More divisive than ever?

Several conservatives I know have gotten themselves into hot water these past few weeks because of their supposed incivility toward liberals. Meanwhile, liberals seems to be stepping up their ad hominem attacks on conservatives, and particularly Sarah Palin. My sister-in-law summed up neatly something I have been sensing for a few weeks: this election is different than presidential elections past. "It is feeling really intense, divisive, and almost antagonistic to me – even among my friends," she observed.

I think, to some extent, the identification of incivility is overstated. An increasing number of people seems to take offense at civil, direct factual claims. So, for example, when I claimed recently that Obama is morally self-deceived on the issue of abortion, an acquaintance excoriated me for slandering and "wanting to win," whatever that means. But I didn't slander Obama (see New York Times v. Sullivan). Nor do I particularly want McCain to win (though I really don't want Obama to win). And I did not engage in an ad hominem attack. Obama's stance on abortion is morally indefensible. And that fact is relevant both to the substance of his position on abortion and to the question of his judgment. Both of those questions are relevant to his campaign for the presidency.

On the other hand, I suspect most Americans who know someone of the opposite ideology have experienced some genuine incivility these past few weeks. I have. Is it worse this year, or does it just seem that way? I have the impression that it is worse. And I think there are three causes.

First, I wonder whether Facebook and blogs have exacerbated the problem. I suspect a lot of conclusory/slightly-ad-hominem comments that people made to their ideological soulmates over the kitchen table in elections past are now appearing in the status bar on Facebook, which of course is open for all to see.

Second, I think Obama and Palin are pitch-perfect representatives of the cultural divide in a way that no national candidate has ever been before. To have them both in the same election is just too much for civility to bear. Obama represents everything I detest about the liberal elite. And Palin seems to really raise the ire of that same liberal elite.

Finally, I think the two cultures in American society have drifted further apart since 2004, thanks to the same-sex marriage decisions and Bush's mistakes in Iraq. Just when a consensus was starting to develop about the immorality of abortion and the need for better health care policy, along came the Massachusetts and California courts and a badly-botched counter-insurgency in Iraq.

These are not excuses, but I think they are reasons why this election has been so gut-wrenching. It's likely to get worse in the next few weeks.

The case against McCain, not strong enough

George Will makes the conservative -- that is to say, reasoned, principled -- case against a John McCain presidency. It is a strong case. It resonates with me. I am troubled by many aspects of a potential McCain presidency. But there remain two conclusive reasons why voting for McCain is the right choice.

First, there's Sarah Palin. By choosing Palin, McCain has helped to commit the future of the Republican party to conservative quarters.

Second, there's Barack Obama. Obama is not merely liberal. He is for abortion on demand, he refuses to oppose infanticide, he promises to put liberal activists on the federal courts, he promises dramatically to expand costly federal entitlements, including health insurance, and has already demonstrated his fecklessness in foreign relations and policy.

I am not enthusiastic about a McCain presidency. But the Candidate of the Past must be stopped.

True American femininity

Sarah Palin has inspired and awakened an enormous and politically influential, if often quiet, demographic: mothers. To observe that the liberals don't understand this group is to miss the significance of liberals' self-deception. As one Palin supporter put it, with considerable understatement, feminist groups such as NOW do "not represent me." And in Sarah Palin these women (including my own wife) have found more than a representative, they have found someone with whom they identify.

A colleague recently remarked to me that his wife detests politics. She never engages her acquaintances in political debate, never even shares her political views. When she recently expressed her antipathy to politics on her personal blog, several of her friends, all mothers, freely confessed their own disaffection with politics. And yet, my colleague informed me, all of these women go to the polls every four years and vote Republican. And this year, they are excited about doing so, because the Republican ticket contains one of their own.

If liberals are still wondering what's the matter with Kansas, they might ask the average American woman, who, as the Palin supporter stated, "are raising our families, who work if we have to, but love our country and our families first."

Obama and slavery

The inimitable Gerry Bradley puts Obama's moral self-deception into its proper historical framework. Obama's accommodation on abortion bears a striking resemblance to the apologies made 150 years ago for slavery. That is surely an uncomfortable fact for Obama, who identifies himself with the grievance politics of Black America, but it is undeniably a fact, nonetheless.

Perfect timing; Divine Providence

After watching Palin's speech last night, I remarked to a friend this morning that she is no Lady Thatcher, but that Obama and Biden must have been peeing their pants. My friend retorted, "She's no Thatcher yet."

That is Sarah Palin's "x" appeal among conservatives: she has extraordinary potential. Her potential is unrealized, but she has potential nonetheless. As Rudy Guliani put it, she is the future of the Republican party, and the future looks pretty good. In this respect, she resembles the Democrats' nominee for President, Barack Obama. Of course, the resemblance ends there.

Palin might turn out to be a big flop. She might never realize her potential. But right now, in the infancy of her career on the national political stage, potential is all that is expected of her. Contrast that expectation with the one now sitting upon Obama's shoulders. When he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention his potential was enough to satisfy. That was four years ago. Obama has not been running for president forever, it just seems like it.

Which begs the question: did Barack Obama peak too early? Or, put differently, did the Democrats tap him too late, after it had become painfully obvious that his potential was all puff and dander, completely devoid of substance? What might have happened had John Kerry tapped the Obama well in '04? Might Kerry be running for a second term as President today?

Thankfully, we'll never know. Which makes me believe that God still cares about America after all, and has great plans for her. Only Divine Providence could have arranged this chance for a conservative resurgence in spite of strong anti-Republican sentiment and the apparent inevitability of Barack Obama's coronation.

POTUS campaign trivia

How about this for curious: On the two tickets are represented the first state, and the 48th, 49th, and 50th. Not a good year for states added in the 19th century, apparently.

Palin for Veep

The Corner is abuzz about the Palin pick. With good reason. Almost no one saw it coming.

The best aspect of this pick might just be Palin's perfect positioning to make inroads into the culture of abortion. Consider this analysis:

For now, let's just give McCain credit for going for the Democratic Party's solar plexus. He picked a woman when his competitor couldn't. He picked a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome baby to run with him against a man who, as Jonah points out, couldn't bring himself to protect babies who survive abortion.

All of that matters. A lot. We could be witnessing the high-water mark of the pro-abortion movement. Imagine the damage that a pro-life, female Vice President can do to the abortion rights crowd. Imagine the immensity of her bully pulpit. Add the fact that she kept a child with Down Sydrome and her moral authority on this issue seems insuperable.

UPDATE: I just watched her speech. Just when you think her moral authority cannot possibly be any stronger, she discloses that she has a son serving in Iraq.

I hope the McCain campaign did its due diligence. This is almost too good to be true. As long as she doesn't have any dark skeletons in her closet, she's going to make Slow Joe Biden look like a used car salesman.

More on Democrats' antipathy to free speech

Powerline has the latest in a "series of near-daily 'Democrats vs. Free Speech' stories." Stanley Kurtz has now crossed the Dems' hawse with his inquiries into Obama's connections to the terrorist Bill Ayers. According to Politico, the Obama campaign responded with an effort to disrupt Kurtz's appearance on a Chicago radio program.

The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station's telephone number and the show's extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he's a conservative, which isn't in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups."

It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies," it continues.

Clearly, this issue touches a nerve in the Obama campain.

UPDATE: Guy Benson has a first-hand account.

So much for free speech

Barack Obama is trying to silence a group that is raising legitimate, unanswered questions about Obama's ties to the terrorist William Ayers. He is threatening to employ the Justice Department to pressure television stations that carry advertisements linking him to Ayers. And he is impliedly threatening to have the stations' broadcast licenses revoked, asserting that running the ads violates the stations' obligations to operate "in the public interest." That phrase is a term of art, the standard for determining which television stations get to broadcast and which ones do not.

I have not seen the ads. Perhaps they imply stronger inferences than the evidence will bear. However, Obama is a public figure, so the ads are almost certainly not defamatory. Cheaps shots? Perhaps. But in this country we happen to believe that tough questions in a political campaign are protected under the First Amendment. And we trust American citizens to distinguish between political ads that are legitimate and those that are over the line.

The bigger issue is this. If Candidate Obama is willing to go to such extremes to silence critics during a political campaign, imagine what a President Obama might do once he has actually obtained the reigns of power. The man obviously has little regard for the First Amendment. Add this to the list of things -- human life, marriage, free markets -- for which he has little regard, and one discerns a troubling pattern.

UPDATE: Police in Denver have arrested an ABC news producer for "trespass" on a public sidewalk, a physical impossibility. At the time of his arrest, the producer was attempting to photograph Democratic senators and DNC donors. How little do Obama's folks value free speech?

I am informed that Rush Limbaugh is covering this story on his radio show.

Remaking the world, secular European style

In case you've not yet picked up on the messianic ambitions of the Junior Senator from Illinois, we have this passage from his speech today in Berlin. "With an eye towards the future, with resolve in our heart, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again." The highly-secular Germans ate it up, averaging more than one applause interruption each minute throughout the speech.

Barack Obama and western Europe: religiously immanentizing the Eschaton.

Add hypocrisy to the list

Barack Obama is currently on his world tour running for... it's not clear what. One would be forgiven for concluding that he is hoping to be elected Emperor of the Secular Western World. In any event, Obama made a campaign stop at the Western Wall in Jerusalem yesterday morning, complete with campaign posters written in Hebrew. Predictably, some in attendance heckled, others chanted their support.

Rather than accept responsibility for turning a holy site into the host of a political convention, Obama had this to say: "It was rowdier than the last time I was there, you know? I mean, people were sort of, like, holerin'. You know I was expecting more reverence."

Obama has demonstrated an increasing number of unattractive vices in the last several months. Add hypocrisy.

Dangerous because so very naive

Barack Obama pledges to rid the world of nuclear weapons during his tenure as President. As if the goal were not sufficiently naive, his means are laughably so. "Obama said adhering to nonproliferation treaties would put pressure on nations such as North Korea and Iran."

The notion that Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be so shamed by our voluntary disarmament that they will give up their nuclear ambitions can only be maintained in a very small, very weak, or very immature mind. The Candidate of the Past must be defeated. We cannot afford to capitulate to thugs and terrorists.

The September 10 Candidate

We have here called Barack Obama the Candidate of the Past because of his extraordinary resemblence to Jimmy Carter. Obama is mired in the failed policy proposals of the 1970's.

As Andrew McCarthy today points out, Obama is also mired in the failed national security mindset of another moment of the past, September 10, 2001. McCarthy drives the point home:

When an elitist lawyer like Obama claims the criminal-justice system works against terrorists, he means it satisfies his top concern: due process. And on that score, he’s quite right: We’ve shown we can conduct trials that are fair to the terrorists. After all, we give them lawyers paid for by the taxpayers whom they are trying to kill, mounds of our intelligence in discovery, and years upon years of pretrial proceedings, trials, appeals, and habeas corpus.

As a national-security strategy, however, and as a means of carrying our government’s first responsibility to protect the American people, heavy reliance on criminal justice is an abysmal failure.

A successful counterterrorism strategy makes criminal prosecution a subordinate part of a much broader governmental response. Most of what is needed never happens in a courtroom. It happens in military operations against terrorist strongholds; intelligence operations in which jihadists get assassinated — without trial; intelligence collections in which we cozy up to despicable informants since only they can tell us what we need to know; and aggressive treasury actions to trace terror funds.

Barack Obama lacks the will to oversee these necessary operations, and he is far too enthralled with his own moral and intellectual superiority to deal honestly with the problem of terrorism. For the preservation of all that is good about Western civilization and this great nation, the Candidate of the Past must be defeated.

Let them eat... less

We've made the comparison before, but Barack Obama is now not merely making Jimmy Carter-esque policy proposals, he is now also sounding a lot like our Elder National Disgrace.

George Bush and McCain have suggested that me being willing to sit down with our adversaries is a sign of weakness and sign of appeasement.

Did he say "appeasement"? Like Carter's premature peace-in-our-time declaration after his meeting with the terrorist organization Hamas?

How about this from Obama?

We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.

Compare that with selections from Carter's infamous 1977 energy speeches:

All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.

and

One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public transportation system continues to decline.

Of course, we all think conservation is a good idea. But there is something unbecoming, un-American, and unimaginative about a President or candidate for the presidency telling Americans how to spend their money.

Are we prepared for four years of economic malaise, a projection to our enemies of a weak will, and feckless leadership in the face of real crises? That's what we will get with an Obama presidency.

Obama's vision for an activist judiciary

Ed Whelan has been carefully documenting the evidence -- thus far unrebutted -- that an Obama presidency would result in a dramatic increase in the number of liberal activists in the federal judiciary. Today he adds to the pile.

There's nothing too surprising here. Any reasonable reading of Obama's and McCain's speeches, votes, and campaign commitments leads to the parallel conclusions that a McCain presidency would at least marginally improve the federal judiciary and that an Obama presidency would cause significant deterioration in the third branch of government. Federal judges have difficult, lonely jobs. And the vast majority of them are talented, virtuous public servants. Obama's vision of a qualified federal judge is depressing, and is one more reason why an Obama presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States.

McCain's advisors on judges

One of the frequent and, I think, reasonable criticisms of John McCain is that he has not yet demonstrated a commitment to putting originalist judges on federal benches. In fact, with the Gang of Fourteen deal and his unfortunate comments about Justice Alito, McCain gave conservatives real reason to doubt his judgment on judicial picks.

I, for one, feel a little better now that McCain has announced the membership of his Judicial Advisory Committee. Chaired by Ted Olson and Sam Brownback, the Committee also includes pro-life and/or originalist stalwarts Gerry Bradley, Steven Calabresi, Rick Garnett, Robert George, Fred Thompson, and Eugene Volokh.

But wait! Is that Lindsey Graham I see in there? The Lindsey Graham who abetted McCain's abandonment of qualified, competent Bush nominees and undermined deployment of the Constitutional Option?

Let us hope the Committee makes its decisions by majority vote.

"Religious Right" still integral

An interesting read from USA Today:

With the deaths of prominent evangelical pastors Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy last year, funeral bells began tolling for the Religious Right. Political columnist E.J. Dionne wrote Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right, and theologian Jim Wallis offered The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. Even religious and civil liberties attorney John Whitehead, who assisted Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Clinton, joined the chorus with an article titled, "The Passing of the Christian Right."

These reports are at the very least premature, and in all likelihood dead wrong. High-profile leaders will come and go, but the strength and commitment of conservative Christians on the front lines of parish life are as strong as ever.

McCain's Health Care Proposal

Today on NRO, John McCain sets out his health care proposal. To my inexpert eye, the proposal seems to incorporate the best learning on this subject from the last several years. (I am curious to know what our resident economists think.)

The centerpiece of the proposal is individualized tax credits, which would supplement the credits currently granted to employers who insure their employees. A taxpayer who chooses the individual credit would be free to choose an insurer, to whom the credit would be paid on the taxpayers behalf. The system is designed to increase competition, with its attendant increase in quality and decrease in cost, while also increasing access.

Tax credits, which directly reduce tax liability, are more valuable than tax deductions, which reduce taxable income and thus only indirectly reduce tax liability. However, neither a credit nor a deduction is much use to someone who pays no taxes. Many of the poorest Americans have no tax liability. It is not clear how McCain's tax credit might benefit them. On the other hand, the poorest Americans are often eligible for Medicaid, and have their basic health care needs covered through that federal welfare program.

Kudos to McCain for a promising proposal. The man looks more conservative by the week.

McCain's Faith

The LA Times writes today about John McCain's faith:

Not long after he became the presumed Republican nominee, John McCain flew to New Orleans to face a skeptical audience -- conservative leaders of the Council for National Policy.

A questioner zeroed in on a topic McCain rarely addresses on the campaign trail, asking him to explain his faith in God.

McCain, an Episcopalian who attends a Baptist church in Phoenix, turned to a well-worn tale of the guard he met when he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. The man once loosened the ropes binding McCain, and later shared his Christian faith with McCain by silently sketching a cross in the prison yard with his sandal.

The story played well in an ad before the New Hampshire primary, but it was deeply disappointing to many at the New Orleans gathering, conservative activist Richard Viguerie recalled.

"He blew that question off by telling us about the faith of his jailer," said Viguerie. "It was very obvious to those three or four hundred conservative leaders there. . . . The vast, vast majority of them were either sitting on the sidelines or unenthusiastic about his impending nomination and he didn't move a single person."

McCain's reticence about raising the subject of his faith in public is all the more noticeable as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have spoken up about their beliefs as they campaign for the Democratic nomination.

The secular language of McCain's speeches, often rooted in patriotic themes of duty, honor and service, is also a striking contrast to that of President Bush, who bonded with evangelicals by threading religious language through his speeches and speaking about how faith rescued him from his struggles with drinking.

I am torn here. I don't think there is anything wrong with weaving the language of faith into your policy speeches like Bush did. If that is who you are as a candidate fine. On the other hand, we see where some of this language led in real policy terms. "Compassionate conservatism" became nothing more than big-government conservatism that spent way too much while achieving far too little (typical of anything big government-related).

If McCain shies away from that, good for him. And unlike some evangelicals, I do not feel the need to be placated by the stump speeches of political candidates.

Clinton wins big, race goes on

Despite being outspent by millions of dollars, Hillary Clinton looks to have pulled off a double digit win in the Keystone State. Governor Ed Rendell rightly calls last night's results a "game changer," and he is right.

Before Wrightgate broke, this was Obama's election. Since then, Obama has been seen in another light. Add to the fire the William Ayers story and Obama's boneheaded belittling of "bitter" working class Americans who "cling" to religion and guns.

All these stories will follow Obama into the general election if he ends up pulling it out in the Dem primary.

Now you have to really question whether this guy can win...or better yet, Democrat poobahs need to ask that question and adjust their support accordingly. He clearly is not the teflon candidate as his supporters had hoped. Teflon candidates don't get their rears served to them by an underwhelming candidate to the tune of 10 points or more.

Lastly, Democrats who are all over the airwaves saying this is not hurting their party are completely full of it. If this trend continues and super-delegates do indeed begin to move for Hillary, the Party will have a full fledged revolt on their hands. Are we to believe that denying the democratically elected Obama the nomination will not have repercussions with black voters and young voters? Nonsense.