I suppose we could just ignore Bill Kristol — every Monday, I’d write a short item, saying, “Kristol’s latest NYT column is absurd” — but what fun would that be?
In today’s edition, Kristol notes that Republicans have every reason to be discouraged right now, especially after last week’s third special-election defeat in Mississippi, but Kristol sees three pieces of evidence that suggests John McCain will help the Republicans keep the White House. Encouraging GOP Development #1:
On Tuesday night, while the G.O.P. Congressional candidate was losing in a Mississippi district George Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points, Barack Obama was being trounced in the West Virginia Democratic primary — by 41 points. I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee losing a primary by this kind of margin.
The New York Times has a pretty good research department; Kristol might have wanted to check in with them before writing a column for publication about what he “can’t find.”
John McCain, for example, won the Republican nomination this year after losing Kansas by 36 points, Arkansas by 40 points, Colorado by 42 points, and Utah by 83 points. I found this on the election results page of an obscure news source called The New York Times.
Indeed, among Dems, Hillary Clinton has lost several contests by more than 41 points (Obama won 74% or better in Alaska, D.C., Hawaii, Idaho, and Kansas). By Kristol’s logic, therefore, no one can win the Democratic nomination, since no candidate can with the nomination after a lopsided defeat.
Given Kristol’s recent history of obvious factual errors in his printed columns, did it not occur to the Times to consider fact-checking his pieces before they go to print? Kristol has already had to run two corrections, and this should prompt a third. How many more chances does this guy get?
Kristol’s Encouraging GOP Development #2:
On Thursday, the California Supreme Court did precisely what much of the American public doesn’t want judges doing: it made social policy from the bench. With a 4-to-3 majority, the judges chose not to defer to a ballot initiative approved by 61 percent of California voters eight years ago, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court redefined marriage in that state, helping to highlight the issues of same-sex marriage and judicial activism for the 2004 presidential campaign. Now the California court has conveniently stepped up to the plate.
This isn’t just wrong; it’s lazy. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick explained last week:
Let’s stipulate that these gay-marriage decisions inevitably degenerate into cartoonish attacks on the judiciary and — in an election year — even more cartoonish battles over judicial ideology. Every time a state court reads its own constitution and precedent to find a right to gay marriage, the critics always cry activism. They do that before they read the opinion, which means they can do it regardless of what said state constitution and precedents say. If the decision is for gay marriage, it’s activist, and whatever the court did to get there is activism. Once you recognize this fact, you can read today’s opinion (and the instant criticism of the opinion) for what it is: Even though the majority did what it was supposed to do and offered up a rigorous close reading of state law and precedent, it will be defended and also criticized solely in terms of judicial elitism and overreaching. That’s too bad. There’s some pretty interesting law stuff in here. But the only real fight that emerges from today’s Supreme Court decision (all but one of the justices was appointed by a Republican governor, incidentally) is over what makes a judge an activist and who can properly say “nyah, nyah, nyah” come November.
And finally, Kristol’s Encouraging GOP Development #3:
It was also on Thursday that President Bush spoke before Israel’s Knesset. He denounced those who “seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.” This “foolish delusion,” Bush claimed, yields “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
If Kristol thinks tying McCain and Bush together on foreign policy is bad news for Obama, he’s just not paying attention.
Note to Times editors: whatever you’re paying this guy, it’s too much.