Month: August 2008

Chimps on ice!

Levin wonders if Obama is "over-learning the Swift Boat lesson with their reaction to the Corsi book." Crowley thinks not, while Jonathan Martin suggests the 41 page rebuttal the Obama campaign has issued should have a subtitle: "We Are Not John Kerry’s Campaign."
 

This reminds me of the Obama-Clinton popular vote arguments:

It’s interesting to look at the official Beijing Olympics medal-count site, which like all other media I’ve seen in China ranks countries’ performance according to how many gold medals they have won. Right at this moment, it shows China as #1 with 22 golds, vs 14 for the runner up, the United States. Then look at the main US Olympic Committee/NBC medal-count site, which as of right now shows the US as #1 with 43 total medals, vs 36 for #2 China.  We’re all above average!

"Corsi’s approach to politics is both destructive and self-destructive. If Senator Obama loses, he should lose on the merits: his record in public life and his political philosophy. And while it’s legitimate to take into account Obama’s past associations with people like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright -especially for someone like Obama, about whom relatively little is known- it’s wrong and reckless to throw out unsubstantiated charges and smears against Senator Obama.

Conservatism has been an intellectual home to people like Burke and Buckley. The GOP is the party that gave us Lincoln and Reagan. It seems to me that its leaders ought to make it clear that they find what Dr. Corsi is doing to be both wrong and repellent. To have their movement and their party associated with such a figure would be a terrible thing and it will only help the cause of those who hold both the GOP and the conservative movement in contempt," – Peter Wehner.

But JPod exults here. And sees the Corsi book’s success as a resurgence in the "conservative book market." It was created by Mary Matalin, a person in very good standing with the GOP, who gave her boss’s daughter, Mary Cheney, a $500,000 advance for a book only five people read. The sad truth is: this kind of crap is the right’s central critique of Obama and no one in the Republican hierarchy will disown it. This is Peter’s party. It’s admirable that he’s saying what he’s saying, but he surely must know the slime machine he is riding.

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"What worries me is that McCain’s eagerness for more conflict in the world – pushing Russia and China into a corner – is not in the best interests of the United States. It may be moral; it may be exciting; it may provide the great national purpose McCain thinks we all need to feel. But it ignores the hard trade-offs involved, and perpetuates the whole with-us-or-against us bluster of the last eight years. We need more of that? More enemies? Less diplomacy? More conflict?
Count me out."

I’m glad you added the last sentence, but I wish more people would stop making touchy-feely excuses for John McCain because they used to support him. I am a former McCain 2000 supporter. He was a personal hero. I bought his book for my father for father’s day while I was in high school. But we need to stop with the madness. The rhetoric coming out of the McCain campaign (and the Republican Party by default) on this issue is seriously endangering the national well-being. This is neither moral, nor exciting, nor providing a great national purpose.

Over the past 8 years, this country has repeatedly stumbled because of the fantasyland of a cowboy from Texas who was easily mislead and influenced by a group of overly partisan warmongering hacks.  We’ve become embroiled in an extra war that only serves to distract us from the one we really should be fighting (see: Iraq), our economy is in the toilet (see: massive fiscal mismanagement of a surplus), our emergency preparation is miserable (see: Katrina), and our infrastructure (the same infrastructure that allowed for our exceptional prosperity for the past century) is badly in need of renewal and renovation (see: bridges in Minnesota, etc).

Here’s what would be moral – having a plan to fix all those problems, and remembering that other countries have a responsibility to defend themselves and take care of their own international issues at some point.  I seem to remember during the 2000 campaign that Republicans were consistently talking about us avoiding "policing the world."  Is John McCain running to be President of the United States, or global sherriff?  Let’s try a little old school realism for once: when our interests are at stake (and those of our real allies), we need to intervene.  Otherwise, we push for peace and offer discussion and incentives, not the escalation of conflict with an already overextended armed forces.  We’re not all Georgians.  Nor are we Russians.  We should be a neutral party in a complicated conflict who wishes to preserve peace.

You do the same half-hearted defense with regard to McCain’s views on abortion and homosexuality.  "So placing the position on gay rights on a higher level than abortion rights can only be explained by bigotry, it seems to me. Or, in McCain’s case, a perceived need to cater to bigotry."  Influential people excuse him for bigotry because in the past he has been thought of as a nice guy. Those statements are those of a bigot.  Take them at face value. 

As a whole, I think it’s important for all of us to stop reading emotions that we want to see into the statements that we hear.   McCain wants to win the election, and he’s shown since he lost in 2000 that he’s willing to compromise his own values entirely for the sake of cozying up to the neo/theocons. He traded his "maverick" credibility in a long time ago, and we should all stop trying to excuse his boorish behavior.

Stockholm, Sweden, 10 am.

Nice catch from Ross.

JPod gives it his best shot:

What are the risks? First, there is the disaffection of pro-lifers and other social conservatives, who don’t like Lieberman’s record. That can be dealt with in part by reminding people that Lieberman was an ally of social conservatives on issues of family and morality and the crudity of popular culture in the 1990s. But that will not be enough. Lieberman will have to pledge not to seek the presidency, and to make the point that he is a man of his word. Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that the Lieberman choice all but requires McCain himself to pledge he will serve only one term, because the goal of his presidency will be to right the ship of state and change the atmosphere in Washington, and then get out of town.

Here’s how JPod wants to right the ship of state:

Those goals are first, constructing a post-Bush foreign policy that aims to solidify the gains in Iraq and face down the threats posed by Iran’s march forward and (the new entry) Russia’s effort to reconstitute some kind of empire.

"Solidify the gains in Iraq" means, I presume, entrenching the occupation with permanent bases. So: one neocon war to continue; two new ones to begin. And with the world in an epochal conflict, you think McCain would leave the stage voluntarily? He lives for that kind of global conflict.

The main problem with Lieberman, by the way, is not that he belongs to another party. Both he and McCain belong to the war party. It’s that Lieberman would bring out the Democratic base more powerfully than he would bring out the Republican base.

McCain recycles the celebrity charge, sans Paris, and removes his lie about Obama’s raising taxes on people earning $42,000 a year (while never acknowledging that it was a lie in the first place). But the personal demonization of Obama, and raising fears about his somehow being responsible for raising gas prices are pure demagoguery. The ad is particularly nauseating when you remember how the Rove GOP used to attack McCain for his ertwhile fiscal conservatism (since abandoned). McCain has become – and how swiftly – what he once derided.

I fear it will work, however. Since Obama’s hubris in Berlin, he has lost almost every cycle of this campaign, and lost all of them quite badly. I’m not sure his campaign gets how far they have sunk, and how ineffectual and passive Obama has seemed these past few weeks. The total capitulation to the Clintons at the convention is particularly lame:

Is he fighting back the clever way?

Over the past week, we’ve gotten our hands on a number of negative TV ads Obama’s been running against McCain in key states like Ohio and Michigan. This is in addition to the tough spot, uncovered by Politico, that Obama’s airing in Indiana. Clearly, the Obama campaign isn’t interested in telling the media about every single McCain attack ad they’re running. Perhaps this is because Obama’s brand can’t afford to be tarnished too much if he’s seen as constantly running negative TV ads. So the campaign simply puts them on the air in key markets, doesn’t tell the press about them, and layers those ads with positive ones being run nationally during the Olympics.

Also, by not releasing to the media, it forces the McCain camp to wait a day or two before they see the ad. McCain’s camp is much more comfortable unveiling their negative ads, perhaps because they want the free press that comes with them. But make no mistake, Obama’s running plenty of negative TV ads, particularly in the industrial Midwestern states. In fact, one of Obama’s biggest candidate strengths — which doesn’t get the attention it deserves — is that he plays political hardball as well as his opponents; he just sometimes does it under the radar.