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LIGHTNING ROUND: RADIO KILLED THE GOP STAR (AND THE INTERNET WILL SAVE IT!)
- It's (almost) official: Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State in the Obama administration. For homework, read Spencer Ackerman on the loyalists Clinton will likely bring to State and how that could affect Obama's foreign policy.
- Timothy Geithner is expected to head the Obama Treasury, as Robert Kuttner suggested in September. Other likely appointments include Bill Richardson for Commerce Secretary, Patrick Gaspard for Political Director, and Ret. Gen. James L. Jones for National Security Adviser.
- Al Franken is claiming that the ongoing Minnesota recount now has him behind incumbent Norm Coleman by double digits, with about half of the ballots counted. And for true political junkies, you can watch a live feed of the recount here.
- Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed last night while concluding a speech at the Federalist Society but was released from George Washington University Hospital this morning. A battery of tests indicated "he had not suffered a stroke or other heart-related incident."
- Barack Obama's 21-month campaign for raised half a billion dollars online, according to The Washington Post. The president-elect has also extended his influence to pitching for Jim Martin in a Georgia radio spot and recording a video promoting Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
- Marin Cogan has an excellent piece in The New Republic on conservatism's new phantom menace: reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. On the same subject, this post by Nate Silver comes about as close to the Platonic ideal as I've ever seen towards explaining the relationship between talk radio to the conservative movement: "There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion. ... Stimulation [what conservative talk radio does -MD], however, is somewhat the opposite of persuasion. You're not going to persuade someone of something when you're (literally, in Ziegler's case) yelling in their ear. The McCain campaign was all about stimulation. The Britney Spears ads weren't persuasive, but they sure were stimulating! "Drill, baby, drill" wasn't persuasive, but it sure was stimulating! Sarah Palin wasn't persuasive, but she sure was (literally, in Rich Lowry's case) stimulating!" (emphasis in original)
- A popular new meme concerning the revival of conservatism seems to be the "technology will save us all" approach toward what Jonathan Stein calls "The GOP's Internet Insurgents." This is all interesting stuff, but at the end of the day the ability to communicate more effectively and more widely isn't the same thing as making the GOP brand more appealing, which is the real problem.
- The only thing I don't understand about this AP story reporting that Fred "future of the GOP" Thompson is returning to acting and abandoning his (quest?) for the RNC chairmanship is why the AP chose to claim Thompson is returning to acting; hasn't he already been playing the part of a laughably unambitious politician for the better part of a year now?
- And finally, Michelle Bachmann is now claiming that her McCarthyite rant last month is actually just an "urban legend." Uh-huh. Shorter Bachmann: I respect the intelligence of my audience so little that I assume they don't recognize the existence of the video recording technology which captured my unhinged rant in the first place.
--Mori Dinauer
COMMENTS (3)
Mori, Some good shorts here, especially on Grampa Thompson, but I think you're ascribing far too much self-awareness to Michelle Bachmann to suggest that she can consciously accept that she actually said something so self-damaging.
Look again at the quotes you gave from the Nate Silver piece (strikingly insightful even for his high standards), and think back to the immortal "you in the reality-based community" quote Ron Suskind picked up. Take that kind of overweening arrogance and self-deception, and put it in someone as thoroughly shallow and fanatical as Bachmann. I'm sure that if she even looked at her little McCarthyite riff once (she's not capable of facing up to it more than once), she thereafter persuaded herself -- because she wanted to have said it in a way that was less damaging to herself -- that post hoc intention/desire became the reality of that episode to her thereafter, and anyone who believes otherwise is simply creating an urban legend at odds with the "reality" of what she wanted to have said.
That woman is not capable of experiencing a nanosecond of self-awareness.
Posted by: Steady Eddie | November 21, 2008 11:36 PM
Regarding "conservatism's new phantom menace", here's a fact-based discussion of the issue. Turns out the only phantom is the thinking abilities of Cogan and those linking to her.
Posted by: 24AheadDotCom | November 22, 2008 3:26 PM
Michele Bachmann is unaware that her sentiments suggesting the investigation of Congress for "their views" is and of itself UnAmerican. Members of Congress and all wannabe members should be required to take a Constitutional Law and American History course prior to filing their campaign papers.
Posted by: Bev | November 23, 2008 2:30 PM