Month: May 2006

Defensive Fatigue

by digby

“The president’s run into a perfect political storm where the confluence of natural disasters from last fall, gasoline prices, staff changes, the continuing war in Iraq, all are giving conservatives a defensive fatigue,” said Kenneth Khachigian, a California GOP strategist who served in Ronald Reagan’s White House. “And let’s put immigration in there, too. . . . There’s just wave after wave washing over them at this point.”

Oh please. This is not an act of God. There’s a tsunami of corruption and epic failure crashing over their heads — and it’s one of their own making. As for their “fatigue” maybe they should try being being on 24/7 defense for eight long years as Clinton was and then complain, the WATB chickenshits.

These fragile little flowers really should be frightened of the Democrats taking over the congress. If they are falling apart with “defensive fatigue” already, they obviously are not cut out for long term survival in the rough game they created. Bush was treated like a Roman god for more than four years. For a time it was patriotically incorrect to even utter criticism of him in public (just ask the Dixie Chicks.) He had a free hand and he fucked everything up royally. Now, after six months of pressure, they want to blame it all on external events and whine about how tired they are of being on the defensive. Boo fucking hoo.

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Viguerie And The Fine Art Of Rhetorical Omission

by tristero

Poor Richard Viguerie. Betrayed by George W. Bush:

The main cause of conservatives’ anger with Bush is this: He talked like a conservative to win our votes but never governed like a conservative.

This is just the latest talking point of course, but what’s interesting is what Viguerie didn’t discuss. Some are obvious and I’ll let you have the pleasure of finding them (grin). Here are a few that are a bit more subtle.

Let’s start with a small omission. Unlike others on the far right, Viguerie’s not claiming that Bush governed as a liberal. Rather, he says Bush is just a corrupt, incompetent, deceitful, Big Business pork-feeder.

If one were trusting, one could think of that as progress of a sort, meaning Viguerie’s reality-testing is improving, and that bodes well for the future of American politics. But being cynical about all things right wing, I tend to read this as – possibly – a weird feeler to the Lieberman wing of the Democratic party, to see if they might be willing to buy some of Viguerie’s mail order snake oil. He does say, after all, his new movement will be “independent of any party.”

More importantly, Viguerie doesn’t want to distract attention from the distinction he wants to draw between the evil Biz Repubs and the saintly “real” conservatives. For even if he sees Bush’s character and concerns with something resembling partial acuity,Viguerie, on all other subjects, is still out there in rightwing nutland – mewling over the morals and ethics of a science policy he doesn’t know the first thing about, gibbering on about the dangers of letting two people who love each other get married, and professing wariness of the conservative cred of two judges who make Roger Taney look like a multi-culturalist.

In short, by consigning Biz Cons and Bush to hell for betraying the “real” conservatives, Viguerie sees a political opportunity right now, a potential realignment of voters who are outraged at the sops to Big Biz and deeply concerned about other things, presumably things that directly affect them.

And then, being a Con-man from way back, Viguerie pulls a fast one. He links opposition to the evils of Big Biz to his own far-rightwing agenda. Quite a slick trick.

Now this would be a ridiculous idea, and majorly bizarre, if it weren’t for the fact that Viguerie is quite serious and rightwingers have been making these kinds of illogical links for years. Worse, many important folks strongly opposed to Viguerie and his agenda, both Democratic and Republican, still haven’t figured out a way to link opposition to Big Biz to opposition to Big Cons like Viguerie himself without sounding like Marxists. (That, too, is majorly bizarre, but that’s another post. Here, I’d just like to look a little closer at what Viguerie says. ‘Cause it’s good news, I think. )

Now, Viguerie is partly correct, if not exactly original. The Biz Republicans don’t have any kind of wide national base – the most rabid and wealthiest of these creatures total far less than 1% of the population – which is why they’ve tolerated loony nuts like Robertson, Dobson, and Viguerie himself. And which is why a spoiled rich brat like George W. Bush loves to affect the thickest down-home Texas accent he possibly can, ’cause it makes him “sound like an American,” not the filthy rich elitist he clearly is.*

But Viguerie is quite wrong in assuming that the folks united against the decadence of America’s corporate rich and the obscene tax giveaways to large corporations and their wealthiest members are all fellow loons on his moon. They’re not and 20 seconds of thought should make it clear how illogical Viguerie is being, and how desperate he is for us not to notice.

Ken Lay may disgust you but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re pro-coathanger – Viguerie wants to pretend that it does. In fact, those of us who work for a living and haven’t bought the sick, rightwing framing of the issue know very well that there are times when carrying a pregnancy to term is a choice, and that choice should never be made by politicians but by ourselves.

LIkewise, contempt for Halliburton’s unspeakable behavior does not translate into strong opposition to marriage rights and benefits for all couples that want to get hitched. Again, those of us who live in the real world have far more important things to worry about – like job security, health benefits, education, and the like. (BTW, I’m avoiding the terms “populist” and “populism” here because I think they have meanings that make it easy to miscontrue a very fluid and complex reality.) But Viguerie wants us to ignore the non sequitur and think that because you don’t like Halliburton bigshots, you have to hate gay people.

And that brings us to yet another omission in Viguerie’s essay, which should make it quite clear what a fast one Viguerie is pulling here. And how much trouble he sees for the far right agenda if ever the Democrats wake up. Check it out:

Viguerie brought up the godless UN – which affects directly nearly none of the people Viguerie is claiming as a conservative base – but neglected to mention the failed assault on Social Security, which affects all of us.

Now why would Viguerie forget to rant against Social Security, that commie central-planning nonsense left over from the Nazi Roosevelt Administration? After all, it’s the fluoridated water of entitlements, corrupting Americans and sapping all our precious bodily fluids, Well for one thing, he can’t use it to pretend Bush isn’t a “real” conservative and without that, his argument falls flat on its Laffer Curves.

In fact, Bush and the other rightwing nuts tried like hell to eliminate Social Security by proposing a path to disaster a la FEMA and CIA. And Bush failed to wreck Social Security because of a simple fact Viguerie dare not mention: The base he’s talking about isn’t nearly as far-right as he’d have us believe. They aren’t all Birchers or Randall Terry lovers; in fact, my guess is that if the Vigueries of American politics were properly labeled as the extremists they really are, and not accorded WaPo op-ed privileges and the like, the apparent support for rightwing conservatism shown in the polls would be far lower.

So yes, there are a lot of folks who can no longer be counted upon to vote in goosestep for the next corporate shill the Republicans put up for national office. But this is not an opportunity for so-called “conservatives” -actually rightwing radicals -of Viguerie’s stripe. This really is a splendid opportunity for Democrats, and even liberals.

So, Democrats: Don’t blow it this time around, okay? Bush has handed you on a platter both the potential for marginalizing the very dangerous American right plus the potential for political dominance. It will never get better than 2006 and, potentially, 2008. Don’t blow it, people.

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*Oversimplified, naturally, in order to get at an idea that doesn’t depend upon the complications. For the record, George W. Bush is, indeed, a Biz Con all the way through. He is also a cultural Con in Viguerie’s sense all the way through. To certain readers, this may seem a logically impossible assertion: How can someone be all one AND all the other? Well, it’s rather hard to explain in a brief footnote, but it’s kinda like transubstantiation or being many substances at the same time. As for being “impossible,” I refer you the living contradiction that is George W. Bush for proof of its reality.

Nedrenaline!

by digby

Wow. I go off-line for a few hours and look what happened: Ned Lamont and his team, backed by the netroots activists like Hamsher and Stoller (didn’t they write “Hound Dog”?) got 30% of the vote at the Connecticut Democratic convention, which has to seem like a tidal wave to Joe Lieberman. And according to Colin McEnroe, local Connecticut journalist, there would have been plenty more where that came from if there had been a secret ballot:

The real number is lot worse for Lieberman than 33 percent. I don’t know how big the Lamont vote would get if you could tabulate the no-shows and the sleeper cells of delegates who plan to vote differently in the primary, but I do know it’s a bigger number. And the convention is full of party regulars, usually the easiest people to keep in line. Wisdom of the ages would suggest that the “amateur” voters are potentially much more rebellious.

I will admit that I have always believed it would be difficult for Lamont to win this race, as I’m sure everyone agrees. Incumbency is the most powerful tool in a politicians box. My main reasons for being enthusiastic is that I do not think Blue State pols like Liebermann should get a free ride when they consistently enable the opposition. (There’s a lesson here for other Blue State Dems who insist on letting their iconoclastic self-image sabotage the Party in a hyperpartisan era — Bob Casey, take note.)

After last night I think this might actually happen. Lieberman may break from the party if he fails to win the Democratic nomination and run as an independent — and he may win as an independent too, with his large Republican following. It would be tough to beat him. Bring it. It’s long past time for Democrats to draw some lines. This is going to be a brawl for the foreseeable future and we need Democratic partisans not Republican appeasers.

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Centrist Know Nothings

by digby

This is getting stupid. The NY Times is creating a false impression about the netroots support for Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman as an expression of anti-war fervor. I think that is missing the greater point.

There are quite a few Democrats who voted for the war. They certainly have some work to do to convince many of us that they have seen the light. But the reason the netroots are taking on Joe Lieberman is because he enables Republicans on a host of issues and consistently shows disloyalty to the party in a hyper-partisan era. Alone among Democrats at the time, he went on the floor of the Senate and excoriated Bill Clinton for personal failures (that’s what the speech was about) and gave support to the hypocritical Republican witch-hunters. Then, once again, alone among Democrats, he stood up for George Bush as it became obvious that the justification for the war in Iraq was based upon lies and hype. These are just two telling examples of where Lieberman tends to come out on issues that mean something to the Democratic party in a larger sense.

He comes from Connecticut. There is no excuse that he’s in a Red State and has to pander to conservatives. He does this completely for its own sake. And inevitably, he gets the highest accolades from Republicans for doing so; he actually seems to revel in his position as George Bush’s favorite Democrat. It is understandable that a Democratic senator lauded constantly by the right wing noise machine is going to be suspect among Democratic partisans.

There was a time when a vital center coalition existed in the Senate, where there was room on both sides for trading votes across party lines. The Republicans destroyed that coalition and Liebermann, inexplicably, doesn’t seem to get that. Even worse, when the shit comes down, he inevitably sides with them. Many Democrats took a long time to learn the harsh lessons of GOP political hardball and had to lose to a bunch of thuggish right-wingers before they began to recognise what they were up against. Lieberman still refuses to accept the fact that his high minded centrism is a weapon in the hands of the radical Republicans.

The netroots are bringing some heat from the partisans and even if Lamont loses maybe this will move Lieberman’s ass a little bit back to the party that brung him. That is not illegitimate politics. It is the only way to educate him apparently. He certainly has not listened to anything else.

The DLC’s Al Frum says at the end of the article:

“A very simple thing happened that changed Democratic politics dramatically, and that was that the war turned bad,” Mr. From said, adding of the senator’s critics: “There’s a group in our party that makes a lot of noise and I don’t think they’ve ever won an election. They’re trying to take out one of the great statesmen our party has and that’s wrong.”

So he agrees with Karl Rove that the only thing that happened recently was that the war wasn’t a resounding, yellow ribbon victory. They are both wrong. The GOP has proven that it can’t govern its way out of a paper bag on any issue — and the Democratic grassroots have been fed up for some time with this play it safe losing strategy that empowered the most anti-democratic government since Nixon.

From really shouldn’t talk so much about who has won and lost elections. Since the DLC became the guiding force in the Democratic establishment the Party has lost everything. We are making a lot of noise because assholes like Al From have allowed the Republicans to turn liberalism into a bucket of warm spit — and put the government entirely in the hands of the far right. It’s not about the war. That’s just the most visible example. It’s about having no standards, no loyalty, no principles — and losing because of it!

This great statesman Joe Lieberman supported the president in his illegal, immoral war, sold out his party on numerous occasions and is being challenged for it. You’d think that a great student of the Talmud would see the good old fashioned message of divine retribution in that.

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The War On Fucking

by tristero

In today’s Times, Lauren Winner writes:

If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage…

Wha? As the father of a soon-to-be ten year old daughter, why on earth would I want my future teener not to have sex until she got a state license?

Of course, I don’t want her to get pregnant until she and her partner-to-be are emotionally ready and prepared to raise a child in a loving environment. And certainly, I don’t want her to get sick or make others sick. But “help” her to refrain from enjoying the pleasures of intimacy? I don’t get it – why would I want to help with something so psychologically and morally crippling?

And what’s this “we” shit? Also, check out that “countercultural” – wow. Who knew that not fucking was the new LSD?

To change the tone of my post, please note the rhetorical devices here, in particular the intense barrage of baseless assertions – the “we” assuming everyone agrees that so-called “premarital” sex is a bad thing (and notice how she witholds the specific qualifier, “Christians,” until long after the “we” has worked its magic); the weird assumption that abstinence is a sensible thing to inflict on a kid, a strange assumption even if you do think that teen sex is not necessarily a good idea; and the bizarre delusion that not having sex until officially licensed flies in the face of official values (see Virgin, The Forty-Year Old, and the hundreds upon hundreds of slasher films where the teen couple that just had sex inevitably gets dismembered in all sorts of gruesome ways ).

This is all of a piece with modern rightwing propaganda style, to pack as much loopy nonsense as possible into every sentence. This makes it exceedingly difficult to confront and rebut, but not because there’s a solid argument to “engage.” Firstly, the sheer amount of garbage that needs to be cleared away all but requires, as it does here, a response longer than the original winger passage. Secondly, the whackiness of many of the secondary assertions makes it extremely easy to get distracted onto tangents – for example, into a debate on exactly what is meant by “countercultural.” Thirdly, the effect is literally paralyzing and intimidating. To read the word “we” in this context stops us (heh heh) dead in our tracks – huh? – and then “we” wonder what’s wrong with us that “we” aren’t focused on helping us make our kids’ teen years as miserable as they possibly can be (“and no, little Ethel, no masturbation, either, that’s a sin, and I really don’t like you smooching little Lucy, either. You’re too old now.”).

This packing tactic was, if not pioneered by him, surely brought to a new level of obnoxiousness by Robert Novak many, many years ago, when he would ask a Democrat a trick question filled with screwy righty assumptions that simply would have to be dealt with before the question even could be addressed, thus enabling Novak to accuse the hapless Dem of wimpiness and evasion.

Finally, notice the appropriation and inversion of liberal/lefty rhetoric. We wish to help our teenager. We are the counterculture, sticking it to The Man. This is very common and very old. The early pro-coathanger activists would adapt Beatles songs and old 60’s protest chants (“All we are saying, is give life (sic) a chance”) and Lauren Winner is steeped in that tactic. And what are “we” gonna do in retaliation? It’s not as if there are that many compelling rightwing songs around to rip off (“The Ballad of the Brie Ballet,” maybe? Nah…).

Lauren Winner’s op-ed is full of it – rightwing rhetoric, that is. Rhetoric that comes so naturally even to mediocrities like the inaptly named Winner they just speak it as a matter of course. Liberals and Dems have nothing comparable and they need to develop it. That’s why those of us who’ve been shouting about rhetoric and framing long before Lakoff got famous insist that yes, ideas but also yes, you gotta talk real good, too. Liberals have many great ideas, but they matter nought if they’re tongue-tied.

Not Taking Any Chances

by digby

SIOUX FALLS, SD – Today’s Argus Leader newspaper revealed that Attorney General Larry Long has been asked to give his opinion on the timeframe for the circulation of petitions to refer the abortion ban passed by the legislature to the voters of South Dakota.

Central to the request of the Attorney General is a question being forwarded by two South Dakota legislators who are working on an expensive legal strategy to prevent the people of South Dakota a chance to vote to keep or repeal the near-total ban on abortions.

State Senator Lee Schoenbeck and State Representative Roger Hunt, the chief author of the abortion ban, are concocting a legal strategy to shut down the petition-signing process nearly three weeks before the deadline set under South Dakota law and confirmed by Secretary of State Chris Nelson. Nelson has consistently said the deadline for petitions is June 19, but Hunt and Schoenbeck believe it should be nearly three weeks earlier, shutting off opportunities for South Dakota voters to sign petitions.

You have to wonder why they would bother with this unless they have information that leads them to believe the referendum rejecting the draconian coat-hanger law might succeed.

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Now She Tells Us

by digby

Judy Miller has regrets about being too careful in her reporting:

I had begun to hear rumors about intensified intercepts and tapping of telephones. But that was just vaguest kind of rumors in the street, indicators … I remember the weekend before July 4, 2001, in particular, because for some reason the people who were worried about Al Qaida believed that was the weekend that there was going to be an attack on the United States or on a major American target somewhere. It was going to be a large, well-coordinated attack. Because of the July 4 holiday, this was an ideal opportunistic target and date for Al Qaida.

My sources also told me at that time that there had been a lot of chatter overheard — I didn’t know specifically what that meant — but a lot of talk about an impending attack at one time or another. And the intelligence community seemed to believe that at least a part of the attack was going to come on July 4. So I remember that, for a lot of my sources, this was going to be a ‘lost’ weekend. Everybody was going to be working; nobody was going to take time off. And that was bad news for me, because it meant I was also going to be on stand-by, and I would be working too.

“I was in New York, but I remember coming down to D.C. one day that weekend, just to be around in case something happened … Misery loves company, is how I would put it. If it were going to be a stress-filled weekend, it was better to do it together. It also meant I wouldn’t have trouble tracking people down — or as much trouble — because as you know, some of these people can be very elusive.

“The people in the counter-terrorism (CT) office were very worried about attacks here in the United States, and that was, it struck me, another debate in the intelligence community. Because a lot of intelligence people did not believe that Al Qaida had the ability to strike within the United States. The CT people thought they were wrong. But I got the sense at that time that the counter-terrorism people in the White House were viewed as extremist on these views.

“Everyone in Washington was very spun-up in the CT world at that time. I think everybody knew that an attack was coming — everyone who followed this. But you know you can only ‘cry wolf’ within a newspaper or, I imagine, within an intelligence agency, so many times before people start saying there he goes — or there she goes — again!

That would have been a blockbuster story. It might have even spooked the terrorists. But Judy is nothing if not meticulous. (Well, except for her stuff about the WMD in Iraq.) She does have some regrets, as does the editor who wouldn’t run with this story:

Like Miller, Steve Engelberg, now managing editor of the Oregonian in Portland, still thinks about that story that got away. “More than once I’ve wondered what would have happened if we’d run the piece?” he told the CJR. “A case can be made that it would have been alarmist, and I just couldn’t justify it, but you can’t help but think maybe I made the wrong call.”

Engelberg told us the same thing. “On Sept. 11th, I was standing on the platform at the 125th Street station,” he remembered ruefully more than four years later. “I was with a friend, and we both saw the World Trade Center burning and saw the second one hit. ‘It’s Al-Qaida!’ I yelled. ‘We had a heads-up!’ So yes, I do still have regrets.”

So does Judy Miller.

“I don’t remember what I said to Steve on Sept. 11,” she concluded in her interview with us. “I don’t think we said anything at all to each other. He just knew what I was thinking, and I knew what he was thinking. We were so stunned by what was happening, and there was so much to do, and I think that was the day in which words just fail you.

“So I sometimes think back, and Steve and I have talked a few times about the fact that that story wasn’t fit, and that neither one of us pursued it at that time with the kind of vigor and determination that we would have had we known what was going to happen. And I always wondered how the person who sent that [intercept] warning must have felt.

“You know, sometimes in journalism you regret the stories you do, but most of the time you regret the ones that you didn’t do.”

I’d imagine so. Engleberg seems to be geniunely pained that they didn’t run with the story, although he knows it was a tough call. Judy, not so much. But then she not only had the story of an impending major terrorist attack and didn’t get it in the paper but she then reported a bunch of manufactured drivel on Iraq’s fantasy WMD and managed to help the administration start an unnecessary war. She’s a one-woman wrecking crew, that one.

But what-ever! Let’s all go have one third of a martini in a gorgeous glass.

Update: I think it’s fair to note that this is not news except to the extent that Judy Miller had the story. Richard Clarke’s testimony to the 9/11 commission covered this ground before. The administration did consider Clarke and others who were running around with their “hair on fire” to be extremists. And we knew that the 4th of July that year was considered a prime possibility for an attack.

And it is still inexplicable why the Bush administration failed to lurch into high gear — except for the fact that we know know that if there is a decision to be made, The Decider inevitably makes the wrong one.

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“I Suppose Asians Too”

by digby

John Gibson is NOT a racist. He’ll tell you so himself:

GIBSON: Some misunderstandings about a recent “My Word.” I’ve been accused of being a racist because I said something simple. It was a couple of days ago, and I said procreate not recreate. It was a thought or two about demographics, about the science of looking into population trends and making predictions.

My concern was simply that I didn’t want America to become Europe, where the birth rate is so low the continent is fast being populated by immigrants, mainly from Muslim countries, whose birth rate is very high. That fact was coupled with a news item that said half of all babies in America under five are minorities and the majority of those are Hispanic.

I said, fine, but it was also a good idea if people other than Hispanics also got busy and had more babies. Those people would include both blacks and whites. I suppose Asians, too. I said you can’t expect Hispanics to do all the work when it comes to supplying our country with babies.

Well, you would have thought I put on a sheet and a pointed cap and started riding around at night carrying torches. People called me a racist. And for what? For simply saying that we ought to be having more babies in this country, and that while Hispanics were doing their part, others should be doing more.

If you look at the demographic trends, as I have, you could conclude, as I have, that 50 years from now, Europe will be brown and Muslim, and America will be brown and Christian. I am fine with that, America, and I’ve said so many times. I’d rather live with the Christians here than live in — under Sharia law in Europe. Of course, I won’t be alive anyway, but I hope you get the point.

The overall point here today is to say people are wrong if they say I am urging white people to have more babies because I’m afraid of more brown people and I’m a racist. Couldn’t be farther from the truth. Not that the truth matters when people want to lie about you for their own personal and vicious motives, which seems to happen a lot lately. That’s “My Word.”

Well ok then. That clears that up. People need to stop lying about him for their own personal and vicious motives. He was just worried about the muslims invading and forcing sharia law on the Mexicans — as are we all. That should have been obvious to anyone.

transcript via media matters

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There Goes The Neighborhood

by digby

I wrote yesterday about why the Democrats should not fear running on congressional oversight and wondered why the press is so anxious to avoid the fat, juicy stories that might come from these investigations. I’m glad to see that John Conyers, the investigative black boogeyman who has Joe Klein and the Republicans on the verge of tears, has explained why it’s important for the congress to oversee the executive. Now let’s see how the press reacts.

My guess is that they are going to be obsessed with this:

“At the end of the process, if — and only if — the select committee, acting on a bipartisan basis, finds evidence of potentially impeachable offenses, it would forward that information to the Judiciary Committee.”

I also suspect they are going to ask every Democrat (accompanied by much wailing and rending of garments) if he or she will “back” Conyers’ call to forward information about impeachable offenses to the Judiciary Committee. They are quite concerned, I believe, about whether a Democratic congress is going to behave properly. Certainly, the voice of beltway intellectual torpor, Joe Klein, is concerned that dark hued Democratic members have a problem with proper decorum. (We all saw that horrible, horrible funeral for Coretta Scott King.) You can understand why the press is nervous. They would hate to see the congress suffer the indignities of a circus-like atmosophere.

Certain people coming back into power in their town and “trashing the place” has them nervous. After all, it’s not their place.

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Morally Awake

by digby

Ok, who put the LSD in the DC water system? George Will is making sense. And he even (almost) accurately describes Democratic party values in a way that doesn’t make us sound like a bunch of ninnies:

Conservatives should be wary of the idea that when they talk about, say, tax cuts and limited government — about things other than abortion, gay marriage, religion in the public square and similar issues — they are engaging in values-free discourse. And by ratifying the social conservatives’ monopoly of the label “values voters,” the media are furthering the fiction that these voters are somehow more morally awake than others.

Today’s liberal agenda includes preservation, even expansion, of the welfare state in its current configuration in order to strengthen an egalitarian ethic of common provision. Liberals favor taxes and other measures to produce a more equal distribution of income. They may value equality indiscriminately, but they vote their values.

Among the various flavors of conservatism, there is libertarianism that is wary of government attempts to nurture morality and there is social conservatism that says unless government nurtures morality, liberty will perish. Both kinds of conservatives use their votes to advance what they value.

I would also argue that libertarians who are wary of government attempts to nurture morality can just as easily be Democrats — and I don’t think that Democrats value equality indiscriminately. But other than that, he’s being rather bracingly … fair. And it confuses me. Again, do you think it’s something in the water or are we looking at a Starbucks conspiracy here?

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