A Second Hand Conjecture

Joe the Plumber joins the party and throws McCain under the bus, describing him and his campaign as apalling, praising only Sarah Palin. Apparently he asked McCain some questions about his views on the federal bailouts and McCain responded like…well, McCain.

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RedState launches Operation Leper to expose recently unemployed McCain aides who are trying to pin their failures on Sarah Palin. Hardly unexpected. As Grover Norquist noted yesterday, the only time the McCain campaign led the polls was during the two weeks when Sarah dominated the cycle. When it switched back to McCain, sayonara.

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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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Under McCain and Obama's tax plans 43% and 44% would pay no income tax respectively

Fewer and fewer people are paying income tax and even less will be with either candidates tax plan. I don’t think this would be such a problem if we didn’t have such high spending, growing entitlements, and if so many of these zero income tax filers weren’t getting additional handouts from the government (especially under Obama’s tax “cuts” ie. handouts).

It has been said by an unknown author “[Democracy] can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury…” and this is where we’ve been heading for awhile. I think just as a tax plan can be too regressive, it can be too progressive in that it places too high a burden on “the rich” resulting in them leaving (atlas shrugs) or seeking tax shelters, and at the same time having too much of the population with no civic tax obligation leaving them no incentive to constrain public spending (hey, it’s not their money right?)

(HT Greg Mankiw)

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You’ve probably heard that John McCain has denounced Barack Obama’s ’spread the wealth’ formulation for tax policy as socialism. It’s an inflammatory but not unjustified charge, as a good definition for socialism is the equitable distribution of wealth to the community, coercively enforced by law.

But here’s a troubling aspect: suppose the electorate doesn’t mind if it is socialism?

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Video of Laura Ingraham interrogating Christopher Hitchens over his rather weakly supported endorsement of Barack Obama for president.

Hitch’s primary position in this chat is that Obama should be supported because he is “evolving” toward support of a more aggressive policy against international terrorism. Hardly the most persuasive pitch to say the least. Perhaps all those years of arguing for evolution through natural selection may have given him too much of a preference for the word itself.

His auxillery case is that McCain has become senile and temperamentally unfit for leadership. That’s something which is supposedly entirely and exclusively demonstrated by his “irresponsible” selection of Sarah Palin for vice president. Hardly more persuasive.

But in reading Hitchens’ recent writing on this matter, one tends to think that last point is what is actually driving the others (something Laura instantly zeroes in on). There is a certain reflexive personal hostility to Mrs. Palin in Hitchens’ writing, which is far closer to a definition of political irresponsiblity than McCain’s selection of her allegedly is.

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What a day for indignity. Just when I’d stopped shaking my head at the image of Paul Krugman accepting the Nobel Prize, I read two of my most cherished heroes offering rather embarrassing endorsements for bad things.

Christopher Hitchens, always aloof from the elderly McCain, has been pushed into a categorical and insulting rejection in Slate, animated mostly by a festering hatred of Sarah Palin that seems to grow more infected by the day. It’s not quite an Andrew Sullivan endoresement in that it lacks the enchanted fascination with Obama, but it’s still advocacy that makes you wince at the superficiality.

But worse is yet to come. Francis Fukuyama, in his most aggressive Obama endorsement yet, reboots history in The Times (adapted from the Newsweek piece) by denouncing the entire edifice of the Reagan-Thatcher revolution for capitalism and democracy as destructive and driven by uneducated American swing voters, who are stupid enough to endorse the philosophy he once championed as the endgame of civilzation itself.

Sad affairs. I suspect I shall have to become an antiquarian for these men’s opinions in order to remain a fan. Their current thinking seems only demonstrative of the strangely stupefying effect partisanship for Obama can have on otherwise able minds.

(ht: Ghost of a Flea)

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Had the radio on driving to get coffee. Rush Limbaugh was denouncing sexism and patriarchal privilege. McCain ad comes on pitching expanding embryonic stem cell research. Boy, haven’t things changed in the Republican party? For the better, says me.

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For two weeks, as John McCain’s national polls first rose above Obama and then solidified there, Democrats protested that the popular vote was irrelevant. Look to the state polls said they, in a sensible but amusingly opportunistic argument for the electoral college (for those of us who recall the venom of 2000). Alas, this was a comfort built upon something of an illusion, given that few state polls were available after the Republican convention. That’s begun to change of course, and for the first time Rasmussen has given McCain a slim electoral college advantage.

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Tim Reid travels to Mount Clemens, Macomb County Michigan, to talk to white working class female voters. Macomb County should be core Democratic blue country, but it was here that Stanley Greenberg first identified the “Reagan Democrats” of the 1980s, and Reid thinks we just might be seeing the ground shift once again:

The Times spoke to dozens of women here – perhaps the key demographic in this election – in an area that is 88 per cent white, has one of the highest unemployment and home repossession rates in the country, and will play a big role in determining who wins Michigan in November. It is a crucial swing state that no Republican has won since 1988 but where Mr Obama is particularly vulnerable. Nearly all said that they were still undecided. Yet the disturbing fact for Mr Obama was how many said that they had been leaning towards him – until Mrs Palin entered the race.
(The Times)

Read on>>

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Obama’s “new” tactic to regain the initiative in the election is to portray McCain as out of touch with ordinary Americans. Hmm. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this the old tactic? Patrician wife, seven houses, price of milk, Salvatore Ferragamo footwear and so forth. I seem to remember that being the heart of their complaint for months. And didn’t it, you know, fail?

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Toby Harnden weighs in with his thoughts on the Palin effect. All interesting, all very astute IMO.

Of particular interest is Toby’s argument that McCain commands enough public respect for his experience and expertise, that he has no concerns about being eclipsed by Sarah. Because of that, he’s perfectly comfortable to ride in her publicity tailwind, legitimately without a fear that voters could fall into doubt about who is in command.

This is of course correct and it’s enormously important as a contrast between the candidates. That’s because this intrinsic stature gap is precisely what Barack Obama didn’t have (or suspected he didn’t have), when he declined consideration of Hillary Clinton for his own vice presidential slot. Something that’s regarded today even by Joe Biden as a considerable mistake.

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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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Seth Weinberger picks up Foreign Policy’s “10 Worst Policy Ideas” for Obama and McCain and adds some commentary. What’s immediately striking to me is how few objections FP offers to McCain’s foreign policy proposals. A peculiar thing, if you’re familiar with the doctrinal tilt of the pub. There’s really only one they single out against McCain (League o’ Democracies), the rest is purely domestic politics. By contrast Obama comes in for scorn on four (NAFTA, CAFTA, Pakistan, Iran).

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Ron Hilton caught some great shots at the McCain/Palin rally in Fairfax, Virginia. He was gracious enough to let us post them here for you:

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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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Last week I noticed that Sarah Palin had exceeded Joe Biden slightly in Google returns. Understandably, that has now become an avalanche (Biden: 5.6 million | Palin: 22.4 million). Although it plainly doesn’t exceed John McCain or Barack Obama’s returns as Robert Legge strangely argues.

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Longtime Clinton ally Leon Panetta pronounces Barack Obama “intimidated” by Sarah Palin, and lost in a deepening cycle of reactive defense. With McCain now winning a majority of independents and erasing the gender gap, the blood is most definitely in the water. It’s now a legitimate question to ask whether McCain can finish him off. My sense is that the Obama campaign isn’t too many more mistakes removed from a serious structural collapse in a significant segment of its support outside the Democratic ranks. Panetta is quite right, Obama needs to regain the initiative and fast.

On that matter Jonathan Freedland is pessimistic. So much so, that he is evidently consumed with stomach pains of grief. He warns us that the entire planet will seek revenge against the United States if we fail to appoint Obama president.
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According to a new Rasmussen survey 62% of Americans believe encouraging economic growth is more important than reducing income inequality. 51% also say the federal government exerts too much control over our economy as it stands. It would be wise of the McCain campaign to emphasize which candidates value which most.

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Caroline Glick via Ace of Spades
Caroline Glick is an astute observer of our political situation. She is based in Jerusalem.
“McCain’s strategic grasp of the requirements for a successful
presidential race provide an important lesson for policy-makers and
political leaders.”

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Jennifer Rubin becomes the latest to reconsider the merits of McCain’s convention acceptance speech. It’s interesting how many people on the political right are reevaluating it really. Like Jennifer, my own reaction was that it was unremarkable. I told friends that it failed to connect, but I held off on criticizing it very aggressively on grounds that I had the nagging sensation that the speech was merely not intended for me as an audience. It’s beginning to look as though that was indeed the case.

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Jihad Watch
I have seen a few articles that say something like – if the left dislikes McCan-Palin so much they must be doing something right. Here is a similar argument about views from the Muslim world. “whenever your taqiyya-practicing enemy tries to give you “advice” — such as who or who not to vote for — do
the opposite”.

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How many children does John McCain have? It’s seven including adoptions, but very few seem to know that. Easier question: how many children does Sarah Palin have? Five and I bet you knew that instantly. Welcome to sexism says liberal feminist Linda Keenan, in a profound and important confessional apology to Sarah.

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The atrocious background colors displayed on the silly jumbotron during John McCain’s convention speech shouldn’t have been difficult to avoid. As BestWeekEver sadly illustrates, almost anything would have been an improvement. The solid pastel blue and green backgrounds made their Photoshopping easy at least.

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Patterico’s Pontifications
This didn’t seem possible just a few months ago.

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Todd Zywicki, of the Volokh Conspiracy, takes a look at libertarianism in the McCain/Palin ticket and notes a distinct western vibe to the first all-western ticket in our history. He had an interesting observation that I think captures a lot of our hesitation about McCain.

The only caveat to this is that McCain’s westernism is tempered by his military background. And frankly, this is what concerns me most about him–his mind seems like a command-and-control, top-down worldview. To put the matter more elliptically to many but more accurately to my thinking, I think he simply does not understand or trust the idea of spontaneous order. In his worldview, things happen (good or bad) because somebody makes them happen. This is not a worldview that is conducive to understanding spontaneous order. That’s a statist streak in him that offsets some of his westernism.

An interesting point to think about. Does Palin temper that? Does she enhance it?

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Schwarzenegger’s former top strategist Steve Schmidt turned John McCain’s campaign from a dithering defensive wreck, into the aggressive machine that’s been taking the fight to Obama all summer. Most of all, he’s the man who finally got John McCain to stay on message after decades of failure by others.

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According to the McCain campaign via NRO, the teleprompter had a glitch throughout the entire Palin speech. It continued to roll without pause for applause and thus would have been badly out of sync for her. Had no effect at all that I could discern on her delivery. Pretty impressive actually.

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The title is what Time Magazine labeled New Jersey’s Senator William Warren Barbour in 1940. The expression takes on a better curve for Sarah Palin, but it fits the occasion of a very partisan and frankly rather phenomenal speech tonight (transcript).

I suppose I’m surprised by the surprise in so many media reactions I’m seeing. Then again it’s a reminder that we on the pro-Palin political right have been following Sarah for over a year now, and this sort of thing is still very much an introduction for others.

Michael Crowley for instance calls Palin’s speech “alarmingly strong” and describes emails from liberal colleagues as “panicked.” I think that’s probably an ungenerous assessment. There is afterall a reason so many on the left have been trying to destroy her these past few days. You saw it this evening. Sarah does have a certain magic. Even when she fumbles in a long speech as she can, it tends to amplify her humanity. A characteristic interestingly shared with Barack Obama and almost totally alien to wizened veterans.

The amplitude of the attention and the stress of the experince is of course very new for Sarah, but you’d never know it from looking at her tonight. I realized I’d become a little emotionally invested in this candidate over the course of the week, with its grotesque slander and innuendo campaigns in the press. When the Republican party in assembly gave her a near endless welcoming ovation I kept saying “don’t cry, don’t cry,” which was slightly sexist for Sarah and slightly for my own sad benefit.

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Yep:

Understand: Palin is under attack because she was such a good choice.

[...]

After years of electing plasticized creations of political consultants, we have the chance to vote for a real person with real peoples’ problems. In standing by her, McCain speaks volumes about his attitude toward women and his empathy for those who face family troubles. His loyalty illustrates not just his decency, but his sensitivity and good sense.
(Rasmussen Reports)

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Be honest, wouldn’t you rather see Barack Obama vs Sarah Palin and John McCain vs Joe Biden in the debates?

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He’s actually starting to run against Sarah Palin:

“My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month,”
(CNN via Adam’s Blog)

No, no, no. You say: “Sarah Palin? I’ll remind you I’m running for the presidency against Senator John McCain, who I’ve worked with and known in the United States Senate, and who on almost every issue of substance today is critically and completely dead wrong…blah, blah, blah”

Instead he bites the equivalent of a frayed fiberglass lure the dumbest bass in Kentucky would pass on.

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John McCain, in an interview with Brian Williams on Sarah Palin:

“The facts are funny things. She’s been in elected office longer than Sen. Obama. She’s been the chief executive of the state that provides 20 percent of America’s energy; she has balanced budgets; she has had executive experience as governor, as mayor, as a city council member and PTA.

So she was in elected office when Sen. Obama was still a local community organizer. He’s never had one day of executive experience.

I think it’s almost ludicrous to compare her experience in elected office and as a leader of one of the most important states in America — certainly one of the largest — to compare her experience with his. It’s no contest.”
(CNS)

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Looking at today’s stats, so far the number one search engine keyword bringing people to ASHC is “obama vs palin.” It’s amusing that people seem to think the Republican vice presidential nominee bears easier comparison and contest with the Democratic presidential nominee. I can only agree with them.

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Andrew Sullivan is so hysterical about the “irresponsibility” of Sarah Palin as vice president, that he’s almost to the point of arguing that McCain didn’t even know her name until an hour before the announcement. As Neo-Neocon contends however, the Palin selection is demonstrative of skill on the part of McCain (something very unexpected by me).

As for Andrew, who probably praises Obama in between snores in his sleep these days, the fact that just about everything he’s publishing lately is about Sarah Palin and what a colossal calamity she is, only tends to verify McCain’s wisdom. Anything bad for Obama, Andrew is sure to hate.

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A bit of a departure from the Bush/Cheney experience in 2000 and 2004.

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Perhaps those Zogby numbers weren’t so crazy after all.  CNN confirms the erasure of the Obama lead on an apparent Sarah Palin bounce.

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It has become a serious question to ask if there is any argument in Obama’s perceived interest that Andrew Sullivan will not advance. In the latest project for that question, Sullivan argues that Palin represents the most “irresponsible” pick for the office of Vice President since Dan Quayle, on grounds of her alleged inexperience. It’s left to John Podhoretz to indirectly remind Mr. Sullivan that Quayle’s twelve years in Washington prior to 1988 made him vastly more experienced than Mr. Sullivan’s own choice for president, Barack Obama.

At some point here Sullivan and the other proponents of this line of attack against Palin have to recognize the untenability of their charge, at least as active supporters of Mr. Obama. I’ve no serious objection to anyone rejecting Sarah Palin for her qualifications after all, I can only object when it’s done in the service of a candidate for higher office who possesses even less relevant experience.

It is impossible to believe that Barack Obama’s resume qualifies him as experienced to assume the presidency at the end of this year, whilst Sarah Palin’s resume does not qualify her to serve as vice president at that same moment. Either they are both unqualified, or neither is. Charles Krauthammer for instance quite logically argues that both are unqualified. To argue one over the other, is only to expose yourself as a fantastically obsequious partisan of the saddest sort.

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I’m beginning to sense that anti-Palin hysteria is building toward a collective psychological meltdown of truly epic proportions on the Democratic side of our political divide. Today, Democratic consultant Dan Conley angrily pushed us a little further to the brink of that by arguing that the selection of Palin by McCain was “cynical, undemocratic and frankly, unpatriotic.” Wow.

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RightWingNation has some good photographs from the Pennsylvania McCain/Palin rally. Evidently the crowd kept drowning Sarah out with adulatory chants.

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She raised less than $500k for the Alaska governor’s race in 2006. But as McCain’s running mate, Palin’s inaugurated a seven million dollar surge in donations to the McCain campaign. Given the excitement (near ecstasy, really) on the political right over the selection, it’s not difficult to see why. Put her on a stage anywhere near conservative donors and collect, John.

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Everyone’s jumping on the Zogby poll, which alone seems to show McCain/Palin taking the lead over Obama/Biden. I personally find such a result hard to believe in the extreme. Rasmussen’s finding that Palin might have arrested the slide seems more plausible; a complete reversal of fortune is a bit much to expect. However, what would be genuinely remarkable about the Zog results isn’t the McCain/Obama break, but 5% of likely voters casting for Bob Barr. This too is hard to believe though.

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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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Pro-McCain sign at rally.

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The hard sacrifices of the unselected.

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The explosion of enthusiasm for Palin on just about every conservative blog and media outlet has apparently gone unnoticed at the DailyKos, which is predicting that Sarah represents a divisive force, who will soon fracture and ultimately destroy the Republican party. Hmm.

Now, there has always been a tendency among ideological people to retreat to fantasy in moments of peak political crisis, when the ideological narrative they’ve been following suddenly runs aground of some protruding reef of reality, but this is almost too much. I’m not sure it’s even possible to be more comprehensively mistaken in a single political assessment.

In truth, Palin is of course the ultimate force for unification and it’s why she or someone like her was so desperately needed by McCain and the Republicans. How much of a unifier is she? When the neoconservatives and Ronpaulists like the selection, if you are familiar with the party beyond name, you need say no more.

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Hot Air – Ed Morrissey
“Would you rather have the man who set the trap dealing with our enemies abroad, or the man who fell into it?”

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I cited Victor Davis Hanson’s NRO post earlier in an easy defense of Palin, but there’s another point therein worth mention: Palin as agent of change for McCain, personally.

On energy, [Sarah Palin] will either blunt McCain’s unreasonable opposition to ANWR, or, in fact — as an Alaskan pro-driller — give him the opening necessary to “evolve” on the issue into a support for drilling there.
(NRO)

An entirely welcome possibility, as ANWR is increasingly looking peculiar within the context of McCain’s dramatically “evolved” (outright changed) positions on domestic drilling and energy independence as general policy principles.

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Paul Begala laments the fact that McCain didn’t select a vice presidential candidate who is more traditional, old, boring, uninspiring…in essence, an ossified agent of the establishment, like Joe Biden for instance.

Well, he doesn’t quite phrase it that way, but it’s the political implication of his complaint. Reviewing his catalog of allegedly superior selections, I feel slightly like shouting out as a teenager: boo-ring. Just as a great many Democratic partisans of Mr. Obama did, when surveying a field of establishmentarian dinosaurs in a year of change.

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Obama moves to distance himself from his own campaign’s harshly antagonistic rhetoric against Palin. Commendable, but probably unwise. Palin represents a direct threat to one of Obama’s core constituencies and thus it would be to his advantage to define her negatively and fast. Even if the ‘inexperience’ attack is hopelessly misguided for obvious reasons.

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