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Saturday, May 24, 2008
Tinfoil hat time in Denver
Posted by on 5.24.08 @ 8:14PM
DENVER -- Libertarian presidential hopeful Mary Ruwart plays footsie with the "9/11 Truth" conspiracy theorists in an interview with Liberty, and won't back away when Reason's David Weigel questions her about it:
I think we don't know because there are so many unanswered questions. That's why I think we should have investigated it as a forensic site. If I was the commander-in-chief that's exactly what I would have done, so we could prevent it in the future.
"Unanswered questions"? Read the Popular Mechanics debunking of the Truther claims. The whole "controlled demolition/inside job" nonsense peddled by the Truthers is a senseless rejection of Occam's Razor. If (a) two hijacked jumbo jets crash into two buildings and then (b) the buildings collapse, how hard is it to accept that (a) was the cause of (b)?
Ah, but that's just what they want us to think!
"Unanswered questions," indeed. Pass the tinfoil . . .
Get ready to rumble
Posted by on 5.24.08 @ 5:28PM
DENVER -- A multi-ballot battle for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination is almost guaranteed, now that the party has posted the official results of the delegate-token count:
Wayne Allyn Root (94 tokens)
Mary Ruwart (94 tokens)
Mike Gravel (67 tokens)
Mike Jingozian (63 tokens)
George Phillies (62 tokens)
Steve Kubby (60 tokens)
That's a total of 534 tokens, meaning that nearly 100 delegates didn't give their tokens to any candidate, or else gave tokens to one of the seven declared candidates who didn't make the cut. At any rate, Barr's token count (even allowing a cushion for the tokens his campaign lent to Gravel) amounts to less than one-sixth of the more than 600 delegates. Barr will probably get a larger first-round vote, but it looks nearly impossible for him to get the 300+ votes needed for a majority on the first ballot.
Lots of intrigue and horse-trading can be expected, and Team Barr face an obvious challenge from the LP's more radical bloc. If Jingozian, Phillies, and Kubby throw their support to Ruwart to form an anti-Barr alliance, that would put Ruwart -- the sweetheart of the radicals -- close to a majority of the delegates. (Oh, all those ignorant MSM reporters who thought the nomination was a done deal for Barr!)
Meanwhile, at 9 p.m. ET (7 p.m. MT), Jim Pinkerton will moderate the seven-candidate debate on C-SPAN tonight.
Here's video of Barr addressing his supporters this afternoon:
One Token Over the Line, Sweet Jesus
Posted by on 5.24.08 @ 2:50PM
DENVER -- The final official number of Libertarian Party delegates registered as of this morning's cutoff time is 562. That means that presidential candidates hoping to participate in tonight's televised debate will need 57 tokens to qualify. (Each registered delegate is issued one token to give to the candidate of his, her, or its choice.) The cutoff time is 1 pm Mountain Time (3 pm Eastern) about ten minutes from now.
However, since the official cutoff that sets the threshold, an additional 65 delegates have registered, meaning that additional tokens are available to the candidates seeking to qualify for the debate. One operative for the Michael Jingozian campaign was overheard saying that their candidate "needs at least six more" tokens. Meanwhile, candidate Daniel Imperato was seen soliciting passers by, "I need tokens."
Operatives for the Bob Barr campaign were asking their supporters to assemble at Barr's exhibition booth to form a parade into the convention hall to turn in their tokens. The Barr campaign is closemouthed about the number of delegates they've secured. They appear quietly confident that their candidate will qualify for this evening's debate, to be broadcast on C-SPAN.
UPDATE: The Barr campaign just turned in 93 tokens to qualify their candidate for the presidential candidate. However, that sent up a cheer from supporters of Wayne Allyn Root, who turned in 94 tokens. This represents a strong showing by the pragmatist wing of the LP, since Root is also a telegenic ex-Republican. Meanwhile, candidate Christine Smith failed to meet the 10 percent threshold necessary to qualify for the C-SPAN debate.
UPDATE II: I've just been informed by a senior source with the Barr campaign that their token total was actually higher, but Barr shared some of his tokens with Mike Gravel in order to help the ex-Democrat qualify for the debate. "We wanted him in the debate...so we actually had by far the most tokens of any candidate," the source said.
Seeing the scene in Denver
Posted by on 5.24.08 @ 2:10PM
DENVER -- If you want to get an idea of what the Libertarian Party convention looks like, I've posted some photos at my personal blog. I expect to update shortly with the final delegate count and more news. Meanwhile, David Weigel has a report of this morning's media breakfast.
Memorial Day Moviegoers
Posted by on 5.24.08 @ 1:05PM
Just got back from the new Indiana Jones flick. It was awful. If you don't want to take my word for it, go read this defense of the film by Slate's Dana Stevens, perhaps the world's most consistently wrong movie critic. If it's action that you're, uh, jonesing for, try Prince Caspian. Sometimes Spectator contributor Joe Carter calls it "the greatest war movie ever made for children."
Video: Barr on the LP
Posted by on 5.24.08 @ 12:46PM
DENVER -- From this morning's media breakfast, Bob Barr responds to a question from Michael Ivov, who's covering the Libertarian Party convention for The New Republic. Ivov asked about opposition from "single issue" delegates:
Speaking of "single issue" delegates, I was just talking to some delegates supporting Steve Kubby, the California medical marijuana crusader, who were busy collecting presidential tokens for their candidate. Then I ran into Barr campaign operative Stephen Gordon, who is distributing copies of Val Richardson's Washington Times story about Barr's support from the Marijuana Policy Project.
Some in the Barr camp had referred to Val's article as a "hit piece" -- viewing it as an attempt to hurt the candidate's mainstream viability -- but in terms of securing the LP nomination, it's pure gold here in Denver. Many of the radical-leaning delegates who are doubtful about Barr will be favorably impressed by his "free weeder" credentials, so the "hit piece" is just what Barr needs today to woo those who support Kubby, whose campaign buttons bear a marijuana leaf logo.
UPDATE: As of 9:15 a.m. MT, there were 562 delegates registered -- significantly less than the 700-1,000 predicted before the convention. Registration continues until noon (2 p.m. ET), and I'll be sure to post the final registration number then. The number is important because a large number might represent a strong turnout by either side of the purist/pragmatist divide, and also will affect the total number of tokens needed to get a candidate into tonight's debate, which will be televised by C-SPAN.
Barr for breakfast
Posted by on 5.24.08 @ 11:39AM
DENVER -- Just got back from a media breakfast with Bob Barr, who was asked about several issues, including immigration. "My main concern, and the immediate concern I would have as president, is securing the borders," he said. However, Barr discounted the idea of a border fence as ineffective and expensive.
Barr was asked why he hadn't signed the "Libertarians for Justice" pledge, calling for a new investigation into 9/11 -- a "Truther" project endorsed by 11 of the 14 LP presidential candidates.
"I'm not interested in conspiratorial theories, I'm interested in moving the country forward," Barr said. "Some candidates will sign whatever's put in front of them, if they think it will get them votes. I don't operate that way."
Hillary & RFK
Posted by on 5.24.08 @ 7:52AM
If you watch the Hillary video of the remarks, it's clear - to me, anyway - that she actually was trying to make the point about primary campaigns going on long, even if, as Drudge and others are pointing out, her history is a bit weak. However inelegant she was in bringing up RFK's assassination, she stresses the word June when she mentions it - right on the heels of saying that her husband had not wrapped up his nomination until June. An ill-advised, potentially catastrophic gaffe, given our media and political climate, but I don't think there was anything sinister at work here.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Barr's pot party
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 6:49PM
DENVER -- My former Washington Times colleague Valerie Richardson scooped me on this story:
The Libertarian National Convention kicked off yesterday with a tea-and-cookies reception hosted by the Marijuana Policy Project featuring none other than Mr. Barr, the party's leading candidate for its presidential nomination. . . .Among those expected to give the Sunday nominating speeches for Mr. Barr at the convention is Rob Kampia, the Marijuana Policy Project's executive director, who praised the candidate for having the courage of his convictions.
"It's very rare to find someone who's willing to change their position and then be so public about it," Mr. Kampia said. "He's definitely increased the credibility of the Marijuana Policy Project. People have to take us seriously when we walk through the door with Bob Barr."
You know what kills me about being scooped on this? I was sitting at the next table at Timberlakes in DC on Tuesday when Barr had dinner with the MPP guys and it didn't occur to me to think that something newsworthy might be happening. Having hard-core "freeweeders" to vouch for him will be very helpful to Barr in terms of getting Libertarian support for his presidential bid. Ending the drug war is a big issue with LP people.
The refreshments tonight at Barr's delegate reception, I assume, will be traditional, legal and free.
BTW, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a story about the vanload of Georgia Libertarians with whom I rode to Denver.
Cindy McCain Releases Tax Returns
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 6:29PM
Cindy McCain released her 2006 tax return and reported $6 million in income that year, backing away from her (probably untenable) refusal to do so. She received an extension for her 2007 return and will likely release it later.
Hillary Responds to Bobby Kennedy Remark
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 5:29PM
Her campaign just released this statement:
"Earlier today I was discussing the Democratic primary history and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns that both my husband and Senator Kennedy waged in California in June 1992 and 1968 and I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nomination primary contests that go into June. That's a historic fact. The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever. My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to, and I'm honored to hold Senator Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York and have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family."
Viguerie slams McCain & GOP
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 5:14PM
DENVER -- In a speech to the Libertarian Party convention just now, Richard Viguerie lit into the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain and conservatives who have been content to become an "appendage" of the GOP:
Republican leaders have treated conservatives with utter disrespect ... and, in turn, conservatives have lost all respect for Republican leaders. Millions of grassroots conservative activists and donors have left the Republican Party and taken with them their volunteer time, their checkbooks, and their votes.
John McCain has had the Republican presidential nomination sewn up for three-and-a-half months and has done nothing to convince conservatives to come off the sidelines and enthusiastically support him. . . .Senator McCain is trying to get the conservative support on the cheap -- that is, without having to give ironclad assurance that he will fill the government with people who believe in individual liberty, individual responsibility, and in freedom.
He hasn't given conservatives any encouragement on what I believe is the most important question: Who will advise him? Who will run his administration? Who will he appoint? . . . The fact is, after more than 20 years surrounding himself with supporters of Big Government, he won't change now. . . .
The lesser of two evils is evil, Senator McCain.
The full text of Viguerie's speech is now online. Viguerie's condemnation of McCain and the GOP comes on the heels of similar criticism by conservative bloggers John Hawkins and Michelle Malkin.
BTW, Viguerie was amused by the conspiracy theories (reported this morning) about him, David Weigel reports:
Viguerie dismisses the theories about him as "too many free spirits trying to find something to fight about. They flatter themselves if they think I'd take over the party."Key votes on the platform expected this evening. The candidates debate Saturday night. The nomination vote is Sunday. Much of the proceedings will be broadcast on C-SPAN.
Hillary's Bobby Kennedy Argument
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 5:13PM
Speaking to a newspaper in South Dakota, Hillary Clinton offered the following reasons for continuing her candidacy into June: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it." Clinton has already apologized.
Libertarian lunch rumors
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 4:28PM
DENVER -- During a vote in this morning's session of the Libertarian Party convention, it was agreed that 10 percent of the delegates will be a sufficient threshold to submit a dispute to the judicial committee. Not a good idea, said one Libertarian insider; this could lead to multiple disputes over all kinds of issues.
Meanwhile, David Weigel of Reason has a good article about the LP convention, including this quote from Richard Burke of Americans for Prosperity: "The purists don't want a political party as much as they want a church," he said. "They need a place to worship."
One of the sponsors of the convention is Shotgun Willie's, a local strip joint. Each delegate's credentials packet includes a coupon for half-price admission. Shotgun Willie's also has a booth in the exhibition hall, next to the Mike Gravel booth.
More Libertapalooza
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 3:53PM
This weekend, Phil Klein will be on WJLA - D.C.'s "Capital Sunday" talking about the Libertarian National Convention.
Carlson Isn't Running
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 3:50PM
It seems that Tucker won't be throwing his bowtie into the ring.
Fear & loathing, cont'd
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 1:37PM
DENVER -- Today's article about the conspiratorial murmurings around the Libertarian Party convention here at the Denver Sheraton may have added more fuel to the paranoid fires. This morning, I saw Bob Barr campaign operative Stephen Gordon who half-joked that he's now suspected of plotting with Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.
Unlike the major party conventions, the presidential candidates are readily accessible at the LP convention, where a delegate would have little trouble speaking directly to all 14 candidates. When I went up to the 22nd floor Concorde Club to grab a glass of grapefruit juice this morning, I spoke to Mike Gravel and his lovely wife Whitney, who were having breakfast with seven or eight young supporters. Meanwhile, Barr campaign HQ was temporarily located this morning at the Starbucks across the street, where the former Republican congressman had five -- count 'em, five -- espresso shots in his latte. During a visit to the exhibition hall just now, I spotted both Christine Smith and Michael Jingozian, and saw George Phillies talking to Wayne Allyn Root -- plotting their own counter-conspiracy, perhaps.
The LP rules apparently don't include residency requirements for delegates, so Barr publicist Audrey Mullen will be a delegate from South Carolina, although she said her only previous connection to the state was a vacation at Isle of Palms. When I asked Barr campaign manager Russ Verney about this, he said, "The rules are the rules."
Speaking of rules, when I was in the convention hall this morning, LP chairman Bill Redpath was hearing motions about proposed rule changes -- including one suggestion to change the convention schedule to permit more time for the presidential candidates to debate. The votes on these rules questions may give an early indication of the relative strength of the Barr and anti-Barr forces. I'll update as soon as new rumors, insinuations and smears become available.
The Barr Factor
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 12:58PM
In the comments below, Eric Dondero says if neither Bob Barr nor Wayne Root wins the LP nomination folks like him will become Libertarians for McCain. Over at the American Conservative, Daniel McCarthy and Daniel Larison both say that it's Barr or bust when it comes to voting Libertarian this fall. Dondero's foreign-policy views are, to say the least, very different from the Daniels'.
Which makes me wonder if the Ron Paul Republican/Rush Limbaugh Republican coalition Barr would have to put together to be a factor in the presidential race might actually be possible. The biggest dividing line was always going to be foreign policy: the regular Republicans who oppose McCain from the right nevertheless agree with him on the war and in some cases think his views on torture and Gitmo would prevent him from waging it strongly enough. Paul supporters obviously oppose the war. How would Barr get past this?
Triangulation, perhaps. Barr's positions on foreign policy are more hawkish than Paul's and more dovish than McCain's. That could end up turning off voters on both sides (and may be a liability at the LP convention). But it might be enough to convince anti-McCain conservatives that they aren't pulling the lever for a pacifist. Paleos, on the other hand, might decide that Barr will get a larger vote and be more likely to effect the outcome of the election than Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin and that it is therefore worth putting up with ideological imperfections. None of this necessarily means Barr will get the LP nod, though the Donderos and the Daniels may end up united in a different way if he loses: I can't imagine any of them voting for Mary Ruwart.
When Ted Kennedy Was Right
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 11:50AM
Following a week of tributes to Massachusetts' senior senator after his cancer diagnosis was announced, Tim Carney has a fine column about Ted Kennedy's fight for airline deregulation.
Re: Tucker Carlson, Commander-in-Chief
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 11:07AM
I've always been a big booster of Tucker as an idiosyncratic mainstream pundit and an even bigger fan of his very fine, very funny work as a feature writer, if a bit mocking of his fanbase, so I personally would welcome his entry into the presidential race. Hearing these surprising rumors reminded me, however, of a passage from his far-too-overlooked book, Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites, in which he wrote briefly of the genesis of the beloved Buchanan Brigades of my New Hampshire youth:
In 1992, Pat Buchanan arrived at the same conclusion most talk show hosts come to sooner or later: I should be president of the United States. In contrast to most, he acted on it.
Is the prophecy about to be fulfilled?!
Isolated Jindal, Redux
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 10:27AM
At Red State, the estimable Ben Domenech answers my report that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is too isolated. I do hope that Ben properly read my post as a VERY friendly warning. He also answers my reports about just one facet of the "isolation," namely Jindal's press relations. I hope he did not understand me to say that the only problem is press access. That was, again, just one example. What I am reporting is that he is isolated in general, from political friends and media friends, and from criticism. Or at least that's what I have been told, again by more than one source, those sources being totally distinct from each other, i.e. not even in the same orbit. As for Jindal's openness to national bloggers -- why, of course! Jindal is doing everything he can to look good nationally. The TV appearances, the National Press Club event, the national bloggers, the "social barbeque" visit to John McCain this weekend..... It's image-building of the first degree.
One result of the focus on image is that things slip through the cracks. For instance, while he successfully pushed serious ethics reforms through the state legislature, and got much well-deserved credit for it, he let slip through a change in the enforcement mechanism -- basically, the burden of proor for an ethics investigation -- that will make it actually more difficult to enforce the tougher standards than it was to enforce the weaker standards. This mistkae has been much-commented-on in Louisiana.
Don't get me wrong: I think the world of Bobby Jindal. And his congressional staff worked wonders after Katrina. I am not saying his gubernatorial staffers are not competent. But the word I get is that they are too clique-ish, too arrogant. (If that sounds like a certain current White House circa 2003 and 2004, well, if the shoe fits.....)
Again, I have no first-hand knowledge. I have not gone to LA since his inauguration, nor have I tried to contact his office. I was delighted to be invited, third-hand, to the bloggers' meeting with the Guv, but could not get away to LA on such short notice. I would hope to be invited again. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, is more eager to report wonderful things about Jindal than I am. As I wrote in my blog entry yesterday, "Again, right now these problems are correctable. Nobody other than a few gadflies thinks Bobby's reformist instincts or his conservative convictions are any less real than we have always thought they are."
One mark of a good leader is to know how to distinguish friendly criticism from nasty attacks, and to welcome the former in the spirit in which it is offered. Because when it comes right down to it, I continue to believe with all my heart that "Jindal 2012!" has a very nice sound to it.
Tucker Carlson, Commander-in-Chief
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 10:13AM
I don't know if there is anything to do this, but the rumors are making the rounds that Tucker Carlson might jump into the Libertarian Party presidential race. He has worn bowties, danced with stars, hosted and un-hosted TV shows, gotten George W. Bush to mock a death row inmate, opposed the Iraq war from a perch on the Weekly Standard's masthead, voted for Ron Paul (in 1988 even), and followed around the Straight Talk Express. So this would be the next logical step. Obviously, if there is anything to it, he would be another candidate alongside Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root vying for the right-libertarian vote.
The Other Klein Is At It Again on Obama and Iran
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 9:50AM
On Tuesday, I mocked Time's Joe Klein for suggesting that Barack Obama didn't necessarily want to meet with with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and I noted a video in which Obama mentions Ahmadinejad within the context of negotiations. J. Klein also insisted that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who Obama may have really meant, wasn't as much of a "flagrant anti-Semite." But as I pointed out, Khamenei called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that "should be removed from the region..."
Now, in a column, he says that the Obama position is "fuzzy" so that McCain should stop linking him to Ahmadinejad to scare up Jewish votes. And in a blog post, J. Klein writes, "Obama's position on talking to Ahmadinejad, which is muddy, to say the least, but has never included the following statement, 'I will meet unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.'"
This a ridiculous standard. Go back and watch the video from the YouTube debate in which Obama answered affirmatively that he would meet with the leaders of a number of rogue states, without preconditions, within a first year of his administration. Closely watch the amateur video when the question is being posed, and you will see that when Iran is mentioned, a photo of Ahmadinejad pops on the screen. All summer, Obama had the opportunity to correct news reports on him vowing to meet with Ahmadinejad, but he didn't. During the controversy over Ahmadinejad's visit last fall, he was again given a chance to backtrack, but reiterated his willingness to meet with Ahmadinejad. J. Klein's sister company, CNN, reported, "Obama stands ground on meeting with Ahmadinejad." He once again didn't correct the record.
I might add that not only did Obama not run away from the idea of meeting with Ahmadinejad, he embraced it. He used the controversy as an example of how he represented a break from the "conventional Washington thinking" on foreign policy. This whole stunt by J. Klein is outrageous.
Regulatory Abuse
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 9:42AM
My latest at the Examiner, about regulatory and prosecutorial abuse.
Jumping Ship
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 9:15AM
John Hawkins of Right Wing News, never a McCainiac, wrote a Townhall column last February entitled, "Why You're Going to Vote for John McCain in November and Like It."
Well, maybe you still are, but he sure isn't. It looks like it's mostly over fibs Hawkins believes McCain has been telling about immigration reform, ironically one of the few things I agree with the Arizona senator on in principle, if not exactly detail. (That is, to be clear, I support immigration reform, not fibs.) I expect we'll see more of this sort of thing until the real partisan (long?) war breaks out in a few weeks.
Re: So, About that Kiddie Porn Question
Posted by on 5.23.08 @ 1:15AM
I find it pretty amusing that Balko would accuse me of some sort of "smear" of Libertarians. I mean, I voted for Harry Browne in 2000 because I couldn't stomach Bush's big government conservatism, and I also favor legalizing drugs and believe that states should have the right to allow gay marriage. I wouldn't consider myself a Libertarian these days due to my fierce disagreements over foreign policy, and because in my view Libertarians' obsession with silly purity tests on side issues marginalize them and hinder their ability to actually advance the cause of limiting the size of government. But to think I'm out to "smear" Libertarians is quite absurd. Does Balko not see humor in the fact that the first audience question at a presidential debate would be over whether the candidates believe in a person's right to possess and distribute child pornography?
As to Balko's sarcastic rejoinder, "And no doubt to the disappointment of some conservatives, all of the major GOP candidates for president this year opposed bombing abortion clinics and lynching black people," I'd really like for him to point me to a similar forum involving Republican candidates in which a conservative audience member asked such a question. Or to a Republican candidate with a serious shot of winning the nomination who advocated it.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
So, About that Kiddie Porn Question
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 8:31PM
Contra Reason's Radley Balko, I explain in this Guardian piece today why the issue of whether Libertarians want to legalize child pornography is not just some conservative smear job.
Item one: The first questioner at the Reason event asked three candidates for the Libertarian Party's nomination if they would decriminalize it. (They all said no.)
Item two: Mary Ruwart, one of the candidates for the LP
nomination, has said in the past that she doesn't think kiddie porn
should be illegal, so long as it's consensual. Ruwart, I remind, is
a candidate with a serious shot at getting the nod.
Safe and Sound
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 7:10PM
"[T]he rattling was from dodging the twister, not from getting sucked in" -- Dave Weigel on his trip to the Libertarian Party convention.
Ryan Moves Up
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 5:39PM
Weeks ago, I listed Paul Ryan as having moved up from somewhere in the second tier of my top eight or so choices for veep up to among my top four or five. I've been meaning to post this for days: Ryan has now moved up to second for me, right behind Chris Cox (who remains easily my first choice). This new series of proposals of his is just stunningly good. Ryan is incredibly impressive in person, very likeable, very bright, and a good speaker. He is from the very "gettable" state of Wisconsin. He might cut into Obama's youth vote. And despite his own youth, he has nearly ten years of experience in Congress PLUS a serious public policy background before that, working for Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett at Empower America. He is worth a good, long look by Sen. McCain.
Go Slow on Jindal
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 5:18PM
I tread very, very carefully here, because, as I have shown again and again, I have been a Bobby Jindal fan since late 1991, before he was even finished his studies. I remain a huge fan. I think he is the best thing to happen to my beloved Louisiana in decades. But I must issue a warning, one which may be important for certain national candidates to take into account. I have lots of sources in Louisiana, of course, and from a wide variety of unrelated sources, I am hearing the same thing: Bobby Jindal so far is what MORE than one source, completely independent of each other, described in identical words: "the most isolated governor I have ever seen." The word is that his bright young staffers are also his arrogant young staffers. They are so sure of themselves that they aggregate power to themselves by acting as if their gatekeeper role is not just to keep too many people at once from going through the gate to see the Guv, but to keep the gate almost entirely shut. Even the friendly media is complaining -- and most LA media right now wants to be friendly, because their desperate desire for reform overcomes any ideological predispositions to the left right now; I have had quite liberal media folks down there tell me how excited they were that Bobby won the election. But now reporters feel shunned -- and the LSU student press has been terribly ill treated, which is really dumb by the Jindal team because the student press could easily be inspired by Jindal's reformist nature.
Outside of the media, a few minor but embarrassing missteps have occurred; a few things have fallen through the cracks that shouldn't have; and more than a few good people, reformers, longtime supporters, say they can't get their phone calls returned.
Again, right now these problems are correctable. Nobody other than a few gadflies thinks Bobby's reformist instincts or his conservative convictions are any less real than we have always thought they are. But it gets to the heart of things: Louisiana politics is notoriously convoluted. It's a tough place to master. And it's particularly tough to stay on top of one's game while still being a legitimate reformer, much less a legitimate conservative reformer. A lot of bad old guys are setting snares for Jindal as we speak, trying to bloody him up, trying to block his initiatives, trying to cut his knees out from under him. Jindal's ability to handle all of this for not just four months but four years, is still to be shown. If he can run this gantlet for four years, he should be the national conservative star in 2012. I'll even volunteer to lead his parade blowing a trumpet. But he still needs to get there. It's called seasoning. And he won't get it if he turns off his own allies.
Former Gov. Dave Treen, another reformer (but a much less able politician) made the same mistake of letting himself be isolated. Granted, it was a worse mistake for him to make than for Jindal because master politician Edwin Edwards, at the height of his popularity, was waiting just offstage to return to the Governor's mansion that he gave up in the first place only because the state Constitution limited him to two consecutive terms (but allowed re-election once he sat out one term). Nobody of that stature threatens Jindal. But he needs to accept this and other reports as VERY friendly shots across his bow telling him that people who should be thrilled with him are getting upset -- NOT because they are on ego trips and want access to the governor for personal interest, but because they see him making mistakes that could hurt him down the line.
Conservatism and the Problem with Problem-Solving
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 3:14PM
Andrew Sullivan writes, "Conservatism is not, to my mind, about solving problems, which is why it remains a very problematic governing philosophy for modern Americans. It is about a modesty toward what problems government can ever solve." Sullivan is absolutely right that this is, or ought to be, a valid description of the conservative mindset or conservatism as a temperament. This is something putative conservatives have forgotten to our detriment. But that doesn't necessarily tell us what people who have a conservative temperament should do when engaged in electoral politics or governing. If a group is involved in these two tasks, it must put together coalitions that can win elections and it must be up to the job of doing the work of government.
So while I'm tempted to agree with Sullivan when he writes, "For conservatism to copy liberalism by always seeking 'solutions' to problems and convincing 'the right coalitions' of people to look to government for the satisfaction of their needs would be a mistake in my view," that cannot be the approach of conservatives who actually get involved with politics and government rather than writing and blogging. Maybe "solutions" is the wrong word for what government can provide, but people who are going to participate in politics and government have to, well, campaign and govern effectively despite having a more limited view of what politics and government can realistically accomplish. Even if you believe government is usually the problem rather than the solution, you have to have a political strategy to contain government, a social base that will support you, and an agenda by which you can pursue policies to limit government.
UPDATE: Yuval Levin adds some thoughts. I should add that I don't think conservatism properly understood denies that politics can be used to solve problems -- conservatism just understands the scope of what politics can solve to be limited and prefers modesty in the proposed solutions.
Bob Barr Blogged Here
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 2:31PM
Libertarian Party presidential candidate -- and former American Spectator Contributing Editor -- Bob Barr has to prove this weekend, in Denver, at the LP convention, that his commitment to liberty is genuine and not new-fangled (in the way that Alan Keyes' Illinois citizenship was in the 2004 Senate race against Barack Obama), and that he can be the messenger for a message that's lost in the current political debate.
A perusal of his blog posts during his time with The Spectator reveals he's been a consistent gadfly for the Bush administration's War on Terror policies. Barr might not give Libertarians everything they want -- kiddie-porn won't become legal under a Barr administration -- but will work to push the Republicans back in the direction of protecting individual liberties.
On this blog, Barr wrote against the indefinite detention of potential terrorists and attacked the "terrorist surveillance program" as "NSA spying." He cheered on "Civil libertarians on the right and left" in Congress who were, in December 2005, preparing to filibuster an extension of the Patriot Act that didn't include "modest but important amendments" meant to limit the government's powers in detaining suspected terrorists.
Then there was that now-ironic post about former New York Governor -- and then-Attorney General -- Eliot Spitzer, "the poster child for anti-business and anti-individual liberty tactic[s]," suing H & R Block for selling low-interest, high-fee retirement accounts. Barr, of course, framed Spitzer's actions as an overreach and an attack on "the Little Guy" in his attempt to achieve prosperity.
When, in April 2006, Congressman Tom DeLay left the House, Barr declared it "The End of an Era," an era in which the Newt Gingrichs and Tom DeLays and Dick Armeys espoused a principled, limited-government conservatism that swept in the "Class of 1994." It was as much a compliment of old Republican leadership as an attack on new Republican leaders, whose me-too-ism on spending led to a slaughter of the GOP in the 2006 elections.
A week later, Barr was challenging President Bush's weakness on immigration reform and pandering appeals to the "decency" of the American people. Barr deciding it was more important to be right than to be decent. "America is first and foremost a "nation of LAWS"; at least we used to be," Barr said. Immigration reform was one of Barr's major bugaboos at Reason's recent Libertarian debate, with Barr going so far as to say would-be immigrants need have background checks and disease screens before gaining entrance to America.
In one of his final posts before joining the Libertarian Party in December 2006, Barr saluted Governor George Allen as a "class act" for passing on his right to a re-count in favor of a smooth transition. Allen's senatorial campaign in Virginia was marred by gaffes and a bad election year for Republicans.
One wonders whether Barr will go quietly into the night, as Allen did, if things don't go smoothly for him at the Libertarian Party convention this weekend -- or if we'll see a repeat of the Reform Party debacle from 2000, when Pat Buchanan's detractors stormed out of the Reform Party convention, threatening to start their own party if the nomination were delivered to the Paleoconservative.
Buchanan got less than one-half of one per cent in the general election, and the Reform Party hasn't been a player since. But with Dr. Ron Paul earning over one million votes in the Republican primary, and Barr claiming at the recent Libertarian debate that "we need to move far beyond that," and having just enough name recognition to tug at the voters disgusted by the choice between a Democrat and cap-and-trade McCain, Libertarians aren't going away any time soon.
What's the Matter with the Middle Class?
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 11:29AM
Robert Samuelson has an important column on middle-class economic anxieties. By most objective measures we are doing better, but there are fewer guarantees: that well-paying job could be downsized, your investments and 401(k) could go south, your health insurance premiums could rise and eat into any income growth you experience, you might be pushed out of your job in your 50s, etc. That's why I think it is a mistake for conservatives to simply talk up the economy by pointing to historically low unemployment, household net worth increases, GDP growth rates since 2001, and other measures in an attempt to (rightly) defend the Bush tax cuts. What's going on is more complicated than that and trying to reassure people about the economny by citing these statistics misses the point. Neither the Pollyanna nor doomsday scenarios are quite true.
Webb on Working-Class Whites and Blacks Together
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 11:16AM
Scott McConnell has some thoughts on Jim Webb, the paleo Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Webb was once a strong critic of race-conscious affirmative action, which he compared to Jim Crow. His views on the issue have since evolved in a more conventional Democratic direction but not entirely: in his 2006 Senate campaign and his upcoming book, Webb talks about affirmative action as a set of policies designed specifically to compensate blacks for historical injustices they faced in the United States. He remains critical of it becoming a set of policies that benefit all nonwhites while excluding working-class whites. He seems to be suggesting some kind of class-based affirmative action, which isn't exactly new (outreach-friendly Republicans like Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich flirted with the idea after the Ward Connerly campaign against racial preferences began to take off in the 1990s). But it might be an interesting platform for, say, an Obama-Webb ticket to embrace while trying to put the Humpty Dumpty Democratic coalition back together again.
"MAYBE We Can, But We Still Probably Shouldn't"
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 11:13AM
That's the slogan that'll earn my vote this year, I don't care if it comes from the Snowball's Chance Party.
RomneyPAC
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 11:04AM
In other Romney news, his new political action committee, Free and Strong America, has launched.
The Failure of RomneyCare
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 10:54AM
Via Jennifer Rubin, I see this excellent WSJ editorial exposing what a catastrophe Romney's universal health care reform has been for Massachusetts, which should be another lesson to all conservatives that supporting statist public policy initiatives and calling them "free market" does not change economic reality.
But I'll give Romney credit on one thing. He showed us what happens when government shifts citizens onto heavily subsidized public plans:
And people wonder why I've been so bearish on Romney as the leader of the conservative future, and why I think it would be a disaster for McCain to pick him as VP.
Against Educational Romanticism
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 10:21AM
Charles Murray has
a provocative essay at The New
Criterion on education reform--and how both left and right
go about achieving it exactly wrong. Here's a snippet:
For the good of our children, educational romanticism needs to collapse, and quickly. Its effects play out in the lives of young people in devastating ways. The fourth-grader who has trouble sounding out simple words and his classmate who is reading A Tale of Two Cities for fun sit in the same classroom day after miserable day, the one so frustrated by tasks he cannot do and the other so bored that both are near tears. The eighth-grader who cannot make sense of algebra but has an almost mystical knack with machines is told to stick with the college prep track, because to be a success in life he must go to college and get a B.A. The senior with terrific SAT scores gets away with turning in rubbish on his term papers because to make special demands on the gifted would be elitist. They are all products of an educational system that cannot make itself talk openly about the implications of diverse educational limits.
Newsweek school rankings -- and costs
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 7:55AM
Kevin D. Williamson, on NRO's The Corner, has just posted a comment on Newsweek's rankings of public high schools, and asks a good question: How much money per pupil do these high-achieving school districts spend? He cites some flossy districts in Pennsylvania that put out $23-$25,000 per pupil, and then mentions Lubbock, TX, which spends about $6,500.
When I worked for the local newspaper in Westfield, NJ, another high-achieving, high-spending community, the school board simply would never say what they spent per pupil. We could easily have published a fairly accurate number by dividing the annual school budget by the number of pupils (which Williamson mentions, and does), but our publisher was too chicken to do it.
Paul Mulshine, of the Newark Star-Ledger, annually compares per pupil spending in high- and low-achieving New Jersey school districts, with the sorry and expected result: Some of the most expensive districts perform the worst.
To be fair, some states support schools in different ways. In Texas, schools get some portion of state oil revenues, for example.
The point remains. It isn't money that makes a good school. The disconnect is not total, but almost.
Obama, Kennedy and Khrushchev
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 1:42AM
Boy am I glad that somebody finally wrote this. And in the New York Times, no less: "Kennedy's one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one's adversaries." The whole thing is well worth a read.
McCain To Meet With Three Lousy VP Choices
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 1:22AM
The NY Times reports that John McCain is planning to meet with three potential running mates at his Arizona ranch this weekend: Charlie Crist, Bobby Jindal, and Mitt Romney. None of them would be wise choices for VP. Let me approach this one at a time.
Clearly, McCain owes a favor to Crist, who no doubt helped put him over the top in the crucial Florida primary, so this very well could be who McCain ends up choosing. The problem is he isn't particularly liked by conservatives. I also think McCain should be able to win the Sunshine State without him on the ticket.
Jindal would, without a doubt, add instant conservative appeal to his ticket, as well as youth, and a brilliant mastery of policy. But the problem is that at 36, he's still quite inexperienced, and thus picking him to be a heartbeat away from the presidency will undercut the central argument McCain is making against Obama. And I know this is a factor more for the future of conservative politics in general than for McCain specifically, but after years of the Bush administration, conservatives are in desperate need of a strong story of successul governance. In eight years, Jindal will still be young, but he could have a Giuliani-type turnaround story in Lousiana--only without the personal bagage or problems with social conservatives. Nominating him as VP would be like when a baseball team trades away its top pitiching prospect midseason in hopes of winning now.
The same commentators who spent all of last year trying, without success, to convince the grassroots that Romney was the candidate for conservatives, are now arguing that McCain can instantly win over conservatives by picking Romney. That is ludicrous. If Romney had truly closed the deal with conservatives, he would have captured the nomination. Instead, he was chased out of South Carolina after spending millions there running ads and building an organization, and finished a distant fourth. He couldn't consolidate conservatives in Florida after Fred Thompson dropped out of the race, even as talk radio and conservative pundits rallied around him. And then he got crushed on Super Tuesday.
Also, good luck running a "Straight Talk" campaign with Romney on the ticket. On top of the fact that he wouldn't win over conservatives, Romney would be an absolute albatross on nationally, because in the process of twisting himself in a pretzel on issue after issue in the primaries, the general public came to see him as a phony. In the most recent Gallup poll to ask about Romney, around the time he dropped out of the race in February, he came away with a net unfavorable rating of 12 points. And having run the most negative campaign of any Republican, the Democrats can spend all fall running ads of Romney attacking McCain, especially on economics. Furthermore, Romney's actual strengths as an organizer and executive will not be very relevant in the number two slot.
In Which I Was Ahead of the Onion
Posted by on 5.22.08 @ 12:12AM
Though to be fair, their twist was funnier. (My article here.)
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Re: Farm Bill Veto
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 7:05PM
Quin is absolutely right. I'm happy the president vetoed the farm bill, as I hoped he would, but only intense conservative pressure on congressional Republicans can prevent an override.
Da Veepstakes
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 6:55PM
John O'Sullivan suggests Obama-Webb versus McCain-Romney. Obviously, I tend to find the first more plausible then the second though I suppose you could argue that Webb's appeal to working-class whites is more theoretical than Romney's appeal to anti-McCain conservatives. At least some of them. But there is no way Mitt Romney can put Massachusetts in play, especially not in light of recent events.
For my money, the Onion has most accurately captured the 2008 presidential race: a nightmare ticket of Obama, Clinton, and McCain.
Farm Bill Veto
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 6:41PM
I guess it will sound like utterly insufficient gratitude, but I am not happy with Bush's veto of the Farm Bill today. Why? Because he did it way too soon. NRO wisely noted several days ago that Bush should take his time before issuing the veto -- he is allowed ten days -- in order to give his allies time to make the case to the public about why his veto ought to be sustained. Bush could have waited until the very end of next week, and vetoed the bill just as Congress was going out of session, giving Congress no time to override his veto before its Memorial Day recess. That way, Bush and conservatives could have had ten days to make their case about why the bill is so gawdawful, and get the public sufficiently upset about the bill that the congressmen would hear about it in no uncertain terms during town meetings. THEN Bush would have had a chance to actually defeat an attempted override vote. As it is, Congress will probably move quickly to override before the general public really knows the difference. No blogger alerts, no talk radio campaign -- NOTHING. It's almost as if Bush doesn't really care if he is overridden. Either that, or else this White House again has shown that its political tactics are just pathetically inept.
I vote for a little of both. Remember that Bob Novak reported earlier this week the same thing I heard independently, that the president offered only a tepid explanation for his coming veto when he met with GOP House members last week, and that he immediately said he understood that good people liek Bob Goodlatte put a lot of work into the bill and he understands if they pass it despite his wishes. And he offered the congressmen no specific reasons, or very very few, why the bill was so bad. That, combined with this hasty veto, tells me the president wants credit for finally taking a real stand against spending, while not really wanting his stand to, well... to stand.
If the White House already has whipped this and has a plan to get the veto sustained and succeeds in the plan, I will gladly stand corrected, eat crow, praise Bush to high heaven, etc. I WANT him to succeed with this veto. I just don't think this is the way to do it.
Judges MATTER!
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 6:25PM
(Cross posting at ConfirmThem AND Southern Appeal) K-Lo at NRO noted this first, but this confirms what I have insisted again and again, and what all of you good readers of this site have also insisted and known in your very marrows: Our voters care, deeply, about judges. Summary: Rasmussen reports that far more GOP voters care about judges than about even the war in Iraq. Indeed, judges is the second most important issue, behind only the economy. WHY don’t our senators seem to understand this?!?!?!?!?
Judging the Republicans
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 5:36PM
Dan Flynn has a terrific piece on Republican complicity in judicial activism, right down to the GOP role in the California gay marriage ruling. He doesn't even mention the names Earl Warren, William Brennan, or Harry Blackmun. He doesn't have to: "The cases conservatives cite to demonstrate the arrogance of jurists legislating from the bench are in almost all instances the product of Republican jurisprudence"
Of course, solving the problem is more difficult than diagnosing it since, as Flynn writes, "voting for Barack Obama to teach Republicans a lesson about getting tough on judicial activism is to cut off your nose to spite your face." Republicans appoint many liberal judges but also almost all the conservative judges, with the notable exception of Byron White. But there are now so many experienced members of conservative legal networks there really is no excuse for anymore David Souters. Conservatives should learn from the Harriet Miers debacle and only support nominees with a clear track record, even if they are nominated by President Bush or President McCain.
Setting the Barr Too Low
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 5:00PM
Ross Douthat's prediction that Bob Barr will only do about as well as Pat Buchanan in 2000 is obviously the safest way to bet. Third-party challenges on the right have tended to do poorly unless the candidate has some unconservative elements that also allow him to win significant non-conservative support (think George Wallace in 1968 and Ross Perot in both his presidential runs). More purely right-wing third-party candidates have had less impact. John Schmitz, then a sitting Republican congressman, took 1.4 percent of the popular vote in 1972. Ron Paul received just 0.5 percent as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988, although I agree he would do much better today partly because he could reach beyond the right. Buchanan, the biggest-name recent conservative to bolt the GOP, won only 0.4 percent. The Constitution Party has never even cracked 200,000 votes nationally, other smaller right-wing parties have fared worse.
Douthat is right that there is a "more favorable landscape for a right-of-center protest candidate" than in 2000 but Barr lacks Buchanan's "charisma, celebrity and committed followers." But Barr is famous enough, especially among the conservative talk-radio set, and his resume of red-meat Republicanism in the 1990s and harder-line libertarianism in recent years may help him put together an unlikely coalition of Ron Paul Republicans and Rush Limbaugh Republicans. The more of the latter group he brings in, the more he can serve as a Ralph Nader of the right than a Buchanan.
Some of this depends on how much Barr wants to risk being seen as responsible for John McCain's defeat. Buchanan really didn't want to elect Al Gore -- he ran for the Reform Party nomination partly on the premise that Gore was going to beat George W. Bush anyway -- and usually campaigned that way. Many of his supporters didn't want to elect Gore either, as evidenced by his steady drop in the polls as the Bush-Gore race tightened. Barr's success will also depend on his ability to win the Libertarian nomination without taking positions on issues like immigration that repel anti-McCain conservatives. Most of all, however, it depends on his ability to win the Libertarian nomination, period.
Weeping Cedars
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 12:06PM
Hezbollah has taken over the Lebanese government.
Here's some background on the violence that lead to this point from the Sunday Washington Post, where it's suggested that "the new calculus in Lebanon, where tension is combustible and diversity is claustrophobic, may prove that Hezbollah's victory was Pyrrhic, as it inherits a country whose sectarian and political contradictions suggest another civil war ahead."
Re: Breakfast With Nussle
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 11:55AM
Nussle's argument about the "fiscal surplus" masking deficits in our defense and homeland security capabilities points to another missed opportunity for conservatives and Republicans: After 9/11, we could have had a debate about returning government to its proper role. While I'm not a fan of many of the things this administration has done in foreign policy, national defense is a legitimate function of the federal government. To the extent that our spending in other areas was making it difficult to perform that legitimate function, the other spending should have been cut. Even New Deal liberals like FDR and Harry Truman cut non-war spending in wartime, a fact Nussle's predecessor Mitch Daniels emphasized in a 2002 Washington Post op-ed. Yet armed with that knowledge, Bush and the Republican Congress instead allowed spending increases across the board. It's nice of them to object now that the Democrats are doing the same, but it would have been better for them to have done something to limit government while the allegedly limited-government party had unified control of Washington.
The War on Child Porn
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 11:42AM
It looks as though child pornography laws are the latest example of well-intentioned legislation that winds up threatening civil liberties.
Example one comes from R. Kelly's child pornography trial, where Slate writer Josh Levin filed this dispatch:
While it might seem that merely clicking on a link wouldn't be enough to justify a search warrant, courts have ruled otherwise. On March 6, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Nevada agreed with a magistrate judge that the hyperlink-sting operation constituted sufficient probable cause to justify giving the FBI its search warrant.
The defendant in that case, Travis Carter, suggested that any of the neighbors could be using his wireless network. (The public defender's office even sent out an investigator who confirmed that dozens of homes were within Wi-Fi range.)
But the magistrate judge ruled that even the possibilities of spoofing or other users of an open Wi-Fi connection "would not have negated a substantial basis for concluding that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of child pornography would be found on the premises to be searched."The last example involves the least sympathetic character, a teen who posted naked pictures of his 16 year-old ex-girlfriend on the Internet (images she'd willingly sent him). I can't say I'm sorry he's been charged with defamation. But felony counts of child porn and sexual exploitation of a child? Sex offender registries ought to be designed for predators who pose a risk to kids, not teenage jerks.
And given the recent spate of probably exaggerated stories about kids sending one another naked photos through their cell phones, the laws we now have threaten to make a lot of sexually confused adolescents into felony sex offenders. Wouldn't police resources be better spent protecting kids from child molestors? Or gangs?
Breakfast With Nussle
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 11:09AM
This morning, The American Spectator hosted a Newsmaker Breakfast with OMB Director and former Iowa congressman Jim Nussle, during which he emphasized the need for Congress to vote on Iraq supplemental funding and made his best attempt to defend the Bush administration's spending record to a room full of skeptical conservatives.
Citing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Nussle said that if the pending $108 billion request was not met, the troops would begin to run out of funds by June 15. When I asked him when the ultimate drop date was -- i.e. when they could no longer shift around funds from one account to another to fund the troops - he said the end of June, or July 4 at the latest.
Nussle argued that normally supplemental bills come up as a surprise, but this is something that Congress knew was in the pipeline for 16 months, so they should bring it up for a vote. His position is that anybody can disagree with the politics of the war, but once we have troops committed, we have to meet their needs.
Nussle reiterated that President Bush would veto the Farm Bill immediately upon receiving it in the next day or two, and that Congress plans to immediately vote on whether to override the veto.
When Nussle was asked whether deficits matter, he said they do, but noted different types of deficits. On Sept. 10, he said, we were running a fiscal surplus, but there was a deficit in our defense and homeland security capability, which we had to increase. This is an argument that the Bush administration has employed consistently to explain away its atrocious spending record, but it doesn't really fly. Even if one were to concede that all of the homeland security spending actually went to homeland security - quite a concession - it doesn't explain the expansion of the rest of government. Furthermore, if we are to continue with Nussle's line of logic that we had a defense and homeland security deficit, did we not have a surplus in other parts of government that could have been used do pay for the increased defense expenditures? Did Bush and Republicans need to go through with No Child Left Behind? Or the Medicare prescription drug bill?
Toward the end of the session, Nussle took issue with a chart showing that federal spending had skyrocketed by $867 billion during the Bush years (vs. a $577 billion increase in revenue), by saying that most of that increase was due to "automatic" (i.e. mandatory) spending that they had no control over. Quin Hillyer rightly noted that even discretionary spending growth has far outpaced the rate of inflation since 2001. Nussle became quite agitated. I would only add that it's a total copout for the Bush administration to absolve itself of responsibility for the rise in mandatory spending, because he had a Republican congress for 6 years and could have pursued entitlement reform. Instead, he pushed through the largest expansion of entitlements with the Medicare drug plan, which greatly exacerbated the "automatic" spending problem.
White Working-Class Voters No Yawning Matter
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 11:00AM
I mostly agree with this Roger Simon column arguing that Hillary Clinton's recent victories are too little, too late for her to win the Democratic nomination. Her argument that she would have won if the rules were different strikes me as particularly bogus. But I stumbled over this line, in which Simon swats down a Clinton argument he finds unpersuasive: "That she continues to win white, working-class voters? Yawn."
Yawn? That is her strongest argument, given that white working-class votes actually do count -- this seems to come as a surprise to some people -- and they live in the states that will likely decide this presidential election. The evidence is growing that many of these voters just plain don't like Barack Obama. To see her win by 35 points in Kentucky and 41 points in West Virginia after Obama has more or less wrapped up the nomination, to watch her win Ohio and Pennsylvania after Obama's February 11-state winning streak, to see such high numbers of Clinton voters telling exit pollsters they will vote for John McCain at this late a date -- well, that ought to be a little unsettling for Democratic bigwigs. These voters seem to be hardening against the likely Democratic nominee and it will be difficult if not impossible to win the White House without them.
That said, it is an argument that probably won't work. Hillary's biggest wins have come too late. At this point, the only way she can win the nomination is through the massive intervention of superdelegates on her behalf. Party leaders would have to deny the nomination to an African American presidential candidate who has won the elected delegates and won the popular vote when you only count the states where he was actually on the ballot. Worse, they wold have to do so on the grounds that white working-class folks won't vote for him. That would demoralize black voters, who are equally important to Democrats, and divide the party. But even if the Democrats are unlikely to be swayed by Hillary's argument, they will worry that she is right. The white working-class voter argument doesn't deserve a yawn. It is truly Hillary Clinton's best argument.
Re: Barr on Afghanistan
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 10:38AM
It's possible that Barr favored post-9/11 retalitory strikes and a mission to go get bin Laden but opposed the occupation of Afghanistan. That is, roughly, the Ron Paul position. But given that overthrowing the Taliban government was a prerequisite for such a mission, I'm not sure how an occupation for at least some time period could have been avoided. And I agree it makes no sense to say the Afghan war is not a military intervention.
Environmentalism To Replace Jesus, Buddha & Big M!
Posted by on 5.21.08 @ 9:28AM
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Barr isn't a sure thing for LP
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 10:33PM
While at the same Reason magazine event that John attended, I found myself talking with a Libertarian about Bob Barr's chances of winning the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in Denver. There was a reporter for a major news organization standing nearby, who apparently had no idea how much internal LP opposition Barr would face.
"Opposition?" she asked. "But I thought ..."
"We're talking about Libertarians," said my friend. "They're crazy."
David Weigel tried to explain this last month, but apparently the media ignored that, so I've tried to explain it again:
"We definitely don't expect to win it on the first ballot," said Russ Verney, the Barr manager who shepherded Ross Perot's third-party bids in 1992 and 1996. "The other [Libertarian] candidates have been out there recruiting delegates for over a year. Bob just declared his candidacy last week, so he's definitely the underdog." . . .Talk of Barr as a "spoiler" for John McCain is assuming much more than it is safe to assume, considering that the 2004 LP presidential nominee didn't win it until the third ballot.
Phone surveys of delegates and state party leaders indicate Barr would get between 30 and 35 percent of the first-ballot vote, his supporters say. With a majority of delegates needed to secure the nomination in a party that doesn't choose its candidate by primary votes, multiple rounds of balloting are not unusual at LP conventions.
Barr on Afghanistan
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 9:43PM
I just got home from a Libertarian Party debate at Reason headquarters. I think Phil will have more on the event later, but one moment was especially odd: Dave Weigel asked the candidates if they favored any of the US interventions since the first Gulf War, and Bob Barr flatly said no. I asked him afterwards if that meant he was now against the war in Afghanistan. He answered that he didn't have time to get into it during the debate, but he had "no problem at all going into Afghanistan" (though he seems to be against staying there now) -- he just doesn't consider it an "intervention." That, of course, makes no sense.
Hillary Wins Kentucky
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 8:02PM
Hillary Clinton won Kentucky big and she won it early. With a little under half of the vote in, she is up 58 percent to 38 percent. Clinton's margin isn't exactly West Virginia-like but no other state is as demographically challenging to Barack Obama as Robert Byrd's home. Again, two words: watch Oregon.
UPDATE: With 91 percent of precincts reporting, it's a 35-point shellacking. Whatever her prospects for the nomination, Hillary has definitely driven home the point that Obama has a problem winning working-class whites.
The Latest LaRouche Objective
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 6:24PM
Passing through a Metro station, I was accosted by some LaRouchies handing out fliers about a webcast or some such by their fearless leader. I took the flier, gave them a look that was equal parts amusement and bemusement, and kept walking. One of them shouted after me, "With your support the Washingtion Nationals will win the Super Bowl this year! Are you with me? Do I need to get you free tickets to be with me?"
Plaxo Acquired By Comcast
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 5:27PM
From an email:
Plaxo's still playing a big gamble. It's likely that the "definitive agreement" means that Comcast will arrive to purchase Plaxo between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. tomorrow. Meaning, Comcast will be too busy finishing a few beers in the back of the truck to show up.
You Say 'Stinking Corpse,' I Say 'Cancerous Tumor'
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 3:21PM
Time's Joe Klein is out to prove that McCain is lying about Obama's position on negotiating with Iran, and doesn't know who is running the country.
He wrote:
As for J. Klein's first point, Michael Goldfarb has already done an able job of discrediting it by posting a video of Obama using the name Ahmadinejad in the context of his pledge to negotiate with Iran, so I expect that a correction will be forthcoming.
But J. Klein makes even more of a fool of himself -- if that's at all possible -- by trying to suggest that Obama may have been talking about Iran's supreme leader, rather than its president:
I wonder what his definition of "flagrant anti-Semite" is, because it turns out that while Ahmadinejad has called Israel a "stinking corpse" that needed to be wiped off the map, Khamenei has called it a "cancerous tumor" that "should be removed from the region..."
As Reuters reported on Decmber 15, 2000:
The larger point here is this. The left wants to portray McCain as an ignoramus for constantly mentioning Ahmadinejad --the most identifiable public face of Iran -- rather than Supreme Leader Khamenei. J. Klein proudly confronted McCain on this at a press conference today. But it isn't as if Ahmadinejad is a member of some opposition party, nor would he be allowed to make the statements he does were his views not shared by the ruling regime. It's pretty clear that his inflamatory statements were just in keeping with long-standing Iranian policy.
So, McCain was absolutely correct when he responded to J. Klein's chest-pounding interrogation by saying of Ahmadinejad that:
But I say, let's call the whole thing off.
Flynn's take: Conservatism, R.I.P.?
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 2:30PM
Thanks, James. Indeed, Flynn's short article packs several good phrases:
There is no conservative movement. It is one of the many casualties of the George W. Bush presidency. The arcane phrase reflects a world of YAFers, "Don't Immanentize the Eschaton" buttons, and debates over the Bricker Amendment. That does not exist anymore. . . .
Conservatism the label became more popular than conservatism the outlook. Thus, people who mistake Russell Kirk for the captain of the Starship Enterprise jumped on the bandwagon, hijacked the driver's seat, and sent it off course. The more that people called themselves "conservative," the less "conservative" resembled conservatism.
I think it's worth noting that "What's Wrong With The GOP?" has long been a favorite parlor game for conservatives. Sputtering rage breaks out on the Right whenever conservatives are especially frustrated by Republican ineptitude, which is quite often. Yet that kind of routine grumbling never gets written up by the New Yorker.
However, when the GOP starts losing elections, the liberal media never blames the Susan Collinses and Arlen Specters and George Voinoviches. There's always a rush to blame conservatives or conservatism. I remember this after Clinton was re-elected in 1996, and it erupted again after the '98 Republican mid-term losses. Yet after the 2002 and '04 GOP victories, we were told that conservatism has triumphed. Now a few bad years later, conservatism is being hurried to the graveyard. Let's keep our powder dry and resist the urge to take advice from liberals.
IT'S SIMPLE
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 2:08PM
The explanation for current gasoline prices for those untutored in economics: SUPPLY and DEMAND.
You supply the money they demand.
Re: Conservatism, R.I.P.
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 2:05PM
Dan Flynn's thoughts on the Packer article are well worth reading.
Re: Conservatism R.I.P.
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 1:32PM
Good points, Phil. The way Packer allows Brooks, unrebutted, to slam limited-government conservatism as both un-American and unpopular tells us more about what's wrong with conservatism than Packer intends.
This recent descent of the GOP Establishment into confusion goes directly back to Brooks and his "National Greatness" idea, which amounts to a white flag on the limited-government philosophy advanced by conservatives in the Reagan and Gingrich eras. Brooks' argument has never been examined in terms of its provenance in the aftermath of Clinton's 1996 re-election.
If you will recall the 1996 primary field, Republicans rejected two limited-government candidates -- Phil Gramm and Steve Forbes -- in favor of that fossilized specimen of Nixonian pragmatism, Bob "It's My Turn" Dole. Remember that Dole had been Gerald Ford's running mate in 1976, when the GOP rejected Reagan's conservative insurgency.
Dole was never a conservative, and had undermined Gingrich and the House Republicans during the 1995-96 budget battles. Dole never managed to ignite any excitement in the '96 presidential campaign, which was effectively over by Labor Day, and ended up with just 41 percent of the vote. And from this lackluster performance, those moderate Republicans who had supported Dole derived an odd lesson. Clinton's re-election, they said, proved that limited-government conservatism was unpopular and untenable as a political platform.
Huh? How does the defeat of a moderate Republican prove conservatism untenable? And what about the fact that nearly all those radical mean-spirited right-wing House Republicans were re-elected? The fact that the GOP was able to maintain its congressional majorities in '96 didn't dent the consciousness of the Dole people, who blamed Gingrich and the right-wingers for their man's defeat.
The "National Greatness" idea put forward in the wake of the Dole debacle (Brooks' version of this argument appeared in the Weekly Standard in March 1997) was an attempt to lend a patina of intellectual credibility to the Republican retreat from conservatism. All that has transpired since -- including the GOP's 2006 defeat and John McCain's nomination this year -- is mere denouement of the Republican establishment's jettisoning of old-fashioned limited-government philosophy after '96.
John McCain: (Not So) Big Spender
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 1:29PM
The Center for American Progress's policy blog, The Wonk
Room, is touting a new
CAP study on costs associated with John McCain's health care plan. What's the big deal? His plan, they argue, would raise the
administrative costs of health insurance. "The study flips McCain’s small
government rhetoric on its head," the post's author writes.
Well, no. It just doesn't, and it's not even confusing
either. Administrative costs in private health insurance don't count as big
government, mainly because they… aren't
government.
Okay, but what about those higher administrative costs?
They're going to make health insurance more expensive, right? Ah, see, but, yeah, they're not.
What the CAP study is
talking about isn't a rise in the cost of an insurance policy, but instead, a
rise in the number of policies with high administrative costs.
So the real message here is that John McCain wants to promote health insurance plans that cost less money.
CNN: Ted Kennedy Has A Malignant Brain Tumor
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 1:28PM
CNN reports:
From the Centre for Neuro Skills website:
Re: Conservatism, R.I.P.
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 1:26PM
Packer and his sources advance some cogent criticisms of the state of conservatism, but the whole piece suffers from a failure to distinguish ideas from electoral politics. So do a lot of the books and articles about remaking the right. I think it is important to make distinctions between two trends here that are traveling together: The observation that conservatives need to adapt to a new set of issues that are different from the problems Reagan faced in 1980 and that the Gingrich Republicans faced in 1994 is correct. There need to be conservative policies that address voter concerns about health care, energy prices, and middle-class economic anxieties. Expanding the tax credit for children and shifting to payroll tax-cutting are important ways to make tax cuts relevant to a wider group of voters, even if those tax cuts can't be as easily justified in supply-side terms.
The trouble is the tendency to take this thinking a step further: conceding that essentially liberal means of addressing the country's problems are better than conservative ones. If we believe this -- or we believe that conservatism was a onetime development relevant only to winning the Cold War and ending stagflation -- we should become liberals. Let's not try to reinvent Rockefeller Republicanism under another name.
Other conservatives think conservative policies and ideas can't be sold to the American people. But that's a problem for politicians and political strategists, not conservative writers and thinkers. It is an inability to tell the difference between the two that harms conservatism as much as anything else.
Re: Conservatism R.I.P.
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 12:29PM
I read through George Packer's New Yorker article, "The Fall of Conservatism" that Stacy mentioned yesterday, and I also would take issue with it. Rather than starting with the development of intellectual conservatism in the 1940s or 1950s, or of political conservatism with Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign, Packer chooses to begin his article -- and frame his entire piece -- around Pat Buchanan and Richard Nixon crafting the Southern strategy in 1966. Most conservatives would not even consider Nixon -- who supported price controls and guaranteed income -- to be an ideological conservative. But Packer would rather taint the entire intellectual and political movement with two of its most controversial figures from the outset. All political success for conservatives, to Packer, seems to stem from dividing the country and running on a negative appeal. Only deep into the article does he get to Ronald Reagan, who he begrudgingly acknowledges "turned conservatism into a forward-looking, optimistic ideology" before criticizing him.
But what really bugs me about about the article is, through an over-reliance on quotes from David Brooks, believing in limiting the size of government gets reduced to a "dogma." Among the quotes offered by Brooks are, "The only thing that held the coalition together was hostility to government" and, on the government shutdown:
That's not to say that Packer (or some of the people he quotes) don't have any legitimate points about the difficulties facing the modern conservative movement, both politically and intellectually. I do think that conservatives need to do a better job of explaining why our principles are relevant to the challenges America faces today. But I see a big danger in conservatives adopting a myopic view, making snap judgments based a few lousy election cycles for Republicans, and concluding that they should stop worrying and come to love big government -- as long as it's family friendly. I never supported limiting the size of government as a political operative who thought it was a winning political strategy, but because I believe in individual liberty. So I'm not going to stop fighting encroachments of the state because David Brooks thinks it's un-American and David Frum has determined it's not an effective political strategy for the Republican Party.
Where's Your Fig Leaf, Son?
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 12:24PM
James Poulos has a wonderful column up today at Doublethink covering "Authority, Legitimacy, and Austin Bramwell's Fig Leaf Fallacy." Head on over to decipher your own personal level of objective intellectual nudity.
Change the Farm Bill? No We Can't!
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 11:05AM
David Brooks is second only to Michael Gerson in terms of conservative columnists who often make me feel like I'm reading Anna Quindlen with better prose, but his column today is spot on. Barack Obama has talked a big game about standing up to the special interests, but he (along with virtually everyone else in both parties) supported a bloated giveaway to strong claimants with weak claims in the form of the $307 billion farm bill. It is welfare for agribusiness; it gives federal money to farmers in the top 1 percent; it cheats taxpayers and consumers while benefiting special interests. John McCain sided with the Jeff Flakes and the Ron Pauls in voting against it. Obama the reformer was for business as usual. McCain should make this an issue in the campaign.
The Antics of Vito Not So Neato
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 10:44AM
New York Congressman Vito Fossella will not run for re-election after a drunk driving arrest and the disclosure that he fathered a child out of wedlock. Another term of Fossella family values has been vetoed.
For Gay Marriage/Against Judicial Activism
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 10:08AM
Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi, whom I interviewed here last year, has (like Tabin and Antle) waded into the gay marriage debate with a succinct little piece that begins like so:
No one can blame gay Americans for celebrating
the California Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn a
voter-approved ban on gay marriage. At first glance, the case
appears to be a key victory for same-sex marriage proponents. But,
in truth, any judicial action that strikes down a democratically
enacted law is a step in wrong direction - both tactically and
ideologically.
There is no way around
it. At some point, a majority of American voters, rather than a
slight majority of judges, must be convinced that gay marriage
deserves legal recognition. Don't get me wrong. I count myself
among the convinced. Committed relationships - socially,
emotionally, sexually - between two individuals, whatever the
gender component, is favorable to a lack of such
relationships.
If Ashton Kutcher can call it marriage, well . . . come on.
Re: Think the Democratic Race Will Be Over?
Posted by on 5.20.08 @ 12:39AM
A miraculous Hillary comeback seems almost too much to hope for at this point, James. She's outperformed all expectations simply by managing to draw it out this far.
Still, as I wrote Monday morning, Obama seems frighteningly overconfident and two recent polls show Oregon tightening, and it ain't over 'til it's over.
I've never been any good at prognostication, but for what it's worth, David Weigel of Reason called me Monday afternoon and offered to bet me dinner that Obama wins Oregon by at least 10. I took the bet, but there's no way I can really lose, since I'll be drinking free at Reason's event tonight anyway. Whatever the cost of a dinner, I'll still be ahead of the game.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Back to Rove and Alabama Sex-gate
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 4:23PM
I wrote about this case several months ago. Recap: Demo conspiracy theorists, backed by 60 Minutes and by MSNBC's Dan Abrams, charge that Karl Rove tried to help GOPer Bob Riley become governor of Alabama by sending a low-level GOP operative (who actually is not a GOP operative) to spy on then-Gov. Don Siegelman, a Dem, to get photos of him in sexual congress with somebody not his wife. The story is nuts. Now John Hinderaker at The Weekly Standard web site does an admirable job taking up the case in order again to blow it to smithereens. Read Hinderaker's piece. It's good.
Think the Democratic Race Will Be Over Tomorrow?
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 3:54PM
Think again, says Michael Barone. For my money, everything comes down to two words: Watch Oregon. A close race there keeps Hillary's hopes alive; a Hillary victory would be a debacle for Obama; an Obama landslide bakes the cake.
Re: Iran is a Threat
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 3:45PM
I tend to agree with James Kurth that Iran's sponsorship of terrorism actually provides us opportunities to deter the Islamist terrorist organizations they influence or control through deterring Tehran. (Ahmadinejad's nutty stemwinders notwithstanding, I think there are good reasons to believe the Iranian government seeks self-preservation.) Unfortunately, that requires a credible threat to hold Iran responsible for the actions of groups like Hezbollah while not replacing the Iranian government with a failed or failing state through some Iraq-like venture. That's a tough balance to reach when the next commander-in-chief will be someone either who sings "Kumbuya" or "Bomb Iran."
Examiner on Farm Manure
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 3:19PM
Today the Examiner weighed in on the dreadful farm bill, in terms sure to grab attention. (Those who voted for it are "craven" and "irresponsible." And that's just a start.) Combined with the Novak column which James posted earlier, it should serve as a wake-up call to all GOP congressmen, indeed all congressmen in general, and certainly to conservative activists. Indeed, sustaining Bush's veto of the farm bill ought to become the next conservative cause celebre along the lines of what conservatives did to block to amnesty bill (although one would hope it could be accomplished without some of the culturally insensitive rhetoric). Talk radio ought to pound on this issue. Bloggers as well. Its a big deal.Â
In Reversal, Obama Says Iran Is A Threat
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 3:04PM
I suppose some campaign staffer must have alerted Obama to the fact that if he says Iran is not a serious threat, it's one less thing he can blame on President Bush and John McCain, so now he's singing a different tune:
"Iran is a grave threat. It has an illicit nuclear program. It supports terrorism across the region and militias in Iraq. It threatens Israel's existence. It denies the Holocaust," he said. "The reason Iran is so much more powerful than it was a few years ago is because of the Bush-McCain policy of fighting in Iraq and refusing to pursue direct diplomacy with Iran. They're the ones who have not dealt with Iran wisely."
Re: Obama-Byrd '08
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 2:53PM
Well, what better way for Obama to win over voters who refuse to vote for a black candidate than with a former Klansman?
And McCain wants to run on experience? I mean, McCain may have been in a North Vietnamese POW camp when Obama was still a kid in Indonesia, sure, but Byrd joined Congress in 1953. At the time, McCain was just a bratty jock at Episcopal High School in Alexandria.
Obama-Byrd sounds like a winner to me.
Obama Channels Carter
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 2:23PM
Obama campaigning in Oregon:
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.
I suppose the fine print of "Yes We Can!" should read, "as long as we get permission from other countries."
Via Yuval Levin.
This Might Have Been Helpful Before West Virginia
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 1:49PM
Robert Byrd endorses Barack Obama. What better way to reach out to hard-working white Americans? "Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support," said Byrd.The Politico's Ben Smith discusses Byrd's evolution on racial issues and some passages about the 91-year-old West Virginia senator from Obama's The Audacity of Hope.
Forget Obama-Webb. How about Obama-Byrd?
Overconfidence?
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 11:54AM
My article today notes that Hillary Clinton got a free hour of TV time Friday in Oregon because Barack Obama refused an invitation to debate:
Oregon has an unusual mail-in election system and, as of Friday, only 22 percent of voters had sent in their ballots for tomorrow's primary. When Obama ceded Hillary that hour of free TV time, polls showed him leading in Oregon by as many as 20 percentage points. However, an American Research Group poll taken late last week indicated the race might be tightening, with Obama leading Hillary by only a 50-45 margin.
Now, another poll shows Oregon to be much closer than expected:
In Oregon, Obama (45 percent) led Clinton (41 percent) by 4 points. . . .
The Suffolk University polls were conducted May 17-18, 2008.
This is the latest survey of Oregon, and the finding that Obama's support is under 50 percent is the most interesting result. He may still win big in Oregon (he's pretty popular in Portland), but a landslide is looking less likely. Meanwhile, Obama's campaign has changed its mind about claiming the nomination tomorrow.
UPDATE 1:15 p.m.: The Boston Globe notes the same poll trend in Oregon and adds:
Clinton, on the other hand, continues to lead handily in every poll in Kentucky, which also votes Tuesday. . . . But she isn't taking any chances and hopes to win big enough to cut into Obama's lead in the total popular vote, campaigning all day in the Bluegrass State.There are roughly equal numbers of delegates at stake in Kentucky (51) and Oregon (52). Depending on turnout and the margin in each state, Hillary's net gain in the popular vote total could be as politically useful as her delegate haul.
McCain Jokes About "Oldness"
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 11:41AM
In case you missed John McCain on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, here's a clip. This is probably as good a way to address the age issue as any:
Obama Says Iran Not A "Serious Threat"
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 11:38AM
Via Jenifer Rubin, I see this video of Barack Obama making the argument -- popular in liberal foreign policy circles -- that Iran does not pose a serious threat because it is much smaller and spends a tiny amount on defense relative to the United States. What Obama does not seem able to grasp, or at least doesn't want to engage, is that in an era of asymmetric warfare, dramatic differences in size do not matter as much as they do when fighting a conventional enemy. On 9/11, 19 men armed with box cutters killed more civilians on American soil than the Soviets or Nazis did, with all of their weaponry.
Asymmetric warfare is especially effective at neutralizing size advantages when the more powerful country is civilized and seeks to protect innocent life. In a conventional war, Israel would obliterate Hamas and Hezbollah because it has a more advanced military, but when both groups are willing to launch rockets at Israel, hide behind women and children, and store weapons underneath hospitals, those groups remain formidable because Israel isn't willing to indiscriminantely bomb those areas. And what better example than Iraq -- where U.S. forces have been battling insurgents for five years -- to demonstrate why size isn't everything?
"If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance," Obama said. That would be absolutely true in a conventional war, and it would be true if America were willing to use its nuclear arsenal to level Iran, or at least use non-nuclear devices to carpet bomb its cities. But in reality, if Iran posed a serious threat and America tried to act, it would have to avoid using its most powerful weapons and be careful to prevent civilian casualties.
Iran is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. Right now, Iranian weapons are killing Americans in Iraq via insurgents and overrunning a U.S.-supported government in Lebanon via Hezbollah. They are financing Hamas, which threatens Israel, a nation that Obama has recently taken to calling an American ally. And all of this is without them having nuclear weapons.
Sure, Iran is unlikely to create a world without America or Israel. It's not likely to be able to restore the Caliphate and turn the U.S. into an Islamist state. But it sure as heck has the potential to do a lot of damage in the process of pursuing its insane goals, even if its military is puny compared to the Soviet Union.
Conservatism, R.I.P.?
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 11:26AM
The basic problem with George Packer's New Yorker piece on "The Fall of Conservatism" is that Packer conflates conservatism with Republicanism to such a degree that GOP electoral success becomes a metric of the validity of conservative ideas. Thus, Packer's subtitle:
Have the Republicans run out of ideas?
Conservative ideas were as valid in 1964 and 1974 as they are today, yet '64 and '74 were the two worst years for the GOP in the past half-century. Indeed, as any reader of Al Regnery's Upstream would know, the original seeds of what became the modern conservative movement were sown in the 1940s, when Democrats ruled the roost. The movement grew during the 1950s and anyone who has read William F. Buckley Jr.'s 1959 book Up From Liberalism knows that Buckley was a caustic critic of Eisenhower's "Modern Republicanism." (Do these New Yorker writers never read any good books?)
However woeful the current state of affairs for Republicans -- and things look pretty grim -- this is not a reflection on conservative philosophy as such, especially since GOP officeholders have hardly been paragons of conservatism in recent years.
Obama and the Politics of Fear
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 10:42AM
Barack Obama has made it a point of his candidacy to argue that Republicans have exploited the 9/11 tragedy for political gain, and he has promised, if elected president, to move us beyond the "politics of fear." He has chastized Republicans, including President Bush and John McCain in recent days, for distorting his views. But apparently, his opposition to the "politics of fear" only applies when Republicans are talking about threats to our national security. When the topic is Social Security, Obama evidently has no problem spreading fear, and lying about his opponents poisition to scare up votes among a demographic group that has given him problems in the primaries.
The AP reports, that while campaigning in Oregon:
Obama said McCain would push to raise the retirement age for collecting Social Security benefits or trim annual cost-of-living increases. Obama has rejected both ideas as solutions to the funding crisis projected for Social Security in favor of making higher-income workers pay more into the system.
"We have to protect Social Security for future generations without pushing the burden onto seniors who have earned the right to retire in dignity," he said.
Anybody who is intellectually honest knows that none of the proposals on the table to allow workers to voluntarily invest a small percentage of payroll taxes in stock/bond funds would affect todays seniors, and the Bush proposal that McCain supported explicitly took anybody over the age of 55 off of the table. For Obama go to senior citizens center and spook them into thinking that McCain is a threat to their retirement security, is a patently dishonest, dare I say, "smear." Obama claims to represent a "new kind of politics" but scaring senior citizens into thinking that the big bad Republicans are going to take away their retirement money is the oldest dirty trick in the Democratic playbook.It's worth noting, in closing, that among other approaches Obama would consider on Social Secuirty would be raising the current payroll tax cap beyond $97,000 -- this despite his pledge to not raise taxes for Americans making less than $200,000.
Mike Huckabee Runs for Veep
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 10:39AM
So Mike Huckabee wants to be John McCain's running mate, an announcement I missed because, like a good potential Huckabee voter, I was in church while the Sunday morning talk shows were broadcasting. Campaigning openly for the vice presidency doesn't always turn out well in the best of circumstances. Doing so right after joking that someone at the NRA convention pointed a gun at Barack Obama is, well, not the best of circumstances. I don't think there was any malice on Huckabee's part when he made his Obama gaffe. But I do think it shows spectactularly poor judgment and the potential for some Quayle-ian moments should he get the vice presidential nod.
Dismal Republicans
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 10:21AM
Robert Novak has a fine column about the farm bill and the pointlessness of most congressional Republicans.
Global Warming Alarmists Turn On The Pudgy
Posted by on 5.19.08 @ 9:36AM
Great, now people are gonna shoot at me with harpoons and darts and yell sh-t about my carbon waistline--the Gotham City Insider on a British survey linking obesity to global warming.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Re: Constitutionalism, California Style
Posted by on 5.18.08 @ 11:01PM
The Chapman column that Jim linked to below sums up most of my thoughts on In re Marriage Cases, but it's worth underlining the ruling's intellectual dishonesty (or sloppiness, if one is inclined to be charitable). Since California's domestic partnership law provides virtually all the substantive benefits of marriage, the only issue was whether it is constitutional to create a marriage-like institution for gays that isn't called "marriage." The Court claims that "The only out-of-state high court decision to address a comparable issue is the decision in Opinions of the Justices to the Senate" (in which, at the request of the legislature, the Massachusetts Supreme Court advised that a pending civil unions bill wouldn't be acceptable), and that in their civil union cases, "the Vermont Supreme Court and the New Jersey Supreme Court specifically reserved judgment on the analogous state constitutional question that would be presented should the legislature decide to extend to same-sex couples the substantive benefits, but not the official designation, of marriage. To date, neither of these courts has addressed this issue."
That just isn't true. The New Jersey Supreme court quite explicitly addressed the issue of whether same-sex unions have to be called "marriage" in Lewis v. Harris: "The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process," the New Jersey high court held. The In re Marriage Cases ruling actually cites a dissent from Lewis v. Harris even as it ignores and mischaracterizes the majority position in the New Jersey case.
It's obvious that Chief Justice George made his decision without studying the case law, and only then sent his clerks to find precedents he could use to reach his foregone conclusion.
Re: Next Stop, Belmont
Posted by on 5.18.08 @ 9:26PM
No Stacy, I didn't have any bread on Big Brown. I don't generally like to bet on favorites to begin with, and 1-5 odds were just ridiculous. But perhaps at Belmont, I'll pick a long shot to place, and bet on him as part of an exacta.
"Subdued" Senator Clinton
Posted by on 5.18.08 @ 3:34PM
If Hillary Clinton has really stopped her direct attacks against Barack Obama, then even she knows the Democratic nomination race is over no matter how overwhelmingly she wins Kentucky on Tuesday.
Constitutionalism, California Style
Posted by on 5.18.08 @ 2:49PM
This Los Angeles Times story about California Chief Justice Ronald George pretty much dispels the notion that the gay marriage ruling had much to do with applying the state's constitution and written law. We hear about George's gay friends, his comparison of the same-sex marriage debate to the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, his conviction that "there are times when doing the right thing means not playing it safe." All of this would be perfectly legitimate, even admirable, if George were a legislator. But he's not a legislatior. He's a judge.
For all the legal arguments judges in Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont, California and elsewhere have raised on behalf of judicially imposed same-sex marriage, their decisions ultimately hinge on policy questions: the fundamental purpose of marriage, questions of legal recognition for same-sex couples, the link between marriage and childbearing, and whether we're ultimately talking about the definition of marriage or the exclusion of some group of people from the institution of marriage. There are certainly arguments to be made for the pro-gay-marriage positions on each of these policy questions. But these questions are best left to legislators, not judges.
UPDATE: Stephen Chapman, who supports same-sex marriage as a matter of policy, has a similar take on the California decision. And while I'm linking to stuff, here's a TCS Daily piece I wrote a while back warning against overly broad defense-of-marriage amendments that impinge on freedom of contract.
- Two Weddings and a Demerol
- Barney and Friends
- Michael Ledeen on Iran and Democracy