The permanent Republican victory

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Frank Rich cautions against premature liberal gloating of coming triumphs, demographic or otherwise:

What’s more, the right thinks long-term, and if you look at the long-term, the whole ugly “fiscal cliff” standoff was a win-win for conservatives, no matter what their passing defeats in this week’s deal. The more Washington looks dysfunctional, the more it sows dissatisfaction with the very idea of a Federal government. Yes, Democrats and the White House can argue that polls show that the Republicans would be getting most of the blameif Congress couldn’t reach agreement on the “fiscal cliff.” But that’s short-term liberal wishful thinking. Long-term, this intractable dispute has undermined Americans’ faith in government, period, and the voters’ plague-on-all-your-houses view of Washington is overall a resounding ideological win for a party that wants to dismantle government, the GOP. The conservative movement is no more dead after its 2012 defeat than it was after the Goldwater debacle of 1964.

Silver lining? Social issues, at least, seem to be a winning hand for the Dems:

John Roberts is as political a Chief Justice as I’ve seen — political in the sense of wanting to be well-regarded by mainstream public opinion and posterity. He’s no Scalia-Thomas-Bork right-wing bull in the china shop. Much as I welcomed his upholding of Obamacare, his logic was so tortured that I shared the view of conservative critics that he was holding a finger to the wind and cynically trying to be on the right side of history. His remarks about  the nation’s fiscal impasse are content-free and gratuitous — and irrelevant to his constitutional role — but they do reflect his own desire to maintain a noble public image. It was, one might say, a Howard Schulz PR move. If nothing else, this Chief Justice’s continued obsession with his own profile may bode well for the future of same-sex marriage: Hard to imagine that Roberts will thwart a civil rights breakthrough now enthusiastically supported by an overwhelming majority of the young and even not-so-young Americans who will write the history of the Roberts Court.

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Returning the favor to Bibi

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Alan Berger thinks President Obama should pay Israel a visit just ahead of the nation’s January 22 elections:

A politician is expected to reward friends and punish whoever dares to cross him. So Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s barely veiled backing for Mitt Romney not only bent the unwritten rule requiring Israeli leaders to preserve a posture of immaculate neutrality in US elections; it meant that Obama owes the Israeli pol some sort of payback.

If Obama’s past performances can be taken as a reliable guide, there is little chance he would retaliate against Netanyahu by meddling in the Israeli election scheduled for Jan. 22. But he should. Not for the petty motive of settling scores with Netanyahu, but to safeguard the true long-term interests of Israelis, Americans, and all the peoples of the Middle East…

Considering that a new party to the right of Netanyahu’s Likud is polling 12 to 14 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, that Likud’s own list is now dominated by radicals impatient with democratic restraint, and that Israel’s centrist and left-leaning parties seem to be in steep decline, an Obama speech could hardly be expected to enable someone other than Netanyahu to form the next government. In Israel’s parliamentary system, however, the shape and disposition of a government is often determined in the bargaining, balancing, and bribing with ministerial portfolios that go under the rubric of forming a coalition. And the right sort of speech from Obama could have a crucial effect on the post-election process of deal-making.

The coming fight over Chuck Hagel

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CNN reports, encouragingly, that at least some prominent Republicans and Democrats are rushing to his defense against the shameless Israel lobby and others:

In one of its letters the group said, “We write to you, Mr. President, in support of Senator Hagel because we believe our polarized political life is much in need of leaders with the kind of bipartisanship and independence of conscience and mind that Chuck Hagel’s service to our country has exemplified.”

Among its notable members are Former National Security Advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, Former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, Former Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, Former Sens. David Boren, Nancy Kassebaum-Baker and Gary Hart.

To help get its message out the Bipartisan Group in the last few weeks approached the Podesta Group, one of Washington’s leading lobbying and public relations firms, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Some of the members have been doing television interviews as well to help defend Hagel and his record.

The criticism of Hagel before there is even a formal nomination “is not acceptable” and “unseemly,” according to this source and that is the motivation for the actions by these notable foreign policy veterans – “to show he has a record” and to defend it, this source added. “Premature judging…is unfair.”

Meanwhile, Joe Coscarelli predicts that the fireworks are just getting started:

If you were under the impression that he had already been chosen based on the beating he’s taking in the press — for not loving Israel enough, for calling someone “aggressively gay,” for being the Republican he is and was — then just wait until after the weekend. Then the actual fun begins, although at least Hagel will have the White House really defending him.

The official line today, according to NBC, is that “chatter” about Hagel as Obama’s final decision is “premature,” but the White House did admit he’s a “leading contender.” Other options to replace Leon Panetta after the sinking of Susan Rice included deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Pentagon Under Secretary Michele Flournoy.

But detractors have already aimed squarely at Hagel, as laid out by Foreign Policy:

That campaign has included anonymous Senate aides calling Hagel an anti-Semite, the Washington Post editorial board writing that “Chuck Hagel is not the right choice for defense secretary,” and the Emergency Committee for Israel, which counts among its board members Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, running a television ad criticizing Hagel’s opposition to unilateral sanctions against Iran. “For secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel is not a responsible option,” the ad claims.

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Steering clear of the cliff

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Joshua Green wonders what might have been, had President Obama been willing to maximize his leverage from the fiscal cliff:

Even before the deal was settled, many liberals were outraged at how much he was willing to concede to avoid going over the cliff — an event for which every poll showed Republicans would be blamed. Most Republicans were terrified at the prospect.

Nonetheless, Obama agreed to raise income tax rates only on households making $450,000 or more; establish a generous inheritance tax exemption; and lightly tax dividends and capital gains. The income-tax threshold alone sacrifices $200 billion compared with what he had once insisted on. But the revenue sacrificed isn’t terribly important.

What is important is that Obama yielded on resolving the budget deadlines, the most consequential being the need to raise the debt limit. Already, Republicans are threatening default without deep cuts in return. Had Obama been willing to go over the cliff, they probably wouldn’t be, since the public would be furiously blaming them. By pulling back, Obama passed up a chance to “break the fever” (as he likes to put it) that afflicts the Republican Party and led it to oppose nearly all that he has done during his presidency.

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Technical problems

Miscellaneous, , ,

It seems social media and blogging platforms are just as difficult to use in China as one might expect. I’ve now tried (multiple times) to upload a photo or two to the blog, to no avail. So I suppose I’ll be sticking with text now, for the next few weeks.

Anyway, Happy New Year! I will try to post slightly more often during the next couple of weeks than I have for the last week or so (that is, none at all). But a lot of that will depend on how stringent the…ahem, controls are here.

Gone fishin’

Miscellaneous,

fishing

I’m leaving New York (and the country) today and won’t return until just past mid-January, so my posting will be very sporadic for the next few weeks.

December was another record month in blog visits. In fact, of the last four months of 2012, three of them set new blog records for visits (I fell behind a bit in November). As always, thank you all very much for reading and commenting, and now…onward to 2013! Stick around!

Happy New Year.