Reason Magazine - Staff > David Weigel > Hit & Run Posts

The Future is a 73-Year Old Man

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:27:00 EST

Jose Antonio Vargas gives a full, flattering hearing to Republican consultants Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn, midwives of a new web site designed to let conservatives share their ideas for Republican recovery.

Ruffini, 30, is a veteran online political operative who worked for President Bush before heading the RNC's Internet department and advising Rudy Giuliani. "Maybe I'm being too optimistic here," he says, "but I think this period we're going through right now will be seen as a reawakening of not just the rightroots but also the Republican Party."

"The Republican Party cannot reboot if it's viewed only as a party of old, crusty white guys," adds Finn, who started a Washington-based online consulting firm with Ruffini last summer.

And the user-generated "Ideas" section of the site is... a jungle of comments by Ron Paul supporters. These would be the Ron Paul supporters whom RedState.com's Erick Erickson purged from his site, because clearly they were the only thing standing between the GOP and utter electoral triumph. The top three ideas are from Paul supporters, the fourth is the Fair Tax, the fifth and sixth are from Paul supporters, the seventh is the Fair Tax.

Ruffini, more than a lot of conservative bloggy leaders, had a strange respect for Paul supporters. (Tech-crazed Republican National Committee candidate Saul Anuzis famously tried to keep Paul out of Republican debates. He went on to lead his party in Michigan to its worst drubbing by Democrats since 1964.) It's clear that Paul grassroots activists like Trevor Lyman had huge breakthroughs this year. But the big Paul post-election venture, the Campaign for Liberty, has been criticized by Justine Lam, Paul's e-coordinator during the presidential campaign.

"I was very skeptical at first," Lam told me last week, "and I still am. Without Kent Snyder's direction and vision [longtime Paul friend and ideas man Snyder died this year], this can degrade into one of Ron’s organizations from the past. Look at FREE—it’s nothing. All they do is self-publish Ron's book, and not even at high quality. These organizations became salary collection devices for people close to Ron Paul. They didn’t become real forces like the Institute for Justice, for example, that are able to create change. They just exist." Lam criticized the CfL for its "long, rambling" early e-mails—while it's improved since launch it's still not a group that has anything to teach Republicans.

So the Paul people are out there, and online... but they are either organized ineffectively or treated like a virus that takes over "real" organizations.

Bob Barr on Eric Holder

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:37:00 EST

I had a long talk with former Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, mostly concerned with the timeline and high/low-lights of the campaign, but near the end I asked what he thought of attorney general-designate Eric Holder, who has come in for some criticism on this blog.

I have no problem with Eric Holder. I know him. I disagreed with him on some issues when he was with the Clinton administration and I was in the Congress... but, to me, Eric is somewhat different than the Clinton administration holdovers getting some of the other big posts. Being a lawyer and working at the Department of Justice—he’s not a Clintonista policy type. Yes, he was associated with the Clinton administration as the U.S. attorney here in D.C, and then as deputy attorney general, but I wouldn't call him a Clintonista.

This is striking because Barr was one of the congressmen grilling Holder over the Marc Rich pardon in early 2001. Fast forward to 1:49 in this video.

Barr has largely moved on from that, and is even more positive about Holder than the leaders of the Drug Policy Alliance and Marijuana Policy Project. Barr was more concerned and surprised at Obama's apparent selection of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. "I think that is a lose-lose for Obama," Barr said. "I do not understand why he’s doing that unless there’s something going on behind the scenes."

I For One Welcome Our New Mustachioed Overlords

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:14:00 EST

The environmental movement has claimed a big, 82-year old scalp: Michigan Rep. John Dingell, who's been in Congress since Eisenhower's first term, has lost the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to California Rep. Henry Waxman.

Waxman’s takeover of the Energy and Commerce caps a quarter-century rivalry between him and Dingell. While they agree on many issues — most notably health care — the two men have clashed since the 1980s over environmental regulations. Waxman, who leans to the left of his party, is an advocate of strong clean air protections and stringent fuel-efficiency and energy conservation measures.

Dingell has been a fierce protector of the auto industry, which is crucial to the economy of his home state of Michigan.

Waxman’s victory gives him control of one of the most powerful committees in Congress, with jurisdiction that touches almost every corner of domestic policy, from energy to health care to telecommunications.

You can't overstate how much liberals had come to resent Dingell. Glenn Hurowitz's 2007 rundown of the saga is a good place to start.

In a nod to Dingell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi excluded an increase in vehicle fuel efficiency -- despite the fact that the Senate included such an increase in its energy bill and more than 200 House co-sponsors have publicly backed the measure. It was a notable gap in a bill that otherwise included aggressive measures to tackle the climate crisis and secure energy independence, like diverting $16 billion in subsidies from oil and gas companies towards clean energy...

Earlier this summer, Dingell floated an energy proposal that could almost have come out of Dick Cheney's energy task force. Not only did it propose massive subsidies for dirt fossil fuels like coal and prohibit increases in automobile fuel efficiency, it took a somewhat gratuitous swipe at Pelosi's home state by revoking California's more than 30-year-old authority to set its own cleaner air standards.

Reason contributing editor Julian Sanchez has more on Waxman's views of intellectual property, part of his new fiefdom.

Dammit, Janet, I Love You

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:28:00 EST

If Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano actually becomes Secretary of Homeland Security, as President-elect Obama seems to desire... well, we could do worse. The first DHS secretary, Tom Ridge, struck me (I only met him twice) as a smart guy who really didn't understand his portfolio and was being driven slowly mad by the blame accrued for the agency's sloppy organization and stupid proposals. Second-and-current Secretary Michael Chertoff as been nowhere near as bad as we had reason to expect. Yes, he presided over Hurricane Katrina. But that seems to have been another victim of the inherent bureaucratic nightmare of DHS.

I think history has already forgotten Battlin' Bernie Kerik, the laughably corrupt and mobbed-up cop whom Rudy Giuliani commended to George W. Bush as a great replacement for Ridge. Kerik's nomination caught fire like styrofoam in a microwave, and we as a nation got the first clue that Giuliani had been replaced at some point in 2001-2004 by a strange, bald cyborg that needed to recharge batteries by making inopportune phone calls to its "wife."

Anyway, the worst idea proferred by Chertoff has been the national ID card, the slow decline and sputter-out of which I wrote about earlier this year. One of the governors who helped nail down the coffin lid on REAL ID was... Janet Napolitano.

On Tuesday, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed a measure, House Bill 2677, barring Arizona's compliance with the Real ID program. In so doing, she called it an unfunded federal mandate that would stick states such as Arizona with a multibillion-dollar bill for the cost to develop and implement the series of new fraud-proof identification cards.
...
In a letter explaining her support for HB 2677, Napolitano cited a White House estimate that Real ID would cost at least $4 billion to implement. But thus far, she said, the federal government has only appropriated $90 million to help Arizona and other states offset those costs.

"My support of the Real ID Act is, and has always been, contingent upon adequate federal funding," Napolitano wrote Tuesday. "Absent that, the Real ID Act becomes just another unfunded federal mandate."

The implication is that Napolitano would favor a national ID if it could be funded. What's the likelihood of it being funded soon? Not very high. So Napolitano seems, first and foremost, like an effective manager who understands immigration policy and has been a bulwark against the crab barrel of restrictionist crazies in her state. Not the worst pick Obama could make.

Obama's Attorney General on Drugs

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:21:00 EST

President-elect Obama has tapped Eric Holder, Jr for attorney general, and most of the opposition thus far has centered around Holder's role in the eleventh hour Clinton pardons. I get bored just typing about that. I'm much more worried about what Holder wanted to do 12 years ago, when he was U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

U.S. Attorney Eric H. Holder Jr. said in an interview that he is considering not only prosecuting more marijuana cases but also asking the D.C. Council to enact stiffer penalties for the sale and use of marijuana.

"We have too long taken the view that what we would term to be minor crimes are not important," Holder said, referring to current attitudes toward marijuana use and other offenses such as panhandling.

Now, people arrested in the District and charged with distributing marijuana, even large quantities, face only misdemeanor charges, a standard that has sparked repeated complaints by police officers.

He also told the Washington Post that "the District could learn from New York's 'zero-tolerance' policy." I wonder what people in the drug policy reform movement, who have so far been (relatively) optimistic about Obama, think of this.

(Hat tip: Ben Masel.)

Wayne's World, Party Time, Excellent

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:12:00 EST

A little while ago I chatted with erstwhile Libertarian vice presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root, to get a grapple on where the LP is going after 2008. Root didn't figure much into Brian Doherty's excellent rundown of the LP campaign, so I wanted to get his perspective.

"I just wrapped up another little political discussion," said Root. "I was talking to a guy who’s run nine campaigns in Las Vegas, and won eight of them. He thinks I'm an absolute favorite for mayor of Las Vegas in 2011. And keep in mind, it's a non-partisan race, and the incumbent is term-limited, even though he's been inspired by Michael Bloomberg to try and change that."

Root was "obviously disappointed" with how the Barr/Root presidential campaign ended, but the only specific criticism he made was the decision to "stiff Ron Paul" at his September 10 press conference and offer him the LP vice presidential slot. "If you want him to get behind you, offer him the top spot on the ticket. If you want to snub him, offer him the number two spot. I mean, why would he ever take that, this candidate who'd won a million votes?"

That's as negative as he wanted to get. "I'm a team player," he said. He concentrated on his game plan for the next four years.

- "Pick up the Ron Paul torch." Root is reaching out to RP's old base of supporters, like moneybomb originator Trevor Lyman, and appearing on Lyman's Break the Matrix site whenever he can.

- "Become Rush Limbaugh." Root's book The Conscience of a Libertarian will hit shelves in May, and he's proud of the subtitle: "Empowering the citizen revolution, with God, guns, gambling, school choice and tax cuts."

- "Find the next David Koch." Root's convinced, and he's not alone, that the secret of the LP's success in the 1980 campaign was the vice presidential candidacy of deep-pocketed libertarian philanthropist David Koch. "I will spent the next four years with one goal in mind: Finding a billionaire running mate. Believe me when I tell you I will find him, or her. All of a sudden I’ll be on TV day and night, just like Ross Perot, and suddenly we’ll get 19 million votes, just like Ross Perot."

Holy Joe Lieberman Was Resurrected After Three Days

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:14:00 EST

I don't get it. Why is it so hard for the Democrats to kick Holy Joe Lieberman to the curb that he has so dearly earned? There are some reasons at the link (they're not afraid of him using his committee chairmanship to attack Obama, the president-elect wanetd them to forgive and forget), but are they the last people on earth who realize that Lieberman is one of the true scrubs of American politics, an unliked and unlikeable scold who can only elicit applause at John Hagee's church and the occasional PMRC reunion tours?

Let's turn the clock back a little. When Lieberman endorsed John McCain, it was supposed to help McCain court a few sought-after groups of voters. First, Jewish voters who might have a problem with a candidate who wanted to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, oh yeah, was named "Barack Hussein Obama." Second, independents. Third, voters in Lieberman's own state of Connecticut, a swing state as recently as 1992, and New Hampshire, a swing state every year since then.

How'd it go?

Jewish voters: John Kerry won them, 74-25 percent. Obama won them by more, 78-21.

Independents: Kerry won them, 49-48 percent. Obama won them by more, 52-44.

Connecticut and New Hampshire: Kerry won them, 55-44 and 50-49. Obama won them by more, 61-38 and 54-45. Obama's victories in both states were the biggest for any Democrat since LBJ, and I believe he's the first Democrat to every sweep every county in New Hampshire.

Senators protecting their own, nothing new. Senators protecting such an obvious loser... that's more unusual, isn't it?

UPDATE: There's some murmuring in the comments about why any reasonoid should care about this. Well, two years ago, when it looked like the video game-banner and drug warrior from Connecticut had lost his Senate seat, we fired off 21 guns. A Lieberman-free Senate would be a better Senate, insofar as such a thing might exist. It's been amusing/irritating to see Lieberman heralded, in his post-Democratic career, as a force for bipartisanship and independence. He's not: He's a full-scale nanny stater who gets squeamish when people behave in ways he doesn't like. Watching his McCain endorsement backfire or fall flat should have killed Lieberman's image once and for all, but apparently that image has George Romero and Lucio Fulci qualities.

Weigel vs. Lilly: Endgame

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:49:00 EST

My two final arguments with the Center for American Progress's Scott Lilly are here and here. Subjects include big labor's influence over the Democratic party, whether Obama can (and should) buck their influence, and whether the sky-high hopes for the Age of O will backfire on him.

Mike Huckabee vs. the Libertarians. Sorry, "Faux-Cons."

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:27:00 EST

Once (and future?) presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is out with his third book in as many years, Do the Right Thing, ~~a searing picture of a day on a Brooklyn city block~~ a memoir of his unlikely, underfunded, and proudly socially conservative bid. A big chunk of the book is dedicated to settling some scores between Huck and the economic conservatives and libertarians who considered (and still consider) him unacceptable.

The real threat to the Republican Party is something we saw a lot of this past election cycle: libertarianism masked as conservatism. And it threatens to not only split the Republican Party, but render it as irrelevant as the Whig Party.

Huckabee trains a lot of fire on the Club for Growth, who had another tough election cycle, with 2006 victors Rep. Tim Walberg (MI) and Rep. Bill Sali (ID) going down in the Obama wave, joined by prize recruit Andy Harris in Maryland's first district. (Harris beat incumbent Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, a fellow Republican, in the primary, and watched Gilchrest push past him to elect Democrat Frank Kratovil.) Perhaps the Club's biggest success was its pre-emptive demolition job on Huckabee. The governor responds by accusing them and other libertarians of believing in "purity of politics first; people are on their own." In a chapter titled "Let Them Buy Stocks!" he accuses "libertarian faux-cons" of driving "the party even further away from its base of the hard-working middle class." He names names.

You can see the growing influence of faux-cons in the 2008 election cycle from the so-called Ron Paul Revolution to the economics-only conservatism reflected by some of the supporters of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

But he backs off on Paul.

Before I get singed by hot and angry mail from Ron Paul disciples, I want to be emphatic in stating my sincere respect for Congressman Paul. I was convinced that he at least had genuine convictions and was willing to stand by them and on them no matter what the audience--a lot more than I could say for some of the candidates who could change positions as easily as Cher can change costumes in one of her many farewell tours.

Subtext: "Go to hell, Mitt Romney. No, not the one you believe in. The one I believe in."

One reason Huckabee might be softer on Paul is the role that rEVOLutionaries played in Huckabee's West Virginia primary victory. West Virginia Republicans select their winner at a party member-only convention. As I reported on Feb. 5, Paul backers, who loathed the bullying and arrogant Romney faction, cut a deal with Huckabee backers to combine their votes and edge out Romney. All the news networks reported that John McCain supporters had made the deal, but Huckabee sets the record straight and credits the "horse-trading" of the Paul people for his win.

So Let It Be Written In, So Let It Be Done

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:49:00 EST

Last week, I counted up the vote totals for the third parties in this presidential election. Nothing much has changed in a week, although extra ballots have edged Ralph Nader past his 1996 performance and pushed Chuck Baldwin to the best Constitution Party showing ever. The biggest change, historically speaking, is the total of write-in votes. As of today we know that, in the states that allow write-in votes to be counted, 78,346 people wrote in names at the top of their ballots, the biggest official number in American history.

Does that mean there was a nationwide groundswell of support for Ron Paul? Sort of. We know what happened in New Hampshire, the state that's crunched the write-in numbers the fastest.

Hillary Clinton, the Democrat who finished first in New Hampshire's presidential primary last year, also took first among all the write-in candidates in last week's general election. She garnered 1,124 write-in votes. Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, also had his supporters, claiming 13 write-in votes from around the state.
Libertarians also made a strong showing in write-in ballots. Libertarian icon and Texas Republican Rep. Paul snagged 1,092 write-in votes. Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party nominee, snagged 226 votes.

All year I argued that the Ron Paul rEVOLution had more dead-enders than the Hillary Clinton electorate. But it turns out that, in the one state where we have data, their numbers were pretty comparable.

UPDATE: A caveat about Ralph Nader: His better vote totals are largely a function of his making it on more state ballots than he did in 2004 and 1996. In swing states where he's always been on the ballot (and where he focused his attention), his numbers are cratering. Nader won 28,087 votes in Florida this year, down from 32,971 in 2004 and (famously) 97,488 in 2000. In Colorado, Nader won 12,542 votes, down marginally from 12,718 in 2004, way down from 91,434 in 2000, and down even from the 25,070 votes he won in his 1996 non-campaign (when he allowed his name to be placed on ballots but refused to stump on the trail). California is Nader's burial ground: he won 237,016 votes there in 1996, 418,707 votes in 2000, and missed the ballot in 2004. But this year he got back on and won only 95,609 votes, even though liberal voters had no doubts about Obama winning the state.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that Nader would have been better off skipping this race, as far as it concerns his reputation. (Beyond the paltry vote totals, all that'll make his obituary is him accusing Obama of "acting white" and being an "Uncle Tom.") That's also true for McKinney, but probably not true for Barr, Baldwin, and Paul.

Ron Paul 2012?

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:19:00 EST

Last week, Campaign for Liberty press guy and Ron Paul grandson-in-law Jesse Benton was driving to a constituent event with his boss and the subject of 2012 came up.

"He hasn’t closed out the idea of another run," said Benton today. "We have some time to decide whether he runs again, or whether he gets behind somebody else. But we don’t have tons of time. By the middle of 2009, the decision needs to be made."

Benton isn't pushing Paul one way or the other. "I could get behind either decision, but it needs to be made in the next six months or so," he said. "One thing we learned is that those voters in New Hampshire and Iowa expect, to see their candidates early and often." Paul entered the 2008 primaries in January 2007, about 11 months and two weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

I asked about the rumor that former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson might jump into the race (unclear in which party yet). "If he were to decide that he wanted to do that, he’d be a great guy to take the reins. But I don’t think that what Dr. Paul captured was 100 percent transferable to anyone else. I think the Bob Barr campaign assumed that and it didn't pan out."

Would Paul run as a Republican again or as a Libertarian? "We try not to ever deal in absolutes in politics," Benton said carefully. "But he would be very likely to be running as a Republican again." It's not just that "working within the system" gets more exposure for a candidate. It's that several Republican primary states include the caveat that candidates cannot run in their primaries and go third party if they lose. "To be frank, I got tired of the 'third party' question getting asked time after time, and I know that Ron did too."

Paul is almost exactly a year older than John McCain, and turned 73 in August.

The Snake Oil Well, Running Dry

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:26:00 EST

Via Instapundit, it seems that T. Boone Pickens is slowing down his plans to save America by getting us to buy wind power from him.

Over the past two days, Boone spoke at events where he said that the wind project is having trouble getting financing because of the credit crunch.

He was also quoted saying that falling prices of natural gas, used in power plants, are making his wind project less economical.

Another possible factor (albeit smaller) is the defeat of California's Proposition 10, a plan to provide rebates that was heavily funded by Pickens because of the potential windfall to his business. reason was critical of that set-up early this year, and Pickens spent a lot of his time dealing with criticism in a conference call I participated in last month. But the biggest problem I had with Pickens' year-long campaign was his populist angle that our purchase of oil from other countries was "the largest wealth transfer in the history of mankind." Steven Milloy put it best.

Contrary to Pickens' demagoguery, "wealth transfer" is a term generally used in the context of estate planning, where money is simply "gifted" to heirs.

Our purchases of foreign oil, in contrast, are more reasonably known as "trade" — and trade is good.

Americans are not simply petro-junkies who mainline crude oil for the masochistic high of watching gas pump numbers spin faster. We produce goods and services with imported oil more than any other people on this planet.

The Pickens TV and PR campaign was one of the most sophisticated I've ever seen: not only did he get Al Gore and the presidential candidates to give him cover, I remember an Ohio voter who said she didn't like McCain or Obama so she'd write in Pickens. (Pickens' gravelly Texas accent was a big help, I think: as Ross Perot could tell you, there's something more politically attractive about a plains tycoon than, say, a Silicon Valley billionaire.) But I'm not weeping that his $57 million campaign isn't getting him what he wanted this year.

Weigel: Live and In 3-D

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:08:00 EST

If you're in the D.C. area tonight, I'm appearing on an America's Future Foundation panel on the subject "Now What? An Election Postmortem."

With president-elect Barack Obama stepping into the White House, with expanded Democratic majorities in Congress, with public sentiment moving against free markets in the midst of the economic crisis, and with Virgina voters supporting a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1964--now what? What does this mean for freedom and the free market principles that conservatives and libertarians fight for? Will this be the opportunity for the Republican Party to rebuild and come back to their roots of a smaller government? What lessons can be learned from this election and how do conservatives and libertarians move forward?

I'm stepping in for Evans-Novak reporter Tim Carney, so my remarks will be mostly exit poll and other data-driven with some suggestions of what libertarians in the GOP should do. The answer, obviously, is to ban gay marriage everywhere and ask Democrats hard questions then upload the responses to YouTube. Also, to run Sarah Palin for president every four years.

Weigel vs. Lilly: The Saga Continues

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:37:00 EST

In the L.A. Times, I go at it again with the Center for American Progress senior fellow on whether Hillary Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger should get jobs in the Obama cabinet.

I Don't Know What to Do Now That Pink Has Turned to Blue

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:41:00 EST

This National Journal map doesn’t strike me as a particularly useful guide for the GOP's chances of taking back the House. It obsesses over which Democrats represent districts that voted for President Bush in 2004. But 2004 was, you know, four years ago. This year Barack Obama clobbered McCain in every Kerry state and all of the non-deep South, non-Great Plains, non-Arizona Bush states. As a result, outside the deep South, basically every Democrat is from a “safer” district now.

Look at Virginia. The first number is how much of the vote John McCain scored in this district. The second number is what George W. Bush scored four years ago, when he easily defeated John Kerry statewide. I’ve bolded the districts where the representative is now from the party whose presidential candidate lost the district. (VA-02, VA-05, and VA-11 all replaced Republicans with Democrats this year.)

VA-01: Rob Wittman (R) - 51% (60%)
VA-02: Glenn Nye (D) - 49% (58%)
VA-03: Bobby Scott (D) - 24% (33%)
VA-04: Randy Forbes (R) - 49% (57%)
VA-05: Tom Perriello (D) - 51% (56%)
VA-06: Bob Goodlatte (R) - 57% (63%)
VA-07: Eric Cantor (R) - 53% (61%)
VA-08: Jim Moran (D) - 30% (35%)
VA-09: Rick Boucher (D) - 59% (59%)
VA-10: Frank Wolf (R) - 46% (55%)
VA-11: Gerry Connelly (D) - 42% (50%)

See what happened? Only two of the state’s six Democrats are in McCain-voting districts, one of them in a squeaker (Perriello) and one whose southwest district is so safe for him that the GOP didn’t even field a challenger (Boucher.) Two of the state’s five Republicans are now in Obama-voting districts, even though their districts voted for Bush last time. And two of the three Democrats elected this year, Connelly and Nye, are in districts that swung from Bush to Obama.

Keep in mind, all of this happened in a state whose Republican governor and legislature started the decade by gerrymandering the districts for maximum GOP strength. Bush carried nine of Virginia’s 11 districts twice. McCain carried only five of them. Once we learn the full results from states like Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin, places where Obama dramatically outperformed in the suburbs, I think we’ll learn that most congressional districts went blue at the presidential level. In 2004, 255 congressional districts had gone red.

Ted Stevens, Walking the Bridge to Nowhere

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:01:00 EST

All week, pundits have been assuming that Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens miraculously survived his re-election bid. No one knew how he did it.

We're starting to get an answer: He actually didn't survive the race. Alaska is big and weird and it takes ages to count early ballots from close races, and the state counted 53,000 ballots yesterday that put Democrat Mark Begich in the lead.

Mark Begich (D) - 132,196
Ted Stevens (R) - 131,382
Bob Bird (AI) - 11,315
Fredrick Haase (Lib) - 2086
Others - 1858

Markos "Daily Kos" Moulitsas, who's been following the numbers closely, claims that the remaining ballots come from Democratic-leaning districts. Nate "538" Silver has more. If Begich even builds a 0.51 percent lead over Stevens (he's at a 0.29 percent lead now), he escapes a recount and takes over the seat. This would, among other things, close Sarah Palin's escape hatch out of Alaskan politics. It would also lock down 58 Democratic Senate seats (counting Joe Lieberman), with the Minnesota Senate race looking better for them every day. (Democrat Al Franken has gained hundreds of votes as the state recounts ballots, and the Republicans have shown their panic with lawsuits and op-eds trying to cast doubt on the count.)

UPDATE: From the Anchorage Daily News:

Republican Party of Alaska Chairman Randy Ruedrich wasn't giving up hope for Stevens, saying Begich's advantage could lessen as the state finishes counting the early votes.

He said remaining mail-in absentee votes "should be much more favorable to Republicans" than the ones counted so far.

But state Democratic Party spokeswoman Bethany Lesser said Begich workers are cautiously optimistic the lead would hold. She noted that the election district based in Nome, which covers Northern and Western Alaska, has not counted any of its absentee ballots yet. Begich beat Stevens in that area on Election Day, just as he did throughout Bush Alaska, a traditional Stevens stronghold that relies on federal appropriations.

Begich also won the voting on all four of Alaska's military installations on Election Day. That makes the Begich campaign optimistic about overseas absentee ballots from service members.

Weigel vs. Lilly, Round Two

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:02:00 EST

My dust-up with Scott Lilly of the Center for American Progress continues here, with a back-and-forth about whom President Obama should and shouldn't put in his cabinet.

The Incredible Bendable Bailout

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:54:00 EST

In a development that will surely come as a shock to everyone, the $700 billion bailout package isn't being spent like we were told it'd be spent.

Treasury is unlikely to conduct any auctions to purchase bad loans and other troubled assets -- the original intention of the $700 billion rescue plan. Instead, Treasury is expected to continue focusing its firepower on injecting capital directly into the financial sector, these people said.

There is good news:

Before launching its $250 billion capital-purchase program last month, Treasury toyed with requiring banks to raise matching funds alongside any government investment, but it thought that might discourage some firms from participating. It also worried that firms would not be able to raise private money in the current market environment.

Instead, Treasury structured its investment in a way that it believed would encourage firms to eventually raise private funds. But Treasury officials now think market conditions may have improved enough that companies could raise private capital.

Beware of Brounshirts

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:49:00 EST

Yes, Rep. Paul Broun is the Constitution-minded Republican I profiled earlier this year. Yes, I've seen this.

It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force. I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.

There are so many points in there at which Broun could have shut up. Maybe the phrase "exactly what Hitler did"? Maybe the totally baseless claim that Obama's mulled-over "civilian security force"--still not a good idea, by the way--would be some sort of Chavista unit "answering to him"? This extra excerpt of the Broun interview is illuminating.

Broun theorized that after Obama creates this national police force he'll ban gun ownership.

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

That's another fringe position, but it's one egged on by the NRA, which warned gun owners that a President Obama would literally rip their firearms from their warm, living hands.

Jake Tapper, in that last link, calls this "Obama Derangement Syndrome." I think this is some of the first anti-Obama wackadoodlry that isn't specific to the candidate. This was the language used to scare the fringe right about the last Democratic president, too. It's incredible dumb and off-putting, not to mention wrong.

UPDATE: The Angry Optimist says:

If someone wants to make the comparison of pre-Reich Germany and Obama, Mr. Weigel, it is incumbent on you to say why it is dumb.

OK. First, the Democrats didn't seize power through violence and threats against their enemies. I'm sure someone can point me to isolated stories of Obama supporters bullying McCain supporters, but I doubt any conservative are nervous about stepping outside without their Democratic Party membership cards. Second, the Schutzstaffel (which Broun appears to be invoking) was created as a personal guard service for Hitler. Obama is proposing a new civilian force that he'd command as he commands every branch of the military.

Barr/Root: A Point-Counterpoint

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:50:00 EST

As I reported in my write-up of the Bob Barr election night party, VP candidate Wayne Allyn Root promised the crowd that he'd be back in 2012: "Maybe as your president-elect!" Root e-mailed me later to reflect on how the ticket had performed.

Barr/Root got the 2nd highest raw vote total in the 37 year history of LP, we did it in perhaps the worst environment for Third Parties ever (because of the hype, fear, and excitement over Obama)... and we did it on a virtually non-existent campaign budget. Obama won with almost $700 million. We did it with no money. Only nonstop media appearances... and IDEAS!

In all prior elections, the LP VP candidates were literaly MIA and invisible for the entire campaign. They received zero media attention. In 2008 I changed all that with 800+ media appearances, including FOX News Channel nonstop in the last month of the campaign. What I accomplished is remarkable for a third party VP candidate. That is a SMALL sign of things to come.

I campaigned for over a year with one theme at every event, every media appearance, every debate, every speech, every conversation with voters: that Barry Goldwater had great ideas, yet still lost in a landslide. Reagan took the same ideas and won in two landslides. The only difference was his ability to communicate, educate and motivate voters. I'm a Reagan/Obama for the LP and the Ron Paul freedom movement. Obama's election proves a good communicator can change everything.

Now instead of running for President for a short period of time, or a spur-of-the-minute idea. I have four years to hit the ground running. Four years of nonstop media appearances. Four years of serious fundraising. Four years of contrasting my ideas for smaller government with those of our President Barack Obama, my college classmate, my Libertarian book out with one of the world's biggest publishers in May, and serious interest from major radio syndicators for my own national political radio show called (what else?) ROOT FOR AMERICA.

A little while later I heard from Steve Kubby, the medical marijuana activist who narrowly lost the party's VP nomination to Root and beseeched LP "radicals" not to bolt the party. (Given how few people voted for the breakaway Boston Tea/Personal Choice Party, I think Kubby succeeded.) Kubby has put out a public statement on this year's LP campaign.

The bottom line for this ticket is that they promised $30 million in campaign contributions and a popular vote of 5%. Instead, they raised just over $1 million and failed to break 0.5% of the vote, landing them a 4th place finish for LP presidential campaigns. Barr and Root received a record amount of media coverage and they are celebrities in their own right, but it didn’t work out the way we were told it would.

So much for media and celebrity.

The Barr/Root campaign was an honest test of media and celebrity and the results are clear. Media and celebrity is not the answer. Our ideas and our ability to communicate those ideas, is what sets us apart and earns us serious attention. The hunger for new ideas has never been greater and our ideas, about limited government, ending personal income taxes and upholding personal freedom are more mainstream than ever.

If we dilute our message and rely upon celebrity, it gets us nothing but empty rhetoric. On the other hand, if we transmit a pure signal and only a handful get it, but they totally and earnestly get it, then that is revolutionary.

I think the poor showing of Ralph Nader—on more ballots than ever, but registering his lowest vote totals ever in most states—is the best evidence that this was just a bad third party year, as Root suggests. But there were two other directions the LP could have gone in. One minor change would have been the selection of Kubby instead of Root as VP. Kubby would have soothed most of the people who went online and agitated against Barr/Root, and given the campaign an extra media hook (the drug warrior and the drug war victim!), but it's unlikely Kubby would have done as much media as Root or appealed directly to conservatives.

A major change would have been the nomination of Dr. Mary Ruwart over Barr. Ruwart might have secured the endorsement of Ron Paul. She certainly wouldn't have spooked him into endorsing Chuck Baldwin. But the low vote totals of the Baldwin campaign don't suggest that Paul could have boosted any candidate that much, given that his endorsement wasn't backed up by campaign appearences or fundraising. And Ruwart would have alienated Barr supporters (and Root) to the degree that they might have sat the election out. With no media profile outside of the movement, she would have gotten a level of coverage comparable, probably, to Cynthia McKinney. There was no one "right" way to boost the LP in 2008.

Winter Companions, Old Men Lost in their Overcoats

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:37:00 EST

Newsweek's Tale of Genji-length wrap-up of the presidential campaign has been picked over pretty well for McCain and Obama secrets and the thinking behind decisions like "hey, that Alaska woman with the Fargo accent can be president one day." I was struck by how much time McCain spent with South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, whom if only scattered fragments of this story are available in 100 years would be remembered as a modern Joshua Speed. He brainstormed the "celebrity" ad. He urged McCain to pick Vinegar Joe Lieberman as a running mate to "match history with history." And basically they hung out all the time.

Somewhere on the 14-hour plane ride back, McCain said to Graham, "You know we got to keep going; we can't let those guys down." Graham replied, "That's right, John. If they can do it, we can do it."
...
The weather in Charleston was awful—sleeting rain—and McCain seemed caged, cooped up with his friend Lindsey Graham, who was annoying him by trying to "visualize" victory. By 7 p.m., Cindy and Graham were ready to "jump out the window," Graham later recalled. McCain's 95-year-old mother, Roberta, tried to lighten the mood by cracking jokes about how she wanted to marry Lindsey.
...
McCain could look hot or riled up (his traveling buddy Lindsey Graham particularly affected his moods, for better and for worse).
...
Piper, the governor's 7-year-old, thought nothing of crawling across Joe Lieberman's lap to get to her mother. Lindsey Graham mischievously enjoyed getting the child hopped up on Mountain Dew, a beverage to which he was mildly addicted.
...
McCain had been too wound up to get to sleep, calling Graham at 1 a.m. ("What'd ya think, boy?" "Home run.")
...
As Lindsey Graham told the story, he had been awakened at 4:30 on the morning of the final debate. It was McCain on the phone. "I can't sleep," said the candidate. "Well, now neither can I," said a sleepy Graham.

There's nothing quite so... Adam West and Burt Ward about the magazine's Obama reporting. If anything, he comes off as eerily calm and equally eerily dorky.

During one of the debate preps, the lights blew, flickering on and off like a strobe light from the 1970s disco craze. Obama stood behind the podium, quietly singing the song "Disco Inferno," last popular in the heyday of "Saturday Night Fever."
...
"That's an interesting belt buckle," he said to Michelle, mischievously. She feigned offense and said, "I am interesting, next to you. Surprise, surprise, a blue suit, a white shirt and a tie." Obama grinned and bent down until he was almost at eye level with her waist. He jabbed a playful finger toward her belt buckle, and let loose his inner nerd. "The lithium crystals! Beam me up, Scotty!" Obama squeaked, laughing at his own lame joke as Michelle rolled her eyes.

That's what you had to choose between, America: a man who calls Lindsey Graham when he can't get to sleep and a man who still quotes The Trammps.

Ryan Sager Will Have His Revenge on Salt Lake City

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:50:00 EST

It used to be Utah that reported back the biggest Republican landslide every year. Bill Clinton actually came in third there in 1992, behind Ross Perot. But as of this week, Oklahoma is now the most Republican state at the presidential level. The Mountain West has moved toward the Democrats. And it wasn't just Hispanic-heavy states such as Nevada and Colorado. Check out the four most reliably Republican western states, which went for McCain.

Idaho: Bush won 68-30 in the popular vote and all but one county. McCain won 62-36 in the popular vote and all but three counties. Most populous county: Ada (Boise), which went 61-38 for Bush but only 51-48 for McCain. Also, Democrats gained the first House district, the western Idaho sprawl that contains Coeur d'Alene and the Boise suburbs.

Montana: Bush won 59-39 in the popular vote and 50 of 56 counties. McCain won 50-47 in the popular vote and 44 of 56 counties. Most populous county: Yellowstone (Billings), which went 62-36 for Bush and 52-46 for McCain.

Wyoming: Bush won 69-29 in the popular vote and 22 of 23 counties. McCain won 65-33 in the popular vote and 21 of 23 counties. Most populous county: Laramie (Cheyenne), which went 65-33 for Bush and 59-39 for McCain.

Utah: Bush won 72-26 in the popular vote and swept all 29 counties. McCain won 63-34 in the popular vote and 27 of 29 counties. Most populous county: Salt Lake (Salt Lake City), which went 60-38 for Bush but only 49-48 for McCain. (If Ralph Nader voters had broken for Obama, he would have become the first Democrat to take this county since LBJ.)

Again, this wasn't about Hispanic votes. In 2004, John Kerry carried 24 percent of the white vote in Utah. This year Obama carried 31 percent. So what happened?

All Mod Cons

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:21:00 EST

The American Spectator's Philip Klein reports from a meeting of the conservative movement's old Reaganite hands in Virginia.

There's a strong feeling, [Spectator Editor R. Emmet] Tyrrell said, that social conservatives, free market conservatives, and national security conservatives will all be able to work together.

He also said that "there's a sense that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are freer of wobbly-kneed Republicans than they were before the election."

[Spectator Publisher Al] Regnery said, "The consensus was that this was not a mandate for Democrats, that this country is still center-right. The overriding fear was that the Republican Party does not represent conservatives," and there was a desire to get behind genuinely conservative candidates.

Isn't it striking how the two parties react to defeat? In 2004, Democrats agonized about how the loss of "values voters" was a problem they'd have to overcome, that they needed a new Southern governor to win, because that's the only way they'd won since the 1970s. Late in the year Democratic leaders tried to anoint pro-life former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer as DNC chair on the harebrained theory that this would satisfy Republican voters somehow.

Party leaders say their support for preserving the landmark ruling will not change. But they are looking at ways to soften the hard line, such as promoting adoption and embracing parental notification requirements for minors and bans on late-term abortions. Their thinking reflects a sense among strategists that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and the party’s congressional candidates lost votes because the GOP conveyed a more compelling message on social issues.

Democrats spent much of the next two years in that box. Phil Bredesen, the conservative Democratic governor of Tennessee who has all the charisma of Stephen Wright at 4 a.m., was looked at as a prospective president because he cut spending and was, uh, from the South.

Flash forward to today, and the Democrats have elected a black senator who was raised in Hawai'i and Indonesia and who was accused by his opponent of being a socialist who befriended terrorists and voted for infanticide. So you can see why conservatives are skipping the "how do we change?" part and going right to hoping that Obama screws up. But this part of Klein's report doesn't make sense to me.

Although polls show that "conservative" is a more popular word than "Republican," it turns out that "Democrat" is a more popular description than "liberal," and the sentiment was that tougher language needed to be used to define Barack Obama and other Democrats as liberals.

Tougher? How about "socialist?" Oh, wait.

Language used to work for Republicans. Indeed, one of the more mockable exercises that Democrats tried from December 2004 to November 2006 was "reframing" their policies, because they were so in awe of how Republicans had popularized terms like "death tax" and made "liberal" a curse word.

The Ron Paul Vote

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:32:00 EST

It'll be weeks before we know exactly how many votes were cast for which candidates. Two Senate seats and a bunch of House seats are still too close to call because of the outstanding ballots. But I don't think there are too many outstanding votes for third party presidential candidates. How'd they do?

Bob Barr (LP): 490,689 votes. Only around half of what the campaign had hoped for, and had expected given its efforts in a bunch of close states. It's the second-best Libertarian presidential performance of all time, better than Harry Browne's two runs or than Ron Paul's run in 1988, but well behind Ed Clark's 921,128 votes in 1980.

Ralph Nader (Various Parties): 661,736 votes. A huge letdown for him, too, given the improved organization and ballot access he achieved this campaign. It's his second-worst performance in four runs for president, worse even than 1996, when he got 685,297 votes with a "non-campaign" on fewer state ballots. That year he scored 237,016 votes in California. This year he scored less than 90,000, even though Barack Obama was winning the biggest Democratic landslide there since FDR beat Alf Landon. Overall Nader got fewer votes than Eugene McCarthy in his forgotten 1976 run. I'd say something like this plus his racial attacks on Barack Obama mean "his career is finished," but when a guy's determined to become as relevant as those Jimmy Buffett for President bumper stickers there's not much you can do.

Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party): 175,868 votes. Despite the Ron Paul endorsement, this is only the second-best Constitution Party performance ever: In 1996, Howard Phillips got 184,820 votes. The difference was in Alan Keyes, who stole the party's California ballot line and scored more than 30,000 votes there. (This doesn't include write-in votes, though, and even Paul himself had to write Baldwin in on the Texas ballot.)

Cynthia McKinney (Green Party): 142,865 votes. Only slightly better than the party's abysmal 2004 performance, which was hindered by Ralph Nader's decision not to run, then his decision to run, then his decision to atack the Greens when they didn't nominate him.

Ron Paul (Various Parties): 19,852 votes. We don't know how many write-in votes he got yet, but that's what he pulled by being on the ballot in Montana and Louisiana.

So if you add together Paul with the four candidates he gathered at the National Press Club to endorse (and include Barr, who was invited), Paul's favored candidates got around 1.5 million votes. In a historical perspective, that's... not that impressive, still. Ralph Nader got almost twice as many votes in 2000, and John Anderson got almost four times as many in 1980. It's a bigger third party vote than 2004, but not by much.

Why was this if everyone told the pollsters they were furious with the way the country was going and hated the two parties? I'd say it's because there was a Democrat and a Republican that people basically liked, but that wouldn't explain why 1988 third party voting was so low. I'm not hearing any of this discussed in the rest of the media, so Bob Barr's complaint from Ron Paul's presser rings true: The way to keep attention on libertarian political arguments was to consolidate behind one candidate. For all of Paul's flaws, his totals in Montana and Louisiana indicate that he probably could have run a Nader 2000-style campaign and gotten about Nader's 2.8 million votes.

Fun Election Facts for the Kids

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:18:00 EST

- The biggest Libertarian vote total in the nation, and the biggest ever, was given to John Monds, a candidate for the Public Service Commission in Georgia. At the moment he's won 1,056,225 votes, which, unfortunately, means he loses 67-33 percent.

- Barack Obama's historic summit with Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher happened in Lucas County, Ohio. Obama carried the county 65-34 over John McCain.

- There are three states where John McCain outperformed George W. Bush: Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee. The rest either matched their 2004 margins or broke for Obama.

- About one in nine Montana voters who decided their votes in the last week went for Ron Paul.

- Alan Keyes Party candidate Alan Keyes got around 30,000 votes in California, just ahead of Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, who lives in California.

- If you subtract the other candidates and read California like a rematch between Obama and Keyes (the two Illinois U.S. Senate candidates in 2004), Obama wins 99.5 percent to 0.5 percent.

- Cindy Sheehan got 17 percent of the vote in her race against Nancy Pelosi.

- States where Bob Barr came in third place: Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas. States where the Barr vote total is bigger than the gap between Obama and McCain: Indiana and North Carolina. [Corrected: Did the math wrong earlier.]

- Hillary Clinton won 21 states in the primaries if you count the contested Florida and Michigan contests. Obama beat McCain in 13 of these states. (I bring this up because I remember being on Clinton campaign conferences calls where it was argued that only Clinton could take these states.)

- As Matthew Yglesias notes, almost all of the areas where McCain dramatically outperformed Bush were in Appalachia. Arkansas and Oklahoma are just as striking.