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[ChoklitReign]

Social Causes
[ ] Gay Marriage Legalized
[ ] Don't Ask; Don't Tell Repealed
[ ] Decriminalize Marijuana
[ ] NCAA Football Tournament

No chance in hell.

 

[Cheebs]

No chance in hell.

dont ask dont tell will go. But it'll be an issue he punts to his second term most likely

 

[Mike M]

No chance in hell.

Idunno, I think DADT isn't out of the question. The others he hasn't said he supports/said he does NOT support (To the best of my knowledge), so I don't know why they're even there...

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

I think Don't Ask, Don't Tell still has a chance; he said he'd repeal that quite explicitly, and he hasn't broken too many of those promises as of yet.

 

[GrapeApes]

No chance in hell.

Don't lump DADT in with the other two. The public supports a repeal. I wonder if he could actually get 60 votes in the Senate.

 

[GhaleonEB]

dont ask dont tell will go. But it'll be an issue he punts to his second term most likely

Nah. Next two years, easy.

 

[Mercury Fred]

Frank Rich blasts Obama and the Dems on their inaction on gay rights.

May 24, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
La Cage aux Democrats

By FRANK RICH
THE most potent word in our new president’s lexicon — change — has been heard much less since his inspiring campaign gave way to the hard realities of governing. But on Tuesday night, the irresistible Obama brand made an unexpected and pointed cameo appearance on America’s most popular television show, “American Idol.” In the talent competition’s climactic faceoff, the song picked for one of the two finalists, Adam Lambert, was Sam Cooke’s soul classic, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

Cooke recorded it in January 1964. Some four months earlier he had been arrested when trying to check into a whites-only motel in Shreveport, La. “It’s been a long, long time coming,” goes the lyric. “But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.” Cooke, who was killed later that same year in a shooting at another motel, in Los Angeles, didn’t live to see his song turn into a civil rights anthem. He could not have imagined how many changes were gonna come, including the election of an African-American president who ran on change some 44 years later.

Cooke might also have been baffled to see his song covered by Lambert, a 27-year-old white guy from San Diego, on Fox last week. But the producers of “American Idol” knew what they were doing. With his dyed black hair, eyeliner and black nail polish — and an Internet photographic trail of same-sex canoodling — Lambert was “widely assumed to be gay” (Entertainment Weekly), “seemingly gay” (The Times) and “flam-bam-boyantly queeny” (Rolling Stone). Another civil rights movement was in the house even if Lambert himself stopped just short of coming out (as of my deadline, anyway) in the ritualistic Ellen DeGeneres/Clay Aiken show-biz manner.

In the end, Lambert was runner-up to his friendly and blander opponent, Kris Allen, an evangelical Christian from Arkansas. That verdict, dominated by the votes of texting tween girls, was in all likelihood a referendum on musical and cultural habits, not red/blue politics or sexual orientation. As the pop critic Ann Powers wrote in The Los Angeles Times, the victorious Allen also has a gay fan base, much as Lambert has vocal Christian admirers.

This is increasingly the live-and-let-live society we inhabit — particularly younger America. In a Times/CBS News poll in April, 57 percent of those under 40 supported same-sex marriage. The approval figure for all ages (42 percent) has nearly doubled in just five years. On Tuesday the California Supreme Court will render its opinion on that state’s pox on gay marriage, Proposition 8. Since Prop 8 passed last fall, four states have legalized gay marriage and New Hampshire is about to. This rapid change has been greeted not by a backlash, but by a national shrug — just as a seemingly gay “American Idol” victory most likely would have been.

And yet the changes aren’t coming as fast as many gay Americans would like, and as our Bill of Rights would demand. Especially in Washington. Despite Barack Obama’s pledges as a candidate and president, there is no discernible movement on repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy or the Defense of Marriage Act. Both seem more cruelly discriminatory by the day.

When yet another Arabic translator was thrown out of the Army this month for being gay, Jon Stewart nailed the self-destructive Catch-22 of “don’t ask”: We allow interrogators to waterboard detainees and then banish a soldier who can tell us what that detainee is saying. The equally egregious Defense of Marriage Act, a k a DOMA, punishes same-sex spouses by voiding their federal marital rights even in states that have legalized gay marriage. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the widower of America’s first openly gay congressman, Gerry Studds of Massachusetts, must mount a long-shot court battle to try to collect the survivor benefits from his federal pension and health insurance plans. (Studds died in 2006.) Nothing short of Congressional repeal of DOMA is likely to rectify that injustice.

The civil rights lawyer Evan Wolfson, who is executive director of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry, notes that the current stasis in Washington is a bit reminiscent of early 1963, when major triumphs in the black civil rights movement (Brown v. Board of Education, the Freedom Riders, the Montgomery bus boycott) had been followed by stalling, infighting and more violent setbacks. Victories were on their way but it took the march on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to galvanize John Kennedy and ultimately Lyndon Johnson into action. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Johnson had to step up big time — and did — to prod Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (now under imminent threat from the Roberts Supreme Court).

It would be easy to blame the Beltway logjam in gay civil rights progress on the cultural warriors of the religious right and its political host, the Republican Party. But it would be inaccurate. The right has lost much of its clout in the capital and, as President Obama’s thoughtful performance at Notre Dame dramatized last weekend, its shrill anti-abortion-rights extremism now plays badly even in supposedly friendly confines.

Anyone with half a brain in the incredibly shrinking G.O.P. knows that gay bashing will further dim the party’s already remote chance of recruiting young voters to replenish its aging ranks, much as the right’s immigrant bashing drove away Hispanics. This is why Republican politicians now say they oppose only gay marriage, not gay people, even when it’s blatant that they’re dissembling. Naked homophobia — those campy, fear-mongering National Organization for Marriage ads, for instance — is increasingly unwelcome in a party fighting for survival. The wingnuts don’t even have Dick Cheney on their side on this issue.

Most Congressional Republicans will still vote against gay civil rights. Some may take the politically risky path of demonizing same-sex marriage during the coming debate over the new Supreme Court nominee. Old prejudices and defense mechanisms die hard, after all: there are still many gay men in the party’s hierarchy hiding in fear from what remains of the old religious-right base. In “Outrage,” a new documentary addressing precisely this point, Kirk Fordham, who had been chief of staff to Mark Foley, the former Republican congressman, says, “If they tried to fire gay staff like they do booting people out of the military, the legislative process would screech to a halt.” A closet divided against itself cannot stand.

But when Congressional Republicans try to block gay civil rights — last week one cadre introduced a bill to void the recognition of same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia — they just don’t have the votes to get their way. The Democrats do have the votes to advance the gay civil rights legislation Obama has promised to sign. And they have a serious responsibility to do so. Let’s not forget that “don’t ask” and DOMA both happened on Bill Clinton’s watch and with his approval. Indeed, in the 2008 campaign, Obama’s promise to repeal DOMA outright was a position meant to outflank Hillary Clinton, who favored only a partial revision.

So what’s stopping the Democrats from rectifying that legacy now? As Wolfson said to me last week, they lack “a towering national figure to make the moral case” for full gay civil rights. There’s no one of that stature in Congress now that Ted Kennedy has been sidelined by illness, and the president shows no signs so far of following the example of L.B.J., who championed black civil rights even though he knew it would cost his own party the South. When Obama invoked same-sex marriage in an innocuous joke at the White House correspondents’ dinner two weeks ago — he and his political partner, David Axelrod, went to Iowa to “make it official” — it seemed all the odder that he hasn’t engaged the issue substantively.

“This is a civil rights moment,” Wolfson said, “and Obama has not yet risen to it.” Worse, Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage is now giving cover to every hard-core opponent of gay rights, from the Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean to the former Washington mayor Marion Barry, each of whom can claim with nominal justification to share the president’s views.

In reality, they don’t. Obama has long been, as he says, a fierce advocate for gay equality. The Windy City Times has reported that he initially endorsed legalizing same-sex marriage when running for the Illinois State Senate in 1996. The most common rationale for his current passivity is that his plate is too full. But the president has so far shown an impressive inclination both to multitask and to argue passionately for bedrock American principles when he wants to. Relegating fundamental constitutional rights to the bottom of the pile until some to-be-determined future seems like a shell game.

As Wolfson reminds us in his book “Why Marriage Matters,” Dr. King addressed such dawdling in 1963. “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait,’ ” King wrote. “It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ ”

The gay civil rights movement has fewer obstacles in its path than did Dr. King’s Herculean mission to overthrow the singular legacy of slavery. That makes it all the more shameful that it has fewer courageous allies in Washington than King did. If “American Idol” can sing out for change on Fox in prime time, it ill becomes Obama, of all presidents, to remain mute in the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24rich.html

 

[Cloudy]

The folks that bash Obama on gay rights issues just don't get it. Do they see what's happening in this country on the state level? We are seeing progress but it's not gonna happen overnight

I admit that it's unfair for me to say this cos I'm not gay but there is just no reason to expend his political capital on a wedge issue like that right now. It'd be playing right into the GOP's hands. They need something to be "outraged" about cos it helps them make mask their lack of ideas on big issues..

 

[Mercury Fred]

The folks that bash Obama on gay rights issues just don't get it. Do they see what's happening in this country on the state level? We are seeing progress but it's not gonna happen overnight

I admit that it's unfair for me to say this cos I'm not gay but there is just no reason to expend his political capital on a wedge issue like that right now. It'd be playing right into the GOP's hands. They need something to be "outraged" about cos it helps them make mask their lack of ideas on big issues..

At the barest of bare minimums, Obama should put a halt to DADT discharges, something he can do with a simple executive order. Marriage equality is only one piece in the puzzle.

 

[besada]

Tthere is just no reason to expend his political capital on a wedge issue like that right now. It'd be playing right into the GOP's hands. They need something to be "outraged" about cos it helps them make mask their lack of ideas on big issues..

In your post you've admitted that Obama has chosen political ease over the rights of certain human beings, which is exactly what the "bashers" are saying about him. The reason to expend his political capital is because it's the right thing to do (particularly in the case of DADT, which is even publicly popular).

I like Obama, I voted for Obama, and I approve of the majority of what he's doing, but that doesn't mean he gets a free pass on gay rights from me. I'm fully capable of praising those decisions which are good and condemning those which are bad.

 

[Cloudy]

At the barest of bare minimums, Obama should put a halt to DADT discharges, something he can do with a simple executive order. Marriage equality is only one piece in the puzzle.

Thing is, the military brass seems to be dead set against it and if Obama goes over them, the right-wingers will make hay about how he "didn't listen the military officials" etc. and it'll be a huge distraction.

This is too critical a time to let the media and/or political opponents try to cause conflict between Obama and the military folks.

Again, I know it's presumptuous of me but I think gay and lesbian Americans need to be a bit more patient. We all know where Obama stands on this issue and his administration has been doing a lot of subtle stuff that shows acceptance. Sometimes the best way to lead is by example. Especially since many state legislators are already looking at the issue seriously..

 

[PantherLotus]

Perhaps the temporary solution is a Tuskegee-Airmen-like all-gay combat unit? That's how the American government dealt with attempting to treat African Americans like actual humans that wanted to fight for our country. Some time later, the American government said that they were welcome in all parts of our Armed Forces.

 

[GhaleonEB]

Obama is 8% into his first term. He came in laser-focused on a massive recession/credit crisis/housing meltdown and is pushing through an equally massive agenda on healthcare and energy this summer. I think it's understandable that he's holding off on the issue of gay rights in general and DADT in particular - the repeal of which has broad public support but will be a battle in the Senate - until his major domestic agenda items are through. Those will be happening soon enough.

Would I rather he move faster? Yup. I also wish he'd issue that executive order to halt dismissals for gays in the military until it's repealed. But he's been in office four months. He's done a tremendous amount on the domestic front amount already. And the groundwork to getting DADT reversed has been laid by his administration declining to appeal a ruling challenging DADT.

I think he's taking lessons from Clinton's first term, where the issue derailed a lot of his domestic agenda and proved to be a major distraction. Maybe not the right lesson, but that seems to be what he's doing. But the bottom line is, Obama promised to repeal DADT in his first term. If I had to guess, it will happen in the first two years, if not sooner. It'd be nice if everything got done at once. But people need to be realistic and a bit more patient here.

 

[Door2Dawn]

Obama needs to repeal DADT. Let the states handle gay marriage.

 

[PantherLotus]

Agreed. I think people were expecting Abraham Lincoln or the best president ever but are disappointed that he is following Bill Clinton's legacy almost step for step, at least in regards to nuance and engaging the middle.

So maybe he won't be the best president ever? If his tenure is as accomplished as Clinton's, he'll be in the top 10.

 

[Mercury Fred]

Sometimes the best way to lead is by example.

And as the Rich piece points out, Obama's "leadership" on gay marriage in particular gives the right wingers plenty of cover when they make their cases for discrimination.

 

[PantherLotus]

And as the Rich piece points out, Obama's "leadership" on gay marriage in particular gives the right wingers plenty of cover when they make their cases for discrimination.

We knew that before he was elected, and unfortunately, it's still fashionable to discriminate against gay people.

 

[Mercury Fred]

We knew that before he was elected, and unfortunately, it's still fashionable to discriminate against gay people.

Of course. But since that time, marriage equality has picked up a lot of momentum. The terrain is quite different than it was even six months ago.

 

[charlequin]

Thing is, the military brass seems to be dead set against it and if Obama goes over them, the right-wingers will make hay about how he "didn't listen the military officials" etc. and it'll be a huge distraction.

I agree that just 100% full-steaming on it over the objections of the brass is a terrible idea, which is why I don't actually consider "well, he could stop discharges with an Executive Order" a legitimate argument -- yes, it's possible that he could do so legally, but at the cost of backlash and problems in the chain of command.

But Obama's the Commander-in-Chief. The military brass report to him and it's their job to implement his initiatives. He needs to be telling them that he will eliminate DADT one way or another and asking them to help him figure out the way to do so that will work best for everyone.

If he and/or his staff are indeed doing this, and the policy gets revoked, then no, I don't think it'll be legit to stay mad that Obama took two years instead of two months to reverse the policy. But he needs to actually do that, and steady pressure from the left reminding him of this promise and insisting that he follow through is a key part in ensuring that happens.

he is following Bill Clinton's legacy almost step for step

Come the fuck on.

 

[gcubed]

Come the fuck on.

agreed, that was a pretty poor comparison, by this time the democratic majority was pretty much on its way out. Obama at least has another midterm of democratic wins unless something major happens, so if Franken ever gets seated, he'll have a majority for possibly 3 years (if Franken gets seated by the end of the year)

 

[DeathbyVolcano]

Eh, this call of an executive order on dismissals of gay soldiers is a little sketchy to me, to be honest. Granted I'm not completely familiar with how executive orders work, but I know it's left a sour taste in my mouth after Bush and I would rather Obama stick with precedent before Bush got into office.

 

[avatar299]

In your post you've admitted that Obama has chosen political ease over the rights of certain human beings, which is exactly what the "bashers" are saying about him. The reason to expend his political capital is because it's the right thing to do (particularly in the case of DADT, which is even publicly popular).

I like Obama, I voted for Obama, and I approve of the majority of what he's doing, but that doesn't mean he gets a free pass on gay rights from me. I'm fully capable of praising those decisions which are good and condemning those which are bad.

It's pretty clear Obama doesn't personally believe in gay marriage. He has publicly stated his stance on marriage. Why anyone would think he would go out of his way for this? Are people just projecting a Obama they want to see, and damn it all to reality?

 

[besada]

Eh, this call of an executive order on dismissals of gay soldiers is a little sketchy to me, to be honest. Granted I'm not completely familiar with how executive orders work, but I know it's left a sour taste in my mouth after Bush and I would rather Obama stick with precedent before Bush got into office.

Executive orders have been around since long before Bush, and in this case, I don't think it even needs an executive order. Obama is the Commander in Chief, which means he can dictate policy to the armed forces as part of his clear constitutional power. One of those dictates could be to stop investigations regarding sexuality, which doesn't get rid of DADT, but essentially negates its ability to drive gay and lesbian people out of the services.

Regarding executive orders, though, Obama's already signed nearly twenty of them, so it's not as if he doesn't see them as a useful tool.

 

[DeathbyVolcano]

Gotcha. I'm still a little weary of their effect and media reaction, though, considering it became somewhat of a buzzword for Bush.

Oh well, I need to read up on some modern American history.

 

[besada]

Gotcha. I'm still a little weary of their effect and media reaction, though, considering it became somewhat of a buzzword for Bush.

Oh well, I need to read up on some modern American history.

Obviously the content of an order is more important than the number, but Bush signed less of them than either Clinton or Reagan.

And they don't come close to FDR, who signed over 3,000 of them.

Check out the details here:
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/disposition.html

 

[charlequin]

It's pretty clear Obama doesn't personally believe in gay marriage. He has publicly stated his stance on marriage. Why anyone would think he would go out of his way for this? Are people just projecting a Obama they want to see, and damn it all to reality?

Besada's talking about DADT, which Obama actively campaigned on eliminating, not gay marriage which you are correct to say Obama's stated position is not in favor of.

One of those dictates could be to stop investigations regarding sexuality, which doesn't get rid of DADT, but essentially negates its ability to drive gay and lesbian people out of the services.

Assuming that Obama is working in some way towards accomplishing this goal, I don't actually think stopping a small number of people from being fired now is worth it if it creates a state of antagonism with the military leadership that interferes with implementing the actual full solution.

 

[Gaborn]

At the barest of bare minimums, Obama should put a halt to DADT discharges, something he can do with a simple executive order. Marriage equality is only one piece in the puzzle.

That's not all he should do. He needs to end the HIV travel ban. Hell, even BUSH supported that at the end of his term.

 

[besada]

Assuming that Obama is working in some way towards accomplishing this goal, I don't actually think stopping a small number of people from being fired now is worth it if it creates a state of antagonism with the military leadership that interferes with implementing the actual full solution.

Well, I imagine it's important to the people being fired. As for as I know these people aren't getting Honorable Discharges, which can have a significant effect on the rest of their life, solely because they happen to be gay.

At the same time, an over abundance of deference to the Pentagon seems like a bad tack to take for a Commander in Chief on general principles. I get not wanting to needlessly antagonize the military brass, but he seems perfectly willing to upset them over project cancellations and the direction of the "War of Terror", but unwilling to do so over what is a human rights issue. I have to admit that bothers me a bit.

 

[mAcOdIn]

Well, I imagine it's important to the people being fired. As for as I know these people aren't getting Honorable Discharges, which can have a significant effect on the rest of their life, solely because they happen to be gay.

I'd assume that a great majority of homosexual servicemen really want to be in the military, you'd have to really want to do something to join an organization that'd boot you if they found out about your sexual preference.

I don't think a General Discharge really hurts your future but it can stop you from getting veteran benefits and personally, if they did everything the guy next to them did but liked the dick jokes in the barracks I don't see why they shouldn't also get a Honorable Discharge so that they could use the GI Bill if they paid into it or whatever. That said, they really shouldn't be getting kicked out in the first place.

I think the public and military support of ending DADT is about as high as it'll ever be before getting rid of it. I think the higher ups in combat arms are pretty much always going to be against it and all other fields could probably not give a fuck if it ended tomorrow, I don't see anything to be gained by waiting.

 

[scorcho]

Diverting from DADT a bit, thought this article was pretty interesting - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085619.html

Essentially, Israel's best hope to cease Iran's nuclear program is for Bibi to convince Obama to either lend support or take outright ownership of the problem, both of which appear highly unlikely. That is, unless Israel decides to utilize their nuclear arsenal to simplify the strikes, but that isn't likely to happen either.

How the findings of this study could potentially shape Israel's foreign policy remains to be seen. Already Bibi attempted to shoehorn all ME politics in the frame of Iran first, which Obama didn't bite on. I've been of the mind for a long time now that essentially nothing would happen to curtail Iran's nuclear program, and should they weaponize their production it wouldn't alter the region's political/military landscape all that much.

 

[PantherLotus]

TPMDC Sunday Roundup
By Eric Kleefeld - May 24, 2009, 12:53PM

Mullen: Gitmo Needs To Be Closed
Appearing on ABC's This Week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen reaffirmed his belief that the prison at Guantanamo Bay should be closed. "The concern I've had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol, and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. So and I think that centers -- you know, that's the heart of the concern for Guantanamo's continued existence, in which I spoke to a few years ago, the need to close it."

Obama's Day: Camp David
President Obama has been spending the weekend at Camp David, and is scheduled to arrive back at the White House tonight at 10 p.m. ET. He does not have any public events scheduled. Vice President Biden is in Wilmington, Delaware, and also does not have any scheduled public events.

Durbin: SCOTUS Pick Likely This Week
Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) affirmed that the Supreme Court nomination could come this week. "Well, I, I've been told it's likely to come this week, but I don't know which day," said Durbin. He also pointed to President Obama's background as a constitutional law professor as an asset in picking a nominee: "I would hate to go through that interview on constitutional issues with our president, because he knows a lot more about the Constitution than many people who serve as judges today"

Gingrich: Gitmo Should Remain Open Until "The Terrorists Disappear"
Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press, former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was asked by David Gregory how long the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay should remain open. "Until the war is over," said Gingrich. When asked what that means, Gingrich explained: "We'll -- when the terrorists disappear."

Kyl: Obama's Claims On Gitmo "Culpably False"
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said President Obama made false claims about Guantanamo. "When the president said in his speech that it -- that the existence of Gitmo probably created more terrorists than have ever been held there, he meant to say that 770 people or more became terrorists because we have a prison at Guantanamo," said Kyl. "We called his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, and asked for information about the charges that he'd made in his speech. We haven't heard back yet. This is a false charge. In fact, it's culpably false."

Powell: "I Am Still A Republican"
Appearing on CBS' Face The Nation, former Sec. of State Colin Powell said he is still a Republican. "Rush will not get his wish. And Mr. Cheney was misinformed. I am still a Republican," said Powell. "And I'd like to point out that in the course of my 50 years of voting for presidents, I have voted for the person I thought was best- qualified at that time to lead the nation. Last year I thought it was President-now Barack Obama."

Ridge To Limbaugh: Don't Be Divisive
Appearing on CNN's State of the Union, former Sec. of Homeland Security Tom Ridge offered some criticism of Rush Limbaugh. "It does get the base all fired up and he's got a strong following," said Ridge. "But personally, if he would listen to me and I doubt if he would, the notion is express yourself but let's respect others opinions and let's not be divisive."

Ridge Doesn't Endorse Toomey -- Nor Rules Out Voting For Specter
Also during his State of the Union appearance, Tom Ridge again did not endorse Republican candidate Pat Toomey for the 2010 Pennsylvania Senate race -- and didn't rule out a vote for newly-minted Democrat Arlen Specter. "I'm a strong, strong Republican but I'd be -- I've never, ever, ever voted straight Republican ticket in my life and I never will," Ridge continued," said Ridge.
​

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/mullen-gitmo-needs-to-be-closed.php

 

[speculawyer]

Essentially, Israel's best hope to cease Iran's nuclear program is for Bibi to convince Obama to either lend support or take outright ownership of the problem, both of which appear highly unlikely. That is, unless Israel decides to utilize their nuclear arsenal to simplify the strikes, but that isn't likely to happen either.

Yeah, I kinda resent the pressure Israel is trying to exert on us about Iran. Look, we are involved in two fucking wars and our economy has gone to shit. One of those wars concerned one of you biggest enemies and he is gone. So don't come asking us to deal with Iran now. We don't have money or military capacity for it and we've already helped you out more than enough. You need to chill the fuck out.

 

[PantherLotus]

Excellent stream-of-consciousness from John Marshall:

How Much Do Safe Havens Matter?
05.24.09 -- 10:41AM

I'm still trying to decide what I think about this question. But given how much strategic focus we're giving to Afghanistan, I'm confident we haven't given the question enough collective thought. Matt Yglesias had a post a couple months ago asking a basic question: how much does it really matter if al Qaida has safe havens in Afghanistan?

To be clear, no one's saying it doesn't matter at all. But does it matter enough, relative to other threats, to make Afghanistan -- and specifically, the escalation of our involvement in Afghanistan -- close to the focus of our whole foreign policy? Ethnic Afghans have played little or no role in any of the major terrorist incidents of the last decade. And most were planned and organized either in Europe, the US or in other Arab or majority Muslim countries. The training camps we hear a lot about mainly focused on light combat training and maybe car-jackings. As Matt puts it, the 'safe havens' in Afghanistan were neither necessary (the training could be and often was done elsewhere) nor sufficient (you still needed cells in the target countries) conditions for any of the major terrorist attacks. So why is this such a critical focus of our policy?

On the other side of the spectrum, I'd put the following considerations. If al Qaida types get plugged in in the thriving opium trade in Afghanistan that's clearly a source of money. And one of the best counter-terrorism strategies seems to be just keeping the members of terrorist organizations under pressure and threat everywhere. So you wouldn't want one country where bin Laden and his pals could live more or less unmolested and in the open -- though given what happened and how many drones we have on patrol, it's not really credible to me that quite that would ever be allowed again.

Then there's the question of Pakistan. On really every front, money, safe havens, weaponry, even nuclear weapons, Pakistan has everything that Afghanistan has, only ten-fold, though there's probably a decent argument that the two countries are umbilical when it comes to counter-terrorism policy.

And let me finish on two further points. Through much of the last decade, I've been in the group of people saying that Iraq was a distraction and that Afghanistan was the place we really needed to be focusing on. So this is in conflict with much I've said before. Furthermore, if you look at the history, the role of Afghanistan going back over the last few decades, wasn't so much that it allowed for safe havens but that the guerilla, semi-irregular wars there spun off thousands of violent, highly-trained and religiously intoxicated extremists who later spread out around the world spreading terror right and left. And that makes intensifying the conflict in Afghanistan to prevent the growth of safe havens a logically questionable proposition.

Like I said up top, I'm not sure where I come down on this one. But given how central a role 'safe havens' play in current policy and how much focus we're giving to this policy, it really requires more scrutiny. Let me know your thoughts. I'm curious what others have to say.

--Josh Marshall​

 

[Diablos]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/us/25talkshows.html?hp

“I felt Guantánamo should be closed for the past six years, and I lobbied and presented reasons to President Bush,” Mr. Powell said.

He added that Mr. Cheney’s disagreement with Obama administration is also a disagreement with the Bush administration’s policy.

“President Bush stated repeatedly to international audiences and to the country that he wanted to close Guantánamo,” Mr. Powell said. “The problem he had was he couldn’t get all the pieces together.”

Colin Powell is the best Republican in the world.

 

[Rur0ni]

Yeah, I kinda resent the pressure Israel is trying to exert on us about Iran. Look, we are involved in two fucking wars and our economy has gone to shit. One of those wars concerned one of you biggest enemies and he is gone. So don't come asking us to deal with Iran now. We don't have money or military capacity for it and we've already helped you out more than enough. You need to chill the fuck out.

Judging by the article scorcho posted, Israel has no choice but to live with a nuclear Iran, despite their doctrine. I'd rather be friendly with Iran at this point.

 

[scorcho]

Judging by the article scorcho posted, Israel has no choice but to live with a nuclear Iran, despite their doctrine. I'd rather be friendly with Iran at this point.

Exactly - Iran learned quite a bit from Iraq's error during the early 80s and has not only decentralized their nuclear facilities, but have put them in high-risk areas with ridiculous amounts of structural reinforcements. If only Cheney was in the WH, then Israel would have an easier route to assure their nuclear primacy in the region.

 

[charlequin]

That's not all he should do. He needs to end the HIV travel ban. Hell, even BUSH supported that at the end of his term.

Yes, that's extremely important and unlike DADT, I don't see a good reason not to just do it.

Well, I imagine it's important to the people being fired.

Sure, lots of things are important to lots of people. It's going to suck a lot for the last person fired under this immoral policy, whichever person that is. However, that still does not obviate the necessity of approaching the problem strategically. It's not worth keeping ten people's jobs if the fallout from that approach screws up other aspects of Obama's agenda, and an approach where those ten people get fired but DADT still eventually gets repealed would also work.

At the same time, an over abundance of deference to the Pentagon seems like a bad tack to take for a Commander in Chief on general principles. I get not wanting to needlessly antagonize the military brass, but he seems perfectly willing to upset them over project cancellations and the direction of the "War of Terror", but unwilling to do so over what is a human rights issue.

This is still assuming that he's already given up on it rather than that he's slow-rolling it, though. The funding changes are something that really does have to just be forced down the throats of the military leaders, but with the upfront knowledge that the change is an inevitability, DADT should be something you can work out a smoother transition for. I would much prefer to see it happen that way so that if there's a situation later on where Obama aims to make defense cuts or correct war policy decisions that the military leadership disagrees with, he has room to maneuver.

But does it matter enough, relative to other threats, to make Afghanistan -- and specifically, the escalation of our involvement in Afghanistan -- close to the focus of our whole foreign policy?

Since Matt Y started writing about the topic I've been pretty strongly of the position that the answer is "no." Terrorists don't need a country of their own in order to plan terrorist attacks; that's what makes them terrorists.

 

[APF]

I haven't read Yglesias' articles on the question, but that John Marshall post was just about the dumbest "analysis" I've read on the issue.

 

[Stoney Mason]

A good article on the Southern Party.

COVER STORY
For GOP, A Southern Exposure
Republican strength in the South has both compensated for and masked the extent of the party's decline elsewhere.
by Ronald Brownstein

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Founded in the decade before the Civil War as the Northern voice of union, the Republican Party today is more electorally dependent on the South than at any point in its past.

In the House and Senate, nearly half of all Republicans were elected from that region, defined as the 11 states of the Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma. In each chamber, Southerners are a larger share of the Republican caucus than ever before. Similarly, beginning with the 1992 presidential election, the South has provided at least 59 percent of the Electoral College votes won by the GOP nominee, including by George W. Bush in his 2000 and 2004 victories. That percentage is nearly double the South's share of all Electoral College votes and by far the most that GOP presidential nominees have relied on the region over any sustained period.

Republican strength in the South has both compensated for and masked the extent of the GOP's decline elsewhere. By several key measures, the party is now weaker outside the South than at any time since the Depression; in some ways, it is weaker than ever before.

Today the GOP holds a smaller share of non-Southern seats in the House and Senate than at any other point in its history except the apex of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's popularity during the early days of the New Deal. What is perhaps even more dramatic is that Republicans in the past five presidential elections have won a smaller share of the Electoral College votes available outside of the South than in any other five-election sequence since the party's formation in 1854. Likewise, since 1992, Republican presidential nominees have won a smaller share of the cumulative popular vote outside of the South than in any other five-election sequence since the party's founding, including the five consecutive elections won by Roosevelt and Harry Truman (1932 to 1948).

The Republican domination of the South "looked great when we were holding on to our Northeastern and Midwestern seats and continuing to sweep the South," said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster who specializes in Southern races. "The challenge arises when the rest of the country says, 'I don't believe the same things,' or 'I don't admire the same candidates,' as the South does."
Since Bush's re-election in 2004, the GOP has lost ground electorally in the South and the rest of the nation. But the erosion has been much more severe outside the South. That dynamic has threatened Republicans with a spiral of concentration and contraction. Because the party has lost so much ground elsewhere, the South represents an increasing share of what remains -- both in Congress and in its electoral coalition. The party's increasing identification with staunch Southern economic and social conservatism, however, may be accelerating its decline in more-moderate-to-liberal areas of the country, including the Northeast and the West Coast. "Many of the things they have done to become the dominant party in the South have caused them to be less successful in other places," said veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, a South Carolina native.

These intertwined trends -- the Republican Party's growing reliance on the South and the erosion of its strength elsewhere, particularly along the coasts -- have prompted some unusually public soul-searching within the GOP about whether the party has grown too defined by the unflinchingly conservative priorities of its most loyal region. Although the GOP congressional leadership includes more non-Southerners than it did in the 1990s, much of the party's most militant opposition to President Obama has come from Southern leaders, such as South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The Texan even raised the possibility of secession in response to Obama's initiatives.

In the view of former Rep. Charles Bass, R-N.H., who was defeated in 2006, "The current crisis of the Republican Party is whether it wants to be a regional party or whether it can try to expand ideologically and appeal to other regions."Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, argues that the election of Republican governors in New England, the Midwest, and California refutes the idea that the GOP is becoming excessively Southern. "If it wasn't for the governors, it would be more of a danger, more of an issue," Barbour said. "When I became a Republican in 1968, we were not a national party. We weren't competitive in a lot of the South. And you don't want to ever get as a party where you are not competitive in any area of the country."

Although not as severe, the regional challenges now confronting the GOP resemble those that Democrats faced in the first decades of the 20th century, when Republicans dominated Congress and the White House. From 1896 until Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, the Solid South, which still rejected Republicans as the perpetrators of "Northern aggression" in the Civil War, provided the sole regional base for the depleted Democrats. But throughout much of that period, the Democrats' pervasive identification with the South made it harder for them to loosen the Republicans' commanding grip on the rest of the country. In those years of Democratic decline, "the South was the majority faction in a minority party," notes Emory University political scientist Merle Black, co-author of the 2002 book The Rise of Southern Republicans. "And now it looks like the Southerners are becoming close to a majority faction in a minority Republican Party."

Presidential Balloting

For seven decades after the end of Reconstruction, Republicans were pariahs in Southern politics. From 1880 through 1948, Republican presidential nominees did not win a single state in the Old Confederacy, except Tennessee in 1920 and Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia in 1928, when Democrats nominated Northern Catholic Al Smith. Over that long period, the only other Southern states that Republicans carried were in the outer South: Kentucky in 1896, 1924, and 1928; Oklahoma in 1920 and 1928.

In terms of presidential politics, Republicans made their first inroads into the South from 1952 to 1964, when Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Barry Goldwater each won five to seven states there. After the Democratic-controlled Congress joined with Democratic President Johnson to end state-sponsored segregation by enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the traditional Southern Democratic coalition shattered. In 1968, Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey won only one Southern state, Texas; Nixon carried seven; and former Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, a segregationist running as an independent, carried the other five.



Since then, Republican presidential nominees have dominated the South. In the five elections from 1972 to 1988, Republicans won all of the South's electoral votes three times (1972, 1984, and 1988) and more than 90 percent of them in 1980. During that period, the only Democrat to win a majority of Southern Electoral College votes was former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter in 1976.

From 1972 to 1988, Republicans ran nearly as well outside the South as they did in the South. In three of that period's five presidential elections (1972, 1980, and 1984), the Republican nominee won at least 90 percent of the non-Southern Electoral College votes. Likewise, the party's nominee won almost three-fourths of them in 1988 and nearly three-fifths of them in 1976.

Beginning in 1992, the GOP's fortunes in the South and the non-South diverged. Since then, the GOP has remained strong in the South. Even as Arkansas's Bill Clinton was twice winning the White House for the Democrats, the GOP won about two-thirds of the region's Electoral College votes. In 2000 and 2004, Texan George Bush won all of the South's Electoral College votes, even though his first race was against a fellow Southerner, Al Gore of Tennessee. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama made potentially significant inroads into the region by capturing Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia -- Southern states influenced by outside migration -- but Republican John McCain still won two-thirds of Southern Electoral College votes.

Elsewhere, though, the GOP's presidential performance has tumbled in recent election cycles. Democrats have won at least two-thirds of the Electoral College votes outside the South in each of the past five elections. Even Bush won only about 30 percent of the non-Southern Electoral College votes in 2000 and again in 2004.

In all, across these past five presidential elections, Republicans have won an average of only 21.1 percent of the Electoral College votes at stake outside the South. That's less than the 22.7 percent of the non-Southern Electoral College votes they captured in the five elections from 1932 through 1948. In fact, as noted above, from 1992 through 2008, the GOP won a smaller share of non-Southern Electoral College votes than it did during any other five-election sequence since the party picked John C. Fremont as its first presidential nominee in 1856.

As the Republican Party weakened elsewhere from 1992 to 2008, the 13 Southern states provided 59 to 69 percent of all the Electoral College votes won by its presidential nominees. Only once before had the region provided more than 36 percent of the party's Electoral College votes. The exception was in 1964, when five Southern states were the only places Barry Goldwater won outside of his native Arizona.

The story is similar with the presidential popular vote. For many decades after Reconstruction, the GOP was annihilated in the South: None of its nominees, for instance, exceeded 30.1 percent against FDR or Truman. But the party established a Southern beachhead from 1952 through 1964 (winning just under half of the region's votes) and raced past the Democrats after Wallace's insurgency.

In all 10 elections from 1972 through 2008, the GOP presidential nominee outpolled the Democratic nominee in the South, except in 1976 when native son Carter beat Gerald Ford in the region, according to calculations performed for National Journal by Polidata, a political data analysis firm. In seven of these 10 elections, the Republican nominee won an absolute majority of Southern votes -- four times reaching at least 57 percent. As he did in the Electoral College, Obama made inroads in last November's popular vote: He won 46 percent of Southern votes, more than any other Democrat since 1976 except for President Clinton in 1996. Even so, McCain drew a solid 53 percent of the region's votes.

From 1972 through 1988, the Republican nominee also carried the non-Southern popular vote each time, according to Polidata. In 1992, however, the South and non-South diverged once again. Starting that year, the Democratic nominee has outpolled his Republican rival in the non-Southern states each time. And the Republican nominee has exceeded 45 percent of the popular vote in the non-South only in 2004, when Bush won re-election while attracting almost 48 percent. In 2008, Obama crushed McCain outside the South, receiving 56 percent to his rival's 42 percent, Polidata found. That 14-point difference was the third-widest margin of victory ever for a Democrat over a Republican in the non-Southern states. Only Johnson in 1964 and Roosevelt in 1936 exceeded it.

Overall, Republicans won just 41.9 percent of the cumulative presidential popular vote outside of the South from 1992 through 2008, the Polidata calculations show. That was a stunning drop from their average of 53.3 percent in the non-South from 1972 through 1988. It was also less than the 45 percent of the popular vote that the GOP won in the non-Southern states during the five elections of the FDR-Truman era, a halcyon time for the Democratic Party.

Like the GOP's showing in the Electoral College, the Republican popular-vote tally outside of the South since 1992 is, in fact, the party's worst performance for any five-election sequence since its founding. The last time either party fared so poorly outside the South over five elections was 1916 through 1932, when the Democrats won only 40 percent of the non-Southern cumulative popular vote. The Republican total was low in 1992 and 1996 in part because independent candidate Ross Perot siphoned off votes from both major-party nominees. But third-party candidates split the vote in earlier periods, too. And even considering only the votes for major-party candidates, the Republican average in the non-Southern states from 1992 through 2008 is the party's worst showing ever over any five-election sequence..

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20090523_2195.php

 

[Stoney Mason]

A Similar Pattern On The Hill

Republicans were just as marginalized in Southern congressional contests as they were in the region's presidential races for many decades after Reconstruction. From 1900 through 1960, Republicans held more than 10 percent of the South's House seats in only three Congresses. In the Senate, between 1878 and 1960, the GOP only once -- in 1924 -- held more than two of the region's 26 seats. In the 20th century, Republicans did not elect a senator from the Old Confederacy until John Tower won the Texas seat that Lyndon Johnson vacated in 1961.

In both chambers, Southern Republicans started advancing in the early 1960s. Their gains accelerated over the next quarter-century, as a powerful constellation of issues -- including school busing and civil rights, abortion, gun control, gay rights, taxes, and national security -- drove legions of conservative white Southerners from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

The Republican share of Southern House seats doubled from 7.5 percent in 1960 to 15 percent in 1964, crossed 30 percent in Richard Nixon's 1972 landslide, and reached 36 percent when Ronald Reagan routed Jimmy Carter in 1980. Dixie Democrats largely held their ground for the next decade, but in 1994, the backlash against Clinton's chaotic first two years allowed Republicans to win a majority of Southern House seats for the first time since 1868.

The GOP's Southern progress in the Senate followed a similar track. The party grew from three seats in 1962 to 10 in 1972 and 12 during President Reagan's first term, before losing some ground later in the 1980s. The 1994 Republican surge then lifted the number to 16, giving the GOP its first majority of the South's Senate seats since 1872.

After the 1994 election, Republicans controlled a majority of House seats not only in the South but also in the non-South (about 53 percent in each case). Holding House majorities both inside and outside the South was another post-Reconstruction first for the party, Merle and Earl Black noted in The Rise of Southern Republicans. Following the 1994 election, Republicans also controlled most Southern Senate seats and exactly half of non-Southern seats.

In a pattern similar to the presidential balloting, the GOP's experiences in the South and the non-South diverged after 1994. The party has remained strong across the South. From 1996 through 2004, Republicans controlled at least 17 Southern Senate seats (peaking at 21 seats) and consistently won about three-fifths of Southern House seats. In both chambers, Republicans have surrendered some Southern seats since 2006 because of the public's widespread disillusionment with Bush's performance. (Most notably, Democrats have gained 11 Southern House seats.) But, the GOP still holds 56 percent of the region's House seats and 19 of its 26 Senate seats. Outside the South, though, the GOP's position has sharply deteriorated. In the House, the party's non-Southern majority held for only two years, falling to 49 percent in 1996. Through 2004, the party retained control of nearly half of non-Southern House seats. The bottom fell out in 2006. Over the past two elections, the GOP share of non-Southern House seats has plunged to just 33.5 percent. Only twice in the party's history has it controlled a smaller share of House seats outside the South -- after the 1934 and 1936 elections at the height of FDR's popularity.
The GOP has followed a similar downward trajectory in the Senate. Republicans held exactly half of the chamber's 74 non-Southern seats from 1994 through 1998, but their share fell to around 45 percent during Bush's first term. After sharp losses in 2006 and 2008, the Republican share of non-Southern seats has dwindled to around 28 percent (counting Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter as a Democrat). That is the smallest percentage of non-Southern Senate seats controlled by Republicans, except after the 1936 FDR re-election landslide that reduced the GOP to its modern low point in Congress.

The Republicans' Southern advance has steadily tilted the balance of power in the congressional GOP toward the region. With only a single exception, the share of the House Republican Conference from the 13 Southern states has increased in every Congress since 1960. (Only the Congress elected in 1986 broke the pattern.) The progression hasn't been quite as linear in the Senate, but even there the South tripled its share of Republican seats from 9 percent in 1962 to 28 percent in 1992, before rising steadily to about one-third in 2000.

The party's losses in other regions during George W. Bush's second term shifted the balance even more sharply toward the South. In the House, the share of Southern members in the Republican caucus jumped from about 37 percent in 2000 to 45 percent now; in the Senate, the South's share spiked from 34 percent in 2000 to 48 percent now (19 of 40 members). In both chambers, the Republican conference is now considerably more concentrated in the South than ever before. These percentages far exceed the contribution of the 13 Southern states to Congress's overall makeup (about one-fourth of the Senate and one-third of the House). They also represent the biggest Southern tilt in either party since Dixie provided a comparable share of House and Senate Democrats in the mid-1950s.

Pulled To The Right

From Reconstruction through the modern civil-rights era, a consuming -- and often insurmountable -- challenge for Democratic leaders was reconciling the priorities of a solidly conservative South with the views of the party's supporters elsewhere. Republicans today face a similar test. Over the past 50 years, with the decline of the party's moderate wing, the GOP's center of gravity has shifted to the right. But more often than not, the South still defines the party's right flank.

Southern House Republicans, for instance, have overwhelmingly opposed Obama, even on the handful of issues where he's made inroads among GOP legislators from other regions. Nearly one-third of House Republicans from outside of the South supported expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, but only one-tenth of Southern House Republicans did so. Likewise, just 5 percent of Southern House Republicans supported the bill expanding the national service program, compared with 22 percent of Republicans from other states. (In the Senate this year, there's no such gap between Southern and non-Southern Republicans. Few moderates from any region remain in the Republican Conference.)
Overall, the GOP's congressional leadership is more regionally diverse than it was in the 1990s, when it was dominated by Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Dick Armey of Texas, Trent Lott of Mississippi, and other Southerners. But in Congress and beyond, Southern Republicans have frequently led the resistance to Obama, heatedly denouncing his initiatives. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has described Obama as "the world's best salesman of socialism." Southern governors such as Sanford, Barbour, and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal headlined the Republican opposition to Obama's stimulus plan, condemning it as a federal intrusion into states' rights and even rejecting some funding. Texas Gov. Perry trumped them all for provocative positioning when he suggested in April that Obama's plans were so onerous they might prompt Texans to consider trying again to secede. Perry no doubt was trying to consolidate conservative support heading into his gubernatorial primary next year, not launch a genuine secessionist movement. But his inflammatory language, which ignited an inevitable cable television and blog conflagration, dramatized the extent to which Southern voices now define a Republican Party explicitly formed in the North as a counterpoint to Southern political influence.

Carrick, like many other Democratic strategists, believes that these ideologically assertive Southern Republicans are hurting the GOP's appeal elsewhere, particularly because cable television has made each party's leaders more visible than a generation ago. "It makes them look... extreme and that they are engaged in partisan political fights that are irrelevant to achieving success," Carrick says. "It is definitely a losing spiral that... is reinforced every day by the 24/7 news cycle."

Like Barbour, South Carolina Gov. Sanford rejects the idea that the South is disproportionately influential within their party. In any case, he says, the arguments that he and other Southerners have raised against Obama offer the party its most promising path back to power. Republican recovery "is probably less about new bells and whistles and more about the core of what made the party great in the first place, which is the angle of limited government," Sanford said. "I believe our political destiny is more closely tied to our roots than in trying to add new features."

A broad range of Republicans supports a return to small-government arguments. Nevertheless, some GOP strategists are gingerly suggesting that staunchly conservative Southerners are putting too much of their own stamp on the party, especially on social issues. GOP consultant Mike DuHaime, political director of McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, said that "everybody in the party is concerned" about the GOP's decline along the coasts and in the Upper Midwest. "It's important that we always keep our base [in the South] as part of our party, but we need to have the ability to disagree on certain issues. That's the only way we are going to expand," he said. Republican pollster Ayres concurs. "The South is an incredibly important part of the Republican coalition, but it's not sufficient to win," he said. "You may very well have standards that are somewhat different for a Republican in the Philadelphia suburbs than you do for a Republican in Alabama."

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, appears to have taken that thinking to heart, pursuing moderates for 2010 Senate contests in several Democratic-leaning states, including Connecticut, Delaware, and Illinois, where Democratic troubles or departures have brightened GOP prospects. Democrats are also giving Republicans openings in several high-profile gubernatorial races in blue states outside the South, including Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. Those opportunities create some optimism among Republicans that they may have hit bottom in the non-Southern states. Yet, given the extent of the party's decline there, it may be some time before Republicans recover enough strength outside the South to truly threaten the generation-long southward migration in the party's center of gravity.

Meanwhile, demographic trends could create new challenges for Republicans within their Southern stronghold. The Republican position in the Deep South is fortified by a racial paradox: In the states with the highest proportion of black voters (such as Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi), Democrats usually attract the smallest percentage of white voters, partly because African-Americans are seen as dominant in the Democratic Party.

But the growth of other nonwhite populations, such as Hispanics and even Asians, is strengthening Democrats across the region, especially in the outer South, and even in portions of the Deep South such as Georgia. These "new minority" voters functioned like a thumb on the scale last year for Obama in Virginia (where they reached 10 percent of the vote) and North Carolina (where they comprised 6 percent). They were also instrumental in tipping Florida to the Democratic presidential nominee. "When you add the Democratic vote among African-Americans with that of the new minorities, that means the share of the white vote a Democrat needs to win goes down," notes Merle Black.

Eventually, Hispanic population growth might even threaten the Republican hold on Texas, where whites last year constituted just 63 percent of the vote, the same as in California. Demography alone probably won't flip Texas: To capture it, Democrats will almost certainly need to improve their performance among whites there, too. (Obama won just one-fourth of them, compared with twice that in California.) But at the least, Black notes, the growing nonwhite vote is allowing Texas Democrats to become competitive again in the state that has functioned as the jewel in the crown for Southern Republicans.

Questions about the GOP's regional balance may come to a head when the party picks its next presidential nominee. The 2012 race could pit several strong contenders from the South -- including Sanford, Jindal, and Barbour -- against competitors from other regions, such as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Carrick predicts that a Southern Republican nominee in 2012 would "solidify all of the current trends" toward Democrats among young people and socially moderate white-collar suburbanites outside the South. Another Republican Southern nominee, Carrick maintains, "would say that it is a regional party but [also] that the prevailing ideology in the party is too far out to be competitive."

Barbour, not surprisingly, dismisses this analysis. He believes that the next GOP nominee's region is less important than the candidate's skills and whether the country has lost faith in Obama. "Could a guy from Alabama, Louisiana, or Texas get elected president as easily as one from Illinois under those circumstances?" Barbour asked. "I think the answer is yes."

As on so many other fronts, the debate over the party's 2012 nominee shows how the GOP's Southern drift is forcing Republicans to confront variations of the political dilemmas that long confounded the Democrats. From Truman in 1948 until Obama in 2008, the only Democrats who could hold enough of the South to build a majority national coalition and win the White House were Southerners: Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. Republicans now face the mirror-image challenge of recapturing enough territory beyond the South to assemble a winning national coalition. For decades, Democrats ardently debated whether they could elect a president who was not from the South. Before long, Republicans may debate with equal passion whether they can elect another president who is.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20090523_2195.php

 

[Stoney Mason]

 

[charlequin]

I haven't read Yglesias' articles on the question, but that John Marshall post was just about the dumbest "analysis" I've read on the issue.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/03/how_important_are_safe_havens.php is the first post I remember on Yglesias' blog about it. It seems like a pretty strong basic argument to me: "denying al-Qaeda a safe haven" is not, in itself, a strong argument for any given policy in Afghanistan given that a terrorist network with a distributed cell structure and amorphous goals can plan and implement terrorist attacks from anywhere.

 

[Learn2read]

I haven't read Yglesias' articles on the question, but that John Marshall post was just about the dumbest "analysis" I've read on the issue.

The 9/11 attacks were planned in Hamburg and they were flight trained in Florida. An established gov't of law and order in Afganistan would be nice, but so are ponies.

 

[SouthernDragon]

I've started reading "The Shock Doctrine", recommended to me by a friend.

Holy fuck.

I'm a business major, implying I have a belief in the free market system, but this has enforced the notion that a balance between corporations and governments as antagonistic entities towards each other is necessary, for the most part. (I still support appropriate subsidization, like the [truly] clean and alternative energy sector.)

God damn. I'm just so horrified by all of it. I just finished the chapters chronicling Milton Friedman's "economic shock treatment" on South American countries. Being of South American origin, I say; Fuck him. Fuck him in the ear.

 

[Tamanon]

Don't read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man then.

 

[mckmas8808]

Or cut them loose in Afghanistan and let them take their chances with the American Armed Forces. Either way, we begin to at least follow our own rules for a change. If they go back to terrorism, we're talking a handful of people added to the cause, while their detention not only makes a mockery of American "justice" but acts as an amazing recruiting tool for the very same cause.

No one wants to just cut these guys loose, but the cost of their celebrity in the middle-east is certainly more painful to bear than actually having them out in the field.

Some oof you Neogaffers are crazy if you honestly think an American President will knowingly let say 15 known terrorist back on the real battlefield of Afghanistan just to let them attempt to kill our troops a few weeks later.

I know this is left country, but it would be nice if we can be realistic on this issue.

 

[The Lamonster]

You guys are the shit. PoliGAF continues to be an excellent forum for intelligent political discussion and debate.


...and I will never get sick of the Obama pics and bar graphs.

 

[JayDubya]

I've started reading "The Shock Doctrine", recommended to me by a friend.

I'm so sorry. You need better friends, starting maybe with those that don't propagate libel.

 

[SouthernDragon]

Don't read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man then.

Well, looks like I have another book to read, then.

And I'm starting to find PoliGAF limited. You guys served as a decent intro to politics and political thought, but I'm going to start finding the source material instead of seeing it regurgitated here.

No doubt, though, that there are some stellar posters here, so much so that I wonder what the hell you guys are doing here at all.

Edit:

Funny that, Jay, when I was reading it I remembered you. Perhaps you could offer a counter to the first four or five chapters of that book? I'd be willing to hear what you have to say.

Edit 2: Might I add that the book is required reading at my friend's school, UF. UF hardly has liberal economists on staff (from my experience).

 

[JayDubya]

Funny that, Jay, when I was reading it I remembered you. Perhaps you could offer a counter to the first four or five chapters of that book? I'd be willing to hear what you have to say.

How about her central thesis is monstrously flawed character assassination based on taking a line out of a book, misinterpreting it to serve an agenda, and then running with it?

Hey, I know a few people around here who love that sort of thing - maybe you can recommend it to them.