While Supreme Court watchers ponder how justices will come down in the debate over gay marriage, ABC's George Will said Sunday on ABC News "This Week" it's clear where public opinion is headed. "There is something like an emerging consensus," Will said, noting voters in three states recently endorsed same-sex marriage initiatives. "Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It's old people."
Well, old people or bigots. And often both. And slowly, ever so slowly, conservatives -- some of them old, many of them bigots on this issue -- are backing down. They always had justice against them. Now they have public opinion against them as well, and that's apparently enough, the realization that the politics just aren't with them anymore and that opposition is increasingly a losing issue for Republicans. Sometimes political reality can get the better of you, eh?
Monday evening, Nate Silver released his final predictions for the presidential race. The most remarkable aspect of the prediction was that Florida, which two weeks earlier had been solidly in Romney's favor, slipped into a slight lean towards Obama. How slight? Silver predicted that Obama would win Florida by 0.022 percentage points. Earlier that day, I predicted that Florida would go to Obama, based upon the clear trend that had been evident the previous two weeks. Regardless, I predicted even odds that Obama would get 332, 303, or 294 electoral votes. Right now, we aren't sure which way Florida will go -- just as Silver predicted. But we do know that Obama won re-election with either 332 or 303 electoral votes.
I don't bring this up to show how smart I am. In general, all I did was follow Nate Silver's work and understand it more than most people. For example, I heard a lot of people claim that they thought Obama would win 313 electoral votes because that was the average prediction that Silver released. But that number was extremely unlikely. What was much more helpful was the electoral vote distribution that indicated that Obama had a 20% chance of getting 332 votes, 16% chance of getting 303 votes, and 13% chance of getting 345 votes. Here it is:
As you may recall, Dean Chambers of Unskewed Polls, predicted a 359-179 vote Obama loss. I went over to his website this morning and it is like a ghost town. But I noted that he had updated his prediction. As of Monday, he had Romney winning by the much less ridiculous margin of 275-263. What does that mean? It means in the end he abandoned his claim that the polls were skewed and went along with them, but gave the benefit of the doubt to Romney in Ohio and Florida.
Needless to say, this is not science; this is partisanship. We saw the same thing throughout the right wing echo chamber. George Will predicted Romney would win 321 votes. Dick Morris predicted 325 votes. What was most interesting about these conservative predictions was how extreme they were. While liberals were mostly predicting modest Obama wins (290 and 294 were the most common), conservatives were all predicting blow outs. The reason for this seems to be that conservatives had to assume that the polls were systematically wrong. In order to predict an Ohio win for Romney, they had to predict that a number of other unlikely states would go for him too. Thus the 321, 325, and 359 predictions.
It isn't just Nate Silver who did well last night. Drew Linzer of Votamatic had been predicting a 332-206 Obama win for weeks. What all this means, of course, is that as always the polls were right. The models were better than the straight polling averages because they took parameters like trends into account. Real Clear Politics, for example, had Romney up in Florida by 1.5% on Monday. Even still, a simple poll average was enough to predict 49 out of 50 states. There were no surprises last night in the presidential race.
The bottom line here is: don't mess with the nerds. They may be boring. They may be unfathomable. But they have special Nerd Powers. You'd be foolish to play poker with them. And masochistic to publicly challenge their splendid statistical models of the real world.
Yesterday, I read the following campaign intel from James Pethokoukis, "I just talked to one of my best Team Romney sources who told me that heading into today all the key battleground polls were moving hard and fast in their direction. The source, hardly a perma-optimist, thinks it will be a long night, but that Romney is going to win." Actually, that's not what it said. If that's what it said, I wouldn't be quoting it here. This is because such information is everywhere right now. Steve Schmidt was promoting this same bullshit line over at MSNBC the other night. George Will predicted that Romney would win with 321 electoral votes. As best I can tell, he means that Romney will win Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Virginia. And Minnesota. And Oregon, Nevada, and New Mexico. This would be a surprise, to say the least. But the point of all these confident proclamations is that the election is somehow moving in Romney's direction. That's why the quote above is so telling. It was written on 4 November 2008 about John McCain. I just changed "McCain" to "Romney." Here's the actual quote:
I just talked to one of my best Team McCain sources who told me that heading into today all the key battleground polls were moving hard and fast in their direction. The source, hardly a perma-optimist, thinks it will be a long night, but that McCain is going to win.
You may recall, that even though Pethokoukis's source may not be a perma-optimist, he was a that-day-optimist. McCain lost big. Obama got 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173. I think it is interesting that all the liberals I read are predicting modest Obama victories. David Atkins over at Hullabaloopredicts an Obama win 294-244. But he does note that Obama could win Colorado and bring the total up to 303-235. Ezra Klein is predicting only 290 electoral votes for Obama (which means he also thinks that Obama will lose New Hampshire). This contrasts starkly with the Republican landslide fantasies. Romney may well win, but he will eke out a narrow victory if he does. My only thought is that the only way that Republicans can argue that Romney will win is to assume that the polls are systematically wrong or that undecideds will break heavily for Romney. One can't assume voters are going to break hard for Romney in Ohio but not in Oregon. Thus you end up with something like the Unskewed Polls prediction of a Romney 359-179 victory. The liberal approach is to assume the polls are basically right, the undecideds will break the way they always do, and that Republican voter suppression (and just bad luck because liberals are pessimists) will lead Obama to lose the close ones: Florida, Colorado, and New Hampshire. My best guess is still that Obama will win 332-206. However, that does not mean I think that is the most likely outcome. That is just the most likely single outcome. I think it is slightly more likely than 303-235. But I would lay even odds that Obama will win 294, 303, or 332 electoral votes. Nate Silver gives the odds of that happening at roughly 35%. But he also gives the odds of a 345 vote Obama victory an 11% chance. That would require Obama winning North Carolina. I just don't see this happening, but maybe 11% is about right. The main thing is that it is pretty hard to see how Romney wins this race unless the polls are completely wrong. Check out this great interactive battleground state tool over at the LA Times. Start by giving Obama Ohio. If that happens, it is almost impossible for Romney to win. So tomorrow night, it really does all come down to Ohio. If Florida goes for Obama, it will be a blowout. Otherwise, it will be relatively close regardless of who wins.
If you're following the polling numbers — and chances are that if you're reading this, you have been — Nate Silver is saying that the national polls are showing President Obama with a "modest lead":
This happens to be a reasonably friendly group of polls for Mr. Obama, and it's more likely than not that at least some national polls published late Sunday or on Monday will still show Mitt Romney ahead. Nevertheless, there is enough data to conclude that Mr. Obama probably has a slight edge from national surveys, which until recently had pointed toward a tie — or perhaps a modest advantage for Mr. Romney in the immediate aftermath of the Denver debate. A number of these polls had very large sample sizes, meaning that the results are less likely than usual to have resulted from statistical variance. But the modest gains that Mr. Obama has made in the high-profile national surveys should not be that much of a surprise. We've observed the race shifting toward him over the past two to three weeks in polls of swing states, where overwhelming majorities of polls have had Mr. Obama ahead over the past few days.
This leaves a little breathing room, but not much. Still, Mr. Silver has the president with an 86.3% chance of winning.
Almost there.
Oh, wait; George F. Will says that Mitt Romney will win 321 electoral votes. So I guess Nate Silver and his algorithms are wrong and Mr. Will and his bow tie are right. Well, that settles that. After all, pundits are never wrong.
Barack Obama is going to win, and I don't like that at all.
His version of a primal scream is fun to read because he embodies the uptight bow-tied daddy mentality, especially when he incorporates words like "bilious." I don't think Mr. Will is an out-and-out bigot, but it's clear from his tone that he thinks Barack Obama was presumptuous in running for president and that once in office, he put on airs as if he was worthy of being the Commander in Chief when anybody could see that someone like him had no business being in the Oval Office. How dare he? Who does he think he is? Of course, all the things he accuses Mr. Obama of doing — and not doing — in his first term would be excused by Mr. Will if he were a WASP Republican working against an intransigent and stubborn opposition party (which is a fantasy in itself), but because Mr. Obama is neither, he's the one who is guilty of arrogance and condescension. He doesn't use the word "uppity," but he might just as well; a sneer from him is as good as the N-bomb from anybody else. I won't be waiting around to see if Mr. Will casts his watery gaze at the flailing campaign of Mitt Romney and his blatant misstatements and outright lies. In fact, I expect that Mr. Will will defend the Romney camp; what else can they do when they're under attack from the gang that doesn't respect the manifest destiny of their superiors? What must be especially galling for Mr. Will is that in the last twenty years, the best examples of leadership and inspiration in this country have come from men he despised not for their policy but for their lack of breeding. It must really rattle the sensibilities of the old boys at Burning Tree that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, neither of whom could pass muster at the country club admissions committee, rallied the nation while their best example, a scion of the aristocracy, turned out to be a fool and a laughing stock. I love the smell of freshly-made karma. (Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)
By Mustang Bobby In Tuesday's column, George F. Will basically conceded the election to Barack Obama, but he's not going gracefully or without some of his twee condescending snark:
That Obama is African American may be important, but in a way quite unlike that darkly suggested by, for example, MSNBC's excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up. Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation's heart, if not its head.
In other words, the only reason Barack Obama was elected in the first place was that he was black, and now the only reason that he's going to be re-elected is that the nation overwhelmingly feels bad about firing him lest they be seen as racist. It had nothing to do with the fact that the previous administration had totally bankrupted the country, taken us into two unpaid-for wars, trampled all over our civil rights, turned party politics into the mission statement of the Justice Department, and embarrassed us on the stage of the world by sending forth a president who came across as too dumb to play dead in a cowboy movie. Now they put forth a Republican nominee who, for all we can tell, is no different than the last GOP president except with better hair, who thinks nearly half the country is nothing but moochers and parasites waiting for a hand-out, and who has shown all the courage of his convictions as a bowl of warm Jello. But it's the White Guilt that's doing it for Barack Obama. Sheesh. (Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)
By Mustang Bobby (Ed. note: As Jon Chait wrote yesterday, Obama's bounce may be over, the race narrowing again for the stretch run, a "slog" already upon us. This because a new WaPo polls shows a virtual tie between Obama and Romney among likely voters. Fair enough, but there have nonetheless been unmistakable signs of discontent (if not panic) on the Republican side since last week's Democratic convention, and I suspect that's largely because while the race is very close, there isn't much room for movement with so few undecideds left and Romney needing to overtake Obama in key swing states like Ohio to have a shot at victory. Regardless, there's no reason for optimism, and so no reason to let up and assume it's in the bag. This one's going to be terrifyingly close, one way or the other.-- MJWS) A couple of bloggers that I respect deeply are seeing signs of panic and desperation from the Republicans and the Romney campaign. Booman:
Anyone else getting the first whiffs of panic on the Republican side? Odd thing, though. I'm seeing plenty of resignation, too. I mean, I don't think Ohio Governor John Kasich really gives two craps whether Romney wins or loses, and he really should be a little more concerned. But then I remember that George Will wrote off Romney's chances at the beginning of March.
I'm reluctant to use the word "flailing" because the race remains very close, but for over a year, Mitt Romney has invested time and energy in telling Americans he's a competent, corporate turn-around artist who'll create jobs. Over the weekend, he was reduced to, "I will not take 'God' off our coins."
It seems as if the guy no longer knows what he wants to say to the nation, so if he keeps coming with new lines, maybe one of them will eventually resonate. I'm not a campaign strategist, but it seems to me the time for this kind of message experimentation was mid-September 2011, not mid-September 2012.
This sort of grasping-at-nutsery usually sets in much later in a campaign when all of the insiders start making plans to look for work after the election and toss the apartment guides to the Washington area that they've been scanning. George H.W. Bush railed against Bill Clinton and Al Gore's foreign policy experience -- "My dog Millie knows more about foreign policy than those two bozos!" -- when it was clear that he was not catching up in 1992, but that was in October. Here we have Mitt Romney already in the weeds of whackery, and Paul Ryan is telling us that because he once voted to send troops to war, he has more foreign policy experience than Barack Obama did when he ran. (For some reason, Mr. Romney is reluctant to bring up his dog while on the stump. Go figure.) I'm not superstitious, but why take the chance. It is still way too early to call the race; how many times have the Tigers been five runs ahead in the third inning only to lose? But when you are seeing this kind of scatter-shot campaigning at this point, you have to wonder who is controlling the message. Certainly the Romney people did not plan this, because if they did, it's not exactly the kind of leadership you want to have running the campaign, much less the country. P.S.: Steve M and TBogg note that the blame game is already starting. (Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)
ABC News reports on a funny thing that happened on ABC this morning:
This morning on "This Week," ABC News' George Will called Donald Trump a "bloviating ignoramus," questioning why presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is associating with the real estate mogul, who once again falsely questioned President Obama's birthplace this week.
"I do not understand the cost benefit here," Will said on the "This Week" roundtable. "The costs are clear. The benefit — what voter is gonna vote for him (Romney) because he is seen with Donald Trump? The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious it seems to me."
"Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics," Will added. "Again, I don't understand the benefit. What is Romney seeking?"
I don't know... approval from the powerful so as to fill some gaping hole in his soul?
(UPDATE: Trump has fired back, tweeting: "George Will may be the dumbest (and most overrated) political commentator of all time. If the Republicans listen to him, they will lose." I don't much care for Will, but I'd defend him here. There are many who are dumber. Has Trump ever watched Fox News?)
Look, I take (and for the most part agree with) Will's point, but there's the usual bloviating arrogance here:
First, while birtherism is a refuge for the ignorant, and worse, Republicans (that is, members of Will's own party) have for the most part spent the past four years, and more, questioning Obama's loyalty to America.
This more line of attack on first the candidate and then the president has taken a number of forms, but Romney himself has engaged in it repeatedly, accusing Obama of going around the world apologizing for America, a blatant lie. Yes, birtherism has been one of the ugliest forms of it, what with its more explicit racist component, and Trump has been one of the most visible of the birthers, and one of the loudest, but Will is just trying to distance himself and his beloved party from a movement, if you can call it that, that has been very much a part of the vicious Republican assault on Obama, one that's still going strong today.
Will often takes this smarter-than-thou approach in his punditry, and to his credit he has criticized the more extreme elements in his party on occasion, but you can't really have it both ways. Birtherism and similar lines of attack on the president (e.g., playing the affirmative action card, which Trump has also done) are a huge part of what the Republican Party has been about the past several years. If you count yourself a Republican, this is what your party is about. You can try to pretend otherwise, or wave off these elements as too silly to bother with, and you can try to make yourself look good by comparison in doing so, but that would be a gross misrepresentation of your party.
Second, Donald Trump is a popular Republican -- among Republicans -- as his high poll numbers last year indicated. Will may not like that, but it's true. And why is he so popular? It's his birtherism, sure, to a point, but perhaps more so his bullying views on foreign policy (advocating the America be a sort of global bully, pushing everyone around, including China, to get whatever it wants) -- indeed, this has become Romney's main foreign policy view as well: Russia's still Enemy #1 and America ought just to go around swining its supposedly massive dick. It's not exactly an enlightened position to take, but it's not like Romney is terribly enlightened on foreign policy.
Furthermore -- and this is really why Trump is so widely esteemed -- Republicans worship successful businessmen and the super-wealthy, and Trump is both (even if his record as a businessman has been full of massive failure*). Put another way, Republicans love rapacious greed, and Trump is nothing if not rapaciously greedy.
(*As I wrote back in February, if you want failure, you need look no further than Trump's own career -- for example, the USFL, the Trump Shuttle, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage, massive debt, bailouts by banks, bankrupties... really, one could go on and on. See here and here for the details of these and other failures.)
Far more than birtherism, and even more than bullying American foreign policy and militarism, this is the core of today's Republican Party, with the chief policy goal being the significant lowering of those tax rates affecting the wealthy. The Republican Party is the party of plutocracy, not democracy, and it advocates a laissez-faire system in which the rich can acquire more and more wealth -- and of course more and more power. Will's views, admittedly, are more nuanced and complex than that, and he may not approve in full of this plutocratic agenda, or even acknowledge it, but basically both he and his party are fundamentally pro-Trump.
Third, while I agree that the benefits of appearing with Trump aren't clear, if indeed there are any, Romney has proven himself throughout this campaign to be a shameless panderer and suck-up who will do and say anything for votes. Given that, it makes sense he'd want to appear with a popular Republican celebrity like Trump. Furthermore, for someone lacking in charisma and broad public appeal like Romney, being at Trump's side is an opportunity to bask in a desirable glow of someone very much unlike himself. Romney and his campaign no doubt think he'll be able to benefit just from being in the presence of that glow.
But, really, Romney may simply want to be in the presence of another super-rich businessman. Look at who Romney is: a one-term governor and otherwise political failure who has made a fortune in the business world as a vulture capitalist. Trump has been critical of Romney in this regard -- "He'd buy companies. He'd close companies. He'd get rid of jobs." -- but that may not matter much to Romney. Or, rather, it may, but perhaps Romney sees in Trump what other Republicans do, business success, and perhaps that's all that really matters here.
Simply put, Trump is someone to whom Romney can relate on a deep personal level (more personal than political), someone even more successful (in a way), and even richer, than he is. If you view the world through a lens of plutocratic entitlement, as Romney seems to, Trump's a superstar. And who doesn't want to hang out with superstars?
So while there may be no obvious benefit to it, in terms of votes, is it really any wonder Romney will be appearing with The Donald -- and with Gingrich as well, making up what I've termed "the un-holy Republican triumvirate of 2012"?
The fact that George Will doesn't see this, or doesn't want to, is evidence that he doesn't understand, or doesn't want to, today's Republican Party, including its 2012 presidential flag-bearer.
George Will expressed it well on This Week yesterday to George Stephanopoulos:
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has been inundated with criticism
after calling Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University student who
testified before a House committee about contraception, a "slut" and a "prostitute." But while Democrats have fiercely condemned the comments, Republicans' ire has been significantly more muted.
ABC's George Will told me Sunday on "This Week" that GOP leaders have
steered clear of harshly denouncing Limbaugh's comments because "Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh."
"[House Speaker John] Boehner comes out and says Rush's language was
inappropriate. Using the salad fork for your entrée, that's
inappropriate. Not this stuff," Will said. "And it was depressing
because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of
Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they're afraid of Rush
Limbaugh."
ABC's Matthew Dowd suggested that Rush's influence is largely a "myth," but there's really no denying his lofty place on the right. And while some Republicans may indeed think of him as a "buffoon" and a "clown" whom "nobody takes... seriously," and while members of the Republican media elite like Will may scoff at him, he wields enormous influence not just because of his huge audiences of "dittoheads" but because, much like with anti-tax maniac Grover Norquist, Republicans are pretty much required to kowtow to him in order to prove their right-wing bona fides and receive his blessing. Sure, it's been possible to get ahead in the GOP without his blessing, but as the party has moved further to the right and more and more heretics have been purged, his position has only solidified.
And, too, it's pretty rich of commentators like Will to scoff and leaders like Boehner to use euphemisms like "inappropriate" in response to Rush's latest awfulness. Not to take anything away from his horrible remarks about Ms. Fluke, but he has a long, long history of sexist (like this) and racist (like this) and generally bigoted comments, and he's been able to get away with it without suffering much in the way of consequences from within the Republican Party or movement conservatism. Sure, he's had his detractors, and no doubt many have rolled their eyes at his various "inappropriate" comments over the years, but the fact that he's still so influential, still such a force on the right, says a lot about what is appropriate and what isn't for Republicans.
The campaign to destroy Newt Gingrich, or at least his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, is well underway.
It's coming from renegades like Ron Paul (who's obviously acting on his own), Capitol Hill establishment types like Pete King (who's obviously playing his part in a more organized campaign), Romney surrogates like Chris Christie (who's obviously doing his pal's bidding), and, of course, from big-time conservative pundits who can see clearly that Newt, an unprincipled egomaniac, would be a disaster for the GOP. For example:
Peggy Noonan: "He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, 'Watch this!'"
George Will: "There is almost artistic vulgarity in Gingrich's unrepented role as a
hired larynx for interests profiting from such government follies as
ethanol and cheap mortgages."
David Brooks: "[Newt] has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with
'60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and
intemperance. He just has those traits in Republican form."
Michael Gerson: "Gingrich's language is often intemperate. He is seized by temporary
enthusiasms. He combines absolute certainty in any given moment with
continual reinvention over time."
Can you smell the fear? Can you sense the panic? If conservatives of this caliber are going after Newt with such aggressiveness, it's only because he's become such a formidable frontrunner, and because he's gaining such momentum that he may very well be approaching the realm of inevitability.
George F. Will lights into Mitt Romney for being the pretzel candidate.
The Republican presidential dynamic — various candidates rise and recede; Mitt Romney remains at about 25 percent support — is peculiar because conservatives correctly believe that it is important to defeat Barack Obama but unimportant that Romney be president. This is not cognitive dissonance.
Obama, a floundering naif who thinks ATMs aggravate unemployment, is bewildered by a national tragedy of shattered dreams, decaying workforce skills and forgone wealth creation. Romney cannot enunciate a defensible, or even decipherable, ethanol policy.
[...]
Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.
Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from "data" (although there is precious little to support Romney's idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis's words) "competence," not "ideology." But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before "forever"? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?
Mr. Will is at his Brahman best when he gets all stuffy like this, and it's a joy to read such indignant diatribes ("Floundering Naif" would be a great name for a deep-sea charter boat), but especially when it's directed at one of his own kind. After all, Mr. Romney is the perfect GOP establishment candidate; he's the 21st century Thomas E. Dewey, but without his charm or conviction.
What's missing from this lovely piece of fratricidal vitriol against Mr. Romney is Mr. Will's promotion of an alternative choice for the nomination. Unfortunately, all of his druthers have left the party, so to speak, or have no chance of getting the nomination, and he appears to be way over his brief crush on Michele Bachmann that he elaborated on in October 2009. So, who's left? Will he go for Herman Cain, who can't articulate a position on abortion but stands up for the smokers? What about Newt Gingrich, who is getting another look now that the rest of the field is falling apart? After all, Mr. Gingrich once predicted that after all the other candidates have been found wanting, they would turn to him.
This is what happens when you make the campaign solely about beating the other guy. That may be the way to win the nomination or even an election, but at some point the voters want to know what you stand for, not against.
I don't much care for Mr. Will, and I don't even have any grudging respect anymore, but he's one of the few major conservative pundits who goes after Palin, and for that, I suppose, he deserves some credit -- yes, let's at least give him that.
The threshold question, not usually asked, but it's in everyone's mind
in a presidential election. "Should we give this person nuclear
weapons?" And the answer [in Palin's case], answers itself.
I'd say the answer also answers itself for Michele Bachmann, if not necessarily so much for Romney and Pawlenty, Giuliani and Gingrich, Pataki and Huntsman, or even Paul.
I'd also say there any number of other such threshold questions not just for all presidential candidates but for the increasingly extremist Republicans and especially for Palin, questions such as:
-- "Should this person be allowed to nominate Supreme Court justices?"
-- "Should this person be given the keys to the country's national security apparatus?"
-- "Should this person be given control over U.S. foreign policy?"
-- "Should this person be the country's chief diplomat, the person advancing America's interests around the world, the person most responsible for America's reputation and credibility globally?"
-- "Should this person be put in charge, as much as any single person is in charge of, the economy?"
For Palin, it's clearly a NO on all questions. It doesn't take George Will to tell us that, but it's good that at least some Republicans understand what lurks in their midst.
**********
Will is a frequent critic of Palin. For some background, let's head back to those heady days leading up to the '08 election:
When I find myself agreeing with conservative pundit George Will, it might be time to walk away from the computer. What can I say? But we do seem to agree about one thing and that is that this new group of moderate conservatives, calling themselves "No Labels," who have come together to give us all a good tongue-lashing for our hyper-partisanship, is a goofy bunch.
Here is the mission statement for the group:
No Labels is a 501(c)(4) social welfare advocacy organization created to provide a voice for America's vital center, where ideas are judged on their merits, a position which is underrepresented in our current politics. No Labels provides a forum and community for Americans of all political backgrounds interested in seeing the nation move not left, not right, but forward. No Labels encourages all public officials to prioritize the national interest over party interest, and to cease acting on behalf of narrow, if vocal, special interests on the far right or left.
People have different political sensibilities; they cluster and the clusters are called parties. They have distinctive understandings of the meaning and relative importance of liberty, equality and other matters. Politics is given weight, and motion is imparted to democracy, by intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes.
Yup, there it is. I agree with George Will. That, all on its own, may be proof that left and right can work together. (Just kidding.) But Will's point is that these people have no understanding of what politics is and that the kind of agreement that they think exists at the vital centre of American life, isn't there – and that is not a bad thing. Political partisanship is what makes democracy work.
To add a bit more clarity, I draw your attention to a comment made by MSNBC political commentator Joe Scarborough, one of the principles of No Labels, who offers this:
We govern in the middle. We always have. With apologies to Arthur Schlesinger, there’s not a pendulum swing ideologically in America. America stays in the middle, and we saw it. When you go too far left, they slap you back and when Republicans go too far right, they slap you back as well, into the center.
What Scarborough seems to be suggesting is that there is a true and identifiable "general will" of the American people that is politically centrist and that Democrats and Republicans would do well to focus their energies on keeping it happy. He also seems to suggest that this general will has a clear idea of what public policies it would support and those it would reject and politicians need only work together, as good technocrats, to give effect to its interests.
George Will, as a trained political philosopher, probably has a pretty good idea that Joe Scarborough is full of crap. Hence Will's comment that people have very different ideas about the meaning of some extremely important ideas like liberty, equality, justice, fairness, morality, etc., etc. Politics is, as he says, all about "intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes."
If Scarborough and his "No Label" friends only mean to say that we should try harder to understand each other to see if we can reach a working and reasonable accommodation about things where absolute agreement is unlikely, then okay, fine. I don't think we need a new 501(c) (4) social welfare advocacy organization for that, but fine. Knock yourself out.
But if he thinks that those on the right and left are simply conspiring to thwart the clear will of the people for the sake of narrow partisan and illegitimate interests, he and his friends are not serious people.
Speaking only for myself, I am on the left and will never stop trying to convince people, through legal and generally civil means, that wealth and power is concentrated in America to an extent that makes real democracy difficult; that equality is impossible if the rules of the game are rigged; that liberty is empty if we don't share the resources needed to make our desires effective; and that justice has far too much to do with how much money you have in your pocket.
This also means that I have a lot invested in challenging the status quo. And I doubt that the "No Labelers" would consider a challenge to the status quo, at least in any meaningful way, acceptable. My guess is that the status quo is what they mean by the "vital center," and making the machine function in a more amicable way is about as ambitious as they intend to get.
What they also mean is that the vital center should be defined by the values that the "No Labelers" hold. It wouldn't be the first time that the particular values of those holding power in society were represented as the universal values of everybody. Whenever I hear someone trying to tell us what the American people, taken as a whole, believe, I know it's time to run for cover.
This is the oldest trick in the political play book. Everybody else is biased in their political views and values, but the views that I and my friends hold define the good itself. No thank you.
At a minimum, labels are, as Will notes, a shorthand for how people feel about some pretty important issues, for which there may be little basis for agreement. The "No Labels" movement, and every other "beyond left and right" movement wants to gloss over this important fact.
To repeat, politics is not a technical exercise among like minds to implement in policy the values that we obviously share. There is no such agreement. There is no "general will." Politics is the fight over whose values will prevail. Labels are simply a useful shorthand for telling us who our potential allies and opponents are. If we stopped using the ones currently in vogue, we would need to invent others to replace them.
Again, if this is all about the fact that we should have more respect for good process, that's fine. But please stop saying that moving beyond left and right is necessarily the same as moving forward. It isn't. It's just an argument for de-clawing political opposition and for embracing business as usual.
I'll bet partisans on the left and right can agree at least about that much.
Publius has lived in and spent most of his life thinking about Washington, D.C. He is an attorney, an avid sports fan, and the editor of The Fourth Branch. This is his first guest post at The Reaction.
(Ed. note: Along with what we already do here, I'm hoping to have more guest spots from bloggers I really like. We used to have a guest blogger every now and then, but when I was doing the Crooks and Liars blog round-up recently I realized I hadn't invited anyone to do a guest spot in ages. Let's get it underway again with Publius (alas, not his real name) from The Fourth Branch. As you'll see in this post, as well as at his blog, he is an extremely thoughtful commentator. His blogging tends to be admirably intellectual and academic (in a good way), and it's a pleasure to welcome him aboard. -- MJWS)
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George Will recently wrote a column
entitled "The Case for Engaged Justices," in which he argues that the
individual insurance mandate is unconstitutional and that if the Supreme
Court acts as "engaged justices," as opposed to "activist justices,"
they will find the mandate unconstitutional. Mr. Will's column is
replete with rhetorical flourish but lacks much critical thought.
Will begins by arguing that the debate over the insurance mandate's
constitutionality is really a debate about whether Congress' power to
regulate interstate commerce is "infinitely elastic" and says that "if
the power is infinitely elastic, Congress can do anything -- eat your broccoli, or else -- and America no longer has a limited government."
First, an admission: If the Congress' power is infinitely elastic,
then, yes, it has the power to do whatever it wants. That's not so much
an argument by Will as a definition.
Second, a dispute: The debate over
the insurance mandate isn't a debate over whether Congress has infinite
power. It is, rather, a debate over whether Congress has the specific
power to require Americans to purchase health insurance.
Such a proposal is not a wild leap from current laws
that presumably Will finds constitutional. Take, for example, the
requirement that all working Americans pay into Medicare. In essence,
Congress has required Americans to purchase health insurance but to do
so for other Americans (through a government-funded program) and not for
themselves. Those distinctions aren't irrelevant, but are they so
large that overcoming them means Congress must now be viewed as having "infinitely elastic" powers? Hardly.
Will argues that the legal answer to the constitutionality of the
health insurance mandate can be found in an opinion of a Texas judge.
In the Texas case cited by Will,
a man dying of asbestos exposure sued a company for damages. The Texas
legislature, after the suit was filed and the harm inflicted to the
dying man, apparently passed a law immunizing the company (and others)
from the lawsuit. The Texas judge held that the law violated the Texas constitutional prohibition
on retroactive laws and that the lawsuit could proceed. Will concludes
that the decision stood for the principal that legislative actions,
even when intended to protect the general welfare (such as the insurance
mandate), cannot trump constitutional limitations on power.
Will would do well to note that the case was not decided on U.S.
constitutional grounds, and so its applicability is tenuous at best.
Regardless of that significant distinction, it is perhaps even more
significant to note that retroactive laws are expressly prohibited in
Article I, Section 16 of the Texas Constitution as applied to a pending
action. In other words, the "constitutional limitation on power" is
clearly articulated in the Texas Constitution. Unfortunately for Will's
analogy, that's not the case with the insurance mandate. Nowhere does
the U.S. Constitution specify that "Congress shall not pass an individual
health insurance mandate."
Will appears to argue that such a
prohibition can be inferred from "the first words of the Bill of Rights: 'Congress shall make no law...'" Will ought to read the rest of the Bill
of Rights. He would note that such language doesn't apply to the
entire Bill of Rights, it applies only to the First Amendment (which
involves speech, press, assembly and petition, and religion).
Oddly enough, Will concludes his argument with a statement that
appears to favor the individual mandate. Will states (quoting in his
first sentence the Texas judge from the case above):
"There is a profound difference between an activist judge and an engaged judge." The former creates rights not specified or implied by the Constitution. The latter defends rights the Framers actually placed there
and prevents the elected branches from usurping the judiciary's duty to
declare what the Constitution means. Let us hope the Supreme Court
justices are engaged when considering the insurance mandate.
The issue in this case isn't one of "creating rights," which is what
Will believes defines an "activist judge." The issue is defining the
scope of Congress' power to take certain actions. It's highly unlikely
the Supreme Court would hold, for example, that Congress can't pass the
insurance mandate because Americans have a constitutional right not to
buy health insurance if they don't want to buy it. In fact, if the
Supreme Court acts under Will's definition of an "engaged justice," the
Court could not make such a holding (the right not to purchase health
insurance wasn't "actually placed" in the Constitution by the Framers).
As I've mentioned here before, one of the interesting (and sometimes unpleasant) things about being a blogger (and member of the political commentariat) with a public e-mail address is that I find myself on many different mailing lists. Like, for example, those of a number of (mostly Democratic) Sens and Reps on Capitol Hill.
In this Washington Times opinion piece, Coral Ridge Ministries Senior Writer Robert Knight challenges the moral relativism of columnist George Will and others who support allowing open homosexuals to serve in the military.
Please let me know if you would like to speak with Mr. Knight about this column.
Andrew Scott [e-mail address] or [phone number]
The "opinion piece" is pretty much what you'd expect, a conservative religious rant against gays in the military, and against homosexuality generally, and in support of right-wing Christian theocracy:
And what about the Creator of the Universe? It is God's moral code that has undergirded Western society for more than 3,500 years. God's intelligent design – marriage – is the glue that holds it together.
It's just more of the same old biblical bigotry that we've come to expect from the religious right, and it hardly deserves a response.
But what's amusing, in a way, is that Knight calls Will, one of America's leading conservative commentators (and, in Knight's words, "one of the smartest men in Washington"), a moral relativist for suggesting (rightly, I would add) that "homosexuality will soon be a non-issue in the military," that is, for not being a fellow bigot. Similarly, Knight accuses Charles Krauthammer, another die-hard conservative, of being "aboard the gay express" (whatever that is), before ignorantly claiming that "the myth persists that science has established that people are 'born gay.'"
All those who do not agree with the biblical bigotry of Knight and his ilk, you see, a bigotry that is common in Knight's Christian circles (as well as in Republican circles), are moral relativists -- including some of America's leading conservatives. But this is where the religious right is, well to the right of the more establishment, more secular conservatism of Will and Krauthammer.
How truly enjoyable it is to sit back and watch conservatives, however extreme, however crazy, attempt to commit fratricide.
In the past I've had a modicum of respect for George F. Will, even if he does come across as a humorless New England boarding school English teacher in need of a high colonic. I've even agreed with him on some occasions, even though he spends most of his time defending the old-guard country club ideals of elite Republicanism, and I've thought that he viewed the rantings of the new right wing -- the birthers, the deathers, and the oathers -- with a bit of sneer even as he defends some of their ideas if not their tactics. But today he rises to the defense of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the highly entertaining whirling dervish of the far right, and makes it sound like she is yet another misunderstood beacon of truth, justice, and the American Way. His only concession to her nutsery is to admit that she is a "petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked." Occasionally?
Mr. Will cites her appearance on Hardball last October where she "made the mistake of taking Chris Matthews's bait and speculating about whether Barack Obama and some other Democrats have 'anti-American' views." Of course it was Chris Matthews' fault that she answered his question. But he insists that she's well within the mainstream, citing her oft-viewed House floor speech where she labeled the federal takeover of General Motors as "gangster government" and says that millions of people have seen it. Hint: just because a video gets viewed 2 million times doesn't make it proof of intelligent discourse, and it's not always because they agree with her. (The dramatic prairie dog gets that many in a day.)
If that was Ms. Bachmann's only example of her "supposed excess," Mr. Will's defense of her would be understandable; after all, we've got a lot of examples of other far-right members of Congress making loony speeches that bring out the mockery and snark, and they don't garner the attention, more's the pity. But Ms. Bachmann is the gift that keeps on giving, from her call for keeping Americans "armed and dangerous," her denial of climate change (in which Mr. Will is her soulmate), and a number of other just downright nutty claims such as the FEMA concentration camps that will come from the renewal of Americorps. Mr. Will ignores the rest of these and, as is the wont of every mainstream pundit sucking up to to fringe, suggests that we are mocking and ignoring Ms. Bachmann at our peril.
In a way, I feel sorry for Mr. Will; I'm guessing he bet on the Dodgers to win the NLCS and this is his penance: having to defend one of the most divisive and extreme members of his party in print.
I'll admit, I never much cared for him -- or, rather, for his work:
Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.
Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the disgraced Nixon coterie. But he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and for 32 years tenaciously attacked and defended foreign and domestic policies, and the foibles, of seven administrations. Along the way, he incurred enmity and admiration, and made a lot of powerful people squirm.
Well, fair enough, he certainly was more of a "contrarian" than most on the right, and he was certainly, at times, admirably independent in his thinking, and he did, I suppose, make some "powerful people squirm." But he was also, to the end, a Nixon apologist and, even with the GOP lurching ever further rightward, a dedicated partisan. Sure, he was more pleasant, less insane, and far more intelligent than the Glenn Becks and Sean Hannitys of the world, and that made him appealing both in print and on Meet the Press -- he was sort of like David Brooks, a conservative liberals could actually respect and occasionally agree with -- but his apparent reasonableness, and his broad appeal, only made him, in a way, more nefarious. However independent, however flexible, he was an ideologue, and, in a way, an effective propagandist for conservatism, if more Nixonian than the extremism of the movement today, a Republican even when the Republican Party should no longer have appealed to him. I think the same of Brooks and the same of George Will, another old-style conservative in the heart of the liberal media establishment, or what used to be, though Brooks remains a neocon and Will remains more of an ideologue than Safire ever was. Both have Safire's appeal, but, as with Safire, it would be wise not to let appearances get in the way of better judgement.
Still, Safire was always a good read, always provocative, and, more often than not, a valuable contributor to the public debate. Conservatives would have done well to have taken him more seriously, and the rest of us, I think, should have done the same. Even to those of us who generally disagreed with him on pretty much everything, he offered a great deal, often irritatingly so, and we knew, or at least I can say that I did, that he was often a deeply perceptive thinker who at the very least compelled us to reconsider our assumptions and opinions, and even our firmly held beliefs, and, I think, we were all stronger for it in the end. Political preferences aside, isn't that what you want in a columnist at a major newspaper like the Times? Safire frequently went too far, and I can't say that everything he said and wrote fit this noble purpose, far from it from my limited perspective, but at least he wasn't one of those pundits who only tell a narrow fringe what it wants to hear and who lash out at everything else. We all know there are far too many such pundits today.
And, of course, he was, most admirably, a linguist, a defender of the English language at a time when it was, and is, being torn apart. I learned not to split infinitives from my father, and I don't, but Safire taught us all, in his own distinctive way, to use language properly, to speak and write according to rules that ought to remain in force, and to stand firm against the dumbing down of society through the erosion of linguistic standards.
To boldly go? No, never. William Safire will be missed.
[S]eeing Will and Graham on opposite sides of this reminds me of a point that often goes overlooked: we're not dealing with a dynamic that pits the left vs. the right, or Dems against Republicans. Rather, this is a situation featuring neocons vs. everyone else.
You'll notice that President Obama's strategy has not only been endorsed by Democratic lawmakers, but also prominent Republicans who are in office (Dick Lugar), served in Republican administrations (Henry Kissinger, Gary Sick, and Nick Burns), or are prominent Republican voices in the media (George Will, Peggy Noonan, and Pat Buchanan).
The president's leading detractors, meanwhile, primarily come from a motley and discredited crew who cling to neoconservatism -- McCain, Graham, Kristol, Krauthammer, Wolfowitz.
When we see reports indicating that "Republicans" are outraged by the president's tack on Iran, let's not forget it's mostly just a certain part of the party
The key point is that many neocons actively want war with Iran and they are doing all they can in this crisis to precipitate one. Whether it be hoping for an Ahmadinejad win, or trying to goad Obama into making this critical uprising into a US vs Iran showdown, their goal is conflict. Everything they say needs to be filtered through that prism.
A discredited prism of conflict, death, destabilization and destruction sounds about right, but since they make such "great guests" who cares.
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UPDATE: Here, from Think Progress, is the clip of Will criticizing ("foolish") conservative criticism of Obama's (sensible) response to the Iranian election:
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