Fellow Republican puts Gingrich in "hall of shame" over Uighur remarks

Tell us something we don't know:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich got into a public spat with fellow Republicans this week after he denounced the 17 Chinese Muslims who're being released from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison as "terrorists" who should be sent back to China, where they're likely to face persecution.

Gingrich, the Republican party's most prominent spokesman, is "in the Hall of Shame" for his remarks, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said in his opening statement during a Tuesday hearing of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Human Rights. Democrats and other Republicans also piled on Gingrich for "fear-mongering" and allegedly peddling Chinese propaganda.

The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority concentrated in the northwest part of China. According to the 2008 State Department Human Right's report, they've been the target of human rights abuses in China.

Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., the committee's chairman, said that Gingrich is either misinformed or intentionally circulating false information about the 17 Uighurs to "appease the Communist Chinese," who've repeatedly asked the U.S. to return the Uighurs to China. He said the Chinese "brutally persecute and oppress the Uighur minority."

And this guy's supposed to be the "intellectual" of the Republican Party? This is worse than saying Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. Either he's completely ignorant about the Uighurs or he's fear-mongering to those who are. In any case, he's a shining example of what's wrong with the Republican Party. But how ridiculous is it to look to someone who was Speaker of the House for 4 years in the 90s and left in disgrace for your future electoral hopes anyway? If that's your savior, you're in pretty sad shape.

"This is Americans' Money"

Republicans, demonstrating again that the only thing they can get behind is screwing the little guy out of some money.

Messaging

Ta-Nehisi Coates links to this video explaining how the GOP will court black urban youth. Basically, it's hilarious.

Vindication

Remember a few of weeks ago, when Republicans were generally patting themselves on their collective backs for their brave stand against the Obama stimulus package, after Obama negotiated with them in good faith over the legislation? That worked out about as predicted:

President Obama is benefiting from remarkably high levels of optimism and confidence among Americans about his leadership, providing him with substantial political clout as he confronts the nation’s economic challenges and opposition from nearly all Republicans in Congress, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

A majority of people surveyed in both parties said Mr. Obama was striving to work in a bipartisan way, but most Americans faulted Republicans for their response to the president, saying the party had objected to the $787 billion economic stimulus plan for political reasons. Most Americans said Mr. Obama should pursue the priorities he campaigned on, the poll found, rather than seek middle ground with Republicans.

As the president addresses Democrats and Republicans in Congress on Tuesday evening, he does so with a sense among most Americans that he is trying to make good on his pledge to bridge the partisan divide. About three-quarters of those polled, including 61 percent of Republicans, said Mr. Obama has been trying to work with Republicans. But only 3 in 10 Americans said Republicans are doing the same, with 63 percent saying that Republicans opposed the economic stimulus package primarily for political reasons rather and policy concerns.

About 8 in 10 Americans said Republicans should be working in a bipartisan way rather than holding fast to their policies, the poll found, with almost three-quarters of Republican respondents agreeing that bipartisanship was preferable.

Bed already made, Republicans now commence lying in it.

Tom Coburn: "There's No Reason For Us To Hurry Up"

Our economy burns, and Republicans decide it's time for a "principled" stand against wasteful spending. I swear to God, governing a nation is just a game to these people.

UPDATE: More from Paul Krugman, on how Obama and the Democrats on the Hill need to quit dicking around with the Republicans and get this bill passed. Senate Dems say they're close to the 60 votes they need; they'd damn well better be right.

UPDATE II: Various economists react. Note: none of them seems concerned about wasteful spending.

"Victory"

Regarding the House Republican's imitation of The Little Bighorn over the stimulus bill and other various acts of Congress, Daniel Larison has this to say on why this "last stand" may not have been such a good idea:

Indeed, the sudden unanimous opposition of House Republicans to this bill mainly accomplishes one thing, which is to remind everyone of how gutlessly the Republican leadership acquiesced to whatever the Bush administration wanted and how they only managed to discover some interest in resisting massive expenditures when someone from the other party is in the White House. This highlights the past fecklessness and opportunism of the current Republican leadership. Given the current mood in the country, the House GOP in ‘10 will probably be received in the country about as well as the House GOP was received during the ‘98 midterms. The lesson to draw from the Democrats’ defeat in 2002 is not that cooperation with the White House loses the opposition party seats in the next elections, but that challenging a very popular President on a major piece of legislation (especially when the legislation is also popular) usually ends up costing the opposition party seats.

Nate Silver echoes this, and tries to get to the heart of what's going on here:

But surely the phrase "ZERO Republicans voted for the Recovery Package" is more likely to escape Democratic lips on the campaign trail in 2010 than Republican ones. If the stimulus bill proves to be unpopular -- and it might well -- a House Republican can tout the fact that he voted against the package. But with the unanimous vote -- as well as the near-unanimity on measures like the Ledbetter Act and Digital TV -- the Republicans remove the emphasis from their individual judgment to that of their party. It is not clear why they would want this: the Republican brand, even under the best of circumstances, is not likely to be significantly rehabilitated by 2010, especially when the Republicans do not have agenda-setting powers.

[...]

... the Republicans, arguably, are in something of a death spiral. The more conservative, partisan, and strident their message becomes, the more they alienate non-base Republicans. But the more they alienate non-base Republicans, the fewer of them are left to worry about appeasing. Thus, their message becomes continually more appealing to the base -- but more conservative, partisan, and strident to the rest of us. And the process loops back upon itself.

And here's David Weigel, who says there is strategy at work here:

The Republican strategy here is incredibly bold. The party’s betting against Obama’s current popularity and against the chance of an economic recovery by 2010 (or 2012), having done very little work convincing Americans that the stimulus tax rebates amount to “welfare” (one popular argument) or that, after eight years of deficit spending, voters should worry about the cost of this bill. I’m skeptical about the political oomph of attacking “wasteful spending,” even though (in a growing economy, at least) it makes more sense than endless tax cuts. But maybe the strategy will pay off. Or maybe putting 177 Republicans on record against tax cuts will come back to hurt them. We’ll find out.

I for one think the effects of this stand will neither be as good as Republicans hope, nor as bad as Silver and Larison think. However, I do consider this a golden opportunity for Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration to do as they please, as they can now plausibly say "See, we try to reach out to them in the spirit of bipartisanship, and this is what they do."

Texas No Longer Solidly Republican

Though I suppose you can still count on our state to supply Republican scofflaws, a new Gallup poll indicates that Texas is no longer a solidly Republican state. In fact, only four states are: Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska. Nebraska leans Republican, and all other states are either competitive (Texas), lean Democratic or are solidly Democratic.

Dead

The NY Times, on the aformentioned death of the "southern strategy":

“I think that’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win national elections without the South.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern.

Merle Black, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere.

“They’ve maxed out on the South,” he said, which has “limited their appeal in the rest of the country.”

Of course one could argue that this election was a unique event, that disgust with the Republican party and the popularity of Barack Obama in general combined to dramatically reduce the impact of southern whites. But as the article mentions, demographic changes split North Carolina and Virginia away from the South, reducing the electoral value of the South as a whole, and whites in other parts of the country voted for Obama in greater numbers. I do think the race factor is over-played to some extent. It's present (there's really no arguing that it's a factor when Kerry-a less popular figure generally-won more votes than Obama among southern whites) but we should recall that Republicans went beyond race to a relying generally on class, painting Democratic candidates as out-of-touch and effete elitists. Of course this stereotyping was used to appeal to poorer and less educated whites throughout the country; we focus on the South mostly because the appeals to race and class have been most effective there, and because the South has provided a safe and reliable base of electoral votes for Republican candidates. What this election has demonstrated is that appeals to race and class are no longer effective among enough whites outside of the South to make up for the voters that they either turn off or have no effect on, even accounting for the uniqueness of this election. 

This is a welcome development for Democrats, who will no longer feel the need to nominate southern candidates in an effort to manage losses in the South. This is a troubling development for the Republican party, which now must either face moderating its message to appeal to more voters outside of the south. Overall this a supremely positive for our nation, whose national politics will not be dominated by a disproportionate focus on the poorest, most under-educated, provincial and unsophisticated white people in the country. With the death of the effectiveness of either overt or covert appeals to race, our nation can finally move beyond the racial politics that has characterized national elections from the sixties on. 

What then is the future of the South in national politics? If at one time the value of southern whites was over-valued, it may now be that they are under-valued. If Democrats don't even need to consider the deep south in mapping their electoral strategies, their concerns won't be addressed. Even if they elect reliably conservative Republicans and Democrats to Congress in the future, that influence can be outweighed by greater numbers of members from states in New England, the Midwest and the West (as is the case now thanks to this election.) What then is the future of the South? I'm not at all prepared to answer that question, but I'm sure I'm not the only one pondering it.

UPDATE: Naturally, other bloggers are responding to this article with their opinions. I don't quite understand the reaction of Clay Risen at TNR, who says the south isn't waning so much as it's "fissuring":

Across the “Deep South”—South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and northern Louisiana, what the rest of the country talks about when it talks about the South—the map is almost entirely blue. Pretty much all of Texas is blue, too. That means that Obama, even if he didn’t win these states, still did better than Kerry. Instead, the red splotches center in eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and southern Louisiana; northern Alabama is pretty red as well. (Interestingly, these are places where Democrats tend to do well, historically, on the local and state level.)

What this all points to is not a waning South, but a fissured and rapidly changing one.

To which I respond with a "yeah, but you're missing the point." No, the "South" has never been a unified bloc of white racists. It's just that appeals to the racism and class consciousness of whites was an integral party of the Republican strategy to secure the electoral votes of the deep South, which served as reliable backbone for Republican candidates and left them needing to concentrate solely on states in the midwest and the West (and Florida, which doesn't really count as the South.) But yes, we can acknowledge that the South itself is changing; for example, Dallas County in North Texas (generally an area that historically has more in common with the deep south than say, southern Texas) is now blue, safely and securely. Yes, that undermines to some extent the "unity" of Texas as a safe Republican state, but not by that much; the rest of East Texas voted for McCain in a greater percentage than they did Bush. So Texas was secure for McCain, just as was the rest of the deep South minus areas where there have been shifts in demographics like Virginia, or North Carolina. It simply doesn't matter that more urbanites, more African-Americans and more Hispanics voted for Obama in these states this year than in years past, because the tilt of the state was decided by the white voters that Republicans make overt appeals to. What matters is that other parts of the country are changing (like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, etc.) so much so that appeals to the whites in these states no longer work; when you can "only" win states outside of the deep South and still easily win the presidency then yes, the South is marginalized. I don't see how this isn't a fair conclusion. It's true there is some over-simplication in the article; "deep South" is really code for "white voters in the South." And I hardly think that we should conclude that the South on longer has any role in presidential races. Rather, the South's prominence in deciding who Democratic candidates will be and what strategy they will run on, is now much diminished. I think that's a fair conclusion. 

UPDATE: Stuart Rothenberg, discussing whether this election was a "realignment", touches on the issue of the white voter:

If demographics are indeed destiny, then the 2008 national exit poll at the very least raises questions about where the GOP goes from here.

For the first time ever, whites constituted less than 75 percent of the electorate, a considerable problem for the Republican Party given its historical problems attracting minorities. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) drew just 55 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, but Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) drew 67 percent of it four years later — a remarkable showing considering that many of those voters preferred Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in the Democratic contest and supposedly were resistant to voting for a black candidate.

It's fair to say that changing demographics both in and outside of the deep South have operated to reduce the influence of white voters in the South.

Whither the GOP?

As you can imagine, Republicans are busy licking their wounds and trying to figure out what is in their future after further losses in Congress and Obama's victory. There is much talk of a return to "first principles", such as this by Jeff Flake:

I suggest that we return to first principles. At the top of that list has to be a recommitment to limited government. After eight years of profligate spending and soaring deficits, voters can be forgiven for not knowing that limited government has long been the first article of faith for Republicans.

Of course, it's not the level of spending that gets the most attention; it's the manner in which the spending is allocated. The proliferation of earmarks is largely a product of the Gingrich-DeLay years, and it's no surprise that some of the most ardent practitioners were earmarked by the voters for retirement yesterday. Few Americans will take seriously Republican speeches on limited government if we Republicans can't wean ourselves from this insidious practice. But if we can go clean, it will offer a stark contrast to the Democrats, who, after two years in training, already have their own earmark favor factory running at full tilt.

Second, we need to recommit to our belief in economic freedom. Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" may be on the discount rack this year, but the free market is still the most efficient means to allocate capital and human resources in an economy, and Americans know it. Now that we've inserted government deeply into the private sector by bailing out banks and businesses, the temptation will be for government to overstay its welcome and force the distribution of resources to serve political ends. Substituting political for economic incentives is not the recipe for economic recovery.

This sort of talk is popular now, understandably so. Republicans accurately perceive that their approach to governing-tar Democrats, spend like crazy, cut taxes, start wars, and let the economy tank-has been rejected by a majority of voters. The solution naturally appears to be a return to principles that many Americans can admire and respect that are nonetheless opposed to Democratic principles. What's lacking in these retrospectives of course is any explanation for how the Republicans got to where they are in the first place; what led them to abandon the principles that their party supposedly embodies? An explanation lies in this column by John W. Dean, former counsel to Richard Nixon and author of Conservatives Without Conscience, on why Republican rule is dangerous:

Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do. Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.

Republicans' authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which it to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.

Authoritarian conservatives are primarily anti-government, except where they believe the government can be useful to impose moral or social order (for example, with respect to matters like abortion, prayer in schools, or prohibiting sexually-explicit information from public view). Similarly, Republicans' limited-government attitude does not apply regarding national security, where they feel there can never be too much government activity - nor are the rights and liberties of individuals respected when national security is involved. Authoritarian Republicans do oppose the government interfering with markets and the economy, however -- and generally oppose the government's doing anything to help anyone they feel should be able to help themselves.

What is wrong with being an authoritarian conservative? Well, if you want to take the country where they do, nothing. "They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result," Altemeyer told me. "The problem is that these authoritarian followers are much more active than the rest of the country. They have the mentality of 'old-time religion' on a crusade, and they generously give money, time and effort to the cause. They proselytize; they lick stamps; they put pressure on loved ones; and they revel in being loyal to a cohesive group of like thinkers. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going to go away."

No they are not. In fact, the right-wing base of the party is now whole-heartedly rejecting the idea that there is any need for change, lashing out viciously at Party moderates who don't agree, and busy promoting Sarah Palin as their prime pick for President in 2012. They have no tolerance for dissent and their poor showing only causes them to further entrench themselves in the notion that what they really need is even more conservative (read, authoritarian) candidates and policies. And as we've learned from Bob Altemeyer (mentioned in Dean's article) authoritarians are not ones to accept evidence that is contrary to their peculiar notions, even evidence that the vast majority of Americans (including conservatives) reject their ideas and basic math which indicates that a party of 28%ers can't hope to win national elections.

Republican leadership can afford no such illusions, at least not if they wish to be elected. But still one must ask, how did things get to this point? And how is this turn of events to be avoided in the future, lest the GOP overplay it's hand again ten or twenty so years from now and find itself the victim of dramatic shifts of public opinion that leave it looking in from the outside? Quite simply 9/11, the event that served as the greatest boon the party, also produced the party's downfall. 

9/11 produced a political climate in the country where many Americans were willing to defer to the leadership of Bush and the GOP. 9/11 led to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the climate of war and the fear of further terrorist attacks gave the Bush administration and a mostly servile Republican leadership the ability to operate absent restraint (a mostly irrelevant Democratic leadership also helped.) Without the check of a legitimate minority party (or where their opposition could be turned back by attacks on patriotism or appeals to the fears of voters) there was nothing to prevent the Bush administration from engaging in the worst aspects of authoritarian rule; ideology pervaded every element of the administration, policy decisions were made based on how it would benefit Republicans at the polls, foreign policy became strident and overtly nationalistic, and dissentors on all sides  had their patriotism (or at least their loyalty to Bush) questioned. 

That era is now at an end, but Republicans cannot hope to return to power without abandoning to some extent the party's authoritarian leanings. Conservatism attracts authoritarians to a far greater degree than does liberalism, but that doesn't mean that the Republican party must be in thrall to authoritarian followers and a leadership that would take advantage of them. Necessarily, this means a rejection of the desires of the right-wing base to simply re-engage in authoritarian politics with more vigor, by nominating someone like Sarah Palin in 2012. Conservatives should look to far more moderate politicians that are personally attracted to the ideals of limited government and traditional morals, not hypocrites and strident moralists. Coming back to power means winning back the voters that were turned off by excessive Republican vitriol and hypocrisy, and only by looking to personable and likeable candidates who are genuine representatives of conservative policies can they hope to provide attractive faces to voters. Absent dramatic events that tar the Democratic party in some manner, Republicans can hope to return to power only by engaging in the long slog of campaigning moderate, likeable candidates. 

Of course, I wouldn't expect a Republican to trust this analysis anymore than I was willing to listen to the "advice" of Republicans to Democrats over the last eight years. Of course, unlike your typical authoritarian Republican, I actually believe that a legitimate two-party system and a contest of ideas is good for the nation as a whole, and I'm willing to accept that the Republican must exist not only as a usefeul check on Democrats (who are also inclined to excesses, if not the most authoritarian of ones) but also as an alternative to voter who find Democratic policies wanting. As a result I'm actually not in favor of a decades of unrivalled Democratic governance, nor am I in favor of the Republican being reduced to a rump of itself former self that represents only the most conservative regions of our country. But whether or not the Republican party can serve as a viable alternative to the Democratic party, depends entirely upon the conservatives who are busy battling over the future of the party and the course that they elect to take. 

Obama's Keys to Victory

What were the keys to Obama's victory last night? I have my ideas. Here they are (though not in order of importance because honestly, I couldn't say which had more impact than others, at least not enough to rank them):

• The economy: Obama experienced some "luck" in this regard. What was horrendous for us was great for his campaign, as the rapid acceleration of the global financial meltdown absolutely swamped the McCain campaign. McCain, already percieved as weaker on the economy than matters of national security and foreign policy, was at a loss for what to do when the crisis broke. In what is probably his second greatest gambit after picking Palin for VP, McCain rushed back to D.C., only to appear mostly irrelevant to the bailout process. Instead of undoing Obama's natural advantage as a Democrat on the economy, McCain only damaged his own standing. 

• George Bush and the GOP: Republicans are quick to spin this election as a referendum on eight years of George Bush. The election wasn't entirely about Republican ineptitude, but any Republican candidate was going to start out behind thanks to the massive shift in the public mood against the GOP. It only hurt McCain that he was forced to play to the right-wing base in order to shore up support for his candidacy; in doing so, he only confirmed to many voters that he wouldn't be substantially different from what they'd already seen for eight years.

• The Death of the "Southern Strategy": It's hard to say with any confidence what this election means to the electorate as a whole, except in one sense; it's safe to say that the "southern strategy", the practice of pandering to racist voters in the South that has been carried out by every Republican Presidential campaign since Nixon, is dying if not already dead. The Republican party played this strategy to the hilt. Not only did Republican campaigns wink and nod to the racists in their party, they came to identify the white, working-class voter (who just so happens to be racist, or at least deeply suspicious of minorities) as the "ultimate American" voter and perpetuated a culture war that attempted to define their supporters as "real" Americans and Democrats as latte-sipping "elitists." But the Republican party was trapped by its own game, forced to nominate an unqualified governor for Vice President because the base of the party, now comprised of these white voters, could only relate to someone like themselves; anti-intellectual, under-educated, confidently ignorant, overtly religious, and white. Unfortunately, time and demographics have caught up to the Republican party. Voters comfortable with these tactics now tend to reside largely in the south and the plains states; what only two years ago was a region that was ceded in advance by Democrats, is now overnight the only safe region that Republicans can count on. If the Republican party continues to identify itself as primarily the party of these voters and continues to value the votes of it's poorer whites above other groups of voters, it will become at best a regional party incapable of fashioning a coalition sufficient to win national election.

• Sarah Palin: Speaking of playing to the base...McCain's greatest gambit was his selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. The move was a blatant pandering to the right-wing base of the Republican party and although it energized the party faithful, it turned off swing voters and right-leaning Dems in droves. The McCain campaign sensed-probably rightly-that a safe, conservative campaign wouldn't be enough against Obama, and they had a serious enthusiasm gap to deal with. Unfortunately for them, the enthusiasm Sarah Palin generated could not hope to make up for the negative effect it had on the McCain campaign as a whole.

• The McCain campaign: Often, it appears that McCain's worst enemy was himself, or at least, his campaign advisors. McCain's advisors could never quite decide what they wanted to sell to the public. Part of the problem was they could never quite settle on what issue would damage Obama the most, largely because no attacks that they mounted gained any traction (for example Iraq, which was largely negated as an issue in the campaign.) At the same time, those attacks failed to gain traction in part because the campaign never gave them time to work. The Bush campaign in '04 settled on one strategy; identify Kerry's weaknesses and attack them relentlessly from beginning to end. But the McCain campaign could never quite figure out what they wanted people to like least about Obama; his associations, his ideology, his lack of experience, his anti-American leanings, etc., etc. Indeed it was a laundry list of things voters were supposed to reject, but the only thing McCain apparently asked them to embrace was his "experience." It wasn't enough. The McCain campaign was also extremely undisciplined. In the weeks leading up to the election we heard McCain's advisors make pronouncements about how they couldn't win if the election was about the economy as well as throw each other and Palin under the bus in anonymous quotes in major news articles. None of this gave Americans the impression that the McCain campaign had any idea what if was doing, and I think in large part Americans attributed this failing to McCain himself; his inability to pick quality advisors reflected on his judgment. That contrasts with....

• The Obama Campaign: It is generally agreed that Obama and his advisors ran a nearly flawless campaign. There were no serious gaffes, crises were dispatched hastily, advisors who appeared in the media were disciplined and on message, the grassroots organization was light-years beyond anything we've seen to this point, the 50-state strategy was bold and effective, and the message to the public was short, memorable and convincing. Obama credited his two most senior advisors in his speech last night, David Axelrod and David Plouffe, and he was right to do so; the two men engineered the kind of campaign that Joe Trippi could only dream about. The Obama campaign was essentially the anti-Rove campaign; instead of the 50+1 approach, Obama's campaign fought for votes in every state of the union. The landslide victory, and the political implications thereof (a mandate far beyond anything Rove ever hoped for) are the direct result. Of course, it would be criminal to overlook the literally millions of people who contributed or volunteered on Obama's behalf. The Obama campaign may have known exactly how to harness that power and enthusiasm, but it was these volunteers, many young, some old, all fired up for Obama, that delivered the votes to make this victory a landslide. 

• Barack Obama: Of coure, Americans did not turn out to vote for Obama's campaign; they turned out to vote for Obama. They are not likely to regret their choice. Obama demonstrated through the two-year long campaign that he was cool, level-headed, possessed of great equanimity, poised, well-spoken, intelligent and thoughtful. The reason many of the McCain campaigns attacks failed to work against Obama is because each time Obama appeared in the public eye, he demonstrated attributes in opposition to the ones McCain tried to paint him with. At no time was this more evident than in the flap over Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama proved to America that he was a different kind of politician when he turned the crisis, which threatened to derail his campaign, into an opportunity to confront the issue of race head-on in one of the most masterful political speeches of the modern era. In his speech Obama was direct, considered, and sincere. He treated the public as adults who could handle a frank discussion about race from a national figure, and he was not wrong. America has rewarded him in turn.

And so those are my thoughts. But I'm sure there are many things I'm leaving out. Your comments are welcome.

Class Warfare

Via John Cole, David Brooks has a pretty decent column about how the Republican preoccupation with class warfare has driven professionals and technocrats out of the party, and left them with a smaller and smaller base to mobilize as even social conservatives have wearied of constant tales of incompetence and as their economic fortunes have dwindled with no substantive response from their own party. The goal always was to play on the resentments and social beliefs of the "Joe Sixpacks", accommodate the lasseiz-faire economic beliefs of those inclined to libertarianism, and take money from the corporate and financial interests who the party is truly loyal to. Daniel Larison, whom Cole also links to, explains why McCain's desperate efforts to rally the base will fail:

As November approaches, memories seem to get very short. Where just a few years before there was loose talk of thirty-year dominance of the Presidency on the model of the early 20th century GOP, there is now the fear of a long sojourn out of power. To avoid this, disaffected conservatives are supposed to “come home,” but in November just as in 2006 it will not matter whether McCain succeeds in retaining the GOP core. Every tactic McCain has employed has been part of a strategy to retain and mobilize that core, and it will not succeed, because this reflects a complete lack of comprehension about why the GOP is in its current predicament. Republicans and conservatives generally rallied to the flag with almost the same reflexive loyalty in 2006 as they had done in previous elections, and the GOP was still routed because previously GOP-leaning independents fled the party in droves and the left was better mobilized and organized. The Palin selection and the enthusiastic reaction to it have been disheartening because they suggest that conservatives will continue to bind themselves closely to the GOP and its obsession with short-term objectives.

The cause of the current predicament being of course that the modern GOP isn't actually interested so much in substance as they are in power. The fact that every minor policy decision in the Bush administration was political was not an anamoly; it was the result of GOP electoral strategy, which succeeded in that it picked a candidate in Bush (and his advisor in Karl Rove) who, as Brooks explains, perfectly encapsulated this approach. Every decision was aimed at bettering the chance of Republicans to win elections, and since such an approach will eventually result in policies that are damaging to the nation, it was only a matter of time before the GOP drove away more moderate voters. Personally, I value the two-party system; we're hardly as democratic as a nation as we should be, but one-party dominance is a recipe for disaster (and this is true even when more competent Democrats may be running the show.) I don't wish for the destruction of the Republican Party so much as I wish for the excision of its right-wing base, or at least the destruction of their dominance of the party. Don't expect this to happen overnight if McCain loses, but Republican candidates will spend two long years wondering how to get back what they are almost certain to lose in the Congressional elections in November, and they will be forced to realize that-at least to a greater degree than they've been willing to accept for eight years-substance wins elections.

Tax Holiday

Via Vince at Capitol Annex, we see that once again, there is no problem so big that it can't be solved with a tax cut, even if that solution happens to involve spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer money at the same time. Hint to the GOP: this is why many Americans are having trouble taking you seriously right now. 

Dallas Con Defects

Wick Allison, Editor-in-Chief of our very own D Magazine, explains why he ardent conservatism leads him to endorse Barack Obama for President. I shouldn't say Allison defected, so much as he appears to have realized that his party defected from him:

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

I may not agree with the man's principles, but his willingness to adhere to them is a mark of integrity. To be fair, many conservatives who are alarmed at the path George W. Bush and his version of the GOP have trod nonetheless can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. Their unwillingness doesn't make them less principled, but it does indicate that they perhaps misjudge the danger posed to our nation by their runaway party. Clearly, Allison does not.

Bipartisanship, Schmipartisanship

It's good to see that in the spirit of "bipartisanship", the kumbaya-ish unity of opposing political forces that is so highly touted among political pundits and supposedly craved by the public, both Democrats and Republicans can come together to pander to voters by sending them money. Here's a sample of the cringe-worthy (but bipartisan!) quotes from the article:

President Bush hailed "the kind of cooperation that some predicted was not possible here in Washington." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) used the words "bipartisan" and "bipartisanship" 10 times in a brief appearance. "Many Americans believe that Washington is broken," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). "But I think this agreement, and I hope that this agreement, will show the American people that we can fix it."

They're sick and tired of the bickering, and they want to see us get some things done," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.).

See, everyone wins! Only not really, because members of Congress have come together to enact a stimulus package that won't really stimulate the economy but does have the political side-effect of bribing taxpayers into thinking that the government is doing something about the looming recession. And that's what counts for a win in D.C. these days.

The truth is, nobody really wants bipartisanship. What they really want is for the other side to give in to what they want, and each side excoriates the other for "partisanship" when they don't. But the American people want partisanship. They want their side to win, and they want their policies enacted. Only the legendary independent/moderate voter wants "bipartisanship" because supposedly that's the measure of progress in this country; not what policies get enacted, but that any get enacted at all.

Not me though. And not partisans for the other side either. I want the Democrats to stomp down legislation in Congress when the legislation getting passed is atrocious (unlike this example, where in the spirit of bipartisanship they will give President Bush exactly what he wants.) Bipartisanship? Count me out. I want to win.

Right On

I'm with Fish; "independent" voters are way overrated. The only voters who are independent are those who are too contrary or stubborn or ignorant to admit that they actually line up well with one party or another. People who generally vote one party but are leaning towards another this time are one thing, but the fact that someone doesn't ever know if they're going to vote Democratic or Republican until the last minute is just beyond ridiculous to me. Given the vast difference between the leading candidates of the two major parties, such foolishness is an indication to me of incredible political ignorance or naiveté. Why we should prize such ignoramuses is beyond me.

Ron Paul Raises $4.2 million in 24 Hours Online

Look, I'm not a huge fan of Ron Paul. But anything that makes the Christians and the warmongerers in the GOP wet their pants amuses me to no end.

Colorado Turning Purple?

Ah, sweet music to my ears:

The Bush administration's aggressive drive to promote oil and gas drilling on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains has sparked growing anger here among traditional Republican constituents who say that the stepped-up push for energy development is sullying some of the country's most majestic landscape.

The emerging backlash from ranchers and sportsmen, which is occurring despite an economic boom driven by drilling, is threatening GOP primacy in at least one corner of what has been a solidly Republican West. Long the most reliably conservative expanse of a state that has gone red in six of the past seven presidential contests, Colorado's western third shows evidence of the "purpling" that has made Colorado look increasingly like a swing state.

Support from the western slope was seen as pivotal in the elections of Democrats Bill Ritter as governor last year and Sen. Ken Salazar in 2004, the same year Salazar's older brother, Rep. John Salazar, was elected to Congress from a western Colorado district that had given 66 percent of its vote to the Republican candidate four years earlier. All three Democrats found support in GOP enclaves while calling for "balance" in energy extraction.

"I can only speak for myself and I'm a registered Republican, but last year I voted a straight Democratic ticket. First time in my life," said Bob Elderkin, 68, who heads the town of Rifle's chapter of the Colorado Mule Deer Association, a hunting group that has made common cause with environmentalists against drilling. "The Republicans have kind of lost touch with reality."

As the administration is learning, all the industrial money in the world won't get you elected when you turn off your own supporters, and the quickest way to do it is to let energy companies foul the air, water and soil where they live.

Change/No Change

In advance of the September progress report in Iraq, pressure is growing for a change of course:

After [Warner's] trip to Iraq this month, which included a meeting with top Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus, Warner said time has run out on the Baghdad government and Bush should make good on his word that the U.S. commitment was not open-ended by announcing a pullout of troops this fall.

The symbolic gesture, he said, could amount to as few as 5,000 of the 160,000 troops in Iraq. The goal would be to pressure Iraqi leaders to make political compromises necessary to tamp down sectarian violence.

It's not only politicians saying that the surge is unsustainable:

The departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns that keeping a force of more than 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 would severely strain the military.

Pace's recommendations reflect the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which initially expressed skepticism in private about the strategy ordered by Bush and directed by Petraeus before publicly backing it.

According to administration and military officials, the Joint Chiefs believe it is of strategic importance to reduce the size of the U.S. force in Iraq to bolster the military's ability to respond to other threats, a view shared by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The White House response? Predictable:

Despite political pressure for a change of course in Iraq, the White House hopes to keep in place its existing military strategy and troop levels there after the mid-September report from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, administration officials said.

...White House officials said privately that they are not contemplating making major shifts before early next year. They said that next month's report is likely to highlight what they see as significant improvements in security over the past year and that they expect the president to assert that now is not the time to dramatically change approaches.

There are no "metrics" by which the Bush administration will decide that it's time to start bringing troops home. Not the levels of violence in Iraq, not the lack of political progress, and not the slow breaking of the military in Iraq. Only Congressional action will change the course of the war, but unfortunately we are forced to rely upon the Democrats (some of whom also don't think there's anything worth changing) to change the direction of this war.

The Republican Party is Filled with Scumbags

At the behest of Adam, I watched a short clip on PBS' "NOW" about the practice of voter caging in the 2004 election. Essentially the practice involves sending letters to registered voters and then, when those letters are returned as undeliverable, ruthlessly challenging the right of those voters to vote when they show up at the polls on election day. The Republican Party used this method largely to target African-Americans in Florida and in other key battleground states, where as little as a few hundred votes could make the difference in a national election. As the piece explains, caging is not illegal unless it's done on the basis of race, which it most certainly was by the Republican Party. And even if it were legal, it would make them no less racist scumbags for seeking-as they have done throughout their long and racist history-to deny votes to African Americans for partisan political gain.

It's Payback Time!

Yes, according to Robert Novak, all these subpoenas and threatened contempt citations are "payback":

Waxman planned payback through 12 years in the minority. In response, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's ranking Republican, Rep. Tom Davis, at an April 25 committee meeting tried to extend Waxman's subpoena of Republican e-mails to include Democratic e-mails during the Clinton administration. Davis was defeated on a party-line vote.

I can almost see Waxman, sitting at his desk late at night, rubbing his hands and chortling with glee at the thought of revenge for a decade of humiliation! Or in the real world, doing his job and ferreting out corruption. Also, Davis seriously wanted to include Clinton era e-mails in the subpoena? Are the Republicans that stupid? NOBODY cares, except the 25% of Americans who would support the Republican party even if (or especially if) it established a totalitarian dictatorship in our country. Is it worth the 10 second soundbite he got out of that stunt, for people such as myself to read columns like this and immediately assume Davis is a moron? I guess so.