Politics is Hard

The proof? A group of 30 or so protesters at an anti-war rally in Portland Oregon lit an effigy of an American Soldier on Fire. This is the point of William Rusher's latest article.

First of all some background. A college student (and reporter at her college paper) posted some pictures of an anti rally. According to her, a few protesters (about 30) broke off from the main group and did this soldier effigy burning. She snapped some pictures of it, and put them in her picture book, where they have since burned through the Conservative Blog-O-Sphere.

Let me point out that burning soldiers in effigy is not cool, and those who participated in the act should be ashamed of themselves.

But of course this is the final straw for poor William Rusher.

I have tended to resist the arguments of friends of mine who insist that American politics have recently become uglier than they have ever been before. But an incident in Portland, Ore., on Sunday, March 25, does suggest that we may have passed a fateful turning point in our national dialogue.

On that day, several thousand antiwar protesters marched through Portland, most of them behaving the way protesters do on such occasions. According to the Portland Oregonian, however, "a handful of people set afire a uniformed effigy of a U.S. soldier and an upside-down flag." A Web site provided further details: "Photos taken by Rachel Palinkas, a Linfield College student, showed masked protesters burning an effigy of what appears to be a U.S. soldier. ... The photos showed protesters gathered around a figure wearing U.S. military fatigues and a crude skull for a head as it and an American flag were lit on fire. Other black-clad, masked protesters carried a black banner that read, 'No Gods, no country, no masters,' and a circle 'A' anarchy symbol."

Now, burning an effigy of an American soldier is not, as far as I know, something we have seen before in this country. Together with the slogan on the banner, it seems determined to push defiance of the United States and its values to the furthest imaginable extreme.

Yeah it really is shocking that college anarchists do thinks that are irresponsible, nasty, and rotten. And the fact that such things happen are proof that Liberalism is rotten to the core. And that discourse in our party has gotten too nasty. Because a few garden variety anarchists in Portland are clearly representative of liberalism as a whole.

What's funny about this article is how the dink writing it has to pretend that there is a connection between what these Anarchists did and the mainstream of American political discourse (quick quiz; name one prominent American Anarchist who isn't in a band of one sort or the other).

But he also wants to pretend to be even handed. So he talks about technological innovations that make such protests possible. You see these protesters were masked, so they didn't have to worry about the possibility of being attacked for their inappropriate protests. And the mask having been invented about the same time as the weblog, this sort of protest is a clearly a brand new type of protest that would have been impossible in generations past.

Anyway I do feel sorry for Mr. Rusher having just realized how vicious and polarizing some rhetoric is. On the other hand it is kind of nice that he has been spared having to read Ann Coulter.

Gamble?

It's interesting to watch how Republicans are reacting to the current showdown with President Bush. Obviously they want to condemn Democrats, but on two somewhat exclusive grounds. They want to accuse Congressional Democrats of both being weak and and standing up to the President. Makes for some confusion.

William Rusher's latest article finesses it by saying that their standing up to President Bush is in fact a political gamble, after getting a factually shaky account of the current situation. He notes that some Democrats voted against the plan in a way that makes it seem like they are opposed to it; in fact many of the Democrats who voted against Pelosi's bill did so because they felt it was too weak. He also predicts that the Senate will quash it, which has proven inaccurate (admittedly because the Republicanoids want President Bush to get the chance to veto it).

But let's go back to this gamble idea.

Still, a realist would have to concede that the chances are that the Democrats will win their bet, or at least escape major damage if they lose it. American forces have spent four years trying to devise a way of suppressing the terrorist insurgents that have killed so many scores of thousands of their fellow Iraqis, thus far with notable lack of success. It seems unlikely that a military "surge," however well conducted, can reverse that record.

Of course by positioning this position as a political gamble he robs it, purposefully I assume, of any of the moral implications involved. Congress isn't working to get our troops out of Iraq because they care about the troops or because they think us being there is a horrible mistake. Nope. They are doing it simply to score political points. By shifting the terrain we get to talk about strategies rather than whether it's right or wrong, moral or immoral, for President Bush to keep troops dying in Iraq in a situation Rusher admits might not get any better.

I suppose it's more enjoyable to talk about strategy anyway.

Something We Can All Agree on; Let's Fight!

William Rusher rights a surprisingly fair minded article over at Townhall today about partisanship and how it is our birthright as a nation.

Why don't boxers embrace in the center of the ring, agree not to fight, and split the prize money 50-50? The answer is, of course, that we are looking forward to the fight, and would rightly be outraged if it didn't occur. To be sure, politics is a far more serious matter, and it would presumably be nice, as a purely theoretical proposition, if those who participate in it would agree to work together to solve the nation's problems.

But the Founding Fathers weren't fools, and they knew that it was inevitable that serious men (and women) would disagree profoundly on the proper solutions to all sorts of problems. So they carefully designed a system in which such differences would be argued out among the various factions, and then a decision would be taken on each issue by the simple process of putting the various proposed solutions up to a vote.

. . . Yes, the brawls between the Republicans and the Democrats can get tiring, and both are routinely guilty of posturing just to look better than their rival. But that way we at least get to see what's going on. It's when harmony (and silence) reign on Capitol Hill that the voters have most cause to worry.

This is better than Jonah Goldberg's article from last week on the same subject by virtue of actually being evenhanded. In other words he doesn't try to pretend that the partisanship is mostly the Democrats fault.

Of course it is interesting to speculate on why these writers are trying to make a virtue of partisanship; I suspect it's because they don't have anything else right now. This President isn't going to make peace with the Democrats; he's got no incentive to.

Who's Fault is It?

The best part about the Democratic victory in 2006 is that the Conservatives can start blaming Liberals for our forthcoming failure (or, more accurately, admission of failure) in Iraq on the tenuous grounds that they are now running things. How it is their fault when President Bush has made it clear that he doesn't plan on listening to them on the war and his followers are making the case that as commander-in-chief he doesn't really need to is a bit baffling. But who cares! When you are a conservative it's always best to jab the knife in first and the figure out a rationale later.

Take William Rushers's latest article, entitled, "The Democrats take over the war." He starts with the bit about monkeys, typewrites and Shakespeare, and suggests that the Democrats chances of coming up with a viable strategy to confront middle eastern terrorism are roughly the same. But we don't care about coming up with a viable strategy anyway.

The Democrats haven't the faintest idea how to bug out of Iraq without all sorts of ensuing disasters, but they are determined to express "the will of the American people" (if only they can figure out what it is).

The only thing they are really determined to do is lose. They don't feel guilty about this because they think it's inevitable anyway, and it can always be blamed on George Bush.

Yeah - kind of rotten of us to blame the administration who got us into Iraq, who planned the invation, who failed to plan for the aftermath, and so on and so forth.

Edwards

There's an articlee up today at Townhall by William Rusher on John Edwards, who is apparently one of the more formidable candidates.

Watching Edwards on television, I am torn between admiration of his finesse and a deep wariness over whether somebody so glib can possibly be real. A good many other Americans may come to share that doubt. But this country cheerfully elected Bill Clinton twice, and he was surely the King of Glibness. So keep your eye on John Edwards.

He also describes Edwards as "fiendishly handsome." There's a joke there to be made, I suppose.

This isn't the first time I've seen Conservatives express this opinion, and I don't entirely know what to make of it. Perhaps they think Edwards is really the easiest to beat. Hillary Clinton will have a ton of money and is a woman. Barak Obama is black. The negative style of campaigning they've perfected in the last few elections might not be as effective in this campaign. Clinton will have enough money to fight back, and trashing Obama feeds into the idea that Republicans are racists. So maybe they want Edwards at the top of the deck.

I like Edwards, though, so I hope I'm wrong.

Why did the Republicans Lose?

The current Republican wisdom is that Democrats didn't win this election; Republicans lost. A pretty fine distinction, in my mind, but when you have lost I suppose you care about such distinctions.

And why did the Republicans lose? Because they were insufficiently conservative. That's the take in William Rusher's latest article, and he's not alone in pushing it.

In the 12 years since the GOP took control of Congress, they have settled down comfortably to "politics as usual," mimicking the performance of the Democrats during their 40 years in control. They cheerfully abandoned their conservative commitment to reducing government expenditures, racking up deficits that would have appalled Bill Clinton, and, actually, pushed the use of "earmarks" (whereby individual Congressmen can insert pork into legislation invisibly) to limits not even the Democrats had ever dreamed of. Inevitably, in this atmosphere, outright corruption ultimately made its appearance, and several Republican members of the House and their staff members are now in, or on their way to, prison.

So there it is. I'm not going to deny that the way Republicans have governed turned off their base, who certainly would like to see more fiscal responsibility at the top. But I think you also need to look at how Congress has performed in overseeing President Bush's handling of the War on Terror.

Mr. Rusher argue that Congress can't be blamed for the War in Iraq, as well as other problems related to the War on Terror. He couldn't be more wrong. Congress authorized the use of force in Iraq and they have been negligent in providing real oversight on the Executive Branch. It was earlier this year that we were seriously discussing the Unitary Executive. I don't think you can avoid the fact that the people saw a President out of control and a Congress not willing to do perform their duty in controlling him.

So yeah, the fact that Republicans in Congress spent like drunken sailors probably didn't help them any, but it was only a symptom of a deeper problem - i.e. the unwillingness to take their responsibilities to the people seriously when that meant criticizing fellow Republicans.

However erroneous Mr. Rusher's analysis is, however, it's clear that it is one of the main explanations for Republicans recent electoral failures. And what are the implications for 2008? It depends on whether or not President Bush and Karl Rove can make a case that their conservativism and military adventurism is real conservativism or not. It seems like, at this point, that's going to be a hard sell. So look for someone to postulate a "real" conservativism between now and then.

Handicapping the Democrats

While some live in denial, more and more Republicans are starting to realize this may not be their year. There are, I suppose, a couple of ways to deal with that. One obvious way is to handicap the Democrats by, say, hitting their ankles with tire irons. Or by setting the bar very high for Democrats and then declaring victory when they fail to clear it, as William Rusher does in his latest article.

But, given the problems President Bush is facing in Iraq, the general deterioration of the situation in the Middle East, the threat posed by North Korea, the various incidents of corruption that have been breaking out in the executive branch and (mostly, though not entirely, among Republicans) in Congress, plus the fact that the generally healthy economy is overshadowed in the public's eyes by the continued high price of gasoline, the wonder is that the Democrats aren't widely considered sure to seize control of both houses of Congress in November and throw the Republican rascals out of the White House in 2008.

Yep. The fact that we aren't in a position to completely dominate America proves that we are weak and powerless.

Rusher trots out the usual arguments; Democrats don't have a vision for America, Democrats are just a collection of warring sub-groups, White people like Republicans. Yeah, I"m serious about that last one. White people, Males, Couples and small businesses like Republicans, so they win. Nice to see all the cards on the table like that.

It is pretty clear, incidentally, that every Democrat could recite a plan on national security, in unison, and Republican pundits would still bemoan the lack of a plan on the Democrat side of the fence.