The Republicans Will Debate: How Are They Going To Adapt To Conflicting Paradigms?

The Republicans will debate later today. The debate coach in me is happy even though it won't be a debate. Real debate involves delivering prepared cases, engaging in direct cross examination, and presenting concise rebuttals that sum up the key issues in the round. The event would more accurately be described as dueling extemporaneous speeches, but I digress.

 Before the young'uns go into a debate, we usually go discuss the judges. In preliminary rounds there's only one judge. In semi-final or final rounds there are usually three. Many judges have paradigms that determine how the young'uns approach the round. If the panel is composed of judges with conflicting paradigms, the young'uns have some tough choices. The Republicans on the big stage tonight have a few million judges with some fairly set but conflicting paradigms.

That fact prompts a few questions. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio all seem to be fighting to get the establishment vote. Will Bush solidify his lead with this group or will one of the other cut into Bush's support? Will Kasich, Christie, or Rubio make a play for one of the other constituencies. For example, Rubio might try to wrest the tea party vote from Trump or prevent Ted Cruz from making inroads into that constituency.

 Rand Paul seems to be the favorite among libertarian leaning Republicans. Will he make a play for the angry tea party folk that now seem to gravitate toward Donald Trump? For that matter will Trump try to allay some establishment fears or ensure that he heads off any efforts from Paul or, perhaps, Scott Walker to take some of those voters?

 Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee seem to fighting for the social conservative vote. Will one of them emerge as a clear favorite of that constituency? Will Carson cede this group to Huckabee and go after the tea party vote reasoning that social conservatives will follow him if he can outlast Huckabee? The same questions might apply to Ted Cruz,

The groups admittedly overlap and many candidates have their feet in two camps, but at this stage of the campaign, the Republican candidates are not unlike high school debaters trying to determine how to win a round with a panel of judges who disagree about what constitutes a winner.

Quotation Of The Day: Whither The Political True Believers? Edition

From this Rod Dreher post:

That said, . . . , it makes me think that the Republican Party is like a church whose congregation really doesn’t believe anymore, but who keeps showing up on Sunday for lack of anything better to do.

Maybe Democrats see their own party like this too. I don’t know.

Quotation Of The Day: Republican Party Dichotomy Summed Up In One Sentence

In his American Conservative blog Rod Dreher sums up the Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate runoff. 

I am just glad I didn’t have to choose between Cochran, the exhausted establishmentarian, and McDaniel, running to be the Senator from Talk Radio. Shame they both couldn’t lose.

The description fits most Republican politicians. All one needs to do is change the names. For example, one could replace Cochran with Rounds and McDaniel with Howie.

Let's Stop Playing What's The Politician's Faith?

Via Madville, I see that Reverend Hickey unable to "detect" any "evidence" of President Obama's "Christian faith." I have no idea whether Reverend Hickey claims to possess the gift of discernment or how one discerns the sincerity of the faith of a politician one has never met.

I can remember more than a few good Christian folk who were upset that Jimmy Carter lusted in his heart and had an evening glass of scotch even though he taught Sunday school. Many of those same folks loved Ronald Reagan who rarely darkened a church door.

Bill Clinton broke both the adultery and false witness commandments. The second Bush took the nation to war under dubious pretenses. Obama is far from perfect, but I haven't seen any evidence of his committing similar, shall we agree to call them, errors.

I didn't vote for Obama in 2012; I haven't been satisfied with a President since Eisenhower, and I was three when he left office. I'm, therefore, not going to trust my personal memory on his second term.

From my displaced point of view, it seems that one's view of a public figure's faith is colored not by the public figure's faith and works but by beholder's political views.

When I was a young'un my mother used to read me the story of Samuel coming to Jesse to anoint one of Jesse's sons the new king of Israel. That son was the future King David who at the time was a runty, ruddy youth. The key verse of the story was I Samuel 16:7

But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

I'm fairly certain that no human can can see another's heart. Perhaps, it would serve us all to refrain from commenting on the faith of public figures be they Presidents, U.S. Senators, or Popes. Those comments reveal more about the speaker than the public figure, and they rarely reflect well on the speaker.

A Minor Musing About The AP Stylebook And Labels

The AP Stylebook, the bible of newspaper folk everywhere, has decreed that the term "illegal immigrant" should no longer be used:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

Big Boy Blogger Kevin Drum grouses a bit. His headline makes a valid point: "'Illegal Immigrant' Is Now Out, But AP Doesn't Tell Us What's In." He then goes on to bemoan the loss of a label:

AP apparently now feels that there's no acceptable way to refer to people who are in the country illegally. Neither "undocumented immigrant" nor "unauthorized immigrant," is acceptable, and neither is anything else. Labels are flatly not allowed, despite the fact that we label people all the time. Kevin Drum is a blogger. Barack Obama is a politician. Etc.

As a grammar teacher, I am happy that AP has decreed that illegal describe an action rather than a person. The distinction seems intuitive.  I am not unsympathetic to Drum's complaint; some term needs to replace "illegal immigrant." Further, labels are sometimes necessary. I am not just a teacher. I am an English teacher.

For many, however, the simple label frequently seems insufficient. They must create a "them" to demonize. These folks seem unsatisfied asserting Barack Obama is a Democratic politician. They want to be more forceful: Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. Since that sentiment might be seen as too dramatic, they settle for labels: Barack Obama is a Marxist Kenyan anti-colonialist politician. For local examples, read any recent post here.

It seems that the only positive labels are the ones that one gives to one's self:

I don't like labels. I am a conservative liberal radical skeptic who believes in good education for all: blog.nj.com/njv_bob_braun/…
— Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch) May 25, 2012

I don't know if any stylebook has rules for that phrasing.

Quotation Of The Day: Political Labels And Historical Analogies Edition

From Scott Galupo in this post at The American Conservative:

President Obama is not a closet socialist or cunningly patient radical. What he is—or what he fancies himself—is a neo-Whig. The Henry Clay of the 21st century. He never tires of pointing out that the federal government in the 19th century midwifed the transcontinental railroad and land-grant colleges. In the 20th century, it developed a proto-internet and the global positioning system. In the 21st century? Obama dreams of a green-energy revolution. High-speed rail. A smart electrical grid. And more.

Does this mean Obama may actually have been born in the United States and he's not a Kenyan anti-colonialist? More importantly, does this comparison mean that Boehner is Calhoun? If that's the case, who the heck is the corresponding Webster?

We Need More Collective Nouns To Identify Political Group

Conor Friedersdorf creates a list of collective nouns to add to one's political vocabulary. I note that none of the groups are associated with "pride."

An axis of wonks.
A muzak of talking heads.
A friedman of taxi drivers.
A scandal of senators.
A capra of filibusters.
A cabinet of secretaries.
A forge (or jones) of Smithsonians.
A molestation of TSA agents.
A hospice of Supreme Court justices.
A stipend of interns.
A deceit of talking points.
A bordello of lobbyists.
A belligerence of neocons.
An obama of drone casualties.
A cyclotron of press secretaries.
A euphemism of atrocities.
An ostrich of climate-change skeptics.
A david gergen of David Gergens.
A cirrhosis of happy hours.
A per diem of fundraisers.
A peroxide of Fox News anchors.
A slumlord of rent-control advocates.
A kabuki of debates.
A baldwin of Romneys.

"A bordello of lobbyists descended on Pierre" does have a nice ring to it. So does "An obama of drone casualties has created a euphemism of atrocities."

An Important Reminder About Voters And Politics

Tod Kelly attended the recently conlcuded Value Voters Summit and comes away asserting "the attendees I was fortunate enough to meet – . . . were, to a man and woman, incredibly salt-0f-the-Earth nice people."

He goes on to make eleven brief observations about the people who spoke to these attendees. My favorites:

So, in no particular order, here are the top ten things I learned from the Values Voter Summit Main Stage speakers:

1. By the tally I kept, the number of times I heard Main Floor Speakers not named Paul Ryan mention Barack Obama: 157. Number of times I heard Main Floor Speakers not named Paul Ryan mention Mitt Romney: 5. . . .

3. The Obama administration has begun secretly plotting with the Organization for Islamic Cooperation. They have begun to “brainwash” FBI and other security agents to be receptive to the messages of Islam, so that Sharia law speech laws can be enforced unchallenged after Obama’s reelection. (Michelle Bachmann, US Rep-MN). . .

7. The Obama administration is planning to make illegal all churches and synagogues, and put in jail any Americans that attend them. This will happen this January, “March at the latest.” (Kamal Saleem, Debunked Ex-Terrorist Impersonator). . . .

8. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was apparently told early on that politicians smile big all the time. So now when she talks about terrible tragedies like the brutal the murder of Robert Krentz or Chris Stevens, she does so with a beaming, 100 megawatt smile that looks like she’s about to break out in the giggles. It comes off looking very creepy. Seriously, her people need to sit her down and talk to her about this. . . .

9. When Rand Paul opened the conference, he talked about the sanctity of human life, in regard to human fetuses, to thunderous, leap-out-of-your-chair applause. He continued to underline this philosophy by pivoting to the subject of war, where he said, “Truly great leaders are reluctant to go to war.” The crowd got pretty quiet on him after that. . . .

And this ones not really about a speaker, so I’ll throw it in as a bonus fun fact:

11. Friday morning before Paul Ryan came out, they showed a video presentation honoring the Heritage Foundation. The video ended with stills of famous conservatives that had worked with the foundation, and each got a different level of applause by the audience, based on how popular the pictured conservative was. Not surprisingly, the picture of Paul Ryan got the loudest. The next biggest cheers went to a picture of Limbaugh, followed by one of Hannity, and right behind him was George W. Bush. One of the pictures that got the least, shockingly, was the picture of Reagan, who got what might be called a polite, golf-clap smattering. This may have been the most surprising moment of the conference for me.

The fact that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity can earn bigger applause than Ronald Reagan says a lot about the state of America's alleged conservatives. None of what is says should be considered good. The fact that a call to be "reluctant to go to war" quieted a crowd of "salt-of-the-Earth-nice people" should frighten us all.

The Biggest Threat To The United States Is A President Who Won With Over 50% Of The Vote?

I've said that I'm not voting for Obama or Romney. I'll be looking at third party options. This chart, however, angers and frustrates.  Dan Amira polled 50 random delegates to the Republican convention. One of the questions was "What is the greatest threat facing the United States?" According to a majority of the Republican delegates Amira polled, the greatest threat is a President elected with the majority of the vote:

Amira points out that some of the delegates objected to his foreign policy choices:

Mea culpa: This question did not include economic threats as choices. So if a delegate protested that the options available weren't sufficient, they were invited to write in their own. Here's what they wrote:

Economic collapse
Fiscal and moral decline
Natl debt and growing federal govt
Current moral decline
Debt
Economic collapse

I know the sample is small, but I'm not unsure that the results are inaccurate. Further, I really don't know if it's possible to have a civil political discussion or campaign if one views one's political opponent as an existential threat to the nation. Diplomacy has been called war by other means; apparently some Republican delegates believe that politics is also a form of warfare.

HT: Andrew Sullivan



Quotation Of The Day: Political Tediousness Edition

Noah Millman, the token liberal blogger at The American Conservative, sums up something I have been thinking about as South Dakota Republicans fight with each other:

The semantic debate about defining a “real” conservative is exceptionally tedious, . . .

Nothing more needs to be said.

Quotation Of The Day: I Must Be A Traditional Conservative Edition

Writing at The American Conservative, Daniel Larison rejects the idea that conservatives merely desire to preserve the status quo.

Preserving the status quo would mean rejecting all of the following things: breaking up the banks, significantly scaling back the warfare state, reducing overseas commitments and deployments, curtailing the power of the executive branch, and practicing fiscal responsibility in budgeting. That is far from an exhaustive list. Most or all of these are among the more important priorities for many traditional conservatives. Judging by what he has done, Obama doesn’t support doing any of these things. (A lot of self-described conservatives don’t support any of these things, either.) Like a lot of “centrists,” Obama has accommodated existing powerful interests in domestic and foreign policy. That doesn’t make him a conservative. It just makes him a conventional center-left Democrat.[italics in original]

I support "breaking up the banks, significantly scaling back the warfare state, reducing overseas commitments and deployments, curtailing the power of the executive branch, and practicing fiscal responsibility in budgeting." South Dakota is allegedly a conservative state. but I can find few South Dakotans who agree with me that the first four of the issues that Larison lists should be priorities. I must be more traditional that most of South Dakota's conservatives.

A Minor Musing About Permanent Political Climate Change

When people discuss climate change, someone usually feels the urge to remind everyone that weather and climate are different. This is an election year, so the political weather may just be undergoing a regular cycle. I'm not optimistic, however. It may be time to worry about permanent political climate change.

Political seasons used to be predictable.  The year began with tax-and-spend rains, followed by weak-on-defense heat waves. Then, there were the conspiracy season chills followed by a scandal sleet .

This year the weak-on defense season has been so mild that I haven't noticed it.  In fact, some youngsters might not even know that weak-on-defense season exists.

Conspiracy theory winds seem to have lasted forever. The birther humidity seems to come more often, but it has been relatively mild. Sharia Law and Muslim terrorist freezes have lasted much longer than most full conspiracy seasons. The winds of Sharia Law panic have "roiled" some regional political waters, and Michele Bachmann has conjured up a Muslim infiltration front.

Tax-and-spend-liberal season didn't register with me this year. Instead, we've have full fledged Marxism monsoons that seem to have lasted forever.  In April, Allen West claimed that Congress was rife with Marxists, and nearly four months later David Liss is still seeking to "identify and remove" them. The depth and intensity of these Marxist storms have old-timers claiming that these Marxism storms are worse than the ones in the early 1950s. That fact leads me to believe we may be entering an era of full fledged Marxist seasons.

If the political climate has truly been altered, both tax-and-spend liberal season and weak-on-defense season may disappear.  The country will then be confronted by a political climate that begins with socialism season, goes into conspiracy-theory season, which in turn leads to a Marxism season that is as long as tax-and-spend liberal and weak-on-defense season combined. That cycle might be more dangerous than melting polar ice caps.

Quotation Of The Day: Presidential Campaign Edition

Rod Dreher sums up my mood perfectly:

Still, it’s an interesting question: how is it that things can be so crummy for so long, with so many real, and real serious, problems facing the country, and the only protest movement we can generate is that pointless SWPL-palooza [Stuff White People Like] called Occupy Wall Street, and the election still comes down to Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney? Read David Brooks today on why this campaign is so awful.  I swear, this campaign is like watching CSPAN1 and CSPAN2 having sex on Ambien.

Now That We've Solved The Problem Of Giving Everything The Proper Political Label,

Can we please try to deal with a few substantive issues?

Cory has an excellent post about the dangers of labeling every government act "socialism" and the logical fallacy inherent in equating socialism with totalitarianism.

Blogger, political gadfly, and label attacher extraordinaire, Steve Sibson responds:

Just because communists like Obama haven’t completely implemented their communist plan does not excuse them from being communists. Communism evolution style, versus revolution style, is Fabian socialism. And this is not happening in America as a nation. It is happening in America on an international basis via the United Nations…Agenda 21, UNESCO, etc. It is happening in South Dakota via the 6 planning Districts, International based education standards, economic development for a global economy, and now RomneyCare/ObamaCare/DaugaardCare.

Sibson is extreme but not unique in his effort to label opinions and opinion holders. A cursory search of most Madville Times comments threads will find one of his comments contending that some person or idea is "Masonic," "New Age," "New World Order"-ish, or crony socialistic capitalistic fascism.

Sibson, talk radio hosts, and an an avenging horde of political leaders have engaged in an epic struggle to discover and assign political labels to every noun on the planet. They have won! TV news even covered the event:

Now that that little problem is taken care of, can we move on to the minor issue of inequality?

Writing in The Atlantic, Eliot Gerson points out:

America is moving toward the kind of bifurcated society we used to deride in banana republics--rich getting richer in gated communities, while the poor grow poorer, barely seen in segregated urban ghettos and hidden rural decay. Over 20 million Americans live in extreme poverty. One in 50 Americans' only income is food stamps. Add the poor and the near-poor--that is under $44K for a family of four--and you have more than 100 million people.

The richest country in the world now has the highest rate of child poverty in the developed world. The U.S. has gone from being relatively egalitarian to one of the most unequal countries in the world.

And mobility from the poor to the middle class is not as open to anyone of talent and ambition as it once was; demographers and sociologists all agree on this. Americans now have less upward mobility--and those born privileged have less downward mobility--than in many of the formerly aristocratic countries our ancestors fled from.

 The inequality and lack of mobility is likely to worsen. A Pew Study finds:

At all levels, Americans are likely to exceed their parents’ family incomes, but the extent of their income growth varies by quintile. Americans raised in  the bottom who surpass their parents' incomes do so by the smallest absolute amounts, while Americans raised in the top who surpass their parents’ incomes do so by the largest absolute amounts . . . .

The rungs of the income ladder have widened during the past generation, reflecting
economic growth at all levels, but especially at the top. Median income in the bottom
income quintile increased by 74 percent between the two generations, compared with
126 percent in the top income quintile  

The results of the income disparity are predictable:

During the past generation, the amount of wealth held by people at each rung of the ladder has diverged: Wealth has decreased at the bottom and middle and has increased at the top two rungs of the ladder. The wealth compression is especially notable at the bottom: Median wealth for those in the lowest wealth quintile decreased from just under $7,500 in the parents’ generation to less than $2,800 in the children’s generation. Conversely, at the top of the wealth distribution, median wealth increased from just under $500,000 in the parents’ generation to almost $630,000 in the children’s generation. [Emphasis mine]

Most people are making more money than their parents, but the poor and the middle class are lessable to create and hold wealth.

Finding a solution to the wealth gap has been hampered in no small measure by the fact that those who attempted to offer solutions were automatically called "socialists" or "fascists" or "class warriors determined to destroy the fabric of American society."

Now that all the nouns have been labeled, the country should start looking at ways to help Americans fulfill the promise that those who work hard and play by the rules will get ahead not fall behind.