The Left and Huckabee

I wonder if he’ll get more sympathy along these lines:

Huckabee’s biggest obstacle isn’t Democrats, it’s the corporatist Republican establishment that has been in control of the government for the past seven years. Life has been grand for these fatcats under the Bush regime. There is no way they’re going to quietly cede power to a yahoo Christian nationalist populist like Huckabee.

The Club for Growth, along with Grover Norquist and his gang – with its direct connection to Karl Rove – are among the leading shills of the corporatist wing of the Republican Party.

Quote For The Day

"When I was a governor and young and thought I was the best politician in the Democratic Party, I didn’t run the first time.  I could have. I knew in my bones I shouldn’t run. That I was a good enough politician to win, but I didn’t think I was ready to be president," – president Bill Clinton, trashing Barack Obama’s readiness for the Oval Office. Marc notes:

Toward the end of the interview, his hands began to shake and his face reddened as he discussed the political thicket his wife finds herself in.

Where’s The Anti-Terror Beef?

The strange failure of law enforcement to find, you know, any actual evidence of terrorist plots against America remains a mystery:

At some point, you’d figure we’d bust open a ring where there is actually hard evidence of wrong-doing.  Where are the weapons caches? The bomb factories? The foreign trained jihadists with forged papers? Where are the guys who have actually done dry runs against targets? The guys who have deposited "martyrdom" videos with AQ central?

It almost seems as if AQ is not even trying to strike the U.S. homeland because the "plots" we are disrupting show virtually no signs of have been devised and planned with the professionalism we usually associate with AQ activities.

Joyner suggests a reason:

The more likely answer, I think, is the fact that U.S. counter-terrorism policy is in the hands of a 1920s-style law enforcement agency whose bureaucratic incentives stress busts and convictions as the key metric.

On the other hand, maybe torture as the primary means of intelligence-gathering has turned out to be not-so-effective. But don’t tell Cheney. He doesn’t like it when the dark side just leads to more … dark.

This Is Your Party, Mr Krauthammer

From a pitch for the anti-marriage constitutional amendment in Florida:

My friend John Stemberger’s efforts to save marriage is closing in on an important milestone. They are only 13,000 ballots away from the required 611,000+ needed to put a marriage ammendment [sic] on the ballot for the 2008 elections.

The amendment would change Florida’s constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, so that marriage cannot be defined in ways that the Bible forbids, and so that marriages and families can be protected by state law.

The Bible forbids. Chris Kelly observes:

Now I know what you’re thinking: Why doesn’t a nice place like Florida already have a law making sure that lesbians know they’re not as good as women who get fucked with penises, and that they never forget it? Well, it does. It’s already illegal for gay people to get married in Florida.

Sure, but who cares when the state constitution doesn’t explicitly reflect what the Bible forbids? I guess this is all news to Rich Lowry. It’s all funny, isn’t it, until someone who isn’t gay gets hurt.

Decency And A Generation

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"The Republicans will have a very hard time attacking Obama on racial grounds without seeming to be overtly racist. So they will smear him as treasonous and use the religion card, however fallaciously. This meme is out there – disgracefully abetted by those now in power. The only way past it is through it. And the only mistake is fearing it. Don’t under-estimate it, but don’t fear it. And defeat it. Clinton simply cannot do that. But Obama has a chance."

Hammer. Nail. Head.

This country has been torn apart by fear, sectarianism, and prejudice for a long time. It started before the 2000 election, but it got kicked into overdrive after September 11th. It has been abetted by a feckless media and a frightened and ignorant public who has seen so much change in the last generation that they need scapegoats, any scapegoats, to blame these uncomfortable changes on.

It’s been promoted by those who want to turn back the clock to some mythical  ‘way when things used to be’ that never existed. Huckabee’s ignorant dismissal of science is indicative that there are powerful forces in this country that are still upset with these changes and unhappy with what modernity has wrought. We may disagree on policy and certain points of policy – I am liberal and you are conservative. But the difference between you and I are nothing compared to us and what has taken over the Republican Party.

At the height of McCarthyism the great thug from Wisconsin was brought low when, on television for all the nation to see, a man stood up to him and said, "You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" Andrew, there is a vast, silent majority out here yearning for someone to say exactly that to the forces that have given us the Bush administration. No retreat. No surrender. No appeasement. We want someone to stand up and shout ‘Have you no decency?!’

Hillary can’t do this because she’s been part of it. She part of it because she was cowed and made fearful by the forces that attempted to destroy her and her husband in the 1990s. This is why Obama is so appealing. His generation is simply not compromised by the accumulated cultural baggage that allowed those despicable attacks to wound her and democrats of that era. Let these smears continue – my generation, in their millions and millions, will only be incensed more and more by them. We’re pissed. All someone has to do is show up and lead, because we’re damn ready to follow.