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Shorter Rudy: Platanos en Tentacion used to be my favorite starter, but since 9/11 it's Empanada de Queso all the way!

Anyone else yearn for the halcyon days when all a Republican thought they had to do to win Florida's Cuban vote was ineptly roll a few cigars and promise to make Castro their bitch?

It is kind of saddening to see the venal, petty, disgruntled potshots some of the A-list blogpundits are taking at Barack Obama. For them, it seems he's just not enough the hard-line liberal, not enough the Party man. (Funny, that, considering you don't have to look too far back to see these same blogpundits attacking as demanding "ideological purity" critics of the now-discredited and clearly unreliable Yellow Dog Democrats.)

One expects a Dominionist candidate like Mitt Romney, a traditional neo-authoritarian candidate like Rudi Giuliani, and knuckleheaded television clowns to attack Obama. After all, they will attack any Democrat for any number of reasons -- mainly daring to be so unpatriotic as to refuse to be a Republican at least by name.

And one even expects Democratic candidates to criticize other Democrats so as to set themselves apart, for whatever reason. Which is why Hillary Clinton, the darling of some bloggers, is attacking Obama as being too progressive.

When I look at Barack Obama, I look as a skeptic of all the candidates. But of the Democratic offerings, I see someone who's not waving anti-corporate rhetoric like a machine gun (like John Edwards), and who's not invisible behind the managed and massaged messaging of handlers (like Hillary Clinton). Maybe what bothers the blogpundits is that Obama is actually appealing to Republicans.

And it's an appeal unlike what, say, Joe Lieberman has. For one thing, Obama is against the war on Iraq. For another thing, Obama doesn't dress up like a Republican while calling himself a Democrat. (Some of the blogpundits' favorite Yellow Dogs of the past can't make the same claim.) But I think the main thing is that Obama uses measured rhetoric. He's not much of a centrist in terms of policy, but he uses centrist rhetoric.

What that means is that Obama appeals to Republicans who are utterly disgusted with their own party's slate of idiots. This unlike Hillary Clinton, who couldn't not help but mock what Republicans might have supported her (by "seeing the light"). And unlike John Edwards, who I doubt even wants to get any support from Republicans.

Will he win? Of course I have no idea. But he does appeal to me for the mere fact that he's winning independents and conservatives over to his generally progressive views. That, I feel, is the opportunity he offers to changing the political climate in this country.

It means bad news for blogpundits who thrive on divisiveness, whose bank accounts could be severely impacted by the rise of a more of consensus political climate. But they shouldn't worry so much. There always will be idiots to oppose and rant about, and we still may see the Republican Party implode and reinvent itself for the first time in 40 years, and that certainly would be entertaining fodder.

Via Alas, a blog, we learn of the gender ratios of paid and volunteer staffs for the various presidential campaigns:

At The Huffington Post, Zephyr Teachout and Kelly Nuxoll provide a breakdown of presidential campaign staffs by gender. (They also provide links to an explanation of their methodology and a spreadsheet of their data)....

Just two of 15 senior Edwards staffers are women, with women filling 37 percent of the top-paid roles. Three of Obama’s 12 senior staffers are women, and women fill 45 percent of the highest-paying jobs. In fact, of all the leading candidates (the list also includes Huckabee, Richardson, Romney, and Thompson) the only candidate who did not favor male staffers was Clinton. On her campaign, eight of 14 senior staffers, 12 of the top-20 staffers, and 52 percent of the highest-paid staffers are women. Women are also much more likely to play important strategic roles in the Clinton campaign; in the other campaigns, women are more likely to work in finance and internal operations.

This may seem like petty stuff, but I think it foreshadows the gender breakdown of executive staff under a Clinton administration. As I’ve written before, gender matters. Women understand, and care about, women’s interests, which is one reason many women are supporting Clinton despite reservations about her politics.

Via AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth:

So many people so insecure about their sexual orientation that they demand a Constitutional Amendment! So Rudy Giuliani has flip-flopped his position and now finds room for Constitutional homophobia in his vision of a police-state America:

Still liking Giuliani, all you moderates out there? Giuliani was against bashing gays in the US Constitution before he was for it. What a freaking hypocrite, the man is pretending on every single issue to be a "real" conservative when he's simply lying. Giuliani just might give Romney a run for his money as the biggest phony and flip-flopper among the GOP candidates....

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, told The Hill Saturday that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I suppose that's one way for social conservatives to prevent themselves from "choosing to be gay."

Republican candidates don't get the internet at all, it seems:

Conservative bloggers associated with the “Save the Debate” petition seem to be unconvinced that Republican candidates have really grasped the significance of the YouTube debate. George Ajjan, writing in New Jersey’s Herald News, takes Republicans to task for their failure to understand basic aspects of the political internet:

The comments of those skeptical about the YouTube debates sadly exemplify many of the traditional and stereotypical shortcomings of Republicans. The GOP has got to shatter the image of country-club elitism that plagues the party. Giuliani’s campaign prioritizing fundraising over a one-day commitment to appear before millions of viewers and answer tough questions directly from the electorate is deplorable and plays right into that regrettable typecast….

As far as YouTube itself goes, the issue is not that national Republicans don’t want to use new technologies. Both Giuliani and Romney have invested heavily in their online efforts and have specifically touted their embrace of YouTube as a campaigning medium. But their behavior seems to indicate the belief that the internet is a switch they can turn on and off, depending upon whether they’re in the mood to communicate. But the internet is always “on,” although it’s not always “on your terms.”

Until our party truly grasps that, we will continue to alienate voters and activists, especially young people for whom the internet is not “new,” but an integral part of their political upbringing.

The Republicans don’t have a technology problem, per se. They have an arrogance problem, and it’s spilling over into their online outreach efforts. Coming at a time when polls show young voters abandoning the GOP en masse, this bodes ill for the elephants.

The Right Field.

This is more than just arrogance, though. The internet is a medium that lends itself to free speech, egalitarian values (at least as far as right to ones own opinion goes), empowering the people.

The internet might have made sense in the old Republican party of Barry Goldwater, but it is really nothing but a threat to (or at best only a tool to be exploited by) modern day neo-Republicans who have ditched libertarian values in favor of big government as big brother.

In other words, it is not modern Republican arrogance that puts them at odds with the internet, but rather modern Republican culture that is diametrically opposed to a medium that gives us peasants a way of talking back at them ... and talking amongst ourselves.

Can the neo-Republicans and their vision of authoritarian government keeping the people in line succeed in the internet age? I doubt it. The party is already fraying and showing serious signs of breaking. They are going to have to reinvent themselves or destroy the internet to preserve their privilege.

On this day, the Democrats in Congress seem very very small, while Al Gore is like a giant.

I wish he would run. Then I would get really interested. I want to be inspired by the frontrunners. They hit the right notes, mostly, but really I feel like I'm watching a bunch of children fighting for the spotlight in the school musical.

And they have been almost inspiring so far because the Republican candidates are just so much more pathetic and stupid.

Help!

They just can't seem to stand how Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the Republican contenders for the White House. I can't count how many times I've heard the "expert" reporters on Washington Week, This Week, the NewsHour and other mainstream media outlets crow how Giuliani's private life, support of gay rights and acknowledgment of women's authority over their own bodies mean that he is in for trouble as the primaries approach -- even as his political star rises week by week when it comes to what the people want.

While there's no doubt that the front-runners today can't be considered de facto front-runners come 2008 -- witness how Hillary Clinton continues her slow implosion of being right but not very presidential with each and every public appearance -- it's funny how the media treats the candidates.

Note how the same pundits claim that Clinton is unstoppable.

Thesis: The folks in the media love a good story, and conflict makes for a good story. A Giuliani nomination would be rather dull conflict-wise, since on social issues he's much more like a Democrat. It's hard to paint black-and-white -- "right" vs. "left" -- political storytelling with Rudy carrying the GOP banner. (And if he by chance does win the nomination, then the media figures can delight in how he "defied expectations" -- just their own expectations, but never mind that.)

On the other hand, these folks love the idea of a polarizing figure like Hillary Clinton getting the Democratic nod. Then there will certainly be a nice and ugly campaign to cover, full of overblown rhetoric that will make writing political stories so much easier and fun.

In other words, the drama the mainstream media are painting arises out of their own preconceptions, their own inside-the-Beltway brand of conventional wisdom.

[Personally I don't plan to vote for Rudy, even if he's up against Hillary (who is at best 4th in my Democratic nomination preferences, behind Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson -- and Al Gore, too, if he runs), but he's a hell of a lot less frightening than the brown-nosing John McCain, the two-faced Mitt Romney, the Dominion-minded Sam Brownback, the slicker-than-Willie Newt Gingrich and the other ugly-of-uglies in American politics.]

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They just can't seem to stand how Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the Republican contenders for the White House. I can't count how many times I've heard the "expert" reporters on Washington Week, This Week, the NewsHour and other mainstream media outlets crow how Giuliani's private life, support of gay rights and acknowledgment of women's authority over their own bodies mean that he is in for trouble as the primaries approach -- even as his political star rises week by week when it comes to what the people want.

While there's no doubt that the front-runners today can't be considered de facto front-runners come 2008 -- witness how Hillary Clinton continues her slow implosion of being right but not very presidential with each and every public appearance -- it's funny how the media treats the candidates.

Note how the same pundits claim that Clinton is unstoppable.

Thesis: The folks in the media love a good story, and conflict makes for a good story. A Giuliani nomination would be rather dull conflict-wise, since on social issues he's much more like a Democrat. It's hard to paint black-and-white -- "right" vs. "left" -- political storytelling with Rudy carrying the GOP banner. (And if he by chance does win the nomination, then the media figures can delight in how he "defied expectations" -- just their own expectations, but never mind that.)

On the other hand, these folks love the idea of a polarizing figure like Hillary Clinton getting the Democratic nod. Then there will certainly be a nice and ugly campaign to cover, full of overblown rhetoric that will make writing political stories so much easier and fun.

In other words, the drama the mainstream media are painting arises out of their own preconceptions, their own inside-the-Beltway brand of conventional wisdom.

[Personally I don't plan to vote for Rudy, even if he's up against Hillary (who is at best 4th in my Democratic nomination preferences, behind Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson -- and Al Gore, too, if he runs), but he's a hell of a lot less frightening than the brown-nosing John McCain, the two-faced Mitt Romney, the Dominion-minded Sam Brownback, the slicker-than-Willie Newt Gingrich and the other ugly-of-uglies in American politics.]

read more