Contrarian Pundits Are Not An Electoral Coalition

Via Ailes, Mikey Kaus explains the rationale for his right-wing vanity campaign:

“I believe in affirmative government and spending gobs of money,” he said. But, “I want to let people know that there are people that disagree with the party orthodoxy” on unions and amnesty-first immigration reform.

He already has a platform for his outspoken views, kausfiles.com, with a sizeable audience. So why make a seemingly quixotic Senate run?

He says he can reach people that he didn’t with his blog. And, “the time is right.”

Public disapproval of unions is at an all-time high, he notes.

“People really hate the GM bailout.” Kaus supported saving GM and Chrysler but said, “The UAW got us into this mess, so I think they should have taken a pay cut and made more concessions.”

[...]

You don’t have to be a wild-eyed libertarian to realize something is very wrong with that. But, as Kaus points out, “You can’t find a Democrat politician criticizing the teachers unions.”

That silence is hurting the liberal cause. “Unions are what make affirmative government unpalatable,” he said.

The standard objections to Kaus's everything-is-a-nail approach to seeing labor as the root problem of everything apply; that one union has negotiated an excessively cumbersome doesn't mean that labor negotiations are bad, there's little reason to believe that labor protections are a major factor in poor school performance, and blaming the UAW rather than management for the problems with American auto manufacturers is implausible in the extreme. (I note, for example, that the justifiably well-regarded Malibu, CTS, and Silverado are all UAW-made, while the pieceashit Aveo is not; it's almost enough to make me think we're not looking at the key variable here.)

But what really kills me is the idea that unions are standing in the way of the expansive welfare state Kaus pretends to want. The truth is something like the reverse -- without labor, progressive politics as an electoral force is in a hopeless position. How, exactly, does Kaus propose replacing the organizational and GOTV support that labor provides? It's almost enough to make me think he doesn't care about progressive policy outcomes at all...

Read more...

Inept Troll Of The Day

Stanley Fish. Generally, it's good to wait until there's some evidence you're right before you do an "I told you so" column in defense of a stupid thesis, but...

I guess I have to link to this again.

Read more...

Hacktacular!

Col. Mustard, among many others, accuses Democrats of being hypocrites for planning to use the majority rules votes that govern pretty much every other legislature in the world to pass health care reform in the Senate. This kind of procedural tu quoque is useless even if accurate because it almost always cuts both ways. Which makes it especially pathetic that the charges are simply false even on their own terms; since Democrats aren't planning to use the "nuclear option," but rather a banal procedural tool more often used by Republicans, they've got nothing. Sad.

Read more...

Stop the Presses!

Apparently, defense lawyers may have represented people accused of crimes. This is truly shocking in its own right, but here's something more shocking: they're being permitted to work in the Obama administration! Oh the humanity!

I suppose it's difficult for anything else to be the dumbest winger faux-scandal of the week given the assertions that anti-communist books about communism being in the White House library prove that Michelle Obama is a Maoist, but York sure has given it an Olympic-caliber effort.

Read more...

"We've plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence."

Ann Althouse wishes to emphasize that, while Glenn Reynolds based his assumption that Amy Bishop is a left-wing radical on a single RateMyProfessor comment, her own evidence is absolutely airtight:

LGM expends much effort trying to make it look as though the only source for Bishop's politics was some student review on RateMyProfessors. But — I've already linked to this — here's the Boston Herald:

A family source said Bishop... was a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting

Well, I can understand why Althouse is proud of citing two whole pieces of what can charitably be called "evidence." After all, she once wrote an op-ed asserting that Sam Alito was a moderate who deserved liberal support that had no evidence at all. But it should be obvious that this anonymous quote is scarcely better evidence of Bishop's politics than isolated RateMyProfesors comments. I know "family sources" who consider my partner a radical leftist because she eats vegetables other than iceberg lettuce and drives a Subaru; without knowing who the family source is or how well he/she knows Bishop the quote isn't reliable evidence of anything. Moreover, the quote is self-refuting -- a radical leftist obsessed with Barack Obama? It's better evidence that the "family source" considers anybody to the left of Jim DeMint a "far-left political extremist" than that Bishop had radical politics.

Of course, even if this highly unconvincing "evidence" was accurate, it doesn't really matter, as Althouse leaves the other Scott's central point untouched. Scott Roeder's murder was explicitly and admittedly political in purpose, while Bishop's homicides seem to have resulted from an apolitical personal grievance. To argue that the MSM is biased because they're not treating these cases the same way is idiotic.

Read more...

Joementum 2: Electric Boogaloo

Obviously, the idea that Evan Bayh has any chance of winning a national Democratic primary is funny stuff (or pathetic, when the person making the argument is actually paid to write about politics; it's funnier coming from hapless amateurs.) But I especially enjoyed this from Lane's tribute to Bayh:

For months now, Bayh has been screaming at the top of his voice that the party needs to reorient toward a more popular, centrist agenda -- one that emphasizes jobs and fiscal responsibility over health care and cap and trade. Neither the White House nor the Senate leadership has given him the response he wanted.

Leaving aside the feigned shock about the fact that the Democratic leadership was unenthusiastic about adopting the agenda of the second-most conservative Democratic senator, you have to enjoy the idea that the "popular" strategy for the Democrats would apparently be a "jobs" program...of the "fiscally disciplined" kind adopted by Herbert Hoover and Martin Van Buren. If Congress actually adopted Bayh's ideas, his choice to run or not would be moot, given that his chances of winning would be roughly zero given the state of the economy...

Read more...

Hack of the Day

Glenn Reynolds.

...it's a twofer! In context, taking an isolated assertion at ratemyprofessor that Bishop is a "socialist" at face value and then implying that it's somehow relevant to her multiple homicides is probably worse that falling for another global denialist hoax, but it's close...

Read more...

Dumbest Crayon Scribblings At Fred Hiatt's Place Today

Richard Cohen. The fact that a plausible list of the worst WaPo columnists could be compiled an not include him remains amazing; as Paul says, it's like a mirror image of the 1975 Reds.

Read more...

You Disagree With Tony Kennedy (When He Reaches a Conservative Result), You Oppose the Rule of Law

Paul and I have compiled some examples of conservative academics arguing that Obama needs to be sent to Sally Quinn Reeducation Camp or something for disagreeing with an innovative constitutional doctrine just announced by a bare majority of the Court. At the time, though, I missed an even funnier argument, namely William Jacobson's assertion that by criticizing the Court, Obama was threatening the rule of law itself:

The attack on the Supreme Court exposes the intolerance of this President. The politician who campaigned and allegedly champions the rule of law actually has very little use for the rule of law when it does not advance his political agenda.

This is an...interesting argument. Let's examine some other examples of prominent public officials who, in disagreeing with decisions announced by the Supreme Court, therefore oppose the rule of law:

• "The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy [sic] was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators — not a single state had such unrestricted abortion [sic] before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973. But the consequences of this judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of Americans lost in all our nation's wars...Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution." --Saint Ronald Reagan, 1983
• "After a day of consideration, the McCain Campaign has decided to come out hard against yesterday's 5 to 4 decision to grant more rights to court review for enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," McCain said. He went on to quote from Justice Roberts dissent in the case, rail against "unaccountable judges," and say that the courts are about to be clogged with cases from detainees."

The 2008 election was contested between two candidates who oppose the rule of law -- shocking! Anyway, I could go on, but since I assume that even Jacobson himself doesn't believe in this ridiculous definition of the "rule of law" cataloging further examples would be redundant.

For further comedy, in attempting to claim that Obama's public disagreement with 5 of the Court's 9 members was "unprecedented," Col. Mustard uncritically quotes someone asserting that "[e]ven President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had a lot of grievances with the Court, never mentioned it in any of his State of the Union messages." This might strike you as implausible in the extreme. Well, I happen to have FDR's 1937 State of the Union Address right here, and...

Read more...

Seems About Right

Remember Laurie Mylroie? The sometime collaborator of Respected Journamalist Judy Miller whose meticulous scholarship has demonstrated that Saddam Hussein was responsible for such events as 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombings, and Aaron Small going 11-0 with the 2005 Yankees? Now guess who the Bush administration turned to when they needed an, ahem, expert analysis of Al Qaeda.

I'm very happy these people are no longer in power...

Read more...

The Antithesis Of Sensible

To expand on Matt's point about this otherwise disturbingly excellent Peter Beinart column, it's not merely that Stuart Taylor isn't "normally sensible"; it's that he exemplifies egregious double standards with respect to racial classifications. His long-standing, full-throated defense of racial profiling has always coexisted alongside the belief that even the mildest forms of affirmative action are immense injustices.

Read more...

Sarah Palin Hack Watch

Shorter Verbatim Matthew Continetti: "An October Gallup poll put Ms. Palin's favorable number at 40%, her lowest rating to date. In a November Gallup survey, 63% of all voters said they wouldn't seriously consider supporting her for the presidency. Yet Ms. Palin isn't as unpopular as John Edwards."

Yes, if there's a more promising basis for a national political career than being marginally more popular than a failed presidential candidate who fathered a child with a woman who was not his cancer-stricken wife, I don't know what it could be.

Read more...

How To Be A Hack

The Weekly Kristol does indeed set the gold standard, among other things usefully demonstrating the distinction between a conservative publication and a straightforward extension of the Republican Party. My personal favorite:

McCain should feel vindicated. His choice of Palin as his running mate has turned out extraordinarily well. There's never been a national candidate like her, a mother of five from the boondocks who grins as she skewers her opponents. More important, she's given a significant gift to McCain. She's improved his chances of winning.

Not-sadly, no! Which, in fairness, does demonstrate that their Republican hackery has some limits. After all, writers actually concerned with the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party would be trying to make Palin a pariah, but the Standard is still fully in the tank.

Read more...

Connolly

On some level, taking Ceci Connolly to task for acting as a stenographer for insurance company interests willfully attempting to deceive the public is like criticizing a camel for having humps -- there was never any reason to think Connolly would be anything but in over her head, or that her inevitable errors would do anything but reinforce narratives that reactionary interests want spread. The real issue here is with her editors -- given her track record, this seems exactly like the kind of reporting they want.

Read more...

Trust. But, As Long As It's A GOP Talking Point, Don't Verify.

I'm sure a lot of our students are hoping that we'll adopt Fred Hiatt's rigorous standards for assessing the veracity of claims* published in his op-ed pages:

Me: I always like to see a groundbreaking thesis in an American politics research paper, but your claim that Dwight Eisenhower was assassinated by the John Birch Society and secretly replaced with an innovative robotic model to finish out his term in office isn't really sourced. What's your evidence?

Student: I conducted research.

Me: What kind? Where?

Student: You know, research. From the library. Plus, a fellow student is writing a paper arguing that my thesis is unfounded.

ME: OK Then. A+!

*Note: Methods may not be available to non-Republicans

[via]

Read more...

"The Left" Strikes Again!

Neo-neocon bring her mad yoosta-bee skillz to the Polanski issue:

The reaction of no small number of pundits on the Left to the Polanski case is to recommend that we let bygones be bygones.

Amusingly, the post goes on to engage in some speculation about the motives of these dastardly "pundits on the Left" without getting around to naming any of them or their their alleged specific arguments, which one would think would be necessary for her project. And the reasons for this are obvious: leaving aside Hollywood directors/writers and mediocre French "philosophers" (who don't fit the criteria anyway), the most prominent American pundit to apologize for Polanski has been...Anne Applebaum, whose politics are essentially identical neo-neo con. The one dismaying actual leftist exception to this is Katrina VandenHeuvel, who posted a one-line twitter agreeing with Applebaum's idiotic column, which she's partially walked back (albeit with a regrettable endorsement of Wanted and Desired.) And...that's it. (And, no, Richard Cohen really doesn't count.) Pretty thin reed to hang an indictment on "the Left," I'd have to say. (Mother Jones editor Clara Jeffrey's reactions would be far more representative.)

And now, the punchline:

But thank goodness the rank and file liberals at HuffPo and Salon don’t happen to agree with their journalist “betters” that Polanski should be let off the hook.

Yes, damn Salon for publishing so many apologies for Polanski! I'm afraid neo has a lot to learn about writing lazy indictments of "the Left"; it's generally a bad idea to even name sources, because it makes it embarrassingly obvious that you haven't even read the ones you're criticizing.

For rather more useful contributions on Polanski, see Lauren and little light. They don't even blame Polanski on the moral relativism of "the right!"

Read more...

Hack of the Day

Michael Barone. (Am I right to remember that Barone once had a reputation as being something other than a fourth-rate op-ed propagandist?)

See also, although of course even if Gladney was a genuine victim of assault it would hardly prove anything about "liberals."

Read more...

Hacktacular!

At this point, Reynolds, Malkin et al. have dug up parody's corpse to kill it again so many times I can't believe there's anything left in the grave at this point. (You'd think that a college professor might, say, take 20 seconds to check ABC's website to see if the transparently implausible numbers being attributed to ABC were actually produced by them, but I guess that's too much to expect.)

Read more...