A Second Hand Conjecture

For those of us not living in the concentrated sprawl of the coastal and Midwestern metropoli, it is often extremely perplexing how urban Democratic mayors in places like Chicago and Philadelphia can compile lengthy and embarrassing records of incompetent and failed policies, yet remain wildly popular within their urban constituencies. Even as these mayors accumulate massive public debts while governing with a seeming indifference to economic and developmental realities, there is often a certain immutability to their popularity. It is doubly surprising how mayoral characters of this sort are consistently reelected to office in enormous majorities, frequently over vastly superior Republican opponents.

It occurs to me that as the United States becomes ever more urban concentrated, is it not conceivable that we should expect to see this bizarre phenomenon replicated in national politics?

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With Obama tapping Ken Salazar for the Interior Department, rumor has it conservative John Elway may step forward to run for his Senate seat in Colorado. This rumor –similar to one for Mike Ditka in Illinois– has come and gone before. This time however, the tectonically altered political environment makes it more credible. Party political defeats don’t tend to alienate good new candidates, but draw them in, as the rapid transformation of the Democratic Party between 2004, 2006 and 2008 demonstrates.

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Rasmussen has polled the public on whether they agreed with President Bush’s characterization of capitalism as the “highway to the American Dream.” Only 44% voiced support for capitalism, 33% were undecided and 22% expressed opposition. A grim finding. Only Republicans marshaled an absolute majority of support for the system, commendably voting 4:1, independents had a plurality of support, and Democrats were evenly split.

It should be observed that it is not without historical precendent that a victorious power would quickly wish to transform itself into the image of the enemy it proved its system utterly superior to, rejecting the values and virtues which had enabled her to triumph, in favor of those which had condemned her adversary to defeat. Indeed, it’s a bizarre but relatively common historical temptation if considered.

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You may have noticed there’s an ugly and unfortunate current developing in some of the protests against Proposition 8 in California. Namely white gays, blaming blacks for its passage. Even Andrew Sullivan, who has been blaming blacks for a couple of days now, has noticed that perhaps things are getting a little out of hand.

Altogether, as Mark Steyn puts it, this wasn’t quite the possibility for post-election civil discord people were anticipating:

The media were warning that if the election went the wrong way there’d be riots, but I didn’t realize they meant Klansmen in Abercrombie polos roaming West Hollywood itching for a rumble.
(NRO)

One of the most visible recurring problems here is the frustration many gay men and women are experiencing with the question of how blacks could “betray” the cause of universal civil rights, after such a long and noble struggle of their own to secure them. Confronting this matter directly in an opinion in the Los Angeles Times, Jasmyne Cannick raises several worthwhile points of explanation. Most notably, a misunderstanding on the part of white gays about both the origins and requirements of an appeal to the black community:

[T]he black civil rights movement was essentially born out of and driven by the black church; social justice and religion are inextricably intertwined in the black community. To many blacks, civil rights are grounded in Christianity — not something separate and apart from religion but synonymous with it. To the extent that the issue of gay marriage seemed to be pitted against the church, it was going to be a losing battle in my community.

[...]

Likewise, holding the occasional town-hall meeting in Leimert Park — the one part of the black community where they now feel safe thanks to gentrification — to tell black people how to vote on something gay isn’t effective outreach either.
(LAT)

In a consistent vein she adds on her site:

[G]ays are headed to Long Beach tonight to protest. I wonder though why they are moving from Westwood to Long Beach and skipping past Compton, Watts, and South L.A.?
(Jasmyne Cannick)

While fear and conceit are definitely in evidence, more pertinent is the matter of misdirection in the division between political friends and enemies. In ordinary times, the necessary accord for putting these two parties back into a grudging spiritual alignment would be to unify against the common enemy: the invidious conservative power structure.

Thus the real trouble is that simultaneous with the passage of Proposition 8, this conservative power structure and government has been quite visibly thrown down by the election of Barack Obama and the Democrats. The once titanic foe is now in pieces, scattered and preoccupied with internal reexamination and a painful reconsolidation project. It isn’t a party to this debate, it isn’t even a party with an agenda of any kind at the moment. So it is that without a Tito to oppose in common struggle, the Balkan coalition of Yugoslavian dissidents become Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians, almost eager to turn on each other. Head north to peaceful Slovenia says me. Call it Oregon.

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It occurs to me that the sequence of cocktails is the best political indicator I know of on election night. In 2004 I was attending a Democratic election party and early on everyone was drinking wine and martinis in stemware, or beer and soda in tall glasses. The ambiance befit the beverages: general levity and young merriment. Sporty coquettish girls with wide white toothy smiles dominated all conversations.

But when it became clear that the exit polls predicting a Kerry victory were wildly mistaken, and field reports were coming in on cell phones of Karl Rove’s successful mobilization effort, it wasn’t long before the assembled Democrats had exchanged their drinks for short glasses filled with dark brown fluids. To match the new taste for scotch and bourbon whiskey, the sporty girls seemed to disappear and old men began to dominate conversations.

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Could a liberal lesbian rights activist actually win South Carolina’s 1st congressional district? Sure looks possible, as Linda Ketner has closed to within 5 in her aggressive challenge to incumbent Rep. Henry Brown. Of interest, Ketner is also a member of  “the Cabinet” which Time just published an interesting piece on. It’s an informal group of gay tech and hereditary millionaires, who have been investing large sums toward a systematic defeat of social conservative Republicans nationwide.

The success of Ketner and other socially liberal Democrats running on explicitly pro-gay rights platforms in traditionally social conservative friendly districts, would certainly tend to complete the trinity of broader Republican political decline. Not only are economic and national security focused conservatives losing on their traditional strong suit thanks to economic woes and Iraq, but the cultural debate may be shifting substantially leftward as well.

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Filipino writer Benjamin Pimentel is surprised to discover that his countrymen were among the very few foreign populations to prefer John McCain to Barack Obama in a Gallup international survey. A happy place for Republicans in a lonely world apparently, as in the Philippines the outgoing Bush administration enjoys a 66% approval (more than twice its abysmally low domestic support).

Pimentel then speculated somewhat interestingly that had the Philippines ever applied for US statehood or multi-statehood (the most recent proposals call for the country to be broken into three states: Luzón, Visayas, and Mindanao), McCain would handily win the general election. The Philippines 91 million plus population would easily dwarf the combined advantage of Democratic California and New York in the electoral college.

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Alan Reynolds at Cato asks “How’s Obama Going to Raise $4.3 Trillion?”

Altogether, Mr. Obama is promising at least $4.3 trillion of increased spending and reduced tax revenue from 2009 to 2018 — roughly an extra $430 billion a year by 2012-2013.

How is he going to pay for it?

Read the whole thing for an overview of what Obama is promising in inscreased spending and loss of tax revenues and how his rational for paying for it falls far short of the goal. How will we pay for all this? It’s something I’ve wondered for a long long time and have only found hand waving about corporate loopholes and better efficiencies savings that seem absurd on their face.

That leaves 3 options as I see it. We will do one or some combination of

1. Increase the national debt
2. Raise taxes
3. Cut Spending

Increasing the national debt may not be as politially feasible in the near future as it has been in the past (at least I hope), so it’s clear that can’t account for all of it. I’m not sure how much more the democrats will be able to tax the rich and corporations. I mean, they might try, but I don’t think it will give them the returns they would hope for. So that leaves raising taxes on the rest of us and cutting spending. Any whats the only part of the budge the democrats have been known to favor spending cuts for? The military.

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I was not in favor of the Paulson plan if you haven’t caught that yet. Still, the pitiful display from our congress today set a recent low.

First, faced with an unpopular and contentious bill which she feels for the good of the nation must be passed, we get a partisan and divisive speech from Nancy Pelosi:

Pelosi had said that the $700 billion price tag of the measure “is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.”

Pure horse hockey. More importantly, if Pelosi believes her rhetoric about the importance of this bill the poor judgment, lack of leadership and inability to understand the importance of statesmanship in a crisis should be grounds for immediate dismissal from her post.

Then, we get this pathetic response from the Republican leadership:

“I do believe that we could have gotten there today had it not been for this partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, adding that Pelosi “poisoned” the GOP conference.

Deputy Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) held up a copy of Pelosi’s floor speech at a press conference and said she had “failed to listen and to lead” on the issue.

The Speaker had blasted the Bush administration in her speech and Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asserted that some GOP lawmakers, who had reluctantly agreed to support the bill, might have changed their minds following Pelosi’s remarks.

“Might” have effected them? What whining. If it is false it shows the same tin ear that Pelosi demonstrated. If it is true it is even worse. Either way, did it not occur to them how petty it would look in a moment of crisis?

If these congressman or women really didn’t support the bill and were going to vote for it anyway, the idea that they would change their votes because Pelosi was her normal clueless self is enough to deprive them of my vote forever.  It is even more damning if they thought the bill was necessary and voted against it due to her behavior.

This is a disgrace.

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Panic grips the Hill, with Democrats planning to distance themselves from Obama and/or abandon criticism of McCain. Geez. Snap out of it guys. You have the most compelling presidential candidate you’ve had since perhaps John F. Kennedy. Almost every conditional variable in the election is heavily slanted in your favor. If you can’t win this one, you can’t win a presidential election.

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Well, I thought it was a clever button. But it’s pretty preposterous on the House floor. Context counts.

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According to the Associated Press, a sequence of interviews with Democratic leaders has revealed this to be the political plan being recommended to the Obama campaign:

1. Tie the Republican to an unpopular President Bush.
2. Let no charge go unanswered.
3. Stress plans to fix the economy.

Well, I’m not sure any of these items is good advice, with a possible qualitative exception on #3.
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(photo: Brian Long)

Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Canadian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is concerned that Sarah Palin’s decision to have Trig, may lead to a reduction of abortions in Canada through positive example.

This is perhaps demonstrative of how different perspectives on abortion can be in the United States on both sides. It is frankly uncommon to see a senior figure among even the staunchest American defenders of abortion rights, argue that a decrease in their exercise would be undesirable. Indeed, such an opinion is more commonly confined to the most extremist fringes of radical feminism, or within the vile eugenics and zero population growth movements.

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Dick Durbin renews the Democratic attack on Palin’s experience, and calls for a retreat on family slander. It’s pretty much back and forth between the two attack vectors day-to-day in Democratic circles. They don’t know how to deal with her yet. Meanwhile they’re letting her develop her image as an classical outsider/reformer. It’s a huge political mistake with enduring costs.

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John Podhoretz thinks the Palin speech might be among the most dazzling debuts in American political history. I don’t know about that, but I do know it was the most powerful, important, and effective speech by a vice presidential candidate since Nixon’s “Checkers.” John later notes that McCain looked relieved by it all. Again, I thought of Checkers and and a smiling Eisenhower addressing the convention: “tonight I saw courage…”

The parallels are pretty striking actually. The week of acrimonious scandal, the uncertainty of the party leadership, the lack of truth to the charges, and ultimately the triumphant personal redemption through a national televised address, which transformed a very young party favorite into a powerful national voice. Interestingly, the most notable departure from this historical recreation is the conduct of McCain throughout. He cut a superior and more loyal figure than Ike did and that’s impressive.

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Well, here is an embarrassing prospect. It seems the Republican leadership may boycott the Republican convention in Minnesota, for fear of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

The top elected Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was already boycotting. But now we learn that President Bush is said to be unlikely to attend, whilst Senator McCain may deliver his acceptance speech via satellite.

One would hope someone could prevail on both the president and the senator that this would represent egregious folly after a flawless, unifying Democratic convention, with its leadership in attendance. Evidently that’s something of a fortuitous luxury when the wind blows these days.

It should be plain that only an appearance of fear and disarray could possibly be conveyed by the abstention of Arnold, Bush and McCain from their own convention. The Republicans wouldn’t have hesitated to level such charges, had such a similarly ridiculous plan been proposed by the Democrats for Denver.

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It’s almost as if the Dems can’t help but to resort to misogynistic antagonism in dealing with Gov. Sarah Palin. This comes courtesy of Alan Colmes, citing Rogers Cadenhead who questions Palin’s maternal abilities:

One bit of weirdness associated with Palin concerns the birth of her youngest child. As the Alaskan media reported, Palin was attending an energy conference in Texas on April 18 when her water broke four weeks before her due date. After this happened, Palin didn’t head to a hospital or even leave the conference, even though the premature rupture of fetal membrances is normally a cause for an immediate examination by an obstetrician, who will observe the fetus on a monitor to guard against infection and other life-threatening complications. Two other reasons for heightened concern were Palin’s age, 43, and the fact that prenatal testing indicated the child had Down syndrome.

Palin stayed at the conference and delivered a 30-minute speech, then boarded a 12-hour Alaska Airlines flight from Dallas to Anchorage, neglecting to tell the airline her water had broken — most airlines won’t fly a woman in labor. The motivation for all of this appears to be the Palins’ desire that the child be born in Alaska. Her husband Todd told the Anchorage Daily News, “You can’t have a fish picker from Texas.”

When she arrived home, Palin was hospitalized immediately and the baby was born prematurely after labor was induced in the middle of the night.

Aside from baby Trig suffering from Down Syndrome, the child was quite healthy at delivery and has been doing fine ever since. It is true that when amino leaks occur, the general advice of doctors is to get to the hospital immediately, but that is not always the case. In fact, when delivery proceeds within 24 hours of an amino leak (a.k.a. water breaking), the risks of any complications to the baby are quite low. Indeed, some women experience minor leakages, as Palin did, well before they are due without any complications whatsoever.

In Palin’s case, she delivered Trig well within the 24 hour window recognized as “safe,” and actually had to be induced because she wasn’t in labor. Moreover, she was in touch with her physician throughout the event, and he did not advise her to act otherwise.

As an aside, the accusation that Trig was born prematurely does not seem to hold water (no pun intended … well, maybe a little) since Palin was past her 36th week, and the definition of “premature birth” is a baby born prior to the 37th week of gestation.

In any case, these are just facts that undermine the credibility of anyone asserting such ridiculous accusations. That Obama supporters are seriously challenging Palin’s credibility and competence as a mother is just stunning on a political level. Not just in the brashness, but also in the sheer stupidity of leveling such charges. I mean, how do idiots like Colmes and Cadenhead think women are going to react to their second-guessing of Palin’s birthing decisions?

I can hear my wife’s retort now: “You try carrying a bowling ball in your belly for 40 weeks, and then shooting it out your pee-hole with the entire hospital staff staring at your nether region. And that’s not even mentioning having to pee every 20 minutes, feeling like a fat cow, persistent fatigue, and constantly worrying about how your caring for unborn child. Plus you have to do your job just as competently and efficiently as you always did before you were pregnant (including dealing with any previously born children), only to be confronted with some a$$wipe having the nerve to tell you ‘You’re doing it wrong’.”

I imagine that a lot of women would feel the same way.

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Have not the Democrats figured out, you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Or something like that. With a 54 page platform, I guess not.

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When you’re Speaker of the House, I guess that, in addition to all your other powers, you can make language mean whatever you wish it to mean.

PELOSI: I’m never certain of anything. Today, I would be certain. I just think that it is the opportunity for our country to move away from Washington.  You know, I’m the Speaker of the House. I’m an outsider in Washington, D.C. .  Business as usual in Washington is not in the people’s interests. It there’s for the special interests.

KING: You would be the ultimate insider, wouldn’t you?

PELOSI: Well, I — you would think. But I…

KING: The speaker of the House isn’t an insider?

PELOSI: Well, they didn’t want me to be Speaker of the House.

KING: But you are.

PELOSI: I had to fight these special interests. And now to make the change, we have to have a Democratic president. And Barack Obama has done more than anyone in terms of passing the toughest ethical bill — ethics bill in Congress, to shed the bright light on transparency on the link between special interests and legislation in Washington.

Even Larry King is incredulous at the notion that a chosen Speaker of the House would not be the ultimate insider!

The amazing thing is that these politicians can get on national TV and make ludicrous statements with a straight face.

Ah, well.  They have got lots of practice at it.

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Two separate studies suggest that some Democratic voters are highly influenced by Stephen Colbert and Oprah Winfrey in choosing candidates to support. Kind of embarrassing really.

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Cernig at Larisa Alexandrovna’s site had me persuaded for two whole paragraphs.

Now, having little taste for the fine art of distractions-from-distractions, I tend to roll my eyes at the transparently partisan diversionary tactics one sees all over the web from Democrats in defense of John Edwards (eg “who cares about a politician’s adultery when there’s potholes in the streets!”). However, Cernig’s complaint that the national media was focusing on that rather tawdry and meaningless scandal to the exclusion of the crisis in Georgia, had some legitimacy. Reading it I paused for a moment, reflected on the non-Olympic television news coverage I’d watched over the past 24 hours, and decided Cernig had a legitimate point.

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(photo: WBEZ Chicago Public Radio | site)

Obama’s newish McSame style attack ad mocking McCain’s “original maverick” slogan is fairly good. As Ken Wheaton notes, all the time McCain had to spend trying to convince the GOP he was a loyal Republican, unfortunately produced a lot of pro-Bush statements on videotape. Also, I like the Rovian touch of attacking McCain’s strength: experience.

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The Club for Growth has a clip of Mitch McConnell’s struggles to find a price for gasoline which is high enough to persuade congressional Democrats to authorize expanded oil drilling. A bit of a theatrical exercise of course, but there is a certain discomfort in seeing Ken Salazar casually reject $10 a gallon as insufficient.

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McCain wears Salvatore Ferragamo? Cindy’s doing no doubt. The poster adds contemptuously: “But that’s what regular guys do right?” This might be the first time footwear symbolism was injected into a presidential campaign since, you know.

Come to think of it, while Democrats are typically obsessed with socioeconomic class in general, there might be a recurring fascination with the class meaning of footwear in particular. Not long ago I saw this bizarre love affair with the higher class metaphors of marks on Tom Udall’s boots.

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Certainly not one our Congress can’t make worse. We have a market where housing prices are in free fall, where the last thing we want shaky institutions to have more exposure to is mortgages that are almost guaranteed to be at risk.

How shaky an institution? How about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which operate at stratospheric levels of leverage, 40 to 1.

Think about that. The most important financial institutions in our country operate at levels above those that brought Long Term Capital to its knees as a matter of course. That means the slightest mismatch between their assets and liabilities results in massive losses. So, faced with this crisis and the massive, shaky, highly levered institutions which undergird it, what do our leaders do? Let the lovely Megan McCardle take it from here:

The GSEs got into an enormous mess because their special status allowed them to take an unsafe chunk of the market, its executives were rewarded for risk-taking, and its management was excessively entangled with the government, which made it hard for them to say no when the regulators asked them to take on even more loans.  Congress’s plan is . . . more of the same.  Instead of moving to put FM/FM into a more easily understood model–either nationalizing them, or privatising–they’re making the GSEs even weirder, and of course, piling on more debt.

It’s time for Congress to bite the bullet:  nationalize them, or take them private.  But keeping pet companies on a leash so that you can use them as a sort of housing market slush fund, while pretending that the liabilities you thereby create don’t really affect the government, is the kind of thing one expects to see in a banana republic, not a free and prosperous nation.

How prosperous we will stay with leadership like this is open to question. Note, while House Democrats are decrying the high risk idiocy of our financial leaders (and I won’t argue with them) they are telling the GSE’s to do the exact kinds of things they have been decrying. In fact, they wanted to give them more leeway to increase risk and debt:

The deal includes several compromises. It would allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase loans of as much as $625,000 in high-cost areas of the country, a lower number than many House Democrats wanted but higher than some Senate lawmakers originally envisioned.

The enormous implications of encouraging the kind of behavior that got us into this in the first place, with government guarantees to stiffen their resolve when they go into the maw of the housing crisis, boggles the mind.

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After speculating upon Hillary Clinton’s strategic thinking with respect to the Democratic nomination, James Taranto concludes (emphasis added):

To summarize, Mrs. Clinton maximizes her chances of becoming president if she (1) does enough damage to Obama to snatch the nomination away from him, (2) failing that, does enough damage to him to bring about his defeat in November, and (3) gets herself on the ticket, whether he wins in November or not.

Some will say Mrs. Clinton is being disloyal to her party if she undermines Obama’s chances of winning in November. But maybe she just practices a different kind of party loyalty. After all, if you can be a patriot while hoping your country loses a war, why can’t you be a loyal Democrat while hoping your party loses an election?

It is an interesting question.

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Meet Shirley Golub, a feisty San Franciscan who is challenging Nancy Pelosi for the Democratic nomination in the 8th Congressional District of California, on the grounds that she’s just not anti-Bush enough. Shirley fears above all that if Bush isn’t impeached, he’ll invade Iran. Yes, you might say that Bush will not even be in office if Shirley were to be elected in place of Nancy. But Shirl says it’s just a symptom of “corporate brainwashing” to suggest it’s too late to impeach. You must understand Shirley is very anti-Bush. It wouldn’t be the first time that obsessive and excessive animosity toward this president bent reality a little bit, and sent people spinning off into pointless efforts.

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Wow. They beat the crap out of this elderly school teacher, because she chanted for Hillary at the Rules & Bylaws Committee meeting: video. (via FDL). I suppose that’s one way to put down internal insurrection. Not a very good one though in a building full of cameras.

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(photo: Department of Defense)

The Obama campaign has categorically rejected John McCain’s proposal for a joint trip to Iraq, calling it a “publicity stunt.” Publicity stunt it most certainly is, but why is it automatically assumed that the publicity would only benefit McCain? Because he proposed it? Or because the facts on the ground are thought to validate his views? Nettlesome matters that McCain would be wise to emphasize in the wake of the rejection.

While Obama’s supporters are snarling at what they consider to be a pattern politics of either immaturity or sage condescension (they’re apparently a bit vexed by the event), the campaign may have missed a tremendous opportunity here.

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Some interesting parallels with our current situation and the period before the Great Depression. Interestingly, it seems the Democrats are intent on not learning from history, at least not about what led us to the Depression. Or maybe they want a replay of the policies that helped drag us out of the Depression.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_shlaes&sid=alBsmRS72DyM

Schumer used the Bear Stearns collapse to call for “a greater degree of regulation” in the industry that is relevant this time, investment banking.

Hoover knew free trade was beneficial. But his party, the Grand Old Party, was the tariff party. So in spite of himself, he signed a big new tariff, the Smoot-Hawley act, triggering retaliation from U.S. trading partners.

For many decades now, Democrats have contrasted Hoover’s concession to protectionists unfavorably with free-trade legislation written by Roosevelt and his globalization guru, Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

Today it is the Democrats who are doing wrong, and they know better. Candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both internationalists by temperament, yet they seem to be in a race to see who can repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement first.

Channeling Hull

Bush, by contrast, was channeling Hull when he called a plan to reject a new trade accord with Colombia “a terrible signal.”

Finally, there was Hoover’s tax policy. Today every fool, right or left, knows that imposing a tax increase in an economic downturn is like kicking a wounded man in the stomach.

Yet in the dark days of 1932, with unemployment at 20 percent, Hoover perversely signed an increase that reversed the multiple cuts by his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge.

Hoover more than doubled rates at the bottom of the tax schedule. He also increased the top marginal tax rate to 63 percent from 25 percent. The effect was predictable. That tax error has haunted economists ever since.

Yet today it is not Republicans but Democrats who are preparing to replicate it. Obama has suggested a payroll tax increase and an income tax increase; together they would just about offset all the breaks created by Bush. Clinton is scarcely different. Who’s Hoover now?

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Most people believe that liberals and Democrats are more sympathetic to gay interests than conservatives and Republicans. Count me among those who think this is accurate.

But, not all is what it seems on the surface.

Some Republicans – some very high up – can and have expressed support for those in the gay community.

Allow the Gay Patriot to explain.

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Do you want the best possible result? Sure; don’t we all?

When I play bridge, we frequently say: “I didn’t get the best possible result. But – I got the best result possible.” Sometimes, the best possible result is impossible to get. And – you don’t always get what you want.

These very important lessons are highlighted in this spot-on essay from the Weekly Standard: The Inconvenient Truths of 2008.

Each party’s base has two inconvenient truths it doesn’t want to hear. For Republicans, those truths concern immigration and the culture war. Most of today’s illegal immigrant population is here to stay (along with their descendants) and will pay no significant price for getting here outside the legal channels. No presidential candidate can change those facts. On the issue that matters most to conservative Christians–abortion–the political phase of the culture war is over. The right lost –a pro-life initiative failed in South Dakota in 2006: If it can’t win there, it can’t win anywhere. Well, maybe Utah.

For Democrats, the relevant subjects are Iraq and federal spending. Discussions of the Iraq war in Democratic primaries have a bizarre quality: Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speak as though the war is a lost cause. It isn’t–unless one of them wins the election and pulls the plug, a scenario that Iran’s proxies no doubt await eagerly. As for spending, the federal budget (and federal tax revenues) will leave no room for large, expensive, New Deal-style health and education programs. For the foreseeable future, domestic policymaking will have more to do with arranging incentives than with dispensing largesse: Think welfare reform, not Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

If Republicans fail to understand their unpleasant truths, they will lose in November, and lose badly. Democrats might win even if their heads remain in the sand: It’s a Democratic year, as a comparison between the two parties’ fundraising, turnout, and vote totals in the primaries to date suggests. But they will lose the chance to have the kind of public debate that shapes government policy–meaning, the kind that is based on truth, convenient and otherwise.

Will we elect a leader who tells us the truth – even if those truths are not what we want, and not what we want to hear?

Sad to say, the candidate who most often tells unhappy truths may not turn out to be the candidate who wins the most votes. Elections are not always won by truth-tellers; deception sometimes carries the day. John F. Kennedy, whose presidency is often invoked these days, won a close national election by describing an imaginary gap between the Soviet Union’s arsenal of missiles and our own. If something similar happens this year, if the next president wins by promising limitless spending with limited taxes or a costless retreat in Iraq, voters should not blame the winning candidate. In politics as in markets, customers rule; we usually get the leaders we want. The trick is to want the right leaders. We might start by asking who tells us the truth–even, or especially, when it hurts.

You get what you pay for. What will we be purchasing come November?

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Steven Taylor takes a look at Paul Kane’s conclusion that it is now mathematically impossible for either Obama or Clinton to win the nomination with pledged delegates, and notes that a super-delegate decided nominee represents an enormous political problem for the Democrats:

The party that has a legitimate gripe about the 2000 election and the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote cannot find themselves in a situation in which the nominee with less popularly-selected delegates is given the nomination by delegates who were not elected via the primary/caucus process.
(PoliBlog)

Not only is this a problem of political perception and party unity, it could conceivably jeopardize the unification of the two candidates on a single ticket. The candidate perceptions themselves of whether or not they’ve been swindled out of the top slot on the ticket could be significant. Given the nature of this race, it has become almost imperative that the loser is named the vice presidential nominee. But when we are dealing with two candidates who no longer seem particularly fond of each other to begin with, trouble may lie ahead by adding the dimension of a potential backroom convention deal.

Supplementally, Dr. Taylor also adds:

Also, at the end of the day, the DNC may very much come to regret taking the Michigan and Florida delegates out of the pool.
(PoliBlog)

Further evidence that the politics of exclusion always ends up punishing you in democracy.

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The Anchoress has a splendid post on my very own Representative, Heather Wilson (R-NM), whom I proudly voted for in 2006. While she upsets many conservatives with her McCain-esque positions (NR likes to slam her quite frequently), it should be remembered that Albuquerque –the urban heart of her district– is a politically divided city. Her cross-appeal to female Democrats has often made the difference in defeating strong Democratic challengers. At heart she’s a conservative and is thus enormously infuriating to Democrats who see the 1st District as being naturally theirs. However, I’d like to keep her where she is in the House. Let Steve Pearce take the fall against popular Tom Udall for Domenici’s Senate seat.

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Video clip of Sean Hannity asking Frank Luntz’s group of Democratic Obama supporters to name one (1) specific accomplishment of their candidate. They all fail embarrassingly and resort to offering Obama’s personality characteristics as achievements. One young girl does manage to meekly submit “community organizer,” which may be a valid allusion to Barack’s accomplishments on behalf of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago in the 1980s. The rest…ought to be ashamed of themselves. Anyone this uninformed about who they intend to vote for, should probably not be voting in an election to begin with.

From: HotAir

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In a post at QandO, Billy Hollis explains why John McCain will not be getting his vote. Essentially, McCain-Feingold and Johnny’s continued contempt for the Bill of Rights leaves Billy cold:

This [McCain-Feingold] is THE main reason I cannot vote for the man. Heck, I almost shied away from Fred merely because he voted for it. McCain was the ringleader, the prime mover, the guy without whom it would not have happened.

The fact that McCain feels justified in subverting the Bill of Rights to arbitrarily decide what citizens may say and do makes him unqualified to be the president of these United States.

I pretty much agree entirely with Billy (and Peg) on this. I have great deal of respect for the Arizona Senator, but he truly seems to believe that government knows what’s best for everybody, and he isn’t afraid to use the levers of power to override Constitutional rights.

However, there was something in the comments that just begged for further analysis. Frequent QandO commenter jpm100 cogently observes:

McCain, Iraq, and the Left’s Hypocrisy

For the past 5 years, the lion’s share of the attacks on Bush and Republicans have revolved around Iraq. They include Abu Garib, no WMDs, lying about WMDs, lying about terrorism ties, Haliburton, Escalation, ad infinitum.

But here we have McCain, who’s one Republican Selling point is his support for the Iraq War. Not just a Supporter, but the Queen Bee of Senate Support for Iraq. Yet the Left relishes his rise as the Republican nominee.

I’ve have to believe this is only because of one or both of two possible reasons.

1) Opposition against the Iraq War was purely politically motivated, a tool to smear Bush with. With US Troops deaths as the anchor, they could attack Bush and recreate the Vietnam era for the Kerry campaign for one. And just generally deride Bush and Republicans.

Yet does any of this negativity get raised by the left when the Queen Bee of Iraq War Support is in line for the Presidency? You’d think they’d go nuts. Instead they support him. Its not even brought up directly. Opposition to Iraq has all been a fraud that was easily jettisoned.

and/or

2) McCain is a such a liberal boner, they can overlook his support for Iraq. This wasn’t the case for Lieberman who they literally kicked out of the Democrat Party. Iraq was all important then.

Liberal’s support for McCain has betrayed their opposition to the Iraq War as a political tool and they otherwise couldn’t give a crap.

I’d say jpm100 sets up the tension perfectly. For all the caterwauling about the Iraq war, it really doesn’t make any sense that the left would even grudgingly show respect for the Republican candidate with the strongest position on the war. Joe Lieberman has received no such respect, and Hillary Clinton is persistently dogged by those who want her to repent openly and with as much self deprecation as possible about her vote for the war. So why would the left give John McCain a pass?

Frankly, I don’t think that jpm100’s suggestions are mutually exclusive so I’ll opt for the “and” in his (her?) statement. The Iraq War is/was a convenient club to bash Bush, and McCain’s affinity for Democrat programs prompts the left to leave him pretty well alone. Added to that, McCain’s penchant for bucking his own party probably softens the left’s stance toward him. However, I thik there is more to the story than that.

I am certain that there are many on the left who simply oppose war for any reason. These would be the folks who were not only against the war in Iraq, but also the war in Afghanistan, the war in the Balkans, and the first Gulf War. A significant portion of this contingent is likely made up of Code Pink types who oppose any and all actions of the United States, which they see as a crony-capitalist state enforcing the will of big corporations at the expense of the working classes. For them, war at the hands of a capitalist regime is the epitome of the rich oppressing the poor, and really no different than medieval Kings sending peasants off to die for them in their never ending quest for more riches.

But there is another segment of the left that, while more sane in matters political and historical, are absolutely resigned to the idea anything coming from the right is surely motivated by bad intentions (their counterparts on the right are just as certain that Bill and Hillary are evil incarnate, and that they had Vince Foster killed). These are the leftists who always vote Democrat and who only seem to oppose wars when its a Republican prosecuting it. For them, the motivations behind going to war are much more important than the war itself. Since they can’t trust Republicans to have the “correct” intentions, they immediately suspect and dismiss any stated reasons for war, and assume some nefarious and/or selfish reasons instead. Out-of-context statements and extemporaneous missteps by Republicans are seized upon in gotcha frenzies as evidence of the malintentions they all knew were present, yet hidden.

So, maybe the reason that McCain gets such a pass is because, despite his steadfast support for the war, his intentions are not as immediately suspect. Perhaps because of his willingness to buck the party line, and his support for issues important to Democrats, his status as the “Queen Bee of Senate Support for Iraq” can not only be forgiven, but overlooked entirely. Accordingly, because he is trusted by Democrats, the usual tropes that make up anti-war cant are not very useful against him. Similarly, since his belief in using government to organize and regulate people’s lives meshes nicely with Democrat views, he is treated as de facto Democrat.

And therein lies the problem for him among small-government conservatives and libertarians. If that part of the statist left who actually wields power is comfortable with him, then it will be left up to the Republicans in Congress to oppose him. Judging from how they dealt with Bush on matters of government spending and expansion, it’s hard to see how there will be any effective opposition at all. In short, with McCain occupying the White House, there won’t be any adults in charge and you can kiss any attempts to restrain the federal government good-bye.

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Bill Clinton’s recent emergence as Hillary’s principal anti-Obama attack dog has left a lot of people somewhat uncomfortable. We’re not generally accustomed to seeing this sort of bare knuckled political brawling from a former president (all the effort seems to be wearing Bill out too). Eugene Robinson supplies a reason for Bill’s furious anti-Obama rhetoric: “Obama’s candidacy not only threatens to obliterate the dream of a Clinton Restoration. It also fundamentally calls into question Bill Clinton’s legacy by making it seem . . . not really such a big deal.” Robinson notices that Barack’s remarks on Reagan possess a deeper subtext. While Clinton merely repositioned the Democrats in the post-Reagan era, Obama wants to transform the landscape like Reagan did, leaving Bill’s accomplishments a historical footnote.

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I don’t want to hear any more about how the Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility; none of them are planning to close the current deficit, much less deal with the now-seriously-it-really-is-looming entitlement problem. Their tax code changes will claw back only a small fraction of the revenue lost in the Bush tax cut. If you are surprised, it is probably because the Democrats and the Republicans have a different definition of the tax cuts going “mostly to the rich”. If you mean, “which individuals got the biggest benefit from the tax cuts?”, rich people did, because they pay the most taxes; that is the definition Democrats use. But if you mean “which class of people got most of the money?”, then the answer is “the middle class”. There just aren’t that many rich people; it costs a lot more to hand out a modest amount of cash to 200 million than to hand out a lot of cash to 500,000. So when Democrats repeal only the tax cuts on the top one or two brackets, this may be symbolically rewarding, but it will not actually generate that much revenue for the treasury.Democrats are, of course, planning to spend every bit of the money from their tax increases on new spending, plus it looks like some more. You may now return to forgetting that you ever thought you cared about the budget deficit.

This rant is inspired by this post from Greg Mankiw on Hillary Clinton’s tax plan:

1. The $52 billion estimate seems high to me. The CBO reports that each percentage-point increase in the top two income tax rates–singles making over about $150K, married taxpayers over about $180K–increases tax revenue by only $6.5 billion in 2009. Multiply that by 4.6 (the proposed rate increase), and you get $29 billion, not $52 billion. And even that $6.5 billion is an overestimate, because it includes the top two rates, not just the top rate. I would guess that the Clinton campaign included other tax increases in the $52 billion figure, such as increases in the taxes rates for dividends and capital gains.

2. Even taking the $52 billion estimate at face value, it shows how little revenue would come from increasing taxes on the rich. This is only about 1/3 of one percent of GDP.

3. The passage from Leonhardt makes clear that Senator Clinton wants to spend the extra revenue on other proposals, instead of using it to reduce the long-term fiscal gap.

4. The passage says that this revenue will “help pay” for her other proposals, instead of fully paying for them. The entire package seems to involve either an expanded deficit or other taxes increases (or spending cuts) to be named later.

Actually, as bad as this is it doesn’t come close to the grand stupidity of this suggestion from Hillary on how to solve the housing crisis.

Not that Megan is shocked at her conclusion, but I have certainly pointed out before that any examination of the voting in Congress showed that Republicans were far more fiscally responsible than the Democrats. So I already reached the same conclusion she has. Which doesn’t mean the Republicans in power is a good thing. They have much stiffer backbones in the minority.

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(photo: Marc Nozell)

Matt Stoller at OpenLeft has a pretty interesting observation about the swing of the self-described “very liberal” constituency from Obama to Hillary over the course of the primaries:

In Iowa, Obama beat Clinton by 16 points among those who consider themselves as ‘very liberal’. In New Hampshire, they were even. And now in Nevada, Clinton simply destroyed Obama within that block by 16 points. In other words, while it’s not entirely clear who ‘won’ Nevada, whatever that means, had Obama run even with Clinton among those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal’, he would have soundly defeated her at the caucuses outright instead of having to play delegate games.
(OpenLeft via Corrente)

Matt goes on to make the argument that Obama’s recent praise of the Reagan legacy was the catalyst for Obama’s defeat. Overall Matt’s grinding old ideological axes a bit too hard here, given that this would clearly fail to answer how the trend he identified managed to precede Obama’s remarks on Reagan. But he is onto something at the margins. It would be interesting if Obama was losing the “very liberals” as Matt notes, among the aging and still resentful leftists who were adults during the Reagan era.

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At least the last sentence, my emphasis:

First he has no chance whatever of being elected President of the United States of America. He is a rich kid, yes so is George Bush as well – but George Bush gives a good imitation of looking and sounding like an ordinary Texan, Mitt Romney looks and sounds like what he is.

Americans will accept a Democrat who was born rich – they have more of a problem with a Republican who was born rich.

- Paul Marks, taking no prisoners

Via Samizdata

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Michael Goldfarb thinks that the unexpected Hillary win in Nevada despite the Culinary Workers Union endorsement of Obama, could represent the beginning of a substantial diminution in union political power: “If they can’t even affect the votes of their members when those members must vote in public, in front of their colleagues, and under the watchful eye of management, what kind of premium are candidates likely to put on union endorsements in the future?”

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Here’s a fascinating little article on Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome and the new leading light of the Italian Left. Vetroni has worked to create a more moderate and flexible social democratic political culture in Italy. Modeling his new party in name and substance expressly on the US Democratic Party, he’s sought to create a very American kind of Left in a country so often fractured by the rancor of political extremism. His fierce criticism of Iran and his rejection of ossified socialist economic theory represent substantial breaks from the ideological status quo. While many of his positions and views aren’t entirely welcome, perhaps a Blairite “third way” is finally coming to the Italian Republic.

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Hillary and Edwards are slamming Obama after he heaped praise on Ronald Reagan –something that may not play well with the leftist base of their party, but was doubtlessly well received by the general electorate. One wonders if Obama shouldn’t have waited to express that opinion until after he had the nomination wrapped up however.

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Hotair has video of Chris Matthews talking about Barack Obama on the Tonight Show, in which he tosses objectivity to the wind and replaces it with a kind of turbid political idolatry. He suggests to us that he wouldn’t be an honest reporter if he failed to tell us about the “spiritual experience” one supposedly must have at an Obama rally. Toward that he argues that if one does not cry at said rallies, they are not American.

Charles Feldman has a quote from Democratic media strategist Dan Payne on the same themes:

“We don’t know much about him. He’s almost like a spirit. People like the feeling they get when they’re in his presence.”
(The Feldman Blog)

Between Matthews and Payne, there you have the tripartite ideology of the Obama movement: an unfocused yet visceral emotional reaction, a transcendent supernatural magnetism, and an essential enigmatic vagueness.

Looking at this as a campaign, I’m inclined to agree with the others on ASHC who have suggested that there is something subterraneously unhealthy about these characteristics in Barack’s accelerating personality cult. It’s both too easy too much to compare this combination of emotion, spirituality and ambiguity with the authoritarian personality cults. But it’s also difficult to think of leaders who predicated their entire political purposes on such animating properties, and then delivered sound leadership for their countries.

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Via hotair

President Bush on Friday used a “pocket veto” to reject a sweeping defense bill because he dislikes a provision that would expose the Iraqi government to expensive lawsuits seeking damages from the Saddam Hussein era…

The sponsor of the contested provision, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said the provision would allow “American victims of terror to hold perpetrators accountable — plain and simple.”

** Isn’t this a de-facto admission that Saddam’s regime was neck deep in terrorism???

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A few weeks back I posted a facile little rebuke aimed at the national security implications of Green Party presidential candidate Alan Augustson’s political platform. Alan responded to this in such a way that I realized I had little idea what the Green Party’s position on security matters was, relative to its environmental policies. Indeed, rarely have I seen anyone even ask Green Party figures questions about this subject.

In continental Europe, Greens are expected to have a broad agenda on all conventional political issues from foreign policy, to funding for the humanities. However in the United States, Greens seem to have been ghettoized into answering questions solely on subjects like global warming or genetically engineered foods. This has the natural effect of marginalizing them into niche political interests within the broader Left. A Left that the media seems quite content to have dominated by the Democratic Party alone.

So, toward a better education in the broader politics of Greens, Alan was kind enough to sit down with us for a short interview on security policy.

From the outset, it should be noted that Alan is a fierce critic of current US security policy and naturally his ideas won’t find much agreement with me, or among postpolitical’s predominantly conservative audience. But I think you’ll agree with me that we managed to ask some fair questions and the interview turned out to be an interesting and instructive exploration of a radically different political perspective.

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I seem to have caused some confusion with my previous post, “Putting the Question to the Bishop,” by an inartful use of the term “small-government libertarian.” The more I think about, the clearer it becomes to me that this term is redundant — libertarians are, by definition, in favor of small government. To me, the term has always been a way to distinguish between the minarchist (such as Hayek or Friedman styled libertarians) and anarcho-capitalist (such as fans of Murray Rothbard or Robert Nozick) flavors of libertarianism. Minarchists find value in some minimal level of government, whereas anarcho-capitalists are usually anti-state in nearly every form. However, when the term “small-government libertarian” is used in any other context it just becomes confusing. Frankly, I was simply wrong to employ it the way I did.

The intended point of my previous post was to highlight the choice being forced on the Democratic Party by the netroots crowd — those who support the war vs. those who don’t — and to suggest an alternate choice: the anti-war left vs. the pro-small government electorate. The choice I envision does not involve the war, but instead hinges on how one views the State. Of course, anti-war views are well represented amongst those who prefer small government, and that’s fine. A good argument can (and has been) made that if Congress and the Executive branches were filled with small-government types, there would be no War in Iraq. But, in my view, the Democratic Party needs to focus less on netroots voters who would hold their support of the war against them, and more on voters who are (justifiably) wary of the Democrats’ propensity for big government. The latter have been abandoned by the Republican Party. If the Democrats decided to occupy that small-government ground that the Republicans vacated, such small-government voters could easily be swayed to vote Democratic.

In short, instead of “small-government libertarian” I should have simply said “small-government voters.” My underlying premise is this: as the two major parties continue to cater their policies of governance to increasingly smaller and divisive, albeit increasingly more vocal, special interest groups, they are creating an ever-growing swath of independent voters.

If you think about it, don’t you hear more and more people claiming to be libertarians today, despite their seemingly disparate views? I surely do. I believe this is the natural result of the Democrats and Republicans being more concerned with single-issue voters (e.g., pro-choice vs. pro-life; homosexual rights vs. anti-gay marriage; anti-war vs. pro-strong defense; etc.), than with broad policy measures. Eventually all you have left are moneyed special-interests who promise to get out the vote. Left in the wake of this rush to divvy up the battleground into pro and anti groups are those who feel the government is foisting itself too much on ordinary citizens. Most people just want to be left alone, even though they gladly take free goodies when they are a member of a favored interest group (which is, of course, quite rational). In my opinion, a significant number of voters are out there who will choose small-government policies over single-issue candidates (such as pro-defense/anti-war). I only wish one of the two parties would act on that.

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