A fatal cancer on the Republican Party

NEW YORK (AP)—Major League Baseball has agreed to push back the start time of a potential World Series Game 6 by eight minutes to allow Democrat Barack Obama to purchase a half-hour of air time on the Fox network.

Baseball spokesman Pat Courtney said Thursday that the game time would now be set for 8:35 p.m.

The Obama presidential campaign said Oct. 9 that it had bought the 8-8:30 p.m slot on CBS and NBC.

“Fox will accommodate Senator Obama’s desire to communicate with voters in this long-form format,” network spokesman Lou D’Ermilio said in a statement. “We are pleased that Major League Baseball has agreed to delay the first pitch of World Series Game 6 for a few minutes in order for Fox to carry his program on Oct. 29. If requested, the network would be willing to make similar time available to Senator McCain’s campaign.”

The World Series has not gone to a sixth game since 2003.

The decision was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Palin’s Talent Scout

by Scott Horton

Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper’s Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.

No wonder Bill Kristol has remained so positive about her while other neocons have fled. He helped push her to the veep ticket—and won out against Karl Rove.

In June 2007, a cruise hosted by the political journal The Weekly Standard set anchor in Juneau, Alaska. Standard editors William Kristol and Fred Barnes then lunched with Governor Sarah Palin. It was a moment of discovery to equal Hernando Cortez’s landing at Veracruz.

The Daily Telegraph’s Tim Shipman saw this encounter as the launch of a Neoconservative project surrounding Palin. He interviewed a former Republican White House official now at the American Enterprise Institute about Palin:

“She’s bright and she’s a blank page. She’s going places and it’s worth going there with her.” Asked if he sees her as a “project,” the former official said: “Your word, not mine, but I wouldn’t disagree with the sentiment.

Kristol appeared on Fox News on June 30, 2008, confidently predicting that McCain would select Sarah Palin and as a public display of support, oil prices would miraculously fall.

Kristol can fairly lay claim to having “discovered” Palin for Washington political circles. Palin’s name appeared in 41 Weekly Standard articles since the Juneau meeting—starting with a paean entitled “The Most Popular Governor” that ran right after the reception.

Indeed, Kristol, who was a loyal McCain supporter in 2000 and is often thought to have suffered exclusion from Bush’s inner circle as a result, may have played a key role in McCain’s decision to tap Palin as his running mate. A McCain campaign insider described to me a tight three-way competition between Palin, Joe Lieberman, and Mitt Romney in the final days. McCain himself, it was no secret, wanted Lieberman to be his running mate, but his senior advisors were adamant that Lieberman could not be sold to the Republican base. A Lieberman nomination might risk exposing serious fissures in the party at the convention in Saint Paul.

The inner circle broke down between two choices. Those close to Karl Rove united around Romney. Rove engaged in heavy lobbying in an effort to get McCain to embrace Romney. Others, of whom Kristol was the most prominent, pushed Sarah Palin—arguing that she was young, popular, vigorous, unknown and had the right connections to the Religious Right bloc which had proven so important to Republican wins in 2000 and 2004. Karl Rove himself recognized, with typical insight, that Palin was the real challenger. He attacked Virginia Governor Tim Kaine as an ill-suited candidate for the vice presidential slot on the Democratic ticket. Kaine, of course, had a resume almost identical to Palin’s—he had been a small city mayor and then had served, for less than two years, as governor—and McCain campaign insiders understood the swipe differently from others. Did Rove really care about Kaine’s darkhorse candidacy for the Democrats, or was he launching a cloaked attack on Palin? (In a recent appearance, Rove was asked if he thought Palin would make a good president. “I don’t know” was his unenthusiastic answer.

Kristol, in any event, was quick to press the campaign for the Palin candidacy with the party’s faithful. Taking a cue from the Straussian handbook, Kristol appeared on Fox News on June 30, 2008, confidently predicting that McCain would select Sarah Palin and as a public display of support, oil prices would miraculously fall.

And indeed, weeks after the Palin pick, oil prices did tumble—though analysts link this to concerns about the crisis in financial institutions and not Sarah Palin.

After the nomination, conservative columnists have been very critical of the Palin candidacy. Some have openly distanced themselves from it, such as National Review’s Kathleen Parker, who called on Palin voluntarily to quit the ticket. David Brooks referred to Palin as a “cancer on the Republican Party.” Peggy Noonan was overheard grumbling about the choice as “political bullshit” on an open mike on MSNBC. George Will told a gathering of Senate aides that Palin was “obviously not qualified” to be vice president. Former presidential speechwriter David Frum called the choice a gamble and then said he felt it was “disturbing.” Charles Krauthammer called the choice “near suicidal.”

Kristol is one of the few conservative columnists whose support of Palin has been unflinching. He has used his space as a New York Times columnist to tout her candidacy repeatedly. But in the process Kristol has never bothered to disclose his role in the decision making process that led to the Palin pick. Kristol’s Weekly Standard has figured as Palin’s chief defender, and its writers have gone after even those who dare to pose questions about Palin’s candidacy. Bill Kristol, it seems, has much at stake in the Palin candidacy.

There is another fatal cancer on the Republican Party, and that is the “We are the true Americans” cancer, which is divisive. It reminds me of all of those good people who believe that they are the “true children of God” and that all others are damned.

The irony is that a true American recognizes that diversity of political opinion is our right. A true American doesn’t believe that those who think differently than he/she does about taxation, war, abortion/reproductive rights, gay rights, immigration, fixing the economy, etc., are somehow inferior, or even unpatriotic. A true American doesn’t believe that “true Americans” are necessarily conservative — or that they are necessarily liberal. For that matter, a true American is not necessarily a moderate either.

A true American wants the greatest voter turnout in all areas of the country, including those areas that won’t favor his/her candidate of choice. A true American will accept whichever candidate wins and will regard him as our national leader for the next four years.

One more thing: Just what does “We (that is, the true and patriotic Americans) believe in the flag” mean? Do they think that the rest of us don’t have special regard for the symbol of the American flag? Were any of us to ask members of a cheering crowd why they were cheering after that statement, we would get some stunned silence.

#6: Call the nurse because it’s time for your psychiatric meds.

Let the Blame Game Begin
James Carville and Paul Begala

As Barack Obama and the Democrats appear poised for an historic sweep, we have a message for our Republican friends: It is time to point fingers.

We are pro-finger-pointing. We disagree strongly with Gov. Sarah Palin who said recently, “Do you notice that our opponents sure have spent a lot of time looking at the past and pointing fingers? You look to the past because that’s where you find blame, but we’re…looking to the future, because that’s where you find solutions.” On the contrary, Governor, blame assignment, while much maligned, is essential to determining what went wrong and how to set it right. Besides, it’s a hell of a spectator sport. Here’s our primer for a little game we like to call Big Losers Always Make Excuses (BLAME):

First — a couple of ground rules. You can’t blame the press or minorities. Sure, media-bashing is part of the conservative catechism, and minority voters are likely to support Barack Obama in record numbers. But finger-pointing is only interesting when you point at someone on your team. Republicans need a civil war — a steel cage death match — to sort out what they stand for. Scapegoating outsiders won’t purge the party of what’s rotting it on the inside.

Here’s the most important thing about finger-pointing: you have to start early. If you’re a Republican who wants to avoid blame for the current meltdown, you cannot afford to wait until after the election is over.

The smartest people in the conservative movement are already pointing like a bird dog on a South Georgia quail hunt. David Brooks and Bill Kristol are leading the way. Mr. Brooks, representing the intellectual wing of the conservative movement, called Ms. Palin, “a fatal cancer to the Republican Party.” Attaboy, Brooksie. Score one for the brainiacs.

Mr. Kristol, on the other hand, blames neither Ms. Palin nor Sen. John McCain, but rather McCain’s campaign advisers, writing of the campaign: “Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic.” See? That’s how you do it. Kristol can’t say McCain’s problem is that he supported the Iraq war, (which Kristol advocated) or that he chose Sarah Palin (whom Kristol praised). So rather than play defense, Bill went on offense, blaming McCain’s Steve Schmidt-led campaign. But we have a feeling this fight will only begin when the Schmidt hits the fan.

But where are the other voices? We need to hear, for example, from Karl Rove. Whom will he blame? We stipulate that Karl is a genius — albeit a genius whose advice took Pres. Bush from a 91 percent approval rating down to 26. With the House of Bush ablaze, Karl is going to have to do some quick finger-pointing before they change they change his nickname from The Architect to The Arsonist.

How about Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other radio personalities? They never liked McCain much — but his campaign cratered only when he embraced their wild attacks on Sen. Obama. It was only after Mr. McCain borrowed the Limbaugh-Hannity line on Bill Ayers, only after Gov. Palin accused Mr. Obama of “pallin’ around with terrorists,” that the bottom fell out for Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin. We’re betting the hot air boys will blame the intellectuals. After all, if you want to make an omelet, you’ve got to break a few eggheads.

The Republican Party is atomizing, and each faction must participate in Project BLAME. The neocons may want to blame the theocons. The economic conservatives will likely blame the big spenders. The conflagration will be so multi-dimensional we’ll need a program to sort out the players. They will need to answer fundamental questions: What does it mean to be a Republican? Do Republicans support laissez-faire or nationalized banking? Do Republicans support a balanced budget or half-trillion-dollar deficits? Do Republicans want a “humble foreign policy” like George W. Bush, or preventive war against countries that pose no threat, like, umm, George W. Bush? Are Republicans the party of limited government or a vast Medicare prescription drug benefit? Are they wary of Big Brother or eager to expand warrantless wiretaps? Do they support Christian values or torture? Are they the party that believes that cutting-edge technology can shoot a missile out of the sky or the party that believes humans and dinosaurs walked the earth simultaneously?

These questions should define the 2012 GOP presidential primaries. So start blaming, all you would-be candidates. That means you, Ms. Palin, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist. Hurry up. You only have 1,165 days left until the Iowa Caucuses.

James Carville and Paul Begala were senior strategists for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign. They’d like everyone to know it’s not their fault.