Month: February 2012

This political science-y piece shows pretty clearly what most political observers outside the Beltway-Mustache-Axis-of-Bipartisan-Fetishism intuitively understand: there simply isn’t a constituency for “centrist” efforts like Americans Elect:

Both Democrats and Republicans are now closer to their own party and farther from the opposition party than at any time in the past four decades. Democrats on average place the Democratic Party exactly where they place themselves while they place the Republican Party very far to the right of where they place themselves. And Republicans on average place the Republican Party exactly where they place themselves while they place the Democratic Party very far to the left of where they place themselves. As a result, very few supporters of either party are likely to be tempted to vote for a centrist third party.

There is one group of voters that might be tempted to vote for a centrist third party: pure independents. These voters, on average, place themselves right in the middle of the two major parties and rather far from either one. But pure independents typically make up less than 10% of the electorate, and they tend to be less interested in politics and less attentive to political campaigns than voters who identify with a political party. There are simply not enough of them and they are too hard to mobilize to have a major impact on the outcome of a presidential election.

One caveat: Sabato’s charts measure perception of where the parties stand ideologically, not where they actually stand, and I’d question how much of a drift leftward there’s actually been on the Democratic side. The influence of the DLC and its fellow travellers has obviously waned, and the Blue Dogs took a kick to the gut in 2010, but that just means that the Dems are less ideologically diverse – not that, say, the Overton Window of permissible range of discussion has actually moved leftward within the party. Dennis Kucinich is as much of an outlier now as he was 10 years ago. The same cannot be said for Jim DeMint.

That said, Sabato’s piece shows the inherent irrelevance of efforts like Americans Elect, which posit a groundswell of support from voters that simply don’t exist. The people channelling David Broder from beyond the grave, who wax nostalgic for the days when pols drank at the same clubs and cut cordial backroom deals, are also pining for a political system in which voters’ wishes were routinely ignored. Those voters are, in 2012, living in two different worlds. They both hate Congress not because it’s gridlocked, but because it isn’t doing their bidding. And in the freakishly unlikely event a third-party presidential bid would be successful, it would still leave us with a Congress that was, if anything, even more gridlocked, for the simple reason that our political system isn’t designed to handle two extremely polarized political camps.

Wishing for a political system that ignores that inconvenient fact is wishing for a top-down, anti-democratic political system that represents almost nobody – the very antithesis of the “nominate whoever you want!” approach Americans Elect claims to embrace. The people backing such appeals to centrism would be better off using their considerable media platforms to explore how our country’s citizens could become less polarized, rather than pretending the polarization doesn’t exist.

ABC News:

Return of the Culture Wars: Can Mitt Romney Win Conservative Backing?

The resurgence of social and cultural issues in voters’ minds poses new challenges for GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney as he reels from surprising losses Tuesday to conservative favorite Rick Santorum.

The economy remains the No. 1 issue of concern for a majority of Americans. But the recent hoopla surrounding the Obama administration’s support of contraceptives, the court ruling against California’s same-sex marriage ban and heated debate about abortion access has created a perfect storm that has pushed these seemingly dormant issues to the surface….

Romney, meanwhile, has struggled to convince the Republican base of his conservative credentials. Most recently, he came under fire for allowing “abortion pills” as governor of Massachusetts. In 2005, Romney vetoed a law that required all Massachusetts hospitals, including those owned by religious groups, to provide emergency contraception to rape victims, but it was overridden by the state legislature….

First of all, I question the premise that there’s been a “resurgence” of these issues “in voters’ minds” — in Republican voters’ minds, maybe, but if so, that’s only because the Republican attack machine forced these issues onto the agenda by making lots of noise about them (contraception) or stirring up trouble where it didn’t exist (Planned Parenthood).

And what a genius thing to do: The Republicans had Romney, who a mere month ago was viewed by a significant majority of Republicans as an acceptable nominee and who at the same time was showing up in polls of the overall population as the most electable running against Obama, and — instead of continuing to stress arguments that played to his strengths — decided to gin up culture-war controversies in a way that inspires GOP base voters to reject Romney and vote for much more beatable candidates, like Santorum.

Republican message-mongers did this because they can’t walk away from anything that seems like a promising wedge issue — even if, as in this case, the short-term Democrat-bashing gain comes with a potential serious loss at the ballot box for their party in November.

I actually think, in the short term, the righties are going to win the contraception war — they’ve now made so much noise about this that low-information voters probably think Obama did something wrong, even though they can’t exactly tell you what it is. He’ll have to compromise or accept some GOP restraint. But meanwhile the right has stirred up the culture warriors just when they’re ready to rally around an extremely weak presidential candidate. Good one, GOP.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

I don’t know about the monetary value of the National Mortgage Settlement, but the new consumer protections totally kick ass. When Obama’s legacy is discussed, I suspect he’ll be known as the “Consumer Protection President.” If he serves out his two terms, we’ll see a revolution in how banks, payday loaners, check-cashing joints, credit card companies, and others interact with the public. This is by far the most unambiguously progressive element of his presidency.

This week’s Scrapple News explores the 557th Republican debates and caucuses; the sexual proclivities of Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu “Me love you long time!” Bykofsky; and the Catholic Church’s REAL reason for opposing birth control…

Who chooses a Mormon to defend the rights and honor of the Holy Catholic Church?

I was pleased to see my former state senator and colleague get some praise in The Village Voice.

Vi Simpson: The Woman Who Punked The Radical Republicans in the Indiana State Senate and Their Creationist Bill

After interviewing Vi Simpson, the Indiana State Senate Minority Leader, I’m wondering why the hell I haven’t already seen this woman on national television or in the mainstream press.

I hope you see what I mean after you hear what she had to say about the way she crippled the latest Creationism-in-the-schools bill with a brilliant stratagem: by convincing the radical Republicans in the Indiana State Senate that if they want to teach Christianity in the schools, they’re also going to have to teach Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Scientology.

Even though the Republicans managed to shrink her district down to little more than the city of Bloomington last year, she still has the edge on them in creative amending (and much more).

More like Vi in statehouses everywhere, please!

Remember when I said it wasn’t humanitarian to create a power vacuum filled with armed militias from rivaling tribes that would fight each other for power in an oil-rich state? Well, that’s what we did in Libya. I’ll admit that it went better than I feared. But that’s in the past now. The future looks every bit as grim as I feared. Are they better off without Gaddafi? Some people are. Overall, though, the situation is worse. Are more people alive because we intervened? That’s highly doubtful, and grows more doubtful everyday.

This is also a lesson for Syria. The situations are not exactly analogous, but they are similar enough for Libya to serve as a warning. As we should have learned from Iraq, countries that are ruled by dictators are generally unstable by nature. The dictator isn’t so much the cause of repression as the symptom of a society that won’t live together in peace by choice. Remove the repression and people will act out against their neighbors.

This isn’t an argument that Arabs are incapable of living in pluralistic democracies. It’s more an observation about the difficulties created by the colonial powers when they created the modern Arab nation-states without due consideration for ethnic and religious and tribal rivalries. Or, perhaps, the states were designed to be unstable. Regardless, that’s all in the past now. The world has to deal with the counties that we have.

I think the Assad regime needs to step down from power in Syria, just as I thought the Gaddafi regime needed to leave power in Libya. And the international community needs to stand ready to lend assistance to the people of Syria, including arbitration and peacemaking to prevent the outbreak of a very lethal civil war. But the United States should not be involved militarily and should not have a lead role. Neighboring Arab states should take the lead role. If a western power is asked to put boots on the ground, it should be France since Syria is their creation.

The international community has humanitarian responsibilities, not just the United States. And regime change may be necessary in Syria at this time, but no one should assume that regime change will magically make things better. For the short and medium term, it will almost certainly make things worse, just as it did in Iraq and Libya.

Update [2012-2-11 6:40 EST by Oui]
Of course after all denials yesterday, the Free Syrian Army now claims the twin deadly terror attacks in the city of Aleppo. The United States has confirmed it is in collusion for the purposeful overthrow of Assad with AQAU (Al-Qaeda of Arab Uprising). Nice going guys, perhaps this will be a gamechanger for Western policy of military intervention in Syria. I should have changed the title of my diary “Obama In Bed with Israel and Neocons” to Obama in bed with Saudi funded extreme Islamists of the Salafist jihadists. What an embarrassment to Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and the Obama administration. When will they accept, the Saudi regime is the most dangerous for U.S. security? Speaking of regime change …

U.S. intelligence reports indicate that the bombings came on the orders of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian
who assumed leadership of al-Qaeda after the last year’s death of Osama bin Laden.

A must read – Al-Qaeda/FSA Claim Twin Bombings in Aleppo, Syria [Update]

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The call for regime change is in the foreign policy line of Bill Clinton and George Bush. The outcome for Syria is more uncertain than the call for removal of Saddam Hussein by the Clinton administration in 1996. In Iraq the US and Britain were “victorious” through the massacre of civilians in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, sectarian violence costing more than 100,000 lives. Mostly innocent victims: children, women, elderly and family members of the wrong sect. Already Israel is backtracking as the expected easy victory in Syria might leave the country in turmoil, under leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, unchecked militias, foreign fighters (al-Qaeda) and plenty of weapons, munitions and WMDs (chemical warfare). Has the West gone insane because of Persian Gulf oil resources? How ‘Shock and Awe’ Ended.

Is Assad “isolated”?

(Asian Times) – As much as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may wish it, and the White House stresses “Assad must halt his campaign of killing and crimes against his own people now” and “must step aside” – no. The “international community” proponents of regime change in Syria are the NATOGCC (North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Gulf Cooperation Council) – or, to be really specific, Washington, London and Paris and the oil-drenched sheikh puppets of the Persian Gulf, most of all the House of Saud and Qatar.

Turkey is playing a very ambivalent game; it hosts a NATO command and control center in Hatay province, near the Syrian border, and at the same time offers exile to Assad. Even Israel is at a loss; they prefer the devil they know to an unpredictably hostile post-Assad regime led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Assad is supported by Iran; by the government in Baghdad (Iraq has refused to impose sanctions); by Lebanon (the same); and most of all by Russia (which does not want to lose its naval base in Tartus) and trade partner China. This means Syria’s economy will not be strangled (moreover, the country is used to life under sanctions and does not have to worry about a national debt). The BRICS group is adamant; the Syria crisis has to be solved by Syrians only.

Following the Neocon playbook on Syria and Iran …

A mistaken case for Syrian regime change

(CNI) Feb. 6, 2012 – “War with Iran is already here,” wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing “the combination of covert warfare and international pressure” being applied to Iran.

Although not mentioned, the “strategic prize” of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. “Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself,” Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, “nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.”

By December, senior United States officials were explicit about their regime change agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National Security Adviser, explained that the “end of the [President Bashar al-]Assad regime would constitute Iran’s greatest setback in the region yet – a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran.”

Shortly before, a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would “relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved”.

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime “more compatible” with US interests in the region.

The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009. The report – “Which Path to Persia?”  – continues to be the generic strategic approach for US-led regime change in the region.

A rereading of it, together with the more recent “Towards a Post-Assad Syria” (which adopts the same language and perspective, but focuses on Syria, and was recently produced by two US neo-conservative think-tanks) illustrates how developments in Syria have been shaped according to the step-by-step approach detailed in the “Paths to Persia” report with the same key objective: regime change.

The authors of these reports include, among others, John Hannah and Martin Indyk, both former senior neo-conservative officials from the George W Bush/Dick Cheney administration, and both advocates for regime change in Syria. Not for the first time are we seeing a close alliance between US/British neo-cons with Islamists (including, reports show, some with links to al-Qaeda) working together to bring about regime change in an “enemy” state.

Arguably, the most important component in this struggle for the “strategic prize” has been the deliberate construction of a largely false narrative that pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed in their hundreds and thousands as they protest peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime, a “killing machine” led by the “monster” Assad.

In Syria, we see the majority of Western mainstream media outlets, along with the media of the US’s allies in the region, particularly al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV channels, are effectively collaborating with the “regime change” narrative and agenda with a near-complete lack of questioning or investigation of statistics and information put out by organizations and media outlets that are either funded or owned by the US/European/Gulf alliance – the very same countries instigating the regime change project in the first place.

Claims of “massacres”, “campaigns of rape targeting women and girls in predominantly Sunni towns”, “torture” and even “child-rape” are reported by the international press based largely on two sources – the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCCs) – with minimal additional checking or verification.

Brookings’ “Which Path to Persia?”

(LandDestroyer) Feb. 13, 2011 – While the corporate owned media has the plebeians arguing over whether or not Iran should have nuclear weapons or if it intends to commit genocide against the Jews (the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel actually resides in Iran), the debate is already over, and the war has already quietly begun. Before it began, however, someone meticulously meted out the details of how it would unfold. That “someone” is the mega-corporate backed Brookings Institute.

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The Brookings Institute itself is a creation of the notorious globalist funding arms including the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, all who recently had been involved in the fake “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy. Today, Brookings boasts a full complement of support and funding from America’s biggest corporations. Upon the Brookings Institute’s board of trustees one will find a collection of corporate leaders from Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, the insurance industry, Pepsi (CFR), Alcoa (CFR), and various CFR affiliated consulting firms like McKinsey & Company.

• Remember? U.S. Loses Saudi Help for Launch of Iraq War
• Read my last diary – Foreign Troops and al-Qaeda Infiltrating Into Syria

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

It looks like the banks have finally gotten a deal that will cost them $25 billion and let them off the hook for the robo-signing scandal. I’m no expert on these things but it doesn’t seem to be that important. The money the banks are coughing up isn’t enough to fix the housing slump. The immunity they received is incredibly narrow. I advise you to ignore people who are freaking out on either side of the argument. We’re still going to be in the same place we were. The housing market is messed up, with too many mortgages under water. The banks are still facing an aggressive investigation of their practices during the housing bubble. The deal may help on the margins. It’s unlikely to have many negative consequences. And most of the people who should be shamed, pauperized, or imprisoned will still get off scot-free.

In The Political Paradox of US conservatism I argued that whenever Romney looked like tying up the Republican nomination, some other more conservative candidate popped up to steal the lead. First it was Sarah Palin, then Michelle Bachmann, then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain and then Newt Gingrich who led the polls. And then Rick Santorum appeared from almost nowhere to win the first caucus in Iowa.  Romney recovered to win New Hampshire and then was trounced by Newt Gingrich in South Carolina. Romney then won Florida and Nevada only to be trounced by Santorum in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.

For all his money, organisation, endorsements and establishment support, the Republican base just can’t get to like Romney. Next up is Michigan, which is unlikely to vote Romney (even though his father was a popular Governor there).  The reason? Romney’s New Yourk Times’ Op ed piece “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” is unlikely to play well there even amongst conservative GOP voters. Clint Eastwood’s “Half time in America ” ad during the Superbowl final couldn’t have come at a worse time for Romney. Eastwood, a lifetime Republican voter, didn’t explicitly endorse Obama.  But he sure endorsed Obama’s message that the Auto bail-out worked.

So as Romney, Gingrich and Santorum continue to savage one other with attack ads containing accusations so negative that even Democrats haven’t dared to throw at their Republican opponents there has been one clear winner to date: Barack Obama.
Ever since the GOP primaries got going in earnest, Obama’s rating has been moving upwards from a near 50:50 favourable/unfavourable rating last Autumn/Fall:

Even his job approval numbers are nearly back to 50:50

And even on the economy, Obama’s Achilles heel to date, Obama’s numbers are improving as good employment numbers over the past few months are finally putting a dent in the unemployment rate:

Obama has always out-polled Gingrich by a steady 10%, but now his generally slender lead over Romney has widened to over 5%. There’s a long way to go until November, but to date Obama has been the resounding winner of the GOP primary process. It would have been difficult for Democrats to have dreamed up a more enticing scenario than having almost equally strong/weak Republican contenders tear strips off one another (and spending huge amounts of cash) all the way to the Republican convention in August. Indeed, if the economy continues to improve, Obama could soon become unbeatable and the prospect of a Democratic victory in the Congressional elections also becomes a distinct possibility.