Cracking the Disinformation Apparatus

One of the frustrating dimensions of the health care debate was the perception that opposition to health reform was mostly a product of media manipulation. Bill Clinton had campaigned on health reform in 1992 but was stymied as the bill moved through the legislative process because a wave of attack ads made the legislation impossible. By the time the insurance companies got done with their campaign, Harry and Louise were better known than Bill and Hillary

Health care reform was an even bigger part of Obama's 2008 campaign, but so was the effort of the conservative media apparatus to manipulate popular opinion against health care reform. The villification of Obama as a socialist, fascist, etc., the "death panels" scare, the disinformation about the relationship between reform legislation and the deficit made the legislation so unpopular that a majority of the population wanted to see health reform repealed even before the legislation was fully implemented.

But the 2010 election is over and the conservative disinformation apparatus is no longer united. As a result, opposition to health care reform is beginning to diminish. According to an AP/GfK poll, about 41% of the population supports health care reform while 40% oppose. Of that 40%, a certain percentage would have opposed the Obama legislation because they don't think it went far enough. I wish the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats had gotten the public option myself.

Moreover, support for repealing the legislation has dropped significantly.

As for repeal, only about one in four say they want to do away with the law completely. Among Republicans support for repeal has dropped sharply, from 61 percent after the elections to 49 percent now.

The movement to repeal health reform was a kind of speculative media bubble. Once the forces that created the bubble were no longer synchronized, support for repeal pretty much dissolved.

What were the forces that created the anti-reform bubble? There were several. In my opinion, the root of the anti-reform bubble was the wave of white conservative revulsion over electing a black Democrat for president. Conservatives might have revolted over any Democrat, but the fact that Obama is black and so much of conservatism is invested in feeding racial animosities made the election of Obama particularly revolting to the right.

Republican politicians, lobbying groups, and the conservative media apparatus fed the beast of Obama villification in various ways. Republican consultants and lobbying groups bankrolled the Tea Party movement, Obama was regularly villified as a socialist, fascist, and Nazi in the conservative media, Republican politicians sought to undercut any attempt by Obama to act presidential (i.e., the controversy over Obama's address to school children).

And it worked.

Republicans scored a big win in the 2010 mid-term elections.

But once the Republicans got control of the House, the forces that created the anti-health bubble began to dissolve. The Republican leadership began to compromise with the Democrats on tax cuts for the wealthy and moderate Republicans pealed off to support the repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell and funding for 9-11 first responders. Once Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and other Republicans split off somewhat from Jim DeMint and the Tea Party activists, the conservative media began to split as well. Instead of continuing the non-stop villification of Obama and the Democrats, Fox and other right-wing sources have had to slow down and parse out the compromises.

And that took the wind out of the conservative apparatus.

Pope Robbie I--Robert George Takes Charge of American Catholicism

The New York Times has an interesting article on the influence of Princeton scholar Robert George on American Catholicism. The core of Robert --or "Robbie" as he's affectionately known among conservative circles--George's position is that Catholics should abolish any kind of social justice agenda and focus entirely on sexual issues like abortion, gay marriage, and embryo research.

Last spring, George was invited to address an audience that included many bishops at a conference in Washington. He told them with typical bluntness that they should stop talking so much about the many policy issues they have taken up in the name of social justice. They should concentrate their authority on “the moral social” issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, where, he argued, the natural law and Gospel principles were clear.

Actually, "Robbie" is right about the clarity of the "Gospel" on the issues of abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage. In fact, the Gospels say absolutely nothing about any of these issues. There can be no clearer statement about the lack of significance of these issues for Jesus than that. Actually, Jesus might have had suspicions of same-sex marriage, but such suspicions would have been derived from his scepticism about marriage and family in general rather than his views on homosexuality. Jesus most clearly formulates his scepticism about marriage in Luke 14:26 where he states that "If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Obviously, this passage is not the "politically correct" Jesus of the Good Samaritan story, but it clearly expresses the persistent suspicion Jesus had about the likelihood of family bonds competing with the attachment of potential disciples to Him. In the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life, Jesus himself did not marry or form heterosexual attachments with any of his female followers. Jesus also chose other males as his chief confidantes and apostles for his message. And according to Catholic orthodoxy, it is very important that he did so.

Jesus doesn't address homosexuality anywhere in the Gospels. Perhaps Jesus didn't view himself as competing against homosexuality in the same way that he viewed himself as competing against heterosexual marriage. But Jesus does enunciate principles that apply to many if not most gay people. In the opening passage of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus gives a set of blessings that have become known as "The Beatitudes." By defining the first of those blessings as "blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," Jesus gives the first (and foremost) of his blessings to people like suicidal gay teens, the thousands of gay people who suffered and died at the height of the aids epidemic and the millions of gay people who feel themselves excluded the mainstream of American society because they are not allowed to get married like "normal" people. Much as Jesus valued tax collectors, lepers, "fallen women," and the outcasts of ancient Israel, he would value contemporary outcasts from social respectability like gay people, drug addicts, alcoholics, and the homeless. According to the Beatitudes, "theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

The NY Times article gives the impression that Robert George has gained influence among the Catholic bishops because of his emphasis on the justification for his social conservatism in the "natural law" ideas of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas rather than divine revelation. For better or worse (worse in my view), that's made opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights into the guiding principles of American Catholicism and Robert George into the real Pope for American Catholics.

All hail Pope Robbie I.

Wishing the U. S. Was More Normal

Matthew Yglesias writes from Germany that "one of the oddest things about being in Germany during an election campaign is that I’m pretty sure I have right-of-center views relative to German politics."

But we're the weird ones, not the Germans.

Matthew Yglesias is a liberal blogger who counts as part of the left-wing of the Democratic Party in the U. S. As a blogger for ThinkProgress and journalist for several left-wing news outlets, Yglesias is as wired into the left-wing media establishment as he can be. But Yglesias would still be a conservative in Germany. Probably in France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and the Scandanavian countries as well.

That means the U. S. has a conservative left, a very conservative middle, and an ultra-conservative right.

Really, we could stand to be more like the rest of the advanced industrial world.

Pat Buchanan and the Facts of Conservative Life

Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of Hitler's invasion of Poland and Hitler apologist Pat Buchanan is in full "Sympathy to Our Pal Adolf" mode. According to TPM:

According to Buchanan, Hitler's invasion of Poland -- which led to Britain's declaration of war on Germany, and the start of World War II -- was motivated merely by Germany's desire to regain the city of Danzig, which had been given to Poland in the Versailles Treaty. Had Poland simply negotiated with Hitler, war could have been averted. In fact, Hitler wasn't bent on world, or even European, domination. He would have been happy with just Danzig, Austria, and the Sudetenland, you see. Hitler "wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps." It was only thanks to the aggression of Britain, Russia, and the U.S. that the conflict was expanded. So, goes the implication, any deaths that occurred after 1940 -- including the 6 million that comprised the Holocaust -- are on the Allies' heads.

But Buchanan is just being an honest conservative here. Every conservative defense of tyranny, domination, cruelty, or oppression begins with the premise that the stronger party is provoked into aggression by their targets. That's true of wife-beating husbands and rapists. It was also the case with conservative justifications of slaveholders and segregationist lynch mobs. The Bush administration used the fact of Iraqi resistance as a justification for the destruction of Iraqi cities like Fallujah. The only thing that Pat Buchanan is doing here is extending a core conservative view to a previously taboo subject in the form of Adolf Hitler.

Otherwise, defending the cruelty of the stronger party is just a fact of conservative life.

Reports of a Sarah Palin Divorce

There are reports out this afternoon that Sarah Palin and her husband are getting divorced.

AlaskaReport has learned this morning that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage have confirmed the news. A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska.

The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other at last Sunday's resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago.

If this is the case, it's most unfortunate. The Palin's still have four kids living at home and the baby Trigg is disabled. So, a divorce would hardly be good for the family.

A divorce following so closely on her resignation as governor would give Palin a Lindsey-Lohan kind of train wreck aura as well.

My own opinion is that there's no particular need for Sarah Palin to join John Ensign and Mark Sanford in the roster of Republican train wrecks. And I certainly wouldn't want to see anything happen to derail Palin's upcoming career as a gaffe-a-minute conservative icon. So I hope the rumors aren't really true.

But there's certainly a lot of smoke around Palin's personal life.

Update: Sarah Palin's spokesperson came out with a denial.

Yet again, some so-called journalists have decided to make up a story. There is no truth to the recent "story" (and story is the correct term for this type of fiction) that the Palins are divorcing. The Palins remain married, committed to each other and their family, and have not purchased land in Montana (last week it was reported to be Long Island). Less than one week ago, Governor Palin asked the media to "quit making things up." We appreciate that the more professional journalists decided to question this story before repeating it.

The Official Response from Sarah Palin is a no ambiguity, Shermanesque denial that the media is always seeking: "Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I'm not blind!"-- SARAH PALIN

Of course, that's also the kind of denial that Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro made when they were asked about steroids.

I give the Palins marriage another year.

MEMO TO WASHINGTON POST: YOU'RE FIRED!

A few days ago, I posted on Open Salon and RSI about boycotting the Washington Post in the wake of the Dan Froomkin firing.

Today, I fired them!

It was easy. I unsubcribed to their "Today's Headlines And Columnists Feedback" and wrote this comment:

This is to inform you that I’m no longer subscribing to the Washington Post’s
"Today’s Headlines and Columnists” service. As has been frequently observed, the Washington Post is becoming more and more of a right-wing mouthpiece while still enjoying the economic benefits of its reputation as a major “liberal” newspaper. However, with the Dan Froomkin firing, I am no longer willing to patronize the Post. So I am severing what little connection I have.

One suggestion though--you might think about having your editorials posted on the Townhall website along with the op-eds of Charles Krauthammer.

Then, I e-mailed my comment to editor Fred Hiatt. Obviously, I don't have much weight with Fred Hiatt, but it's important to add my little bit to the sum of disgust with the Washington Post's general rightward drift and their recent firing of Dan Froomkin.

Progressives are a well-educated, relatively high-income group that has considerable economic weight. Boycotting the Washington Post is an appropriate occasion for throwing that weight around a little.

Republican Extinction

While agreeing with most progressives about the mainstream media's sympathy toward conservative views, there are times when conservatives really do get sandbagged. The Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin was a good example. Producers must have known in advance that the somber lighting of the set and the slow, uber serious tone of Couric's questions would all work against Palin's perky strengths and accentuate her lack of policy knowledge. Taping the show must have felt like moving in for the kill.

There's another little dig on Time's Mike Murphy article on the problems of the Republican Party. Time editors accentuate Murphy's theme of the "GOP Ice Age" by changing the Republican symbol of the elephant into a woolly mammoth, an ice age behemoth . . . .

Which just happens to be extinct.

Murphy, a top Republican consultant, puts a familiar argument into an attractive package. He believes that the power of demographics means that the Republicans need to change. He focuses on the Hispanic and youth vote. The Hispanic vote has increased from 2% of the electorate in 1980 to 9% in 2008, went to Obama by 36%, and delivered Indiana to the Democrats. Given that the most popular name for male babies in Texas is "Jose," the Republicans will have to change their stance on immigration if they want to become even remotely competitive for the Hispanic vote.

Likewise, Murphy argues that the Republicans need to relax their opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights if they want to start being competitive for the 18-29 vote.

Murphy knows that all of this is bitter medicine. Republican Senators and House members come from safe districts that really want the GOP to stick with Reagan. He also ould have mentioned that GOP voters are becoming even more rigid in their conservatism and thus are unlikely to change their approach.

Ultimately, the Republicans probably are on the road to extinction and they would need more bitter medicine still if they want to change course.

Top of the GOP list should be shutting down Fox News.

The function of Fox News is to amplify conservative views on abortion rights, gay rights, race, immigration, health care, and Obama. Conservative views on all of these topics range from unpopular to offensive with the rest of the country. With the television megaphone in the hands of right-wing provocateurs like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, Fox provides decisive affirmation for both sides of all these debates in a way that disadvantages conservatism.

For conservatives 33% of the electorate, Fox affirms all of their views as being the right views and portrays them positively as an embattled minority. Largely because of Fox (and talk radio), conservative constituencies are always inflamed about immigration, abortion, gay rights, and religion. As a result, the Republican Party has none of the wiggle room on social issues that consultants like Mike Murphy would like to see.

Even worse, Fox also manifests conservative hostility toward African-Americans, hispanics, gay people, and secular culture. That hostility gets further amplified through the emerging left-wing media of the Daily Show, Colbert Report, Huffington Post, and Media Matters. To the Republican Party, Ann Coulter's homophobic comments about John Edwards are an embarrassment best forgotten. However, the rise of the left-wing media means that the provocations of Coulter are never forgotten. Material from Coulter, O'Reilly, Beck, and the other Fox worthies become left-wing news, fodder for comic put-downs of conservatives, and affirmations of progressive views concerning the right. The ultimate result is to lock in the majority view of conservatives as old white people who are bigots, homophobes, and religious zealots who are generally out of touch with modern America.

For Republicans, "The Fox Effect" is to shrink the GOP down to a very committed 33% minority that is poorly thought of by the large majority of their fellow Americans.

And it's not just Hispanics and young people who see conservatism this way either. So are white moderates and independents. Murphy doesn't mention this because he probably sees the Republicans as no longer having a chance with these constituencies, but the "liberalization" of the New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. suburbs has destroyed the Republican Party in the Northeast and given the Democrats an advantage in Virginia.

If the GOP wants to once again become competitive with the white moderates, independents, and weak Democrats who dominate the suburban vote, the best thing they can do is close down Fox.

Of course, that's not going to happen. One way or another, the Republicans probably will become extinct.

The Discovery of the Day

Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan discovers that Barack Obama is not Ronald Reagan. Pat must have had an industrial strength case of the vapors when he finally figured that out.

Rush Provides Another Reason to "Buy GM"

After years of giving the American public more reasons to vote Democratic, Rush Limbaugh is now beginning a new campaign to get Americans to buy GM cars.

The people saying they don't want to buy anything at General Motors are not mad at General Motors. They don't want to patronize Obama. They don't want to do anything to make Obama's policies work! This is an untold story, by the way. Of course, the government-controlled media is not gonna report anything like this but there are a lot of people who are not going to buy from Chrysler or General Motors as long as it is perceived Barack Obama is running it, because people do not want his policy to work here because this is antithetical to the American economic way of life. The government does not own car companies; the government does not design cars, not in a country that works. So people aren't going to buy products from companies that Obama runs.

That's right. The new slogan for General Motors should be "Screw Rush--Buy GM."

Newt Gingrich: a Powerful Force for Paganism

Today, at a speech in Virginia, Newtie complained about paganism.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee urged Christians to get involved in politics to preserve the presence of religion in American life.

"I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history," Gingrich said. "We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. in history from Tulane, but is as terrible a historian as he is skilled at politics. Paganism has lots of divine personalities like Zeus, Hera, and Apollo from the religion of classic Greece and the religious practice of paganism involves sacrificing animals (and the occasional human) to those divinities. Paganism also associates divinity with natural phenomena like thunder and specific places like groves and river. And sacrifices animals to them as well. If I remember right, Achilles was almost killed by a river god in the Iliad. But what anchored paganism was ancestor worship where the primary religious practice was within families and revolved around songs, prayers, and other forms of worshipping deceased male heads of household. Ancestor worship involves constant animal sacrifice.

In other words, paganism is a bloody mess. Even the few people I know who would claim themselves as pagans (including one of my wife's cousins) are too genteel to practice any form of animal sacrifice.

Likewise, most people who think of themselves as pagans are thumbing their noses at their families. As a result, the last thing they would undertake is ancestor worship.

So, rest easy Newt.

You're not surrounded by pagans.

But I can see where Newt Gingrich and other paragons of the right could see themselves as surrounded by people who reject the agenda of religious conservatism. At least two thirds of American rejects Protestant fundamentalism, Catholic traditionalism, conventional Mormonism, and Orthodox Judaism. About 15% of the American population is now either atheistic, agnostic, or vaguely spiritual as well. Perhaps what Gingrich means by "paganism" is the rejection of religious conservatism and he's certainly right that most Americans reject religious conservatism. Religious conservatism isn't even all that popular in Bible Belt areas like Eastern Kentucky.

But why is that the case?

Here I think Newt Gingrich should look in the mirror. Now that Newt is one of the premier voices for the conservative effort to claim the U. S. as a Christian nation, he's also become a powerful force for the rejection of religious conservatism. Newt's Gingrich is legendary for his relentless self-centereded, sanctimoniousness, hypocrysy, and inhumanity toward his fellow human beings. How could he not be. Gingrich is a prominent public figure who is extremely aggressive about all his bad character traits. Everything that anybody needs to know about Newt Gingrich can be summed up by the fact that he informed his first wife that he was divorcing her while she was in the hospital for cancer treatment.

As a spokesperson for the Republican Party, Gingrich drives people away from the Republican Party. Now that Gingrich is a spokesperson for religious conservatism, he's driving people away from religious conservatism. As some evangelicals like Michael Spencer are beginning to realise, the association of Protestant evangelicism and Christianity with political conservatism and the religious right is undermining Christianity. Now that moderates and liberals are starting to identify Christianity with people like Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and the guy who murdered George Tiller, they're also starting to reject Christianity.

If Newt Gingrich lives to be 100, we might be going back to ancestor worship and animal sacrifice after all.

Townhall's Darling Ann Coulter

Townhall has a profile of Ann Coulter by the heroine-worshipping Lisa dePasquale. I'm not sure whether dePasquale's essay is "fawning," "gushing," or paid for by Ann Coulter, but only aides to the pope are so blandly worshipful in real life.

Several months ago, Ann and I were in the same city for two weeks and finally connected the day before I left. We spent the evening drinking chardonnay, eating stale potato chips while talking about boys, the election and “CPAC gossip,” as she put it. At one point she said, “What time do you think it is?” I guessed it was probably 2 a.m. I was wrong. We had been blabbering and getting eaten up by mosquitoes until 5 a.m. Like millions of others, I have read Ann Coulter’s books and columns, seen her on TV, heard her on the radio, witnessed raucous speeches on college campuses and enjoyed her numerous appearances at CPAC—yet I’ll still stay up until five in the morning to hear what she’ll say next.

Interesting that they were talking about "boys." Coulter's well into her forties but doesn't have enough attachment to traditional values to have even a bad marriage to her credit. Maybe Bill O'Reilly should check her out for pedophilia.

This is a good place to note that Coulter's actually been off her game and out of the limelight for most of the last year. Guilty may have sold, but it didn't really make the same kind of waves as Coulter's previous books. She still delivers the punch lines, but they just don't have the same zing they used to have.

Who knows why? Maybe Coulter's getting stale. Maybe the audience is jaded. Maybe she's burdened by guilt over dating Penthouse heir Bob Guccione, jr. Maybe she's sad over the deaths of her parents.

But Ann Coulter's not the force she used to be.

The Obama Landscape

One of the things that's hard to figure out is the layout of the American political landscape as the Obama administration takes shape.

Here's a hint: one question is what the Obama administration is going to do when the Republicans reject compromise on the economic stimulus package.

The first weeks of the Obama administration will be probably dominated by the efforts to pass a large-scale stimulus package to counter the effects of the deepening recession.

Obama laid out the general contours of the stimulus package again today. It will be worth close to $800 billion with about 60% new spending and 40% tax cuts and the new spending will be oriented toward education, health care, alternative energy, and infrastructure spending. Thus, the new spending is going to be a vehicle through which the Obama administration seeks to enact longstanding Democratic domestic policy priorities.

Although Obama proposed middle-class tax cuts during the campaign, the prominence of tax cuts in the mix is already seen as a compromise gesture toward Republicans.

But the Republicans are going to reject the compromise. The Republicans can accept the tax cuts, but they will reject the new government spending. Republican spokespeople already have their arguments lined up. The Republicans claim that large scale government spending didn't work during the Great Depression and it won't work now. They'll also claim that Obama is promoting "hysteria" about the economy and that the current recession doesn't require such drastic remedies. Finally, the Republicans are setting themselves up to argue that Congress isn't giving the stimulus package the detailed committee consideration that it needs.

But the bottom line is that any compromise with the Obama administration on government spending will be unacceptable to conservative activists. The hard right that would rather have a depression than more large-scale government spending. As a result, Mitch McConnell will refuse compromise and do everything in his power to scuttle the stimulus package.

So, the question is what will the Obama administration do when it becomes clear that the Republicans will be recalcitrant?

Will they totally cave and abandon the spending programs in favor of the massive tax cuts that the Republicans want? That's what the Democratic Congressional leadership did on Iraq war funding. They gave Bush everything he wanted without condition.

Or will they mostly cave and go for a token program of government "investments" in a package largely devoted to tax cuts? That's what the Democrats did on warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity legislation last year and Obama himself went along with it. The Democratic leadership got very little of what they wanted while mostly giving away the store on telecom immunity. Even the Republicans were surprised.

Or will Obama and the Democratic leadership call out the Republicans for refusing to do what's necessary in the face of a rapidly deteriorating economy and fight them?

This is what it's going to get down too. Barack Obama has a strong instinct for bipartisanship and compromise. The Republicans have just as strong an instinct for rejecting compromise.

Something will have to give.

Let Coulter Be Coulter

CANCELING COULTER. It's been announced that Ann Coulter's appearance on Tuesday's Today Show to promote her new book was canceled. That's a bad idea. It was also a bad idea for Media Matters to launch a campaign against Coulter's television appearance. Keeping Coulter out of the public eye is bad political morality and bad politics. If anything, sensible people on the left should be trying to make Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh even more prominent than they are now.

Why is an embargo on Ann Coulter bad political morality?

One word: censorship.

Whether we on the left like it or not, Ann Coulter is a major figure in American society. She also makes her living primarily as a writer and promotes her books through media appearances and interviews. Coulter is best known for her television appearances, but she also gives interviews to talk radio and magazines and does speeches at universities and mega-churches. Preventing Coulter from making public appearances in venues that would otherwise welcome her is a form of censorship. As John Stuart Mill argued in On Liberty, freedom of thought involves promoting ideas as well as publishing them. By seeking to prevent Coulter from appearing on Today, Media Matters was circumscribing her ability to promote her ideas, limiting the discussion of her ideas in the public realm, and thereby censoring her.

Given that censorship is bad political morality in any kind of free society, Media Matters is morally wrong in their effort to get NBC to cancel Coulter's appearance.

WORTH HER WEIGHT IN GOLD. It's also important to emphasize that keeping Coulter off the Today show is bad politics. In many ways, Ann Coulter is the most recognizable face of movement conservatism in the United States. Where conservative celebrities like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly all live in their own version of right-wing caves, Coulter is out in the world mesmerizing audiences with her daring defiance of contemporary political morality, i.e., "political correctness." Where Limbaugh et al., gingerly venture over the line into racism, homophobia, and misogyny, Coulter goes all in by arguing that women shouldn't have the right to vote, calling John Edwards and Al Gore explicatives for being gay, and calling African-Americans everything but the n-word.

This is why the left hardly has a better friend than Ann Coulter. Coulter is the telegenic face of conservative hatred of black people, gays, women, Hispanics, Jews, and women. Not that the non-white, non-male, and non-Christian population hasn't already gotten the message, but Coulter is a constant and especially prominent reminder that the Republican Party is the party of social bigotry in the United States.

In other words, Ann Coulter is worth her weight in gold to the left. If anything, Media Matters and Huffington Post should be booking more shows for Coulter rather than keeping her from appearing on already scheduled programs.

So, let Coulter be Coulter. It's the right thing to do and it's good liberal politics.

Why Did Conservatives Abandon Gonzales? Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an interview with former Attorney General Alberto (just "Al" to George Bush) Gonzales. A lot of it is "whoa is me" self-pity on the part of Gonzales--especially this:

"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government . . . [F]or some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

Why was Al Gonzales complaining like this to the Wall Street Journal? If Gonzales had conducted the interview with Glenn Greenwald, Huffington Post, or Talking Points Memo, he would have received definite answers on these points. If he asked any of these media outlets why he "deserves this kind of response to my service," Gonzales would have heard at the very least that he was culpable for crimes against humanity for his role in approving the John Yoo torture memo and participation in the principles meetings that approved specific torture techniques. Gonzales would also have heard about how he committed felonies for his role in promoting warrantless wiretapping and the perjury in his Congressional testimony. I imagine someone would have mentioned his role in politicizing the Justice Department as well.

What would have been even more humiliating to Gonzales is the fact that the left blogosphere does not even rate him that high on the hierarchy of Bush administration "evil." Gonzales may have been White House counsel and Attorney General but he wasn't seen as a major player in the Bush administration's assault on the rule of law. Dick Cheney, David Addington, and John Yoo driving the train--not Gonzales. The left may view Gonzales as a war criminal, but it also views Gonzales strictly as a secondary player.

But it's not the left that's blackballing Gonzales--it's the conservative establishment. As tainted as the Bush administration is by failure and criminality, most Bush figures have found sinecures at conservative institutions. Bush himself is creating a conservative institution in the form of his presidential library while Rove is a Fox, Time, and Wall Street Journal commentator. Dick Cheney can pretty much write his own ticket with the American Enterprise Institute, Fox, or talk radio. He could also make a mint as a paid speaker for conservative audiences. Condoleeza Rice is going to be at the Hoover Institute. Even some of the more reviled secondary players like John Bolton and Doug Feith landed on their feet with think tank and academic gigs. Somewhat unbelievably, they're still sought out by the media as conservative spokesmen.

But Al Gonzales?

Nothing. Not even a book contract from Regnery.

The problem for Gonzales is that he got scapegoated as an incompetent by the conservative establishment. The Bush administration was teeming with cronies and incompetents, but Al Gonzales ended up as the representative figure for Bush incompetence to conservatives as well as liberals. Figures like Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice did a lot more harm than Gonzales, but Gonzales was the one that the right ended up throwing under the bus.

Sorry Al.

Off-Her-Game Ann Coulter Whacks Kwanzaa. In her Christmas column today, Ann Coulter took a few whacks at Kwanzaa--the African-American oriented winter holiday. As a talented political comedian, Coulter gets in her usual insults, demeaning characterizations, and one liners. Here's a couple:

When Karenga (Dr. Maulana Karenga, the founder of Kwanza) was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites. While taking the "best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism" -- which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment of homosexuals and forced labor -- Kawaida practitioners believe one's racial identity "determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding." There's an inclusive philosophy for you.

But Coulter is also off her game. Coulter's idea is that she can get in a few shots at white liberals and their African-American political allies by taking a comical blunderbuss to Kwanzaa. But she doesn't get there. In fact, Dr. Maulana Kerenga is not a well known or widely celebrated figure. So, ridiculing him doesn't get Coulter to bigger targets like Nancy Pelosi, Jesse Jackson, or Barack Obama. It's just another conservative rant against black people.

Coulter's sneering put-downs of Kwanzaa don't help either.

Kwanzaa itself is a nutty blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven "principles" of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life -- economics, work, personality, even litter removal. ("Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.") It takes a village to raise a police snitch.

Like improving the community is a bad thing. Kwanzaa has the same schmaltzy good intentions, niceness, and helpfulness as Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. Whacking Kwanzaa as a Marxist aberration is the equivalent of taking a two by four to the Easter Bunny.

It ain't pretty.

But Coulter's been off her game ever since John McCain nailed down the Republican nomination Offended by McCain and wrong-footed by Obama (isn't everybody?), Coulter kept the one-liners flying but hasn't been sure how to attack her targets, what her conservatism has to say about the issues of the day, or how to advance the conservative cause.

Completely irrelevant during the presidential election, Coulter still hasn't found her post-election groove.

Will Anyone Outside the Magic Circle Be Listening? The New York Times has an article on conservative radio talkers looking forward to Obama's inauguration as a sign that they can go "back on the offensive" after eight uncomfortable years of defending Bush. However, there's a good chance that nobody outside conservative circles will be listening. Conservative talker and columnist Michael Medved has concerns:

In an opinion piece for USA Today this month, the radio host Michael Medved said he cherished the notion “that the last time a young Democrat took over the White
House with gauzy visions of change, it produced a ‘Golden Age’ for right-wing talk,” referring to the presidency of Bill Clinton and the ascent of Rush Limbaugh, among others. But he expressed concern that talk shows have cultivated a “niche audience rather than the Republican mainstream.”

If conservative talk radio can't even appeal to the "Republican mainstream," they have little chance of having an impact on moderate and independent opinion and thus little chance of influencing broader political debate. Rush Limbaugh already knows how little he connects with moderates and independents.

What people don't realize is I'm doing McCain the biggest favor that could be done for him by staying out of this. If I endorsed him thoroughly, with passion, that would end the independents and moderates, 'cause they so despise me, and they so hate me.

During the heyday of the Bush administration, conservative talkers like Limbaugh and Sean Hannity coordinated their programs with the Bush administration, the Republican Party, and conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The talk shows formulated Bush administration talking points in compelling ways, promoted the latest conservative ideas coming out of the think tanks, and came up with new kinds of attacks on the Democrats and liberals that would be re-circulated by the mainstream media.

But all of that's gone now. The Bush administration will be gone next month while the Republican Party and institutions like AEI haven't figured out what they're going to stand for in the post-Bush era. Conservative talk radio exists in its own bubble. It's a large bubble, but it appears that nobody's going to be listening outside the magic bubble.