For quite a while, conservatives have embraced an annoying strategy — trawl through liberal comments sections in the hopes of finding intemperate remarks. The right then takes these comments to “prove” that the left is made up of unhinged radicals.
The practice has always been rather self-defeating. In fact, about a year ago, Kevin Drum came up with a sensible maxim: “If you’re forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you’ve pretty much made exactly the opposite point.” Eventually, the practice was even given a name: “Nutpicking.”
Unfortunately, the practice seems to have spread. Instead of far-right blogs trolling through liberal comment sections for fodder, now Republican candidates for public office are doing it.
A Republican state legislator from Fairfax County has launched an attack ad on cable TV against his Democratic opponent that features unidentified, unverified quotes from a blog.
The ad by Del. Timothy D. Hugo points to a new form of negative campaigning in which information for an attack ad is sourced to comments posted on the Internet instead of more authoritative sources such as news reports or public records.
Hugo’s ad highlights critical comments about his Democratic opponent, Rex Simmons, that someone with the screen name “Pitin” posted on the Democratic blog Raising Kaine.
This is obviously absurd. The TV ad claims to alert the public to what “others are saying” about Simmons, and quotes criticism of the Democrat’s campaign from Raising Kaine, before concluding, “We just can’t trust Rex Simmons.”
Actually, we just can’t trust campaign commercials that rely on pseudonymous criticism from a blog’s comment section. In this case, there’s obviously nothing to stop the Hugo campaign from going to Raising Kane, leaving derogatory comments about Simmons, and then using their own planted denigrations in their own campaign commercials.
Nutpicking was irritating enough when it was confined to conservative blogs. Taking it onto the air is not a positive development.
By any reasonable measure, Fred Thompson, the actor-lobbyist-presidential candidate, is off to a rough start. Particularly on policy matters, Thompson has been confused and uninformed about everything from Social Security policy to drilling the Everglades for oil to the 2005 Schiavo controversy.
But this has to be my favorite.
NBC’s “First Read’ reports that when Thompson was asked Thursday about Louisiana’s “Jena Six” protest of Old South racism on his way into a San Antonio fundraiser, he replied: “I don’t know anything about it.”
Bush fielded a question about it at his news conference the same day, saying the events in Louisiana had “saddened” him. Thompson’s staff said he knew all about the issue but was unfamiliar with the expression “Jena Six.”
Look, there are ways to try and spin a candidate’s unfamiliarity with an issue, but this isn’t one of them. If someone knows “all about” the racial injustices in Jena, La., then that person has to know about the “Jena Six.” Those six young men are the point of the controversy.
It’s a bit like saying you know “all about” the arrest of Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, and others during the 1968 Democratic National Convention on charges of conspiracy and inciting to riot, and then arguing you’ve never heard of the “Chicago Seven.” It just doesn’t make any sense.
What could make this week worse for Blackwater? If shooting Iraqi civilians and facing deportation pressure from the Maliki government weren’t quite enough, there’s also the looming investigation into illicit arms smuggling.
Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that employees of Blackwater — the security firm accused of shooting dead up to 20 Iraqi civilians — illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq, according to U.S. government sources. […]
One U.S. government official said the U.S. attorney’s office in Raleigh, North Carolina, is in the early stages of an investigation that so far focuses on individual Blackwater employees and not the company.
The AP report added that the alleged smuggled arms from Blackwater employees “may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.”
Blackwater’s other problems, meanwhile, continue to worsen.
Iraq’s Interior Ministry has expanded its investigation into incidents involving Blackwater USA security guards amid the furor following a shooting that claimed at least 11 lives, a ministry spokesman said Saturday.
Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said the Moyock, N.C.-based company has been implicated in six other incidents over the past seven months, including a Feb. 7 shooting outside Iraqi state television in Baghdad in which three building guards were fatally shot.
One wonders where all of this could go, or whether it’s a moot point. After a few days of inactivity, Blackwater went back to work yesterday, and the “sovereign” Iraqi government grudgingly acknowledges that it can’t kick Blackwater out of the country.
Given his record, Rudy Giuliani’s pitch to the National Rifle Association is a tough one. He’s referred to the group’s members as “extremists”; he’s fought the group on the assault-weapons ban; and he filed a federal lawsuit as mayor against the nation’s gun manufacturers for violent crimes involving firearms. Indeed, he’s blasted the gun industry as one that “profits from the suffering of innocent people.”
With that in mind, Giuliani spoke to a skeptical audience yesterday at the NRA’s national convention. Would he Sister Souljah the nation’s largest gun group? Of course not. Would he flip-flop his way into their good graces? Well, sort of.
Yesterday, Giuliani backed away from the lawsuit, saying he might not uphold it if he were a judge.
“That lawsuit has taken several turns and several twists that I don’t agree with,” he said, without going into specifics. “I also think that there are some major intervening events — September 11, which cast somewhat of a different light on the Second Amendment, doesn’t change it fundamentally but perhaps highlights the necessity of it.”
By any reasonable measure, this is a fairly silly thing to say. Giuliani couldn’t even chalk it up to flubbing a question, since he was reading from a prepared text.* In other words, he meant to say that 9/11 helped change his mind on gun control.
Asked to explain the shift, a campaign spokesperson said Giuliani was “making a point that personal rights such as the 2nd Amendment are even more critical in a post-September 11th world.”
It’s hard to believe a serious presidential campaign could offer such a foolish rationale for obvious nonsense, and yet, here we are.
I’m generally not in the habit of offering advice to Republican presidential hopefuls, but I have an idea for the Giuliani campaign. As a way to save time at future appearances, perhaps one of his aides could give Giuliani a placard with the word “terrorism” on one side, and “9/11â³ on the other. That way, whenever he’s confronted with a challenge on any subject, he can simply point to the sign, instead of having to go to the trouble of coming up with an excuse to end up at the same point anyway.
* Update: An alert reader noted that Giuliani’s answer was in response to a question from the audience, not the prepared text. My mistake.
Andrew Sullivan linked today to a press conference from San Diego’s Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders, who announced this week that he will now support gay marriage. The video clip is definitely worth watching.
Sanders’ remarks were a pleasant surprise. In fact, he got elected after promising voters in 2005 that he would oppose same-sex marriage, and would use his veto power if the San Diego City Council took steps to go beyond civil unions.
With that in mind, when council members voted 5 to 3 recently on a resolution endorsing gay marriage, most expected the mayor to reject the measure. But then a funny thing happened — Sanders decided he wanted his lesbian daughter to have the same marriage rights as everyone else.
A tearful Mayor Jerry Sanders made a dramatic shift yesterday, explaining that he can no longer oppose same-sex marriages because he does not want to deny justice to people like his daughter, who is a lesbian.
Joined at a late afternoon news conference by his wife, Rana Sampson, the San Diego mayor announced he will back a City Council decision to support same-sex marriage before the state Supreme Court, where California’s ban on it awaits review.
“I decided to lead with my heart, which is probably obvious at the moment,” said Sanders, moments before he revealed his daughter’s sexual orientation.
I think there’s a pattern here for conservatives and their social attitudes. They don’t mind restrictions on free speech, until they have something provocative to say. They want to restrict reproductive rights, until someone close to them has an unwanted pregnancy. They want to break down the church-state wall, until they feel like their faith is in the minority. They want to treat embryos as people, until they suffer from an ailment that could benefit from stem-cell research.
And they balk at the idea of equal rights for gay people, until it’s their daughter who is looking for equality.
The key to social change in this country seems fairly straightforward: wait for conservatives to have more life experience.
The religious right’s support in the Republican presidential primaries is clearly up for grabs. Rudy Giuliani has the worst “family values” of any presidential candidate in recent memory .John McCain thinks the movement’s leaders are “agents of intolerance.” Fred Thompson was denounced by James Dobson earlier this week.
Mitt Romney has the disadvantage of being a Mormon, which the religious right disapproves of, but he may be the best suited of the GOP’s top tier to win the movement’s support.
And how does he plan to take advantage of the opportunity? By engaging in some of the most ridiculous pandering anyone has seen in years.
[H]e’s going to move “In God We Trust” to the front of the new dollar coins instead of the side. […]
[Romney added,] “I’ll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA.”
I’m sure there have been more shameless campaign pitches by presidential candidates this year, but none come to mind.
Two weeks ago, after Gen. David Petraeus’ highly-anticipated congressional testimony, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq offered one “news” outlet an exclusive: the Fox News Channel. Tonight, the network will apparently return the favor with an hour-long hagiography.
At 9 pm ET on Saturday, Fox News will air a one hour special about the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who recently argued in Congressional testimony that President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq is working. The program, titled “American Commander: Gen. David Petraeus” and hosted by Jon Scott, will look at Petraeus’ “life and times.”
It’s bound to be “fair and balanced,” right?
Apparently, the White House is a little concerned about the political fallout of Bush’s opposition to a bipartisan expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). The president called a press conference this week, apparently for no other reason than to denounce Congress’ work on making healthcare more accessible to millions of uninsured kids.
Today, Bush emphasized what he describes as a “philosophical” opposition to the bipartisan legislation — the White House concedes this is about ideology, not results — in his radio address, which ironically accused lawmakers of putting S-CHIP in jeopardy.
The claim-to-lie ratio was pretty close to 1:1. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities did some helpful fact-checking.
What the Washington Post noted about data that’s encouraging suddenly-optimistic Republicans:
GOP Senate offices circulated the results of a Gallup poll released this week that showed 54 percent of those surveyed think Petraeus’s plan for removing troops is the right pace, or even too quick. One-third of those surveyed viewed the withdrawal as moving too slowly.
What the same article neglected to mention:
As it happens, the very same poll that Murray allows these GOPers to cherry pick from has a bunch of other numbers in it, too. It finds that 59% want a timetable for withdrawal and that barely one-third think the surge is having a positive effect. Indeed, the pollsters themselves conclude that most of the public’s opinions on Iraq “run contrary to the message delivered by Petraeus to Congress last week.”
And then, of course, there are the other recent polls, which should be even less encouraging to the stay-the-course crowd.
But what I find really odd is that GOP lawmakers are circulating polls about Iraq at all. How many more surveys do Republicans really need to see before they realize that the country rejected the Bush policy quite a while ago? Their political expectations regarding U.S. public opinion appear to be about as realistic as their expectations for Iraq.
It didn’t generate much in the way of media attention this week, but a bunch of religious right groups co-sponsored the first-ever “Values Voter” debate a few days ago for the GOP presidential field. The top four (Giuliani, Romney, McCain, and Thompson) stayed away, but seven other Republican presidential hopefuls cozied up to luminaries such as Phyllis Schlafly, Paul Weyrich, and Don Wildmon.
There were plenty of bizarre questions and answers, but one of the elements of the debate that stood out for me was, oddly enough, the song that got things started. Event organizers invited the Church of God Choir, from Springfield, Ohio, to sing “God Bless America” — except the lyrics were rewritten. Instead of a song about “the land that I love,” and “home sweet home,” this version condemns the country, saying we’ve all turned against God, and that He won’t bless us. It was a big hit among the conservative Republicans in the room.
(The lyrics are here.)
I’m trying to imagine the response if, say, Yearly Kos hosted a Democratic presidential candidate forum, which started with a rewritten version of “God Bless America” that disparaged the United States.
It’s the kind of thing Fox News would jump all over — and every Democratic candidate on hand would be asked whether they agreed with the song’s lyrical condemnation of the country. Bill O’Reilly would tell us that “God Bless America” is fine the way it is, and it doesn’t need to be rewritten by liberals to serve a radical political agenda.
Admittedly, it gets tiresome to hear “if this were a Democrat…” but in this case, I think it’s appropriate.