I really am on a break (no, really!), but I see that Jim Antle has lately been taking some heat from one of his colleagues at AmSpec for what was basically a throwaway line about Alabama Gov. Riley in his article on Huckabee and I wanted to say a few words about this.  Following some back and forth over Riley, Quin Hillyer takes exception to Jim’s characterisation of Riley’s attempted tax hike of ’03 and his description of the justification given for it.  Mr. Hillyer claimed that an appeal to the New Testament played a small role in Gov. Riley’s arguments for the tax hike and that the changes did not lead to “redistributive taxation.”  That would seem to be contradicted by this 2003 report from RNS:

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, a conservative Republican and Southern Baptist, has proposed a $1.2 billion tax package that raises taxes on the wealthiest residents and businesses and cuts taxes on poor families. Riley argues that he has a moral obligation to do so, said David Azbell, the governor’s press secretary.

“Gov. Riley has said many times that there are three things he has found in reading the New Testament,” Azbell said. “We are to love God, love our neighbor and take care of the poorest of the poor.”

Azbell said that the tax plan helps make “an immoral tax system moral.” He notes that in Alabama, a family of four that makes as little as $4,600 a year still has to pay income taxes. In neighboring Mississippi, that figure is $19,000. “I just don’t think you can find a justification in the New Testament for taxing a family that makes $4,600 a year,” he said.

Riley’s plan, which fills a $675 million shortfall in Alabama’s budget and provides new money for education and other state services, passed the state legislature in June. It now faces a Sept. 9 referendum. Azbell said that Alabama’s churches will play a key role in getting the tax package approved.

There are perfectly good arguments for making a tax system “less regressive,” and Alabama’s tax structure does seem to have been unusually regressive, but to make it less regressive is, by definition, to make it more progressive and to accept the assumption of redistributionists that wealthier members of society should pay a relatively higher proportion in taxes.  Once you grant this assumption, there are only pragmatic objections left to the levels at which you can progressively tax wealthier members of society.  In principle, you have accepted the justice of redistributive taxation, and it is redistributive, since most of the tax revenues will be going for services that disproportionately benefit the poor.     

This plan would certainly seem to bear many of the hallmarks of something akin to a “soak the rich” approach to tax policy.  It would also appear that Gov. Riley himself and his press secretary were quite pleased to make this a question of Christian morality and social justice and did not make this justification incidental to their argument in favour of the plan.  Is one bad budget plan reason enough to write off Gov. Riley?  Obviously not.  Still, it hardly seems credible to deny that the budget plan was poorly conceived when viewed from the perspective of most conservatives. 

Incidentally, it might not be a selling point to conservatives around the country that Bill Pryor supported Riley’s plan, since Pryor was one of the ones who (with the blessing of the White House) stuck the knives in the back of former Justice Moore during the Ten Commandments controversy.  If Bill Pryor is vouching for someone’s conservative credentials, I would consider that a mark against that person, rather than a reason to be confident about him.

Tonight’s event is the first time any of the 2008 candidates have competed for attention in the same room since they launched their campaigns in earnest. It is also an important illustration of just how much stock all of the presidential candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, will put in the pro- Israel community, particularly for campaign dollars.

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A Democratic political consultant who worked on President Clinton‘s re-election campaign, Hank Sheinkopf, noted that the Aipac dinner always draws a parade of politicians.

“New York is the ATM for American politicians. Large amounts of money come from the Jewish community,” he said. “If you’re running for president and you want dollars from that group, you need to show that you’re interested in the issue that matters most to them.”

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Yet Mr. Edwards, who is appealing to anti-war advocates with his push to withdraw American troops from Iraq, took a hawkish stance on Israel last week while speaking via satellite to a conference in Herzliya, Israel. “Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons,” he said. He later suggested that America should take military action against Iran if necessary, noting that “all options must remain on the table.” ~New York Sun

Via The Plank

Query: How is it that the people who are more or less openly calling for a war of aggression against Iran (oh, sorry, I mean a “preventive” war) possess any moral authority to impugn the motives of anybody else?

Michael Medved has no idea what he’s talking about when he writes:

When people respond to Mitt Romney at this stage in the campaign, they’re expressing their attitudes toward Mormonism –not their reaction to a specific and dynamic candidate.

Yet, as of the infamous Rasmussen poll last fall, only 19% of likely voters could identify Romney as the Mormon in the race, but this didn’t stop likely voters from giving him fairly high unfavourable ratings (30%).  It is possible that all of the voters who could identify Romney as Mormon had an unfavourable impression, but it is not likely.  Since then, Romney’s unfavs have gone up to at least 35%, which could very well mean that the more people get to know Romney, the less they like him.  While he remains a blank slate on which they can inscribe whatever they’d like, he’s much more of a desirable candidate.  In the end, it will be a combination of widespread anti-Mormonism (reflected in that same poll) and Romney’s own numerous flaws as a candidate trying to run as the social conservative that he probably still isn’t that will bring down his candidacy.  Medved also underestimates the depth and breadth of anti-Mormon sentiment if he allows only that roughly 20% would never support a Mormon for President–the figures are more likely in the high 30s or low 40s according to polls taken in the last four months.

Medved also errs badly here:

His devout adherence to the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints may look like a huge handicap at the moment, but the vast majority of GOP voters will base their ultimate decisions on factors other than the faith of the candidates. 

Sure, Medved, whatever you say.  Even though the same Rasmussen poll tells us that 53% of conservatives and 72% of evangelicals believe that a candidate’s faith is “very important” and another 28% of conservatives and another 20% of evangelicals believe that a candidate’s faith is “somewhat important,” I’m sure Medved must be right.  Even though 48% of Republicans say that a candidate’s faith is “very important” and 30% say that that it is “somewhat important” (obviously more intense than the Democrats at 29/26%), I’m sure the view that Romney is from a little-known, non-Christian religion will not be a major obstacle for his campaign.  After all, once the voters learn about his egregious and almost certainly cynical flip-flopping on social issues, his signature on that horrible health-care bill and his well-nigh mad rhetoric about Iran, they won’t need to know that he is a Mormon to cause them to run screaming from the room.

The hiatus remains in effect, but something compels me to write a follow-up post on the subject of Hagel the Non-noninterventionist.  That something would be another Justin Raimondo column overflowing with effusive praise for Chuck Hagel.  Why, look, even Peggy Noonan is applauding him–Hagel must be a serious contender now!  Traditionally much more antiwar Iowan voters barely prefer him less than they prefer Mitt Romney–get out the champagne!  (It is worth noting that Romney and Hagel pulled 8 and 7% respectively, trailing Giuliani, McCain and Gingrich–a flowering of GOP antiwar sentiment isn’t exactly in the offing.) 

Raimondo refers to Hagel’s “rock-ribbed conservatism.”  Perhaps the rocks he has in mind are metamorphic and prone to erode quickly.  This is clear from the man’s record.  His lifetime ACU rating (86) is only three points higher than McCain’s, which tells you plenty about Hagel’s “rock-ribbed” conservatism and the real value of ACU ratings.  Hagel voted against killing NEA funding, when the NEA has long been a target of “rock-ribbed conservatives” (very few of whom are in Congress, of course).  He voted against an amendment that would have given HHS the power to negotiate prescription drug prices (as Ron Paul correctly noted in his Reason interview, the program itself is unconstitutional but if there is going to be a program it ought to be run in such a way that it costs the taxpayers the least amount of money possible).  He was a co-sponsor of one of the most awful, pro-amnesty immigration bills of my lifetime.  If this is “rock-ribbed” conservatism, may God preserve us from the weak and vacillating moderate Republicans!     

Raimondo cites “good old David Boaz,” known most recently for helping discover the unicorn-like “libertarian swing vote,” as a voice of sound political analysis.  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Boaz writes:

Yes, right now the only thing conservatives know about him is his opposition to George W. Bush’s war plans, and conservatives are still inexplicably in thrall to the big-government Bush. But I’ll predict that over, say, the next 12 months leading up to the Iowa caucuses, Hagel is going to look increasingly wise and prescient to Republican voters. And as they come to discover that he’s a commonsense Midwestern conservative who opposed many of the Bush administration’s worst ideas, he’s going to look more attractive.

More attractive to whom?  He already does look attractive to many people who don’t consider themselves conservatives for all the reasons that he will never appear attractive to core GOP voters.  In any case, I fear that the latter pay more attention to the Hewitts of the world than the Hagels.  What these people hear on a regular basis from their demagogues is that Hagel’s position, as milquetoast as it is, is basically subversive and vaguely treasonous. 

Consider Boaz’s own description to understand how absurd this entire Hagel boom is.  A group of people whom Mr. Boaz identifies as being “in thrall” to Mr. Bush–and they are nowhere more “in thrall” to him than on the war–are supposedly going to come to value Hagel’s independence from Bush on the war (the main issue on account of which they have entered Bush-thralldom).  Moreover, they will do this because they are going to recognise (for equally inexplicable reasons) that the war is actually one of Mr. Bush’s “worst ideas” after having believed for four years that it has been a signature feature of his good leadership.  More to the point, they are going to heed Sen. Hagel’s appeal because he has supposedly “opposed many [italics mine-DL] of the Bush administrations worst ideas.”  Except that he doesn’t even oppose the war in Iraq, much less “many” of the administration’s worst ideas (several of which these people probably don’t regard as bad ideas at all anyway).  Hagel rejects the latest troop deployment plan and favours having a debate about Iraq.  A debate would be an interesting change from the servile submission of the last four years.  But it is a measure of how pathetic and weak Congress has become that the mere suggestion of talking about something (an activity that one would not think unpopular among the professional bloviators of the Capitol) is taken as a mark of profound opposition.  It isn’t, and we, as opponents of the war, are committing ourselves to another false hope just as we did before the war if we think it is and if we think it will lead somewhere.  You remember how it went before.  Maybe the British public will do our work for us and stop Blair from joining the invasion!  Maybe the Turkish government will deny use of their country as a springboard for invasion and stop the war in its tracks!  Maybe Hans Blix will save the day!  It’s no wonder we lost, if we ever thought that any of those scenarios were going to make a bit of difference. 

As for the administration’s other “worst ideas” as far as libertarians are concerned, he is staunchly supportive of the drug “war,” which is an appalling policy that should trouble all serious non-interventionists quite a lot.  He voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, but then I suppose only sissies care about leaving the torture of detainees open-ended and at the discretion of the President.  He did oppose re-authorisation of the PATRIOT Act after having voted for it in the beginning.  In other words, when it counted, he went with the herd and did not lead.  Likewise, now he makes a great deal of noise (and so far it is just noise) about how he regrets his vote for the war and how he opposes the “surge” and so on and so forth, but when it counted–even though he could see with considerable prescience the potential pitfalls awaiting us–he voted with the easy majority.  On immigration, he took the political coward’s way out with his so-called “guest worker program” that simply dresses up amnesty, much as Mr. Bush has tried to do, as something other than what it obviously is.  This makes him not only a political coward, but something of a deceiver in the Bushian mould on a matter of supreme national importance.  It is very likely true to say that another amnesty will do more damage to this country, short and long term, than almost anything that could happen in Iraq.  Even if Hagel were really right on Iraq, which he isn’t, it could not make up for his abominable position on what is arguably an equally important, if not more important, issue. 

When exactly has Hagel shown real political courage?  When it became conventionally acceptable to begin whinging about administration failures, he whinged.  When it became acceptable to criticise Rumsfeld, he criticised.  When it became acceptable, post-midterms, to start talking a bit tougher to the administration about its failures, Hagel talked a bit tougher.  When it became acceptable to start challenging the executive with the bold stroke of a non-binding resolution (Dick Cheney must be laughing at this one), Hagel strode forth and supported the Biden resolution in all of its non-obligation.  In other words, Kaus is right–Hagel isn’t being brave, and he hasn’t been terribly brave, politically speaking, over the past few years.  Perhaps now he thinks he can make up for lost time and actually force a change in policy–all I can say is that it’s about time.  Yet I have not seen this supposed change in policy that Hagel actually proposes to force Mr. Bush to consider. 

Doing something substantive here would involve a real change in policy, rather than this quibbling over how many Americans will remain in Iraq to hold the coats and watch the backs of sectarian murderers.  When Hagel starts pushing for something that looks remotely like a substantive change in Iraq policy, which he isn’t really doing right now, then I will begin to approve and acknowledge the political risk he is taking (assuming that he is taking a political risk in a country where a majority now opposes the war!).  In a Nebraska where Democrat Scott Kleeb could pull over 40% of the vote in a massively overwhelmingly Republican district, discontent with the current state of affairs is obviously strong.  If Hagel does not run for President, he is up for re-election.  Perhaps he knows that he is going to launch an ’08 campaign, and so is willing to roll the dice, hoping to tap into antiwar fever, or perhaps he thinks that his political career is over and wants to retire, in which case doing something that will be remembered takes on a new urgency.  The argument could be made that Hagel is the epitome of the politician who simply follows his constituents and has shifted his position according to the mood of his state.  That might well be a worthy and respectable attribute in a representative of Nebraska, but what it is not is courageous.

This brings me to the vexed question of so-called political “mavericks.”  When liberals fell in love with John McCain because he had adopted their pet issue of campaign finance reform, everyone could see through the deceit of calling McCain a “maverick.”  Maverick meant “a politician who does what I, the observer, like, regardless of the political fallout.”  Actual, hard-core mavericks or radicals have no place in this universe of “mavericks,” because real mavericks frighten the political and chattering classes.  Real mavericks cannot be controlled or cajoled with the usual methods.  When warmongers and interventionists treated Joe Lieberman as if he were the founder of a new religion for his unremitting commitment to belligerence and stupid foreign policy no matter the cost (mainly to others), many of us pointed out that his status as an “independent” and the frequent comparisons to McCain’s “maverick” reputation were the most appalling lies when Lieberman was otherwise an amazingly conventional left-liberal on everything except when it came to killing foreigners who had never done anything to us.  On this, at least, the “maverick” and the “independent” could agree–killing the foreigners was a good idea. 

I now must say quite seriously that antiwar rightists who begin gushing about Hagel’s “maverick” independence from Mr. Bush will not only be quite wrong on the substance of the matter (his supposed independence is focused heavily on process and methods, not on goals or strategy), but they will have fallen into this same shallow habit of virtually deifying a mediocre politician because he happens to seem to agree with them on a single issue.  The saddest thing is that Hagel doesn’t even really agree with the antiwar right about Iraq or foreign policy generally, as I said last time, so the Hagelites are abasing themselves at the shrine of Chuck without even being right about their chosen one’s single-issue appeal. 

No, I take that back–the saddest thing is to treat the media’s hype about Hagel as if it were the pure channeling of an “authentic” opposition figure, as opposed to the media-created “hype” surrounding Obama and Edwards’ actual antiwar positions.  Say what you will against these two powdered buffoons (and I have and will say a great deal against both), but when it comes to the war they actually oppose it rather than mumble about how it “isn’t working” or how we need a “debate.”  Oh, yes, Chuck, let’s debate!  We should have had a real debate in 2002.  That was when Hagel and Edwards could have made some greater difference, but when it counted they were to be found with the administration in favour of aggressive war.  Failing that, they could have at least voted against the authorisation resolution, but that vote was on the eve of the Khaki Election when the Decider was riding high and opposition on a matter of national security was considered to be “irresponsible.”  Obama meanwhile had the luxury of representing a state senate district that was 99% against the war in a state that was overwhelmingly against it, so he could speak out strongly against it with no concern about his political future.   

Even so, Obama, ridiculous neophyte that he is in so many ways, has actually contributed something to the debate with his withdrawal legislation (maybe his legislation is terrible, maybe not, but it is an actual bill that would compel policy changes).  Meanwhile, Hagel yelled at his colleagues on national TV (because he’s so authentic) and then voted for a non-binding resolution.  That’s pretty heady stuff, let me tell you.  Get out the placards and sign me up to start canvassing Davenport for Chuck!  Well, actually, maybe not.   

Once again, let me say that I do prefer Hagel’s weak, belated turn against the administration to the even more gutless embrace of whatever the administration serves up that is more typical of the GOP in Congress (John Cornyn, this means you).  I would rather that Hagel take a much more Feingoldian approach to the entire question, but the obvious impossibility of his doing any such thing underscores my objection to antiwar rightists’ treating him as if he were the second coming of Bob Taft and Bob La Follette rolled into one.   

If Hagel were the compromise candidate who stood the best chance of rallying both antiwar and disillusioned internationalist views under one banner in the hopes of ending the Iraq war once and for all, you could make an argument why antiwar conservatives and libertarians should overlook his unimpressive record on other important things (e.g., immigration, drug war, etc.) and his rhetorical hostility to deeply religious people and explain why they should support his candidacy (if there is actually a Hagel candidacy to support).  That would force us to be single-issue voters, but according to Raimondo Iraq is the only issue. 

I would not make such an argument, and I would probably not be persuaded by such an argument were it made, but it would be a much more serious argument than pretending that Hagel is somehow the embodiment of all that we might ever hope for, our proverbial white knight, when he is at best the squire on a donkey.  Unlike Howard Dean, an actual antiwar candidate who famously flamed out and in whom some of us invested far too many expectations, Chuck Hagel isn’t even what I could call antiwar.  To be antiwar, you have to oppose a war.  I do not know of anything Sen. Hagel has ever said about Iraq that would lead me to think that he actually opposes it.  How can he rally antiwar Americans to his cause when he doesn’t even accept the premise of their resistance to the administration and probably, as a veteran and an internationalist, regards most antiwar people with a vague contempt?  Watching non-interventionists, mainly libertarians at that, throw themselves at Chuck Hagel like the Japanese girl from Babel is just depressing, because it reveals the depth of their, our, desperation and represents the total and complete failure of the opposition to the Iraq war even at this late stage.  Fundamentally, it is an error because it invests this entirely conventional Red Republican pol with an importance he does not possess and an integrity in defending the Constitution and the American interest that he has not demonstrated.  We should never trust princes, but neither should we praise them when they have done literally nothing to deserve it.  That way lies the disgusting servility and abasement of the legions of Bush-adoring collaborators.  It does not yield a more free people nor does it yield a more just government.

The idea is that India and the United States are natural allies. But some are skeptical that India is ready to assume the mantle of responsible world power. Closer ties with an ever more authoritarian Russia don’t bode well. ~Michael Goldfarb

I don’t assume India and America are “natural” allies, since I don’t think any such thing exists.  Relative to other states in the region and for the time being, India is the most desirable ally to have to advance American interests in southern and western Asia and to help balance against the rise of China. 

Michael Goldfarb, the Standard‘s new blogger, exhibits about as much foreign policy realism and understanding as the Foreign Policy contributor whom he cites in support of his implicitly anti-Indian post.  Closer ties with Russia are hardly surprising, nor should they be the cause of any turning away from India on our part.  Good Russo-Indian relations have been a fact of life ever since the realignment with China in 1972 that led to our leaning towards Pakistan over India (since Barbara Crossette in Foreign Policy insists on talking about the nastiness of 1971, we might remember that CENTO lent some support to Pakistani operations during the war, which did involve many Pakistani atrocities in their attempts to retain control of the Bengali-speaking East).  Contemplating weakening our connection to India because India continues to have good relations with Russia, whether it is authoritarian, democratic or anarchosyndicalist, is the height of moralistic stupidity and precisely what I would expect from the Standard.  The solution for the smart foreign policy thinker is to stop harrassing and alienating the Russians and to form a triad of great powers linking Moscow, New Delhi and Washington.  

Since both of the other powers have good relations with Iran (something that Ms. Crossette foolishly counts as a liability against an Indian alliance), and since it is blindingly obvious that rapprochement with Iran is in our interest, this triad would present a number of possibilities for securing our interests across the continent.  However, so long as we have ridiculous foreign policy thinkers who are more worried about Russian authoritarianism, the caste system and Kashmir than they are about the American interest, we will not succeed in forming such an alliance. 

Most of the examples Barbara Crossette lists as examples of India as bad international actor come from at least twenty years ago–consider how absurd it is to govern current Iran policy by memories of 1979, and you begin to appreciate why talking about India’s role in fomenting the 1971 war is remarkably irrelevant to the question of whether America should cultivate close ties.  By the by, the separation of what was then East Pakistan did have the effect of making future full-out Pakistani attacks on India extremely difficult, and this has contributed to the relative stability that the region has enjoyed for thirty-five years.  The 1971 war was very ugly and brutal, but there have at least been no more such wars–partly because of Indian policy.  That should be counted in New Delhi’s favour, should it not?

We should not enter into any connection with India on the basis of delusions of common purpose or common values.  A very small minority in India shares anything like the “values” most Americans possess, but most are radically alien from us in religion, culture and politics.  That is as you would expect.  Any connection with India must be founded on an understanding and respect for the respective nations’ legitimate and just interests and an appreciation of those points where our nations’ interests coincide.  Where they do not coincide, as they sometimes will not, we should demonstrate a certain degree of patience and toleration without, however, surrendering our appropriate claims.  It very much suits Indian interests, for instance, to have a great deal of outsourcing and offshoring, whereas it does not suit the interests of much of the American people to have their facilities and jobs sent overseas.  That will have to be flagged as an area where there will not be much room for accommodation in the future, which should not preclude cooperation on security, intelligence and other commercial fronts.

I’m hearing you guys [House GOP] don’t care what people think. That’s what I’m hearing, and that’s what got us the minority, and that’s what’ll keep us there, but I hope you’ll come back and talk with me again. ~Hugh Hewitt

Er, well, actually it was the Iraq war that put Republicans in the minority, as any remedial civics student would have to know by now.  There were aggravating factors with the massive overspending, corruption and general listlessness of GOP leadership, but fundamentally the war caused GOP failure and it will continue to destroy the GOP until Republican leaders stop listening to the Hewitts of the world and listen to their constituents, a majority of whom oppose the war and want out in short order.  The only thing that will keep the GOP in the minority is the sabotage of militaristic purists like Hewitt who seem to have as little understanding of the political realities of the day as they do of the military realities of Iraq.  If they did understand those realities, it would tell them that the surge will not bring victory or anything like it and that this entire tantrum on the part of zealous war supporters is juvenile and ridiculous.

Two senators _ a Republican and a Democrat _ leading separate efforts to put Congress on record against President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq joined forces Wednesday, agreeing on a nonbinding resolution that would oppose the plan and potentially embarrass the White House.

Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., had been sponsoring competing measures opposing Bush’s strategy of sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to the war zone, with Warner’s less harshly worded version attracting more Republican interest. The new resolution would vow to protect funding for troops while keeping Warner’s original language expressing the Senate’s opposition to the buildup.

Levin replaced Warner as chairman of the Armed Services Committee when the Democrats took control of the Senate in January. Their resolution could well gain more support from members of both parties than their separate versions had been attracting. It lacks Levin’s language saying the troop increase is against the national interest, and it drops an earlier provision by Warner suggesting Senate support for some additional troops.

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The House had planned on waiting for the Senate to vote as a way of testing the waters for Republican support of such a resolution. But according to a Democratic aide, the House may begin the process next week with a committee review. That would set the stage for a House floor debate the week of Feb. 12. ~The Washington Post

Seeing that his blunt, clumsy instrument of blackmail and intimidation is failing, Hewitt has begun concocting an amusing, if rather sad, self-justifying myth:

When the bottom falls out of RNC/NRCC/NRSC fundraising, they won’t be able to say they weren’t warned.  the insainty [sic] is that the only way some senators could lose in 2008 is by going defeatist on the war and embracing “benchmarks.”

Yes, if only the GOP would lash itself to the mast of the sinking ship, it would succeed!  And there he goes again obsessing about benchmarks–did the man have a traumatic experience with a workbench as a child?  What is wrong with him? 

We’ll be keeping an eye on the anti-surge GOP Senators to see how well they fare next year.  My guess is that they will perform better than their pro-surge counterparts, but they may still end up going down to defeat because the “surge” will go ahead despite these meaningless, non-binding resolutions and will make the GOP even more radioactive than it already is.  Opposing the surge will only win them credit with voters if they actually do something to stop it–waving their arms in the air and saying, “I think it’s a bad idea, but…whatever!” will not win much support from anyone.  The funny thing is that the anti-surge Republicans may prevent their party’s losses in ’08 from being a complete blowout and make them just a mildly humiliating setback (that is, maybe just a loss of three seats instead of a possible eight), but only if they actually do something substantive to stop the surge.  If they satisfy themselves with a purely symbolic gesture that also manages to outrage their core partisans, they will get hit coming and going as they will get no credit from either side.     

Much may depend on how much support Hewitt’s crazed GOP suicide pact has actually garnered among serious contributors.  If he and his allies have actually gutted a significant part of the GOP’s online and other fundraising sources over such an incredible non-issue as this resolution business, he can be congratulated for having led the way in handing Congress to the Democrats for the next decade for no good reason.  Maybe the Kossacks will give him some sort of medal as Political Blogger Most Damaging To His Own Side.

The Old Right is back, and in Hagel it has, perhaps, found a formidable and eminently electable candidate. ~Justin Raimondo

Put a lot of emphasis on that perhaps.  First, there are some definitional problems: Hagel is not an antiwar Republican.  How do I know?  Because he never says he is against the war.  There’s a mighty big difference between being antiwar and being opposed to the frustratingly incompetent way a war is being fought.  There’s certainly a huge difference between opposing the war and opposing the “surge.”  Hagel has distinguished himself, such as he has, as a critic of the war’s management, but you get no sense from any of his public statements that he would dream of proposing a withdrawal from Iraq or bringing an end to the war in the near future.  In defense of his support for Biden’s resolution in the FRC the other day, he specifically argued later that he does not support “redeployment” in the foreseeable future, be it “phased” or “rapid.”  He has endorsed the conventional wisdom that withdrawal would make everything even worse than things are now. 

Furthermore, to the extent that he does advocate extricating the U.S. from Iraq, it is simply a Murthian sort of extrication not terribly different from Lugar’s regional watchman idea.  As Prof. Bacevich noted grimly, there is no fundamental opposition in Washington to the underlying flawed, non-America First U.S. policy that has gotten us to this dreadful pass.  Hagel certainly doesn’t hold to any such foreign policy view and he never has.  He has come to deeply regret his authorisation vote, as well he might–should we give him a medal for realising the obvious four years too late?  Nothing that he says tells me that he understands that the Iraq war came from the profoundly misguided internationalist foreign policy to which he has always subscribed and to which he still generally does subscribe today.  Nothing tells me that he is really all that comparable to anyone who might have once been called Old Right.

Let me a couple words in defense of people who actually think there are other issues besides the war.  First of all, there really are other pressing issues of national concern.  If Hagel were right on the war from an antiwar perspective (which he really isn’t) and wrong on everything else, who would be the monomaniac if you supported him anyway?  If libertarians find the drug war deeply offensive and a candidate’s support for the drug war a dealbreaker, as well they might given its long-running egregious violations of constitutional rights and its inextricable ties to an interventionist and meddlesome foreign policy in Latin America (not to mention its hitherto counterproductive effect on counterinsurgency in Afghanistan), this is not necessarily monomania (a weird charge coming from the editor of Antiwar.com).  It could very well be a consistent extension of their commitment to non-interventionism.  It is interesting how Sen. Hagel can now wrap himself in the Constitution complaining about national security infringements on protected liberties (especially since he originally voted to authorise the PATRIOT Act, as he must have, since only Russ Feingold opposed it in the Senate in 2001), when the drug war infringes on those same liberties using the same bad and transparent justifications.   

Second, the political reality we face is that voters have more concerns than the war and those concerns have to be credibly addressed as well.  One of the burning issues for many disenchanted Republican voters–and a potential opening for a candidate that is antiwar, committed to border security and opposed to amnesty (a tall order these days)–is obviously immigration.  Sen. Hagel is, I’m sorry to say, one of the worst Republican Senatorson immigration (Hagel-Martinez, anyone?).  

If he ran in the GOP primaries or as an independent candidate, he would never gain any traction.  That is the reality.  Part of the reason why he would go nowhere is that he does not represent what one could reasonably call an America First position on immigration, and so he automatically alienates all of those people on the right most inclined to view his opposition to the administration favourably.  I genuinely fail to see the Old Right reborn in Chuck Hagel.  Granted, the alternatives may well be worse and it might be a case where we have to bite our tongues and accept a deeply flawed candidate for a greater good, but that’s no reason to kid ourselves that Hagel is either in real agreement with how we look at foreign policy or that he is actually electable.  In truth, he is neither.  If someone wants to make an argument that he represents the best chance antiwar conservatives and libertarians have of being represented, that is something else all together, but it would also a pretty sad statement about the continuing marginalisation of antiwar rightists that the best we can hope for is the candidacy of a pro-amnesty, disenchanted internationalist.

He has been trying to build his campaign on the idea of protecting human life from womb to death, and across the globe.  That agenda cannot advance by retreating from the field on which the most pivotal of the current battles is being waged.  Perhaps Senator Brownback will also recognize that in the days ahead and back victory in Iraq. ~Hugh Hewitt

No wonder Mitt Romney has mostly been keeping his mouth shut about Iraq.  Even when you are absolutely for what Hewitt would call victory and absolutely supportive of the war, as Brownback is, you cannot satisfy the raving loons who claim to be the voice of popular conservatism in America.  I don’t support Brownback, I don’t much like Brownback, but the ignorant people on both sides of the surge debate who keep thinking that Brownback is somehow less than 100% pro-war are driving me up the wall.

Okay, I am not on hiatus yet, and Sullivan offers such an easy, fun target: 

It was much more significant in the 2006 elections than the white evangelical vote. In 2006, a full 36 percent of self-described libertarians voted Democrat – easily the biggest share of that vote that the Dems have had in recent times. ~Andrew Sullivan

This has already been talked to death, but here it is one more time: in 2004, these libertarian voters supported the Dems 44-53 in House races and 43-54 in Senate races.  That means that 2004 was the peak of libertarian support for Democratic candidates in Congress.  Both of these results for the Dems are much higher than in 2002 and 2000, but they are also a little higher than in 2006.  So 36% is obviously not the biggest share of the libertarian vote the Dems have had “in recent times,” unless Sullivan defines “in recent times” to be “after the 2004 elections.” 

I also don’t know how he can determine that the libertarian vote is more significant than the white evangelical vote, since there are obviously fewer libertarians, even of the Boaz/Kirby “libertarian-leaning” bloc (which is supposedly 13% of voters), than there are white evangelicals.  According to this and this, white evangelicals consistently made up 23% of the electorate in 2000 and 2004.  Unless roughly half of them sat out the last election–which is a claim I haven’t seen made anywhere–they remain a significantly larger group of voters than the mythical “libertarian swing vote” imagined by Boaz/Kirby.  As to how many “Christianist” voters there are, well, I leave that to Sullivan to invent right along with the Christianists themselves, since they exist only in his head anyway.

It may be that there was a more significant change between 2002 and 2004  and again between 2004 and 2006 in the voting patterns of these “libertarians” than there was in the voting of white evangelicals, but I don’t have the latter’s numbers handy.  What is certainly not the case is that these libertarians, even as broadly and questionably as the bloc has been defined, somehow formed a larger part of the electorate than white evangelicals.  Is there any conclusion in this post that Sullivan didn’t get wrong?