Just An Idea: Maybe Your Moderates Could Try Being Moderate

Chris Cillizza, "In GOP circles, some wonder whether the party needs to lose big to eventually win". March 4

THE 2012 Republican Presidential primaries will be remembered, if at all, for having taught us any number of things we already knew.

Rush Limbaugh is a human cloud of flatulence. Rick Santorum is a 10th century religious lunatic. Newt Gingrich is to serious politics what Newt Gingrich is to academic history.

Nobody likes Mitt Romney.

Of course the preeminent truth is that the whole goddam party is insane, and that the Press, having ignored the over-abundance of evidence of this for a generation, now finds itself incapable of dealing with this. Aside from the customary writing of scripts designed to encompass all such facts as aren't truly inconvenient. Those, as always, get ignored.

So this is the campaign which began with the artificial groundswell of popular wrath known as Teabagging. To my knowledge no one ever asked what exactly the "grassroots" were so worked up about, other than the fact they'd roundly and deservedly lost an election. That turd floated so long as it was the only Republican hope for the mid-terms, but the fact that it might mean Sarah Palin was the nominee alerted a few worrywarts who'd actively campaigned for her to become Vice President of the United States just months before.

Which led to the desperate casting of Indiana Governor Mitch "Ronald Reagan Without The Charm, Or The Stature" Daniels as the Big Brained Savior of the Big Brained Republican Economics Club. Which lasted right up until the time Mitch (Or Haley Barbour--there's an opportunity lost--or Chris Christie, or Paul Ryan) would have had to become serious candidates. Recall that, at the time, each man's refusal was excused as personal decisions which disappointed a lot of potential supporters, and not a harbinger of Sarah Palins II, III, IV, V, and VI.

Trump. Bachmann. ("Tested by Fire".) Perry. Cain. Santorum. We'll leave out Newt's minute at the Top, even though he has the coveted Palin If It Can't Be Me Sorta-Endorsement; Newt is sui generis. The rest are just as cracked, and all but Santorum as illiterately ill-prepared, as La Palin herself. Anybody really believe that the emergence of Candidate Daniels would have changed that dynamic?

When was it, actually, that it began to dawn on the bright thinkers that there was trouble a'brewin'? Not when Bachmann was taken seriously. Not when Rick Perry rode into town. And both were well-known as imbeciles long before they demonstrated that anew, in debate form.

In “Batman Begins” — the 2005 movie about the origins of the caped crusader — there is a group of villains who believe the city of Gotham is beyond saving and that the only way to fix it is to first destroy it.

Y'know, nobody ever asks whether "having a pundit class whose frame of reference exceeded pop culture" could do anything for us.

As the Republican presidential race has worn on (and on), there are some within the party wondering — privately, of course — whether the only way for the party to face the growing divide between its moderate and conservative wings is for the 2012 election to be its Gotham moment.

What "moderate" wing? If Mitt Romney had embraced his record he'd'a been run out of town in '08. Romney isn't the "moderate" candidate. He's the establishment candidate.

“I’d personally enjoy all the ‘we can’t nominate another Republican In Name Only’ crowd getting a stomping by an incumbent with an 8.5 unemployment rate,” said one senior party strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, warning of nominating a strictly conservative candidate like former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.

Granting, arguendo, the existence of "moderate" Republicans, on the grounds that there are still some left who are just sane enough to realize Rick Santorum is unelectable--even if they won't say so out loud--th' fuck is a "stomping" supposed to accomplish? Why should it do more than the stomping of "Moderate John" McCain? "Moderate" Republicans haven't nominated a winning candidate since Eisenhower. The lips of the modern "moderate" Republican are still firmly attached to the tailpipe of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the World's Most Unpardonably Successful Anti-fluoridationist. Why should anyone in that blasted landscape listen to them?

The GOP’s problem, according to party insiders, is most evident when it comes to the issue of immigration. All of the major Republican presidential candidates — with the exception of former House speaker Newt Gingrich — have largely rejected the idea of a path to citizenship for the 11 million people in the United States illegally.

That view has contributed to a broader sense among Hispanic voters that the Republican Party is not a friendly place for them. In the 2008 election, President Obama won the Hispanic vote nationwide with 67 percent of the vote. Given that more than half of the total growth in U.S. population over the past decade came in the Hispanic community, Republicans simply can’t afford to keep losing this largest minority group 65 percent to 35 percent and have a fighting chance of winning national elections in four or eight years’ time.

For those of you just tuning in, or exiting a coma, yes, this is the very same Republican party which threw out African-Americans--literally, not just figuratively--by dissolving all the Reconstruction-era Republican organizations across the south in 1964, and which has been milkin' that same bull ever since. It's the same one which is currently involved in a national effort to obstruct voting by poor people. It's the one where the "moderates"--see McCain, "Desperate John"--are the ones who've flip-flopped on the issue. Now a fast-growing Hispanic minority is an opportunity you're not taking full advantage of? Maybe you people should come out in favor of contraception. In selected drinking water supplies.

The question many Republican strategists are asking themselves at the moment is whether — in 2012, 2016 or even 2020 — it’s worth taking one step back in order to, hopefully, take two steps forward.

GOP 2020: That Shit-Stain Was There When We Got Here.

Two steps forward to what? You've had thirty years at least to do something about this. Your brand, clearly, consists of pushing hot buttons for votes, not offering a vision of leadership. You're not one lesson, or two, away from righting the ship. You're forty years off course.

That's Entertaintment!

I'VE no idea how many lifetimes it's going to take Rick Santorum to figure stuff out, but here's a leg up (since I'm assuming legs are something which he'll find in short supply for the next Kali Yuga or two): if Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer, then everyone in the news business is an entertainer (I'm willing to stipulate that, Rick). So either no one is responsible for the things he says, or everyone is. You don't get to insist that "The Media" is after you for "being a conservative" if Rush is free to say whatever fucked-up-thing is echoing in his skull at the moment. Sure, sure, you said that because neither you nor Mitt dare criticize him outright; yes, that must be a heavy Cross to bear. But you said it, so that should be the principle you're stuck with.

As for people who supposedly know better, here's Weigel:

But let's be clear about what this is. Limbaugh is a private citizen who has not endorsed any Republican candidate. (The closest he's come is praise for Santorum, which the candidate quotes on his campaign lit.) There is not a pressing public interest here. There's only the advantage that Democrats have carved out, by moving the discussion on birth control from the conscience exemption to the existential reasons why conservatives might want to limit birth control. The complex is winning this one.

Makes you wish that Weigel would acknowledge that he's just an entertainer, too.

Sure, sure, it's Slate, whose corporate mission is to make sure no one could possibly give a fuck, thereby reducing the number of complaints they receive.

But what about Weigel? "Conservatives" like this were pretending that Limbaugh was "just an entertainer" long before Santorum grabbed it like a drowning man grabs anything that floats by. They've gotten to pretend that the racism, misogyny, comet-induced-panics, and drunken high-school-yahoo one-liners weren't really their party, just a set of distasteful rituals in flyover country, full of Sound and Fury and deficient in Dentition. Now, not so much. The supposed uproar over how intractable the party has "suddenly" become is just the recognition by a few well-seated pundits that the louts they excused for decades--because loutishness elected a helluva lot more Republicans than the columns of George Eff Will and David Brooks combined--have wised up to the con.

But what about Weigel? I've given him the partial excuse of galloping Reagantotism in the past; this is the way it has always been, post-Nixon, the duration of Weigel's sentience, and it's not his fault it's never been questioned. But it is his fault that he can't be bothered to look around on his own. Limbaugh said something (yet again) that's outside the bounds of decent rhetoric. I don't care; I do the same myself, for a lot less money. But fucking own up to it. Limbaugh didn't "give the Democrats a chance to turn the 'debate' from a conscience exemption onto contraception". He blurted out what's been behind the argument all along. Not for the news cycle; since Roe. He underlined the fact that there's no pretension to truth at all behind the cries of religious persecution. Limbaugh is the Catholic Church with Tourette's.

The fact that the "Democratic media complex" (read: Kos, Media Matters, and Think Progress) object to it, and seek to disseminate it more fully, has nothing to do with anything. We're all left to understand that Weigel, or Brooks, deplores the abhorrent attack on an innocent woman--whose crime, incidentally, was to be correct, and to wish to make the case that contraceptive drugs have other health uses than preventing pregnancy--so he can proceed to uncover the real story: that Democrats are making something of it.

Th' fuck does someone want to do this? "Rush Limbaugh is a private citizen?" So are the Koch Brothers. So is Dick Armey, and so are the literally dozens of grammar-challenged powdered-wig mummers Weigel's been trying to make into a political movement for three years. Only Limbaugh also has a huge radio-blather empire. And it's not exactly non-partisan.

You Have My Most Middling Sympathies

Jonathan Weisman, "After Many Tough Choices, The Choice To Quit". February 29

Dana Millbank, "A moderate's lament". February 29

IF you have tears, prepare to almost shed them now. Or ask your Doctor if a half-empty bottle of Restasis® is right for you:

WASHINGTON — The looming Senate vote on a Republican plan to give employers the right to withdraw health care coverage based on religious and moral convictions put Senator Olympia J. Snowe in a tough but familiar position: weighing her own views as a Republican centrist against pressure from fellow Republicans to support the party position.

A longtime advocate of increasing access to health care and one of a dwindling number of Republican backers of abortion rights, Ms. Snowe believed that the language was too broad and could have unintended consequences. At the same time, an embattled Republican colleague, Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, had publicly backed it, and a “no” vote from Ms. Snowe, of Maine, could isolate him as he sought to fend off anger in his heavily Democratic state.

Dear Lord, what have we done? Forcing a United States Senator to choose between voting her nit-picky conscience and chucking it all to symbolically aid the reelection efforts of a fellow Republican from a nearby state? Are we monsters?

Boy, there goes my beautiful dream, that someday in my lifetime the US Senate would be composed of Red State religious lunatics and Blue State moderate Republicans, and we could finally get something done.

with each day on Capitol Hill comes more evidence that the place is broken beyond repair — and that the last remaining vestiges of sense and moderation are fleeing. The latest blow came on Tuesday, when Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of the Republican Party’s last moderates, said she wouldn’t seek a fourth term because she sees no imminent change in “the partisanship of recent years.”

Also heading for the door is much of the remaining core of Senate moderates: Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas; independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut; and Democrats Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia. After that kind of exodus, Bennet will be one of the last reasonable lawmakers still standing. “I think that it should be a real wake-up call to people here,” he said. “There are a number of folks who don’t want to come here and participate in the dysfunction.”

This lament, by the way, is brought to you by Dana Millbank, whose regular job is piloting a clown car for the Washington Post.

One: what is losing Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and the late lamented Evan Bayh, compared to living in a society where those five are described as "moderate"? I'm really supposed to be excited because Hutchinson (R-Exxon Mobil) is pro-choice (and thus "principled")? I'm supposed to be aghast at the prospect of three more dilatory, war-flogging (and thus "principled") Democrats (I'm sorry, two Democrats and a guy who got lost on his way to the Knesset) who managed to block single payer, the solution to a major social and economic problem in this country, for the sake of their friends (and wives' employers) in the insurance and pharmaceutical businesses, being "forced" to join Evan Bayh on the sidelines, in the boardrooms, and at FOX? Somebody show me the major legislation any of these bozos crafted. Somebody show me the major legislation they proposed, only to be cruelly overpowered by rabid partisanship. All five ought to be thanking their lucky stars for our dysfunctional politics, which allowed mediocrities like themselves to set themselves up for life swapping tax breaks and special treatment for "campaign" contributions and a sinecure to be named later.

(Jim Webb, on the other hand, seems a decent and thoughtful fellow. But Webb really made it clear in 2008 that he wasn't going to be a career Senator. Snowe may be a step up from her fellow retirees, and an actual sponsor of real-world legislation, but is her real problem with the "tone" in Washington, or the constant buzzing her own party has been emitting since 1964?)

Which brings us to Two: th' fuck did these people imagine they were going? Were they informed ahead of time that the Senate is the "deliberative" body? Isn't that at least covered at Orientation? For fuck's sake, all but Nelson (and Bayh) sat in judgement of William Jefferson Clinton, and none got so disheartened at the tone of that he hung up his galoshes. None of them has spent an hour of adult life living in an America that wasn't politically divided. All are old enough to remember the Civil Rights movement firsthand. All the males (except Bayh) are old enough to have escaped service in Vietnam, which, of course, they atoned for by voting unlimited funds for Iraq. This country's divided, like it or no; that's reflected--as it's supposed to be--in our Senate.

You ask me, the problem is that we aren't divisive enough, that an entire current of political thought is largely unrepresented in the Congress, namely, that of people who don't game the system, and who think things ought to be fair. When we're pillorying them in the Senate out of excess partisanship it'll at least mean we have some.

And tell me, who gives a fuck if Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil used to have a beer after hours? Only people who're warm and satisfied with the results of thirty years of Reaganism.

Which brings us, of course, to Three: the Republican party comprises the criminally insane, the merely criminal, and the religiously mazed. Untreated, ignored, faux-balanced--let alone rewarded--this has, to no one's surprise except people who earn their livings working in government, or watching and reporting on it, merely grown louder and uglier. The Democratic party won sweeping electoral victories in 2006 and 2008, based largely on the public's wish that this would put a stop to such excesses. (This is ample evidence, where none was needed, that the American public doesn't pay near enough attention.)

It didn't. The new Democratic majority quickly reassured nervous markets that it would never do anything so radical as to tax wealthy people again (the one aspect of the Gentlemanly, Peaceful, and Respectful 50s no one wants to return), or treat war crimes and high-level profiteering as moral enormities on par with blow-job reception; thus reassured, and unfettered for yet another decade, the markets responded by looting the world economy.

This is what the lamenters lament. The All-in-Good-Fun partisanship of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. The days when a man, and only a man, could clap Strom Thurmond or Jessie Helms on the back in bonhomie, without worrying about some internet riffraff bringing up their voting records. The days when the Congress could just laugh and shrug at Iran/Contra or the S&L disaster. It very well might be that it would take more Evan Bayhs to bring those days back. Or the last Ice Age, for that matter. I would like to point out to people who think that way that we in Indiana managed to find another lackluster Republican Lobbyist/Senator to take his place without too much fuss. Now please explain to me why, if you could snap your fingers and make the Senate more efficient, you wouldn't prefer to snap your fingers and make it ten times smarter instead?

Me, on the other hand, well, my one regret when people start gurgling this nonsense is that I have only two hands to clasp my wallet with.

Look, Dave, I Know Things Are Desperate Over There, But If You've Decided To Tell The Truth At Least Ease Into It, Huh?

David Brooks, "The Possum Republicans". February 27

AFTER all, sudden exercise kills more sluggards and lay-a-beds than not-exercising does:

Politicians do what they must to get re-elected. So it’s not unexpected that Republican senators like Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch would swing sharply to the right to fend off primary challengers.

As Jonathan Weisman reported in The Times on Sunday, Hatch has a lifetime rating of 78 percent from the ultra-free market Club for Growth, but, in the past two years, he has miraculously jumped to 100 percent and 99 percent, respectively. Lugar has earned widespread respect for his thoughtful manner and independent ways. Now he’s more of a reliable Republican foot soldier.

Thanks for the excuse to bring up Lugar, who's now just about caught up with Mitch Daniels' ad expenditures during the 2008 primary season. Of course Mitch didn't have a primary challenger. He didn't have Citizens United, either, and the ability to fob off expenses on the fucking National Chamber of Commerce. Officially, I mean.

Fifty-some years in politics and Lugar absolutely freaked to be opposed by some nobody Teabagger. This tells you all you need to know. It certainly tells you more than Brooks' column, excepting the unintentional revelations.

So that we in Indiana are now entering our third? seventeenth? month of Dick Lugar campaign ads which run something like this: I'm Dick Lugar, and I hate that black guy in the White House as much as you do! And I've been as dilatory and obstructionist about it as anyone! Pipeline!

This is Dick Lugar, The Oldest Surviving Scam in the US Senate. And what's more, it's the real Dick Lugar, Dave. The "respected and thoughtful" Lugar is a canard, and the "independent" Lugar is a Fucking Lie. He moved to the Senate from being Nixon's Favorite Mayor. That only qualifies one as a "moderate" by today's whacked-out standards. He's voted the party line for forty years. Absolutely reliably. One of his Obama-bashing ads--which is, come to think of it, the only kind he has, other than the one that bashes his Teabagger opponent for daring to question him--says he "Sponsored a Balanced Budget Amendment Seventeen Times." Yeah, and voted for deficit spending thirty-five times.

Dave, if it gives you a sad to see Dick Lugar, Octogenarian Wingnut Fellator, you either haven't been paying attention, or you've lost whatever ability to tell reality from fantasy you began with.

Still, it is worth pointing out that this behavior is not entirely honorable.

Not entirely honorable? Saying things to get elected may--may--be thought necessary, but nothing about it is honorable.

But, of course, this is exactly what has been happening in the Republican Party for the past half century. Over these decades, one pattern has been constant: Wingers fight to take over the party, mainstream Republicans bob and weave to keep their seats.

Republicans on the extreme ferociously attack their fellow party members. Those in the middle backpedal to avoid conflict. Republicans on the extreme are willing to lose elections in order to promote their principles. Those in the mainstream are quick to fudge their principles if it will help them get a short-term win.

'Scuse me, but would you be the same David Brooks who "suddenly" began looking for astroturfed common ground with the Teabaggers the minute their shit began to stick?

In the 1960s and ’70s, the fight was between conservatives and moderates. Conservatives trounced the moderates and have driven them from the party. These days the fight is between the protesters and the professionals. The grass-roots protesters in the Tea Party and elsewhere have certain policy ideas, but they are not that different from the Republicans in the “establishment.”

This recap of Republicans tossing out moderates in the 60s and 70s brought to you by David Brooks, Moderate Republican since 1980.

And this umpteenth attempt to portray the Teabaggers as some sui-generis "grass-roots" "protest" movement, and not the province of the Dick Armey/ Koch Brothers "wing" of Mr. Brooks' party, is as fulla shit as the last three years of attempts have been (see Weigel, David, career of).

The big difference is that the protesters don’t believe in governance. They have zero tolerance for the compromises needed to get legislation passed. They don’t believe in trimming and coalition building. For them, politics is more about earning respect and making a statement than it is about enacting legislation. It’s grievance politics, identity politics.

Of course, the professional politicians don’t want to get in the way of this torrent of passion and resentment. In private, they bemoan where the party is headed; in public they do nothing.

As opposed to the "moderate" "conservative" voices at the New York Times, who snipe about it just enough to keep what they imagine as their credibility intact.

All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lamenting how the party has grown more and more insular, more and more rigid. This year, they have an excellent chance to defeat President Obama, yet the wingers have trashed the party’s reputation by swinging from one embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Bachmann, Trump, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.

You'll forgive me; I try to get through every David Brooks column, but my memory ain't what it was. When did Brooks complain about this before it all but capsized his party's planned Victory Parade 2012? Where'd he say it plainly? Where'd he call Sarah Palin an unqualified buffoon? Snarking about Arizona while being a reliable dispenser of Republican talking points for the PBS audience doesn't qualify, any more than being against everybody else's nuclear arsenal makes Dick Lugar a humanitarian. This shit comes up because you're losing. The Republican party has been making you look like an idiot ever since St. Ron said trees cause pollution. You cannot possibly have missed it, unless maybe Mark Shields really is the only "opposition" voice you ever hear. Oh, his and Joe Lieberman's.

Really, all this time as a "principled" "conservative" who winked at the rabid racists of the base at election time, secure in the knowledge that you weren't actually one of them, all those Burke weekends dreaming up snappier slogans to get the rabble to Vote Aristo, and now you're beginning to realize that actions have consequences? And now you wanna know why your brand of well-born party official didn't take on Rush Limbaugh earlier? The way you did: the measured snark that none of his listeners would ever hear, or get if they did? They at least have jobs to lose; you've got a sinecure. When did you speak honestly and openly about the culture wars (oh, you're sort of for gay marriage and reproductive rights, provided the wind blows your cloudy pronouncements just right), let alone speak sense about global climate change, energy policy, banking reform, campaign reform, or any of the other crackpot schemes you "reasonable Republicans" need to keep the spigot turned on? Fer chrissakes, you don't like the Rabid Right, now that it may cost you an election? You gotta set the Wayback Machine for a lot earlier than five years ago to kill it in its cradle.

Charm School

The Great and Small White Hope.

Dan Balz, "Governors see risks from tone, length of GOP nomination fight". February 26

Philip Rucker, "Mitt Romney at Daytona 500: 'I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners' ". February 26

Nia-Malika Henderson, "Santorum presses culture wars attack". February 26

SOMEONE at Wonkette, and I apologize for not writing it down immediately, asked recently if anyone else had been struck by the notion that Rick Santorum, faced with the prospect of actually being at the top of national Republican polls, had decided to do his damnedest to lose the thing.

Seems as good an explanation as any.

To me the twin mysteries of the 2012 Republican sweepstakes are these: 1) when did Republicans become so anti-Republican? and 2) why do people keep going to Mitch Daniels for quotes?

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said the president remains highly vulnerable because of the economy, despite some recent improvements. Once the GOP contest is over, he said, the Republican nominee will have plenty of opportunities to make his case.

“I think a lot of the miniature issues and squabbles and supposed stumbles of today will be long forgotten,” he said.

This, take it from me, is what you always get from Daniels in public: a brimming bowlful of mush, thoughtfully predigested for you.

I know, they're all trying to say "Barack Obama" as many times as they can now, because their own choices suck. Just like in 2008, 2004, and 2000. But when did "We're not Barack Obama!" become the Republican brand? (I know, "We're not Black" has been for ages, but that's another story.)

Why do they hate their candidates? Mitt Romney has demonstrated over and over again that he's the pure essence of Reaganism: self-satisfied, wealthy bubble boy, devoid of fellow feeling, and willing to say anything the Yahoos wanna hear in order to grab the reins of power. Sure, sure, "I may not rank among the most ardent of NASCAR aficionados" might seem a trifle stiff, but what possible objection is there to "some of my best friends own racing teams"? Unless friends is too much of a stretch.

Santorum? He's the most risibly "honest" candidate since Goldwater. Sure, we've got to put "honest" in quotes, because, like any public religious loudmouth he's a liar and a sexual psychopath, but still, didn't the Republican party worship the fact that George W. Bush "never read the polls [sic]"? Santorum has zeroed in on the real core of the Republican party, and told everyone else to go to Hell, literally. What's the problem? Sure, it exposes that whole "Teabaggers are fiscal conservatives, and not interested in the old-fashioned Culture War thing" routine, but who besides Dave Weigel believed that?

Daniels and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, often cited as possible late entrants, said Sunday that they have no interest in the role.

Christie, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” twice said he does not want to enter the contest. “I’m with Governor Romney,” he said. “And one of the things people know about me is that when I make up my mind, it pretty much stays made.”
Daniels reiterated his long-standing position that he will not run. “I haven’t played any games with anybody,” he said in an interview. “Nothing has changed.”
Still, he acknowledged that the nomination battle has kept the possibility of a late entrant alive.

“The fact that no one has sewn it up like previous cycles means it’s a relevant question,” said Daniels, who is neutral about the race. “It wouldn’t have been a relevant question in previous cycles. This one’s different in so many ways.”

Yeah. Because your party's had it in so many ways. Just not in any ways which causes any of you shills, mouthpieces, and privateers to admit that something's seriously wrong. And not in ways that prevent you from having a 50% chance of getting power, and a 100% chance that whoever does get power will help you stay in the game. By god, I hate to admit it, but it was the people suckered by your "grassroots" Teabagger routine who came closer to changing our politics than anyone since the '68 Democratic convention. Found a shallow grave, didn't they?

Cast that Giant Brain around for a minute, Mitchkin. Climb down from the Ego Train (wait till the Redcap shows up with the kiddie steps) and look. They're talking about you and Chris Christie as the party's saviors. And you presume to lecture the rest of us with apocalyptic nightmares?

The Difference Between God And Democrats Is That God Makes Use Of Historians

Laura Vozzella and Anita Kumar, "Nitty-gritty knocked Va. abortion bill off the fast track". February 23

OKAY, so, far be it from me to fart in the crowded elevator of delirious triumphalism rising amidst a temporary 5% reduction in the level of anti-abortion insanity in this country, but someone really should point out how defenders of reproductive freedom lost this battle four decades ago, how they continue to lose it today, and that celebrating small victories only makes sense if you're a ragtag band of insurgents or a hapless sports franchise.

So when the measure came up for a vote in the Senate on Jan. 31, Barker and Northam raised the issue during the floor debate — but delicately. They used the words “transvaginal” and “internal.” But they didn’t use startling terms such as “vaginal penetration” and “state-sponsored rape,” which eventually came to dominate the debate.

Mindful of the teenage Senate pages sitting in the chamber, Barker said, they wanted to be sensitive with their language….

On the Senate floor, Howell had not been explicit about the intrusive nature of the ultrasound. “I thought I was being brave by saying ‘digital rectal,’ ” she said.

But Howell came to understand that some of her Senate colleagues failed to grasp how much the type of ultrasound in question was like the probing she’d proposed for men.

“I don’t think they understood what kind of ultrasound they were talking about,” she said. “I think they thought it was a mini-massage and not something approaching rape. People are squeamish about using words like ‘vagina,’ but in this case, it was necessary for people to understand how invasive this bill is.”

What's the forced medical-fetishist invasion of thousands of Virgina vaginas when the delicate ears of some teenaged pages are at stake?

Th' fuck? How many times did wingnut Congressmen read "What Homosexuals Do" into the public record? (I grant you that many of them were a lot better informed about the average teenaged page's sexual sensitivities than you folks seem to be.)

When have the anti-rights crusaders shown the slightest inclination to reticence? When has a concern for tender young feelings stopped them?

This began forty years ago; it began when the same side which had fought for the only reasonable solution to the question--that reproductive health is a matter for the individual to decide, not for the Law--became deferential to the "ethical" concerns of others, shrank from criticizing the Catholic hierarchy, and allowed monstrous assaults on the English language such as "Right to Life" and "unborn child" to be perpetrated without push-back. ("Choice", children, entered the game quite late.) We are suffering Fools these days because the line was not drawn clearly then, because the extremism of self-appointed spokesmen--emphasis on the "men"--for dead Bronze Age carpenters was never pointed out, because there was a complacency about Constitutional law trumping the screaming mania of licensed beggars and tax-free pederasts everywhere.

It didn't work, it doesn't work today, yet the side with right on its side remains defensive. Chaste depictions of a device the size of a souvenir ball bat about to be shoved into some terrified rape victim is, somehow, all it takes to get people to notice what's what? Horseshit. That proposed Virginia law was hardly the first of its kind. I hope it's more a (puzzling) medical unfamiliarity than a lexical squeamishness that's kept this objection out of the public eye before now. "Partial Birth Abortion" laws rape women as surely as some electric womb bat. Running every clinic out of the Dakotas is just another version of forced penetration. Foxing the Catholic Church on contraceptive health care is a lot less impressive to me than telling the Catholic Church to tend to its own flock and leave governance to the government would be. I'm less concerned about Komen being forced to apologize than I am about why it felt booting Planned Parenthood was a good PR move in the first place. There is no goddam sense for this argument to have devolved to Cute Baby Ducks and Adorable Puppies vs. Evil Moneymaking Abortionplexes and Commielesbian Planned Parenthood. There's no reason on earth why it took until 2012 for people to realize that that real anti-abortion agenda is the anti-sex, anti-contraceptive, anti-human stance of Rick Santorum, not the faux-reasonableness of Bill Saletan.

But what should be understood, now, is that the years when the defenders of reproductive rights felt inclined to do so with a face of public reluctance have given its opponents free rein. And that that needs to be corrected, not outmaneuvered, if they're ever to go back to lecturing the like-minded, not shoving things into every woman from menarche to menopause.

Ice Cream, Mandrake?

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They Saved Kathryn Kuhlman's Brain

Ross Douthat "Can Santorum Win in November?" February 21

SHORTER Ross Douthat: Rick Santorum is the perfect Republican Presidential candidate, if only he weren't Rick Santorum.

Y'know, the only reason I can figure why Ross Douthat is writing about the 2012 campaign for the Times--let alone in a column labeled "Strong Opinions"--is that somebody on the Op-Ed board noticed they still had some nails lying around after they used Maureen Dowd to make sure American Letters wasn't getting out of its coffin.

"Rick Santorum is a humorless, joyless, scold, a petty, small-town, small-time bigot few people will vote for and no one likes". This is supposed to be deep analysis? (Well, no. What it is is a continuation of Douthat's entire, and already (at 30) superannuated career: "Here's what open-minded intellectual investigation would look like if the world were made up of nothing but snake-handlers and glossolaliaics.")

How much longer does he get away with this charade? Here's Douthat on the Republican "Dream" candidate"

He would hail from the Midwest – a region filled with recession-battered swing states where the president’s support is weaker than in the country as a whole. He would be a Catholic rather than an Evangelical or a Mormon, because the Catholic vote swings back and forth between the two parties in ways that other religious demographics don’t. He would have a strong personal and biographical connection to blue-collar whites, a bloc of voters whose support President Obama has always had difficulty winning. His record would be conservative enough to excite the Republican Party’s base, but leavened with enough moderation and even populism on economic issues to reassure anxious middle-income voters that the Republican Party doesn’t just exist to serve Wall Street and the rich.

In other words he'd be…Ross Douthat, if we could make New Haven part of the Middle West by fiat, just like we did Pennsylvania, and make "pretends he understands 'Reagan Democrats'" qualify as a connection to blue-collar whites, same as "pretends he grew up digging coal".

But no presidential candidate can succeed without a modicum of favorable media coverage, and so a successful populist needs to be able to disarm elite journalists (as Huckabee so expertly did, schmoozing on The Daily Show and elsewhere) as often as he alienates them. And nobody has ever used the word “disarming” to describe Rick Santorum’s approach to politics.

Okay, so explain to me how Huckabee ran third, and how after establishing himself by winning that ridiculous church-basement raffle-off in Iowa the only thing he managed to do was split Dixie with John McCain. Huckabee's Protestant fascism, which was on display later in the campaign, when he tried it as a longshot, is yet more acceptable to Middle America than Santorum's Catholic fascism, because it's less fanatical. It's got very little to do with Santorum being so unlikeable, though he certainly is that. You guys have papered over the difference for so long in your anti-abortion efforts that you've come to believe they don't exist. This is a profound misreading. You can get Baptists to sign up for your Temperance march. You're not going to get many to help when it's time to close the last liquor store in the county.

Santorum was one of four religious nutjobs in the race. He's the only one who managed to wait until primary season to blow his own foot off, mostly because no one took him seriously until the others dropped out. Why are the others gone? Why didn't Huckabee win? Religion-on-your-sleeve, social "conservatism" is supposed to be the lifeblood of Heartland. Why don't these guys win?

That’s because the former senator has the instincts of an activist, rather than of a president or statesman. Whether the topic is social issues or foreign policy, his zeal exceeds his prudence, and as a result his career is littered with debating society provocations (referencing “man-on-dog” sex in an argument about gay marriage, using his doomed 2006 Senate bid to educate Pennsylvanians on the evils of Hugo Chavez, etc.) that have won him far more enemies than friends. His passion for ideas and argument often does him credit, but in a national campaign it would probably do him in.

Yeah. The key to winning is to find a Republican who doesn't sound like one, but appeals to the base, who never makes crackpot statements, but believes Jebus counts every sperm, and who convinces working people in this country that he's one of them, except with a $12 million war chest. I don't know why you guys have so much trouble finding one, Ross. What I do know is it's not for lack of error.

Dear Lord, It's Worse Than I Ever Imagined, Vol. CDLXXXII

Manohla Dargis:

But come on — Billy Crystal!? The Academy would have done a lot better to go with someone like Madonna for host or producer, someone, you know, who at least knows how to put on a big show, retains some cultural currency and can bring the polymorphously perverse to the Super Bowl.

PLEASE…what th' fuck has happened?

(By the way, Ms Dargis: I know a thing or two about polymorphous perversity. That, if anything, was monomorphic perversity.)

Why Everything Sucks, Vol. CDXXI

John Dickerson, "The Deepest Darkest Fantasies of Democrats and Republicans: Both parties are using the contraception debate to paint the other side as scary radicals. In others words, politics as usual." February 17

David Weigel, "A Kinder, Gentler Rick Santorum: Now that the man in the vest is surging in the polls, he’s toning down his talk on homosexuality, gay marriage, and abortion. Meet Santorum 2.0. " February 17

LEAVE us return, at least momentarily, to a recurring theme: Suckiness is a product of the 70s, a fact which is evidently lost on the 1.75 generations of adult Americans who didn't really live through them, or who only recall them through the unquenchable thirst for Oompa Loompa references.

Look, I'd never be so cavalier as to blame 70s Suck on people who had nothing to do with it. It's what we might call the Sha Na Na Effect, which every generation must confront anew: what seems like a hoot when you're a Columbia undergrad will pall long before it finds itself seated between the Landers sisters and Lee Horsley on The New Hollywood Squares. The march is inevitable, and the modern era has only made it worse. Still, the Reader is reminded--or perhaps informed for the first time--that the fact that he can automatically perform the break when he reads the words "Bohemian Rhapsody" is entirely due to some fucker who thought it would be funny to bring it back.

As I've mentioned here before, it took just two men to wreck the German Mark in the 1920s, and it took just two men--Gene Roddenberry and Roone Arledge--to sink American postwar culture. (Yes, Star Trek was a product of the Sixties--where it fucking bombed--but its popularity as a cultural touchstone for people who missed the televised morality lessons of the half-hour "Western", and wished they could somehow be updated for the Punch-Card Age, dates to its revival on the rerun circuit in, yes, the Decade of Disco.

The Seventies--the decade when America ran screaming from the previous fifteen years of social progress and personal freedom--were the breeding ground for the self-absorbed, libertarian-valueless, facile anti-intellectualism we're mired in today. The 70s gave us the Instantaneous Rewrite of Vietnam to Assuage Our Hurt Self-Image, introducing us, in the process, to the Spat-upon Returning War Veteran and Old Glory as a simplistic political press-on statement, to Reverse Discrimination, Allan Bakke, and the But We Solved Racism in the Sixties argument, and the Tax Revolt, that spiffy updating of anti-fluoridationism. The 70s replaced the gentle, agrarian and communal joys of marihuana with the secretive, exclusive, and criminal joys of cocaine. The 70s gave us Yuppies, gave American Food pretensions it never earned, and granted Camille Paglia a Ph.D.

If Ronald Reagan was the horrible, untested, human-paraquat enema America tried as a cure for its Sixties hangover, the 70s were the unspeakable rash that drove it to quack medicine in the first place.

Oh, and, a generation-and-a-half which imagines that this is how Journalism sounds:

We know that this election will be about taxes, the size of government, and America's place in the world. We know there will be energy, education, and defense policy speeches. We see all of that coming in slow steady steps. But what quickens the pace of presidential campaigns and sends it into crazy corners is the secret reveal: the moment where one candidate or party slips and gives us a window into their entire world-view. With the contraception debate, both parties are exposed.

Yeah, Heaven forfend that arguments about taxes, or America's place in the world tell us anything about a party's worldview. Since that might require our army of faux-balancers to comment on something serious, and dull.

I'm sorry, did I say serious? I retract. Contraception and reproductive rights are as serious as anything; the fight over the Republican desire that the wealthy pay no taxes is temporary mud-slinging by comparison. The reason the punditocracy can treat it as small potatoes is the reason behind so much "news" coverage: it doesn't matter to the average reporter, who is in no danger of becoming a single mother, and who believes the Republican party is really only there to cut his personal taxes. (Compare the price of gasoline; a significant rise--the result of typical market forces the "news" celebrates as a perfect system run by perfect men--is treated as a personal affront to all Americans. My goddam local news treats air travel inconveniences more seriously than contraception. And gives it more airtime. )

That's before we get to the faux-balance shit:

For Republicans, the original Obama contraception policy—which required Catholic hospitals to cover their employees who used it—is an example of what they've been complaining about all along. The White House will pass policies in the dead of night that infringe on your most sacred beliefs. They were caught this time, but there are hundreds of other secret offenses in the works, plots yet to hatch that will trample on our rights as citizens. You don't need to think that Barack Obama is evil to worry about these plots. He thinks he's actually trying to "help." As Sen. Scott Brown put it, "Basically the government is saying, 'Just do what you're told, and leave the moral questions to us.' "

is equated to:

The Democratic mind has even more kindling to fire the imagination. This week House Republicans held a hearing on contraception but invited no women to testify. Foster Freiss, Rick Santorum's key financial backer, joked that women used to prevent pregnancy by putting an aspirin between their knees. Santorum has promised that as president he will use the bully pulpit to speak out against sex for purposes other than procreation. "One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is … the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea ...[Contraception’s] not OK, because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." In response, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray wrote in a fundraising appeal: "I feel like I woke up this morning on the set of Mad Men. ... Republicans have set their time machine for the 1950s."

So, in whose world is the opposition claim of a Republican War on Contraception equal to the opposition claim that Democrats are trying to outlaw religion in the dead of night?

I dunno. Faux-contrarian-libertarian-leaning reporters who Got Theirs, Jack? "Moderate" faux-contrarian-libertarian-leaning Republicans who really wish the Base would turn out to vote, then shut up for 700 days or so and quit embarrassing them? It's okay, so long as we can claim that people are only saying shit to get elected?

Whoever paints the darker fantasy has the political advantage.

I'm sorry, Mr. Dickerson, but you were alive and sentient through the last decade, right?

The wax gets softer the hotter the politics. An independent voter—who wants to see progress and not ideological fights—can easily imagine that a future President Romney would compromise at the first sign of controversy.

As opposed to "cave to the extreme Right, which he's been doing since 2007"?

Tell me, John: what does "compromise" on contraception look like?

That is not true of Rick Santorum. He is far more likely to stick to policies that match his socially conservative views. That is the liberal caricature—but also the fervent belief of Santorum’s own supporters.

Wait, Rick Santorum's social conservatism is a liberal caricature?

Santorum's views on social issues are not the sum total of the Santorum campaign. As Dave Weigel points out, Santorum is working hard to show he has appeal beyond the social issues.

Well, loc. cit., as we say in the footnote game:

The Rick Santorum who’s soaring in primary polls looks a lot like the Santorum who lost his 2006 re-election bid by 18 points. Here is a difference: His culture war talk is softer, more implied. He talks up his welfare reform role and his doom-saying about Iran far more than he talks up his stances on homosexuality or Prop 8. He doesn’t need to emphasize it, because the people who acid-test Republicans on social issues know they can trust him. He rallied for Terri Schiavo once; he doesn’t have much else to prove.

So the Rick Santorum who finds himself, by default, the standard-bearer for Really Lunatic Religious Republicanism--simply because the Possibly Even Bigger Lunatics got run out of town--the Rick Santorum who couldn't get any traction with Republican lunatic voters so long as there was a Rick Perry or Herman Cain in the race, that Rick Santorum is now trying to de-emphasize his religious lunacy? Trying to change the subject when Mr. Foster Freeze makes a bad joke, where the old Rick Santorum would have read it into the Congressional Record?

So President Santorum wouldn't just be the Anti-Contraception President? He'd also bomb Iran and require people on welfare to abstain from sex? He's got serious policy proposals, in other words? Well, let's see the liberals try to caricature that.

Saturday Olio: Shoot The Middleman Edition

• Matt Sedensky, "Laptop-shooting dad's rant draws raves, reprimands". February 17

So evidently half the nation finds nothing hinky about disciplining a fifteen-year-old (for griping!) with a handgun ("This here's my .45") and a YouTube video? On the grounds that parenting can be frustrating?

Th' fuck are you a parent in the first place? Th' fuck stupid were you sixteen years ago that you didn't realize you'd have a teenager on your hands before you knew it?

But thanks for having the good sense to move the lit Marlboro out of your shootin' hand. That woulda set a bad example for the kids.

(UPDATE: Extra credit for complaining to the Media--after telling the Media you would not be talking to the Media--about the effect "this kind of publicity" can have on a family. Wurzelbacher/Jordan 2016!)

• Mr. Foster Freeze apologizes:

"My aspirin joke bombed as many didn’t recognize it as a joke but thought it was my prescription for today’s birth control practices," he wrote on "Foster's Campfire Blog," where he posts along with other contributors. "In fact, the only positive comments I got were from folks who remembered it from 50 years back. Birth control pills weren’t yet available, so everyone laughed at the silliness on how an aspirin could become a birth control pill."

Listen, don't get me wrong; one solution to our current morass would be to require anyone who gives more money to a Super PAC than the average American earns in a year to be miked 24/7. Mr. Foster Freeze should be encouraged to shoot off his mouth as often as possible.

But a birth-control pill joke premised on the fact that birth-control pills didn't exist? (Which they did, of course; the point should also be made that the Pill was being marketed in 1962; if it "wasn't yet available" that was because Evil Statists prevented women from getting it.) Another bottomless pit of disinformation. There's a surprise.

• David Brooks, "The Jeremy Lin Problem". February 16

Jeremy Lin is anomalous in all sorts of ways. He’s a Harvard grad in the N.B.A., an Asian-American man in professional sports. But we shouldn’t neglect the biggest anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports.

We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday to Tim Tebow. But we shouldn’t forget how problematic this is. The moral ethos of sport is in tension with the moral ethos of faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

I believe it is safe to say that there is no All-Knowing, Omnipotent God of the Universe. Else He'd never let David Brooks write about Him. Or sports.

Oh, Do Shut Up

Bush the Dumber's Council on Bioethics recommended he approve Federal funding of stem-cell research, over the religious objections of some Christian denomination or other whose name escapes me at the moment.

Charles Merkwürdigeliebe Krauthammer, "Overreach--Obamacare vs. the Constitution". February 16

REALLY, I was just trying to find someone, anyone, objecting to the contraception mandate on grounds it violates the Free Exercise clause who would either 1) acknowledge, clearly, that the law exempted the Catholic Church and/or 2) that similar restrictions on religious liberty are numerous, even commonplace.

Well, Merkwürdigeliebe went the other direction.

Sensing, perhaps--but not admitting, oh no--that the religious objection ship had sailed, and without anything in the manifest the majority of Americans are interested in buying, Krauthammer decides on that favorite of prosecutors everywhere: if you can't make the case, charge 'em with conspiracy:

This constitutional trifecta — the state invading the autonomy of religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen — should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over one-sixth of the economy.

Okay, so 1) nope; that isn't a) what's happening, b) un-Constitutional, nor unprecedented, even if it were; or c) even a particularly imaginative updating of anti-fluoridationism; 2) nope; try the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986, fer instance; it ought to be familiar to anyone pontificating about health care in this country; and 3) I'm guessing that

because never before has the already hypertrophied Commerce Clause been used to compel a citizen to enter into a private contract with a private company by mere fact of his existence.

[emphasis mine] was added to make it sound like you have an argument, and not as a leg-pull, "existence" being the prior condition which predisposes one to require health care. I'm not sure where the Constitutional guarantee of "reasonably-termed mandates" resides. I doubt many Court observers would be astonished if the Roberts Court finds one anyway, but that's another matter.

Every presidential challenger says that he will repeal Obamacare on Day One. Well, yes. But is any of them making the case for why?

You mean as opposed to hurling handfuls of shit at a wall to see what sticks?

Look, Chuckles: it's your end of the spectrum loves it some Imperial Presidency, so long as it's Republican; I don't recall any concern from y'all when George W. Bush asserted his right to go to war based on his facile reading of a post-expiration UN resolution. I didn't hear you screaming when Dick Cheney invented himself a Fourth Branch of government, though it would have been hard to hear over the sniggering. But, really, now, if you wanna lecture us on the Constitution, demonstrate a little competence. Don't trot out "hypertrophied Commerce clause" in defense of a religious exemption that doesn't exist.