Quotes of the Day: Noonan, Will, Brooks, and Gerson take down The Newt

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The campaign to destroy Newt Gingrich, or at least his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, is well underway.

It's coming from renegades like Ron Paul (who's obviously acting on his own), Capitol Hill establishment types like Pete King (who's obviously playing his part in a more organized campaign), Romney surrogates like Chris Christie (who's obviously doing his pal's bidding), and, of course, from big-time conservative pundits who can see clearly that Newt, an unprincipled egomaniac, would be a disaster for the GOP. For example:

Peggy Noonan: "He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, 'Watch this!'"

George Will: "There is almost artistic vulgarity in Gingrich's unrepented role as a hired larynx for interests profiting from such government follies as ethanol and cheap mortgages."

David Brooks: "[Newt] has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with '60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance. He just has those traits in Republican form."

Michael Gerson: "Gingrich's language is often intemperate. He is seized by temporary enthusiasms. He combines absolute certainty in any given moment with continual reinvention over time."

Can you smell the fear? Can you sense the panic? If conservatives of this caliber are going after Newt with such aggressiveness, it's only because he's become such a formidable frontrunner, and because he's gaining such momentum that he may very well be approaching the realm of inevitability.

Eating their own

By Mustang Bobby

George F. Will lights into Mitt Romney for being the pretzel candidate.

The Republican presidential dynamic — various candidates rise and recede; Mitt Romney remains at about 25 percent support — is peculiar because conservatives correctly believe that it is important to defeat Barack Obama but unimportant that Romney be president. This is not cognitive dissonance.

Obama, a floundering naif who thinks ATMs aggravate unemployment, is bewildered by a national tragedy of shattered dreams, decaying workforce skills and forgone wealth creation. Romney cannot enunciate a defensible, or even decipherable, ethanol policy.

[...]

Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from "data" (although there is precious little to support Romney's idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis's words) "competence," not "ideology." But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before "forever"? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

Mr. Will is at his Brahman best when he gets all stuffy like this, and it's a joy to read such indignant diatribes ("Floundering Naif" would be a great name for a deep-sea charter boat), but especially when it's directed at one of his own kind. After all, Mr. Romney is the perfect GOP establishment candidate; he's the 21st century Thomas E. Dewey, but without his charm or conviction.

What's missing from this lovely piece of fratricidal vitriol against Mr. Romney is Mr. Will's promotion of an alternative choice for the nomination. Unfortunately, all of his druthers have left the party, so to speak, or have no chance of getting the nomination, and he appears to be way over his brief crush on Michele Bachmann that he elaborated on in October 2009. So, who's left? Will he go for Herman Cain, who can't articulate a position on abortion but stands up for the smokers? What about Newt Gingrich, who is getting another look now that the rest of the field is falling apart? After all, Mr. Gingrich once predicted that after all the other candidates have been found wanting, they would turn to him.

This is what happens when you make the campaign solely about beating the other guy. That may be the way to win the nomination or even an election, but at some point the voters want to know what you stand for, not against.

(photo: Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco Goya)

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

George Will doesn't think Sarah Palin should have her finger on the button

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I don't much care for Mr. Will, and I don't even have any grudging respect anymore, but he's one of the few major conservative pundits who goes after Palin, and for that, I suppose, he deserves some credit -- yes, let's at least give him that.

Yesterday on ABC's This Week, Will asked the key question about Palin:

The threshold question, not usually asked, but it's in everyone's mind in a presidential election. "Should we give this person nuclear weapons?" And the answer [in Palin's case], answers itself.

I'd say the answer also answers itself for Michele Bachmann, if not necessarily so much for Romney and Pawlenty, Giuliani and Gingrich, Pataki and Huntsman, or even Paul.

I'd also say there any number of other such threshold questions not just for all presidential candidates but for the increasingly extremist Republicans and especially for Palin, questions such as:

-- "Should this person be allowed to nominate Supreme Court justices?"

-- "Should this person be given the keys to the country's national security apparatus?"

-- "Should this person be given control over U.S. foreign policy?"

-- "Should this person be the country's chief diplomat, the person advancing America's interests around the world, the person most responsible for America's reputation and credibility globally?"

-- "Should this person be put in charge, as much as any single person is in charge of, the economy?"

For Palin, it's clearly a NO on all questions. It doesn't take George Will to tell us that, but it's good that at least some Republicans understand what lurks in their midst. 

**********

Will is a frequent critic of Palin. For some background, let's head back to those heady days leading up to the '08 election:

No labels? No thank you

By R.K. Barry 

When I find myself agreeing with conservative pundit George Will, it might be time to walk away from the computer. What can I say? But we do seem to agree about one thing and that is that this new group of moderate conservatives, calling themselves "No Labels," who have come together to give us all a good tongue-lashing for our hyper-partisanship, is a goofy bunch. 

Here is the mission statement for the group:

No Labels is a 501(c)(4) social welfare advocacy organization created to provide a voice for America's vital center, where ideas are judged on their merits, a position which is underrepresented in our current politics. No Labels provides a forum and community for Americans of all political backgrounds interested in seeing the nation move not left, not right, but forward. No Labels encourages all public officials to prioritize the national interest over party interest, and to cease acting on behalf of narrow, if vocal, special interests on the far right or left. 

Here is what Mr. Will has to say about them: 

People have different political sensibilities; they cluster and the clusters are called parties. They have distinctive understandings of the meaning and relative importance of liberty, equality and other matters. Politics is given weight, and motion is imparted to democracy, by intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes. 

Yup, there it is. I agree with George Will. That, all on its own, may be proof that left and right can work together. (Just kidding.) But Will's point is that these people have no understanding of what politics is and that the kind of agreement that they think exists at the vital centre of American life, isn't there – and that is not a bad thing. Political partisanship is what makes democracy work.

To add a bit more clarity, I draw your attention to a comment made by MSNBC political commentator Joe Scarborough, one of the principles of No Labels, who offers this:

We govern in the middle. We always have. With apologies to Arthur Schlesinger, there’s not a pendulum swing ideologically in America. America stays in the middle, and we saw it. When you go too far left, they slap you back and when Republicans go too far right, they slap you back as well, into the center. 

What Scarborough seems to be suggesting is that there is a true and identifiable "general will" of the American people that is politically centrist and that Democrats and Republicans would do well to focus their energies on keeping it happy. He also seems to suggest that this general will has a clear idea of what public policies it would support and those it would reject and politicians need only work together, as good technocrats, to give effect to its interests.

George Will, as a trained political philosopher, probably has a pretty good idea that Joe Scarborough is full of crap. Hence Will's comment that people have very different ideas about the meaning of some extremely important ideas like liberty, equality, justice, fairness, morality, etc., etc. Politics is, as he says, all about "intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes."

If Scarborough and his "No Label" friends only mean to say that we should try harder to understand each other to see if we can reach a working and reasonable accommodation about things where absolute agreement is unlikely, then okay, fine. I don't think we need a new 501(c) (4) social welfare advocacy organization for that, but fine. Knock yourself out.

But if he thinks that those on the right and left are simply conspiring to thwart the clear will of the people for the sake of narrow partisan and illegitimate interests, he and his friends are not serious people.

Speaking only for myself, I am on the left and will never stop trying to convince people, through legal and generally civil means, that wealth and power is concentrated in America to an extent that makes real democracy difficult; that equality is impossible if the rules of the game are rigged; that liberty is empty if we don't share the resources needed to make our desires effective; and that justice has far too much to do with how much money you have in your pocket. 

This also means that I have a lot invested in challenging the status quo. And I doubt that the "No Labelers" would consider a challenge to the status quo, at least in any meaningful way, acceptable. My guess is that the status quo is what they mean by the "vital center," and making the machine function in a more amicable way is about as ambitious as they intend to get. 

What they also mean is that the vital center should be defined by the values that the "No Labelers" hold. It wouldn't be the first time that the particular values of those holding power in society were represented as the universal values of everybody. Whenever I hear someone trying to tell us what the American people, taken as a whole, believe, I know it's time to run for cover.

This is the oldest trick in the political play book. Everybody else is biased in their political views and values, but the views that I and my friends hold define the good itself. No thank you.

At a minimum, labels are, as Will notes, a shorthand for how people feel about some pretty important issues, for which there may be little basis for agreement. The "No Labels" movement, and every other "beyond left and right" movement wants to gloss over this important fact.

To repeat, politics is not a technical exercise among like minds to implement in policy the values that we obviously share. There is no such agreement. There is no "general will." Politics is the fight over whose values will prevail. Labels are simply a useful shorthand for telling us who our potential allies and opponents are. If we stopped using the ones currently in vogue, we would need to invent others to replace them.

Again, if this is all about the fact that we should have more respect for good process, that's fine. But please stop saying that moving beyond left and right is necessarily the same as moving forward. It isn't. It's just an argument for de-clawing political opposition and for embracing business as usual.

I'll bet partisans on the left and right can agree at least about that much. 

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

George Will's argument for "engaged justices"

Guest post by Publius

Publius has lived in and spent most of his life thinking about Washington, D.C. He is an attorney, an avid sports fan, and the editor of The Fourth Branch. This is his first guest post at The Reaction.

(Ed. note: Along with what we already do here, I'm hoping to have more guest spots from bloggers I really like. We used to have a guest blogger every now and then, but when I was doing the Crooks and Liars blog round-up recently I realized I hadn't invited anyone to do a guest spot in ages. Let's get it underway again with Publius (alas, not his real name) from The Fourth Branch. As you'll see in this post, as well as at his blog, he is an extremely thoughtful commentator. His blogging tends to be admirably intellectual and academic (in a good way), and it's a pleasure to welcome him aboard. -- MJWS)

**********

George Will recently wrote a column entitled "The Case for Engaged Justices," in which he argues that the individual insurance mandate is unconstitutional and that if the Supreme Court acts as "engaged justices," as opposed to "activist justices," they will find the mandate unconstitutional. Mr. Will's column is replete with rhetorical flourish but lacks much critical thought.

Will begins by arguing that the debate over the insurance mandate's constitutionality is really a debate about whether Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce is "infinitely elastic" and says that "if the power is infinitely elastic, Congress can do anything -- eat your broccoli, or else -- and America no longer has a limited government."

First, an admission: If the Congress' power is infinitely elastic, then, yes, it has the power to do whatever it wants. That's not so much an argument by Will as a definition.

Second, a dispute: The debate over the insurance mandate isn't a debate over whether Congress has infinite power. It is, rather, a debate over whether Congress has the specific power to require Americans to purchase health insurance.

Such a proposal is not a wild leap from current laws that presumably Will finds constitutional. Take, for example, the requirement that all working Americans pay into Medicare. In essence, Congress has required Americans to purchase health insurance but to do so for other Americans (through a government-funded program) and not for themselves. Those distinctions aren't irrelevant, but are they so large that overcoming them means Congress must now be viewed as having "infinitely elastic" powers? Hardly.

Will argues that the legal answer to the constitutionality of the health insurance mandate can be found in an opinion of a Texas judge. In the Texas case cited by Will, a man dying of asbestos exposure sued a company for damages. The Texas legislature, after the suit was filed and the harm inflicted to the dying man, apparently passed a law immunizing the company (and others) from the lawsuit. The Texas judge held that the law violated the Texas constitutional prohibition on retroactive laws and that the lawsuit could proceed. Will concludes that the decision stood for the principal that legislative actions, even when intended to protect the general welfare (such as the insurance mandate), cannot trump constitutional limitations on power.

Will would do well to note that the case was not decided on U.S. constitutional grounds, and so its applicability is tenuous at best. Regardless of that significant distinction, it is perhaps even more significant to note that retroactive laws are expressly prohibited in Article I, Section 16 of the Texas Constitution as applied to a pending action. In other words, the "constitutional limitation on power" is clearly articulated in the Texas Constitution. Unfortunately for Will's analogy, that's not the case with the insurance mandate. Nowhere does the U.S. Constitution specify that "Congress shall not pass an individual health insurance mandate."

Will appears to argue that such a prohibition can be inferred from "the first words of the Bill of Rights: 'Congress shall make no law...'" Will ought to read the rest of the Bill of Rights. He would note that such language doesn't apply to the entire Bill of Rights, it applies only to the First Amendment (which involves speech, press, assembly and petition, and religion).

Oddly enough, Will concludes his argument with a statement that appears to favor the individual mandate. Will states (quoting in his first sentence the Texas judge from the case above):

"There is a profound difference between an activist judge and an engaged judge." The former creates rights not specified or implied by the Constitution. The latter defends rights the Framers actually placed there and prevents the elected branches from usurping the judiciary's duty to declare what the Constitution means. Let us hope the Supreme Court justices are engaged when considering the insurance mandate.

The issue in this case isn't one of "creating rights," which is what Will believes defines an "activist judge." The issue is defining the scope of Congress' power to take certain actions. It's highly unlikely the Supreme Court would hold, for example, that Congress can't pass the insurance mandate because Americans have a constitutional right not to buy health insurance if they don't want to buy it. In fact, if the Supreme Court acts under Will's definition of an "engaged justice," the Court could not make such a holding (the right not to purchase health insurance wasn't "actually placed" in the Constitution by the Framers).

(Cross-posted from The Fourth Branch.)

Craziest Conservative of the Day: Robert Knight

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

As I've mentioned here before, one of the interesting (and sometimes unpleasant) things about being a blogger (and member of the political commentariat) with a public e-mail address is that I find myself on many different mailing lists. Like, for example, those of a number of (mostly Democratic) Sens and Reps on Capitol Hill.

And of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.

And of the theocratic right-wing Coral Ridge Ministries, founded by D. James Kennedy. Which the other day sent me this:

Dear Media:

In this Washington Times opinion piece, Coral Ridge Ministries Senior Writer Robert Knight challenges the moral relativism of columnist George Will and others who support allowing open homosexuals to serve in the military.

Please let me know if you would like to speak with Mr. Knight about this column.

Andrew Scott [e-mail address] or [phone number]

The "opinion piece" is pretty much what you'd expect, a conservative religious rant against gays in the military, and against homosexuality generally, and in support of right-wing Christian theocracy:

And what about the Creator of the Universe? It is God's moral code that has undergirded Western society for more than 3,500 years. God's intelligent design – marriage – is the glue that holds it together.

It's just more of the same old biblical bigotry that we've come to expect from the religious right, and it hardly deserves a response.

But what's amusing, in a way, is that Knight calls Will, one of America's leading conservative commentators (and, in Knight's words, "one of the smartest men in Washington"), a moral relativist for suggesting (rightly, I would add) that "homosexuality will soon be a non-issue in the military," that is, for not being a fellow bigot. Similarly, Knight accuses Charles Krauthammer, another die-hard conservative, of being "aboard the gay express" (whatever that is), before ignorantly claiming that "the myth persists that science has established that people are 'born gay.'"

All those who do not agree with the biblical bigotry of Knight and his ilk, you see, a bigotry that is common in Knight's Christian circles (as well as in Republican circles), are moral relativists -- including some of America's leading conservatives. But this is where the religious right is, well to the right of the more establishment, more secular conservatism of Will and Krauthammer.

How truly enjoyable it is to sit back and watch conservatives, however extreme, however crazy, attempt to commit fratricide.

George Will goes gaga for Bachmann

By Mustang Bobby

In the past I've had a modicum of respect for George F. Will, even if he does come across as a humorless New England boarding school English teacher in need of a high colonic. I've even agreed with him on some occasions, even though he spends most of his time defending the old-guard country club ideals of elite Republicanism, and I've thought that he viewed the rantings of the new right wing -- the birthers, the deathers, and the oathers -- with a bit of sneer even as he defends some of their ideas if not their tactics. But today he rises to the defense of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the highly entertaining whirling dervish of the far right, and makes it sound like she is yet another misunderstood beacon of truth, justice, and the American Way. His only concession to her nutsery is to admit that she is a "petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked." Occasionally?

Mr. Will cites her appearance on Hardball last October where she "made the mistake of taking Chris Matthews's bait and speculating about whether Barack Obama and some other Democrats have 'anti-American' views." Of course it was Chris Matthews' fault that she answered his question. But he insists that she's well within the mainstream, citing her oft-viewed House floor speech where she labeled the federal takeover of General Motors as "gangster government" and says that millions of people have seen it. Hint: just because a video gets viewed 2 million times doesn't make it proof of intelligent discourse, and it's not always because they agree with her. (The dramatic prairie dog gets that many in a day.)

If that was Ms. Bachmann's only example of her "supposed excess," Mr. Will's defense of her would be understandable; after all, we've got a lot of examples of other far-right members of Congress making loony speeches that bring out the mockery and snark, and they don't garner the attention, more's the pity. But Ms. Bachmann is the gift that keeps on giving, from her call for keeping Americans "armed and dangerous," her denial of climate change (in which Mr. Will is her soulmate), and a number of other just downright nutty claims such as the FEMA concentration camps that will come from the renewal of Americorps. Mr. Will ignores the rest of these and, as is the wont of every mainstream pundit sucking up to to fringe, suggests that we are mocking and ignoring Ms. Bachmann at our peril.

In a way, I feel sorry for Mr. Will; I'm guessing he bet on the Dodgers to win the NLCS and this is his penance: having to defend one of the most divisive and extreme members of his party in print.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

William Safire (1929-2009)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

William Safire -- Nixon speechwriter, New York Times columnist, and conservative intellectual -- has died at the age of 79.

I'll admit, I never much cared for him -- or, rather, for his work:

Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.

Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the disgraced Nixon coterie. But he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and for 32 years tenaciously attacked and defended foreign and domestic policies, and the foibles, of seven administrations. Along the way, he incurred enmity and admiration, and made a lot of powerful people squirm.

Well, fair enough, he certainly was more of a "contrarian" than most on the right, and he was certainly, at times, admirably independent in his thinking, and he did, I suppose, make some "powerful people squirm." But he was also, to the end, a Nixon apologist and, even with the GOP lurching ever further rightward, a dedicated partisan. Sure, he was more pleasant, less insane, and far more intelligent than the Glenn Becks and Sean Hannitys of the world, and that made him appealing both in print and on Meet the Press -- he was sort of like David Brooks, a conservative liberals could actually respect and occasionally agree with -- but his apparent reasonableness, and his broad appeal, only made him, in a way, more nefarious. However independent, however flexible, he was an ideologue, and, in a way, an effective propagandist for conservatism, if more Nixonian than the extremism of the movement today, a Republican even when the Republican Party should no longer have appealed to him. I think the same of Brooks and the same of George Will, another old-style conservative in the heart of the liberal media establishment, or what used to be, though Brooks remains a neocon and Will remains more of an ideologue than Safire ever was. Both have Safire's appeal, but, as with Safire, it would be wise not to let appearances get in the way of better judgement.

Still, Safire was always a good read, always provocative, and, more often than not, a valuable contributor to the public debate. Conservatives would have done well to have taken him more seriously, and the rest of us, I think, should have done the same. Even to those of us who generally disagreed with him on pretty much everything, he offered a great deal, often irritatingly so, and we knew, or at least I can say that I did, that he was often a deeply perceptive thinker who at the very least compelled us to reconsider our assumptions and opinions, and even our firmly held beliefs, and, I think, we were all stronger for it in the end. Political preferences aside, isn't that what you want in a columnist at a major newspaper like the Times? Safire frequently went too far, and I can't say that everything he said and wrote fit this noble purpose, far from it from my limited perspective, but at least he wasn't one of those pundits who only tell a narrow fringe what it wants to hear and who lash out at everything else. We all know there are far too many such pundits today.

And, of course, he was, most admirably, a linguist, a defender of the English language at a time when it was, and is, being torn apart. I learned not to split infinitives from my father, and I don't, but Safire taught us all, in his own distinctive way, to use language properly, to speak and write according to rules that ought to remain in force, and to stand firm against the dumbing down of society through the erosion of linguistic standards.

To boldly go? No, never. William Safire will be missed.

The neocon prism

By Creature

Benen makes a point that's worth reinforcing:

[S]eeing Will and Graham on opposite sides of this reminds me of a point that often goes overlooked: we're not dealing with a dynamic that pits the left vs. the right, or Dems against Republicans. Rather, this is a situation featuring neocons vs. everyone else.

You'll notice that President Obama's strategy has not only been endorsed by Democratic lawmakers, but also prominent Republicans who are in office (Dick Lugar), served in Republican administrations (Henry Kissinger, Gary Sick, and Nick Burns), or are prominent Republican voices in the media (George Will, Peggy Noonan, and Pat Buchanan).

The president's leading detractors, meanwhile, primarily come from a motley and discredited crew who cling to neoconservatism -- McCain, Graham, Kristol, Krauthammer, Wolfowitz.

When we see reports indicating that "Republicans" are outraged by the president's tack on Iran, let's not forget it's mostly just a certain part of the party

Here's Sullivan along the same lines:

The key point is that many neocons actively want war with Iran and they are doing all they can in this crisis to precipitate one. Whether it be hoping for an Ahmadinejad win, or trying to goad Obama into making this critical uprising into a US vs Iran showdown, their goal is conflict. Everything they say needs to be filtered through that prism.

A discredited prism of conflict, death, destabilization and destruction sounds about right, but since they make such "great guests" who cares.

**********

UPDATE: Here, from Think Progress, is the clip of Will criticizing ("foolish") conservative criticism of Obama's (sensible) response to the Iranian election:



-- MJWS

Close enough isn't good enough

By Mustang Bobby

George F. Will really can't argue effectively that California's Prop 8, the referendum that eliminates same-sex marriage rights, is a good law, so he uses the typical tactics that debaters use when they get down to their last straws: he attacks the attackers of the law -- in this case California Attorney General Jerry Brown -- and he makes exceptions to his own beliefs in order to shore up his shaky argument:

Now comes California's attorney general, Jerry Brown -- always a fountain of novel arguments -- with a 111-page brief asking the state Supreme Court to declare the constitutional amendment unconstitutional. He favors same-sex marriages and says the amendment violates Article 1, Section 1, of California's Constitution, which enumerates "inalienable rights" to, among other things, liberty, happiness and privacy.

Brown's audacious argument is a viscous soup of natural-law and natural-rights philosophizing, utterly untethered from case law. It is designed to effect a constitutional revolution by establishing an unchallengeable judicial hegemony. He argues that:

The not-really-sovereign people cannot use the constitutionally provided amendment process to define the scope of rights enumerated in the Constitution; California's judiciary, although established by the state's Constitution, has the extra-constitutional right to supplement that enumeration by brooding about natural law, natural justice and natural rights, all arising from some authority somewhere outside the Constitution; the judiciary has the unchallengeable right to say what social policies are entailed by or proscribed by the state Constitution's declaration of rights and other rights discovered by judges.

What is natural justice? Learned and honorable people disagree. Which is why such consensus as can be reached is codified in a constitution. But Brown's reasoning would make California's Constitution subordinate to judges' flights of fancy regarding natural justice. Judges could declare unconstitutional any act of Constitution-revising by the people.

"Natural law" is also the argument that most anti-abortionists use in arguing against Roe v. Wade; the life of a foetus supersedes the rights of the woman bearing it, and the rights of the unborn are equal to those of any other citizen even though the Constitution clearly states that rights of citizenship aren't established unless or until a person is born in the United States or naturalized through the due process of law. Simply put, Mr. Brown is saying that there are some rights that are so important that they can't be subject to the political whims and winds of popular opinion. For example, if civil rights and voting rights for African Americans were put to a vote by referendum in 1964 and 1965, chances are very good that they would not have passed in many states, and not just those in the South. I'm not sure that Mr. Brown isn't going out on a limb here, but I also don't think that it should be given the brush-off that Mr. Will gives it. If the idea of natural law doesn't apply to the rights of same-sex couples who are otherwise entitled to the same rights and responsibilities of everyone else, why should it apply to a foetus?

Mr. Will then does a bit of pretzel logic on the idea of the people voting on laws:

Passing laws by referenda is an imprudent departure from the core principle of republican government -- representation: The people do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide. But the right of Californians to make laws through the direct democracy of referenda is as firmly established as it is promiscuously exercised.

This is his thinly-veiled way of saying, "Well, I don't like it when the people make the law, but in this case, I like the result, so it's okay." Whether he knows it or not, he's just made a very good point as to why Prop 8 should be overturned: the basic rights of the citizens shouldn't be subject to the whims and the fund-raising capabilities of the Mormons, and it doesn't matter whether or not you approve of the people who are making the pitch or who are the targets of the vote. And just because referenda is "firmly established" in California law doesn't make it right. Slavery was pretty firmly established, too, before 1864.

Finally, and most patronizingly, Mr. Will tells all us queers to just be patient. This time the proposition was passed narrowly as compared to the original Prop 22 in 2000 that established the law defining marriage as being for straight people only:

Just eight years ago, Proposition 22 was passed, 61.4 to 38.6 percent. The much narrower victory of Proposition 8 suggests that minds are moving toward toleration of same-sex marriage. If advocates of that have the patience required by democratic persuasion, California's ongoing conversation may end as they hope. If, however, the conversation is truncated, as Brown urges, by judicial fiat, the argument will become as embittered as the argument about abortion has been by judicial highhandedness.

I think the same argument was made in the 1950's when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education: "You colored people should just be patient, we'll get around to giving you your equal rights in due time, so stop being so damn pushy about getting them right now just because those nine old men said so." Yes, and if they had, they'd still be waiting.

Giving a minority community that contributes fully to society every way, including paying our taxes and doing our duty as citizens while being denied the fundamental equality of the law, is wrong, and Mr. Will knows it. Giving us a pat on the head and the gentle admonishment to wait our turn isn't good enough.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Charm offensive: Obama at dinner with the conservative punditocracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've been meaning all day to comment on Obama's dinner with Will, Kristol, Brooks, and Krauthammer -- the four horsemen of the right-wing apocalypse? -- but I just don't have much to say about it. On Obama's part, it was an exceptionally smart move. Why not, as the soon-to-be president, make nice and break bread with four leading conservative political commentators? If nothing else, as Michael Crowley stressed, "Obama will surely choose his words carefully and avoid saying anything that causes him trouble. He's certainly not going to make any new promises to appease the right. And a little personal charm" -- or a charm offensive? -- "is sure to buy him a few pulled punches among the columns and punditry of these men." No, they won't go soft, but maybe at least they'll show him some respect and take him, and his efforts at outreach to the right, seriously. (Remember that the Clintons did themselves no favours by attacking the media, including liberals, early on, setting a negative tone that only hindered the Clinton presidency. Obama may be stuffing his administration with Clintonites, but he has certainly learned from some of Clinton's mistakes.)

And liberals, by the way, aren't all that troubled by the dinner. Take Steve Benen and Kevin Drum, for example. And, again, I feel much the same way.

As Jon Chait argues, though, and I think he's right about this, conservatives wouldn't be nearly as understanding if the situation were reversed:

I actually don't find it terribly surprising that liberals haven't shown any outrage over Barack Obama's dinner party with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and David Brooks. I'll get to my hypothesis why liberals aren't upset in a moment. But first imagine this counterfactual: George W. Bush (or maybe a victorious John McCain) sat down before his first inauguration with Paul Krugman, E.J. Dionne, and Frank Foer. Would conservatives have reacted with the same equanimity? No, I think they'd have gone nuts. And the reason is that they wouldn't have confidence in Bush or McCain to be surrounded by liberal ideas without being deeply influenced by them. I don't think they'd have reacted this way if, say, a President Mitt Romney did the same thing.

And that's why liberals aren't having a cow. They know that Obama understands far more about policy than any of his right-wing dinner companions, is used to being exposed to opposing ideas, and won't come out of that dinner telling his staff, "Hey, did you know we cut half the capital gains tax and raise more revenue?"

A separate issue is why Obama didn't pick some conservatives with a bit more intellectual integrity than, say, Kristol and Krauthammer. The problem, of course, is conservatives like that tend not to rise to positions of high influence.

Right, I don't think there's any concern, despite existing (and, in my view, wrong-headed) concerns among some progressives that he's a centrist of sorts, that Obama will surrender to conservative pressure or otherwise reveal himself to be a Republican. If nothing else, we have confidence in Obama's firmness. And we understand, I think, that it makes good political sense, at this time, with the economic stimulus package soon to be up for a vote and with health care, energy, and education reform looming on the horizon, to reach out not just to potentially friendly Republicans in Congress but to key figures, key opinion-shapers, on the right. Which is why he picked these four. Two of them, I agree, may not have much intellectual integrity -- I'd say Will is the only one with much of it, and Brooks has more than Krauthammer and far, far more than Kristol -- but there's no denying their lofty places in the conservative food chain. (But at least more despicable figures like Limbaugh and O'Reilly weren't there. That would have been too much even for generous and understanding liberals to take.)

This is one case where it is best to trust that Obama knows what he's doing. I have no doubt that he does.

No fair

By Mustang Bobby

George F. Will joins the growing chorus of right-wingers who are speaking out against the re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine.

Reactionary liberalism, the ideology of many Democrats, holds that inconvenient rights, such as secret ballots in unionization elections, should be repealed; that existing failures, such as GM, should be preserved; and, with special perversity, that repealed mistakes, such as the "fairness doctrine," should be repeated. That Orwellian name was designed to disguise the doctrine's use as the government's instrument for preventing fair competition in the broadcasting of political commentary.

Because liberals have been even less successful in competing with conservatives on talk radio than Detroit has been in competing with its rivals, liberals are seeking intellectual protectionism in the form of regulations that suppress ideological rivals. If liberals advertise their illiberalism by reimposing the fairness doctrine, the Supreme Court might revisit its 1969 ruling that the fairness doctrine is constitutional. The court probably would dismay reactionary liberals by reversing that decision on the ground that the world has changed vastly, pertinently and for the better.

[...]

If reactionary liberals, unsatisfied with dominating the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, were competitive on talk radio, they would be uninterested in reviving the fairness doctrine. Having so sullied liberalism's name that they have taken to calling themselves progressives, liberals are now ruining the reputation of reactionaries, which really is unfair.

One small problem: No one on the liberal side of the dial is advocating for the re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine. President-elect Obama is not in favor of it, and no one on Capitol Hill is seriously proposing that it be brought back.

It's pretty pathetic when the right wing has to whoop up a hue and cry over a non-existent issue so that when nothing happens they can claim a victory.

We also haven't been invaded by the Borg. I guess they can take credit for that, too.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Powell for Obama

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Needless to say, the political world is all abuzz today over Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama this morning on Meet the Press.

Mustang Bobby posted the clips -- Powell on MTP, then outside the studio.

For coverage in the MSM, see CNN and MSNBC.

**********

Needless to say, conservatives are going nuts -- or, rather, getting even nuttier -- in response:

Take Michelle Malkin, for example -- or don't take her, it's up to you, and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't -- who calls Powell's endorsement "a triumph of hope over reality." Of course, "reality" for Malkin is a fantasyland for the rest of us. She blames Powell for not taking the Obama-Ayers association seriously enough, for blaming the GOP for spreading smears and slurs about Obama, and for finding the GOP too "narrow." As inhabitants of real reality know, the Obama-Ayers assocation is insignificant, the Republican smear machine, including McCain and Palin themselves, has been operating at full throttle to try to bring down Obama, and the Republican Party is, and has been for a long time, a party populated by theocrats, neocons, and neo-liberals, with a mob-like base of extremists.

It gets even more amusing when Malkin declares that "[t]he orgy of Obamedia attention Powell will receive the next 24 hours is disproportionate to its importance." It should come as no surprise that she doesn't mention the fact that the mainstream press, the supposedly liberal media she so loathes, has spent the better part of the past decade or so in bed with McCain, happily pumping up and stroking the phony McCain myth. Indeed, what McCain has experienced over the course of this campaign is nothing compared to what Obama has endured, with seemingly every detail of Obama's past dredged up for prolonged examination.

**********

Malkin predicts that "people outside the Beltway bubble" will respond to Powell's endorsement with a yawn. I disagree. Here's how I put it on Friday:

I don't want to overstate the case -- endorsements don't usually mean that much, after all -- but I think a Powell endorsement at this point, with the three debates behind us and with Obama having opened up solid leads in the polls and with time running out, would be a significant coup for Obama. It would give him a high-profile boost to his own foreign policy credibility (that is, it would act as a major vote of confidence -- even though polls show he already has the confidence of voters even in what was thought to be one of McCain's strongest areas) and there would likely be overwhelmingly positive media coverage next week (certainly the establishment press still likes Powell a lot). As well, it could be just what Obama needs to win over remaining independents and "undecideds," those voters seemingly waiting for something, anything, to compel them to vote one way or the other.

I stand by that today.

**********

At the very least, Malkin doesn't accuse Powell of racism. In her view, it's not Obama's race that attracted his endorsement, it's Obama's "social liberalism."

I don't agree with that either.

Powell may be more socially liberal than most Republicans, but he's not one to base his vote on such concerns (other than to note that the Republican Party is too "narrow" for him).

Here's how Powell himself put it: "I think he is a transformational figure, he is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Sen. Barack Obama."

In addition, he praised Obama specifically on the economy and foreign policy.

Malkin and her ilk simply don't get Obama's appeal, in terms of both style and substance, and it should come as no surprise that they don't get why he would appeal to Powell, and why Powell's endorsement matters.

**********

Other conservatives are displaying overt racism, however.

For example, George Will, on ABC's This Week this morning, suggested that what is at play here is race: "[I]t seems to me if we had the tools to measure we'd find that Barack Obama gets two votes because he's black for every one he loses because he's black because so much of this country is so eager, a, to feel good about itself by doing this, but more than that to put paid to the whole Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson game of political rhetoric."

In other words, Obama's appeal is racial, and hence ultimately racist: People are supporting him largely (perhaps even mostly) because he's black. Given that he said this in response to a question about the Powell endorsement, it would seem that, to Will, Powell's endorsement is racist: one black man supporting another.

Rush Limbaugh was characteristically even more direct: "Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race. OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."

As usual, Limbaugh will come up with whatever he wants to come up with. For him, as for Will, this is all about race.

You want racism? It's right there, as usual, on the right.

**********

Finally, a word from Steve Benen on the impact of the endorsement:

[A]s a purely political matter, Powell's endorsement of Obama strikes me as a fairly significant political development. Powell is arguably the nation's most popular and most respected Republican. He has been a friend of McCain's for a quarter of a century, has seen up close what kind of leader McCain would be, and even contributed to McCain's campaign.

And yet, as of this morning, Powell is officially an Obama supporter -- and is officially dejected about what's become of McCain's campaign and the Republican Party.

*****

I'd just add that Powell didn't just tacitly offer a vague endorsement, he offered his unapologetic support to Obama, while blasting what's become of his old friend, John McCain. He sounded like a man who barely recognizes what's become of today's GOP. For self-described moderates and independents, Powell remains a widely admired figure. What's more, few if any Americans enjoy the media adulation that Powell has, which means coverage of this morning's announcement is likely to be very strong.

With that in mind, Powell's endorsement this morning may very well have a significant impact.

I think it will.

Stating the obvious about Sarah Palin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Occasionally, every once in a while, Tony La Russa fan club president George Will gets it right. Even if getting it right amounts merely to stating the obvious:

Famed conservative columnist George Will told a gathering of Senate aides on Monday that Gov. Sarah Palin is "obviously" not prepared to assume the presidency if necessary, two event attendees told the Huffington Post.

Appearing at a Senate Press Secretaries Association reception at the Cornerstone Government Affairs office, Will offered a harsh assessment of John McCain's running mate.

Palin is "obviously not qualified to be President," he remarked, describing her interview on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric as a "disaster."

Genius.