P.M. Carpenter

You boys don't like it? Take it up with God's lawyers

Of all the places I would not have expected to find an invincible defense of President Obama's "hypocritical" super PAC, I would have guessed it to be the Jesuit priest Frederick Copleston's history of early medieval philosophy, which I just cozied up to for the evening. Yet ...

[On] the one hand pagan philosophers were inclined to attack the Church and her doctrine, while on the other hand Christian apologists and theologians were inclined to borrow the weapons of their adversaries when they thought that these weapons could serve their purpose.

Dear Christian right and allies: Take that!

Hitch amended?

It could be that Christopher Hitchens, sitting in some smoke-filled celestial bar (and if there's a heaven, there's one on every gilded corner), is successfully managing at least a partial defense of his temporal writings: Whether one ponders California's Prop 8 or the Catholic hierarchy's uproar over ObamaCare's coverage of women's contraception, "Religion still poisons everything."

Mitt Romney: he's got nothin'

From The Hill:

Hoping to blunt the possibility of a swell of support for Santorum [in today's Missouri primary and Minnesota caucus], Romney unleashed his most concentrated and severe attacks on Santorum since the days after the two fought to a near draw in Iowa’s Jan. 3 caucuses.

And what are these "severe attacks"? One of them is only commonsensical, given that the goofy GOP base loves to vote against its own interests: "[He] dispatched one of his top surrogates [T-Paw!] ... to blast Santorum for saying he was proud of earmarks he had secured for Pennsylvania as its senator." Bad pol. Bad, bad pol.

The second, though, is rather comical, or at least I found it so. "Romney’s campaign blasted out a copy of Santorum’s 2008 endorsement of Romney, hoping to make the former senator’s recent criticisms of Romney appear hypocritical." The key word there is "hoping," since my first thought (which would have remained perfectly valid had it not been for the follow-up dependent clause, and even then, well ...) was that Romney's campaign was only scathingly reminding Missouri and Minnesota voters just how lunatic Rick Santorum had been in 2008. He endorsed whom?

Quite aside from the chuckles, though, is the gathering and profoundly somber observation that Romney's campaign is a strategic unfolding of, pretty much ... nothingness. One cannot sensibly disagree with the quoted University of Virginia analyst in The Hill story: "I do think it’s smart for Romney to try to head off Santorum at the pass, because he doesn’t want to be caught in a position where Santorum suddenly catches fire and becomes like Newt." That of course is but preemptive, hardball politics. Yet there is never anything of substance or thoughtfulness subsequent to each of Romney's "concentrated and severe attacks." 

They are, it seems, all he's got. And that's not nearly enough. For a House seat, sure; maybe even for a senatorial campaign. But not for the White House.

The enemy within: super PACs

We can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

--Jim Messina, President Obama's campaign manager

[T]he greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet Communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.

--George F. Kennan, U.S. diplomat

The eternal tension, in wars, cold wars, and hot politics. George Kennan wasn't the first to identify and warn of the danger of internal perversion -- from Aeschylus to Woodrow Wilson, during conflict, their feared loss of virtue was their own -- and President Obama won't be the last to reluctantly join an arms race.

It may seem that in this acquiescence the president most resembles the one man who is most unlike him, in both temperament and outlook -- Newt Gingrich. Throughout this amusingly repulsive Republican primary season I have taken Gingrich at his word on only one subject: that he genuinely desired a "big ideas," and not a big-bigger-biggest money, contest. Although he's half the intellect of Obama, he nonetheless fancies himself among the most formidable of politico-philosophical minds; the dazzle of that alone would be enough, he thought, for as long as he wished. The self-evident flaw in his thinking almost instantly emerged, however, and it emerged twofold: he neither anticipated ever getting this far, which was a fundamental misreading of the GOP base's depravity, nor had he bothered to lay any foundation for rapid, tactical re-maneuvering. When the time came to adjust he looked around and there was only one guy -- a gambling czar no less, not exactly a culture warrior's best ally -- willing to get behind him.  

Yet Obama was, as always, merely playing the long game. He made a public show of resisting the siren seductress of Priorities USA Action, even to the -- No! say it ain't so! -- leaked disgruntlement of big Democratic donors. Oh dear, what would they do, what would they do? The president isn't playing Mitt Romney's game! His nobility could cost him, big time!

Duly noted.

Yet suddenly? Unleash the hounds.

The pre-planning and execution went like clockwork.

After all, even George F. Kennan never advocated unilateral disarmament. He did however urge a vigorous "containment" of sinister forces, a policy which I'm certain Obama will happily take into consideration when interviewing potential Supreme Court nominees, next term.

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p.s.: Kennan came to metaphorical mind because I just perused John Lewis Gaddis's new, magnificent biography of this fascinating thinker. I cannot recommend it too highly.

Of gamesmanship and respect

The anatomy of political gamesmanship, at the country's expense:

Republicans first opposed a one-year payroll tax-cut extension, even though tax cuts are the GOP's universal answer to all maladies great and small, from recessions to toothaches. Further, they insisted payroll tax cuts must be paid for, although tax cuts for the excessively affluent need never be paid for, since tax cuts pay for themselves -- until President Obama wanted one. So Obama and the congressional Democratic leadership pared the tax cut's duration to two months -- figuring something was better than nothing -- upon which Republicans instantly threw themselves into violent opposition because, they argued, the deal should extend to one year, which they had just got through opposing. They would fight, fight, fight for a one-year deal, or nothing.

Now they have their chance. And what do we hear? "It’s far from a done deal," says one House Republican, while another says the longer extension is merely "a gimmick to try to get [Obama] reelected." One Senate Republican calls the extension a "very slippery slope," while another says that for him, "it’ll be a hard sell."

The very essence of Republicanism is presently teetering betwixt a Marx Brothers movie and a Bram Stoker novel. It is yet to plunge all the way, that is, entirely one way or t'other, so for now it's suspended in a kind of comedic lugubriousness, or, if you prefer, a lugubrious comedy of errors.

Which leads to this: We used to hear, and from a few pluckily delusional souls we still hear, about the civil indispensability of respecting others' opinions; yet what these voices almost invariably neglect to stipulate is that others' opinions should first be respect-worthy -- those arising from political farces and bloodsucking villains don't count.

Mahatma Gandhi once observed (and this may be apocryphal, nevertheless it is fair) that he'd gladly become a Christian, just as soon as he met one. Well, I'd gladly respect an authentically conservative Republican, just as soon as I find one.

--Mahatma Phil

The bigger ass is the wiser choice

Although the Washington Post-ABC News's latest polling on an Obama-Romney matchup is good news, for now this contest is more about trends, and they're even better.

To put it somewhat more broadly than statisticians, somewhat less exactingly than political scientists, and with a decorum befitting the blogosphere's rather ill-mannered directness, Americans, on average, think Romney an unendurable ass.

Or, as the Post put it, with a trifle more sophistication: "By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him." Remarkable restraint then seized Dan Balz, Jon Cohen & Editors, which prevented them from adding the straight-reportorial assessment, "It's nearly enough to restore one's faith in American democracy."

Not just a plurality, but a majority -- outside the margin of error -- "of those who are closely following the campaign say they disapprove of what the GOP candidates have been saying." When narrowed to Romney, even the GOP aborigines give as many thumbs down as thumbs up. What's more, he's bleeding independents.

Ahem. Dear Republicans, a word of advice, or, let's say, a friendly suggestion. You are going down, and you are going down hard. True, it's a long road to November; but when the sitting president, in his fourth year, is also sitting on an 8+ unemployment rate (thanks to those  charmless hooligans with whom you so gratuitously stuffed Congress last year) and your "electable" guy is experiencing the equivalent of an electoral defenestration, then no one would blame you for fundamentally reassessing. So, my suggestion, already adverbially exposed: Go with Newt.

Look, you'd have far more fun, the rest of us would be immeasurably entertained, the media would soar to the sensationalist heavens, some faux Lincoln-Douglas redux would guarantee more funny million-dollar ads and Madonna could do the halftime show -- all the way around, Gingrich is a win, win, win ... there's just no downside. But he is sure lose, you say? Well, yeah. But what is Mitt going to do, assuming we can all stay awake long enough to find out?

No, no. Newt's your guy. Go with Newt. Make everybody's day.

Why we need Newt Gingrich

That the demagogic Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are both prodigious liars is one of this political era's most conspicuous truisms. It's like Isaac Newton and gravity: no mathematical proof of the latter is really needed, for heaven's sake just look around you and observe; but if one so chooses, the former's demonstration is there.

In short, I'm not about to sit here and tediously demonstrate proof of the above Romney-Gingrich proposition, or rather, truism, or political law. Whole collections of Big Lies are the singular substance with which they rev up the base -- wrenching irrealities that the base not only doesn't mind, but welcomes and even demands, since reality conflicts with its cherished prejudices. Any Romney or Gingrich stump speech, chosen at random by the unfortunate observer who asks for proof of this, is empirical proof enough.

This doesn't mean that Romney and Gingrich are equals in lying, demagogic ability, however. I confess a logical favorite, and here, I will demonstrate why.

What makes Mitt Romney such a repugnant demagogue is that he lies like an amateur; he has something plentiful of the bumbler in him, like a Baghdad Bob. Take this snippet, from his victory speech last night: "This president began his presidency by apologizing for America. He should now be apologizing to America."

Now what, for the professional demagogue of some refinement and taste and natural ability, is missing from those lines? Yep, you saw it and heard it right away. What's missing is even a shadow of sincerity, even a whisper of truth. The great demagogues and fantastic liars of the past, from both left and right -- your Joe McCarthys, your Huey Longs, your "Pitchfork" Ben Tillmans and your James Michael Curleys -- all of them, in a kind of awe-inspiring Mephistophelian way, excelled at weaving at least some semblance of some truth somewhere in their diatribes and denunciations. Not Mitt. His are just laughably, transparently false -- and consequently thoroughly repugnant.

Here, on the other and more admirable hand, is a brief passage from Newt Gingrich's performance last night: "It hadn’t occurred to me that you would have the level of ruthlessness and the level of dishonesty that we saw [from Romney] last week." Now there's a demagogic lie of artfulness and beauty. Gingrich himself was of course a mining pioneer in exploring these now familiar depths of political ruthlessness and dishonesty, yet he added a smidgen of truthfulness to his rant: he never expected this sorry-ass frontrunner of a bumbling Baghdad Bob to be so nakedly brazen, as Gingrich once was, and is.

You hang in there, Newt, just as long as you can. Because after Mitt dispatches you, we'll have only his gagging amateurism left.

Ron Paul's two brains

As part of MSNBC's live Nevada caucus coverage (which is the broadcast-excitement equivalent of some guy live-blogging Franco's health), Ron Paul was just now delivering an extended stump speech in Minnesota. How the same mind can marry the imperative of the Iraq war's stupidity with the stupidity of the gold standard's imperative is beyond me. One would think anyone coherent enough to comprehend the first couldn't but snicker at the second. Yet ...

He's not concerned about the very poor nets, either

There seem to be a lot of nets in Mitt Romney's life these days. Safe but rather indifferent nets for the poor; net-nets of job gains, which may be true-true or not-not; and now a net negative, among Nevadans, from The Donald's endorsement:

Forty-one percent of those surveyed said Trump's endorsement gave them a more negative view of Romney, compared with just 10 percent who said they now view him more positively. Forty-nine percent said the endorsement had no effect.

To present oneself either negatively to no effect. This appears to be Romney's predominant campaign theme. Well, at least it's novel.

The conservatism of 'ObamaCare' and Europe's 'socialist nightmare'

Just one of many of Newt Gingrich's Big Ideas is to replace the GOP-perceived monstrosity of 'ObamaCare' with the simple, ruggedly individualist elegance of health savings accounts -- the selfsame buncombe that George W. Bush, along with Mitt Romney and other right-wing apostles of free-market gibberish, peddled or are still peddling to an increasingly uninsured populace. Gingrich, operating on home turf and through his Center for Health Transformation, even managed to hustle his version of health savings accounts to Georgia lawmakers, who, to great pseudoconservative fanfare, enacted said hustle in 2008.

The results? Here, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

[Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation] claimed it would reduce the number of uninsured Georgians dramatically, but instead, the percentage of Georgians without insurance has substantially increased. In fact, since the law's enactment, the ranks of the insured have risen more rapidly in Georgia than in the rest of the South and in the nation as a whole.

Still, I feel a bit disingenuous, if not unclean, in helping the CBPP point this out. For truth be told, even if Gingrich's plan had in fact worked to reduce the number of Georgia's uninsured, I would remain aggressively opposed to health savings accounts as any kind of "fix" for American conservatism's simple elegance of doing without. Healthcare is a human right -- not a privilege, not a prerogative, not a perk; not a gumball machine intended for only those good, thrifty boys and girls who had the foresight and means to save their pennies. (As for those other, perfectly good boys and girls, known as the working poor, who have no pennies to save? A necessarily empty health savings account would be of ... what value?)

I remain hopeful. It may take five years, or it may take 50, but someday American conservatism will come to comprehend and embrace the matter-of-factly profound, empiricist conservatism behind Europe's "socialist nightmare," as delineated in today's Washington Post by Die Zeit's Washington bureau chief:

Several European states run their mandatory health-care systems more efficiently and at lower cost than the United States while guaranteeing every citizen access to affordable and up-to-date services [italics mine].

Hard, dollars-and-cents -- oder pfennigs und deutsche marks (once) -- reasoning, with the satisfaction of attending to human rights thrown in. It doesn't get much more authentically conservative than that. And 'ObamaCare,' after Medicare/Medicaid, is our second major step there.

Joe Stalin: compared to Romney, a pretty good employer

Georgi Zhukov, whom military historian Andrew Roberts has lauded as the Second World War's most outstanding general -- as well as ass-saver of the Kremlin's generalissimo, fared better under Stalin than debate-coach Brett O'Donnell, whom political observers have credited with having single-handedly saved the now-reemergent frontrunner, did under Romney.

[Writes Roberts], Zhukov was relegated after the war to a series of minor commands by a suspicious and jealous Stalin.

[O'Donnell ...] who won plaudits for bolstering Mitt Romney’s recent debate performances is not being retained by the front-runner’s campaign [writes Politico], an apparent victim of internal tensions over staff receiving too much credit for the candidate’s comeback.

In the free-enterprise splendor of Romneyworld, producing a magnificent return for your boss could very well dictate your unemployment, while in Stalinist Russia, you at least might have kept your job.

This bizarre little peek into the suspicious, jealous, hypersensitive soul of Mitt Romney also strongly suggests that Chris Christie shouldn't pack for national touring as Mitt's veep choice. The latter rather conspicuously understands that he'll never star on the stump if his running mate is brimming with personality and pizazz -- or, rather, if his running mate possesses any personality or pizazz. So T-Paw, start your engine; only against your stifling banality can Mitt Romney ever look appealing.

The GOP leadership, off the wagon -- again

Ezra Klein:

The bottom line is that this isn’t just a good jobs report. It’s a recovery jobs report. It’s showing the sort of numbers that win elections. As my colleague Neil Irwin tweeted, "That sound you hear is champagne corks in the West Wing."

I'm not so sure. Pop! fizzzz ... there it went again. Sounds to me like extravagantly priced bottles of Merlot and cans of cheap beer, brewed from the tepid waters of east-central Virginia, being opened by the GOP's severely depressed leadership.

This can't be happening, they're quietly slurring to each other, just before they launch into another gloomy pronunciamento to the press. "[T]he American people were promised by the president that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent," says a wobbly John Boehner, once again forgetting to mention that forecast's outdated and since-revised data.

Then slithering up to the mic comes every recovering alcoholic's worst I-can't-take-this-idiot nightmare of re-indulgent temptation, Eric Cantor, belching, "we could do a lot better."

Damn right we could. Just get the hell out of Obama's way.

One key, less time, no problem

In the late 1960s, real newspaperman Jack Germond joked that presidential candidate George Romney backpedaled from his rhetorical contortions so often, he was tempted to add a time-saving key to his typewriter: "Romney later explained ..."

In keeping with Germond's profoundly useful idea, I suggest to the makers of computer keyboards this time-saving key for contemporary journalists, when it comes to reporting on the regularly improving economy: "But Republicans, noting that unemployment remains above eight percent, charged the Obama administration with ..."

'Nothing new under the sun'

For quicker reference, one should file Brooks's latest column under Ecclesiastes 1:9. I found his meditations brilliant (which is the conservative in me), if woefully ignored by today's inept scatterings of protest, which is Brooks's woe, too.

One minor difference of opinion, though, David. Nietzsche wasn't all that fresh, either; he being but a syphilitic bastardization of Schopenhauer and Plato's Callicles.

"Komen Git It": A farce in one act

So the Susan G. Komen Foundation's original cover story for its politicization of women's healthcare turns out to have been a mischaracterization, hence the foundation has recharacterized its cover story, such recharacterization including a sound thrashing of those who originally "mischaracterized" its revamped policy of politicization, among whom was, most notably, the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

I have heard this bumbling burlesque variously described by pro-choice commentators as bewildering, baffling and inexplicable, which themselves are bewildering characterizations, since the cast of characters for this little farce includes: a right-wing congressman, Americans United for Life, and a self-described anti-Planned Parenthood, "pro-life Christian" ex-pol, as Komen's new senior vice president.

Oh, and a boatload of stupidity -- not really a character on stage, but a backdrop embodiment. And it appears this ship of fools, being, as it were, foolishly stupid, possesses no keen interest in publicly appearing any brighter, anytime soon; to wit, "Komen executives said donations were up '100 percent,' but executives declined to provide specifics." Planned Parenthood, by strikingly intelligent contrast, "also reported an outpouring of support, with $650,000 in contributions in 24 hours after the announcement. Of those, $400,000 came from more than 6,000 online donors."

Some who believe deeply in women's rights and women's health and constitutional rights and the healthly rule of law have been distressed by Komen's bizarre lurch to right-wing skulduggery. Yet I find it rather uplifting and a cause for newfound hope.

There was a time, as they say, when this breed of subterranean chicanery and pseudoconservative scorcery would have been executed with an internally dazzling but untraceable professionalism. Its victim would have been dead or dying before anyone realized who knifed it -- yea, those days of not so distant yore, when the "vast right-wing conspiracy" was less vast, less conspicuous, more competent, and far more lethal. The right's very success, however, has led it to taking on new troupes of inadequate amateurs and bumbling beginners who just can't help but botch even the simplest of hits, while leaving their bloody prints all over the stage-prop knife.

In brief, movement conservatism has added too many roadshows and touring companies; too many expansion teams, so to speak, invariably absent sufficiently manned talent; it has transmogrified into a collection of buffoons and bumblers -- all perfectly unprepared to strut their imperiously unclothed stuff on the American stage of political farce. And folks are noticing.

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Update: One-and-a-half acts.