machiavel's blog
Posted at 6:59pm on Sep. 20, 2006 Human Events '08 Straw Poll Results
By machiavel
Nothing but trendlines here folks, as Human Events doesn't ask juicy cross-questions, but a lack of cross-blog pollination means this is probably a pretty accurate month to month reflection of that community. Needless to say, they're further to the right than the rest of the blogosphere.
August numbers with July in parentheses:
Newt Gingrich: 24.89% (23.02%)
Tom Tancredo: 22.64% (24.84%)
George Allen: 10.56% (11.68%)
Rudy Giuliani: 8.31% (6.21%)
Condoleezza Rice: 6.74% (7.54%)
Mitt Romney: 5.35% (4.64%)
Jeb Bush: 4.13% (4.27%)
John McCain: 3.28% (2.53%)
Mike Pence: 1.62% (2.90%)
Sam Brownback: 1.12% (1.04%)
Dick Cheney: 1.03% (1.28%)
Mike Huckabee: 0.85% (0.95%)
Bill Frist: 0.81% (0.50%)
Chuck Hagel: 0.67% (0.25%)
Tom Ridge: 0.27% (0.12%)
George Pataki: 0.18% (0.37%)
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Posted at 5:30am on Sep. 20, 2006 Something fishy about McCain's Tradesports contract? [Calling market gurus]
By machiavel
I follow Tradesports' '08 nomination contracts religiously, but lately I've been wondering if there isn't something odd about McCain's Tradesports contract. With his major falling out with the President over the last week or so, shouldn't his stock have gone down? In fact, his contract hasn't fluctuated much at all these last several months, despite high-profile spats over immigration and campaign staff announcements. A few explanations suggest themselves:
1) Traders in fact didn't think the controversy made any difference, and so it may soon blow over.
2) Contract-holders are based mostly overseas and probably think that a stand like McCain's on "torture" is a positive or at a minimum, a wash. Tradesports is a British site after all.
3) There is some other force, such as a dominant shareholder, who is propping up the price.
Tinfoil hat firmly in place, here's why I think it *might* be the latter.
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Posted at 4:51pm on Aug. 27, 2006 The First Post-Macaca Straw Poll
By machiavel
The results of the latest GOP Bloggers straw poll are in. The poll was posted on the RS homepage over the weekend, and first-choice results are as follows (full results with RS results in parentheses).
Giuliani 24.6% (22.0%) Gingrich 21.1% (19.5%) Romney 12.8% (15.8%) Allen 11.5% (11.3%) Tancredo 6.7% (4.5%) McCain 6.4% (6.7%) Hagel 2.8% (3.3%) Brownback 2.5% (3.2%) Huckabee 1.5% (1.8%) Frist 1.1% (0.9%) Pataki 0.3% (0.3%)
Read on...
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Posted at 10:02pm on Jul. 2, 2006 McCain = Brazil?
By machiavel
Juding from the chilly reaction to Pej's World Cup updates, I suspect this soccer metaphor will be over the heads (and into the net!) of many a reader. But reading Oz's extremely clarifying poll on McCain's chances, I just had to let this one out.
Going into the tournament, Brazil was the strong favorite. The current squad had been to the top before -- and clearly had the stuff to do it again. The smart money in Tradesports was on Ronaldo and the boys, with other contenders struggling to break out of the low double-digits.
But despite being the favorites on paper, Brazil encountered strong historical headwinds little remarked on by the pundits.
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Posted at 6:21pm on May 16, 2006 Thank You Mike Huckabee
By machiavel
For saying what needed to be said:
"If I were to say that some of it is driven by just sheer racism, I think I would be telling you the truth. I've had conversations with people that and it became very evident that what they really didn't like was that people didn't look like them, didn't talk like them, didn't celebrate ht holidays like they do, and they just had a problem with it. Now, that is not to say that everyone who is really fired out about immigration is racist. They're not."
I don't think the people on this blog can be tarred with this brush. When I asked the question of those share a passion for this issue I can't seem to muster, the vast majority of the responses were heartfelt, rational, and cogent.
But there is no ignoring the irrational, overwrought tenor of this debate in many quarters. Internal family squabbles in the past year -- on spending, on Harriet Miers, on the House Majority Leader's race -- have shown the conservative movement at its best: principled, expansive, prepared to deal with internal disagreement in an open and mature fashion. The same cannot be said of the current debate, with acts of excommunication and catering to the lowest common denominator.
If you want the laws to be enforced, fine. If you want a fence, fine. If you want employers who wantonly hire illegals perp-walked, fine. All that you want can be accomplished coldly, bloodlessly, and without demagoguery -- just as you pressured the Republican leadership on spending and judges. But when your biggest concern in life is "Press one for English, two for Spanish" there's something darker at work, and it must be exposed and deplored.
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Posted at 7:36pm on Apr. 17, 2006 A Grand Compromise on Immigration
By machiavel
- Build a fence -- and build it high. You can't argue with success.
- Anyone wishing to participate in the guest worker program must leave the U.S. for at least six months and then return. There would be a five-year window in which the 12 million could cycle out of the country, preventing a sudden labor shortage. The guest worker program would not be rewarding illegal behavior since the participants would not be here illegally -- they would have already been deported, in effect, as a result of their illegal stay. This could also be an opportunity to get serious about homeland security, beefing up the entry-exit system to keep track of millions of guest workers. Those refusing this generous offer in five years would be subject to the harshest deportation measures available.
- To reinforce a strong "legal si, illegal no" message south of the border, make it easier for people to immigrate to the United States legally, cutting wait times for citizenship from four years to two.
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Posted at 10:19am on Apr. 7, 2006 Giuliani '08: Back from the Dead?
By machiavel
Observers of '08 politics have scratched their heads at the curious silence emanating from the offices of Giuliani Partners. At one point, "keep your powder dry" would have been a viable strategy for a frontrunner -- and polls indicate that Giuliani is still that. But, given the media's love affair with John McCain, and an unusually strong and active field crisscrossing the country, this thing has gotten so far away from Team Giuliani that it's not just his social views the Gang of 500 is using to pooh-pooh Rudy -- it's the more devastating belief that he won't run at all. Time for Plan B.
This morning's "He's considering it -- really" story in the Times might just be the start of a steadying of nerves:
Mr. Giuliani's advisers are only now starting to talk openly about the outlines of a possible national bid, but they say he could enter the race at the start of 2007, or even later, and still assemble a team and raise tens of millions of dollars in a relatively short time.
Mr. Giuliani has been amassing political chits by raising money for candidates in politically important states, like California, Iowa, Michigan and New Jersey. He is buddying up to conservatives in tough re-election fights, like Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; the two men are scheduled to attend a fund-raising event and campaign together in two weeks. Instead of raising money for himself, Mr. Giuliani is exerting his political muscle to help Republicans keep control of Congress this year, headlining a major fund-raising affair for Senate candidates in May.
"A lot of the events we've done have really laid the groundwork to go, if we need to, to raise money nationally," said Anthony V. Carbonetti, Mr. Giuliani's political point man, who is already planning campaign stops for July and August. "We really have a road map."
At the same time, the piece doesn't tell us anything we don't already know about the reasons for Giuliani not to run:
"Rudy knows that his views on the social issues -- abortion, gun control -- are one reason not to run," said one friend of Mr. Giuliani's, who, like others, would discuss their conversations only on the condition of anonymity. "I told him that the nomination would be very hard to win. He knows that. But if he doesn't run, a lot of his friends will tell you, it's because he's having too much fun in his life right now."
A former top aide at City Hall, who is in touch with the former mayor but is not part of the current inner circle, said there was "a natural tension" in Mr. Giuliani's mind between running for president and building the consulting, finance and law practices that help make up a growing business empire.
"He never had money, he never thought he had money, and now he is making more money on a weekly basis than his father ever dreamed of," the former aide said. "If he checks out and decides to run for president, everything could start to fall apart."
The smart money that's betting against Giuliani says he wouldn't have a chance against a Bush or Reagan-like conservative. That may well be true. But against the weakest establishment favorite since Nelson Rockefeller in '64, it could be another matter entirely.
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Posted at 9:55pm on Mar. 24, 2006 Michelle Malkin: Dead to Me
By machiavel
There are things worse than plagiarism, or the accusations thereof. Personal betrayal, for one. Threats of violence. Smearing a man's family. I am not an ink-stained wretch, so I beg forgiveness at the writers who may take umbrage at this statement, but the sum total of what was done to Ben Domenech this week is a thousandfold worse than plagiarism.
I don't agree with the positions taken by Rick Moran and Patrick Frey. But I can at least understand them. They don't know Ben, so it's easy for them to criticize a faceless blogger in order to take an abstract position against the monstrous actions he stands accused of. Misguided, yes. Treacherous, no.
It is entirely another matter, however, to know the man, to have worked with the man, and feel the irrepressible urge to show your fair-mindedness, to strut your reasonableness, to tell it like it is, sister! -- friendship be damned. All this before your former colleague has had the opportunity to speak.
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Posted at 11:30pm on Mar. 22, 2006 Hillary: Republicans Want to Criminalize Jesus
By machiavel
Why -- oh, why! -- does she make it so easy for us?
Surrounded by a multicultural coalition of New York immigration advocates, Clinton blasted the House bill [on immigration] as "mean-spirited" and said it flew in the face of Republicans' stated support for faith and values.
"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures," Clinton said, "because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself."
It's a sad state of affairs when I can practically cut/paste this stuff from the post-Cox Wonkette.
So much for Hillary outflanking us to the right on immigration. That would actually show -- oh, I don't know -- devastating strategic acumen. (Which she most thankfully does not possess.)
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Posted at 7:06pm on Mar. 14, 2006 McCain: Not the Frontrunner
By machiavel
At least, not for conservative bloggers, anyhow.
This poll is interesting in that it measures both the intensity of like and dislike for various candidates, and voters can register an opinion on more than one candidate. At present, Allen leads (54.6% for, 16.7% against), and he has his very low negatives to thank for that, followed by Rudy (53.1% to 24.4%). In third is Mitt with 45.5% saying they'd "like" to see him as the nominee compared to 25.1% opposed.
No such luck for "frontrunner" McCain. He's the third most disliked GOP candidate (22.5% for, 55.8% against) behind asterisks Hagel and Pataki.
But the sample seems to skew heavily conservative, seeming to indicate that McCain supporters haven't totally been spoken for in the blogosphere. Including non-voters, 68% of them voted for Bush in the 2000 primary to just 5.5% for McCain (the real split was something like 57-37). Still, McCain is not the most popular candidate among McCain '00 Kool Aid drinkers: Giuliani is.
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Posted at 7:43pm on Feb. 18, 2006 John McCain: "Do as I say, not as I do."
By machiavel
Will St. John McCain's halo finally get swiped from right over his earmarks?
Foe of Earmarks Has a Pet Cause of His Own
It is just the sort of parochial spending request that might lead Senator John McCain, nemesis of pork barrel projects, to give somebody an earful.
The bill would direct $2 million annually over five years to establish a center at a specified law school to honor a renowned jurist from the state. While the goal may be laudable, some critics say, the measure is a classic case of lawmakers' trying to funnel money directly to a home-state institution for a project that should find financing elsewhere.
But it is doubtful that Mr. McCain will weigh in against the idea this time: the legislation to support the project is being sponsored by him and Senator Jon Kyl, Arizona Republicans who are among those aggressively promoting new rules for handling Congressional spending requests.
The notion of honoring the late William Rehnquist is laudable, but at the end of the day we're still talking about bricks and mortar on a college campus. Putting sentiment aside, what compelling reason is there for federal funding for such a project? If it looks like an earmark, and quacks like an earmark...
Just as non-Beltway conservatives were supposed to be warming up to McCain, he unveils a new fiscal policy of "Do as I say, not as I do." A lot of waving his arms in the air over earmarks seems like a diversionary tactic from McCain's real problem: he never met a problem he didn't want to regulate. And it's not just campaign finance reform. It's Kyoto. It's shilling for Cablevision on behalf of bogus cable-a-la-carte regs when the marketplace is already destroying artificial barriers between your television and your broadband connection.
By acquiescing to McCain 2008, D.C. conservatives are trading fiscal profligacy for something arguably far worse: economic dirigism. Why worse? Because your freedom can be compromised without Congress having to spend a dime.
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Posted at 3:09am on Dec. 3, 2005 The GOP Establishment: Clueless
By machiavel
If the title's got you worried about another yawner of a diary about critters living atop a hill, don't worry. This one deals with a different kind of bottom-feeder -- the ones at the fringes, the kind who subsist on $15,000 memos and are known to the rags as "sources close to the White House."
Yes -- the kind that no one has ever lost money betting against.
The Hotline Blog tidily sums up the conventional wisdom on '08 from these quarters:
At today's Hotline/UVA American Democracy conference, moderator Chuck Todd gave the five Republican pollsters and strategists a task : list the top tier of Republican presidential candidates.
The responses:
Tony Fabrizio: McCain, Allen, definitely ... and then, maybe, Giuliani. And Huckabee, possibly.
Craig Shirley: McCain, Allen and possibly Gingrich.
Kellyanne Conway: McCain, Allen, maybe "Speaker Newt"
John Brabender: McCain, Allen, and, possibly, Santorum (his current client), who Fabrizio noted is amassing an enormous list of donors for his '06 race that'd be a big boon for an '08 race.
Linda DiVall: McCain, Allen and... the third slot is open.
Not one mentioned Mitt Romney, and only one of them mentioned a sitting governor -- Fabrizio's sense that Huckabee could unite the various wings of the GOP.
And they all agreed that SecState Condi Rice was a wild card.
We knew the media was drinking the McCain Kool-Aid. But Republican consultants? Granted -- most in this crowd already have a few things in common: they're pre-43 types who competed ferociously for stints on the Dole campaign and have offices in Old Town. But, McCain?
To be sure, McCain has his virtues, which Adam C could dutifully tick off -- I think they go something like: pork, pork, pork, Iraq, pork. And he is a proven vote-getter nationally, garnering 37% of the vote in the 2000 Republican primaries. Grabbing the lion's share of those votes against a divided field would all but assure him the nomination.
McCain should be sitting pretty -- would that it were true that second-time candidates always win the same votes they did the first time around. But it's instructive to look back to 2000, when the Bush people thought they'd face a maverick outsider with ties to party moderates but recently reinvented as a conservative.
That challenger wasn't McCain. It was Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Jr.
Forbes had placed well in 1996 running as an outsider on a reform platform. The Bush people feared him most, raising gobs of money to fend off a repeat of his self-funded mauling of Bob Dole. But history didn't repeat itself. After a strong second in Iowa, and buying 12% in New Hampshire, Forbes was put away a week later in Delaware, in no small measure because his profile changed from flat-taxing crusader to cookie-cutter conservative in a race of cookie-cutter conservatives.
Is McCain the Steve Forbes of 2008? Could well be, except perhaps with further to fall. History may record that his 2000 success was due to unique circumstances not replicatable in 2008: the clear reformer/insider contrast, a hunger by bored Gore partisans to seriously damage Bush with crossover votes in GOP primaries (thank Bill Bradley's lackluster campaign for that), and the small vestige of an illusion that McCain was a loyal Republican that still existed back then.
The media wants badly to believe that McCain 2000 can happen again -- so much so that MSM-oriented Beltway conservatives are starting to "resign" themselves to it.
But they don't understand what's changed since '00: McCain's political persona today is even more of a product of Democrats and a sycophantic media than it was when he challenged Bush. His approval rating among Republicans is pretty low, less than his score among Democrats -- the more hardcore the primary voter, the worse it gets, with unfavorables in the 20-30% range. Hugh Hewitt's poll of highly committed blogosphere activists shows little native support for McCain among Republicans, with 5% overall, just 2% among women, but a sporting 31% plurality among those apoplectic about ANWR drilling.
You just wait: McCain '08 will turn out to be as big a flop as Frist '08, Gephardt '04, Forbes '00, Alexander '00, Buchanan '00, Gramm '96, Hart '88, McGovern '84, and Connally '80. All aboard the White Elephant Express.
Now, I don't begrudge the Old Town Coalition of everything. They at least went through the motions of getting it right, setting up a battle between a "conservative" and a "moderate." And they may well be right about the "conservative" -- George Allen.
But they mangle -- badly -- the identity of the moderate. It's more apt to be more of a conventional moderate, meaning one who can capture the votes of moderates within the party, not outside of it. That man is Rudy Giuliani.
Of course, this is automatically dismissed as nonsense by those with a stick-figure understanding of Republican primaries as a proxy war over abortion. But consider everything Rudy has going for him that McCain doesn't: he's the most popular Republican within the Republican Party with the possible exception of W. and Condi. His unfavorables are nearly nonexistent. He polls well among general Republican primary voters, and unlike McCain, his popularity is moved and seconded when one takes the temperature of committed activists.
Knowing that politics abhors a vacuum, a uniquely spirited pro-life challenge to the personality-driven Rudy juggernaut is inevitable. And then the question becomes whether George Allen is the right man to carry the torch when his position on life is less than clear.
Enter Sam Brownback, the true pro-lifer, should Allen, the watered-down pro-lifer, fall flat.
And enter Mitt Romney, the watered-down pro-choicer, should Rudy, the true pro-choicer, prove untenable.
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Posted at 9:38am on Oct. 18, 2005 Ban Abortion?
By machiavel
Reuters' Thomas Ferraro shows his fundamental misunderstanding of Constitutional law and the Roe v. Wade decision in a piece simplistically titled, "Miers says no one knows if she would ban abortion." To the apparently brain-dead MSM, this is exactly what the reversal of Roe v. Wade would instantly accomplish: banning all abortion in America.
White House lawyer Harriet Miers told a Democratic senator on Monday no one knows how she would vote on abortion if confirmed to the Supreme Court after a published report suggested she favored outlawing it.
Emerging from a closed-door meeting with Miers, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York told reporters that Miers told him she had not shared her views on the court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
"She said, 'Nobody knows my views on Roe v. Wade," Schumer said. "She said, 'No one can speak for me on Roe v. Wade."
Liberalism increasingly relies on myths like these to keep what's left of its atrophying influence. Memo to Ferraro: Roe v. Wade did not legalize abortion in the United States; it was already legal in several states. It created abortion as a Constitutional right, which is a far cry from a statement of its legality. Reversing it would simply return the matter to the state legislatures, 47 of which would likely vote to keep the procedure legal.
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Posted at 5:23pm on Oct. 13, 2005 Thanks But No Thanks George Will: Wilkinson Dead On Arrival
By machiavel
Among the first conservatives to throw President Bush under the bus for his nomination of Harriet Miers was George Will, who wrote that Bush lacked the "ability" to make Supreme Court picks and that Miers lacked "talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks."
But it's hard to see how Bush would be in a better position had he taken Will's advice this July and selected picked 4th Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson to succeed Justice O'Connor. Indeed, despite Will's contention, Wilkinson would have drawn even sharper opposition from conservatives than has Miers.
On the key issue of a judge's role in government, the contrast between Wilkinson and John Roberts couldn't be clearer. While Roberts won plaudits for his analogy of a judge as an umpire calling balls and strikes, Wilkinson wrote that a "Supreme Court judgeship is perhaps the closest our country has come to clothing mortals with deistic powers."
On abortion, what is known about Wilkinson's views is far more damning than anything said of Miers. Wilkinson wrote that the Roe v. Wade decision was "not an illogical extension of the Court's earlier decisions in matters of intimate association." Sens. Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn might want to read Wilkinson's entire passage on abortion before thanking President Bush for not taking George Will's advice:
"The right to procreate also suggests a right not to procreate ... Only in Roe v. Wade, however, did the right not to procreate gain firm recognition as a lifestyle decision. In upholding the right to abortion, the Court recognized that an unwanted child might create a `distressful life and future,' with psychological, physical, and financial burdens for the woman concerned. Although Roe has been severely criticized, the decision is not an illogical extension of the Court's earlier decisions in matters of intimate association. Indeed, if procreation is labeled a constitutional right, it may imply a full freedom of negative choice, in the same sense that marriage implies a full choice not to marry, voting not to vote, and travel to remain at home. For the constitutional right of procreation can hardly be fundamental if one is compelled to exercise it."
Perhaps Wilkinson's "deistic powers" failed him when 4th Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig called "most humorous" his ruling that the Constitution's commerce clause justified a Fish and Wildlife Service regulation prohibiting North Carolina farmers from shooting red wolves threatening their livestock because without wolves "there will be no red-wolf related tourism, no scientific research, and no commercial trade in pelts."
As a fellow Ivy League man and former college professor, Will clearly has more in common with Wilkinson than Harriett Miers, the pride of Southern Methodist University. But Will provides no help to anyone in blasting Bush for lacking the "ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution" when his prime pick would be dead on arrival.
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Posted at 11:56am on Sep. 26, 2005 Another Brilliant Idea from the FEC
By machiavel
Just when you thought you blogs were safe from the FEC, another harebrained scheme appears on the horizon: Let's "authenticate" and "certify" official campaign websites. Because, you see, the candidates last year lost "millions of visitors and donations to fraudulent campaign sites." That's Washington for you: every press release that makes its way round the Web brings a crisis which you weren't even aware existed! The crisis here? Americans speaking their minds on grassroots or spoof websites. On sites like this one. Or Blogs for Bush. Or Crush Kerry (now Ankle Biting Pundits). The FEC thinks we desperately need solutions for those confused into thinking these were the official Bush and Kerry websites. Sadly though, help for these folks is more apt to come from 40 extra IQ points than it is from free speech regulations.
Tomorrow, ElectionMall Technologies brings this fomented crisis to the nation's capital with an event featuring the Kentucky and New Mexico Secretaries of State. The group is claiming a mandate from FEC Chairman Scott Thomas, who "understands the urgency of a solution."
From the press release:
The widespread use of the Internet is changing the face of political campaigns and elections. During the 2004 elections, 75 million Americans used the Internet to get political news and information, making the Internet and online campaigning a top focus and communications medium for politicians and political groups.
Simultaneously, fraudulent political websites are on the rise. Last year, President Bush and John Kerry lost millions of visitors and donations to fraudulent campaign sites, creating new concerns among voters and new challenges for politicians. Is it safe to make online donations and receive political information on the Internet? What is being done to create safe environments for voters and candidates alike? The recent onslaught of questionable charity web-sites raising funds for Katrina (currently there are more than 2,100) reflects an ever-growing issue. Campaign website authentication and certification are critical.
<u>On Tuesday, September 27,</u> a Washington, D.C.-headquartered company will announce a nationally-backed solution to protect candidates and voters against fraudulent political websites, just in time for candidates to revisit their web security policies and prepare for their next election, whether local or national.
The company's answer to the tsunami of phony political websites sweeping America is the "Election Security(TM) Seal Program." For a mere $99.95, campaigns can have the privilege of posting this eminently Photoshoppable seal on their websites. This from the same people who brought you the Blogger Identity Seal - also a steal at $99.95.
So, what's extraordinary about a vendor trying to hawk a crappy product? It wouldn't be, except for the fact that the FEC apparently thinks that Americans expressing their opinions on unofficial sites is a problem and that the FEC "understands the urgency of a solution."
Is this truly stupid idea about to become the next FEC hobbyhorse?
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