The Politico is reporting that a “well-connected” McCain supporter is “circulating” the fact that Mitt Romney gave $250 in 1992 to the campaign of former New Hampshire Representative Dick Swett (D) has made a point of noting that Swett is a Mormon. Is this an attempt to bolster the Damon Linker note of caution that Mormon politicians hold their faith above their allegiance to their country? ~Marc, Law Students for Romney

Er, no, since the point of mentioning the donation would be that Romney was supporting a fellow Mormon who was a Democrat rather than being a good, little partisan and backing only GOP candidates.  As the story at The Politico says:

“Some activists are beginning to wonder: does Mitt support Mormons over Republicans?”  muses this person.

By “some activists,” of course, the McCainiac means “some activists who support John McCain.”  It’s rather funny that any of Romney’s opponents would attempt to make an issue out of this (if Giuliani tried to question Romney’s party bona fides, that would take some chutzpah).  What I think the McCain people are trying to do here is to cast doubt on Romney’s reliability as a Republican.  This will play on the “flip-flopping” argument that Brownback is using as a club to beat Romney, and it will tie into GOP primary voters’ anxieties about candidates from Massachusetts.  On the other hand, if Romney can show that he has a record of supporting candidates from both parties while also convincing people that he is now a serious conservative (no laughing, please), this might work to his benefit by combining his social conservative appeal with evidence of pragmatism.  It would, that is, were it not for the roughly 40% of Americans who have already determined they would never vote for a Mormon. 

These voters don’t need to know that Romney supported a Mormon Democrat in a congressional race nearly 15 years ago to view him with suspicion; they just need to know that he is a Mormon.  To the extent that the McCain people’s whispering about the donation emphasises Romney’s Mormon identity, it will have a greater effect on his candidacy than some meager donation he gave back in ’92.  However, the purpose of the whispering does not seem to be aimed at his Mormonism in a Linkeresque or Christian conservative way.  Far worse than (obviously absurd) dangers of a national Mormon theocracy or adherence to a false religion in the eyes of the McCainiacs is a lack of lock-step allegiance to the Red Republicans.

Update: Something else about our Romneyite’s question just struck me as fairly silly.  Linker said some provocative and fairly insulting things about Mormonism, but he did not say that Mormons put their faith ahead of their loyalty to the country.  On the contrary, he identifies one of the principal threats from Mormonism to be their theologically-fortified Americanism.  As Linker would have it, this supposedly dictates that Mormon millennial expectations will drive Mormons to political action to hasten the return of Christ here in America.  As his critics have already pointed out, this is a fairly loopy argument in that it has very little to do with what actual Mormons are interested in doing.  Nonetheless, as wrong as Linker was about this and as bizarre as his complaint against Mormons was (they’re too patriotic!), he did not claim that they put their religion before their country.  The problem is supposed to be, rather, that their faith and their sense of patriotism are too closely intertwined.  The notion that anyone is accusing Mormons of putting religion ahead of country in a practical way is a product of misleading and annoying comparisons between old anti-Catholic tropes and present-day anti-Mormon opposition.  I swear, if I see one more mention of JFK…

“It is not acceptable for Nevada to go before New Hampshire,” Gov. John Lynch told me in a phone interview yesterday.

He added that “it is possible that we will see additional movement” by other states trying to muscle ahead of New Hampshire. But that won’t be allowed either.

One person and one person alone has the authority to set the date of the New Hampshire primary: William M. Gardner, New Hampshire’s secretary of state — or, as he is called in political circles, God.

Gardner will not allow Nevada to go first, no matter whether Nevada calls its contest a caucus, a primary or a ring-toss. ~Roger Simon, The Politico

This increasingly insane race to the front of the primary schedule will obviously serve well the candidates who can perform well in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Anyone hoping for some momentum from a Nevada win to propel him onward through the N.H. primary will apparently be out of luck.  This probably means that the major contenders will focus on these first two, traditionally significant races more than they would have and they will leave Nevada to the second-tier candidates.  This offers the illusion of making the race briefly appear to be more competitive, when what it actually does is to make Nevada as irrelevant as ever.

Well, actually, my experience in foreign policy [bold mine-DL] is probably more diverse than most others in the field.  I’m somebody who has actually lived overseas, somebody who has studied overseas.  I majored in international relations.  But ultimately, foreign policy is really about having judgement and having a sense first and foremost of the strengths of America and the American people and being able to talk with them about what our values and ideals are and also having an understanding of what the world beyond our borders is like. ~Barack Obama on Good Morning America

Yes, he lived and studied overseas when he was a small child.  If he would like us to discount whatever negative associations people might make with his time in Indonesia, he might do well to not bring up his few years as a child in Indonesia as an example of his qualifications to be chief executive.  He majored in international relations?  That’s interesting to know (but it doesn’t inspire much confidence–Condi got a doctorate in international relations, and look how that worked out for us).  Does he really think that makes him more qualified than Bill Richardson or Joe Biden, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee?  Goodness, even Dennis Kucinich has been working on his Department of Peace proposals for longer than Obama has been in elective office, and led the opposition to the authorisation resolution in 2002 while Obama was still in Springfield.  Absurdly, the three Dems with the least practical, hands-on experience working on foreign policy are the three leaders of the pack: Clinton, Obama and Edwards.   

Ah, but Obama’s experience is “diverse,” which is another way of saying, “I have no real experience in thinking about or working on policy, but I like to travel.”  Who seriously believes the man is ready to be President?      

Hugh Hewitt’s pro-“surge” pledge:

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony  of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution.  Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

The best part comes in the brief remarks following the pledge, where Hewitt writes:

GOP activists and donors built the GOP senate delegation, as well as the majority that was punted away [bold mine-DL].  They can disassemble it as well, and GOP support for a neoappeasement [bold mine-DL] resolution is exactly the way to start that process.

Neoappeasement?  Is that what they call appeasement in The Matrix?  But, hey, if you have neocons, and Santorum is Neochurchill, you have to have neoappeasement.  Does that make Brownback Neochamberlain? 

I thought I was the purist who expected unlikely things from people in government.  Faced with an incredibly difficult election for a considerable number (21, I believe, which is nine more than the Democrats have to hold) of contested Senate seats, many of them in “blue” or “purple” states, Hewitt has made it his goal to undermine any Senator running for re-election in ’08 if he does the one thing likely to save his seat by voting against the ill-conceived “surge.” 

The majority was “punted away”?  Granted, the majority leadership did work overtime at accomplishing nothing of value and otherwise alienating parts of the country with the few things they did manage to bestir themselves to attempt (take that, Internet gamblers!), but the overwhelming reason why the majority was lost was because of continued mismanagement of a war that seemed to have lost any intelligible rationale.  The reflexive, full-throated support of people like Hewitt for the war ensured that the voters would associate (with good reason) the deteriorating conditions there with general Republican incompetence.  The majority was not “punted away”–war supporters in the coalition fumbled at their own five yard line through their increasingly inflexible, irrational defenses of a war that most Americans want to see brought to a close by ’08.  The “surge” puts an exclamation point on all of this mismanagement.  Mr. Bush’s out-of-hand rejection of the ISG Report, whatever the flaws it possesses, was a giant, blinking neon sign that announced to the country, “Nevermind what you voted for, I’ll do whatever I damn well please.” 

He has made sure that most of the country thinks of this as a Republican war, pure and simple, and for the GOP this is nightmarish when the war is increasingly unpopular.  Some of the Senators Hewitt seeks to chastise are probably barely going to be able to hang on as it is (Norm Coleman, this means you), and now he is actively encouraging people to contribute to the defeat of his party because of some Senators’ opposition to one particularly bad policy.  Of course, he’s free to hold the GOP to whatever standard he wants, but he shouldn’t be surprised if most other Republicans look at him as if he’s crazy.  For the most part, conservatives who advocated for GOP defeat last year wanted the GOP to be chastened and to pay a price for its misrule and abandonment of principle.  Hewitt doesn’t just want the GOP chastened–he wants them to get slaughtered yet again and see their presence in the Senate reduced to a rump.  For what?  For the sake of Mr. Bush’s poorly conceived “surge”?  If the Senate GOP find themselves with only 39 or 40 seats (or fewer) come January 2009, the thanks will be due in part to screeching warmongers like Hewitt and their agitation to undermine incumbents in tough re-election fights.      

Update: Norm Coleman is apparently already buckling under pressure from the Hewitts out there.  In Senate FRC, he voted against the non-binding anti-“surge” resolution. That didn’t take long–Hewitt put up his pledge yesterday. Maybe Coleman was under pressure from the leadership to back the White House (maybe they threatened to withhold NRSC funding?), and Hewitt had nothing to do with it, but it’s interesting to note the timing of the threat and Coleman’s volte-face.

Second Update: VOA gives more information about why the non-binding resolution passed on a virtually party-line vote (Hagel joined with the majority):

Among the lawmakers who voted against the measure was the top Republican on the committee, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who said while he, too, opposes a U.S. troop increase in Iraq, he also opposes the resolution.

“It is unclear to me how passing a nonbinding resolution that the president has already said he will ignore will contribute to any improvement or modifications of our Iraq policy,” he said. 

Lugar says he fears passage of the resolution will make it more difficult for Congress to work with the president to influence his Iraq policy.

In other words, in order to have influence on Iraq policy it is necessary to not try to influence Iraq policy with any measure at all, no matter how symbolic.  That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I suppose it’s an explanation of sorts.  What it does show, however, is that there is a lot less support for the actual “surge” on the committee than the 12-9 FRC vote indicates.  It also means that Coleman has put himself in the ridiculous position of having to explain to his constituents that he opposed the “surge” before he failed to disapprove of it.  Minnesota DFL folks are going to beat him silly with this vote come next year.   

Third Update: Voinovich, a man not running for re-election in ’08 but who is from what is becoming a very “blue” state, also expressed strong opposition to the “surge” while voting against the resolution.

With the White House wholly rejecting the “get the GOP out of Iraq” card, the president managed to do something many thought was nearly impossible: He strengthened the GOP’s ties to the war.

So what does this mean for 2008? Potential disaster. There are five people who are probably sweating more bullets about the GOP’s image problem than anyone else: The party’s three presidential front-runners (John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney), National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Ensign of Nevada and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma. ~Chuck Todd

In this environment, what is even stranger is that the Terrible Trio of presidential candidates are united in their support of the war and the “surge” and have tended to go out of their way to demonstrate their ueber-hawkishness to all.  In putting some distance between himself and the administration on the “surge,” Brownback might have bought himself a little bit more credibility as the most electable GOP nominee.  That is not to say that a Brownback ticket would win (it would, I suspect, still be too reminiscent of Bush’s style and policies to go anywhere), but that every other major alternative to Brownback has bound himself closely to Mr. Bush on Iraq (which, in Romney’s position as a former governor, is almost inexplicable).  If Chuck Todd is right (and he often is about these sorts of things), that association may very well doom the “frontrunners” to defeat in the primaries or present the GOP with another blowout defeat in the general.  The usual suspects’ vilification of Brownback as a weak, appeasing loser will be starting soon enough to help compensate for the huge problems the biggest Republican interventionist candidates face.

At a time when religion and politics are increasingly intertwined, it would be an opportunity to remind all Americans why the wall between church and state has served the country well. ~David Campbell & J. Quin Monson

Yet again, the conventional arguments deployed in favour of Romney (tolerance!  separation of church and state!) are the very sorts of arguments that make the people Romney needs as supporters grind their teeth.  Many Christian conservatives believe, quite rightly, that the “wall of separation” does not exist, or at least they hold that it is not enshrined in the Constitution and has nothing to do with the fundamental law.  The prohibition against establishment in the First Amendment was, is, not the same as an absolute “separation.”  If “the wall” exists now, it is a function of some of the very judicial excesses that have contributed to the judicial tyranny these voters have resented and opposed for decades. 

If Romney were to make an appeal for his candidacy in the name of a “wall of separation,” it would just be one more reason why many Christian voters in the GOP primaries could not vote for him.  He may be currently be good on the issues that matter to them (his spotty record here hardly helps him), but their acceptance of his candidacy would then be predicated on an endorsement of certain ideas, such as “the wall,” that they firmly reject as later misreadings of the law and an arbitrary interpolation of Jefferson’s letter to the Baptists into constitutional rulings (if only the Court were always so interested in original intent!).  Now, with a Brownback in the race they have no need now to “settle” for Romney’s late-in-the-day discovery of moral truths that Brownback has been defending, to some degree, for ten years.

Just like the challenge for Kennedy in 1960 and for born-again Christian Jimmy Carter in 1976, Romney’s candidacy will provide fresh opportunity for the US to reassert that its democratic traditions are above religion and serve as a protector of religion. ~The Christian Science Monitor

This may be the source of one of Romney’s problems with Christian voters.  It requires them to accept that, as the CSM rather clumsily put it, “democratic traditions are above religion.”  Put like that, you might be hard-pressed to find a lot of conservative Christians who would want to endorse such a message, since “religion” for them means Christianity and we can be fairly sure that for many of them democracy is not “above” or ahead of Christianity.  This ties into the other reasons why Romney’s Mormon identity will be a problem for him.  On the one hand, his candidacy runs up against the natural democratic impulse to elect people like ourselves who represent us and in whom we can recognise ourselves, and on the other hand his appeal must seek to transcend and so, to some degree, set aside religious identity, which runs the risk of appearing to trivialise the place of religion in public life.  Like so many other pols, he turns to the weasel word “values” to convey his basic agreement with Christian voters on social issues of importance to them, but unlike most of these other pols on the GOP side he does not have the built-in credibility with many conservative voters that goes with being from a Christian background.  He is hemmed in on every side and, as the polls indicate, he just can’t win.

I’m less sure that the backward-looking focus on the decisions of 2003 made much sense, or that the anti-Wall Street rhetoric plays well. Let me put it this way: This is not the speech that Rahm Emanuel or Chuck Schumer would have written. And while Webb is a more compelling figure than they are, they’re the better political strategists. ~Ramesh Ponnuru

On the contrary, the focus on 2003, to the extent that there was one, was a smart move.  The list of national security and military figures Sen. Webb rattled off, while familiar to pundits and bloggers, reintroduced the viewing public (if there was much of one) to the serious and credible arguments and predictions made–and ignored by the administration and its supporters–prior to the war.  The list summed up fairly quickly the most damning assessment that can be made about the GOP and Bush.  Webb was saying, “Iraq shows that the Republicans are not the party of responsible, intelligent foreign policy, and here are the witnesses.”  Important parts of the Webb response were aimed at saying, “The Republicans are reckless in foreign affairs, whereas we Democrats have better judgement.”  Speaking of the party as a whole, this is absurd, but that is why Webb being the one to give the response was a very wise move.  Had someone like an Emanuel or a Schumer given the response, the appeal would have been a harder sell, since Schumer voted for the authorisation of force (as did most ambitious, “national” Democrats) and Emanuel is a reliable DLC man when it comes to interventionist foreign policy.  Emanuel and Schumer are better political strategists, but mainly in the context of running election campaigns–their judgement on the politics of how to handle policy questions seems questionable at best.  Emanuel and Schumer represent the half-hearted defense approach: they concede the substance of a policy, such as the Iraq war, but quibble about the details.  Webb obviously represents a more stern, confrontational approach, and it is to have more vigorous opposition and confrontation with Mr. Bush when Congress believes him to be in the wrong that the public voted out the GOP majority.    

Webb makes the message of responsible Democratic foreign policy sound remotely plausible, because he actually did have better judgement than the administration in assessing the pitfalls of an invasion and was on record saying so in 2002.  But he notes his opposition almost in passing, emphasising the numerous credible critics of the then-proposed invasion.  The nods to his family’s tradition of military service was a straightforward way of saying: “My people have been fighting your wars because of our patriotism, but you keep misleading and mistreating us and now we’re mighty angry.”  It was a blunt way to do away with the standard “weak” Democrat image, but it will probably resonate with a lot of tired and frustrated military families.  It will definitely resonate with other tired and frustrated citizens who, as the Senator rightly noted, have patiently endured four years of mismanagement in this war.  It was also another way of saying, I think, “My Democratic Party is not the party of the wine-and-cheesers and the cultural radicals–it is a party for the patriotic, put-upon Middle American.”  

One might think that Webb’s knocks on Wall Street and the old Wall Street/Main Street dichotomy wouldn’t go over well, but then one would need to forget election results in places such as Ohio and Pennsylvania where record high Dow closes mean very little for a great many people.  The nods to Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt and the remarks about wages all tap into instinctive distrust of the moneyed interest in Democratic constituencies.  They also probably appeal to the American sense of fair play.  Perhaps some will say Webb is dressing up as a question of “fairness” things that have nothing to do with what is actually fair or right, but it seems almost certain that appealing to that sense of fair play will have a receptive audience.  As the passage of numerous minimum wage referenda around the nation shows, that element of Webb’s response will likely go over very well.   

Webb’s response was a solid performance for his first nationwide address.  It was hardly the rapture-inducing event that some Democrats seem to have made it out to be, but neither was it the awkward, anxious bumbling Republicans have portrayed it as being.  Obviously, he was following the teleprompter closely, which seems to be the natural hang-up for those starting out in making televised speeches of this kind, but compared to his less-than-enthralling stump performances last year it was a clear improvement and a success in laying out the basic Democratic theme, which seems to be, “We’re on your side.” 

Of course, I don’t think the Democrats, a few individuals like Webb excepted perhaps, are on “our” side at all, but that is the message they need to convey to continue to capitalise on the disenchantment and disgust with the GOP.

Update: Reihan has a short post on the “tribune” of the “new populists.”  I can think of someone who is probably very pleased by last night’s performance.

With this last bit, we not only see the accuracy of Clark’s remark, but, once again, the stunning hypocrisy of the anti-anti-Semitism brigades. It’s clear that McCain, just like Clark, sees American Jewish organizations as key players in the Iran-hawk movement in the United States, and also that he sees concern for Israeli security as motivating those groups. Nobody, however, is going to label McCain a Jew-hating conspiracy theorist — because, of course, McCain wants to help these groups push the United States into a military confrontation with Iran. Thus, McCain gets an award, and Clark gets called an anti-Semite. ~Matt Yglesias

I have earlier noted what Mr. Yglesias calls the “bizarre rules of the road in discussing America’s Israel policy,” according to which making the exact same assessment of a threat to Israel and observing that a confrontational policy suits the goals of Israeli and American pro-Israel hawks (in this case regarding Iran) will elicit two completely different reactions depending on whether or not the observer agrees with the hawks’ proposed course of confrontation.  Yglesias again:

If you’re offering commentary that’s supportive of America’s soi-disant “pro-Israel” forces, as Barone was, it’s considered perfectly acceptable to note, albeit elliptically, that said forces are influential in the Democratic Party in part because they contribute large sums of money to Democratic politicians who are willing to toe the line. If, by contrast, one observes this fact by way of criticizing the influence of “pro-Israel” forces, you’re denounced as an anti-Semite.  

Likewise, to observe in a negative or critical way that an attack on Iran is being done for the sake of Israel (or, in reality, maximalist hawkish definitions of Israeli security interests)–rather than, say, because of any legitimate American interest in doing so–is to invite derision and claims of conspiracy-mongering.  On the other hand, to call for action against Iran partly or fully for the sake of Israel (especially when in Israel), as Gov. Romney recently did, will normally earn you praise and plaudits for your “moral” leadership on a vital issue.  In the earlier post, I wrote:

Strangely, today many of the same people who denounced the paleoconservatives take it as almost a given that we should attack Iran because of the threat it poses to Israel.  They are not even embarrassed to say it quite openly: the reason why we should start a war with Iran is because Ahmadinejad has threatened Israel with special vehemence and fanaticism and has therefore gone beyond the pale.  Presumably, however, if one of the paleos were to observe that a forthcoming attack on Iran was being done for Israel’s benefit, we would be condemned again as anti-Semites.  (This is usually because we follow this identical observation with an argument for why it is not America’s fight and that our wars should be fought in our national interest, which is supposedly the wrong and immoral answer.). 

(I should add again that “for Israel’s benefit” in that post is not a claim that an American war with Iran actually is in the real security interests of Israel, but that the exceedingly hawkish “pro-Israel” people who advocate for the war believe, wrongly as usual, that it is.)  However, when I wrote the above quote on 14 January, I had failed to notice that pro-Israel hawks who want confrontation with Iran do become embarrassed by critics of an attack on Iran bringing up certain truths about who it is that wants a war with Iran.  Again, the thinking seems to be: “we the hawks can say this, because we take the morally right policy position, and you cannot, because your position is not only immoral but must also be based in deepest prejudice.”  After all, what other reason would anyone have for wanting to keep America out of another needless, aggressive war in the Near East? 

The lesson is easy enough to learn: if you favour policies that lead to violent upheaval and conflict in the Near East as a way to supposedly secure Israel, you have special moral authority, and if you oppose these policies you are probably acting from the vilest of motives.  This is because, according to these rules, there cannot actually be honest, principled or sane disagreement about what serves the American national interest, nor even about what “pro-Israel” hawks deem to be security threats to us or Israel, just as there can be no disagreement about what should done about such threats.  It obviously damages the quality and integrity of foreign policy debate in this country when a hawkish faction in this country can define all of the terms, control all of the proceedings and exclude, by means of smears and intimidation, from the debate as inherently illegitimate any real opposing views. 

If Americans wish to avoid getting dragged into another unnecessary war, they can start by ignoring the professional corps of character assassins and smear artists who seek to politically kneecap patriots and Near East policy dissidents.  When the ADL or National Review, say, disgustingly accuses someone of such hateful prejudice, start by assuming that they are working overtime to discredit an opposing view whose arguments they cannot effectively rebut in a proper debate.  It is predictable that those with the weaker argument resort to ad hominem attacks.  What is surprising is how tolerant most people have become of this kind of fallacious argument.

Since my cold keeps me from getting any sleep, while I wait for this dreadful TheraFlu to kick in (it tastes horrible, but does the trick) I will post here a few random items that may interest you all.

On the shameless self-promotion front, I have a review of Adrian Goldsworthy’s Caesar: Life of a Colossusin the latest TAC(1/29/07). 

On a random music note, I am currently listening to Sting’s impressive album of songs, Songs from the Labyrinth, written by the late 16th/early 17th century English composer, John Dowland.  Apparently, he even learned to play the lute to accompany the professional lutenist, Edin Karamazov, on one of the songs.  Dowland’s late medieval sound and lyrics, by turns melancholy and irreverent, are always beautiful.  Sting intersperses excerpts from a letter from Dowland to Robert Cecil, Lord Burleigh, in which Dowland, a confessing Catholic, was attempting to bring to the attention of the English court a plot against Elizabeth I while vowing his loyalty to England.  This has the interesting effect of recounting Dowland’s life as his corpus of work unfolds (the songs seem not to be in strictly chronological order).  By far, my favourite has to be Can she excuse my wrongs? (1597).  Here is the first stanza:

Can she excuse my wrongs with Virtue’s cloak?
Shall I call her good when she proves unkind?
Are those clear fire which vanish into smoke?
Must I praise the leaves where no fruit I find?

Los Angelino Eunomia readers, be mildly intrigued: the “Dark Lord of Paleoconservatism” will be visiting your city next week to speak on a matter historical, ecclesiastical and Armenian.  I am unsure whether I will have any time away from the scheduled events at the colloquium at UCLA, but if anyone is in the vicinity and would like to hear a talk on monotheletism (who wouldn’t want to hear a talk on monotheletism?) I imagine that you would be most welcome to attend.  Come and confirm that I am not, in fact, a disembodied brain who blogs via “sheer Mental Power.”