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I’ve come to the conclusion that Republicans who are sincerely calling for Mitch Daniels to enter the race--not the ones who wish he had, the ones who want him to do so now--actually want to kill off their party’s chances in 2012. The deep and not entirely known flaws of a Daniels run, in my opinion, dwarf those of Romney’s bid. Any thinking person would come to the conclusion that the whole thing is a bad idea for Republicans, and while that description doesn’t include Bill Kristol, I would think Jay Cost (via Daniel Larison) is more rational than this:
While [Daniels] could not win an outright majority of delegates because of the passing of too many filing deadlines, he could do what Bobby Kennedy attempted in 1968: get in late, do well in the latter contests, win some big states, and make the case that, early primaries aside, he is the true choice of the party, the one who could unify everybody around a common cause. If nobody has won a majority of delegates by June, that could very well be enough for a dark horse victory for Daniels.
I actually disagree with Larison that Daniels is well-positioned to make the case for deficit cutting/entitlement reform. Yeah, Daniels doesn’t have Swiss accounts and Cayman Island shelters to drag him down, but on the other hand Obama would be able to dismiss his rhetoric out of hand by pointing to the inconvenient fact that Daniels was the budget chief who okayed both rounds of the Bush Tax Cuts and the Iraq War, not to mention Medicare Part D. These are four big holes punched through the deficit on Daniels’s watch, making him one of the key architects of our deficit. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has not raised the federal deficit by a single cent. Shifting from making Romney into the bad guy of the past ten years to making Daniels the bad guy of the past ten years would be easy, because it’s right there in the public record. And that alone should be enough.
It’s also entirely nuts to nominate a top Bush Administration economic official for president in an environment where the majority still blames the bad economy on George W. Bush, where the president intends to run for another term on not returning to old, unpopular Bush policies (that Daniels helped implement). Blaming Daniels solely for these policies is demagogic, but it’s not as though he resigned in protest over them, or even disowned them afterward.
What’s more, it’s even nuttier when you think about the inevitable results of doing this:
- A successful Daniels candidacy would ensure a deadlocked convention. That’s the definition of success in this case, which should be a first clue. It’s unlikely that anything in the universe would be able to make Paul, Gingrich or Romney drop out ahead of time, the latter two especially if they even have a chance of winning. Such a convention hasn’t happened since primaries became de rigeur, and having one would bring about, as Larison puts it, “…disaffection of the voting base that feels that its choice has been hijacked.” Which, great timing for that, two months before the election.
- A Daniels nomination, were it accepted, would mean elevating a candidate who hasn’t been vetted and might have embarrassing surprises in his closet.
- Daniels has no experience on the national stage, and could well have a Rick Perry-style cultureshock in such a different arena.
- Daniels is a far less effective communicator than Romney, and a far less dynamic presence in general. My guess is that Obama would run circles around him in debates. And I don’t subscribe to the “hip to be square” concept either.
Really, anyone who knows all this and signs up for it anyway is either suicidal or a fool. Just ask Democrats: in 2004 we didn’t fall in love with John Kerry, but we voted for him anyway. We didn’t spend months on end panicking and wondering if we could somehow induce Gary Locke to hop in and derail the whole thing.
I typically agree with Fidel Castro very rarely, but this is a pretty on-the-money summary:
“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,” said the retired Cuban leader, who has dueled with 11 U.S. administrations since his 1959 revolution.
Also, these guys really need to stop with this stuff:
Another Republican candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said he would authorize increased covert operations to bring down the Cuban government.
Look, the whole point of plausible deniability is that you can fucking deny it! If you tell people you’re going to do it, it’s not covert. It’s just openly breaking the law at that point. Also, it means that other countries that want to hurt America could stage some sort of false flag mission to increase tensions with Cuba. I don’t expect much from Newt Gingrich--respect for other countries’ sovereignty, certainly not--but at the very least he could stop fucking up American security, now, couldn’t he?
This really ought to be the Gingrich campaign song, if he can’t get the rights to “Crackdown” by The Clash:
(h/t: Pwire)
He delivered his speech slightly better than I figured he would, and while I didn’t care much for the content I can’t argue that some of his points were presented well (starting out with a firm defense of the safety net, and presenting what are presumably Paul Ryan-style reforms to save it = smart). But the speech suffered from a schizophrenic focus and tone. Daniels was clearly trying to throw out red meat and make nods to the center, in the same speech, sometimes consecutively. I’m not sure who his audience was, but it felt sort of like that hacky old sitcom plot where the guy goes on two dates at the same time. I’m not qualified to judge whether the red meat was successful. The centrist-style appeals were more so, though in a qualified way. In general, I don’t find Republican rhetoric on entitlement reform very compelling, as it tends to obscure the real choices we need to make there, and Daniels particularly is the man who masterminded the Bush Tax Cuts. He starts out with a serious deficit of trust from this observer, and I doubt he’ll ever reverse it. No doubt if Daniels had run for president, he’d have advocated the exact same supply-side cuts that Romney, Gingrich and Santorum do, and oppose the same “defense” cuts. Until the party’s structure and attitudes change, there’s little point of hoping they’ll start caring about the deficit.
As for the style, Daniels’s overall tone was fairly gloomy, set by this early line: “On these evenings, Presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true.” And, later, this: “So 2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an America of hope and upward mobility, and greater equality.” Daniels started here and pretty much ended here. The speech as written tried to shift toward a more hopeful vision of the future if we just got the danged fiscal house in order, but Daniels’s limits as a speaker insured he’d fail to get that across verbally. The whole thing was low energy and one-note, and felt defeated above all else, which I think is not really the message Republicans want to send in 2012. The difference between President Barack Obama, a man who has taken more abuse than any president probably since Lincoln, going up there and still being able to swing for the fences, get people fired up, and show some genuine passion and idealism up there, and the man Republicans seem to think would be best-suited to replace him was just incredibly stark. And Daniels’s speech smacked very much of a Romneyesque tendency to reach for the right-wing rhetorical jugular insincerely, in fact he’s much less natural at delivering the red meat than Romney is (though I will admit that the “lightbulb” line was delivered pretty well, I reacted to it in spite of knowing it was horseshit). All in all, a speech with significant content and major presentational deficits, the latter of which suggest a limited political skill set that would probably have led to a Rick Perry-like result Daniels moved onto the national stage. If there was any doubt that Mitch Daniels should have run for president, this speech really ought to extinguish it.
Oh, yeah, and Obama did quite well too. But there hasn’t been an occasion that needed outstanding rhetoric and delivery where Obama didn’t rise to the challenge. It was amazing how Romney-centric it was, actually. He’s got his eyes on the ball. And the gestalt is encouraging. Onto November!
(P.S. I can’t resist taking a victory lap for my first-ever Andrew Sullivan link, which I’ve always likened to a stand-up comedian getting a shot on Carson’s Tonight Show. I’m very pleased with it!)
Recently, I’ve been flexing the old activist muscles (been too busy with life changes to really do much before) with the SAFE California group that is working to put a question to the voters on dropping the death penalty in favor of life without parole. It’ll save the state as much as $100 million off of an $8 billion deficit, which isn’t going to fix everything but it’s a patch at no cost to anyone. Anyway, I’ve mostly just been asking people I know as well as asking in friendly venues to gather them, and so far it’s been going pretty well. As of last Friday we need about 190,000 signatures to get the question on the ballot, averaging over 50k per week. With a bit less than four weeks left it seems doable, though obviously some signatures are going to be invalid. It’s going to be close is what I’m saying.
I reckon, if we can get it on the ballot, it has a decent chance of coming to pass. I’m not sure which interests would really be threatened by ending capital punishment in the state. Sure, perhaps there’ll be some nutty right-wing billionaire who will bankroll a vicious smear campaign (there always seems to be one of those), but in terms of the stakeholders I don’t see it. The one company that manufactures the chemicals used for lethal injections went bankrupt a while ago, and to the extent that law enforcement considers execution a useful tool (not a universal view), I’m not sure they want to miss out on the part of the initiative that redirects some of the money used on executions to fund cash-strapped police departments (a savvy inclusion on the part of the organizers). If law enforcement signs on to ending the thing when put to the voters, I’d go so far as to say it’s favored. And, certainly, Governor (and former Attorney General) Jerry Brown and current AG Kamala Harris can make a strong argument for why it’s not needed to keep people safe (both oppose capital punishment). Looking at the polling, this really seems like the best chance to drop the practice in the state, and take one step toward humane correctional practices.
Also, on a related note, Jerry Brown really has been doing a pretty good job in office, much better than Schwarzenegger ever did. Arnie can keep his swaggering macho bullshit, it takes real guts to stand up to the prison guard unions in this state. Or to stake his political capital on a tax hike initiative (to forestall even more spending cuts, of course). Arnie was deathly afraid of doing either one back during his days in office, and Ol’ Moonbeam took him to toughness school on both. Pretty impressive, actually.
Mitt’s apparent intention to turn himself into the New Newt has made him, well, about as popular as Newt. Not all that surprising I guess. But interesting.
I’ve long been skeptical that Mitt Romney would win the nomination easily, despite a truly awful field of competitors. Romney may or may not be a great policy mind when he wants to, but he’s a second-rate political talent who has lost exactly twice as many elections as he’s won. Lately I’ve been thinking about why Romney’s campaign has been so lousy considering the circumstances (lest we forget, he’s locked in an epic battle for first with Newt fucking Gingrich!), and I think I’ve figured it out. It’s simple: Romney thinks it’s all about him. In 2008, Barack Obama consistently (and wisely) did everything he could to minimize his own significance in the election, arguing that he was merely a vehicle for change. His presence dominated the election process, but he connected himself to the larger trends of the moment and thus made the election about something much bigger than himself. It helped that his biography and profile symbolized change so totally, but he was perfectly willing to step aside and let the winds of change blow. Had he spent weeks furiously trying to smack down Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko attacks, say, or mounted a spirited defense of the legal profession, I suspect his brand would have suffered. That stuff was beside the point because of how Obama handled himself, and he won. In a funny way, George W. Bush did something similar in 2000, presenting himself (hilariously) as an outsider to a nation that was tired of scandal and not sold on Al Gore. I wasn’t persuaded by the whole rough-hewn Texan image, partly because it was so evidently fabricated, but one has to admit that he presented himself as part of something larger and acted as basically a medium for it.
Mitt Romney, though, is much more narcissistic than those two candidates. Through his over-the-top and inaccurate criticisms of Obama, he’s tried to make himself a conduit for the free-floating anger at Obama, but in a calculated and forced way that hasn’t gone over with the party’s rank-and-file. Newt Gingrich, though, has been very successful at this game. He gives Republicans something bigger to connect to, something they believe deeply in: fear of change and deep resentment at Obama for making it. Romney, though, mostly chooses to make the election about himself. About his taxes, his wealth, his business expertise, his experience. That he’s the right person to lead. Admittedly, these arguments have to be made in order to win support. But the simple fact is that people don’t love the guy, and while he can attack Obama’s record he can’t quite get out of the damn way to let peoples’ feelings flow through. He’s obviously the best-qualified candidate in the field to have the job, but he’s struggling. At the moment, Newt leads Mitt by four points in Gallup’s five-day rolling average. Romney could still turn it around, but the question is: with what? He’s already unloaded most of his best material on the guy and Newt’s still not dead. (New movie idea: Mitt Romney running for president against a bunch of zombies. Could be a winner!). The numbers are in:
When you get down to it, Romney has every advantage in this race except for one. He can’t channel the white-hot rage of the Republican base convincingly. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, has nearly everything against him except that he can channel that rage. As it turns out, being able to channel that rage has lately been the key to this race, which is why Newt has the edge at the moment. Romney could still win, there are plenty of factors for why that could come to pass, not the least of which is that Newt Gingrich is insane. But the simple fact is that the Something Larger that he’s advocating people connect to is basically Mitt Romney’s Awesomeness, and if people don’t like Mitt Romney, what does he have?
Mitch Daniels is the man of the moment—he’s been selected to respond to Barack Obama’s State Of The Union address, which essentially means that he’s about to kiss any sort of rising star status goodbye if history is any guide. And it should be: Daniels is soft-spoken and not terribly magnetic, and my hunch is that the Republicans devoutly wishing he’d gotten in will not be wishing it this time tomorrow. SOTU responses are a lose-lose situation, the only decent ones in recent years were (1) the one given by Sen. Jim Webb in 2007, which was packed with gravitas, toughness, and dignity, and (2) the one given by Gov. Bob McDonnell last year, which ramped up the cheesy atmospherics (cheering crowds, speaker walking down the aisle and shaking hands) to turn the whole thing into an ersatz State Of The Union, but which somehow worked because it turned the whole thing into a joke that McDonnell was entirely in on. It was actually kind of amazing to watch. Daniels, though, will likely shoot for the first and see his buzz evaporate faster than Bobby Jindal’s did, and let’s not forget that then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’s 2008 address arguably killed her prospects of landing a VP nod with her lifeless speech. I’m not sure why they didn’t give this year’s to Chris Christie, who at least has shown himself to have a strong personality, which is the key ingredient here (and is the subtle connecting thread between Webb and McDonnell that led to their speeches working). Christie can talk, he’s younger and his record in office is much less horrifying than Daniels’s. It’s baffling to me why he wasn’t chosen.
But the weird esteem that Daniels lucked into makes me think of something else. It’s become an article of faith that Daniels not only should have run, but that he’d have done well if he had. Daniel Larison put that notion to rest yesterday. The emerging image of Daniels as a thoughtful, moderate statesman is utterly baffling to me, and is a sign of…something. Let’s do a quick jog down memory lane. During the 1990s, the establishment had plenty of moderate Republicans around to bestow praise upon to show their centrism: George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Susan Molinari, etc. Then the 2000s came around, and suddenly those ranks were severely depleted. Dubya was moderate in some respects, but the establishment was always ambivalent about the guy, simultaneously portraying him as a real ‘merikan and a drunk dolt, and later simultaneously as a True Hero and an incompetent dolt. He never hit the sweet spot for them, so John McCain became their favorite Republican. This made some sense since McCain actually was moderate during this time, opposing the Bush Tax Cuts and so forth. Yes, he supported the Iraq War, but so did every Republican aside from Lincoln Chafee (who, ironically, was booted out in 2006 thanks to public scorn about the Iraq War). But being an iconoclast (and likely an actual Vice President under Kerry had he accepted) simply wasn’t enough for him, he wanted to be president and thus made peace with Bush. From then until now, the centrist establishment’s love for the guy has slowly but steadily dwindled—sure, he still gets on the Sunday shows all the time, but nobody talks about him in elevated terms anymore. Gone forever are the days of the Bipartisan Maverick Centrist War Hero with Courage—these days he’s indulged mostly with vague embarrassment, sort of like Joe Biden without the likability (and with much less knowledge about foreign policy).
This, of course, has left a vacuum for the establishment. Who’s going to be the next maverick, unorthodox Republican for them all to unite around and elevate into a national hero? It’s an open question. Paul Ryan looked certain to be that figure for a time, but the push didn’t work. Too partisan, too bitter, too beholden to wingnut influences, and ultimately while the D.C. crowd loved the idea of a Medicare shredder as a transpartisan hero, the public shockingly refused to go along with it. Chris Christie is the obvious contender for the role, and might well get it, but his style is a hard sell to people outside Jersey. Which leaves us with Mitch Daniels, in many ways the most bizarre figure in this story. Daniels has gotten a lot of mainstream credibility, even though he’s not demonstrably moderate on much of anything. As Kay explains here, he’s a reliable big business crony on the environment, labor rights, taxes, and just about anything else you can name domestically. On foreign policy, he buys into the most dubious assumptions of Fox/Rush/Drudgedom, repeating silly rumors about Obama’s nonexistent apology tour. Daniels does refrain from angry yelling and does present a thoughtful mien, I’ll admit. But it’s either a sign of Daniels’s media savvy that he’s been able to become a “moderate” despite not being moderate in any visible way, or it shows the establishment’s desperation in trying to find a non-horrible Republican that they’ve puffed up someone who gives them very little moderation at all. Or both! Of course, the centrist establishment loves “civility,” which Daniels has I suppose, but this has nothing to do with moderation. McCain during the early aughts was never a civil figure and Christie certainly isn’t. Both are much more moderate than Daniels. Perhaps the establishment has conflated centrism and civility (wouldn’t be the first time!), but someone should tell them that the current state of the Republican Party is such that they can have someone who’s quiet or they can have someone who’s moderate. But today’s Republican Party isn’t going to elevate someone who’s both.
In any event, it’s not going to matter, as Daniels isn’t noted for being an electrifying speaker or much of a master of atmospherics, and can be counted on to give a dull, low-energy Republican speech tonight that will quickly lower the heat on his star. I give it a 95% chance of happening.
As always, this song asks pertinent questions:
The Guardian has a great article on the successful rebranding of the French National Front under its new young leader, Marine Le Pen:
The French political elite was given a short, sharp lesson in not underestimating the FN in 2002. In a completely unexpected scenario, Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked the Socialist candidate out. He lost in the second-round run-off, but the incident provoked a bout of national shame and self-loathing that left deep scars.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s hectoring antisemitism and bullying rhetoric could not sustain the success. But in January 2010 Marine Le Pen was elected the FN’s president and overhauled the party.
She dumped the shaven-haired bully boys nominally responsible for “security” at FN rallies for fresh-faced girls in jeans and crisp T-shirts, and abandoned the neo-Nazism and outdated references to the second world war. She even voiced support for homosexual marriage.
There were flashes of Le Pen senior in her railing against Muslims praying in the streets – which she likened to the Nazi occupation – “corrupt” politicians, European technocrats, and that old FN chestnut, immigration. And while it was generally agreed that she was softer and cleverer than her father, the fundamental ideology of the FN seemed to have changed little.
“She’s a young woman and she plays on that softer image. She’s also good at getting her message across, much, much better than her father,” said Nonna Mayer, who is an expert on France’s far right and a professor at the Paris Institute for Political Studies (Sciences Po).
“But it’s the same politics of scapegoating that it always has been. It’s still the extreme right. There’s no getting away from it.”
I used to think that Europe was way ahead of us. But these days, I’m starting to think we’re ahead of them. Our innate multiculturalism forced us to grapple with what everyone else will have to in the wake of globalization, and countries that once seemed like forward-looking, tolerant, and progressive are seeing the rise of sentiments that have been commonplace here for a long time. But the thing is, I’m actually relatively hopeful for America. Our young people just have little conception (for the most part) of race-based grievances, and the younger you get, the less there is. In the medium term, we should be fine. But a lot of these European countries are going to have to reckon with this stuff, and I have no idea how long it’s going to take. Hopefully shorter than it’s taken us.
In any event, let’s just hope Ms. Le Pen doesn’t get anywhere close to power this year.
Another bucketfull of irony poured into the bottomless well of Republican hypocrisy:
Senator Rand Paul [...] was
detained[inconvenienced] at the airport in Nashville by the Transportation Security Administration on Monday, according to people close to the lawmaker, although the T.S.A. quickly disputed their account.Instead, the agency said the senator had been denied entry to the secure part of the airport after refusing a pat-down,and was “escorted” from the screening area by local law enforcement, but had never been “detained.”
Mr. Paul was later rebooked on a different flight and was “re-screened without incident,” the agency said.
The T.S.A. said that Mr. Paul had been screened by a version of its millimeter-wave body imaging device that uses a generic image of a passenger and, if it detects any anomaly, puts a yellow box on the body area that requires greater scrutiny. An alarm was triggered when he was in the machine, which – under administration procedures – required a “targeted pat-down” to see what caused it. But Mr. Paul refused to submit to the pat-down, the agency said.
Get it? Wingnut firebrand Rand Paul gets his panties in a bunch because the TSA was trying to pat down his God-given right to privacy. Where does the irony come in?
A posting on the senator’s own Twitter account shortly before the incident announced that he was headed to Washington to speak at the “March for Life,” an anti-abortion rally.
Yep, Paul was off to join a bunch of anti-choice dead-enders in their quest to overturn Supreme Court decisions like Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, which served to establish a constitutional right to privacy when it came to things like contraception and abortion.
But far be it from me to ever expect any kind of consistency or logic to invade the bubble in which wingnuts spend all of their waking hours…
Fast Food
New From The Gingrich-Cain Front
Newt rants about cable movies he doesn’t like, and flips out when Herman tries to seize control. Catch all the fun here. And the main site is here, as always. (0 comments)Please Pardon Our Mess. Doing Some Work Under The Hood.
We’re going to be doing some work on Library Grape’s technical bits over the next day or two. We hope the changes will be seamless, but if anything comes up please bear with us as we iron out the kinks.
(0 comments)Headline of the Week: Making Rapeanade
Leave it to TBogg:
(0 comments)Rick Santorum Suggests That When Life Gives You Rape, You Should Make Rapeanade Back when I was in junior high and the Clinton Impeachment was going on, I could hardly have imagined that Clinton would be used as an excuse for wrongdoing by Republican leaders. But that’s where we are. Interesting, isn’t it? (0 comments)Catch up with the official Gingrich-Cain “Great Statesmen” series over at @GingrichCain12. (0 comments)Only 65% of White Americans Have a Favorable Opinion of MLK Jr
…with a whimper. Drum is worth reading on this. I think he’s just got to be the most overhyped and overcovered guy who never managed better than third place since…Joe Lieberman? (0 comments)Mitt Romney's Overwhelming Inauthenticity
It’s amazing to me that Mitt Romney brings up France as a scary comparison point to himself so often when he spent years there and speaks the language. It’s such a minor point, but telling. Of all the people running for president, Mitt Romney has to be the most aware that the rightwing caricature of ... (0 comments)Mother Teresa Doesn't Deserve Sainthood
Case in point. It’s amazing how all the famous/respected Catholic figures from the 1990s have turned out to be incredibly corrupt, isn’t it? I’m sure they’re somehow connected. Of course, as I’m a Protestant I know little about such things. (1 comments)I Fixed It! Ban Sitting Politicians From Running For Another Office
Wonkette reminded me of one of the provisions that I want to write into my fantasy Constitution:No person who holds any elected office shall be permitted to seek election to any other office until he shall have permanently vacated his current post.
(2 comments)The Kardashians want their own magazine?
Unintentionally hilarious: “Bachmann, 55, told a small group of supporters Tuesday night that she was staying in the presidential race…”What other kind of group of Bachmann supporters could there be?(0 comments)Santorum Finishes #2, Sliding Down In The Final Minutes To Lose To Romney
I was really hoping that Santorum would win the Iowa caucuses. The disgustingly puerile humor would have lasted for WEEKS! (0 comments)Good stuff: The National Labor Relations Board announced on Wednesday that it had adopted new rules that would speed up unionization elections, its last major policy decision before it drops to two members and can no longer make new decisions. It approved the rules in a 2-to-1 vote. The labor board said the new rules, which have ... (0 comments)A Dinosaur Infringed On A Patent For Rocks...
Reading this lead-in to an article today made me think of cavemen and dinosaurs:“The long-running antitrust suit Novell filed regarding Microsoft’s alleged tactics to prevent WordPerfect from running properly in Windows 95 seemed to be on the verge of conclusion…”
... (0 comments)Libertarian flame and GOP Hopeful Gary Johnson finally realizes that he’d be better off running as an actual Libertarian. (0 comments)Counterevidence for the 27% Rule
Here:A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll to be released in full later tonight finds a 51% of Republicans view their party’s presidential candidates as average, while 21% view the field as strong and 27% view it as weak.
This time they’re right. (1 comments)
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