Month: June 2006

Brand Ex

by digby

This is probably going to be an interesting site. I haven’t had a chance to read it over very carefully (except to note that Elain Kamarck is openly suggesting that we run the Dukakis campaign again because it might work this time.) But I think it’s probably going to be a useful insight into the thinking of the strategic workings of the Democratic party.

I can’t help but wonder, however, why anyone would think that calling the thing “The Democratic Strategist” was a great idea? Talk about bad branding. If there is a more ridiculed and disrespected phrase in the party at the moment, I can’t think of what it would be.

Somehow, I have a feeling this wrong choice says something important. I can’t quite put my finger on what it might be …

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Pandermonium

by digby

Ana Marie Cox’s latest dispatch from YKOS online cautions all you funny little bumpkins who have never been to a political bash before to be careful of being co-opted by the elite. She’s been a real “journalist” for almost five minutes now so she understands how to handle being handled. You, on the other hand, are putty in their hands. Word to the wise.

But Cox is very confused about something else. She writes:

Many marveled that Warner would spend so much on bloggers — bloggers! — especially given that the progressive Internet movement has yet to claim a significant general election victory. But from publicity perspective, the campaign got a significant bang for its buck. “Think about it,” said a Warner staffer, “If we threw this kind of thing for the DNC [Democratic National Committee], it would be just another party.” As it was, the event’s buzz reverberated throughout the community and into the mainstream media.

Warner was the first Presidential hopeful to commit to coming to Yearly Kos. Jerome Armstrong, the co-author of “Crashing the Gate” with Yearly Kos namesake Markos Moulitsas, is the governor’s Internet consultant and unofficial blogger liaison. Clearly, the Warner campaign has great hopes for leveraging what convention-goers call “the netroots.” Yet to judge by Warner’s actual speech, the netroots are just another constituency, a Democratic special-interest group to be placated by a campaign promise or two. Aside from a warm-up that referenced the night’s festivities, Warner delivered his time-tested stump speech to the crowd, its paeans to the need for education and national security indistinguishable from what he might say to the Milwaukee teacher’s association or the Charleston VFW. This lack of special treatment—or absence of pandering—is either a sign of respect or confusion.

(Note that “many” marveled. Not the vague and ill defined “some” that that George Bush uses all the time, but “many.” How many, I wonder? And who? Were they really, really cool insiders who know about this stuff, or the hillbillies from Mud Holler who don’t know nothin’ bout no big time politickin’? Just curious.)

But that’s not why I highlighted this paragraph in her otherwise fairly uninformative and ennervating piece. Cox’s observations about politicians pandering to the netroots as a special interest show she misunderstands the meaning of both special interest and pandering.

A “special interest group,” by definition, has a special interest. Like the environment. Or gun rights. If Warner or any other candidate saw the netroots as a special interest group, what’s the special interest? Net neutrality? Free broadband? Censorship?

I’m not saying that we don’t have an interest in keeping the net free from government interference etc., but that’s just a basic necessity to keep doing what we’re doing. Our “special interest” is progressive politics — which is a pretty broad definition of “special.” We care about all the same stuff that Democrats everywhere do and we are perhaps even more interested than most in hearing the whole program, how it’s presented and what the priorities are, because we are a communication medium and we will be spreading the good news if we hear it. So, it’s wrong to say that Warner made a mistake in not tailoring a speech to the Netroots. There is simply no way to pander to our special interest because we have no special interest. The netroots are just grassroots progressives organized in a new way.

She goes on to claim that Dean, on the other hand, did pander to the conventioneers as a special interest group by giving a partisan speech. If the Chairman of the Democratic party is considered to be pandering when he gives a rousing pep talk to a group of hard core grassroots Democrats then let the panderfest begin. It’s part of the job description. (I’ll make sure to let the broadcasters know that when Bill Cohwer gives a halftime pep talk to the Steelers next season, they should refer to it as pandering.)

Cox spends the rest of her column observing that bloggers yearn to be mainstream journalists, but don’t have the skills. She may not know much about how politics work, but Cox’s current gig at TIME magazine as their ex-blogger expert shows her to be uniquely qualified to comment on that particular subject.

Update:

Cox was reportedly distraught that her notebook went missing during the convention. Somebody found it.

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The Libertarian Blues

by tristero

In comments to a previous post, NY Expat was correct that I had not read Kos’s description of a “Libertarian Democrat” worldview. Having now read it, I find it a brilliant example of framing a set of political beliefs in an attractive way. What Kos is describing, of course, is not so much a brand of libertarianism as it is a moderate form of contemporary liberalism (somewhat more moderate than my own, by the way, but certainly respectable and defensible).

If this kind of relabeling helps attract more voters, I’m all for it. Nevertheless, actual libertarianism – with its radical emphasis on the elimination of government regulation, coupled with a frankly naive attitude towards the obvious potential for such policies when implemented to create a profoundly illiberal society – remains a political philosophy which most liberal Democrats will find rather unhelpful. Liberal Democrats need to articulate a genuinely serious set of commonsense proposals to help this country regain its democracy and its stature, so majorly battered by the present Republican “mainstream” and other extremists on the right.

It is unclear to me what positive ideas libertarianism can offer to liberalism that are unique. For example, if affirmative action and Social Security are such cancers on the nation, what does a libertarian believe would be sensible improvements. Mere elimination of these programs will not responsibly address the underlying issues that led to their proposal in the first place.

He Threw it Away A Long Time Ago

by digby

Josh Marshall has a nice response up to Jonah Goldberg’s plaintive cry of “where can Rove go to get his reputation back?”

As Andrew Sullivan aptly quips, maybe Rove can go look for it in South Carolina. More to the point, let’s not forget the salient facts here. The question going back three years ago now is whether Karl Rove knowingly participated in leaking the identity of a covert CIA operative for the purpose of discrediting a political opponent who was revealing information about the White House’s use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

That was the issue. From the beginning, Rove, through Scott McClellan, denied that he did any of that. There weren’t even any clever circumlocutions. He just lied. From admissions from Rove, filings in the Libby case, and uncontradicted reportage, we know as clearly as we ever can that Rove did do each of those things.

So he did do what he was suspected of and he did lie about it.

These things may not have risen to a level of criminality, but they were low-down political dirty tricks at the very least. We know this. And we know that Rove has done whisper campaigns about judges being pedophiles and governors being lesbians and war heroes being cowards. He plays a form of despicable hardball politics by character assassination. He makes no bones about it. These things are not illegal. But they are despicable and loathesome, nonetheless.

As Marshall points out, Fitzgerald gave up on charging under the leak statute early on. This has always been about perjury and obstruction. Whether Rove cut a deal or Fitz just couldn’t make a case for those two crimes is unknown. What is not unknown is whether Rove is a lying, scumbag piece of shit. He is.

And when the the Libby trial happens next winter, I suspect it will be spelled out in uncertain terms just how low these people are willing to go.

Remember this:

[Rove] also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

And this:

Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times reported on July 18 that top White House aides were in a state of mania around this time two years ago, “intensely focused on discrediting” Joseph Wilson after he wrote his now-famous New York Times op-ed piece.

Hamburger’s and Wallsten’s sources tell them that Karl Rove’s animus toward Wilson was so intense that curiosity arose within the White House about it. When asked about this, Rove reportedly said, “He’s a Democrat.”

I’m sure that many Republicans feel that this was just great. It shows that Karl has the biggest balls in town. But I suspect there are others who aren’t quite so enamored of this petty political crapola when it comes to serious issues like why went into Iraq.

As I wrote earlier, Karl’s testimony should be very interesting.

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Brass Ones

by digby

You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans. Karl Rove must have heard that he was off the hook — and the first thing he did was head up to New Hampshire to raise money for the most crooked state GOP operation in the nation:

MANCHESTER, N.H. –Presidential adviser Karl Rove is the keynote speaker Monday night at the state Republican Party’s annual dinner — which Democrats say is to raise money to help the party pay legal fees in a phone jamming case.

State Party Chairman Wayne Semprini acknowledged Friday he would like to raise enough money so the suit “represents a very small portion of our budget.”

But he said the case has nothing to do with Rove’s appearance.

“He won’t say boo about phone jamming,” Semprini said. “There’s absolutely no connection between his being here and phone jamming. Period. This is our annual dinner.”

Democrats are suing Republicans to find out who knew about the phone jamming done Election Day 2002 that tied up a Democratic and nonpartisan effort to get out the vote and provide rides to the polls. Three Republican operatives have been convicted in the plot.

Democrats and New Hampshire Citizen Action plan demonstrations to coincide with Rove’s speech to draw attention to the event and the phone jamming case.

Semprini blamed the case on a “rogue employee who did a real dumb thing.”

“As a party, we’re paying a price,” he said, but added that the state party won’t go out of business as a result.

Not that anyone has any regrets. Here’s the rogue employee whom I quoted last week:

In his first interview about the case, Raymond said he doesn’t know anything that would suggest the White House was involved in the plan to tie up Democrats’ phone lines and thereby block their get-out-the-vote effort. But he said the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race.

“A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people,” he said. “I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody.”

Karl couldn’t have said it better himself. And I’m sure that Karl will make sure that Mr Raymond is taken care of. He did his time so more important Republicans didn’t have to. That’s how it works.

Feelin’ good about that Scooter?

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Rover Rollover

by digby

So Rove’s not going to be frog marched out of the white house any time soon. At least not for Plame. But c’mon. It’s pretty clear that he cut a deal, don’t you think? His lawyer says that Fitzgerald “does not anticipate seeking charges.” Yeah, unless he fails to live up to his agreement to testify. He went before the grand jury five times, and it wasn’t because he had nothing to say. He saved his own neck at Libby’s expense — and maybe Cheney’s.

This post from Chicago’s Archpundit from last October says it all, I think, about Fitzgerald’s techniques:

In his high profiles cases that I’ve followed, Fitzgerald is not the kind of guy to shoot all of his ammunition at once. He’s strategic in what he brings at any given time with the seeming strategy to leverage current indictments to move up the food chain.

[…]

The last U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois was a guy named Scott Lasser who was generally seen as an honest guy, but most of his public corruption trials involved alderman and other assorted small fry. Lasser always seemed to be complaining behind the scenes that he couldn’t get anyone to talk. The reason is obvious from the outside, Lasser looked to build a case and do it at one time. He never exhibited a pattern of building cases slowly and then moving up the food chain. He wasn’t corrupt by any account, but perhaps not very imaginative.

Peter Fitzgerald brought in a Patrick Fitzgerald to change that sense of helplessness. Fitzgerald had worked a number of different kind of cases, but the big ones were two terrorism cases involving the first World Trade Center bombing and the African Embassy Bombings. What isn’t mentioned as much, but is probably as critical to how he tries white collar crime, is he participated in several mafia related prosecutions including one of the Gambino trials.

What does all this mean assuming indictments come down tomorrow? It means that most likely, they won’t be the last and the purpose of them may not be simply to bring justice and an end to the investigation. If Fitzgerald thinks he needs to crack someone to get the top banana, he’ll use all the pressure he has available to get Libby or Rove or someone else to flip if that is where he feels the law will take him.

As far as the great Vizier Rove’s ability to pull naother rabbit out of the hat in November goes: we’ll see. He’s always been overrated. After all, he’s called “Bush’s Brain.” That’s worked out really well hasn’t it?

And the good news is that Libby’s trial is going to be a barn burner if Rove testifies against him.

Update: Christy at Firedoglake has more.

Update II: Jeralynn at Talk Left spoke to Rove’s lawyer who said categorically that there was no deal. Rove is apparently completely in the clear. Long live the man behind the curtain.

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Ann Gets Voted Off The Island

by digby

Oh my goodness. Guess who’s being purged from the movement for not being a real conservative? From skralyx at Daily Kos:

I was just at RedState, though, and I got a strange breath of fresh air: a recommended diary over there tonight is about boycotting Ann Coulter. It got mixed comments, with some dittoheads bellowing, “I love Ann! I’m buying her book! Woohooo! Don’t bother me with facts and analysis. La la la! I can’t hear you!!”, but a nearly equal number agreeing that she is no service whatsoever to conservatism.

Redstate: I am somewhat reluctant to write about Ann Coulter this week. The last thing I want to do is help her sell more copies of her book. But I am willing to take that chance in order to denouce her, to show that she is one of the greatest dangers that exists to the conservative movement.

[…]

Captain Ed says it best about this:

…impugning the grief felt by 9/11 widows regardless of their politics is nothing short of despicable. It denies them their humanity and disregards the very public and horrific nature of their spouses’ deaths. The attacks motivated a lot of us to become more active in politics in order to make sure our voices contribute to the debate, and it is impossible to argue that the 9/11 widows (and widowers, and children, and parents) have less standing to opine on foreign policy than Ann Coulter…

Of course Ed isn’t the only conservative denoucing Coulter on this.

—–

Hugh Hewitt:

Ann Coulter owes an apology to the widows of 9/11, and she should issue it immediately. This is beyond callous, beyond any notion of decency. It is disgusting.

RedState:

this sort of savage attack on people who have suffered a horrible tragedy is beyond any excusing and, really, beyond any apology. Coulter, who was a friend of Barbara Olson (killed on the plane that hit the Pentagon), should know better; heck, any first-grader would know better. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Anchoress:

…she is embodying everything I currently cannot abide in the “conservative movement”, the arrogant presumption of absolute moral certitude (which is ugly, ugly, ugly coming from the left, so honey, it’s not pretty when it’s from the right, either), combined with the sense of over-confidence which is sending so many on the right into a self-destructive Roy Moore/Tom Tancredo plunge off a cliff.

Ace of Spades:

this nastiness is uncalled for. Even if something is actually felt deep inside — even if you’re filled with toxic hatred for very annoying, very presumptuous, very left-leaning women with an overweening sense of entitlement — most people would find less abrasive ways to express such an emotion. Does that mean that Ann is just more honest than us “nancy boys”? Not really. A lot of the time the excuse of “I was just being honest” is just a code for “I’m basically an inconsiderate [butthead] who cannot be bothered to modify my behavior in even the slightest fashion in order to observe basic conventions of social decency.”

The Strata-Sphere:

I don’t know what happened to Anne, but she is a walking disaster for conservatives…Anne Coulter is no Conservative. She cannot be. Either that or I am no conservative. There is no way to condone such cruelty. Anne, sit down and just don’t talk anymore. You have done enough damage.

—–

AJStrata is completely correct: Ann Coulter is no conservative. Ann Coulter stands for nothing more than herself. And this is the curious thing. Many conservative friends of mine are defending Coulter. Well, I think the joke is on them.

[…]

It is high time to “excommunicate” Ann Coulter from the conservative movement. So I am issuing this call to the conservative movement across the country: Boycott Ann Coulter! Do not buy her book. Do not attend her speaking engagements. My goal is to see her new book fall off the New York Times Top 10 Bestseller List very soon.

So if you are with me on this one please drop me a note in the comments below. And more importantly, get the word out. Pass this post on to others. It is high time to separate from Coulter just like we did with Pat Buchanan and David Duke.

Apparently commenters throughout the right blogosphere are aghast at this proposed purging of their blond heroine. They’d better get with the program. This is only the beginning.

Coulter has been a shrieking harpy for years, saying the most vile things imaginable and making a good profit at it. What in the world has changed?

They supported her when she said:

When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors.”

and this:

“[The] backbone of the Democratic Party [is a] typical fat, implacable welfare recipient”

and this:

“it’s far preferable to fight [terrorists] in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York where the residents would immediately surrender.”

and this:

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”

or this:

“Liberals can’t just come out and say they want to take our money, kill babies and discriminate on the basis of race.”

and this:

“Name-calling has been the principal argument liberals have deployed against conservative arguments”.

Those quotes go back all the way to 1997 and they are just the tip of the iceberg. This woman has been coarsening the discourse with her hateful swill for more than a decade and made big bucks selling that swill to eager rightwing readers.

So what has precipitated this new wingnut sensitivity? Republican popularity, that’s what. That’s when the movement starts casting its dead weight overboard.

Sorry, Ann. That’s the way it goes in the conservative movement. When someone becomes a bother they are no longer conservative — no matter that you’ve spent your whole life doing exactly the same disgusting thing to great acclaim by all these people. You’ve been voted off the island. For the good of the Party. Long live conservatism — the “pure” ideology that never fails.

But guys, if you have a problem with Coulter’s attacks on the 9/11 widows, you’re going to have to take a look at the big guy himself. Ann Coulter didn’t create the slandering of the 9/11 widows theme. Limbaugh did. Is he no longer a conservative either?

Update: John Amato has posted a hilarious Coulter moment.

Update II: Howie Klein has another hilarious Coulter moment, by Henry Rollins.

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Can A Libertarian Find True Happiness In The Blues?

by tristero

My libertarian cyber-friend Mona has a very interesting guest post on the demonization of Michael Schiavo by the extreme right. From my standpoint there are several things that strike me as remarkable about it.

First of all is her underlying assumption that there is a controversy about this that needs to be addressed. In liberal and even centrist-right circles, the obscene behavior of the mainstream GOP during Schiavo- that’s correct, dear close-reading reader: “mainstream GOP” is today a synonym for the American far right – is simply accepted as fact (Joan Didion’s dismayingly bizarre dissent to this consensus is the only exception I know of, and there were extenuating circs for that which had nothing to do with Schiavo). In any event, knowing a little about Mona’s politics, it is not surprising she sides with the angels on this one.

Truly astonishing, imo, is that she seems open to exploring the possibility that her libertarian politics are closer to the modern Democratic Party than the Republican. And that brings up a host of very interesting questions that cluster around two axes: (1) Is the Democratic Party congenial to libertarianism?; (2) If so, is that a good thing for liberals?

(Full disclosure compels me to remind you of something I’ve mentioned several times in the past. I am a registered Independent and not a Democrat. In reality, I’ve never voted other than Democratic, Liberal Party, or Working Families Party – the candidates overlap quite often in New York. )

Let’s start with what Mona means by “libertarian.” In this post, she writes:

We libertarians are frequently caricatured as “Republicans who just want to smoke dope and have orgiastic sex.” Actually, we hold fealty to many serious general principles, including: the rule of law, basic human rights, federalism, and, yes, the individual adult’s liberty interest in making all manner of personal decisions sans interference from the state; we are also usually skeptical of moralistic social crusades.

A quick skim of this list reveals considerable agreement (agreeance? Calling the grammar police) with liberal values. With some serious caveats:

“Basic human rights” appears to be code for “affirmative action stinks.” I won’t rehearse the arguments pro/con affirmative action here other than to reassure readers that I fully support affirmative action (even if it produces the occasional Clarence Thomas) and don’t think American culture has changed enough vis a vis racism and poverty since the 60’s and 70’s to merit its abandonment – it can always be improved, however.

The point Mona is finessing here is, of course, not affirmative action per se but more general objections to the kind of social engineering liberals are often accused of advocating in their latte-addled interfering way. What libertarians fail to understand – and it is what makes me characterize libertarianism as utopian and naive – is that essentially *all* political action is social engineering.

Neither conservatives nor the extreme right – neither of which is naive – make that mistake, even if, for polemical reasons, they reframe what they’re up to as not social engineering. The argument between liberals, conservatives, and the extreme right revolves around what kind of social engineering is best. Tax breaks for corporations? Affirmative action? Coathangers? A strong FEMA? But the reality of government as social engineer is accepted as a given.

Libertarians were sold a bill of goods by Republicans. As all, repeat all, recent Republican history has shown, they are as much the party of Big Government as the Democrats. Before going blue, however, libertarians will need seriously to refine their notion of what government is. Make no mistake: Democrats do not loathe government. They recognize that there are some functions a government must do. And they are honest – unlike their red counterparts – about their belief that there are some things governments should do. Furthermore, Democrats are once again honest in asserting that there are some things governments do far better than private corporations or charities. (And it goes without saying there are many things the government should keep its filthy hands out of.)

The argument, within the party, is over the details and the relative balance. But the Norquistian notion of shrinking the US government so that it is so small it will slip down the drain (or whatever his odious metaphor was) is recognized as sheer idiocy or propaganda. The US government will change. It will not get substantially smaller. You can, God forbid, get rid of the NEA, but that just means that there will be more money going to fund bridges to nowhere in Alaska.

As long as Mona clings to the illusion that any human society can exist with “minimal” or no social engineering from the top, she will find politics among the blues majorly annoying.

Turning it around, from the standpoint of this liberal, “existential” arguments about social programs are a complete waste of time. Social Security is a good thing, Mona. Like any human institution, of course it can be improved and every liberal welcomes substantive discussions on how to do that. But eliminated? Privatized? That’s just social engineering John Birch-style. It’s not smaller government but, in the present day, a movement towards a rapacious authoritarianism. This liberal wants to…move on from such rightwing timewasters and address real issues, such as the construction of an affordable and just national healthcare system. There are serious, honest disagreements on how to do this. But I, for one, have zero interest in arguing whether it is creeping communism or not. I’ve seen communism up close; the charge that liberals advocating universal healthcare are a bunch of pseudo-commies is an outrageous canard that does not merit serious argument.

All of the above implies that federal taxes will have to be restored to rational levels to fund the workings of the US government. The fiscal irresponsibility exhibited by the rightwing whenever they obtain power is unconscionable. That plus the moral irresponsibility of deliberately shifting the tax burden to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor is criminal (maybe not legally, but certainly spiritually, by any serious standard including Christian and atheist value systems). Taxes will rise once the rightwing loses power. If paying your debts is a virtue, and it is, that is a Very Very Good Thing.

Potentially more troubling for the libertarian interested in the Democratic Party is Mona’s advocacy of federalism. I say “potentially” because I don’t know enough about what Mona herself means by the term. From what I can tell in a quick search, federalism is just States Rights rewritten as a polysyllable. And that is troubling.

Today, less than 40 years after the assasination of King, racism is still a shameful, omnipresent reality in the US (that it is true all over the world does not make it less shameful in the US, which has a terrible history of racism that adds a particular context). Liberals have a lot of problems with Katrina, for example; we believe the avoidable components of the disaster were permitted to happen due in large part to racism coupled with endemic corruption and incompetence. True, the Democratic Party does not, qua party, officially share this conviction, and Mona may find many Democrats who think racism had nothing to do with the awful images of human bodies floating in sewage. But it is hard to imagine that advocates of “federalism” will find many brothers and sisters in the party.

The issues centered around federalism are ancient ones in American history, as Sean Wilentz reminds us, in considerable detail, in his not-to-be-missed The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. Suffice it to say that arguments for “federalism” that depend upon chimera like “original intent” are, when you examine the history closely, exceedingly crude to the point of useless, except to advance partisan contemporary objectives. Original intent, as any fan of early music knows, is simply impossible to recover. It can be approximated to a greater or lesser extent, but there are always significant differences that make no performance “authentic.” Similarly attempts to base a modern political philosophy on slavish adherence to original intent are doomed to failure; such attempts represent a kind of secular fundamentalism, cherry-picking desired characteristics from a wide and contradictory canon of texts.

It goes without saying that there are useful arguments to be had about the intent of the Founders, the following generations, and their relevance today. It is the framing within the Procrustean bed of “original intent” that foreordains a conclusion that can only be illiberal. An argumentative structure that, as one of its givens, eliminates liberalism is not a structure I care to privilege with “engagement.” Ever.*

So in sum, Mona, you may find parts of the Democratic Party worldview congenial. But you will also find much that you won’t like; even if the Democrats, God forbid, move farther away from Enlightenment values, ie liberalism, broadly defined, it is hard to imagine the party advocating anything remotely close to libertarianism. From my standpoint, if the Democrats did so move, my despair about the future of democracy in this country would deepen, hard as that is to believe for some of you.

On the other hand, if you can, as you have in the past, continue to query your own belief system, I am confident that you will come to the conclusion that liberalism is far more congenial to your worldview than you currently think. You may be remain seriously bugged by my particular brand of liberalism, but those kinds of disagreements are part and parcel of the liberal tradition. No genuine liberal ever wants lockstep agreement. That’s for Republicans.

There is, however, a disagreement in kind between arguments within liberalism and those intended to destroy it. There are very few of those that stand on their own merit, without positing a dependence upon an unseen Authority or an innate permanent inequality between people that deserves to be codified into law. Liberals emphatically reject arguments that categorically depend upon such assumptions; it is there our tolerance meets its limit. And a Democratic Party that moves further to embrace such assumptions would be a terrible party, indeed.

*Many dishonest critics of liberals assume that our interest in understanding what Islamism is about represents a desire to “engage’ radical Islamists in an argument over values during a shared meal of hummus, red wine, and brie. They know very well that is a lie. Unfortunately, many other people, who understand nothing about liberal values of inquiry and knowledge, believe the lie.

BlogGods

by digby

I’ve got a post up this afternoon over at FDL in which I suck up shamelessly to just about everyone in the blogosphere, especially you readers. But I really mean it.

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Meet The New Cokie

by digby

I got in a lot of trouble a few weeks ago for being disrespectful toward Ana Marie Cox. I have no intention of being disrespectful now. I think it’s just terrific that she’s become a full fledged member of the mainstream media and is covering bloggers as if they are pod people from mars. It’s the smart career move. Still, it’s quite a transition since for several years she represented the liberal blogosphere on countless blogging panels and media appearances. It’s a testament to her faking skills that she could convincingly be a blogging pioneer one minute and a befuddled mainstream journalist the next. It’s trailblazing, actually.

This article, which has been promised as the first of an exciting series on the YKOS convention is not illuminating in any way. It could have been written by Adam Nagourney. In fact, Adam Nagourney wrote the first draft.

Cox, being unfamiliar with flamethrowing blogging as she is, appears to be shocked to hear something like this:

One journalist presses some workshop attendees on the apparent disconnect between the online bomb- throwers and the chatty, eager conference goers. A woman explains that one would never attack someone in person the way you can online: “It’s the difference between bombing someone from 50,000 feet and sticking a bayonet between their eyes.” And most people, she observes, can’t deal with sticking a bayonet between the eyes. “Unless you’re really psychopathic.”

As a mainstream journalist now, it would imappropriate for her to offer any insights into the hyperbolic nature of blogging, despite her own contribution to the genre. That would be wrong. Instead, she just lets it hang out there as an example of the way the bloodthirsty left blogosphere thinks, even referring to the attendees sarcastically as “cordial” (and drunk) in the next paragraph. TIME must have been pleased.

TBOGG reports that Instapundit was very pleased when Cox sent him this private email which he posted on his blog:

“Bonus material: I saw Joe Wilson get not one but two standing ovations today; he was also called ‘a true American hero.’ People waited in line for his autograph. I’m going to begin drinking now.”

Can a Regnery special be far in the future? That’s the predictable move for her.

In the meantime, she throws her lot in with her new MSM pals explicitly when she writes:

A gaggle of mainstream media reporters in the back grows nervous. “Are you worried they’re going to blog us?” I ask someone. He replies, “I’m worried they’re going to lynch us.”

“Are you worried they’re going to blog us?”

I’m not sure what that means. I can only assume it bears some relationship to assfucking — Anna Marie’s special contribution to blogospheric discourse. Perhaps she’ll write about how one can parlay a blog about anal sex into a gig at the kewl kidz table in the next installment. It stands to reason that it’s that kind of “insider” insights for which TIME magazine signed her for this gig. If they wanted Cokie Roberts they would have hired Cokie Roberts.

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