Month: May 2006

Rauch on Gallagher

I echo all of Jon Rauch’s points here about Maggie Gallagher’s latest attack on gay couples’ right to legally protected relationships. There sometimes is a real clash between liberal anti-discrimination Vn_1 legislation and maximal religious freedom. Given the choice, I’m with maximal freedom for religious groups to discriminate in any way they like as private entities; and I’m generally suspicious of anti-discrimination laws. (Dale Carpenter makes the case for allowing the Catholic hierarchy to discriminate here.) That’s why, in Virtually Normal, I opposed laws against anti-gay discrimination in employment; and why I oppose all hate crime laws; and why I firmly support the rights of bigots to express themselves without being restrained or "re-educated" by government. But the marriage argument is still largely a red herring here. Religious freedom is affected primarily by broad anti-discrimination laws, and has been for years. Gallagher wants to give the impression that marriage rights have created this clash. That’s untrue, and she knows it.

The Hillary Problem

Which is it? Mine or Kos’? A reader comments:

It seems to me that while you and Markos both have deep issues with Hillary, you seem to see the problem with her candidacy in vastly different terms. Kos seems to believe (as do most leftists) that the Democrats do not need a centrist figure to win, but a base-rousing liberal (I’m betting Kos would love a Feingold candidacy).  However you submit that "After the deep red-blue divides of the past decade and a half, a candidacy that would simply take those wounds and rub salt in them cannot be good for the country", which in my mind eliminates a left-winger.
Kos, and the liberal myth he espouses, sounds great if you occupy the left-wing (as Kos calls it the Jesse Jackson Democratic Party), but I’ve yet to see the electoral proof that such a campaign would win.
Kos and his ilk claim the Gore and Kerry losses augur for a liberal insurgency that will crystallize the left and bring millions of heretofore non-voters to the polls, galvanized not by policies themselves but stubborn adherence to those policies.
They continue to ignore the steady conservative movement of the last 40 years (perhaps they are too young to fully remember the Reagan revolution?) and overstate the meaning of the ‘netroots’ movement.
As a centrist Democrat I feel the party increasingly slipping over a precipice- or thanks to Kos and his friends perhaps pushed over a precipice would be more apt.

Maybe the solution is Mark Warner.

Democrats and Hillary

It’s very hard to disagree with this analysis:

Hillarykevinwolfap She doesn’t have a single memorable policy or legislative accomplishment to her name. Meanwhile, she remains behind the curve or downright incoherent on pressing issues such as the war in Iraq.
On the war, Clinton’s recent "I disagree with those who believe we should pull out, and I disagree with those who believe we should stay without end" seems little different from Kerry’s famous "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" line. The last thing we need is yet another Democrat afraid to stand on principle.
In person, Clinton is one of the warmest politicians I’ve ever met, but her advisers have stripped what personality she has, hiding it from the public. Some of that may be a product of her team’s legendary paranoia, somewhat understandable given the knives out for her. But what remains is a heartless, passionless machine, surrounded by the very people who ground down the activist base in the 1990s and have continued to hold the party’s grassroots in utter contempt. The operation is rudderless, without any sign of significant leadership. And to top it off, a sizable number of Democrats don’t think she could win a general election, anyway.

Now, imagine how rough the Republicans will be on her. I have two major issues with Senator Clinton. The first is that she is, willy-nilly, a deeply polarizing figure. After the deep red-blue divides of the past decade and a half, a candidacy that would simply take those wounds and rub salt in them cannot be good for the country. Secondly, the Bill problem is insurmountable. I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about what on earth you do with him if she wins the White House. We will be back to a co-presidency, with all its psycho-dramas and constitutional worries. (Why should anyone win a co-presidency through marriage?) I know she has a massive money advantage. But I don’t think she’d even stand a faint chance up against McCain. The theme of the next few years will be change. The Democrats shouldn’t offer up a warmed-over version of a bitter, divisive past.

(Photo: Kevin Wolf/AP.)

Republicans and Hookers

The administration is not dead. You can see that from the very skillful way it has massaged the news treatment of Porter Goss’s resignation. Sure, there’s a great deal of truth behind the Negroponte context, and the bureaucratic tensions and policy disputes that contributed to Goss’s Rovemanuelbalcecenetaap_1 demise. But even if this were the case to an even greater extent, does anyone believe the Bush administration would actually want to lose its CIA director so soon after appointing him, and when the president himself cannot give a good reason for it? Occam’s razor applies here. Goss’s connection to Foggo is just too close for comfort. Even if Goss is exonerated completely of any direct connections to the poker games, hookers, and corrupt deals that Randy Cunningham is now explaining to the authorities, his closeness to the people who are makes the scandal that much more visible and that much more damaging to the White House.

Why so damaging? Because the scandal involves old-fashioned corruption and bribery, it involves military-corporate deal-making, and it involves sex. If the party of evangelical fundamentalism is revealed as one in which several key members are quite comfortable being bribed by booze, gambling and prostitutes, it cannot exactly help wrench the depressed base out of growing surliness. This is how metastasizing scandals are successfully headed off. Cut your major losses early; create a persuasive cover-story to hide that fact; then hunker down and hope you can weather the tawdry details that will doubtless emerge. That’s still not good news for the White House. But it’s surely better than having your CIA director forced to resign in September in "Hookergate". Karl is refocused. And, of course, the MSM ate it up. At least, that’s my take.

(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

The Bingham Cup

Mark_steelers_1
Over the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, over forty rugby teams will converge on Randall’s Island in New York City to compete for the Bingham Cup, named after Mark Bingham, one of the heroes of United Flight 93. Bingham’s 36th birthday would be this May 23, if religious fanatics had not hijacked his plane and tried, in vain, to turn it into a missile against Washington, D.C. Why not honor his memory by going to the games? Full info is here. A brief history of the tournament can be found here. The website for the host team, Gotham Rugdy Football Club, is here. I suppose one way to commemorate a rugby player is to beat the crap out of each other on a muddy field for an hour and a half. There will be plenty of beer afterwards, as well.

(Photo of Mark, courtesy of San Francisco Fog, SF’s rugby team.)

Cole’s Motives

A reader writes:

I find it difficult to fathom how you could find it difficult to fathom why Cole would be "acting as a witting dissembler about the views of Ahmadinejad." Cole could not possibly be more perfectly representative of the very disease on the left the Euston Manifesto is designed to counteract. He dresses it up in academic language, but strip that away, and time and again you are left with the same tired bromides and the same tired conclusion: everything, everywhere, at all times, is the fault of Bush and co., and the fault of Israel. He is simply incapable of reaching any other conclusion and I defy you or anyone to prove me wrong about that. He is the very antithesis of a true intellectual: he starts from a conclusion (it’s Bush & Co./Israel’s fault!) and then ties all inconvenient and unignorable facts up into pretzels to make them fit. How is this not an accurate description of exactly what’s he’s just done in the present case?