Midwest Conservative Journal

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

NOTES FROM A PEACEFUL RELIGION - Professor Reynolds asks a very good question.
posted by Christopher Johnson 7:58 PM

AND NOW...IDIOTS - I Can't Believe It's Not Roman Catholicism!^TM's Stupid Party has an Australian branch. Martin Roth is on the case.
posted by Christopher Johnson 4:37 PM

ATTACK OF THE EURO-CLUELESS - There seem to be two possible approaches you can take when writing about another country. You can extensively research the history or politics of a country and read as much of its news media and interview as many of its people as you can. Or, if you're George Monbiot, you can grab a few cliches, stitch them together until you have enough words for a column and then hit the pub. Here are just a few examples of George's positively epic cluelessness:
The tens of millions of US voters opposed to a war with Iraq were, until he died in a mysterious plane crash two weeks ago, represented by just one senator, Paul Wellstone.
"Tens of millions," Georgie? Care to back that up at all? You seem to be one of that species of leftist who believes that right is whatever you believe right is and therefore anyone who disagrees with you must be evil. Which would account for "mysterious plane crash." One more time, Georgie. Barbra Streisand and Michael Moore are not credible sources for American public opinion.
Yet Democratic congressmen have helped the Republicans to obstruct global efforts to tackle climate change. The Democrats have failed to respond decisively to the widespread public anger about tax cuts for the super rich, corporate corruption and the privatisation of state pensions.
Probably because most Democrats realize that "global efforts to tackle climate change" would mean throwing tens of thousands of American registered voters out of work, which is never a winning issue in an election. As for "tax cuts for the super rich, corporate corruption and the privatisation of state pensions," Missouri's Jean Carnahan ran on all of that. I saw her commercials myself. Inexplicably, she lost.
The first is that Bush did not win the presidential election. Al Gore did, though as we know he lost the subsequent power struggle.
In the last few weeks before the presidential election, Gore, alarmed by Nader's popularity, turned sharply to the left, promoting a series of green and progressive policies which had previously been ignored.
Had Nader not frightened them, Gore may well have lost. Had Nader frightened them a little more, Gore may have won with sufficient conviction to prevent Bush's bureaucratic coup.
Wrong on all counts. Had Gore stayed in the center, he probably would have won. Most of us here know that it was his lurch to the radical left which doomed him. Despite all those leftist journals and web sites you apparently spend most of your day reading, we're not a "progressive" people over here, George.
Oh, and Georgie? Popular vote doesn't elect a president here; the Electoral College does. And you or anyone else cannot come up with a scenario that would have given Mr. Gore Florida. If you're going to write about the United States, do a little research, will you? Or you're going to look like even more of a jackass than you do now.
posted by Christopher Johnson 12:52 AM

Monday, November 11, 2002

DUH WATCH - Roto-Reuters on Iraqi politics:
Iraq's parliament reconvenes on Tuesday to vote on a motion to reject a new U.N. resolution on disarmament, but the assembly speaker said deputies would leave the final say to President Saddam Hussein.
Iraq's parliamentary opposition insisted that a veto override was a genuine possibility. "We have the votes," said a spokesperson for the Lemming Party.
posted by Christopher Johnson 11:30 PM

VEXILLOLOGIC VOTE? - There were undoubtedly a great many other factors involved in both elections. But it is interesting that the two governors who most recently presided over the deemphasis of the Confederate flag in their states, South Carolina's Jim Hodges and Georgia's Roy Barnes, both lost last Tuesday. And in the current edition of Newsweek, Ellis Cose observes about Georgia:
In contrast, Republicans mobilized their base with an effective ground-level effort. They also benefited from the rage Gov. Roy Barnes incited by shrinking the Confederate battle cross on the state flag.
UPDATE: The New York Times confirms the role the flag played in Barnes' defeat:
Last year Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, led a successful effort to change Georgia's state flag, which then prominently featured the Confederate battle cross.
This Tuesday, he paid the price.
"There was this huge undercurrent of resentment and anger about the flag, but I think we all missed it because it's not something people discuss in the open," said Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. "The Confederate flag is still a very powerful symbol. A lot of white voters felt Barnes was not on their side when he pushed to change it."
"The flag was definitely part of the equation," said another Georgia Democrat, Senator Zell Miller. "I could spend all day and all evening trying to explain why this is such an emotional issue. It just is."
One of [governor-elect] Perdue's campaign promises was to have a referendum on the state flag, resurrecting a matter that dated from January 2001, when Governor Barnes, intervening in a longtime battle, pushed for a new flag design.
Asked whether it could have been the governor's progressive education plans, or perhaps his close ties to the black leadership of Atlanta, William Boone, a political science professor at Clark Atlanta University, said he did not think so. "The flag dragged Barnes down," Dr. Boone said. "He was one of the most progressive governors in the South. Now he's gone."
posted by Christopher Johnson 10:00 PM

JOURNALISTIC DETACHMENT- The United-States-as-Nazi-Germany theme works its way into a "news" story here in the Independent:
The Bush administration is putting the finishing touches to plans for a massive land, air and sea attack on Iraq, should the United Nations inspectors fail in their mission.
It would involve up to 250,000 US and British troops and amount to a modern-day Blitzkrieg, aimed at forcing the speedy collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime with as few casualties as possible among Allied troops and Iraqi civilians.
posted by Christopher Johnson 9:35 AM

Sunday, November 10, 2002

FORT SAN CARLOS - Here in Missouri, two Democratic strongholds have been Jackson County(Kansas City) and the city of St. Louis. But according to this St. Louis Post-Dispatch story, at least one of those bastions has, for the time being, been neutralized:
When Missouri Republican leaders needed a site for President George W. Bush's pre-election visit Monday to promote Senate candidate Jim Talent, they chose St. Charles County's Family Arena.
The next day, Talent carried the county by 16,611 votes -- a key element in his slim statewide majority of 22,586 over Democrat Jean Carnahan.
"The main thing is it single-handedly canceled out the deficit (of 14,868 votes) we had in St. Louis County," said John Hancock, the Missouri GOP's executive director.
In state government, St. Charles County has become heavily Republican:
Post-census redistricting allotted St. Charles County eight Missouri House districts plus part of another, up from seven. All but one of the new delegation is a Republican; the GOP had a 4-3 edge in the old group.
And here is perhaps the key point:
In 2000, the county for the first time generated more votes than the city of St. Louis, which is heavily Democratic. That happened again last week.
Even though they are outnumbered there at the moment, the Democrats have not given up:
Their ability to win two countywide races and to hold GOP County Executive Joe Ortwerth to his lowest-ever victory margin - a still formidable 55 percent - give them some hope.
Party operatives say that because many of the recent transplants to the county came from middle-class Democratic areas in St. Louis County and St. Louis, they have a chance to do better in the future. Those newcomers include many union members, traditionally a Democratic base.
"What we need to do is go out and listen," said Mike Kelley, the Missouri Democratic Party's executive director. "We believe we're the party that goes to work for working families. Our message isn't sinking in."
But that's down the road. Perhaps way down the road. Short-term, St. Charles County demonstrates what kind of trouble the Democrats are in around here.
posted by Christopher Johnson 2:54 PM

KEY LIMEY PIE - Tim Blair works wonders with Will Hutton's Observer cluelessness.
posted by Christopher Johnson 2:42 PM

LONGSHOT - I give it six months.
posted by Christopher Johnson 1:35 PM

Saturday, November 09, 2002

RECRIMINATIONS II - The left is having a tough time dealing with November 5th. Scott Miller of St. Louis hallucinates in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
It was interesting to watch the fictional Democratic president win the election on "The West Wing" the night after we saw real Republicans win control of both houses of the real Congress. And it makes me wonder.
Is there a reason we can't have leaders like "The West Wing's" Jed Bartlett?
Is there a reason we can't have leaders who actually lead, who stand up for what they believe in, for what's right, no matter what public opinion may say, rather than leaders who do nothing but bend to public opinion, always trying not to offend, always backing down from previously stated positions, playing word games, playing the polls and, in the end, standing for nothing except getting elected?
What would happen, I wonder, if candidates stopped looking at polls, stopped listening to campaign consultants, and stopped caring what the "experts" think.
It was Edmund Burke who said, "A representative owes the people not only his industry but his judgment, and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion." What would happen if our leaders actually led us? Would they be elected over those who only try to please us? I'd like to think they would. I'd like to think America is that smart and that good.
But is anyone brave enough to try?
Scott Miller
St. Louis
Q: Why are liberal presidents like white boxers. A: They both only win on film. I'm wildly speculating here that the reason we don't have presidents like Jed Bartlett might have a tiny bit to do with the fact that Bartlett's a drug-induced figment of Aaron Sorkin's imagination and not a real person. Watch the History Channel some time, man. Stephanie Brinkman of Manchester, Missouri, on the other hand, is ready to jump off the Eads Bridge:
We need to say a prayer for our children. What will there be for them as they grow up?
Will they have clean water to drink or clean air to breathe? Will there be national parks or forests to visit or just a series of subdivisions, parking lots, paper chip mills and strip mines?
Will we have to say there used to be trees that grew taller than a 30-story skyscraper but we cut them all down to make some decks and lawn furniture? But, hey, they will grow back. It will only take from 600 to 2,000 years.
Will we have to tell them we might have had a cure for cancer, but we clear-cut all of the rain forests, losing 50 percent of the plant species to extinction before we even knew what cures they might hold?
They will have a "kinder, gentler nation" where it is still legal to own an assault weapon with armor piercing bullets so people can go deer hunting. A nation where our grandparents have to choose between life-saving medication or food. A nation that will send its young people to fight over oil because legislators won't require our automakers to produce vehicles that get better gas mileage, or look for other sources of renewable energy.
How are we going to explain this to our children? Do we not value them enough to hand them a better world?
Stephanie Brinkmann
Manchester
A lot of us think we just did, Stephanie.
posted by Christopher Johnson 2:23 PM

PM PENNY? - Will Newfoundland go it alone?
posted by Christopher Johnson 12:53 PM

LEFTIST BLUES - Over at The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild could use a hug:
The landscape this November 6 is barren. The Democrats managed to lose the Senate, and now the Republicans will have their way. They will be able to clog the benches with rightwing judges, cement Bush's retrograde tax cuts, and roll back environmental, labor, and a host of other protections.
Matt hasn't bought his one-way plane ticket out yet but since last Tuesday, he's been spending an awfully long time thumbing longingly through his National Geographic collection and dreaming of a land where Government's not restrained by having to give a damn what the proles think about things:
With a muddle for a message, the Democrats failed to energize or enlarge their base and instead opted to fight on Republican turf, wrestling over a few thousand voters in district after district, state after state. Those voters were conservative Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans.
Europe, say:
The Democrats ought to be able to say: We'll give you a big raise, we'll give you free health care, we'll give your kids a free college education, we'll curb corporate power and take the money out of politics, and we'll clean up the environment while we're at it.
And we'll pay for it all by "taxing the rich."
The problem isn't that the Democrats haven't been "moderate" enough; the problem is, they haven't been bold enough.
Until they get bold, the strains of triumph will remain distant.
Until the left ~~commits mass suicide~~ gets bold, Matt, try Jim Beam. Cheaper than most, drinkable, gets the job done. For my part, I'm waiting for the BBC reports from the refugee camps filled with American leftists with the inevitable shots of Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Woody Harrelson, etc. entertaining folks and a papier-mache statue of a women holding a torch and emblazoned with those famous words, "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning for 80% tax rates."
posted by Christopher Johnson 5:35 AM

Thursday, November 07, 2002

ANTI-AMERICAN RIGHT WATCH - I wonder what's in that cigarette of his. Because Justin Raimondo has lost it:
What more do we need to know about our "special relationship" with Israel? Israel demands, we obey. Yes, there is something very "special" indeed about U.S.-Israeli relations: like John Williams-Muhammed and John Lee Malvo, Bonnie and Clyde, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the Israeli and American governments are team serial killers symbiotically linked, one a cat's-paw for the other's murderous rage. One a controlling authority, the brains of the operation, and the other a servile gofer, an accomplice whose passion for obedience is surpassed only by a perverse desire to love beyond the limits of rationality.
posted by Christopher Johnson 9:53 PM

NAP TIME - Eric Alterman's not a happy camper.
posted by Christopher Johnson 4:35 PM

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

SEPPUKU - Richard Gephardt will step down as House minority leader.
posted by Christopher Johnson 6:47 PM

RECRIMINATIONS - Over at the Al Gore Fan Club Newsletter, they're trying to figure out who to blame and having a tough time of it. Michael Crowley thinks Terry McAullife might be the most likely candidate to get waxed:
Still, human nature being what it is, people will want heads to roll. That will probably mean a trip to the chopping block for the party chairman, Terry McAuliffe, who has powerful patrons in Bill Clinton and Dick Gephardt but has never been especially popular with anyone else. Democrats have long suspected that McAuliffe, distracted by things like his plans to build a new party headquarters, wasn't invested enough in the midterm congressional elections.
But if Terry does "pursue other opportunities," it probably won't make much difference:
But if, as it already seems, last night's rout has led to a resurgence of the party's more ideologically combative liberal wing, sacking McAuliffe will serve little purpose. The DNC chairman has always been a voice of fairly undiluted liberalism.
Gephardt's probably safe because he's out of there anyway:
After losing seats in the House, Gephardt might have had to worry about a challenge to his leadership position--were it not for the fact that he's likely to leave Congress and begin a run for president as early as this month. So the real issue for Gephardt is the impact on his presidential prospects. It's likely to be a small one. No one seriously expected Democrats to win back the House, so their failure to do so doesn't seem like a defeat--especially alongside the shocking loss of the Senate.
And nobody's going after Daschle:
Still, Daschle probably wasn't the only Democrat loath to cut a deal that would infuriate labor right before the midterm elections. And so ultimately, Daschle, to the disappointment of Kremlinologists, isn't likely to be challenged. There is a natural candidate in Connecticut's Chris Dodd, a leader of full-throated Senate liberals. Dodd ran against Daschle for party leader in 1994 and still has enough ambition to be mulling a run for president. But Daschle is immensely well-liked, and it's hard to see Dodd trying to succeed in displacing him. Like Gephardt, Daschle suffers most in the context of his presidential ambitions.
But, thinks Crowley, Daschle might want to rethink those particular career plans:
In recent weeks Democrats have been abuzz that Daschle's interest in taking on Bush in 2004 has been growing. Having effectively lost a proxy war with the president yesterday, Daschle may well be reconsidering that plan.
Noam Schreiber thinks Democratic strategy, if you'd like to dignify it with that word, left a lot to be desired:
If you had to summarize the Democratic election strategy in a single sentence--and any more than that would be too generous--it would have been to neutralize the president on the major issues (taxes, the war) and pray that some serendipitous tailwind emerged to push them across the finish line. Two of the bigger Democratic disappointments of the night, Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire and Max Cleland in Georgia, nicely illustrate the danger of that strategy: Neutralizing alone doesn't get it done when you're facing a popular president.
And The Publisher gets to the heart of the matter:
If this election was not quite the romp the Republicans are making it out to be, their victory was at least deep enough and wide enough for Democrats to puzzle. Of course, they are constitutionally unable to credit the rapport of George W. Bush with the vox populi as one reason for the outcome. But the fact is that, by campaigning so intensely, he made himself the issue. And whether this strategy was a result of polling or an expression of intuition, the results have to be seen as the president's victory.
I believe that the Democratic performance was so pathetic--losing big where the odds were even (Erskine Bowles, Jeanne Shaheen, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Shannon O'Brien), winning small where the odds were large (Jennifer Granholm, Gray Davis)--because neither the party itself, in so far as it has a self, nor the individual candidates ever faced the fact that the most serious underlying issues for the country are the internal and external threats to its security. In truth, these constitute one issue, not seamless, but certainly intertwined. The nation is in danger, and Democrats avert their eyes. In this circumstance, it hardly matters whether they are right on prescription drugs for the elderly.
UPDATE: Peter Beinart is more downbeat than Michael Crowley:
Virtually every prominent Democratic leader leaves this campaign politically diminished. Gephardt's presidential run looks like a fortuitously timed escape hatch for a man so associated with electoral failure that he might not win reelection as minority leader if he tried. In retrospect, Daschle's last several months of Senate leadership look disastrous--he gave the Democrats no accomplishments to run on and got suckered into a fight over union protections in the Homeland Security Bill that may have cost Max Cleland his Senate seat in Georgia. Joseph Lieberman was the mastermind of that disastrous Homeland Security fight, in which, astonishingly, President Bush stole a Democratic idea and turned it into a political club against its original creators. Edwards's inability to carry Erskine Bowles to victory in North Carolina raises questions about his political standing in his home state, and, like Gephardt, his run for president looks like a convenient alternative to trying to hold onto his current job. Kerry similarly watched his party's gubernatorial candidate, Shannon O'Brien, get drubbed.
Mainly because of where this election might take the Democrats:
As a result, the left, for the first time since the 1980s, has a shot at taking over the party. The defeat of moderate Democrats in swing states and districts inevitably tilts the congressional party toward ideological hardliners in safe seats. Ted Kennedy and John Conyers would have yanked the party left in 1994, had not the Clinton White House moved in the other direction. But now there is no counterweight. And that is what makes the Democratic Party's current predicament so dangerous. The ideological vacuum atop the post-September 11 Democratic Party will inevitably be filled. And if it is filled by Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Kucinich, the United States will no longer be a 50-50 nation; it will be a 40-60 nation for a generation.
And Beinart thinks Bush might very well have the same effect on American politics in general and the Democratic Party in particular as another prominent Republican:
Bush has demonstrated in this election what Reagan demonstrated two decades ago: If you are intellectually audacious, you can redefine the boundaries of what is politically possible. The last time the ground shifted beneath them, the Democrats responded with denial, then cosmetic change, then internecine warfare, then an ideological transformation that saved the party. Now that reckoning is slowly beginning once again. And that, at least, is reason for hope.
posted by Christopher Johnson 3:49 PM

YIPPY-KI-YAY! - The Euro-clueless are not at all happy:
Europeans, having at times accused George W. Bush of cowboy diplomacy, worried on Wednesday the U.S. president would be more emboldened, especially on Iraq, following his Republican party's mid-term election gains.
The man from Texas and his center-right party gained the historically rare opportunity to control the presidency and both houses of Congress with a strong showing in Tuesday's elections.
Aw, yew bet! You know them Texas cowboy diplomats. Loved this bit from the Germans:
"The likelihood that the American president will feel even more self-confident about his own views than prior to the election is great," Karsten Voigt, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's U.S. affairs coordinator, told Reuters.

"But on the other side, I think that he needs to convince Europeans. And so far as military action (in Iraq) is concerned, he has not convinced the Germans -- yet."
Karsten. Buddy. Here's how things are, son. We don't have to convince Europeans of anything at all, least of all ~~Liechtenstein~~ Germany. One of your boss's ~~gauleiters~~ ministers basically called our president Hitler, Karstie. So don't count on an invitation to the Christmas party this year. We like you as a friend, Karstie. But I think we should both see other countries. As far as most of us here are concerned, German opinion about, well, anything at all is less than irrelevant. Same with the EU:
European Union diplomats expressed concern privately that the Republican sweep could take the Bush administration further down the path of unilateralism which has caused serious tension with Europe since Bush took office in January 2001.
"This is not going to make transatlantic relations easier because we have many issues on the table which could be complicated to handle with a Republican president and Congress," one diplomat said, citing Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular.
The sources said EU policymakers had hoped the Democrats would at least hold on to their control of the Senate and rein in the more hawkish, go-it-alone elements of the Bush administration.
I think they've nailed it. So the EU was backing the Democrats, eh? There's one more reason to be ecstatic over yesterday's results.
posted by Christopher Johnson 12:44 PM

ELECTION 2002 - Last night, the Republican Party accomplished two almost unheard-of political feats. The conventional wisdom states that the party in power in an off-year election loses seats but the GOP evidently didn't get the memo. The Republicans not only maintained their lead in the House but expanded it. And with victories in Georgia, Minnesota and Missouri, they took back the Senate. So what does it all mean? A great many things, including, but not limited to, the following:
(1) Although liberals, much of Hollywood, UN diplomats, Europeans and Europhiles will choke on this, George W. Bush must be considered one of the most formidable American politicians ever. What Clinton victory was really comparable to this? Clinton lost a Congress in 1994; Bush won one in 2002.
Bush put his reputation on the line in this election, traveling thousands of miles to campaign for Republican candidates. And the Republicans had many more Senate seats to defend than the Democrats. In my view, the fact that they were able to win what they did last night was a much more impressive political achievement for the party than 1994 was. George W. Bush may well come to embody conservatism in general and the Republican Party in particular in the same way Ronald Reagan does now.
(2) Be careful what you politically wish for. Almost all the Democrats supported the McCain-Feingold ~~incumbent protection~~ campaign finance law and(assuming the Supreme Court doesn't overturn it), its provisions have taken effect. Which means that it might be a very long time before the Democrats can take back the House or the Senate.
(3) Although it will still be a force locally(and even that might be doubted a little; for the first time in a very long time, both houses of the Missouri General Assembly are in the hands of the Republicans), nationally, the Democratic Party has nothing to say and nothing to offer. I am not one of those who believes that party to be at death's door. Similar things were said about the Republicans after Watergate(and are said by the national media every time a Democrat wins the White House). But the Democrats are going to have to come to grips with the fact that, for the most part, this is a conservative country.
(4) Bill Clinton may still draw a crowd and a Clinton aide or two may have won yesterday but nationally, Clintonism is dead. Clinton's hand-picked DNC leader, Terry McAuliffe, led the party to yesterday's disaster.
(5) Blogging may have arrived. While the "experts" were generally wrong or wildly off, Bill Quick called last night a month ago(read the last paragraph).
posted by Christopher Johnson 10:25 AM

Tuesday, November 05, 2002

TURTLE BAY REAL ESTATE FOR SALE - The UN officially becomes irrelevant. Given that ridiculous organization's favorite target, I propose turning the General Assembly building into a synagogue.
posted by Christopher Johnson 5:50 PM

AND NOW...IDIOTS - Famous European author Gore Vidal on the war and stuff:
Controversial U.S. author Gore Vidal said Tuesday President Bush organized last year's invasion of Afghanistan to gain control of nearby oil and natural gas resources rather than to fight terror.
"We know what they want. They want Caspian oil," the outspoken writer told Reuters in a telephone interview from Rome. "Every important player in the administration is from the oil and gas business, mostly Texas."
The author also repeated recent accusations that Bush did not do all he could to prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"An hour and 20 minutes passed before any plane goes up," said Vidal, who spends much of his time at his home in the town of Ravello, on southern Italy's Amalfi coast. "And we have nothing but fighter planes up and down the United States."
"The same people own the media that own the White House that own the Congress that own the oil fields," he said. "They all work together to give a false view of the world to the American people," he said.
posted by Christopher Johnson 5:04 PM

PREDICTION - RealClear is predicting a Senate GOP gain of two seats.
posted by Christopher Johnson 3:00 PM