Buck Up. You're The Party Of Tradition. So Wait Two Months And Then Act Like Nothing Happened, The Way You Always Do.

George Eff Will, "A reformed Republican party". November 9

Jennifer Rubin, "What went wrong? Lots." November 9

Kathleen Parker, "The party that doomed its nominee". November 9

LEAVE us dispense with "Pulitzer" Parker first:  the idea that Poor Mitt was driven too far right by the crazies in the primaries is, by now, an old man with a long beard. Not ten or eleven months old; four years and eleven months old. After 2007's Most Blatant Pandering Operation Ever Seen in American Politics almost got him the prize in spite of himself, and 2010's midterms, which proved once and for all time that the country is one big seething Teabag, was there really some expectation that Mitt Romney was going to be anything else this time? If moving toward the Even Less Hinged end of the Republican spectrum was such an awful idea, then Mitt Romney was twice an awful candidate. Similarly, if pointing out something this trite, at this late a date, constitutes Republican punditasting, then your party is even awfuller. I'll be happy to agree that the Republican primaries may've cost Mitt Romney the election. Except it was the 1980 primaries that did it.

Rubin, we need not mention, is eminently disposable, sorry that the Brilliant CEO's people let him down, and eager that we all know that the Obama campaign ran "really nasty ads in Spanish" which were apparently too shocking to translate and too numerous to need citation. Plus, there was a hurricane which lasted eight or nine days, and threw the challenger off so much more than the incumbent, who might've lost instantly had he been one-quarter as incompetent as the last Republican president. Whatever his name was.

[And, by the way, how many Republicans now complaining that Obama "unfairly looked good" after Sandy complained when George W. Bush finally crawled out from under his desk on 9/15, and posed with a bullhorn and a prop fireman? Answer: zero.]

Rubin is, or was, a Romney campaign stovepipe, merely, though she has some helpful advice for Paul Ryan there at the end, and, no, it's not "find another line of work". But George Eff Will, of course, is our leading right-wing intellectual.

The election’s outcome was foreshadowed by Mitt Romney struggling as long as he did to surmount a notably weak field of Republican rivals.

[Full non-disclosure: including one advised by your wife]

You say "notably weak", I say "typical".  That field didn't get there by happenstance. It wasn't an historical aberration. That was the Republican party on display in the primaries, the one you've cultivated since 1980, if not 1964.

He struggled because he wasn't much stronger than the rest of that crowd, because he wasn't liked or trusted by the rank-and-file, and because, whether you like it or not, there are serious reasons why normal people do not care for Mitt Romney.

His salient deficiency was not of character but of chemistry, that indefinable something suggested by the term empathy.

Bosh. Empathy doesn't require personal chemistry. It actually requires character. Something which is not measured in net worth. Usually the opposite.

And fer cryin' out loud, Mitt Romney made so many 180º turns between 2007 and 2012 we now say that Jim Rockford "pulled a Romney", instead of vice-versa.

Many voters who thought he lacked this did not trust him to employ on their behalf what he does not lack, economic understanding.

Somebody call me when the Republican party figures out that working people not trusting capitalists to operate in other people's interest is not a paradox.

On Feb. 11, 2011, the person who should have been the Republican nominee

Sure, the first step in reformulating a defeated political party is to demonstrate your separation from reality.

laconically warned conservatives about a prerequisite for persuading people to make painful adjustments to a rickety entitlement state. Said Indiana’s Gov. Mitch Daniels: “A more affirmative, ‘better angels’ approach to voters is really less an aesthetic than a practical one. With apologies for the banality, I submit that, as we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us, just a bit.”

I've had plenty to say here over the years about the PR bullshit, and the voodoo, behind Mitch Daniels' Indiana Miracle. You can choose to still believe in it--but act fast, it's crumbling as we speak--but no one can possibly imagine he could pull those tricks at the national level. Daniels didn't have to close any military bases or mothball six carriers. He could--with a fully compliant legislature--cut Indiana departments by whatever percentage he chose (and get away with it, in the short term, by laying off that debt on local governments). Had he stood on the national stage (I mean, had he stood on a box on the national stage) he'd have done so with the same hocus-pocus and lack of specificity that Romney tried to get away with. I'm not convinced he'd have beaten Romney, for that matter, let alone been a better nominee in the general.

But forget that; this call for "being liked" is just an attempt at conjuring Zombie Ronald Reagan as the solution to your problems. Mitt made clear what your problem with most Americans is--you don't like 'em. You don't think they're smart enough to understand this. Likeability is not merely a question of your score on a personality inventory.

And (the party needs a nominee) who tilts toward the libertarian side of the Republican Party’s fusion of social and laissez-faire conservatism.

Good luck with that one. All you need is a Republican nominee who overtly disagrees with the majority of your electorate? George, maybe what you need is a different electorate.

Most voters already favor less punitive immigration policies than the ones angrily advocated by clenched-fist Republicans...

Y'know, the unfortunate thing there is that this isn't just a cockeyed policy favored by hotheaded Republican activists. It's the Republican national platform, and it's inextricably joined to any number of racial and class-warfare stances which are the main attraction of your party for a big chunk of those voters.

By the way, wasn't this what the Teabaggers were supposed to be all about?  No more culture war, just metaphysically proven economic policies?

The speed with which civil unions and same-sex marriage have become debatable topics and even mainstream policies is astonishing. As is conservatives’ failure to recognize this: They need not endorse such policies, but neither need they despise those, such as young people, who favor them.

So hate the sin but love the sinner? Yeah, why don't you try that?

Once again, you're not talking about some accidentally unpopular policy choice; you're talking about a cherished tenet of people who believe with Divine intensity that they are right, no matter what. They're an important Republican constituency, and you're not going back to the days of St. Ronnie when you could just take them for granted. Tell us how you do this. Tell us which Republican stands up and tells the religious right to stuff it.

And it is strange for conservatives to turn a stony face toward any reconsideration of drug policies, particularly concerning marijuana, which confirm conservatism’s warnings about government persistence in the teeth of evidence.

Really? I must've hallucinated Nancy Reagan. And hippie punching.

Listen, neither party has been reasonable about drug decriminalization. And both have been wholly wrong, and utterly misguided. Neither party is going to collect any chips on marijuana.

With much work — the most painful sort: thinking — to be done, conservatives should squander no energy on recriminations.

The Republican party will be doing plenty of thinking; problem is that what it needs to do plenty of is re-thinking. Which ain't gonna happen. Money talks.

And by the way, what're all the complaints about the weak primary field and the damage culture warriors do the party if not recriminations?

Liberals have an inherent but not insuperable advantage: As enthusiasts of government, to which many of them are related as employees or clients,

Oh, snap!

they are more motivated for political activity than are conservatives, who prefer private spaces. Never mind. Conservatives have a commensurate advantage: Americans still find congenial conservatism’s vocabulary of skepticism about statism. And events — ongoing economic anemia; the regulatory state’s metabolic urge to bully — will deepen this vocabulary’s resonance.

Problem with that is that every so often you get the opportunity to expand the vocabulary, and instead you expand the state. That part of it you approve of.

As the stakes of politics increase with government’s size, so does voter engagement. And 2012 redundantly proved what 2010 demonstrated. The 2010 elections, the first after the Supreme Court’s excellent Citizens United decision liberalized the rules about funding political advocacy, were especially competitive. Social science confirms what common sense suggests: More spending on political advocacy means more voter information and interest. The approximately $2 billion spent in support of this year’s presidential candidates — only about two-thirds as much as Procter & Gamble spent on U.S. advertising last year — surely contributed to the high turnout in targeted states.

Y'know, George, I love that Proctor & Gamble routine nearly as much as you do, but unlike you I sat through in twice now in Indiana, and lemme just tell ya, if this is the sort of thing that increases interest in voter information you can fucking have it. It's pure shit-slinging and simple-minded sloganeering with no fear of analysis or consequence. On both sides. It enriches local media, and so makes it even less interested in free, fair, and open discussion. Which is the sort of thing I thought principled conservatism was in favor of.

Media and other “nonpartisan” — please, no chortling —

Oh, snap!

dismay about “too much money in politics” waned as seven of the 10 highest-spending political entities supported Democrats and outspent the three supporting Republicans, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Citation? Who complained about "too much money in politics" then changed his tune because the Democrats were the ones being bought off? According to the Wall St. Journal, I mean.

The advocacy infrastructure being developed by both sides in the post-Citizens United world will, over time, favor the most plausible side, which conservatives know is theirs.

So, why were you soul-searching, again?

A Modest Proposal

DR. Tony Bennett, you're about to join the ranks of the unemployed in Indiana; I'm not sure what your wife has been doing since unfair publicity and the liberal media drove her to resign her sinecure with the charter school industry. 

If there's one thing the education reform movement has been clear about, it's that the single key to improving education, the sine qua non of student achievement, is having great teachers. In fairness--I'm trying, seriously, to be fair to you, but I didn't lose my mind overnight--you reformers have been as unclear as to what constituted greatness in a teacher, let alone how this could be quantified, cultivated, and installed in every classroom, as you have been about the evidence for the claim. But even unreasonable people can agree to disagree. 

You're a smart man, a Doctor; I think you might see where this is headed. Unlike Joel Klein, now supervising Rupert Murdoch's textbook wing, or Michelle Rhee, luxuriating in tax-free cash and (I suspect) waiting for Hollywood to call, it's time you showed that reformers are serious, not pocket-stuffing opportunists and laughing cynics. Hoosier values. Personal responsibility. Service.

It's time you--and your wife--went to work as school teachers.

Not administrators. Not celebrity volunteers. Teachers.

And don't worry. My Poor Wife says that after the first couple months, spending every weekend doing meaningless "reform" paperwork which will never be seen again gets to be second nature. 

Goodbye To All That. For About Two Months. [Now Updated With Math!]

George Eff Will, "And the winner is: The status quo". November 7

READER, consider the Dallas Cowboys. (There are two reasons why you might not want to consider the Dallas Cowboys: a) you aren't a football fan, or b) you are.)

The Dallas Cowboys Football Club, Ltd., is the most valuable sports franchise in the United States, and second in the world. It's owned by Jerral Wayne "Asshole" Jones, who made his money by being born wealthy and increasing it. Mr. Jones is therefore what is known, in some circles, as a "jobs creator", though he created neither The Dallas Cowboys, nor the search for natural resources, his other hobby, and cannot perform either highly remunerated function without assistance. No one I'm aware of argues that either pursuit would go unfunded if Jones did not exist.

And Jerry Jones is widely, if not unanimously, considered to be the worst human being to own a professional sports franchise. Even if you don't know anything about professional sports franchises, just imagine what the competition must be like.  He is also the General Manager of Cowboys football operations. As with everything else he touches, Jones has been highly successful at this. So long as other people were doing the work.

The Cowboys suck, but they're worth billions. The Cowboys are worth billions, but it's the taxpayers who built the largest domed stadium on earth so they'd have a place to play. It was projected to cost $650 million, and actually cost $1.3 billion, give or take a few fabrications.

Now, then, let's talk entitlements:

America’s 57th presidential election revealed that a second important national institution is on an unsustainable trajectory. The first, the entitlement state, is endangered by improvident promises to an aging population. It has been joined by the political party, whose crucial current function is to stress the need to reform this state. And now the Republican Party, like today’s transfer-payment state, is endangered by tardiness in recognizing demography is destiny.

Okay, look. I know the election was hard on you. I realize that you didn't predict "The Status Quo" was going to win the election, unless by "Status Quo" one means "The White Guy." But pull yourself together, man. If you're going to be the intellectual heir of William Fuhbuckley's Church Latin as a Grammatical Weapon wing of the party, then try to maintain the sacred tradition of Making Sense. That's either three institutions, the entitlement state, political parties, and the Republican party, making two in all, or the piece has an infestation of misplaced punctuation and And nows. Is the strain of insisting that 100% of whatever national debt figure you make up is due to social programs which are in fact trust-funds, not "entitlements", finally getting to you?

Perhaps Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election on Sept. 22, 2011, when, alarmed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s

[Full non-disclosure: with the assistance of your wife, which you didn't reveal until after Perry went down in flames, although, since you didn't do it ahead of time, that really only left you 25 minutes]

entry into the Republican nomination race, he rushed to Perry’s right regarding immigration, attacking the Dream Act.

Or, looked at another way, maybe he lost the 2012 election when your party went batshit crazy in 1964. Or 1946. Romney didn't try to flank Perry on immigration just out of the blue. He did so because Mitt was the guy with the money, the guy with the campaign organization, the guy with the entitlement to the nomination, being the highest-ranking loser from the previous campaign still standing, who had just one drawback: Republicans hated him.

And they hated him because he was a "moderate" or a Fellow Traveler. Yes, as the brilliant political thinker Chuck Todd pointed out yesterday, Romney chose to attack Perry on immigration. But that's because it was the only place Perry was weak with the Republican voter. He was Guns n' Jebus all the way otherwise. Blame Romney, but blame a Republican party where a collection of encephalopaths dominate your national stage. I'm not convinced Romney isn't one of 'em. But let's face it, he wasn't going to attack Perry, Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Jeb Bush, George Bush, or Ronald Reagan for being certifiably insane or moronically doctrinaire, was he?

He would go on to talk about forcing illegal immigrants into “self-deportation.” It is surprising that only about 70 percent of Hispanics opposed Romney.

No it isn't. If our domestic political life proves anything it's that you can buy off 30% of any demographic with a promise of potential job promotion. Except African-Americans, who have a slightly different historical take on that.

In 2012 — the year after the first year in which a majority of babies born in America were minorities — Hispanics were for the first time a double-digit (10 percent) portion of the turnout. Republicans have four years to figure out how to leaven their contracting base with millions more members of America’s largest and fastest-growing minority.

You mean "some way other than addressing the entitlement of the wealthy which is their core belief".

Romney’s melancholy but useful role has been to refute those determinists who insist that economic conditions are almost always decisive. Americans are earning less and worth less than they were four years ago; average household income is down $3,800;

Finally concerned about income inequality, are we?

under the 11 presidents from Harry Truman through George W. Bush, unemployment was 8 percent or more for a total of 39 months but was above that for 43 Obama months.

And under FDR it was over 14% for eight years. I'm reminded of the time in the old Batman teevee series when the Penguin ran for Mayor of Gotham City against Batman, and won after pointing out that every time one saw his picture in the paper he was surrounded by police, but every time one saw Batman he was surrounded by criminals. The national voting population has not been quite so easy to fool. Make a note of it.

Yet voters preferred the president who presided over this to a Republican who, more than any candidate since the Great Depression, made his economic expertise his presidential credential.

Funny how that never gets listed as his big mistake.

Voters littered the political landscape with contradictions between their loudly articulated discontents and their observable behavior.

"Dog Bites Man".

Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals 2-to-1 in a nation that has reelected the most liberal president since Lyndon Johnson and his mentor Franklin Roosevelt.

Okay, first, again with the language thing, George. It's "since Lyndon Johnson".  In fact, it's never "since x and y", unless those items were chronologically linked. If you wanted to bring up FDR the time to do so was with those "inexplicable" unemployment numbers, though, agreed, that risked tipping off one or more of your readers that previous Republican administrations might bear the responsibility for having thrown those millions out of work in the first place.

Second, we've already entered the Realm of Historicalisms with the unemployment numbers, and it's going to be our recurring theme. Assuming we could quantify Barack Obama's "liberalism"--he's a fucking centrist Democrat, aka a Rockefeller Republican--that little insight compares him to exactly two Presidents: Jimmy Carter, the centrist alternative to Good Sense that Democrats were profoundly hoping for after George McGovern, and Bill Clinton, leader of the post-Carter Let's Move Right and Win Elections movement. And Carter was "more liberal" than Obama, in many ways, but I guess you've pretty much exhausted the possibilities of running against him again. [Full disclosure: I've been wrong about that before]

After three consecutive “wave” elections in which a party gained at least 20 House seats, and at a moment when approval of Congress has risen — yes, risen — to 21 percent,

1) It couldn't have fallen, not without employing integers, anyway, and 2) it's from the simple expedient of remaining invisible during a national election. You think it's on an upward trend? Go ahead and be obstructionist again, then. Dare ya.

voters ratified Republican control of the House, keeping in place those excoriated as obstructionists by the president the voters retained.

Funny how there's no "wave" in the first even-year election since the 2010 Census. Just a coincidence, probably.

Obama is only the second president (Andrew Jackson was the first) to win a second term with a reduced percentage of the popular vote, and the third (after Madison and Woodrow Wilson) to win a second term with a smaller percentage of the electoral vote.

So what? Elections are elections, not sports records books. We could spend time pointing out that Madison was elected under the old electoral college rules, that Wilson was the electoral benefactor of a three-way Republican split in 1912, or that George W. Bush couldn't possibly have been reelected had his percentage of the popular vote dropped even further below even. Barack Obama was elected--by mandate proportions--in 2008 due to a massive rejection of the Republican party. He wound up in a somewhat closer race in 2012 due to a masterful rear-guard action by the excoriated obstructionists of the Republican party. But he won. Full stop.

A diminished figure after conducting the most relentlessly negative campaign ever run by an incumbent,

Historian.

For crying out loud, George. If you've got to cry in your beer, at least use a fucking coaster.

he has the meager mandate of not being Bain Capital.

For a lot of Americans that's a major accomplishment. I'm guessing it wouldn't have been a meager mandate had Romney won on it.

Foreshadowing continuing institutional conflict, which the constitutional system not only anticipates but encourages, Speaker John Boehner says of the House Republican caucus: “We’ll have as much of a mandate as he will.”

Lemme just say this: one can either celebrate the obstructionist nature of the Federal system, or bemoan it. What one cannot do, and remain an honest public figure--not that it isn't too late for you, George, by three decades--is bounce between the two depending on whose ox is getting gored.

The electoral vote system, so incessantly and simple-mindedly criticized,

Uck-fay oo-yay.

has again performed the invaluable service of enabling federalism — presidents elected by the decisions of the states’ electorates — to deliver a constitutional decisiveness that the popular vote often disguises.

Says the man who, one paragraph ago, was trying to wish away this year's results.

Republicans can take some solace from the popular vote. But unless they respond to accelerating demographic changes — and Obama, by pressing immigration reform, can give Republicans a reef on which they can wreck themselves — the 58th presidential election may be like the 57th, only more so.

Lemme say that this "demographic change" routine is a fine one, assuming one has no desire to examine just how the Republican "message" is playing, or what the Republican "program" is accomplishing.  Hispanics didn't swing Ohio, or Virginia, to Obama. It's not a voting bloc which suddenly became liberal when Mitt Romney spoke without foresight. You can't demonize working people, demonize minorities, demonize liberalism, and make your entire program the reduction of taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and still compete for those votes. I'm sorry this is apparently something you're congenitally unable to fathom. Nevertheless, it is.

This election was fought over two issues as old as the Republic, the proper scope and actual competence of government. The president persuaded — here the popular vote is the decisive datum — almost exactly half the voters. The argument continues.

Okay, then. I look forward to you treating the question as an age-old argument, as opposed to the usurpation of "Real America" by foreign ideas and collectivist envy. Just as you look forward to your party convincing the Hispanic population to vote your way. It's a nice, clean kink, isn't it, George, to wish for something that ain't fucking gonna happen?

[Update: I was a bit rushed this morning; I glanced at Will's second-term vote math, found it a bit fudged (imagine), but had to leave it for later. It's later. First, under no accepted definition of the terms was Obama "only the second" man to win a second term with a reduced percentage of the popular vote; Grover Cleveland joins Andrew Jackson as having previously earned the distinction. Yes, Cleveland's terms were not consecutive, but I missed the disqualifier if Will intended it. FDR also won two terms with a smaller percentage of the popular vote (and Electoral College totals) than he received in his first term, or than he received in the term previous, but got higher totals for his second term than his first. We could quibble there about his third and fourth terms not being his "second", but they otherwise fit the argument; which way of doing things skews the view?

So: Barack Obama is the seventeen man elected to more than one term as President, a feat which has actually been accomplished nineteen times, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times. Jackson, Cleveland, Roosevelt (twice) and Obama did so with reduced percentages of the popular vote from the previous. That's 26% of the total. Madison, Wilson, Roosevelt (twice), and Obama won with decreased percentages of the Electoral College total. That's 26% of the total. Not the usual pattern, but not so rare as hen's teeth. Barack Obama is the only man to win election a second time with both totals reduced; perhaps the next Republican majority in both houses of Congress will pass a Constitutional amendment voiding the occurrence in the future, the way the Twenty-second amendment closed the barn door after Roosevelt died. And just like that one they can try to repeal it when Zombie Android Ronald Reagan runs afoul of it thirty years later.

Obama's the only left-handed Kenyan ever to win two terms, as well. I suppose Will's also got a problem with that. ]

Wednesday Olio: Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry? Edition

• My morning penance was watching Morning Joe. Specifically with the panel of Chuck Todd, David Gregory, Michael Steele, and the withered Prairie husk of Tom Bwokaw. I'm not sure why Steele was there. I'm not sure why he's anywhere. (Okay, yes I am. He's the face of Republican diversity and reasonableness. To whom? )

Scratch Steele and despair! Is there a greater illustration of the depths of trouble this country is in that those three NBC political geniuses? There is nothing whatsoever that FOX News can do, nothing a roomful of Jonah Goldbergs could accomplish (if anything), which begins to approach the fluid-sucking toe fungus which is the NBC News operation. Todd and Gregory, both, are to political discourse what Lester Holt is to diversity.

Lord, the blather! Romney "would have won if he'd just gotten McCain's percentage of the Hispanic vote" (Todd). This of course is simpleton's math--these guys really don't want to learn anything from Matt Silver--but the real point is that it's at the service of the Beltway insider idea that Republicans are the natural rulers of this country, if they can just somehow manage to jettison their voters. 

• John Boehner is still alive! Who knew?

• Best election news I've ever gotten in Indiana: Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett, Ed.D, takes it in the shorts! 

Two things, here: first, Bennett had the job because his predecessor, Suellen Reed, a well-liked Republican, was run out of town by the Daniels machine, the better to put the "reform" movement in place to sluice the juice.  And, two, this one's gonna be a lot tougher to explain than the Mourdock loss. Bennett lost because he's a bully and an asshole. And a transparent one, at that. 

• Bennett had all kinds of money, most of it from Charter School Ponzi Schemes, Inc. He was all over the teevee, in ads that touted his experience (the same experience which had taught him, somehow, that teacher's don't need education degrees, or much else in the way of qualifications). Two days ago I heard some teleprompter reader mention his opponent, Glenda Ritz. I happened to be in the room with my Poor Wife.

Me: Y'know, I knew he was running against a woman, but I didn't even know her name.

PW:  Teachers know it.

• Ritz:  “As I traveled across the state, it was clear that Hoosiers don’t want their tax dollars going toward the privatization of our schools,” she said. “And they don’t want their teaching and learning environments to be about teaching to the test, resulting in grading of our schools with a flawed A to F accountability model.”

• I do hope that someone's going to publish the collective campaign musings of David Weigel. Is he now exposed as Ross Douthat without the religious mania? If I buy you a sword, Dave, will you fall on it?  Just kiddin'. Cheer up. Maybe Michele will run again.

• Ed Henry, on FOX, reporting from Obama headquarters: "The crowd is near pandemonium now, despite the fact that employment is hovering near 8 percent."

• I went to bed early, got up in the middle of the night, watched a bit of the teevee (enough to see and hear the enormous crash behind Tom Bwokaw, who'd been speaking about Jack Welch's twitterings, because what else is there, which caused Brian Williams to suggest that it might have been Welch shooting himself), then got up for good at 5. So I'm not quite clear about it, but the "The people have clearly spoken for the sort of bipartisanship over-paid Beltway punditasters prefer" started early. Would that have been the storyline if Romney had won? Or does it just apply to Democrats? The people have been saying very clearly for years that they don't care much for the punditocracy, either. When does that take effect?

In A Nutshell, Appropriately

JIM Shella, the Dean (Broder) of Indiana political reporters, asked last night about the prospects for the Donnelly-Mourdock race sez Donnelly's in the driver's seat, adding:

A race we thought was about Lugar Republicans turns out to be about another group: women.

So, congratulations, Sisters! You've proven to be of equal value to a storyline. At this rate, in another twenty or thirty years, who knows? Political reporters might actually begin asking questions that speak to your interests, instead of accidentally being on hand when one of your white male overlords accidentally steps on his dick. 

Back Home Again

ONE of the small pleasures of the Indiana political season--there aren't any large pleasures, unless you count Richard Mourdock's moment in the national limelight--is the campaign of Dr. Tony Bennett, Ed.D, State Superintendent of Public Instruction and Union Busting. This was, by the way, an appointed position until Mitch Daniels came along and improved everything. For people who sell ad time.

Bennett is Just Another 21st Century Public Education huckster. He's got ads everywhere; his opponent has none. He's not only raked in boatloads of "campaign contributions" from every Reform Pirate out there, his wife was puling down large green consulting with the charter school industry until they decided that looked bad when people exposed the fact. He's a transparent liar and a bureaucratic bully who, unlike most public education "reformers", actually taught school, and administered one, and so knows just how full of shit the whole thing is.

Bennett came to town yesterday to inspect the schools he took over a year ago. The occasion was the state handing out its phony Letter Grade to Schools bushwah. (Which, by the way, is now causing Indianapolis' suburban school superintendents to howl like the wind about the unfairness of the system. Those're the same superintendents who were absolutely silent while that system was used to muscle local control away from inner-city schools two years ago.)

My Poor Wife's Failing School miraculously received a B, and Bennett was on hand to stage a pre-election photo op congratulate them on suddenly educating our youth. She was heading to the auditorium for his appearance when she was passed by a colleague headed the other direction.

"You're not going to hear Dr. Bennett?" she asked, fully enjoying the "doctor" part.

"Don't have to. I already have a dick," he said.

Boo

The Search For The Perfect Contraindicator

David Brooks, "The Upside of Opportunism". October 29

IN which the Opportunism in question is Mitt "Windsock" Romney's, and the Upside is, why, it's Yours and Mine, America!

To get re-elected in a country with a rising minority population and a shrinking Republican coalition, Romney’s shape-shifting nature would induce him to govern as a center-right moderate. To get his tax and entitlement reforms through the Democratic Senate, Romney would have to make some serious concessions: increase taxes on the rich as part of an overall reform; abandon the most draconian spending cuts in Paul Ryan’s budget; reduce the size of his lavish tax-cut promises.

Or, if it's the Tuesday Before The Election, It Must Be Time To Paint The Republican As David Brooks.

("Shape-shifting nature"! I'm surprised Brooks didn't cite a sociological paper to back that one up.)

Leave us remind everyone, one more time, that 2012 is the election season when Republican mouthpieces actually became desperate enough to announce that lying on the campaign trail means absolutely nothing, that it's the ultimate reckoning that counts. I'm sure they'll be generously applying that rubric to both party's candidates from now on.

You'll also note, of course, that in BrooksWorld there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that a) Republicans, however nutty, are going to flat-out cut 3% of GDP off the national budget and then b) stand willing to take the responsibility for it, although c) that is, apodictically, an immediate, roaring success for the national economy.

In other words, precisely the opposite effect of the last 24 years of Republican economic engineering.

Republicans would like to take the reform agenda that Republican governors have pursued in places like Indiana and take it to the national level: structural entitlement reform; fundamental tax reform.

Oh, I'm sure they would. And when the national economy becomes as amenable to flimsy PR manipulations in place of real results, I'm sure they'll be eager to take Mitch Daniels back at OMB.

Fuck: Mitch Daniels raised the sales tax in Indiana 17%. He did that to pay for capping property taxes, a showy little soak-the-poor accomplishment he got away with because it's Indiana. He slashed spending across the Procrustian board, because he had a compliant state legislature, and because Indiana doesn't have any aircraft carriers or nuclear warheads. Thank God. And, as a result of this Economic Miracle Finaglin', Indiana's unemployment rate is 8.2%, compared to the national rate of 7.8%, and it's right in line with the rest of the region. Except for Ohio, which is at 7%.

So thanks, Mr. Brooks. But if you're just gonna make shit up, I'd prefer to stick to butchering reality. Those flights of sociological fancy of yours are downright disturbing.

Olio: And The Definition Of Contemporary American Optimist Is Someone Who Believes Things Are Only Getting Worse Edition

•Hey, we always knew they didn't lock up enough people in the Likens case:

[Eighty-seven-year-old psychologist Edward] Strain is not surprised Paula Baniszewski changed her name after the murder. Asked if he would do the same, he replied: "Oh hell yeah." Several surviving jurors from the case also agreed this week.

"I think she needed space to move on frankly," Strain said. "She wanted to live."

Oh, yeah. As one would.

They caught up with Paula  this week, forty-seven years later, working in Iowa as a teacher's aide for the last fourteen years. Seems she'd left "Felonies? Well, there was that one time I helped torture a sixteen-year-old girl to death in Indiana, but I did my three years" off her job application.

Some anonymous tipster phoned police. Someone who couldn't live with the knowledge anymore. Someone unlike Paula.

She'd been registered to vote in Iowa for the last fifteen years. Quite possibly feloniously; I'm sure the state's Republican majority will be chasing that one down with vigor. This blog's No Praeteritio Rule prevents us from mentioning that Paula was herself a Republican.

We don't have a rule against linking to ourselves, though, so here's my piece on the fortieth anniversary of the death of Sylvia Likens, at the hands of many, and the plaster-cast of Paula Pace, née  Baniszewski, placed on the hand she'd broken in the daily ritual of beating her rival.

• Is there really an audience for Brooks' pensées ? How long would it take you to drop his course once he started lecturing? (My personal record was 15 minutes, the time spent by a macroeconomics professor to describe in practiced and apocalyptic terms the horrible, crushing workload he was going to inflict on the class, and anyone who didn't like it "should leave now." So I did. I thought it might make him feel a little better about himself, which he obviously needed. Besides, I had the syllabus handout in front of me, and it was about half the reading of the average humanities course, so I suspected that the shit he was full of was half the result of Biz School students' work habits, and half that he didn't know what he was talking about. And I wasn't having either.)

First, let me describe what moderation is not. It is not just finding the midpoint between two opposing poles and opportunistically planting yourself there. Only people who know nothing about moderation think it means that.

Moderates start with a political vision, but they get it from history books, not philosophy books. That is, a moderate isn't ultimately committed to an abstract idea. Instead, she has a deep reverence for the way people live in her country and the animating principle behind that way of life. In America, moderates revere the fact that we are a nation of immigrants dedicated to the American dream -- committed to the idea that each person should be able to work hard and rise.

Yeah, she.  Leave us note, here that a) no one with any sense thinks self-described political moderates in this country are anything other than Rockefeller Republicans. The position is "historical" in the sense of "long dead", but it's not an historical movement, and it sure ain't a movement based on History. The American Dream is just another Fifties-era fantasy Reagantots like Brooks were sold in infancy, and now they're trying to unload while there's still some value left.

Not to mention that a lot of immigrants didn't come to this country willingly, didn't have an opportunity to accumulate possessions, or look at white women. And we'll quit mentioning this when guys like Brooks show the slightest sign of understanding it.

• God help me, I had to read this Weigel codswallop twice, because the first time I thought it was whomever wrote the headline ("Finally, a Winning Benghazi Argument") deserved killin', and that's not the sort of mistake you wanna make.

Republicans spent a month arguing that Barack Obama had lied about the circumstances at the Benghazi consulate on September 11. That was a heavy carry, because it wasn't really true -- Obama had referred multiple times to "acts of terror." But the new criticism of the Obama response dials the clock back to the day of the attack, and it's compelling. Charles Woods, the father of Benghazi victim Tyrone Woods, has been calling up conservative talk radio to explain how his sun rushed into the fray and was denied back-up.

Let's say this again, Reader: suppose you were trying to make a decision about something you planned to keep for a couple of years: car, exterior paint, a spouse. Wouldn't "it wasn't really true" be the end of your deliberations? In fact, if you were being objective, or honest, god help you, wouldn't you just say "wasn't true", not "really wasn't true"?

What's the difference between Brooks and Weigel? Neither can keep their Republican peckers in their pants when there's an election, or a Big Issue nearby. (Unless a loss is a forgone conclusion, when they become sudden bipartisans). Their "moderation" is of the Springsteen Poster or No Real Objection to Gay Marriage type; that is, it's a personal affability, not a political stance. The most you ever hear from them is the sound of a sad head-shake when John "Missing In Action" Boehner is forced to say something really kooky. And, professionally, this allows them to a) pretend they're not Republicans and b) pretend that they are Republicans, but it's possible to be a Republican in the current century and not be sullied by the base. At one and the same time.

The major difference, I think, is that Brooks has the aura of a lifelong third-chair school band trombonist who's been convinced by Ronald Reagan that he's the really smart, hip one, not those hippies with their vans, and bongs, and all-night sex orgies, and Weigel is the guy who grew up imagining Bill Clinton as an ultra-liberal, and shag carpeting as a rhetorical argument against All Things Sixties.

Words Don't Mean Things. And Allow Me To Explain.

Jennifer Rubin, "Richard Mourdock and media misrepresenttation." October 24

Mona Charen, "Rape, God, and Liberals". October 26

I MADE the mistake of turning on the local news yesterday morning, not because I meant to hear what they had to say, or sound out phonetically, about Richard Mourdock, but just because I was still on FOX from watching Game One of the Series the night before when I hit the power button.  

Lemme just say this about the local FOX affiliate news: a decade or more ago the always illuminating combination of greed and desperation gave someone in upper management the age-old delusion brilliant idea that a Young, Hip morning newscast would draw in the delusional desired Young, Hip audience. This being America, they did not go out and find Young, Hip talent, or Hip, Young writers; they swiped the Morning Zoo format, sanitized it for television, staffed the studio with something like a dozen careerist graduates of the Communications departments of various Middle Western land grant colleges, and directed them to behave as if a) every day was Casual Friday; and b) they were slightly buzzed.

The results were even more gruesome than that sounds. If possible. The thing had all the wit and charm of a backyard barbecue three houses over in some godawful treeless subdivision, at just the point where everyone's had at least three beers and somebody decides to crank up the radio. It sorta broke up the same way, as I recall: you looked up and realized there were just six people left, then four, then they had new graphics, and the host and hostess were seated at a desk, slightly hung-over, trying to hide their sheepishness, and trying, with even less success, to behave like adults.

They've never recovered; the effect on their news division was much like the effect on Egypt when Nasser had all the intellectuals taken out and shot. I immediately hit the button on the remote than sends you to the previous channel, which turned out to be CBS, and before I could punch in some other number--this was all pre-coffee, fer chrissakes--got to hear their Top of the Hour pitch for the upcoming interview with a woman who was conceived when her mother was raped.

And who was bravely speaking out for brave Richard Mourdock.

In an audio interview.

Channel 8 used to be the gold standard of local news, back when "local news" meant a half-hour of people reading news, weather, and sports, not ninety minutes of Jack in the Box openings. It's fallen on hard times, and has made a rather clear effort to gain viewership by stovepiping Republican talking points. I don't know if this is cynical, manipulative, or both. I do know that these people willingly rode along with the dumbing-down of the news, beginning with the Happy Talk format of the 70s, and now, a generation later, if they want to convince the audience of some ideological point or other the result is a sea of virtual blank stares. Petards are for hoisting.

At any rate, the story was a Channel 8 exclusive, and, at any rate, it turns out that:

• The facts of the case rely exclusively on the woman's say-so. (I'm not suggesting we doubt her, but I am suggesting this was perhaps reason to do some reporting, try to interview the mother, that sorta thing.)

• She was adopted, under circumstances left unexplained, making her a) whiteness and b) health, proper number of limbs, and relative trainability important factors in today's market.

• She met her mother twenty years ago, which is when she got the story.

• She now spends her time as a "Pro-Life" speaker.

• The rape occurred in 1972.

• That's prior to Roe v. Wade. Abortions were illegal in Indiana.

• The fact that an abortion was not a legal option is dealt with by having the mother consider an illegal one.

• This point--that the mother and rape victim still had the option to terminate the pregnancy, only at extremely greater risk--seems to get lost immediately.


As is so often the case in the Faux Balance world, an instance which screamed for real balance didn't even get the Faux treatment.

IT'S hardly surprising that the attempts to walk Mourdock back have avoiding addressing his actual point; that's been the stock in trade of Right to Lifers for forty years. Mourdock wasn't asked about his metaphysical beliefs. He used them to answer the question. He said, essentially, that there should be no exceptions to a total ban on pregnancy termination except the life of the mother. He said, essentially, "Well, we've had two months to refine what Todd Akin said, so here goes: he was wrong about that 'no-pregnancy-from-rape' thing, and spot-on otherwise. Thank you very much."

And this, as has been pointed out many a time since, is the Republican position on reproductive rights. And it's theocratic malarky. And, despite all the comments that "at least Mourdock is standing on principle" it's bullshit. Point me to the Bible verse where God exempts the mother when her life is threatened. It's not principle. It's the lowest form of political convenience masquerading as principle. People who actually have principles about the issue ought to be the loudest complainers.

I found it instructive to consult two of the premier Beltway voices for Ladies Against Women. First up, Jennifer Rubin, Ben Domenech Chair of Applied Lunacy at WaPo Test Prep:

For a moment, let’s understand what Mourdock meant by that. Like some pro-life Americans, Mourdock believes that all life is sacred and, absent a risk to the life of the mother, it is murder to abort the unborn child. Man from the moment of conception, these people believe, is made in God’s image.

Thanks, Jenny. But, y'know, I fucking got that from what Mourdock said. The moderator didn't ask him for a plerophory on conception, he asked about a rape exemption to the anti-choice views the entire fucking lineup of Senatorial worthies--including the fucking Libertarian--espouses. In response Mourdock claimed God as his wingman. Not only is that much fucking clear, it's the only part of the answer that is. Calling a zygote "Life" does not change the equation. Contrary to the convenient Manicheism of Right to Life supporters, there are many people who believe that Life does begin at conception, but that a mother may have the right to terminate a pregnancy anyway.

One of those people being Richard Mourdock. He would require that the mothers life "be in danger" first.

Like Rubin, dour and dull life defender Mona Charen thought the real problem was Democrats (and their Puppet Media) having a contrary opinion, and expressing it.

The very fact that a couple of ill-chosen words by pro-life candidates have become lightning rods this election season betrays the overwhelming bias of the press on this issue. Most Americans consider themselves to be pro-life. The pro-life posture is accordingly the mainstream view. An August CNN survey found that 52 percent say abortion should be illegal in all (15 percent) or most (37 percent) circumstances. A May Gallup survey found that more women call themselves pro-life (46 percent) than pro-choice (44 percent). But the press allies with the Democrats to smear pro-life candidates as “extremists.”

Yes, because anything 15% of the population tells a pollster it believes in can't be extremist.

Look, if you're gonna lecture everyone on willful misrepresentation, maybe you should try to achieve something like accuracy. Like, instead of squinting in order to make that crowd you estimate look homogeneous, you could tell us how many Americans believe, point blank, that every rape victim should be forced to carry her little gift from God to term, then support it for eighteen years, and maybe leave herself open to lawsuits from her rapist over visitation and child rearing practices?

It’s obviously a ghastly thing for a woman to be raped and to find herself pregnant as a consequence.

But?

But the liberal answer — abort the child or else be accused of approving of rape — is a slimy abuse of tragedy and a disgrace to civil discourse.

While portraying the "liberal" position as "abort the child" is the very essence of civility.

Fer cryin' out loud. Moudock's moral principles, or excuses, are irrelevant to the argument. We're talking about a Constitutionally-protected right; at minimum your side has to admit that is the case before there can be any discussion, civil or no. I'll just wait here. In the meantime, the past forty years has driven the extremist religious maniacs of your party above ground, and they have no concept of discourse on this issue. Nor of internal consistency. Those of you in the business of milking them for votes have tried to keep 'em quiet about it, or at least on message, but the message was always ill-considered, illogical, and emotional. When George W. Bush was riding high in 2004, this element decided it could show itself as anti-abortion in all cases, and anti-contraception into the bargain. If you wanna talk about principle, there's where the principle lies. And you know that forcing rape victims to carry fetuses to term, let alone banning rubbers, is a huge electoral loser. A coalition breaker, in fact. That's who has really responded to this summer's White Male rape defenders. (Sorry for the incivility.) That's what you think is unfair.

You want civility, Ms Charen, civility defined as a continued free ride for the religiously mazed on the issue, unfettered by the rules of logic. What you emphatically do not wish is discourse.

That's A Total Distortion Of What I Wish I Had Said

YESTERDAY evening, before Teabagger and Future U.S. Senator Richard Mourdock volunteered to do what local media has refused to get him to do, open his mouth and let the crazy pour out like nougat, the big local political news was that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals had blocked the state from defunding Planned Parenthood.

Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, since "7th Circuit Court of Appeals" is too wonky or elitist-sounding for local media types. So the Dean (Broder) of Indiana political correspondents, Channel 8's Jim Shella, simply referred to "the federal courts", in that convenient shorthand which has allowed his favored party* to run against them for forty years without confronting anything resembling the principles of law. Shella dealt with the tricky question of the state attempting to eliminate access to Constitutionally-protected reproductive rights (like it's ever referred to that way) with the sort of misdirection play which used to wow 'em back when Red Grange was running through defenses: he introduced a clip of then-Governor Mitch Daniels "explaining why he signed the bill into law". The ensuing clip was of Daniels insisting that no one would lose access to health care as a result (“The charges that anybody would lose access to health care are not true. I know folks are concerned they might be, but they’re not.” End of clip). My New Shorter OED has two entries for reason as a noun, and thirteen entries under the common one, none of which remotely turns that into "a reason". 

These are the same lexical shenanigans which turn Daniels contention that something wasn't going to happen when it assuredly, absolutely would happen, and as a direct result of his signing the bill, into an "answer".

I'm not saying this is Shella's contention; it's how abortion politics have been played so long as he's been around, which is too long. The (understood) reason for the bill was the punishment of Planned Parenthood as an abortion provider, or facilitator. The (understood) reason for Daniels to sign it, aside from his own caged position, is that no Republican is free to do otherwise, and, since he was a) no longer going to be on a state ticket; and b) no longer planning to run for President, and thus could no longer corral the whack job "wing" of his party, the thing had landed on his desk. Daniels' reason faked addressing concerns about the defunding's effect on women's health. A lack of concern with access to healthcare is entirely within Daniels' rights, and consistent with his public philosophy; it's just something he doesn't wanna be called on. Restricting access to Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms is not his right. So that, once again, the way we remain "balanced" in reporting somehow requires us to stand everything on its goddam head.

Which brings us to Richard Mourdock, Dick Lugar Killer and Teabagging Senatorial hopeful, a couple hours after that broadcast, in the final Senatorial Debate of the season. (And, by the way, Lugar at this point would be twenty points up. In two weeks Mourdock is gonna be wearing his hat as a codpiece.)

Richard Mourdock is a lunatic. If he's not completely unhinged it's only because he didn't come with hinges in the first place. This is not even open to debate. The only question which is open is how he (that is, the vast ocean of non-Hoosier lunatic money he compiled) got Indiana Republicans to join in in the primary, and what this says about the folly of democratic elections.

The three candidates (Mourdock, the Republican-Democrat, and the Libertarian) are asked about abortion, because of course they are. (No one is ever asked to describe the landscape of the surrounding fantasy world where a Senator's opinion about abortion means squat, to the law, to the ethical questions involved, or to the sorts of political gyrations and elimination of half the country's population which would be required to change the status quo.) All are agin' it, because of course they are, including the Libertarian. This will not be a story, because a) the Libertarian is just there so that people will figure the two actual parties are better than staring into the blackness of the Abyss, and b) because it would be wonky and boring to point out that the Libertarian party is as statist as everyone it complains about. And Mourdock says that, even in the case of rape, pregnancy is still a gift from God. Because of course he did. Seriously. Of course he did. This is actually how these maniacs refined Todd Akin's message over the past two months. 

Mourdock was forced to come out afterwards to assure the voting public that he thinks rape is bad. This is the sort of non-apology apology which used to be considered de rigueur, and simply rote, but which recent events have turned into a needed clarification. 

Now, if you're like me, you watch Indiana politics, if at all, as a sort of spring training for dealing with your crazy relatives at Thanksgiving. If you want the political side of this, other than the increasingly moldy news that everyone in the Republican party is clinically insane, it's that Mourdock is the one Republican Senatorial candidate Willard Mitt Romney has seen fit to make a campaign commercial for, which he did a couple weeks ago. But, then, you already knew about Romney's decision-making skills, didn't you? One-third of the Senate is up for reelection, and Romney chooses to help a guy who not only was dancing around in a tinfoil fool's cap all season, but one you'd take one look at and remove your children from the playground he was sitting near. Not to mention that the Teabagging Mourdock campaign has become desperate enough to play ball with Mitt Fucking Romney. 

My own concern, though, is with God.  What's up with Him, now? Fer chrissakes, the man had 66 books, at least three versions of the Ten Commandments, not counting the twenty or so that follow those and are generally ignored even more fully. He's got Seven Deadly Sins, an equal number of Virtues, thousands of historical exemplars, untold thousands more ahistorical exemplars, and the world's biggest sales force; He Himself gets to choose who becomes a writer, a painter, a composer, a scientist, a dialectician, plus he's fucking tax exempt. He Personally chose Al Gore to invent the internet, yet the internet is just a global porn factory. So I'm told. 

Yet He never just came out and said "No abortions, ever. My will. Oh, except to save the life of the mother, once I allow the general acceptance of antiseptics, sometime in the 19th century. Got it?" For the sacred life of me, I can't understand why the central tenet of Christianity remained impenetrable for 19th centuries, especially with all those hair-splitters, pinhead-dancers, and secret coders poring over every Word. I mean, the Man's a fucking loon.

Or His spokesmen are.

_____________

* Look, I got no idea how Jim "Dean" Shella votes. But I've heard him say "kerfuffle" on the air, which is as big a tell as saying something about States' Rights has been for a couple centuries now. Let's say this: it might as well be a one-party state, and which side do you imagine puts on the best press buffet? Jim Shella is not going to lead the charge to eliminate faux balance. In Indiana, that's being objectively pro-gun-totin' religious maniac. 

All's Well That Ends With A Merely Short-Term Chilling, Racially-Motivated Voter Suppression Campaign Put Up By "Mistake"

THE Freedom Defenders at Clear Channel have announced that dozens of the above billboards will be removed immediately, since the Freedom Defenders at Whatever Anonymous Family Foundation Which Was Accidentally Permitted To Fund Them Contrary To Clear Channel's Own Rules has--wisely, we think--decided it would rather remain anonymous than further its voter education efforts in the open.

The billboards have been erected in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Columbus, Ohio, and elsewhere, in what the headline writers described as "predominantly poor neighborhoods", which is the faux-balanced way of pretending the targeting might not have been racist.

And, since our own No Preteritio policy is enforced by the same legal team that vets Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings' contracts, we're not going to mention that the odds of Clear Channel accidentally contracting to put up anonymous political billboards targeted at You Know Who are identical to the odds of Clear Channel accidentally revealing the name of the foundation in question. It's just math. Contracts are hard. I'm sure they don't understand what they're signing half the time.

But may we just mention, now, how the Republican voter suppression--sorry, voter fraud suppression--routine--you'll forgive my assumption about the anonymous foundation's political leanings, contrary to this blog's practices--underlines the fact that these rich bastids and their rodential henchmen don't know the first fucking thing about real people? Good Lord, the idea that poor people really imagine that stuffing a ballot box would make things better for them! How far removed from reality do you have to be? Isn't this, really, at the heart of our national "debate" over the superior personhood of corporations? Sheesh, just look at the sorts of people who run them.