Month: December 2011

Michael Kazin finds the possibility tantalizing: 

Gingrich has many flaws, but downplaying his ideological ambitions is not among them. He rose to power by being an articulate, if savage, exponent of a conservative world-view, and his nomination, if it occurred, would represent the triumph of rhetorical boldness over Romney’s cautious artifice. And it would also provide Barack Obama with an opportunity to advocate the progressive principles that inspired him to run for the office in the first place. … Newt would force Obama to talk about his principles and not just his programs—or rather how the latter flows from the former. The debates would sharpen the terms of political discourse in a healthy rather than demagogic fashion: Standing just feet away from the president, Newt would probably refrain from ranting about the Democrat’s "secular socialist agenda," and Obama would not be able to get away with empty talk about “winning the future."

Romney's latest ad is a not-so-subtle jab at Newt's marital history:

Allahpundit analyzes:

The "unlike some people" is merely implied, but this one’s so heavy-handed that he might as well have tacked on a few shots of Newt with his ex-wives framed by a torn "heart" graphic. I’m tempted to say this will do Romney as much harm as good simply because it stinks of desperation driven by Gingrich’s surge, but in truth it probably will help him a bit.

The most devastating Huntsman ad yet.

RedState's "Dear Leader" is having a hard time: 

I feel guilty for feeling this way, but I just don’t know that I can support [Gingrich] in the primary. Over Romney? Sure. Newt won’t be nearly as devastating down ballot as Romney if things go wrong for the GOP. But over Bachmann, Huntsman, and Perry in alphabetical order? I hope for a Perry rebound. He’s on his first wife still and has the most consistent record of conservative policies. And we hate the same people and institutions.

We have the same general world view. But if Perry is not ready, I have to say I may have to seriously reconsider saying I’d never, ever, never vote for Jon Huntsman. He is more consistently conservative than either Newt or Romney, more pro-life than either, and a far more competent executive than either. He and Perry also are very real and sincere family men. Jon Huntsman clearly adores his family and I have concluded, despite my own misgivings about him, that he would govern more consistently to the right of Mitt Romney than even his campaign team would have us believe.

I’ll support the nominee. Any of the Republicans will be better than Obama, regardless of the number of wives. I’m just not yet at a position where I think I can look myself in the mirror and be comfortable knowing I voted for a guy on his third wife who cheated on the first two. Honestly, it is more the cheating than the number of marriages. And even after moving his letter from the Baptist to the Catholic church, it seems he may have settled down on the marital front, but he’s still cheating on conservatives.

Heats up:

The Donald barks back. Pareene gets out the popcorn:

Rove, see, is operating from the outmoded idea that the Republican party should attempt to appeal to anyone not currently already old, angry, and skeptical of the president’s citizenship. From Karl Rove’s perspective, a man universally regarded as an unserious ass should not be hosting a major party’s presidential candidates and then selecting one of them, reality show-style, as his endorsee, live on television. For Rove, the fact that polls show associating with Trump is a net negative even among GOP voters is worrying, and not, as it is for the rest of us, hilarious.

Dish coverage of the Trump sideshow here and here.

Mark Kleiman calls his newfound climate skepticism "craven":

Now that Huntsman smells what might be a real, if long-shot, chance at the nomination, as the last credible candidate not named Mitt or Newt, he’s trimming his opinions to fit the beliefs of the fringe element that now constitutes the Republican base.

Allahpundit is more nuanced:

[Huntsman is] not saying he’s agnostic about the issue — clearly he thinks warming is going on — merely that he thinks we haven’t quite yet reached the point where it’s okay to call this a scientific fact and move on from debating whether it’s happening and, if so, what’s driving it. It’s a soft pander, in other words, aimed at showing the base that (a) he respects their opinion even if he doesn’t agree with it and (b) he’s not going to push any regulatory solutions unless and until other major emitters like China sign on to a multilateral scheme.

I too am convinced of man-made climate change but remain deeply conflicted about the best way to tackle it. I'm deeply underwhelmed by cap and trade, and would be leery of imposing it, especially given its corrupt record in Europe. If this is the worst pandering we get from Huntsman, I can live with it.

Yesterday, the White House issued a memorandum instructing "all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons." A key excerpt:

The struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons is a global challenge, and one that is central to the United States commitment to promoting human rights. I am deeply concerned by the violence and discrimination targeting LGBT persons around the world — whether it is passing laws that criminalize LGBT status, beating citizens simply for joining peaceful LGBT pride celebrations, or killing men, women, and children for their perceived sexual orientation. That is why I declared before heads of state gathered at the United Nations, "no country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere."

Rick Perry responded:

Promoting special rights for gays in foreign countries is not in America’s interests and not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money.  

Timothy Kincaid fires back:

Ideologically, it’s difficult to conceptualize a greater enemy to gay people. Santorum, perhaps. But never has there ever been in modern times a President who held the level of personal animosity that Rick Perry has for you. Not Eisenhower, not Nixon, not Johnson, not Reagan, and neither Bush. It is inconceivable that Perry could have the personal gay friendships of Reagan, the gay appointments of the Bushes, and certainly not the supportive views of Carter, Clinton, Ford, or Obama. None of the other credible GOP candidates, Romney, Gingrich, or even Bachmann would be worse.

Perry is a nasty bigot on this. The United States has long opposed the persecution of minorities in other countries; and the appalling threats against gay people across the planet must surely count among them. We are talking here about jailing people for being gay, executing them, burying them under walls and lynching. Maybe the man who hunted at Niggerhead is untroubled by these events. Few others will be.

John Cassidy reacts to Obama's speech yesterday:

This isn’t the President saying he deserves to be on Mount Rushmore. This is Obama seeking to define the themes he intends to run on next year, to energize his disillusioned base, and to capitalize on a big change in the political climate. Teddy Roosevelt, whose famous “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 called upon the three branches of the federal government to put the public welfare before the interests of money and property, merely provided a convenient framing device.

Chait argues along the same lines:

This is the theme Obama has prepared for his campaign: himself, as champion of the middle class, against Romney, as modern-day robber baron. Of course, Romney happens to be rapidly falling behind Newt Gingrich in the race for the GOP nomination, but a campaign against Gingrich is probably something you hope for rather than plan for.

Tomasky:

What I found interesting is what Obama did not say. He made the case for higher taxes on the very wealthy not as an abstract redistributionist principle, but as an element of restoring the common good. Extreme inequality is deeply dangerous for a democracy. When that inequality also leads to buying influence in the Congress, then we are already in very deep.

I've heard many Suskind-style critiques of this president, primarily about his not seizing the moment in early 2009 to break up, nationalize or overhaul the temporarily weakened banking sector. All I can say is that I prefer a president who tackles the most pressing matter at hand first: the potential implosion of our entire financial system. If that meant holding the banks' hands for a while until things stabilized – and do these people remember what those days were like? – so what? Now is the time, having stabilized the situation, to tackle the deeper problems behind it.

I've been watching a lot of Fox lately to better understand the dynamics of the GOP race. Last night, propagandist Hannity – by far the most shameless of all of them – introduced a tape of Obama with a description of the speech as "class warfare". And then you heard the clips: about being one nation, built around middle class values, requiring everyone to sacrifice a little, but especially those who have gained so much in the last thirty years. The way Obama has framed this is especially helpful in deflecting the class warfare charge. And, in my view, campaigns that focus on the future rather than the past have an edge.

Hitch writes another penetratingly self-aware essay on his dying. No, what doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger:

I do remember lying there and looking down at my naked torso, which was covered almost from throat to navel by a vivid red radiation rash. This was the product of a month-long bombardment with protons which had burned away all of the cancer in my clavicular and paratracheal nodes, as well as the original tumor in the esophagus. This put me in a rare class of patients who could claim to have received the highly advanced expertise uniquely available at the stellar Zip Code of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

To say that the rash hurt would be pointless. The struggle is to convey the way that it hurt on the inside. I lay for days on end, trying in vain to postpone the moment when I would have to swallow. Every time I did swallow, a hellish tide of pain would flow up my throat, culminating in what felt like a mule kick in the small of my back. I wondered if things looked as red and inflamed within as they did without. And then I had an unprompted rogue thought: If I had been told about all this in advance, would I have opted for the treatment? There were several moments as I bucked and writhed and gasped and cursed when I seriously doubted it.

As we read this, we distance ourselves from it. The great task of our lives is not to:

So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate.

The second most powerful man in the conservative movement takes a stand:

George Will, I mentioned this yesterday, George Will has called Newt a Marxist. Fine; he can do whatever he wants. But I don’t recall him ever calling Obama a Marxist. So there’s a huge effort out there today, and it’s not just today; of course it’s been building. It was Herman Cain before Newt. It was Rick Perry when he came out strong. This effort’s been directed at Michele Bachmann. And it is essentially an attack on conservatives. It is conservatives that nobody in the establishment inside the Beltway appears to want. Republicans and Democrats alike really apparently do not want genuine conservatives winning elections at the upper levels of the Republican Party.

Kornacki gets inside Limbaugh's head:

Part of the explanation has to do with Limbaugh’s status as a leading Romney-skeptic. He announced on his show a few months ago that "Romney is not a conservative," and even when Rick Perry’s poll numbers collapsed earlier this fall and the political world began treating Romney as the inevitable nominee Limbaugh continued urging his listeners to be open to alternatives. He regards himself as a preeminent voice of the anti-establishment Tea Party movement, so in a way the GOP race is a test of Limbaugh’s clout: If he makes it clear he doesn’t want Romney to be the nominee, what will it say if Romney coasts to the nomination?