Brendan Nyhan

Manuel Miranda, a conservative legal activist who was forced to resign from his position in the Senate after improperly accessing Democratic staff memos, repeats the myth that “moral issues” voters were the key factor in 2004:

Then came 2003 and 2004, and another 10 judicial filibusters. Last November, Republican Senate candidates swept the South, ousted Tom Daschle, and won by bringing out “moral-issues” voters, all concerned by the matter of judges.

But as I’ve pointed out before, this is not true — a flawed exit poll question drastically exaggerated the importance of “moral values” for voters. The number of evangelical voters did not increase from 2000, and open-response questions about priorities did not receive nearly as many answers concerning “moral values” as did the flawed question.

First Alan Sokal, now Richard Posner?

A few years ago, the judge — a prolific writer — published a book criticizing so-called “public intellectuals” for pontificating about issues outside their areas of expertise. Several reviewers pointed out that the poorly constructed book itself seemed to illustrate the problems that Posner purported to diagnose. But it helped make him famous.

Then, Posner published a book on how to fight terrorism and started a blog with economist Gary Becker where he comments on a wide variety of issues.

And now, in his latest essay for The New York Times book review, Posner has again demonstrated his ability to illustrate the flaw he once criticized, engaging in a sloppy, badly argued analysis of the new media landscape. (Example: He claims CNN has moved to the left in reaction to Fox News, a claim that is bizarre on its face.)

By all accounts, Posner is brilliant. Is he mocking us? Or just unaware of the obvious contradictions between his book and his career?

Giving Brendans everywhere a bad name, OpinionJournal.com’s Brendan Miniter takes us to the land of conservative postmodernism:

cite=”http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110007045″>

One trap Ms. [Maxine] Waters, Mr. Kerry and quite a few Democrats fell into was
the
idea that the war in Iraq was somehow separate from the war on
terror. The
American people never really believed that, as polls showed in the
run up to
the war that many believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with
the
Sept. 11 attacks. President Bush never made that direct of a
connection.
Instead the reason for the war in Iraq has long been to transform the
politics in the Middle East in our favor.

This passage is a logical and factual disaster. Not only does Miniter fail to point out that there is no credible evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, but he uses this misperception to support his claim that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror. And of course, he glosses over the way the Bush administration implicitly linked Sept. 11 to the war in Iraq and used weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for war (see ATPS for the evidence on both points). I think someone may have exited the reality-based community…

Jason Reifler, one of my colleagues at Duke (and an assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago in the fall), offers a telling analogy for who most resembles Bill Frist among past presidential contenders:

I think you missed the real reason behind Frists’s change of heart on
stem
cells. It’s not a break in his pandering parade, just the next
float. He
saw he was going to lose on stem cells because his position was
unpopular
and, if the Dems are right, stem cells will finally be a wedge issue
they
can use to their advantage.

In my view, Frist may be the new Steve Forbes. A guy who doesn’t
generate
a lot of warmth who is way overmatched in running for president and
is
constantly remaking himself to improve his numbers. Forbes caught on
in
’96 because 1) he had a simple message, 2) that was new (if you
forget
about Jerry Brown in ’92), and 3) ran against a pathetically weak
field.
And he still lost.

Update 8/2: Jason adds:

I realize only now that I left off part of the conclusion re: Frist.
He
lacks #1 and #2, a simple and novel message. He will likely have the
weak
field. Which only makes him that much more vulnerable because
somebody
with #1 and #2 could waltz right in.

Here’s a nice point from yesterday’s edition of The Hotline, the subscription-only insider political newsletter, about Bill Frist and Hillary Clinton making gestures toward the center in the period before the 2008 primaries (though I think that Hillary hasn’t actually moved very far). They’re right that Frist is taking a much greater risk — he can’t use the electability argument like Hillary can:

Conventional wisdom has long held that in order to become president, a
candidate must run to left/right to capture the nomination then sprint to
the middle to win the general election. So why do Bill Frist and
Hillary Clinton appear to be doing the opposite?

It is a telling point about the politicos and their parties that
Clinton’s “drive” to the middle is generally hailed as a “smart” political
strategy while Frist’s stem cell reversal is seen as “principled,” a code
word for bad politics. While both are taking heat from party activists, it’s
the Senate Maj. Leader who appears more at risk.

Having spent most of this year joining hands on conservative causes
(Schiavo, judges, gun maker liability, etc), Frist has separated on an issue
near and dear to the GOP activists. Should stem cell research pass and
survive a Bush veto, Frist’s support will be a big reason why. And it will
leave him open to attacks from those he has done so much to woo. The size of
their bets might be different but the stakes are high and both Frist and
Clinton are betting that, at least on some issues, a move to the middle is a
winner.

In an interview that was quoted by the Washington Post, Senator Harry Reid claims that the administration’s refusal to turn over classified documents on John Bolton requested by Democrats prove that “[t]here must be something he’s trying to hide”:

BuzzFlash: Reading between the lines, we speculate that the Democrats in the Senate know of a smoking gun in classified documents relating to John Bolton’s information request on individuals he wanted to retaliate against. Without asking you to discuss any classified information, which you cannot, is there in general something in John Bolton’s past which has stalled his nomination? Otherwise, why is it not moving forward? And there’s speculation that the White House might be considering a recess appointment.

Senator Reid: If a recess appointment occurs, then they would be appointing a flawed candidate. John Bolton is a person who, in his personal relationship with government employees, has been abominable, mean, unreasonable and bizarre. His not producing the papers we have requested only underscores the importance of why we need those papers. There must be something he’s trying to hide.

This is the same ridiculous logic that drove many of the Clinton scandals. Each time information is not produced on demand, the inquisitor concludes that a coverup of some damaging information must be underway.

As I’ve argued before, there’s no way John McCain is going to win the Republican nomination in 2008. Establishment conservatives dislike him too much. Grover Norquist, the influential head of Americans for Tax Reform, called McCain a “gun-grabbing, tax-increasing Bolshevik.” And in a recent profile of Norquist in The New Yorker, David Keene, the president of American Conservative Union, went even further, saying that “The ultimate danger point for the [Republican] Party is a McCain candidacy. If he runs and gets nominated, there will be a third-party conservative candidate, and the Democrats will probably win.”

You can argue that this isn’t a credible threat because conservatives would still ultimately prefer President McCain to President Hillary and thus wouldn’t run a third-party candidate. But as Ralph Nader proved in 2000, all it takes is one disenchanted purist to get on the ballot and siphon off votes in key states. And more importantly, if key activists like Norquist and Keene hate McCain this much, they’re likely to sabotage him before he can ever win the nomination.

Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, has a disturbing obsession with Communist metaphors and tactics. According to David Brock, Norquist keeps a portrait of Lenin and frequently quotes Lenin’s saying “Probe with bayonets, looking for weaknesses.” And in a New Yorker profile this week, Norquist compares his efforts to take over the country via democratic means with a Communist-style revolution — maybe the comment is supposed to be sarcastic, but I find it disturbing:

[Norquist] talked about how to build a broad coalition. “If you want the votes of people who are good on guns, good on taxes, and good on faith issues, that is a very small intersection of voters,” he said. “But if you say, Give me the votes of anybody who agrees with you on any of these issues, that’s a much bigger section of the population.” To illustrate what he meant, Norquist drew three intersecting circles over a piece of paper. In the first one he wrote “guns,” in the second he wrote “taxes,” in the third he wrote “faith.” There was a small area where the circles intersected. “With that group, you can take over the country, starting with the airports and the radio stations,” he said. “But with all of the three circles that’s sixty percent of the population, and you can win politically.”

This is hardly the only example of the parallels that are explicitly drawn by conservatives. A 1983 Cato article (PDF) lays out a “Leninist strategy” for privatizing Social Security. Liberals could never get away with this stuff.

John Cassidy’s New Yorker story on Grover Norquist includes the text of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, which I had never seen before:

I ,____________,
pledge to the taxpayers of the _____ district of the State of
_________ and to the American People that I will:
ONE, oppose any and all efforts
to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or
businesses; and
TWO, oppose any net reduction
or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar
for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

I understand why they make people pledge never to raise taxes (though I think that sort of inflexibility is idiotic). But the second provision of the pledge surprised me. To me, a big part of tax reform is reducing the economic distortions and inefficiencies created by the tax code. This means keeping the system simple and preventing special interest deductions and credits from proliferating. The potential efficiency gains from this sort of reform are arguably at least as great as the ones from reducing marginal rates. But ATR is so focused on reducing taxes that it implicitly protects deductions and credits, saying that they can only be eliminated if matched dollar-for-dollar by new tax cuts. What a shame.

Why are black quarterbacks still so rare in football? There are more black coaches than ever before (though still very few) and a number of black QBs have been highly successful at the college and pro levels, but the position is still ridiculously white. Don’t believe me? Check out this picture from a New York Times article on a camp for the top high school quarterbacks in the country: