www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/03/index.html#009646
laugh-out-loud hilarious campaign manifesto released back during his House leadership race, in which the Ohio rep. included epigraphs from Winston Churchill and Walt Disney and implored his fellow Republicans to reclaim their souls through a renewed commitment to spewing vacuous platitudes.
memo (PDF) was Boehner's enthusiastic call for a big caucus-wide powwow to figure out what Republicans stand for and what their core principles are. Given the number of endless (and endlessly futile) "what do we stand for?" conference meetings and bull sessions that Democrats have masochistically forced themselves to endure since the 2004 election, one read Boehner's cheerful game plan and wanted to shout "No!
Coming mere moments after an election that largely turned on a defense of "traditional marriage" and contempt for blue state values, it actually was the role of magazines like The Prospect, which don't need to worry about political expediency, to mount an assault on the rightwing's explicit claim of moral superiority. That such a dry recounting of data can be termed elitist, or anything save honest, is precisely the point.
If blue states, with their liberal policies, are actually seeing lower rates of social ills than red states, that says something important about the set of policy prescriptions best equipped to actualize so-called "family values." As our piece elegantly explained, the highest proportion of teenage births for a blue state was in Delaware, which nonetheless ranked behind 17 red states on the metric. New England turned out to be the least sexually promiscuous, while the defenders of morality in the crimson Mountain States admitted to having the most partners. Red states, too, had more divorces than blue states, while Massachusetts, under fire for threatening traditional marriage by allowing gays into the fold, had the lowest separation rate in the country. These are outcomes in direct contradiction to much of the right's political rhetoric, and if progressives plan to mount a case for their viability on such issues, pointing out the reality is a good place to start. Conversely, running from their own record because they fear the "elitist" label would be both pathetic and counterproductive. Which isn't to say the left hasn't been doing exactly that for quite some time. If any Democratic candidate referred to Southern values, or Western states, with the knowing sneer that Republicans use when spitting out the word "Massachusetts," the outcry would be swift and vicious. Instead, Democrats kowtow to the importance and unquestionable virtue of America's amorphous "heartland" while their erstwhile allies write articles slamming any defense of blue state morality. But if the political environment has truly become so toxic to empiricism that a simple recounting of social science statistics is perceived as anything but honest, that strikes me as precisely the sort of trend magazines like The American Prospect, and for that matter, The New Republic, should be fighting against.
Comments (17) HILLARY RAISES BIG BUCKS IN TEXAS BUSH COUNTRY. Senator Clinton did a great deal of fundraising around the country in March, and her private fundraising schedule -- which was passed along by a source -- shows that she raked in big bucks in that most impenetrable of red-state strongholds: Texas. The schedule lists a dozen events in four states, in the space of just two months, March and April. This is very significant, because all the activity shows just how determined Hillary's advisers are to stockpile an enormous campaign warchest at a time when she is facing only token opposition for reelection in 2006 -- something which of course will only fuel speculation that her fundraising right now is also about scaring off potential Dem challengers in 2008. On March 21, the schedule shows, Hillary quietly slipped off to Texas for an unpublicized swing through that state, where the junior senator from the ultimate blue state raked in as much as $4,200-per-person in some of the most red-hued of venues. For instance, one event was a breakfast at, of all places, the Dallas Petroleum Club, a mahogany-festooned enclave whose president was once Ray Hunt, a top Bush fundraiser and oilman. She also had a fundraising event at a barbeque in San Antonio and an event crowded with high-tech entrepreneurs in Austin (the state capitol where Bush presided as Texas governor). A source familiar with the Austin event tells me that at least one attendee was surprised by the fact that many who showed up were Republican women, lots of them first-time donors. I mention this not to argue that Hillary has crossover appeal, but to show how aggressively her fundraisers are working to tap diverse constituencies around the country. Her schedule also shows events in Washington, DC, Rhode Island, and Missouri -- an amount of national activity that, for someone who's so far ahead in polls and money for reelection, is striking.
Comments (50) LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, YOUR AMERICAN GOVERNMENT! It's rarely a surprise to hear that the Bush administration lies, but it's occasionally impressive to read a textured account of how brazen and conscious their deceptions are.
retellings than The National Journal's Murray Waas: Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews. Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons." Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Maybe I'm just a naive youngster, but the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch sure sound like "intelligence sources" to me. And no one should forget Colin Powell's humiliation at the hands of all this, which is even more abjectly embarrassing when you read: In mid-September 2002, two weeks before Bush received the October 2002 President's Summary, Tenet informed him that both State and Energy had doubts about the aluminum tubes and that even some within the CIA weren't certain that the tubes were meant for nuclear weapons, according to government records and interviews with two former senior officials. Official records and interviews with current and former officials also reveal that the president was told that even then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had doubts that the tubes might be used for nuclear weapons. But if Powell was played, at least he was somewhat complicit in the fall. The American people, now embroiled in a costly and dangerous occupation of Iraq, were offered no such chance for accurate judgment.
Anderson speculates that Jim Brady hired Domenech precisely because he was a crude, unqualified caricature of conservative punditry that Brady, fogged by blue state elitism, perceived to be conservatism's true...
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