Category: The Dish

Another Take On Rove

A reader writes:

Rove fed a primal need in Bush to win at everything. Unfortunately, winning, to both of them, meant winning the daily news cycle. Even more unfortunate for the country, winning meant the demonization and emasculation of the Democrats. When you view the White House through this prism, the last six plus years make complete sense.

The pair of them framed every issue in this macho light. This is yet another reason why the Republicans are so eager for the Democrats to nominate Hillary. It plays right into their storyline.

And Giuliani continues it perfectly. After a rocky start, he seems the strongest GOP candidate right now. The South will forgive Rudy’s personal foibles if they are accompanied by  relentless, polarizing belligerence against enemies at home and abroad. Christianity may be about peace, but Christianism is about war – a culture war against the enemy. Rudy will shift that fight in the Malkin direction – toward foreign enemies and what many on the right will see as their treasonous allies at home. And he loves to fight.

Thanks Again, Guys

A reader writes:

I always ‘suffer through’ your vacations, anxiously awaiting your return and the continuation of your dialogue with (mostly) yourself.

This year, however, I almost hate to see it end.  Bruce, Stephen, Liz and Eric have been wonderful.  The tax discussions were very thought provoking – how could anyone have complained about them?  What a treat to read 4 smart people discussing serious subjects (mostly) and disagreeing with each other in a civilized, intelligent way.  It was your best vacation ever – from my perspective.

From mine too. I slept through most of it. And grew my beard. It’s getting Whitmanesque.

My Hillary Problem

Clintonmanniegarciagetty

Many readers are mad at me for this post, where I reiterate my issue with Senator Clinton. In expressing my aversion in emotional terms, I’m trying to be candid. But you’re right. In a serious election, it isn’t good enough to write sentences like "I’m sorry but she does that to me." I’ve written before that Clinton’s relentless sensibleness on many issues – including the war, where her own journey has been in the same direction as mine – makes her hard to oppose. So why my continued – almost violent – fear of her as president? The answer, I think, is about character. It’s not so much about policy any more. I’m resigned to the fact that conservatism has entered a wilderness for a while. Bush and Rove killed it, and it will take a period out of power to restore it. And if you’re going to have a big government philosophy you might as well have the government run by people who believe in it, rather than by those who think it’s just a useful vehicle to get their second cousin a job. And Hillary isn’t that left-wing. Yes, I’m worried about what she’d do to the American healthcare industry. But the purge of excellence is coming anyway. The character issue is really about having a president I can trust, whose words are connected to what he or she actually believes, and a president who can move us past the hideous and growing polarization of the past two decades. The words that come out of Clinton’s mouth are like round, honed pebbles on a beach of public relations and focus groups. She has got it down, and it’s smooth and round and aesthetically pleasing. But I don’t believe it or even hear it except as a series of ever shifting calculations. I know some of this is inevitable in politics. But it has come to drain our political discourse of real meaning and clarity. And the crafted populist soundbites of Clinton’s newest, Eva Peron-style campaign ad sound as empty as they may well be effective. She has taken professional politics to a newly homogenized blur of blather. We need plain English.

We may be stuck with her. There would be worse things right now than an extremely careful, cautious and prudent machine pol. A reader notes:

1) If things are bad, getting back to stability is a good idea. "Core competences" in MBA talk. "Stick to the knitting". Nostalgia? Well, duh, habeas corpus, non-interventionism, balanced budgets, respect for the law and the Constitution – sounds quaint, doesn’t it?

2) Every candidate hopes to lock things up quickly. Hillary at this point has gotten rid of all competitors but one. Including in both parties. Her steady growth of being accepted or even liked by people from both parties appears to have squashed any real "draft Gore" likelihood, something that wasn’t obvious 2 months ago. Compared to skeletons in Giuliani’s and Romney’s closets, Hillary looks pretty clean. Ron Paul infatuation is fizzling as people become real. Thompson? My bet is he’ll never officially announce. Perhaps the Republicans can draft someone who has a chance, but Arnie can’t and I don’t see anyone else who has any appeal. (Bloomberg is a tough sell).

3) Obama’s still in it, but he has a lot of catch up to do. Frum’s wrong – the election schedule is too tight – there’s no space for rebounds, no time to re-evaluate after start of primaries. Of course it’s up to the voters in the end, and it looks like only Hillary and Barack have a chance of drawing the numbers, but it still looks like a Hillary/Barack ticket in the end, rather than Barack/Hillary. Richardson is effectively killing himself off as possible VP, though can still be good again in the cabinet. Edwards? Was fairly useless last time, and not going very far this time.

Hard to disagree. But as long as there is a viable alternative – Obama – there’s still hope for something better.

(Photo: Mannie Garcia/Getty.)

Frum on Rove

David’s op-ed this morning was intelligent as he almost uniformly is. He’s absolutely right that Rove’s obsession in reshaping Republicanism to cater to a post-Clinton landscape was pure tactics and no strategy. It was a game-plan, above all, devoid of philosophical coherence and, in many cases, as Josh Green points out as well, antithetical to conservatism as broadly understood for the last four decades. Bush, however, was integral to this abandonment of conservatism as well. A man who had never understood conservatism except as an esoteric form of class resentment had no reason to push back against a mix of short-term highs and long-term lows. But I must differ from David on this:

Wedge politics unites a large constituency on one side, while splitting the coalition on the other side. In the 1970s, crime was a wedge issue: pushing white urban Democrats away from their black and liberal New Deal allies. In this strict sense, the only wedge issue Mr. Rove deployed was immigration, and he deployed it against his own side, dividing business donors from the conservative voting base.

Obviously, the gay marriage issue was a wedge issue. And it was central to Rove’s re-election strategy; and in helping win Ohio in 2004, it may have made the difference in the election.

Rove had pledged not to use gays as a wedge to divide elite Democrats from more socially conservative (and often religious) ones, but he did when it became clear it could make a difference in the election. The disingenuousness of the president’s argument – there was never any threat that civil marriage would be mandated nationally by a court decision in one state – was proof of the cynicism behind it. It relied on demonizing a minority of people, one of whom was Rove’s own stepfather. It was a sign that the Bush administration took politics much more seriously than policy, or even decency. It was a clear sign that they would divide if it meant they could rule. David cannot whitewash that from history, or his own role in promoting and defending it.

EFPs In Iraq

A interesting observation by Juan Cole:

Note too that the Sunni Arab neighborhoods have the explosively formed projectiles, just as do the Shiite neighborhoods. Iran is not giving them to Sunnis, and certainly not to ‘al-Qaeda-allied’ Sunnis. Ipso facto, Iran cannot be the only source of EFPs, and it is not established except by allegation and innuendo that they are a source at all. (If the Sunni Arab guerrillas can make EFPs, so could Iraqi Shiites).

The Maliki government is trying to buy arms from the Mafia as well, as Cole demonstrates in the same post. All for national unity, of course.