The American left has been subject to a good deal of unproductive speculation and fear-mongering when it comes to the question of evangelical Christians. We've been forced to listen to vacuous scoldings from the bobbleheaded purveyors of the conventional wisdom, who - evidence be damned - insist that Democrats must get right with something called "values voters" if they're ever to have chance at political success again. And from our own ranks we've been capitivated by waves of hysteria over the barbarians at the gates, as we fixate on the most titillatingly scary fundamentalists we can find.

Thus says Josh Marshall. Specifically, he's talking about how Cheney and Bush, encouraged by foolish neoconservatives like John Bolton, spurred the North Koreans to develop nuclear weapons. Mash posted a diary on this yesterday. I want to offer a little more background - and a warning.

Reading the right so you don't have to... this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.

Sometimes all we liberals want is a little moral clarity. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and justice should be done. Well honey, ain't no way in the world could we be satisfied. Our conservative organists are well versed in the postmodern possibilities of multiple truths, and of all the shadows they cast on America, the one they're trying hardest to cast these days is the shadow of doubt.

Reading the right so you don't have to. Cross posted at alien & sedition.

This week finds our organists caught up in a strange mixture of giddiness and dread, as they claim a couple of victories even while they realize that there's a chance that they might fall apart before too long. It seems there's plenty of time for fussing and fighting....

Rick Perlstein has a nice article at the New Republic on how bloggers often outperform the major media, largely because of the same media weakness that politicians have learned to exploit so skillfully: ego.

And he raises a very interesting point, which is a little something to keep in mind next time some mainstream media hack tries to put you in your place because "you're just a blogger."

Final installment.

Part One.
Part Two.

Sunday, January 28

I skip the first debate. Saturday was long, and this morning the organizers promise only "continental" breakfast, not the bacon and eggs we got yesterday. I’m not getting out of bed early for a croissant. I believe this is a properly conservative attitude.

Still, it sounded interesting, and I do make it in at the end, just in time to hear Tamar Jacoby insist that Republicans "are digging our grave as a political party by how we talk to immigrants." Mark Krikorian answers furiously that the GOP is in fact digging its grave by allowing all this immigration – "admitting all these natural Democrats!" He is enthusiastically applauded. Those croissants really got everyone going, I guess.

Read Part One here.
Cross posted at alien & sedition.

There’s a bit of cultural whiplash, going from conservative conference to anti-war march and back again, but it’s an interesting mental exercise. Walking west on Pennsylvania Avenue, I shed the outward signs of my real opinions – by Fourth Street, my ‘Out of Iraq’ placard is gone; by Tenth Street I have put the peace button in my pocket. By the time the Marriott heaves into sight I’ve set myself to reassuming a conservative mindset, the kind of outlook that’s less interested in peace, and a lot more interested in wondering how the heck the GOP leadership is going to account for itself after last November’s debacle. Just inside the doors of the Grand Ballroom, a gaggle of dark-suited young conservatives eye my name tag and step aside to let me pass. I gather that they have been assigned to keep any of the anti-war rabble from crashing the conference. And a good thing, too.

Cross-posted at alien & sedition, where I'll post parts 2 & 3.

Friday, January 26

Washington feels better – physically improved – with the Democrats back in power. Where it had lurked menacingly, the Capitol now presides majestically over the skyline. The monuments seem ennobled rather than cheapened, the marble shinier, the steam grates steamier. There’s still that problem with the White House, but it’s shrunken now; the man in there shrank it himself. And this weekend, tens of thousands of my fellow citizens will take to the city’s streets to once again demand an end to the war in Iraq. Washington is changing.

But I’m here to caucus with the throwbacks, the vanquished rebels, as they regroup and plot to storm the establishment once again. We beat them last November but they aren’t going anywhere. This is the National Review Institute’s 2007 Conservative Summit, a conclave of the best and the brightest in what remains of the conservative movement, and they may be hurting, but they’re in a fighting mood. This is where they discuss the long road back to what they hope will be power.

And I’m your fly on the wall.

(Reading the right-wing mags so you don't have to. One day early this week as I'm going out of town - but I'll have interesting stories when I return. As always, cross-posted at the site your mother warned you about, alien & sedition).

Conservatives don't believe in retreat; they merely advance in another direction. This week our organists grapple with the Decider's State of the Union address, trying to parse out whether he's still leading the conservative charge, especially on the home front. On some issues, there's a letdown. On others, they're happy to report that in the Bush administration the conservative project is alive and well. That project, of course, is the regression of government and society to whatever they supposedly used to be, long long ago. Don't say conservatives don't believe in evolution: they merely evolve in a backwards direction.

(Digesting the right-wing magazines and spitting them out for you in tasty little bites. Note: next week's TWICO will be on Thursday afternoon, if you're in the habit of looking for it. As always, cross-posted at the alluring alien & sedition.)

This week the conservative organs are throbbing (sorry) with a sense of urgency, as the 100 Hours roll past before many of the crew even get the chance to work up a proper huff, and the Iraqi government seems unable to remember that we've got deadlines to keep, here. This, as they say, ain't no foolin' around.

Let's move...

Thanks to ksh01 for rescuing me last week. Again: I read the right so you don't have to. Cross-posted at the mysterious and intriguing alien & sedition, where we're also starting a series on reading conservative history.

Democrats drove a stake through their collective heart last November, but Washington is a center of mystical political convergence, and now the conservative undead return to walk the land. And with the "surge" speech and the opening of the 110th Congress, they finally have something to sink their teeth into.

Follow me, and watch your neck.

This is a little something I've started doing over at my blog, alien and sedition (It's cross-posted there). It's basically just a rundown of what's in the major conservative magazines each week - stuff that may or may not have been picked up in the liberal blogosphere. As much fun as it can be to mock Michelle Malkin, I think you've really got to see what the opinion-makers are doing. So I thought I'd post one installment to see if there's any interest here at DKos.

As Republican ex-staffers scramble to secure whatever lobbying jobs are left, our conservative organists this week take up the burden of advising the newly minoritized GOP legislators as to just what, exactly, they should do with themselves for the next two years.

We begin after the jump...

Cross-posted at alien & sedition

Right now we’re stuck in a 51-49 paradigm, electorally speaking. This suits conservatives just fine. They’ve only ever had one truly unifying, game-changing star in the modern era, and he was an actor – and when his magic disappeared, they resorted to the Atwater-Rove approach: divide and conquer. It’s a truism that conservatives win by dividing America, while progressives can only truly win by uniting it. We can muddle along, hoping to hold our blue states and swing Ohio, and we might win next time, but the math won’t change and in four or eight years the conservatives will be back, governing with undimmed arrogance, no matter how small their margin of victory – because for them, power is its own mandate.

We need to change the game. Here's why I believe Barack Obama could do that:

Apologia: I'm wary of writing about Israeli/Palestinian politics at Daily Kos, for obvious reasons. However, I believe this is topical and (I hope) balanced. If it just turns into a trollish pissing match, I'll delete the diary. For the record, I'm not a partisan of either "side": I support secure democratic sovereignty for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Cross-posted at alien & sedition.

I don’t often write about Middle East politics (there are other sites that can do it far better), but sometimes you can’t resist commenting, like when you see your government repeating the same stupid mistakes with a persistence that, were we talking about individuals, would be considered proof of insanity.

(More after the jump)

Cross-posted from alien & sedition

This morning at the National Review, K-Lo puts Mitt Romney through his paces, as the Governor from the Great State of Dukakis/Kerry continues his effort to pander to conservatives. Given how the GOP spent 2004 redefining Massachusetts as "France, only worse," it can't be easy for the guy.

Lopez asks Romney about comments he made in 1994, when he argued that gay marriage should be an issue decided by the states and denounced "extremist" Republicans ["People of integrity don't force their beliefs on others, they make sure that others can live by different beliefs they may have" - whoops! Don't let Dr. Dobson hear you talking like that!].

[Romney's reply - to the tune of "I Walk the Line": after the jump]

John McCain insists that last Tuesday's election was payback for the Republicans' abandonment of conservative principles:

"Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins -- and the people will punish it," said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona. "We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office.

"We lost our principles and our majority," he said. "And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first."

This goes beyond the song-and-dance about how the Democrats somehow moved right to win. McCain is opening the door for the most important political question of our time: can conservatives govern at all?

The new Massachusetts health care bill, which has generated very little discussion here at Daily Kos, represents a unique effort along all parts of the political spectrum to bring health coverage to 95% of the state's residents.  The particulars of the plan merit more analysis by progressives nationally, but it also, I believe, forces us to confront the question of whether it will be more productive to pursue the goal of universal coverage through the states, or at the Federal level.

Writing in the New York Times, Dan Savage makes an excellent point:  since many of our current culture-war battles center on whether or not judges and SCOTUS nominees agree that the Constitution implies a right to privacy, why aren't we seizing the initiative here?  Why aren't Democrats proposing and pushing a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing an explicit (no pun intended) right to privacy?  Shouldn't this be a screamingly obvious move?

Savage says: