This isn’t exactly profiles in courage material, but it’s good to see that not every Republican is taking her marching orders from talk radio. I do think this is worth peering deeper into, however:
Maine Republican Party Chairman Charles Webster, of Farmington, said Limbaugh has many admirers in Maine because “he speaks for a lot of [...]
This isn’t exactly profiles in courage material, but it’s good to see that not every Republican is taking her marching orders from talk radio. I do think this is worth peering deeper into, however:
Maine Republican Party Chairman Charles Webster, of Farmington, said Limbaugh has many admirers in Maine because “he speaks for a lot of working-class people” who are struggling to make a living.
Just to be clear, Maine exit polls show that the more money you have, the more likely you were to vote for John McCain:
In education terms, McCain’s best demographic was “some college” (though he lost that, too) and he did equally bad with those possessing a high-school diploma but no college, and those possessing a bachelor’s degree.
Since it used to be that George W. Bush was President, but now Barack Obama’s president, and Bush was a Republican but Obama’s a Democrat, it seems that the new lazy cliché is to hold that everything is just the opposite of what it once was. Thus Matt Bai writes:
Such an acknowledgment of common purpose [...]
Since it used to be that George W. Bush was President, but now Barack Obama’s president, and Bush was a Republican but Obama’s a Democrat, it seems that the new lazy cliché is to hold that everything is just the opposite of what it once was. Thus Matt Bai writes:
Such an acknowledgment of common purpose has all but vanished, as the realignment in American politics — a hardening of regional loyalties that began with battles over civil rights and Vietnam — deepened the cultural divisions in Washington. Each party has demonized the other and embraced the notion that dissent can have no moral or intellectual value.
Really? Brendan Nyhan calls this a “classic case of false equivalence” and says “some Democrats have certainly criticized or undermined dissent, I’m not aware of any evidence comparable to the pattern of vicious attacks on dissent by Republicans between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the end of George W. Bush’s time in office.”
I would distinguish between the “demonization” issue and “the notion that dissent can have no moral or intellectual value” issue. On demonization, sure, if it’s a day that ends in “y” people are demonizing their political adversaries. But there was a specific “wartime” contention being put forward during the Bush years which held that strongly-worded political criticism of the Bush administration was, as such, undermining American national security. I genuinely don’t think anyone’s made an equivalent claim. Indeed, all the most prominent progressive voices I’m familiar with have themselves engaged in fairly strong criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to some issues. This reflects an important and somewhat enduring difference between the political parties. The Republicans are much more reliably conservative than the Democrats are progressive.
You can’t understand contemporary politics if you don’t understand that.
Jan Hoffman profiles conservative pundit Jonathan Krohn who’s hit the big-time at the tender age of 14. This put me in the mind of Ben Shapiro who was a big deal when he was a 17 year-old syndicated TownHall columnist but whose star seems to have faded over the years as he’s become less outlandishly [...]
Jan Hoffman profiles conservative pundit Jonathan Krohn who’s hit the big-time at the tender age of 14. This put me in the mind of Ben Shapiro who was a big deal when he was a 17 year-old syndicated TownHall columnist but whose star seems to have faded over the years as he’s become less outlandishly young.
I really struggle to understand why this particular gimmick appeals to conservatives. What does it accomplish to put a 14 year-old front and center at CPAC? What’s the message it’s supposed to send? That the conservative message is childish? That the right’s talking points can be easily mastered by a 14 year-old? That the CPAC audience doesn’t care about the knowledge-base of the speakers there, they just want to hear certain ritual beats repeated? I wouldn’t want to claim that liberals are so high-minded as to be above all that, but I’m hard-pressed to think of an example of liberals trying to flaunt disdain for knowledge and expertise.
A very shrewd post by Mark Schmitt explores why it is that Republicans like Lindsay Graham who profess to hate earmarks can’t actually bring themselves to give up their own earmarks; his conclusion cuts wider than petty hypocrisy:
There’s nothing partisan about earmarks — Republicans do it, Democrats do it, and if you were a member [...]
A very shrewd post by Mark Schmitt explores why it is that Republicans like Lindsay Graham who profess to hate earmarks can’t actually bring themselves to give up their own earmarks; his conclusion cuts wider than petty hypocrisy:
There’s nothing partisan about earmarks — Republicans do it, Democrats do it, and if you were a member of Congress, you’d do it, too. But for the moment, Republicans are far more dependent than Democrats on their ability to take some credit for federally funded projects. In the world with earmarks, Lindsay Graham is able to stand against the president on stimulus, on the budget, on Iraq, on health care. And then he’s able to go home, cut a ribbon, get his picture in the paper, and tell everyone that he delivered the money for the new Myrtle Beach Convention Center.
But in a world without earmarks, what does Lindsay Graham bring home? Just words, and great stories about how he fought bravely against health care and economic stimulus.
Whereas a Democrat in a world without earmarks will be able to go home, ideally, and tell her constituents that she supported a popular president, that she helped rescue the economy, that she’s moving us toward universal health care.
Of course a certain number of Republicans are so solidly safe that they can get along one way or the other. But the bulk of members of congress need to be able to say to constituents and donors alike that they’ve done something. And absent earmarks, that would require members of the minority to forge some kind of compromises with members of the majority on the big issues of the day. Which is precisely what almost no Republicans seem inclined to do at the moment.
Via Mark Kleiman, William Stuntz makes the case for increased federal assistance to local governments to hire police officers. He’s making the case in The Weekly Standard so it’s filled with a fair amount of somewhat annoying conservative rhetoric and framing, down to the use of the term “police surge” but he’s still right.
Among [...]
Via Mark Kleiman, William Stuntz makes the case for increased federal assistance to local governments to hire police officers. He’s making the case in The Weekly Standard so it’s filled with a fair amount of somewhat annoying conservative rhetoric and framing, down to the use of the term “police surge” but he’s still right.
Among other things, staying strictly within the realm of things that count as “tough on crime” but increasing the number of prison beds and increasing the number of cops on the streets are effective at reducing crime. At boosting incarceration is considerably less humane and more socially destructive. Both police and prisoners are necessary, but we’ve gone from having twice as many police officers as prison inmates to having twice as many inmates as police officers. It’s not a beneficial switch.
When any book comes to be as highly praised as Thomas Ricks’ The Gamble, my natural instinct is to start looking for the flaws the praisers are leaving out. And Spencer Ackerman, while not denying the book’s virtues, delivers the goods in his review for The National:
We do not learn from The Gamble what the [...]
When any book comes to be as highly praised as Thomas Ricks’ The Gamble, my natural instinct is to start looking for the flaws the praisers are leaving out. And Spencer Ackerman, while not denying the book’s virtues, delivers the goods in his review for The National:
We do not learn from The Gamble what the Iraqis – or any Iraqi factions – think of the surge. At the beginning of the book, Ricks prints an account of how an Iraqi witness to the 2005 Marine massacre in Haditha viewed the horror. An analogous Iraqi viewpoint might have complemented his description of an initiative known as “gated communities”, in which Petraeus’s subordinates built huge blast walls to separate Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad from Shiite ones. Petraeus meant the barriers to reduce sectarian violence, but Sunni residents of the Adhimiya neighbourhood protested loudly that the US was ghettoising Baghdad. Al Maliki publicly sided with the protesters, but the walls kept going up. Similarly, Odierno recognised that fighting in the “belts” around Baghdad was key to reducing violence inside the city (slyly, Ricks compares him to Saddam Hussein, who adopted a similar strategy). This peri-urban fighting was fierce and sustained, even if it helped protect the population from the insurgency. How did the Iraqis view this predicament? […]
It’s possible that Ricks’s blindness to the SOFA reflects that of his sources. During the month when the SOFA was signed, Odierno tells him, “I would like to see a… force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000” in 2014 or 2015 – years after the SOFA mandates the US must leave. A discomfort with the prospect of US forces leaving Iraq permeates the quotes from Odierno’s deputies. “The American military is trying to persuade the American people that this is going to take a long time,” Odierno aide Maj James Powell says. Emma Sky, a British liberal who improbably serves as Odierno’s political adviser – and who took the job, she says, to see if the US could “exit with some dignity” – tells Ricks: “We have to buy time in the US to complete the mission.” There is no recognition evident in their quotes that it is the Iraqis, not the Americans, who ultimately decide when the mission is completed.
To lean a bit speculatively, but not too much I would say, I think we can conclude that the limits of Ricks’ perspective reflect the limited perspective of his sources—sources within the U.S. military. And that this, in turn, reflects the fairly inherent limits of an imperial enterprise. The American military forces charged with administering Iraq report to politicians in Washington, DC who report to voters and interest-groups scattered throughout the country. Whether or not one acknowledges Iraqi opinion to be, in some sense, the “center of gravity” of one’s counterinsurgency campaign the fact of the matter remains that one’s key bases of support are all back home. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid pose a much more credible threat to cut off your supply lines than does the insurgency. Naturally, then, the focus remains to a large extent on sentiment back home.
Meanwhile, for Iraq to be run decently, it’s really necessary that Iraq be run by people who are accountable to Iraqis. Which means that Iraq needs to not be run by foreigners. Which is precisely why Iraqis from across the spectrum were able to unite around the principle that the Americans have to go. And it appears that the new Obama administration recognizes that reality and is planning to leave. And thanks to the security gains associated with the surge, we’ll get to do so with our heads held much higher than they would have been had we started leaving in 2006. But the strategic, human, and material costs of dragging things out have been high and all the successes of the surge period didn’t change the fact that in the end we need to go.
Atrios writes that “this article makes clear Timmeh still doesn’t know how to find the pony in the shitpile.” And offers as a suggestion “Hint: you can’t.” I’m inclined to agree, but I think that what the article actually makes clear is that cost rather than ideological taboos is preventing the administration from undertaking a [...]
Atrios writes that “this article makes clear Timmeh still doesn’t know how to find the pony in the shitpile.” And offers as a suggestion “Hint: you can’t.” I’m inclined to agree, but I think that what the article actually makes clear is that cost rather than ideological taboos is preventing the administration from undertaking a Swedish solution to the banking crisis:
Many financial experts estimate that the nation’s banks are holding as much as $2 trillion in troubled assets, most of it tied to mortgages. By contrast, the Treasury has less than $300 billion left in the financial rescue plan that Congress reluctantly approved last year.
To avoid asking Congress for more money, Mr. Geithner has been trying to stretch government money by working with private investors, the Federal Reserve and government-controlled companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants. But that has introduced other tough policy issues, many of which remain unresolved.
“Their huge problem is that the American public is not willing to accept large losses for large financial institutions,” said Vincent Reinhart, a former Fed official and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research and lobbying organization. “Everything they are doing is about having the smallest possible footprint on the federal budget. They don’t want to engage the Congress and they don’t want to engage the American people in that discussion.”
Nationalizing banks would mean nationalizing the banks’ losses. That would cost a ton of money. Money that congress would need to authorize. If I were a member of congress, I would gladly vote to appropriate the funds. But would the actual members of congress? You can see where doubts might creep in. Indeed, where I giving the president advice on legislative matters I would say, at a minimum, that if it’s at all possible it would be better to just keep delaying on the bank issue until the 2009 appropriations bill and the 2010 budget have both passed, lest the price tag of the banking fix drag the rest of the administration’s agenda down with it.
