Wingnuts Athwart

John Cole: A Thought Experiment

If you ever wondered how the rest of the world views our wingnuts when they speak on the global stage, you should turn on CNN right now and watch Gadhafi’s rambling and incoherent speech.

Kurtz: Fox News Can't Help Itself 

The big news from the United Nations today? According to Fox News, it was Qaddafi praising President Obama as a "son" of Africa. Watch.

Josh Marshall: Commando

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is leading a special "truth squad" delegation to the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen to tell the foreigners Obama doesn't know what he's talking about. And they shouldn't listen to other members of Congress saying the US is going to pass legislation.

Josh Marshall: Guess He's a No on Reform 

Georgia congressman says US already has "soviet-style" health care system.
Only he's a Democrat.

publius: Afghanistan As Therapy

One unfortunate aspect of today's political conservative movement is that much of it is defined entirely by opposition -- and contempt -- for liberals.  That's the ideological glue that holds many otherwise inconsistent policies and coalitions together.
Another dynamic is simply that frustrations with the Bush administration led to massive amounts of cognitive dissonance.  In the age of Bush, what exactly did "conservative" mean? 
Enter the new Obama administration.  What's frustrating is not so much the GOP's opposition to everything, but that the opposition seems more about reaffirming ideological views and healing cognitive dissonance than about articulating actual policy disagreements.  In short, conservatives are using opposition to Obama to reaffirm their ideological glue and conservative bona fides -- it's a form of therapy.
For instance, on the domestic front, the stimulus saved a lot of jobs -- and helped stop the bleeding.  But the opposition was fueled by an ideological aversion to government.  Opposing the stimulus was the GOP's chance to show that they actually believe in "small government," even if it made very little policy sense.
But whatever, that's part of the game.
Afghanistan, though, is different.  It's frustrates me on a far deeper level to see people advocate for wars just to make themselves feel better.  With Obama wavering on troop escalations in Afghanistan (good!), the old poisonous Kagan nationalism is creeping back out -- along with the same vague "goals" that generally emerge when wars lose their purpose.  And now we're supposed to raise troop levels just to show how tough we are.
It's important to remember, however, that troops aren't "resources" -- they're real humans, with real families, with real children, and with real friends.  If we're going to escalate in Afghanistan, we deserve to give them defined goals. 
You can play therapy session all day with the stimulus opposition if you want.  But not with the lives of troops -- they didn't sign up to make the Kagan family feel good about themselves.

Benen: STANDING ATHWART HISTORY...

There are plenty of discouraging poll numbers for Democrats that have been released lately, but there's little evidence that Republicans are capitalizing in any meaningful way. The party is still less popular than the Democratic majority, and the GOP is still less trusted on most of the major issues of the day.
On health care, for example, the new NBC/WSJ poll shows 45% of Americans approving of President Obama's handling of the issue. For the Republican Party, the number was 21%. The GOP has done wonders raising doubts about Democratic reform plans, but it's not exactly persuading anyone that Republicans offer a superior alternative.
With that in mind, Ezra Klein had a good summary of the bigger picture.

The Republican Party's strategy against health-care reform has been something of a kamikaze mission: destroy the bill through a strategy that also destroys the party, at least in the short-term. The hope is that if they win the war, they'll be in better shape come the 2010 midterms. Maybe that'll work. Maybe it won't.
But if it does work, it won't leave them in a better position to govern. What Republicans -- and, when they're out of power, Democrats -- are doing is essentially discrediting the political process. Piece by piece, bill by bill. The argument, essentially, is that politicians are untrustworthy and Congress is corrupt and interest groups are trying to do horrible things to you and problems are not being solved.
All these thing might be true, but they're being said, in this case, by politicians who want to take back Congress and start negotiating with interest groups to solve problems. That's not going to work terribly well, and for obvious reasons. Republicans may think they've found a clever strategy in making it hard for Democrats to govern, but what they're really doing is making it nearly impossible for anyone to govern. American politics is trapped in a cycle of minority obstruction, and though that's good for whomever the minority is at the moment, it's not particularly good for making progress on pressing issues.

I think this is almost entirely right, except for one point -- Ezra described congressional Republicans as "politicians who want to take back Congress and start negotiating with interest groups to solve problems." I don't mean to be cute here, but I see things slightly differently.
In fact, I'm not sure Republicans are interested in problem-solving at all. They want to take back Congress for the express purpose of stopping the White House from passing a progressive policy agenda. GOP leaders don't want to govern or "make progress on pressing issues"; they want to stop the process of governing and let the status quo linger.
To be sure, I think Ezra's entirely right about the consequences of Republican tactics -- they paralyze our system of government. The key, though, is that the GOP is almost certainly okay with that.
Put it this way: when was the last time the Republican Party, on the national level, had a coherent policy agenda? It wasn't 2002 ("9/11, 9/11, 9/11"); it wasn't 2004 (the bulk of George W. Bush's stump speech was about John Kerry); it wasn't 2006 ("9/11?, 9/11?, 9/11?"); and it wasn't 2008 ("maverick" is not a plan).
The same will be true in 2010 -- there's nothing in particular the GOP wants to do with government, other than to say "no" to those who do have an agenda. And with that in mind, making it impossible for anyone to govern suits Republicans just fine.

Columbia Journalism Review: Q & A: Rick Perlstein

...
Greg Marx: I’m interested in your thoughts on Marcus Brauchli’s comments about mainstream coverage of conservative concerns in particular, and also in this issue more broadly.
Rick Perlstein: I read what Brauchli said, and what he was paraphrased as saying, and it almost suggests to me that Matt Drudge is becoming his assignment editor. I mean, why would a newspaper like the Post be training its investigative focus on ACORN now? Whether you think well or ill of ACORN, they’re a very marginal group in the grand scheme of things—and about as tied to the White House as the PTA.
The real story is that millions of Americans don’t consider a liberal president legitimate, and they’re moving from that axiom to try to delegitimize the president in the eyes of the majority. And one of the ways they do that is, frankly, by baiting the hook for mainstream media decision-makers who are terrified at the accusation of liberal bias. It really looks like Brauchli is falling for that.
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