BLITZER: Joining us now in our “Strategy Session,” radio talk show host Bill Press and CNN political analyst, former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts.
In this Plan B decision, the morning-after contraception pill, in effect, Hillary Clinton came out with a strong statement: “While we urge the FDA to revisit placing age restrictions on the sale of Plan B, it is real progress that millions of American women will now have increased access to emergency contraception.”
Women 18 and older can just go in and buy the pill. Seventeen- year-olds and under have to get a doctor’s note.
J.C. WATTS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well…
(LAUGHTER)
WATTS: … Wolf, I don’t know what is the difference in, you know, harming the child the night or the day after. I still don’t think that changes the debate. Those…
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: You think this is abortion?
WATTS: I do. I think — I still don’t think it changes the debate one bit.
I think those who are opposed to abortion are going to be opposed to this. Those who support abortion, they will like this decision, as — as Senator Clinton said. It’s abortion the day after.
So, it doesn’t change the debate any. And I do. I agree that the FDA has made a huge mistake in this ruling.
BLITZER: The other side, Wendy Wright of Concerned Women of — For America, says, “The FDA’s irresponsible action today takes those rights out of a parent’s hands and gives them to ill-intentioned perpetrators.”
Clearly, they’re very unhappy with this FDA decision.
BILL PRESS, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Well, you know, that’s too bad, Wolf. I think this is a major breakthrough for American women.
And, J.C., it’s hypocritical to be against abortion and to be against Plan B. We heard Sanjay Gupta, who knows more about this than you and I do, at the top of the show, say, if a woman is already pregnant, this does nothing. This is not an abortion pill. It’s a contraceptive pill. It has been used safely by European women for years. It has been held up in this year only for — in this country only for political reasons.
And what this pill is going to result in is fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer abortions, which I thought — is certainly my goal — I thought was your goal, too.
WATTS: Well, it’s ironic, Wolf, that we say it’s a contraceptive, but you take it the morning after.
PRESS: So what?
(LAUGHTER)
PRESS: You take one pill the day before. You can take one the morning after.
(CROSSTALK)
PRESS: It’s a medical breakthrough.
WATTS: The morning after.
PRESS: It’s a contraceptive.
WATTS: It’s…
PRESS: And it’s not funny.
WATTS: It…
PRESS: Three-and-a-half — no.
WATTS: Bill, the bottom line is…
PRESS: It’s…
WATTS: … your mind is not going to be changed by this decision. Nor — and nor is mine.
(CROSSTALK)
WATTS: I believe it’s abortion. I believe it takes the life of a — you don’t. So…
PRESS: No, but I…
WATTS: … that’s the issue.
PRESS: … would hope…
WATTS: That’s the issue.
PRESS: But I would hope people who have strong beliefs would listen to the experts and listen to the facts.
As Sanjay said, three — and he’s the medical expert here, not you, not me — three-and-a-half million unwanted pregnancies in this country. One-half of them could be eliminated because of this pill. I would think you would say…
BLITZER: All right.
PRESS: … it’s about time.
WATTS: But you want to listen…
BLITZER: All right.
WATTS: … to the experts on abortion, but you don’t want to listen to the experts on the war that says that evil people are trying to kill us.
BLITZER: All right.
WATTS: But you don’t want to do anything about that.
I understand that some alleged liberals are getting all tingly at the notion of John McCain as the next president. As Yglesias said, “And why shouldn’t he? A handful of additional wars and steep cuts in vital retirement security programs would be a small price to pay for minor alterations to the campaign finance system.” Not to mention that JJ, the manly fighter pilot, is just soooo dreamy.
The truth is that McCain is actually more hawkish and deceitful than Bush. The only difference in their rhetoric on national security is that McCain pretends he didn’t cheer every single move Bush made until it started to go wrong. Senator Straight Talk is very, very slick, I’ll give him that. Take this exchange on Press The Meat from 2005:
R. RUSSERT: Let me show you something that John McCain said describing a war situation: “And we have a horrific strain on the men and women in the military. We can’t keep our pilots. We’re lowering our recruiting standards. It’s a very serious situation. And to have another one of these extended, unending burdens placed on the men and women in the military has some consequences. All I’m saying is: Let’s develop a strategy overall and let’s also then develop an exit strategy for this particular situation.”
That was February 14, 1999, Kosovo. That’s exactly what the Democrats are saying about Iraq.
SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm.
MR. RUSSERT: Aren’t they saying things that should be said and should be listened to?
SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm. Well, I guess this is true confessions. I was wrong about Kosovo. I was right about Bosnia. We did the right thing in Kosovo by going in there and stopping ethnic cleansing. And we haven’t done what we should be doing in Darfur and some other parts of the world, by the way. But I–if there’s a strategy for withdrawal, it is success. It is the formula that the president described last week and the one I just described to you. I’m not for keeping troops there forever. I hope–I wish we could take them out tomorrow. It’s not a question of whether we want to withdraw or not. We all want that. The question is: Will conditions on the ground dictate whether we withdraw or not and when we withdraw, or will it be some arbitrary date? I say conditions on the ground.
He successfully deflects the logical charge that he’s an opportunistic partisan flip-flopper by just saying — “oh yeah, my bad” and then just blathers incoherently. Because Russert yearns to service him, he lets it pass. The fact is that McCain was screeching for more troops in Kosovo too, which may explain why nobody listens to him. No matter what, we never seem to be committing enough troops to fight the big land war that he thinks we should be fighting:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today was joined by Senators Joe Biden (D-DE), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) in offering a Senate resolution on Kosovo. The text of McCain’s floor speech follows:
“As my colleagues know I am concerned that the force the United States and our NATO allies has employed against Serbia– gradually escalating air strikes – is insufficient to achieve our political objectives there – the removal of Serb military and security forces from Kosovo; the return of the refugees to their homes; and the establishment of a NATO led peacekeeping force. I hope this resolution, should it be adopted, will encourage the Administration and our allies to find the courage and resolve to prosecute this war in the manner most likely to result in its early and successful conclusion. In other words, I hope this resolution will make clear Congress’ support for adapting our means to secure our ends, rather than the reverse.
In exactly the same way, McCain began agitating for more troops in Iraq in August of 2003. And because the war actually was a dud this time, his arguments for more troops were taken up by just about everybody and have successfully framed the argument for many Iraq war supporters by implying that the war would have been a “day at the beach” if only they had sent in more troops when McCain wanted to.
But McCain knew that this was nonsense. The fact is that we have never had enough troops to do what he belatedly thought should be done and unless the administration was willing to institute the draft or pull troops from other vital missions (besides Afghanistan, where we’d already pulled them), we never did. The key to the mission that McCain and Bush sold was always to have large a multi-national force, which Codpiece and Unka Dick did everything but spit in the world’s face to avoid. McCain knows this very well but continued to argue publicly that we could just easily conjure up a larger military to “fix” Iraq and just slides on through like the oily political conman he really is.
It has certainly set him up nicely for a presidential run, though. He gives speeches more stirring than anything Michael Gerson ever dreamed of about liberty and freedom. He made the argument before Bush did that “some say” arabs can’t govern themselves, but he begs to differ! Remember, he’s Mr “National Greatness” which is all about the Glory That Is Imperial America. And somehow he manages to convince people that he would have magically won this stupid war and we’d all feel better about ourselves today if he’d been in charge — even though he backed Bush’s cock-up every step of the way and only came along later to carp about troop levels once it was already too late.
KING: We have an e-mail for you, Senator McCain, from Heather in Epsom, New Hampshire and it says, “Larry, I would like to ask Senator McCain if there is any hope that, if he were president, he would take a new approach to securing peace in the Middle East?” What would you do differently?
MCCAIN: I’m not sure, Larry, and for me to articulate something different obviously might be a criticism and I’m not sure right now that I’d like to criticize this administration because I think they’re doing the very best they can.
I would have done things differently in Iraq, as you know, even though I continue to support our effort there. I think this is a very difficult situation.
Heather, as you know in the past, Henry Kissinger or Jim Baker or whoever was secretary of state could shuttle from one capital to another that basically controlled the fighting and that’s much more difficult when you’ve got terrorist organizations that are doing the fighting and so it’s much more complicated.
Slicker than owlshit, as my father always says.
John McCain is no better than George W. Bush on national security and foreign policy. This is best exemplified by their similar views of how to deal with the complicated issues in the mid-east. You’ll recall that Dubya was caught on tape recently saying, “What they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.” But that’s downright Churchillian compared to McCain’s view. From Steve Benen we have this report:
Jason Horowitz reports in the New York Observer that John McCain met with an exclusive audience of very wealthy Republicans in New York late last week, shortly after getting booed relentlessly at the New School’s commencement ceremony. The students weren’t terribly impressed, but apparently McCain “saved some of his best material” for the elite crowd that gathered behind closed doors in the back of the Regency Hotel.
In a small, mirror-paneled room guarded by a Secret Service agent and packed with some of the city’s wealthiest and most influential political donors, Mr. McCain got right to the point.
“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit,'” said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.
Oh, so that’s what we need from the Oval Office. I’m sure the Iraqis will find this immediately persuasive and lay down arms thanks to the power of McCain’s personality and his desire to see the two sides get along. Somewhere, Bush is slapping his hand against his forehead, saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Or, as Brendan Nyhan put it, “So honest! So bold! What an innovative diplomatic concept! If only John McCain were president, we’d have peace in Iraq!”
Well, yes. That’s what the McCain would have you believe and there are plenty of people who want to believe it. As Benen pointed out:
It’s worth noting, however, all sarcasm aside, McCain’s audience ate this up. DioGuardi, the wife of former Republican congressman Joseph DioGuardi, said McCain was “fantastic” and has “a vision for what should happen to this country.
And if anybody thinks that McCain is more sane on some of the other foreign policy challenges, think again:
“The greatest single threat that we are facing right now to our national security is Iran,” he said. “If they get that weapon, and they have the capability to deliver it, put yourself in the position of the government of the state of Israel. This could be one of the most unsettling and difficult challenges that we have ever faced.”
The governor of Alaska, Frank Murkowski, came in 3rd in the Republican primary on Tuesday, and although it has widely been interpreted as a revolt over local issues, there can be no doubt that it sent a chill down the spines of DC incumbents, particularly the Senate majority.
Frank Murkowski isn’t just some obscure Alaskan nobody — he was a US Senator for 22 years, a member of the most exclusive club in the world, from one of the most reliable red states. In small (population) states like Alaska, he should have been an iconic figure who stayed in office until he was forced out by term limits or death. For years he had the backing of the most important industries in the state as well as the religious right, the NRA and the Alaska GOP. And yet, he couldn’t get over 20% in the Republican primary this year. And the woman who won ran against the Republican establishment.
This is the fourth incumbent, two Republicans, one Replieberman and one Dem who have lost their primaries since August 8th. Lincoln Chafee is facing a very tough go from the big money Club For Growth challenge on his right. All of this is highly unusual.
I just heard Jeff Greenfield say that it’s coincidence. Perhaps so. But if this is a “throw the rascals out” election, which it appears to me to be, let’s just say there are a lot more Republican rascals than there are Democrats in national office these days. And even their own voters don’t like them.
Echidne has posted a piece about a professor who claims that liberals are being outbred by conservatives and are therefore, going to eventually go the way of the dodo bird. The professor writes:
Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They’re not having enough of them, they haven’t for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That’s a “fertility gap” of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%–explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.
Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today’s problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020–and all for no other reason than babies.
And here I thought liberals were the lovers and conservatives were the fighters.
But where’s the guarantee that Republican embryo becomes Republican voter? There are three kids in my wingnut family and only one is a chip off the old block, and he’s pretty apathetic. The rightwing politics in my family were what turned my brother and me into raving liberals. I think that happens fairly often — the old preacher’s kid syndrome. It’s certainly possible that a lot of conservatives come from liberal families as well — I just haven’t come across a lot of them. I do know quite few people who have been influenced by their spouses to change political directions, though.
I guess my point is that I’m not really sure that being born into politics is the predictor this professor seems to believe it is. According to Echidne there’s a pretty good possibility that this professor is pulling his data out of his ass, so perhaps that’s not surprising.
How many of you liberals out there came from conservative families?
Scott Winship has an interesting article in The Democratic Strategist today in which he dissects one of those polls that measures how stupid Americans are about politics. And boy are they stupid about politics — only one in ten knows who Denny Hastert is. But the good news is that they aren’t measurably more stupid than they were in the 40’s and 50’s when there was a lot more illiteracy and many people didn’t graduate from High School. I suppose that’s good news.
Here’s the part I find interesting:
Bennett shows that consistency in positions taken across issue areas increases as political knowledge increases. Those who have little knowledge tend to have unconventional combinations of issue positions. If it is also the case that those with little political knowledge are less consistent in their positions on individual issues over time than other people are, then the result might be a sizeable constituency for demagoguery and misdirection. Bennett’s results imply that that bloc would be as large as one-third of the population. It seems important to separate these people out, to the extent possible, when analyzing characteristics of the electorate by, say, party or ideology. And it would be nice to know more about the positions they take on issues and the candidates they support.
I happen to know an excellent place to start. Chris Hayes wrote an article about exactly this odd phenomenon after the 2004 election and I posted about it here. Hayes wrote:
Undecided voters aren’t as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We’re giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man’s house, she still couldn’t make sense of his decision.
[…]
A disturbing number of undecided voters are crypto-racist isolationists. In the age of the war on terror and the war in Iraq, pundits agreed that this would be the most foreign policy-oriented election in a generation–and polling throughout the summer seemed to bear that out…But just because voters were unusually concerned about foreign policy didn’t mean they had fundamentally shifted their outlook on world affairs. In fact, among undecided voters, I encountered a consistent and surprising isolationism–an isolationism that September 11 was supposed to have made obsolete everywhere but the left and right fringes of the political spectrum.
[…]
To be sure, maybe they simply thought Kerry’s promise to bring in allies was a lame idea–after all, many well-informed observers did. But I became convinced that there was something else at play here, because undecided voters extended the same logic to other seemingly intractable problems, like the deficit or health care. On these issues, too, undecideds recognized the severity of the situation–but precisely because they understood the severity, they were inclined to be skeptical of Kerry’s ability to fix things. Undecided voters, as everyone knows, have a deep skepticism about the ability of politicians to keep their promises and solve problems. So the staggering incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration and the demonstrably poor state of world affairs seemed to serve not as indictments of Bush in particular, but rather of politicians in general.
[…]
undecideds seemed oddly unwilling to hold the president accountable for his previous actions, focusing instead on the practical issue of who would have a better chance of success in the future. Because undecideds seemed uninterested in assessing responsibility for the past, Bush suffered no penalty for having made things so bad; and because undecideds were focused on, but cynical about, the future, the worse things appeared, the less inclined they were to believe that problems could be fixed–thereby nullifying the backbone of Kerry’s case. Needless to say, I found this logic maddening.
Undecided voters don’t think in terms of issues. Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the “issues.” That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured–a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example–but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I’d just asked them to name their favorite prime number.
[…]
But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to… So I tried other ways of asking the same question: “Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what’s been happening in the country in the last four years?”
These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn’t the word “issue”; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the “political.” The undecideds I spoke to didn’t seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief–not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.
[…]
In this context, Bush’s victory, particularly on the strength of those voters who listed “values” as their number one issue, makes perfect sense. Kerry ran a campaign that was about politics: He parsed the world into political categories and offered political solutions. Bush did this too, but it wasn’t the main thrust of his campaign. Instead, the president ran on broad themes, like “character” and “morals.” Everyone feels an immediate and intuitive expertise on morals and values–we all know what’s right and wrong. But how can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don’t even grasp what issues are?
Liberals like to point out that majorities of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, so Republicans are forced to run on character and values in order to win. (This cuts both ways: I met a large number of Bush/Feingold voters whose politics were more in line with the Republican president, but who admired the backbone and gutsiness of their Democratic senator.) But polls that ask people about issues presuppose a basic familiarity with the concept of issues–a familiarity that may not exist.
As far as I can tell, this leaves Democrats with two options: either abandon “issues” as the lynchpin of political campaigns and adopt the language of values, morals, and character as many have suggested; or begin the long-term and arduous task of rebuilding a popular, accessible political vocabulary–of convincing undecided voters to believe once again in the importance of issues. The former strategy could help the Democrats stop the bleeding in time for 2008. But the latter strategy might be necessary for the Democrats to become a majority party again.
I think Democrats need to do a bit of both. Certainly, the Republicans, for whatever reason, seem to better understand heuristics and are willing to demagogue wherever necessary. These last few years have taught us nothing if they haven’t taught us how far you can go even when you make no sense whatsoever.
But the fact remains that this is not good for the country. We simply cannot adequately govern ourselves if a large number of us are dumb as posts and vote for reasons that make no sense.
The polling data suggests that the best solution is this:
The surest way to enhance political information levels is to convince people to become more interested in politics. In 2004, the mean score on the PI scale for the least interested segment of the public was 1.7. Among the most interested, the mean score was 6.2.
Increasing political interest won’t be easy, however. One suggestion has been for schools to conduct more classes in civics or American history, but the link between the number of such classes taken K-12 and informed citizenship is extremely weak. Get-out-the-vote campaigns in the mass media have also been popular, but the people who most need such encouragement don’t read newspapers or watch the news on TV. “Kids Voting” programs may benefit some, but they tend to be too few in number around the country, and their effects are generally minor.
Tne possible solution is deliberative polls, as suggested by University of Texas professor James Fishkin. The 2004 ANES found, for example, that persons who reported discussing politics with family and friends were significantly better informed than those who eschewed political talk. It is likely that political information and political discussions are mutually reinforcing.
And that, my friends, is our mission, should we decide to accept it. As the trainspotting, vanguard political junkies, our job is to take this conversation offline and spread the good word to our families and friends and co-workers. We can hang out in the blogosphere and hash out the arguments and organize ourselves around issues and candidates and raise money and volunteer. But if we do nothing else, we need to talk about this stuff out in the real world and build this dialog into the body politic.
I don’t know how many people you can inspire or how many in whom you can even tweak an interest. But it doesn’t take very many. Once a poltically informed person is created they tend to create more. I’ve been quite hopeful that this will be a positive benefit of the blogosphere for sometime. And when you read that data you can see just how necessary it is.
The RNC has put out an amazing hit piece today on our glorious overlord Kos. Apparently, Democrats who associate themselves with our Dear Leader are to be shunned for such extremist associations.
But, it’s funny, as I was over on the site reading through their various press releases, I saw that they have issued many in support of John Bolton. And yet John Bolton’s most important and passionate online operative is none other than Pamela “Atlas” Oshry, surely one of the most shocking extremists in the right blogosphere. Why he was being “interviewed” one-on-one by the wingnut-gone-wild while he was supposedly right in the middle of brokering a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon a couple of weeks ago. They are practically joined at the hip … or something.
And needless to say, since Republican politicians routinely go on radio shows like Rush Limbaugh’s and appear at conferences with psychotic hatemongers like Ann Coulter, making the “guilt by association” argument is very, very risky for them.
Are they sure they want to go there?
Update: From Seeing the Forest, I see that the man who said, “I would only add that these liberals want us to lose, not just in some small corner, but with their whole hearts; in fact, our defeat is the only thing they whole-heartedly work for” was invited to the white house this week.
He wasn’t talking about liberals wanting conservatives to lose — he was talking about liberals wanting America to lose to the terrorists, which logically means we desire a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy.
I wrote a few days ago about the “Duelling Pageants” of 9/11 and Katrina. It appears that the Bush administration is going to go into the belly of the beast on the day and try to squeeze out some good publicity from the stagnant floodwaters.
As next week’s anniversary of Hurricane Katrina triggers recollections of rooftop refugees and massive devastation along the Gulf Coast, the White House has begun a public relations blitz to counteract Democrats’ plans to use the government’s tardy response and the region’s slow recovery in the coming congressional elections.
President Bush will visit the area Monday and Tuesday, including an overnight stay in New Orleans. He probably will visit the city’s Lower 9th Ward, the heavily black area that remains mired in debris, and is expected to meet with storm victims.
The trip will force Bush to revisit sensitive racial issues that arose with the flooding of New Orleans; at that time, civil rights leaders charged that the White House was slow to respond because so many victims were black. GOP strategists acknowledged that the administration’s failure to act quickly was a significant setback in their efforts to court traditionally Democratic African American voters.
The White House announced Bush’s visit Tuesday as a phalanx of administration officials stood before reporters to argue that billions of dollars had flowed to the region and millions more was on the way. The plans for the trip were disclosed one day after Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales announced that he was sending additional lawyers and resources to the city to fight fraud and abuse.
At Tuesday’s briefing, White House aides passed out folders and fact sheets that painted a picture of aggressive recovery efforts. A packet from the Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for the levees that were breached after the storm, carried the slogan: “One Team: Relevant, Ready, Responsible, Reliable.”
Donald E. Powell, the White House official in charge of recovery plans, declared that Bush was “fulfilling his commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast better and stronger.”
The administration’s coordinated response is the latest example of White House officials maneuvering to cast a positive light on a campaign issue expected to hurt Republicans. Just this week, Bush acknowledged public anxiety over Katrina, along with concern about the war in Iraq and rising gasoline prices. But he defended his record and accused the Democrats of weakness, particularly on national security issues.
I suppose you could call this progress. The administration has progressed from never acknowledging they made a mistake to “acknowledging public anxiety.”
The tone of the article suggests skepticism on the part of these particular reporters, but there’s no guarantee that the white house won’t be able to pull out that old photo op magic the press won’t be compelled to portray Bush as a benevolent religious figure. They’ve had a lot of time to plan this.
The White House effort comes as the Democrats, who plan to challenge Republicans on national security in this year’s midterm election campaign, are portraying the government’s response to Katrina as evidence that Bush failed to fix inadequacies exposed by the Sept. 11 attacks.
A report being released today by top Democrats, titled “Broken Promises: The Republican Response to Katrina,” features a picture of Bush during his Sept. 15, 2005, speech in New Orleans’ Jackson Square, in which he promised to oversee “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.”
The report argues that every aspect of recovery — including housing, business loans, healthcare, education and preparedness — “suffers from a failed Republican response marked by unfulfilled promises, cronyism, waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is scheduled to spend Thursday in New Orleans with fellow Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana to kick off what they call the “Hope and Recovery Tour.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco plans to arrive this weekend with about 20 other Democrats for additional events.
That’s good. But, thank goodness the visual images of the crisis speak for themselves. The ninth ward still looks like it was hit with a bunker buster.
I would really like to see Bill Clinton down there next week. This is the type of thing at which he excells:
Leaders of the recovery effort said Tuesday that although progress had been slow in some areas, Bush would be able to point to successes in some New Orleans neighborhoods, including the famed French Quarter and the Garden District. However, neither area was damaged as severely as the Lower 9th Ward. The question for White House schedulers is how much to accentuate the positives while acknowledging the negatives.
“If you go to most of the city you see enormous progress,” said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. “They are probably going to go to the Lower 9th Ward, which is very honest of them, because that’s the place you see the least progress.”
Isaacson, a New Orleans native, said he considered many of the Democrats’ critiques to be unfair. He credited the White House with safeguarding millions of dollars in grants for housing and levee reconstruction, some of which was only approved this summer amid a contentious budget debate.
“They protected that housing money and the levee money in the appropriation process when every congressman was looking at it greedily,” he said.
Good old former editor of TIME magazine Walter Isaacson, still shilling for his GOP buddies. He neglects to mention that if this is true, the whitehouse was “protecting” the housing money from its own Republicans — and they did it for purely partisan political reasons.
On Monday, Bush offered a preview of his anniversary message, contending at a news conference that despite frustrations about the slow arrival of housing funds and delays in debris removal, “the money has been appropriated, the formula is in place, and now it’s time to move forward.”
He suggested that $110 billion in federal funds had been “committed” to help the region rebuild, but confusion persisted Tuesday over what portion of that money had actually been spent.
During the White House briefing, Powell said that about $44 billion, about 40% of the total, had been distributed to hurricane victims, but suggested that state and local governments were mostly to blame for the gap.
Obviously Iraq is the primary political issue in the coming election. But the real issue, cutting across all the others, is the fact that the Republicans simply cannot handle the responsibility of government whether it’s terrorism, gas prices or a crisis in a major American city. Katrina is the most vivid image of their incompetence and lack of accountability right here in the US.
The country is going to be reminded of this lowest moment of Republican rule next week. Let’s hope the Republicans aren’t able to turn that soggy lemon into lemonade. They are absolutely terrible at governing and with Bush they have a guy who they can’t count on to react well during the crisis. But nobody manufactures a campaign photo-op better than they do.
Remarks by President Bush After Meeting With Rockey Vaccarella Wednesday August 23, 11:39 am ET
WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 /PRNewswire/ — The following are remarks by President Bush:
THE PRESIDENT: I just had coffee with Rockey Vaccarella, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. He caught my attention because he decided to come up to Washington, D.C. and make it clear to me and others here in the government that there’s people down there still hurting in south Louisiana, and along the Gulf Coast.
And Rock is a plain-spoken guy. He’s the kind of fellow I feel comfortable talking to. I told him that I understand that there’s people down there that still need help. And I told him the federal government will work with the state and local authorities to get the help to them as quickly as possible.
MR. VACCARELLA: That’s right.
THE PRESIDENT: He met with my friend, Don Powell. Don’s job is to cut through bureaucracy. I told Rocky the first obligation of the federal government is to write a check big enough to help the people down there. And I want to thank the members of Congress of both political parties that helped us pass over $110 billion of appropriations. And that’s going to help the folks. And I told him that to the extent that there’s still bureaucratic hurdles, and the need for the federal government to help eradicate those hurdles, we want to do that.
Now, I know we’re coming up on the first-year anniversary of Katrina, and it’s a time to remember, a time to particularly remember the suffering that people went through. Rocky lost everything. He lost — he and his family had every possession they had wiped out. And it’s a time to remember that people suffer, and it’s a time to recommit ourselves to helping them. But I also want people to remember that a one-year anniversary is just that, because it’s going to require a long time to help these people rebuild.
And thank you for your spirit.
MR. VACCARELLA: Thank you, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s an amazing country, isn’t it, where —
MR. VACCARELLA: It is. You know, it’s really amazing when a small man like me from St. Bernard Parish can meet the President of the United States. The President is a people person. I knew that from the beginning. I was confident that I could meet President Bush.
And my mission was very simple. I wanted to thank President Bush for the millions of FEMA trailers that were brought down there. They gave roofs over people’s head. People had the chance to have baths, air condition. We have TV, we have toiletry, we have things that are necessities that we can live upon.
But now, I wanted to remind the President that the job’s not done, and he knows that. And I just don’t want the government and President Bush to forget about us. And I just wish the President could have another term in Washington.
So it begins.
CNN is, predictably, having an orgasm. They are down with Rocky’s lovely family in their FEMA trailer right now.
Rocky, by the way, is a very nice local Republican politician and he’s very grateful for everything the president has done — unlike some of those other “ungrateful” macaca types.
I was reading about the latest outrage from Felix “Macaca” Allen’s campaign over at Gilliard’s place and something about his comment tickled my memory. Steve wrote:
They’re clearly worried about the impact of the racist words coming from Allen’s mouth. And even if he didn’t say Macaca/Sand Ni**er/Dune C**n/Haji what came after is worse. “Welcome to America”.
Excuse me. America is no longer just white people. That’s the real insult there. Especially when the kid was born in Virginia, unlike Allen.
I recalled that the empty Codpiece had said something along the same lines a couple of years ago:
There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.
Felix and Dubya default to the same patronizing, bigoted assumptions. Bush may be less hostile than Felix, but he’s no less racist. “America” to both of these rich, privileged Republican creeps, is white.
So we know that king neocon Norman Podhoretz is sticking with Bush to the bitter end, which is kind of sweet when you think about it. But the movement conservatives are bailing. Here’s a blurb from Richard Viguerie’s new book:
This is the first book that deals with the disappointment and even anger that most conservatives have with President Bush and the GOP-led Congress on major public policy issues. In this conservative manifesto, Viguerie applies conservative principles to 21st Century problems and issues. He also presents a detailed strategy for conservatives to take back control of the Republican Party and govern America.
With President Bush’s low approval numbers, the unrest among grassroots conservatives, and the potential for GOP losses in the 2006 and 2008 elections, this book is a roadmap for conservatives as they begin to rebuild the conservative movement, recapture the Republican Party, and move even the Democrats to the right. In Conservatives Betrayed, Mr. Viguerie proposes bold action for conservatives to take back the Republican Party from Big Government Republicans, including:
Withhold financial support from Republican committees and most Republican incumbents.
Withhold support from all 2008 presidential candidates.
No longer call yourself a “Republican” but rather a Reagan conservative or Reagan Republican.
Work for wholesale change in Republican leadership at all levels of government.
And think and act as a third force (not third party) independent of the Republican Party. While not advocating GOP defeat, Mr. Viguerie says conservatives should not fear the loss of Congress in 2006, since our best gains usually come after a defeat:
— 1976: Gerald Ford’s loss made possible Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980.
— 1992: George H.W. Bush’s loss made possible the Republican congressional victories in 1994.
Losing is always a good tonic for the New Right, who always get a little disoriented when they hold power for too long. It messes with their sense of victimization. And, of course, they have to do this to save conservatism from the taint of Bushism.
But there’s more to it than that and it has to do with old Norman. Even before the last election, Viguerie was seeing the writing on the wall:
… for Viguerie and other conservative leaders, maintaining that discipline this year is harder than usual. The Republicans’ united front masks a growing struggle sparked by the president’s hawkish and ambitious foreign policy–one that may burst into the open soon after the polls close, whoever wins. “Most conservatives are not comfortable with the neocons,” Viguerie says. He decries the neocons as “overbearing” and “immensely influential. . . . They want to be the world’s policeman. We don’t feel our role is to be Don Quixote, righting all the wrongs in the world.”
Viguerie’s disquiet is widely shared by veteran conservative activists, who are increasingly blaming neoconservatives for placing Iraq at the center of the war on terrorism.
Viguerie is one of the great old men of the modern conservative movement. He’s a keeper of the flame. The GOP is just the political arm, not the center of the movement itself. Bush and his friends the neocons have failed conservatism, big time:
…the neocons now find themselves in a fight for their place in the Republican Party–and in a second term, should Bush win. Former Reagan administration official Stefan Halper and former British diplomat Jonathan Clarke, in a widely discussed book called America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, charge that Bush’s foreign policy was hijacked after 9/11, leading to a “betrayal of both Republican and conservative principles.” Francis Fukuyama, a former State Department official in the administration of Bush’s father, assailed some fellow neocons and Bush’s Iraq policy in a National Interest article. He argued that Bush overlooked the need for international support to build a sense of “legitimacy” for the Iraq invasion, antagonized many by announcing a pre-emption strategy, and “went into Iraq with enormous illusions about how easy the postwar situation would be.” Conservative columnists like George Will, Robert Novak, and William F. Buckley Jr. are stoking the fire. Will recently complained that ideology is crowding out facts in Bush’s Iraq nation building. “This administration needs a dose of conservatism without the [neo] prefix,” he wrote.
Behind the scenes, movement conservatives are disputing neocon ideas as well. Says Alfred Regnery, publisher of the American Spectator and numerous conservative books, “The administration got sold a little bit by the neocons. . . . We should return to a traditional, strong Republican foreign policy: We go to war only as a last resort, and we’re not in the business of building nations.” Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum, says the administration needs to “finish up the job in Iraq.” However, Schlafly says, “we don’t think we can be the policeman of the world.” She describes herself as “not a fan” of Wilsonian policies: “All this talk of democracy in Iraq is kind of ridiculous,” she argues. “What’s really important is that they have governments that are friendly to the United States.”
Meanwhile:
Under fire, neoconservatives out of government are regrouping. This summer saw the rebirth of the Committee on the Present Danger–the third incarnation of a group first launched in the 1950s and restarted in the 1970s to promote a hard line against Soviet communism. Norman Podhoretz, one of the movement’s leading thinkers, laments the darkening mood of “gloom and doom,” in particular the “newborn pessimism among supporters” of the Iraq war. “Things have gone not badly, not disastrously, but triumphantly,” he declared at the group’s inaugural conference last month. The group posits that the United States now faces another existential threat and has dubbed the struggle “World War IV,” the Cold War being World War III. The group’s chairman, former CIA Director James Woolsey, says its rebirth recognizes that “people are to some extent choosing up sides. . . . Get the job done or go back to the ’90s” –before 9/11 and Bush’s pre-emption doctrine. “A number of critics have a nostalgia for an earlier era,” he warns. But with a toxic mix of Arab and Islamist totalitarianism, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorists, he says, “those days are gone with the wind.”
Woolsey predicts “the long war of the 21st century” will last decades. The fight between neocons and other cons might last just as long.
If the Dems pull off a win this fall, it’s well worth thinking about how to stoke these divisions over the next few years as the Republicans re-group. This fault in their coalition is a big one and its worth driving a wedge in as deeply as possible.