Month: December 2006

The Romney candidacy is staggering under the weight of its own contradictions. Ryan Lizza explores Romney’s past and one activist’s attempt to broadcast it to the world. Money quote:

Camenker reminds his fellow conservatives that Romney appointed numerous openly gay men and women, including the state employee responsible for adding a box to driver’s license renewal forms to indicate whether the applicant’s sex has changed. He points out, with links to many interesting pictures, that the governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth–the same government body whose fisting seminars so rankled Camenker back in 2000–organized a "Youth Pride Day" and "Transgender Proms." No detail escapes Camenker’s attention. He notes that Romney’s Department of Education distributed a publication, The Little Black Book: Queer in the 21st Century, that includes the following practical information: "There is little risk of STD infection and no risk of HIV infection from playing with pee."

Spin that, K-Lo. 

That’s Stephen Bainbridge’s view of the politics sketched in "The Conservative Soul." Sounds a lot like Burke.

Today is the anniversary that Ronald Reagan was declared president by the electoral college in 1980. So let me annoy my liberal readers with a YouTube tribute to a man I still revere:

What did I start? Beliefnet takes a peep under the vestments of many faiths here.

Benedict XVI keeps surprising. We are seeing, as John Allen notes, the greening of institutional Christianity.

"Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mom and she’s going to love this child a lot," – closet-tolerant, president George W. Bush. And Heather too, I might add.

Gerard Baker is surely right about the broad nature of the president’s likely decision:

More even than a president normally is, Mr Bush is alone with this decision. He can choose to manage the messy consequences of his Iraq gamble, cut his and the world’s losses and wind it down. But if he does that he knows for sure his presidency will be judged a colossal failure. His vision of democracy in the Middle East will be a bloody shambles.

He is more likely to think, I suspect, as he reflects alone in the next few weeks, that he still has a chance to change that verdict — to bring all that America’s might can muster and give it one final, serious, push for success. It is, surely, at least, what he should do.

Somehow, however, I don’t think rearranging the troops with a temporary surge will ever amount to "all that America’s might can muster." And there’s no evidence that the president is attempting anything much more ambitious. As I said before: if he adds 50,000 more troops, we’ll know he’s serious. Short of that, it’s all spin – paid for by others’ lives.

(Photo: Brooks Kraft/Corbis for Time.)

Nashville, Tennessee, 7.20 am.

Can we all just leave the kids alone? Ugh. The World’s Least Cool 8-Year-old:

A reader writes:

Thanks for the pointer to Rich Lowry at the Corner.

Lowry compares Romney’s flip-flops to the movements of the Bush campaign in 1999/2000. But I think things have changed since then, and it is this change that I think is the real back story that deserves more attention.

In 1999/2000, Bush did not have to say much about or defend his religion. He ran a little bit on faith-based initiatives, but mostly spent his campaign reaching out for "wider appeal to the party and the electorate." Mostly, the Christianists stood by like a standard-issue politician’s wife: smiling at his side when he needed them, out working the neighborhoods where they had influence, and generally following along when he made guarded statements (remember how he said he would have no "pro-life litmus test"?). He did not need to pander to them, because they mostly already believed he was their man. Once he got through the dirty business of campaigning, he would be coming home to them.

Contrast that with the beginnings of this election cycle, where it is clear the religious right feels it was mostly betrayed over the last six years. Indeed, while the media polling says the Republican’s 06 loss resulted from losing the middle, the Christian right blames politicians for not following through on their promises and loosing the faith-based voters.

Now, it’s no longer possible for a Republican candidate to make guarded statements with a wink and a nod. The Christianists are demanding ideological purity from "their" candidate, which is why the pre-08 Republican contenders (McCain, et al) are forced into this groveling posture.

So the question becomes, how much power do the Christianists really have? They believe they have enough power not only to win the nomination but the general election too. If the movements by all these early candidates are any indication, I’m almost worried they’re right.