The "Center-Right" Pushback on the Left

I'm getting a kick out of how much radical left bloggers are outraged at the notion of a "center-right" nation, a point of fact conservatives have been quick to offer upon the election of Barack Obama to the presidency on November 4th.

As Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council summarized after the vote:

Look, America is a center-right nation. Barack Obama and the policies he reflects are not reflective of the nation. I think he offered, you know, what he called change, and Americans were ready for change. You know, Republicans have not governed well, and America was looking for a new path, and Barack Obama offered that. Now, his success is going to depend on whether or not he can govern as a moderate, as he campaigned, or whether he is going to be a liberal, as his record would indicate.

Perkins' point is objectively true.

The conditions in the United States at the founding of the country differed dramatically from the history of feudal development in the European continental democracies, where the original theories of socialism originated and where political systems prior to the Industrial Revolution evolved from the Middle Ages into highly-authoritarian, statist govermental institutions.

Perhaps the most important determinant of America's anti-socialist path was the nation's development in the absence of a feudal legacy. There was no aristocratic or monarchical authority in the American colonies in the 18th century. Gordon Wood, for example, in his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, noted how the essential economic and political equality of the average American - from the city merchant to the frontier explorer - mitigated any nascent agitation emerging from some oppressed lumpenproletariat we might envision in a Charles Dickens novel. The American man saw unbounded opportunity, and the rugged individualist ethic trumped class-based indentifications, and thus worked against the support for a militant trade sector that might lead to a revolt against the capitalist classes. With abundant land and raw materials, the normal "crisis of capitalism" expected in the Marxist model could be delayed indefinitely.

So here we are today, and the left now sees American capitalism - and the GOP "oppressor" class - as repudiated by the election of a (surreptiously) far-left Democratic candidate. Prominent lefty bloggers hope to delegitimize any suggestion that the country's political culture is founded in a frontier heritage of inherently center-right invidualism, with its suspicion of concentrated, centralized governmental authority.

Dave Neiwert, for example, argues this today:

If anyone were betting on it, I would happily wager that the right-wing talking point that "this is still a center-right nation" was being ginned up and distributed to every conservative talking head on the planet within 24 hours of Barack Obama's election victory, if not before.

I mean, it's coming out of the mouths of nearly every single right-wing pundit who's managed airtime since Nov. 5. It started the next day, and has only gained volume since.

And of course, it's so risibly false that it really tells us much more about conservatives and their grip on reality than anything else....

Of course, this is just the latest wingnut meme. It tells us, though, that the Republicans' longtime operating motto - "If you can't beat 'em with brains, baffle 'em with bulls**t" - is very much still with us.

Wingnut, eh?

The fact is that anyone who disagrees with the hegemonic discourse of the left is a "wingut." The leftist don't argue logically or consider facts or history. They excoriate and intimidate those who would utter heresy against their postmodern talking points.

Is Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek (a prominently left-wing journalistic establishment) a "wingnut"?

Hardly.

Meacham recently laid out a historically grounded case for an enduring American political culture of centrism, where he warned Barack Obama and the Democrats of over-interpreting the election as a "mandate" for radical change: "It’s Not Easy Bein’ Blue: America Remains a Center-Right Nation — A Fact Rhat a President Obama Would Forget at His Peril":

So are we a centrist country, or a right-of-center one? I think the latter, because the mean to which most Americans revert tends to be more conservative than liberal. According to the NEWSWEEK Poll, nearly twice as many people call themselves conservatives as liberals (40 percent to 20 percent), and Republicans have dominated presidential politics—in many ways the most personal, visceral vote we cast—for 40 years. Since 1968, Democrats have won only three of 10 general elections (1976, 1992 and 1996), and in those years they were led by Southern Baptist nominees who ran away from the liberal label. "Is this a center-right country? Yes, compared to Europe or Canada it's obviously much more conservative," says Adrian Wooldridge, coauthor of The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America and Washington bureau chief of the London-based Economist. "There's a much higher tolerance for inequality, much greater cultural conservatism, a higher incarceration rate, legalized handguns and greater distrust of the state."

Instead of calling people who make this argument "wingnuts," folks on the left would be taken more seriously if they made the case that the old consensus in favor of free markets and individualist groundings has been shattered.

It most likely has not, and the fact that Barack Obama has already shifted to the right of the political spectrum, hoping to gain popular legitimacy beyond the Democratic Party's hard-left faithful, is a powerful illustration of America's rightward tug.

Blocking Obama's Health Plan is Key to GOP's Survival?

You've got to hand it to James Pethokoukis. He's got a canny ability to get a grip on the hot issues of the day like few others.

So it is with his new piece, "How Tom Daschle Might Kill Conservatism," which includes this provocative passage:

Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."

You know, while I'd need to read the research Pethokoukis cites, given our current economic predicament, I could see huge numbers of voters finding attraction with a statist/redistributionist policy agenda of the Democratic Party for years to come, especially if Barack Obama proves to be smart in office, and actually passes some landmark legislation. Indeed, such an outcome, bolstered by some electoral endurance for Obama's demographic coalition, would confirm that we've indeed had a genuine realignment.

If there's any good news in this it's that Margaret Thatcher came to power in Britain in 1979. So, using this same timeline offered by Pethokoukis, the GOP will be the country's minority party for just 35 years.

Sweet!

Progressivism as the Radical Left

I have long noted that "the progressive netroots," as our political antagonists on the other side like to call themselves, are today's radicals, the ideological descendents of the New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s (people like Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground terrorists).

Today's progressives have very little in common with the true early-20th progressive reformers, such as Governor Hiram Johnson of California, who brought direct democracy to the state's voters in 1911.

I often get smeared as "wingnut" by some reality-challenged bloggers (for example, here and here) for making this argument, because the left today can't stand being identified for what they truly are. So it's with pleasure that I share Michael Lind's new piece, calling on progressives to end their charade: "Is it OK to Be Liberal Again, Instead of Progressive?":

If you were a progressive in the '60s and '70s, you were likely to think that Truman and Johnson were warmongering "corporate liberals" under the control of the "military-industrial complex" and that the Democrats and Republicans were indistinguishable. For the moderate and conservative Democrats of the DLC to call themselves the new progressives was the equivalent of moderate, secular Republicans calling themselves the new fundamentalists.

At least the far-left progressives were honest. They genuinely despised the mid-century American liberals, whom they viewed simply as another species of bourgeois imperialists. This is another one of the reasons I dislike the term "progressive" ... Why share a label with anyone who romanticized Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro?

Actually, because so few Americans identify "progressives" with this strain of left-wing extremism, it's unlikely that today's left will abandon the term.

I imagine there's still some kind of positive glow associated with the idea of a political movement that supports "progress." That's the last thing today's leftists want, however. They want a new (old) New Deal/Great Society combo, complete with WPA-style government spending programs, taxes on the rich (those making $250,000, which was about $35,000 in 1960, for comparison, but folks at that income level back then didn't think they were "rich"), and the endorsement of blame-America-first ideology at the highest levels of the foreign policy establishment (in that respect, thank goodness we might see Hillary Clinton taking over Foggy Bottom).

Daniel Halper at Pajamas Media argues that Barack Obama's already thrown the Democratic Party's hard-left contingents under the bus. Yet, given the tantrum-prone propensity of the progressive hordes, the president-elect may find their endless harangues a bit overwhelming at some point.

Moving on Up! Obama Girls to Attend Elite Private D.C. School

Barack and Michelle Obama have chosen the Sidwell Friends School, an elite private academy, for their daughters' education in Washington, D.C.

The Politico reports that the decision disappointed public education advocates:

Some education advocates had hoped that the soon-to-be first family would choose to send their daughters to a public school, and some reports suggested that Lafayette Elementary, a high-performing public school, was in the running.

Indeed, research on Layfayette academic success found no difference in the college placement rates between students who attended private or public high schools after leaving Lafayette.

According to the Swamp's story:

... a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, says the Obamas focused on what's the best fit for 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha.

I wonder how the Obamas determined what was the "best fit" for their daughters?

Probably not too many crack houses up in the Sidwell neighborhood.

Not only that, the Obamas' kids will follow an elite alumni, including Chelsea Clinton, Albert Gore III, Julie and Tricia Nixon, Nancy Reagan, and Archibald Roosevelt (son of Theodore), as well as Charlie Gibson of ABC News (and previously Princeton University),

Well, I guess the Obamas, like the Jeffersons, are "moving on up," hope and change be damned!

Domestic Partnership and the Incommensurability of Language

The State of California is widely acknowledged to have among the most expansive equal protection guarantees afforded to gay citizens in the country.

As a Brookings Institution report concluded last May, following the California Supreme Court's ruling to overturn the state's ban on gay marriage:

California has a domestic partnership law, which grants same-sex couples virtually all of the rights and obligations of marriage, making the current dispute one of nomenclature over the use of the word "marriage," not about the substance of marriage rights.

Here is the language of Section 297.5. (a) of the California Family Code

Registered domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law, whether they derive from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, government policies, common law, or any other provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses.

All along, the debate has been one of the social construction of rights and power. This a battle of interpretation and language. Andrew Sullivan noted yesterday that equal protection for domestic partners isn't enough ... he's determined to fight a war of discourse, beating tradition and reason into submission until he gets his way:

We live in a new world, and we can and should create meaning where we can, in civil society, in private, through free expression and self-empowerment. But we cannot enforce that old meaning on others by law. And we certainly cannot do so arbitrarily, to the sole detriment of only one group in society - homosexuals.

To read this is to see the postmodern language project in action. Sullivan's post is entitled, incommensurably, "Modernity, Faith, and Marriage."

The majoritarian acceptance of gay marriage will be a postmodern triumph, not a modern one. Sullivan should at least square his theories with prevailing modes of discourse.

Hezbollah Youth

While the story is troubling, the picture itself gives me shudders.

Hezbollah's Mahdi Scouts look like a reincarnation of Germany's Hitler's Youth from the pre-World War II era. The training of Mahdi Scouts for Islamo-fascist hegemony replicates the Nazi regimen of creating "Ayran supermen" who were prepared as leaders for the "Thousand Year Reich" during the Nazi era.

The Times notes that Hezbollah's "Mahdi Scouts have a reputation of being a feeder for Hezbollah's armed wing."

In World War II, crack troops comprised of Hitler Youth cadres fought with "ferocity" against British and Canadian forces during the Allied invasion of Normandy.

Here's this from the Times article:

Hezbollah’s influence on Lebanese youth is very difficult to quantify because of the party’s extreme secrecy and the general absence of reliable statistics in the country. It is clear that the Shiite religious schools, in which Hezbollah exercises a dominant influence, have grown over the past two decades from a mere handful into a major national network. Other, less visible avenues may be equally important, like the growing number of clerics associated with the movement.

Hezbollah and its allies have also adapted and expanded religious rituals involving children, starting at ever-earlier ages. Women, who play a more prominent role in Hezbollah than they do in most other radical Islamic groups, are especially important in creating what is often called “the jihad atmosphere” among children.

Gay Marriage Activists Undermine Their Own Cause

There's a lot of interesting commentary tonight on the gay marriage debate.

Andrew Sullivan has new, windblown essay that is positively infuriating, frankly: "Modernity, Faith, And Marriage" (Pete Abel's got the link if you want it):

If conservatism is to recover as a force in the modern world, the theocons and Christianists have to understand that their concept of a unified polis with a telos guiding all of us to a theologically-understood social good is a non-starter. Modernity has smashed it into a million little pieces. Women will never return in their consciousness to the child-bearing subservience of the not-so-distant past. Gay people will never again internalize a sense of their own "objective disorder" to acquiesce to a civil regime where they are willingly second-class citizens. Straight men and women are never again going to avoid divorce to the degree our parents did. Nor are they going to have kids because contraception is illicit. The only way to force all these genies back into the bottle would require the kind of oppressive police state Rod would not want to live under.

"Rod" is Rod Dreher, to whom Sullivan is responding. I want to comment on Dreher's piece in a later post.

What I find interesting and problematic is Sullivan's declaration of the death of conservatism by nothing other than fiat: His argument is a sophisticated version of the temper tantrum-demonstrations we've seen following the passage of Proposition 8 on November 4th.

Sullivan's assumption, stated in his "never again" declamations, is that success of the gay marriage movement is inevitable. The position, of course, is not only intellectually dishonest, but is radical secular propaganda: This idea of a teleological endpoint, of course, is the universal good of God's grace over mankind. To argue that conservatives must abandon that is like saying that a heart must stop beating. Sullivan appeals to death, because he can't argue straight to existential values, for he reject morals if that suits his utility-maximizing purpose.

Sullivan also can't make up his mind, for example, where tonight he says:

I have nothing against the voluntary and peaceful activities of any religious group, and regard these organizations as some of the greatest strengths of America.

But recall what he said just the other day, of the Mormon Church, which provided financial backing for Proposition 8:

... when they use their money and power to target my family, to break it up, to demean it and marginalize it, to strip me and my husband of our civil rights, then they have started a war.

Sullivan's a gasbag, frankly, and he's torn between sinister poles of outward belligerence and surreptitious persuasion.

I'll have more on this later, at least because of Sullivan's delusions of victory (recall that three states passed initiatives confirming marriage as between one man and one woman, so all this talk of inevitability is itself unhinged from fact).

In the meanwhile, readers should read this essay from Lucy Caldwell at the Harvard Crimson (alternative link here):

The push for same-sex marriage is a rally for additional rights. While this characterization of the movement strikes most gay rights activists as harsh, it is a useful distinction to be made when devising ways to advance the cause effectively. Yet gay rights advocates have not taken the appropriate cues from their defeats earlier this month, as reflected in their continued ignorance of their opponents’ thoughts and motives. They seem unable to face that democracy has spoken, and it has said “no” on same-sex marriage.

One major problem with the gay rights movement is that it simultaneously champions democratic government and rejects it. The movement views marriage as a civic institution rather than a religious one (this is one distinction between marriages and civil unions), but only so long as government functions from a pro-gay marriage position. Once the cogs of government have turned to an anti-gay marriage slant, gay rights activists cease to be tolerant of the democratic process. Cue the banners decrying opponents as hateful and intolerant. Is this unfortunate divide what activists seek? Certainly that sort of culture of separatist intolerance is what arises when advocates take this approach.

And it is this very same-marriage authoritarianism that dooms the movement for the near future (who knows what happens in the long term?).

Sullivan's already noted this, but he's now changing his tune, blowing off the movement's violence and intimidation as aberrations, as part of his cognitive dissonance.

I can't say I'm as optimistic as Ms. Caldwell, especially with an activist judiciary caving to the radical secular humanist agenda. But given the outrageous behavior of the gay marriage H8ers so far, there's certainly a strong possibility of a crushing implosion on the activist left.

Ackerman Wants Bush Dead, Not to Mention a New Counterinsurgency Plan

I've received an e-mail notification from the Center for Independent Media directing me to Spencer Ackerman's new piece at the Washington Independent, "Recasting the War on Terrorism: A Progressive Coalition Wants Obama to Be More Than the Anti-Bush."

First thoughts?

Well, no shit Sherlock, if you'll pardon the expression. I don't normally resort to urban slang, but since Ackerman's a wannabe punk hipster with a supremely disgusting repertoire of profanity, so I'm sure readers will understand.

For the substantive record, Ackerman should be known by his words, for example this passage from July:

The Iraq war is and has always been an obscenity, a filthy lie born of avarice and lust for power masquerading as virtue. This is what imperialism looks like. But the age of empire is over. The same hubris that led Bush into the Iraq disaster led him to miscalculate, again and again, over how to entrench it. But now he is impotent, unable to impose his will, and the nakedness of his attempted imposition has led the American and the Iraqi peoples to wake up and end his nightmare. May his war-crimes prosecutor be Iraqi; may his judge be American; and may he die in the Hague.

I wrote of Ackerman's post at the time:

This is the highest stage of moral relativist anti-Americanism, topped-off with a flourish of abject secular demonology.

And given our potty-mouthed Flophouse freak's piece today, delivered to me via my blog profile contact-information (the editors really need to check my archives before sending stuff out to American Power), I have no reason to suspect Ackerman's abandoned his nihilism. He writes, for example:

Buoyed by high expectations for the first year of Barack Obama’s administration, an informal coalition of progressive national-security and civil-liberties experts are urging the president-elect to redefine the war on terrorism.

Eight years of the Bush administration’s approach to counterterrorism have yielded two open-ended and bloody wars; a massively expanded security apparatus, and spending on defense far outpacing outlays on domestic programs, even during a crisis-plagued economy.

Yet while liberals have spent much of this time opposing the Bush administration’s agenda, many of their proposals for Obama go beyond merely rolling back President George W. Bush’s policies — withdrawing from Iraq, shuttering the Guantanamo Bay detention complex, abolishing torture — to offer new areas of emphasis, like stabilizing Afghanistan, an Arab-Israeli peace and a re-envisioned balance between security and liberty.

Through white papers delivered to the Obama transition team, new reports and interviews with reporters, this loose affiliation of progressives is saying it has a real opportunity to recast the U.S. effort against terrorism in fundamental ways.

Consistent with the broader progressive agenda of achieving global security through multilateral cooperation, economic development and respect for human rights, the past few days have seen a series of proposals urging rejection of the Bush administration’s militarism. To the degree these various progressive groups have a concerted goal, it’s to influence the transition with specific liberal ideas for new directions in the war on terrorism.

You can see why one might hardly be dumbstruck in reading this, given the quadrillions of bytes of BDS spewed over the last eight years of the current adminstration.

But more than that, MSM reporting is even highlighting the building leftist backlash to Obama's centrism. For example, today's Los Angeles Times reports that the antiwar left is worried that Obama's selling out the antiwar surrender enthusiasts to the "people who supported the war from the beginning," a reference to folks like Senator Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

The left wants nothing less than the utter emasculation of American power, with increasing "multilateralism" the buzzword for legitimizing the extreme globalist internationalism of the contemporary left. The flaky imprimatur of the "Washington Independent" does nothing to sanitize the disastrously relativist agenda of Ackerman's "loose affiliation of progressives."

The truth is we're losing in Afghanistan right now because of the weak-kneed nature of the current multinational force. As Michael Yon wrote last week, de facto victory is at hand in Iraq, notwithstanding the likelihood of the odd deadenders mounting spasms of nihilist mayhem on the Iraqi people. But Afghanistan needs an infusion of resolve, not a progressive coalition of the sniveling:

A new president will soon begin to make critical decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic crisis at home, and countless other matters. While the Iraq war began, then boiled, and finally cooled before President-elect Obama will be sworn into office on January 20, 2009, the Afghanistan-Pakistan spectacle is just getting started. He was always a fierce opponent of our involvement in Iraq. And, as with so many Democrats in the Senate, he argued frequently, during the campaign, that we should have been focused on Afghanistan all along, because it is the real incubator of the international terrorist threat. Timing being everything, our new president will get his wish. Afghanistan now moves to center stage. The conflicts in Afghanistan and between Afghanistan and Pakistan have the simmering potential to overshadow anything we’ve seen in Iraq. Here are a few things I hope he understands:

Our enemies are winning. The enemies know it. We know it. Who are they? The Taliban, with its deep local roots, is enemy number one. Al-Qaeda is hanging around to make trouble. Some Paks, who don’t want to see a thriving Pushtun state on their border, are our enemies. They fund and shelter the Taliban even though we rely on them to help us defeat it. Nothing is straightforward in this part of the world. We have other enemies in Afghanistan who hate the Taliban.

Most of our allies are not very helpful. With the exception of the British, Canadians, Dutch, and a few others such as the Aussies, we are not fighting this with an “A-team” of international allies. With a few exceptions, our allies on the ground are comprised of several dozen countries that mostly refuse to fight. The bulk of NATO amounts to little more than a “Taliban piñata.” The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is proving nearly worthless and provides no credible threat to armed opposition groups (AOGs) in Afghanistan. Most of the NATO member countries seem to break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of “Taliban.” They piled in when the war looked easy and largely humanitarian. But now that it’s getting harder and more dangerous, they would like to pile out.

To ensure that we have influence over the outcome, we need more soldiers in Afghanistan, and fast. They need to be U.S. forces, British, Canadian, and Aussie; we cannot depend on NATO in general and they don’t know how to fight anyway. Unless President-elect Obama knows some kind of magic spell, he will not be able to persuade most NATO countries to do the right thing. Springtime 2009 will likely bring very heavy fighting in Afghanistan. We will not have credible negotiating positions while we remain outgunned by a bunch of old rifles and dinged-up RPGs.

Yon pinpoints the resources needed to finish the job: more firepower and the will to use it - something not likely to be realized with the progressives' mushy calls to "legitimize" a beefed up deployment through the utopian defense bureaucracies of "NATO countries."

The leftists will continue to wet their shorts as long as the coming Obama administration makes concessions to the realities of military power.

The fact that the same people who pushed for an American defeat in Iraq are now hoping to "multilateralize" the deployment in Afghanistan shows that Obama is indeed moving right, and this in turn is one of the most reassuring signs that Obama's earlier campaign pledges were largely junk fodder for the masses, and that perhaps he's actually shortened the daylight between his ill-considered antiwar nonsense and the precepts of actual foreign policy responsibility.

That same responsibility, of course, is something of which Spencer Ackerman knows nothing.

Texas Fred Would Beat Wife Over Nigerian Scam!

Folks may remember my old nemesis Texas Fred. Well Old Freddy indicates that he'd beat his own wife if she got caught in one of those Nigerian e-mail scams, like Janella Spears of Sweet Home, Oregon:

I have NEVER believed in hitting a woman, but Janella, if you were MY wife, I would seriously be thinking of all kinds of creative new ways to make you hurt! I am sorry if that offends anyone but this is one of those STUPID PEOPLE things! I HATE stupid people! There are, as I am fond of saying, people in this world that would literally DIE if breathing were not a reflex action, and this woman is one of them.

These Nigerian email scams have been well documented for a long time, in the news, in the papers, on the blogs, through email notification, all the various media sources have done their part in making the public aware. Apparently, someone didn’t get the memo!

Fred's a liar, of course. Recall that Texas Fred, who sells himself as a genuine "Southern Gentleman," viciously attacked Amy Proctor in the comments at his blog when she disagreed with his traitorous rants on the Iraq war:

Amy, you do know that you can go to the hospital and have a bit of ‘day surgery’ don’t you?? They can cut the Hypocritical BITCH right out of you, you know the one I am talking about?? The one that seeks to infringe on the free speech of others??
And ya really outta think about it too...

Texas Fred's spewing today in response to a Fox News report, "Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam."

It's an interesting story, as we all get loads of these scam letters in our inbox's.

But it's especially interesting when we see one big fat Southern redneck admitting he'd beat his own sweet Bertha! Texas Fred is a bad man, a faux conservative with no morals whatsover. He's begged so many bloggers to join his redneck blogrolls it's pathetic, and then he turns around and backstabs anyone who vaguely disagrees with him after they've joined! Wow! As Amy indicates:

Texas Fred claims his blog’s mission is to “piss off as many lefty/libbers as I possibly can, each and every day, it’s my mission in life” and describes himself as a “Conservative libertarian ....

In reality his message is hostile to Conservative values and positions, particularly when it comes to the war on terror, Iraq and President Bush.

A real jerk, in other words.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, Expecting Baby, Plans to Marry

I've met Congresswoman Linda Sanchez on a couple of occasions. She represents the 39th congressional district in Washington, and she was reelected to office this month with a 70 percent majority.

It turns out that Representative Sanchez is pregnant, which is a little awkward, as she is unmarried:

California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez is pregnant. Ordinarily, this would not make headlines, except to the Sanchez family and maybe in a newsletter to the 39th Congressional District in southeast L.A. County, which just elected her to her fourth term. It's no big deal nowadays when members of Congress give birth. The first was Mrs. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, 35 years ago.

What makes Sanchez's pregnancy news is that she is not married to the baby's father -- not yet, anyway.

You're practically the first to know. Even her sister and fellow congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez, didn't know until a few days ago.

The baby's father and Sanchez's "unofficially engaged" beau of a year and a half is Jim Sullivan, a government and PR consultant and the divorced father of three boys.

Washington is a back-fence-gossip kind of town, and Sanchez expects there to be some fuss and bother.

"I don't know how it'll be received," she said. "I hope people will recognize that to be able to plan that in your life -- I don't think that marriage and childbirth are black and white. There are certain instances in which you have to do things in reverse order."

Twenty years ago, it simply wouldn't have been possible -- pregnant, single and a member of Congress? Oh, the scandal! But Hester Prynne has morphed into Juno MacGuff, the culture wars have been fought to a truce of exhaustion, and "unwed mother" has been recast as "single mom."

Read the whole thing, here.

Sanchez boasts a very active student internship program, and I routinely recommend students to apply for the program.

I must say though that this is quite unusual. Times have changed, certainly, but the fact that this is not likely to be scandalous tells quite a bit about the changing nature of political culture and social norms.

EHarmony Bullied to Offer Same-Sex Dating Services

If folks don't think that the gay marriage movement is about radically transforming America's traditional culture, think about the implications of EHarmony's decision to offer same-sex dating services to gays:

The Pasadena-based dating website, heavily promoted by Christian evangelical leaders when it was founded, has agreed in a civil rights settlement to give up its heterosexuals-only policy and offer same-sex matches.

EHarmony -- known for the mild-mannered television and radio advertisements by its founder, psychologist Neil Clark Warren -- not only must implement the new policy by March 31 but also must give the first 10,000 same-sex registrants a free six-month subscription.

Note that EHarmony broke no laws and decided to settle rather than face years of litigation from unruly same-sex activists that just gotta have it!

Robert Stacy McCain sent me the link to his artcle, "Gay Rights, Gay Rage," which is worth quoting at length, especially the notion on the left that there's a "right" to everything. Robert picks up on the theme in the wake of the No on H8 protests in Los Angeles following the passage of Proposition 8:

As the California activists spewed their fury -- allegedly vandalizing Mormon temples, making terroristic threats toward Catholics, and hurling racial epithets at African-Americans (who voted 3-to-1 in favor of Prop 8, according to exit polls) -- their vitriolic rage highlighted how the progressive rhetoric of "rights" undermines and destabilizes political consensus.

The late historian Christopher Lasch was the first to identify (and Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon later examined in depth) how "rights talk" insinuated itself into American culture as a dominant mode of political discourse in the decades following World War II. Because Americans are taught to think of "rights" as something sacred in our civic religion, those accused of violating "rights" are easily demonized, while those who advocate "rights" are sanctified.

Seizing on the triumphant narrative of the black civil-rights movement, liberals adopted the habit of framing political debates in terms of minority "rights" versus majority "discrimination." That this tactic involves a species of moral and emotional blackmail should be obvious. To disagree with a liberal, to oppose his latest policy proposal, is to invite comparisons to Bull Connor and Orval Faubus, so long as the liberal can make "rights" the basis of his argument. (Witness, for example, how Keith Olbermann addressed himself to Proposition 8 supporters, casting their position as morally equivalent to segregation and slavery.)

"Rights talk" allowed liberals a means of preemptively delegitimizing their opponents and thereby to avoid arguing about policy in terms of necessity, utility and efficacy. If all legal and political conflicts are about "rights," there is no need to argue about the specific consequences of laws and policies. Merely determine which side of the controversy represents "rights" and the debate ends there.

The gay rage in California can be traced directly to the Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which voided a Texas sodomy law because, as Justice Anthony Kennedy declared, "our laws and traditions in the past half century…show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex."

The Lawrence ruling was the culmination of what Justice Antonin Scalia called "a 17-year crusade" to overturn the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision (which had upheld Georgia's sodomy statute) and, as Scalia noted in his dissent, the Court's "emerging awareness" argument was a disingenuous way to avoid actually declaring a "fundamental right" to sodomy. The legal effect was the same, however, and Lawrence was repeatedly cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision five months later mandating the legalization of gay marriage in that state.

If homosexuality is a right, and denying legal recognition to same-sex marriage is a violation of that right, then the rage of gay activists against their opponents is entirely justified. Proposition 8 does not deny tolerance, safety and freedom to gays and lesbians, whose right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is as secure in California as anywhere in the world.

Tolerance, safety and freedom are not the same as equality, however, and equality is the freight that liberals seek to smuggle into arguments via "rights talk." Gay activists do not construe their "rights" in terms of liberty, but in terms of radical and absolute equality. They insist that same-sex relationships are identical to -- entirely analogous to and fungible with -- traditional marriage.

Common sense resists this assertion, perceiving something fundamentally false in the gay marriage argument. Yet it seems common-sense resistance can only be justified by resort to religious faith, through the understanding that men are "endowed by their Creator" with rights. Eliminate the Creator from discussion, and it becomes impossible to refute the activists' indignant demand for equality.

In a Spectacle of Wealth and Poverty...

The Department of Agriculture reported yesterday that the number of children experiencing hunger increased by 50 percent from 2007. Perhaps the Obama administration's economic policies will help those families least able to succeed in the economy.

In the meantime, please enjoy Natalie Merchant's "Carnival," where she sings:

Have I been blind
Have I been lost
Inside my self and
My own mind
Hypnotized
Mesmerized
By what my eyes have seen?

Yes on 8 Campaign Awaits Court Ruling, Rejects Recall

The California Supreme Court has agreed to review Proposition 8, the state ballot measure making marriage available only to one man and one woman.

I have just received a memo for distribution from the leadership of Protect Marriage and the Yes on 8 Campaign. The memo states that initiative sponsors will await the outcome of the Court's judicial review, and they oppose any efforts to begin campaigning for a recall of the justices of the court:

"Our position is the Court will uphold Prop 8 even if some may disagree with the policy it embodies. There should be no discussion of a recall at this point and nobody associated with the campaign should even hint that such a thing is being discussed. It is NOT being discussed. We are discussing defending Prop 8 and, if necessary, doing the work necessary to be ready for a future initiative battle if the other side chooses to seek to legalize same sex marriage."

As noted here in previous entries, the Court is well aware of the threat of a recall, and the intensity of the controversy on both sides of the debate means a majority of the Court is likely to defer to the will of the voters, to avoid prolonging the battle (Justice Joyce Kennard voted to deny a court review of the initiative). And the Los Angeles Times reports that "Supporters of the Proposition 8" are warning of a recall of any of the justices who vote to overturn the measure.

Just exactly who those "supporters" are remains key, as the official Yes on 8 campaign has opposed counter-demonstrations against the No on H8 protests, and now indicates it is frowning on recall mobilization prior to a decision from the judicial branch.

Michelle Obama at Slave Auction

There's no other way for me to conceptualize this other than the kind of physical examination of black chattel by white traders at a slave auction: Erin Aubry Kaplan's discussion of Michelle Obama's bottom represents one of the lowest, most explicitly race-conscious - and hence racist - essays imaginable.

The piece, "First Lady Got Back," is written from the perspective of one black woman admiring another, but for the life of me I can't fathom the rationale for publishing an essay like this at a major journal at time when the country is supposed to be transcending. There is no decency here, and no class. This part is especially revealing in its degradation of Mrs. Obama:

From the ocean of nastiness and confusion that defined this campaign from the beginning, Michelle rose up like Venus on the waves, keeping her coif above water and cruising the coattails of history to present us with a brand-new beauty norm before we knew it was even happening.

Actually, it took me and a lot of other similarly configured black women by surprise. So anxious and indignant were we about Michelle getting attacked for saying anything about America that conservatives could turn into mud, we hardly looked south of her neck. I noted her business suits and the fact she hardly ever wore pants (unlike Hillary). As I gradually relaxed, as Michelle strode onto more stages and people started focusing on her clothes and presence instead of her patriotism, it dawned on me -- good God, she has a butt! "Obama’s baby (mama) got back," wrote one feminist blogger. "OMG, her butt is humongous!" went a typical comment on one African-American online forum, and while it isn't humongous, per se, it is a solid, round, black, class-A boo-tay. Try as Michelle might to cover it with those Mamie Eisenhower skirts and sheath dresses meant to reassure mainstream voters, the butt would not be denied.

As America fretted about Obama's exoticism and he sought to calm the waters with speeches about unity and common experience, Michelle's body was sending a different message: To hell with biracialism! Compromise, bipartisanship? Don't think so. Here was one clear signifier of blackness that couldn't be tamed, muted or otherwise made invisible. It emerged right before our eyes, in the midst of our growing uncertainty about everything, and we were too bogged down in the daily campaign madness to notice. The one clear predictor of success that the pundits, despite all their fancy maps, charts and holograms, missed completely? Michelle's butt.

Lord knows, it's time the butt got some respect. Ever since slavery, it's been both vilified and fetishized as the most singular of all black female features, more unsettling than dark skin and full lips, the thing that marked black women as uncouth and not quite ready for civilization (of course, it also made them mighty attractive to white men, which further stoked fears of miscegenation that lay at the heart of legal and social segregation). In modern times, the butt has demarcated class and stature among black society itself. Emphasizing it or not separates dignified black women from ho's, party girls from professionals, hip-hop from serious. (Black women are not the only ones with protruding behinds, by the way, but they're certainly considered its source. How many gluteally endowed nonblack women have been derided for having a black ass? Well, Hillary, for one.)

Erin Aubry Kaplan is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times who happens to be black. If a white conservative columnist published this at, say, the Wall Street Journal or the Weekly Standard, the Democratic-left would be up in arms with yet another cry of racism!

My first thought when getting to the section about Mrs. Obama's "solid, round, black, class-A boo-tay" was thinking that here's what the slave traders would be saying, back in 1830, if the president-elect's wife was stripped naked and slathered in oil, tied to a post up on a "stage" while an auctioneer made the case for a strong "field nigger" with "solid hindquarters" and sharp muscle tone conducive to long, stooped hours picking cotton, with the added bonus of a "near-burble" skin to withstand the searing midday sun.

Anyone who's read classic novels like Jubilee or Uncle Tom's Cabin has some recollection of the dehumanizing nature of the chattel slave markets.

Erin Aubrey Kaplan should know better.

Captain Ed's got more.

Daschle to Lead Health and Human Services

The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama has appointed former Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle to lead the Department of Health and Human Services:

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen his close confidant and former Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle to serve as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to several sources close to the transition.

Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, will also reportedly be given a policy portfolio that stretches beyond the department in order to help shepherd health-care reform legislation in 2009.

He will oversee a department of nearly 65,000 employees spread across 11 operating divisions with a budget this year of $707.7 billion. If he is confirmed by the Senate, his responsibilities will include the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the Food and Drug Administration, public health programs and government research at the National Institutes of Health.

More significantly, Daschle has positioned himself as Obama's central adviser on efforts to dramatically expand health-care coverage next year, while at the same time lowering costs. During the campaign, Obama promised to reduce the average family's medical bill by $2,500.

There are certain to be questions surrounding Daschle's wife, Linda, a registered federal lobbyist with the firm Baker Donelson. During Daschle's 2004 re-election campaign, Republicans sought to paint the Democrat as the ultimate Washington insider, using some of his wife's lobbying clients as evidence that the Senator was more worried about Washington than South Dakota.

The Republican National Committee quickly pounced on Daschle's post-Senate activities in a statement released this afternoon.

"Barack Obama is filling his Administration with long-time Washington insiders," said RNC spokesman Alex Conant. "Since losing his Senate seat, Tom Daschle has worked for a major lobbying firm. For voters hoping to see new faces and fewer lobbyist-connections in government, Daschle's nomination will be another disappointment."

Daschle is not a lobbyist, although his firm--Alston & Bird--does have a lobbying arm.

For Daschle, the post at HHS is a political rebirth of sorts following a devastating defeat for re-election in 2004. Daschle, then the Senate Minority Leader, was defeated by Sen. John Thune, who two years earlier had lost a tightly contested race against Sen. Tim Johnson.

Daschle was one of Obama's earliest supporters and a number of Daschle-trained operatives -- field guru Steve Hildebrand, political mind Jennifer O'Malley and communications guru Dan Pfeiffer -- held senior roles in Obama's presidential campaign.

Daschle was initially rumored to be in the running for White House chief of staff but following Rep. Rahm Emanuel's (Ill.) ascension to that post became a leading candidate for HHS.

Daschle, 59, is a co-author of the book "Critical: What We Can Do about the Health-Care Crisis," in which he recommends creating an entity modeled after the Federal Reserve Board oversee health care in the United States.

I always thought Dashcle was a good guy. He seemed to have the public interest at heart in his governing style. I can't recall anything particularly controversial about him, beyond the criticism of his wife's lobbying ties.

I can say that the attacks on Obama for appointing top Washington advisors are fair, but frankly, the president-elect's more likely to hit the ground running with a seasoned team of operatives, and thus he's way more likely to avoid the drastic screw-ups that marred Bill Clinton's first year in office. People to this day criticize Clinton for bringing Thomas "Mack" McLarty to Washington, because he was an outsider to the nation's capital and didn't serve the new administration well.

Obama may have pulled off the best bait-and-switch in the history of presidential campaigns: Run on a ticket of hope, change, and reform, then upon taking office govern like a crooked big-city boss with ruthless advisors who know where all the skeletons are buried and who know how to leverage patronage to maximum and merciless political advantage.

Remembering the Real Hillary Clinton

Often earlier this year, during the Democratic primaries, I would pinch myself and say, "what is it about Hillary Clinton that I now like so much?"

Indeed, I got so excited by her indelible fighting spirit, I got to calling her "Hillary Clinton Maximus Decimus Meridius," for just like Russell Crowe's Roman general, she simply wouldn't die.

Hillary's in the news again, of course, with all the speculation on her potential appointment as secretary of state (which would be a disaster, in my opinion, not for U.S. foreign policy, but for Hillary's moral legacy).

Noemie Emery, in any case, zooms in on why we love her, why we love Hillary Clinton, even though her history indeed represents all that conservatives claim to loathe. The grudging respect emerged after Barack Obama had become the Democratic frontrunner, and Hillary's inevitability was long forgotten. That's when Americans saw Hillary as a gladiator refusing to go down:

After March 4, she suddenly seemed to look and sound different: She began to seem real. The shrillness was gone, and so was The Cackle, and so were the forced southern accents that once caused so many so much merriment. Hillary!--whoever that was--never really cohered as a character; her previous poses--the Perfect Wife, the Aggrieved Wife, the Empress-in-Waiting--were all unconvincing, but in her new role--the scrapper, forced to the wall, and hanging in there with ferocious and grim resolution--she is suddenly all of a piece. Along with her inner JFK, she has channeled her inner Robert F. Kennedy (going back to the days when he was still "ruthless"), along with her inner Margaret Thatcher--"No time to go wobbly"--along with echoes of the John McCain who clawed his way out of the grave only last winter, and the George W. Bush who just as tenaciously saved his Iraq policy--and maybe Iraq itself--from the Democrats in Congress last year.

It is no accident that it was just at this juncture that she began to rouse outrage in parts of what once was her base. It is a truism that liberals think people are formed by exterior forces around them and are helpless before them, while conservatives think individuals make their own destiny. Liberals love victims and want them to stay helpless, so they can help them, with government programs; while conservatives love those who refuse to be victims, and get up off the canvas and fight. Hillary may still be a nanny-state type in some of her policies, but in her own life she seems more and more of a Social Darwinian, refusing to lose, and insisting on shaping her destiny. If the fittest survive, she intends to be one of them. This takes her part of the way towards a private conversion. She is acting like one of our own.

If this weren't enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. The New York Times is having hysterics about her. At the New Republic, Jonathan Chait (who inspired the word "Chaitred" for his pioneer work on Bush hatred) has transferred his loathing of the 43rd president intact and still shining to her. "She should now go gentle into the political night," he advised in January. "Go Already!" he repeated in March, when she had failed to act on his suggestion. "No Really, You Should Go," he said in April after she won Pennsylvania, which made her even less likely to take his advice. "Now that loathing seems a lot less irrational," he wrote of the right wing's prior distaste for both the Clintons. "We just really wish they'd go away."

And what caused this display of intense irritation? She's running a right-wing campaign. She's running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan--"The Bear in the Forest"--ran against Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she's doing it with much the same symbols.

"Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11," the New York Times has been whining. "A Clinton television ad, torn right from Karl Rove's playbook, evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war, and 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden . . . declaring in an interview with ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president," she would wipe the aggressor off the face of the earth. "Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about Obama that McCain is," Chait lamented: "He's inexperienced, lacking in substance," unprepared to stand up to the world. She has said her opponent is ill-prepared to answer the phone, should it ring in the White House at three in the morning. Her ads are like the ones McCain would be running in her place, and they'll doubtless show up in McCain's ads should Obama defeat her. She has said that while she and McCain are both prepared to be president, Obama is not. They act, he makes speeches. They take heat, while he tends to wilt or to faint in the kitchen. He may even throw like a girl.

And better--or worse--she is becoming a social conservative, a feminist form of George Bush. Against an opponent who shops for arugula, hangs out with ex-Weathermen, and says rural residents cling to guns and to God in unenlightened despair at their circumstances, she has rushed to the defense of religion and firearms, while knocking back shots of Crown Royal and beer. Her harsh, football-playing Republican father (the villain of the piece, against whom she rebelled in earlier takes on her story) has become a role model, a working class hero, whose name she evokes with great reverence. Any day now, she'll start talking Texan, and cutting the brush out in Chappaqua or at her posh mansion on Embassy Row.

In the right-wing conspiracy, this adaptation has not gone unobserved. "Hillary has shown a Nixonian resilience and she's morphing into Scoop Jackson," runs one post on National Review's blog, The Corner:

She's entering the culture war as a general. All of this has made her a far more formidable general election candidate. She's fighting the left and she's capturing the center. She's denounced MoveOn.org. She's become the Lieberman of the Democratic Party. The left hates her and treats her like Lieberman. . . . Obama is distancing himself from Wright and Hillary is getting in touch with O'Reilly. The culture war has come to the Democratic Party.

She might run to the right of McCain, if she makes it to the general election, and get the votes of rebellious conservatives. Or she, Lieberman, and McCain could form a pro-war coalition, with all of them running to pick up the phone when it rings in the small hours. The New York Times and the rest of the left would go crazy. Respect can't get stranger than that.

I can't add much to that, except to say, once again, Noemie Emery's shown herself to be among the very best of those writing on politics and culture today.

Attorney General Nominee Eric Holder

While there have been indications that Barack Obama has moved to the center since his nomination last june, and upon winning the general election this month, the National Review indicates that Obama's nomination of Eric Holder for attorney general demonstrates where the ideological fulcrum will be in the next Justice Department, and in American law:

Holder was the Clinton administration’s last deputy attorney general, succeeding Jamie Gorelick in 1997 under Janet Reno. That appointment marked the final elevation in a series of Clinton-era promotions that punctuate his résumé. Holder’s rise, like Obama’s own, is of symbolic significance, as he now has been nominated to be the nation’s first black attorney general. Symbolism, however, cannot camouflage the fact that Holder is a conventional, check-the-boxes creature of the Left.

He is convinced justice in America needs to be “established” rather than enforced; he’s excited about hate crimes and enthusiastic about the constitutionally dubious Violence Against Women Act; he’s a supporter of affirmative action and a practitioner of the statistical voodoo that makes it possible to burden police departments with accusations of racial profiling and the states with charges of racially skewed death-penalty enforcement; he’s more likely to be animated by a touchy-feely Reno-esque agenda than traditional enforcement against crimes; he’s in favor of ending the detentions of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay and favors income redistribution to address the supposed root causes of crime.

In any other time, Holder would simply be an uninspired choice. But these are not ordinary times — we face a serious, persistent threat from Islamist terrorists. At the same time, Democrats have expressed outrage over both the alleged politicization of the Justice Department and the reckless disregard of its storied traditions. For these times, it is difficult to imagine a worse choice for AG than Eric Holder.

There's more at the link.

Holder's nomination is bad enough, but we haven't seen the end of the leftward lurch (just wait, for example, until word goes out on who'll head the EPA ... change is on the way!).

Don't Waste Hillary at the State Department

I haven't posted on all of the rumors that Hillary Clinton will become secretary of state in the Barack Obama administration.

I don't like the idea, frankly. David Broder explains my reservations perfectly:

It may be moot and it certainly is presumptuous, but I would be less than honest with readers if I did not say what I believe: Making Hillary Rodham Clinton the secretary of state in Barack Obama's administration would be a mistake.

I do not doubt that she could do the job -- and do it well. I have been a fan of the former first lady's since I covered her efforts for health-care reform 15 years ago. What I saw in the recent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was convincing evidence of her physical stamina and moral courage, and of her capacity to improve her own performance at every step of the process. I admired her readiness to endorse and campaign hard for Obama after her own candidacy fell short.

Equally, I admire Obama's readiness to reach out to former rivals and enlist their help in the governing enterprise he is launching. His serious discussions with Clinton, John McCain and Bill Richardson, among others, are testaments to his sincerity in wanting to move beyond the partisanship and personal differences that too often poison the atmosphere in Washington.

What, then, is the problem? Clinton is the wrong person for that job in this administration. It's not the best use of her talents, and it's certainly not the best fit for this new president.

Unfortunately, Broder marred his piece with a slam on the Iraq war ... which is no surprise since the Beltway establishment attaced the war as a "disaster" from the get go.

But Hillary Clinton was right in authorizing the deployment in 2002, and perhaps by staying away from the Obama cabinet, she can return to a more realistic view of American foreign policy, not driven by electoral pressures from the Democratic party's defeatist base.

A Cancer on the Democratic Party

One bright side to John McCain's loss this month is that Michael Goldfarb, who left the Weekly Standard to join the campaign as a media spokesman, is back at the magazine hashing out some penetrating analysis.

Goldfarb provides the best explanation to the left's Lieberman derangement yet. There's a cancer metastasizing at the base:

What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

This is precisely what the Democratic party achieved with Barack Obama’s historic victory on November 4. The Democrats increased their majorities in both the House and Senate while eliminating anything even resembling a functioning opposition. Those Republicans that survived the massacre are exhausted, scattered and foraging for scraps. It was a bloodbath, and one that should have satiated the blood lust of even the most committed Democratic partisans. Yet some Democrats can’t seem to accept a complete and total victory -- they want to round up the wounded and execute them. Joe Lieberman’s name is at the top of their list ....

The Democratic party and the left won a stunning victory in this election, and while they should be savoring it (and most are) a few are busy trying to settle old scores. It’s pathetic, but it’s also cause for some optimism: these people are a cancer on the Democratic party that even a landslide victory couldn't cure.

Unfortunately, the nihilist left is a cancer on American life altogether.

Recall Specter Hangs Over California Supreme Court

Last Saturday, I argued that the case of Rose Elizabeth Bird, the late Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, who was rejected at the polls in 1986, should be the model for today's Yes on 8 proponents contemplating political options in the event that the Ronald George court decides to strike down the November 4th ballot measure.

It turns out, as the Los Angeles Times reports, that the state high court is fully aware of the possibility of an electoral backlash should a majority on the bench overturn the wishes of a majority of the state's voters:

Six months ago, California's highest court discarded its reputation for caution and ended the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

Now the moderately conservative state Supreme Court is being asked to take an even riskier step -- to overturn the November voter initiative that reinstated the gay-marriage ban and possibly provoke a voter revolt that could eject one or more of the justices from the bench.

The court is under intense pressure from all sides. Its first response to the challenges may come today, when the justices meet privately in a weekly conference to decide which cases to accept for review.

Legal scholars say case law does not give the court a clear path for overturning the voter-approved measure. The state high court -- six Republicans and one moderate Democrat -- generally defers to the will of the people. Only twice has the court rejected initiatives on the legal grounds cited by opponents of Proposition 8.

Despite the uncertainties, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said publicly that he expects and hopes that the state high court will reject Proposition 8.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, whose office must defend it, opposed the measure, and 44 legislators have called on the court to overturn it.

Civil rights groups, churches and local governments have filed six lawsuits asking the court to declare the measure an illegal constitutional revision. Letters also have poured into the court pleading for urgent action, and anti-Proposition 8 rallies have attracted large crowds statewide.

At the same time, opponents of gay marriage have warned that they will work to oust any justice who votes against Proposition 8, a threat particularly palpable in a year when voters in other states have booted six state high court justices after campaigns by special interest groups.

"It is a time of lots of crocodiles in the bathtub," said Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, who has followed the court for decades. "Their oath requires them to ignore these kinds of political threats. But the threat of having to face a contested election is a significant one."

Uelmen used a metaphor coined by the late California Supreme Court Justice Otto Kaus, a Democrat who served on the court with Chief Justice Rose Bird before voters removed her and two justices over their opposition to the death penalty.

Kaus later said that as hard as he tried to decide cases impartially, he was never sure whether the threat of a recall election was influencing his votes.

"It was like finding a crocodile in your bathtub when you go to shave in the morning," Kaus said. "You know it's there, and you try not to think about it, but it's hard to think about much else while you're shaving."

The folks at Firedoglake aren't too thrilled about it, calling backers of a likely recall campaign "the forces behind inequality" and a bunch of "crazy supporters."

There's a bitter irony here for the leftist progressive "H8ers": California's true progressive reformer, Governor Hiram Johnson, in 1911, empowered the voters of the state with the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. He also established non-partisan elections for judicial officials, which was the mechanism that removed Chief Justice Bird in 1986 after she refused to permit capital punishment in the state.

Now, of course, today's so-called "progressives" (neo-Stalinists, actually) reject the most important political reforms in California history, since they allow popular majorities to go over the heads of the currupt and inefficient elected officials, as well as members of the judiciary, to direct public policy themselves.

The will of the voters will prevail on this issue. The same-sex marriage activists need to try again at the ballot box after a few election cycles have passed. If the demographics are really trending toward the gay agenda of radical secularism, these folks should have nothing to worry about.

David Frum's Rethinking

Here's an excerpt from David Frum's response to the New York Times piece yesterday on the decline of respect at the National Review:

I have been engaged in some intense rethinking of my own conservatism. My fundamental political principles remain the same as ever: free markets, American leadership in the world, and intense attachment to inherited moral and cultural traditions. Yet I cannot be blind to the evidence that we have seen free markets produce some damaging and dangerous results in recent years. Or that the foreign policy I supported has not yielded the success I would have wished to see. Or that traditions must evolve if they are to endure. There are new principes too that must be included in a majority conservatism: environmental protection as a core value and an unwavering insistence upon competence and integrity in government.

I appreciate this statement on America's "leadership in the world."

That commitment will be restrained, unfortunately, if American leadership is compromised on the altar of the left's ideological doctrine of environmental globalism.

This idea of a "commitment to moral and cultural traditions" is good, but how much must they "evolve" if they are to endure?

We're seeing enough evolution right now with the coming of Barack Obama, whose positions on the issues seem to be "evolving" in a way that's not so great for moral and cultural traditions.

Other than that, great.

Frum will be intitiating a group blog on conservative politics sometime around the time of the inauguration (we'll see how "conservative" that turns out, yo, Peggy Noonan!).

Petition to Governor Schwarzenegger

I just got this petition notification from the folks at the Yes on 8 campaign:

Meridian Magazine / Family Leader

Proposition 8: Governor Schwarzenegger Respect the Voter's Will

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,

Since election day, you have made comments urging the California Supreme Court to overturn the citizens' will in passing Proposition 8 in California defining marriage as between a man and a woman. This was passed after a rigorous election process by a healthy margin of 52% to 48%.

You have recommended that the state Supreme Court declare the initiative unconstitutional and said, "The important thing now is to resolve this issue." The election passing Proposition 8 did resolve the issue, according to the most basic tenet of our free society, which is based on the "consent of the governed" ....

To try to overturn an election is an insult to voters and undermines the democratic process. As governor, it is your responsibility to support and defend the California constitution, which now reads that marriage is between a man and a woman and the foundation processes of our country that are based on "consent of the governed."

We urge you to:

* Publically accept the results of the ballot initiative as the will of the people

* Publically recant any suggestions that the California Supreme Court should overturn the voice of a free and fair election.

* Condemn the recent assaults upon the First Amendment rights of supporters of Proposition 8. We echo what the Protect Marriage coalition has said, "Amidst all this lawlessness, harassment, trampling of civil rights and now domestic terrorism, one thing stands out: the deafening silence of our elected officials. Not a single elected leader has spoken out against what is happening." We look to you to speak out against those who would silence free speech by targeting donors, disrupting church services and vandalizing property.

Sincerely,

Your Name & Address Here ...

I think this is a good start to a grassroots accountability campaign directed at the goverment of the State of California.

Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr., announced today that his office will ask the California Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of Proposition 8. Brown will represent the state, but Yes on 8 backers don't trust the A.G. to defend their position adequately before the Court.

The Attorney General's contact page is here. Make your voice heard.