For Republicans obsessed with holding on to their tenuous position in the U.S. Senate, it was big and happy news when Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced he was running for the seat of retiring Sen. Mel Martinez. Yes, former FL House Speaker Marco Rubio, a conservative protege of Jeb Bush, had already announced for the seat. But given Crist’s high approval ratings and huge early polling lead over Rubio, that was easy to ignore. So it wasn’t surprising when TX Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, endorsed Crist, hoping to clear the field for the governor.
Turns out Cornyn may have forgotten to respect the tender sensibilities of conservative activists, who are still angry at Crist for spitting on the political grave of Katherine Harris by championing felon re-enfranchisement, and who really went wild when Crist endorsed the Obama stimulus package.
As Jonathan Allen and Bart Jansen of CQ explain today, two of the more prominent conservative bloggers, Eric Erickson of RedState and John Hawkins of RightWingNews, have helped organize a campaign and website called “Not One Red Cent” to boycott contributions to the NRSC and push Cornyn to resign as its chairman.
The CQ piece has an interesting quote from Hawkins:

The leadership of the Republican Party keeps saying we need to get back to our principles and talking about how important it is to attract more young voters and Hispanic Americans. Then, we get a viable, young, conservative, Hispanic candidate running for Senate and they arrogantly try to shove him aside to make way for a better connected, moderate pol who’s more acceptable to the GOP establishment.
This cuts to the core of what’s wrong with today’s Republican Party.

The dude does make a valid point about Republican hypocrisy. Since the last election, and arguably since the one before that, Republican pols have chirped like cicadas in unison with the delusional activist belief that the GOP’s problem was insufficient conservatism, and that “diversity” could be accomplished by aggressively recruiting some black or brown candidates who happened to be frothing conservatives themselves. Rubio definitely appears to answer that casting call. So it’s probably fair for activists to get mad when GOP poohbahs pass over Rubio for the first pretty tanned face who comes along, with his fancy poll standings and his reputation as the Last Moderate Standing among Republican headliners.
The “Not One Red Cent” webpage is quite a piece of work. It features a sort of manifesto with the shouting headline: NOT ONE RED CENT FOR RINO SELLOUTS! (the exclamation point is a bit redundant, but I guess that’s a stylistic decision).
Yesterday the site included a post by Richard McEnroe, entitled “A Florida Parable!” and with a subtitle that I cannot reprint in a family-friendly blog, that played off a bizarre news story about two Russian tourists who got caught in Florida having sex with a porcupine. McEnroe “revealed” the identity of the tourists by displaying photos of Michael Steele and Charlie Crist.
Nice, eh? Now as it happens, Mr. McEnroe describes himself on his own blog site, Three Beers Later, as a “South Park Conservative” who believes in “Loose Women and Tight Borders,” so perhaps his particularly sophomoric contributions to the revolt against the RINO SELLOUTS shouldn’t be held against angry conservative activists generally. But if I were Charlie Crist, I wouldn’t laugh these guys off too quickly. They have some deep-pocketed allies in the Club for Growth, which just yesterday demanded that Crist pledge that he would “not follow fellow liberal Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party if he felt his political survival depended on it.” Since the Club is often credited with pushing Specter out of the Republican Party, that’s a rather pointed analogy they are drawing to Crist.
Whether or not the NRSC starts noticing a pinch in their banking accounts, it’s doubtful that Marco Rubio is going away any time soon. He’s definitely got friends in low places.

I don’t have a lot to say about the unusual “debate”–via back to back speeches at different locations–between the President of the United States and the former Vice President of the United States in Washington today. You can read them here and here, and judge for yourself, or check out the many assessments on the internet (e.g., this early one from Jacob Heilbrunn calling it a rout for Obama).
More interesting to me is the way Team Obama created this “event” in the first place, showing how smart tactics can promote smart strategy.
Remember where we were just yesterday on the “anti-terrorism” issues that were the centerpiece of the Obama-Cheney “debate.” The President was getting hit from every direction on his handling of detainee polices, investigations of interrogation practices, and increasingly, his Iraq and Afghanistan strategies. It seemed nearly everyone was calling him a wimp, a hypocrite, or both, from their varying perspectives. The U.S. Senate had dealt him an embarrassing bipartisan blow on funding for shutting down Gitmo.
It’s hard to imagine a better “reframer” of these issues than a “debate” with Dick Cheney, a deeply unpopular man who is determined to defend the very worst practices of the Bush administration, in a manner that reminds Americans–progressives and moderate independents alike–exactly why they voted for Barack Obama, even if they are disappointed with him on this or that issue. And aside from the specific issues in discussion, there is simply no downside for the White House or for Democrats in keeping Cheney front-and-center as the snarling voice and brooding face of the GOP.
If, in addition to everything else, the initial perception that Obama cleaned Cheney’s clock is broadly shared, you’d have to consider this a tactical and strategic ten-strike for the White House, at a time, and on a topic, where he needed one. The next “frame” (sorry for the bowling metaphor, but I couldn’t resist!) could produce different results, but it was a good day’s work for the President of the United States.

It has unfortunately now become clear that despite certain promising trends in the December elections in Iraq, in general the situation is sharply deteriorating. The Sunni “awakening councils” – whose pacification was a critical part of the reduction in violence — have not been paid since last winter when responsibility for their payments was passed to the Shia army. Instead of the jobs and assimilation into the Shia-dominated army that they were promised, many “awakening council” members have been arrested and others have gone into hiding. Bombings have once again become regular and frequent events. All the major religious and ethnic groups are preparing for a renewal of fighting.
It now appears that even a “best-case” scenario for Iraq is a continuing level of sectarian violence that resembles past eras in Northern Ireland. The “worst-case” scenario is a return to the full scale, grotesquely violent ethnic civil war of 2006-2007.
The Republicans, because they are out of power (and committed to their “take no prisoners” propaganda strategy) are already beginning to prepare utterly opportunistic attacks on Obama and the Democrats regardless of what actually happens in Iraq.

• If Obama decides to slow the withdrawal of troops from Iraq (assuming this can be negotiated with the Iraqi government) Republicans will criticize him for failing to achieve a clear “victory”–i.e. to completely suppress the ethnic violence.
• If Obama sticks to his current plan for withdrawal while conditions worsen, Republicans will attack him for “losing” the war in Iraq that the surge had “won”.

This propaganda strategy requires almost no effort for the GOP. It is, in effect, a perfect “no- lose” situation for them. They just have to avoid inadvertently insulting the work of General Petraeus and the military while they attempt to assign the entire blame for whatever transpires onto Obama and the Democrats.
What should Democrats do in response? The first and most urgent challenge will be to present a unified and coherent response to the Republican attacks and to avoid the appearance of internal disarray. This will not be easy because there are at least three quite distinct strategic views about Iraq within the Democratic Party — and more if one includes the formerly Republican neoconservative military strategists who — in an extraordinary case of instant mass epiphany — all rediscovered the virtues of principled political nonpartisanship around 11:03 P.M. last November 4th (as one observer acutely noted, “they did not flee the sinking Republican ship; they teleported”).
But, even as Democrats continue to debate alternative military strategies among themselves, they can, without contradiction, also present a unified response to Republican attacks. The basic theme of this response should be that there is a fundamental difference between responsible and irresponsible criticism. Obama, General Petraeus, and the other military advisors face deeply difficult, “no easy answer” trade-offs regarding how to allocate limited troops and deal with deeply rooted interethnic violence. Republicans who want to criticize Obama’s strategy therefore have an obligation to confront key questions like the following:

• In order to deal with the current shortage of available troops, should the U.S. bring back the draft? Should it hire 50,000 or more additional paid mercenaries to fill the gaps? If a Republican is not in favor of these steps, then he or she must explain where the troops will be found to carry out any broadened U.S. mission before he or she criticizes Obama.
• To deal with rising ethnic violence in Iraq, should the U.S. resume the payments to the “Awakening Councils, even if the Maliki government objects? Should the U.S. redeploy increased numbers of American troops to Iraq’s major cities to maintain peace between Shia and Sunni? If not, then Republican critics must explain exactly what alternative strategy it is that they propose before they criticize Obama. Demanding “victory” is not an alternative military strategy – it is a goal.

When Republicans attack Obama without honestly answering these kinds of questions — as they most surely will — Dems should consistently make three parallel points about the difference between sincere debates over military strategy and the following key phrase — “irresponsible political posturing”:

• Partisan demands for “victory” or “success” which do not include a realistic plan to provide the troops and resources needed to achieve those goals are irresponsible political posturing.
• Partisan accusations that Obama’s strategy “is failing” or has “failed” which do not offer a coherent alternative strategy are irresponsible political posturing.
• Partisan attacks on Obama and the Democrats as showing “weakness” but which offer no alternative strategy are irresponsible political posturing.

In short, Democrats should respond to Republican attacks on Obama by insisting that Republicans have a patriotic obligation to the troops and to the county to offer serious and responsible military alternatives rather than empty partisan rhetoric. The American people understand that there are no easy, magic solutions in Iraq. If the Republican “alternative” is to pretend that magic solutions exist, they will not receive the support of most Americans.
Democrats should as their very first response to Republican attacks consistently and repeatedly assert the basic demand that Republicans avoid “irresponsible political posturing” on this issue. Democrats should insist that if Republicans engage in this kind of shamelessly irresponsible behavior, they do not even deserve to be answered; they deserve to be condemned and ignored.

It didn’t get much more than a day’s attention in the MSM, but the announcement over the weekend that the President was appointing Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as U.S. ambassador to China has created all sorts of insider buzz about the 2012 and 2016 presidential contests and the future of the Republican Party.
Huntsman was by all accounts carefully preparing a 2012 presidential bid, and was rapidly emerging as the one Republican that Democrats feared. Instead, he’s heading to Beijing as an employee of the Obama administration.
Was this, as many commentators asserted, a shrewd maneuver by the White House to “sideline” a potentially dangerous foe? Or, as others suggested, had Huntsman independently decided to cool his presidential ambitions until 2016, when a chastened GOP might turn to him after wearing out its current lurch to the hard right? Or were both strategic considerations in play?
It’s hard to say. With excellent timing, The New Republic has published a long profile of Huntsman by Zvika Krieger that lays out all the relevant facts, including Huntsman’s rivalry with fellow-Mormon Mitt Romney and the unhappy conservative-activist reaction to the governor’s recent endorsement of civil unions for gays and lesbians. You get the impression that perhaps Huntsman seized on the China gig (for which his background strongly prepared him) as an opportunity to sidestep a decision about duking it out with Romney and Palin and Huckabee and Sanford and Lord knows who else in the pursuit of a nomination that turned out to be worthless, much as his friend John McCain did in 2008.
In any event, the payoffs to both sides in the Obama-Huntsman partnership are pretty clear. The President gets a savvy Mandarin-speaking ambassador who can put a bipartisan cast on his efforts to deal with a vast number of U.S.-China issues, from Iran and Darfur to global financial reform to carbon emissions reductions. Huntsman gets a chance to burnish his foreign policy credentials and stay out of the latest struggle for the soul of the GOP. At the moment, it looks like a win-win proposition, particularly for Barack Obama, who will be perfectly happy if there is no “moderate” voice in the 2012 Republican field.

In a step that will be interpreted as a triumph for what passes as Republican “moderation” these days, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution (at a special session called for this purpose) today that accuses the President and the Democratic Party of “pushing our country towards socialism,” but does not specifically demand that Democrats begin calling themselves the “Democrat Socialist Party,” which was how it was originally worded.
Since all the “whereas” clauses in the resolution seem to have been left intact, it doesn’t appear that Republicans have changed their minds about calling Democrats “socialists.” They’ve just abandoned the sophomoric idea of demanding a party name change, complete with cropping “Democratic” to “Democrat,” an odd if ancient GOP ritual.
But maybe that’s too simplistic. To get a sense of Republican “thinking” on this subject, it’s useful to watch a video put together by the American News Project’s Harry Hanbury after interviewing RNC members at a state chair’s meeting yesterday. Here’s what California National Committeeman Shawn Steel had to say:

One point of view is that calling them a “socialist party” is not quite accurate; they’re more like a “national socialist party” the way the Nazis were. Well, I don’t know if that faction is going to prevail or not.
Another group is thinking that “socialism” kind of obscures the real issue of what Democrats are doing. The chairman of Tennessee said it’s really not a matter of “socialism,” but it’s more like “fascism” where the government controls the corporations but the corporations are still semi-private.

So maybe for some RNC members it was a matter not of avoiding name-calling, but of reacing agreement on exactly the right name to call. “Nazi” and “fascist” do have a bit stronger connotation than mere “socialist.”
And there seems to be some disagreement as well about exactly the right label among the all-powerful conservative activist base, at least according to one of its longtime leaders, direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie. He’s been conducting an online survey for the last week via his Conservative HQ site, and here’s how his self-identified-conservative respondents break down in describing “President Obama’s political philosophy”: Socialist: 46%; Marxist 24%; Communist: 11%; Fascist:10%; Liberal: 5%; Progressive: 2%.
No, I think it’s definitely premature to say any kind of “moderates” in the GOP have had any kind of “victory” when it comes to thinking about the party that waxed them in the last two election cycles.

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Alan Abramowitz, who is Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of the TDS Advisory Board.
Is support for abortion rights hurting Democratic candidates at the polls and, if so, would abandoning the Party’s traditional pro-choice position help Democrats win over pro-life voters? These questions are being raised with increasing urgency following the release of new Gallup and Pew polls that supposedly show a substantial decrease in support for the pro-choice position among the American public.
The findings of the Gallup and Pew polls are rather surprising given the stability of public attitudes on the abortion issue over several decades. Moreover, a number of other polls conducted before and after the 2008 election found no dramatic change in public opinion on this issue. For example, the two most respected academic surveys of the American public, the General Social Survey and the National Election Study, found no decline in support for abortion rights between 2004 and 2008. More importantly, the evidence from the 2008 National Election Study indicates that Barack Obama’s support for abortion rights was a net plus for his candidacy and that attempts by Democrats to win over pro-life voters by abandoning the Party’s support for abortion rights would probably do more harm than good.
Every four years since 1980, the American National Election Study has asked a sample of eligible voters to choose one of four positions on the issue of abortion: abortion should “never be permitted,” abortion should be permitted “only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger,” abortion should be permitted “for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established,” or “a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of choice.”
The results in 2008 were very similar to those in other recent election years: 13 percent of voters supported a total ban on abortion, 26 percent supported allowing abortion only under highly restrictive conditions (rape, incest or danger to the woman’s life), 19 percent supported allowing abortion under less restrictive conditions but only if a there was a clearly established need, and 42 percent supported allowing abortion as a matter of choice. For analytical purposes, I combined the first two options, banning abortion completely and allowing it only under highly restrictive conditions, into a single pro-life category. I left the rather vague third option, allowing abortion only if a need had been clearly established, as a middle category, and I used the fourth option, allowing abortion as a matter of choice, as the pro-choice category. This resulted in 39 percent of voters being classified as pro-life, 19 percent being classified in the middle position, and 42 percent being classified as pro-choice.
There was a strong relationship between abortion position and presidential vote in 2008. Pro-life voters supported John McCain over Barack Obama by decisive 62 percent to 38 percent margin. But pro-choice voters supported Obama over McCain by an even more decisive margin of 73 percent to 27 percent. Those in the relatively small moderate group favored McCain over Obama by a fairly narrow 55 percent to 45 percent margin.
According to the NES data, pro-choice voters supporting Obama made up 30 percent of the electorate while pro-life voters supporting McCain made up only 24 percent of the electorate. These results suggest that Barack Obama’s support for abortion rights helped him more than it hurt him in 2008. Before accepting this conclusion, however, we need to control for the influence of partisanship because opinions on abortion are strongly correlated with party identification and 90 percent of Democratic and Republican identifiers voted for their own party’s presidential candidate in 2008.
In order to evaluate the impact of the abortion issue on the performance of the presidential candidates, we need to know whether partisan defection rates were affected by opinions on abortion. Table 1 displays the relationship between abortion opinion and partisan defection among Democratic and Republican identifiers (including leaning independents) who had a clear abortion position. About one-fourth of each party’s voters were cross-pressured on the issue of abortion: 27 percent of Democratic voters took the pro-life position and 25 percent of Republican voters took the pro-choice position. However, the results in Table 1 show that pro-choice Republicans were more than twice as likely to defect as pro-life Democrats. Pro-life Democrats were only slightly more likely to defect than pro-choice Democrats but pro-choice Republicans were much more likely to defect than pro-life Republicans. In fact, the relationship between abortion opinion and defection was statistically significant only for Republicans.

Based on these results, the abortion issue appears to have produced a small net gain in support for Obama in 2008. Pro-choice Republicans who voted for Obama made up 2.6 percent of the electorate while pro-life Democrats who voted for McCain made up 1.4 percent of the electorate, resulting in a net gain of 1.2 percent of the vote for Obama.
Some critics of the Democratic Party’s current position on abortion have suggested that the Party could make substantial inroads among pro-life voters who now support the GOP by abandoning its support for abortion rights. The evidence from the 2008 NES displayed in Table 2 raises serious doubts about the viability of such a strategy, however. Republican voters who were pro-life on abortion tended to take conservative positions on many other issues: the overwhelming majority described themselves as conservative, opposed marriage or civil unions for same sex couples, opposed a larger government role in providing health insurance, supported the war in Iraq and approved of President Bush’s job performance.

Based on their ideological identification and other issue positions, there appears to be little likelihood that pro-life Republicans would respond positively to appeals from Democratic candidates on the issue of abortion. Moreover, in addition to alienating the pro-choice majority of Democrats, such a shift would also alienate the pro-choice minority of Republicans who appear to be much more open to appeals from Democratic candidates on a wide range of issues. These findings suggest that rather than abandoning the Democratic Party’s traditional support for abortion rights in a futile pursuit of pro-life Republican voters, Democratic candidates would be better off focusing their efforts on appealing to Republicans who support the Democratic Party’s traditional position on abortion.

In an important new survey, Democracy Corps shows that the Republican advantage on trust in handling national security issues, which has been a staple of American politics since the Vietnam War era, has vanished, at least for the moment, in no small part due to strong approval of President Obama’s policies.
The shift has been dramatic, particularly in certain key demographic groups:

Less than six years ago, in August 2003, Democrats lagged by 29 points on this key metric, effectively ruling them out as a credible alternative on national security for many voters. The shift has been especially dramatic for key likely voter segments:
* Moderates. Self-described moderates favored the GOP on national security by 25 points in 2003, but now favor Democrats by a decisive 23 points, 54 to 31 percent.
* Women, especially unmarried women. Women trusted the GOP more on national security by 20 points in 2003; now they trust the Democrats more by 17 points. The shift is the strongest among unmarried women.
* Younger voters. Voters under age 30 trusted Republicans more on national security by a 27 point margin in 2003; now they trust Democrats more by 18 points, 50 to 32 percent. This strong margin of trust among younger voters could signal the start of a lasting generational shift on this set of issues.

Barack Obama’s role in eliminating the “national security gap” is pretty clear. As the DCorps analysis shows, the President’ job approval rating on national security (64% favorable) is actually higher than his overall job approval rating (58%). And given efforts by Republicans led by Dick Cheney to claim that the new administration has already made Americans less safe, it’s striking that “by a strong 48 to 26 percent margin, likely voters believe that President Obama is doing better, rather than worse, than President George W. Bush when it comes to national security policy.”
Obama is earning high approval marks on an array of specific policies as well, including his handling of Afghanistan (68%), Iraq (67%), “leading America’s military” (65%) and “fighting terrorism” (61%).
There are some significant areas where public skepticism of the administration holds, most notably towards his stated goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. As is well known from other survey, a slight majority of Americans are also unsure about categorically ruling out torture of terrorism suspects in certain circumstances.
All in all, the survey is very good news for Democrats, and also provides yet another chunk of evidence undermining Republican claims that George W. Bush’s spending policies are the only source of their current political problems. Bush and company managed to turn national security from an enormous source of strength to a handicap in a few short years. President Obama and Democrats generally are taking advantage of that opportunity.

You may not have heard about it, but they’re having an election in California today, with some local contests, but also with a statewide batch of ballot propositions designed to implement the budget agreement reached in February, after much yelling and screaming, between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators (with a few key votes from Republicans).
Pretty much everybody concedes that all but one of the propositions–one that freezes legislators’ salaries when the state budget is out of balance–are very likely to go down when the ballots are counted (and given the very low turnout, that won’t take long).
The central proposition–titled 1A–sought to solidify the budget deal by extending a tax increase for two years while imposing a limit on state spending and strengthening the state’s “rainy’day” fund. It was advertised, in reasonably heavy TV ads financed mainly by the two major teachers unions, as representing an end to California’s perpetual budget crisis. Instead, it’s being perceived as a symbol of the budget crisis, as most Republicans, some Democrats, and notably two public employee unions (SEIU and AFSCME) are opposing it.
For all the talk about 1A and the closely related proposition 1B (which deals specifically with ensuring future education spending), the biggest immediate budget impact would come from proposition 1C, which authorizes an immediate $5 billion loan to the state from future lottery earnings. But 1C is faring even worse in the polls than its better-known companion measures.
Meanwhile, state revenue collections are going even more poorly than was expected when the budget deal “fixed” the budget shortfall, so when all’s said and done, tomorrow California will likely face a cumulative budget shortfall of $21 billion, according to Schwarzenegger’s estimates. While the Governator has spent the last week issuing dire predictions of massive layoffs and untended fires, he’s actually in Washington today to join President Obama for the announcement of new federal tailpipe emissions standards similar to California’s.
Ah-nold’s trip out of town is being greeted with horselaughs from across the political spectrum (his own approval ratings are down to 33%), but especially from Republicans.
You get the feeling listening to California conservatives right now that they think of the budget revolt as an extension of “tea party” sentiment, and that after they get rid of their (term-limited) RINO governor they will reclaim power in Sacramento on a hard-core platform of massive reductions in state spending and employment. This is already playing out in the runup to the 2010 governor’s race: just last week, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, considered something of a “moderate” in GOP circles, promised to lay off 30,000 to 40,000 state employees. And that was before the much darker fiscal picture that will emerge if the budget propositions go down.
I suspect Republicans tend to underestimate the extent to which unhappiness with the status quo in California is a matter of poor services and not just high taxes; cutbacks and tuition increases in the higher education system have been particularly unpopular. But anytime GOPers these days think they have an opportunity to win elections while making cooing noises at their “base,” they’ll go for it every time.

The pragmatic flexibility of President Obama’s decision-making strategy is nicely-limned in a May 16th L.A. Times article by Janet Hook and Christi Parsons.

Unlike his predecessor, George W. Bush, who styled himself as “the Decider” and took pride in sticking with decisions come what might, Obama is emerging as a leader so committed to pragmatism that he will move to a new position with barely a shrug.
Whether it’s a long-standing campaign promise or a recent Oval Office decision, Obama has shown a willingness to reverse himself and even anger his most liberal supporters if he can advance a higher-priority goal or avoid what he sees as a distracting controversy.

The article goes on to discuss Obama’s changed positions on releasing torture photos, using military tribunals, “extraordinary rendition” and dispersement of fees for exceeding carbon emissions caps. The list could be extended to inlcude changed positions regarding economic policy, Iraq withdrawall, stem cell and a range of other issues just 4 months into his term. The authors quote TDS Co-editor William Galston, who puts Obama’s reversals in context of “the basic optic”:

This is the story of an ambitious new administration running up against reality at home and abroad…The realities on the defense and foreign policy fronts are both more intractable and quicker to show themselves for what they are…If he’s basically faithful to the agenda he ran on, the reversals — such as they are — are going to be seen as tolerable exceptions rather than as leading indicators…If you are a single-issue person, what the president says in regard to your issue may be a bitter disappointment.

Not surprisingly, a growing number of progressives are displeased by the overall tilt of Obama’s reversals. And it does seem as if the flexibility Obama demonstrates rarely, if ever, bends toward the left. There is always a feeling that, as MLK, once put it “Ultimately a genuine leader is not of consensus but a molder of consensus,” a sense that a President ought to be more willing to fight for principles, and be a little less eager to compromise them. Of course MLK was a moral leader, whose job was more to awaken dormant consciences, rather than secure gradual reforms.
Some corroboration that Obama’s policy compromises are within the range of being “tolerable exceptions” and “basically faithful” to his campaign agenda, as Galston put it, comes from testimony in the conservative press. As Peter Berkowitz put it in an elegantly-written, if politically-wrong-headed piece in The Weekly Standard earlier this month:

…Obama’s pragmatism…appears to be another name for achieving progressive ends; flexibility is confined to the means. This helps explain the sometimes glaring gap between Obama’s glistening postpartisan promises and his aggressively partisan policies. Judging by his conduct–as pragmatism officially instructs–Obama appears to have concluded that the best way to maintain public support for progressive programs is to divert attention from the full range of their consequences and, where possible, to refrain from making progressive principles too explicit.
…A truly postpartisan pragmatist–or a pragmatist in the ordinary, everyday sense–would pay attention to the long-term economic consequences of massive government costs and expansion. He would also show interest in the full range of moral consequences of his policies, in particular the practical impact on citizens’ incentives for responsibly managing their lives of a great enlargement of government responsibilities for managing their lives for them. But a pragmatist for whom it is second nature to measure all policy by how well it promotes a progressive agenda might well ignore or deflect consideration of these awkward consequences…The problem is not partisanship, but a deceptive form of pragmatism, where pretending to be nonpartisan is a pragmatic strategy for imposing far-reaching progressive policies on an unwary public…

it seems reasonable to measure the left critique of Obama’s position reversals against the more blistering critiques of the conservatives to get a fair measure of his fidelity to the progressive agenda. I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more of the bold consensus-molding Dr. King referred to, of the sort Obama displayed at Notre Dame, as Ed notes today. What is indisputable is that what doesn”t bend will eventually break, and Bush’s rigid policies left him with a legacy of zero positive accomplishments. Although politics is the art of compromise, principled compromise is even better.

Note: this item is cross-posted from The Huffington Post
It’s understandable that progressive listeners heard different things in President Obama’s remarkable commencement address yesterday at Notre Dame. Martha Burk heard a disturbing mushiness and evasion on abortion rights. James Fallows heard an “eloquence of thought” that transcended the “pretiness” of more famous orators. E.J. Dionne heard Obama strengthen “moderate and liberal forces inside the [Catholic] church itself.”
But as a Christian progressive, I heard Obama directly challenge religious fundamentalism of every sort by associating the fear of God with “doubt” and “humility,” and offering that as a “common ground” for debates within and beyond the ranks of the faithful.
After decades of listening to conservative Christian politicians–echoed by some progressives as well–speak of their faith as an absolute assurance of absolute positions on public policies ranging from abortion to war, these lines at Notre Dame were incredibly refreshing:

[T]he ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.
This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame.

Fundamentalism, particularly in its political application, is typically based on the redefinition of “humility” as a rejection of civility and mutual respect as an act of obedience to God, whose revelation of His will, through scripture, teaching or tradition, is so clear that only selfishness and rebellion could explain the persistence of doubt. This inversion of the “fear of God” as requiring aggressive and repressive self-righteousness has been responsible for endless scandals of faith over the centuries, quite often in conjunction with the divinization of culturally conservative causes from slavery to nationalism to patriarchy.
By insisting on the spiritual validity–indeed, necessity–of doubt, Obama is repudiating on religious grounds the very idea that appeals to Revelation should have presumptive value in political debates. As he forthrightly says, those who truly fear God have particular reason to confine their arguments to the “common ground” of reason where all believers, along with unbelievers, can speak:

[W]ithin our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds.
For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It is no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. To serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth.

It’s safe to say that many progressives cringe whenever Barack Obama talks about “common ground” with anti-abortionists, theocrats, or in general, with Republicans, because they view it as an offer to compromise or even betray their rights and values. But in the religious context, what he was talking about at Notre Dame is a “common ground” that is inherently secular, empirically based, and respectful of individual rights in a way that is antithetical to the thinking of the Christian Right.
Viewed from this perspective, it’s no contradiction at all that the President spoke of “common ground” on abortion even as he directly acknowleged that pro-choice and pro-life views can’t be compromised:

I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it – indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory – the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.

This strikes me as a pretty plain admonition to those of his own “religious advisers” who talk of achieving some sort of “compromise” on abortion rights that will make the issue–or indeed, the “cultural wars”–simply “go away.”
Now it’s true that Obama’s pledge to respect and not vilify those who are on the other side of the barricades on abortion remains offensive to those abortion rights advocates who for good reason resent any “debate”–particularly among men–about what should be regarded as fundamental reproductive rights. And such “debate” really is phony (as has been brilliantly explained by Linda Hirshman) if it is conducted on the “common ground” that abortion is evil, and that women who seek them are either perpetrators or victims of a tragedy if not a crime.
But I don’t hear Obama saying that, and moreover, abortion rights in this country will never be safe if they depend on the presumption that discussion of the subject is a priori illegitimate.
In the end, as Obama himself suggests, what unites secular liberalism with non-fundamentalist religious beliefs is the conviction that we live in a world governed by universal laws that cannot be reliably deduced in many particulars. That is why mutual respect, including respect for individual rights, and a commitment to pluralism and rational discourse, are so critical to both traditions, and why many of us subscribe to both. If religious fundamentalists or cultural conservatives generally choose to reject that “common ground,” as many will, then they are willfully abandoning any path to the achievement of their own objectives that does not depend on raw power and repression. And large majorities of Americans–including many God-fearing Americans–will reject them in turn.