Deal Hudson gives up:
It’s clear from his convoluted statements on embryonic stem cells that Romney’s thoughts on this issue are still far from coherent and consistent.
So far as I can tell, the only truly consistent thing in Romney’s life is his own ambition. If this race ends up between Clinton and Romney, it really will be two hollow shells ricocheting off each other’s opportunism.
I find it hard to disagree with any of this. In Obama, the Democratic party has a chance for a landslide in the 2008 election, something they will immediately forfeit with the divisive, cynical, hollow candidacy of Hillary Clinton. In Obama, disaffected Republicans also have a chance to punish their own party for its abandonment of conservatism, embrace of dumb authoritarianism abroad and spendthrift liberalism at home. The logic is overwhelming to me, but it’s good to see it echoed in the Washington Times. If the Democrats throw this opportunity away in favor of a corrupt dynasty, it will be the biggest self-inflicted blow since … well, John Kerry and Harry Reid.
A reader writes:
Is it really so puzzling why lower middle class people go to church but have higher rates of abortion, illegitimacy, and divorce? Very often people who lack a quality are the ones who obsess ostentatiously about it. That applies, not just to family virtue, but to many other traits — intellect, culture, beauty, class, professional achievement. People who insecure about possessing a quality compensate by displaying conspicuous signs that they have it. A paralegal, for example, anxious about her class, will carry a Gucci handbag to try to show that she is rich and fashionable. An aristocrat, living on inherited money earned four generations ago, is more confident and wears a favorite five year old jacket when she walks outside in the snow.
The same pattern applies to family virtue.
A liberal who lives in Boston and has been married to the same woman for twenty years has no need to proclaim his virtue; it is evident in his own life. The man from Alabama who has divorced and fathered a child out of wedlock is acutely conscious of his lack of virtue and is nervous about the impression it will give to other people. He covers his soiled family life with the clean blanket of churchgoing and vocal participation in groups devoted to conservative causes.
But why does this lead to opposition to gay marriage, when gay marriage promotes the virtues of fidelity and stability? I strongly support gay marriage and believe that it promotes family virtue. But if we are trying to explain (but not excuse) why the churchgoing divorcees oppose it, the answer is that they see homosexuality, married or not, as non-traditional. The churchgoing divorcees are not asserting their family virtue, logically conceived, but their family virtue as traditionally defined. It is the traditional definition of family virtue that prevails in the communities where the churchgoing divorcees are trying to ingratiate themselves, as a way to compensate for and cover their fractured family lives. And while an argument can be made that gay marriage is compatible with tradition, gay marriage is not the same as that tradition, which has historically been bitterly bigoted and hostile towards homosexuality.
Alas, they’re not much of a force any more in Republican ranks – the candidates clearly don’t want us. But among the Democrats, whatever the polls say, the gay vote in Iowa and New Hampshire seems as divided and conflicted as the straight vote.
It’s neck and neck between Clinton and Obama in New Hampshire and Iowa. And here’s a fascinating glimpse of the choice:
The poll finds a divide in support for Clinton and Obama among age groups, with about two out of five voters age 18 to 44 in both states saying they favor Obama and about the same margin of Democratic voters age 65 and above backing Clinton, though Edwards gets a similar margin of support from that group in Iowa.
Furthermore, Clinton continues to hold onto support from older women. In Iowa, she gets 43 percent of the vote from women age 45 and over, twice as much as Edwards and Obama. The numbers are similar in New Hampshire.
It’s between the older generation versus the younger; those afraid of the Republican machine and those who want to transcend that bitter struggle. I liked this rationale for Clinton:
"You can’t sit across the table from somebody all those years and not talk business," says Klenske, 81. "If you’re a farmer’s wife you pretty much know as much about operating a farm as your husband does."
This is what Clinton does for feminism. She makes it indistinguishable from nepotism.
(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)
Can you tell anything about a presidential candidate by playing basketball with him? I guess this is Matt Yglesias’ bailiwick, but this Sports Illustrated piece is fun:
Obama was confident but not cocky, unselfish but unafraid to shoot. On court he showed the same balance that has fueled his political rise; he could talk trash without seeming mean, compete feverishly without seeming angry. Yet few knew how central the sport — "my first love," he calls it — was to his self-image as a mixed-race child: How the greatest gift from his absent dad was a basketball, how playing gave him his closest white friends and a place where black skin wasn’t a disadvantage. When a coach, a close friend, casually threw out the word n—–, Obama says, "It reminded me that race is complicated, that people are complicated, that you could have ugly strains even among people who were otherwise decent…. It does not necessarily mean they’re bad people."
Here’s some classic highschool footage of Obama on the court:
The weather anyway. Probably more reliable than the polls at Christmas.
He’s as touchy as his presidential pick.
Useful history:
Bin Laden has plotted against Bhutto since she first became prime minister of Pakistan. In the fall of 1989, in the lead up to a crunch no-confidence vote in Pakistan’s parliament, Bin Laden, based then in Peshawar, tried to sway the outcome by sending money to Islamabad to buy votes. According to testimony in Peter Bergen’s 2006 oral history The Osama bin Laden I know, Bhutto, on discovering Bin Laden’s involvement, personally phoned up King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and demanded the Saudis rein him in. The Saudis called Bin Laden back for consultations and promptly confiscated his passport, cutting him off for a while from the al-Qaida organisation he had founded in Pakistan the year before. The episode presumably did not endear Bhutto to Bin Laden.
Not a pretty sight:
It’s not the mistake itself that will raise eyebrowses — it’s Huckabee’s lack of intellectual ease, his lack of felicity, with foreign policy at a critical moment when everyone is paying attention.
