For those of you who missed last night’s YouTube/CNN Republican presidential candidate debate, you didn’t miss a whole lot, other than a predictable escalation of hostilities among Guiliani, Romney and Huckabee, and a few outbreaks of the humma-hummas that rival any stumbling and mumbling among the Democratic candidates on immigration. Huckabee seemed to do himself the most good, and that leads to the really important (if objectively superficial) development in the GOP race, nicely expressed by John McIntyre at RealClearPolitics:

What we have developing is Huckabee stepping in and filling the void in the GOP field that was available to Thompson in the summer – a void that his inept campaign has been unable to fill. So perhaps instead of the Tennessean sinking the Romney campaign it could very well be the Arkansan.
For the Romney campaign the silver lining in Huckabee’s move into the first tier — and it is not an unimportant silver lining — is that Huckabee has totally shaken up the expectations for Iowa on the GOP side. Because of this resetting of expectations in December, if Romney is able to hold off Huckabee in Iowa it will be a huge win for his campaign. A win that would allow the Romney campaign to get the kind of momentum they were looking for when they originally laid out their sling-shot strategy to the nomination. (Win Iowa, win New Hampshire, win Michigan, make it a two-person race against Giuliani, combine the early wins with Romney’s personal wealth to overwhelm Rudy).

I think McIntyre’s got his finger on how the Media Herd is likely to change the expectations game going into the Iowa Caucuses. With Huckabee getting all the buzz these days, Romney, despite his large early lead, his win in the State Republican Straw Poll, his substantial field operation, and his expenditure of a gazillion dollars, is now rapidly becoming the underdog in Iowa. Meanwhile, Huckabee, whose spending in Iowa is pretty much limited to the spare change Romney could find under the seat cushions of his campaign bus, is moving into a position where a second-place finish, which would have been deemed miraculous not long ago, could “finish” him as a realistic candidate for the nomination.
Hardly seems fair, but that’s how the game is played at present.

Most readers are probably aware that there has been a sustained, deliberate smear campaign aimed at Barack Obama over the last few months based on fabricated “information” that he’s a secret Muslim, and/or a graduate of a Muslim “madrassa” in Indonesia.
So it’s not a big surprise that the Washington Post published an article about this phenomenon. But the Post gave Perry Bacon, Jr.’s piece the following headline: “Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him.”
You don’t have to be a journalist to understand the two problematic words in this headline: “ties” implies there’s something to the idea that Obama’s got a Muslim background, and “rumors” sounds a lot more credible than “lies.”
And this is how “rumors” get started.

There’s a new example available of how different polls of the same category of voters on the same day and in the same place produce strikingly different results. Yesterday both CNN and Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion Research released polls of likely voters in the Florida GOP presidential primary, conducted over the same two-day period (November 25-26).
According to CNN, Rudy Giuliani has a huge lead in the Sunshine State, polling at 38%, with Mitt Romney at 17%, McCain and Thompson at 11%, and Mike Huckabee running fifth at 9%. According to Insider Advantage (per the Southern Political Report), the big story is that Huckabee’s “surge” isn’t limited to Iowa: he’s running second in FL at 17%, trailing Rudy at 26%, but leading McCain at 13%, Romney at 12% and Thompson at 9%.
The CNN poll has a margin of error of 5.5%, while Insider Advantage’s MoE is 3.5%. But somebody’s just getting it wrong.
BTW, the CNN/Insider Advantage Sunshine Competition continues tonight, as the former sponsors the YouTube GOP presidential debate from St. Petersberg at 8:00 EST, and the latter conducts a snap poll of Florida Republicans on “who won.”

There’s a long-simmering debate going on in progressive political circles about the legitimacy of faith-based political appeals, as reflected in a recent TRB column by Jonathan Chait in The New Republic.
But concerns about the religious motivations of politicians aren’t limited to the Left. For one thing, there’s the drumbeat of conservative criticism of Mike Huckabee for espousing views on domestic issues characteristic of the Christian Left (sic!).
Huckabee’s not, it seems, the only major GOP figure that has been led astray into socialism and do-gooderism by Christianity. Check out this uintentionally hilarious post from Andy McCarthy at National Review‘s The Corner blog

When a politician who wants to be president of the United States adheres to them, I don’t see why we should hesitate to ask about what those beliefs are and why he thinks they are sensible. And when a politician holds himself out to be a person of deep religious belief, again I don’t see why we should not probe. I don’t think that’s hostility to religion; I think it’s common sense.
President Bush, for example, is a man of deep religious faith. Faith may be able to move mountains; but it can also substitute hope and blind conviction for experience and hard inquiry. In my observation, the president believes in democracy with a religious zeal that ignores the real limitations of democracy; he sincerely believes in the oneness and dignity of all human beings to a degree that makes him insensitive to the downsides of his proposed comprehensive immigration reform; he sincerely believes in our duty to help our fellow human beings in need with an ardor that makes him insensitive to the limitations of government (and, indeed, to the negative effects of public welfare on the individual). I could be wrong about this, but I perceive a connection between his religious convictions and the things I don’t like about his policies.

Jesus wept.

Edmund L. Andrews’ somewhat misleadingly-titled New York Times article “Candidates Offer Different Views on Energy Policy” is more a broad overview of the differences between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates as two groups on how — and when — to achieve energy independence for the U.S. This is not so helpful for making distinctions between the individual candidates, and disses all of the “second tier” candidates, except for a quick mention of Richardson’s CAFE goal (50 mpg by 2020 –highest and quickest).
The main point of the Times article seems to be that Dems as a whole have stronger policies for energy independence, which we knew already. The article does touch lightly on a few energy policy positions of Clinton, Richardson, Edwards McCain, Huckabee and Romney (the worst of both fields, arguably). But most of Andrews’ piece deals with the differences between the GOP field and the Dems in general terms. The candidates’ positions on energy independence and environmental concerns are too important to be addressed so once-over-lightly in the nation’s top newspaper.
So where do you go to get more detail on the energy/environmental policies of the Dem field? You go to their energy and environment web pages, collected here for your convenience:
Biden – “Energy” and “Climate Change” and “Protecting the Environment”
Clinton – “Promoting Energy Independence and Fighting Global Warming”
Dodd – “Chris Dodd’s Energy Plan”
Edwards – “Energy/Environment”
Kucinich – “A Sustainable Future”
Obama – “Environment” and “Energy”
Richardson – “Energy” and “Environment”
Please read them all and feel free to share with us your thoughts on their relative strengths and weaknesses. No, we’re not going to do the same for the GOP field — that’s their job, and there isn’t much of substance in the GOP field anyway, except for McCain’s oppostion to oil and gas drilling in the Arctic (gasp) and Huckabee’s support for mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.
We need a louder echo chamber on energy and environmental issues. Why? As a survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for the Center for American Progress, conducted 3/19-22, found:

More than 3/4 of people believe the effects of global warming are already here.
Americans want immediate action on global warming – 60 percent believe that increasing pollution has set global warming into motion and “we must take action now or it will be too late to stop it.”
Unlike other issues before Congress and the President there is no strong partisan divide on stopping global warming.

The survey also indicated that energy and global warming “now rivals health care as the top domestic issue that requires immediate action.” We have a great opportunity here. The challenge is to bring it front and center.

(Andrew Levison is the author of two books and numerous articles on the social and political attitudes of blue collar workers and other ordinary Americans)
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It is an unfortunate fact that during election years important discussions of long-term political strategy often get oversimplified and distorted in order to squeeze them into conventional campaign narratives.
This is what happened to an important Democracy Corps memo issued several weeks ago. The memo — which offered an analysis of polls and focus group data on a range of domestic economic issues including immigration and open borders — got grabbed and sucked up into the mainstream media debate about the electoral wisdom of the Republican’s “get tough”, anti-illegal immigrant posturing and whether the Democrats should follow their lead or stick to traditional progressive principles.
But this was not the specific issue the D-Corps memo was actually evaluating and its more subtle strategic analysis and conclusions should not be allowed to get lost in the shuffle. The central finding of D-Corps’ polls and focus groups was that a profound and unrecognized degree of frustration exists among average middle-class Americans regarding a wide range of economic issues, feeding an extraordinarily deep contempt and anger at the political establishment, Democratic as well as Republican. The Memo’s key thesis was that, without a proper political strategy, this deep discontent will not necessarily benefit the Democrats next year.
In regard to immigration, the memo noted three critical facts:
1. While Democrats in the survey identified Iraq and health care as the major areas where the country was going in the wrong direction, the top issue identified by independents was immigration and “unprotected borders.” 40% of independents chose this option – no other issue even came close.
2. Immigration and open borders were the top concern for those voters who want to vote Democratic but are holding back – the most attainable swing voters of all.
3. The voters who were most angry about the issue were those with a high school education and rural voters – groups where recent surveys have suggested Democrats might otherwise be able to regain some lost ground.
The first point that should be noted is that these conclusions are focused on how immigration is perceived by a specific group of voters – “ordinary middle-class” swing voters – and not how the issue will play with the electorate as a whole (In fact, when D-Corps studied national opinion as a whole, they found slightly less support for the one- sided “get tough” measures then for alternatives that included some path to citizenship).
More important, the basic problem the D-Corps memo identified is not simply that there is substantial middle-American antagonism to illegal immigration. It is that this sentiment threatens to fuse with three other attitudes among many potential democratic voters: a sense of severe economic distress; a feeling of powerlessness and of being ignored by political leaders; and a simmering sense of class resentment toward the “liberal” educated elite. This was the potent ideological package that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and both Bushes used to ride to the presidency and which Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ross Perot and scores of their lesser imitators have ridden to national celebrity.
It is not surprising that Democracy Corps detected this emerging danger. Back in the 1980s Stan Greenberg, the lead author of the memo, was the first political analyst to clearly understand and map the distinct political attitudes of the “Reagan Democrats” – the traditionally Democratic blue-collar and grey-collar workers whose defection to the Republicans has arguably been the most fundamental (and intractable) demographic problem for the Democrats during the past 25 years. The clear implicit warning the recent D-Corps memo contains is that if Democrats fail to successfully confront the current challenge, these voters could be lost for another quarter-century.

Read more…

E.J. Dionne writes in his Washington Post column today that the landslike victory last weekend of the Australian Labor Party under Kevin Rudd’s leadership provides important lessons for Democrats in the U.S.:

Rudd’s balancing act provides a model for center-left parties that also points to the tensions they confront once in power. Rudd won as a self-described “economic conservative” who would tightly manage the nation’s budget. But he also won thanks to an activated trade union movement fighting for its life in seeking to overthrow Howard’s workplace rules….
Rudd relied on youth, moderation and the voters’ exhaustion with the ideological categories of the past. But he also needed the passion of activists determined to end a long conservative era. Sound familiar?

It’s a truisim that on the presidential campaign trail, policy pragmatism takes a permanent back seat to candidate positioning and differentiation. And that’s been particularly true of John Edwards, who’s made a big deal out of his “fighting progressive” credentials and his contempt for the kind of legislative compromises–especially those that reach across party boundaries–that he describes as endemic to a “corrupt” Washington establishment
That’s why a sudden moment of silence from Edwards on climate change legislation in the last couple of weeks has been especially significant.
In a column in this week’s issue of Time, Eric Pooley explains:

You can tell when the politicians are getting serious about an issue: they stop taking cheap shots at one another and suddenly become pragmatic. Amazingly, that’s happening right now on global warming. Just as the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of “abrupt and irreversible” damage if we don’t take immediate action, a serious piece of climate legislation is beginning to pick up speed in the U.S. Senate.

Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner are sponsoring a bill to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels over the next 43 years. They’re calling the legislation America’s Climate Security Act, and it is expected to make it to the Senate floor soon.
Environmentalists have been split on this legislation, a somewhat watered-down version of cap-and-trade proposals that Lieberman earlier sponsored with John McCain. Some activists think it doesn’t cap emissions at a low enough level, while others are upset that the bill gives away too many pollution “allowances” instead of auctioning them. Until quite recently, Edwards was firmly in the negative camp, calling the bill “corporate welfare” and publicly challenging other candidates, most notably Hillary Clinton, to oppose it.
Before Thanksgiving, at an environmental forum, Edwards had the perfect opportunity to ratchet up the pressure on this issue and use it to reinforce his general attack on HRC as a “corporate Democrat” and an equivocator. But as Pooley notes:

Edwards decided not to take that swing. He didn’t attack Clinton or the bill. Why not? Because the politics of climate change are moving so fast and in such a pragmatic direction that he didn’t want to get caught out. His campaign had been hearing from key environmental groups, says an Edwards adviser, “and the consensus was that they don’t want to trash this bill. They want to strengthen it, not kill it.”

Edwards is running for his life at this point. He has to take down Hillary Clinton if he has any chance of winning the presidency. Here’s an issue that fits those themes perfectly, and he let it pass him by.
Tactically, that might seem like a mistake. But on a higher level, it is significant. Throughout this Democratic nominating process, John Edwards has been the candidate driving the public policy debate. No one was talking about poverty until Edwards made it a campaign issue. He was the first candidate to release a detailed plan to provide universal health care. He’s made bold calls for climate change legislation in this campaign before.
This move, though, represents a different kind of leadership. The possibility of a Democratic presidency is still more than a year away, and action on climate change is urgent. It’s to Edwards’ credit that he understand this is one issue on which the perfect should not become the enemy of the good.

Just to piggy-back on Ed’s post yesterday, here’s a tidbit from the Libertarian Party Platform section on “Property Rights,” subsection on “Solutions”:

All publicly owned infrastructures including dams and parks shall be returned to private ownership and all taxing authority for such public improvements shall sunset. Property related services shall be supplied by private markets and paid for by user fees, and regulation of property shall be limited to that which secures the rights of individuals.

Now there’s a lovely idea. Let’s turn our National, State and City Parks over to any greedhead with a chainsaw.
The Libertarian Party web pages say little of substance about improving environmental protection, or addressing global warming and related concerns. And if you want to see a Libertarian get all tongue-tied, just ask him/her to explain how they would reduce pollution. In fact, Libertarian leaders still frequently deny that global warming is a problem. When pressed, they say pollution issues can be settled in the courts, which is highly dubious, especially considering they want to repeal environmental regulations.
The main reason Libertarian policies have any relevance to Democratic strategy is that Ron Paul, a former (’88) Libertarian Party presidential nominee, has gotten substantial contributions from individuals seeking a peace candidate in the GOP presidential field. I’d wager a lot of those contributions come from people who are unaware of the Libertarian Party’s (and Paul’s) blanket opposition to environmental regulations, or Paul’s disturbing support from white supremacist groups, discussed in several articles on this page.
Paul is not going to get nominated, but who knows, his fund-raising success may yet nudge one of the GOP’s more likely nominees toward a less hawkish position regarding Iraq. Either way, after the GOP nomination is decided, Dems may have a clear chance to win over some of Paul’s pro-peace supporters, a relatively small constituency, but one which could make a difference in a close general election. It might help to have a better understanding of who they are.

The latest evidence that the Ron Paul Revolution has achieved pop-culture Cool Status is in the puffy Washington Post Outlook Section piece today by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch that discovers libertarianism for readers who have somehow missed the whole phenomenon over the last few decades.
To be sure, the authors of this piece know their subject; they are both editors for the libertarian mag Reason. But they are pitching their faith in a skewed way aimed at seducing people who should know better.
For one thing, Gillespie and Welch gets some simple facts wrong: they call the hyper-clericalist Guy Fawkes an “anarchist,” and they falsely claim that the libertarian strain of conservatism was once “dominant” in the GOP. More importantly, they almost exclusively identify libertarians with their most fashionable, progressive beliefs–opposition to the Iraq War and to civil liberties violations, and support for decriminalization of drugs–and not with their virulently reactionary opposition to every conceivable positive function of government.
If I sound a bit cranky on this subject, it’s because I think libertarianism is the least Cool, and most pedantic and tiresome political ideology on the map. Maybe you had to go through (as I did as an adolescent) the Ayn Rand Virus to understand the extent to which Ron Paul’s obsession with bringing back the Gold Standard is typical of the libertarian mindset. These are people who consider even the mildest forms of progressive taxation as “looting,” and even the most basic regulation of corporations as steps on the road to communism and fascism.
The most ridiculous part of the Gillespie/Welch effort to make libertarianism Cool is their breathless citation of celebrity support for Ron Paul and his Cause (Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Matt Stone, Tucker Carlson, and even Barry Manilow are cited as self-described libertarians, and Drew Carey is also dragooned into the category). Well, what do you expect? Is it a surprise that some wealthy and hedonistic celebrities might favor an ideology that simultaneously lets them oppose wars, take drugs and avoid taxation?
Gillespie and Welch also note Markos Moulitsas’ effort to claim libertarianism as part of a latter-day Democratic ideology. With all due respect to Markos, it’s tough to imagine any real coalition involving people like him, who think it’s heretical to consider any changes in the Social Security system, and want Democrats to stand for universal health care, and people like Ron Paul, who would happily abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and every other safety net program.
The simple reality is that libertarianism is neither new nor hip, nor progressive. No less an authority than Rand Herself described Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland, the late-nineteenth-century bete noir of the populists, as the beau ideal of libertarian governance. And the one contemporary libertarian who actually gained real power was Rand’s ever-faithful disciple Alan Greenspan, hardly a progressive figure.
I understand why some Democrats want to fete Ron Paul for his opposition to the war and his support for civil liberties. But get real, folks: an America run by the likes of Ron Paul might be peaceful and non-authoritarian, but from the perspective of every other progressive value, it would be Hooverism on steroids (though libertarians might well object to the analogy on grounds that Hoover was far too altruistic!).
The Ron Paul Counter-Revolution would be a better monniker for the Texan’s campaign.