« May 5, 2008 - May 11, 2008 | Main | May 19, 2008 - May 25, 2008 »
May 18, 2008
Obsession
Jonah Goldberg, Richard Cohen and George Will on the Clinton campaign.
It's Not Easy Being Green
Robert Bluey on John McCain's climate-change proposal.
UPDATE: Dick Morris on how McCain could defeat Barack Obama. Plus, more from the New York Times.
May 17, 2008
A Perfect Design
Real estate mogul Thomas Flatley passes away at 76. More from the Patriot Ledger and Boston Herald.
State Of Shock
Sen. Ted Kennedy is hospitalized in Boston. More from the Cape Cod Times, BBC News, the New York Times and CNN.
Once In A Lifetime
Black Gold
May 16, 2008
Man About Town
Leading The Way
Which Way Is Up?
The Gay Rites Movement
What to make of the California Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage?
The Court’s 4-3 ruling might be overturned this November, as traditional-marriage advocates are working to place on the 2008 ballot an initiative that would define marriage in the California Constitution as the union of one man and one woman. If the initiative makes it to the ballot, California will replace Massachusetts as the epicenter of the American culture war, at least for the next few months.
Will traditional-marriage advocates successfully nullify this ruling? They could not in Massachusetts, and there’s a strong possibility that they could also fail in the Golden State.
The gay-marriage war will be won by whichever side amasses the most political power. In Massachusetts, gay-marriage advocates unified to prevent efforts by traditional-marriage advocates to place a gay-marriage ban on the ballot. They worked tirelessly to convince pro-traditional-marriage legislators to reconsider their views, and labored mightily to elect a pro-gay-marriage governor, Deval Patrick, as the successor to the pro-traditional-marriage Mitt Romney.
In short, gay-marriage advocates outworked, outmaneuvered, outpaced, and—arguably—outsmarted traditional-marriage advocates in the Bay State. One can easily see the same scenario unfolding in California this year.
Having observed the Massachusetts gay-marriage battle, I must say that traditional-marriage advocates severely underestimate how committed gay-marriage advocates are to “marriage equality.” While I disagreed with the November 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court gay-marriage ruling on judicial-restraint grounds, I can’t condemn those who fought aggressively to preserve the ruling.
One can disagree with the tactics of gay-marriage advocates (tactics that, in the eyes of Bay State conservatives, denied the people the right to vote on this issue) while admiring their resolve. Massachusetts gay-marriage advocates were a strong, devoted army: they fought and fought and fought, and used any means necessary to prevent the state’s gay-marriage ruling from being nullified. They were determined to keep the ruling alive, and they ultimately won out.
As much as I disagreed with the Massachusetts court’s ruling, I can’t find fault with gay-marriage advocates for their aggressive efforts to “protect” the decision. If I were on their side—if I firmly believed that gay marriage was a civil right and a moral necessity for a democracy—I would have fought tooth and nail to defend the ruling, using any tactic necessary in the name of preserving what I believed to be equality. Quite frankly, I wish the American conservative movement had the same steely determination gay-marriage “progressives” in Massachusetts had.
Unfortunately, the American conservative movement does not have that determination, which is why traditional-marriage advocates will likely fail in California. To gay-marriage advocates, this is an issue of utmost importance; in Massachusetts, I saw gay-marriage advocates whose determination and desire to preserve “marriage equality” was so strong that many seemed ready to lay down their lives if necessary if it meant preserving the Massachusetts court’s ruling. If gay-marriage advocates in California are as resolute as gay-marriage advocates in Massachusetts, then they have already won—because they will fight as aggressively as Martin Luther King Jr. fought to remove the foot of segregation from his neck.
I disagree with the California decision, just as I disagreed with the Massachusetts finding. Ideally, this issue would be resolved by the legislative and executive branches, not by the judicial branch. The logic behind the ruling—enshrining equality for gay and lesbian couples—may be noble, but the legal thought process is mistaken.
However, the ruling is likely a permanent one, just as Massachusetts’ decision was. California is not conservative—and in so many ways, neither is America for that matter. While traditional-marriage advocates will speak loudly, they could still find themselves being drowned out by those who will yell, “Live and let live!”
This ruling came at a perfect time for gay-marriage advocates. Unlike 2003-2004, when the conservative movement exploited the Massachusetts ruling to shotblock John Kerry’s White House hopes, this ruling will not help the American right. The GOP brand name is in need of serious repair, and cries of “Stop judicial activism! Vote against Obama!” will not undo the damage the party has sustained over the past three years. The right simply lacks the political apparatus to make hay out of this ruling. The elephant’s tusks have been removed.
I predict that California will join Massachusetts as a pro-gay-marriage state. Considering American sociopolitical trends, I also predict that it won’t be the last one.
May 15, 2008
Distinguished Alumni
The Long Run
Freak Out!
Karl Rove, Power Line, the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal on the anxious GOP.
UPDATE: More from Peggy Noonan and Kim Strassel.
May 14, 2008
You're My Best Friend
John Edwards endorses Barack Obama. More from Todd Feinburg.
Law & Disorder
Shock The Monkey
A politically incorrect T-shirt generates anger in Georgia. (The dude who came up with this T-shirt is a colossal moron, isn't he?)
Tearing Down The Wall
A Civil Action
A Predetermined Result
If John McCain wins the November election, the most aggrieved group in America could well be—Republicans!
The right just seems to get more and more disgruntled with the GOP nominee: his recent climate-change speech inspired much griping and groaning from the major conservative websites. Comment sections and message boards on prominent pro-Republican blogs are filled with denunciations of McCain from “movement conservatives” who insist that they cannot vote for a “RINO” like the Arizona senator.
It seems that some conservatives deliberately desire McCain’s defeat at the hands of Barack Obama, either as a means of “teaching the GOP a lesson” or in the hopes that a conservative hero will rise to challenge Obama in 2012. This thinking is shortsighted; if Obama demonstrates a minimum level of competence during his first term, he will likely be re-elected four years from now.
McCain’s “maverick” act is hard to swallow—but conservatives may have to get used to that bitter taste. McCain represents something that is unpleasant but inevitable: the return of the GOP to the pre-1980, “country-club” era.
Let’s face it, conservatives never really seized control of the GOP apparatus; if they had, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater would not have been the only true-red conservatives nominated by the party over the last fifty years. The Republican Party has always been run by moderates uncomfortable with social conservatism: McCain, like George H. W. Bush twenty years ago, is the party’s ideal candidate.
Reagan was an outstanding President, but from a political standpoint, he was a fluke, an anomaly, a happy accident. By all rights, Bush the Elder should have been the GOP’s nominee in 1980. Reagan had the skills and the strength to beat Bush in the ’80 primaries, but no conservative has pulled off a similar feat in the years since.
Conservatives are angry at McCain because, at bottom, he heralds the end of the Reagan Revolution. Reagan conservatives believed that the Gipper’s 1980 victory was the beginning of legitimate, lasting change in American politics. McCain’s candidacy shatters that belief. Had Reagan conservatives truly revolutionized American politics, McCain would not have come within ten thousand feet of the GOP nomination.
McCain never liked Reagan conservatives. His political vision was formed in the pre-1980 era, and he clearly wants to return to that era. In his mind, it was a more civil, cordial day, a day in which things got done in Washington to benefit the American people.
McCain’s not the only one who holds fast to this belief. If Colin Powell had won the White House as a Republican in 1996, he would have also sought to dismantle the Reagan Revolution. Powell, like McCain, has made no secret of his contempt for movement conservatives, and his myopic belief that things were somehow better before Reagan and the right temporarily assumed power.
The end of the Reagan era is indeed distressing—but at some point, it was going to end. McCain is merely hastening history. Somewhere along the line, the Republican Party was going to revert to its original, moderate form. McCain’s nomination signifies the party returning to its natural shape.
Perhaps this political rewind will help the party compete in the future. We are informed by national polls that the GOP is hated by voters under the age of 35. These voters have been taught to hate the Reagan-era GOP, to see the party as an entity that supports homophobia, sexism, bigotry, contempt for the environment, and other such social maladies. If these younger voters maintain their hatred for all things Republican as they age, the GOP could be out of business thirty to forty years from now.
McCain clearly feels it’s necessary to re-brand the GOP as a home of “tolerance” and “moderation.” Rightly or wrongly, he believes that Americans have turned against conservatism, and that a less “ideological” approach will keep the GOP politically vibrant for years to come. McCain’s logic is suspect, to be sure, but the party’s power brokers obviously embrace his view.
Conservatives will not be happy if McCain wins. However, they can at least take comfort in the fact that a McCain victory will discredit liberalism as well. After all, for nearly three decades liberals have argued that the GOP is controlled by ultraconservative evangelicals and ignorant reactionaries. If McCain—who is neither a right-wing fundamentalist nor a John Birch Society-type—becomes the country’s next Republican President, the left’s anti-GOP arguments will immediately become null and void. How can conservatives not be happy when “progressives” are forced to shut up?
May 13, 2008
You Go, Girl!
No Holds Barred
Green Machine
Money Talks
It would shock the world if liberal Massachusetts abolished the state income tax, wouldn't it? Best of luck to responsible-government activist Carla Howell on this.
May 12, 2008
Oh, For Chrissakes!
The Comfort Zone
If Barack Obama defeats John McCain on November 4, it will prove, once and for all, that America is not a conservative country.
Yes, it will be galling for conservatives if Obama tops McCain on the 28th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s conquest of Jimmy Carter. However, in some ways it will be altogether fitting. Since Reagan’s victory, some conservatives have fooled themselves into believing that the country is fundamentally conservative, and that thinking Americans stand firmly against left-wing principles. An Obama win will finally put such a shortsighted view to rest.
Obama may well win for the exact same reason that Reagan won in 1980: not because he is an ideologue, but because Americans are looking to him for perceived comfort. Most Americans do not vote based on ideology: if they did, we would have been spared two Clinton administrations, and Al Gore and John Kerry would have suffered George McGovern-style blowout defeats. Americans largely vote based on who they think will do something positive for them.
In 1980, America was mired in an economic slump, and the country’s pride had been severely damaged by the ongoing Iranian hostage crisis. Average Americans were frustrated, anxious, irritated with the condition of the country—and turned to Reagan to fix Carter’s mess.
Twenty-eight years later, we are in another period in which average Americans are troubled by economic news and bothered by the ongoing Iraq War. Numerous polls indicate the country’s extreme discomfort with President Bush (although Americans don’t have much love for the Democrat-controlled Congress either). One can’t deny that the current American social climate is ripe for Obama to exploit in the fall, just as the social climate of 1980 was ripe for Reagan to exploit.
For conservatives, the prospect of an Obama victory is disturbing—not because of the color of his skin, but because his victory will (at least in theory) represent the dominion of celebrity politics and mindless liberalism in this country. Conservatives will view an Obama victory as a sad step in America’s history, a pathetic moment in which a man gets elected only by spouting left-wing platitudes and delivering empty but well-delivered speeches.
This will be, of course, the wrong context in which to view an Obama victory. If Obama wins, it will not mean that the country has gone “moonbat.” Rather, it will simply mean that the country wanted comfort from President Bush, and didn’t think Bush delivered it.
Ironically, Bush was once a beneficiary of the same desire for comfort that could destroy his party in the fall. Both of Bush’s wins were based on the country’s psychological needs: the need to have a President who didn’t embarrass the country with his perjury and sexual licentiousness in 2000, the need to have a President who would work tirelessly to prevent another 9/11 in 2004. Bush needed the support of America’s evangelicals to win both elections, but ideology did not have a great deal to do with his twin victories. Heck, back in 1999-2000, there were some conservatives who regarded Bush as a RINO, just as many conservatives regard McCain as a RINO today.
For four decades, America’s Presidential elections have been won by those who positioned themselves as attentive to the country’s need for psychological comfort. In 1968 and 1972, Americans troubled by the counterculture and a lack of “law and order” in the nation’s major cities turned to Richard Nixon. In 1976, Americans horrified by Nixon’s lack of ethics embraced Carter. In 1988, Americans took George H. W. Bush at face value when he spoke of his desire for a “kinder, gentler nation”; in 1992, Clinton won after asserting that the felt the voters’ pain.
If Obama wins, he will continue a long (and, depending on your perspective, ignoble) tradition of appealing to people’s emotions in order to get the keys to the White House. Obama knows that because Americans are feeling nervous right now, he has a chance to become President despite his ultra-liberal social vision. While there are voters who will take ideology into account before making their choice, they could well be outnumbered by those who don’t think in terms of conservative vs. liberal, but think in terms of comfort vs. discomfort. “Hope” and “change” are empty slogans--but when people are in a ticked-off mood, those slogans suddenly become profound.
I’ll vote for John McCain, but I do not envy him. By surviving Vietnam, he became a military hero. If he defeats Obama despite the colossal odds against him, he will become a political hero.
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