31 Comments

1. heather:

Omar of Iraq the Model panicked last week, when there appeared to be a glitch in the Iraq ‘democratic process.’ I would say the same thing to him as I would say to Roger: no-one promised anyone a rose garden, even in a brand new democratic world. Iraq has had very smart people making their constitution, and very smart people working to make their government, and of course, they will make mistakes, and have huge disagreements. But going to meetings and being bored out of your mind is a whole lot better than torture chambers and guns.

Think. If you go to the “mother of parliaments” in London, you will see red lines woven into the green carpet in the House of Commons. These lines are more than 2 swords lengths apart. Why? Because as the parliament developed, people were very apt to haul out swords to decide issues. The Iraqis are much more civilized than your 17th and 18th century Brit.

The USA has a remarkably resilient system. As a Canadian, I am awestruck at the checks and balances inherent in your system. Yes, the Senators on the Judicial committee have made idiots of themselves. If the Democrats want to survive as a party (and there are not guarantees there, by the way), then they will have to deal with the overload of old foolish people who are currently “leaders” of their party.

Jan 13, 2006 - 10:54 pm 2. Patrick Tyson:

We deserve more. We deserve people who think.

Hmmm…deserve. Now what does that bring to mind?

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

—H. L. Mencken

Jan 13, 2006 - 10:54 pm 3. exguru:

Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 with 42-43% of the vote, and promptly got Ginsburg and Breyer approved by unanimous vote. Dubya was elected with 52% of the vote, and had to fight for weeks with nasty people like Kennedy and Schumer, not to mention oafs like Biden and Harry Reid. The difference is the Republicans had respect for the traditional system–an important feature of the greatest government ever invented by man–while the Democrats decided they would try to blow it up.

Jan 13, 2006 - 11:02 pm 4. John Anderson:

I am basically Republican, but have sometimmes agreed with Democrat Party (or other) positions. I think it unfortunate that the last thirty or so years have seen the Dems (and too many Repubs, if not as widely or to the same extreme) degrading from a party that could debate issues and even support “opposition” stances if they were persuasive to a knee-jerk truth-ignoring pack of slavering zombies out to destroy rather than build or at least conserve.

Bad enough the latest example of H Clinton saying body armor incompleteness was Bush/Repub criminal/treasonous indifference to troops without checking with the Pentagon, and then not showing for the inquiry on the issue for which she had called (OK, it did come up too quickly to seamlessly re-schedule appointments, so cut a bit of slack - but not much).

Far worse, and I hope (but do not expect) it is picked up and pounded upon again and again, happened during the Alito meetings: refusing to hear any other views. After a couple of days of vague and often incorrect (the CAP business, for instance - a “subpoena” to get records the NYTimes already had - no subpoena needed - and had found no problems in), when offered the closest thing to evidence - the testimony of his fellow judges, several of them of the Dem party - most simply did not show up to hear it. This was not simply impoliteness, it was dereliction of duty.

Jan 14, 2006 - 12:54 am 5. Gary Rosen:

David Brooks, the lone voice of sanity at the NY Times, wrote a column this week called “Losing the Alitos” which absolutely nails why the Democrats are losing middle-class voters in this country. It should be required reading for every Democratic senator, congressman and political operative:

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/opinion/12brooks.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fDavid%20Brooks

Jan 14, 2006 - 1:25 am 6. Syl:

It should be required reading for every Democratic senator, congressman and political operative

Only if they subscribe to Times Select.

Everything has been said about the Dem fiasco at the hearings that I’d want to say. So I’d just like to mention something else.

After Roberts charismatic presence during his hearings, I wasn’t really looking forward to these with Alito. It somehow seemed unfair to have to follow Roberts.

And when Alito first opened his mouth and actually said something, my first reaction was that he actually has a voice and can talk! I was relieved just by that fact, for some reason, never having heard him utter a single word before. I think my expectations had been set waaaaay too low.

Then I started listening to what he had to say and noted his assured manner and immediately felt comfortable. When the questioning started the next day, no sweat, I looked forward to every answer.

For me this was even better than Roberts because I wasn’t distracted by blue eyes and interesting head tilts. I was listening.

At one point when the questioner was wondering if there had been any cases re such-and-such, I looked at Alito fully expecting that brain of his to know the answer and be able to quote the majority opinion in whatever case it was. I had that much confidence in him.

When the Dems complained that Alito wasn’t forthcoming re what he believed about thus and so, I screamed at the TV ‘That’s not the point!’. Alito will follow the law, not make it up as he goes along.

And on that score I think conservatives should be no happier than liberals are mad.

I think in all the furor over the Dems behavior, the basic essence and strengths of Alito have been buried.

And it made me more determined to fight Hillary. I don’t want her to have a chance to negate Roberts and Alito through any judges she may be able to place.

Jan 14, 2006 - 3:03 am 7. Oyster:

We need these hearings because without them we begin to do away with an important aspect of our democracy - transparency. However, we don’t need the theatrics and mock-indignance we’ve witnessed. Some of them don’t have the sense to be embarrassed. As someone said to me it’s ironic how we have such people bald-facedly passing judgement on probably the only branch of government that still carries an ounce of dignity.

Jan 14, 2006 - 3:23 am 8. Always right:

Charles Krauthammer said it very well; Alito (his demeanor and his answer) is so dull that Dem can’t find a chink in his armor (paraphrasing). And we witnessed yet more frantic Dems outplay themselves as the hearing went on.

One thing seems very clear from this “brutal” (for the viewers) hearing. We won’t know for sure how Alito is going to vote on cases brought to the SC, but he has shown to be a thoughtful and decent man/judge. With his promise of open-mindedness, that’s all I can ask for.

I hope two good things can happen post-hearing now. First, more people from my state (DE) can finally vote the dullwit Biden out. [Decent and smart people don't put themselves and their family through the process to run for public service. It is not that we thought Biden too grand, there's nobody else in the race.] Secondly, more people can trust GWB for his next pick if ever more SC vacancy comes up during his term.

Jan 14, 2006 - 5:24 am 9. Huan:

To play to one’s base is both natural and reasonable. What is silly and stupid is the ineptitude of the play itself. If they only look back at the past few years and realize that there is direct correlation between how partisan the plays have been with the disapproval ratings of congress.

Stand up and be a man and act based on your conviction (if you have any beyond what is handed to you by the MSM and special interests groups).

Despite all the missteps Bush has made, what remains consistent is that he acts based on conviction, whether we agree or not.

Jan 14, 2006 - 5:48 am 10. maria horvath:

My advice to the Democrats: Learn to lose gracefully.

Jan 14, 2006 - 6:12 am 11. David Thomson:

ìWell, right … up to a point. Peevish, yes (although I might have used a stronger word), but “disorganized,” no.î

ìIdioticî is the word which jumps out to me. The Republicans are the only game in town. They arenít perfect and sometimes even make fools of themselves. Still, the majority of todayís Republicans are center-right. Their Republican legislators donít have to answer to a bunch of crazy people. The Democrat senators, on the other hand, are constantly being pressured by the likes of the Daily Kos and the Move On.org crowd. I could point out a few other things—but this one is the most significant. Everything else is of secondary importance next to the realization that the Democratic Party has been captured by radical leftists.

Jan 14, 2006 - 6:55 am 12. Carl Spackler:

‘…As the words liberal and conservative become increasingly meaningless in our culture.’

What’s this ‘our culture’ business? Are you referring to L.A., upper income, “the leather in my Lexis is creamier” culture?

I know in MY culture, we’ve been the majority of the military for the last 30 years, and if you are sitting on the floor of a BlackHawk looking at Afghanistan, Columbian, Iraq landscape go by, dollar to donuts, you are not a liberal.

Most truckers who spend weeks away from their families, driving seventy thousands pounds through rain, mountains, snow, aren’t liberals. Fishermen here in New England that leave the docks in falling snow to fish in ‘youíll be dead in minutes water’ arenít liberal. Nor the millions of tradesmen, small businessmen and women that make life nearly effortless, liberal.

I read your writing because you live in a different world, and exotic world, still in America but way, way out there from ethos of masses. Sloppy language, sloppy thoughts with apologies to Orwell

Jan 14, 2006 - 7:10 am 13. ShrinkWrapped:

David Thomson hit the nail on the head; the Dems are being run by extremists, which is why people like me, a life long Democrat and a traditional liberal, voted for GWB last election; furthermore, I have no intention of voting for Hillary when she runs for Senate this year (and for President in ‘08.)

The Dems are like the Palestinians; they have lost but do not know it or admit it to themselves.

It required the devastation of 1964 for the conservatives to go back to the drawing board, re-think their position and then begin the arduous process of convincing people they had some good ideas. Until the Dems suffer a similar debacle, we cannot expect them to recognize they are out of step and need to re-think their ideas. Unfortunately for the Dems, the MSM is so blindly on their side that there is no one to point out the stupidity of many of their positions. As Alter said, it also adds 5 points to their poll numbers which makes it even harder for them to see reality.

One or two more election cycles like the last one should do it.

Jan 14, 2006 - 7:40 am 14. Silicon valley Jim:

I grew up with a lawyer for a father. I attended a top-five law school. As a result, I have had considerable first-hand experience of the overweening confidence of lawyers; they’ll assert something confidently and defend it whether it’s true or not, and whether they know anything about the subject or not. I found one of the most impressive things about Judge Alito to be the number of times that he said that he couldn’t express an opinion on that subject because he wasn’t familiar with enough of the background. For this, the likes of Teddy Kennedy and Joseph Biden say that he’s not “forthcoming”.

Jan 14, 2006 - 8:23 am 15. ahem:

The traditional two parties are really only points around which to rally voters of relatively similar interest. They were always rough coalitions bound to dissolve once the MSM could no longer control the terms of the debate.

Now that information is free, voters are becoming more informed about the true nature of reality and are making finer political distinctions. Our political identities are no longer as clear-cut as before. We’re experiencing a major shake-up in traditional party politics.

If reactionaries don’t manage to stifle free speech, this trend will catch on with even more voters in the future. I think it’s clear that while the Republicans are starting to realize this, the Democrats aren’t.

Jan 14, 2006 - 8:57 am 16. Patrick Tyson:

Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 with 42-43% of the vote, and promptly got Ginsburg and Breyer approved by unanimous vote.

Neither was confirmed by unanimous vote and Bill Clinton got 43.01% of the popular vote in 1992. George Bush got 47.87% of the popular vote in 2000 and 50.73% of the popular vote in 2004.

As to respecting the “traditional system,” it’s been my observation that the party in power finds a lot to respect and the party out of power finds a lot to fault.

Jan 14, 2006 - 9:49 am 17. Insufficiently Sensitive:

With all due apologies to the ‘people’s elected representatives’ sitting on the Judiciary Committee, they’re the best living examples of reactionaries that we see today. Their senility is proven once and for all by their inability to recognize this - they’ve wholly forgotten how righteously they sneered at ‘reactionaries’ in the days when they converted to the Church of the Left.

Vote ‘em off the island.

Jan 14, 2006 - 10:35 am 18. David Thomson:

I donít want to mislead anyone. Republican elected representatives are pressured to oppose gay marriage and abortion. Iím sorry but these awkward social issues cannot be ignored. Are these issues of paramount importance to you? Can you live with these compromises? Other than that, though, the GOP represents sanity on matters such as the war on terror, the economy, environmentalism, and just about everything else. The choice is yours. I canít make it for you.

Jan 14, 2006 - 11:06 am 19. Terrye:

Roger:

I agree with you.

Right now I am pretty disgusted with the base of both parties, but the Democrats take the cake for sheer stupidity.

Jan 14, 2006 - 11:31 am 20. Charlie (Colorado):

If the Democrats want to survive as a party …, then they will have to deal with the overload of old foolish people who are currently “leaders” of their party.

Not to mention the overload of young foolish people that seem to be their front-line troops.

Jan 14, 2006 - 1:17 pm 21. ROA:

The fact that the Canadian Justice Department is urging legalization of polygamy will not help the cause of gay marriage anyplace except possibly southern Utah.

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/006148.php

Jan 14, 2006 - 2:32 pm 22. markus:

Shrinkwrapped — “It required the devastation of 1964 for the conservatives to go back to the drawing board, re-think their position and then begin the arduous process of convincing people they had some good ideas.”

Excuse me, but what positions did conservatives rethink after the Goldwater loss? My understanding is that the Goldwaterites simply continued the ideological battle that Goldwater himself started with mainstream Republicanism. Eventually, around 1980, they won. You see, they had the TRUTH, and eventually their party and their country recognized it.

maria hovarth — “My advice to the Democrats: Learn to lose gracefully.”

I always appreciate when people say what the really feel. So thank you, maria, for being honest and for summing up (I think) the viewpoint of most people reading this blog. Which is that unless Democrats like myself have something to say about Terri Schiavo, or gay marriage, or perhaps Pat Robertson, or unless we are attacking liberal orthodoxy ourselves (something that many of us actually do more than occasionally, c.f. The New Republic) — we should just SHUT UP. Right?

Just like too many posters at the Daily Kos,

no respect for those with opposing views.

Jan 14, 2006 - 10:53 pm 23. klrfz1:

Markus, Arthur Herman has an editorial on a related topic in the NY Post today.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/60411.htm (registration required)

ON June 9, 1954, during the televised Army- McCarthy hearings, Sen. McCarthy “outed” Fred Fischer, a young lawyer working for the Army, for having once belonged to the leftist National Lawyers Guild. Everyone in the room except McCarthy instantly realized it was a gross gratuitous smear.

Fischer’s boss, Joseph Welch, interrupted McCarthy’s tirade with an indignant speech of his own, which began, “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” and ended, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

The cameras took it all in ? one of the 20th century’s unforgettable moments. …

McCarthy’s fall sank the anti-Communist crusade he had championed, and crippled the Republican Party’s right wing, which had made anti-Communism its lodestone, for a generation. Those dramatic minutes on TV began a political landslide that buried McCarthy’s friend Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election 10 years later.

Republicans, and the conservative movement, learned a powerful lesson. They would now pay a high price for their rhetorical excess or hysteria, which the media would instantly denounce as “McCarthyism.” …

THE fall of McCarthy forced conservatives to change their political style. Smearing opponents as “commies” or “pinkos” only backfired. Appealing to racial or anti-Semitic stereotypes told the public more about the accuser than the accused.

The right began policing its own. Conservatives who didn’t or couldn’t make the adjustment were relegated to the swamps of the John Birch Society ? or later, like white supremacist David Duke or evangelist Pat Robertson, instantly denounced. The new attitude was embodied in a new magazine that appeared soon after McCarthy’s fall, William F. Buckley’s National Review, which taught conservatives that they could gain more through reasoned debate than through conspiracy theories, name-calling, and sleazy innuendo.

Conservatives learned their lesson: The Reagan Revolution would be the result.

I apologize for any names I may have called you. I regret any sleazy innuendo or gratuitous smear I may have posted here. I will henceforth try to confine my remarks to reasoned debate. Which is really too bad because I just thought of a terrific joke about respecting your “opposing views”. Oh well. My excuse is I was a Democrat for so many years, rudeness just comes naturally to me.

Did you ever see anyone at Daily Kos apologize for anything? Do you see any relevance in Herman’s editorial for today’s Democratic Party? Did I just use the word “henceforth”? Yikes!

Jan 15, 2006 - 5:37 am 24. Tim:

So markus thinks maria’s advice for Democrats to start learning how to lose gracefully really means Democrats should shut up?

Any semi-literate moron understands the plain meaning of maria’s advice. murkus’s complaint only makes sense if Democrats cannot speak out without being rude, obnoxious, or otherwise deleterious. I suspect markus knows himself, and those he consorts with, all too well, and his question acknowledges, however painfully, that Democrats simply cannot speak up nor lose arguments gracefully.

Which only means we’ll have this problem for years, if not decades, to come, as Democrats and other liberals haven’t proven themselves smart enough to learn new tricks, let alone absorb lessons.

Jan 15, 2006 - 7:16 am 25. Jamie Irons:

Markus writes:

You see, [the Republicans] had the TRUTH, and eventually their party and their country recognized it…

As one who migrated slightly to the right of center almost immediately after 9/11, when I had been to that point rather far to the left (without being “radical”), I think to the extent that conservatives feel they have any grasp of the “truth,” it is mostly a grasp of an enduring truth of human nature: human nature is relatively fixed.

Our genes, which control a surprising range of our possible behavior, without the latter’s being altogether rigid, have changed hardly at all in hundreds of millennia. When one reads the great writers of antiquity, one is surprised at the degree to which they already had the world, and their fellow human beings, pretty well figured out.

The left sees human nature as almost infinitely malleable, and doesn’t hesitate to promote the overthrow of institutions (marriage, for example) that it sees as hindrances to this infinite malleability.

What really surprises me about the left is that, in contrast to its purported belief in science, it seems almost immune to historical evidence (which is of course of a different order than experimental evidence). While there is evidence everywhere of the failure of the institutions promoted by the left, the latter sees these failures as evidence only of an insufficiently pure application of their principles.

Strange.

Jamie Irons

Jan 15, 2006 - 8:42 am 26. greeneyeshade:

the ny post editorial quoted by klrfz1 (ummm, with a nom de plume like that, he wouldn’t be channeling walt kelly’s grundoon, would he?) resonated with something i’d observed since the ‘04 presidential conventions _ no credit there, by then it had become too obvious to miss: the republicans did a better job keeping their crazies out of sight than we did.

of course, cathy young blew a hole in that theory with 2 words: ‘ann coulter.’ but maybe that just proves there are exceptions to every rule.

Jan 16, 2006 - 12:24 am 27. markus:

“While there is evidence everywhere of the failure of the institutions promoted by the left, the latter sees these failures as evidence only of an insufficiently pure application of their principles.”

Actually, intelligent liberals (cf. Washington Monthly, New Republic, Center for American Progress, New American Foundations) see the shortcomings of various institutions which they have promoted in the past, and they then seek to make those institutions work better. That is to say, liberals are REFORMERS. Conservatives see the shortcomings of liberal institutions as proof that they never should have existed in the first place.

And when the voters put people who think that government programs are intrinsically inefficient and unable to help solve problems in charge of administering those very same programs — this is when we get people like Michael Brown.

Jan 16, 2006 - 11:35 am 28. Steven Mitchell:

Markus, “inefficient” and “effective” are not synonyms. That is one of the classic blunders of liberals.

Jamie, exactly! You are beginning to see why conservatism is not an ideology.

As to the original point, party line politics is only stupid if both parties offer worthwhile choices.

Jan 16, 2006 - 12:37 pm 29. markus:

Steven — I never said “inefficient” and “effective” were synonyms. I said Republicans think government programs tend to be inefficient and ineffictive. (Although this may need modified: Bush seems to love big government social engineering projects in Middle Eastern countries, and he also seems to have boundless faith in soviet-style command and control institutions dealing with military and internal security matters.)

But please feel free to enlighten me about classic liberal blunders. After all, I’ve been told there is no such thing as an educated liberal, only an educated ex-liberal. Right? Not a single one?

Jamie — I’m not going to speak for leftists or marxists, since I am not one of them. But having a relatively fixed idea of human nature is certainly compatible with modern liberalism (progressivism). There is nothing about human nature that is incompatible with the effort to end child labor in 1905, nor with the similar effort to ensure universal access to the best health care one hundred years later.

Jan 17, 2006 - 5:39 am 30. Bostonian:

Jamie: “While there is evidence everywhere of the failure of the institutions promoted by the left, the latter sees these failures as evidence only of an insufficiently pure application of their principles.”

Indeed.

I spoke with a family friend about the failure of affirmative action programs, despite some 30 years of effort.

Her conclusion was that we hadn’t tried hard enough.

Yes, that’s right, an entire generation of hardworking, dedicated lefties had not tried hard enough.

Jan 17, 2006 - 9:30 am 31. markus:

“…failure of affirmative action programs, despite some 30 years of effort.”

An honest look at the issue would show that, in practice, affirmative discrimination (the British term, which I prefer) has a MIXED record. Some clear success, for instance in enabling large numbers of minorities to enter schools and be hired for positions, AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE OPPORTUNITIES, which would have been available to them under an ostensibly “color-blind” selection system. And possible practical downsides: reinforcing minority feeling of inadequacy, intensifying white resentments, etc..

But the primary objection to affirmative discrimination are not practical ones, rather they are based on principles.

Jan 17, 2006 - 10:56 am

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