Category: GOP

“New Dominion” | Under the Big Tent.

“The Old Dominion is now the New Dominion, particularly in the suburban and exurban counties north of the Rappahannock River. Barack Obama could not have carried Virginia as it once was. But he is running even with John McCain in a paradoxical state that was home to the Confederacy’s capital but also gave the nation its first elected African American governor, Doug Wilder, in 1989.” E.J. Dionne takes a look at Obama’s prospects in Virginia. I must say, assuming I’m still here and/or around DC by November, it’ll be nice to vote in an honest-to-goodness swing state for once in my life.

Also, a programming note: I managed to secure a “new media” press pass for the DNC’s “Big Tent” in Denver. (Whether it was due to GitM’s longevity, some Dem name-dropping by yours truly, or they just let everyone who signed up through the gates, I know not.) In any case, I bought a (pricey) flight yesterday and will be on the ground and reporting in from the Mile High City during the Democratic National Convention next month. Should be grand. (And if you’ll be there too, drop me a line.)

The Calm Before the Storm.

“After a set of primaries that felt like they began about the time Sputnik went up, it is strange to be transported to the static battlefield of Obama versus John McCain. The fundamentals are locked in place — and seem unlikely to be dislodged by anything less than a shift in the tectonic plates.” Walter Shapiro briefly surveys the state of the race (as does the inimitable Akbar Jenkins.)

I know it’s been quiet on the electoral front around here of late — That’s partly because my thoughts have been on the 20’s of late and partly because I just can’t muster any outrage about the New Yorker cover, or much else that’s happened on the trail the past week or two. But I’m sure that’ll change in due course.

Obama and McCain’s Sinister Inclinations.

“In the race for the White House, lefties seem to have the upper hand. No matter who wins in November, six of the 12 chief executives since the end of World War II will have been left-handed: Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton and either Obama or McCain. That’s a disproportionate number, considering that only one in 10 people in the general population is left-handed.” In the WP, authors Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt explain why all your Oval Offices are belong to us, the lefties. We also swelled the ranks of both my undergraduate and graduate cohorts, whatever that’s worth.

Good Riddance, Jesse.

Our nation’s been waiting with bated breath for years. But, at long last — Happy B-day, America! — Sen. Jesse Helms has shuffled off this mortal coil. (1921-2008) “Ed Feulner, president of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, hailed Helms as ‘one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century.’ ‘Along with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, he helped establish the conservative movement and became a powerful voice for free markets and free people,’ Feulner wrote.“

Um, yeah. As with Strom’s passing in 2003, it’s worth rereading Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon obit right about now. “I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum. Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man…Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.“

Same goes for Helms and the Senate. If, God forbid, the media roll over as they did at Helms’ retirement and try to “Russert-ize” Helms now that the racist, homophobic bastard is finally gone, remember this: He was the worst kind of racebaiting scum and the worst kind of hypocrite. He camouflaged his divisive hatred by slathering it in fake, aw-shucks populism. And he spent his career serving the dictates of the wealthiest and screwing over the good people of North Carolina, white and black. Our nation is a brighter place with his passing. [Helms photo via here.]

Temper, Temper.

“‘McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerilla group here at this end of the table and I don’t know what attracted my attention,’ Cochran said. ‘But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don’t know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him.”

Um…ok. Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), who earlier said the idea of McCain as president “sends a cold chill down my spine,” recalls McCain losing his mind on a diplomatic tour to Nicaragua. And before anyone thinks this makes him a tough guy, “easily baited” is a terrible trait in a negotiator…or a president. Update: McCain denies it.

The Manchurian Handbook.

“The military trainers who came to Guantanamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of ‘coercive management techniques’ for possible use on prisoners, including ‘sleep deprivation,’ ‘prolonged constraint,’ and ‘exposure.’ What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners…The only change made in the chart presented at Guantanamo was to drop its original title: ‘Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.‘”

How low have we sunk under Dubya? Apparently, under this administration, we’ve actually been plagiarizing Maoist torture techniques for use in the Gitmo gulag. “‘What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,’ Levin said. ‘People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.’”

And don’t forget the Homosexual Nineties.

“Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday…” The wacko-right American Family Association has a little trouble with their auto-replace software. (It’s been happening for awhile.)

Stating — and Rejecting — the Obvious.

“‘As he’s said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain’s service, and of course he rejects yesterday’s statement by General Clark,’ Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.” So…I guess Wes Clark won’t be the veep. For some ill-defined reason, the Obama campaign sees fit to throw the general under the bus because Clark, a guy I run hot and cold on, simply stated the obvious. Getting shot down over Vietnam, however ostensibly character-building, in no way constitutes executive experience: “I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility…I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

Said Obama in Independence today: “McCain had ‘endured physical torment in service to our country’ and ‘no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides.’” Fair enough, but that wasn’t at all what Clark was doing. McCain’s basically getting away with the same sort of resume inflation as Sen. Clinton did in the primaries, and Clark — a five-star general who knows what he’s talking about — called him on it.

One could argue that there’s a method to this move by the Obama campaign, but even that theory suggests a certain ugly political opportunism at work. (One could also argue karma had some part to play in all this, since Clark earlier jumped all over Samantha Powers’ gaffe during the primaries.) Nonetheless, between this, the Senator’s switchback on telecom immunity (which I discussed in the comments here), and various other recent triangulations, the Obama campaign has had a pretty lousy week. I don’t know if it’s the recent influx of “veteran” hands, an attempt to beat back the National Journal liberal label, or just an early-summer malaise, but that sickly-sweet smell of Old-School Dem Politics is lingering in the air. Get it together, y’all. I know the polls look good, but this defensive-minded playing-not-to-lose is assuredly not the way to go.

Update: “I’ve said this for some weeks now, they’ve been repeated many times.” Clark sticks to his guns, and Webb has his back. Meanwhile, Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald makes the case against Obama’s last two weeks: “There is no question, at least to me, that having Obama beat McCain is vitally important…[but] his election is less likely, not more likely, the more homage he pays to these these tired, status-quo-perpetuating Beltway pieties.“

Update II: Obama clarifies on Clark: “I don’t think that General Clark you know had the same intent as the swift boat ads that we saw four years ago, I reject that analogy…I think in at least one publication was reported that my comments yesterday about Senator McCain were in a response to General Clark. I think my staff will confirm that that was in a draft of that speech that I had written two months ago.”

Update III: Fred Kaplan has a theory about Clark v. McCain: Grunts are from Mars, Flyboys are from Venus.

…so why not Iran?

“The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. ‘The oversight process has not kept pace — it’s been coöpted’ by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. ‘The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.‘”

In related news, The New Yorker‘s venerable Sy Hersh reports that the Dubya administration has been stepping up covert activities in Iran…and Congress is once again going along for the ride. “In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership…were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.“

Drillbit McCain.

So, as you likely heard, John McCain recently took time off from pretending to be Mr. Environment to join Dubya in calling for the resumption of offshore drilling (thus prompting his possible No. 2, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, to also rethink the issue.) As many writers have pointed out, this just so happens to be a switch from what he said three weeks earlier, in keeping with McCain’s usual m.o.

Well, the environmental consequences notwithstanding, TIME’s Bryan Walsh asks the pertinent question: “Will more drilling mean cheaper gas?” Nope. “Even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer Continental Shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027.” In other words, this is the gas tax holiday all over again. (TIME link via Dangerous Meta.)