Month: December 2011

Is The GOP Establishment An Anachronism?

Jamie Weinstein chases a definition: 

Pat Buchanan, a conservative commentator and former advisor to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, agrees with [George] Will and [Michael] Barone that what was historically referred to as the Republican establishment was essentially defeated in the 1960s. "What exists of it is really less an establishment than basically the Washington based party, the leaders in both Houses of Congress, the K-Street lobbyists, many of the big fundraisers," he told TheDC. "These are all various power bases I think. But there is nothing like what was that establishment that used to be able to impose its nominees on the party."

"I think a Washington Consensus is probably a good term," he added. "If you want to see this consensus, let Ron Paul win Iowa and New Hampshire."

Mitt Romney Is A Big Fat Liar

BOBBLEMITTAlexWong:Getty

One of the advantages of having put your soul on eBay is that it frees you up. You can say anything to anyone, and feel no consequences. You can go from promising to be more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy to backing an amendment to the Constitution permanently putting gays into second class status. You can go from calling yourself "progressive" to "the most conservative candidate in this race." And you also can repeat in increasingly crude terms the notion that this president is some kind of anti-American, far-left ideologue determined to turn 21st Century America into Eastern Europe c. 1978 … and pretend that this is the actual debate we are having and that this is the universe we are living in. Given the alternative galaxies proferred by Roger Ailes, any other narrative might prove confusing for the true believers, I suppose. But if you want to read a long list of the whoppers that Romney has been touting, check out Sargent.

This is a lie:

Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

I hereby challenge Romney to cite a single case or action in which president Obama has said he believes that government should enforce equal outcomes in the workplace or the economy or anywhere else. His signature policy in education is called "Race To The Top", for Pete's sake. He chose to extend the Bush tax cuts. He has actually cut Medicare and taxes on a majority of Americans. The idea that at a time when the debt is soaring the wealthy might be asked to contribute their fair share to balancing the buget is not Marxist. It's something the most right-wing economic government in the West, Britain's Conservative Party, has insisted upon.

One other little contrast to reveal the extent of Romney's deception. Here's a recent debate riff:

This is a president who fundamentally believes that the next century is the post-American century. Perhaps it will be the Chinese century. He is wrong.

Again, I hereby demand from the Romney campaign direct evidence that the president has ever said or done something that can back up this ludicrous assertion of backing a foreign country over one's own. It's a lie. And, by the way, here is the president in this year's State of the Union:

You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations — they're not standing still. These nations aren't playing for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math and science. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America.

Dish Readers: Who Are You? Ctd

Dish Readers: Who Are You?

Look above to see the new questions available in our reader survey (such as "Did you support the Iraq War in 2003?" and "Do you have a beard, or prefer men who do?"). The Urtak blog digs into the cross-tabs:

[Andrew Sullivan's] readers under the age of 35 are less likely to have cried in response to a Dish post. Cold-hearted youth!

His married readers would be less interested in attending an annual conference of Dish readers.

His Jewish readers are almost three times more likely than their gentile counterparts to have attended Ivy League colleges.

His Republican-voting readers are more likely to have emailed him.

And his gun-owning readers are more likely to make more than $100,000/year.

Readers are also sifting through the data:

I was shocked to find out that FIFTY percent of your readers who took your poll were atheists like me.

I've always respected your Catholicism and read every word of your debate with Sam Harris years ago, but I think that this is living proof that there are a lot of nameless, faceless, intelligent skeptics out there – many of whom are aligned with you on most other important issues. I think it just goes to show how independent and anomalous you are.

Well, that's a nice way to put it. Another writes:

I suspect you already knew the rough answer to this question, but it still must be jarring to see that 78% of Dish readers answered yes when asked "do you consider yourself a liberal?" while only 9% answered yes when asked "do you consider yourself a political conservative?" As you know, I'm one of those liberals, tried and true. I think people like me read The Dish because we're craving an actual intelligent, well-reasoned political opponent. A point of view based in reality but skeptical of liberal political thought. We want to have real political arguments, but they're impossible to have with know-nothing movement conservatives.  The Dish is where we come to grapple with the patriotic, intelligent, small-c conservative, loyal opposition we wish we could get from the GOP.

Another reader:

Holy cats, Andrew. The survey of your readership is an eye-opener in many ways, but my greatest take-away from the results so far is: I am one of only 22% of your readers who is female, and the rest of your readership appears to be largely comprised of straight men around my age, a good percentage of whom are unmarried, non-religious, liberal, and voted for Obama. And many of them have dogs!

You’re damn straight I'd come to that annual gathering …

Explore the data for yourself here. A big thanks to all our readers who took a few minutes to answer and submit questions. The most original submission:

Would you pay to see Andrew shave his beard live on The Dish with proceeds going to "cure" Marcus Bachmann?

Is Iraq Unraveling?

Eli Lake reports on Maliki's attempt to arrest his vice president. The lesson Greg Scoblete draws:

So supporters of an indefinite U.S. military presence in Iraq have a point – the U.S. might well have stayed Maliki's hand and lent a degree of stability to Iraq that will otherwise be missing. But this also demonstrates quite clearly that actually creating an Iraq that does not descend into violence the moment the paternalistic hand of the U.S. military is withdrawn was going to be the work of decades – or more. And that's if everything went well – and there's no reason to believe that it would have. Asking large numbers of troops to stay inside Iraq as a hostage to Iraqi political squabbling is a huge investment at a time when the U.S. has other pressing needs around the world (and at home).

Joel Wing says that Maliki is reneging on his promise to forego a third term:

The prime minister has successfully out maneuvered all of his rivals and allies, and is increasingly centralizing power around him. Given his current position, there was no reason to believe that he would give it all up, because of protests that have largely subsided. Saying that he would not seek a third term was simply one of many promises that Maliki made at that time to get people off the streets, so that he could go back to consolidating his hold over the country. For a short period, it appeared that Iraq might face the same changes as occurred in other neighboring countries during the Arab Spring. The prime minister was able to tackle them just as he has his opponents, and the demonstrations brought about no real changes to the country.

More on Iraq after the withdrawal here.

Piers Morgan “Must Have Known”

The testimony of one James Hipwell, a former colleague of Piers Morgan at the Daily Mirror, is pretty devastating. Ethics were not exactly a Morgan concern:

This is not a subject which was an overriding concern for any of the senior editors.

The phone hacking was endemic at Morgan’s paper under his editorship:

I saw it on a daily basis in 1999, especially the latter half, when I would go as far as to say it happened every day… it seemed to be fair play as a means to get a story.

How could Morgan not have known?

He was the newspaper. It was all about Piers and I think he did a very good job … Looking at his style of editorship, I would say it was very unlikely that he didn’t know it was going on because there wasn’t ever much he didn’t know about. He took a very keen interest in the work of his journalists. Showbusiness is very close to his heart… He stamped his authority on every single page. The newspaper was built around the cult of Piers. He was extremely hands on. Nothing happened at the newspaper without him knowing.

So either Hipwell is lying under oath or Morgan is. Hence this:

The Daily Mirror’s counsel, Desmond Browne QC, is arguing that many of the allegations against his clients have not been able to be properly challenged. He describes Hipwell as “an acknowledged liar”.

Hipwell indeed ran an insider trading scheme when he was the Mirror’s financial columnist under Morgan, a scheme he claims Morgan was in on. He served two months in jail. Meanwhile, Lady McCartney makes it perfectly clear that she never gave Morgan permission to listen to voicemail messages from her husband:

Heather Mills has issued a statement claiming that she could “categorically state” she had “never ever” played Piers Morgan “a tape of any kind, never mind a voice message from my ex-husband”. That directly contradicts the implication from Morgan’s evidence yesterday.

Hitch’s Drinking, Ctd

I wrote what killed Hitch "was not the alcohol as such or the many years of smoking, but the force of will that simply didn’t rest, and seemed to punish his body with ludicrously brutal days and nights of sleepless drive." Keith Humphreys counters:

Hitchens’ prided himself on his honesty and his courage, so let’s honor his memory by facing up to the fact that his addictions to alcohol and tobacco are almost certainly why his life ended well before his time. The National Institutes of Health estimates that about 75% of esophageal cancers are caused by chronic heavy drinking. For people who are also addicted to tobacco (as Hitchens was) risk of this form of cancer is even higher than that grim statistic suggests.

Kim Jong Il’s Torture Techniques – And Cheney’s

A reader points to the above video:

In the sequel to the Youtube you featured, starting around the 5:15 mark above, one gentleman describes the torture he received in a political prisoner camp, including being made to stand in a room full of waist-high water for 48 hours, as well as being handcuffed to the ceiling with his toes barely touching the floor (and bearing scars to this day from it) – what I have heard described as "stress positions".  I didn't expect to feel guilty watching a video about almost cartoonishly evil North Korean goons. But I feel ashamed knowing that American soldiers were ordered to perform many of these same "techniques".

The North Koreans did far, far, far worse things to innocents than the Bush-Cheney administration did to terror suspects. There is no moral equivalence between the two governments. But note the description of "unendurable" torture from being forced to stand for 48 hours in a stress position in water in a small box, exactly the kind of thing Donald Rumsfeld personally authorized.

The legal definition of torture is the infliction of "severe mental or physical pain or suffering" to procure information from someone physically under your control. I regard "unendurable" as a sub-set of "severe", don't you? And if that is so, and it is, then this country is in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Yes, of course, it was under Bush and Cheney, who deserve the lion's share of moral, legal and ethical culpability. But this president's refusal to uphold the rule of law on a matter of such profound significance is a Rubicon Obama – and Obama alone – allowed the United States to cross. There was a time when this could have been quarantined and prosecuted and the rule of law restored. If that ever happens in the future, Obama will have been as retroactively complicit as Bush was fecklessly guilty.

The Anti-Gingrich Ad Blitz

TPM rounds up Iowa ads, like the one above:

[Gingrich is] getting brutally outspent by Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and their respective independent Super PACs. According to MSNBC, pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future is outspending Gingrich $713,000 to $21,000 this week, though Gingrich is planning to fight back with a larger buy next week.