alien & sedition.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Aping the Surrender Monkeys?
A couple of points:
1) Gringrich's Sarkozian strategy seems to involve perpetuating the conservative impulse toward counterculture. Why do Republicans need to circumvent the media through internet channels? Don't they have Fox News? AM Radio? Over the past few decades, conservatives have built an entire parallel communications apparatus, one they use to talk amongst themselves while studiously ingoring the experiences and opinions of the American mainstream. This looks like little more than a Gingrichian pseudo-futurist twist on traditional conservative paranoia.
2) The United States, it turns out, is not France. The structural problems we face are nothing like those facing the French. There's an argument to be had over whether France needs a dose of Thatcherism; Sarkozy's election should be understood in that context -- this is the France of the 35-hour work week, powerful unions, and rather astonishing job security laws. The problems in the United States are entirely the opposite -- after decades of conservative ascendancy, our public investment and social insurance fall woefully short, leaving both our physical and social infrastructure crumbling. After Katrina, how can anyone credibly make the argument that the US needs more Thatcherism, more conservative economics? Conservatives want to use their own failures in government to discredit the notion of government itself; the only "change" they represent is an accelerated degradation of the ability of government to do what Americans expect it to do.
In the end, as always, Gingrich's rhetoric is mostly for show. He dresses up old conservative hobbyhorses as something fresh and futurist, but he offers nothing genuinely new or original. Much of what he says directly contradicts itself -- for instance, he raises the specter of economic and educational competition from China and India, only to use it as an opportunity to launch into yet another denunciation of teachers and yet another argument for undermining the funding and accountability of our schools through vouchers and "school choice." This is astonishing -- he uses the rise of our competitors to insist on the very things that would further damage our competitiveness!
You can't blame Republicans for looking wistfully across the Atlantic to the country they so recently demonized. They understand how deeply unpopular they have become after a catastrophic era of conservative government, and naturally they look to the one example they can find of conservatives finding a way to win despite their own unpopularity. Unfortunately for the Republicans, though, the similarities are only superficial. Again, and as these same patriots were at such pains to remind us only a few short years ago, the United States of America is not France.
MyDD's Todd Beeton examines whether it will be possible for any Republican to run as a "change candidate" this cycle, noting that many in the beleagured party of George W. Bush have been looking to French President Nicolas Sarkozy as an example of how to do it. As Todd points out, it's Newt Gingrich -- framing expert, nutty futurist, and current "none of the above" candidate -- who seems most fixated on le chemin Sarkozien:
So Sarkozy comes along and he's brilliant and he understands that [the French] are in a crisis of their culture. And he's in, in terms of the current politics of where we are in Washington, he is in the second term of a 12-year presidency, which has been decaying. Chirac was unpopular. So if you set up the normal political science equation, the left is going to win because after 12 years of the center right they've run out of energy and he manages to put together this magic formula of arguing that the greatness of France requires real change. So even though he is in Chirac's cabinet, he is the candidate of real change and Royale is the candidate of reactionary bureaucracy.Speaking Tuesday at the National Press Club, Gingrich elaborated on what Sarkozian strategy might mean for the GOP:
Sarkozy, he said, did two important things.Gringrich also spoke about the threat of economic competition from China and India, particularly in light of lagging American education standards, the usual terrorist stuff, and the evils of "government bureacracy."
First, Sarkozy established 16 Internet channels that were like YouTube and rigorously avoided trying to communicate through the French media, which Gingrich defined as hostile to conservatives.
"What (Sarkozy) said is, 'If I can communicate with you, then the news media can watch our conversation,' which is very different than having a conversation with the news media which (average people) watch," Gingrich said.
"The second thing is he made a very important speech where he said we must have a clean break" from Chirac, Gingrich said. "And I would say to (Republican) candidates, there is a lot of parallel there."
Gingrich used education as an example, asserting Republicans can win by advocating bold changes and framing failing schools as economic and national security issues. Gingrich said Democrats are too beholden to teachers' unions to match that argument.
A couple of points:
1) Gringrich's Sarkozian strategy seems to involve perpetuating the conservative impulse toward counterculture. Why do Republicans need to circumvent the media through internet channels? Don't they have Fox News? AM Radio? Over the past few decades, conservatives have built an entire parallel communications apparatus, one they use to talk amongst themselves while studiously ingoring the experiences and opinions of the American mainstream. This looks like little more than a Gingrichian pseudo-futurist twist on traditional conservative paranoia.
2) The United States, it turns out, is not France. The structural problems we face are nothing like those facing the French. There's an argument to be had over whether France needs a dose of Thatcherism; Sarkozy's election should be understood in that context -- this is the France of the 35-hour work week, powerful unions, and rather astonishing job security laws. The problems in the United States are entirely the opposite -- after decades of conservative ascendancy, our public investment and social insurance fall woefully short, leaving both our physical and social infrastructure crumbling. After Katrina, how can anyone credibly make the argument that the US needs more Thatcherism, more conservative economics? Conservatives want to use their own failures in government to discredit the notion of government itself; the only "change" they represent is an accelerated degradation of the ability of government to do what Americans expect it to do.
In the end, as always, Gingrich's rhetoric is mostly for show. He dresses up old conservative hobbyhorses as something fresh and futurist, but he offers nothing genuinely new or original. Much of what he says directly contradicts itself -- for instance, he raises the specter of economic and educational competition from China and India, only to use it as an opportunity to launch into yet another denunciation of teachers and yet another argument for undermining the funding and accountability of our schools through vouchers and "school choice." This is astonishing -- he uses the rise of our competitors to insist on the very things that would further damage our competitiveness!
You can't blame Republicans for looking wistfully across the Atlantic to the country they so recently demonized. They understand how deeply unpopular they have become after a catastrophic era of conservative government, and naturally they look to the one example they can find of conservatives finding a way to win despite their own unpopularity. Unfortunately for the Republicans, though, the similarities are only superficial. Again, and as these same patriots were at such pains to remind us only a few short years ago, the United States of America is not France.
Labels: 2008, conservatives, Newt Gingrich, Nicolas Sarkozy, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:46 AM 0 comments Tuesday, August 07, 2007
They're Doing It Again
The Katrina Corollary: Conservatives will blame the failure of conservative government on government itself (also known as the Walter Reed Corollary).
Noah of the November Blog called it:
Alien & Sedition's Law: Conservatives can't govern, because conservatives don't believe in government.
The Katrina Corollary: Conservatives will blame the failure of conservative government on government itself (also known as the Walter Reed Corollary).
Noah of the November Blog called it:
But just wait, Republicans will use this bridge collapse as an excuse to decry how awful things get when government tries to handle the public's infrastructure and safety. And they will call for more private control, and more"free market" expansion.They wouldn't dare, would th-- oh, right. Of course they would:
But in this case, anger is an appropriate response, and it is proper for that anger to be directed at government - government at all levels.Why? Not because of massive underinvestment in American infrastructure during an era of conservative governance. No:
Maintenance is necessary but boring, and since government is made up of human beings who abhor boredom, few elected officials or high-level managers are all that interested in this mundane task. Instead, they want to do big, exciting, bold new things - things they can claim for their own.See, our bridges are collapsing because government inevitably prefers to spend its time cramming gay marriage down our throats (always down our throats) than doing boring maintenance. Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, sends an email to his list claiming that, when it comes to rebuilding, government will be the problem, not the solution:
And in the past half-century, American government has redefined its core responsibilities. No longer does government exist for the purposes of maintenance and upkeep. Instead, it is seen as a means - perhaps the only significant means - of healing social flaws and reweaving the social fabric.
The lessons are clear, as these cases prove. Yet, already some in Minnesota are calling not for unleashing American ingenuity but instead for more taxes to feed the same failing bureaucracies.For the nth time, my conservative friends: the fact that you find it impossible to govern competently, does not mean that competent government is impossible.
Their answer is to further punish Minneapolis drivers by raising the gasoline tax. This knee-jerk reaction is precisely what happens when the right lacks an effective vocabulary of solutions to compete with left-wing tax-and-spend policies.
Raising taxes to spend on bureaucracies -- which in all three cases were the main impediment to a safe, efficient and speedy rebuilding effort in the first place -- is exactly the wrong answer.
Labels: John Podhoretz, Newt Gingrich
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 4:36 PM 4 comments Thursday, August 02, 2007
Newt Gingrich Is a Strange Duck
He's one of the most adept and infuriating propagandists in the GOP, but then he'll say stuff like this. There is, undoubtedly, more to the story. I'll follow up if I can figure out what he's up to.
Labels: Newt Gingrich
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 5:39 PM 0 comments Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Newt Gingrich Thinks You're Stupid
If this Washington Times op-ed is any indication:
The Hamas victory in Gaza is a warning that World War IV (as Norman Podhoretz has called it) is going to be long and hard. It is also a warning that the West is currently losing that war.Never mind the childishness of the "World War IV" thing. Is this what Newt's new organization is blowing its money on? Have they polled the number of Americans who are against bad stuff? What about the number who support happy things? Those results should be pretty telling, I'd imagine.
These defeats are not a function of the courage and will of the American people. In a June poll sponsored by American Solutions, 85 percent of the American people said it was important to defend America and its allies. Only 10 percent were opposed. On an even stronger question, 75 percent said it was important to defeat America's enemies. Only 16 percent disagreed.
So the hard left in America is only 16 percent. It is outnumbered almost 5-1 by those who would defeat our enemies.
Labels: general rightwing looniness, Newt Gingrich
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:51 AM 3 comments Monday, June 04, 2007
Twilight of the Idols
As an analysis of the state of affairs in the GOP, the article is pretty straightforward. Goldberg interviews four of the men who have brought the party to where it is now: Karl Rove and the three fallen Congressional leaders, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and Dick Armey. They are all famously at odds with each other these days, like Beatles circa 1972, sniping and slashing and making you wonder how they ever managed to work together in any sort of harmony. Goldberg does a good job of letting their own ego-saturated words tell the tale of Republican discontent; there's also the obligatory Richard Viguerie quote as well as a purity check with a Republican Study Committee member (Jeff Flake, who also name-checks conservative favorite Mike Pence).
Everyone interviewed seems to grasp that in the 2008 election conservatism will in some sense be on trial; nobody agrees as to what that means. DeLay, resolutely and cheerfully clueless, seems to think he can return from Elba and take up the war right where he left off. Flake and his compatriots, who have convinced themselves that Republican corruption is just another manifestation of the evils of Big Government, are content to spend some time in purifying exile, waiting for Democrats to "overreach."
Rove is tired of hearing denunciations of "big-government conservatism":
The idea of the "natural majority" is a vexing one to conservatives, who have long told themselves that that is precisely what they represent, yet who have never really arrived at a comfortable sense of exactly what they mean by that. It's not a claim that is generally supported by issues polling, nor does it jibe with the conservative impulse toward counterculturalism.
Of all Goldberg's interlocutors, it's Gingrich, unsurprisingly, who best grasps that 2008 will be a change election. And Gingrich, citing the example of Nicolas Sarkozy -- who managed to run as a "change" candidate despite having spent years in the cabinet of an unpopular incumbent -- thinks he knows just how to approach it. Goldberg reports that Gingrich was frustrated by Rove's purported refusal to frame the 2004 election as a starkly ideological contest:
It's unclear that there are very many substantive ideas underlying Gingrich's bluster; as I discussed with regard to his "green conservatism" (solving global warming with prizes?), his real expertise is not in policy ideas but in communications strategies, and he tends to use the latter to mask his poverty in the former. He is an expert communicator, which makes him dangerous to tangle with, but progressives shouldn't be afraid to do so. We should welcome a war of ideas, because whether we realize it or not, we're much bettter armed for it.
Once again, one gets the distinct sense that the whole conservative ideological edifice could be pushed to pieces by a few bold progressive shoves.
So I did at last get around to reading the entirety of Jeffrey Goldberg's New Yorker piece on the "Republican Implosion." It's certainly worth a read, especially from a schadenfruede perspective.
As an analysis of the state of affairs in the GOP, the article is pretty straightforward. Goldberg interviews four of the men who have brought the party to where it is now: Karl Rove and the three fallen Congressional leaders, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and Dick Armey. They are all famously at odds with each other these days, like Beatles circa 1972, sniping and slashing and making you wonder how they ever managed to work together in any sort of harmony. Goldberg does a good job of letting their own ego-saturated words tell the tale of Republican discontent; there's also the obligatory Richard Viguerie quote as well as a purity check with a Republican Study Committee member (Jeff Flake, who also name-checks conservative favorite Mike Pence).
Everyone interviewed seems to grasp that in the 2008 election conservatism will in some sense be on trial; nobody agrees as to what that means. DeLay, resolutely and cheerfully clueless, seems to think he can return from Elba and take up the war right where he left off. Flake and his compatriots, who have convinced themselves that Republican corruption is just another manifestation of the evils of Big Government, are content to spend some time in purifying exile, waiting for Democrats to "overreach."
Rove is tired of hearing denunciations of "big-government conservatism":
When I mentioned Flake’s objections to Rove, he said, "I don’t accept the label 'big-government conservatism.' I think the object here is how do you fundamentally reform the big institutions of government in a way in which you drive them toward market choice, to the individual, to decentralization." He went on, "Flake is one of the few people who are consistent. Because he will say, 'Not only should we not have the prescription-drug benefit but also we shouldn’t have Medicare, either.' But most members of Congress, virtually every conservative member of Congress, has said, 'Look, we’ve settled that issue; we’re going to have Medicare.'"Flake, in return, insists that "If we could stick to our principles, we could be a natural governing majority."
The idea of the "natural majority" is a vexing one to conservatives, who have long told themselves that that is precisely what they represent, yet who have never really arrived at a comfortable sense of exactly what they mean by that. It's not a claim that is generally supported by issues polling, nor does it jibe with the conservative impulse toward counterculturalism.
Of all Goldberg's interlocutors, it's Gingrich, unsurprisingly, who best grasps that 2008 will be a change election. And Gingrich, citing the example of Nicolas Sarkozy -- who managed to run as a "change" candidate despite having spent years in the cabinet of an unpopular incumbent -- thinks he knows just how to approach it. Goldberg reports that Gingrich was frustrated by Rove's purported refusal to frame the 2004 election as a starkly ideological contest:
"All he proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was bigger than the anti-Bush vote," Gingrich said. He continued, "The Bush people deliberately could not bring themselves to wage a campaign of choice" -- of ideology, of suggesting that Kerry was "to the left of Ted Kennedy" -- and chose instead to attack Kerry’s war record.The activist in me loves Gingrich's approach: charge right for the ideological battlefield, highlight the clash, and fight it out -- may the best ideas win. Here's Goldberg's account of Newt's recent debate with John Kerry over global warming:
Very few Republicans these days talk about global warming as a reality, the way Gingrich does. Before a recent debate on Capitol Hill with John Kerry (reporters were promised a "smack-down"), Kerry seemed flustered when Gingrich shifted the debate from the basic science to a discussion of market-based solutions to the problem. Gingrich explained it this way: "here’s a short-term way out of this and a long-term way out of this. The long-term way is to create a new intellectual battleground, which you can’t do if you start out by saying 'No, no, no, no, no.' But if you say, 'O.K., let’s talk about, for example, how you best have conservation in America, do you think trial lawyers, regulators, bureaucrats, and higher taxes are the answer, then you ought to be with Al Gore. If you think that markets, incentives, prizes, and entrepreneurs are the answer, you ought to be with us.'"Other conservatives see Gingrich's willingness to talk about global warming as a sign of traitorous left-sliding; Gingrich sees what he's doing as seizing an opportunity to transform an issue and move it from liberal to conservative turf. In this sense, he's very much like Rove.
It's unclear that there are very many substantive ideas underlying Gingrich's bluster; as I discussed with regard to his "green conservatism" (solving global warming with prizes?), his real expertise is not in policy ideas but in communications strategies, and he tends to use the latter to mask his poverty in the former. He is an expert communicator, which makes him dangerous to tangle with, but progressives shouldn't be afraid to do so. We should welcome a war of ideas, because whether we realize it or not, we're much bettter armed for it.
Once again, one gets the distinct sense that the whole conservative ideological edifice could be pushed to pieces by a few bold progressive shoves.
Labels: conservatives, New Yorker, Newt Gingrich, Republicans
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:25 AM 2 comments Thursday, April 26, 2007
With You Shortly
Meanwhile, as an amuse bouche, here's a taste of what our conservative friends are up to today:
This week's Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn award goes to the Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter, whose op-ed in the New York Sun blames the various problem's of today's black youth - sexism, jaywalking, and the "stop snitching" thing - on LBJ and John Stewart. McWhorter argues that, back when they were oppressed, black folks were more upstanding. Truly, the past isn't what it used to be. Nor, apparently, is the present.
The editors of the National Review make a very good point about John McCain's apparently floundering campaign: there's an excellent chance he'll rebound thanks to the very reason he appears to be in trouble. How's that? Remember when we talked about conservative activists' perverse resentment of McCain's good relationship with the national media? Now that the media are saying he's in trouble, conservative primary voters are more likely to embrace the ex-"maverick":
Also at the National Review, Jim Geraghty brings us a trio of posts (the last of which is an interview) about Law & Order's Sam Waterson speaking about Fred Thompson and the 2008 election. Waterson's main subject is actually Unity 08, the group, with whom he is involved, seeking to draft a bipartisan independent ticket for the presidential election. I like Waterson, and I've always dug Jack McCoy, hard case though he is (did you know he's a fan of The Clash?), but man, that is one dumb idea.
And meanwhile, lurking in a distinctly candidate-like non-candidate-y way, Newt Gingrich flogs his "Green Conservatism" at the Australian (?) and the AEI website.
Right then. See you this afternoon.
So, Blogger seems to be crapping it up, again. We'll attempt to stay the course nonetheless. I'll be back later this afternoon with the long-awaited (by me, anyway) third part of the Republican Futures Past series, reporting from that brief time when we all thought the George W. Bush presidency wouldn't amount to much either way.
Meanwhile, as an amuse bouche, here's a taste of what our conservative friends are up to today:
This week's Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn award goes to the Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter, whose op-ed in the New York Sun blames the various problem's of today's black youth - sexism, jaywalking, and the "stop snitching" thing - on LBJ and John Stewart. McWhorter argues that, back when they were oppressed, black folks were more upstanding. Truly, the past isn't what it used to be. Nor, apparently, is the present.
The editors of the National Review make a very good point about John McCain's apparently floundering campaign: there's an excellent chance he'll rebound thanks to the very reason he appears to be in trouble. How's that? Remember when we talked about conservative activists' perverse resentment of McCain's good relationship with the national media? Now that the media are saying he's in trouble, conservative primary voters are more likely to embrace the ex-"maverick":
The rest of McCain’s campaign — which he officially launched in New Hampshire yesterday — is likely to be characterized by a dissonance: Whatever turns off the press and prompts it to write about how much he is hurting himself will probably only help him among Republican voters.McCain's "embittered ex-lovers" in the media may end up driving conservative voters into his arms.
Also at the National Review, Jim Geraghty brings us a trio of posts (the last of which is an interview) about Law & Order's Sam Waterson speaking about Fred Thompson and the 2008 election. Waterson's main subject is actually Unity 08, the group, with whom he is involved, seeking to draft a bipartisan independent ticket for the presidential election. I like Waterson, and I've always dug Jack McCoy, hard case though he is (did you know he's a fan of The Clash?), but man, that is one dumb idea.
And meanwhile, lurking in a distinctly candidate-like non-candidate-y way, Newt Gingrich flogs his "Green Conservatism" at the Australian (?) and the AEI website.
Right then. See you this afternoon.
Labels: 2008, John McCain, National review, New York Sun, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:35 AM 0 comments Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Newt Goes Green
Now, Newt hasn't been making a lot of sense lately, but the basic point here is fairly clear: Gingrich, as political operatives are wont to do, is trying to develop a communication strategy to deal with a serious policy issue that's hurting his side in the polls. Take this paragraph:
Far be it from me to doubt Newt's sincere commitment to safeguarding "the health of our planet," but his list of Green Conservatism's "basic values" isn't exactly dripping with substance:
Newt is a master of political language, and that appears to be mostly what his "Green Conservatism" is all about: language to win political battles as a substitute for actual policy strategy. He even insists that Green Conservatism talk of "conservation," not "environmentalism." We're promised much more to come on this subject. Though at such an inefficient rate of rhetoric to actual ideas, I think it might be more conservationist for Newt to just leave it alone.
If any of you are lucky enough to be on Newt Gingrich's email list, you may have read his latest missive: "We Can Have Green Conservatism -- And We Should." In which the former Speaker announces that "the time has come for the development of Green Conservatism as an alternative to big bureaucracy and big litigation liberal environmentalism."
Now, Newt hasn't been making a lot of sense lately, but the basic point here is fairly clear: Gingrich, as political operatives are wont to do, is trying to develop a communication strategy to deal with a serious policy issue that's hurting his side in the polls. Take this paragraph:
For example, former Vice President Al Gore suggests that global warming is so bad that we could have a 20-foot rise in the oceans in the near future. No responsible scientist anywhere believes that to be true. But if the debate becomes, "Al Gore cares about the earth, and we're against Al Gore," we end up in a defensive position where the average American could end up perceiving conservatives as always being negative about the environment.What a fuzzy bundle of conservative climate change-related pathologies! Newt's use of Al Gore, Strawman is textbook, as is his misleading opposition of the scientific consensus to that favorite denialist talking point, the 20-foot rise claim. Yet Gingrich seems concerned that demonizing Gore, as much fun as it is, may be counterproductive in the long run.
Far be it from me to doubt Newt's sincere commitment to safeguarding "the health of our planet," but his list of Green Conservatism's "basic values" isn't exactly dripping with substance:
- Green Conservatism favors clean air and clean water.
- Green Conservatism understands biodiversity as a positive good.
- Green Conservatism favors minimizing carbon loading in the atmosphere as a positive public value.
- Green Conservatism is pro-science, pro-technology and pro-innovation.
- Green Conservatism believes that green prosperity and green development are integral to the successful future of the human race.
- Green Conservatism believes that economic growth and environmental health are compatible in both the developed and developing world.
- Green Conservatism believes that we can realize more positive environmental outcomes faster by shifting tax code incentives and shifting market behavior than is possible from litigation and regulation.
Newt is a master of political language, and that appears to be mostly what his "Green Conservatism" is all about: language to win political battles as a substitute for actual policy strategy. He even insists that Green Conservatism talk of "conservation," not "environmentalism." We're promised much more to come on this subject. Though at such an inefficient rate of rhetoric to actual ideas, I think it might be more conservationist for Newt to just leave it alone.
Labels: environment, global warming, Newt Gingrich
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:20 PM 0 comments Saturday, March 31, 2007
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 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 Thursday, March 22, 2007
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 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 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 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
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 Tuesday, February 27, 2007
You Can't Keep a Bad Movement Down
Which is a shame, because the year before the presidential election would be a good time to go. The contenders will be pandering at a fast clip, while the activists talk strategy for the upcoming fight. Rudy Giuliani - fresh from yesterday's talk at the Hoover Institution - will be making one of his first major campaign appearances at CPAC, and Mitt Romney will be hoping to make up for his damp squib at the Summit.
Another speaker will be Newt Gingrich, still fully engaged in his campaign to bring an intellectual renaissance - by force, if necessary - to the conservative movement. Newt recently sent around some thoughts on the 2008 election to those of us lucky enough to be on his email list. Some excerpts:
Oh, and the Hillary thing never fails to crack me up. You spent eight years calling her a lesbian Nazi who murdered Vince Foster and you're saying she's a mud-slinger? If conservatives like Newt were projecting any more obviously, they'd be Imax theaters.
But our mission is to observe, not to editorialize. Here's what Newt thinks the '08 election should be about:
Still, don't underestimate Newt. Note how he mentions the so-called "human cost" of the welfare state. That's a big flashing sign that he and his minions plan to be out there telling stories about how ordinary people - they'll have names, hometowns, biographies, adorable children, everything - have suffered at the merciless hands of big government. Again, do not underestimate this. It doesn't matter if it's garbage - if the right is out there telling personal stories, and the left is up its own behind with laundry lists and vague rhetoric, we're going to find ourselves caught off guard and mystified, once again, by how such patent conservative nonsense suddenly seems so politically potent. We need to be telling the stories. And the thing is, our stories will make more sense, because they're real and they represent the opinions and experiences of most Americans. But we need to be out there telling them. Because if we don't, Newt and his crowd will.
This weekend the leading lights of the right will gather in DC for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the annual right-wing hootenanny sponsored by the American Conservative Union. I would love love love to be there, but as much as I enjoyed the National Review's Conservative Summit last month, I can't make it to DC for this one.
Which is a shame, because the year before the presidential election would be a good time to go. The contenders will be pandering at a fast clip, while the activists talk strategy for the upcoming fight. Rudy Giuliani - fresh from yesterday's talk at the Hoover Institution - will be making one of his first major campaign appearances at CPAC, and Mitt Romney will be hoping to make up for his damp squib at the Summit.
Another speaker will be Newt Gingrich, still fully engaged in his campaign to bring an intellectual renaissance - by force, if necessary - to the conservative movement. Newt recently sent around some thoughts on the 2008 election to those of us lucky enough to be on his email list. Some excerpts:
There are two big facts about the 2008 election.Emphasis mine. Newt seems unable to escape the Great Conservative Fallacy of 2006, which holds that, somehow, Americans voted for Democrats because the Republicans weren't conservative enough. But then again, having invested all that energy in 'revitalizing' conservatism, Newt's probably not going to up and admit that the GOP should move to the center. So: be more conservative, get rejected again, purify yourself even more, etc. etc. This could be a most entertaining vicious circle.
FACT #1: Running as a bland, business-as-usual Republican will be a dead loser. In 2006, the American people repudiated the GOP, because the idea of Republicans' trying to manage the liberal welfare state they inherited from the Democrats was a dead loser. I am not sure many Republican consultants have come to understand this. Certainly the elite news media want Republicans to run as non-ideological "centrists" who will then have no persuasive appeal to the vast majority of Americans that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980 and '84 and the Contract with America House Republicans in 1994.
FACT #2: Focusing on an anti-Hillary campaign will also be a dead loser. The Clintons are the most determined and intense politicians of our lifetime. I just read Ambassador Bill Middendorf's A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement (read my review here), and he reminded me of the ferocity of the 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign. It reminded me of the Clinton campaign style.
If a campaign is going to degenerate into a mud slinging contest, the Clintons will always win because they are vastly more ready to jump into the pit. The recent attacks over David Geffen and Barack Obama are just a sample of how quickly and fiercely the Clintons will attack if the campaign is simply about who can "out negative" whom.
Oh, and the Hillary thing never fails to crack me up. You spent eight years calling her a lesbian Nazi who murdered Vince Foster and you're saying she's a mud-slinger? If conservatives like Newt were projecting any more obviously, they'd be Imax theaters.
But our mission is to observe, not to editorialize. Here's what Newt thinks the '08 election should be about:
THE KEY to victory in 2008 is for conservatives to communicate three big messages:Again, emphasis mine. So, the lesson of six years of disastrous conservative government is that... liberals have failed? You have to admire his chutzpah.
- America is faced with historic challenges that require historic responses. That is a much different style and approach than we get out of traditional politicians and their traditional consultants.
- If we do the right things and implement the right changes, we can build a better, safer, freer and more prosperous America. We should have the nerve to go into every neighborhood and every community and explain why our better future will work. The liberal welfare state has failed, and its bureaucracies cannot be defended if we focus on the human costs of their failures. It is our challenge to focus on the big choices, the big truths and the big contrasts, not on the petty politics of personal viciousness that characterize so much of the current system.
- This choice between a failed liberal, welfare-state future and an exciting, successful, conservative, opportunity- society future requires transformation at all levels of American elected office (511,000+ elected officials) and not merely the oval office [this refers to Newt's new 527, American Solutions for Winning the Future, about which more later- ed.].
These are the themes and the call to action I will outline Saturday at CPAC. I hope to see you there.
Still, don't underestimate Newt. Note how he mentions the so-called "human cost" of the welfare state. That's a big flashing sign that he and his minions plan to be out there telling stories about how ordinary people - they'll have names, hometowns, biographies, adorable children, everything - have suffered at the merciless hands of big government. Again, do not underestimate this. It doesn't matter if it's garbage - if the right is out there telling personal stories, and the left is up its own behind with laundry lists and vague rhetoric, we're going to find ourselves caught off guard and mystified, once again, by how such patent conservative nonsense suddenly seems so politically potent. We need to be telling the stories. And the thing is, our stories will make more sense, because they're real and they represent the opinions and experiences of most Americans. But we need to be out there telling them. Because if we don't, Newt and his crowd will.
Labels: 2008, conservatives, CPAC, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:44 AM 0 comments Friday, February 02, 2007
See for Yourself
I didn't talk about Kudlow - he introduced Snow with a lengthy diatribe about the all-conquering Milton Friedman and the "total defeat of the left and their statist ideas." It was the first time I've ever been in a crowd that was moved to wild applause by a dis on Keynesianism.
NRO has online video of Newt, Apple Pie Huckabee (I suppose that works out to "Applebee"), and Larry Kudlow speaking at the Conservative Summit. Now you can sit up close and feel the action.
I didn't talk about Kudlow - he introduced Snow with a lengthy diatribe about the all-conquering Milton Friedman and the "total defeat of the left and their statist ideas." It was the first time I've ever been in a crowd that was moved to wild applause by a dis on Keynesianism.
Labels: Conservative Summit, Lawrence Kudlow, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich
¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:03 AM 0 comments 
