August 17, 2007

Netroots as cannibals

The WSJ has a great piece up today about the Netroots setting out to devour moderate Democrats.

The piece picks up on a theme that I touched on earlier this year in a column at The New York Sun. But WSJ brings us up-to-date on just how ready to take out moderates the base of the Democratic party has become.

If the liberal blogging phenomenon deserves to be known for anything, it is the strategy to intimidate or silence anyone who disagrees with its own out-of-the-mainstream views. That muzzling has been on full display in recent weeks as Mr. Moulitsas and fellow online speech police have launched a campaign against the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. DLC Chairman Harold Ford, Jr. was even thwacked last week for daring to speak to this editorial page (my sincere apologies, Mr. Ford)--the clear goal to discourage him from making such a free-speech mistake again.

Yet a lively midweek chat with Mr. Cuellar suggests that this campaign of threats isn't necessarily having the intended effect. If anything, it might be backfiring. "They win when they intimidate people," says Mr. Cuellar. "I've taken everything they've thrown, plus their kitchen sink, and I still stand proud as a moderate-conservative Democrat." He says his triumph over blogger fire has only strengthened his conviction that his party will only win elections if it continues to be a "big tent" open to all views. "To make that tent smaller, to force people--not to persuade, but to force, because these are threats--to quiet down, that's destructive in the long term and the short term."

Mr. Cuellar's 2006 victory may be the truest proof of those words. While many of the Democrats' toughest races were fought in conservative-leaning districts, Mr. Cuellar hails from the 28th, a Democratic area near San Antoni...

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August 17, 2007

Fred takes some action in Iowa; looks a little lazy doing it

Jonathan Martin has a post up noting that Fred Thompson campaigned in Iowa today. The most salient point, for me, was that "Thompson was the only candidate to take avail of a golf cart in making his way around the butter cow, pork-chop-on-a-stick and livestock barns."

I agree with Jonathan that "It's perhaps not the best imagery for a candidate whose energy for 18 hour days has been called into question."

This is the biggest issue I have with Fred-- he seems to be a little too laid-back (and yes, maybe even lazy) to really run a winning campaign. And I can kind of imagine that he gets into this race, then decides he can't really be bothered when the campaigning really has to get upstepped just a few weeks or months before the Iowa caucuses, and then he pulls out or something.

Maybe that's harsh, but I just have a bad gut feeling about Fred and his willingness to campaign hard.

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August 16, 2007

Looking at Romney's investments

Yesterday, my friend Soren Dayton wrote a post on Romney's investments in oil companies with links to bad regimes: Saddam's Iraq, Ahmadinejad's Iran, and China, by the by.

While I think Soren might have gone a little over-the-top in titling his piece, it makes a good point: blind trust or no blind trust, Romney is a guy who seems to have been benefiting massively from investments in companies that are involved with some of the worst elements in international politics-- elements he's happy to portray as the enemy, rather than a quasi-investment partner, as he campaigns.

Soren also points to Romney's investment in companies that carry out embryonic stem cell research, as highlighted in yesterday's Boston Herald, and now again, today by ABC News-- again, these investments are held via a blind trust, but still, the point remains that Romney seems to be benefiting from something he supposedly opposes.

I personally don't have a problem with embryonic stem cell research as funded and carried out by private business (given that it has yet to deliver in any demonstrable manner, though, I'm skeptical about spending tax dollars on it-- it doesn't feel like the great investment it's usually touted as, and that is literally my only issue with federal funding of it).

But that's not the point. Romney does oppose embryonic stem cell research, and in fact, it's not just that he opposes it, it's that his whole explanation as to how he became pro-life relates to embryonic stem cell research, which he allegedly determined, after talking with some scientists, treated human life too casually or somesuch (> Read more & share
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