Month: March 2011

It's vulnerable, according to Tom Jensen:

Assuming that the folks who want to get rid of Snowe do coalesce behind a single challenger and run a competent campaign against her it's going to be very difficult for her to win the Republican nomination.

MANAKAI from makoto yabuki on Vimeo.

That's Rush Limbaugh's description of Obama, and he's getting more matter of fact about saying so every day:

So the presidential campaign, here's the question.  You got an incumbent, Barack Hussein Obama.  Does the Republican nominee focus on what we all believe to be true, the guy's got a different view of the American tradition than all the rest of us?  Do we say, does our nominee, does our campaign focus on portraying Obama as anti-traditional American values, do we say this guy is a socialist, this guy's models consist of Marx and Alinsky, do we go that way, do we point that out?  Or do we say to ourselves, you know what, most people don't want to think that about their president.  There's such reverence for the office that people don't want to think that even if they admit that they made a mistake in voting for the guy, they don't want to think that they've elected somebody who is essentially an enemy of traditional American founding values. 

… I guarantee you the nominee, whoever he or she is, is gonna think there's nowhere else you can go but him or her.  So they may not think they have to service you in the campaign.  They may think we have to offer the red meat of this guy's socialist, Marxist, Saul Alinsky, 'cause they're afraid doing that might lose precious independents and so forth and so on.  So they just focus on policy.  I'm just asking the question here, what do you expect, what do you want, what would your reaction be? 

If you click through to the transcript you'll see that Limbaugh's staff is laughing at him through this monologue. What sort of people realize this sort of poison is mere schtick and help broadcast it? The same sort of cynical mercenaries who staff too much of the conservative movement.

Benjamin J. Dueholm, a Lutheran pastor, delves into the sex columnist's highly ethical world:

Underlying all of Savage’s principles, abbreviations, and maxims is a pragmatism that strives for stable, livable, and reasonably happy relationships in a world where the old constraints that were meant to facilitate these ends are gone. Disclosure is necessary, but not beyond reason. “Honesty [is] the best policy and all,” he advised a guilty boyfriend, but “each of us gets to take at least one big secret to the grave.” Stuck with a husband whose porn stash has grown beyond what you thought you were signing up for? Put it behind closed doors and try not to think about it.

Who knows how many good relationships have been saved—and how many disastrous marriages have been averted—by heeding a Savage insistence on disclosing the unmet need, tolerating the within-reason quirk, or forgiving the endurable lapse? In ways that his frequent interlocutors on the Christian right wouldn’t expect, Savage has probably done more to uphold conventional families than many counselors who are unwilling to engage so frankly with modern sexual mores.

Dan is busted. He is one of the most reality-based conservatives I know.

Andrew Stuttaford cheers Christians’ ignorance of their holy book:

The Bible certainly has its moments, but the West has benefited immensely from the way that Christianity has broken free from its ancient founding text into something infinitely more fluid, flexible and syncretic. If evangelical Christians wish to believe that ‘God helps those who help themselves’ is a Bible verse that is, I think, far from a tragedy.

 If you’re an atheist.

Roger Cohen wonders where our memory has gone:

There are many reasons I oppose a Western military intervention in Libya: the bitter experience of Iraq; the importance of these Arab liberation movements being homegrown; the ease of going in and difficulty of getting out; the accusations of Western pursuit of oil that will poison the terrain; the fact that two Western wars in Muslim countries are enough.

But the deepest reason is the moral bankruptcy of the West with respect to the Arab world. Arabs have no need of U.S. or European soldiers as they seek the freedom that America and the European Union were content to deny them.

Drezner thinks the tea party is on the way out, and incoherent, especially with regard to foreign policy:

The simplest fact about the Tea Party is that, by and large, they don’t care about foreign policy. The only issue areas where I suspect the Tea Party will really matter going forward are in the policies that cater to both wing’s inherent American nationalism — namely, immigration and anti-Muslim hysteria concerns.  Beyond that, however, I suspect that ten years from now we’ll look back at the Tea Party movement the same way we now look [at] Ross Perot’s Reform Party — a brief, interesting but in the end unstable collection of political oddities.

I’m not so sure. Does Dan think the Republican tea-party base is really that supportive of the war in Afghanistan? Or of intervening in Libya? It’s in flux, I think. Huckabee has openly questioned the war in Afghanistan; Gary Johnson dislikes it; Ron Paul will run again. The campaign could even open an important debate about foreign policy. Yes, I know foreign policy isn’t what truly animates the Tea Party; and yes, I suspect that “No Apology” grandstanding in defense of America and appeals to “strength” will probably dominate the debate. But what about defense spending? And nation-building? We’ll see, won’t we?

A must-read for the frustrated freelancer.

Joe Klein is puzzled by Romney:

Romney remains a mystery to me: He’s smart, he was a good governor, he’s essentially a responsible moderate-conservative…but he has made an utter fool of himself flip-flopping and fudging–and taking wildly stupid positions (against the START treaty, for example) on issues about which he knows little or nothing. It almost seems a personality disorder.

Kevin Drum’s answer:

Romney’s a moderate conservative who figured out sometime between 2006 and 2008 that it was no longer possible for a moderate conservative to win the Republican nomination for president. The events of the past two years have made this even clearer than before, but Romney really, really wants to be president.

Steve Kornacki’s timeline tracks Romney’s various political reincarnations. Dizzying.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)