Category: Politics

Political Tone-Deafness Epitomized

The White House is defending Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s request to use an intercontinental jet to fly cross-country so she can carry her entourage and family with her.

Let’s see, you have a perfect attempt to skewer the hypocrisy of global warming advocates who spew tons of carbon into the atmosphere on private jets, expose the hypocrisy of someone who supposedly champions the working poor living a life only .001% of the American populace will likely experience, and expose the hypocrisy of someone supposedly fighting for more effective government by wasting tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money on their own insufferable vanity.

And what does the Bush Administration do? Try to defend the indefensible!

There’s no reason why Speaker Pelosi can’t use the same jet her predecessors did. Or better yet, she can be ecologically conscious and fly the same commercial airliners the rest of the hoi polloi do.

But if the Administration doesn’t have the stones to call her on this, she’ll win. And given that the Anna Nicole Smith tragedy/farce has closed the window for this story to develop, it’s clear that the level of political tone-deafness from the White House has once again ensured that the President’s pitiful approval ratings will stay right where they are.

The White House is trying to play nice, which has it’s admirable side, but not when the opposition is playing hardball. In politics, you either fight or you lose, and the President keeps backing off when he should be pointing out the obvious — even if subtly.

More On The Company You Keep

It looks like John Edwards will not fire the left-wing bloggers whose incendiary comments caused a minor media storm.

I’m not all that surprised — Edwards knows that the radical “netroots” have a disproportionate influence on the Democratic Party, and he needs to kowtow to them as much as possible in the early days.

However, what Marcotte wrote was bigoted, incendiary, and childish. It was tantamount to hate speech, and is certainly not anything resembling decent and thoughtful political discourse. Like it or not, by retaining Marcotte and McEwen, Edwards has given a tacit endorsement to their comments. That is certainly his choice, but it also the choice for the electorate to make inferences based upon it.

Another Look At The GOP Horserace

The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the state of the GOP nomination race and finds that McCain is sinking while Giuliani’s star on the rise. Now, given that there’s more than a year to go before the race even gets close to being determinative, it is interesting to note the general trends.

Powerline has video of Giuliani’s appearance on Hannity and Colmes this week (Part One and Part Two). What’s interesting about Giuliani is that he isn’t acting apologetic over his positions on the Second Amendment and abortion. He’s saying exactly what he believes, which isn’t where I would have gone, but might actually be a better course of action for him.

This approach has some huge upsides and some huge downsides. The biggest upside is that it preserves Giuliani’s rep as a straight-shooter, which helps him against McCain, but also is refreshing from an American politician. It’s rare that a politician will sit down and admit that he has his disagreements with the base of his (or her) party, and then show why they have common ground.

Of course, that leads to the huge downside: there are unquestionably socially conservative voters who will not vote for any candidate who is personally pro-life, even if they wish to see Roe v. Wade overturned as a matter of law or policy. However, Giuliani’s position is consistent, and may not be as unpalatable as some would think. The big question is how many people take the view that Giuliani’s views make him categorically unacceptable versus the number of independents he brings in.

My personal take is that he’ll bring in more than he loses. Evangelicals, even those who oppose abortion, aren’t generally the sort of fanatics that the press makes them out to be. Pragmatically, a Giuliani Presidency would move this country forwards in terms of respecting the lives of the unborn, at least when it comes to judges. Giuliani will have to answer some tough questions about federal statutes against partial-birth abortion, the Mexico City Protocols, and other abortion issues, but I think there’s a chance he can remain consistent in his views and still stand with conservatives.

I’m not alone in that assessment. As the Christian Science Monitor piece notes:

“I tend to think if Giuliani catches fire, he could win” even the South Carolina primary, says Dick Bennett, a nonpartisan pollster based in New Hampshire, who has been polling in early nominating states. The key is that South Carolina has an open primary, meaning that independents can vote.

The bigger question here is why Rudy Giuliani, a relatively liberal Republican is beating the arguably more conservative John McCain. Larry Sabato notes the phenomenon:

“Is it that Republicans are saying to themselves, ‘McCain is too close to this unpopular president and this unpopular war’?” says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “Or are they saying, ‘I never liked McCain, I can’t swallow him, he has too many problems, like age and temper, and I’ve always liked Giuliani’? I think it’s a bit of everything.”

“It’s very revealing – the intensity of anti-McCain sentiment out there among Republicans,” Mr. Sabato adds. “I encounter it whenever I give a talk.”

I think it comes down to the Aretha Franklin factor: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Evangelicals don’t trust McCain since he trashed them in 2000. Fiscal conservatives don’t trust him on taxes. Small government conservatives don’t trust him because of McCain-Feingold. Anti-war voters don’t trust him because he’s the President’s most stalwart supporter on the war. While McCain has made an effort to reestablish his conservative street cred, he hasn’t yet been able to repair those bridges with key Republican groups quite yet.

Giuliani, on the other hand, cannot be accused of pandering. He’s taken the Straight Talk Express theme that McCain used to have as a centerpiece and made it his own. McCain seems to be pandering, while Giuliani appears to be the more principled of the two. When it comes right down to it, conservatives tend to trust Giuliani, and not trust McCain.

Of course, this analysis leaves out the influence of the other candidates, mainly Mitt Romney who could easily be the beneficiary of a McCain-Giuliani split, as well as dark horses like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee. However, the trend lines are unmistakable — Giuliani’s waxing while McCain wanes. This far out, anything could happen, but what is truly interesting is despite the predictions that conservatives really don’t like Rudy Giuliani, they keep stubbornly insisting on supporting him. While there’s evidence that his record may take the shine off of that support, it hasn’t happened yet. It’s still a wide open race, and will be for probably another 12 months or so, but it does show that some of the conventional wisdom about this race may not be as strong as one would think…

The Company You Keep

ABC’s Terry Moran notes that John Edwards is taking heat for hiring leftyblogger Amanda Marcotte whose expletive-filled rantings are hardly the sort of thing that a reputable political candidate would want to endorse. Moran asks the right questions:

At issue are Marcotte’s comments on her own blog, Pandagon (http://www.pandagon.net/), which has staked out a prominent place in the left-wing blogosphere. It’s pretty strong stuff; her comments about other people’s faiths could well be construed as hate speech.

Questions: What, if anything, does it tell us about Edwards that he’s joined up with this blogger? Is Edwards’ association with a person who has written these things a legitimate issue for voters, as they wonder–among other things–whom he might appoint to high office if he’s elected? If a Republican candidate teamed up with a right-wing blogger who spewed this kind of venom, how would people react? Is the mere raising of this issue a kind of underhanded censorship, a way of ruling out of bounds some kinds of opinion? Are we all just going to have to get used to a more rough-and-tumble, profane, and even hate-filled public arena in the age of the blogosphere?

I think we’ll see a lot more of that as blogging goes mainstream. Predictably, the left-wing blogosphere has gone nuts over the piece.

Like it or not, Ms. Marcotte may have the right to free speech, and no one is arguing that she should be censored. However, what she says is incindiary, derogatory, and bigoted. Had she treated Islam the way she treats Catholicism, she’d be widely ostracized. Marcotte represents everything that is wrong with the lefty blogosphere — the constant profanity, the invective, the elevation of childish snark above analysis. There are only a few left-wing bloggers who do anything resembling analysis, and while some of them are good (Joshua Micah Marshall comes to mind as an example) most of them seem to carry the attitudes of high school kids who think they’re “sticking it to the Man” by dropping cluster F-bombs. For anyone who doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid already, it’s not only unpersuasive, it’s horrendously off-putting.

I think Dean Barnett is right — the Edwards team seems not to be familiar with the blogger they hired — which is their mistake. Marcotte has every right to spew her invective and play the part of a left-wing Ann Coulter all she wishes — but for a campaign to not do their due diligence and figure out what they were getting into is a rather significant error of judgment.

Like it or not, Presidential campaigns are known by the company they keep, and when they end up hiring a blogger whose singular talent is trying to be as offensive and vitriolic as possible, that sends the message that they haven’t been paying much attention. I doubt this will make much of a ripple outside the media and the blogosphere, but sooner or later this sort of thing will lead to a much wider political scandal. The question is when, and what will the repercussions be?

UPDATE: Left-wing group blog MyDD demonstrates the siege mentality of the left:

The Edwards camp faces a series simple choices right now:

  • Are you with the people who work their asses for you, or are you with right-wing extremists who hate you?
  • Are you willing to point out the double standards and hypocrisy behind this story, or will you cave to even the mildest pressure from the Republican Noise Machine?
  • Do you have any loyalty to the netroots, or was it all just sweet talk, where loyalty actually only flows uphill and shit actually only flows downhill?

Of course, to the left, everything is manipulated by sinister right-wing forces. Never mind that what Ms. Marcotte wrote would likely offend nearly everyone, including the Catholic liberal voters that any Democrat needs to win in key states. It’s all about the “Republican Noise Machine” (which apparently now includes ABC’s Terry Moran) and how they must be stopped at any costs. Everyone who doesn’t agree with them is a “right wing extremist” and compromise is impossible.

This is why, ultimately, the left-wing blogosphere is more of a liability to the Democrats than an asset. The second they start getting more mainstream attention, the more their radicalism comes to light. Ms. Marcotte’s comments are not the sort of thing that persuades anyone, and they reflect poorly on John Edwards and his campaign. And it doesn’t take a “right wing extremist” to see that.

Reagan And Freedom

Mitch Berg notes the birthday of America’s greatest modern President, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

One of Reagan’s many brilliant speeches, A Time for Choosing contains a passage that has become, perhaps, even more relevant with age:

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Their conflict was Vietnam, ours is Iraq, and the enemy we face today is far less constrained by morality or self-interest than the Soviets were. Right now they don’t have the same arsenal of deadly weapons, but each day moves us closer to the point where fanatics like Osama bin Laden gain control of some of the most deadly weapons on the planet.

If we fail in our war, history will still record that those with the most to lose did the least to prevent it from happening, just as if we had lost in the Cold War. Yet, we seem to be unable as a society to defend our own interests and values from those who would subject us all to domination under the banner of radical Islam.

We should be constantly asking ourselves whether we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers — because we keep selling out the values of the Republic they created each and every day. We choose to “tax the rich” forgetting that envy is not the sine qua non of public policy. We choose more regulations designed to “protect” us from smoking, fatty foods, etc., and each day our freedoms are diminished. We have people making claims that this government is the equivalent of the Nazis while a group of foreign despots are emboldened more and more by our weakness and vacillation.

If ever there was a time we needed a leader with the stature of Ronald Wilson Reagan, it’s now.

Can Giuliani Get Past Step One?

USA Today takes a look at Giuliani’s chances at getting the Republican nomination in 2008. What’s interesting is that their poll show that most Republicans didn’t know about Giuliani’s position on social issues — which seems surprising given that the media has been hammering him on it for some time.

That actually works to Giuliani’s advantage, as it gives him an opportunity to show why he’d be a candidate that social conservatives can support. Giuliani has already stated that he would nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, which is a good start. However, he’s going to have to clarify his position on gay marriage, abortion, and gun control to win. He has an opportunity to reinvent himself should he be willing to take it, and if he’s serious about running, he’s going to have to confront those issues.

His related problem is that once he does that, he runs the risk of alienating moderates inclined to support him. He can’t swing too far to the right, as that puts him in the same space as everyone else jockeying for that position.

What Giuliani needs to do is run as a kind of “Third Way” candidate — someone who will be absolutely resolute on national defense, keep taxes low, and will support family values, but by encouraging character rather than legislative policy. Giuliani can speak on the breakdown of the American family in general terms and still appeal to social conservatives.

If Giuliani can moderate his position and speak in the language that social conservatives understand, I don’t necessarily think that there will be a huge backlash against him from social conservatives. Social conservatives aren’t going to hand the White House to a John Edwards or a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama just because they have some issues with Giuliani. Even though some social conservatives might stay home, Giuliani can pick up the libertarian-leaning Republicans, fiscal conservatives, and moderates who abandoned the GOP in the 2006 cycle. So long as there’s more of them then there are Republicans who would never consider Giuliani, he is still very much in the game.

Assuming Giuliani doesn’t flame out sometime in the next year or so (which, admittedly, is always a possibility) he has a strong chance at picking up the nomination. He’s going to have to have a road-to-Damascus moment on the Second Amendment, but he’s got the time to do so. Giuliani’s greatest asset is that he exudes a sense of leadership — when he’s in the room, there’s no doubt that he’s in charge. What he will have to do is use that personal gravitas to reach out to the Republican base. If he can pull that off, and I see a strong chance he can, he can assuage the doubts of conservatives of all stripes and position himself as the next great American leader.

Like Christmas All Over Again!

Al Franken is running for the Senate in 2008.

This is great news for Norm Coleman, who could be a vulnerable GOP incumbent otherwise. Al Franken is one of the most thin-skinned people out there, his speaking style is atrocious, and Minnesota’s last affair with electing someone to office based solely on celebrity didn’t go so well.

Franken can certainly play to the urban angry liberal set, but he’ll go over like a fart in church outside the Patchouli Belt. Especially given that his angry liberal schtick won’t be relevant without Moby Bush to kick around in 2008.

The second Franken displays his infamous temper and storms out of an interview, it’ll be all over. I’m not convinced he’ll last long enough to even get through the general, especially when the DFL has plenty of candidates who aren’t has-been comedians.

More On The Minimum Wage

The Economist has a good piece on the realities of the minimum wage increase:

We have written a fair bit about the question of minimum wages over the last few months. It is probable that the minimum wage increase will not cost enough jobs to make its effects readily distinguishable from random economic variation. It is also probable that it will improve the lot of a few poor people, though not many, as fewer than 20% of those who earn the minimum wage live in poor households now. On the other hand, it also seems probable that much of any benefit that goes to poor families will come out of the pockets of other poor people—very probably even poorer people, such as convicts, who are currently barely hanging onto the fringes of the labour force.

The left wants to argue that the minimum wage is a transfer of assets from the rich (business owners) to the poor. The reality of the minimum wage is that it ends up being an asset transfer between poor people — or more likely an asset transfer between disadvantaged people and less disadvantaged people. Any increase in the marginal cost of labor tends to be felt most strongly at the bottom — if labor costs rise, businesses are less likely to hire workers who have a higher likelihood of producing less value for their costs. That means people who have families, less reliable access to transportation, or other personal problems. Single mothers, ex-convicts, people on drug treatment, all of those groups that are the most disadvantaged.

Increasing the minimum wage is pure political theater. All it does is assuage the guilt of wealthy white liberals while doing little to nothing to help people. In fact, it’s even a form of corporate welfare:

CEO’s who support higher minimum wages are not, as the media often casts them, renegade heros speaking truth to power because their inner moral voice bids them be silent no more. They are by and large, like Mr Sinegal, the heads of companies that pay well above the minimum wage. Forcing up the labour costs of their competitors, while simultaneously collecting good PR for “daring” to support a higher minimum, is a terrific business move. But it is not altruistic, nor does it make him a “maverick”. Costco’s biggest competitor, Wal-Mart, also supports a higher minimum wage, and for the same reason. Wal-Mart’s average wage is already above the new minimum; it will cost the company little, while possibly forcing mom-and-pop stores that compete with Wal-Mart out of business. This seems blindingly obvious to me. Though I don’t expect we’ll see “the minimum wage—it’s great for Wal-Mart!” in many Democratic campaign commercials.

In in all, raising the minimum wage has low societal costs — it won’t raise unemployment all that much. What it will do is impact the most vulnerable and benefit the least vulnerable. It won’t affect McDonald’s all that much, but it will affect the small-town cafe that can afford to pay its cooks $6.00/hour but not $7.25/hour. Big business doesn’t have much incentive to fight — why take the PR hit when most of them already pay more than the minimum. It’s the small fry that get the shaft.

Raising the minimum wage has nothing to do with poverty, or justice, or any of the other high-minded ideals that are used to justify it — not after rationally looking at what it really does. All this is about is pretending to care rather than actually doing something constructive — which seems to be enough for politicians and the American public. For those who actually need the most help, it isn’t enough and never will be.

Hat tip to Instapundit)

“If They’re Going To Support Us, Support Us All The Way”

NBC News ran this rather frank interview with American troops in Iraq on how they deal with the criticism of the war:

They’re right — the “dissent” over the war with Iraq cannot be made without consideration that it actively makes the jobs of our troops harder. The argument that “dissent” is automatically “patriotic” is simply false. If one were to say “Al-Qaeda should win and America should be destroyed” that would certainly be a dissenting view, but only a fool would call it patriotism.

Or, take this real-life example from Michael Moore:

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?

Anyone who wants to argue that such a view is even remotely patriotic under any rational definition of the word is debasing the meaning of the word into uselessness.

Those who do not support this war cannot support the mission of our troops, are undermining their morale, and are emboldening the enemy. Those are inescapable conclusions that cannot be brushed aside. That doesn’t mean that they can’t argue that the greater good is still being served, but the notion that an antiwar position is at all compatible with full support of the troops is intellectually dishonest.

It’s like saying that one supports the marriage of two friends while actively telling one of the partners to divorce the other. If we want to argue that the mission in Iraq is impossible that failure is inevitable, we’re saying that our troops cannot do the job they were assigned to do. Our troops think Iraq is a winnable conflict — and they’re the ones dodging IEDs and enemy gunfire. If they can support the war under those incredibly trying circumstances either they are hopelessly gullible or far braver than the American body politic. (The antiwar crowd subtly and not-so-subtly intimates the former — witness John Kerry’s statement about being “stuck in Iraq.”)

I maintain it’s the latter. Our troops know the stakes, they have the most involvement in this conflict, and they see things a hell of a lot clearer from the ground in Iraq than we do through the lens of a media that is not neutral on this issue. When political “courage” constitutes saying what’s popular it is clear that one US soldier has more bravery than nearly the entire Congress put together.

The soldier interviewed by NBC is right — if we’re going to support the troops, we can’t divorce ourselves from supporting the mission. We can’t say we support our brave men and women fighting this war while cutting off their reinforcements and constantly impugning their ability and spitting on their mission.

The Conservative Case For Giuliani

George Will makes the case:

Giuliani has a way to go before he can seal the deal, but he’s saying the right things. Conservatives can trust him to nominate judges who will follow the Constitution rather than reshape social policy from the bench. That’s what conservatives want to hear, and if Giuliani strongly makes that point, it will help him. There are still going to be questions about Giuliani’s position on abortion and gun control, but I don’t see those as being fatal to his campaign — unless he bombs them.

Giuliani’s biggest asset is his leadership — he did great things for the City of New York, and he’s a tenacious when it comes to getting things done. This country needs someone like that. Even if Giuliani alienates some on the social right, he can also bring in many moderates, and it’s the moderates abandoning the GOP in 2006 that cost the Republicans control of Congress.