Nation-Building

a rather public announcement in a diary at DailyKos confirms the news. This is going to be fun. I detect the hand of Joe Trippi at work! (yup, there's a campaign blog - the O-blog, if you will...)

I have yet to see Tom Tancredo (R-CO) denounced by mainstream leaders of the Republican party for his comments about bombing Mecca. In fact, Tancredo went on the Savage Nation radio show to talk with Michael Savage and promote himself. It seems that Tancredo also harbors Presidential ambition:   ELECTION 2008 Tancredo considers White House bid Congressman to run if no other Republican takes on border issue Posted: March 28, 2005 8:35 p.m. Eastern Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., fresh from victory in three online presidential straw polls over formidable candidates, told Joseph Farah's radio audience today he would run for president in 2008 if no other Republican candidate takes the border issue seriously. "I'll tell you what," he said, "if no one else does it, I will do it." Tancredo is the head of the House Immigration Reform Caucus and has challenged his own party's president on the issue of an insecure border and his proposed "guest worker" propo...

The link goes to a discussion thread at DailyKos where I posted a diary indicating why Dean's comments were boneheaded. Unfortunately, the responses to the diary increased my suspicion that the polarization of our politics has produced all too many people on the left who simply want to replace the GOP, not defeat the underlying dynamic of poisoned politics. Defeating GOP extremism is indeed the paramount concern. In that respect, I fully understand Matt's and Jeremy's prioritizing . But Republicanism is today's problem; Democratism is potentially tomorrow's. I will be looking in 2008 for a leader who will eschew the path that leads to Democratism rather than the one who is saddled with its baggage. Howard Dean spoke during the campaign of a unified politics, based on principles and honesty, and promised that such a course would lead to electoral success. It is deeply ironic that Dean's defenders today are the ones who explicitly disavow those principles - and ...

as reported by Townhall.com : He also said the president was partly responsible for a recent Supreme Court decision involving eminent domain. "The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is "okay" to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is," assuming that Dean's words are reported accurately, Townhall does the fact-checking for him:   Dean said, not mentioning that until he nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court this week, Bush had not appointed anyone to the high court. Dean’s reference to the "right-wing" court was also erroneous. The four justices who dissented in the Kelo vs. New London case included the three most conservative members of the court – Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the fourth dissenter. The court’s liberal coalition of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsb...

After all, who would surrender to the Dread Pirate Edith? I think it's premature for this . The best thing we could hope for is for a normal, sane human being to be appointed to government, especially since this appointment doesn't affect Roe vs Wade. I think the best attitude to take is as follows:   I'm willing to hear the guy out. We're not going to get a Ginsburg, but I'd be happy with an O'Connor-style moderate conservative. For all we know (and for all the religious-right knows), Roberts might be that sort of guy. But he has to be honest and forthcoming, unlike his previous confirmation hearing. The Senate must take its time deliberating over the nomination. And this is something that all sides should want, not just ours. For all the right wing knows, this guy may be the next Souter who simply pretended to be virulently anti-privacy. As Roberts answers all questions posed, we can then decide whether it's worth opposing or not. And the importance of g...

Conservatives, or perhaps I should better define them as Republicanists, define liberalism thus : Liberalism is simply the political expression of the opinion (one cannot refer to it as philosophy in the classical sense of that term) that all political and social questions are open questions, that a nation and a people have no, or ought to have no, doctrines, principles, laws or traditions which are, or are taken to be, expressive and determinative of the essence of their culture and common life Utter nonsense. Read on..   I reject this definition. He may be thinking of post-modernism; he may be extrapolating overmuch from Progressivism; but ultimately, such a thing does not exist as a mainstream philosophy on the American Left. I challenge anyone who subscribes to this definition of liberalism to articulate one piece of legislation signed into law by any President in the 20th century, whose basic motivation draws from the straw-man characterization of liberlaism above. I will then...

I was reflecting on my post from last week about how the latest incarnation of this blog, an attempt at forging a "purple politics" identity on the web, had never really taken off. Here's an attempt at a post-mortem. The problem is that there are very few genuinely purple voices in politics today. Even Dean himself, whose candidacy was as purple as could be, was never able to sell that message to the red aisle - and in so doing let itself be co-opted by the determinedly blue. In other words, Dean never really succeeded in selling the concept of Purple to the Blues. The voice of the Deaniac movement was always the Blue/Progressive one, whereas the actual bulk was ordinary purple folks who just were unable to reclaim the movement from the further left in the eye of the public media. As a result, the large population of Democratic voters who were genuinely receptive to a purple message could not discern what purple there was to be had, and rejected Dean for a more purple-mar...

Meet The Press, Sunday July 17th: MR. RUSSERT: You would not be pouncing on a Democratic White House for leaking the identity of a CIA agent? MR. MEHLMAN: It is unthinkable for me to imagine that a leading member of the Republican Senate leadership, like Charles Schumer, would hold a press conference with the equivalent of a Joe Wilson, a major press conference, where they repeated allegations that have been proved wrong. I can't imagine they would do that. I can't imagine that Bob Dole and Republican leaders would go on the floor of the Senate to call 100 percent of Republicans, to revoke somebody's security clearance, who's cooperating fully with the investigation, and who evidence has been vindicating toward. I can't imagine that would happen. MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Podesta. MR. PODESTA: I think my Republican friend slept through the 1990s.

Yes, things have been pretty quiet around here :) I'd like to thank everyone who has been posting recently, especially Brian. I think the brief experiment in "purple politics" hasn't succeeded, however, despite my best efforts (including recruiting genuinely conservative voices to post). That's likely because we are in a polarized atmosphere, and ignoring that fact isn't enough to change it. Dean Nation therefore enters a new phase - planned obsolescence. I am not sure if Dean Nation will be completely shut down or not yet, but there will definitely not be regular content for a while. I'll be cross-posting stuff here that I write for TPMCafe and for other sites, until I figure out where we go from here. I am of course blogging more regularly at City of Brass , so if there's anyone here who actually is interested in what I've got to say, do visit :)

There's a lot of conservative teeth-gnashing about the possibility that Alberto Gonzales will be nominated to the Supreme Court. The reason for this is that he isn't suitably conservative by their estimation. Note, of course, that "conservative" in this context means "religious conservative" (I don't like the "religious right" moniker because it feeds the perception that religion is solely the Right's purview). When we refer to the GOP's "base", that's who we really are speaking about: the conservative Republican voters who are strongly pro-life. But does the GOP really need the Base? No, because they have Al Qaeda. Here's why ...   The GOP enjoys near-total dominance in government at the federal level today. The party got there by leveraging the Base as part of it's GOTV efforts, turning the 2000 and 2004 elections into an arms race of volunteer foot soldiers. Arguably, Ohio was delivered to the GOP by virtue of ...