“It’s Different When We Do It”

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CBS Charlotte:

Colbert: Sanford’s Win ‘Scares Me To My Core’

Angry about his sister’s congressional election loss to Mark Sanford, Stephen Colbert did the logical thing – and declared Sanford his new sister.

Supporting his sister following her defeat for one of South Carolina’s congressional seats, Colbert, host of “The Colbert Report,” took jabs at CNN, almost denounced his love for the state of South Carolina, and wondered aloud, comically, whether the lies leveled against his sister were a common part of political campaigns.

“This scares me to my core. I’m shaken. This was the first political campaign where I knew and cared about the candidate before they got into politics. I saw first-hand how her opponents smeared her with outrageous accusations I knew to be untrue,” he said on his show Wednesday night. “And that’s made me wonder if other campaigns have done this as well.”

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Is it just me or do you get the feeling he’s only kinda sorta joking? His schtick got old a long time ago. Once upon a time he used his on-screen persona to “speak truth to power”. But since Obama took office he’s been defending power. He pretends to be a conservative, but it’s all satire. Except satire is funny, and Stephen Colbert isn’t funny anymore.

You can search all you want but you won’t find me taking a position on the SC special election. That’s only partly because of my general policy of staying out of elections that I’m not eligible to vote in. If figure that the people in South Carolina should pick their own representatives.

I was not particularly concerned about the effect the election would have on which party controls the House of Representatives, and I doubt there are any tea leaves to read in that election regarding next year’s mid-term elections.

I am familiar with Mark Sanford’s recent fall from grace. It is a sordid tale of personal failing that as far as I am concerned has nothing to do with his ideology or party membership. In recent years there have been plenty of sex scandals involving members of both parties.

But if the voters of South Carolina want to give a disgraced politician a second chance, that is their choice. It’s not like it was kept secret from them until after the election. That’s why I don’t understand the pearl clutching over Sanford’s win by Meghan McCain and other Vile Progs. It’s just democracy in action.

Vox populi, vox Dei.

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Best Campaign Ad Ever

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This is even better than Carly Fiorina’s Demon Sheep ad from 2010!

(Via Legal Insurrection)

This is an open thread.

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DNC = WATB

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RNC ad with Obama and Newtown mother infuriates DNC

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) clashed Wednesday over a new RNC ad that the DNC says cruelly exploits the Newtown shootings.

The ad, called “The First 100 Days,” criticizes Obama on the failure of his legislative agenda, including gun control, so far in Congress. It features a voiceover saying that Obama’s agenda has “already suffered a string of defeats,” and a black and white photo of the president reaching to embrace Nicole Hockley, the distraught mother of a victim in the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse called the ad “disgraceful” in a tweet and “disgusting” in another.

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When you watch the video don’t blink or you’ll miss it. And the brief glimpse they’re talking about didn’t come from a memorial service, it was from the POUTUS Presser in the Rose Garden where he used some Newtown parents as stage props while he whinged about Senate Republicans.

If you politicize something, your opponents should be able to politicize it too.

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Requiescat in pace: Mayor Ed Koch Dead at 88

Via the NYT:

Edward I. Koch, the master showman of City Hall, who parlayed shrewd political instincts and plenty of chutzpah into three tumultuous terms as mayor of New York with all the tenacity, zest and combativeness that personified his city of golden dreams, died Friday morning at age 88.

Mr. Koch’s spokesman, George Arzt, said the former mayor died at 2 a.m. from congestive heart failure. He was being treated at New York-Presbyterian Columbia Hospital.

[...]

Mr. Koch’s 12-year mayoralty encompassed the fiscal austerity of the late 1970s and the racial conflicts and municipal corruption scandals of the 1980s, an era of almost continuous discord that found Mr. Koch at the vortex of a maelstrom day after day.

But out among the people or facing a news media circus in the Blue Room at City Hall, he was a feisty, slippery egoist who could not be pinned down by questioners and who could outtalk anybody in the authentic voice of New York: as opinionated as a Flatbush cabby, as loud as the scrums on 42nd Street, as pugnacious as a West Side reform Democrat mother.

“I’m the sort of person who will never get ulcers,” the mayor — eyebrows devilishly up, grinning wickedly at his own wit — enlightened the reporters at his $475 rent-controlled apartment in Greenwich Village on Inauguration Day in 1978. “Why? Because I say exactly what I think. I’m the sort of person who might give other people ulcers.”

His political odyssey took him from independent-minded liberal to pragmatic conservative, from street-corner hustings with a little band of reform Democrats in Greenwich Village to the pinnacle of power as New York City’s 105th mayor from Jan. 1, 1978, to Dec. 31, 1989. Along the way, he ousted the Tammany boss Carmine G. De Sapio and served two years as a councilman and nine more in Congress representing, with distinction, the East Side of Manhattan.

With his trademark — “How’m I doin?” — Mr. Koch stood at subway entrances on countless mornings wringing the hands and votes of constituents, who elected him 21 times in 26 years, with only three defeats: a forgettable 1962 State Assembly race; a memorable 1982 primary in a race for governor won by Mario M. Cuomo; and a last Koch hurrah, a Democratic primary in 1989 won by David N. Dinkins, who would be his one-term successor.

I always liked Koch, for exactly the reasons stated in the article: he was a hard talking man with a heart. Maybe not a perfect man, but a fine one, for sure. RIP, Mayor.

Chuck Roast

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Apparently I’ve been missing the show:

Chuck Hagel under fire at confirmation hearing

Chuck Hagel came under rapid fire from former senators at his confirmation hearings as secretary of defense on Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He clashed with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former friend and Vietnam veteran, when he refused to give him a direct answer on whether the Iraq war surge succeeded. He apologized for using the term “Jewish lobby” in a rambling answer to a question from Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and stumbled in his answers on Iran.

Hagel’s answers prompted at least one prominent conservative, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), to announce he would oppose Hagel’s nomination.

“I’ve stated long ago I’ve been deeply disturbed by his previous comments and positions in regards to sanctions on Iran and in regards to direct negotiations with North Korea,” Rubio told Fox News during Hagel’s testimony. Obviously, statements he’s made about Israel…I just don’t believe I will be able to support his nomination especially after his testimony in the last hour here, he’s really not said anything that addresses those concerns to my satisfaction.”

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Hagel could go down as one of the weirdest nominees in recent history. He’s a Republican and a former senator, but the Republicans don’t like him. I’m guessing he gets confirmed by a fairly narrow party-line margin.

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Why Do They Always Seem To Want To Start At The Top?

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Yarmuth says Ashley Judd may run for office

Will she or won’t she? That’s the question many are asking about Ashley Judd possibly running against Kentucky U-S Senator Mitch McConnell.

Congressman John Yarmuth says he’s talked with Judd, who is from Kentucky.

He says the actress is weighing the possibility of running for office.

Yarmuth says he’s not interested in the seat, but it’s a top priority to find a good candidate to run against McConnell.

And, Judd may be eyeing something other than McConnell’s seat.

Yarmuth says, “I think she’s very interested in becoming a candidate for some office whether it’s next year against Mitch McConnell or it’s against Rand Paul whether it’s for some other office I don’t know, but she’s a very serious potential candidate.”

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I don’t mind celebrities running for office. They have as much right to run as anyone else.

But why do they always seem to want to start at the top?

Okay, not always. Clint Eastwood ran for mayor of Carmel. Sonny Bono ran for Congress.

But look how many run (or at least talk about running) for governor, senator and president. That’s 151 positions in the entire country. Shouldn’t those jobs go to people with some experience at working in government? I’m not talking about playing a politician on television or in a movie. I mean real life experience.

There are lots of state and local positions celebrities can run for to get experience. Let them start there. If they do well we can consider promoting them.

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The Misadventures of Agent Orange

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Philip Klein:

Why on earth would anybody want Boehner’s job?

Ever since John Boehner’s “fiscal cliff” backup plan went down in flames on Thursday, there’s been a flood of speculation as to whether he can still survive as speaker of the House. But there’s a very fundamental question that a lot of people floating this possibility need to address: Why on earth would anybody want the job?
Boehner is in an impossible situation. Details aside, the bottom line is that Boehner won’t be able to negotiate any deal that will satisfy President Obama and pass the Democratic Senate that would also be remotely acceptable to House conservatives. So, if he shows a willingness to strike a deal with Obama that passes with Democratic support, he’ll be blasted by conservatives for caving. Should he refuse to negotiate, he’ll be lambasted as intransigent and take the brunt of the public blame for any consequences that come from a failure to reach a deal. And this isn’t limited to the current “fiscal cliff” debate. It goes for any future showdowns over the debt ceiling, a potential government shutdown, or any other issues that come up. This will be the case at least until after the 2014 election, should Republicans figure out a way to regain control of the Senate and shakeup the current political dynamic.

Most people would agree that it’s unlikely that, for lack of a better term, an “establishment” member of the House GOP caucus would challenge Boehner. So any challenge is more likely to come from a conservative frustrated with his lack of progress on cutting spending. But right now, if you’re a conservative in the House, the current state of affairs is quite good with Boehner in charge — at least as far as your career is concerned. You get to blast any deal that gets struck, reiterating your support for lowering taxes, reducing spending and reforming entitlements — all of which burnishes your “true conservative” credentials. You get to go home to your constituents and attack back door Washington dealmaking. And if no deal gets struck and Republicans get blamed for any consequences that ensue, it’s Boehner that will absorb punishment as the public face of the party. Sure, the media will generically blast “tea party extremists” — but no individual member will be singled out for blame. And individual members can argue that if only Boehner had listened to them and pursued a different strategy, Republicans could have won the showdown. But if you’re actually in charge, suddenly you’re the one in the cross hairs. You become tainted by the Washington process. And because everybody who is being intellectually honest knows that Obama will never sign on to a small government agenda, you’re destined to be ineffective and to lose your conservative street cred.

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John Boehner is turning out to be the worst Speaker of the House since Nancy Pelosi.

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Fried Rice

Susan Rice

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Susan Rice withdraws as candidate for secretary of state

U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice withdrew her name Thursday as President Obama’s leading candidate for secretary of state, saying the administration could not afford a “lengthy, disruptive and costly” confirmation fight over statements she made about the extremist attack in Libya that killed four Americans.

Rice called Obama on Thursday morning, before sending him a letter officially withdrawing from consideration. Rice said in an interview that she had concluded early this week that what she and Obama considered “unfair and misleading” charges against her over the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, would impede the president’s second-term agenda.

“This was my decision,” Rice said. When asked if Obama had tried to dissuade her, she said that he “understood that this was the right decision, and that I made it for the right reasons.”

Her withdrawal leaves Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) with no apparent rivals to take over from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. A senior administration official said that “something strange would have to happen” for Kerry not to be the choice.

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Last time I checked, we already had a Secretary of State. Now while it’s true that Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said she intends to resign her post, she has not officially announced her intention to do so or given a date when she intends to leave. But let’s forget about those minor details.

As I’m sure you recall from you high school civics classes (those of you who made it to high school anyway) the President nominates people for high-ranking posts in his administration and the Senate gets to use its “advise and consent” power to veto or approve those nominations.

There has been a lot of speculation among the talking heads and bloviating gasbags as to who might replace Hillary in a second Obama administration. But I don’t recall any official announcement that Susan Rice was the leading candidate for the job. I don’t even recall anybody in the Obama administration admitting publicly that she was even A candidate. On the other hand it’s no secret that John Kerry coveted the big office at Foggy Bottom.

So what we had yesterday was the spectacle of Susan Rice “officially” withdrawing from consideration for a job nobody was officially in the running for. Seems like pretty good theater to me.

We will never know for sure who Obama intended to nominate to replace Hillary. If he had planned to nominate Dr. Rice, we don’t know if she would have been approved or not.

But we do know that Obama plans to get maximum political mileage out of a nomination that never happened. Susan Rice could have notified Obama with a phone call or in a private meeting. She certainly didn’t need to write a letter to withdraw from a job she was never officially offered. Nor did she need to make a public announcement. Now the GOP will get blamed for something they never even got a chance to do.

Well played, Mr. President. Well played.

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The Romney Tsunami

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Mitt Romney has tapped into what Nixon called the Silent Majority.

There are millions of people out there that are non-political. They don’t talk about politics. They don’t go to protests or donate to candidates and they damn sure don’t answer opinion polls. But they do vote, especially when they are unhappy.

Right now they ain’t happy.

When they are happy they either stay home or they vote for incumbents. They are happiest in times of peace and prosperity. When the economy is booming and none of our kids are dying in foreign countries, they are very forgiving. Just ask the Big Dawg.

They aren’t stupid or ignorant, they just prefer to think about other stuff, like Dancing With The Stars and NFL fantasy football. Unlike us, they find politics to be boring. But that doesn’t mean they don’t care.

They know when things aren’t the way they oughta be. They weren’t happy in 2004, but not unhappy enough to do anything about it. They were very unhappy in 2006, so they voted out a lot of incumbents, especially the ones in power – the Republicans. They still weren’t happy in 2008, so they voted out some more GOP incumbents and switched the party controlling the White House to the Democrats.

But then they got even more pissed off in 2010 and started voting out Democrats. And they are still pissed today.

You can spend a billion dollars on campaign ads, but these voters know when mama ain’t happy. And as my uncle would say, “When mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.”

A lot of this is pure luck on Mitt’s part. If he would have won the nomination in 2008 he would have lost to Obama because 2008 was a “any Democrat” year. This year is basically “any Republican”.

So he’s gonna get four years to make mama happy. If he doesn’t, he’ll be replaced too.

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My plan:

Today: Vote for Mitt Romney (done)

Tonight: Get drunk while I watch the election returns come in.

Tomorrow: Celebrate (recover from hangover)

Thursday: Start holding Mitt Romney’s feet to the fire.

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Prejudice, Sterotypes and Bigotry

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Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart:

L.A. Times Hears Racist Dog Whistles from Romney Voters

Sandy Banks of the L.A. Times has figured out why anyone would vote against Barack Obama. Why, they are all racists, of course. Oh, you don’t use “the N word,” she tells us, but we know what you Romney voters really think.

Banks dropped all pretense of logic or fairness in her Sunday piece, claiming that the nation’s “kumbaya era” is over merely because a white man dared run against Barack Obama for the office of President of the United States.

Like all these hate-filled screeds that cast any non-Obama voter as a racist, Banks doesn’t bother trying to actually explain how a nation that elected a black man as President could suddenly revert to pre-civil rights oppression. She just states it straight as if it is obvious fact.

This has been the single most disgusting attack against Romney voters and, if Obama loses his bid for reelection, be prepared to see every last left-winger on TV and in the commentariat claim that the only reason Obama lost is because the country is filled with hood-wearing, Jim Crow-loving racists.

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You don’t have to be an Obama follower to think like that:

In the last couple of days, I have read the consternation of the left as they see the evangelicals and other right wing followers get behind their Mormon. It’s as if the left has forgotten all of the studies by Bob Altemeyer and lessons learned from John Dean about the nature of the authoritarian follower. But it’s even weirder than that because although the right has made it a badge of honor to decouple cause from effect, ignore evidence and discourage reasoned thinking in its followers so that the world looks to them like a violent, chaotic place, I never thought I would see the same sort of behavior rising in the left.

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I was raised in fundamentalist church in a red zone of California. My mom was (and is) a feminist but not a liberal. So I first hit adulthood with a right-wing tilt to my politics. The first time I voted in a presidential election I cast my ballot for Ronnie Raygun. But during my twenties I moved steadily to the left until by the time I was thirty I was a borderline socialist.

I stayed that way for a long time. I was proud to be a liberal and a yellow-dog Democrat. 2008 cured me of that yellow-dog thingie but I still consider myself a liberal Democrat-in-exile.

Democracy For Dummies

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David Feith:

If Obama Loses

If President Obama loses re-election, it won’t be because of the weak economy, the unpopularity of ObamaCare, the fallout from Benghazi or any other policy-related matter. At least that isn’t how many Obama supporters on the left are likely to explain it. Instead, we’ll hear that he went down to defeat at the hands of America the Pathological—a country where bigotry, corruption and political dysfunction reign.

Americans got a taste of that reaction four years ago, when Mr. Obama’s election wasn’t certain. “Racism is the only reason Obama might lose” to John McCain, Slate editor Jacob Weisberg wrote at the time. The argument was rendered moot when the first-term Illinois senator trounced Mr. McCain (53%-46%), winning a larger share of white voters than any Democrat in 40 years and entering the White House amid echoes of Camelot and approval ratings above 70%. Now the racism argument is being readied in the event of a Romney victory.

[...]

Attributing an Obama defeat to racism, though, is a weak charge because he is, after all, the incumbent—and so his defenders will need to bolster the America the Pathological diagnosis. That’s where a larger conspiracy would come in: The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision handed the levers of power to plutocrats like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.

“Is a ‘Citizens United’ Democracy a Democracy at All?” asked Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation recently. Team Obama already has suggested that the election was being bought. “You’ve got a few very wealthy people lining up trying to purchase the White House for Mr. Romney,” said senior White House adviser David Plouffe in October. Added campaign strategist David Axelrod: “They are trying to buy this election.”

Actually, the spending by GOP donors has been about making a case to voters—and the same is true of spending by the Obama camp and every other campaign there ever was. Public rallies, television ads, direct mail, online videos and the like cost money. Such political speech is the essence of democracy, not its undoing.

Of course some campaign rhetoric is misleading or downright dishonest. That’s why it is good that politicians, journalists and regular citizens are free to push back. Ultimately the public decides—that’s the whole point. Unless the public can’t be trusted to bear that responsibility, a critique that seems to be at the heart of the scaremongering about the plutocratic takeover of American politics.

[...]

Which brings us to the indictment that could ring loudest of all if Mr. Romney wins: America is ungovernable, democracy not up to the challenge. The United States is “a nation of dodos . . . too dumb to thrive,” Time magazine’s Joe Klein wrote in 2010, after opinion surveys showed the public insufficiently impressed by Mr. Obama’s economic stewardship. Days later, in a column called “Down With the People,” Slate’s Mr. Weisberg wrote that “what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament [is] the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.”

This is familiar territory for progressives. As Herbert Croly, co-founder of The New Republic, wrote a century ago: “The average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.” So it has ever been thus: heads, our guy wins; tails, America loses.

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How ironic is it that the “party of the people” is run by a group of snotty elitists that don’t trust the people?

Democracy is a radical idea. “One person, one vote.” Even our Founding Fathers didn’t completely trust the idea, that’s why they wanted to limit the voting franchise to white male landowners. Right now the only requirements to register to vote is to be eighteen years old, a citizen and have a pulse. In the vast majority of cases nobody even checks to see if you are telling the truth.

We let crazy people vote, along with the mentally deficient. (Half of all eligible voters are below-average in intelligence.) Poll tests are illegal – you don’t have to be literate or even demonstrate that you understand what issues you are voting on.

The historical record of democracy is mixed. Over the years the voters have elected some real losers – the current incumbent being a prime example. But they have also elected some great leaders at key moments in our history. You could probably get the same results by picking names at random.

So why do we keep democracy? Why not restrict the voting franchise to educated people who understand the issues?

The answer is pragmatic: Because democracy works better than anything else that’s ever been tried.

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Black Voters Going PUMA?

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Exodus: Inner City Blacks Fleeing Obama

After his meteoric ascent to the top of the American political arena in the country’s history, we are now in the midst of witnessing one of the most stunning collapses of any man ever to hold the office of President of the United States.

Over the past few weeks we have begun to see the ultimate unraveling of support for the president, with women and youth fleeing from his side. But what is even more surprising and perhaps unimaginable to the president and his faithful media cult is that he is now also losing members of his normally deemed “untouchable” base of support—poor, inner-city black Americans.

There is little doubt, due the historic and tremendous pressure on black Americans to support the first African-American President of the United States simply because he is not a white Republican, the President will win the black vote. However, just as his strength and reputation are growing weaker every day, the same is quickly becoming true of the support from the community he claims to be the strongest advocate for—the community-organized voting bloc on Chicago’s south and west sides that many say he has long since abandoned.

In the course of an ongoing investigation into the root causes of the rising tide of violence and horrifying murder rate this year in Chicago’s most destitute neighborhoods, several video interviews I conducted with black American voters from the community-organized south and west side, reveal a community that is fed up with the status quo–the status quo that keeps these communities ridden with poverty, homelessness, unemployment, dismantled families, and, of course, skyrocketing murder rates. And residents say, “it is the black Democratic leadership implementing a liberal agenda” that is to blame for the ongoing plight in their community.

Community activist Mark Carter says, “our issues have not been met on, have not been adhered to, and it’s almost as if they are just saying even though no one has addressed your issues, just go with ‘em anyway. And we say no.”

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There’s more at the link.

We have a lot of problems in our inner cities, especially in the black communities around the nation. These are chronic problems that have defied solution since before I was born. I won’t claim I know all the answers. I don’t even know what the questions are.

I’m a white guy who spent most of my life in rural/suburban areas. But even as an outsider I can make some observations.

What we’ve been doing obviously ain’t working. The current homicide rate in Chicago is about 3 murders every 2 days. As of this morning there have been 436 murders so far this year. Police claim the rate of killings is now “leveling off.”

It must be those racist Republican Tea Partiers, right? Wrong. The majority of both the victims and the killers are black. Not only that but Chicago has been controlled by the Democratic party for several generations. And Chicago controls the state capitol in Springfield.

Many of the worst inner-city areas are in cities with black Democratic mayors in solid-blue states. And yet the black communities in the blue states are no better off than black communities in the deep south.

The black community is strongly identified with the Democratic party. Polls have shown for years that black voters overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates. This is true across the country. In some states “majority-minority” districts have been created that virtually guarantee that black candidates will win elections. All of those districts are represented by Democrats.

One theory is that by acting as a solid voting bloc for the Democratic party it ensures that the Democrats will be responsive to the needs of the black community. An alternative theory is that it allows the Democrats to take the black community for granted. Either way it allows the GOP to ignore the black community because there is no incentive to seek their votes.

Here is my honest assessment as an outsider – the problems in the black community are going to have to be solved by the black community. Government can’t do it. Government can help. Government can provide schools and police. Government can prohibit discrimination.

Government can build schools and provide teachers, but it can’t give you an education. You have to earn if for yourself with hard work. Government can provide police, but it can’t make you obey the law. You have to make that choice. Government can prohibit discrimination, but you have to get out there and compete for jobs. If you fail to try, then you are trying to fail.

That’s my $.02, FWIW.

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Good Policy = Good Politics

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Walter Russell Mead:

How Change Works

Our political parties may be ideological in some of their inspirations and their rhetoric, but they are pragmatic. If an approach to an issue works and pleases voters, political leaders try to bring it on board.

This is especially true at times of transition like the present. The classical progressive approach to social problems has long jumped the shark; this means that conservative and Tea Party activists can seize the political high ground if they can convert slogans and preferences into policies that work. If you can get better educational outcomes for less money, your ideas will gain traction. If you can provide necessary environmental protection while creating a more favorable business climate, your state will start to grow—and people around the country will notice.

The strength of a ‘natural party of government’ is that those who believe in the ideological principles of a political movement do, on a long term, sustainable basis, a better job than their opponents at developing policies that address the actual problems of the American people. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the key ideas of the Democrats (like Bismarckian social insurance programs, government as the umpire in an economy of stable oligpolies and monopolies, expansionary fiscal policy during the Bretton Woods era when the dollar was the global monetary yardstick) worked so well that Republican presidents like Eisenhower and Nixon worked within a basically Democratic policy framework.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the conservative ideas espoused by President Reagan seemed to work, and so a Democratic president like Bill Clinton made some long term Republican ideas (welfare reform, fiscal restraint) an important part of his governing approach.

But the point is that longterm power is less about shouting slogans and proclaiming ideological principles. It is about using your political ideology to build policies that work so well that your political opponents try to steal them. You know you are winning when the other side promises to carry out the main ideas in your vision.

In a politics and poll obsessed period like the closing days of a national presidential campaign, it can be hard to remember, but the principle is something that any serious political activist of whatever ideological stripe can’t afford to forget. In America, political power doesn’t flow out of the barrel of a gun, and it doesn’t flow out of a megaphone either. Real political power — enduring, transformational political power — is the result of good policy. Fix problems that matter, and the people will listen to your ideas.

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The Vile Progs were right about one thing – they could get away with all the lying and cheating if their policies were successful. Unfortunately for all of us, their policies failed.

Imagine if unemployment was down to 4.0% and the economy was growing at 4.0% (like when the Big Dawg was in office). Obama would be a shoo-in for reelection and Romney would be “taking one for the team” as token opposition.

The fact is most voters aren’t really into ideology, they are into whatever works. And they evaluate how well things are going based upon their own lives, not a bunch of data on the news. Unemployment is just a statistic unless you or someone close to you is out of work. And if you are unemployed you don’t care about statistics – you just want a job.

From a pragmatic standpoint the Clinton years were enormously successful. According to the ideological left they were the dark ages.

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An Immigrant’s Tale – Viral Video

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From Kevin Rennie at Daily Ructions:

Greenwich, Connecticut resident Thomas Peterffy takes to the airwaves today to speak of the blessings of freedom. He’s an authority. Peterffy was born, according to Forbes, in Hungary in 1944 “during a Russian bombing raid.” He made it to America in 1965 and became a great success. It is a season of artifice and manipulation in American public life. Peterffy offers a stirring endorsement of freedom. Take a look at the 1 minute ad that hits cable networks today.

He explains how it works: “Take away the incentive with badmouthing success and you take away the wealth that helps us take care of the needy.”

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If socialism is so good why are socialist countries so poor?

(h/t Legal Insurrection)

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Same World, Different Planets

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Rebecca Solnit is one of the lefty intelligentsia, if such a thing still exists these days. She has all the right credentials:

She skipped high school altogether, enrolling in an alternative junior high in the public school system that took her through tenth grade, when she passed the GED exam. Thereafter she enrolled in junior college. When she was 17 she went to study in Paris. She ultimately returned to California and finished her college education at San Francisco State University when she was 20.[2] She then received a Masters in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley[3] in 1984 and has been an independent writer since 1988. [4] She credits her education in journalism and art criticism with strengthening her critical thinking skills and training her to quickly develop expertise in the great variety of subjects her books have covered.

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I’m sure that Ms. Solnit is a very nice person and supports all the right causes, but I’m gonna save you the trouble of reading her latest opus. It’s very similar to a number of other articles and blog posts we’ve been seeing lately. Remember the “conversion diaries” of 2007-2008, where virtually every day someone would post a long-winded essay on how they were a dedicated progressive and had recently come to the realization that Hillary Clinton was a bitch and Barack Obama was The One?

I call these the “Obama sucks but we have to vote for him anyway” diaries. They all have different writers and different words, but the same message. They start off bemoaning Obama’s failure and inadequacies. Then they point out that the Republicans are really bad people. Then they conclude that we must hold our noses and vote for Obama in spite of everything.

I do want to bring attention to this passage because it encapsulates so much of what is wrong with modern progressive thought:

We are facing a radical right that has abandoned all interest in truth and fact. We face not only their specific policies, but a kind of cultural decay that comes from not valuing truth, not trying to understand the complexities and nuances of our situation, and not making empathy a force with which to act. To oppose them requires us to be different from them, and that begins with both empathy and intelligence, which are not as separate as we have often been told.

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Ask a progressive what they believe in and they’ll probably rattle off some high-minded ideals like “truth” and “justice”. But if you get them talking about what “progressive” means and it won’t belong before they start telling you what it is not. In other words, they define themselves in opposition to conservatism, or, more accurately, in opposition to what they think conservatism is. They also use “conservative” interchangeably with “Republican.”

Interestingly, defining yourself in opposition to other groups is one of the things authoritarians do.

But the real problem is that their definition of conservatism is wrong. In this case both sides are guilty of stereotyping the other. The left is not a bunch of America-hating socialists, and the right is not a bunch of greedy, racist Luddites. But you can find people who match those stereotypes – they really do exist.

Compared to many other countries our radical fringes are very small. Despite all the drama and histrionics, about 95% of the people in this country are within a few points of the political median. For political posturing purposes, both sides like to depict the tiny radical fringe of the other side as their mainstream. Conversely, the radical fringes tend to overestimate their numbers and influence.

We like to talk about the country in terms of “blue” states and “red” states, with blue representing the left/Democrats and red representing the right/Republicans. But the truth is the whole country is just various shades of purple. There is a little red and a little blue everywhere, and we mostly get along just fine, at least offline.

They play baseball, football and basketball in every area of the country. We watch the same movies and television shows. Everybody has eaten hamburgers, tacos, spaghetti and chow mein. They listen to Country music in the cities and Rap in the sticks. We all love our children and want the best for them.

The real difference between the two sides isn’t the destination, it’s the route. Both sides want better schools, the disagreements are over how to achieve that goal and how (and how much) to pay for it. But neither side is evil.

There are bad people, however. It seems like the worst ones end up in politics or prison – sometimes both. Neither side has a monopoly on morality or corruption. We’re all just people. We’re all Americans.

Barack Obama has failed miserably by every objective measure. Even his supporters admit it. He ain’t gonna get no better, neither. As Clint Eastwood said, “When somebody doesn’t do the job, we gotta let him go.”

If the new guy doesn’t work out, we’ll fire his ass four years from now.

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The Golden Age of Bullshit

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Via Legal Insurrection, a review of On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, “we have no theory.”

Frankfurt, one of the world’s most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

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The best way I can define the difference between lying and bullshitting is that a lie is a single discrete intentionally untrue statement whereas “bullshit” is a constant mixed stream of lie, truth, half-truth and omission along with irrelevancies and distractions. A liar wants to convince you of something that is not true. A bullshitter doesn’t care whether it’s true or not.

In other words, Barack Obama.

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Remember when Democrats hated one-party rule?

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Americans’ Preference Shifts Toward One-Party Government

A record-high 38% of Americans prefer that the same party control the presidency and Congress, while a record-low 23% say it would be better if the president and Congress were from different parties and 33% say it doesn’t make any difference. While Americans tend to lean toward one-party government over divided government in presidential election years, this year finds the biggest gap in preferences for the former over the latter and is a major shift in views from one year ago.

[...]

Opinions on divided government have fluctuated over the years. When one party controlled both Congress and the presidency in 2006 and 2010, Gallup found near-historical lows supporting one-party rule. This suggests Americans may simply tend to prefer what they don’t have or see problems in whatever the current situation is. At least one chamber of Congress changed hands in the subsequent elections, and the increase in support for one-party government in 2008 foreshadowed an election that would give the Democrats sole control of the presidency and both houses of Congress.

[...]

Democrats (49%) are now more likely than Republicans (36%) or independents (28%) to favor one-party government. There may be several reasons for this. Democrats currently control the presidency and many Democrats may be frustrated that President Barack Obama cannot enact his legislative agenda without the help of a sympathetic Congress. Also, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to express faith in the federal government’s ability to handle domestic problems. Insofar as politically unified executive and legislative branches ease the passage of laws and the implementation of policies designed to solve national problems, Democrats would view this as a positive development. Republicans also favor one-party control over divided government, but by a smaller margin of 36% to 27%. Independents are split in their preferences between one-party (28%) and divided (30%) government.

Democrats’ preference for unified government rose significantly this year — to 49%, compared with 35% last year. Independents also became more favorable to one-party government this year, up seven percentage points compared with 2011. Republicans did not see a significant change.

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It seems to me that the preference for one-party rule kinda depends on which party you think will be on top. If your party is on the outs divided government sounds a lot better. For most of my life Congress and the White house have been split between the parties.

The Democrats controlled both branches from 1961 until 1969 (8 years), 1977 until 1981 (4 years), 1993-1994 (2 years) and 2009-2011 (2 years). That’s 16 years. There was also about four years during the George W. Bush administration where the Republicans controlled both branches. The rest of the time at least one house of Congress was controlled by the party that did not hold the White House.

There were several months during the Obama administration where the Democrats held the White House and held a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The result of that was a massive GOP landslide in the 2010 midterms.

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“Mom says I’m the handsome one.”

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Crystalization

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Ever watch crystals form? It’s almost like watching a living thing grow. Some times thoughts crystalize too.

From The Once and Future Liberalism by Walter Russell Mead:

One of the main reasons Americans have been so slow to recognize the collapse of the blue model is that the language we use to discuss and think about politics tends to disorganize our stock of understanding about our own society. Millions of Americans are conservatives and even reactionaries but think of themselves as “liberals”; at the same time, millions of genuine liberals and even radicals call themselves conservative. It’s an unholy mess that calls desperately for a language intervention. Let us begin with an historic meditation on the “L” word.

“Liberal” and “progressive” are two of the noblest and most important words in the English dictionary. They describe essential qualities of the American mind and essential values in American politics in a country born in reaction against oligarchy and concentrated autocracy. They sum up in a nutshell what this country is all about. A liberal is someone who seeks ordered liberty through politics—namely, the reconciliation of humanity’s need for governance with its drive for freedom in such a way as to give us all the order we need (but no more) with as much liberty as possible. In this sense, liberty isn’t divided or divisible into freedoms of speech, religion, economic activity or personal conduct: Genuine liberals care about all of the above and seek a society in which individuals enjoy increasing liberty in each of these dimensions while continuing to cultivate the virtues and the institutions that give us the order without which there can be no freedom.

But today the words liberal and progressive have been hijacked and turned into their opposites: A “liberal” today is somebody who defends the 20th-century blue social model; a “progressive” is now somebody who thinks history has gone wrong and that we must restore the Iron Triangle of yesteryear to make things better. Most of what passes for liberal and progressive politics these days is a conservative reaction against economic and social changes the Left doesn’t like. The people who call themselves liberal in the United States today are fighting rearguard actions to save old policies and established institutions that once served noble purposes but that now need fundamental reform (and in some cases abolition), lest they thwart the very purposes for which they were created.

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For years I considered myself a liberal Democrat. I also considered those terms basically interchangeable – liberals were Democrats and Democrats were liberals. Then 2008 happened.

I still consider myself to be a Democrat but “my” party has been hijacked by a gang of corrupt politicians and elitist idiots. My long-range goal is to win back control of the Democratic party. That is why I want to see Barack Obama and the clique that enabled him defeated.

I still consider myself a liberal as well. But my estrangement from the Democratic party made me realize how much tribalism played in my political ideology. This caused me to spend quite a bit of time over the past couple years pondering the true meaning of “liberal.” It has also resulted in some former friends accusing me of being a traitor or Republican ratfucker.

(I was unbothered by those accusations because I know my core principles have remained unchanged. People can agree on principles and goals and yet differ on policy and tactics. But you can’t be a member of the “reality-based community” if you refuse to face reality.)

So like I said my thoughts were in flux for many months. This article has caused my thoughts to crystalize. But crystalization is a process, not an event. There is still some deep thinking ahead. The material in this article is gonna provide material for a few different posts.

But for now, here is the foundation I want to build upon:

A liberal is someone who seeks ordered liberty through politics—namely, the reconciliation of humanity’s need for governance with its drive for freedom in such a way as to give us all the order we need (but no more) with as much liberty as possible.

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I like that definition. But you will notice that there are no specific policies or programs described in there. Nor is there any particular candidate, party or even a political system in that definition. But it is a basic assumption that liberalism rests upon established principles of democracy and the rule of law.

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COMING SOON: Liberalism and Big Government

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Peering into an uncertain future

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Walter Russell Mead:

But for people who are more interested in shaping the future, it’s important to grasp that this is one of those times when politics feels more important than usual but in fact matters less. The status quo doesn’t fit well and doesn’t work well so we look toward politics for answers, but the politicians don’t have what we need.

This is not anybody’s fault. As regular readers know, our view is that the US stands at an uncomfortable transition point between eras. We are between social models. The blue model of twentieth century mass production, mass consumption society based on stable corporate oligopoly, bloc voting and government regulation in a relatively closed national economy has foundered and it cannot, so far as we can see here, be restored. But we have at best only a very dim and incomplete sense of what could replace it.

This means that we are at a moment of maximum discomfort nationally, and we want our politicians and leaders to fix things — but that neither party really knows what to do. On the whole, the Democrats stand for restoring the blue model and Republicans oppose that and so far, so good. The choices between the parties seem to be growing more clear as the problems resulting from the decay of the blue model take a larger toll.

Yet neither party can offer the smooth path to a stable and affluent future that voters want. The Democrats know what they want but can’t deliver it because it is undeliverable. The Republicans know what they don’t want but are not able to describe the future they would like to see — much less show how they can manage the transition fairly and kindly because they don’t really know what the goal looks like.

Our problem is that the time isn’t ripe: the real work of our society right now isn’t about political competition. It is about re-imagining, reinventing and restructuring core institutions and professions. Our health care system is wasteful and poorly organized and if in the next generation we don’t fundamentally reorganize it the country will go broke. Our educational system from kindergarten through grad school needs a variety of upgrades and innovations. Mass employment through manufacturing cannot support the kind of middle class society it once did; conventional big box retail cannot do it; government employment and subsidies can’t do it. Americans must find new ways to organize themselves for work and production, and we must learn to produce different (better and more interesting) goods. We must complete the transition from a late stage industrial society to an early stage information society and it’s something that nobody has ever done before in the history of the world.

Neither party, it must be emphasized, knows what to do about these issues. To a very large degree the solutions are outside politics. Policy and therefore politics will play a significant role ultimately in either furthering or retarding the changes we need, but so much of the shape of the future is still unknown that nobody can really tell us what should be done and in what order to create the best possible conditions in which a brighter future most quickly and most stably emerge.

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I’m not convinced that an “information society” is a viable model, but we are in transition from an industrial society to something else. Politics will not control that change, it will reflect the change.

The institutions of society (government, religion, law) are by their nature conservative. They will resist change. The marketplace adapts first. Back in the Sixties they said that computers would change the world. They were right, but their predictions about how it would change were mostly wrong.

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It’s da rulz!

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Rick Moran:

The Rules Fight Food Fight

Any hope that Mitt Romney might have had that the Ron Paul faction of the Republican Party would mind their P’s and Q’s during his coronation at the GOP convention has come a cropper. And ironically, the revolt is the result of his own efforts to reform the rules to make sure that a tiny minority can’t overturn the will of the majority who voted in a state primary.

An old-fashioned floor fight is brewing over new rules pushed through by the Romney campaign that have the Ron Paul delegates up in arms, as well as several state party chairmen who believe that the national party is trying to seize control over the delegate selection process. For the insurgent Paul forces, the rules changes would prevent them from wreaking the kinds of havoc at state GOP conventions that led to chaos in Louisiana and bitter clashes between the factions at the Nevada and Maine state conventions. At issue is a rule that would allow presidential candidates to vet delegates in order to insure their loyalty, and another rule designed to squash incipient revolts like the Ron Paul insurgency that would require delegations from statewide caucuses and conventions to adhere to the will of the majority who voted.

The latter rule is what is angering the Paul people. With a brilliant organizing effort, the Paul campaign literally took over the state conventions in Nevada, Maine, and Louisiana, catching establishment Republicans unawares and sending their own delegations to the Tampa convention. In Louisiana, regular GOP party members didn’t take their demotion gracefully. They called in the police, who physically escorted some Paul delegates out of the hall, injuring several. The establishment Republicans then went ahead and held a rump convention where they elected their own delegates. The Maine and Nevada state conventions were hardly less peaceful, with the well-organized Paul campaign running rings around the establishment Republicans.

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Imagine if your state voted for Hillary Clinton but the delegates gave their votes to Barack Obama instead.

Oh, wait . . .

I’m not sure I have a handle on exactly what is going down in Tampa. But I know that democratic principles are more important than party rules. The voters get to decide, and their wishes should be respected.

Even if they vote for the wrong person.

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