In a column on the Rick Santelli rant against “losers” on CNBC and the excited reaction it received in conservative circles, Jon Chait offers this key insight about the instant mythology aroused by both Santelli and Joe the Plumber:

The only thing that separated Santelli’s rant from any other similar outburst that could be found on Fox News or talk radio was that it seemed to represent the vox populi. Santelli was not previously known as a right-wing ideologue–mainly because he was not known for much of anything–so he came across as a fed-up investor, just as Wurzelbacher initially cast himself as an undecided voter skeptical of progressive taxation. And Santelli was surrounded by actual people who dug his message, people he described (absurdly) as a representative sample of American opinion. His rant thus appeared like a genuine expression of popular revolt.

Interesting, then, that Santelli has since described himself as an “Ayn Rander.” Whatever else you think that allegiance represents (Chait notes that it certainly makes opposition to any sort of government relief efforts axiomatic), it ain’t “populism,” unless there’s some hitherto unnoticed popular enthusiasm for the ideas of privatizing the sidewalks or denouncing religion as “the mysticism of the mind.”
There does seem to be an interesting pattern here of self-styled conservative “populists” turning out to be people with some pretty marginal political associations. Joe the Plumber was recently registered to vote as a member of the now-defunct Natural Law Party, best known for its advocacy of transcendental meditation. Sarah Palin had a well-established friendly relationship with the Alaska Independence Party, itself affiliated with the far-right theocratic Constitution Party.
Men and Women In the Street may well harbor some strange views on some issues, but by and large they don’t choose to vote for or support tiny extremist parties or ideological movements, which is why they are tiny. Conventional conservatives should probably look a little more closely at their “populist” champions before designating them as representatives of vast undercurrents of public opinion that somehow aren’t reflected in actual elections.

Eve Fairbanks at TNR makes a pretty good observation about the anti-Obama tactics that Republicans have embraced since he officially became president: they are eerily similar to the anti-Obama tactics that the McCain-Palion campaign used unsuccessfully to try to keep him out of the White House in the first place.
Eve mentions the earmark-“pork” attack on the stimulus legislation, various “dramatic” gestures, and hilariously failed efforts to get cool with rock-laden videos intended to go “viral.”
But I think there are some other examples as well: the blame-the-poor reaction to Obama’s housing proposal; cries of “welfare” over Obama’s tax proposals, of “socialized medicine” over his health care proposals; and of “socialism” over his banking proposals. And you can’t help but think of McCain’s adoption of Joe the Plumber when viewing the current conservative mania for Rick Santelli
Moreover, it’s not so much that Republicans are imitating the McCain campaign as that the McCain campaign itself out of desperation embraced some of the longest-playing themes of the hard-core Right. Anyone who’s spent much time listening to conservative talk radio over the last couple of decades would find the rhetoric of both the McCain campaign and of today’s congressional Republicans depressingly familiar. They’re replaying some very old tapes here, and it’s clear they think they are timeless classics.

To a remarkable extent, the day-after commentary about the unanimous Republican vote in the House against the economic stimulus package has credited or blamed this development on Rush Limbaugh. Politico is actually devoting its rountable-format “Arena” today to the proposition that Limbaugh has become the de facto leader of the Republican Party. And earlier this week, Georgia Republican congressman Phil Gingrey was forced to make a humiliating retreat and apology after criticizing Rush’s attacks on the GOP leadership for insufficiently robust opposition to Barack Obama.
In a separate development, House Republican conference chairman Mike Pence refused in a media interview to take any issue with a newly notorious Limbaugh comment that Americans have to “bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever” because Obama’s “father was black, because this is the first black president.”
This is all pretty interesting, if depressingly familiar. In the wake of their drubbing last November, the one thing Republicans generally agreed they needed to do differently was getting hep to new media–you know, social networks, twitter, blogs, YouTube, etc. But now here we are in the first big decision-moment of 2009, and the GOPers are still taking their orders from that big mouth on the AM radio dial.

In 1929, just after he was elected governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the headline speaker at a dinner organized by Tammany Hall. The theme of the night was political oratory, and in his remarks, FDR talked about the importance of political speech in the formation of the republic. As H.W. Brands records in his new biography, Roosevelt told the audience, “Elections were won or lost, parties were driven out or swept into power entirely as the public speakers of one side or the other proved most able and convincing. It was the golden age of the silver tongue.”
That tradition, however, had changed with the advent of mass media in the form of the newspapers. Then, as now, publishers seldom printed speeches in their entirety, and voters learned to take their cues from quotes that reporters and editors chose to excerpt.
But on that night eighty years ago, FDR saw a new technological revolution taking hold. He told the guests:

The pendulum is rapidly swinging back to the old condition of things. One can only guess at the figure, but I think it is a conservative estimate to say that whereas five years ago 99 out of 100 took their arguments from the editorials and the news columns of the daily press, today at least half the voters, sitting at their own fireside, listen to the actual words of the political leaders on both sides and make their decisions based on what they hear rather than what they read. I think it is almost safe to say that in reaching their decisions as to which party they will support, what is heard over the radio decides as many people as what is printed in the newspapers.

Roosevelt’s recognition of this change and his success in using radio to appeal directly to voters made up no small part of his political genius. For the next sixteen years, when he needed to win a political argument, Roosevelt took the discussion straight from the White House into the homes of ordinary citizens, and the nation’s voters sided with FDR time and time again. Roosevelt didn’t just win elections; he changed the way that politics in America were practiced.
But time didn’t stand still, and politics changed again in 1960. Television became the dominant medium, and that in turn forced voters to process information in a new way.The most successful politicians were those who had the discipline to harness the format and the wealth to run slick media campaigns. Operatives adapted political speech to the new paradigm, and the soundbite was born.
In less than a week, we will swear in a new president who has already shown an extraordinary capacity to use the emerging technologies of the Internet to break through the television mindset and the scripted candidacy it produces. But there is a important difference between using the Internet to campaign and using the Internet to govern.
To make the transition from politics to policy, Obama should look to FDR.
The day after he took office, Roosevelt made his first policy decision as president and issued an order to declare a national bank holiday. His goal was to end the panic that led thousands to descend on financial institutions and withdraw the entirety of their savings.
In less than a week, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, granting Roosevelt new powers to deal with the crisis. Three days after that, nearly 1,000 banks across the country were up and running again. Many who had withdrawn their wealth in the weeks before lined up to deposit it back again.
Exactly one week after issuing that first executive order, at 10 o’clock in the evening on the East Coast, FDR settled into his study in the White House and gave a short talk about his decision and the actions he took. He explained why some banks would reopen and some would remain closed. He closed saying, “You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work. It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.”
The entire address was broadcast live over the radio, lasted for just a few minutes, and history remembers it as the first fireside chat. Will Rogers later said that the remarkable thing about Roosevelt’s talk was that he took “such a dry subject as banking and made everyone understand it, even the bankers.”
Roosevelt never believed that the problems of Washington, as difficult as they appeared, were too complex for the American people to understand. The genius of that first fireside chat and those that followed was that FDR spoke directly to his fellow citizens with respect, explained his actions as best he could, and as a peer, he asked the people of this country to join him in his work. “Together, he said, “We cannot fail.”
The tools of the Internet give Obama the same opportunity today.
When the president-elect gives his inaugural address on Tuesday, it will be watched in person by millions of people gathered in Washington to see it live. It will be watched by millions more across the world who will turn on their televisions to hear what Obama has to say.
But as the rest of Washington prepares to celebrate the new administration, a team working for the president will take the video of that speech, edit it for the web, and upload it to YouTube. And in the days that follow, it will almost certainly be watched from beginning to end, millions and millions of times.
This new political reality is an opportunity. It is a chance for a teaching moment.
With the network he built during the campaign, the pulpit offered by the White House, and the tools available to Obama online, the new president can appeal directly to the American people and do what FDR did: ask the people of this country to join with him in solving the problems we face as a nation.

At the American Prospect site, Paul Waldman’s written a good summary of the demographic trends that have largely doomed the Republican Party’s ancient strategy of winning national majorities by appealing to the “upoor, the unblack, and the unyoung.” And as Waldman notes, there aren’t too many signs that today’s Republicans understand that the old strategy won’t work anymore.
I’d go a bit further than Waldman, whose main evidence for GOP cluelessness involves the “Barack the Magic Negro” incident. That’s bad enough, but there’s every indication that Republicans (beyond a few smart but powerless intellectuals like Ross Douthat or David Frum) are thoroughly united in the belief that a more rigorous fidelity to conservative ideology in all its particulars is not only consistent with the party’s strategic needs, but is essential to their achievement.
Even RNC Chair candidate Michael Steele, who has consistently condemned Chip Saltsman’s tone-deaf racist “jokes” as damaging to the party, still buys into the idea that there’s an audience of Democratic and independent–and African-American and Latino–voters who would gravitate to the GOP if they understood how thoroughly the party has resolved to eschew “moderate” heresies. The manifesto for his candidacy is very blunt on this central issue:

Moderates in our party, and liberal elements outside it, have tried to steer this debate toward the suggestion that we need to change our core views, desert our convictions and give up our conservative philosophy. This is nonsense. The country did not become liberal on November 4. In fact, just the reverse is true.

So speaks the “moderate” candidate for RNC chair.
This raises a very simple question: is it possible to be rigorously conservative at this particular moment in history while successfully reaching out to demographic categories of voters who either have always been or are trending in the direction of a firm attachment to the Democratic Party? Or to put it another way, are the attitudes that have repelled, say, minority voters truly detachable from conservative ideology?
In my opinion, the true test of these dubious “move right and win more voters” hypotheses isn’t whether Republicans repudiate stupidly racist tactics and messages, but whether they repudiate sophisticated racist tactics and messages that amount to the same thing. And for that reason, it’s extremely telling that none of the candidates for RNC chairman, or any other conservative thinker or talker that I’ve heard, has yet to express any doubts about the demographic impact of the McCain-Palin message down the homestretch of the presidential campaign, which was heavily based on the argument that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party were determined to ruin the country on behalf of its unworthy minority-group constituencies.
Did efforts to promote minority homeownership actually cause the financial crisis? Is a progressive tax code truly “socialist?” Are refundable income tax credits really “welfare?” Is a presumption in favor of the right to vote geniunely “voter fraud?” Are doubts about the Iraq War in fact “treason” or “a failure to support the troops?” Is support for comprehensive immigration reform indeed a matter of subordinating the very idea of citizenship to a crass desire to build a dependent Latino political base? Are women seeking legal abortions carrying out an American Holocaust? Are gays and lesbians determined to destroy the institutions of marriage and family?
All these conservative talking points during the campaign carried all sorts of nasty and exclusive demographic freight, as evidenced by the fact that they were generally delivered by politicians who avoided the more hamhanded “Barack the Magic Negro” types of rhetorical overkill.
This is not to say that conservatives are subjectively racist, homophobic, nativist, or antifeminist. But conservatives need to come to grips with the very real possibility that large elements of their ideology are leading them ineluctably to political appeals that are perceived by people outside their coalition as excluding them or as terribly hostile to their own interests.
All things being equal, it’s probably good for the GOP to avoid sounding like Jesse Helms, to express at least occasional contempt for their talk-radio or Fox TV clowns, to recruit candidates who aren’t white men, and to do all the other practical things “reformers” are suggesting to improve the party’s mechanics and outreach. But all things aren’t equal when it comes to what Republicans need in order to break out of their demographic box. “Moving to the right” or even “clearly conveying core conservative values” are basically attractive to the same old coalition that is now failing the GOP. Perhaps more votes can be squeezed out of the old turnip with better technology, more attractive candidates, and a clearer message. And maybe fidelity to what conservatives consider to be the eternal truth of their ideology is worth losing a few more elections.
But the widespread, almost universal conservative search for anything, everything, other than ideology as the source of the GOP’s demographic problems could well be a blind spot that keeps them wandering in the wilderness, endlessly looking for more attractive ways to package the same product. It would be nice to see a few more conservatives consider that possibility.

Some of you may remember the skirmishing over the language about abortion in the Democratic platform earlier this year. A straightforward endorsement of abortion rights was combined with a commitment to help reduce the need for abortion. The latter material was widely hailed as a victory by those Democrats–many of them supporters of abortion restrictions–who consider “abortion reduction” the common ground on which pro-choice and pro-life Americans can cooperate.
While it’s always an accomplishment when platform drafters can make everybody happy, the concept of “abortion reduction” by means other than direct restrictions on the legality of abortion is not a universal crowdpleaser, particularly among reproductive rights advocates who view this approach as an unacceptable concession to the assumption that abortion is inherently immoral.
At The American Prospect, Sarah Posner has a solid write-up today on how the platform skirmishing might play itself out during the first year of the Obama administration, with “abortion reduction” legislation sponsored by Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan of OH and Rosa DeLauro of CT being the lightning rod:

Passing a comprehensive bill like Ryan-DeLauro could be complicated not only by the reluctance of reproductive-rights advocates to get behind it but also by the refusal of some Catholic groups, under pressure from church hierarchy, to endorse a bill that includes contraception. Many evangelicals are similarly loathe to endorse contraception, as evidenced by the forced resignation of Richard Cizik, the chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, after he told National Public Radio’s Fresh Air host Terri Gross that he favored government supplying contraception [note: Cizik also signaled he was becoming more open to gay marriage, which may have been an even bigger deal].

Overshadowing this debate are doubts about the exact position of Barack Obama, who has an impeccable pro-choice voting record but who has also done a lot to encourage “abortion reduction” supporters.

Between the economic meltdown and the uplifting election, Americans have had something of a respite for a few months from dispiriting headlines concerning wars and terrorism. But now the horrific atrocities in Mumbai bring a sobering reminder that the Obama administration will face a continuing, if not growing, threat of global terror, much of it directed against Americans.
As a presidential candidate, Senator Obama had to talk tough about confronting terrorists with military force. He wasn’t just overcompensating because of his opponent’s impressive military record. The cold, hard reality is that we do need enhanced military and intelligence capabilities to deal with the threat of terrorism. But our policy must be a lot smarter, with more precision in targeting military action when it’s really necessary and much stronger on-the-ground intelligence. It will require a major reformulation of our strategic goals at DOD, State, and intelligence agencies.
But the greatest challenge facing the Obama administration in confronting the threat of global terror is creating a more effective strategy for winning the struggle for hearts and minds.

Read more…

Progressive bloggers are having great sport this week with high-decibal conservative warnings that Democrats are plotting to censor conservative opinion through a restoration of the old “fairness doctrine” that used to theoretically govern broadcast television and radio. That “doctrine” was actually a Federal Communications Commission regulation requiring users of the public broadcast spectrum to provide reasonable access to points of view contrary to their own. It was rarely enforced, and was repealed in 1987, as a vestige of the long-lost days when three television networks completely dominated opinion media.
The unsubstantiated claim that “liberals” want to reimpose the fairness doctrine to destroy conservative opinion media has been a hardy perennial issue for Rush Limbaugh since at least the early 1990s. And during this election year, in association with a variety of other lurid assertions about the radically different way of life Americans would experience in a country governed by Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress, the “fairness” meme went viral.
Marin Cogan of The New Republic has penned a fine background piece on this strange furor, and on the highly relevant fact that it’s all a complete hoax.
The Obama campaign explicitly opposed reimposition of the fairness doctrine, and virtually no one in Congress or in progressive “media reform” circles has any interest whatsoever in raising the issue. Notes Matt Yglesias: “Political movements mischaracterize the other side’s general goals all the time. But I’ve never heard of anything like the current conservative mania for blocking a particular legislative provision that nobody is trying to enact.” Some cynics even believe the whole thing is intended to create a phantom menace that conservative gabbers can then take credit for defeating when it doesn’t actually emerge. Cogan chalks it all up to “paranoia and self-pity” among conservatives in the wake of their electoral defeat.
All this may well be true, but I think there’s something deeper going on here: the fruits of conservative demonization of “the Left” over a long period of time.
One of the hallmarks of “movement conservative” opinion in recent years has been the growing tendency to treat itself not simply as a legitimate or “correct” point of view, or one that promotes policies good for the country, but as a cause that is synonymous with American self-interest, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and indeed, Western Civilization. This trend has naturally led to the depiction of its opponents as un-American, immoral and anti-religious, and, well, barbaric. Within the Christian Right, the need to demonize has become even more intense, in justification of the extraordinary step taken by religious leaders to adopt a “prophetic stance” against the wickedness of society and harness their pulpits and their flocks to the secular goals of the Republican Party.
From this point of view, “liberals” can’t simply be wrong or ill-informed or open to persuasion. Those supporting a woman’s right to choose must actually favor infanticide, euthanasia and human cloning. Advocates of a less militaristic foreign policy must be consciously aligned with America’s enemies. “People for the American Way” favoring mild church-state separation rules must really aim at systemic descrimination against Christians. Proponents of marriage equality for gays and lesbians are actually bent on destroying the traditional family.
Ironically, this tendency to attribute sinister and deeply deceptive motives to the opposition grew even more pervasive during the Bush-DeLay era, when conservatives controlled the White House, the federal bureaucracy, and both Houses of Congress. Indeed, Republican electoral success created still another curse to hurl at the hated liberals: they were “elitists” who were undermining democracy through their control of Hollywood, the news media, academia and the judiciary, with complicity from treasonous fifth-columnists in the GOP.
So now, with Democrats actually in a position to wield real power for the first time since 1994, is it really any wonder that some conservatives feel the need to convince their audiences, and perhaps even themselves, that we are on the brink of a totalitarian revolution? Anyone who’s paid attention to the distorted world view of much of the Right over the last decade or two shouldn’t be surprised. When you see devil’s horns on your political opponents, there’s hell to pay when they win.

Media critic Leslie Savan’s post “GOP Plays a Mean Saxby” at The Nation spotlights a half-dozen of the recent political ads of the Martin-Chambliss race in Georgia. Chamblis’s central theme this time around is taxes, along with predictable name-calling about Martin being a liberal. Savan believes Chambliss’s ads are tame compared to his ’02 race against Cleland:

What Chambliss wants to do is bring out his base without provoking anyone on the other side. While both camps may spend as much or more on TV advertising in this four-week period before the run-off than they did in the months-long general election, the odds that Chambliss would walk on the wild side with another cut-throat ad are long.

As Savan notes, Chambliss is counting on a weak turnout. One obvious way for Martin to win is with a surprisingly large African American turnout in GA, although there are reports that early African American voting for the Senate run-off is lagging. African American turnout should get a boost from a reported influx of union volunteers. President-elect Obama has cut a radio ad for Martin, as Ed Kilgore noted yesterday. And yes, it would be good for Obama to come to GA for Martin in the closing days of the race. Obama’s rep as a ‘stand-up guy’ is one of his strongest political assets, and he is the leader of his party now, so I’m hoping he shows.
Another way to cut into Chambliss’s lead might be through creating more buzz among vets and supporters of the military about Chambliss’s numerous votes against vets’ interests. Martin has run a few ads on this theme, but he needs something more dramatic to generate some heat. I thought this powerful feature of the Democratic National Convention removed a lot of doubts viewers may have had about Obama’s national security creds. Why not get a few of the retired generals and admirals to do an ad for Jim Martin? Chambliss’s weak record on veterans benefits provides a lot of material for scripts, and I’ll bet a few of them wouldn’t mind coming out against Chambliss in return for his shameful ads questioning Cleland’s patriotism in ’02. Running such an ad in heavy rotation near GA’s military installations, as well as state-wide, just might sway enough voters who are slightly leaning toward Chambliss to vote for Martin. If this race is as close as recent polls indicate, such an ad just might make a difference.

As the number of Democratic U.S. Senators inches up towards the Big Goal of 60, and as Georgia inches towards a December 2 runoff between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democratic challenger Jim Martin, the sixty-four-thousand dollar question is how much President-elect Barack Obama is willing to invest of his personal political capital in this race.
You’d have to guess that this is a question being batted around within Team Obama, in whatever time they have left in the midst of running a transition, vetting and choosing a Cabinet, and watching the economy contract.
The argument against direct intervention in GA by Obama is that the last thing he needs right now is to become embroiled in a highly partisan election that would be interpreted as the first personal defeat of his soon-to-be presidency. It’s also possible a high-profile Obama presence in the race would produce a large turnout for white conservatives eager to give him an early black eye.
The argument for it is that a Republican win will be interpreted as a rebuke to him no matter what he does, and that direct involvement is the only way to give Martin a fighting chance.
Polls show Chambliss with a narrow lead over Martin, amidst warnings that it’s almost impossible to measure likelihood to vote in this kind of stand-alone runoff.
More ominously for Martin, there are reports that African-American participation in early voting for the runoff is down sharply during its first few days. You can certainly argue that nothing short of a highly visible intervention by Obama could convince African-Americans, who may feel their mission was accomplished on November 4, to come back to the polls for the runoff.
Both candidates are runnning ads that essentially agree the runoff is about who would help or hinder the new Obama administration. Obama campaign volunteers are apparently all over the state, along with A-list Obama surrogates like Bill Clinton and Al Gore (John McCain’s campaigned for Chambliss). So it’s not clear Obama has that much to lose by getting personally involved, aside from national sentiment that he ought to be focused on preparing to govern.
Late today Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post reported that Obama’s cut a new 60-second radio ad for Martin. We obviously don’t know if this is the president-elect’s last toe in the water of this campaign, or a prelude to a plunge.