Month: August 2012

A reader writes:

Do you have evidence that these were two Republican delegates at the convention?  The story you link to indicates it was two attendees.  Big difference.  And, maybe the reason that CNN is not making a big deal out of it is because they suspect that perhaps these attendees were not what they seem.  I mean, if you can take off your hate-the-modern-GOP goggles for just a moment, ask yourself which seems more plausible: actual delegates acting this way in an unprompted manor, or some left-leaning nutjobs deciding to crash the party and play to stereotypes about Republican racism. Please either confirm they were delegates, or print a correction.

We're still trying to confirm either way. Right now, better to say "convention delegates or attendees". We've fixed the original post for clarity. Another reader:

In a political contest too often focused on ginned-up outrage over minor or irrelevant issues, why would anyone focus on this one?

Of course the perpetrators were 100% wrong and out of line. There is no excuse for that much stupidity, much less the bigotry and simple bad manners. The RNC, for a change, did exactly the right thing. They immediately removed the (most likely drunk, although that isn't mentioned) miscreants, and clearly stated that their behavior was inexcusable and would not be tolerated. What else do you want them to do?

I agree with virtually everything you say about the Republican Party these days. I just think we need to keep the attention on real issues, not the childish and stupid actions of a couple of clowns who most likely represent West Podunk, Alabama and have never been to the big city before.

I didn't include an alleged incident of anti-Latino yelling for these reasons. Another:

It’s possible that CNN isn’t pursuing the story at the camerawoman’s request. As a rule, reporters don’t like becoming the story and camera people don’t like being in front of a camera.

From 538:

The Obama campaign has opened 73 field offices in Florida compared with the Romney campaign’s 28.

Josh Green reviews A Conservative Walks Into a Bar: The Politics of Political Humor, Alison Dagnes' exploration of why conservatives and comedy don't often mix:

Dagnes concludes that conservatism is philosophically incompatible with satire. "The nature of conservatism does not meet the conditions necessary for political satire to flourish: conservatism is harmonized and slow to criticize people in power, and it originates from a place that repudiates humor because it is absolute."

Green, one of the early editors of the Onion, adds:

To me, the conservative inclination to put politics before humor goes a long way toward explaining [the lack of conservative late-night television shows]. It’s one reason why talk radio has been such a successful format for conservative entertainers (and such a challenging one for liberals, who have failed in their attempts to match it). You can’t cultivate a national television audience for a comedy show if being funny isn’t the first order of business.

In my book, anyone who puts politics and ideology before life and humor is ipso facto not a conservative. Conservatism is about the limits not just of government but of politics. And real conservatives find life funny – and enjoy it – because reality is always making fools of us. We misjudge, we misread, we are the victims of our own desires and the architects of our own failures. In "On Being Conservative," the model essay on the conservative temperament, Michael Oakeshott wrote what I regard as the most sublime and eloquent definition. A sample:

To be conservative … is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. Familiar relationships and loyalties will be preferred to the allure of more profitable attachments; to acquire and to enlarge will be less important than to keep, to cultivate and to enjoy; the grief of loss will be more acute than the excitement of novelty or promise. It is to be equal to one's own fortune, to live at the level of one's own means, to be content with the want of greater perfection which belongs alike to oneself and one's circumstances.

The current GOP, in its search for a Randian utopia, in its anger and fundamentalist mindset, has no time to laugh – at itself or anyone else. Laughing requires an ability not to care so much all the time, to acknowledge the limits of humanity rather than be obsessed with the inherent superiority of one country – and one party in one country – within it. I prefer laughing and friendship to politics and ideology. That's what makes me a conservative; and it's what makes it impossible for me to be a Republican in 2012.

TNC calls out a double standard:

No one wonders what advantages accrued to Mitt Romney, a man who spent his early life ensconced in the preserve of malignant and absolutist affirmative action that was metropolitan Detroit. Romney's Detroit (like most of the country) prohibited black people from the best jobs, the best schools, the best neighborhoods, and the best of everything else. The exclusive Detroit Golf Club, a short walk from one of Romney's childhood homes, didn't integrate until 1986. No one is skeptical of Mitt Romney because of the broader systemic advantages he enjoyed, advantages erected largely to ensure that this country would ever be run by men who looked like him.

I made the case on Colbert last night:

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Douthat says the Paulites need to build "a movement that will outlast the current political moment, and endure even when the incentives of partisanship cut a different way":

The real test will come when it’s a Republican president contemplating sending troops to Syria or when it’s a Republican economy that’s being goosed by the Fed’s monetary policy. I’m fairly confident that Rand Paul will raise his voice in criticism in those cases; I’m much less confident that there will be any kind of Paulista groundswell rising with him.

Larison is more optimistic about Paulism's future. I'm with Ross on this. The Paulites will be stiffed on foreign policy at every juncture.

Here's a fascinating round-table by LDS members about the candidacy of Mitt Romney, a high priest and former stake president in the faith. It's fascinating because it's so diverse – showing just how heterogeneous many Mormons are in their politics. Maybe the simple act of a Mormon nominee will unite all Mormons behind Romney, but at the intellectual level, not so much. One sample from Bryan Benson:

Romney, like anyone else, can be completely in harmony with the Church's teaching on marriage; polygamy, we now know, is not a requirement for exaltation. The teachings respecting Zion, on the other hand, remain intact. Whether one believes that we are not called to live those teachings at this moment or that we simply do not live them, no serious Latter Day Saint can feel completely comfortable with either economic individualism or with the tremendous inequality that results from it. This is not to say that one must see government as the remedy to inequality, but simply that the principles themselves, because in tension with Mormon doctrine, must necessarily produce a certain amount of unease. If we find no sign of uneasiness regarding these things in Romney or other Mormon candidates for high office, it may be more a matter of prudence than principle. Or it may be a sign of the extent of Mormon assimilation.

What is difficult to deny is that balancing the budget entirely on the backs of the poor, old and sick, while actually enriching the already super-rich, and increasing defense spending is not in line with the communitarian ethos that originally inspired the LDS church. Thelma Young:

If there is any message that rings loudly in Christian doctrine, and especially in the Book of Mormon it is the importance of taking care of the least fortunate in our society. We are told to “succor those that stand in need of your succor” and to not “suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish” (Mosiah 4: 16).

Indeed our salvation depends upon it – “And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you-that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God-I would they ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spirituality and temporally, according to their wants” (Mosiah 4:26).

According to their wants. Not their merits.

(Illustration: Brigham Young's 1857 Declaration of Independence from the US in the new country of "Deseret" from Jared Farmer's "Mormons in the Media 1830 – 2012" [PDF].)

How Douthat understood Ann Romney's speech:

The purpose of her primetime address was ostensibly to humanize her husband, to make him seem more like the lovable Everyman that presidential candidates always pretend to be. But her speech was actually most effective when it was confirming the impression that Romney is less a relatable 21st century kind of guy than an unusual sort of throwback – the last of the WASP aristocrats, the latter-day heir of the Cabots and Saltonstalls and pre-Texas Bushes, offering himself up to serve a country where his species long ago ceased to rule.

Nicely captured. I found her enchanting, I have to say. But shallow and too subservient at the same time – not exactly Michelle. Joe Klein wishes she had been more specific:

Mrs. Romney said at several points in the speech that her husband makes her laugh. But no examples. We didn’t hear a single Mitt Romney anecdote–at least, none that I recall. We had to take his humanity on faith. I’m willing to do that. I’m sure he’s a great husband and dad. But that tells you nothing about the kind of leader, the kind of national father-figure, he might be…and delivering bad news, in a fatherly way, is one of the jobs of a President.

And wasn't she supposed to help us understand his faith? He might as well have been a reserved Episcopalian, rather than Mormon royalty. Rachael Larimore echoes Joe:

I’m the rare conservative who will admit to sorta kinda actually liking ol’ Mitt, not just tolerating him, but even I was left wanting a little more from Ann’s speech. There are some wonderful Mitt Romney stories out there: the time a daughter of a Bain partner went missing after a rave and Mitt shut down the entire company and brought everyone to New York to find her (they did, and just barely in time); the time he and two sons saved a family on a lake in New Hampshire when the family’s boat started sinking. And I know you don’t tell those stories on a national stage, because it would be viewed as crass exploitation. But surely there are some anecdotes that lie somewhere between strapping the family dog to the car and saving someone’s life.

And Andrew Sabl takes Mrs. Romney to task for pretending to have had it tough:

As I blogged a few months ago, the way she and Mitt paid for their pasta and tuna fish, and the desk that was a door, was by SELLING STOCK, given to them by his family, that on a conservative calculation was worth in current money almost FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. …Reminding viewers of the facts ought to be the press’ job. But it’s not doing it. The reports I’ve seen—including the New York Times—have made no mention of Ann and Mitt’s vast gifted wealth (and the much vaster wealth that they could of course have drawn on if in trouble). A speech eagerly reported as humanizing and successful actually had a fabricated reality at its center.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

God knows the RNC was trying to court women last night. Hanna Rosin has a new book out, The End Of Men:

At this unprecedented moment, women are no longer merely gaining on men; they have pulled decisively ahead by almost every measure. Already “the end of men”—the phrase Rosin coined—has entered the lexicon as indelibly as Betty Friedan’s “feminine mystique,” Simone de Beauvoir’s “second sex,” Susan Faludi’s “backlash,” and Naomi Wolf’s “beauty myth” have. … Rosin reveals how the new world order came to be, and how it is dramatically shifting dynamics in every arena and at every level of society, with profound implications for marriage, sex, children, work, and more.

An excerpt from the book here. “Ask Anything” archive here.

When he’s on, there’s no one better. Leon Wieseltier unloads on Paul Ryan:

“I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” That is how John Galt concludes his testament, which Paul Ryan demands that his staffers in Congress read. What a frail sense of self it is that feels so imperiled by the existence of others! This monadic ideal is not heroic, it is cowardly. It is also dangerous, because it honors only itself. In his Roadmap, the intellectual on the Republican ticket lectures that “the Founders saw [Adam] Smith not only as an economic thinker, but as a moral philosopher whose other great work was The Theory of Moral Sentiments.” Never mind that everybody else also saw Smith that way, because he really was a moral philosopher and he really did write The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Has Ryan ever opened The Theory of Moral Sentiments? Has he ever read its very first sentence on its very first page?

“How selfish soever man may be supposed,” Smith begins, “there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” That is the least Galt-like, least Rand-like, least Ryan-like sentence ever written. And from there the conservatives’ deity launches into a profound analysis of “mutual sympathy.” So much for Ryan’s fiction of the isolato with a platinum card! If there is anything that Adam Smith stands for, it is the reconcilability of capitalism with fellow feeling, of market economics with social decency. But Ryan is a dismal student of Smith, because he likes his capitalism cruel.

I second every punctuation mark. And I have to say that Ryan’s embrace of Rand and Catholicism reveals he is either extremely ignorant or fathomlessly dumb. They are not somewhat different variants on “movement conservatism”; they are polar opposites. Jesus and Ayn Rand simply could not be further apart. A man who reveres both is a gigantic fool or a massive fraud.