VoteGopher.Com

I generally distrust Facebook as a source of political anything, but I got invited to a group today for something called VoteGopher (founded, like Facebook itself, by an ambitious Haavaad undergrad). Apparently the premise of VoteGopher.com is that the site does issue research (on some 18 topics) allowing people to compare candidates; others have tried it before, but this looks like it might be a valuable resource in part because it harnesses the power of the Internet to provide both candidate overviews on a given issue but also videos, quotes, and news stories. God I love the internet.

The effort also gets some love from the Times (perhaps undermining its hoped-for impartiality) here.


Until I decide whether or not it's a biased hack job, I'll add it to my sidebar...

Pity the Fools?

I'm not going to describe them as thankless jobs, but both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi find themselves in uncomfortable spots. Their approval numbers make the president look like Bono (or at least Britney), Bush has rediscovered Article 1 Section 7 of the Constitution (vetoes), and then there's the party itself. In the first episode of The West Wing, a leader of the Religious Right tells Chief of Staff Leo McGarry "Every group has plenty of demons" to which Leo replies "You don't have to tell me about it, Reverend. I'm a member of the Democratic Party."

Pelosi and Reid would only succeed in shutting up their foaming at the mouth base if they withdrew from Iraq yesterday, impeached (and probably lynched - or at least sent to the ICC) just about anyone who's ever stepped foot in the White House, and nationalized the means of production - to say nothing of locking up Rush Limbaugh and effectively rendering the homeland vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Given that they can't do any of that, the leadership is deadlocked. Congressional Republicans, for their part, have maintained the discipline that was a hallmark of the Tom Delay era. They've also taken a page from the Democratic playbook and are using what they can to hold up Democratic legislation and force votes on matters that Pelosi and Reid would rather push under the rug (the condemnations of MoveOn.org, for example). Thus Congress goes nowhere and Democrats find themselves beset on every side.

I don't pity them, I just laugh mercilessly. Politico's got a piece on this whole impasse here.

Who's Conservative and What That Means

About ten days ago, David Brooks wrote a column in the Times about former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. That piece precipitated a veritable deluge (just to provide a small sample: 1, 2, 3, and the best-titled of the pack, William Jennings Huckabee) of Huckabee pieces, first just taking notice and then moving to criticisms and defenses and arguably culminating in a column by the candidate himself (and likely literally himself as he's been known to eschew speech-writers).

The arc of the debate basically went like this: who the hell is Mike Huckabee? He's a social conservative, claimed many of the earliest writers. Then came John Fund's piece (I believe the third of those above), with its devastating quote from the Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly: "He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles," she says. "Yet some of the same evangelicals who sold us on George W. Bush as a 'compassionate conservative' are now trying to sell us on Mike Huckabee."

The criticisms are of two varities: Huckabee as a false social conservative (I don't buy it) and Huckabee as simply not a fiscal conservative. The latter concern has become sufficiently grave in some circles that there's a story on Politico today in which fiscal conservatives are concerned about the prospect of him becoming the vice presidential nominee. Concern about his fiscal conservatism are based not only on pieces like William Jennings Huckabee (mentioned above) but also in his campaign rhetoric. The Politico piece suggests that the opposition is motivated by Huckabee's being "anti-greed" (so he's not Gordon Gecko I suppose), but it speaks to a larger issue: Huckabee is an economic populist.

I'm no fan of populism (in fact it invariably brings to mind a fantastic quote from the first season of HBO's Rome, uttered by Cicero "What a dreadful noise plebes make when they are happy"), especially from a Republican presidential candidate. But in a VP nominee, it's not entirely illogical - in fact it might help counteract the populism that Hillary will invariably spout. Whether or not Grover Norquist et al. can derail Huckabee's bid for the spot remains to be seen. Either way, it's interesting to see this debate, and interesting to see Huckabee's conservative credentials criticized.

On the other side of the equation is an op-ed in today's WaPo by David Greenberg slamming Giuliani (from the left) for being a conservative. He rightly argues that the perception of Giuliani as a liberal is based on his stances on guns, gays, and abortion (though he erroneously argues that Giuliani only moderately strays from Republican orthodoxy on those three). His argument for Giuliani-as-conservative is summed up in the following two passages:

On issues such as free speech and religion, secrecy and due process, civil rights and civil liberties, pornography and democracy, this moralist and self-styled lawman has exhibited all the key hallmarks of Bush-era conservatism.
...
As any New Yorker can tell you, the last word anyone in the 1990s would have attached to the brash, furniture- breaking mayor was "liberal" -- and the second-to-last was "moderate." With his take-many-prisoners approach to crime and his unerring pro-police instincts, the prosecutor-turned-proconsul made his mark on the city not by embracing its social liberalism but by trying to crush it.
...
They include state support of religion; the legitimacy of dissenting speech; the president's right to keep information secret; the place of fair procedures in dispensing justice.

First off, since when is being pro-law enforcement a conservative trait? Is that to say, Professor Greenberg, that Democrats are pro-anarchy? Not that I'd disagree with that claim...
But what are his claims for Giuliani trying to crush liberalism? His attack on the Brooklyn Museum of Art, with its exhibition featuring the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung as an assault on free speech; all Giuliani really did was try and withhold funds from the museum, a move that only in New York (and San Francisco) could be criticized. It also brings up the larger argument about whether or not the state should be subsidizing art or whether that should be left to the private sector.

I'm not disputing many of his positions as conservative (in fact I embrace them), but Greenberg's being a typically liberal melodramatic about these; I'm glad, though, that he's disputing the conventional wisdom of Giuliani's liberalism and making him more palatable to the Republican party.

But it speaks to the state of the Republican race when a conservative can be attacked as liberal and a "liberal" as conservative. It's still a long road to Minneapolis next summer.

Tom Tancred Out

Of the House at least - he's still running for "president." Some presidential candidates are actually running for Vice President (Huckabee); I wouldn't actually say Tancredo's that ambitious. He's more running for head of the Border Patrol than anything else.

Of course the media will likely play this as part of that big bad wave of GOP retirements. There's a certain wisdom in that, but I don't think most pundits have yet realized that 2008's environment may bear little resemblance to that of 2006. Some of the open seats will flip because they're not Republican strongholds but Tancredo's, the Colorado 7th, won't. Bush won the district with 60% of the vote in both 2000 and 2004, and Tancredo's won comfortably for years (67% in 2002, 59% in 2004, 60% in 2006). This is a bright red district in a purplish state.

Ron Paul and the Troofers

I, along with the rest of the conservative blogosphere, applauded the other night when former President Clinton smacked down a bunch of 9/11 conspiracy theorists in Minnesota.

Which only sharpens the contrast and underlines the importance of the following question: why in God's name did Ron Paul pay the leader of these paranoid idiots $1,300 for "services?
What exactly are these services? Promoting him to his fellow black helicopter/Trilateral Commission believers? The Paul campaign's increasingly got questions to answer - hate groups, conspiracy theorists, and Islamists have all jumped into his camp. It's an unsavory swamp inhabited by many of the most disreputable elements of American society yet Dr. Paul has yet to publicly denounce many of them...indeed he may be embracing them. (h/t Captain's Quarters).

For the record, I'll no longer tag Ron Paul-related posts as "Republican Party." He's too far off the reservation to merit that anymore.