What is this, 1980?: A Look at the Reagan Factor

It seems every Republican debate and stump speech has turned into a "Reagan Off," a test of courage to see who can invoke the name of our Dear Lord, Ronald Reagan, the most.

There is no clear winner yet.

So, what's with the nostalgia over Reagan? Well, rumor has it the so-called "Reagan Coalition" (although, I would suggest that Nixon had more to do with building the modern Republican party than Reagan, but I guess Republicans don't want to idolize Nixon...) is falling apart. This coalition is loosely composed of three groups of people. The CEOs, the Bible Thumpers, and the Warmongers. In the recent past, Republican candidates have been able to satisfy all three crowds. George W. Bush, for instance, is a businessman who feigns Evangelical Christianity while promoting hawkish policies. Everyone is happy.

Too bad for them W has to go. This coalition has not been able to rally around a nominee. Mike Huckabee satisfies the Bible Thumpers, but the CEOs hate him (what is this populism bullshit!?). John McCain plays well to hawkish crowds, but the Jesus Freaks and the businessfolk don't trust him (he's against tax cuts and he likes gays! Or something...). Mitt Romney, the penultimate Businessman, can't win over evangelicals ("Don't Mormons believe that the devil is Jesus' brother?" - Mike Huckabee) and he doesn't have the military experience that the hawks like.

So, what is a Republican to do? Invoke the name of Reagan, of course! I think the logic here is that by repeating Reagan's name, a candidate might be able to fool these factions into thinking he is the most like Reagan and thus able to hold the coalition together.

I think Mitt Romney could come the closest to holding the coalition together. While he lacks military experience, he at least speaks in a hawkish manner ("Let's double Gitmo! YEEHAW!") And while evangelicals don't really trust him, he does promote very evangelical arguments. So, if the coalition gives Romney a chance, he might be able to hold it together.

But, of course, it's worth noting that Mitt Romney couldn't beat Pee Wee Herman in a general election. So, I don't know what the Republicans can do.

I guess wait eight years until America is sick of Democrats and try again.

We can only hope

Will Christian conservatives back a third-party candidate if the Republican Party nominates pro-choice Rudy Giuliani? I hope so. A commentator at the New York Times says:

Let the Republicans nominate Rudy so the Evangelicals can run a 3rd party candidate. We’ll get a Clinton in the office with just a plurality of the vote. Sounds like 1992 all over again!

Yee hah!

Alan Greenspan lets loose

Alan Greenspan lets loose:

In a withering critique of his fellow Republicans, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir that the party to which he has belonged all his life deserved to lose power last year for forsaking its small-government principles.

...

Mr. Greenspan, who calls himself a "lifelong libertarian Republican," writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb "out-of-control" spending while the Republicans controlled Congress. He says President Bush's failure to do so "was a major mistake." Republicans in Congress, he writes, "swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose."

Yes indeed.

UPDATE: Digby has a nice post on the subject, including this little tidbit:

I'm most interested in his take on the various presidents he worked with. For instance:

he believes that "Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were the most intelligent, he wrote, while he found Ford the most normal and likeable. Ronald Reagan was the most devoted to free markets, though his grasp of economics "wasn't very deep or sophisticated."

The Party of Family Values, Part III

In the New York Times, Gail Collins (sort of) defends all those politicians in the news caught with their pants around their ankles:

People, have you ever in your life pointed to your kids or grandkids and said that you hoped they grew up to be like Larry Craig? Or Bill Clinton? Or Mitt Romney? No. You might hope they were as politically skillful as Clinton or as financially successful as Romney or as ... um, good at barbershop quartet singing as Larry Craig. We do not hire our elected officials to shape our children’s characters. We want them to pass good laws and make sensible decisions on our behalf. If something terrible happens, we want to feel that they are strong enough to get us through it. But we have very little investment in whether they’re faithful to their wives, or even whether they’re tortured by demons of sexual confusion.

Although if it involves men’s rooms, we would really rather not hear about it.

Collins does have a point here-- and if a politician were to run a campaign based just on, say, government efficiency and tax cuts, then I agree that the personal behavior of that politician would be irrelevant. However, that is not the case here. Many, if not most, Republican candidates today run as "family values" conservatives, devoted to imposing a fundamentalist view of sexual morality on the American public through the power of the law. (Abstinence-only sex education! No Plan B! Outlaw gay marriage! Save the country from "San Francisco Values"!) Therefore, the fact that an inordinate number of Republican Congressman seem to have been caught cruising for gay sex, or visiting prostitutes, couldn't be more relevant. It's all about the hypocrisy.

The Party of Family Values, Cont.

It turns out I forget to mention several other Republican sex scandals. Pam at AMERICAblog has a list of what has happened in just the past month and half, and I'm not even bothering to include the Craig and Vitter scandals when I cut and paste it here:

* Glenn Murphy, Jr., the recently elected chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, caught sexually assaulting a sleeping man.
* former White house spiritual advisor and fallen megachurch pastor Tweaker Ted "I'm completely heterosexual" Haggard asking whatever fans he has left for money.
* former NC Republican lawmaker and Christian Action League president, Coy C. Privette -- caught at the no-tell motel with a sex worker -- also guilty.
* Mark Foley is back in the news, he won’t turn over his former congressional computer to investigators.
* Rep. Bob Allen, another Republican, caught asking to blow an undercover officer and willing to pay $20 for the pleasure; currently coming up with an excuse for the day (scary black men, thunderstorms) for his same-sex appetite.

Election 2008: Boy, I'd hate to see the Democrats win and "San Francisco Values" spread across the nation!

The Party of Family Values

Another day, another Republican sex scandal. From Senator Vitter and his prostitutes to Senator Craig and his liaisons in public restrooms, the Party of Family Values never ceases to amaze me. Craig, like Vitter, is a married man. I can't wait for the 2008 election and the inevitable Republican moralizing about the sanctity of marriage.

On the Iowa Straw Poll

Our old pal Mitt won. By a lot. But, I don't know if he should throw a high-octane Mormon fiesta just yet. After all, Giuliani, Thompson (the one who actually has a chance, that is), and McCain weren't participating. Plus, the straw poll doesn't really show who has the most support in Iowa, but rather who can buy the most support in Iowa. And we know that Mitt is by far the most free-spending candidate out there. So, he won a money competition. Wow. Congrats there Mitty.

I think the true winner of the straw poll was the man who came in second place, Mike Huckabee. He and his chief rival for the coveted second place, Sam Brownback, were very close, with Huckabee getting 18 percent and Brownback getting 15. But, there should be an important asterisk here. Brownback spent more money and exerted more effort here than Huckabee. So, in theory, Brownback should have taken second place.

Of course, coming in second place in a rather meaningless and completely undemocratic poll in which three of the main competitors chose not to participate may not seem like a big accomplishment. And it really isn't. But, I think it may be a bit of foreshadowing. We know that conservative Republicans are displeased with Giuliani, McCain, and Romney (and they will be even more displeased once primary season really heats up and the airwaves are filled with negative ads showing how liberal these guys are). They're sort of holding out hope that Thompson will be their man, but I have the feeling he will flop pretty quickly. So, what then? Who will be the conservative standard bearer? Huckabee or Brownback. Of course, I'm not saying that the nomination will ultimately go to either of those two (I don't think it will), but I do think one of them will be a bigger part of the campaign than they currently are. And I think this straw poll shows that Huckabee may be that guy.

Evangelicals and republicans: strange bedfellows?

I was reading this very long (but very interesting) article about Ron Paul in the Times, and one passage really struck me:

“I was annoyed by the evangelicals’ being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything that I was taught as a Christian,” he recalls. “The religion is based on somebody who’s referred to as the Prince of Peace.”

We hear the "this is un-Christian" argument all the time in American politics, but rarely is it directed at the evangelicals. Indeed, it is typically left to the evangelicals themselves to throw that argument around. But, it's refreshing to hear someone say it like it is, and it raises an important question. How much of the Republican party's platform really is Christian?

Now, I should note that I am no religion scholar. I was born and raised a true-blooded agnostic. The only times I have attended Church have been weddings and funerals. I have never read the Bible, but I still think I have a relatively decent grasp of the kind of vision Jesus Christ had for the world, and despite my religious leanings, I agree wholeheartedly with that vision, because here's the deal: it's a liberal vision.

Let's consider, say, taxes. While I cannot point to a specific passage, it seems that Jesus would have generally supported a Robin Hood style "take from the rich and give to the poor" type class system. I have a hard time believing that Mr. Christ would have been a hard-nosed free-market Capitalist. So, it seems to me that the "Christian" system of taxation would be a graduated tax, taxing the rich at a higher level than the poor, for the improvement of the whole community, not a flat tax.

By the way, I realize how silly it is to think about what sort of taxes Jesus would have supported, but I think it's a worthwhile endeavor anyway.

Along similar lines, I don't think Jesus would have supported the "Get a job!" mentality that so many Republicans have when it comes to the existence of the welfare state. The welfare state (while it may very well have flaws) seems to be a shining example of Christian charity.

Abortion. While Jesus may very well have been "pro-life," the definition of "pro-life" has to extend beyond the moment a baby is born, or for that matter, the moment someone sinks into a coma. It seems that the only time Republicans want to "protect life" is when a fetus is in the womb or someone is in a vegetative state. What about all the time in between? Is it pro-life to see to it that a baby is born, but then to kick the mother and newborn out of the hospital for wont of insurance? Is it pro-life to allow poverty to thrive? Is it pro-life to send young men and women off to a foreign country to die for no real reason?

I don't think so, but hey, I'm just a stupid agnostic, right?

Gay rights. I think it's funny that Christians (I'm generalizing, of course, so I apologize to all of you progressive/liberal/sane Christians out there) put so much emphasis on homosexuality being a sin. I'm not arguing that it isn't, but there are plenty of things that are sins that are not as despised as homosexuality. Adultery, for instance. Senator David Vitter has admitted to being an adulterer, but I have yet to hear of evangelicals clamoring for his resignation. But, can you imagine how they would've rallied if he had announced he was gay? The point is this: Jesus taught tolerance, not just for some people, for everyone.

Immigration. "Love thy neighbor."

Free speech. Jesus was a revolutionary. He was counter-culture. To think that he would support the silencing of a vocal minority for the "comfort" of the majority seems absolutely absurd.

This all shows why I am so fundamentally opposed to organized religion. This guy Jesus (or the authors of the Bible) had some marvelous ideas, but once they got mixed in with power and politics, they got corrupted. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that Democrats are by any means above this kind of twisting. My point is this: religion and politics have to mix, because people's opinions are informed by their religion. However, people need to take a long hard look at what their religion truly stands for. I don't mean that they need to listen to their priest when he says that pro-choicers can't take communion. I mean that they need to seriously look into the core of their religion and see what the fundamental goals and values are. They need to trust themselves as interpreters of the Bible; not their priests or pastors, and certainly not politicians running for President. They might be surprised what they find.

Bush commutes Libby, delights the "Party of Law and Order"

So Bush commuted Scooter Libby's prison sentence yesterday, and the "Party of Law and Order" cheered him on. Some of the best commentary on this case comes from Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy:

I find Bush's action very troubling because of the obvious special treatment Libby received. President Bush has set a remarkable record in the last 6+ years for essentially never exercising his powers to commute sentences or pardon those in jail. His handful of pardons have been almost all symbolic gestures involving cases decades old, sometimes for people who are long dead. Come to think of it, I don't know if Bush has ever actually used his powers to get one single person out of jail even one day early. If there are such cases, they are certainly few and far between. So Libby's treatment was very special indeed.

What's particularly outrageous is the way that Republicans have portrayed the Libby sentence as "politically motivated." Kerr points out the obvious:

I find this argument seriously bizarre. As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as "overwhelming" and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.
...
But for the case to have been purely political, doesn't that require the involvement of someone who was not a Bush political appointee?

My personal favorite defense is that Libby's perjury didn't matter because no one was convicted in the case, sort of a no harm no foul defense. But where were these enlightened Republicans when Bill Clinton lied about his affair?

Rudy Giuliani: Fear Monger

Rudy Giuliani recently announced his "Twelve Commitments to the American People." Take a look, there are some interesting things, but I only want to comment on the first: "I will keep America on offense in the Terrorists’ War on Us."

"War on Us?" Well, that doesn't sound as happy-go-lucky. Indeed, it sounds rather like, what's that phrase I'm thinking of? Oh yeah... fear mongering. Maybe I'm naive, and maybe I have too much faith in the American people, but six years after 9/11, I think the power of fear mongering has faded. And Rudy shouldn't be allowed to get away with it just because he was there. If I were Bill Maher, I would say, "New Rule: Rudy Giuliani has to get off the 9/11 train. We get it, you were there, you said some nice things to comfort some people, but honestly, any halfway decent mayor would have done just as good of a job. And let's face it, 9/11 is the only reason that you're politically relevant these days. You were lucky, Rudy. You're the Ringo Starr of the presidential race. So, stop pointing out that you're here for a really bad reason and just hope that no one catches on."

Bill Maher's funnier than I am. Oh well.

On a slightly different note, I was watching a Mitt ad, and something struck me.

When Republicans candidates talk about wasteful spending, they have to be talking about President Bush. So, when the Republican crowds cheer for these Republican candidates, they're really cheering against their Republican president, whom they probably still "strongly support" in polls. Perhaps this (i.e. suggesting that we need some rather vauge notiong of change) is the closest any of the Republicans will come to attacking Bush. We shall see.

Republican debate reaction

Yesterday, I read this post by Glenn Greenwald:

The great fraud being perpetrated in our political discourse is the concerted attempt by movement conservatives, now that the Bush presidency lay irreversibly in ruins, to repudiate George Bush by claiming that he is not, and never has been, a "real conservative." This con game is being perpetrated by the very same conservatives who -- when his presidency looked to be an epic success -- glorified George W. Bush, ensured both of his election victories, depicted him as the heroic Second Coming of Ronald Reagan, and celebrated him as the embodiment of True Conservatism.

This fraud is as transparent as it is dishonest, yet there are signs that the media is nonetheless beginning to adopt this theme that there is some sort of epic and long-standing "Bush-conservative schism." But very little effort is required to see what a fraud that storyline is.

One of the few propositions on which Bush supporters and critics agree is that George Bush does not change and has not changed at all over the last six years. He is exactly the same.

Or as Digby puts it more succinctly (quoted in the same article):

George W. Bush will not achieve a place in the Republican pantheon. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)

So I looked forward with great anticipation to seeing if this dynamic would surface in the Republican debate this evening-- and, lo and behold, it did. You see, the Republicans in Washington didn't fail because of flaws in their conservative ideology, they failed because they turned into liberals! And in a contest between "professional spenders" (the Dems) and the "amateur spenders" (the Republicans), the Democrats will always win, said Tommy Thompson. Apparently the answer for the Republicans is to take a turn to the right. Um, good luck, fellas.... let me know how that works out for you.

Is Bush Really to Blame?

Paul Krugman of The New York Times has an op-ed piece entitled "Don't Blame Bush."(you'll only be able to view the article if you have a Times Select account, which anyone with a .edu e-mail address can obtain for free). He opens with a very un-Krugman-esque line:

I’ve been looking at the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and I’ve come to a disturbing conclusion: maybe we’ve all been too hard on President Bush.

But, he goes on to explain himself. We harp on Bush for doing any number of un-American things: promoting torture, allowing domestic spying, lying about the situation in the Middle East, etc. And this is true: Bush does these things. But it isn't simply Bush. It is the New Republican Party, or the "movement conservatives," if you will. Bush is not simply a freak of nature. This is the kind of leadership we can expect from any modern Republican president.

The leading contenders for the Republican nomination have given us little reason to believe they would behave differently. Why should they? The principles Mr. Bush has betrayed are principles today’s G.O.P., dominated by movement conservatives, no longer honors.

Krugman goes on to point out that the only Republican candidate to speak out against torture was John McCain (our old pal Mitt apparently said "My view is, we ought to double Guantánamo."), but even he was far enough disconnected from reality to claim that there are areas of Baghdad where one can "walk freely."

What we need to realize is that the infamous “Bush bubble,” the administration’s no-reality zone, extends a long way beyond the White House. Millions of Americans believe that patriotic torturers are keeping us safe, that there’s a vast Islamic axis of evil, that victory in Iraq is just around the corner, that Bush appointees are doing a heckuva job — and that news reports contradicting these beliefs reflect liberal media bias.

Except for Ron Paul, I have yet to see any of the 2008 Republicans distinguish themselves in any important way from President Bush and the "movement conservatives." And that means one thing:

The Republican nomination will go either to someone who shares these beliefs, and would therefore run the country the same way Mr. Bush has, or to a very, very good liar.

On the Power of Capitalization

democrat - an advocate of a democratic form of government

Democrat - a member of the Democratic Party

republican - an advocate of a republican form of government

Republican - a member of the Republican Party

It is interesting to see these terms defined. After all, Democrats are not always democrats, and Republicans are not always republicans. For instance, Democrats are democrats in that they believe in the inherent equality of all people, but they are not democrats in that they think, for instance, that the Supreme Court should have the power to act contrary to the will of the public. At the same time, however, Republicans often complain that government is too distant (which republicanism seems to endorse), wishing that the will of the majority should become law (which is not inherently un-republican, but it certainly seems more pro-democratic). So, we often see Republicans arguing for democracy and Democrats arguing for republicanism (or perhaps elitism would be more accurate).

I wonder how many Republicans even know what it means to be a republican and how many Democrats know what it means to be a democrat.

Me? I think I'm an elitist Democrat. Or something along those lines. I tend not to trust the will of "the many."

The winners (and the loser) in the Republican debate

Unlike the Democratic debate, I think this was a debate with clear winners and losers. One winner was John McCain, who turned in a vigorous performance, got the most laughs of the night, and delivered a forceful response to questions about his age. On Iraq he did about as well as he could, given that he’s defending an escalation of the war. He managed to distance himself from Bush by criticizing the mismanagement of the war. He also stood out by slamming pork barrel spending and vowing to clean spending bill, saving special criticism for cost overruns in military bills. (My only question: who exactly is going to “follow us home” from Iraq? The Shiites? The Sunnis? Al Qaeda? I think it’s clear that even if we pull out that neither the Shiites nor the Sunni militias would tolerate an al Qaeda mini-state in Iraq.) Nonetheless, a strong performance overall from the senator from Arizona.

The other winner was Mitt Romney. He just seemed presidential. As a Massachusetts native, I’m not a huge Romney fan. He ran for governor as a pro-choice, pro-gay rights moderate, and then flip-flopped to set up his run for president. But I will say this: he certainly is competent and charismatic, and it showed on stage. He did a great job defending the Massachusetts health care plan.

The big loser was Giuliani. His defense of a woman’s right to choose stuck out like a sore thumb in the Republican field. Props to him for not completely flip-flopping like Romney, but it’s going to hurt him. His more moderate positions might be an advantage in the general election but they sure aren’t here.

As for everyone else: Ron Paul did a good job representing the paleoconservative wing of the party. Tom Tancredo managed to differentiate himself on immigration without frothing at the mouth like he usually does. (Although I’m a little disturbed by how completely he conflates American and Israeli interests. I’m all for supporting an ally, but still… ). Tommy Thompson did a decent job, but how exactly does he think he’s going to implement his partition plan for Iraq? The Iraqis don’t want it, and last time I checked we handed control of the government back to them. None of the other candidates really stood out.

Overall, the level of the debate was higher than I expected, but I don't think the party-line conservatism supported by most of the candidates stands a chance against the Democrats come 2008.

Vanity Fair: Rudy = Crazy (but he just might win)

This Vanity Fair article reads like a hit piece on Rudy Giuliani but still manages to be optimistic about his chances:

Bush and Cheney have created a sense of something like guilt, or embarrassment, or, even, disgrace, among the faithful. Potential candidates on the traditional right seem to be hiding under a rock—they don't want the Bush-Cheney taint. So to find yourself a nationally admired figure (a kind of apple pie), in a field where something like 70 percent of likely voters (many your natural ideological enemies) still haven't expressed any opinion about the race, and where the opposition includes the 70-year-old John McCain, who both hates and sucks up to Bush (therefore getting neither advantage), and Mitt Romney, a Mormon from Massachusetts, that's luck. What's more, choosing a relative social liberal—just at the moment when the religious right seems to have lost its way—with supersonic national-security cred might be a way to combine independents with Reagan Democrats, along with the South (which you get anyway), and for the Republicans to actually, miraculously, win.

Barring a complete Democratic meltdown or a miraculous solution to the Iraq War, I don't see the Republicans winning in 2008 no matter who their candidate is. But Rudy probably has a better shot than anyone else.

UPDATE: The New York Times ponders which tack Giuliani will take in the debate tonight: hard-hitting prosecutor or Mr. Nice Guy...