PMC Commentary

With baited breath

As I was saying ...

... so says Ed Kilgore and others:

The remarkable ability of conservatives to drag American politics to the Right by taking extremist positions and then offering to "compromise" by accepting policies deemed conservative the week before last is hardly a new thing.... But the MSM keeps taking the bait, which is why we now have Lindsay Graham and Saxby Chambliss being lionized for making fake concessions to stop America from plunging over a fake "fiscal cliff," asking only the small concession that the Bush tax cuts, the principal cause of current long-term public debt, be extended forever, and oh, by the way, could we also cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits?

Republicans must be beside themselves with wonder at their own dazzling bullshit, but particularly at how the media just keep buying it.

A peek under National Review's rock

Imagine a fellow who sees a therapist for 10 years, once a week, week in and week out, and throughout those 520 weeks he's told by the therapist that his chief problem is poor communication with his wife and kids. Then imagine that on the 521st week this fellow enters his therapist's office and exclaims: "I had a magnificent revelation last night; I think my chief problem is poor communication with the wife and kids."

Imagine that, and you've essentially grasped Ramesh Ponnuru's "insight" in his latest NRO column, "The Party's Problem," which is a stunning, jaw-dropping and indeed jarring demonstration of perpetual obtuseness. It has of late come within Mr. Ponnuru's notice, you see, that the Republican Party is now losing because for some time it has been ignoring the "economic interests" of the middle class.

Well fucking duh!

Ponnuru's revelation goes on at some length. Earlier I recommended that you read Bruce Bartlett's lengthy essay, since in it, there's something to be learned. On Ponnuru, however, don't waste your time, unless you want a cheap laugh. But should you choose the latter, here's a little something to spike your amusement: Just remember, Ponnuru is one of the brighter bulbs among the endlessly advertised pack of "young, innovative conservative thinkers."

The Education of Bruce Bartlett

In a grim, elegiac, must-read essay written for The American Conservative, Bruce Bartlett universalizes movement conservatism's catastrophic decline by relating his early experiences within it; then, his experiences on its wary edges; then, on its paranoid periphery; and finally, now, utterly outside of it, in forced exile. It's a riveting, historical synopsis of what should bluntly be called American intellectual fascism, which is why I despair of any "reform" of it. Unmeditative goons, sworn ideologues and ruthless enforcers don't tend to the epiphanic.

Bartlett at least partially shares my prognosis: "I am disinclined," he writes, "to think that Republicans are yet ready for a serious questioning of their philosophy or strategy." (Hence the horror of attempting to negotiate a budget deal with these throwbacks; their sinister strategies are always piously veiled and their philosophy is as corrupt as it is electorally repudiated. So screw 'em.)

Bartlett's political maturity went to full throttle when he began to appreciate George W. Bush's immutable "stupidity, cockiness, arrogance, ignorance, and general cluelessness" as president. That would do it--especially since his "conservative" friends, rather than appreciating same, went to full W.-defense mode. They simply closed the door to any objective analysis of contemporary conservatism's chronic degeneration.

Later, Bartlett "came to the annoying conclusion that Keynes had been 100 percent right in the 1930s"--and beyond. Thus Bartlett also had to cut his intellectual allegiance to the magical thinking of supply-side theory. His "final line ... to cross in complete alienation from the right," though? "[M]y recognition that Obama is not a leftist":

In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.

At this point, I lost every last friend I had on the right.

Not much, as they say, of a loss.

Bartlett protests that he's "not a liberal or a Democrat," which is peculiar for anyone who's in thorough accord with Keynesian economics, detests modern Republicans, and, most of all, seems to broadly endorse Obama's Democratic conservative progressivism. But, whatever. I've come to accept such Bartlett-like protests as a shrewd marketing tool--a kind of politico-philosophical "positioning" that draws readers' attention which wouldn't otherwise exist, were Bartlett et al. to simply confess their rather conspicuous conversion.

But, I'll end where I started. Bartlett's essay is a must read. Go read it.

Is the Party over?

Bob Shrum does a superb job of reflecting on the "party that doesn’t comprehend or simply can’t respond to the dimensions of its 2012 defeat." Because of its base.

That's the GOP's arch and possibly insurmountable difficulty--not ideology, not future demographics, not abortion or contraception or gay marriage, not turnout, not Mitt Romney, not not not. This is no negative problem for the GOP. Its problem, rather, is that of a weird positive kind--its base. It is killing the party. It is ignorant and intransigent and wholly out of touch. It is an all-but-certain dead end, yet it's also the only asset the party has left. If the party's leaders abandon the base then there is no GOP; yet if the party's leaders pamper the base then there is, in time, no GOP.

Some organisms just die. Nothing can be done. It's almost miraculous that the Democratic Party, which is, quite literally, the oldest political party in the world, has lasted as long as it has. It has survived and prospered, however, by making necessary adjustments at critical junctures--by ceasing rebellious jabber, by being urban-machine responsive and immigrant-welcoming, by realigning in the 1930s against capitalism's harsher realities, by promoting the cause of human rights for all Americans in the 1960s and beyond.

Republicans, though, have entrenched, not adjusted. They've become a regional party of the Old South and fittingly they've all the Old South's deadly faults: they're insular, they're nativist, they're inflexible, they're paranoid, and they're kinda in-bred stupid. If they are capable of changing, it might nonetheless just be too late.

The one-third, still at it

Elections may come, politicians may go, shifting coalitions may reign and subtle realignments may prevail, but the percentage of dumb-ass Americans seems remarkably stable:

Forty-five percent surveyed in a new CNN/ORC poll said they would blame congressional Republicans if there is no [fiscal cliff-averting] agreement, with 34 percent pointing the finger at Obama [italics mine].

... at Obama. Why? For what?

It matters not. Because about one-third of the American electorate can always be counted on to be utterly, absolutely, breathtakingly wrong about pretty much everything.

I recall an early 1993 poll which revealed that about, oh, 34 percent of Americans disapproved of the job being done by newly inaugurated Vice President Al Gore. Poor Al couldn't yet even find his office each morning without assistance--not to mention that few vice presidents had had much to do once they got there--and already a third of the electorate was agin 'im. Unflinchingly.

There is a technical term for this 34 percent. It's called the Republican base.

You go, Grover

CNN Politics:

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said Monday that his group, Americans for Tax Reform, would work to unseat Republicans who break their pledge to never vote for higher taxes.

Good. I wish him and his organization's extortionist efforts abundant success.

Congressional Republicans deserve as a worrisome burden the same kind of unthinking extremism that they've been dishing out for years--and Grover is just the unthinking extremist to impose it.

The compromise limit: the right has pushed us to it

To me it remains nearly incomprehensible that progressive writers such as David Corn must tutor the adult progressive community on the fundamental politics of "governing," which is regularly compromising, which is invariably interpreted by said progressive community as "caving." Another David--Brooks--nicely served up, on Thanksgiving Day, a celebratory definition of Abe Lincoln's (and, by way of inference, Barack Obama's) governing style versus the idealistically entrenched:   

In the Gettysburg phase, a leader expresses grand ideas. This, frankly, is relatively easy. Lots of people embrace grand ideals or all-explaining ideologies. But satisfied with that they become morally infantile. They refuse to compromise, insult their opponents and isolate themselves on the perch of their own solipsism.

I freely cop to the insult phase; the last time I looked around I really was, from my vantage point, the center of this universe; and I'd also cop to moral infantilism if only I believed in what seems to be puritanically imposed morality, as opposed to natural ethics. As for compromising, I'm generally flexible, which is a happily agreeable match.  

I wonder, though, if Corn's piece isn't a softening tactic. The negotiating vibes are spooky: word is circulating that real entitlement cuts--such as upping Medicare's eligibility age, or that of Social Security, which has virtually nothing to do with our fiscal problems--would be an inescapable portion of any pre-January budget deal.

And such a compromise--as Obama is getting an earful of--would be as condemnable as it would be contemptible. The center-left won. Some things--i.e., protecting social safety nets as they are--are no longer debatable. Only new revenue streams and old weapons systems and inched-up tax rates (and that means, eventually, on the middle class as well) are for legitimate contemplation.

The right helped immensely in getting us into this fiscal mess with its mindless tax cuts. The curtain on that crap should be drawn. And any gutting or trimming of the Booming welfare state--especially now that it's really needed--should be shown the GOP's infamous highway. At this, I reach my compromising limit.

A ghost story, as told by the goblins

Krugman writes this morning that "it’s time for Washington to stop worrying about this phantom menace" of a debt crisis as howled by the ulterior ghouls of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and 'Fix the Debt' and all their plutocratic ectoplasm of fat financing. Washington should just "stop listening," says Krugman, "to the people who have been peddling this scare story in an attempt to get their way."

"Washington should"--the two most compelling yet vastly incompatible words in the English language. The phrase returned 675,000 matches in a Google-second, while whatever it is that "Washington actually does" would fill a munchkin's thimble. 

The problem with Krugman's formulation is that much of Washington and all of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and 'Fix the Debt' and the material goo of their pluto-plasm are one in the same. Washington can't "stop listening" because it--especially in its spectral Republican form--is doing most of the peddling.

The chilling, campfire debt story as heroically whispered to the media by such maverick revenuers as Lindsey Graham, Tom Coburn and Saxby Chambliss I happen to find amusing enough. The media, however, seem to miss its entertainment value. Graham & Co. no more believes--or worries--about the debt a comin' to get us at night than Paul Krugman does; hell, most of these boys have been busy the last 30 years driving the bloody thing stratospherically up. No, what these ghouls want--what they've wanted since the New Deal and Great Society--are the virtuous souls of every last efficient and effective social safety net, since the latter task the former's heartless dogma.

Exposed: Mitt Romney really did have a staff (of at least one)

It's a well-known fact. No one voted for Nixon in 1972. Others voted for Nixon in 1972, but no one voted for Nixon. Ask around. You'll see that I'm right.

I thought the same ghostly miracle had happened in, to, and for, the Romney campaign; it all just sort of came to pass, no one was actually responsible for that mess, or, at the very least, no one would ever take the discredit. It was merely an abstraction; an 'SNL' spoof of lower politics; an Edgar Bergen skit of Mortimer Snerd on the stump; or, perhaps, darkly, a Dickensian undigested bit of beef, a fragment of underdone potato stuck in our national amygdala.

Hence my shock upon seeing this tag line in a NY Times 'Business Day' commentary: "N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He was an adviser to Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential campaign."

That disgrace of an economic whodunnit or rather who'lldoit mystery game or maybe it was a 'You Bet Your Life' roulette-wheel thing had an adviser? An economic adviser? An economic adviser from Harvard? And he's willing to be identified, by name?

One of the many benefits of tenure.

The commentary itself is as useless, as unoriginal, as unthoughtful, as drearily Romneyesque as the Romney 'campaign'--a tedious kind of Jeffersonian riff on heart vs. mind, only in Mankiw's version, it's Obama the Liberal debating Obama the Moderate about fiscal choices. In short, it's a waste of time. But it's Sunday, a good day for that sort of thing, so here's the link.

Anyway, I salute N. Gregory Mankiw for 'fessing up in the tag. Perhaps others will now do the same; and some may even confess to having voted for Nixon in 1972.

But the GOP (and the Times) repeats itself

For 77 years Republicans have pissed and moaned about the Hayekian injustice of Social Security; it's a monstrous insult to all that's divinely ordered--every man and woman for him- or herself. And for 47 years Republicans have pissed and moaned about Medicare; it, too, is a monstrous insult to all that's divinely ordered--basic healthcare just isn't for everyone. Now, Republicans are pissing and moaning about ObamaCare, yet another monstrous but statutorily fixed insult to all that remains divinely ordered--see above.

Yet the NY Times finds Republican Speaker John Boehner's persistent, petulant resistance to ObamaCare not merely objectionable, but apparently unique: "[T]his kind of gamesmanship is an unwelcome reminder of unyielding Republican opposition."

Yes many of us of course find the speaker and his hideous party objectionable. But to single out this particular GOP abomination as though it's particularly abominable--as opposed to the party's periodic but pretty much unremitting pissing and moaning of the last eight decades--makes about as much sense as the Times' redundancy of unyielding Republican opposition.

Sufferin' succotash

In characterizing as "absurd" Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism's spectacularly self-evident study of Fox News' and MSNBC's respective right/left bias in their presidential election coverage, Phil Griffin has achieved ultimate oneness with laughable indefensibility: 

"Everybody tries to make an equivalency between the two of us and it’s not true," said Griffin, MSNBC's president. "[I]n prime time and in tone, they have an agenda."

Now that's absurd. Does Griffin not watch his own network? Assuming he does, then either I'm hallucinating or he is. If that's not a prime-time agenda--some of it executed with sophistication; the other, more Punch Schultz and Judy Maddow--then I'm Ann Coulter.

Yet there's nothing wrong with having an agenda. Buddha had an agenda, Tolstoy had an agenda, Socrates had an agenda, and word is that Christ had an agenda, even if a bit more comprehensibly sublime than the recondite transcendence of Black Friday. Indeed we all have an agenda, and the Truth, Mr. Griffin, shall free your sets. There's nothing wrong with an O'Donnell panel or Matthews panel occasionally mentioning that if all this--whatever "this" happens to be that evening--sounds like a determined "agenda," the only hate mail said panel will ponder is that which is accompanied by cited disproof of its factual basis.

Embrace not the indefensible, Mr. Griffin, but your agenda-ness. Otherwise, saying they--the paranoid and propagandistic buffoons at Fox News--have one and you don't, when you so obviously do, just sounds silly.

What denial looks like

Plucky? Or pinheaded?

Several [tea party] groups already are setting their sights on 2014 congressional races, in which they plan to promote their preferred candidates and hope to weed out Republicans they consider insufficiently conservative....

"This was a very difficult year," said [the] founder of the Virginia Federation of Tea Party Patriots. "But in many ways, we are stronger than ever."

There was no elaboration on that "stronger than ever" part.

I'll go with pinheaded.

Pleading for less conservative nastiness is "cowardly tripe"

Previously I cited Jim Geraghty's NRO piece, which urges less conservative nastiness, which further propelled reactive "conservative" comments such as these: 

What a bunch of cowardly tripe written by Geraghty; I'm sick of it.

"Jimbo," wouldn't you know it, wrote "You libs are real morons."

Another commenter observed:

Sorry, I'm not buying it.... You can't find an over the top comment from the right that I can't match from the left.

Yet another philosophized:

There's civility, and then there's being a pushover.... All [Paul Ryan's] "civility" did was make him disappear.

As I recall it was Paul Ryan, Paul Ryan's repellent budget, indeed all things Paul Ryan and finally Romney-Ryan HQ that made Paul Ryan disappear, but let us quibble not with the self-certain base.

The above, selected comments are lifted from the first page only. There are nearly 600 more--a veritable online War and Peace of seething, smoldering, right-wing bubbled malice. Methinks Mr. Geraghty missed his mark.

Conservatism, liberalism, and a suggested heresy

Remarks such as this one, from National Review Online's Jim Geraghty, invariably cause me to swoon with envy at what an easy marketing job conservatism has had for decades:

If you believe that conservative ideas work, you hopefully believe that the formula — a decent education, hard work, prudence, thrift, and a dollop of ambition — can and will work for anyone and everyone.

Somewhere along the line, contemporary conservatism, having already pocketed the flag and God as its "values," acquired as a wholly puppeteered subsidiary the collective concept of education, work and ambition. That these had been American values for centuries--indeed, global values since the Renaissance, Max Weber's 'Ethic,' the Industrial Revolution and Adam Smith--seemed not to trouble the electorally motivated conservative mind; it liked the sound of mass-appealing words such as education, work and ambition, so it simply appropriated them as uniquely "conservative." (Do you know any liberals or progressives or socialists or fascists who are opposed to, say, ambition? I thought not.)

OK, so all that is well known. What hasn't been well tried, however, is the liberal heresy I've huckstered since, I think it was, 2008: Democrats should campaign as conservatives in entrenched conservative districts and states. And by that I mean call themselves conservatives; presumptuously steal the other guys' labeled thunder; blather relentlessly about education, work and ambition as both conservative and Democratic values; note that Republicans just don't get it--they just don't understand what makes America America, i.e., values such as education, work and ambition.

This was Barack Obama's key insight into winning and rewinning the White House. He subtly wove the "conservative" message into his orthodox liberalism to a textured point in which the red and the blue strands became indistinguishably purple; he openly praised Ronald Reagan; he joked about whispering Republicans taking his side; he thundered about American values of education, work and ambition while understating and downplaying government's indispensable role in promoting them all. Hence to many of the 40 percent of American voters who self-identify as "conservative"--again, because conservative pols have appropriated the language of their American values--Obama made perfect sense.

He never overtly declared himself the "conservative" candidate--he didn't have to; nor would many among his liberal-progressive base have been understanding and accepting. But to those potential Democratic House candidates in 2014--those running in essentially conservative but competitive districts--I'd advise that you begin the practice of selling yourself through the c word. Because some self-identifications never change, and that's as American as God and country, as well as education, work and ambition.

This year, it's the real thing

When giving thanks on Thanksgiving Day, many Americans lift muttered voices of fumbling platitudes to some generic invisibility of doubtful existence and even more questionable receptivity. I generally abstain from this globally unexceptional ritual, officially sanctioned in our case during that mid-19th-century decade in which we godly Americans were slaughtering one another with monstrous fury over the philosophical merits of melanin. 

This year I'm making an exception. I know precisely whom I wish to thank, and why.

Thank you, thank you, endless thanks to you, Mr. President, and Mr. Vice President, as well as your allied House and Senate candidates, for conducting altogether splendid and thus victorious campaigns against the vulgar Romney-Ryan and its assorted, downballot djinns. True, that generic invisibility of doubtful existence seemed to favor you all along--and, like a sabotaging ventriloquist, to diabolically plant the most appalling, campaign-dooming utterances in the mouths of Mitt Romney & Friends--but only your human exertion really pulled this thing off.

Again, thank you, because four wretched years of Romney-Ryan's hateful divisiveness and its aligned tea-partying malevolence might well have reduced us to another immense, and possibly bloody, family squabble.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. This year, it's not just an empty phrase.