August 16, 2003

Good Advice without a Prayer

Richard Bennett clearly and ably explains the basics of the various "machines" in California politics. He's dead right here:

The Repubs can either use this election to reincarnate their party into relevance, or to finish it off altogether. If the Republican Party is to have a future here, it has to be recast from the Pat Robertson mold into the image of the Silicon Valley Republican (AKA "RINO") embodied by Tom Campbell, Richard Riordan, and Arnie: that's libertarian on social issues, pro-choice, tough on crime, strong on education, and tight on taxes. Pete Wilson understands this, and if the California Reeps can turn this corner, they could start a movement that goes nationwide. In his day, Reagan was socially liberal: he signed the first no-fault divorce law in the nation, after all. Today it means live-and-let-live with gays and legal immigrants, hands-off abortion, and some sort of wimpy gun control. So the future of the Republic rides on this wacky recall, after all.

Of course, this is nothing more than good, common sense; in other words, extremely unlikely.

UPDATE: Apropos of this, Francis W. Porretto left this comment over at Bill Quick's place:

The sensible approach to this, from the GOP's perspective, would be to enforce party discipline and unite its efforts behind the candidate with the best chance of winning California. However, that requires something conservatives have managed only rarely: the suppression of internal squabbling and some hard swallowing over policy and ideological divergences.

Dubya should get Schwarzenegger, McClintock and Simon into a little room and tell them approximately this:

"You're not leaving here until two of you have withdrawn from the governor's race. I don't much care which of you stays in it. However, I do care that you present a united face to the state of California. There are fifty-one electoral votes and seats in Congress at stake. If your hypertrophied egos mess up the party's best chance to win those votes and seats since Reagan was governor, I will personally see to it that neither of you ever receives one more groat of support from the party for as long as you live, regardless of what it costs me..."

Would Dubya ever do that? No. He's too soft-spoken, and too willing to believe the best of people. IMNSHO, Simon and McClintock are displaying their Dark Sides just now, and need to be spanked -- but if the president can't bring himself to discipline or dismiss State Department subordinates for working against his Middle Eastern policy, there's scant chance he'll brandish his birch switch for the sake of California.

Of course, there's not even the slightest room for doubt as to who the "best chance" guy is: it's hard to imagine any realistic scenario where McClintock or Bill "watch me lose again" Simon manage to beat Bustamante, though I suppose anything's possible. Of course, the idea of McC or Simon "taking one for team" is out of some parallel universe as well.

Posted by Dr. Frank at August 16, 2003 05:22 PM | TrackBack
Comments

"In his day, Reagan was socially liberal: he signed the first no-fault divorce law in the nation, after all."

lol.

Posted by: spacetoast at August 16, 2003 05:57 PM

Seriously...the man who enabled the fascist Edwin Meese, who proclaimed 1983 the "Year of the Bible," lauded as "socially liberal" for ratifying no-fault divorce? 1...2...3...

Reagan was *divorced*!?!

It's a bad punchline.

Posted by: spacetoast at August 17, 2003 01:54 AM

On this point he sounds consistent to me. He divorced and supported no-fault divorce. If he didn't, that'd be hypocritical, no?

To be fair, if you attack a politician for being self-serving in this manner, you're automatically disqualified from attacking his hypocritical positions. ;-)

Posted by: JB at August 17, 2003 03:36 AM

Yeah, JB, if he had done otherwise, that would've been hypocrytical. Hand out the "socially liberal" trophies.

Posted by: spacetoast at August 17, 2003 04:22 AM

Not exactly the point, Space, but OK: I hereby revoke Governor Reagan's Socially Liberal Trophy ;-)

The observation is not without irony, but no-fault divorce was indeed a controversial socially liberal policy-- anathema to "family values" types. (They're still complaining about it even now, in fact.) As was/is California's liberalized abortion law, which Reagan also signed. There are other examples of policies and positions he held as governor that might seem surprising given his reputation as arch- or ur-conservative: he established the Air Resources Board, opposed a state proposition that would have banned homosexual teachers from public schools, authorized cost-of-living increases for welfare recipients, addressed a budget crisis by raising taxes (several times if I'm not mistaken.) Whether out of pragmatism, true conviction, or even an ever-so-slight affinity with the California/Hollywood lifestyle (or maybe a bit of all three) even the patron saint of modern Republican conservatism was, as governor, a bit more flexible, less hidebound and buttoned-down, less ideologically rigid and predictable, than his contemporary worshippers in the Simon wing of the California GOP. That may not be saying much, perhaps, but at minimum, Reagan was a pragmatic politician in a way that these folks will never be. I think that's the point.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at August 17, 2003 07:06 AM

If the notion is that the CA GOP have learned or are learning to become electable after the fashion of Reagan, fine. But if the notion is that they've done so in coming to a desirable social politics *like Reagan*, then that is baldly wrong. In either case, "socially liberal" is an enormous distortion. I can't speak on particular expediencies of his govenorship, but his presidential record of appointments, his vigorous opposition to abortion rights, opposition to environmental and safety standards, his not seldom vocalized belief that homosexuality is a deviance and should not be recognized as an "alternative lifestyle," his draconian criminal justice policy (pursued by Meese), his solidification of the Christian right as a political power (c'mon dude, Reagan's obsequious push for a prayer in school amendment was straight out of the Pat Robertson playbook), "just say no," his support of the Bob Jones U's ban on interracial dating, all speak for themselves, and I think answer your dillema. It's one thing to lionize Reagan as the great white knight against communism, but he's supposed to have been socially liberal to boot? Or is relativism to the worldview of some "day" or some worse bunch of nuts acceptable in this circumstance? I realize the medium here is in the main one giant intersubjective hallucination, but seriously...the socially liberal Reagan? Not a blink?

Posted by: spacetoast at August 17, 2003 08:41 AM

I think you may be missing the irony, my friend. Sure, Reagan (as governor and still less as President) was not actually, literally, a "social liberal." Yet he, particularly as governor, would on occasion adopt and support "socially liberal" policies as the need arose. In other words, he understood California politics far better than the current crop of CA GOP yahoos who can always be counted on to do their utmost to torpedo any Republican candidate who comes within shouting distance of electability. They did it to Riordan, and now it looks as though they're trying to do it to Schwarzeneggar. It's almost like they prefer losing, these guys.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at August 17, 2003 03:03 PM

Err...

Arnold, or the Arnold/Riordan wing of the CA GOP, stands here to manage a broad appeal to the electorate reminiscent of Reagan. I take that point. Reagan's fundamentalism was (necessarily) attenuated during his governorship in comparison to his presidency (though not forgetting stuff like that his militaristic approach to the student protest movement was in most respects just as nasty and puritanical as the activity of your bete noire the student radicals). Broadly, I take that point also. If "socially liberal" is intended as some kind of tongue in cheek euphemism, then, yeah, I'm definitely missing that joke. But the main irony I see in this comparison consists in the facts that if Arnold is successful, he'll be successful apparently despite (a) alienating the reactionary Republican power base Reagan fortified in the '80s, and, as it happens, also (b) (especially in light of Buffet's recent comments) pursuing an increase-taxes/cut-spending fiscal policy more in keeping with the crushingly moderate DLC than with Reagan's mystical supply-side paradigm based on a theory laid out on a fucking cocktail napkin. That's ironic, sure enough.

My basic suspicion though is that "like Reagan" has come mainly to refer just to any politically successful Republican qua politically successful Republican, which I think dangerously coaches revisionism. I don't know if you're normalizing in opposition to the bay area kook set again, or what makes this notion attractive to you, but in my view, especially taking Riordan as a crude proxy for Arnold's politics (we don't *really* know who Arnold is yet), this is a dismal comparison that unduly flatters Reagan with a civil-libertarian spirit he clearly did not possess.

Posted by: spacetoast at August 17, 2003 08:30 PM

Mr. Toast (or may I call you "Space"?), you seem to be off on the standard rant against Reagan that's all the fashion on the far left these days, and quite enjoying it to boot. Unfortunately, you fail to read my remarks in context or to grant the assumption of basic humanity to Mr. Reagan.

I was commenting on Gov. Reagan, not on President Reagan, and about his public policy positions relative to the standards of the era when he served as governor of California, 1967-1975. He was much less the ideologue than you imagine, and in fact the most liberal members of the legislature who served with him, including John Burton, have a great deal of admiration for him to this day. Reagan wasn't a small-minded and hateful partisan like many of his successors and would-be successors have been; he had a genuine love for the people, all of the people, and believed that their interests were best served by a small but highly efficient state government. In his inaugural address, he talked about making government deliver services more efficiently, not about screwing welfare cheats:

"The only way governmental services can be provided in a useful, effective and economical way is through coordinated action of a unified, well-organized executive branch carrying out policies established after proper consultation with all who are affected. Our executive branch cannot operate in this way unless the many agencies, bureaus and departments are grouped together in a logical manner and their day-to-day activities are coordinated by executives operating out of the Governor's office."

http://www.governor.ca.gov/govsite/govsgallery/h/documents/inaugural_33.html

And as the Dr. has pointed out, his positions on social issues were, by the standards of the day, liberal. But he was able to sell these liberal positions to conservatives as he was able to sell the principle of smaller and more accountable bureaucracy to liberals. Nobody benefits from government waste but the bureaucrats, and they weren't as important a political force in his day as they are now.

Burton says Reagan was easy to work with because at the end of the day he didn't want the poor and the children to suffer, and he was willing to do what was truly necessary to take care of them. He didn't think in terms of voting blocs and focus groups as much as in terms of broad, abstract principles fairly applied.

Posted by: Richard Bennett at August 17, 2003 10:58 PM

Richard, dude, I don't know why you've included a lengthy and irrelevant quote dealing with Reagan's views on government infrastructure (rather than civil liberties), or what it could possibly mean to you that I "fail...to grant the assumption of basic humanity to Mr. Reagan"--I'm sorry, but that's an extraordinarily stupid comment--but you are dead wrong calling Reagan "socially liberal"..."Let there be a bloodbath. No appeasment."? I don't care if Al Sharpton proclaims him "socially liberal," it's false, you are wrong, I am right, and to the extent that Arnold is authentically "socially liberal" that is not "like Reagan." As for my standard far-left ranting...*sigh*...once you've seen one tree, you've seen'em all, eh?

Posted by: spacetoast at August 18, 2003 12:09 AM

Well, Spacetoast, I think you're focusing too much on the essence of Reagan's character, which is an interesting, but peripheral, question, not really the point (I don't think) of Bennett's post, nor of my quotation of it. It doesn't really matter whether you call him "a" social liberal or not, or whether it's right to do so; nor is it a matter of how many undesirable or illiberal positions he may have held through his career.

Here's the point: the future of the Republican Party in California (if there is to be one) lies with the so-called RINOs. I don't think there's much room for doubt there. Those who control the GOP in this state refuse to admit this, making their support for candidates contingent on their holding positions that effectively rule out their being elected (e.g. anti-abortion.) What's more, they collaborate with their opponents in smearing, trashing, attempting to destroy any member of their party who even comes close to looking like a "moderate." (They certainly did Davis's work for him during the last election, cheerfully eliminating his only realistic rival.) For some reason, they don't seem to see a connection between this losing strategy and the fact that they always lose. They continually cite Reagan's governorship as an example of pure, absolutely uncompromising, electorally successful ideological "conservativism" (in contrast to the fake, inauthentic "conservatism" of Riordan/Arnold types.) They may have a point, as you say, that Arnie isn't in fact very Reagan-like. The irony, though, is that, were the Reagan of '67-'75 around today, they'd be calling him a RINO, too.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at August 18, 2003 05:53 PM

By refusing to come out in support of Prop. 13, Reagan failed on one of the great litmus tests of ideogical purity for the modern-day California loser Republican, BTW.

Posted by: Richard Bennett at August 18, 2003 08:17 PM

Man, I have not missed the point. I have acknowledged all along that Reagan was fundamentally a political chameleon who knew how to get elected, whereas the Simon et al wing of the CA GOP (it seems) are not, do not, etc. (though who knows what will happen in this screwy thing). My original comment was that it was funny that the point cited in behalf of the characterization "socially liberal," especially in light of the later record which shows Reagan to have been, whatever else, a Pentecostal space alien and jingo brought to earth through some celluloid wormhole to deliver Tony Dolan's "Evil Empire" homily, declare condiments vegetables and facts "stupid," and steal jellybeans from destitute black children (*now* I'm denying him a basic humanity), was the one issue on which a different stand would've made him an arrant fraud. Then you geezers started in about how Reagan actually was a pretty hep daddy after all...and anyway neither one of you seems to be using a definition of "socially liberal" I recognize, because you both want to drag in stuff about taxes, government bureaucracy, and whatnot...

[Sheesh, Dr. Frank, isn't it about time you learned from the mistakes of your great inspiration, Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler?]

Would the Reagan of ~1970 be considered a "RINO" today? Maybe. If it was politically expedient, probably. I don't know what that gets you, but certainly not an inference that RINO Republicans like Arnold and Riordan are the authentic legatees of "the party of Ronald Reagan," which I still maintain is the basic implication here.

Anyway, here are a few more, I think amusing, canards to kick around...

John Ashcroft: "Tap-dancin' fool for privacy rights."

Dan Quayle: "Scrabble champion of the GOP."

Nancy Reagan: "*Not* Skeletor in drag."

Kissinger: "Vat accent?"

Posted by: spacetoast at August 18, 2003 09:28 PM

Would the Reagan of ~1970 be considered a "RINO" today? Maybe. If it was politically expedient, probably. I don't know what that gets you, but certainly not an inference that RINO Republicans like Arnold and Riordan are the authentic legatees of "the party of Ronald Reagan," which I still maintain is the basic implication here.

The basic assertion here is that the RINO is the future of the Republican Party in California; the point about Reagan's social policies, according to the standards of his day, is secondary and for purposes of illustration only. Pete Wilson, pro-choice Republican all hepped-up on education, is a more recent example of the electability of the socially-liberal Republican; Tom Campbell is a better example.

Posted by: Richard Bennett at August 18, 2003 11:06 PM

"The basic assertion here is that the RINO is the future of the Republican Party in California..."

Cautiously agree (I'm hedging my bets).

My basic assertion, again, is that Reagan was not socially liberal, and that to the extent that being socially liberal is really a component of RINO politics, there isn't a meaningful continuity with Reagan there, or, on the premise that, as Dr. Frank seems to suggest, "socially liberal" isn't to be associated with any kind of core political identity in this case, then its terminological value is extremely marginal, and at any rate it (still) fails to meaningfully pick out Reagan. However, I do acknowledge that Reagan was exceptionally savvy with respect to tailoring himself to his electorate, and that the Simon/far-right-wing of the CA GOP, no matter how much they may idolize Reagan, have not learned this lesson.

Posted by: spacetoast at August 19, 2003 01:59 AM

"...the Simon/far-right-wing of the CA GOP, no matter how much they may idolize Reagan, have not learned this lesson."

Amen.

Posted by: Richard Bennett at August 19, 2003 08:19 PM

Well, I should probably just take the opportunity to invoke Godwin's Law and just declare the end of this squabble, but... ;-)

Space, you're right that it's kind of funny to call Reagan "socially liberal." There's a counter-intuitive element of truth to it, though (especially when compared to his would-be successors) when it comes to his tenure as governor, is all I'm saying. (That's funny as well.) Love him or hate him, Reagan may have been a rigid right wing ideologue's rigid right wing ideologue, but even if so he did not always govern as a rigid right wing ideologue when he was governor. I think there's a lesson there for the Simon-ites, if they would deign to consider it. Otherwise, they're just going to keep scaring away most of the voters, all the while wondering aloud why nobody loves them. That's most likely just what they'll do, which is also kind of funny. But hell, the whole shebang (California politics, Reagan, Arnold, Simon, Davis, recall, etc.) is hilarious no matter how you slice it-- why should this be any different?

Speaking only for myself, I would never say that Schwarzie and Riordan are "the authentic legatees of 'the party of Ronald Reagan.'" I don't know where you got that. Whatever it might mean, it's absurd. Yet I can think of at least one area where Governor Reagan's effective position certainly appears to have been more like Arnold's than Simon's (abortion). If liberal abortion laws are "socially liberal," whereas an absolutist anti-abortion position is not, do we err in calling the guy who supports the liberal abortion laws "socially liberal"? Maybe so, occasionally, if we stray outside the context of abortion and if the focus is upon a Socially LIberal Identity or an assessment of the desirability of a particular comprehensive "social politics." (Or if we're trying to assess the true essence of the guy's character, taking his entire subsequent history into account, and screening out potentially insincere gestures or positions thrust upon him by circumstances.)

Perhaps Bennett should have written, and I should have quoted, (instead of "in his day, Reagan was socially liberal..."): "as governor, and in the context of the times, Reagan adopted liberal positions on a variety of social issues." I think it's pretty clear from the context that that was what he was getting at, though it was incidental to the main point. Would that make a difference? At the risk of re-riling the Toastman, when it comes to electoral politics or strategy in the state of California, I can't see that it makes much of one. In fact, whatever irony there is merely underscores the point about the cluelessness of CA's current Republican Party and their fetishizing of reified platitudinous "conservative" attitudes as non-negotiable, salvific (or, alternately, potentially deal-breaking if lacking) attributes of one's personality or character. Of course, no one should (nor, I imagine, would anyone, not even Hitlers in training) make the complementary error of casting Reagan as the ultimate in state-of-the-art Social Liberalism. Some of his positions were not "liberal"; some were. I'm sorry, but it's true. And, in the current climate, that probably would have been enough to get even him kicked out of the club. That the character of the "party of Reagan" that took shape around his subsequent presidential career (albeit one now stewarded by a pack of idiots) is a major contributing factor to this situation is also funny. I repeat: I never said it wasn't funny.

At any rate, the observation has little to do with Reagan himself and more to do with what it takes to win in California's gubernatorial race and what it takes to govern this state afterwards: and part of it is, then as now, a degree of "social liberalism" in word and deed. What I'm saying is, the Simon yahoos are far to the right on "social issues", and far more rigid and unrealistic about it, than even their patron saint ever was when he was playing the California political game. He would have failed a great many of their patently unrealistic litmus tests, and would probably have been attack ad-ed out of the race in pretty short order. So would GWB, probably. Unless they develop some belated maturity and common sense, it looks very much as though they'll keep putting forth candidates who scare the majority of the CA electorate out of their habitual apathy just enough to vote against 'em. I know you know that's what I'm saying. Anyway, I've got to stop saying it now, and get back to work on that album...

Posted by: Dr. Frank at August 19, 2003 08:52 PM


sigh...so much complicated politics...

if only we still had...

"mister james k polk napoleon of the stump"

you see he...

"made sure the tarriffs fell and made the english
sell...the oregon territory...he built an
independent treasury"

he basically fufilled all his promises and every
body agreed he was great and...

"having done all this he sought no second term,
but precious few have mourned the passing of...
mister james k polk our 11th president."

maybe that doesn't have too much to do with
anything here,but i felt the need to indulge
in my little political knowledge,gained via
two folks from Lincoln named John.

beth
P.s. that is they might be giants.

Posted by: just me at August 19, 2003 09:20 PM

Dr. Frank-

Richard and I finally came to an agreement on something and here you go clouding the issue again. Reagan was politically savvy and knew how to play the game in California, which seems to always entail taking a relatively mixed approach to social issues--though that applies to the left as well. The Simonites do not know how to play that game. As far as Richard's point goes, that should be the end of it. Now I have no problem with a textured view of Reagan's career, personae, etc., I have more or less agreed to this stuff about 1970 Reagan being a RINO today, despite my general reservation about cutting and pasting folks around in history and speculating about who they'd be and how they'd behave, but that's definitely pushing the limit of what I feel I can honestly agree to.

At any rate, what all of this makes me wonder is, since you see so much difference here, what do you see that's the same. In other words, I wonder what you take to be the part that does not change across the right side of the political spectrum, and here particularly. Do you think Reagan and, say, Simon, only share views about tax policy and the size of government? Or what?

Posted by: spacetoast at August 20, 2003 08:39 AM

There I go again! Sorry, Space, I'm just a little cranky these days. Deadline pressure, the frustration of trying to turn ideal into reality, etc. I never thought we disagreed all that much on this-- was just puzzled at your strong reaction to the Reagan example (and I did feel you mischaracterized my views, with the "legatees of the party of Reagan" thing.)

Anyhow, I don't know how to answer your question, but I'll say I have a general feeling that California would probably be better off governed by a fiscally responsible RINO; as I (pretty much) feel the country would best be run by a hawkish RINO/fiscally responsible DINO. And there's a similar frustration in the last case, as the Democratic Party seems rather CA GOP-like, determined to prevent the nomination of a DINO, which is actually what I'd probably prefer, and the only way they'd have a prayer of winning. (Lieberman would be my first choice, if I were to have one.) Is it some kind of unwritten rule of two party representative democracy that one of the parties (either one) is required to conduct itself as ineptly as possible in order to provide the other party with the chance to make mediocrity look appealing? You know, I think it might be.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at August 20, 2003 04:07 PM

Dr. Frank-

I guess we probably disagree on what the "strong on defense/fiscally responsible" tandem implies. For example, Bush's claim that there's not enough money to bolster funding for port security, first responders, etc. (the stuff independent researchers have consistently identified as most important for "homeland security"), when the modest proposals in this regard (e.g. Lieberman's ~30bill proposal) constitute less than 2% of the tax cuts Bush is giving the richies, doesn't satisfy my standard of "strong on defense/fiscally responsible"...in fact, just the opposite. As for the RINO part of "hawkish-RINO," I dunno, pursuing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, for instance, doesn't work for me, whether Bush's qualification that "we're all sinners" qualifies him as a RINO or not...and call me an ACLU liberal and terrorist supporter, but I don't feel too warm and fuzzy about the attorney general either. Personally, I can't support Bush, whatever his hawkish virtues *may* be. As for Lieberman, I don't know why you're so pessimistic. He's leading the Gallup last I checked. Conservative Democrats and folks who like Bush, but worry that he has no plan after all, seem to respond strongly to Lieberman. I have mixed feelings about him. Frankly, I don't like him personally--I don't care for his pandering to the DLC, and I don't buy the "courageous underdog" spin around him, which neglects, among other things, that his positions have consistently coincided exactly with public opinion polls. I dunno...he opposed the stupid ANWR drilling stuff, but then there's also stuff like this:

(And I'm not endorsing this site, btw.)

http://www.joseph2004.org/adoptajew.html

I don't know about this "electable" stuff either. What interests me in this thing is that Bush will have to debate this time around. Gore flubbed it in 2000 trying to manage his image too finely. I don't think any Dem challenger will make that mistake this time. Especially considering that Bush has given like 10 press conferences since he's president (counting in base 2 of course)...the fewest ever, anyway...I think his capacity to answer criticism extemporaneously is still a major weak point. The debates will be critical (in both senses). Unless the Repubs can somehow channel Lee Atwater circa '88 (I won't put it past them yet), or unless the Dems make the mistake of nominating the stultifying Gephardt, I cautiously predict a Democratic coup following the debates. Anyway, if Lieberman's your guy, you should have more faith, because he's top dog right now as far as I can see.

I apologize if I mischaracterized your views. I admit I'm extremely sensitive to what I take to be revisionism/distortion from the right these days. What I see is that the Anne Coulters of the world have succeeded in rehabilitating, in many people's minds anyway, the McCarthys and J. Edgar Hoovers of the world as nothing less than great American heroes. The (sound) notion that free markets are fundamentally good has been distorted into a notion that any sort of commons or welfare structure is a mawkish anachronism at best and perhaps even evil. Couples wanting the same economic rights as other couples, and families living in poverty, are characterized as "special interest groups." Et cetera. I find this trend frightening. It is in fact not constitutive of a pragmatic, hard-nosed and/or level-headed, or morally grounded worldview, contra Fox News. It is histrionic and willfully not self-critical. So Reagan then...

Consider your experience with the Berkeley loony set, as a young adult especially, which you've written about here at least a fair bit. Well, the current climate and the renascent far-right is my analogous experience, and its characteristic totems are my Weathermen and SLA.

What is your reaction to a claim that e.g. the Black Panthers *were* a beneficent group (with their school lunch program in Marin cited as evidence)? The school lunch program meets the criteria, doesn't it? After all, school lunch programs *are* beneficent. Now maybe it wasn't intended exactly "that way." Maybe you even take the person who says this thing to hold ultimately a more nuanced view. But it looks kinda dangerous to you anyway, no?

I'm not saying that the relative weights here are identical, but that is more or less the kind of thing that motivated my response. I'm surely not a Michael Moore reactionary and I don't understand Reagan and his ilk as evil incarnate, or whatever it would be, but I felt it was important to clarify that it is inaccurate to call Reagan a social liberal, and the more you and Richard, it seemed to me, wanted to preserve the sense of that, the more I felt it was important. I don't accuse either of you of stumping for the far-right or Reagan's overall social view, or anything like that, but I did and do believe you both wanted to let through the back door a version of Reagan friendlier and safer than the reality. If I don't go after the point, then, as your Hitchens would say, the "center" would be occupied and defined without my having helped to define it. In this case, the "center" cannot be a place where Reagan is allowed as socially liberal. It really cannot.

(sorry for the length.)

Posted by: spacetoast at August 20, 2003 08:03 PM

Peace, brother.

"RINO" isn't all that useful a category when you take it outside the context of its being used as a pejorative in inter-Republican sniping. (But within that context, I tend to think that the types who are so accused seem like good guys who might possibly affect the status quo in a desirable way, though not necessarily always.)

My gut feeling is that Lieberman won't make it through the initial primaries, but I could be wrong. He's not perfect, of course. As for Bush, it wouldn't be too hard to be more credible on fiscal responsibility; for that matter, it wouldn't be too hard to be more credible on defense and national security, either. Nonetheless, it will greatly surprise me if any Democrat actually manages to make it through the primary campaign retaining the ability to do either persuasively, fair or not.

My prediction as for the debates: it will go pretty much like last time, i.e., both candidates will come off as goofy, freaky, ill-informed dullards, but GWB will "win" by the one brownie point he gets for coming off as the goofy, freaky, ill-informed dullard who appears to be the least stuck-up. I'd love to be wrong about that, by the way.

That's an interesting point about the '80s campus Young Conservatives turned TV personalities being your SLA/Weatherman.

Keep checkin' me on that revisionist impulse.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at August 21, 2003 02:17 AM

["RINO" isn't all that useful a category when you take it outside the context of its being used as a pejorative in inter-Republican sniping. (But within that context, I tend to think that the types who are so accused seem like good guys who might possibly affect the status quo in a desirable way, though not necessarily always.)]

I agree strongly with the first part, and will believe the parenthetical part when I see it. I basically think too though that Arnold, for example, is a good guy. This is from an intro he apparently did for one of a series videos done by Milton Friedman and his wife:

"Milton and Rose Friedman's Free to Choose TV series has changed my life."

"I came from Austria, a socialistic country where government controlled the economy. A place where you can hear 18-year-old kids talking about their pensions. I wanted more. I wanted to be the best. I had to come to America. I had no money in my pocket, but here I had the freedom to get it. I have been able to parlay my muscles into a big movie career.

"Okay, so there I was, waiting for Maria to get ready for a game of mixed doubles tennis. I started flipping the television dial. I caught a glimpse of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman whom I recognized from my studies in economics. I didn't know I was watching Free to Choose. It knocked me out. Dr. Friedman validated everything I ever thought about the way the economy works.

"I became a big pain in the neck about Free to Choose. All my friends and acquaintances got tapes as well as books for Christmas after Christmas. If I had come up with Free to Choose, maybe I wouldn't have got into body building."

http://www.laissezfaire.org/prodinfo.asp?number=MF5642

I am amused and, for some reason, oddly touched by this, but it also makes me keenly aware that I really have no idea what it would mean, or what Arnold would "do" as governor. Mixed doubles tennis?

As for the other stuff, hmm, keep watching the polls and whatnot. And I think it's pretty clear by now that I can't control my impulse to chime in on every little thing, so...yeah...


Posted by: spacetoast at August 21, 2003 03:45 AM