We keep losing elections because the parties are fighting on two different levels. We talk about competence and issues. They talk about character and values.
We appeal to narrow self-interest and a laundry list of issues. We are down in the weeds. They appeal to a higher plane, as pollster Cornell Belcher puts it, getting a substantial number of low income whites to vote not ‘against their economic interests’ as some would have it, but for what they see as higher interests.
Democrats will continue to win on the issues but lose elections until we learn to cast our issues in terms of values and characater.
Or until people finally see that the Republican committment to values and character is nothing but a scam — which is happening — and they see that such things are not very well measured by someone spouting a few religious code words and being against abortion.
I’m all for inspirational and aspirational rhetoric. They are essential components of successful politics and I don’t think Democrats do enough of it. But the Republicans have bastardized these concepts of “character” to mean you don’t have sex and “values” to mean you are against gay marriage and abortion and they have become code words in themselves. Once people begin to separate this phony Elmer Gantry hucksterism from the actual performance of the Republican majority in office, perhaps some universal values like “honesty” and “responsibility” and “respect” might even come back into fashion. I suspect when that happens, many voters are going to be looking for teacher instead of a preacher. Issues and competence tend to become more highly valued when the shit comes down.
Update:
To clarify. Ever since Dukakis I have railed against using the “competence” argument. It’s flat and technocratic and doesn’t work when compared to the soaring “we are the greatest” or “we are the free-est” rhetoric coming from the right.
But right now we are seeing an epic meltdown in basic governance layered underneath years of values rhetoric, inspirational cant about freedom and democracy and fear mongering about “smokin’ em out o their caves.” I have a suspicion that we are going to have a couple of elections in which competence is going to be a substantial part of the discussion. The debacle in Iraq and the corruption scandals have turned the tables on the soaring rhetoric about freedom and the values arguments about personal character. They won’t play the way they used to — indeed, they are probably going to be most useful as criticism.
As I wrote, I’m a big believer in inspirational and aspirational rhetoric. I think we should get some. And I think we should talk about values like “honesty” “responsibility” and “respect.” I’ve been relentlessly hectoring the Democrats about showing conviction and fighting for fundamental principles. I believe this is essential.
But let’s not make the mistake of fighting the last war. We may just naturally be bringing something to the party that people want right now. Good government. Issues and competence are arrows we have in our quiver and we should not be afraid to shoot them when the time is right.
Aw, That’s Too Bad, David Irving. We Got ACLU. Austria Doesn’t.
by tristero
I’m still trying to dig out from under the chaos that usually accompanies major concerts (oddly, before the performances, life stays pretty organized, why I don’t know) but thought I’d briefly weigh in with some thoughts on the Austrian conviction of scumbag David Irving for the crime of…being a scumbag.
Now, the Jerusalem Post appears to approve of Irving’s sentence to imprisonment for three years for denying the Holocaust. Yet their editorial takes note that Deborah Lipstadt, who famously was sued for libel by Irving – a case Irving lost and then some – believes that Irving has the right to lie through his teeth about Hitler, Jews, and the Holocaust without thereby becoming an involuntary guest of the Austrian penal system.
Of course, I agree with Lipstadt. Free speech means the freedom to offend. And that’s that.
Well… Not quite. It’s not that simple. Sure there’s free speech. And then there’s the indisputable fact that Irving is a lying, unprincipled, Nazi-loving, right wing sociopath who repeatedly has bent over backwards to exonerate Hitler for 6 million plus murders while, at the same time, ridiculing and sliming the lucky few who escaped the gas chambers and lived to tell the tale.
And so, to be perfectly blunt and honest about it, I really don’t give a good goddamm what happens to David Irving. Let the bastard rot in hell. Y’think I’d lift a finger to help him? Y’kidding?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it a million times. Free speech, free speech! But when it comes to Nazi lovers, it ain’t me, babe. Sure, intellectually, I get it. But if you think I’m gonna take the time truly to defend Irving’s right to lie and rewrite some of the most tragic history – if not, the most tragic history – humans have endured, think again.
Ditto, if only slightly less ugly, the Danish newspaper editor behind the racist cartoons. Yup, yup, yup. He indeed had the right to publish them. But did you just say you want me to sign a petition in support of HIS free speech rights? Well, geez… you know, I have a serious case of writer’s cramp right now and my doctor forbids me holding a pen for at least the next 6 months, so, no I ain’t signin’ nuttin.’ Can’t.
And that’s why there’s the ACLU.
Well, to be precise, that’s why there would be the ACLU if these things happened here in the US. So let’s now leave David Irving in Austria, and Flemming Rose in Copenhagen, and return to America and free speech here. After all, why go all the way to Austria, or Denmark, to sniff out someone rotten? There are a lot of inflammatory stinkers in this country. I don’t mean only Pat Robertson and Antonin Scalia, of course. I’m thinking about that always useful nobody the right likes to smear lefties with, what’s his name – Ward Cleaver? Winston something? Anyway, that guy.
Life is far too short for me to waste a moment of it worrying in detail about the civil rights of a malicious ignoramus who called my friends and neighbors “little Eichmanns.” And I really don’t care at all about some jerks at U of Illinois, especially when there are people whose rights I DO care proactively to defend like say, parents who want their kids to learn science and not fundamentalist propaganda in science class. For this reason, if it appears that Ward Cleaver’s rights may be violated, then – because the principle of free speech and civil liberties simply must be respected regardless of my personal beliefs and feelings – it is essential to the operation of a modern democracy to support an organization like ACLU.
Strangely, many on the right and some others don’t quite get ACLU’s beat. Defending Oliver North or the Ku Klux Klan in no way implies endorsement of North’s loopy Cro-Magnon militarism or the Klan’s racism. The problem is this. Once you start infringing on Ollie’s constitutional right to be a flaming asshole,fundamentalist churches any NAMBLA are next. No great loss, you say? You’re right, I agree. But the problem with infringing those civil rights is that rapidly you reach the point where just about any kind of speech can be banned for any reason. And therein lies the problem.
First and foremost, the banning of speech and the curtailment of civil rights, is a political act, exercised by the powerful upon the weak. It is an immensely slippery and dangerous slope. Speech suddenly gets criminalized at the whim of the government or corporations in cahoots with the government. That is why those of us who don’t have any interest in speaking up in defense of major league jerks nevertheless refuse to give up our ACLU cards when they offer their services to defend someone we utterly detest. We know that, if they get away with shutting up Ollie or a Nazi, we’re next. Just as we don’t like Iran/Contra criminals, we don’t like NAMBLA either. But they all got rights. Or none of us really do.
It goes without saying that ACLU also defends a lot of right-on causes. Recently, ACLU was doing God’s work in the Dover “intelligent design” creationism trial (no irony intended; “God’s work” is an appropriate way to describe ACLU’s efforts on behalf of science, religion, and American education). And that’s just for starters.
But what makes ACLU so admirable is that that is not all that they do. They go beyond where my emotions can permit. Whereas I truly couldn’t care less whether a Nazi lover has free speech, they care long after my anger at Irving’s lies has forgotten the free speech principle that lets Irving off the hook, legally (but not morally). So by being an ACLU member, I unequivocally support free speech without ever having to speak up in defense of the Klan. So whatever flaws the organization might have, as long as ACLU cleaves to its mission to defend free speech, I will continue to support them no matter who they choose to defend. (Even, dammit, David Irving, if he ever gets in trouble over free speech issues in the US.)
I realize this appears not to be a rousing defense of freedom of speech. In fact it is. It simply takes into account that one of the best ways to uphold the principle without being exploited by cynical manipulators is to support an institution whose sole mission is to defend specific liberties like free speech without endorsing any specific ideology. Free speech – real free speech – is a complex issue, and an emotional one. Rightly so. There are ways to be pro-free speech without holding hands with the American counterparts of sleazy gits like David Irving or Flemming Rose. ACLU is one way.
[Not to rightwingers: You might object to what seems an unfair pairing of the likes of David Irving – a known liar and anti-Semite – with the Danish editor Flemming Rose (who is not known publicly to be either and who I assume in neither in private). It would appear to be obvious that I implied they are alike only in their appeal to free speech for their disgraceful behavior, but rightwing nuts have managed in the past to assume much more.
Therefore, always sensitive to the special needs of my readers on the right and their numerous cognitive challenges, let me be clear. I do not wish to enter into specious arguments as to which is a more cowardly scumbag, Irving or Rose. So, let’s all agree that “sleazy” refers only to Irving in the last sentence and “gits” to both.]
As the country careens toward a supreme court showdown on Roe vs Wade, I just have to point out that columnists like EJ Dionne are full of shit when they say that most members of the right to life movement care more about a the taking of an innocent life rather than wanting to control a woman’s reproductive systems. They may think that’s what they care about but if that were true 81% of Americans, including many who call themselves “pro-life,” wouldn’t believe that abortion should be legal in case of rape or incest.
I hate to point out the obvious but children who are conceived in rape or incest are just as innocent as those who are conceived because birth control failed. The difference is not in the relative innocence of the children — it’s the “innocence” of the woman. Most people believe that she should not be forced to bear the child of her molester, her relative or her rapist. And I think it’s fair to assume that they think this because they believe that the pregnancy wasn’t her “fault.”
Some people would probably make the argument that having to bear a child in the case of rape or incest is too traumatic for the mother and that is why they shouldn’t have to bear the child. But people talk about giving up children for adoption as if that is somehow easier than the trauma of bearing her child concieved in rape and having to give it up for adoption. For some that might be true. But for others it most definitely is not. Indeed, it can be terribly traumatic to go through a full term pregnancy and then be unable to raise her child for any reason — a child who would be the brother or sister of her other children.
Neither do these people allow that it would be terribly traumatic to have a child while still in high school or after already having had three children in five years or many of the other circumstances that could make a pregnancy unwanted. I don’t buy the trauma argument. I think it’s pretty clear that most “pro-life” people who hold that abortion is ok in the case of rape or incest (all but the 19% who are opposed in all cases) believe this is so because the woman did not consent to sex, which makes her “innocent” too — and therefore she should not be punished as other women are by being forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth and all that goes with that.
They seem to think that sex isn’t a primary biological imperative — meaning that succumbing to the most primitive urge we have is an act which should be punished if it results in what nature intends — pregnancy. It is not a function of bad character. It’s a function of nature. There seem to be few people who are willing to admit that the sex drive is stronger than most people’s willpower from time to time — and therefore unwanted pregnancy will also happen from time to time.
We could take a fair amount of chance out of this equation by simply promoting the use and availability of birth control. The more available and easy it is to obtain the less likely unwanted pregnancy will happen. We could at least educate young people and make it easy for them to get reliable birth control. If pro-lifers really cared about not killing “innocent life” they would have condom machines in school alongside the cokes and candy bars. There is no group of people on earth who are more horny, more impulsive and more likely to think there is no tomorrow than teen-agers. Yet this is the group that the pro-life people most want to punish with early pregnancy if they fail to beat back their natural urges.
But let’s face it. Even if everyone had birth control, unwanted pregnancies would still happen. Nothing is foolproof. As the Republicans remind us incessantly, the only foolproof way to ensure there is no unwanted preganancy is abstinence. That’s the real message of the “pro-life” movement. If women don’t want to endure forced childbirth they shouldn’t have sex. Period.
Jane is asking people to contact Naral and Planned Parenthood to ask them to support Ned Lamont in the Connecticut senate race against Lieberman, whose loyalty to the Gang of 14 Milquetoasts was stronger than his loyalty to women. This is getting very serious now and it’s long past time for the anti-forced childbirth groups to play hardball.
From what I just heard from Senator Warner on CNN, it’s about maintaining access to the ports, as I guessed earlier. (Airfields too.) Ed Henry just said the UAE hosts more of the US Navy in the gulf than any other country. If we diss them and refuse to scratch their backs, they’ll get upset and pull back permission to dock our ships in their country. It’s nothing personal. It’s strictly business.
This is the first time in four years that I can recall a Democrat seriously being concerned about this group of people, and this is racism. This is racism. We are concluding that all Arabs are terrorists. We are concluding that every damn one of them — be they a sheik, an emir — they are all terrorists. They all have ties to terrorists and they all seek our utter, total destruction, and we can’t risk an exception to that. They’re all that way — and welcome to racism Democrats, because the Democrats are leading the show on this just as well as a lot of conservatives are. So when Democrats are illustrating their racism, their xenophobia, they’re also demonstrating that they fully acknowledge we have an enemy. Well, this is a tenuous position for them to take because their kook base doesn’t believe any of this.
All right, well, I’m watching this during the break — the Senate hearings. I’m just watching Sen. “Dick Turban,” ah, Dick Turban is doing his — from Illinois — he of Club G’itmo fame. Ha! I wish Roberts would have shown up in the Club G’itmo T-shirt today. Maybe, maybe a Club G’itmo java coffee cup, just for Dick Turban. Ah, but anyway, Dick Turban is up there saying, “Ah, you’re going to judged here, Judge. You’re going to be judged on one question, just one question. You going to expand the personal freedoms of the Americans, or are you going to restrict them? You going to expand personal freedom, or you going to restrict personal freedom?”
Illustration from the August 2005 issue of The Limbaugh Letter
[Reading from AP report] “One detainee wrapped in an Israeli flag, some were shackled hand and foot in fetal positions for 18 to 24 hours, forcing them to soil themselves.” Ugh! I thought they did that anyway over there.
It’s awfully tempting to simply answer Rush’s maidenly concern about the UAE’s royal family’s delicate feelings with this:
If it were up to you people, we wouldn’t exist as a country today. You would have given in to the Soviets long ago, you would have appeased the Soviet communists. You would appease Iran right now. You probably wouldn’t have cared about the war on terror or the bombing on 9-11. You would have sought out bin Laden and tried to make a deal with him, and this country exists today only because we have been able to prevent you from gaining power to do that kind of thing. We’ve had our run-ins with Neville Chamberlain types, and you’re the modern incarnation
Following up my post below, I’d like to recommend this diary over at Kos by hekebolos. I think this is an excellent insight into why this port issue is having so much resonance:
Time and time again, this president has said that his highest goal, superceding all others, and even superceding any previous precedent of executive authority–is to defend the American people. He has shown time and time again that neither international law, nor federal law, nor the constitution, nor the Legislative or Judicial Branches of the Government of the United States, will prevent him from executing that duty as he and he alone sees fit.
The Bush presidency has not really been the “fuck-you” presidency. Really, it has been the “I can act like a king because I do national security and after 9/11 you can never be too careful” presidency.
And right here, it all comes crashing down. Because for many Bush supporters, it doesn’t really matter whether Iraq helped or harmed national security. It doesn’t really matter whether the domestic spying program assisted or hindered surveillance of suspected terrorists. It doesn’t really matter whether the Patriot Act helps get new leads against terror suspects–because he’s trying his best to do what he thinks is right, in their view, and if they agree with him on other issues, they’ll be willing to forgive whatever mistakes have been made in his quest to protect the country, because he seems to care that much.
The Portgate scandal is crucial because Bush has violated his own doctrine. When Bush said that we need to justify holding a Middle Eastern company to a higher standard, he showed that he in fact does not agree with the key point of his own doctrine: namely, that in a post-9/11 world, you can never be too careful.
He needs to be secretly spy on American citizens without a warrant and he needs to be able to hold them indefinitely in jail without a trial and he needs to be able to torture innocent people with impunity because we just can’t be too careful after 9/11.
But there’s no reason to go overboard by saying that we shouldn’t outsource our port management to a company owned by a state whose leaders have been known to hang out with bin Laden.
Perhaps the best way to put this is that the administration seems to trust the leaders of the United Arab Emirates more than the US congress or the secret FISA Court.
Every converstation I’ve had with people about this port deal, on both the right and the left, has been one of complete befuddlement. Why on earth would Bush do something this politically obtuse? After all the fearmongering and the talk about “oceans don’t protect us” for the last four years it’s just inexplicable that they would go to the wall for a deal that looks so terrible.
Just now I sleepily clicked over to Atrios and read this, which just makes it even more unbelievable:
The Central Intelligence Agency did not target Al Qaeda chief Osama bin laden once as he had the royal family of the United Arab Emirates with him in Afghanistan, the agency’s director, George Tenet, told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States on Thursday.
Had the CIA targeted bin Laden, half the royal family would have been wiped out as well, he said.
Here’s the bit from the 9/11 report which doesn’t explicitly name the royal family:
The Desert Camp, February 1999
Early in 1999, the CIA received reporting that Bin Ladin was spending much of his time at one of several camps in the Afghan desert south of Kandahar. At the beginning of February, Bin Ladin was reportedly located in the vicinity of the Sheikh Ali camp, a desert hunting camp being used by visitors from a Gulf state. Public sources have stated that these visitors were from the United Arab Emirates.
Reporting from the CIA’s assets provided a detailed description of the hunting camp, including its size, location, resources, and security, as well as of Bin Ladin’s smaller, adjacent camp. Because this was not in an urban area, missiles launched against it would have less risk of causing collateral damage. On February 8, the military began to ready itself for a possible strike. The next day, national technical intelligence confirmed the location and description of the larger camp and showed the nearby presence of an official aircraft of the United Arab Emirates. But the location of Bin Ladin’s quarters could not be pinned down so precisely.The CIA did its best to answer a host of questions about the larger camp and its residents and about Bin Ladin’s daily schedule and routines to support military contingency planning. According to reporting from the tribals, Bin Ladin regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited the Emiratis; the tribals expected him to be at the hunting camp for such a visit at least until midmorning on February 11. Clarke wrote to Berger’s deputy on February 10 that the military was then doing targeting work to hit the main camp with cruise missiles and should be in position to strike the following morning. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert appears to have been briefed on the situation.
No strike was launched. By February 12 Bin Ladin had apparently moved on, and the immediate strike plans became moot. According to CIA and Defense officials, policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with Bin Ladin or close by. Clarke told us the strike was called off after consultations with Director Tenet because the intelligence was dubious, and it seemed to Clarke as if the CIA was presenting an option to attack America’s best counterterrorism ally in the Gulf. The lead CIA official in the field, Gary Schroen, felt that the intelligence reporting in this case was very reliable; the Bin Ladin unit chief, “Mike,” agreed. Schroen believes today that this was a lost opportunity to kill Bin Ladin before 9/11.
Even after Bin Ladin’s departure from the area, CIA officers hoped he might return, seeing the camp as a magnet that could draw him for as long as it was still set up. The military maintained readiness for another strike opportunity. On March 7, 1999, Clarke called a UAE official to express his concerns about possible associations between Emirati officials and Bin Ladin. Clarke later wrote in a memorandum of this conversation that the call had been approved at an interagency meeting and cleared with the CIA. When the former Bin Ladin unit chief found out about Clarke’s call, he questioned CIA officials, who denied having given such a clearance. Imagery confirmed that less than a week after Clarke’s phone call the camp was hurriedly dismantled, and the site was deserted. CIA officers, including Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt, were irate. “Mike” thought the dismantling of the camp erased a possible site for targeting Bin Ladin.
The United Arab Emirates was becoming both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem. From 1999 through early 2001, the United States, and President Clinton personally, pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban’s only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11.
In July 1999, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hamdan bin Zayid threatened to break relations with the Taliban over Bin Ladin.166 The Taliban did not take him seriously, however. Bin Zayid later told an American diplomat that the UAE valued its relations with the Taliban because the Afghan radicals offered a counterbalance to “Iranian dangers” in the region, but he also noted that the UAE did not want to upset the United States.
What a tangled web. It certainly appears that the UAE has us wrapped around their little fingers, doesn’t it? And it’s not just that they are “both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem.” They are holding something else over our heads as well (again via Atrios):
But he said he would withhold judgment on the deal’s national security implications until after today’s briefing. The United Arab Emirates provides docking rights for more U.S. Navy ships than any other nation in the region, Warner noted. He added: “If they say they have not been treated fairly in this, we run the risk of them pulling back some of that support at a critical time of the war.”
This is obviously a very complicated relationship, which explains why Bush was singing kumbaaya around the drum circle yesterday asking everyone to give peace a chance.
But here’s the thing. Bush has been playing politics with this complicated situation for years now, saying things like “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” He spent the entire presidential campaign taunting John Kerry for allegedly requiring a “global test” and using his applause lines like a bludgeon:
I will never hand over America’s security decisions to foreign leaders and international bodies that do not have America’s interests at heart.
… the senator would have America bend over backwards to satisfy a handful of governments with agendas different from our own.
This is my opponent’s alliance-building strategy: brush off your best friends, fawn over your critics. And that is no way to gain the respect of the world.
Here’s some vintage Bush cowboy bullshit trash talk, from just last week:
First, when we see threats, we’ve got to deal with them. When I was growing up in West Texas, oceans protected us. You might remember some of those days. Old Mayor Martinez, I know he remembers those days when we felt pretty comfortable here in America. We could see a threat overseas, but oceans made it pretty clear that — to a lot of folks — that nothing would happen, you know. September 11th came along and made it clear that we are vulnerable, that the enemy can hit us if they — if they want to.
And therefore, when you see a threat, you’ve got to deal with it. You can’t take things for granted anymore. The best way to deal with this enemy is to defeat them overseas so we don’t have to face them here at home, and to stay on the hunt. (Applause.) And that’s what we’re doing.
And we’ve got a coalition of countries. I spent a lot of time reminding people about the nature of the war. Listen, the tendency for folks is to say, well, this really isn’t a war. I can understand that. Who wants to walk around thinking there’s a war about to hit us. I mean, that’s — that’s my job to worry about it, not yours. How can you have an economy recover from a recession if people are afraid to risk capital because they’re worried about thinking something is going to happen? And the same thing happens overseas. People kind of want to slip to the comfortable. They don’t believe it’s a war, some of them, and I understand that. And so we spend a lot of time reminding people that we’ve got to work together because the enemy can’t stand what we stand for, and that’s freedom. They just hate freedom. And so we’ve got a good coalition, and — and we’re on the hunt. We’re keeping the pressure on them. It’s hard to plot and plan and execute attacks when you’re on the run.
And so the first step of our strategy is defeat them there so we don’t to have to face them here. And we’ve got some great special forces — I met the special forces command guy here — and there’s great intelligence officers and wonderful coalition folks. We’re cutting off their money. It makes it kind of hard to operate when you can’t get your bank accounts full of money in order to — we’re just doing a lot of stuff. And it’s important for citizens to know that there’s a constant, constant pressure. I think about it every day.
And we’re making progress — Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, September the 11th plotter-planner, is incarcerated; his successor brought to justice. Slowly but surely, we’re finding them where they hide, and they know we’re on their trail.
Secondly, we got to deny them safe haven. These people can’t operate without safe haven. It’s an interesting war we’re in. It’s totally different from what we’re used to because we’re not — we’re not facing nation-states; we’re dealing with an enemy that is international in nature, that hides in states.
When the President says something like, if you harbor a terrorist, you’re equally as guilty as the terrorist, those words mean nothing unless you act upon them. And I said that to the people of Afghanistan — the Taliban. They didn’t listen. And so we acted. And removing the Taliban — (applause) — is a clear signal that we won’t tolerate safe haven. In other words, if you harbor the terrorist, you’re just as guilty as the murderers. And that’s a clear signal that the United States must continue to send in order to win the war on terror.
But, it was never quite that simple was it? We aren’t in a “war” as it is commonly understood, are we? Our “enemies” are sometimes our “allies” and things change from one day to the next. It’s complicated and — dare I say it — nuanced . Our security can’t be assured by simply flexing our muscles and roaring like beasts.
But, after years of that puerile chest beating he can’t expect everybody to do a big 180 and accept this crap:
I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British (sic) company. I’m trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to people of the world, we’ll treat you fairly. And after careful scrutiny, we believe this deal is a legitimate deal that will not jeopardize the security of the country, and at the same time, send that signal that we’re willing to treat people fairly.”
Is it any wonder that this whole thing has brought about extreme cognitive dissonance?
It may be that we have gotten ourselves into a terrible position in which we cannot “offend” the UAE by blocking this deal because they may reciprocate by blocking access to their deep water ports. If that’s the case, then we are being blackmailed by the UAE for big money and potentially putting our own ports in danger in the process. According to the 9/11 report they have been playing both ends against the middle for years. And we have Yosemite Sam and Quickdraw McGraw in charge of dealing with them. It’s not a big surprise that the whole thing is blowing up in their faces.
Both Kos and Atrios linked to this post about how Rove smeared John Kerry fior allegedly being in cahoots with Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammed. It was bullshit, of course, and now we find out that Rove’s buddy Abramoff was selling Bush face time and cut a deal for a meeting with Mahathir for 1.2 mil. (And to think the Republicans had coronaries about those silly “white house coffees.”)
This post also notes some other dirty tricks from the last electionthat I was unaware of. From a Miami Herald article dated november 1, 2004:
The visits came as the ground war escalated. The National Jewish Democratic Council reported Sunday that Kerry campaign signs were defaced with stickers reading, ”Arafat Endorses,” suggesting Kerry has the backing of the ailing Palestinian leader.
Bush’s campaign has looked to siphon off traditionally Democratic-leaning Jewish voters, and the stickers echo a Republican Party of Florida mailer that also suggests Kerry is being supported by Arafat.
Kerry supporters have pointed to the senator’s 100 percent pro-Israel voting record to rebuff the Republican claims that Bush is a stronger supporter of the Jewish state.
Republican voters received a torrent of negative anti-Kerry campaign mailings Saturday, some from an organization with strong Republican ties, the Florida Leadership Council.
The group is headed by Cory Tilley, a former aide to Gov. Bush, and David Johnson, former executive director of the Republican Party of Florida.
The mailings range from images of the party’s stalwart leaders — like Ronald Reagan — to more ominous pieces that equate a vote for Kerry as the first step in leading to a terrorist attack on South Florida.
FAKE ARTICLE
The most negative mailing from the Florida Leadership Council has a fake newspaper story from the year 2007 underneath a photo of children in a classroom wearing gas masks.
The dateline is ”Florida Red Zone,” and the fake story reads: ‘President John Kerry warned parents and children in South Florida that mandatory radiation and chemical gear would be required to be worn `for the foreseeable future’ since the Suitcase Dirty Bomb terrorist attack on South Florida in the spring.”
On the reverse side of the mailing, it says “The last line of defense must be stronger than John Kerry.
These are the people who run and win on “moral values.”
Sometimes I get criticism from my readers for suggesting that the Democrats must play on the same playing field as the Republicans. They say, “we shouldn’t become them.” But I never suggest that the Democrats should lie, cheat or play dirty as the Republicans do. I suggest that they wise up and stop pretending that Republicans are anything but ruthless adversaries and adjust accordingly. They can be beaten with smart strategies, but not unless the Democrats internalize the connection between the nice men and women they are working with on capitol hill every day with the thugs they hire to get elected. They are all cogs in the same cutthroat political machine.
Update: When I went to put up the links, I realized that Atrios had written “Always project. Always.” it reminded me of a post I did before the election called “Projection Politics” in which I noted that Rove doesn’t actually attack the strengths of his opponents, as he like to say he does:
Rove has developed a campaign of projection in which he tars his opponents with his own candidates’ weaknesses and then attacks them.
He attacks Kerry for phony heroism thirty years ago when just last year his own candidate had himself filmed in a little costume prancing around on an aircraft carrier pretending he’d won a war that had only begun. But, by tarring Kerry with using war as a PR stunt for his own personal gain, people can process the uncomfortable feelings they are experiencing about Iraq as not really being caused by Junior, but by his rival who is the real shallow opportunist who only pretends to be a man of proven leadership and experience.
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What is interesting about Rove is that his way of dealing with his own candidates’ even more glaring deficiencies is to build a Kerry straw man in Bush’s exact image and then set it afire. I don’t know if it will work, or even if he’s aware that he’s doing it, projection being epidemic in GOP circles. But, it’s disarming and confusing and it makes it difficult to effectively counter attack. You end up with some defensive version of “I know you are but what am I” which doesn’t really advance your position.
It’s projection/innoculation. And they are very good at it. Of course, you always run the risk that it will circle right back on you, which it seems to have done.
So Bush says he’ll veto any legislation to block the port deal. He says that his government knows what it’s doing and wouldn’t have ok’d the deal if it would harm the nation’s security. This is the same government that did such a great job with Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.
Assuming that we aren’t seeing some sort of kabuki here, it appears that the Eunuch Caucus is getting an earful from their constituents and see no margin in working with the lame albatross right now. He’s threatened vetoes before and the invertebrate Republicans have always fallen into line. This time appears to be different.
If this is true, the Bush administration may be effectively over.
Update: Dan Bartlett is going on and on about the “rigorousness” of the process the administration undertook with this port deal. He keeps saying that they have a lot of experience with this company and that the department of Homeland Security will be in charge of security. Apparently, they have no idea that they have lost the trust of the people on exactly these kinds of things. The rigor of their planning, the “experience” with private companies and the ineptitude of Homeland Security.
They have fear mongered their way to victory for four long years, going on and on about how “the oceans don’t protect us” anymore and now they act as if port security is just another contract and claim it’s important for “our image” to give security contracts to state owned middle eastern companies with ties to terrorism. Wow.
They are left with nothing but the president’s “resolve” to govern. They believe that if he digs in his heels everyone will capitulate out of sheer admiration for his machismo. At 39%, the power of his machismo has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. He’s in very icy water now.
NGUYEN: Well, it wasn’t quite an apology, but it was an admission. Three weeks after his State of the Union address calling for energy independence, President Bush acknowledged today that his administration has been sending some mixed signals.
Mr. Bush visited one of the nation’s top renewable energy labs in Colorado. He praised the work that’s being done there and acknowledged that just two weeks ago the government laid off 32 workers there. Those jobs have now been restored, just in time for the president’s visit.
I’m sure those 32 workers are grateful, but really. This is becoming embarrasing. I don’t know if you saw him, but he was draped so far forward on the podium he looked like he was trying to crawl over it. Maybe there was a copy of “My Pet Goat” lying open on the floor.
President Bush, on a three-state trip to promote his energy policy, said Tuesday that a budgeting mix-up was the reason 32 workers at one of the nation’s premier renewable energy labs were laid off and then reinstated just before his visit.
Bush addressed the funding problem as soon as he began speaking here at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is developing the sort of renewable energy technologies the president is promoting.
“Sometimes, decisions made as the result of the appropriations process, the money may not end up where it was supposed to have gone,” Bush said.
Right. He never meant to cut those jobs. The money just ended up where it wasn’t supposed to go.
