Politics : The Atlantic

Sarah Palin Brings Out the Barbs at CPAC

2012-02-11T19:11:55-05:00

The former Alaska governor gives a rousing speech to conservatives in Washington, but most were glad she's not running for president.

Sarah Palin closed out the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday with a speech full of sarcastic barbs for the Washington establishment, crony capitalism, and President Obama.

"Hope and change?" she said, a hard edge in her sharp voice. "Yeah, you gotta hope things change!"

Palin reiterated the populist line that has become her trademark, accusing the Beltway elites of profiting from the growth of government while the rest of the country suffers.

"While America suffers, Washington prospers. While our real-estate markets crash, Washington's is strong," she said.

"Washington is hiring, but the question is, hiring for what? They don't manufacture. They don't mine. They don't drill. They don't harvest," added Palin, who makes a living as a cable-television commentator. "They produce nothing, and the services they provide create dependency, not freedom. They don't create wealth, they take it."

When Palin unveiled this attack on "crony capitalism," in a speech in Iowa in September, it was accompanied by a detailed five-point policy plan to restore the American economy to strength. In Saturday's 35-minute address, the positive agenda was gone -- only the attacks remained.

When Republicans win the presidency, she said, "We will have a president who defends our American way of life instead of apologizing for it. We will have a commander-in-chief worthy of our troops."

Palin's place in the conservative movement these days is difficult to define. It seems to consist mainly of doing what she did Saturday: giving speeches that get people riled up. "She's an exciting speaker," Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, answered when I asked him what her role was. "She fires up the base, and I hope she'll be very active through November."

Though Palin was expected to fade to insignificance after she decided against running for president in October, she has remained a surprisingly influential presence. Her "crony capitalism" formulation -- the idea that powerful interests and their corrupt lobbyists have perverted the free market of conservative ideals -- has become widespread.

Candidates from Michele Bachmann to Newt Gingrich have wielded the phrase. In a debate in South Carolina last month, even Mitt Romney picked it up, accusing the president of "practicing crony capitalism." And though Palin rebuked Occupy Wall Street protesters who tried to interrupt her speech Saturday -- shaking her fist and leading the crowd in a chant of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" as the protesters were ushered out of the room -- her people-power pitch can be heard in that movement's critique of certain kinds of capitalism as well.

Palin's speech was received ecstatically by the capacity crowd in the CPAC ballroom. But in interviews, many audience members said they were glad she wasn't a candidate for president, and some said she'd lost her hold on their attention.

"I was very pro-Sarah when she ran, but I'm not sure about her anymore," said Lisa Everington, a defense employee from Richmond, Va. "She had a focus before. Now, I don't have a clue what she's supposed to be about."

Everington said she voted for Rick Santorum in the conference's straw poll to send an anti-Mitt Romney message to the party establishment. Romney, however, won the straw poll, despite a speech in which he labored, not always believably, to emphasize his conservative sympathies.

Palin didn't mention any presidential candidate by name in her speech. She has previously said she would vote for Newt Gingrich if she were a voter in the South Carolina primary, but said she wasn't endorsing Gingrich, just encouraging a longer vetting process instead of the anointment of any single candidate.

She did, however, call for the nominee to be a "passionate" conservative, in what sounded, to those accustomed to reading between Palin lines, like a jab at Romney.

"Our candidate should be someone who can instinctively turn right to constitutional conservative principles," she said. "It's too late in the game to teach it at this point. It's either there or it isn't."

She also reiterated her call for the primary to continue.

"We've all heard the pundits say we've got to name our nominee right now. We've got to wrap it up! No debate for you! We'll cut it off, we're through!" she said. "As if competition weakens our nominee. Here in America, we believe competition strengthens us. Competition will lead us to victory in 2012. I believe the competition has got to keep going."

It was a call that Republican voters seemed to be heeding when they handed Romney unexpected losses in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado on Tuesday. But with Romney bouncing back to win the straw poll and Maine caucuses on Saturday, maybe Republican voters aren't listening to Sarah Palin after all.

Image credit: Getty Images/Mark Wilson

Mitt Romney Wins CPAC Straw Poll

2012-02-11T17:20:20-05:00

In a reassuring result for the reeling front-runner, conservatives meeting in Washington -- and across the country -- pick Romney as their standard-bearer.

Despite a surge of enthusiasm for Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney won a big victory in the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll Saturday, a surprising affirmation for the front-runner who has faced a backlash from the Republican Party base in recent days.

Romney took 38 percent of the vote to Santorum's 31 percent. Newt Gingrich came in third with 15 percent, and Ron Paul, the only candidate not to speak at the Washington conference, was last with 12 percent.

Though the straw poll is an unscientific survey of conference attendees who cast ballots, the conference also commissioned a scientific poll of self-identified conservatives nationwide. Conducted by GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, that survey also had Romney on top but by a slimmer margin: Romney had 27 percent to Santorum's 25 percent; Gingrich had 20 percent, Paul 8.

Taken together, the two polls will be a reassuring sign for the Romney campaign, which had been reeling in the face of Santorum's surprise sweep of three GOP contests Tuesday. Romney's vote share in the straw poll was the highest of any candidate since 2000, when George W. Bush took 42 percent. The idea of a conservative base rising up in last-minute revolt against the idea of a Romney nomination may have been overstated.

For the last two years, Paul has been the winner of the poll thanks to aggressive organizing efforts, but this year his campaign decided it wasn't worth the effort and focused instead on the Maine caucuses that were set to conclude Saturday evening.

The straw poll doesn't necessarily represent the wishes of Republican voters -- four years ago, John McCain was booed at CPAC and Romney, who then represented the conservative alternative to McCain, won the poll even as he was dropping out of the race. But it represents the segment of the GOP electorate that Romney has, this time around, struggled most to capture.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio ran away with the vice presidential slot in the straw poll, taking 34 percent. His speech on the first day of the conference Thursday was rapturously received, and his status as odds-on running mate remains secure.

Image credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Super-Cool Obama, Super-Hot Christie, and a Book by Harper Lee

2012-02-11T15:19:24-05:00

Following my cover story in the current issue, and this message from an African-American professional woman, Nancy Wallace, about the Jackie Robinson-like pressure on Obama not to "let down his race," a few more. One reader writes:

Obama is also demeanor-constrained in the opposite direction from showing hot anger: he can't even be seen wearing sunglasses in public, since that would be seen as looking "too cool" - in the Malcolm X sense.

As it happens, Obama has actually been criticized on this score!

Reader Michael Harrington writes:

I am glad you ran that supplemental post that mentions how the president's demeanor may be sort of a construct due to the possible unfortunate implications of him getting too angry or emotional and fulfilling some awful stereotype. I am assuming that he is walking quite the tightrope a lot of the time, lest he scares America with his fury and we as a country decide he might not be able to "deal with the pressures of the job".

This is something I have been thinking about lately, partly because I am a Black man that works mostly with non-Black people in a leadership capacity and have to walk that tightrope, partly due to discussions I have been having with white associates outside of those professional settings, and partially due to reading Toure's latest book (Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?) and thinking about what he said about some of the most recent Black politicians, including President Obama.

I do not know if you read that book (I think everyone should, regardless of ethnic origin) [JF: I have not yet], but he makes the salient point that to be successful in politics or business as a black person (I feel this applies to Latinos as well), you have to be as inoffensive as possible, lest you make people feel uncomfortable or guilty. I am not surprised that the woman who emailed you the other day had a nervous breakdown, since this puts a lot of strain on Black people that I assume (I don't know if it is true) most white people don't have to deal with. I also found that talking about this with non-white people, even in a casual setting upsets them a lot. I brought up this point in regards to the president, and I was either scoffed at, talked over, or was ignored. I cannot imagine what the president and his family are going through, but I assure you that he knows very well that it is in his best interest to seem as rational and objective in public as possible, since it is apparent that many people in this country still have deep issues with race and the perception of how certain groups play out their "racial roles"...

Even though I am Black, I don't blindly support the president because of his race; I support the president because I am an American citizen and I am glad that the representative of the country is a rational, brilliant person who seems to want to learn more. I suppose most people that become the POTUS are exceptional by definition, but it is interesting that Barack Obama has to be both exceptional and for all intents and purposes, as flawless as possible. It almost seems like he has to stifle his humanity due to the color of his skin.

After the jump, one more, on the Chris Christie/Harper Lee angle.

A reader writes:

[Reader Nancy Wallace] said this about Jan Brewer: "Jan Brewer claimed that the president was being "threatening" toward her, and I believe she probably did feel threatened because there was a tall black guy in front of her who didn't look all that pleased."

Actually, Jan Brewer initially claimed the president was whiny and sensitive. She didn't introduce fear until later, and after pundits tried to assert that the finger-wagging Brewer was somehow being threatened by the President of the United States. "Bin Laden's gone; who's next?"

When I've wanted to illustrate the President's weakness around issues related to race, I think back to the Henry Gates-induced Beer Summit. I simply cannot imagine another president being forced to have a beer with someone they've insulted (justly or unjustly). Christ Christie is a great comparison point here. Think of his outbursts to questioners, most of them questioners. The response among the cable television was far from condemnation and closer to praise.

What's interesting to me is who the enforcers were for the Beer Summit. Sure, Republicans were giving Obama the whatfor, but if it was absurd most media types would have taken a pass. Instead, they took and they ran with it. My guess is because they felt Obama had overstepped. That was the angle of the story and he had overstepped racially. Something he knew instinctively, that Gates shouldn't have been arrested outside his own home and that race probably had something to do with it, was not something known instinctively by the people who cover him. Thus days of pressure until the Beer Summit. Obama had to make it right with the officer and with the press.

The same press threw the race flag on Obama when he referenced his grandmother as a typical white person.

Reminded me of Tom Robinson's misstep in his testimony in To Kill a Mockingbird. "I felt right sorry for her."

Yes, the leader of the free world - in black skin - must still know his place.

And he does. So does his wife.

12 Hours at CPAC, the 'Mardi Gras of the Right'

2012-02-11T14:52:11-05:00

Santorum was the star attraction at the confab, but he had a lot of competition from the sideshow at the annual festival of conservative thinking.

Just when things were beginning to drag a bit at yesterday's Conservative Political Action Conference -- dubbed "the Mardi Gras of the Right" by the American Spectator -- Occupy D.C. showed up, and the future of American conservatism, several thousand strong, wandered out onto the front lawn of the Marriott Wardman Park to sneak a cigarette and catch a bit of the action. Protesters pounded the pavement in front of a jumbo inflatable "fat cat," complete with fangs and three-piece suit, which had its paws around the neck of an inflatable Joe American. Teamsters, U.A.W. members, and Occupiers surged up the driveway. The police closed in. Taunts sailed back and forth over their heads.

Rebecca DiFede, a CPAC participant with a silver business card case and pink tongue stud, watched from the sidelines. "I just saw Ann Coulter speak," she said. "She opened with, 'Hello one-percenters. Welcome to Occupy the Marriott.'"

As we strolled back inside, DiFede said that she understood the economic frustrations at the heart of Occupy. She graduated from American University this spring: "It's astonishing to see how many of my classmates are out of jobs. Unemployment for our age demographic is something in the upper forty percent." (In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among 20-24 year olds is 14.2 percent, and 59.9 percent are employed.)

I asked DiFede whether she sees any shared blood between Occupiers and Tea Partiers. "The Tea Party movement is usually made up of well-educated, regular people who take time from their jobs or families to go and try to make something better," she said. "These people -- not to put people down, but -- when I went there, they were vagrants and drug addicts. People without jobs who said they'd been out of work for months. They'd just been sitting in McPherson Square. How is that helping you get a job? No one's going to come down and interview you in your tent."

* * *

CPAC, like most political conventions, has the feel of an indoor state fair, with fewer fried cheese curds, more speechifying, and plenty of chances to score free knickknacks: beer koozies (courtesy of the American Conservative Union), tiny rubber fetuses (Human Life International), and sunglasses (Google). There are more than 5,000 attendees at the confab, which wraps up Saturday evening, along with hundreds of reporters from the "lamestream" media. When the crowd gets on it feet in the main ballroom -- which it does, often -- the place just howls.

When I arrived at 8:15 a.m. Friday to grab my credentials, many CPACers were still sleeping off the previous night's festivities. The hotel's exhibition hall was deserted, save for Edward Newland, who was dutifully manning the Newt 2012 booth. He'd been on his feet most of the last 24 hours, but he cheerfully walked me through a chart comparing Gingrich to the competition. Result: Newt wins.

Newland is a political science grad student and campaign volunteer in northern Virginia -- a state where Gingrich isn't even on the primary ballot, owing to his failure to collect enough signatures. This is a sore point. "I don't want to have to vote for Mitt Romney or Ron Paul," he said, referring to the two candidates who are on the ballot. "That's no choice at all. That's like, which one of my legs do I want to chop off?"

Paul won't be appearing at this year's CPAC, to the surprise (and dismay) of many. He typically makes a strong showing here, and for two years running, he's won the convention's straw poll. Word is, Newland confided, that Paul's campaign usually scores cheap tickets, stacks the crowd with young boots, and runs away with the vote. This year, no dice.

Instead, Rick Santorum seems to have the largest army of dewy-eyed ephebes. A few hours after he appeared onstage with his beaming wife and kids, Santorum held a meet-and-greet in the Wilson Room. The line to get in the door made a complete loop around the mezzanine balcony, and then wrapped in on itself. If he had stayed for the whole thing, it would have taken Santorum until Saturday morning to shake all these folks' hands. Even so, they waited. One volunteer said she took a red-eye from L.A. just to be here and pitch in.

In line, Loren Spivack, free market warrior, sold copies of his "Cat in the Hat" parody, The New Democrat, which features Obama as the sly, toothy cat, wearing a Soviet-style cap emblazoned with hammer and sickle. (Glenn Beck plays the anxious fish.) The rhymes are pretty catchy, actually. The book ends with America racing full speed ahead toward government rationing, death panels, &c.

Half an hour later, the line to see Santorum had barely budged.

* * *

At lunch, I plopped down in the hotel lobby next to the Shadrix family, up from Raleigh, N.C., as they tucked into Chipotle burritos. They capture the CPAC demographic pretty well -- white, well-educated, strong Christian values, happy to chat with a perfect stranger. Tom wore a red sweater vest, Wendy a red argyle cardigan, and their eldest, Shawn, a red paisley button-down. Shawn and his father are CPAC veterans, and none too broken up about Ron Paul's no-show. "They're pretty disruptive," said Tom of Paul's supporters. "I don't know how he's doing that as an older gentleman, how he's mesmerizing this group." He also wasn't too keen on Romney breaking "Ronald Reagan's eleventh commandment: 'Don't blast your fellow Republicans.'" Santorum speaks to their traditional values, added Wendy.

Like nearly everyone I chatted with at CPAC, the Shadrixes wanted to know which way The Atlantic leans: left or right? Oddly, this question always cropped up at the end of the interview, as if those I'd spoken with were simply curious how their quotes would be spun in print. Was I an ally -- or a snarky hack from New York? The Atlantic, going back to 1857, to Emerson and Longfellow, has been "the organ of no party or clique," I told them. Inevitably, the conversation would turn to how polarized the media has become, and how democracy suffers as a result, the consensus being: Everyone knows it. No one knows how to fix it. It's getting worse.

Wendy Shadrix stopped me as I stood up to leave. She and Tom chose to home-school Shawn and his sister, Mikayla, and she knew how home-schooling evangelical Christians are depicted in the "liberal" media. She hoped I won't caricature her, she said. So here are the facts: Shawn and Mikayla have read Shakespeare and The Voyage of the Beagle under their mom's tutelage. They have not read Ayn Rand. They are bright, charming, look-you-in-the-eye-when-making-conversation kind of kids. They have good teeth. If I'd stuck around another five minutes, Shawn probably would have offered me the rest of his burrito. As it was, I was late to see Newt.

* * *

Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney were all on the stump Friday, and their remarks were fairly boilerplate. Santorum jabbed at the frontrunners, saying the GOP needed a candidate it could get fired-up about. Romney declared himself a "severely conservative Republican governor" who "fought hard to prevent Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage." Gingrich punted, with a lackluster oration. "Newt is an enthusiastic and committed golfer," his wife, Callista, said by way of introduction. "He gets in and out of more sand traps than anyone I've ever seen." The audience in the cavernous hotel ballroom greeted this with...crickets. The press pen above the ballroom stifled a giggle. Even the stony-faced Times reporter cracked a smile.

The most inflammatory one-liners -- evoking the biggest roars of approval -- came from speakers on the B-list panels. There was plenty of talk of "left-wing social engineering" and "government poverty plantations." Pundit Jonah Goldberg compared Romney on the stump to "Spock reading a love letter." Cal Thomas said of left-leaning news anchor Rachel Maddow: "I think that she is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception. I would be all for that. And all the rest of the crowd at MSNBC, for that matter." At this, Twitter went bonkers.

In truth, though, the second day of CPAC didn't feel much like a Tea Party rally. The CPAC hoi polloi milled about in sober suits and tippy heels. The only truly surreal moment of the afternoon came when William Temple, dressed as a British redcoat (rum flask, Union Jack) stopped to pose with Mr. Crony Capitalism (cane, top hat) and Big Government Gary (fat suit, fake bills). Temple is a first-generation Tea Partier who supported Michele Bachmann, and later, Herman Cain; he can't stomach any alternatives. "The Tea Party is fractured beyond belief," he said. "They're at the whims of the GOP." In protest, he's advocating for the return of King George III. Better than either Mitt or Newt, he said.

Meanwhile, Big Government Gary invited me to happy hour at a bar in Adams Morgan.

* * *

As the day wound down, I paid a visit to the NRA's virtual shooting gallery, where Janis Chester, armed with a plastic pump-action shotgun, was absolutely mopping up the competition. When she stepped away from the firing line, Chester, a psychiatrist from Delaware, disclosed that she recently got her conceal-and-carry permit. She has strikingly clear eyes and wears a diamond-studded Star of David around her neck. Like me, she was a CPAC virgin. "It's like the most inspiring pep rally," she said.

Her boyfriend, Robert Pyles, avuncular with his snowy hair and soft laugh, joined the conversation, and they began to chat about being "born again" Republicans. "We were both pretty hardcore Democrats up until Obama ran," said Pyles. "That was a wake up call," added Chester. "My gut, when I saw him, I knew he was evil."

Pyles served in the Navy, but, until 2008, hadn't voted Republican in three decades. He supported Clinton and detested Bush. In fact, the couple met at Al Gore's nominating convention in 2000. Then came Obama. "I found him empty, vapid," said Pyles. "'Hope and change,' what's that? I thought he had no substance."

Slowly, Chester, who grew up "a middle class, New York Jew," found that she couldn't tolerate NPR on the drive home anymore. "I started zooming around the dial. I discovered talk radio." Glenn Beck unearthed some latent libertarianism in her blood. "Obama made me feel so..." She paused, searching for the right word. "I instantly knew that he hated America. Repulsive."

In the Tea Party, the couple found a new -- if underground -- home. "The circles we move in, you don't dare say anything far right," Chester said. "I didn't realize it was verboten to say I was for McCain. It was like I'd said that I was for killing puppies." Not long ago, they attended Glen Beck's Restoring Courage rally in Jerusalem. Seeing the Holy Land, she said, was nothing less than profound.

Like many Tea Partiers, Chester and Pyles were sad to see Bachmann and Cain drop out of the race. Would they tolerate Romney? "I'd support a ketchup bottle before I support Obama," said Pyles.

* * *

Hours later, I passed "Thomas Paine" and "Thomas Jefferson," both in tri-corner hats, doublets, and breeches, as they strolled toward the Ronald Reagan VIP reception, looking to wet their beaks. Fittingly, the bar was serving Sam Adams.

"There's only one guy in America who has run on the Constitution," said Paine. "Ron Paul." But, added Jefferson, in true colonial fighting spirit, "Once the primary's over and we have a nominee, we have a responsibility to come out and work for that nominee and beat the other guy. To stay home and not do it is a kick in the teeth."

As they headed toward the libations, Paine leaned in close. "Watch those neo-cons over there at The Atlantic. I get nervous at that one -- what's his name? Goldberg."

Me, I headed over to Adams Morgan, where Big Government Gary -- now sans fat suit -- was hosting Politics on the Rocks, a monthly meeting of D.C.'s young conservatives. Suffice it to say that the bar in question, Madam's Organ, had rarely seen so many clean-shaven young men in suits in one night. They were chummy and sharp. An ex-infantryman talked about about life after Baghdad. Someone bought me a Bud, and I got to try out my new CPAC beer koozie. With my credentials tucked in my back pocket, I was just one of the gang, whether I liked it or not.

Image credit: Reuters

Romney Edges Paul to Win Maine's Caucuses

2012-02-11T10:40:31-05:00

The Republican wins the contest near his home state of Massachusetts, although it's unclear how many delegates he'll get.

UPDATED 6:54p.m.: It's Mitt Romney's lucky day.

Although he suffered a rough string of caucus and primary defeats and one poll now shows Rick Santorum leading him nationally, the former Massachusetts governor pulled off a win in Maine, garnering 39 percent of the vote to Ron Paul's 36. The announcement of the results from the state's two-and-a-half month caucuses come on the same day that he surged to an upset victory in the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. The bad news for Romney is that the Maine result is no more binding than the CPAC one -- rather than awarding delegates, the caucuses in the Pine Tree State selected delegates to a convention to select delegates for the national convention. (For more about the mechanics of the poll, read on below.)

It's disappointing news for Ron Paul, who was the only other candidate to campaign in the state. His supporters had hoped that Maine, which has an independent and libertarian streak to its politics, might be his best shot at a primary or caucus victory for some time, and Paul visited the state to stump. Santorum received 18 percent of the Maine vote, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich took six.

***

10: 40 a.m.: It doesn't get much attention, but Maine has one of the most unusual political cultures in the nation. It has two of the most liberal Republican senators, in Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. For eight years, from 1995 to 2003, it had a governor who was from neither major party (independent Angus King, for those of you keeping score at home). In 2010, it nearly elected another when independent Eliot Cutler fell just 9,000 votes short of Paul LePage (LePage won the governorship with just 38 percent of the vote). And on Saturday, the state wraps up its two-and-a-half-month Republican presidential caucus.

Yes, you read that right: state law in Maine mandates an election season longer than a D.C. winter. Parties can try to push local authorities to hold their caucuses at certain times, but they can't require it. The Maine Democratic Party arranged to have all of its caucuses on a single day, February 26 (it helps that their pick was a foregone conclusion), but the Republicans couldn't pull that off. They tried to wrangle everyone into having their caucuses between February 4 and 11, but even that was too much authority for many of the state's GOP voters: a quarter of municipalities scheduled their caucuses outside that week-long window.

But that's not the end of the weirdness. The Maine caucuses, like the Minnesota caucuses earlier this week, are nonbinding. Attendees won't actually select delegates until the state nominating convention; those delegates will in turn choose the state's 24 delegates to the Republican National Convention in August, who will give their votes to one candidate or another. So when the Maine GOP hosts an event Saturday evening to announce caucus results, what will be revealed is the results of a straw poll of attendees. That's generally considered a good rough estimate of how the delegates will be apportioned, since the same folks who choose the delegates vote in the straw poll. But since they aren't bound to support anyone, it's impossible to know for sure.

Although Maine has more delegates than its neighbor New Hampshire, the number of caucusgoers is typically minuscule -- in 2008, fewer than 6,000 Republicans turned out. Still, the contest could be consequential for Mitt Romney and Ron Paul (Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum haven't even bothered to campaign there). Romney made a quick jaunt to the state Friday evening after his appearance at CPAC. Despite the small number of delegates and scant attention given to Maine, a loss there would be his fourth straight stumble, and further emphasize doubts about his presumed front-runner status. In 2008, the former Massachusetts governor won 52 percent of the vote in the caucus.

Paul, meanwhile, is in the hunt for his first win of the primary campaign. He insists that his strategy is to slowly and steadily accrue delegates, but his supporters -- including his son Rand -- have said that he needs a victory somewhere, and have pegged their hopes on Maine. The Texan is the only candidate to have spent significant time there, and the conventional wisdom is that the state's independent bent gives him an opening.

Image: Brian Snyder / Reuters

CPAC Discovers Hip-Hop

2012-02-10T20:51:37-05:00

Submitted without comment.

A 'Severely Conservative' Romney Tries to Woo CPAC

2012-02-10T18:41:02-05:00

Santorum and Gingrich also spoke on the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, trying to show solidarity with the GOP base crowd.

Mitt Romney's much-hyped task at the Conservative Political Action Conference: convince this exotic tribe that he was one of them. And so, in his 26-minute speech Friday, the word "conservative" appeared 24 times.

But when Romney went off script, with a single adverb, he described conservatism as if it were a disease.

"I was a severely conservative governor," he said of his time as chief executive of Massachusetts.

That one sour note did much to undermine the goal of the speech, which was -- aside from repetitive subliminal word-association with "conservative" -- to paint Romney as no arriviste to the conservative cause.

Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich all spoke on Day 2 of CPAC, each hoping to win the affections of the party base that has behaved in such a fickle manner this campaign season.

Santorum, for his part, made the most of his status as the man of the moment, seeming comfortable and at ease in his speech earlier in the day. Gingrich, speaking last of the three, gave an unremarkable, overlong recitation of his stump speech.

Santorum was introduced, jarringly, by the man bankrolling his supposedly uncoordinated "super PAC," billionaire Foster Friess, who, unlike the candidate, wore a sweater vest. "A conservative, a moderate and a liberal walk into a bar," Friess joked. "And the bartender says, 'Hi, Mitt!'"

Santorum said conservatives had "learned our lesson" and knew better than to "abandon and apologize for the principles that made this country great" to achieve "a hollow victory in November."

The election, he said, would be about "really big things, more than just the economy -- foundational principles." He pitched an economic policy that would, he said, help even those who don't vote for conservatives, such as the "very poor" -- a cutting jab that implied that Romney's profession of non-concern for the very poor was based on pandering rather than merely class blindness.

Santorum argued that a less-than-enthusiastic GOP base would never win, and that Romney's supposed organizational advantage was no message to take to a general election.

"We're not going to win this election because the Republican candidate has the most money to beat up on their opponent," he said, adding, "Why would an undecided voter vote for a candidate of a party who the party's not excited about?"

Much of the appeal of Romney's candidacy is predicated on the idea that beating Obama will be difficult, and compromises required to achieve it. But Romney, perhaps recognizing that voters have grown weary and suspicious of that message, tried to convince the crowd that it's governing he's interested in, not power.

"Of course we can defeat Barack Obama! That's the easy part!" Romney said. The hard part, the important part, he said, would come later -- changing the country.

Romney distinguished himself from the college kids in attendance who, he speculated, were learning conservatism by reading Burke and Hayek; when he was their age, he said, he would have thought those were infielders for the Tigers.

Rather, he said, "I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism" -- growing up in a rags-to-riches family, being married to the same woman for 42 years and making lots of money in business.

Romney also got in a shot at Santorum and Gingrich, saying he was "the only candidate in this race, Republican or Democrat, who has never worked a day in Washington. I don't have old scores to settle or decades of cloakroom deals to defend."

Voters, Romney said, should be "skeptical" of "any politician who tries to convince you that they hated Washington so much that they just couldn't leave."

The ballroom was packed for all three candidates, but there was clearly less energy in the room for Gingrich, whose candidacy has swooned in recent weeks. He was introduced by his wife, Callista, who told some awkward, overprogrammed jokes about her beloved husband. Newt, she said, "golfs the way he does everything" -- "he's willing to learn and he never gives up."

Taking the stage, Gingrich clarified that he was "a very bad golfer."

Image credit: Reuters/Jim Bourg

Video of the Day: Showdown at CPAC

2012-02-10T16:59:41-05:00

Occupiers meet attendees at the conservative gathering, and chaos ensues.

Behold: the day's dumbest political confrontation. (If you're listening in an office, it's probably mildly NSFW without headphones due to an F-bomb.)

The Daily Caller's Matt Lewis uploaded this video. After dire warnings for days that members of the Occupy movement would try to disrupt the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington -- conservative activists reportedly infiltrated Occupy meetings to learn what was planned -- the showdown finally arrived today. Let's just say that as far as memorable and worthy battles in history go, it's not exactly the Shootout at the OK Corral. The form of the protest: Occupiers entered the overflow room for attendees watching Mitt Romney's address, then stood silently in front of the screen relaying the speech. Those who actually wanted to see Romney's speech were understandably annoyed, and a bit of a donnybrook broke out.

It's tough to make out exactly what's going on, but choice quotes include the nonsensical "You're not the 99 percent, I'm the 99 percent;" the straightforward "you're a left-wing bastard" (UPDATED: he might be saying fascist); and the playground-quality insult, "why don't you go hang out with Mussolini?" It's not really a good look for anyone involved, although the young woman concerned her father will come to blows with a protester is somewhat endearing.

Obama and Purple America

2012-02-10T16:48:57-05:00

I think it's worth checking out Noam Scheiber's piece on Obama and end of his "grand compromise" trip. I don't know about other supporters, but I generally thought that when he claimed that there was no "red America" or "blue America" he was engaging in campaign rhetoric. When he claimed, as Ryan Lizza notes, that politics was mostly played between the "40 yard lines" I thought it was more packaging than principal.

When Hillary Clinton would criticize his post-partisan fantasies, I remember smugly thinking "That is exactly why I can't support you." I didn't think Obama was more "liberal" than Clinton. I thought he was less polarizing, and more likely to open up the playing field. But I also thought that, in the era of Terri Schiavo, he could really believe in post-partisanship, or a purple America.

In hindsight, I should have been less cynical and seen that Obama's 40-yard line politics were deeply tied to his ability to expand the map. Politics and policy were wedded. And so we find that it wasn't until the debt ceiling fight, that Obama truly began to comprehend his opposition:

After the midterm elections, Geithner's chief of staff, Mark Patterson, thought the administration should try to defuse the debt-limit issue once and for all before the incoming Republicans arrived. He drafted a law giving the president the authority to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally and sent it to the White House. To sell it politically, the president could explain that renewing the upper-income Bush tax cuts, as Republicans were then demanding, would cost the government $700 billion over ten years, forcing it to hit the debt ceiling sooner.

The White House was initially interested, but dropped the idea once Republicans made clear they would oppose it. But, of course, the way to win concessions from obstructionist opponents isn't to sound them out quietly. It's to cause them public discomfort. As one former Treasury aide who was involved explains: "Imagine the alternative reality where the president comes out in December and says, 'I understand you want to increase the high-end tax cuts. But that will make the deficit go up. ... I am willing to do some of what you want to do, but you have to pay for it by raising the debt ceiling.'" At the very least, it would have put the GOP on the defensive.

But the White House didn't have an appetite for going to war so soon after the midterms. Instead, it chose to bargain behind the scenes, renewing the Bush tax cuts in order to win more tax benefits for workers. "The feeling [at the White House] was, 'Let's go home, lick our wounds, sort it out.' There wasn't a lot of fight in folks," says the former Treasury aide. "We [at Treasury] were a little bit obsessed. They were, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll deal with it later...' "

Lew, Sperling, and Reed had served as top Clinton aides when the president had struck a budget deal with Republicans in 1997. The effort had led them to believe another deal was possible now. "The experience we had with the Republican Congress in the mid-nineties was that they came in and didn't want to reach agreement," says one Clinton veteran who returned under Obama. "

But, by mid-'96, they were pleading with us to agree with them on something." Unfortunately, this analogy ignored some fundamental differences between the mid-'90s and 2011. Republicans were less extreme during the Clinton years--and as of 1995, the unemployment rate was under 6 percent. In 2011, on the other hand, the Republicans were in the grips of true fiscal fanaticism while the economy was distressingly fragile. Even if it were possible to eventually strike a deal, the country couldn't afford a prolonged debate over how to apportion the pain.

I don't really fall into the category of "disappointed" when it comes to Obama's presidency. I do wish he would grant the same good will to his critics on the left that he grants to those on the right. But whatever.

If there's one thing I'm disappointed in it's that he really did think that by shrinking the stimulus, by proclaiming faith in Chuck Grassley, by proclaiming faith in John Boehner, he would actually get somewhere. And in that sense I could come in for the most common rebuttal of Obama criticism--failing to understand that he really meant what he said.

As an aside, this piece is incomplete. I'm going to dig into Fallows' cover this weekend. I'm sure I'll have more to say after that.

Super-Cool Obama and the Spectre of the Angry Black Man

2012-02-10T16:19:35-05:00

I'll start posting some of the reactions I've gotten to my current cover story that tries to make sense of President Obama's successes and failures in his first three years in office.

Not many people who have written in about the piece have said, "But gee, it was so short!" It's all of 12,000 words long -- but even at that scale, we left lots of stuff out. Among the cutting-room floor material was an attempt to address the issue this reader's message raises: how much of Obama's super-cool demeanor, which can seem so icily effective when it works and so ineffectively passive when it doesn't, is due to the pressures on him as America's first non-white president. If I, as a middle-aged white guy, am aware of the perils awaiting him at the slightest flash of being an Angry Black Man, I can barely imagine how much more profoundly he must have wrestled with this question.

I am therefore glad that Nancy Wallace, whose name I'm using with her permission, has written in about the issue:

I wanted to write to you because I think there's an important element of Obama's emotional responses and the perception of those responses that you didn't mention: race. I grew up in a family that was black middle-class; we actually were kind of the Cosbys. From the time I was in elementary school, I was aware, even though no one ever said it out loud, that was supposed to be "a credit to the race". I had a responsibility to be a role model which meant studying hard and going to church and getting into a good college and going on to professional school and marrying someone of the opposite gender. I was taught to deal with emotions by hiding them, because tears or anger would immediately slot me into a stereotype of Mammy or Jezebel.

In 1995, I had a nervous breakdown in the office where I worked at Harvard. I was on medical leave for two months. When I came back, I couldn't shake the sense that as the only black woman in my office, my failure to handle an unreasonable and excessive workload would reflect poorly on all black women, everywhere. It took a long time and a lot of therapy to realize that I was carrying a burden that wasn't mine, and that by repressing my emotions to avoid being seen as "too angry" or "hysterical," I'd just made everything worse.

Unlike me, Barack Obama IS a role model. Everything he does and says is, on some level, viewed through the prism of "First Black President". Knowing that has to constrain his public emotional responses, especially anger. If he raises his voice the slightest bit, then he'll be seen as an Angry Black Man, and Angry Black Man is scary. Jan Brewer claimed that the president was being "threatening" toward her, and I believe she probably did feel threatened because there was a tall black guy in front of her who didn't look all that pleased. At any moment, he could have whipped out a gun, or overwhelmed her with his brute animal strength!

Even the media narrative is quick to slap Obama with the "angry" label. After his speech during debt ceiling crisis where he directly criticized the GOP, his demeanor was described in some headlines as "angry", when in reality, he managed to hold it down to vaguely irritated. Can you imagine what would happen if he'd said, "Look, these clowns in the House? Dumb as a box of hammers. If they want to stop dicking around and get serious, I'm here; otherwise they need to stop acting like a bunch of spoiled whiny brats."

Jackie Robinson agreed that during his first year with the Dodgers, he wouldn't respond to any of the abuse he received from players, officials or fans, because even just yelling back would be seen as proof that "they" can't handle the pressure. I suspect Barack Obama is fairly laid back in general, but we'll never know because he can't be anything else.

The Most Awesome Swag at CPAC

2012-02-10T16:14:27-05:00

Attendees at the annual conservative confab who want to take home more than just memories have plenty of ways to accessorize.

If you're one of the thousands of conservatives assembled in Washington this week for the Conservative Political Action Conference, you're going to have some great memories. But what about more tangible souvenirs? For that, you'll want to hit the exhibition hall in the basement, where dozens of conservative groups are offering party favors at their booths. From rubber fetuses to Santorum sweater vests, you'll go home proudly accessorized with the hottest right-wing gear.

Administration Backtracks on Birth Control, but at What Cost?

2012-02-10T15:46:05-05:00

It looks like the Obama administration is pretty much completely caving on the rule forcing religious organizations to provide free contraception coverage for employees at facilities with a secular purpose (hospitals, schools, etc.). The onus has been shifted to insurance companies, which will contact women separately and offer them the optional coverage, which they will pay for. The insurers aren't happy, of course, but they never are these days. The administration, meanwhile, is trying to spin this as a victory:

This is better for both sides, the source says, since the religious organizations do not have to deal with medical care to which they object, and women employees will not have to be dependent upon an organization strongly opposed to that care in order to obtain it.

After last week's Susan G. Komen firestorm, I will be very interested to see how this unfolds. I noted last week that if the Susan G. Komen foundation had just never given Planned Parenthood a grant in the first place, there might have been isolated complaints, but it's doubtful that it would have escalated to a PR fiasco. Taking the grants away, however, was a very different matter. That's in part because it's harder to explain--not giving it can be simply explained by saying that there were better candidates for limited funds, but taking it away once you've given it demands an explanation of what changed. Susan G. Komen didn't have a good one--"changing sentiment about abortion" wasn't going to win them any friends--and the explanation they offered was fairly transparently an excuse.

But it's also because people react to losses differently from potential gains. If you don't give someone a raise, maybe they're mad. But it's nothing compared to the fury you will trigger if you try to cut their pay.

I suspect that the Obama administration may find itself with the same problem. Had they simply allowed religious groups an out in the first place, you would have heard some muttering from women's groups. But they told women's groups that they were going to make the Catholic Church pay for free birth control--handing them a pretty major victory in a long-running battle. Supporters of this decision have been vehemently defending it for a week, investing them even more heavily in the outcome. Now the administration has done a 180. It would be pretty understandable if they took this as a betrayal.

Of course, women's groups (and feminists more generally) have a lot of other reasons to support the Obama administration; they may decide to give him a pass for the greater good. On the other hand, before the last week, I would have said something about the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Update: Commenters point out that I've misread it--the insurers have to provide it "at no cost". Which of course means the Church will still be paying for it. So the question is, how do the Catholics take it? Not well, from what I can see.

White House Announces 'Accommodation' on Birth-Control Issue

2012-02-10T12:23:27-05:00

The newly announced plan still mandates coverage of contraception, but will shift the provision to insurers, rather than employers.

The White House said on Friday that it will require insurance companies to pick up the tab for women's contraceptives, exempting religious employers from the rule, in what it called an "accommodation" on the hotly contested issue of paying for birth control.

The White House said it would post a proposed rule that requires insurance companies to offer contraception coverage directly to women.

The much-awaited compromise is meant to appease religious institutions that say federal rules on contraception violate their religious beliefs.

"Insurance companies will be required to provide contraception coverage to these women free of charge," the White House said in a statement. "Religious organizations will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer their employees to organizations that provide contraception," it added. "Religious organizations will not be required to subsidize the cost of contraception."

Chart of the Day: GOP Primary Results in Every County

2012-02-10T11:55:37-05:00

Mapping returns on a county-by-county basis offers a different view of the Republican electorate.

If just seeing which Republican contender won what state isn't enough, this is the graphic for you. Ken Gross of Rustbelt Cartography created this map, which color-codes every county in the nation and is being updated as results from the GOP primaries and caucuses come in. One clear takeaway: Mitt Romney might be the frontrunner, but there's mostly green for Santorum all over the map.

The map gives a view of voter demographics in a way that pure percentages can't. In South Carolina, for example, Mitt Romney got pummeled by Newt Gingrich, but he did well in more urban, wealthy, moderate areas. So in the Palmetto State sea of lime green, you can pick out Columbia, the capital, and the coastal area around Charleston, which has attracted northern in-migration. There's an even starker contrast between Florida Republicans who broke for Romney in the main part of Florida, and the more conservative, "southern" ones who pulled the lever for Gingrich in the panhandle.

Image: Ken Gross / Rustbelt Cartography

What Do Republican Voters See in Rick Santorum?

2012-02-10T10:37:29-05:00

He may be caricatured as a far-right culture warrior, but Santorum has made headway in the race by contrasting his authentic conservatism with Romney's record.

Rick Santorum is back. After his stunning three-state sweep in Tuesday's Republican balloting, the former Pennsylvania senator has single-handedly revived a GOP race that seemed to be on the verge of wrapping up. How seriously has his new wave of successes reordered the landscape? A forthcoming national poll will show him in first place, the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling tweeted Thursday night.

To those who had written him off as a social-conservative niche candidate or a one-hit wonder after his Iowa surprise, this is a bit jarring, if not plain laughable. The guy who once equated homosexuality to "man on dog," prompting a sex columnist to turn his name into an obscenity? The guy who lost his last race for reelection by 18 percentage points? The dweeb in the sweater vest? Why is this guy being taken seriously by Republican voters?

His latest resurgence may be as much about Mitt Romney as it is about Santorum. But there are three key attributes that endear Santorum to conservatives -- and they're all things Romney lacks: an appealing personal story, a refusal to back down and a set of impeccable culture-war credentials.

1. His Appealing Personal Story. Santorum is a first-generation American -- as a child, his father was brought to the U.S. by his grandfather, an Italian who worked as a coal miner in western Pennsylvania. Those are some serious blue-collar credentials, and Santorum references them frequently on the stump, whether it's describing how his ancestors' sacrifices match up with the sacrifices of immigrants today, or pitching an economic plan that he says would bring back manufacturing for the good of the working class. Santorum also lives his pro-life beliefs. A Catholic who personally opposes contraception, he has seven living children (another died after just hours of life), including one, Bella, who is now three years old, despite having a Down Syndrome-like condition, Trisomy 18, that few children survive. Santorum speaks movingly of her situation, too, giving his professed belief in the sanctity of all life an intensely, sometimes painfully personal cast. Recently, he took a few days off the campaign trail when Bella was hospitalized. In his victory speech in Missouri on Tuesday, one of the first things Santorum said was this: "I just want a particular little note to my Bella, who I know is watching me and looking at her daddy. So I love you, sweetie. Thank you so much for getting healthy."

2. His Refusal to Back Down. The most telling moment I witnessed with Santorum on the campaign trail was in Marshalltown, Iowa, before the caucuses when a questioner at a town hall asked him what he would do to bring back the good old days when polarization was not so severe and the two parties could get together and compromise -- when Bob Dole and Tip O'Neill could put their differences aside and solve problems. There's an easy non-answer to this question, and politicians give it all the time: I'll reach across the aisle, they say, and common sense will prevail. Instead, Santorum argued against his questioner's premise. Those weren't the good old days at all, he said. In those days, Democrats got to keep expanding government, and Republicans' idea of "compromise" was to get them to spend a little less, or to get some money for Republican districts. Santorum praised the current Congress -- unpopular as it is -- for having drawn lines in the sand on things like the debt ceiling, rather than going along to get along. He does this on other issues, too. Conservatives hate that he wholeheartedly supported his liberal colleague Arlen Specter's 2004 reelection against a more conservative primary challenger, but Santorum defends it, saying Specter's votes guaranteed the confirmation of George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominees. Likewise, Santorum refuses to apologize for having avidly sought earmarks while in Congress, saying elected representatives know better how federal money ought to be spent than bureaucrats do -- though he concedes pork-barrel spending has now gotten out of hand. Santorum's refusal to compromise his principles, and his ability to articulately defend his stances, are attractive qualities for conservatives who find Romney squishy. They also make Santorum a consistently excellent debater, the only candidate who's successfully prosecuted the case against Romney on health care.

3. His Culture-War Cred. With the economy thawing, conservatives are suddenly concerned that they won't be able to beat Obama on that issue alone, and they worry that Romney doesn't have any other case to make. Meanwhile, and perhaps not coincidentally, cultural issues are having a flare-up -- from the federal court decision affirming gay marriage in California, to the battle between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood, to the Obama administration's decision to require some religious employers to pay for insurance plans that cover birth control. This latter issue was by far the hottest topic at the Conservative Political Action Conference that kicked off Thursday in Washington, with speakers and participants alike seeing it as an attack on religious freedom and the First Amendment. (Santorum, Romney and Newt Gingrich are the star speakers at the confab today.) With his long history as a culture warrior, this is a hot button Santorum -- who led the charge for congressional intervention on the Terri Schiavo case and authored the partial-birth abortion ban -- is uniquely qualified to push.

Image credit: Getty Images/Whitney Curtis

Bill O'Reilly's Surprising Defense of Ellen DeGeneres

2012-02-10T10:23:50-05:00

The Fox News host is siding with the lesbian comedian against the social conservatives calling for her termination.

Ellen DeGeneres, the daytime talk-show host and heir apparent to Oprah Winfrey, is likable as all get out, and a lot of women who watch TV during the day prefer her to anyone else. So JCPenney, the discount department store, chose her as a celebrity endorser when it began to re-brand.

The choice is now making headlines, as a group called One Million Moms demands her termination. "Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families," the group states on its website, urging the chain to "be neutral in the culture war." Perhaps the threatened boycott will benefit of rival Sears, where traditional families can revel in the tight-knit Kardashian Kollection, or Kohl's, which re-signed family-values icon Britney Spears as a partner in 2010.

More likely, this campaign is going to fail miserably -- trying to get gay people out of fashion? Really? -- but it's nevertheless heartening to see that even Bill O'Reilly, staunch foe of "secularists," perceives its odiousness. Here's a clip of him defending Ellen on The O'Reilly Factor:

To be clear, Bill O'Reilly's blustery faux-reasoning is as typically nonsensical in the clip above as always. Does he really believe that it's always wrong to demand than an organization fire a spokesperson so long as they haven't broken any laws? Of course he doesn't. This is a man who made it his personal mission to attack Pepsi for hiring the rapper Ludacris as a spokesman. What I suspected O'Reilly was thinking, but didn't say: the anti-Ellen campaign is odious because there is nothing objectionable about the mere fact of being an uncloseted lesbian.

But Papa Bear logic is famously hard to parse. In the next segment, Bernie Goldberg, the critic of liberal media bias, was much clearer, and uttered words that I never thought I'd hear on Fox News Channel:

There's something that needs to be said no matter how uncomfortable it makes some people listening to us. There is a strain of bigotry -- and that's the word I want to use -- running through conservative America. That doesn't mean all conservatives are bigots, or even that most conservative are bigots. That's not what I'm saying. But there is a strain of bigotry. And it goes against gay people, for instance. Ellen DeGeneres did nothing wrong. She's gay, right. Reasonable people may disagree on gay marriage. That's fine. But to call on somebody to be fired, to lose her job because she's gay, is bigotry, and I don't care how many people listening to us right now don't like that. It's bigotry.

And he wasn't finished!

Let me say one more thing, Bill. In the middle of the last century, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there was another strain of bigotry on the right, and it was against black people. That has to leave the conservative movement. I used to be a liberal. I became a conservative because liberals were a little too crazy for me. A lot too crazy for me, actually. But you know what? I am immensely uncomfortable with the bigotry on the right. And I don't care how many people don't like it. I am sick of it.

It led to this interesting exchange:

Bill O'Reilly: It's not Ellen DeGeneres's sexuality that they object to, Bernie. It's how she presents it to the public. They believe, the Million Moms believe, that she flaunts it, she puts it in their face.

Bernie Goldberg: She flaunts it? I flaunt my heterosexuality.

Bill O'Reilly: No you don't. We don't know about your personal life. You don't walk around and all of that.

Bernie Goldberg: What do you mean she flaunts it?

Bill O'Reilly: She makes it a cause. She makes it a cause celebre. And that's what they object to.

Bernie Goldberg: They're a minority that in many places are under attack. She has every right to make it a cause. And there's no agenda. She's just gay. She wants to live her life as a gay person. I'm telling you, I'm sick of this.

At this point, O'Reilly quite possibly saves Goldberg's job by expertly drawing him back inside the bubble:

Bill O'Reilly: Now the bigotry against pro-life people, I think, is way more than the bigotry against gay people, particularly in the media, because the media supports gay people, generally speaking.

Bernie Goldberg: (unenthusiastically) Right.

Well, no. Wrong. The fact that the media is more gay-friendly than pro-life-friendly hardly makes the country more bigoted against the latter group than the former, as a casual perusal of hate-crime data makes brutally clear. I suspect that both O'Reilly and Goldberg know that, but grading on the Fox News curve, you've got to give them credit for the above segments. Ellen did.

Image credit: Reuters

The Atlantic Politics Quiz: Big Tent Edition

2012-02-10T10:11:50-05:00

Test your trivia chops by answering these 5 questions.

&lt;a href="http://theatlantic.polldaddy.com/s/the-atlantic-politics-quiz-5"&gt;View Survey&lt;/a&gt;

The Contraception Controversy Was Never a Civil Rights Issue

2012-02-09T18:48:44-05:00

Even if access to birth control is a core liberty, it need not be secured via employers and health insurance. And the Obama compromise proves it.

Is health insurance that includes subsidized birth control pills a basic right owed to every American? The Daily Dish's Zach Beauchamp thinks so. "Birth control is for 98% of women the principal means of protecting a right central to their own liberty - the right to choose when to create a family," he writes. "For these women, not having access to birth control renders a crucially important right meaningless. Full insurance coverage is a critical part of the picture. Birth control is an expensive product - $81 a month is considered a steal with no contribution from your insurance, but that number still prices out many women. Even insurance plans that have co-pays can be prohibitively pricey. Cheaper alternatives like condoms have significant failure rates."

This kind of thinking was everywhere in the debate over whether nonprofits affiliated with the Catholic Church or other religious institutions should be required to provide employees with health insurance that includes birth control coverage (or else stop employing non-Catholics in universities and hospitals order to qualify for an exemption given to faith-based organizations that exclusively employ coreligionists). Wendy Kaminer, for example, suggests that civil rights are implicated in the debate:

As government workers are laid off and government programs shrink, the public role of private, tax-exempt non-profits expands. The stronger their right to dispense public funds and deliver public services according to sectarian religious dictates, the weaker our rights to a non-sectarian public sphere. It's a zero-sum game... What if belief in segregation were an article of faith, a matter of conscience, for some? (Some clergymen once defended slavery.) I'm not comparing opposition to birth control with racism, much less slavery. I'm simply pointing out that religious beliefs can, and often do, conflict with civil society and individual rights.

Would we tolerate a religious right to refuse treatment or accommodation on the basis of race as readily as we tolerate a religious right to refuse reproductive health care? Of course not. Your right to act on your religious beliefs is not absolute; it's weighed against the rights that your actions would deny to others. Today, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, claims of religious freedom tend to outweigh claims of reproductive freedom. But that is a consequence of history, politics, and culture and is subject to change. The balance of power is not divinely ordained.

Where these arguments failed was in their unduly narrow view of how access to contraception can be secured. Even if birth control is a civil right -- a controversial proposition -- is employer provided health insurance a prerequisite for enjoying it?

I don't see why that has to be the case.

There is broad agreement that America's system of providing health care via employers is outdated and in need of reform. There are all sorts of ways to transition away from the status quo -- a single payer system, a public option, extending the tax credit that employers get when purchasing health care to individuals. And however health insurance is obtained, the inclusion of contraception is strange. Don't misunderstand my beliefs. I think it is good public policy and fiscally prudent for the government to buy birth control for people too poor to afford it on their own. But let's not pretend it's well-suited to insurance. It's a predictable expense (like many others needlessly bundled but easily separable from health insurance), not a risk to hedge against by entering into a risk pool with a bunch of people not knowing who'll need to file a claim.

To confront these facts is to acknowledge that forcing Catholic Church affiliated institutions to provide "insurance" covering birth control was not the only way to go even if you think birth control is a civil right. Public policy could be arranged so that employers played no role in health insurance. Or it could be arranged so that birth control wasn't a mandated part of health care plans -- folks could buy it out of pocket like Advil rather than paying higher premiums in exchange for having it subsidized; folks too poor to afford birth control could get a subsidy covering their costs.

In fact, the Obama Administration demonstrated the truth of this point in the compromise it reached on Friday:

The White House will change its policy requiring employers to offer health insurance coverage to their employees that covers birth control at no cost. Previously, religiously affiliated employers other than churches--such as Catholic universities and hospitals--would have been required to offer the insurance to their employees. Now, according to senior White House officials, if a religious employer has a religious objection to providing birth control coverage, insurance companies will be required to offer the insurance featuring free birth control directly to the employees.

Even if you think birth control is a civil right, it wasn't ever threatened in the case of the Catholic Church-affiliated nonprofits versus the Obama Administration. What was threatened was the progressive desire to expand birth control access and subsidies via the specific policy mechanism it preferred for political reasons. You'd think, given the rhetoric of Obama Administration supporters, that a broad consensus supports their position on birth control, and only the qualms of a small number of orthodox Catholics were standing in the way of implementing it (in fact, only a small majority of Americans, 55 percent, favors requiring employers to provide health insurance that includes contraception). And no clear majority supports Beauchamp's notion that if someone is too poor to buy birth control pills, their civil rights are violated unless their employer chips in.

A straightforward bill to subsidize birth control for the poor might not pass Congress (even though I would support it). In order to avoid taking their chances on legislation of that kind, the Obama Administration pursued the path of least resistance: order employers to add this to their plans, even if doing so violates their conscience. This approach permitted them to hide the cost of providing birth control by bundling it into insurance premiums, mask the nature of who is being subsidized by whom, and build political support by offering a universal subsidy rather than one targeted at the poor.

What today's compromise showed is that it there was never a need to choose between religious and contraceptive freedom. What was actually at odds was religious freedom and the ability of progressives to advance contraceptive freedom through the means they found most expedient. There were always lots of different approaches that would achieve the same ends. If the Obama Administration and its progressive allies were less casual about coercing people, they'd have discovered the current compromise -- which they deserve credit for adopting -- a lot sooner.

Image credit: Flicker user Starbooze

CPAC's Opening Day Is Haunted by the Ghosts of Candidates Past

2012-02-09T16:40:40-05:00

The annual conservative confab hears the also-rans' excuses -- and tries to summon enthusiasm for those still in the field.

The opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, which kicked off Thursday in Washington, was devoted to failed presidential candidates of the not-quite-distant-enough past, who tested the audience's capacity for instant nostalgia with rueful jokes about their defunct campaigns.

"I thought you would be interested in knowing that running for president of the United States is really one series of humiliations after another," said a beaming Michele Bachmann, looking tanned and rested. "But it's also a very educational experience."

Bachmann proceeded to reference some of her own humiliations in the spotlight's glare. "I learned three things," she said. "First of all, I learned where John Wayne was born. Second, I learned the day Elvis Presley was born -- these are vital issues for our republic! And third, I learned: Never forget the three things that you learned."

That last one was a dig at Rick Perry, the Texas governor who was in the race to make all the other candidates feel brighter and more articulate. Perry, speaking a couple of hours after Bachmann, had his own take on his erstwhile presidential effort.

"Aggies never lose -- we just run out of time," he said, referring to his alma mater, Texas A&M University. "You could say my presidential campaign just ran out of time."

Perry devoted his speech to his favorite part of the Bill of Rights -- the states' rights part -- without mentioning the candidate he has endorsed, Newt Gingrich.

"A candidate I am no more, but a committed Tenth Amendment conservative I will be until the last breath I draw!" he said.

Gingrich also went unmentioned by the third former candidate to speak, Herman Cain. Cain, who also endorsed his fellow Georgian, was too busy exuberantly expressing his support for Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, the 2008 campaign minicelebrity who's now a congressional candidate in Ohio. Wurzelbacher, he explained (without attempting to pronounce his actual last name), had embraced Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan.

Cain's reflections on his campaign were more serious than Bachmann or Perry's. "There are two reasons I dropped out of the race," he said. "Gutter politics, and number two, I chose to put family first."

While Bachmann devoted her speech to foreign policy and Perry to the threat of an overweening federal government, the recitation of "9-9-9" was the extent of the policy content in Cain's speech.

The more consequential speeches will come Friday, when three of the four remaining presidential candidates are scheduled to speak: Rick Santorum, fresh off his surprise triple victory in Tuesday's votes; Mitt Romney, trying to regain his equilibrium after his losses to Santorum; and Gingrich.

The fourth candidate, Ron Paul, is skipping CPAC this year in favor of campaigning in Maine, having won the conference's straw poll for the last two years and gotten precisely nothing to show for it.

Gingrich and Santorum had volunteers out in force at the annual festival, whose large contingent of College Republican attendees gives it a party vibe. Santorum's stickering effort was particularly aggressive; he also had a booth selling his signature sweater vests for $50 a piece.

There was little enthusiasm for Romney on display among the attendees, but also little outright antagonism. Many seemed to have already resigned themselves to his inevitable nomination prior to Tuesday's Santorum comeback.

Others, though, relished Romney's setback.

"The whole momentum, inevitable narrative -- it's false. It's crap," said Eric McGrane, a 42-year-old IT manager from Chesterfield, Va. He was leaning toward Santorum, though only as the best remaining alternative -- he was troubled by the "bad votes" on the former senator's record.

"I think, of the current candidates, he's been more consistent," he said. "I wouldn't say I'm head over heels."

Image: Win McNamee / Getty Images

A Lonely Widow's Conscience Helped Gay Marriage Pass in Washington

2012-02-09T16:23:04-05:00

A Republican state legislator cited her relationship with her deceased husband to explain why she broke ranks and voted to allow same-sex unions.

In the video above, Washington State Rep. Maureen Walsh explains why she was one of only two Republicans in her chamber to break ranks and support a marriage-equality bill. A summary can't do justice to her moving words -- just click play and admire her candor.

The bigger news is that gay marriage will soon be legal in another state. As The Christian Science Monitor explains:

The Washington House of Representatives voted 55 to 43 Wednesday to approve gay marriage. The State Senate already had passed the measure 28 to 21, and Gov. Chris Gregoire (D), who calls it "a major step toward completing a long and important journey to end discrimination based on sexual orientation," will sign the bill.

The history of the Washington State bill mirrors the shift in public and political attitudes toward gay marriage around the country. In 1998, state lawmakers passed a Defense of Marriage Act declaring marriage to be a union between a man and a woman. In 2006, a state civil rights measure specifically including protections based on sexual orientation passed for the first time. The next year, a domestic partnership law was enacted, and in 2009 voters approved expanding that law to include everything but marriage. The new gay marriage law was approved largely along party lines. Just two Republicans voted for it, and two Democrats voted against it. Prominent companies in the Pacific Northwest -- including Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks -- publicly support same-sex marriage and endorsed the bill. (Some conservative Christian organizations launched a boycott of Starbucks as a result.)

Opponents of the bill say they'll try to collect enough signatures to put it on the ballot in hopes that voters will overturn it.

The Great Fallon-Obama Potato Sack Race

2012-02-09T15:45:45-05:00

It probably is said too much now, but coming from a time when black people were almost exclusively subordinate on television, this sort of thing is amazing. The Obama Presidency is, if anything else, a really special reality show for black people, a love letter to all of us disgusted with watching black families through the lens of sociology and "problem-solving."

What If the Press Frankly Acknowledged Its Role in Campaigns?

2012-02-09T15:21:23-05:00

Arbitrary journalistic conventions inevitably influence how primaries are covered. Why not say so openly?

Arbitrary conventions shape how the primaries are covered.

Early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are deemed especially important, rather than being assigned weight commensurate with the number of delegates at stake. Candidates are sometimes treated as "winners" even when they haven't won any delegates, so long as they've "exceed expectations." There is an obsession with momentum: candidates are said to be gaining or losing momentum; suffering from the fact that a primary in an unfriendly state is interrupting their momentum; or trying their utmost to stop an opponent's momentum, lest he or she "coast" to the nomination.

There are reasons for these conventions. They're shaped by experience. As every experienced political reporter knows, for example, victory in an early state really can impact a campaign beyond the small number of delegates gained. It can trigger a significant spike in campaign contributions.

Or a wave of newly positive media coverage.

That's where things get tricky. Say a candidate wins New Hampshire. Journalists expect that he or she will get a boost, so they report its likelihood. But isn't it then impossible to tell what caused the boost? Was it that the winning candidate proved to donors or voters that he or she is capable of winning? Or was the boost caused by the endless assertions in the media about the boost?

How much campaign coverage is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

As a political journalist familiar with how the press behaves, I agree with the New York Times when it reported, after Rick Santorum's Tuesday night sweep in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota, that it "could scramble the dynamic of the Republican race." But part of why I think that's true is the certainty that newspapers, network anchors, cable news pundits, and Web journalists will all say so. What few outlets typically acknowledge is the degree to which their own coverage and the stuff published or broadcast by their competitors are a primary mechanism by which the scrambling takes place! It is easy to imagine a political press that embraced different, equally plausible conventions -- that delegates are what matters, for example, and that only naive ignoramuses would attribute importance to the results of a race with few or no delegates.

That understanding would cause the press to confer marginal importance on Iowa or New Hampshire. Wouldn't the end result be the emergence of a very different campaign, and perhaps even a different outcome?

So far, this primary season has confounded journalistic expectations.

As Dave Weigel puts it:

Political reporters make for lousy gravediggers. Find a primary, pick a day, and I can point you to a story pronouncing the campaign "over" or "almost over" or over, pending the judgment of a proverbial Fat Lady. Let's make it easy and start last month. On Jan. 10, as Romney was winning New Hampshire, NPR quoted a Republican strategist who counted the margins and pronounced the race "over." On Jan. 18, the Los AngelesTimes informed us that South Carolina's primary "could essentially end" the Santorum and Gingrich campaigns. Two days later, NBC News told us that a Romney win in the first southern primary would make him "the de facto nominee."

When Romney lost, we got pre-Florida primary headlines like "Can Mitt Romney recover from his South Carolina 'disaster?'" Days later, Howard Kurtz was tap-tapping about the "distinct possibility" that the media would "bury Newt Gingrich for the third time" in Florida. No one was talking about Rick Santorum until yesterday, when the Wall Street Journal saluted Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri for "puncturing Mitt Romney's claim to be the unstoppable front-runner."

Given the frequency with which speculative analysis is wrong, it would probably be a good thing if journalists engaged in less of it. But horse race analysis isn't going away: readers want it, journalists want to produce it, and no style of journalism will ever end when both of those things are true.

The reform I'd suggest is for journalists to be less coy about what's going on. It isn't unduly meta to fully acknowledge the role the press plays in campaigns, even if doing so is a bit awkward. For example, The New York Times writes that many in the Republican establishment were urging GOP activists to fall in line behind Mitt Romney, but voters in three states refused to do so.

The story goes on:

Instead, the most conservative elements of the Republican Party's base expressed their unease with Mr. Romney by sending a resounding message that they preferred someone else. And they collectively revived the candidacy of Mr. Santorum, who has been languishing in the background since a narrow victory in Iowa's caucuses at the beginning of the year.

What if that last sentence read:

And they collectively revived the candidacy of Mr. Santorum, who won a narrow victory in Iowa's caucuses at the beginning of the year, but raised less money than his rivals and found it more difficult to attract free media attention too because many editors, reporters and pundits underestimated him, either erroneously speculating that he couldn't possibly sweep Tuesday's primaries, or else ignoring him until immediately before the vote, only to lavish new respect on him afterward. He'll almost certainly generate more headlines and soundbites in coming days, free attention his campaign needs given its fundraising disadvantage.

Isn't that more informative than passively noting that he "has been languishing in the background," as if that occurred as a natural phenomenon? Assumptions are always going to be built into campaign journalism, but they needn't remain static and unexamined. Perhaps shedding light on the assumptions that shape the way candidates are covered, and the impact the press is having on the race, would help the least defensible practices to be examined and discredited.

Image credit: Reuters

Obama Story Is Online

2012-02-09T14:21:24-05:00

Much of this past fall I was interviewing political figures to get their judgments on what-we-know, and how-we-know it, about President Obama's successes and failures in office so far.

The results are now online here (but of course it's always best read on paper!) plus a short video q-and-a with Corby Kummer, who was my editor on this piece as he has been for nearly all other Atlantic articles I've done since the early Reagan years.

Will have more to say about the background of this article, implications, cutting-room-floor info (yes, even with a 12,000-word piece, there's a lot left out!), and so on in the days ahead.
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Also, for the record, the Reddit AMA session I did yesterday was interesting, at least to me, and the results are here.

Are Pro-Israel American Jews Warming to Obama?

2012-02-09T13:13:42-05:00

Ben Smith (still writing in Politico, as if he's not busy enough with his new job), takes notice of a softening in opinion among hawkish Jews about President Obama:

"Most of the pro-Israel community is now convinced that when President Obama says he will prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capability, he means it," said Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.). He cited a litany of muscular actions, including SEAL raids on Osama bin Laden and Somali kidnappers, drone strikes around the world, and a shift of American military assets toward Iran, which he said have "for the moment given pause to those who wondered about the president's mettle in using force against America's and Israel's enemies."
The shift has had consequences through Democratic politics. Rothman, redistricted into a tough primary with Rep. Bill Pascrell, is seeking to draw a contrast based on Rothman's hawkishly pro-Israel record.
That's no longer a position that would put him in conflict with the popular Democratic president.
"Constituents and relatives who were otherwise regularly calling to inquire whether the president really felt the need to protect Israel in his guts are not now calling me so much with those kinds of questions," he said.
Indeed, the targeted actions against Iran - and in particular the assassinations of civilian scientists, for which the U.S. has not taken credit - have made it difficult to make the case that Obama is being insufficiently ruthless in his approach. (Difficult, but not impossible: Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton recently described assassinations as "half-measures.")

By the way, a Boltonesque "full-measure" re: Iran would be shooting an Iranian nuclear scientist, burying him, then digging him up and shooting him again.

Video of the Day: The Undead Budget Will Eat Your Brains

2012-02-09T13:07:04-05:00

Monsters meet money in an entertaining clip from Rep. Kevin McCarthy.

Washington is on the brink of a budget showdown, with President Obama's spending proposal for the year due at the end of next week. It isn't the sort of thing the average voter gets excited about -- unless, that is, it comes packaged in an entertaining YouTube video spoofing old-school horror B-movies.

The clip is from Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House majority whip. McCarthy gets social media and the Internet better than nearly any politician on the scene. He previously launched an mobile app that tracks legislation on the floor of the House and hosted Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for a Q&A on social media.

For the record, though, we think calling the video "President Obama's Monster Budget" was a missed opportunity. Since Republican leaders like to cite the fact that it's been more than 1,000 days since Senate Democrats passed a budget, why not nod to zombie flick 28 Days Later and call this "1,016 Days Later"?