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Friday, February 29, 2008 STILL, NOBODY HATES HILLARY LIKE THE REPUBLICANS You probably know about the new Hillary Clinton ad that's airing in Texas: "It's 3:00am and your children are asleep," a voice over says in the ad. "There's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing. Something is happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call." "Whether someone knows the world's leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead. It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?" the ad concludes. It's being slammed several different ways -- as fearmongering, as a warmed-over Mondale ad, as a warmed-over LBJ "daisy" ad -- but here's the strangest critique, from Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb: Hillary's New Ad: I Will Micromanage! ... Hillary seems to be just the kind of person who would want to micromanage a military situation. That's how she's run her campaign, and there's little doubt that's how she'd run the White House.... Look, I'm not wild about the fearmongering here, but we know the kind of crisis she's talking about -- a horrific 9/11-style attack on the America. Does Goldfarb not believe the president of the United States should wake up in such circumstances and begin to deal with the situation at hand? Oh, wait, maybe he doesn't -- after all, he's a member of the party of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, so presumably he wants a president who'll ignore signs of an impending crisis, be allowed to sleep through a nighttime crisis, and respond to a daytime crisis by fleeing in fear. posted by Steve M. | 2:40 PM | ADAM NAGOURNEY REPORTS FROM A PARALLEL UNIVERSE Nagourney, on the front page of today's New York Times: ...if Mr. Obama becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, he is sure to face an onslaught from Republicans and their allies that will be very different in tone and intensity from what he has faced so far. ...For much of this year, Mr. Obama has been handled with relative care by Mrs. Clinton.... "Relative care"? Hillary Clinton suggesting that Al-Qaeda was more likely to attack if Obama is president? Bill Clinton describing Obama's assertion that he's consistently opposed the Iraq War as a "fairytale" and comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson? Surrogates attacking Obama's youthful drug use? Campaign staffers circulating madrassa e-mails? A speaker at a Clinton campaign appearance calling Obama supporters "latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies"? You can say the Clinton campaign got nasty or you can say that politics ain't beanbag and Obama can't complain if the going got rough. But Nagourney is actually arguing that the going didn't get rough -- that Obama has been treated with kid gloves. That's absurd. Of course, Nagourney would argue that. The message of virtually every story Adam Nagourney has ever written is "Democrats are doomed." He predicts doom for Democrats and then uses his front-page column inches in the Times to make that into self-fulfilling prophesy. So pay no attention to Obama's success in the polls, against both Clinton and McCain, Nagourney says -- Obama's really never been attacked, and he probably won't be able to handle it when he is. ***** There's one more pro-Republican meme Nagourney wants to spread in this story: that whatever happens between now and November, John McCain is innocent. Watch how Nagourney pre-acquits McCain: But Mr. McCain clearly will not control all of the voices that could oppose Mr. Obama, from bloggers and talk radio hosts to other elected officials. Even parts of the Republican Party apparatus can transmit messages that the presidential nominee cannot or will not. That's a sneaky, deceitful elision. The first sentence alludes to people McCain genuinely can't be expected to control. But the second sentence refers to the national party of which McCain will be the nominee. Is Nagourney saying that McCain is helpless to influence the big kahunas in his party when he's the party's presidential candidate? Well, no, Nagourney's not exactly saying that -- but by putting that sentence after a sentence about people McCain "clearly will not control," Nagourney is trying to lull you into thinking that nothing, even if it comes from RNC headquarters, will be McCain's fault. That is what we're going to hear, of course, for the next eight months -- that no weapon wielded by any Republican, in however appalling a way, has McCain's fingerprints on it. posted by Steve M. | 10:25 AM | Thursday, February 28, 2008 AT LEAST FOUR POSSIBLE McCAIN RUNNING MATES HAVE ALSO PRAISED HAGEE You may already know about this: Senator John McCain got support on Wednesday from an important corner of evangelical Texas when the pastor of a San Antonio mega-church, Rev. John C. Hagee, endorsed Mr. McCain for president. Mr. Hagee, who argues that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive, biblically prophesized military strike against Iran that will lead to the second coming of Christ, praised Mr. McCain.... Mr. McCain ... said he was "very honored" by Mr. Hagee's endorsement. Asked about Mr. Hagee’s extensive writings on Armageddon and about what one questioner said was Mr. Hagee's belief that the anti-Christ will be the head of the European Union, Mr. McCain responded that "all I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee’s support."... As Glenn Greenwald notes, Hagee has said some rather harsh things about Muslims ("those who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews"), Katrina victims ("I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that"), and, er, the Harry Potter books ("The whole purpose of the Potter books is to desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult") -- and Bill Donohue of the not-exactly-liberal Catholic League has noted that Hagee doesn't seem to like Catholics much, either: ... for the past few decades, he has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it 'The Great Whore,' an 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ,' and a 'false cult system.' Will McCain face the same scrutiny that Barack Obama has faced after being endorsed by Louis Farrakhan (an endorsement he's rejected)? Naaah. Of course not. I just want to add that at least four people who've been mentioned as possible McCain running mates have also spoken well of Hagee: Mike Huckabee: ... Mike Huckabee risked his standing with Catholic voters on Sunday by courting his evangelical base at the church of a controversial preacher accused of disparaging Catholics. ... Huckabee delivered a Christmas season sermon at Cornerstone about Christ's birth and embraced Hagee, calling him "one of the great Christian leaders of our nation." ... Joe Lieberman: ...Last month, Lieberman warmly greeted Pastor John Hagee, a founder of Christians United for Israel and a man who agrees with Lieberman's view that a pre-emptive U.S. strike may one day be necessary to neutralize Iran. "I would describe Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses," Lieberman told Hagee and his followers at a recent conference the group held in Washington, at which Lieberman was invited to speak. "He is an 'Eesh Elo Kim,' a man of God, because those words fit him; and like Moses, he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of defense of Israel." ... Governor Rick Perry of Texas: Texas Gov. Rick Perry has drawn criticism from rival candidates for saying he agrees non-Christians are condemned to spend eternity in hell. Perry was among some 60 mostly Republican candidates for Tuesday's midterm election attending a Sunday service at San Antonio's Cornerstone Church, where pastor John Hagee said in his sermon non-Christians were "going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket," The Dallas Morning News reported. Afterward, Perry told reporters there was nothing in the sermon he could disagree with.... Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina: Greenville celebrated "A Night to Honor Israel" last Tuesday evening.... It was the initial rally in the State of South Carolina of the new organization, Christians United For Israel (CUFI), which was founded last year by Dr. John Hagee... Governor Mark Sanford sent a special letter of greeting and support. Sanford wrote: 'This special event in support of Israel brings hope for the future. It demonstrates a commitment to work together on common ground to address the concerns and issues that affect us all." ... Would any of them have to answer questions about their kind words for this bigoted lunatic? Naaah. Of course not. **** UPDATE: Did I say "lunatic"? Read about Hagee's book Jerusalem Countdown: ...He argues that a strike against Iran will cause Arab nations to unite under Russia's leadership, as outlined in chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezekiel, leading to an "inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon." ... The strike will provoke Russia -- which wants Persian Gulf oil -- to lead an army of Arab nations against Israel. Then God will wipe out all but one-sixth of the Russian-led army... To fill the power vacuum left by God's decimation of the Russian army, the Antichrist -- the head of the EU -- will rule "a one-world government, a one-world currency and a one-world religion" for three and a half years.... The "demonic world leader" will then be confronted by a false prophet, identified by Hagee as China, at Armageddon, the Mount of Megiddo in Israel. As they prepare for the final battle, Jesus will return on a white horse and cast both villains -- and presumably any nonbelievers -- into a "lake of fire burning with brimstone," thus marking the beginning of his millennial reign.... So hey, don't worry about your adjustable-rate mortgages, people. posted by Steve M. | 11:06 PM | AND WE HAVE EIGHT MONTHS TO GO YET So I didn't realize that Rush Limbaugh's call screener, James Golden, a black man who's referred to on the air as "Bo Snerdley," has been labeled Rush's "Official Obama Criticizer."  Nor did I realize that he's happy to do this criticizing in someone's crude, fourth-hand idea of black English. First we get the standard English. Then we get the minstrelsy: ...RUSH: We turn now to the Official EIB Obama Criticizer, Bo Snerdley. SNERDLEY: This is Bo Snerdley, Official EIB Barack Criticizer, African-American, certified black guy, black enough to criticize. I have a statement: "Senator Obama, your reaction to the release of the picture showing you in native garb with your extended family in Africa was...regretful. While the motives of the Clinton camp in disseminating the image are clear, your response was baffling. Instead of acting wounded, whining, and like you're ashamed of the photo in the first place; it would have been wiser for you to take pride in the photo. Explain that world leaders, such as yourself, often wear the traditional garb when you visit foreign lands -- especially if you're visiting your family! You could have also dug up the pictures of both Bill and Hillary Clinton attired in similar African garb while they were pretending to be the black president and first lady. Bad form, Mr. Obama. You need to develop a much thicker skin, and not fall for Clinton tricks." (Let me interrupt here to note that a link at the bottom of the transcript on Limbaugh's site goes to an ABC story that essentially contradicts everything "Snerdley" says here -- it points out that Obama and members of his campaign pushed back in precisely these ways. Does anyone in Limbaugh Land even check these things?) Then comes "Snerdley's" minstrelsy: Now, the translation for EIB brothers and sisters in the hood. "Yo, oh! What's up with you acting dissed when they only rolled out a shot of you with your African garb. Yo! You were in the mother land with the peeps. That was lame, yo! These are your peeps. You were stylin'. Instead of acting dissed, you shoulda rolled out large and told Clinton and everybody else what was up. This is what the big dogs do, yo, not like Bill faking it, putting on some kente cloth when he goes to Africa, then forgetting all about the home boys when he comes back home. Like that. You shoulda also told Hillary: 'Yo, baby, maybe if you dress up in some costumes and get out of that bumblebee outfit, you might keep your man at home for a change.' Okay? You feel me? Don't fall for Clinton 'trickinology,' bro." That concludes this statement. Yikes. posted by Steve M. | 5:02 PM | A CLARIFICATION Digby, posting about John McCain's apology for "Hussein"-baiter Bill Cunningham, who warmed up that Tennessee crowd for him: From the comments comes an apt analogy, which I missed. Cunningham is this season's Sistah Soljah. But that's not quite accurate. The truth is, the press is treating McCain's entire campaign as a Sister Souljah moment. As a candidate, he is being portrayed as a living, breathing 24/7 refutation of the likes of Bill Cunningham (despite the fact that, as Digby notes, the McCain campaign told Cunningham to give the crowd "red meat"), George W. Bush (despite the fact that McCain will Xerox Bush's policies on the war and the economy), and Rush Limbaugh (despite the fact that Limbaugh has made it clear he wants Republicans to win this election). The political establishment praised a Clinton moment. The same establishment discusses the McCain campaign as if every moment is praiseworthy -- as if it's an act of bravery on McCain's part just to get up in the morning and campaign. And it's only going to get worse. posted by Steve M. | 2:36 PM | NO LOOKING, BILL: HILLARY'S MIDDLE NAME IS... Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party: ...Apparently, using Barack Hussein Obama's middle name is a no-no.... Silly, of course. Run a Lexis-Nexis search for the number of times the media has used Hillary Rodham Clinton's middle name, often to underscore her feminist leanings and independence from her husband.... Er, Bill? Rodham is Hillary Clinton's maiden name. Her middle name is Diane. Eagerly awaiting your next press release on behalf of John Sidney McCain. ***** (Hobbs link via TBogg.) posted by Steve M. | 10:55 AM | ABC WHITEWASHES BUCKLEY; NEO-NAZIS DON'T Last night's ABC News broadcast included a tribute to William F. Buckley (video here). At about 1:09 in, there's a clip from a debate Buckley had on ABC in 1968 at the time of the unrest surrounding the Chicago Democratic convention. Here's how it came out in the tribute last night: ABC ANCHOR CHARLIE GIBSON: ... He charmed and exasperated and never backed down from a fight, like this one with Gore Vidal in 1968: VIDAL (on film): ...the only crypto Nazi I can think of is yourself. BUCKLEY (on film): Stop calling me a crypto Nazi, or I'll sock you in your goddamn face... As Ann Coulter delightedly notes (in a riff she's stolen a couple of times herself), this is how the exchange actually went (emphasis mine): In a famous exchange with Gore Vidal in 1968, Vidal said to Buckley: "As far as I am concerned, the only crypto Nazi I can think of is yourself." Buckley replied: "Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto Nazi, or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered." Why leave "you queer" out? Buckley wasn't ashamed of it. (Coulter gleefully adds: "Years later, in 1985, Buckley said of the incident: 'We both acted irresponsibly. I'm not a Nazi, but he is, I suppose, a fag.'") Not only did he suggest tattooing the HIV-positive in the 1980s, he proudly repeated the suggestion three years ago (declining to identify himself in a way I'm sure he thought was arch): Someone, 20 years ago, suggested a discreet tattoo the site of which would alert the prospective partner to the danger of proceeding as had been planned. But the author of the idea was treated as though he had been schooled in Buchenwald, and the idea was not widely considered, but maybe it is up now for reconsideration. Hey, ABC -- show the man for what he was. **** A much more honest tribute to Buckley shows up at the message board of the Stormfront White Nationalist Community -- a link to an article on Buckley and National Review from the neo-Nazi American Renaissance. Although it expresses regret for dangerous backsliding toward racial decency on Buckley's part in recent years, it commends him for his early racialism: ...passages from some back issues could have been lifted right out of American Renaissance. ...Mr. Buckley's magazine stood firm. A book review from the July 13th issue of ... 1957 ... by Richard Weaver was called, "Integration is Communization." Mr. Weaver found Carl Rowan's Go South to Sorrow "a sorry specimen of Negro intellectual leadership," and went on to express deep suspicion about the whole integrationist enterprise: "'Integration' and 'Communization' are, after all, pretty closely synonymous. In light of what is happening today, the first may be little more than a euphemism for the second. It does not take many steps to get from the 'integrating' of facilities to the 'communizing' of facilities, if the impulse is there." ...In a column written five months before the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and called "The Issue at Selma," [Buckley] ... sympathized with the Southern position writing, "In much of the South, what is so greatly feared is irresponsible, mobocratic rule, and it is a fear not easily dissipated, because it is well-grounded that if the entire Negro population in the South were suddenly given the vote, and were to use it as a bloc, and pursuant to directives handed down by some of the more demagogic leaders, chaos would ensue." He also warned of "a suddenly enfranchised, violently embittered Negro population which will take the vote and wield it as an instrument of vengeance, shaking down the walls of Jericho even to their foundations, and reawakening the terrible genocidal antagonisms that scarred the Southern psyche during the days of Reconstruction." ... In an April 8, 1969 column called "On Negro Inferiority" Mr. Buckley wrote about the furor caused by Arthur Jensen's research about race and IQ, calling it "massive, apparently authoritative." Mr. Buckley even bragged that "Professor Ernest van den Haag, writing in National Review (Dec. 1, 1964) ... brilliantly anticipated the findings of Dr. Jensen and brilliantly coped with their implications." The late Revilo Oliver, classicist and outspoken racialist, made regular appearances in the early NR. Mr. Buckley thought so highly of him he put his name on the masthead and invited him to his wedding.... That's only a tiny sample of the riches the American Renaissance article has on display. Ann Coulter, in her tribute, says, "there was a lot more to him than a bow tie and a sailboat." I'll say. posted by Steve M. | 8:46 AM | Wednesday, February 27, 2008 EVEN IF TIM RUSSERT IS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING, ANOTHER TIM RUSSERT WILL COME ALONG Digby last night, summing up the mood of the entire left blogosphere: How Do We Defeat Tim Russert? But if there were no Tim Russert, Russertism would still be with us. We know this because there were Tim Russerts well before Tim Russert rose to prominence. Remember Bernie Shaw? Remember the question he asked Michael Dukakis in that 1988 debate? Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for her killer? That's the quintessence of Russertism. Here's how Paul Waldman put it at Tapped last spring: ...Shaw wasn't trying to tease out the reasons Dukakis opposed the death penalty. His question was the worst kind of "gotcha," something with no policy content whatsoever. Its goal, and what it achieved so spectacularly, was to provide the "decisive moment" that would cast into sharp relief the character flaw that reporters had already decided was Dukakis' Achilles heel. Sound familiar? ...There's an unbroken line between Shaw, and Kit Seelye and Ceci Connolly making up lies Al Gore never told, and Jodi Wilgoren musing on John Kerry's windsurfing, and Maureen Dowd writing about John Edwards' haircut, and on and on and on into this campaign and the next and the next. It's not about substance, and it isn't even about "character." It's about finding what reporters think is the worst thing about a candidate, and picking and picking at it until their evident belief that it should disqualify him from the presidency becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.... That's Russertism for the past twenty years. I'm sorry to say there'll be Russertism forever -- unless there is a massive change to the way business is routinely done by the Beltway pess corps. posted by Steve M. | 10:57 PM | ACTIVELY MAKING OURSELVES STUPIDER Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism just hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Idiocracy? You're soaking in it. (The new list just went out by e-mail. It'll be on the Times site this weekend.) posted by Steve M. | 5:56 PM | GOOD COP, BAD COP Marc Ambinder, blogging for The Atlantic at 8:40 this morning: Rove: Don't "Hussein" Obama No less an authority figure than Karl Rove has warned Republican operatives from demagoguing Barack Obama's middle name. At a closed door meeting of GOP state executive directors in late January, Rove said the safest way to refer to Obama would be to use his honorific, "Sen. Obama." "The context was, you're not going to stimatize this guy. You shouldn't underestimate him," one of the executive directors said. Rove said that the use of "Barack Hussein Obama" would perpetuate the notion that Republicans were bigoted and would hurt the party.... Marc Ambinder, five hours later: Tennessee Republican Party Slams Barack "Hussein" Obama On Monday, the Tennessee Republican Party dropped the H-bomb, adorning a press release with Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, and associated him the Muslim religion by running the 2006 photograph of the candidate wearing Somali tribal clothing. Here's the first paragraph of the release: The Tennessee Republican Party today joins a growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel, the only stable democracy in the Middle East, if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States. Ostensibly, the press release was written to react to Louis Farrakhan's Sunday endorsement of Obama.... Is the Tennessee state party off message? Oh, give me a break. The state party isn't off message and Bill Cunningham, who similarly baited Obama while warming up a McCain crowd in Cincinnati yesterday, wasn't off message either. Ambinder's Rove story is meant to gull us into believing that the GOP's best minds think race-baiting Obama is both offensive and bad politics. We were also meant to be gulled by the Politico story from Sunday that said, "Top Republican strategists are working on plans to protect the GOP from charges of racism or sexism in the general election ... commission[ing] polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate"; we were really supposed to be bamboozled by the assertion that this mega-super-secret "RNC project is viewed as so sensitive that those involved in the work were reluctant to discuss the findings in detail." It's a crock. The plan is that the nominee and marquee party names will act high-minded while expendable enforcers from the deep GOP/VRWC bench come in to throw the elbows. The big names will piously express shock and remorse, while congratulating the thugs on a job well done. **** UPDATE: I'm surprised that Kos thinks Rove is sincere and the Tennessee party "refuses to play ball." It seems pretty obvious to me that these guys are running a scam. posted by Steve M. | 3:11 PM | FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR Seattle: Seattle drivers, what do you make of this?  The billboard, which faces south from the corner of Western Avenue and Denny Way, states that it was funded by something called "Concerned Citizens for a Better America." You won't find the group's name on Google, except in a wayward comment thread or two. The group is not registered as a Political Action Committee or with the Washington Secretary of State's corporation division. Nor does it have to be -- based on this billboard, anyway -- because its message neither mentions a candidate by name nor appears too close to election time.... "Whoever did it chose the location carefully -- 'cause it was next to you," [Democratic consultant Frank Greer] said, referring to the P-I [Seattle Post-Intelligencer].... Houston:  Gee, what would you do if you were in a crowded field of 10 candidates for Congress, and you are not one of the more well known politicians? Here's an idea, put a really scary billboard up, and get the voters to notice you! That's the plan for Brian Klock, one of the ten people running for the Republican nomination of Congressional District 22. With more well known names like Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, and John Manlove running, Klock is trying to stand out from the pack. A campaign staffer called me this morning, gleefully telling me that the billboard will refocus the voters' attention on terrorism. In addition, he told me the billboard unveiling news conference will include Bob Perry, one of the most prominent Republican donors. I was also reminded on the phone that Perry is the driving force behind the "Swift Boat" campaigns, and thus making this a very important endorsement.... Both apparently up the same week. Make of that what you will. Klock, by the way, is trying to stand out in the crowded primary field by vowing last month to eat nothing but MREs until primary election day. I am not making this up. posted by Steve M. | 12:03 PM | DENOUNCE-VS.-REJECT-GATE -- SET THE TIME-MACHINE DIALS TO 1988 I got a few details wrong, but I'll quote something I posted last May: ...People often say that the Iraq War will absolutely be the #1 issue in the '08 presidential election -- but they're dead wrong.... It can't be -- because if it is, the Democrat will win handily, and the Beltway Establishment doesn't want that to happen. So when the Republicans try to change the subject -- try to make the election about John Edwards's money and alleged vanity, or about Barack Obama's foreign roots or his pastor's political beliefs, or about all the things in the Gerth/Van Natta and Bernstein books [about Hillary Clinton] -- the Beltway press will do everything in its power to aid and abet them.... So nothing you or I would consider an issue will dominate the discussion in '08. That seems insane, given the war (which will absolutely still be going strong all through next year), and given other pressing concerns (such as health care), but that's the way it's going to be. The election will be a referendum on one of the items the GOP floats as the '08 version of Willie Horton or Kerry's time on the Swift Boat. It's going to be about trivia.... So we have Traditional-Garb-Gate. We have Denounce-Vs.-Reject-Gate, with Tim Russert demanding that Barack Obama denounce anti-Semitism he'd already denounced, and now we're being told that "denounce" is inadequate, even modified to "denounce and reject" -- a line of argument we'll surely hear from the McCain campaign. And, warming up in the bullpen, we have Incidental-Contact-With-Sixties-Radicals-Gate -- see Jonah Goldberg in today's New York Post, not quite hanging radicals-turned-Chicago-political-operatives William Ayres and Bernardine Dorhn around Obama's neck, but certainly hinting at ways his insignificant links to them can be exploited politically. Get used to waking up every day and seeing your political culture -- candidates, the press, even (perhaps especially) the blogs -- discussing this crap rather than the issues. Get used to it because we're going to have nine more months of it. By fall, one of these non-issues is effectively going to be the central issue of the campaign -- or more than one is. And that would have been true no matter who the Democratic nominee turned out to be. I love this Goldberg quote: In the weeks to come, maybe reporters can resist the temptation to repeat health-care questions for the billionth time and instead ask America's foremost liberal representatives why being a radical means never having to say you're sorry. Oh you and your stupid "issues." We don't care! We want a witch-hunt, dammit! We want irrelevant distractions! Well, relax, Jonah. Tim Russert still has a job. We'll all be neck-deep in the irrelevant very, very soon. *** And yes, obviously a lot of this stuff isn't originating with the GOP. That's something I got wrong in May -- forgetting about the press's ability to originate, rather than merely parrot, anti-Democratic talking points, and forgetting about the Democrats' fondness for fragging. posted by Steve M. | 8:10 AM | Tuesday, February 26, 2008 THIS IS WHY PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN No matter who's responsible, you and I are blamed for things like this: Film's casting call wants that 'inbred' look A movie about to be filmed in Pittsburgh is casting Gothic characters -- including an albino-like girl and deformed people -- to depict West Virginia mountain people. "'Regular-looking" children need not apply. That's the gist of an open casting call for paid extras for "Shelter," a horror film starring Julianne Moore that will begin shooting in Pittsburgh in March.... "It's the way it was described in the script," Belajac said Monday. "Some of these 'holler' people -- because they are insular and clannish, and they don't leave their area -- there is literally inbreeding, and the people there often have a different kind of look. That's what we're trying to get." ... Asked if she felt the characterization might be offensive to West Virginians, Belajac said: "We tried to word it in a way that's not offensive. I hope it's not an offensive thing. It's not meant to be a generalization about everyone in West Virginia. That's why we put that it's in a 'holler' in the mountains." ... Oh, so you only want to stereotype thousands of West Virginians, not all West Virginians. That makes it so much less offensive, doesn't it? The notion that the Appalachians produce inbred, misshapen people is an artifact of the eugenics era. Go read this for a bit of background. The notion is actually more myth than fact. Look, for all I know, the screenwriter and casting director of Shelter are Republicans. It doesn't matter -- stereotyping of "dumb hicks," and flyover-country dwellers in general, is blamed on the party associated with cultural sophistication, the Democratic Party. And, well, some of us do say stupid things like this. And I really think it shows up at the ballot box -- I think a lot of red-state non-urbane people care more about respect for the way they live their lives than they do about, say, Laffer-curve tax policy. Yeah, I'm not perfect on this score. I generalize once in a while -- I do rag on the South, for instance. But I try to limit my criticism to political opinions Southerners themselves would acknowledge as widespread in their region. I'll criticize you if you reject evolution or if you think closing the gun-show loophole is an act of fascism. On the other hand, if you like hunting or NASCAR, it's just not my idea of fun; I don't think enjoying these things makes you a shoeless cousin-humper with no teeth. The problem, of course, is that issue debates become lifestyle debates. If I want the gun-show loophole closed, I'm said to have contempt for rural hunters. If I want evolution taught, I'm said to hate devout rural Christians. We're going to be banging heads over these issues for a long time to come -- but, on our side, I wish we'd just keep it political; gratuitous cultural stereotyping on our side, I'd say, just leads the other side to get more dug in. By the way, the big problem in Appalachia isn't inbreeding; the real problem is plain old poverty. Being yuppie scum myself, I'll recommend some yuppie cultural product -- Frontline's Country Boys and Rory Kennedy's American Hollow. Meanwhile, lose the Deliverance jokes. They're not helping. posted by Steve M. | 7:27 PM | COMPLACENCY IS FOR THE DELUSIONAL Andrea Marcotte is right: ...The entire point of calling McCain a "maverick" is to insinuate -- wrongly -- that he's barely a Republican at all. Just a formality, really. Goodness, he's practically in the party so that he can go undercover with his maverick so-not-Bush ways. *swoon* This is going to be the major problem of the entire election season, that the media will tell the story that McCain needs to win, about how he's practically a Democrat, except that they don't let grumpy white war veterans into the party. It's a lie, but repeat it enough -- say, 100 times a day from now until November -- and it will have the glow of truth to it. That he's not any different from any other Republican in any way that counts will not be the story that gets told.... If you needed any evidence of this, check out the current "Write Your Own Caption" political cartoon contest from McClatchy Newspapers. Here's the wordless version:  And here's the winning caption from a reader (yeah, it's not really a caption):  Q.E.D. **** Amanda's post is inspired by this blog post from The Nation's Katha Pollitt, which is probably the best analysis of the problem: ...He may look like a grumpy old man ... or the nutty old uncle who rags on everyone at Thanksgiving before passing out in front of the football game. But that's another way of saying McCain is a familiar, indeed family, character. It does not require an imaginative stretch to get John McCain. How many voters know someone like Barack Obama? ... So what if he's old? In politics old can be good ( for men), especially to the older voters -- older white voters -- who dominate the polls. Besides, McCain's not so old that he couldn't get himself a much younger trophy wife, and even if Cindy McCain looks brittle and unhappy and like she hasn't eaten in a decade, she is always there by his side, a visual reminder of his manly prowess. McCain is brash and sly and seemingly unguarded, unlike the famously self-protective Hillary Clinton, and he loves to schmooze with reporters, who adore him and like most of the rest of America, refuse to see how conservative he is. It's like they're saying, Oh go on, Uncle John! you're just saying you love Sam Alito to get me riled up! ... So the task at hand is to prevent the narrative from being: The Democrat is way off to one side; the Republican is right in the middle. Can it be done? posted by Steve M. | 2:13 PM | COMPLAINING ABOUT THE UNFAIRNESS IS UNFAIR Chris Cillizza, blogging for The Washington Post: Rendell: 'The Media Does Not Like the Clintons' Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) said Monday that the media's pro-Obama (or anti-Clinton) bias explains in part why Barack Obama is portrayed as running away with the Democratic presidential nomination (instead of being locked in a close fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton). "The media does not like the Clintons for whatever reason," Rendell, a Clinton supporter, said in an interview with The Fix. "Maybe some of it's [the Clintons'] fault, but the media does not like the Clintons." Rendell insisted that the "media has relished this fall with glee that I have never seen in any other candidate in the thirty years I have been in the business." As a result, "Right now the senator can do no wrong," Rendell said of Obama.... Is there anything to this? Sure -- there's definitely anti-Clinton animosity in the media. It's been around for a long time and is unconnected to Barack Obama. But so what? If the press doesn't love you and you want to run for president, tough. It's just a fact of life -- it's a given, and your job as a candidate is to find a way to neutralize it. Hillary Clinton pulled that off when she was running for Senate in 2000, by improving her own image. She simply didn't do that in this campaign, at least not from Iowa on. If you can't raise your own positives, you have to raise your opponent's negatives. That's obviously what the Clinton campaign has been trying to do -- but either what you do works or it doesn't, and what the Clinton campaign is doing isn't working. Poppy Bush faced this problem in his race against Michael Dukakis. Dukakis may not have been charismatic, but the press liked his life story and he was way up in the polls. The campaign Bush ran was reprehensible, but it got the job done. The Clinton campaign just can't pull that off. Nobody on the Republican side complained that the press has long worshipped John McCain. All the candidates just went out and tried to beat him. And maybe they lost because of that press favoritism -- the GOP electorate's good feelings about McCain were largely the result of years of favorable press. But you play the hand you're dealt. Unfairness is a given, and you just have to make the best of it. ***** One more point: The Clinton campaign has suggested that its attacks on Obama are just a taste of what he'd be likely to face in a general-election campaign -- the implication being that the Clintonites are toughening him up for that contest, testing him the way the Republicans would. But couldn't the same argument be made with regard to Clinton? If she were to become the nominee, she'd be the one the press wanted to lose. I'd say Obama is the one who's subjecting Clinton to a taste of what the rest of the campaign would be like -- she'd have to run against someone who regularly gets great press, while she gets a lot of lousy press. This primary campaign suggests that she doesn't have a strategy to overcome that disadvantage. If she can't beat Obamamania, how was she planning to beat the Straight Talking Maverick Man, whose press coverage would surely have turned overwhelmingly positive again as soon as she clinched the nomination? posted by Steve M. | 7:40 AM | Monday, February 25, 2008 HILLARY CLINTON'S NEW TEJANO THEME SONG Kinda silly, but actually fairly tolerable, which is more than you can say for "Hillary4UandMe," which sounds like the theme song of a late-seventies sitcom that was canceled after half a season. Or maybe it's just the Up with People dancing in the video for the latter song that gets on my nerves. posted by Steve M. | 11:04 PM | THIS IS HOW WE LOSE I grew up in a Democratic state (Massachusetts) that often elected Republican governors. I now live in a Democratic city and state (New York) where Republican mayors and governors are often elected, and where, God help us, Al D'Amato won three terms in the Senate. And now I'm watching Muslim Garb-Gate, and anger embodied in (and embodied in some of the reaction to) that Saturday Night Live "bitch is the new black" sketch, and I'm seeing the future in the past. New York Times, November 7, 2001: ...The lifelong Democrat [Mark Green]'s mayoral hopes ended sourly yesterday with his narrow defeat to Michael R. Bloomberg, the wealthy [Republican] businessman.... Some of Mr. Green's narrow failure reflects ... his tendency to irritate many party faithful who should have been in his corner. ... Democratic infighting no doubt hurt Mr. Green with black and Latino voters. He did not do as well with them as a classic Democrat usually does -- in part because of the animosity of the Rev. Al Sharpton and Fernando Ferrer. They were furious over harsh tactics that Mr. Green insisted were not his doing.... New York Times, October 3, 1993: It was, some say, a nasty case of political poisoning. Last year, the Democratic Party saw three of its most seasoned, well-known politicians, Robert Abrams, Geraldine A. Ferraro and Elizabeth Holtzman, climb into the race for their party's nomination for a seat in the United States Senate. The Democrats had Bill Clinton's coattails to cling to. The Republican incumbent, Alfonse M. D'Amato, was believed to be vulnerable. Party leaders could taste victory. Then the ugly realities of New York politics turned up like the cancerous underbelly of a dead fish. The campaigning turned muddy and the candidates turned on each other. In time, three ambitions were dashed and, it has become clear, three careers derailed. Instead of another Democrat in the Senate, the party lost three of its best hopes to vicious infighting, residual bitterness and combat fatigue.... Once Ms. Holtzman began broadcasting advertisements directly attacking Ms. Ferraro for ethical lapses, and even implying possible links to organized crime, it changed not only the nature of the primary race but even the mood of the general election that followed. So angered were many voters over the nature of the ads and the ugliness of the charges that when Mr. Abrams traveled upstate in his race against Mr. D'Amato he was accosted by his own supporters as having cynically played along with a destructive smear campaign. Ms. Ferraro tried to strike back at the time by charging that Ms. Holtzman's ads and the more general attacks constituted a slur against all Italian-Americans. In another race, those charges might not have seemed so shocking, but the unusual presence of of two well-respected women on the ballot gave the primary an unusual and delicate dynamic. Some voters believed that only one woman should run to capitalize on pro-female sentiment in a season touted as the "Year of the Woman." Many of those voters backed Ms. Ferraro because of her name recognition won during her run for the vice presidency with Walter Mondale.... Remind you of anything? At this moment I can't see any way that many of the most energized supporters of the losing Democratic candidate won't sit out the general election in a huff. In that case, John McCain may as well ask his pal George W. to let him come in and start measuring the White House drapes. Stop it. Just stop it. posted by Steve M. | 4:36 PM | OBAMA-TRADITIONAL-GARB-PICTURE-GATE Please wake me when it's over. Or just shoot me now. posted by Steve M. | 3:04 PM | BOOMER CHICKENHAWKS AREN'T GOING TO STOP PLAYING THE VIETNAM CARD William Kristol in today's New York Times: ....Obama chose to present his flag-pin removal as a principled gesture. "You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest." ... It's fitting that the alternative to Obama will be John McCain ... his patriotism has consisted of deeds more challenging than "speaking out on issues." William Kristol turned 18 on December 23, 1970. That year there were more than 300,000 U.S. servicemembers in Vietnam and nearly 10,000 were killed. A total of 162,746 Americans were drafted in 1970, and 94,092 the following year. Needless to say, William Kristol, who now uses John McCain's military service as a stick with which to beat Barack Obama, avoided service in Vietnam. And it's hard to think of anything William Kristol has done in his adult life that doesn't fall under the rubric "speaking out on issues." Pot, meet kettle. Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. Barack Obama was 13 years old at the time. posted by Steve M. | 10:15 AM | THAT WILDLY POPULAR IRAQ WAR I think I just heard Cokie Roberts say on NPR, regarding Barack Obama: Even his stand on the war Good grief. Here are some poll numbers for you, Cokie. (Yes, the "progress" numbers are up, but the "disapprove," "mistake," and "not worth it" numbers haven't dropped a bit.) UPDATE: Yup, that's what she said. posted by Steve M. | 8:17 AM | Sunday, February 24, 2008 TRUE, IF BY "HUGE BOON" YOU MEAN "BARELY MEASURABLE IMPACT" I know the Politico consciously skews its coverage to draw those all-important Drudge links, but this is preposterous: Nader enters in boon to GOP Ralph Nader announced on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he'll run as a third-party, anti-corporate candidate for president this fall, which would be likely to drain votes from the Democratic nominee and provide a huge boon to Republicans.... "Huge boon"? Give me a break. Yes, Nader had a tremendous impact in 2000. He got quite a few votes. But do you know how much his vote total dropped from 2000 to 2004? It dropped eighty-four percent. In 2000, he won 2,883,105 votes -- 2.7% of all votes cast. In 2004? His total was only 465,650 votes -- 0.38% of all votes cast. He barely finished third, for heaven's sake. (Libertarian Michael Badnarik won 397,265, or 0.32% of the total.) Which is why I hope this doesn't pan out: Democrats say they will work behind the scenes -- and use court challenges, if necessary -- to try to thwart his access to ballots. Don't. Please don't. For the love of God, please deprive him of his only legitimate grievances. Just let him have his fun. And if he gets on enough ballots, welcome him to a debate -- but with a catch: say that everyone who gets on, say, 45 state ballots should be invited to the debate. That would probably mean the candidates of the Libertarian Party and maybe the right-wing Constitution Party should also be invited. Then let McCain be the one to say no to that. It's what Gore should've done in 2000. posted by Steve M. | 9:37 PM | TINA FEY, DEMOCRATIC HERO? ER, I DON'T THINK SO Taylor Marsh and Jeralyn Merritt were delighted by Tina Fey's pro-Hillary Clinton "bitch is the new black" monologue on last night's Saturday Night Live. And, y'know, arguing that a tough dame like Hillary can get things done is valid -- I'm ready to back Hillary if she's the nominee. But Tina Fey wasn't just being pro-Hillary. She was being pro-Hillary and anti-Barack Obama. And if you think she might vote Republican in November if Obama is the nominee, well, you're probably right. In fact, it's possible she might vote Republican even with Hillary in the race. Consider this, from a September '07 New York Times profile of Fey: ... In another episode, in which [Fey's 30 Rock character] Liz reflects on things about herself that others wouldn't know, she says, "There is an 80 percent chance" that she will "tell all my friends I'm voting for Barack Obama, but I will secretly vote for John McCain." Ms. Fey, who wrote that line, said it was semi-autobiographical, a way of "admitting I have a lot of liberal feelings, but I also live in New York, and I want to feel safe, and I secretly kind of want Giuliani." Sorry, folks -- if that's how Tina Fey feels, we are not on the same political wavelength at all, and I'll get my voting advice elsewhere, thank you. posted by Steve M. | 9:07 PM | MAUREEN DOWD AND LARRY SINCLAIR: SEPARATED AT BIRTH? Let's see: One is a nutjob and a menace to society whose moneymaking scam is calling Barack Obama a big faggot, and the other is, er.... First, Sinclair: Larry Sinclair filed suit in Minnesota District Court on Monday [February 11] against Barack Obama, along with Obama's campaign strategist David Axelrod and others, regarding issues stemming from Sinclair's allegations that he used cocaine and performed a sexual act with Obama in 1999.... This story has been picked up by the Globe, the supermarket tabloid (so you know it's true!), to the delight of the Free Republic crowd. Sinclair, one assumes, is a loser who's desperate for money (the Globe says he's dying) and who may well have been put up to this by Republican operatives. But what's Maureen Dowd's excuse? Here's her lite version of the same Obama's-not-a-real-man slander, minus the drugs: ... The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival. ...Hillary was so busy trying to prove she could be one of the boys ... that she only belatedly realized that many Democratic and independent voters, especially women, were eager to move from hard-power locker-room tactics to a soft-power sewing circle approach. Less towel-snapping and more towel color coordinating, less steroids and more sensitivity. ...[Clinton] tried once more to cast Obama as a weak sister on his willingness to talk to Raul Castro. Obama tapped into his inner chick and turned the other cheek.... Like a prudent housekeeper, Obama spent the cash he raised ... far more shrewdly, on ads rather than on himself.... I don't care if Dowd would say she means this as praise ("Business schools have begun teaching the value of a less autocratic leadership style, with an emphasis on behavior women excel at," she writes elsewhere in the column). I don't buy that. All of her female words for Obama ("sewing circle," "chick," "housekeeper") suggest female insubstantiality and powerlessness. You half wish she'd just come out and call him a big homo -- which you know her doppelganger, Ann Coulter, will do any day now. Here, according to Dowd, is some "evidence" that Obama's not a macho man: ...At the University of Texas on Thursday morning, Obama proved that he was not a cowboy in overdrive like W. when he demurred at throwing a spiral because his pass might not be as good as the Longhorn stars'. Er, he actually went to the football facility at the university -- isn't that kind of a guy thing to do? And he seems not have thrown the football for the cameras (at least not in this clip), but he did catch one -- and Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy seems to have seen him throw at some point: Obama then went to the field to see the stadium's construction and catch a pass or two from McCoy. "He's got a good arm," McCoy said. "I told him I didn't want to throw it too hard because he's got a big game himself tonight." Well, when the facts don't fit her preposterous thesis, Dowd sticks with the thesis. ***** Meanwhile, there's Larry Sinclair. It's hard to tell if he's just a freelance nut or a cog in the right's character-assassination machine. If he's the latter, I don't think it's because his handlers believe a lot of people will fall for this crap -- I think they just want the ideas (Obama as an adult powdered-drug user, Obama as gay) floating out there, as items that will work their way into backyard-barbecue conversations and online chats (a lot of Obama slanders, by the way, shows up on Craigslist). Sinclair's YouTube "confession" is here. Two comments, Larry: (1) Your narrative would be a lot more plausible if it didn't seem like inept, cliche-ridden fiction ("I met Obama at an upscale lounge..."). (2) I just love this detail: Mr. Obama obtained powdered cocaine for my use, crack cocaine for his use. Can't you just picture it? "Larry, you're a white guy -- you like that nose candy. Not me. I'm black -- I like the pipe!" Because that's what you'd do, isn't it, if you were buying drugs from the backseat of a limousine? (Yup, poor scruffy Larry implausibly claims they were in his limousine.) Rather than buying powdered coke or crack, you'd carefully order a small dose of each from your waitperson? Like a couple in a restaurant ordering wine by the glass because one wants pinot noir and the other wants chardonnay? Oh, yeah, that's plausible. posted by Steve M. | 11:25 AM | Saturday, February 23, 2008 PARADOX Barack Obama is simultaneously an Islamic fundamentalist Manchurian candidate and a godless Communist Manchurian candidate. Discuss. posted by Steve M. | 10:15 PM | WOULD A SEX-FREE STORY REALLY HAVE HURT McCAIN? Well, it's obvious that the decision at The New York Times to lead with hints of adultery in the story about John McCain's coziness with lobbyists was a huge gift to McCain. But would a sex-free story really have damaged his image? Obviously, a story with the sex left out wouldn't have had this set of unintended consequences: Conservative radio talk show hosts who had long reviled Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential candidate from Arizona, had rallied to his defense. Bloggers on the right said that this could be the start of a new relationship. Most telling, Mr. McCain's campaign announced Friday afternoon that it had just recorded its single-best 24 hours in online fund-raising, although it declined to provide numbers.... But does it really hurt McCain in any case to say he's not the ethically clean guy he wants you to think he is (as we're also being told in other, sex-free media accounts)? I wonder. I'm just not convinced that that's why McCain is winning primaries or running more or less even with Democratic challengers in polls. I know hardcore Limbaughnista Republicans hate his campaign finance crusade and regard the unlimited access of lobbyists as, God help us, a free speech issue. And as for the general public, I know cleaning up Washington is very low on the list when voters are asked to name the biggest problem facing the country. Isn't all this a central element of McCain's image? That he's a "straight talker" and "straight shooter"? Again this is a hunch, but I think, for voters, McCain's image is as a guy who sometimes says impolitic things -- and that's what "straight talk" means to them. They think he challenges orthodoxies, even those of his own party. They think of him as a guy who'll sometimes anger his party-mates and reach across the aisle. (Obama's image is somewhat similar, and it's clearly helping him with independents.) An alleged willingness to reject the party line is what's "straight" about McCain's "shooting," at least according to the myth that's been built up. **** So far, what we're talking about when we talk about the inclusion of a sex angle in the Times story is the journalistic propriety of doing so. For the most part, we're not talking about the alleged sex itself. That's a good thing for Democrats, I think -- I know a lot of you find the notion repulsive, but I think more talk about the sex would make at least some voters think of McCain as human and vigorous. That might actually help him. By the way, Lucianne Goldberg, of all people, is already playing up this angle:  (Click to enlarge, if you're so inclined.) I get a lot of disagreement when I say this, but I think McCain is already seen as a relaxed regular guy, "comfortable in his own skin" as the pundit gasbags like to say. Obama, too -- but I worry that seeming to have moral flaws would actually give McCain a leg up in that contest, at least as it'll play out in the media narrative between now and November. Eventually, I fear the GOP is going to try to portray Obama the way it portrayed Gore -- as prissy, goody-goody, sanctimonious, effete. Maureen Dowd and Chris Matthews would eat that meme up. The contrast could be John McCain, tough old rumpled horndog. posted by Steve M. | 1:51 PM | Friday, February 22, 2008 COMMIES AND EGGHEADS You probably know that Barack Obama got applause at a campaign rally for blowing his nose. Fox News took the high road as usual: Responding to a video clip of Sen. Barack Obama saying, "I'm going to blow my nose here for a second," followed by the audience cheering, Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen then said, "That kind of spontaneous affection Chairman Mao only dreamed of." But you really need to savor a tiny detail lovingly worked into the setup (emphasis mine): ROSEN: The adoration, the immense crowd, the chanting -- it's all part of what lazy headline writers call "Obama-mania." But if Barack Obama's frenzied fans and fundraising success, his elevation in the delegate count and in the hearts of intellectuals don't convince you the phenomenon is real, look no farther than supporters' reaction in Dallas on Wednesday, when the candidate famous for his soaring oratory performed the most mundane of human bodily functions. OBAMA: Going to blow my nose here for a second. ROSEN: That kind of spontaneous affection Chairman Mao only dreamed of.... Yup -- this isn't just a commie personality cult, it's a personality cult made up of commie intellectuals. That's the most dangerous kind! And no, I don't think the applause is all that weird. Hell, at Woodstock they cheered the guy whose land they were on when he came out and said, "I'm a farmer...." There was never a totalitarian personality cult surrounding Max Yasgur. ***** OH, AND: I'm surprised no one's accused Obama of plagiarizing DJ Kool. posted by Steve M. | 7:41 PM | MICHELLE OBAMA, PRIVILEGED BLUEBLOOD When the middle-aged right-wing establishment apparatchik Peggy Noonan and the youngish creator of the inept wingnut comic strip "Day by Day" sing exactly the same tune from the same hymnal on the same day, you start looking around wondering who's picking the hymns for the choir. Chris Muir's "Day by Day" today (click to enlarge):  Noonan today: His problem was, is, his wife's words, not his, the speech in which she said that for the first time in her adult life she is proud of her country, because Obama is winning.... Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it? Did anyone at their Ivy League universities school them in why one should love America? ... Have they been, throughout their adulthood, so pampered and praised--so raised in the liberal cocoon--that they are essentially unaware of what and how normal Americans think? And are they, in this, like those cosseted yuppies, the Clintons? That's right -- Michelle Obama, daughter of a secretary and a city pump operator, is a snooty child of privilege. In fact, being born black at a time when some blacks in this country didn't have the right to vote actually gave her an unfair advantage: ... I have wondered if it is hard for young African-Americans of her generation, having been drilled in America's sad racial history, having been told about it every day of their lives, to fully apprehend the struggles of others. I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think "Man, she got it all." Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful... Noonan, of course, supported both Bushes. She wrote the 1988 convention speech in which the elder Bush described his move to Texas as "taking a chance and pushing into unknown territory with kids and a dog and a car." Taking a chance? When has any Bush ever truly had anything at risk? **** For right-wingers and those who take their rhetoric seriously, all this dovetails quite nicely with the other meme that's been spread about the Obamas this week: that they're big commies. And gosh, what a coincidence -- the smears came in a wave all at once this week: the article by Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media that suggests Obama is a commie because a family friend who advised him thirty years ago, before he went to college, was a communist; former Dan Quayle speechwriter Lisa Schiffren's absurd but McCarthyite response to the Kincaid piece, in which she implied that Obama's parents must have been commies because all the interracial couples she knew growing up in Manhattan, several time zones away, were commies; and now the Politico story "Obama Once Visited '60s Radicals" (the radicals in question are people who, for better or worse, had become part of Chicago's political establishment when Obama was trying to make his political way). Go back to the beginning of the Noonan excerpt above ("His problem was, is, his wife's words, not his, the speech in which she said that for the first time in her adult life she is proud of her country"). Now remember how this right-wing meme goes: commie = dangerous subversive, but commie also = overeducated = elitist = out of touch with Joe Sixpack. This is how they're going to try to get Obama, from now until the end. **** OOPS. Almost missed "Obama: Is America Ready for This Dangerous Leftwinger?," published today by Rupert Murdoch's Times of London. It begins: For most ordinary Americans, those not encumbered with an expensive education or infected by prolonged exposure to cosmopolitan heterodoxy, patriotism is a consequence of birth. And it goes on to say: There is a caste of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was much more like France. They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it did not have such a "militaristic" approach to foreign policy. Above all, that its national goals were dictated, not by the dreadful halfwits who inhabit godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the counsels of the United Nations. There it is -- everything I talked about above, packed into two paragraphs. Funny how everyone on the right had the same thoughts at the same time. By the way, don't believe for a minute that Rupe likes Obama just because his New York Post endorsed him -- or at least consider the possibility that the Post endorsed Obama precisely in order to keep Obama off balance and unsure of Murdoch's intentions, a perfect setup for attacks like today's (I'd add that Murdoch seems to have set up Hillary Clinton the same way). From this piece it's clear that Murdoch got the memo and knows precisely how Obama is supposed to be attacked. posted by Steve M. | 1:49 PM | McCAIN: HOW MUCH IMMUNITY AND FOR HOW LONG? Maybe others have said this already, but let me say it anyway: Suggestions of adultery are to the New York Times story about John McCain's relationships with lobbyists what those documents were to the CBS story about George W. Bush's National Guard service -- non-essential elements that wound up poisoning a good story, after being included even though it was clear that they'd inspire outrage and would therefore need to be absolutely bulletproof (which they weren't). I wonder if the consequences are going to be the same -- that now the media will avoid the story of McCain's relationships with lobbyists altogether because the Times piece made the story radioactive, and that The New York Times, in particular, will back away from other stories that challenge McCain and take pains to mollify him, just as CBS backed away from tough reporting about Bush in the aftermath of the National Guard fiasco. We'll see. **** UPDATE: This appears to be my third stupid prediction of the week -- the press doesn't seem to be backing down. posted by Steve M. | 10:06 AM | Thursday, February 21, 2008 WHAT WAS I THINKING? I made a dumb prediction last night. I predicted that the McCain-bashers in the wingnut media might actually take the side of The New York Times against John McCain after its story on his interactions with Vicki Iseman and other lobbyists. Bay Buchanan, Pat's sister and a Romney backer, is angry at McCain, but everyone else on the right seems to be circling the wagons and lashing out at the Times on McCain's behalf. Why didn't I see that coming? The anger directed at McCain has always been greater than what's been directed at the other GOP candidates in this presidential race -- the wingnuts hate McCain more than the still socially moderate Rudy Giuliani, more than the shamelessly flip-flopping ex-centrist Mitt Romney, more, even, than Ron Paul. Why? Because Romney (now) hates liberals, Giuliani (even though he's perceived as socially liberal) has genuinely hated liberals for a long time, and Ron Paul is clearly no fan of liberals -- but McCain, that bastard, reaches out to liberals. And hatred of liberals is really the one and only thing that matters to the right. It's the single leg of modern conservatism's one-legged stool. Inadequate hatred of liberals is the reason McCain has been despised -- who cares if he has a solid conservative voting record and is the most fervent supporter of the Iraq war, which the right has told us for years is the great crusade of this century? But now McCain's enemy is the embodiment of the "liberal media," The New York Times. So of course they right is backing him. McCain's support on the far right isn't going to last. Unless he stay linked to that hate, he'll be the right's whipping boy again soon. But for now, he's lucky to have run afoul of the right enemy. **** (Bay Buchanan link via Kathy in the comments to another thread.) posted by Steve M. | 11:35 PM | SO WHY AREN'T THE McCAINOPHOBES TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THIS HUGE GIFT FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES? From the Politico: ... Laura Ingraham, another influential conservative radio host, asserted that the Times waited until McCain was on the brink of the Republican presidential nomination and now is seeking to "contaminate" him with an article that she calls "absurd" and "ridiculous." ... Ingraham began her show this morning with a brief dig at McCain's years of cozying up to the mainstream media, but then declared: "You wait until it's pretty much beyond a doubt that he's going to be the Republican nominee, and then you let it drop -- drop some acid in the pool, contaminate the whole pool. That's what The New York Times thinks." ... You're right, Laura -- "it's pretty much beyond a doubt that he's going to be the Republican nominee." But it's not completely beyond a doubt -- he's still 273 delegates short of a guaranteed first-ballot victory. Isn't this the huge break you've been dreaming of, Laura? Come on -- what are you and Rush and Sean and all the other conservatively correct McCain-haters waiting for? Isn't this your chance to rally your troops and deny Maverick Man a first-ballot victory? Why aren't you telling them to vote Huckabee in the upcoming contests -- or Romney, or whoever the hell's on the ballot who's not McCain? Brokered convention, baby! And then you guys take over the joint! Hey, Laura, maybe Rush will get the nomination and make you his running mate! How can you pass up a golden opportunity like this? **** From the same Politico article: ...Greg Mueller, a veteran Republican strategist, said conservatives would side with McCain against the paper they love to hate. “The New York Times is trying to swift-boat McCain,” Mueller said.... That's a curious thing for Mueller to say, in light of this: Greg Mueller is President of CRC Public Relations, and former senior aide to Republican Presidential Candidates Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes. Mueller also spearheaded communications for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. So let's see: Mueller worked for the Swift Boat guys, which means he presumably thinks they were telling the truth. Now he says the Times "is trying to swift-boat McCain." Is that his cryptic way of confirming the truthfulness of the Times story? **** UPDATE: Link fixed. posted by Steve M. | 1:50 PM | CAREFULLY TIMED From ABC: Romney Camp Laments The remnants of the Romney campaign are shaking their heads this morning. For months they were whispering about a New York Times investigation into John McCain's ties to a certain lobbyist. They would poke and prod reporters to see if they had heard anything new about when and if the New York Times would publish the story. On Thursday, while no one would allow their name to be published, several former advisers lamented the timing of the story, one suggesting, "If this piece had run before New Hampshire, McCain would have lost. If it had run before Florida, he would have lost." .... Hey, maybe that's why the story didn't run until now -- what rational person would want to do anything that would help Mitt Romney? posted by Steve M. | 12:12 PM | YES, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAUREEN DOWD AND GAIL COLLINS Gail Collins managed to get through an entire column about the plan to shoot down that satellite without once making a snarky metaphoric reference to the Clintons or Barack Obama. In fact, they're not mentioned at all. I don't think Maureen Dowd could pull that off if her life depended on it. You can imagine how Dowd would write about this: ...Just like the satellite, the notion of the First Black President was launched some time ago, with great fanfare. Now that notion is headed back to earth -- and Bill and Hill fear it's aimed straight at them. They're panicking -- who knew it could do so much damage? They've tried using Bill to shoot it out of the sky, but that's not what his payload was designed for.... Or something like that. The Collins column is actually rather amusing. It's a nice break from Dowdism, and from 24/7 campaign talk in general. posted by Steve M. | 10:47 AM | Wednesday, February 20, 2008 THIS COULD CREATE AN ANTI-MEDIA BACKLASH AMONG HARDCORE McCAIN SUPPORTERS -- IF THERE WERE ANY Poor John McCain. I just heard NBC's Chuck Todd on TV saying that the New York Times story hinting at a 2000 affair between McCain and a much younger lobbyist could actually help him by inspiring anger at the Times among his supporters. The problem is, McCain doesn't have supporters like that. He's won a lot of votes, but he just doesn't have the usual Republican base of support -- people who hate the "liberal media" and who'll see this article as a sign of media bias against Republicans. The talk-show hosts won't defend him. The rank-and-file GOP base won't see him as a guy who's been dealt a low blow by their mutual enemies. If anything, Limbaugh et al. might even express approval of the story, the real thrust of which is that, on ethics, McCain's deeds don't match his words. Limbaugh and his pals finds those words really sanctimonious. For that reason, they might help keep this story alive for a while. **** UPDATE: D. and Donna in comments say this probably won't hurt McCain -- it'll come off as old news and, well, he's a Republican. I agree. I think voters are blase about sex scandals and corruption scandals in general. But I think, as I say above, that he could have actually turned this back around on the media if he had the usual wingnut gang backing him up, and I do think the wingnut media might actually back the Times up for a while. **** UPDATE: Another mistaken hunch on my part: Conservative media outlets rushed with surprising vehemence to defend Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday against a critical article in The New York Times, embracing a maverick they have often attacked. Rush Limbaugh calls it "the drive-by media ... trying to take him out." Laura Ingraham, another influential conservative radio host, said the Times waited until McCain was on the brink of the Republican presidential nomination and now is seeking to "contaminate" him with an article that she calls "absurd" and "ridiculous." CBN.org, the website of the Christian Broadcasting Network, says an attack by the Times is "a conservative badge of honor." ... What I've been told is an old Islamic adage is also, apparently, a wingnut adage: Me against my brother, me and my brother against my cousin, me and my brother and my cousin against a stranger. And everyone against the Times. **** UPDATE: But as Kathy points out in the comments to another thread, Bay Buchanan is not rushing to McCain's defense: ...She was frothing at mouth last night on CNN's [Anderson Cooper] 360, stoking the fundie fires. She obviously thinks her man Mitt would have walked away with the nomination had this story dropped back before Florida. ...BUCHANAN: ...We -- we -- you know, conservatives are -- we believe that we are the family value party. We believe it seriously. We expect our candidates to live up to those values, not just to talk about them and expect us to vote for them, and not be there really when it counts.posted by Steve M. | 11:32 PM | PRIORITY #1 Tom Hilton is right: McCain Is the Enemy ...In the absence of any official DNC effort, the answer to "who takes on John McCain?" has to be us. This is what the blogosphere is for, folks. If we're a laboratory for memes, the memes we really need to be testing are the ones that could keep McCain out of the White House. So far, we--well, a lot of us--have been falling down on the job. Many of the bigger, more politically obsessive blogs and blog communities have been focused almost exclusively on the primaries.... All over the lefty blogosphere, people seem to be more concerned about the minor difference between Obama and Clinton than about the vast catastrophe it'll be if we let McCain win.... What does matter is keeping Captain McQueeg from taking us all for a ride on the Straitjacket Express. How about we focus on that for the next 8 months or so? ... There are some good links at his post. I'd add this: If we're a "laboratory for memes," we also need to be working on undoing memes. For instance, why isn't the entire left blogosphere howling mad at the fact that "maverick" and "straight talk" appear in every single news story about McCain, as if these are neutral descriptions rather than de facto campaign slogans? It's no more appropriate to use these descriptors in straight news stories than it would have been to assert as a statement of fact that "Nixon will bring us together" in 1968, or "It's morning in America" in 1984. And that's only one of several message wars we need to start fighting. posted by Steve M. | 5:35 PM | YES, THEY'RE THAT TWISTED In case you wondering whether You know about the crazies who believe that the Clintons have their enemies killed. In case you were wondering whether these people now think the Clintons might extend this alleged practice to Barack Obama, the answer is yes. From Free Republic: Should Barak and Michelle Obama be worried? ... I remember the ruthless politics of the Clinton White House. I remember the personal destruction of Katherine Willey, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers and Monica. These women paid a price for being a political obstacle….. and there were many other women who paid a similar price. Now I also remember others who paid a price for standing in the path of the Clinton Political Borg. Vincent Foster knows what I am thinking. The Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas got in the Clinton's way. Michelle and Barak Obama are now standing squarely in defiance to the ambitions of Bill and Hillary. I wonder if what I am thinking has ever crossed the minds of either Bill or Hillary? Maybe Hillary could try to blame the "Haters of the Right", like Bill tried to do with the Oklahoma City bombing… but I suspect the Clinton fingerprints would be far too evident. For wingnuts, this is what's called a "double fantasy." I've always loved the "Clinton Body Count" list. It consists of dozens and dozens of people -- most of whom you've never heard of. Meanwhile, here are a few people who are conspicuously absent from the list: Ken Starr, Matt Drudge, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Richard Mellon Scaife, Ann Coulter, anyone connected to the "Harry and Louise" ads, not to mention Monica and Gennifer and Paula and Kathleen. All of these people are still alive and well. Why on earth can't the Clintons target the correct people for brutal unsolved political assassinations? Of course, the only real difference between the Cheeto-chomping losers at Free Republic and much of the elite press corps is that the Freepers think Bill and Hillary are going to turn into the Corleones, while Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews, Mickey Kaus, et al. are expecting something more along the lines of the last scene in Fatal Attraction. posted by Steve M. | 2:43 PM | DIGNITY ... ALWAYS DIGNITY From the Yeas and Nays blog at Examiner.com: ...as soon as [President Bush] started speaking at the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda, he was spitting out one-liners like Henny Youngman at a Catskills resort. "Please be seated -- unless, of course, you don't have a chair," he opened. "I had a speech -- I'm not going to give it," he continued. And later: "Any other Texans that are here? Yes, there you go. You know what it's like." According to the official transcript, the president's quips elicited polite (we'd guess) laughter at every turn. Even White House flack Dana Perino got into the act. When asked about the unfavorable election results in Pakistan, she replied that since Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006 elections, "we've continued to work as a strong, functioning government -- well, 'functioning' might be a little strong. (Laughter.) But all kidding aside, we continue to function as a government." ... Oh, and, according to the transcript, Bush also joked about a plan to name a street near the embassy after Martin Luther King: I do want to recognize our great Secretary of State. I thought, for a minute, you were going to name that road after Secretary Condoleezza Rice. (Laughter.) When they're talking about great Americans, and they're going on and on and on, I was certain it was going to say, "Rice Boulevard." (Laughter and applause.) Rice, not King -- oh, tee-hee! All this levity came about four hours after Bush's visit to the Kigali Memorial Centre, Rwanda's genocide museum. More from the Examiner: Perino also supplied some serious news: "American Idol" winner and Super Bowl national anthem performer Jordin Sparks will join the president and Mrs. Bush on their next stop, in Ghana. "Melinda Doolittle, who was a previous 'Idol' winner, joined Mrs. Bush in Zambia last June," Perino said. "Melinda didn't win," a member of the press pool reminded her. "Well, she was close, a finalist," Perino came back. OK, so we lied about the "serious" part. When I read that, I just can't tell you how proud it makes me to be an American, on so many levels. posted by Steve M. | 12:07 PM | OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS: POSSIBLE FUTURES Headline of a post at Down with Tyranny: AT WHAT POINT DO THE CLINTONS ENDORSE OBAMA AND START WORKING ON SAVING THEIR BRAND? Oh, they could have another ten or twenty years in the public eye; my guess is that they think Hill can be senator for life (probably true) and Bill's celebrity will endure, and so the brand will take care of itself. Hillary's not going to drop out until it's inevitable that she won't win. I just don't know what happens then. It's easy to imagine the Obama camp thinking it's strategically better not to be associated with the Clintons, while the Clintons are happy not to lift a finger for the guy beyond pro forma shows of support. What I wonder about is an Obama presidency, if it happens. Would Senator Clinton be President Obama's ally in Congress? Or would she decide to be to him what Pat Moynihan and Bob Kerrey were to her husband -- would she be, in other words, a frequent critic, someone the press can always count on for a quotably nasty intraparty verbal attack? Obama may win the election and enter the White House on a wave of goodwill, but he's still a Democrat and the press is still the press -- it will constantly be on the lookout for people who can cut him off at the knees, just as it was the last time a Democrat became president, with a special eagerness to find party mates abandoning him on this or that issue. The irony, of course, is that sniping at President Obama would give the Clintons the respect within the chattering classes that they've never had. I hope Hillary resists the temptation, but if he wins, it'll be there. ***** Headline at BuzzFlash: ... Hillary, Don't Destroy the Democratic Party, Please. Take a Seat on the Supreme Court in an Obama Presidency (How Does Chief Justice Sound?) Or Become the Majority Leader of the Senate, And Let's Move On. We Need to Get the Republicans Out of the White House. Hillary Clinton as a Supreme Court nominee? For the love of God, no. What could possibly be more of a rallying point for the GOP? Making an appointment like this would be like deliberately cutting yourself in shark-infested waters. Hey, BuzzFlash, I don't think there's the slightest chance of this -- and a good thing, too. (BuzzFlash editor Mark Karlin's unconvincing argument for a Hillary Clinton Supreme Court appointment is here.) posted by Steve M. | 8:12 AM | Tuesday, February 19, 2008 ER, HILLARY... If I were Hillary Clinton, I'm not so sure I would have put this into my concession speech tonight: Now, you may have heard that I actually loaned my campaign some money. And I was honored and humbled by the support that I have received since, from people like the young mom who sent me $10 and wrote that, "My two daughters are 2 and 4, and I want them to know anything is possible"... (APPLAUSE) ... or the gentleman who described himself as an independent voter, a veteran, and a "generally cranky conservative" who decided to support me. Hillary? Did that "gentleman" actually decide to support you? Or did he send you ten bucks because he thinks you'd be easier to beat? posted by Steve M. | 10:48 PM | MY HUNCH? HILLARY'S GOING TO WIN THE NOMINATION (UPDATE, WEDNESDAY MORNING: I went out on a limb. I look like an idiot now for posting this. But screw it, I'll leave it up.) First, Gallup was reporting this earlier today: Obama Gaining Among Middle-Aged, Women, Hispanics The momentum in the Democratic nomination race has clearly swung toward Barack Obama.... Obama's standing has improved among most Democratic subgroups over the past several days. But one of the more substantial shifts has been the changing preferences of middle-aged Democratic voters, who have moved away from Clinton and toward Obama in the past week. Obama has also made gains among three other groups that have favored Clinton throughout much of the campaign -- women, Hispanics, and self-identified Democrats.... However, Gallup went on to give us this: Hillary Clinton has rebounded among Democrats in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking average for Feb. 16-18. She is now at 45% to Barack Obama's 46%. Clinton was seven percentage points behind Obama in the Feb. 15-17 average.... The smart folks think it's a response to the Obama/Deval Patrick plagiarism-from-a-pal kerfuffle. I don't. I suspect a lot of clever-clever overeducated cultural sophisticates -- i.e., my peers -- are starting to feel that Obama is an indie band they don't like anymore; there's just too much tackily earnest irony-free mass adulation going on all around him. An increasing number of ordinary Joes and Janes are starting to respond to Obama's appeal as a candidate by switching to him, but we frou-frou types are responding to his appeal as a candidate by switching from him. Or something like that. Meanwhile, Hillary was never out of it -- I think a lot of us just thought so because we simply don't know any, say, older Catholic women who didn't go to college, or other members of the Clinton base. (As it turns out, I'm the son of an older Catholic woman who didn't go to college, and, yup, she likes Hillary.) Hillary's polling quite well in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Why have so many people acted as if her persistence in the race has been somehow unseemly? I say this as someone who voted for Obama and thinks he'd be the stronger candidate -- that is, when I don't find myself thinking that no Democrat will win this or any other presidential election in in my lifetime, given the way our political narrative always returns to "President equals Daddy, which means solid Republican rather than freaky Democrat." But my preference doesn't change my sense that Obama has never been as inevitable as he's seemed recently, and he's less so now, mostly because all the talk of Obamamania has made him seem less cool. Well, we'll see. posted by Steve M. | 6:45 PM | DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON'T It's quite appropriate that the remaining Democratic candidates for president are an African-American and a woman. When they run for office, blacks and women both struggle, often in vain, to find the sweet spot between one negative image that's "too much" and one that's "not enough" -- women aren't taken seriously if they seem truly feminine but are regarded as scary hermaphrodites if they act tough; blacks are deemed angry if they regularly talk about race and are regarded as inauthentic "bargainers" if they downplay race. Much of the time, it seems they just can't win. That's ideal preparation for being the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. The reason? Well, as far as our political culture is concerned, Democrats just can't win. Democrats are always either too much or not enough, and are therefore always unworthy of serious consideration for the highest office in the land. To see how this works, let's turn to David Brooks in today's New York Times. According to Brooks, you have two Democratic choices: Too Much Hope and Too Much Gloom: At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Mary Chapin Carpenter devotees in Berkeley, Cambridge and Chapel Hill. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what's bound to be a national phenomenon: Obama Comedown Syndrome. The afflicted had already been through the phases of Obama-mania -- fainting at rallies, weeping over their touch screens while watching Obama videos, spending hours making folk crafts featuring Michelle Obama's face. These patients had experienced intense surges of hope-amine, the brain chemical that fuels euphoric sensations of historic change and personal salvation. But they found that as the weeks went on, they needed more and purer hope-injections just to preserve the rush. They wound up craving more hope than even the Hope Pope could provide.... Patients in the grip of O.C.S. rarely express doubts at first, but in a classic case of transference, many experience slivers of sympathy for Hillary Clinton. They see her campaign morosely traipsing from one depressed industrial area to another -- The Sitting Shiva for America Tour. They see that her entire political strategy consists of waiting for primary states as boring as she is..... I've said this before and I'll say it again: George W. Bush ran in 2004 as God's Anointed Candidate, complete with a media operation that had frequently positioned him and press photographers so he'd be photographed with what seemed like a halo. Bush had said in no uncertain terms that one of his closest advisers was God. And the Bush media operation has made certain that nearly every Bush public appearance has been before an adoring crowd. None of this has ever given David Brooks the slightest pause. Meanwhile, Brooks depicts Hillary Clinton as a Gloomy Gus who sees America in decline. But four short days ago, Brooks was approvingly quoting Mitt Romney's predictions of American decline. Here's what Brooks and Romney said: ... Generation after generation, American workers were better educated, more industrious and more innovative than the ones that came before. That progress stopped about 30 years ago. The percentage of young Americans completing college has been stagnant for a generation. As well-educated boomers retire over the next decades, the quality of the American work force is likely to decline. Mitt Romney captured the consequences in his withdrawal statement: "I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century -- still a great nation, but no longer the leader of the world." ... That's OK. That's just tough, sharp rehetoric. Hillary, on the other hand, is Debbie Downer. What a pill! Whatever Republicans do is normal. Whatever Democrats do is extreme. Democrats are always too rich (John Kerry, John Edwards), too low-class (Bill Clinton), too aggressive (Al Sharpton), too wussy (Mike Dukakis), too boring (Dukakis, Kerry, Mondale, Hillary Clinton), too flamboyant (Obama, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton), too red-carpet fabulous (the Clintons, Al Gore now), too Mom's-basement geeky (Dukakis, Al Gore before the movie). Republicans are always safely smack dab in the middle. posted by Steve M. | 2:49 PM | "JESUS IS TEH AWSUM" BILL ADVANCES Carrying a Bible on the school bus is the new heterosexual marriage -- a right you had no idea was under siege: Missouri House gives first OK to constitutional amendment emphasizing the right to pray The Missouri House gave preliminary approval Monday to a proposed constitutional amendment that would emphasize the right to pray in any public setting, including public schools. The action came after more than an hour of spirited debate over whether such an amendment would make any difference and whether the names of individual deities should be inserted into the Constitution. At one point, lawmakers voted to insert into the Constitution a citizen's right to acknowledge "the inerrancy of the Bible." But they deleted that reference on a subsequent vote. Omigod! Does that mean it's still a capital offense in Missouri to say the Bible is inerrant? They didn't even free the tens of thousands of Christians who are on Missouri's Death Row for this? Rep. Ray Salva, a Sugar Creek Democrat, tried to insert a requirement that all sporting events include a time to pray between recitation of the pledge of allegiance and the start of the event. That proposal was ruled out of order. Because everyone knows you can't possibly just pray before a sporting event -- or, rather, you can pray, but God doesn't hear your prayer unless other people who don't want to pray have been pressured to pray at the same time. ...Republicans, including the proposal's sponsor, Rep. Mike McGhee of Odessa, acknowledged that the new wording would not change the law. But McGhee said it was needed to highlight that children had the right to carry Bibles on school buses and could write about Jesus in class. Rep. Jim Lembke, a St. Louis County Republican, said "you can't get much clearer" than the current Missouri Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom. But the new wording would be a rebuke to people who have tried to outlaw prayer in public schools and sought the removal of the Ten Commandments from public places. "This will send a clear message to people who might want to mess with those rights to keep their hands off," Lembke said. And that's really what this is all about -- telling other people to bugger off! Because that's what Jesus would do. Rep. Trent Skaggs, a North Kansas City Democrat, demanded to know where Bible-toting children had not been allowed to ride school buses. McGhee said he didn't know the location. But a friend of a friend said his wife's cousin's kid saw it happening and it's totally true, swear to God. Oh, and why is this happening? The sometimes wild maneuvering reflected the feeling of most Democrats that the proposal was nothing more than meaningless verbiage designed to go on the ballot to drive religious conservatives to the polls in November. Ah. Of course. Alas for them, the race in November might be McCain vs. Obama, and this might actually drive Obama voters to the polls. By the way, if you want to see what the Missouri constitution says about religious freedom, go here. posted by Steve M. | 8:02 AM | Monday, February 18, 2008 SO WHAT ARE MITT ROMNEY AND THOSE WACKY FIVE BROTHERS UP TO THESE DAYS? Phil Nugent knows. I don't want to reveal too many surprises, but it does seem that Poppa Mitt's been hitting the chocolate beverages pretty hard.... posted by Steve M. | 11:10 PM | THE EVER POPULAR ANTI-LIBERAL LIBERAL DOUBLE REVERSE In The Boston Globe, the novelist Elinor Lipman argues that we shouldn't have been upset when MSNBC's David Shuster asked whether Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" by her parents: I learned of Shuster's question and its fallout while watching "Countdown," from its increasingly self-important and bombastic anchor Keith Olbermann, who added his own wah-wahs - "Utterly inappropriate and indefensible" - to the network's apology. ("We are literally, dreadfully sorry. The Clintons have every right to be furious, hurt, and appalled.") I waited for the "Not!", unwilling to believe that Olbermann's cynical ears had gone so delicate that he believed that Shuster for one millisecond was assigning any sexual-trafficking connotation to the Clinton campaign. I would like to think that someone among the NBC brass noted, "That's live TV for you," or cited its noble twin, "Whatever happened to freedom of speech?" Er, freedom of speech comes with a cost. The people who hear you have freedom of speech, too, i.e., the freedom to say they thought you had a goddamn nerve to say what you said. And as for "connotation," it seems that Ms. Lipman has an interesting rule of thumb: If she can't conceive of a slur being literally true, then nobody can, and therefore the use of that slur is perfectly OK: Which brings me to Don Imus, who surely scarred and scared the Human Resources department of MSNBC. In April I squirmed as I listened to the funereal earnestness of the deeply offended Rutgers women's basketball coach. Inherent in Vivian Stringer's testimonials was seemingly an odd given: that sane people for one second took Imus's offensive words seriously. It was as if she had to prove to a jury that these young women, caught in the crossfire of a stupid joke, weren't in fact -- you'll forgive me, but for journalistic accuracy -- "hos." Did anyone in his or her right mind need to be disabused of Imus's characterization? Well, yes -- actually, I do think some people would think virtually any young black woman is likely to be a "ho." But maybe it's been a while since Lipman met anyone who would think such a thing. This is from the bio at her Web site: I live part-time in Manhattan, but mostly in the bucolic yet chi-chi (8 sushi bars) college town of Northampton, Mass., home of Smith College. You live like that and of course you're not going to know anyone who literally thinks the Rutgers women were "hos" -- or, at least, you're not going to know anyone who'd say so out loud to you. Admittedly, I'm a Manhattanite, and these days I don't run into a lot of people who say such things out loud, either, but I don't live in such an insular world that I've forgotten such people exist (and it's only been a couple of years since I went back to the Boston neighborhood where I grew up and heard an elderly former neighbor railing against "niggers"). By the way, for Ms. Lipman's delectation, here's a fuller transcript of what was said on the radio that day: IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and -- McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos. IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don't know. McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing. IMUS: Yeah. McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes -- that movie that he had. IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough -- McCORD: Do The Right Thing. McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. IMUS: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right? ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors. IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah. RUFFINO: Only tougher. McGUIRK: The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate. Rough jigaboo hos. Yeah, they should have just shrugged that off, right? **** Cross-posted at the Carpetbagger Report. posted by Steve M. | 11:06 AM | ANOTHER DAY OLDER AND DEEPER IN DEBT This is not good for you: A new debit card that lets consumers use ATMs to withdraw money from their 401(k) plans is drawing a sharp reaction from financial planners. The ReservePlus card is marketed by Reserve Solutions Inc., a New York financial firm that says it has 10,000 cardholders already. The debit cards allow cardholders to take out loans from their employer-sponsored 401(k) retirement funds. Normally, restrictions on the funds discourage account holders from making withdrawals before they are 59½ years old. Early withdrawals from 401(k) plans come with taxes and fees, which could deprive account holders of their nest eggs if they fail to replace the money promptly. ..."For every $10 you take out of the account, you only have $6 or $7 to spend, probably closer to $6, which means you're giving up a third of your money," said Stuart Ritter, certified financial planner for T. Rowe Price, a Baltimore asset-management company. "You're also giving up money to spend in retirement, so you are by definition lowering your lifestyle in retirement."... They just won't stop. They just won't stop making it too easy for people to do financial harm to themselves with easy credit. We're told by a Reserve Solutions spokesperson that people who borrow this way borrow less than people who take out traditional loans against their 401(k)s, but let's not be naive -- nobody's offering this service as a way to encourage caution and thrift. This is being offered as way of encouraging people to borrow 401(k) money without giving it a lot of thought, and to take out a lot of little loans until the amount really adds up. Anything to keep the cash flowing through the system in the short term -- even if spenders are hurting their long-term financial health. Much better, if you're in a financial bind, to temporarily cut back on your 401(k) contributions, or suspend them altogether for a while. Much better to take out a loan that requires paperwork and forces you to think about what you're doing. This is a lousy alternative. Don't get sucked in. posted by Steve M. | 10:40 AM | Sunday, February 17, 2008 EVEN THE LIBERAL... A couple of weeks ago, The New York Times Book Review published a nasty, sneering review of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston, a Times business reporter; the review was written by Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, in his finest oh-don't-confuse-me-with-those-icky-progressive-Democrats tone (despite the fact that Johnston, though a fierce critic of greedy plutocrats, is a registered Republican). Today the Book Review publishes a letter from Johnston, along with Chait's reply to that letter. Here's Johnston: [Chait] writes that I embrace litigiousness to solve societal problems. In fact, I describe litigation as "scary and nasty" and show ways to reduce lawsuits. To which Chait responds: That Johnston can deny that he embraces litigiousness is bizarre. He depicts trial lawyers as heroes and wrote that every American has dreamed of fighting a case all the way to the Supreme Court. But where's the contradiction in that? If I'd use the word "heroes" to describe EMTs or cardiac surgeons who save the lives of heart-attack patients, does that mean I approve of the poor choices (smoking, bad diet, lack of exercise) that many of these patients made prior to their heart attacks? If I think soldiers are heroes, does that necessarily mean I love war and want more of it? What about firefighters? If I think they're heroic, does that mean I approve of arson, or smoking in bed, or failure to use smoke detectors -- or 9/11? Can't I disapprove of ill-advised or even evil acts that make certain professions necessary, and wish to prevent those acts in the future, while admiring the people who labor to minimize their bad consequences? And regarding the Supreme Court, what Johnston actually wrote (as Chait noted in his review) is this: Is there an American, feeling the sting of injustice, who has not vowed to fight all the way to the Supreme Court? Subtle move of the goalposts, Jonathan: "vowed" in response to injustice has become "dreamed" in response to, seemingly, nothing but the abstract wish to sue. But maybe, to you, there's no difference -- because maybe, to you, only a litigation-loving nutjob would ever feel that the system is rigged in favor of the haves. posted by Steve M. | 6:13 PM | JERALYN MERRITT: REPUBLICANS WILL ATTACK ONE (AND ONLY ONE) DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE AS A PINKO! That seems to be the point of this post, which quotes Rupert Murdoch's Times of London: The TimesOnline says the right wing is set to attack Barack Obama s the ultimate "liberal socialist" in the mold of George McGovern. LEADING Republicans believe they can trounce Barack Obama in the presidential election by tarring him as a shady Chicago socialist. They are increasingly confident that his campaign could collapse by the time their attack machine has finished with him. Sample attack: Obama has the voting record of a "hard-left" socialist, according to [Grover]Norquist, from his time in the Illinois state legislature to the US Senate. He was recently judged by the nonpartisan National Journal to have the most liberal voting record in 2007 of any senator.... And that would never happen with Hillary Clinton -- would it?  Number of Google hits for "obama socialist": 415,000. Number of Google hits for "clinton socialist": 489,000. Number of Google hits for "obama communist": 439,000. Number of Google hits for "clinton communist": 517,000. I'd say it's more or less a wash. I'd say the only Democratic ticket that wouldn't provoke this line of attack would be the dark-horse Joe Lieberman/Zell Miller ticket. posted by Steve M. | 12:42 PM | Saturday, February 16, 2008 ON OBAMANIA Here's something I don't recall: I don't recall any of the more urbane, cerebral Republicans -- David Brooks, David Frum, people like that -- saying, at the height of George W. Bush's popularity, that maybe it would be a good idea to replace Bush on the ticket in 2004 because some of his supporters were enthusiastic about him to the point of zealotry. Recall General William Boykin's assertion that "God put" Bush in the White House. And Bush himself encouraged such talk, while his team positioned photographers so they'd snap pictures of him with haloed. But if some suggestible Bush fans were forming a Bush personality cult, his more even-tempered supporters didn't say, "Oh, no, we can't have that, even though it means he has a good shot at winning in '04 and continuing policies with which we agree -- we'd rather have a candidate who doesn't inspire that kind of enthusiasm because that kind of enthusiasm is unseemly." If you don't think you'd like what Barack Obama would do as president, don't support him. If you think Hillary Clinton would make a better president or is more electable, that's sensible too. But if you resist Obama just because some of his fans go a bit over the top, that's missing the point about overzealous fandom: It's truly dangerous only when the object seeks to manipulate it for malign ends, and, obviously, Barack Obama is no David Koresh. Look through your music collection. A lot of those people -- Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan, hell, even Liszt -- had overheated admirers. They didn't do much to discourage excessive levels of admiration, and in many cases actually encouraged it. But they did good work anyway, and they shouldn't be blamed for their craziest fans. posted by Steve M. | 7:32 PM | R.I.P. I've been informed that Lurch of Main and Central has passed away. I don't have any further information. He was a great blogger and a friend of this blog, and he'll be missed.... posted by Steve M. | 11:52 AM | EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE, WE'LL BE WATCHING YOU (Remotely) Hey, kids, did you know that prayer can help make you a remote totalitarian-wannabe spy for Jesus? WALLINGFORD, Pa. -- The bell rang and the eighth-graders jumped up, eager to compare notes. "I named my baby Kyle Patrick," one shouted. "Mine is Antonio!" At the urging of an anti-abortion activist, each had pledged to "spiritually adopt" a fetus developing in an unknown woman -- to name it, love it from afar and, above all, pray daily that the mother-to-be would not choose abortion. "Maybe one day you'll get to heaven and these people will come running to you ... and say, 'We're all the little children you saved,'" activist Cristina Barba said. She smiled at the students in their Catholic school uniforms. "Maybe you really can make a difference." ... Sorry, this creeps me out -- the notion that, if you're pregnant, some pubescent zealot feels entitled to name your fetus and influence what happens to it. It's a bizarre combination of superstition and fascism. It's also (like so much else in the anti-abortion movement) treating the fetus as what a friend of mine has called a "foetish" -- a fetishized fetus. The article goes on to cite statistics showing decreased support for legalized abortion among the young. If that's the case, I don't know if it's a harbinger of a real ahift in public opinion, a byproduct of a kind of absolutism that dissipates as people grow older and see more of real life -- or possibly an association of support for abortion with those horrible boomer feminists everyone hates these days. But regardless, the remote-naming-and-praying exercise is just twisted. (More on Cristina Barber, who's also a virginity activist, here. She's obviously pretty good at getting mainstream press; no doubt her book deal is just around the corner.) posted by Steve M. | 11:47 AM | Friday, February 15, 2008 ANY RESEMBLANCE TO THE RANTINGS OF A FASCIST WANNABE ARE ENTIRELY INADVERTENT, AND A REAL SURPRISE TO ME PERSONALLY I see that David Brooks, the "nice" conservative, is quoting Mitt Romney approvingly in today's New York Times: In the 19th century, ... American leaders expanded education and created the highest quality work force on the planet. That quality work force was the single biggest reason the U.S. emerged as the economic superpower of the 20th century. Generation after generation, American workers were better educated, more industrious and more innovative than the ones that came before. That progress stopped about 30 years ago. The percentage of young Americans completing college has been stagnant for a generation. As well-educated boomers retire over the next decades, the quality of the American work force is likely to decline. Mitt Romney captured the consequences in his withdrawal statement: "I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century -- still a great nation, but no longer the leader of the world." ... Now, nice-conservative Mr. Brooks has many nice-conservative proposals for turning this situation around -- health-insurance portability, national service for young people, and so on. He even wants more preschool and a bigger Earned Income Tax Credit. So, er, why did he quote Mitt Romney, whose gloss on the foreseen decline is, shall we say, a tad darker? Let's go to the Romney speech Brooks quoted: "The threat to our culture comes from within. The 1960's welfare programs created a culture of poverty. Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven't given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility. They fight to strip work requirements from welfare, to put more people on Medicaid, and to remove more and more people from having to pay any income tax whatsoever. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity. Dependency is a culture-killing drug. We have got to fight it like the poison it is. "The attack on faith and religion is no less relentless. And tolerance for pornography -- even celebration of it -- and sexual promiscuity, combined with the twisted incentives of government welfare programs have led to today's grim realities: 68% of African American children are born out-of-wedlock, 45% of Hispanic children, and 25% of White children. How much harder it is for these children to succeed in school and in life. A nation built on the principles of the Founding Fathers cannot long stand when its children are raised without fathers in the home. "The development of a child is enhanced by having a mother and father. Such a family is the ideal for the future of the child and for the strength of a nation. I wonder how it is that unelected judges, like some in my state of Massachusetts, are so unaware of this reality, so oblivious to the millennia of recorded history. It is time for the people of America to fortify marriage through Constitutional amendment, so that liberal judges cannot continue to attack it. "Europe is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality. Some reason that culture is merely an accessory to America's vitality; we know that it is the source of our strength. And we are not dissuaded by the snickers and knowing glances when we stand up for family values, and morality, and culture. We will always be honored to stand on principle and to stand for principle.... Forget the Earned Income Tax Credit, says Mitt -- just get rid of porn, Medicaid, gay marriage, and a tolerance for atheism and everything will be copacetic. Gee, not so nice, hunh? (Although it sounds like a pale echo of the original German.) Do you suppose that pleasant Mr. Brooks ever wonders why none of his conservative friends is as genial as he is? posted by Steve M. | 4:49 PM | SO DERANGED SHE KEEPS FIGHTING EVEN WHEN SHE'S TRAILING BY A WHOPPING 50%-49% MARGIN Peggy Noonan almost has the Hillary Derangement Syndrome in check: ... In Virginia last Sunday, two days before the Little Tuesday voting, she suggested her problem is that she's not a big phony. "People say to me all the time, 'You're so specific.... Why don't you just come and, you know, really just give us one of those great rhetorical flourishes and then, you know, get everybody all whooped up.' " When she said it, I thought it might be a sign that Mrs. Clinton was beginning to accept the idea that she might lose. I thought it was a way of explaining to others--a way of explaining to herself--why things hadn't worked. A riff that wasn't a riff but a marker, a rationale for a loss, an explanation of why she failed that could be archived by television producers--Hillary on the trail, 2/10/08--and retrieved the day she concedes.... I thought it an acknowledgement that loss might come. That's actually fairly astute -- and shocking, because it may be the first time Noonan has ever acknowledged that Hillary is capable of a non-sociopathic response to anything whatsoever. But then Noonan's derangement kicks back in: But by Thursday afternoon, Mrs. Clinton was furiously stumping through Ohio using the same line of attack, but this time it wasn't a marker. The race is about "speeches versus solutions." Her unnamed opponent stands for the first, she for the second. He is all "words," she is "action." "Words are cheap," she said. Gosh -- no possible way it could be both, is there, Peggy? There's simply no possible way that Hillary Clinton -- up against a guy who has all the momentum, yet still a mere The new Clinton meme on the right, a corollary to "will do anything to win," is "can't endure losing, at least not without settng off a bloodbath." And the evidence of that is ... she's still campaigning! The psycho! And even though I voted for Obama, I'm not going to join the pile-on, because I know that if Obama wins the nomination, he's next. posted by Steve M. | 2:23 PM | GOD IS DEAD, GOP EDITION Rush Limbaugh is interviewed in today's New York Times, and there's an odd, momentarily baffling Limbaugh bit quoted early in the story: "I would like today to announce a tentative decision -- I'm still thinking about it -- to endorse Barack Obama," he said.... Mr. Limbaugh then listed nearly a dozen qualities he said he found admirable in Mr. Obama. "Barack Obama is pro-life," he began. "Barack Obama is a tax-cutter extraordinaire." Hunh? If neither statement was descriptive of Mr. Obama, a liberal Democrat, nor was there much hope for what followed. "Barack Obama will establish a college football playoff, once and for all," Mr. Limbaugh said. "Barack Obama will offer free-beer Fridays." His point, Mr. Limbaugh said, was that Mr. Obama represented "a blank canvas upon which anyone can project their fantasies and desires." Oh. OK, I get it now. But there's something off here. The point seems strained -- and Limbaugh's tone, especially in an accompanying audio clip, seems wistful. In the clip, Limbaugh's riff goes on longer -- and you start realizing that Limbaugh isn't mocking Obama so much as describing his own crisis of faith, as his appeal to the heavens (or, rather, to Republican headquarters) for the healing touch of God goes unanswered this year (or so Limbaugh keeps telling us): Barack Obama is pro-life. Barack Obama is a constitutionalist. Barack Obama believes in limited government. Barack Obama is in favor of health-care savings plans. Barack Obama loves free markets and wants to protect them. Barack Obama is strong on national defense. Barack Obama is a tax-cutter extraordinaire. This isn't a riff. This is a prayer, or at least a bitter mockery of a prayer. The subtext is: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? ***** Republicans and Clintonites alike have concluded that they can really hurt Obama by attacking him as a self-styled Messiah. In the general election, at least, I don't think it can work -- by now, Americans are too accustomed to thinking of top political leaders as embodiments of Good and Godliness and smiters of Evil, and no one's done more in the past thirty years or so to keep that way of looking at politics alive than the GOP. Ronald Reagan rose from the dead after being shot, then was literally the Bringer of Dawn after presiding over the end of his own recession and conquering a tiny island nation. Via his Lady of the Lake, Peggy Noonan, Reagan passed his magic sword to George H.W. Bush, who won the election but was never truly divine -- but at just about this time, Limbaugh himself arose, with (as he put it) "talent on loan from God." Newt Gingrich had ten commandments on his Contract with America tablets. And 9/11 made George W. Bush God's president. America fell for every bit of this nonsense, at least for a while, so if voters think Obama is the Messiah, and Obama is leading McCain in the polls, that's just the GOP being hoist on its own petard. (John McCain actually did spend years in a living hell, and why Limbaugh and his ideological soul mates aren't playing that up just to keep the Democrats out of the White House is still a mystery.) It's the GOP that's told us for years that American politics is the struggle between Pure Good and Pure Evil; it's Republicans' tough luck if Democrats now believe it. Except that Democrats might not believe it. I'm reading that Hillary Clinton is doing quite well in polls in Texas and Ohio and Wisconsin; maybe the "Messiah" thing is starting to hurt Obama. Democrats don't usually nominate godlike figures -- far from it. Gore? Kerry? Dukakis? Mondale? Not very godlike. Yes, Bill Clinton did enter Madison Square Garden before his '92 convention speech after a short Christ-like procession, and was then seen on film shaking hands with God in the person of JFK -- and he won. But that happened months after he'd already won the Democratic nomination. And yes, subsequently, in time for the '98 midterms, Clinton became like a horny god from the Greco-Roman tradition. But these are exceptions. More often, Democratic voters have been skeptical of Messiahs and dragon-slayers. That could be Hillary Clinton's opening. Maybe, for better or worse, Democrats will return to their usual preference for the wonky and pragmatic. And meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh will still be wandering in the desert, waiting for a sign. posted by Steve M. | 8:25 AM | Thursday, February 14, 2008 FOR YOU, SIRE, WE SUSPEND GRIDLOCK David Broder in today's Washington Post: The voters' message is getting through ... in changing the mind-set of Washington. The clearest evidence of the change is what happened last week on the economic stimulus bill. A week ahead of their self-imposed deadline, the House and Senate, by overwhelming votes, sent to President Bush almost exactly the kind of relief measure he had sought for the staggering economy. It was a dramatic reversal of the gridlock that had characterized executive-congressional relations throughout 2007, and it reflects the recognition by both Republicans and Democrats of the public disenchantment with official Washington that has been one of the dominant themes of the 2008 presidential campaign.... The hell it does. The only thing it reflects is the fact that when the plutocrat Masters of the Universe are in trouble, it automatically becomes the government's top priority to try to restore their financial stability. (Your financial situation doesn't really matter; it's only supposed to get better so theirs can.) Now that Washington has seen to their needs, we will return shortly to your regularly scheduled gridlock, routinely punctuated by your regularly scheduled Bush administration naked power grabs. posted by Steve M. | 10:58 AM | BIGOTRY IS FUN! (WHEN YOU CAN BLAME IT ON SOMEONE ELSE) From the front page of Lucianne.com today:  (Click to enlarge.) Hey, it's OK for us to laugh at this! This isn't what we think! It's what the Clintons think! (Even though we've lovingly Photoshopped this image ourselves....) **** There seems to be a lot of this kind of thing going around -- see Maureen Dowd yesterday, declaring herself shocked, shocked, that a nasty sexist joke is being made about Hillary Clinton. ...But Hillary is not the best test case for women. We'll never know how much of the backlash is because she's a woman or because she's this woman or because of the ick factor of returning to the old Clinton dysfunction.... In a webcast, prestidigitator Penn Jillette talks about a joke he has begun telling in his show. He thinks the thunderous reaction it gets from audiences shows that Hillary no longer has a shot. The joke goes: "Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know. And Hillary says it's not fair, because they're being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there's no White Bitch Month." ... As Bob Somerby says: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Readers, male comedians are telling naughty jokes about Clinton! And Dowd is quick to repeat them, of course.... "[E]ven Jillette admits it's offensive," Dowd says, speaking of her moronic friend's sally. But we can't quite criticize males like Jillette until the "best test case" comes along! ... Until then, we'll just have to repeat Gillette's "joke"... Well, of course. It's a public service, don't you see. It just a reminder of how hateful other people (not Dowd herself!) can be -- especially when the object of that hate, y'know, kinda asked for it. **** Also see James Wolcott on Dowd's column. posted by Steve M. | 9:46 AM | Wednesday, February 13, 2008 FACTS ON LOAN FROM OXYCONTIN Rush Limbaugh, in a Time magazine interview: And [Reagan] didn't have the Senate for most of his eight [years]. Look what he did. He got his tax cuts through — a number of things. It can be done. In fact, Republicans controlled the Senate for six of Reagan's eight years in office. They gained Senate control in the 1980 elections and didn't lose it until the 1986 midterms. ***** Bonus Rush quote: The second thing that the media doesn't understand -- and I think it's because talk radio is outside the Beltway. It's a phenomenon that attracts what I call the people who make the country work. I don't think politicians and elected officials and bureaucrats and even the media are responsible for the greatness of the country. I think it's individual Americans laboring in anonymity, not seeking fame, just trying to get by, play by the rules, work hard, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And those are the people that listen to talk radio. Dude, your show is on in the middle of the workday -- noon to three Eastern time. Your fans can't be working all that freakin' hard. posted by Steve M. | 11:38 PM | VOTE FOR ME, YOU HOCKEY PUCK Tom Hilton says we need to define, or redefine, John McCain for voters. I think that's an uphill climb -- he's a media star, so voters think they know him -- but, yeah, we may have to try. Here are two ways Tom thinks we should define McCain (and I know he's far from alone in this): * Crazy John: a loose cannon, reckless and impulsive, who will lead us into more crazy self-destructive wars with countries that aren't actually a threat. Think bomb-bomb-Iran; think 100 years. * Cranky Old John: the Bob Dole of 2008, with a nasty mean streak and an uncontrollable temper. And having himself made nasty jokes about old people, he can't well complain now that he's in a position to be the butt of them. But I keep thinking that "angry, cranky old John" is what he looks like only to people on the left (and right) who follow the news quite closely and who don't like him. To most everyone else, he looks spry, witty, and genial. Can I prove this? Not quite. But I can point you to the Forbes Tracker, which is an ongoing survey of voters' impressions of the candidates. Look at McCain's numbers: only 2% of women and 3% of men think he's "mean," while a mere 4% of women and 3% of men think he's "rude." Now compare Hillary Clinton's numbers: 9% of women and 18% of men call her "mean," while 9% of women and 13% of men call her "rude." Or try "creepy": 12% of women find Clinton creepy, and 20% of men. McCain's numbers are just 7% for both men and women. Remember, John McCain is the guy who said, "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." But only a vanishingly small percentage of the public thinks he's "mean" or "rude." ***** I really do think McCain comes off to a lot of people as witty, or at least amusing. Being able to crack jokes cuts against both the "angry" message (laughter is seen as the opposite of anger, even though humor is often rechanneled anger) and the "old" message (someone who seems sharp enough to crack an apparently off-the-cuff joke with reasonably competent timing seems to be well in command of his faculties). McCain, I fear, comes off as a political Don Rickles -- an insult comic who (and I say this as someone who grew up in his heyday) is seen as not really mean-spirited at all. Hell, McCain even looks a bit like Rickles:   I'm just saying I think it's going to be hard to paint McCain as angry or old unless he has a raw YouTubed moment of rage and/or extreme forgetfulness -- or one of his jokes really, really crosses the line. If nothing like that happens, I fear his image will remain exactly the opposite of what it is among well-informed McCain skeptics. posted by Steve M. | 5:03 PM | PUTTING THEIR BEST MINDS TO WORK ON THIS ONE, I'M SURE From an article in today's New York Times about John McCain's new finance co-chairman, a former Bush moneyman: ...In 2004, contributors to Mr. Bush who collected $100,000 in checks, otherwise known as bundlers, were called Pioneers. Those who collected $200,000 were called Rangers, after the Texas baseball team once partly owned by Mr. Bush. Mr. McCain's advisers said that the senator's campaign would also be bestowing titles on its most prolific fund-raisers.... Wait, don't tell me. Let me take a wild stab in the dark. McCain's will be called ... um ... "Mavericks"? And "Straight Talkers"? **** AND: Maybe he'll call small donors the "Little Jerks"? posted by Steve M. | 2:10 PM | AS YOU LIKE IT Obama's a very good candidate who's running a very good campaign that made many shrewd choices, which are paying off. Clinton isn't running as good a campaign and made some poor choices. There -- I fulfilled my obligation as a blogger to focus monomaniacally on theorizing about the Democratic horserace in the aftermath of the last few contests. posted by Steve M. | 11:12 AM | A MAN HEARS WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR AND DISREGARDS THE REST Dennis Sanders at the Moderate Voice: As I was coming home tonight, I listened to some of John McCain's victory speech.... he seems to offer a more decent and civil conservatism that is far different from the stuff we are used to hearing. ...He expresses a desire for small government, stating that government isn't the answer to every problem, but without all the anti-government rhetoric..... Dennis linked the speech, but apparently he didn't read it. To him, this isn't "anti-government rhetoric"? We do not yet know for certain who will have the honor of being the Democratic Party's nominee for president. But we know where either of their candidates will lead this country, and we dare not let them. (APPLAUSE) They will promise a new approach to governing, but offer only the policies of a political orthodoxy that insists the solution to government's failures is to simply make it bigger. They will appeal to our dreams of a better future for ourselves, our families and our country, but they would take from us more of the wealth we have earned to build those dreams and assure us that government is better able than we are to make decisions about our future for us. Sanders also says McCain does go after the Democrats, but he seems to express what is wrong with their ideas instead of saying that they are evil. -- an interesting statement, given the fact that this morning when I went to another centrist site, Donklephant, and read a post citing this one, it was accompanied by this eeek-she's-a-witch! McCain ad:   (A bit dated, that; no doubt McCain's people are hard at work on an ad that depicts a robe-clad Barack Obama as a self-styled Jesus handing down "The Ten Commandments of Liberalism" to hackysack-playing hippies in Che Guevara T-shirts. But this will be done in a nice way, so it's OK.) posted by Steve M. | 10:02 AM | Tuesday, February 12, 2008 EVERYTHING IS BAD FOR DEMOCRATS According to Commentary blogger Daniel Casse, Barack Obama should just stop all this winning because it's only going to hurt his candidacy: Is victory coming too easily for Obama? What we are seeing tonight is the possibility that the entire Clinton edifice is collapsing far more quickly than anyone imagined.... if Obama's victory becomes a foregone conclusion over the next few days, he will have lost the most powerful weapon in his arsenal: his battle against the incumbent Democratic establishment. So long as Obama was in a tight race with Clinton, he could continue to polish his reputation as the man struggling to change the status quo.... Clinton has been a perfect foil for him. That stage of the campaign is almost over, and Obama may soon wish he still had the Clintons to kick around for a while longer. The possibility that there might be, y'know, an incumbent Republican establishment for Obama to run against, one that actually constitutes the real status quo in American politics, has apparently never occurred to Casse. posted by Steve M. | 11:00 PM | RELAX, DON'T DO IT Our old PNAC pal Leon Wieseltier has been watching Barack Obama and doesn't like what he sees: ...I have been pondering his remarks about foreign policy in the ensuing campaign and I do not detect the hardness I seek.... He seems averse to the hurtful, expensive, traditional, unedifying stuff. Hmmm ... Wieseltier wants a candidate with more "hardness"? Less "averse to the hurtful"? Yup, I guess it is the same Leon Wieseltier who, a few years ago, famously lavished praise on a memoir about anal sex. ***** (More on the Wieseltier essay from Spencer Ackerman and Ezra Klein.) posted by Steve M. | 10:16 PM | UNLIKELY? From McClatchy: 9/11 Guantanamo trials unlikely before Bush leaves office The U.S. military is scrambling to assemble defense teams for six Guantanamo detainees who are facing the death penalty for their alleged roles in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Knowledgeable legal experts, however, said it's unlikely that they can be tried speedily, meaning the cases probably won't be heard before the Bush administration leaves office next January. "I will move as quickly as I can, but we will take our time and we will not be bullied by the government," said Army Col. Steve David, the chief defense counsel in the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions.... "Any attempt to do these cases in 2008 would be a mockery," said Joseph Margulies, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and a noted death penalty expert. He said that it would take at least a year for lawyers to familiarize themselves with the evidence against the six men.... The career military would feel "bullied" if the trials happen this year? A professor thinks holding the trials this year would be a "mockery" of justice? Shhhh! Don't say these things! You're going to make Bush even more determined to do this now! posted by Steve M. | 3:56 PM | UNPERSONS A February 9 Washington Times article about the search for a new Leader of the True Right-Wing Faith includes this remarkable assertion: The conservative movement has been without a leader since Mr. Reagan Excuse me? Without a leader? Wow. I'm reminded of the old Soviet Union -- in the textbooks it appears that George W. Bush (and Newt Gingrich before him) have been airbrushed from all the photos of past True Conservative party conferences. Any evidence that W and Newt were ever movement leaders has been expunged from the official record. To be fair, I should give you the whole sentence: The conservative movement has been without a leader since Mr. Reagan, and has faced competition from conservatism usually preceded by such adjectives as "big-government," "compassionate" and "neo." Oh. So now "neoconservatism" is some weird offshoot of "conservatism." Funny how no one on the right was desperate to distinguish neoconservatism from conservatism back when, say, Bush was landing that plane on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in '03. In fact, just using the word "neoconservative" to refer to ideas all True Conservatives embraced meant you were trying to smear the True Faith in an anti-Semitic way. And I know my memory contradicts what the Ministry of Truth is telling me, but was there any "compassionate conservatism" after No Child Left Behind passed (a transparent attempt, it seems now, to lull potential opponents into somnolence so Bush could get his tax cuts passed) and after the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives passed into irrelevance with the departure of John DiIulio? Back then, it didn't seem to matter because 9/11 had Changed Everything and the "compassionate conservative" leader had become the "neoconservative" leader -- except it was all considered "conservative," before it dropped to 30% approval in the polls. Regarding "big-government" conservatism, I won't even bring up the size of Reagan's deficits. **** Steve Benen cited this article because it tells us about a gathering of prominent right-wing activists who seek a new True Faith leader -- and it appears that that leader may be Mitt Romney. No, I'm serious -- the shape-shifter wants to head the Orthodox branch of the faith. As Steve notes, Romney's trying to do what Ronald Reagan did after he failed to wrest the GOP presidential nomination from Gerald Ford in 1976: He's setting himself up for a run four years from now, as the True Conservative. Talk about "the second time as farce." I say that for three reasons: (1) Romney is still a Mormon. The population that finds that unacceptable is a large subset of precisely the population he's trying to appeal to. (2) Reagan changed a lot of his political positions over the course of his career, just like Romney, but after he'd done so, voters heard him talk about his new positions and actually believed he was sincere. Only desperate conservatives think Romney is sincere. (3) Many people found Reagan likable. Nobody actually likes Romney. **** One more point I want to make here. There have been approximately nine thousand articles and blog posts in the past couple of weeks decrying the alleged belief on the part of some Obama supporters that Obama is the Messiah. I just want to remind everyone that the Republicans are fighting among themselves right now precisely because this year they couldn't find a Messiah, or at least a candidate seemingly touched by the hand of the Almighty. The worst rhetorical excesses on the part of Obama's most zealous supporters are something like the median right-wing belief regarding Bush at the height of his popularity, and regarding Reagan to this day. Remember General William Boykin? "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." Hard to imagine a Mormon inheriting this mantle. **** UPDATE: TS at Instaputz has a related thought. posted by Steve M. | 12:49 PM | NO THIRD TERMS Jeb Bush endorsed John McCain yesterday. The text of the announcement is at the link. I'd say Jeb and the McCain campaign wanted to make sure they got this in before the Potomac primaries -- after all, a lot of the GOP voters in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. today will be government operatives and lobbying-firm employees and think-tankers who have long-standing ties to the current administration and an enduring fondness for the endorser's big brother. McCain wants them, in particular, to know that he's the dynasty's choice. John McCain: Four More Years. posted by Steve M. | 8:50 AM | GO, HUCK, GO! From SurveyUSA: Eve of VA GOP Primary 2/11/08: Huckabee Closes-In On McCain: Big movement in Virginia following Mike Huckabee's strong showing over the weekend in Louisiana, Kansas and Washington state. On the eve of the Virginia Republican Primary, it's John McCain 48%, Mike Huckabee 37%. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA tracking poll released 72 hours ago, McCain is down 9, Huckabee is up 12. McCain had led by 32, now leads by 11. Among Conservative voters, McCain had led by 21, now trails by 5. Among Pro-Life voters, McCain had led by 20 points, now trails by 6. Among voters in Southeast VA, McCain had led by 28, now trails by 12. Among voters focused on Immigration, McCain had led by 16, now trails by 17. Among voters who attend religious services regularly, McCain had led by 24, now trails by 2. Oh, man -- they shut down the vote count because they were afraid Huck might win Washington State. What happens if he's on the verge of upsetting Maverick Man in Virginia? Bomb scares? Suspicious white powder found at the state board of elections? ***** UPDATE: Yeah yeah, I know -- Atrios had this yesterday afternoon. I guess the fact that I didn't know that means that I really have kicked my eight-times-a-day Atrios habit, haven't I? Feels good, actually. posted by Steve M. | 7:25 AM | Monday, February 11, 2008 DEMOCRATIC WOMEN!! EEEEK!! THEY'RE WEIRD AND UNNATURAL!!! Reinforcing an ugly stereotype? Who? Me, Mark Halperin?  Good grief. ***** Meanwhile, let's play "separated at birth": Inside the campaign, [Michelle Obama has] been dubbed "the closer" because she often pushes harder to seal the deal with voters than [her husband] does. --Monica Langley, "Michelle Obama Solidifies Her Role in the Election," from page 1 of today's Wall Street Journal Aides learned that Hillary was "the closer": no decision was final until she had signed off on it. --Sally Bedell Smith's Clinton-bashing book For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years Women! Doing jobs men are supposed to do! Actually, the Journal article on Michelle Obama isn't bad at all -- it actually seems admiring. But I say that as someone who doesn't expect women to be zombified helpmeets like the current First Lady. Compare the wives of the three top GOP candidates this year: Do you have any empirical evidence that the wives of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee have larynxes? I don't -- I've seen each one of them standing stoically by her husband, sometimes flashing a chipper smile, but i've never heard any of them utter a word. If that's your idea of a First Lady, and if Barack Obama is on the ticket, it's clear that you're gradually going to be told that Michelle is Hillary II: It Lives Again. On a conference call to prepare for a recent debate, Barack Obama brainstormed with his top advisers on the fine points of his positions. Michelle Obama had dialed in to listen, but finally couldn't stay silent any longer. "Barack," she interjected, "Feel -- don't think!" Telling her husband his "over-thinking" during past debates had tripped him up with rival Hillary Clinton, she said: "Don't get caught in the weeds. Be visceral. Use your heart -- and your head." The campaign veterans shut up. They knew that Mrs. Obama's opinion and advice mattered more to their candidate than anything they could say.... On the campaign trail, she has emerged as an influential adviser whom aides watch as a barometer for how both they and the candidate are doing. They watch for "the look" between her and Mr. Obama, on stage or in private moments, as an indication of his mood.... But sometimes her approach can backfire. When she told audiences that her husband is "snore-y and stinky" in the morning, doesn't put the butter back in the fridge and one morning "put on his clothes and left" while she juggled her own schedule to deal with an overflowing toilet, some voters and observers cringed that she was emasculating her husband. ...Her all-female staff works hard to protect her on the stump and she's protective of her aides as well. Last week when a TV reporter physically moved Mrs. Obama's press secretary out of his way, she stopped him cold: "Did you place your hand on my staff?" Mrs. Obama demanded. "You do not touch my team." ... Oooh, she's capable of anger! Oooh, she gets her husband to do things he wouldn't have done otherwise -- and she doesn't use "feminine wiles," she actually tells him to do stuff. And he does it! Unnatural she-demon! posted by Steve M. | 3:34 PM | HEY OLSON, HOW'S THAT VOTE COUNT IN WASHINGTON STATE GOING? I don't want to beat this into the ground, but right now Republicans are having a jolly old schadenfreudegasm over an ugly Democratic legal battle that hasn't even happened, and may never happen, while, in their own party, actual lawyers are actually looking into the actual vote-counting irregularity in Washington State, a subject much of the GOP seems not to want to talk about. The inspiration for the schadenfeude among GOP unhatched-chicken counters is this snarky Wall Street Journal op-ed by GOP uber-apparatchik Ted Olson, almost all of which is written in conditional tenses: What splendid theater the Democratic Party presidential nominating process is shaping up to be. And they are just getting started. The real fun would be a convention deadlock denouement a few months from now.... How ironic.... [Democrats] have designed a Rube Goldberg nominating process that could easily produce a result much like the Electoral College result in 2000.... Imagine that as the convention approaches, Sen. Clinton is leading in the popular vote, but Sen. Obama has the delegate lead. Surely no one familiar with her history would doubt that her take-no-prisoners campaign team would do whatever it took to capture the nomination, including all manner of challenges to Obama delegates and tidal waves of litigation. ...As the convention nears, with Sen. Clinton trailing slightly in the delegate count, the next step might well be a suit in the Florida courts.... No lawyers are in place, no lawsuits are in the works, yet Democrats are already guilty of excessive litigiousness because Ted Olson thinks lawsuits would happen. It's a wrinkle on the Clinton Rules (soon, perhaps, to be the Obama Rules): Not only is what other people do without raising objections suddenly evil when the Clintons do it, it's evil when it's believed they might do it. Meanwhile, in actually existing reality in Washington State: ... Huckabee's campaign said there were "obvious irregularities" in the state's Republican caucuses and that it is sending lawyers to explore "all available legal options regarding the dubious final results." ... I'm reminded of Stephen Colbert's take on the Bush administration's attitude toward torture: ... we shouldn't be judged on actions. It's our principles that matter; our inspiring, abstract notions. Remember, Jon, just because torturing prisoners is something we did doesn’t mean it's something we would do. posted by Steve M. | 1:35 PM | THE BACK-TO-SHARIA-AND-THE-MIDDLE-AGES MOVEMENT (Christian Division) I go to right-wing Web sites and I'm told that all religiously reactionary fanatics have olive skin -- but apparently the pink-cheeked have a few problems of their own. First, here's Mike Huckabee. A few weeks ago, he told us that "we need to ... amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards." Yesterday, at Jerry Falwell's church, the possible next vice president of the United States reiterated his support for Christian sharia law: ..."Frankly, we really don't need a lot of law if we are people of morality," he said to the congregation of over 7,000. "There are only ten basic laws that we need. If you think about it, the Ten Commandments cover it all." "The reason law gets more complicated is because we try to figure out clever ways around those ten," he said to applause.... “I hope you know Jesus Christ personally…because the level to which he rules you and governs you, you need less and less of man’s law to tell you how to live and that is what our Founding Fathers understood and we must understand.” Meanwhile, in Poland -- where they host conferences for American religious-right groups and still question the sexuality of Teletubbies -- today's Washington Post informs us that it's time to go back to the Middle Ages, with the Vatican's approval: ...The Rev. Andrzej Trojanowski, a soft-spoken Pole, plans to build a "spiritual oasis" that will serve as Europe's only center dedicated to performing exorcisms. With the blessing of the local Catholic archbishop and theological support from the Vatican, the center will aid a growing number of Poles possessed by evil forces or the devil himself, he said. ...Although a Vatican official denied reports in December of a campaign to train more exorcists, supporters said informal efforts began under Pope John Paul II -- himself an occasional demon chaser -- and have accelerated under Pope Benedict XVI. A Catholic university in Rome began offering courses in exorcism in 2005 and has drawn students from around the globe. One of the recruits is the Rev. Wieslaw Jankowski, a priest with the Institute for Studies on the Family, a counseling center outside Warsaw. He said priests at the institute realized they needed an exorcist on staff after encountering an increase in people plagued by evil. Typical cases, he said, include people who turn away from the church and embrace New Age therapies, alternative religions or the occult. Internet addicts and yoga devotees are also at risk, he said. Bloody hell -- yoga? Yup: In 1989 the Vatican issued a document saying the practice of Eastern traditions like yoga "can degenerate into a cult of the body," warning Catholics against mistaking yoga's "pleasing sensations" for "spiritual well-being." It was signed by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger--now Pope Benedict XVI. In a 2003 document the Vatican further distances itself from New Age practices, including yoga. More from the Post: ...Jankowski cited the case of a woman who asked for a divorce days after renewing her wedding vows as part of a marriage counseling program. What was suspicious, he said, was how the wife suddenly developed a passionate hatred for her husband. "According to what I could perceive, the devil was present and acting in an obvious way," he said. "How else can you explain how a wife, in the space of a couple of weeks, could come to hate her own husband, a man who is a good person?" Um, he's violent and she's justifiably decided she can't maintain a brave face anymore, and she naively thinks she's in an environment where her words will be taken seriously? (Or, alternately, she really is being irrational, but only because she's experiencing the onset of mental illness, which means she needs the help of contemporary doctors, not witch doctors?) Jankowski said that an archbishop granted him the authority last October to perform exorcisms and that he's been busy ever since. As for the afflicted wife? "We're still working with her," he said. Oh, how fortunate for her. By the way, in their search for demonically possessed people in Poland who need spiritual healing, do you suppose these priests ever wandered over to Poland's CIA interrogation prisons? posted by Steve M. | 10:19 AM | Sunday, February 10, 2008 ONLY CELEBRITY CANDIDATES ARE INTERESTING Is it safe to say that, if Hillary Clinton were the presumptive Democratic nominee right now, but she still faced quite a bit of resentment within her party's base, and if she embarrassingly lost two contests over the weekend to a challenger, then was declared the winner in a third contest by a razor-thin margin with 13% of the vote still uncounted, that would be a huge political story? Is it safe to say that pundits would be fixated on it, speculating endless about the possible dirty deed that spared Clinton further humiliation? Well, the scenario I described is precisely what happened to John McCain and Mike Huckabee this weekend -- and as far as I can tell, the only mentions of this at the New York Times Web site are in this wire-service story and about a third of this story, which suggests that it's debatable that a winner was declared prematurely. (It isn't.) Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is all over the story, as is Fox News. But the Times, I guess, considers it irrelevant and boring. The Times simply doesn't think McCain and Huckabee are as fabulous as Clinton and Obama -- which means that all the nastiness and rancor in the GOP race -- the anger of the base at McCain and now, possibly, the skulduggery involved in trying to make him look like a widely accepted standard-bearer -- get less coverage than the Democratic struggle to pick a nominee. This should be an embarrassment for the GOP. At the Times, it isn't. This neglect is a gift to McCain and his party. posted by Steve M. | 11:43 PM | TIMES OP-ED "LIBERALS" ARE WORKING HARDER TO ELECT A REPUBLICAN IN '08 THAN ACTUAL REPUBLICANS ARE Republicans, doggedly refusing to coalesce around John McCain, decided to punish the guy Rush hates by voting for the other guy Rush hates: Mike Huckabee swept to victory in the Kansas Republican presidential caucuses yesterday, beating his party's presumptive nominee John McCain by a margin of more than 2-1. Huckabee also won in Louisiana.... The Washington state caucuses were too close to call.... Well, so much for the theory that Huck was staying in just to siphon votes away from Mitt Romney on behalf of his pal John McCain. Humiliating the front-runner -- not a good way to get a spot on the ticket. At this point the the GOP looks like a dictatorship after the downfall of the Maximum Leader -- candidates, voters, and bloviators alike are running amok in the streets; they're not even concerned about eventually establishing order because they've been living in a culture of intimidation, and now they're taking what they've learned for years and are practicing it on one another. If you want to understand the GOP in 2008, think of Iraq after the fall of Saddam. ***** All the polls say that Republicans have a fine chance of winning with McCain (I think Digby is nuts for saying that Republicans "know they are going to lose" and are planning to "blame the loss on the fact that McCain wasn't a real conservative" -- they can read polls), but apparently Republicans don't want to win with him. Not to worry: The "liberals" on the op-ed page of The New York Times are doing their damnedest to save Republicans from themselves and ensure a GOP victory in November. Today it's Frank Rich, going absolutely medieval on Hillary Clinton. Let's see: there's a "Stepford" here, a "synthetic product leeched of most human qualities" there, a comparison to Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment over there; we're told to watch for "how nastily the Clintons will fight," out of "cold, political cost-benefit calculus," because Barack Obama faces "a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary." Which is true, and not easily forgiven, but the Clintons have since dialed it down quite a bit. Except that, according to Rich, they haven't. His evidence? (1) A Clinton pollster told The New Yorker that, in his opinion, Hispanics prefer not to vote for blacks; (2) a televised Clinton town meeting had no blacks among the ordinary citizens who asked questions of Mrs. Clinton -- although a black woman co-hosted the show. (Hmmm ... were there any country singers in that "Yes, We Can" video?) Wow -- it's David Duke redux! Let's see: Frank Rich hates the Clintons. Paul Krugman has a bug up his ass about Obama. Maureen Dowd hates the Clintons and Obama. Who needs Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to demonize the Democrats when the op-ed regulars of the Times will gladly do the job themselves, using pretty much the same language? posted by Steve M. | 10:42 AM | Saturday, February 09, 2008 ANOTHER LIKELY LINE OF ATTACK AGAINST BARACK OBAMA COMES INTO FOCUS Not only are Republicans gradually falling into line behind John McCain, they're gradually backing away from Barack Obama -- right on schedule, as he inches closer to possibly winning the Democratic nomination, or at least a spot on the ticket. Yesterday,David Brooks fit Obama into some old familiar right-wing pigeonholes for Democrats, in a column structured as a mock conversation with "Dr. Retail." Dr. Retail tells us that Obama and Hillary Clinton are products, and Obama is a frou-frou product: ...Listen, the essential competition in many consumer sectors is between commodity providers and experience providers, the companies that just deliver product and the companies that deliver a sensation, too. There's Safeway, and then there is Whole Foods. There's the PC, and then there's the Mac. There are Holiday Inns, and there are W Hotels. There's Walgreens, and there's The Body Shop. Hillary Clinton is a classic commodity provider. She caters to the less-educated, less-pretentious consumer. As Ron Brownstein of The National Journal pointed out on Wednesday, she won the non-college-educated voters by 22 points in California, 32 points in Massachusetts and 54 points in Arkansas. She offers voters no frills, just commodities: tax credits, federal subsidies and scholarships. She's got good programs at good prices. Barack Obama is an experience provider. He attracts the educated consumer. In the last Pew Research national survey, he led among people with college degrees by 22 points. Educated people get all emotional when they shop and vote. They want an uplifting experience so they can persuade themselves that they're not engaging in a grubby self-interested transaction. They fall for all that zero-carbon footprint, locally grown, community-enhancing Third Place hype. They want cultural signifiers that enrich their lives with meaning. "Educated people get all emotional when they shop and vote." This is where Brooks's seemingly genial pop sociology turns nasty and Maureen Dowd-like. Brooks isn't wrong when he says that a lot of well-educated people want socially responsible products. But the phrase "all emotional" takes the argument to a different place: Upscale consumers are just silly girls. Of course, this is nonsense -- everyone, or at least everyone in America, gets "all emotional" while doing at least some kinds of shopping. Tell me that the (mostly) boys and men lining up for the latest game console are just there out of a grim sense of obligation. Tell me that people without a lot of money don't savor finding what they want at bargain prices. Hell, I bet even jes'-folks Mike Huckabee feels his heart racing when he walks into a first-rate guitar shop. But Brooks wants to send the message that Obama voters are frivolous little flibbertigibbets. And that's one way the right is going to try to beat Obama -- by going after his voters. Even with Obama's Ivy League background, it's going to be hard attacking him the way George H.W. Bush shamelessly attacked Michael Dukakis -- by saying his ideas were "born in Harvard Yard's boutique." Obama's life story is too well known. So the alternative will be to update the dirty-60s-hippie stereotype, and turn into a post-hippie stereotype -- effeminate, self-involved, metrosexual, elitist. The alternative, of course, is a Real Man. Enter John McCain. **** (Another name for the alternative, by the way, is "retrosexual." Go read "The Retrosexual Code," which just happens to have been posted at Free Republic yesterday, if you want to see precisely what they're going to say Obamaites aren't. posted by Steve M. | 4:23 PM | QUESTIONING THE TIMING Were they putting off dealing with the cases of these guys for so long just so they could use their trials to give Junior's administration a big dramatic finish? Military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing the first sweeping case against suspected conspirators in the plot that led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, and drew the United States into war, people who have been briefed on the case said. The charges, to be filed in the military commission system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would involve as many as six detainees held at the detention camp, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former senior aide to Osama bin Laden, who has said he was the principal planner of the plot. The case could begin to fulfill a longtime goal of the Bush administration: establishing culpability for the terrorist attacks of 2001. It could also help the administration make its case that some detainees at Guantanamo, where 275 men remain, would pose a threat if they are not held at Guantanamo or elsewhere. Officials have long said that a half-dozen men held at Guantanamo played essential roles in the plot directed by Mr. Mohammed, from would-be hijackers to financiers.... This is also intended to be an ongoing McCain campaign rally, meant to fire up the base (and it would have been a Giuliani rally or Romney rally or Thompson rally if things had worked out that way). Even legal setbacks -- Lawyers have said that two of those are men whose treatment in American hands would inevitably be a focus of defense lawyers in their cases. One of them, Mr. Mohammed, known as KSM, was subject to the simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding while in secret C.I.A. custody, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, confirmed this week. -- will be treated as evidence of the dangers we'll face if those Code Pink/MoveOn Democrats win the White House. It's all that plus the ego boost of reinforcing the narrative Bush keeps in his head of his own presidency -- "I vanquished the evildoers." posted by Steve M. | 9:46 AM | OOPS But ... but ... but I thought all the good people in Iraq were mutually supportive and peaceful and happy now: America's Sunni allies go on strike in Iraq's Diyala province Members of U.S.-allied citizen brigades, which are credited with helping to tamp down violence in many parts of Iraq, went on strike Friday in Diyala province, alleging that the provincial police chief there is running a death squad. ... Abu Mina, one of the leaders of the citizens groups in Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, said his group demanded the resignation of Gen. Ghanim al Quraishi three days ago and had given authorities evidence that Quraishi was involved in death-squad activities. Mina also accused seven police officers of kidnapping, raping and killing two women in a village north of Diyala earlier this week. ... The citizens groups also are demanding that the heavily Shiite police force be remade into one that reflects the composition of the mixed Sunni-Shiite province, that detained people not convicted of crimes be released and that Sunnis who return to Shiite-dominated areas from which they've been displaced be protected.... But we're still winning, of course. posted by Steve M. | 8:57 AM | Friday, February 08, 2008 THE PERFECT TICKET Righty pundit Michael Graham: ...So who should be at McCain's side? Here's my three-point test. The VP nominee must: 1-Be perceived as "ready to be president" immediately.... 2-- Add a state to the GOP column.... This is mandatory, in my opinion, for any Veep choice: No potential state pick-up, no nominee.... 3--Be a woman or a member of a minority group. It's tragic but true. 2008 is the year of identity politics.... Hmmmmmmm.... I've got it! The perfect running mate! He meets all those criteria!   McCain/Keyes '08, baby! START MEASURING THE WHITE HOUSE DRAPES NOW!!! (Er, what state is Keyes from these days? Illinois? Maryland? Must be one of those non-red states, right?) posted by Steve M. | 5:03 PM | OH CRAP, HERE COMES THIS AGAIN Please shoot me -- it's "authenticity" time again: L.A. Times: Romney Failed the 'Authentic' Test Boston Globe: "But in the end, [Romney's] campaign foundered for one basic reason: He lacked authenticity." Slate: "Despite sinking in $35 million of his own money (the WP says it was $50 million) and raising millions more, [Romney] still faced one fundamental problem that almost all the papers summarize with one word: 'authenticity.'" New York Times: "Yet Mr. Romney's advisers acknowledged Thursday an array of tactical missteps and miscalculations. Perhaps most significantly, they conceded that they had failed to overcome doubts about Mr. Romney's authenticity...." Never mind the fact that the last guy to survive a GOP presidential primary process was a Connecticut-born, prep school-educated, Ivy League legacy student whose favorite leisure-time activity seems to be mountain biking, one of the yuppiest forms of exercise imaginable, who has nevertheless been deemed a regular guy because he drops his g's and purchased a ranch just around the time he decided to seek the White House. And never mind the fact that the Republican Party's secular saint was a budget-busting non-church-attender who posed as a fiscal disciplinarian and as God's messenger on earth. "Authenticity" is like sincerity -- all you have to do is learn how to fake it. Reagan and W could, at least well enough to fool the party's rubes; Romney simply couldn't. **** Now, you know what all this "authenticity" talk means, of course: It means the pundits are about to tell us that "authenticity" is the #1 issue in this election -- not the economy, not Iraq, not health care. This is a serious problem if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee -- everyone "knows" she's a phony. And the pundits all "know" John McCain is "authentic." David Broder: "The presumption of authenticity -- the assumption that what he says, he actually believes -- is John McCain's greatest strength...." Pollster John Zogby: "There's something more at play when you're dealing with John McCain -- it's authenticity." CBN political reporter and frequent Meet the Press panelist David Brody: "I have been on the campaign trail with John McCain. I have talked to voters about him. What is resonating with people is his love of country, patriotism, leadership ability and authenticity." I think this won't be a problem if Obama is the nominee -- but there have been a few signs that even he might be vulnerable. A New York Sun editorial asked last month, But how did Mr. Obama become the King of our day? With all the talk of Mr. Obama's authenticity, it's remarkable that so few have wondered how this candidate can declaim like a Southern preacher. And if pundits do turn against Obama, they might even pick up on the fact that some black writers have questioned whether Obama is "authentically" African-American, given that he's not descended from West African slaves like most American blacks. That would be grasping at straws (he's certainly not pretending to be something he isn't), but the pundits might decide to go there if there's a sincere desire to contrast him unfavorably with John McCain. **** I hate all the "authenticity" talk. I hate it because it's staggeringly misleading -- when the pundits say "authentic," what they really mean is "charismatic." To the pundits, you're not "authentic" if you're in any way a geek, or if you struggle with the personality parts of politics, even though awkward may be exactly what you are. Gore, Kerry, Dukakis -- all of them were awkward, and all of them are considered "inauthentic," even though no one can actually point out a difference between what we saw of them and what they are. Social discomfort was treated as deceptiveness. And I think the supposedly devious phoniness of Hillary Clinton is vastly overstated. I think she really is a wonk with a serious demeanor who sometimes gets angry or chokes up or lets out a big laugh -- she's basically what she appears to be. Her political deeds often don't match her idealistic rhetoric -- which makes her like every other politician. Maybe she fakes emotion sometimes -- but don't tell me every pol who strolls through Iowa is sincerely in awe of the butter cow. As a faker, she can't hold a candle to George W. Bush, whose ersatz empathy and heartache at the thought of dead troops is treated in the press as genuine, and whose accounts of, say, prodigious book-reading are regarded as the God's honest truth. As for Romney, I think people think he has charisma, but he doesn't -- he's a guy who looks as if he has charisma. He's like a mid-market local-news anchorman who has a terrific jaw line but just lacks a certain something that keeps him from going nationwide. If he were truly charismatic, I think he'd have gotten away with every phony aspect of his campaign -- with the press's full complicity. posted by Steve M. | 2:38 PM | HELL YEAH, I'LL DEFEND IT It's phony outrage time on the right again. On her radio show on Super Tuesday, Randi Rhodes aired a mock ad that took the wingnuts' McCain Derangement Syndrome to an absurdly logical conclusion. The Radio Equalizer, leading the right-wing fainting couch brigade, has both a transcript and audio. An excerpt: ANNOUNCER: The following is a paid advertisement from Republicans for Mitt Romney, or mass suicide. If John McCain is the Republican Presidential nominee, it will destroy the Republican Party. We're Romney supporters and we know. Cause, if you vote for John McCain, we're going to go on a killing rampage. Hey, better dead then moderate." REPUBLICAN CHARACTER VOICE: "Look, I for one don't want to die in a hail of gun fire from crazed Mitt Romney supporters, but it's better then nominating a man who opposed the Bush tax cuts...." SECOND REPUBLICAN CHARACTER VOICE: As a true Republican, I'm prepared to poison my own children if John McCain is the nominee, but I do wish there was another way."... It's funny because it's true. It's not attacking anyone on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. It's not playing on any stereotype whatsoever. Many people on the right really do think a McCain nomination is the Apocalypse. Sorry, kids, we're watching your hysteria level, and this is your logical next step. **** At Power Line, Hindrocket sniffs, More hate speech from Air America. It's entertaining to contemplate what would happen if conservative talk radio engaged in the same kind of "humor" about Barack Obama. Of course, that would never happen. Conservatives just don't know how to hate like liberals. The same kind of humor about Obama? What would that be -- a scenario in which Obama wins the nomination and Team Clinton goes on a killing rampage? Well, how different is that from Peggy Noonan's latest column? If Hillary Clinton loses, does she know how to lose? What will that be, if she loses? Will she just say, "I concede" and go on vacation at a friend's house on an island, and then go back to the Senate and wait? ... a woman obsessed with how tough she is just may be lethal.... Deep down journalists think she's a political Rasputin who will not be dispatched.... And that is a grim and over-the-top analogy, which I must withdraw. What I really mean is they see her as the Glenn Close character in "Fatal Attraction": "I won't be ignored, Dan!" ... Oh, sorry. That's just Hitlery. It's OK to call her a psycho killer. **** UPDATE: And as FeralLiberal reminds me in comments, it's perfectly OK for Jonah "Liberal Fascism" Goldberg to suggest that there'll be chaos in the streets if Obama loses: I think it's worth imagining a certain scenario. Imagine the Democrats do rally around Obama. Imagine the media invests as heavily in him as I think we all know they will if he's the nominee -- and then imagine he loses. I seriously think certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged. I can imagine the fear of this social unraveling actually aiding Obama enormously in 2008.... Obama has a rendezvous with destiny, or so we will be told. And if he's denied it, teeth shall be gnashed, clothes rent and prices paid. Well, "certain segments" do have more melanin, of course, so you can say anything you want about them, as long as you use codewords like "certain segments." posted by Steve M. | 8:28 AM | Thursday, February 07, 2008 REPUBLICANS REMEMBER WHO THE ENEMY IS I hope some right-wingers see that headline and think, "Damn straight -- we almost forgot we're at war with Islamofascists!" That's not what I mean at all. I mean that Republicans suddenly -- seemingly in the past seven hours -- remembered that the real enemy is us. National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru said as much in the first sentence of his post about the speech John McCain gave at CPAC today: He went after the Democrats -- which was wise, in my view. "All in all, a good speech," Ponnuru said. John Hawkins of Right Wing News said, "I am hearing McCain's speech as he's giving it and I am liking it." (He has a transcript at the link.) Mary Katherine Ham at TownHall notes that the crowd reaction included "Big cheers" for a pledge to "secure the borders first," "big applause" for Democrat-bashing on FISA, and "Big applause" for a promise to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Of a vow by McCain that he'll never sign a bill with earmarks, she says, "that kind of promise makes my heart sing." Even Hugh Hewitt, the king of Romney flacks, called it "superb." And just like that, with one speech (following up on Romney's Cheneyesque Democrat-bashing withdrawal speech), I think McCain is back in many wingnuts' good graces. And even Rush seems to be inching his way back into the fold -- read this transcript from today's show and you'll see he's trying to walk a fine line, still expressing disgruntlement about McCain, but mostly ascribing disgruntlement to his listeners and e-mailers -- feeling their pain, as it were ("I hear you") -- and being somewhat ambiguous about whether he's eventually going to get with the program. But he's not encouraging to a voter who says he'd consider voting for Obama over McCain: RUSH: You won't do that when you find out what Obama's policies are. CALLER: Well, you know what? I know that he's very liberal. I know that. RUSH: Just think of a nice Hillary Clinton, in terms of policy. CALLER: You're right. You're right. RUSH: Maybe even worse, if that's possible. In a snarky way he is getting with the program. Check out what's on on his homepage as I type this:  He's trying to be disgruntled and a good soldier: ...I'm dead serious about considering this.... I've heard people say things, pundits on our side, "Don't worry about McCain, Rush. Hillary is so hated and despised and loathed and so forth. That alone will unite our voters: the fear and loathing for Hillary Clinton." It appears that may be what our strategy is. Rather than get leadership, conservative leadership for our own party, it may well be that that's the thing -- and she's in danger of losing the nomination. Folks, here's this rookie who's been in the Senate for two years, and he's smokin' her on fundraising? He is doing everything that he can and is succeeding, and she's had to borrow money and so forth? If our electoral victory in November requires her being in the race, we gotta stop him; because there's no fear and loathing on Obama. You can't run against Obama fearing him or loathing him or dissing him. It isn't going to work. He doesn't have the personality that makes any of that fit. So we need to keep her in it so we can win it. I'll have more on this as I give future thought to this. It's schtick, but it's pro-Republican schtick. The fact that he's doing this suggests to me that he'll slowly make his way back into the fold. **** Steve Benen, I suspect, would say that's a good thing -- this morning, before all the sudden reversals at CPAC, Steve argued that we shouldn't be talking about a conservative crack-up: ...Highlighting the right-wing clowns who hate McCain may inadvertently help McCain's campaign. The goal, moving forward, isn't to point to the schism, but rather, to point to how much McCain has in common with those on the far right who are attacking him. ...I suspect for most of the country, there's widespread disdain for the Republican Party right now. When these folks hear about who's condemning McCain, their first thought is likely to be, "Well, maybe as Republicans go, he's not so bad." Indeed, if I were with the McCain campaign, I'd be tempted to encourage these attacks, because they only make the GOP candidate more appealing to a general-election audience. ...The goal going forward should be the polar opposite -- the differences between Limbaugh and McCain are minor. They're two conservative Republicans who fundamentally want to take the country in the same (i.e., wrong) direction.... Maybe doing that is going to be much easier now. posted by Steve M. | 6:56 PM | REPEAT AFTER ME: ONLY DEMOCRATS ENGAGE IN IDENTITY POLITICS. ONLY DEMOCRATS ENGAGE IN IDENTITY POLITICS. ONLY DEMOCRATS... (Bumped to the top because you can read about Romney's withdrawal anywhere.) Yes, the headline to this story has the word "Identity" in it, and it's in the "Politics" section of the New York Times Web site, but don't even think about putting the two words together, dammit, 'cause these are Republicans we're talking about, and they don't do that kind of thing! Huckabee Claims Identity as Candidate of the South Mike Huckabee fashioned a new campaign identity after his victories in five Southern primaries on Tuesday, proclaiming himself the candidate of the Republicans' true base, the South. ... That message could not be more explicitly regional, as enunciated by Mr. Huckabee to stunned and cheering supporters in a suburban Little Rock assembly hall on Tuesday night. Indeed, Mr. Huckabee suggested he was winning in the region precisely because of his conservative orthodoxy.... There were the Bible-coded references to his opponents.... There were nods to gun owners and to anti-abortion partisans.... And there was another bit in Huckabee's Super Tuesday speech that impressed John Podhoretz even as its actual meaning escaped him (Pod being, of course, a Northeasterner, and not really up on these things): Mike Huckabee has just riffed on songs representing all the states in which he is still competitive tonight. It was a pure improv, and very impressive, even if corny. Actually, he was riffing on the college teams of the states in which he was competitive, as well as the fight songs, plus the outcome of one big college football game. Here's the transcript, to which I've added links for Podhoretz's reference: Now, it's tough for this old razorback to say things like roll, tide roll, but I'm doing it tonight. And it's tough for this old razorback to look over there to the state just to the east of us and anticipate being able to say that we're two volunteers. I think before the night is over, I'll even be singing "Rocky Top." This old razorback may even catch some bulldog fever before the night is over. And we're going to forget all about the Cotton Bowl and even be grateful for our friends to the north before tonight night is over, I'm fully believing. I shouldn't rag on Podhoretz. The point of this was to say to Mitt Romney, "Hey, Mitt, I live down here. I can talk about college football all day. I bet you couldn't even read something like this off a Teleprompter." (And I don't want to forget Huck's talk about eating squirrel, his Confederate flag pander, and his criticism of Romney's approach to fried chicken.) Huckabee really is appealing to Southern evangelicals, not evangelicals as a whole. Here was an interesting detail from yesterday's Times: ... according to exit polls provided by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, evangelical voters [in California] split among Mr. McCain, Mitt Romney and, to a lesser degree, Mike Huckabee. "To a lesser degree." So God matters, but what really seems to matter is whether you set aside your chicken skin. Also see Mark Steyn: There was an explicit anti-Romney vote in the South. A mere month ago, in the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire, I received a ton of e-mails from southern readers saying these pansy northern states weren't the "real" conservative heartland, and things would look different once the contest moved to the South. Well, the heartland spoke last night and about the only message it sent was that, no matter what the talk radio guys say, they're not voting for a Mormon; no way, no how. But, see, we're not supposed to talk about this the way we talk about Clinton vs. Obama. We're not allowed to say that these Southerners see themselves as members of an identity group first and as Americans second, and that that's why they won't help Mitt Romney give John McCain a run for his money. Heaven forfend -- only Democrats and liberals do that kind of thing. Only Democrats and liberals see themselves as hyphenated Americans. We're told that Democrats play the "race card" and the "gender card," but I've never even encountered the phrase "Southern card" -- and that's exactly what Huckabee is playing. (Steyn link via the Mahablog.) posted by Steve M. | 4:10 PM | ROMNEY: I DROPPED OUT BECAUSE IF I DIDN'T WE'D ALL DIE That's an accurate paraphrase of the key passage of his withdrawal speech, which was given today at the Conservative Political Action Committee confab: Even though we face an uphill fight, I know that many in this room are fully behind my campaign." You are with me all the way to the convention. Fight on, just like Ronald Reagan did in 1976. But there is an important difference from 1976: today… we are a nation at war. And Barack and Hillary have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror. They would retreat and declare defeat. And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that make Afghanistan under the Taliban look like child’s play. About this, I have no doubt. I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. Oh, Mitt! You saved our lives! You're our hero! And in case you think I'm misreading this, he goes on to say: If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country. I will continue to stand for conservative principles; I will fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of those things is that we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism!! Wow -- the ego has (crash)-landed. And yes, the double exclamation points are straight from the transcript. posted by Steve M. | 2:19 PM | ROMNEY TO SUSPEND CAMPAIGN So many wasted trees...  As Lenny Bruce said back in '63, "Poor Vaughn Meader!" (But at least Meader, unlike Hewitt, wasn't a shameless sycophant.) posted by Steve M. | 1:07 PM | KNOWLEDGE ISN'T POWER -- KNOWLEDGE IS A PLOT TO DESTROY OUR CULTURE! In Texas, one family stands up for the right not to know jack about your neighbors: Mandatory Spanish classes anger Grapevine family While the rest of her fifth-grade class was taking Spanish classes mandated by the Grapevine-Colleyville school district curriculum, Ashleigh Allison sat in the Timberline Elementary School library writing a report about France. Ashleigh and her mother, Leigh Allison, say teaching elementary school Spanish only makes life easier for Hispanic immigrants in the community who do not learn or speak English. And Ashleigh shouldn't be forced to conform, they say. "She wants to be that one voice that forces them to learn English," Allison said. "We're not going to turn America into a bilingual country to accommodate you." Er, this isn't a plot to destroy our English-speaking heritage -- it's just standard-issue foreign-language instruction as most of have experienced it in American schools for generations. And Spanish is this kid's only choice for the same reason that French and German were my only choices when I was in school -- because offering just the limited menu is easy: ... Texas' curriculum requires a school district to offer, "to the extent possible, languages other than English" for elementary- and middle school-age children. Most districts offer some level of language instruction, said Monica Martinez, curriculum director with the Texas Education Agency. And for most, Spanish is the language of choice. It's easier to learn and speak than many other languages, and school districts can hire more experienced Spanish teachers than teachers of other languages. "But it could be French. It could be American Sign Language," Martinez said. "It's left to local district discretion to determine what they offer." As for whether this course is helping Americans inappropriately accommodate people who refuse to speak English, um, I don't think so: Grapevine-Colleyville elementary students must take Spanish two days a week in nine-week rotations with art classes. Two days a week for half the school year? That's going to enable the reconquista? Oh, please. Like a lot of Americans, I took years of high-school French, in full-year, full-week courses, and a few years ago I couldn't even pull off asking for directions in Montreal. Most language instruction in American schools is pathetically inadequate -- languages are treated as something you learn because you're simply supposed to be in school learning stuff, much of which you'll never use in real life; a foreign language is thus treated as more or less like trigonometry. But even woefully inadequate language instruction is too much for this family. Oh well -- at least Ashleigh's mom doesn't mind Ashleigh learning about France. I guess the "freedom fries" era really is over. (Via BuzzFlash.net.) posted by Steve M. | 8:24 AM | Wednesday, February 06, 2008 WHAT WE KNOW THAT JUST AIN'T SO John Cole at Balloon Juice: You will hear the Clinton camp talking repeatedly about winning the big prize- California. Winning California is irrelevant, as a Democrat is going to win Cali in the general regardless who it is. Wouldn't it be pretty to think so: Clinton now clings to a bare 45 to 43 percent lead over McCain in a projected California presidential vote, down dramatically from her 17 percentage point margin just two weeks ago. Obama now holds a stronger 47 to 40 percent margin over the Arizona senator, but that's only half the 14 percentage point advantage he had in mid-January. Have I made it clear to you yet that I'm worried about November? (Cole link via Instaputz.) posted by Steve M. | 7:45 PM | WISHING WILL MAKE IT SO! I don't know what's wrong with these people: Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Despite his pro-life voting record on abortion and his calls for Roe v. Wade to be reversed, a pro-abortion Republican group has endorsed John McCain. The Republicans for Choice Political Action Committee contends McCain is the best of the rest of the Republicans seeking the presidential nomination. Ann Stone, the founder and chair of the organization told the Cybercast News Service that her group knows McCain is pro-life, but she says's has not as intense as his top rivals Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. "(McCain) is (pro-life), but it's not at the top of his agenda, not like Huckabee or the born-again Romney," Stone said. "He's shown his willingness to reach across the party, and we look forward to those discussions." ...As recently as last month's March for Life, McCain argued Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.... Last February, McCain said he favors overturning Roe v. Wade. “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” McCain told 800 GOP voters during a campaign stop in South Carolina.... Look, the guy has a zero rating for the century from NARAL. How much more anti-abortion can he get? Yet another group that seems to be assessing McCain by feel, i.e., by the warm, fuzzy feelings of liberalism he (bafflingly) seems to inspire.... posted by Steve M. | 5:14 PM | A POX ON YOUR HOUSE (AND, ER, YEAH, ON YOURS TOO, I GUESS) Well, that's balanced: The lead editorial in today's New York Times decries "stark intramural divisions that pose risks for both Democrats and Republicans" -- and then spends four paragraphs criticizing the divisions among the Democrats, while devoting only one paragraph to fighting within the GOP. This despite the fact that, right now, the internal battles among Republicans are much, much nastier. Meanwhile, over on the op-ed page, Maureen Dowd publishes yet another Hillary Clinton hit job (with swipes at "Obambi") -- her nineteenth attack on the Democratic candidates since the last time she wrote a negative word about a Republican with a chance at winning the nomination, which was nearly two months ago. (She did mock Giuliani last week, but it was clear by then that his campaign was effectively over.) Dowd's subject? The tension between the Clinton and Obama campaigns -- naturally. There's your liberal media: The GOP is virtually invisible to these people -- which, right now, means that the bloodbath within the Republican Party is invisible. That's wonderful news for McCain. ***** The Times editorial issues a dire warning: Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will face the gargantuan task of winning over the other's voters. Gargantuan? Really? Not according to Super Tuesday analysis at CNN: Though close, the exit polls suggested that the Democratic base is not bitterly divided over its choice. Nearly two-thirds -- 72 percent -- of Democratic voters said they'd be satisfied with Clinton as the nominee, and 71 percent said they'd be happy with Obama. Yet even CNN is acting as if the rancor in the GOP doesn't exist. Oh, sure, it used its GOP exit polls to determine how many McCain voters call themselves conservatives (only 49%; the numbers for Romney and Huckabee are much higher) -- but CNN's polling unit doesn't seem the least bit interested in whether a McCain win will depress GOP turnout (or even cause defections) in the fall, while it seems obsessed with that question as regards the Democrats. How do I know this? Well, go to the CNN link above, go down to the list of states, and look at the results of the party exit polls. Republican voters were asked no questions whatsoever that directly measure intraparty bitterness. Meanwhile, Democrats were asked the following: Satisfied if Clinton Wins Nomination? Would You Be Satisfied... Only if Clinton Wins / Only if Obama Wins / If Either Wins / Dissat. With Both Satisfied if Obama Wins Nomination? Which Candidate Attacked Unfairly? Did Clinton Attack Unfairly? Did Obama Attack Unfairly? Message: Democrats are having a catfight. Republicans aren't. And that's simply not the truth -- right now, it's almost the opposite of the truth. posted by Steve M. | 11:25 AM | McCAIN'S AUXILIARY CAMPAIGN STAFF Why even bother to raise funds when a writer for the Arts section of The Washington Post will write your campaign ads for free? Attaboy! The Fetching Doggedness Of John McCain By Libby Copeland Washington Post Staff Writer ...The king of doggedness, who knows something about patience, and something about being a pain, and whose charm and gall derive from that combination, seems to be enjoying himself. He's used to waiting, sometimes for years, to get out of prison camp, to fix immigration and campaign finance and Iraq, to get into the White House. ...At rallies, he ... introduces his spry 95-year-old mother, telling the story of how she went to France but they told her she was too old to rent a car. "So she bought a car and drove around France!" McCain says. "Atta girl, Mother!" Atta girl (and boy) to everyone everywhere who is underestimated.... Even after the polls close on Super Tuesday, and McCain has blown through the Northeast and piled up the most delegates, he is not yet a sure thing, and maybe he's used to dealing with that. The fighting and sticking to it and waiting, rather than the prize.... "Yeah, I'm sorry it's not 40 years earlier," says an attorney named Neil Rossman, 62, who's ... at the Boston rally. "He looks tired. But I'll take him as tired."... Good grief. The Democratic nominee isn't going to run against an aged reactionary who's 180 degrees wrong on the war and the tax cuts and health care -- the Democratic nominee is going to be running against this. Between now and November, the coverage of McCain, except in more ideological corners of the right and left, is all going to be like this. Maybe -- maybe the current conservative crack-up will neutralize this kind of thing. It's much more likely, though, that the wingnut ideologues will fume and fuss and everyone else will get on board the You-Know-What Express. And if we learned nothing from the '06 Senate race in Conecticut, didn't we learn that if centrist voters think you're a tough but charming Capraesque maverick with a twinkle in your eye, you don't need your party's base? posted by Steve M. | 8:32 AM | REPUBLICANS LYING TO POLLSTERS? Last night, John Podhoretz was in despair: ...the exit polls are disastrous. They had McCain in a tie in Arizona. He's won the state by 20 points. It was the exit polls that said McCain was in trouble in Arizona because of his stand on immigration. This suggests the polltakers were once again taken in by partisans who eagerly sought them out to skew the exits their way. Or that the poll takers were themselves in on it. Or maybe Rush et al. made Republican voters reluctant to tell pollsters that they weren't going to do the conservatively correct thing and vote for Romney? Let's see -- when voters lie to pollsters and won't give a promised vote to a black candidate, it's called the Bradley Effect. What's it called when voters lie about their willingness to vote for an obscenely rich white guy? The J. Bradley Huffingworth III Effect? **** (Actually, the exit polls had McCain up by 5 in Arizona, and he won by 14.) posted by Steve M. | 7:01 AM | Tuesday, February 05, 2008 WELCOME TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT, RUSH (AND ANN AND GLENN) What I'm about to say is glaringly obvious, but I want to say it anyway: The recent pronouncements of the right-wing media's McCain Derangement Syndrome brigade -- Limbaugh, Coulter, now Glenn Beck -- that they'll vote for Clinton or Obama if the GOP nominee is McCain are proof, if we needed any, that the last six years have been a big lie. These right-wingers never gave a rat's ass about the Iraq War except as a stick they could use to beat Democrats and liberals; given the opportunity to rally around the most unswerving Iraq War hawk in the race, they're passing it up, proclaiming there's no reason not to vote for Democratic candidates who've promised to withdraw and throwing their support behind a guy who polls say would lose badly to those Democrats. So much for the cause of our generation. Thanks for the bashing and the accusations of treason, folks -- stupid me, I half thought you actually meant it. posted by Steve M. | 8:55 PM | TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY Now that the muckamucks of talk radio actually pose the biggest threat to the Beltway Establishment's desire to keep Republicans in power in D.C. forever, expect the elite media to suddenly discover, and announce to the world, that talk radio exists and is frequently not very nice. For approximately two decades, right-wing radio talkers have been able to exercise their influence with almost no scrutiny from the MSM. But that's likely to change soon. As if out of nowhere, appalling radio moments that we on the left have been talking about for years are going to show up in TV news stories and newsmagazine cover articles and op-eds by A-list pundits; the disgust at the talkers' behavior is going to be so great that you'll think the journalists and pundits must be talking about angry lefties on the Internet. Of course, none of this will happen if the talkers get with the McCain program and go back to slandering and Swift-boating their usual targets: Democrats, liberals, the mainstream media itself. If the talkers behave and help drive McCain to a solid lead, no matter how reprehensible their tactics, they'll do so completely under the mainstream-press radar. posted by Steve M. | 4:48 PM | WHAT'S LIMBAUGH'S GAME? I have some theories, as Rush's pronouncements get (for him) even more bizarre: Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is so exasperated about Senator McCain's surge in the Republican presidential contest that he is coming to the defense of Senators Clinton and Obama. On Mr. Limbaugh's program today, he said people should not be rushing to back Mr. McCain over issues of national security. The talk host said America's direction in Iraq would not be substantially different even if Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama were elected. "They are not going to surrender the country to Islamic radicalism or the war in Iraq," Mr. Limbaugh said after mentioning the two Democratic senators by name. "They are not going to do that to themselves, despite what their base says." "The idea that we've only got one person in this whole roster of candidates, either party, who is willing to take on the war on terror is frankly, absurd," Mr. Limbaugh said.... The talk host continued to wail on Mr. McCain, repeatedly accusing him of lying and disloyalty. "John McCain has stabbed his own party in the back I can't tell you how many times," Mr. Limbaugh said.... Obviously, the guy wants someone he thinks is more ideologically compatible -- but surely he can see that his almost certain failure to get Romney nominated makes him look a lot weaker, a lot less powerful within the GOP, than he seemed even weeks ago. I think he doesn't care, and I'm starting to think he'd rather try to sink McCain's presidential bid, even in the general election, even at the cost of an Obama or (gasp) Clinton presidency, than help McCain win in November. Limbaugh's strategy for continuing to seem powerful and relevant is to say that McCain may become the leader of the Republican Party, but he, Limbaugh, will be the leader of the conservative movement (or, rather, he and Coulter and the other McCain haters will become co-leaders). If McCain's the king of the hill, Limbaugh's saying it's the wrong hill -- the hill he's standing on is the right hill. Another thought: If Limbaugh and the other McCain haters think McCain is such a big liberal, they'd probably rather have the most powerful Republican elected officials be Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, et al. than President McCain. If the president is a Democrat, even with likely Democratic control of both houses of Congress, the mainstream press will treat congressional Republicans, and any Democrats who ally with Republicans, as the rightful and proper leaders of Congress (see the first two years of Clinton's term; also see the Pelosi-Reid era). But if the president is McCain, he'll get the best press, and be treated as our natural leader. The haters may be shrewd enough to realize that, and surely they'd prefer the former. **** Oh, and there's another theory, which contradicts what I've just said: that Limbaugh et al. are trying to depress Democratic turnout by speaking approvingly of Clinton and Obama. That would mean they don't want to be in the wilderness after all. (But if that's the case, why slam the inevitable Republican nominee?) posted by Steve M. | 12:34 PM | ... AND FEATURING KELLY HU AS GOEBBELS Sorry, I just can't let this go. Yesterday I gave an American Spectator blogger named John Tabin a hard time for asserting that the will.i.am Obama "Yes We Can" remix video seemed fascist. Roy Edroso of Alicublog also rang in. Tabin subsequently responded to Roy and me: ...No, I don't mean that I smell liberal fascism in "everything inspiring" or "any show of enthusiasm by fifty or more liberals for anything or anyone whatsoever." I mean that a bunch of people beatifying a politician by reciting, in unison, a speech of his that climaxes with the words We are one people, we are one nation, and together we will begin the next great chapther in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can is a message devoid of any content beyond a call to unity of the collective as an end unto itself, complete with a very deliberate aesthetic embodiment of that message. If that doesn't strike you as even a little bit fascistic, I guess I can't help you.... "The collective"?? Does this kid have any cultural reference points that don't come from Ayn Rand novels? Beyond the fact that we express hero-worship of politicians all the time in this country without veering into fascism, and the fact that calls to unity in campaign season are utterly within the American democratic grain, and the fact that, well, the remix is just a cover version, and these performers are no more turning Obama into their fascist overlord than, say, Kanye West is turning Daft Punk into his by recording "Stronger," it should be obvious to Tabin that "yes we can" (or "yes I can") is a message of endurance and self-confidence in the face of adversity that has African-American roots and is especially tied to the civil rights era. Well, Tabin's a lot younger than I am. Even in my largely segregated '60s/'70s childhood, this phrase penetrated via pop culture: Sammy Davis Jr., who worked not only with Sinatra but with Dr. King, called his autobiography Yes I Can; the phrase showed in the lyrics of Earth, Wind & Fire's "Shining Star"; and Allen Toussaint, the legendary New Orleans songwriter, wrote a song for fellow New Orleanian Lee Dorsey called "Yes We Can Can" ("I know we can make it, I know that we can/I know darn well we can work it out/Yes we can, I know we can can, yes we can can..."), which Dorsey recorded in 1970 and the Pointer Sisters put on the charts a few years later. At that time, even to a white kid, even in upbeat pop songs, it was clear that the meaning of the phrase "yes we can" was "yes, we can do things we're not supposed to be capable of" -- or "yes, we can overcome." At a bad moment in our history, I'd say Obama's trying to give this phrase to the whole country, all accrued meanings attached, as a gift of sorts. If Tabin finds that fascist, well, I guess I can't help him. **** BONUS FASCISM: An MP3 of Lee Dorsey's "Yes We Can Can" is here; YouTube has the Pointer Sisters, before they went synth-pop, singing it live in 1974. **** AND: Roy Edroso also responds to the response, reminding us that Reagan wasn't above inspiring a bit of call-and-response himself. (Roy also does a better job than I've done of matching up the Obama kids to their alleged Nazi counterparts; me, I'm just titling my posts by ear, strictly on what sounds most absurd, inspired by Woody Allen's reference to "chicken Himmler.") Best line from Roy: In the Jonah Goldberg era, allusions to the Third Reich are the new "no fair." Indeed. posted by Steve M. | 8:45 AM | Monday, February 04, 2008 ALAS, WE'RE GETTING BACK TO NORMAL Remember all those polls last year that showed Generic Democrat with a double-digit lead over Generic Republican for president (while real Democrats didn't do quite as well)? Well, according to a new NPR poll, even Generic Democrat isn't kicking butt anymore. From the audio report that aired this morning: ...STAN GREENBERG, POLLSTER: There's now a crystallization on the presidential level around real candidates, and there that's moved the generic ballot -- whether you'd vote for an unnamed candidate -- has made that closer. MARA LIASSON, NPR: The generic ballot asks voters whether they'd vote for an unnamed Democratic or Republican candidate if the election were held today. In our past polls, Democrats have had a double-digit advantage here. But now that's gone. Democrats are only ahead by five points. In head-to-head races with real names, McCain beats Clinton by 3 and Obama by 1. (Sigh.) Obama ties McCain among independents. Clinton loses independents badly to McCain -- 58%-32%. But she does better among Democrats than Obama does. (Poll results here, poll highlights here; both are PDFs.) The bottom line is that this is yet another poll that shows it's McCain's race to lose. Once again, the American electorate seems prepared to turn to Daddy for president. Please, people, don't do this to me again. posted by Steve M. | 10:16 PM | WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE... Erica Jong makes a few reasonable points in her pro-Hillary Washington Post op-ed today, but I'm not sure what's up with this: ...when Bill rewarded [Hillary] by letting some tootsie do whatever it was they did in the Oval Office, she got really mad. But she was wise enough to know what it did and did not mean. She did what smart European and Asian women have done through the ages: She kept her marriage but changed her focus to her own ambitions. Just Europeans and Asians? Hello? Eleanor Roosevelt? Er, why focus on ethnicity in this context at all? And since Jong brought it up, where do African and Latin-American women fit in all this? I ask because there's a decidedly unpleasant undercurrent of ethnic stereotyping in Jong's piece. Elsewhere Jong says of Mrs. Clinton, "If she could win over the rednecks in upstate New York, she can win over any American." "Rednecks"? This isn't a slur in Jong's world? And while the jumping-off point for the piece is William Kristol's assertion that "the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women," is it necessary for Jong to play the race card at the end of this paragraph? Nothing she did was ever enough to stop her detractors. Supporting a politician husband by being a successful lawyer, raising a terrific daughter, saving her marriage when the love of her life publicly humiliated her -- these are things that would be considered enormously admirable in most politicians and public figures. But because she's a white woman, she's been pilloried for them. Does Jong really think the press would have been kinder if the Clintons had been non-white? (I'll say right here that I think the press would have been kinder if they'd been Republican.) And I think this is racially patronizing across party lines: [Obama] was lucky enough not to be in the Senate when the Iraq war resolution was floated after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell lied about WMDs. That was the true tragedy of race: a black man lying for a corrupt white administration that was using him as a token, much as they use Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now. Obama is also a token -- of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension. In the second paragraph, Jong plays games with the word "token," as a roundabout way of saying that Obama's just a helpless victim. Then she insists that blacks would second her denial that he's capable of agency. In the first paragraph, she's just flat wrong about Powell and Rice, in an equally condescending way -- it's quite obvious that Bush respects Rice's mind, and that he respected (and feared) Powell's status and credibility within the Washington establishment; to use LBJ's phrase, he wanted Powell inside the tent pissing out rather than outside pissing in. Rice is no token -- she's clearly a willing, active participant in this administration's misadventures -- and Powell's problem was not that he was a token, it's that he might have been able to stop (or at least slow) the runaway Iraq train and didn't have the guts or a sufficient level of skepticism to do so. But to Jong it's still not time to take any of these people seriously. Maybe I'm being unduly harsh to Jong because last week she had an idiotic piece at the Huffington Post arguing that Jewish men are attracted to non-Jewish women because they resent their circumcisions. If you think I'm reading Jong and seeing an obsession with ethnicity where this is none, go read that. Sample passage: And Jewish women bear the brunt ever after. Either [Jewish men] marry you and run around with Diana Ross or Beyonce or Naomi Campbell -- or they marry Sandra Oh or Lucy Liu or Yoko Ono and she converts. Oy. (And I say that as a circumcised Italian-American -- hey, Erica, would it kill you to learn the simple fact that large numbers of American gentiles, at least in my generation, were circumcised? And not by a mohel? Oh, and was John Lennon Jewish?) ***** The op-ed that accompanies Jong's in today's Post isn't much better. It's a pro-Obama piece by Michael Chabon, and it's basically The Political Secret. You know The Secret, right? The hugely successful self-help book that says (in the words of Publishers Weekly) "that one's positive thoughts are powerful magnets that attract wealth, health, happiness... [and] that fleeting negative thoughts are powerful enough to create terminal illness, poverty and even widespread disasters"? Well, that's basically what Chabon says about politics: The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy. ...But the most pitiable fear of all is the fear of disappointment, of having our hearts broken and our hopes dashed by this radiant, humane politician... ... in the name of preserving hope do we disdain it. That is how a phobocracy maintains its grip on power. ...To support Obama, we must permit ourselves to feel hope... That kind of belief is a revolutionary act. It holds the power, in time, to overturn and repair all the damage that our fear has driven us to inflict on ourselves and the world. This is precisely the argument made by the charlatans responsible for The Secret: ... Whatever is going on in your mind is what you are attracting ... People think about what they don't want and attract more of the same ...Those who speak most of illness have illness, those who speak most of prosperity have it.... ...Thoughts that bring about good feelings mean you are on the right track. Thoughts that bring about bad feelings means you are not on the right track. ...Decide what you want ... believe you can have it, believe you deserve it, believe it's possible for you... Sorry -- I need a non-New Age reason to vote for Obama. Is he more reliably opposed to imperialist adventurism than Hillary Clinton? Is the currently fractured Republican Party less likely to come together in opposition to him? Will he attract new voters and swing voters? Balanced against all those would be a more timid health-care plan, a relative lack of experience in back-alley fights with Republicans, and, yes, lack of experience. I'm sorry, Michael -- that's how I decide how to vote. I don't do it on the basis of power-of-positive-thinking claptrap. **** (Jong circumcision piece via dnA.) posted by Steve M. | 2:55 PM | STARRING SCARLETT JOHANSSON AS HIMMLER Blogging for The American Spectator, John Tabin reacts to will.i.am's Barack Obama's remix video by -- no joke -- playing the Nazi card: Obama's Promise: A Real Triumph of the Will This is all over the place. Liberal bloggers, to a man, find it inspiring and catchy. Am I the only one that finds it, um, terrifyingly creepy? ... Jonah Goldberg's book becomes more relevant by the minute.... Chances are you've already seen it, but if not, here's what he's talking about. This is his idea of "liberal fascism"? Scarlett Johansson and Amber Valletta and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are his Hitler Youth? It's fascist to invoke the fight against slavery and the labor movement? (No, wait, he's a right-winger, so that makes perfect sense -- property rights and all that): Now I understand the right's definition of "liberal fascism": It's any show of enthusiasm by fifty or more liberals for anything or anyone whatsoever. Oh, and Tabin goes on to recommend, as "a video palate-cleanser," Living Colour's "Cult of Personality." Yes, thank God there are no personality cults on the right, right? posted by Steve M. | 10:28 AM | Sunday, February 03, 2008 OBAMA SURGING? OR "HILLARY EFFECT" IN EFFECT? Or maybe both? I'm seeing poll after poll after poll showing huge gains for Barack Obama -- and, yes, I believe he's surging. But on the Upper West Side of Manhattan this weekend I've been watching the button-buyers and button-wearers, and if what I'm seeing is a measure of the likely outcome on Tuesday, Obama's not only going to beat Clinton here, he's going to beat her by about an 80%-20% margin. That really doesn't seem plausible. So I can't help wondering if I'm seeing the political-button version of what Cenk Uygur, just after New Hampshire, called "the Hillary Effect": ...Today, a caller on our show made a great point as to why Hillary might have won in New Hampshire despite the fact that polls showed her losing by 10 points -- the Hillary Effect. She said a lot of people don't want to say they are supporting Hillary Clinton because it is an unpopular thing to say and causes harsh reactions. So, they keep quiet about their support but vote for her anyway. Then, we received this e-mail from Dawn, another closeted Hillary supporter: "I have been supporting Hillary, and having to apologize for it, for a year. I can easily see myself being vague about it when asked by a pollster, but in the privacy of my voting booth I will vote for her enthusiastically."... Actually, Uygur's caller was an Edwards supporter. But she was right -- supporting Hillary is decidedly uncool. Obama's highly unlikely to win the Upper West Side 80%-20%, and I think it's just possible that there'll be a somewhat stronger Clinton finish than the polls are projecting now. But I haven't been the greatest prognosticator this election season, so we'll see. **** UPDATE: Aimai thinks the Obama surge is as big as it looks -- and has mixed feelings about that. posted by Steve M. | 9:30 PM | PRINCESS RUDY I don't buy the theory advanced (half-seriously) by Will Bunch at Attytood -- that Rudy Giuliani might have run for president just to collect and spend lots of money -- but I do appreciate the fact that Bunch reminds us of the luxury level of some of that spending: Giuliani's spending was elevated at least in part because he traveled in style. He often stayed in luxury hotels, spending $2,010 at the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia, $4,034 at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., and $5,370 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. He also spent more than $565,000 reimbursing various corporate supporters for private jet travel, and another $800,000 on charter jet travel. Which makes me even more puzzled than I was a couple of days ago about the fact that the New York Daily News ran a story called "How Judi Killed Off Rudy Giuliani," which mentions Mrs. G's habit of reserving a separate airple seat for her Louis Vuitton handbag. Clearly, if there was a problem here, it wasn't that Giuliani's wife was overly fond of being pampered -- it's that they both were. If she's a spoiled princess, he's a spoiled prince -- and yet even though Rudy is widely mocked for cross-dressing, the News couldn't bring itself to mention his fondness for the finer things, presumably because that's a girl thing. What's up with that? ***** ALSO: Shorter Michael Smerconish in The Philadelphia Inquirer: If writing negative stories about Giuliani had simply been forbidden, the way it should have been, he would have won the nomination. ***** (Attytood link via BuzzFlash.) posted by Steve M. | 11:39 AM | Saturday, February 02, 2008 SELECTIVE AMNESIA: IT'S HOW RIGHT-WINGERS LIVE WITH THEMSELVES John Hinderaker last night at Power Line: ... Lots of conservatives are freaking out, in the vernacular, over the prospect of the Republican Party nominating a moderate like John McCain.... There are a number of things going on here, of course, but one of the most important is the GOP's history of nominating the party's heir apparent. Republicans, much more than Democrats, seem to think that whoever is "next in line" more or less deserves the nomination. As the number two contender in 2000, McCain was the heir apparent; hence his early front-runner status.... This Republican tendency can be frustrating, but it does spare us from embarrassments like Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis.... And when the heir-apparent doesn't get the GOP nomination? Any potential for embarrassment there, John?     Nope -- not a word from Hindrocket about this guy. posted by Steve M. | 5:47 PM | LIVE BY THE BEER, DIE BY THE BEER Quin Hillyer of The American Spectator's blog thinks he knows how to do CPR on Romney's campaign: Among the several things Romney could do to change the narrative of this campaign--a narrative he desperately needs to change--one of the easiest to do would be to try to generate a sense of momentum, a sense that people are flocking TO him now rather than throwing in the towel. And the way to do that is with a one-minute ad that makes use of endorsements and support-announcements that have come in the past few days. Just quick video shots of certain people: "I'm Rush Limbaugh, and I'm voting for Mitt Romney." "I'm Sean Hannity, and I'm for Mitt Romney." "I'm Laura Ingraham, and I'm for Mitt Romney." Mark Levin. Michael Reagan. Rick Santorum. Jim Talent. Rich Lowry. Michelle Malkin.... and then an UNKNOWN mother getting a baby out of a car seat: "I'm Jane Johnson, and I'm for Mitt." A father at a child's soccer game: "I'm John Jones, and I'm for Mitt." That sort of thing. All with some sort of very subtle but upbeat music in the background.... It's that last part that just seems so wrong. Romney ... and ordinary people? That's like oil and water, no? Here's Romney's big problem: He's tried to replicate the reality of the last two Republican presidencies -- a hereditary member of the ruling class taking on the job that is his due -- rather than the myth. The myth, of course, is that the George Bushes, despite their elite status, were jes' folks, the son a Texas rancher who drops his g's and the father a humble suburban dad as depicted in the '88 convention speech Peggy Noonan wrote for him. It's not that people who voted for the Bushes thought they were getting middle-class guys who sometimes had trouble paying the bills. It's that they persuaded themselves that the Bushes (as the standard poll question puts it) "care a lot about people like us" because, deep down, they are like us. Voters felt that (all together now, class) they'd like to have a beer with the Bushes (even if, in W's case, it would have to be an alcohol-free one). In our presidential campaigns, which go on forever and are personality driven, every candidate is going to get into a jam now and then and feel the need to say to voters, "I'm in a tough spot. I need your help." Can you even imagine Mitt Romney doing that and connecting? His persona is: "I've been successful at everything I've done, I have a great family, I'm handsome, and I'm richer than God." No phony subtext of ordinariness! No vulnerability whatsoever! Hard to play on voters' sympathies that way. So he's toast. And the next plutocrat who seeks the Republican nomination will presumably know better than to be quite so blatant about his position in the pecking order. ***** How bad is it for Romney, by the way? As another AmSpec blogger notes, it's this bad: We're starting to see polling data that shows McCain's lead increasing if Huckabee drops out of the race. Yup -- Huck is said to be staying in the race just to siphon votes away from Romney on McCain's account, but look what would happen if he were to drop out, according to a new Fox News poll (PDF): 6. If the 2008 Republican presidential primary were held today, for whom would you vote if the candidates were: John McCain 48% Mitt Romney 20 Mike Huckabee 19 Ron Paul 5 (Other) - (Don’t know) 5 (Would not vote in GOP primary) 2 ...7. If John McCain and Mitt Romney were the only choices in the Republican primary, how would you vote? McCain 62% Romney 29 (Don’t know) 6 (Would not vote) 3 In other words, if Huck drops out, McCain gains 14 points and Romney only 9. (Or maybe McCain is getting all those Ron Paul fans -- preposterously, McCain does beat Paul among anti-war primary voters already....) posted by Steve M. | 2:03 PM | Friday, February 01, 2008 LIEBERMAN DEBUNKS AN OBAMA RUMOR ... SORT OF When Barack Obama first went to the Senate, Joe Lieberman was his mentor. And now Lieberman is campaigning for the guy who'll be Obama's opponent if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. So I guess it's understandable that Azi Paybarah of The New York Observer would ask Lieberman about the big Obama rumor that won't go away. Lieberman, of course, should have done the honorable thing and responded with an unambiguous denial of the rumor -- problem is, he didn't (emphasis mine): Joe Lieberman, who made history as the first Jewish candidate on a major presidential ticket in 2000, said he once was confronted the storyline about Barack Obama being Muslim and not a strong supporter of Israel. "I've heard about it," Lieberman told me just now in a telephone interview. "The one time that I confronted it, I was campaigning in Florida for Senator McCain. I spoke to a large group and a man stood up and asked me about it, or he referenced it. And I said, of course, that I know Senator Obama pretty well. Obviously one's religion is a matter of choice. Everything I knew said he was Christian. So, I don't know how widespread it is but that's the one time I confronted it. And of course the most important thing is that Senator Obama said it's just not true." Lieberman added, "I don't have to say it again but I will. We're not in a war against Muslims, we're in a war against extremists. A lot of them happen to be Muslim." ... Er, Joe, the correct answer is "No, he's not -- I know him well, and he's a Christian." Why not just say that? Why insinuate that there's the slightest doubt? Oh, and after leaving that hint of uncertainty in the air, why tag on the "A lot of [extremists] happen to be Muslim" bit? Never mind. We know your character, Joe, so we know why. posted by Steve M. | 7:18 PM | DAILY NEWS ON RUDY'S LOSS: BLAME THE BROAD It pains me to be nice to either of the Giulianis, but really, this New York Daily News article is misogynist nonsense: How Judi killed off Rudy Giuliani ... part of Rudy Giuliani's presidential flameout can be traced back to his Judi -- the woman he fell for in a cigar bar in 1999 while he was the married mayor with a wife and two young children at home. "She was a major part of the reason for Giuliani's collapse," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "Rudy wanted to head up the 'family values' party, and Judi didn't fit that label. Even worse, Giuliani was estranged from his children. Their refusal to campaign for him spoke volumes to voters." Among the low notes that brought national embarrassment to the one-time GOP frontrunner: her use of taxpayer-funded NYPD detectives as personal valets and chauffeurs while she was the mayor's mistress; revelations of a secret past marriage; and interrupting Giuliani's speech to the National Rifle Association with a cutesy cell phone call to say hi.... Stop right there. So it's her fault he took her call during the speech? It's not his fault that he was too damn stupid to keep his phone turned off? More: Giuliani also had to retract a comment during a Barbara Walters interview that, if elected, he'd allow his wife -- a graduate of a two-year nursing program with no college degree -- to sit in on cabinet meetings. And it's her fault that, as he prepared to face voters in a party that despises the Clintons, he stupidly proclaimed that his presidency would mimic an aspect of the Clinton presidency those voters despise? Press accounts were not flattering either, describing the 53-year-old Hazleton, Pa., native as a social climber who liked to spend Giuliani's post-9/11 cash. In a Vanity Fair profile last fall, a Giuliani aide remarked that an "entire airplane seat was needed for Judith's 'Baby Louis' -- a reference to her expensive Louis Vuitton handbag -- which sits in solitary splendor on her travels." Oh, right. I'm sure that made a huge difference -- because so many Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire and Michigan and South Carolina read Vanity Fair and the New York tabloids. Sorry, I don't buy this. I'm not saying she was an asset to his campaign -- a few GOP voters in Florida surely ran across that Louis Vuitton story. But any concessions he made to her during the campaign or prior to it, whether arranging taxpayer-funded police protection or distancing himself from his previous wife's kids, was a concession he chose to make. As for the secret marriage -- surely he knew about it years ago. And surely he knew he wanted to run for president years ago. Why didn't he let the story get out years ago -- preferably on a Friday before a three-day weekend? (And please note that the "family values" party is about to nominate a candidate, John McCain, with an unpleasant divorce in his past. Many in the party were prepared to embrace the twice-married Fred Thompson, whose first child was conceived out of wedlock and whose current wife is several years younger than that child. And the party's greatest saint, Ronald Reagan, was also divorced.) Giuliani never had an adequate response to all the Kerik stories. He never had a memorable message on the economy or any issue other than kicking dark-skinned people's butts. He had no fire in his belly when he wasn't indulging in nostalgia for his mayoral days or snapping at Ron Paul about 9/11. His positions on social issues horrified many religious conservatives (and most religious conservative leaders, some of whom threatened to support a third-party candidate if he won the nomination). And he seemed afraid to stay in the fight in any state where he was losing, even as he tried to posture as a tough guy. All this and the Daily News thinks what lost it for him was his wife? I can't help thinking that this reflects a bit of embarrassment at how chatterers in New York fell for Rudy once upon a time. The swells really dug him here for years, and then again after 9/11 -- but the so-called rubes in flyover country saw through all his phony bluster. What was the difference? Oh, it must have been the ball and chain. Yeah, people liked him in New York, but mostly before she came along. So it must be her fault. posted by Steve M. | 2:41 PM | ANOTHER PEEK INTO THE SICK AND TWISTED MIND OF LUCIANNE GOLDBERG From Lucianne.com today:  Eeuuuw. I don't even want to try to understand what's she's getting at here. I think Dr. Freud is going to have to come back from the dead and define a new stage of psychosexual development just for Lucianne. posted by Steve M. | 11:06 AM | WINGNUTS: THEY'RE ALL SPOILED-BRAT FAILURES NOW Has this been true all along and I missed it, or has all of George W. Bush's wingnut base actually turned into George W. Bush? Think about it. Bush has screwed up everything he's ever done in his life, yet he retains a massive sense of entitlement, and he seems to regard many aspects of reality (the failure of his big war, the plain text of laws passed by Congress, the Constitution) as personal affronts to his ego that he's free to accept or reject. The wingnuts have also screwed up spectacularly, fobbing off the spectacularly incompetent and unpopular Bush on America, and yet they feel entitled to deny the cold truth that non-wingnuts in their party, and non-Republicans with the full legal right to vote in their primaries, have made John McCain the party's nominee. At this point the analogy breaks down somewhat: Bush is still president, so he retains the godlike ability to sustain his destructive, reality-denying misrule at will. The wingnuts can't simply nullify the results of their party's primaries and caucuses -- as far as we know -- but they're refusing to accept the 99% of a loaf they've got in John McCain; the latest is that Glenn Beck is derisively calling the presumptive nominee "Juan McCain" and Ann Coulter is saying, "I will campaign for [Hillary Clinton] if it's McCain." And all this when the clouds were parting on the Democratic side during last night's love fest, at least temporarily, and it was possible even for your grumpy correspondent to feel what a lot of people felt a couple of months ago -- that, whoever wins, we're happy, and let's just pick one of the solid candidates (and maybe even the dream ticket) and come together and finish off the Republicans. Just about everything has gone the wingnuts' way for close to thirty years. In that time we've had a few glimmers of hope and a few more false dawns. The result is that they're brats who demand everything they want, all the time. We're not like that. And right now, that makes us seem like the grown-ups, and maybe it means we'll win one. posted by Steve M. | 8:14 AM | |
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