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Mar

1

[video] Bobby Jindal on 60 Minutes 3/1/09

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Hattip to The Next Right and this tweet from Patrick Ruffini:


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By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:28 pm March 1st, 2009 in Bobby Jindal, conservatives, Media, Politics, Republicans | Please comment 

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Mar

1

Bai on Boehner: “smoker’s voice, sculptured hair, a lobbyist’s pinstripe suit”

Filed Under Barack Obama, conservatives, Democrats, Government, leadership, Media, Ohio, Politics, Republicans, Whitehouse09, Writing | Leave a Comment

Matt Bai’s New York Times Magazine article on Newt Gingrich includes a fun description of Ohio Congressman and House minority leader, John Boehner, in a section that deals with how Gingrich fits into Republican and conservative leadership right now:

…Republicans right now are desperately looking for direction from someone, ideally someone who knows how to handle an opposition president with a 65-percent approval rating. Normally this role would fall to a charismatic Congressional boss or to a vaunted strategist with a record of success. At the moment, Republicans have neither. The House leader, John Boehner, is a dealmaker of the 1980s Republican variety — smoker’s voice, sculptured hair, a lobbyist’s pinstripe suit. He’s a solid guy, the kind you could golf with or put on your board of directors, but nothing about him makes you want to charge toward a machine-gun battery to take a hill. Over on the Senate side, Mitch McConnell, an expert floor tactician, seems about as socially uncomfortable as a man can be and still reach the pinnacle of politics. The closest thing the party has to a grand strategist, Karl Rove, offers most of his wisdom on Fox News, prompting a lot of Republicans who endured his tirades during the Bush years to shudder and change the channel. [emphasis added]

The breach here is plenty wide, and Gingrich is nothing if not politically agile.

But damn if he doesn’t have a great tan, especially for a person from Ohio. Remember this photo, in which he appears to be the same hue as President Obama?

Ahh – sorry – I definitely get suckered in by that tan thing.

As for the rest of Bai’s article, it’s very, very interesting. I almost always read whatever Bai writes, but I don’t often like all of it. This time, however, Bai hits on qualities and observations about Gingrich that people either have not noted before or haven’t been given voice by anyone who has been talking about Newt lately.

These three paragraphs are, for me, the crux of it all:

It sounded like a cool idea, to be sure, as long as you weren’t one of those poor air-traffic controllers, who, for whatever reason, have been on the wrong side of Republicans since Reagan fired them in 1981. But it was hard to imagine Republicans outflanking Obama, as we stood on the brink of global panic, by promising a better on-time ratio for Delta. This has long been the chief criticism of Gingrich among those who share his ideological convictions — that there is a randomness to his brilliance, a lack of prioritization or discipline. Gingrich may be an “idea factory,” as Paul Ryan puts it, but it sometimes seems like a factory working on triple shifts without a floor manager or anyone keeping the books. Even Gingrich’s modestly bulging waistline, which expands and contracts on some kind of lunar schedule to which only fellow Republicans seem especially attuned, is mentioned as evidence that Gingrich can’t focus on any one objective for very long.

The ideas Gingrich promotes seem to rotate every few weeks, depending on the book he has just torn through or the especially illuminating conversation he has just had, or simply on where his earnest fascination with policy has taken him this morning. One day it’s his energy plan, which includes not just drilling offshore and in the oil-shale-packed mountainous West but also the kind of massive investment in solar and wind power and biofuels that Obama and other Democrats favor. On another day it might be his favorite education idea, which entails a plan to reward low-income high-school students who graduate early with a college scholarship equal to the value of the money they’re saving the school system.

There’s not really any unified, easily distillable argument in these and other proposals, no ideology that might be charted on a continuum and labeled accordingly. Rather, the new-model Newt seems to be pursuing a ruthlessly responsive, almost-wikified brand of politics. His goal is to turn the Republicans into what he calls a “party of the American people” by linking disparate solutions whose only real relationship to one another is that they demonstrate, in surveys, what he calls “tripartisan” appeal — the broad support of Republicans, Democrats and independents. Gingrich told me he has identified about 100 ideas and positions that command anywhere from 62 percent to 93 percent support among such a cross-section of voters: giving out tax credits for installing alternative heating sources in your home (90 percent); awarding cash prizes to anyone who invents a car that gets 100 miles to the gallon (77 percent); keeping God in the Pledge of Allegiance (88 percent). Gingrich’s vision — much more Clintonian than Reaganite — is to use targeted initiatives to create a kind of mechanized compatibility with the masses.

Despite how unappealing this might sound, from a political just do it perspective, the fact is, as Bai describes it, we get an image of Gingrich’s style as a reflection of the channel-surfing ADHD-quality MTV generation. It perfectly mirrors what we say about 35 and unders – generalizations all, but nevertheless, an apt description.

Gingrich’s vision — much more Clintonian than Reaganite — is to use targeted initiatives to create a kind of mechanized compatibility with the masses.

I happen to think that, if this is accurate in terms of what Gingrich’s vision is, then I would say that that vision is, in fact, spot-on for success.  Scary that that might be the case, very scary.

But isn’t that precisely what people who want you to buy what they are selling do?

Target initiatives to create a compatibility with the masses.

The reason why this will fail for conservatives and Republicans is because they’re too mired in winning, losing, minority, majority, and power, rather than just figuring out how it is that they get to be the ones who govern again.

Those of us on the left side of center would be wise to consider Bai’s interpretation of Gingrich’s vision too, by the way.

Bonus observation: If you get a chance to view the print version of the article or if the photos are online, there isn’t a single woman and only one minority in all the photos with Gingrich.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:35 pm March 1st, 2009 in Barack Obama, conservatives, Democrats, Government, leadership, Media, Ohio, Politics, Republicans, Whitehouse09, Writing | Please comment 

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Mar

1

[video] Mandel addresses Darke County GOP Women

Filed Under conservatives, OH17, Ohio, Politics, Republicans, Statehouse | Leave a Comment

Many thanks to the Darke GOP Women for this video:


Watch Josh Mandel - Darke County Lincoln Day (2009)  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:35 am March 1st, 2009 in conservatives, OH17, Ohio, Politics, Republicans, Statehouse | Please comment 

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