Marketing, Not the Product: An Elegy for Conservatives

As promised…

I’m going to try hard not to overreact. I’m going to try to stay away from hyperbole. I’m simply going to try and think through what the results of 2008 South Carolina, and the aftereffects, mean.

What truly matters to me in the final analysis is not that Fred Thompson was rejected, but who the primary voters of SC selected over him, and possible reasons why they did so. And the result is that I now must seriously entertain the idea that the Reagan Coalition is indeed no more, and that the future of conservatism as a movement and the future of the Republican Party as a political organization are both in flux.

There are three things about the SC primary results that are simply striking to me.

1. Fred Lost

There are some who remain optimistic, who believe that in this strange year, anything is possible and that Fred Thompson could remain viable somehow — perhaps involving a brokered convention, etc. That’s all fine and good, but such optimism cannot obscure the fact that Fred Thompson lost, and lost big. He got beat pretty badly by McCain and Huckabee both.

Why did he lose? Especially when it appeared that everyone up and down the Republican Party invariably agreed with Fred on the positions, and further agreed that he was the most consistently, across-the-board conservative in the field?

Well, the answer usually is some form of “Fred rocks, but his campaign sucks”. This is the criticism most often levelled at Thompson: we agree and believe in him, but his campaign just didn’t get it done. Whether it’s a criticism of the organization, a criticism of the candidate, or a criticism of timing, fact is that many SC Republicans voted against Fred not because of his positions, but in spite of them.  We can talk about electability, about leadership, about discipline, about “fire in the belly”… whatever term you want to use.  But the point is that the SC electorate punished Fred for failing to execute.

There are, of course, some very good reasons to do so. As many have pointed out, if you can’t sell the message, then it doesn’t matter what the message is.  However it happened, Thompson was seen as being unable to get the message out.

2.  Voters went for Huckabee and McCain

The second salient fact is that in rejecting Fred Thompson — the candidate who just didn’t get it done — 30% of the voters of SC went for Huckabee, and 33% went for McCain.  This is significant for slightly different reasons, but nonetheless significant.

McCain’s problems with the conservative base is so well-known that even Fox News commentators talk about it.  They say that he needs to extend a branch to conservatives, and have a Come to Jesus moment on McCain-Feingold (among other issues).  McCain’s own supporters have problems with some of his record on illegal immigration, on Gang of 14, on McCain-Feingold, on voting against the Bush tax cuts, etc.  And these are his active supporters.

Nonetheless, 33% of those voting in the Republican primary in rock-ribbed conservative state of South Carolina went for McCain.  I can only think of two possible explanations.  One possibility is that McCain, despite his issues, was seen as being the best on the preeminent issue before the SC GOP electorate: the War.  (With the very high military family population in SC, this isn’t too far from the truth, I believe.)  Large numbers of conservatives in SC forgave McCain all of his “foibles” because he was right on the One Thing to Rule Them All.  The other possibility is that McCain won over all of the moderate Republicans and independents in the SC primary.  (More on this shortly)

Huckabee’s 30% is immensely significant.  Fred Thompson simply tore apart Huckabee’s economic populism during the SC debate, and Huckabee simply couldn’t answer his charges.  Huckabee’s positions are so different from classic conservative principles — including the class-warfare rhetoric he uses on stump speeches — that his strong second-place finish could only be explained by one of two things: “conservatism” no longer means what it used to mean, or social conservatives have become an identity politics group (which… probably means that “conservatism” no longer means what it used to mean).

Take a look at the exit polling data on some of these questions.

McCain won 47% of those who describe themselves as being liberal on most political issues, 51% of the moderates, and only 26% of the conservatives.  3 out of 4 SC voters who described themselves as “conservative” voted against McCain.  And yet, they did not vote for Thompson or for McCain.  Instead, 35% of them voted for Huckabee.  Romney and Thompson together accounted for 35% — meaning that as many self-described conservatives voted for Huckabee (whose positions are not conservative, as that term used to mean) as did for the two candidates who espouse the most consistently conservative positions.

Further consider that 70% of the respondents said that it mattered “somewhat” or “a great deal” that the candidate shared their religious beliefs.  That group went heavily for Huckabee: 50% in the “great deal” category and 29% of the “somewhat” category, with the combined result being that 40% of the 70% to whom the candidate’s religious beliefs matter went for Huckabee.  That is, I submit, identity politics — a variety of politics I happen to be fairly conversant in.  At least 40% of the 70% voted for the guy who was “most like them” as a person.

3.  Rejection of the Commentariat

The final observation that I take away is that the 2008 SC primary showed the powerlessness of the conservative commentariat — and in particular, the irrelevance of the Internet.

Rush Limbaugh himself constantly attacked both McCain and Huckabee.  Mark Levin’s hostility to McCain is well-known and well-documented.  The blogosphere as a whole was pulling for Thompson with a fervor usually seen on the left side of the blogosphere.  (Myself included.)  Reports have been that the party elites really wanted Fred Thompson to be the GOP nominee.  Thousands of trees, and billions of pixels gave their lives for the cause of promoting the Thompson candidacy.

None of it mattered.

And yes, one can always fall back on the “Thompson ran a terrible campaign” theme.  That very well might be true.  But one of the hallmarks of campaigning is to win over the so-called opinion makers and influencers.  And the Thompson campaign did that in spades.

It did not matter.

I see this as a wholesale rejection of the conservative commentariat.  The endorsements of various “powerful” organizations and entities did not matter.  The support of various writers, media personalities, and the Blogosphere did not matter.

To some extent, this blog entry does not matter.

What does all this mean?  Why the title?

Taken together, the conclusion I draw from the above three observations is that we have crossed the Rubicon in Republican politics.

There is no intellectual leadership in the Republican party — the intellectual commentariat is just an echo chamber of those of us who really care about discussing principles, philosophies, and policies.  The voters themselves pay no attention to the commentariat, and vote accordingly.

You see, the converse of the “Thompson campaign sucked” is something like, “The McCain/Huckabee campaigns rocked!”  The message, the inconsistency, the divergence from conservative principles — these things did not matter.  What mattered was their organization, their GOTV, their TV advertising, their townhall meetings, etc. etc. — all of the process-oriented execution of a campaign.  Whatever it is that the McCain & Huckabee campaigns did, it mattered more than the principles so beloved by the commentariat.

It mattered more to an enormous bloc of South Carolina voters that Huckabee’s personal religious beliefs were similar to their own than that his policies cohered with “conservative principles”.

In short, the results of S. C. show that it is the marketing, not the product, that counts.

If we lose in the general election vs. the Democrats, it will be because our candidate lacked organization, or didn’t have fire in the belly, or wasn’t displaying enough leadership, or ran a poor GOTV operation, or did not have the right zinger in the presidential debates.  If we win, then it has nothing to do with the electorate coming to see that conservative principles are better than liberal ones — instead, it’s all about our machinery being better than theirs.

Politics is no longer about ideas and principles and policies, but about gameplan and execution.  We don’t need the conservative commentariat, and thinktanks like Cato Institute.  No — we need Bill Belichick.

Perhaps this has always been the case, and I was just naive in thinking that conservatism — and the contemporary Republican Party — was different.

When the Kerryites lost in 2004, and Al Gore lost in 2000, I thought it was because they believed the wrong things, and had wrong policies, and had no principles to speak of besides Wille zu Macht.  The Dems thought it was because of the Bush organization machine, the insidious machinations of Karl “The Emperor” Rove, various dirty tricks, and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.  Turns out, maybe the Dems were right.  McLuhan has been right along — the medium is the message.  The campaign is the message in today’s America.

Already, there are some who are calling for a ‘rebranding’ of the Republican Brand — as if it were AirTran and just needed a new logo and some new paint.  Then there are others who believe that we need a new coalition for a new era, a new product for a changed marketplace.

Perhaps both are right.

Whoever our nominee is, and whether we win or lose in November, it does appear to me that today, after the SC primaries, conservatism is not about ideas, but about winning, or about identity, or about… well, whatever else a movement would be about once it transcends ideas and becomes about process and execution.

The disappointment that many of us Fredheads feel about the results of South Carolina has this sense of having crossed the ideological Rubicon.  We know our candidate was flawed; we know his campaign wasn’t the Patriots offense.  We thought, nonetheless, that he would win because the Republican Party — especially the conservatives within the party, well-represented in S. C. — would be about ideas and principles, not just the theatrics and the mechanics of campaigning.  That may have been naive.  In retrospect, it certainly seems so.  Some of us (myself included) congratulate Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee for running a great campaign.  None of that changes the pit-in-the-stomach feeling that we have crossed some important line, and have chosen — as a party, as a movement — that we will be about winning, about process, about campaigning.

We will be about marketing, not the product.  And that, in some way, is the most tragic result of South Carolina.

-TS

Fred, Consistency, and the Lure of Going Native

Reading the excellent post on Redstate about Thompson’s stand on the Second Amendment, I was reminded of something. I’m currently reading the excellent War Without Death, a book about the behind-the-scenes story in the NFC East, when I came across a fascinating section about the Redskins Opening Day.

Dan Snyder, the owner of the Redskins, had invited all sorts of luminaries to the owner’s box to watch the home opener. In attendance were Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Jamie Foxx, and one Fred D. Thompson. It was a throwaway observation, but it reminded me most forcefully of something.

Fred Thompson is a Hollywood actor.

Fred Thompson has spent a decade or more in Washington DC.

Why is this important at all?

One of the peculiarities that conservatives have had to endure is the sight of formerly conservative politicians going to Washington DC and “going native”. They go to the swamp on the Potomac with the best of intentions, and over time, they somehow start to adapt the viewpoint of the reigning liberal orthodoxy.

GW Bush is but one example. Even though “compassionate conservatism” was grating rhetoric, I don’t know that any of us would have foreseen his so-called “growth” in office. McCain, that most excellent of men, has the stains of McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, and is talking about man-made global warming after his many years in Washington. Condi Rice is another major disappointment in the way she has “grown” as the Secretary of State.

The GOP — finally handed the reins of power in Congress — went absolutely berserk trying to out-liberal the liberal Congress they replaced in terms of spending, earmarks, and corruption.

Supposedly conservative justices, nominated by supposedly conservative presidents, “grow in office” until they start handing down rulings completely at odds with the principles of conservatism.

We know this happens.

I think it’s something in the water.

Nonetheless, I realized that Fred had spent years in the fairyland that is Hollywood, surrounded by Hollywood people, in informal, off-camera gatherings, parties, and functions being talked to/at/with by the likes of Tom Cruise. It’s a glamorous world, for certain, and I wonder what sort of character a man must have to resist all of the blandishments and temptations of Hollywood to remain as Fred has remained all these years.

Because, friends, let’s not pretend that any of us is totally immune to peer pressure and our social circles. Let’s not pretend that any of us likes to be the odd one out. It is not only easy to learn to conform, learn to get along, learn to adapt the dominant ideology in place in our immediate social circles — it is actually near impossible to resist conforming.

The same goes for Washington DC, the city with more lawyers per capita than any other in the world, the city where the lobbyists never sleep.

McCain is a good man, and if the choice were him or the Socialists, I would hold my nose and vote for him. But he has already proven, to me at least, that he has the capacity to “grow in office” — because he already has.

Romney is a good man, and if the choice were him or the Socialists, I would hold my nose and vote for him. But he hasn’t been surrounded by Hollywood stars with their glamor coupled with liberal views, nor has he spent years in the Swamp being battered from all sides. And his conservatism is — even if genuine — of recent vintage. I worry if he could resist “growing in office” once he reaches Washington DC.

Giuliani is a good man, and if the choice were him or the Socialists, I would hold my nose and vote for him. But has he truly been surrounded by acquaintances, peers, friends for years on end who advocate the socialist path and resisted? Has he spent years in the Swamp? No, and no. Could he resist the temptation to “grow in office” once he reaches the White House? Perhaps — he’s a strong man. But evidence of such, there is none.

Huckabee is a good man, but he is a Socialist in many ways, so a choice between him or one of the actual Socialists, would be no choice at all. And importantly, he has not proven to me the ability to resist the tempation of going native once ensconced in Washington. If Huckabee had spent years of his life in Hollywood, surrounded by Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, I wonder if he might not have developed some different views and ideas on how the country should be run.

In terms of consistency, in holding on to his conservative values, right in the midst of Hollywood and DC — the two most corrupting places in America — Fred Thompson shows me something. He has proven something there. Doesn’t mean he too would not “grow in office” — but at the very least, he has a record of not going native, either in Hollywood or in DC.

Fred Thompson for President.

-TS

Best. Post. Ever.

If you read nothing else this year, read this.

Best piece of writing on the web so far this year.  Nay, this decade.

-TS

An Important Video to Watch

This is an absolutely chilling YouTube video made from a 911 call that a woman made while her home was being invaded by a male stalker. (HT: Laurel Zimmer)

All the politicking and talking about guns and gun control ignore the specific and the real, sometimes.  It’s important to watch this.

-TS

Conservative Consensus on Gun Control?

What, if anything, is the conservative position on gun control that is intellectually defensible?

I ask because I believe what distinguishes conservatism from today’s liberalism is the idea that principles — not just raw power — matter. As I see it, the tension between principle and policy is in everything we advocate and do, but nowhere in as sharp a relief as in the issue of the Second Amendment.

I am forced to conclude that as conservatives, we must advocate for a new constitutional amendment spelling out what rights individual citizens ought to have with respect to owning weapons.

As I see it, on the one hand, we must oppose any and all attempts to impose gun control by the government, including bans on military hardware up to and including nuclear weapons. There is no intellectually coherent way to interpret the Second Amendment differently.

I don’t feel particularly knowledgeable about the jurisprudence of the Second Amendment, so I would appreciate those who know more to educate me. Having said that, in a general sense, the other freedoms articulated in the Bill of Rights have a basis in the Anglo-American common law tradition. The ideas of free speech, for example, has been something in place since the Magna Carta. Freedom of religion may not have been practiced in a firm we would recognize as such, but it existed as a philosophy for some time.

The Second Amendment, on the other hand, seems to be of a revolutionary character — it amounts to the rejection of the state’s monopoly on violence. Having just fought a war of rebellion against the legitimate government (under the theories of government in place in the 18th century), the Founders enshrined (IMHO) the idea that the people have a right to violence specifically against the government.

Today, we get wrapped up in whether the Second Amendment allows us to have handguns for self-defense or not, and so forth, but it seems there is no reasonable way to doubt that the spirit of the Second Amendment is to preserve the ability of the people to fight the government — specifically, the federal government.

That does mean, of course, in a principled Constitutionalist sense, that the Second Amendment does allow people to own F-15’s, main battle tanks, and nuclear cruise missiles.

Of course, it is patently ridiculous in the real world to advocate such a position. “Home defense nukes” just isn’t a sane point of view to hold in our world. If people think Ron Paul is kooky, imagine how conservatives would sound if we were advocating for private citizens to own artillery with chemical warheads.

While the Founders may have intended for the citizenry to have the ability to have a second Revolutionary War against the Federal United States should the need arise, they did not foresee the development of mechanized weapons, chemical and biological weapons, and other technology that simply does not allow the application of 18th century ideas.

Is this not the perfect situation for how we, as conservatives, should respond to actual changes in the real world when such changes make the Constitution outdated?

If we accept the various court rulings allowing for regulation of arms, how then do we coherently oppose various court rulings creating rights that do not exist, or abrogating rights that do exist?

Practically speaking, we can agree to accept regulation only as a temporary patch while we work towards a new Amendment to update the Second Amendment to the world we live in, as opposed to the world the Founders lived in back in the 18th century.

And the question we will need to answer is, What is the modern purpose of a freedom to own weapons? Is it still to preserve the ability to have a second Revolutionary War if the Federal United States becomes a tyranny? Or is it something else? Self-defense against criminals? Self-defense against local police/officials?

It would be useful to have consensus on these issues as an intellectual matter.

-TS

Dealing With Domestic Wannabe Terrorists

According to Reuters, Britain has convicted and imprisoned a wannabe Taliban fighter, having arrested him at Heathrow in October of 2006, carrying cash and various jihadi propaganda materials:

LONDON (Reuters) – A London dentist who planned to fight for the Afghan Taliban against British and U.S. forces was jailed on Tuesday for preparing to commit terrorist acts.

Sohail Qureshi, 29, was arrested in October 2006 at London’s Heathrow airport as he prepared to fly to Pakistan carrying around 9,000 pounds ($17,800) in cash, medical supplies and night vision gear.

Qureshi, who was born in Pakistan, was sentenced to 4-1/2 years but in practice is likely to be free within a year, after serving half that term and allowing for time he has already spent in custody.

Describing him as a “dedicated supporter of Islamist extremism,” prosecutors said material on his computer hard drive showed he had intended to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan against British and U.S. forces.

Police also found a discussion with an associate on a militant Web site referring to his Pakistan trip. “All I know is that it is a two- or three-week operation. Pray that I will kill many, brother. Revenge, revenge, revenge,” it read.

…

Qureshi pleaded guilty to preparing for the commission of terrorist acts, possessing an article for a terrorist purpose and possession of records likely to be useful in terrorism.

It was the first conviction under a 2006 law covering cases where suspects are preparing to commit an act of terrorism but fall short of having a concrete plan in place.

The court was told that his arrest also led to the conviction of Samina Malik, 23, who had written poems praising Osama bin Laden, supporting martyrdom and discussing beheading.

Police had uncovered Internet contact between Qureshi and Malik, who worked airside at a shop in Heathrow’s Terminal 4.

The court was told that before his planned Pakistan trip, he e-mailed her and asked: “What is the situation like at work? Is the check-in very harsh or have things cooled down a bit?”

Malik was found guilty of possessing terrorism-related documents and was given a suspended sentence last month.

A few questions come to mind.

First, if Qureshi pleaded guilty… why did it take over fifteen months to sentence him?  Hopefully, he was taking a long rest with various boys and girls of the MI6 and CIA during that time, but… I rather doubt that.  The UK doesn’t have the Bill of Rights, but nonetheless, I get the feeling that their criminal defendants have rights as well.  Presumably, one of them is the right not to be interrogated by the secret service.

So, why the lengthy delay?  Shouldn’t it have been a week or two at the most?

Second, the fact that Qureshi received only 4 1/2 years and will be out in 1 year is… I don’t know what it is.  Leaves a queasy feeling in my stomach, yet I’m not sure how to protest this.

On the one hand, what Qureshi is accused of isn’t even a crime in the classic Anglo-American liberal tradition.  He’s guilty of a political belief — a vile one, to be sure, but he hasn’t killed anyone, hasn’t maimed anybody, and hasn’t actually taken up arms against the UK, the US, or any innocents.  Granted, the UK doesn’t have the rights that the US does with the constitutional protections that we have, but nonetheless, even 4 1/2 years could be considered as being extreme for the crime of being a jihadist.

But on the other hand, and practically speaking in the real world as opposed the world of legal principles, this is a man who is most obviously devoted to the cause of violent jihad, who was taking concrete steps to carry that out.  That we stopped him before he could actually blow people up and wreak mayhem does not change the fact that he was ready, willing and able to become a Taliban shaheed.  There is no suggestion in the article that Qureshi was repentant in any way, shape, or form; nor is there the suggestion that he will emerge from prison in a year a reformed and chastened British subject.

So in effect, in a year’s time, the British government will release onto its streets a self-professed jihadi who wanted to “kill many” for revenge, revenge, revenge.

Am I the only person who gets queasy at the thought?

Presumably, the MI6 and Scotland Yard and Interpol and the FBI Counter-terrorism people and the CIA and everybody else has Qureshi’s house, boat, car, doghouse, workplace, telephone, and cellphone monitored 24/7/365.  Presumably, Qureshi has now picked up all manner of surveillance.  So one may hope that he won’t be able to “kill many” for revenge, revenge, revenge.

At the same time, having paid his debt to society, is he not free to go about his business?  And if that business includes boarding a jet bound for Pakistan at Heathrow, but this time without all the terrorist paraphernalia, what right does the British government have to hold him? 

All of this raises some fundamental questions about how we in the West should deal with domestic terrorists-in-training, or wannabe jihadis, or others whose intent, purpose, and ability are all perfectly clear — but have not actually carried out an attack.

If we treat terrorism as a crime — as the UK has done (and the U.S. probably could not do under our system of civil rights) — then we could analogize the situation to that of a self-confessed child molester.  How would a civil society respond to someone who is a self-confessed pedophile, who declares his love for girls under the age of 10, and reads literature and has DVD’s of child pornography.  He is caught loitering near playgrounds, and then in the ensuing trial, pleads guilty to wanting to rape children.  And yet, he has actually done nothing.  He has committed no assault on a child; merely desires it very much and was planning in a general sense to carry it out.

How should civil society treat such a person, who is clearly a threat to society, remains unrepentant about it, and would engage in the crime if given the chance?

Does Anglo-American legal tradition support a “pre-emptive imprisonment” for the protection of society when the individual has not actually committed a crime?  (Hello, Tom Cruise!)  The answer is no, it does not.  We can not imprison someone for a crime they haven’t yet committed without throwing out the entire basis of our jurisprudence.

The dilemma is a bit easier — although by no means resolved — if we treat terrorism not as a crime, but as an act of war in the context of an ongoing war.  (Of course, you’d have to define the war, define the enemy, etc. which is a whole other set of issues….)

Under the war-paradigm, the domestic wannabe terrorist isn’t a criminal per se, but a saboteur unit working behind our lines – an enemy combatant.  Arrest and imprisonment are eminently justifiable as a preventive measure.  The same way we would take prisoners on the battlefield and hold them in prison camps — though they have committed no crime —  for the purpose of preventing them from returning to combat against our troops.

If the wannabe terrorist is also a citizen, or owes a duty of loyalty in some way to the country, then he might also be charged appropriately with treason.  But if he’s a foreign national, then I’m not sure that he’s committed any sort of a crime.

The United States and other Anglosphere countries have taken this approach in the past, but those efforts have mostly been condemned as most of them have been racist or xenophobic in nature.  Nonetheless, there is precedent there for preventive imprisonment — and it seems that such precedent would be stronger if the person being imprisoned is a self-confessed jihadist with loyalty to a group or movement whose avowed purpose is harmful to the United States.

Nonetheless, as the Long War continues on, this issue is unfortunately likely to become more urgent for us.  How we respond will go a long way towards answering whether we will win the Long War, and what sort of society we will be in the aftermath.

-TS

U.N.! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Courtesy of the AP, we get this cheery story of U.N. incompetence:

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Gunmen ambushed a United Nations convoy in Darfur in the first attack against the peacekeepers since their mission began this month, the U.N. said Tuesday. A Sudanese driver was wounded and in critical condition after the U.N. road convoy was attacked late Monday in a volatile area near Sudan’s border with Chad, the U.N. mission, known as UNAMID, said in a statement.

A fuel tanker truck was destroyed by the assailants, and an armored personnel carrier was damaged, the U.N. said. Peacekeepers said they did not return fire and that no U.N. staff was injured.

…

“The is the first time UNAMID is attacked, and we hope it will be the last,” mission spokesman Noureddine Mezni told The Associated Press. “We are in Darfur to bring peace, not to fight.”

The U.N. mission is the latest international attempt to quell the violence in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled to refugee camps in nearly five years of fighting between the Sudanese government and local rebels.

A previous African Union force was unable the end the chaos and suffered dozens of casualties.

Under a compromise with the Sudanese government, the new U.N. force incorporates the African peacekeepers already deployed and is to remain predominantly African.

The mission is due to number 26,000 peacekeepers and police, but the deployment is far behind schedule and Western countries have so far failed to commit heavy fighting equipment such as helicopters.

Why do we keep funding this incompetence bureaucracy whose sole purpose is to provide a good income to various corrupt bureaucrats?

What good is a “peacekeeping force” that doesn’t return fire even when fired upon?  If you’re in Sudan not to fight, how the hell do you “quell the violence”?  Strong language?  Letter writing campaigns?  American Idol reruns?

Given this level of incompetence, why should Western countries commit heavy fighting equipment?  The U.N. is in Sudan not to fight, but to “bring peace” — presumably by choruses of Kumbayah and sharing heartfelt stories of overcoming violence through dialogue.  Heavy weapons are for fighting, which the U.N. isn’t there to do, and apparently is unable or unwilling to do — even when fired upon.

Folks who want to subordinate our national defense to these clowns are plain old crazy, idiotically ignorant of reality, or enemies of the United States.

-TS

The Rich Prefer Democrats (and Rudy!)

So while poking around various places on the interwebs, I ran across something extraordinary. It comes as no surprise to many people, but… I thought it pretty shocking.

Turns out, the Democrats are the party of the Rich:

Number of $4,600 Donors:

Presumably, the $4600 donor is a husband-wife couple each donating the max $2300 per individual.

Only Giuliani and McCain attract any significant numbers of max donors, but on the whole, the Democrats are getting people to pony up the max by the thousands.

Interestingly, the accompanying chart shows what percentage of the total contribution is raised from those of $200+, $2,300+, and $4,600+.

Clinton: 13% ($200) / 63% ($2,300) / 37% ($4,600)
Obama: 25% / 46% / 11%
Edwards: 28% / 39% / 16%

Rudy: 12% / 60% / 19%
Romney: 14% / 49% / 1%
McCain: 22% / 47% / 10%
Huckabee: 25% / 37% / 0%
Thompson: 34% / 38% / 2%

I’m no political professional, so these numbers may not mean anything. And I can already anticipate objections. But at a minimum, does it not make you wonder and ask certain questions? For example…

How is Romney getting 49% of his money from the $2300 crowd, but only 1% from their spouses?

How is it that Rudy has less of his money coming from the $200 crowd than Hilary does? Is he the choice of the GOP elite?

Was Clinton’s downfall inevitable by the pattern in her fundraising?

Can any guesses be made about grassroots support for a candidate based on these? (Incidentally, Ron Paul is: 49% / 17% / 0%)

-TS

Fred’s Rascal Flatts Strategery for Victory

(You are hereby pre-warned of bias. I support Fred.)

Watching the excellent debates of the last two nights, I thought I would update my original post on why I thought Fred might have been the big winner in Iowa. I’m not privy to the inner strategies of the Thompson campaign (I am just a citizen supporter), but some trends are coming to light in my eyes.

This is mostly rank speculation, and likely full of errors of fact and judgment, and I would appreciate any thoughtful comments/corrections.

I believe that Thompson is now committed to taking a very subtle Bless the Broken Road strategy to the nomination. I think he’s waiting for the crowded field to get whittled down, as candidates spend their time and money attacking each other, all the while he plays up his strengths: dignity, character, principles, and gravitas. Once the field is whittled down to 2-3, if Fred is still standing, he may be the candidate that the GOP turns to.

I know that Fred was criticized for his somnolescent performance at the two debates, but I wonder if he’s doing it deliberately in order not to attract attention to himself in this time of internecine conflict.

A Pledge I Want from Candidates

I know we’re all constantly asking the candidates for this promise and that; to pander to us in one area or another. I’ve got one to add.

I want a promise, a pledge, by all of the candidates running for President to prosecute vigorously and to the fullest extent of the law those who leak national security secrets and the reporters and the press who publish them against the law.

Stories like this one in the NY Times had better be authorized by the President himself, because it is tipping our hand to the Taliban and Al Qaeda goons. This comes in the aftermath of the CIA use of private airplanes, existence of CIA facilites in Europe and elsewhere. It seems clear to me that elements of our bureaucracy, together with elements of the press, are acting as the de facto CIA of Al Qaeda. This must stop.

You want me to take you seriously for your national security credentials?

Tell me what you will do to stop the insane leaking of our national security secrets to the enemy by way of the press.

-TS

Can A Nation Be Moral?

Big Lizards is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs.  In a post in which the author, David Ross, argues against Huckabee as president, I find this interesting tidbit:

No “turning the other cheek,” please. That is for individuals, not nations. Governments do not, or should not, allow criminals to get away with murder, even though the New Testament might imply that individuals should do that very thing.At the same time it is sometimes the duty of a president to do things that might be regarded as in a moral gray area. I fully expect and require the president to lie when it is necessary. Not to me the voter, necessarily, and certainly not because the president has done something naughty and wants to get away with it. But I do think that it is sometimes necessary for a president to lie to protect the lives of soldiers or agents who might be in mortal danger. It is naive to believe otherwise.

For what it’s worth, I agree with Ross on nearly everything he wrote.   But it raises the question: Can a nation actually be moral?

Why Fred Might Be the Big Winner in Iowa

In the aftermath of the Iowa caucii, there are a number of views circulating throughout the Right Blogosphere about What It Means?  I’m going to add my $0.02 because I haven’t seen it really discussed much anywhere (although I crossposted this to Redstate.com for feedback).

My take on Iowa is that Fred Thompson may have been the big winner.  Now, I know most of you are going, “WTF are you smoking, son?”  And I realize the skepticism is warranted.

Although I am a Fredhead, I describe myself as a rational Fredhead.  I know he’s a dark horse candidate at this stage of the game.  But if you look at the race, several things emerge (and Redstate is a good example of the environment amongst Republican faithful).

First, 2008 promises to be the election that tests the Republican coalition, comprised primarily of Social Conservatives (SoCons), Fiscal Conservatives (FisCons), and War Conservatives (DefCons).  Yes, there’s a strong libertarian contingent, but I get the sense that they aren’t one of the pillars of the party, but more of a theme that infuses all pillars (except SoCons to some extent).

Second, none of the top tier candidates appeal to all three pillars.  Indeed, most of them are unacceptable to one or more of the pillars.

Huckabee is unacceptable to the FisCons and DefCons. Romney is apparently unpalatable to a large block of SoCons. Rudy is unacceptable to most SoCons, and a few FisCons. McCain is unacceptable to allCons. Paul is unacceptable to saneCons.

And every conservative has Fred Thompson as their first or second choice. He is the compromise candidate. If conventions still meant something, he would emerge as the nominee after backroom politicking by the party bosses.

Now Iowa comes along, and Huckabee out and out wins the thing.  Romney drops to second.  And Fred has an upset at coming in third.

But among the top tier, no candidate is as unacceptable as Huckabee.  Further, Romney was probably the most “electable” of the top candidates.

Huckabee’s win in Iowa no more catapults him into the nomination than a Kucinich win in Iowa would have on the Dem side.  He’s simply not in the mainstream of most of the Republican voters, even if he has very strong support among the SoCons.

Romney was and remains the “electable” candidate.  Apart from the devoted supporters (and every candidate has a cadre of those), I really got the sense that Republicans didn’t really trust the man.  There’s just something about him where even as you like him, even as you admire his competence, his perfectly coiffed hair, his speaking abilities, everything… just something unsettling about him.  All the flip-flop charges are, I believe, a symptom of this unease with Romney.

Republican support for Romney stemmed from the notion that he was the Guy That Gets It Done.  His money, his organization, his technology, and his personality were all supposed to build an inexorable vote-getting machine that we could ride to victory in the General over the expected Hillary-Media ticket.  I don’t know that Republicans truly love the guy; I don’t know that Republicans really believe the guy; I think we thought he is a winner, and that was the real basis of our support.

So for Huckabee the Pariah to win Iowa, and Romney the Chosen One to lose by 8 points, is frankly a nightmare for those FisCons and DefCons who cannot accept Huckabee and backed the Winner, who turns out to be a loser.

All of those people who backed Romney because he’s a winner now starts casting about for someone else to throw against Huckabee.  So who’s out there?

McCain benefits the most… except that there is a very significant part of the Republican base that cannot stand McCain.  Extremely influential opinion makers from Rush to Mark Levin and others are deadset against McCain.  As I see it, those who identify themselves as conservatives first and Republicans second find McCain unacceptable.  His Gang-of-Fourteen deal, the McCain-Feingold Crushing of Speech law, the repeated courting of the liberal media, his willingness to cut deals left and right… all of it leads to many conservatives rejecting McCain.  Plus, Fred beat McCain in Iowa.

Rudy stands to benefit, except that would splinter the party in all likelihood.  SoCons may admire his unwillingness to pander to their demands that the candidate stand for the Culture of Life, but they’re unlikely to back a man who has donated funds to Planned Parenthood.  I don’t know that the powerful Second Amendment group could countenance Rudy.  And he has weaknesses on illegal immigration.  Plus, Fred beat Rudy in Iowa.

This situation is perfect for powerbrokers to settle on Fred as the compromise candidate who can keep the party together.  He’s right on all of the principles.  He is everyone’s second choice.  SoCons, FisCons, DefCons… all say, “Fred would be great… if he could win.”

The critical question for Fred has always been, “Do you really want this?”  Obviously, I personally think he does, but for the good of the country, not for personal aggrandizement.  Nonetheless, Fred has to show the powerbrokers in the party, especially the money people, that he wants it and that if he is given the opportunity, he will close this out.

New Hampshire and Michigan are important, of course, as is South Carolina.  A huge win by McCain in NH changes the landscape, and I assume Romney’s support at that point starts to really move into McCain’s camp: after all, these are people who value winning more than rock-solid conservatism.  Romney could come storming back, and reestablish himself as the Winner.

But the path to the nomination is not as preposterous as people think.  The Head might say Romney or McCain or Rudy or whomever; but I believe the Heart of every conservative says Thompson.

The fundraising over the next couple of weeks will be very telling.

I think the big winner last night was one Fred D. Thompson.

-TS

Weather vs. Climate in Politics (Not Global Warming Related)

Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse has a wonderful post up called After the Storm, A Rising Tide where he tries to make some predictions about the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.  It’s well worth a read, as he delves into history and quite a bit of detail about the current Republican coalition between fiscons, socons, and neocons.

Towards the end, he concludes his post with something of a gloomy forecast for the GOP:

But no matter who is nominated and elected in 2008, the fracturing of the conservative movement, already well underway, will remain a huge issue. While I wouldn’t expect a rethinking of basic conservative principle, when the dust settles it is possible that conservatism and the GOP will not be as joined at the hip as they are now – especially given the animus between many mainstream conservatives and the social cons. I laid down some thoughts on what a post-fractured conservative movement might need to think about:

For conservatism to survive and even thrive, a new paradigm must be realized that recognizes we live in a different world than the one inhabited by our ancestors and that many of the old verities we cherished are just no longer relevant to what America has become. For better or worse, the United States is changing – something it has always done and always will do. Without altering most of the core principles of conservatism, it should be possible to change with it, supplying common sense alternatives to liberal panaceas for everything from health care to concerns over climate change….

Now I am not saying that conservatives should compromise their principles to gain success in the legislature nor am I saying those principles should be abandoned in order to gain electoral victory. But there is a difference between having a vital conservative movement that shapes and informs government and one that has no relevancy whatsoever to modern America.

Clearly, applying conservative principles to governance should be the goal. And just as clearly, there is no lack of ideas on how to make that happen. The disconnect I speak of above arises from the cage that Republican candidates have been placed in by the various factions of conservatism that makes them slaves to an agenda that is out of date, out of touch, and after 2008, there’s a good chance that it will lead to Republicans being out of luck.

Breaking out of that cage will be difficult unless the party continues to lose at the polls. And part of that breaking free will be making the Reagan legacy a part of history and not a part of contemporary Republican orthodoxy. The world that Reagan helped remake is radically different than the one we inhabit today and yet, GOP candidates insist on invoking his name as if it is a talisman to be stroked and fondled, hoping that the magic will rub off on them. Reagan is gone and so is the world where his ideas resonated so strongly with the voters.

But Reagan’s principles remain with us. Free markets, free nations, and free men is just as powerful a tocsin today as it was a quarter century ago. The challenge is to remake a party and the conservative movement into a vessel by which new ideas about governing a 21st century industrialized democracy can be debated, adopted, and enacted. Without abandoning our core beliefs while redefining or perhaps re-imagining what those beliefs represent as a practical matter, conservatism could recharge itself and define a new relationship between the governed and the government.

But before reform comes the fall. And even if, as Yglesias believes is possible, the party and the movement are able to limp along for a few years with a cobbled together coalition, eventually the piper must be paid and the wages earned. It won’t be a quick or easy process. But it will happen nonetheless. And out of the bitterness and recriminations will emerge a different Republican party, animated by conservative principles and true to a legacy that has as its foundation a belief in individual liberty and personal responsibility.

With all due respect to Mr. Moran, I believe he’s confused weather with climate in predicting storms and rising tides.

Perhaps he’s absolutely correct that we Republicans will face electoral defeat and defeat in 2008, 2010 and beyond.  Perhaps he’s also correct that there will be a fundamental change in the Republican party afterwards.

But if such a thing were to happen, I believe that we will see a return to the center — back to the foundations of modern conservatism.  We’re looking at short term weather patterns, not climate change.

Answering Mr. Moran’s predictions is no easy thing, and I turn to a far better authority than myself to do so.

Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.

I don’t know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our party”—when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.

It was a feeling that there was not a sufficient difference now between the parties that kept a majority of the voters away from the polls. When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy? Who has ever been barred from participating?

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.

Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help.

And let it provide indexing—adjusting the brackets to the cost of living—so that an increase in salary merely to keep pace with inflation does not move the taxpayer into a surtax bracket. Failure to provide this means an increase in government’s share and would make the worker worse off than he was before he got the raise.

Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people.

Let us also call for an end to the nit-picking, the harassment and over-regulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets.

Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine.

Our banner must recognize the responsibility of government to protect the law-abiding, holding those who commit misdeeds personally accountable.

And we must make it plain to international adventurers that our love of peace stops short of “peace at any price.”

We will maintain whatever level of strength is necessary to preserve our free way of life.

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.

Perhaps I am guilty of rubbing the Reagan talisman, as Mr. Moran suggests.  I counter that perhaps he is too hasty in trying to remake the Republican party and the conservative movement.  In saying that the challenge facing the GOP is wholesale transformation (“remake” is not “reform”), I believe he has bought into the dominant meme amongst liberals that the old ways are by definition outdated and no longer relevant.  From that meme, we get the theory of the “living Constitution” for one example.

There is no need to redefine or reimagine what our core beliefs represent as a practical matter, nor is there a need to “recharge” conservatism and define a “new relationship between the governed and the government”.  That is wholesale surrender.

And it is unwarranted alarmism.  Because the American people have not changed fundamentally in 20 years when Reagan was president, nor in 36 years since he made that speech, nor for that matter in 300 years since the Founders gathered to pledge their Lives, their Fortune, and their sacred Honor to the cause of freedom.

The American people are hungry to feel once againa sense of mission and greatness.  Our people are looking for a cause to believe in.  They are looking for leaders who will boldly proclaim our principles of a people who have a government, not a state that has subjects.

Our problem has not been a lack of a theory of a new relationship between the governed and the government, nor a failure to redefine our core beliefs.  Indeed our problem has been the failure to live up to existing core beliefs.  Our problem has been the corruption of the Republican elite acting exactly as if they had been Democrats once ensconced in the halls of power, including, disappointingly, President Bush.

Before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, before we think a chilly rain is the sign of climate change instead of just a rain shower, why don’t we try actually doing what we say?  Why don’t we elect leaders who actually have principles, and once elected, why don’t we try holding them accountable to those principles?

It is said that politics is the art of compromise.  Well, we’ve been practicing that art for so long that we may as well be Michaelangelo of politics.  It’s time to let the liberals learn to practice the art.  It is time for us to start standing up for what we believe in.

And those who cannot subscribe to our principles, those who would rather redefine or reimagine them… as the Gipper said… let them go their own way.

-TS

Signs of Victory

I now know how we will recognize victory in our current War against Islamists.  This most unorthodox of wars, a conflict with an ideology without a nation or empire behind it, made it so difficult to define what victory even means.

Well, thanks to the efforts of Stacey Lawson, I now have a way of knowing when we have won.

When a woman in Saudi Arabia can write absolutely bug-eyed asinine crap like this, be read by people in Iran, Pakistan, Jenin, Lebanon, Indonesia, Yemen, Somalia, and anywhere else where the Islamist ideology reigns… and stay alive for longer than one month…

…that is when we will know that we have won the war.

In fact, I think we should agree to pull out of Iraq immediately if Al Qaeda would just take Stacey Lawson off our hands and make her their principal spokesperson.

-TS

In This Time of Primaries… A Look Back

In this primary season, as we seek to nominate one man to represent the Republican Party (and hopefully the conservative viewpoint) in the national election for President… I thought it useful to take a look back at some words that resonate deeply even today.

I have taken liberties with the passage below, and made modifications where I thought useful to have these words speak for our times:

Our people are in a time of discontent. Our vital energy supplies are threatened by possibly the most dangerous regime in human history. Our traditional allies in Western Europe are experiencing political and economic instability bordering on chaos, even as they slip towards an unthinking dhimmitude.

We seem to be increasingly alone in a world grown more hostile, but we let our vigilance shrink to pre-9/11 levels. And we are conscious that in Tehran the crash build-up of nuclear arms continues. The latest National Intelligence Estimate, combined with the lack of action by the U.N. and our European allies, guarantees the Iranians nuclear weapon capability in the heart of the most unstable and dangerous region in the world. Yet, too many congressmen demand that we do nothing more than symbolic gestures to stop Iran.

I realize that millions of Americans are sick of hearing about the Middle East, and perhaps it is politically unwise to talk of our obligation to Afghanistan and Iraq. But we pledged to support the Iraqi people who are resisting the aggression of the Jihadis who are violating every convention of decency and humanity and are fully aided by their Iranian and Saudi allies.

Can we live with ourselves if we, as a nation, betray our friends and ignore our pledged word? And, if we do, who would ever trust us again? To consider committing such an act so contrary to our deepest ideals is symptomatic of the erosion of standards and values. And this adds to our discontent.

We did not seek world leadership; it was thrust upon us. It has been our destiny almost from the first moment this land was settled. If we fail to keep our rendezvous with destiny or, as John Winthrop said in 1630, “Deal falsely with our God,” we shall be made “a story and byword throughout the world.”

Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.

I don’t know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our party” — when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.

It was a feeling that there was not a sufficient difference now between the parties that kept a majority of the voters away from the polls. When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy? Who has ever been barred from participating?

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.

Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help.

And let it provide indexing — adjusting the brackets to the cost of living — so that an increase in salary merely to keep pace with inflation does not move the taxpayer into the AMT. Failure to provide this means an increase in government’s share and would make the worker worse off than he was before he got the raise.

Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people.

Let us also call for an end to the nit-picking, the harassment and over-regulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets.

Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine.

Our banner must recognize the responsibility of government to protect the law-abiding, holding those who commit misdeeds personally accountable.

And we must make it plain to international adventurers and death-embracing jihadis that our love of peace stops short of “peace at any price.”

We will maintain whatever level of strength is necessary to preserve our free way of life.

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.

The original is here. If you haven’t read it in a long time, I urge you to take another look.

Then ask which of the current candidates can be said to have raised “a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors”?

As for me, it is Fred Thompson. But I respect your own choice in the matter as long as it is intellectually honest. As long as we all remember that it is the <b>principles</b>, some of which are articulated above, that matter, not the man who is seeking the office, I believe that we cannot go wrong.

-TS

(Cross-posted to Redstate.com)

Must-See TV

Fred Thompson explains to the voters of Iowa why they should vote for him.

He’s the best hope for the nation at this time in our history.  He’s the only true conservative in Reagan’s mold there is in the field.  I think Romney or Giuliani would be fine choices as well, but there is no doubt that Thompson is who we need.

Hear Fred argue his case with quiet passion, integrity, and conviction.

-TS

Chinese-Americans and the NSA

This is a disturbing story on so many levels.  Apparently, the National Security Agency, the arm of the intelligence community so secretive that people joke that NSA stands for No Such Agency, has apparently been completely penetrated and compromised by Chinese intelligence services:

December 26, 2007:  The U.S. recently revealed that China had done some major damage to the NSA (National Security Agency) via penetration of the NSA facility in Hawaii (which concentrates on monitoring China.) The Chinese effort was two-fold. First, the Chinese set up a Chinese translation service in Hawaii, and managed to make it appear as American owned (and able to pass a security check). Eventually, this translation company got NSA contracts to translate material obtained from China. The operators of the translation of the company were able to pass the NSA material back to China, letting the Chinese know what information the NSA was picking up, which helped the Chinese figure out how the NSA was getting certain information, and with what. This made it easier to prevent the NSA from getting certain information, or setting up a trap, to feed the NSA false information.

First of all, I hope heads are rolling over at NSA over this incredible failure.  I wonder if the Chinese would have used a CIA-front translation service to handle sensitive materials without checking it out fully, following the “owners” around, and doing things to make sure that they weren’t handing over the candy store.

Second, there’s a far more worrisome (to me) little passage in the story:

But there was more. Many of the NSA employees were Chinese-American. The Chinese set up a recruiting operation, that was so carefully established and run, that it was several years before U.S. counter-intelligence caught on, and shut it down. (emphasis mine)

Remember the brouhaha over Wen Ho Lee?  It seems now in retrospect that the man was guilty of nothing more than stupidity — mishandling sensitive data.  But at the time it was blowing up — and I was a raging liberal race-activist then, seeing all manner of discrimination and hatred against Asian-Americans — I remember thinking, “Aren’t we (that is, the Asian-American community) being a little too hasty in clearing Dr. Lee before all the facts are out?”  What if he really had been in the pay of the Chinese Ministry of State Security?

It made me question whether I — and my fellow travelers in the activist community — had a grasp on the idea of loyalty to the country of our citizenship.  Granted, this was the 90’s, when we all took a vacation from history (and economics), but it did make me wonder.

And now, this.  Chinese-Americans working at the most secretive of the intelligence agencies of the United States have been successfully recruited and spying for China for several years.  China set up a front operation translating sensitive documents in Hawaii, presumably with the aid of American citizens.  Can we, the Asian-American community, call these people (whoever they are) traitors as we rightly should?

Granted, espionage is filled with traitorous characters, and Chinese-Americans are no different than any other kind of American.  Robert Hanssen did incalculable damage to American interests, and (to quote KRS-ONE), he’s white I believe.

Nonetheless, when a security breach of this magnitude occurs at the most sensitive of our agencies, one has to wonder what steps were taken to screen the employees and applicants.  One has to wonder if the gospel of political correctness interfered with proper suspicions of people like me — a naturalized citizen with connections still back to the mother country.  And I have to wonder if those people who were betraying their country knew that that was what they were doing, or even thought about it.

Obviously, news and public information on a story like this are not likely to be trumpeted around.  But I would dearly like to know how many, who, their particular stories of why they betrayed their country, and how long this was going on.  I’d like to know how we finally nailed the sons of bitches (or bitches), and how counter-intelligence “shut it down”.  I’d like to know the prosecution, if any, of these individuals, and what steps are being taken to guard against a repeat.

This is a dark day for the loyal Asian-American community.

-TS

If You’re Not Reading Iowahawk, You’re Missing Out

Just another demonstration of why Iowahawk is one of the finest writers in the United States.  Seriously, you owe it to yourself to read this blog regularly.  I rarely laugh out loud while reading blogs, but this one had me guffawing:

Iowa is a Microcosm of America. A one-day national presidential primary (as some analysts have recommended) would be prohibitively expensive for all but the most well-funded candidates, and make ‘dark horse’ campaigns virtually impossible. Democracy is better served by a small scale contest that allows for grassroots candidates to build momentum, while representing the country as a whole. Luckily, Iowa is an almost perfect miniaturized 1/100th scale model of the United States. For example, Northeastern iowa is filled with gritty and glitzy urban financial centers like Dubuque, “Iowa’s New York.” Iowa’s Missouri River West Coast teems with hi-tech Gay entertainment centers like Sioux City (“The San Francisco of Iowa”) and Council Bluffs (“The Malibu of Iowa”). With its fashionable supermodel nightclubs and machine gun-wielding drug lords, far southeastern Keokuk is our Miami Beach. And, in the center of it all, there is Des Moines, which is famous as “the Des Moines of Iowa.”

Iowa is also widely known as “The Diversity State,” with its vibrant Norwegian-American community and its equally vibrant German-American community, not to mention a growing population of German-Norwegian-American halfbreed mestizos. And, according to the most recent U.S. Census, Iowa has twice as many African-Americans as New Hampshire, and both of them are keenly involved in the political process.

If anyone is going to give Mark Steyn a run for his money, my vote is with Iowahawk.

-TS

I’m With Fred

I would write a long dissertation on why I’m supporting Fred Thompson for President in 2008.  But… first, not many people read this personal blog of mine, and second, Beldar has done a far better job than I ever could in expressing why I am choosing Fred.

So head on over and take a look.  The single most important fact for me, personally, is this:

If simply getting elected and staying atop the polls were what Fred Thompson were all about, he’d be a much better candidate, but ultimately a much worse president. For better or worse, he’s running his campaign the way he believes it should be run — meaning he wasn’t stampeded into an early start, and there are definite limits to the indignities that he’ll willingly suffer for the sake of retail campaigning. His abrupt refusal to participate in the recent “show of hands on global warming” in the televised Iowa debate, for example, was the act of a self-secure grown-up with a serious sense of statesmanship. Fred may be a good old boy, and indeed he’s charming as heck, but he’s just not a panderer.

Read the whole thing.

To me, Fred Thompson is a man who doesn’t really want to be president, but feels that he is called to lead the country in a time of need.  There’s something about a man (or a woman) who wants elected office so much.  I mean, it doesn’t pay that well, it’s a royal pain in the ass, and you no longer have a personal life… so why do you want it so bad?

Hilary Clinton is a great example of this, but so is someone like Mitt — and I like Mitt.  I wouldn’t be crushed if he were the GOP nominee.  But something about him says, “I want to win so bad!”  I’m not comfortable with that — I know, it’s probably illogical, but I’d rather have a president who reluctantly accepts the responsibility of the free world, than someone who wants it desperately for some personal self-affirmation reason or for the sake of power for itself.

And here’s Fred’s official site if you’re one of the 50 people or so who might be intrigued by my entirely unimportant endorsement: http://www.fred08.com/

-TS

Maybe… They’re Worth It?

Megan McArdle has a post on CEO pay that is interesting in its own right, but some of the comments are even more interesting.  The basic gist of many of the comments appears to be that CEO’s are nothing more than well-dressed con artists who have convinced a Board to give him wads of cash for nothing.  This comment by a commenter named SwissArmyD is far from atypical:

The reason they are reviled isn’t as much that they make some large multiple of the salary of people who actually do THE WORK… It’s that they never have to fall on their swords. It’s not like they have to give back that salary if they frell up. So it looks like they do whatever they can to get their money out, and then leave the company to dangle. The worst part of that is often that in the interim, they cut thousands of jobs of people who actually do WORK, while sponging themselves. Since their salary is such a multiplier, you could keep many of those people, and figure out how to fix the company problem, and get rid of the top guy, who got you into trouble.

Then there’s this from a Marcin Tustin:

Alternatively the principle-agent problem and reciprocity among those with a common interest mean that those who are in the class of people who serve on boards and vote on executive compensation all fail to rock the boat on higher and higher salaries, on the basis that each has had or will have a turn at the trough.

As it happens, I don’t really have an opinion on the core issue: the extremely fast rise in CEO compensation, and the seeming invulnerability of some ‘bad’ CEO’s to bad outcomes at companies they headed up (Nardelli at Home Depot is frequently mentioned).

But I do have an opinion on the value of a good CEO: immeasurable.

Petraeus for President

In 2008, I’m basically a single-issue voter.  I will vote for whoever understands our enemies best, and knows how to defeat them in the generational war we find ourselves in.  I happen to be for Fred, because I think he knows what’s at stake, but whoever steps up with the best plan and vision for defeating Islamists is my guy.

Having said that… where’s the Draft Petraeus movement?

Especially in light of this:

Don’t look now, but the Petraeus surge is surging.

Surging Media: Yesterday, a USA Today editorial acknowledged the surge is working. The headline reads, “Surge’s success holds chance to seize the moment in Iraq.” The paper says, “Democrats are lost in time.” Moreover, U.S. and Iraqi casualties are down sharply. In fact, U.S. military deaths are down to their lowest level in twenty months. Also, Sunni groups, once sympathetic to al-Qaeda, have shifted allegiances. They are now working alongside U.S. forces. Over on the Shiite side, “about 70,000 local, pro-government groups, a bit like neighborhood watch groups, have formed to expose extremist militias.”

Surging Oil: There’s a big story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about Iraqi oil output surging back to prewar levels (“Iraqi Oil Is Easing Supply Strain”). According to the WSJ, Iraqi output is back to about 2.5 million barrels a day. In addition, average oil exports in November came in just shy of 2 million barrels a day. That’s a post-invasion record.

Surging Bonds: Bloomberg reports that, “[Iraq’s] $2.7 billion of 5.8 percent bonds due in 2028 returned 15.2 percent since July, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. index data. Only Ecuador’s debt gained more, rising 18 percent.”

Why don’t we go get the one man who has shown actual success in the field of battle?  Why settle for some guy who says he has an idea and a plan?

 

I personally believe a Thompson/Petraeus ticket would be pretty hard to beat.

 

-TS

If Your Foot Is In Your Mouth, Stop Chewing!

So it seems that the hapless Mr. Henley, who got taken to the proverbial woodshed by Mark Steyn, has posted something that might pass for an apology in a parallel universe peopled exclusively by deaf-mutes who can’t read.

His original post was amended to this:

UPDATE 12/10/07 12:10am: AS NOTED IN AN UPDATE AT BOTTOM, I MADE A SERIOUS ATTRIBUTION ERROR IN THIS PIECE. I’VE USED STRIKETHROUGH TO MARK THE BAD QUOTE BUT LEAVE IT AVAILABLE FOR THE RECORD. I’M ALSO BOLDING AND STRIKING THE PART IMMEDIATELY AFTER, WHICH I NO LONGER SUPPORT. SEE FOLLOW-UP POST FROM TONIGHT. COMMENTS ON THIS PIECE WILL BE CLOSED. COMMENTS ON THE FOLLOW-UP PIECE ARE OPEN.]

The excerpt from Mark Steyn’s America Alone that ran in Maclean’s last year is far more blatantly racist than I figured it would be when I began reading it. I knew Steyn was a bigot, with a 1920s obsession with demographic decline. (Cf. Tom Buchanan in Gatsby, who can’t stop talking about Rise of the Colored Empires, “by this man Goddard.”) But I imagined Steyn was more adroit in his use of code words and deniability feints. No! “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes” is merely the most spectacular example of – not code words. I’m not completely shocked that Steyn would write with such frank bigotry, or that Regnery would publish it. I’m somewhat surprised that an establishment organ like Maclean’s would run it.

Okay, so… Henley acknowledges the attribution to be wrong, acknowledges that he himself is a douchebag, but stands by the statement: “I knew Steyn was a bigot, with a 1920s obsession with demographic decline.”  Worse still, he stands by the “I imagined Steyn was more adroit in his use of code words and deniability feints.”

So naturally, one looks for some sort of example of such lack of adroitness on the part of Steyn.  Some quote surely attributable to Steyn would be found by our Mr. Henley.  No!

That’s right, no such example of maladroitness is provided.  For that matter, once you remove the offending statement, no shred of evidence of a racist attitude exists.

No matter!  Our brave Mr. Henley sallies forth to stand by his claim that “Mark Steyn is a racist douchebag in addition to being a ridiculous figure.”

Ah but he posted a followup!  Surely one can find examples of both racist attitudes and maladroitness!  So one follows the link posted to find a massive uberpost that would require the slaughter of numerous innocent pixels to deconstruct.  But let me see if I can’t point out the most salient points.

When I talk about what it does and doesn’t mean for the thrust of the original piece, I want to make clear that I’m not claiming that it wasn’t a major lapse in conduct, even though I will be arguing that it has a finite impact on the argument.

In other words, Fake But True.  Isn’t it amazing how little the concept of truth matters to liberals bent on making a point?  But let us soldier on.

[Steyn] grants no material variance in the constituent parts of the “remorseless” “Muslim demographic” no internal difference that makes a difference. They’re young; they have “will”; end of story. The birthrate is a given, amenable to linear projection. The welfare state that Steyn believes throttled Christian birth rates apparently won’t have any effect worth mentioning on Muslim birth rates. Steyn’s use of demography in the piece is sweeping and reductionist.

…

In the excerpt from Maclean’s, Steyn doesn’t even nod toward these issues. It’s simplistic demography. The question is, simplistic in what direction? Answer: in a racist one – if you prefer, in a religiously or culturally bigoted direction. James Joyner, in a slightly kinder piece on the mis-attribution issue than I deserve, argues that “racism” is the wrong word, that the argument is about culture. I see his argument. We lack a really good term for anti-Muslim bigotry, the way “Anti-Semitism” serves as a marker for the various flavors of anti-Jewish bigotry. But in my opinion, “racist” is a good enough term for Steyn’s comparative schema of European whites, “Anglosphere” whites and predominantly nonwhite and immigrant Muslims.

Once you remove the torture of the language — for which, I assume the anti-torture crowd among the liberals are preparing charges against Mr. Henley — what his argument boils down to is this: Steyn is a culturist, the argument is about Western civilization and Islamic civilization, but I’m going to call it “racist” anyway.  Comparative schema?  How much education does one need to write like such an idiot?

But worse still, Mr. Henley completely neglects to include in his indictment Steyn’s fellow traveler in the racist, reductionist, comparative schematist conspiracy.  To wit:

Nor am I surprised actual existing Muslim Canadians would take offense at the article. The article can’t touch me, an Anglo American, in the same way it can hit the emotions of a Canadian Muslim – it can’t feel as personal to me as it can to them.

How dare he!

How dare he classify all Muslim Canadians into one group as he does?  How dare this racist scum grant no material variance in the constituent parts of the Muslim Canadian demographic?

For that matter, how dare the racist douchebag try to represent the hugely varied Anglo-American demographic into a single unity, as if to preserve his colonialist legacy of supremacy, like some white sahib lording it over the darkies?

Doesn’t he know that the so-called “Anglo-American” is merely a construct of the racist-colonialist West, and that there are vast internal differences between the descendants of the Irish potato farmer and the descendants of English lords who settled Virginia and South Carolina?

With no care for the internal difference that makes a difference amongst the variety of Canadian Muslims, this racist dares, DARES, to claim to understand the emotions of the reductionist “Canadian Muslim”?

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the said racist, reductionist douchebag is Mr. Henley himself, in his original post.

Oh, I can hear the protest now.  When I do it, it’s not racist.  When he does it, of course it’s racist.

But reductionist is reductionist, bucko.  Comparative schema is comparative schema.

He dares to close his follow-up post with this:

But a core liberal value is recognizing that the crudest measures of group membership don’t define the essence of all of its individual members. Steyn’s particular take on demographics does this. I consider that not just wrong in several senses but counterproductive.

This from the same douchebag who reduced the essence of all Canadian Muslim individuals into one of undifferentiated outrage against Steyn.  How the hell would he know?  Did he interview each and every single individual identifying himself/herself as a Canadian Muslim before he presumed to speak for their emotion?

As a culturist, as someone who believes in something approaching group identity, culture, shared ethos, etc., Steyn (and his ilk, like myself) have no issues speaking in generalities about groups of people — with the obligatory “of courses” and “exceptions to every rule” and such.  I’m happy to be included in the “cultural group” of the West (even if I’m not so sanguine about the contemporary West), and have no problem talking about the “cultural group” of Muslims.  Or African-Americans.  Or Asian-Americans.  Or Americans.

And in the science of demographics, it is necessary to speak of groups of people, not individuals.  It is necessary to speak of birthrates, not this specific baby boy born to this particular family.

So Henley, in addition to displaying his rank racist hypocrisy, in addition to displaying his ineptness with the English language, further displays his absolute ignorance of the topic Steyn addresses: demographics.

The reason, it seems, is that Henley doesn’t have any idea what the hell he’s talking about.  Once Steyn’s argument is presented in terms of culture, or in terms of demographics, Henley knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.  He has to demonize the argument somehow.  There being only seven cardinal sins in the modern liberal’s mind (child abuse, racism, sexism, “homophobia”, hypocrisy, smoking, and being conservative), he’s got to fit Steyn’s argument into one of those categories.   Hence, “racist” is good enough term for Steyn’s comparative schema.

Mr. Henley… you might have been more successful trying to fit Steyn into the smoking sin category.  Just say, “Reading Mark Steyn results in more smoking!” and leave it at that.

You’d have looked less like a fool.  If you’ve opened your mouth already, and have inserted your foot… stop chewing!

-TS

Why I Love Mark Steyn, Reason #237

No living writer opens a rhetorical can of whoopass with quite the elan and panache of Mr. Steyn.  It appears some blogger wrote with all the self-righteous rage that only a liberal can summon:

The excerpt from Mark Steyn’s America Alone that ran in Maclean’s last year is far more blatantly racist than I figured it would be when I began reading it. I knew Steyn was a bigot, with a 1920s obsession with demographic decline. (Cf. Tom Buchanan in Gatsby, who can’t stop talking about Rise of the Colored Empires, “by this man Goddard.”) But I imagined Steyn was more adroit in his use of code words and deniability feints. No! “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes” is merely the most spectacular example of – not code words. I’m not completely shocked that Steyn would write with such frank bigotry, or that Regnery would publish it. I’m somewhat surprised that an establishment organ like Maclean’s would run it.

Except that it turns out that the words quoted with such delicious condemnation are those of a prominent Norwegian imam, not Mark Steyn:

The words that so offend him are, indeed “frank bigotry”. However, if you read my racist diatribe, you’ll see the bigotry is not mine but Mullah Krekar’s:

“We’re the ones who will change you,” the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.” As he summed it up: “Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours.”

Hello, Mr Henley? Anybody home in there? Those are quotation marks, because they’re someone else’s words – not the blatant racism of the racist douchebag Steyn but of a prominent Scandinavian imam. It’s tempting to say to Jim Henley, “Douchebag, douche thyself”, and leave it at that.

Oh wow.  It hurts reading from here.  Across the anonymity of the Internet.  It’s like watching a pro boxer take down a retarded one-legged kid.

Mr. Jim Henley has yet to publish a retraction and an apology, but I’m very curious to see how he could recover any face from this.  Maybe he can take a page from Mapes/Rather and go with the “false, but accurate” meme?  Douchebag, douche thyself indeed.

-TS

French… Fried

I saw a few links coming in from a site I did not recognize, so I went to investigate.  Turns out it’s a blog called SuperFrenchie and someone in the comments linked to my post on Capital of Europe.  SuperFrenchie himself responded in the comments that:

It’s one thing to know where people were born (sub-Saharan Africa), but how does the guy know the 12 other councilmen’s religion?

(smacks of a very racist article, if you ask me. Condescending, too)

(For that matter, how does he know that the entire Atlanta council is not Muslim?)

I have no idea whether this is typical French logic or not, as I simply don’t think about the French very much, except to mourn (ever so briefly) in the passing of a formerly great European nation, the seat of an empire (that did the world much harm).  But there was much there of interest.

First, if SuperFrenchie had followed the link on my original post, he would have seen that I refer to the Brussels Journal where the editor, Paul Belien, states:

Thielemans is a member of the Parti Socialiste (PS), a Belgian party which caters for the Muslim population. The PS is the largest party in Brussels, holding 17 of the 47 seats in the city council. 10 of the 17 PS-councillors are Muslims. The PS governs Brussels in a coalition with the Christian-Democrats, who have 11 councillors, of whom 2 are Muslims and 3 are immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa. Only 13 of the 28 councillors in the governing coalition of the city are native Belgians.

Well, 10 + 2 = 12.  I suspect that Belien is a European nativist of some sort, but I have no idea of his politics specifically.  I just think that taking the word of someone who lives and works in Belgium about the religious/ethnic affiliation of his own councillors seems a reasonable step to take.

So SuperFrenchie isn’t interested, particularly, in facts.

Second, and more interestingly, he thinks pointing out someone’s religious/ethnic affiliation and/or national origin smacks of racism, even in a post discussing the politics of race and ethnicity.  I suppose he must regard the entirety of the scholarship of so-called “African-American Studies” to be racist, since every single article and book there mentions race very prominently.

In jumping to whip out his biggest rhetorical sword, SuperFrenchie misses the entire point of my post, of course, which isn’t about how having councillors who are Muslims is bad or good, but that one might ask questions about the demographics of Brussels as a city based on its elected representation, and wonder about possible negative fallout.

Hence, the juxtaposition of Atlanta, the sister city to Brussels.

Sixteen years ago, as of the 1991 census, Brussels had 64% native born Belgians.  In 2007, we see that 15 of the 47 councillors on the Brussels City Council are foreign born, with 12 of them being identified by a native Bruxellian as being Muslim.  That’s roughly 32% of the entire City Council, and a majority of the 28-person ruling coalition.

If the same situation held in Atlanta, with its 62% African-American population, it would mean that all five non-black councilmembers in the Atlanta City Council would be part of the 8-man ruling coalition.  I suspect that the Atlantans might be concerned about what appears to be a small minority of whites essentially controlling the City Council, and that SuperFrenchie and his lib friends would raise all sorts of hoot and holler about the racism of the South, and so forth.

It is no racism, despite French fried logic, to wonder how it is that a racial/ethnic minority controls the power in a major European city.  And then to wonder if the majority peoples of that city will continue to tolerate such an arrangement — a rarity in world history, as evidenced by the example of South Africa.

Or perhaps the answer is that since 1991, Muslims/North Africans have become the majority in Brussels.  This is possible, although I have no facts either way on that question.

-TS

More on Gentlemen and Ladies

So since my post on whether gentlemen can exist without ladies, I’ve spoken to a number of colleagues and friends on the related issues.  Some fascinating things emerged.

First, it is apparently not necessarily a compliment for contemporary women to be called “a lady”.  One colleague immediately asked, “Well, what do you mean by ‘lady’?”  And another said, “Well, I guess that’s good, but… I wouldn’t want to be considered a prude.” 

Second, there is little doubt about the meaning of the word “gentleman”.  There is correspondingly little understanding about the meaning of the word “lady”.  As the above example showed, people instinctively knew what was meant by “gentleman” and never asked, “What do you mean by that?”  But almost every single person I spoke with asked what I meant by “lady”.

Third, there are fewer “ladies” among women than there are “gentlemen” among men, at least as instinctively understood.  For example, just about everyone I spoke with would confidently say that many if not most of their male friends were “gentlemen” however that term was instinctively understood.  At the same time, almost every single one either couldn’t name a single woman friend he/she would consider a “lady”, or only one or two women friends who might be called a “lady”.

How interesting.

I spoke with parents of little girls the original question: Would you want to raise your daughter to be a lady?

The answer was almost always a qualified No.  When you dig into it, as I did with close friends who wouldn’t be insulted, what I found was that in their minds, being a “lady” is tied up with being passive, submissive, and weak.  A Victorian ideal perhaps of a “lady” as the kind of woman who has fainting spells.  There was a subtext that a “lady” does not work, except at some high-society charity type of places, and all of the parents of little girls wanted their daughters to be All That She Can Be.

Here’s another interesting tidbit.  The opposite of “gentleman” is “cad” or “scumbag” or “lowlife” according to the people I spoke to.  The opposite of “lady” is “slut” in every single case.  Why the word “gentleman” would be tied almost exclusively to the idea of manners, while the word “lady” would be tied exclusively to sexual chastity is something I find enormously interesting.

-TS