Month: November 2008

The Starbursts Fade

Someone should tell Jonah:

NBC-WSJ GOP pollster Neil Newhouse did a post-election survey last night, and here’s what he found: Just 12% of those surveyed believed Palin should be the GOP’s new leader; instead 29% of voters said Romney, followed by 20% who say Huckabee. Among GOPers, it was Romney 33%, Huckabee 20% and Palin 18%.

From The Middle East: Hope

This is now; these things will fade. But celebrate now:

"No doubt that Obama will be better for the Americans and the whole world, and being elected after the horrible policy of George Bush is enough by itself. Whatever change he can bring to the world after this catastrophic polices would be great," – Hisham Abu Amer, 28, in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

"Today, reality in America has superseded fantasy. … Americans have struck a deadly blow to racism all over the world. Americans have regained themselves and have regained the American dream. The picture of the U.S. that was disfigured by the Republicans in the past eight years fell from the wall today. The picture of the America we had in our minds has taken its place," – Prominent Saudi columnist Dawood al-Shirian.

This helps us win the war.

The Right Reacts

From the losing side of the blogosphere. Ross:

I was disappointed in Barack Obama, but I also realize that his campaign wasn’t addressed to me: It was addressed to the constituents of a potential center-left majority, and that’s the majority he won tonight. Whether this majority holds together will depend on how he governs, but for the moment he has achieved something that no Democratic politician has achieved in a generation: He’s carved out a mandate to take America at least some distance in a leftward direction, and he has left the conservative opposition demoralized, disorganized, and arguably self-destructing.

John Hinderaker:

The Democrats will be solidly in control in Washington. The silver lining is that for the first time in quite a few years, they will not be able to duck responsibility. As soon as they actually begin governing in January, they will, inevitably, begin to alienate voters. Obama in particular will not remain a tabula rasa, all things to all people, much longer. Whether he turns out to be the hard leftist of his legislative years or the borderline Republican that he sometimes seemed on the campaign trail, he will disappoint some of his followers. And the next time a hurricane strikes, it will be the Democrats’ fault.

Larison:

My Culture11 article on what we can expect from the future President makes an argument that will be familiar to many regular readers of Eunomia, stressing as it does Obama’s aversion to political risk, his careful, deliberative approach and his preference for consensus and accommodation.  This is my concession to Obama supporters’ emphasis on the man’s temperament, which I think the article explains fairly well, albeit not necessarily in the most flattering way.  I set this view of Obama against the interpretations of those inclined to hope for or fear significant policy shifts in the years to come.  One point that I want to emphasize is this:

There is an assumption shared by most Obama backers that he will prove to be, in Colin Powell’s formulation, a “transformational” President, particularly with respect to foreign affairs and America’s reputation abroad. But the expected transformation in foreign attitudes seems based largely on temporary foreign enthusiasm for Obama’s candidacy that is itself a product of the misconception that Obama’s election will mark some significant or meaningful change in U.S. foreign policy

Michael Brendan Dougherty:

Conservatives should welcome tomorrow. President Obama and the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress will give Republicans and conservatives a choice: reform, or be scattered to the winds. Our next president will have overwhelming power, but it will be handed to him in incredibly unfavorable circumstances. Two wars, a terrible international reputation, potential economic contraction, a lawless border. Events will force him to be disciplined, or he will quickly lose his working majority in Congress.

David Donadio:

With this election, conservatives are finally going to begin having the arguments they haven’t been allowed to have in public.  They’re going to begin talking seriously about the direction of the country, figuring out where they went wrong, and planning how to get back into the majority.  That’ll make them stronger, and it’ll make the country stronger, too.

Oh, No, You Don’t

Camarriage1justinsullivangetty

Heart-breaking news this morning: a terribly close vote has stripped gay couples in California of their right to marry. The geographic balance shows that the inland parts of California voted for the Proposition and the coast and urban areas voted against it. Yes, it is heart-breaking: it is always hard to be in a tiny minority whose rights and dignity are removed by a majority. It’s a brutal rebuke to the state supreme court, and enshrinement in California’s constitution that gay couples are now second-class citizens and second class human beings. Massively funded by the Mormon church, a religious majority finally managed to put gay people in the back of the bus in the biggest state of the union. The refusal of Schwarzenegger to really oppose the measure and Obama’s luke-warm opposition didn’t help. And cruelly, a very hefty black turnout, as feared, was one of the factors that defeated us, according to the exit poll. Today this is one of the solaces to a hard right and a Republican party that sees gay people as the least real of Americans. But I realize I am not shattered. My own marriage exists and is real without the approval of others. One day soon, it will be accepted by a majority. And this initiative in California can and will be reversed, as California’s initiatives are much more fluid than those in other states; and the younger generation is overwhelmingly – 2 to 1 – in our favor. The tide of history is behind us; but we will have to work harder to educate people about our lives and loves and humanity. It cannot be denied that this feels like a punch in the gut. It is. I’m not going to pretend that the wound isn’t deep and personal, like an attack on my own family. It was meant to be. Many Obama supporters voted against our rights, and Obama himself opposes our full civil equality. The religious folk who believe that Jesus stood for the marginalization of minorities, and who believe that my equality somehow threatens their children, will, I pray, see how misguided they have become. And make no mistake: they won this by playing on very deep fears of gay people around kids. They knew the levers to pull.

But some perspective from someone who has fought this fight as long and as personally as anyone in this country. Twenty years ago, equality of gay couples was a mere idea. Forty years ago, it was a pipe-dream.

In the long arc of inclusion, we will miss our goals along the way from time to time. Today, we have full marriage rights in two states, we have many civil marriages in California that will remain in place as examples of who gay people really are, we have civil unions in many more places, and marriage rights in other parts of the world, as beacons to America. And this is a civil rights movement. It goes forward and it is forced back. The battle to end miscegenation took centuries. These are the rhythms of progress. Sometimes losing, and being shown to lose, shifts something in the minds of those watching as a small group is punished for daring to dream of full civil equality. In this battle we have already had far more defeats than victories. But each time, we have come closer to our goal. And in the hearts and minds and souls of so many, we have changed consciousness for ever.

California has full civil equality in law for gay couples. In time, full civil marriage equality – the only real measure of equality – will follow. And it will spread, state by state, more slowly now, and perhaps more organically from legislatures, rather than courts, which would not be the worst idea. And observing this backlash against us will reveal to many the cruelty of allowing majorities to take the rights of tiny minorities away.

If we had won this, this civil rights battle would be all but over. Now, it isn’t. So we get back to work, arguing, talking. speaking, debating, writing, blogging, and struggling to change more minds. The hope for equality can never be extinguished, however hard our opponents try. And in the unlikely history of America, there has never been anything false about hope.

(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty.)

The First Presidential Decision

Obama offers Rahm Emanuel Chief Of Staff:

Emanuel, a knowledgeable source tells ABC News, has not yet given his answer. The sharp-tongued, sharp-elbowed, keenly intelligent veteran of the Clinton White House is said to have ambitions to some day be Speaker of the House. But he also has a keen sense of "duty."

That’s some chief of staff. I think even Rahm’s friends will acknowledge that he is as abrasive as Obama is smooth, and, well, he knows how to be a total asshole when he has to be. But that’s often what you want in a chief of staff: an enforcer. Marc has more on the transition.

The Great Conservative Debate Begins Again

I really hope that my book, "The Conservative Soul", largely unread by most conservatives when it was published two years ago, gets a fair hearing. I’ve been warning of this looming GOP meltdown for quite a while, and while my book is not the first or last word on this, and while the word ‘conservatism’ includes many multitudes in which my esoteric Oakeshottianism is but one small current, I hope we can debate this with more openness and civility (on all sides) now. It matters. We need a healthy right to oppose Obama when necessary, and keep him honest, and challenge him intellectually. It would be good for him; and good for us. Even if this may well not happen at a popular or mass media level yet, the battle of ideas among those seriously committed to the conservative tradition (if not the oxymoronic conservative "movement" as it now is), is vital. Not since Buckley’s pioneering work in the 1950s has the intellectual challenge been so formidable – and fascinating.

So let’s try and be worthy of it. Starting now.