Klein debates Lieberman’s future:
The best course of action would be to remove him as chair of the Homeland Security Committee, but allow him to retain his seniority. That’s about as gracious as I think Democrats should be, and far more than Lieberman deserves.
That’s the partisan Republican spin on the dreadful McCain campaign. Krauthammer makes the case this morning:
The patient was fatally stricken on Sept. 15 — caught in the rubble when the roof fell in (at Lehman Brothers, according to the police report) — although he did linger until his final, rather quiet demise on Nov. 4. In the excitement and decisiveness of Barack Obama’s victory, we forget that in the first weeks of September, John McCain was actually ahead. Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.
The data do not support this thesis. McCain was behind for almost all of the campaign, apart from a brief post-convention bump. Here’s the Pollster graph for the period in question:
You will note that McCain’s slide began September 7, a week before Krauthammer claims; and Obama’s re-surge began September 9. Pollster’s polls are smoothed out, but the turning point was well before Lehman, and correlates with the disastrous Couric Gibson-Palin interview.
All along, the clear line for McCain was always down, and only the convention period – when people were still under the temporary illusion that Sarah Palin was a credible, rather than a farcical, candidate – gave McCain any hope.
Charles also argues that Palin hurt McCain solely because she undermined his "experience" card. This is part of the truth, but much more important was not that she was inexperienced but that she was barely at a high-school education level, unable to tell fact from fiction, and totally out of her depth. That called McCain’s judgment into question, and highlighted his impulsive, reckless decision-making style. When that jumpiness was confirmed by his campaign suspension (done, some are now saying, to distract from Palin’s Couric mess), and by his terrible debate performances, the cake was baked.
And on Palin, Krauthammer is also avoiding the issue:
The choice of Sarah Palin was also a mistake. I’m talking here about its political effects, not the sideshow psychodrama of feminist rage and elite loathing that had little to do with politics and everything to do with cultural prejudices, resentments and affectations.
Dismay at Palin was not a function of enraged feminists and "elite" loathing. It was a function of people being shocked by McCain’s total indifference to ability, contempt for national security, and cynical sexism in believing that somehow women, missing Clinton, would vote for someone else with the right gender wiring. If Krauthammer and Kristol cannot recognize that their bet on Palin was based on nothing, that their cynical campaign hood-ornament move was too cynical for a country seriously grappling with a multiple crises, then they will not understand why their side lost so badly.
Speculation about what will replace the execrable, incoherent column that Bill Kristol has been phoning in to the paper he despises is buzzing around the Internets. Our own Ross Douthat is leading in one online poll. Don’t go!
That’s the message Obama staffers are sending Ambers about the rationale behind the pick of Rahm. It’s about getting things done and having someone with real Congressional clout to manage Capitol Hill. I don’t see it as an ideological pick. But then I’ve never believed that Obama is about ideology as such. Emanuel is as much a sign of governing seriousness as Palin was the opposite for McCain.
John Cole on the GOP circular firing squad:
If they were smart, they would regroup, and decide what they stand for and present it to the American people. Instead, I suspect we will get several more months of infighting over tactics and appearances, and more purges of those who wish to engage in a debate over the party’s direction.
It isn’t just that many of the folks leading the purge disagree with George Will and Peggy Noonan and Daniel Larison and Sullivan and Ron Paul about the direction of the future GOP- they want them destroyed for suggesting there needs to be a debate. That is how dead the party is, and Henke is right. They need some time in the wilderness, to figure out who they are and what they believe in and why and how it will be better for the country.
Instead, I suspect we will see Palin pom poms and purity purges, which is all the more humorous given the defections from prominent conservatives to Obama, they are already whittled down to the true belivers. It would be funny if our nation’s currrent two-party system did not require a competent opposition party.
David Frum charts a new GOP course:
College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. There are more and more college-educated voters.
So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? This will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. It will involve even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarising on social issues.
That’s a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin – but the only hope for a Republican recovery.
Nikki Eddy and her girlfriend Dawn Miller comfort each other during a Proposition 8 opposition rally at the San Diego Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center November 5, 2008 in San Diego, California. Proposition 8, which bans same sex marriage, passed in yesterday’s California election. By Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images.
Eugene Volokh differs from the California attorney general in thinking that existing marriages will be saved. 18,000 couples may therefore be divorced soon by their fellow Californians. One reader got a robocall from Hugh Hewitt, urging that gay married couples be stripped of protections in their relationships.
I’m happy to say that Proposition 2 passed, providing minimal humane protections for pigs, chickens and other farm animals. How odd for people to restrict cruelty for animals and simultaneously inflict it on some humans.
…there will come a time, not immediately but sometime, when flesh needs to be put on those rhetorical bones. A time when promises must be followed by action. A time for cheques to be cashed. And that means action on Guantanamo Bay and Extraordinary Rendition.
Understandably, we haven’t heard much about those sort of things on the campaign trail. Certainly, there’s not much mention of these issues on Obama’s website. Equally understandably, one appreciates the domestic political concerns that make any immediate action on these matters unlikely. To put it mildly, it’s not a good idea to begin your presidency with actions that can, however absurdly, be misinterpreted as being "soft on terrorists".
Nonetheless, at some point something needs to be done. The Iraq War was, for sure, unpopular across much of the world, but its Guantanamo and rendition and secret CIA prisons around the world that have done far more damage to the United States’ reputation. And, I’m afraid, rightly so…
If there’s been no announcement on the future of Guantanamo and rendition by, say, this time next year then, Washington, we’re going to have a problem…
I don’t agree that Obama can wait nearly a year before doing something about torture.
A reader writes:
I’m sorry, I absolutely flat-out refuse to believe that she didn’t know Africa was not a country:
- Grade-school kids know that Africa is a continent;
- She has a frickin’ degree in journalism;
- Before she was selected as veep candidate, I understood numerous people met her (from outside Alaska) and came away impressed;
- She gives a decent speech, and fared reasonably well against Biden, reputed foreign-affairs expert (explain that!);
- There’s no way she could have got as far as she did and been that misinformed.
So why has this anecdote in particular not been denied? Look: you think they keep a veep from a press conference because that’s good for a campaign? You think they refuse to allow their veep to go on Meet The Press because she’s too charismatic? This was the craziest decision in the history of modern American politics. In a sane world, Palin would be a plaintiff on Judge Judy – and not potentially vice-president of the United States. And Judge Judy would have been a lot better at sussing her out than the national press corps.
I think the Kristol Meth-heads still do not understand quite how deep the con was. But they will at some point.
The Dish 