Is The GOP Hopelessly Nixonian?

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by Smitty

Insty links to Bret Jacobson in Forbes. Jacobson starts with the obvious JFK/Nixon debate point, enumerates the various major new media channels, and concludes:

So successful campaigns using digital tools well should always be congratulated, sometimes emulated (never duplicated), and always topped. Showing up is a great first step. Then it’s time to understand how to win in an emerging medium.

I don’t think that the GOP’s Nixonian problem has to do with a Luddite view of technology. The wrecking of George Allen in 2006 and the ludicrous $ haul of BHO in 2008 are two searing examples among thousands of why technology mastery goes without saying.

The view of Nixon’s character, as seen in Frost/Nixon suggests another parallel between the GOP gestalt and Nixon; that of the Ruling Class Overlord confronted with the hoi polloi. The elder statesman is too burdened with his weighty matters of state to condescend to explain himself to a commoner. But, as with the JFK/Nixon debate issue, this is superficial.

The problem is not the GOP inside the beltway looking out to the lumpen proletariat. Rather, the American citizens looking into the beltway having trouble telling apart the GOP and Democrat ends of the Ruling Class. In a twisted way, the Democrats are more forthright: they explicitly believe that there are no problems, only government solutions. No bones about it. No faux capitalist bleating, and then another bureaucracy (TSA) or ream of legislation up the stern tube.

Now, I understand that all the GOP candidates, in contrast to the Democrat one, have got to be moderate for a few reasons:

  • The Independent third of the electorate decides who gets control.
  • People will cheerfully ride the economic bus they know off a cliff rather than consider things like eliminating the Federal Reserve, with the attendant uncertainty about who will pick our pockets and shower them with economic ruin, if not Bernanke.
  • Nobody wants to upset the rice bowls. The amazingly torpid homo bureaucratus who works within the beltway can become agitated, and release a storm of PowerPoint slides, if his meeting room habitat is disturbed. Candidates are wise to take a mellow tack, and promise spending cuts, but no staffing cuts.

That’s all campaigning, which is a different beast than holding office, unless your name sounds similar to origami.

Which is the crux of the matter for the GOP. Doing the right, proper, conservative, common-sense thing involves a refudiation of their entire Ruling Class approach for the last century. It’s one thing for a lone drunk to go cold turkey, but sobering an entire political party is like trying to get Jimmy Carter not to be a milquetoast: easier said than dried.

Answering the question posed in the title, the GOP is hopelessly Nixonian by nature. It is also going to have as much change beaten into it as necessary by the Tea Party to overcome the hopeless part. The Radtke/Allen kerfuffle is a case in point; look for further entertainment as the primary season unfolds, Virginians.

Hard Times Spreading Just Like the Flu …

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. . . Watch out, homeboy, don’t let it catch you:

In the occasionally prickly world of media reporting, it’s hard to find anyone who does not love, respect and, yes, slightly fear Jack Shafer.
So widespread is the love that American Journalism Review published a valentine to him earlier today, devoting 2,500 words to figuring out just what makes him so much better at writing about the media than everybody else.
Then, just minutes later, Adweek broke the news that Slate had laid him off, along with several others.
“These are tough times for publications,” Shafer told POLITICO. “They had to let some people go, and I was one of them.”He said he would continue as a contributor.
Slate held a meeting on Wednesday afternoon to inform staff about the layoffs, which affected four people. Staffers said there was no mention of any reason for the cutbacks beyond the tough economic times.
“We did a small reduction in our full-time staff and in our contractors, and we are, like everybody in the business, constantly looking at the competitive landscape and trying to be as responsive and agile as we can,” David Plotz, Slate’s editor, told POLITICO. “The goal of Slate is to produce intelligent and witty and innovative-in-the-medium kind of journalism, and it’s our belief that the changes that we’ve made today, plus some investments that we are making in other editorial matters and technology, are going to help us be competitive.”
Timothy Noah, author of Slate’s “Chatterbox” column, confirmed that he was one of the four editorial staffers laid off, and will now become a nonstaff “contributing writer.” He’s been on book leave since April writing a book about income inequality, based on a series he wrote last year for Slate.

Kind of ironic to be working on a book about “income inequality” when you get laid off from your day job. But the fact that they are making such cutbacks at Slate, one of the original online publications, and cutting front-page names like Shafer and Noah, should tell you something about the state of the industry.

Instapundit quoted something wise yesterday: “The way you get a job as an online journalist is that you show you can write and get traffic. . . . You should also start your own blog. That is your real resume. If you want a job writing online, any employer will say ‘Why aren’t you doing it now if that’s what you want to do?’ And it’s a decent question. No one is stopping you from writing right now. You don’t need to be paid to write something good. Just write it and put it on your blog.”

What’s weird to me is that so few downsized journalists even try their hands as independent bloggers. Most bloggers dont’t come from a journalism background. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of newspaper staffers have been laid off in the past decade. How many of them are are now blogging? Not many, so far as I know. And that’s weird.

And hey, how’d you like that Old School hiphop reference in the title?

This Item Is Not (Yet) Available at Amazon

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But it’s probably only a matter of time:

The Duet is a new, sleek, multispeed, waterproof vibrator – and it doubles as a USB drive with up to 16GB of storage.
Its designers, Ti Chang and Michael Topolovac, realized that the biggest complaint from women about vibrators had to do with the hassle of cords, batteries or obscure charging devices.
They discovered a USB connector was the solution.
“You look at it plugged into a laptop, charging, and it doesn’t look anything like a vibrator,” Chang said.

Could technology render men redundant to the . . . uh, pleasure process? Feminists perhaps hope so, and therefore this USB love-machine/thumb-drive represents “progress” in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, they sell everything at Amazon, and I’m sure they’ll be selling this soon.

Just yesterday, we sold a Kitchen Aid food processor for $179, which earned me a $7.16 commission through Amazon Associates, and another reader recently bought a $379 Nikon digital camera, thus kicking a $15.16 commission my way.

Whether it’s food processors or cameras or . . . uh, personal pleasure you’re looking for, Amazon sells it, and every time you shop through our Amazon links here, I get a 4% commission on the purchase price.





Of course, the easiest and quickest way to help pay the bills here is to hit the tip jar, but we do appreciate readers who shop Amazon for great bargains. And good lovin’ . . . NTTAWWT.

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More Predictable Than the Weather

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Hurricane hysteria gives way to global-warming hype:

Was Hurricane Irene caused by global warming?
— Politico

How Global Warming Is Making Hurricane Irene Worse
— Thnk Progress

Global Warming’s Heavy Cost
— The Daily Beast

And if you don’t buy into the hype, you’re anti-science.

Just wondering: Would I be the first to say that it’s hard to hate a hurricane that seems to be taking direct aim at James Wolcott?

Not that I am actually saying that, but if I did say it, would I be the first?

Tiny Indiana College Likely to Get a Whole Lot Tinier in the Near Future

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The kind of stuff you can’t make up:

Tiny Goshen College in Indiana has banned the “The Star Spangled Banner: at all sporting events because the Mennonite school’s president considers the National Anthem’s words to be too violent.
The 1,000-student school had already banned the words last year, but the band could still play the music for patriots in attendance. Now, the school has banned the song entirely, according to NBC Sports.

(Via Memeorandum.) If Goshen College wishes to be even less significant than they already are, they’ve chosen a perfect path to obscurity.

Next year is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, during which the British bombardment of Fort McHenry inspired the famous words of our national anthem, written by Maryland native Francis Scott Key. It is pathetic that brave men died so that twerps like Goshen College’s president could have the freedom to repudiate their courageous sacrifice.

Question: What’s the Difference Between HPV and Whooping Cough?

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From a public-health perspective, someone ill with whooping cough could spread this potentially deadly disease to anyone who encounters them, however casually — in the hallways of a public school, for example. So requiring young children to be vaccinated for whooping cough just makes common sense.

Human papilloma virus? Not so much.

Maybe Cody at LFAYA will reconsider whether he really wants to throw down with Michelle Malkin over Rick Perry’s HPV vaccine mandate.

Because I’m thinking . . . not so much.

GOP Leaders To Bernanke: “Stop, Or We’re Gonna Say ‘Stop’ Again!”

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by Smitty

From The Hill:

“I think it’s a bad idea. Just printing more money and throwing it out there is devaluing the money we already have,” said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) in an interview. “Over the long term it’s inflationary. It sends the wrong message.”
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said he doesn’t think another round of easing is a good idea.
“QE is flooding the market with more money and it’s unacceptable,” he said.

Stocks look up as I write, with Helicopter Ben having not said publicly he’ll do QE3.

My question to the GOP, given the recent revelations about the Fed, is: What makes you think Bernanke won’t just do QE3 anyway, and not bother telling you? We are, at best, in a ‘trust but verify’ situation with the Federal Reserve. We need a full audit. Nothing less will do. I’m not quite sure which rubes are the intended audience for this bit of GOP bleating, but nobody who has been paying attention is impressed.

via Memeorandum