Strategery
The other day I wrote some words of praise for With All Our Might, a very good book. Now if I were sitting around at PPI headquarters thinking to myself "how can I totally discedit this good new book on national security we published in the eyes of the progressives we're hoping to convince?" I don't think I could have come up with a better answer than to keep Marshall Wittman on staff, have him praise the book in the context of a foolish blog item on Iran that incidentally reveals he hasn't actually read the section dealing with Iran, and then follow up with a mind-blowingly outrageous take on the latest NSA revelations.
Just saying.
Now as the book itself sensibly argues on page 57, "The Bush administration has done serious damage to America's moral standing as a beacon of liberty and thus to our soft power in the world. We cannot inspire others to respect human rights and embrace democratic principles if our own government officials do not do the same."
The tent is not big enough for the moose. If he wants to vote dem, fine, but let's not pretend that he should have any influence within the party at all.
Is there a way to stress that he started out as a political operative for the religious right? It seems more and more likely to me that he is still doing that, only covertly.
May 12, 2006 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
No he's a McCain guy. He dumped the religious right because of what they did to McCain in 2000, simple as that.
He is and always has been a right winger, just a different kind than the theo-cons.
He should be viewed like Bartlet or any other bush critic from the right. Giving him a platform as a represenative of progressive politics is nuts.
May 12, 2006 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, comment left in wrong article.
May 12, 2006 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The tent is not big enough for the moose. If he wants to vote dem, fine, but let's not pretend that he should have any influence within the party at all."
The issue is not which way the moose votes.
The issue is which way a big group of voters who think like the moose votes.
And the moose is a useful reference point to those voters despite the extremism of his Likudnik foreign policy.
You don't have to agree with him on the merits, just realize that there are a lot of big government conservative voters out there. They are traditionalist on God 'n' Country issues, but progressive on economic issues. We need more of those folks in our tent.
The tent isn't currently big enough. We're going to have a good November this year, but we're still going to have the minority electoral coalition, at least at the House and Senate levels.
The most attractive and available group to expand our tent are these big government conservatives. It's the low hanging fruit. They currently vote overwhelmingly Republican. We can peel off a chunk of them without creating horrible fault lines in the existing coalition.
And due to their geographical distribution outside of 'blue' areas, moving a chunk of them to our side ends up providing even more House and Senate help than their numbers would otherwise indicate.
Wittman is important because he's painting a picture for the Democrats of today much like the one Kevin Phillips painted for the Republicans of the late 60's. The picture is of a realigned country to our benefit.
(And of course, Phillips didn't stay loyal to the GOP after doing painting that picture, and Wittman is likely to work for McCain in '08. Screw what Wittman does in the future - it's his ideas in the present that are useful.)
May 12, 2006 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
What exactly is the evidence that he's an economic progressive?
May 12, 2006 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fair enough Petey. If you want to argue the Moose is representative of a certain easily captured block of voters -- that may be true, and I would be happy to follow a plan that brings them in -- but the foreign policy is simply idiotic, dangerous, and frankly not worth it. I am not talking about hawks in general. Specifically, the Moose's policies he lays out in the linked articles are pernicious, and if they are popular, the goal should be towards changing opinion.
May 12, 2006 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I try, try, try not to overreact to Whitman and to even appreciate him as a useful devil's advocate under the left's tent, but then he writes stuff like this about the NSA and I just can't help but figure, "he really doesn't belong, not even on the big issues."
So, I try not to get mad and I try to ignore him, since I've spent too much time being annoyed by him in the past, but...
...the guy has influence in the DLC and the DLC has influence over the party and, really... Whitman's just bad. He's like a double agent without all the clevel dual identity stuff.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 12, 2006 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
He may be interesting, for a take on how the GOP focuses on the Center & Center-Right, I have no doubt that's exactly what the DLC had in mind when they gave him a job. But the man has done nothing good for the DLC's image. The DLC, much maligned by Kossacks, at least approaches politics with an internalized Democratic framework in mind. Whatever Wittman's political merits, he doesen't. He's a non theocratic conservative republican, and as such, shouldn't have been given a platform to supposedly represent Centrist Democratic interests.
It isn't like the DLC gets their money's worth either. I've never seen him add anything paritcularly insightful or even useful from the perspective he's supposed to be speaking from. Ed Kilgore knows alot more about the stuff Marshall Wittman is supposed to shed light on and that isn't even his main focus. All Wittman does is use his bully pulpit from the DLC blog zoo to bash Democrats (and by proxi the majority of the country) for being insignificantly supportive of the war and accusations of being the "angry left". This supposedly moderate centre-right Republican is a bigger proponent of the war than many GOP elected officials. How's that for centrism?
I believe it was Wittman who said his dream presidential ticket would be McCain-Nunn. McCain of course being the Lieberman of the GOP and Sam Nunn, the Democratic Senator from Georgia who voted like Ben Nelson. That's not a knock on Nelson, we need Dems in Nebraska and his voting record, while being the most conservative among Democrats by a large margin, has always been more liberal than even the most liberal Republican Senators. But I think it's safe to say that when it comes to Democrats, Wittman is more a Zell Miller guy than a Bill Clinton guy.
It also appears to me that Wittman represents the worst of the Washington punditocracy. He got a job working for McCain, peddled that and his token jewishness into a job working for the Christian Coalition. Then he peddled that experience as a flack for the VRWC into a job in the DLC, purporting to be able to shed light on the secret success of the GOP...for a paycehck. The guy will work for anyone who hires him. The DLC should let someone else have the honor.
I respect the DLC alot. I always stand up for them when I think they are being attacked unfairly or in bad faith. But Marshall Wittman has got to go.
May 13, 2006 6:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are missing Wittmann's purpose. He's the "bad cop". He's the face of the DLC strategy to run against their own base. (See Hillary and Murdoch for more of same). It's a breathtakingly cynical and opportunistic strategy by the DLC. Why today we even have the DLC linked to Jerry Falwell. Moose just loved McCain's speech at Falwell U. Cute isn't it how the DLC can embrace Falwell without embracing Falwell. Why it's darn near Rovian in its audacity. I owe a debt to the Moose. He has made clear to me why it would be impossible to trust anyone in the DLC.
May 14, 2006 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink