Month: October 2004

“It’s in the Bible. It should be in the constitution.” – an Ohio conservative on why marriage for gays should be banned everywhere.

FRIENDSHIP, AGAIN: “Friendship can be exploitive and predatory, a strange symbiosis of quiet underwater carnage, though I’ve seldom seen one stay that way, Yet friends are partly for quarrelling with. Most of us need to squabble occasionally to tap off our toxins, and friends permit us to without inflammatory consequences. We can be a trifle mean, or stumble into a brief tailspin, and be forgiven. Knowing our knotty nuttiness, our self-destructive lonely spells, they let us phone a bit too much and don’t require us to specify just how tricky we feel. Friends are for jitters as well as barbecues.” – from Edward Hoagand’s essay, “Running Mates,” in “Tigers & Ice, Reflections on Nature and Life.”

SORRY: No Inside Dish this weekend. I’ve been too wiped out from the tour.

Someone who cannot be dismissed as a lefty, former congressman Bob Barr, seems extremely uneasy in backing Bush this time around:

Bush’s problem is that true conservatives remember their history. They recall that in recent years when the nation enjoyed the fruits of actual conservative fiscal and security policies, a Democrat occupied the White House and Congress was controlled by a Republican majority that actually fought for a substantive conservative agenda.
History’s a troublesome thing for presidents. Even though most voters don’t take much of a historical perspective into the voting booth with them, true conservatives do.
Hmmm. Who’s the Libertarian candidate again?

For Barr, it’s fiscal insanity, immigration and civil liberties. But he’s also against the FMA.

“In the whole history of Afghanistan this is the first time we come and choose our leader in democratic process and free condition. I feel very proud and I feel very happy,” – an Afghan voter yesterday. Whatever else you feel about president Bush’s war leadership, this amazing event is a result of his policies, and belongs to his legacy. More important, of course, it gives this Islamic nation a taste of what the future can bring. Forget the nit-picking. This is a huge step forward in the war.

Josh Chafetz reflects on where he is in this race. Bottom line: “Undecided … but leaning more towards Kerry than I was before.” That’s where I am. Josh’s arguments are very close to my own thoughts as well. I cannot support Bush but I’m amazed I’m this close to considering favoring Kerry as president. I’m not there yet. Don’t rush me. But after two debates, I feel far more comfortable with the thought of him as commander-in-chief than I once thought possible.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I started reading your work about a year ago on the suggestion of a friend because I was convinced that the actions of the Bush Administration were making life impossible for a fair-minded and intelligent Conservatives. Obviously, there is a great deal of cognitive dissonance in leaving the Party that brought you to this point. But defending the Bush Administration has forced any Conservative thinker who is fairminded and intelligent into either turning himself into rhetorical knots or altogether ignoring reality. (For a classic example of both, see David Brooks’ column today–for him to look at the Duelfer report and conclude that “[Saddam] was on the verge of greatness” requires delusions nearly on the level of Hussein’s: Hussein’s vaunted army lost the country in three weeks without getting a single plane off the ground; he had neither stores of WMD’s nor the programs in place to create them; Saddam Hussein was about as close to greatness as an imaginative kid playing battleship.)

It has been refreshing to see you come to the conclusion that you cannot be Conservative, intelligent and fair minded and continue to support this administration. In fact, at the risk of being melodramatic, it renews my faith in the idea that a fairminded struggle with ideas can result in progress, rather than further entrenchment at the expense of logic, fairness and reality.

So much of Conservative ideology is already part and parcel of the current political millieu on both sides of the aisle–a faith in American power, free market ideology, personal responsibility–that a Conservative can vote for John Kerry without sacrificing his ideals. (After all, it was Bill Clinton who led Welfare Reform and the formation of NAFTA, two actions that were absolute anathema to the Left. He also balanced the budget … remember when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?)”

“Conservatives like myself suspect [Bush] has a hard time articulating a conservative message because he isn’t authentically conservative.” – Zach Wendling, Hoosier Review. Amen.

A big and unexpected fillip for the Bush campaign from down under. Tim Blair is in heaven.

David Broder provides some useful details on a critical swing state.

THAT SIMPLE QUESTION: Thanks for all your emails about why the Bush war-plan did not even try to secure many of the Saddam weapons sites that might have contained WMDs and actually did contain ammunition that was subsequently looted. I’m sorry to say no one has a persuasive answer. One option is that the military was so intent on decapitating the regime that they ignored these real potential threats, regarding them as less of a priority. But wasn’t the entire point of the invasion to prevent loose nukes, chems and bios from getting to terrorists? Another option is that there were simply too few troops to do all that needed to be done. But that ignores the fact that these weapons sites were left unguarded for weeks, while the borders were essentially open. Some of you, of course, think that the reason is more obvious and devious than that:

It’s unsettling to consider, but it is apparent that the invasion proceeded with no concern for the possibility of WMD used against our troops, no concern for the possibility that Saddam could pass WMD on to terrorists as an option of last resort, and no concern for the possibility that terrorists could stumble upon WMD in the chaos of regime change. This suggests to me that the war planners didn’t believe there were any WMD to fear.

So why were soldiers given chemical suits? Here’s another thought:

I was asking myself questions similar to the ones you raise in response to Bremer’s admission, but they were stimulated by the Duelfer report instead of the Bremer gaffe. My understanding is that while it debunks the claims that Iraq had an active weapons program, it leaves open the question of whether or not stockpiles of weapons were removed from Iraq prior to the invasion. Please tell me I’m wrong about this. Imagine if weapons were spirited out of Iraq before we had even had the opportunity to implement a good plan to secure the borders. The fact is that we’ve traded a relatively mild uncertainty about Iraq’s WMD for a horrifying uncertainty about them. The only thing that is certain is that they are not where we can do anything about them. Nothing would make me happier than to be corrected on this point.

Me too. I refuse to believe that the administration lied. Which leaves the incompetence explanation intact.

That’s Saletan’s take. He’s very good on Kerry’s awful blather about abortion.

Interesting stuff from a polling organization that has provided consistently good news for Bush. Independents backed Kerry in the debate 53 to 37 percent. Women backed him 50 to 41. Bush rallied his base, but Kerry won over the middle.

A good analysis from RealClearPolitics, a great site, by the way.