California GOP twists itself into a big ole Pretzel
"what digby sez..."
California GOP twists itself into a big ole Pretzel
“I’m for it, with reservations” Or is it, “I’m against it, for now?” Whatever.
MyDD
posts about the rhetorical fight being waged between Howard Dean and John Kerry over the Iraq resolution. I’m with Dean on this. Kerry’s Iraq vote was disasterous, and all the more so because he didn’t have to do it. He says he’ll hold Bush’s feet to the fire, but unfortunately, he has absolutely no power to do that so it sounds like so much weak political bullshit. Which it is.
The Red Staters who were facing shameful scumbags like Saxby Chambliss last November could be forgiven. But it was important to rank and file Democrats that their leaders (none of whom were facing tough re-election battles) understood how important this issue was to them and that they take a stand.
Every last Democratic presidential hopeful in the Senate took a dive.
It was a cowardly CYA-for-the-future-because-the-big-bad-Republicans-will-be-mean vote that took the starch right out of the Democratic base who made thousands of calls and wrote thousands of letters veritably begging the leading Dems to hold tough on this issue. Any Democratic electoral momentum leading up to the election hit a brick wall when they caved on the issue.
And we can thank the vaunted political strategists of Carville, Shrum and Greenberg for this incredible miscalculation:
According to the memo, the most effective argument for Democrats who oppose the war is one which “affirms one’s commitment to wage the war against terrorism, including getting rid of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but that questions the rush to war; it calls on the U.S. to seek U.N. and international support, others sharing costs and making sure we will achieve greater stability.”
Nearly as strong, the memo argues, is explaining a no vote as a no “for now,” and “stressing the need to go to the UN and try to get the inspectors back into Iraq and work to get the support of our allies.”
That position, the memo notes, is strongest by far with “independents and with men (where the issue has more salience.)”
The least effective argument?
“Outright opposition to the war against Iraq and to the concept of regime change, finishing with the phrase, ‘it is the wrong thing to do,’ produces a weak response,” they write.
Driving the point home, the memo points out that the poll found that a Democrat who opposes the war who simply argues that the policy is wrong loses by 15 points (39 percent to 54 percent) to a Republican who says he or she “trusts Bush to do this right.”
Yeah. The politician who sounds the most like he’s trying to have it both ways is always a big winner.
Carville,Greenberg and Shrum’s post mortem of the election said:
In the end, 39 percent of the actual voters self-identified as Republicans, 3 percent more than in 2000 and 1998. The Democratic portion fell to 35 percent (down from 39 percent in 2000 and 37 percent in 1998). That alone could more than account for the shift witnessed at the polls. There was an even bigger increase in self-identified conservatives in the elector-ate, 41 percent, compared to approximately 30 percent two and four years ago.
How surprising.
Now, we are stuck with this absurd position of having to defend giving Junior a blank check while pretending that we are “influencing” the debate. And this happened, in my opinion, largely because some of the Democratic base was depressed by the craven behavior of its Senate leaders on the grave issue of whether to go to war.
I love Carville on Crossfire. He seems like a great guy. But, I have to wonder when the last time these three mythical Democratic strategists actually won any elections.
I lay the loss of the last one at their feet.
The James Earl Ray Historical Society Is Upset
Josh Marshall has too much class to mention it to this ignorant cretin, but he has a PhD in …. History.
God And Man At UM
OOOOh. Julia eviscerates William B. Fuckley.
And finds an inconvenient little factoid that has gone missing from the press accounts of the case.
What he didn’t add, from the same article in the Wall Street Journal he’s quoting without attribution:
Sons and daughters of graduates make up 10% to 15% of students at most Ivy League schools and enjoy sharply higher rates of acceptance. Harvard accepts 40% of legacy applicants, compared with an 11% overall acceptance rate. Princeton took 35% of alumni children who applied last year, and 11% of overall applicants. The University of Pennsylvania accepts 41% of legacy applicants, compared with 21% overall.
At Notre Dame, about 23% of all students are children of graduates.
…
Although universities have always paid special attention to their alumni, the legacy preference was formalized early last century, in some cases partly to limit enrollment of Jews. Today, the practice often has that effect on other groups. At the University of Virginia, 91% of legacy applicants accepted on an early-decision basis for next fall are white; 1.6% are black, 0.5% are Hispanic, and 1.6% are Asian. Among applicants with no alumni parents, the pool of those accepted is more diverse: 73% white, 5.6% black, 9.3% Asian and 3.5% Hispanic.
and this woodnote wild from the Michigan case:
One of those students, Patrick Hamacher, was turned down by Michigan despite having a legacy preference. An earlier version of Michigan’s legacy preference had boosted his 2.9 high-school grade-point average to 3 for purposes of considering him. The suit that he and co-plaintiff Jennifer Gratz filed asks for the elimination of race as a factor in admissions at the university. But Mr. Hamacher says he actually doesn’t think Michigan should consider either race or parentage in its admissions. He is now a graduate of another university, Michigan State.
Julia says:
So the student who’s suing was willing to get in ahead of more qualified applicants. Funny we didn’t hear that earlier…
The average SAT of legacies admitted at Harvard is two points lower than that of the average student admitted which number includes the legacies?
Take out the legacy scores from the average and tell me how the average legacy stacks up to that number.
Better yet, let’s talk mean scores.
Better yet, how about Mr. Buckley go back to the Dartmouth Review where his kind of reasoning is more at home.
He has always been a liar. Now, he has virtually everything he’s ever wanted but he just can’t stop himself. It’s embedded in the DNA.
UPDATE: Ampersand has a very instructive analysis about how many and which whites are rejected because of affirmative action.
Honor and Integrity
Kevin Drum says:
Let’s recap: When Democrats controlled the Senate and Bush and Reagan were president, they were nice guys and allowed judicial nominations to proceed with only one blue slip.
When Republicans took over the Senate and Clinton was president, Republicans played hardball and demanded two blue slips.
When Bush became president, they suddenly decided that those nice Democrats were right after all: one blue slip should be enough.
Don’t you just love principled conservatives?
I just love ’em.
And, FWIW, I’ve been following the Lott study story mostly on Kevin’s great site and I just have to say that it’s pretty obvious that this guy is fucked up on a grand scale. Kevin says:
And don’t forget: Lott originally sourced the 98% number to someone else and then changed his mind only in 1999 when it turned out that he had misinterpreted the survey results he was using. He had never mentioned doing a survey of his own until then. What’s more, Lott’s first reference to the 98% number was in early 1997, well before his survey could have been finished.
That does it for me. cred-i-bil-i-ty-gap
So, what are the gun guys saying about all this? Are we demanding that they repudiate everything they’ve ever said on the issue and crawl on their bellies to every gun control advocate they know and beg for forgiveness and pledge to tell all the world how wrong, wrong, wrong they are? I certainly hope so….
Via Hesiod:
South Korean Leader Criticizes Bush Approach
“We are looking for some peaceful way of solving this through dialogue,” the presidential spokesman said.
Kim Dae Jung reiterated that message in remarks at a luncheon today, in which he took an indirect swipe at President Bush’s refusal to negotiate with the North Korean leader.
“Sometimes we need to talk to the other party, even if we dislike the other party,” he said, repeating versions of the phrase three times. “There’s no other way but to engage North Korea in dialogue. It’s reality whether we like it or not.”
The barbs were aimed at President Bush’s harsh personal rhetoric directed at the North Korean leader, which many in Kim’s administration feel have helped create the current crisis. Bush began his administration by bluntly declaring he did not trust the North Korean dictator, and recently was quoted by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward saying, “I loathe Kim Jong Il”– personal affronts that have great weight in Asian cultures.
(Another instance of Cowboy Bob’s lack of experience and intellectual development leading him to unnecessarily personalize a policy dispute with the most paranoid, proud despot on the planet. Calling an Asian leader names is perhaps the most ignorant and disrespectful thing this moron has done. And he did it at a time when Kim Jong Il was trying to re-establish relations with its mortal enemy, Japan, and its estranged brother, South Korea. Calling him a pygmy and saying he loathed him at that moment was akin to pissing on his head in public.
And, you don’t have to be a career diplomat to know this. You only have to have read something other than the “Hungry Caterpillar” and watched “Combat” re-runs after school.)
In his State of the Union address last January, Bush lambasted North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” Many South Koreans resented that, feeling it was a gratuitous remark that torpedoed South Korea’s “sunshine policy” and scuttled efforts to coax North Korea out of its isolation and hostility.
As Hesiod says, “Is there ANYONE left on the rest of the planet who supports President Bush?”
He also points out:
The Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq, and the increasing reluctance/opposition from many countries to our machinations, brings to mind the old Groucho Marx joke: “I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member.”
Why do I say that? Because, Bush is very good at lining up oppressive, ant-democratic regimes to his cause. But he’s terrible at getting Democratic nations to follow his lead with respect to Iraq. The reason is…public opinion. The vast majority of people OUTSIDE the United States don’t want a war with Iraq. Hell…it’s even unpopular HERE!
The Supreme Irony is…one of the very reason Bush claims he wants “regime change” in Iraq: to advance human rights and democracy, the the very thing that could undermine his whole effort.
The people of the world just do not want this war.
This is just one more example of the undemocratic streak that runs through the modern Republican Party. Creeping fas…..
Big Hair
Just looking at MSNBC and wondering when Bay Buchanan decided to get a Farrah do.
It’s very disturbing. Very.
We All Knew This Was Next, Didn’t We?
From TBOGG
“The proposals, obtained by The Washington Post, are the first indication of the Bush administration’s plans for changing Title IX, which is widely credited with increasing female participation in collegiate sports over the past three decades.”
TBOGG Says:
Anyone think that the Soccer Mom’s won’t notice this? I guess Bush is counting on a boost from the all-important “Wrestling Moms”…see Catfight, below.
Maybe if the universities weren’t paying Bobby Bowden, Mike Krzyzewski, Bob Stoop, and Roy Williams millions of dollars to coach their respective sports, the schools would have enough money to fund wrestling, swimming, and volleyball for men. But that will never happen.
Golly, Tom. Haven’t you heard? 64% of Americans think there should be no preferences in college admissions, even for athletics. They’d be willing to give up their winning teams in the interest of a true academic meritocracy. So, you just know they’ll be willing to give up those winning coaches’ huge salaries in order to preserve fairness for all God’s children, red or yellow, black or white AND girl or boy.
Sure they will.
Update: Kevin at Lean Left makes an excellent point:
So, points for race among points for other things is a quota, but setting a minimum number for athletics is not?
Well…no….it’s completely different because Bush made his quota statement on a Thursday and this will come out on a Monday. Apples and oranges.
The Major Problem Is Bush the Cowboy
This is why you don’t allow an unqualified brand name in a suit be president of the most powerful country in the world. He thinks he’s cute but he is actually confusing and unnecessarily provocative.
To European ears, the president’s language is far too blunt, and he has been far too quick to cast the debate about how to separate Saddam Hussein from his weapons of mass destruction in black-and-white certainties, officials in Paris and Berlin say. They add that his confrontational approach, his impatience with the inspections and even his habit of finger pointing as he speaks undermine the possibility of common strategy against Saddam Hussein.
No kidding. I’m California born and bred and I find his language embarrassingly puerile and simple-minded (although I realize that this makes me something more akin to French than American, what with my diet of brie and cheese and all.) That finger pointing drives me up a wall, too. His default tone is a scold. “Ah tole the Murican people they were gonna half tah be patient, an Ah MEANT it!”
“Much of it is the way he talks, this provocative manner, the jabbing of his finger at you,” said Hans-Ulrich Klose, the vice chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the German Parliament. “It’s Texas, a culture that is unfamiliar to Germans. And it’s the religious tenor of his arguments.”
It’s not Texas. It’s stupid. There are millions of smart Texans. He isn’t one of them.
When Bush is on CNN, if you close your eyes you would believe you are listening to an inarticulate, bumbling Jimmy Swaggert instead of a world leader. His religiosity has all the sincerity of Elmer Gantry. But, it’s one of the only ways he knows how to speak. Lame preacher. Angry scold.
Over the past several months, as Mr. Bush has mounted his argument for forcing Iraq to disarm, the president himself has once again become the issue here. In interviews in three capitals over the past week, diplomats, politicians and analysts said they believed relations between the United States and two of its most crucial allies — Germany and France — were at their lowest point since the end of the cold war.
As the White House was quick to argue today, the American president has friends and admirers among the leading politicians in several Western European countries, starting with Britain, Italy and Spain, and spreading east to Poland.
Not starting. Ending. And there is going to be some tension on those counts as more and more citizens of those countries take to the streets. Unlike the US, when the citizens of Eupopean countries march in huge numbers, the press and the government actually notice.
It is no wonder, Mr. Bush’s foreign policy aides say, that he has redrawn his mental map of America’s alliances, and that Paris and Berlin have been placed in the deep freeze for failing his loyalty tests.
His loyalty tests. His personal loyalty tests. This is all that matters. It’s all about Him. They are supposed to do what he tells them to do. He’s the Commander in chief. Of everybody.
An American diplomat trying to keep European objections from delaying Mr. Bush’s timetable for disarming Iraq said he heard similar complaints all the time.
“Much of it is the way he talks, the rhetoric, the religiosity,” he said of Mr. Bush. “It reminds them of what drove them crazy about Reagan. It reminds them of what they miss about Clinton. All the stereotypes we thought we had banished for good after Sept. 11 — the cowboy imagery, in particular — it’s all back.”
Reagan was Aristotle compared to this little boy. He had many, many years of experience making speeches and talking politics. He could articulate what he believed. And he could be an utterly charming personality even if you hated his policies.
Clinton actually had the goods. He had a politicians’ gift for drawing people to him. But, he also had a lively and nimble mind that could flexibly adapt to situations and people. He knew what he was talking about and that gave other countries’ leaders confidence in him. (They were unconcerned with his cock because, well, Europeans know that genitalia is common to all creatures on the planet. It doesn’t make them giggle like schoolgirls or recoil in shock.)
Junior is callow, unschooled, unpredictable and tempermentally mean. His good-ole boy persona is a phony mask for his insecurity. He makes thinking people nervous because he is so obviously in over his head.
He has a credibility gap as wide as the Grand Canyon and his rhetoric is so unpredictable and incoherant that they simply cannot trust what this government says.
From the French Foreign Ministry to the chancellor’s office in Berlin, there is broad acknowledgement that the breach between the United States and its traditional allies in Western Europe has gone beyond the friction that has long been a staple of French-American relations or the misunderstandings that have grown since the cold-war ended.
Senior officials insisted in interviews that in France and Germany Mr. Bush had not made the case that Iraq posed a more imminent threat than, say, Al Qaeda.
One French official argued that the American military’s failure to hunt down Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda’s top command had led Mr. Bush to search for “easier but less important prey.”
That is only partly true. He was manipulated by the people in his administration who wanted to go into Iraq before 9/11 and cynically used that tragedy to justify what they were planning to do anyway.
And it is wrong to say that he is not completely on top of the Al Qaeda situation. Why, just today he made the bold and unprecedented statement that we have Al Qaeda “on the run” and that we’ve “disrupted their operations,” something I don’t think we’ve heard before. I believe he also mentioned something very intriguing about how the terrorists “live in caves” and we are going to “rout them out.” Very interesting new developments on that front.
“Terrorists are a hundred times more likely to obtain a weapon of mass destruction from Pakistan than from Iraq,” one senior European official said, not permitting a reporter to identify even his nationality because tensions with Washington are so high. “North Korea is far more likely to sell whatever it’s got. But can we say this in public? Can we have a real debate about priorities? Not with George Bush.”
No, you cannot have a debate in public if it challenges the omnipotence of our great and good leader George W. Bush. It is treasonous for Americans and it is disloyal for world leaders. He TOLD the world what he was gonna do, an he MEANT it!
This sense that many European officials have of dealing with an American president who makes up his mind and then will accept no argument is a central element in the current friction.
[…]
Yeah. It bugs the hell out of over 50% of Americans, too.
In all seriousness, this is a real problem. Say what you will about the Europeans, after 9/11 they were backing us 100%. They are our very closest allies politically, culturally and economically , most especially on the threat of Islamic terrorism. We have worked hand in glove for over 50 years to establish international institutions and a set of norms to govern civilized behavior in the era of nuclear weapons and an increasingly interdependent world.
It is truly outrageous that Cowboy Bob and his band of frustrated middle aged warriors have so little regard for these long standing alliances. They seem determined to destroy every single shred of goodwill we have built up over the last half century the same way they destroyed the post 9/11 goodwill in a matter of months.
I fear that the Strangelove elements in this administration suffer from a feeling of impotence because they did not receive the victory parades and heroic adulation they felt they were entitled to for zealously fighting the cold war and defeating communism.
Containment sucks. Nobody ever says “uncle.” Our allies don’t lay wreaths of gratitude at our feet. The anti-communists don’t get any credit for keeping the heat on. The chickenhawks are frustrated.
So, they bought themselves a nasty little sock-puppet and are going to seize what they think they deserve. They want to be worshipped for being right.
…damned liberal media