Doing the Allah Overthinking Thing (you know it's true, Allah): Is he just saying this because he thinks it's true, or is he trying to provoke the GOP into doing the same old stuff so we keep losing elections?

I actually think he thinks it's true -- and that's probably because I think it's true.

When your traction slips on the road, what do they always tell you not to do? Overcorrect. Do not violently turn the wheel. Sure, turn into the skid a little, but don't overcorrect.

We're overcorrecting like hell right now, and not only will we turn off GOP voters, we're also about to create millions of new Democratic voters.

This [Doom of the GOP Narrative] has practically reached the status of conventional wisdom these days. [editorial niggle: Practically? Why the qualifier?] Republicans are doomed because they don't appeal to the young, or to Hispanics, or to women, or whatever. Their core base of pissed-off white guys is shrinking, and they're inevitably going to shrink along with it.

That makes sense to me. And yet....there's something about it that doesn't quite add up. Republicans control the House, and no one seems to think that's going to change in the near future. (And no, it's not just because of gerrymandering.) On the other side of Capitol Hill, Democrats seem genuinely concerned about holding onto the Senate next year. As for the White House, Republicans have only lost two presidential elections in a row, both times in years where the fundamentals favored Democrats. And they continue to hold outsize majorities in state legislatures and governor's mansions.

This doesn't seem like the markers of a party so far outside the mainstream that they're doomed to extinction. Frankly, they seem to be holding on fairly well.

The fact of the matter that Republican economics aren't terribly popular, either. But we're not talking about jettisoning that aspect of our beliefs. (Of course, we'll do what we always do; keep the rhetoric while insulting it with our actions.)

Let me propose the heretical thought that whenever someone wants you to change your position, he always claims it's the pathway to electoral success. A lot of people in the GOP are quietly in favor of gay marriage, for example -- people with urban values, who work in liberal cities, and have Gone Native as far as social beliefs.

Now, of course, it is quite true that sometimes a change in policy will in fact bring greater electoral success. But for ever time this is true, it is claimed, falsely, about eleven or fifteen times.

I don't think the GOP has to be pro-gay marriage.* What I think it has to do if it wants to stop alienating otherwise-natural-GOP voters is to stop sounding like they're anti-gay. It's slightly tricky to oppose gay marriage while not sounding anti-gay -- that of course is always the immediate claim by the pro-gay-marriage people-- but it can be done. And should be done, anyway.

The GOP does not need to be pro-amnesty, either. I don't think the public itself is pro-amnesty. I think the public is what it always is -- pro-"niceness."

I really think these two issues demand "niceness" -- as vague as that is -- and not abrupt departures of policy.

For years I've been calling for the GOP to change its stupid anti-Gay Marriage Amendment. I said it would never pass. It never passed. Now, certainly, it will never, ever pass.

It was chump-bait, a con for the Social Cons. It never had any chance of passing. It was a Lie foisted on conservative voters.

Now, a version of it could have passed. I don't know if it could still pass. Probably not. But a version of it would at least have a better chance of passing. The version of it I'd suggest is not the unattainable full ban of gay marriage, but the more-attainable (but perhaps now out of reach) ban of judge-imposed gay marriage.

Leave it to the legislatures. Leave it to democratic decision-making. Empower citizens. Take it out of the hands of the judges. Who could be against that?

Well, actually, 45% of the public could be against that, but that's not 60%.

Similarly, on immigration, sure, offer the "niceness" of a potential future plan for a pathway to citizenship. But demand that we get border crossings down to a trivial level first. Do not permit the former without having the latter.

I think that's actually what the public wants. They do not want to feel as if their "niceness" is in question, picking on poor Latin immigrants, but they actually would like an end to the endless flow of millions and millions of poor immigrants who pay little for the support of government services but have a greater than average need for them.

Yes, the public is in favor of "niceness." They are not, however, in favor of having their wallets lightened for the sake of "niceness." They always said they were in favor of the "niceness" elements of ObamaCare, too... what they weren't in favor of was ObamaCare itself, because while it's nice to support niceness, it's costly to support higher costs.

* You may have guessed my own position has shifted from "I'm against it" to "I no longer care." I suppose that the idea just doesn't seem as weird to me as it once did, and that the things I feared would flow from it haven't really flowed all that much.

Nevertheless, I agree with Rush -- in order to appease people who probably won't vote for us, we're abandoning those who usually do. But might stop.

I think it's a rather undemocratic situation to have so many millions of people be completely unrepresented by either party on an issue of importance to them. For the political class, who are all largely in agreement on this, no matter what their partisan stripe, to strike a deal on this among themselves while ignoring the voters strikes me as not only undemocratic but also as electoral suicide, or, if not suicide, electoral cutting.

What I hear is people like Rob Portman declaring their new position to the liberal media. What I don't hear them doing is making a cogent argument to conservatives, trying to get them to agree. Major political changes should be forged by agreement, not by ipse dixits.

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (165)
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Apparently I'm not dropping this Friedersdorf thing.

If he's claiming that what separates the liberal media from Us the Unwashed is their purported hatred of falsehoods, then I'm going to have to insist he correct a deliberate false quote.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (293)
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The public gives the "nice" option, some kind of amnesty, a qualified okay, so long as the border is enforced from here on out.

But Democrats are refusing to do that; as Allah notes, they won't even permit the figleaf of it. Nevermind real border enforcement -- they want to Win Politically on this, and that means appeasing their Open Borders constituency, and that in turn means not even pretending to safeguard the border.

Yesterday he mocked libertarians for their position on this.

Maybe the libertarians are right: LetÂ’s simplify things by opening the borders instead. Offer to hand out voting ballots to anyone around the world whoÂ’s willing to pay U.S. taxes. (Imagine what fine libertarian electoral outcomes that would produce.)

Indeed! A mass influx of immigrants from socialist countries with cradle-to-grave entitlements (and broken economies-- gee I wonder if those two are related?) should finally gift us all with Rand Paul and Reason's dream of a public ready for some libertarian economic solutions.

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (366)
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I wasn't even going to mention this -- I don't think enough of you care about about blogger spats to make it a post -- but I've been annoyed on Twitter.

I'll make this very quick so I can put up a real post.

David Frum's and Andrew Sullivan's creature, the "conservative" (or something) Conor Friedersdorf (no idea if that's the correct spelling, who cares), put up a gotcha type post attacking Michelle Malkin for an 11-year-old column. In that column, she talked about the possibility that Iraqi agents could steal across the unprotected Southern border to commit terrorism.

Bear in mind Iraq was a sponsor of terrorism and bear in mind the war drums against Iraq were beginning to be beat. Also bear in mind this was about a half-year after 9/11, when most of us were trying to anticipate possible terrorist threats, given that we'd completely failed to anticipate 9/11.

Well, Conor flattered his liberal audience at the Atlantic (but remember, he's their "conservative" writer or something) by saying ha-ha, no Iraqi terrorists came into America to commit terrorism, across the Mexican border or otherwise; isn't Michelle Malkin quite a silly goose?

At this point John Sexton, who knows how to work the google machine, put up a post noting that Conor Friedersdorf had expressed either the exact same points, or, according to Conor, similar but not exactly the same points as Malkin did -- terrorists crossing the border, dual loyalties of recent Muslim immigrants -- late as 2006.

So... doesn't this mean Conor Friedersdorf is quite a silly goose? Apparently not, but let's put that aside for the moment.

At this point I jumped in on Twitter to begin asking Conor when -- given that he was now our self-appointed Minister of Online Hygiene -- he would be similarly doing a What a Silly Goose piece about his former boss/mentor Andrew Sullivan, and write up a fulsome attack on Sullivan's many conspiracy theories.

There is a part II to this stupid thing but Twitchy hasn't collected it up yet so that'll have to wait.

By the way, Conor did write about Sullivan's Trig Trutherism.

By defending Sullivan. By claiming that Sarah Palin was courting such suspicions because they helped her politically.

He disagrees with Sullivan that Palin faked a pregnancy (gee thanks for that bold stance) but then claims that maybe Palin's been advised to keep the proof of her birthing of Trig secret, in order to bait her critics into talking about her.

One explanation for the disparity in evidence: the persistence of questions about Trig helps Sarah Palin. All along, she has savvily used the notion that the media is treating her unfairly to enhance her popularity. An amoral political strategist would advise her to keep hard evidence of Trig’s maternity hidden at all costs in the hope that critics would continue questioning it — if Professor Bernstein and I, both of us huge Sarah Palin critics, doubt the merits of this line of inquiry, imagine how the average American reacts to it, and how the Sarah Palin base reacts. For better or worse, we live in a country where the politics of umbrage are very effective, and Ms. Palin is expert at them. Indeed I fear that speculation about Trig’s maternity increases the chance that she’ll win the 2012 GOP nomination. If a savvy political analyst can be found who disagrees with that assessment, I’d be surprised.

I'm savvy and I disagree. So I guess Conor is surprised.

Palin really rode Trig Trutherism to the nomination, huh? Like a stallion.

Conor then disagrees with Sullivan's claim that Palin's alleged parentage of Trig is the greatest, most odious lie ever perpetrated on the public... because Conor can think of even greater lies.

Later in his post, Andrew writes, “if Palin has lied about this, it’s the most staggering, appalling deception in the history of American politics.” I think that on reflection he’d reconsider. How staggering a lie is must relate to consequences. Consider Dick Cheney and the Iraq War, or the treatment of detainees at black sites around the world, just to name two political lies that resulted in loss of life and incalculable damage to our country.

So you know -- he's been a real bear on calling out His Side* for their unhinged remarks.

And now I'll do a real post.

Sorry.

* I have no idea what side Friedersdorf claims to be on. I don't know if he's still posing as a conservative so he can serve as House Conservative to liberal outfits, or if he's now confessed his actual partisan affiliation. I know rather little about him. This comes as a major surprise to him, as I'll note later.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (206)
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The ONT refreshing has become ummm, farkled and maddeningly slow, so let's transfer all the traffic to this thread and start a fresh farkeling.

While highly touted, and featured prominently in quite a few TV series (ex. Person of Interest), it turns out facial reco has a weak point.

...one of facial recognition systems' key weaknesses is that they have a hard time detecting - let alone recognizing - a face if it is not looking towards the camera, according to Dr Kilpatrick. "Absolutely the easiest thing you can do is look down at your feet," he concluded. "That won't attract much attention, but because surveillance cameras are generally mounted high up or at least at eye level, it will defeat pretty much any recognition system

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:26 PM | Comments (128)
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The Head Ewok's busy kicking Conor Friederwhatever in the nuts over on Twitter.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Posted by: andy at 10:16 AM | Comments (193)
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Frankly, I'm still amazed that cities are still subsidizing sports teams.

The problem with [the theory that sports subsidies help the economy] is that there is scant evidence that such economic benefits actually occur. Numerous studies done over the last 25 years have found that professional sport teams have little, if any, positive effect on a city’s economy. Usually, a new team or a new stadium location doesn’t increase the amount of consumer spending, it merely shifts it away from other, already existing sources. Entertainment dollars will be spent one way or another whether a stadium exists or not. Plus, the increase in jobs is often modest at best — nowhere near enough to offset the millions invested in the projects.

Indeed, the politicians deserve our scorn as much as the team owners do. The old Giants Stadium cost $78 million, yet the outstanding debt more than 30 years later is $110 million. How did this happen? Simple: The politicians spent the money that was originally intended to pay off the debt on other things. It's a common problem. Revenues get diverted to other programs and the stadium debt gets refinanced.

Posted by: CDR M at 06:05 PM | Comments (987)
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We take a break from Ace-A-Thon 2013 (see the PayPal button over to the left) to focus on the true victims of the Obamaquester....highly paid congressional aides.

Picture Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as the Sally Struthers of this charity movement.

The cuts have also affected the quality of life for congressional aides, said Wasserman Schultz, whose defense of Capitol Hill staffers amid budget cuts has won her unofficial den mother status among many. At the hearing, for example, she said prices of meals in House restaurants are getting so high that aides are being "priced out" of a good meal.

And, she added, the cuts demanded by House leaders over the past three years have lessened the attractiveness of Hill jobs. "The more we rob Peter to pay Paul," she said, "the tougher it is for us to compete not only with the private sector but with other federal agencies."

Listen you heartless bastards, you're just going to have to give up that occasional dinner out with the kids so Debbie's Kids can get a good meal in DC.

Oh and the next time your ungrateful little brats don't finish what's on their plates, remind them there are staffers in DC who can't afford The Palm. That'll teach them to take things for granted.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:25 AM | Comments (620)
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• Ohio Prosecutor Seeks Death Penalty For Punxsutawney Phil
  

Follow me on twitter.

Also, remember to kick a little scratch to Ace.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:30 AM | Comments (299)
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Ace-a-Thon Day 2. Give 'til it hurts.

Shot:

Chaser:

Journalist and political blogger Matthew Yglesias bought a three-bedroom, three-bath condo on Q Street in Logan Circle for $1.2 million. In a converted Victorian rowhouse, the unit has original exposed-brick walls and a private patio. Yglesias writes about business and the economy for Slate.

So, party at Matty's this weekend? I mean, I'm sure he won't mind if we crash the joint, what with that myth of owning private property and all.

Here at the HQ, we have our sights set much lower. All we're trying to do is get Ace a new cardboard box for the Spring, and maybe an upgrade to the fancy paper plates and individual plastic utensils ... although I hear he's going pretty well with his Assault Spork there under the bridge.

Posted by: andy at 04:24 AM | Comments (252)
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