What does it mean when the North Carolina Republican Committee puts up green dollars to attack Barack Obama on something that is yesterday's news? Nominally, it's to smear the gubernatorial hopeful Democrat for supporting Obama. I think it serves a better purpose yet.
John McCain has asked the NCRC to stop airing this ad.
I tend to agree; the story is stale and never really was relevant to the issues. But why should McCain want it to stop? With a Democratic Party on its way to a first-class schism, I think attacking Obama there and now makes sense. If I were a McCain planner, I would welcome any chance right now to strengthen Hillary Clinton in NC and other states where she probably can't come close to Obama in the upcoming primaries. After all, the only way Hillary can get the nomination is by dirty, behind-closed-doors wheeling, dealing, and betrayal at convention. It might come down to that anyway, the way she waves around her Pennsylvania victory, but hey! why not cut down Obama's lead and further inflate her sense of entitlement? If she was down by 20 points in NC and then loses by only 10, she will consider the nomination already hers!
So while it looks like a state committee gone off the GOP reservation (against McCain's wishes, even!), I suspect McCain's people orchestrated this. But they were smart to give the national committee and McCain by extension some plausibly deniable distance from it, cuz it's rotten politics.
How are you Democrats feeling about your race these days? Does anyone believe the nice-talk of TV "strategists," or are you coming to realize that my prediction from early March is beginning to come true??
A Shot Across the Bow
Posted by KWS on 4/23/2008
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20 comments:
The bottom line is that the Democratic race has been ugly, and continues to get uglier. Obama has certainly lost most (if not all) of his momentum, and although Hillary seems to be gaining steam, it's almost mathematically impossible for her to make up the deficits she has racked up in the popular vote, the delegate count, and number of states won.
I would bet, however, that it will not come down to the convention. It appears that Michigan and Florida will be taking their rightful places on the sidelines of this one, as neither state has been able to bring both campaigns and the national party to a consensus solution. I believe that after the primaries and caucuses are all over, Howard Dean will quickly arrange a binding superdelegate mini-convention to determine the nominee by July at the latest.
It's obvious at this point that neither Obama nor Clinton will have enough pledged delegates and committed superdelegates to carry the nomination alone, so the superdelegates will end up deciding this thing. But I do have faith that the superdelegates will not overturn the voice of the popular vote in the primaries, and Obama will become the nominee sometime in July. It's not perfect, but at least there will be some finality.
I don't really know what to think - to me, the candidates have made their points and I'm not paying that much attention right at the moment (did I just say that? Did the political blogger just say she kind of doesn't care???) The only reason to keep having debates, keep making speeches, keep going round and round in circles over the same things is in the hopes that one candidate or the other makes some kind of huge gaffe. I think it's ridiculous - whoever is elected is bound to make a gaffe at some point in their Presidency (hasn't seemed to hurt our current Fearless Leader - he got reelected in spite of it!) but you KNOW if either Clinton or Obama so much as sneezes indelicately at this point then their "opponents" - in whatever form they take - are going to try to leverage that into a defeat.
I don't want to choose my President based on some kind of last-minute shenanigans, unless those shenanigans are relevant to their Presidency or qualifications. The fact that so many people are still sitting around watching and nitpicking tells me that either they:
a) have no idea what they're looking for and are just wanting to choose the "candidate of the moment"
b) they don't personally feel that way, but they have no guilt about encouraging other, more easily swayed people to choose their nominee based on these kind of factors
c) they're just really bored and petty?
I don't know. I was thrilled when Obama declined to engage in yet ANOTHER debate this week, because if at this point you don't know what they're going to say in a debate against each other then you shouldn't be voting. I don't know how "ugly" the campaign has gotten because as I said, I haven't really been watching. I am tired of hearing about it, but that's not the candidates' faults I don't think. It's a close race, and it's going to the finish line, and that's the way it is. I don't think it's fair to ask Clinton to drop out, or expect her to, because according to the "rules" she still has a shot. I personally wanted whoever wins the popular vote to win the nomination because maybe I'm a simpleton but that seems like the only logical way to do it.
Wizzle, are you talking about the nit-picking of policies or personal lives or both?
Policies I agree, we already know where they stand. Their personal lives are VERY important to nit-pick especially in Obamas case as he is relatively new to the political scene. I would rather hear about it now than after the fact.
I have to admit I am loving it.
Well, I mean nitpicking their every word and breath at this point. Nobody, NOBODY, can withstand this amount of scrutiny without coming out looking bad. I agree that personal lives are fair game, but analyzing every statement made by both candidates and everyone they've ever associated with is just busy work IMO.
I still don't understand the obsession with people's personal lives. Would it make any difference to learn that, say, Abraham Lincoln was an adulterer? Or that Hitler's personal life was above reproach? Does it bother me that McCain dumped his first wife for a gorgeous blonde millionairess? No. Does it reassure me that Hillary is still with the same husband after all these years? No. Did Rudy Giuliani's affairs make him a bad mayor? No.
For that matter, can pointing out Joseph Smith's money-digging scams help us fairly evaluate his prophecy? No.
I think all this concern with the candidates' personal lives is a part of the political process we should be striving to rise above instead of wallowing in. But as long a so much of the public thinks otherwise, we're stuck with it.
KWS, as for your prediction about the effect of the prolonged primary on the Democrats' chances, I'm still not sure what to say. It would help if there were some kind of truly relevant precedent we could point to. I don't know if the good at this point outweighs the bad, but Hillary's attacks on Obama are doing him SOME good. She's not saying anything now that won't be said by McCain and his surrogates in the fall, and at least Obama can refine his responses now, while few people are really paying attention.
The biggest wild card, I think, concerns the turnout. If the prolonged Democratic bloodbath ultimately gets more Dems to register and show up at the polls in November, Obama might have the last laugh after all. We'll see.
--David
Anon David, I disagree. Whether or not a politician has an affair on his wife is an indication of his integrity. If he can't be faithful to and honest with his own spouse, how can I expect him to be honest with me? The way people live their personal lives show whether they live with integrity. I do think it is sad that our nation doesn't seem to value integrity anymore.
That aspect of McCain is not appealing to me. But, in my mind, with these choices, when I vote this fall, I am not voting for who I want. I will be voting for the one I perceive will do the least damage.
Ditto to that Stephanie. Isn't it interesting that one of the most respected presidents of all time is *HONEST* Abe?
David, you are suggesting that trust doesn't need to be earned. I still believe it does. I wouldn't disregard a potential business partners dishonesty, so why should I when it comes to the most important position in the world? For me, this goes right along with the gay rights and abortion issues. Yes, we have the choice to act as we wish, but that doesn't make it right.
Stephanie, Matt--a few points. First, I want a leader who's effective in carrying out the policies I want carried out, in leading the nation in the direction I want it led. And it's just a fact that there's no real correlation between a politician's personal life and his or her political effectiveness. Cases in point include many a philandering conservative, such as Rudy Giuliani and Nicolas Sarkozy. Counterexamples include people like Jimmie Carter, still married to the same woman after 52 years, but an ineffective president.
Second, I really doubt whether either of you really mean it when you claim personal character to be so dispositive. John McCain is as corrupt as Hillary Clinton (in my view, his Keating Five etc. balances out Clinton's Whitewater etc.) but he has a far worse personal history, what with being such an adulterer and all. When push comes to shove, none of this will matter and you'll vote for McCain, because you see him as the one "who will do the least damage." At best, you will use Obama's personal failings merely to justify what is in reality an ideological and pragmatic decision. You'll make your decision just like the rest of us, only with a bit of extra moral preening.
Third, you have what strikes me as a rather cramped definition of morality. A little of that definition concerns money, most of it probably concerns sex, and none of it, as far as I can tell, concerns things like lying to the American people in order to start an immoral war, or suborning the Justice Department into okaying illegal torture, and so on. If you don't see George W. Bush as profoundly immoral, I hardly know what to say.
Pretty much everyone will say "I stand for morality and integrity!" but will then go on to amplify some immoralities, ignore others, and in any event define those terms so selectively that morality per se cannot be said to guide their choices.
I'm just trying to be realistic here.
Stephanie, when you write, "I do think it is sad that our nation doesn't seem to value integrity anymore," are you referring to people like me, who don't care about a politician's personal life, or are you referring to Bush's supporters, those paragons of morality who seem to have found a way to absolve their oh-so-moral leader, and themselves, of the sins of Abu Ghraib?
These people will blind themselves to the sins of the nation by pointing to the sinlessness of the person. But as an American I feel more concerned about the sins into which the leader leads the nation than with the sins he commits in his personal life.
When you ask this: "If he can't be faithful to and honest with his own spouse, how can I expect him to be honest with me?"
I answer thus: You CAN'T expect him to be honest with you. But you can't expect him to be honest with you even if he IS faithful to his wife. Case in point: G. W. Bush. So fidelity becomes irrelevant.
Again, when you write, "The way people live their personal lives shows whether they live with integrity," I can only respond with these four words: "So what? Jimmy Carter."
Matt, your implied anti-gay bigotry is itself immoral, anti-American, and un-conservative. Whether or not gay people have rights is simply not up to you, nor is it up to the government. They have rights that are inalienable, and among those rights are the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to the equal protection of the laws.
When it comes to gay people, conservatives turn into big-government authoritarians, using the government not for any narrowly circumscribed, legitimate governmental end but merely to instantiate their own prejudices. If you're truly a conservative, then you should favor getting the government out of the marriage business entirely. (Ditto if you consider marriage to be a sacrament. What possible business does the government have in determining who may or may not receive a sacrament?)
--David
Anon David, no, integrity and morality are not the only indicators I used when choosing who to cast my vote for. It is one factor to consider, and as both you and I pointed out, in the case of this election, it won't outweigh policies for me. But, it could partly explain why I gave a lot of money to Romney's campaign and don't plan to give any to McCain's.
Despite ample examples you gave to the contrary, I still believe there is a correlation between personal integrity and political effectiveness. The Book of Mormon teaches me that. (If I had more time right now, I'd find it for you, but I am speaking in church and teaching a lesson tomorrow).
I've already been there and back on discussing this particular topic (whether or not morality in political leaders is important) on another blog. I find the whole Bush and his "immoral" war argument irritating.
My whole point is this: whether or not a man/woman is faithful to his wife is one indication of integrity. I use that as one factor in my analysis of whether or not I want to vote for someone as a leader. And, our society in general does not value integrity anymore. I think more people value "getting what they want" than living by principle.
I also find it irritating when you (Anon Davd) and other liberals on blogs assume so many things about me from one sentence and the fact that I am conservative and Mormon. It goes back to that Bush thing. I never said anything about Bush! I feel that he lied to me as a supporter who cast my vote for him. So why do you people keep using him as some example to hang over my head? It is irritating.
Bush is not as conservative as he claimed to be when he ran for office. His own actions show that. So, as a conservative, it is irritating to me that he keeps being help up as the example of conservatism! He's done more to hurt the conservative cause than anyone I can think of right now. Did I mention I am irritated?!?!
Obama is a black power, white hating racist. His own supporters called him an elitist. He is the worst possible person to run a country his own wife isn’t even proud to be a part of, except when her husband is being considered for the presidency.
Sorry for wrongly assuming, Stephanie. I meant to speak of Bush's supporters generally, and reading back over my comment I don't see where I explicitly included you among them. Apparently you're NOT among them, and I should have made that clearer. Even so, I can't recall you ever expressing your unhappiness with Bush specifically in terms of his integrity. That term, and others in the right's moral vocabulary, seem to be reserved for sexual behavior alone.
You wrote that "Despite ample examples you gave to the contrary, I still believe there is a correlation between personal integrity and political effectiveness. The Book of Mormon teaches me that." In other words, revelation trumps evidence. The Book of Mormon said it, I believe it, and that settles it. Well, D&C says that if a man marries umpteen women, and all of them are virgins on their wedding night, and they were not already engaged to another man, then it cannot be adultery. It might be a violation of this or that nation's temporary civil law, perhaps, but not a violation of God's law. D&C says it--do you believe it?
But that's just the Book of Mormon. Your scriptures include others that teach other things, such as that God loved David despite that guy's adultery, murder, and conspiracy. So when you say your scriptures teach you that "there is a correlation between personal integrity and political effectiveness," I just don't think you're reading those scriptures very carefully. I think they teach precisely the opposite. I think what they teach is this: "The effectiveness of a political leader is correlated to God's larger plan for the nation." Israel rises and falls, Babylon rises and falls, etc., not in response to the personal integrity of the leader, despite Joseph Smith's wish to believe otherwise, but in response to God's desires, which sometimes include the punishment of a nation for the sins of its people (not necessarily for those of its leader). E.g., Nebuchadnezzar succeeds as a leader not because of his personal qualities but because God wants his nation to succeed in punishing Israel. I don't see much evidence in the Bible for what amounts to a "personal meritocracy" model of political leadership. I see evidence for a model in which God moves in rather more mysterious ways than that. It's typical of LDS theology to reduce political effectiveness to the simplistic notion of "each person gets what he earns," but in doing so it trashes the complexity, realism, and profundity of the Bible. And leads people to misread American politics.
--David
David, the government would also have no authority to arrest a person for having child porn, right? As this is their "pursuit of happiness" and there is no physical harm in this. For me it doesn't work that way. Like it or not the constitution was made for a moral and religious people, as stated by the founders of this nation. I don't think it was happenstance that created the most free country in the world.
As far as Bush being immoral, I think it is more unintelligent than immoral. I don't think he want people to die just for the fun of it.
Couldn't I say that Al Gore is just as immoral for fabricating "truths" to scare people into believing his crap? Isn't he partly to blame for the global food shortage that is starving people to death? Conservatives aren't the only one that are immoral
Given that no children are harmed by it, gay marriage is much more analogous to interracial marriage* than to child porn. Child pornography exploits children and inclines the minds of those who view it toward even more exploitation; gay marriage does neither of these things. You make the comparison not because it is a reasonable analogy, but in order to equate homosexuality with child abuse, and gay-marriage supporters with apologists for child abuse. Nice try, though.
As for the constitution being made for a moral and religious people, I always thought that if a people were moral, no government would be necessary. It would certainly not be necessary to create a constitution with a set of checks and balances designed to counteract the immoral propensities of politicians.
You write, quite wrongly, that "I don't think it was happenstance that [the Founders] created the most free country in the world." They DIDN'T create the most free country in the world. They created a nation in which millions of residents were held in bondage, a nation whose constitution approved of their bondage (see the Three Fifths Clause).
The free nation you're referring to was created much later, starting with the Thirteenth Amendment.
You ask, "Couldn't I say that Al Gore is just as immoral for fabricating 'truths' to scare people into believing his crap?" I suppose you could, and your doing so would at least impress me with your ability to conceive of "morality" in terms other than sexual. That would itself be a tremendous expansion of your moral horizon.
Having said that, I'm not exactly sure how Gore's global warming campaign is "partly to blame for the global food shortage that is starving people to death," given that as far as I know his proposals have not been implemented. I would also note that Gore is not urging us to do anything illegal; he is arguing that we should change the law. At Abu Ghraid, at Guantanamo, and at numerous "black sites," Bush and his subordinates disobeyed existing laws. Do you see the difference? It's the difference between the student who tries to persuade a teacher to change a grade (Gore) and the student who knows he doesn't really have a case, and that persuasion will fail, and then sneaks into the Records Office at night to alter his transcript. Note that Gore is doing his thing in public, while Bush did his dirt in secret.
But still, you're right that conservatives are not the only ones who are immoral. I'm glad to see that your moral horizon seems to be expanding. Maybe you could try to perform this sort of moral analysis on, oh, the activities of crooked prosecutors who suppress evidence to win convictions, or companies like Halliburton that lobby for war for the sake of increasing sales, or Saudi Arabian support for terrorism or Russia's growing fascism... You might find yourself less worried about Jeremiah Wright and gay marriage. You might find yourself wondering where the candidates stand on the stuff that really matters.
--David
* Said that racist scamp, Brigham Young: "Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so."
Tee hee.
The difference between me and the conservative Mormon: We BOTH think Jeremiah Wright is a nut, but only one of us thinks that of the other church-builder. One of us (me) is willing to evaluate BOTH men's goofy racism in light of all the good they did for their respective communities. But the conservative Mormon is only willing to extend that courtesy to their own goofy racist.
As I've said before, seems a bit uncharitable.
Even so, I can't recall you ever expressing your unhappiness with Bush specifically in terms of his integrity. That term, and others in the right's moral vocabulary, seem to be reserved for sexual behavior alone.
You are assuming a lot here.
I suppose you could, and your doing so would at least impress me with your ability to conceive of "morality" in terms other than sexual. That would itself be a tremendous expansion of your moral horizon.
Same here.
Anon David, I'm not going to play this game today (the "You are a Mormon, so you must defend yourself" game).
I find it interesting how often these comments deviate from the topic of the original post. That said, I feel I too must respond to one of these tangents.
David, you wrote,
"You write, quite wrongly, that "I don't think it was happenstance that [the Founders] created the most free country in the world." They DIDN'T create the most free country in the world. They created a nation in which millions of residents were held in bondage, a nation whose constitution approved of their bondage (see the Three Fifths Clause).
"The free nation you're referring to was created much later, starting with the Thirteenth Amendment."
While I do not know what Matt had in mind when he made the original claim, it is clear that the Founders did create the most free country in the world. This is not to say they created a country where everyone enjoyed perfect freedom; some enjoyed freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of the time, and some enjoyed no freedom at all. Nonetheless, though failing to meet our contemporary standards of freedom and equality, the result of the Founders efforts was a country that allowed greater freedom than any other of the time.
Not to get to nitpicky, but I find it troubling that people don't understand the 3/5 compromise. Southern slaveholders wanted blacks to count as whole persons. Why? So that Southern states would have more representation and thus power in the Federal government. This would have made it even more difficult to limit and eventually end slavery. Northerners didn't think it right to count people for the apportionment of representatives who would not be able to vote on those representatives. They wanted slaves not to count in the apportionment tallies. Admittedly, there was some self interest here as well, but it would be hard to convincingly argue that the Northerners were MORE racist than Southern slaveholders.
To sum up, equality in this case would have further entrenched slavery. The 3/5 compromise was a way of getting the Constitution passed without giving in too much to slavery. Perhaps you will argue that because Constitution did not grant all people the same rights and protections equally, it should not have been accepted in the form it was. But the real question is whether it was better for the country as a whole AND for the individuals white and black to accept these compromises to establish a Constitution where freedom and equality could eventually be actualized or to forgo the Union and the Constitution leaving the country without any framework for increasing freedom and equality?
--Travis
Travis, can you think of any country whose population in 1787 did not include 700,000 chattel slaves? Can you at least consider the possibility that by any meaningful definition of "freedom," such a country could be considered more free than the U.S. was in 1787?
You write of "a Constitution where freedom and equality could eventually be actualized." Bingo. Freedom would eventually be actualized, but that does not mean the U.S. was the freest country on the planet when it was created. And why did we have to endure such a monstrously bloody civil war before the freedom and equality could be actualized? Many historians have quite plausibly argued that the reason was the profoundly flawed nature of the original Constitution. The original Constitution did not contain within itself the necessary mechanism. That mechanism could only be provided by the rifle and the bayonet.
BTW, which country abolished slavery first, the U.S. or Britain?
If the American colonists had never rebelled, never written their own constitution and created their own nation, where would that leave us today? Wallowing in the same abyss of misery and tyranny as those former British colonies that DIDN'T rebel? Horrible places like, you know, Canada and Australia? Perish the thought!
Don't get me wrong. America's a great place and I like it a lot. But the fact is we did not singlehandedly invent freedom.
David I was not trying to relate child porn to gay marriage other than to state that both are immoral. I hate to break it to you but religion is not the only institution that disagrees with homosexuality. I have yet to see science show that two men having sex can procreate. Again, I don't think it is happenstance that that two people of the same sex cannot procreate.
As far as your three fifths arguement, that is like saying the Book of Mormon can't be true because it is an "addition to the bible". It sounds good the the mass media who is uninformed, but when researched, makes no sense. Nice try.
You're right, a constitution would not be necessary if everyone were moral, that would bee 100% moral though. There will always be some that aren't, but as long as the majority is the constitution will work and the country will prosper.
You write, "your doing so would at least impress me with your ability to conceive of "morality" in terms other than sexual. That would itself be a tremendous expansion of your moral horizon.", If you didn't notice, I spoke of dishonesty as being immoral earlier in the post. You can assume all you want about what I include in my definition of moral, but we all know what happens when we assume.
I enjoy your comparison of B.Young and Wright. I agree both have/had outlandish beliefs, the difference is one lived during the 1800's when slavery was prevalent and black men were look down on. The other man lives today and acts as though he was a slave in the 1800's. Nice try once again:)
You write "America's a great place and I like it a lot." I believe this about as much as I belive Jerimiah Wright's principal that the government gave AIDS to the black man. I have yet to hear you say anything positive about the country you live in. I say the same thing to you and Wright, Support the country you live in, Live in the country you support. I'm not saying that you have to like everything, but geesh, help find solutions instead of just complaining and pointing out problems.
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