Live Blogging The 20th GOP Debate

by Elias Isquith on February 22, 2012

Azcnndebate

9:56 p.m. My initial take is that Santorum did much better handling the pressures of being the nominal frontrunner than did Newt, while Romney didn’t do much of anything to change anyone’s mind. There was no big moment in any way, and, this being the friggin’ 20th of these, the event was on the whole rather predictable.

If Santorum had the wind at his back, I’d say this would’ve been a nice little nudge towards victory in Michigan; but considering Romney’s recent resurgence there, in his pseudo home state, I expect that tonight’s debate won’t be reason enough for many voters to go with their hearts rather than their heads and pick the Senate’s former Grand Inquisitor.

9:52 p.m. Mitt completely refuses to answer the question as to what’s the biggest misconception about him, launches into a canned version of his stump speech instead. He doesn’t even make a slight gesture towards answering the question, and condescendingly chides John King when the moderator attempts to get him back on-track. His cynicism, plasticity, and, well, smarminess has rarely shone through quite so blindingly.

Santorum follows his lead and natters-on about something or other. It’s hard to even hear these repackaged elevator-pitches anymore. The debate, mercifully ends.

9:27 p.m. John King calls a potential third war in the Middle East in the past decade a “showdown,” à la Giants vs. Patriots. So gross. Newt repeats the standard Adelson-Netanyahu hysteria, and seems to genuinely think that Ahmadinejad is the supreme dictator of the country… which is baffling, since anyone with access to Google could tell you otherwise in a matter of minutes.

Then Santorum, Romney, and Paul say the same exact things they’ve been saying for months. This debate is treading water like Jack and Rose.

9:08 p.m. They’re talking about immigration and the border. Yawn. Arpaio, the birther authoritarian being investigated by the FBI (fresh off of coming under the DOJ‘s purview), is quoted. Yuck.

9:02 p.m. A lengthy back-and-forth between Romney and Santorum on (1) Romneycare’s similarities to Obamacare and (2) Santorum’s previous support of Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey wraps up, and while I think Santorum is often taking too long with his answers, I also think it’s hard to deny that he’s done a really good job pushing back against Romney’s attacks.

He criticized Romney chirping over having a balanced budget in-place in MA by the time he left the State House, noting that it’s a constitutional requirement of the state and something that none other than Michael Dukakis (boo! hiss!) achieved for a full decade. “Does that make him qualified to be President?” You could see the beginnings of a smile creeping across Santorum’s face as he landed the Dukakis line; he knew he was on a seriously good run.

He also does a decent job defending his support of Specter, something Romney brought up solely because it is perhaps Santorum’s greatest sin in the eyes of true wingnuts. I think Santorum’s defense — that his deal with Specter was a quid pro quo that ensured Alito and Roberts got onto the Court — was well-delivered and logical (and benefitted from being the truth), but it was also more than a little inside baseball.

I’m not sure anyone who isn’t already familiar with and interested by the wheelings and dealings of the Senate is going to be persuaded. More likely, they’ll just be reminded of how much of an “insider” Santorum once was.

8:47 p.m. John King asks, via a tweeter, how the candidates feel about contraception. Newt Gingrich argues that being against birth control is not an extreme position, that Obama is pro “infanticide.” Meanwhile, Romney tries to channel Rick Perry by saying that the President is waging an unprecedented attack on religion. Santorum — who this question, of course, is really for — claims that contraception leads to wedlock, drug use, and, perhaps worst of all, new books by Charles Murray.

8:35 p.m. Moderator John King finally gets around to asking about the auto-bailouts. Santorum handles it horribly, evincing no humanity or capacity for feeling, awkwardly intoning market fetishizing clichés, saying that “pain” is worth it because in “the long run” markets are more efficient. Yeah, I’m sure the dude in Detroit who’d be years-long unemployed right now if Santo (or anyone else on that stage) had had their way is really moved by Santorum’s Schumpeter For Dummies.

Romney’s trying to spin his “Let Detroit Fail” op-eds as being, somehow, an argument in favor of doing a smarter, cheaper, “managed bankruptcy” that would’ve ended up with the same results that we see today; indeed, Romney tries to argue that a managed bankruptcy is eventually what the White House and Detroit ended up doing, anyway. (I’m no expert on this stuff, but Think Progress says Romney’s answer is bullshit.)

Romney then goes on to demagogue about how the really bad part of the auto bailout was how all of the unions weren’t eviscerated. That’s going to sound great in Michigan come general election time, I’m sure!

8:23 p.m. Newt Gingrich does something really fascinating, after doing something really boring (at least when it comes from him). The boring thing is dodging the question from King — how would you control the debt? — and saying that it’s too small and, I paraphrase, “we” need to go bigger and take on the entire federal government, which is, in his words, “a disaster.” Yawn. This is what he always does, foregoing giving a substantive answer in favor of pretentious, pseudo-intellectual platitudes.

The interesting thing he does? He argues that the way to deal with the “disaster” that is the federal government is to repeal all of the civil service laws of 130 years ago. He then goes on to argue that the way to turn the government into a “modern” management-service (or some other corporate newspeak) entity is to… take us back into the late 19th century.

What’s fascinating about this, to me, is the degree to which a hearkening back to the supposedly halcyon days of the 1880s is the very heart-and-soul of today’s conservative ideology. But, for obvious reasons, it’s not common that a Republican is so willing to acknowledge that fact.

8.17 p.m. Ron Paul calls Santorum “a fake” while Santorum tries desperately to turn a hateful grimace into a smile. His face looks like the kind of face you make when a strange, bigoted old person has cornered you and is dancing around saying something profoundly offensive, bizarre but endearing, or an unholy combination of the two. So, yeah — the face most appropriate for listening to Ron Paul.

8.14 p.m. Santorum tries to slam Romney by claiming he’s “adopting” the language of Occupy Wall Street. Mitt replies by bragging that, today, he promised to cut taxes for the 1% by 20%. This is why the longer this goes on, the worse things get for Romney in the long run.

8:02 p.m. All right, here we go. As always, CNN begins tonight’s festivities with an onslaught of brain-dead, clichés intended to pump *clap* you up! TONIGHT — EVERYTHING. CHANGES. FOREVER. I could imagine Michael Bay asking if they couldn’t tone it down a bit. The candidates are introduced with a relative lack of fanfare, at least for CNN. No fireworks, no guitar solos, no rings of fire for people riding motorcycles to zoom through before jumping over a tank full of sharks, etc.

{ 2 comments }

Live Blogging Tonight’s GOP Debate

by Elias Isquith on February 22, 2012

I’ll be doing this over at eliasisquith.com (I’ll repost it here once it’s finished, too).

{ 0 comments }

Is The Republican Primary George McGovern’s Fault?

by Elias Isquith on February 22, 2012

Gop2012

Weekly Standard‘s Jay Cost is bemoaning the dissolution of the old, pre-McGovern system of Party organization, when both Parties, were run by a hierarchical network of wise men and power brokers. Ever since the McGovern-Fraser Commission that brought about the modern nomination process, Cost argues, Americans have been saddled with an unwieldy, inefficient, and self-defeating system.

Instead of there being a centralized Party leadership to keep in mind what’s best for the entire institution, power is divvied-up among the candidates. And while the candidates may mean well, the fact is that it’s rarely in their own self-interest to do what’s in the greater self-interest of the Party. Some of them end up behaving like the contemptuous little sovereigns of the Holy Roman Empire, refusing to sacrifice an ounce of their own power for the greater good.

Supposedly, this is the reason why this cycle’s Presidential nomination process for the GOP has been such an unmitigated disaster; an endless and self-destructive carnival of mediocre candidates becoming that even weaker through in-fighting and desperate attempts to prove themselves most faithful to the wingnut code. It’s, in a word, the system, man, that’s bringing Mitt Romney — and a chance of winning in 2012, with him — to the brink of defeat.

Understandably, Cost yearns for the good old days:

Because there is no such governing body, we have this mess that possibly might stretch on for months, leave lingering bad blood between the factions, and ultimately give Barack Obama a boost in the general election. That’s the difference between having somebody in charge and having nobody in charge….

The sad truth is that Americans who lived and died 150 years ago – who didn’t have modern medicine, personal computers, cars, airplanes, easy access to higher education, “sophisticated” manners and all the rest – had a much better party system than we do today.

And the Republican party is paying the price for this right now.

Hey, guess what; I’m not buying this for a second. (Big surprise, right?) And neither should you.

The far more logical explanation for the Republican Party’s current nomination woes? The Party faithful have gone off the deep end. At this point, that’s kind of a boring analysis, I know. We’ve been saying this for at least three years. But it’s still true!

For Cost’s argument to make any sense, we’d have to discount the 2008 Democratic nomination process, which produced not one but two top-tier, highly-electable candidates. And though their campaign was inarguably hard-fought, they not only were able to make nice for the kids, but have forged a rather improbable but doubtlessly effective partnership. In fact, Obama and Clinton have worked so well together, it’s become something of a cliché for bored DC journos to pitch a story: What if Clinton and Biden switch seats for 2012?

During the dog days of the Clinton-Obama contest, of course, there were plenty of Democrats who worried, as Cost is today, that the intra-party squabble would — like Lisa did Johnny — tear the Dems apart. But these anxieties were proven premature. Why? Because the Democratic nomination contest of 2007-2008 was waged along personal, not ideological, lines.

On the substance, the distance between Obama and Clinton was minuscule. Indeed, the distance between the two of them and the median voter was similarly proportioned. And that’s where the big contrast with today’s GOP lies.

Clinton and Obama weren’t marching around Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, West Virginia, and other primary states going back-and-forth over who was more indebted to Lyndon Johnson’s legacy; or who would nationalize more industries and subsidize more forms of birth control. It got ugly between the two of them, sure, but it was ugly in a petty, personal way. No one was showing swing-voter Jane Doe those planks of the Democratic base best left under the rug.

Today’s GOP, on the other hand, has not only had the ad hominem brawling that so turns voters off, but it’s had more than the normal share of extremist one-upsmanship. Honestly, as little as you may think of today’s Republican Party, did you honestly imagine that at this juncture, in late February, we’d be talking about Rick Santorum? Or Rick Santorum and Satan? That support for Paul Ryan’s dismantling of Medicare would be the moderate position? The list goes on.

That, and not the post-McGovern reforms, is the real reason the GOP seems poised to spectacularly blow what could have been a Heaven-sent opportunity. Not because the people have too much control, but because these people have too much control. At this point, not even Da Mare or Boss Tweed could save Republicans from themselves.

{ 0 comments }

No, Super PACs Are Not Good For Democracy

by Elias Isquith on February 21, 2012

Citizens united(Image by Kip Lyall)

It’s rather predictable, and in that way perhaps more forgivable.

Who wouldn’t expect two of our more clever journo-bloggers (who, not incidentally, both could be described as libertarian-curious) to acquiesce to their more ignoble desires and pen contrarian takes on Citizens United‘s impact on the 2012 election? Indeed, as someone who is not paid for his keyboard tappings, but nevertheless feels compelled to find somewhat interesting things to write about during the campaign, I can understand how the Super PAC world has been a boon to many media scribes. It’s given us “King of Bain,” Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, and the spectacle of Romney as Sisyphus, rolling the GOP nomination inch-by-inch up the mountain.

Nevertheless, Will Wilkinson and Dave Weigel are very, very wrong. They’re wrong in the same way; and they’re wrong twice-over. They’re wrong about why some people think the effect of Citizens United is and will continue to be so negative. And they’re wrong when they say why they think it isn’t.

Their first mistake may be understandable, but it’s also an example of how we sometimes fail to give those with whom we disagree enough credit. Here’s how Wilkinson ventriloquizes:

The Citizens United decision, which spawned the superPAC, was hailed by some on the left as the death-knell of democracy [leading to] mega-bucks buying the election through a barrage of brainwashing TV spots.

Weigel characterizes anti-PACers similarly (though, to his credit, he provides quotes):

The super PAC critics aren’t [call them] rotten and unfair. In the words of Democracy Now producers, the PAC money comes from a “secretive coterie” of donors. In the terrific coinage of Mother Jones editors, it’s “dark money,” a Lovecraftian monster that moves from state to state, dissolving the foundations of the republic.

If Citizens United‘s critics were primarily or solely concerned with the prospect that Super PAC cash would lead to election results that would be different than they’d have been without the unleashing of monetized “speech,” I’d have no problem with depicting them as a flock of Chicken Littles. But I think Jane Mayer’s recent, superb New Yorker piece on the matter does a far more effective job in identifying the real specter now haunting the United States.

We’ve no longer only fear itself to fear; there’s cynicism, too:

Lawrence Lessig, the author of a new book on campaign finance, “Republic, Lost,” argues that the Court misunderstood the nature of corruption. A greater peril than obvious, quid-pro-quo bribes is posed by systemic corruption, he says, in which voters regard the whole system as rigged. And the Court, by eliminating almost all the curbs on outside money in elections, has given wealthy donors disproportionate political power, largely in the form of Super PACs and nonprofit advocacy groups.

There’s a first-order problem with Citizens United, one that rests on a first principles-styled objection rather than a more consequentialist critique. I subscribe to it. Simply put, it’s the idea that Foster Friess and Sheldon Adelson should not be able to wield such a grotesquely disproportionate influence over the democratic process. Not because they’ll become secret string-pullers, but simply because it’s unfair. (And as an aside, I believe both moneymen have proven themselves to be quite undeserving of being listened to — full-stop.)

But the second, consequentialist, argument against Citizens United sacrifices none of its power for its pragmatism. Because a Citizens United polity is one in which the vast majority of participants rightly feel themselves to be superfluous. And like a civic broken windows, the appearance of legitimacy is no second-order concern for a democracy. There is therefore a patent state interest in upholding the integrity of the political process, regardless of whether or not one is focused on the end-results of elections.

Americans were already deeply cynical about their politics, before Citizens United. But while there was once a means, however feint, to argue that the system is not a dull gloss over what is in essence an elaborate sporting event with dueling oligarchs jockeying over what amounts to most of us as minutiae, the Super PAC order of today renders that optimism not naïve but simply delusional. In the same way people know professional wrestling is fake — even if the role of “winner” is traded back-and-forth between dueling sides — voters will soon believe, if they don’t already, that American democracy is a sham.

It may continue to provide good copy for Wilkinson, Weigel, and me, but the Citizens United decision nevertheless remains, on the whole, a disaster.

[cross-posted at eliasisquith.com]

{ 15 comments }

A Man Of Inaction: Rick Perlstein On The Obama Presidency’s First Three Years

by Elias Isquith on February 19, 2012

Obama

I had been meaning to write a piece on Ryan Lizza’s big “Obama memos” exposé, but I should’ve known to just wait a while; because, if it’s worth writing, chances are that sooner or later Rick Perlstein’s going to get to it. His latest piece for Rolling Stone takes a look at the President through a slew of successive retrospectives on what I think people will come to call Part I of the Obama Administration, and I’d say that his conclusions about the man are more or less my own:

Read Ryan Lizza. What’s remarkable about his New Yorker piece is how definitively it establishes much of Obama’s policy making as not planned, but merely reactive. Lizza has somehow got ahold of the kind of documents and “decision memos” – proposals drafted by White House aides for the president to either approve or reject – that usually only surface decades after a presidency ends. They show, among other things, an erstwhile Keynesian in Chief – Obama’s February 24, 2009 speech defending the $787 billion in investments in his American Recovery and Investment Act got a 92 percent approval rating – rashly rewriting his entire economic approach, in a lurch from stimulus to austerity, in the face of a Tea Party onslaught. It also shows him as, in moments, strikingly heartless: His aides describe to him a plan to “expand programs to reduce and prevent the incidence of homelessness among veterans. He responds: “Given what we did last year, does the increase need to be this high?”

Of course, part of this is the ordinary give-and-take of governing. But part is organic to the foolish way Obama and the people around him think – how often they let themselves be guided by clichés made up by Republicans and parroted by pundits. “Democratic Presidents rarely address small business in their message,” a team of aides tells the president. But of course Democratic presidents are obsessed with talking about small business. Click here, here, here, and here for Democratic presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton saying at least as much or more about small business as Ronald Reagan ever did. Likewise when top Obama aide David Plouffe announces it’s time for cuts to balance the budget. “‘We’re going to need a period of ugliness’ — he meant with the left — ‘so that people in the center understand we’re not wasting their tax dollars.” Except that this clashes with the vast majority of polls, which show Americans prefer higher taxes over lower spending as a way to balance the budget.

It makes for a curious convergence in Obama’s character: blindness in the face of controverting evidence, yes; but a lack of stout-hearted conviction at the very same time. Never once in these documents do we see Obama uttering a Reaganite “Stay the course!” No reminders of some stalwart eight-year plan they’re supposed to all be laboring under. (Instead, Fox News doesn’t even have to say “jump” before the President responds, “How high?” His staff secretary writes of a proposal to pay federal employees to participate in a healthcare study, “Regardless of the merit and relatively low cost of the idea … it could easily be caricatured by the right-wing press.” Obama replies: “Unfortunately, I think the political guys are right about how it would be characterized.”) Then there is the right’s healthcare policy panacea, “malpractice reform”: “Obviously,” Obama says about that, “we shouldn’t do anything that weighs down the overall effort, but if this helps the [American Medical Association, the main doctors' lobby] stay on board, we should explore it.” It looks like the best way to get Barack Obama to consider changing course is to say “Boo!”

One of the most interesting things about reading Lizza’s piece is seeing how it is that a politician with relatively liberal and social-justice-conscious proclivities survives within the American political system. It ain’t pretty.

[Continue reading]

{ 0 comments }

Mike Bloomberg And The Politics Of Gun Control

by Elias Isquith on February 17, 2012

Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg is on a one-man mission to bring gun control back from the 90s and once again into the mainstream political debate (up next he will — like the fearless independent, no-nonsense centrist that he is — challenge the nation: Rachel, Monica, or Phoebe?), so this morning he took to the airwaves with some advice for how gun control advocates can one day become the bizarro-world version of the NRA:

“What you’ve got to do is take a look at your Congressman, your Senator, and say ‘Where are you? I’m not going to worry about everybody else. I’m going to work for your opponent unless you do what’s right to protect my kids and the cops on the corner who are putting their lives on the line to protect me” …

Mr. Bloomberg then made the case that Washington legislators should face scrutiny no matter how bad their opponents are on gun control issues. “I’ll deal with your opponent when I get that man or woman when he gets into office,” he advocated voters tell their representatives.

“Because that’s exactly what the NRA does. You say ‘Oh my opponent’s going to be worse for the NRA than me.’ They say ‘I don’t care, we’re going after you.’”

I have not spent a large amount of time delving into the politics of gun control. It honestly doesn’t interest me that much. In the abstract I would support whatever would make it more difficult for people to get the kind of guns made primarily or solely for the purpose of killing other people while leaving the kind of guns that are used mainly for hunting alone. But it’s just so far down on my list of things to do once I finally become Earth’s version of Xenu.

[Read more]

{ 10 comments }

New Digs, Ctd.

by Elias Isquith on February 17, 2012

Over at my new real estate, I try to skim-read to the ending of the latest chapter in the Not Romney Saga and lay-out why Rick Santorum will not win.

{ 0 comments }

A Bad Day For Women And The GOP

by Elias Isquith on February 17, 2012

Contradudes

Andrew Sullivan is dumbfounded by yesterday’s farce of a hearing from Congressman Issa on the White House’s contraception mandate in which not a single person with two X chromosomes testified:

It’s hard to believe that the GOP has become so isolated from the American mainstream that they could not find and would not allow a single woman to testify in the Issa hearings today on contraception and religious freedom for Catholic bishops and the small minority of American Catholics who don’t agree with birth control on grounds of conscience. I know the GOP doesn’t want the debate to be about birth control, even though it obviously is at least in part, but seriously. They couldn’t even find a Catholic woman to make the case that this isn’t about abortion? Or do any actually exist? And they excluded a Catholic woan representing the majority Catholic view that Obama’s compromise was acceptable as a reasonable balance?

Whatever else this is, it is not good p.r.

Yeah, I’d say that this is not a good bit of video for the Republicans:

E.D., meanwhile, has this to add:

We’ve all been watching the Republican party deteriorate lo these past five, ten, twenty years. Should anything surprise us anymore?…

[O]f course, it will get worse before it gets better. All across the country, women’s access to healthcare is being threatened in one form or another. Virginia is just the latest in a long string of absurd moves by the right to expand government into the bedroom. Because government is only too big if it’s giving poor kids chicken nuggets. When it’s forcing women to have an ultrasound whether or not she wants one it’s no big deal at all.

This is not the right way to go about decreasing the rate of abortions. Universal access to healthcare, prioritizing education, and working toward prosperity for everyone will all lead to fewer abortions in the long run. Cultural and economic forces, not more prying authoritarianism, and yes contraception are more likely to slow the rate of abortion than forced ultrasounds.

That Virginia news (which, to be fair, came prior to yesterday) is indeed — even in these debased times — somewhat breathtaking in its chauvinism, cruelty, and pig ignorance.

Delegate Todd Gilbert, in particular, distinguished himself during the debate in the Virginia House with comments revealing his understanding of the abortion issue to be just as muttonheaded and stridently ignorant as his most diehard ideological opponents would imagine:

Republicans said opponents of both bills were alarmists who had exaggerated the consequences.

No comment provoked more surprise than that of Del. Todd Gilbert in diminishing the gravity of the decision to have an abortion.

“We hear the same song over there. The very tragic human notes that are often touched upon involve extreme examples,” said Gilbert, R-Shenandoah. “But in the vast majority of these cases, these are matters of lifestyle convenience.”

A murmur rippled across the House chamber as members reacted to Gilbert’s words.

Gilbert later walked his comments back in the typical modern fashion of louts caught saying what they truly believe — i.e., by spouting off a handful of clichés representing the absolutely opposite position of what he said in a pseudo-candid manner — but the contours of the simplistic and crudely drawn morality play in which he lives are crystal clear to anyone paying a modicum of attention.

And keeping in mind that I haven’t even yet touched upon the bizarre, nearly self-parodyingly paternalistic and anachronistic comments of ostensible GOP front-runner Rick Santorum’s sugar daddy Foster Friess? I’d say it’s pretty clear, too, that today was an awful, no good, terrible, very bad day for the however many pathetic souls running the Republican Party’s 2012 outreach program to women voters.


(x-posted)

{ 3 comments }

New Digs

by Elias Isquith on February 17, 2012

Just wanted to let you guys know I’ll be posting here, too, à la E.D. with his new American Times venue. Would be thrilled to have you comment there, if you’re so inclined. I’ll probably be doing a lot of my own commenting (hopefully more than I have been able to as of late) thereabouts.

{ 0 comments }

Can The Bishops Take Yes For An Answer?

by Elias Isquith on February 15, 2012

Usccb

David Gibson tries to use the Catholic Church’s own rules and teachings about “cooperation” with “evil” to discern whether or not the contraception mandate truly is too much for any observant Catholic to bear. Now, of course, there’s often no objectively correct answer when it comes to theology any more than there’s one when it comes to Constitutional interpretation — still, his conclusion is worth noting:

In fact, the insurance issue at this level [i.e., post-compromise] is akin to someone objecting that their tax dollars go to the Defense Department or for food stamps or something else they might object to in principle. But people still have to pay taxes, and the Catholic Church and other religious organizations have done that without much protest throughout history.

“This is Moral Theology 101,” said one moral theologian who, like several others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of angering the hierarchy on such a sensitive topic.

“I do not think the bishops and their advisers have thought all the way through the entire bundle of values at stake,” said another. “The bishops do not seem to be able to take yes for an answer.”

I’ve heard the tax argument made more than a few times and I gotta say, for as much as I’ve followed Michael Brendan Dougherty (who, all due respect to Mr. Cupp, is the person I go to most often to get the hard-right Catholic perspective) in his daily arguments on this issue over Twitter, I’m still a bit fuzzy as to how it’s mistaken.

A more sturdy ground to argue on, it seems to me, is to say that the insurers will raise premiums on the Church’s institutions as a consequence of giving away the contraception for “free.” On that question, Gibson is a bit dismissive, basically repeating the Administration’s response:

Some critics of the administration’s “accommodation” for faith-based employers argue that the distance between a Catholic (or other religious) employer is deceptive on two counts.

One, they say that the organization’s health insurance company will simply pass on the cost of the contraceptive coverage to the religious institution in the form of higher premiums, so the institution will in effect be paying for contraceptive coverage. But studies show that providing coverage for birth control actually saves insurers money (pregnancies and abortions cost more than contraceptives) and it is at least revenue neutral. So there are no costs to pass on.

I don’t know enough about health insurance companies’ supply lines to weigh in. Maybe a reader can and would be so kind. Still, the argument, while better than those against this being essentially a tax, is not to my mind an especially good one. It requires we believe something will happen that hasn’t demonstrably (as far as I know) happened, and it requires we believe that the Administration is either too stupid to have thought of this consequence or, more likely, is lying. And while it’s obviously not hard for some of the people worked up over this decision to envision a scheming, anti-Catholic White House, I don’t think, on the whole, American politics is populated by super villains.

To answer this post’s rhetorical question — they can, but they won’t. It’s no great secret that the Bishops are a rather conservative bunch of old white dudes. And it’s not secret that many of them would prefer a President of a different Party in the White House. But the Administration has said that it’s not the Bishops they’re trying to win over, anyway — and on that front, the polling thus far seems to reflect that they’ve succeeded.

{ 10 comments }

← Previous Entries