My original post on this topic was going to be based on the somewhat silly premise, that Rush Limbaugh claims, that he isn't the 'head' of the Republican party. The whole thing started with RNC Chairman Michael Steele speaking with D.L. Hughley Saturday night. (Is it just me, or is D.L. turning out to get a lot of Republican's to say things they don't really want to say on his CNN show?)
As Jonathan Martin reported at Politico, Steele said the following on Hughley's show:
“Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer,” Steele said. “Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes it’s incendiary, yes it’s ugly.”
Well, of course, Steele's office tried to do some damage control because, for whatever reason it is that the GOP has decided, you can't just attack the house pit bull. I don't think they did a whole lot better:
“Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats know they lose an argument with the Republican Party on substance so they are building straw men to attack and distract,” said RNC spokesman Alex Conant.
“The feud between radio host Rush Limbaugh and Rahm Emanuel makes great political theater, but it is a sideshow to the important work going on in Washington. RNC Chairman Michael Steele and elected Republicans are focused on fighting for reform and winning elections. The Democrats’ problem is that the American people are growing skeptical of the massive government spending being pushed by Congressional leaders like Nancy Pelosi.”
All of which leads us to Rush, himself. His response going into today?
“I’ll handle it on the radio,” he wrote in an e-mail.
See, now here's my problem with George Will come full bloom, all his own fault mind you. Because I question his use of the data and facts in this column and this column, as I explained here and here, I now cannot take him at face value when he presents other "facts" in his new column in Newsweek.
If I really want to bother rebutting an otherwise fairly standard 'Can't you people see Obama is a socialist' column, I should take this part:
FDR's Washington was awash in confidence about government's ability to skillfully engineer a proper allocation of production within each industry. Supposedly the government's knack for economic planning would soon have the nation regulated back to prosperity. This would happen by, among other things, replacing competition with cartelization, the sweater cartel being, presumably, a paradigm.
And I should, regardless of arguing whether that was exactly FDR's intention, argue about it's contextual use here and now. After all, it's use implies that he thinks that this is where President Obama is going. Does George honestly think Barack Obama, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers want to do that? Or even anything remotely close to that? Heck even those of us more toward the middle think a government takeover of the insolvent big banks would be good, but only to restructure them and reprivatize them. It's those three that are holding that back! Heck, how about what your old buddy former Treasury Secretary and Secretary of State James Baker said in the FT today:
This is not a call for nationalisation but rather for a temporary injection of public funds to clean up problem banks and return them to private ownership as soon as possible. As president Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Treasury, I abhor the idea of government ownership - either partial or full - even if only temporary. Unfortunately, we may have no choice.
That goes a lot further than what Geithner and Summers seem comfortable with. Do you think Baker is a closet socialist George? He says he's not but you never know nowadays.
I digress. The problem is that the above should be the post I write. Since, however, I no longer trust George Will to give me facts and data unsupported, and since I have never heard this "Sweater fable" story before (and I know a lot of Presidential history off the top of my head), I cannot get past the idea that maybe he might have made the story up just to support the rest of his column in Newsweek.
That is what is truly sad about this whole situation. George Will was not Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter. He could be counted upon for relying on actual, undistorted facts to support his conclusions. I don't usually agree with the conclusions but I didn't dispute the facts. Now, I've got a problem with the conclusions and have to do extra legwork to make sure he is even using appropriate facts. We are approaching irrelevancy here. I don't need that kind of crap just to argue with a guy I disagree with anyway. That's why I rarely discuss Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter et al. in this blog to begin with.
I am, nevertheless, still relatively sure that the story must be true. He can't possibly pull that in a column in Newsweek (can he?). I'm sure I'll be seeing Doris Kearns Goodwin all over the place if it's not true. The point is that I am still angry that one of the last conservatives I had respect for seems to be going down the same low road as the rest of the herd. I hope he doubles back. I'd sure like to argue about just his conclusions and not his facts as well.
One last thing, not for nothing, but I waited eight years for George Will to fire a broadside or two at the USS G.W. Bush. It starts coming a month and a half after he leaves office? Gimme a break.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
I am quite sure that Rush Limbaugh will, with the help of his ample staff, jump on every single miscue President Barack Hussein Obama makes, real and imagined. It will require his staff because, unlike President Obama's immediate predecessor, he will make far fewer gaffes. Those he does make will probably often require someone more intelligent than an average fifth grader to pick up on as well. Another difference.
But, enough Bush bashing. The was NO good way to phrase this sentence other than how he did.
"Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath."
The loyal opposition: OMG! He doesn't realize that Grover Cleveland served twice! He's not worthy!
Well, "forty-four presidents" might have been better. At least you can make an argument that Grover Cleveland was two presidents as he was both the 22nd and 24th president. Regardless, using a number other than forty-four would have seemed disjointed at best to the bulk of the populace that was listening to that speech. The phrasing might have seemed disjointed if used any other workable way as well. Sorry, "Forty-four Presidents have now taken the presidential oath" just does not flow as well. So, a tiny bit of room for poetic license here please? It was not completely inaccurate! Certainly not as much as saying that Iraq "certainly" possessed WMD's on a national television broadcast before the invasion of Iraq! (I know that was former Vice-President Dark Lord, but the idea is the same!)
What is particularly annoying is how the right is attacking the statement like it is proof of his incompetence! That works now? It didn't work for us for the last eight years! Further, these were not off the cuff remarks, this was a Presidential Inauguration speech. This, regardless of whether or not it was largely written by President Barack Obama, was vetted. I believe President Obama knows that only 42 individuals preceded him. I am completely sure that David Axelrod knows that only 42 individuals preceded his boss. They went with the terminology not from ignorance but because they preferred it to other alternatives.
What the right really hates is this: President Barack Hussein Obama. President Barack Hussein Obama. President Barack Hussein Obama.
They will do anything to discredit him. If they do it indiscriminately, such as with the "Obama Flag" incident in Ohio (it was Ohio's state flag), then it will simply further discredit them.
One last thing, just for Rush Limbaugh: President Barack Hussein Obama!
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
With only one more day of the Bush administration left things are, of course, starting to be portrayed in a different light. No longer the 'loyal opposition', the Democrats must once again learn to lead without becoming parodies of themselves. The Republicans need to find a way to be the 'loyal opposition' after a number of years claiming that it wasn't necessary.
Already, in a post highlighting the potential coming battle between soon to be President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Glenn Thrush inserts this little bit:
and the GOP is already rushing to label the 111th Congress as a tax-and-spend nightmare.
Personally, I say have at it! You portray the Democrats as "tax and spend" then we will have no problem pointing out the 6 years of Republican "cut taxes and spend" that we have recently gone through. Oh!...That's not fair? He wasn't a real conservative? Too bad. You claimed he was for eight years can't change now.
Further, you are not allowed to insist on any government oversight by Congress. You just spent eight years claiming that it was not necessary, unpatriotic and/or purely partisan. While I fully expect the Democrats to insist on Congressional oversight of the executive branch I no longer think the Republican party should be allowed to call for such things since they don't believe it necessary when in power.
Well, anyway, hopefully we are entering a new era in Washington politics. I am not naive enough to have a great deal of realistic hope for that sentiment. I am, I hope, not yet cynical enough to not hold out for the tiniest glimmer of a chance that that may yet occur.
I will not promise to post anywhere near as often as I did pre-election, but, hopefully, if you care, you'll see me around a little more often than in the last two months.
Here's looking forward to the end of eight years that were even more horrendous than I thought they'd be. Good riddance.
Sorry about my unannounced hiatus. Life happens and I am not TPM or AmericaBlog or etc. with multiple contributors. Regardless, I apologize. Life has settled a little and election burnout is withdrawing so I should be posting regularly here on out.
On to the subject: I continue to be completely amazed, befuddled, bemused, amused, confounded and perplexed by the machinations of the Republicans since Nov. 4. It would seem that, despite the fact that they clearly lost the elusive "middle", they are absolutely convinced that they betrayed the core values and weren't conservative enough in their run this year. We'll skip over what they actually mean by "conservative" for the moment (it may not mean what you think it means.)
In my world, which, oddly enough, happens to be reality based, when you lose the middle, it is probably because some of your positions were too extreme. In other words, for those who need to have their hands held: You lost the middle because you were too conservative.
Fortunately, these people are members of the "you create your own reality" community that Republicanism, courtesy of the administration of George "The Iraq War will pay for itself after we are greeted as liberators!" Bush, has become. According to them, people who would otherwise have voted for a more conservative candidate instead chose to vote for a candidate that was repeatedly labeled as "socialist" by their own parties candidates. Yeah, right.
There are quite a few scary numbers in the exit polls to be alarmed about if you are a reality based conservative. The "Southern strategy" is slowly eroding as more and more blacks vote in the south and prejudices and barriers continue to be broken in the south. Barack Obama actually outperformed John Kerry amongst whites in the south! Bush beat Kerry 70-29 whilst McCain beat Obama 68-30. It doesn't seem like much, until you think about the fact that we are talking about a black candidate. Nobody would have dared predict that before the election. Granted, southern whites don't like Massachusetts liberals but, even so, that is really impressive.
How about those people that Barack Obama actually said he would raise taxes on the $200,000 plus (it is really $250,000 but the polls only have $200,000 and up) crowd? They broke for Bush in 2004 63-35. In 2008 they were 52-46....for OBAMA. I think you guys made it fairly clear that Barack Obama would raise these peoples taxes. Hell, you even tried say he would raise just about everybody's taxes, but these people knew their taxes were slated to go up and still voted for the guy who promised to do it. It would behoove you to find out why. I'm just guessing here, but I don't think it is because your message wasn't conservative enough.
Frank Rich has a great column detailing the circular firing squad that the Republicans seem to have set up and it has some good insights into their fundamental problems. An example:
Yet the G.O.P. really does believe that it’s all about perception. That’s why its 2000 convention offered a stage full of break dancers and gospel singers, wildly outnumbering the black delegates in the audience. Bush and Karl Rove regarded diversity as a public-relations issue to be finessed with marketing. Round up some black extras! Sell “compassionate conservatism” by posing Bush incessantly with black schoolchildren! Problem solved!...
...In defeat, the party’s thinking remains unchanged. Its leaders once again believe they can bamboozle the public into thinking they’re the “party of Lincoln” by pushing forward a few minority front men or women. The reason why they are promoting Palin and the recently elected Indian-American governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, as the party’s “future” is not just that they are hard-line social conservatives; they are also the only prominent Republican officeholders under 50 who are not white men. The G.O.P. will have to dip down to a former one-term lieutenant governor of Maryland, Michael Steele, to put a black public face on its national committee.
By the way, one more thing -- this has never been a center-right country. Of course, there are pendulum swings in the political spectrum and the country is more conservative at times and more progressive at other times. But overall, we built the United Nations, we started the idea of human rights, we expanded voting rights and civil rights for everybody, we spread the idea of individual rights throughout the world, and we even rebuilt our enemies after World War II. It is no exaggeration to say that America is one of the most progressive countries in the history of the world.
Center-right: Another creation of the non-reality based community.
There are obviously a number of issues the Republican party needs to address. I would agree that it probably should return to it's fiscal conservative roots from which it has strayed badly the last eight, and arguably the last thirty, years. But there are other "conservative" ideals that these people want to push that don't have a real place in what I, at least, consider "conservatism".
The conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan had much more in common with Libertarianism than it does today. Indeed, many of the policies of today's "conservatives" run completely counter to that ideology. Goldwater would be irate about stem-cell research policy, abortion and large swaths of the Patriot Act just to name a few things. We won't even get into the implications of Guantanamo Bay and "enemy combatant" designations!
It will take some time for things to shake out but if the result is a Republican party where Governor Sarah Palin, at least with her current views, and Joe the Plumber still have a place, then you will, perhaps, eventually see another major party emerge to take up the mantle of conservatism that has been left to itself. I don't think it will, and I hope it doesn't happen that way (not least because, despite my general liberalism, the Dems in power, unchecked, for that length of time would be bad. Just as any party in power that long, unchecked, would be.)
There are some serious fundamental directions that the Republican party will be deciding on in the near future. Everyone is watching in fascination.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
Barney, the First Dog, seems a little cranky that he has to give up his digs in 75 days. He bit a reporter from Reuters! Look:
The reporter, after treatment and a instructions on a course of antibiotics by the White House physician, is fine as you can see in the video. I hope Barney is just cranky and that there is nothing wrong with him. He is my favorite member of the entire Bush clan.
Newsweek's "How he did it, 2008" project is being published in seven parts, starting here. As usual, it promise to be full of insights, great and small, into how things came to be as they did in the election.
They are providing some teasers that provide some interesting insights into both candidates. I'll bring up two that relate to Senator John McCain:
McCain also was reluctant to use Obama's incendiary pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as a campaign issue. The Republican had set firm boundaries: no Jeremiah Wright; no attacking Michelle Obama; no attacking Obama for not serving in the military. McCain balked at an ad using images of children that suggested that Obama might not protect them from terrorism. Schmidt vetoed ads suggesting that Obama was soft on crime (no Willie Hortons). And before word even got to McCain, Schmidt and Salter scuttled a "celebrity" ad of Obama dancing with talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres (the sight of a black man dancing with a lesbian was deemed too provocative).
Wow! You mean that Steve Schmidt was actually restraining himself? I am not sure whether that makes him better in my eyes or worse.
McCain was dumbfounded when Congressman John Lewis, a civil-rights hero, issued a press release comparing the GOP nominee with former Alabama governor George Wallace, a segregationist infamous for stirring racial fears. McCain had devoted a chapter to Lewis in one of his books, "Why Courage Matters," and had so admired Lewis that he had once taken his children to meet him.
This one just shows how completely out of touch with how his campaign was appearing to the average voter McCain was by this point in the campaign. This makes it relatively clear that McCain did not understand what type of feelings and people his campaign's, and his own, statements were stirring up but it still doesn't excuse that it happened. I don't think I, personally, can ever forgive him for pandering to the elements he did. I might have expected it of George Bush but not John McCain.
Good reading, both the teasers and the full article.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
Yup. I'm sure that I have not a few Republicans and Democrats rolling on the floor with that one. I am very aware that Barack Obama needs to win multiple states in which he is not ahead in order for this to occur. John McCain also needs this to happen, on a much more massive scale than my map, in order to win. He thinks he is going to win. I say, if it's good for the goose....
First off, why am I so optimistic? Well, firstly, I think that the youth vote is seriously underestimated in ALL the polls because of the cell phone issue. I think the fact that very few of the 'serious' polls do anything with cell phone users is a fundamental problem. The ones that do tend to be considered 'outliers.' Hmm.
Second: early voting. There has be a lot of it in states where it is permitted. There is no hard evidence, other than what are essentially rudimentary exit polls, but everything on the early voting seems to have broken towards Barack Obama. Hard.
Third. I think John McCain and Sarah Palin thoroughly disgusted voters with their appeals to baser instincts over the last weeks of the campaign. I may wind up debating with Republicans for the rest of my life who swear that this is not what they were doing. Please. His staff knew exactly what is was doing with all of this. Associates with terrorists. Whether it is Bill Ayers or trying to assassinate Rashid Khalidi's character and then tie Obama to him. Socialism. Not pro-America. Yeah, they knew exactly what they were doing. The crowds they drew were exactly what they were looking for. The problem is that a lot of independents, and moderate Dems and Republicans did not like what they saw. In a nutshell, this was, by far, the worst run campaign by a major party candidate in my lifetime. Yes, I was alive for George McGovern.
Put all of that together, you get a popular vote landslide. You want me to commit to a number? 8 points or better. Roughly 53-45 or better, assuming that Nader, Barr and company grab roughly 2 percent this cycle.
But where do I get 406 electoral votes. Let's see:
So it is exactly what it looks like. Obama runs the table and then some. The only possible pickups he whiffs on are West Virginia and Omaha. (I am still not to sure about Omaha. It might be 407-131.) McCain gets shut out on everything he's been hoping to hold on to/regain. No Pennsylvania. No Virginia. No North Carolina or Florida. Georgia? Yup. Remember how I was talking about the early voting? Well a LOT of people did early voting in Georgia. Nearly 2 million people have already voted in Georgia. The entire state only cast 3.3 million votes in 2004. The people actually going to the polls tomorrow on going to have to break heavily for McCain for him to actually carry Georgia. I don't think thats going to happen.
Other "oddballs" here. He loses Arizona: Momentum has been heavy against him here. That will be what kills him here. Ditto Montana and North Dakota as Governor Brian Schweitzer comes through with his state of Montana and helps North Dakota along as well. It case no one noticed, both of those states have seriously tightened in the final weeks.
Missouri. All I have to say is: Kansas City and St. Louis, especially St. Louis. This state has been right there for years. I think it comes to our column this time. I also think that Sen. Kit Bond should be very happy to not be running this year and should probably stop being as high profile in his support of McCain as he has been. Oops! Too late.
Ohio. My home state. Won't be as close as some seem to think, despite Kevin DeWine's best try. Everyone here is voting (and yes, Kevin, they are real voters). Most of the everyones I know are not voting for McCain. Also, another early voting state. Columbus and Cleveland already have huge numbers of votes in. Neither city is going to be pro-McCain. Even they know that.
Finally, my biggest quandary. Indiana. That's right, Georgia, Montana, North Dakota, Arizona and Missouri don't bother me as much as picking Indiana for Obama. Still, this is the home state of Birch and Evan Bayh. I think it will go to Obama but, if I had to pick one state that I may be wrong about, this, believe it or not, is it.
There you have it. My landslide projection. Nobody else seems to have enough cojones to pick this, so I will. Could I be wrong? Even very wrong? Hell yeah! But I think this is how it will play out. I thought very hard about this before I decided this map. I know how "out there" it seems. Everyone seems to like to discount the youth vote. Nobody seems to be factoring in the early voters.
And, lastly I do think as Kathleen Parker has suggested and Governor Mike Easley (D-NC) also seemed to hint at a few weeks ago on Rachel Maddow's show, that a "reverse Bradley effect" may actually occur. People who aren't comfortable telling a pollster that they will vote for a black man, but, when they get in the voting booth, do. Sounds a little weird, I know, but there is some anecdotal evidence that it might occur in this election.
I will not call this the most important election of my lifetime. That happened four years ago. The second most important was eight years ago. As much of a disaster as I thought a Bush presidency might become eight years ago, I must say, it is breathtaking, quite literally, at how much bigger a disaster than I was able to comprehend, it did, in fact, become.
So there. It is the third most important election in my lifetime. Maybe fourth. That is because regardless of the way John McCain has run his campaign, I cannot wrap my mind around how he could possibly not be better that Vice-President Dark Lord and his minion the President.
Tomorrow night, I fully expect to know that Barack Obama has won the election. Hopefully, my map is pretty accurate and Barack goes in with a big mandate. I doubt that he will go in without some sort of mandate, however. Maybe he'll "only" get 330 electoral votes. But he will win. Our long winter will finally be over.
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
