Tag: Politics

Goldilocks Triangulation

Digby utterly nails it; do yourself a favor and read the whole thing:

[Obama’s political advisers] should have realized that a health care bill that nobody in their right minds would have designed from scratch, the worst aspects of which liberals will be asked to defend for years to come, would be met with dampened enthusiasm by those who watched the process devolve from a sense of progressive purpose to an exhausting farce. They are expected to be able to predict that financial reform without accountability for what’s gone before, combined with the administration’s unwillingness to confront the civil liberties abuse of the last administration – indeed expanding on them in some cases – would show a lack of fundamental concern for justice among those who care about such things.

Goldilocks Triangulation

The other side said no.
They said no to laws that we passed to stop insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. They said no to requiring women to get equal pay for equal work. They said no to extended unemployment insurance for folks who desperately needed help. They said no to holding oil companies accountable when they bring on catastrophe.

Barack Obama, speaking in Vegas.
This is all well and good, and I’m glad to (finally) hear it. But The Democrat needs to be out there, every day in front of every microphone that is switched on repeating this sort of mantra over and over again, day after day, week after week, year after year. Then and only then it might start to seep in.
They choose not to. They choose to ignore the glaring truth that the facts do not matter. They think they have the high ground of those facts which do not matter. They do not. The facts do not matter, and often don’t even enter into the calculus. This is why they fail.

…military rules and traditions [allow] very little public criticism of civilian leadership in order to ensure that political and strategic disagreement doesn’t curdle into a culture of opposition among the people with all the weapons. McChrystal was clearly lax on policing criticism within his command, but when the system was made aware of that failure, the system worked. You did not see politically disgruntled generals rallying around McChrystal.
Instead, what you saw was David Petraeus taking a command that amounts to a demotion from his current post and could destroy his reputation as a miracle worker. Petraeus’s successes in Iraq gave him a tremendous reputation and credibility as a big, strategic thinker. He could rest on that, retire on that, run for office on that. Instead, Petraeus is going to put that reputation back on the line in service of a war effort that may well be doomed. Why? Well, the civilian who leads the military asked him to, and a soldier obeys.

Ezra Klein, nailing it.
Also interesting to me that the Petraeus move politically neutralizes any credible GOP opposition while also effectively neutralizing Petraeus relative to any vague 2012-based thinking that may have been going on while simultaneously giving the endlessly imbecilic chattering class a bone re: Presidential “toughness.” Masterful.

Haw…haw?

The GOP is using taxpayer money to get idears on a totally new platform they’re promising. It will be of interest to us all. Wonder how that’s working out for them?

They set up a website to solicit ideas, only to see liberals flood it with distinctly un-Republican suggestions. When Republicans invited the public to rank proposals online, critics lampooned the effort for small-bore notions such as ending a federal program for “historic whaling partners.”

[…]

Last week, the top five entries in the “Liberty and Freedom” category were: ban handguns, “drop the idea that we’re a ‘Christian’ country,” declare abortion “none of the government’s business,” allow gays to serve openly in the military and legalize marijuana.

Great ideas all. So, I’m sure the GOP is dutifully crafting reasoned, actionable legislative agendas for each of these exciting new priorities and running off about a million little seemingly hand-made and gramaticully inorrect signs for people to wave around? Not so much:

Brendan Buck, spokesman for “America Speaking Out,” said Republicans “are plucking out ideas” worthy of consideration and consistent with GOP principles. “It’s not a ‘top vote gets in’” deal, he said.

Ah, so you’re wasting taxpayer money so that you can just keep exactly what you had before. It’s a good thing we can count on The Democrat not to make a point of any of this. That would be shrill.

Note to MSM: they never expect you to be prepared. Even a high schooler realizes this. You want to seem relevant? You want to go viral? Be prepared.
Stop thinking that your ultimate goal is to be friends with these people and attend their beach parties. Pro Tip: they don’t invite you to those “to get to know you better as a person.”
The country will benefit if you just show up prepared. So will you.

A little dab’ll do ya

OpenLeft notes just a short list of the things that Rand Paul (and his supporters) think it should be legal for the owner of a private company to fire you for:

  • Not being the same religion as the boss
  • Not having sex with the boss
  • Having children, or not having them
  • Not liking the same sports teams as the boss
  • Not voting for different political candidates than the boss
  • Not eating the same food than the boss
  • Not liking different colors than the boss.

Basically, any reason at all.

This is exactly right, and yet is sadly underappreciated by the general public, or at the very least in the MSM’s depiction of said public. Turns out dread Big Guvmint is responsible for some hugely popular things. Who knew?

And, in another edition of This is Why, it also goes a long way towards explaining The Democat’s current fecklessness. You see, it’s all about inoculation. We know right now that the glibertarians and their friends in the Tea Klan hold a set of wildly unpopular beliefs. Put simply, they think you should Go Die in the Streets. Are you a child whose parents have no money for food? Go die in the streets. Sick? Go die in the streets. And so forth. Turns out most Americans prefer not being relegated to death in the streets.

So you blow them the fuck up with it. Repeatedly. To the extent that Rand Paul and his ilk answer honestly (see: Brown vs. the Board of Education was wrongly decided), they will instantly and permanently alienate vast swathes of Americans, including many or even most “Conservatives.”
To the extent that Rand Paul and his ilk shuck and jive and dissemble about street death relegation, they will alienate that fraction of America that constitutes their primary support (pun definitely intended)…they come off as “just another meely mouthed politician” and/or end up with the most dreaded tag of all: RINO. Either way, it’s a strategy that puts more Democrats in office unless and until the GOP gets a clue. Which, let’s face it, is a long way off into Our Glorious Socialist Future.

Rand Paul has this tendency to get in public or get on national cable shows and feel like he wants to give me a lecture on constitutional law. I’m the attorney general of Kentucky. He didn’t go to law school. I did. I don’t need a lecture on Constitutional law from Rand Paul or Sarah Palin.

Jack Conway (via apsies)

Because the boundaries of political debate in Washington are also the horizons of the discussion on “Washington Week,” the show has no grace, mystery, edge or dissonant voice. What if the system is broken, the political elite is failing the country, accountability is a mirage and the game is a farce run by well-educated people who manipulate the symbols of the republic? Whenever those things are true, “Washington Week” becomes a lie.

Jay Rosen. Don’t mince words, Jay, tell us what you really think. Oh, and: yep.