Month: November 2008

He was quite absent in the Corner during the election, presumably because he was too honest to tell the requisite lies about the Palin farce. He’s back now, and horrified, of course, that Obama is president. But it has to be a land speed Godwin’s law record for someone to compare a president-elect, only days after the election, with both Hitler and Stalin. I do think that comparing Obama’s proposals for voluntary service to the forced labor marches in building the White Sea-Baltic canal by Stalin is absurd. But it is also deeply insulting to the actual victims of Stalinism.

At no point, to my best recollection, did Derbyshire protest when the Bush administration actually did use Communist torture techniques against incarcerated terror suspects. But maybe his revulsion at the methods of totalitarians will shortly be revived now that there’s a black man in the White House.

By illustrator Patrick Moberg.

(Hat tip: Beutler)

That "authentic" moose-killer certainly had some fancy tastes:

The campaign was charged for silk boxer shorts, spray tanners and 13 suitcases to carry all the designer clothes, according to two GOP insiders.

"The shopping continued after the convention in Minneapolis, it continued all around the country," one source said. "She was still receiving shipments of custom-designed underpinnings up to her ‘Saturday Night Live‘ performance" in October. Sources said expenses were put on the personal credit cards of low-level Palin staffers and discovered when they asked party officials for reimbursement.

Silk boxer shorts? For Todd? Remember also that she denied all of this when asked. So add more pathological lying to the bizarre self-enrichment. Now you really still believe all the stories she has told?

Patrick Ruffini, among others, has launched a 10-point action plan for the next RNC Chairman:

… the best part? You can vote on key tenets of the plan, submit your own, and vote them up in a Digg-like process. The best user generated ideas may be included in future releases of the plan. Participate in this platform by visiting Ideas.RebuildTheParty.com and registering.

Scott Horton has more detail on the role of Bill Kristol in blowing up the McCain campaign both before and after the disastrous selection of Sarah Palin. From a McCain adviser:

“In the last six weeks there was a remarkable echo. You could listen to arguments made by folks inside of the campaign who were close to Bill Kristol and then open up the New York Times and read them in Kristol’s columns. It was ‘set Sarah free,’ coupled with an agenda designed to appeal to the religious right and the more raucous elements of the party.

They got their way often enough, and we started noticing that at many of the Palin functions it was non-stop ‘Sarah, Sarah,’ while John McCain all but vanished. Were they trying to get McCain elected in 2008, or to help Palin on the way to the Republican nomination in 2012? You can’t get yourself into a situation in which anyone can credibly ask that question.”

The bottom line?

 

What emerges on a close reading is this: Palin and those closest to her inside the campaign were eager to wage a Lee Atwater-style campaign designed to demonize Barack Obama, with Palin as the figure leading the charge. McCain was resisting this push or at least attempting to keep it within tight boundaries. Kristol campaigned against the McCain strategy, boosting Palin.

Noam Scheiber makes the case that Rahm was Obama’s only plausible pick.

They’re social liberals, anyway. Ross considers the next Republican coalition:

A party that restores its reputation for competence and policy seriousness, as the Republicans desperately need to do, will win back voters across the income and educational spectrum, no matter what specific positions it takes. But insofar as there’s a choice to be made, I think building a coalition of social conservatives and social moderates from the middle of the income and education distribution makes much more political sense than trying to hold together a coalition of social conservatives from the middle of the distribution and social liberals from the upper end.

Joe the Plumber and Joe the Office-Park Employee make much more plausible political bedfellows than Joe the Plumber and Joseph the Hedge Fund Guy. Moreover, I think a conservatism that’s primarily oriented around the interests of the first pair of Joes is the better choice for America as well – because these are voters who face the most significant socioeconomic challenges in the current landscape, and who most deserve a government, and a right-of-center politics, that looks out for their interests.

I disagree. I don’t think political programs should emerge from the shape of political coalitions. But I’m too tired to debate this now, and we’ll have plenty of time for this debate in the coming months and years as the dust settles from the current GOP implosion.

"Does any reasonable person not believe that gays and lesbians deserve respect and equality? Not today’s Republican Party. Expert translators from Arabic have been dismissed for being gay. And applicants for the post of certified public accountants in the Iraq Green Zone have been asked about their view of Roe v. Wade," – Jeffrey Hart, one of the founders of the conservative movement.

Hart was removed from the masthead of National Review a little while ago.

Wilkinson and Manzi disagree about the importance of inequality. Here’s Manzi’s bottom line:

Why does a person with whom I agree about so much find inequality to be much less troubling than I do? I’ve thought a lot about this, and I believe that ultimately it’s because I see the world as a much more dangerous and violent place than Will does. I think that living in an extended, law-bound, commercial society is deeply unnatural, and the product of many generations of work. Aspects of human nature are an acid that constantly undermines its foundations. Hordes of violent men are always outside the city gates ready to sack it, and those inside always threaten to turn into a mob and destroy it from within. One of many bulwarks against these threats is social cohesion, which is undermined by extreme inequality.

I’m with Manzi. Aristotle convinced me of this a long time ago. I’d just prefer to tackle inequality by investing in education rather than skewing tax rates.

St, Petersburg, Russia, 9.30 am.