In reading Garance Franke-Ruta’s account of the Tribute to Tom DeLay dinner, which I just posted about, one name among the many attending the event jumped off the page: public-relations flack Craig Shirley, described as a “spokesman” for the dinner.As it happens, I recently read Shirley’s January 2005 book, Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All. In fact, the next issue of Blueprint magazine will include a review I wrote of that book and the much-better-known Before the Storm, Rick Perlstein’s study of the Goldwater campaign.Most non-conservatives looking at Shirley’s title will probably assume it’s about the 1980 campaign that signalled the conservative movement’s conquest of the GOP, and lifted Ronald Reagan to the presidency. But no: the book is about Reagan’s unsuccessful 1976 presidential effort, and as Shirley makes abundantly clear, that campaign, not Goldwater’s, was the defining moment for the younger wave of conservative activists who are now dominating the GOP and the Bush administration.Unlike Perlstein, Shirley is not a gifted writer or a particularly deep thinker, but he does cover the 1976 Reagan campaign in great detail and with considerable balance, despite his obvious intention to provide a sort of intra-movement scrapbook of the bittersweet moment that marked the transition of latter-day conservatism from noble futility to national power. And his account is replete with the names of minor campaign figures who later emerged as Washington big-timers, such as Haley Barbour, Charlie Black, Martin Anderson, and Ed Meese. Interestingly if not surprisingly, Shirley singles out Dick Cheney, then White House Chief of Staff, as both the most effective operative in Gerald Ford’s successful effort to turn back the Reagan drive, and as the one key figure in Ford’s circle who understood the conservative movement and its needs and goals.And while Shirley goes well out of his way to refute the revisionist belief of many conservatives that Reagan’s 1976 effort was ruined by his non-ideological campaign manager, John Sears, he also makes it clear that the Jesse Helms/Congressional Club zealots saved Reagan’s career by designing and managing the Gipper’s breakthrough victory in the North Carolina primary, and had the best strategy for prevailing during the Republican Convention.My Perlstein-Shirley review will focus on the dangerous belief of some Democrats that we should emulate the 1964 and 1976 conservative “noble defeats,” and one of my arguments is that Reagan’s survival in 1976 and his apotheosis in 1980 were far more fortuitous than anyone, including Shirley, seems to be willing to admit.Shirley does concede, and even emphasize, that if Reagan had lost the 1976 nomination early on, he would not have been a candidate in 1980. But he doesn’t really address the likelihood that a Reagan nomination in 1976 would have been equally ruinous to the actor’s political career, and perhaps to the conservative movement as well. For a whole host of reasons, Reagan would almost certainly have been a weaker candidate than Gerald Ford against Jimmy Carter in 1976. And by 1980, almost any Republican could have beaten Carter, given the condition of the country domestically and internationally.There’s no telling what a slightly different course of events might have meant for the conservative movement that now, in its maturity or senescence, depending on your point of view, finds itself lionizing Tom DeLay.

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth discussion in the news media and on the blogs about last week’s famous Tribute to Tom DeLay event. Some cynics have suggested that this kind of “tribute” is generally a sign that the tributee is about to get thrown to the sharks. But the intrepid Garance Franke-Ruta of The American Prospect did us all a favor by attending the dinner herself and providing a spin-free take on its meaning, and she’s quite sure the event represented a gesture of Conservative Movement solidarity with the Hammer, and implicitly a shot across the bow at any Republicans tempted to abandon him.

Now that John Bolton’s nomination as ambassador to the United Nations is heading to the Senate floor, albeit without a positive recommendation from the Foreign Relations Committee, Democrats have a fresh and final chance to make a case against him that doesn’t reinforce every GOP-fed stereotype about whiny “global test” liberals whose first concern is to placate “world opinion.” I understand the “Mean Man” argument was dictated by Foreign Relations Committee politics, and especially the need to give Republican waverers like Chafee and Voinovich a reason for opposing the nomination that did not involve a broad attack on Bush administration policies. But now, on the floor of the Senate, Democrats need to understand that this debate has implications beyond the question of whether or not Bolton gets his job. As Kenny Baer and I, among others, have argued earlier in this process, Democrats need to make a national security case against Bolton, and fortunately, there is a clear case to be made.I strongly urge everyone interested in the Bolton nomination to read a report by Michael Hirsch and Eve Conant that appeared in Newsweek last week. Through extensive interviews with current and past Bush administration officials, they learned that Bolton completely botched preparations for a critical five-year review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. They also cast new doubts about Bolton’s involvement in the one (if inadequate) big advance the administration has made in preventing nuclear terrorism, the Proliferation Security Initiative. In other words, as the point man for what Bush and Cheney have repeatedly called the most important front in the war on terror–the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists–Bolton has done a dangerously lousy job. He’s not just a Mean Man–he’s a Mean Man blinded by ideology and ambition from promoting the steps we need to take internationally to prevent a nuclear 9/11, or for that matter, a fully nuclear Iran and North Korea. And the question Democrats need to finally start asking on the Senate floor is why this administration has entrusted Bolton with this crucial responsibility, and why it is now insisting on making him our country’s most visible representative in world affairs. If that’s not enough of an argument to make, then maybe Senate Democrats should also raise a question about U.N. reform that barely got mentioned in the Foreign Relations Committee: does Bolton, and does the Bush administration, support or oppose the Annan Commission recommendation to amend the U.N. Charter to make it clear “sovereignty” does not extend to the right to commit genocide within one’s own borders? Given Bolton’s much-expressed contempt for risking any U.S. lives or dollars in preventing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo or Rwanda, it’s a very pertinent question as the debate over Darfur continues.

To the delight of the chattering classes of Washington, Andy Kohut’s fine folks at the Pew Research Center have released a new Political Typology study. It purports to divide the electorate into nine categories, with three each for Democrats, Republicans and “the middle,” though it turns out Bush won “middle” voters handily in 2004. Now you have to understand that political junkies love typologies like drunks love cheap whiskey. Why? Well, to be cynical about it, typologies make it easy to sound sophisticated about the deeper currents of political behavior, and the subtle but real differences between voters who in any given election may vote for the same candidate or identify with the same party. Moreover, typologies are often used to identify some hot new “swing” voter category that one party or the other is supposed to pursue or cherish: thus, the famous “soccer moms” of the 1990s and the “NASCAR dads” of more recent vintage.But there’s another feature of the new Pew study that’s creating some buzz: right there on the site you can answer 25 questions and find out which of the nine categories you supposedly fit into. And that’s where I began to lose a lot of confidence in Pew’s understanding of the electorate.Question after question, the survey lays out a long series of false choices that you are required to make: military force versus diplomacy; environmental protection versus economic growth; gay people and immigrants and corporations and regulations G-O-O-D or B-A-A-D. Other than agreeing with a proposition mildly rather than strongly, there’s no way to register dismay over the boneheaded nature of these choices. For the record, the Typology Test identified me as a “liberal,” probably because the only question on which I registered any strong feeling was about the need to treat homosexuality as an acceptable way of life. But I absolutely reject the idea that this test captures much at all of how I actually think about domestic and foreign policy issues, and several people I tend to agree with wound up being tossed into some other category. To be fair, the Typology Test does not include all the questions Pew used in the actual surveys on which the typology depends; the full questionnaire does at least get into more nuanced issues like the budget and tax policy, Iraq, Social Security and so forth. But still, it made me a lot less excited about the prospect of slogging through 119 pages of analysis of “Disadvantaged Democrats,” or “Enterprisers” or “Upbeats.”So all of you out there in political junkieland, do yourself a favor: before you start enthusing about the strategic implications of the Pew typology, take the test yourself and see if you think it helps identify types, or just stereotypes.

A remarkable amount of media attention has been devoted this week to an incident at a small Southern Baptist Church in Waynesville, North Carolina. That’s where a pastor, the Rev. Chan Chandler, known for strident sermons about the religious obligation of Christians to support George W. Bush allegedly tried to expel nine church members who objected to his politicization of the pulpit, and then resigned, apparently leading a group of “young adult” newcomers to the church towards some sort of split-off congregation, presumably to worship according to strict Republican principles.For those of you unfamiliar with the Baptist tradition, congregational and even denominational splits are hardly unusual. Baptists have angrily parted ways over the scripturally prescribed quantity of water to be used in baptismal fonts. Down in North Georgia, the ancestral church of my in-laws split over the issue of admitting divorced persons, with the “conservatives” opening a new church about half-a-mile away. An entire denomination, the Primitive Baptists (which two of my great-grandfathers served as ministers) developed out of an objection to the missionary activities of the Southern Baptists. These are not people who put a high premium on unity, and who traditionally resist any higher authority than the individual congregation communing with the lively Word of God.What’s ironic about the outcome of the East Waynesville saga is that the schismatic preacher in question represented the point of view that has gone a long way towards snuffing out that robust sense of Baptist independence.The “conservative” (i.e., biblical literalist and quasi-theocratic) takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that occurred during the 1980s involved a constant guerilla war against the independence of state Baptist Conventions, Baptist seminaries and colleges, and individual congregations. Its centralizing focus was alien to the historic ecclesiology of Baptists, much as its political agenda was alien to the historic devotion of Baptists to the principle of strict separation of church and state.To be sure, most “conservative” Baptist leaders have stopped short of the ultimate religio-political stance of anathemizing every single individual churchgoer who might be inclined to support the heathen Democratic Party, just as some “conservative” Catholic Bishops have so far failed to carry out their threats to deny communion to those who vote for pro-choice Democrats. Time will tell if Chan Chandler is simply a few steps further along the current trajectory of the Baptist wing of the Christian Right, or represents a flashing warning sign to those who have subjected the Gospel to the fortunes of the GOP.

The Democratic blogosphere has been abuzz this week over a giant batch of polls released by SurveyUSA measuring the approval/disapproval ratings of all 50 Governors (as of May 6-8). So far I haven’t seen anyone look at them from the perspective of Democrats in red states, but once you do it really leaps off the page. Here are the numbers for the twelve Democratic Governors of states carried by Bush in 2004, beginning with their ranking among the 50:(3) David Freudenthal WY (67/20)(6) Joe Manchin WV (64/24)(8) Janet Napolitano AZ ((59/32)(10) Brad Henry OK (59/30)(11) Brian Schweitzer MT ((58/27)(12) Kathleen Blanco LA (55/36)(13) Mark Warner VA ((55/31)(16) Kathleen Sebelius KS (54/34)(20) Bill Richardson NM (54/39)(22) Mike Easley NC (52/34)(23) Phil Bredesen TN (52/40)(25) Tom Vilsack IA (50/39)Amazing, huh? All 12 are in the top half of Governors, all have approval ratings of 50 or above, and all have solid approval/disapproval ratios.The other interesting optic I wanted to draw attention to is the ragged popularity of Republican Governors in the South. As regular readers of this blog know, one of my theories about Southern Republicans is that they don’t do as well in office as in opposition, which creates perennial opportunities for Southern Democrats even in the toughest terrain. Here are the rankings and numbers for Southern GOPers:(21) Mark Sanford SC (53/35)(24) Mike Huckabee AR (51/41)(28) Jeb Bush FL (49/46)(30) Sonny Perdue GA (47/40)(38) Rick Perry TX (38/48)(40) Haley Barbour MS (37/55)(41) Bob Riley AL (36/52)(43) Ernie Fletcher KY (36/50)If you add in the border state of MO, you also get:(48) Matt Blunt MO (33/57)None of these numbers, of course, guarantee future Democratic success in red states, but things are definitely looking up.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

With the retirement of my old boss Zell Miller, I thought perhaps his outrageous political behavior of the last couple of years would come to an end. I mean, what’s the point of insulting your party when nobody really cares any more? Ah, but it now appears the fires of Zell’s odd rage still burn: along with Sean Hannity, he will be the featured speaker at a fundraiser for none other than Ralph Reed, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, and the past master of hypocritical political sleaze.There is, of course, a peculiar historical echo here: Ralph’s very first campaign, before he got religion, and before his notorious stint as deputy to Jack Abramoff in the College Republicans, was with Zell Miller’s unsuccessful 1980 race for the U.S. Senate. Miller lost the Democratic runoff to incumbent Herman Talmadge, who basically beat Miller by calling him too liberal for Georgia. Ironic, huh?Ralph was no more than a little pissant in that Miller campaign, so I doubt this is a matter of discharging some ancient debt. No, Zell’s determined to play out his rightward tangent to such an extreme that absolutely everyone will forget that he was ever a fine, progressive Democratic Governor. He rationalized his endorsement of Bush last year as a patriotic act of gratitude for W.’s national security leadership; that’s ostensibly why his role at the Republican Convention was focused on swift-boating John Kerry’s defense record. Last time I checked, Ralph Reed’s national security resume was pretty much limited to the campaign of calumny against war hero Max Cleland that he orchestrated in 2002. When I worked for Zell, I often walked by a statue of the great populist Tom Watson on the State Capitol grounds. As the historically minded among you may know, Watson capped his career with a long descent into bitter right-wing demagoguery. Zell Miller seems to be following the same trajectory, even in retirement.

Over at &c, the New Republic’s blog, Reihan Salam, who’s sitting in for Noam Scheiber, did a post today that I obviously can’t leave alone. Under the title, “Where Have You Gone, New Democrats?”, Salam cites one of those perennial Nation obituaries for the DLC (they’ve been publishing them for twenty years), and then mourns at our grave since it would be nice if somebody in the Democratic camp had a strategy for dealing with the plight of low-income workers that’s a little broader and a lot more effective than pushing for “living wage” ordinances or demonizing Wal-Mart.The timing of this lament was interesting, insofar as my colleague The Moose, in his DLC-sponsored blog, made a similar case against Wal-Mart-o-phobia yesterday morning. And less than a month ago, our think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute published a well-regarded tax reform proposal by Paul Weinstein that included a super-charged version of the Earned Income Tax Credit, the longstanding New Democrat alternative to exclusive reliance on minimum wages as a strategy for supporting low-income working families.Salam refers to the New Democrat argument for a “win-win” society where wage subsidies are part of a national strategy to make our economy more competitive as though it were a relic of the distant past. Actually, the same argument can be found in virtually every issue of Blueprint magazine over the last three years, and more importantly, in the policy speeches of nearly every major Democratic candidate for president in 2004 (not to mention Tony Blair, who long ago adopted the DLC slogan of “expanding the winners’ circle”). “What we need is a national commitment to those who ‘work hard and play by the rules,'” says Salam. That message was, in fact, the centerpiece of John Edwards’ entire presidential campaign, in no small part because he completely incorporated the New Democratic approach to this issue. And the Kerry campaign pretty much adopted this approach after Edwards went on the ticket. Sure, the candidates should have talked about it a lot more, but they sure weren’t out there promoting “living wage” ordinances or other purely employer-based strategies for helping the working poor.The bottom line is that we New Democrats are still around, and still promoting ideas that pursue progressive goals in ways that make sense in the real world of politics and policy.I suggest that Reihan spend less time on the Nation’s site, and more time at ours, and other New Dem sites, like NDN and Third Way, if he wants to feel less lonely.

As some of you may recall, the central premise of JFK, Jr.’s magazine George, that great curiosity of 1990s political journalism, was that cool young people could only become interested in the uncool topic of politics if the subject was addressed through the eyes and voices of popular culture celebrities. And there was, to be fair, a genuine earnestness to Kennedy’s endeavor which tempered the horror people like me experienced during every exposure to George‘s Let’s-Learn-Civics-From-Supermodels modus operandi.Mixing celebrities with political journalism is one thing. But now, the same idea has invaded the quintessentially uncool arena of the blogosphere, and I must ask: Is nothing sacred?I am speaking of Arianna Huffington’s mammoth new group blog posted on her new Drudge o’ the Left site, the Huffington Post.There’s no question at all that Arianna is the perfectly appropriate impresario for the advent of Celebrity Blogging, since she has never shown any notable comprehension that political opinion is about anything other than self-promotional shouting gussied up with generic Mediterranean glamor. And indeed, it’s not clear from what’s she said about the new blog that she realizes her responsibility for ushering in a rough and unnatural beast that may signal the Last Days. According to Howard Kurtz’s column in the WaPo today, it sounds like La Huffington thinks she’s performing a sort of public service for Famous People:

“The great thing about blogging is that your thoughts don’t have to have a beginning, middle and end,” says Huffington, arguing that famous people are usually too busy to craft an op-ed piece. “You can just put a thought out there in the cultural bloodstream.”

Gee, what a great compliment to all us bloggers: our medium fosters the kind of incoherent rambling that Hollywood types can toss off between drinks, between photo shoots, or between divorces. The New York Times Op-Ed page’s loss is our gain.

I couldn’t bear to stay on her site long enough to discover the full range of celebrity bloggers she’s enlisted. Kurtz mentions Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Geffen, Rob Reiner, Albert Brooks, Bill Maher, Larry David, David Mamet, Normal Lear, Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin. They are, at least by reputation, a fairly cerebral bunch when it comes to their own craft. But anyone who’s familiar with the long, sad history of artists and intellectuals who embrace stupid and sometimes evil political causes of both the Right and the Left knows that the ability to write, direct or perform a witty screenplay is often associated with the most tedious and tendentious political views.

Huffington’s initial posts show she is not limiting her blog to Hollywood celebrities; non-Hollywood celebrities (e.g., Walter Cronkite, Arthur Schlesinger) have been invited to the dinner party as well. Moreover, she’s coralled a few legitimate political journalists like David Corn of The Nation, and Byron York of National Review, who’s presumably an acquaintance from the days before Arianna effortlessly shifted her allegiance from the orthodoxy of the Far Right to that of the Far Left.

But this diversity worries me even more. Will non-celebrities in the midst of all this glitter be seduced and drawn into the preening world of their new blogging friends? Can we expect David Sirota to do an ironic turn on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm?

On behalf of all us unglamorous bloggers toiling away in our basements each night, I think it’s time to draw a line in the sand, and embrace our non-celebrity as a Basic Value. We are not cool. Our idea of a chic cocktail party is a vicious argument about the bankruptcy bill at a cash bar in some shabby hotel conference room. We jet-set in the center seats of AirTran, and do not often fly over flyover country. We are the Punks of Punditry.

Yes, the blogosphere is open to all, even to celebrities, but I hope Arrianna’s venture is not as popular as I fear it will be. The pretty people of Hollywood already dominate so much of our culture; they should generally limit their political involvement to writing checks and waving from the wings at candidate rallies. If they are interested in blogging, let them create a Blogger’s Relief Fund or at least hire some ghost-bloggers to post for them.

Now that would be cool.

Well, having done earlier posts suggesting that Labour might actually lose, and that Labour might be headed for a landslide, I guess I’m not surprised to learn that the exit polls show something in between: a Labour majority, but reduced from 161 seats to 66. In terms of the popular vote, the exits have Labour at 37 percent, the Tories at 33 percent, and the Lib Dems at 21 percent. While the Labour and LibDem percentages are exactly what the final polls suggested, the Tories did about 6 points better. More importantly, a Tory strategy of focusing most of their resources on marginal seats seems to have paid off, since they seem to be winning a much bigger chunk of the lost Labour seats than the LibDems.But in a campaign full of surprises (despite much voter apathy), we’ll have to wait for the final numbers to see what really happened.