Left: Niccolo Machiavelli

Right: Sun-Tzu

Above:  TN Rep. Jason Mumpower

Republican Jason Mumpower’s had a bad week. Denied - at the last minute - the 1st GOP house speakership in 40 years.

It was not supposed to go this way, especially because Mumpower had read up on two of the best political/strategic books in history:

“Fellow members described him as meticulous and a highly organized strategist. In addition to [Machiavelli's] The Prince, he also has a copy of [Sun-Tzu's] The Art of War in his office within easy reach.”

But he apparently wasn’t able to ingest the right lessons.

John A. Tures of the Southern Political Report explains (h/t Kleinheider):

“For all of Mumpower’s bragging about bringing “a new order” that Machiavelli wrote about, he might have done well to read the rest of the quote.

“And one should bear in mind that there is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer than to introduce a new order to things; for he who introduces it has all those who profit from the old order as his enemies; and he has only lukewarm allies in all those who might profit from the new. This lukewarmness partly stems from fear of their adversaries, who have the law on their side, and partly from the skepticism of men, who do not truly believe in new things unless they have personal experience in them.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

A quick thought about Machiavelli, whose biography & most known work I read in the past year.

Many people throw the term “Machiavellian” around as a perjorative. It’s often used to describe how to behave amorally to accomplish one’s goals. But a closer reading reveals that its main point is to show how practicing good government is in a politician’s (or manager’s, or average Joe’s) best interest to treat all with respect.

Before Niccolo, the “how to be the best King” works described an ideal that never existed in reality, & the goal was merely to strive to that ideal. “The Prince” looked at the real world, & used empirical evidence to define the best way to move forward. It is on the surface “morally neutral,” but points out the moral advantages of effective, real-world governance.

The trouble, though, as demonstrated above, is that Mumpower apparently kept his nose too far in the book when he should have spent more time looking around to see which way the wind blows.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

In his blog, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote about his experience speaking with students at Covenant College last month (which I wrote about here):

“I liked them all—students, faculty, and the college president, Niel Nielson—very much. They were polite, serious, gracious, and un-self-righteous.

…

I got the impression that many of them are embarrassed by the likes of Dobson, Robertson, and Sarah Palin, and have no wish to be lumped in with them.

…

These students live in a bubble, and they know it. But then, people like me live in a bubble, too, and, on the whole, we don’t know it. From my angle, of course, our bubble looks bigger and better. Theirs: a constricted, six-thousand-year-old world ruled by an incorrigibly small-minded God, the secrets of which are to be found in a black-bound anthology of unreliably translated old tribal stories, poems, directives, and tracts. Ours: an unimaginably immense, unimaginably ancient universe ruled by no one, the wonders and beauties of which are continually being revealed to us through our senses and our minds. The more frank and friendly conversation there is between the two bubbles, the better.”

Emphasis mine.

On the whole, I’d say the bubble-viewer in the previous post has a far more clearer view of the outside world.

Both men, though, I think have hit upon something we all need to recognize in order to move our great country forward.

But what do you think?

FURTHER READING: Read Covenant College’s coverage of Hertzberg’s appearance.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Yes, Virginia, there are Republicans who recognize both their current state of affairs & a way out of them.

There’s so much to like from this essay, ‘The Way Back,’ from former Virginia Congressman Tom Davis (R), like:

“We talked to ourselves and not to voters. We became more concerned with stem cell policy than economic policy, and with prayer in schools rather than balance in our public budgets and priorities. Not so long ago, it was easy to paint the Democrats as the party of extremists. Now, they say we’re extremists, and voters agree.“

&

“We’ve long-since given up on the African-American vote. We’re forfeiting the Hispanic vote with unwarranted and unsavory vitriol against immigrants. Youth vote? Gone. We ask for nothing from these idealistic voters, we offer little except chastisement of their lifestyle choices and denial of global warming, and we are woefully behind the Democrats in learning how to connect with them.”

&

“[We need to] remind ourselves the first principle of conservatism is not tax cuts or free trade or even smaller government.  It is prudence, and prudence should be our guide.

Prudence dictates we take seriously the concerns of those who elect us and tailor our policy proposals to counter the government-mandate-heavy ideas bound to emerge from the other side.”

& especially:

“What we can’t do is go back. I’ve heard much talk of going back to our conservative roots, to the issues that helped us win in 1980 and 1994. That issue matrix has changed so much as to be nearly unrecognizable now. The voters who dealt us our electoral disasters in 2006 and 2008 did so because they thought we were all too true to our roots. That we were exclusive, favored rich over poor, and didn’t care sufficiently for the plight of the little person.

Also, I suspect this call to return to our “roots” really is a call to do nothing. And doing nothing, I hope Republicans will agree, is not an option.

…

We also need to stop talking about how much we hate government if we expect people to elect us to run it. Perfecting it, reducing it to its ideal size, having it accomplish what we need with minimal resources requires that we embrace it and study it and work hard at it.”

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

‘Cart’ = ideology & ‘horse’ = real-life experiences, as magnificently explained by Jim Manzi, who, in my view, has spotted a way to solve the problem of the Republican brand:

“It’s conventional wisdom to say something to the effect of “we need to apply the timeless principles of conservatism to the challenges of today” or whatever. The instinct behind this – adapting to changing circumstances without sacrificing basic beliefs – is surely sound. But as operational advice, it seems quite misguided.

I think that we sometimes reason from political principles to specific policies, but much more typically we either react viscerally to proposals or conduct analysis of a given problem and reach a conclusion. Either the visceral reaction or assumptions made in the analysis are the locus where conservative or liberal beliefs manifest themselves. These beliefs are probably created through some combination of genetic hardwiring and individual experiences. One type of experience can be reading and rational conversation, and so political philosophy and persuasion are not empty exercises; but they are probably a lot less important that genetics plus all of the experiences of childhood, work, family and so on. In effect, our political philosophy is more revealed by our choices than something which dictates them. (If anything, this ought to be truer for conservatives than anybody else.)

So, I’d worry a lot less about trying to distill the “essence of conservatism” or whatever than just trying to identify the problems of the day, and figuring out practical solutions to them. Obviously, I’ve packed a lot into the assumptions of what we define as a problem, how we decide what makes a good solution, and so on. This isn’t an argument that we don’t need political philosophy, but rather an argument about the primary methodology for developing, or perhaps more properly, specifying, one in our current situation. It strikes me that the most effective way for conservatives to apply a conservative worldview and develop the next manifestation of conservative ideology right now is, ironically, not to be self-consciously ideological, but rather to attempt to be pragmatic., i.e., empirical and practical.”

FURTHER READING: Andrew Sullivan adds to the discussion.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Just like (yet, by definition, not at all like) in Iraq, the key is counterinsurgency.

An absolutely essential read over at Foreign Policy shows how General David Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy can lead to victory, including these so-called “paradoxes:”

Paradox 1: Some of the best weapons do not shoot.

Paradox 2: Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.

Paradox 3: The hosts doing something tolerably is often better than foreigners doing it well.

Paradox 4: Sometimes the more force is used, the less effective it is.

Paradox 5: Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.

If you care about victory over terrorism, you need to read this.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Peter Berkowitz of the Wall Street Journal wants to remind both social & economic conservatives of the power of the Constitution…

“…a constitutional conservatism provides a framework for developing a distinctive agenda for today’s challenges to which social conservatives and libertarian conservatives can both, in good conscience, subscribe.

…

If they honor the imperatives of a constitutional conservatism, both social conservatives and libertarian conservatives will have to bite their fair share of bullets as they translate these goals into concrete policy. They will, though, have a big advantage: Moderation is not only a conservative virtue, but the governing virtue of a constitutional conservatism.”

…while Paul Krugman recommends throwing out the GOP’s divisive strategy for success for the past 40 years:

“Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.”

The GOP needs to figure out - quick, as in, yesterday - how to grow its party, not shrink it. I suggest it follow Lamar’s lead. It shouldn’t be that difficult.

& it also needs to recognize that the smart strategy lies in crafting a smart government, not just attempting to wipe it out at every turn.

Not to mention remembering that the U.S. Constitution is the party’s (& all of our) friend, even & especially during wartime.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Check out Marc Ambinder’s analysis on which GOP fights in the 1st year of the Obama administration are worth picking, including:

The stimulus package. First, make that packages, plural. There’ll be several of them spread throughout the year, though there is no consensus right now about how to divide up the proposals. A trillion dollars worth of government spending over the course of a few years is a ripe target for conservatives. Think back to the (Bill-Clinton/Joe Biden!) crime bill of 1994, when Republicans rallied their base against the legislation by ridiculing a tiny part of it — proposals to expand midnight basketball leagues as a way of keeping kids off the streets and out of gangs. Watch for Republicans to settle on a handful of objectionable items and create the impression that the entire enterprise is suspect. Doing so will give Republicans cover to vote against more wildly popular projects.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Eugene Robinson:

“The thing to do is give the automakers the money to buy some time. This is obvious to the current administration, the incoming administration, a majority in the House of Representatives and the Democrats in the Senate — but not to the Senate Republicans. They killed the bailout measure by demanding that the United Auto Workers agree to sharp, almost immediate cuts in wages and benefits.

Funny, I don’t recall a cry from Senate Republicans for salary caps on the stockbrokers whose jobs were saved in the Wall Street bailout. Nor, to my knowledge, have they demanded that white-collar workers in the auto companies take pay cuts. I do recall lectures from some Republicans in the Senate about how inadvisable it is for government to meddle in the workings of the free market. In my book, renegotiating labor contracts qualifies as meddling.

Some of the most vocal critics of a Detroit bailout — Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), for example — happen to have foreign-owned auto plants in their home states. This has led to accusations that they are deliberately trying to sabotage the Big Three to help foreign automakers, but I think it’s more likely that they’re just being doctrinaire and ultimately self-defeating.”

Emphasis mine.

I suppose that viewpoint is expected from the left-leaning Robinson, but I was surprised that someone on the right shares his view, someone who has a Midas-like knack for being wrong on just about everything:

“I don’t think it’s very smart for a bunch of Southern Republicans to decide that the future of the Republican party is to beat up working class union members in states like Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. The UAW is in a lot of trouble, they’ve shrunk by 2/3’s in the last years…

An average automobile, 10% of the cost comes from wages and they were going to cut wages by ten or twenty percent, so it’s one or two percent of the cost of the automobile. To have a huge fight for that. I think it was a mistake for the Republicans.” - Bill Kristol, on this past Fox News Sunday.

EQUAL TIME: Western Tennessee-based ‘Right at Home’ has nothing but praise for Senator Corker & others who blocked the bailout.

&:

Andrew Sullivan:

“The point of capitalism is that actions have consequences. Once that market discipline is removed for a few of the worst, ill-managed, union-crippled companies in America, the stage is set for endless mediocrity, government-run industry (i.e. even more endless mediocrity), and a free-for-all at the government trough. A clear majority of Americans agree, in the new WaPo poll. If this intensifies the recession, so be it. Recessions are sometimes necessary for long-term economic health. And the bigger and sharper it is now the more time Obama has to recover from it. Let them die.”

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

A concise & fantastic piece from Richard Posner dissects not only the recent splintering of the Republican party, but also what led liberals astray during the Reagan era; he offers excellent advice for breaking the chains of dogma:

First, Republicans:

“The financial crisis has hit economic libertarians in the solar plexus, because the crisis is largely a consequence of innate weaknesses in free markets and of excessive deregulation of banking and finance, rather than of government interference in the market. Believers in a strong foreign policy have been hurt by the protracted and seemingly purposeless war in Iraq (the main effects of which seem to have been discord between the United States and its allies, increased recruitment of Islamic terrorists, and the strengthening of Iran and of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of al Qaeda in Pakistan) and the Bush Administration’s lack of success in dealing with Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. And social conservatives have been hurt by the stridency of some of their most prominent advocates, who all too often give the appearance of being mean-spirited, out-of-touch, know-nothing deniers of science (e.g., evolution, climate change).

The efficiency gap between the competing presidential campaigns created the appearance of a competence gap between the parties. As the campaigns progressed, a surprising number of conservatives switched their support to Obama. Thoughtful conservatives, already disturbed by the accumulation of blunders of the current Administration (the Iraq WMD, Katrina, the Justice Department scandals), culminating in its uncertain response to the financial crisis, were appalled at the iconic status that Joe the Plumber attained in the Republican campaign, the wild rumors spread by the conservative bloggers and talk-radio hosts, and the intellectual vacuity of many Republican candidates and advocates. The Republican Party seemed to have descended to anti-intellectualism–to deriding highly educated people who speak in complete sentences as “elitists,” as compared to the down-to-the-earth ignorance of Joe and his ilk–which sorts badly with the strong intellectual tradition of conservatism. It is a self-defeating strategy of conservatives to argue that “all” intellectuals are liberal and therefore conservatives should think with their guts rather than their brains.”

His solution, which includes pointing out the failures of Democrats (my emphasis added):

For myself, I would be happy to see conservatism exit from the political scene–provided it takes liberalism with it. I would like to see us enter a post-ideological era in which policies are based on pragmatic considerations rather than on conformity to a set of preconceptions rooted in a rapidly vanishing past. We have accumulated a substantial history of liberal and conservative failures. The liberal failures include underestimating the cost of egalitarianism and of social engineering by judges (the Warren Court, Roe v. Wade, the near abolition of capital punishment), and the benefits of discipline, of punishment, of enforcing principles of personal responsibility, and of military force. The conservative failures include overestimating the efficiency of unregulated markets, the efficacy of military force, and the beneficent effects of religiosity. Liberals are wrong to promote unions (described by one wag, albeit with some exaggeration, as the parasites that kill their hosts) and conservatives to promote abstinence as a substitute for condoms in preventing teenage pregnancy.”

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

This is part of why I was so perplexed when Sarah Palin mocked ‘community organizing’ in her convention speech last September; does she not realize how it’s leading us down the path to victory around the world?

David Brooks elaborates:

“The 2008 election results did not fundamentally change American foreign policy. The real change began a few years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It began with colonels and captains fighting terror on the ground. They found that they could clear a town of the bad guys, but they had little capacity to establish rule of law or quality of life for the people they were trying to help. They quickly realized that the big challenge in this new era is not killing the enemy, it’s repairing the zones of chaos where enemies grow and breed. They realized, too, that Washington wasn’t providing them with the tools they needed to accomplish their missions.

Their observations and arguments filtered through military channels and back home, producing serious rethinking at the highest levels.

In this new world, she continued, it is impossible to draw neat lines between security, democratization and development efforts. She called for a transformational diplomacy, in which State Department employees would do less negotiating and communiqué-writing. Instead, they’d be out in towns and villages doing broad campaign planning with military colleagues, strengthening local governments and implementing development projects.

Over the past year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has delivered a series of remarkable speeches echoing and advancing Rice’s themes. “In recent years, the lines separating war, peace, diplomacy and development have become more blurred and no longer fit the neat organizational charts of the 20th century,” he said in Washington in July.

Gates does not talk about spreading democracy, at least in the short run. He talks about using integrated federal agencies to help locals improve the quality and responsiveness of governments in trouble spots around the world.

He has developed a way of talking about security and foreign policy that is now the lingua franca in government and think-tank circles. It owes a lot to the lessons of counterinsurgency and uses phrases like “full spectrum operations” to describe multidisciplinary security and development campaigns.”

As I’ve said many times before, the man above, General David Petraeus, deserves a large amount of credit for pushing this change in our strategy. To whatever extent we are succeeding in Iraq, it’s in large part due to him. & the efforts of those low-level ‘colonels & captains’ who see how the advantages of community organizing can lead to a safer America & world.

If you haven’t already, you should print & read Petraeus’ counterinsurgency manual (major-big PDF file)

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Could Neal Gabler have just hit the nail on the head when it comes to the reason the GOP had such a crushing defeat this year? I do believe so. He charts a different course in the rise of conservative success not with Barry Goldwater, but with Joe McCarthy:

“Reagan’s sunny disposition and his willingness to compromise masked the McCarthyite elements of his appeal, but Reaganism as an electoral device was unique to Reagan and essentially died with the end of his presidency. McCarthyism, on the other hand, which could be deployed by anyone, thrived. McCarthyism was how Republicans won. George H.W. Bush used it to get himself elected, terrifying voters with Willie Horton. And his son, under the tutelage of strategist Karl Rove, not only got himself reelected by convincing voters that John Kerry was a coward and a liar and would hand the nation over to terrorists, which was pure McCarthyism, he governed by rousing McCarthyite resentments among his base.

Republicans continue to push the idea that this is a center-right country and that Americans have swooned for GOP anti-government posturing all these years, but the real electoral bait has been anger, recrimination and scapegoating. That’s why John McCain kept describing Barack Obama as some sort of alien and why Palin, taking a page right out of the McCarthy playbook, kept pushing Obama’s relationship with onetime radical William Ayers.

And that is also why the Republican Party, despite the recent failure of McCarthyism, is likely to keep moving rightward, appeasing its more extreme elements and stoking their grievances for some time to come. There may be assorted intellectuals and ideologues in the party, maybe even a few centrists, but there is no longer an intellectual or even ideological wing. The party belongs to McCarthy and his heirs — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Palin. It’s in the genes.”

This reveals a truth, I think, about where to move forward. Let me hazard a guess that until the GOP figures out how to destroy this need to scapegoat anyone - be it gays, Muslims, liberals, abortion rights advocates, Hispanics, etc, etc, etc., it will remain a party entrenched in the minority for the forseeable future. It’s very easy to place the blame for what ails the country on a certain individual or group. It’s harder, but far more rewarding, to find common ground in those same groups.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The latest installment of our listening in to the discussions among conservatives about the future of the conservative movement, after the jump.

There’s been a lot of reaction to this column by Kathleen Parker, a conservative who believes the party’s adherence to an anti-abortion platform is what helped ‘do them in’ this year.

Eunomia’s Daniel Larison:

“The argument that opposition to abortion in particular is somehow a drag on the GOP is one that doesn’t seem persuasive even at first glance, and it becomes less so the more one engages it. In state after state, somewhere between a quarter and a third of Democrats right now say that they are pro-life, but for a variety of reasons they remain in the Democratic Party because they find its positions on economic policy, social services and the like to be preferable. The ever-elusive 60-70% of the Hispanic vote that keeps going to Democrats, despite the alleged “natural” Republicanism of this community (a “natural” Republicanism defined by claims of socially conservative attitudes), remains elusive because of other policies endorsed by the GOP. That doesn’t mean that these voters would move into the GOP column even if Republicans altered their views (i.e., moved to the left) on a number of other issues, but it almost certainly does mean that it is not pro-life planks in the party platform that are driving them away. As I mentioned earlier this month, the rising generation is neither more nor less pro-life than its elders, so you cannot blame the loss of young voters on this, either.

The GOP is losing younger voters, but it is not particularly because of its abortion stance. Part of the shift is structural: non-Christians, non-whites and singles are much less likely to be Republican voters, and there are a lot more non-Christians, non-whites and singles among Millennials than in the past. What is notable about this for our purposes here is that despite significant demographic and cultural changes–Millennials are less religious and more ethnically diverse–young voters’ attitudes on abortion are essentially no different from older generations that tend to be more religious and more white. Another is simply backlash against the Bush administration–most Millennials became politically conscious at the beginning of or during the Bush Era, and like all other groups in the country they have soured on the GOP as a result. An important part of this is what happened in Iraq between 2004 and today. Kerry still won 18-29 year olds in 2004, but not by the large margins that Obama did this year. It is partly the case that Bush made most of the 9/11 generation into Democratic voters primarily through his national security and foreign policy decisions, which his other prominent policies did little or nothing to counteract, but these just exacerbated the party’s problem with younger voters that has its roots in demographic and cultural changes.”

CrunchyCon’s Rod Dreher (after a major dip into the sarcasm pool):

“No, I don’t think the social and religious conservatives are blameless. We were part of this coalition, and we didn’t stand up to the party and its leaders when they were doing things they ought not to have been doing. We own our share of this disaster. But it’s objectively absurd to blame us for the GOP’s implosion, and we’d be fools to let that happen.”

George Weigel of the Ethics & Public Policy Center blames Catholics whom he says voted against their faith:

“This year, the pro-abortion candidate carried every state in what Maggie Gallagher calls the “Decadent Catholic Corridor” — the Northeast and the older parts of the Midwest. Too many Catholics there are still voting the way their grandparents did, and because that’s what their grandparents did. This tribal voting has been described by some bishops as immoral; it is certainly stupid, and it must be challenged by adult education. That includes effective use of the pulpit to unsettle settled patterns of mindlessness. This year, a gratifying number of bishops began to accept the responsibilities of their teaching office; so, now, must parish pastors.”

To which Ross Douthat (insightfully, I think) responds:

“In 1980, ‘84 and ‘88, Republican (and pro-life) Presidential candidates managed to capture nearly all of the Midwest and the Northeast, “settled patterns of mindlessness” notwithstanding. Now here we are twenty years later, with FDR and JFK even further in the rearview mirror - and yet Weigel wants to chalk up the Republican Party’s horrible showing in these regions to mindless “tribal voting” among Catholic Democrats? This is self-deception, and it ill-behooves pro-lifers to engage in it. John McCain did not lose this election because the Catholic clergy failed to anathematize Barack Obama loudly enough, or because Pennsylvanians and Michiganders thought they were voting for Roosevelt or Truman. He lost it because his party flat-out misgoverned the country, in foreign and domestic policy alike, and because of late the culture war has mattered less to most Americans than the Iraq War and the economic meltdown. And pro-lifers who see the GOP as the only plausible vehicle for their goals have an obligation to look the party’s failures squarely in the face and work to fix them, instead of just doubling down on the case for single-issue pro-life voting.

No, social conservatives aren’t the problem for the GOP. But they haven’t been the solution, either: Too often, on matters ranging from the Iraq War to domestic policy, they’ve served as enablers of Republican folly, rather than as constructive critics. And calling Catholics who voted for Obama “mindless” and “stupid” is a poor substitute for building the sort of Republican Party that can attract the votes of those millions of Americans, Catholic and otherwise, who voted for the Democrats because they thought, not without reason, that George W. Bush was a disastrous president whose party should not be rewarded with a third term in the White House.”

I think Douthat is exactly right on this last point.

The problem wasn’t Palin, or her stance (symbolic & otherwise) on abortion - it was the fact that for too many people, that stance was “enough” for them, without looking critically at her other skills or abilities. For so many voters, Sarah Palin didn’t do a good enough job demonstrating why she wasn’t a female manifestation/reincarnation of George W. Bush.

It’s not enough to have a candidate “check all of your favorite boxes.” Palin will never, repeat never, succeed until she is able to convince the public she’s competent, capable, &, above all, curious about how to lead this diverse country.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Ross Douthat gets it exactly right:

“This problem is not, repeat not, a matter of conservatives needing to abandon their core convictions in order to win elections, as right-of-center reformers are often accused of doing. Rather, it’s a matter of conservatives needing to apply their core convictions to questions like “how do we mitigate the worst effects of climate change?” and “how do we modernize our infrastructure?” and “how do we encourage excellence and competition within our public school bureaucracy?” instead of just letting liberals completely monopolize these debates, while the Right talks about porkbusting and not much else.”

It’s putting your philosophy into practice on a ‘micro,’ day-to-day, issue-to-issue level, rather (as has been painfully the case for too many years) saying one thing & doing another.

Too often Republicans have defended Republicans simply because they’re Republicans (which of course plagued the Democratic party for decades): “Go against my core principles? Who cares? As long as my party’s in power.”

This ‘cocoon-like’ way of thinking leads to ruin, a fact I’m sure many in the GOP now see all too clearly.

Praise or criticize the idea itself.

Don’t praise or criticize based on who has the idea.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

From Newsweek:

1. Avoid mindless opposition. We should support President Obama when he is right (Afghanistan), persuade him when his mind appears open (trade) and oppose him when he is wrong (taxes). It is the Republican Party’s job to hold him accountable on the merits only.

4.Republicans must regain ground among critical voting groups. Voters ages 18–29 voted Democratic by a 2-to-1 margin. A market-oriented “green” agenda that’s true to our principles would help win them back. Hispanics dropped from 44 percent Republican in 2004 to 31 percent in 2008. The GOP won’t be a majority party if it cedes the young or Hispanics to Democrats. Republicans must find a way to support secure borders, a guest-worker program and comprehensive immigration reform that strengthens citizenship, grows our economy and keeps America a welcoming nation. An anti-Hispanic attitude is suicidal. As the party of Lincoln, Republicans have a moral obligation to make our case to Hispanics, blacks and Asian-Americans who share our values. Whether we see gains in 2010 depends on it.

& probably what I think is the most important:

10. The GOP must master new media. Today, more than 70 percent of Americans say they find news online; 37 percent are online daily looking for it. Democrats have successfully developed tools to exploit online advocacy, and Republicans must spend more time and energy doing the same. The Web edge we had through 2004 is gone.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

[above: Snakeranch, Missouri, January, 1978. photograph by my father.]

Intriguing idea from Jesse Walker:

“Expel your base or retreat into an echo chamber: If those choices seem dispiriting, Republicans can take heart. They’re the same false alternatives that the Democrats allegedly faced four years ago. Then a politician who hadn’t fallen behind the bipartisan Iraq war — but, unlike Howard Dean, actually wanted to be president — came out of nowhere to beat his party’s establishment and take the White House.

There’s a lesson there. If I were a Republican, I’d ignore the inane Palin debate and start looking around for a politician who had the good sense to break with the bipartisan consensus and oppose the bailout bill before it passed. Then I’d start planning an insurgency.”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Republicans: if you are interested in finding your way out of the wilderness, a good place to start is GOPAC (the GOP’s political action committee) chair Michael Steele, writing today in the Wall Street Journal:

“Most Americans today see a Republican Party that defines itself by what it is against rather than what it is for. We can tell you why public schools aren’t working, but not articulate a compelling vision for how we’ll better educate children. We’re well equipped to rail against tax increases; but can’t begin to explain how we’ll help the poor. We exclude far better than we welcome.

Things were different as recently as 20 years ago. Back then, Ronald Reagan made it cool to be a Republican — it wasn’t just his specific policies, but the timeless truths he so eloquently gave voice to, and upon which his policies were based. That’s the Republican Party we must re-establish.

We must articulate a positive vision for America’s future that speaks to Americans’ hopes, concerns and needs. It’s time to stop defining ourselves by what we are not, and tell voters what we believe, how we’ll lead, and where we’ll go; how we Republicans will make America better; how we’ll make their families more prosperous, their children better educated, their parents more secure, and all of us healthier, safer and stronger.

Our challenge lies not in beating Democrats, but in uniting around a message that solidifies our ranks and attracts new people to our cause. We have to listen to what Americans are telling us about their hopes, desires and needs, and then translate that message into proposals for meaningful action squarely grounded on the values we Republicans have always stood for.”

Hard to add to that. Don’t kid yourselves, Republicans - this will take a lot of time, & quite a bit of realignment on your part.

The key to success, I believe, -for all Americans, of every party- starts with the words of someone two years ago who just announced he was running for president (my emphasis added):

“I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point.”

Now.

Someone e-mailed me an altered Wizard of Id cartoon that’s making the rounds through the internet, that happens - as it happens - to make the alternate case for the opposing view, in its own way:

Now, what part of the sentiment expressed in this cartoon will bring the GOP out of the wilderness?

How is it inclusive?

How will it bring more people to the Republican party?

Feel free to answer any of those.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The future White House Chief of Staff helped the Democrats gain ground in western North Carolina’s Congressional district, with some relentless pressure applied to former Vols quarterback Heath Shuler.

Article excerpt from Emanuel’s Congressional website:

“Congressman Rahm Emanuel boasts that “patience ain’t a virtue in my book,” and that’s especially clear when the feisty Democrat from Illinois is trying to recruit candidates to run in November’s mid-term elections. Last summer, for instance, when Emanuel tried to convince Heath Shuler, former star quarterback at the University of Tennessee, to run for Congress from his native North Carolina, he had to make a hard sell. Shuler said he was worried he wouldn’t get enough time with his two young children if he was constantly shuttling back and forth from Capitol Hill, so Emanuel had more than a dozen congressional Democrats with kids call Shuler. Then he barraged Shuler himself with more than 40 calls over two weeks, just to prove it was possible to serve in Congress and still see your children. “Heath, Rahm, I’m at the pool with my kids,” he said, and then quickly hung up. Another time, “Heath, I”m driving my kids to school.” Later, “Heath, we’re getting ready for soccer practice.”

He was tireless, perhaps even annoying, and wouldn’t take no for an answer - just the kind of qualities that might be required to rally the Democratic troops gearing up for the best chance the party has to take back Congress since the GOP won both the House and Senate in 1994.”

Here’s Heath Shuler’s Congressional website.

Considering Shuler’s politics probably, on average, lean to the right of a Republican in California, I’d not take the charges that he’s too partisan too seriously. The man’s more interested in strategic victories than ideological ones.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

What can the GOP do to recover?

Here’s what some conservatives are saying:

George Will:

Although John McCain’s loss was not as numerically stunning as the 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater, who won 16 fewer states and 122 fewer electoral votes than McCain seems to have won as of this writing, Tuesday’s trouncing was more dispiriting for conservatives. Goldwater’s loss was constructive; it invigorated his party by reorienting it ideologically. McCain’s loss was sterile, containing no seeds of intellectual rebirth.

John Henke, TheNextRight.com:

Some of you will say “we have learned our lesson“, and then try to pass off cosmetic changes as Reform. You are the problem.

Some of you will say “Republicans need to fight/hold Democrats accountable“, as if it is sufficient to be against Democrats. The pendulum may eventually swing back to you, but you won’t know what to do with it.

Some of you will say “Republicans need to carry our message to the American people“, as if the problem is that Republicans haven’t been saying “tax cuts and limited government” loudly enough. The problem is not the inability to communicate; the problem is that you have no idea how to actually deliver on those ideas.

Others will say “Republicans need to be more principled“, as if the problem is a mere lack of personal courage and principle by Republicans. Even the best people can’t limit government if there is not an effective strategy for implementation - for getting “from here to there”. You don’t need better people. You need a better strategy.

Patrick Ruffini:

People have been focusing on whether the youth vote was up. It was — slightly: going from 17 to 18 percent. But the real story about the youth vote is not how many “new” voters Obama got to show up. It’s how he produced a gargantuan 25% swing among existing young voters, or those who were sure to vote for the first time anyway.

How big?

18 percent times a 25 percent increase in the Democratic margin equals 4.5 points, or a majority of Obama’s popular vote margin. Had the Democratic 18-29 vote stayed the same as 2004’s already impressive percentage, Obama would have won by about 2 points, and would not have won 73 electoral votes from Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, or Indiana.

So, to clarify here: Obama’s youth margin = 73 electoral votes. Without the economic crisis, this would have been the difference.

Above: NewsChannel9’s Derek Dellinger speaks with Zach Wamp.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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***Reminder: You Have Until 5pm Today to Vote Early in North Carolina***

Early voting’s been extended, too; read more about it here.

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Obama in Nevada

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McCain & Ah-nold

Above: Columbus, Ohio, last night.

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Palin in Pennsylvania

Above: a home-video from Latrobe, last night.

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Biden Home-State Stumping

Above: Joe Biden in Delaware, at his alma-mater

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Chutes & Ladders in the Senate

The Tennessee Senate race (between Alexander & Tuke) has nowhere near the excitement as Georgia’s or North Carolina’s on Tuesday night.

But you should pay close attention to the degree of GOP losses in the Senate.

The more losses there are, the more freshman Tennessee Senator Bob Corker has to gain on the Senate hierarchical ladder. He has the potential to climb a few ‘bonus’ rungs if experienced GOPers like Alaska’s Ted Stevens or NC’s Elizabeth Dole or KY’s Mitch McConnell find defeat.

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Unintentionally Transparent?

Senator Saxby Chambliss, (R) Georgia, yesterday:

“There has always been a rush to the polls by African-Americans early,” he said at the square in Covington, a quick stop on a bus tour as the campaign entered its final week. He predicted the crowds of early voters would motivate Republicans to turn out. “It has also got our side energized, they see what is happening,” he said.

Careful with that “our side,” Senator.

Check the latest polls in the GA Senate race here.

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How He’ll Win, by McCain’s Chief Strategist

Read Rick Davis’ memo here, with Marc Ambinder’s observations in italics.

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McCain’s Horrible Month

Charles Blow recaps.

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Any Surprises Left?

Several pollsters weigh in here.

Keep in mind the impact of any “late surprise” is diminished by early voting.

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A McCain Endorsement the Obama People Were Happy to Disseminate

Above: Dick Cheney stumps for McCain in Wyoming.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

JUST 6 MORE DAYS

The Infomercial

I thought it was well-done. It certainly beats Ross Perot’s informercial from 1992.

He kept it positive - didn’t mention the word “Bush” once.

Watch & tell me what you think.

Read McCain’s ‘prebuttal’ to the infomercial here.

A lot of you have voted already. As of Monday, more than 50,000 people have voted in Hamilton County.

Which way are early voters leaning? Marc Ambinder:

Obama leads by 16 points among likely voters, by 17 points among independents, by 13 points among men, by 20 points among women, is tied among whites, and is up eight among white Catholics. Of the 15 percent of the sample who’ve already voted, Obama leads by 19 points (although this subsample has a fairly large MoE). 74% of Obama’s backers say they support him “strongly,” which is 20 points higher than the percentage who say the same about their support for McCain.

Click here for the full Pew results, as of Tuesday.

Here’s a site where you can see the early voting numbers already in from around the country. Very useful.

From that site I glean:

The number of early voters so far in Tennessee is 45% of the total number of votes in 2004. (wow.)

&, 36.4% of the ENTIRE number of votes cast in Georgia in 2004 have been cast already this year. (again, wow.)

The Peach state is turning into one of THE states to watch this year - & I had written that state off months ago, back when Bob Barr’s Georgia support started dropping off.

But now - look at this chart over at Pollster.com. We have ourselves a real nail-biter, folks.

& not just the presidential race. The battle for Saxby Chambliss’ Senate seat remains intense.

The two latest polls come from polling firms that lean either way.

The left-leaning InsiderAdvantage poll has Saxby Chambliss & Jim Martin at 46-44%, That same poll also shows McCain leading by just 1 point).

The right-leaning Strategic Vision poll has Chambliss up by 2, & McCain up by 6.

& it’s possible that Georgia may be the last Senate race called - as in called several weeks after election night. MSNBC’s First Read blog explains:

“If Martin wins, he’ll have Obama to thank because the surge in African-American turnout is clearly benefiting the Democrat. By the way, Georgia could be the state that is the final race called in the country. Why? The state has that quirky runoff law, and a third-party candidate in the race might hold one of the major party candidates under 50%. The last time Georgia hosted a Senate runoff was the last time the country elected a new Democratic president: 1992, when the election of Clinton ended up helping the Republicans pull the Senate upset (Paul Coverdell defeated Wyche Fowler). This time, however, Republicans fear that an Obama victory will only energize African Americans in the runoff and make Chambliss’ path to victory even more difficult.”

Speaking of African-American turnout, it’s huge in Georgia - check it out. Georgia’s Secretary of State reports that 35% of early voters are African-American - more than double the percentage of the state’s population.

& there seems to be a correlation between a state’s African-American voting population & percentage of early voter turnout. FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver has the details here. In short, the higher the percentage of blacks in a state, the higher early voter turnout is. The states with the highest turnout are Georgia, North Carolina & Louisiana.

Can McCain count on voters who make up their minds in this final week? The trends (from Pollster.com) from past Presidential elections, in terms of their numbers, don’t look promising:

Click this link (again, to Pollster.com) to find out which way those last-minute voters swing.

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But still, interestingly, yet probably unsurprisingly, Obama still faces a major disadvantage with voters down here in that long-GOP stronghold, the South, per ABC News:

Obama is outperforming any Democrat back to Jimmy Carter among white voters, getting 45 percent to McCain’s 52 percent. But in the South, it is a very different story. Obama fares worse among Southern whites than any Democrat since George McGovern in 1972.

Whites in the East and West tilt narrowly toward Obama (he’s up 8 and 7 points, respectively), and the two run about evenly among those in the Midwest. By contrast, Southern whites break more than 2 to 1 for McCain, 65 percent to 32 percent.

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SIX DAYS.

Barack Obama

His informercial appears on most of network TV tonight… except for ABC (read why here). Needless to say, I’m ashamed of my parent network about this. It’s airing “Pushing Daisies” instead, & running some frankly offensive promos about it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: wet, wet wet conditions in Chester, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Doesn’t look fun at all.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: Obama making calls to undecided voters in Colorado.

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Has Obama fudged his “no tax increases for those making under $250,000″ promise this week? Marc Ambinder does some fact-checking.

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Michelle Obama appeared on Jay Leno Monday. Click here to watch.

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Why the Right’s ‘Kitchen Sink’ Philosophy is Failing

From the Toot:

“…once you’ve made a narrative choice, you do have to stick with it - you can’t just keep bouncing around, or people become confused. If you are telling the story of a scary vampire, you can’t decide in chapter 2 that he’s also 500 feet tall and radioactive and bent on destroying Tokyo, in chapter 3 that he is actually a giant man-eating shark, and in chapter 4 that he is all this and a super-terrorist trying to plant a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. All of these things are, indeed, scary, but taken together they add up to a muddle.

This is the problem. It’s not just the McCain campaign’s problem - although their inability to pick a narrative and stick to it is a special kind of inexcusable - it’s a problem for the entire wingnut noise machine. Obama is a Marxist Muslim Arab Jesus Black White Terrorist Technocrat Racist Do-Gooder Liberal FDR Stalin Hilter Commie Fascist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider Noob Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Slick Gaffe-Prone Pedophile Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist Etc. & Anti-Etc. with a bunch of scary friends from - wait for it! - the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties. It makes no sense. It’s a jumble sale of fears and scary associations from 50 years of wingnut witch hunts and smear campaigns, a flea market of pre-owned and antique resentments, and if one does detect a semi-consistent 1960’s motif running through it all, that’s because that’s when most of these ideas were coined.”

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John McCain

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: at a joint rally with Sarah Palin in Hershey Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

He also appeared in North Carolina..

…but, interestingly, without incumbent GOP Senator Elizabeth Dole. (this may be why)

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Speaking of absences, someone’s face appears to be conspicuously absent from his own party’s website.

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Is the ‘Divided Government’ Argument Going to Work?

It’s the major card McCain has left to play. But Newsweek’s Andrew Romano is pessimistic. Former Bush staffer Peter Wehner hsays the party needs to return to its reformist roots [which, I'd add, is what John McCain should have pushed harder for - challenging his party to return to its fundamental principles - instead of blatantly pandering to its base, which has spent the past year essentially rooting for the status quo, or at least is blind to why the status quo is in such a sorry state].

Here’s a ‘Silver Lining’ for Republicans, though:

Single-party government rarely works for very long. It tends to overreach when there are no limits to those in power (see Congress/President Bush, 2002-2006). If this plays out, that will bode well for the beginning of a comeback for the now-battered GOP. [though I will say that if you sat on your hands & approved of how things were run under Republican leadership, you have a smaller rhetorical leg to stand on.]

& here’s a reason Democrats might prefer divided government:

['divided' here being less than a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate]

If this crazy year ends the way the trends are looking - that Obama will be elected - Obama’s historical standing would improve if he brought about change with the help & support of the minority party.

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The Keystone State Conundrum

Why is McCain behind Obama in the Pennsylvania polls? Michael Barone hazards a guess:

“My hypothesis is that that is because places like the Philly suburbs are places where the recent decline in household wealth has been most conspicuous. Housing prices mean a lot more to you when your house started off at $400,000 and declined to $290,000 than they did when you started off (as may be typical of Scranton or a blue-collar town in metro Pittsburgh) at $140,000 and declined to $110,000. Newspaper coverage of our current economic distress focuses on the very poor (like a recent Washington Post story on North Carolina, which focused on an ex-convict in a cheap motel in Charlotte), but the people who are getting hurt most visibly in their lifelong project of accumulating wealth are the more affluent. They’re the ones whose house values have most visibly and spectacularly declined, and whose 401(k) accounts and stock portfolios have tanked in the last few months as well. Folks in Scranton or in the cheap motel in Charlotte didn’t expect to live comfortably ever after off their increased house values, 401(k)’s, and Merrill Lynch accounts; a $700 monthly check from Social Security is about what they have long expected and that’s not in danger (yet). Folks in the Philly suburbs did expect to live comfortably off such assets.”

& he concludes

“The irony here is that voters motivated by anger at the decline in their wealth seem about to elect a president who has promised to embark on wealth-destroying policies.”

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What Hath Karl Rove Wrought?

The exodus of a chunk of voters - Libertarians - who traditionally vote Republican, that’s what.

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Joe Biden

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a view-from-the-crowd at a Joe rally in New Port Richey, Florida on Monday. He remained in Florida on Tuesday.

Sarah Palin

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, appearing with McCain.

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Sadly, there appears to be quite a few reports of ‘ugly Americanism‘ at her rallies, & that’s a shame for Palin & her supporters, who in my opinion should quickly & forcefully speak out about those who would tarnish her image, especially if you are hoping she becomes the Republican party’s standard-bearer after the election.

That’s it for now! I know it’s a lot to digest, but please feel free to comment on anything mentioned above. ALL views are welcome here.

& check back later in the day, as I’ll provide more info in this post. Let me know what you think of the ‘one-post’ format. I think I’ll stick to doing it this way through the home stretch.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

[above: Obama the Cabbage Patch candidate]

Above: the “One Week” closing argument speech given in Canton, Ohio yesterday.

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Figuring Out What Those Undecideds Will Do

The Weekly Standard’s Arnon Mishkin dubs it “the Obama Effect” in an attempt to crack the nut that is this year’s undecided voters:

Where there is a perception that there is a “socially acceptable” choice, respondents who do not articulate it, are likely not to agree with it. Are they lying? Or just genuinely torn about taking that route or another? I am not going to psychoanalyze what is going on in their heads, but in the end, the pattern tends to be that those undecided voters vote against that “socially acceptable” choice.

Nate over at FiveThirtyEight.com refutes this theory by Bill Greener at Salon.com, who says Obama cannot win if his numbers are under 50%, & he uses Tennessee’s 2006 Senate race as an example:

“Problem #2: Greener cherry-picks his data in literally every race. He isn’t even subtle about it. Here is a good example:

How about Tennessee, where black Democrat Harold Ford was up against white Republican Bob Corker for Republican Bill Frist’s old U.S. Senate seat? Harold Ford did slightly better than Steele and Blackwell. The day before the election, he was within a point of Corker, 47 to 48 with 5 percent undecided, according to OnPoint Polling. On Nov. 7, Corker got 50.7 percent of the vote, Ford got 48 and an assortment of independents took 1.3 percent. Ford was able to pick up one out of every five undecided voters.

OnPoint was the only polling firm to show the Tennessee race within 1 point on the eve of the election. Meanwhile, Gallup showed a 3-point lead for Corker, Rasmussen showed a 4-point lead for Corker, SurveyUSA and Pollmetrix showed 5-point leads, and Mason-Dixon showed a 12-point lead. Corker eventually won by 2.7 points, smaller than the margin predicted by all firms but OnPoint.”

If you’re interested in trying to figure out 2008’s undecideds, I recommend clicking on all the links provided above.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Peter Suderman at Culture 11:

“the problem is real: the mechanisms for acceptable self-criticism on the right aren’t very good, especially in election years. Any institution, even one with noble intentions, that dedicates itself to simple self-preservation without the added step of self-monitoring is bound to face corruption, disarray, and discontent. Do I have a grand, systematic solution? No, but a little more honesty and public self-questioning from any somewhat influential conservative who can afford to do so would certainly help.”

Patrick Ruffini, the Next Right:

“Like Mark McKinnon I too feel the McCain camp could probably have done some things differently, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to save them. What is striking about 2008 is how little the campaigns have mattered in comparison to the fundamental nature of the two men running.

Nothing the McCain campaign did could change the reality of McCain the candidate’s poor management instincts and his tendency to fidget around and not stay on message. When the economic crisis hit, this reality flew in the face of the McCain campaign’s message of steadiness versus inexperience. Whether by design or the candidate’s nature, Obama’s caution and deliberation was a living, breathing talking point against the experience card.

Likewise, I think it will be said that the McCain campaign has yet to really lay a glove on Obama character-wise because Obama himself simply does not project the cloying, insecure, effete tendencies of past nominees like Gore and Kerry, though the only two times he’s come close (Wright and bitter/cling) have barely figured in the general election campaign. I do think “celeb” was the best chance we had to define Obama personally, but again, though there is something to be said for attacking a guy’s strength, Obama’s grassroots appeal was a legitimate strength, not a hidden weakness.”

Ross Douthat, the Atlantic:

Whatever direction you think conservatism should be going in from here on out, the absolute worst thing the members of a losing political movement can do - if they ever want to win again, at least - is attempt to pre-emptively close off debate about the movement’s future. Conservatives need to have arguments, not promise excommunications, or else pretty soon there won’t be very much worth arguing over.

Daniel Finkelstein, the (London) Times Online:

“I was in Conservative Central Office in May 1997, on the night the Tory Party lost power after 18 years. I saw friends, and people I liked a little less than that, lose their seats or scrape home. And then the Prime Minister, John Major, returned and took his friends and advisers to a private room where he talked to us of his plans to resign as Conservative leader the next morning.

…

There was a feeling of euphoria in Britain that morning, a feeling of freshness and change. Even people who hadn’t voted for Blair were caught up in it. Many of them wished that they had, and his poll rating soared. Much of the good feeling about new Labour was generated in the months after their landslide, oddly, rather than in the months before it.

And here’s the lesson for Tories. The hardest thing to absorb was this - we didn’t matter.

For the first time in years the story wasn’t about us, and our squabbles and intrigues seemed oddly silly and pointless. And we, especially those of us who had worked on the losing campaign, felt excluded from a great national party. It was a little bit like sitting in the gloomy train Woody Allen films in Stardust Memories, while in the happy train everyone is popping champagne corks.

The first step towards recovery for the Conservative party was to stop thinking that we were the centre of the universe and that what we thought mattered more than what others thought.

The Republicans are about to go through a period of self absorption and will think it is all that matters. They will only recover when they start to understand that no one is watching and that no one, except them, cares.

That realisation will be more painful than the battles themselves.”

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08