December 11, 2006
12/11: Bloggers 'Bleh' On Romney Rights Revelations
Reaction to New York Times and Boston Globe articles on MA Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) history on gay rights issues was the second most popular subject on righty blogs 12/9 and 12/10 (ISG reax still leading the league). The articles drew out Romney supporters and detractors, with National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez and Townhall's Dean Barnett leading the Romney defense. While some prominent IA bloggers are troubled by the news, the wider righty blogosphere does not appear to be. In the latest GOP Bloggers '08 straw polling, Romney remains in third as readers top choice for the nomination, but also is first as an "acceptable" GOP nomination.
ROMNEY: Better Now Than Later?
IA's Caucus Cooler reports Romney "got blasted by the East Coast establishment media this weekend on his statements regarding gay marriage." CC claims storiesfrom the New York Times and Boston Globe were timed to punish Romney for supporting a MA const. amndt. that does not include gay relationships in the definition of marriage. CC (a Romney fan) comments: "For Governor Romney it's important that he addresses these issues in December 2006, not December 2007. Because wanting to outdo Ted Kennedy on gay rights certainly is something he will want to avoid in the days leading up to the Iowa Caucus."
As if she was the official campaign blog-spokewoman, righty bloggers looked to The Corner's Kathryn Jean Lopez for a defense of the outgoing-Gov: "I think that this Romney then-vs.-now meme is out (pun intended) and circulating now, is a bit of a gift to his campaign. He will have to address early on next year his evolution and explain why he stands where he does today and make the sale that he believes what he says today ... As I've written, the governor's got a great genuinely humane tone when he speaks on marriage and why it's important to preserve it as we know it. ... I think he has a real opportunity to bring people together in a way that really gets us somewhere on some tough but crucial issues."
Those on the right supporting other GOP hope fulls eagerly welcomed the news. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) aide Ankle Biting PunditsPatrick Hynes posts "the screaming headline" from the Bay Windows article covered by the Globe "just for fun." The headline reads: "I'll be better than Ted for gay rights." Ex-NY mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) fan Race4 '08's DaveG makes it clear Romney's pro-gay sentiments are fine with him, especially since it means more primary voters will choose Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) or AR Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) over Romney as a socially conservative alternative.
Unaligned conservative bloggers troubled the revelations include Captain's Quarters who argues the controversy "will certainly fuel the notion that Romney has a little too much flexibility in his principles. That impression has already taken hold on the issue of abortion, where Romney now professes to be pro-life but did nothing to oppose abortion during his one term as governor in Massachusetts." CQ adds: "Even to me, who believes that the Republican Party has to get over its issues with gays, this pattern seems inconsistent." The Right Angle's Matt Lewis claims the NYT piece "pokes a big hole in Mitt Romney's efforts to portray himself as the conservative alternative to John McCain" and IA's Krusty Konsrvative says the issue "give [Romney] fits here in Iowa." KK adds: "Pro-Romney people like to make excuses for his past remarks by saying that Romney was running for office in the bluest of blue states, and any Republican is better than a Democrat. That sort of logic should worry any conservative."
Romney defenders were not relegated to the Manhattan offices of NRO. Power Line's Paul Mirengoff also defended Romney: "the socially conservative Republicans may view the matter differently ... but I don't see much in the article that concerns me." John Hinderaker adds: "I suspect that much mainstream news analysis is filtered through the false assumption that conservatives generally hate homosexuals. ... I think a large majority of conservatives have no ill will toward homosexuals, while at the same time believing that gay marriage would be an unwise social policy." Townhall's Dean Barnett has the longest defense of Romney including: "The question itself regarding Romney's putatively shifting views suggests Romney has a penchant for flip-flopping with such audacity that John Kerry should be obvious. There is, however, an answer to the question ... He's not a hater. He's not a bigot. He's not a homophobe. ... Romney is also a traditionalist. He does not believe that institutions such as marriage should be mucked with. And he certainly doesn't believe that such institutions should be playthings for a gaggle of unelected officials who happen to wear black robes for a living."
But Eye on '08 notes that the MSM is already picking up on the flip-flopper meme, including Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace who asked Brownback 12/10:
It turns out that one of your potential rivals for that mantle up there on the screen right now, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, has apparently changed his positions on abortion, and now it turns out on gay rights, since the 1990s
Eye on '08 adds: "As I said earlier, the danger for Romney is that he has this story emerges again and again on issue after issue. If the press, the voters, and conservative leaders settle on the theme that Romney's another MA "flip-flopper", he's in a world of hurt. As Hotline pointed out, what is the Iowa Christian Alliance saying?
And possibly not helping Romney in the primaries at all, Andrew Sullivan explains how he could now support a Romney candidacy: "If Romney proposes healthcare reform on the basis of the Massachusetts experiment, if he backs gay civil unions and ENDA, if he reaches out to LCR, if he leaves marriage to the states to decide, and if he has a sane and serious strategy for fighting Islamist terror, I'd be perfectly open to backing him. If he is serious about cutting spending, I could even get enthusiastic."
GOP FIELD: Rudy Wins Again
GOP Bloggers is in the middle of their 12/06 '08 straw poll. The top choices of righty blog readers as if 10 AM 12/11 are:
Gingrich 29%
Giuliani 23%
Romney 20%
Brownback 6%
Tancredo 6%
Pataki 6%
McCain 5%
GOP Bloggers also asks which candidates are "Acceptable/Unacceptable." The top three acceptable candidates are:
Romney +48%
Gingrich +47%
Giuliani +33%
The three most unacceptable candidates are:
Hagel -59%
Pataki -56%
McCain -35%
BROWNBACK: Hire That Man!
The MI Cooler shares an anonymous tip: "[F]ormer U.S. Senate candidate Jerry Zandstra was overheard at the Michigan Republican State Committee Meeting this morning promoting Sam Brownback for President." MC suggests: "Brownback would be smart to signup Zandstra immediately because he is the darling of Michigan conservatives after his interesting run for U.S. Senate. He received more press than any other candidate and endorsed the anti-racial preference ballot issue and a constitutional amendment to ban abortion."
DEM FIELD: All Aboard The Populism Train!
At The Huffington PostDavid Sirota is interested in '08 hopeful willingness to be an economic populist. Sirota quotes Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown (D) from a Mother Jonesarticle demanding a Dem nominee that "will work to put the government on the side of working families. And that means different trade policy, standing up to the drug industry, taking on the oil industry. It means showing that the Democratic Party is a progressive, populist party." Sirota adds: "In other words, Brown is letting the field know that any Democrat who wants a chance to win Ohio - and thus win the presidency - better get on board with the kind of economic populism he used to win the most politically important swing state in the country."
Still reacting to the ISG report, MyDD's Matt Stoller is not impressed with '08 hopeful leadership on the issue: "No one who knows anything about that region of the world and is willing to consider the realities of domestic American politics thinks this report adds anything useful to the debate. Democratic leaders like Harry Reid, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton continue to hide behind the skirt of James Baker, who is of course not on our side. The only people I've seen in political office who have shown leadership are Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, and Russ Feingold. That's it."
BIDEN: Hit Me Baby One More Time
Atrios takes Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) to task for his repeated use of the phrase "one last shot" when discussing Iraq. Atrios rounds up Biden uses of the term going back to 11/7/2003.
OBAMA: Let The Good Times Roll
MyDD's Jill Tubman covers minority blogger opinion of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for MyDD's "Racial Politics This Week" segment. Tubman finds "Latino Bloggers" upset with Obama's immigration policy, "Black Bloggers" worried Obama "will end up like Jesse," and not "much just yet" from "Asian Bloggers."
Also at MyDD, Matt Stoller looks at Hotline On Call reports that Zephyr Teachout and John Hlinko joined the Draft Obama organization: "I worked a bit with Hlinko during the Draft Clark movement. He's very skilled at creative media, so get ready to see some fun press stunts asking Obama to run for President." But Stoller is not encouraged by Sen. Dick Durbin's involvement in the Obama movement: "Dick Durbin of all people is trying to draft Obama into the Presidential contest, and that should give us something of a sense that Obama's candidacy is exciting insiders as much as anyone else. ... Obama's power isn't coming from a deep base, but a very wide and shallow one. It's not clear to me who his people are - women, labor, youth? I don't know. Maybe all of them."
LA 02: Embarrassingly Awful
Lefty bloggers were uniformly unhappy with Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) 12/9 win over state Rep. Karen Carter (D). MyDD's Matt Stoller finds the "situation" "just so embarrassingly awful." Fellow MyDDer, Chris Bowers was reminded of Philadelphia mayor John Street's (D) "playing the victim after it was revealed that the FBI had a bug in his office" helped him win in 2003. Bowers adds: "This is a dangerous cycle for both progressives and African-Americans. We have a difficult time removing our corrupt leaders because we view their corruption not as real, but rather as a fictitious creation of a conservative movement looking to make yet another power grab. Our inability to distinguish between legitimate victims of governmental persecution and corruption within our own leadership has the potential to sow the seeds of our own undoing not long from now."
Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz suggested Dems refuse to seat Jefferson along with Rep.-elect Vern Buchanan (R-FL) before readers pointed out it would be unconstitutional for Dems to do so.
FOLEY: It Depends On What Your Definition Of 'Aware' Is
Glenn Greenwald is receiving wide praise from the right and left for his review of Rep. Rahm Emanuel's
The right's Outside the Beltway finds "Greenwald's candor" "refreshing" and then looks at this Greenwald passage:
It's possible that the Democratic takeover of Congress can result in genuine and meaningful - and desperately-needed - change for our country. But it's also possible that it could result in nothing notable, that it will produce only the most marginal and politically risk-free actions, all justified by the need not to do anything too "extreme' due to a fear of harming their 2008 electoral prospects.
OTB responds: "The latter is more than "possible;' it is virtually assured. Neither party has a monopoly on virtue. Indeed, most Members of Congress are honorable people genuinely trying to serve the public. The incentive structure, especially in the House with its biannual elections, though, is for the majority party to maximize fundraising and minimize risk. That's not going to change just because the leadership changed hands." Captain's Quarters wonders: "Will Emanuel pay any price for his dishonesty? It's doubtful; by the time of the next election, this will be old news that neither party will want to revisit. Still, kudos to Glenn for getting tough with his own party on dishonesty and political cynicism of the highest order."
Back on the left, Down with Tyranny links to CNN's coverage of the House report under the header: "Rahm Emanuel Should Resign From Congress Immediately And Go Back To Being A Crooked Stockbroker Or Ballerina."
Also taking blogger heat from the report, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) released a statement claiming he took "prompt action" in response to an email he received from a page. TPM Muckraker had reported the House report showed the pages email included reference to an IM referencing "the page's penis size."
REYES: Po-tay-to, Po-tot-o, Sunni, Shia, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
Congressional Quarterly's 12/8 interview with incoming House Intel. Cmte. chair Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) drew wide blogger attention, almost all noting that Reyes did not know whether Al Qaeda was a Sunni or Shia organization. Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat urges Dems to reconsider Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) for the post and Daily Kos' emptywheel mockingly prepares a test for incoming lawmakers.
RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh and Captain's Quarters also push for a Harman reconsideration in light of Reyes' statements.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Advantage McCain
MyDD's Matt Stoller looks at the '08 implications of the ISG:
As our situation gets uglier, John McCain may come out looking better and better. He's not trying to win in Iraq, he's trying to blame Bush and the Democrats for losing Iraq. James Baker made that very clear when he said this morning that the ONLY critic of the report who had an alternative plan was John McCain, adding that he had enormous respect for McCain. I can't predict whether McCain's position is going to help him. What I can say is that if Democratic elites choose to rely on this report as anything but a propaganda wedge, then the assumptions of this report - that it's not worth rehashing the initial invasion and the massive failure of the establishment's apparatus for judgment - are going to become the standard arbiter for what we do going forward. And in that case, it won't matter that McCain supported Bush, because we need to look forward, as the Iraq Study Group says. And McCain is the only one with a plan to do that.
LEST WE FORGET: The Key To Fixing The BCS Is Peace In The Middle East
Looking at the ISG, Townhall's Dean Barnett quips: "If James Baker ran a bipartisan Blue-Ribbon panel tasked with saving social security, his commission would conclude that no real progress on social security was possible until Israel ceded the Golan Heights to Syria and made whatever concessions necessary to mollify Hamas.
Posted by Conn Carroll at December 11, 2006 12:29 PM
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