Jay Reding.com

Glenn Reynolds looks at the Administration’s immigration rhetoric and wonders if there isn’t some bizarre Republican death wish in play. I’m wondering if he’s right — Bush’s only base of support is with the GOP rank-and-file, and they hate his position on immigration. When you’ve got nothing in terms of political capital, it makes no sense to start burning bridges with your strongest supporters. Even Laura Ingraham is on Bush’s case.

Even if one accepts that the immigration deal is good policy, the way the Bush Administration has been defending it has been so ham-handed that even those who might support the bill are reeling. Bush’s political instincts haven’t been right since the 2004 elections, and while Bush’s political future is of absolutely no consequence, he’s dragging down key issues with him. He can’t defend his immigration bill, he can’t defend the war, and he can’t defend his own record. There are some very smart political operators in the White House, but when the ship has already hit bottom, it’s a hell of a lot harder to steer a new course.

Left-wing bloggers are all over the assertion by Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that Valerie Plame was indeed a covert operative. More careful people are not so sure.

For one, it’s absolutely ridiculous for anyone to say that the case is closed based on the word of a prosecutor in a legal matter. For one, if Fitzgerald knew that Plame was covert, why did he not charge anyone with violating the IIPA? He know who the leaker was — Richard Armitage, so the argument that Libby’s purported obstruction doesn’t matter. If Plame was covert as a matter of federal law it should have been a slam-dunk case. Yet the CIA has never conclusively said that Plame was a covert operative under the terms of Title 50, U.S.C. §421 which would make it a closed issue. One would think that if Plame really were protected by the stringent terms of the IIPA, that Fitzgerald would have prosecuted someone for that, rather than for obstruction.

Yet, Fitzgerald went the easy route, prosecuting someone for the coverup, rather than the crime. As Maguire notes:

My guess - Fitzgerald is an aggressive prosecutor and was comfortable moving full speed ahead on what looked to him to be a perjury/obstruction investigation. For purposes of the Libby trial, he had what looked like a straightforward case which would scarcely be advanced by arguing the question of Ms. Plame’s covert status; if he won Fitzgerald would be spared some verbal gymnastics and be able to speculate as to Libby’s motive more easily. But if he lost a key ruling on her covert status, the defense would spend the entire trial hammering the point that this was an investigation about nothing.

Consequently, he ducked the issue in any forum when it might matter, such as the pre-trial filings. However in a sentencing memorandum the prosecutor is expected to throw in everything, with special emphasis on the kitchen sink.

Now, if it is as the leftybloggers say it is — that Valerie Plame was a super-secret agent, the American Jane Bond, and only a moron would say otherwise, why did Fitzgerald have doubts that he could win that point in court? Instead, Fitzgerald danced around the issue. If it really were an open-and-shut case, it should have been an open-and-shut case in court as well.

This whole thing continues to reek of a politically-motivated prosecution by an overzealous prosecutor who knew that he couldn’t come up empty-handed. He knew who the original leaker was. If Plame was truly covert and Armitage had broken federal law, there doesn’t seem to be much good reason for Fitzgerald not to have taken him down. My guess is that he wanted someone in the Oval Office, not Foggy Bottom, and Libby was the best he could do.

We probably will never get a conclusive answer as to what Plame’s true status was — it’s likely her position at the CIA was ostensibly “covert”, but not sufficiently so to be covered by the IIPA. What we do know is that this whole silly little affair continues to spiral into irrelevance, with left-wing activists making ever more outrageous accusations and the facts supporting less and less. At least this affair was more interesting when hoards of leftybloggers were still demanding that Karl Rove be shot for treason… now that we know that Richard Armitage was the real leaker and Joe Wilson’s book is gathering dust in remainder bins, it appears as though the intrigue has long faded.

…at least if you’re a Mexican agave farmer.

Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.

The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn.

Biofuels aren’t a bad concept — but making them out of food stocks is an extremely dumb idea. For one, we don’t have nearly enough agricultural capacity to grow enough corn to meet demand for biofuels. Secondly, it’s driving up the price of corn, which happens to be an important staple crop in the developing world. The only reason why corn-based ethanol is so popular is because Midwestern farmers are making a killing off of it. While that’s very good news for farmers, it’s not so good for the rest of us. Already Mexicans are dealing with dramatically increasing prices for corn tortillas, which is a critical part of the diet of many of Mexico’s poor. While we’re not seeing the same effect in the US quite yet, it’s a very real concern.

Fortunately, there is a solution in the form of cellulosic ethanol, which uses agricultural waste products instead of viable food crops. The problem is that it requires an extra step in processing to break down the cellulose in the plant walls of the biomatter being processed.

Biofuels are likely to be an important supplement to petroleum, but it’s important for policymakers to balance the competing factors of food and energy production — it’s just not smart to burn food for fuel, and unless the proper balance is struck, we may have cheaper gas, but higher food costs — which ends up hurting more people than it helps.

UPDATE: Even worse, German beer prices are going up due to the biofuels boom… which is an absolute tragedy — and another example of how government subsidies only screw up the market’s natural resource allocations.

The Tennessean is reporting that Fred Thompson will run for the GOP nomination. This is hardly a surprise, but does confirm the rampant speculation.

In many polls, Thompson is already in second or third place, which means that he’s got a more than credible shot at getting the nomination. I suspect that Thompson will steal some of Giuliani’s thunder — he has the same leadership characteristics as Giuliani without as much of the baggage. Both Giuliani and Thompson have the sort of gravitas that the GOP currently lacks. Thompson has an accomplished record in governance in law, and has been actively courting the conservative base in a way that Giuliani has not.

I’m not sure how this will all shake out. McCain and Romney are down, but certainly not out, and Romney has been giving some very strong performances as of late. Giuliani and Thompson might do what Clinton and Obama threaten to do with the Dems — take each other out and leave the field open to a dark-horse candidate. Such turns are certainly not unheard of in American politics.

If nothing else, Thompson’s entrance will make this race, already hotly contested, into an even more interesting competition. The Republicans have the advantage of a very strong field, and the top-tier candidates offer much to the party and to the nation. Even the middle- and lower-tier candidates have something to offer: Duncan Hunter is surprisingly well-versed on the issues, Tommy Thompson may have no chance of winning, but his welfare reform efforts helped millions of Americans, and even Ron Paul, while a nut, brings something to the debate. (Even if that something is a punching bag for the other candidates.) It’s a strong field, and the person who finally gets the nod is going to have to demonstrate competence, charisma, and knowledge to make it — which is a good thing for the country in general.

Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz has a fascinating piece on why the right in America is divided and the left is unified. His thesis is interesting, and his analysis deep, but ultimately I’m not sure that the larger point is quite true. Before that, his observations:

This absence on the left of debate or dissent about moral and political ends has been aided and abetted by many of the party’s foremost intellectuals, who have reveled in denouncing George W. Bush as a dictator, in declaring democracy in 21st-century America all but illegitimate, and in diagnosing conservatism in America as in the grips of fascist sentiments and opinions.

A few months ago, Hoover Institution research fellow Dinesh D’Souza published a highly polemical book, “The Enemy at Home,” which held the cultural left responsible for causing 9/11 and contended that American conservatives should repudiate fellow citizens on the left and instead form alliances with traditional Muslims around the world. Conservatives of many stripes leapt into the fray to criticize it. But rare is the voice on the left that has criticized Boston College professor and New Republic contributing editor Alan Wolfe, former secretary of labor and Berkeley professor Robert Reich, New Republic editor-at-large and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Peter Beinart, Berkeley professor George Lakoff, and New York University law professor Ronald Dworkin–all of whom have publicly argued in the last several years that conservatives form an enemy at home.

One explanation of the unity on the left is its belief that today’s divisive political questions have easy answers–but because of their illiberal opinions and aims, conservatives are unable to see this and, in a mere six years, have brought democracy in America to the brink. This explanation, however, contradicts the vital lesson of John Stuart Mill’s liberalism that political questions, as opposed to mathematical questions, tend by their very nature to be many-sided. Indeed, it contradicts the left’s celebration of its own appreciation of the complexity and depth of politics.

Another explanation is that blinded by rage at the Bush administration and resentment over its own lack of power, the left has betrayed its commitment to grasp the many-sidedness of politics, and, in the process, has lost appreciation of modern conservatism’s distinctive contribution to the defense of a good, liberty, which the left also prizes. Indeed, the widespread ignorance among the highly educated of the conservative tradition in America is appalling.

I think that ultimately, the left really is more divided than the right in this country. The only thing making the left coherent is their hatred of George W. Bush. In 20 months, the simmering divisions within the left could easily explode — just witness the rapid transformation of Cindy Sheehan from moral paragon to persona non grata for the left. Absent their Emmanuel Goldstein, the left doesn’t really agree on much. Green eco-feminist activists and Ohio steelworkers don’t have all that much in common, and as the “netroots” keep pushing the Democratic Party further towards the left, the vital center in American politics remains up for grabs.

However, that argument notwithstanding, Berkowitz is right that the right appears divided and the left appears unified. I agree that the left has largely lost their ability to see issues without being clouded by their own extreme partisanship, while the right is searching for a legacy that doesn’t involve George W. Bush. The right’s search is a productive one, because trying any intellectual movement to a person who was never a great intellectual leader (and ran on a platform that discarded much of what conservatism stands for) is never a good idea. Conservatives were willing to give Bush a chance to show that “compassionate conservatism” was a workable program — it wasn’t, and it has largely been discredited as being a form of watered-down statism with a conservative veneer. The right has it’s set of first principles: American exceptionalism, limited government, a strong national defense, and a belief in the importance of moral absolutes. However, there are some major disagreements over the application of those principles: immigration being the most significant.

Berkowitz is also correct that the left doesn’t really have a set of first principles — other than the opposition to Bush, what does the left really stand for? The netroots aren’t at all intellectual leaders. Their positions are based on animosity and political brinksmanship, not any real deep-seated political or philosophical conviction. It is based solely on the will to power — and reading any of the major left-wing blogs reveals that the left knows what they hate, but doesn’t seem to have a good idea who they are as a movement. When Bush becomes irrelevant (more so than he is already), what will they have to stand on?

Conservatives, by contrast, are rich in ideas, but very poor in activism. RedState was designed to mirror the successes of The Daily Kos in terms of political activism, but it’s never been nearly as successful. RedState is willing to challenge the GOP and move the party in a more conservative direction, but the influence of the right-wing analogue of the “netroots” isn’t that great. Part of it is because the GOP doesn’t get the importance of online activism in the way that the Democrats did, but the larger part is because the typical GOP voter isn’t an activist. Small-government types rarely are in today’s society. Instead, conservatives are more likely to be focused on intellectual debates than political ones — which is why the major right-wing blogs tend to be more intellectually diverse than the left-wing ones.

All of this supports Berkowitz’ observations. How this will play out in the future is the bigger question. I don’t believe that political movements that are based on nothing more than political power tend to survive very long. Once they attain power, they rarely use it judiciously — just witness the ineptitude of the Pelosi/Reid Congress. A long-lasting political movement has to have some kind of set of strong first principles beyond obtaining power to give it strength. The conservative movement in America has lost steam because they became too enamored with power and lost sight of their first principles. The liberal/statist movement in America has blundered right out of the gate because they never had those first principles to begin with.

Conservatives know what they believe, and are more in tune with their intellectual heritage than their opponents. This is due in large part because the nature of conservatism is to look to the past for inspiration and understanding. The conservative intellectual heritage of Burke, Kirk, Strauss, and Buckley is still as vital for us today as it was in the half-century when it exploded onto the scene. Political power is transitory, and the GOP’s fortunes may wax and wane. What must never be forgotten is the intellectual and moral principles which form the bedrock of conservative philosophy — because losing those is far worse than losing temporal political power.