Today’s Washington Post has an article by Mike Allen that amplifies earlier reports that conservative activists and House GOP factotums are gearing up for a campaign to defend the embattled Tom DeLay, with a message that (a) all his troubles come from a liberal plot financed by George Soros, and (b) if DeLay goes down, the GOP and the conservative movement go right down with him. Point (a) especially amuses me, since, well, people like me and my employers, the DLC, have been as angry and outspoken about DeLay’s abuses of power as anybody, and personally, I haven’t come within shouting distance of a single Soros dollar, and few would describe the DLC as part of some vast left-wing conspiracy.But point (b) is more interesting, insofar as it suggests the DeLay mess may reflect more broadly on the ethical standards and priorities of the GOP and the conservative movement as a whole. And there’s a good argument they are right about that one. Who in the Republican Party, after all, complained about the Great Texas Power Grab of 2003, the DeLay-engineered re-redistricting scheme that led to one of his ethics problems, and to criminal indictments of some of his cronies? Who in the Republican Party has objected to the K Street Strategy, the DeLay-Santorum-Norquist campaign to force lobbying firms and trade associations to skew campaign contributions and staff hirings to the GOP or sacrifice access to bill-drafting? And up until now, who has drawn attention to the hyper-sleazy lobbying practices of close DeLay associates (and big-time GOP operatives) Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, whose Indian Casino Scandal may yet produce collateral damage among Republicans on a level not seen since Teapot Dome? More generally, how many Republicans have been willing to disassociate themselves from the whole Bush-era GOP fiscal/political strategy of hustling high-end tax cuts, corporate subsidies, and friendly legislation and regulatory actions in exchange for hard-line support for “our team?” Well, there’s John McCain, but the list grows short after that. So as we get further into Tom DeLay’s unhappy hour of scrutiny, it’s fine with me if his defenders get their way, and we review his record of leadership as indicative and exemplary for his party and his ideological soul-mates in this period of total GOP domination of the federal government. Let’s just all agree we are living in the DeLay Era of national politics, and let the chips fall where they may. As L’Affaire DeLay goes, so goes the nation? Deal.

Today is the 140th anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, which essentially ended the American Civil War.As a (white) child growing up in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s, I looked forward in history class to the tale of the Appomattox surrender, because it marked the end of the interminable period of time we spent studying–or more accurately, saturating ourselves in–the War Between the States each year. Indeed, such was the extent of our wallowing in the Confederacy that we rarely made it past World War I in American history.Far beyond elementary school, in the broader southern white culture I grew up in, there was an odd exultancy about Appomattox that had nothing to do with vicarious relief at the end of that brutal war. No, we drank in the details of Lee’s peerless dress and manner at the moment of surrender, and were encouraged to think of the shabby Grant’s generosity in victory as little more than the acknowledgement of a superior being–and a superior, if Lost, Cause. A Cause, moreover, that was about everything other than the ownership of human beings–about states’ rights, about agrarian resistance to capitalism, about cultured Cavaliers defending civilization against philistine Puritans, about Honor, about Duty.And that was the essence of Confederate Nostalgia in those days: a cult of romantic defeat, denial, self-pity and pride. I never quite shared it, even as a child, but never quite understood its pathological depths until its mirror images in Serbian and (some parts of) Arab culture became part of world events in more recent years. And remarkably, I get the sense Confederate Nostalgia is not only surviving, but perhaps even reviving among people too young to know its nature and political usages.So now, in many heated conversations with my fellow white southerners–and occasionally with Yankees who’ve been caught up by the Romance in Grey–I find myself insisting on an acknowledgement of the reality of the Confederacy, and its consequences for our home region.It was an armed revolution led by a planter class that could not tolerate restrictions on the “right” to transfer its human property into the territories.It was a “Cause” centered in the states most dependent on slavery, made possible by a secession bitterly opposed by poor white farmers in much of the region, and imposed on them by the narrowest of margins.It was a rebellion whose success entirely relied on the calculation that the people of the North would not sacrifice for abstactions like the Union and Freedom.Its inevitable defeat plunged the South and all of its people into a century of grinding poverty, isolation, and oligarchical government. Its heritage has been used again and again to justify racism and every other sort of reactionary policy.I look at Appomattox and see the end of a disastrous folly that killed over 600,000 Americans, maimed far more, and made life miserable for those of my ancestors who survived the Planters’ Revolt. No romance. No victory-in-defeat. Just carnage and destruction in a bad cause made no better by the good men whose lives and futures it claimed.It is far past time for southern pride–which I share to an almost painful extent–to attach itself to everything, anything, other than those four disastrous years that ended at Appomattox Court House.

With a very weird stretch of time marked by the Schiavo saga, the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, and even a Royal Wedding, it’s a good time to take stock of where things are politically.Things are not looking good for George W. Bush and his party. His approval ratings have sagged after leaping after the Iraqi elections. The famously disciplined GOP is divided over a whole host of matters, with the famously pampered conservative base as unhappy as it’s been in a long time.Bush’s main domestic initiative, his Social Security privatization push, has gone nowhere, after months of presidential hype. Senate Republicans seem to be waivering in their long-threatened determination to ram through Bush’s judicial nominations by outlawing filibusters. House Republicans are now indelibly identified with their Leader, Tom DeLay, who’s working hard to achieve Gingrich-level pariah status, even aside from his ethics recidivism and his growing enmeshment in the Abramaoff-Indian-Casino-Shakedown scandal. House and Senate Republicans are at odds on a whole variety of substantive and political issues, including the budget, which may never get resolved this year despite growing public worries about ever-escalating public debts. The economy is chugging along in low gear, but not much so you’d notice. What people are noticing is a continuing health care cost spiral, which the GOPers haven’t a single clue how to confront, and now a gasoline price spiral, which Bush energy policies would make worse.International affairs remain a relative bright spot for Bush, but now the post-election euphoria on Iraq has turned into another tense period of uncertainty, and the recent presidential commission report on the whole Iraq WMD issue has poured a few more gallons of cold water on the administration’s international credibility. Promising developments are still underway in Palestine and especially in Lebanon, but in neither arena is a dramatic pro-democracy, pro-peace breakthrough as likely as it appeared a few weeks ago.It probably won’t help Bush internationally that his next scheduled act is a high-profile confirmation fight over a proposed ambassador to the U.N. whose public record contains a string of obnoxious unilateralist comments as long as your arm. And to top it all off, his most important foreign ally, Tony Blair, is in a tough election fight; if Labour loses or simply loses a lot of ground, it will be almost entirely attributable to W.If you add it up, the president and his party appear to be in a whole heap o’ trouble, with no obvious relief in sight.This doesn’t necessarily translate itself into political gains for Democrats (more about that in near-future posts), but we can pretty much forget about the idea that Bush and company are off to a roaring second-term start.

In the midst of the shared ecumenical solemnity of Pope John Paul II’s funeral, it’s inevitable that the occasional ax-grinders have introduced a sour note of triumphalism. Here’s an example I happened upon at National Review’s group blog, The Corner, yesterday in the form of an email posted by my friend and occasional antagonist Ramesh Ponnuru:

WHAT A DIFFERENCE 27 YEARS MAKE. An email I got several days ago: “In watching the coverage, I’ve noticed something that you are too young to know about and no one else (to my knowledge) has commented on. When Pope Paul VI died (followed shortly after by the death of Pope John Paul I) commentary was sought, of course, from Protestant theologians and church officials. With one exception (Billy Graham), the Protestants invited to comment were associated with the mainline churches. They were National Council of Churches types. . . . In the past two days, I haven’t seen a single such commentator (of course, it is possible that I’ve missed one or more). Instead, the Protestant voices that are being presented–Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Richard Land, etc.–are all Evangelicals. This seems to be true, by the way, not simply on Fox, but on CNN, MSNBC, and the networks. This, I believe, is telling. For all intents and purposes, mainline Protestantism has become irrelevant in this country. It is more marginal today than evangelicalism was when John Paul II became the Vicar of Christ. [My emailer is Catholic–RP.] Even the secular liberal media types seem implicitly to recognize that the Protestantism that matters in this country now is evangelical. This is a real transformation.”

I cite this post because it reflects an observation that I hear very often from conservatives, especially those who aren’t themselves Protestants, or in many case, even Christians or believers in any creed: “liberal” mainline Protestants are headed for the dustbin of history, mainly because they don’t embrace a militant agenda of cultural conservatism, which is, of course, what Christianity is all about, right?The idea that mainline Protestantism is so “irrelevant” that even the “secular liberal” media have acknowledged it is an especially disingenuous argument. For decades, the news media ignored conservative evangelicals and pentecostal/charismatic Christians on the few occasions that they were forced to delve into religious issues. The same clueless producers (or their heirs) have now bought into the equally flawed proposition that people like Pat Robertson are exemplars of American Protestantism.For one thing, the line between “evangelical” and “mainline” Protestants is notoriously slippery. How do you classify the evangelical and mainline American Baptists and Disciples of Christ, or for that matter, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America? Are they simultaneously “irrelevant” and “the Protestantism that matters?”So let’s take the other distinction Ramesh’s correspondent used, and examine the statistical relevance of those Protestants affiliated with that great target of conservative abuse, the National Council of Churches. Hmmm. Seems the NCC is down to 36 denominations with just 45 million members.No wonder they can’t get any of their leaders on television.

After expressing puzzlement yesterday at the political value of the Alliance for Justice’s “Phil A. Buster” ads opposing the “nuclear option” on judicial nominations, I opened up today’s Washington Post, and there, in the Reliable Source column, was a photo of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) posing with some dude dressed up as Phil, the animated bullhorn. The caption directed readers to the “nifty cartoon” starring Phil and his little friends Check and Balanz. Several younger colleagues have let me know the “Save Phil” ‘toon is an effort to replicate the School House Rock genre of retro-chic educational animations from the ’80s and early ’90s. In other words, it’s an ironic knockoff of an ironic knockoff. Still haven’t found anybody who likes it, though one colleague said: “Sure, it’s awful, but we’ve been talking about it half the day, right?”

Curt Matlock of MyDD provided a link today to an ad that the Alliance for Justice (a respected liberal group that played a big role in the Bork confirmation fight back in the day) is planning to run on national cable and selected broadcast markets, in an effort to gin up the public against the “nuclear option” on judicial nominations.Matlock didn’t comment on the effectiveness of the ad, but take a look yourself, and see if you think a long animated spot featuring a talking bullhorn named Phil A. Buster, and his friends Check and Balanz (not to mention the Founding Fathers, described as “really smart guys”) is going to turn the tide. I do think the ad is likely to boost support for the filibuster among first-time voters in 2016 or so, but the deal will probably go down well before then.I know that some people don’t think Democrats should ever be critical of anybody on “our team,” and maybe the ad is one of those ironic, so-bad-it’s-good things that old goats like me don’t “get.” But I hope somebody’s working on an ad that operates on a slightly more literate level, if only to prevent those “really smart guys” who designed our system from rolling in their graves.

Earlier today Tony Blair called for the dissolution of Parliament and a general election on May 5. That’s right: one month from today, with the campaign actually not getting completely underway until after Pope John Paul II’s funeral on Friday and Prince Charles’ wedding on Saturday. So it’s basically going to be a three-week sprint to the wire, astonishing as that may seem to us Americans who are used to two-year marathons.Moreover, Blair’s announcement coincided with the release of a couple of national polls showing Labour’s margin over the Tories shrinking significantly. The Guardian/ICM poll has Labour at 37 percent, the Conservatives at 34 percent, and the LibDems at 21 percent, with a lot of indications of voter volatility. This is a bit misleading, since Labour enjoys a vote-distribution advantage that would convert these numbers into a parliamentary majority of somewhere between 90 and 100 seats, but it’s still likely to be a more competitive election than appeared likely just a couple of weeks ago.As many of you probably know, British party politics in the last few years have revolved around four dynamics: (1) significant public unhappiness with Blair’s foreign policies, and especially Britain’s role in Iraq, which have offset general approbation of Labour’s domestic, and especially economic policies; (2) the chronic weakness of the Tory opposition, which suffers from leadership and message problems that make the superficially similar problems of American Democrats pale in comparison; (3) the steady transformation of the LibDems, who used to be generally considered a centrist party, into a Left Opposition to Labour, especially on foreign policy and cultural issues; and (4) restiveness about Labour’s relatively long hold on power, which would become really remarkable if it wins a third straight general election.I don’t know how many NewDonkey readers are interested in British politics, but I do intend to blog about this semi-regularly between now and May 5. And while I will try to present objective analysis of what’s going on, I’ll disclose right up front that I am a Tony Blair and Labour partisan.No, I’m not happy with the moral and intellectual support that Blair has provided not just to George W. Bush’s foreign policies, but to Bush himself (every time they have a joint press conference, I half-expect Bush to respond to a question with: “What he said.”), but what do you expect from any British Prime Minister? I have zero doubts, and lots of reasons to believe, that 10 Downing Street would have been ecstatic at a Kerry victory last November, and that the U.S.-British alliance would have flourished as never before.But the bottom line is that on every key issue facing his country, our country, and the world, Tony Blair has an abundance of exactly what virtually all U.S. Democrats say a party of the center-left should have: a clear, articulate vision; a values-based progressive message that does not ignore collective security or cultural issues; and a full agenda for shaping change in the interests of most people, especially those with no privilege or power, even in places like Africa. He is also, of course, one of the few twenty-first century survivors among the wave of center-left politicians who won striking victories throughout the West in the 1990s, consigning, or so it seemed at the time, Reagan-Thatcher style conservative politics to the dustbin of history. And to the extent that left-leaning Labour activists (and their U.S. counterparts) with various issues with Blair hope Gordon Brown succeeds him as P.M. during a third term, let me add that I think Brown is a potentially great leader as well, and shares Blair’s New Labour vision more than a lot of observers realize. So I hope Labour wins, but will try to offer a few news items and insights on the campaign as it develops, and however it develops.

Whoever’s in charge of headline writing over at The Hill, the congressional insider tabloid, pulled off a minor masterpiece in today’s banner: “K Street Fears Nuclear Winter.” The accompanying article by Geoff Earle reports that business lobbyists are not exactly happy about Senate Republican threats to “go nuclear” with a procedural maneuver disallowing filibusters on judicial nominations, which Senate Democrats have promised to fight by making life a living hell for the GOPers by refusing to go along with routine Senate business.Sure, some business lobbies like the National Association of Manufacturers have pledged support for the GOP’s efforts to ram judicial nominees through the Senate, but this is really the Cultural Right’s fight. K Street potentates have been asking Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist to delay the confrontation on judges until later in the year, after they get some more goodies out of the Senate like the pending energy and highway bills.The longtime enforcer of conservative message discipline among the K Street crowd, our ol’ buddy Grover Norquist, told Earle the Gucci Shoes will eventually fall into line with the judge-bashing, bench-stacking Gospel.

Norquist said the lobbying community was “insufficiently” involved right now, “but they will be.” He noted that tort reform and the rulings handed down by state and federal judges were primary issues for buisiness groups.

Yeah, and not only that, but you better get in line if you want your own stuff from the administration and the Congress, right, Grover?Today’s edition of The Hill also features a gossipy item by Hans Nichols suggesting that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are arguing over the right way to frame (damn! George Lakoff is ruining a perfectly good verb!) the upcoming “nuclear option” fight, with Reid favoring a direct and narrow pitch and Pelosi wanting it to be part of a broader message about GOP abuse of power in Washington. House and Senate prerogatives aside, there’s a legitimate difference of opinion on how to handle this fight. I’m sympathetic to Reid’s apparent belief that it will take a focused and sustained message effort to get the public to understand, much less care about, a fight over Senate rules. But Pelosi’s absolutely right that it should be part of a broader reform message about a runaway Congress and federal government under iron Republican control. Indeed, that’s a message Democrats should hammer away on from now until November of 2006, no matter which particular abuse the GOPers are indulging in on any particular day.

I struggled all weekend to find something distinctive to say about the life and legacy of Pope John Paul II, and have a hypothesis to offer. In the end, what Karol Wojtyla will be most remembered for is not his role in the end of the Cold War, or the formidable windbreak he built against the storms of doctrinal change initiated by the Second Vatican Council. His most important legacy, I surmise, may be as the key transitional figure in the transformation of Roman Catholicism specifically, and Christianity generally, from a “Western” tradition rooted in Europe to a truly global faith centered in the South rather than the North.This may seem counter-intuitive, since this Pope was himself pre-eminently European, with a faith and outlook shaped by the twentieth century’s struggles against European totalitarianism, and a life that personified the destruction of the divisions between Eastern and Western Europe. Moreover, he went a long way towards healing European Christianity’s most shameful historical disease, its murderous intolerance of religious minorities, most notably Jews.Yet nearly everything about the powerful and perhaps irreversible trajectory he set for the Church points South, to the Third World, and away from Europe and the United States. Many obituarists of this Pope have struggled to categorize him ideologically as “conservative” on faith and morals yet “liberal” or even “radical” on issues of globalization, poverty and war, even as they acknowledge the unity of his own thinking.But these are Eurocentric ways of looking at his teachings, which may confuse and distress American Catholics and what’s left of the faith in Europe, but make perfect sense to most Catholics in Africa, Latin America and Asia.A deeply illiberal approach to issues involving sexuality and gender; a rejection of capitalism as a necessary counterpart to democracy; and an abiding hostility to U.S.-European political, military, economic and cultural hegemony: this is a consistent point of view with strong support in the global South, among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Indeed, in many respects what John Paul II represented was a living link between the pre-modern traditions of European Catholicism and the post-modern realities of much of the rest of the world.And in that respect, John Paul II was following, not just leading, the faithful. As will be pointed out often during the next couple of weeks, there is now a Southern majority in the College of Cardinals that will elect this pope’s successor. Most of the Church’s growth is in the South, or among southern immigrants to the North (most notably the Latin American immigrants to the U.S.). John Paul II’s peripatetic travel was notable not just in its pace, but in its scope, especially in Latin America and Asia. And it’s no accident that the short list for the successor to the first non-Italian pope in half a millennium includes serious candidates from outside Europe for the first time ever.Sure, John Paul II clamped down on the “liberation theology” popular in some elements of the Latin American clergy, and reined in some of the more exuberant liturgical experiments underway in Africa (as well as in the U.S.). But such actions should be understood as steps to consolidate the South’s position in the universal church, not as efforts to impose European norms.This is, of course, just a hypothesis, and perhaps I am being unduly influenced by the North-South struggle underway in my own faith community, the Anglican Communion, where African and Asian bishops are headed rapidly down a path that may soon lead to the isolation and/or expulsion of their U.S. and Canadian brethren, with the Church of England itself probably next in line for punishment for its “modernist” heresies.But the case for John Paul II as the crucial figure in the Roman Church’s non-Roman, non-European, non-American future seems more compelling to me than a lot of the competing interpretations. And this possibility should especially give pause to the American conservatives, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and irreligious, who are outdoing each other this week in viewing this pope’s legacy through the lens of their own cultural and political obsessions. This pope’s opposition to “American exceptionalism” invariably embraced opposition to the death penalty, to capitalist triumphalism, and to George W. Bush’s unilateralist foreign policies, as well as to abortion or birth control or the removal of feeding tubes from the hopelessly dying.Many conservatives accuse John Paul II’s American flock of practicing a “Cafeteria Catholicism” of selective obedience to Rome. But the American Right, I would argue, is practicing “Cafeteria Conservatism”–an equally selective interpretation of this pope’s teachings and legacy, which lead not Right or Left but South.

Pope John Paul II died today at 84. There will be much to say, and much said, about the life and legacy of this remarkable man, but for now: may he rest in peace.