This Week in Conservative Organs: Bushhead Revisited

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.



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.

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.

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."

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.




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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

What might have been. Sigh...




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

  This Week in Conservative Organs: Muddy Waters

Sometimes all we liberals want is a little moral clarity. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and justice should be done. Well honey, ain't no way in the world could we be satisfied. Our conservative organists are well versed in the postmodern possibilities of multiple truths, and of all the shadows they cast on America, the one they're trying hardest to cast these days is the shadow of doubt.




Reasonable doubt, mind you. Exhibit A: The trial of one I. Lewis Libby. Writing at the National Review, Byron York asks: "did Fitzgerald prove his case?" On the charge of lying about his conversation with Matthew Cooper, York doesn't think so:

Certainly Fitzgerald’s evidence for the two Cooper Counts is quite weak. Libby says one thing, while Cooper says another. It’s entirely possible the jury simply will not accept Fitzgerald’s allegation in the absence of more definitive evidence.

Tim Russert, though, is a little more skilled at giving the impression of truthiness, and York suggests that his testimony may be more damaging to Scooter. Still, "there is no more documentary evidence to support Russert’s story than there is to support Cooper’s," says York. What's more, Russert himself could not absolutely guarantee that he was 1000% percent sure about every detail:

[FBI agent Jack] Eckenrode, who took notes but did not record the conversation, wrote that “Russert does not recall stating to Libby, in this conversation, anything about the wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson. Although he could not completely rule out the possibility that he had such an exchange, Russert was at a loss to remember it, and moreover, he believes that this would be the type of conversation that he would or should remember. Russert acknowledged that he speaks to many people on a daily basis and it is difficult to reconstruct some specific conversations, particularly one which occurred several months ago.”

During the trial, Libby’s lawyers emphasized the “not completely rule out the possibility” and the “difficult to reconstruct some specific conversations” parts of Eckenrode’s notes in hopes of introducing some doubts in the jurors’ minds about Russert’s recollection.

So what might it take to propel the jury out beyond that shadow of a doubt? Well, there's always sheer liberal fecklessness:

In the end, it seems hard to believe that Libby will be acquitted on all counts. The jury is, after all, a District of Columbia jury, and it stretches the imagination to believe they would unanimously exonerate Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.

Setting aside the fact that there are probably few places anywhere in the country where you could assemble twelve individuals who wouldn't like to stick it to Dick Cheney, York suggests that Libby's defense just may have raised enough doubts to get Scooter off the hook on at least some of the charges.

But of course there is another shadow in this case, and as Patrick Fitzgerald has pointed out, it looms over the Vice President. York, in the next installment of his trial coverage, complains that "the undertone of Fitzgerald’s argument, and, in retrospect, of his entire investigation, was that a simple effort at political pushback — the bid to discredit Wilson — was somehow a criminal act."

Here York gets to play public defender for the Bush administration. He's got the burden of proof on his side, since, as Judge Walton pointed out, this case is specifically not about whether or not Valerie Plame was in fact under cover, or whether the administration deliberately and illegally outed her. The case is about whether Scooter Libby lied to the FBI and to a grand jury. Thus, technically, one can analyze the case without discussing whether there were any misdeeds perpetrated by the White House, or the Office of the Vice President. There may or may not be a forest here, argues York, but the important thing is what to make of all the damn trees:

After three years of investigation, Fitzgerald did not charge anyone with leaking Mrs. Wilson’s identity. Yet throughout the trial, Fitzgerald attempted to create an atmosphere of accusation, an accusation that Libby and Cheney and the Bush White House criminally exposed a covert CIA operative. On Tuesday, he reached for the big payoff.

The problem was, of course, that he had no proof of what he was saying.

Because, of course, he was not allowed to offer any such proof. And thus the shadow of doubt returns, this time shielding the administration. Sure, there was an "effort at political pushback," and sure, there was a CIA operative whose cover was most likely blown in the course of the effort, and sure it's a bit silly to imagine that Scooter Libby cooked this all up on his own, especially given the public record. But that's not what's on trial here.

York observes that "a trial ... is not necessarily a search for truth." Which may be lucky for Dick Cheney.

ALSO AT NRO... Bill Buckley seeks to muddy the waters on the evolution "debate," specifically over whether John McCain should be considered a fool for accepting an invitation to speak at the neo-creationist Discovery Institute. Hey, says Buckley, let's not rush to judgment:

The questions are profound, and the arguments subtle. It is not reasonably expected of Senator McCain, or any other contender for the presidency, that in his public appearances he will explicate all the conundrums.

Indeed. We shouldn't expect the Senator to have figured out all the nuances of whether it's crazy to go around saying the earth is flat.

Evidently, the Buckley piece generated some complaints, as John Derbyshire feels compelled to offer a rebuttal - though, when you're dealing with the patron saint of your movement, a rebuttal can come across looking almost like an apologia. The Derb ruminates interestingly - if somewhat confusingly - on the psychology of human interaction, especially as it pertains to religion and politics - and he points out that the methodology of science doesn't really accomodate such psychological practices. The conclusion, I think, is that scientists and creationists will never understand each other, and we should understand that these debates are just always going to be with us. All in all, an entirely moderate piece - though I'm not sure whether moderation in the pursuit of reality is a virtue.

MEANWHILE... Kathryn Jean Lopez recounts Mitt Romney's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week: dissed twice in the Washington Post, mocked at NRO, exposed in the Boston Globe (not to mention dumped at RedState) - should the good Governor pack it in? No way, says K-Lo: "it's way early." Lopez quotes us a couple of experts:

Don’t rush to any conclusions, some professional politics-watchers say. “Romney can be saved — no religious pun intended,” University of Virginia professor and oft-quoted horserace expert Larry Sabato tells NRO. “A presidential campaign, especially this one, is a long and winding road. He has the money, the basic skills, and the fundamental charisma to overcome his challenges.”

“It’s still early. Romney can recover,” Republican pollster Robert Moran, vice president of Strategy One, agrees. “The real question may be ‘when will McCain and Giuliani implode?’ Neither of these two is a good fit for the base, and the conservative media will batter these two.”

Further reinforcement is offered by James Bopp Jr., who tells us that Romney is a true social conservative - even if only lately. The point, says Bopp, is that pro-lifers are always trying to make converts, so why should they reject one who's running for president? Yeah, sure he's a Mormon, but:

his faith should be viewed by social conservatives as a good sign, not as a matter of concern. The Mormon religion, while having tenets that Christians do not share, is profoundly conservative in its support for life, family, and marriage. Thus, Romney’s religion reinforces, rather than conflicts with, his conversion.

And what are your other choices? Giuliani? McCain? Please:

the fact remains that Romney opposes public funds for embryo-destructive research that McCain and Giuliani support. Romney has fought for a federal marriage amendment and McCain and Giuliani oppose one. There is the simple question of whether social conservatives want someone who is currently on their side or someone who currently opposes them.

At least someone at NRO is seeking clarity.

MISC'ALLY... Bruce Bartlett blames Bush for choosing a Vice President with no "ambitions of his own" [Er, WTF? - ed.] thus depriving the GOP of a presidential heir apparent; Thomas Sowell reveals how the poor are "human shields" for those whose true interest in the welfare state is government control of the golf courses; David Lewis Schaefer takes the National Park Service to task for unpatriotically failing to gloss over Jim Crow; and Victor Davis Hanson tells us that "Democratic senators and candidates should simply confess that ... most of the earlier reasons to remove Saddam remain valid." Which is a great point, if by "valid" Hanson means "completely and totally debunked."




I have a feeling that TWICO's favorite honor is only one more brilliant column away from being renamed the "R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Up-is-Downism Award." R. has done it again, this time excoriating the Democrats for pretending that Congress has anything to do with war powers. Just what are these jokers up to?

If they can effectively hamstring our efforts in Iraq, they somehow think the American electorate will blame the whole thing on the Republicans.

Sussed! I can't imagine how the American people could possibly blame the Iraq debacle on the Republican party, but you can always count on the devious libs to find a way. And the result?

The more Iraq descends into anarchy, the more likely the American people will whoop it up for the political party that, as the Washington Post has put it, linked "support for President Bush's war-funding request to strict standards of resting, training and equipping combat forces."

Well, only if the Republicans don't rig the whooping machines next November. At any rate, as R. tells us, the point is that "the Democrats' political meddling in this war is obviously dragging it out and endangering our troops."

And certainly, the fact that the Iraq war has dragged on longer than World War II can be blamed on the Democrats, who after all were the ones who failed to plan it properly and then had total control of government for three and a half years while everything went to hell. And then there's the fact that Democrats have been misleading the public: R. points out that they "fabricated a complaint, to wit, 'Bush lied to us about WMDs.'" Whatevs, Dems! Bush lied honestly!

ALSO AT THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR... G. Tracy Mehan, III is sort of cute how he's totally blown away by the fact that "only 17" Republican members of the House voted for the anti-escalation resolution:

Discipline within the GOP is truly a sight to behold. Despite predictions of 50, even 60 Republican votes for the Democratic leadership's anti-surge resolution, only a fraction of that number actually voted for it.

What's this game called? The Expectations Game? No sir, I've never - MY GOD THAT'S AMAZING.

Mehan thinks that, far from being split, the GOP is actually pulling together over the Iraq war, which is good, because as his fellow 'III' - W. James Antle III - observes, things aren't so hot on the social front. Why, wonders Antle, are McCain and Romney such incompetent boobs when it comes to picking up the abortion stick and beating Guiliani with it? At least Rudy hasn't joined the pandering, and that consistency is probably why he's not taking hits from the sociocons. Says Antle: "perhaps the moral of the story is this: If you can't respect life, at least try to respect pro-lifers' intelligence."

MEANWHILE, Lisa Fabrizio reacts negatively to her readers' readiness to believe Rudy when he says he'll appoint "originalist" judges. A true originalist, argues Fabrizio, would have done the right thing as mayor and let Manhattan sidewalk vendors sell Uzis to all comers. And then she makes a bid for the Up-is-Downism award:

It seems to me that he is open to abuse of the U.S Constitution in order to serve a "greater good." I suspect that the overwhelming majority of conservatives would agree that when the supreme law of the land is at stake, the end can never justifies the means.

Except, you know, every so often.

AND... The Prowler reports that Mitt's getting Jeb folk while McCain is losing Hollywood folk; Peter Hannaford says "Karl Rove Was Wrong" (who knew that could happen?) - in the age of 24-hour cable news cycles, a two-year-long presidential campaign is just about right; Jackie Mason compares Anna Nicole to a bakery; and Megan Basham pines for the days when the dirty hippies actually dug Jesus: "he even inspired a colorful and refreshingly non-blasphemous musical and film." You don't see Amanda Marcotte in Godspell!, that's my point here.




At the Weekly Standard, Victorino Matus explains the joys of 'Civilization,' the video game. It's actually an interesting piece, if pitched somewhat towards the "get off my lawn" crowd, who need some reassurance as to why the whole thing amounts to something more than just a buncha damn beatnik nonsense. But there's an itchy irony you start to feel, reading an article extolling the virtues of a game that lets you be a Ceasar or a Napolean - considering that it's published at the Weekly Standard. Matus quotes the game's creator, Sid Meier, saying that "the game kind of lets you be yourself," and you start to think about what that means to some of this crowd, and Meier says that:

"people like to be in these positions in games that they probably don't have a chance to be in real life and it tapped into that fantasy to a certain extent of being the leader of a civilization and having the destiny of all these people depending on you, and that was fun."

and you just get the damn creeps.

But there's this funny line from Meier, who as a kid played 'Risk' but not 'Diplomacy':"You had to have friends to play Diplomacy so that kind of left me out." Speaking as an American citizen, Sid, I know how you feel.

MEANWHILE, the Standard's own champion civilization-game-player, Bill Kristol, introduces us to the "slow-bleed" meme, in yet another one of his bitter anti-anti-war screeds; Joseph Leconte blames liberals for not believing conservatives when they shout "wolf!" over Iran; Michel Gurfinkiel gives us the "good news" about the French presidential election, which is that both major candidates are pretty conservative; Igor Khrestin tells us that Russian President Putin's harsh criticism of U.S. foreign policy "does not indicate a significant shift in policy;" and Peter Berkowitz plays a nifty little moral equivilance game, where he balances Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter, who have accused liberals of treasonously collaborating with the terrorist enemy who not long ago killed thousands of Americans, and the latter of whom has more or less openly called for the deaths of her political opponents, with Alan Wolfe who once used the writings of Carl Schmitt to analyze Republican political strategy. Muddy waters indeed.

I've actually got more to say on that last article, and so at some point I'll say it, but for now, my keyboard won't write no more.

Have a great weekend.

Labels: American Spectator, National review, TWICO, Weekly Standard

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:16 PM 0 comments

  Huckabee: Conservative or What?

Those looking for evidence of a continuing strain in the libertarian-social conservative alliance would do well to consider the right's decidedly lukewarm reaction to Mike Huckabee. Jennifer Rubin has a good summary of the debate at the National Review.

Rubin suggests that "most Americans know him for his remarkable effort in losing 110 pounds and his success as a marathon runner," which surprises me, as I'm not sure that most Americans know anything about Huckabee at all - if they did, he'd probably be more of a star. At any rate, Rubin goes on to explain the Arkansas governor's appeal to social conservatives:

He says without hesitation: “On the social issues, my political viewpoint is based on my core values and spiritual convictions. While I am deeply pro-life, I also believe that our commitment to life doesn’t stop at birth, but instead to do everything possible to help all children have what they need to realize their full potential.” Maggie Gallagher [last seen 'defending marriage' at the conservative summit - ed.], president of the Institute of Marriage and Public Policy, counts herself as a “fan” of the governor’s efforts to reduce “family fragmentation” and out of wedlock births and unnecessary divorce. He signed bills outlawing same sex marriage, requiring parental consent for abortion, and mandating notification by abortion providers to prospective parents that the unborn baby may feel pain. He also signed one of three state covenant-marriage laws, allowing couples to elect to marry under conditions that permit divorce only after appropriate counseling and when there has been a “total and complete” breach of the relationship.

But on the other side of the fusionist coin: while Governor Huckabee initially looked good to economic conservatives, signing a $70 million tax cut and a "Property Taxpayer's Bill of Rights," things quickly deteriorated.

By the end of his second term he had raised sales taxes 37 percent, fuel taxes 16 percent, and cigarettes taxes 103 percent, leading to a jump in total tax revenues from $3.9 billion to $6.8 billion. The Cato Institute gave him a failing grade of “F” on its fiscal report card for 2006 and an only marginally better but still embarrassing “D” for his entire term. Both as a governor and now as a presidential candidate Huckabee has declined to sign a “no tax” pledge. Recalling that Huckabee has said that he would only raise taxes if his arm were twisted, Grover Norquist of ATR responded: “He has a history of allowing his arm to be twisted and twisting other’s arms.”

He was not the poster child for smaller government. During his tenure, the number of state government workers in Arkansas increased over 20 percent. Under Governor Huckabee’s watch, state spending increased a whopping 65.3 percent from 1996 to 2004, three times the rate of inflation, and the state’s general obligation debt shot up by almost $1 billion. As Grover Norquist quipped, “We like chubby governors and skinny budgets. Not the other way around.” The massive increase in government spending is due in part to the number of new health programs and expansion of existing ones, including ARKids First, a state program to provide health coverage for 70,000 Arkansas children. Spending on ARKids alone increased 69 percent over a five-year period.

All of this, plus Huckabee's promotion of personal health initiatives like one requiring students to have their Body Mass Index measures, has seriously damaged the governor's standing with economic conservatives. Charles Murray - last seen at the conservative summit defending "small government" - put it bluntly:

“They are bad in principle, they’re a waste of money, they are of the same muddle-headed mindset as the Compassionate Conservatism of the Bush administration. That a person who advocates them might be taken seriously as a Republican candidate for the presidency just 20 years after Reagan left office is deeply depressing.”

All of which adds up to a dilemma for the conservative movement, especially considering Huckabee's considerable charm and campaigning skills.

As Darryl Hart recently observed in the latest American Conservative magazine, conservative evangelical leaders are in danger of being outflanked from the left by a new generation of religious activists motivated by issues like poverty, the environment, and health care. W. James Antle III, writing in the American Spectator, suggests that Huckabee, with Sam Brownback, is at work forging a "new religious right," which would take up those same concerns. As such, it would seem like Mike Huckabee represents an opportunity for the religious right to guard its left flank. I suppose Huckabee doesn't need to win a presidential nomination in order to do that, but the fact that a candidate with such potential is essentially being called a non-starter by the economic right suggests, once again, that the fractures in the right's fusionist coalition are real, and have real effects.

Labels: 2008, American Conservative, American Spectator, Darryl Hart, fusionism, Jennifer Rubin, Mike Huckabee, National review, Presidential election, social conservatives, W. James Antle III

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:48 AM 0 comments

  This Week in Conservative Organs: We Can Work It Out

This week finds our organists caught up in a strange mixture of giddiness and dread, as they claim a couple of victories even while they realize that there's a chance that they might fall apart before too long. It seems there's plenty of time for fussing and fighting....




We begin with Larry Kudlow of the National Review, who wants to tell us the Good News about "the Goldilocks economy." (I don't know what this means but it calls to mind the Wolf's lines in Sondheim's great musical, Into the Woods: "There's no possible way/To describe how you feel/When you're talking to your meal!") He begins by telling us the story of Dubyalocks's recent triumphant visit to Wall Street:

President George W. Bush became only the second sitting American president to visit the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. As he moved from trading post to trading post, floor brokers and assistants stopped their work and started to cheer.

Huge cheers. Loud applause.

George Bush has apparently managed to find the last place in New York City that isn't full of people who hate him.

The reason these good hardy Wall Street folk don't hate Bush, Kudlow points out, is that the stock market is doing pretty good. To hear Kudlow tell it, everyone should be equally bullish, considering the jobs picture:

The most accurate employment gauge, called “adjusted households” (which the Bureau of Labor Statistics created in order to combine the non-farm payroll survey with the civilian-employment household survey), shows nearly 3 million new jobs annually over the past three years — all since Mr. Bush’s supply-side tax cuts of 2003.

Or is it all bull? There's no doubt that the economy has been adding jobs. But as the Center for American Progress points out:

Job growth is the weakest for any business cycle. Despite the 2003 tax cut, job growth has averaged only 1.5% since then—the lowest growth of any recovery of at least the same length. Monthly job growth since March 2001 has averaged an annualized 0.6%.

This is what Kudlow calls "carping." Kudlow does not like carping, because it harshes Kudlow's buzz. And nothing seems to harsh that buzz more than carping about inequality:

And the president (or anybody else) shouldn’t fret about so-called wage stagnation, or inequality. Hourly earnings for non-supervisory wage earners averaged $16.76 in 2006, a near 20 percent gain from the last business-cycle peak in 2000 and a 64 percent increase from the $10.20 cycle peak in 1990.

Comparing the first five years of the Bush economic expansion with the first five years of the Papa Bush/Clinton cycle, average hourly earnings are 44 percent higher today in nominal terms and 9 percent higher in inflation-adjusted terms. Washington economist Alan Reynolds has written voluminously on the absence of wage inequality since the tax-reform bill of 1986. This is a faux issue.

Of course, as people like Jonathan Chait have pointed out, Alan Reynolds is what you might call a "faux economist." American Progress, by contrast, observes that "The gap between productivity growth and wage growth is wider today than ever." The Economic Policy Institute further illustrates this "unprecedented income inequality:"

Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis through the third quarter of 2006 show that a historically high share of corporate income is going into profits and interest (i.e., capital income) rather than employee compensation. And a newly released Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of household incomes shows that a greater share of this capital income goes to the richest households than at any time since the CBO began tracking such trends. In other words, our economy is producing more capital income and that type of income is more likely to go to those at the very top of the income scale. Together, these dynamics are contributing to a uniquely skewed recovery.

Indeed: huge cheers. Loud applause.

ALSO at NRO, the Editors get a big kick out of the way Senate Republicans gummed up the Iraq resolution process, suggesting that "under Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republicans have quickly gotten the hang of serving in a minority that can successfully frustrate Harry Reid’s partisan maneuvering on the war in Iraq." No hint of irony here in that what McConnell blocked was Reid's attempt to get a bipartisan majority on the Iraq issue. Meanwhile, Terence P. Jeffrey rejects Steven Malanga's argument in City Journal that Rudy Giuliani is both electable and a true conservative. He is neither, Jeffrey says. Jeffrey quotes America's Mayor himself:

Murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes,” Rudy Giuliani once said. “But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other.”

Indeed, says Jeffrey. Likewise, a politician who tolerates gay marriage is more likely to tolerate the destruction of human civilization. Touche!

AND... Demonstrating once again that there is no creature on earth more persecuted than a conservative college student, Bridget Johnson recounts her days of torment with the hairy legged-feminists and unfeminine-looking professors at the old alma mater. "Every bit the granola-breath nightmare I'd been warned about by fraternity guys," she says it was. And nobody knows from the nuances of feminist theory like fraternity guys. Johnson's point is that we shouldn't be all excited over gender milestones like the first woman Speaker or the first woman President. Teh war on Islamofascism - that's what should revv our engines! We shouldn't view political women differently from political men, as long as they can PWN the bad guys.

The argument would certainly be more convincing if it weren't accompanied by K-Lo's interview with Mary Sheehan Warren, "founder of Elegance in Style," who "offers advice on the right way to dress." Title of the interview: "Pretty Pelosi." Sample line: "Do Republican gals still wear pearls?"

ROUNDING OUT... Peter Kirsanow says Republicans have to stop apologizing for their conservative views when they talk to blacks, Mallory Factor praises South Carolina governor Mark Sanford as an example of how Republican statehouses can avoid raising taxes, Andrew McCarthy demands that the Bush administration release the dossier about all the bad stuff Iran's been up to, so's we can finally get our war on, and Thomas Sowell reveals the New York Times's Great Conspiracy to Destroy Marriage as We Know It. Foiled again!




This week the Up-is-Downism Award returns to its natural home at the American Spectator, thanks to the efforts of Quin Hillyer, who quite literally asks us to imagine: what if up really was down?

We're talking about the troop surge. Really. What if attacks, bombings, injuries, deaths, all decline precipitously in Iraq in the next two years? [...]

What if, meanwhile, the American public finally starts giving President George W. Bush credit for the economy that has been doing so splendidly for about four years now?

What if, as seems increasingly likely, the jury in the Scooter Libby trial decides that Libby is not guilty? What if, on the other hand, Harry Reid's questionable real estate transactions continue to stink to high heaven, and what if, as expected, Democratic Rep. William "Cold Cash" Jefferson of Louisiana is indicted and then convicted for various financial misdeeds? What if, in short, it is the Democrats and not the Republicans who get blamed for having a "culture of corruption"? [...]

What if somebody of the high caliber and brilliance of the SEC's Chris Cox, or with the combination of communications skills and genuineness of Tony Snow, steps in to the presidential race and unites conservatives around him? [...]

What if Karl Rove re-establishes his reputation as a political genius and designs a stunning political comeback for the president?

Indeed, Quin: what if reality really didn't bite?

ALSO AT THE SPECTATOR, a trio of articles considers the prospects of Rudy, Romney, and Huck. The Spectator's founder, wingnut extraordinaire R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., is moved to rhapsody by the God-like Giuliani, who singlehandedly pulled New York City out of the Great Depression, ended street crime down to the level of hot dog vendors overcharging you during parades, beat the terrorists on 9/11, and stopped the Green Goblin from throwing that tram full of people off the Queensboro Bridge.

Meanwhile, John Tabin takes a somewhat more sober look at Mitt Romney, last seen bombing at the conservative summit (Tabin reports that the summit performance was so bad as to prompt one attendee to refer to him as "our Kerry.") Mitt's cleaned up, found Jesus: he did much better speaking before the right-wing Republican Study Committee last week, and Tobin suggests that "one thing Romney has going for him is that he's made a much more concerted effort to woo conservatives than the frontrunners ... If he can learn to be more consistent on the stump, Romney's efforts to shore up the right may well pay off."

Finally, W. James Antle III (the Spectator has a gift for ingenious writer names) examines Mike Huckabee, who, with fellow social-con candidate Sam Brownback, may be forging a "new religious right." This neo-theo-conism endorses certain "fiscal heterodoxies" (thus exposing itself to broadsides from the Club for Growth) as it seeks to move beyond the old sex-based enthusiasms of the religious right to a prioritization of poverty, health care, and other social needs. Antle III is intrigued, if a bit skeptical:

The new religious right that Republicans like Huckabee and Brownback are trying to build is in many respects admirable and appealing. The moral implications of the Christian faith are obviously broader than single-issue politics and sex, something an older breed of organized religious conservatives sometimes seemed to forget. But four decades of activist government have taught us the pitfalls of effecting social change from Washington; those consequences won't be ameliorated simply by putting more faithful bureaucrats in charge.

AND... Bernard Chapin, who "is currently at work on a book concerning women," interviews Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism, which, like many conservative books, has a subtitle beginning with the word "How". Sommers talks about the distinction between "gender feminists," who hate men, and "equity feminists," who "embrace equality and individual rights." If you're reading this post, you're probably a "gender feminist."

Sommers repeats the common right-wing claim that our universities are run by Hairy Scary Feminists seeking to indoctrinate the youth, and she argues that "gender feminism thrives on the myth that American women are the oppressed 'second sex.'" As in so much conservative cultural criticism, she seems to operate from the assumption that conservatives are actually the oppressed identity group, overrun by the tyranny of the liberal elites. In fact, let's try a little thought experiment. Read the following statement by Sommers:

One of the things I say in my lecture is that American women -- as a group -- are not oppressed. In fact, they are among the most favored, privileged and blessed group of human beings in the world.

Now substitute "conservatives" for "women." Hell, given the way the right has tried to re-frame the culture wars, substitute "white men" for "women."

Now repeat ad nauseum.



The truth rears its ugly head at the Weekly Standard, where Fred Barnes makes the unpopular point that "it wasn't for want of conservatives that the GOP lost in 2006." Actually, Barnes notes, the GOP lost big amongst independents, while conservatives voted Republican in the same numbers as ever. This doesn't mean Republicans should abandon conservatism, he argues - but they should remember that "the Republican party is a center-right party. And the problem in 2006 was that the center did not hold."

Meanwhile, Noemie Emery provides a nice summary of the right's emerging Dolchstosslegende:

If Iraq is stabilized this side of chaos, the congressional Democrats will be remembered as the people who fought to prevent it, who tried to kneecap the commander and demoralize the armed forces, and all in all make the mission more difficult. If, on the other hand, the surge is seen to fail, they will be the ones who made it more difficult, demoralized the armed forces, kneecapped the commander, and telegraphed to the enemy that our will was cracking, and we would shortly be leaving.

Damned if we do, damned if we don't, damned for just existing. And the party that created the greatest foreign-policy disaster in American history gets off scot free! You've got to admire the neocon's mental agility. They're like tiny little mental gymnasts.

Finally, at the paleocon American Conservative, Darryl Hart forecasts a leftward tide in the evangelical movement, as its concerns shift from sex to social justice, and as the Falwells and Dobsons give way to the Wallises and Rick Warrens. Meanwhile, Daniel McCarthy considers the "failure of fusionism," but suggests it's misguided to assume that libertarians will end up joining the left. And, ending this week's TWICO on a note we can all enjoy, Andrew J. Bachevic vitriolically condemns the neocons, arguing that the "surge" that was supposed to save Iraq was really designed to save neoconservatism itself. And he pounds Frederick Kagan to a bloody rhetorical pulp. Referring to him as "a lesser light in the neoconservative constellation," Bachevic thunders:

That in places like AEI and the editorial offices of The Weekly Standard Kagan himself has emerged as the man of the hour testifies to the depth of neoconservative desperation. Kagan’s insistence that his surge will do the trick postpones the neoconservative day of reckoning. Believe Kagan and you can avoid for at least a bit longer having to confront Iraq’s incontrovertible lessons: that preventive war doesn’t work, that American power has limits, that the world is not infinitely malleable, and that grasping for “benign global hegemony” is a self-defeating proposition.

All together now!

Labels: American Conservative, American Spectator, conservatives, National review, TWICO, Weekly Standard

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:54 AM 0 comments

  This Week in Conservative Organs: Altered States

Conservatives don't believe in retreat; they merely advance in another direction. This week our organists grapple with the Decider's State of the Union address, trying to parse out whether he's still leading the conservative charge, especially on the home front. On some issues, there's a letdown. On others, they're happy to report that in the Bush administration the conservative project is alive and well. That project, of course, is the regression of government and society to whatever they supposedly used to be, long long ago. Don't say conservatives don't believe in evolution: they merely evolve in a backwards direction.






"No Shock, No Awe," declare the editors of the National Review. But they're pretty happy with the SOTU anyway: "where was this Bush a year ago?" The president, we are told, "made a solid case for victory in Iraq." (As he so often does - I, meanwhile, have repeatedly made a very solid case for being given a magical flying pony, but have yet to receive it. I blame the Democrats.) The editors also love the health proposal: it's "genuinely innovative." Indeed, if you consider a great health plan to be one that wrecks the current system, mainly benefits the wealthy and healthy, and shifts risk onto individuals, then, as the editors say, "the Democrats will not be able to come up with a similarly attractive package."

The National Reviewistas are not so fond of Bush's energy proposals or his immigration rhetoric. Oh, and:

Where were the social issues? It is widely accepted that opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage are two of the few issues that have been helping the Republican party lately; why abandon them now?

Nobody ever claimed that the National Review was a libertarian publication, but this underlines it. At a time when economic conservatives are loudly raising the alarm about the health of the conservative coalition, and debating how quickly they can cut off the social conservative deadweight, here's NRO actually claiming that abortion and gay marriage are the future of the Republican Party. Don't ever change, kids.

Anyway, the editors note that "the truth is that the president is down, way down, and the State of the Union address is not going to do anything to change that." But speech consultant T.J. Walker has good news!

Bush now thoroughly knows his way around a Teleprompter. He moves his head well, pauses sufficiently, and does not rush. Bush finally shows a full range of facial expressions.

Then there's my favorite part:

ARTICULATION:
Fantastic improvement!

I actually agree. Just goes to show that the words can be clear as a bell even if the message still doesn't make any sense.

OTHER REVIEWS FROM THE NRO'IANS: Michael Cannon totally digs the health care plan: "It would be difficult to overstate how dramatically the president’s proposal would reduce government influence in the health care sector." John Fonte likes the sound of 'assimilation' (it's a sibilant sound) but judges Bush's conservative tack on immigration to be "too little, too late." And Clifford May seems to forget who's in the driver's seat now:

The White House is betting that some Democrats will come along on each of these issues — not out of respect for Bush; not even out of respect for his office, but for self-interest: While in the minority Democrats could be satisfied merely to oppose. Now that they are in the majority, some Democrats may want to show they can do more than carp and criticize from the sidelines.

Right - because that's all they've done so far.

Veronique de Rugy makes an interesting point: "In apparent surrender to the Democrats, the president didn’t mention making his tax cuts permanent. Also absent from the speech was his commitment to Social Security reform." Jim Webb's response, meanwhile, left her indignant. Forget all that nonsense about the struggling middle class - the fact is that people are getting richer "whether they feel it or not." I've just got to try and feel it more.

ALSO AT NRO, Max Schulz and Henry Payne are unimpressed with the president's alternative fuel proposals. Schulz argues that "making vehicles more efficient will actually increase gasoline consumption," since it'll just mean people can afford to drive more. Payne, meanwhile, says that the Renewable Fuel Standard exists mainly "to satisfy the auto and farm lobbies" - the former, because it allows them to skirt fuel efficiency laws, and the latter because, ya know - sell more corn.

AND, Larry Kudlow wonders why it's so hard for everyone to just admit that the economy is doing super! (Here are some reasons, Larry). Meanwhile, Jennifer Roback Morse finds herself faced with a bit of cognitive dissonance: The New York Times says that marriage is in decline. What to do if you 1) Also like to insist that marriage is in decline, but 2) Believe that the Times is filled with nothing but sulphurous liberal lies? Oh, it's not as hard as you'd think:

The point of the story was to convince the public that this decline is inexorable, like a force of nature, and that only old fuddy-duddies complain about it.

Voila!

MORE... Deroy Murdock continues his one-man crusade to cast Giuliani as a Conservative After All, this time making the argument that, since abortions declined in New York during Rudy's term, and since Rudy didn't actively try to prevent that decline (by, what - standing out on the street with a megaphone and a placard demanding HAVE MORE ABORTIONS?), he's pro-life in his own special way. Meanwhile, Michael Cannon reveals that ArnoldCare would rely on a lot of money from other states (aka Federal money), Jonah Goldberg urges us to not think of the children, and poor Kathryn Lopez talks about a "vision" problem, which seems to have something to do with seeing everything backwards: she says that Iraq will be a "great burden on the campaign trail" for Democrats, and that "we can't wish away a war we didn't start" (this last quote would make sense if by "we" she meant Democrats, but no - she means the United States. And guess who she thinks 'started' it? Rhymes with 'errorists.')

Our Up-is-Downism winners this week are the Weekly Standard's Masters of Destruction, Frederick Kagan & William Kristol. These bold strategists pour scorn on Hillary Clinton's proposal to cap the number of troops in Iraq, arguing that if we did so, the Iraq war might start to go badly. But the Dems seem to be willing to let the war go on for years:

Perhaps the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the forced migration of millions would eventually lead to a certain exhaustion [no kidding! - ed.]. Is that the outcome Senators Clinton, Dodd, and Obama have in mind? It's a far cry from the Democratic party that insisted on sending American forces to stop ethnic cleansing in war-torn Bosnia in the 1990s, to the one that now declares an Iraqi bloodbath no concern of ours.

They have a point: remember how we invaded Bosnia, a nation which had been at peace and hadn't attacked us, thus provoking years and years of bloodshed which our troops, despite great sacrifice, were unable to contain? Remember how none of the Bosnians wanted us there and how everything we did just seemed to make the situation worse? Oh, right.

Anyway, the point is we should just trust Petraeus:

There is one man who should be recommending the size of American forces in Iraq, and that is the incoming commander, General Petraeus. ... And when he has spoken, Senator Clinton and her colleagues should carefully weigh the burden they will take on themselves if they dismiss his advice.

So now it's cool to listen to the generals? When did that happen?

Then there's this, which is just really, really neat:

The efforts of Clinton and others would prevent the new commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, from working effectively to bring the violence under control. There is every reason, therefore, to imagine that violence would continue to increase. This would be the effect of Sen. Clinton's legislation.

That's right. The violence in Iraq would be Hillary's fault. There really is nothing we can't blame on her!

ALSO AT THE STANDARD, Tom Donnelly continues the Petraeus worship. after making the obligatory Churchill reference, Donnelly gives us the good news:

Happily, Petraeus, whom I've known and observed for nearly 20 years, wears "the mask of command" as well as any current officer. He's already done so successfully for Iraqis.

I'm not going to be the one to argue against knowledge gained from 20 years of personal friendship, so I'll let William Arkin do it. Anyway, record be damned. The important point is that he's "charismatic" and lots of people seem to like him.

AND, Irwin Stelzer takes an interesting look at Barney Frank's ideas for the House Financial Services Committee, which include the notion of improving corporate democracy and moving towards British-style 'principles-based' regulation of corporate governance, as opposed to the 'rules-based' regulation used in the U.S. Unfortunately for CEOs, it seems, the principles-based system leaves them feeling a little exposed when it comes to shareholder suits and fraud prosecutions. Also, Harvey Mansfield has a fairly interesting meditation on the philosophical meaning of courage - despite his gratuitous swipes at feminism - and Wesley J. Smith praises the UN's new Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which specifically mentions the "right to life," and suggests that conservative NGOs need to start trying to get more ideas on the World Government's agenda.

As I've written elsewhere, conservative intellectuals may be abandoning their denial of global warming (in favor of treating it as a "long-term" technological challenge). The American Spectator, though, seems to have missed the meeting. Both Peter Hannaford and William Tucker flog the new book by oil industry-funded warming denier Fred Singer (can't they find one denier who doesn't take oil money?) - though Tucker is willing to grant that warming may be partially our fault.

MEANWHILE, John Tabin praises the president's SOTU for painting a good picture of the enemy (he paints that same picture over and over again - he's like Degas and ballerinas). Tabin argues that the Dems will do nothing about Iraq, and takes a moment to engage in that favorite pastime of pro-war pundits: projecting his opinions onto the American people:

The public is pessimistic about the prospects of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but the mood of the country is not yet so dark that leaving the Iraqis to slaughter each other is a winning position.

But my question is: who calls it "Operation Iraqi Freedom" anymore?

ALSO, David Hogberg looks at the domestic side of the SOTU: Health plan? Two thumbs up. Budget? One thumb up - should've mentioned corporate welfare. Energy: "Ugh." Meanwhile, Doug Bandow rails against card-check elections for unions, while Jeremy Lott wonders just what the hell Alberto Gonzales is smoking.

ON THE LIBERTARIAN SIDE, Katherine Mangu-Ward has an interesting piece at Reason. She considers the implications of a lawsuit against roommates.com, over whether individual users could post discriminatory preferences (e.g., 'vegetarians only') in their for-rent ads. That kind of thing is mostly forbidden (with a 'Mrs. Murphy' exemption for small units), but the real question is whether sites like roommates.com or Craigslist can be held responsible for misconduct by their own users:

To make such ads illegal would require overturning parts of the Mrs, Murphy exception and the Communications Decency Act. The latter is especially disturbing since it puts a whole host of Web 2.0 sites at risk, including Wikipedia, MySpace, and blog engines. Any website with user-generated content (including the comments section of reason.com) could be legally on the hook for anything users post.

ALSO AT REASON, Jacob Sullum excoriates the Bush administration for its FISA tomfoolery:

By exposing the hollowness of President Bush's national security justification, his tardy compliance with FISA demonstrates more contempt for the rule of law than continued defiance would have. [...]

The reason for the delay in complying with FISA is clear: When it comes to fighting terrorism, the president considers obeying the law optional. As Gonzales emphasized, the administration still maintains the president is not obligated to follow FISA; he is doing so only because he has decided that "involving all branches of government on such an important program is best for the country." Given the president's view of his "inherent" powers, he could go back to evading the courts and flouting the will of Congress any day.

AND FINALLY, Cathy Young considers the state of the culture war six years into the new milennium, Ronald Bailey suggests that the ban on federal funds for stem cell research may have been the best thing that could have happened for the research, thanks to the resulting explosion in state and private funds, and Charles Oliver, in an article titled "The Era of Big Government Never Ended," looks at the state of libertarianism in a post-Cold War era. Can liberty survive in the modern welfare state? And what about the need for security?

The challenge of liberty in the near future will be to show how those philosophical arguments about liberty and order, freedom and safety, bear on current debates regarding the powers assumed by the government in the War on Terror.

Oliver's musings are worth a look. He's a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get?

Labels: American Spectator, National review, Reason, TWICO, Weekly Standard

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:18 PM 0 comments

  This Week in Conservative Organs: Life During Wartime

(Update: I characterized Brian Riedl as a "wealthy college professor." He is not in fact a professor, but a Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Whether or not he is "wealthy," I will admit, is beside the point. The point is that conservatives, unlike 79% of the American public, oppose the idea of lowering student loan interest rates. My apologies to Mr. Riedl.)

This week the conservative organs are throbbing (sorry) with a sense of urgency, as the 100 Hours roll past before many of the crew even get the chance to work up a proper huff, and the Iraqi government seems unable to remember that we've got deadlines to keep, here. This, as they say, ain't no foolin' around.



We begin at the Weekly Standard, where the architects of the Great Surge of 2007 seem a bit disconcerted by the failure of the nation at large, and the Republican party in particular, to grasp the strategic genius at work in their plan. While William Kristol seems to have slipped wholly into bitter sarcasm, Frederick "Field Marshall" Kagan revisits the math: how many troops must a president send, before you can call it a surge? The answer, my friend, is about 35,000. So is Kagan disappointed that the Bush plan would only send 21,000? No, because it will actually be more than that, when you count support troops:

[T]he surge being briefed by the Bush administration now is much more likely to be around 29,000 troops than 22,000--in other words, close to the number of combat troops the IPG recommended, and, when necessary support troops are added, close to the overall numbers I had estimated before the IPG met.

It's left to Fred Barnes to make the requisite historical analogies. Bush, this week, is Lincoln, for "standing alone" (by which measure I myself have been Lincoln many times at parties), and for sacking his feckless generals. Also, he's Washington, because Washington alone was in charge of the Army during the Revolutionary war. I guess Churchill gets the week off.

Barnes also comments on many Republicans' disappointment with Bush's surge speech:

Some Republicans were disappointed in the president's speech. They wanted a rousing address that would electrify the public, spur support for victory in Iraq, and ease the war's political drain on Republicans.

Same as it ever was...

Meanwhile, Duncan Currie takes another look at all those "conservative" freshman Democrats, and realizes with creeping horror that they're all against the war. He also makes a strange argument that I've seen several times in conservative circles: that Democrats are somehow hypocritical because, having pushed for more troops in the past, now they've "changed their tune." It's as though the strategic situation in January of 2007 were just the same as it was in June of 2003. Just like the Japanese, having failed to take Midway in 1942, really should have tried again in June of 1945, instead of wasting all that time on Okinawa.

ALSO IN THE STANDARD, Cesar Conda suggests some actions Bush could take on the economy without having to consult Congress: among them, "provide relief from Sarbanes-Oxley," which, scandalously, has "forced management and corporate board members to spend more time on accounting issues and less time expanding their businesses."

AND, Matthew Continetti considers Hillary's "lonely" position on Iraq, one which "leave[s] her to the right of the antiwar left and most other Democrats." Continetti seems to be trying to write a "Democrats divided" story here, by pointing out that "the Clintons are 'not there yet' on retreat from Iraq." The problem, of course, is that it's the Republicans who are really divided by the issue. While it's true that Hillary is at the tail end of the general Democratic movement towards full opposition to the war, the spin Continetti wants to put on it highlights a conceptual dilemma that we'll see emerging in a number of other conservative articles about the war: the gradually-developing understanding that the right's pro-war position is very unpopular (a point in which, perversely, conservatives can take a certain comfort), at the same time that they seem unable to fully let go of the idea that opposition to the war represents some extremist position which will lead to electoral doom for the Dems. Thus Continetti argues: "For four years [Hillary] has resisted the pull of the antiwar left. If she continues down that path, it may help her in the general election." Your basic conservative cognitive dissonance: the right is always embattled, but non-right-wing positions are for marginal whacko nutjobs.



This week's Up-Is-Downism Award goes to Thomas Sowell of the National Review, who insists that Bush may have made mistakes in Iraq, but the war's critics couldn't see straight either. Mistakes? You've made a few, Dems! For instance:

Critics have been proved wrong repeatedly in their claims that elections could not be held in Iraq or a government formed there. Iraqi-voter turnout, even in the face of terrorist threats, has exceeded voter turnout in the United States.

Indeed. In the spirit of reconciliation, let's all list our mistakes. The war supporters can go first. Hunter will help you:

[The war] stripped forces from the Afghanistan conflict, thereby potentially dooming rebuilding efforts in that country; it was sold under roundly (and insultingly) misleading WMD claims involving "aluminum tubes" and WMDs that we knew existed, but an entire phalanx of CIA, NSA and U.N. observers could never manage to find hide nor hair of; it had no links to 9/11 to begin with; Kurdish political conflicts and skirmishes were already demonstrating the likelihood of civil unrest and an unstable, possibly untenable end state; stated required troop levels that were widely manipulative, the far more likely expert-calculated numbers being unsustainable; similarly outrageous predictions of a zero-cost occupation; that the United Nations was being not just ignored, but their mandate corrupted; and so on. Oh, and add to that that according to terrorism experts, bin Laden was explicitly trying to engage America in a broader Middle East war, under the banner of solidifying Muslim support for a pan-Arab Muslim state -- meaning the Iraq War was exactly what the 9/11 attacks were intended to provoke.

Okay, our turn: we totally didn't anticipate how nice those purple fingers would look on our Congresspeople. Beats sticky fingers, I suppose.

ALSO AT NRO, Grover Norquist has his libertarian schtick. But when he makes the mistake of standing next to real libertarians, the results can be embarrassing. Seems Grover is blue with anger over H.R. 6, the Clean Energy Act:

The clean-energy bill represents an effort to hinder American energy independence and raise taxes on both domestic oil producers and American consumers.

Norquist is outraged that Congress wants to charge royalty fees on oil drawn from Federal waters. It's unprecedented!

[T]he new Democratic majority intends to violate binding contracts, forcing domestic producers to accept a $9 per barrel royalty fee from the leases. If they do not except [sic], they lose the right to bid for federal property in the future.

What's more, it will surely lead to higher gas prices: Ford imposed royalty fees once, and look what happened! The Energy Crisis! (Here Norquist suggested that the Act, combined with one cutting off funds for the Iraq war, would guarantee a GOP victory in 2008 - oddly, this sentence was later deleted). If that's not enough, it'll increase our energy dependence:

While gas prices are creeping back down to $2 a gallon, Democrats are devising a plan to manipulate the energy markets, despite the disastrous consequences. The oil-tax increase will, by the laws of economics, decrease domestic energy production and provide a boost for OPEC producers — thereby increasing our energy dependence.

Convincing! And look, here's another NRO article on the Clean Energy Act, by Jerry Taylor & Peter Van Doren of the Cato institute, and it... Uh-oh, Grover.

The case for oil subsidies is laughably thin. Proponents argue that the more you subsidize oil production, the more oil you’ll get, and that, after all, is a good thing for consumers when gasoline prices are around $2.25 a gallon. Unfortunately, there’s simply not enough unexploited oil in the United States that might be exploited as a consequence of those subsidies to greatly affect world crude oil prices.

As for the supposed bait-and-switch with the leases:

In principle, there’s nothing wrong with renegotiating leases. Contracts, after all, are renegotiated in private markets all the time. If Party A refuses to renegotiate with Party B, there is no reason why Party B must commit to doing future business with Party A. If the taxpayer is being unfairly taken advantage of, there’s nothing wrong a call for renegotiation.

What's the catch? Well, primarily that Taylor and Van Doren don't like the idea of reinvesting the revenue gained from oil royalties in companies developing alternative energy. To them, this is just more "corporate welfare." It may or may not be. That's simply a question of whether you believe that government can play a role in fostering investment in areas vital to national development, security, and the general welfare.

MORE NRO: A pair of wealthy professors [correction: only Vedder is a professor - see Update at top of post], Richard Vedder and Brian Riedl, generously decline student aid relief on everyone else's behalf (I'm sure their grad students will thank them), Stephen Spruiell praises the Porkbusters, Peter Kirsanow takes the old Republicans-are-better-for-blacks diatribe out for its roughly bi-annual public appearance, and Phil Kerpen sounds the alarm over a proposed rules change at the SEC that would allow pension fund holders to gain seats on corporate boards: "That's called socialism." Touche!



The American Spectator wobbles a little bit on the war, as William Tucker tells us a long, Big Muddy-esque tale of How I Once Got Lost in the Woods and Almost Lost My Dog, So Remind Me What the Hell We're Doing in Iraq Again? (Actually, it's not a bad piece by Spectator standards.) Quin Hillyer, though, is having none of it:

Now that the president has made his decision, what is the alternative? What good does carping do? President Bush has tried the equivalent of a difficult bank shot in pool; the only way it can work is if other officials don't rock the table. The more they voice dissent, the less likely the Iraqis -- in government and on the streets -- will be to do their part to make the plan a success. And the only way for Bush to hold a strong enough hand to bring other nations on board to help is if he is seen as having significant support here at home. Victory is very, very difficult when the home front is not united. Last I checked, victory is still a highly valued commodity in these United States.

The brilliantly named H.W. Crocker III, meanwhile, suggests that the difficulty may be the President's unrealistically high expectations of "our little brown brothers" in Iraq (yes, he actually uses that phrase).

ALSO AT THE SPECTATOR, James Bowman, who when we last checked was making the case for "corporal punishment [and] fagging," congratulates men for having the good sense not to go wild the way the girls always seem to be doing these days, and Christopher Orlet makes the interesting observation that, if women keep going to college, our great-grandchildren will be reduced to grunting like Neanderthals.

MEANWHILE, at the American Enterprise Institute-funded online magazine American.com, Jurgen Reinhoudt, responding to former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson's denunciation of small-government conservatism, accuses Gerson of being a commie:

Gerson's arguments, though flawed to the core, present a grave threat to the philosophical underpinnings of limited government conservatism and the legacy of Reagan in the Republican Party. At heart, Gerson's arguments are old Christian Socialist arguments, falsely presented as being "conservative."

Reinhoudt argues that "civil society" can deliver social-service-with-a-smile, which beats the hell out of getting your Thanksgiving turkey from a faceless bureaucrat. He also disputes Gerson's contention that "during the Reagan years, big government got bigger." Au contraire, says Reinhoudt: "Reagan was the only president over the past forty years to have cut inflation-adjusted non-defense spending." Compare this to Bush, who "has massively boosted spending on those departments and across the board." Conservatives, it seems, argue over the True Reagan the way any other religious group bickers over its prophet. Precisely whose schismatic, highly-specific modern agenda did He really endorse?

ALSO, Aparna Mathur makes the insightful - if rather obvious - point that harsher bankruptcy laws have a way of smothering entrepreneurialism, Dick Martin examines America's brand problem and suggests we learn a thing or two from the private sector about "competence and sincerity," and Jonathan Bronitsky warns that even the great David Beckham won't get Americans to fall in love with the beautiful game.

AND FINALLY...Speaking of famous people... Contra the Captain and Tennille, David Robinson argues that in an age where the internet has radically fragmented audiences and attention, not information, is the real commodity, celebrities will keep us together: "they create a community of watchers who, by paying attention to the same subject, come to share knowledge and experiences with one another." Thus fame is the new speaking in tongues. Might there may be some utility to that Hollyweird left after all?

Labels: American Spectator, American.com, National review, TWICO, Weekly Standard

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:49 PM 0 comments