Author: Andrew Sullivan

While we're all atwitter about Breitbart etc, the president signs another huge piece of reformist legislation. It is hard to think of a more substantive domestic first two years for a presidency in recent times. At some point, when the full public tunes in, this will surely matter.

We tend to think of Israel as a Western country and in many respects it is. And then you read a story like this. More here.

Climbing Sweettooth? On another front, the wedding is delayed.

Larison reminds the Dish that Romney, no matter how unseemly he might have been, defeated the three women he ran against:

There also seems to be the suggestion that it is Romney who is at a disadvantage in any intra-Republican contest in which gender becomes a significant issue. That is an odd thing to assume. Palin’s “Mama Grizzly” routine works well enough when the perceived attackers are coming from outside the GOP, but my guess is that it will fall flat and will come across as mere whining when she uses it to fend off Republican rivals.

Do we really think that most Republican primary voters are more likely to nominate a woman for President than Democratic voters were two years ago? Do we really think that Republicans would prefer the less qualified candidate because she is a woman? Wouldn’t many Republicans want Romney to succeed to prove that the GOP is not dominated by religious conservatives who will not support a Mormon candidate? Wouldn’t that impulse to show religious tolerance overwhelm any impulse to promote Palin beyond her ability just to get credit for nominating the first woman nominee?

If the 2012 nomination contest comes down to a head-to-head fight between Romney and Palin, there appears to be every reason to think that Romney prevails.

(Cartoon via Conservatives4Palin)

Tricia Romano profiles the post-racial sex appeal of the Old Spice Guy:

Interestingly, Old Spice had another black spokesman before [ex-wide receiver Isaiah] Mustafa: Terry Crews. The hyperactive ad series featured the ex-NFL linebacker topless and yelling in an intense (and funny) way. Chideya says of Crews: "He's not as handsome as Isaiah, but he's also really funny in a way that's more within the black vernacular." Of Mustafa, she says, "This guy is no doubt black, but he's someone who is the modern, urbane, living-in-a-post-racial-Fort Greene kind of a guy."

While Obama braves the fast-moving political tide (we love him, we are irritated and disappointed with him, we loathe him, we love him again), here is this other stunningly handsome, funny black man on our TV, transcending color lines, with—it should be noted—a Muslim name.

The gays love him too:

He's not “hot for a black guy,” he’s just hot. He's hot enough to make celebrity lesbian Ellen DeGeneres giggle like a school girl when he visited her set, causing her to beg him to recite his Old Spice lines. Ellen isn’t alone—gay men love the Old Spice Man, as much as straight women apparently do. An AfterElton.com staffer picked Mustafa as one of his 10 hottest men, writing, that Mustafa "almost makes me want to buy some Old Spice. Almost."

Joe Berkowitz chronicles Mustafa's rise after watching all 180 of his spin-off ads.  Mashable rounds up the ten funniest. The actor has already signed a talent deal with NBC, so a sitcom could be in the works.

Continetti makes an important point in passing:

When you look at conservative commentary today, you see a lot of people interpreting the rise of the Tea Party and the coming Republican victories as signs that suddenly the country has become indistinguishable from CPAC. I do not see that as the case. While the public has been drifting right on a number of issues, there is the real danger that conservatives and Republicans will over-interpret whatever happens in November, just as liberals and Democrats over-interpreted the 2008 election.

Once again, you stumble upon the truth, Morton!

Long ago, this was my basic assumption about the immediate future of the GOP. They could not cognitively handle that they had supported an administration that spent like left-liberals, poured trillions into nation-building in failed states, fought a war on dramatically false pretenses, authorized illegal torture by presidential decree, lost a major US city, and turned a surplus into a spiraling deficit, leaving no wriggle room for when a storm like the financial collapse of 2008 occurred. So they simply went into denial, and blamed everything on the person who inherited this catastrophe.

Reduced to a purer rump based in the South, they reinforced their worst tendencies, as parties often do after losing elections in landslides. They became more anti-illegal immigrant, they chanted slogans about "liberty or tyranny" rather than offering proposals to solve our many problems, they became older and whiter and angrier. And because of the enduring recession and a centrist attempt to find a way for working poor to afford health insurance, they blamed all their woes on a black communist, taking from whites and giving to minorities. And from this strong elixir, they gained an appearance of strength. They may well do well this fall as a protest vote.

But what then? They do not have the courage or conviction of the British Tories, who are actually cutting spending with a vengeance, while tackling climate change and promoting values like commitment and responsibility for all citizens, gay and straight. And so they will be asked by Obama, if they win back the House, to take a stand on the debt, along the lines of his debt commission. What then? Will they grow up and deal or retreat in Palinite denialism?

I suspect the latter … which could well lead to a landslide for Obama in 2012. Obama's strength as a moderator and facilitator will be made stronger by a divided Congress. And voters will be very leery of handing the presidency to a Republican if the GOP also runs the Congress (or seems likely to). Unlike Clinton, of course, Obama will also have moved the needle pragmatically leftward – on financial regulation and health insurance, not to speak of foreign policy. On this, I share Charles Krauthammer's argument that the long run still favors Obama. Decisively. And the Republicans are making this more likely, not less, by their extremism and anger.

They are huffing the glue of their own bankrupt ideology. That leads away from power, not toward it.

Breitbart blames others for his demonization of Shirley Sherrod – and pivots directly to sliming the NAACP audience:

Staggering. Who are “they”?

In the past, Hitch was a stern critic; I was a stern defender. Strange that we have now converged again:

In order for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can’t, it’ll have to dispense with the occupation. It’s as simple as that.

It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can’t govern other people against their will. It can’t continue to steal their land in the way that it does every day.And it’s unbelievably irresponsible of Israelis, knowing the position of the United States and its allies are in around the world, to continue to behave in this unconscionable way. And I’m afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I’m a prisoner of that knowledge. I can’t un-know it.

Since Obama was elected, Israel has indeed behaved in an unconscionable and irresponsible way towards its most important ally. And yet those neocons who never stint in calling for presidents to defend US interests against foreign governments, have almost uniformly backed this foreign government against their own president. I can't think of any parallel. And yet we are so used to it it is almost background noise.

Towson, Maryland, 12 pm

Ezra Klein addresses the controversy over his list-serv for the last time. It's telling to me that he sets up a straw-man. There was no "conspiracy" on Journolist, so far as I can tell, and I haven't claimed there was. There was a cozy, self-satisfied network of writers, bloggers, and journalists who shared a broad progressive position and supported the Democratic party (but often disagreed as well). The valid criticism is not that this is a conspiracy, but a clique, a clique that at times (but not always) fostered the notion of coordination, media management, and even petitions. That's what the neocon right does; and what the theocon right does. I think it's helped kill off conservative thinking and fostered groupthink, ideological policing, and media manipulation. I can see why some liberals wanted to fight fire with fire. But what's burning is the polity and free discourse.

Still, the list is over with now. Good riddance.