Newshoggers.com

Report: Maliki Won't Sign US Forces Deal

By Cernig

According to a senior Iraqi lawmaker, Maliki-ally Sheikh Jalal al Din al Sagheer, the deputy head of the Shiite Muslim Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, neither Maliki nor Iraq's parliament are ready to sign the status of forces agreement with the U.S. as it is currently written.

"The problem is that when we were given the latest draft, we were told the American negotiators will accept no amendments to it, and the Iraqi government has more requirements," said Sagheer, an Islamic cleric who later led the Friday prayers broadcast on national television.

He said that Maliki had come to the Political Council for National Security, a top decision-making body, and said the new accord was the best he could obtain, but it didn't include everything that Iraq wanted.

If Maliki signed the accord and turned it over to the parliament, "I'm sure that the agreement will not be approved for 10 years," Sagheer said.

The cleric said the draft accord was "good, in general," but its timing was bad. If an Iraqi negotiator accepted the agreement, "he will be taken as an agent for the Americans," and if he were to reject it, "he will be taken for an agent for Iran."

A second factor is that the accord comes just before the U.S. elections, and an Iraqi negotiator had to ask whether it was best to negotiate with the lame-duck Bush administration or wait for its successor. More important, Sagheer said, are the approaching provincial elections in Iraq, which could be held early next year.

"Iraqi politicians don't want to give their competitors the chance to use this agreement to destroy them," he said.

Sagheer also said that Maliki is thinking about asking for a six month extension of the UN mandate instead, after receiving assurances that Russia wouldn't veto any UNSC resolution to that effect. The trouble there is that Maliki has already promised he wouldn't ask for any extension and an extension of the mandate, with its far looser terms for U.S. operations, would be even more unpopular and even more of a club in the provincial elections than the status of forces agreement would be. Everyone expects there to be an uptick in violence for those elections, the question is just how big a one. Trying to re-impose the UN mandate would be certain to make that uptick a nastier one.

The other option, if nothing gets done, is to at the very least confine U.S. forces to their bases - and that's if the expiry of the mandate even leaves the U.S. the legal standing to do even that much.

Meanwhile, John "watch my judgement" McCain is still trying to spin the status of forces agreement as being exactly what the Bush administration and he himself were looking for - and his adviser Randy Scheunemann is hinting McCain would just ignore the wishes of the Iraqis and international law anyway.

Quote of the day

By Ron Beasley

The quote of the day is from Sully:

We will see a serious conservatism again when Bill Kristol and Karl Rove are banished from the Republican party and from the conservative media. The Republican implosion is primarily their doing, their achievement, their legacy. It was when McCain ceded his campaign to Schmidt and Palin (creatures of Rove and Kristol respectively) that he threw it all away. As long as they are given any credence, Republicanism will not recover.

This is a good time to repeat my favorite Bill Kristol quote:

"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."
~Willaim Kristol, April 4th, 2003, NPR

Google clueless and the first hit should be Bill Kristol.

Why have an election "day"?

By Ron Beasley

There is an op-ed in the NYT today, Everybody’s Voting for the Weekend, where they make a great case for changing election day from Tuesday to the weekend like the rest of the world.  I say good idea but why bother.  Here in my own state of Oregon we don't have an "election day" we have a last day to turn in your ballot.  It's called vote by mail and most eligible voters in Oregon had received their ballots in the mail by Monday of this week.  I received my ballot on Saturday, voted on Monday and put my ballot in the white mail box in front of city hall on Tuesday.  I could have mailed it.  This from a  January, 2005 op-ed in the Washington Post.

While many states were embroiled in fights over touch-screen voting machines and provisional ballots and struggling to find enough people to staff polling places, Oregon once again quietly conducted a presidential election with record turnout and little strife.

Oregon's vote-by-mail system has proved reliable and popular. Critics said that vote-by-mail is prone to fraud. But signature verification of every voter before a ballot is counted is an effective safeguard against fraud.

[....]

Vote-by-mail is voter-friendly, and high turnout in every vote-by-mail election shows that voters like the convenience. Oregonians receive ballots in the mail two weeks before Election Day, allowing ample time to research issues, review and mark the ballot, and eliminating the need to stand in long lines waiting for a polling booth.

Voters are busy, but voting fits their schedule if they may return their ballot at any time during those two weeks and up until 8 p.m. on Election Day. Voters may mail their ballots or save a stamp by dropping them off in person at any of the official sites located throughout the state. The earlier that ballots come in, the more time election officials have to check for any problems and to process the ballots to ensure that every vote counts. With a large number of ballots received before Election Day, the first tally released on election night contained nearly 50 percent of the vote and proved to be an accurate predictor of the final numbers.

Vote-by-mail provides an automatic paper trail. Every vote-by-mail ballot is read by reliable optical scan machines, and the paper is available should a hand recount become necessary. Mailed ballots are not forwarded by the post office, and the constant updating of voter rolls provided by returned ballots allows Oregon to have accurate and updated voter rolls without the risk of partisan purges. 

Without polling places, vote-by-mail eliminates the expensive and time-consuming recruitment and training of poll workers. As a result, the cost of a vote-by-mail election is nearly 30 percent less than the cost of a polling place election.

Centralized supervision and control of ballot processing by elections officials in county elections offices, instead of dispersed polling places, maintains uniformity and strict compliance with law throughout the state.

It is estimated that as many as a third of voters will vote before the official election day this year so why not make it official, more convenient and save some money at the same time.

Local McCain Staffer Pushed Hyped Version Of "B-Attack" Hoax

By Cernig

You might have noticed that we hadn't posted a thing on the Ashley Todd "B for Barrack Attack" hoax that has been burning up the internet since yesterday eve. That's because, in our opinion, it wasn't a story. If it were true then it was a story about a mugger who is also a dumb-ass. There's plenty of those out there. When Todd admitted that the whole tale was a hoax, it became a story about an attention-seeking brat who never grew up. There's plenty of those too.

If you cover one, you should cover as many as possible, but this is a politics blog not a local news blog. I don't intend to denigrate the experiences of those who have been assaulted or mugged, in the least. I've had friends it has happened to, it's an awful experience when it really happens to someone...and I didn't blog about those either. Those who did were mostly dealing in faux-outrage and hyperbole.

Now, though, it's real news. TPM has the story.

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

...A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman...

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn't want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a "national incident" and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

Two different TV stations have removed paragraphs from their original web coverage of the story - paragraphs provided by the PA McCain campaign - as the story turned out to be not what that campaign hyped it to be.

Feldmen's actions, trying to pre-empt a police investigation with an anti-Obama narrative that tied McCain's opponent to a nasty assault, are shameful. He really must resign. And we also want to know whether McCain's local campaign staff prompted or pushed Ashley Todd in any way.

The next stimulus package

by Jay McDonough

Talk of a second stimulus package has been making the rounds in Congress for awhile now - since the effects of the $120B tax rebate Congress approved in the spring petered out at the end of the summer. A new stimulus package received the big nod of approval earlier this week when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke endorsed the idea.  The Bush White House, which had been dragging it's feet on a stimulus to that point, had no alternative but no roll over and cry uncle. 

A number of Democrats have argued the second stimulus package should be mostly about infrastructure, proposing this approach kills several birds with a single stone, pumping desperately needed money into infrastructure improvements, puting folks to work and providing them wages to spend to jumpstart the economy.  Sounds good. But critics argue the lag time for large infrastructure projects is so long the approach doesn't address the immediate need to pump money into the economy.

Reid Cramer makes the case Congress should consider short and longer term solutions.

This economic security bill will be most effective if it combines provisions designed to ameliorate immediate hardships with policies that provide access to economic opportunity over the long term. In other words, we need both a safety net and a stronger economic security platform.

The safety net should include provisions to help viable homeowners remain in their homes and communities. No one will be served by allowing massive foreclosures to spread across the country.  Government action should also support a number of perennial proposals designed to help vulnerable families make it through hard times. These include such good ideas as increasing the funding for food stamps, extending unemployment insurance, and offering targeted relief for rising home heating and utility costs.

Besides these insurance protections, constructing an economic security platform will require dusting off an old-time virtue -- savings.  Although lost in recent years under an avalanche of easy credit, savings is an essential component of economic security which is capable of stimulating the type of growth that can power the economic recovery. This is because savings can be used to weather unexpected changes in income at the household level.   Savings provide a foundation for the risk taking, creativity, and entrepreneurship which creates economic opportunity and drives economic growth.

President Bush wasn't being flippant or delusional when he told Americans to just go shopping after the 9/11 attacks.  The economy was teetering after the attacks, and while there was a relatively short term setback, the results could have been so much worse.  The President knows full well the American economy is fueled by consumer spending, and his encouragement to get out there and spend some dough was, no doubt, an effort to keep that teetering economy upright.

Federal economic policy has made the concept of saving something that went out of style about the same time as avocado colored kitchen refrigerators and shag rugs. Easily available credit has allowed those slipping under due to stagnant wage growth the opportunity to live that American dream.  It's a cold heart that's critical of that desire.  But it's had some devastating effects we're now able to see very clearly.

Today's Defections - 10/24

By Ron Beasley

Well John McCain got one endorsedment today - George W. Bush voted for him. Boy that's going to help. Now for the defections.  First we have Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican.  No real surprise here, he is one of the few remaining moderate Republicans.  But this one has to hurt:

Reagan Appointee and (Recent) McCain Adviser Charles Fried Supports Obama

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

Fried is exceptionally thoughtful and principled; his vote for Obama is especially noteworthy.

It's pretty bad when your own advisors endorse your opponent.

McCain Pal Gets 54 Months For Fraud

By Cernig

Raffaello Follieri, perhaps most famous for being Anne Hathaway's ex-boyfriend, has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison this Friday after being pleading guilty to one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering.

Raffaello Follieri, 30, pleaded guilty in September to fraudulently obtaining US$2.4 million by leading investors to believe he had Vatican connections that enabled him to buy the Roman Catholic Church's unwanted US properties at a discount.

..."I have dishonored my family name and embarrassed the church I love," Follieri told Judge John Koeltl in US District Court in Manhattan in a statement in Italian that was translated into English.

"I will never be able to wash away the stain. I hope that someday those hurt by my actions will forgive me," Follieri said before the judge handed down the sentence.

He'll be deported after serving his sentence.

Follieri had good connections to both McCain and Rick Davis, for whom he had promised to "deliver Catholic votes", and was the host of John McCain's 70th birthday party, celebrated onboard the yacht of another dodgy character - a Russian oligarch who pretty much owns the tiny state of Montenegro.

In mid-September The Nation's website published a photo of McCain celebrating his seventieth birthday in Montenegro in August 2006 at a yacht party hosted by convicted Italian felon Raffaello Follieri and his movie-star girlfriend Anne Hathaway. On the same day one of the largest mega-yachts in the world, the Queen K, was moored in the same bay of Kotor. This was where the real party was. The owner of the Queen K was known as "Putin's oligarch": Oleg Deripaska, controlling shareholder of the Russian aluminum giant RusAl, currently listed as the ninth-richest man in the world, with a rap sheet as abundant as his wealth. By mid-2005 Deripaska had already virtually taken control of Montenegro's economy by snapping up its aluminum plant, KAP--which accounts for up to 40 percent of the country's GDP and some 80 percent of its export earnings--in a nontransparent privatization tender strongly criticized by NGO watchdogs, Montenegrin politicians and journalists. The Nation has learned that Deripaska told one of his closest associates that he bought the plant "because Putin encouraged him to do it." The reason: "the Kremlin wanted an area of influence in the Mediterranean."

Deripaska is himself involved in some political scandal right now - involving both a high level Labour Party cabinet minister, Lord Peter Mandelson who was one of Tony Blair's closest advisors and the current shadow chancellor, the Conservative Party's George Osborne. Both McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis have dubious ties to Deripaska too. Other McCain campaign advisers, lobbyists to a man, have their own shady connections.

John McCain keeps saying he's a reformer and a maverick with no time for the incestuous and often shady dealings of the K Street crowd - but his actions speak louder than his words.

McCain Surrogate -War With Iran Is Certain

By Cernig

Republican William Grayson, president of a San Francisco hedge fund company and former general counsel for the San Francisco Republican Central Committee - and "cleared by the McCain campaign to serve as a McCain surrogate":

"Let me assure you of this," Grayson said after the student presentation on foreign policy. "The next president, whether it is Senator Obama or John McCain, will go to war, and he will go to war with Iran.

"They are very busy developing nuclear weapons. They will use those nuclear weapons against Israel or any of its allies, and that is a war that we're going to fight," Grayson said.

This in a speech to students at Dominican University, CA.

His opposite number, Tony West, there as a representative of the Obama campaign said simply:

"I do not believe it is a foregone conclusion that this nation will go to war with anybody in the next four or eight years."

Well no, it isn't - at least not if McCain and his couterie of angry neocon nutters are kept out of the White House.

Retribution and Incentives

By Fester:

John Murtha's campaign is in trouble after stating that Western Pennsylvania has a lot of racist voters.  I think he'll pull out a squeaker, but this will be toughest race he has faced in at least the past decade as Political Wire notes a case of dueling polls:

Yesterday, a more public Susquehanna Poll showed Murtha leading by just four points....
A Pennsylvania source leaked a new poll to Michelle Malkin showing Republican challenger Bill Russell (R) leading Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), 48% to 35%.

And then Michelle Bachman (R-MN) is in trouble as her challenger is now up by three according to Survey USA.  She went from a tough race that was highly winnable to becoming an underdog in a deeply Republican district because she channelled her inner McCarthy on national TV. 
Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings looks at Bachman's case and makes a generalizable statement that I think is a hopeful sign ---

if they paid a price for saying genuinely hateful things, their self-interest would line up on the side of basic decency.

We might be getting closer to that world.

Michele Bachmann may yet win. But in her district, she should have won easily. She has paid a serious price for what she said. A few more episodes like this and we might just see politicians thinking twice about vileness as a political tactic.

That would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Generalize this to Rep. Murtha facing the toughest race of my political memory, and the incentive structure to not be a complete douchebag is starting to firm itself up.  There may be plenty of douchebags in Congress, but the smarter ones will learn to keep their mouths shut and not reveal their inner idiocy. Hopefully we can start burying the 60s and work and speak as if most voters are functional adults.

The Pre-Election Post-Mortems

By BJ

I have to admit, much like Tim F. and Cernig, watching the circular firing squad forming in the Republican ranks is rather amusing.The Politico story on this phenomena looks at several of the decisions that have led to McCain’s implosion, but its this explanation that catches my attention.

One current senior campaign official gave voice to this “Law of the Jungle” ethic, defending the campaign against second-guessers who say it was a mistake to throw away his "experience" message in an attempt to match Obama’s “change” mantra.

"Everybody agreed with the strategy,” said this official.  “We were unlikely to be successful without being aggressive and taking risks.”

Running as a steady hand and basing a campaign on Obama’s sparse résumé was a political loser, it was decided.

“The pollsters and the entire senior leadership of campaign believe that experience vs. change was not a winning message and formulation, the same way it was no winning formula with Hillary Clinton.”

Let’s call this what it is, bull! This election was always going to be a tough slog for McCain, but during the summer, with the assistance of the war in Georgia, suddenly the steady hand with the foreign policy reputation that McCain has built up was looking pretty good to people and he had all but ate away at Obama’s poll leads. Even Obama’s selection of Biden as VP candidate was being spun as an acknowledgement of his weakness in this area, and all sorts of comments that McCain wouldn’t need any “on the job training”.

So what really happened to cause such a massive swing in their strategy? Two words: Sarah Palin. The whiplash-inducing turnaround of the Republican party faithful on the issue of experience when the non-vetted Palin was announced as McCain’s VP choice was stunning to watch. In one fell swoop, McCain undercut what was becoming a reasonably effective campaign storyline and a plausible strategic path for victory for a short-term tactical bounce. When the economic crisis hit, McCain was no longer the steady hand at the helm, and his dice-rolling instincts got the better of him and fed into the risky, erratic theme that the Obama camp was peddling, and that the VP pick was the paramount example of.

Look at many of the conservative newspaper endorsements, or the endorsements of former big-name Republicans like Colin Powell’s for Obama, and they nearly all list this irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin among their reasons for not backing McCain.

It isn’t that McCain didn’t face other problems or make other mistakes, but they were generally of the survivable type. Whatever else the coming post-mortems of McCain’s campaign bring up, it was the pick of Palin that turned the race from a close-run thing into a probable rout.

Palin Appeases Some Terrorists

By Cernig

There's a clearcut distinction for Sarah. Bill Ayers is a domestic terrorist. Abortion clinic firebombers and those who assassinate clinic doctors are her base. That makes them 'freedom fighters for unborn babies imprisoned in lefty-socialist wombs'.

Update: Dave Newiwert has a list for Palin - of the wingnut domestic terrorists she should be concerned about.

The Collapse Of The Republican Circus Tent

By Cernig

There's got to be more than a little schaudenfreude involved for Dems watching the G.O.P.'s meltdown as the worst-run Republican campaign in recent history gasps its way towards the finish line. The theocrat Family Research Council is accusing the NRCC of "abandoning social conservative candidates". McCain aides are already sending out resumes because they're already certain they won't be getting jobs in the next administration. Sarah Palin seems to be working for herself, rather than her running mate, even while the old wardog is still trying to guard her back from media spotlights.

E.J. Dionne calls it a conservative civil war - which is hardly the one the extreme Right have been looking forward to for so long. He writes:

For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity -- and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

And then there is George W. Bush. Conservatives once hailed him as creating an enduring majority on behalf of their cause. Now, they cast him as the goat in their story of decline.

... Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush's apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the "real America" is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin's speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.

Conservatives came to believe that if they repeated phrases such as "Joe the Plumber" often enough, they could persuade working-class voters that policies tilted heavily in favor of the very privileged were actually designed with Joe in mind.

It isn't working anymore. No wonder conservatives are turning on each other so ferociously.

For years, the Right has had a big tent - full of bread and circuses for Joe Sixpack, Joe Biblebelt and not-so-poor Joe Plumber - while the Left has been herding cats in a fractured coalition that couldn't find anyone or anything worth coalescing around. Now the tabels are turned, bigtime. Schaudenfreude? Pass the popcorn!

Todays Defections

By Ron Beasley

There were a number of new Republicans who endoresed Barack Obama today.  The first doesn't mean that much - that slimy weasel Scott McClellan who can simply see which way the wind is blowing.  The next is former Republican Governor of Minnesota Arne Carlson:

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Arne Carlson, a former Republican governor in Minnesota, has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Carlson said Thursday that the Illinois senator's stances on the Iraq war, the economy and green energy goals won him over. Carlson, who served from 1991 to 1998, also cited recent comments by GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann questioning whether politicians have "pro-America or anti-America views."

"Regardless of our party, regardless of our partisan inclinations, there is no interest more compelling than the interest in the well-being of the United States," Carlson said at a gathering of Obama supporters at the state Capitol.

The big one today though was the defection of much of the family of conservative icon Barry Goldwater represented by Goldwater's granddaughter and biographer CC Goldwater.  Perhaps it's not really a surprise, CC and the rest of the Goldwater family have been very critical of George W. Bush but it could have an impact in Arizona and other western states.

Being Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics. I learned a lot about my grandfather while producing the documentary, Mr. Conservative Goldwater on Goldwater. Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin ticket.

What is it about the hard right.....

By Fester:

What is it with the hard right engaging in behaviors they attack:

From Austria:

The successor of the Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider was dismissed yesterday after he revealed a “special” relationship “far beyond” friendship with his former mentor.

In emotional interviews with the national broadcaster and a tabloid newspaper Stefan Petzner spoke openly about his affair with Haider, who died at the age of 58 in a high-speed car crash after heavy drinking session at a gay club this month....

“He was the man of my life. Our relationship went far beyond friendship,” Mr Petzner, 27, said after only a week in the job, adding that Haider’s wife, Claudia, 52, “did not object” to their relationship...

Okay, sex clubs --- saw that in Illinois -- are not that unusual... but where are the hookers, wet suit or the diapers....

Quiet --- Matlock's on

By Fester

Somehow this story does not reinforce any theme that John McCain wants to advance:

Republican John McCain is not going to make his election night remarks in the traditional style — at a podium standing in front of a sea of campaign workers jammed into a hotel ballroom. Oh, the throng of supporters will hold the usual election night party at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix on the evening of Nov. 4.

But the Republican presidential nominee plans to address another group of supporters and a small group of reporters on the hotel lawn; his remarks will be simultaneously piped electronically to the party inside and other reporters in a media filing center, aides said.

Aides said Thursday that the arrangement was the result of space limitations and that McCain might drop by the election watch party at some other point.

                                                 

When the election comes down to Change v. 'Stay off my Lawn' Grandpa Simpson, this is exactly the image McCain wants....

Palin '12 a rerun of Clinton '08?

By Fester:

These is a new round of analysis by both bloggers I respect and the professionals that the McCain campaign is beginning to see incentive divergence.  As Kyle Moore at Comments from Left Field notes, the probability of a loss means a widely variant future for the different staff members on the McCain team. 

On this last point, what I mean to say is that when a campaign begins, most staffers will agree that a win for the campaign will be good for them. But when it begins to appear that the campaign can no longer win, what is good for them is no longer necessarily good for the campaign. This causes more in-fighting as well as encourages a break down in campaign discipline.

For instance, when we look at the end of the Clinton campaign, we started seeing an awful lot of post mortem articles......

Marc Ambinger outlines the CW argument for Palin 2012 ---

With Republicans completely out of power, and President Obama running what is likely to be a bigger government that spends more on social programs, Republicans are likely to run the most anti-government, anti-Washington campaign this side of Barry Goldwater. Again, Palin is perfectly positioned for this campaign. Republicans tend to pick the next guy in line. Strangely enough, the next guy in line is now Sarah Palin, by virtue of her being the VP nominee this year...

Her main obstacles to the nomination are Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee....

The Republicans are going to want someone willing to really go for Obama's throat, and be able to do it with a smile. Depending on the outcome of the GOP's War of the Roses, the evangelical community might be a stronger force in 2012 than it was in 2008, at least when it comes to dominating the GOP nominating process. They are a solid bloc of voters and footsoldiers amidst a rapidly splintering coalition.

This is all interesting speculation, but the first analogy that comes to my mind for a hypothetical Palin 2012 run would be Hillary Clinton.  Each will be coming into an election cycle with a divided party split between those who want something different and those who think the same thing can be tweaked.  There is no natural successor, and there is a significant base and elite split.  Each candidate will lock in a fairly significant portion of their respective party's primary electorate at a fairly early point. 

However Gov. Palin probably shares the same basic problem that doomed the Clinton campaign.  Looking at Pollster.com, the problem for the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2007-2008 primary season was that she had minimal space to grow her coalition.  She started off in the high 30s and never got past 45%.  Pretty much anyone who was willing to vote for her had declared their support very early on.  Everyone else rolled down their preference list to any other surviving candidate until Obama built a slightly larger winning coalition.

Mitt Romney will lock down the money-cons, Newt Gingrich would make a hard play for the neo-cons and Mike Huckabee can play for the Southern theo-cons while Bobby Jindal will attempt to be the hot new thing that is not corrupted by being too close to Washington and power. 

She may start with a decent size base but there is not a whole lot of natural growth areas for her to win.  Much like Hillary Clinton, her best shot would be to face a sustained divided field as she has a good chance of being the top candidate in a contest of five but the anti-Palin cascade buries her in a one on one contest. 

Quote Of The Day

By Cernig

Quote of the day comes from a Guardian report on the falling fortunes of Crawford, Texas, now that Bush is the lamest of ducks.

“A man who cuts cedar in 100 degrees in the summertime in Texas - there's something wrong with his brain”  Keith Lynch, 70, 4th-generation Crawford rancher.

Amazingly, every Texas resident knows that - but still a majority of Texans voted for the rancher who doesn't own cattle.

Iraq Agreement Leaves Bush, McCain Policy In Tatters

By Cernig

By any stretch of the (sane) imagination, the agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, as currently written, is a humiliating debacle and crushing defeat for Bush policy and neocon dreams of permanent hegemony. As Gareth Porter points out:

The final draft, dated Oct. 13, not only imposes unambiguous deadlines for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by 2011 but makes it extremely unlikely that a U.S. non-combat presence will be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces.

Furthermore, Shiite opposition to the pact as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty makes the prospects for passage of even this agreement by the Iraqi parliament doubtful. Pro-government Shiite parties, the top Shiite clerical body in the country, and a powerful movement led by nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that recently mobilised hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in protest against the pact, are all calling for its defeat.

At an Iraqi cabinet meeting Tuesday, ministers raised objections to the final draft, and a government spokesman said that the agreement would not submit it to the parliament in its current form. But Secretary of Defence Robert Gates told three news agencies Tuesday that the door was "pretty far closed" on further negotiations.

In the absence of an agreement approved by the Iraqi parliament, U.S. troops in Iraq will probably be confined to their bases once the United Nations mandate expires Dec. 31.

The clearest sign of the dramatically reduced U.S. negotiating power in the final draft is the willingness of the United States to give up extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. contractors and their employees and over U.S. troops in the case of "major and intentional crimes" that occur outside bases and while off duty. The United States has never allowed a foreign country to have jurisdiction over its troops in any previous status of forces agreement.

Gareth goes on to note that the administration seriously underestimated Maliki's opposition to a Bush agenda seriously opposed to it's own, and has also underestimated Iraqi opposition to the deal even as currently written - which could yet mean that there's no deal at all in place when the UN mandate expires, leaving the U.S. presence in Iraq clearly illegal.

But if the Bush administration have been shocked and surprised, John McCain seems to have been driven into abject denial. Spencer Ackerman points out that McCain flat lied about the provisions of the agreement in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday.

Long story short: Either McCain hasn’t read the latest text or he’s just making stuff up. (Transcript courtesy of the Mighty DeLong and his Amazing TiVo Device.)

Blitzer: The Bush administration seems to be close to what is called a “status of forces” agreement with the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It calls, in the draft agreement at least, for the complete withdrawal of combat forces from villages and cities by July 30 of 2009, and out of the country by December 30, 2011. If you’re elected president, would you, as commander-in-chief, honor this agreement if, in fact, it’s formalized?

McCain: With respect Wolf, and you know better, my friend. You know better. It’s condition-based. It’s conditions-based, and Ryan Crocker, our ambassador to Baghdad, said, “If you want to know what victory looks like, look at this agreement.”

You know better than that, Wolf. You know it’s condition-based, and that’s what the big fight was all about.

Actually, my friends, it’s McCain who should know better. I’ll have much more on this in a piece tomorrow morning, but if you read Article 25 of the Oct. 13 text — as I blogged yesterday — you’ll see it says that “The U.S. forces shall withdraw from Iraqi territories no later than December 31st, 2011″ and goes on to say “U.S. combat forces will withdraw from all cities, towns, and villages as soon as the Iraqi forces take over the full security responsibilities in them. The U.S. withdrawal from these areas shall take place no later than June 30th, 2009.”

The only way to square McCain's circle, unless you assume that he really has lost it completely, is that McCain has no intention of letting the Iraqis have a say in what happens to their country should he become President. His chief foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, suggested as much in a conference call on Wednesday.

But either way - insane or imperialist - these people should in no way be allowed to continue to hold the reins of power or control of America's military.

In Defense of Racism

By BJ

You know, there’s been times during this election, watching some of those opposed to an Obama presidency, that I’ve been embarrassed to be a white male.  Granted that I’m far less moronic when it comes to race than these idiots, but I certainly recognize the attitudes, and I lament the fact that people could look at me and privately wonder if I was one of them.

Now, I was also of the opinion that people with attitudes like that are a terrible drag on society, preventing others from reaching their fullest potential.  However, Ta-Nehisi Coates points out that these kinds of folks actually do serve a greater purpose.

Here is the thing. We've all noticed that the public persona of black folks has taken a tumble over the past few decades. We went from Otis Redding and the Four Tops, to 50 Cent and Dip Set. We went from Jesse Owens and Joe Louis to Pacman Jones and Mike Tyson. Are today's Negroes of a lesser breed? Nope. What's changed is that white folks are now letting anybody through the gate. White racists have taken a lot of heat on this blog. But the truth of the matter is that they may be the single biggest promoters of black excellence in this country's history. There is a reason Tony Dungy was the first winning coach in Tampa Bay's history--he had to be.

Think about this whole Joe The Plumber foolishness. There's no way in the world Barack Obama could pull off the same trick with, say, Rashid The Barber. Rashid would be laughed off the stage--as he should be--and Barack's campaign would be dead. Joe The Plumber is stupid and it isn't working. A little bit of bigotry would have prevented all of this. So to all the Ferraros out there I have one request--more racism please. It improves our stock. It makes black people, a better people.

It’s a good point.  If it weren’t for the still-present bigotry out there, there wouldn’t have been any need for the Democrats to nominate someone as inspiring as Barack Obama, and we could be left facing a nation run by a guy who thinks Sarah Palin is the most qualified VP candidate ever.

And as to those who like to bitch about “reverse racism”, seeing that all too many of my white brethren also seem to think Palin is not only qualified for the VP slot, but are salivating at the chance of her running in 2012, it is pretty clear that we have set the bar way too low and should consider encouraging such an effect so as to improve our stock as well. [/snark]

Palin Backs Immigrant Amnesty

By Cernig

Oh dear. Sarah Palin, in an interview with Univision, has backed an amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

Interviewer: To clarify, so you support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants?

Palin: I do because I understand why people would want to be in America. To seek the safety and prosperity, the opportunities, the health that is here. It is so important that yes, people follow the rules so that people can be treated equally and fairly in this country.

Needless to say, the wingnuts, those few mentioning it so far, are not at all happy.

The Corner leads the charge:

What Palin's response shows is that, first, she's completely open to whatever kool-aid they want her to drink — i.e., she has no innate resistance to amnesty for illegals that would cause her to look for less-unappealing ways of saying what the campaign wants her to say. And second, it shows what the campaign is telling her about McCain's views on the issue — if McCain's talk of "border security first" were anything but boob bait for Bubba, his operatives would have made it clear that Palin was supposed to include that in her discussion of immigration, but she didn't even make a passing reference to it.

Daniel Larison:

I have given up trying to understand what Palinites see in their favorite candidate.  If this does not drive home how malleable and unacquainted with the relevant policy options she is, I’m not sure what would.

With 12 days to go, this is going to hurt the McCain/Palin camp even worse than the $150k blown on Sarah's make-over. I'm waiting to see what the Malkinites will make of it.

(And I wonder, are immigrants the "barbarians at the gate" that Neo-Roman elitist Andy McCarthy is so afraid of?)

Update: Malkin - "We're Screwed, '08!"