It’s official: the GOP is hopeless

Not to spend too much time on this Arlen Specter business, but I thought it was worth commenting on Bill Kristol’s insane take on Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party.  Here’s a taste:

Similarly and contrarianly, I wonder if today’s Arlen Specter party switch, this time to the president’s party, won’t end up being bad for President Obama and the Democrats. With the likely seating of Al Franken from Minnesota, Democrats will have 60 seats in the Senate, giving Obama unambiguous governing majorities in both bodies. He’ll be responsible for everything. GOP obstructionism will go away as an issue, and Democratic defections will become the constant worry and story line. This will make it easier for GOP candidates in 2010 to ask to be elected to help restore some checks and balance in Washington — and, meanwhile, Specter’s party change won’t likely have made much difference in getting key legislation passed or not. So, losing Specter may help produce greater GOP gains in November 2010, and a brighter Republican future.

I’ve always known that Kristol was a dishonest hack, but I didn’t realize that he was also in denial about the GOP’s utter failure as a viable national party.  In theory the Republican Party should be in very good shape; after all, as a center-right party of the country’s dominant religio-ethnic groups, it both has the support of the business community and benefit of standing on the side of “tradition.”  The Democratic Party (and the left especially), by contrast, shouldn’t have very many opportunities to implement its agenda; its natural constituency – minorities, poor whites and other marginalized communities – isn’t large enough to carry a national candidate to victory.  Indeed, you can even make the (strong) case that this is what happened for most of the 20th century; the nation’s agenda was controlled by a “party” of racially conservative southern Democrats and their moderate and conservative allies in the Republican Party.

In a rational political world, Specter would be the poster boy for a GOP which relied on the votes of socially conservative working class whites, middle class whites, and wealthy business owners.  The fact that Specter can represent core conservative constituencies and still not have a place in the GOP should be deeply troubling for everyone invested in ensuring that the Republican Party has a place in American politics.

In order to survive, gotta learn to live with regrets (except, not really)

You know, I thought Jay Bybee felt bad about the torture memos, after all, that’s what his friends told us.  But if this New York Times article is any indication, Bybee’s friends clearly don’t know him very well; far from feeling some sense of shame, it turns out that Jay Bybee has no regrets:

“The central question for lawyers was a narrow one; locate, under the statutory definition, the thin line between harsh treatment of a high-ranking Al Qaeda terrorist that is not torture and harsh treatment that is. I believed at the time, and continue to believe today, that the conclusions were legally correct.”

Other administration lawyers agreed with those conclusions, Judge Bybee said.

“The legal question was and is difficult,” he said. “And the stakes for the country were significant no matter what our opinion. In that context, we gave our best, honest advice, based on our good-faith analysis of the law.”

It’s comforting to know that we have a veritable sociopath serving in the federal judiciary.

(h/t Adam Serwer)

“The Confederate flag means segregation”

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a good post up on those who defend their desire to fly the Confederate flag as an affirmation of heritage and not an open expression of hate:

It may well be true that Alabama’s desire to fly the Confederate flag at the state capitol, or the desire of many Alabamans to use it themselves as they see fit, has nothing to do with the fact that the state was the last to drop its (unenforceable) prohibition against interracial marriage (in 2000!). It may be a mere coincidence that the only people to oppose the Alabama repeal were leaders of the states’ “Confederate heritage group.”  But if the flag’s defenders aren’t racist (which I can accept) the necessary conclusion, while banal and common, isn’t anymore comforting–a shocking ignorance of one’s own history.

As someone who grew up around Confederate flags and the white folks who love them (Southern by the grace of God, as they say), I can attest to this: most of these kids (and their parents) are scarcely aware of their history.  They have romanticized their Confederate ancestors as noble defenders of independence, and while that’s in some sense understandable (no one likes to think poorly of their ancestors), it does ignore the fact that the Confederacy was explicitly founded on a theology of divinely-ordained white supremacy.

What’s more, even the “heritage” defense betrays a deep ignorance of history; although the Confederate flag (in various incarnations) was flown throughout Reconstruction and into the 20th century, the Confederate flag as we recognize it (the “stars and bars) didn’t come into popular use until the 1950s and the beginning of federally-mandated desegregation, where it was used primarily to signal opposition to desegregation.  Insofar that it was supposed to represent Southern “heritage,” it was a sign that the flyer respected the long-standing Southern tradition of apartheid and racial violence.  As historian John Hoski explains in his book on the subject, this was a pretty explicit sentiment:

Roy V. Harris, the recently retired speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives and editor of the Augusta Courier, minced no words in linking the threat to his embrace of the Confederate flag in 1951.  ”The Confederate flag is coming to mean something to everybody now.  It means the southern cause.  It means the heart throbs of the people of the South. It is becoming to be [sic] the symbol of the white race and the cause of white people.  The Confederate flag means segregation.”

Honestly, I’d be a lot more comfortable with people who flew the Confederate flag if stopped they simply acknowledged that the flag represents apartheid and white supremacy; it’s not a pleasant history, but it’s history, and Confederate flag-loving white Southerners ought to accept that.

Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA)

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Pennsylvania’s long-serving moderate Republican senator – Arlen Specter - has switched sides and joined the Democratic caucus.  Although the timing comes as something of a shock, I don’t think anyone is surprised that Specter switched parties: back in 2004, Specter nearly lost the primary to Rep. Pat Toomey, a right-wing Republican who is now serving as the president of Club for Growth.  Since then, Pennsylvania has become more friendly to Democratic candidates (Obama won the state with a ten-point margin), and the state’s Republican base has become far more conservative. Given that current polling shows Specter trailing by twenty points in a match up with Toomey, if he wanted to remain a senator, his only real choice was to switch parties (Pennsylvania’s election laws preclude Specter from pulling a Lieberman and running as an independent).

The Democratic reaction – judging from the steady stream of emails I’ve received from various groups of college Democrats – is that this is excellent news; Specter plus a seated Al Franken equals 60-votes and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  Of course, there probably needs to be quotes over “filibuster-proof”; Specter was particularly spineless throughout the Bush years, and like many of his “moderate” colleagues, is more concerned with image than substance.  While I certainly hope that Specter will take advantage of his newfound political freedom and reverse his stance on the Employee Free Choice Act  or commit to supporting a Democratic health care bill, I doubt that will be the case.  In all likelihood, Specter will jump on the Ben Nelson/Evan Byah train and use his position to enhance his “centrist credentials” while simultaneously obstructing or actively working against progressive legislation.

Nonetheless, this does further underscore the extent to which the Republican Party is cocooning itself into irrelevence. What Specter loses in ideological purity, he more than makes up for in sheer popularity; Pennsylvanians love the guy (A good friend of mine’s only Republican vote was for Specter) and the seat (along with a reliable vote) would have remained in Republican hands until he retired. Toomey, by contrast, doesn’t stand a chance in the general election; nominating him simply amounts to giving the Democratic Party another safe senate seat.  Frankly, this only goes to show that the GOP isn’t actuall interested in improving its electoral fortunes, since if it were, it would have done everything possible to keep Toomey out of the primary.  As it stands however, the GOP has a near-fanatical obsession with maintaining its ideological purity, despite the fact that its pro-torture/pro-plutocrat ideology is corrupt, ineffective and deeply unpopular.

Update: Edited for clarity.

Jam of the Night

Here’s to kickin’ it old school:

LL Cool J – “I Need Love”

You can find a better quality video here.

links for 2009-04-27

• The Reality-Based Community: Were torture supporters "moral cretins"?
  "No, I don't pat myself on the back for hating torture and those who practice it, and most of all those who disgraced my country and its flag by practicing it. That doesn't require any particular penetration or courage. But I think I'm allowed to count myself one-up, not only on the torture conspirators themselves, but on those who, for eight long years, pretended not to know what was going on, and those who now insist that it would be un-bipartisan for the President to live up to his oath of office and "take care that the laws be faithfully executed.""
• Ezra Klein: SHOULD EMPLOYER-BASED HEALTH CARE BE TAX DEDUCTIBLE?
  Short answer: No.
• slacktivist: The burkha-logic of NOM
  Fred Clark is my hero.
• Irony and Torture « Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Never Gonna Fall For (Modern Love)

I like and agree with most of Dmitry’s thoughts on Mark Regnerus’ recent Washington Post piece on the benefits of marrying young: Americans are approaching marriage in a markedly different way then their parents and grandparents, and it might be the case that delaying marriage is the best option for the current generation of young Americans.  Nonetheless, if you feel ready to marry young, then marry young.  That said, I would have liked to hear Dmitry’s thoughts on Regnerus’ heavy emphasis on the desirability of early marriage for young women.  For what it’s worth, I thought Regnerus relied far too much on deeply sexist ideas to make his case that young women should rethink delaying marriage.  For instance, there’s this passage:

I realize that it’s not cool to say that, but my job is to map trends, not to affirm them. Marriage will be there for men when they’re ready. And most do get there. Eventually. But according to social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, women’s “market value” declines steadily as they age, while men’s tends to rise in step with their growing resources (that is, money and maturation). Countless studies — and endless anecdotes — reinforce their conclusion. Meanwhile, women’s fertility is more or less fixed, yet they largely suppress it during their 20s — their most fertile years — only to have to beg, pray, borrow and pay to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s. Although male fertility lives on, it doesn’t hold out forever, either: Studies emerging from Europe and Australia note that a couple’s chances of conceiving fall off notably when men pass the age of 40, and that several developmental disorders are slightly more common in children of older fathers.

Two things are immediately apparent here: the first is that Regnerus takes the fact that women’s “market value” declines steadily as they age, and accepts it as a natural and fixed part of how we structure dating, marriage, and other romantic relationships.  That women “lose value” as they age is less some intrinsic process and more the product of a patriarchal society which values women in as much as they fulfill their given role as pliant breeder.  The second thing flows from here: at the risk of sounding really uncharitable, I get the sense that Regnerus doesn’t really value women as independent actors.  There’s a point in the piece where he argues that marriage “works best as a formative institution,” in which the two partners grow and develop together as one, rather than enter into the arrangment as fully formed individuals.  “Some lessons just come easier earlier in life,” and Regnerus understands early marriages as a very useful way of facilitating those lessons.

The problem though, is that by Regnerus’ argument, this is only really applicable to women.  Regnerus doesn’t have much of a problem with men delaying marriage, indeed, at the beginning of the piece he even says at much:

The average age of American men marrying for the first time is now 28. That’s up five full years since 1970 and the oldest average since the Census Bureau started keeping track. If men weren’t pulling women along with them on this upward swing, I wouldn’t be complaining. But women are now taking that first plunge into matrimony at an older age as well.

Apparently, it’s perfectly fine if men enter a marriage as fully formed individuals.  Women, by contrast, need to be younger and more malleable.  Of course, in any relationship where one person is financially and developmentally less secure than the other, there’s a fair chance that the former will have a fair amount of influence on the latter.  What Regnerus seems to be arguing is that marriages in which the husband is in a position to shape and potentially control his spouse are a good thing, or at least not problematic.

Now to be fair, I’m sure that if pressed, Regnerus wouldn’t encourage women to give up the pursuit of career goals in favor of early marriage (and presumably childbirth), but when you peel back everything else in the article, that’s essentially what he’s saying.

(Also, you should read Amanda Marcotte’s take on the whole thing.)

Who needs laws when you have benevolent torturers defending you?

John McCain – former presidential nominee and torture survivor – doesn’t think that we should investigate or prosecute officials involved in crafting the Bush administration’s torture policy:

Appearing on CBS’ Face The Nation Sunday, the former Republican presidential nominee — who was himself tortured as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese — said, “Are you going to prosecute people for giving bad legal advice?” He suggested that Washington should ignore calls to investigate who was behind government lawyers writing memos which gave legal cover to the use of torture on detainees.

“We need to put this behind us,” he told host Bob Schieffer. “We need to move forward. … We need a united nation, not a divided one.”

McCain reiterated that he has always opposed torture, noting that it can be a recruiting tool for America’s enemies, as was the case with news of America’s mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But prosecutions would not ultimately benefit the country, he said. He compared the current situation to President Ford’s decision to pardon President Nixon following the Watergate scandal.

“Most people in retrospect believe that the Ford pardon was right, because we moved on. We’ve got to move on,” said McCain.

I, for one, am proud to live in a country where senior elected officials feel comfortable telling major news organizations that an unaccountable executive branch with limitless power is necessary, proper and critical to the well-being of the counry.

A New Approach (that will still probably fail)

Tapped’s Tim Fernholz thinks that the GOP might be backing off in its criticism of President Obama:

During most of the stimulus debate, up until the president dropped his budget, this was the Republican line of the day — align with the popular president, and use attacks on the less-popular Congressional Democrats as an excuse to vote no on the government’s agenda. After the stimulus, the Republicans adjusted and started going after the president more directly, in part because members didn’t think they were seeing an return on their previous strategy and partially in response to the ambition of the Obama budget. But after a quiet Easter recess (Congress returned to work this week) it seems that the GOP could be shifting back again. Despite their harsh criticism, the president remains popular, and most of his real problems have come from Senate Democrats. Looking ahead to 2010, they may have given up on casting Obama as a political enemy — who wants to take on the champ? — in favor of scapegoating the congressional Dems to make their argument for a return to power.

I think this is pretty much the case; last week I dropped in on a meeting of U.Va’s College Republicans to check out House Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s remarks to the group, and while his talk was mostly boilerplate, I noticed he referred to President Obama in mostly conciliatory terms.  The only time he threw out the red meat was when he was talking about congressional Democrats; in those instances, he was a lot more willing to call out Democrats for “partisanship” or whatever else it is they call the actions of the majority party in a popularly elected legislature.  If this anecdote is any indication, then Fernholz is right: Republican leadership is beginning to realize that attacking Obama is a no win game, and that it might be better to frame themselves as opposing Nancy Pelosi and her minions (or something).

Cry Me a River Jay Bybee

Jay Bybee feels very sad about his decision to assist the CIA in developing a torture program (via the Washington Post):

It was, in the private room of a public restaurant, the kind of joyless judgment that some friends and associates say the jurist arrived at well before the public release of four additional memos last week and the resulting uproar that has engulfed Washington. One of the documents, dated Aug. 1, 2002, offered a helpfully narrow definition of torture to the CIA and soon became known as the “Bybee memo,” because it bore his signature.

“I’ve heard him express regret at the contents of the memo,” said a fellow legal scholar and longtime friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while offering remarks that might appear as “piling on.” “I’ve heard him express regret that the memo was misused. I’ve heard him express regret at the lack of context — of the enormous pressure and the enormous time pressure that he was under. And anyone would have regrets simply because of the notoriety.”

That notoriety worsened this week as the documents — detailing the acceptable application of waterboarding, “walling,” sleep deprivation and other procedures the Bush administration called “enhanced interrogation methods” — prompted calls from human rights advocates and other critics for criminal investigations of the government lawyers who generated them.

I’d probably feel a bit more sympathetic if Judge Bybee didn’t author a memo giving the CIA the room it needed to develop and implement a torture program.  That said, I don’t see why it matters that Bybee “regrets” his decision to pen the memo; while contrition is certainly nice, it doesn’t erase the fact that Bybee is partially responsible for instituting an immoral and illegal program for the torture of detainees.  Indeed, I would very much prefer it if Bybee expressed his contrition while standing trial for his role in providing the legal justification for war crimes, and not while sitting on the federal bench.