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March 30, 2007

Two-thirds think a Democrat will win in '08

According to a poll from Fox News:

By 67 percent to 22 percent, American voters think the Democrats are going to win the 2008 presidential election. Fully 90 percent of Democrats think their party is going to be victorious and 60 percent of independents agree. Among Republicans, 44 percent think Democrats will win the White House and 45 percent think their party will hold on to the presidency.

Yet, Giuliani basically ties with Clinton and Obama in head-to-head matchups, according to the poll.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 2:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 29, 2007

Quote of the day

President Bush at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner, on how things have changed since last year:

"A year ago my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone. Those were the good ol' days."

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 7:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 27, 2007

Begun the tax wars have

Republicans have issued a press release claiming the "Democrat budget" released last Wednesday proposes the largest tax increase in U.S. history—$392.5 billion over five years. The document should probably be taken with a grain (or block) of salt, as it comes from the Republican Party rather than a government office and goes to great lengths to portray Democrats as tax-hiking villains:

"It is noteworthy that the last time Democrats held a majority in Congress – 1993-94 – they passed what was then the largest tax increase in history, about $240 billion over 5 years. Now, in only the third month of their new majority, they have already passed an even larger tax increase."

As far as I know, the press release's claims about the tax hike haven't hit the mainstream media yet, but Matt Drudge has linked to it, as have a few other bloggers.

On the other hand, some are accusing President Bush of being the "tax hiker." TaxProf Blog links to a report by the Joint Committee on Taxation and suggests that "the President's proposed standard deduction for health insurance, coupled with repeal of the exclusion for employer-paid health insurance, self-employed health insurance deduction, and itemized medical deductions, would result in a $333 billion tax increase over 10 years."

This comes from a more reputable source—the Joint Committee on Taxation is an actual government body consisting of Representatives and Senators—but again, this hasn't hit the mainstream media yet and may be taken out of context.

So which is it? Who's raising taxes? Does it even matter, or are these going to be more important for partisan mudslingers than for the average taxpayer?

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 11:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Do 18% of Americans live in a cave?

Eighteen percent of Americans have never even heard of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll. That's understandable, given that he has only been with the administration a little over two years and hasn't been as controversial or high-profile as Ashcroft for most of that time.

But 18% also have never heard of Karl Rove, and 19% have never heard of Nancy Pelosi. I'm usually pretty cynical and realistic about the average citizen's level of concern about politics and world affairs, but even I find it hard to believe that nearly one in five people have never heard of three of the most powerful and influential people in the ~~country~~ world. Sadly, I'm willing to bet there are fewer people who have never heard of the latest American Idol winner.

Among those who have heard of these figures and have an opinion

Only 26% view Alberto Gonzales favorably. That's down from 32% in June 2005.
Karl Rove's approval rating is even lower, at 21%.
Nancy Pelosi's approval rating is down to 37%, from 44% this January. But she's still polling three points higher than Bush.

Another surprising statistic: Although the majority (56%) say we made a mistake sending troops to Iraq, 43% still think it wasn't a mistake. In other words, even though 60% are now ready to pull out, and even though every justification for the invasion has fallen through, and even though the majority of Americans think the situation is horrible and will get worse when we leave... nearly half of the country would do it all again if given the chance.

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March 26, 2007

Majority support 2008 withdrawal

The majority of Americans (59%) want their congressional representative to support a bill calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq by August 2008, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Only 33% want their representative to oppose the bill.

Additional findings on the situation in Iraq:

40% now believe the U.S. military effort is going well, up from 30% in February
56% now believe it is not going well, down from 67%
27% think the troop surge is making things better, 19% think it is making things worse. 44% say it has no effect

On Congress's handling of Iraq:

22% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job, 38% say only fair
35% say Congress is doing a poor job
23% say Congress is going too far in challenging President Bush, but 40% say Congress isn't going far enough

Via Pollster.com

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Monday numbers: Party identification

A recent Pew poll reveals some pretty dramatic reversals in party identification within the last few years. The public was split 43/43 in Republican/Democrat identification in 2002, but Democrats have now taken a significant lead with 35/50 split this year. It's easy to rest the blame solely on George Bush's shoulders. And while his unpopularity certainly has helped open this gap (notice 35% is also his rough approval rating), the overall strategy of the Republican party was perhaps doomed to fail.

As Kevin Drum suggests, Republicans in the last decade have hitched their wagons to two issues: Tax cuts and "culture war" politics. Tax cuts are a cyclical, short-term issue that will probably always remain in the Republicans' political arsenal. You can't cut taxes forever, and voters understand that. But after Democrats regain power and eliminate tax cuts to make up for funding shortfalls, Republicans will probably once again dust off this issue.

But the real bread and butter of Karl Rove's party has been catering to social conservatives. And it worked for a while. They fired up voters about gay marriage; they riled up the public about Terry Schiavo. But what seemed like a regression destined to eliminate the hard-won progress of the last century turned out to be just a hiccup in the long, slow march toward social justice. America is getting more culturally liberal as time goes by, and not just in the short term.

It will be interesting to see how the Republican party reacts to this shift in the next election. Justin Gardner at Donklephant thinks the party is ready to embrace fiscally responsible, socially tolerant candidates such as Schwarzenegger and Giuliani. I agree, but I'm not convinced that it's happening yet. I think the Republican party will endure some serious internal struggles before the pendulum swings back to the right.

Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 6, 2007

Ann Coulter is the Paris Hilton of Conservative Politics

Most elementary school teachers will tell you a simple fact about the relationship between positive and negative attention and the continuation of behavior, good and bad. When you acknowledge and give attention to negative behavior as much as you do to positive behavior, you tacitly endorse negative behavior. In the end, the child becomes disinterested in the exact nature of attention, and simply pursues attention for its own sake.

Enter Paris Hilton and Ann Coulter, the quintessential attention whores. While Hilton has the predisposition to open her legs on the moments notice of being in the proximity of a flash bulb, Coulter decidedly opens her mouth when the cameras are rolling. For Hilton, doing coke, getting DUI's, and having blowjobs night-vision video taped is the standard; for Coulter, it is insulting the widows of 9/11, referring to Muslims as rag-heads, and most recently, calling John Edwards a 'faggot'.

The problem with the situation wasn't Ann Coulter necessarily, but the amount of response to her absurdity. After years of hearing a neighbor's nocturnal dog, the media and blogospheres reaction was as if being unexpectedly stirred from slumber by the barks and yelps of the canine. Much like a poorly trained dog or poorly raised child, the satisfaction of Coulter and Hilton grows as the uproar continues. They suffer from the same disease of needing to satiate their egos with the media attention they believe is deserved. In this addiction, they do not care who they hurt, what they say, or what they have to do, the end prize is the pursuit and capture of attention, no matter how negative or repugnant.

The lesson was learned apparently, later rather than sooner, by the Associated Press. Reported by CNN, the AP decidedly 'blacked out' Paris Hilton from media reports for a week and promptly was arrested for driving under the influence the following week:

So you may have heard: Paris Hilton was ticketed the other day for driving with a suspended license. Not huge news, even by celebrity-gossip standards. Here at The Associated Press, we put out an initial item of some 300 words. But it actually meant more to us than that. It meant the end of our experimental blackout on news about Paris Hilton.
It was only meant to be a weeklong ban -- not the boldest of journalistic initiatives, and one, we realized, that might seem hypocritical once it ended. And it wasn't based on a view of what the public should be focusing on -- the war in Iraq, for example, or the upcoming election of the next leader of the free world, as opposed to the doings of a partygoing celebrity heiress/reality TV star most famous for a grainy sex video.

No, editors just wanted to see what would happen if we didn't cover this media phenomenon, this creature of the Internet gossip age, for a full week. After that, we'd take it day by day. Would anyone care? Would anyone notice? And would that tell us something interesting?

It turned out that people noticed plenty -- but not in the way that might have been expected. None of the thousands of media outlets that depend on AP called in asking for a Paris Hilton story. No one felt a newsworthy event had been ignored.

The media, after years of getting humans like Paris Hilton wrong, finally got it right. But it turned around in less than a month and got Ann Coulter wrong. The reaction to Ann Coulter's 'faggot' episode was flawed not in the direction -- almost everyone, left and right, denounced her words -- but that the reaction was disparate, coming from all directions, and constantly replayed. Rather than having isolated Coulter, the story found itself on the headlines of CNN and FoxNews website, on Bill O'Reilly's 'The Factor', on MSNBC, and any blog with a political bent. Essentially, Coulter was put on a pedestal -- isolated but admired with attention that she did not deserve, aptly labeled by Slate as the press' Ann Coulter problem.

In the end, there is but one lesson to learn: don't feed the ego, especially of individuals who don't deserve it. It's the only way Ann Coulter and Paris Hilton will go away.

Originally posted on PBH.

Posted by Alec at 4:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 1, 2007

Filling the Void: Saudi Diplomacy in a Realigned Middle East

As the Bush administration moves towards disengagement in the Middle East from those regarded as extremist -- including Syria, Iran, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, and Hezbollah in Lebanon -- the result has been a vacuum of power left from the absence of traditional diplomatic channels. In the post Cold War era, this meant typically working with, and in the least, involving the United States. But in recent months as American policy becomes more rigid and inflexible, Middle Eastern diplomatic channels have rerouted outside of Washington and back into the Middle East proper. In this capacity, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the new bridge where the forces of moderation can work within the framework of Middle East reality -- a reality where extremists unfortunately are popular and united -- and work on successful compromises.

The Saud's have also acted as the defacto go between for Iran and the West as issues continue to flair revolving supposed Iranian involvement in the Iraqi civil war, the pursuit of nuclear technology, and of the funding and support for Shiite proxy groups. Stated by the Washington Post:

Saudi diplomats, including former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar bin Sultan, are also deeply engaged in talks with Iran. The contacts began with a visit to Saudi Arabia by Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's national security council. Prince Bandar subsequently visited Tehran and, according to a report in the New York Times, King Abdullah received leaders of Hezbollah. Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran back opposite sides in the escalating sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon, but the talks show that both governments are interested in tamping them down. Though there have been no breakthroughs, the diplomacy seems to have succeeded, at least, in cooling the situation in Lebanon, where a Hezbollah campaign against the Saudi-supported, pro-Western government led to several days of violence last month.

The continuation of this was seen in early February in talks initially balked at by Condoleezza Rice but brokered by the Saud's between the almost-at-civil-war Hamas and Fatah Palestinian political groups. Instead of direct mediation by the Bush administration, the middle ground is reinvented by the parties involved:

America is holding back from serious involvement while it sees what else Saudi Arabia can do. King Abdullah and his energetic security adviser, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former long-time Washington ambassador, may try to stick another feather in their caps at next month's Arab League summit. They want to revive and perhaps refine the Arab League's 2002 proposal for all Arab states to normalise relations with Israel if Israel withdraws from all the territories it occupied in 1967, both Palestinian and Syrian.
...So was the Fatah-Hamas deal in vain? And why did Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, fly all the way to Jerusalem to see Mr Abbas and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and on to Jordan to see America's other Arab allies, to tell them something she could have fitted into an SMS text message?

While it is important that America acts against those committed to reckless ideology, it is increasingly important in the context of prolonged American involvement in Iraq and NATO involvement in Afghanistan that hostility does not boil over to conflict before it has the chance for diplomatic resolution. The ramifications of a sectarian Middle East become more visceral, the role of Saudi Arabia will grow as the leading voice as both a moderate country and the largest Sunni country.

Originally posted on PBH and PubliusPundit.

Sources

Saudi Arabia's Diplomacy, Washington Post.

Banking on the Saudis, Economist.

Decisions Deferred in Mideast Talks, Council on Foreign Relations.

Arab states watch Iraq with dread, BBC News.

A holy but puzzling alliance, Economist.

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