Republican Bob McDonnell enjoys a rather sizable lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds in his race for Virginia’s governorship. But the Washington Post, which went after George Allen with amazing fervor in his 2006 race against longshot Jim Webb, is doing what it can to fix that. First, it ran a series of articles about a master’s thesis McDonnell wrote during the Reagan administration. With that having not done the trick, it’s digging up a new charge:

In January 2003, then-Del. Robert F. McDonnell helped gavel in one of the most extraordinary judicial reappointment hearings in Virginia history: a seven-hour, trial-like affair that led to questions about whether the future Republican gubernatorial candidate thought gays were fit to serve on the bench.

As chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee, McDonnell sat at the head of the proceedings, with his Senate counterpart next to him and committee members on both sides. Facing them was Verbena M. Askew of Newport News, the state’s first black female Circuit Court judge, whose reappointment was in jeopardy because of allegations that she had sexually harassed a female colleague.

[...]

In comments before the hearing, McDonnell indicated that Askew’s sexual conduct was relevant, telling one newspaper that “certain homosexual conduct” could disqualify a person from being a judge because it violates the state’s crimes against nature law. The words were widely published at the time, and his remarks contributed to a lasting view that sexual orientation was at least one reason for Askew’s ouster.

[...]

McDonnell’s role in the hearing has attracted renewed scrutiny after the publication last week of a 1989 graduate school thesis in which the 14-year lawmaker and former attorney general had criticized working mothers and homosexuals and urged the promotion of traditional values through government. In one passage, McDonnell wrote: “Man’s basic nature is inclined towards evil, and when the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality, the government must restrain, punish, and deter.”

[...]

McDonnell was credited by Republicans and Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly at the time for making sure witnesses supporting Askew were present at the hearing.

He also became known for telling the Daily Press of Newport News that certain homosexual activities could disqualify a person from the bench. “It certainly raises some questions about the qualifications to serve as a judge,” he said. “There is certain homosexual conduct that is in violation of the law,” McDonnell added. “I’m not telling you I would disqualify a judge per se if he said he was gay. I’m talking about their actions.”

What’s particularly rich here is that the Post is arguing that it’s own opposition research on a candidate is grounds for doing more of the same because, after all, it “attracted renewed scrutiny”!  Imagine that.  Indeed, they title the piece “After Thesis Uproar, McDonnell’s Strongly Worded Comments on Gays Resurface.”  One has to love the use of the passive voice to obscure the fact that it’s the Post itself creating the uproar and doing the resurfacing.

Like Allen, McDonnell has run numerous races, including statewide races, before.  He’s faced the scrutiny of the voters and the slings and arrows of opposition campaigns.  These issues have therefore been bandied about over and again.

In what possible sense is a twenty-year-old graduate thesis news? Or even six-year-old public hearings that were widely covered at the time?  This is a smear job, not journalism.

Two Americas

Sarah Palin caused a bit of a flap earlier in the week when she told a North Carolina crowd that she loved visiting the “pro-America” parts of the country, leading WaPo’s Juliet Eilperin to quip, “No word on which states she views as unpatriotic.”

The campaign circulated a longer report, courtesy of WSJ’s Elizabeth Holmes, putting the remarks in context, which Eilperin posted:

“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe” — here the audience interrupted Palin with applause and cheers — “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.”

She continued: “This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom.”

Eilperin’s take:

The upshot? The District is neither “real America” nor “pro-America.” Other parts of the nation? It’s unclear, but if you live in a small town, you’re probably patriotic from Palin’s point of view.
The campaign says, no, “She was reinforcing the message that the best of our America isn’t confined to our nation’s capitol.”

The controversy continued last night, when Eilperin’s colleagues Matthew Mosk and Christopher Twarowski passed on a remark by a McCain staffer nobody had ever heard of on a show nobody watched:

McCain senior adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer, a self-described “proud resident of Oakton, Virginia,” said on MSNBC that “Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into Northern Virginia, and that’s really what you see there. But the rest of the state, real Virginia, if you will, I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain’s message.”

Program host Kevin Corke asked Pfotenhauer if she wanted to retract the comment, prompting her to reply, “I mean ‘real Virginia’ because Northern Virginia is where I’ve always been, but ‘real Virginia’ I take to be the — this part of the state that is more Southern in nature, if you will. Northern Virginia is really metro D.C.”

I’ve now lived in Northern Virginia a little over six years, easily the longest I’ve lived consecutively in any state as an adult and soon to surpass any place I’ve lived consecutively in my lifetime.  I categorically agree with Pfotenhauer that it isn’t “Real Virginia” — let alone the “Real South” — but rather a suburb of Washington, DC.  This isn’t an insult but rather a cultural judgment.

Northern Virginia is much more affluent. It’s much more congested and thus has far different political priorities than the rest of the state.  People generally don’t have Southern accents here as they do just a few miles south and west.  It’s hard to get sweet tea in a restaurant here.  There are actually quotas making it harder for kids graduating schools in these parts to get into the University of Virginia, otherwise it would be overwhelmed by students from a handful of affluent counties.

As to the “Real America” nonsense, it’s a really annoying relic of the pre-24/7 communications era, when candidates could stump in localities and say things that wouldn’t get heard elsewhere.  In some ways, it’s as benign as rock bands traveling the country and telling each crowd that this is their favorite venue and that this is the best crowd, ever.

It’s more than that, of course.  There is in fact a cultural divide in the country that animates politics, especially at the presidential level.   It’s not quite rural-urban, as relatively few people leave in rural areas these days even in the reddest of Red States.  No, it’s between “cosmopolitan America” and the rest of the country.  People who live and work in big cities and college towns tend to have a different set of attitudes than those who live everywhere else.

We’ve seen it in the internecine debate among conservatives over Sarah Palin.  She’s adored by a wide swath of conservatives from the South, West, and Midwest but viewed quite skeptically by those of us who live in Cosmopolitan America.  South Park Republicans are different from Wal Mart Republicans, even though we wind up voting for the same people.

David Brooks captured this divide brilliantly, if somewhat inaccurately, in his various “Bobos in Paradise” writings.  In a 2003 followup in the Atlantic, he observed,

Human beings are capable of drawing amazingly subtle social distinctions and then shaping their lives around them. In the Washington, D.C., area Democratic lawyers tend to live in suburban Maryland, and Republican lawyers tend to live in suburban Virginia. If you asked a Democratic lawyer to move from her $750,000 house in Bethesda, Maryland, to a $750,000 house in Great Falls, Virginia, she’d look at you as if you had just asked her to buy a pickup truck with a gun rack and to shove chewing tobacco in her kid’s mouth. In Manhattan the owner of a $3 million SoHo loft would feel out of place moving into a $3 million Fifth Avenue apartment. A West Hollywood interior decorator would feel dislocated if you asked him to move to Orange County. In Georgia a barista from Athens would probably not fit in serving coffee in Americus.

At the macro level, there’s a longstanding scorn between these “Americas” that goes back to the days of the Founding Fathers.  Whether it was Hamiltonians vs. Jeffersonians, North vs. South, Country Club vs. Cloth Coat, or Blue vs. Red, the former have tended to look down on the latter while the latter resented the former.  Successful politicians have long mastered pushing the buttons to use these sentiments to their advantage.

However real the differences are, however, fanning the flames of resentment is a dangerous game for those aspiring to the presidency (or vice presidency).  Not only is it now impossible to play it and not get caught in the age of blogs and cell phone videocameras and YouTube — it brought down the very promising career of George Allen, for example, with the Macaca incident — but it’s impossible to govern effectively after waging that sort of campaign.  This is especially true now that campaigning for office is a never-ending cycle and the concepts of a “honeymoon” or a “governing mandate” now seem quaint.

Image: Canadian Red

Senator Jim Webb, touted by many as a vice presidential candidate who would help shore up Barack Obama with Southerners and those uncomfortable with his lack of national security experience, has an “affinity” for the Confederacy, Politico’s David Mark reports breathlessly.

He has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy of slavery and segregation, for others it simply reflects Southern pride. In a June 1990 speech in front of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, posted on his personal website, he lauded the rebels’ “gallantry,” which he said “is still misunderstood by most Americans.”

Webb, a descendant of Confederate officers, also voiced sympathy for the notion of state sovereignty as it was understood in the early 1860s, and seemed to suggest that states were justified in trying to secede.

“Most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather than slavery,” he said. “Love of the Union was palpably stronger in the South than in the North before the war — just as overt patriotism is today — but it was tempered by a strong belief that state sovereignty existed prior to the Constitution and that it had never been surrendered.”

This line of attack is somewhat ironic, given that Webb is a Senator today partly because his erstwhile opponent, George Allen, was painted as a Confederate sympathizer, which paved the way for the “Macaca” incident to stick. It’s also, as James Fallows — who elsewhere persuaded me that Webb would be a poor VP choice — observes rather silly.

First, this is hardly a secret or news. The dignity of ordinary Confederate troops and their battlefield leaders, as opposed to the evil of the southern slaveholding system, was a major theme in Webb’s widely-noted and generally-praised book Born Fighting, published four years ago.

In addition to that book, the main documentary proof of Webb’s “problem” is a speech at the Confederate war memorial in 1990. That memorial, by the way, is in Arlington National Cemetery — not in Richmond, Charleston, Natchez, etc.

Slavery was the key issue absent which the Civil War wouldn’t have been fought and the resurgence of the Confederate battle flag in the 1960s was mostly about segregationist defiance. It’s easy to understand, therefore, why expressing pro-Confederate sympathies is politically problematic. But Webb’s admiration for the against-all-odds fighting spirit of his ancestors, most of whom fought for reasons having nothing to do with slavery or, frankly, political considerations of any sort, is understandable, too. In a complex world, one can simultaneously admire Robert E. Lee’s character, J.E.B. Stuart’s generalship, and the courage of those who charged up Little Round Top while damning the institution of slavery.

And after all: we’re discussing scenarios in which the first black major party nominee might choose Webb as his running mate. Somehow this would “have the potential” of conveying a pro-Confederate tilt? I don’t think this is the right job for Webb, but his respect for his Confederate ancestors is not the reason why.

Indeed.

Yesterday’s announcement that Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb is taking a leave of absence “to serve as deputy communications director of the McCain campaign” has been greeted with surprising interest from bloggers across the political spectrum. Just sampling those in my RSS reader:

• Radley Balko points out that “Goldfarb has written (falsely, by any reasonable reading of the Constitution, Federalist Papers, or diaries of the Constitutional Convention) that the founders believed the president should have “near dictatorial” powers when it comes to war and foreign policy.”

• Matt Yglesias: “Some folks take comfort in the fact that up until 1998-99 or so McCain had reasonably reasonable views about foreign policy, but he’s been way out in crazy-land for years now and all indications are that his administration will be staffed by neocons too fanatical or dim-witted to have served in the Bush administration and been discredited.”

• Andrew Sullivan: “Uh-oh.” (I’d say “Read the whole thing” but, alas, you just did.)

• Glenn Greenwald cites some Goldfarb posts he disagrees with and adds, “Does one even need to point out that there are few things more incompatible with one another than “straight talk” and The Weekly Standard?”

• Steve Benen mentions without comment in a “Campaign Roundup.”

• Ditto Laura Rosen.

• John Schwenkler, new at PoMoCo, has a long rant about how this proves McCain=Bush and closes, “[The thought that] Mr. Goldfarb might resurface in the more appropriately water-carrying role of Press Secretary to a (shudder) President McCain ought to be enough to turn one’s vote elsewhere.”

I’m afraid I don’t get it. I’m only vaguely familiar with Goldfarb’s work as a blogger but he’s apparently been in the writing business for quite some time, including a stint at Time.com more than a decade ago. One presumes he’s qualified to write press releases and carry out other duties associated with the job which, as described by Bill Kristol in the announcement post, is pretty low-vis: “He’ll be focusing on their online activities.”

Kristol joked (one presumes he wasn’t serious) about Goldfarb being National Security Advisor to a President McCain but Schwenkler’s right: something in the communications shop is more likely. But so what? Ronald Reagan employed Pat Buchanan as his Communications Director, after all.

George Allen hired Jon Henke in a similar capacity, as did Mitch McConnell. I don’t recall either of them making a sudden shift to neo-libertarianism. That’s just not the nature of these gigs.

Presidents and presidential candidates hire all manner of people to serve in all manner of roles. They’re not interchangeable. Goldfarb is supremely unqualified to serve in a foreign policy role, let alone as Attorney General. His opinions on the scope of presidential power are therefore irrelevant.

McCain’s foreign policy is too neo-con and “national greatness” for my tastes. Bill Kristol has been one of his biggest boosters for years, which would seem to trump the Goldfarb association in terms of meaning. But we know where he stands based on his decades in office and his two runs for the presidency.

UPDATE: For more discussion, see “McCain’s Weekly Standard Posse.”

After several weeks of being the odds-on favorite to be Barack Obama’s running mate (at least if bloggers were doing the picking) it appears is if the inevitable backlash has set in.

Kathy G, guesting at Matt Yglesias’ site (apparently, the Atlantic Monthly has given their bloggers the week off) takes the lead, setting out the anti-Webb argument in a long post. The bullet points:

• It would give a Republican a chance at his Senate seat.

• Webb isn’t a team player.

• Webb isn’t a natural campaigner.

• “Webb basically became a Democrat the day before yesterday, and he has a long history of holding some pretty wingnutty opinions and making some fairly outrageous and offensive statements.”

The last of these, not surprisingly, most energizes Kathy. She thinks Webb shares the Southern resentment of the 1960s counterculture, doesn’t think the Vietnam war was unmitigated evil, and most notably, he was opposed to the admission of women to the Naval Academy thirty years ago and he compounded his misogyny with a partial defense of the Tailgate transgressors.

Ezra Klein — who has opposed Webb for VP longer than Kathy — seconds these concerns but, more importantly, thinks Webb too risky simply because “there’s a lot about what James Webb thinks that we simply don’t know.”

Spencer Ackerman thinks Webb’s record is more complicated than Kathy gives him credit for and believes there’s still a strong case to be made for having him on the ticket.

Alex Massie thinks some of the complaints lodged against Webb are features, not bugs. To the extent that this election is “a battle for the centre-ground” it makes sense for Obama to do what he can to appeal to moderates rather than to shore up his support with the hard-core base.

I tend to agree. As I noted in my “endorsement” of choosing Webb a few weeks back, “he’s a bit of a loose cannon and might not be the ideal guy to have out in the hustings to deliver a scripted message.” But the fact of the matter is that moderates, most of whom are the white working class voters that we’ve heard so much about in recent weeks, are probably closer to Webb on the issues in question than to Kathy G.

Granting that George Allen ran a spectacularly bad re-election campaign in 2006, he still barely lost. Had Harris Miller beaten Webb, Allen would almost certainly still be a Senator — and probably made an interesting run at the the Republican presidential nomination. The Republicans would still have nominal control of the Senate, thanks to Dick Cheney’s tie-breaking vote.

Virginia is thought of as Red state but is really Purple and trending Blue, owing to the staggering growth of the D.C. suburbs and exurbs of Northern Virginia. The ability to win here is a strong indicator of appeal in other swing states. Jim Webb or someone with similar credentials, then, makes sense unless the Democrats really think Obama is going to win this thing walking away.

Photo via Daniel Farrell

UPDATE: Bill Dyer, who’s about as likely to vote for Obama regardless of his VP choice as I am, was bemused by the suggestion when I first broached the subject on April 1 (No, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke).

The thought of Webb and Obama sharing a ticket really makes me giggle. I can envision a joint appearance with Webb getting into gear about the Scots-Irish and their heritage, and how they provided the work ethic which built the United States into the greatest country in the world — all while Michelle Obama silently seethes.

Then Barack Obama would explain that the Second Amendment permits the District of Columbia to ban handguns outright. At that exact moment, Webb would slyly nudge his briefcase, with its Glock and three extra magazines of ammo, further under the table.

Midway through Rev. Wright’s closing benediction, I would expect Webb to engage him in a fist-fight.

It is, indeed, quite a contrast. But, certainly, no more than Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

UPDATE: Ezra expands his argument in an American Prospect piece entitled “Is Jim Webb Too Good for the Vice Presidency?” The central thesis, laid out in persuasive detail, is that Webb’s “outlook is the antithesis of the vice presidency, which often requires mortgaging your personal credibility and sacrificing your independence in order to further the president’s point of view.”

Of course, the operative question right now is whether Webb would help Obama get elected, rather than whether he’d actually be a good VP. After all, the second question is rendered moot if Obama loses. But Ezra’s point is a good one.

Jon Henke, Patrick Ruffini, and Soren Dayton are launching a new initiative they’ve dubbed “The Next Right.” It’s apparently yet another attempt to create a right-of-center counterpart of the Netroots. Not yet launched, it purports to be “an online community for change-minded activists and hardcore political junkies in the conservative movement.”

All three of the founders agree that a lot has changed since 1980 and that the GOP is no longer the party of Reagan but rather, as Soren puts it, “at a transitional point.” Jon laments that the Iron Law of Oligarchy has set in and that, “Much of the DC-based infrastructure on the Right – Republican politicians, the advocacy organizations and non-profits, the massive, campaign-oriented fundraising machines that spring up in each cycle – has become the entrenched bureaucracy seeking its own promulgation.”

They also agree that the Republicans have fallen way behind the Democrats in reaching out via the Internet. As Patrick writes, “Netroots activists on the left have built critical mass around an idea that regular people on the Internet can get their hands dirty and remix Democratic politics. They not only raise money. They recruit candidates. They fund full-time investigative journalism to ambush Republicans.”

Beyond that, the three admit they have little agreement. That’s not surprising, really. Jon’s a neo-libertarian who has worked for George Allen and Fred Thompson. Pat’s a longtime Republican activist who has worked for George W. Bush and Rudy Guiliani. Soren briefly worked for John McCain.

And therein, methinks, lies the problem. While most Republican-leaning intellectuals think the party needs to change after seven years of Bush and after a GOP-majority Congress became the kings of pork and fiscal irresponsibility, there’s not a whole lot of consensus on the nature of that change.

Sure, we want leaders with a gift for communication and inspiration, as we had with Reagan. We’re tired of earmarks and “politics as usual” and all the standard complaints. But there’s not a whole lot of agreement beyond that.

• Should we continue a foreign policy of “American greatness” and trying to democratize the heathens through military power? Or should we retrench to a more traditional Realist posture?

• Should we get more serious about the social issues and improving public morality? Or should we become more libertarian, get government out of the bedroom, and focus instead on economic policy?

• What do we do about immigration? Social Security? Health care? Sustainable energy? Terrorism?

Our choices on those issues will determine the future of the party and radically impact its demographics.

The Netroots have been united by opposition to Bush, the neocons, and the war. It’s not at all apparent to me what it is that will unite the “Rightroots” (or whatever term we coin).

To the extent that The Next Right is a platform for having this discussion, it’ll be interesting. My guess, though, is that we’ll continue talking past one another, though.

I’ve mentioned in passing several times, both here and on OTB Radio, that Jim Webb would be the Democrats’ smartest choice for Vice President, particularly if (as seems exceedingly likely) Barack Obama is their nominee. Alex Massie makes the case in detail. Some excerpts:

The political considerations first: the Democrats have no other plausible candidate with anything like Webb’s military experience. At the very least one might think Obama could ask Webb to be a Shadow Secretary of Defense in advance of nominating him to the post after the election. Sure, Webb was a Republican until recently, but in addition to the Navy Cross, Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts he won in Vietnam he served as Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. He also, and vitally from a Democratic point of view, opposed the Iraq War for reasons that, alas, look more cogent than ever.

[...]

Secondly, even allowing for the truth that Webb could probably not have won Virginia without George Allen’s self-immolation it remains the case that Virginia is trending Democratic and Webb’s presence on the ticket could conceivably help Obama win the Commonwealth’s 14 electoral college votes. Pinching states from the opposition is no small thing.

But really Webb’s appeal as a running-mate is greater than that and greater too than the prospect of his being able to compensate, to some extent anyway, for John McCain’s appeal to working-class white men. It’s not hard to imagine Webb helping the ticket in virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, to say nothing of the benefits his populism could potentially have in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio. He may, in fact, be just the sort of culturally conservative and genuine Democrat Obama needs to balance his ticket.

The main downsides to Webb, are that he’s a bit of a loose cannon and might not be the ideal guy to have out in the hustings to deliver a scripted message and, as Dave Schuler has noted, that having two first-term Senators on the ticket might be problematic from an “experience” standpoint.

I’m not sure how much these matter. As McCain has demonstrated, a certain cantankerous candor charms the press, so he’d get something of a pass for minor gaffes. And this might be a year when experience is a disadvantage, as in Ross Perot’s famous 1992 debate rejoinder, “I don’t have any experience screwing up the country.”

Photo: MyDD via Google

Fred Thompson has become the latest former 2008 Republican presidential candidate to endorse John McCain.

Fred Thompson, the one-time Republican presidential candidate, endorsed Sen. John McCain Friday, calling on the party to “close ranks” behind the presumed nominee.

“This is no longer about past preferences or differences. It is about what is best for our country and for me that means that Republican should close ranks behind John McCain,” Thompson said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

One wonders why Thompson held his fire this long. The endorsement was natural and expected and yet he waited until McCain had the nomination all but mathematically sewn up.

One also wonders how long cognitive dissonance will continue to plague anti-McCain Republicans. Many were enthusiastically behind Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and even Rudy Giuliani, all of whom are now backing McCain. Were they wrong about those guys? Have they sold their souls in the name of party unity? How about John Bolton, the Patron Saint of Diplomacy? Or Tom Coburn? Steve Forbes? John Cornyn? George Allen? The list is getting pretty long.

Image: PoliGazette

John Hawkins, Joy McCann and I just wasted half an hour trying to get in to the McCain speech but, even with media credentials, we couldn’t. Something about the fire code.

I don’t feel too bad: Clarence Page was there getting turned away with us, along with several less notable journalists working for mainstream media outlets. So it goes. I’m back up watching via closed circuit television.

George Allen introduced him and now somebody I don’t recognize is on. Turns out to be Senator Tom Coburn, who I admire politically, but he’s new enough on the scene that I don’t know his face; I just don’t watch much news television anymore and print media often doesn’t put a picture with the face.

McCain’s speech was conciliatory, praising Mitt Romney as “a great governor” and Mike Huckabee as a “great man” (or something along those lines). He must have used the word “conservative” 200 times. Nothing of any great substance in the speech for those of us who have been paying attention all these months.

The crowd reception was relatively enthusiastic. If there was a lot of booing, it wasn’t audible on the closed circuit; it might have been in the hall.

The prepared text below the fold, courtesy Patrick Hynes of the campaign. I’m using John Hawkins‘ version, which cleaned up the formatting.

U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today released the following remarks by John McCain as prepared for delivery:

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It’s been a little while since I’ve had the honor of addressing you, and I appreciate very much your courtesy to me today. We should do this more often. I hope you will pardon my absence last year, and understand that I intended no personal insult to any of you. I was merely pre-occupied with the business of trying to escape the distinction of pre-season frontrunner for the Republican nomination, which, I’m sure some of you observed, I managed to do in fairly short order. But, now, I again have the privilege of that distinction, and this time I would prefer to hold on to it for a while.

I know I have a responsibility, if I am, as I hope to be, the Republican nominee for President, to unite the party and prepare for the great contest in November. And I am acutely aware that I cannot succeed in that endeavor, nor can our party prevail over the challenge we will face from either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama, without the support of dedicated conservatives, whose convictions, creativity and energy have been indispensible to the success our party has had over the last quarter century. Many of you have disagreed strongly with some positions I have taken in recent years. I understand that. I might not agree with it, but I respect it for the principled position it is. And it is my sincere hope that even if you believe I have occasionally erred in my reasoning as a fellow conservative, you will still allow that I have, in many ways important to all of us, maintained the record of a conservative. Further, I hope you will grant that I have defended many positions we share just as ardently as I have made my case for positions that have provoked your opposition. If not, thank you for this opportunity to make my case today.

I am proud to be a conservative, and I make that claim because I share with you that most basic of conservative principles: that liberty is a right conferred by our Creator, not by governments, and that the proper object of justice and the rule of law in our country is not to aggregate power to the state but to protect the liberty and property of its citizens. And like you, I understand, as Edmund Burke observed, that “whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither . . . is safe.”

While I have long worked to help grow a public majority of support for Republican candidates and principles, I have also always believed, like you, in the wisdom of Ronald Reagan, who warned in an address to this conference in 1975, that “a political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.”

I attended my first CPAC conference as the invited guest of Ronald Reagan, not long after I had returned from overseas, when I heard him deliver his “shining city upon a hill” speech. I was still a naval officer then, but his words inspired and helped form my own political views, just as Ronald Reagan’s defense of America’s cause in Vietnam and his evident concern for American prisoners of war in that conflict inspired and were a great comfort to those of us who, in my friend Jerry Denton’s words, had the honor of serving “our country under difficult circumstances.” I am proud, very proud, to have come to public office as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution. And if a few of my positions have raised your concern that I have forgotten my political heritage, I want to assure you that I have not, and I am as proud of that association today as I was then. My record in public office taken as a whole is the record of a mainstream conservative. I believe today, as I believed twenty-five years ago, in small government; fiscal discipline; low taxes; a strong defense, judges who enforce, and not make, our laws; the social values that are the true source of our strength; and, generally, the steadfast defense of our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which I have defended my entire career as God-given to the born and unborn.

Those are my beliefs, and you need not examine only my past votes and speeches to assure yourselves that they are my genuine convictions. You can take added confidence from the positions I have defended during this campaign. I campaigned in Iowa in opposition to agriculture subsidies. I campaigned in New Hampshire against big government mandated health care and for a free market solution to the problem of unavailable and unaffordable health care. I campaigned in Michigan for the tax incentives and trade policies that will create new and better jobs in that economically troubled state. I campaigned in Florida against the national catastrophic insurance fund bill that passed the House of Representatives and defended my opposition to the prescription drug benefit bill that saddled Americans with yet another hugely expensive entitlement program. I have argued to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, to reduce the corporate tax rate and abolish the AMT. I have defended my position on protecting our Second Amendment rights, including my votes against waiting periods, bans on the so-called “assault weapons,” and illegitimate lawsuits targeting gun manufacturers. I have proudly defended my twenty-four year pro-life record. Throughout this campaign, I have defended the President’s brave decision to increase troop levels in Iraq to execute a long overdue counterinsurgency that has spared us the terrible calamity of losing that war. I held these positions because I believed they were in the best interests of my party and country.”

Surely, I have held other positions that have not met with widespread agreement from conservatives. I won’t pretend otherwise nor would you permit me to forget it. On the issue of illegal immigration, a position which provoked the outspoken opposition of many conservatives, I stood my ground aware that my position would imperil my campaign. I respect your opposition for I know that the vast majority of critics to the bill based their opposition in a principled defense of the rule of law. And while I and other Republican supporters of the bill were genuine in our intention to restore control of our borders, we failed, for various and understandable reasons, to convince Americans that we were. I accept that, and have pledged that it would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.

All I ask of any American, conservative, moderate, independent, or enlightened Democrat, is to judge my record as a whole, and accept that I am not in the habit of making promises to my country that I do not intend to keep. I hope I have proven that in my life even to my critics. Then vote for or against me based on that record, my qualifications for the office, and the direction where I plainly state I intend to lead our country. If I am so fortunate as to be the Republican nominee for President, I will offer Americans, in what will be a very challenging and spirited contest, a clearly conservative approach to governing. I will make my case to voters, no matter what state they reside in, in the same way. I will not obscure my positions from voters who I fear might not share them. I will stand on my convictions, my conservative convictions, and trust in the good sense of the voters, and in my confidence that conservative principles still appeal to a majority of Americans, Republicans, Independents and Reagan Democrats.

Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences. This one will not be. We are arguing about hugely consequential things. Whomever the Democrats nominate, they would govern this country in a way that will, in my opinion, take this country backward to the days when government felt empowered to take from us our freedom to decide for ourselves the course and quality of our lives; to substitute the muddled judgment of large and expanding federal bureaucracies for the common sense and values of the American people; to the timidity and wishful thinking of a time when we averted our eyes from terrible threats to our security that were so plainly gathering strength abroad. It is shameful and dangerous that Senate Democrats are blocking an extension of surveillance powers that enable our intelligence and law enforcement to defend our country against radical Islamic extremists. This election is going to be about big things, not small things. And I intend to fight as hard as I can to ensure that our principles prevail over theirs.

Senator Clinton and Senator Obama want to increase the size of the federal government.

I intend to reduce it. I will not sign a bill with earmarks in it, any earmarks in it. I will fight for the line item veto, and I will not permit any expansion whatsoever of the entitlement programs that are bankrupting us. On the contrary, I intend to reform those programs so that government is no longer in that habit of making promises to Americans it does not have the means to keep.

Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will raise your taxes.

I intend to cut them. I will start by making the Bush tax cuts permanent. I will cut corporate tax rates from 35 to 25% to keep industries and jobs in this country. I will end the Alternate Minimum Tax. And I won’t let a Democratic Congress raise your taxes and choke the growth of our economy.

They will offer a big government solution to health care insurance coverage.

I intend to address the problem with free market solutions and with respect for the freedom of individuals to make important choices for themselves.

They will appoint to the federal bench judges who are intent on achieving political changes that the American people cannot be convinced to accept through the election of their representatives.

I intend to nominate judges who have proven themselves worthy of our trust that they take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people’s elected representatives, judges of the character and quality of Justices Roberts and Alito, judges who can be relied upon to respect the values of the people whose rights, laws and property they are sworn to defend.

Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will withdraw our forces from Iraq based on an arbitrary timetable designed for the sake of political expediency, and which recklessly ignores the profound human calamity and dire threats to our security that would ensue.

I intend to win the war, and trust in the proven judgment of our commanders there and the courage and selflessness of the Americans they have the honor to command. I share the grief over the terrible losses we have suffered in its prosecution. There is no other candidate for this office who appreciates more than I do just how awful war is. But I know that the costs in lives and treasure we would incur should we fail in Iraq will be far greater than the heartbreaking losses we have suffered to date. And I will not allow that to happen.

They won’t recognize and seriously address the threat posed by an Iran with nuclear ambitions to our ally, Israel, and the region.

I intend to make unmistakably clear to Iran we will not permit a government that espouses the destruction of the State of Israel as its fondest wish and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions.

Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will concede to our critics that our own actions to defend against its threats are responsible for fomenting the terrible evil of radical Islamic extremism, and their resolve to combat it will be as flawed as their judgment.

I intend to defeat that threat by staying on offense and by marshaling every relevant agency of our government, and our allies, in the urgent necessity of defending the values, virtues and security of free people against those who despise all that is good about us.

These are but a few of the differences that will define this election. They are very significant differences, and I promise you, I intend to contest these issues on conservative grounds and fight as hard as I can to defend the principles and positions we share, and to keep this country safe, proud, prosperous and free.

We have had a few disagreements, and none of us will pretend that we won’t continue to have a few. But even in disagreement, especially in disagreement, I will seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives. If I am convinced my judgment is in error, I will correct it. And if I stand by my position, even after benefit of your counsel, I hope you will not lose sight of the far more numerous occasions when we are in complete accord.

I began by assuring you that we share a conception of liberty that is the bedrock of our beliefs as conservatives. As you know, I was deprived of liberty for a time in my life, and while my love of liberty is no greater than yours, you can be confident that mine is the equal of any American’s. It is a deep and unwavering love. My life experiences in service to our country inform my political judgments. They are at the core of my convictions. I am pro-life and an advocate for the Rights of Man everywhere in the world because of them, because I know that to be denied liberty is an offense to nature and nature’s Creator. I will never waver in that conviction, I promise you. I know in this country our liberty will not be seized in a political revolution or by a totalitarian government. But, rather, as Burke warned, it can be “nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.” I am alert to that risk and will defend against it, and take comfort from the knowledge that I will be encouraged in that defense by my fellow conservatives.

You have heard me say before that for all my reputation as a maverick, I have only found true happiness in serving a cause greater than my self-interest. For me, that cause has always been our country, and the ideals that have made us great. I have been her imperfect servant for many years, and I have made many mistakes. You can attest to that, but need not. For I know them well myself. But I love her deeply and I will never, never tire of the honor of serving her. I cannot do that without your counsel and support. And I am grateful, very grateful, that you have given me this opportunity to ask for it.

Thank you and God bless you.

Richard Viguerie, the pioneer of the direct mail fundraising approach and a guiding force in Republican politics since the 1970s, has been campaigning at least since this time last year for the nomination of a Reagan style conservative. He was going around the halls at last year’s CPAC convention lamenting the ways in which “Rudy McRomney” fell short of that ideal and has been sending mass emails ever since.

He briefly backed Fred Thompson but, alas, that dog couldn’t get up early enough in the morning to hunt. He then backed Ron Paul but, alas, he doesn’t appeal to Republicans — a distinct disadvantage in Republican primaries — and, as Viguerie himself admits, “most conservatives want a powerful U.S. presence in world affairs and will never support Paul’s defense and foreign policy.”

He believes there’s still time to beat back the tide that seems to have John McCain winning the nomination with Mitt Romney as the only plausible alternative. But who?

Former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen was considered a frontrunner for this year’s GOP nomination before he lost his reelection campaign in 2006. But his loss can be chalked up to his mishandling of charges of racism and to voter resentment toward the Iraq War, and to the fact that Democrats, desperate to win the Senate, swallowed hard and nominated a former Reagan Administration official to run against him. If losing one’s previous statewide campaign disqualified a person from being president, neither Lincoln nor Nixon nor the elder Bush would have won.

Of course, many would argue that the latter two shouldn’t have won. And the election of the first resulted in a war that pitted brother against brother which killed over half a million Americans.

But, still, their victories do demonstrate that it’s possible to make a comeback. Of course, it helps to serve two terms as vice president under popular presidents, as Nixon and Bush did, or to have an election pitting four major candidates against one another, as Lincoln did. Not to mention having avoided the reputation as a yahoo.

He also puts forth Senator Jim DeMint or Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina as possible alternatives. That neither has any national name recognition, organization, or cash on hand does pose a minor obstacle to each, however.

Or the fact that the nomination may well be all but wrapped up by tonight.

Photo credit: Raising Kaine via Google. Yes, it’s from a movie.

There has long been a buzz about the fact that Ron Paul’s vast network of supporters includes white supremacists and anti-Semites. Paul has disassociated himself from them and he’s shrugged it off as the nature of a bottom-up organization. While I’m by no means a Paul booster, that has struck me as quite reasonable.

Today, though, TNR (the publication which laid much of the groundwork for the “George Allen is a racist” meme that finally ignited into an inferno after the Macaca incident) takes it to a new level with James Kirchick’s feature “Angry White Man – The bigoted past of Ron Paul.” It sifts through Paul’s newsletters, some dating as far back as 1978, for statements that are racially charged.

As Kirchick freely admits, many of the charges have been made before in local campaigns and most of the newsletters lack bylines, making the author impossible to pin down. But they were all published by Ron Paul and “seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him–and reflected his views.”

Much of the piece is guilt by association. Kirchick notes Paul’s long association with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a respected libertarian think tank, and points out that other people associated with the organization are Confederate sympathizers and the like. Further,

Paul’s newsletters have themselves repeatedly expressed sympathy for the general concept of secession. In 1992, for instance, the Survival Report argued that “the right of secession should be ingrained in a free society” and that “there is nothing wrong with loosely banding together small units of government. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we too should consider it.”

But, surely, one could philosophically support the right of self-determination without supporting, say, the lynching of people who were born with a different skin color?

The people surrounding the von Mises Institute–including Paul–may describe themselves as libertarians, but they are nothing like the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine. Instead, they represent a strain of right-wing libertarianism that views the Civil War as a catastrophic turning point in American history–the moment when a tyrannical federal government established its supremacy over the states.

One has to love the pitting of urbane Northern libertarians against the reactionary Southern brethren in a tract seeking to establish that someone else is a bigot. Regardless, however, can one not simultaneously think the after effects of the Civil War (or, for that matter, the Great Society) negatively impacted the country while nonetheless being happy that slavery was ended?

Much of the rest of the piece is a mixed bag. Some of the quotes taken from Paul’s newsletters — again, quite possibly not Paul’s own writing but nonetheless put out under his banner — are quite indefensible.

Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began,” read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with “‘civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.” It also denounced “the media” for believing that “America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.” To be fair, the newsletter did praise Asian merchants in Los Angeles, but only because they had the gumption to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans were “the only people to act like real Americans,” it explained, “mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England.”

Quite a bit of this strikes me merely as frank discussion about race relations and a reaction against a racially based politics of distribution. One can lament cultural segregation without believing other races are inferior. Certainly, most American conservatives oppose racial gerrymandering, quotas, hate crime laws, and the like. And the idea that there is an attempt to bring “public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda” has been a reality for quite some time.

Still, the business about welfare checks and whatnot is hard to defend.

As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled “What To Expect for the 1990s,” predicted that “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities” because “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” Two months later, a newsletter warned of “The Coming Race War,” and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, “If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.” In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.” “This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,” the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter’s author–presumably Paul–wrote, “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.” That same year, a newsletter described the aftermath of a basketball game in which “blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot.” The newsletter inveighed against liberals who “want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare,” adding, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”

Well, we’ve definitely had some race riots. And one can hardly deny there have been numerous instances of mayhem in inner cities after major sporting events. But talk of “animals” and the general tone here is undeniably racist.

There’s much more in the piece, including something to offend just about any group you could think of.

Daniel Koffler, a self-described former Paul supporter, has a whole list of racist quotes from Paul’s newsletters in easy-to-digest, out-of-context form.

Ron Paul denies that this sort of thing reflects his personal views. Kirchick, again:

When I asked Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign spokesman, about the newsletters, he said that, over the years, Paul had granted “various levels of approval” to what appeared in his publications–ranging from “no approval” to instances where he “actually wrote it himself.” After I read Benton some of the more offensive passages, he said, “A lot of [the newsletters] he did not see. Most of the incendiary stuff, no.” He added that he was surprised to hear about the insults hurled at Martin Luther King, because “Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero.”

The urbane Dave Weigel, one of libertines at Reason magazine, caught up to Paul today and got much the same story.

[UPDATE: Paul has issued a press release:

“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

“In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person's character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’

“This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It's once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.

“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”

END UPDATE]

Even beyond the questionable rhetoric on race, religion, and sexual orientation, we get garden variety kookery.

Paul’s newsletters didn’t just contain bigotry. They also contained paranoia–specifically, the brand of anti-government paranoia that festered among right-wing militia groups during the 1980s and ’90s. Indeed, the newsletters seemed to hint that armed revolution against the federal government would be justified. In January 1995, three months before right-wing militants bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, a newsletter listed “Ten Militia Commandments,” describing “the 1,500 local militias now training to defend liberty” as “one of the most encouraging developments in America.” It warned militia members that they were “possibly under BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] or other totalitarian federal surveillance” and printed bits of advice from the Sons of Liberty, an anti-government militia based in Alabama–among them, “You can’t kill a Hydra by cutting off its head,” “Keep the group size down,” “Keep quiet and you’re harder to find,” “Leave no clues,” “Avoid the phone as much as possible,” and “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

How much Paul believes this nonsense is unclear. My sense of him has long been that he’s a conspiracy theorist and outside the mainstream of intellectual libertarianism.

Andrew Sullivan, who has praised Paul in the past, is quite concerned.

Paul needs to say not only that he did not pen these excrescences, he needs to explain how his name was on them and disown them completely. I’ve supported Paul for what I believe are honorable reasons: his brave resistance to the enforced uniformity of opinion on the Iraq war, his defense of limited constitutional government, his libertarianism, his sincerity. If there is some other agenda lurking beneath all this, we deserve to know. It’s up to Ron Paul now to clearly explain and disown these ugly, vile, despicable tracts from the past.

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb doesn’t expect to see that: “He’s been speaking in code to the dregs of American society this whole time. And he had no intention of alienating his base of support.”

For that matter, the best case scenario would seem to be that Paul has been marketing a “Ron Paul Newsletter” for years that is anything but. Which, by my reckoning, would make him a fraud.

The Swamp: Rebounding George Allen, rising Fred Thompson

Former Sen. George Allen, who made “macaca” a household word and upset his once-promising political career, already shows signs of preparing for a possible comeback. His new Web site, www.georgeallen.com, touts his travels around Virginia, mostly in Republican-friendly territory. A press account posted on his site of a Republican fundraiser in Harrisonburg quotes supporters urging him to run for governor in 2009. And last week, Allen took to the airwaves after winning what amounted to four hours of free publicity. The ex-governor, who lost his Senate seat to Virginia Democrat Jim Webb last fall, served as guest host one morning on WRVA radio’s “Richmond Morning News” show.

The front page of his website is a blog which consists mostly of friendly news clippings, including a report in the Harrisonburg Daily News and Record that Allen visited that city to stump for local Republican candidates and that a few enthusiasts were hoping he’d make a run for governor.

More interestingly, he’s using to site to solicit donations for something called the Good Government Action Fund, which “allows me to support candidates who share in my ideals and support causes to improve freedom, opportunity, justice and common sense Jeffersonian conservative principles with a focus on making Virginia a better place to live, learn and raise our families.”

Whether any of that signals an intention to run for political office soon is anyone’s guess. Virginia does not permit governors to serve consecutive terms, so every cycle features an open race. There’s also widespread speculation that John Warner, the Commonwealth’s senior senator, will retire, creating a vacancy next November.

My hunch is that Allen will indeed mount a bid for one or both of those positions. He went from being a highly touted presidential hopeful to something of a national laughingstock with the Macaca mess and some ensuing gaffes. It’s hard to see how he recovers from that anytime soon, especially in a state that’s getting Bluer by the day, as the D.C. suburbs and exurbs of Northern Virginia continue to experience record growth. Then again, Trent Lott managed to find his way back into the Senate leadership.

After being hired on to the George Allen campaign too late to help clean up the post-Macaca mess and six months as the new media rep for the Republican minority in the Senate, Jon Henke is back to blogging at Q and O and on board the Fred Thompson campaign bandwagon.

I’m not sure what to make of Thompson’s candidacy. He’s a likable, smart, and charismatic fellow. Still, I’m not sure that his public policy resume shows adequate preparation for the presidency. Certainly, during the brief time he was my Senator (I lived in Tennessee during the 1995-96 academic year) he was more a show horse than a work horse.

The Henke hire is a good one, presuming they’ll actually listen to him. Allen’s staff didn’t and while Mitch McConnell did plenty of blog outreach through Henke, they mostly used him as a press flack sending out far too many emails against his own judgment.

After several days of criticism from the right side of the blogosphere, John Edwards’ blog outreach team is now coming under fire from the Catholic League, which is demanding that Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan be fired for anti-Catholic comments written on their blogs, Pandagon and Shakespeare’s Sister. Bill Donohue issued a statement saying, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots.”

As more campaigns (and corporations and PR firms) get aboard the “blogger relations” bandwagon, the natural impulse is to hire established bloggers. Hillary Clinton has hired Peter Daou, John McCain has Patrick Hynes, Rudy Giuliani has Patrick Ruffini, and the Senate Republicans have hired Jon Henke, who was also brought on too late to do George Allen much good.

Having top bloggers on the staff makes sense, because these people have demonstrated not only that they have the ability to express themselves in writing but that they “get” blogging. As a bonus, they probably have a network of other bloggers that they can reach out to with more credibility than some flack on the communications staff.

At the same time, however, there is a serious downside that Edwards is now discovering: Bloggers have a “paper” trail. The longer someone has been blogging, the more of their sometimes-developed thoughts are out there for public consumption. Not only have they likely written things uncomplimentary to their now-boss, but they have almost certainly written things that could embarrass him. At the very least, as Marcotte and McEwan are demonstrating, the bloggers can wind up taking the attention away from the candidate’s message.

UPDATE: WaPo has picked up the story, too, via the AP wire.

More blog coverage of the controversy:

• Patrick Frey digs up the offending quotes from Marcotte and McEwan. They’re pretty vulgar, frankly, even from a non-religious perspective.
• Barbara O’Brien sees intimidation at work here and observes that, “Donohue hates everybody who isn’t the Pope.”
• Bruce McQuain (Henke’s former blogmate) writes, “My guess is that both Marcotte and McEwan would wear such accusations by a religious group as badges of honor if they were still blogging at their own respective blogs.”

McQuain also points out this, which I had missed in the NYT story: “Mr. Edwards’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, said Tuesday night that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers.”

Joe Biden is set to launch his second run for the presidency today but it will likely be overshadowed by some candid comments made in an interview with Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer.

Most noteworthy is what he says about Barack Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Not surprisingly, Matt Drudge is all over it:

I’m already getting e-mails from GOP operatives touting this, too.

Presuming Biden is being accurately quoted here–which is never a safe assumption with the press–it seems obvious that he left out a rather key phrase (which may have been implied by the context of the larger conversation): “presidential candidate.” And I presume by “clean” he means “clean-cut” rather than “bathes regularly.”

If the quote is, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American presidential candidate who is articulate and bright and clean-cut and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man,” it’s rather unobjectionable. Indeed, I’ve said much the same thing myself.

Jesse Jackson is articulate, bright, and relatively clean-cut; he’s not mainstream. Al Sharpton is bright and articulate but not particularly clean-cut, let alone meanstream. Colin Powell was articulate, bright, clean-cut and mainstream, but not a presidential candidate.

While it’s true that Democrats seem to get more of a pass than Republicans on these sorts of things from both the press and the civil rights establishment, these things always have a context. Aside from an unfortunate joke about the tendency of convenience stores to be run by Indians, which is so obviously true that “The Simpsons” has been running with it for 15-odd years, there’s no evidence of which I’m aware that Biden is racist. By contrast, the “Macaca” flap that ultimately killed George Allen’s candidacy fit in with a lot of circumstantial evidence that was part of a pre-existing “Confederate sympathizing redneck poseur” image.

UPDATE: Steve Verdon suggests in the comments, “I would think clean as in no skeletons in his closet.” That actually makes even more sense. The analysis fits just as well with the above-mentioned candidates. It also covers Carol Moseley-Braun who, I’m reminded, was technically a presidential candidate in 2004 but who decidedly had skeletons in her closet. I’d argue she was also outside-the-mainstream and certainly not “bright” in the same sense as the others.

UPDATE: Nothing at Memeorandum so far. Not a whole lot at Technorati just yet, either. I suspect that will change.

• PJM in Barcelona titles his post, “First Day in the Race, First Faux Pas.”
• Election Geek Blog follows suit: “Joe Biden: A Major Mistake So Early in the Game?”
• Sensible Mom: “Has he never met an educated black man (or are they all considered Uncle Tom’s by people like Biden)? Talk about the soft racism of low expectations.”
• Michelle Malkin: “Who will press Joe Biden to name the names of the inarticulate and dim and dirty and unattractive African-Americans he was thinking about when he, um, complimented Barack Obama?”
• Curt @ Flopping Aces: “So was this a five minute Presidential candidacy or what?”
• Mary Katharine Ham: “A clean black man? The first black guy on the American political scene who can both shower regularly and speak properly? Is that really what Biden thinks?”

Nor is the hammering just from the Right:

• Marcos “Kos” Moulitas: “Really, if we live in a just world, this will be the end of Joe Biden’s political career.”
• Duncan “Atrios” Black: “The are more and less charitable readings of what Biden said, but there’s no way to read it which doesn’t reflect very poorly on Biden.”
• Josh Marshall: “. . . I think at this point you have to say that Biden suffers from what one might with real generosity call chronic racial grandpaism. That is to say, the penchant for making comments that are not only racially offensive but also extremely silly . . . .”

Hmm. It seems that I’m virtually alone in seeing a perfectly innocent explanation for this one.

UPDATE: Steven Taylor has a video collection of Biden saying stupid things.