Wading Through The Concern Troll Maze

Nobody wants to kill health care reform. OK, I guess Bill Kristol does. But nobody else. They're just very concerned with the speed of the legislation, and some of the provisions and they just want to take the time, do it right, we can do it bay-bee.

You'd expect the RNC to weigh in on the side of the status quo. But Michael Steele is so clueless about the topic of health care that, as you can see from this compilation, he would probably be stumped if you asked him what a doctor does.



Later on, he didn't understand the individual mandate, only the central issue in the most intensely watched primary campaign in American history. He has found his metaphor, though, calling it a reckless and risky "experiment," both in his remarks and in this new ad, which I think makes the point that Barack Obama is experimenting on children.



Not really a new argument, nor is the idea that the new health care plan would "ration" care. Peter Orszag parries that nicely.

ORSZAG: This is the biggest canard that is floating throughout this debate. The fact of the matter is right now politicians and insurance companies are making decisions. We're saying we want doctors to be making decisions, and I think that will lead to a higher-quality, lower-cost system over time.

WALLACE: But when you say they're making decisions, they would be saying, you can have this treatment, you can't have that treatment.

ORSZAG: Do you think that politicians are currently rationing care, are insurance companies currently rationing care? There's no set of decisions that this commission would have that is not currently resting with either members of Congress or insurance companies.

WALLACE: So they would be rationing care.

ORSZAG: No! Because I don't think we're rationing care today, and similarly they would not be in the future. What they would be doing is setting reimbursement rates and moving towards a higher-quality system.

These arguments from the right are both silly and transparent. They are designed not to advance any debate about health care or create some alternative set of proposals. They are, as Orszag said on a different Sunday show, designed simply to kill any bill. They not only want to break health care, but break Obama, as Jim DeMint very clearly stated. Delay equals defeat in this case.

Which is why it's so disconcerting to see Democrats engage in the same tactics. For example, Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana criticized the expansion of Medicaid in the bill because it would leave an unfunded mandate for the states, but under the House bill, at least, the federal government picks up ALL of the costs for that expansion, at no cost to the states whatsoever. Schweitzer may consider this a slippery slope, and in that case, he should advocate for taking state participation out of Medicaid entirely. But instead, he's chipping away at Congress' bill, as are other governors of both parties, and eventually that tactic leads not to getting the policy right, but burying it.

If moderate Democrats have legitimate concerns with the bill, they have every opportunity to address them, but they seem more concerned with shooting arrows at it, which will only destroy the bill, and probably their political future as well.

But the question isn't whether Republicans understand the power of successful opposition. It's whether Democrats understand the dangers of failure. And that's most true for the Democrats who are most likely to weaken the effort: The Democrats who are cool to health-care reform because they fear the conservative tilt of their state are the Democrats who will lose their seats if Obama loses his momentum and the Democratic majority begins to lose on its major initiatives. Legislative defeats will not threaten Henry Waxman's seat. But it will imperil Mary Landrieu's. And Ben Nelson's.

Bill Kristol is right that defeating Obama's health-care plan is a first step for Republicans who want to pick off vulnerable Democrats in the 2010 midterms. But the converse is also true: Passing health-care reform is the first step for vulnerable Democrats who want to save their seats.

In the end, I'm not sure that those moderates really want universal health care. So they concern troll it and ask for delays and we eventually spend another couple decades with a broken system and no progress. I'm hopeful that isn't the case this time, as Obama steps to the front of this debate. But at this point, turning away from the sausage-making is probably best for my heart.

Back To The Well

Bill Kristol responded to Susan Boyle's loss on Britain's Got Talent by calling for strategic bombing in London. No, wait, this time it was North Korea, actually.

Kristol explained, "I don't rule out the possibility of us deciding -- and I think it might be wise for us to decide -- to knock out a few. They're apparently rolling a long-term missile to a base to test another one, long-range missile to test another one. You know, it might be worth doing some targeted air strikes to show the North Koreans, instead of always talking about, 'Gee, there could be consequences,' to show that they can't simply keep going down this path."

Brit Hume, on the same program, endorsed Kristol's proposal, but said he "can't imagine" the Obama administration actually launching a military strike on North Korea.

Matt Yglesias noted, "Kristol doesn't even attempt to say what he thinks this will accomplish. He just kind of tosses it out there for no reason because arguing that the United States should start wars is what he does."

Kristol and his merry band of he-men think that the United States can drop bombs on any nation it chooses without consequences. This is despite the fact that never in human history has such a consequence-free imperialism ever come to pass. If we "targeted" air strikes on North Korea (10, 20 million dead, depending on the breaks), they would bomb Seoul. And kill a lot of people. Indiscriminate projection of military force has brought us through failed wars over the past several decades and the death of hundreds of thousands. Bill Kristol views this as an inconvenience.

Besides, Robert Farley makes the point I've made for years. North Korea doesn't have a lot of money, and apparently their fissile material is finite. Every bomb they test equals one less bomb they have. So go ahead and test! You know how much kimchee they have to sell to scrounge up the cash for another weapon?

They're Baaaack...

You didn't think Bill Kristol and the PNAC crowd would just go away, did you?

What do you do if your previous organization — and the ideology behind it — has become inextricably bound in the public’s imagination to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in American history? Obviously, shut it down, and start a new organization with a new name.

The Foreign Policy Initiative lists Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and Dan Senor on its board of directors, so no prizes for guessing what they’re about (more power, less appeasement, stronger wills.) Kagan and Kristol need no introduction, they’re the Tick and Arthur of disastrously counterproductive military adventurism. Given the staggering costs in American blood, treasure, security, and reputation incurred by their boundless enthusiasm for blowing stuff up, you might think they’d have had the decency to retreat to a Tibetan monastery by now, but sadly no. The way it works in Washington is, if you’re willing to argue for more defense spending, you’ll always find someone willing to fund your think tank.

Dan Senor is less known to the general public, but familiar to those who’ve followed the Iraq debacle closely. From 2003 to 2004, Senor served as a Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman under Paul Bremer. After that smashing success, Senor returned to Washington, where, among other things, in September 2004 he helped write speeches for Iraqi interim prime minister Ayad Allawi’s U.S. visit, and then apparently went on television to praise those speeches as evidence of Bush’s accomplishments in Iraq.

Senor is also Campbell Brown's husband, so I'm sure this will be covered extensively on her show, which as you know is both no bias and no bull.

Spencer Ackerman and Ari Rabin-Havt have more. Interestingly, this little group's first public event is a half-day conference on how to succeed in Afghanistan, featuring some of the same cheerleaders who blundered us into war in Iraq.

FPI, whose founders and principals include Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and Dan Senor, will host a summit next Tuesday titled "Afghanistan: Planning for Success." Billed as a "half-day conference" to "discuss how the United States and our allies can succeed in Afghanistan," the event will feature appearances and discussion from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Rep. John M. McHugh (R-N.Y.) -- ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee -- and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who chairs of the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee.

"I know these people and recognize where they're coming from," the Congresswoman said of her appearance at the event. "I'm coming from a different place and want to be sure that point of view is heard. My point of view will be extremely sympathetic to the Obama Administration position on Af/Pak."

Maybe Harman could go ahead and not show up to give a point of view that none of the magical thinkers and armchair generals who make up this outfit would possibly care about. But I am intrigued by the focus on Afghanistan. As Matt Duss notes, the better title for the conference would be "Afghanistan: Dealing With The Huge Problems Created By Many Of The People On This Very Stage." The relentless focus on Iraq drew attention and resources from Afghanistan and helped to put us in this predicament. But the current dynamic shows Republicans both praising Obama's Afghanistan/Pakistan plan and calling it "the new surge." Here's John Cornyn.

I commend President Obama on his plan for a surge in Afghanistan, which is our front line in the Global War On Terror. Victory there is imperative, and President Obama and our troops on the ground in Afghanistan have my full support. I will do everything in my power to ensure that Congress provides any and all resources required to accomplish the mission [...]

It is my hope that President Obama's surge in Afghanistan achieves results similar to the surge in Iraq, enabling victory and bringing our fighting men and women home as soon as possible.

You can see an outline of the foreign policy critique here. First of all, the neocons are trying to redeem the Bush strategy in Iraq by casting it as a success (I have hundreds of thousands of reasons why this is not the case). Then there is the support of Afghanistan, which will quickly turn into "there needs to be a greater commitment" as it falters. Neoconservatism cannot fail, of course, it can only be failed. And so the argument will be that Green Lantern's will just needs to be stronger and we can exterminate the brutes and claim victory. Which is actually not Obama's Af/Pak plan (a plan I don't fully support), so the space on the right can be easily carved.

It would be easy to say "Forget about these idiots who wrecked the world, they have been totally discredited," but the country's politics have never worked that way. The same discredited group one year returns to power the next. And so it's crucial to keep tabs on these knaves and see what most excellent adventure they have planned for the country when they claw their way back.

"This Is William Kristol's Last Column." We Wish.

Yes, there will be no more Bill Kristol on the New York Times op-ed page. And he exits with one of my favorite quotes from a conservative in years:

Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world.

Feel the pride! Or maybe that's nihilism.

Don't weep for Irving's son, however - he's headed to the Washington Post to sully their op-ed pages for a bit. There is simply nothing he can do, no amount of wrong he can spout, to get him kicked out of the little pundit club.

This also means there's an opening for a new conservative at the Times. Joe the Plumber, this is your moment. I'd love to see dozens of columns recapitulating "I don't think the media should have a right to have an opinion on anything!"

...Fred Hiatt on Bill Kristol: "I thought he wrote a good column."

The optimistic view is that Hiatt is just trying to provide an economic stimulus for his corrections department. The more measured view is that he's a neocon jackass.

Sitting Down With Our Enemies

Barack Obama fulfilled a campaign promise yesterday, even before his inauguration, by negotiating with his enemies.

President-elect Barack Obama spent Tuesday evening at a dinner party with several prominent conservative columnists, including William Kristol and David Brooks of The New York Times, according to an Obama transition pool report.

Mr. Obama, who has been staying at the Hay-Adams Hotel in advance of his inauguration next week, arrived at 9 Grafton Street, an upscale address in Chevy Chase, Md., at 6:34 p.m. The Montgomery County property tax records list this address as the home of the conservative Washington Post columnist George Will, the host of the dinner party. Also attending the party was Charles Krauthammer The Washington Post. Together, some of the columnists at the dinner party have been some of Mr. Obama’s severest critics.

I'm of two minds on this. Much like elevating Rick Warren, this elevates the likes of Kristol and Brooks as if they are serious folk whose ideas must be respected. However, it's only a dinner, and as I said, it was a campaign promise. Not to mention the fact that it's straight out of the counterinsurgency textbook:

One of the more frustrating aspects of counterinsurgency involves talking to the people who were recently shooting at you -- sometimes while they're shooting at you. Often that gets misinterpreted as softness, but it's more of a recognition that the only way to achieve a true victory is by co-opting your opponents. What looks like a decisive victory one day can easily be overturned by a simmering sense among the vanquished that they have no place in the new regime, and therefore have little recourse besides resistance. The objective in launching these sorts of parleys with your opponents is two-fold. First, to see if they can be placated, and whether the price of doing so is acceptable. And second, to visibly demonstrate to the broader population that you've taken every reasonable step at reaching out to these adversaries -- so if they rebuke you and you counterattack, you look like the reasonable party and they look like the rejectionists. It's generally a sound strategy, and it's achieved real results.

One final point - the Obama mantra of talking to people who disagree with him has so far not spread to his liberal critics. Hopefully that dinner will be organized soon. It should be - otherwise there's a certain imbalance to the effort.

UPDATE: The report is that Obama met with liberal columnists this morning.

Today's group included the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson, the Wall Street Journal's Jerry Seib, National Journal's Ron Brownstein, the New York Times Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, among others.

While I'm glad Rachel was in the room, these aren't CRITICS, by and large, nor are most of them even liberals. This is the typical thinking in Washington, where the range of policy ideas ranges from the Weekly Standard to The New Republic. Put the President-elect in a room with Arianna Huffington, Robert Scheer, Katha Pollitt, Katrina vanden Heuvel, maybe a few liberal bloggers. That would say something.

The Clinton Rules

While some conservative activists have the idea to rebuild their party by using the Obama-Dean inclusive vision of organizing and party infrastructure in service to the exclusive vision of conservatism, and others are waging jihad against anyone who dares cross Sarah Palin (by the power of Grayskull Redstate, we will purge you!!!), I think we know how this is all going to turn out, right?

HH: And I think he will be very concerned with the two issues I’m going to raise with you – national security and immigration. Now I believe the Committee On the Present Danger filled a need in the 70s which we need to reorganize an equivalent now. But what do you think, Bill Kristol?

BK: Oh, I agree, and we did a little of that in the 90s with the Project For the New American Century. And I actually think there are people talking about this. And there’s a lot of good foreign policy and defense thinking on our side, the Fred Kagans and Bob Kagans and Reuel Gerechts of the world, Victor Davis Hanson, et cetera. But a little bit of a political organization for them wouldn’t be bad. And I think we should support Obama, incidentally, if he does the right thing.

OF COURSE there will be another PNAC. As the media - and lots of Democrats - do the conservatives' dirty work for them by warning Obama not to read any kind of Democratic victory into the resounding Presidential and Congressional victory, the connected white men at the top of the party will shrink into the background, plot, seek ways to undermine the new President, and basically lie in wait. They aren't going to throw money into 50-state organizing or the Internet - that's for the little people. They are convinced that Obama's agenda will fail and they will stand ready, using their message machine to continue to feed rancid ideas into the media bloodstream. They've already got most of the Democratic Party urging for bipartisanship and restraint like the well-trained litter Grover Norquist et al. always wanted them to be. Fox News and right-wing radio and blogs will continue to work themselves into frenzies. Direct-mail groups will start sending letters to the base about how mysterious that Obama's grandmother and the Nevada state director died on the same day - they'll be added to the Obama Death List. Regnery books arguing against the radical Obama vision will fly off the shelves and into the pulping machines, with the authors all over cable news. AEI and Heritage will schedule conferences on "Why Moving The Top Tax Rate To 39% Kills Poor People" and other illuminating subjects. It will still be difficult to break a filibuster, and the minority party won't make it any easier on anything that matters.

The right doesn't have to "do" anything, I imagine is the consensus. All the structures of an opposition movement already exist, they just have to turn on the switch and sit back and wait.

Now, the question is whether our side has learned anything from 1993-94, or not.

FAIL Of The Century

Bill Kristol: "You're reading The New York Times too much."

Jon Stewart: "Bill, you work for The New York Times."



(h/t)

I haven't seen someone walk into a punch like that since the early days of Mike Tyson.

The Kristol Prefigure

Bill Kristol is an insufferable fool and wrong about everything, but over and over in this campaign he has flown trial balloons in this column that have inevitably been picked up by John McCain. So if you want to see what's going to happen at the final debate on Wednesday, consider his column today a blueprint.

Of course, the idea that McCain can junk everything with three weeks to go and start over, while people are voting early, and expect the electorate to react favorably, is... well, it's a Bill Kristol idea, so I don't have to tell you how stupid it is. But as much as anything, it's an honor restoration strategy, not really a strategy for winning. They actually started this over the weekend, when Rick Davis responded to John Lewis' comparison between McCain rallies and the ugly race-baiting of George Wallace by saying, oh yeah, well John McCain was a POW. Which suggests a return to the wounded warrior status, the "how dare they attack me" backlash strategy.

Not that McCain isn't OK with a little comparison of Obama to a terrorist. I mean, he's only human.

...And sure enough, here comes the McCain reboot. Bill Kristol is a genius! In the same way that the guy holding the puppet strings knows exactly where the marionette is going to go!

Bill Kristol Makes Pinch Sulzberger Proud Again

Hey, imagine that, a movement conservative leads with his chin again and gets embarrassed by reality (although the extent to which he can ever be embarrassed, after all he's been wrong about, is questionable):

Bill Kristol, in the print edition of this morning’s New York Times:

"NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on “Meet the Press” that “the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context. … What they’re putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.”

That’s pretty astonishing, since there seems to be absolutely no basis for the charge. But the fact that Obama’s people made this suggestion means they know McCain outperformed him."

News story in today’s New York Times, print and online editions:

"Senator John McCain was not in a “cone of silence” on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California.

Senator John McCain of Arizona at a forum on Saturday with the host, the Rev. Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in California.

Members of the McCain campaign staff, who flew here Sunday from California, said Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed by the Rev. Rick Warren, the author of the best-selling book 'The Purpose Driven Life.'"

Bill Kristol’s desperate last-minute attempt to salvage some shred of dignity by rewriting his column for the online edition of this morning’s New York TImes:

"NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on “Meet the Press” that “the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context. … What they’re putting out privately is that McCain … may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.”

There’s no evidence that McCain had any such advantage. But the fact that Obama’s people made this suggestion means they know McCain outperformed him."

Let's also focus on the SUBSTANCE of this claim, too. To say that McCain outperformed Obama at a gathering of evangelical conservative Christians would be as silly as saying Obama outperformed McCain at the NAACP. Obama was never going to "win" this, so grading them on without noting that is absurd. However, I think we have a rare instance of a liberal dogwhistle here:

“Now, let’s deal with abortion,” the Rev. Rick Warren said. “Forty million abortions since Roe v. Wade. You know, as a pastor, I have to deal with this all of the time. All of the pain and all of the conflicts. I know this is a very complex issue. Forty million abortions. At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?”

Obama responded, “Well, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade. But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue….” Obama went on to explain how (and why) we can reduce the number of abortions in this country, and why he’s pro-choice.

The right is flipping out over the "above my pay grade" comment, but they're not understanding that this Obama appeared to be expressing humility in the face of God. Conservative bloggers yelling "nothing is above the pay grade of the President!" are missing the point. If Obama does sway a significant portion of evangelicals in November, it'll be because of little moments like this, which display that he can speak their language to a degree. We'll see if this gets swamped by the tribal impulses to support the "party of life" or whatever, but I have a feeling that this was kind of brilliant and that Obama is not at all upset about the right ginning up a controversy over this.

Americablog has more on cone of silence-gate.

Never A Bad Time...

To notice Bill Kristol being totally and completely wrong. This is from December 2006.

KRISTOL: You know, Bill Clinton won a nomination in 1992 against a weak field. Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York, chose not to run. George Mitchell, the Senate majority leader, chose not to run. Al Gore and Dick Gephardt, who had run in '88, chose not to run. The heavyweights didn't run. Bill Clinton had a sketchy field against him and won the nomination, despite various missteps and flaws.

Hillary Clinton, it looks like to me, is now going to follow in Bill Clinton's footsteps. If she gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then. She wants to be the centrist.

I think she's taking some risks in staying on the center, not going to left, which is intelligent. She can still beat the left-wing democratic candidates, I think. And then she's pretty well-positioned for the general election. So this is all good for Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I'll predict that right now.

It's that kind of crackerjack political acumen that gets you a coveted editorial slot in the New York Times. Thanks, Arthur Sulzberger!

(via TBogg)

Bill Kristol, Super-Genius

So I guess professional fabulist Bill Kristol today proposed a McCain-Bobby Jindal ticket for the Republicans, suggesting that the young governor of Louisiana would defuse the age issue while riling up the conservative base with his staunchly pro-life views.

Uh-huh.

There was a special election in Louisiana, in Jindal's back yard, right in Baton Rouge, the home of the state capital, and his favored candidate lost. Jindal, in fact, strongly supported him. Here's the endorsement.

If he couldn't influence a race in his own backyard, why would he have any impact on a national ticket, where he's practically unknown?

The answer: I'm Bill Kristol and I've never been right!

The Coming Attack On Obama Takes Shape

We're starting to see how the Republicans will handle an Obama candidacy in the fall. The first answer is, yes, with racism, although they're testing how far they can take that without a serious backlash. I don't think we'll see the Jesse Helms "Hands" ad, but beneath the surface there'll be some racial appeals. On top of that surface, it'll be the narrative of the uppity elitist who thinks he's better than you. This is actually how the right has demonized Hillary Clinton for years; she thinks she's better than you and smarter than you. Because, you know, the worst possible outcome would be to have a smart President.

But this elitism has to be connected to a greater outrage for it to work. And so the Republicans use patriotism. It's actually somewhat ingenious, as it attaches all of the threads we've already seen out there about Obama.

Kristol manages the neat trick of wrapping up not one, but two highly dubious anti-Obama smears into his first few grafs -- the bogus flag-pin patriotism story and Michelle Obama's claim that she's really proud of her country for the first time.

That's to be expected, of course. But what interests me is the overarching theme he uses to tie them together: They both show, he suggests, that haughty and elitist Obama thinks he's better than you and the average Joe. We saw these exact same attacks lobbed relentlessly at Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, of course.

Kristol reaches this "conclusion" by pointing to Obama's claim that he stopped wearing the flag pin because it "became a substitute" for "true patriotism." This, Kristol said, was tantamount to Obama saying that "he was too good" to wear the pin...

He's too good to be a real American, and so he's too good to wear the pin, and so he's not a real American because real Americans wear flag pins. Or something.

Sargent correctly notes that this "he's not a real American" smear is the same that we saw with regard to Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. And, of course, many conservatives do believe that liberals aren't real Americans, that they're some kind of coastal fifth column. The derision is ALWAYS over patriotism and "America-hating," from the time of Jeanne Kirkpatrick asking why liberals "blame America first" in 1984. It's an uncritical way of looking at the world, full of jingoism and completely outside of policy.

Where it departs, or builds upon, that theme, is in the fact that Obama is a black man, and in the eyes of various email forwards, a Muslim. This takes the "he's not a real American smear" to its extreme. He doesn't LOOK like a real American either, according to this tactic. I think this is why they feel they can get away with this more overt sneering, where CNN sees no problem running a poll asking if Obama shows the proper patriotism for someone who wants to be President.

How fucking dare you? Lack patriotism? What is this, the McCarthy era? AP is now willing to write any crap, so long as it's a Republican saying it about a Democrat? AP knows damn well that Obama doesn't hate America. This isn't a he-said-she-said. It's a case where AP is genuflecting to the Republicans and regurgitating their crap in a way Pickler and her fellow reporters wouldn't dare do if the victim were Republican. Has Pickler ever written a story about John McCain being insane? Being senile? Somehow I doubt it.

CNN should be ashamed of itself (and AP and the NYT are close behind). It's high time we declared war on the media and made it clear that this year if they decide to give coverage to the Republicans' swift-boating lies, then they are going to pay a huge price.

So there it is. Anyone surprised? The personal attacks will feminize Obama as an effete intellectual egghead elitist who isn't a real American and is in fact some sort of Manchurian candidate for Al Qaeda, who lacks the experience to keep the country safe. It's an amalgam of all the attacks we've heard since the 1950s, and none of them have anything to do with policy. This is the battleground that the Republicans will fight the election on. If Obama were smart, he would fight on a completely different battleground, one of contrast, one that defends the 81% of Americans who don't think George Bush moved the country in the right direction. If the critique of him can be broadened out and surmised as a critique of that whole 81% ("they don't want your life to improve. They think you're not real Americans"), it loses all of its power through that dilution.

The Huckabee Shuffle

As I mentioned earlier, Mike Huckabee is soaring in South Carolina, traditionally where the Republican nominee has been determined in recent years. Considering that another Southern state, Florida, comes up right after South Carolina, and considering that Huckabee now has the national lead, there's no question that he's the front-runner on the Republican side right now, no matter what the McCain-fluffing media seems to think. The biggest sign of this is Bill Kristol's quasi-endorsement of him in the New York Times yesterday, a sign that the conservative establishment is no longer putting up a firewall, but trying to cultivate Huckabee as someone they can work with.

Indeed, Kristol’s column goes on to praise Huckabee as “likable regular guy” with a compelling personal narrative who may appeal well to younger voters. He concludes that the “Republican establishment spent 2007 underestimating Mike Huckabee,” and insists that “Huckabee is a talented politician.”

Kristol didn’t go so far as to endorse the former Arkansas governor — he said, “I’m certainly not ready to sign up” to back Huckabee’s campaign — but that he was willing to be as laudatory as he was should be enough to raise a few eyebrows.

As regular readers know, the Republican establishment, especially throughout the month of December, experienced what John Cole aptly labeled the “Huckabee Panic.” All of a sudden, it seemed to dawn on the party that the GOP nominee may be a former governor who raised taxes, supported immigration “amnesty,” has a record of making extreme comments, and whose understanding of foreign policy and national security issues rivals that of a small child [...]

And yet, here’s Kristol, effectively giving Huckabee his blessing. It suggests the Republican establishment freak-out, at a minimum, is subsiding, and the party is coming to grips with the former governor being a reasonable alternative to their preferred candidates.

As John Cole noted, watching the establishmentarians turn on a dime if Huckabee can't be stopped will be great fun. But I think you'll see more of Huckabee going to the establishment than the establishment going to him. His movement on immigration, from a position of compassion to a position of wanting to deny birthright citizenship, has already occurred.

But I think it's going to be easy for Huckabee to become "acceptable" to the money boys on the right; his campaign isn't really about anything but the fact that he's a good Christian and an aw-shucks kind of guy. I actually took a look at a Huckabee campaign rally on C-SPAN. It's like a stand-up comedy/variety show. The jokes come fast and furious, with lines like this one which he made on Letterman last night being indicative.

"If I win New Hampshire, it's because I did this show. If I lose New Hampshire, it's because I did this show."

He's funny and charming and he plays bass guitar almost everywhere. The policy specifics are amazingly lean. There was an entire campaign event this week based on a diner naming a burger after him. As far as the establishment is concerned, he can demagogue about the economy all he wants, as long as he's not prepared to do anything about it. And the indications are that he wants to talk about these things but actually go in the opposite direction, by proposing regressive taxes like the FairTax plan. As long as he can keep the grunts in the pews excited, they'll have an army of volunteers at the polls in November. A certain kind of army:

"When we become believers, it's as if we have signed up to be part of God's Army, to be soldiers for Christ," Huckabee told the enthusiastic audience.

"When you give yourself to Christ, some relationships have to go," he said. "It's no longer your life; you've signed it over."

Likening service to God to service in the military, Huckabee said "there is suffering in the conditioning for battle" and "you obey the orders."

I don't think the Big Money Boys are comfortable with this at all, but they may have to live with it. After all, their alternatives are dwindling.

The Wisdom We Can Expect

From the Grey Lady, The New York Freakin' Times:

"I think there's been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America, that, you know, somehow the Shia can't get along with the Sunni, or the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq has always been very secular."

Heckuva job, Pinch.

Bill Kristol in the New York Times. And what's worse, he's not behind the paywall! They should build a new paywall just for him.

SCHIP Saga - The Permanent Republican Minority

The buzz is that the Democrats' effort to override President Bush's veto on S-CHIP will come up short. And they are coming up with a new strategy to fund children's health. But regardless of that, Thursday's vote will be brutal for Republicans, and will resonate into next November. The Democratic majority has no need to compromise further on what was already a compromise bill. Already the Republicans are scampering for cover by announcing their own universal health care proposal. It probably goes something like "Ten bazillion dollars in payouts to insurance companies in exchange for the same shitty system you have now," but that's not the point. They've been forced by this bill to play on the other team's home field. That's smrt politics that you don't normally see from the Democrats, so hopefully they'll press the advantage.

Chris Hayes has a reminder of what this is all about. SCHIP is a program designed to capture those who aren't poor enough to be covered by Medicare, but who can't afford private health insurance on their own, or who can't procure it due to pre-existing condition (which was the real issue in the case of Graeme Frost, who was in a terrible car accident). The idea is that kids had no role in the unaffordability of their own health care, and that there are social and moral benefits to ensuring their care. I don't care who pays, any kid who needs health care ought to get it, and that's not a controversial stance in this country; over 75-80% of Americans agree. Those who don't, however, are adamant about it, for purely political reasons:

It was back in 1993, as the Clintons prepared to roll out their new universal healthcare plan, that Bill Kristol wrote a memo to fellow conservatives and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill warning them that their goal must be to "kill," not amend, the Clinton plan. "Healthcare," Kristol wrote, "is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative ... . It will revive the reputation of the ... Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."

This is really the issue: from the New Deal through the Great Society, the Democrats dominated American politics by being first and foremost the stewards of social-democratic middle-class entitlements. In the wake of the Civil Rights Act, white southerners in particular and white middle-class voters in general, began to associate the Democrats with pursuing the interests of Others - minorities, homosexuals, welfare queens. Conservative political dominance in the post-Reagan era has rested on two pillars: preserving, at a rhetorical level, the conception of the Democrats as being beholden to "special interests" (who don't look like you) and, at the policy level, making sure Democrats never have an opportunity to pass legislation that would belie that claim.

If Democrats once again act like the stewards of the middle class, there will really be no stopping them electorally. Which is why this debate must be about rich lazy people who are "ripping off" the American taxpayer. Republicans have no choice but to demonize the very people who the SCHIP program are designed to protect (and by the way, it was designed by Congressional Republicans).

I still believe we have a shot to pass this bill, but if some intractable Republicans won't go along, they are signing their political death warrant.

The SCHIP Fight - Two Weeks And Counting

The date of October 18 has been set for a vote to override President Bush's veto of providing health care to children. Regardless of the outcome, this will become a defining issue on the most important domestic policy facing America in 2008.

Several officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing strategy, said Pelosi and Reid seemed set on sending Bush successor bills that are nearly identical with the one he just vetoed. The goal would be to force him — and his congressional allies — to repeatedly expose themselves to criticism that they were denying health care for kids.

Democracy Corps, which offers advice to Democrats, said its poll showed the public sides with Democrats by a margin of 60-35. The veto battle "gives Democrats a large advantage with independents, as well as mobilizing Democratic supporters. Indeed, the president has not won over Republican voters on this issue," said an accompanying memo.

House Republicans quietly distributed a survey by David Winston, who is close to Boehner, that came to a different conclusion. It said critics of the legislation can win the public debate if they say they favor "covering uninsured children without expanding government coverage to adults, illegal immigrants and those who already have insurance...." A copy of the poll was obtained by The Associated Press.

Boehner is lying, of course. The bill does not provide "government coverage" at all, and it's against federal law for S-CHIP funds to go to illegal immigrants. Hoouse Republicans simply have to lie to make their vote palatable. If they were honest, they would say what Bill Kristol said, supposedly in jest but not really.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, NPR’s Mara Liasson said that President Bush’s expected veto of an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which passed both the House and Senate on a strong bipartisan basis, will be seen as “a heartless blow against children.”

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who supports Bush’s veto, laughingly joked:

First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the President’s willing to do something bad for the kids.

He clearly is. The President has delivered 4 vetoes in his two terms. Two denied federal funds for stem cell research, upending efforts for medical breakthroughs, many for children. One denied a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, consigning 18 year-old soldiers to a war zone with no end in sight. And this one directly denies children health care. Bush's entire veto lifespan is about doing something bad for the kids. He is the leader of the party of death.

The Democrats have the right idea on this one, voting on it over and over again and forcing Republicans and the President to defend their anti-children stance. I wish they had the fortitude to do the same endless votes on Iraq, as Russ Feingold advocates. But they're not going to give up on children.

UPDATE: It's important to note that the group holding rallies in support of the Democratic position on S-CHIP and against the President's veto is MoveOn.org. You would think that, after being slapped in the face by the Democratic leadership, they would have no interest in helping out on this issue. But MoveOn puts the policy first. Democrats simply don't understand the allies they have in the country in the progressive movement.

The Craig Gift

Run Larry Run! He really needs to stand up for closeted gay Republicans throughout Idaho. It also fucks up the Bush Administration's Iran/Iraq rollout plans, as I'm sure the cable nets will go into full 24-Hour "Senator-We-Never-Heard-Of-Until-Last-Week-But-Now-He's-In-A-Gay-Sex-Scandal-And-It's-Lurid" mode.

What this guy said:

TPM Reader KB understands the nexus between imperialism and 24 hour cable ...

If Sen. Larry Craig reconsiders and steps all over Gen. Petraeus' week of surge, Bill Kristol's head will explode. That Penatagon media war room they set up will be useless in the face of this cable TV zoo.

And I think you can run on having exploded Bill Kristol's head, and win. Or at least be respectable.

Not only is Larry Craig the only man or woman in the state of Idaho who can deliver that Senate seat to the Democrats, but the benefits NOW to his intransigence can hardly be counted. I think a large part of the GOP stabbing him in the back and trying to get him backstage was the TIMING. There's a war to support and another war to start. We can't have the nation talking about a wide stance.

The Pundits, They Burn!

I've been collecting really bad editorial columns for a new feature I think I'll call "This Week In Abominable Punditry," but I never got around to last week's. So I'll just bullet-point it here for your perusal:

• If I had to give out an award for abominable punditry, clearly it would have to be called the Golden Hiatt. In this edition, Fred blames Harry Reid for being so mean and angry and bullying Senators around on Iraq, disabling them from coming up with a nice sensible centrist solution for themselves. In other words, he's claiming that if Harry Reid and the Democrats weren't pushing for a change of course, Republican moderates who have voted in lockstep with Bush for over four years would suddenly break with the President and come up with their own plan. Talk about waiting for Godot.

• It's never a carnival of abominable punditry without John Stossel, who actually argues that life expectancy isn't a function of health care, just simply that "in America we kill each other more." Murder to BOLSTER an argument! Why didn't I think of that? He also laments that patients don't "shop around" for health care, and he's right because when I break my ankle, it is my right and duty as a capitalist not to get it set and fixed immediately but to comparison shop. (This, by the way, is part of a common thread of Michael Moore-bashing that has a root in journalistic exceptionalism, where they must scrupulously fact-check his numbers without concern for their own.)

• David Brooks' column, where he peers into the soul of George W. Bush and finds a man at peace, certainly qualifies for abominable, but Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting point about one passage:

Conservatives are supposed to distrust government, but Bush clearly loves the presidency. Or to be more precise, he loves leadership. He’s convinced leaders have the power to change societies. Even in a place as chaotic as Iraq, good leadership makes all the difference.

Now I suppose their must be some conservatives for him this "are supposed to distrust government" dictum applies, but for the past fifty or so years that's clearly not the case. The mainstream conservative belief is that the government needs to be given dramatically greater scope to gather information and to deploy force -- including deadly force -- and threats thereof.

Indeed, and that's something Jonah Goldberg conveniently forgets in his abominable column, where he asserts that liberals only hate strong executive power when applied to George Bush (and he backs it up with tales of FDR, which certainly resonate for everyone over the age of 80, but not many others). In fact, conservatives' views on the Presidency have transmorgrified to a far greater degree over time, even constructing wild theories validating the Imperial Presidency and reconciling it with conservatism. It should not surprise you that Goldberg gets this backwards. If it does, please go directly to The Corner and come back after total immersion in the bullshit.

• Our "Abominable Punditry in History" series takes us back to the words of Thomas Friedman, one of America's most-respected foreign policy writers, mind you, who said this about Kosovo:

Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set back your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.

Classy. I guess achieving every objective without the loss of a single American life was too neat and clean.

• And finally, there's the all-timer from Bill Kristol, Why Bush Is A Winner, a raft of lies and uncomfortably bad predictions that managed to only convince one person in the entire country:

Bill Kristol's the-war-is-being-won piece in The Washington Post brought him plenty of ridicule, but at least one person liked it.

President Bush read the July 15 Outlook article that morning and recommended it to his staff.

"I like the cut of this guy's jib! Never thought about it that way! I'm actually doin' a good job! This guy's like Einstein! I wonder what else he thinks about me?"

Peace out.

Joe Lieberman Actually Said This

"If (Bill) Kristol says what I'm doing is right, it must be right."

Ho. Lee. Crap.

I don't think there's enough space on this blog to itemize all of the things about which Bill Kristol has been wrong. Let me pluck one at random.

"I think there's been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America, that, you know, somehow the Shia can't get along with the Sunni, or the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq has always been very secular."

"Always" in this context must be taken to mean "while Saddam Hussein was killing Shiites and Kurds and forcing their leaders into exile, from the outsider's view it seemed that way."

That's almost a disqualifying statement from the Senate, suitable for expulsion. The only people who listent to Bill Kristol anymore are Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney. I think even Bush looked at Kristol's advice and thought, "Well that's just stupid."

UPDATE: Lieberman spread the usual bullshit in the WSJ today, saying in the same editorial that the Sunnis are turning against Al Qaeda in Al Anbar, but if we leave Iraq, Al Qaeda will take over. If Al Qaeda can't even persuade fellow Iraqi Sunnis in the West to join them, how do you think they'll fare with enemy Shiites throughout the country? What a tool.

Right Between The Eyes

Bill Kristol, last seen getting every single thing wrong about foreign policy since the day he was born, has the gall to criticize someone for not taking risks from the comfort of his penthouse apartment in Manhattan and not on the streets of Baghdad.

Will Bush pardon Libby? Apparently not--even if it means a man who worked closely with him and sought tirelessly to do what was right for the country goes to prison. Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino, noting that the appeals process was underway, said, "Given that and in keeping with what we have said in the past, the president has not intervened so far in any other criminal matter and he is going to decline to do so now."

So much for loyalty, or decency, or courage. For President Bush, loyalty is apparently a one-way street; decency is something he's for as long as he doesn't have to take any risks in its behalf; and courage--well, that's nowhere to be seen. Many of us used to respect President Bush. Can one respect him still?

There's so much that can be said about this, but none of it half as good as what TBogg said.

...here he goes again talking about "courage" and "decency" as if this hump has ever done a courageous or decent thing during his shiftless privileged life. Bill Kristol is worried about his PNAC neocon buddy Scooter when:

More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday, warning that the figure will continue to rise [...]

These are the consequences of the actions and chest-thumping policies of people like Scooter Libby, Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Doug Feith, etc. They play a game where only other people lose, but never themselves. Then they just move on to think tanks and visiting professorships and book contracts where nobody ever points out to them that they fucked up. They fucked up really bad.

If there was a shred of decency or an ounce of courage in any one of them, take your pick, they would each be making an appointment with Mr. Heavy Rope and Mr. Stout Overhead Beam, and their last act on earth would be to pin a note to their shirt that simply states: "I'm sorry. I was wrong."

Amen. TBogg only gets serious about as often as the cicadas come out from underground to terrorize the Midwest, but when he does it's thrilling to watch.

On a related note, Rick Perlstein takes a look at the letters to the court from Libby's band of neocon well-wishers and finds them to be a fascinating study in GOP thinking, where none of their friends can do any wrong, where they're all paragons of virtue or simply misunderstood, where forces conspire against them from simply doing the right thing for them and their families. But:

What's missing from every single one - every one: a single forthright statement about the magnitude of the offense for which he'd already been convicted.

But who cares, Libby loves families!

It's nothing short of enormously gratifying to see this two-bit huckster get everything that's coming to him. And hearing the right-wing noise machine in full bleat tickles me as well.

UPDATE: I should mention that the majority of the Republicans at the debate would pardon Libby if they were President, and the best answer was Mitt Romney's, an encapsulation of his whole campaign really, as he made the principled statement that he's never pardoned anybody because he doesn't believe in overruling juries, but in this case he probably would because that's what he thinks primary voters want him to say.