When I heard in the wake of the Tucson shootings that Jim Clyburn had said something about bringing back the “Fairness Doctrine” (the long-lapsed FCC regulation requiring that broadcasters offer “equal time” to controversial political content), I literally groaned aloud. “Oh God,” I thought, “that’s all it will take to keep that conspiracy theory alive for another year or two.”
Sure enough, Rush Limbaugh and company were off to the races, as reported by Politico‘s Keach Hagey:

When some liberals called for reining in harsh political rhetoric after the Arizona shootings, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) took it one step further. He called for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, in what was widely considered an attempt to clamp down on talk radio.
A week later, those calls have abated, and no one is seriously pursuing the idea of returning to the long-defunct policy, which required media on the public airwaves to present both sides of controversial political issues. Not Clyburn, not another Democrat who echoed his call for regulatory remedies, Rep. Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), and not the Federal Communications Commission, whose chairman opposes reinstating the policy.
But you wouldn’t know it from listening to conservative talk radio.
Conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are rallying their listeners with a very old — and very successful — battle cry, accusing the left of trying to curb their free speech.
“So believe me, I wouldn’t be surprised, folks, if somebody in the Obama regime or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressperson has already written up legislation to stifle and eliminate conservative speech, and that legislation is sitting in a desk drawer someplace just waiting for the right event to clamp down because that’s what all this is,” Limbaugh said Monday, in his first show since the shooting. “And every time an event like this happens, they get into a trial run in hopes that this is the one that they can succeed in shutting us all down.”
This theme remained a constant on talk radio, conservative blogs and Fox News throughout the week….

Never mind that the “threat” is totally not-happening. Never mind that even if the Fairness Doctrine were brought back, it would involve “equal time,” not the suppression or elimination of conservative gabbing. Never mind that even in that remote contingency, it would only apply to the increasingly less-dominant broadcast media, not to “speech.” And never mind that when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect, there was plenty of conservative advocacy abroad in the land.
Rush’s lurid suggestion that the Obama administration was looking for “the right event to clamp down” and that Clyburn was cleverly and with vast secret backing conducting a “trial run” by bringing the subject up represented a bit more than the now-habitual effort to make purveyors of extremist rhetoric the victims of the Tucson tragedy. He was stopping just short of the analogy which you can see in comment threads all over the right-wing blogosphere: that “the Left” is looking for a “Reichstag Fire” with which to justify a totalitarian takeover of the country, just like you-know-who did back in 1933.
No informed and sane conservative believes this crap, even for a moment. But Rush and Glenn and Sean–not to mention the authors of countless viral emails shrieking about the Fairness Doctrine for at least two years now–play with fears of imminent totalitarianism regularly, and it’s about time folks on the Right called them on it. Aside from unnecessarily scaring the folks who hear and trust this stuff, it must be noted that such fearmongering has the collatoral effect of stimulating the sort of insurrectionary sentiments that genuine totalitarian threats might legitimately raise. And it’s an especially bad time to be doing that.

It’s noteworthy that the annual holiday set aside to commemorate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King has come this year immediately after a horrific act of violence in Arizona, and at the end of a brief and not very edifying debate over the relationship between violent political rhetoric and actual violence.
Unfortunately, most conservative activists probably aren’t much in the habit of reflecting on the teachings of MLK. Some appear to think that “color-blindness” was his enduring legacy; others, that he is simply a historical figure who contributed to the dismantlement of Jim Crow, and is not terribly relevant today. I vividly recall seeing posters around Denver during the 2008 Democratic Convention (erroneously) claiming MLK as a Republican. Above all, many conservatives–along with millions of liberals, moderates, and non-political folk–probably think of MLK Day as simply an ethnic holiday for African-Americans.
You might imagine that some of MLK’s writings that were addressed to the conservatives of his day–say, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, or Paul’s Letter to American Christians, would be useful reading right now. But contemporary conservatives are not at all in the same psychological space as their forebears in the 1950s and 1960s, who were defensively protecting an unjust status quo on grounds that it represented a lesser of evils or a condition best left to fade away slowly. No, for the most part today’s American Right is in a counterrevolutionary mood, viewing the status quo as representing the intolerable consequences of liberal policies and political victories.
But for that very reason, ironically enough, King’s many injunctions to the progressives of his day to strictly eschew violence, stand for the universalist principles of America’s civic and religious traditions, and seek reconciliation rather than self-righteous vengence, seem more appropriate reading material for the Right than for the Left (though the latter need constant reminders as well).
Now it’s true that most conservatives have never embraced violence as a means to the changes they seek in public policies, and that many are careful to avoid demonization of opponents or appeals to “higher laws” that sometimes are used to justify violence or other extraordinary measures. While they may sincerely believe that lower taxes on “job-producers” or a scaling-back of the New Deal and Great Society safety net or war with Iran and North Korea are essential to America’s future, they don’t necessarily view those who disagree with them as un-American or illegitimate.
But there’s simply no denying that there has been a significant rise on the Right in just the last few years in the numbers of those who may not openly advocate domestic violence, but defend the recourse to violence as a trump card in the defense of what they view as immutable principles of governance, economics and national security; that’s the unavoidable meaning of talk about “second Amendment remedies” and secession, or of liberals as “a Terrorist Fifth Column” or as “looters.” And that’s in addition to those conservatives who believe legalized abortion is an ongoing “Holocaust” defended by the latter-day equivalents of the Nazis, or that separation of church and state represents persecution of Christians and an attack on civilization itself.
To those on the Right who are flirting with violence and hatred even if they cannot justly be accused of abetting hate crimes, a good immersion in King’s writings would be a very good idea. And a good place to start might be what King had to say on the power of nonviolence:

[T]he nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding.

Nonviolence doesn’t always “work” to achieve immediate social or political objectives. But it does always provide a safeguard against the blindness and bitterness that hatred sows when civic conflict becomes war and opponents become enemies.

On the very day when Republicans are in the process of dumping their African-American party chairman, word comes from South Carolina (via Jon Chait) that Newt Gingrich is stressing the need for a massive outreach to minority voters.

The midterm win wasn’t enough and Republicans need to aim for winning 40 more House seats and 12 or 13 more Senate seats in the next election, Gingrich said to a crowd at the Marina Inn at Grande Dunes.
“If you’re going to govern in 2013, you’re going to need a really large margin,” he said.
To do that, Republicans need to spend at least 30 percent of their time campaigning to black, Hispanic and other minority communities and emphasize lowering taxes instead of social programs such as welfare.

Quite appropriately, Chait found it hilarious that Gingrich thought Republicans weren’t spending enough time talking about tax cuts.
But it’s a sign of Newt’s myopia that he doesn’t seem to think there’s anything about the GOP’s messaging that might represent a bar to a better performance among minority voters.
Totally aside from Newt’s trumped-up “lowering taxes instead of welfare” choice, minority voters just don’t agree with the fundamental premise of GOP rhetoric that too much government is threatening the country, as noted recently by Ron Brownstein in a column on exit poll findings:

Minorities were almost exactly twice as likely as whites to say that life would be better for the next generation than for their own; whites were considerably more likely to say that it would be more difficult. And on a question measuring bedrock beliefs about the role of government, the two racial groups again registered almost mirror-image preferences. Sixty percent of minorities said that government should be doing more to solve problems; 63 percent of whites said that government is doing too many things that would be better left to businesses and individuals.
The irony in these results is that minorities expressed more faith in both the future and the government than whites did, even though the recession has hit minority communities harder.

And beyond this very different set of perspectives, minority voters aren’t likely to get friendlier with a party that is in the habit of (a) blaming the housing and financial meltdowns on shiftless poor and minority families who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford; (b) screaming about non-existent “voter fraud” any time there’s an effort to help minorites exercise their right to vote; and (c) treating the first African-American president as a dangerous extremist who is consciously betraying the U.S. Constitution.
I’ve never quite shared the assessment of Newt as some sort of strategic genius, but maybe that’s because I’ve been watching him since he was a flaky history professor running to the left of a Democratic congressman in two straight elections back in the 70s.
Still, if Newt and other Republicans are serious about increasing their share of the minority vote, they need to understand that spending more time saying offensive things to minority voters ain’t going to get the job done.

So the Republican National Committee is holding its regularly-scheduled chairmanship election today, and controversial incumbent Michael Steele is almost certain to lose. The question for Republicans is how embarrassing the whole scenario will turn out to be. After all, Steele is a symbol of alleged GOP diversity, and after all, the party did rather well under his leadership.
But it’s also a bit difficult for Republicans to pose as champions of fiscal probity when their national commitee seems to be constantly struggling with money issues fed by questionable spending practices, and without question, some GOPers fear Steele’s camera-friendly visibility, particularly since he’s prone to gaffes.
The front-runner to replace Steele (after a complicated series of ballots) has become Wisconsin Republican chairman Reince Priebus, but he’s been hit with a last-minute rumor campaign suggesting he’s a “plant” by potential presidential candidate Haley Barbour, himself a former RNC chief. This development underlines the sort of internal problems Republicans are going to face in a wide-open presidential cycle where everyone at every moment is suspected of carrying the water for a would-be Chief Executive.
If you are interested in following the RNC decision, I’d recommend you keep an eye on Dave Weigel’s blog at Slate; he’ll be covering it all in detail.

Back in early December, when all the talk was about progressive unhappiness with the president’s decision to cut a deal with John Boehner on the extension of Bush tax cuts, Gallup seemed to offer some empirical evidence that Obama was paying a price with self-identified liberals’ support:

Liberal Democrats remain strong supporters of President Obama, but their approval of the job he is doing has fallen noticeably since the midterm elections. For the first time, it dropped below 80% in the week after the announcement of the tax deal he brokered with congressional Republicans.

Well, whatever was going on then seems to have been an outlier or just a momentary blip. In the last Gallup presidential job approval tracking poll (January 3-9), liberal Democratic job approval ratings for Obama were back up to 87%. And in case you think that poll picked up some sort of backlash to the Tucson tragedy, Obama’s job approval rating among liberal Democrats was even higher, at 91%, the week of December 20-26. Among self-identified liberals in general, the relevant support is at 76%, as compared to 69% in December 6-12. How about African-Americans? 93% now, as compared to 84% in December 6-12.
If there was ever some sort of trend indicating that disgruntlement with Obama was spreading from progressive elites to the rank-and-file “base,” it’s gone away, which should cool the jets of those folk who so recently were calling for a left-bent primary challenge to the president in 2012.

In discussing the 2012 presidential campaign, I’ve been a bit disrespectful of the odds for Republican dark horses who may be big time players in Washington or in the eyes of pundits, but do not exactly walk tall in the places that actually determine presidential nominations.
Now comes Dave Weigel with a timely reminder of just how slowly this presidential cycle is getting underway compared to the situation four years ago:

Here’s a list of all the candidates who had at least announced exploratory committees by this day, four years ago, in the last cycle. I’ve put the details for candidates who did something else — announcing a bid without an exploratory committee, or confirming they’d run — in parentheses.
April 17, 2006: Mike Gravel (announcing a full-on campaign at the National Press Club)
October 30, 2006: Duncan Hunter (announcing he’d retire from Congress and run for president)
November 9, 2006: Tom Vilsack (announcing a full campaign)
November 13, 2006: Rudy Giuliani
November 15, 2006: John McCain
December 4, 2006: Sam Brownback
December 7, 2006: Bill Richardson (telling Fox News “I am running”)
December 15, 2006: Tommy Thompson
December 19, 2006: Jim Gilmore
December 26, 2006: John Edwards
January 3, 2007: Mitt Romney
January 7, 2007: Joe Biden (announcing his intention to create a committee, on Meet the Press)
January 11, 2007: Chris Dodd (announcing a full-on run on Don Imus’s show), Ron Paul

You can soon add another name to that list: Barack Obama announced his exploratory committee four years ago this Sunday.
When Weigel published his post earlier this week, the number of 2012 Republican candidates who had set up exploratory committees was a nice round zero. Yesterday Georgia-based conservative talk show host Herman Cain became the first to set one up.
Now it’s true the number of candidates in the 2008 cycle was inflated by the open presidency, but still, there were 6 Democrats and 8 Republicans in the field by this time in 2007. (For those who think 2008 was atypical, consider 2004; at this point eight years ago, Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman were already announced candidates, while John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards had set up exploratory committees).
It’s not as though the nominating process has become more langorous since then. Yes, we had unusually early contests in 2008 thanks to threats to Iowa and New Hampshire’s duopoly, but those weren’t apparent yet when all those candidates started running, and nothing fundamental about the process has been changed since then. The 2008 Democratic nominee won Iowa and the Republican nominee won New Hampshire. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, we had the latest in a long list of failures of prominent candidacies that adopted the strategy of ignoring the early states and mopping up on Super Tuesday (Rudy Giuliani).
In other words, time’s a-wastin’ for 2012, and the only candidates who can afford to lie in the weeds are well-known retreads or national celebrities, such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin (you could probably add Ron Paul to the list if he runs once again). Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum are already heavily involved in quasi-candidate activity in Iowa, but that’s about it.
At some point soon, then, it will be time for the chattering classes to stop fantasizing about dark horses like John Thune, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence or Chris Christie, unless they get a move on and start making themselves much better known in the early states. That may be impossible for some of them. Some of my progressive buddies are convinced Christie’s going to be a formidable candidate, but I can’t quite see how a first-term governor will find the time to spend a year living in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina without his constituents getting a mite upset.
Moreover, each tick of the clock makes the task of all the dark horses that much harder.
Truth is, a lot of Republicans are less than excited about their potential 2012 field, and are talking up dark horses to make themselves feel better.
But soon enough, all the talk must end, and what you see is what you’ll get.

Today’s big political sensation seems to be a video released by Sarah Palin providing her presumably definitive commentary on the shootings in Tucson, the controversy over her PAC’s targeting of Gabby Giffords with what looked like a bullseye on her district, and the broader argument about the possible connection of violent anti-government rhetoric with acts of violence against government officials.
Most of the commentary on the video has focused on her use of the term “blood libel” to characterize accusations of conservative responsibility for the outbreak of violence in Arizona.
The term originally referred to persistent medieval claims that Jews were killing Christian children and using their blood for ritual purposes. Thus, it was suspected, Palin’s longstanding habit of appropriating every available symbol of victimization to illustrate the persecution of herself, her family, and her political supporters had reached a new low.
I personally think it’s more likely that Palin and/or her staff picked up on “blood libel” after it was used (and then endlessly linked to) by Glenn Reynolds in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday to turn the tables on liberal critics of violent conservative rhetoric. Maybe he knew the historical derivation of the term, but there’s no particular reason to assume Palin did; she probably thought, quite plausibly, that it referred to allegations of “blood on your hands” after an act of violence.
In any event, it’s not the “blood libel” reference that struck me about the speech, or the general, predictable effort to deny there was anything at all wrong or unusual about her and other conservatives’ rhetoric towards their political opponents. What was really interesting was how much Palin’s video was framed like a presidential address (disclosure: I borrowed this insight from The American Prospect‘s Mark Schmitt, who mentioned it in a private discussion), from its Olympian tone of reassurance right down to its “May God Bless America” closing. Viewed from this perspective, Palin’s self-exculpatory lines and the accusation of a “blood libel” seem more like a matter-of-fact statement of her viewers’ beliefs than any angrily-intended counterattack against her alleged tormenters
Check out this altar call at the end:

Let us honor those precious lives cut short in Tucson by praying for them and their families and by cherishing their memories. Let us pray for the full recovery of the wounded. And let us pray for our country. In times like this we need God’s guidance and the peace He provides. We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to stifle debate.
America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy. We will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time, to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner, and to unite in the knowledge that, though our ideas may be different, we must all strive for a better future for our country.

Now there’s obviously some red meat tucked into this passage, with the references to “mindless finger-pointing” and “stifling debate.” But that’s not the central thrust, which was bascially to tell “her people” that they were on the side of the Tucson victims, not to mention the angels, and that their political activities were in the best traditions and interests of the country as a whole.
It’s as though she knew “her nation” wouldn’t listen to its dubious commander-in-chief, Barack Obama, when he speaks tonight, and felt it needed its own presidential address to calm fears and restate pieties.
If this is an accurate interpretations of her motives, then it’s a token of the depth of divisions facing America that we can’t unite even rhetorically except by proxy. And it’s also a sign of Palin’s own self-appointed role as not just one of many conservative leaders, but as the voice conservatives have been waiting to hear.