The sewer McCain leads

by shamanic

I read this, and I feel sorry for John McCain, POW, victim of torture at the hands of the Viet Cong, and I can't for the life of me understand how he ended up the top vote getter in that moral sewer of a party.

McCain in SC

by shamanic

I'm fascinated to see that McCain is now polling ahead of Huckabee in South Carolina. After the drubbing he took there in 2000, and the dirty way it was conducted, I bet a victory in the Southern Firewall state would be incomparably satisfying. I would be satisfied with that result, despite my belief that McCain is by far the strongest of the contenders on the GOP side. There's something about fairness that keeps kicking around in my head, and McCain winning SC would restore my sense that there is a measure of balance in our politics, however late it arrives.

Also, I suspect the Republicans of South Carolina are considering whether Mike Huckabee could successfully bear their standard in the fall, and that he's coming up short in their estimation. I have no doubt that he's a nice guy and he's certainly funny, but he's not well informed. Whoever the next president is, he or she needs to be the smartest, most curious kid in the class.

Rove says Obama is "often lazy"

by shamanic

Rove's take on Obama:

"He is often lazy, given to misstatements and exaggerations and, when he doesn't know the answer, too ready to try to bluff his way through."

I guess if Obama gets the nomination, we can expect words like "shiftless" to pop up in Rove's essays too.

Notice also the emphasis that Rove places on the Michigan and Florida primaries, which the Republican legislatures moved up in violation of DNC rules, so candidates can't campaign there. For instance, he says, "Mrs. Clinton is likely to win the Democratic beauty contest in Michigan on Jan. 15," but fails to mention that because of the rule violation, Barack Obama isn't even on the ballot there (link goes to a pdf of the Michigan Voter Guide). So yes, she is likely to win, and as he notes, pick up zero delegates.

Karl Rove needs Hillary Clinton to be the nominee in order to hold together what's left of the Republican Party. Watch for a lot more like this from prominent Republican partisans in coming weeks.

More Iowa poll crazy-making

by shamanic

The Corner shows a Zogby poll that puts Obama and Huck in the lead.

I can see Huck getting the GOP nomination, especially if he wins tonight. He won't win New Hampshire, but South Carolina is a real possibility for him, and Super Tuesday would put him in strong contention.

And if the race is between any of the top three Democrats and Mike Huckabee, the GOP is in for a few years of bitter infighting and massive restructuring. And frankly: it's time. I'm sympathetic to a lot of the "leave me alone" ideals of old-style Republicanism, I just don't see any of those in the current party. It makes no sense to be for low taxes, deficit spending, and a growing national debt. Republican fiscal policy has become an incoherent mishmash of ideologically driven but ultimately contrary talking points.

I don't pretend that Democrats have all the answers, but of the two parties, the Democrats are at least serious about pursuing solutions, and I believe they can be pushed toward responsibility in governing.

When the GOP gets serious, and quits targeting gays and minorities, I could end up as part of the new coalition that puts it back in power. But it has a long way to go, and a Huckabee nomination would be nothing short of the first step along that road.

Waging war against the past

by shamanic

One big difference between Dems and Republicans, as illustrated nicely by this post, is that the right seems to always be waging a war against the 1960s.

I wasn't alive in the 1960s. The issues that I'm concerned about are the issues of today. The advocacy I engage in is for the future, not to try to rewrite someone's opinion of the past.

It's no real surprise that young people have departed the GOP in droves lately. I'm 31, and I'd guess there are a lot of under-40s who can't for the life of them figure out what the hell the GOP is all about these days. The 60s? That's so... 1969.

When peace becomes a dirty word...

I've been meaning to get to this story that I picked up at Crooks and Liars a while ago. It's rather horrifying.

Students at Cocoa Beach Jr./Sr. High School are waging a war on peace.Recently, sophomore Skylar Stains decided to hold Peace Shirt Thursdays at the school. Skylar and her friend, Lauren Lorraine, started wearing peace shirts and soon recruited more friends to wear them. Now, the “Peace Shirt Coalition” as they call themselves, has close to 30 students from all grades.

Students started approaching the group members, yelling obscene things at them, said Lauren.

And then it got worse. The posters they left on their lockers were being torn down or being defaced with swastikas and ‘white power’ slogans. Then ‘I Love Bush’ and ‘I Love America, Because America Loves War’ were taped over them. But even that wasn't the end of it.

Soon, a second group started to wear Confederate flag shirts to oppose the peace group, Skylar said. She saw shirts with sayings such as “This is America, get used to it,” and “If peace is the answer; it must be a stupid question.”

“Now there are even ’support our troops’ kids who don’t like us because I guess they think you can’t say peace and support the troops at the same time,” Lauren said.

The school responded by punishing the peace kids for causing trouble and denied them the right to have a peace club even though they submitted a written proposal and had a sponsor as required. Now all they have left is a My Space page where their detractors continue to leave threatening comments.

These kids weren't trying to make any kind of political statement other than supporting the concept of peace so what would cause such a violent reaction to their little club? I hear David Gregory blames blogs for creating such a polarizing public environment, but I doubt the student body of this little school is spending its waking hours poring over either Kos or Power Line. No, there's a simpler explanation.

The GOP spent years accruing power by planting hate in their base via their wedge politics. This sort of ugliness is simply the fruit of that poison tree.

Update: From racrecir in comments, more kids who hate peace because they've heard it has 'a liberal bias.' How sad.

Of course Ann Coulter is a hypocrite

by shamanic

You know, I find Rick Jacobs' outrage that Ann Coulter would be in a West Hollywood restaurant with a coterie of gay men attending to her slightly odd. Did he not realize she's a total hypocrite? She's a famous, outrageous woman who spends her time in the gay capitols of America - DC, New York, South Florida, and California. How could she possibly hate gays?

She fancies herself a comedy writer. I've seen at least a few interviews with her where she evaluates the relative merits of this or that with the simple "is it funny" test, and as a writer in a different genre who's also into making audiences laugh, I know the test well.

She says whatever she says to sell books and stay on the TV circuit. She believes none of it. For all I know she's a Democrat who gives money under a fake name to Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank. It wouldn't surprise me, honestly. She says the things that all those rubes in the heartland love to hear, and I'm sure she mocks them relentlessly in private. They're not her audience, they're her marks.

Hastert resigning?

by shamanic

There are reports this morning that former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has notified friends and colleagues of his intent to resign later this year. No reasons are given in the stories, but CNN quotes a GOP aide as saying that Hastert is just "done with being a member of Congress."