on the health care debate, of all things. The effort to remake health care as a conservative issue got a big boost this week,
when Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn released a big-ideas blueprint for restructuring the entire health-care system--the tax code, Medicare, tort liability, insurance laws--along free-market lines. Dr. Coburn's plan builds on the White House's own bold proposal in January to revamp tax laws so as to put consumers back in control of their health-care decisions. Both plans are about fundamental, bottom-up health-care reforms, cast in the language of markets, consumers and individual control.Describing the chintzy little tax breaks President Bush proposed in the last SOTU as "bold" may call Strassel's judgment into question, but there's no doubt that conservatives feel they're onto something here. Strassel frames it as a distinct alternative to Romney- and Arnold-style insurance mandates, as well as to the frightening specter of "government-run" health care as proposed by The Libs. Strassel even has the chuztpah to try and smear single-payer proposals with a reference to the Walter Reed scandal - once again demonstrating how conservatives mistakenly believe that everyone else is as incompetent as they themselves are when it comes to governing.
Whether the conservative plan for "health savings accounts" is serious or not is a matter for debate. What are conservatives trying to accomplish? Pardon my cynicism, but the least likely possibility seems to be that they are genuinely trying to find an affordable way for all Americans to have adequate health care. Oh, I'm sure a few of them are really after that goal, but not enough to matter.
Another possibility is that conservatives are hoping to use the health savings account concept to undermine any social insurance-based approach to health care. They see another social security about to be born, and they're looking to strangle it in its crib. Yet another possibility is that they simply want to look like they're doing something about health care, for short-term electoral reasons.
This is all pretty surface-level analysis - we'll get into in greater depth soon. The point for now is that the right is now talking about health care, for real. And with increasing enthusiasm:
Conservative health-care guru John Goodman remembers going to Washington in the early 1990s to get Republicans interested in individual health savings accounts, and "only about five guys would even meet with me," he recalls. Now, HSAs "are a religion" among the right, he notes, and Republicans used their last years in the majority to significantly expand access to these accounts. In the past 15 years, the GOP has also planted the roots of Medicare reform, looked at interstate trade in health insurance, and got behind competitive Medicare reforms in their states. [...]Of course, "for real" is a relative term when discussing conservative policymaking. But at the same time, compared to liberals, the right has better understood the power of words. And they're putting their linguistic talents to work in a debate which we should have won years ago:
The important thing is that debate equals education, which equals understanding, which equals precisely what the GOP needs right now. The Heritage Foundation's Mike Franc says Republicans are still too preoccupied with health-care small-ball--which procedures should be covered by Medicare, how much should generics cost--to get their heads around the broader subject. "This is still outside their intellectual comfort zone, and Republicans never do well in that situation," he says. "But to win this debate--the defining issue of the next 40 or 50 years--they're going to have to address it forcefully, head-on, and with every bit of their intellectual firepower."
Those on the free-market side are starting to understand the need for a new language, especially if they are to coax more nervous elements of their party into embracing radical change. When President Bush unveiled his health-care tax overhaul in the State of the Union, he stressed that health-care decisions needed to be made by "patients and doctors," not government or insurance companies. Mr. Coburn's bill summary is littered with the words "choice," "empowerment," "competition," "flexibility," "control"--which is not only an honest assessment of what his proposal would provide, but one with which Americans can identify.There are all kinds of reasons why conservative health care "reform" is a ridiculous idea. But even if it never goes beyond rhetoric, the right's health care plan could fatally cripple any attempt to achieve truly universal coverage. All the more reason for liberals to be bold and simple when talking about health care, rather than dinking around with what seem like safe little proposals. Mike Franc is right: it's time to stop playing small ball.
The health care debate is suddenly far, far more urgent than many Democrats realize. Because if we don't get the public's attention, the other side will.
Labels: conservatives, health care, Kimberly Strassel
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:55 AM 3 comments Thursday, March 22, 2007
Elizabeth & John
But she is those things, and so is her husband, and I'm glad he's staying in the race, because we need his voice out there, and hers too.
This is one of those posts where it doesn't really matter what I think, 'cause everyone else thinks the same thing. At any rate, I'm sad to hear that Elizabeth Edwards's cancer has spread. The fact that she is, by all accounts, a wonderful person and an asset to our political culture is actually immaterial - it's sad for any person to be challenged this way.
But she is those things, and so is her husband, and I'm glad he's staying in the race, because we need his voice out there, and hers too.
Labels: 2008, Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:16 PM 0 comments
Die, Blogger, Die
I know, save your work, and I also know, stop complaining and get off Blogger already. Still.
So the post was reconstructed to include the main piece. What was lost? Short versions:
"Make English our Official Language": Newt Gingrich thinks the linguistic sky is falling, but doesn't produce any evidence that Americans are particularly culturally fragmented, nor does he propose a solution to the real problem with ESL education: the fact that "over 90% of the need for English as a Second Language classes goes unmet." (Link via The Right's Field.) His list of recommendations seems to be aimed not at solving a policy problem but at reasserting a conservative voice in the immigration debate. And you can't help but notice that it also seems intended to depress immigrant (and thus Democratic) voter turnout.
"Tortured Credibility": Anne Applebaum turns up - at the AEI website! - to denounce the use of torture from a practical perspective. She points out that the Khalid Sheik Mohammed "confessions" have been met with indifference and skepticism around the world. And even if he wasn't tortured, the extrajudicial means used to confine and interrogate him undermine the legitimacy of any confession. The lesson?
And no, I don't mean "The, Blogger, The." So I missed a tag in the Think Tank Review and thus lost half my post, along with an hour and a half I could have spent in all kinds of other, less thinky activities.
I know, save your work, and I also know, stop complaining and get off Blogger already. Still.
So the post was reconstructed to include the main piece. What was lost? Short versions:
"Make English our Official Language": Newt Gingrich thinks the linguistic sky is falling, but doesn't produce any evidence that Americans are particularly culturally fragmented, nor does he propose a solution to the real problem with ESL education: the fact that "over 90% of the need for English as a Second Language classes goes unmet." (Link via The Right's Field.) His list of recommendations seems to be aimed not at solving a policy problem but at reasserting a conservative voice in the immigration debate. And you can't help but notice that it also seems intended to depress immigrant (and thus Democratic) voter turnout.
"Tortured Credibility": Anne Applebaum turns up - at the AEI website! - to denounce the use of torture from a practical perspective. She points out that the Khalid Sheik Mohammed "confessions" have been met with indifference and skepticism around the world. And even if he wasn't tortured, the extrajudicial means used to confine and interrogate him undermine the legitimacy of any confession. The lesson?
[I]t is not merely immoral to operate outside the rule of law; it is also ineffective and in fact profoundly counterproductive: There is no proof that it produces better information but plenty of evidence that it has discredited the United States.Given AEI's influence in conservative policymaking circles, it's heartening to see this piece at their website.
Labels: Blogger sux, immigration, Newt Gingrich, Right Wing Think Tank Review, torture
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:22 PM 0 comments
Right-Wing Think Tank Review: 3/22/07
Gore on the Rocks
By Steven F. Hayward
Pub. 3/21/07; also pub. in National Review.
Hayward's article attempts to establish the idea that there is a "backlash" under way, in the scientific community and among the general public, against climate change "alarmism." Celebrating the fact that "public opinion has barely budged" on climate change, Hayward uses Al Gore as a foil for various denialist assertions.
He begins by citing William Broad's recent article in the New York Times, which purported to show a backlash against the former Vice President's climate change lobbying "'from rank and file scientists' who 'have no political ax to grind.'" (See here and here for criticism of Broad's piece). Hayward goes on to quote Mike Hulme, a British climatologist who sounds a reasonable note of caution about the dangers of always assuming worst-case scenarios. The article then distorts the sense of Hulme's statement by following it with a quote about "internal backlash" from Kevin Vranes - who is also cited in the NYT piece, and who, critics have noted, has published very little peer-reviewed work on climate change.
Hayward then argues that the recent report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "undermines many of Gore's most spectacular claims" [emphasis mine]. Citing, for instance, Gore's warning about the possibility of a 20-foot rise in sea level, Hayward uses the IPCC's more limited conclusions to criticize outlier claims about the effects of global warming, without noting that the report itself affirms extremely strong evidence for anthropogenic influence on climate.
Like a number of other conservative writers, Hayward cites the recent British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle as evidence of a scientific "backlash" against warnings about climate change. Critics have noted that the program offered little more than the usual debunked denialist claims; one of the scientists featured in the program, meanwhile, has stated that Channel 4 misled him about the nature of the documentary and distorted his opinions.
Hayward and other conservative writers are focusing on examples of extreme rhetoric from non-scientist climate change activists, then conflating the more cautious language of actual scientists with discredited denialist claims, to impute the existence of a "backlash" against warnings about global warming in general. Using certain activists as a straw man, Hayward is attempting to attach denialism parasitically to actual science. As RealClimate.org has warned,
Meanwhile, Hayward also attempts to portray a backlash against climate change campaigners among the general public. Again, he resorts to ridicule of Al Gore, criticizing Gore's "profligate energy use" (here we see the synergy of the conservative think tanks and right-wing media/attack operations). At the same time, Hayward mades an important political point - one which progressives should carefully consider:
[Remainder of post lost]
American Enterprise Institute (Sourcewatch profile here)
Gore on the Rocks
By Steven F. Hayward
Pub. 3/21/07; also pub. in National Review.
Hayward's article attempts to establish the idea that there is a "backlash" under way, in the scientific community and among the general public, against climate change "alarmism." Celebrating the fact that "public opinion has barely budged" on climate change, Hayward uses Al Gore as a foil for various denialist assertions.
He begins by citing William Broad's recent article in the New York Times, which purported to show a backlash against the former Vice President's climate change lobbying "'from rank and file scientists' who 'have no political ax to grind.'" (See here and here for criticism of Broad's piece). Hayward goes on to quote Mike Hulme, a British climatologist who sounds a reasonable note of caution about the dangers of always assuming worst-case scenarios. The article then distorts the sense of Hulme's statement by following it with a quote about "internal backlash" from Kevin Vranes - who is also cited in the NYT piece, and who, critics have noted, has published very little peer-reviewed work on climate change.
Hayward then argues that the recent report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "undermines many of Gore's most spectacular claims" [emphasis mine]. Citing, for instance, Gore's warning about the possibility of a 20-foot rise in sea level, Hayward uses the IPCC's more limited conclusions to criticize outlier claims about the effects of global warming, without noting that the report itself affirms extremely strong evidence for anthropogenic influence on climate.
Like a number of other conservative writers, Hayward cites the recent British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle as evidence of a scientific "backlash" against warnings about climate change. Critics have noted that the program offered little more than the usual debunked denialist claims; one of the scientists featured in the program, meanwhile, has stated that Channel 4 misled him about the nature of the documentary and distorted his opinions.
Hayward and other conservative writers are focusing on examples of extreme rhetoric from non-scientist climate change activists, then conflating the more cautious language of actual scientists with discredited denialist claims, to impute the existence of a "backlash" against warnings about global warming in general. Using certain activists as a straw man, Hayward is attempting to attach denialism parasitically to actual science. As RealClimate.org has warned,
Much of the sensationalist talk in the public discourse (and to which the scientists in the piece, and we, rightly take exception) are not the pronoucements of serious scientists in the field, but distorted and often out-of-context quotes that can be further mangled upon frequent repetition. We have often criticised such pieces (here, or here for instance) and it is important to note that the 'shrill voices of doom' referred to by Mike Hulme were not scientists, but campaigners.Yet we cannot expect conservative think tanks to make the same distinctions.
Meanwhile, Hayward also attempts to portray a backlash against climate change campaigners among the general public. Again, he resorts to ridicule of Al Gore, criticizing Gore's "profligate energy use" (here we see the synergy of the conservative think tanks and right-wing media/attack operations). At the same time, Hayward mades an important political point - one which progressives should carefully consider:
Liberals in the 1960s and 1970s never comprehended how damaging "limousine liberalism" was to their cause. They seem even more oblivious to the self-inflicted wounds of "Gulfstream liberalism." Whatever the intricacies of climate science, middle-class citizens understand that Gore wants them to use less energy and pay more for it, while he and his Hollywood pals use as much as they want and buy their way out of guilt, like a medieval indulgence [Emphasis mine].Carbon offsets have a emerged as a way for people to use market-like mechanisms to mitigate the environmental harm caused by their personal energy use. This is a laudable idea, but it has the potential to be politically disastrous. It implies that burdens will not be equally shared, and could allow cultural and class-based resentments to undermine serious efforts at emissions reduction. It structures emissions reduction much as the Union's ill-conceived military draft was structured during the Civil War: theoretically, anybody can buy out of it, but in practical terms, only the wealthy can do so. Carbon offsets are not technically hypocritical, but they are deeply hypocritical on a symbolic level.
[Remainder of post lost]
Labels: American Enterprise Institute, global warming, Right Wing Think Tank Review
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:36 AM 3 comments Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The Stench of Stale Hubris
"This, too, shall pass," is the answer.
Wolcott:
When Dick Cheney famously told Pat Leahy to go fuck himself, he and the rest of the administration clearly never anticipated the day when Leahy would return to powerful chairmanship; I think they internalized Karl Rove's visionary scheme of a permanent Republican majority and thought the future was in the bag. Now they're holding the bag and it's leaking all over their laps.I've never mentioned it, but there was a particular point implied when I named this blog Alien & Sedition. It's also why there's a picture of Jefferson in the top corner there. The point is the same one made by the proverb about the Chinese emperor who asks his wise man to tell him one thing that will always be true:
"This, too, shall pass," is the answer.
Labels: Dick Cheney, James Wolcott, meta
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:48 PM 4 comments
Elsewhere...
I have no idea why comments aren't enabled on the post below. My theory is that is has something to do with the fact that Blogger Sux.
At any rate, hope you enjoy going back to the future. Light posting the rest of today. If dusty memories from the Commentary archives aren't enough for you, may I recommend:
Amazin' Avenue: You know what they say about a bad dress rehearsal...
The Right's Field: McCain gets clubbed.
Vernon Lee: Comrade Romney vs. the Boston Herald (Also see "Vernon Lee's Law," which has nothing to do with anything horrible happening to some kid named Vernon Lee).
Undercover Blue: What might really lie behind the US attorney firings.
John Cole: Democratic overreach? Hardly.
Slacktivist: Teh MSM is undermining our pets!!!!11!!1!
They hate our freedom and our pooties.
I have no idea why comments aren't enabled on the post below. My theory is that is has something to do with the fact that Blogger Sux.
At any rate, hope you enjoy going back to the future. Light posting the rest of today. If dusty memories from the Commentary archives aren't enough for you, may I recommend:
Amazin' Avenue: You know what they say about a bad dress rehearsal...
The Right's Field: McCain gets clubbed.
Vernon Lee: Comrade Romney vs. the Boston Herald (Also see "Vernon Lee's Law," which has nothing to do with anything horrible happening to some kid named Vernon Lee).
Undercover Blue: What might really lie behind the US attorney firings.
John Cole: Democratic overreach? Hardly.
Slacktivist: Teh MSM is undermining our pets!!!!11!!1!
They hate our freedom and our pooties.
Labels: Blogger sux, Other blogs
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:54 AM 0 comments Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Republican Futures Past: 1983
The following January, as the new Congress took its seats, Commentary Magazine published an essay by James Nuechterlein titled "The Republican Future" [pp. 17-25]. Responding to conservative disappointment, Nuechterlein argued that the results constituted "no realignment, no repudiation" - only a "gentle rebuke." Still, there was no denying the fact that "the Democrats remain the majority party in America."
A quarter-century later, we're accustomed to remembering the 1980 election as the 'Reagan Revolution.' But in the wake of the '82 midterms, Nuechterlein suggested that Reagan had originally earned only a "tentative mandate" - one that Republicans should endeavor to renew despite their midterm defeat. Nuechterlein is clear about the stakes involved:
By "traditionalism," Nuechterlein tells us, Pines meant:
"Fusionism" is another term that neither author uses, even though it is the very concept that frames each author's concerns about the prospects for the future of this new traditionalism. Nuechterlein cites the divide between traditionalists on the one hand, and "conservative and neoconservative intellectuals, corporate executives, and mainline Republicans" on the other. "In Pines's view," we're told, "these two groups seldom communicate." History, of course, tells us that they would learn to communicate quite well before very long.
Still, Nuechterlein is not quite ready to jump in with both feet. While he concedes that the left has unfairly maligned honest conservatives, he points out that
In Post-Conservative America, on the other hand, Kevin Phillips appears to have predicted a descent into extremism of a somewhat different sort: "radical reactionary upsurges and the emergence of 'a species of European corporate statism.'" Nuechterlein feels compelled to refute Phillips's thesis, which does indeed come across as overly pessimistic - but which is grounded in an otherwise astute analysis of the dilemma with which conservatives would ultimately be faced. Phillips, it seems, argues that Reagan's coalition of economic conservatives, old-line Republicans, and the social right, cannot hold. Ultimately, Phillips says, social conservatives simply aren't on board with the Reaganite dream of remaking America's political economy. Nuechterlein summarizes:
Nuechterlein derides this apocalyptic vision, arguing that there is no reason to believe that the right will disintegrate into radicalism on account of tensions between economic and social conservatives. Defending Reagan against charges of intellectual inadequacy, Nuechterlein says that
One might cite Clinton's deceleration of government spending as evidence for a Reagan Revolution that remade the American political context and forced even Democrats to join the small-government bandwagon. Conservatives have often referred to Clinton's pronouncement in his 1996 State of the Union address that "the era of big government is over." This, we are told, is evidence of Reagan's triumph. But the argument mistakes rhetoric for fact (and Clinton's next sentence was a reaffirmation of the need for activist government: "But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.") And the explosion of government spending under the conservative George W. Bush essentially puts the myth of the Reagan Revolution to bed.
The irony of all this is that the failure of the Reagan Revolution turned out to be a good thing for the Republican party. By avoiding significant budget cuts, Reagan was able to retain the support of the social conservatives who have come to constitute the party's base - and who, contra Pines, were always much more interested in culture than in political economy. Thus the right was not forced to split, and Phillips's dark hypothesis was never tested. The conservative movement may have been saved by its own hypocrisy.
True supply-siders are well represented in the ranks of conservative intellectuals and donors. But they have never had a significant electoral base of their own. The latest Pew Political Typology, for instance, finds that so-called "Enterprisers," who are "strongly pro-business" and "oppose social welfare," constitute only 11 percent of registered voters - dramatically underscoring the extent to which Republican fortunes lie in the hands of "pro-government conservatives." As Phillips and others have pointed out, the populist embrace of right-wing economics extends only as far as the occasional tax revolt will carry it. The Friedmanites have developed various coping strategies in response. They've over-idealized the Reagan years. They've blamed Democrats for blocking the conservative economic program. They've searched for silver linings. But over the past six years, they've had little cover for the failure to advance their agenda - and the result has been a series of noisy complaints about their own party - and especially Bush. In fact, the current administration has, with its "compassionate conservatism," sought a way out of the dilemma facing economic conservatives. But that's for the next installment.
The Republican future of 1983 was fraught with promise and peril. Ultimately it neither realized its promise nor succumbed to the peril. The fusionist conservative movement did not in fact achieve a revolution under Reagan, but neither did it disintegrate into fascism. Rather it has perpetuated itself by a kind of mythmaking: overstating both its successes (as exemplified by Reagan and Newt Gingrich) and its supposed powerlessness under Clinton and the first President Bush. The movement has held more political power than it will admit, but it has accomplished less than it would like to believe. Yet this dual myth has benefited conservatives: it has held the movement together and given it impetus, providing a vision of what conservatives might achieve and a hunger to overcome the political obstacles standing in the way.
But in the era of total conservative government, this sustaining myth ran aground. The obstacles to implementation of the conservative agenda were no longer just political, but structural; conservatives, with only feeble Democratic opposition, and the guiding star of the Reaganite ideology showing the way, were forced to navigate waters far more difficult than they had imagined. This was the dilemma that would confront President George W. Bush, and it was in many ways a legacy of a president who proved, in the end, to be a great actor - but not much of a revolutionary.
Cross-posted at Progressive Historians.
In November 1982, during a time of recession and 10 percent unemployment, American voters punished President Ronald Reagan and the Republican party, expanding the Democrats' majority in the House of Representatives by 27 seats.
The following January, as the new Congress took its seats, Commentary Magazine published an essay by James Nuechterlein titled "The Republican Future" [pp. 17-25]. Responding to conservative disappointment, Nuechterlein argued that the results constituted "no realignment, no repudiation" - only a "gentle rebuke." Still, there was no denying the fact that "the Democrats remain the majority party in America."
A quarter-century later, we're accustomed to remembering the 1980 election as the 'Reagan Revolution.' But in the wake of the '82 midterms, Nuechterlein suggested that Reagan had originally earned only a "tentative mandate" - one that Republicans should endeavor to renew despite their midterm defeat. Nuechterlein is clear about the stakes involved:
Reagan is no ordinary President. He is our most ideological chief executive since Franklin Roosevelt, and he intends as consequential a revision of our political economy as did FDR. [...]The starting point for Nuechterlein's effort to divine that fate is his review of a pair of books published shortly before the midterms. The first, by a Heritage Foundation analyst and former Time Magazine writer named Burton Yale Pines, forecast the emergence of a "traditionalist" movement that would, Pines predicted, transform American culture as much as its politics (click here for a New York Times review of the same book). The second appears to have represented an interesting moment in the evolution of Kevin Phillips, the Nixon strategist who has since become a vehement critic of the right.
[Reagan's] political fate will resonate through our political culture with an urgency that no American will be able to disregard.
By "traditionalism," Nuechterlein tells us, Pines meant:
a revolt against dominant modernist liberal values in virtually every area of public and private life: economics, politics, education, family relations, religion, crime and punishment, and the intellectual world. He means defense of private enterprise; advocacy of growth over redistribution ... preservation of the nuclear family as a cultural norm (which implies, among other things, anti-feminism and repudiation of gay rights); defense of religious orthodoxy and opposition to secular humanism... and an overriding skepticism and fear of government plans to build, by rationalist enterprise, the good society.The mass evangelical re-entry into electoral politics had only begun recently, during the Carter years, so we might not be surprised that it apparently doesn't quite occur to Pines or Nuechterlein to give this phenomenon the label we know it by today: the Christian Right.
"Fusionism" is another term that neither author uses, even though it is the very concept that frames each author's concerns about the prospects for the future of this new traditionalism. Nuechterlein cites the divide between traditionalists on the one hand, and "conservative and neoconservative intellectuals, corporate executives, and mainline Republicans" on the other. "In Pines's view," we're told, "these two groups seldom communicate." History, of course, tells us that they would learn to communicate quite well before very long.
Still, Nuechterlein is not quite ready to jump in with both feet. While he concedes that the left has unfairly maligned honest conservatives, he points out that
there are crazies, zealots, and fanatics on the right, and there is no greater obstacle to the progress of a responsible conservatism than the perception ... that the Right is inhabited only by inadequate and unhinged personalities.He criticizes Pines for the latter's "popular-front mentality" - the idea that "there are no enemies on the right." Conservatives will ruin themselves, says Nuechterlein, "if they do not distinguish themselves from the know-nothing fringe." One hardly need point out the irony of the fact that "no enemies on the right" was the concept behind the "11th Commandment" devised to protect Ronald Reagan himself. For the time being, at any rate, Nuechterlein takes comfort in the "apparent failure of right-wing dogmatists to achieve their objectives" in the '82 elections - especially given how organizations like the Moral Majority had inspired liberal fundraising efforts. The message he wants to reiterate is that "a conservative is not at all the same thing as a radical of the right." Twenty-five years later, unfortunately, that message is not so clear.
In Post-Conservative America, on the other hand, Kevin Phillips appears to have predicted a descent into extremism of a somewhat different sort: "radical reactionary upsurges and the emergence of 'a species of European corporate statism.'" Nuechterlein feels compelled to refute Phillips's thesis, which does indeed come across as overly pessimistic - but which is grounded in an otherwise astute analysis of the dilemma with which conservatives would ultimately be faced. Phillips, it seems, argues that Reagan's coalition of economic conservatives, old-line Republicans, and the social right, cannot hold. Ultimately, Phillips says, social conservatives simply aren't on board with the Reaganite dream of remaking America's political economy. Nuechterlein summarizes:
Reagan's program of budget cuts, monetarist restraint, and reduction in marginal tax rates ... held little attraction for the populist Right. That group was more interested in reductions in property taxes - the Proposition 13 phenomenon - than in progressive income tax rates, and its anti-business instincts ... made it suspicious of monetarism. [...]Phillips's pessimism lies in how he predicts this contradiction will resolve itself: with Balkanization, radicalization, and "revolutionary conservatism" demanding massive but illiberal government intervention in the economy, leading even to joint government-business central planning. Thus the European-style corporatism he fears, bearing the possibility of authoritarian politics along with it. What Phillips refers to is, essentially, a variety of fascism.
Moreover, the populist Right's generalized animus against big government did not preclude its expectation that the federal pork barrel would remain accessible to itself. While Reagan's middle-class supporters wanted cuts in welfare, Phillips argues, they were not prepared for the widespread reductions in social programs that the administration's policies called for.
Nuechterlein derides this apocalyptic vision, arguing that there is no reason to believe that the right will disintegrate into radicalism on account of tensions between economic and social conservatives. Defending Reagan against charges of intellectual inadequacy, Nuechterlein says that
Reagan has already brought a good deal more coherence into American politics than it has experienced in recent years. He has, first of all, united the conservative movement and turned the Republican party into a vehicle of that movement.And anyway, if social conservatives dislike the president's economic policies, there's no other place for them to go - certainly they won't turn to the Democrats, and any third party would be a waste of their time. Ronald Reagan, according to Nuechterlein, would remain firmly at the head of the conservative coalition. And there was no reason to believe that the project would fail:
The Reagan administration may wind up in ultimate frustration, but Phillips's Chicken-Little analysis simply comes to early in the game for us to believe it is anything but predetermined.Looking back, certain things do in fact seem to have been predetermined - not by Phillips's analysis, but by economic and political reality. Reagan achieved no consequential revision of American political economy - to echo Nuechterlein, the so-called Reagan Revolution ended in no realignment, no repudiation of the New Deal. As Michael Kinsley has described,
Federal government spending was a quarter higher in real terms when Reagan left office than when he entered. As a share of GDP, the federal government shrank from 22.2 percent to 21.2 percent—a whopping one percentage point. The federal civilian work force increased from 2.8 million to 3 million [even excluding Defense Department employees]. [...]For context, Kinsley compares this record to that of President Clinton, under whom the federal civilian workforce shrank, and federal spending grew at half the rate in real terms - and was reduced as a portion of GDP by twice as much - as it had under Reagan. Even during Reagan's term, monetarism was abandoned and Laffer Curves were quietly put away. All in all, Reagan managed some modest cuts in non-defense discretionary spending, but made no dent on entitlements and ultimately racked up massive deficits which forced his successors to raise marginal tax rates, thus wiping out the one Reagan legacy that conservatives have been able to cite as a great triumph of supply-side economics. And, of course, the rise in marginal tax rates under Clinton only fueled the economy.
And taxes? Federal tax collections rose about a fifth in real terms under Reagan. As a share of GDP, they declined from 19.6 percent to 18.3 percent.
One might cite Clinton's deceleration of government spending as evidence for a Reagan Revolution that remade the American political context and forced even Democrats to join the small-government bandwagon. Conservatives have often referred to Clinton's pronouncement in his 1996 State of the Union address that "the era of big government is over." This, we are told, is evidence of Reagan's triumph. But the argument mistakes rhetoric for fact (and Clinton's next sentence was a reaffirmation of the need for activist government: "But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.") And the explosion of government spending under the conservative George W. Bush essentially puts the myth of the Reagan Revolution to bed.
The irony of all this is that the failure of the Reagan Revolution turned out to be a good thing for the Republican party. By avoiding significant budget cuts, Reagan was able to retain the support of the social conservatives who have come to constitute the party's base - and who, contra Pines, were always much more interested in culture than in political economy. Thus the right was not forced to split, and Phillips's dark hypothesis was never tested. The conservative movement may have been saved by its own hypocrisy.
True supply-siders are well represented in the ranks of conservative intellectuals and donors. But they have never had a significant electoral base of their own. The latest Pew Political Typology, for instance, finds that so-called "Enterprisers," who are "strongly pro-business" and "oppose social welfare," constitute only 11 percent of registered voters - dramatically underscoring the extent to which Republican fortunes lie in the hands of "pro-government conservatives." As Phillips and others have pointed out, the populist embrace of right-wing economics extends only as far as the occasional tax revolt will carry it. The Friedmanites have developed various coping strategies in response. They've over-idealized the Reagan years. They've blamed Democrats for blocking the conservative economic program. They've searched for silver linings. But over the past six years, they've had little cover for the failure to advance their agenda - and the result has been a series of noisy complaints about their own party - and especially Bush. In fact, the current administration has, with its "compassionate conservatism," sought a way out of the dilemma facing economic conservatives. But that's for the next installment.
The Republican future of 1983 was fraught with promise and peril. Ultimately it neither realized its promise nor succumbed to the peril. The fusionist conservative movement did not in fact achieve a revolution under Reagan, but neither did it disintegrate into fascism. Rather it has perpetuated itself by a kind of mythmaking: overstating both its successes (as exemplified by Reagan and Newt Gingrich) and its supposed powerlessness under Clinton and the first President Bush. The movement has held more political power than it will admit, but it has accomplished less than it would like to believe. Yet this dual myth has benefited conservatives: it has held the movement together and given it impetus, providing a vision of what conservatives might achieve and a hunger to overcome the political obstacles standing in the way.
But in the era of total conservative government, this sustaining myth ran aground. The obstacles to implementation of the conservative agenda were no longer just political, but structural; conservatives, with only feeble Democratic opposition, and the guiding star of the Reaganite ideology showing the way, were forced to navigate waters far more difficult than they had imagined. This was the dilemma that would confront President George W. Bush, and it was in many ways a legacy of a president who proved, in the end, to be a great actor - but not much of a revolutionary.
Cross-posted at Progressive Historians.
Labels: Commentary, conservatives, Reading Conservative History, Ronald Reagan
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:39 PM
"The White House Will Cave"
York points to this report put together several years ago by the Congressional Research Service, listing the many precedents for White House aides testifying before Congress. As York notes, no fewer than 31 members of the Clinton administration made appearances - mostly regarding the Whitewater investigation.
According to York,
This, of course, is wrong, but you don't need me to tell you that. What's interesting here is that even some conservative correspondents believe that the White House, one way or another, will have to accomodate Congress - and Rove will have to talk. Says York:
So says the National Review's White House correspondent Byron York, who tells us that, as much as the administration would like to prevent Karl Rove and others from having to testify before Congress about the US attorney scandal, the White House doesn't have a leg to stand on.
York points to this report put together several years ago by the Congressional Research Service, listing the many precedents for White House aides testifying before Congress. As York notes, no fewer than 31 members of the Clinton administration made appearances - mostly regarding the Whitewater investigation.
According to York,
The Congressional Research Service report quotes historian Louis Fisher on the issue of White House testimony: “Although White House aides do not testify before congressional committees on a regular basis, under certain conditions they do. First, intense and escalating political embarrassment may convince the White House that it is in the interest of the president to have these aides testify and ventilate the issue fully. Second, initial White House resistance may give way in the face of concerted congressional and public pressure.”Of course, this is an administration that has proven to be remarkably insulated from giving a damn about political embarrassment or congressional or public pressure. Or, as York puts it:
[T]he Bush White House, of course, has tried to restore some of the presidential prerogatives that officials believe were unwisely given away by earlier administrations. The fact that the Clinton White House allowed so many of its officials to testify, some Republicans argue, does not mean that the Bush White House has to do the same.York, I should point out, still refuses to see any actual substance in the scandal. He cites a former Bush administration attorney who insists that the congressional hearings are just a "perjury trap," and that nobody has alleged any legal wrongdoing on the part of the White House.
This, of course, is wrong, but you don't need me to tell you that. What's interesting here is that even some conservative correspondents believe that the White House, one way or another, will have to accomodate Congress - and Rove will have to talk. Says York:
In the end, though, the question will be settled not on the merits but on the numbers. Democrats have 51 votes in the Senate and 233 votes in the House. To some extent, the White House will have to make accommodations. “They posture mightily,” says one Washington insider of White Houses past and present, “and then they grab some fig leaf to give Congress what it wants.”
Labels: Bush administration, Byron York, National review, US Attorney scandal
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:43 AM 2 comments
Tales from the Dolchstosslegende, Part XXVIII
So we know that Senator Brownback is a real man of principle. Meanwhile, Lake sounds curiously optimistic describing the situation on the right:
So there's that self-marginalization again. But maybe they're counting on the intensity of the Dolchstosslegende to overcome it - after all, they pulled off something similar in 2004. Now that the Democrats have at last more or less come out against the war, it's clarified. Democrats are not seeking the support of "victory voters." They, to use Lake's execrable phrasing, "want to sabotage the mission."
You can see, theoretically speaking, the utility of the stab-in-the-back myth. It can be used against Democrats while the war still sputters along; it can be used just as effectively - perhaps moreso - after the war is over. So in one sense, it's a way for Republicans to hedge their bets on the question of whether or not the war will end before November '08. In another sense, as we've discussed, it's a way to try and shift the blame for the failure in Iraq from where it clearly belongs - with the Republican party - to the Democrats.
To be successful in 2008, the Democrats and their nominee will have to find an effective way of dealing with this. I always like ridicule, but maybe there are other approaches. Meanwhile, as pretty as the Dolchstosslegende sounds to conservatives, they might consider that, these days, their Hannity- and Limbaugh-composed tunes don't actually resonate so well outside the conservative echo chamber.
It's becoming ever more clear that Republicans are planning to put the Dolchstosslegende at the center of their 2008 strategy. Consider, for instance, Eli Lake's op-ed in today's New York Sun, "welcoming" Senator Brownback back into the anti-anti-war fold. Brownback, who has been waffling artlessly on the escalation, ultimately came out against the latest anti-surge resolution in the Senate:
In prose Vice President Cheney might use, he said the Reid resolution, which lost 50 to 48, played directly into the hands of Al Qaeda. Today, the senator's campaign Web site says the situation in Iraq is "precarious, but hopeful."Of course, it was in fact the Iraq war itself that has played directly into the hands of Al Qaeda - succeeding beyond Osama bin Laden's wildest dreams. But bracket that. Here's Brownback, for one, embracing the Dolchstosslegende. Lake argues that the Senator flipped because he didn't like the Democrats' timetable - and because he was frightened of Hugh Hewitt-esque backlash against anti-war Republicans. One might suggest that Brownback's change of heart in fact had a lot more to do with the latter than with the former.
So we know that Senator Brownback is a real man of principle. Meanwhile, Lake sounds curiously optimistic describing the situation on the right:
In other words, Messrs. Hewitt and [Mark] Levin, along with such figures as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Reagan, are defining the base. While taxes, immigration, and values are important, this year the war trumps all. The people who will show up in New Hampshire and Iowa to pick the Republican nominee are victory voters.Now, if I were a Republican strategist, passages like this would have me buying Tums by the carton. The GOP's presidential candidates are gambling that a year and eight months from now, the American public will still be in the mood to hear their leaders yakking about the need to stay the course in Iraq. Even worse, the Republican field is, apparently, beholden to the political strategy advice of people like Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.
Hence for all of their flaws, the big three contenders for the Republican prize talk about winning in Iraq. Mayor Giuliani may be too left on the social issues. Senator McCain may be too much of a lick-spittle to the liberal press. Governor Romney may be too new to the struggle. But none of the three wants to sabotage the mission the way the liberal Democrats do. It was Mr. Brownback who sputtered on the war, and when it became clear that it was not a winning course, he made a course correction.
So there's that self-marginalization again. But maybe they're counting on the intensity of the Dolchstosslegende to overcome it - after all, they pulled off something similar in 2004. Now that the Democrats have at last more or less come out against the war, it's clarified. Democrats are not seeking the support of "victory voters." They, to use Lake's execrable phrasing, "want to sabotage the mission."
You can see, theoretically speaking, the utility of the stab-in-the-back myth. It can be used against Democrats while the war still sputters along; it can be used just as effectively - perhaps moreso - after the war is over. So in one sense, it's a way for Republicans to hedge their bets on the question of whether or not the war will end before November '08. In another sense, as we've discussed, it's a way to try and shift the blame for the failure in Iraq from where it clearly belongs - with the Republican party - to the Democrats.
To be successful in 2008, the Democrats and their nominee will have to find an effective way of dealing with this. I always like ridicule, but maybe there are other approaches. Meanwhile, as pretty as the Dolchstosslegende sounds to conservatives, they might consider that, these days, their Hannity- and Limbaugh-composed tunes don't actually resonate so well outside the conservative echo chamber.
Labels: 2008, Dolchstosslegende, Iraq, Presidential election, Sam Brownback
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:28 AM 0 comments Monday, March 19, 2007
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
I'm a passionate supporter of the newly-emerging progressive movement, which could ultimately transform American politics as much as the conservative movement has. But let's learn from the conservatives' mistakes, as well as their triumphs.
If you've read the last three posts, stop by The Third Estate for a good discussion of how the same strategic considerations apply to the Democratic coalition.
I'm a passionate supporter of the newly-emerging progressive movement, which could ultimately transform American politics as much as the conservative movement has. But let's learn from the conservatives' mistakes, as well as their triumphs.
Labels: progressives, The Third Estate
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:55 AM 2 comments
The Rise of the Conservative Essenes
Again, this is not just a disagreement about ideas. That sort of thing is common enough in political coalitions, and it can be handled with deft horse trading. What's happening on the right, at this point, is a kind of cultural secessionism. The conservative sense of persecution and self-righteousness has resulted in a deepening retrenchment behind culture war assumptions - regardless of the fact that most of America lies outside the perimeter.
If the right won't even let its candidates join the national conversation, if the code words aren't enough anymore, if the entire Republican party is to be sealed within the airless chamber of the conservative movement, locked in the room with CPAC and the National Review and Focus on the Family and nobody else - does this mean that the most powerful movement in modern American politics will, under its own potent momentum, end up driving itself into oblivion?
At this point, it's a hyperbolic question. But given the dynamic Continetti points out, it may, before long, become a reasonable one.
As the conventional wisdom begins to shift toward an understanding that John McCain's campaign is in serious trouble, the Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti turns up in the op-ed pages of the New York Times to explain it to us civilians. Continetti reviews how McCain has gone from GOP heir-apparent to the right's favorite punching bag. Some of it is that mixed bag of issues (campaign finance reform, global warming, etc.) and old personal grudges (Falwell fallout). As Continetti summarizes:
While Mr. McCain and the conservative activists who compose the Republican grassroots share many positions — pro-war, pro-life, against waste in government and for low taxes — a significant portion of those grassroots just ... doesn’t ... like him.And the most interesting reason Continetti cites for this mistrust is not ideological or personal, but cultural:
For years conservatives have cast a suspicious eye on Senator McCain because non-conservatives find him appealing. They distrust the institutions of liberal culture — the news media in particular — to such a degree that a politician those institutions embrace must be suspect. They grow furious when they hear Senator McCain on Don Imus’s radio show but not Rush Limbaugh’s. The politics of polarization militate against a McCain candidacy. The man transcends the partisan divide — but what partisans want above all is a fellow partisan.Take a moment to consider how remarkable this is - how self-defeating. The conservative movement has reached the point where it refuses to tolerate the notion of its candidates even talking to mainstream America. This is a movement, a party, in the process of committing political suicide.
[...]
Call it poetic justice, tragedy or farce: Senator McCain’s quest to become the establishment candidate has jeopardized his candidacy and exposed deep fissures within the conservative movement.
Again, this is not just a disagreement about ideas. That sort of thing is common enough in political coalitions, and it can be handled with deft horse trading. What's happening on the right, at this point, is a kind of cultural secessionism. The conservative sense of persecution and self-righteousness has resulted in a deepening retrenchment behind culture war assumptions - regardless of the fact that most of America lies outside the perimeter.
If the right won't even let its candidates join the national conversation, if the code words aren't enough anymore, if the entire Republican party is to be sealed within the airless chamber of the conservative movement, locked in the room with CPAC and the National Review and Focus on the Family and nobody else - does this mean that the most powerful movement in modern American politics will, under its own potent momentum, end up driving itself into oblivion?
At this point, it's a hyperbolic question. But given the dynamic Continetti points out, it may, before long, become a reasonable one.
Labels: conservatives, John McCain, Matthew Continetti
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:38 AM 3 comments
The Republican Crack-Up Factor
Hamlin, for his part, points out how both left and right blogs are targeting the Republican primary field. The GOP frontrunners are likely to face as much damaging scrutiny from conservative blogs (such as these) as from the liberal blogosphere. Thus, in Hamlin's words, the potential for a "blog-driven crackup."
I think Stoller and Hamlin make good points. Bloggers will be able to heighten the contradictions within a party that is run by a narrow ideological movement but depends upon its ability to appeal to moderate voters for electoral success. Ironically, this is the very same narrative conservatives would like to apply to the Democrats, but the proof is in the pudding: while there's disagreement over the war, the Democrats suffer nothing like the demoralization and confusion currently running through Republican ranks.
At the same time, and as much as I like to give the blogosphere credit, the Republican dilemma has to do with a number of factors besides bloggers. Primarily, as this blog has analyzed, it has to do with the crisis caused in conservatism by the movement's own experience of power, which has forced conservatives either to re-examine their assumptions about government and the nature of their coalition, or to retreat further into self-delusion. This, in turn, has raised the stakes for intra-party squabbles.
Much of this does trace back to the same problem with the iron law of American political history: a major party must be a broad coalition in order to survive. As the GOP has narrowed itself ideologically, it has relied increasingly on smoke and mirrors to maintain the illusion of inclusivity. But now, confronted with the bright light of the blogosphere and the hard physics of actual governance, the magic is beginning to fade.
At The Right's Field, Matt Browner Hamlin highlights Matt Stoller's comments on the "Republican crack-up" factor in the 2008 presidential cycle. I recommend giving both posts a read. Stoller argues that, in the era before blogs, Republican candidates could get away with saying "different things to different audiences," which enabled them to manage the difficult task of locking up the reactionary vote without alienating moderates. Now, however, their ugliness and hypocrisy will be on full display.
Hamlin, for his part, points out how both left and right blogs are targeting the Republican primary field. The GOP frontrunners are likely to face as much damaging scrutiny from conservative blogs (such as these) as from the liberal blogosphere. Thus, in Hamlin's words, the potential for a "blog-driven crackup."
I think Stoller and Hamlin make good points. Bloggers will be able to heighten the contradictions within a party that is run by a narrow ideological movement but depends upon its ability to appeal to moderate voters for electoral success. Ironically, this is the very same narrative conservatives would like to apply to the Democrats, but the proof is in the pudding: while there's disagreement over the war, the Democrats suffer nothing like the demoralization and confusion currently running through Republican ranks.
At the same time, and as much as I like to give the blogosphere credit, the Republican dilemma has to do with a number of factors besides bloggers. Primarily, as this blog has analyzed, it has to do with the crisis caused in conservatism by the movement's own experience of power, which has forced conservatives either to re-examine their assumptions about government and the nature of their coalition, or to retreat further into self-delusion. This, in turn, has raised the stakes for intra-party squabbles.
Much of this does trace back to the same problem with the iron law of American political history: a major party must be a broad coalition in order to survive. As the GOP has narrowed itself ideologically, it has relied increasingly on smoke and mirrors to maintain the illusion of inclusivity. But now, confronted with the bright light of the blogosphere and the hard physics of actual governance, the magic is beginning to fade.
Labels: conservatives, Matt Stoller, Republicans, The Right's Field
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:59 AM 1 comments Sunday, March 18, 2007
Republican Futures Past: 1956
All of this makes digging around in the magazine's archives a fascinating exercise. Having bought myself a subscription, I've been doing just that - and I've come across a trio of articles that provide very interesting insight into how the conservative movement has transformed the Republican party over the past half-century. Each piece - from 1956, 1983, and 2001 - attempts to make predictions about the future of the relationship between conservatives and the GOP, and how that relationship affects political prospects for both the movement and the party. Over the next three days or so, I'll do a post on each article.
The first, from the November 1956 issue (pp. 482-5), is a review, by the now-legendary historian Seymour Martin Lipset, of a book about the history of the Republican party by conservative professor Malcolm Moos. Bemoaning a dearth of academic interest in the major American political parties, Lipset praises Moos's engaged but evenhanded account of the GOP. Moos, an Eisenhower Republican, is apparently willing to document the party's failings as much as its triumphs. It comes a shock to the modern reader when, listing examples of such mistakes, Lipset includes "the antagonism to a strong Executive which has characterized the GOP for the past thirty-six years."
Equally striking is the tradition that the "conservative" Moos celebrates. Lipset summarizes:
What's fascinating is how Lipset and Moos are interested in the historical arc of the Republican party as the story of the development of progressive, not movement, conservatism. Lipset provides a thumbnail sketch of the party's foundational coalition: an alliance of northeastern middle-class conservatives in the Federalist tradition, nativist, anti-Catholic Know-Nothings, and Free Soilers. He doesn't discuss the ideological and regional incoherence of the Whig coalition that preceded the Republicans, but he does point out that, with the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, the Republicans became the first American political party to secure a lasting marriage between northeastern conservatives and a mass agricultural base (in the Midwest). As Lipset recounts, the northeasterners would dictate the party's industrialist economic policy, while the Midwesterners, in response, would give birth to a reformist progressive tradition.
And yet, by the 1950s, it was the northeastern wing of the GOP that represented progressivism, while the Midwest had become the party's conservative heartland. Among the reasons Moos and Lipset cite for this development are the decline of the nation's rural population - which meant the rise of a conservative bourgeoisie in Midwestern towns (the "middle-sized conservative businessman who is opposed to trade unions, high taxes, and government regulation"), and the increasing internationalism of northeastern capitalism, which went along with a greater willingness to tolerate trade unionism and social welfare policies.
If you've read Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm, you'll recognize this alignment as the powder keg of the mid-50s, when the resentments harbored by "middle-sized" Midwestern businessmen - of unions, of communism, of taxes, of regulation, of foreign entanglements, and of the liberal northeastern Republicans who were accomodating it all - needed only a political spark to explode. Again, Lipset can't be blamed for failing to see this, nor for failing to predict the additional layer of extremism that would come as a result of the Republican strategy of tapping into the white Southern reaction to the civil rights movement after the 1960s. And his attempt to make a prediction about the future of the GOP is grounded in a reasonable analysis. But the historical irony is impossible to miss.
Lipset cites Moos's observation that, when the mid-20th century GOP was out of power, most of its Congressional delegation was drawn from safely conservative districts:
Clearly, things have changed since 1956. The loss of the South - along with a number of other factors - has flipped the dynamic of the Democratic party so that it, like the postwar GOP, is more centrist after it has won than after it has lost. But the Republicans have changed, too. Lipset's model was, in fact, predictive in the near-term. He correctly forecast that the conservative Richard Nixon, if he made it to the White House, would govern from the center (dirty tricks notwithstanding):
But the tectonic plates of American politics would shift in the meantime. The conservative movement that was born around the time of Lipset's writing would grow in influence, as it drew support from reactionary populism not only in the Midwest, but in the South and in the Sunbelt. Conservatives would note Nixon's role as spokesman for the liberal wing of the GOP, and resolve to bring an end to such political imperatives. Lipset's 1956 model of the American political landscape would become obsolete by the end of the 70s. Lipset himself was not willing to predict that the Republican party would become as progressive as Moos hoped, but, he said, "neither is it likely to become the tool of deep-dyed reactionaries." It was a reasonable deduction given the calculus of the time, but the calculations have changed.
The reactionaries have, by now, completely extinguished the progressive tradition in the Republican party. The GOP seems to be equally conservative in and out of power, though its varying confidence levels and the theoretical dilemmas within the conservative movement can provide something of an illusion of ideological diversity.
In the long run, American politics tends not to reward parties with narrow ideological range. Now that the postwar conservative movement has reached a rather vexing crossroads, and the GOP looks more vulnerable than it has in a long time, it's difficult to forecast where the party will go next (and it will partially depend, of course, on choices made by the Democrats). But the lesson of the Republican future of 1956 is that the party has found itself embarked upon a very different path than the one historians might have had reason to predict.
(Cross-posted at Progressive Historians.)
Among American political journals, Commentary Magazine has had one of the more intriguing histories. Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945, the publication's initial purpose was to help engage Jewish intellectuals in the nation's political and cultural conversations. Under founding editor Elliot Cohen - who brought on board writers like Nathan Glazer and Irving Howe - Commentary's editorial line was liberal anti-Communist. Following Norman Podhoretz's takeover in 1960, the magazine moved sharply to the left, only to begin a swing in the other direction by the end of the decade, as Podhoretz and his cohort turned against the so-called New Left (they also reacted against perceived anti-Israeli sentiment in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War). By the mid-70s, liberal/left intellectuals were referring to Commentary's contributors as "neoconservatives" - a somewhat pejorative term meant to denote former leftists who had since become, in Lewis Coser's words, "intellectuals in retreat." Before long, the Commentary circle had become an influential - if sometimes uneasy - part of the conservative movement.
All of this makes digging around in the magazine's archives a fascinating exercise. Having bought myself a subscription, I've been doing just that - and I've come across a trio of articles that provide very interesting insight into how the conservative movement has transformed the Republican party over the past half-century. Each piece - from 1956, 1983, and 2001 - attempts to make predictions about the future of the relationship between conservatives and the GOP, and how that relationship affects political prospects for both the movement and the party. Over the next three days or so, I'll do a post on each article.
The first, from the November 1956 issue (pp. 482-5), is a review, by the now-legendary historian Seymour Martin Lipset, of a book about the history of the Republican party by conservative professor Malcolm Moos. Bemoaning a dearth of academic interest in the major American political parties, Lipset praises Moos's engaged but evenhanded account of the GOP. Moos, an Eisenhower Republican, is apparently willing to document the party's failings as much as its triumphs. It comes a shock to the modern reader when, listing examples of such mistakes, Lipset includes "the antagonism to a strong Executive which has characterized the GOP for the past thirty-six years."
Equally striking is the tradition that the "conservative" Moos celebrates. Lipset summarizes:
Lincoln's leadership; Mark Hanna's far-sighted "progressive conservatism," which recognized in the late 19th century that a stable society would require strong trade unions and that reformist groups did not constitute a challenge to private capitalism; the Progressive Republicans in the early part of this century who fought the excesses of big business power; William Howard Taft, who prosecuted trusts and whose administration sponsored Constitutional amendments for the income tax and the direct election of Senators; and Taft's son Robert, who backed public housing for the poor, and who in 1953 was willing to defend the right of Communists to teach.It was Robert Taft's death in 1954 - along with the end of Joe McCarthy's reign of demagoguery (which falls on the "failures" list) - that left a void on the Republican right for the nascent conservative movement to fill. November of 1956 was too early for Moos or Lipset to recognize the implications of this. The National Review was only a year old, Barry Goldwater just an unusually-energetic freshman Senator.
What's fascinating is how Lipset and Moos are interested in the historical arc of the Republican party as the story of the development of progressive, not movement, conservatism. Lipset provides a thumbnail sketch of the party's foundational coalition: an alliance of northeastern middle-class conservatives in the Federalist tradition, nativist, anti-Catholic Know-Nothings, and Free Soilers. He doesn't discuss the ideological and regional incoherence of the Whig coalition that preceded the Republicans, but he does point out that, with the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, the Republicans became the first American political party to secure a lasting marriage between northeastern conservatives and a mass agricultural base (in the Midwest). As Lipset recounts, the northeasterners would dictate the party's industrialist economic policy, while the Midwesterners, in response, would give birth to a reformist progressive tradition.
And yet, by the 1950s, it was the northeastern wing of the GOP that represented progressivism, while the Midwest had become the party's conservative heartland. Among the reasons Moos and Lipset cite for this development are the decline of the nation's rural population - which meant the rise of a conservative bourgeoisie in Midwestern towns (the "middle-sized conservative businessman who is opposed to trade unions, high taxes, and government regulation"), and the increasing internationalism of northeastern capitalism, which went along with a greater willingness to tolerate trade unionism and social welfare policies.
If you've read Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm, you'll recognize this alignment as the powder keg of the mid-50s, when the resentments harbored by "middle-sized" Midwestern businessmen - of unions, of communism, of taxes, of regulation, of foreign entanglements, and of the liberal northeastern Republicans who were accomodating it all - needed only a political spark to explode. Again, Lipset can't be blamed for failing to see this, nor for failing to predict the additional layer of extremism that would come as a result of the Republican strategy of tapping into the white Southern reaction to the civil rights movement after the 1960s. And his attempt to make a prediction about the future of the GOP is grounded in a reasonable analysis. But the historical irony is impossible to miss.
Lipset cites Moos's observation that, when the mid-20th century GOP was out of power, most of its Congressional delegation was drawn from safely conservative districts:
But a Republican running for governor in an industrial state that has a strong Democratic party, or running for the Presidency, must appeal to independent and Democratic voters who will not vote for a reactionary. And so one always finds Republican governors pitted against Republican Congressmen at national conventions, and since 1936 the former have almost invariably succeeded in pushing through a Presidential candidate of their own persuasion.The result of all this was that Republicans tended to be conservative in the minority but moderate when in power. The Democrats, by contrast, tended to be more progressive in power than out of it. This was because their safest Congressional seats - the seats the party was most likely to hold in a time of weakness - were in the South!
Clearly, things have changed since 1956. The loss of the South - along with a number of other factors - has flipped the dynamic of the Democratic party so that it, like the postwar GOP, is more centrist after it has won than after it has lost. But the Republicans have changed, too. Lipset's model was, in fact, predictive in the near-term. He correctly forecast that the conservative Richard Nixon, if he made it to the White House, would govern from the center (dirty tricks notwithstanding):
One may safely hazard the guess that not even the succession of Nixon to the Presidency would affect this pattern, for Nixon and the party leaders know that a Republican President must be spokesman of the most liberal element in the party.In fact, this prediction, made with the 1960 election in mind, held true even after two additional cycles had passed.
But the tectonic plates of American politics would shift in the meantime. The conservative movement that was born around the time of Lipset's writing would grow in influence, as it drew support from reactionary populism not only in the Midwest, but in the South and in the Sunbelt. Conservatives would note Nixon's role as spokesman for the liberal wing of the GOP, and resolve to bring an end to such political imperatives. Lipset's 1956 model of the American political landscape would become obsolete by the end of the 70s. Lipset himself was not willing to predict that the Republican party would become as progressive as Moos hoped, but, he said, "neither is it likely to become the tool of deep-dyed reactionaries." It was a reasonable deduction given the calculus of the time, but the calculations have changed.
The reactionaries have, by now, completely extinguished the progressive tradition in the Republican party. The GOP seems to be equally conservative in and out of power, though its varying confidence levels and the theoretical dilemmas within the conservative movement can provide something of an illusion of ideological diversity.
In the long run, American politics tends not to reward parties with narrow ideological range. Now that the postwar conservative movement has reached a rather vexing crossroads, and the GOP looks more vulnerable than it has in a long time, it's difficult to forecast where the party will go next (and it will partially depend, of course, on choices made by the Democrats). But the lesson of the Republican future of 1956 is that the party has found itself embarked upon a very different path than the one historians might have had reason to predict.
(Cross-posted at Progressive Historians.)
Labels: Commentary, conservatives, Reading Conservative History, Republicans
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:29 PM 2 comments Saturday, March 17, 2007
Sick
I'll even forgive the typo on the front page of the website...
It's a good thing: I've been complaining about the left's inability to personalize the health care crisis. Well, this looks like a good start.
I'll even forgive the typo on the front page of the website...
Labels: health care, Jonathan Cohn
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:18 AM 0 comments
Thompson v. Gandhi
Luckily, Jon Swift has done the dirty work: Fred Thompson Kicks Gandhi's Ass.
And how.
Almost included this in TWICO, but it just seemed too stupid to handle.
Luckily, Jon Swift has done the dirty work: Fred Thompson Kicks Gandhi's Ass.
And how.
Labels: Fred Thompson, Gandhi, Jon Swift, wingnuttery
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:36 AM 0 comments Friday, March 16, 2007
This Week in Conservative Organs: Bushhead Revisited
We open with a wide-angle view, courtesy of the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes, who reveals a scene of remarkable tranquility at the White House and across the conservative estate. The president, he tells us, is not the "broken man" we liberals insist he must be. Says Barnes, "Bush has retained, despite low approval ratings and fierce criticism, a capacity for enthusiasm." Given the disastrous results of the president's prior enthusiasms, one might view this as an ominous disclosure - but then, this is precisely the attitude which Barnes takes such delight in skewering.
Interior, day. The Oval Office: President Bush spends nearly an hour "in a one-on-one conversation with British historian Andrew Roberts" - whom Bush has previously honored with the luncheon described in Greenwald's post. Barnes explains:
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are reinvigorated both by said combativeness and by the President's unique approach to bipartisanship, which involves listening more to the GOP's congressional delegation now that it is in the minority, while avoiding conciliation with the Democrats. Thus, "the president isn't so dominant and Republicans aren't so docile." This turn of events has paid off for Republicans in Congress, who have colluded with Bush to undercut Democrats during so-called "bipartisan" meetings:
No mention is made of the US attorney scandal, but precedent suggests that it's unlikely to make much of a dent in the White House's robust self-confidence. The Libby trial certainly didn't:
Michael Novak, on the other hand, is feeling a little unsettled. Seems that during the Roberts luncheon Novak made a little faux pas when he implied that he, well, hates God. Now, the particular issue was, we're told, a theological one. In the course of the discussion of good and evil (a common topic among neoconservatives during the breaks they take from comparing themselves to Churchill and Lincoln), Novak suggested that, while evil exists, "there is no such thing as absolute good." Oh, dear:
Considering how Bush and his neoconservative advisers are so confident of the good of their principles and the evil of the principles of anyone who opposes them, this might seem, for all intents and purposes, to be a distinction without a difference. Novak's sin, of course, was not that he fell afoul of St. Augustine, but that he blasphemed against Saint Bush himself, and all the Manichean pretensions the president's neoconservative supporters have invested in him.
ALSO AT THE STANDARD ... Speaking of moral relativism, William Kristol rediscovers the virtue of mercy, arguing that the president should "pardon Libby now" - if only for the good of the Republican party:
AND, Steve Schippert argues that Pakistan, not Iran, is the country we should be worried about when it comes to terrorists' nuclear ambitions. The Iranians are still years away from developing a nuke, but Pakistan already has them, and President Musharraf's grip on power is rather shaky:
This week's award for outlandish invertedness goes to the Editors of the National Review. Their March 12 Editorial is mostly boilerplate anti-anti-war shrieking, but they win the prize for their wonderfully succinct formulation of the new Dolchstosslegende: "What cannot be doubted now is that the Democrats are the party of defeat in Iraq."
It is, of course, the Republican party which is the party of defeat in Iraq, because it is the Republican party that sucked America into a disastrous war on false pretenses, that refused - out of its own ideological arrogance - to properly plan or execute the occupation, that threw away the State Department's plans for reconstruction, that enthusiastically alienated the allies who could have helped rescue the situation, that declined to send enough troops when they could have made a difference, that failed to properly equip the troops who were sent, that insisted on filling the ranks of the occupation authorities with ignorant Young Republicans, that gave us "Mission Accomplished" and "Bring it On," and "Last Throes," that has bungled and blustered and lied and failed at every turn and sunk the nation into the greatest strategic catastrophe in its history.
If we have been defeated in Iraq, the Democrats have no bearing on that fact. The defeat was preordained; it was ordained - it was designed - by the Republicans. One gets tired of how accusations of treason are thrown around so casually in this era - another squalid innovation of the Republican party - but if we're going to do it, let's do it right, and identify who, objectively speaking, are the real traitors here. They are the ones who lied to and betrayed our country, who drove it to disaster, who set it irrevocably on the course of defeat. They are the Republicans, and they are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the party of defeat in Iraq.
ALSO AT NRO... Stephen Spruiell reports on the doings of the Republican Study Committee, who constitute the economic conservative caucus in the House. Seems the RSC
Still, there are a couple things worthy of note. One is that the RSC is planning to enlist the support of both the conservative blogosphere and the Blue Dog Democrats to begin the social security push, which is intended, it seems, as an Overton Window move towards their unpopular private accounts idea.
The other thing to watch is their fourth pillar: "Sunset the tax code":
BRINGING UP THE NRO REAR... Thomas Sowell graces us with another one of his nutty climate change denial screeds - but this time he sez he's got the BBC on his side! (Don't tell Sowell, but it was the UK's Channel 4, not the Beeb, that produced this dodgy documentary.) Switching gears, Sowell assures us that Newt Gingrich's scandals won't affect his candidacy. Deroy Murdock, one the other hand, berates Gingrich for his staggering hypocrisy - and his political stupidity. He also treats us to a chilling alternative history scenario. Let's listen in:
At the American Spectator, Master of All Wingnuts R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. ("Two ems, two tees, two ares, two els") denounces the left-wing "moron vote" (that's you and me, compadres), and mocks Hillary Clinton for reviving the phrase "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy." No such thing! laughs R. This is a little like Bud Selig denying the existence of Major League Baseball.
MEANWHILE... Paul Chesser thinks Gingrich's not-at-all-staged and fully-heartfelt confession of infidelity will now give him an advantage over Multiple-Marriage-Choice Rudy. James Antle, writing in response to Noemie Emery's recent article on the possible end of the litmus test, paints a picture of just how ugly the abortion thing could get for Giuliani. Not only did Rudy vehemently support public funding for abortions, he donated money to Planned Parenthood, and even declared a "Planned Parenthood Day" in New York! What's more, Giuliani's promise to appoint so-called "strict constructionist" judges may be a sucker punch aimed at anti-choicers: as Antle points out, there's no guarantee that said judges wouldn't prefer to uphold Roe v. Wade on stare decisis grounds. And Antle presents us this sparkling example of how Rudy's primary opponents can frame him:
AND FINALLY... Joel Himelfarb hits Giuliani from another direction, chastising the mayor for his (actually quite sensible) support for immigrant "sanctuary" laws; Shawn Macomber is unimpressed by the Sex Workers' Art Show (though not as epatee as you'd expect les bourgeois to be); and Mark E. Hyman takes us down memory lane, rehearsing all the scurrilous right-wing attacks on Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson we've come to know and love.
For our purposes, let's linger over one particular accusation in Hyman's article, that Joe Wilson is worthy of scorn because he claimed to have "proved a negative." It's remarkable how often conservatives raise this objection to various debunkings. In fact, it's a lovely little shelter to inhabit: since so much of conservatism - particularly neoconservatism - is based on making fantastical claims about things that don't exist, anyone who tries to set the record straight is, by definition, going to be forced to deal with the problem of "proving a negative." No, Mr. Hyman, I can't prove that there are no faeries in your garden. You got me.
But I would suggest that Bush and his neoconservative circle, who carry on so cheerfully amidst the ruins of their policies, have proven very much a negative for America, and for the world. We still have to listen to the Mark Hymans and the Michael Novaks and the Andrew Robertses and the George Bushes. For now. But there's some comfort in knowing that their words are the last coin of a legacy that dwindles with time.
It isn't that they're simply obdurate, or hunkered down behind a wall of Rovian bluster. The president, his inner circle, and the coterie of worshipful conservatives who have yet to abandon them, still inhabit a fully-developed culture; they continue to view themselves as creative agents whose ideas have relevance and validity. But it's a dying civilization, this world of neocons and "compassionate" conservatives. Their bizarre orgies of self-congratulation - as documented, for instance, by Glenn Greenwald - take place amidst the last glowing embers of a once-impressive edifice. Reading the accounts in this week's conservative organs, you can't help but be struck by the political decadence unfolding in the White House, tinted by the atmosphere of a better age.
TWICO Feature: "You can't believe things because they're a lovely idea"
We open with a wide-angle view, courtesy of the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes, who reveals a scene of remarkable tranquility at the White House and across the conservative estate. The president, he tells us, is not the "broken man" we liberals insist he must be. Says Barnes, "Bush has retained, despite low approval ratings and fierce criticism, a capacity for enthusiasm." Given the disastrous results of the president's prior enthusiasms, one might view this as an ominous disclosure - but then, this is precisely the attitude which Barnes takes such delight in skewering.
Interior, day. The Oval Office: President Bush spends nearly an hour "in a one-on-one conversation with British historian Andrew Roberts" - whom Bush has previously honored with the luncheon described in Greenwald's post. Barnes explains:
Among other things, Bush and Roberts talked about the decline of Europe and the role in this played by the shrunken influence of Christianity. By the time they broke for lunch, the president was "revved up," an aide says. His fervor was infectious. "Roberts is more conservative than I am!" a pleasantly surprised White House official exclaimed.This "revved up" Bush has been able to take a "combative approach" towards the Democratic Congress, and his staff - who lobbied extensively to defeat the anti-war resolutions, are "fired up on Iraq." It's unclear whether Barnes means to imply that there was ever a point at which the administration was not combative with regard to its opponents, or fired up on the war.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are reinvigorated both by said combativeness and by the President's unique approach to bipartisanship, which involves listening more to the GOP's congressional delegation now that it is in the minority, while avoiding conciliation with the Democrats. Thus, "the president isn't so dominant and Republicans aren't so docile." This turn of events has paid off for Republicans in Congress, who have colluded with Bush to undercut Democrats during so-called "bipartisan" meetings:
Bush and his aides are listening to Republicans as well at the president's regular meetings with bipartisan leaders in Congress. Republicans found that Democrats had a bigger voice at the sessions. So, with White House approval, Republican leaders decided to convene the day before and decide on a plan for the bicameral meeting.Certainly it would be unseemly for Democrats, who were chosen by the American people to have a bigger voice in Congress, to have a bigger voice in Congress's meetings with the president.
No mention is made of the US attorney scandal, but precedent suggests that it's unlikely to make much of a dent in the White House's robust self-confidence. The Libby trial certainly didn't:
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Libby conviction scarcely fazed the president's staff. Aides were saddened but not surprised. The expectation was that, even if Libby had been acquitted, he wouldn't be returning to the White House. Besides, the jury's verdict was "an individual judgment, not an institutional judgment," an official says. In other words, the conviction applied only to Libby's conduct and not the White House's. That may sound like a cold appraisal, but it's true.Rest assured, fellow citizens: there's nothing more to see here. And the blithe self-satisfaction extends to the administration's outlook on the war:
Now the president believes "progress" is being made in Iraq. And if he's hopeful, so is everyone else at the White House.So must we all be.
Michael Novak, on the other hand, is feeling a little unsettled. Seems that during the Roberts luncheon Novak made a little faux pas when he implied that he, well, hates God. Now, the particular issue was, we're told, a theological one. In the course of the discussion of good and evil (a common topic among neoconservatives during the breaks they take from comparing themselves to Churchill and Lincoln), Novak suggested that, while evil exists, "there is no such thing as absolute good." Oh, dear:
My theologian friend [Irwin Stelzer "himself"] noted that this formulation not only abandons the orthodox Christian tradition (Catholic and Protestant) since St. Augustine, but is a total inversion of it. Augustine reasoned that there is an absolute good, namely God, in all His radiance and power; whereas evil has no ontological existence on its own at all, being no more than a defective good or a perversion of the good.Our Mr. Novak, it seems, farted in church:
To my mind, the context here was solely about human beings, not God. And I was, without saying so, alluding to a point made by Reinhold Niebuhr, about the irony of American history: America serves a noble, good principle, but yet often does so through flawed men and flawed policies (such as slavery). "In my good, there is always some evil," I was thinking.Thus Novak's column - written, perhaps, after a hard night's sleep on the couch - attempts to undo the damage. Luckily for Novak, the president and his guests "batted [the question] around," and figured it all out: people aren't necessarily good, but "There is today an intense battle between good and evil principles."
However, I was trying to instruct neither my fellow guests nor the president. Many (including my wife, she told me later) did not like my formulation. Some, pre-occupied with the threat from relativism, made fun of the left-wing fetish for limiting speech to various shades of gray.
Considering how Bush and his neoconservative advisers are so confident of the good of their principles and the evil of the principles of anyone who opposes them, this might seem, for all intents and purposes, to be a distinction without a difference. Novak's sin, of course, was not that he fell afoul of St. Augustine, but that he blasphemed against Saint Bush himself, and all the Manichean pretensions the president's neoconservative supporters have invested in him.
ALSO AT THE STANDARD ... Speaking of moral relativism, William Kristol rediscovers the virtue of mercy, arguing that the president should "pardon Libby now" - if only for the good of the Republican party:
Bush won't be able to "stay out of it." Others will continue to place his White House at the very heart of it, as the Libby appeals move forward. After all, Libby's lawyers foolishly (or perhaps desperately) introduced at trial the notion that Libby was a "fall guy"--which would seem to legitimize the notion there was a conspiracy, of which Libby was a part, though a less important part than others. Each time a legal paper is filed, a new anti-Bush news cycle will erupt. So if the White House wants to minimize opportunities for fresh speculation about how the Libby case is part of some broader conspiracy, the president should act now.Kristol insists that Bush's opponents (devious Democrats) will spend the next two years speculating about a pardon anyway, so he may as well get it over with - which would also have the beneficial effect of "reinvigorating" conservatives who are "demoralized now by Libby's conviction." The quality of conservative mercy, it seems, is just a little bit strained.
AND, Steve Schippert argues that Pakistan, not Iran, is the country we should be worried about when it comes to terrorists' nuclear ambitions. The Iranians are still years away from developing a nuke, but Pakistan already has them, and President Musharraf's grip on power is rather shaky:
[I]f the end goal of Islamist terrorists is to obtain a nuclear weapon, it seems as though they have a better chance of doing so by taking over a nuclear-capable Pakistan, rather than making an Islamist Iran nuclear-capable.Also, after weeks of conservative assurances that the economy was doing Just Great!, Irwin Stelzer moves the goalposts and suggests that, whatever, it's not as bad as it could be.
Up-is-Downism Award: "You don't seem much more virtuous than me"
This week's award for outlandish invertedness goes to the Editors of the National Review. Their March 12 Editorial is mostly boilerplate anti-anti-war shrieking, but they win the prize for their wonderfully succinct formulation of the new Dolchstosslegende: "What cannot be doubted now is that the Democrats are the party of defeat in Iraq."
It is, of course, the Republican party which is the party of defeat in Iraq, because it is the Republican party that sucked America into a disastrous war on false pretenses, that refused - out of its own ideological arrogance - to properly plan or execute the occupation, that threw away the State Department's plans for reconstruction, that enthusiastically alienated the allies who could have helped rescue the situation, that declined to send enough troops when they could have made a difference, that failed to properly equip the troops who were sent, that insisted on filling the ranks of the occupation authorities with ignorant Young Republicans, that gave us "Mission Accomplished" and "Bring it On," and "Last Throes," that has bungled and blustered and lied and failed at every turn and sunk the nation into the greatest strategic catastrophe in its history.
If we have been defeated in Iraq, the Democrats have no bearing on that fact. The defeat was preordained; it was ordained - it was designed - by the Republicans. One gets tired of how accusations of treason are thrown around so casually in this era - another squalid innovation of the Republican party - but if we're going to do it, let's do it right, and identify who, objectively speaking, are the real traitors here. They are the ones who lied to and betrayed our country, who drove it to disaster, who set it irrevocably on the course of defeat. They are the Republicans, and they are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the party of defeat in Iraq.
ALSO AT NRO... Stephen Spruiell reports on the doings of the Republican Study Committee, who constitute the economic conservative caucus in the House. Seems the RSC
is unveiling what its leaders are calling the American Taxpayer Bill of Rights. The initiative, which will be introduced with a press conference today and will continue to be unveiled with a series of grassroots events across the country, is meant to focus the country, and especially the Republican candidates for president, on the nation’s fiscal crisis and Congress’s epidemic of wasteful spending.The thing is, said American TABOR doesn't really seem to amount to very much. There is one proposed constitutional amendment - Phil Gramm's Balanced Budget Amendment - but two of the other three "pillars" of the plan ("reduce wasteful spending" and "reform social security,") apparently amount to little more than extending the moratorium on earmarks and instituting Al Gore's social security "lock box," respectively.
Still, there are a couple things worthy of note. One is that the RSC is planning to enlist the support of both the conservative blogosphere and the Blue Dog Democrats to begin the social security push, which is intended, it seems, as an Overton Window move towards their unpopular private accounts idea.
The other thing to watch is their fourth pillar: "Sunset the tax code":
The RSC proposes legislation to sunset the nine-million-word IRS tax code on January 1st, 2011, which is the day that all of the Bush tax cuts expire. “It’s important for people to focus on what kind of tax burden they’re going to be faced with in the next few years,” Hensarling says. “Just with the government programs that are in place today, not programs that are dreamed up tomorrow, the next generation will be looking at a tax increase somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 percent. That’s unconscionable.”Of course, a progressive income tax can be just as simple as a flat tax - you just need to abolish all the loopholes. But keep your eye on this 2011 date. Right-wing Congressman Paul Ryan hinted at this during the conservative summit in January: the idea that conservatives were planning to force a major debate on the tax code that year. The next president we elect will have to deal with this. We need to be ready.
As for what might replace the tax code, House conservatives are less sure. Some favor a national sales tax, while others favor a flat tax. But this leg of the RSC’s proposal is meant to move past those differences, Campbell said on the conference call, and to put the focus on the need for a simpler code.
BRINGING UP THE NRO REAR... Thomas Sowell graces us with another one of his nutty climate change denial screeds - but this time he sez he's got the BBC on his side! (Don't tell Sowell, but it was the UK's Channel 4, not the Beeb, that produced this dodgy documentary.) Switching gears, Sowell assures us that Newt Gingrich's scandals won't affect his candidacy. Deroy Murdock, one the other hand, berates Gingrich for his staggering hypocrisy - and his political stupidity. He also treats us to a chilling alternative history scenario. Let's listen in:
Imagine if Gingrich and Bisek had been discovered, say around October 25, 1998. The resulting hypocrisy bomb would have rattled every American from Seattle to Key West. Struck by flying hubris, voters overwhelmingly would have punished Gingrich’s fellow Republicans for prosecuting Clinton while America’s most prominent Republican was entangled in conduct way to close for comfort. Accurate but legalistic pleas that Clinton committed adultery plus perjury, while Gingrich never lied under oath about his infidelity, would have elicited enormous laughter, if not outright scorn — fairly or unfairly.What might have been. Sigh...
Rather than chop the GOP’s majority from ten seats to five, as happened anyway, Democrats likely would have recaptured the House. All rise for Speaker Dick Gephardt (D., Mo.). Rather than battle Republicans to a draw, Democrats could have taken the Senate with a five-seat net victory. That would have made then-Senator Tom Daschle (D., S.D.) majority leader. With Democrats once again controlling Capitol Hill, Clinton could have spent his last two years building socialism [sic - for God's sake, this is getting so old - is there any conservative writer out there with the ability and the honesty to distinguish between centrist Keynesianism and socialism? Deroy Murdock! I know you're out there, like every other writer, Technorati-searching yourself! Why don't you stop by and tell us how Clinton - the conservative Democrat, the only president to have abolished an entitlement program - was "building socialism." If Clinton was a socialist then Dubya, who was responsible for the largest expansion of entitlement spending since LBJ, must be a straight-up Marxist-Leninist. C'mon, Deroy, explain it to us! I'll even put your name as a Technorati tag to help you find this! Somebody's gotta sort this out - ed.]. With that added momentum, then-Vice President Al Gore might have tipped the skin-tight 2000 election thismuch in his direction, prompting his — not G. W. Bush’s — inauguration.
It is entirely possible, if not probable, that much or all of this would have transpired, simply because Newt Gingrich got his brain caught in his zipper.
Elsewhere
At the American Spectator, Master of All Wingnuts R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. ("Two ems, two tees, two ares, two els") denounces the left-wing "moron vote" (that's you and me, compadres), and mocks Hillary Clinton for reviving the phrase "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy." No such thing! laughs R. This is a little like Bud Selig denying the existence of Major League Baseball.
MEANWHILE... Paul Chesser thinks Gingrich's not-at-all-staged and fully-heartfelt confession of infidelity will now give him an advantage over Multiple-Marriage-Choice Rudy. James Antle, writing in response to Noemie Emery's recent article on the possible end of the litmus test, paints a picture of just how ugly the abortion thing could get for Giuliani. Not only did Rudy vehemently support public funding for abortions, he donated money to Planned Parenthood, and even declared a "Planned Parenthood Day" in New York! What's more, Giuliani's promise to appoint so-called "strict constructionist" judges may be a sucker punch aimed at anti-choicers: as Antle points out, there's no guarantee that said judges wouldn't prefer to uphold Roe v. Wade on stare decisis grounds. And Antle presents us this sparkling example of how Rudy's primary opponents can frame him:
[P]ro-lifers should think long and hard before they work to nominate and elect a Republican with an abortion record virtually indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton's.Yeowch!
AND FINALLY... Joel Himelfarb hits Giuliani from another direction, chastising the mayor for his (actually quite sensible) support for immigrant "sanctuary" laws; Shawn Macomber is unimpressed by the Sex Workers' Art Show (though not as epatee as you'd expect les bourgeois to be); and Mark E. Hyman takes us down memory lane, rehearsing all the scurrilous right-wing attacks on Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson we've come to know and love.
For our purposes, let's linger over one particular accusation in Hyman's article, that Joe Wilson is worthy of scorn because he claimed to have "proved a negative." It's remarkable how often conservatives raise this objection to various debunkings. In fact, it's a lovely little shelter to inhabit: since so much of conservatism - particularly neoconservatism - is based on making fantastical claims about things that don't exist, anyone who tries to set the record straight is, by definition, going to be forced to deal with the problem of "proving a negative." No, Mr. Hyman, I can't prove that there are no faeries in your garden. You got me.
But I would suggest that Bush and his neoconservative circle, who carry on so cheerfully amidst the ruins of their policies, have proven very much a negative for America, and for the world. We still have to listen to the Mark Hymans and the Michael Novaks and the Andrew Robertses and the George Bushes. For now. But there's some comfort in knowing that their words are the last coin of a legacy that dwindles with time.
Labels: American Spectator, Deroy Murdock, National review, TWICO, Weekly Standard
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:56 AM 0 comments Thursday, March 15, 2007
But He's No Sam Waterson...
Incidently, Novak also thinks Obama's got Hillary right where he wants her: forced to constantly react to his moves.
No jokes about being the "law and order" candidate.... Robert Novak seems to think that Fred Thompson could actually be a factor in the race for the GOP presidential nomination:
The hype over former Sen. Fred Thompson has some substance to it, as the actor-politician has already begun approaching experienced campaign hands in key states. Thompson already evokes the obvious comparison to Ronald Reagan because of his profession.Conservative, an actor... what's not for a Republican to love?
Thompson effectively embraced the Republican right when he ran for and entered the U.S. Senate. From the perspective of the Republican Party's conservative base, he stacks up well against each of the "Big Three" leading Republican candidates. His voting record (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 86%) in the Senate is more conservative than that of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain (lifetime ACU rating: 82%), none of his position-switches are nearly as bad or as recent as those of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), and nothing in his background is as negative as that of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R).
Given enough money, Thompson could make a good run at it by tearing down the conservative credentials of the "Big Three" and then building himself up as a tax-cutting, pro-life former senator. His acting role on "Law & Order" does not hurt, either.
Incidently, Novak also thinks Obama's got Hillary right where he wants her: forced to constantly react to his moves.
Labels: 2008, Fred Thompson, Presidential election, Robert Novak
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 4:56 PM 3 comments
Buckley: Thwarted by History?
What's fascinating - and this is further illustrated in Isaac Chotiner's follow-up interview with Tanenhaus - is how Buckley serves as a marker of just how much the modern conservative movement has changed since he helped found it in the 1950s. Growing beyond the movement's distant origins in anti-Wilsonian isolationsim, Buckley was the prototypical modern conservative. For his time, he was ideological, engaged, impatient with moderation, and committed to an understanding of conservatism as a defined and self-conscious movement. The conservative movement of 2007 is all of those things - only vastly more so. It has not changed in kind, but it has been transformed by degree.
The question of power has always been a central problem for modern American conservatives. As this blog has sought to document, governmental power is a dilemma for a movement predicated on denying the positive power of government. The movement seeks power with desperate abandon, yet, having power, it is forced either to confront itself with greater honesty, or - more often - to rely on rhetorical constructions having little to do with reality. This exchange from the Cotiner-Tanenhaus interview is instructive:
There seem to be very few left who, like Buckley, have any skill for striking a balance between the two. In part this is because conservative philosophy makes it difficult to achieve such a balance. But in part - and this is a warning for the nascent progressive movement, as well - it is because the more powerful a political movement becomes, the less likely it is to feel restrained by trivial matters like reality.
It's worth reading the article by Sam Tanenhaus at the New Republic, on the twilight of William F. Buckley. The angle is about how Buckley has turned against the current of the movement he did so much to create, denouncing the war in Iraq and expressing shock and dismay over Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. The larger portrait is of Buckley as a particularly old-fashioned sort of conservative: pragmatic, aristocratic, aloof - and increasingly unsure of exactly what defines a conservative anymore.
What's fascinating - and this is further illustrated in Isaac Chotiner's follow-up interview with Tanenhaus - is how Buckley serves as a marker of just how much the modern conservative movement has changed since he helped found it in the 1950s. Growing beyond the movement's distant origins in anti-Wilsonian isolationsim, Buckley was the prototypical modern conservative. For his time, he was ideological, engaged, impatient with moderation, and committed to an understanding of conservatism as a defined and self-conscious movement. The conservative movement of 2007 is all of those things - only vastly more so. It has not changed in kind, but it has been transformed by degree.
The question of power has always been a central problem for modern American conservatives. As this blog has sought to document, governmental power is a dilemma for a movement predicated on denying the positive power of government. The movement seeks power with desperate abandon, yet, having power, it is forced either to confront itself with greater honesty, or - more often - to rely on rhetorical constructions having little to do with reality. This exchange from the Cotiner-Tanenhaus interview is instructive:
But do you think it's possible to have, given the size of the American government now and a country of 300 million people, the preeminent economic power in the world, and an ageing population with needs in terms of health care and so on. Do you think it's possible for an individualist, or libertarian as you say, party to attain electoral success? Or do you think you need to sign prescription drug bills and so forth if you want to obtain political power in 2007 Washington?Buckley understood this, but as the movement he founded has grown larger and more aggressive, it has refused to admit the limitations imposed by political - or even physical - reality. The revelation of the Bush administration, for a large part of the conservative movement, has been that talking the talk is no longer enough. Thus conservatives seem to have become largely split between a faction that insists upon sticking to its principles - no matter how untenable - and one that abandons all principle and operates purely as a political machine.
Yes, I think you're right, and I think every serious conservative knows this. The important thing to keep in mind about American conservatism is much of it--and this is not said in a denegrative way, as it goes to the essence of modern conservatism--is as much about rhetoric as it is about policy. There's a fascinating piece--I just glancingly refer to it in my little story for you all for TNR--in which Buckley defended the new governor of California in 1967, Ronald Reagan, because he had submitted his first budget and shocked many on the right and on the left by increasing taxes and actually just growing entitlements which is of course was what Reagan also did when he was elected president. So the essence there is a kind of maneuverability. And what Buckley says in the piece is that rhetoric precedes policy; so to be a kind of card-carrying, acceptable, ideological conservatism is often just about certain things you say, certain cultural values, religious values, political values. This is why Reagan was able to oppose a lot of what we now think of as the ideological agenda of the right, and hardly ever be criticized for it, even from the activists, or what Garry Wills calls the hard workers, the ones who actually get win primaries and get people elected and drive the agenda of the party. So as long as someone talks the talk they really don't have to walk the walk so much, and they can constantly make the sorts of real-world adjustments that any real-world political figure does. And there's another component to this, too. When Buckley and company started out in the 1950s and began to attain some real visability partly through Buckley's own fascinating campaign for mayor in New York in 1965, they were very much on the margins. They'd never governed, so it was very easy for them to criticize on these purist ideological grounds what was happening in government. Well now they've been in power for, what, a quarter of a century? Not exclusively, but for much of that period starting with Reagan's election. So someone like Buckley, a movement elder, understands very well that once you control the reins of power, that policy gets enacted in a very different way, so of course you have to win votes, and of course you have to present entitlements and all the rest. Nixon saw this too in his presidency, so slack will be cut, adjustments will be made, as long as the so-called core values remain in place. And there will always be a struggle about the sort of balance between the two; of the values on one hand and the practical politics on the other.
There seem to be very few left who, like Buckley, have any skill for striking a balance between the two. In part this is because conservative philosophy makes it difficult to achieve such a balance. But in part - and this is a warning for the nascent progressive movement, as well - it is because the more powerful a political movement becomes, the less likely it is to feel restrained by trivial matters like reality.
Labels: conservatives, The New Republic, William F. Buckley
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:27 PM 0 comments
One Decent Thing We Can Do
That's just what Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega - whom the Contras once sought to overthrow - is suggesting:
Ortega's right - and it's also smart politics for him, and good for Nicaragua. He's already shown a willingness to reform, and now he's looking for resources to help his former antagonists. If Nicaragua is to begin to pull out of its crushing poverty, some degree of national reconciliation is going to be necessary. And the US is morally obligated to help with that if we can - especially if it's a question of providing a little aid to those we once used as pawns on the cold war chessboard.
Now that Bush is back from tooling around Latin American promising to help the poor, here's a concrete suggestion about some poor Latin American people for whom he could actually do something: America's former proxy soldiers, the Contras of Nicaragua.
That's just what Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega - whom the Contras once sought to overthrow - is suggesting:
Ortega, a Cold War foe of the United States who now heads his second government after winning last year's election, said U.S. President George W. Bush's administration should assume some responsibility for the welfare of the ex-Contras.Reagan's support for the Contras was illegal, but it was done in our name nonetheless. Considering all the havoc the US helped wreak in Nicaragua, don't we at least have the moral resonsibility to help that country look after the people we once paid to wreak it?
The former rebels are demanding housing, land and farm credits promised to them at the end of Nicaragua's civil war that pitted the U.S.-financed fighters against the Sandinista revolutionary government.
"I would like the U.S. government, President Bush ... to take into account the United States' responsibility in this war during the government of President Reagan," Ortega said.
"It would be good if the United States contributed at least $300 million to this fund, permitting the construction of housing for these families, that will allow us to give them credits to work the land or set up small businesses," he told reporters.
Ortega's right - and it's also smart politics for him, and good for Nicaragua. He's already shown a willingness to reform, and now he's looking for resources to help his former antagonists. If Nicaragua is to begin to pull out of its crushing poverty, some degree of national reconciliation is going to be necessary. And the US is morally obligated to help with that if we can - especially if it's a question of providing a little aid to those we once used as pawns on the cold war chessboard.
Labels: Foreign Policy, Nicaragua
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:53 PM 0 comments
Sometimes They Parody Themselves
Via Andrew Sullivan... it's time for "macho Christianity":
According to the article, the GodMen are, in part, a response to interior decorating issues:
We're told that the GodMen are inspired by the story of Jesus storming the temple to kick moneychanging ass. Christian rightists seem to refer to this story a lot. It's the one thing in the New Testament that helps validate their dangerously high anger levels.
I'm not religious myself, but it always seemed to me that one of the greatest things about Jesus, as with Gandhi and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., was his guts. Really, the most incredible kind of courage is the kind that would steel a person to face injustice armed only with truth and the fragility of the human body. Maybe the "life coach" thinks it's a "bore," but give me a nonviolent revolutionary over a fernophobic armchair warrior any day.
Though, in all fairness, nonviolence never sold boxer shorts.
Above: GodMan's arch-enemy
Via Andrew Sullivan... it's time for "macho Christianity":
There is a new trend in religion: macho Christianity — a movement started by men who say traditional church services are just too feminine and sissy.Who are these manly men who will save Christianity from the ladies? These men are GodMen:
Men need movements like GodMen because Christians have been taught about a Jesus who's too nice to be real, said life coach and Christian radio show host Paul Coughlin. The leaders of GodMen contend that church, as most men know it, has gotten too sissy.All right, first thing: your job title is "life coach." That's macho?
"A meek and mild Jesus… eventually is a bore," he said.
According to the article, the GodMen are, in part, a response to interior decorating issues:
"What we're saying is that… we've been taught the loving guy, the beautiful guy… When we walk into a church, we see ferns. We're not used to that. We want something that shows the masculine side as well," [founder Brad] Stine said.Presumably macho Christians prefer macho plants. Something in a ficus, maybe. A butch ficus.
We're told that the GodMen are inspired by the story of Jesus storming the temple to kick moneychanging ass. Christian rightists seem to refer to this story a lot. It's the one thing in the New Testament that helps validate their dangerously high anger levels.
I'm not religious myself, but it always seemed to me that one of the greatest things about Jesus, as with Gandhi and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., was his guts. Really, the most incredible kind of courage is the kind that would steel a person to face injustice armed only with truth and the fragility of the human body. Maybe the "life coach" thinks it's a "bore," but give me a nonviolent revolutionary over a fernophobic armchair warrior any day.
Though, in all fairness, nonviolence never sold boxer shorts.
Labels: Andrew Sullivan, fundamentalists, GodMen
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:56 AM 0 comments
The Primary Problem
On the first point:
I've never been one to moan about how unusually long the American presidential campaign is compared to those in other countries. We're a big country, and the long campaign is a result of both that and of the democratization of the nomination process. Our nominees are no longer chosen in smoke-filled rooms at brokered conventions, nor are they pre-designated parliamentary leaders. They're chosen by the voters - which means they have to criss-cross the country to meet the voters. And that takes a lot of time.
Complaints about the length of the campaign season seem misguided to me. It is fair to complain about some states having more influence than others in the primary calendar - but the solution is not to create a national primary in early February. Many people have suggested some form of rotating primary calendar. This seems to make a lot more sense - and it would preserve the tradition of retail politics, which may seem to take ridiculously long, but is, after all, a solid democratic process.
George Will makes some good points regarding the newly-frontloaded presidential primary schedule. The Feb. 5 super tuesday isn't necessarily going to make voters in the big states any more relevant, but it is likely to give voters less chance to see how the candidates perform over time.
On the first point:
Every campaign is shaped by two scarcities - the candidate's time, and money. No candidate will have enough of either to campaign intensely, in person or even on television, in perhaps 24 states across the continent in the 22 days between Iowa (Jan. 14) and Feb. 5. As political analyst Charlie Cook says, this will raise the stakes - the free media attention, and the momentum it imparts - that will accrue to the winner or winners of the first four states (South Carolina Democrats and Republicans vote on Jan. 29 and Feb. 2, respectively). Indeed, if one person wins three or all four of those, the Feb. 5 primaries might be mere ratifying echoes rather than deciding events.With regard to the second point: complaints about the long primary season notwithstanding, the new calendar is actually likely to compress the primary campaign into a very brief window of time late next winter. The nominees-apparent will then be left to keep themselves busy until the party conventions. It's kind of a dreadful prospect, when you think about it.
I've never been one to moan about how unusually long the American presidential campaign is compared to those in other countries. We're a big country, and the long campaign is a result of both that and of the democratization of the nomination process. Our nominees are no longer chosen in smoke-filled rooms at brokered conventions, nor are they pre-designated parliamentary leaders. They're chosen by the voters - which means they have to criss-cross the country to meet the voters. And that takes a lot of time.
Complaints about the length of the campaign season seem misguided to me. It is fair to complain about some states having more influence than others in the primary calendar - but the solution is not to create a national primary in early February. Many people have suggested some form of rotating primary calendar. This seems to make a lot more sense - and it would preserve the tradition of retail politics, which may seem to take ridiculously long, but is, after all, a solid democratic process.
Labels: 2008, Presidential election, primaries
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:29 AM 4 comments Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Our Gramscian Conservatives
I'm increasingly convinced that, to understand modern American conservatism, you shouldn't just be reading Schmitt, but Gramsci. In fact, I've started to suspect that many in the conservative movement, if they haven't actually been reading the old Italian Marxist, have at least been sleeping with his books under their pillows.
The latest in a long line of exhibits: an article at Conservative Battleline Online by Joseph Farah, the WorldNetDaily honcho. The title is "Radicalizing Conservatism," and it begins by asserting that "Conservatism is dead."
According to Farah, conservatism as a political program only really lived during the Reagan era. Why? Because as a philosophy it is essentially defensive, geared toward "conserving" the social and political modes of the past, not towards aggressively seeking change. The defensiveness of the philosophy undermines the political effort. But Reagan was a radical: he was constantly "on offense."
The curious transformation of conservatism into a radical force is the phenomenon that first made me want to start writing about it. And that transformation, as Farah observes (likewise, from the left, Gary Kamiya), has been made possible by the right's culture war. To Farah, without victory in the culture war, the conservative political project is futile:
Farah is only reiterating a theme that has run - implicitly and explicitly - throughout American conservative discourse for decades. And, unsurprisingly, he frames it in the same victim mentality we've come to expect from cultural conservatives - as though, during the era of Fox news and right-wing talk radio and total conservative domination of the national government, it's the right that has been oppressed. But that feeling of oppression is an essential part of modern American conservatism, and it's precisely what has pushed the movement to view itself as engaged in a fight for cultural hegemony (thus, again, David Frum laments the inability of the Half Hour News Hour to counter the "clever cultural sabotage" of the Daily Show).
Alan Wolfe was correct to cite Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction as a key tool for analyzing the right. They do make that distinction. But they go beyond the political, carrying the fight to the culture, just as Antonio Gramsci would have recommended they should. And if their political fortunes should continue to suffer in the next few years, we should expect them to redouble their efforts in the war of position.
We may be about to see a new intensification of the culture wars, if Farah and Gramsci are any guide.
Above: A theorist of modern conservatism
I'm increasingly convinced that, to understand modern American conservatism, you shouldn't just be reading Schmitt, but Gramsci. In fact, I've started to suspect that many in the conservative movement, if they haven't actually been reading the old Italian Marxist, have at least been sleeping with his books under their pillows.
The latest in a long line of exhibits: an article at Conservative Battleline Online by Joseph Farah, the WorldNetDaily honcho. The title is "Radicalizing Conservatism," and it begins by asserting that "Conservatism is dead."
According to Farah, conservatism as a political program only really lived during the Reagan era. Why? Because as a philosophy it is essentially defensive, geared toward "conserving" the social and political modes of the past, not towards aggressively seeking change. The defensiveness of the philosophy undermines the political effort. But Reagan was a radical: he was constantly "on offense."
The curious transformation of conservatism into a radical force is the phenomenon that first made me want to start writing about it. And that transformation, as Farah observes (likewise, from the left, Gary Kamiya), has been made possible by the right's culture war. To Farah, without victory in the culture war, the conservative political project is futile:
Conservatism is also hopelessly inadequate as an agenda because of its near total reliance on "politics" as the battle ground. The real battle for the hearts and minds of the people doesn't take place in election cycles. It takes place every day when they watch television, when they read their newspapers, when they go to church, when they go the movies, when they send their children to school, when they listen to music, when they go to college.This, of course, is precisely what Gramsci meant by the 'war of position' (summary here). Gramsci was addressing the question of why, during times of economic crisis, socialists were failing to lead successful revolutions against capitalist states. Comparing the class struggle to the first world war, Gramsci argued that victory was determined not by individual battles - which might be enough only to seize an outer trench or two - but by the "overall relation of the forces in conflict."
Those are all battlegrounds where core values are shaped. Those cultural institutions are almost totally out of the control of conservatives. They will not be won back because of any election victories. At the same time, election victories become tougher and tougher for conservatives because of the power their adversaries have over the culture.
A war of position is not, in reality, constituted simply by the actual trenches, but by the whole organizational and industrial system of the territory which lies to the rear of the army in the field. It is imposed notably by the rapid fire-power of cannons, machine-guns and rifles, by the armed strength which can be concentrated at a particular spot, as well as by the abundance of supplies which make possible the swift replacement of material lost after an enemy breakthrough or a retreat. A further factor is the great mass of men under arms; they are of very unequal calibre, and are precisely only able to operate as a mass force.The 'war of manoeuvre,' in turn, "must be considered as reduced to more of a tactical than a strategic function ... it must be considered as occupying the same position as siege warfare used to occupy previously in relation to it." To Gramsci, the lesson for socialists was that
the same reduction must take place in the art and science of politics, at least in the case of the most advanced states, where ‘civil society’ has become a very complex structure and one which is resistant to the catastrophic ‘incursions’ of the immediate economic element (crises, depressions, etc.). The superstructures of civil society are like the trench-systems of modern warfare.Gramsci argued for a war of position in capitalist society, to challenge capitalist ideological domination of culture and media, and to achieve cultural hegemony. He argued, in short, for a culture war.
Farah is only reiterating a theme that has run - implicitly and explicitly - throughout American conservative discourse for decades. And, unsurprisingly, he frames it in the same victim mentality we've come to expect from cultural conservatives - as though, during the era of Fox news and right-wing talk radio and total conservative domination of the national government, it's the right that has been oppressed. But that feeling of oppression is an essential part of modern American conservatism, and it's precisely what has pushed the movement to view itself as engaged in a fight for cultural hegemony (thus, again, David Frum laments the inability of the Half Hour News Hour to counter the "clever cultural sabotage" of the Daily Show).
Alan Wolfe was correct to cite Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction as a key tool for analyzing the right. They do make that distinction. But they go beyond the political, carrying the fight to the culture, just as Antonio Gramsci would have recommended they should. And if their political fortunes should continue to suffer in the next few years, we should expect them to redouble their efforts in the war of position.
We may be about to see a new intensification of the culture wars, if Farah and Gramsci are any guide.
Labels: Conservative Battleline, conservatives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:37 PM 2 comments
Blowback from McCain's CPAC Snub
One thing that does sound odd to me is the assertion, from both sides, that McCain simply didn't know how big a deal CPAC would be. It's the major event on the conservative calendar. It's a big deal every year. McCain wasn't avoiding it because he was misinformed; he was avoiding it, most likely, because he knew what a cesspool of right-wing fanaticism it can be. And yet he still flip-flopped and tried to get in under the wire.
As it stands, McCain's relationship with the conservative base has taken a blow, not just for missing CPAC, but for making its organizers feel bad:
As you may recall, John McCain was conspicuous by his absence at this year's CPAC. The American Conservative Union, which sponsored the conference, today features an article (reprinted from The Hill) by ACU chairman David Keene, who scolds McCain for the snub. He also mentions - which I hadn't been aware of - that, consistent with McCain's flip-floppy record, the Senator's aides did try at the last minute to work something out, but they were snubbed in return. The whole thing was a blown opportunity:
McCain’s people reacted to questions about how [skipping CPAC] fit into his strategy of courting conservative support with blank stares and finally began claiming that CPAC was not representative of anything, as it is attended mostly by “Washington insiders.” What was apparent to reporters and others, however, was that the 6,300 conservative activists streaming in from outside Washington were, in fact, from everywhere but Washington. As it turned out, they had come from all 50 states and were crowding the halls of the Shoreham and a couple of neighboring hotels that had been booked solid weeks in advance.I'm not one of those liberals with a soft spot for John McCain; he's an unprincipled war hawk with a much more conservative record than many would like to admit. Still, I was counting it as a plus for him that he skipped out on this year's Coulterized hate fest. But it should come as no surprise that he in fact made a rather pathetic attempt to get on board at the last minute.
When the senator’s people realized this wouldn’t fly they tried to go around the organizers to get a room to host a separate reception for attendees, but were told quite accurately that every function room and suite in the host hotel were sold out. They satisfied themselves in the end by telling reporters that the senator would have come but for scheduling difficulties.
In fact, had McCain attended, he would have been well received. He finished fourth anyway in the straw poll won by Mitt Romney, but was booed every time his name was mentioned for the way he and his ham-handed managers handled the whole thing. There is much about his record that conservatives don’t like, but a good bit they admire as well. That is something that can be said of the other wannabes as well … and all of them were well received.
One thing that does sound odd to me is the assertion, from both sides, that McCain simply didn't know how big a deal CPAC would be. It's the major event on the conservative calendar. It's a big deal every year. McCain wasn't avoiding it because he was misinformed; he was avoiding it, most likely, because he knew what a cesspool of right-wing fanaticism it can be. And yet he still flip-flopped and tried to get in under the wire.
As it stands, McCain's relationship with the conservative base has taken a blow, not just for missing CPAC, but for making its organizers feel bad:
The loser, of course, was John McCain—not because he wasn’t there, but because of the essentially mean-spirited manner in which he and his staff dismissed the very people whose support he claims he is seeking.And that just seems to be the line on McCain generally: nobody actually likes him very much.
Labels: 2008, conservatives, CPAC, John McCain, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:04 PM 0 comments
Excommunication for Rudy?
And lo and behold! Here's Catholic newspaper columnist Kenneth J. Wolfe in an op-ed at the NY Daily News:
The problem, for Rudy, is not the first divorce - it's the second. The Catholic church, of course, does not sanction divorce at all - however, if a married couple can demonstrate that their marriage should never have taken place at all, the church will grant them an annulment. This is what ended the marriage between Giuliani and his second cousin Regina Peruggi. The second time around, though, it's a lot harder to get an annulment. And so, when Rudy dumped Donna Hanover (disgracefully forcing Hanover to learn of his decision through the media), he never got the church's sanction.
And that means that, when Giuliani married Judith Nathan, he became - in the eyes of the Catholic church - an adulterer. He may not be unusual in this respect (though he was unusually cruel to Hanover), but it's hardly a formula for winning over conservative voters:
John Kerry had to deal with Catholic conservatives breathing down his neck in the 2004 election, so it would seem only fair that the thrice-married, nominally pro-choice Rudy Giuliani should be subject to the same scrutiny.
And lo and behold! Here's Catholic newspaper columnist Kenneth J. Wolfe in an op-ed at the NY Daily News:
Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani has made several statements supporting legalized and even taxpayer-funded abortion. Some Catholics believe these warrant a "latae sententiae" excommunication from the church under canon law - in other words, an automatic excommunication that occurs "by the very commission of the offense."For those of you who didn't grow up Catholic, being "prohibited from receiving Communion" is what excommunication is all about.
But there is another area on which the grounds for excommunication are much more clear: marriage.
Giuliani is currently in a civil marriage with Judith Nathan. Unlike Giuliani's previous two marriages, this one was not performed under the auspices of the Catholic Church. And unlike his second marriage, he did not receive an annulment from the church for his most recent marriage. As a result, Giuliani could be prohibited from receiving Communion.
The problem, for Rudy, is not the first divorce - it's the second. The Catholic church, of course, does not sanction divorce at all - however, if a married couple can demonstrate that their marriage should never have taken place at all, the church will grant them an annulment. This is what ended the marriage between Giuliani and his second cousin Regina Peruggi. The second time around, though, it's a lot harder to get an annulment. And so, when Rudy dumped Donna Hanover (disgracefully forcing Hanover to learn of his decision through the media), he never got the church's sanction.
And that means that, when Giuliani married Judith Nathan, he became - in the eyes of the Catholic church - an adulterer. He may not be unusual in this respect (though he was unusually cruel to Hanover), but it's hardly a formula for winning over conservative voters:
If Giuliani is elected President, he would be the second divorced man to win the office. However, he could be the first to be barred from his church from fully participating in its liturgy. As the GOP continues to court conservative Catholics, his excommunication could very well have an effect on the 2008 election.I expect William Donahue will be weighing in?
Labels: 2008, Catholics, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:56 AM 0 comments Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Newt: Countdown to G-Day
He also considers Newt's non-campaign campaign, as I've been calling it:
My own hope is that progressives can learn from the important innovations Gingrich brought to political communication, while avoiding Luntzian doublespeak. Luckily for us, bad ideas require a lot more doublespeak than do good ones.
At any rate, as much as I'm fascinated by Gingrich's political skills, I've had an inexplicably hard time taking him seriously as an actual presidential candidate. Continetti's article finally helps me understand why:
Of course, come G-Day, I may be proven wrong.
Writing at the Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti has a conservative take on that "Lincon-inspired" Cooper Union debate between Newt Gingrich and Mario Cuomo a couple weeks ago.
He also considers Newt's non-campaign campaign, as I've been calling it:
There is, believe it or not, a path by which Newt Gingrich could conceivably arrive at the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. The path starts where we are now, with Gingrich not declaring any sort of candidacy and refusing to shed light on his plans. What he has done instead is create a nonpartisan political organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, that can spend unlimited sums of money under section 527 of the U.S. tax code. American Solutions, Gingrich says, will hold national workshops this September 27--the thirteenth anniversary of the Contract With America--and September 29. Then, on September 30--call it G-Day--Gingrich will "decide" whether to run for president. At which point there still will be about three and a half months before the first actual caucuses and primaries.Continetti notes some of the advantages we've already suggested Gingrich holds: his strong numbers at CPAC despite the lack of a campaign, his "gut connection" with Republican voters, the shabby state of the rest of the GOP field. So where does he stand?
Among Republicans, the current wisdom concerning Gingrich has two parts. The first is that, come September, Gingrich will in fact decide to enter the race. "These guys always run," Murphy says. "It's what they do. It's like chimps picking up bananas. They can't help it." The second part is that Gingrich's impact will be limited to the presidential primary debates. Gingrich's understanding of conservative Republicans, this line of thinking goes, combined with his rhetorical powers, may set the terms of discussion and win support, but ultimately voters will choose to vote for either McCain, Giuliani, or Romney. Still, after watching Gingrich dominate the debates, conservative Republicans might just say to themselves, Why not . . . Newt?Gingrich's schtick is his futurist intellectual (or pseudo-intellectual) mania. And his great skill is his ability to communicate politics at personal and historical levels. As Continetti observes, these factors set him apart:
"I think Newt's about nailed this," says Republican lobbyist Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996. "But when it comes to having an impact in the race . . . time will tell. This is a guy who doesn't need a big infrastructure. He's kind of a one-man band. He understands how to make news, he understands how to exploit his opponents' political weaknesses, and he's a happy warrior." Most important, Reed says, Gingrich has "always understood how to make a dramatic entry into politics."
Gingrich reveals himself as either a visionary or a pretender, a world-historical figure or a goof playing at the highest levels of national politics. Republicans--and Gingrich--tend to adopt the more favorable view. What no one can deny, however, is Gingrich's mastery of political language, his ability to appropriate words that connect with people's aspirations and fears, his ear for terms that resonate deeply in the mind and heart. Opportunity, prosperity, patriotic, winning, future, transformation, decay, system, evolution, appeasement, change. Gingrich combines them with his favorite adjectives and adverbs. Stunning, dramatically, fundamentally, very.It's amusing how Gingrich and other conservatives have been going around saying that liberals have been winning the language wars, that conservatives' great flaw is not taking language seriously. These guys reinvented political language. They were more Orwellian than Orwell. Newt's faction is the Frank Luntz faction.
My own hope is that progressives can learn from the important innovations Gingrich brought to political communication, while avoiding Luntzian doublespeak. Luckily for us, bad ideas require a lot more doublespeak than do good ones.
At any rate, as much as I'm fascinated by Gingrich's political skills, I've had an inexplicably hard time taking him seriously as an actual presidential candidate. Continetti's article finally helps me understand why:
"There are operatives in politics, and there are candidates," says Mike Murphy. "Newt is an operative. Not a candidate."He's a very effective operative, but I think this Murphy fellow is right: he's just not a candidate.
Of course, come G-Day, I may be proven wrong.
Labels: 2008, conservatives, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 4:22 PM 0 comments
The End of the Litmus Test?
Emery argues:
For Emery, the litmus test has been problematic from the beginning, dictating from the extremes a debate in which most Americans fall somewhere in the conflicted middle:
I don't know enough about Emery to guess whether this is strictly objective analysis, or whether she is a Giuliani sympathizer making a case for Rudy's viability.
I do know that Ramesh "Party of Life" Ponnuru disagrees with her. Citing the need to look beyond the "negative connotations" of the term "litmus tests," Ponnuru asks what the phrase really means:
At any rate, Ponnuru doesn't think the litmus test has been such a bad thing at all:
Yesterday I wrote about an article by Noemie Emery at the Weekly Standard, which argues that Rudy Giuliani is positioned to win the GOP nomination despite his "socially liberal" tendencies. Emery's analysis of Giuliani's appeal is convincing enough, but let's look a bit more at whether the litmus test is really endangered.
Emery argues:
After 30-plus years of fierce, intense arguments, much emotion, and many polls taken, both sides in the abortion wars have been mugged by reality, and realize that neither is likely to reach its major goals soon. Dreams of outlawing abortion on the one hand, or, on the other, of seeing it funded, legitimized, and enshrined as an unassailable civil right, have faded in the face of a large and so-far unswayable public opinion that is conflicted, ambivalent, and inclined to punish any political figure it sees as too rigid, too strident, or too eager to go to extremes. For this reason, no politician shrewd enough to make himself president is likely to go on a pro-life or pro-choice crusade.Activists are becoming increasingly sophisticated both in accepting the political complexities of the abortion debate, and in recognizing that a president's personal beliefs in fact have little bearing on the state of play. Emery acknowledges that, for many dedicated conservatives, this kind of subtle analysis is unconvincing. But, she says, "the surprising thing is that these debates are occurring at all."
This is why early assessments of Giuliani's possible weakness may be misleading, among them polls indicating that many social conservatives would never back a pro-choice nominee. They do not show what might happen if the nominee pledged not to push for a pro-choice agenda, or if he were endorsed and supported by conservative icons who vouched for him, campaigned with and for him, and swore to their backers that he was all right.Emery suggests that Democrats, too, might move away from an abortion litmus test - but that's another discussion entirely.
The deal in the works has been carefully crafted to make sure that no one loses too much. Conservatives would be getting a pro-choice nominee, but one who would not push a pro-choice agenda, and one who would give them (as far as presidents can be sure in these matters) the kind of judges they long for. Giuliani would not be required to renounce his beliefs, merely to appoint the right kind of judges and to remain more or less neutral in a policy area in which, to be honest, he has never shown that much interest. The Republicans will remain the pro-life party--as desired by the bulk of their voters and required by the workings of the two-party system--though now with a larger, more varied, and in some ways more competitive field of candidates.
For Emery, the litmus test has been problematic from the beginning, dictating from the extremes a debate in which most Americans fall somewhere in the conflicted middle:
It has been a very good deal for the people who imposed it, but a very bad one for the country at large. It has meant that a candidate for national office must begin by embracing ideas that have been rejected by seven in ten of Americans, while a candidate who comes close to the center of public opinion would never be allowed to compete.... Worst of all, it posed the real possibility that a candidate would come forth who seemed equipped to deal with a crisis, but who, because he held the "wrong views" in the eyes of the interest groups, would not be allowed to emerge.That crisis, of course, is terrorism - and the man who "seems equipped" to deal with it is Rudy Giuliani, President of 9/11.
I don't know enough about Emery to guess whether this is strictly objective analysis, or whether she is a Giuliani sympathizer making a case for Rudy's viability.
I do know that Ramesh "Party of Life" Ponnuru disagrees with her. Citing the need to look beyond the "negative connotations" of the term "litmus tests," Ponnuru asks what the phrase really means:
Only that some people have the nerve to prefer candidates who agree with them on the issues that they care about.He criticizes Emery for being "too quick to declare, and to celebrate, its demise."
[M]y own guess is that pro-life and pro-choice voters will cease to care about the views of presidential nominees only when the politics of abortion is de-nationalized: which is to say, after Roe v. Wade has fallen.It seems Emery is putting the cart just slightly before the horse: she argues that anti-choicers will support a candidate as long as he promises to appoint the judges to overturn Roe; Ponnuru seems to think they'll believe it when they see it - and meanwhile, litmus test away.
At any rate, Ponnuru doesn't think the litmus test has been such a bad thing at all:
No cost-benefit analysis is complete if it looks only at costs, as Emery does. What have been the benefits of the pro-life “litmus test”? It has kept open a question that the courts, among others, have repeatedly and arrogantly tried to declare closed. It has helped to promote policy changes that have brought the abortion rate down. It has made the Republican party a more conservative party across the board; and it has furthered a campaign to restore the judiciary to its proper place in the constitutional scheme of things, a campaign that would have gotten nowhere without it.One could apply a pretty cynical analysis here. The abortion litmus test has indeed given discipline and impetus to the conservative agenda. It has done so at the cost, to anti-choice true believers, of electing presidents who pay lip service to an extremist anti-abortion agenda, but are powerless to actually do anything about it. And thus, considering how much political damage the Republican party would suffer if Roe were ever actually overturned, from the point of view of a GOP operative, the litmus test has perhaps been a pretty great thing all around.
Labels: 2008, abortion, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:38 PM 0 comments
Firefighters Snub Giuliani
I reported on this blowup a few days ago. It's not going away. Just read the end of the letter:
Mole333 at The Daily Gotham brings us this letter from the International Association of Firefighters:
On March 14, 2007, the IAFF will host the first bi-partisan Presidential Forum of the 2008 election cycle. No other union and very few organizations has the credibility and respect to attract top-tier candidates from both political parties. The lineup of speakers who have agreed to participate in our Forum is truly a testament to our great union and the reputation we have built as a powerful political force and a coveted endorsement.Oh, man. That's gotta hurt. There's more:
John Edwards, John McCain, Barack Obama, Chuck Hagel, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Duncan Hunter and seven other candidates will make their case before the 1,000 delegates who will be attending the Forum and to our entire membership via same-day broadcast on our web site.
Early on, the IAFF made a decision to invite all serious candidates from both political parties — except one: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
We made this decision after considerable soul-searching and close consultation with our two New York City affiliates, the Uniformed Firefighters Association Local 94 and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association Local 854, as well as our former Local 94 President and current IAFF 1st District Vice President covering New York.You want to read the sordid details for yourself? Head on over to TDG.
The IAFF recognizes that Mayor Giuliani generally enjoys a favorable reputation as a result of his actions immediately after the tragedy of 9/11. As such, we want our affiliates and every one of our members to clearly understand the reason and rationale behind this very serious and sober decision.
[...]
His actions post 9/11 rise to such an offensive and personal attack on our brother and sisterhood — and directly on our union — that the IAFF does not feel Rudy Giuliani deserves an audience of IAFF leaders and members at our own Presidential Forum.
The disrespect that he exhibited to our 343 fallen FDNY brothers, their families and our New York City IAFF leadership in the wake of that tragic day has not been forgiven or forgotten.
I reported on this blowup a few days ago. It's not going away. Just read the end of the letter:
We have heard from some affiliates that Giuliani's campaign is beginning to reach out to our locals, looking to build support. If you are contacted by Giuliani, Von Essen, or a representative of the Giuliani campaign, we hope you will say not just, "No," but, "Hell no."Day-um.
Labels: 2008, 9/11, firefighters, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:26 PM 0 comments Monday, March 12, 2007
Reflections on Michael Moore
At any rate, I finally got around to checking out the Euston-associated journal Democratiya, beginning with David Adler's review of Jesse Larner's book about Michael Moore (Adler's own blog is here). I was a Moore fan long before he crashed the global Zeitgeist with Fahrenheit 9/11. Roger & Me made a huge impression, and I vividly remember my slack-jawed delight at the very idea that TV Nation could make it onto the mainstream airwaves - even if only for a short run.
So it's with some reluctance that I've come to admit my growing disenchantment with the slovenly fellow in the baseball cap, as Dinesh D'Souza (wanker) called him. Some of it was a result of the frankly bizarre logic of Bowling for Columbine. Some of it came from silly arguments in F9/11 - like the suggestion that the US invaded Afghanistan in order to build an oil pipeline. And some was the product of being forced to admit that Moore has, many times, had a less-than-perfect relationship with the facts.
Still, I won't throw my lot in with the anti-Moore fanatics of the right, who are many times more mendacious than he. The man may be wrong, but that's no reason to take up with the bad faith of his conservative critics. And the same applies to dishonest liberal critics.
So it was kind of a relief to read Adler's article. Honestly, given the energy the Euston circle expends on attacking portions of the anti-war left, I had expected something of a hit piece. Instead, it's a balanced, conscientious review of what appears to be a balanced, conscientious book. Both Larner and Adler seem to be determined not fall into cheap attacks on Moore, nor do they intend to allow their criticism to give cover to rightist cretins.
Much of Larner's book is evidently focused on a biographical examination of Moore and his work - and the flaws in that work. Both authors make the point that Moore is not some anti-American ideologue - rather, he's an entertainer whose arguments can be all over the map. Adler aptly uses Stephen Colbert's term 'truthiness' to characterize Moore's style, which often seems to rely on appeals to what we know we know, rather than what might actually hold up under scrutiny. I won't delve into the analysis here - you should read it yourself. I only want to comment very briefly on the role that Moore has played for the American left in recent years.
Larner's book compares Moore to the attention-seeking British leftist politician George Galloway. He does not argue that they are perfectly analogous - again, where Galloway is an ideologue, Moore is not. The Respect Party MP is inarguably a loathesome character, whereas Moore just tends to be irresponsible. But in one respect - especially for Americans - they have played a similar role. Adler refers to Larner's analysis:
Michael Moore, with Fahrenheit 9/11, filled a void that nobody else at that time was willing to fill. When nobody in American public discourse - not even our "respectable" liberal intellectuals - was willing to point out that the Iraq war was stupid and wrong, F9/11 was there. There was a time not so long ago when the organs of the mainstream American left were cheerleading right along with the neocons. No wonder the film was so popular: our public conservation was dry indeed, so how can you blame millions of Americans for taking up the only relief they could find?
I believe in agency. I don't think that the left has been shut out of the national dialogue because of some capitalist conspiracy or cosmic injustice. Since the 1960s, we've simply done a terrible job at political organization and media penetration. We have ourselves to blame - and I include myself, remembering how much I used to care about marching against bad things and how little I used to care about the practical elements of electoral politics or message-making.
Still, Moore succeeded because his was practically the only prominent voice against the war at a time when the entire American political class had abdicated its responsibility. Likewise, when Adler asks, "Will well-intentioned liberals continue to ally with International A.N.S.W.E.R. and The World Can't Wait, entities that may as well have been dreamed up by Ann Coulter to discredit the left?" - I agree with him, but for a long while there it looked like those old Trotskyists were the only opposition to the insane official line. And if the Democrats, having been elected with a clear mandate to end the Iraq war, find themselves unwilling to make clearly the case for bringing the troops home, I fear the A.N.S.W.E.R. crowd - foolish as they are - will only look vindicated in the eyes of many.
But this is drifting off the point. The question is: what should American liberals make of Michael Moore? Here I think Adler draws the right conclusion, but for the wrong reasons. Says Adler:
Victory does matter. But so does truth. For liberals, victory without truth is not victory at all. Sloppy logic and faulty moral standards like those sometimes propagated by Moore should be challenged, but not because we fear they will be used as a cudgel by the right. They should be challenged because they are wrong. The right will always slander the left, whether we are honest or not. So we might as well be honest, because that way we'll be stronger, and we'll look stronger too - acting on the basis of our values and the truth, not on the basis of what we fear conservatives will say about us.
And this points back to the reasons for Moore's success. He was wrong, but he acted without fear of what the right would say about him. And that was admirable. If more of our liberal intellectuals had had that kind of courage, we might not ever have needed a Michael Moore at all.
Recently I've been reading some of the British blogs associated with the Euston Manifesto, which is a subject I'd like to take up in more depth at a later date (I've got a copy of Nick Cohen's What's Left on order but the busy elves at Amazon have told me that it's going to be a few weeks before it arrives). I'm interested in all this for the purposes of contemplating the exceedingly difficult position in which the liberal/social democratic left finds itself with regard to terrorism and anti-totalitarianism globally - though one thing I'll note is that the Euston folks seem to underestimate the degree of difference between the American and British political contexts.
At any rate, I finally got around to checking out the Euston-associated journal Democratiya, beginning with David Adler's review of Jesse Larner's book about Michael Moore (Adler's own blog is here). I was a Moore fan long before he crashed the global Zeitgeist with Fahrenheit 9/11. Roger & Me made a huge impression, and I vividly remember my slack-jawed delight at the very idea that TV Nation could make it onto the mainstream airwaves - even if only for a short run.
So it's with some reluctance that I've come to admit my growing disenchantment with the slovenly fellow in the baseball cap, as Dinesh D'Souza (wanker) called him. Some of it was a result of the frankly bizarre logic of Bowling for Columbine. Some of it came from silly arguments in F9/11 - like the suggestion that the US invaded Afghanistan in order to build an oil pipeline. And some was the product of being forced to admit that Moore has, many times, had a less-than-perfect relationship with the facts.
Still, I won't throw my lot in with the anti-Moore fanatics of the right, who are many times more mendacious than he. The man may be wrong, but that's no reason to take up with the bad faith of his conservative critics. And the same applies to dishonest liberal critics.
So it was kind of a relief to read Adler's article. Honestly, given the energy the Euston circle expends on attacking portions of the anti-war left, I had expected something of a hit piece. Instead, it's a balanced, conscientious review of what appears to be a balanced, conscientious book. Both Larner and Adler seem to be determined not fall into cheap attacks on Moore, nor do they intend to allow their criticism to give cover to rightist cretins.
Much of Larner's book is evidently focused on a biographical examination of Moore and his work - and the flaws in that work. Both authors make the point that Moore is not some anti-American ideologue - rather, he's an entertainer whose arguments can be all over the map. Adler aptly uses Stephen Colbert's term 'truthiness' to characterize Moore's style, which often seems to rely on appeals to what we know we know, rather than what might actually hold up under scrutiny. I won't delve into the analysis here - you should read it yourself. I only want to comment very briefly on the role that Moore has played for the American left in recent years.
Larner's book compares Moore to the attention-seeking British leftist politician George Galloway. He does not argue that they are perfectly analogous - again, where Galloway is an ideologue, Moore is not. The Respect Party MP is inarguably a loathesome character, whereas Moore just tends to be irresponsible. But in one respect - especially for Americans - they have played a similar role. Adler refers to Larner's analysis:
He begins with George Galloway's blustery and evasive Senate testimony in May 2005, which many on the left greeted 'like water in the parched desert of American politics' (p. 215). After exposing Galloway's appalling anti-democratic record, Larner presses the case that Moore is a kinder, gentler version, whose 'very unserious' arguments about terrorism have harmed the left's standing with the American public.This is the thing. When Galloway testified in Washington, I was fully aware of his own disgraceful record. But the Republican Senators grilling him were hardly any more sympathetic - and it was in some ways immensely gratifying to finally see someone - anyone - treating them and their stupid warmongering enthusiasms with the contempt they deserved. It would be hyperbolic to compare it to seeing the Soviets and the Nazis duke it out, so let's put it in Mets terms: watching the Yankees play the Braves, one feels nothing more than a fervent desire to see them both lose.
Michael Moore, with Fahrenheit 9/11, filled a void that nobody else at that time was willing to fill. When nobody in American public discourse - not even our "respectable" liberal intellectuals - was willing to point out that the Iraq war was stupid and wrong, F9/11 was there. There was a time not so long ago when the organs of the mainstream American left were cheerleading right along with the neocons. No wonder the film was so popular: our public conservation was dry indeed, so how can you blame millions of Americans for taking up the only relief they could find?
I believe in agency. I don't think that the left has been shut out of the national dialogue because of some capitalist conspiracy or cosmic injustice. Since the 1960s, we've simply done a terrible job at political organization and media penetration. We have ourselves to blame - and I include myself, remembering how much I used to care about marching against bad things and how little I used to care about the practical elements of electoral politics or message-making.
Still, Moore succeeded because his was practically the only prominent voice against the war at a time when the entire American political class had abdicated its responsibility. Likewise, when Adler asks, "Will well-intentioned liberals continue to ally with International A.N.S.W.E.R. and The World Can't Wait, entities that may as well have been dreamed up by Ann Coulter to discredit the left?" - I agree with him, but for a long while there it looked like those old Trotskyists were the only opposition to the insane official line. And if the Democrats, having been elected with a clear mandate to end the Iraq war, find themselves unwilling to make clearly the case for bringing the troops home, I fear the A.N.S.W.E.R. crowd - foolish as they are - will only look vindicated in the eyes of many.
But this is drifting off the point. The question is: what should American liberals make of Michael Moore? Here I think Adler draws the right conclusion, but for the wrong reasons. Says Adler:
His narrative points to a slackening of intellectual and moral standards that must be challenged by the left, or it will continue to be used as a cudgel by the right.This reminds me of Reagan's famous '11th Commandment': the dictum that conservatives should have no enemies on the right. I've often chewed over whether and how liberals should apply this reasoning to the left. The more I think about it, the more it strikes me as an essentially right-wing mindset: victory matters more than truth.
Victory does matter. But so does truth. For liberals, victory without truth is not victory at all. Sloppy logic and faulty moral standards like those sometimes propagated by Moore should be challenged, but not because we fear they will be used as a cudgel by the right. They should be challenged because they are wrong. The right will always slander the left, whether we are honest or not. So we might as well be honest, because that way we'll be stronger, and we'll look stronger too - acting on the basis of our values and the truth, not on the basis of what we fear conservatives will say about us.
And this points back to the reasons for Moore's success. He was wrong, but he acted without fear of what the right would say about him. And that was admirable. If more of our liberal intellectuals had had that kind of courage, we might not ever have needed a Michael Moore at all.
Labels: Democratiya, Euston Manifesto, Iraq, Michael Moore, progressives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:20 PM 4 comments
Rudy and Social Conservatives: "A Deal in the Works"?
Such a development is made possible by the way Giuliani has been working within a changing political context. First, and most important, he has not been resorting to wild Romney-style pandering. Instead, he's been taking David Frum's advice:
Of course, it's aided by the fact that some social conservatives have indicated their willingness to be bought more cheaply this time around. Just give us the judges, they say, and we'll do the rest. And Rudy has been promising them that much, at least. Of course, there's another contradiction here: if sociocons believe that they are winning the wars of public opinion over abortion and gay marriage, they may have the self-confidence not to need a leader who promises to federalize their every concern (certainly this would be a relief to the libertarian contingent in the GOP). But if they are winning the public opinion war, why should they settle for anything less? To the victors should go the spoils, right? Judicial nominations are a baseline upon which Giuliani is able to freely acceede to conservative demands. And some of the commentariat are telling themselves that that will be enough. But will it?
Back to Emery, at any rate. If the litumus test is about to die, if Giuliani is able to win the nomination without making more than baseline assurances to social conservatives, it will be for a number of reasons. Emery provides four - the first two of which I want to discuss in this post.
First, the War. This is the most obvious factor, though Emery provides a particularly vivid depiction of the sociocon mentality here:
There's also the Uncle Rico factor. This was of course the name we gave to Tom Schaller's theory that Giuliani represents, for Republicans, a chance to go back and relive the era before they bungled in Iraq, a time when Republicans, with a straight face, could refer to the GOP as the party of national security (9/11-related failures notwithstanding). Thinking about it more, I'm starting to wonder: is Schaller giving conservatives too much credit? Remember, they don't think like us. Sure, GOP politicians and strategists know Iraq has been a disaster for them, but isn't the whole point that Republican primary voters don't make a distinction between Iraq and the war on terror? They may be angry about how the war has been such a cock-up, but between now and next November they have a perfectly good Dolchstosslegende to explain why it's all the Democrats' fault.
At any rate, the war (whichever war) may turn out to be a lot less predictive than we'd like to think it will be, in terms of how it affects conservative voters next spring. The "surge" will have done its thing, or not done its thing. If conditions in Iraq haven't improved, even social conservatives may not be so eager anymore for a hawkish candidate that they'd be willing to sell their age-old priorities down the river. On the other side of the coin, if the Dolchstosslegende has been marketed well enough, any old Republican might be able to take advantage of it.
Still, there's no denying - for now - the appeal of Rudy's vicious personality. And that's the second big factor for Emery: Rudy is "not your father's pro-choice Republican." He's no squishy liberal like Lincoln Chafee or "the ladies from Maine." He's a hard-ass:
Tomorrow I'll look more at this argument - and its implications for the Republican party.
How could Republican primary voters - the preponderance of whom are social conservatives - possibly wind up nominating a pro-choice New Yorker for president? Noemie Emery explains how in an article at the Weekly Standard. Contrary to the many observers who see an unresolvable conflict at the heart of the Rudy-Republican relationship, Emery suggests that there may be a "deal in the works" between the mayor and sociocons:
Next year may see the party of the Sunbelt and Reagan, based in the South and in Protestant churches, nominate its first presidential candidate who is Catholic, urban, and ethnic--and socially liberal on a cluster of issues that set him at odds with the party's base. As a result, it may also see the end of the social issues litmus test in the Republican party, done in not by the party's left wing, which is shrunken and powerless, but by a fairly large cadre of social conservatives convinced that, in a time of national peril, the test is a luxury they cannot afford.As Emery points out, the abortion litmus test has been at the center of national politics for over 30 years, dating back at least to the parties' dueling 1980 platforms, and reinforced since by powerful interest groups on either side. Emery is suggesting that something no less than revolutionary is happening: a party may be on the verge of abandoning its commitment to the fight. And the winner would be Rudy Giuliani.
Such a development is made possible by the way Giuliani has been working within a changing political context. First, and most important, he has not been resorting to wild Romney-style pandering. Instead, he's been taking David Frum's advice:
"He should not try to deny or conceal his own views," [Frum] wrote of the mayor. "He should not invoke Lee Atwater's 'Big Tent' . . . nor should he spend minutes and minutes parsing his views. . . . His job is not to persuade pro-life Republicans to agree with him, but to assure them that they can live with him."This matters because Giuliani's appeal to conservatives lies in his strong-leader persona, which would be undermined if he gave the impression of flip-flopping around - even if it were in the name of taking up the sociocon agenda. It's a pretty neat trick.
Of course, it's aided by the fact that some social conservatives have indicated their willingness to be bought more cheaply this time around. Just give us the judges, they say, and we'll do the rest. And Rudy has been promising them that much, at least. Of course, there's another contradiction here: if sociocons believe that they are winning the wars of public opinion over abortion and gay marriage, they may have the self-confidence not to need a leader who promises to federalize their every concern (certainly this would be a relief to the libertarian contingent in the GOP). But if they are winning the public opinion war, why should they settle for anything less? To the victors should go the spoils, right? Judicial nominations are a baseline upon which Giuliani is able to freely acceede to conservative demands. And some of the commentariat are telling themselves that that will be enough. But will it?
Back to Emery, at any rate. If the litumus test is about to die, if Giuliani is able to win the nomination without making more than baseline assurances to social conservatives, it will be for a number of reasons. Emery provides four - the first two of which I want to discuss in this post.
First, the War. This is the most obvious factor, though Emery provides a particularly vivid depiction of the sociocon mentality here:
They see [Giuliani] as a more ruthless version of George W. Bush, someone who would not have consented to less-than-aggressive rules of engagement; who would have taken Falluja the first time, and not have had to come back later; who would not have let Sadr escape when he had him; who would not have been fazed by whining over Abu Ghraib and Club Gitmo, and would have treated critics of the armed forces and of the mission with the same impatience he showed critics of the police in New York.This, besides being deeply disturbing, points to a larger question: can the 'war on terror' act as a convincing stand-in for the struggle against communism, which united the right for so long? Emery quotes Jonah Goldberg as saying that pro-lifers "really, really believe the war on terror is for real." Of course, that's exactly what a fighting keyboarder like Goldberg would want to believe. I don't pretend to know the extent to which Joe and Jane Pro-Lifer actually buy into the vast, self-aggrandizing historical fantasy of the conservative pundit classes, who have so much invested in their operatic role-playing game, who spend so much time and waste so much ink making bad historical analogies and congratulating each other for their Churchillian wisdom and Lincoln-like resoluteness, but I have my doubts.
There's also the Uncle Rico factor. This was of course the name we gave to Tom Schaller's theory that Giuliani represents, for Republicans, a chance to go back and relive the era before they bungled in Iraq, a time when Republicans, with a straight face, could refer to the GOP as the party of national security (9/11-related failures notwithstanding). Thinking about it more, I'm starting to wonder: is Schaller giving conservatives too much credit? Remember, they don't think like us. Sure, GOP politicians and strategists know Iraq has been a disaster for them, but isn't the whole point that Republican primary voters don't make a distinction between Iraq and the war on terror? They may be angry about how the war has been such a cock-up, but between now and next November they have a perfectly good Dolchstosslegende to explain why it's all the Democrats' fault.
At any rate, the war (whichever war) may turn out to be a lot less predictive than we'd like to think it will be, in terms of how it affects conservative voters next spring. The "surge" will have done its thing, or not done its thing. If conditions in Iraq haven't improved, even social conservatives may not be so eager anymore for a hawkish candidate that they'd be willing to sell their age-old priorities down the river. On the other side of the coin, if the Dolchstosslegende has been marketed well enough, any old Republican might be able to take advantage of it.
Still, there's no denying - for now - the appeal of Rudy's vicious personality. And that's the second big factor for Emery: Rudy is "not your father's pro-choice Republican." He's no squishy liberal like Lincoln Chafee or "the ladies from Maine." He's a hard-ass:
To the press, Rudy was one of those terrible people--too quick to defend the police when they were attacked on brutality charges; a fascist, a bully, and a prude. With most pro-choice Republicans, their views on abortion are only one of a set of positions and attitudes that arouse the ire of the base. Giuliani is that very rare animal, a pro-choice Republican who is also the furthest thing possible from a liberal on a wide range of issues (law and order among them). [...]Rudy's an authoritarian jerk. And, to social conservatives, this is apparently like pheremones. As discussed before, it's not unlike Vernon Lee's examination of Dubya's appeal in 2004: the cowboy factor. It all seems to converge with analysis by Glenn Greenwald and Rick Perlstein. The right loves swagger. The right loves to bug the liberals. The right loves a bully. All of this makes Rudy Giuliani a hell of a lot more compelling than George Pataki, and it may just get him nominated.
Rudy Giuliani is a liberal slayer.
Tomorrow I'll look more at this argument - and its implications for the Republican party.
Labels: 2008, Noemie Emery, Presidential election, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:07 AM 1 comments
Unconscionable Conservatism
I needn't have worried. Some of you were no doubt way ahead of me on this; for those who weren't, here's Gavin M. guesting at the Newsblog, giving us the latest on Boot's tobacco astroturf scandal and Wikipedia tomfoolery (originally reported by Matt Yglesias).
Unfortunately, one really can't afford to give these people the benefit of the doubt, even when they seem to be talking sensible-like.
Recently I observed that the only two times I'd ever posted about conservative commentator Max Boot, it had been by way of noting rather sensible things he'd said (re: global warming and the International Criminal Court). I wondered whether he wasn't veering dangerously close to apostasy.
I needn't have worried. Some of you were no doubt way ahead of me on this; for those who weren't, here's Gavin M. guesting at the Newsblog, giving us the latest on Boot's tobacco astroturf scandal and Wikipedia tomfoolery (originally reported by Matt Yglesias).
Unfortunately, one really can't afford to give these people the benefit of the doubt, even when they seem to be talking sensible-like.
Labels: hackery, Max Boot, Steve Gilliard
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:33 AM 0 comments
"Odd Silence" over Reagan Bio
So this post by Jonah Goldberg at the Corner caught my eye:
Inasmuch as Reagan really believed that "that the only answer to the cold war was to call it off," as Diggins puts it, he was breaking not only with the neocons, but also, of course, with the realists. But setting that aside, and also setting aside Goldberg's own preoccupations, I would suppose that a book like this should touch off rather more discussion on the right, especially in neoconservative circles. Here's a liberal writer declaring Reagan to be one of the greatest presidents in American history - man takes a big bite out of dog - yet also inverting the narrative of how Saint Reagan won the Cold War, arguing that victory came not thanks to American bluster, but thanks to the president's newfound willingness to take risks in talking peace. You'd think all of this would spark some debate amongst conservatives. But, if Goldberg's right, it hasn't. Which is odd.
Anyway, I'll get around to reviewing the book myself, sooner or later.
A couple weeks ago I discussed a review of the new biography of Ronald Reagan by John Patrick Diggins - a liberal scholar who nonetheless apparently has a great deal of praise for Reagan as an idealist above all.
So this post by Jonah Goldberg at the Corner caught my eye:
According to Diggins the Gipper disagreed sharply with his neocon advisors (which seems to include all of the strong anti-Communists around him) and the neocons were wrong about just about everything. Some of it strikes me as useful and informed correction but much of it strikes me as tendentious, odd or as ill-advised attempts to find the roots of the Iraq war in the Reagan Administration. I thought to myself: I wonder what Peter Robinson or Steve Hayward or the entire constellation of folks at Commentary and The Weekly Standard have to say about all of this? And, from what I can tell the answer is: absolutely nothing. George Will, Jim Pinkerton and Rich wrote about Diggins's book and that's about it (Will loved it, oddly). Pinkerton takes a shot or two — at the neocons — but basically nobody has pushed back on Diggins' frontal assault on them.This is maybe a telling interpretation.
Inasmuch as Reagan really believed that "that the only answer to the cold war was to call it off," as Diggins puts it, he was breaking not only with the neocons, but also, of course, with the realists. But setting that aside, and also setting aside Goldberg's own preoccupations, I would suppose that a book like this should touch off rather more discussion on the right, especially in neoconservative circles. Here's a liberal writer declaring Reagan to be one of the greatest presidents in American history - man takes a big bite out of dog - yet also inverting the narrative of how Saint Reagan won the Cold War, arguing that victory came not thanks to American bluster, but thanks to the president's newfound willingness to take risks in talking peace. You'd think all of this would spark some debate amongst conservatives. But, if Goldberg's right, it hasn't. Which is odd.
Anyway, I'll get around to reviewing the book myself, sooner or later.
Labels: Jonah Goldberg, Ronald Reagan, The Corner
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:56 AM 0 comments Saturday, March 10, 2007
Confession is Good for the Political Soul
It's a political market in indulgences.
So now that Newt Gingrich has admitted that the whole time he was tormenting Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky he was also cheating on his own wife, it appears that the evangelical brigade are giving him the green light. Jerry Falwell has praised Gingrich for coming clean, and invited the former speaker to appear at Liberty University:
"He has admitted his moral shortcomings to me, as well, in private conversations," Falwell wrote in a weekly newsletter sent Friday to members of the Moral Majority Coalition and The Liberty Alliance. "And he has also told me that he has, in recent years, come to grips with his personal failures and sought God's forgiveness."It's all so formulaic, so ritualistic. Candidate X needs fundamentalist votes. Fundamentalist Blowhard Y wants to feel relevant. X offers the standard words of contrition to Y. Y publicly forgives X on behalf of God and the Moral Majority.
It's a political market in indulgences.
Labels: 2008, Jerry Falwell, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election, social conservatives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:25 AM 0 comments Friday, March 09, 2007
Programming Note
I'll make a special effort to get one done for next week, though. Meanwhile, more to come this afternoon. Cheers...
I apologize to regular readers, but this is going to be another TWICO-less week. It's an exhausting feature to write and I can't really do it if I'm busy on Wednesday and Thursday nights, as I have been for the last two weeks.
I'll make a special effort to get one done for next week, though. Meanwhile, more to come this afternoon. Cheers...
Labels: meta
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:38 PM 2 comments
Giuliani Fights Fire With ... Nothing, Really
This wasn't the first group to poke a hole in Rudy's 9/11 myth. And it won't be the last. Again: there is a lot to talk about here.
The national firefighters' union, unsurprisingly, has gone public about some of Rudy Giuliani's failures after 9/11:
The International Association of Fire Fighters union said it wants its 260,000 U.S. members to know the "real story" of the former New York mayor, contending that Giuliani sought to curtail search-and-recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, that claimed the lives of 2,752 people, including 343 union fire fighters.Rudy's response was so lame you want to buy it a Christmas turkey:
"Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," said union President Harold Schaitberger in a draft letter to affiliates.
In response, a Giuliani spokeswoman released a statement from Tim Brown, a former fire fighter working with the campaign and head of "Firefighters for Rudy."Giuliani has been coasting, more or less unchallenged, on the myth that he was some kind of 9/11 hero. But that myth is now going to be put to the test. It's good of the AP to report it, but we'll see if syncophants like Chris Matthews are willing to take it up too.
"We are honored by the support of so many first responders from across the country and are appreciative of their continued enthusiasm for Mayor Giuliani's candidacy," Brown said. "We look forward to future events and an ongoing conversation with America's firefighters."
This wasn't the first group to poke a hole in Rudy's 9/11 myth. And it won't be the last. Again: there is a lot to talk about here.
Labels: 2008, 9/11, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:24 PM 0 comments
Huckabee: Still on the Radar
So anyway: Ross Douthat notes, first of all, that the reason might be related to the fact that it seems to be mostly liberals who find Huckabee so fascinating. And yet: let us not forget the subplot wherin Paul Weyrich and the "secretive" (in the sense of being "secretively publicity-seeking") Council for National Policy have been embarked on a quest for a real hero. Now, it seems, the storylines may be about to come together:
Huckabee might need a bold move to "step up to the A-League": a Feech La Manna card game to crash - risky as that can be. I think that's what the Huckster was trying to do by endorsing the flat tax, which is a big plus with the conservative crank base, but a big risk in a general election. At any rate, it certainly hasn't been enough to propel him into the top tier.
Douthat also notes Michael Scherer's description of Huckabee as "a sort of Dr. Phil-meets-Ned Flanders for the political arena." This may the governor's real problem.
Still, it's worth watching to see whether Weyrich and the CNP can make something out of Huckabee. Some analysts are arguing that the tectonic plates within the GOP are shifting in favor of Giuliani - that social conservatives may not need their "own" candidate this time around. I'll look at that debate later this afternoon. But if that argument is wrong, the result may be something of a rebirth for the born-again Huckabee.
I missed this post from the American Scene when it went up on Tuesday, but it's worth a read. As you may recall, your loyal blogger was quite impressed by the performance of one Mike Huckabee, late of Arkansas, now an inexplicably-dark horse in the Republican presidential race. Despite his bludgeoning by the Club for Growth, I've had a hard time seeing why a candidate with his manifest skills isn't doing better in a cycle when conservatives all seem to be grumbling about how there's nothing good on the menu.
So anyway: Ross Douthat notes, first of all, that the reason might be related to the fact that it seems to be mostly liberals who find Huckabee so fascinating. And yet: let us not forget the subplot wherin Paul Weyrich and the "secretive" (in the sense of being "secretively publicity-seeking") Council for National Policy have been embarked on a quest for a real hero. Now, it seems, the storylines may be about to come together:
Some heavyweights within the Council for National Policy and other conservative coalitions are weighing an effort to galvanize behind a socially conservative second-tier candidate, such as Huckabee or Brownback, in an attempt to catapult him into the top tier. "There is a very strong feeling that we have to assert ourselves or we're going to end up with somebody we can't support," says Paul Weyrich, a longtime conservative activist and cofounder of Moral Majority. Weyrich says Christian right leadership is currently split "around fifty-fifty" over whether to pursue such a plan or to adopt an every-man-for-himself approach, in which activists would gravitate toward the candidate of their choice.Ah, says Douthat: but the plot is somewhat thicker than that:
The trouble, of course, is that Huckabee isn't the only second-tier, socially-conservative candidate in the race, and while he might be a more plausible nominee than Brownback - sure, he has no foreign-policy experience, but neither does the man who's going to be the Democratic nominee - the two are going to be lumped together in just about every national-media account for the next six months, which will mean that they'll have to look for ways to subtly tear the other down, and use up valuable time that could be spend going after the big three in the process.And don't forget Jim Gilmore!
Huckabee might need a bold move to "step up to the A-League": a Feech La Manna card game to crash - risky as that can be. I think that's what the Huckster was trying to do by endorsing the flat tax, which is a big plus with the conservative crank base, but a big risk in a general election. At any rate, it certainly hasn't been enough to propel him into the top tier.
Douthat also notes Michael Scherer's description of Huckabee as "a sort of Dr. Phil-meets-Ned Flanders for the political arena." This may the governor's real problem.
Still, it's worth watching to see whether Weyrich and the CNP can make something out of Huckabee. Some analysts are arguing that the tectonic plates within the GOP are shifting in favor of Giuliani - that social conservatives may not need their "own" candidate this time around. I'll look at that debate later this afternoon. But if that argument is wrong, the result may be something of a rebirth for the born-again Huckabee.
Labels: 2008, Mike Huckabee, Presidential election, The American Scene
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:38 PM 0 comments
Frum: Failing to Find the Funny
Thus, Comedy Central, rather than simply getting lucky when one of their obscure shows was taken over by a very funny host who was in touch with the zeitgeist, must in fact have set out - cleverly - to commit cultural sabotage on behalf of the vast liberal conspiracy.
I'm putting words into Frum's mouth at this point, but as Roy notes, Frum's own complaint is revealing enough. His mindset is just the same as those who created the Half Hour News Hour: it's the belief that the Daily Show was intended as liberal propaganda, and it must be countered with conservative propaganda. The reason Frum is upset isn't that he thinks the show was misconceived - just that it's missing its target, that it's failing as propaganda.
But propaganda is not art, except occasionally as kitsch. And it's never funny - except as an object of derision. In which sense, I have to admit, the HHNH is a laff riot.
Roy at alicublog deconstructs David Frum's dismay over the Half Hour News Thingy. It's not just that the show is a crime against comedy, Roy points out. The larger problem is how Frum's complaint itself illustrates the ideologue's inability to distinguish between art and propaganda. The artist works for the sake of creating art (ego notwithstanding) - for instance, the comedian who does a comedy show because he wants to be funny.
But the propagandist ... wants results. In his black, rubber heart, he does not get the appeal of Madame Bovary or Lolita or The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. What action plan follows upon these? What agenda is advanced? What polling results will be affected? Whereas a well-crafted Swift Boat ad, or blog, or National Review column will make people do things -- vote, or fail to vote, or stay mad at the people you want them mad at, or stay worshipful of the people you want to remain unquestioned.This, too, goes some way towards illuminating what Frum means when he refers to "Comedy Central's clever cultural sabotage." He's performing the kind of agent detection common among ideologues: something milder than the conspiratorial mindset, but still very much inclined to see premeditation and coordination where none exists. You see this all the time when reading conservative writings about liberals - and about society at large, since it's a mindset that assumes liberals have collaborated to infiltrate and "sabotage" American culture.
That is why David Frum -- whose soul, if he ever had one, must be fatally wearied by the lifelong application of his verbal talents to propaganda -- looks at this failed comedy show and thinks -- says! -- that the great failure there was not a failure to clear a grateful public's minds and lungs with laughter, nor a failure to provide them with a fresh angle from which to view their world, but a failure to "create a conservative institution with cultural power."
To him culture is not a spring that refreshes the spirit, but a storehouse of destructive power to be used against his enemies.
Thus, Comedy Central, rather than simply getting lucky when one of their obscure shows was taken over by a very funny host who was in touch with the zeitgeist, must in fact have set out - cleverly - to commit cultural sabotage on behalf of the vast liberal conspiracy.
I'm putting words into Frum's mouth at this point, but as Roy notes, Frum's own complaint is revealing enough. His mindset is just the same as those who created the Half Hour News Hour: it's the belief that the Daily Show was intended as liberal propaganda, and it must be countered with conservative propaganda. The reason Frum is upset isn't that he thinks the show was misconceived - just that it's missing its target, that it's failing as propaganda.
But propaganda is not art, except occasionally as kitsch. And it's never funny - except as an object of derision. In which sense, I have to admit, the HHNH is a laff riot.
Labels: alicublog, David Frum, Half Hour News Hour
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:47 AM 0 comments
Get Well Soon, Steve
Haven't mentioned it yet, but I wanted to put one more voice on the internets wishing the best of luck to Steve Gilliard, fellow New Yorker and kick-ass blogger. He's through surgery but not out of the woods yet. I'll be thinking of him this weekend and counting on hearing good news next week.
Labels: Steve Gilliard
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:34 AM 0 comments Thursday, March 08, 2007
"Back in '82..."
Following on my post below about the Hamlin and Schaller pieces, I think I've hit on what Giuliani is all about. He's the GOP's Uncle Rico candidate. He is the Republican party looking back at itself and thinking, I could have been great. He's the candidate of re-living the glory - or the imaginary glory - and pretending the rest of it never happened.
"How much you wanna make a bet I could throw a terrorist over them mountains?"
(Cross-posted - combined with the previous post - at the Daily Gotham.)
Following on my post below about the Hamlin and Schaller pieces, I think I've hit on what Giuliani is all about. He's the GOP's Uncle Rico candidate. He is the Republican party looking back at itself and thinking, I could have been great. He's the candidate of re-living the glory - or the imaginary glory - and pretending the rest of it never happened.
"How much you wanna make a bet I could throw a terrorist over them mountains?"
(Cross-posted - combined with the previous post - at the Daily Gotham.)
Labels: 2008, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, The Right's Field
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:19 AM 0 comments
Elephants: "Forget...Forrrgeeeeet..."
Incidently, Schaller mentions a strange thing Rudy said at CPAC (strange given the audience, that is):
It really is all about perception, I guess.
Good post by Matt Browner Hamlin at The Right's Field about this excellent Tom Schaller piece in the Baltimore Sun. Both Hamlin and Schaller note the astounding dearth of references to the Iraq war by presidential candidates at CPAC. Schaller suspects that the omissions may be rooted in the same factor that has so far made Rudy Giuliani the frontrunner:
Here's my theory for why Mr. Giuliani is ascendant: It's not so much because he triggers memories of the horrific day in the fall of 2001 when the terrorists attacked, but that he reminds Republicans of the fall of 2002.This is, of course, pure fantasy on the part of Giuliani and his supporters - but as I've said many times before, fantasy is Giuliani's strong suit. The entire Republican party seems ready to slip back into happy illusions about the days when Americans believed that the GOP was the party of national security and they're hoping the general public is willing to come along for the ride - Iraq be damned. As Hamlin puts it:
That autumn, the Republicans were at their zenith. In September, President Bush had given a moving speech on the first anniversary of 9/11. The next month, the Republican-led Congress passed the Iraq war resolution. A month later, Republicans won the midterm elections. Mr. Bush was popular, Democrats were scrambling for cover, and Republicans controlled the entire national government for the first time in a half-century.
Then came the war in Iraq, which Mr. Bush insisted was the central front in the global war on terror. By coupling Iraq with the broader war against terror, "The Decider" eventually turned the GOP's advantage on terrorism into a liability.
Mr. Giuliani is presenting himself as "The De-Coupler" - the candidate who allows Republicans to magically transport themselves back in time to a pre-Iraq era, when their terrorism credentials could still be wielded as a lethal, single-edged sword.
Not only are Republicans forced to run away from Bush, they have to deny that the last five years have taken place and whitewash the results of their failures of leadership in the war against Islamic terrorists.Et viola! If you want a Grand Unifying Theory of This Week's Posts at A&S, it's this: Rudy Giuliani commands the Republican field because he is a champion in the war of perception. Schaller makes the same observation:
Pretending Iraq never happened is tough. It was abundantly clear at last week’s conference, however, that the conservatives’ capacity for self-deluding, avoidant behavior may prove to be Mr. Giuliani’s greatest asset.It's a depressing scene, like watching a balding and pudgy 40-year-old man squeeze into his high school letter jacket. But there you have it.
Incidently, Schaller mentions a strange thing Rudy said at CPAC (strange given the audience, that is):
He suggested that, much as America's former enemies from World War II are now allies, and the former communist states are rapidly becoming our friends too, the goal of the war on terrorism should be to win the hearts and minds of the terrorists who hate us.Remember how in 2004 all the conservatives were insisting that it wasn't enough for John Kerry to say we'd stop the terrorists - he had to say we would "kill" the terrorists. Imagine if he'd told people that "we have to pursuade them"! We'd still be hearing about it!
"We have to stop them, and then we have to persuade them," Mr. Giuliani said.
It really is all about perception, I guess.
Labels: 2008, conservatives, CPAC, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, The Right's Field, Tom Schaller
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:53 AM 0 comments Wednesday, March 07, 2007
They're Not Laughing With You...
Oh, the humanity.
For the record, though - the yoots of today didn't need John Stewart and Steven Colbert to tell them "that Republicans are ridiculous, absurd, hopelessly past it." The GOP has done the pratfalling all on its own.
Via BC at Cliff Schecter's blog, here's conservative pundit David Frum contemplating the train wreck that is the 1/2 Hour News Hour:
Joel Surnow told NRO on Friday that he wanted to produce a program that would set Michael Moore's hair on fire. He has not done it. More seriously, he has failed to do something much more important: create a conservative institution with cultural power. The Daily Show and now Steven Colbert have taught a generation of college students that Republicans are ridiculous, absurd, hopelessly past it. And their work has had an effect: today's 20-somethings are more Democratic than any equivalent cohort since World War II.Ouch. Frum also reports that the show is stealing old material from blogs.
"The 1/2 Hour News Show" does not counteract Comedy Central's clever cultural sabotage. On the contrary: it contributes to it. If there is anyone under 72 still watching it, they are not thinking, "Gee - conservatives can tell a joke." They are thinking, "Conservatives are a joke."
Oh, the humanity.
For the record, though - the yoots of today didn't need John Stewart and Steven Colbert to tell them "that Republicans are ridiculous, absurd, hopelessly past it." The GOP has done the pratfalling all on its own.
Labels: David Frum, Half Hour News Hour
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 6:13 PM 2 comments
Bush and Conservatives: Cleansing the Doors of Perception (Part 2)
Michael Novak undertakes a rebuttal of Joseph Bottum's claim that President Bush has been a disaster for the conservative movement. Responding to Bottum's argument specifically, and to conservative "demoralization" generally, Novak plunges us back into the war of perception, beginning with a curious re-interpretation of events in Iraq:
With regard to Apple, Novak appears to be manufacturing a quotation. Novak doesn't cite a source, and my searches haven't turned up any article in which Apple uses the word "quagmire" in reference to the Iraq war, though he did use the term in a 2001 piece about the war in Afghanistan - where, it should be noted, Osama bin Laden remains at large and the Taleban are resurgent five and a half years after the invasion. In an article he'd probably like to forget, Slate columnist Jack Shafer mocked Apple for implying that the Iraq war would turn into a quagmire, but nowhere does the Times reporter appear to have used the word.
The irony, of course, is that Apple's early warnings about Iraq were prescient. For instance, this passage from March 27, 2003:
Still, it is common conservative practice to play the victim when the right's own favored perceptions are insufficiently reinforced in the "liberal media." Novak's response to this challenge is unsurprising: he cites the wisdom of the greatest American conservative leader, who was, not coincidently, an actor:
At any rate, Novak's argument next turns in such a way as to implicitly admit that the problem in Iraq is with the facts on the ground, not with feckless liberal reporters:
Novak seems unable to resolve his own confusion on this point. On the one hand, he contends that Bush "should have seen, in warfare, the crucial importance of one key goal: victory" (but does this mean that Bush was not seeking "victory" to begin with?). On the other, he acknowledges that "victory" can only be achieved "by bringing security to the people." Again, the conservative impulse to demand a perception of victory runs up against reality's brick wall.
Leaving this puzzle unsolved, Novak turns to Bottum's charge of incompetence, which he suggests is "more troubling." Novak's first reaction is to reiterate an increasingly common conservative fallacy: that the problem is not with Bush's government, but with government itself:
At any rate, suggests Novak, the tide may be about to turn. He spends the next several paragraphs praising Bush's latest State of the Union address, for its "plain-spoken rhetorical style," its efforts "to occupy what some think of as Democrat [sic] territory," its "simplicity and power" in addressing, once again, the threat of jihad (on this last point Novak asserts that the "stated aim" of the nebulous "Jihadists" is "forcibly to convert us to Islam or to exterminate us until the caliphate stretches around the world" - reason once again to doubt that conservative ideologues in fact understand anything at all about the terrorist threat outside of their own self-aggrandizing fantasies). Novak even cites the post-speech back-slapping as evidence that the address did wonders for the president's popularity.
Unable to resist the conservative appetite for awkward historical comparisons, Novak cites the case of Harry Truman, who was reviled in office but revered in history:
In the end Novak is forced to rely on the same hope as the president himself: that one day history will, for some reason, judge George W. Bush more kindly. Here's Novak's case:
The debate between Bottum and Novak matters because it will be difficult for conservatives simultaneously to disassociate themselves from the Bush legacy and to argue that that legacy will ultimately prove a positive one. But if you appreciate the irony of fate, you can't help but marvel at how, for Bush and for the conservatives, the struggle against historical judgment looks so similar to their struggle against reality, in the war upon which they have staked so much.
(Read Part 1 here)
Michael Novak undertakes a rebuttal of Joseph Bottum's claim that President Bush has been a disaster for the conservative movement. Responding to Bottum's argument specifically, and to conservative "demoralization" generally, Novak plunges us back into the war of perception, beginning with a curious re-interpretation of events in Iraq:
As far as perception of the war in Iraq goes, it’s worth remembering that perceptions are changeable. As the war began in 2003, the New York Times required less than three weeks before it ran a front-page report by a star correspondent of the last generation, R.W. Apple, which hauled out the heavy word of the Vietnam generation, quagmire-as in the quagmire in which, Apple wrote, U.S. troops were already bogged down. Three weeks later, those same quagmired troops had sped into Baghdad, watching as jubilant crowds pulled down the great statue of Saddam Hussein in the center of the city and organizing a systematic search for the suddenly deposed butcher of Mesopotamia.The statue of Saddam, of course, was in fact pulled down by a U.S. military vehicle. There were no "jubilant crowds" at Firdos Square that day - only Western journalists and a handful of militiamen linked to the conman Ahmed Chalabi.
Above: The War of Perception: Battle of Firdos Square
With regard to Apple, Novak appears to be manufacturing a quotation. Novak doesn't cite a source, and my searches haven't turned up any article in which Apple uses the word "quagmire" in reference to the Iraq war, though he did use the term in a 2001 piece about the war in Afghanistan - where, it should be noted, Osama bin Laden remains at large and the Taleban are resurgent five and a half years after the invasion. In an article he'd probably like to forget, Slate columnist Jack Shafer mocked Apple for implying that the Iraq war would turn into a quagmire, but nowhere does the Times reporter appear to have used the word.
The irony, of course, is that Apple's early warnings about Iraq were prescient. For instance, this passage from March 27, 2003:
But the streets and alleys of Iraqi cities are ideal places for urban guerrillas who can blend into the crowds to operate, just as those of Belfast and Tel Aviv have done. Not only are the guerrillas hard to root out, but doing so also works against the American desire to be seen as agents of liberation, not agents of conquest.Or this, from April 6, 2003:
Who is a fedayeen fighter and who is a civilian? Marines tell stories of Iraqis changing in and out of uniform. A civilian bus turns out to be a troop transport. Guerrillas cluster near schools and hospitals. In several cases, troops carrying white flags have opened fire.
Iraqis do not play by the rules of West Point and Sandhurst.
Although the American stay is likely to be shorter [than the British colonial occupation], it could generate the same kind of resentment if not handled with a deftness rare in the annals of triumphant armies. That, in turn, could fuel the kind of resistance to a new government that the United States wishes to minimize, even if Mr. Hussein is killed or captured. It could also further destabilize the Middle East as a whole -- precisely the opposite of what Washington has set out to achieve.Novak's point is to counter Bottum's claim that "the war is already lost" on account of the way it is perceived. "Perceptions are changeable," Novak argues - and he proves his own point by inverting the correct perception of the war.
Still, it is common conservative practice to play the victim when the right's own favored perceptions are insufficiently reinforced in the "liberal media." Novak's response to this challenge is unsurprising: he cites the wisdom of the greatest American conservative leader, who was, not coincidently, an actor:
Ronald Reagan taught us that the perceptions promoted by the liberal media do not, in fact, control the way Americans think. As Clare Boothe Luce once explained, from his experience as a B-movie actor Reagan learned the difference between the box office and the critics. If you win over the first, you can be awfully sweet-tempered to the second. He showed that the hostility of all the liberal media could not, finally, drown out common-sense reality.This analysis begs the question of who represents the box office, and who are the critics. An enthusiastic propaganda campaign might theoretically convince the American public that all is well in Iraq, but will it convince the Iraqis who suffer the effects of the war, or the soldiers who have to fight it?
At any rate, Novak's argument next turns in such a way as to implicitly admit that the problem in Iraq is with the facts on the ground, not with feckless liberal reporters:
I agree with Bottum that in the view of the media the war has been lost. But we may also expect this perception to reverse itself if events in the coming six months unmistakably change direction.Novak asks us to consider what would happen if things really did improve in Iraq: if the Mahdi army were to relent, if al-Qaeda were to flee Baghdad, and if the Sunnis were to see the light and turn against their own insurgent faction. "With these conditions met," writes Novak, "Iraq would come to seem reasonably tranquil." And this may be true, but it's an argument that concedes the weakness of the conservative forces of perception in the face of stiff resistance from reality.
Novak seems unable to resolve his own confusion on this point. On the one hand, he contends that Bush "should have seen, in warfare, the crucial importance of one key goal: victory" (but does this mean that Bush was not seeking "victory" to begin with?). On the other, he acknowledges that "victory" can only be achieved "by bringing security to the people." Again, the conservative impulse to demand a perception of victory runs up against reality's brick wall.
Leaving this puzzle unsolved, Novak turns to Bottum's charge of incompetence, which he suggests is "more troubling." Novak's first reaction is to reiterate an increasingly common conservative fallacy: that the problem is not with Bush's government, but with government itself:
A long-established lesson is that, even in the best of times, government is mightily incompetent—and the bigger government gets, the more incompetent it becomes. Think of how much time it takes to obtain a building permit, to go through vehicle registration, to correct a government mistake on tax forms or on public utility bills, etc. Recall how few government offices in the same building communicate with the others, and how often you are shuttled back and forth.Conservatives have long tried to use the fact that the Post Office lost your postcard to discredit the concept of social insurance and activist government generally, but with the movement's need to escape from under the looming catastrophe of the Bush administration, this argument has gained new urgency. Expectations for Bush were too high, Novak tells us, as though no president had ever governed competently at all.
At any rate, suggests Novak, the tide may be about to turn. He spends the next several paragraphs praising Bush's latest State of the Union address, for its "plain-spoken rhetorical style," its efforts "to occupy what some think of as Democrat [sic] territory," its "simplicity and power" in addressing, once again, the threat of jihad (on this last point Novak asserts that the "stated aim" of the nebulous "Jihadists" is "forcibly to convert us to Islam or to exterminate us until the caliphate stretches around the world" - reason once again to doubt that conservative ideologues in fact understand anything at all about the terrorist threat outside of their own self-aggrandizing fantasies). Novak even cites the post-speech back-slapping as evidence that the address did wonders for the president's popularity.
Unable to resist the conservative appetite for awkward historical comparisons, Novak cites the case of Harry Truman, who was reviled in office but revered in history:
Often enough, the nation’s public leaders have been burned in effigy on the spots where their gleaming statues are later paid respect. If the reputation of President Bush meets such a fate, his 2007 State of the Union address just might be seen as one of the modest pivots on which that turn began slowly to revolve.There's a lot of speculation packed into that "if." Despite the post-address polls Novak cites as evidence of the public's great positive reaction to the State of the Union speech, the latest polls show Bush's approval rating lower than it's ever been.
In the end Novak is forced to rely on the same hope as the president himself: that one day history will, for some reason, judge George W. Bush more kindly. Here's Novak's case:
At the very least, in the face of passionate hostility at home and abroad, George Bush has proved himself a brave and determined man who has staked his presidency on getting democratic momentum underway in the Middle East.What is remarkable here is how, for the president's supporters, the notion of victory in the war of perception mirrors their notion of victory in Iraq: you can't prove that it will never be won - only that it hasn't been won yet.
The debate between Bottum and Novak matters because it will be difficult for conservatives simultaneously to disassociate themselves from the Bush legacy and to argue that that legacy will ultimately prove a positive one. But if you appreciate the irony of fate, you can't help but marvel at how, for Bush and for the conservatives, the struggle against historical judgment looks so similar to their struggle against reality, in the war upon which they have staked so much.
Labels: conservatives, First Things, George Bush, Iraq, Michael Novak
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:19 PM 0 comments
Oh, for God's Sake
The cult of contrived masculinity just gets more surreal. Via the British blog Harry's Place, here's the Washington Post's report on one Pat Dollard, Hollywood crackpot and right-wing pseudo-warrior:
After his fourth wife left him because she got upset about his hobbies, which included cocaine and hookers, Hollywood agent/producer Pat Dollard decided to get his head together by flying to Iraq to hang out with Marines and fight insurgents and film a pro-war documentary that would make him "the Michael Moore of the right."Some like to say that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. In this case, it appears that a conservative is a liberal who went insane:
A few weeks later, he sent his Hollywood pals a photo of himself with a Mohawk haircut, a machine gun and the word DIE shaved into his chest hair. After that, things started to get weird.
The booze and dope fueled many crazy antics, and in the spring of 2004, cops handcuffed Dollard and carted him off to the psych unit of an L.A. hospital.Dollard surfaced in Iraq, tagging along with a group of Marines and generally doing his part to screw up the war effort:
"Around this time he began his political conversion," [Vanity Fair writer Evan] Wright notes. "Somewhere between the Roman orgy and the mental ward he became a staunch supporter of George W. Bush's."
One day while the Marines were on patrol in a town called Musayyib, Dollard encountered an Iraqi selling whiskey. He bought three bottles, got crazy drunk and ripped a sign off a mosque, which angered the locals and sparked a gunfight. On another occasion, according to Dollard and several Marines, he walked into a pharmacy, showed the owner his gun and stole a cache of drugs, including liquid Valium, which he shared with some of the Marines.See, I keep wanting to quote the crazy parts, but they're all crazy parts. You've got to read the whole thing. It continues to get weirder, and porn is involved. Meanwhile, let's cut to the inevitable:
[S]oon he was hanging out with Ann Coulter and appearing on Fox's "Hannity & Colmes," jabbering about Iraq and evil Hollywood liberals. [...]Again, I'm beginning to expect that the conservative movement has been taken over by a troupe of dadaist performance artists.
In the last scene of the story, Dollard is being feted by conservatives at a Hollywood party, babbling about how the liberal media is "literally allied with the Islamic Fascist Imperialists." Meanwhile, Coulter is pigging out on guacamole and chips and questioning the manhood of conservatives who are insufficiently pro-war.
Labels: Ann Coulter, conservatives, Iraq, Pat Dollard
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:44 AM 0 comments
Rudy Still Well Out in Front
The poll was taken before the recent Giuliani family drama, though that's unlikely to matter much anyway. At this early stage, nobody but us weirdos is really paying attention.
Via Greg Sargent at TPMCafe, Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the GOP field by a gigantic margin: he holds a 24-point advantage over his nearest rival, John McCain.
The poll was taken before the recent Giuliani family drama, though that's unlikely to matter much anyway. At this early stage, nobody but us weirdos is really paying attention.
Labels: 2008, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:29 AM 0 comments Tuesday, March 06, 2007
The Scooter Thing
Not a good week for the Bush administration.
UPDATE: The National Review's editors are already demanding a pardon:
Sadly, No! has reaction from NRO, if you're curious. I'll do my own little take later.
Not a good week for the Bush administration.
UPDATE: The National Review's editors are already demanding a pardon:
There should have been no referral, no special counsel, no indictments, and no trial. The “CIA-leak case” has been a travesty. A good man has paid a very heavy price for the Left’s fevers, the media’s scandal-mongering, and President Bush’s failure to unify his own administration. Justice demands that Bush issue a pardon and lower the curtain on an embarrassing drama that shouldn’t have lasted beyond its opening act.Another way to look at it is: the chief of staff for the most aggressive vice president in history paid a price for his operation's arrogant, vicious, and dangerous attempts to smear a political opponent. You might even say that Scooter Libby is a victim of the out-of-control dirty-tricks machine that has taken control of the conservative movement itself. Of course, he was also a cog in that machine, so.
Labels: Sadly No, Scooter Libby
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 5:29 PM 0 comments
Bush and Conservatives: Cleansing the Doors of Perception (Part 1)
It's striking how many of these conservative debates run along one or the other of two parallel tracks: perception as it relates to the success or failure of the war in Iraq, and as it relates to the question of what lessons, if any, can be learned from the Bush administration about the conservative project. Often, these two tracks are linked.
An illustrative example is the debate in First Things between Joseph Bottum and Michael Novak. At issue is "the leadership of George W. Bush" and its consequences for American conservatism: Bottum argues it has been disastrous; Novak defends the president. Each argument revolves around the problem of winning wars of perception, at home and abroad.
Bottum is bleak:
On the first point, Bottum observes that, outside of a handful of victories - most notably the the Roberts and Alito nominations - conservatives are unconvinced by the media narrative that Bush has accomplished their goals:
Says Bottum, "The common turn among commentators, once they’ve recognized Bush’s weakness, has been to declare the betrayal of some form of authentic conservatism." But Bottum doesn't share this view:
In Bottum's analysis, Bush has consistently attempted to do the "right" thing - it's just that the president has consistently lacked the political skills to succeed. He compares Bush to Clinton, who "seemed a man of enormous political competence and no principle." Bush, it appears, has been the inverse. As a result, "social-security reform is now dead for a generation," the No Child Left Behind Act was purged of its good ideas and hijacked by bad ones, and the GOP's "lack of political savvy" has cost conservatives dearly on judicial nominations.
Note the distinction between two kinds of incompetence: Bottum is not criticizing Bush for his incompetence as president, but as an agent of the conservative agenda. This failure has, in turn, poisoned that agenda in the mind of the public. What we have here is a failure to communicate.
You can see how perfectly this dovetails with the conservative line on the war in Iraq: that victory and defeat are largely matters of perception. Indeed, Bottum makes this case quite literally - although, unlike the Malkin crowd, he focuses his opprobrium not on the media, but on the Administration itself, which has failed to convince us that we are winning:
But to finally call off the game would be to "lock in place the perception of defeat." And, concerned as Bottum is about the consequences of that perception for America generally, he's worried about the consequences for the conservative movement in particular. Specifically, he's worried about a return to the culture of the 1970s: social freedom, modest foreign policy, wide lapels and all.
Bottum, of course, is utterly at sea with regard to the motives of liberals. In terms of political cognition, you could say his theory of mind is severely underdeveloped. Of course, this isn't unusual on the right (nor, to be fair, is it exactly unknown on the left). Conservatives have been imputing false motives regarding the war to liberals since it began. Much of this has simply been sheer dishonesty for the sake of political opportunism. Yet it also appears clear that many conservatives, unable to separate the wars of perception from political reality, have fallen afoul of a critical rule of politics: "never believe your own bullshit."
And this is going to hurt the conservatives. For one thing, it limits their understanding of how the majority of Americans view the war and the Republican party. According to the mindset represented by Bottum, the public are misled by devious liberals who have outsmarted the president - well-meaning but bumbling - at every turn. Like other conservatives, Bottum is apparently incapable of conceiving of liberals as part of the public. Moreover, he fails to confront fully the public's disenchantment with conservatism. In the feedback loop of conservative discourse, the public are frustrated for the same reason that conservatives are frustrated: because six years of conservative government have mostly failed to advance the conservative agenda.
But of course, the more likely possibility is that the public is frustrated because six years of conservative government have simply been a disaster. Any public relations expert will tell you that you can only do so much to sell a bad product. Americans don't want competent politics, they want competent government. No amount of soft lighting, flattering camera angles, and retouched makeup is going to make the conservative experiment look any prettier. By shifting the blame to Bush, Bottum isn't doing his movement any favors, because his argument still leaves conservatives stuck in a quagmire of their own making: the unwinnable war of perception against reality.
Next - Part 2: Novak's Rebuttal
By now the observation that conservatives and the Bush administration are divorced from the "reality-based community" has ripened from truism to cliche. Still, it's a difficult cliche to avoid, especially given how so much conservative discourse - even within the movement itself - is explicitly dedicated to arguments about perception.
It's striking how many of these conservative debates run along one or the other of two parallel tracks: perception as it relates to the success or failure of the war in Iraq, and as it relates to the question of what lessons, if any, can be learned from the Bush administration about the conservative project. Often, these two tracks are linked.
An illustrative example is the debate in First Things between Joseph Bottum and Michael Novak. At issue is "the leadership of George W. Bush" and its consequences for American conservatism: Bottum argues it has been disastrous; Novak defends the president. Each argument revolves around the problem of winning wars of perception, at home and abroad.
Bottum is bleak:
Every conservative I know is depressed these days, and they are right to be. Under President Bush, conservatism has won only in the sense of not losing as quickly as it would have under a President Gore or a President Kerry.This depression is the result of the Administration's defeat in two wars of perception: one with regard to the conservative movement itself, the other involving public opinion generally.
On the first point, Bottum observes that, outside of a handful of victories - most notably the the Roberts and Alito nominations - conservatives are unconvinced by the media narrative that Bush has accomplished their goals:
The noise has been overwhelming since George W. Bush took office. Abortion, euthanasia, stem cells, public Christmas displays, same-sex marriage, pornography in the movies, faith-based initiatives, immigration, visible patriotism: We’ve been warned by the media, over and over again, that Republicans are reshaping America into a Puritan’s paradise. But, at the end of the day, the media mostly won and the Republicans mostly lost. Social conservatism is in little better shape now than it was when Bush was first elected. In many ways, it is in worse shape.In the larger sense, argues Bottum, Bush's failures have seriously damaged the public's perception of conservatism itself - not just social conservatism, but economic and neo- conservatism as well. There is a point about substance implicit in what Bottum is saying: had Bush successfully implemented conservative policies, the logic goes, the country would be in better shape - and the right would thus have remained in the public's good graces. Of course, faith in the ultimate efficacy of one's ideas underlies everyone's political views, so it's logical that Bottum would make this point. But, on the question of why Bush has not successfully advanced conservative policies, the argument turns back to perception.
Says Bottum, "The common turn among commentators, once they’ve recognized Bush’s weakness, has been to declare the betrayal of some form of authentic conservatism." But Bottum doesn't share this view:
[The] conclusion that the White House has flown under false colors is ludicrous. In all that he has tried to do-reform education, fix social security, restore religion to the public square, assert American greatness, appoint good judges-Bush has proved himself a conservative. Of course, along the way, he has also proved himself hapless. The problem isn’t his lack of conservatism. The problem is his lack of competence.The competence argument is a familiar one. Glenn Greenwald attacked it last year, though in his post - which was criticizing a Peggy Noonan op-ed - the separation between the "false colors" argument and the incompetence argument was not complete. Bottum is clarifying this distinction.
In Bottum's analysis, Bush has consistently attempted to do the "right" thing - it's just that the president has consistently lacked the political skills to succeed. He compares Bush to Clinton, who "seemed a man of enormous political competence and no principle." Bush, it appears, has been the inverse. As a result, "social-security reform is now dead for a generation," the No Child Left Behind Act was purged of its good ideas and hijacked by bad ones, and the GOP's "lack of political savvy" has cost conservatives dearly on judicial nominations.
Note the distinction between two kinds of incompetence: Bottum is not criticizing Bush for his incompetence as president, but as an agent of the conservative agenda. This failure has, in turn, poisoned that agenda in the mind of the public. What we have here is a failure to communicate.
You can see how perfectly this dovetails with the conservative line on the war in Iraq: that victory and defeat are largely matters of perception. Indeed, Bottum makes this case quite literally - although, unlike the Malkin crowd, he focuses his opprobrium not on the media, but on the Administration itself, which has failed to convince us that we are winning:
We have already been defeated in Iraq. Perhaps not in literal truth; a better policy, better implemented, might yet bring about a stable, democratic country. And certainly not in historical terms; Iraq is only an early chapter in what must be a long struggle against global Jihadism. But, at the very least, the battle for perception of the Iraq War has gone entirely against the United States. In the eyes of both the American public and the Islamic world, we have lost—and lost badly.Emphasis mine. Of course Bottum, like every war supporter, has little more than faith - and a limitless patience for occupation and casualties - upon which to pin his hopes for "victory." As long as we do not abandon the effort, "victory" can be projected ad infinitum into the future, always at some date yet to come. It is an unimpeachable concept, relying on an un-provable negative: you can't prove that victory won't happen - only that it hasn't happened yet. Meanwhile, the issue is almost entirely a matter of perception: we should be trying to convince people (Americans and "Jihadis" alike) that the endless path upon which we are embarked must lead, somehow, to victory.
But to finally call off the game would be to "lock in place the perception of defeat." And, concerned as Bottum is about the consequences of that perception for America generally, he's worried about the consequences for the conservative movement in particular. Specifically, he's worried about a return to the culture of the 1970s: social freedom, modest foreign policy, wide lapels and all.
Domestically, a large range of conservatives will seem discredited by an American defeat in Iraq, which is why their liberal and radical opponents so quickly, and fecklessly, embraced the claim that Iraq is lost. On crime, abortion, education, government spending—the whole litany of domestic concerns-the American conservative movement may well find itself starting over, back once again where it was in 1974. The result will be perhaps most disheartening for social conservatives, as decades of intellectual and political gains against abortion are frustrated.So here it comes together: the public's perception of the war in Iraq is linked to its perception of the conservative movement. A defeat in one theater will lead inevitably to collapse in the other.
Bottum, of course, is utterly at sea with regard to the motives of liberals. In terms of political cognition, you could say his theory of mind is severely underdeveloped. Of course, this isn't unusual on the right (nor, to be fair, is it exactly unknown on the left). Conservatives have been imputing false motives regarding the war to liberals since it began. Much of this has simply been sheer dishonesty for the sake of political opportunism. Yet it also appears clear that many conservatives, unable to separate the wars of perception from political reality, have fallen afoul of a critical rule of politics: "never believe your own bullshit."
And this is going to hurt the conservatives. For one thing, it limits their understanding of how the majority of Americans view the war and the Republican party. According to the mindset represented by Bottum, the public are misled by devious liberals who have outsmarted the president - well-meaning but bumbling - at every turn. Like other conservatives, Bottum is apparently incapable of conceiving of liberals as part of the public. Moreover, he fails to confront fully the public's disenchantment with conservatism. In the feedback loop of conservative discourse, the public are frustrated for the same reason that conservatives are frustrated: because six years of conservative government have mostly failed to advance the conservative agenda.
But of course, the more likely possibility is that the public is frustrated because six years of conservative government have simply been a disaster. Any public relations expert will tell you that you can only do so much to sell a bad product. Americans don't want competent politics, they want competent government. No amount of soft lighting, flattering camera angles, and retouched makeup is going to make the conservative experiment look any prettier. By shifting the blame to Bush, Bottum isn't doing his movement any favors, because his argument still leaves conservatives stuck in a quagmire of their own making: the unwinnable war of perception against reality.
Next - Part 2: Novak's Rebuttal
Labels: conservatives, First Things, Joseph Bottum
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:11 AM 0 comments Monday, March 05, 2007
A New Traveling Salvation Show?
I see that it's also sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Concord Coalition, which are generally considered somewhere on the center-right spectrum - but not as organs of the conservative movement. Quoting from the mission statement:
Anyone know anything about this? Anyone in Charleston or Cincinnati and want to check it out?
Noted for the record: the "Fiscal Wake-up Tour," which, according to the Heritage Foundation, "is crisscrossing America to alert the public to the danger of out of control federal spending. Next stops: Charleston and Cincinnati." Heritage reports that the tour was recently profiled on '60 Minutes.'
I see that it's also sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Concord Coalition, which are generally considered somewhere on the center-right spectrum - but not as organs of the conservative movement. Quoting from the mission statement:
The purpose of this Tour is to explain in plain terms why budget analysts of diverse perspectives are increasingly alarmed by the nation's long-term fiscal outlook. Our emphasis is on the key areas in which we have found consensus, such as:No progressive think-tanks appear to be connected to this, which is something of a concern. Once again it appears that the acceptable range of political discourse in America runs from center-right to right. It would not be a good thing for progressive voices to be left out of the Coming Big Budget Debate.
- The overall dimensions of the problem
- The nature of the realistic trade-offs that must be confronted in finding solutions
- The adverse and inequitable consequences for future generations if we fail to make serious changes, sooner rather than later.
Our mission is to cut through the usual partisan rhetoric and stimulate a more realistic public dialogue on what we want our nation's future to look like, along with the required trade-offs. We believe that elected leaders in Washington know there is a problem, but they are unlikely to act unless their constituents better understand the need for action, and indeed, demand it. Members of the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour do not necessarily agree on the ideal levels of spending, taxes and debt, but we do agree on the following key points:
- Current fiscal policy is unsustainable
- There are no free lunch solutions, such as cutting waste fraud and abuse or growing our way out of the problem.
- The best way to make the hard choices is through a bipartisan process with all options on the table.
- Public engagement and understanding is vital in finding solutions.
- This is not about numbers. It is a moral issue.
We remind audiences that each of the realistic options comes with economic and political consequences that must be carefully weighed, and that there must be tradeoffs. Those who want to raise taxes are asked to explain what level of taxation they are willing to support and the manner in which the new revenue should be raised. Those who argue that spending must come down from projected levels are asked which programs they would target and how the savings would be achieved. Those who are unwilling to do either are asked how much debt they are willing to impose on future generations.
Anyone know anything about this? Anyone in Charleston or Cincinnati and want to check it out?
Labels: economics, Fiscal Wake-Up Tour
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 5:59 PM 2 comments
CPAC: Heart of Darkness
According to the right-wing Washington Times,
Gingrich, continuing his non-campaign campaign, was on his home turf.
At any rate, the straw poll - reported in the post below - seems to be surrounded by a pretty sophisticated expectations game. For instance:
My sense is that there's an element of both, that for instance the Romney vote reflects more organization than enthusiasm. But at the same time, Newt has done plenty of organization himself - just not in the name of a presidential run. He's been building his mailing lists, he's got his 527, and he has spent the last decade cultivating his conservative fan base. I'm guessing that a few banquet tables, give or take, weren't going to make much difference anyway.
Reports on Giuliani have been mixed. The Washington Times article suggests Rudy did well:
The WaTimes suggests that Gilmore - who is trying to overcome his obscurity by claiming the "true conservative" mantle - did pretty well for himself:
Finally, on the subject of Coulter, I'll give a little - a little - bit of credit to the right: they have indeed been busy denouncing her. From the WaTimes article:
And out of this muck we're meant to get a clearer picture of the Republican presidential field. John McCain did not attend, so he looks a little less muddy - if also less viable. Rudy seems to be running on "electability" juice, while Romney is powered by organization. Gingrich, it seems, is biding his time, hoping to jump in to fill the conservative void at the heart of the GOP field. But he may find that conservatives, unwilling to tolerate such a void for so long, have sutured themselves around a Romney or a Rudy, imperfect as either one may be, in order to keep that heart beating.
Tomorrow I'll take a look at some of the other CPAC goings-on - those related less to presidential horse racing, and more to policy, strategy, and communication.
Now that the CPAC attendees have had a chance to unpack (and to advise us on hotels to avoid in DC), we're getting more comprehensive reports on how it all went down.
According to the right-wing Washington Times,
Michael S. Steele and Newt Gingrich were the biggest stars according to activists who attended the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference.Steele, of course, is a two-time loser (for U.S. Senate and RNC Chair) and isn't running for President, but he was well received at the Conservative Summit and at CPAC, and it seems clear that he's going to be hanging around as a conservative movement star-in-waiting. That kind of status generally comes with an expiration date, since you eventually have to do something to justify the buzz, but Steele's window may be larger than others, since he seems to have become the nation's most prominent black Republican (besides Condi). Considering the alternative, conservatives seem pretty happy to have Steele around - and who can blame them?
Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani pulled off CPAC's biggest coup, former Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III was the biggest surprise, and Ann Coulter was the biggest loser.
Gingrich, continuing his non-campaign campaign, was on his home turf.
"I got more bang for my buck than the other [2008 presidential hopefuls]," a smiling Mr. Gingrich told The Washington Times after he marched from the back of the Regency Ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, amid stirring music nearly drowned out by applause and cheers.Now, Newt hasn't announced yet. He's been coy, keeping himself in the public eye while criticizing the long campaign season. So I'd like to know exactly what words he used in place of "[2008 presidential hopefuls]".
At any rate, the straw poll - reported in the post below - seems to be surrounded by a pretty sophisticated expectations game. For instance:
Mr. Gingrich was the only top-tier potential contender for the Republican nomination who hadn't formed a presidential exploratory committee or bought any CPAC banquet tables for supporters. Yet in the largest presidential preference straw poll in the conference's history, he placed fourth (14 percent) -- ahead of Arizona Sen. John McCain (12 percent), who rejected an invitation to address the event.I've been praising Romney's legwork for a while now, but how much does "pre-event organization" really have to do with the straw poll results? Do contenders try to pack CPAC the way local pols might pack a Democratic club to win its endorsement? Does the CPAC straw poll really measure the temperature of the conservative movement, or does it mainly just reflect a petty test of the candidates' early organization?
Mr. Giuliani made his decision to accept CPAC's speaking invitation four days before the conference, yet managed to place second (17 percent) in the straw poll behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (21 percent), who had invested heavily in pre-event organization.
My sense is that there's an element of both, that for instance the Romney vote reflects more organization than enthusiasm. But at the same time, Newt has done plenty of organization himself - just not in the name of a presidential run. He's been building his mailing lists, he's got his 527, and he has spent the last decade cultivating his conservative fan base. I'm guessing that a few banquet tables, give or take, weren't going to make much difference anyway.
Reports on Giuliani have been mixed. The Washington Times article suggests Rudy did well:
"I think Giuliani is doing much better among conservative audiences than anybody could have imagined six months ago," said Michael Toner, a Federal Election Commission member appointed by President Bush.Other reports have indicated that Rudy "fell flat," delivering a long, rambling speech with little red meat, leaving the hall "to significantly softer applause than what he was greeted with at his entrance." An MSNBC article interviews New York Conservative Party chairman Mike Long, who offers a mixed assessment:
Following Mr. Giuliani's Friday speech, several previously skeptical conservatives stopped a reporter to express their admiration for how thoughtful Mr. Giuliani appeared and to say they liked the way he conveyed a sense of leadership.
Long has known Giuliani for years and knows Giuliani is no conservative. “In his heart, he’s a Democrat,” Long said in 1994 when Giuliani supported Democrat Mario Cuomo in the governor’s race. The Conservative Party provided the margin of victory for Republican George Pataki that year in his upset victory over Cuomo.Long, of course, has his own calculations to make. Never a great ally of the mayor, Long nonetheless has an opportunity to thrust his increasingly marginalized party into the spotlight and maybe play a little bit of the kingmaker. Moreover, the only hope for Republicans and Conservatives to avoid a wipeout in New York's state and local elections next year may be having Rudy Giuliani at the top of the ticket. So it's no surprise that Long was making friendly noises about Giuliani at the Conservative Party summit last month. On a larger level, it's indicative of the attitude conservatives seem to be taking toward Rudy: he's not perfect, but he sure is electable.
Giuliani ran three times for mayor of New York City; not once did he run on the conservative party line; in fact he ran on the liberal party line.
At this past weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington sponsored by the American Conservative Union (ACU), Long said, “There’s a clear separation (between conservatives and Giuliani) on important issues that a president has to embrace to win conservative minds and hearts.”
He added, “In all fairness to the mayor, he’s starting to go through an evolution, so we have a long way to go. We haven’t talked to him about anything yet at this stage of the game; we have not had a sit-down on issues.”
The WaTimes suggests that Gilmore - who is trying to overcome his obscurity by claiming the "true conservative" mantle - did pretty well for himself:
[W]hen questioned Saturday night after both Mr. Gilmore's and Mr. Gingrich's speeches, more CPAC attendees remembered the former Virginia governor's address and said the Virginian -- a former RNC chairman who headed the Gilmore Commission to assess terrorism threats -- got all the nuances right on foreign policy.On the other hand, Erick of RedState called Gilmore "a non-starter":
Gilmore proclaimed himself the only conservative, but he did not mention Brownback. He threw lots of punches to claim the mantel for himself and in the process barely got any applause from the crowd.The last paragraph makes me chuckle. Seems that, in the battle to be President of 9/11, proximity counts for a lot.
In fact, Jim Gilmore, in his efforts to go all out at CPAC, might have done himself in. He failed to attract a lot of enthusiasm from the student activists and his largest applause lines were about Ronald Reagan -- not himself.
He also tried mightily to remind people that Virginia, under his watch, suffered an attack on 9/11, just like Rudy. The difference, of course, was that Rudy was in the thick of it and Gilmore was not. And judging by his showing the straw poll, Gilmore did not get any traction with his late effort.
Finally, on the subject of Coulter, I'll give a little - a little - bit of credit to the right: they have indeed been busy denouncing her. From the WaTimes article:
"No question -- we shouldn't give Coulter a serious platform when she is seriously out of line," said Mrs. Mitchell, an Oklahoma native whose clients include many top Republican candidates. "She is the Howard Stern of so-called conservative commentators, and we should take her off the list in my view."From RedState:
Former Republican congressional staffer Gil Macklin agreed.
"Every time Ann Coulter opens her mouth, taste takes a holiday," Mr. Macklin said. "No blow is too low for Coulter to throw."
Ann Coulter's remarks at CPAC were crass and bigoted, and she dropped them into her schtick so that she could end with a bang and get some cheap publicity at the expense of everyone at CPAC.From the New York Times:
Three of the leading Republican presidential candidates on Saturday denounced one of their party’s best-known conservative commentators for using an antigay epithet when discussing a Democratic presidential contender at a gathering of conservatives here.We asked for denunciation, we're more or less getting it. Of course, it's hard to give the right too much credit here. For one thing, their pique seems to stem more from the damage Coulter has done to the conservative movement than from the hatefulness of her remarks. For instance, RedState:
The remarks by Ann Coulter, an author who regularly speaks at conservative events, were sharply denounced by the candidates, Senator John McCain of Arizona, Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Their statements came after Democrats, gay rights groups and bloggers raised a storm of protest over the remarks.
Perhaps the worst thing Coulter did with her bigoted tongue, though, was to hand the Democrats yet another free pass, over a weekend when the stories should have gone completely in the other direction. [...]Of course, it's fair to complain when the idiocy of one of your own hurts you politically. But the bigger problem is that it's not like they didn't know who Ann Coulter was. For God's sake! This is a woman who has essentially called for the bombing of the New York Times, the assassination of a president, and the murder of her political enemies. CPAC's organizers - and attendees, including the presidential candidates - knew what Ann Coulter was all about when she was booked. She's a nasty, vicious bigot - and she was one of the big draws of the conference. As the Houston Chronicle's "Blue Bayou" blog puts it:
It's indisputable that it's Coulter's right to say any vile, harebrained thing she can come up with. It's a free country, and she's got a big mouth, after all. Nobody is going to put her in jail for being an idiot. But it's not indisputable that we have to put up with it, and it's especially galling because were it not for her antics, this CPAC would have been an unqualified and unsullied success. If we continue to make tactical mistakes of this kind, the Democrats will win.
Here's what's I find funny: conservative friends will tell me that nobody really looks at Coulter as a serious person. With her calls for assassinations of public officials, general name-calling, and highly casual relationship with anything resembling facts, she's the court jester, a source of entertainment whom nobody really thinks of as one of the grown-ups.News reports described the crowd's reaction to Coulter's "faggot" remark as a brief moment of stunned silence, followed by laughter and applause. I think that pretty well helps us calibrate how the bulk of conservative activists feel about this kind of bigotry: they know at some level that it's repulsive - enough to give them pause - but ultimately, they either agree with it, or they don't want to be caught disagreeing with it. A moment of silence, followed by laughter and applause. And scrambling denunciations later, when they see how much damage their center-stage bigotry has done to them. So they're not exactly the Klan, but it's still pretty ugly.
But there she is, a featured speaker at this event... and there are the attendees, clapping for her.
Conservatives who like to get worked up about what they call "Bush derangement syndrome" (which is just an odd term for "disagreeing with Bush's failed policies"), or rude bloggers hired by Democratic campaigns, or anonymous comments on liberal blogs, should be asked to hold their thoughts until they can explain Coulter's presence in anything resembling serious - or even just adult - conservative circles.
And out of this muck we're meant to get a clearer picture of the Republican presidential field. John McCain did not attend, so he looks a little less muddy - if also less viable. Rudy seems to be running on "electability" juice, while Romney is powered by organization. Gingrich, it seems, is biding his time, hoping to jump in to fill the conservative void at the heart of the GOP field. But he may find that conservatives, unwilling to tolerate such a void for so long, have sutured themselves around a Romney or a Rudy, imperfect as either one may be, in order to keep that heart beating.
Tomorrow I'll take a look at some of the other CPAC goings-on - those related less to presidential horse racing, and more to policy, strategy, and communication.
Labels: 2008, CPAC, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:49 AM 0 comments
Bolton: "Wolf! Wolf!"
As you'll recall, the US abandoned the Agreed Framework in 2002, over American contentions that North Korea was developing a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program. Once the US had ditched the Agreed Framework, the Koreans went ahead and made nukes - real nukes - from the plutonium program that the Framework had been keeping in check. Now the Bush Administration is admitting that it did not have solid evidence of an HEU program to begin with.
Bolton responds as neoconservatives typically do when presented with facts: by attacking the messenger and doubling down on the argument. Criticizing the Times article for being short on "attributable sources," Bolton argues that there was not
As Jacob Weisberg has pointed out, there's a reason for this sudden Administration admission about the HEU intelligence:
Meanwhile, Bolton's off with the dead enders. He cites Nick Eberstadt, the AEI analyst who has been denouncing the six-party agreement and demanding that the Bush administration repeat its mistakes of 2002. And he actually quotes Rumsfeld: "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
Sure. But neither is it evidence of absence of the real frigging nukes that were the North Koreans' prize for your little neocon word games.
Let's rephrase that Rumsfeldism into something more accurately describing the neconservative mindset. Perhaps: "the absence of evidence is evidence for whatever the hell we want it to be."
When the true believer is confronted with evidence that his beliefs are wrong, he doesn't change his beliefs - he ups the ante. For instance: everyone's favorite "ambassador" has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which he's looking to counter the damage from last week's revelations about the Administration's catastrophic blunders in Korea.
As you'll recall, the US abandoned the Agreed Framework in 2002, over American contentions that North Korea was developing a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program. Once the US had ditched the Agreed Framework, the Koreans went ahead and made nukes - real nukes - from the plutonium program that the Framework had been keeping in check. Now the Bush Administration is admitting that it did not have solid evidence of an HEU program to begin with.
Bolton responds as neoconservatives typically do when presented with facts: by attacking the messenger and doubling down on the argument. Criticizing the Times article for being short on "attributable sources," Bolton argues that there was not
any reversal on actual facts, only an apparent shift in the "confidence level." My understanding is that the decrease in confidence stems from the absence of significant new or contemporary information about North Korea's activities. This lack of new information may be attributable to a loss of sensitive sources and methods, or it may be attributable to the effectiveness of President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative, or its creative financial sanctions, in drying up North Korea's procurement activity.Of course, Bolton is deliberately missing the point: to have sacrificed a successful agreement and allowed North Korea to develop real plutonium nuclear weapons, on the basis of debatable evidence about an HEU program that either did not exist, or was embryonic compared to the plutonium program, was a criminally stupid blunder.
As Jacob Weisberg has pointed out, there's a reason for this sudden Administration admission about the HEU intelligence:
Why are senior officials suddenly saying that North Korea might not have an enriched-uranium program? No new information has come to light on the issue. They are saying this for one reason: President Bush recently agreed to a nuclear deal with the North Koreans; the deal says nothing about enriched uranium (it requires them only to freeze their plutonium-bomb program); so, in order to stave off the flood of criticism from Bush's conservative base, senior officials are saying that the enriched uranium was never a big deal to begin with.As Weisberg says, at this point the Administration's intelligence is so politicized as to be completely useless. Who knows if there was an HEU program or not? All we get is intelligence tailored to suit the daily political needs of the White House.
Meanwhile, Bolton's off with the dead enders. He cites Nick Eberstadt, the AEI analyst who has been denouncing the six-party agreement and demanding that the Bush administration repeat its mistakes of 2002. And he actually quotes Rumsfeld: "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
Sure. But neither is it evidence of absence of the real frigging nukes that were the North Koreans' prize for your little neocon word games.
Let's rephrase that Rumsfeldism into something more accurately describing the neconservative mindset. Perhaps: "the absence of evidence is evidence for whatever the hell we want it to be."
Labels: Foreign Policy, John Bolton, Neoconservatives, North Korea
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:48 AM 0 comments Sunday, March 04, 2007
Mitt's Triumph
Apparently the Ann Coulter endorsement did him good: Mitt Romney won the CPAC straw poll by four points. The AP reports:
Despite his record of inconsistency on some social issues, the former Massachusetts governor got 21 percent of the 1,705 votes cast by paid registrants to the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference. They were asked who their first choice would be for the Republican nomination.Brownback got 15, Gingrich 14, and McCain, who didn't attend the conference, only 12.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor whose moderate stances on social issues irks the party's right wing, was second with 17 percent.
Labels: 2008, CPAC, Mitt Romney, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:31 AM 0 comments
Life Among the Unhinged
At some point I'll try to bring you a roundup of some of the coverage of CPAC from the right. Meanwhile, here's a good post from Digby on the Coulter-versy and what it says about the media and conservatives. He quotes Andrew Sullivan:
When you see [Coulter] in such a context, you realize that she truly represents the heart and soul of contemporary conservative activism, especially among the young. The standing ovation for Romney was nothing like the eruption of enthusiasm that greeted her. . . .Sure, says Digby - but Sully's a little late to the party:
Her endorsement of Romney today - "probably the best candidate" - is a big deal, it seems to me. McCain is a non-starter. He is as loathed as Clinton in these parts. Giuliani is, in her words, "very, very liberal." One of his sins? He opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That's the new standard. She is the new Republicanism. The sooner people recognize this, the better.
This hideous face of the Republican Party has been obvious to those of us who have been paying attention for a long, long time. It is the single most important reason why our politics have devolved into a filthy grudge match.Digby's giving voice to a deep-rooted and ever-growing liberal frustration. It's infuriating to be constantly confronted with such comprehensive and vicious up-is-downism. I try not to dwell on it for blood pressure-related reasons, but it needs to be said.
For a long time liberals were paralyzed or indifferent as the GOP demonized liberalism as the root of every problem and pathology in American society. We were derided as unamerican, treasonous and evil. After the congressional harrassment of the 90's, the partisan impeachment, the puerile coverage of campaign 2000 and the resulting installation of a Republican president under very dubious circumstances, Democrats of all stripes heard both the Republicans and the media smirking at our outrage and telling us to "get over it."
[...]
When Limbaugh said, "I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for," we didn't doubt him anymore.
When Ann Coulter said "we need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors," to rapturous applause at the 2002 CPAC, we knew she wasn't just kidding.
And, yes, when Andrew Sullivan said that we liberals in blue enclaves formed a fifth column, you'll have to forgive us for assuming he was among the people who wished to see us jailed or dead.
It continues today. Dinesh D'Souza just published a book saying that liberals are the cause of terrorism. Ramesh Ponneru calls us "The Party of Death." And when Michele Malkin then creates a career out of calling the left is "Unhinged" and the Washington Post treats her likes she's discovered the Holy Grail.
This is why it is so shocking to us when we see people like Howard Kurtz and various others call for the smelling salts when some members of the left have reacted in kind by saying hateful, violent things about Dick Cheney's assassination attempt. These anonymous commenters are not best selling authors making a personal televised appearance at a gathering that includes most of the Republican presidential candidates, members of congress and even the Vice President himself.
Labels: Andrew Sullivan, Ann Coulter, conservatives, Digby
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:15 AM 0 comments Saturday, March 03, 2007
Faggot
Doesn't it?
Hello?
Anyone?
Wow, it's just that I would have thought, after all that nonsense about a couple bloggers ... Y'know, Coulter was a featured speaker at the major event on the annual conservative calendar. She was introduced by a presidential candidate. She did use a vicious, bigoted slur to refer to another presidential candidate.
Ultimately there will be plenty of other sticks with which to beat Romney and all the other GOP candidates. The 2008 election is never going to won or lost by what Ann Coulter said at CPAC 2007.
But, reapeating some of what I said in the previous post, let's not be too surprised by the extremism and the hate on display. That's who these people are - maybe not all of them, but enough of them. And considering their moral obsession with demanding that Democrats denounce every semi-controversial statement made by anyone on the left - whether connected to the party and mainstream liberals or not - we can assume that the general conservative silence (albeit with a couple of notable exceptions) - indicates assent. These are indeed the kind of people who think it acceptable - indeed, applause-worthy - to publicly call a presidential candidate "faggot."
That's who they are.
UPDATE: I emailed Adam Nagourney, who's covering CPAC for the New York Times, to ask why he had omitted any mention of Coulter's remark. He replied:
I'll look at CPAC in more depth later this weekend.
UPDATE #2: Nagourney covers the fallout at the Caucus (the Times' national political blog)
That's a seriously ugly word up there. It stands out pretty clearly, doesn't it?
Doesn't it?
Hello?
Anyone?
Wow, it's just that I would have thought, after all that nonsense about a couple bloggers ... Y'know, Coulter was a featured speaker at the major event on the annual conservative calendar. She was introduced by a presidential candidate. She did use a vicious, bigoted slur to refer to another presidential candidate.
Ultimately there will be plenty of other sticks with which to beat Romney and all the other GOP candidates. The 2008 election is never going to won or lost by what Ann Coulter said at CPAC 2007.
But, reapeating some of what I said in the previous post, let's not be too surprised by the extremism and the hate on display. That's who these people are - maybe not all of them, but enough of them. And considering their moral obsession with demanding that Democrats denounce every semi-controversial statement made by anyone on the left - whether connected to the party and mainstream liberals or not - we can assume that the general conservative silence (albeit with a couple of notable exceptions) - indicates assent. These are indeed the kind of people who think it acceptable - indeed, applause-worthy - to publicly call a presidential candidate "faggot."
That's who they are.
UPDATE: I emailed Adam Nagourney, who's covering CPAC for the New York Times, to ask why he had omitted any mention of Coulter's remark. He replied:
> I was not there when it happened, having left theAs to Romney's connection, I don't know if "introduced" would be the precise word, but Hotline's blog did report it this way:
> room to write a deadline story about the
> presidential candidates, which was what I had gone
> there to cover. Heard about it much later; will
> figure out what to do about it this morning. Thanks
> for writing.
>
> P.S. I'm pretty certain she was not introduced by
> Mitt Romney; he had left the room at the same time I
> did.
Mitt Romney faces the biggest burden: he spoke right before Coulter and praised her... not knowing what she planned to say.At any rate, we may yet hear more about this.
I'll look at CPAC in more depth later this weekend.
UPDATE #2: Nagourney covers the fallout at the Caucus (the Times' national political blog)
Labels: Ann Coulter, conservatives, CPAC, Mitt Romney
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:02 AM 1 comments Friday, March 02, 2007
Yeah, They Pretty Much ARE That Crazy
At any rate, I bring him up because of a post at his blog about a recent poll of 63 conservative bloggers conducted by rightwingnews.com. Here are the first four questions, and the results:
Sure, the bloggers are cruder and more bluntly nasty than the Heritage Foundation and American Conservative Union types. But all they do is recycle - with less tact but more panache - the same talking points. Do you think they'd feel out of place at CPAC? Hell, a lot of them are probably going to CPAC and planning to have a merry old time. And - with the exception of question 3 - is there anything in the above results that doesn't basically jibe with what we've been getting out of the Bush administration?
They may be extremists compared to Americans in general, but they're right in line with the conservative movement that's been in power for the last six years.
If you're not familiar with Cliff Schecter, you should be. His too-infrequent appearances on MSNBC - some of which have managed to survive the attentions of YouTube's enforcers - offer the viewer the rare pleasure of watching a liberal pundit reduce conservative gasbags to scorched chitterlings. My own opinion is that progressives should be pushing the cable news programmers to agree that the "left" viewpoint for every show will only ever be provided by Schecter; I realize that this might be a bit of a drain on Cliff, but I'm sure we could take up a collection to keep him in caffeine pills.
At any rate, I bring him up because of a post at his blog about a recent poll of 63 conservative bloggers conducted by rightwingnews.com. Here are the first four questions, and the results:
1) Do you think the surge should go forward?Cliff comes to the poll via Andrew Sullivan, who, in his Tory way, is properly horrified. Says Sully:
Yes (61) -- 97%
No (2) -- 3%
2) Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?
Yes (53)-- 84%
No (10) -- 16%
3) Do you believe that the wall on the border will ever actually be completed?
Yes (6) -- 10%
No (56) -- 90%
4) Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?
Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%
The rightwing blogosphere is almost certainly to the right of most Republican voters, let alone independent voters who are open to the GOP. But I didn't expect quite this amount of loopiness.Or, as Schecter puts it:
Can these people seriously represent the thinking of the far right? These are the kinds of people who cheered as folks were burned at the stake, dunked witches at Salem and opposed teaching Darwin at the Scopes trial. If we do not beat them, they will continually drag our country backwards.Of course, the scary thing is that the "far right" they represent constitutes the better part of the conservative movement. Sullivan may be correct that these bloggers are to the right of most folks who pull the lever for the GOP, but it's this crowd who are running the show.
Sure, the bloggers are cruder and more bluntly nasty than the Heritage Foundation and American Conservative Union types. But all they do is recycle - with less tact but more panache - the same talking points. Do you think they'd feel out of place at CPAC? Hell, a lot of them are probably going to CPAC and planning to have a merry old time. And - with the exception of question 3 - is there anything in the above results that doesn't basically jibe with what we've been getting out of the Bush administration?
They may be extremists compared to Americans in general, but they're right in line with the conservative movement that's been in power for the last six years.
Labels: Blogs, Cliff Schecter, conservatives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 4:33 PM 2 comments
Bush Minima, Giuliani Maximus
Lucky for us, we'll have plenty of other material to work with.
Vernon Lee strikes again. Pondering the habit of editorial cartoonists like Mike Luckovich to depict Bush as a very tiny little man, Vernon points out how we blew it two years ago:
Democrats ... misfired terribly during the 2004 campaign in reinforcing those elements of Bush's character that Democrats hated and feared but were the entire basis for hard-core (white evangelical male) Republican support.Bolded text is my emphasis. Matt Stoller was right to point out that conservatives don't think like us. Stoller was making the point with regard to Giuliani's appeal to sociocons - the authoritarian personality makes up for the lack of gay-hating. Vernon's argument makes me wonder if liberals won't fall into the same trap with Rudy as with Bush. The thing that disturbs me most about Giuliani is his authoritarianism. But it's also the source of much of his support. If Rudy wins the GOP nomination, we may need to carefully consider how we plan to go after him, so that we don't end up reinforcing his strengths.
Depicting Bush as a swaggering cowboy or schoolyard bully perfectly captured and underlined the reassurance the archetypal Bush voter felt at having someone like Bush in charge. Now, while it wasn't particularly likely that such core supporters could have been moved into the Kerry column in 2004, they might at least have stayed home if they'd come to feel less buttressed in their masculinity via association with Republicans.
[...]
[I]f Bush supporters encourage the view that he's a cowboy, and Kerry supporters warn us that he's a cowboy - well, good cowboy or bad cowboy: Bush is a cowboy....I wish some 527 had instead specifically undercut that which Bush supporters valued.
Lucky for us, we'll have plenty of other material to work with.
Labels: political communication, Rudy Giuliani, Vernon Lee
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:41 AM 2 comments
Stop Making Sense (ICC Edition)
This is interesting. At Commentary Magazine's blog "Contentions," Max Boot argues that it's time for conservatives to make their peace with the International Criminal Court - which, he suggests, has actually been a pretty good thing:
Conservatives love to hate the International Criminal Court. Elaborate scenarios have been conjured up about how it could be politicized and turned into an instrument of anti-American animus. Fears have been raised that Henry Kissinger or Donald Rumsfeld could soon find himself in the dock. John Bolton spent an inordinate amount of time and energy when he was Undersecretary of State trying to coerce American allies into signing treaties pledging they would never send Americans for prosecution to the Hague.Boot points out that the court has been proving useful in prosecuting perpetrators of the Darfur genocide - and he regrets that the Bush administration wasn't willing to send Saddam Hussein to the ICC for what would have been a far more legitimate trial. While "this was a missed opportunity," Boot argues that
So far such alarmism has proven groundless. The ICC seems to be doing exactly what it ought to be doing—trying to hold real war criminals accountable for their actions in places where the local legal system does not function effectively.
[I]n the future, American officials, whether Republican or Democrat, should put aside their qualms and make use of the ICC wherever possible to promote the international rule of law, a longstanding American cause.I'll admit I haven't followed Boot's work very closely. The only other time I've cited him he was making equally level-headed points about the need for conservatives to honestly assess the evidence for climate change. Should we worry that somebody is going to revoke his VRWC credentials?
Labels: conservatives, Contentions, ICC, Max Boot
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:22 AM 0 comments
Bill Kristol Is Feelin' Fine
Reason the second: the Democratic Congress.
Of course, Kristol's real best hope is that the Democrats continue to believe what he's saying. Certainly the public will not look kindly on Democrats in 2008 if they fail to do - or even try - what they were elected to do in 2006: take the war out of the hands of failed ideologues like Kristol, and bring the troops home.
Kristol likes the look of the Republican field and thinks the Democratic field seems quite beatable. It's the kind of analysis you could get going either way, so make of it what you will. In this case, it seems to me like a fairly pedestrian exercise in partisan framing - considering the audience for which he's writing. At any rate, the most interesting reason for Republican revivification Kristol offers is number five:
But they'll be going around telling everybody that they have great ideas for taxation and health care. And it's on that storytelling front where they tend to win control of the national political narrative. Like I said, I'll check out these texts Kristol cites as examples of the great wealth of conservative ideas. If there really is anything innovative, I certainly will give them their due. But I suspect that, as with so many other conservative "ideas," what I'll find are a lot of cynical old anti-government time bombs dressed up in shiny packaging.
In one respect, however, Kristol is entirely correct: "It's worth remembering," he says, "that off-year elections often aren't predictors of the outcome of the next presidential one." 1994 told us nothing about 1996, nor did 1986 auger anything for 1988. If we think Democrats can coast to victory in 2008 based on general public disdain for Republicans alone, without any bold and well-articulated ideas, without any clear and unapologetic attempt to end the deeply unpopular war in Iraq, without actually doing anything in the next two years - then we're in for a nasty surprise.
In a Time column, everyone's favorite neocon tells us why "Republicans are smiling" despite their losses last November.
[M]y fellow conservatives and Republicans are pretty upbeat. After a rough 2006, conservative magazines are seeing an uptick in subscription renewals, right-wing websites are getting more hits, and Republican and conservative groups here at Harvard (yes, Harvard!) seem invigorated.Why all the good vibrations? Try not to act surprised when I tell you that Kristol cites his very own pet "surge" as reason one. Said surge, and the artful new arrangement of the deck chairs that accompanied it, "gave hope to those who still think success is possible in Iraq." Which includes nearly everyone at the Weekly Standard.
Reason the second: the Democratic Congress.
It's difficult to be in charge of Congress, especially when your grass roots are pushing you to do something about the war, and it's hard to do anything without seeming to undercut the troops or denying Petraeus a chance to succeed.Indeed - if you are Bill Kristol, and you are thoroughly convinced by your own talking points, then you look right past the part where the majority of Americans want the Democrats to do something about the war, regardless of GOP nonsense about "undercutting the troops," and you can't help but smile serenely.
Of course, Kristol's real best hope is that the Democrats continue to believe what he's saying. Certainly the public will not look kindly on Democrats in 2008 if they fail to do - or even try - what they were elected to do in 2006: take the war out of the hands of failed ideologues like Kristol, and bring the troops home.
Kristol likes the look of the Republican field and thinks the Democratic field seems quite beatable. It's the kind of analysis you could get going either way, so make of it what you will. In this case, it seems to me like a fairly pedestrian exercise in partisan framing - considering the audience for which he's writing. At any rate, the most interesting reason for Republican revivification Kristol offers is number five:
Fresh ideas. I don't sense that conservatism is exhausted. There's new thinking on domestic policy that could serve as the basis of an interesting agenda for the G.O.P. nominee. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam explain in their forthcoming book on "Sam's Club Republicans" how the G.O.P. can do a better job of responding to the anxieties of working and middle-class Americans in areas like tax policy and health insurance, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Yuval Levin suggests a complementary policy agenda--"Putting Parents First," he calls it--aimed at those same swing voters. In foreign policy, the U.S. will still be at war in 2008--and despite Bush's travails, Republicans still seem likely to be able to claim to be the party of American strength.Once you've stopped laughing over the part about Republicans being "the party of American strength," spare a thought for what Kristol's saying about domestic policy. I'll have a look at this "Putting Parents First" thingy, and maybe at the "Sam's Club Republicans" book as well. The point is not that Republicans can do anything signficant to help ordinary Americans - as we've seen from their record over the last six years. Conservatism seems ideologically exhausted, not re-invigorated.
But they'll be going around telling everybody that they have great ideas for taxation and health care. And it's on that storytelling front where they tend to win control of the national political narrative. Like I said, I'll check out these texts Kristol cites as examples of the great wealth of conservative ideas. If there really is anything innovative, I certainly will give them their due. But I suspect that, as with so many other conservative "ideas," what I'll find are a lot of cynical old anti-government time bombs dressed up in shiny packaging.
In one respect, however, Kristol is entirely correct: "It's worth remembering," he says, "that off-year elections often aren't predictors of the outcome of the next presidential one." 1994 told us nothing about 1996, nor did 1986 auger anything for 1988. If we think Democrats can coast to victory in 2008 based on general public disdain for Republicans alone, without any bold and well-articulated ideas, without any clear and unapologetic attempt to end the deeply unpopular war in Iraq, without actually doing anything in the next two years - then we're in for a nasty surprise.
Labels: 2008, conservatives, Presidential election, William Kristol
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:34 AM 0 comments Thursday, March 01, 2007
Right Makes Might Night at the Cooper Union
But all that aside, it really was a worthy event. The talk was 'moderated' by a still-hobbling Tim Russert, but - thankfully - Timmeh mostly stayed out of it, allowing Gingrich and Cuomo to drive the discussion.
Gingrich opened with another salvo aimed at the consultancy, repeating what he had said at the conservative summit about the long presidential campaign being little more than a "consultant full-employment program." I'm beginning to get the sense that Gingrich is trying to run for president by not running for president. Which isn't necessarily a bad strategy.
Certainly Newt was talking like a man who wants to be the leader of his party. First he laid out a trio of high-minded "process proposals" for the presidential campaign. He endorsed the idea of basing the campaign around a "Cooper Union dialogue," and suggested that the parties should agree to a series of bipartisan events in every key primary state, on the theory that such occasions could impose a limit on the level of rhetorical nastiness in the race. And, most interestingly, he proposed challenging every candidate in each party to agree that, upon winning the nomination, he or she would engage in nine ninety-minute Cooper Union-style "dialogues" with the other side. This, it seems to me, may be the best idea Newt Gingrich has ever had. For God's sake, imagine if we'd had that in 2004.
Displaying his simple genius for public speaking, Gingrich moved fluidly from his three process proposals to his three political points. The first was a typically Gingrichian futurist rhapsody about the boundless scientific and productive potential of the private sector, which is revolutionizing everything from cancer research to the way you eat your toast - and which contrasts sharply to the "stunning decay" of the public sector. The argument seemed to lack the subtlety that might have been required for a fairly well-informed audience - are we really supposed to listen to this without thinking of the countless innovations and technological triumphs brought to us by government research and investment? But it was a surprisingly conservative crowd, probably because the event was co-sponsored by Newt's own organization, and people seemed enthusiastic enough.
Newt's rhetorical move - and Cuomo called him on it - was to recast the failures of the Bush administration as failures of government per se. The catastrophe in New Orleans, for instance, "is largely a tragedy of government" - and here he actually blamed victims of Katrina for being uneducated and "incapable of getting out of the way of a hurricane." I try not to make angry clucking sounds in public places, but I found myself unable to resist this time. And he even upped the level of audacity - calling the Iraq war a failure of government. Not a failure of conservative government, but of government full stop. Evidently this is because some guy he knew wanted to open a factory in Iraq but the red tape got in the way. Those Sunni insurgents can do nasty things with red tape, I guess.
Newt's other points were to do with national security and health care. He argued that America was "not serious" about the threat of a Korean nuclear weapon - and if by "America" he meant "neoconservatives and the Bush administration," he was surely correct - and, not surprisingly, he made another plug for Health Savings Accounts. He delved into the world of James Bond a bit, advocating smuggling across the Korean border and sabotage at an Iranian refinery.
But the important thing - the very important thing - is not what Gingrich says (which is mostly nonsense), but how he says it. I counted at least seven actual names Gingrich cited - two fictional examples, the rest real. He talked about Kevin Matthews, a Special Forces soldier with a young baby named Dean. "I worry about Dean's future," said Newt. And he told a long story about Mike Leavitt, HHS Secretary and former governor of Utah, who went through Kafkaesque trials with his health insurance, trying to get the machines he needed to help with his sleep apnea. The lesson? Health Savings Accounts are a great thing. It makes no logical sense, but you believe it when Newt tells it to you. The foundation of Gingrich's political talk was personalized storytelling. I'm going to keep harping on this until it seems like Democrats finally get it.
It isn't that I don't love good old-fashioned liberal oratory - and nobody does it better than Mario Cuomo, who spoke with passion and fire about poverty, religion, and the need to "share benefits and burdens." Listening to Cuomo - even when, as last night, he runs fifteen minutes overtime - is a pleasure. But too many Democrats these days seem lost in an airless, focus-grouped middle-ism, struggling to articulate how their ideas matter to the lives of ordinary Americans.
And that's a shame, because it shouldn't be so hard to do. Newt Gingrich can do it with ideas that make no sense at all. So why can't we do it with good ones?
Say it with me: speak personally first, historically second, and politically last.
At Cooper Union on that day in February 1860, Lincoln called for clarity:
Cross-posted at Progressive Historians
Justin and I managed to make it into last night's "Lincoln-inspired" debate between Newt Gingrich and Mario Cuomo, at Cooper Union's Great Hall. The tone, particularly during the various introductions, was a tad self-congratulatory - apparently the idea of substantive political discussion has become radically old-school. I don't know what to say about the fact that Cooper Union's connection with Lincoln did not involve Abe's debates with Steven Douglas, nor any exercise in bipartisan dialogue, but a speech in which Lincoln drew a clear partisan line in the sand. And I have nothing polite to say about the Great Hall's sightlines.
But all that aside, it really was a worthy event. The talk was 'moderated' by a still-hobbling Tim Russert, but - thankfully - Timmeh mostly stayed out of it, allowing Gingrich and Cuomo to drive the discussion.
Gingrich opened with another salvo aimed at the consultancy, repeating what he had said at the conservative summit about the long presidential campaign being little more than a "consultant full-employment program." I'm beginning to get the sense that Gingrich is trying to run for president by not running for president. Which isn't necessarily a bad strategy.
Certainly Newt was talking like a man who wants to be the leader of his party. First he laid out a trio of high-minded "process proposals" for the presidential campaign. He endorsed the idea of basing the campaign around a "Cooper Union dialogue," and suggested that the parties should agree to a series of bipartisan events in every key primary state, on the theory that such occasions could impose a limit on the level of rhetorical nastiness in the race. And, most interestingly, he proposed challenging every candidate in each party to agree that, upon winning the nomination, he or she would engage in nine ninety-minute Cooper Union-style "dialogues" with the other side. This, it seems to me, may be the best idea Newt Gingrich has ever had. For God's sake, imagine if we'd had that in 2004.
Displaying his simple genius for public speaking, Gingrich moved fluidly from his three process proposals to his three political points. The first was a typically Gingrichian futurist rhapsody about the boundless scientific and productive potential of the private sector, which is revolutionizing everything from cancer research to the way you eat your toast - and which contrasts sharply to the "stunning decay" of the public sector. The argument seemed to lack the subtlety that might have been required for a fairly well-informed audience - are we really supposed to listen to this without thinking of the countless innovations and technological triumphs brought to us by government research and investment? But it was a surprisingly conservative crowd, probably because the event was co-sponsored by Newt's own organization, and people seemed enthusiastic enough.
Newt's rhetorical move - and Cuomo called him on it - was to recast the failures of the Bush administration as failures of government per se. The catastrophe in New Orleans, for instance, "is largely a tragedy of government" - and here he actually blamed victims of Katrina for being uneducated and "incapable of getting out of the way of a hurricane." I try not to make angry clucking sounds in public places, but I found myself unable to resist this time. And he even upped the level of audacity - calling the Iraq war a failure of government. Not a failure of conservative government, but of government full stop. Evidently this is because some guy he knew wanted to open a factory in Iraq but the red tape got in the way. Those Sunni insurgents can do nasty things with red tape, I guess.
Newt's other points were to do with national security and health care. He argued that America was "not serious" about the threat of a Korean nuclear weapon - and if by "America" he meant "neoconservatives and the Bush administration," he was surely correct - and, not surprisingly, he made another plug for Health Savings Accounts. He delved into the world of James Bond a bit, advocating smuggling across the Korean border and sabotage at an Iranian refinery.
But the important thing - the very important thing - is not what Gingrich says (which is mostly nonsense), but how he says it. I counted at least seven actual names Gingrich cited - two fictional examples, the rest real. He talked about Kevin Matthews, a Special Forces soldier with a young baby named Dean. "I worry about Dean's future," said Newt. And he told a long story about Mike Leavitt, HHS Secretary and former governor of Utah, who went through Kafkaesque trials with his health insurance, trying to get the machines he needed to help with his sleep apnea. The lesson? Health Savings Accounts are a great thing. It makes no logical sense, but you believe it when Newt tells it to you. The foundation of Gingrich's political talk was personalized storytelling. I'm going to keep harping on this until it seems like Democrats finally get it.
It isn't that I don't love good old-fashioned liberal oratory - and nobody does it better than Mario Cuomo, who spoke with passion and fire about poverty, religion, and the need to "share benefits and burdens." Listening to Cuomo - even when, as last night, he runs fifteen minutes overtime - is a pleasure. But too many Democrats these days seem lost in an airless, focus-grouped middle-ism, struggling to articulate how their ideas matter to the lives of ordinary Americans.
And that's a shame, because it shouldn't be so hard to do. Newt Gingrich can do it with ideas that make no sense at all. So why can't we do it with good ones?
Say it with me: speak personally first, historically second, and politically last.
At Cooper Union on that day in February 1860, Lincoln called for clarity:
Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man.Cuomo reminds us that our progressive principles matter, that they speak to the very core of the American experience - of the human experience. The problem isn't to search for some sophistical contrivance whereby these principles seem less likely to draw fire from the right or from the media. The problem is simple: to speak of these values at work in the lives of ordinary Americans. With names.
Cross-posted at Progressive Historians
Labels: conservatives, Mario Cuomo, Newt Gingrich, progressives
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 4:45 PM 2 comments
The Real Korean Blunder
The foolishness of the neoconservative hard line represented by people like Eberstadt and Griffin is further illustrated by an article in yesterday's New York Times which reports that the White House is publicly admitting that it doesn't even really know if the Koreans have an HEU program. As you'll recall, it was neocon hard-nosing over the HEU issue that prompted the Bush administration to abandon the Agreed Framework in 2002, thus encouraging the Koreans to go ahead and build nukes with the plutonium program that the Agreed Framework had been keeping in check.
Josh Marshall perfectly sums up the horrifying incompetence of it all:
And yet the wheels keep churning at AEI, and people keep pretending to take this crowd seriously.
This week's Right-Wing Think Tank Review covered an AEI article by Nicholas Eberstadt and Christopher Griffin which called the recent six-party agreement a "strategic blunder," largely because it failed to address the issue of a North Korean uranium enrichment program, as well as the plutonium weapons the Koreans may have already built.
The foolishness of the neoconservative hard line represented by people like Eberstadt and Griffin is further illustrated by an article in yesterday's New York Times which reports that the White House is publicly admitting that it doesn't even really know if the Koreans have an HEU program. As you'll recall, it was neocon hard-nosing over the HEU issue that prompted the Bush administration to abandon the Agreed Framework in 2002, thus encouraging the Koreans to go ahead and build nukes with the plutonium program that the Agreed Framework had been keeping in check.
Josh Marshall perfectly sums up the horrifying incompetence of it all:
Because of a weapons program that may not even have existed (and no one ever thought was far advanced) the White House got the North Koreans to restart their plutonium program and then sat by while they produced a half dozen or a dozen real nuclear weapons -- not the Doug Feith/John Bolton kind, but the real thing.Absolutely stunning stupidity. The neocons and their pet politicians in the Bush administration have done incalculable damage to American national security and to global stability. As Marshall points out, "In this decade there's been no stronger force for nuclear weapons proliferation than the dynamic duo of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush."
And yet the wheels keep churning at AEI, and people keep pretending to take this crowd seriously.
Labels: American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy, George Bush, North Korea
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:03 PM 0 comments
Circling the Void
Novak relates how a pollster in the employ of former Virginia governor James Gilmore was able to catapult his client ahead of the Republican field in Iowa by letting poll respondents in on the frontrunners' dirty little liberal secrets. The poll, by political consultant Kieran Mahoney, first showed McCain at 33 percent, Giuliani at 31.5, Romney at 8.8, and the obscure Gilmore at 1.8.
There's nothing new or surprising about push-polls. They are of course designed to produce counter-intuitive results by carefully trashing some candidates while building up others. But the degree of fluidity in the GOP field indicated by Mahoney's poll is somewhat interesting. To Novak, this reinforces the emerging consensus on the right that none of the current candidates will do - "without question," he says, "there is a conservative void."
Novak points out that each of the frontrunners is trying to take advantage of the situation by talking up the liberal tendencies of the others:
If Newt is too liberal, then I'm not sure the right can be helped. But I suspect that Gingrich would indeed find a receptive audience among conservative primary voters. He's certainly got the skills to appeal to them. So what is he up to? He seems to be running a sort of non-campaign campaign - denouncing the long presidential season while taking care to maintain a high public profile. I saw him at Cooper Union last night - I'll report on that later today. It certainly doesn't seem impossible that Newt is positioning himself to ride to the rescue when conservatives begin to despair en masse about their presidential options.
Ignore your better judgment and venture over to Townhall, where Robert Novak is having some fun with a push-poll (that reminds me of the old Highlights Magazine motto, "Fun with a Purpose," which I, as a young lad, always read as "Fun with a Porpoise" - to my perpetual disappointment, since the magazine almost invariably failed to include any dolphin-related material whatsoever).
Novak relates how a pollster in the employ of former Virginia governor James Gilmore was able to catapult his client ahead of the Republican field in Iowa by letting poll respondents in on the frontrunners' dirty little liberal secrets. The poll, by political consultant Kieran Mahoney, first showed McCain at 33 percent, Giuliani at 31.5, Romney at 8.8, and the obscure Gilmore at 1.8.
The polltakers next "pushed" -- alleging information about each candidate that could alienate conservative voters. McCain: opposed tax cuts, favored "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, opposed a ban on same-sex marriages. Romney: "refused to ban" abortion in Massachusetts, committed to "full equality" for gays and lesbians, put health care in the hands of bureaucrats. Giuliani: supported Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo's re-election in New York, is pro-gay rights and pro-choice, supports gun control.The coup de grace came when respondents were plied with information about Gilmore's true-blue conservative record, upon which the unknown governor was boosted into a ten-point lead.
That additional information dropped Giuliani by 9 percentage points to 22.3 percent and Romney by 5 points to 3.8 percent, while McCain rose 2 points to 35.3 percent. The unknown Gilmore was constant at 1.3 percent.
There's nothing new or surprising about push-polls. They are of course designed to produce counter-intuitive results by carefully trashing some candidates while building up others. But the degree of fluidity in the GOP field indicated by Mahoney's poll is somewhat interesting. To Novak, this reinforces the emerging consensus on the right that none of the current candidates will do - "without question," he says, "there is a conservative void."
Novak points out that each of the frontrunners is trying to take advantage of the situation by talking up the liberal tendencies of the others:
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) attracting right-wingers nationwide to Washington this weekend, Citizens United will distribute a 23-page attack on McCain. "He's no Ronald Reagan," it begins, and concludes: "John McCain is not a conservative." (McCain is the only announced Republican presidential hopeful not scheduled to speak at CPAC.) Simultaneously, McCain operatives are putting out material that depicts Giuliani riding into City Hall on the shoulders of the New York Liberal Party as a throwback to the old Tammany Hall Democratic machine.But of course, that's a circular firing squad if there ever was one. Is there any candidate who can credibly fill the conservative void? Novak cites Newt Gingrich, but suggests that even Newt's conservative credentials aren't perfect.
If Newt is too liberal, then I'm not sure the right can be helped. But I suspect that Gingrich would indeed find a receptive audience among conservative primary voters. He's certainly got the skills to appeal to them. So what is he up to? He seems to be running a sort of non-campaign campaign - denouncing the long presidential season while taking care to maintain a high public profile. I saw him at Cooper Union last night - I'll report on that later today. It certainly doesn't seem impossible that Newt is positioning himself to ride to the rescue when conservatives begin to despair en masse about their presidential options.
Labels: 2008, conservatives, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election, Republicans
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:53 AM 0 comments 
