Month: May 2009

The Tao Of Robert Stacy McCain

Freddie DeBoer analyzes the Malkinyest of Malkin Award winners:

[This is] the central contradiction of the movement conservative pundit, men who regularly mock nerdy philosophizers when they are, in fact, nerdy philosophizers. Robert Stacey McCain isn’t, actually, some character from a Bruce Springsteen video. He’s a writer and thinker, a guy who pals around at Washington magazine parties and think tank frou-fras. He is most assuredly not one of the Ordinary Americans he is here glamorizing. This was the glaring idiocy of the Sarah Palin boosters within the conservative intelligentsia from last year, people decrying liberal elitists when in every material way, they themselves resembled those liberal elitists far more than they resembled what they believed Palin represented. It takes a special lack of self-knowledge to write an insidery, navel-gazing post about how much you hate navel-gazing insiders, but then, it takes a special lack of self-knowledge to regularly decry intellectualism underneath a quote from Arthur Koestler.

Dreher has much more:

If you have to descend to the level of trash-talking vulgarian to prove your bona fides with the Common Man, then fine, in the aristocracy of character, I'll keep working toward being an elitist. It is hard to imagine the conservatives I admire the most, and wish to emulate — men like Wendell Berry and Russell Kirk — being very impressed with Mark Levin's crude shtick.

I draw the line at urging the mass-murder of innocents myself.

Sotomayor And Executive Power

To my mind, this is the most significant issue for the court, especially given the radicalism of Roberts and Alito on presidential supremacy. Charlie Savage did an article yesterday about potential nominees' views on executive authority. This is his only mention of Obama's pick:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit — has never worked in the federal executive branch and sits on a court that hears few executive power cases.

The Dish will take its time trying to understand Sotomayor's judicial record.

Moore Award Nominee

"In the worst case, this decision could become the catalyst for a new round of large-scale domestic terrorism from the right. As I've noted, everything I'm seeing points to a subculture that is gearing up for this kind of heroic last stand in defense of a lost cause. And this time, it's not going to be just a few white supremacist/militia/patriot/anti-choice wackos. The new crop of right wing militants is better connected, better trained, better armed, and absolutely determined to go down fighting. And, as the SPLC keeps telling us, there may considerably more people motivated to support them than there have been in the past. It’s not unthinkable that between 15 and 20% of the country could be inclined to start — or at least support — a civil war over this," – Sara Robinson.

Bush The Lefty And The Toxic Rump

Larison notes a disconnect:

Ironically, the political center of the GOP is significantly farther to the left today than it was thirty years ago, in keeping with general shifts in popular opinion and cultural changes, but there are far more people inside the party who claim to be conservatives than was the case just 12 years ago. This has created the bizarre disconnect between those inside and those outside the party, as those inside see accurately that there has been no “move to the right” by the GOP in the last decade (on the contrary, there has been a move in the opposite direction), but those outside see for the most part the strong identification between Republicans and conservatives, and the largely unflinching support the latter give to the party in good times and bad, and they conclude that the GOP is conservative and becoming more so all the time.

This perception will tend to be strongest among the least informed and therefore least ideological voters, and it will not matter that this perception is based in a manipulative electoral strategy that has little policy substance behind it (see Palin, Sarah). They then look at the outcomes of Republican governance, which marginal critics have been correctly lambasting for years or decades as un-conservative or even anti-conservative by more traditional definitions, and conclude that all these people running around calling themselves conservatives should not be trusted with power.

Vive La Resistance

Radley Balko wants Libertarians to stop aiding and abetting Michael Savage:

Michael Savage is a raving bigot. He regularly uses phrases like “turd-world countries” and “ghetto slime.” He once wished rape on a group of high school girls who make trips into San Francisco to feed the homeless. He’s a blood-thirsty warmonger, and a feverish culture warrior. He once said on the air that, “”When I hear someone’s in the civil rights business, I oil up my AR-15!” On social issues, he’s far to the right of just about every elected Republican official I can think of. He has wished AIDS and death on homosexuals. He regularly denigrates drug users. He is virulently anti-immigration. In short, there’s nothing remotely libertarian about him.

Pro Lifers For Roe

Nate Silver parses some abortion polls:

I don't think Democrats ought to take for granted that public opinion is etched in stone on the abortion choice issue. That increasing numbers of young people, for instance, are apparently taking a pro-life, but pro-gay marriage position suggests that terms on which this issue was debated among Baby Boomers may not resonate in the same ways with Gen Y'ers, whose opinions may be more malleable.

The more obvious and salient fact, however, as we are about to begin the debate over President Obama's Supreme Court pick, is that support for Roe v Wade has always been higher than support for either the "pro-choice" or the legal abortion positions in the abstract, and remains that way today. Republicans are probably in error if they think they can gain ground with the public by vigorously opposing Obama's Supreme Court pick for this reason.

Maybe Roe is a symbol of a settlement that most people don't want disturbed. That's its only merit so far as I can see. My own view is that the next generation simply believes that gay people are human beings and deserve respect and equality, and that women should retain the right to abortion in the first trimester, but should use that right to choose life. That's roughly where I am. It's not a position you are allowed to hold in the current Republican party. And that's a serious, serious problem if they ever want to become a majority in the future.

Trust Him?

Andrew Sprung compares Bush to Obama:

Obama's "trust me" is different in kind from Bush's. Bush meant "trust my gut," trust my good-faith effort to keep America safe, trust me not to abuse an authority that acknowledges no Constitutional bounds whenever a threat to national security can be invoked. Obama's trust me means "trust the process as I lead you through it."

That leaves ample space, of course, to oppose his policies on the merits. I for one am not convinced that we should accord the government the power to detain persons without trial. But I would be disposed to listen assuming Obama makes the case in more detail.

Obama is scrupulously careful about laying down the rules of engagement when he seeks a new authority. Supporters need to be equally rigorous in developing criteria to support or oppose. Personally, until I see evidence of an egregious error in judgement, I remain disposed to give him the benefit of the doubt.