Learning From Past Mistakes

New RNC Chair Michael Steele did the talk show circuit this morning, and has presented the nation with his new vision for the Republican Party...except that it's the same as the current vision of the Republican Party.

I can't say this astonishes me. But does anyone out there feel like the reason the Republicans were just handed their electoral heads has a lot to do with their "failure to lead," Steele's stated reason?

It seems to me like they did rather too much leading, and most of it in direction I would categorize as "very wrong." No need to learn anything from that NYT map showing you with 5 states still in the Republican column, or the voices even from within the party suggesting you're in danger of becoming a regional rather than a national organization. Haven't you noticed how much your delegation has appreciated being included in governing decisions by President Obama this past week?

Enjoy your time in the wilderness. You might want to start getting comfortable.

Endangered Species, Republican Moderate Edition

Interesting but not surprising development from George Voinovich. As the article states, Voinovich will be 74 in 2010, and that is pretty old for someone seeking another six year term. It’s far too early to use this as any sort of indicator of Republican fortunes in the next round of congressional elections, of course. The eight hundred pound bear in the room hasn’t decided exactly what’s going to happen, so it’ll be good to know if we have a wall to hang curtains on before we head down to Penney’s to look at fabric swatches.

Voinovich has long been one of the Senate’s main moderate Republicans. It seems likely from the early maneuverings that the Republican Party is reacting to its electoral drubbings in 2006 and 2008 not by tempering their tone, but by going out of their way to embrace a new Christian, Southern, anti-immigrant, pro-war, pro-torture orthodoxy. A seat like Voinovich’s, in a swing state that wanders all over electorally, could be a real test for the soul of the Republican Party. Who the various factions back, and who comes out the winner will be very telling for what we can expect from the future.

Which begs the question, who will run for Voinovich’s seat? The current Democratic Governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, will be up for reelection in 2010. Perhaps he could be enticed to run, although he showed a real reticence to be dragged into national politics during the Democratic primary race. On the Republican side, I can’t think of anyone of a similar stature. Any suggestions?

More on the Republican Quagmire

The New Republic offers this thorough exploration of the multiple, mutually exclusive, critiques of the Bush administration and efforts to extrapolate lessons for the future of the Republican party.

Probably the best line is the entirety of the third page:

"What part of "overwhelming electoral defeat" does the GOP not understand?"

Then in the NYT, we have a story in which a group of Republicans decide that, “The moderate wing of the Republican Party is dead.”

I am not a member of any political party, but any regular reader of this blog has probably divined my not particularly concealed sympathies for the Left. That said, conservatism does have valuable contributions to make to American political discourse: fiscal restraint, self-reliance, local solutions to local problems, and personal freedom are all the traditional foundations of the conservative movement, at least as I understand it.

People calling for a party grounded on the model of the last 10 years, which so far as I can tell include: tax policies that enrich billionaires, rejection of science and a related unwillingness to acknowledge, let alone confront, a number of global crisis, a desire to cater to a coded "values" agenda, and a rejection of education and nuance at the expense of flag-waving mindless patriotism, may have strong partisans, but cannot command a majority- in short, the vision of the party espoused in the NYT article, seem determined to craft a party that cannot hope to command national office. The article today in which card-holding Republicans overwhelmingly support Palin in 2012 have a lot of ground to cover before we get around to another election, so should be taken with a good sized rock of salt.

While Palin et al lead the Republicans further and further away from electability, the nation suffers from a lack of people espousing the best traditions of conservatism, and producing the tension in policy-making that maintains moderate outcomes. Conservatives of the United States: there is still a place in the public forum for you. In fact, we need you. Let the moose hunters go their own way. They're going to anyway.

Bush League

As the McCain campaign's operators are finally free to turn on one another fully, the complete scope of Sarah Palin's...I struggle for the right word...unfitness to serve in high national office is emerging more fully.

This video from Fox, linked through TPM, runs the gamut. It suggests the Palin couldn't name the three countries involved in NAFTA. Believed Africa to be a nation, rather than a continent. And of course, couldn't explain the Bush doctrine to Charlie Gibson. Incredibly, Fox goes on to suggest that the McCain campaign can't really be faulted for this, because this level of ignorance in a state governor is inconceivable.

This longer clip from the same interview also discusses how, during the last two weeks, she would fly into what aides describe as "tantrums" upon seeing her morning press clippings, with items being thrown about the room and reducing at least one staffer to tears. It got so bad that McCain wouldn't allow her to do interviews on her own, actually curtailing her air time when he couldn't be there.

John McCain, RNC,right wing pundrity, et al: you nearly put this woman in the White House, behind a 72 year old man. Really, think about that for a moment.

Palin apparently returned to Alaska today, and was greeted by "dozens" of supporters chanting "2012." Watch that underwhelming video here. According to the NYT, she has been deluged with interview requests, but has so far been hiding from the media, not even appearing at work today.

Adding insult to injury, an RNC lawyer has been dispatched to Alaska to retrieve some of the 150k worth of clothing that apparently somehow found its way back to the frozen North with the governor. Read about this embarrassment here.

Palin's personal troubles aside, the Republican party seems to be on the edge of a vast wilderness if this, this, this, or this, story are at all correct.

The leadership struggles and infighting over who lost what for whom are all very nice, but the problem seems to run much deeper. Palin was far more popular on the campaign trail than McCain was. We all saw her campaign. Where, exactly, would Colin Powell fit in her worldview? Or Edmund Burke, ideological founder of conservatism, for that matter. I'm hardly the first to suggest it, but Palin isn't capable of even pretending to appeal to intellectual conservatives. Unless they happen to be moose hunters.

She is, truly, a fitting addition to the Bush league.

** Update **
On CNN, Palin claims these stories are products of rumor being spread by upset former staffers.

Having slept on this post, I'm not half inclined to wonder if she might actually be right on this one. Fox may have had a point- could she really have believed Africa to be a nation? Could anyone be that out of it?

My Republican Party

OK, so this is a little bit immature, not very objective, and makes only a minimal contribution to the Great National Debate.

On the other hand, I enjoy dark humor.

My Republican Party.

After all, the Pilgrims really didn't need a social safety net.

McCain Campaign Cracks Up, Sober Reflections upon Mortality Ensue

The collapse seems to have begun in earnest, with members of the various McCain/Palin factions jockeying for post-election position in the GOP civil wars that will be occupying us through the new year and beyond. Andrew Sullivan points to this analysis by George Stephanopoulos that has an interesting quote.

But some McCain camp insiders tell ABC News they simply couldn't put Palin out in front of the media any more than they did because she wasn't ready.

The Palin camp is fighting back, arguing that if the McCain campaign had just let Sarah Palin be Sarah Palin, she would have done just fine on her own.

While I’m by no means a huge fan of John McCain, I’d have to say I have an underlying sympathy for his version of events. There’s been zero evidence so far that Palin could have become ready no matter how much handling she’d had. The absurd position from Palin’s partisans that they were mistaken in not letting her be Palinesque enough is idiot. Can Palin have been any more Palin than she has in the last eight weeks, short of shooting a moose and communicating in grunts and expressive gestures? How deep can the Palin run? Has there been any point in the last two months where you’ve looked at the news and thought, “John McCain needs to let that young go getter Sarah Palin out here to speak her mind. Enough with her being a delicate, blushing flower, cowed by the grim old men of Washington!”? I have to doubt it.

Incidentally, when did George Stephanopoulos get so old? The picture of him on the page above makes him look like William Sanderson in Blade Runner. I guess it’s been a while since I remember him from the Clinton administration, but jeez.

Wow

According to Politico, RNC money originally destined for brand new Republican nominees running for seats is instead being directed at trying to salvage the election chances of incumbents. That’s pretty phenomenal. These are not the kind of decisions you want to be forced to make three weeks before an election.

Bailout Collapse

Looks like the bailout bill failed in the House. I’m not entirely sure what happens from here. Do they bring it back up for a vote? According to Marc Ambinder, more than 131 Republicans and 94 Democrats voted against. The Dow is dropping like a rock. That’s a pretty large block – I’m not sure that they can really bring this back from that.

Paul Kruman has said that the bill is sufficiently not terrible to be worth passing. It’s not exactly the second coming of the New Deal, but it’s what’s needed right now. If nothing else, it was a pretty remarkable step back from the original Paulson plan. Dodd and Frank were under some pretty tight constraints in what was politically doable, with the president and the Treasury secretary where they are.

The bill really had to have bipartisan support – Krugman talks about this above – because without it, the dissatisfied party can always go and hang a sign reading “$700 Billion Handout” around the other party’s neck. It seems that the Republican backbenchers didn’t feel like they can go home with this plan behind them. I guess we’ll see if they end up ruing that decision here in a month or so.

Reign in Hell

Daniel Larison answers a question I asked:

I think they might have avoided mentioning how beautiful Obama finds the Islamic call to prayer, I think they might have eschewed ever referring to his middle name, and I think they could have worked much more strenuously to stress how embarrassingly “pro-Israel” Obama’s positions on Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and the like have been. I take it for granted that his admirers and supporters want him to win, and I assume they are savvy enough to understand that imputing sympathy with Muslims is exactly what Obama’s opponents want people to believe about him, so I have never understood why they have been so keen to talk about those aspects of his life and family history that separate him from most Americans’ experience.

I think this reveals a few things about the two major parties, their approach to campaigning and the American public. Obama’s appeal to the rest of the world and his engagement with the outside world on a level deeper than “USA #1” sloganeering isn’t a bug, it’s a feature for progressives. The idea that the Obama campaign should have actively tried to hide that to appease a group of bigots who are unlikely to vote for him is absurd. As someone who currently lives outside the US, I can say that people here in Eastern Europe are much more excited about Obama than McCain – and with good reason. Obama at least gives the rest of the world the courtesy of pretending that they have cultures worthy of respect. And as a side note, I live close to a mosque, and the call to prayer is beautiful. If Obama loses the election because of people and attitudes like the ones Daniel discusses, it doesn’t have anything to do with Obama and his supporters.

In campaigning, Democratic candidates tend to be more principled than Republicans. (“Republicans,” as opposed to “conservatives”) Look at the campaigns this year. Democrats are always knocked for being weak and on the defensive, because Republicans are more than happy to lie, slander and play political hardball. This is often presented as an admirable trait. When progressives say they like Obama in part because he has an understanding of and even an appreciation for Muslim culture it’s not because we think that it’s going to help Obama get elected. It’s because that’s what we think. The idea of hiding that because it would make Obama more electable is absurd and distasteful to me. Now, could this cause Obama to lose the election? I suppose. I think that would be a real tragedy for the country. But I would much, much prefer that Obama and his supporters run a campaign where they don’t try and pull a white curtain across their candidate’s problematic characteristics.

I don’t think that the Democrats are the holders of all good thoughts, or that the Republicans are simply cynical power addicts (I think they’re much more than just simple cynical power addicts), but clearly they don’t have a problem with naked cynicism when it suits their purposes. Progressives have only recently had much say in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Up until Bush, most progressives were content to say, “I’m taking my ball and going home” when candidates didn’t carry through on promises (see Nader, Ralph). Evangelicals are much more closely tied to their party’s powerbase and are hence much more reluctant to leave the coalition, even though it’s not as if the GOP has ever followed through on all those sweet nothings they whispered into Christians’ ears before taking advantage of them.

What it comes down to is: where progressives see a qualification, others see a liability. What is disgusting about the whole thing – even more than the thought that people would not vote for a candidate who is not Muslim based on how they feel about Islamic culture – is the fact that there are people out there willing to take advantage of those people to gain power. I think we already know that quite a few Republicans are familiar with Milton.

Same Old Song and Dance

E. J. Dionne has a good editorial dealing with a topic that I’ve been thinking about for the past few days: the Republican habit of playing the refs. As Dionne discusses, you can’t say it hasn’t been a successful strategy for them. With the pick of Palin as McCain’s running mate, it’s clear that there were two primary considerations: one, evangelicals love her. They’re all over the moon with the pick, and are more likely than not voting for Palin, not McCain, a man they never really loved and whom they know is not really one of them. So, mission accomplished on that score.

The second issue is that by picking someone that the base loves, and given the sexual and social stereotypes and traditions of our society, McCain and Steve Schmidt can come out and denounce any instance of the media or a Democrat questioning or attacking Palin as not showing the proper “respect and deference.” Questions are too hard? How does it look when big, mean Joe Biden or Barack Obama are attacking a helpless woman? She has five kids! She’s against earmarks! She doesn’t have to go in front of a “hostile” “liberal” media. And why should she? The Republicans only really feel comfortable when they’re on (or appear to be on) the defensive. The gays are attacking marriage – just like your marriage! The ACLU is trying to stop you from teaching your children to be a Christian!

This Bridge to Nowhere nonsense has been debunked time and time again. That certainly hasn’t stopped Palin and McCain from repeating it over and over. What does the media do? They simply throw their hands up and say, “Well, isn’t that an interesting argument?”

Working the refs has been a very successful strategy for Republicans for a long time now. At some point you’d think that media outlets would stop being cowed about helping to disseminate and to obscure completely false claims. They have on Republican and Democrat “analysts” all the time – they pay these people. You’d think that they’d eventually stop throwing money at people who repeat demonstrably false claims. Or would that be bad for ratings?

The Race in Montana

The Republican candidate for Senate from Montana, Bob Kelleher, is an eighty-five year old man, a perennial candidate for office under the Republican, Democratic and Green parties, believes that the three branches of government should be replaced by a parliamentary system based on England’s, studied to be a Catholic priest before deciding he couldn’t be celibate and he is profiled in a NY Times piece today.

The article also discusses the problems Republicans are having in finding candidates to run in various Senate races, such as against Sen. Frank Lautenberg in New Jersey and Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas, who is running unopposed.

I personally don’t wish to see the Republicans pick up any Senate seats this year, but I think it’s interesting the way party systems become so entrenched in local government. Max Baucus has been the Democratic Senator from Montana for thirty years. That’s a long time. The Republican Party in Montana seems to be very unhappy with Kelleher’s primary victory (he’s been barred from speaking at the convention). The article doesn’t discuss how Kelleher was able to win the primary this year, and I’d be interested to hear it. If this guy won, what were the other candidates like?

While the presidential race is stable, with Obama consistently leading McCain by a small margin, down-ticket Republicans are having an extraordinarily bad year of it.

Hip to be Square

I felt like this was too good not to post over here. I was reading Obsidian Wings this morning and publius posted a link to a Wall Street Journal article by Mark W. Davis about a Republican Policy Committee produced CD (and podcast) called Freedom Songs: The American Empowerment Agenda, a CD with spoken word discussions of Republican talking points.

From the Journal article:

I have on my desk a CD sent out this spring from the Republican House Policy Committee. Fat, 1970s lettering bears the title, "Freedom Songs." The cover image of the CD package is a sepia-tone photo of Teddy Roosevelt.

Open it up and you are treated to photos of Warren G. Harding staring into the horn of a crank phonograph, Herbert Hoover listening to a wireless, and a glum-looking Calvin Coolidge simply glowering at a camera. In an accompanying letter, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan writes that the CD includes "riffs by Dr. Russell Kirk," as well as "the pounding rhythm section of the Austrian School of Economics."

Kitsch is best when it’s unintentional. This CD seems to come from the same realm of boneheaded, ham-handed obliviousness as the kind of 1950s hygiene videos they used to mock on MST3K.  But what really interests me about this whole thing is, just how bad can Republican youth outreach become? Does the Republican Policy Committee not have any interns to run this stuff past? The Democratic Party has captured my generation's vote almost by default, without having to try too hard – the Republican Party has just made itself too unlikable to almost anyone under thirty-five who wasn’t homeschooled.   Part of it obviously has to do with the Republican emphasis on culture war politics in the last couple of elections. But, short of kicking out the fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party, is there anything they can do to win back the youth vote for this generation?

They could at least put some Ted Nugent songs on there. The kids still like the Motor City Madman, right?