The Dish

Well, we'll soon see whether the Rasmussen model can predict a Senate race. That's different, of course, than providing insight into general public opinion – and Rasmussens model excludes that kind of polling, focusing on what Rasmussen, a Republican outfit, thinks are the key voters: white, older Republicans and Independents. Weigel explains the base dynamics. Ben Smith tries to sound open-minded about Rasmussen. But the phenomenon of a polling outfit playing a key role in shaping anti-Obama stories in the blogosphere and MSM, generating base enthusiasm, and being embraced as the real reality of American politics is an interesting dynamic.

I don't buy the idea that Rasmussen represents how the country is thinking as a whole. But I'm an agnostic on whether it really does show what will happen at the polls in mid-terms or small turnout special races. This is a pretty good test of that, no?

One of many readers writes:

You wrote:

“Can you imagine any private sector company failing on such a core element of its enterprise and no one being fired?”

Uhhhh, yeah.  It’s called “Wall Street.”

Maybe they should give all the operatives who failed to connect the dots or respond adequately to this threat a billion dollar bonus.

 

Graeme Wood, a card carrying member of the "cold-water bucket brigade with respect to this revolt's chance of being upgraded….to a full-blown revolution" was surprised by the intensity of the recent Iranian protests:

I do hope to hear more about the conditions outside Tehran, and away from the predictable sites of unrest. When I start reading reports of riots in Tabriz, Shiraz, and Yazd, the possibility of someday visiting a small grave, barely marked with the name "Khamenei," will seem considerably less remote.

At the Dish we do what we can to forage data from the sealed-off country. But my sense is that Ashura was a turning point. This is a psychological and spiritual struggle at its core. It is about the very legitimacy of the Khamenei junta's right to claim religious and political leadership of Iranians. The election itself was a coup de foudre, but the junta's response to the vote was disastrously ill-footed. As Machiavelli taught, the only thing more dangerous than allowing dissent to take hold is to suppress it incompetently. 

Like Cheney, Khamenei could not control the torture he unleashed on prisoners and, like Cheney, has lost any moral standing among democracy-supporters as a result. The brutality in the open streets and behind closed doors at nightfall and in the college dorms of the next generation confirmed the illegitimacy of the regime. The violence on Ashura made it much worse. And the strength and resilience of the Green Movement has endured, despite a lack of central leadership.

Despite neocon protestations – it's always about them – Obama's refusal to be baited by the regime and turned into propaganda tool for the junta was a very helpful move. The only argument we hear from Khamenei's goons is that the resistance is entirely a CIA plot, funded by the Brits and Americans. If Obama had done the emotionally satisfying thing and rallied the American government explicitly behind the revolution, he would have hurt more than helped. Ditto the sanctions game. His dedication to restraint and pragmatism is easily the best way to achieve the regime change that alone will alter the dynamics of the war on Jihadist terror.

With each demonstration of their continued grip on the popular imagination, from June through December, the Green Movement gains legitimacy and the regime loses its. Like the original revolution, this comes in waves, each one washing a little further over the high water-mark of theocratic-military rule. At some point, there will have to be massive violence unleashed by the junta – a true Stalinist terror-state move – to prevent a collapse. Or the dam will break.

February 11 will be the next high tide.

Reihan adds his two cents. Map from the student protests of 16 Azar.

Charles Johnson explains his concerns here. He's particularly right about the kind of proto-fascist love of violence against "the other" that you see pulsating in the writing of, say, Michael Goldfarb or Robert Stacy McCain.

I think proto-fascism is a better term than neo-fascism. Cheney and Bush respected the outer limits of constitutional democracy. They obeyed a Supreme Court ruling that struck down their maximalist views of their own inherent power as the executive branch. They left office after an election. They are not fascists. But they do see the executive branch as a kind of fascist element within a democratic polity, an element that can simply ignore the law or hire lawyers to twist it into meaninglessness, an element that has the inherent power to seize anyone, citizen or non-citizen, in the US or not the US, detain them without due process and torture them, in the name of national security, meaning any government response to "active threats" of terrorism.

This proto-fascist tendency, proven chillingly in the last week as Cheney Republicans like Stephen Hayes called for the torture of the undie-bomber, is what worries me. It is the embrace of raw violence against the defenseless – not within the constraints of just war, but outside all constraints except victory against an 'evil' enemy.

I do think partisanship has clouded conservative eyes on this question. I don't think many on the right have yet absorbed the full ramifications of what Cheney asserted and what the GOP now holds as its view of the power of government – i.e. total power over the individual, to the point of torture, in the name of national security.

That's why, in my judgment, Obama is essential. He is the barrier between us and a form of fascism, imbued with utter moral certainty, that now animates the core of the GOP. Until that core is defeated, real conservatives need to keep their distance from this kind of authoritarian thrill.

Georgetown, Maine, 10 am.

The book, "The View From Your Window", featuring 200 Dish reader windows from the past three years, from dawn to dusk, across every continent, can be purchased here.

We're told no heads will roll at today's review of anti-terror policy after the undie-bomber near-miss. Can you imagine any private sector company failing on such a core element of its enterprise and no one being fired?

Me neither. In this, Obama is in danger of becoming Bush. Yes, I understand that fixing the problems is paramount. And I understand the need to find out exactly who failed us and why and how to prevent that in future. And I can see why immediate firings may not be feasible.

But if there is not a period of house-cleaning in which those individuals who failed to do basic due diligence on a case that is close to identical to one that occurred eight years ago, then we will know that Obama is the same old same old.

It's called BSMP LLC, and is about "public relations". Gryphen asks:

Who are the public relations for? And how does a public relations firm manage with only one employee?

The archivist has some possible explanations. Palingates muses here. Maddow explored it on her show last night:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"What’s he call up and say? 'I got a hot one for you, Jon. Can you take — what’s your email address?' Is that what he does?" – Chris Matthews on Cheney's media spokesman, Mike Allen of Politico.

As Chris says, this was "not reporting." It was fusing a journalistic enterprise with a political machine in order to gain page-views for a scoop and thereby money. And that's the danger of someone like Mike Allen getting so close to Dick Cheney that he is a stenographer-for-hire. Couldn't Cheney have just faxed his recent attack on the president to the press in general? Why does Mike Allen have to be his conduit? We know why. Allen has proved his worth to Cheney.

Video of Politico's Jonathan Martin trying and failing to defend the whoredom of his publication after the jump: