Month: July 2008

Victor Davis Hanson is flummoxed by elite support for Obama:

To sum up, Obama offers a reassuring sense of self-image: one can still maintain all the current mechanisms one is accustomed to in ensuring privilege, but visible support for Obama offers a sense of atonement and alleviation of guilt at rather modest cost…Somehow an Obama sticker, sign on the lawn, or a lapel button has become the equivalent of a crucifix around the neck of a prosperous 16th-century burgher: easy fides of inner good and a valuable totem in reconciling the apparent irreconcilable.

Hilzoy counters. It may be that, despite tax hikes, many simply think he’d be a better president – temperamentally, diplomatically, and in terms of overcoming some of the polarization that Bush and Rove fomented for their own purposes.
 

Christopher Beam lists Obama’s de-calibrated positions. I’ve long suspected that Obama would disappoint many of his supporters and pleasantly surprise some of his opponents. I don’t see anything more than prudent post-primary adjustment.

A hero of the right – and a hero to me too – in opposing affirmative action, Ward Connerly, is one of those few anti-discrimination Republicans who sees gay people as real citizens. Along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Republican appointed justices on California’s Supreme Court, he therefore opposes the November initiative to remove marriage licenses from thousands of California’s gay couples:

“For anyone to say that this is an issue for people who are gay and that this isn’t about civil rights is sadly mistaken. If you really believe in freedom and limited government, to be intellectually consistent and honest you have to oppose efforts of the majority to impose their will on people.”

I’ve long since seen opposition to affirmative action, support for a flat tax and marriage equality as lynchpins of limited government equal-rights conservatism. I still believe it’s the future for the conservative movement – and far more compatible with Goldwater’s legacy than the moralizing, Christianist authoritarianism of the current crew.

Obama ahead by five in Montana? The generational shift is remarkable:

Against McCain, Obama leads among voters under 50, including a twenty-seven point lead among voters under 30. McCain leads among those over 50.

(The L-Word refers to "landslide.")

And the punchline is: they’re talking about his hair. I guess I’ll never get the cover-treatment, will I?

Fred Kaplan thinks that the Clark McCain conflict is rooted in an old military rivalry:  "Clark was an Army infantry commander during the Vietnam War while McCain was a Navy aviator. As a rule, the grunts hated the flyboys." I do think that there’s something else going on with some military types not really liking McCain. If he were a little less crude in advertizing his own military experience – some things really do speak for themselves – he might reduce some of the crankiness.

ABC reports that the president may shut down Guantanamo because of the recent Supreme Court ruling:

Bush has not decided whether he will announce that GTMO should be closed, sources say. But at the very least, sources say, he will soon announce a host of these legal and policy changes that will force Congress to come up with a solution–including where to imprison those detainees if GTMO does, in fact, shut its doors.

Timothy Noah notes that McCain is having a hard time getting money from conservative fat cats:

In the end, the great majority of Bush’s Pioneers and Rangers will probably donate money to McCain because they have nowhere else to go. But the longer they make McCain wait, the more McCain will have to ingratiate them by dancing further and further to the right, which is exactly what he’s been doing. In that sense, McCain isn’t a maverick at all. By playing hard-to-get, the corporate ruling class has taken McCain hostage. The ransom won’t be small.

I guess Tim is referring to potential clashes between a president McCain and some corporate leaders. Somehow, I don’t think McCain can be bought off.

Greenwald is not letting go and, as often, he has a point:

In the past, Obama has opposed the type of warrantless eavesdropping which those PAA orders authorize. He’s repeatedly said that the FISA court works and there’s no need to authorize eavesdropping without individual warrants. None of that can be reconciled with his current claim that he supports this FISA "compromise" because National Security requires that those PAA orders not expire and that there be massive changes to FISA. It’s just as simple as that.

“We are not talking about 50 years, 25 years or 10 years; we are negotiating about one or two years, so this is not going to be another colonization of Iraq,” – Hoshyar Zebari, Foreign Minister, Iraq.