Brendan Nyhan

The Houston Chronicle reports that President Bush is coming to Virginia to campaign for George Allen next week. Will the President disavow Allen’s remarks? So far, the White House is dodging the question:

White House spokesman Tony Snow abruptly cut off a question about whether Bush had anything to say [about the macaca incident].

“If he has, it has not been discussed. I gather Senator Allen has apologized for it,” Snow said.

Let’s hope the press covers this angle of Bush’s visit.

The legacy of Michael Kinsley, the former editor of The New Republic and Slate, continues to rot center-left opinion journalism.

The problem is that his writing and editing have elevated the “surprising” and “counter-intuitive” article above all else. The formula is always “I’m a liberal, but I think [something liberals don’t typically think]” or “Everything you know about [some topic] is wrong.” To his imitators, these cliched formulas take precedence over factual accuracy, clear analysis, or other mundane journalistic goals.

And over time, writers have gone further and further in pursuit of counter-intuitive takes on familiar topics. In late 2005, Slate published a disturbing article that gave a winking endorsement voter fraud and an article praising the entertainment value of the melee involving Ron Artest at a NBA game in Detroit.

The latest entry in the counter-intuitive derby is “A defense of Ann Coulter” by an entry-level New Republic reporter-researcher named Elspeth Reeve. What better way to break in at TNR than to defend the most loathsome pundit in America?

Coulter has endorsed violence and treason prosecutions against her political opponents on multiple occasions, but to Reeve, those are immaterial:

Yes, yes, Coulter has said some terrible things. But I don’t think it’s the terrible things that really bother liberals. Coulter makes us cringe not when she lies, but when she says things we wish weren’t true.

Really? I’m not upset when Coulter says she regrets that Timothy McVeigh didn’t blow up the New York Times? Instead, according to Reeve, liberals are bothered when Coulter says things “we wish weren’t true.”

She provides three examples, none of which make any sense, as Bob Somerby pointed out. Here’s the first one:

Asked to define the First Amendment: “An excuse for overweight women to dance in pasties and The New York Times to commit treason.” Just completely terrible, I know. But I have to admit, I giggled—having recently covered a pro-choice rally where I interviewed a very nice young woman whose nipples were covered by NARAL stickers.

Does seeing one person with nipples covered by NARAL stickers make Coulter’s statement “true”? This is epistemology for five-year-olds. And what about the New York Times treason remark?

Next, Reeve writes:

Or take Coulter’s most infamous line: Writing about her friend’s death on September 11, she finished her essay with, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” Wow, that’s pretty indefensible. The United States could never — would never — do such a thing. Instead, we’ve invaded their countries, killed their leaders, and are desperately trying to convert them to secularism. (It’s not like mullahs appreciate the difference.)

As Somerby notes, Coulter was making an argument about what the US should do, not predicting what it would do. Her statement cannot be either true or untrue – it’s simply an expression of her (repulsive) personal beliefs. Again, Reeve doesn’t seem to understand epistemology on even a basic level.

Finally, Reeve quotes Coulter refusing to withdraw her attack on the “Jersey Girls”:

“I didn’t write about the 9/11 widows. I wrote about four widows cutting campaign commercials for John Kerry and using the fact that their husbands died on 9/11 to prevent anyone from responding,” [Coulter] said. The thing is…it’s kind of true. A little. It is a little absurd to hold up a person as an expert judge of the 9/11 Commission Report, for example, just because she lost a loved one. Liberals do tend to do that kind of thing, and it makes us look like weenies.

But as Somerby writes, “[i]t isn’t true that the ‘Jersey Girls’ were held up as experts ‘just because they lost loved ones.’ The women in question did make themselves experts, on a wide range of relevant matters, in the aftermath of 9/11.”

Other than these three points, Reeve’s article amounts to the statement is that she personally enjoys Coulter’s over-the-top hysterics because she once was an embattled liberal using outlandish arguments against conservative co-workers:

I love Ann Coulter because, in her, I see a loudmouth on the assembly line, fighting not to be squished and whittled and boxed into the shape Washington seems to think fits a girl just right.

In short, the article is an incoherent mess. But even the usually reliable Jon Chait, my favorite opinion writer, defended it on TNR’s blog:

Elspeth Reeve, our extremely talented reporter-researcher, penned a clever, interesting, very well-executed defense of despicable authoritarian pundit Ann Coulter. Now, I found her ultimate point to be highly unpersuasive, as I imagine most people did, but this was a piece less about the destination than the journey. What made her column interesting was not the counterintuitive shock value but the fact that she had thought-provoking observations about Coulter’s role in the political culture, however indefensible her conclusion may have been.

Note Chait’s reasoning. Reeve’s conclusion is “highly unpersuasive” and “indefensible,” but the article is “clever,” “interesting,” “very well-executed,” and “thought-provoking.” Why? Chait disavows the “counterintuitive shock value,” but what else is there? Reeve’s argument makes literally no sense, which reduces the article to the surprising statement that a TNR writer “loves” Coulter and relates to her. There’s nothing else there.

So who will the aspiring TNR writers of the future choose to defend now that the new bar has been set? Rush Limbaugh? David Horowitz? Comments are open.

John McCain came to Virginia to campaign for George Allen yesterday and inadvertently reinforced the “macaca” gaffe that Allen is trying to downplay:

Maybe somebody should have clued in Sen. John McCain.

First, Sen. George Allen, R-Va., wound up a few dozen veterans with a “we win, they lose, there’s no substitute victory” strategy for Iraq, then McCain followed with a joke about a monkey flying an airplane.

McCain, R-Ariz., was in town Wednesday night to lure some votes for his Republican colleague, Allen, who has heard enough monkey jokes lately. Especially since a report was unearthed that he used “macaca” in reference to S.R. Sidarth, a worker of Indian descendent for the campaign of Allen’s Democratic opponent, Jim Webb.

Macaca is a genus of monkey.

Oops.

Update 8/17 10:47 AM: Or, as a commenter asks, was McCain intentionally undermining a potential 2008 rival? It’s hard to know.

Update 8/20 5:17 PM: The Richmond Times-Dispatch asks the same question:

It is unclear whether McCain’s monkey joke was a warning shot fired over Allen’s bow by a potential rival in 2008, or a joke that he delivers to audiences with a large Naval component, such as the Allen rally in Norfolk. The punch line is that a monkey becomes an admiral.

Also, a commenter asks what joke McCain actually told. A Daily Kos commenter claims to have been provided with the audio of the joke and posted this transcript, which matches the Times-Dispatch account of the punchline:

Not long before I retired from the Navy, I was over at the Officers’ Club at Oceania, having a Coca-Cola, as most fighter pilots do, and standing next to me was this guy who was really old and ancient and senile-looking…and I noticed that he was carrying one stripe on his sleeve, an Ensign, the lowest rank you can be as an officer, and I said, ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘how long have you been in the Navy?’ He said, ’37 years.’ I said, ‘And all those years in the Navy you were never promoted?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, I was stationed at the first squadron that was at Guadalcanal in World War II. It was terrible, the food was terrible. Every night, one Japanese airplane used to fly over Henderson Field, and it wasn’t an air raid, it was just this harassment airplane, we called him Washing Machine Charlie. But the sirens would go off, we’d have to get out of our tents, get into our airplanes, start the engine, sit there–pretty soon the “all clear” siren would go off and then we’d go back to bed. It was killing me, I wouldn’t get any sleep at night and it was awful. So I went out in the jungle and I solved the problem. I got–I caught this monkey, and I trained the monkey that when the siren went off, he’d come out of the jungle, get into my airplane, start the engine, sit there, the “all clear” siren would go off, he’d shut down the engine, get out of the airplane and go back in the jungle. It was wonderful. I was sleeping like a baby. Well, sure enough, one night it was not just Washing Machine Charlie. It was a real Japanese air raid. I came out of my tent just in time to see that monkey taking off in my airplane.’ I said, ‘Well, I can certainly see why you were not promoted!’ He said, ‘That’s not what makes me mad. The monkey retired as an admiral last week!’

I think…I served with that monkey at one time or another…

According to Hotline On Call, Senator George Allen’s campaign is peddling a new excuse of his offensive “macaca” gaffe — it was a combination of “mohawk” and “caca” made up by his campaign staffers:

What does Macaca really mean? Three Virginia Republicans confirmed to the Hotline that several Allen campaign aides and advisers are telling allies that the word was a made-up, off-the-cuff neologism that these aides occasionally used to refer to tracker S.R. Sidarth well before last Saturday’s videotaped encounter.

According to two Republicans who heard the word used, “macaca” was a mash-up of “Mohawk,” referring to Sidarth’s distinctive hair, and “caca,” Spanish slang for excrement, or “shit.”

Said one Republican close to the campaign: “In other words, he was a shit-head, an annoyance.” Allen, according to Republicans, heard members of his traveling entourage and Virginia Republicans use the phrase and picked it up.
It was the first word that came to his mind when he spied Sidarth at the weekend’s event, according to Republicans who have been briefed on Allen’s version of the event.

Let’s recall, however, the AP report noting that Allen claimed he made the word up himself:

On Monday, Allen spokesman Dick Wadhams said the name “Macaca” was a variation of “Mohawk,” the nickname Allen campaign staffers gave Sidarth for his partially cropped haircut. Allen, however, said Tuesday that he made up the name himself.

Here’s the statement Allen gave to CNN in which he said he “made up a nickname” for Sidarth:

I also made up a nickname for the cameraman, which was in no way intended to be racially derogatory. Any insinuations to the contrary are completely false.

Wonkette is right to call this the “Shittiest. Explanation. Ever.”

Update 8/17 10:17 AM: The Allen explanation quoted by ABC News is completely incoherent:

“Some of our staff folks was calling him ‘mohawk’ and at any rate I didn’t know what him name was, I didn’t know what ‘macaca’ means,” Allen said.

This doesn’t seem to square with the “mohawk” plus “caca” story. Also, is Allen really that inarticulate?

Update 8/17 10:31 AM: Here’s yet another one, this time from the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Allen said, “For folks to think I would know what sorts of genus of monkeys are in eastern Asia, ascribe a lot more intelligence to me than I actually have.”

No comment.

Given George Allen’s ugly racial history, will the “macaca” gaffe hurt his prospects for the 2008 presidential nomination?

Back in April, I noted that Ryan Lizza’s devastating Allen cover story in The New Republic had no effect on futures market prices for his 2008 presidential candidacy.

Will “macaca” be different? Here are live charts of futures market trading on the contract for Allen receiving the 2008 GOP presidential nomination over the last 24 hours, last week, and the lifetime of the contract, respectively — the 24 hours chart currently suggests that a decline may be taking place:

It’s an open question (PDF) in political science whether futures market prices accurately reflect the probability of a candidate’s success, but if they do, these prices could be a leading indicator of damage to Allen’s prospects.

According to the Washington Post, Senator George Allen, the 2008 presidential contender with an ugly history of exploiting racial issues, has described his senatorial opponent’s non-white staffer using a word meaning monkey:

S.R. Sidarth, a senior at the University of Virginia, had been trailing Allen with a video camera to document his travels and speeches for the Webb campaign. During a campaign speech Friday in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, Allen singled out Sidarth and called him a word that sounded like “Macaca.”

“This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He’s with my opponent. He’s following us around everywhere. And it’s just great. We’re going to places all over Virginia, and he’s having it on film and its great to have you here and you show it to your opponent because he’s never been there and probably will never come.”

After telling the crowd that Webb was raising money in California with a “bunch of Hollywood movie moguls,” Allen again referenced Sidarth, who was born and raised in Fairfax County.

“Let’s give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” said Allen, who then began talking about the “war on terror”…

According to the Post, “macaca” refers to a type of monkey (actually a genus; “Makaka” is a town in South Africa). It’s hard to see how there’s an innocent explanation for this. This isn’t a case where Allen misspoke or mangled his phrasing – he used an obscure term twice. Why would he do that unless “macaca” has some particular meaning behind it? In addition, the statement “Welcome to America” is highly offensive given that Sidarth is non-white.

The Allen campaign offered a preposterous defense of “macaca”:

[Allen campaign manager Dick] Wadhams said Allen campaign staffers had begun calling Sidarth “mohawk” because of a haircut Wadhams said the Webb staffer has. “Macaca was just a variation of that,” Wadhams said.

Somehow, “macaca” is a variation of “mohawk”? That claim makes no sense — the words are completely different (other than starting with the letter m) and have no conceptual relationship.

Also, why did the Post let Wadhams defend Allen? Error-prone candidates like Allen are often allowed to hide behind their staff rather than talking directly with reporters. Only Allen knows what he meant — he should have to explain himself.

The claim that “macaca” is a variant of “mohawk” reminds me of Allen’s 2005 claim that the noose he hung from a tree in his law office in the early 1990s as “more of a lasso,” even though nearly every media report describes it as a noose and Allen and his staff referred to it as such all the way through 2004.

In short, Allen’s very long list of racially insensitive actions has grown again. He’s twice referred to his opponent’s non-white campaign staffer using a term that means monkey, hung a noose from a tree in his law office, displayed a Confederate flag on numerous occasions from 1967-2000, featured the flag in his first statewide television ad in Virginia, signed a Confederate Heritage Month proclamation that described the Civil War as “a four-year struggle for independence and state’s rights,” opposed the 1991 Civil Rights Act, opposed creating a holiday for Martin Luther King, voted against changing a racially offensive state song, and initially defended Trent Lott after he praised Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat presidential candidacy.

Do you want a man with that resume as President?

Update 8/14 6:08 PM: In comments, SomeCallMeTim notes that Atrios has posted a n alleged picture of Sidarth pulled from a Kos comment thread, and the person in the picture did not have a mohawk at the time it was taken. Also, Atrios notes that the term “macaque” — the English name for monkeys in the macaca genus — is an established racial slur that is pronounced similarly to “macaca” (one of the pronunciations is ma-käk).

Update 8/14 8:13 PM: More on Sidarth’s haircut from the Associated Press — it sure doesn’t sound like a mohawk:

Whether the University of Virginia senior’s haircut–closely cropped around the temples and above the ears, but otherwise full–qualifies as a Mohawk is open to interpretation. Sidarth said he does not consider it a Mohawk.

Update 8/15 10:25 AM: Allen apologized in an interview with the Post last night, implausibly claiming that he didn’t know what the word meant and that it was a derivative of mohawk:

Reached Monday evening, Allen said that the word had no derogatory meaning for him and that he was sorry. “I would never want to demean him as an individual. I do apologize if he’s offended by that. That was no way the point.”

Asked what macaca means, Allen said: “I don’t know what it means.” He said the word sounds similar to “mohawk,” a term that his campaign staff had nicknamed Sidarth because of his haircut. Sidarth said his hairstyle is a mullet — tight on top, long in the back.

Allen said that by the comment welcoming him to America, he meant: “Just to the real world. Get outside the Beltway and get to the real world.”

If he doesn’t know what the term means, why did he use it twice?

The Post also ran an editorial on “George Allen’s America” today that sums everything up nicely:

“MY FRIENDS, we’re going to run this campaign on positive, constructive ideas,” Sen. George F. Allen told a rally of Republican supporters in Southwest Virginia last week. “And it’s important that we motivate and inspire people for something.” Whereupon Mr. Allen turned his attention to a young campaign aide working for his Democratic opponent — a University of Virginia student from Fairfax County who was apparently the only person of color present — and proceeded to ridicule him.

Let’s consider which positive, constructive or inspirational ideas Mr. Allen had in mind when he chose to mock S.R. Sidarth of Dunn Loring, who was recording the event with a video camera on behalf of James Webb, the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat Mr. Allen holds. The idea that holding up minorities to public scorn in front of an all-white crowd will elicit chortles and guffaws? (It did.) The idea that a candidate for public office can say “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!” to an American of Indian descent and really mean nothing offensive by it? (So insisted Mr. Allen’s aides.) Or perhaps the idea that bullying your opponents and calling them strange names — Mr. Allen twice referred to Mr. Sidarth as “Macaca” — is within the bounds of decency on the campaign trail?

We have no inkling as to what Mr. Allen meant by “Macaca,” though we rather doubt his campaign’s imaginative explanation that it was somehow an allusion to Mr. Sidarth’s hairstyle, a mullet. Mr. Allen said last night that no slur was intended, though he failed to explain what, exactly, he did have in mind. Macaca is the genus for macaques, a type of monkey found mainly in Asia. Mr. Allen, who as a young man had a fondness for Confederate flags and later staunchly opposed a state holiday in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has surely learned too much about racial sensitivities in public life to misspeak so offensively.

Mr. Sidarth, who is 20, is a senior at U-Va.; he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax after compiling an excellent academic record. He is thinking of applying to law school. He may be forgiven if his week-long foray on the campaign trail with Mr. Allen has left him with a bitter taste. “I think he was doing it because he could, and I was the person of color there and it was useful for him in inciting his audience,” Mr. Sidarth told us. “I’m disgusted he would use my race in a political context.”

We don’t blame him for feeling that way. But really, by mocking Mr. Sidarth, Sen. George F. Allen demeaned only himself.

Update 8/15 12:17 PM: TNR’s Ryan Lizza notes a connection between the ethnic slur “macaque” and Allen’s background:

Not only is macaque apparently a French slur used to describe North Africans, Allen would have good reason to know it is. His mother is French Tunisian (yeah, that’s in North Africa), and Allen speaks French.

Update 8/15 8:47 PM: The AP suggests that there is a contradiction between the back story for “macaca” given by Wadhams and the one provided by Allen:

On Monday, Allen spokesman Dick Wadhams said the name “Macaca” was a variation of “Mohawk,” the nickname Allen campaign staffers gave Sidarth for his partially cropped haircut. Allen, however, said Tuesday that he made up the name himself.

Here’s the key quote from Allen’s statement to CNN:

I also made up a nickname for the cameraman, which was in no way intended to be racially derogatory. Any insinuations to the contrary are completely false.

Update 8/16 9:33 AM: Sidarth’s haircut was vaguely reminiscent of a mohawk — here’s a picture from today’s New York Times article on the controversy:

Postscript: It’s also amusing/disturbing how Allen bashes his opponent for raising money from a “bunch of Hollywood movie moguls,” given that he was raised in the “exclusive cliffside community” of Palos Verdes in a “palatial home with sweeping views of downtown Los Angeles and the Santa Monica basin.” Allen makes President Bush’s faux rancher act seem authentic.

Back in May, “The Fool” posted one of my favorite Brendan-hating comments ever:

Is it just me or does everyone else cringe when they see Hyhan’s smug mug pictured on this web page. That picture just screams, “Look at me! I’m such a weasel!”

Well, there’s a new picture of my smug mug up on the left sidebar – I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it is more or less weaselly…

Since 9/11, pundits and politicians have frequently compared their opponents to terrorists, Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban.

Michael Crowley at TNR has flagged the latest offender: a Daily Kos diary post that is currently featured on the Kos homepage which includes this charming image:

As Crowley wrote, “I don’t think you have to be a Joe apologist to find this pretty deplorable.”

Meanwhile, TPM Muckraker highlights allegations that the Republican National Committee digitally altered a photo of Howard Dean to add a Hitler mustache. If true, it’s deplorable, but it’s not clear to me (as a non-expert) whether the original “mustache” was just a shadow.

Here’s the original, which was posted Thursday:

And here’s the second image, which was posted later the same day:

Ben Fritz (my friend and former Spinsanity co-editor) has a great post about the nasty rhetorical tactics of Joe Lieberman:

[N]ot only does Joe Lieberman neglect to criticize George W. Bush, he’s starting to talk like George Bush. He’s specifically picking up one of Bush’s worst, most anti-democratic, rhetorical tricks, one we criticized extensively in “All the President’s Spin.”

Here’s Lieberman talking at his primary concession / independent campaign launch speech on Tuesday:

I am disappointed not just because I lost, but because the old politics of partisan polarization won today. For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand.

I expect that my opponent will continue to do in the general election what he has done in the primary … partisan polarizing instead of talking about how we can solve people’s problems, insults instead of ideas. In other words, more of the same old partisan politics that has assailed Washington today.

This is a classic George W. Bush: accuse your opponent of engaging in “partisan polarization” because he disagrees with you. The definition of non-partisanship is of course, agreeing with Joe Lieberman or George W. Bush 100%.

Because Ned Lamont has substantive disagreements with Joe Lieberman — especially on whether we should have invaded Iraq; how much the President deserves to be criticized for his poor conduct of the war; and whether we should set a timetable to pull out — he is a partisan.

Bush does this all the time, especially in his first term when he often claiemd he wanted to “change the tone” in Washington. To quote page 114 of “All the President’s Spin”: “This formulation defined his own agenda as ‘what’s right for the people’ and those who criticized him as ‘acrimonious and bitter.’ In practice, of course, ‘changing the tone’ is impossible unless one party simply gives in to the other. As Bush defined it, the standard would prohibit vigorous disagreement between parties — the essence of democratic debate.”

Joe Lieberman should just be honest about his substantive differences with Lamont and run on those. Lieberman is a centrist (right of center on national security, left of center on many domestic issues). So he should run as a centrist against Lamont the liberal. Then let the voters decide. Instead, he portrays his centrism as a holier-than-thou rising above the partisan fray. It’s not only dishonest, but in an era when the Republican congressional leadership and President Bush have made have made bipartisanship as quaint as the Geneva Conventions, it’s not very politically tenable. I suspect that’s why the majority of Connecticut Democrats decided to lean to their left and vote for Lamont, rather than their right for Lieberman.

Update (2:30 PM PST): Wow it didn’t take long for Lieberman to start copying even more of Bush’s nasty spin tactics. Look what Mr. non-partisan said the very same day that authorities stopped a (seemingly) major terrorist plot:

“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England,” Mr. Lieberman said at a campaign event at lunchtime in Waterbury, Conn. “It will strengthen them and they will strike again.”

News flash, Joe: It wasn’t insurgents from Iraq who were planning to blow up those planes. It was, according to the NY Times, “mainly British-born Muslims some of Pakistani descent.” I highly doubt our staying in or withdrawing from Iraq would deter such terrorists. There’s certainly no evidence connecting the two.

Of course, notice Joe didn’t exactly say they were connected. He just said a withdrawal from Iraq “will be taken as a tremendous victory” by the alleged terrorists who were arrested today. Of course that could be true. Who knows what they would think. That’s not factually wrong. It’s just implying a connection where there’s no evidence at all.

Why, it almost reminds me of George W. Bush’s tendency to imply a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks, even though there was no evidence linking the two, by saying things like “we know that after September the 11, Saddam Huseein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.”

Again, this is a nasty, dishonest, undemocratic rhetorical tactic President Bush uses all the time that we criticized at length in All the President’s Spin. Now that the Democratic voters of Connecticut Democrats have rejected him for being too close to W., Lieberman seems determined to prove them right by sinking to the President’s level of spin.

Heritage Foundation senior foreign policy analyst John Hulsman, who was fired for criticizing the President’s policies, describes the idyllic atmosphere inside the think tank to TNR’s Spencer Ackerman:

When [Hulsman] arrived [at Heritage] in 1999 to revitalize its European studies program, Heritage seemed an exciting and intellectually open place to work. “It was always a big tent,” he remembers. “There was a sense that you had authoritarians, neocons, realists and libertarians, all bubbling along.”

As the Sesame Street song goes, one of these things is not like the others. Hint: It’s the one Merriam-Webster Online defines as “(1) of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority; (2)
of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people.”

This is the most important conservative think tank in Washington. Isn’t it a big deal when a former Heritage analyst describes members of its staff as authoritarian?

Postscript: Back in 2002, David Broder, the “dean” of the Washington press corps, wrote that Heritage and the Cato Institute’s “usefulness in Washington politics stems from their intellectual honesty and their willingness to question conventional wisdom, even when their friends are in power,” ignoring ample evidence of Heritage’s intellectual dishonesty. Hulsman’s firing perfectly illustrates the extent to which Heritage is willing to “question conventional wisdom, even when their friends are in power.” Anyone think Broder will reconsider?

Correction 8/10 10:42 PM: As Mungowitz points out in comments, the original version of this post inadvertently stated that Broder ignored “ample evidence of their [Heritage and Cato’s] intellectual dishonesty.” It has been corrected to say “Heritage’s intellectual dishonesty” above, which was the point I was trying to make (hence the link to a Spinsanity article about Heritage). Apologies for the error.