Month: May 2012

Kilgore's suspicion:

Rand Paul bears few of the scars of decades of ideological battle earned by his father. He enjoys a closer relationship with the GOP establishment in the Senate and elsewhere; according to some reports, he is already plotting a presidential candidacy of his own, if not in 2016 then in 2020. If anyone could bring anti-interventionist foreign policy into the mainstream of the GOP, it’s Rand.

This suggests a simple answer to what Ron Paul wants: He is ready, like Moses, to withdraw from the battleground having never entered the Promised Land, entrusting that task to his Joshua, his son. And whatever the doctor can do to make his son an accepted voice for a respected point of view on foreign policy—whether it’s securing a convention speech, a platform concession, or just a place at the table in hypothetical Romney administration deliberations—he will cash his last gold coins to make it happen.

A reader's take:

I’ve been trying to work out what Ron Paul is up to.  A lot of the delegates he’s acquiring are technically pledged delegates (for instance, the Nevada delegates are mostly obliged to vote for Romney).  Even in some primary states, there’s still a state convention that chooses the delegates – though they are then obliged to vote for the candidate that won the primary.

So why should he care who the delegates are?

One suggestion that has been going around is the platform.  But the platform doesn’t matter; it doesn’t bind the candidate, and it certainly doesn’t bind candidates for the House or Senate.  When was the last time you ever heard any elected official called to account for not abiding by the party’s platform?

Pledged delegates, however, are only bound to their candidate in the vote for the presidential nominee in the first ballot.  So there are two possibilities I can see.  First, he thinks he can stop Romney winning on the first ballot.  Suspended campaigns still exist, and their pledged delegates are still pledged until released by the candidate, so all the Santorum delegates and the few Gingrich delegates can’t vote for Romney.  Romney will win lots of delegates when he wins the remaining winner-take-all primaries, so I doubt that Paul can actually prevent a Romney win on the first ballot.  

Second, he wants to control the vice-presidential nomination.  This, I think, he might actually pull off.  Under normal circumstances the delegates pledged to the presidential nominee are personally loyal enough to vote for the VP of his choice. But if there are a lot of Romney delegates who are actually Paul supporters, then Paul can pick the VP.  He might pick himself, but I doubt it; he has to expect Romney to lose, and he doesn’t really support him that much – but there are other libertarians (no, not Rand) that he could choose.  If Romney finds that he has to choose a VP acceptable to Paul to avoid a nasty floor-fight over the nomination, then he probably does rather than face the floor fight.  That certainly affects the veepstakes calculations.

Finally, one thing the Paul delegates will definitely do: turn up to all the sessions on organisation and electing committees and start rewriting the rules of the party to make it easier for them to choose the nominee next time.  No-one else will care; no-one else will turn up; the Paulites will be about to out-vote everyone else, just as they have at district and state conventions.

“I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view,” – Richard Mourdock, the GOP primary challenger that knocked out Dick Lugar last night.

After last night, a reminder:

Obama is sitting down with ABC News today for an interview which will, in part, address his excruciating non-position on marriage equality. Some are saying he will make news. I doubt it, and I don't much care. The Congress and the states are the players here – not the president. And this desperate desire among some gays for some kind of affirmation from one man is a little sad.

Previous videos of Maggie Gallagher here and here. “Ask Anything” archive here.

There are elements of the Obama re-election campaign that turn my stomach. Emails like this one from "Michelle Obama" with the cringe-inducing content-line: "Me Again." Yes, you again. Like I need more spam. Then the pitch:

There's one thing I forgot to mention: If you chip in to support the campaign before the big deadline tomorrow, you'll also be automatically entered to have dinner with my husband.

Look: I understand the need for fundraising pitches but these are just creepy:

Aaron — I think it's safe to assume that an evening at George Clooney's house is something you're not going to want to miss. He's getting involved because, like you and me, he cares deeply about the work we still have left to do — so you're sure to have a thing or two to talk about.

The email is titled "Clooney And Me." Ugh. Another from Michelle, called "Up Late":

Friend — Every night in the White House, I see Barack up late poring over briefings, reading your letters, and writing notes to people he's met. He's doing that for you — working hard every day to make sure we can finish what we all started together.

Pass the sickbag. Then the pitch. And now we have this:

What is this, North Korea? I have my own mother, thank you very much.

The "celebrity" meme pioneered by Steve Schmidt in the summer of 2008 seemed to me to be inappropriate, given the strong message Obama was sending. But with more celebrity-driven solipsism like this, Steve is beginning to look prescient.

Alexis Madrigal takes aim: 

You can get a page view spike that's actually a negative for your brand. And the more the slideshow spreads because of a clever headline or just because the topic is hot, the farther that brand damage spreads. Congratulations! You juiced the stats with an invisible poison! 

I'm sympathetic to the business concerns of the media industry. I really am. But this myth that slideshows are the path to salvation has got to be put into a rocket and sent hurtling into the sun. People know when your product is cheap; there is no "trick" of the web. The sad truth is that to win on the Internet you have to do good reporting and analysis, write great headlines, empower individual staffers to embed themselves in communities that can serve up scoops and distribute finished stories, and understand the social ecosystems that bring visitors to your site. 

The Atlantic's slide-show on "animals in the news" starting with the cutest ever polar bear is here. There are 41 separate photos in the slideshow.

(Screenshot from the Daily Caller) 

Missing:

What Obama lacks right now … is a bludgeon — a super PAC loaded with cash to hammer home negative advertising. Super PACs, as you may have heard, have emerged as the hit men of 2012. Why? Because super PACs offer two key advantages that make them ideal as attack dogs: unrestrained fundraising and a little distance from the candidates they support. They can accept unlimited donations from corporations, unions and individuals, and they do not need to obtain a candidate’s approval for the messages they are putting out.

But liberals seem too prissy and purist to join that fight. I can’t see anything wrong with contributions to GOTV operations, especially among the young and minorities – but when you have a big, fat, plutocratic target waiting to be defined by advertizing, and armed with an arrow-shower of lies about the president, purism against Citizens United seems somewhat perverse – especially since Romney’s picks to SCOTUS could be even further to the right than Scalia and Thomas.

Hey, it’s blogging and around 12 hours is a long time: