Month: January 2012

The nocturnal lives of books:

Noah Millman nods:

If Romney gets the nomination and loses, whoever hangs in and fights him for the nomination over the long haul, assuming they aren’t wildly unacceptable to the party establishment, will automatically be in contention for 2016. Ron Paul is wildly unacceptable to the party establishment; Gingrich, for different reasons, probably is, too. But Huntsman, Santorum and Perry aren’t. No one should assume that if they lose this time around, they are gone. That’s not the way the GOP works.

Newt's financial savior in South Carolina comes in for some strange commentary today. John Sununu:

Does [Adelson] think that people don't remember when you attack them and pay for the attacks in a primary, especially when one ever the parties receiving that attack is a party he likes to go to to finance his expansions? There is no common-sense in this process. You feel sorry for people that aren't that bright.

My new colleague, David Frum:

Newt's path is clear. The question is: why do any GOP donors want to join this path? Answer: I doubt they do. Which is why I suspect that the much ballyhooed $5 million check from Sheldon Adelson to Gingrich's Super-PAC may soon be lost in the mail.

Do they know something we don't?

Battersea, London, 9.45 am

Jonathan Last grapples with Romney's work at Bain: 

Free markets are, in the long run, wonderfully efficient and wise. The problem is, they aren’t, in the short or medium run, always wise (this is why we have bubbles); they aren’t perfectly free (every market is distorted by rent seekers and other externalities); and the efficiencies they produce are not always beneficial to society writ large (see the effects of the pornography and gaming industries). To understand these limitations is not to attack or disdain the free market. It is merely to give, as a very wise man once wrote, a clear-eyed “two-cheers” for capitalism. 

Likewise, Bill Kristol adds that the "unqualified defense of the virtues of Bain Capital" is a recipe for "political disaster—and intellectual sterility":

What's needed is a willingness to put Main Street (at least slightly) ahead of Wall Street, and a reform agenda for capitalism that strengthens it, alongside an even more dramatic reform agenda for government that limits it. Bain Capital shouldn’t be demonized. It may not even deserve to be criticized. But in laying out a way forward, conservatives might remember that Bain Capital isn’t capitalism, that capitalism by itself isn’t freedom, and that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the Gospel of Wealth.

William Jacobson panics:

We are so screwed, we have allowed the Romney campaign and its supporters — and some well-meaning but misguided others — to turn us into the party of Bain.

Yuval Levin has more. 

I'll be live-blogging the New Hampshire results tonight, starting at 8 pm. Not sure when it will end, but I suspect a little earlier in the night than Iowa. But you never know. This is New Hampshire.

A reader writes:

Seattle ranked pretty high in the list of "gayest cities", and I agree that we're a super gay city, but I think the criteria used to determine it aren't necessarily accurate any longer.  Drag has been dying in Seattle for years, leather has never been big and The Cuff is more frequently referred to as "The Fluff," as shirtless twinks far outnumber the leather daddies around the pool table.  I don't know how we got a point for a gay bookstore.  Beyond The Closet closed years ago.  Gay bars have closed right and left over the time I've been here and The Pink Zone, which specialized in rainbow flag crap, closed down ages ago.  WNBA games do have a lot of lesbian fans, but the only Storm fans I know are all straight women and their daughters.  

In the 15 years I've lived here, Seattle seems gayer than ever, but at the same time, aside from the political protections, less obviously gay.  

I mean, there are tons of gay couples, tons of gay men, and when I mention my husband, people ask questions like they would of any other spouse.  When I mentioned how long we'd been married, a coworker replied, "You've been married way too long to not have kids by now."  

When I was in college, an older gay may told me he loved Seattle because "there's no pressure to be gay in a particular way in Seattle." And it's just become more and more like that, which paradoxically means that gay-oriented institutions are fading, particularly as more guys meet their boyfriends (and tricks) online.

So I'll accept our high ranking.  I'll agree that the legal protections are great, but I'll also argue that what makes Seattle so gay isn't an explosion of gay culture, but rather that gays are so smoothly accepted into society at large that for most of us, gay culture is superfluous.

As it appeared in 1896:

Jalal Abukhater marvels at the footage, recovered in 2007:

We see Palestinians; we see Jews, Christians, and Muslims living in peace. We see a Jewish man praying at the Western Wall without having to show IDs to any authority, unlike what we see in Jerusalem today. We see neighbors, friends, families, and a society just like that in Cairo or Damascus, as the commentator says. If we look today, we don’t see much of the same thing. Not so much freedom of religion, not so much freedom of life.

Notice that Muslim Arab 85 percent of the population back then is now regarded by the GOP as "invented."

Wilkinson explores the Republican psyche:

If you're like me, Mr Huntsman's willingness to set aside partisanship and serve in a Democratic administration, in spite of his high political aspirations, argues in favour of his loyalty to the country. But if you're like me you're not a conservative, and you don't really care that much about loyalty. Rock-ribbed conservatives I think see it like this: By agreeing to serve as ambassador to China under Barack Obama, Mr Huntsman picked a side, and it wasn't the side of the conservative tribe.

Jacob Heilbrunn is deeply concerned that "bellicosity about China has become fashionable among Republicans": 

[A] Republican president who actually followed the prescriptions being enunicated during the primaries would wreak havoc in foreign affairs. The truculence of the candidates, apart from Ron Paul, suggests that they have learned little or nothing from the Bush era. It's a testament to hubris or obduracy, or perhaps both at the very same time. Whether a new sobriety would prevail once a Republican candidate was actually in office is another matter. It's hard to believe that Romney, for one, actually believes what he is saying. But there is no gainsaying the fact that bashing China is acquiring a new and unfortunate respectability among Republicans.

What's staggering to me is that after the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, the GOP, while never mentioning anyone with the name Bush, remains, with the exception of Paul and Huntsman, even more gung-ho about military interventionism and a new Cold War with China than ever.