Wow. Fred Barnes’ role as a press aide for Karl Rove masquerading as a journalists is well known, but this is absurd: “a national consensus has formed around what the president calls “comprehensive” immigration reform–that is, impenetrable border security plus earned citizenship and a temporary worker program.” Anyone who’s been paying the slightest bit of attention to American politics would know that’s wrong; all three of those things, either alone or in combination, remain deeply, deeply controversial.
For what it’s worth, my view is that Democrats ought to be doing their best to ensure that intra-GOP divisions prevent a bill from passing this year. Nobody knows exactly how the midterms will play out, but Dems are all-but-certain to pick up some seats and be able to pass a bill in 2007 that’s better than any possible compromise in the current congress.
During the current immigration debate, a lot of conservatives have suddenly discovered that the president sometimes uses deception as a public relations tactic. Jonathan Chait observes:
This outbreak of unflattering conservative insights suggests two possibilities. The first is that, until this moment, Bush never used dishonest tactics to frame his views and those of his critics, and conservative activists never displayed a fanatical aversion to compromise. Somehow, though, Bush and the conservatives are suddenly using tactics against each other that they were too honest and thoughtful to use against the Democrats.
The second possible interpretation is that they’ve been like this all along, and the conservatives are only starting to notice because for once they’re on the receiving end.
I know which interpretation I’m going with.
It sure is hard to decide.
Jim Sensenbrenner on Face the Nation: people who hire illegal immigrants are “21st century slave masters . . . just as immoral as the 19th century slave masters we had to fight a civil war to get rid of.”
Mark Kilmer at Red State calls it “a dangerous analogy.” John Podhoretz sees “insane moral equivalence.” Even John Derbyshire thinks it’s “dumb.”
But this isn’t a new kick for Sensenbrenner. Here he is in March 2006: “Those who hire large numbers of illegal aliens are the 21st-century slave masters. And in my opinion, that’s just as immoral as the 19th-century slave masters we had to fight a civil war to get rid of.”
Has he said it before? Has he even thought for a minute about this analogy? As Jonah Goldberg (“absurd and more than a little depressing”) observes, the only way this could begin to make sense is if someone’s covered up “some sweeping historical episode in which millions of Africans snuck into the country for the ‘opportunity’ to be slaves.” Now anyone can say something thoughtless, but as I say Sensenbrenner’s used the analogy previously. And he’s the House GOP’s lead guy on immigration issues.
All the mucky details from the FBI’s case against Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA).
Dinners at Washington, D.C.’s Citronelle, one of the nation’s top restaurants, should be memorable — especially when they’re shared by a guy who passes you $32,000 in bundled campaign contributions. So why does Rep. Katherine Harris keep forgetting about them? That and more in today’s Daily Muck.
New York Post relays the already debunked “yellow star” story. Jim Henley remarks:
They made it up. Taheri and The Post ran a provably false report, on their own initiative or at the behest of some publicity-shy agency of some government or other, played in as inflammatory way as possible. Why? So that months from now, someone hearing about plans to bomb Iran, or seeing footage of bombing on TV, will say to themselves, âDidnât I read that Iran was going to round up all the Jews and make them wear yellow stars like the Nazis? Something like that. Well, good riddance.â All the story had to do was live long enough to get into circulation.
Can’t have a war without a good disinformation campaign.
I read this Jackson Diehl column late last night, and my first instinct was to believe he’d been sitting around, deliberately trying to figure out what would maximally infuriate me. Then I decided I must have been asleep already and it was all a bad dream. Then I got to the office this morning and it was still there, real as the pile of books on my desk. There on the stack in With All Our Might which, like Diehl, I would recommend. But Diehl doesn’t actually seem interested in recommending it, instead he’s using the recommendation as a pretext to engage in a lot of unsupported slurs about “Internet noise” and people who want to withdraw from Iraq. He quotes the following from Will Marshall and Jeremy Rosner as his big, substantive rebuttal to us silly Internet noise makers:
The fact that President Bush and his team have mismanaged virtually every aspect of postwar reconstruction does not justify an immediate or precipitous withdrawal. Instead we should rally the American people for an extended and robust security and reconstruction presence.
Let me be blunt: This is not an argument. This is cant. It’s silly and it’s insulting. If you’re going to spend your time, as Diehl does, sneering at the Internet for not being substantive then you might want to put an actual substantive argument down on your precious newsprint. Where is the evidence, for example, that this plan is feasible? For that matter, what’s the plan? And if President Bush and his team have mismanaged virtually every aspect of postwar reconstruction then why on God’s earth would we expect them to suddenly implement a brilliant plan?
Nobody doubts that the best thing to happen for Iraq would be for the United States to put together a crackerjack “stability and democracy and ponies” plan and then put it into place. Iraq would end up stable, democratic, and everyone would have ponies. It’d be great. The trouble is that it’s become very clear that nobody actually has such a plan on hand. And not, fundamentally, because they aren’t thinking hard enough. The issue is that there are actual limits to what our troops can accomplish. They’re soldiers, not magicians. They can’t conjure up a sense of national identity or widespread social support for liberalism.
What Iraq needs is a political settlement among the important factions such that everyone would prefer living under the terms of the agreements to fighting with each other. Absent such an agreement, the American military can’t “fix” Iraq. Given such an agreement, the American military would be superfluous.
It bears mentioning that Amir Taheri is an affiliate of Benador Associates, the same firm that brings you the wit and wisdom of such neocon worthies as Meyrav Wurmser, Jim Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Victor Davis Hanson, etc. They call themselves “a highly qualified cadre of inspiring, knowledgeable speakers,” I would devise a less charitable characterization.
At any rate, the curious thing about Benador is that, as the site says they are “the only public relations firm in the United States that doubles as international speakers’ bureau for the experts we represent.” I have no idea if they’re actually the only firm that does this, but it’s certainly on odd set-up in that normally we pundits are just assumed to be speaking our minds on the issues of the day. People who work at PR firms, by contrast, are doing paid advocacy for their clients, which is a different kind of thing. Did somebody hire Benador to push this story?
The Los Angeles Times reported some days ago that the Justice Department was investigating ties between House appropriations chief Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and his lawmaker-turned-lobbyist pal Bill Lowery. We’ve taken a closer look at one of the employees the two men shared — Letitia White — and found she has some questionable ties of her own.
From the annals of irony:
Bush said he would remind Western Hemisphere nations such as those that ”respect for property rights and human rights is essential,” that ”meddling in other elections … to achieve a short-term objective is not in the interests of the neighborhood,” and that the United States expects other nations to stand against corruption and for transparent governance.
”Let me just put it bluntly: I’m concerned about the erosion of democracy in” Venezuela and Bolivia, he said.
I wonder what it would be like to live in a country with a corrupt ruling party and a secrecy-obsessed president who liked to meddle in other countries. How do the Bolivians put up with it?