January 23, 2008
1/23: Turning Up The Heat
As the Dem and GOP primaries have progressed, two frontrunners have emerged (Hillary Clinton and John McCain) who are disliked by a considerable number of people in the blogosphere. On the Dem side, the heated battle between HRC and Barack Obama has been accompanied by an equally heated battle between supporters of both candidates in the comment threads. These "flame wars" have become so intense that prominent liberal blogger Digby has decided to temporarily disable the comment threads on her blog. Chris Bowers thinks these disagreements are an inevitable consequence of "some really nasty divisions in this country." He also writes:
"It will tone down once the primary is over, but no matter who wins it will be a long healing process as supporters struggle with lingering feelings of voter suppression, corporate blackouts, racism, sexism, and other charges the campaigns have made themselves."
In the conservative blogosphere, the criticism of Mike Huckabee has diminished now that the ex-governor looks less viable, while the attacks on McCain have noticeably increased. Ed Morrissey thinks bloggers and commenters need to tone down their attacks:
"In my opinion, the tone of this primary has strayed unnecessarily into negative attacks on valuable members of our own team. Instead of focusing on positive aspects of a favored candidate, too often our advocates have opted to seize on any criticism of others and make that their main message."
We share Bowers' view that once the primaries are over, there will almost certainly be lingering feelings of bitterness among the online supporters of certain candidates. But will it stop these people from uniting behind their party's nominee?
GOP FIELD: McCain Wins, Conservatives Lose?
Two recent columns -- one by Townhall's Michael Medved and the other by The New York Times' David Brooks -- have sparked a lively debate in the conservative blogosphere. Medved and Brooks take similar positions in their columns: Medved sees McCain and Huckabee's 1-2 finish in the SC primary as a repudiation of conservative talk radio (which has attacked both candidates for months), while Brooks sees it as a repudiation of conservative leaders more generally.
"The big loser in South Carolina was, in fact, talk radio: a medium that has unmistakably collapsed in terms of impact, influence and credibility because of its hysterical and one-dimensional involvement in the GOP nomination fight. For more than a month, the leading conservative talkers in the country have broadcast identical messages in an effort to demonize Mike Huckabee and John McCain...Well, the two alleged 'liberals,' McCain and Huckabee, just swept a total of 63% of the Republican vote in deeply conservative South Carolina...South Carolina demonstrates the utter ineffectiveness of concerted efforts by the conservative media elite to derail the campaigns of two popular candidates."
"Many professional conservatives do not regard Mike Huckabee or John McCain as true conservatives...Some of the contributors to The National Review's highly influential blog, The Corner, look to Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney to save the conservative movement. Their hatred of McCain is so strong, it's earned its own name: McCain Derangement Syndrome. Yet a funny thing has happened this primary season. Conservative voters have not followed their conservative leaders. Conservative voters are much more diverse than the image you'd get from conservative officialdom."
NRO's Mark Levin pushes back against Brooks' claims: "I strongly oppose McCain's nomination, but I don't hate him. And I had not heard this phrase 'McCain Derangement Syndrome' until Brooks dropped it into his column...Brooks wants to redefine conservatism, but he's not going to. He has written about a McCain-Lieberman Third Party ticket for a few years now...His position doesn't stray much from the neo-conservative position, in which foreign policy rules supreme, and limited government is of little concern. So, he has to fill that gap, and he does so with a poorly conceived and increasingly frustrated insistence that we all join him in breathing life back into a kind of Nixon-Ford domestic agenda -- i.e., a muck of compromises and government expansion that surrenders the ideological playing field to the Left."
Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "Brooks bristles with contempt for conservative intellectuals who read less than 'pure' conservatives out of the movement. I think I understand where he's coming from. It is incorrect in my view to claim that, on balance, McCain and Huckabee are liberals. At worst, they are moderates who lean to the right. But conservatives certainly aren't out-of-line to the extent that they criticize McCain or Huckabee for specific non-conservative positions they take on major issues. To borrow Brooks' terms, it may be misguided for conservatives to 'expel' McCain and Huckabee, but it's not necessarily inappropriate to 'find them wanting.'"
Captain's Quarters' Ed Morrissey thinks Medved has a point: "In my opinion, the tone of this primary has strayed unnecessarily into negative attacks on valuable members of our own team. Instead of focusing on positive aspects of a favored candidate, too often our advocates have opted to seize on any criticism of others and make that their main message. That's not just true in talk radio, but also in the blogosphere. It has led to what I call Ultimatum Politics -- where people start to demand that either their specific candidate gets nominated or they refuse to participate in the general election. That results from overcranked partisanship clouding mature judgment. In a general election, voters have to make a choice, and as Ronald Reagan warned, it's better to support a candidate with whom one agrees on 70% of the issues rather than allow a 30% candidate to prevail instead."
MCCAIN: Still Not Convincing The Right
Michelle Malkin rips McCain for his record on illegal immigration: "After spearheading a disastrous, security-undermining illegal alien amnesty bill last year with Teddy Kennedy, 'straight-talking' GOP Sen. John McCain claims he has seen the light. In TV appearances, he vows to put immigration enforcement first...But how can McCain cure citizens' distrust when his own credibility on the issue remains fatally damaged?...Not all of us have forgotten how the short-fused Arizona senator cursed good-faith opponents in his own party ('F**k you!' and 'Chickensh*t' were the choice words he had for Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn during a spat over enforcement provisions). Not all of us have forgotten that he voted against barring felons from receiving amnesty benefits under his plan. Not all of us have forgotten the underhanded, debate-sabotaging manner in which McCain/Kennedy/[Lindsay] Graham/Harry Reid conspired to ram their package down voters' throats."
Right Wing News' John Hawkins analyzes McCain:
"Strengths: He's fiscally conservative, a hawk, and has a strong pro-life voting record. He's also the candidate who currently has the best head-to-head numbers against Obama and Clinton by far.
Weaknesses: Beyond the issues above, McCain is basically a Democrat who seems to take perverse enjoyment in picking fights with conservatives. For this reason, he is richly despised by a lot of people on the Right and having him as the nominee would cause conservatives to become despondent. He's also pro-amnesty, didn't support the Bush tax cuts, and is undependable on judges -- and just about everything else -- despite his protests to the contrary."
MCCAIN II: Causing Consternation Among Dems
Liberal bloggers are anxious -- and somewhat conflicted -- about the prospect of facing McCain in the general election:
MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Just yesterday I heard of yet another Democrat who has said he would consider voting for McCain, something I've heard over and over from moderate Democrats and independents...This support McCain has among the broad political middle points to the larger reason I'd prefer a Romney nomination...The real problem I see in McCain is that, setting aside his embrace of the surge and his desire to keep troops in Iraq for hundreds of years, he's actually quite sane on several issues that Democrats have a unique opportunity to claim as their own, among them fighting global warming, instituting comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform, opposing torture and closing Guantanamo Bay. Now, McCain's positions on these issues are problematic for him among conservatives, leading Rush Limbaugh to claim a McCain nomination would 'ruin the party,' but the fact is McCain would blur some of the distinctions that I feel it's imperative for us to be able to draw with the Republicans in November."
Ezra Klein: "I'm deeply conflicted about McCain's rise. On one level, it would be a boon for the GOP to nominate an actual adult. McCain has his problems -- and many of them are severe -- but he's not a reckless nut like [Rudy] Giuliani, and he's not a political knave like Huckabee, and checked by a Democratic Congress, there's the possibility that some decent, if incremental, legislation would be created and passed. On the other hand, he's still the most electable vessel for deeply unsound views on profoundly important matters, and it would be better to have sound views on important matters."
THOMPSON: So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish
Captain's Quarters' Ed Morrissey: "Fred's likely exit will cause a little navel-gazing around the blogosphere. The enthusiasm Fred generated didn't get matched by the energy output of the campaign itself, and many puzzled over this fact. While Thompson advocates argued that we should support the candidate who rejected the media-driven, hoop-jumping campaign that most politicians use, voters expected to see more of Thompson's desire and demonstrate that he had the energy to run the country. Bloggers either missed this desire or mistakenly discounted it as a factor even among media-resistant conservatives -- who voted in greater numbers for John McCain and Mike Huckabee than Fred in South Carolina."
Jennifer Rubin: "I think Thompson and his meek withdrawal from the race carry several lessons. First, being president and running for president take more than saying the 'right' things. There are personal attributes -- drive, determination, leadership and organizational skills that matter. The presidency is not the same (though some of us wish differently) as being a thoughtful pundit. It is an executive and leadership position. Second, campaigns tell us something about how people will perform in office. Are they steadfast and brave or lazy or groveling? Pay attention because adults rarely change their basic personality and character."
AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "I too am disappointed by Fred Thompson's departure from the race, as he was my favorite of the top-tier candidates...Unfortunately, the campaign overpromised in those summer days and underdelivered when Thompson finally declared his candidacy. Candidate Thompson didn't show signs of what made people support him in the first place until too many Republicans had concluded he was no longer viable. He might have had problems in the general election in any event if he didn't do the hard work of connecting the conservative principles he articulated so well to new policies that adress the problems of 2008...If Mitt Romney can't prosper with Thompson out of the race, there are no conditions under which he could win the nomination."
RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Thompson was the only candidate in the GOP race who consistently advocated a small-government, free market, federalist message and his departure leaves a hole in the race for the GOP nomination...I suppose that there are things to learn from this episode in American Presidential history. We learn that getting in the race for the Presidency early is now an imperative. We learn that untraditional campaigns fail. And we learn that however much a candidate is ambitious for his ideas, it won't matter to the electorate unless he is also ambitious for himself or herself."
RedState's Erick Erickson: "I spoke with one of Fred's advisors a little while ago...My understanding is that with no strong clearly conservative person in the race, he saw no point in endorsing. But, this is not the end of Thompson. I'm told we'll be hearing much more from him in a few days. His mother is recovering from an illness and he is with her. But, I suspect he'll be engaging in forums around the country to talk about conservatism and make sure we hold the other candidates to some consistency -- no more talking populist in Michigan, Mitt Romney."
Erickson, who lives in GA, plans to vote for Thompson anyway: "I intend to show up on February 5th at my local polling location and cast my vote for Fred Thompson."
Townhall's Matt Lewis: "Even were he to endorse McCain, I've got to think that Fred's departure from the race hurts McCain, and helps Huckabee and Romney, going forward...Had he departed a week ago, Huckabee would have won South Carolina."
NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "Reading my e-mail and listening to Bill Bennett's show this morning, Fredheads seem to be going Romney."
ROMNEY: You Can't Please Everybody
Townhall's Hugh Hewitt continues to make the case for Romney: "The troubles roiling the international equity markets underscore Romney's vast experience with the economy and growth issues while reminding Florida voters that John McCain's 24 years in the U.S. Senate produces almost nothing in the way of experience with markets and global financial tides and stresses."
Meanwhile, John Hawkins continues to make the case against Romney: "He is a 'promise anything to anybody to get elected' flip-flopper who really can't be trusted once he's in office. An unknown percentage of evangelical Christians won't vote for him because he's a member of what they consider to be a heretical, Christian cult. Moreover, although conservatives don't loathe him, he inspires very little enthusiasm and his head-to-head poll numbers against Obama and Clinton are just terrible. Romney turns states that Huckabee and McCain win by 20 points into toss-ups and seems highly unlikely to win a general election."
DEM FIELD: Emotions Run High
As the HRC-Obama rivalry becomes increasingly heated, so does the rivalry between the online supporters of those candidates:
Daily Kos diarist thereisnospoon reflects the views of many in the netroots rank-and-file in his strong opposition to HRC: "The last thing we need is another Republican President. But the next to last thing we need is another Democratic president in the mould of Bill Clinton. Our principles as progressives should lead us to reject DLC politics, centrism, dirty tricks, cheating, scandalous royalistic behavior, swing-state strategies, baby-step incremental changes, and 'whatever it takes to win' ideologies. Our desire to crash the gate and change such behavior should make us fight like crazy to keep our Party from becoming associated with such things ever again...This notion that we have 'three great candidates' is false. We have two great candidates. The third is a candidate we may have to choke down our throats when push comes to shove -- but any progressive worth their salt should be doing everything in their power to prevent that terrible choice from needing to be made."
Daily Kos diarist grimc thinks the netroots should, and will, support HRC if she becomes the Dem nominee: "I just wanted to say goodbye to all the people who are currently sure they're not voting for Hillary Clinton if she's the nominee -- or even worse, voting for McCain...Don't get me wrong, I'm not telling anybody to leave. It'd be great if you stuck around. But it's logical to assume that anybody who is so dedicated to their principles that they won't vote for Clinton won't possibly be able to stick around a place that's going to be working so hard to get her elected...I mean, if Clinton's the nominee, this place is going to be pretty much 24/7 Let'sHelpHillaryWin.com. After all, the FAQ does say: 'It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory.'...You probably won't want to be associated with any site that promotes evil. So, no hard feelings. Bye. Good luck with your non-vote. Or vote for McCain."
Digby explains her decision to disable the comment threads on her blog: "I turned off my comments to cool the rhetoric a little...A lot of criticism has come my way recently because I won't 'endorse' anyone and this has led to people making assumptions about my position. But the truth really is that I am not invested in any of the candidates. They are nearly identical in terms of policy, all have political gifts and bring something to the table and I find none of the various electability arguments particularly persuasive. Indeed, I believe that the fact they are so similar in all the important ways is one of the reasons everyone is at each other's throats on this --- since there's no daylight on policy everyone is having to argue their case based on their own emotional connection to the candidate or what the candidate symbolizes, which often devolves into ugly invective. It really does become personal under those circumstances. You can see the result of this in the candidates' own debate last night. They weren't really fighting over anything important because they don't actually disagree about anything important. But they had to fight. It's an election. Somebody's got to win."
Digby also defends herself against accusations that she's biased in favor of HRC: "I've been closely following the sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton in the press --- I always monitor the media narratives and this one was indisputably powerful and instructive...And I've also been critical of some of Obama's post-partisan rhetoric because I just disagree with it as a matter of strategic principle, even as I understand why he is doing it. Those two things seem to have led readers to believe that I am a biased, possibly paid, closet Clinton shill, which is what turned the comment section into a war zone."
Open Left's Chris Bowers also comments on the nastiness of the Dem primary campaign: "Supporters are following the leads of the campaigns themselves, and the result is that the diversity of American opinion, tone, and micro-spheres are brushing up against each other in particularly nasty ways. It will tone down once the primary is over, but no matter who wins it will be a long healing process as supporters struggle with lingering feelings of voter suppression, corporate blackouts, racism, sexism, and other charges the campaigns have made themselves. Such feelings were unavoidable no matter how the primary went down, but both the national media and the campaigns themselves have functionally presented a form of negative leadership that is accentuating these unavoidable problems...One thing I will say, however, is that no matter what some pundits and politicians think, the internet and the blogosphere are not the causes of this situation. What the internet has done is pull back the curtain on the myth of a congenial, bi-partisan, post-identity politics America. That was always a myth created by elite political and media types who operate in a privileged world of very narrow demographics that is wholly unreflective of the broader nation. What we are seeing now is very normal for our country."
DEM FIELD II: Who's Gonna Take The Lead On FISA?
The netroots are once again pressing the three Dem frontrunners to take a stand against the Senate FISA reauthorization bill, which grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the Bush admin spy on U.S. citizens without warrants.
Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher wants John Edwards to lead the fight against the FISA bill: "John Edwards should challenge his rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to go back to Washington, DC and fight against retroactive immunity for the telecoms...Such an action would illustrate [Edwards'] genuine commitment to change and fighting vested interests in Washington, and hopefully it will channel that intense anti-immunity passion toward his campaign. He won't be able to participate in the filibuster himself, but by offering to leave the campaign trail and go back to DC with Clinton and Obama he'll be able to show leadership in challenging all Democrats to put thoughts of personal gain aside and join together in the fight to save the constitution. Without the help of the presidential candidates, we are doomed to lose this fight. And all their calls for change will ring hollow if they allow George Bush to railroad this bill through a supine Democratic-controlled Senate because of their absence."
Salon's Glenn Greenwald seconds Hamsher's call: "It will be increasingly difficult to listen to Edwards, Obama and Clinton tout their supreme leadership attributes and their commitment to 'changing the way Washington works' if they choose to sit by, more or less mute, and allow such a blatant and corrupt evisceration of the rule of law -- and such a vast and permanent expansion of the limitless surveillance state -- to occur without a fight. Any one of them, or all three, has a unique opportunity to actually demonstrate with actions, rather than pretty speeches, their commitment to the principles they claim to espouse."Open Left's Matt Stoller: "Who cares who wins the primary? Bush is about to get his number one priority through Congress, a move that could be stopped by Edwards, Obama, or Clinton, especially the latter two. This is the move to implement retroactive immunity for telecom companies who spy on Americans and violate core constitutional principles. All that is required to fight this is for Clinton or Obama to put the glare of the Presidential spotlight in the Senate. To, you know, lead. All three campaigns are well-aware of this fight, and at least Clinton and Obama have been completely unresponsive. South Carolina is probably locked up for Obama, and since the fight now is over swing liberals and the campaign is about to move national, this would be a smart political move. You get more national attention by confronting Bush in DC in a dramatic filibuster than you do with bland paid media."
Open Left's Paul Rosenberg: "If there's anything at all that a Democratic primary should be good for, it's stopping the Senate from shredding the Constitution."
OBAMA: Where's The Partisanship?
Liberal bloggers continue to disagree with Obama's post-partisan approach:
MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Those that do argue that this country is clamoring for a new politics that gets beyond the divisions of red and blue America might point to Barack Obama's incredible fundraising success and the excitement he's generated as proof that this post-partisan message is exactly what America is looking for; on the contrary, I would point to his losses in New Hampshire and Nevada as proof it's exactly what Democrats are NOT looking for (winning Democrats is the immediate goal here after all.) Calling the Republican Party 'the party of ideas' and running an ad that runs away from his own party identification are of a piece and, if Obama does lose the nomination, this sort of messaging will largely be to blame. I don't begrudge Obama's unity message, I think it's inspiring and has genuinely excited people outside of the two party system, but I reject the idea that it must be done without stating plainly, as he did in the debate last night, what we all know to be true: one party is right and one party is wrong and it is our ideas that not only are right for America but are the ideas that voters are clamoring for. Wouldn't it be nice if his unity message simultaneously communicated this fact, maybe then he wouldn't be doing such a good job of losing the liberal vote, and, so it would seem, the nomination, to Hillary Clinton."
The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "I lean toward the Hillary approach because I think the Obama approach only works when there's already a real groundswell of support for significant change (as in the 30s, 60s, and 80s, for example) -- and as much as I hate to say it, I just don't see that at the moment. I know the pundit class talks endlessly about the public's hunger for change and its disgust with the politics of polarization, but aside from a nearly unanimous desire to get rid of George Bush it seems to me that the basic partisan divisions we've had for the past three decades are mostly still there."
Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat: "I've written what I think is wrong with Obama's approach too many times to count while also explaining why I think IF he comes to adopt a more partisan approach he is in the best position to get a progressive agenda fowarded."
OBAMA II: Changing The Game
We've observed that liberal bloggers seem to believe that McCain would be the most formidable GOP nominee. On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative bloggers seem to believe that Obama would be the most formidable Dem nominee:
NRO's Byron York: "I went to Barack Obama's rally [in Columbia SC] on Sunday night, with a Republican friend who had never seen the Illinois senator in action before. Watching the crowd of more than 3,000 fill up the convention center, watching the people send up waves of energy to Obama, and watching him play off that energy in a speech that was one of the best political performances anyone has seen this year, my Republican friend said, simply, 'Oh, s--t.' He recalled the scene from Jaws, in which the small seaside town's sheriff realizes how big the shark he's tracking truly is, and says, 'We're gonna need a bigger boat'...Running against the man on stage at the convention center would be a hard, hard campaign, requiring a very big boat."
AmSpec Blog's Jennifer Rubin: "Every Republican watching [the CNN/CBC debate] must be thinking 'Wow, I'm glad Hillary cried in NH.' Obama is, for all his inexperience and lack of realism in foreign policy, a far more compelling candidate. When he says he could get a 60% share of the electorate for the Democrats I believe him. You go, girl!"
Meanwhile, CBN's David Brody interviewed Obama in SC:
Brody: "Will Hillary be a drag for down-ticket races as a presidential candidate?"Obama: "I think there is no doubt that she has higher negatives than any of the remaining democratic candidates. That's just a fact and there are some who will not vote for her. If you look at the results in Nevada, for example, she eked out the popular vote victory over me, but I ended up winning more delegates because she got almost all of her votes from Clark County, Las Vegas and some of the traditional democratic areas. We got votes there, but we also got votes in northern Nevada and rural conservative regions of the state that traditionally don't vote Democratic, but were excited about my campaign.
I have no doubt that once the nomination contest is over, I will get the people who voted for her. Now the question is can she get the people who voted for me? And I think that describes sort of one of the choices that people have, just a practical choice, as they move forward."
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Petraeus 2012?
The American Prospect's Spencer Ackerman thinks so:
"[David] Petraeus can basically write his next round of orders. But wherever he goes, his next important campaign probably won't be on any battlefield. It'll be political. For the past year, the GOP has laid the groundwork to enlist Petraeus as its standard-bearer in the fairly likely event that the party loses in November to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. You read it here first. Plant your lawn signs now. Petraeus 2012: Surging to the White House."
Ezra Klein is dubious:
"It's not merely that I don't think it's likely to happen (his moment is now, not four years from now), but I don't think it's likely to succeed. Petraeus isn't [Dwight] Eisenhower. He's a popular war general of a basically small war. People like him, but unless they write for The Weekly Standard, they don't have much invested in him. So he won't get a pass by virtue of our psychological dependence on his presence (as Eisenhower did). Moreover, unlike Ike, he'd have to drop into the modern campaign, a grueling, seemingly endless, process. What happens the first time he's grilled about health care? About ethanol? About global warming? About taxes? About his wife, his kids, some stuff he said 20 years ago? If we've learned nothing else over the past 12 months, it's that the endless campaign takes the sheen off even the most gleaming candidates. America's Mayor is polling fourth in Florida and its District Attorney just dropped out of the race. The frontrunners are the two who could best be described as career politicians. It's what the process selects for."
LEST WE FORGET: 2007 -- A Great Year For Movies
TAPPED's Scott Lemieux:
"Maybe I'm forgetting something, but relative to the quality of films this year I would be surprised if this isn't the best selection of best picture nominees of my lifetime. Granted, it's marred by [Julian] Schnabel relegated to a Best Director nomination while Atonement takes Diving Bell's rightful place in what I assume (although I haven't seen Atonement yet, so maybe even it's good) to be the Middlebrow Doorstop spot (although having only one is pretty amazing in itself.) Still, There Will Be Blood and No Country are both excellent-to-exceptional films, Juno very good, and while the enjoyable Michael Clayton is overmatched in this heat (and I would have preferred Lumet/Before the Devil) it's certainly better than most recent Best Picture winners (Crash, Shakespeare in Love, Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, American Beauty, ugh.) It's an unusually strong collection of pictures. I wonder how it happened?"
Posted by Ian Faerstein at January 23, 2008 12:36 PM
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