Month: January 2007

The Massachusetts flip-flopper also threw a fundraiser for a Democratic candidate in 1992. It was for an open Senate seat. Money quote:

A Romney spokesman, Kevin Madden, confirmed that the fundraiser had occured but dismissed its significance. "Doug Anderson is a close personal friend of Mitt Romney," Madden told us. Madden added that "sometimes friendship qualifies politics, and that was the case with Doug Anderson and Mitt Romney in 1992."

The fundraiser is significant because it shows that Romney actively sought to help a Democrat take an open Senate seat from the GOP. Romney has already been heavily criticized by conservatives who think his socially liberal views in the early 1990s — he migrated from a pro-choice position to a pro-life one several years later, and underwent a similar conversion on gay rights — are a sign that he would be an unreliable ally in the White House. Romney has aggressively been moving to explain his earlier views in an effort to convince conservatives they can trust him.

In many ways, I find Romney an appealing, moderate Republican: competent, reformist, articulate. And then he tried to run as Hewitt-theocon.

Nightline only digs him in deeper:

A reader insists:

Hear me out on this. They’re still using Rove’s game plan, which is: The religious base is worth 30 percent of the vote. You carry some libertarians and tribal Republicans and you’re home free.  Whoever gets the GOP nod MUST have this 30 percent.

So who can do it? McCain?  No way. They hate him, and know that, secretly, he hates them. Dobson has already nixed him. Romney? Anyone who thinks a candidate whose core religious text is subtitled ‘Another Gospel of Jesus Christ’ hasn’t been living in this country these last seven years. Rudy? Ditto. Divorced. Gay rights supporter.  No way. Brownback? He’ll get most of the 30% but has no crossover appeal. Hagel? The base will never forgive him for his apostasy on the war.

So who can do it? JEB. And they’ll run it just like Clinton did in ’92. They’ll wait until the last possible moment and then step into the vacuum created by the lack of appeal in the above roster. The Bush name won’t help him, but he’s got a reputation for being level-headed, he’s certainly competent, and he has crossover appeal. Waiting will mitigate talk about "Bush Dynasty" etc.. I’m a Democrat, can’t stand this administration, but have to say that Jeb could be a winner for the GOP in ’08. He just gave that speech you posted in which he talked about going back to core conservative principles. In short, he distanced himself from his bro.

Brownback has some cross-over appeal. Anti-war, big government Christianism has a real constituency. And the press will eat up his desire to spend government money on the poor, sick and needy. But this reader makes me pause.

The blogalogue continues. Here’s part of the latest from Mr Harris:

I remain open to evidence and argument on this and all other fronts. In fact, I could easily imagine a scenario that would persuade me of the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, and the utter sanctity of the blessed Virgin. Granted, this communication would have to be of the crass "signs and wonders" variety, for I am a very doubting Thomas, but there is no question that my mind could be fundamentally changed, even in this email exchange. If, for instance, your "Imaginary Friend" gave you some highly specific information that you could not have obtained by any other means, I would take this as powerful evidence in favor of your point of view.

To increase my vulnerability to this line of attack, I have just written a 30-digit number on a scrap of paper and hidden it in my office. If God tells you (or any of our readers) what this number is, I will be appropriately astounded and will publicize the results of this experiment to the limit of my abilities. It is, of course, true that your success would be open to a variety of interpretations-perhaps such a miracle says nothing about the existence of God but demonstrates that clairvoyance is an actual power of the human mind and that you possess it in spades. Or perhaps it proves that Satan exists, and he is similarly endowed. Of course, we should expect some skeptical readers to accuse us both of fraud. Let us cross these bridges if we ever come to them. The point, of course, is that if God exists, it would be trivially easy for Him to blow my mind. (Hint to the Creator: I’m thinking of an even number, and it’s not 927459757074561008328610835528).

Read the whole thing here. Red the whole blogalogue here. I have to do some work on the transition to the Atlantic, but I hope to respond within a day.

Another take:

More here.

A reader rightly corrects me:

I only thought to look back at your archives because I was reading your blog every day in 2002, 2003 and 2004. My sense was that you ended 2003 thinking things were tough but headed in the right direction, and soured on the war (as executed, if not in theory) in late winter/early spring of 2004. I can pinpoint the time when I went from supporting the war, to being doubtful, to wishing we’d never started it. It was the winter and early spring of 2004, when I made my first trip to Iraq.

I think there may soon be a temptation, if there isn’t one already, for ex-hawks to fight over who turned against the war too soon, who turned against it too late, who turned against it for bad reasons, etc. I think we’d be much better off putting that aside and focusing on what we can do to save lives in Iraq, and what we can do to make sure we don’t make a mistake remotely like this again in our lifetimes.

Agreed. My own doubts about force levels, expressed soon after the invasion, didn’t really morph into "getting off the bus" until the end of 2003, beginning of 2004. But you can raid the archives and see the shift for yourself.

A classic YouTube of Nixon on Soviet television in full detente mode in 1972.

Some things the left won’t tell you:

Current tax revenues of 18.4% of GDP are now above the historical average.

The 2006 tax revenues of $2,407 billion were $47 billion above the level projected by CBO before the 2003 tax cuts, and just $58 billion below the level projected by CBO in 2000, before the 2001 tax cuts.

Capitals gains tax revenues have more than doubled to $103 billion since the 2003 capital gains tax cuts.

We don’t need tax hikes; we need spending cuts, especially on middle class entitlements, corporate welfare, and agricultural subsidies.

Glenn Greenwald aggressively takes on my book – and the premise behind it. I don’t have time to respond now, but will later. I’m grateful for the seriousness and care with which Greenwald has tackled the book’s argument, however.

Stacy Schiff (TimesDelete) gets it right about the Cheney-Blitzer interview:

What the vice president’s nonresponse did deliver was a very cogent message: the rules apply to you, but not to us. It’s our privacy, your patriotism; our delusion, your sacrifice; our tax cuts, your kids. After all, as Mr. Cheney so tellingly said of his Republican critics, "I’m the vice president, and they’re not." The part for which some of us have no stomach is the sense of entitlement.