May 6, 2008 6:06

Polling Place Story of the Day

There have been concerns that Indiana's voter ID law, recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, might be causing some confusion at the polls today. Reports are that voting is generally going smoothly, but I don't think anyone expected this:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

Nonetheless, she said, the convent will make a "very concerted effort" to get proper identification for the nuns in time for the general election. "We're going to take from now until November to get them out and get this done. You can't do this like school kids on a bus," she said. "I wish we could."

May 6, 2008 1:49

Clinton's Day After Option

For much of the day yesterday, The Huffington Post carried this banner headline:

CLINTON CAMP SAYS IT WILL USE THE NUCLEAR OPTION

All that was missing was a Drudge-style siren. The gist of the story, which first carried the headline "Clinton Camp Considering Nuclear Option," was that Clinton folks might try to "ram" a decision through the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee, which has its next scheduled meeting on May 31, to seat the delegations from the disputed Michigan and Florida primaries. In other words, the Clinton people not only want Florida and Michigan to count -- because Hillary "won" them -- but they might actually try to make them count.

It's hard to work up the solicited level of righteous indignation about this revelation when Clinton and her aides have been arguing for several months now, publicly and incessantly, that Michigan and Florida should count. Is that position crassly self-serving? Does it demonstrate a blatant disregard for fair play and a blithe willingness to bend the rules for personal advantage? Does it betray a ruthless, win-at-any-cost, positively Clintonian approach to electoral politics?

You might say so, especially if you're an Obama partisan. Alternatively, if you're a Clinton partisan or a Democrat in Michigan or Florida, you might say the people of those fine states deserve to have their voices heard and their votes count, etc, etc.

Either way, I wouldn't call it explosive news. Since it was the Rules & Bylaws Committee that ruled last December that Michigan and Florida's rogue delegations would not count and would not be seated, it stands to reason that the way to change that decision is to get the Committee to reverse itself.

Is that the nuclear option? Would it, in other words, lay to waste all that was built before it, namely Obama's otherwise insurmountable and indisputable lead? Only if it happened in a vacuum -- with no other developments in the race between now and May 31. Or if, say, Obama were to slow or halt Clinton's momentum today by pulling off a surprise win in Indiana.

But it isn't going to unfold that way. It's true that the known allegiances among the 30 members Rules & Bylaws Committee tilt toward Clinton. Harold Ickes is a member of the committee, after all, and he's the aide spearheading Hillary's effort to win a favorable resolution to the Florida and Michigan problem. But as the HuffPo story rightly goes on to say, the Clinton campaign would attempt the strategy of "ramming" a reversal through the Rules & Bylaws Committee only "under specific circumstances" -- circumstances that begin with Clinton having an exceptionally good day today in Indiana and North Carolina. From there, she would have to continue her momentum by racking up victories in primaries through the end of May, thereby hammering home her argument that she's the better general election candidate in November.

Those circumstances would have to prevail, but even they would not be enough. There would also have to be a concurrent, spreading panic among Democratic officials and officeholders about Obama's liabilities, the kind of panic that would lead super-delegates of all types to line up in large numbers behind Clinton. At that point -- i.e., in the midst of a dramatic upheaval in the party -- members of the Rules & Bylaws Committee might be willing to risk their own political futures by deciding to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations according to the primary results. But they would be following, not leading. The bomb would have gone off already. The Committee would act on the Day After.

Is any of it likely to happen? I still don't think so. But in the past few weeks, the impossible has become merely the improbable.

May 6, 2008 1:26

McCain Camp Pushes Back on HuffPost Voting Claim

Hey, Mark Salter, why don't you tell us how you really feel?

Asked why Huffington would make up her story about McCain not voting for Bush, longtime McCain aide Mark Salter -- who has previously tangled with the Huffington Post -- ripped into her. "Why would she make something up? Because she's a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva. And that's on the record."

Arianna has an equally tart response:

Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. "It's not true," Bounds told the Washington Post, "and I ask you to consider the source."

My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

As a piece of political jujitsu, Arianna's claim is sort of brilliant: If it's true, yeah, sure, it makes McCain's recent attempts to solidify the GOP base seem craven. (And it confirms the worst suspicions of some Republicans.) If it's not true -- and, honestly, it doesn't quite scan -- no matter how often he crosses party lines, he is, at heart, a loyal Republican and he always has been. And unfortunately for McCain, the distinction between being loyal to his party and loyal to this exceedingly unpopular president is rather fine.

Something I'm sure Arianna knows: McCain's association with Bush hurts him more than Wright hurts Obama.

May 6, 2008 12:27

Everything You Thought You Knew About Evangelicals Is Wrong (Maybe)

Key West, FL
Greetings from a dim conference room. Today's diversion from the beach was a presentation from Michael Lindsay in which he presented "eight myths about evangelicals." Lindsay is the author of "Faith in the Halls of Power," and had conducted some of academia's most thorough and sensitive research on evangelicalism. His "myths" are after the jump.

(This is an especially interesting set of statements in light of tomorrow's release of "An Evangelical Manifesto" at the National Press Club, which -- according to Lindsay -- seeks to clarify to the relationship of evangelicals to public life; specifically, to assert that politics is not the main locus of evangelicals' engagement with public life.)

May 6, 2008 12:18

Ashcroft, Yoo to Testify

At last! What would you ask them?

UPDATE: A subpoena has been authorized for Cheney COS Addington.

May 6, 2008 10:52

Newt Gingrich Warns the GOP: 'Real Disaster' is Coming

Writing in Human Events, the former Speaker says that Saturday's loss of a long-held Republican House seat in Louisiana, coming after a similar defeat in Illinois, "should be a sharp wake up call for Republicans: Either Congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November."

Newt contends:

The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.

This model has already been tested with disastrous results.

Newt's answer:

May 6, 2008 10:30

You Can't Talk to Iran...

if they don't want to talk to you. Of course, every effort shold be made to negotiate--but it's always good to bear in mind that the mullahs have been as recalcitrant as the Bush Administration...and more recalcitrant than the Clinton Administration (at least, in Clinton's latter years). In 2000, a handshake had been choreographed between Clinton and then-Iranian President Khatami during the UN General Assembly meeting, but Khatami pulled out of the deal at the last minute--pressure from the Supreme Leader Khamenei and his circle. (I've been told that Khatami says that backing out of the handshake was the greatest regret of his presidency.)

It's no secret why the mullahs are reluctant to talk to us: they need a Great Satan to keep their public distracted from the generally disastrous job they're doing running the government. As I've written before, my favorite piece of (official) graffiti in Teheran is painted on the old U.S. Embassy--now the Museum of the Great Satan: "On the day the Great Satan praises us, We shall mourn..." I've always thought that was the perfect rationale for unilateral U.S. recognition of Iran: it's the last thing the mullahs want.

Meanwhile, according to AFP via Juan Cole, Khatami has reemerged and is speaking more courageously than he ever did as President:

' In his speech, Khatami referred to the ambition of Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to export the 1979 Islamic revolution around the world, but expressed fear this wish was being distorted. "What did the imam (Khomeini) mean by exporting the revolution?" he asked in the speech Friday to university students in the northern province of Gilan, according to the Kargozaran newspaper. "Did he mean that we take up arms, that we blow up places in other nations and we create groups to carry out sabotage in other countries? The imam was vehemently against this and was confronting it," he added. His speech has been seen by some observers as accusing the Iranian authorities of encouraging militants to destabilize the Middle East, in particular Iraq and Lebanon. '

It'll be interested to see how long it will take for the mullahs to shut him down.