The Republican Party will stand and fight in Philadelphia

A press release that just hit my in-box:

PA GOP: Strengthening The Republican Party In Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA – Republican Party of Pennsylvania Chairman Rob Gleason will be in Philadelphia on Tuesday, February 9^th, for a press conference regarding our efforts to build a stronger Philadelphia Republican Party.

“The Republican Party has failed Philadelphia,” Gleason said.  “One-party rule has failed the city and the Republican Party owes it to every resident of Philadelphia to stand up for the forgotten taxpayer.  I am confident that a stronger Republican Party will play an important role in making Philadelphia a better place to live and work.  We must build a more effective party.”

The Republican Party of Pennsylvania is leading an aggressive effort to recruit Republican committee members across the city.  To date, our staff and volunteers have personally called more than 20,000 registered Republicans and hosted hundreds at training sessions held throughout the city.  Our goal is to strengthen the Republican Party at the neighborhood level and engage voters in the political process.

There’ve been plenty of signs in recent months that the GOP wants to mount a comeback in Philly. Al Schmidt’s run for city controller, for one, and recent attempts by the state party to circumvent the nearly dormant local party structure. But this press conference is more than just a sign; it’s a declaration that the Republicans are going to compete again.

It’ll be an uphill battle. People are used to voting Democrat in this town. And there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical; the GOP, rhetorically at least, doesn’t have much interest in cities like Philadelphia. We’re not the “real America” that Republicans like Sarah Palin are forever carrying on about.

But: It’s rare in politics to hear a statement like “the Republican Party has failed Philadelphia.” Politicians and political parties generally don’t offer unsolicited admissions of failure; that the GOP — or a faction of it, anyway — has decided to push that statement out into the world certainly looks like a table-clearing move to try a fresh approach.

And though I’m not typically a fan of the GOP, I’m happy to see a Republican revival in Philadelphia. First, it’ll make a hell of a political story to follow in coming years — assuming that it can happen at all. And one-party governance really isn’t serving the city well. Competition would help. Let’s hope the Republicans can finally offer some.

The Tea Party, Joseph Farah and Sarah Palin: Trying to distinguish the fringe from the mainstream in the Republican Party

So let’s recap what we know about the National Tea Party convention in Nashville, shall we?

• Tom Tancredo opened the convention with a speech falsely asserting that President Obama was elected by non-English speaking foreigners and urging the reinstement of Jim Crow era voting rules.

• Joseph Farah, proprietor of the truly nutty World Net Daily site, followed up with a Friday night speech propounding “birther” accusations against President Obama.

• And on Sunday, Sarah Palin, the Republican Party’s most recent vice presidential nominee, will be the convention’s keynote speaker on Sunday.

Whenever liberals point out some of the nuttier stuff at the Tea Party gatherings — the racist signs, the comparisons of Obama to Hitler or the talk of revolution and secession — Tea Party sympathizers offer a couple of excuses: The nutty stuff is at the fringe, not really representative of the group as a whole and it’s not fair that you focus on that! Or that the whole thing amounts to political theater, not to be taken that seriously.

But this convention is making it harder for a reasonable observer to distinguish between the nuts and the mainstream. They’re all on the same stage together. That’s a problem for the Tea Party folks — but it’s also a problem for the Republican Party that’s tried to harness the Tea Party wind. Because if Sarah Palin — vice presidential nominee and somebody who is still talked about as the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2012 — isn’t a “mainstream Republican,” who is? And if she’s taking the same stage where Tancredo and Farah have been propounding their foolishness, why should the rest of us not believe that the birther and nativist nuts aren’t welcome in polite Republican circles?

Palin, I suppose, could shock us on Sunday with a speech that decries the conspiracy theories that have taken the stage before her. Something like: “My friends, we are all united in our love of America, our belief in small government and the need for low, low taxes. But we cannot allow paranoia and falsehoods to be the foundation of our case. That’s what’s gone on here this week, and for the sake of our movement and our country it must stop.”

Call in Palin’s “Sister Souljah” moment. It would make folks like me stop and reconsider who Sarah Palin is and what she’s all about.

Personally, I don’t think Palin will do any such thing. She’s done her own bit to whip up paranoia about the president and his policies. She and the Tea Party fringe are made for each other. And the Republican Party, it seems ever more clear, is OK with that.

Gallup poll: Democrats love socialism

According to the Gallup poll, 53 percent of them do. I’ve already seen one Republican-leaning friend trumpet this result on his Facebook page. And my response to him is the same that I had for the “crazy Republican” poll we saw earlier this week: Beware polls that too neatly confirm your biases.

In this case, it’s pretty easy to look past the scary headline and realize that Dems don’t secretly love Chairman Mao. Here’s the baseline question:

“Socialism” you’ll note, isn’t really defined here. It’s not hard to imagine that a number of Democrats and left-leaning independents heard the question and thought of European social democracy — where private enterprise is still firmly in private hands, but where there’s a pretty ample safety net for the poor and infirm.

Indeed, dig deeper into the Gallup poll and you find that Democrats don’t differ that much from Republicans on some key findings: 95 percent of Dems view small business in a positive light; 85 percent laud free enterprise; 82 percent like entrepreneurs.

Then again, only 53 percent of Democrats say they like “capitalism.” But small businesses, free enterprise and entrepreneurs are the stuff of capitalism. How does all of this square. I’m not sure. But again: It’s easy to imagine that a number of Democrats heard the question and thought of Wall Street bankers handing out big bonuses on the taxpayer dime. “Socialism” and “capitalism” cover rather broad categories, but when you get to the nuts and bolts of this poll, Dems and Republicans aren’t that different on some of the key issues.

The main difference, really, is that Dems have a much more positive view of the federal government. Now Republicans might grumble about that. But having a positive view of federal government is not the same thing as being socialist. The headline is misleading, but the headline’s the only thing that most people are going to hear.

(Hat tip: Deregulator)

Can somebody explain today’s unemployment rate numbers to me?

New York Times:

The American unemployment rate dipped from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January, the Labor Department reported Friday, buoying hopes that the worst job market in at least a quarter-century is finally improving.

The economy shed another 20,000 net jobs during the course of the month, underscoring the considerable strains remaining in millions of American households.

Wait. What? Unemployment is down — but so is the number of jobs available to take? How can that be possible?

The Times story explains there’s a fair amount of hinkyness to the numbers. “The message is, you can’t believe what they tell you,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR Inc. in New York. But the overall message — thanks to the unemployment rate dipping — is cautious-but-optimistic.

I’m guessing — but don’t know for sure — that the dipping unemployment rate might mean that fewer people are actually looking for work because they’ve given up. Only the people who aren’t working but who are actively looking for a job are counted in the number. Give in to despair and the unemployment rate suddenly looks better, even if there are fewer available jobs out there. That means the jobs added-subtracted number is the real number to watch right now.

The Tea Party, Tom Tancredo and racism

We here at Philadelphia Weekly have taken a little heat for this week’s Jonathan Valania cover story that, more than a few times, asserts that the roots of the Tea Party movement have more than a little to do with white folks’ discomfort with a black president. I’m no fan of the Tea Party movement, but — despite the odd frequency of questionable signs at some of the rallies — I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Still, if Tea Partiers don’t want to get brushed with the “racist” smear, they could help their cause by not featuring Tom Tancredo as a key speaker at one of their gatherings:

Tom Tancredo opened what’s being billed as the first Tea Party Convention with a bang.

The former congressman from Colorado and 2008 Republican presidential candidate blasted President Obama, saying “people who could not even spell the word ‘vote’, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.”

It’s probably less accurate to call Tancredo a “racist” than a “nativist” — but the way Tancredo practices it, that’s only the barest step up. It’s certainly inflammatory to suggest that President Obama was elected president only because the foreign hordes defeated the will of real Americans. It’s not only inflammatory, it’s also … utterly false.

We’ll leave aside, too, the “Barack Hussein Obama” reference. (What? It’s his name? Are you saying I can’t use his name? Of course not. But there’s a way of saying that name that … insinuates stuff. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.) We’ll just mention that Tancredo mentioned reinstating “literacy tests” at election polls — tests, that of course, were last seen during Jim Crow to keep blacks from voting.

Read the CNN story, and you’ll see that Tea Party Nation — the organizer of this big conference — is already distancing itself from Tancredo. But Tancredo did what Tancredo does. If you don’t want the racist-nativist guilt by association, don’t invite him to be a speaker. Otherwise, you deserve what you get.

David Sills and the Class of 2015: Why Lane Kiffin might be the most evil man in college football

I don’t typically say much about sports in these parts — hell, I don’t usually pay all that much attention — but this story about the new USC football coach caught my eye:

Lane Kiffin really is getting a jump on recruiting.

No sooner had the Trojans new coach put the finishing touches on the Class of 2010 recruits, that he turned his attention to the Class of 2015.

Thursday evening Kiffin received a verbal commitment from 13-year old wunderkind quarterback David Sills of Bear, Del.

Too young?

Yes.

Not according to his personal coach Steve Clarkson, who has mentored some of the game’s best quarterbacks including current USC starter Matt Barkley.

“He’s already six feet as a 13-year old,” Clarkson said. “And he’s breaking down NFL footage.”

This is … just so wrong. David Sills, I’m sure, is a wonderful 13-year-old quarterback … but he’s still a 13-year-old. It’s scary enough to have to make major life decisions when you’re 17 years old; why would you want to “commit” to a path when you’re 13, college is still five years away and there’s so much life to experience between now and then. Well, easy: If USC is recruiting you already, how cool is that? You can’t blame him for taking the opportunity.

But you can blame his parents, and you can blame his coach Steve Clarkson and you can blame USC coach Lane Kiffin. Somebody in that group of adults should’ve had a cool enough head to say something like: “Why don’t you play a year or two of high school football first before we start making decisions based on your Pee Wee League?” Somebody should’ve had the sense to say: “Let’s wait it out a little bit. If you’re good enough in a few years, the opportunity will almost certainly still be there.”

Somebody should’ve said: “Hey. Why don’t you just be a kid?”

Peggy Noonan is wrong about liberals and terrorism

Peggy Noonan in today’s Wall Street Journal:

The biggest historic gain of this administration may turn out to be that Democrats in the White House experienced leadership in the age of terror, came to have responsibility in a struggle that needs and will need our focus. It wasn’t good that half the country thought jihadism was some little Republican obsession.

Oh, what utter, irredeemable bullcrap.

Liberals, like conservatives, had a pretty good view of what happened in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania on 9/11. We were horrified by it every bit as much as conservatives were, too. Many of us dropped our dovishness to support the overthrow of the Taliban, and a few of us — by no means all, and certainly not me — even supported the invasion of Iraq because of the attacks.

I was watching Meet the Press the Sunday after 9/11, the famous interview where Dick Cheney told Tim Russert that America might have to work “the dark side” in order to fight terror. And I’ll admit that I thought this: “Well, yeah.” I backtracked from that over time as the implications of what “the dark side” actually entails.

Liberals, like conservatives, have always wanted to protect this country from terrorism. Always. Where we’ve differed from conservatives, though, is in our willingness to compromise longstanding American laws and values on torture, eavesdropping and the rule of law. We’ve wondered if the conservative rush — and in some cases, the conservative glee — to proclaim a “clash of the civilizations” didn’t actually give Osama bin Laden and his ilk exactly what they wanted. We’ve suspected that certain methods of demonstrating American toughness have actually created more terrorists than they eliminated. And yes, we’ve had a fair amount of contempt for Republican politicians who wielded 9/11 like a battle-axe in the efforts to secure political gains for themselves. Most of all, we’ve wanted to apply a restraining hand on those who would have us become the evil we seek to defeat.

We’ve tried to find balance, knowing that Dick Cheney’s “one percent doctrine” is, ultimately, untenable — that we have to live with some risk in our lives and that crushing out everything that made America America might make us feel safer, but wouldn’t ultimately eliminate the risk.

I’m certain that if you look hard enough, you can find groups and people who think that any American armed response to 9/11 was too much. Those people don’t represent me, and I doubt they represent the mass of folks who make up the left, center-left and other Democratic voters who make up half the country.

I hate terrorism. I know the risks are real. But I also value American freedom and traditions. I don’t blame Republicans for being very focused on terrorism; I blame them for doing it wrong.

Joan Darrah’s life under ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’

I’m sure this was very, very useful for unit cohesion:

For most of my career in the Navy, I lived two lives and went to work each day wondering if that would be my last. Whenever the admiral would call me to his office, 99.9 percent of me was certain that it was to discuss an operational issue. But there was always that fear in the back of my mind that somehow I had been “outed,” and he was calling me to his office to tell me that I was fired. So many simple things that straight people take for granted could have ended my career, even a comment such as “My partner and I went to the movies last night.”

I had pretended to be straight and played the games most gays in the military are all too familiar with — not daring to have a picture of Lynne on my desk, being reluctant to go out to dinner with her, telling her not to call me at work except in a real emergency, not going to church together, avoiding shopping for groceries together and generally staying out of sight of anyone I knew when we were together. I didn’t want to have to lie about who Lynne was or have someone conclude that we were more than casual friends.

On NPR, Howard Zinn and JD Salinger: I think it’s dandy to speak ill of the dead

I took a little heat last week for offering up a rather harsh appraisal of the late JD Salinger and Catcher in the Rye. Some of the many commenters thought I was wrong, but more than a few thought I was just being a jerk for being so negative upon the occasion of the man’s death. As it happened, Salinger’s death coincided roughly with that of leftist historian Howard Zinn, about whom I offered a rather nicer tribute.

NPR also ran an obit of Zinn, which featured a really harsh quote from conservative activist David Horowitz.

“There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn’s intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect,” Horowitz declared in the NPR story. “Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse.”

Now NPR is taking heat from lots of folks on the liberal side who think Horowitz’s comment was disrespectful, to say the least. And all I can say to those people is: Tough taters.

I know, I know: We’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. By and large, that’s a pretty nice custom. But it really shouldn’t apply to public figures — and Salinger and Zinn both qualify.

The reason we care about the deaths of Salinger and Zinn is that they both loomed large, to varying extents, in our culture and in our discourse. There’s lots of fans of both folks, but there are also plenty of critics. And any honest appraisal of a public person’s life and career includes both.

As it happens, I wish NPR had found some other critic besides David Horowitz — who would also fit the definition of a “fringe” figure by the standards he applies to Zinn. But it’s OK. I hope they quote me when he dies.

Michael Traynor: The death penalty isn’t just wrong – it’s unworkable

Michael Traynor, a president emeritus of the American Law Institute, explains why that organization — which provided the intellectual foundations for modern death penalty law in the United States — has withdrawn its support for the penalty:

Now, after searching analysis by our country’s top legal minds, the institute has concluded that the system it created does not work and cannot be fixed. It concluded that we cannot devise a death penalty system that will ensure fairness in process or outcome, or even that innocent people will not be executed.

The death penalty cannot balance the need for consistency in sentencing with the need for individualized determinations. Its administration is unequal across racial groups. There is a grave lack of resources for defense lawyers. The law is distorted by the politics of judicial elections, and it consumes a disproportionate share of public resources.

To be sure, these are problems that can and do afflict the entirety of our justice system — not just the death penalty. But only the death penalty makes impossible any opportunity to rectify or mitigate such injustices. It’s awful when we find out a man convicted of murder served decades in prison when he was actually innocent — a story that we hear with some regularity. But at least he stands a chance of getting out. You cannot undo death.