Today’s big buzz in Washington is over BC04’s latest ad attack on John Kerry, an early Halloween treat called “Wolves.” You can check it out yourself, but the basic idea is to charge Kerry and “Congressional Liberals” of trying to gut intelligence funding “after the first terrorist attack on America” amidst footage of a pack of wolves in a murky forest. It’s not a hundred percent clear whether the wolves are supposed to represent terrorists or liberals, but I doubt the president’s wizards really care.
Opinions are mixed about the Scare Value of the spot. Bruce Reed watched it a couple of times and said, “I dunno. After a while those wolves start looking kind of cuddly.” Maybe they should have focused-tested it with some toddlers to make sure they didn’t point at the screen and gurgle “Doggie!”
But there’s no doubt that the content of the ad is unbelievably dishonest, as Josh Marshall explains in a recent post. The ad clearly intends to suggest that Kerry’s dastardly assault on terrorist-hunting spooks occurred after 9/11. Turns out the reference is to a vote in the mid-90s, after the first attack on the World Trade Center. And Kerry’s proposal was to take back some funding that intelligence agencies were refusing to spend, at a time when he and other Democrats, including President Bill Clinton, were struggling to do something about budget deficits. And far from this being a “liberal” preoccupation, Republicans in the Senate passed a motion cutting intelligence funding at about the same time. It makes you wonder: is Zell Miller now in charge of writing Bush ad scripts?
The real irony, of course, is that Bush has been dragged kicking and screaming into what little effort he’s made to improve our intelligence efforts after 9/11. When it comes to fighting terrorists with better intelligence, the incumbent can best be described as a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

I really, sincerely, appreciate those kind readers who reacted to my post on Bush’s heretical leanings by emailing me to dispute this or that definition of Symbolism or Pelagianism, or to let me know that the Second Vatican Council overruled the Tridentine definition of Protestantism as a heresy. But before I get attacked by the Methodist Anti-Defamation League, or Fox News cites NewDonkey in a piece on Democratic hostility to born-again Christians, I should probably make something real clear:
IT WAS A SATIRE. A REALLY LONG JOKE. OKAY, MAYBE TOO LONG.
Truth is, I’m not a canon lawyer. Actually, I’m not a Roman Catholic; I’m a Protestant myself, though I do have a pronounced weakness for incense and chant and Jesuit logic. I wrote the post in about an hour, without benefit of clergy. Maybe I should have quoted Father Guido Sarducci to make the joke a little clearer.
To the extent I was trying to make any serious points, they were (a) the inquisition of John Kerry’s religious views by some conservatives is remarkably one-sided, with everybody taking it for granted that the president is a veritable Tower of Faith; yea, verily, of Everybody’s Faith, Catholic and Protestant alike; and (2) in this country at least, Christian controversy seems to be about nothing other than sexual ethics, instead of the old-fashioned arguments over the nature of God, the divine order of the universe, and the appropriate manner of worshipping one’s Creator, which is what Christians fought and often died over for most of the last 2,000 years. I’m glad we’re not burning each other any more, but I’m not sure the shift in emphasis from God to us is an improvement.
But in any event, to anyone who was somehow offended by the humorous treatment of religious subject-matter, I offer a perfect act of contrition, if not a firm purpose of amendment. Which reminds me of a great Methodist joke (for all I know, it may be the only Methodist joke):
Two friends, one Baptist, one Methodist, agreed to attend each other’s church. The first Sunday they worshipped with the Baptists, and the Methodist asked a few pertinent questions about the choice of hymns, the purpose of the large baptismal font, etc. The next Sunday, after the Methodist service, the Baptist told his friend he had just one question. “Who’s this John Wesley you keep talking about?” The Methodist, visibly shocked, replied: “Who’s John Wesley? Read your Bible, man! Read your Bible!”
Thus endeth today’s lesson.

Catholics aren’t the only faith community being urged to vote for George W. Bush as an act of group loyalty. Republicans have spent a lot of time telling Jewish Americans they owe the incumbent a vote because of his staunch support for an embattled Israeli government.
This is a Republican pitch that dates back to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, in which Karl Rove cut his teeth. And indeed, Republicans were making some slow progress in reducing Democratic margins among Jews until the administration of Daddy Bush, whose Secretary of State, James Baker, oversaw a Middle East policy that seemed, well, like about what you’d expect from a guy who thought about oil 24-7 (it’s no accident that Baker has been relegated to the role of political fixer by Bush the Younger).
But what the hey, you can’t blame BC04 for giving the political conversion of the Jews the ol’ college try. They are, after all, working uphill against a mistrust of the political Right–and especially of the theocratic political Right–among Jews that was earned over a millenium or so.
Proving once again that nobody even remotely connected with the president’s re-election effort can stay positive for any length of time, the ever-angry conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer today tossed a real screwball into the discussion: John Kerry’s going to sell out Israel!

This is, shall we say, a rather counter-intuitive argument. Kerry, after all, has a twenty-year record in the Senate of unflinching support for Israel; even Zell Miller wouldn’t dare claim otherwise. Two of Kerry’s grandparents were Jewish. His one significant difference of opinion with the incumbent on Israeli-Palestinian issues is that he has promised to become more personally involved.
Krauthammer’s reasoning can be boiled down to this: Kerry wants to make nice with Europeans. Europeans don’t like Israel. Thus, Kerry will “sacrifice Israel” in order to make his Euroweenie buddies feel all warm and cuddly inside. Open and shut case, all right.
To be fair, Krauthammer isn’t necessarily singling out Kerry for abuse. As his long-time readers know, he pretty much suspects everybody, including most Israelis, of a conscious or subconscious willingness to betray Israel. Perhaps this is just an occupational hazard of being a psychiatrist-turned-pundit. Or maybe it’s an example of the old saying that if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But Krauthammer’s argument is not exactly bolstered by his bitter tangent blasting Bill Clinton for his willingness to negotiate with Yasir Arafat. I know it’s been a while, but if I remember correctly, Clinton agreed to deal with the blood-stained old kleptocrat precisely because that’s what every Israeli government of the period wanted him to do. And Clinton was, and remains, very popular among Israelis, who haven’t quite bought Krauthammer’s line that the 42d president was working hard to sell them down the river.
In any event, GOPers would be well advised to stick to the positive case for Bush’s Middle East policies, as part of a positive case for Jewish support. Rabbi Daniel Lapin of the American Alliance of Christians and Jews recently argued (in a piece optimistically entitled American Jews Will Support Bush!) that support for Israel “springs from the heartland of the United States as a reflection of the deep commitment to Judeo-Christian values felt by so many people in the United States. President Bush personifies that commitment which is starting to make so many Jews feel comfortable with his party.” Yes, it’s yet another argument that seeks to identify Bush with qualities properly attributed to the country as a whole–a claim that would be a bit more compelling if he were not a deeply divisive president waging a deeply divisive campaign for re-election. But at least the Rabbi isn’t trying to smear John Kerry–and by implication, every Democrat–for anti-Zionist sentiments so secret that they don’t even exist.

As Steve Waldman explains in a beliefnet.com article, there’s evidence in a new Pew Poll that Catholic voters–for whom Karl Rove lusts like the faithful lust for righteousness–may be shifting towards their co-religionist John Kerry, despite, or perhaps even because, of the highly visible efforts of some conservative bishops to instruct otherwise.
Here at NewDonkey, of course, I’d like to think my recent analysis of George W. Bush’s heretical leanings is responsible for the shift. But that would be an example of what beneficiaries of a solid Catholic education surely recognize as a post hoc ergo propter hoc (“after this, therefore because of this”) logical fallacy, similar to the error in reasoning made by those who credit the President’s foreign policies for the failure of al Qaeda to strike the United States since 9/11.
As for the theory that Catholics are returning to the party of the earlier JFK, we’ll know on November 2, when the votes are in and res ipsa loquitur (the facts will speak for themselves).

I observed in a post the other day that when Republicans talk about “voter fraud,” they are typically not talking about illegal voters or ballot-box stuffing, but about perfectly eligible voters who fail to figure out and overcome official acts of incompetence or malice, such as complicated ballots and registration forms, voter registrar errors, or poorly advertised changes in polling places.
Leave it to George Will to offer a High Tory rationalization for this shoddy way of thinking about the right to vote. In his WaPo column today, Will suggests the belief that eligible voters should get every benefit of the doubt in registration and vote-counting decisions is emblematic of the “liberal” refusal to understand that rights carry responsibilities.
This is pretty rich coming from a columnist who recently penned an obsequious ode to the power and glory of the NRA, an organization notable for its belief that the right to bear arms is absolute, excluding even the most common-sense safety limitations, even if there’s a little collateral damage now and then in terms of kids killed by gun accidents or square citizens blown away by crazy people.
Hypocrisy aside, Will’s “rights and responsibilities” rap on voting doesn’t pass the smell test. Burdening the exercise of fundamental rights of citizenship with “responsibilities” that don’t contribute to any positive public good is a very dangerous practice. Sure, voters could spend days doing research into stupid ballot designs, redundant requirements for proof of eligibility, changes in precincts and voting locations, “provisional” ballot rules, redistrictings and (in Texas, at least) re-redistrictings, and every other official decision that might affect their votes. But who, exactly, would suffer from safeguard measures aimed at ensuring to the maximum extent possible that eligible voters get to express their actual intent? Incompetent election officials? Partisans interested in suppressing certain categories of votes? Republican candidates for office?
Will sniffs that “voter carelessness” should righteously bear the “condign punishment of an unrecorded preference.” Who is he to say what represents “voter carelessness?” I personally think people who vote for George W. Bush because they think he’s kept America safe from another terrorist attack are being pretty damn “careless,” but you don’t see me trying to impose actual knowledge of the president’s record as a “responsibility” that must be discharged before they exercise their right to vote.
Back when conservative columnists set higher standards for themselves, William F. Buckley, Jr., used to frankly argue for “placing potholes” between voters and the ballot box on grounds that a restricted franchise would yield a more determined and educated electorate. That was an honest, if benighted viewpoint. If George Will agrees with it, he should say so, instead of claiming that clear and uniform policies aimed at letting voters vote are the civic equivalent of riotous libertinism. His own careless reasoning should earn him the “condign punishment” of a snort of dismissal.

Well, it’s now official, or perhaps I should say unofficial (since, like NewDonkey, the site is unofficially sponsored by the DLC). Marshall Wittmann’s deservedly notorious Bull Moose Blog is back up, and it’s good to see that he hasn’t lost his distinctive voice, or his ability to run crashing through the thickets of contemporary politics. I urge everybody who enjoys NewDonkey to visit the Moose early and often. After all, the Moose drives Karl Rove absolutely crazy, and strong traffic numbers may distract The Dark Lord of BC04 from whatever devilment he’s up to in the home stretch of this campaign.
In honor of Marshall’s inaugural posts, I have conjured up from the memory banks a bit of anonymous doggerel from the 1912 Teddy Roosevelt campaign that I read at some point during the last thirty years:
I want to be a Bull Moose
And with the Bull Moose stand
With antlers on my forehead
And a big stick in my hand.

Welcome to the Zoo!

As you may know, this presidential election has been roiled by claims from certain conservative Catholics–including a noisy minority of Bishops–that Catholics emperil their souls by voting for John Kerry, whose views on abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research allegedly divide him fatally from Church teachings, making him a self-excommunicated heretic.
Yesterday, according to the Catholic News Service, an unnamed Vatican official representing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addressed this argument by saying: “No, Kerry is not a heretic.”
Now that we’ve cleared that up, Catholics might want to apply a similar test to President Bush, whose campaign has made a mighty effort to convince Catholic voters they have a religious duty to vote Republican this year.
I don’t want to prejudge any official proceedings here, but a quick examination of the president’s professed beliefs create a strong suspicion that he is guilty of a number of heresies condemned by ecumenical councils and leading Catholic theologians over the last two millenia.
Although he does not appear to belong to any specific religious congregation, Mr. Bush has publicly identified himself as a “born-again Christian” of the Methodist denomination. He is thus presumptively an adherent of the Protestant Heresy, condemned most notably and definitively by the sixteenth-century Council of Trent. If so, Bush has implicitly embraced an array of subordinate heresies, including:
* Denial of the teaching authority of the Church (the basis, BTW, for questions about Mr. Kerry’s views on abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research).
* Bibliolatry (rejection of Church tradition as amplifying and interpreting scriptural authority)
* Symbolism (rejection of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist)
* Sacrilege (rejection of marriage, holy orders, penance, confirmation and extreme unction as valid Sacraments of the Church)
* Dishonoring the Mother of God (rejection of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception, Assumption and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
* Schism (rejection of papal authority and establishment of a separate ecclesiastical structure)
In addition, as a Methodist, Bush must be suspected of additional grave errors associated with the heresiarch and patron saint of that denomination, John Wesley.
* Pelagianism (belief in the perfectibility of human nature, suppressed in the 4th century by the Emperor Honarius, following the teaching of St. Augustine).
* Abandonment of the Apostolic Succession of Bishops (achieved when Methodists seceded from the Church of England)
Moreover, as Msgr. Ronald Knox argued in his influential 1950 book, Enthusiasm, Wesleyans reflect a persistant heretical tendency towards elevation of subjective experience in the pursuit of religious truth that links them to such widely varying heresies at Donatism, Hussism and Jansenism.
Finally, the President’s persistant “unilateralist” demand that the United States must enjoy a privileged and unique status with respect to the use of force specifically and international law generally raises some concern that he is guilty of the Americanist Heresy (the belief that this country’s special conditions require deviations from universal laws of faith and morals), condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1899.
If fidelity to the totality of Church teachings is supposed to be the sole test for voting behavior by Catholics, then perhaps the examination of conscience that some conservatives have urged on Catholics prior to entering the voting booth should extend to the highly suspect belief and value system of the incumbent.

Of all the deceptive claims being made by BC04 this year, the most shameless has to be Dick Cheney’s habit of darkly suggesting that a Kerry administration wouldn’t do anything to prevent nuclear terrorism.
The Bush administration’s record on securing nuclear materials to keep them out of the hands of terrorists is by any standard disgraceful. Prior to 9/11, the administration repeatedly tried to gut the Nunn-Lugar initiative, and succeeded partially, to the point that Sam Nunn had to go to Ted Turner and secure private funding for his efforts to deal with loose nukes in the former Soviet Union. After 9/11, the administration grudgingly allowed Nunn-Lugar to continue, but without additonal funding; meanwhile, there’s no evidence that Bush has even mentioned the subject in his various meetings with his buddy Vladimir Putin. To top it all off, the administration managed to invade the one rogue state that didn’t have a WMD program.
This is one subject where Kerry has been absolutely far-sighted and consistent for many years. He has gone into excrutiating detail in this campaign in outlining exactly what he’d do to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and materials, and exactly what the administration has failed to do.
So: where are all the media fact-checkers when Cheney calls a nuclear 9/11 the most important threat to our security, and says (as he did yesterday in Ohio) John Kerry can’t be trusted to even understand the threat, much less deal with it?
Of course, the media might be awakened from their sluggishness on this issue if the Kerry campaign responded by pointing out the two candidates’ records, instead of simply hitting the replay button and citing Kerry’s Vietnam service as proof of his toughness.
Today’s New Dem Daily makes the case that KE04 should start making if Cheney keeps up his Cassandra routine.

Anyone who’s paid any attention to this presidential election has heard repeated debates about whether the candidates should pursue “swing voter” strategies focused on persuasion, or “turnout” strategies focused on “mobilizing” or “energizing” the “base.”
There’s a rarely examined assumption behind this debate: that “peripheral” voters–those who might or might not turn out–are “base” voters. This assumption is, I suspect, intimately related to the age-old belief of liberal and conservative activists that non-voters don’t vote because they think there’s not enough difference between the parties. And this belief, in turn, stems from what I can only describe as a total myth: that there’s a “hidden majority” out there among non-voters for a more partisan and ideological candidate.
Today the DLC released an analysis of “peripheral” voters over the last three presidential cycles that shows pretty convincingly that they are (1) not that different from regular voters, (2) they are in fact closer as a group to classic, independent, swing voters, than to committed partisan voters, (3) they are less, not more, partisan and ideologically polarized than the electorate as a whole, and (4) they have to be persuaded, not simply “energized” or “mobilized” to vote.
The good news for Democrats is that peripheral voters tend to lean Democratic, and are in particular not attracted to culturally conservative wedge issues (that’s one reason the conservative myth of millions of Christian conservatives will flood the polls this year is just that –a myth). The cautionary news is that peripheral voters, who are relatively estranged from civic as well as political involvement, don’t particularly trust government. That’s yet another reason that Kerry and other Democrats need to counter the incessant GOP propaganda that they are “big government, tax and spend liberals.”
Since Kerry seems to be taking persuasion of swing voters more seriously than Bush, this analysis suggests the Democrat may have an extra edge on November 2 among peripheral voters in what is shaping up as a high-turnout election.

Two big new polls out, and here’s the really bizarre disparity in a year of bizarre polling disparities.
The latest New York Times/CBS poll has Bush’s approval rating at 44.
The latest WaPo/ABC poll has Bush’s approval rating at 54.
The first suggests that Bush is in the toaster, if not already toast.
The second suggests he’s in better shape than he’s been in months.
They cannot both be right.
If this sort of thing continues right up until Election Day, there’s gonna be a whole lotta crow on the menu of some pollsters the day after.