Month: July 2010

by Dave Weigel

Huma Khan writes up both sides of the made-for-slow-news-week controversy over the NAACP resolution condemning tea party "racism." One of her more hands-on quoted experts:

Dale Robertson, a Tea Party activist who runs TeaParty.org and has himself been at the center of a race-related controversy, said the NAACP is merely pandering to the Democratic party. "I find that the NAACP should be standing against the new Black Panther (sic) and their stance and yet instead of doing the right thing, they're doing the wrong thing by attacking people who feel government should be held accountable," Robertson said.

Errr, what? The "race-related controversy" Robertson was involved with was his decision to hold a sign calling taxpayers "niggars."

Now, at one level Robertson is demonstrating the silliness of the NAACP's move. His boneheaded activism led him to being basically shunned by local tea party groups, who had no interest in teaming up with someone who'd make such a sign. And to imply that stunts like his are such a pressing problem that they will be one of the few selected for action by the NAACP is to concede that there isn't much real racism to worry about. It's the sort of headline-hungry act that shadows the NAACP's other priorities — one example being Michelle Obama's admonition for African-Americans to "increase intensity," which is now being spun by Limbaugh et al as a call for more racial outrage, instead of what she meant, the call for community-building that basically every black politician issues at this conference.

by Patrick Appel

Scott Mandia clears up common misconceptions about water, lightning, wind, and egg balancing.

by Dave Weigel

Evan McMorris-Santoro finds great meaning in former Rand Paul campaign manager David Adams waving farewell to the Senate race:

Back in May, after the string of disastrous national press appearances that resulted in Paul's high-profile cancellation of an appearance on Meet The Press, campaign manager David Adams was shifted to the role of campaign chairman. Jesse Benton, a longtime Paul family ally and a veteran of Rep. Ron Paul's (R-TX) presidential campaigns (sic*), took the reins as Rand Paul's campaign manager.

Look: Rand Paul isn't running this campaign in order to make good copy for people like me. He, like many Americans who aren't named "Evan Bayh," wants to be a senator. But the reason his campaign was so exciting, and able to draw in hardline libertarians who were disgruntled about Paul's stances on war and drugs, was that he seemed to promise an ideological debate of the variety we don't really get in this country, if we ever did. He was going to challenge the premise of the Great Society! He was going to call for whole government agencies to be abolished! He had "a message from the tea party!"

Paul was surprised by the new, harsh reaction he got from liberals after winning the Kentucky primary, because they were no longer interested in seeking common ground with him, and newly interested in nailing him on whether his views would destroy America. You know what? Tough. Rand Paul should be out there, winning that argument, not just engaging in mutual head-nodding contests on Fox News. Nothing is more irritating about President Obama than his unwillingness to hold press conferences and spar with reporters. It's less impactful, but just as irritating, when the Voice of the Tea Party makes a run for the rose garden.

*Benton only worked for Paul's 2008 bid.

by Patrick Appel

Freddie DeBoer isn't blogging much these days, which is too bad because he's one of my favorite online writers despite his being to my left on any number of issues. When Freddie makes a point, he doesn't bother to dull the sharpness of his words – as any number of his statements in this interview make clear:

I do want to immediately recognize and admit that I have the extremist’s luxury; I don’t have to sully my beliefs with appeal to dirty partisan politics. But that cuts both ways. People say that politics is the art of the possible, but there’s so much insistence on a narrow range of possibility that they winnow away at what we can actually accomplish. Ultimately I have to admit that there are real constraints on political action, but I also have to insist that when you make practicality a chief concern in politics, you’ve effectively undermined democracy.

Freddie's disregard for authority reminds me of Andrew. I'm attracted to this quality precisely because I'm more like David Brooks myself, who admits that he isn't nearly as opinionated a writer as Andrew or Chait. For me, politics and policy is more like math and less like a bar brawl. I've as much capacity to make moral judgments as Chait, Andrew or Freddie, but I'm inclined to place my opinions in vast fields of gray rather than rush into a political controversy.

The trouble with my preferred method is picking a fight is often a faster and better way to flesh out an argument. This isn't always true, as Dave Weigel's excellent post on Trig Palin makes clear. But tediously researched and hedged statements can actually stifle debate with their apparent reasonableness. I'm convinced that humans are wired to respond to heated debate; listening to two people argue is ancient in comparison to reading white papers or editorial monologues.

by Dave Weigel

The invaluable Reid Wilson sees the National Republican Senatorial Committee starting to dig into the records of Gov. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.). When the governor entered the race for the late Robert Byrd's Senate seat, some wags wrote the race off. But the NRSC went after Manchin for a waffling answer (on Fox News) on whether he supported the administration's challenge to Arizona's immigration law, and now it's attacking on this:

The NRSC has requested a series of documents from Manchin's office under WV Freedom of Information laws. In a letter to Manchin's office, NRSC chief counsel Sean Cairncross asked for correspondence between Manchin's office and the Justice Department and any information relating to Manchin family members who may be employed with the state. What's more, the NRSC wants to know whether Manchin spoke with anyone at the WH about Byrd's seat. Correspondence between the WH and Senate candidates in CO, PA and IL has proven embarrassing for Pres. Obama's admin, and GOPers are hoping to continue that story line.

This is gruel so thin Oliver wouldn't even ask for more of it. But it says something about Republicans that they're even spending the time on this. In any other year, Manchin would be a slam dunk candidate, the way popular Gov. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) is in North Dakota. If he has weaknesses or lackluster campaign skills they haven't been seen in two statewide races where he ran miles ahead of his party's presidential ticket. No one wants to run against him. But as the NRSC bats in 10 other states, it's trying to create the impression that Manchin is beatable by one of the GOP's preferred candidates, and to drag one of them in. (It tried the same, unsuccessfully, in 2005, when Byrd was gearing up for his final term.)

You can already see Democrats opting to triage on some Senate races they talked about making this year, like South Carolina. Republicans aren't even giving up on the Byrd seat. It's in situations like these that Scott Brown's victory did more for his party's confidence than the passage of health care did for Democrats.

by Patrick Appel

This starts a little slow but finishes well.

by Chris Bodenner

Not who you think.

by Patrick Appel

Dan Ariely explains behavioral economics:

I always found the appeal to the market gods a bit odd. Why would the market fix mistakes instead of aggravating them?  When the Chicago economists sometimes (reluctantly) admits that people make mistakes, they claim that people make different types of mistakes that will eventually cancel each other out in the market. Behavioral economics argues that, instead, people will often make the same mistake, and the individual mistakes can aggregate in the market.  Let’s take the subprime mortgage crisis, which I think is a great example (but a very sad reality) of the market working to make the aggregation of mistakes worse.  It is not as if some people made one kind of mistake and others made another kind.  It was the fact that so many people made the same mistakes, and the market for these mistakes is what got us to where we are now.