Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

From Politico:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Wow.

Labels: Clinton, politics

...comes from Newt Gingrich, of all people. He was talking about the midterm congressional elections in 2006. For the Dems, he suggested a slogan which I think would work for either Clinton or Obama against McCain.

Feeling the pain of the country as it bore grim witness to the orgy of sloth, idiocy, corruption and dishonesty that, objectively speaking, occurred under eight years of Republican rule, Gingrich (of all people) suggested two words:

"Had enough?"

Labels: Gingrich, politics, slogan

Let's get this out of the way first: I think McCain is a decent human being, which makes him some kind of moral superman compared to most politicians.

McCain is undeniably physically courageous. He mostly behaves with an admirable level of personal integrity (at least, excluding the Keating Five scandal and his recently exposed relationships with, respectively, a female lobbyist and an Arizona property developer). He is very pro-Israel, which I think most Jews appreciate.

Despite all of the above, I think his administration would be awful for America, and here's why: Just because McCain is decent and moral and willing to buck the (occasionally insane) orthodoxy of his party doesn't mean his staffers will be.

Let me give you an example that makes me worry. I worked on one of Gov. George Pataki's reelection campaigns in New York some years ago. As most will remember, Pataki was (is?) a moderate, at least as far as Republicans go. So you'd think that Pataki's staffers would be middle-of-the-road, New England, moderate Republicans.

Not so. One of them, having moved to New York from the Upper Midwest to work on the campaign, actually advised his wife not to leave the apartment. He also made sure to bring his and her pistols when he moved east of the Hudson River. You can imagine his views on things like abortion, etc.

What does this have to do with McCain? A lot.

A McCain Administration would be staffed by Republicans. Most of them would, of course, be alumni of the Bush Administration. The Deputy Under-Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under Bush would probably be the Under-Secretary under McCain, and so on up and down the line.

Why is this a problem? Because the Bush Administration has broken all previous records for managerial incompetence and corruption. In every department, from Homeland Security (remember FEMA during Katrina?) to Justice (waterboarding, anybody?) to, wait for it, Housing and Urban Development (the secretary just resigned in disgrace), the Bushies have combined ideological extremism with managerial mediocrity or worse.

So you may think that, in voting for McCain, you'd get a nice, center-right administration. But you'd likely be getting the same kind of losers, morons, and crooks who staff the present, soon-to-be-not-widely-missed Bush Administration.

Labels: Bush, McCain, politics

Here's why I think Mitt Romney is the worst of the Republican candidates running for president right now:

The conventional take on Romney is that he's a flip-flopper. Romney used to be reliably moderate on social issues - reliable enough that he was elected governor of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the country. Then, when he decided to run for president as a Republican, he flip-flopped, undergoing an instant conversion to a right wing orthodoxy that denies women's right to choose, gay people's right to marry, etc. So good so far...

But here's what I want to know: Given that Romney is an observant Mormon, and given Mormonism's general hostility both to women's rights and gay rights, how did Romney come to his "original", moderate positions. To put it another way, do we even believe that Romney was a moderate in the first place?

I would argue that Romney's original "flip-flop" was the one he made in order to position himself to run for governor of Massachusetts. So, this most recent ideological back-track is really the second one in his relatively brief political career.

I can live with politicians who use questionable tactics to reach admirable goals (like FDR). I can even live with, though not support, politicians who fervently hold beliefs that I find objectionable (Mike Huckabee). I can't live with Mitt Romney, a politician who doesn't really have any personal beliefs, just positions that change based on the electorate to which he happens to be pandering at any particular point in time.

Labels: Mitt Romney, politics