The leading Democratic presidential candidates and Republican senators John McCain and Sam Brownback attended yesterday's meeting of the International Association of Fire Fighters. The forum was mostly uneventful as candidates lavished praise on firefighters and criticized their treatment by the government: from health care and labor issues to a lack emergency equipment. Of course the biggest story was Rudy Giuliani's absence after the union attacked his decision to reduce the number of firefighters doing recovery operations shortly after 9/11. The union endorsed John Kerry in '04 and Republicans "stand little chance of winning the union's endorsement" because of their opposition to labor initiatives.

Giuliani had his own meeting though: a 1,000-person fundraiser in Manhattan where he cast himself as a can-do candidate and said he's "impatient and singled-minded" about his goals. Meanwhile, a Quinnipac poll surveyed New Yorkers, 46 percent of whom said Mayor Bloomberg would make a better president than Giuliani.

Out in California, the state GOP is struggling with a proposal to open its presidential primary to independent voters, who would probably favor Giuliani or McCain. Michael Shear at the Washington Post writes that McCain is trying to recapture the maverick spirit of his '00 campaign now that he trails Giuliani.

On the Democratic side, the Des Moines Register has a long follow-up to a report earlier this week that quoted Sen. Barack Obama as saying "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people" in a discussion of the Middle East, a remark that's now drawing fire from some Jewish Democrats. Obama is also under scrutiny for whether he believes homosexuality is "immoral" after dodging three consecutive questions about the issue yesterday.

For the second time this week Bob Shrum's revelations have struck another Democrat. Shrum writes in his new book that Clinton lobbied to be Kerry's vice presidential pick but was denied because of her high negative ratings in polls.

Find the rest of today's election news at RCP's Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 07:32 AM | Email Author | Permalink

California's new Feb. 5 primary date has given the state's politicians new clout as they become important proxies for presidential campaigns. One especially close relationship is between Rudy Giuliani and Bill Simon, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2003 and is now Giuliani's policy director and salesman to the right. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer doesn't want his state to be left out of the spotlight and said he would like to move the primary date to Feb. 5 as well.

In Washington today, Giuliani will not attend a presidential forum hosted by the International Association of Fire Fighters as they and other first-responder groups criticize Giuliani's record from emergency preparedness to 9/11 search-and-rescue operations. As RCP was first to report yesterday: Sen. John McCain will not attend the Club for Growth meeting this month because of a prior committment in Iraq.

Speaking of Iraq, Bob Shrum's new book says John Edwards was "skeptical" about voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002. According to Shrum, Edwards voted for the war after being told by advisers he didn't have the credibility to vote against it and that he had to vote for it to be taken seriously on national security during his 2004 campaign. "It wasn't a political calculation. It was a mistake," Edwards said yesterday after claiming he had "no idea" what Shrum was talking about. Tomorrow Edwards is slated to deliver a "major policy address" on poverty in New Hampshire.

Elsewhere, Ben Smith at the Politico reports that a Democratic AIPAC member has asked Sen. Barack Obama to clarify his claim that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that he was open to the idea of loosening restrictions on direct aid to the Palestinians.

As Obama plays defense, Sen. Hillary Clinton is playing offense. This morning Clinton called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign during a "Good Morning America" interview. Yesterday Clinton reprised the "vast right-wing conspiracy" line that she originally used to describe efforts against her husband during the Lewinsky scandal. Clinton said it was "proven" in a New Hampshire court that the conspiracy exists after two Republicans pleaded guilty to charges concerning a 2002 case of Election Day phone jamming.

The rest of today's election news can be found at RCP's Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 06:29 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee of The New York Times tell us what we already knew about the GOP field, just with newer information: the party is restless. A new NYT/CBS News poll reports that 40 percent of Republicans think Democrats will win next year, 58 percent want a candidate who's "flexible" on withdrawing from Iraq, but most don't know enough about the leading candidates to make a choice.

In other news on the GOP, Sen. Chuck Hagel's deferred decision about a presidential run may be based on his hope that voters will become tired by the current field and embrace a fresher, more anti-war candidate come fall. But as former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey put it: "On the other hand, it's very difficult to run for president unless you're running for president."

Conservative Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) was made Rudy Giuliani's regional Southern chair and said the mayor isn't running to "advance any liberal social agenda." Yesterday, Giuliani told reporters he was cool to the idea of President Bush immediately pardoning Scooter Libby. "I know more about pardons than anybody needs to know about them," Giuliani said of his time running the pardon office in the Justice Department.

Mitt Romney will be on Giuliani's turf next week in New York where he'll try to raise money from big-name donors who Giuliani hasn't totally locked up. Out west Romney received the backing of a former Nevada governor at the same time the state's GOP faces an internal pushback to the early primary date it set last week.

Not to be forgotten, Democrats are trying to outfox each other. Al Sharpton asked why Sen. Barack Obama, who is against the Iraq war, supported Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary, even though Lieberman is the "biggest supporter of the war," according to Sharpton.

Should Obama or another Democratic make things close at the Democratic convention next year, Sen. Hillary Clinton will turn to "superdelegates" to make her the nominee. These "superdelegates" are mostly Congress members, governors and national committee members who act like free agents at the conventions, unlike delegates selected in the primaries and caucuses.

The Hill reports that Clinton has created a network of Democratic lobbyists and insiders three times the size of Obama's base of Beltway support. Obama has declined contributions from lobbyists for his presidential campaign and even money lobbyists may raise on behalf of others

Find the rest of today's news at our Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 07:00 AM | Email Author | Permalink

USA Today surveys the presidential field and finds candidates who reflect "broad trends in American life that also have affected the nation's schools, workplaces and neighborhoods" and has detailed polling data showing how comfortable different voting segments are with a particular type of candidate.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has used her unique position as the only female candidate to appeal to women, but Democratic female support isn't locked up -- a split personified by dueling abortion rights endorsements between Clinton and John Edwards. Both candidates and their fellow Democrats are hiring consultants from Nevada and building organizations there.

In Iowa, Sen. Barack Obama said Palestinians are suffering and if "we could get some movement among Palestinian leadership" he'd like to see some loosening of restrictions on direct aid to Palestinians. Obama's wife will play a major role in her husband's campaign, both as advisor and booster. Mrs. Obama recently hired a chief of staff and changed her work status to part time.

Today, Sen. Chuck Hagel will make a major announcement at the University of Nebraska, though it's still unclear if he'll announce for president after staying in his Omaha townhouse this weekend. In other GOP news, Sen. John McCain said "out of control" spending was the reason Republicans lost Congress last year. Rudy Giuliani continues his foray into the presidential arena by canceling all of his future paid speeches. So far neither McCain or Giuliani has been scheduled to attend the South Carolina GOP's version of Super Tuesday: three GOP county conventions on April 21. Sen. Sam Brownback sat down with Tom for an extensive interview, which you can find here.

Get the rest of today's news at our Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 04:15 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Today's newspapers have some good news for Sen. Hillary Clinton and bad news for rival Sen. Barack Obama for a change, while its being reported two Republican frontrunners have come under attack from their own.

Clinton pledged a GI bill of rights to ensure better health care for soldiers and more assistance for their families in a speech at the Center for American Progress yesterday. She also echoed FDR in calling for all Americans to be involved in the war, but "did not respond directly" to an audience question if her comments meant "we should win this war." Dana Milbank was there to satirize her, clichés and all.

A new poll from Alabama reports Clinton's lead over Obama expanded eight points since last month and their joint appearance in Selma last weekend. Meanwhile, questions still linger about Obama's stock dealings with companies backed by some of his top donors. Obama's money issues don't stop there: Lynn Sweet writes that his campaign has been secretive about recent fundraising events.

The most surprising attacks today come for Rudy Giuliani from the nation's largest firefighters union, which criticizehis decision to limit Ground Zero searches after 9/11. After the union's letter to officials was revealed, Giuliani backed out of a forum they're sponsoring next week. At the same time his opponents say it's Giuliani's turn to be subject opposition research and attacks. Mitt Romney is also being targeted by some of his own: two Massachusetts-based GOP consultants are planning national TV and radio ads against Romney.

The GOP field may expand next week when Sen. Chuck Hagel is expected to announce a presidential run at the same forum Giuliani backed out of. Discovering Hagel's intentions has been tough for reporters who say he keeps his plans and counsel closely guarded. Journalists haven't had the same problem with Fred Thompson, who's reaching out to GOP power brokers to explore an '08 run. Meanwhile, potential GOP vice-president candidate, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is expected to sign a bill that would outlaw most abortion procedures in his state.

You can find the rest of today's news at our Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 08:00 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Primaries lead today's news again after the California legislature passed a bill to move the state's primary up to Feb. 5, 2008, and now awaits "what should be a swift signature" by Gov. Schwarzenegger. Next door in Nevada, the state GOP approved a Feb. 7 caucus date -- three weeks after Democrats will caucus there and two days after about a dozen states including CA vote.

Next Monday, Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel says he will announce whether he plans to run for president. Should he run, Hagel would stand out in GOP field as the only outright opponent of the Iraq war. Some are suggesting that John McCain's "steadfast support" for the Iraq war is one of a few reasons he's being forced to play catch-up to Rudy Giuliani, who leads McCain by more than 20 points in a new WSJ/NBC News poll. The New York Times reportsthat Giuilani faces a "less obvious hurdle" to the nomination than his liberal social positions: "whether he is too much of a New Yorker for the rest of the country." In South Carolina, it's questionable whether the once-powerful Christian Coalition can play the role it once did in Republican politics now that it's faced with a changing political landscape, debt and fractured leadership.

On the Democratic side, Gov. Bill Richardson is burdened by quotes from his lieutenant governor, Diane Denish, who says she avoids being close to Richardson. The governor, she also mentioned, "pinches my neck. He touches my hip, my thigh, sort of the side of my leg." Richardson denies the allegations, but questions remain on whether his personal conduct can withstand scrutiny. Meanwhile, John Edwards said he will not attend an August debate in NV because it is being co-sponsored by Fox News.

Find the rest of today's news at our Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 08:53 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The presidential race has garnered considerable interest from the public 20 months before election day, according a new USA Today poll released today. About 20 percent of respondents said they have a "good idea" about who they'll support in '08 and 55 percent said they've at least thought about the candidates. The same poll shows that Sen. Hillary Clinton lost four points in her match-up with Sen. Barack Obama from last month and Rudy Giuliani expanded his lead over Sen. John McCain by four points. Of all the candidates, Giuliani has the highest favorability rating, with Obama second.

According to the New York Times today, in 2005 Obama bought "$50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors." Obama's campaign said his broker bought the stocks without consulting him and once Obama learned of the stocks, he sold them.

While Obama has made significant inroads with Clinton's bases of black and Jewish voters, her campaign is courting female voters with a special Web site, online ads and high-profile female backers. In the Senate, Clinton herself is pushing a bill that seeks to reduce the wage gap between men and women. Meanwhile, John Edwards is stitching up a different constituency: a hundred Iowa Democrats who formerly backed Tom Vilsack and now say they support Edwards.

There are some interesting developments in the GOP field, especially in California where Sen. John McCain is mounting a "stealth effort" to change Republican presidential nominating rules to allow independents to vote. This comes on the heels of a "barely noticed move" by CA Republicans that has made their primary "winner-take-all by congressional district" instead of the whole state -- a move seen as favoring Mitt Romney. In Florida, Romney has released a Spanish-language ad aimed at Cuban-Americans. Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Hagel's decision to attend two cattle calls this month fuels speculation of an '08 run.

For news on all of the candidates and early states, check our Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 07:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

At least 19 states with half the nation's population have "moved or are considering moving their primaries" to Feb. 5, 2008 creating a de facto national primary. Not to be outdone, New Hampshire is prepared to defend its first-in-the-nation primary from another state by moving up its date.

In the early state of Nevada, Sen. Hillary Clinton hired four more staffers making her campaign the largest in the state. Clinton made national news today by reiterating her opposition to the "Don't ask, don't tell" military service policy for gays that she originally opposed during her first Senate run. The policy was enacted by the Pentagon under President Clinton in 1993.

Clinton and opponent Sen. Barack Obama will gear up to fight for Jewish support with dueling receptions during next week's AIPAC conference in Washington. In New York, Obama received donations from rappers and Wall St. executives, and also raised money in Boston where some compared him to JFK. Down in South Carolina, Sen. Chris Dodd got some good news by winning a 100-person straw poll against Clinton and Obama.

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is tackling questions about his family life after his son was interviewed yesterday about their strained relationship. Giuliani also stepped up his campaign by selling his investment bank to eliminate potential conflicts of interests. Giuliani declined an invitation to speak to the GOP club in NY where he launched his political career, allowing Sen. John McCain to take top billing there come May. The strategist for their mutual opponent, Mitt Romney, said people are right to ask questions about Romney's faith, because very little is known about it.

Newsweek asked Mike Huckabee what he makes of his prominent Republican challengers who've moved right on social issues. Huckabee: "Some are having a late adult moment to come to a position I've held since I've been a teenager. Voters will have to determine if they're seeing the politics of conviction or convenience."

You can find the rest of today's '08 news at our Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 08:03 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The biggest news this weekend was the join appearance of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the "Bloody Sunday" commemoration in Selma, AL. The NY Times said the visit "became a proxy battle for black support" between Clinton and Obama whose candidacy represents a threat to Clinton's traditional base of black support. The Montgomery Advertiser covered every angle in their package, including Bill Clinton's induction to the Voting Rights Museum.

Donald Lambro of the Washington Times writes that Clinton's spat with Obama over David Geffen's remarks haseroded her supportamong Democrats and especially independents. In a related story, Stephen Braun and Dan Morain of the Los Angeles Times report the Clinton-Geffen dustup was merely latest episode in a rocky relationship between the mogul and the former First Couple.

Meanwhile, Josh Gerstein of the New York Sun reports on John Edwards's efforts to go after Barack Obama's popularity among young voters. Edwards' has been on a tour of college campuses pushing for wage increases among university employees, most recently in Berkely where he "sounded the civil rights theme" heard in Selma. In an interview at Beliefnet.com, Edwards talked about what his faith means to him privately and politically.

On the GOP side, the debate about Rudy Giluiani's electability continues to be "the question in Republican presidential politics at the moment," Republican consultant Whit Ayres told Dan Balz of the Washington Post.

Elswhere, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that Mitt Romney raised a hefty $3 million in Utah during the last quarter.

In other notes on 2008, Lee Bandy of The State reports that despite - or perhaps because of - the massive amount of attention already being lavished on South Carolina at this early stage, voters are tuning out the campaign for now. In the Las Vegas Sun, Michael Mishak takes a look the reasons this is being called a "race on steroids" - still with 20 months to go until the first ballot is cast.

Finally, in other '08 election news, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports on the DCCC's effort to recruit challengers to Nevada Rep. John Porter (R-03). Meanwhile, ex-GOP candidates are "calling for major changes at the NRCC," which they depict as a "rogue attack-ad shop" that went too far in accusations against Democrats during the midterms that often hurt their own candidacies.

You can find all of this and the rest at our Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 08:16 AM | Email Author | Permalink

National Journal released its '06 vote ratings, showing each party just how orthodox their presidential candidates are. Sen. Barack Obama is the most liberal Democrat running, followed by Sens. Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. For Republicans, Sen. Chuck Hagel voted more conservatively than Sens. Sam Brownback and John McCain.

In South Carolina, McCain and Brownback finished third and forth in yesterday's Republican straw poll, behind winner Rudy Giuliani and second-place finisher Rep. Duncan Hunter. Mitt Romney finished fifth. Romney and Giuilani will speak at today's CPAC conference in Washington, where conservatives attack the GOP as "big-government, free-spending coddlers of illegal immigrants." Romney tried to associate Giuliani with those positions during a New Hampshire interview by calling him "pro-gay marriage and antigun."

At today's AIPAC meeting in Chicago, Obama seeks to "convince skeptical Jewish voters that he is as reliable a supporter of Israel as any of the better-known" Democratic candidates. On Sunday, Obama and Clinton will attend the a commemoration of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, AL. The event is receiving even more attention now that Bill Clinton will join his wife and bring his "star power and popularity among African Americans" to the weekend that had been "shaping up as a showcase" for Obama's candidacy. This competition between Obama and Clinton entered into the SC Legislative Black Caucus' decision over who will keynote their spring gala.

Though the biggest news about Obama and African-Americans today is not political, but ancestoral. A "first draft" genealogical report says Obama's forebears of his white mother owned slaves in 1850s Kansas.

Notably absent from the news lately has been John Edwards, which Democratic insiders speculate is being coy to hide the strength of his fundraising. Edwards showed a little leg today with the announcement that he raised $1 million online since December -- the same amount Clinton raised in a week. Obama and McCain are trading proposals to stay in the public financing system if both men win their parties' nominations.

Staying out of the Democratic fray is Tom Vilsack, who said he hasn't decided whether to endorse one of the Democrats running for president or whether he'll challenge Sen. Chuck Grassley in 2010.

Check our Politics and Elections page for these articles and more every morning.

Posted by Justin Miller at 09:22 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Yesterday, Opinion Journal ran Steven Malanga's essay, "Giuliani the Conservative," originally published in the Winter 2007 issue of City Journal. In it, Malanga writes: "Mr. Giuliani decided to launch a welfare revolution, moving recipients from the dole to a job." So effective was Giuliani's "revolution" that by 1999 "the number of welfare recipients finding work had risen to more than 100,000 annually, and the welfare rolls had dropped by more than 600,000."

One would think that as a matter of course Giuliani strongly supported Bill Clinton's 1996 Welfare Reform Bill, which, as NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru says, "was only the most successful piece of conservative domestic reform since, well, maybe ever." Quite right.

But hang on. Ponnuru found a 1996 Giuliani speech in which he says, well, take a look:

Thank you. I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the Welfare Act that was recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton. . . . There are aspects to the Welfare Reform Bill that, as just a matter of policy, I disagree with and I think could pose very serious problems, and although I do think the bill does some good, in the end I believe it does more harm than good.

You read that right: More harm than good. To be fair to Giuliani, who was very much a welfare warrior, he said he supported the core tenets of the law. One of his problems with it, however, was "a provision that attempts to reverse an executive order that New York City has had in existence since 1988 which basically says that New York City will create a zone of protection for illegal and undocumented immigrants who are seeking the protection of the police or seeking medical services because they are sick or attempting to or actually putting their children in public schools so they can be educated."

Read the whole speech. Then take a look at what Mickey Kaus wrote during Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate run: "According to news reports at the time, Giuliani's administration actively lobbied President Clinton to get him to veto the 1996 bill." As a matter of fact, Kaus notes, Hillary's claim that "I supported welfare reforms. He [Giuliani] didn't" was true, if only when talking about the federal reforms.

If Hillary could get to the right on Giuliani on welfare back then - the one area conservatives thought Giuliani was a safe bet - then how hard would it be for the candidates in the Republican field?

Which is not to say Giuliani can't defend himself. Malanga's larger point - that Giuliani did a masterful job reforming New York's dismal welfare system - stands regardless. Still, so early in the race the Giuliani camp doesn't want to be defending his fiscal strengths with conservatives; he's going to have a hard enough time on the social ones.

Posted by Blake Dvorak at 03:24 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Richard M. Daley rolled to a sixth term as Mayor of Chicago yesterday. If Daley finishes out his term he'll make history as the longest serving Mayor in the city's history, breaking the record currently held by his father, Richard J. Daley.

(Photo: Tom Cruze/Chicago Sun-Times)

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:22 PM | Email Author | Permalink

If you thought the Clinton-Obama duel was hot, take a look at the McCain-Romney shootout in South Carolina.

The Politico's Jonathan Martin reveals how and where the battle lines are being drawn in the state GOP. The warring camps are led by their own generals: Richard Quinn, who is reprising his '00 role with Sen. John McCain and ex-George W. Bush consultant Warren Tompkins who now backs Mitt Romney. "Campaign allegiances aside, there is an unknown factor that complicates the 2000 redux storyline: Rudy Giuliani," Martin writes. But Giuliani has no organization and a McCain supporter said, "If Giuliani hadn't shoved it into higher gear, Romney may be out of single digits right now."

Tomorrow, Spartanburg, SC will hold its straw poll and even this small event is exhibiting the big fighting. The county's GOP chair is accused of "stacking the deck" for Romney and holding meetings in locations that aren't handicap-friendly. Still, all the candidates have worked feverishly to do well in the poll and create buzz even though the real primary is 11 months away. When it finally comes, McCain may utilize his new counsel who just resigned as SC's elections chief to join the campaign.

Meanwhile Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign is dealing with problems of its own creation after "inadvertently" omitting from her Senate ethics forms a family charity that's allowed Clinton and her husband to write off millions. Clinton's team is also trying to undo "days of harsh coverage" from two San Francisco-area Chinese-language newspapers that were not admitted to a fundraiser last week.

This weekend Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama will head to Selma, AL to commemorate 1965's Bloody Sunday civil rights march. Before Obama's trip, NPR asked him pointed questions about his experiences as a black presidential candidate, including if he talks the same way to black and white audiences, if he feels he has to prove himself to black leaders and if he has to dominate the black vote to win.

Soon enough all of these candidates will be talking about the immigration plans McCain and Sen. Ted Kennedy are taking up again in Washington today.

What else is flying through the political universe? Check our Politics and Elections page.

Posted by Justin Miller at 08:57 AM | Email Author | Permalink

From Pat Buchanan's column yesterday:

NATO is packing it in as a world power. NATO is little more than a U.S. guarantee to pull Europe's chestnuts out of the fire if Europeans encounter a fight they cannot handle, like an insurgency in Bosnia or Kosovo. NATO has one breadwinner, and 25 dependents.

At the end of the Cold War, internationalists like Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana declared, "NATO must go out of area, or go out of business." What Lugar meant was, with the Soviet threat lifted from Europe, NATO must shoulder more of the global burden.

But the Balkan crises of the 1990s showed that Europeans are not even up to policing their own playground. The Americans had to come in, gently push them aside and do the job. The message Europe is today sending to America, with the withdrawals from Iraq and the refusal of Italy, Germany and France to fight in Afghanistan:

"We are not going out of area again. If you Americans want to play empire, go right ahead. We will not again send our sons overseas to fight in regions of the world from which we withdrew half a century ago. You're on your own."

Where does this leave NATO? This leaves NATO as little more than a U.S. guarantee to go to war for the nations of Europe, while Europeans can be freeloading critics of U.S. policy around the world.

NATO is an expensive proposition. We maintain dozens of bases and scores of thousands of troops from Norway to the Balkans, from Spain to the Baltic republics, from the Black Sea to the Irish Sea.

What do we get for this? Why do we tax ourselves to defend rich nations who refuse to defend themselves? Is the security of Europe more important to us than to Europe?

In the early years of World Wars I and II, Europeans implored us to come save them from the Germans. We did. In the early Cold War, Europeans welcomed returning GIs who stood guard in the Fulda Gap.

Now, with the threat gone, the gratitude is gone. Now, with their welfare states eating up their wealth, their peoples aging, their cities filling up with militant migrants, they want America to continue defending them, as they sit in moral judgment on how we go about it.

Don't be surprised if 90% of U.S. troops in Europe today are gone ten years from now.

Posted by John McIntyre at 06:46 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Is all right here.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 12:31 PM | Email Author | Permalink

NYU historian Jonathan Zimmerman penned an interesting column criticizing Colts' head coach Tony Dungy. Unfortunately, he seems to have put words into Dungy's mouth to make his point.

Zimmerman is troubled by the broad social phenomenon of "born-again Christians" claiming that theirs is the only correct way to follow God. And he accuses Tony Dungy of making that claim in the wake of his Super Bowl XLI win. Zimmerman writes:

In a post-game interview on Sunday, Dungy was asked about the "social significance" of the game - that Dungy and the Chicago Bears' Lovie Smith were the first black coaches to face off in a Super Bowl. Dungy acknowledged the importance of race, but said that the coaches' shared faith was even more noteworthy.

"Lovie Smith and I [are] not only the first two African Americans," Dungy told CBS's Jim Nantz, "but Christian coaches showing that you can win doing it the Lord's way."

Huh? Weren't any prior Super Bowl coaches Christian?

By my count, every single one was. Indeed, the championship trophy that Dungy hoisted on Sunday is named after Vince Lombardi, a devout Catholic who spent two years training for the priesthood.

What distinguishes Dungy and Smith is their born-again Christianity, not their "Christianity" per se. And the problem starts when we lose sight of this distinction.

Actually, the trouble comes with his interpretation of Dungy's sentence. In reality, the sentence is ambiguous, i.e. it is consistent with several interpretations. However, not only does Zimmerman not acknowledge this ambiguity, he also selects the interpretation that paints Dungy in the most intolerant possible light (and that enables him to use the coach to make a broad point about born-again Christians).

Dungy's sentence could indeed mean: Lovie Smith and I are (a) the first two African American coaches to coach in the Super Bowl, and (b) more importantly, the first two Christian coaches to coach in the Super Bowl.

But it could also mean: Lovie Smith and I are (a) the first two African American coaches to coach in the Super Bowl, and (b) more importantly, two Christian coaches who coached in the Super Bowl.

The difference between them boils down to the extent of the word "first." Does it apply to both clauses, or does it apply to just the clause regarding African American coaches? The first interpretation indeed implies that Tony Dungy is claiming that all previous Super Bowl coaches were not Christian, but the second does not.

Again, I think the sentence is ambiguous in its construction. Taking the sentence itself as our only data point, both interpretations are consistent with the wording. But here Zimmerman has made his first mistake. He takes it to be pointing necessarily to the first interpretation, rather than to either the first or the second.

The second mistake is his failure to take in the context of the comment, namely Tony Dungy himself. The man has been in the league for many years. He is not a bomb-thrower. He seems to be loved by pretty much everybody who has ever met him: does he seem like the type of man to make this kind of statement? My answer is a firm no. I think that Dungy - who was interviewed by Jim Nance after the game (read: he had other things on his mind than the social/political/moral significance of his victory, and might therefore not be speaking with maximum precision) - meant something like the latter interpretation, but his meaning was lost in the ambiguity of the actual phrasing.

In other words, I don't think the mild-mannered Dungy was using Nance's question to offer a quickie Jeremiad about the destination of the souls of other ring-bearing coaches. Rather, I think he was doing what he was doing all week -- using questions about the race factor to follow the commandment of Matthew 28:19, to proclaim to the world that, first and foremost, he is a follower of Jesus Christ. I would note that Zimmerman ostensibly has no problem with this. Dungy "has every right to believe what he wants and to recruit others for that belief. That's a no-brainer."

I'll take this a step further to say that Zimmerman's chosen interpretation has no leg to stand on - if we take it in the context of what Dungy had recently said about previous championship coaches. Tony Dungy is - in many respect - a student of the legendary (and vastly underrated) Chuck Noll, head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1969 to 1991 (and Tony Dungy's coach in the '77 and '78 seasons, the latter of which saw the Steelers win their third Super Bowl). This was an oft-covered topic in the lead-up to the Super Bowl. Rob Musselman of the Toledo Blade has a nice write-up on the influence of Noll on Dungy, and how quick the latter is to credit the former. His "Tampa 2" defense is in many respects a modification/amplification of the '75 "Steel Curtain," but also Dungy picked up moral and strategic cues from Noll on how to manage a team. Noll was not a bomb-thrower. Noll was a coach who kept his family close to heart. Noll was an even-keel guy. And so on. Dungy learned a lot from Noll about how to lead a football team calmly and decently - both on and off the field. He believes he owes the man a lot, and during the pre-game festivities of the last few weeks, he never seemed to hestitate to lavish praise upon the coach with the most Super Bowl wins. (I can't blame him. As a Terrible Towel waving, "Steeler Polka" singing, black-and-gold bleeding, "yoi and double yoi!" Steelers fan, I can't praise Noll and the '70s Steelers enough!)

So, here's a question for Professor Zimmerman: do you think Tony Dungy really meant to imply, in that quotation, that Chuck Noll - in many respects his model for a good and decent head coach - is going to h-e-double-toothpicks? Statistically speaking, if we are talking about a "Super Bowl champion coach," most likely we are talking about Noll, who won more than anybody else. So - is that what Dungy thinks of him?

I don't think so.

I am guessing that you don't either, professor -- at least not now that you know a bit more of the story.

My inference is that Zimmerman never came across the affectionate comments Dungy had been making about Noll all week (or at least did not identify them as being a falsifying instance of his hypothesis), which in turn means that he rushed out an op-ed blasting Dungy's character without actually doing sufficient research into said character.

Professor Zimmerman: you owe Coach Dungy an apology. It seems to me that your incorrect interpretation, while surely not willful, is predicated in large part upon not doing the research that Dungy clearly deserved and that you - as a scholarly historian - know how to conduct. If you are going to characterize a man's moral/political/social beliefs, don't you think you owe him the courtesy of checking out his personal story just a little bit?

I find all of this very frustrating. Zimmerman has put words into Dungy's mouth to personalize a broad-based social-political-cultural complaint he has against a segment of the population: the "born-agains." Tony Dungy has been a Steeler, a 49er, a Chief, a Viking, a Bucaneer, and a Colt. He has never been a Straw Man.

Don't treat him as such, Professor.

Posted by Jay Cost at 06:06 PM | Email Author | Permalink

David Broder has struck a nerve with the left over this comment in his column today on the Dems' recent winter meeting:

One of the losers in the weekend oratorical marathon was retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who repeatedly invoked the West Point motto of "Duty, Honor, Country," forgetting that few in this particular audience have much experience with, or sympathy for, the military.

One of the commenters at the Washington Post calls Broder "a shill and a disgrace and a stain on humanity." Oliver Willis blasts Broder for being a "filthy liar" and calls on the Washington Post to "correct the slander he's published in their pages."

Of course, so far as I can tell from looking at his blog, Willis hasn't demonstrated any outrage over the real slander published in the Washington Post recently: William Arkin's unhinged diatribe against U.S. troops. Neither, for that matter, has any other major left wing blog that I'm aware of.

This neatly captures Broder's sentinment in an anecdotal nutshell: when someone on the left slimes the military, we get deafening silence from them. When anyone (mostly from the right, but in this case from the left), questions the left's sincerity when they say they "support the troops," we get a collective tearing of the flesh and screeches of "slander," "libel," and ad hominem attacks like "filthy liar." I'm perfectly willing to accept that left wingers like Willis do in fact support and have sympathy for the troops. It'd just be nice if they showed it once in a while by defending our troops against some the vicious attacks launched by their fellows on the left.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:14 AM | Email Author | Permalink

David Gray of the New America Foundation penned the following letter in response to my column this morning about Democratic Presidential hopefuls deciding what to do with the White House Office of Faith Based & Community Initiatives:

Funding charitable initiatives at home and abroad has great merit. Speaking strictly politically, it is interesting to see how the two different parties do, and can, outflank each other on such funding.

President Bush has gotten great credit in many circles by outflanking Democrats on the issue of funding AIDS and debt initiatives in Africa. Most people assume that Democrats would take the lead in spending on these initiatives, but the President has received much praise relative to the Democrats from unlikely sources, such as U2's singer Bono, for his spending in these areas.

On the domestic front, Democrats have an opportunity to outflank Republicans on the issue of faith based initiatives.

Tom Bevan wrote an excellent article (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/02/will_democrats_keep_the_faith.html) in RealClearPolitics on February 5 about the potential future of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives (Office) under a potential Democratic President. Mr. Bevan posits that Democratic candidates will have to grapple during the '08 campaign with what they would do with the Office if elected, and he concludes that Democrats will likely keep the office and use it as an outreach tool. Much of the Democratic base is hostile to the creation of the Office and at least some of the presidential candidates thus far opposed its creation. With most moderate potential Democratic candidates (such as Bayh and Warner) are not in the race, frontrunners like Hillary Clinton will be pulled to the left. Does that make it likely a Democratic candidate would abolish the Office?

No. I believe Mr. Bevan is correct that a Democratic President will keep the Office. Perhaps the strongest argument that Democrats will keep the Office is "leave well enough alone." If a Democrat President was ambivalent towards the Initiative, they could keep the Office but render it powerless, effectively telling their base that they are ignoring it. However, actively abolishing the Office would anger evangelical voters at a time Democrats are making some inroads in that constituency, and effectively prove the point of conservatives who say Democrats are anti-religion.

I think Mr. Bevan is correct that the Office provides an opportunity for Democrats, but not only because it could help them open a dialogue with evangelicals. One prominent criticism of the Faith-based Initiative is that it was never funded properly. Former White House staffer David Kuo argues in his recent critique Tempting Faith that the Initiative could be successful if only the White House had put more emphasis on funding it. Congress controls the purse-strings, and if Democrats retain control of Congress after the next election perhaps a Democratic Washington would invest in the Initiative. This situation provides an opening for a Democratic President to outflank Republicans and make real connections with many faith based groups that traditionally do not vote Democratic by not only embracing the White House Faith Based Initiative, but by doing one thing that even Republicans have criticized the current White House for failing to do - fund it.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:50 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Al Franken is telling members of the Minnesota delegation he's running for Senate against Norm Coleman next year. He might be a very formidable candidate, or he might end up joining Howard Dean, et al in the political flame out Hall of Fame. At this point I'd say it's a coin flip.

For one thing, Franken is a loose cannon. He's made a living by shooting his off his mouth (at times in very humorous ways), but he doesn't strike me as possessing enough self-discipline to rein things in. Over the course of a long campaign, I can see his seemingly genetic predisposition to irreverence catching up with him at some point.

The other problem is that in between bouts of humor, Franken can come across as angry and condescending - two traits don't wear well with voters over time. He also seems to have a pretty thin skin and could lose his cool, like he did at the 2004 Republican National Convention when he got into a tussle with a producer from the Laura Ingraham show on "radio row:"

Minnesota is not so blue that Franken can afford to be turning off moderates and independents with any antics, goofy or otherwise.

The Governor's race last November is a good cautionary tale for Franken: in a big Dem year, DFLer Mike Hatch led incumbent Republican Tim Pawlenty by a slim margin all the way to the end of the race until Hatch mishandled a last minute brouhaha concerning his running mate's inability to answer a question about E85 (a blend of ethanol). Angered by repeated questions, Hatch lashed out at reporters, calling one a Republican "whore." He ended up losing the race by 22,483 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast.

So will Franken be able to keep his cool? Like I said, the betting line is probably even money.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:48 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Peggy Noonan begins her salute to Chuck Hagel's courage today by writing: "We all complain, and with justice, about the falseness of much that is said in Washington, and the cowardice that leaves a great deal unsaid."

I wonder if Noonan's feeling will change after she reads this interview with Hagel in GQ Magazine in which he calls the president and members of his administration liars:

GQ: And producing a National Intelligence Estimate that turned out to be doctored. Hagel: Oh yeah. All this stuff was doctored. Absolutely. But that's what we were presented with. And I'm not dismissing our responsibility to look into the thing, because there were senators who said, "I don't believe them." But I was told by the president--we all were--that he would exhaust every diplomatic effort.

GQ: You were told that personally?
Hagel: I remember specifically bringing it up with the president. I said, "This has to be like your father did it in 1991. We had every Middle East nation except one with us in 1991. The United Nations was with us."

GQ: Did he give you that assurance, that he would do the same thing as his father?
Hagel: Yep. He said, "That's what we're going to do." But the more I look back on this, the more I think that the administration knew there was some real hard question whether he really had any WMD. In January of 2003, if you recall, the inspectors at the IAEA, who knew more about what Saddam had than anybody, said, "Give us two more months before you go to war, because we don't think there's anything in there." They were the only ones in Iraq. We hadn't been in there. We didn't know what the hell was in there. And the president wouldn't do it! So to answer your question--Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.

GQ: And you feel like you were misled?
Hagel: I asked tough questions of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld before the war: How are you going to govern? Who's going to govern? Where is the money coming from? What are you going to do with their army? How will you secure their borders? And I was assured every time I asked, "Senator, don't worry, we've got task forces on that, they've been working, they're coordinated," and so on.

GQ: Do you think they knew that was false?
Hagel: Oh, I eventually was sure they knew. Even before we actually invaded, I had a pretty clear sense of it--that this administration was hell-bent on going to war in Iraq.

GQ: Even if it meant deceiving Congress?
Hagel: That's right.

This is, quite frankly, almost indistinct from the antiwar left's "Bush Lied, Troops Died" cry we've heard for so long. Maybe this is really what Hagel believes. Fair enough.

But a bit later on in the interview Hagel says "I have never doubted the motives of those who wanted to go to war so badly." Come again? He just said the Bush administration "doctored" intelligence and lied to take us to war in Iraq knowing (or having a good idea, at least) that Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction. That sounds like "doubting the motives" of the President and his administration to me - not to mention impugning their character. Hagel appears to be trying to have it both ways, which isn't very honest, let alone "courageous."

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:50 AM | Email Author | Permalink

My brief two cents is that Bush was better than expected - though that might be because I had such exceedingly low expectations to begin with. I also think the White House purposefully undersold the foreign policy aspect of the speech. It was longer and much more robust and detailed than we were led to believe. That being said, despite the gracious touch toward Nancy Pelosi in the beginning and the rhetorical flourishes outlining the stakes in the war on terror and the consequences of failure in Iraq, Bush's speech doesn't change anything about the facts on the ground, it won't patch up any relations in Congress, nor will it build much support with him among the public.

I thought Senator Webb did a very good job in offering the Democrats' response. I wouldn't go quite so far to gush like Jay Carney that it was the best response ever, but Senator Webb's rebuttal was well-structured, concise, and clear.

And then, of course, there were the goings on the in chamber which always provide ample fodder. This year Dennis Kucinich stood out by proving he's more of a media whore than anyone ever imagined. At least Sheila Jackson Lee can use the excuse that she's from Texas.

The subtle reactions were often the most interesting: John McCain's wink and smile at Bush's mention of earmark reform, Tom Tancredo's ever-so-subtle frown and shake of the head at Bush' s call for comprehensive immigration reform.

My favorite, however, was the not so subtle gesticulations of Chuck Grassley who popped out of his seat with a huge grin and began pounding his hands together at Bush's mention in support of ethanol. Grassley looked like a five year old who'd been told he gets to spend the entire day at Chuck E. Cheese's.

More than any SOTU in recent memory, last night was a display of the pomp, circumstance, and ritual that we've come to expect of the event, but it was noticeably devoid of any real political significance. President Bush's low approval ratings, the split within his own party on Iraq, and the Democrats' control of both chambers of Congress inevitably made his speech seem lacking in force and substance. It was a decent speech on an historic night with Speaker Pelosi behind his shoulder, but today it's back to the slog.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

I can't resist pointing out this inadvertent gem that escaped White House Press Secretary Tony Snow on a conference call a few minutes ago previewing the details of President Bush's State of the Union.

Asked whether Bush's new healthcare proposal is the same type of sacred cow issue that will go the way of the President's 2005 plan to overhaul Social Security, Snow responded: "The Republican leadership made the decision not to bring up Social Security. We don't have that problem anymore."

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:52 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Here they are, as prepared for delivery:

"Some in this Chamber are new to the House and Senate - and I congratulate the Democratic majority. Congress has changed, but our responsibilities have not...We are not the first to come here with government divided and uncertainty in the air. Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for the American people."

"Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on - as long as we are willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done. Our job is to make life better for our fellow Americans, and help them to build a future of hope and opportunity - and this is the business before us tonight."

On the economy:

"A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy - and that is what we have...Unemployment is low, inflation is low, and wages are rising. This economy is on the move - and our job is to keep it that way, not with more government but with more enterprise."

On education:

"Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act...And because we acted, students are performing better in reading and math, and minority students are closing the achievement gap."

"Now the task is to build on this success, without watering down standards ... without taking control from local communities ... and without backsliding and calling it reform...And we can make sure our children are prepared for the jobs of the future, and our country is more competitive, by strengthening math and science skills."

On healthcare:

"[I]n all we do, we must remember that the best healthcare decisions are made not by government and insurance companies, but by patients and their doctors."

On comprehensive immigration reform:

"Extending hope and opportunity in our country requires an immigration system worthy of America - with laws that are fair and borders that are secure. When laws and borders are routinely violated, this harms the interests of our country... Yet...we cannot fully secure the border unless we take pressure off the border - and that requires a temporary worker program."

On energy policy:

"Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America's economy running and America's environment clean. For too long our Nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists - who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments ... raise the price of oil ... and do great harm to our economy. It is in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply - and the way forward is through technology."

On the war on terror:

"For all of us in this room, there is no higher responsibility than to protect the people of this country from danger...[T]o win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy. From the start, America and our allies have protected our people by staying on the offense. The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free flowing communications are long over. For the terrorists, life since Nine-Eleven has never been the same."

"[O]ur military commanders and I have carefully weighed the options. We discussed every possible approach. In the end, I chose this course of action because it provides the best chance of success. Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq - because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far reaching."

"The war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others. That is why it is important to work together so our Nation can see this great effort through."

"Both parties and both branches should work in close consultation. And this is why I propose to establish a special advisory council on the war on terror, made up of leaders in Congress from both political parties. We will share ideas for how to position America to meet every challenge that confronts us. And we will show our enemies abroad that we are united in the goal of victory."

On foreign policy:

"American foreign policy is more than a matter of war and diplomacy. Our work in the world is also based on a timeless truth: To whom much is given, much is required. We hear the call to take on the challenges of hunger, poverty, and disease - and that is precisely what America is doing. We must continue to fight HIV/AIDS, especially on the continent of Africa."

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:18 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Since I've commented a couple of times (here and here) on the brouhaha involving Rep. Steve Kagen (aka Dr. Multimillionaire), it's worth noting that he has finally taken his medicine and apologized for the incident in a letter to his constituents that also ran in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Sunday:

I have officially been the congressman from the 8th district for almost three weeks now. In this short time, I am even more struck than I was when I first decided to run by the enormity of the challenges we face - in Iraq, in our nation's health care system, along our borders, in our public schools and universities, in our jobs and in the record debt we risk leaving for our children and grandchildren.

Yet you have probably heard more about my appearance at last year's White House reception for new lawmakers than you have about the issues my colleagues and I are grappling with today on your behalf. And that's a shame because you deserve better.

I apologize for handling this situation as I did. I allowed this distraction to get out of hand and divert our attention from the critically important work we are doing. My mishandled attempt at humor wasn't delivered or received well. It won't happen again.

I am completely committed to bipartisan efforts to confront the issues I was sent here to address...

Seems the brash Dr. Multimillionaire has suddenly - if belatedly - discovered the virtues of bipartisanship.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:05 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has more on Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Steven Kagen, aka Dr. Multimllionaire, including this quote from the publisher of the paper that originally reported Kagen's kick-ass comments:

"I feel bad for Kagen, I do," said Jim Moran, publisher of The Scene, which reports on arts and culture and covers political issues from a liberal point of view. Moran also owns a hunting and fishing publication and the Chilton Times-Journal.

Moran said the reporter who wrote the story, Jim Lundstrom, taped Kagen's comments. The tape is "not flattering" to the congressman, said Moran, who said Kagen "sounds kind of cocky," apparently unaware a reporter was present.

"He's trying to get a reaction from the audience. You couldn't tell if (the encounters) really happened or didn't, but you're thinking, 'If it did, boy this guy's got balls, because who could do that?' " Moran said.

"Everybody wants the tape," Moran said, but Lundstrom doesn't plan to release it because "our goal isn't to bring Kagen down any further than we've already done."

Wrong. Kagen brought himself down by making those comments, and he's lucky the only reporter in the room at the time was from a left-wing alternative paper who is now willing to protect him by not making the tape public.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:54 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Peter Blake of the Rocky Mountain News has some good ground-level detail on the race to replace Republican Senator Wayne Allard.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:31 AM | Email Author | Permalink

To the extent President Bush has any legacy beyond Iraq, it may very well be the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (FBCI). Originally established by Executive Order in late January 2001, the FBCI overcame initial critics and slowly but quietly has gone about the business of expanding its influence in government over the last six years. There are now about 70 employees across a number of federal agencies who work with the FBCI to coordinate and execute programs - a group that Jay Hein, the new Director of FBCI, refers to as the "tip of the compassionate arrow."

I spoke with Hein on the phone yesterday morning about the FBCI's newest initiative: a series of roundtable discussions his office is calling "Compassion in Action." Every month the FBCI plans to bring together a group of people across a wide spectrum (from activists to think tankers to private philanthropists) to focus on a particular issue. The first roundtable convenes this morning in Washington D.C. to discuss "Grassroots Solutions for Reducing Youth Violence." Robert Woodson, founder of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, will give the keynote address and talk about his organization's Violence Free Zone Initiative in cities across the country.

Next month's roundtable will cover the topic of combating malaria in Africa. Last June President Bush announced a $1.2 billion initiative to fight the disease, and Hein says the FBCI is looking to match that amount in private contributions and to continue building a high level public-private partnership.

In March, the Compassion in Action roundtable will tackle the issue of reintegrating prisoners into society and decreasing recidivism. Hein noted that 700,000 prisoners are released every year (primarily into 65 major metros across the country) so the issue is of great concern at the local, state and federal level. The roundtable will include the release of results from a three-year "demonstration project" covering 4,500 prisoners in eleven cities. Hein said the project was a good example of how the government can work as a type of "venture capitalist" by locating and expanding successful, innovative community-based programs in cooperation with the help of foundations and the private sector.

As the interview came to an end, I asked Hein what he thought was the FBCI's greatest accomplishment over the last six years. He said that the office's biggest successes have been mostly behind the scenes in changing the way the government works: sixteen federal rules and regulations have been revised over the last six years to create a "more level playing field" for faith-based organizations to compete for federal funding. The result, according to Hein, is a "healthier marketplace" with more innovation and a more robust working relationship between the public and private sectors.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:20 AM | Email Author | Permalink

To say many Democrats across the country cringed when they heard Bush say on Wednesday night that he was "acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman.." is probably an understatement.

David Lightman of the Hartford Courant has more on the tense relationship between Lieberman and the Democratic caucus over Iraq.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:44 AM | Email Author | Permalink

There's a lot of grist in this story from today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporting that a complaint from a parent has prompted a school in Federal Way to restrict the showing of Al Gore's movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. Here's part of the text of the email complaint:

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

It seems like Hardison's email might have edited to make that last statement look as foolish as possible, but nevertheless it's the kind of statement that leaves you speechless.

But on the other extreme, check out the response of Laurie David (the co-producer of the movie) to news the school board has decided to treat global warming as a "controversial subject" thus requiring teachers who want to show Gore's film in class to also show or present an alternative view of the subject to students:

"I am shocked that a school district would come to this decision," David said in a prepared statement. "There is no opposing view to science, which is fact, and the facts are clear that global warming is here, now."

I happen to think there is merit to the argument of global warming, not only because of the science but also because a beneficial by-product of the global warming issue is to provide additional, compelling reasons for America to speed the switch to alternative fuel sources as quickly as possible, which I consider a vital component of long-term U.S. national security.

Nevertheless, for Ms. David to arrogantly assert "there is no opposing view to science" when she knows there is legitimate disagreement about the science behind the claim of global warming itself is nearly as bad as the guy who claims the world is only 14,000 years old.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:47 AM | Email Author | Permalink

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in all the chatter over Todd Purdum's profile of John McCain in Vanity Fair was this tidbit on Harry Reid:

On another flight, later that day, McCain reacts to the news that Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, has used campaign money to contribute to the employees' Christmas bonuses at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, where Reid and his wife, Landra, own a condominium. In legal terms Reid's move was dodgy at best. "Who knew he lived at the Ritz?," McCain says. "Not bad for a boy from Searchlight, Nevada." Then McCain--a former amateur boxer and inveterate gambler, whose wife is the wealthy heir to a beer-distributing franchise in Phoenix--goes on to recount how the McCains and the Reids once ran into one another in Las Vegas and went to a boxing match. It turned out that the Reids took free tickets, while the McCains paid.

"I wouldn't say this publicly," McCain tells the crowd at the private Thune fund-raiser, speaking of Reid, "but I came to the House with him in 1982 and he's always been ... " Here McCain pauses--as if suddenly realizing that what he's saying he is indeed saying publicly--and then goes on to finish the thought anyway: " ... a little on the edge."

Sounds to me like McCain is being quite collegial in his description of Senator Reid. In addition to the two ethical hiccups McCain mentions, there was also the Abramoff connection and the lucrative land deal. And this was just in 2006.

No wonder Reid was voted the 2nd most "ethically challenged" member of the Senate by those who work on the Hill - finishing right behind the now former Senator from Montana, Conrad Burns.

By the way, did I mention that Majority Leader Reid is leading the Senate in taking up "ethics reform" today?

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:27 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Jules Crittenden has some observations on Deval Patrick's inauguration, along with a prediction: "I suspect this whole governor thing will soon become a great frustration."

On a related noted, Harvard Constitutional Law Prof Charles Fried was deeply unimpressed with Patrick's handling of the gay marriage issue:

Yet Deval Patrick, our new chief magistrate, instead of showing principled leadership by urging the Legislature to vote, but to vote the proposal down, or, failing that, urging the people to reject it, has resorted to ambiguous but lawless sloganeering, urging the legislators to defeat the petition by all "appropriate" means. And if you thought that meant voting against it, Patrick goes on to say that a civil right should not be subject to a referendum, and more amazing that the question of civil rights outweighs the provisions of the Constitution providing for citizens' petitions to amend the Constitution. [snip]

I wonder whether Deval Patrick had his fingers crossed yesterday when he took the oath to uphold the Constitution.

Ouch. Not the best of beginnings.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:56 AM | Email Author | Permalink

On his blog, Dick Polman of the Philly Inquirer takes a sharp look at the Dems' "trouble on the left flank:"

The Democrats on Capitol Hill clearly face a difficult challenge. The liberal activists within their ranks are anxious to advance what they see as the moral rightness of their positions, notably a de-funding of the Iraq war. As Sheehan said yesterday, "These are not requests. These are demands." And as Deborah Sweet, who runs a pro-impeachment group, said the other day, "We've been told for many years, 12 years now, 'Wait until we get in power. Then you'll see things change.' We'll give them a couple of months or a few weeks to see what they come up with, but if they don't do something very decisive around the war and these other issues, I think there will be trouble." [snip]

The Democrats broadened their tent in the '06 elections; they captured 59 percent of all independent swing voters. Whether they can hold those voters over the next two years, while satisfying the shouters on their left flank, is another issue entirely. They probably can't snag the White House in '08 unless they find a way.

Sounds about right to me.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:38 AM | Email Author | Permalink

As Democrats take control of the Senate few, if any, have it better than Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. In addition to being number two in the leadership behind Harry Reid in Washington, Durbin is surrounded by powerful allies at home and thanks to the utter and complete futility of the Illinois Republican Party, he's unlikely to face more than a mere annoyance on his way to reelection in 2008.

Yesterday Mark Kirk of the 10th Congressional district, seen by many as the Republicans' best hope of offering Durbin a challenge in 2008, made it clear he's not gonna run. The GOP bench in Illinois is so weak there's not a single person who comes to mind (with the possible exception of Jim Edgar, who won't run) who can put up a legitimate challenge to Durbin.

So Durbin can settle in comfortably through 2014 and work to preserve a Dem majority. The only way it could get better for him, of course, is to get a Democratic President in 2008 - especially one that hails from Illinois.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:17 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The Bob Casey, Jr. era began yesterday for Pennsylvanians. Of all the Democrats elected to the Senate this year, Casey seemed to me by far to be the least impressive. In addition to being positively soporific, Casey ran a campaign that had all the same attributes as a Seinfeld episode: it was a show about "nothing." The best thing one can say about Casey is that he was disciplined enough to stay out of sight long enough to let voters to toss Rick Santorum out of office.

If you remember his nationally televised debate on Meet the Press, Casey's strategy seemed to be born to a large degree out of necessity. He struggled to put two coherent thoughts together and didn't seem to have much of a command over any issue beyond boilerplate talking points. In particular, his response to Tim Russert's question of what to do about Social Security was striking for its complete vacuity.

A week or so after the election I was doing a wrap up show on the radio and the host asked me to name someone who lost in November that I'd miss seeing in Congress. The first person who came to mind was Rick Santorum - not because I'm necessarily the biggest fan of his, but because he was a passionate and eloquent defender of many of his party's values. The Senate needs more people like Santorum, not less, and in my opinion the chamber will be a less interesting place without him in the same way I think the Senate (and the public debate in general) misses the fiery passion of a character like Paul Wellstone.

That's not to say we need 100 firebrands in the Senate. It takes all types. Perhaps Casey will turn out to be a decent Senator in his own bland, low-wattage way - though I doubt that's where the smart money is. We'll have to watch him over time and see how he does - assuming that when he's on C-Span we can stay awake long enough to form an opinion.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 12:00 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Courtesy of Drew Griffin at CNN:

According to the Taxpayers Union research, 20 lawmakers over the last 25 years have been found guilty of serious crimes while in office. All 20 received, or are still receiving, congressional retirement benefits.

The focus of Griffin's post is Chicago's own Dan Rostenkowski, convicted on charges of corruption stemming from the 1994 House post office scandal and subsequently pardoned by Bill Clinton after serving more than a year in the pen. Rosty is still collecting a cool $126,000 per year pension, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 05:14 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill hasn't even been sworn in yet, but she's already creating controversy by seeking an exemption from federal contribution limits to take advantage of a new Missouri state law that would help her more easily recoup the $1.6 million she loaned her 2004 gubernatorial campaign.

The new Missouri law, which is being challenged in court, lifted contribution limits altogether effective January 1, 2007, so McCaskill would be able to raise the entire $1.6 million - which would go straight back into her pocket - in a few large chunks or even in one very "generous" contribution from an individual or a political action committee. Federal law restricts contributions to McCaskill to $2,100 from individuals and $5,000 from PACs.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri law gives candidates 18 months to repay campaign loans, and since this one is already nearly three years old McCaskill has gotten creative to keep it on the books, thus giving her a chance of getting the money back someday. In 2005 she transferred the $1.6 million loan from her gubernatorial committee to her State Auditor committee, which restarted the 18 month clock. Last month she restructured her State Auditor committee into a "debt service" committee, resetting the clock again.

The FEC can take up to 60 days to decide whether or not to grant Senator-elect McCaskill the exemption.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:58 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Did anyone really believe the Democrats would usher in a kindler, gentler era of "bipartisanship?" What a farce. It's equally naive to think Republicans will respond to being in the minority with some new found magnanimity after watching Democrats fight tooth and nail for the last few years to derail their agenda - and still be rewarded handsomely at the polls.

That being said, the new Congress presents unique challenges and opportunities for both parties, particularly with a lame duck Republican President serving as a backdrop. Democrats face fissures between new-comers and old-timers, as well as between the hardcore liberals and moderates and conservatives in the caucus. For example, take Melissa Bean, the Democrat from Illinois' conservative 8th District, who will now have to navigate an entirely different landscape:

Serving in the majority means there will be a lot more pressure on Bean to stay on the Democratic reservation -- it's a lot easier to buck your party knowing you weren't going to prevail on the issue anyway. And it's more difficult to disagree with party leadership when they've spent millions to win and defend your seat.

"I think there's always going to be those who feel others of their party affiliation should vote with them. There are others who will say I'm independent and I'm going to represent my district," Bean said.

So what happens when push comes to shove at voting time?

"I'm going to go hang out with my Blue Dog buddies," said Bean, referencing a group of House Democrats known for being more conservative on tax and spending issues. "They're like my blockers. I don't even hang out on the aisle seats."

It's probably smart for Democrats to start by playing "small ball," tackling modest but relatively popular proposals that will minimize their own divisions and at the same time be difficult for most Republicans to oppose.

But a small-bore approach to policy is unlikely to pacify for very long a Democratic base that wants results on big-time issues like the war, repealing tax cuts, and universal healthcare. That's when Nancy Pelosi will have to earn her stripes as a leader.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Gerald Ford was a good and gracious man.

He was a dedicated and honest public servant--well liked by all who knew him personally. And I think his controversial pardon of Richard Nixon was a good idea--good in the sense that it got it off the table so the country could move on.

However, President Ford was one of a long line of American executives who presided over the decline of the U.S. in both national security and economic terms. This began under LBJ and stretched out through Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter.

In national security terms, Mr. Ford was a détentist who accommodated the Soviet Union in a number of ways, including unverifiable arms control deals that Ronald Reagan put an end to when the Gipper assumed the presidency in the 1980's.

The U.S.'s Vietnam retreat from the rooftop of our embassy in Saigon was one of the low points in the history of American foreign policy--a disgraceful action. Reagan, of course, changed all this in the 1980's with his many actions to overturn and defeat Soviet communism.

In economic policy, Mr. Ford was a traditional Republican budget balancer who had no pro-growth policies. Arthur Laffer tried to persuade Ford of the merits of supply side economics to reduce marginal tax rates and grow the American economy--but Ford, acting on advice of top economic advisor Alan Greenspan, rejected this.

June Wanniski called this root canal economics and Newt Gingrich described Ford's futile obsession with the budget deficit as simply the tax collector for the welfare state.

The combination of high inflation interacting with high marginal tax rates led to stagflation and the continued decline of the American economy. And the infamous "whip inflation now" program was nothing more than price controls and state planning.

Again, it took Ronald Reagan to reverse all this by adopting the incentive-minded growth model which slashed tax rates and reignited the U.S. economy in the 1980's - an economy whose fire still burns brightly a quarter of a century later.

At the end of the day, Ford was defeated by Jimmy Carter, who was just as baffled about stagflation and Soviet hegemony as Ford was.

Mr. Ford attempted one last play on the national political stage at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit. Reagan had soundly trounced Papa Bush in the primaries to capture the nomination. But the Papa Bush forces--led by James Baker--attempted a bizarre co-presidency that would have made Ford the vice president and divided up all the executive branch responsibilities.

Reagan himself squashed this, chose Papa Bush instead, crushed Carter in the election, and went on to become one of the greatest presidents in United States history.

Thank God for Ronald Reagan.

Posted by Lawrence Kudlow at 03:43 PM | Email Author | Permalink

This is yesterday's news - literally - but it's worth a comment. Here's how Washington Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire announced $4 billion worth of spending increases in the state budget over the next two years:

"These are good times, these are exciting times. Now is the time to make the investments in the future," Gregoire said. "If we fail to make the investments ... then the future can say, 'Shame on us.' We had the opportunity and passed it up."

It's hard to imagine a comment more illustrative of the difference between liberals and conservatives with regard to fiscal policy. Gregoire's attitude is that if there's any extra money laying around, it must be spent - I'm sorry, "invested" - by the government. Not returned to the people who own it. Not used to pay off debt. The ranking Republican on the Budget Committee said he couldn't find a single instance - not one - in which the governor reduced spending on any program in the entire state.

More from the Seattle Times story:

Gregoire's 2007-09 general-fund budget of nearly $30 billion would add nearly 3,800 new state jobs; spend about $1 billion on pay raises for teachers and state workers, $343 million for public schools and $110 million for health-care programs; and put millions more into state parks, higher education and early learning.

It also would burn through most of a projected $1.9 billion budget surplus and possibly set the state up for a shortfall of more than $600 million when lawmakers have to put together a new budget in 2009. [snip]

Gregoire brushed aside concerns about how much money she wants to spend. "I think the fact that we're headed to that size of the budget is simply an indication that we put people to work and the economy is booming," she said.

"I love my budget."

I bet. Gregoire's giddiness over engaging in a spending spree with taxpayer money should be a helpful reminder to the GOP about the importance of fiscal austerity - a concept that seems to have escaped quite a few members of the Republican party at the state and federal level in recent years.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:54 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Yesterday Georgia Republican State Rep. Len Walker offered a resolution to strip Cynthia McKinney's name off a highway in DeKalb County saying that Ms. McKinney's tenure in Congress was "marked by controversies and rhetoric that has brought embarrassment to the state of Georgia." Walker added, ""Where I come from, we don't name roads for people like Cynthia McKinney."

You may or may not find this idea silly. Fine. McKinney's behavior did cause a lot of attention, and it certainly caused sufficient embarrassment and/or disgust among voters in her district to toss her out of office in November. But she wasn't convicted of a crime or get caught in some other egregious act (a la Mark Foley), which is the sort of disgrace that normally precedes something like this.

Regardless of what you think of Walker's resolution, listen to the way McKinney's former campaign manager responded:

And as for Walker's claim that McKinney has caused embarrassment to Georgia, [John] Evans said: "He must be talking about white folks or uppity black folks."[emphasis added]

So if you're an African-American who thinks McKinney's behavior was embarrassing you're "uppity?" That's the sort of vicious slander some blacks use against members of their own community to keep them in line, whether that line is supporting someone like Cynthia McKinney or opposing other African-Americans like Michael Steele. It's an effective but truly shameful tactic.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Salena Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review lands an exclusive interview with outgoing Republican Senator Rick Santorum. Here's a bit:

During the preceding months of his re-election bid, he never wavered in his support for Rumsfeld or the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, even as both plummeted in public-opinion polls.

He chose to "run with my convictions rather than run away from them, even if they were unpopular and even though they may have cost me my seat," he said, "... because that is how important I believe that they were and still are."

He said he was unimpressed by the Iraq Study Group's report after reading a summary of its 79 recommendations, dismissing it as "not worth reading ... a bunch of contradictory suggestions, with no clear plan other than the fact that we have to get out, and that means to surrender."

He criticized news coverage of the war in Iraq, declaring: "I have always said that if World War II was covered like this war, I really, very seriously, doubt that we would have ever won that war. ... The bottom line is, the media -- and I am not saying that they are intending to do this -- but simply by what they are doing, without question, it is aiding the terrorists and their objective."

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:12 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Zachary Coile of the San Francisco Chronicle runs down a list of Speaker Pelosi's closest friends and confidants.

No real surprises on the shortlist of Congressional members (George Miller, Anna Eshoo, John Murtha, John Spratt, Rahm Emanuel, David Obey, Ike Skelton, and Charlie Rangel in the House. Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, and Chuck Schumer in the Senate), but the list of ex-members of Congress is interesting:

Ex-members of Congress -- a.k.a. the lobbyists

Tom Downey: former Long Island lawmaker and now powerful Democratic lobbyist knows Pelosi well enough that his kids call her "Aunt Nancy."

Marty Russo: a former House member from Illinois was part of Pelosi's Tuesday night dinner club; he's now CEO of Cassidy & Associates, one of D.C.'s top firms for securing earmarks.

George Crawford: Pelosi's former chief of staff, now a lobbyist at King & Spalding; he's raised eyebrows for taking two new clients, ExxonMobil and pharmaceutical giant Amgen, who will face tough scrutiny under a Pelosi-run House.

So among the small group of friends and advisers the SF Chronicle says "will be whispering in her [Pelosi's] ear as she leads a new Democratic Congress" are the CEO of a top D.C. earmarking firm and a former Chief of Staff now lobbying for ExxonMobil and Amgen.

Don't worry, though, Pelosi's going to start "draining the swamp" in DC - right after she gets done with a "4-day fete" celebrating her election as speaker that will culminate on January 5 with a big concert. Tickets? For PACs, a cool $15,000 will get you two.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:58 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Did Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm hide the details of state budget overruns until after the election was over?

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:33 AM | Email Author | Permalink

William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson handily won his run-off for Louisiana's Second Congressional District, beating State Representative Karen Carter who had taken a lot of political heat for her views on social issues.

It is one of the few times you'll see the candidate with a huge fund-raising advantage lose the race: According to published reports, Carter raised 5 times as much money as Jefferson (presumably mostly from whites despite the fact that Carter is black.)

Much has already been made of the comparison between the behavior of the Democrats (and particularly the Congressional Black Caucus) and Republicans when faced with scandal. Mark Foley was disgraced and resigned following his inappropriate (but apparently legal) communications with House pages. When Gerry Studs (a man), a Massachusetts Democrat, actually had sex with a (male) page, he not only refused to accept any censure by his Party, but he ran for re-election and won.

Jefferson is the financial version of Studs: He was caught with $90,000 of literally cold cash in his freezer, believed to be part of up to $400,000 in bribes received from a technology company who wanted Jefferson's help based on his position on the Ways and Means Committee (which is the single most powerful committee in government when it comes to government spending.)

As the newspapers note, Jefferson's victory could pose an ethics bind for the Democrats. What will be most interesting is how Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders deal with the Congressional Black Caucus ("CBC").

This is the group that supported Alcee Hastings to take over the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee despite Hastings having been impeached by the House when he was a judge. This is the group that opposed removing Jefferson from the Ways and Means committee when the bribery came to light. And I expect them to try to get Pelosi to return Jefferson to the Ways and Means Committee. I hope she does, as it would immediately destroy her claims of cleaning up the "culture of corruption" in DC.

The Congressional Black Caucus cares nothing for ethics or even the good of their Party, much less the good of the country. They care only about their own power and being able to say that they are keeping blacks in positions of influence. (It is an issue for another day, but I also believe they consistently take positions (i.e. attacking Wal-Mart, opposing Social Security reform, and opposing school choice) which are directly antithetical to the interests of Americans in general and black Americans in particular.

Jefferson's re-election reminds me most of all of is the O.J. Simpson verdict. Two guys clearly guilty of a crime, one of whom gets re-elected and the other acquitted solely because blacks believe that the system is dominated by whites and biased against blacks. It is similar to recent poll results which show that blacks distrust election results more than any other group.

The idea that a criminal should be returned to office or a murderer should go free as some sort of message against the presumably white-dominated institutions investigating or prosecuting them represents a fundamental problem in America: Blacks feel not only as if they have not achieved as much as whites but also that the game is rigged against them. What is worse black leaders, elected like CBC members or self-appointed like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, maintain their power and fund-raising ability by feeding this fear. They keep telling their constituents that without giving them money and without voting for the black guy regardless of his flaws they will lose what little ability they still have to succeed in America. And since, like it or not, most of the inner-city blacks to whom these messages are directed are less politically attuned, less affluent, and less educated on average than the average American, they are particularly susceptible to what is, in its own way, simply hate speech.

America has clearly had its racial problems, and they still exist in many places. But as black leaders and ordinary black citizens alike use them as an excuse to reward bad behavior and to equate the success of a particular black person (regardless of his crimes) to a victory for blacks as a group shows me that race relations in this country are not as good as most whites like me would believe. That said, I also do not believe they are as bad as the Cynthia McKinneys and Al Sharptons of the world want us to think.

The best thing that could happen for Congress and for the country is for the CBC or at least some prominent black leaders (and I don't mean Thomas Sowell or Ward Connerly) to say that William Jefferson does not represent them, that his re-election was not a good thing, and that he should not be returned to the Ways and Means Committee. I'm not holding my breath, and to the extent that there's a bright side in Jefferson's re-election, it is the prospect of seeing Pelosi twisting in the wind trying to decide what to do. For the record, my guess is that she will refuse to return Jefferson to the Committee.

Posted by Ross Kaminsky at 12:19 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The burning question: will Andy Dick call Jesse Jackson to apologize?

Speaking of the Good Reverend, he's at it again today in the Chicago Sun-Times arguing that President Bush should be impeached:

Whether we're Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, we all should support defending our Constitution. We need a careful consideration of whether the Constitution can or should be changed in the light of the threats we now face. If it is to be changed, then surely it should be changed by amendment, not by the unilateral acts of a president. If changes are not needed, then Bush's claims must be clearly rejected.

This is the same Jesse Jackson, mind you, who just last week argued we should shred the First Amendment and start criminalizing certain types of offensive speech. Thus, Jackson's "carefully considered" view of the Constitution supports tossing the President of the United States out of office during a time of war for defending the country against a global terrorist threat and throwing Andy Dick and Michael Richards in jail for using the n-word.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 02:29 PM | Email Author | Permalink

In today's Seattle Times Lynne Varner writes, "Diversity, as a tool of public education, is dead as a doornail." Varner continues:

The death of the racial tiebreaker will not be the end of the world. It was a diversity tool less than artfully applied. Students could self-identify their race, opening a loophole large enough for hordes of crafty parents to pass through over the years. A smart, perceptive School Board ought to be able to find other ways to compel diversity in neighborhood schools that are growing less diverse.

However, if the court turns Brown on its head by prohibiting any consideration of race in public education, narrowly tailored or not, we're in trouble. It would be an almost perverse interpretation of the 14th Amendment's equal-rights clause. Instead of recognizing the necessary use of racial groups, particularly when ensuring equal opportunity in education, the court could well adopt a colorblind mentality.

God forbid we should ever adopt a colorblind mentality in this country. Apparently we're still a long way from Martin Luther King's dream about the "content of character."

And would prohibiting racial quotas in public education really be turning Brown "on its head," or rather the logical conclusion of equal access? As George Will wrote earlier this week, "the Supreme Court has held that public secondary education 'must be available to all on equal terms.''"

In his column on the Seattle School District's law suit, Will continued:

Until June, the school district's Web site declared that "cultural racism'' includes "emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology,'' "having a future time orientation'' (planning ahead) and "defining one form of English as standard.'' The site also asserted that only whites can be racists, and disparaged assimilation as the "giving up'' of one's culture. After this propaganda provoked outrage, the district, saying it needed to "provide more context to readers'' about "institutional racism,'' put up a page saying that the district's intention is to avoid "unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.''

There's that word again. It's bad enough that some people want to compel predetermined levels of "diversity" in schools via racial quotas, but the problem is compounded by those people eschewing assimilation and suggesting that "colorblindness" is somehow undesirable. In fact, "colorblind" students are exactly what we want, and it's not going to be made any easier by folks who want to balkanize schools into mini-ethnic groups.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:27 AM | Email Author | Permalink

So Bolton is out. What a nice parting gift Republican Lincoln Chafee gave the White House, after it had gone to the mat for him in the Republican primary.

Democrats are ecstatic over taking Bolton's scalp, especially Senator Christopher Dodd, who has been on a personal jihad against Bolton from the beginning. Joseph Cirincione, from the liberal Center For American Progress, said Bolton's resignation marked "the collapse of the neoconservative policy that has guided this administration since 9/11."

I guess that's one way of looking at it. Another would be to see it from the perspective of Republican Senator George Voinovich, who originally opposed Bolton's nomination in May but came to support him a few months later after watching Bolton work. Voinovich wrote in the Washington Post in July:

I cannot imagine a worse message to send to the terrorists -- and to other nations deciding whether to engage in this effort -- than to drag out a possible renomination process or even replace the person our president has entrusted to lead our nation at the United Nations at a time when we are working on these historic objectives.

That's exactly what the Dems did for months prior to the election, despite the fact that the world didn't end when Bolton went to the UN. To the contrary, he scored a number of successes during his short tenure and did an admirable job of aggressively representing America's interests as well as defending the administration's work at Turtle Bay to conservatives who were generally much more skeptical about (and hostile towards) the UN - a point for which Bolton often gets no credit.

Predictably, the Dems and members of the liberal media are callling for President Bush to chart a more "multilateral" course with Bolton's replacement:

Majority Leader Harry Reid: Hopefully this change marks a shift from the failed go-it-alone strategies that have left America less safe. President Bush should now nominate a UN Ambassador who is ready and willing to work with our allies around the world, and who understands the pressing need to change course in Iraq."

John Kerry: 'With the Middle East on the verge of chaos and the nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea increasing, we need a United Nations ambassador who has the full support of Congress and can help rally the international community to tackle the serious threats we face."'

The NY Times editorial board: The Bush administration doesn't need to insult the world at a time when it is becoming increasingly clear how much help the United States needs to stabilize Afghanistan, extricate itself from Iraq, and curb the nuclear appetites of North Korea and Iran. Mr. Bolton's withdrawal gives the president a chance to improve his relationship with both the U.N. and Congress. There are plenty of experienced, internationalist Republicans who could get near-unanimous support in the Senate and send a signal to the world that Mr. Bush understands that the United States is not the only nation on the planet whose opinion matters.

Think about how fantastic these statements are. The UN is going to help us get out of Iraq? The virulently anti-Semitic member organizations in the UN are going to solve the Middle East crisis? An "internationalist" Republican is going to be more effective than a hard-nosed negotiator like Bolton at getting Russia and China on board with sanctions against Iran?

If you believe any of these things you might as well believe in the the tooth fairy. And here I thought "realism" was the buzzword of the day with the Democrats.

The UN, as an institution, is inherently dysfunctional and has become systemically corrupt. Yet at the same time, the UN still maintains an aura of credibility around the world and, to a lesser degree, in the eyes of the American public. So it's unrealistic, and potentially damaging, for America to talk about withdrawing or defunding the UN. There's been some talk of the United States trying to establish a new organization composed of nations who share the same values (i.e. democracy, human rights, and the rule of law). But even that idea, which seems to a me a good one in theory, is a bit unrealistic at the moment.

As a result, the best we can make of our current situation is to push the UN to reform as much as possible and to work through the current system to aggressively defend our interests and those of our allies - which is exactly what John Bolton had been doing. And he'd been doing it pretty well, too.

-------------------------------

More Editorials on Bolton: NY Daily News | NY Post | Philadelphia Inquirer | Newsday | NY Sun | Baltimore Sun | Rocky Mountain News

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:17 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Michael Barone runs down a list of recent unforced errors in Senate races by the GOP - and the Dems.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:28 AM | Email Author | Permalink

If you haven't already checked out Ethan Wallison's recollections of Nancy Pelosi , I strongly suggest you find five minutes and give it a read.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:01 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The news about Nancy Pelosi passing over Alcee Hastings for the Chairmanship of the House Intel Committee came out last night, but in this morning's Washington Post Jonathan Weisman and Peter Slevin do a final smack down of Hastings' claims of innocence in much the same way Byron York did yesterday. Weisman and Slevin write:

He [Hastings] pointed repeatedly to his 1983 acquittal by a Miami jury and wrote that it is "amazing how little importance" his critics give that verdict. The events that followed that trial, he said, "are so convoluted, voluminous, complex and mundane that it would boggle the mind."

In fact, there is a certain simplicity in the conclusion drawn by an investigating committee of five eminent federal judges, each with strong civil rights credentials. Those judges, and later more than three dozen others, concluded that Hastings lied to the Miami jury as many as 15 times to win acquittal.

So who's it going to be? The three candidates being mentioned are Silvestre Reyes, Norm Dicks, and Sanford Bishop. Rush Holt is also in the mix.

Dicks says he hasn't talked to anyone about the Intel Chairmanship and he's not interested besides.

Reyes is the next most senior member on the committee after Hastings, but one can only imagine the anger directed at Pelosi by Congressional Black Caucus, first for ousting William Jefferson and now for passing on Hastings.That would seem to make Bishop a reasonable compromise, especially since he was orgininally bounced from the Intel Committee to seat Harman.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:22 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Two interesting tidbits from this NYT profile of Chris Carney, the new Democrat representing Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District. Carney worked for Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith in the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group at the Pentagon, searching for links between Iraq and al-Qaeda:

In the summer and fall of 2002, Mr. Carney was at the center of the storm, briefing George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, on the Feith unit's assessment of any links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. At the time, the unit was creating controversy within the government for arguing that there was significant evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. [snip]

Today, Mr. Carney says he still believes there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, although he is careful not to overstate them.

"On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 was no connection and 10 was operational control, I would say it's about a 2½," he said in an interview. "It was a relationship of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer," he added. "Saddam was a savvy guy, and I think he wanted to make sure that if Al Qaeda someday became a force, that he wanted to keep his options open. I thought that there was a relationship. Whether it was strong enough to go to war, that's the president's decision."

Interesting that Carney admits what other Democrats have flatly denied in public for at least the last two years. And knowing human nature, I suspect Carney is retrospectively downgrading his assessement of Iraq-al Qaeda ties for a number of reasons. I'll bet if you asked him at the time, Carney would have rated the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda more in the 4-6 range, or perhaps even higher.

As with WMD intel, it's easy to sit back with the benefit of hindsight and say what dots we should or shouldn't have connected, and far more difficult to weigh the risks and make the hard choices.

There's also this:

But Mr. Carney is not enthusiastic about the possibility of a new Congressional investigation of prewar intelligence, which he said would be a major distraction.

Of course Carney doesn't want an investigation, since he was right in the thick of the intel operation which the Democrats have gone out of their way over the last few years to malign and exploit as incompetent and nefariously manipulative. Can you imagine the sight of Carney testifying before House Intelligence Committee and watching his fellow Democrats rake him and others over the coals for "lying" us into Iraq?

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:18 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The conventional wisdom in Washington is the Democrats have a winning issue with the public on whether the government should negotiate with the drug companies to set prices. I'm not so sure.

This exchange from Brit Hume's roundtable by Mort Kondracke illuminates how Republicans can win on this issue.

KONDRACKE: J.D. Power and Associates, the consumer satisfaction people, have surveyed this and 75 percent of seniors say that they are happy with the prescription part D, the prescription drug program as it exists.

HUME: Well, that may mean they're happy with the help they're getting, but that doesn't mean they think they're paying fair prices.

KONDRACKE: Well, they're paying lower prices than anybody expected. The average premium was expected to be $34 a month per average Medicare premium it's down to $27 a month.

HUME: And this gives them an insurance policy that pays for their drugs?

KONDRACKE: Right, I mean look, what I'm tempted to say and I will say is that, you know, Milton Freedman has passed away in more ways than one. I mean, the Democrats do not belief in the private market -- private competition. The way the Medicare prescription drug plan works is that private insurance companies negotiate formularies with these various drug companies and they have lowered the price.

The Medicare system will not negotiate the price; it will set the price, the way it sets the price for regular Medicare procedures, doctor procedures. And what you have then is government control of the pharmaceutical industry, which is going to be a disaster.

The reason that V.A. prices are lower is, it's basically a socialized medical system. You go to a V.A. doctor, you go to a V.A. hospital, you go to a V.A. pharmacy and the V.A. pharmacies only have 25 percent of the drugs that seniors actually use all the time. So, you know, it doesn't work.

The private market does work. But the Democrats don't believe in it.

This is an issue Republicans can win with the public, and more importantly, can win with voters in the middle where they lost this election. Independents and moderates understand exactly the point Kondracke is making that the private market works better the government when it comes to their health care. The Democrats will have the PR carrot of lower prices, but if Republicans can credibly counter that the lower prices will come at the expense of the quality of care and future medical advances this issue will work well with independent voters they will need to get back in the majority.

Posted by John McIntyre at 09:10 AM | Email Author | Permalink

You just gotta love Arnold. In this month's issue of Men's Journal, Schwarzenegger says, ""Sacramento was death -- until I got there!"

The Sacrmento Bee editorial page responded with appropriate sarcasm:

"Dear Gov. Schwarzenegger:

"We, the citizens of Sacramento, want to thank you for breathing life into our once-corpse-like city. You, alone, have enlivened this moribund metropolis making its heart beat and its muscles bulge. Without you, Gov. Schwarzenegger, we would be as dead as a dog in a drainage ditch.

"Some might have forgotten what it was like in the BS -- Before Schwarzenegger -- era. The streets were empty. There was darkness everywhere. Vultures perched on trees, and we all dressed in black hoods, carrying our scythes.

"But then you came, Gov. Schwarzenegger, and it all changed. The skies parted. The flowers bloomed. The sun shone down on the city. Everyone was happy.

(via the LA Times blog, Political Muscle)

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:50 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Arianna gets busy squeezin' lemons over at the Huffington Post after the defeat of Jack Murtha. By the end of the post, however, it becomes clear that Arianna's not just making lemonade, she's mixed up a serious batch of Kool-aid:

And don't shed any tears for Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi. Even though her guy lost, this was still a big win for her. A victory for taking a stand -- and for her leadership. [emphasis added]

You must be kidding, dahhling. Nancy Pelosi got her head handed to her by the Democratic caucus this morning. Trying to spin today's vote as a victory for Pelosi is a job even Baghdad Bob would turn down out of embarrassment. Not Arianna. She continues:

Because that's what real leaders do, they take stands. They listen to their hearts and follow their gut. If you only jump into the fights you're sure you can win -- notches in the W column that will look good on your political resume -- you're a hack, not someone who can move the party and the country forward. It's not about trying to have a spotless record; it's about knowing which battles are worth fighting, whatever the outcome.

Real leaders take stands. They follow their guts. Hmm, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, it's how people typically describe George W. Bush. Of course, to Arianna, when George W. Bush "takes a stand" and "follows his gut" he's a stubborn moron.

Here's one difference, though. After the votes have been counted, even George Bush can acknowledge when there's been a "thumpin.'" That's more than you can say about Arianna.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:57 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Bob Barr writes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Republican minority already facing its first important test:

Early betting is that Democrats' fear of losing the majority in 2008 if they come across as liberal extremists will trump using the power of their newly regained majority to push pet liberal projects too fast, too openly.

Whether the Republican leaders will be able to regroup sufficiently to seriously challenge the Democrats for supremacy in 2008 is a question of equal intrigue. Gingrich and his team of neophyte leaders faced the same Herculean task a dozen years ago; a challenge they met with decidedly mixed results. Now, lacking Gingrich's intellectual power and energy, and having to contend with a president in some respects more "simpatico" with many Democrats than with conservatives in his own party, congressional Republicans will truly be put to the test.

The first hand has been dealt the GOP team -- the White House has told Republicans in Congress it wants U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida , who is indebted to the Bush family for his Senate seat, to head the Republican National Committee.

If GOP leaders fall in line and ratify Martinez, it will serve as a clear signal to the country that the Republican Party has not learned its lessons; that it prefers business as usual and the comfort of minority status to new leadership and direction. Such a move will signal an embrace of the muddled and inconsistent game plan that led the party to the rocky shoals on which it now finds itself beached.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 08:59 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Joel Connelly reminds Democrats not to get too comfortable at the top:

Bill Clinton was going to the White House, eight Democrats from Washington were headed to the U.S. House of Representatives, while local pundits were bound for KCTS-TV and a panel: "Does the Republican Party have a future?"

By 1994, two Novembers later, six of those eight House Democrats had lost their seats, along with more than two dozen colleagues from the state House of Representatives.

The state Democratic Party held a holiday dinner honoring defeated House Speaker Tom Foley. The turnout -- including ringers admitted free -- 37 people.

Political winds change direction quickly. A sweeping victory is often followed by the winner's excess. The voters then administer a spanking. Experts' talk of a "watershed" election is washed away in the next cycle.

Republicans could have used similar advice after 2004 - obviously.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:43 AM | Email Author | Permalink

That's the word from the Associated Press:

Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, the first-term lawmaker who previously served in President Bush's Cabinet, will assume the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, GOP officials said Monday.

Martinez, 60, will replace current chairman Ken Mehlman, who will leave the post in January at the end of his two-year term, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting a formal announcement.

Martinez will remain in the Senate. Mike Duncan, the RNC's current general counsel and a former party treasurer, will run the day-to-day operations at the party's Capitol Hill headquarters.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 03:08 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The Washington Times reports that Michael Steele has been offered the job of replacing Ken Mehlman as Chairman of the RNC. The article also says that Karl Rove "would rather see Mr. Steele serve in the president's Cabinet, perhaps as secretary of Housing and Urban Development." It's not clear that any offer has been made, or which way Steele is leaning. But it is clear that Michael Steele has a very bright future as a national leader of the Republican Party.

In Tennesee, Harold Ford, Jr. now also has to consider his next move. He clearly a smart, talented guy who, like Steele in Maryland, acquitted himself very well in this year's campaign but came up short. The AP reports on a post-election luncheon in Chatanooga where Ford addressed his supporters and said:

"Don't cry. We will do it again, and it will come out on our side the next time," Rep. Ford said to teary-eyed supporters who mobbed him outside the Innside Restaurant on Chestnut Street.

In an interview, Rep. Ford declined to elaborate on his promise to supporters other than to say, "I'd bet on me running again."

Later on the article says Ford "would not speculate on plans beyond his last weeks in Congress." There are plenty of options open to Ford, and It'll be very interesting to see what he decides to do as he sets up possible future run for elective office.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:18 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Deb Price examines whether lawmakers are skirting the rules when they bring spouse and/or family members along on trips.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:00 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The details surrounding the Las Vegas land deal of Minority Leader Harry Reid that exploded onto the scene Tuesday afternoon may or may not turn out to be unethical. The most fascinating part of the story so far, at least to me, is the one that's been least commented on: the hang up.

Hang ups come in a few different varieties. There's the accidental "I had the phone pinched between my shoulder and my ear and hit the wrong button" hang up, and there's also the "I'm so enraged I can't stand it any more" slam the phone down hang up.

Harry's hang up was different. It was an "I'm above answering these questions from you" type of hang up, and one that could be fairly characterized as a bizarre mixture of petulance and contempt.

Let's assume for the moment that the land deal is exactly what Harry Reid says it is: a simple, straightforward, perfectly legal transaction that is being misreported or blown out of proportion. Why on earth wouldn't Reid simply state as much for the record? He could have said "we've been over all this before," or he could have said "you are way off base." Heck, he could have said just about anything. Instead, Reid hung up.

If you believe actions speak louder than words, what are we to make of the fact that the most powerful Democratic elected official in the country feels like he can just hang up in the middle of a tape recorded interview with the largest news syndicate in America?

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:50 AM | Email Author | Permalink

As a follow up to Jim Hoagland's piece in the Washington Post today about the financial squeeze we're putting on North Korea, this interview with Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt warning banks about doing business with Iran is also worth reading.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:30 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Aside from saying that as Speaker of the House one of her agenda items would be pushing through a tax increase, here is what Nancy Pelosi told the AP about the politics of Foleygate:

The potential for political gain is clear to her [Pelosi].

"It's an opportunity for growth among women" for the Democrats, she said. "They don't always vote and this could be a motivation."

With married women, in particular, it's a huge issue, she added.

Among older voters, too.

"If there's an ethical issue, seniors take a hike" and abandon politicians they blame, she said.

"If we hold onto seniors we win the election."

I still think Pelosi made a minor political mistake yesterday by rejecting the proposal to have Louis Freeh recommend improvements to the page system, and when the AP brought it up in the interview Pelosi again dimissed the idea out of hand as a Republican ploy designed to protect their majority. Maybe so, but opposing efforts to improve the page system makes Pelosi look like the one who is more concerned about playing politics with the issue.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:45 AM | Email Author | Permalink

What do former Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and former NSA Director Brent Scowcroft have in common? All three went on record this week questioning some of the assertions made by Bob Woodward in his new book, State of Denial.

In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, Mr. Edsall said he had "real problems" with one of the scenes described in the book. When pressed about the authenticity of Mr. Woodward's recollection and the larger question of his credibility, Mr. Edsall said he's "not sure Woodward makes things up." Rather, he continued: "There are significant problems in Bob's reporting techniques, and the product that he produces, that every reader of his work should be aware of."

Also on Tuesday Mr. Card said in a nationally televised interview that he was "concerned that the perception that he [Woodward] was creating may be a perception to reflect his bias, than the reality that I lived in." Mr. Card disputed Mr. Woodward's charge that he and First Lady Laura Bush pushed to oust Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, saying, "Laura Bush never said to me that she wanted to have Secretary Rumsfeld removed. Never."

On Wednesday, Mr. Scowcroft released a brief statement to the press on State of Denial which read, in part: "There are statements in the book, directly or implicitly attributed to me, that did not and never could have come from me."

Mr. Woodward's work has come under criticism before, but this time those questioning his methods and accuracy are a surprising set of strange bedfellows: a left-leaning former Washington Post colleague, a White House insider, and a Republican who has been fiercely critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq. That's quite an achievement for Mr. Woodward.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:17 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Brent Scowcroft released the following statement today (View image):

"I have spoken to Bob Woodward a number of times about a variety of subjects over the years, but I did not agree to be interviewed for his latest book. Further, there are statements in the book, directly or implicitly attributed to me, that did not and never could have come from me. I never discuss any personal conversations that I may have with President George H.W. Bush, and he never discusses with me any conversations that he has with President George W. Bush."

Scowcroft's office confirmed the authenticity of the statement and said it was released earlier today to the Associated Press. Curiously, I can find no mention of it on any AP-driven news site.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:22 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Anybody remember the penultimate paragraph from a column Paul Begala wrote on November 13, 2000? It has stuck with me as one of the truly despicable pieces of discourse of the last few years - and believe me, there have been quite a few. Here's a refresher:

Yes, Barnicle is right when he notes that tens of millions of good people in Middle America voted Republican. But if you look closely at that map you see a more complex picture. You see the state where James Byrd was lynch-dragged behind a pickup truck until his body came apart -- it's red. You see the state where Matthew Shepard was crucified on a split-rail fence for the crime of being gay -- it's red. You see the state where right-wing extremists blew up a federal office building and murdered scores of federal employees -- it's red. The state where an Army private who was thought to be gay was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, and the state where neo-Nazi skinheads murdered two African-Americans because of their skin color, and the state where Bob Jones University spews its anti-Catholic bigotry: they're all red too.

You really can't paint with a much broader brush than labeling half the country racist, anti-gay bigots and neo-nazis. What struck me about Begala's comments at the time was that he wasn't some no-name nutroot blogger crying out for attention (they didn't exist yet), he was a top strategist in the Democratic party. He remains that today - even though his penchant for most uncivil type of discourse seems as great as ever. Here is Begala concluding his first post at the new Washington Monthly Election '06 blog:

The Capitol needs a change. Hell, it needs to be fumigated. And as the stench and filth of GOP sleaze slowly oozes away, let us never forget that these slimeballs, these dirtbags, these moral midgets think they're better than you and me.

Such highmindedness. As I said, this stuff isn't coming from a member of the kooky lunatic fringe but from a top Dem political strategist and one of the people who has their hand on the rudder of the Democratic party.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 03:03 PM | Email Author | Permalink

John Fund's book on election fraud won't go out of style as long as we still have elections. He talks about the subject on the latest installment of the Glenn and Helen Show.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 10:11 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Gentleman and scholar David Adesnik of Oxblog responds to my post from yesterday with a post of his own questioning the suggestion that "un-smart partisanship is a problem mainly of the left."

A couple of quick points. First, I think David misses the mark by suggesting what I wrote could possibly be interpreted as "invective" (definitions include: 1) vehement or violent denunciation, 2) a railing accusation; vituperation, 3) an insulting or abusive word or expression). I also think he did a bit of disservice by clipping my quote to exclude the two reasons I list that drive a lot of the current partisan anger on the left. My point isn't that it's bad that the most active partisans on the left have been given a voice, but rather that the circumstances under which that voice has been found - the agonizing losses in 2000/2004 and the war in Iraq - have contributed to the tone of the partisan discourse on the left.

Did I mean to imply this type of "un-smart" partisanship is exclusive to the left? Certainly not. And it's not hard to imagine that if the blogosphere had exploded five or ten years earlier, right wing partisans would have been the ones struggling with the problem of managing their visceral dislike - hatred, even - of William Jefferson Clinton. Some still do.

But it's also hard to dispute that if you compare the largest and most highly partisan sites on both the left and the right, there is an obvious difference in style, tone and substance. Markos Moulitsas and Duncan Black seem to revel in the use of obscenities and of ridiculing people who disagree with them with terms like "wankers." Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake tosses around names like "Rape Gurney Joe" to describe Joe Lieberman - not to mention depicts him in blackface - and occasionally uses language so foul it would make a long-haul trucker blush (see her reference to Ana Marie Cox in this post as one example).

Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin and the guys at Powerline operate at very high-octane levels of conservative partisanship, to be sure, but they almost always manage to do so within the bounds of reasonable discourse. That doesn't necessarily make their ideas or argument any "smarter" than the ones that appear on left-wing sites, and they are often criticized - fairly in some cases, unfairly in others, in my opinion - for the partisanship of their views. But you certainly won't see Hugh Hewitt featuring a post on his site titled "Wanker of the Day."

David continues in his post to write something on which we can both agree:

After the discussion was over, I went over to Tom and made the following suggestion. Smart partisanship is partisanship that keeps the interest of the other side. Smart partisanship is something you disagree with, but feel that you have to read because you want to know what the best argument is for the other side.

That's the ideal I keep in my head when I blog. When I write, I keep an imaginary not-me on my shoulder that has the opposite opinion about everything. My goal isn't to get him to agree with me, but to prevent him for saying "This is a waste of time."

Of course, this method hasn't prevented lots of dumb partisanship from showing up on this blog. But I do believe that this ideal has helped make OxBlog a site that attempts to engage its critics rather than one that vents its authors' spleen.

Absolutely. I try to keep up with what Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Chris Bowers, Kevin Drum write precisely because they try (for the most part) to make smart, interesting arguments. Hopefully, they continue to read conservative-leaning sites for the same reason.

There is smart partisanship on both sides, though as I said it seems to me there is more of the invective filled, less substantive variety on the left these days. In my view that type of partisanship is easier to dismiss and in some ways counterproductive to goals of the people who practice it. But that's just my opinion.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 12:27 PM | Email Author | Permalink

That's the question we tried to tackle at the Pajamas Media event last night at the National Press Club. The gist of my remarks was that it is a very difficult, if not impossible question to answer. Indeed, I came to the conclusion that it's probably best to fall back on the answer people most often give when asked to define pornography: "you'll know it when you see it." Here are three observations I tried to make last night about partisanship.

In general, I think partisanship is a good thing. As the editor of a political web site whose mission is to seek out and publish the best political commentary, opinion, and analysis across a broad range of viewpoints, partisanship is often what gives force to an argument and makes it compelling.

That said, there is a difference between "smart partisanship" and a much less attractive alternative that relies on invective rather than argument and employs the widespread use of insults and obscenities. This is a problem the left continues to struggle with given that the new media revolution (to use a pretentious phrase) has taken place almost entirely in the last five years under the tenure of George W. Bush and given voice to a core of the most active liberal partisans who A) believe he wasn't legitimately elected in the first place - or legitimately reelected in 2004 - and who B) believe the President and his administration deliberately misled the country into the current war in Iraq.

One reason the question of "how partisan is too partisan" is almost impossible to answer is because concept of partisanship is itself too subjective. The example I cited last night was the Swift Boat Veterans from the 2004 campaign. Basically half the country - meaning the 48% who voted for John Kerry - viewed the Swift Boat Veterans as an egregiously partisan attack. The other half of the country - or at least a good portion of the 51% who ended up voting for George W. Bush - thought it was perfectly legitimate, indeed newsworthy, that more than 100 of John Kerry's fellow Vietnam vets, including nearly all of his commanders, came forward and went on record to say that he was unfit to serve as Commander in Chief for a variety of reasons.

I think most would agree that if 100-plus members of the Texas Air National Guard had come forward in the same manner to denounce George W. Bush in either 2000 or 2004, liberals would have had a much different opinion on the matter - and the media would have covered it extensively.

Another example is to look at what's currently happening in the Virginia Senate race. Many of the same folks who moaned and screeched about the Swift Boat Vets attack on John Kerry two years ago as too partisan see nothing untoward about the attack being leveled against George Allen - which essentially boils down to a "he said-she said" affair between Allen and one person who went on the record (supported by anonymous sources) alleging he used the n-word thirty-five years ago.

The final point I tried to make last night is that naked partisanship, even of the most extreme kind, is preferable to partisanship masquerading as objectivity. I was thinking specifically about Dan Rather's Memogate episode and also the recent "fauxtography" incidents during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. The idea that evidence can be manufactured, images enhanced, and that "fake but accurate" is a new standard for professional journalists are all deeply disturbing and corrosive results of partisanship and bias in the media.

In a broader sense, the whole notion of objectivity in the media has fallen away on partisan lines. Conservatives look at FOX News and find the coverage exactly as advertised ("fair and balanced") while liberals see FOX as a shameless propaganda machine and mouthpiece of the Bush administration. Liberals read the New York Times and believe they're getting an objective take on the news, conservatives see a paper thoroughly riddled by liberal partisanship engaged in an agenda-journalism crusade against the Bush administration.

There aren't any profound conclusions to draw - not by me anyway - except that when it comes to discussing "how partisan is too partisan," the left and the right will have to agree to disagree. It was a great event last night and I was honored to be included among such a distinguished panel of guests.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:54 AM | Email Author | Permalink

I attended Senator Arlen Specter's address at the National Press Club yesterday (video at C-Span) . Specter discussed the extraordinary work left on the Senate's schedule: military commissions, NSA legislation, immigration, the federal shield law, and eleven appropriations bills. Specter remarked that never in all his years had he seen so much work of such high importance left to the final days of the session.

In addition to his fifteen minute long remarks, Specter spent close to an hour answering questions from the audience covering a wide range of subjects. Here are some of the more interesting pieces of Specters remarks and responses:

On Military Commissions: As he stated on CNN the day before, Specter reiterated that while he thought the compromise on classified evidence was "correct," he remained "strongly opposed" to the provision taking habeus corpus out of the hands of the federal judiciary. Specter said the great writ is explicitly authorized under the Constitution for cases of insurrection or invasion, neither of which we currently face. He'll be introducing an amendment to that effect this week.

On the NSA Program: Specter said there had been major changes in the bill over time but that it had been refined to the point where he thought the "chances are pretty good it will pass." In fact, responding to a question about his relationship with President Bush, Specter responded that he and the President had a great relationship and that he had negotiated directly with the President on aspects of the NSA legislation.

On Immigration: Specter was clearly peeved at being bullied by the House, saying it seemed clear that "the House of Representatives doesn't think much of the bicameral system." Specter said he thought enforcement was vital and that he supported a fence, but that immigration reform shouldn't be handled in such a "piecemeal" way. As Chair of the Conference committee on immigration Specter said he remained open to finding a comprehensive solution. "If somebody has a better idea," he said, "I'm open to listen."

On Judges: Specter defended his record as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, saying the 5.3% vacancy rate in the federal court system is the lowest it's been in 20 years. He rattled off a number of successful appointments, including Pryor, Brown, Owen and Kavanaugh, as well as Alito and Roberts. Specter said he put Boyle , Haynes and Meyers right back on the Committee list after President Bush sent them back up, and he stressed that he's been running a tight ship, getting folks through the committee in a timely fashion. Specter used John Bolton's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as an example of why it's important to move expeditiously on nominations, saying, "if Bolton had testified or one day he would have been confirmed. Let them [nominees] hang out to dry and you can forget about it."

On Bolton: Specter said he supported Bolton and thought he was doing a good job. "He's smart, industrious, and cantankerous" Specter said, adding that he considered those to be "three good qualities."

On Signing Statements: Specter said President Bush's use of signing statements is "inappropriate under the Constitution." If the President likes a bill, Specter said, he should sign it. If not, he should veto it. But the President can't pick and choose which provisions of a bill he (and the rest of the executive branch) is going to follow.

On Torture: when asked about the Bush administration's use of torture, Specter challenged the premise of question. "I don't know that any officials have authorized torture," Specter said. "I don't think they have." He also referred to our current interrogation techniques as "rugged" but legal.

On the Election: when asked whether the GOP deserved 2 more years of Control, Specter said yes, for the following two reasons: 1) they've done a good job and 2) look at the alternative! Specter said his view was that the odds are "strongly in favor" of the GOP hanging onto the Senate and "somewhat in favor" of them hanging onto the House.

On Santorum: when asked what single piece of advice he'd give to Rick Santorum right now, Specter said Santorum should begin emphasizing the bill the two of them authored on stem cells. Specter was proud of the fact they had reached a compromise consistent with Santorum's religious, moral and ethical concerns and that also promoted life-saving science that would benefit millions of Americans. Specter thought that was an issue that would benefit Santorum in the election.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 12:11 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin whiffs on one of the biggest no-brainers in the history of politics.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 04:14 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Thomas Edsall has a long piece in this week's The New Republic (registration, but not subscription) which is quite good. While I don't necessarily agree with many of Edsall's points, he makes a number of astute observations:

--Many Democrats--and writers such as Thomas Frank--have called for the party to reconnect with the white, working-class, male voters it has lost over the decades. The problem with this call to populism is that the party's most influential wing is not populist; it is elitist--affluent, well educated, urban, indifferent (or hostile) to organized religion, and, on the controversial social issues of abortion and gay marriage, well to the left of the general public. The values of this elite tend to prevail in party debates and in the crafting of Democratic platforms.

--This has led to a profound realignment in U.S. politics. Once characterized mainly by the economic split of the Great Depression--a split that played to the Democrats' advantage for the better part of a generation--the parties now divide differently. Put simply, the Democratic Party has become the political arm of the subdominant, while the GOP is home to the dominant groups in American life.

-- Indeed, the pervasiveness of risk in today's economy has made many Americans feel it is safer to look out for yourself and your kin than to place your fate in the hands of a politically controlled collective. Risk is now, for better or worse, a central feature of American life--for managers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and workers. Both substantively and stylistically, Republicans speak to this prevailing mood in a way that Democrats do not.

--The Iraq war may someday be viewed as a political overreach of sorts, it seems unlikely that it will lead to a fundamental realignment of the electoral landscape. To be sure, there are plenty of unknowns that could bring about such a realignment: the approaching retirement of baby-boomers, the growing ranks of Latino voters, another terrorist attack, a serious economic decline. But, unless Democrats are rescued by a major trend or an unforeseen event, they will probably be making Karl Rove look good for many years to come.

I think Edsall's conclusion here is more or less correct. The Latino issue is a salient point and Republicans are vulnerable on both sides of this issue. If mishandled by the GOP it could help Democrats significantly in the long-term. However, as far as another terrorist attack, as long as the anti-war left is prevalent on the Democratic side, another terrorist attack is not going to help the Democrats in the long-term.

The sleeper issue is the growing investor class (I include homeownership along with stocks when talking about this group) which is a significant macro trend that strongly favors Republicans. This is one of the reasons Democrats fought so hard to prevent letting individuals have any control over the retirement money they put in Social Security. The more the public begins to rely on itself, the less need it has for government which in turn, needless to say, deeply undermines a core philosophy of the Democratic party. But the increasing tolerance for risk among that portion of the American public is a double-edged sword that could potentially lay the seeds for a Democratic revival in the event of a risk-precipitated economic collapse. In other words, another depression would be the "unforeseen event" that would end this Republican trend.

Posted by John McIntyre at 03:06 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Guess who said yesterday that President Bush should be impeached? It's not who you think.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 06:35 AM | Email Author | Permalink

With my book, The Elephant in the Room, out this week (last plug, promise), today we run a Q&A excerpted from the book with former Majority Leader Dick Armey.

Here he is on what went wrong in 1995-1996:

What went wrong with the government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996? How did the Republicans miscalculate?

Newt's position was, presidents get blamed for shutdowns, and he cited Ronald Reagan. My position was, Republicans get blamed for shutdowns. I argued that it is counterintuitive to the average American to think that the Democrat wants to shut down the government. They're the advocates of the government. It is perfectly logical to them that Republicans would shut it down, because we're seen as antithetical to government. I said if there's a shutdown, we're going to get the blame. Here's the other thing: You're heard saying rather boldly in June that you're going to shut the government in the fall. You've set the stage for the press to report that the Republicans are now doing in October what they said they'd do in June. Even if, in fact, they thought it was the right strategy to shut down the government, they should have kept their mouths shut about it. The fact of the matter is what happened was, they honestly believed that Clinton would not shut down the government. It was a fiasco that was harmful and dangerous to us because we made it that way.

How could the Republicans have done things differently in 1995?

Just keep our mouth shut, go through the year, stick to our guns, stand quietly on the ground that we had, live by continuing resolutions until we break them. What we did was we precipitated a political confrontation, and we got our butts kicked. If we had just quietly done the nation's business, and let it drag into the next year -- it did anyway -- I think Clinton would have come along. What you had to do with Bill Clinton was don't give him any schmooze. The quiet "no," this is what he couldn't deal with. If you take me out in the back street with Muhammad Ali and give me a gun, I'll shoot him, right, and nobody will notice, but if you let me get in the ring with him, he's gonna kick the tar outta me. Clinton, if you give him the political arena, he's a Muhammad Ali. Newt thought he was big enough and smart enough and strong enough to handle Clinton, so that's what it was really about. Newt was really swelled up with -- the speaker's a very important job, I'm a really important man, I'm as important as the president. He had a compelling need to prove that the speaker was as big as, or bigger than, the president. A lot of it was naïveté on our part. We'd never been there before. Quite frankly, I look back at it, we did a remarkable job for people who'd never been in control of anything. But the idea that we could meet Clinton on his ground and beat him, I just think was naïve on our part.

I tend to agree with Armey that a lot of what went wrong back then was tactical. But it's had the lasting effect of making Republicans scared to pursue small-government policies. Now, we're left with Republicans wondering if it wouldn't just be better to lose?

Posted by Ryan Sager at 08:53 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Former FEC Commissioner And Tireless Free Speech Advocate Brad Smith delivers quite the smackdown to Sen. Russ Feingold in this op-ed: "Yes, senator, McCain-Feingold does censor political speech."

A sample:

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., takes issue with The Examiner's editorial criticism of the McCain-Feingold bill and its "ban" on certain broadcast ads. The indignant senator responds that the law "doesn't ban or censor any speech."

Feingold's position is disingenuous. For just a few sentences after telling us the law "doesn't ban or censor any speech," he tells us that McCain-Feingold was necessary to prevent some voices from being "drowned out" by others. As McCain-Feingold does nothing to affirmatively create or encourage speech -- it offers no subsidies or platform for political speech -- the only way it can prevent anyone's voice from being "drowned out" is through the suppression of other speech -- and that is indeed what McCain-Feingold does, as the senator must know.

Smith goes on to dismantle the common objection from "reformers" that citizen groups are still allowed to speak by way of PACs. Suffice it to say, they shouldn't need permission, and this alternative is wholly inadequate.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 06:22 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The New York Times slimes think tanks that receive ludicrously small amounts of money from a Wal-Mart-related foundation, in a story on the front of the business section today.

As Daniel Drezner points out in the link above, these donations are tiny in the scheme of think-tank giving. And, what's more, it's simply no surprise that free-market organizations ... support the free market against attacks from labor unions.

A truly pitiful hit-piece from the Times.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 05:00 PM | Email Author | Permalink

President Bush likes to say history will judge his actions. Jonathan Rauch at The Atlantic, no psychotic Bush basher, thinks it will judge him harshly (sub required):

The question history will ask is whether Bush's presidency was as bad as Richard Nixon's or only as bad as Jimmy Carter's ... If the country seriously intends to prevent terrorism, then spying at home, detaining terror suspects, and conducting tough interrogations are practices that the government will need to engage in for many years to come. Instead of making proper legal provisions for those practices, Bush has run the war against jihadism out of his back pocket, as a permanent state of emergency. He engages in legal ad-hockery and trickery, treats Congress as a nuisance rather than a partner, and circumvents outmoded laws and treaties when he should be creating new ones. Of all Bush's failings, his refusal to build durable underpinnings for what promises to be a long struggle is the most surprising, the most gratuitous, and potentially the most damaging, both to the sustainability of the antiterrorism effort and to the constitutional order.

I think this is generally correct. While many of the individual actions the administration has taken in an aggressive fight against terrorism are defensible or outright correct, what's almost impossible to defend is why the administration has run what is likely to be a generation(s?)-long conflict like a temporary emergency. With a Republican Congress that would grant the president wide latitude to fight the war, the decision to treat the executive like a monarchy has been particularly unnecessary.

(HT: Sullivan)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 03:51 PM | Email Author | Permalink

As John McCain runs for president, grassroots groups -- many of them anti-abortion activists -- continue to have their speech squelched:

In March 2002, when President Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance "reform" bill, his signing statement noted, "Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns." So, he said, "The courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions."

But, as Bush should have known, you can't trust those no-good "activist judges" to get anything right. And, in four years since, they haven't: The law's most heinous provision - which in effect bars unions, corporations and nonprofits from criticizing incumbent politicians' votes on controversial bills on TV or radio for 60 days before a general election and 30 days before a primary - still stands.

Yet another McCain-Feingold lawsuit proceeds in D.C. today.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 08:06 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Poor Chris Dodd. His jihad against John Bolton has lost some steam over the last 12 months given the UN Ambassador's solid performance since President Bush recess appointed him last August.

Nevertheless, Dodd tells the Hartford Courant he's "arming himself for battle" against Bolton when he returns to the Senate this week. Presumably Dodd knows, but doesn't care, that a filibuster of Bolton before the midterms could provide a much needed boost to Republicans. I'd be astonished if the Dems are foolish enough to risk sacrificing even the slightest electoral advantage to assuage Dodd's ego and vindicate his petty, personal vendetta against Bolton.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 11:31 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Here's a light one going into the holiday weekend...

CNN anchor Kyra Phillips doing a little damage control after calling her sister-in-law a "control freak" on an open mic in the bathroom during a speech by the president:

As always, send nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:56 PM | Email Author | Permalink

On Tuesday, Tom linked to a John Tierney column on TimesDelete about the decline of South Park Republicans.

Reason has now reprinted that column on its Web site for free, so that it can escape from the black hole of the Times' bad business decisions.

This, from South Park co-creator Trey Parker, pretty much sums it all up: "The Republicans didn't want the government to run your life, because Jesus should. That was really part of their thing: less government, more Jesus. Now it's like, how about more government and Jesus?"

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:13 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The Washington Post's editorial on Joe Wilson today is just brutal. What a stupid waste of time all around:

It now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Will he go crawl into a hole now?

Posted by Ryan Sager at 08:32 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Before too many people flee for the holiday weekend, I wanted to alert D.C.-area RCP Blog readers that I'll be speaking Sept. 6 (next Wednesday) at the Cato Institute at noon about my new book, just out from Wiley, The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party.

You can register to attend here. There will also be a feed online.

I'll be talking about big-government conservatism and the GOP's building identity crisis -- especially what it means for the Republican Party's hold on the eight states of the interior West. And I'll be joined by the famed Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report and of course coauthor of the Almanac of American Politics, who will offer commentary.

Should be fun. You might even get a free sandwich from the think tank that understands better than any other that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:12 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Wow. Paul Hackett makes an ass of himself on national cable television with an angry, unhinged, ad hominem attack. Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid must be patting themselves on the back for forcing this guy out of the Ohio Senate race.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 07:38 AM | Email Author | Permalink

It should come as no surprise that former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami would be coming here for the annual UN anniversary celebration. And granting him a visa to do so is also no surprise. And, unfortunately, there is also no surprise in Harvard is offering Khatami a forum to spread his "message," or for our worst former president, Jimmy Carter, to be offering to meet with Khatami.

Khatami was Iran's president from 1997 to 2005, part of the time the mullahcracy was diddling the EU in the now-years-long nuclear kabuki dance. The White House - according to a Washington Post report - says that Khatami is free to meet and speak freely while visiting America. Mr. Carter has no standing to deal with Iran, so what harm can he do? Maybe the same he did in the Der Spiegel and Daily Telegraph interviews earlier this month.

Of Iran, Carter has specific memories. His presidency foundered on the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis. Perhaps he and Khatami can have a meaningful discussion. One that is, as the Post report cites a source saying, "poignant." It is a comfort to know that Carter's talk with Khatami won't be part of the "serious" talks Iran suggests it will have with us.

Posted by Jed Babbin at 01:47 PM | Email Author | Permalink

A clip from Bush's interview last night with NBC's Brian Williams in New Orleans:

The highlight is when Bush seems to describe his reading list as "epileptic." (Of course he meant "eclectic" -- he kind of starts with one word and ends with the other.)

As always, send nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:09 PM | Email Author | Permalink

James Taranto sums up the end of the Plame affair here.

This is really looking like the most stunning humiliation for the anti-Bush Left in ... well, ever.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:18 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at The Corner, noted homophobe (before you send angry emails, realize he wouldn't object to this characterization!) John Derbyshire gives a brief review of Andrew Sullivan's new book.

Despite references to "Sullivan's fundamental hedonism" and "the perennial present-centeredness of those who don't intend to reproduce themselves," it's worth a read just for the fact that -- despite it all -- these two Brits have fundamentally similar ideas about what's wrong with the GOP and how conservatism should be understood.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:48 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The Democrats' campaign against Wal-Mart seems to be in the news a lot in the last few days. So, if you're new to the issue, and want to understand the politics behind it, definitely check out this segment from the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Report:

Gigot: Democrats are picking another fight with business. At least a half dozen of the party's presidential contenders have appeared at protests across the country this summer, denouncing the retail giant Wal-Mart for what they say are substandard wages and health-care benefits. It's a rallying cry many Democrats believe will prove powerful in the midterm elections. But could it backfire?

Kim, explain this to me. This is a company that employs something like 1.3 million Americans; 127 million Americans shop there at Wal-Mart during the week. Yet Democrats think this is terrific politics. Why?

Strassel: I don't think it's terrific politics with the general public or the people who work at Wal-Mart. What it is, is it's meant to suck up to the unions who are powerful in elections. And this is a union issue. This hasn't been talked about enough in the Wal-Mart campaign. What you have here are unions that are very unhappy. They have never been able to organize the largest employer in the country. But more importantly, Wal-Mart's success, its phenomenal low-cost structure, is putting a lot of pressure on their own employers. And that is causing lost jobs, fewer stores, shutdowns. And so, what you have here are unions, who are now trying through laws, like these Wal-Mart laws you've seen around the country, and through political pressure, to force Wal-Mart to actually have to take on the high cost structure that their own employers have.

Gigot: Just so people understand this union issue. You're talking about Wal-Mart entering, now, the grocery store business, which is very heavily unionized at Kroger, Safeway, Jewel, companies like that. And they have a relatively high cost structure, so when Wal-Mart goes in, they undercut the prices. That's one reason they can charge lower prices. And these unions are upset because they hurt the employment at Kroger and Safeway.

Strassel: That's absolutely right. And it's retailers, too. There are retailers who are unionized, and Wal-Mart is not.

Henninger: Another point to keep in mind here. They have singled out Wal-Mart. But Wal-Mart is not an absolutely unique company in the United States. Their earnings come in--their profit margin was about 3.7% last year. Their share price in mid-2003 was $57; it's down to $43 now. They need to increase those margins. They operate on a thin supermarket-like margin. And if they were to do all of the things the Democrats are urging them to do, they'd be wiped out. They'd go out of business. And it's no different whether you're a Wal-Mart or Target or Costco or any other big corporation.

Riley: And I think the grocery-store point is very important here, because it reveals the other agenda here. One agenda is unionizing Wal-Mart. But if you look at the unions driving this anti-Wal-Mart campaign--the United Food Workers and the Service Employees Unions--these are not manufacturing unions. These are grocery-store workers. And their separate agenda, aside from just organizing Wal-Mart, is to stop Wal-Mart from opening more grocery stores. Period. So there are a couple agendas going on here.

My general sense is that this is ridiculously bad politics for the Democrats. The people who hate Wal-Mart already vote Democratic -- that is, urban elitists who've never been inside the store and staunch union members who can't compete with the store. The people who shop at Wal-Mart and like the bargains, on the other hand, are up for grabs. And this will only push them toward the Republicans.

Once again, special-interest politics is leading the Democrats down the wrong road.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:37 PM | Email Author | Permalink

I agree with Tom that Obama's gesture was quite something. Obviously it's part political theater, but that's a big part of what leadership is: political theater by another name.

I have to admit that I've been as impressed as anyone with Obama as an orator and retail politician. He has an appealing plain-spokenness and real charisma.

At the same time, what troubles me about him isn't just his lack of experience (though there is that), but that when you scratch the surface, there's not much there other than very traditional Democratic pabulum. He's in a position where he could be taking a real lead on an issue like, say, school choice. It's a tremendous boon to the African-American community, but the Democrats are locked in a chokehold by the teachers unions. Obama could step up to the plate and change the politics of this issue in a meaningful way that would benefit millions of minority and low-income children. Yet, he takes a pretty standard Democratic line on education.

Now, the simplest explanation here is that he basically believes the standard Democratic line on most issues. And, well, that would make sense. He's a Democrat. But if he doesn't have anything unique to say, then he's just the same-old-same-old in a more appealing wrapper. And I don't think that will take him very far.

So, I think conservatives have to respect Obama's skills, even if they find nothing on which to agree with him. But unless Obama finds some substantive way to appeal to voters right-of-center, his skills will probably end up in service to a once-bright, but ultimately failed political career.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:08 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Make sure to check out Bob Bauer on the "alarmingly ambiguous" relationship between modern "progressives" and free speech.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:58 PM | Email Author | Permalink

As offensive as Mayor Nagin's "hole in the ground" comment is in its phrasing, let me chime in with a note of not-really defense as a New Yorker: It is appalling that New York City is still left with an open wound approaching the five-year anniversary of 9/11.

The failure of the New York City and state governments to get their act together on rebuilding Ground Zero has been a governmental failure approaching the level of incompetence shown by Nagin in New Orleans (if not quite matching it). And the blame falls squarely on one man's shoulders: Gov. George Pataki. Now, Mayor Bloomberg hasn't covered himself in glory in all of this -- his obsession with other development projects around the city (such as trying to land the Olympics) has diverted attention from Ground Zero. But it is the governor who holds real power in New York state, and Pataki's incompetence and sheer laziness have led to a deadlock that still has no end in sight.

His performance at Ground Zero alone disqualifies Pataki from the presidency (if he really harbors any such delusions). Eliot Spitzer will have his shot at fixing this mess starting next year. Let's all hope he does better.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:47 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Pew has just put out its yearly survey on religion and public life. No surprise, the Democrats have a religion problem. According to the report: "Fully 69% of Americans say that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion out of schools and government."

It adds, however: "The proportion who express reservations about attempts by Christian conservatives to impose their religious values has edged up in the past year, with about half the public (49%) now expressing wariness about this." That includes 31 percent of Republicans who think conservative Christians go too far in imposing their religious values.

Forty-nine percent may still be a minority. But in a 50-50 political climate, and with the number seemingly on an upward trajectory, it's nothing at which to sneeze.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:51 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Lefties are up in arms over a series of ads being run by the Center for Union Facts (a conservative outfit opposed to unions -- particularly public-sector ones -- here's some info on them) in Michigan, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon, and on the Internet.

I'm not sure if the center is going to be effective, but its message is certainly the right one. While private sector unions have shrunk down practically to nothing, public-sector unions grow like a cancer in states like New York and California. If "cancer" seems an overly harsh metaphor, you don't live in the Empire State or have any stake in education reform.

The unions have immense political influence, and then they use that influence to make the laws more favorable to themselves, give themselves pay raises, get more political power, and then start the cycle all over again. There's no end in sight for the taxpayers, or for kids trapped in failing, decrepit public schools.

Anyway, here are some of the ads in question:

On teachers unions...

On so-called "card-check" organizing (designed to bully workers who don't want to organize a union -- the New York teachers unions are trying to foist this on non-unionized charter-school teachers)...

And here's one satirizing the benefits of unions generally...

OK, so it's really political videos II, III and IV.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:29 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Harold Ford Jr. campaigning for Senate in Tennessee, ranting against globalization:

As always, send nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 05:27 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Former FEC commissioner Brad Smith argues, rather convincingly, that the presidential public-financing system has not been a success by any measure -- despite the utterly unsupported claims by a number of columnists and reform advocates.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:02 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at OpinionJournal, Brendan Miniter weighs in on George Allen:

Mr. Allen's problem is neither that he is a vicious campaigner nor that he is a modern-day George Wallace. Rather, it is that for more than two decades in state and federal office, he has displayed a dismaying indifference to his adoptive state's racial history. And it is this political tone-deafness that is now weighing down his political future with Southern baggage.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:57 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at Andrew Sullivan's blog, guest blogger David Weigel of Reason magazine takes bemused notice of this post from National Review Online:

Bush has virtually never in his political career made a decision that he didn't think was the right thing to do and the right way to do it. Conservatives who are piling on the anti-Bush bandwagon should consider that this trait--which makes the Bush family historically great--is a historical rarity to be treasured. This administration would do well to be more concerned with its popularity -- the President and even Vice President should appear every week in press conferences and on the Sunday talk shows -- if only to strengthen the political viability of their agenda, and be able to shape the terms of debate. But it was not so long ago that Americans could only wish for a president who was obviously trustworthy, upstanding, and principled. And the day is not far off when we will think ourselves lucky to have seen this President defend the honor and integrity of his office--and the American people--for eight years.

As a fellow libertarian, let me give a slightly different take: I think the NRO poster, Mario Loyola, is right.

Small-government conservatives have many reasons to be unhappy with the Bush presidency, but that Bush hasn't done what he believes is right is distinctly not one of them. In fact, Bush has been remarkable for the number of times he's marched against the political wind: Social Security privatization, immigration liberalization and the continuation of the Iraq war are just a few examples.

Where he's gone against conservative principles is in areas where he simply doesn't have any conservative principles. For a man who came into office without a foreign policy, Bush is uniquely unengaged in domestic policy.

He sold-out small-government values on education in his first major bill as president because he really doesn't believe the government is the problem in public schools -- he thinks the federal government just needs to enforce stricter standards.

He gave free-market health-care reform short shrift and signed the Medicare prescription-drug bill because he didn't see anything particularly wrong with massively expanding the size of the welfare state.

He signed off on pork-filled highway and farm bills because reducing pork has never been a priority in his administration.

These aren't moral failings, or a failure to stand up for what he believes in. He simply doesn't believe in a number of principles that used to define conservatism.

(One act that was a moral failing, however -- where Bush knew he was doing wrong -- was signing McCain-Feingold. He admitted as much in his signing statement.)

Now, I would argue that Bush was fairly disingenuous in his 2000 presidential campaign, painting himself as a small-government conservative at crucial junctures (I go into this in my book). But, overall, I do believe Bush has shown a unique disregard for public opinion. And, yes, I think that's a positive trait.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:27 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Bob Bauer takes a look at how the FEC might vote on proposed new rules to ease the campaign-finance laws' restrictions on issue advertising. He argues that campaign-finance regulation has become so complex and unwieldy that it's no longer sound to assume they'll break down along party lines.

In this case, that might actually be good news for freedom of speech.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:12 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at The American Prospect, Ezra Klein has an interesting article (subscription required) on what he calls, "The Rise of the Republicrats." No, he's not trotting out the old warhorse about there being no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. He's looking at how the Republican Party has abandoned all pretense of being the party of small government and has instead embraced the Leviathan state -- leaving the Democrats, the usual champions of the Leviathan state, in something of a bind.

It's a subject near and dear to my heart (and I make a brief appearance in the article).

Klein argues:

The dilemma for conservatism is obvious: How can a pro-business, pro-tax cut, and anti-entitlement creed such as today's conservatism cater to this constituency [Southern, working-class, white, socially conservative] without abandoning everything it has believed for 40 years? For much of the old guard, such a radical re-imagining of conservatism may prove impossible. But some younger, less tradition-bound conservative thinkers are sketching out a pro-government philosophy that supports conventionally progressive proposals like wage subsidies and child-tax credits but places them in a new context -- as rear-guard protective actions in defense of the nuclear family. That is, whereas progressives argue for economic justice for a class or classes, these conservatives are arguing for economic favoritism for families, buttressed by government policies that encourage and advantage them as the central structure of American life. It isn't hard to see the potential appeal of that approach, and it could corner Democrats and liberals into being the party of the poor, while the GOP becomes the party of parents.

At the same time, I think it's faintly ridiculous to attribute the slide toward big-government conservatism to a younger generation "re-imagining" what conservatism means (Ross Douthat's and Reihan Salam's proposal for the GOP to become the Party of Natalism was interesting, but it isn't quite policy yet). Instead, big-government conservatism has grown out of purely cynical machinations by Republican politicians and public intellectuals who were neutered during the Gingrich years, and are now desperately trying to cling to power and relevance.

Big-government conservatism hasn't meant stealing from the rich to give to the middle class. It's meant meaningless gestures on education (No Child Left Behind), massive government giveaways to corporations and the elderly (the Medicare prescription-drug bill), and pork-laden highway and farm bills. The fact is that while there are Republican politicians who have signed on to this Protecting the Nuclear Family Through Big Government way of thinking -- chief among them Sen. Rick Santorum, who might not be with us much longer -- they don't set policy in the GOP. And if they started to, the party would split in half. Or in thirds.

It's also a strange assumption that the Democrats aren't the ones better poised to become the middle-class Mommy Party. It's only the War on Terror, and only by a few points, that has kept the GOP in power since 2002. Entitlement reform, child tax credits, middle-class "values" talk -- these are all hallmarks of the Clinton Era Democratic Party. The only thing standing in the way of the Democrats returning to power in the guise of such a party is -- well, the Democrats. It's the progressive netroots who want to purge the Democratic Party of all Clintonian (read: election-winning) tendencies domestically, and of all hawkish (read: election-winning) tendencies on foreign policy. A revival of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party (the Big-Government-Republican wing of the Democratic Party, if you will) is the only thing that will keep the Democrats from becoming, as Klein puts it, "the party of the poor." (The real danger, I might add, is becoming "the party of the poor and the pacifists.")

How the Democrats choose to react to the changes taking place in the Republican coalition and the Republican policy program is their business. (Though, I'd agree with Klein that moderately small-government voters -- particularly in the West -- are a group they should be looking to court.)

But the idea that small-government conservatism is dead, or that the libertarian wing of the GOP is just going to roll over and play dead, is mistaken. Small-government conservatism is far from obsolete. In fact, given the entitlement crisis we're all headed toward, especially we in the younger generation, it's more vital than ever. Market-based health-care reform, private Social Security accounts, school choice -- all of these ideas form the core of a policy platform that, if pursued skillfully, should appeal tremendously to the rising generation of voters, as well as to most of the GOP's traditional base. (Bush's Ownership Society actually gets at the core of this concept, but has been pursued ineptly.)

Anyway, pick up TAP and read Klein's whole, insightful article. Just don't mistake Republican incompetence, opportunism, and corruption for a new conservative ideology.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:58 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Ouch.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:44 PM | Email Author | Permalink

E.J. Dionne Jr. today bases his entire column on a claim without a shred of support: That the presidential public-funding system has "worked."

How do we know it worked? Well ... uh ... a lot of presidential candidates took the free money. Big surprise.

Bob Bauer takes on this logic this morning on his blog:

We can't really say that the system "worked" or "served the nation well" when we can't assert, because we can't know, what would have happened without this system.

But it's actually worse than that. It's not just that we "don't know" if it's worked. We do know something much more important: That the public is at best indifferent to the program, and at worst actively hostile to it. A lot of people may say they like public-financing if you word the question in a biased way in a poll, but where the rubber meets the road, in the voluntary tax check-off box, Americans let their real feelings be known: In 2005, only 9 percent of filers elected to support the Presidential Election Campaign Fund; the number's been declining for years.

If people want to defend public financing, great. But the press tends to let them get away with simply asserting things that are -- on the face of it -- patently ridiculous.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:45 AM | Email Author | Permalink

More Macaca Madness ...

Here's ABC News doing a segment on the George Allen's '08 campaign ender:

It features an interview with S.R. Sidarth, who seems to be having fun milking his 15 minutes.

As always, send nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 05:14 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Our good friend Duane over at RadioBlogger has a picture of the large ad Nicole Kidman and many other Hollywood celebs took out in the LA Times today. It is worth taking a look, as the ad is impressive and very encouraging. The language is clear and unambiguous and signed by over 80 Hollywood luminaries.

We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die. We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs.

BuzzTracker has this as the number one blogged story today and the response from the far left netroots crowd is sadly typical. This from Booman Tribune:

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. Hollywood drank the kool-aid.

Apparently actors Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Danny De Vito, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton and William Hurt, and Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi cannot read the New Yorker.

I also condemn the taking of civilian life by organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. I'm just not dense enough to blame them for the deaths of over 700 Lebanese people. Those deaths fall firmly on the plate of Dick Cheney, Ehud Olmert, and George W. Bush. They took those lives months ago when they agreed to use the next provocation to destroy Lebanon and its infrastructure. Thankfully, Olmert resisted Cheney's request that they destroy Syria's infrastructure and kill their civilians too.

I'm no sympathizer with Islamic terrorism. I just don't like being lied to. Apparently, Nicole Kidman doesn't mind.

The Dems' problem is there is no leadership to pull the party back from the brink, and the only one who has the stature in the Party to pull it off -- Bill Clinton -- can't because of his wife's bid for the '08 nomination.

Posted by John McIntyre at 03:28 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Over at TAPPED there's a further discussion of this Allen "macaca" comment. I've got to say, the more I hear, the more I think this looks really bad for Allen. For one, Allen speaks French, which makes it quite doubtful he didn't know what the word meant.

You can also read the rest of what Garance Franke-Ruta has to say at TAPPED about the uses of the word.

That he said this on camera -- on a camera being held by his opponent's staffer -- well, this guy is simply beyond stupid.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:15 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Heather MacDonald sounds more than a bit like Andrew Sullivan in defending "skeptical" conservatives in The American Conservative:

Skeptical conservatives--one of the Right's less celebrated subcultures--are conservatives because of their skepticism, not in spite of it. They ground their ideas in rational thinking and (nonreligious) moral argument. And the conservative movement is crippling itself by leaning too heavily on religion to the exclusion of these temperamentally compatible allies.

Conservative atheists and agnostics support traditional American values. They believe in personal responsibility, self-reliance, and deferred gratification as the bedrock virtues of a prosperous society.

But, then she adds this: "They view marriage between a man and a woman as the surest way to raise stable, law-abiding children."

I'm not sure where opposition to gay marriage fits in as an intrinsic part of non-religion-based conservatism.

Still, the article is worth a read.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:46 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Why do campaign-finance "reform" advocates hate civil dialogue so? Those who follow these matters might remember how Sen. John McCain famously snarled at FEC Commissioner Brad Smith (a dogged "reform" opponent) and refused to shake his hand at a public hearing. Well, here's another bit of "reformer" pleasantness for the ages.

Bob Bauer -- noted progressive campaign-finance attorney and campaign-finance-regulation skeptic -- co-wrote an op-ed last week for the New York Times, expressing, well, skepticism about campaign-finance regulation. Bauer's piece was thoughtful, well-reasoned and engaged in no ad hominem attacks against reformers.

The response came in the Sunday NYT letters section: a ludicrous bit of name-calling and hyperbole from Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 and Trevor Potter of the Campaign Legal Center.

Here's a sample:

Mr. Baran and Mr. Bauer...have facilitated efforts by their clients to undermine the campaign finance laws, and then opposed efforts in Congress to deal with the resulting scandals. ...It is no surprise that these lawyers representing different political parties tell us they meet periodically for cozy lunches to discuss their mutual disdain for the campaign finance laws.

On his blog today, Bauer issues an appropriate -- and, let me say, scorching -- response, calling the "reformers" on their refusal to engage in civilized debate and their reliance on a Black Hat / White Hat narrative to make up for their utter lack of rigor or reason:

Wertheimer and Potter are counting, once again, on the Grand Reform Narrative to ease their way past a close examination of the reform record. This is a Narrative that slights argument and appeals with great success to the instinctive acceptance, in the press and among some members of the public, that politics is corrupt; that reformers are laboring valiantly in the public interest to clean it up; and that they must contend always with tireless resistance from the beneficiaries of the corrupt order. It is a labor-saving argument: it summons forth the fear of demons and excuses any attention to reasoned exposition. "Reform" is good: how could it not be, since it is "reform"?

Bauer goes even further in exposing the sleaze and hypocrisy these "reform" groups perpetrate. While they've tried to ruin Bauer's legal practice for having the audacity to publicly question the "reform" program, they go merrily about finding ways to help Sen. McCain solicit soft money without running afoul of his own laws.

(Those not familiar with McCain's antics as relates to the Reform Institute should familiarize themselves. The group, which can accept soft money, is essentially an appendage of the McCain operation -- hiring his staffers between campaigns and working toward his greater glory generally. He's, not surprisingly, been known to do favors for corporations and individuals who donate to it. I wrote up the scandal in The Post here.)

Anyway, it's nice to see once again that those who support "reform" can only operate from a commitment to sweetness and light, while those who oppose it are ravenous beasts, feasting on the flesh of our dying democracy. Campaign-finance regulation has sure brought us a more civilized public square.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:55 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Is the 1976 Buckley decision (which opened the door to modern campaign-finance regulation) a "superprecedent" or just a big mess.

Bob Bauer reports, you decide.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 02:38 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Raise your hand if you want compulsory voting?

No, seriously. You'll be fined if you don't raise your hand.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:33 PM | Email Author | Permalink

On to more trivial news, for the moment, it looks like both Lowe's and Target have caught on to a tactic that used to be Wal-Mart's specialty: If a city wants to make it hard to do business, just don't do business there.

Chicago's city council passed a bill last month that requires "big-box" retailers to pay their workers $10 in wages and $3 in benefits by 2010. Mayor Daley can still veto it -- and he should. Otherwise, big-box retailers are 100 percent within their rights to refuse to be bullied by economically illiterate local legislative bodies.

Meanwhile, ACORN is going after Target with a letter-writing campaign (ouch -- that ought to bring them to their knees).

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:18 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Shouldn't Larry David and wife have been driving a Prius?

Posted by Ryan Sager at 01:37 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Jan Baran and Robert Bauer have a must-read op-ed in the New York Times today (not, thankfully, in the TimesDelete black hole).

Baran is a lawyer for Republicans and Bauer a lawyer for Democrats. In their piece, they lay out the case that campaign-finance reform has accomplished precisely nothing (except fattening their own wallets, as politicians pay them to navigate our increasingly Byzantine system).

Here's a sample:

Our law practices, which have grown tenfold since 1981, have certainly prospered from the seemingly unappeasable demand for reform. But it cannot be said that others -- those active in the political process, or the public at large -- have done nearly as well. The law is not only increasingly complex but, in many cases, counterintuitive, requiring ever more nuanced clarifications from regulators.

Some reformers genuinely believe that it is possible to drive money out of politics and still observe the command of the First Amendment. Others see practical advantages. Many politicians favored McCain-Feingold because it prohibited certain advertising that mentioned opponents' names, or because it authorized them to raise more money if they were challenged by wealthy, free-spending opponents. The bill also attempted to strike at "negative" political speech -- known to ordinary Americans by its other name, "criticism"-- by requiring candidates to publicly approve their ad content.

In 2004, the first election year during which McCain-Feingold was in effect, negative campaigns overwhelmed the government's efforts to discourage them, and fund-raising records fell beneath the frenzied pace of collections by candidates, parties and interest groups.

By 2005, a rash of scandals, including the Abramoff and Cunningham cases, had answered the question of whether this legal crusade would quash corruption.

This is an extremely important point. Campaign-finance-regulation champions pretend that their "reforms" have "worked" -- though no one can define what having "worked" might even mean. They constantly lower the bar and declare themselves to have cleared it.

Meanwhile, government is as corrupt as ever, and incumbents are more entrenched than ever.

Given how ineffective Sen. John McCain's trademark domestic policy reform has been, I might even propose an '08 campaign slogan: A reformer without results.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:04 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Conservative radio host Paul Smith defends Rep. John Dingell in today's Detroit News:

Congressman John Dingell and I are from completely different political worlds. We often disagree about the best way to get to the same goal. We both love our country deeply, and, we both despise terrorists and terrorism.

Seems odd that I would have to make those last two points clear to anyone who knows either one of us or knows that we are friends.

I did not see or hear the "Flash Point" interview with Devin Scillian that has caused some folks to question Dingell's patriotism or loyalty to America's allies; or even worse, that he would support Hezbollah over Israel.

I didn't need to. I have 50 years of his public record to go by.

Read the rest to see the examples Smith cites.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 09:15 AM | Email Author | Permalink

E.J. Dionne may have a special affinity for declaring various ends to conservatism. But that doesn't mean he's wrong. Make sure to check out his piece today (also linked on the main page) on "The End of the Right?"

Sure, the GOP's in trouble in 2006. But its problems go much, much deeper than that. Under George W. Bush, conservatism has ceased to mean much of anything at all. It's not about small government, it's not about fiscal discipline, it's not about states' rights, it's not even about competent war leadership. And, as Dionne says, it reached something of a low last night with the Republicans trying to swap an increase in the minimum wage (which Republicans are supposed to hate as a government intrusion into the economy -- and an economically illiterate one at that) for a repeal of the estate tax (a good idea, certainly, but far from a top priority).

How has Bush led us to such incoherence? Andrew Busch, author of Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right, put it well in an op-ed on OpinionJournal earlier this week: "Mr. Bush has neglected the critical task--carried out by Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich--of advancing a public argument that connects his otherwise disparate policy decisions to a broader philosophical framework. He has failed to articulate the philosophical argument for limited government that once defined the Republican Party."

Busch argues, correctly I believe, that coherent argument is much more important to the GOP than to the Democrats. They want to give away free stuff; that's easy to understand. We want to take away free stuff, lower taxes, and strengthen the economy and civil society; and that takes a lot more explaining. Without coherent argument or any sense of conservative first principles, Bush has repeatedly given away the store in the name of compassionate conservatism: with the worthless No Child Left Behind law, with the extravagant Medicare prescription-drug bill, etc., etc.

How to come back? Busch outlines a conservative plan based on:

• holding the fiscal line on both taxes and spending;

• re-energizing a public philosophy of constitutionalism and limited government;

• supporting a measured cultural traditionalism;

• incrementally introducing mechanisms for greater choice and accountability into existing public programs;

• concerted campaigning in the black and Hispanic communities on the basis of moral and religious standards, as well as entrepreneurship;

• continuing to promote the vitality of civil society.

It all sounds pretty good to me. There's no time or way to bring the Republican Party around by this fall. But as we head into the 2008 primary season, conservatives concerned about the direction of the party should keep these concepts in mind.

Just because Republicans have been winning elections doesn't mean conservatism is triumphant. In fact, given the compromises that have been made to get here, true conservatism may well be in its worst shape ever.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:06 AM | Email Author | Permalink

James Webb, Democratic Senate candidate in Virginia versus Republican George Allen, finds upon entering politics that campaign-finance reform has not worked.

His solution: more campaign-finance reform.

Brilliant.

(via The Note)

Posted by Ryan Sager at 09:09 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Make sure to check out Peggy Noonan's column today at OpinionJournal (also linked from the main page). While she semi-defends the Cuba embargo, she also ... well, admits it's been a catastrophic failure and says now is the time to lift it. I have to agree on both counts.

Here's the argument:

What to do now?

How about this: Treat it as an opportunity. Use the change of facts to announce a change of course. Declare the old way over. Declare a new U.S.-Cuban relationship, blow open the doors of commerce and human interaction, allow American investment and tourism, mix it up, reach out one by one and person by person to the people of Cuba. "Flood the zone." Flood it with incipient prosperity and the insinuation of democratic values. Let Castroism drown in it.

...

Allow Americans to go to Cuba. Allow U.S. private money into Cuba. Let hotels, homes, restaurants, stores be developed, bought, opened, reopened. Use Fidel's death to reintroduce Cubans on the ground to Americans, American ways, American money and American freedom. Remind them of what they wanted, what they thought they were getting when the bearded one came down from the Sierra Maestre. Use his death/illness/collapse/disappearing act as an excuse to turn the past 40 years of policy on its head. Declare him over. Create new ties. Ignore the dictator, make partnerships with the people.

Yes give more money to Radio Marti and all Western government efforts to communicate with the people of Cuba. But also allow American media companies in. Make a jumble, shake it up, allow the conditions that can help create economic vibrancy and let that reinspire democratic thinking. The Cuban government, hit on all fronts by dynamism for the first time in half a century, will not be able to control it all.

That is how to undo Fidel, and Fidelism. That's how to give him, on the chance he's alive, a last and lingering headache. That's how to puncture his mystique. Let his people profit as he dies.

If he is actually ill, why not arrange it so that the last sounds he hears on earth are a great racket from the streets? What, he will ask the nurse, is that? "Oh," she can explain, "they are rebuilding Havana. It's the Hilton Corp. Except for the drills. That's Steve Wynn. The jackhammer is Ave Maria University, building an extension campus."

Imagine him hearing this. It would, finally, be the exploding cigar. That's the way to make his beard fall off.

Make his beard fall off? That, ladies and gentlemen, is why they pay her the big bucks.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 08:22 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Not him, the other one. The Progressive is carrying an interview with Gore Vidal in this month's issue. It's really hard to capture the "unhingedness" of Vidal without reading the entire interivew. He call Bush "a thug", compares the President and the Vice President to monkeys causing trouble, rants about stolen elections, and on and on.

Here is one question and answer worth quoting in full:

Q: You're a veteran of World War II, the so-called good war. Would you recommend to a young person a career in the armed forces in the United States?

Vidal: No, but I would suggest Canada or New Zealand as a possible place to go until we are rid of our warmongers. We've never had a government like this. The United States has done wicked things in the past to other countries but never on such a scale and never in such an existentialist way. It's as though we are evil. We strike first. We'll destroy you. This is an eternal war against terrorism. It's like a war against dandruff. There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

Read the whole interview and you'll come away with a clear sense of the profound hatred and contempt this man has for America - and for everyone in it who doesn't share his views.

Posted by Tom Bevan at 01:23 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Two notes on the current push to revamp the presidential public-financing system:

1) Via Bob Bauer, we get a sense of how significant this push is. By radically increasing how much money candidates would get under public financing, this bill is attempting to make it almost impossible not to accept the cash. If your opponent's taking it, you'd better do the same. (Also see Bauer for how this is all just a step on the path to public financing of congressional races, which incumbent congressmen would just love.)

2) Note that one half of McCain-Feingold is absent from the current push. McCain, who can raise tons of private money -- remarkably, one has to note, for a "reformer" -- presumably wants to skip public financing. Feingold, who can't and who's involved in the current push, would be a direct beneficiary of the new system (talk about an appearance of corruption).

And so the campaign-finance-reform lobby keeps chugging along. Final destination: no speech allowed during federal elections, except for that granted by Congress and the president.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:54 AM | Email Author | Permalink

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a new ad making it clear that they want 2006 to be all about Bush -- understandably enough.

Here's the ad: Now is the Time for a New Direction.

As always, send nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 11:13 AM | Email Author | Permalink

What happens when a Berkeley linguist tries to save the Democratic Party through the power of language?

Find out in my review for the New York Sun of Geoffrey Nunberg's generously subtitled "Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latté-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show."

Posted by Ryan Sager at 08:03 PM | Email Author | Permalink

An embarrassing day for America: Maliki gets heckled by a war protestor.

As always, send nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 06:59 PM | Email Author | Permalink

The recent court decisions -- in New York on July 6 and in Washington State yesterday -- refusing to create gay marriage by judicial fiat have had a remarkable effect on the public discourse surrounding the issue: They've brought it into being.

Granted, there's been a lot of hollering about gay marriage, particularly from the Republican Party denouncing the activist judges who want to rewrite our marriage laws. But the Democratic Party has been largely silent. It's presumed many Democrats are in favor of gay marriage or civil unions, but most keep their mouths shut or even make noises about "defending marriage" to avoid the inevitable political fallout of speaking up.

But now, Democratic politicians are being forced to take a stand -- since judges aren't going to be able to do the heavy lifting for them.

When New York's decision came down, governor-in-waiting Eliot Spitzer immediately said he supported gay marriage and would introduce a bill to create it. Now, Washington's Gov. Chris Gregoire has come out for the first time in favor of (essentially) civil unions.

The logic here is simple. When the courts are taken out of the equation, people actually have to take sides and then defend their positions. In some states, it will be easy to defend the anti-gay marriage position. In others, however, like New York and Washington, high-profile Democrats are going to have to start going with their consciences -- or, at least, with public opinion.

It will be interesting to watch New York and Washington in the coming year. Those watching New York can check out the legislative wiki, put together by Ben Smith at the Daily News, set up to track state legislators' positions on the issue.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:47 PM | Email Author | Permalink

Jim Geraghty at National Review reports that Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits -- and author of In Defense of the Religious Right -- has been blogging about John McCain, while also, undisclosed, working as a political consultant for him.

Geraghty's story has all the details and Hynes's response to the whole thing -- in which he accepts full responsibility and explains how the relationship came to be. Also, here's Hynes's post at his own blog (comments are open).

Two things strike me here:

First, Hynes is handling this correctly. There's basically no excuse for not disclosing the relationship earlier. And his past comments about similar scandals on the Left now look awfully hypocritical. But, unlike on the Left, it's not all deny, deny, deny. He handled something in the wrong way, and now he's saying so forthrightly.

Second, isn't McCain the one always hyperventilating about "circumvention" of campaign-finance laws. He and his pals even wanted to clamp down on the Internet recently to prevent bloggers from coordinating with campaigns. And now this is what his PAC is up to? Very odd.

Or, really, entirely predictable.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 06:56 PM | Email Author | Permalink

There's a fascinating little paper out from Pew today on whether ballot initiatives really work as turnout-boosters in close elections. The impetus for the study is the fact that the Democrats are looking to copy the GOP's "success" with gay-marriage initiatives by ramping up their own minimum-wage initiatives.

Currently, such initiatives are on the ballot in Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nevada -- and may be on their way in Ohio and Wyoming -- but is there any real reason to expect them to be effective?

Pew looks at the impact of gay-marriage initiatives in 2004 and concludes: not really. Pew writes:

Yes it's true that in 2004, all 11 same sex marriage ban ballot initiatives were approved by voters -- and by sizable margins, ranging from a 57% majority in Oregon to an 86% majority in Mississippi.

Yes, it's true that Bush carried nine of the 11 states where the gay marriage bans were on the ballot in 2004. But it's also true that, unaided by gay marriage ban initiatives, Bush won those same nine states in 2000.

Yes, it's true that, in the aggregate, Bush increased his percentage of the vote in those 11 states by two percentage points between 2000 and 2004. But across all 50 states, he upped his percentage of the vote by three percentage points.

And yes, it's true that turnout spiked in those 11 states by 18.4% between 2000 and 2004. But nationwide, turnout was up by nearly as much -- 16%. And in Red America (the 31 states that Bush carried in 2004), turnout was up a bit more -- 18.9%.

In short, toting up all these numbers, it seems safe to say that the 11 gay marriage initiatives had no across-the-board impact on the 2004 presidential race.

Pew makes one exception: Ohio was so close (Bush won with 51 percent), that it's hard to say any one factor didn't tip the scale. And, of course, if Ohio had gone the other way, so would have the Electoral College -- no small matter.

But, overall, I think this Pew paper confirms what's been obvious since the smoke cleared after 2004. Despite the loud proclamations from "values voters" that they had won Bush his reelection, national security was far-and-away the decisive issue. And I don't particularly buy that the gay-marriage initiative tipped the scale even in Ohio. The Bush ground game there, particularly with black churches, was very aggressive. (But I'd be interested to hear from anyone with real, solid proof it was gay marriage.)

But back to those minimum-wage initiatives. Can they drive turn out? Well, 67 percent of Democrats consider the minimum wage "very important" as an issue; only 43 percent of Republicans consider gay marriage "very important." So, theoretically, it should have an even bigger impact (bigger than zero, that is, if you believe the first part of Pew's analysis).

Still, I don't really buy this. If an explosive, headline-grabbing issue like gay marriage made essentially zero difference, why would a wonkier, less emotional issue get new, Democratic-leaning voters out to the polls? There would have to be some real intensity of feeling about the minimum wage out there in the countryside for this to make a difference.

The minimum wage enjoys widespread (if wrongheaded) support. But I don't think it runs very deep or is the basis for too much excitement.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 04:33 PM | Email Author | Permalink

A long one today ... John McCain's appearance Monday night on the Daily Show. He is, of course, loved by this crowd.

Conservatives should especially watch that ever-present McCain tension: between wanting to say what will make the crowd love him more and wanting not to hack away at President Bush.

Very fraught ...

As always, send in nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Posted by Ryan Sager at 06:50 PM | Email Author | Permalink

What if a group of states comprising at least 270 electoral votes banded together in an alliance and pledged to support the winner of the national popular vote in the next presidential election? Presto: the electoral college would be done away with, but without all the fuss of actually going through the process of amending the U.S. Constitution. Is it legal? Apparently. Is it likely? Not anytime soon.

Nevertheless, the idea, proposed by Stanford University computer science professor (and registered Democrat and former California elector in 1992, by the way) John Koza, is attracting attention from around the country, according to this article in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

Just for fun, let's see how this might work. Let's begin with the assumption that an alliance containing the smallest number of members would be the easiest to form. We can also assume that less populated states (i.e. those with the fewest EC votes) would be less inclined to join such an alliance since the Electoral College was specifically designed to offer them protection against a popular vote.

By my count, the fewest number of states it would take to form alliance to get to the magic 270 is eleven: CA-55, TX-34, NY-31, FL-27, PA-21, IL-21, OH-20, MI-17, NJ-15, GA-15, and NC-15 (or VA-13). Can you see all these states agreeing to a EC-popular vote alliance? Theoretically possible, I guess, but not very likely.

You have to assume any sort of EC pact would be approved by state legislatures. That leads to two problems: first, that the pact could be broken any time a state legislature in any one of the member states changed hands, which would make any such alliance inherently fragile and unstable. Second, it seems to me an alliance running against partisan sentiments of a given state would create a fabulous disconnect for the public that would make state legislatures balk. Put another way, imagine Republican state legislators in Texas trying to explain to their constituents that even though Texas voted overhwelmingly in favor of a GOP Presidential candidate, the state's 34 electoral votes were going to the liberal Democrat.

A more likely change to the Electoral College would be moving to a proporational system for allocating EV's based on the popular vote outcome in each state. But that too has problems, political drawbacks, and seems unlikely to occur anytime soon. It looks like we're stuck with the clunky old system created by The Founders which, while it may outdated and not perfect, still chugs along providing a solid framework for executing the will of the people in the world's greatest federal republic. - Tom Bevan

JAY COST ADDS: Rational choice theory goes a long way to explain the problem with the idea of an EC alliance. Different states have different preferences for different presidential voting systems. I would say the most decisive interest for any given state is the extent to which their economic interests would be enhanced by each method for voting for a President. Some states - like California - would get more attention from presidential candidates, and therefore more economic benefit (the rallies, parties, media, etc), from them. They get ignored now because they are solidly Democratic or solidly Republican. But in this proposal they would not. So they would prefer it. Other states - in Tom's list, I would say MI, PA, OH and VA - would probably economically suffer from the change. They get lots of attention now, and would probably expect a decline in attention. In Pennsylvania, for instance, Greater Pittsburgh is a decisive actor in the state's allocation of EVs. But greater Pittsburgh only has about 1 million people - much fewer voters and much fewer swing voters. That makes spending in the Pittsburgh media market much less rational for a presidential candidate. So also all the campaign rallies become much less feasible. Pittsburgh would suffer, and therefore Pittsburgh legislators would oppose it, and so it will not pass through the state legislator. Lots of other small states - IA, NH, MN, WI, etc - would also suffer. In other words - any state that would economically benefit would support the proposal. Any state that would economically suffer would oppose it.

So - the question is whether the proposal would economically benefit states whose EC population is now 270. I think the answer is no. And I think the reason is that there are simply too many swing states. We all bitch and moan about how few states are actually on the table, but in 2004 there were about 20 states that were on the table. This meant the campaigns spent money in those states, which means all of those states have an economic interest in maintaining the current system. Even if states MIGHT benefit from the change - for many of them there is just so much uncertainty in the new system. How will campaign resources shake out? Uncertainty like this only enhances the appeal of the current system.

There are broader political implications here as well - a look at the map clearly indicates that a change would almost assuredly help Democratic candidates. The Electoral College has a small state bias - every state gets a minimum of 3 EVs. The GOP does better in the small states. So GOPers will want to preserve the current system. Partisanship in the state legislatures can therefore sink the whole thing. There are a whole host of states on that list that have at least one Republican chamber or one Republican governor who are sufficiently partisan to stop the thing.

And Tom correctly indicates the fundamental problem - there is NO enforcement mechanism. No state is penalized for breaking the pact. And, further, the pact is very unstable. If one state reneges, the logic for all states to maintain it disappears - and cooperation ends entirely. Even if we presume that there are enough states with a real interest in the proposal - we can imagine how easy it would be to induce a state to renege. Again, because it is obvious that the GOP would be the harmed party, the GOP candidate could easily "pay off" a state to renege. They might promise the veep spot to the governor. They might promise a package of tax cuts or spending increases to help a state's industry, etc. All the POTUS candidate would have to do is make it in a state's economic or partisan interests to renege. POTUS candidates have that power in spades!

So, I would say that (a) the proposal is not an equilibrium because too many states would oppose it; (b) even if it is an equilibrium, the ease with which a GOP POTUS candidate could induce a state to switch makes it a hopelessly unstable equilibrium.

Finally, I cannot help but comment upon the irony. What these big states are objecting to is the issue of "dictatorship" - i.e. a minority is making a decision against the expressed wishes of the majority. But they are actually trying to create a "dictatorship" of their own to solve this one! These proposals will not pass unanimously in the state legislatures - so, if you add up the constituents of state legislators who oppose the pact along with the states where EVERYBODY opposes it, you are likely to come up with a majority in opposition to the plan. - Jay Cost

Posted by Tom Bevan at 02:29 PM | Email Author | Permalink

This morning, Bob Bauer looks at whether "holistic" campaign-finance regulation might stifle the left-wing filmmaking community:

A "holistic" approach to influence would certainly have to reckon with so mighty an influence network [the Hollywood Left, that is]. The law is not yet equal to the task, but a minor step in this direction was taken in 2004, when complaints were lodged against Michael Moore's filmed assault on George Bush. Moore, faced with the electioneering communication prohibition, suspended his television advertising in the weeks before the election. This is one among other examples of an established connection between this kind of activity and the influencing of political opinion generally, and of voter choice in particular.

And now back to Clooney, who, interviewed about his involvement with political film-making, wisely said: "the most patriotic thing you can do in our country is question your government." He appreciates the elemental proposition that political debate--debate seeking influence--should be open to all wishing to join in. Commenting on Bill O'Reilly's attacks on his views, Clooney has said this: "Fair enough. They [conservatives] can say what they want. I can't demand freedom of speech and then say don't say bad things about me. But I'm also not going to stop presenting opposing views."

No, he won't stop or be stopped, unless faced with the demands, maybe sometime in the future, of "holistic" legal restrictions on political influence.

If campaign-finance regulation starts backfiring on the Left -- and, well, it already has -- one of the first casualties will be the Hollywood political money machine. Yet one more reason for the Left to start rethinking their alliance with the cleanies.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:02 PM | Email Author | Permalink

John Tierney (Remember him? No? Just because he's stuck in TimesDelete's black hole?) has an interesting column on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research in Saturday's Times.

He argues, essentially, that the research is better off without the federal funding:

Even before this week's veto, anger over the ban has prompted states and private philanthropists to put up their own money. They've committed well over $3 billion to this research in the next decade, which might be more than Washington would have provided anyway -- and the federal money would have come with strings attached.

Stem-cell researchers can benefit from the freedom enjoyed by scientists who developed in vitro fertilization, which Washington also refused to finance because it was originally denounced as immoral. The absence of federal involvement sped progress by allowing unregulated private labs and clinics to innovate.

Given the other sources of money for stem-cell research, including private companies that see potentially lucrative profits, there's no pressing need for Washington to get involved. And as long as some Americans -- a minority, but a passionate minority -- oppose the work, there's no reason to force them to subsidize it. The result would just be more pressure for Washington to impose restrictions on what researchers could do.

When I touched on this subject a couple days ago, libertarians wrote in to accuse me of going soft by supporting federal funding of science. Pro-lifers wrote in to accuse me of not getting the moral difference between killing embryos through IVF or killing them through embryonic stem-cell research. My point was that it's inconsistent to say IVF should be allowed but not to fund stem-cell research -- assuming the federal government was going to fund other types of basic science. The majority of Americans (by far) support stem-cell research, so the argument that people would be forced to subsidize research they find morally repugnant is a weak one. In a democracy you fund lots of stuff you don't like when the majority says so.

Anyway, the Tierney argument provides another coherent framework -- the one I subscribe to. The government doesn't fund research and doesn't ban it either (of course, no one's trying to ban the research in this debate). What's more, private philanthropy and the free market ultimately do a better job anyway.

What bothers me still, though, is that opponents of embryonic stem-cell research can't just be upset by the idea of federal funding. If the research is "murder" or crosses some moral line, then there's no rational position but to support an outright ban on it -- and on IVF, which kills far more embryos.

To be clear: I'm not supporting any such ban. I want to see this research continue. But it seems to me there are two binary choices: A) It's either moral (and legal) to create embryos for the purpose of destroying them OR it's not (and, thus, IVF and embryonic stem-cell research should be outlawed), and B) either the government funds basic science (including embryonic stem-cell research) OR it doesn't.

These two questions are mixed up constantly in this debate. But if we've already as a society essentially agreed that embryo-destroying research is permissible (if not beyond controversy), then it doesn't seem to me there should be quite so much fireworks around the question of federal funding.

Unless it's all just a way for the GOP to excite its religious base. Oops ... answered my own question.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 12:03 AM | Email Author | Permalink

Another Kaus item...

Kaus notes some shifts in edupolitics.

For one, New York's governor-to-be, Eliot Spitzer -- a Democrat, as you may be aware -- has now endorsed opening more charter schools in New York state. (An issue on which I called him out for being reluctant to speak up here.) Spitzer's running mate -- David Patterson, a Harlem Democrat -- also supports the largely non-union schools.

For another thing, Kaus notes Clinton appointee Joel Klein's (five-years-old) support for charter schools and war against New York's United Federation of Teachers.

Third, Kaus notes that the lefty Center for American Progress may start ruffling some union feathers. (God willing)

Anyway, I wanted to address one question Kaus had: Is a new study on charter-school effectiveness out of New York state really meaningful? My answer (if I may be so bold as to step on Eduwonk's toes): a little, but not a lot.

[You can find a very biased union response to the report here (PDF).]

The study is a snapshot of the 2004-2005 school year, and shows students in charter schools outscoring students in nearby public schools. Noted conservative education wonk Fred Hess warned charter-school supporters (for tactical reasons) not to make too big a deal of these results. Essentially, snapshots like this control for ... well, nothing.

The essential problem is that state and city education bureaucracies don't study these issues appropriately. All education data should test how much progress students make in a year -- in other words, value added -- rather than taking snapshots. Essentially, you'd want to take a group of kids in a charter school, and then a similar group of kids who didn't get into that same charter school (admissions are done by lottery, so this would be random), and then compare the groups' results over the years.

But, there are very few studies done like this.

At the same time, this study confirms what we've all known for a long time in New York -- there are charter schools with scores that are simply off the charts. Take this example from the New York Post article:

At the Harlem Day Charter School, 100 percent of its fourth-graders passed the English exam and 94 percent passed the standardized math test.

By comparison, an average of 52 percent of students in neighboring schools in Community School District 4 in East Harlem passed the English test and 75.6 percent passed math.

These are kids who have improved dramatically after being plucked from traditional public schools. There's just no question. And since the point of charter schools isn't just getting high scores at every charter school, but rather experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn't, charter schools have been an unqualified success in showing us that there are educational models that can reach low-income, urban kids.

These models invariably involve: longer hours (more "time on task" and thus longer work days for teachers), frequent testing of students to identify where they need help, and strict accountability of teachers for their students' results.

All of these things are anathema to the teachers unions -- thus their hatred for charter schools. (And, oh yeah, teachers at charter schools don't like to unionize ... and that costs the unions dues-paying members.)

My basic plea on education: more charters, vouchers and experimentation ... AND (and this is a big and, hence the CAPS) an investment by cities and states in independent testing and evaluation bodies. State "accountability" systems are a joke, and almost all government-created data falls short.

New York City, for instance, has an Independent Budget Office that evaluates various things and puts out wonky reports. An independent body like this measuring the schools would be better than reports put out by city and state bureaucracies with overriding political agendas. The problem, of course, as with all "independent" bodies, is making sure that institutional players (and ideologues) don't take over. America's teachers colleges are already worthless because they're run by left-wing social-justice crusaders.

Back to the politics: There is a shift going on here among Democrats. New York will be the state to watch on that front. Will Eliot Spitzer take on the teachers unions that run the state's education policy when he takes office? Stay tuned ... I, for one, will be watching.

Posted by Ryan Sager at 10:16 PM | Email Author |