My Kitchen Table

Elizabeth Dole goes over to the dark side

Want to know how badly Elizabeth Dole is losing her reelection bid in North Carolina? The fact that she is running this ad says a lot about how much she must be behind Democrat Kay Hagan.

We've been down this last gasp road before

As Dave Weigel points out on Reason, we've seen predictions of last-second comebacks before. From the AP on Nov. 2, 1988

"Today, the polls are closing, the momentum is our way," [Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen] told a rally attended by about 2,000 students Tuesday night at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Republicans think the campaign is over and are "popping those campaign corks, but I'll tell you on November ninth they're going to have the worst hangover they've ever had," he said.

As he has been doing at other stops, Bentsen held over his head a reprint of the 1948 Chicago Tribune which declared, wrongly, "Dewey Defeats Truman."...

[Bentsen press secretary Mike] McCurry, asked about new national polls sponsored by news organizations showing double-digit leads for Bush, said, "we don't necessarily think those are accurate. They are not consistent with the campaign's own polls," he said.

I had a talk with a good friend, who is a die-hard conservative tied into the national Republican Party. While she still holds out hope for a McCain comeback - she believes that many people who say they are voting for Obama are lying - her demeanor undermined her comments. She's very smart. I think she sees the writing on the wall, but doesn't want to believe it's true.

Shouting ourselves in the foot (again)

I swear, this administration is dumber than a bag of hammers.

OK, so we're negotiating this really important agreement with Iraq that will allow the U.S. to maintain troops in the country after the U.N. mandate runs out in December. But there is a fair bit of resistance to the treaty because Iraqis are afraid that U.S, troops will act like cowboys, do whatever they want, and then not be held responsible for their actions, which frequently involve collateral damage - as in innocent bystanders.

So what do we do?

We act like cowboys, zoom into Syrian, blow a few things up, kill some innocent civilians along the way and then explain it by saying ""We are taking matters into our own hands."

D'ohhhhh. From Reuters:

Some Iraqi officials warned that the U.S. military raid into Syria could be used by opponents of the security pact under negotiation with the United States.

"Now neighboring countries have a good reason to be concerned about the continued U.S. presence in Iraq," prominent Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman told The Associated Press.

[Iraqi Foreign Ministry undersecretary Labid Abbawi ] said he did not believe the Syrian raid would affect the security negotiations but acknowledged that "some will use the incident for the argument against the agreement."

Look, I understand the importance of getting the bad guys (if there were any) regardless of where they hide out. But now we've both put Iraq in a touchy situation with a neighboring country with which it needs to get along AND we've given ammunition to all those Iraqi politicians who don't want us to stay in the country after Dec. 31st.

We couldn't have waited to do this until the agreement was signed?

Well, stupid is as stupid does. And this was just downright stupid.

A twisted religious view of Obama

This video piece by the Guardian, which is reporting on the election in American, hits on the problem that I have with religion in general. An otherwise intelligent person in Iowa whose view of the world has been so twisted by religion that he actually believes that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. It's even more scary that he's not alone. These are the people who make me fear the most for the future of my country.

Sarah, Sarah, Sarah!

No election will ever be the same now that YouTube is here.

Why Fox News is a joke

Just additional evidence that Fox News is more interested in stoking racial tensions than informing people accurately.

Whistling past the graveyard

I've seen this happen before. In Canada.

There, the Progressive Conservative party became so unpopular during the second term of then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that in the election of 1993 it went from 151-seat majority government ... to two seats. The phone booth caucus as we called it. The 149-seat loss was the most ever in a Canadian election for one party.

Canadian conservatives then wandered in the wilderness for the next 13 years. It took the actual disappearance of the PC party, a totally revamped conservative movement, and incredible corruption on the part of the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, for the conservatives to return to power, and then only as a minority government.

American conservatives now face the same situation. An enormously unpopular leader/president. The perception among many people - most importantly, independents - that the party is bankrupt of ideas, a perception enhanced by the "attack all the time" campaign tactics of current GOP presidential nominee John McCain. And a growing split among conservatives over just what it means to be a conservative.

The fissures are starting to show. On the one side, you have the Limbaugh-Palin faction of far-right, red meat, fundamentalist Christian, anti-intellectual zealots. On the other side, you have the Sullivan-Brooks faction of moderate, limited government involvement in the economy and people's personal lives, big tent, intellectual ponderers (with a touch of wonk).

These two sides got along great during the Reagan years when they basically had a leader whose greatest talent was that he was a mirror on to which the two factions could project their beliefs and see them reflected back. But the connections started to fray in the first Bush presidency and were completed destroyed by Bush 43. Now there is open warfare.

For instance, look at these comments made by Rush Limbaugh, the "official" spokesman for one of the factions:

"The Republican Party, we gotta be a big tent," and that's code words for, "We gotta have some pro-choicers in our party to get rid of the influence of these hayseed hicks in the South who are pro-life."  Well, they have gone, and I, for one, say, "Damn well good riddance!"  Weld, why don't you stay a Democrat?  McClellan, stay a Democrat.  All you intellectual conservative media types, go ahead and stay a Democrat once you move over.  By the way, we know what this is about.  This is about being invited to state dinners in a Barack Obama administration.  This is about the social structure of Washington.  This is about style.  It has nothing to do with the fact that these people love Obama's policies.  They couldn't if they're paying attention.  Not if they say they're Republicans.  They couldn't possibly. 

Then on the other side, you have today's column in the New York Times by David Brooks. (Andrew Sullivan has been also very clear on this issue, and a quick visit to his blog will find dozens of references about the need to build a new conservative consensus. Heck,he wrote a whole book about it.)

McCain and Republicans stayed within their lines. There was a lot of talk about earmarks. There was a good health care plan that was never fully explained. And there was Sarah Palin, who represents the old resentments and the narrow appeal of conventional Republicanism.

As a result, Democrats now control the middle. Self-declared moderates now favor Obama by 59 to 30, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll. Suburban voters favor Obama 50 to 39. Voters over all give him a 21 point lead when it comes to better handling the economy and a 14 point lead on tax policy, according to the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Perhaps the clearest signal of this split was when the influence conservative thinker, former Reagan-era Solicitor General and Harvard professor Charles Fried announced that he has voted for Obama. Fried, who had backed McCain in January when things looked bad for the Arizona senator, said he was switching his vote because of McCain's pick of Palin as his vice president.

This split will get worse before it gets better, and there is a very good chance -- as Brooks has said to some people -- that the American conservative movement will have to wander in its own wilderness for a few years.

And while Canada is a very different country than the U.S. in terms of the body politics and the way people react to government, there are still lessons the American conservative can learn from their Canadian cousins that could help shorten the sojourn.

1) DYOB - You've got to be ready to blow the movement up and start over again. It is painful and not pretty to watch. But right now, I'm not sure if anyone can really say what it means to be a conservative in America in a way that all conservatives would approve.

2) Be willing to compromise for the greater good - The newer far-right Reform Party in Canada realized that it was going to have to moderate its message if it was going to attract moderates, while the old Progressive Conservatives realized they were going to have to shed the Mulroney years of corruption and not really standing for anything except grabbing power. It took a while to hammer out, but eventually the Conservative Party was born of a compromise between the two sides. (And if you don't think compromise is possible in the US, it's amazing what being out of power can do to warm up relations between the two factions.)

3) Control the message - This is harder to do in the US than in Canada, with its parliamentary democracy and party unity, but it's an absolute necessity. American conservatives need to find a unify theme (perhaps that old limited government notion, eh) that can be used as a platform on which regional conservative groups can build additions without actually losing the greater message.

4) But for something, not just against everything - These days it seems that the conservative message is perceived as being overly negative. As I noted above, this is partially the result of John McCain's decision to spend most of his time attacking Obama. Not that he hasn't offered alternatives, but they've been drowned out in his William Ayers attacks, etc.

You can win one election on people being tired of the other guys. But you win multiple elections by actually standing for something.

Wassup!

This may be the best YouTube video of the entire presidential campaign.

It was all a hoax

The McCain worker who told police she had been attacked by an Obama supporter and had a B cut in ther face has told police that it was a hoax.

As Andrew Sullivan points out, John Moody, the executive vice president of Fox News has written earlier this week,"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

Charles Fried goes for Obama

Oh. My. Goodness.

Charles Fried, Harvard professor, former Solicitor General and important conservative thinker, announced that he had voted for Obama in early voting.

(Sound of jaw dropping.)

The reason? He had backed McCain in the GOP primaries. But the choice of Palin as VP flipped him to Obama.

There is a real feud shaping up here. Almost all the conservative intellectuals have either backed away from McCain, denounced the Palin pick, announced their support for Obama ... or have done all three. But the far-right of the party, and the anti-intellectual religious elements, are moving more towards what Palin represents. This could get messy.