In a fine riposte to Ross Douthat, who claimed that just about everyone in politics has flip-flopped on privacy and civil liberties issues based on the partisan identity of the administration, James Fallows of The Atlantic shows otherwise:

The anti-security theater alliance has always included right-wing and left-wing libertarians (both exist), ACLU-style liberals, limited-government-style conservatives, and however you would choose to classify the likes of Bruce Schneier or Jeffrey Goldberg (or me). I know of Republicans who, seemingly for partisan reasons like those Douthat lays out, have joined the anti-security theater chorus. For instance, former Sen. Rick Santorum. I don’t know of a single Democrat or liberal who has peeled off and moved the opposite way just because Obama is in charge.
A harder case is Guantanamo, use of drones, and related martial-state issues. Yes, it’s true that some liberals who were vociferous in denouncing such practices under Bush have piped down. But not all (cf Glenn Greenwald etc). And I don’t know of any cases of Democrats who complained about these abuses before and now positively defend them as good parts of Obama’s policy — as opposed to inherited disasters he has not gone far enough to undo and eliminate.

Douthat, of course, is engaging in the everybody’s-doing-it argument that the disingenuous habits of Republicans these days are just a subset of a generalized plague of partisanship in which they are no more guilty than their enemies. But saying it’s so doesn’t make it so, and in fact operates as a way of excusing bad behavior and misunderstanding real-life events. And Fallows calls out Douthat and others who depend on false equivalence exercises as a substitute for actual judgment:

So: it’s nice and fair-sounding to say that the party-first principle applies to all sides in today’s political debate. Like it would be nice and fair-sounding to say that Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress are contributing to obstructionism and party-bloc voting. Or that Fox News and NPR have equal-and-offsetting political agendas in covering the news. But it looks to me as if we’re mostly talking about the way one side operates. Recognizing that is part of facing the reality of today’s politics.

To put it another way, false-equivalence arguments are pernicious not only because they distort reality and misallocate responsibility for misdeeds, but because they reward perpetrators by perversely blaming their victims. The “everybody’s-doing-it” impulse can be as damaging as the conduct it rationalizes.

The brouhaha over the latest (and impending) WikiLeaks disclosure of U.S. diplomatic cables and other classified data will play out over a long time and will involve many tangled issues of national security, official secrets, and misinformation.
But one topic of immediate interest will be the political use of some of the WikiLeaks content to grind particular axes, most notably the conservative claim that the entire Middle East is privately clamoring for Israeli or U.S. military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. In that connection, Matt Yglesias makes a very important distinction about the credibility of “secrets:”

There’s often a conceit in both the world of intelligence and the world of journalism that “secret” truths are somehow better than ordinary ones. That the truth is necessarily hidden, and that hidden facts therefore are especially important to know.
But what do we really know about the leaders of the Gulf states? I mean, suppose you were an envoy from Qatar Ministry of Defense and you’re in a meeting with someone from the Defense Department and your private view is that Israel should be pushed into the sea and the United States is the “great satan.” Well, you’re certainly not going to say that in a meeting! So what will you say? You’ll tell your interlocutors something you think they want to hear, and you’ll try to get then to give you advanced military equipment. So there you are, “privately” very concerned about Iran.
Which isn’t to say Gulf officials are in fact lying when they privately say they’re very worried about Iran. If you look at the objective situation, it’s reasonable for the Gulf states to be worried about Iran. So it’s reasonable for us to assume that the Gulf states are in fact worried about Iran. But this is a surmise we can reach based entirely on publicly available information. Their private statements are just private statements. They could be true or they could be lies. Our best guide to their accuracy is what we know about the objective situation.

And what we know about the objective situation vis a vis Arab states and Iran really isn’t changed by WikiLeaks, so far at least.

Just weeks after the midterm elections, conservative activists are already focused on future purges of the Republican ranks to get rid of discordant elements. And as a profile by Jennifer Steinhauer of The New York Times explains, a big bullseye is being painted on the back of veteran Sen. Dick Lugar.

Mr. Lugar’s recent breaks with his party have stirred the attention of Indiana Tea Party groups, who have him in their sights. “Senator Lugar has been an upstanding citizen representing us in D. C.,” said Diane Hubbard, a spokeswoman for the Indianapolis Tea Party. “But over the years, he has become more moderate in his voting.”
Removing him “will be a difficult challenge,” Ms. Hubbard conceded. “But we do believe it’s doable, and we think the climate is right for it and we believe it is a must.”

It’s a “must,” it appears, mainly because of Lugar’s prominent position on foreign policy matters, and his obdurate belief that some “liberal” initiatives like nuclear nonproliferation treaties should be supported by conservatives. Here’s Lugar blunt message to Republican senators on the START treaty:

Please do your duty for your country. We do not have verification of the Russian nuclear posture right now. We’re not going to have it until we sign the START treaty. We’re not going to be able to get rid of further missiles and warheads aimed at us. I state it candidly to my colleagues, one of those warheads…could demolish my city of Indianapolis — obliterate it! Now Americans may have forgotten that. I’ve not forgotten it and I think that most people who are concentrating on the START treaty want to move ahead to move down the ladder of the number of weapons aimed at us.

It’s probably the idea that patriotism sometimes involves supporting Democratic initiaties that makes Lugar particulary offensive to some conservatives. It will be interesting to see if they can tame him or just decide to take him out.

Two excellent posts provide a devastating take-down of WaPo columnist and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson’s dismissal of the notion that Republicans would sabotage needed economic reforms to gain political advantage. Political Animal Steve Benen, who launched the controversy with his post on GOP sabotage, responds to Gerson’s critique with a couple of compelling observations, which may make Gerson sorry he brought it up:

He suggests at the outset that my argument is somehow an attempt to avoid dealing with the “inadequacies” and “failure” of “liberalism.” It’s an odd line of reasoning — Gerson’s former boss bequeathed an economic catastrophe, a jobs crisis, a massive deficit, and a housing crisis, among other calamities. Democratic policymakers, scrambling to address the catastrophic failures of Bush-brand conservatism, have managed to create an economy that’s growing, creating jobs, and generating private-sector profits, while stabilizing a financial system that teetered on collapse. (What’s more, if Gerson believes the size and scope of the Obama administration’s economic agenda are consistent with what “liberalism” has in mind, he knows far less about the ideology than he should.)
…It’s also worth emphasizing that my point about “uncertainty” was meant as a form of mockery. The right is obsessed with the debunked notion that “economic uncertainty” is responsible for the lack of robust growth, so in raising my observation, I noted that it’s the Republican agenda that seems focused on adding to this uncertainty — vowing to gut the national health care system, promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing to re-write business regulations in general, considering a government shutdown, and even weighing the possibility of sending the United States into default.
What’s more, I’m fascinated by the notion that I’m describing a “conspiracy” — a word Gerson uses four times in his column. I made no such argument. There’s no need for secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms; there’s no reason to imagine a powerful cabal pulling strings behind the scenes. The proposition need not be fanciful at all — a stronger economy would improve President Obama’s re-election chances, so Republicans are resisting policies and ideas that would lead to this result.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasn’t especially cagey about his intentions: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president…. Our single biggest political goal is to give [the Republican] nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful.”
Given this, is it really that extraordinary to wonder if this might include rejecting proposals that would make President Obama look more successful on economic policy — especially given the fact that McConnell’s approach to the economy appears to be carefully crafted to do the opposite of what’s needed? After Gerson’s West Wing colleagues effectively accused Democrats of treason in 2005, is it beyond the pale to have a conversation about Republicans’ inexplicable motivations?

In his Plum Line column, Greg Sargent acknowledges that the “charge that Republicans are planning to actively sabotage the economy” may be overstated/unproductive, but notes, in addition to the McConnell quote cited by Benen, Sen Jim Demint’s call to arms: “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Sargent continues:

…There’s no denying that some Republicans did, in fact, make the clear calculation that denying Obama successes at all costs, regardless of the substance of specific initiatives or any willingness on his part to make concessions, was the best way to accomplish this overarching political goal. They said so themselves! It would be interesting to hear Gerson directly engage these McConnell and DeMint quotes and explain why they don’t directly support this general interpretation of what happened in the last two years.

We’ll file that one under “not gonna happen.”

It being Thanksgiving and all, it’s hard to resist a quick ‘thumbs up’ response to the verdict convicting Tom DeLay for money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering in 2002, ostensibly in order to funnel corporate contributions to Texas GOP legislative candidates.
As Robert Barnes and R. Jeffrey Smith explain it in their WaPo report, prosecutors argued that,

…a political action committee that DeLay started in Texas solicited $190,000 from corporate interests and sent it to an arm of the Republican National Committee. They said that group then distributed the money to seven legislative candidates in an effort to skirt Texas law, which forbids corporate contributions to political campaigns.
Prosecutors said that the money helped the GOP win control of the Texas House and that the majority then pushed through a DeLay-organized congressional redistricting plan that sent more Republicans to Congress.
…Punishment for the first ranges from five years to life in prison, but the former congressman from the Houston suburb of Sugar Land could receive probation…The conviction follows years of investigation of DeLay, 63, who came to symbolize the intersection of money and politics in Washington. He made a mission of solidifying the Republican majority in Congress, and his ability to raise campaign cash was part of his power and eventual downfall.
For a time, DeLay was the Republicans’ chief vote counter and patronage dispenser, and he earned his nickname, “The Hammer,” for the dictatorial style with which he commanded House Republicans – and tormented President Bill Clinton and Democrats.

DeLay may win his appeal or walk after a wrist-slapping. Mine is not to gloat here, as do some, tempting though it is, given DeLay’s snarling arrogance and oft-stated contempt for all things Democratic. But it’s not about DeLay. He’s been over for a while.
This verdict is worth a thumbs up for a practical reason — it will discourage saner Republicans from skirting campaign finance laws willy-nilly, at least for a while. In the post ‘Citizens United’ era, that could be significant, coming after the GOP’s midterm takeovers of state legislatures and governorships and consequent redistricting leverage.
So spare a holiday toast for the good jurors of Travis County, Texas, who refused to be hustled by DeLay’s pricey lawyers. Justice lives in the Lone Star state, and somewhere, Molly Ivins is smiling proudly.

Now that we are not coping with the phenomenon of a national debate over a Bristol Palin victory in Dancing With the Stars, Palin-mania can focus on more Sarahcentric topics, like the former governor’s own TV reality show, or her new book, or the possibility that she’s getting serious about running for president of the United States.
The conjunction of all these phenomena seems to have Republican insiders very worried. There were already reports prior to the midterm elections that the Great Big Grownups of the GOP were talking to each other about how to prevent a Palin nomination in 2012, considered a potential disaster by those who look at general election trial heats.
But the latest shot across Palin’s bow came from an unusual source: the Weekly Standard, edited by one of her earliest and staunchest conservative allies, Bill Kristol. The Standard’s resident semi-satirist, Matt Labash, penned a reasonably nasty review of Sarah Palin’s Alaska that concluded with the assertion that even her Tea Party fans don’t really want her to make a 2012 run.
GOP heretic David Frum sees this as the shape of things to come:

There really is a GOP party establishment. That establishment took up Palin as a useful tool in 2008, deployed Palin as an edged anti-Obama weapon in 2009 – and is now horrified to see that they may have set in motion a force possibly too powerful to halt when its time has ended. The story of the behind-the-scenes struggle to squelch Palin – and her ferocious determination not to be squelched – will be the big GOP-side story of the coming year.

Could this effort actually work, or will it just feed Palin’s power to act as the voice of grassroots conservatives who are tired of being told to keep licking envelopes and let the Great Big Grownups figure out how to seize power? Steve Kornacki of Salon thinks criticism of Palin by conservatives might actually be effective by placing her in some perspective other than as the victim of elitist liberals–but only if it’s systematic and high-profile:

Palin’s poll numbers with the GOP base will only ebb if base voters are exposed, more than once and from more than one voice, to criticisms of her. They don’t have to be harsh, Frank Rich-esque denunciations; just gentle but insistent reminders that maybe she’s not suited to represent the party on its national ticket again.
This is a delicate task, obviously. As I’ve written, the GOP base has rarely been more eager to defy the party establishment than it is today. There is a strong temptation among conservative voters to label inconvenient information the product of the liberal media, or of RINOs. A negative review of Palin’s show from one Weekly Standard writer is noteworthy, but by itself won’t do much. Will Rush Limbaugh ever weigh in and say, “I love Sarah Palin and I hate what the liberals have done to her, but I’m just not seeing her as the nominee”? Will hosts on Fox News, her current employer, start conveying this message? Will Fox’s “straight” newscasts begin touting stories that play up her general election vulnerabilities?

The other factor, of course, is how Palin reacts to conservative criticism. Perhaps she’ll get off reality TV and do some mildly gravitas-building exercises; it’s not like she has a particularly high bar to overcome in raising her game. But ultimately, her fate is closely bound up in the question of how the GOP deals with the contradictory passions it has aroused. If its leaders get serious about taking one path or another out of the incoherent policy agenda they’ve set for themselves, then some elements of the party base are sure to be disappointed. And if those elements include the vengeful grassroots activists who think their day in the sun has finally come, then Palin or someone much like her will always have a political base that no amount of mockery from the Grownups will be able to tame.

I recently did a post on the proposition of a rightward trend in American public opinion, based in part on some new analysis by TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira of the apparent upsurge in self-identifed conservatives in the midterms. This piece drew a spirited response from The Weekly Standard‘s Jay Cost which made some good points but unfortunately missed the main context of what we were saying and took issue with arguments we did not make.
To begin with the “arguments we did not make,” Jay appears to think my denial of any “natural Republican majority” in the electorate means I think Republicans won’t win majorities in the 2012 congressional elections. None of us obviously knows what will happen, but actually, I think the GOP is in a good position in congressional elections going into 2012 because of its big redistricting advantage and the surplus of Democratic Senate seats up next cycle, which means they could hang onto control of the House and make Senate gains even if they lose the presidential election and lose a majority of the national House popular vote. But those advantages may not persist over time; future Senate cycles are less skewed, and let’s remember that in 2002 it was universally assumed that the last round of redistricting had given Republicans a “lock” on the House for decade–a lock that lasted exactly two cycles. Real live events matter, and districts change after they are drawn.
But the main reason for doubting a “natural Repubican majority” is the factor that we have been writing about TDS for months, and wrote about again in this piece: the very different turnout patterns that always prevail in midterm and presidential years.
To be very clear, we have two electorates in this country, which in the past has often only had a marginal effect on partisan outcomes, but now is exceptionally important because the composition of the two party’s voters has become, in 2008 and in 2010, highly correlated with groups that display high (older, whiter, wealthier voters) and low (younger voters and minorities, particularly Hispanics) turnout tendencies in midterms. Jay doesn’t deal with this fundamental argument about “the electorate,” and instead takes issue with Ruy’s analysis of under-the-surface changes in public opinion, best reachable by looking at a more stable sample of Americans, registered voters.
Jay implies that Ruy used Pew rather than Gallup data to look at changes in the ideological composition of voters over time because the former supported his position while the latter did not. I asked Ruy about this, and here was his reply:

First, Pew only provided registered voter data, not all adults data, on their ideological time trend, so I couldn’t have used all adults data even if I’d wanted to. Second, I used Pew data because they provided time trends on ideology for Republicans, Democrats and the three flavors of independents: Democratic-leaning independents, pure independents and Republican-leaning independents. This was central to my analysis.
But let’s look at those Gallup data. Gallup shows a conservative shift of 5 points (2006-2010) among all adults as opposed ot Pew’s 3 point shift among RVs over same time period. However, two other public polls that provide time series ideology data for all adults are actually closer to Pew’s 3 points than Gallup’s 5 points: WaPo/ABC has 3.3 over the time period, CBS/NYT has 3.6 over the period.
Moreover, it’s kind of a strange time to be appealing to the authority of Gallup after its way-off, outlier final generic ballot poll showing a 15 point Republican lead. Gallup was also reporting super-high levels of conservatives among LVs (54 percent in a one mid-October poll). Pew on the other hand nailed the result exactly. So no apologies for the data I selected.
But even if you accepted a 5 point swing among the public, a 10 point jump in conservative representation between ’06 and ’10 still far outstrips that swing. Bottom line: you can’t account for the election results, including the high proportion of conservatives among voters, on the basis of a sharp ideological swing toward the right among registered voters or among the general public. Conservative mobilization clearly had something to do with it.

And both phenomena owed a lot to a shift in identification of Republican voters (including Republican-leaning independents) from “moderate” to “conservative,” which was the main point of his analysis, and is a conclusion shared today by ProgressiveFix’s Lee Drutman in a careful evaluation of the Cost/TDS exchange.
Perhaps a semantic problem clouds this issue for Jay Cost and for other readers: yes, an “electorate” in which some members are moving “to the right” while others stay where they are can be said to be “moving to the right” in an arithmetical sense, but if its main effect is simply to move the party of conservatives a bit farther away from everyone else, that’s hardly an unmixed blessing.
I’ll deal with one other aspect of Jay’s argument: his characterization of our point-of-view as follows:

The electorate has not moved in any significant fashion, and what we saw this November is nothing for liberals to worry about.

I should hope I’ve dealt with the issues involved in the word “electorate;” yes, the midterm electorate moved, but partly because of the turnout patterns already discussed, and partly because of factors (ahem, the economy) which don’t have much to do with ideology or much predictive value for the future. But the planted axiom that Ruy and I don’t think Democrats have anything to worry about is simply wrong. Frankly, I think both parties have a lot to worry about economically, and from a structural point of view, have much to worry about if the current “two electorates” pattern persists, which is hardly conducive to stable policymaking.
Yes, Ruy and I think 2012 will likely be a better year for Democrats overall for reasons ranging from the more positive nature of the presidential electorate, to the close House districts Republicans will now have to defend, to the likely improvement in the economy, to the arguably weak GOP presidential field, to the many dilemmas Republicans face as a party that is simultaneously demanding deficit reduction, new high-end and corporate tax cuts, restoration of Medicare “cuts,” and (among many GOPers) more defense spending and perhaps a new war with Iran. We also think long-range demographic trends favoring Democrats haven’t suddenly gone away.
But if I were a Republican, I’d be less worried about Democratic confidence levels and be a lot more focused on restraining the exceptional triumphalism of my colleagues, many of whom seem to think that every lesson learned in past elections, including the longstanding lack of support of sizable majorities of Americans for key conservative policy positions, can now be forgotten based on one very good midterm cycle. As Democrats just learned, trends can change quickly, and so can “the electorate.”

With the obvious, yawning gap between the deficit-reduction and corporate-lobby impulses of the GOP, it’s equally obvious that progressives benefit from promoting deficit-reducing measures that are progressive but that threaten corporate interests.
It appears that the soon-to-expire batch of subsidies for the ethanol industry could meet those criteria handily.
The immediate impetus for this opportunity is actually coming from two right-wing Republican senators, Tom Coburn of OK and Jim DeMint of SC, who are arguing for letting the subsidies (mainly provided through a tax credit aimed at a few Big Dog suppliers) expire on deficit-reduction and market-neutrality grounds. The reason this idea has traction, of course, is that environmentalists have long disliked ethanol subsidies, creating the rare possibility of a left-right coalition.
The money we are talking about–$5 billion, or about a third of the amount involved in the appropriations earmarks that conservatives have been obsessing about for the last couple of years, if you take seriously the dubious idea that banning earmarks will reduce appropriations–is serious enough to make this of interest to Tea Party folk.
But the ethanol lobby spends some pretty serious money of its own backing Republican candidates. And its defenders include the likely incoming chairman of the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee, Dave Camp (Coburn’s OK colleague) and the ranking Republican on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Chuck Grassley of IA.
Steve Benen was right to identify this issue earlier in the month as a potentially big deal:

If Dems play this right, the subsidies could be a carefully-applied wedge, driving divisions between the party’s activists and the party’s corporate benefactors.

Moreover, I’d add, ethanol is a particularly excrutiating issue for Republicans who want to run for president in 2012 and beyond, given the iconic status of the subsidy in First-in-the-Nation-Caucus-State Iowa.
It’s no accident that George W. Bush’s first policy statement upon officially running for president in 2000 was to pledge his support of ethanol subsidies. And it’s no accident that John McCain, an unrepetetant ethanol subsidy detractor, skipped Iowa in 2000 and skirted it in 2008.
In pushing the issue now, progressives not only help expose some internal rifts in the GOP in the lame duck session of Congress, while showing that good environmental policies can be appealing to Tea Party Folk. They also create some very uncomfortable moments for Republicans who are facing the prospect of spending many months barnstorming amongst the corn stalks in Iowa.

Three conservative memes are unraveling in the wake of the midterms – the notion that the public supports their rigid positions on the deficit, Bush’s tax cuts and DADT. As Ruy Teixeira explains in his November 22 ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘:

On the deficit, conservatives are promoting the idea that immediate drastic action must be taken to shrink government spending and reduce the deficit despite the current economic situation. They are aided and abetted by a chorus from the mainstream media and professional budget scolds. Indeed, to listen to the rising tide of deficit mania you’d think nothing was more important than rapid action on this front.
But that’s not how the public sees it. Fifty-six percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll said they wanted the new Congress to concentrate first on jobs and the economy. Fourteen percent said health care, and a whopping 4 percent said the budget deficit or the national debt.

On W’s tax cuts:

On the Bush tax cuts, conservatives claim that preserving the tax cuts for the rich is a matter of grave national importance that must not be separated from preserving the middle-class tax cuts. Once again, the public’s view is far from that of conservatives. Sixty-four percent of respondents in a recent CNN poll either want to keep only the tax cuts that apply to families earning under $250,000 a year (49 percent) or think all the tax cuts should be eliminated. Just 35 percent endorse the idea that all the tax cuts should continue regardless of how wealthy families are.

Regarding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:”

Finally, conservatives are putting up a last-ditch effort to stop the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which currently prevents gays from serving openly in the armed forces. They may be worried about this change, but the public isn’t. In the same CNN poll just referenced an overwhelming 72 percent favored permitting gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military compared to only 23 percent who were opposed.

So much for the GOP’s midterm mandate regarding three major issues of 2010. Less than a month after the Republicans’ midterm victory, their triumphalist masquerade looks a lot like a farce. As Teixeira puts it to the conservatives: “…You say you want to represent the will of the American people with your newly won power in Congress. Why don’t you start by actually listening to them?”

There are no major surprises in a new study of the midterm elections by Project Vote. Much of the analysis published elsewhere is confirmed in the study, but some interesting trends are highlighted in comparison to the 2006 midterms. Among the findings, which are based on exit poll data and estimates from the U.S. Elections Project and reported here by Steven Thomma and William Douglas of McClatchey News Service:

Senior citizens turned out in force — their turnout was 16 percent higher than in the last midterm election of 2006, and 59 percent of them voted Republican, up 10 percentage points from 2006. While voters 65 and older are 13 percent of the U.S. population, they made up 21 percent of this year’s electorate.[compared to 19 percent in the 2006 midterms] The wealthy voted heavily too. Total ballots cast by people making $200,000 a year or more expanded by 68 percent over 2006, the study found. Those making from $100,000 to $200,000 cast 11 percent more ballots than they did in 2006.

Dems also lost their edge with women voters in 2010, according to the study:

Women voters’ turnout surged significantly over 2006 as well — and the traditional gender gap vanished. In 2006, women voted Democratic by 55 percent to 43 percent for Republicans. This year, women voted 49 percent for Republicans and 48 percent for Democrats.

On a more positive note, the study also confirmed the influence of Latino vote in Democratic victories: “…One striking development helped Democrats in a few races: Hispanic voting surged in several states, helping Democrats win hotly contested Senate races in California, Colorado and Nevada.”