John Sides nods:

Americans want politics to do two things: They want it to “work,” so they complain about incivility, partisanship, gridlock and so on, but they also want politics to give them the policies they want. When people complain about gridlock, it’s not because they want just any policy to pass. They want their preferred policy to pass. And the easiest way to enact landmark legislation, as Obama’s first term illustrates, is to get large partisan majorities and leverage their power, even at the risk of the occasional “go f–k yourself.”

Hence the basic irony inherent in the Obama presidency: He campaigned as a post-partisan, but his most lasting accomplishments will be those of a partisan.

But the GOP simply refused to allow him to be post-partisan. And you cannot do it alone. Obama did not react immediately; as usual, he let them destroy themselves before he consigned them to history. But now, after their insistence on partisanship, he has ever right to take the fight to them. Rewarding their partisanship wouldn’t advance the system. Ending the abuse of the filibuster would – but that’s up to Reid.

That’s the result of the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (pdf). Ponnuru adds important context here.

Douthat thinks so:

[J]ust because the G.O.P. looks like it could spend a generation in the wilderness doesn’t meant that it actually will. National parties exist to win national elections, and that incentive alone often suffices to drive changes that the party’s interest groups and ideological enforcers dislike. For every case like the Republicans of the 1930s and the 1940s, the Carter-Mondale-Dukakis Democrats, or the British Tories between John Major and David Cameron, there’s another case where a party that seems to have lost its way completely turns out to be one successful campaign, one appealing nominee or one change of circumstances away from a comeback. In modern G.O.P. history alone, the Goldwater rout was swiftly succeeded by the Nixon realignment, and the various Gingrich-era debacles by the rise of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” We are only one presidential term removed from the latter rebranding, and the idea that it cannot happen again (albeit hopefully along somewhat different lines) seems ahistorical and naive.

Well: duh. It’s possible, of course. It has happened before. There does seem to be some inching toward reality among some Republicans in Washington DC. Maybe a Rubio will be able to erase the memory of Obama’s providing universal healthcare, comprehensive immigration reform and an end to nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq. Maybe a Christie will build on Obama’s legacy and reform it in a conservative direction with the smart, pragmatic thinking of Reihan and Ross and Ramesh and Yuval et al. Or maybe not. I remember in the 1980s how Kinsley’s New Republic had “Recriminations Issues” planned well in advance of successive Democratic defeats. I recall how Margaret Thatcher won three successive elections because the British left went as bonkers then as the American right is now. I recall how it took from 1997 all the way to 2010 for the British Tories to convince Middle England that they weren’t the “nasty party.” How did they break through? Shifting dramatically on gays and the environment, something unlikely in the GOP.

And if one of the two revivals of American conservatism Ross heralds includes the catastrophe of the Bush-Cheney administration … well, maybe a little longer to recover might not be such a bad thing, after all.

But first, that very NSFW mashup of The Beaver trailer and Gibson’s misogynistic tirade towards the mother of his child, Oksana Grigorieva, whom he left his wife for:

A friend of Gibson pens a long and impassioned defense of the actor:

As a long-time reader, I would very much like to sign up for a yearly membership to your site.  However, you make it very difficult when you get simple factual details incorrect.  Please read this to the end, because I have a question for you.

I am speaking of the Jodie Foster speech, and your Mel Gibson comments specifically.  Mr. Sullivan, you repeatedly refer to Mr. Gibson as “a wife beater.”  Does it bother you at all that Mr. Gibson has NEVER ONCE been accused of being a wife beater?  Mr. Gibson was married to Robyn Moore for 30 years, and even in their divorce papers, Ms. Moore praised him and testified under oath that “he never once displayed a violent temper to her, or their seven children, and that he was in fact an excellent father to their children.” Would you be interested in knowing that Mr. Gibson and Ms. Moore even now have such an outstanding relationship that they are continuing to raise their seven children and three grandchildren, and that they continue to run the charity they began together?

You continue with the 25-year-old canard that Mel Gibson is homophobic [and misogynistic]. That one makes me laugh! Jodie Foster has been good friends with Mel Gibson for over 20 years.  Don’t you think that she knows him better than you?

Do you think that if he had ever acted in any way that was not totally supportive of her, that she would have him for a friend?  Do you think she does not know her own mind?  Don’t you realize that YOU are the one who is being a misogynist, when you suggest that she is not capable of picking her own friends?  Do you know that Mel Gibson’s agent and very best friend was Ed Limato, who was an out-and-proud gay man forever in Hollywood, until his death last year?  Not only was Limato Gibson’s agent and friend, he was his father figure.  And where were you when Mel Gibson’s youngest brother Andrew Gibson came out to the public as being gay several years ago?  He came out to Mel and the rest of his family decades ago and according to Andrew Gibson, they all accepted him with love and grace.  And Mel and Andrew are very good friends and associate with each other regularly.  What do you have to say to that?

Your worst line of the last few days is, “Would you trust Mel Gibson with your two sons?”  Mr. Sullivan, for you of all people to say something like that strikes me not only as hideous, but as embarrassing to you.  Don’t you remember when people would say the same things about homosexuals back in the day?  Why are you so judgmental of others?  Mel Gibson has eight children now, most of them  grown, and have you ever heard one bad thing about any of them?  That is almost a record in Hollywood.  Who are you to judge his parenting?  He has always been a loving and caring father.  You say that Mel Gibson looked small the other night, I think you look small with the inaccuracies you have been printing about him.

As far as the anti-Semitism charge, there is no doubt that Mr. Gibson was caught saying contemptible and awful things on tape.  I make NO excuse that he was drunk at those times, except that is the truth.  This is a man who has suffered more because of what he has done to himself than what he has done to others.  It will make no difference to you if I tell you that Mr. Gibson is not an anti-Semite, because your mind is already made up.  The only thing I CAN tell you is that IF he is an anti-Semite, he certainly has scores of Jewish friends, including myself and my family.

Your charges of why he rejects Vatican II are also incorrect.  Like most traditional Catholics, the reasons are many and varied. I would think that you of all people would understand this point, but here is a news flash for you: Human beings are complicated!  And like most complicated people, Mr. Gibson has much more good in him than bad.

And that is where I come in, Mr. Sullivan.  If you are going to condemn this man so viciously and cruelly out of hand, than you need to know about the millions upon millions of dollars he quietly gives away in charity.  You need to know about the scores of children’s lives he has saved by funding their life threatening surgery in developing countries with the charity he and his wife helped start, “Mending Kids International.”  Why don’t you give Cedars Sinai and UCLA Medical Center a call and ask how many millions upon millions of dollars Mel Gibson donated to their children’s center?  Why don’t you call the President of Mexico and ask, “How much money did Mel Gibson give when you had the earthquake down there?”

You will never hear it from Gibson, because unlike most celebrities, he gives in such a way that nobody in the media will ever know about it.  Mr. Gibson has given more money, more time, and done more for humanity, in one year, than most people will ever do in their lifetime.  That is why so many people have such loyalty towards him.  That is why every single one of his female co-stars stand behind him.  It is not just Jodie Foster as you falsely state; it is Julia Roberts, Goldie Hawn, Glenn Close, Rene Russo, Madeline Stowe, Helen Hunt, Diane Keaton, Lucy Lui, etc.  Why do all these women have such loyalty towards him?  Because there is nobody in show business who is more loyal, kind, trustworthy, reliable to be there for a friend or even for a person they don’t know than Mel Gibson.  When Jodie Foster said that “Mel Gibson had saved her”, she was not just blowing smoke.

Again, don’t you think all these people know Mr. Gibson just a little better than you do, Mr. Sullivan?  It is interesting, Mr. Sullivan, the way you write about Mr. Gibson and certain other people you have chosen to hate, one would almost think that you were without faults, flaws, foibles, shortcomings, or weaknesses of any kind.  One would almost think you have you have never struggled in your life, nor had you have sinned.

You pride yourself on being a “journalist.”  In my opinion, that means you should at the very least clean up the factual errors that you have been printing recently.  But I would be pleased if you just write to me and let me know that you might not know Mel Gibson at all, and you will rethink some of your positions. I would be happy to purchase a yearly subscription to the Dish at that point, if for no other reason than you are good for raising my blood pressure.

I’m so sorry: not wife-beater, but beater of the mother of his own child whom he wished to be “raped by a pack of niggers.” By racism, see above. By anti-Semitism, I meant an entire pornographic snuff-movie that had as much to do with Christianity as Gibson’s deranged version of Catholicism, which by chance fouses on the Second Council which removed its vile generalized condemnation of Jews as somehow responsible for the Roman execution of Jesus. By homophobia, I meant, among many things, this:

In the Dec. 1 issue of the El Pais Sunday magazine, Gibson was directly asked his opinion of homosexuals. He responded, “They take it up the ass.” According to El Pams, he laughed, got up, bent over, pointed to his butt, and continued, “This is only for taking a shit.” The interviewer recalled that Gibson previously had expressed fear people would think he is gay because he’s an actor. He responded: “With this look, who’s going to think I’m gay? … I don’t lend myself to that type of confusion. Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?”

Gibson later refused to take back a word: “I don’t think there’s an apology necessary, and I’m certainly not giving one. Those remarks were a response to a direct question. If someone wants my opinion, I’ll give it. What, am I supposed to lie to them?” By misogynist, I mean a taped conversation in which the mother of his child said: “What kind of a man is that who would hit a woman when she is holding a child in her hands, hitting her twice in the face? What kind of a man is that?” To which he replied: “You know what? You fucking deserved it.”

We are all indeed sinners. Mel Gibson may enter the kingdom of Heaven long before I do, if I ever make it. I can only know the public facts and part of my job is to comment on them. I’m sure my reader knows more and I also know there are many aspects to people’s lives outsiders cannot know. But when I see the bruised face of a woman hit by a man, I side with the woman. I do not add insult to her injuries. When I hear a man slurring “the Jews” as a collective, I shudder. When I hear him refuse to disown a statement defining all gay men by vile stereotypes, I don’t just let it go. And I worry about allowing such acts to be forgotten – or even disgustingly rehabilitated – under the glowing benign wings of Jodie Foster.

Finally done reading through and responding to the few thousand emails you sent surrounding the Dish’s declaration of independence. A big thanks again to everyone who wrote in. Many people by now are probably tired of seeing these reader reaxes (I, II, III), but we want to try to do justice to the immense input on the new venture:

Long-time reader, but I’ve never e-mailed you until now. I felt compelled to say that I just purchased a subscription for $30. I wish I could do more, but I’m a teacher with five kids, limited income, blah blah blah. But I couldn’t just do the bare minimum here. I’m surprised by how good it feels to do this. I have read The Dish for years, almost entirely using your RSS feed via Google Reader. It sounds like from your response to the reader who asked about RSS that I could have continued reading you on Google Reader with no noticeable difference, but I still felt a strong need to a) support this venture to help prove the naysayers wrong, and b) compensate you and your team for the incredible work you do.

Another:

I included a $5.00 tip since you published MY “view from your window”this past Christmas Eve. What a fabulous early Christmas present. I was thrilled.

Another isn’t:

I’m surprised that you haven’t received (or at least posted) more emails from readers who will NOT subscribe to your new service. I will be one of them. I have read your blog for many years and thoroughly enjoy most of it, especially the wry commentary, political posts and links to others (Frum, Brooks, etc). However, I skip a lot of posts: I’m not Catholic, so I don’t read your religious posts; I don’t like poetry, so I skip the poems; Although I like to travel and found the View from Your Window Contest initially intriguing, I’m intimidated by your readers who can pinpoint not only the city but the street; the building; the floor and even the room of where a photo was taken, so I skip that as well. Although I believe in marriage equality, I skip many of the posts regarding homosexuality. I read your blog once a day during lunch at my desk, and during the work week, find it uncomfortable to watch videos, even innocuous ones, so I usually skip the Mental Health Break. Like I said, I enjoy the political stuff. I especially enjoyed the Lies of Sarah Palin series and was surprised that you hadn’t written a book to flesh out and expose her deceptions further.

After writing the preceding, I see that I’m not experiencing the fullness of your web site. I guess that I’m more of a Saucer-head than a Dish-head.  So, thanks but no thanks.

A female subscriber:

In my home, you are simply referred to as my boyfriend.  Tonight, on the way to dinner with my husband, I informed him I would be taking our relationship to the next level.  I would now be financially supporting you.  He laughed.  He understands.

Another adds, “For my subscription I paid $36 – a good luck number in Judaism.” Another:

Your decision has left me very conflicted. I want your blog to succeed, but I hope your business model fails. I believe the pay-for-view website model is tacky, outdated, and contributes to a less open Internet. By subscribing, I would feel as if my money would be supporting an idea I just don’t believe in.

I think you guys will do really well with this model for exactly one year, as most people now are subscribing off of emotion (I almost did myself) and attachment to your blog. But your revenue stream is solely dependent upon old readers; how can you possibly attract new readers to a pay blog? And as for your older readers, competition from lesser but freer bloggers will eventually draw many of those subscribers away. I wish you guys had considered more creative, less-intrusive, revenue models (pay-to-comment being my favorite) as opposed to this.

Another:

I have a modest proposal: Email from paying readers receive higher priority over casual, non-paying reader email when considered for publication as a “curated comment.”  You could even add tiers to boost income from your subscription drive!  For example, I subscribed for $25, so I’d be in a tier above a reader who paid the minimum $19.99, who would in turn be above the non-paying reader.  You could top off the priority at $200 or some other modest sum in order to encourage giving but discourage discourse being weighted too much towards the wealthiest Dish readers.  This could be a lot of fun for your staff.  Then again, this idea is probably a waste of Dish resources.

Another:

I work for one of the largest online advertising exchanges in the world and have a significant amount of experience in how web sites increase revenue. If users are interested in “tipping,” or otherwise increasing revenue to the owner of the ad space, one potential solution would be a system wherein users reveal a greater amount of information about themselves (buying preferences, age, income, gender etc.) to preferred websites, such as blogs, with the expectation that those blogs can then improve yield. This would still accomplish the goal of giving back to their favorite websites, but wouldn’t require any actual tip.

Another:

We’re all supposed to tithe; few of us do.  In many churches, the lack of tithing from guys like me is covered off against by a select few, usually old, men.  They don’t do it for show, but you know who they are, and in many cases they expect a certain status for the effort.  If I give $50 to PBS, I may get the opportunity to tote around an attractive tote, and I might bump into a fellow traveller who gave $500 and is sportin’ the snazzy Mr. Rogers diamond-encrusted broach.  By our souvenirs, both of us demonstrate our superiority to the riff-raff, with the $500 person also knowing she is better still than me.

In the case of the Dish, what do I get for being a loyal subscriber, specifically what can I take out on the town to show how cool I am?  Or do I have to rely on my secret, sacred knowledge like the church’s great benefactors, which is unfortunately far more secret in the case of the Dish?

Another suggests, “Once folks donate, there should be a Twitter, FB and Tumblr button to announce one’s support to the world.” We’re looking into it. Another reader is eager to give more:

Good luck on your new endeavor – and to that end, I also wanted to let you know that I signed up to be a founding Dish Member with a payment of $100 for this first year. To the extent that there are students (or others) that would otherwise read your blog, but might not spend the $20/year, I’d be happy to underwrite a number of subscriptions. Say somewhere in the range of 10-20 subscriptions for the first year. Let me know if that’s helpful or interesting to you at all.

A gifting option is definitely in the works. Another reader:

I used to be a blogger and was linked on the Dish a number of times. I can confidently state that I got a very good book deal because of the exposure you gave me. Because of my book I ended up on NPR and PBS. Thank you.

Another is wary of our model:

First, I wish you and the Dish staff well with your new venture. Internet ads, pop-ups, and animated panels are becoming thick enough to make me avoid certain websites already and that is something for all bloggers to consider circumventing.  But what I find to be the most frustrating and disappointing aspect of this venture is that if you succeed, your success will be due to the cult of personality rather than purely from a desire for valuable content.  Your celebrity is in the driver’s seat and, however flattering that may be personally, it is a sad comment on our age and what we choose to monetarily value.

I am a relatively unknown novelist with a strong desire not to become personally known.  That sounds crazy, no?  And in this current celebrity-driven culture I’m left with very little chance of success.  But why is my personal life so important to my readers that they must know and like me before they are willing to read and like my novels?  In the not too distant literary past, the title of a book dominated the cover and the writer was only on the spine. Writers were secondary to the books and stories themselves, and people read them based solely on their content–now it’s hard to even locate the titles of books because they are visually crushed by the author’s gigantic name.  This current trend is a perversion, IMO, and seems even more perverse when it happens in the world of news and information if it too must be driven and sold by a cult-celebrity model or be otherwise doomed to financial failure.

I mean no disrespect to you personally and realize blogging is personal opinion and not news, and in that sense is legitimately personality-driven.  I only want to encourage you and your readers, while we ponder this topic, to look at ourselves and ask, “If I am willing to pay to read Andrew Sullivan’s personal opinions, why won’t I pay for other basic non-personality driven content?” In short, where are we placing our values and should we rethink them?

The vast majority of content on the Dish is our aggregation and commentary on others’ work. It is driven by my personality, sure, but my colleagues take pains to make sure that it is balanced by opposites and alternatives. A subscriber writes:

A no-brainer, really.  I was paying $33 a month last year for a gym membership that I never used. Honestly, the only I time I walked into the place was when I enrolled.  So, $33 x 12 + $4 to make an even $400.  Which puts you about parity with my NYT digital access.  So job well done, congrats and best of luck!

Another:

At first, I was one the fence about paying. Twenty bucks isn’t a lot, but to a struggling writer it’s not nothing. What changed my mind was two movies I saw last week: Lincoln and Les Miserables. I paid $20 to see these two movies. Both will resonate with me for a long time, but both were essentially transitory experiences. If I can pony up $20 for two films, I can certainly do so for a year of the Dish.

But on a related point, what really pushed me toward paying was how much my viewing of those films benefited from the discussion threads on your site. Similarly, the extensive commentary on Zero Dark Thirty has convinced me not to see that film (at least not until it comes out on DVD). Those who dismiss this experiment or this site wondering who’d pay for one man’s political commentary completely miss the point.

Another:

I have always imagined that if I run into the Dish team at a bar, I would buy you all a round, and that would be little for all that I have learnt from the blog.  So let’s say a round of beers would cost 25 bucks … that’s what I gave (unless you are into the good Belgian stuff – that will be next year). Cheers and the very best for the year ahead.

One more:

I’ve long been a reader of the Dish, since the very beginning in fact.  I happily gave you $100, and that is probably only a fraction of what the true value has been for me over the last ten plus years. What I realized this morning is that while you have forsworn advertising, you are now going to subject Dish readers to regular NPR/Public television-style pitches for subscriptions/donations.  Maybe I’m wrong, and you’ll tone down the pitches after the meter starts in February.

Yes, we plan to. But until then, you can pre-subscribe to the new, ad-free Dishhere. Very grateful for everyone’s support, we literally can’t do this without you now.

(Photos of Dish reader Gmail pics, with permission. Update from a reader: “Loved the pictures of “us” – Dish readers. More please.”)

Beinart analyzes yesterday’s elections:

Netanyahu clearly sees himself as the Winston Churchill to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s Adolf Hitler. (With Barack Obama perhaps making a cameo as Neville Chamberlain). To hear Bibi’s speeches over the past few years, you’d have thought it was five minutes to midnight every year. So what does he do? He holds an election that kicks the can down the road—and gives Tehran more time to build a nuke—which is exactly what he’s denounced the world for doing. I understand his desire to get himself ensconced for a few more years before a second-term Obama has time to undermine him. But why risk a quick election, whose outcome he could never fully foresee, when he’s so convinced History has anointed him the man to act in this moment? It undermines everything he’s said about the gravity of the moment. And even more remarkably, Iran wasn’t even a dominant issue in the campaign.

Michael Koplow expects that the Israeli prime minister’s next term will be his last:

The new Israeli government is going to be facing enormous cross-cutting pressures from within its own ranks and from outside the country, and no matter how hard he tries to construct a stable coalition, there will be nothing Netanyahu can do to mitigate this problem. Rather, the coalition choices that Netanyahu makes are going to determine which set of pressures will ultimately bring him down. In essence, Netanyahu will be picking his poison rather than coming up with a cure.

(Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves to his supporters as he arrives with Former Israel Minister for Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman at his election campaign headquarters on Janurary 23, 2013 in Tel Aviv, Israel. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

J.F. at DiA considers them:

Writing in the New Yorker, Jill Lepore makes a compelling case that the real and lasting legacy of Roe has nothing to do with abortion; instead, it has to do with how the left and right use courts. The left, seeing the backlash that resulted from the Supreme Court effectively deciding a complex and thorny social issue, has been reluctant to go that road again. The right, seeing how the Supreme Court had effectively decided a complex and thorny social issue, has, in the words of a constitutional-law scholar whom Ms Lepore quotes, “raised a generation of people who understand that courts matter and who will vote on that basis and can be mobilised to vote on that basis and who are willing to pay political costs for votes. This is completely lacking on the other side.” Never underestimate the instructive power of failure and loss, in other words.

Canada’s new bank notes need a botany lesson:

[I]t turns out that the maple leaf depicted in a prominent security feature on the new notes most closely resembles a Norwegian maple, rather than one of the country’s ten native species. … The central bank insists that it did consult an unnamed dendrologist—a specialist in wooded plants such as trees, shrubs and lianas—and that the stylised leaf is meant to represent all maples. But botanists, including one who consults with the Royal Mint on coinage, have been coming forward to say that the leaf with five main lobes on the notes is definitely from the Norway maple, an invasive species brought to North America in the 18th century which turns yellow in the autumn, and definitely not the iconic sugar maple leaf, which has three main lobes and turns a brilliant scarlet.

(Photo: A man displays Canadian 20-dollar bills in Washington on January 14, 2013. By Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.)

A reader clarifies:

Your headline citing that Charles Kenny post is misleading. He’s discussing green cards, mere residency rights, not auctioning off all the social benefits and the status of citizenship.

Another:

We’re already doing this. The EB5 visa program is responsible for what will be one of the biggest investments in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, a portion of the state known for its beauty and natural features as well as high unemployment. Companies that arguably might not have picked Vermont to build a new plant have used the program to begin developing the Kingdom.