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All politics are tribal

When Tip O'Neil said that "All politics are local," the quote became famous because it was contrarian. It came in the ultimate age of wholesale politicking,  when Seth Godin's "television-industrial complex" worked equally well at selling politicians as it did soap. Just commodities.

One interpretation of O'Neil's dictum is that you become successful by taking care of the people back home. Others have used it to justify pork, or explain a weird vote in Congress. But here's what I think it wound up meaning: No matter how powerful you got, you had to remain connected to, and empowered by, your base. Because let's face it: by the time O'Neil was speaker of the house, he had bigger things to worry about than whether his district got an extra million or two in community block development grants.

OK, it seems like sound advice. Or it used to be. But here's my contrarian update: Local is out. Tribal is in. And if tribal is the new basis of political and economic power in America, then we're going to have to change the way we do some things.

'Debating' with #tcot

So while waiting for an appointment, I decided to kill a few minutes reading the hashtag for Top Conservatives on Twitter (#tcot). I noticed this Tweet:

TheAntiGuru: Hello?!? You mean not one of you libs supporting Obamacare can name a single problem solved by government? Anyone? #tcot #p2 #topprog #hcr

To which I replied:

xarker: @TheAntiGuru Fire protection? Food safety? Interstate highways? Libraries? Public education? Land grant universities? Need more? #tcot

Which generated this priceless string of replies:

TheAntiGuru RT @xarker: @TheAntiGuru Fire protection? Oooh! You mean there are no fires anymore? My local news says otherwise. #tcot17 minutes ago from TweetDeck

TheAntiGuru RT @xarker: @TheAntiGuru Food safety? I guess all those stories about contaminated food were made up, right? #tcot

TheAntiGuru RT @xarker: @TheAntiGuru Interstate highways? Wow! You mean people didn't travel before those? Amazing! #tcot

TheAntiGuru RT @xarker: @TheAntiGuru Libraries? Public education? Land grant universities? Yes, there were no books and NO education before gov. #tcot

TheAntiGuru RT @xarker: @TheAntiGuru Need more? I'd settle for just one, got any? #tcot

Why no, Mr. AntiGuru. I think you've made things crystal clear.

If Dems were more like GOPs

This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow, from Salon (click to view full size).

Obama's post-partisan dream

So here's how I see the political equation around health care today:

1. Democrats control the White House and both legislative chambers.
2. Voters correctly conclude that this makes the party accountable for federal policy and governance.
3. Despite counting 60 senators in their caucus, the Democrats don't have 60 votes for everything the president sends their way.
4. This means there will have to be compromise within the party to get a health-care reform package out of the Senate.
5. While I'm sure there are plenty of sane Republicans out there who oppose Obama's half-measure health-care reform on pure conservative principle, the party's public campaign against the package isn't even about health care. It's about playing up dark fantasies of murderous socialist oppression being unleashed against white conservative Christian people by the shadowy armies of some terrible communist/Satanist/Nazi/minority/hippie/gay/French conspiracy.
6. Consequently, the goal of achieving traditional bipartatisanship on this health-care package is really just kind of a nice thought. As Paul Krugman said, these people can't be appeased.

So what do you do if you're the Democrats?

In support of terrorism

These people are out of their minds, displaying the kind of fanaticism that goes beyond laughable and into the dangerous. Michael Scheuer, appearing on Fox News, tells Glenn Beck ""The only chance we have as a country right now is" for bin Laden to "detonate a major weapon" in U S. Yep, they are WISHING for Americans to die so that they can push their political agenda.

It's time for Republicans to call these people what they are and to distance themselves from such lunatics and a network that promotes them. Seriously, folks, come back to reality.

The State's non-answer FAIL

Remember those arguments about how Americans are going to regret letting newspapers die because the digital rabble can't do the serious investigative watchdog work of professional reporters? The biggest problem with this argument is that it assumes a fact not in evidence: A widespread discipline of investigation in the professional press.

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!

That painfully private expression is a clip from an e-mail sent by S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford to his Argentinian mistress in July 2008 and published by The State newspaper on Wednesday afternoon following the governor's confession... six months after an anonymous source sent the paper a collection of e-mails between the lovers. To me that raised a series of immediate questions: Why did it take so long? How did The State handle this potentially significant story?

So I e-mailed my questions to the reporter who wrote the first account of The State's role in the story. His response: We'll tell our story on Sunday, and other than that, no comment.

Of course, my old friend Schuyler Kropf managed to get more out of John O'Connor, and after reading Schuyler's story this morning it occurs to me that O'Connor should have stuck to his original silence. What The State has revealed about its handling of the Mark-Maria e-mails offers a rare glimpse of the hollow state of the modern American newsroom.

Sanford's private Twitterstream

Lifted from @GuvMarkyMark, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford's personal Twitter account.

THURSDAY
Why is everybody in Columbia so freakin' stupid?
9:44 AM on June 17 from Tweetie

Havin a bad day. Hey, @SexySarahPGuv, gimme a holla.
4:41 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

You know that thing about how the GOP isn't suppose to attack another GOPer? I guess that's not true in S.C. What Would Reagan Do? #tcot
6:02 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

I've never felt so lonely.
6:03 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

Yo, anybody up for a road trip?
6:04 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

The continuing death of irony

Poor Cal Thomas. In trying to argue a conservative Christianist case this week against the Iowa Supreme Court's wise decision on gay marriage, he wound up satirizing himself yet again.

When Meredith Willson wrote the wildly popular musical "The Music Man" half a century ago, Harold Hill proclaimed trouble had come to River City, Iowa in the form of a pool hall, which he claimed would corrupt young people unless the local citizens bought the musical instruments he was selling and got their kids into a marching band. He promised that playing music would keep kids from "fritterin' away their mealtime, suppertime, chore time, too" ...

Neither Willson, nor his mythical character Hill, could have foreseen what "trouble" the Iowa Supreme Court has brought on the state (and potentially the nation) when it unanimously ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry "does not substantially further any important government objective"...

(snip)

The battle over same-sex marriage is on the way to being lost. For conservatives who still have faith in the political system to reverse the momentum, you are — to recall Harold Hill — "closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge."

Thomas' problem? If you'll recall your Broadway history, The Music Man is a story about a con man. That "trouble" they had right there in River City? There wasn't any. Just a con man trying to sell musical instruments by manipulating a bunch of rubes via drummed-up fears of a corrupting influence.

Rush Limbo: More on the GOP

Yesterday I made the case that Rush Limbaugh as King of Republicans is basically a wet dream for the Democratic Party. Here's Nate Silver's take on it:

The Republicans' problem is not that they don't have a leader, but that they don't have a direction. The House Republicans aren't on the same page as the Senate Republicans, who aren't on the same page as the Red State Governors, who aren't on the same page as the Purple State Governors, who aren't on the same page as the Beltway Elites, who aren't on the same page as the Media Elites. Nobody is happy with their statition in life. Nobody, except maybe Newt Gingrich and John Huntsman, is in anything other than survival mode. Nobody (including Steele, the RNC Chairman) is willing to put the best interests of their party ahead of their desire to mark their territory and increase their personal sphere of influence.

This is not the sign of a healthy party -- but Rush Limbaugh is the least of the Republicans' problems.

Silver also makes this good point: "Opposition parties, in fact, can sometimes function fairly effectively without a leader." Which reminds me that this isn't really a leadership problem, but a lost-in-the-wilderness -and-looking-for-a-compass problem. The Republicans have time to sort that out -- 2010 is still a long way off -- but they've got some heavy lifting ahead of them. There's an assumption that they'll make traditional mid-term gains then, but I think they're making a mistake if they assume their exile will be self-correcting.