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…move West.
Not sure precisely how this affects my thesis about the changing interior West, though I’m sure it does. On first thought, I’d say these boomers are unlikely to be social-conservative firebrands. At the same time, they’re probably not fiscal conservatives either. So, socially liberal (at least moderate) fiscal populists (at least as relates to Social Security and Medicare)? That sounds like straight-up Democrats to me.
Yet another reason the Mountains are turning purple.
…I’m on a list with Ann Coulter.
So, check out for the Club for Greed — um, Growth — ’s anti-Huck list.
The Politico story about Rudy Giuliani shifting travel expenses, supposedly to hide trysts with Judy Nathan, struck me as willfully and wildly overblown at the time (even the original article admitted, way down, that plenty of non-Judy travel had been accounted for in the same way as the Judy travel), but now we have what looks like confirmation that there’s nothing to the story — from a certainly-not-in-Rudy’s-pocket source. The New York Times.
The Web layout doesn’t allow one to link to the story, unbelievably enough, so I’ve screen capped it here. Click on the thumbnail to view.
Given the damage done by the original Politico story, one might expect to see them address this. Unless I’ve missed, they have yet to do so.
(HT: Byron York)
UPDATE: And it appears Byron managed to get the text out. Here it is:
The headlines have dogged Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential campaign for weeks. “Security costs for trysts draw attention,” said one. The articles questioned whether, as mayor, Mr. Giuliani tried to hide his visits to Judith Nathan in the Hamptons by burying the associated security costs in the budgets of obscure mayoral agencies like the Loft Board.
The answer is not likely, according to a review of the city records originally cited as the basis for the assertion.
All eight of Mr. Giuliani’s trips to the Hamptons in 1999 and 2000, including the period when his relationship was a secret, were charged to his own mayoral expense account, according to the records.
After his affair became public, the mayor’s office in 2001 did charge several trips to the Hamptons to the Assigned Counsel Plan, which was designed to coordinate legal efforts for the poor.
But the total cost of those trips, $2,474, represents less than 1 percent of the $281,338 in travel expenses that was charged to the obscure agencies.
And those expenses were not incurred until two years after Mr. Giuliani’s office first began to shift some mayoral travel expenses to lesser-known units.
It’s still not clear why Mr. Giuliani’s office did that, or why it began prepaying his American express bills, both practices that other administrations frowned upon. Former Giuliani administration officials say the shifting of expenses was a temporary, and appropriate maneuver until the Police Department reimbursed the mayor’s office for the security expenses.
The Bloomberg administration is still looking for the backup records for $40,000 of the $632,119 in travel costs that Mr. Giuliani’s office incurred between May 1999 and December 2001, when Mr. Giuliani left office.
But the records reviewed so far, which account for 93 percent of the mayor travel expenses for that period, suggest that Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to see Ms. Nathan, who is now his wife, had nothing to do with any accounting legerdemain.
UPDATE II: And a proper link.
I’d never heard this:
[Huckabee] refus[ed] to sign a disaster relief bill until legislators removed the words “acts of God” to describe tornadoes because Huckabee argued that God was protecting people from tornadoes, not causing them.
This man is insane. Barking at the moon mad.
In my N.Y. Post column this morning, I take a look at Huckabee’s strategy of playing the Evangelical victim card:
‘TIS the season: What better time than Christmas for an all-out war between Christian conservatives and the rest of the Republican Party?
The Evangelical insurgency of the Mike Huckabee campaign having spooked the GOP establishment into counterattacking with a vengeance, the former Arkansas governor has a plan to keep the Huckmentum rolling: Play the victim card. Hard.
“There is a level of elitism that has existed,” Huckabee told the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody in an interview that ran yesterday. “People like me,” he said - that is, “Evangelicals” and people “from the middle of America” - are expected to “come to the rallies and stand in lines for hours to cheer on the candidates . . . but when they got elected, behind closed doors, they would laugh at us and speak with scorn.
“It’s OK if you guys get a seat on the bus,” he added, mocking the tone of the country-clubbers against whom he aims to incite the pitchfork-wielding mob’s rage. “But don’t ever think about telling us where the bus is going to go.”
It’s a common complaint of the religious right. At the risk of agreeing with Huckabee (a despicable peddler of class warfare and various forms of bigotry), on this count he is without a doubt correct.
Of course, if the Evangelicals think they get screwed, they should talk to the libertarians.
Anyway, attacking Huckabee at this point probably helps him a lot more than it hurts him. This is a victimization campaign, and anyone who points out that Huckabee is fiscally liberal bigot who knows nothing about foreign policy is just his victimizer.
Mitt Romney “figuratively” saw his father march with Martin Luther King — though no such thing “literally” happened.
UPDATE: Wow. Romney used to claim that he marched with MLK. Without shame.
UPDATE II: When you’re referring reporters to the dictionary (”the meaning of is is”), you’re losing credibility:
In today’s Post, my thoughts on the GOP debate and the campaigns the candidates’ might have run if they had 2007 to do over again:
YESTERDAY’S Republican debate - the last one before voters go to the polls Jan. 3 for the Iowa Caucuses - resembled a train wreck on more than one occasion.The big embarrassment was ex-Ambassador Alan Keyes, who hasn’t been at any other debate - and looked at many points like he’d have to be removed from the stage by security.
Still, out of all the chaos emerged at least a few revealing things about the candidates’ strategies going forward - and the campaigns they might have run, if they had 2007 to do over.
Awards season may just be getting underway, but we already have at least one winner. The award for worst debate moderating in a presidential primary goes to: the editor of the Des Moines Register, Carolyn Washburn, for her part in yesterday’s GOP debate on Iowa Public Television.
After a Republican debate that made me want to cry (column coming in the morning), this reminds me why I love America.
In this video by The Atlantic, at around 3:00, Mitt Romney claims that he included non-believers under believers in his speech last Thursday — that it was just “assumed” they were included. I don’t think that’s credible. And his campaign has gone almost a week without clarifying the point, despite a huge amount of talk about it. Regardless, here’s the video, judge for yourself:
A look at Mike Huckabee’s gifts — the ones he liked to receive in Arkansas from people with business before the state:
…has the exact same take on Rudy’s fortunes as I do.
Despite the security scandal, things couldn’t be shaping up better for the former mayor. I’ve long thought he was the frontrunner, of course, but even I could never have predicted how the stars would align for this guy as the year progressed. I mean, Mike Huckabee surging to the front in Iowa? Did Rudy find a lamp with a genie in it?
An amazing ad:
Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could “pose a dangerous public health risk.”
As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.
“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote.
“It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”
…
When asked about AIDS research in 1992, Huckabee complained that AIDS research received an unfair share of federal dollars when compared to cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
“In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified,” Huckabee wrote. “An alternative would be to request that multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor (,) Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding be encouraged to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research.”
Of course, by the early 1990s (and well before that, really), it was entirely clear that AIDS could not be spread through casual contact and thus a quarantine could serve no legitimate purpose. Given that, Huckabee’s position really seems to be explained by another answer he gave on the questionnaire:
“I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk.”
There are major parts of the Republican base where this won’t hurt Huckabee, of course. But I think this just makes clearer than ever that Huckabee would not just be a weak general-election candidate, he’d simply be implausible.
UPDATE (4:33 p.m.): The Huckabee camp puts out a statement. He hides behind the science, which wasn’t terribly ambiguous in 1992, as best I know. His current position on AIDS research is much more liberal. I wonder if his views on homosexuality have evolved? (Resisting urge to make evolution joke … damn. Couldn’t resist.)
Well, Mitt Romney seems to be having a complete meltdown now, so hopefully we won’t have to talk about him for much longer (imagine, in a month and a half, this clown will be gone forever — having attempted to sell his soul and only sullied his name forever).
In an exchange with reporters today in Iowa, Romney seems to have gone even further than in his speech on Thursday in declaring non-believers un-American. Hotline has the story:
Mitt Romney was deluged today with questions about yesterday’s speech on faith, specifically about the statement that: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.” “It was a speech on faith in America, first of all,” Romney said, during a testy exchange with reporters after a town hall forum here. He said he was paraphrasing what John Adams and George Washington once said and added that, “For a nation like ours to be great and to thrive, that our Constitution was written for people of faith, and religion is a very extraordinary element and very necessary foundation for our nation. I believe that’s the case.”
Near the end of the media avail, he was asked if he thought a non-spiritual person could be a free person, and he said: “Of course not, that’s not what I said.” Pressed again about the freedom requiring religion line, he said, “I was talking about the nation.”
So, “our Constitution was written for people of faith”? That’s why there’s no reference anywhere within it to even the vague concept of a “creator”? Romney’s hostility to atheists and agnostics at this point cannot be an oversight. Even David Brooks today pointed out how the former governor is deliberately stoking hostility against the faithless. The campaign refuses to say anything that would clarify on this point; meanwhile, Romney himself is making comments that only clarify his own hostility.
Amazing.
I’m not the only one who can’t get an answer on whether Mitt Romney sees any role for agnostics and atheists in his America.
…then I don’t want to know you.
And if you’re not reading the recaps (of ‘30 Rock’ and other shows) at the AV Club’s TV Club, then you’re missing out.
I’ll just quote:
A long time ago, Romney took the decision to be a fool for Joseph Smith, a convicted fraud and serial practitioner of statutory rape who at times made war on the United States and whose cult has been made to amend itself several times in order to be considered American at all. We do not require pious lectures on the American founding from such a man, and we are still waiting for some straight answers from him.
Fair enough.
Finally, and briefly, I’ll give you my quick take on the politics of the Romney speech: They’re bad.
At this point, what more is there to say about it? Pretty much everyone got it before the speech was given, and nothing in the speech changed the equation.
If Romney’s Mormonism was a barrier to a significant number of voters in Iowa, there was nothing in the speech that would put their minds at ease. If anything, emphasizing his refusal to speak about Mormon doctrine can only make Evangelicals more suspicious. All the speech did was make sure that “Mitt Romney is a Mormon” is the storyline this week and probably next. How does that help, other than possibly diverting some media attention away from Mike Huckabee? And the worst of it is, for Romney, that I don’t think it has diverted much attention from Huckabee, especially since the narrative of the speech is that it’s been given in response to Huckabee’s rise.
And, personally, I don’t believe the “it’s all about anti-Mormon bigotry” argument anyway. The flip flopping’s what killed him.
Of course, it would just be unfair to knock Romney on religion today without noting this remarkable moment from Mike Huckabee:
Yes, that’s Huckabee attributing his electoral success to Jesus.
Now, I have no problem with people who think God takes an active role in human affairs thinking that God picked the president. If God’s responsible for all things, then He certainly did pick the president. But he didn’t just pick George W. Bush — he picked Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and FDR, too. And he’s not just responsible for Huckabee’s recent uptick in the polls; he’ll also be responsible when Huckabee loses.
(via Sullivan)
Watching Mitt Romney’s big Mormon Speech this morning, I found myself unsurprised that I was unmoved; one probably wasn’t going to like this speech terribly unless one were already decided for Mitt Romney. I was (moderately) surprised, however, at how utterly cynical and offensive Romney’s speech ended up being. In short, if we didn’t know it before, we now know that in Mitt Romney’s America, there is no room for those without “faith.” What’s more — and this we already did know — Mitt Romney is willing to mislead people about his religion, while categorizing all follow-up questions about his religion as a form of “religious test.”
The most remarkable thing about Romney’s address — and even folks at National Review picked this out, notably Ramesh Ponnuru — is that is wrote atheists and agnostics out of the American nation. Whereas even President Bush, whose own cynical politics have done so much to pit believers versus non-believers, has long gone out of his way to include “good people of no faith at all” in his vision of America. While the president’s need to qualify that phrase with the word “good” might be offensive, it’s a warm embrace of the faithless compared to Romney’s declaration that “freedom requires religion.”
Got that? Those of us who don’t believe in Christianity, those of us who don’t believe in God, those of us who don’t believe in the divinity of human-written holy books have no place in the American experiment, can’t be relied on to uphold the principles of our Constitution, and don’t have the morality necessary to keep a Republic.
If any of this is not what the former governor meant, by all means let him correct himself. I emailed the Romney campaign this morning asking where atheists and agnostics fit into his vision of America. I’ve gotten no response of any kind, and I don’t expect one. Marginalizing non-believers is too central to Romney’s primary strategy for him to speak one word on their behalf. Romney may say that, “A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.” But his vision of who constitutes “the people” includes only the faithful.
As to Romney’s disingenuousness about his own religion, one need only note that the word “Mormon” appeared but once in his speech. (Kennedy mentioned the word Catholic roughly 20 times.) What’s more, he pulled this little number.
On the one hand, he declared:
There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.
So, presidential candidates shouldn’t delve into the doctrines of their churches? I suppose the key word is “distinctive.” Romney is more than willing to talk about the doctrines of his faith when it might accrue to his benefit. Such as … a paragraph earlier in the same speech:
There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind.
It wasn’t quite as misleading as his comments about the Bible in the last debate (where he declared it the “word of God,” despite major differences Mormons have with Christians over the reliability of the Bible).
So, it’s OK to talk about the tenets of Mormonism so far as it presents Evangelical Christians with the impression that there are no major differences between the two faiths. Talking about it any further, dastardly religious test. Got it.
There was at least one line from Romney, though, that was worth the price of admission: “Americans do not respect believers of convenience.”
Amen, brother.
UPDATE: David Frum has a related observation about picking and choosing among theological questions that are “appropriate” to ask. If belief in Jesus is a prerequisite to the presidency, what else might be?
UPDATE II: Another interesting take: “threatened with political … exile.”
James Antle’s got the right idea. If this really becomes a Huckabee vs. Giuliani race (something I doubt — I expect a Huckabee vs. Romney vs. Giuliani race until February 5), then it really will be time for war between big-government, big-religion conservatives and the rest of us.
How any sane person can think Mike Huckabee should be president is a mystery to me. But so is how anyone can call Mike Gerson a conservative. If opposition to abortion and determination not to extend homosexuals equal rights is all that’s necessary for membership in the modern conservative movement, then I suppose count them in. But their views (or view) on the role of government in society are (or is) downright Santorum-esque.
If Reagan had a three-legged stool (economic conservatism, social conservatism, and strong national defense), and Giuliani has a two-legged stool (economic conservatism, strong national defense) — then Huckabee has a modified pogo stick: social conservatism plus simple ignorance on national defense.
God help us all.
Forget brain scans on voters — it’s time to throw the candidates themselves into the MRI: The LA Times has a piece arguing for “Getting Inside Their Heads … Really Inside.”
The political bias of the piece might be revealed here:
One could argue that our current president’s struggles with language and emotional rigidity are symptoms of temporal lobe pathology. The temporal lobes, underneath your temples and behind your eyes, are involved with language, mood stability, reading social cues and emotional flexibility.
Though, to be fair, it also makes the case that Bill Clinton has some serious brain dysfunction.
The piece, however, points up an obvious problem with a lot of the hype around brain scanning. Aside from well-established medical diagnostic tests — we can detect Alzheimer’s very early these days — there’s very little a brain scan can tell us that observation of the candidates, in the normal course of politics, cannot. Bush can’t talk. Bush can’t admit when he’s wrong. We knew at least the first one in 2000. We knew the second one in 2004. We elected him twice (or, one and a half times) nonetheless.
There’s plenty we can tell about the candidates for 2008 already; there’s almost nothing, outside of, say, an undiagnosed brain tumor, we could tell by scanning them.
Personally, I’m in favor of euthanizing all of them and dissecting them in the interest of science. But others would just take their place.
In today’s Post, I argue that Mitt’s Mormon speech will be of little to no use. The real problem is his flip-flopping:
ON Thursday, at the George H.W. Bush presidential library in College Station, Texas, Mitt Romney will deliver what’s being called his “JFK speech.”
Unfortunately for Romney, he’s trying to deal with a John F. Kennedy problem - a nation uneasy with the religion of a serious presidential candidate - when his real weakness is a John F. Kerry-type woe. Like the presidential candidate who “voted for it before I voted against it,” Romney is seen as a flip-flopper whose only guiding principle is personal ambition.
Romney & Co. seem to have panicked quite thoroughly over Mike Huckabee’s rise in the polls. Instead of a well-funded campaign of attack ads to take down the so-far unscrutinized Huckabee, the Romney campaign has decided they’d be better off putting the Mormon issue front and center for at least a week (it’ll probably be more like two) in the home stretch before Iowa votes on January 3.
There’s a phrase that describes that: political suicide.
Blake Dvorak has a good post up on the Paulites over at RCP, responding to my column on the “revolution.”
If, however, I could just take the time to elaborate on one point. Dvorak writes:
Sager says that Paul non-interventionist foreign-policy, which is just one aspect of libertarian thought, drives most of Paul’s supporters. Having talked with many Paul supporters myself, I think Sager somewhat underestimates the appeal of Paul’s domestic policies, but his larger point stands: Were Paul not an anti-war Republican, he’d be just another issues candidate like Tom Tancredo.
I might be underestimating the appeal of Paul’s domestic policies, but it depends on what you mean by domestic policies. Trade and immigration I’ve always considered essentially under the header “domestic policy,” despite their clear international implications. And, indeed, it’s specifically the appeal of Paul’s domestic policies on these issues that I find so troubling. He is a Tancredoite on immigration, and he’s a Dobbsian on trade. Now, he claims he’s against “managed trade” and for free trade, but the end result is he’s against every realistic free-trade agreement in existence; and he spends time ranting about North American Union conspiracy theories.
So, it is specifically Paul’s appeal on a number of hot-button domestic issues I find most troubling. There are plenty of domestic-policy areas where I agree with him, but I see no evidence that these are the areas driving his supporters.
This site mentions the “Jewsmedia” (pun on newsmedia) and has a little banner declaring Paul the “non-Kosher” candidate.
Again, let’s just have no lack of clarity about what motivates many of the stormtroopers of the Ron Paul Revolution.
Sample Ron Paul supporter response to my column this morning:
FUCK YOU PIECE OF FASCIST SHIT! HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BLOW RUPERT MURDOCH! WE AMERICANS ARE WAKING UP TO YOUR EVIL AND SLANTED VENOM!
MAY YOU ROT IN HELL!!!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!
Surprising you guys don’t win over more converts!
UPDATE:
And another great one, mixing in the racism and anti-Semitism I’ve come to expect from the Paul Brigades:
Im Not Sure Of YOUR Politics”? Ive been a CONSERVATIVE Republican all my Life. Ron Paul Is Not a ‘Cook’ As you Claim to Know”? Im ‘Sic’ Of The Republicans and Dems “”They are For A NEW WORLD ORDER And Paul sees this and You sir Are a TWIT And can’t See The Fuzz On Your face.
The traitors In BOTH Parties In America want a North American free Trade Zone wioth No Border”" I don’t and I would rather see An armed revolution If these Stinkin Traitors Try And Make ME A Mexican Or a Socialist Canadian’!
Kid, You Live In a NYC Dream world and cannot see The Mexicans Invading My Country Any easier Then the Fuzz growing On your face’!
America Needs To Throw Off ISRAEL (Thats why America Is hated In The Middle-East And By the Muslims) and Foreign Aid and Get back to taking care Of Americans and Not The Babys Of Illegal Mexicans and Central Americans ILLEGALLY In MY Country’! We Must Take Back The American Revolution……………And……………Ron Paul IS THAT MAN”!
A Nationalist America Is What America Nereds Today’! (Some White Pride For a Change’!)
(This Not Taught In the Marxist Colleges That YOU probably attended Somewhere in America)
Oh well.
To be clear: I know these people don’t represent all Ron Paul fans. There are plenty of reasons to oppose the war and the Patriot Act and the state of never-ending warfare the Bush administration and others seem so eager to get behind. And there are plenty of legitimately libertarian things about what Ron Paul is saying.
But for anyone encouraged by the polling success (if you can call 5% success) and fundraising success (the money is real) of Ron Paul’s campaign, it’s worth keeping in mind just who a lot of these folks are. Paul’s message isn’t all about liberty. A lot of it is xenophobic populism and isolationism. Even if you’re not drawn in by that message, it’s important to remember that a lot of Paulites are.
In today’s New York Post, I make the argument that Ron Paul’s success has far less to do with any “libertarian moment” than it has to do with an unfortunate rise of populist sentiment in the Republican Party:
December 1, 2007 — FOLKS in Washington seem to think that the unexpected success of Ron Paul in the Republican primary suggests the country is in some kind of “libertarian moment” that will reshape American politics. Sorry: While I’d be delighted if the GOP were gripped by libertarianism - that is, a resurgent commitment to economic and social freedom - the truth is actually quite the opposite.
Both The Washington Times and The Washington Post ran pieces over the weekend reading big things into Paul’s showing in the polls. He’s at around 5 percent nationally and in Iowa - far above the 1 percent blip you’d expect from a fringe candidate. And he’s done phenomenally in fund-raising, bringing in $9 million-plus so far this quarter (which may put him ahead of John McCain in the cash race).
But what does the Ron Paul Revolution, as it’s dubbed itself, really represent? Paul, a 10-term congressman from Texas and the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president, has a well-deserved reputation as a principled constitutionalist. But his success now has more to do with anti-war populism than radical libertarianism.
How else to reconcile the simultaneous rise of Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee?
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