The inner cities have their issues. If you’re in Minnesota and reading this, you know about them; you’ve either fled them, are paying for them via your taxes, or are – like me – living among them.

Minneapolis and Saint Paul are taxed half to death; Minneapolis’ crime rate has fallen from brutally-high to merely ridiculously-high, with a murder rate higher than New York, Boston, LA, San Francisco.  Higher, indeed, – ironically, given how Minneapolis’ political, academic and media elites sniff at them – than Mobile, Omaha (twice as high!), Tampa, Jacksonville, higher in fact than all of the major cities in Texas but one (and only slightly off Houston’s pace).  Only marginally lower than Chicago. (Saint Paul’s is quite low by major-city standards – 60% lower than Minneapolis – a testament to Saint Paul’s excellent police department, strong neighborhoods, and at least a couple of relatively sane administrations).

The cities are addicts; their drug is money. Nearly four decades ago, the “Minnesota Miracle” enacted the idea of “Local Government Aid”, which as the DFL’s stranglehold on the inner cities accelerated turned into an eternal subsidy of DFL inner-city policy by the parts of the state that actually pay their way. Governor Pawlenty’s cuts in LGA acted the same way as cutting off the heroin acts on a jonesing junkie; the addict went crazy. The body couldn’t get along without the drug; the drug had incorporated itself into the body’s chemistry. City governments had been providing “services” far beyond what their eroding tax based could provide, even as their left-leftward-moving policies drove more and more of the tax base out of the cities themselves. When LGA cuts forced cities to pass the “service” costs directly to their own tax bases, and the cities were forced to pay their own bills – well, you’ve read the headlines and the op-ed pages, right?

And yet, election after election, the DFL stranglehold over the inner city not only deepens, but gets more and more radical; Greens now have a solid foothold in Minneapolis; Saint Paul’s “Gang of Four” ultra-liberal councilpeople is now a Gang of Five. Policies that were madness thirty years ago are commonplaces today.

How did it get this way?

90% of politics is local. And the DFL understood this from the very beginning, and over the past fifty years has extended its reach into every corner of life in the Cities.

Is there hope?

More tomorrow.

Tomorrow, there’s going to be a special election in Minnesota Senate District 25. Republican Ray Cox is taking on DFLer Kevin Dahle.

Brodkorb has the latest at True North and MDE:

It is worth noting that Republican-endorsed Ray Cox has raised nearly $40,000 (to be exact – $39,885) for the special election in SD 25 this Thursday.

Meanwhile, DFL-endorsed Kevin Dahle may be embarrassed because his fundraising numbers haven’t been posted on the campaign finance board’s website.

Ray Cox is not, as far as I’ve seen, a solid conservative – but he’s the GOPer that’s showed up. Getting conservatives in office is goal #1, of course (for me, at least), but growing the GOP caucus isn’t far behind.

So if you live in District 25 (Map – PDF alert!) – the Rice/LeSeuer County area – you need to get out to the polls Thursday and make sure you vote early and often. Crushing the DFL candidate in the heart of Tim Walz’s district [SD25 is in CD2? Who knew?] would be a great way to kick off the new year.

Michael Bloomberg is pondering entering the race:

Buoyed by the still unsettled field, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run.

I’m inclined to support him on principle.

No, not for President.  Just as a candidate.  He’ll soak up ten Democrat votes for every Republican vote he lands.

Go, Mike!

Stephen Kaus writes that rarest of things – something at the Huffpo that’s worth reading.

Here – Hillary’s shot at bucking the 22nd Amendment (I’ve added emphasis):

The more Hillary tries to use Bill’s presidency as experience, the more we feel like it is the same old, same old and the closer it approaches the 22nd Amendment [which codified the two-term limit] situation, as Ann Althouse points out at the end of this clip. The idea that we have had enough of the Clintons and the Bushes is deeply rooted in our feelings about government. If Hillary had left Bill and were striking out on her own, we would feel less this way, but that is not what she is doing. She is campaigning for a third term while invoking executive privilege as to what she did during the first two.

Worth a read.

I used to make a concerted effort to read leftyblogs.  I did it for the same reason that I read things like Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries or Steal This Book – to know what the enemy believes, what motives him/her, to get an insight into how they think.

Lately?  Not so much.  Reading most leftybloggers is like listening to 14-year-olds argue.

Jane Hamsher – from “Firedoglake”, which, since the demise of “Pandagon” has been the “Norwegianity” of the national leftyblog scene – walks out onto rhetorical thin ice and starts doing a Dutch clog dance:

 Take, for example, supermodels. When you meet them you’re usually struck with the impression that something’s not quite right about them, and after a while it dawns on you that you’ve never met anyone quite this stupid who is so convinced that every word they utter is dripping with peerless insight…

[Really, Jane?  You meet a lot of supermodels?] 

Chris Rock has a whole routine about “model smart,” which basically means being smart enough not to walk out in the middle of traffic and get hit by a car. Which pretty much sums it up.

Er…indeed.

Let’s take a step back.  After the ’72 election, Pauline Kael is famously (and probably apocryphally) supposed to have exclaimed “How could Nixon have won?  Nobody I know voted for him!”

Apocryphal as that may have been, there’s a teaching moment there; someone whose entire world revolves around one region, social circle or professional clacque might just lack the perspective to comment coherently outside that circle.  It’s why Appalachian junk dealers are illiterate about nouvelle cuisine, and why Pauline Kael didn’t know any Nixon voters. 

And, I suspect, it might explain a lot – somewhat ironically, as it happens – about Ms. Hamsher:

Rush Limbaugh has a self-awareness problem.

It’s one you commonly see in celebrities — they form their self-image based on what those around them think, but those people are frequently responding to some combination of factors that may have nothing at all to do with who they are.

It explains a lot about the likes of Arianna Huffington and Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn, to be sure…

Anyway, now we have Rush Limbaugh. He’s been putting out the message on behalf of the GOP to millions of the AM radio faithful so long he thinks he’s one of them, a “man of the people,” or as he likes to say, “part of the Cape Girardeau [Missouri]-Middle America axis.”

But Rush is no such thing. Unless his audience is composed of a lot more people making $35 million a year than I’m aware of, he’s an ugly weld spot between the corporatists and the rank-and-file within the party.

Let’s mark that idea – “Limbaugh is out of touch with the rank and file of the GOP” – for later use.  File it under “Jane Hamsher drops Acid” if you’d like – that, or show me that there are enough “corporatists” – as in, 20-odd-million – to make Limbaugh the biggest name in radio.

Hamsher invokes the “Sista Soulja” moment the Hucker is trying to create with Limbaugh:

 Huckabee knows that audience rather better than Rush does, at least the Southern contingent, and given the fact that the GOP has become largely a regional party, that’s a significant portion of Rush’s base.

That brings up a couple of interesting questions:

1. Does Huckabee “know” southern conservatives?  Given that he’s basically a pro-life, pro-NRA nannystater – basically Bill Clinton with some ethics?  (My guess:  exactly as well  as he needs to to win elections in famously-schizophrenic Arkansas)
2. Do Republicans know exactly how right Hamsher is about that “regional party” thing?  (The GOP is a regional party; it represents the “region” west of the Hudson, east of the Sierra Madre, and outside of Chicago).
3. How does Limbaugh manage to dominate political radio, what with his audience being only “corporatists” and all?
4. Does Jane Hamsher know more conservatives than Rush Limbaugh knows liberals?  (I’d suspect not just “no”, but “hell no”). 

Back to Hamsher:

Which is why Huck’s attack-by-proxie [sic] (“a DC based Huckabee ally”) is so spot-on, and amusing:

“Honestly, because Rush doesn’t think for himself. That’s not necessarily a slap because he’s not paid to be a thinker—he’s an entertainer. I can’t remember the last time that he has veered from the talking points from the DC/Manhattan chattering class. If they were praising Huckabee, he would be too.”

Chicken and egg, Ms. Hamsher.  If Huckabee were a conservative, you bet they’d be praising him!

But he’s not.

Rush rebounded by basically calling Huckabee a stupid hick:

He called the attacks “Clintonian” and accused Huckabee’s campaign of “trying to dumb down conservatism in order to get it to conform with his record.”

Given the region’s cultural persecution complex — not exactly a wise move.

Help me, here:  “conservatism” and “dumb” are southern-specific?

Who’s insulting southern culture?

More importantly – does Jane Hamsher think she’s equipped to serve as a cultural arbiter?

Exhibit A:

As a veteran spewer of right-wing talking points, Rush thinks he’s well aware of what’s going on here, and capable of combatting it with his usual armaments. He retorts by projecting onto Huckabee motivations that legislate the game he perceives himself as playing:

“Armaments?”  “Legislate?”  And what the hell does that last sentence mean, anyway?

“What was somewhat stunning about all this is that NO ONE in the GOP field, including advisers and staff, could possibly misread my 19-plus-year career the way Gov. Huckabee’s D.C. supporter did,” Limbaugh said. “Whoever said those things was essentially repeating the Democrat mantra of all these years: that I am just an entertainer, not an independent thinker, part of the Wall Street/D.C. axis. If it was someone on Gov. Huckabee’s staff or support team, it was just silly, uninformed and thus curious.”

Yeah except it isn’t a left/right PR game this time around, Rush. You’re taking arrows in the back.

Really?

An unnamed Hucker supporter took a specious – and just-plain-dumb – dig at Limbaugh; he/she wrote a rhetorical check that reality just won’t cash.

To wit:

Rush is betting that his listeners will see him as “part of the Cape Girardeau [Missouri]-Middle America axis.” The GOP elite have told him to take down Huckabee, and his ego is so engorged with money and seven years of right wing hegemony he thinks he can win that battle. He doesn’t see the weld spot preparing to crack.

Could someone please send me a nickel for every time the left has said Limbaugh was “out of touch” with Republicans, or that his support was all built on sand?

That’s just…model smart.

And Jane Hamsher thinks some (anonymous) Huckabee staffer speaks for the GOP rank and file, nationwide, more than the one person who, along with Ronald Reagan, made conservatism a genuine mass movement?  A man who goes on the air daily and by the end of the day has reached 20 million people – 19,990,000 of whom likely will be back the next day?

That’s just…leftyblogger smart.

(more…)

Fraters notes a piece by Kim Strassel that sums up my big problem with Huckabee (emphasis added by me):

Since the beginning of 2007, the Democratic National Committee has released 102 direct attacks on Mitt Romney. Rudy Giuliani has warranted 78; John McCain 68; Fred Thompson 21. Mike Huckabee? Four. The most recent of these landed back in March. GOP voters may not have examined Mr. Huckabee’s record, but the left has–and they love what they see.

The optimist and idealist in me wants to believe that the Media are just acting like Lori Sturdevant; lifting up the Republicans who act the most like Democrats (only to cut them down without mercy the moment they turn into actual Republicans.

The cynic in me counters; would the media be pushing a Republican they couldn’t turn around and destroy?

Elder:

Democrats love the smell of Huckabee’s ethical lapses in the past. It smells like victory.

Don’t buy it, Republicans. The media is setting Huckabee – and swing voters – for a big, fat, Hillary slapshot.

I’ve said it before; part of me wants to be able to support John McCain.

In many, many ways, he’s the best conservative of the bunch.  And, as Ed notes (in re a poll that shows him with the lowest negatives among the GOP field):

John McCain may get the best bump from this poll. People wonder whether he could win a Republican primary, but he has the lowest opposition numbers in both the general population and the unaffiliated population. His -6% in the latter group makes him the most electable among the front-runners of both parties. In a race where no one has captured the passion of the electorate, it could be enough of an edge for McCain to make the electability argument his own.

And, I suspect, he could fix that whole “nomination” thing in three not-simple-at-all steps:  repudiating the McCain-Feingold laws, getting religion on immigration, and making some kind of amend or another on the whole Gang of Fourteen thing.

Even two out of three would go a long way.

I want to support McCain, in many ways, sooooo badly.  And yet those three things are killers.

Ed (channeling Powerline), notes that Anderson Cooper’s big “gotcha” from the debate a few weeks ago, re Giuliani’s alleged misuse of security funds to escort his now-wife, then-mistress about, has come a-cropper.

Not that you’d know it from the Times’ “coverage” of this fact:

The New York Times exonerates Rudy Giuliani from charges that he moved travel expenses around through subsidiary agencies in order to hide his affair with his now-wife, Judith. People looking for that exoneration on their feedreaders will find themselves frustrated. Not only did the Times bury the story on one of its blogs, it put it in a graphic format that doesn’t allow for copy-and-paste. In fact, it isn’t even shown as an entry on the blog itself:

I expect the Times to start printing corrections on the undersides of pieces of used chewing gum, at this rate. 

Of course, even a front-page report on this wouldn’t unring the bell; the damage has been done, and it has been considerable. It looks like the Times wanted to make sure none of it got undone. (via Power Line)

Nope.  No liberal media here.

When even Susan Lenfestey gets on board and declares the surge a success, you know you’re onto something.  Right?

Well, surely the Dems do know there’s something there; they’re phrasing that something as “we never doubted the US military’s ability to pull this off.

Except, as Jeff Kouba catalogues, they surely did:

Here’s the intrepid Susan Lenfestey on how she of course duh! never doubted The Surge would work:

Fair enough. We’re all exhausted from the divisiveness of this war, so in the holiday spirit — and with my fingers crossed — I’ll take a break from the rancor and say what he wants to hear: The Surge is Working.

But the doubt was never about the prowess and might of the American military, or that adding more troops would offer short-term security. …

The doubt was never about the prowess and might of the American military?

*bemused, a puzzled look tugs at his brow*

In the 12/3 issue of the The Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery did a tremendous job of logging the many statements made by Lefties concerned their solid belief in the inevitable success of The Surge.

Jeff pulls out a number of examples showing that, on the hard (and not-so-hard) left, there most definitely were doubts! 

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t all those examples at least a vague, nebulous indication that perhaps our patriotic Democratic Left harbored at least a few, secretly held, never voiced in public niggling doubts about The Surge?

Read both pieces.

On the one hand, I love the way the Democrats are starting to squeal about the Clintons’ dirty tricks and misleading spin – once they’re aimed at Democrats.

On the other hand, as squealing goes, the video here is mighty funny.

Fred Thompson counters Ron Paul’s “Boston Tea Party” fundraising effort:

Republican Presidential candidate Fred Thompson today, upon hearing that rival Ron Paul’s supporters had raised $6 million in 24 hours to commemorate the Boston Tea Party, called on his supporters to match that figure in gun purchases before Christmas to mark George Washington’s victory at the Battle of Trenton.

“I’m tired of running around the country raising money that I just have to hand over to the same mainstream media companies that ignore my campaign,” said the former senator from Tennessee. “We’ve done enough this year to support the so-called free press of the first amendment. Let’s give a boost to our friends who make it possible for us to exercise our second amendment right to keep and bear arms.”

Yeah, Fred!  That’ll…um…

(sigh)

Oh, well.  If only it weren’t Scrappleface.

Andrew Sullivan is my blogfather, as I’ve noted in many, many places.  I started Shot In The Dark hours after reading “The Dish” for the first time, inspired by his take (at the time) on events and by the newfound technology that allowed any schlump with an internet connection to hang out a shingle as a pundit.

And while I’ve become estranged from my blogfather, as his true, not-very-conservative (or, rather, “conservative” that bears no relation to my own flavor of the movement) beliefs took over his presentation – I’ve honestly read The Daily Dish maybe twice in the last four years – I’ve always kept that notion in the back of my head; he’s this blog’s Dad.

And now, I’m done.  Sullivan shows us he’s working for the other side, in his rationalization for “endorsing” Ron Paul:  

I admire McCain in so many ways. He is the adult in the field, he is attuned to the issue of climate change in a way no other Republican is, he is a genuine war hero and a patriot, and he bravely and rightly opposed the disastrous occupation policies of the Bush administration in Iraq. The surge is no panacea for Iraq; but it has enabled the United States to lose the war without losing face. And that, in the end, is why I admire McCain but nonetheless have to favor Paul over McCain. Because on the critical issue of our time – the great question of the last six years – Paul has been proven right and McCain wrong. And I say that as someone who once passionately supported McCain’s position on the war but who cannot pretend any longer that it makes sense.

Read the whole thing, if only to pound a stake through the heart of whatever admiration you may once have had for the guy.

Hillary Clinton wraps herself…

…in the Second Amendment?

What else to make of the latest press release from Senator Clinton’s campaign, touting Senator Obama’s one-time support of “banning all handguns” as evidence that calls Mr. Obama’s “electability” into question?

Well, it’s a pleasure to welcome Mrs. Clinton to the Second Amendment side of the debate. It’s a new development; back in 2000, when Mrs. Clinton was running for Senate, she backed the “Million Mom March” for gun control, and, according to CNN, told the Newspaper Association of America, “We have to do more to stand up to those who refuse to believe the reality that guns do kill and that common-sense gun measures can make a difference.” When she ran for re-election in 2006, she earned a rating of “F” from the National Rifle Association’s Political Victory Fund.

Well, the news isn’t all “good”.  Indeed, it’s really a sign that Bill wasn’t the only out-of-control triangulator in the family.

Still…:

For some the gun issue is about the Constitution; for Mrs. Clinton, it’s apparently about “electability.” We’re less concerned about her motive than amused to see our senator attacking Mr. Obama from the right over the right-to-keep-and-bear-arms…here’s an example of the way in which the prospect of confronting voters in an election pulls a politician closer to a mainstream policy position.

At least until January of ’08…

If this is the best criticism the House GOP leadership can come up with – “they’re just as bad as we were” – then the national GOP’s problems may not be over…:

On Tuesday afternoon, House Minority Leader John Boehner lashed out at the Democrats who control Congress, accusing Speaker Nancy Pelosi of using strong-arm, partisan tactics to force through legislation without attempting to negotiate with GOP lawmakers. Of course, as Boehner himself acknowledged, the Democratic strategy has virtually mirrored Republican tactics when they controlled the House.

NPR host Robert Siegel asked the Ohio lawmaker about his pledge earlier this year that Republicans would work with Democrats in addressing issues important to the country: “What evidence of that has there been so far, since you’ve been leader?”

“Well, unfortunately, Robert, there hasn’t been any,” Boehner confided, although he insisted the unfriendly atmosphere in Washington was not the GOP’s fault. “I was hopeful that Speaker Pelosi wouldn’t make some of the mistakes that the Republican majority made by overreaching and going it alone. But what we’ve seen all year is an effort to overreach, to only consider what the Democrat majority wants to do.”

True as far as it goes – and I’ve loved the richness of the irony; when not in power, the Dems (and their media flak friends) decry “partisanship”; when they’re in office, it’s their way or the highway.

But Boehner…oh, my.  Blah.

Miss O’Hara touches on a bunch of things that matter – to me, anyway, and that really is the only litmus test on this blog – in this long, excellent post on religion and the Republican slate.

First, some housekeeping:

Now, I don’t consider myself an “evangelical”. It’s…there’s something screwy about it, namely that the Bible is buried underneath a bunch of self-help books and programs, not to mention lamentably rotten music.

Good Lord, yes.  That the religion of Bach and Handel is saddled with the musical narcotics the evangelical movement has foisted on us is a travesty that someone oughtta answer for, at least to temporal authority.

But I/we digress:

Mike Huckabee, though, is hurriedly being badged as the “Evangelical candidate”, getting what may be an endorsement from Dr. Dobson, and putting the lie to the conventional wisdom from, hmmm, two weeks ago that the evangelical vote had “matured” and was “finally” putting national defense over social issues.

Huckabee reminds me of Arne Carlson, in the sense that he’s “a Republican that the media and the left likes” – presumably because he’s unelectable or because his actual on-the-ground policies are pretty amenable to a big-government nannystater.

Any time the leftymedia starts beating the drum for a “conservative” – who, as better minds than I have reminded you, is a potemkin conservative anyway – it’s time to notice the hairs on the back of your head standing up.

K-Eck from Eckernet notes that Hillary’s planted answers might be actually better than her supporters’ sincere support:

Andrew Young, civil rights activists, apparently was making the argument for the Clintons being “more black” than Obama. And as justification for that he had this to say…

“He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack,” Young said of former President Clinton, drawing laughter from a live television audience.

Erhm – by that rationale, I’m more hispanic than Clinton…

I have no doubt that is true….and that’s just since he married Hillary. Although I’m not sure the sexual prowness is really a critical skill needed to be president.

Although it apparently doesn’t hurt with the “feminist” vote, if the former President’s record is any indication.

On a more serious note:

Probably more troubling is this…

Young went on to say that Obama needs a protective network that he currently lacks – a quality that could hurt him if he were to be elected. He said Hillary Clinton already has that kind of network, including her husband to back her up.

Heh, if everything you plan on doing is legal and ethical, how critical is that??

Without that extended Clinton network of hacks, lawyers and media sycophants, how will Obama survive?

I suppose White House travel office employees can breathe easier if Obie wins…

The all-important Penn endorsement is in the bag, and Kucinich is the big winner:

Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn endorsed Dennis Kucinich for president in San Francisco Friday.

Penn made what had been billed as a “major political statement” at San Francisco State University.

The event was organized by the S.F. State College Democrats and was paid for by Kucinich for President 2008.

NBC’s Domenico Montanaro said a source close to the Hollywood star confirmed Penn would endorse Kucinich.

Call in the dogs and pee on the fire. It’s all over.

Or is it “pee on the dogs and call in the fire?” I can never remember.

NBC Rejects Ad From Conservative Group

NBC has rejected a TV ad by Freedom’s Watch, a conservative group that supports administration policy in Iraq, that asks viewers to remember and thank U.S. troops during the holiday season.

NBC said it declined to air the ad because it refers to the group’s Web site, which the network said was too political, not because of the ad’s message.

“Anybody in the world who would look at this ad would come away with nothing other than we should thankful for their service,” Freedom’s Watch president Brad Blakeman said.

… 

The Freedom’s Watch Web home page contains links for visitors to demonstrate their support for the troops. It also contains a welcoming message that states: “For too long, conservatives have lacked a permanent political presence to do battle with the radical special interests groups and their left-wing allies in government.”

“We have a policy that prohibits acceptance of advertising that deals with issues of public controversy,” Wurtzel said. “This particular ad, in and of itself, is fine. It thanks the troops for their action overseas. We asked them to eliminate a URL address where a person is asked to contact elected officials and told not to cut and run on the war on terror.”

NBC rejected a previous Freedom’s Watch ad that addressed funding for the troops.

Good thing McCain/Feingold makes sure political advertising is fair and balanced, huh?

Jeff at TvM points us to this excellent, thought-provoking, and – in the end – intensely frustrating piece on the GOP electorate’s second look (real or imagined) at John McCain.

McCain is the greatest frustration in my political life at the moment.  At least week’s debate party, I remember sitting, watching McCain speak, and thinking “damn – I wish I could vote for the guy!”. 

The Economist piece touches on McCain’s pros – and there are very, very many (emphases added):

Mr McCain is such a familiar figure that it is easy to forget how remarkable he is. He fought heroically in Vietnam, spending more than five years as a prisoner-of-war, when many other politicians of his generation discovered, like Dick Cheney, that they had “other priorities”. He has repeatedly risked his political career by backing unpopular causes. [Remember that – we’ll be returning to it – Ed].

Mr McCain’s qualifications extend beyond character. Take experience. His range of interests as a senator has been remarkable, extending from immigration to business regulation. He knows as much about foreign affairs and military issues as anybody in public life. Or take judgment. True, he has a reputation as a hothead. But he’s a hothead who cools down. He does not nurse grudges or agonise about vast conspiracies like some of his colleagues in the Senate. He has also been right about some big issues. He was the first senior Republican to criticise George Bush for invading Iraq with too few troops, and the first to call for Donald Rumsfeld’s sacking. He is one of the few Republicans to propose sensible policies on immigration and global warming.

Again, we’ll return to that.

Mr McCain’s qualities are particularly striking if you contrast him with his leading rivals. His willingness to stick to his guns on divisive subjects such as immigration stands in sharp contrast to Mr Romney’s oily pandering. Mr Romney likes to claim that his views on topics such as gay rights and abortion have “evolved”. But they have evolved in a direction that is strikingly convenient—perhaps through intelligent design. Can a party that mocked John Kerry really march into battle behind their very own Massachusetts flip-flopper?

One can expect that Romney’s “soul-searching” would be closely examined.  As someone who’s “flip-flopped” – or, alternately, “found reason to change his mind” – on gun control, abortion, gay marriage, and liberalism itself in the past 25 years, I can truly respect both informed changes of mind as well as “sticking to one’s guns”.  And on many issues – the war, gun control, spending – McCain is on the side of the angels. 

So what’s wrong?

The Economist piece comes close, without quite hitting it:

So why have so many Republicans written off Mr McCain? There are two reasons—one bad, the other more reasonable. The bad reason is that they worry that he is not really one of them. Mr McCain has broken with Republican orthodoxy on everything from tax cuts to campaign finance to immigration. But look at his record more closely and you discover that he is a Republican in good standing. His fights with his fellow Republicans have been driven by his (usually justified) conviction that they were betraying Republican principles. He opposed Mr Bush’s tax cuts because he thought they would create a deficit. He led the charge against pork-barrel spending and lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff because he thought they undermined the principle of small government. Immigration is a genuine problem: he is seriously at odds with the bulk of his party on the issue, though many independents would go with his plan.

The Economist brushes past the whole “McCain-Feingold” thing as if it’s no big deal – and emphasizes McCain’s “republican” qualifications while ignoring the “conservative” ones that are so vital. To many of us who are driven by “first principles” first and foremost, McCain’s dodginess on McCain-Feingold (and the “Gang of 14” debacle) are offenses not against the party (with which many of us have a love-hate relationship at best) but against the principles we espouse…

…as, indeed, does McCain himself.  Albeit frustratingly inconsistently.

I want to like McCain.  If he were to repudiate McCain-Feingold, I’d be more than willing to give him a second look. 

But that’s a big “but”. 

To:    Messrs. Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, McCain

From: Mitch Berg

Re:    Aaaargh

Gentlemen,

Please use the occasion of the New Hampshire caucuses to put Governor Huckabee out of our misery and make the media shut the hell up about him.

The forces pulling Mike Huckabee to the fore in Iowa are fizzling 1,300 miles to the east, where, in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney holds strong on issues and personal attributes — and unthreatened by the religion issue he’ll try to lay to rest in a speech tomorrow.

Romney, a Mormon, is being challenged in Iowa by Huckabee, a Baptist minister whose support has soared particularly in some core Republican groups there — evangelical Christians, conservatives and strong abortion opponents. But each of those groups is less plentiful in the New Hampshire electorate, and far more supportive of Romney.

Thank you.

The other day, I sat in on a conference call with some people from the Norm Coleman campaign, as they rolled out their “Franken Flip-Flops On Iraq” video.

And, having interviewed the Senator on this very subject in the past, I jumped one step ahead of the local Sorosphere; playing the devil’s advocate, I asked the campaign staffer “How would the Senator answer charges that he, himself, has held contradictory positions on the war?”

The answer, of course…

…well, we’ll get back to that.  Because the counterspin has begun. 

Minnesota’s most reliable DFL mouthpieces (except Lori Sturdevant), MNPublius, bring exactly the spin I predicted:

Today Norm Coleman did what any guy afraid of his own record on an issue does: attack the other guy for his record. Coleman is trying his darndest to turn people’s attention away from his abysmal record on this war (he’s gone so far as to convert the whole frontpage of his campaign site to an ad for the webclip) that he’s, apparently, taken to editing together disparate clips from Franken’s past.

Let’s take a moment to make sure we’re clear, here; Coleman’s “abysmal record” has nothing to do with the complaints conservatives might have – about Coleman’s tepid stance on the surge, for example.  The conservative complaints are misguided, in my opinion; while I think Coleman was wrong on the surge (he’s a Senator trying to influence operational decisions, which I think is a poor idea, albeit his right to try as a citizen and legislator), he’s been strong on pretty much every other aspect of the war – including areas that much of the rest of  Congress is afraid to touch, like Iran, the UN, and the fallout of the Oil for Food program.

The closest Coleman’s come to a “flip flop” is his principled – and wrong – votes on the surge.  Mistakes happen.  I give him a “90”, and tell him to go forth and sin no more.

So given that MNPublius is a reliable barometer of the “very-left-but-not-crazy” wing of the DFL, let’s check out their defense of Franken:

Alright, so, the first claim is that Franken has both supported and opposed a timeline for withdrawal but if you take a look at the record you’ll find out (and I might point out that Franken hasn’t attempted to hide this) that his position in favor of a timeline wasn’t formed until late 2006. He has said repeatedly that he became convinced of the need for a timetable during the tumultuous year of 2006, with its waves of sectarian violence and the lack of political progress. He has since made a timeline part of his campaign platform on Iraq.

Now, I don’t necessarily look at “flip-flopping” – sometimes also known as “changing ones’ mind after a rational reappraisal” of something – as a bad thing.  It’d be against interest, for starters.  I “flip-flopped” on being a liberal, 20-odd years ago, after all.  If humans didn’t reappraise things based on evolving knowledge and experience, our hands would all be covered with third-degree burns from the hot stoves we continue testing with our fingers, lest we “flip flop” on trusting our eyes.

No, changing ones’ mind isn’t a bad thing.  Changing ones’ mind from a smart stance to a dumb one – like “giving the terrorists and militias a hard date when it’ll be safe to come out of the cellar and resume their depredations without fear of a US soldier putting a laser-guided missile up your rectum” – however, is.

The second claim here is that Franken has held multiple positions on cutting off funding for the war. This one’s pretty easy to debunk because the guy’s always held the exact same position: that Congress should force the President to establish an exit strategy as a condition of further funding. If the President refused to do so, he would be “cutting off the funding for the troops.” Since that’s not a move the President would make, it would force him to accept the terms of the funding – namely, withdrawal. Moreover, I think this is a plan that most Americans can and would support.

Leave aside that the latest polling shows otherwise (when in the echo chamber, it can take a while for the actual sound to change), that’d be another example of “changing ones’ mind to a stupid position”.

Franken has acknowledged that he never spoke out against the war before it began, and he has acknowledged becoming a vocal critic of the war since. He’s not afraid of his record but stands by it. Which is maybe why he doesn’t feel the need to counterpoint the Coleman spin machine and is maybe why Coleman feels the need to throw these distractions out into the web. I mean, if you had Coleman’s record would you do anything else?

The difference:

• Coleman has made erroneous tangents from a basic core of support for the war – a platform on which he was elected.
• Franken’s positions have evolved from “I don’t know yet” to “I’m going to cater to the nutroots’ most fevered delusions”.

That kinda sums it up, to me.

Over at True North…

…Chief links to the Coleman campaign’s video on Al Franken’s ever-changing positions on Iraq:

This new Coleman ad is a pretty tough one for Al Franken to get past without yet another confirmation/contradiction of 1/2 of Franken’s previous statements. And look for that one to be contradicted again in a few months.

The campaign’s point – Franken isn’t so much “flip-flopping” as he is trying to simultaneously triangulate to every possible audience, from the “Defeat Now!” nutroots of the DFL’s Highland Park base to the outstate and East Side pro-life, pro-gun, “my daughter is a Marine” wing of the party.

Charlie Quimby notes…:

In a mostly comic post about Democratic plants among questioners in the recent CNN/YouTube GOP debate, Mitch Berg says:

[1] Seriously – dimes’ll getcha dollars that the “gun nuts” were plants (no real conservative would toss a shotgun through the air), and the “bible-waver” was a performance artist and Kucinich supporter.

The “no real conservative” part is debatable as a way of ascertaining facts,

(also, it was a broad joke, but I digress)

but it wasn’t hard for me to check out Jay Fox to confirm Mitch’s supposition. He’s a film student who apparently thought he was submitting a comedy short.

Fox got laughs as well as howls of protest — from gun lovers and haters alike. And CNN got more egg on its screen.

Since the debate, I’ve had to change the filters and oil the bearings in my BS detector.  It got that much of a workout.

So not only was every single questioner [1] at Wednesday’s GOP debate a Clinton plant (to say nothing of CNN and YouTube owner Google being in the bag for the Democrats), but apparently every member of the hall staff, the catering staff, and the limo drivers that brought the candidates from the airport were also Clinton, Obama, Gravel or Edwards volunteers.

I’m waiting to see if Ron Paul might actually be a Clinton staffer.

 [1] Seriously – dimes’ll getcha dollars that the “gun nuts” were plants (no real conservative would toss a shotgun through the air), and the “bible-waver” was a performance artist and Kucinich supporter.  No, I have no evidence – but the fallout from this debate shows that not only can’t I make it up fast enough, it’d be futile to try.

…when I think all leftybloggers get their copy from the same centralized service.

Seriously.  Good example – this past few weeks, some leftybloggers have accuses some of us of “stalking the stalker” – Googling fact-checking certain leftybloggers who show an unseemly interest in us. 

And it’s not just local!  “Stalking” apparently now means “Googling lefties”:

Well, at least I’m assuming that’s the definition in the netroots handbook because Todd Beeton of MyDD today accused conservative blogger Michelle Malkin of stalking for daring to use Google to fact-check CNN.

Hm.  I’ve had so many liberal women I’ve dated (or thought about going out with) google me before meeting, I could make a Lifetime movie.