Brendan Nyhan

I just received a fundraising solicitation from the RNC with this quote from Hillary Clinton on the envelope, at the top of the letter, and in the body of the letter: “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

It’s presented with no context in the first two cases. And in the body of the letter, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman writes:

As you decide how much to send I want you to take to heart the words of New York Senator Hillary Clinton when she said, “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

These words of warning have profound and troubling implications for all Americans.

President Reagan frequently reminded us that in America the government works for us. The leaders of the Democrats see it the other way around.

If the liberal Democrats win in 2006, we can expect massive tax and spending increases and a total defeat of the Bush agenda.

Now, I’m no Hillary fan and don’t like the language she used, but the RNC is taking the quote at least partially out of context. It comes from a speech Hillary gave in San Francisco last year, which the AP reported as follows:

Headlining an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is up for re-election this year, Hillary Clinton told several hundred supporters — some of whom had ponied up as much as $10,000 to attend — to expect to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control of Congress.

“Many of you are well enough off that … the tax cuts may have helped you,” Sen. Clinton said. “We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

In short, she was talking specifically to the rich donors who were her audience, and she was advocating the repeal of tax cuts, not the confiscation of property. But knowing the way the media echo chamber works, I’m sure the out-of-context version will take on a life of its own soon enough.

The latest issue of the Washington Monthly has a creative set of policy recommendations for governors planning to run for the White House. Well worth a read.

It also has a decent article on the declining political fortunes of Governor Schwarzanegger, who is discovering that trying to go it alone in the two-party system isn’t as easy as it seems. This fantastic caricature, which isn’t in the online version of the article, sums it all up:

Via Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber, I see that the indefatigable Tim Lambert has caught John Lott posting yet another fraudulent review of his own work under a pseudonym. According to Lambert, Lott has now posted eighteen anonymous five-star reviews of his own books. Unbelievable and sad.

In a Washington Monthly review of The Survivor by John F. Harris, Jeff Greenfield dredges up some Clinton-era propaganda:

Reading The Survivor is to be reminded of the sheer chaos that at times seemed to swamp the White House, from the superficial (sloppy dress,”boxers or briefs?,” chronic tardiness, all-night pizza pig-outs) to the problematic (a $200 haircut on Air Force One, the Whitewater and travel office dustups) to the tragic (the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, one of Hillary Clinton’s closest friends).

In fact, the $200 price for the haircut Clinton received on Air Force One is, like much of the story, undocumented or untrue. No one knows how much Clinton paid; the $200 figure — Christophe’s usual rate — became attached to the story as if it were fact. (And, contrary to widespread belief, the haircut did not tie up air traffic at LAX.)

Greenfield should know better. But then again, if media elites actually cared about the facts, many Clinton-era urban legends would not still be conventional wisdom.

Tom McMahon, the executive director of the DNC, just sent out an anti-nuclear option email to supporters that includes this passage:

[Republicans are] trying to seize absolute control over all three branches of government — and they will do anything to get what they want. In one move they will try to simultaneously crush all dissent in the Senate and destroy the bedrock democratic principle of a fair and independent judiciary.

Time to restate the obvious: The nuclear option does not give Republicans absolute control of the Senate, it will not “crush all dissent in the Senate,” and it will not destroy the “principle of a fair and independent judiciary.” I don’t support the nuclear option, but this hysterical, over-the-top rhetoric makes Democrats look foolish. Losing the right to filibuster judicial nominees does not mean you can’t be an active opposition that can exercise its powers of dissent in all kinds of ways. It just means you can’t require a supermajority to approve a nomination. There’s a difference.

(Previous posts on Tom McMahon and the nuclear option.)

“Avedon,” a guest blogger at Eschaton, displays the classic reasoning of the conspiracy-minded:

One reason I don’t think it’s at all paranoid to suspect that the Republicans have deliberately taken over the voting system in order to cheat is that they keep doing things that don’t otherwise make sense. There’s a rather long list of things you just wouldn’t expect them to think they could get away with unless they really thought they could control the ballot box, because otherwise they would have to expect that the public would kick enough of them out to not only end some political careers but also make impeachment – and prison – a distinct possibility.

And then there’s this nuclear option thing – why would they be willing to remove any possibility of stopping majority party initiatives unless they were absolutely sure that they could never become the minority party again?

Conservatives have made good use of the filibuster over the years, on judicial nominations and a lot of other things. Are they absolutely certain no one will wake up and get rid of them? Or are they just sure that how we vote isn’t going to matter?

Give me a break — has anyone heard of Occam’s Razor? Here’s a simpler explanation: the GOP is overconfident about how long they’re going to be in the majority. It’s sad that this sort of nonsense is appearing on one of the most popular liberal blogs.

Time’s Joe Klein joins my call to oppose any Clinton or Bush running for president in 2008:

What’s more, I suspect there would
be innate and appropriate populist resistance to this slouch toward
monarchial democracy [if Hillary runs for president in 2008]. There is something fundamentally
un-American — and very European — about the Clintons and the Bushes
trading the office every eight years, with stale, familiar corps of
retainers, supporters and enemies. Bill Clinton was a good President.
Hillary Clinton is a good Senator. But enough already. (And that goes
for you too, Jeb.)

A Bush or Dole has been on every Republican ticket since 1976, and if Hillary is chosen by the Democrats in 2008, that would mean that Clintons would have been three of the party’s last five nominees. This is not an aristocracy — our presidential politics need fresh blood.

Media Matters nails a couple of uncanny similarities in David Brooks’ and John Tierney’s columns:

Brooks on President Bush’s Social Security proposal, May 8: Democrats have been hectoring President Bush in the manner of an overripe Fourth of July orator. … Over the past few weeks, the president has called their bluff.

Tierney on President Bush’s Social Security proposal, April 30: Democrats have good reason to be aghast at President Bush’s new proposal for Social Security. Someone has finally called their bluff.

Brooks on thin people dying sooner, April 24: People who work out, eat responsibly and deserve to live are more likely to be culled by the Thin Reaper.

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. Since I read about this report a few days ago, I haven’t been able to stop grinning.

Tierney on thin people dying sooner, April 23: For those of us lacking six-pack abs, this week’s report that the overweight live longer is the greatest medical news in history.

And here’s Kevin Drum on another parallel set of passages:

Here’s Tierney on Saturday writing about George Bush’s Social Security plan:

Faced with the grim math, President Bush offered a progressive compromise last week to Democrats: protect the poor while moderating the growth of benefits for higher-income workers. Democrats refused to bite, denouncing his “cuts” without offering a plan of their own, and members of both parties wondered why any politician would jeopardize his party’s chances in 2006 by tackling an unpleasant future problem.

And here’s Brooks on Sunday:

By embracing the progressive indexing of Social Security benefits, the president has asked us to make a shared sacrifice for the common good. He’s asking middle- and upper-class folks to accept benefit cuts so there will be money for the people who are really facing poverty….So how has the St. Francis of Assisi wing of the Democratic Party responded to Bush’s challenge? Does it applaud him for doing what it has spent the past years telling him he should do? Of course not.

This is what happens when liberal media tastes dictate the selection of “acceptable” conservatives — you get two libertarian-leaning non-evangelicals who focus on humorous pop psychology/sociology instead of ideology or policy and thus have similar takes on most issues. The problem is that they’ve both turned out to be pretty useless on the op-ed page; their columns aren’t funny or interesting, and neither has displayed any particular insight into policy or politics. At least Paul Krugman has a point of view and some policy expertise. Give me Bill Kristol!

Via Wonkette, here’s Sarah Vowell on why she didn’t turn down her role in The Incredibles:

[Pixar is] the best at what they do, the most universally culturally revered. It’s like if Nelson Mandela showed up asking for your help to fight racism. Maybe fighting racism isn’t normally your thing. Maybe you’re more of an armchair racism hater. But if Mandela was standing at your door asking you to get on the bus, you’d just start putting on your shoes, right?’

Eric Alterman is dead-on about this:

Michael Kinsley begins his column, here, “In this great country, there are newspaper editorial pages of every political stripe, from nearly insane far-left rantings to the Wall Street Journal.” Hey Michael, name one “nearly insane far-left” newspaper editorial page in the United States or has it escaped your notice that you are just about the most liberal editorial page editor in the United States?

He’s liberal, but he denounces “nearly insane far-left” newspaper editorials even if they don’t exist! How counter-intuitive is that!

(Past entries in the Kinsley files are here and here.)