— for all those in the GOP smart set who were Absolutely Crushed when Mitch Daniels decided not to run — and Absolutely Elated when Sarah Palin did the same — well, last night’s official GOP response to the President’s State of the Union Address, I submit, is as clear an indication of how tone deaf is the Republican’s non-existent “Establishment” to the mood of the conservative base as we’re likely to hear.
We must protect the safety net, is our message? Really?
For those of us who thought Daniels a dry technocrat dedicated to the efficient management of the federal Leviathan — Mitt Romney without the swell hair — we got pretty much what we expected. (When you appeal to Chris Matthews, it’s unlikely you’re going to simultaneously appeal to the base of your own party.)
Whereas, by way of contrast, with that bumbling, incompetent, unelectable and uppity sex-crazed Pimp Hand charismat, Herman Cain, we got more of what we actually wanted.
— “We,” in this case, of course being those Hobbits who simply don’t understand how DC works and are committed to letting our ideological purity get in the way of putting forth a fine, decent, moderate Republican who can appeal to “independents,” who we’re to continue to believe run screaming from conservatism and embrace progressive nannystatism every time a GOP candidate expresses strong classically liberal, limited government principles.
— That is, every time a GOP candidate overtly defends liberty over “fairness” of the kind Obama and the progressives are looking to turn into a barometer of “social justice.” Which is why the best GOP candidates, per the non-existent “establishment,” are those that appear the least conservative. And appeal the most to Chris Matthews.
Which, helluva way to advance your ideology, that.
At any rate, here’s Cain’s Tea Party response, for those of you who missed it:
Mr. Mitch is a very good governor of Indiana.
It’s some sort of misdirection apparently.
Ah Jeff, you kidder you!
Everyone knows that pragmatists have no ideology.
I wish Mr Cain had stuck it out — immolating his family even — so we could have a better choice for executive than is on offer. But ah well, c’est la vie.
I’m just glad Herman’s name is easy to spell on the write-in line.
I wish Palin had run. Wish Cain had stayed in.
But, as someone who is likely to end up voting for with Santorum by balancing his flaws by his strengths, I’m not likely to waste much time beating up on Daniels.
Obama: Rich white crackers in America are not paying their fair share!
Bitchy Mitchy: You know what you are so right I was looking at entitlement programs the other day and I found myself thinking very similar thoughts really.
Well, this should spike Mitch as a future thought-leader.
Wow. The Matthews seal of approval is worse than the kiss of death for Daniels, at least with respect to conservative politics. I too thought he based too much of his rationale for cutting spending on the ability to save entitlements.
I was firmly on the Cain train, and would have stayed if he had done the same, but that’s all in the past. For me at least that means Santorum is the most consistently conservative candidate left, and hence will get my vote, despite the caterwauling of the GOProud boosters and militant secularists who swear they will neither work for, nor even vote for, him should he be the candidate in the general election.
The GOP should have just let Cain do the official response to Obama’s SOTU.
Herman Cain just did a joint appearance with Stephen Colbert in South Carolina. Gave him a shout out during the Q and A after this very speech.
I haven’t followed any of that Colbert stuff Cain’s doing bh, though heard something or other was going on. But what? Is it just a footnote? A joke, or lark?
I don’t know much more about the Colbert/Cain joint appearance than whatever it was that Matthews said last night, sdferr. I do know that Colbert is no friend of ours and is much more effective that Chris “Is anyone watching?” Matthews.
That would cost, what, twenty, thirty votes?
Limbaugh just doesn’t seem to know, Mitch Daniels solely writes his own stuff. Nobody else has any input. So from his ignorance, he spreads twaddle. But hey, 98.6%, right?
All I’ve heard from Limbaugh so far is that he hated Daniels’ open (which I think people are properly reacting to, btw) but the rest was really good.
Towards that open, I figure that’s why I just can’t get too worked up wishing Daniels had run. Daniels seems to be collegial by temperament. But, one shouldn’t always be collegial and if that’s your default setting, you have to be able to override it. This is what I mean when I say he doesn’t have a feel for the moment.
In a game theory sense, there is a reason to be friendly with some opponents (like when you’re in a negotiation, for instance) because it actually helps you get more of what you want. But, this isn’t always the case. If you can’t charm them or if you can’t induce reciprocation, then it’s more likely to hurt than help. I think we know which of these two sorts of opponents Obama and the progressives are.
If Daniels keeps signalling that categorization mistake with “loyal opposition” tropes and, paraphrasing, “good family man” fluff, he keeps signalling that he might just get rolled by those assholes.
Contrast that with Palin’s “pals around with terrorists” or “death panels”. I don’t think that’s just red meat for the base, I think it’s a recognition of the situation and the subsequent ineffectiveness of collegiality with these particular opponents.
“But hey, 98.6%, right?”
I didn’t hear what you’re referring to, but, even accepting your point, the man has been on the radio 3 hours a day for 24 years. What he says about Daniels today doesn’t move the pile much.
“But, one shouldn’t always be collegial and if that’s your default setting, you have to be able to override it. This is what I mean when I say he doesn’t have a feel for the moment.”
I utterly agree with this: one ought not offer respect to those who disrespect the underlying principles in the name of which one is offering that respect in the first place. Bad ju-ju. Bad strategy, bad tactics. It’s almost like an unthinking knee-jerk with Daniels.
Yes, well put.
It reminds me of those Republicans who wouldn’t wear the 1000 day pins using the excuse that it’s against the rules. Which is to say, we can’t signal our fidelity to a constitutional requirement because it might run afoul of a parliamentary rule.
That’s craven. And stupid. Staven. Crupid.
Rush’s theory seems to be that Daniels’s opening remarks follow the —don’t say anything negative about Barak Obama because that’s mean and the moderates/independents still like him and they won’t like us if we’re seen as being mean— professional campaign consultant preemptive defensiveness playbook, and if you can get past the opening remarks, the rest of the speech is pretty good.
The general problem of course is that that way of playing the game concedes to the but our intentions are good! Leftist apologia.
The specific problem is that it’s not clear to whom or what the Loyal Opposition is loyal to in Daniels’s formulation.
Or, “what bh said.”
Today there is this story line going around. Newt’s less conservative than Romney, he’s a flake who will sell his mother out for some time in the limelight, he can’t beat Obama, and the Tea Party people are stupid suckers if they vote for him.
I notice a couple of things. All of these never mention Santorum as an option for the Tea Party assuming him to be not a serious contender, which is precisely how they treated Newt before South Carolina and every conservative, or non-conservative, until the moment they threatened to depose Romney. Then the knives come out.
Now that their efforts have eliminated all except Newt and Santorum as the “not-Romney” choices they are determined to add another notch to their keyboards. There seems to be no recognition on their part that what the tea Party people want is to let this race go on so that the candidates will have to adopt the positions that the base wants rather than have it end with all the non-Romney’s dropping out and then the establishment can say to the Tea Party, ” You have to move to our position if you don’t want four more years of Obama.”
I still don’t know what to think about Daniels praise of Obamas good example with his family. I mean I agree, that is the one thing I can give Obama credit for, he has a beautiful family. But from Daniels? Isn’t he the one told his base to shut up about that social connie stuff?
By the way, I think Daniels may think (this is a conjecture, to be clear) that Obama is a temporary phenomenon in a sense in which all other former presidents were not, though they all come and go: that because Daniels believes the principles will endure far longer than Obama’s efforts to destroy them, that it’s appropriate to keep the long run in mind, and therefore to maintain the tradition of deferential respect to the office, apart from the man. Otherwise, I can’t see his stance making any sense.
there is this story line going around
Team Romney’s been blasting the fax machine again.
“Rush’s theory seems to be that Daniels’s opening remarks follow the —don’t say anything negative about Barak Obama because that’s mean and the moderates/independents still like him and they won’t like us if we’re seen as being mean— professional campaign consultant preemptive defensiveness playbook, and if you can get past the opening remarks, the rest of the speech is pretty good.”
Somewhere or other, (I think it may have been in an interview with Brian Lamb?) I’ve seen Daniels explain that he intentionally goes out of his way to find kind things to say about Obama on the theory that he can thereby capture the attention of Obama supporters, and maybe get them to listen further. And here, I think, he’s doing exactly that.
geoffb @19, that’s what I was getting at with this comment, only less gooder…
If only should could have said it in a Boston Braham accent. And with a dick.
The GOP might have loved her/him.
“Isn’t he the one told his base to shut up about that social connie stuff?”
One sentence in a longer speech is hardly concentrating his efforts in a contentious quarrel, is it?
“I’ve seen Daniels explain that he intentionally goes out of his way to find kind things to say about Obama on the theory that he can thereby capture the attention of Obama supporters, and maybe get them to listen further”
If that’s the case, the man is delusional.
sdferr, I think I have to go with “I’m not a crazy-mean sonofabitch like Newt Gingrich, or a recalcitrant rabble-rousing anti-government loon like those scary crazy tea-tards. I’m reasonable. I can be bargained with. And I want to make a deal with you!”
Or at least tone deaf.
A Good Man Obama isn’t, and obliquely scolding those who know so to show off your appeals to comity is insulting. Not to mention ostentatious.
I think I wrote a very controversial piece on that very thing some time back, in fact.
Maybe he’s a Christian?
You can think what you like about that Ernst, I’m just recounting what I heard him say.
When Obama referred to those that disagree with him as his enemies, he, at the same time, identified himself as our enemy.
That’s not math, that’s warfare. And what do you do to your enemies?
“Maybe he’s a Christian?”
Probably is. Still, a tone deaf politician at best.
What about that passage do you find relevant Lee?
The tone.
The biblical passage? The tone? That doesn’t tell me much, at least as regards what might be Daniels attitude towards a kind of charity in opening remarks about Obama in a speech that will in fact be predominantly critical.
Also, I like this line:
I think it’s pretty obvious that Mitch Daniels is the enemy. I mean, Barack Obama is too, but they’re like basically the same guy.
Any criticism of Mitch Daniels (or Mitt Romney, or Tim Pawlenty, or Chris Christie, etc.) means you must want Barack Obama re-elected. Whereas any criticism of Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum, well… that just marks you as sane. BIG TENT!
I said good day, sir!
Jeff doesn’t like Obama. Jeff isn’t crazy about asparagus, and thinks, given the choice, he’d rather have corn.
Therefore, to Jeff, Obama is basically the same as asparagus. Making it perfectly legal to cut the President off at the knees, brush him with olive oil, and put him on a grill.
Q.E.D!
Think of this in terms of some of Jeff’s overarching themes, John.
It’s possible to like Daniels and still dislike some of his rhetorical tendencies. In fact, you could go so far as to say that some of those rhetorical tendencies explain a bit towards why we keep drifting the wrong direction even though we have half the political power in this country.
I know it’s possible because I’m doing it right now.
Towards the sting of a disagreeing polemic? Yes, it does sting. But, at the same time, how can you not see the humor in referring to the antagonist Daniels as a dry technocrat without the awesome Romney hair in the same piece that also refers to the protagonist “uppity sex-crazed Pimp Hand charismat, Herman Cain”? Jeff’s a stylist. Sometimes your ox gets described in an unflattering but entertaining light and then gored.
Again, this also just happened to me. Right here. In this very post.
bh@41
I get all that, and that’s all fine. Daniels isn’t my ox insofar as very few in the current Republican party are. But I’m rational and I prioritize: going in the right direction > changing course > stopping > slowing down >>> going faster in the wrong direction. Daniels and damn near any other Republican is on the right side of that equation. Is Daniels perfect? Hardly. Is anyone? Not by a fucking long shot. I would love nothing more than to have the ideal, to be moving full speed in the right direction, and to have elites and a candidate who want the same thing, but if that can’t be achieved right now, I can handle simply moving leftward in that equation. Is that enough? No, but it is what can be achieved right now and it’s better than the reverse. And, if you’re really fighting the long battle to win, then you don’t treat your friends like your enemies and you don’t shrink the size of your force.
The timing is a bit rough because I have to get some sleep now, John. I’ll have a thought or two tomorrow on your latest, I’m guessing.
[I]f you’re really fighting the long battle to win, then you don’t treat your friends like your enemies and you don’t shrink the size of your force.
Yeah, it really isn’t a good idea to tell a third of your coalition to shut up because their issues don’t count.
(I’ll grant that there’s widespread disagreement around here that that’s what Daniels meant when he called for his truce.)
Let me try turning my sarcasm in a different direction:
Harry Reid has already indicated he has no intention of working with a Republican administration should that come to pass next January. Now, maybe he’ll still be the majority leader, or maybe his minority will be large enough to keep the Senate mired in endless debate, but there’s no reason to make his job, whatever it’s going to be, any easier by pretending that, if we’re nice to them they’ll be nice to us. Harry Reid doesn’t see himself as the head of the loyal opposition; he doesn’t think of his job that way.
What if your “friends” always treat your enemies as their friends?
A slightly rewritten part of a pub piece I did back in the summer of 2008 and took down after the election, below.
What I’m leading to is the situation that develops if Democrats see Republicans as their enemy and Republicans see Democrats as, at most, friendly competitors and sometimes even a friends or loved ones and Republicans persist in this view despite evidence to the contrary. In this case Democrats can do many things easily to hurt and disrupt Republicans. Infiltrate Democrat’s agents into Republican’s organizations, turn Republican supporters into double agents by blackmail or even by entreaties to help poor the Democrats out of a bad situation. Outside of abusive spouses this kind of relationship is not the usual.
I propose that the relationship between the leftist leadership of the Democrats and the Republicans is just this kind. The Left treats the Republicans as enemies and the Republicans treat the Democrat’s leadership as friendly competitors, friends and sometimes as loved ones. This gives the Left many advantages in the political arena and some disadvantages. Some of the advantages are as noted above. The disadvantage is, if they seem to be losing, they and their base can become very agitated and extreme. This only hurts them if it is seen by the general public, thus their efforts to shut up all who might report the craziness that pours from the left.
This difference in perception is puzzling because it persists and worrying because it puts the Republicans at such a disadvantage.
How long have we been doing just that and why are we losing so badly?
This is usually followed by a “now, get your asses in line” and a John McCain or Bob Dole candidacy.
Funny how that works.
Want to hear the actual — though inconvenient — truth? If you are really fighting the long battle to win, you have to first defeat the status quo that is preventing any real victories. And if that requires some tough love to wake your friends the fuck up to just what is happening, then that’s what I’m prepared to do.
Ceding rhetorical ground to the left’s assertions and assumptions is surrendering the game before it’s even begun. The history of this site is a detailing of just how that is so, how it works, and how we’re made to aid in its perpetuation.
Wake up.
Would John McCain have been at all better than Barack Obama? Because even if he would’ve only been marginally better, I’ll take that margin. That margin gives us space to fight the battle you’re discussing. Otherwise, it’s just masturbation.
Don’t get me wrong: I desperately want to fight that battle. But fighting the idealistic battle before the realistic one isn’t a recipe for success.
We’re four years downstream from that particular bridge.
If you keep telling people you’ll ultimately accept the lesser of two evils, that’s exactly what you’ll continue to get.
If you want to keep patting yourself on the bat for taking one for the team, good on you. I’m teamless. My vote needs to be courted, not won over based on trying to shame me.
Whether or not McCain would have been better as president is a moot point, because even with Palin as his running mate to fire up the disaffected base — I voted to elect her as VP, not him as president — he still couldn’t manage to win the election.
Which, winning the election is a nominee’s most important job, and McCain sucked at it.
Just like Romney would.