I feel obligated to chime in on this, since as far as I know, I'm the only TAPPED contributor who attended the sinister kiln in which Swarthmorofascism is fired. Although it's been a few years now since I graduated, back in my day (the late 1980s), the place was a hotbed of compulsive studying and Quaker-bred politeness. Like all good fascists, we championed the campaign of Swarthmore grad and noted radical Michael Dukakis, who was legendary for having written the lengthiest seminar paper in school history. His loss was greeted with much wailing and rending of garments. But in truth, most of the students were too neurotic about their studies to join up with the brownshirts. The emblematic moment for me came at a showing of Star Wars. When Obi-Wan asks Luke to come with him to help fight the Empire, Luke responds, "I can't get involved! I have too much work to do!" The assembled students rose from their seats and cheered.

While I was there, the school paper did a long article on what it was like to be conservative at Swarthmore, profiling the half-dozen or so freedom-lovers they could find. After being outed, they were looked upon sort of like unfrozen cavemen, odd remnants of another time whose primitive views were sort of quaint, in a childlike way. But you wouldn't want to turn over the reins of your government to them.

--Paul Waldman

As part of the Weekly Standard's ongoing effort cast blame on Iran (and, whenever possible, the Democrats) for the fact that reality has not cooperated with Bill Kristol's bong-hit fantasies about the salutary regional effects of an American invasion of Iraq , Jonathan Karl suggests that Iraq's refusal to send a representative to the Annapolis conference is due to...the pernicious influence of Iran:

[Iraqi PM] Maliki convened a secret cabinet meeting on the day of the conference to vote on whether to allow [Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. Samir] al-Sumaydi to go to Annapolis. A majority of the cabinet voted against attending. No one will say how the vote broke down, but a senior official tells me it wasn't even close. The public reason they gave for nonattendance was a "scheduling conflict."

But there is a more convincing reason: Iran. The Annapolis conference was designed in part to isolate Iran, the only country in the region not invited. Iran loudly condemned the conference and called for a boycott.

[...]

In the end, the one Arab country the Iranians seems to have had enough influence to convince to boycott the conference was Iraq. (The Kuwaitis were also a no-show, but they were not lobbied to attend like the Iraqis.) Maliki faced a dilemma: skip the conference and offend the United States or attend the conference and offend Iran.

Or, attend the conference and offend Iraqi voters, and further delegitimize his already weak government. Really, I don't think this stuff is difficult. What's interesting is that, having destroyed and recreated (at enormous cost to the U.S., and unimaginable cost to Iraqis) Iraq as the only sort-of democracy in the Arab world, U.S. policy must now contend with the fact that Iraq's politicians are beholden to real, live constituents, many of whom aren't actually hostile to Iran, and most of whom are deeply hostile to Israel, and who, strangely enough, prefer leaders who reflect those views. As our own philosopher-president observed some years ago, dictatorships are easier, both to run and to corral diplomatically.

--Matthew Duss

Today's installment involves her trotting out the "a selective look at the website of an American organization focused on domestic politics proves that feminists don't care about the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia" routine. What's amazing --as TAPPED readers will be aware -- is that just yesterday Emily Yoffe churned out exactly the same silliness. Do Feminists [sic] for Life or somebody have a template that they just send out to contrarian pundits to use whenever they're particularly bereft of ideas? Applebaum bootstraps this well-worn and dishonest argument by linking to Christina Hoff Summers's atrocious version in that well-known principled supporter of feminist causes The Weekly Standard. I think what J. Goodrich said in response to the Summers article applies here:

Sommers is a a very fascinating example of someone who has not herself written a long book about the situation of women in Islamic countries. She found it more important to write books intended at destroying feminism so that there would then be nobody at all to help those women.

Maybe Yoffe could, say, devote some of the column space she wasted explaining how hearing about global warming is just too depressing and people should stop talking about it and write about women's rights instead. Oh wait -- that would probably by kind of a downer too!  

--Scott Lemieux

As we continue with these weekly ad analyses, I suspect one of the main themes will be how amateurish and off-the mark so many of the ads are. So this week, I thought we’d look at one candidate’s ads, a selection that on first glance seems to be pretty good. They have reasonable production values and feature a candidate who is as good talking to the camera as any you’ll find. But these ads -- for flavor-of-the-week Mike Huckabee -- are extraordinarily weak. Up until now he hasn’t had much money to air them anyway, so it might not seem to matter all that much. But if he’s hoping for his television spots to give him a serious boost beyond what he’s already getting, he could have done a lot better.

Let’s start with this one, which is a variation on the familiar bio ad, giving the candidate’s primary message and a few of the facts the campaign wants you to remember about him:

The big problem that leaps out about this ad is that the audio and video tracks are sending two completely different messages, and you’d have to strain to follow them both. Huckabee is talking about giving our children a better America -- pretty standard presidential candidate boilerplate -- while the images and words on the screen are about what he supposedly accomplished as governor. One has nothing to do with the other.

The first rule of political advertising is this: viewers aren’t paying very close attention. If they aren’t skipping over it with their TiVo or padding off to the bathroom, they’re thumbing through a magazine, talking with their spouses, or staring at the ceiling while your commercial is playing. The last thing you want to do is make it harder for them to understand your message.

That was a follow-up to Huckabee’s first spot, which was the advertising equivalent of him waving his hands in the air and saying, “Hello! Christian over here! Check it out! Christian!”

But once he made that point, Huckabee had to move on to something that looks like an actual issue. So he offered up this, wherein he does his best to tap into the current mania on the right, the invasion of the brown-skinned immigrant horde:

Watching this spot, you can tell his heart’s not in it. Immigration is a “hot-button” issue -- and let’s remember what that term is supposed to denote. You push the button, and folks get hot. Immigration is an issue that’s about anxiety, anger, resentment, and fear. But there’s nothing scary about this ad. All it tells you, if you’re paying close enough attention, is that Mike Huckabee is concerned about immigration. It may be that Huckabee has calculated that he’s not going to “out-Tancredo Tancredo,” in the Colorado congressman’s vivid phrase, so all he has to do is fight his main competitors to a draw on this issue. But it helps if there is some visual imagery that supports the ad’s assertions, something that will tap that emotional button. But all we get here is Huckabee talking.

A much more effective version of essentially the same message comes from Rudy Giuliani:

All the assertions made by Giuliani’s words are supported with imagery: people at anti-immigration protests, a border patrol car, various high-tech law enforcement doohickeys, and so on. The information comes at the viewer through both the visual and aural channels, making it much more likely that it will be remembered and that the kinds of associative networks the campaign wants to create in people’s minds (Rudy = protect the borders) will take hold.

Since we’re on the subject of fear, you want to know how to get people scared? Here’s how it’s done, courtesy of Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes. I’ll let Mark Crispin Miller explain this ad’s power, in this terrific article from 1992:

The opening induces, all at once, a sense of claustrophobia, a rush of vertigo, a panicky uncertainty. Here (suggests the ad) you're stuck, you don't know what's behind you -- and there's no protection. The poignant image of that lone guard dissolves to what became the best-known Bush-Quayle visual: "His revolving-door prison policy," intones the voice-over, "gave weekend furloughs to first-degree murderers not eligible for parole." As the guard fades away, he is at once replaced and overwhelmed by a slow horde of much-larger-looking men, impassively filing (in slo-mo they appear to lurch) through -- there it is! -- a revolving door of prison bars; that high-angle medium shot dissolves in turn to a longer, higher shot of the same zombified procession, so that (again) we're looking down at an endless stream of "filth," apparently Dukakis-generated.

[…]

And yet the power of this notorious image lay not in such sly conjunctions, but in the careful visual arrangement. That phrase "revolving-door prison policy" implies, of course, that Massachusetts criminals could, thanks to Governor Dukakis, slip out of jail as easily as commuters streaming from a subway station. But the image makes an even more inflammatory statement. Note the racial composition of the prisoners: white men entering on the right, blacks and Hispanics exiting. In the next moment (below) there is the same racial pattern, albeit complicated by the whites placed at the frame's far left. Those figures, however, would function only to allow Ailes-Atwater some deniability: "Racist? But there are white men in there too!" Such a claim would be disingenuous, because those remote Caucasians are, literally, beside the point. The eye is drawn not to the margins of the frame, but to the center -- the vanishing point where the two human lines converge, and the point toward which the leftward movement of the entering whites also attracts our gazes. In other words, the "revolving door" effects an eerie racial metamorphosis, implying that the Dukakis prison system was not only porous, but a satanic source of negritude -- a dark "liberal" mill that took white men and made them colored.

Those guys knew what they were doing.

--Paul Waldman

John Atlas and Peter Dreier of the National Housing Institute offer a primer on the sub-prime mortgage crisis:

Since 1998, more than 7 million borrowers bought homes with sub-prime loans. One million of those homeowners have already defaulted on their loans The crisis is likely to get worse. Financial analysts predict that at least a quarter of these people -- over 2 million families -- will default and face the financial pain and psychological grief of losing their homes over the next few years.

Bush, who once touted his administration's goal as creating an "ownership society," may now go down in history as the president on whose watch ownership declined. The nation's homeownership rate has fallen during the last two years and will plummet further next year. Moreover, Bush's unwillingness to take bold steps to regulate lenders, brokers, and investors will guarantee that the next president will inherit a much bigger mortgage mess.

To many Americans, the crisis seems too complex to comprehend. To understand it, we need to know: What is the problem? Who benefited? Who got hurt? Who is to blame? Who should we help? What should be done? Although the immediate cause is the widespread use of sub-prime mortgages, the root cause is a decades old failure of government to adequately regulate the banking industry.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

Everybody in this town knows that when politicians or political writers offer even a slightly inaccurate or improperly-contexted utterance about Hillary Clinton, a ton of rapid-response bricks are brought down upon their head. And if one smears the Senator, well, they get the political equivalent of The Joe Pesci Treatment at the end of Goodfellas or Casino.

So just try to imagine that, say, operatives close to Barack Obama campaign, or some major politician who has endorsed him, took a cue from former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey and went on television making allegations about Clinton's sexuality, adding insincerely that, of course, if those allegations were true, they might actually be an asset to Sen. Clinton, given the importance of gay issues in America today.

What would happen? Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson's head would explode so violently it would need to be surgically re-attached to his shoulders. And rightly so. It would be wildly inappropriate, something worthy of a conservative front group. But Team Clinton is doing it because, well, when everything is at stake anything goes.

--Tom Schaller

The funniest part of this piece from the Post on the 14 states that have rejected federal money for "abstinence-only" sex education programs is the point when the abstinence fans -- largely the same folks that want to delegate Roe v. Wade back to the states -- vow to force states to take the funding:

"We're talking about the health of millions of youth across the United States," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association. "We know abstinence education offers the best for them. Now is the time to put more emphasis on that message, not less."

When the states decide that this massive federal boondoggle is both ineffective and a vehicle for an idealogical agenda that they'd prefer not to endorse, they should be bullied into submission, or so goes this logic. Further proof that the right doesn't care about states rights or limiting federal government when it is inconvenient to their agenda.

--Kate Sheppard

Family Security Matters just released their 2007 list of the 10 most "insipid, scary and yes, downright dangerous" college courses. Big surprise -- they're courses about labor, sexuality, race, and "social justice." According to FSM, they "express an agenda far beyond any honest or accurate academic cause" and "offer nothing more than to stroke the ego of the professor’s fascination with silly topics." My alma mater Ithaca College comes in at No. 7 with Chip Gagnon's "Whiteness and Multiculturalism," a course exploring the history of racism and the privileges of whiteness in America.

At first blush, the name "Family Security Matters" might indicate your average hawkish, go-kill-some-Arabs-type national-security organization. But no! "Family security" means so much more! Their mission statement:

Our mission is to inform all Americans, men and women, about the issues surrounding national security; to address their fears about safety and security on a personal, family, community, national and international level; to highlight the connection between individual safety and a strong national defense; to increase civic participation and political responsibility; and to empower all Americans to become proactive defenders of our national security and community safety.

Considering all this hand-wringing about courses on race, class, etc., I can only assume that "community safety" refers to keeping American families safe from not just terrorism, but all those different ideas and people they might be forced to encounter. And by "families," they mean white, Christian, economically privileged families. Their list of contributing editors includes such luminaries as Michelle Malkin, so none of this is much of a surprise. But at what point does lumping all your fear of foreigners and brown people together take you over the line from mere innocuous conservative organization to certifiable racism and xenophobia?

--Kate Sheppard

With all the attention being paid to Jonah Goldberg's forthcoming very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care, it's easy to forget that Goldberg also makes transparently ridiculous arguments about lots of things that have nothing to do with misrepresenting the nature and history of fascism. For instance, torture. Goldberg says that liberals are "cop-outs" because Nancy Pelosi didn't protest when first informed that waterboarding was being used on high-level detainees:

Her defenders say we need to look at the context. This was just after 9/11, and Pelosi was as angry about the attack and as eager to prevent another one as anyone.

Time magazine's liberal columnist Joe Klein writes: ''There was fear that we would be attacked again by terrorists, and on a regular basis. Few were thinking clearly about the nature of the threat and how to deal with it.'' So, what's the big deal?

Well, it's a big deal for a lot of reasons. But the one that left-wingers should take to heart is that you can't rely on your leaders and champions when the buildings collapse, the bombs explode or the planes fall from the sky.

If it's OK for liberal Democrats to condone what they consider to be torture when they're scared and angry, then the lesson is that the only way you can count on Democrats not to be scared and angry is to prevent future 9/11s.

First off, waterboarding is torture. Period.

Second, Joe Klein was in no way suggesting that Democratic acquiescence in torture was not a big deal, as Jonah implies. Klein was simply making the obvious point that everyone was a little traumatized after 9/11, so it's perhaps understandable, if still completely regrettable, that Democratic lawmakers gave up a little bit of liberty for a bit of imagined security. This is what's known as "providing context," something which conservatives generally have a hard time distinguishing from "making excuses."

Third, just to be clear: I don't think it's "OK for liberal Democrats to condone...torture when they're scared and angry." I think it's awful that Democrats went along with torture, but I do think I understand why they did it. A lot of people thought and did a lot of crazy stuff after 9/11. I myself flirted with conservatism, but thankfully realized that what I really needed was a drink and a few hours alone with De Profundis. The question is, having gotten our heads back, and knowing what we know now, that in addition to being morally indefensible, torture is as ineffective at producing usable intelligence as it is effective at radicalizing those who undergo it (and their brothers, cousins, and distant relatives), do we persist in using it? Liberal Democrats say no. Jonah Goldberg, still scared and angry, says yes, and accuses people who've regained their wits, and morality, of "copping-out."

--Matthew Duss

Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan endorsed Ron Paul from among the Republican candidates. It is Sullivan's business if he wants to muddle things up by issuing two endorsements (his heart obviously belongs to Barack Obama), but his tribute to Paul lionizes the Texas congressman as a classic "live-and-let-live" libertarian without ever mentioning the deep contradiction in his platform: Ron Paul is virulently anti-choice. First Dennis Kucinich said he would appoint Paul his V.P. And now Andrew Sullivan, defender of gay rights, idealizes the guy. Earth to liberals and moderate conservatives who value individual rights and liberty: Ron Paul is not your guy, at least not if you believe women deserve the same freedom as men. But it appears Sullivan hasn't given this question any thought. Either that, or he just doesn't care. He writes:

The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration. Paul's federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government: these are principles that made me a conservative in the first place. No one in the current field articulates them as clearly and understands them as deeply as Paul. He is a man of faith who nonetheless sees a clear line between religion and politics. More than all this, he has somehow ignited a new movement of those who love freedom and want to rescue it from the do-gooding bromides of the left and the Christianist meddling of the right.

--Dana Goldstein

Brown University announced that it will give a $10 million endowment to local public schools to atone for its involvement in the slave trade. But, Dana writes, reparations alone will not address the ongoing segregation of the American education system.

Like so many painful issues of race and class, the argument over slavery reparations hovers just beneath the surface of our everyday political consciousness, always ready to burst forth. Support for reparations wasn't always seen as radical. Back in the 19th century, reparations were understood as reasonable public policy. After all, how could former slaves, who had been denied basic rights and education, integrate into the free economy and society without some help? Large-scale reparations were never granted, but the idea has never really disappeared from American culture.

Today the issue has become a sort of litmus test for black politicians, a way of determining if they are too radical for the white electorate. Last July during the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate, Barack Obama was asked if African Americans would ever receive slavery reparations. Clearly prepared to answer this exact question, Obama responded, "I think the reparations we need right here in South Carolina is investment, for example, in our schools." The crowd applauded.

Given that Obama needed to appeal to the nearly two-thirds of African Americans who support reparations, as well as the 96 percent of white Americans who oppose them, it was a skillful pivot. But Obama isn't the only one to conceive of support for struggling public schools as a form of slavery reparations.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

So, is Jonah Goldberg's new book cover intentionally co-opting the logo of the nation's cutist lil' neo-Nazis, or was that just an accident? I'll leave it to others to speculate.

Sadly, No! has some fabulous screen shots of Goldberg's much-anticipated first outing in book form.

--Kate Sheppard

As the holidays and primaries draw nigh, the elves campaign staffers have been busy with last minute policy efforts and with regurgitating highlighting the policy they've released over the course of the past year:

• John Edwards released his "Young Families Rising" agenda, which includes plans to protect young Americans from crippling debt, ensure universal health care, provide universal preschool, expand affordable child care, and guarantee paid family and sick leave.
• Edwards also held an event in Iowa to draw attention to his "Declaration of Independence for Older Americans" which includes plans to strengthen Social Security, protect Medicare and Medicaid, improve medical care through broader health care reforms, and improve the quality of nursing homes.
• Barack Obama released his plan to "Reclaim the American Dream," which includes providing a $500 "Making Work Pay" tax credit to working adults, eliminating income taxes for seniors with an income under $50,000 per year, expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act, and requiring that employers provide seven paid sick days per year. It also includes measures previously released in other policy statements to address the mortgage crisis, reform bankruptcy laws, create a "Credit Card Bill of Rights," and make college more affordable.
• Obama also put out a plan to keep lead-tainted products out of the country, which includes requiring independent testing of all imported toys, and doubling the funding and expanding the powers of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He also pledges to sign into law the Lead-Free Toys Act he proposed in the Senate in 2005, which bans the sale of children’s products that contain more than trace amounts of lead.
• Hillary Clinton released a statement supporting progress on a new climate treaty in Bali and pledging that her administration "will engage in high level meetings with leaders around the world every three months, if that's what it takes, to hammer out a new agreement."
• Bill Richardson released his "Americans with Disabilities Plan" which includes reforming the health care system, restoring the Americans with Disabilities Act, increasing investments in veteran and mental health programs and supporting stem cell research.
• Richardson also appears in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs discussing his foreign policy.

--Kate Sheppard

• Wow, I'm out of touch for a few days and when I get back Obama is leading the polls in Iowa and possibly New Hampshire. I'm somewhat skeptical that the resurgence is due to the Clinton campaign's attacks as Ezra says because it's just too inside baseball. But could it just be that reporting on criticism of Clinton punctured her bubble of inevitability enough that the people who were backing her so they could be behind a winner switched candidates? On the other hand, the attacks clearly affected some people like this former Clinton precinct chair who is now starring in an Obama campaign video.
• Meanwhile, Obama may have wanted to be president in kindergarten, but at least some students in 40 percent of Iowa's high schools apparently want him to be president too. The campaign has organized an interesting network of high school groups to complement it's massive strength in colleges. Also remember that while not that many high schoolers can vote, they can probably get parents to do so.
• Clinton isn't the only one going negative. Obama, apparently concluding that many voters are trying to decide between him and John Edwards, has gone on the offensive. This seems to be the first time a candidate has addressed the debate over tactics for change that Matt Yglesias, Ezra, Paul Krugman, and many other bloggers have been musing over for the last few days.
• John Edwards's money problems worsened Friday after the FEC ruled that contributions through Act Blue don't count towards matching funds.
• On the plus side Edwards received the endorsement of Iowa's first lady (as John Kerry did in 2004).
• Meanwhile Chris Dodd is taking off time from his campaign to fillibuster the telecom immunity bill. Good for him.
• Over on the Republican side, things continue to be ... interesting. First up, Rudy Giuliani is apparently pulling resources (scroll down) out of New Hampshire.
• As Kate noted below, John McCain received an endorsement from Joe Liberman today.
• And it wouldn't be a December Lightning Round without another bit of Huckabamboozlement. Today it's Huckabee's claim that he has a theology degree (he doesn't) and that most of the signers of the declaration of independence were clergy (actually one of 56 was). Isn't lying kinda... unchristian?
• The other big Huckabee news is his odd Foreign Affairs article. It veers from admirable to absurd, but unfortunately the most pleasant parts are undermined by Huckabee's attempt to run away from them as fast as possible when criticized.

• Finally, Huckabee has hired as his new national campaign chairman a GOP operative best known for bragging about bribing black pastors to hold down turnout to get Christie Todd Whitman elected governor of New Jersey.
• The AP is enthusiastic about silly questions like "what's your most treasured possession" but they did get Fred Thompson to say "trophy wife" which is amazing in a horrible sort of way. Also both Bill Richardson and John McCain said baseballs signed by Ted Williams.
• And it wouldn't be a discussion of enthusiasm without Ron Paul. His supporters collected six million dollars for their candidate yesterday. Impressive. But is he better, stronger than he was before?
• Finally, YouTube goodies from the last few days include an anthropomorphic slice of pizza which raps for Ron Paul, a hilariously accurate case for Mike Huckabee, a hilariously over the top case for Mitt Romney (the only candidate who will prevent gay couples form buying the latest cool gadgets), and an attack ad against Jesus Christ. The last three are parodies and the product of the same brilliant man -- Lee Stranahan.

--Sam Boyd

Was the timing of Joe Lieberman's endorsement of McCain meant to influence the Republican primary, or perhaps just to throw it in the face of those suckered into believing that Lieberman was really just an "independent Democrat." It is one thing to say, as he had previously, "I may not support the Democratic nominee" if too liberal, quite another to say, with eight candidates still in the race, that you would not support ANY of them, including the relatively hawkish Clinton, the decidedly non-pacificist chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and his own home-state colleague, whose career is intertwined with his own, and who endorsed him in 2004. By endorsing now, while Dodd and Biden are still in the race, he makes his renunciation of the entire party clear.

Why not let him leave? Will Harry Reid be any less effective as minority leader than as majority leader?

My theory has always been that McCain and Lieberman had been cooking up plans to run a third-party candidacy, on the premise that both had been rejected by the extremists of their own party. But I think the time for a party whose only platform is Endless War has come and gone. And Lieberman has made it quite clear that it is not merely the "extremists" in his party that he disagrees with, but everyone.

--Mark Schmitt

Over the weekend, the world (and the planet) scored a win as the U.S. delegates to the climate change summit in Bali made an abrupt turn, accepting the road map to a post-Kyoto pact.

After two weeks of discussions, the majority of the delegates came up with a plan of action that set a 2009 deadline for a new treaty and a promise of "deep cuts" in greenhouse-gas emissions. But the U.S. representatives protested, wringing their hands over whether the process was moving too quickly and might preempt future negotiations (since the past 20 years hasn't been enough time). Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs and head of the U.S. delegation, first announced to the summit they were rejecting the plan, which was met with a chorus of boos. After plenty of chastising from other delegates, who asked the U.S. to "get out of the way," Dobriansky got back up several minutes later and announced that the U.S. would come on board.

It's progress, though not as much as many hoped would come from the summit. Delegates from the European Union had been pushing for industrialized countries to commit to cutting greenhouse-gas emissions between 25 to 40 percent by 2020, but in the version agreed upon, the final text agrees to "deep cuts" rather than specific targets. This is at least in part due to the U.S. delegation, which has been the most outspoken critic of targets.

Even without targets, the White House says they have "serious concerns" about the Bali plan, which is really why our delegation's change of tune on Saturday is great news. The Bush administration's own minions, sent there to push their agenda, were forced to come around upon realizing that the entire world is against them. Sure, hashing out a new treaty over the next two years will be an arduous task, but the rest of the world proved this weekend that they aren't going to let the U.S. stand in the way any longer.

--Kate Sheppard

I agree with Matt that 1)it was stupid of Obama's campaign to pick a fight with Paul Krugman, but 2) Krugman's point is very misguided. I don't think that Obama's rhetoric about transcending old politics tells us much about how he'll actually govern. Bush in 2000, after all, didn't campaign as a 50%+1 conservative who would increase party polarization in Congress, but that's what he did. Obama's using this kind of rhetoric because 1)it's effective, and 2)he's very good at it. What actually matters, however, is the substance of his policies and record, and on that count he's clearly superior to Clinton (especially on foreign policy), although on domestic policy there's a strong case to be made for Edwards. I also second Matt's point about institutional realities; as nice as it would be if we would be inaugurating a Prime Minister in 2009, no major reform can be passed without the votes of some Republicans and conservative Democrats in the Senate. Given that she generates more hostility from the GOP (despite being more conservative), it seems very unlikely that Clinton is likely to get more accomplished if she's elected.

--Scott Lemieux

Saudi King Abdullah has pardoned "Qatif girl," the young Saudi Shia woman who was kidnapped and raped, then sentenced to 90 lashes for the crime of being alone with a man to whom she was not related, then sentenced to prison time and an additional 200 lashes for appealing the first sentence.

The "Qatif girl" case caused an international outcry with widespread criticism of the Saudi justice system.

The male and female victims were in a car together when they were abducted and raped by seven attackers, who were given jail sentences up to nine years.

Press reports say King Abdullah's move did not mean the sentence was wrong.

Not wrong, so much as the product of institutionalized hardcore misogyny and male privilege dressed up as "piety." Now maybe King Abdullah can do something about the roving gangs of Saudi fundamentalist religious thugs who regularly beat up women who aren't appropriately covered up--oh wait, the Mutaween are an arm of the Saudi state. Such allies we have!

--Matthew Duss

Moving along from the Huckaspawn to the Huckaspouse, check out Janet Huckabee's MySpace page. Her favorite movies are "Men of Honor," "Remember the Titans," and one I've never heard of -- "Rudy." Seriously. It's not about a controversy-baiting big city mayor, but rather, a short kid who wants to play for Notre Dame's football team. Janet and Mike met back in high school and married at 18. Two years later she was diagnosed with spinal cancer and faced paralysis, but Janet survived and learned to walk again. The couple later had three children.

Today, Janet works for the Arkansas Red Cross as the program manager for state emergency management relations. We haven't seen much of her out on the campaign trail with her husband, which is probably because of the negative attention Janet brought to her husband's 2002 gubernatorial reelection race, when she simultaneously ran for secretary of state. Newsweek remembers:

Janet's low point: her run for secretary of State in 2002, in which she was "perceived as thin-skinned, even mean-spirited," says Janine Parry, a political-science professor at the University of Arkansas. Huckabee attacked her opponent over a past DWI conviction and suggested, without verification, that he still had a drinking problem. Responding to critics who questioned her use of state vehicles and troopers to campaign, she told the New York Times, "If it wasn't for the grace of God, I'd have shot a few people already." She got trounced in her race—voters saw her run as an unseemly power play by the couple—and nearly dragged down her husband in his re-election bid that year.

As first lady, Janet's main causes were redecorating the governor's mansion and working with the state's Campaign for Healthier Babies, a public relations blitz intended to increase pregnant's women's knowledge about prenatal care. She also promoted a new sales tax to benefit state parks by jet-skiing down the Arkansas River. She refers to herself as the "Queen of Fun."

--Dana Goldstein

This article in yesterday's Washington Post on Iraqi refugees returning to Baghdad was accompanied by this graphic of the new sectarian make-up of the city. Comparing Baghdad's sectarian distribution in April 2006 to November 2007, we see a city completely transformed, with a majority of the formerly mixed neighborhoods now taken over by Shi'is, most of them supported by the guns of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

What the graphic does not show, and the article does not mention, are the concrete walls which have been erected between new Sunni and Shia neighborhoods throughout Baghdad. David Axe reported in April on the walling off of Adhamiyah:

Not everyone was thrilled by the Adhamiyah barrier. "This will deepen the sectarian strife and only serve to abort efforts aimed at reconciliation," a Sunni shop owner told The New York Times.

Noting such objections, [General David Petraeus' counter-insurgency advisor David] Kilcullen stresses that the walls are temporary. He compares them to tourniquets. "It's something you do when patient is bleeding to death. But you don't leave it there forever or it causes damage."

Eight months later, these tourniquets have been applied throughout Baghdad, essentially making permanent the ethnic cleansing of the last few years, and ensuring that resentments will continue to stymie Iraqi political reconciliation for the foreseeable future. I'd offer that the tourniquet is also an excellent metaphor for the surge itself: It's helped, in some respects, to stop the bleeding, but it's made it impossible to save the leg.

--Matthew Duss

Mark Schmitt explains how Michael Barone made The Almanac of American Politics irrelevant.

--The Editors

Slate's Emily Yoffe apparently noticed the other day that honor killings exist, even among Muslim immigrants in countries like Canada. But then she asks:

Where is the outrage from the Muslim community, from feminists, over atrocities such as this? I went to the National Organization for Women Web site, and I would be thrilled if someone could find the place in it in which NOW denounces forced covering and "honor" killing.When the Washington Post's fashion writer wrote about Hillary Clinton's cleavage, NOW was outraged. Their section on violence against women seems to cover every possible permutation except that of Islamic extremism.

Well Emily, prepare to be thrilled! I thought this sounded a bit fishy so I clicked the link to the NOW website, went to "hot topics" then "more issues" then "violence against women" and what do you know, the fifth item in the news section is entitled "NOW Supports Legislation that Denounces 'Honor' Killings and Violence Against Women." Finding it took me about 30 seconds. An excerpt:

The United States must call strongly for the protection of the millions of women who will become victims of stoning, stabbing, maiming, forced suicide, beheadings, acid throwing and many other cruel punishments with the false justification of "family honor."

A search of the NOW site yields 43 results for "honor killings" compared to 6 for "Robin Givhan" to use Yoffe's example.

This wouldn't be too important, but the larger narrative Yoffe is peddling is deeply pernicious and is usually associated with the nastier elements of the far right. Attacking feminist organizations (falsely) for failing to care enough about the plight of Islamic women both continues the vilification of the religion and makes those groups look hypocritical and selfish. This also isn't the first time Yoffe has soft peddled a Republican talking point with an odd wide-eyed innocence. Remember that hilarious global warming piece from a few months back?

--Sam Boyd

With John McCain's endorsements from the Des Moines Register, Boston Globe, and Portsmouth Herald over the weekend, after already scoring the endorsement of the Union Leader, New Hampshire's largest paper, earlier this month. He also won an endorsement from Joe Lieberman, for whatever that's worth. All this last minute hubbub seems to indicate that we can't write off McCain just yet, though the endorsement from the Herald pretty much sums up why he doesn't necessarily stand as good a chance with Republican primary voters as he does with editorial boards: "McCain will tell you the truth even if it costs him the election."

On the Democratic side, the Globe endorsed Barack Obama, while the Register endorsed Hillary Clinton.

--Kate Sheppard

By now you already know that Hillary Clinton and John McCain were endorsed by the Des Moines Register this weekend. But have you met Sarah Huckabee, the candidate's daughter and national field director?

Best moment: The interviewer, from South Carolina politics site SCHotline.com, asks, "Your father mentioned... he opposed mini skirts. Have you ever worn a mini skirt?" Sarah laughs. "Are you crazy?! Um, I can neither confirm nor deny that accusation there."

On a more serious note, Sarah says her dad is the only candidate who can, "after the 2006 losses for the Republicans... lead the country in a way that would make us proud, not ashamed, to be Republicans." Sounds a little bit like Howard Dean in 2004, saying, "I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party!"

--Dana Goldstein

• As noted below, co-chair of Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign Bill Shaheen resigned after not being subtle enough about trying to make Barack Obama's youthful drug use an issue in the primary. Then Hillary Clinton apologized. Then Clinton strategist Mark Penn went on Hardball to make sure that everyone knew that we're talking about cocaine here. Classy.
• With regard to Bill Shaheen, this is the first I'd heard that Mr. Big's ex-bassist had gone into politics. (Oops, sorry, that's Billy Sheehan.)
• The Rudy Giuliani campaign has announced that the candidate will make a major campaign statement tomorrow, outlining his vision for the future of America. Presumably he will detail who can expect to be bombed by the U.S., who can expect to be detained without charge and tortured by the U.S., and who can expect to merely be deported.
• The New York Times reports that the Mike Huckabee campaign was "crippled for about 24 hours by a massive e-mail breakdown that began just after Wednesday’s Republican debate and stymied its communications just as media attention on it crescendoed." The Lord may be responsible for Huckabee's surge in the polls, but when it comes to server problems, he has to rely on tech-nerds just like the rest of us.
• The conservative advocacy group Freedom's Watch promises that they will "have a strong presence in 2008 and beyond," which means that we can expect many more ads in which nameless Iraq war amputees are used as bludgeons against those who aren't in favor of creating more Iraq war amputees.

--Matthew Duss

On the Times op-ed page today, Sarah Murray raises the question of whether food miles, or calculating the distance traveled/energy used to bring you your food is a relevant measure of sustainability. She argues that some modes of transportation are more efficient, farmers in Africa use less energy-intensive agricultural practices, and foods grown far away are often delivered in bulk, for instance. But a lot of her argument seems based on faulty, or at least incomplete logic:

For a start, consider the relative efficiency of different forms of haulage. If you look at fuel consumption per pound carried, an oceangoing vessel carrying thousands of containers (a single 20-foot container holds about 48,000 bananas) does relatively well, while a 10-mile trip to the local farm stand in a large car to pick up a few bags of vegetables seems, in emissions terms at least, downright destructive.

Well, perhaps, if you don't factor in elements like the 10-mile round-trip drive to the grocery store by each person who wants to buy some of those 48,000 bananas. Or if you don't take into account the fact that the local farmer who grew those sacks of vegetables probably did so with less aid from mechanized contraptions than a large-scale operation is likely to use. Or if you neglect to take into account the absurd volume of pesticides used in many of these largely unregulated plantations, or the treatment and wages of workers there. The fact is, when you buy a bunch of bananas shipped from several thousand miles away, you're unlikely to have any idea how those bananas were produced.

Murray is right in that transportation shouldn't be the sole factor in calculating a food's sustainability. But that's not what the local food movement is about, at least not that alone. It's about bringing all of these factors into account in making decisions about what we eat -- health (both personal and planetary), food security and safety, and connection to what you eat and the people who grow it. Food miles are just one way of measuring how out of balance our food system has become, and giving us tools to talk about how to change it.

--Kate Sheppard

The Australian has what has just become one of my favorite headlines ever: "Sadr studying to become an all-powerful ayatollah."

While the story of Muqtada's returning to seminary to continue his education is a very interesting and potentially extremely significant development, (achieving the rank of mujtahid would mean that Sadr could issue binding legal-religious edicts for his followers, something which he cannot technically do now) the headline underscores the way in which western media tend to present the practice of Islam, and Shi'ism in particular, as if it were some sort of medieval holdover, in which the learned few deploy esoteric forms of knowledge to ignite the passions of huge multitudes. Here in the West we simply refer to this as "politics."

Juan Cole has more.

--Matthew Duss

Are Democrats to blame for how little of their legislative agenda they've passed this year? Terence Samuel isn't so sure, but whether voters can be convinced is another issue:

Congress, particularly the Senate, was designed to frustrate quick or easy maneuvers; the power is with the dissenters, and Republican senators have used it to full advantage. I think that Democrats have put up a good fight and have nothing to apologize for. If they are guilty of anything, it is of their willingness to take the long view, and the political hit, rather than just allow everything to grind to a halt. The suggestion that Reid should just let the Republicans filibuster ignores the responsibility Democrats have to keep the government functioning. They have to be aware, however, that their voters may not be quite so understanding or forgiving.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

Although Mike Huckabee backer Tim LaHaye is best-known of late for his Left Behind fiction series, he was one of the early mover and shakers of the Christian right. Until jumping on board with Huckabee a couple of weeks ago, he hadn't been that visible on the political scene for a while. But as I recently watched a recording of his October 17 appearance on the Trinity Broadcasting Network's Praise the Lord program, hosted that night by Grassley target Benny Hinn, I saw that he was laying the groundwork for jumping back in to the 2008 campaign.

For LaHaye, his apocalyptic fiction is no fairy tale -- it is very real. "There is nothing in prophecy that has to be fulfilled before Jesus comes," LaHaye told Hinn. "He [Jesus] could come right now. So I am anticipating it." To LaHaye, the world is a black and white place of of believers and those who will need to "fall on [their] knees and call out the name of the Lord" so as to escape the horrors of the tribulation. He predicted that "everything is going to be better for the believer in the millennium," referring to the thousand-year reign of Christ he says will follow the battle at Armageddon. Believers will wear crowns, he said, because "garbage collectors don't wear crowns. Kings and queens and rulers wear crowns . . . . There are two kinds of people. Either you have been saved or you haven't."

So much for Huckabee's religious tolerance talk circa last week.

For LaHaye, there are the saved and unsaved in politics, too, and predictions to be made about elections. Hinn asked him what he thought would happen in the 2008 election, and LaHaye replied:

God, in his marvelous grace, has saved America. I remember I, with Jerry Falwell and a few other ministers met in Ronald Reagan’s home when he was trying to get elected in 1980, and we prayed, and I was so doubtful, I didn’t think there was a chance that Ronald Reagan could get elected and be there eight years. That was an act of God, he turned out to be the best president we’ve had in 100 years.

Hinn asked LaHaye if he thought we'd have another Republican president. LaHaye and said that if God could give us the miracle of George W. Bush, why not Huckabee:

I don’t know, I hope we will have a man who is committed, in fact tomorrow, we’re having a meeting with ministers, there will be over 500 ministers at this meeting, and one of the speakers is a minister, Mike Huckabee, a personal friend of mine before he ever ran for politics and became governor of Arkansas. Here’s a man who loves Jesus Christ supremely, and isn’t afraid – I don’t know if you saw his interview with Wolf Blitzer, and Wolf asked him about creation and he came back and doubled back on a question, and said, "Wolf, I answered your question, and I want it clearly understood that I believe in God. And I don’t know how he did it, and how many days he took, but I know one thing: God created the heavens and the earth." And I thought, could we have a president like that? Yes, in the providence of God. Remember, George Bush was elected by 530 votes. If that’s not a miracle. He saved us from Al Gore.

--Sarah Posner

How have the dynamics of the Democratic race changed so quickly? Over the past month, the "politics of hope" have stopped working against Obama, and started working for him. It's because he's figured out the best way to fight back, Ezra writes:

Two months ago, I didn't know anyone who thought Hillary Clinton would lose. Today, I don't know anyone who thinks that she'll win. Such is the seismic shift the past few weeks have seen in the conventional wisdom of DC's chattering class. Barack Obama's quiet creep to the top of the polls in Iowa had already set people talking.

But then came Hillary Clinton's ham-handed attacks on his kindergarten essays about the presidency. And then came Oprah, and her thousands of potential new Obama caucus-goers. And then came the repugnant comments of Bill Shaheen, who stepped down yesterday from his post as co-chair of Clinton's New Hampshire campaign; he suggested that Obama's youthful drug experimentation might lead wise voters to think twice about the untested Senator from Illinois. And suddenly it looked like the Clinton campaign was flailing -- buffeted by bad press and bad decisions at precisely the instant that the Obama campaign could do no wrong.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

The Clinton campaign unveiled a new ad spot in New Hampshire and Iowa today that focuses on her role as a mother and daughter:

Maybe I'm alone here, but I found it hilarious when the only text line in the body of the spot appeared proclaiming "Hillary's mom lives with her." Apparently that's supposed to help make her more likable. Her mother is also featured in this new ad they put out yesterday, telling audiences that she would vote for Hillary even if she wasn't her daughter. I'll admit to feeling a little warm and fuzzy about the three generations of strong women, but it seems like the wrong card to play at this point in the game. It transmits loud and clear that her campaign realizes people think she's cold and calculating, and is trying desperately to fight that image.

--Kate Sheppard

With regard to the sputtering rage with which many neocons have greeted the NIE's determination that a nuclear apocalypse is very likely not imminent, Eric Alterman and and George Zornick point out that this kind of thing has happened before, and before, and before. Conservatives massaging intelligence to achieve their policy objectives, and attacking the intelligence community when it does not produce work that conforms to those objectives, has been a common occurrence over the last several decades. (This is what actual conspiracy-mongering looks like, folks.)

Related, in this morning's Christian Science Monitor, Ray Takeyh and Vali Nasr describe how the NIE could actually undercut support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other hardliners in Iran:

The silver lining of the report may well be the weakening of Mr. Ahmadinejad and his politics of defiance. The president might celebrate the report's findings as a victory for Iran, but he can not take credit for it. Nor will it in all likelihood favor him in his ongoing tug-of-war with political rivals. It is not Ahmadinejad's hard-line rhetoric and uncompromising posture in negotiations that are to credit for the change in Iran's fortunes. Rather, they come from a decision to halt the nuclear weapons program that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blessed in 2003, when reformists were in charge.

With war no longer imminent, the supreme leader may see less value in Ahmadinejad's confrontational politics. And he, not the president, has the last word in foreign policy matters. [...]

At first glance, the NIE appears to have undermined the Bush administration's hard-line approach toward Iran. But the irony is that Washington now has the ability to further undermine Ahmadinejad while regulating Iran's nuclear program through diplomacy and dialogue. Suddenly, Washington may be facing a Tehran that is unyielding on its nuclear prerogatives but is also more pragmatic.

So why are the neocons acting like someone canceled their birthday party?

--Matthew Duss

As we go around and around on waterboarding yet again, I couldn't help noticing that I cannot recall a single instance in which I've seen a journalist simply refer to waterboarding and similar methods of interrogation as "torture." Yet they use terms like "enhanced interrogation techniques" over and over. The Republicans certainly won the language battle on this one.

This is not complicated. Everyone all over the world agrees on what constitutes torture. Torture is the intentional infliction of physical or mental suffering in order to obtain information or confessions. Not hard to understand. Yet Republicans have successfully lured the entire journalistic community into their moral sewer, where there is some degree of suffering (defined not by how awful it is, but by whether it's fast or slow, and whether it leaves visible scars) that marks the line between torture and not-torture. If I rip your fingernails out - torture! If I tie you in a "stress position" designed to gradually inflict elevating amounts of pain, up to sheer agony, over the course of an hour or two - not torture! See, when I punch you in the face, son, I'm not committing child abuse, I'm engaging in enhanced parenting techniques.

I won't bother with the poetic invocations of Orwell. It's enough to say that when we embrace these kinds of euphemisms, we deaden our moral compasses. And every reporter who uses the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" is complicit.

I'm guessing this will come up at one of next fall's presidential debates. What I'd like to see is the Democratic candidate, at the first mention of "enhanced interrogation techniques," say something like this: "How about we stop this charade and have enough respect for the American people to start telling the truth? The Bush administration made the use of torture its official policy. You, Republican candidate, agree with that policy. You think the United States government should torture people. I don't. We can argue the pros and cons. But don't give us this 'enhanced interrogation techniques' baloney. We all know what it is. If you're going to advocate torture, have the guts to call it by its name. If you don't, you're not only immoral enough to be pro-torture, you're also a coward."

I know, I know -- dream on.

--Paul Waldman

With Iowa a three-way heat, the leading Democrats are focusing a lot of energy on women voters -- especially because Hillary Clinton's lead among women has shrunk in the early primary states. The Edwards campaign hosted a conference call this morning for journalists to hear from female politicians about Edwards' "Young Families Rising Agenda." This was basically a repackaging of his plans on college affordability, universal health care, job creation, and early childhood education. The six speakers, including former NARAL president Kate Michelman and Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD), focused on how economic insecurity facing the middle class disproportionately affects women, and also on Edwards' electability against a Republican. But they droned on and on, and when the call ended there was dead silence on the line during the question and answer.

At this point in the game, the press understands the progressive bonafides of Edwards' domestic policy proposals. If the MSM hasn't covered Edwards' platform sufficiently up to this point, they aren't going to begin now, during the thick of the race. So tell us about the ground game in Iowa, or be straightforward about your appeal to working class women voters, who you desperately need to turn away from Clinton. That would make the news.

--Dana Goldtein

Just a few weeks ago Mike Huckabee was touting how his campaign is "not about high-paid consultants" but about "ordinary people who've come from as far away as Oregon and Florida to get to Iowa, many of whom are coming up there from Southern states where they're having to buy a coat so they can survive going door-to-door, answering phones, getting out material and signing up people for the caucuses." He met with Ronald Reagan's 1984 chief campaign strategist, Ed Rollins, who reminisced, Huckabee told the Associated Press, that "'we were so broke, we were sleeping three to a room in New Hampshire and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.'" Now, Huckabee said of Reagan, "he's the icon, and everybody wraps themselves up in Ronald Reagan . . . . he's the gold standard of the Republican Party. He was anything but that, prior to his election and his term."

This afternoon Huckabee is expected to announce that Rollins will be his national campaign chair. No word on whether they are going to share a room.

--Sarah Posner

As Brian Beutler reports today at TAP Online, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted yesterday to put before the full Senate the matter of contempt citations for White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove for their refusal to comply with subpoenas for information on the controversial firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

In Big Media, this is playing as no big deal, perhaps because President Bush has said that should any such citations head for the courts, he will not permit the Justice Department to prosecute them. Presto-change-o, just like that -- instant coup! No biggie, apparently.

Whether the Senate ultimately issues these criminal contempt citations or the Justice Department stonewalls on behalf of Napolean Bonehead (a.k.a., the president), there's a more efficient route the Senate could take. It's one that former Clinton Administration Chief of Staff John Podesta told me back in September: the Senate has the option of using the Capitol Police Force to serve civil contempt citations. No Justice Department needed to prosecute those babies. Just a couple of cops dispatched by the sergeant at arms.

Now, wouldn't that be somethin'? (A girl can dream, can't she?)

--Adele M. Stan

The New Jersey legislature has voted to abolish the death penalty, and Corzine says that he will sign the bill. Good. Some death penalty supporters will undoubtedly mention that a majority of the state's citizens still support the death penalty, but this is misleading. When residents are asked to choose between the viable alternatives, what the legislature did was in fact consistent with public opinion:

Where there is a discernible shift underway -- and what has partly driven the repeal in New Jersey -- is when residents are offered an alternative; the death penalty, or life in prison without parole. Given the choice, New Jersey residents backed life without parole over the death penalty, 52 percent to 39 percent.

--Scott Lemieux

Brian Beutler reports on the contempt resolutions against two of the four White House staff members who have refused to fully comply with the Senate Judiciary Committee's subpoenas.

Sarah Blustain questions the prosecution of a mother with a history of drug abuse whose child was stillborn. (Subscribers only)

--The Editors

Over on Danger Room, Noah Shachtman wonders whether climate change is a military issue. Seems the Defense Authorization Bill that just passed in the House "includes a requirement for future defense planning to include consideration of the risks posed by global warming to current and future Department of Defense facilities, capabilities, and missions," according to a statement from Rep. Ed Markey's office. The bill requires that global warming impacts be assessed and accounted for in future versions of the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the Quadrennial Defense Review.

But it shouldn't be any surprise that the military is going to have to start taking climate change into account. Back in April, a group of retired generals and admirals released a 63-page report on the security threats posed by the resource strain and migration likely to happen should global temperatures continue to rise. The day after that report was issued, the U.N. Security Council held its first-ever briefing on climate change, which focused on conflicts that could arise in politically unstable regions of Asia and Africa. Their report concluded that the climate change could become an "incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," and that the United States "must become a more constructive partner" with the rest of the world.

All of this just makes it even more frustrating that Senate Republicans can't manage to raise taxes on the oil industry to or agree that we should move toward drawing 15 percent of our electricity from renewable sources, pretty much the bare minimum in attempts to curb climate change. What happened to Republican reverence for the military?

--Kate Sheppard

Via Chris Hayes via Wonkette, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has released a "Twelve Days of Christmas" parody about what "the liberals" would disperse as holiday treats this year. But wait, don't we hate Christmas, Jesus, everything contained therein? And aren't there some Republicans out there who learned how to carry a tune in the church choir at some point?

--Kate Sheppard

Larry Sabato -- whose Senate predictions in the '06 midterms were pretty much dead on -- sees 2008 as another good one for the Democrats in the Senate, with VA, CO, and NH looking like likely pickups and a couple of other possibilities. This isn't surprising, but it's still gratifying to see it laid out so systematically. New Mexico shows up as a tossup, however, therefore strengthening my wish that Bill Richardson would abandon his quixotic presidential campaign and get into the race ...

--Scott Lemieux

It wasn't pretty when Bill Shaheen, co-chair of Hillary Clinton's campaign, suggested Barack Obama might be tarred as a drug dealer because Obama has written about his drug use as a young man. As Addie wrote, "Here, we find Shaheen, as Clinton's surrogate, not simply mining a rival's past for unflattering information, but deploying that information in a way that he likely knows will evoke a racial stereotype of the black drug-thug in the minds of voters who have never known actual black people."

So it's no surprise Shaheen is a goner. Here's his statement from the campaign press release:

I would like to reiterate that I deeply regret my comments yesterday and say again that they were in no way authorized by Senator Clinton or the Clinton campaign. Senator Clinton has been running a positive campaign focused on the issues that matter to America’s families. She is the best qualified to be the next President of the United States because she can lead starting on day one. I made a mistake and in light of what happened, I have made the personal decision that I will step down as the Co-Chair of the Hillary for President campaign. This election is too important and we must all get back to electing the best qualified candidate who has the record of making change happen in this country. That candidate is Hillary Clinton.

--Dana Goldstein

Like yesterday's GOP debate, the Democratic debate was pretty tight and focused on generating discussion of real issues for voters in the Iowa caucus (save for the last few throwaway questions). Register editor Carolyn Washburn kept the discussion strictly to policy and priorities, and each candidate was asked to answer nearly every question, unlike other debates where there's been a tendency to limit each to just a few candidates. Despite this, there were some major gaps in discussion topics, most notably, not a single question on foreign policy, and nothing on Iran or the NIE. The only time subjects like torture or Guantanamo came up were when the candidates mentioned them as part of their response to the question on what they'd address in their first year. Also, nothing on immigration or abortion, both of which came up in yesterday's debate.

It was also by far the most civil debate in recent weeks, lacking many direct attacks on opponents. And with little interaction between the candidates, there wasn't a whole lot of excitement. Many expected this to be Hillary Clinton's chance to slow Obama's surge there, but both seemed to bring an equally toned-down, reserved posturing today. At the same time, it also didn't seem to do much to help Obama in the surge department.

There didn't seem to be any clear winners or losers here -- all seemed to have their game faces on, concentrating on making their own message as clear as possible. Perhaps it's just getting too late for any major shake-ups in Iowa via debates; it's all about the legs and the message on the ground there now.

--Kate Sheppard

The last two questions are equally inane: "What are your New Year's resolutions?" and "What are the lessons from Iowa?"

The first produced a lot of hopes that they'll remember what's at stake in the election, and pledges to spend more time with the family and exercise more. The second produced a lot of pandering to Iowans. Edwards: "Instead of seeing us on television, the Iowa caucus-goers see us up close. They can judge what's crucial to the next president." Biden: "Iowa deserves to be first."

--Kate Sheppard

Now they're doing candidate-specific questions. Some interesting ones, and some that seem a little off-base:

First she asks Biden about some of his racial/cultural gaffes in the past. Then she asks Edwards about how he will work with the "special interests" in Washington should he become president, since they're not all going to go away immediately. Dodd is asked about his father misusing campaign funds decades ago, and whether he's running for president to restore his family's good name. Richardson is asked about lax security at national labs when he was Energy Secretary.

Obama is asked about how his foreign policy can include so many former advisers to Bill Clinton and still deliver the differences he promises. This one gets a good number of laughs, especially from Hillary. Obama gets a little punchy: "Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well. I want to gather up talent from everywhere."

Oddly, no special question for Hillary Clinton. (Apparently there was a question for Clinton about the transparency of her health care plan. Must have missed it catching up on notes.)

--Kate Sheppard

Senate Republicans managed to chop tax increases on the oil industry and a 15 percent renewable electricity standard from the energy bill, but at least the final bill retained the provisions that raise fuel-economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, create a Renewable Fuel Standard, and increase efficiency standards for appliances and buildings. Bush says he'll sign this significantly less-toothed version if the House approves it (which it's expected to). And this, my friends, is a wonderful example of how good legislation becomes much-less-good legislation, and then becomes law.

--Kate Sheppard

Obama: reverse executive orders that have undermined our civil liberties, work on health care.

Biden: abandon policies on torture, prisoners, create emergency health care funds on path to universal health care, invest in preschool education.

Richardson: energy strategy to reduce foreign oil imports, bring back habeas corpus, stop using torture, restore ourselves as a nation.

Dodd: appeal to unity, give back Constitution, robust diplomacy in the Middle East, a week after the election get people together to talk about energy and health care.

Edwards: end the war, close Guantanamo, begin process on universal health care and global warming.

Clinton: begin to end war in Iraq and bring troops home, rescind executive orders that take away liberties, end Bush's war on science.

--Kate Sheppard

I'm always impressed with John Edwards' discussions of education policy during these debates. He begins with the importance of early childhood interventions, he criticizes NCLB while holding out hope it can be reformed, and he highlights the privileges suburban schools enjoy that rural and inner city schools lack. He circles back to discuss free college tuition for qualified high school graduates.

Bill Richardson, as usual, talks here about creating a national minimum wage for teachers -- $40,000. Clinton is vague on education today. Biden nods toward smaller class sizes, better teacher pay, and college affordability.

Obama should have been given a chance to tackle this one.

--Dana Goldstein

For what it's worth, Clinton campaign spokesperson Kathleen Strand says that Hillary Clinton personally apologized to Barack Obama for comments by Clinton advisor Bill Shaheen that Obama's past drug use impeded his electability.

Clinton has a subtle dig for Obama in her free statement. "Everyone wants change," she says, but "hope" isn't enough. You have to "work hard for change. That's what I've done my whole life."

--Dana Goldstein

The candidates are asked what should be done about energy independence, especially since it may be a costly transition. Each of the candidates handled it well, framing the transition to a clean energy policy as necessary, not optional.

Biden, up first, says, "The president has to make this a moral crusade for the American people." Richardson says we need to raise fuel efficiency standards to 50 miles a gallon, not 35, and reduce consumption of oil by 50 percent. He also mentioned investing in mass transit, the only of the candidates to do so. "This has to be an energy revolution lead by a president," said Richardson. Dodd touted himself as the only candidate who advocated a corporate carbon tax. "Cheaper fuel is always going to win out, unfortunately," he says. Clinton says that the energy transition will require "a new form of American patriotism," in which people are proud to make sacrifices and back the necessary efforts to transition. Obama called it "a moral imperative." "The next president has to be able to tell the American not just what they want to hear, but what they need to hear," he said.

--Kate Sheppard

Biden's doing great. The frame for this election has been experience vs. change, he says, but he alone can bring "action and pragmatic solutions." He mentions his foreign policy experience and his leadership on specific legislation, including the Violence Against Women Act.

Richardson uses his time to push the focus back to Iraq. "I"m concerned about the fact that in the media and the last debate, the Iraq war was not discussed. And it's the most fundamental issue facing this country."

--Dana Goldstein

As he has in his apperances with Oprah, Obama quotes MLK's "fierce urgency of now" in reference to restoring America's standing in the world, creating economic security, and battling climate change.

Edwards is more combative and populist, saying jobs, the middle class, and health care are all at risk because of "corporate power and corporate greed in Washington, D.C. You can't make a deal with them, you can't make them go away. You have to be ready to fight."

--Dana Goldstein

The two nations aren't playing by the same rules, Dodd says in a well thought out answer. He mentions China's human rights abuses and their devaluation of the yuan.

--Dana Goldstein

It begins with the same first question from yesterday about fiscal responsibility. The Democrats approach the problem completely differently, of course, talking about the costs of the war and the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Obama mentions growing inequality and Edwards rails against shipping jobs overseas.

Bill Richardson advocates a Constitutional amendment to give the president line item veto power over the federal budget.

--Dana Goldstein

Today the Los Angeles Times brings us this piece bemoaning the fact that negotiators in Bali have been stuck in debate about a carbon emissions cap without addressing the "most fundamental question of what it will take to achieve meaningful reductions." The piece then toes the Bush administration's line that it's not emissions reduction targets we need, but "Technology! Technology! Technology!" And to get technology, say Bush and friends, we need massive investments, not regulations.

But they are missing the fact that major investment on the part of the federal government (or private investors) is not going to come without the impetus that binding targets will give us. Without targets, dirty energy will remain cheaper, and thus more appealing, both at home and abroad. It's regulation that spurs the new technology that Bush and friends are so fixated on.

Brad Plumer points to recent Carnegie Mellon research that illustrates this quite clearly. Researchers looked at the number of patent filings for sulfur dioxide-control technologies for power plants. The number of patent applications was pretty dismal for nearly a century, despite government investment, but shot up exponentially when Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1963. So the Bush administration's singular fixation on the research and development of new technology without the necessary regulation component is essentially worthless. It's this simple: Innovation needs regulation, and the planet needs both.

--Kate Sheppard

Paul Waldman ponders the real GOP showdown:

After months of tedium and mindless chest-thumping, the race for the Republican presidential nomination finally got interesting over the last couple of weeks. And the way it did so highlights the fundamental rift threatening the future of the GOP: the divide between the party's corporate/anti-tax wing, which includes the people who write the checks, and its social conservative wing, which includes the people who get bodies to the polls. It's the plutocrats versus the theocrats, and at the moment it's hard to tell who's going to win.

Try to imagine the combination of pain and dread now covering the Mitt Romney campaign like a wet wool blanket. After all the work, after all the enthusiastic pandering, after outspending his opponents by millions, after the months in which he was the only candidate airing ads in Iowa, his support there turned out to be a mile wide and an inch deep. At the first opportunity, the social conservatives whose feet he had kissed with such commitment wandered away from his gleaming campaign and over to that smooth-talking preacher setting up folding chairs in his bare-bones storefront.

It now looks as if a lot of Iowa conservatives were leaning to Romney because they felt that they didn't have much choice. Sure he's a phony, they thought, but what other options do we have? The somnambulant character actor? The cross-dressing New Yorker? As someone recently said, at least Romney was pretending to believe the right things.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

The Republicans were more than happy at their debate yesterday to ignore the fact that Des Moines Register editor Carolyn Washburn asked them not one question about Iraq. Here's hoping that today, the Democrats force Iraq (and the NIE Iran report) into the debate. Judging by a wanky editorial in today's Register, I expect Washburn to once again push the conversation toward "spending" issues that don't capture the magnitude of the political challenges we face. Check back here at 2 pm EST to see if the Democrats can turn up the heat.

--Dana Goldstein

Here are the number one public policy concerns of thousands of people around the world, as determined by a new international survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Pew:

• Sub-Saharan Africa: Infectious diseases, including HIV
• Latin America: Crime
• Asia: Crime
• Central Europe: Political corruption
• Western Europe: Pollution
• Middle East: Terrorism

The results from the Middle East are especially interesting. Broken down by country, the people of Lebanon, Morroco, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey are all most worried about terrorism. But residents of both Israel and the Palestinian territories agree that their biggest problem is "corrupt leaders." Common ground! In Kuwait, people are most concerned about "illegal drugs."

The survey was focused on health and development, so it didn't ask respondents what they thought of "American influence" or "American foreign policy." It would be interesting to know how that would rank among these other concerns.

--Dana Goldstein

On CNN yesterday, Mike Huckabee said he had apologized to Mitt Romney for his "innocent" question about whether Mormons believe Jesus and Satan were brothers:

Speaking with CNN Wednesday, Huckabee expressed disbelief that the comment has caused an uproar.

"We were having a conversation over several hours, the conversation was about religion and he was trying to press me on my thoughts of Mitt Romney's religion, and I said 'I don't want to go there.'" Huckabee said.

"I really didn't know. Well, he was telling me things about the Mormon faith, because he frankly is well-schooled on comparative religions. As a part of that conversation, I asked the question, because I had heard that, and I asked it, not to create something -- I never thought it would make the story."

At the National Review, whose editors have endorsed Romney, Jim Geraghty called Huckabee on his feigned ignorance:"The apology is the right move, but I'm going to call horsepuckey on Huckabee's claim that a New York Times reporter knew more about comparative religions than guy with a theology degree." And if Amy Sullivan's experiences in a Baptist Sunday school are any guide, Huckabee probably learned about Mormonism long before he even went to seminary.

--Sarah Posner

George W. Bush has long used China as an excuse for the United States to do nothing about global warming. At the Republican debate yesterday, Mitt Romney adopted a similar line. "We call it global warming, not American warming!" he cried. "So let's not put a burden on us alone and have the rest of the world skate by."

Such comments rest upon the absurd fallacy that the United States has embraced leader status on environmental issues. The rhetoric is meant to reassure grassroots conservatives of America exceptionalism, the same dangerous ideology upon which neo-conservative foreign policy is based. And it couldn't be more misleading when, simultaneous to the GOP debate, as Kate wrote, American negotiators in Bali were refusing to sign on to binding carbon reductions. Without a promise from the U.S., China is holding back. There goes progress.

So, yes: Where the United States leads, the world follows ... even if we lead straight into the abyss. Americans who tune into the presidential debates deserve to know the truth.

--Dana Goldstein

All the talk of late about the histories of some of the evangelicals who have been getting behind Mike Huckabee (see, for example, this video compilation from People for the American Way, of some of televangelist James Robison's 1970s'-era preaching, around the time that Huckabee worked for him) led me to open my box of 1980s-vintage Christian right literature, where I knew I had plenty of material from Huckabee backers Tim and Beverly LaHaye. Back then, Bev had just founded Concerned Women for America, and Tim was launching his American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV) -- an early Christian right group that no longer exists.

In my box of relics, I found a 1985 issue of The Moral Majority Report, in which LaHaye wrote a column about an upcoming ACTV conference on "How to Win an Election," a rant against "secular-minded Americans" who make lenient laws towards "pornographers, abortionists, homosexuals and drug pushers." Here's the opening paragraph of the piece; see if you can catch a very odd -- but amusing -- misspelling:

The greatest mistake of Christians the past 50 years has been to avoid getting involved in running for public office. In spite of the fact that governors, authorities and those that work for them are called "Ministers of God" in Romans 13:1-6, Christians have rarely considered government service as a bonified position in which to serve the Lord.

ACTV soon folded, as documented by Robert Dreyfuss in this great Rolling Stone piece from 2004 (well worth a read in light of LaHaye's efforts on Huckabee's behalf):

By the mid-1980s, LaHaye was at the top of his game, powerful and well- connected, plugged into the Reagan administration and, through yet another of his groups, the American Coalition for Traditional Values, a pivotal factor in the 1984 election, registering Christian conservative voters through "pastor-representatives" in all 435 congressional districts. But he was also headed for a fall.

LaHaye's free-fall began in the mid-1980s, and by the end he'd almost been expelled from the political Garden of Eden. What set it into motion was his connection with the weird would-be messiah Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose Unification Church cult of "Moonies" was viewed by most Christians as laughably heretical. When Moon got entangled in legal controversy, LaHaye sprang to his defense, amid reports that he'd received substantial funding from the wealthy Moon. By the time LaHaye backed away, it was too late. His credibility was shot, and the American Coalition for Traditional Values soon folded.

Then it got worse. In 1988, LaHaye was bounced from the presidential campaign of former Rep. Jack Kemp when the media learned of LaHaye's anti-Catholic views (he considers Catholics to have strayed from biblical truth and has referred to popes as "Antichrists"). After that, he was deemed nearly radioactive in politics. When he showed up later that year for a campaign event at the elder George Bush's home, the vice president rushed to Doug Wead, his liaison to the religious right. "Tim LaHaye is here!" Wead recalls Bush saying in alarm. By the early 1990s, LaHaye had retreated to a small Baptist church in Rockville, Maryland, and the Moonie-owned Washington Times noted that he had "left the national stage."

Of course now LaHaye is back, helping to run the Renewal or Restoration Projects at which Huckabee speaks to pastors -- but who knows what's said at these events; they are closed to the press and Huckabee doesn't even put them on his public schedule.

--Sarah Posner

Okay, so I'm no neophyte, thinking everybody should play nice with each other until we get this primary thing done with. But yesterday's comments by Billy Shaheen, a national co-chair of Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign (and husband of former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen), on the past drug use of Clinton rival Barack Obama are really shameful.

When soon-to-be also-ran Chris Dodd went after Hillary Clinton for alleged lack of "electability", I took issue with his transparent attempt to leverage any lingering sexism in the Democratic base to his own advantage. Here, we find Shaheen, as Clinton's surrogate, not simply mining a rival's past for unflattering information, but deploying that information in a way that he likely knows will evoke a racial stereotype of the black drug-thug in the minds of voters who have never known actual black people. From The Trail, the WashingtonPost.com blog:

Shaheen said Obama's candor on the subject would "open the door" to further questions. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" Shaheen said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."

If you think I'm reading too much into this, check out this piece by the Post's Lois Romano from very early this year -- a year to the day, perchance, of the upcoming Iowa caucuses --about Obama's self-revelation:

Long before the national media spotlight began to shine on every twist and turn of his life's journey, Barack Obama had this to say about himself: "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. . . . I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind."

[...]

Obama writes extensively about his struggle to come to terms with being a black man whose African father returned to Kenya when he was 2, leaving him to be raised by his white Kansas-born mother and grandparents in Hawaii. He describes an identity crisis arising from his realization that his life was shaped by both a loving white family and a world that saw in him the negative stereotypes frequently ascribed to young black men. He recounts a search of self that took him from high school in Hawaii to Columbia University, and then to the streets of Chicago as a community organizer.

At least he didn't say he never inhaled.

--Adele M. Stan

I wasn't wholly serious earlier with my plea to Newt Gingrich to enter the GOP race (and by my obsession with the Definer, I date myself), but watching the Des Moines debate, I was struck by how much the characteristic gesture of Gingrichism has taken hold in most the field. I would describe that gesture as a marriage of minimalist government, minimal or no taxes, with grand, grand gestures of public ambition and spending -- without even a moment's self-awareness of the contradiction. Thus, Gingrich could call for abolition of the Department of Education and in the next paragraph call for a federal initiative to give every schoolchild a laptop computer! (Back in 1995, when that was a big deal.)

Thus the candidates insist that no taxes will ever rise and there will be more large cuts, some would abolish the IRS; they promise that the deficit must be reduced, that programs of some sort can be cut, and then they turn around and make grand calls for Public Investment!! in climate-change technology, in education, and in defense. We'll all be winners!

That's music to my ears (except for defense), but it has no relationship to the rest of the Republican agenda. And while it might seem like the standard Republican hypocrisy, it's really not the language of Bush in 2000 or 2004, who neither proposed abolishing the IRS nor big public investments. "Compassionate Conservatism" promised moderation in both directions. Which was a lie, but a different lie from the one these guys are telling.

--Mark Schmitt

Compared to past debates, this event was tightly controlled and policy focused. It's clear that the Des Moines Register, unlike CNN or MSNBC, was concerned more with moving the presidential campaign forward around the issues than making flashy television. That didn't keep moderator Carolyn Washburn, editor of the Register, from closing out by asking the candidates to suggest a New Year's resolution for one of their competitors. But all in all, there was a sober tone in Des Moines this afternoon as the Republican field grappled more substantively than they have before with fiscal policy, education, and trade.

All eyes, of course, were on the surging Mike Huckabee. He turned in another strong performance, but he won't run away with the hype today, as he did after the last debate. Perhaps Huck is getting nervous, because he stuck his neck out far less -- his support for public services for the children of undocumented immigrants didn't come up, and he didn't eloquently state his Christian obligation to the poor, as he has in the past. Surprisingly, the other candidates mostly allowed Huckabee to blend into the pack. Romney made the most explicit attack, saying that unlike Huckabee -- who is currently implicated in the pardon of Arkansas rapist and murderer Wayne Dumond -- he never pardoned a criminal in Massachusetts.

I don't think this debate shook the field up at all. We'll see if the Democrats turn in something more exciting tomorrow.

--Dana Goldstein

The Romney campaign is angry about Mike Huckabee's musing in the Chavets piece, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?" Many evangelicals, as I alluded to in this week's FundamentaList, believe that such a heretical filial relationship is a bedrock of the Mormon faith.

Romney hasn't addressed that theological question, but the Mormon church denies it. The Huckabee campaign says "the full context of the exchange makes it clear that Governor Huckabee was illustrating his unwillingness to answer questions about Mormonism and to avoid addressing theological questions during this campaign." So the question remains why, if he admittedly doesn't know much about Mormonism, why he would let that little nugget of apostasy -- so sensational for Mormonism's evangelical critics -- drop at all.

--Sarah Posner

It turns out Minnesota has the highest youth vote turnout in the nation thanks to its progressive voting laws. Via MTV, a recent examination of voter trends by Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement and the United States Election Project, young people in Minnesota had a turnout of 69 percent in 2004. This number is not only higher than national voter turnout of all ages that year (60 percent) but almost 1.5 times more than the national youth vote turnout (47 percent).

Same-day voter registration in Minnesota only requires a state-issued ID. If you don't have one, bring an ID and a recent utility bill. Neighbors can also vouch for once another, and when I was a student, I could use my student ID as proof of residency. Opponents of same-day registration say that this opens elections up to voter fraud, but it always seems that the problem is not that we have too many people voting -- it's that we have too few.

-- Kay Steiger

Regular readers know I don't consider Rudy Giuliani pro-choice, since he says he would appoint Supreme Court justices who'd overturn Roe. But nevertheless, it's lovely to see that at every Republican debate, a few audience members erupt into applause when Giuliani says he believes the ultimate choice about abortion should be left up to a woman and her doctor.

Too bad we can't trust Giuliani on reproductive rights as far as we can throw him.

--Dana Goldstein

So says Ron Paul in his pre-taped interivew with the Des Moines Register, host of today's debate. Awwww. Here at TAPPED, we think the Internet is delightful, too.

--Dana Goldstein

While everyone focuses on its abortion decisions, the Roberts Court is merrily revoking a century of legislation protecting citizens, consumers, workers, and minorities against business. Simon Lazarus lays it all out:

When most Americans think about the Supreme Court's effect on the life of their nation, they think about such cultural hot-buttons as abortion, or due process for terrorists, or free speech and pornography. They don't think about the Court's effect on the issues that most directly affect the majority of them on a daily basis -- health and retirement security, workplace fairness and equal opportunity, consumer protection and product safety.

Since these pocketbook matters do not roil culture-war sensitivities or raise constitutional questions, the press, public, and politicians pay little or no heed when they come before the Court. Nor, with few exceptions, do liberal advocacy groups -- even though landmark laws they fought to enact are at risk, and even though constituencies they purport to represent have much reason to care about how those laws will fare in the hands of the Roberts Court. Indeed, while right-wing groups still make political hay by railing at "liberal activist" judges, progressive groups often pay scant attention to the conservative-activist threat to judicially repeal the economic protections that Congress and state legislatures have enacted since the New Deal.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

Huck's first priority as president would be "bringing the country together."

Alan Keyes is so annoying. Sorry, just had to say that. He earlier stated that the biggest problem with our schools is that kids learn their rights come for the Constitution, not God.

--Dana Goldstein

When asked about education, Duncan Hunter talked about Jaime Escalante, the East Los Angeles math teacher who, during the 1980s, had remarkable success teaching poor children AP calculus. Escalante was the subject of the 1988 movie "Stand and Deliver." Congressman, where have you been these last two decades? You know, there's newer evidence of success in our schools.

In any case, Hunter said Escalante was driven out of teaching "by the unions." My quick Wikipedia fact-check shows that's not true: Escalante did switch high schools in 1991 due to disagreements with the administration over class size. But he retired in 2001 not because of unions, but to return to his native country of Bolivia.

--Dana Goldstein

Everyone seems to agree that "choice and competition" are the answers for schools. McCain gets in a dig at Giuliani by implying that he wasn't any good for New York City schools. "In New York City, there are some remarkable things happening under Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein, with an educational system that was broken," McCain intones. Rudy doesn't respond to that.

--Dana Goldstein

The field just mutinied and said they wouldn't raise their hands to signal whether or not they believe global warming is caused by humans. But then they all basically admitted global warming is real, and talked about investing in green energy.

--Dana Goldstein

Climate talks in Bali are nearing conclusion, and it still looks as though the negotiators from the United States are squared up to impede progress there. Discussion between nations is currently divided over setting the ground rules for formal negotiations of a new pact, and the United States is at the head of opposition to any mention of binding targets in those rules. China continues to refuse to back targets unless the United States is on board. United Nations officials say there hasn't been much progress at the summit, and some sort of breakthrough is needed there in the next two days in order to get on the right track for negotiations of a new treaty to be completed by 2009.

Pressure on the U.S. is mounting from even our former allies on this front, like Australia, whose new prime minister Kevin Rudd officially signed his country onto the Kyoto Protocol on Wednesday. This leaves the United States as the only developed nation that hasn't signed Kyoto.

I'm not hopeful that the United States representatives in Bali will come around on emissions targets in the next two days, but Rudd's action today is a good step. It will probably take a new administration here as well for for our official policy to change, but at least others are moving forward without us.

--Kate Sheppard

Paul: "The goal of all political action should be to ensure liberty."

Thompson: "The most important issue facing our country...is national security. ... I know the world we live in, I think I know what we need to do." He says he'd be the toughest negotiators with "our enemies." It's all very vague.

--Dana Goldstein

Should the United States alter trade policies with nations that abuse human rights? In a word, no. McCain says, "I will open every market in the world to Iowa's agricultural products." He will eliminate ethanol subsidies -- they "distort markets" and "destroy our ability to compete." A bright and sunny Giuliani says of NAFTA and developing nations, "What we should be thinking about is how much can we sell to these people as they're coming out of poverty." Sell, sell!

Tom Tancredo criticizes NAFTA for destroying southern Mexican agriculture, and -- duh-- encouraging illegal immigration.

--Dana Goldstein

The Des Moines Register is allowing each candidate about 30 seconds to make a free statement.

John McCain is up first, and he focuses on his experience and judgment, particulary in his early support for the Iraq surge. Now it's Duncan Hunter's turn. He says he opposes off-shoring and supports a border fence.

--Dana Goldstein

Mitt Romney just suggested that many of the 13 federal programs aimed at preventing teen pregnancy should be cut. "They're not working too well," he said, alluding to last week's news that teen pregnancy rates have risen for the first time in years.

Does this mean Romney wants to cut the Bush administration's $50 million annually to fund abstinence only sex-ed, which science shows does nothing to keep young people healthy, informed, and pregnancy-free?

--Dana Goldstein

The first GOP debate question is on economic risks to American national security. Rudy Giuliani talks about reducing corporate taxes, outlawing the estate tax, and encouraging federal bureaucrats to retire. Ron Paul says our dollar is being "destroyed" by our foreign policy. Tom Tancredo says we need energy independence, as does John McCain, who promises a Manhattan Project to become "oil independent" within five years. Fred Thompson says we need to spend less on entitlements and more on the military. Cutting Social Security "won't hurt anyone," he claims.

Mitt Romney sounds like an automaton: "Our future is bright! ... This, again, is based upon the American people!"

Mike Huckabee says the United States is in a trade deficit and needs to learn to "feed itself, fuel itself, fight for itself." Catchy.

And by the way, Alan Keyes is here today. He says we need to abolish the income tax. Not clear how he thinks that would improve national security.

--Dana Goldstein

United Steelworkers just released a new video as part of their campaign to stop the import of lead-tainted Chinese products:

Sure, the Christmas caroling is somewhat grating, but it's good to see organizing going on around this issue. They've got more information on the campaign at Stop Toxic Imports and Protect Our Kids.

--Kate Sheppard

Like Addie, I found a number of fascinating tidbits in the forthcoming Zev Chavets profile of Mike Huckabee, among them that his thinking on foreign policy (to the extent he has done much thinking, it seems) has been influenced by Thomas Friedman and Frank Gaffney. When asked about his lack of foreign policy experience, Huckabee pointed to our current president's same lack of experience in 1999 (not a good answer, Mike!), and, in another Bush deja-vu, pledged to "surround" himself "with the best possible advice." Who might provide that advice? Duncan Hunter, who Huckabee said is "extraordinarily well-qualified" to be defense secretary.

As for Regent University professor Charles Dunn's theory that envy is keeping some in the evangelical leadership from endorsing Huckabee, I can't get inside their heads, of course, but based on the people I've talked to, I really do get the sense that at least part of their reluctance is that they are very threatened by what they perceive as his willingness to forgo the long-standing evangelical/anti-tax/anti-government alliance. From their perspective, obviously, the coalition is essential for winning elections, and they worry that Huckabee could break it apart.

That said, I wouldn't completely discount the envy theory. Despite his rock star showing at this year's Values Voter Summit, he really rankled the audience last year with a speech in which he proposed forming alliances between Christian conservatives and long-time adversaries such as the gay community and women's rights groups to tackle social issues like AIDS and pornography. His nice-guy act (genuine or not) didn't fly at the 2006 Values Voter Summit, and this year he replaced it with inflammatory phrases like the "holocaust of liberalized abortion."

But Huckabee's deftness in other forums at playing to conservative evangelicals' theocratic impulses while not seeming like a mean-spirited freak to most everyone else could inspire jealousy, no? And surely an unemployed Huckabee would have a platform and a significant following of disappointed primary voters. But if his campaign fundraising is any guide, he would probably still be lacking the main thing that keeps the politicized evangelical leadership going: money.

--Sarah Posner

If the Republican Party winds up with no nominee at all in 2008, give me credit: I was making that prediction well over a year ago, back when their top contenders were Bill Frist, George Allen, and Rick Santorum.

I don't know if Mike Huckabee can win or not, but I'm reasonably confident that he can make Romney disappear. Romney's lead in Iowa was totally built on money. He's not a natural Iowa candidate, whereas Huckabee is. (Though natural Iowa candidates, in either party but especially the GOP, don't always do well elsewhere -- e.g. Pat Robertson.) In national polls, and in every state except the two where he's outspending everyone, Romney never breaks 10%, to this day. And he's the only candidate who almost always trails badly in horserace match-ups with Clinton or any other Dem. I had been discounting that because of name recognition, but it's remarkable how quickly Huckabee moved into position in the national polls, with no more name recognition than Romney. If Romney loses Iowa, maybe he's the "comeback kid" in New Hampshire, but more likely it will be discounted because its a neighboring state and that lead is very soft also.

I think the "Republican Establishment," such as it is, will -- more importantly than any disagreement on taxes or immigration -- conclude Huckabee absolutely can't win. They have to present just a soft enough face on social issues to pick up moderately pro-choice women, which was really the Bush-Cheney secret. I doubt there's a scenario in which Huckabee could win any of the likely swing states, either Rocky Mountain, Midwest, or Florida. I'd guess that will result in a very quick effort to consolidate around Giuliani, despite the fact that his scandal baggage is heavier than we've ever seen in a candidate. I don't see McCain pulling a Kerry, mainly because he can no longer count on the independents in New Hampshire, many of whom have now become Democrats. Perhaps they all self-destruct and Duncan Hunter saunters out of the fiery wreckage.

Newt, your nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Civilization needs its definer.

--Mark Schmitt

Apparently already tiring of going after fellow Republicans, Mitt Romney is now airing an ad in Michigan that targets Hillary Clinton. And he's playing the card she's been using on Obama: experience.

Setting aside the sheer hilarity of equating running the country to running the Olympics, it's at best an absurd claim. "She hasn't run a corner store. She hasn't run a state. She hasn't run a city... The idea that she could learn to be President as an internship just doesn't make any sense." Of course if she had run a corner store, they'd use that against her. But unless you've been president, the job of being president will be new to you, and running a state or city is hardly the same. She could equally accuse the Republican front-runners of having no national-level political experience. Or no experience in foreign policy. Or ... well, one could go on and on.

But more importantly, Republicans want to have it both ways on Clinton: either she's already been in (insert:"the White House," "Washington," "national politics" here) too long, or she hasn't been there long enough. Either she was pulling the strings on Bill or she would be just "an intern" as president. It doesn't seem like a smart tack for Romney to take.

Interesting, though, that he's running the ad in Michigan, where the Dems have vowed to strip the state of its delegates at the 2008 Democratic National Convention if they move forward with plans to hold their primary on Jan. 15. Perhaps he thinks some preemptive Dem-bashing there will do good by the party in the general election. The state isn't usually ranked as one of the top priorities for the Republicans, but Kerry won by a fairly slim margin there in 2004.

--Kate Sheppard

The latest edition in the Washington Post series on the front-runners for president focuses on Fred Thompson, and why his campaign has been pretty much a non-starter. He started too late. His campaign announcement was too "flat and vague." He's too much of a "a policy wonk" to jump into the fray without careful consideration (which is funny, since he's released very little in the way of policy thus far). He annoys some religious conservatives by not supporting a federal amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

The Post piece seems to blame his timing and sees his candidacy as a "perfect opportunity squandered." Or maybe he's just a bad candidate. He's done little to prove to Republicans he'd make a good president, and all the problems described in this piece would make it easy for the Democrats to annihilate him in the general election.This is why I'm hoping that the deep splits among Republican voters will lead to some fluke Thompson win in the primaries. He usually ranks third in national polls in the top three in South Carolina, despite being perpetually in fourth in Iowa and even worse off in New Hampshire. But the lack of consensus still leaves the GOP side pretty wide open.

--Kate Sheppard

I enjoyed this from the National Review’s endorsement of Mitt Romney:

Uniting the conservative coalition is not enough to win a presidential election, but it is a prerequisite for building on that coalition. Rudolph Giuliani did extraordinary work as mayor of New York and was inspirational on 9/11. But he and Mike Huckabee would pull apart the coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives, and Huckabee the economic (and foreign-policy) conservatives. A Republican party that abandoned either limited government or moral standards would be much diminished in the service it could give the country.

Yes, try to imagine a world in which a Republican administration substantially increased government spending, spent spectacular amounts of money to invade a country that posed no threat to the United States, packed the federal courts with statist reactionaries, and repeatedly supported arbitrary executive power. That kind of Republican Party sure would be useless!

—Scott Lemieux

Only one last chance to move to the right on immigration before the Iowa caucuses! Join us at 2 pm EST to read some of what the Republicans are saying out in Des Moines.

--Dana Goldstein

Somebody's campaign is already developing a "Plan B" backstop in New Hampshire in case she tanks in Iowa. (OK, so the feminine pronoun gives it away, but go read.)

--Tom Schaller

My soft spot for Dennis Kucinich has significantly hardened since he said he'd name Ron Paul his vice president, but this is unnecessarily harsh: The Des Moines Register has barred the lefty candidate from participating in tomorrow afternoon's final debate before the Iowa caucus. Why? Kucinich's Iowa campaign manager works out of his own home in Dubuque, instead of a rented office.

Kucinich is wacky. But he's also the only candidate in the race to have voted against the Iraq war authorization in 2002 -- when it counted. He represents (though not as credibly as he could) a real and significant portion of the Democratic electorate: those who were against the war from the beginning, who support single payer health care, who steadfastly oppose the death penalty, and who believe our criminal justice system is discriminatory and broken. Most Democrats who hold those views won't be voting for Kucinich, but that doesn't meant they don't appreciate his voice being part of the debates. You know, especially if he can clamp down on the UFO chatter.

The Register's own poll shows Kucinich tied with Chris Dodd, who will be debating, at 1 percent support from likely caucus-goers. Dodd moved his family to Iowa to campaign, enrolling his daughter in a l