Mark Byron

Fear and Ignorance, not Hate

Herman Cain is getting roasted for comments that he would be "uncomfortable" with a Muslim cabinet member and would want such folks to be loyal to the constitution.

A few days later, Cain went on “Your World With Neil Cavuto” on Fox News.

“A reporter asked me, would I appoint a Muslim to my administration. I did say, ‘No,’” Cain said. “And here’s why. … I would have to have people totally committed to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. And many of the Muslims, they’re not totally dedicated to this country.”

That's being branded as "hateful" in a number of quarters, including a Roger Simon Politico piece that I linked to. I think Cain deserves a bit more credit there; not that he's blameless on this, but the mistakes are that of fear and ignorance.

The fear part is that Cain, like a lot of folks, is likely afraid of a Muslim fifth column that can come back to bite us; the Fort Bragg shooting by a Muslim Army psychologist would be a good poster boy for what's in Cain's craw. However, the shooter there, with a long paper trail of radical statements, would be unlikely to be a candidate for a Cain administration position.

Anyone who'd be in the hunt to be in a Cain cabinet would be far from the folks he's fearful of. I can't think of any prominent conservative American Muslims who'd be in line for such a post, so my mental mind game is to take Newt Gingrich, who became Catholic at the urging of his current wife, and make him a new Muslim convert instead.

Would a Muslim Newt be a bad choice for, say, Commerce Secretary in a Cain administration? Assume his politics didn't change in the process, at least not on the part that would effect his Commerce portfolio. The answer would be "not much worse than before."

In addition, I think all government employees have to be on board with this-

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Everyone has to affirm that, regardless of their faith or lack thereof. So, Cain isn't requiring anything that isn't already required. That's a bit of an oversight on his part, one that doesn't bode well for him. Not disqualifying, but not a selling point.

 

"Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?"

The Greek legislative rules seem to be very party-centric, since the folks resigning from the ruling PASOK party in protest over tough austerity measures can't stop things "as the seats are automatically allocated to the next Socialists in line." In other systems, the MPs could sit as independents until the next election.

A Greek default on debt, which would be likely if the bill isn't passed, would be uncharted territory for a developed country, but Greece is one of the least developed European countries, at least of the ones that didn't find themselves on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain for two generations. The crowds seem more Third World that First.

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Hold your cards, we have a Weiner.... resignation. It's more sad than anything, where a guy who was in line to be NYC mayor had such warped tastes. However, we've seen powerful folks do strange things before and will likely do so again.

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One would think that Vancouver was more civilized than this, but any big city seems to have its share of yahoos; Vancouver seems to have a radical side to go along with the Pacific NW cool.

Vancouver could have used the win; while the Bruins hadn't snagged a title since the Orr/Espo era, all the other teams in town are routinely good.

Saturday Musings

I've been a bit slow to blog lately, often erring on the "think twice, speak once" side of things. Thus, I passed on Congressman Weiner's situation, for I didn't want to swing at that hanging curve ball of a double entendre.

He's likely to be gerrymandered out of his seat next year, as someone has to be the sacficial lamb as NY loses at least one seat. Often, if friendly forces are in charge of the drawing of lines, a congressman who is running for the Senate or Governor gets the dishonor of having his seat get cannibalized, but Weiner just made himself expendable.

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Speaking of gerrymanders (or lack thereof), California has done its first redistricting under a Ahnold-backed non-partisan committee. A lot of incumbents got thrown in together, which will lead to a lot of retirements. The new seats also will be contested using the new non-partisan primary system, where everyone is in one big primary with the top two going on.

The "jungle" primary might see some interesting coalition, where the runner up is a second member of the majority party; that might allow moderates of either party to put together a coalition of the opposition and the centrist wing of their party to beat a winger in the main party. Joe Lieberman 2006 might be a good example of this, where a centrist-GOP coalition can beat a liberal Democratic nominee.

Another scenario might be to have that second candidate be a backer of a wedge issue within the majority party. Let's say you had a 65% black district, and the runner up on the Democratic side is a Baptist social conservative who's otherwise a card-carrying liberal; that runner up could patch together a majority of Republicans and pro-life Democrats in the general if he out-polled the GOP nominee in the primary.

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The Pistons finally pulled the plug on Kuester. I don't like a lot of the names on the list. Isiah isn't the answer (recall the Knicks sexual harassment case of a few years ago), and after getting busted in two different college stops for recruiting violations, I don't want to be rooting for Kevin Sampson.

Mike Woodson would be the low-beta play on this one; a solid coach in Atlanta who could let the Pistons rebuild under a good young nuculus. Bill Laimbeer would be the high-beta play; he's had head coaching experience in the WNBA, winning a title with the Detroit Shock, so the folks at the Palace have seen him run a club. However, his NBA resume as a coach is as Kurt Rambis' assistant at Minnesota.

New owner Tom Gores is an investor by trade; he'll look to maximize his return, which might lean towards Laimbeer. Mike Woodson won't sell tickets, but Laimbeer would, especially for fans of a certain age who recall the Bad Boy era of two decades ago.

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Jim Tressel resigned since I last blogged; that might be due to some more bad NCAA juju coming out on the OSU program. The news of the latter part of the week is that ace QB Terrelle Pryor is bailing out as well, passing on a senior year that is become rather iffy given his rumored track record of raking in the "hundred-dollar handshakes" going back to high school.

The thing that I'm grateful for in 20-20 hindsight is that Pryor didn't sign with Michigan this time three years ago. RichRod had his sights on Pryor as Pat White 2.0 as he came to Michigan. He would up spending a year trying (with not much success) to run his spread with Lloyd Carr's leftovers before getting Forcier and Robinson in for 2009.

Had Pryor came to Michigan, we'd have Pryor's mess on top of the overpracticing violations that hit the program last year.

Instead, it's OSU that gets torpedoed. Tressel seemed to be a Coach K-JoePa kind of guy who you'd trust your teenaged son with were he a hot-shot prospect; when a Michigan fan starts saying nice things about OSU, you're doing well. I'm not sure if Tressel was that way and got seduced by the dark side of big-time football and a once-a-decade recruit, or he was a corner-cutting guy who put on a slick facade all along.

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ESPN was mulling over the coach-in-waiting meme that has hit college football as of late; if you have a long-time coordinator who you want to keep on board rather than see him take a head coaching job at another school, naming him the heir apparant when the sainted coach retires in a few years can work...

...but only if the old fogey is happy with the idea. West Virginia hired Dana Holgorsen as the heir to lame-duck coach Bill Stewart; Stewart proceeded to try to kneecap Holgorsen with a rumor campaign and just got shown the door now rather than at the end of the year.

Stewart was a lame duck and his successor was brought in from the outside; Stewart was being forced out and had no ongoing relationship with the new guy, so the meme of giving your aide-de-camp a shot wasn't there.

Populist Mechanics

Here's an interesting passage from a Politico piece on Sarah Palin's book tour in the northeast; the gist of the piece is that she's ignoring the GOP establishment as she free-lances her way up the coast.

Even Republicans who are critical of Palin concede that she has made a career – and a rather successful one – out of breaking political rules. Now, though, she appears to be in danger of crossing the fine line between flouting expectations and just flat-out ignoring the essential mechanics of the political process.

What are the "essential mechanics" of winning the GOP nomination? Getting your name on the ballot in primary states and filing with the FEC is about it, if we're boiling it down to the bare essentials.

You generally need to raise money if you're planning to be competitive, but you don't need to hold $500/plate fundraiser at every stop; in the Internet age, you can slap a request for donations on your website and call for a moneybomb on day X. She could have a few million in the bank within a day of putting out the word.

Do you need a cadre of advisers, old hands of Washington, advising you? Not really. You might not nail every question, like Herman Cain's muffing of the right-of-return issue in the Israel-Palestinian debate, but if you're spending time talking to Joe Sixpack at a WalMart (which most of her folks aren't), you'll make up for that by understanding the facts on the American ground better. Palin isn't going to get credit for policy chops from the establishment even if she spent the next year at the Kennedy School at Harvard.

She's not raising money or developing a "team." That's not needed when your appeal isn't to the establishment. Appealing to average voters is what is needed, and she has a decent shot at that. There are more WalMart voters than Politico or National Review voters, even though the latter batch get to do the talking in the early stage.

I'm not yet a Palin backer. Cain and Pawlenty are my top two picks at present of those who have announced and Palin would be in the mix were she to make the plunge. She's a bit of a loose cannon, but there is more than a bit of Reagan there in that both Palin and Reagan have/had a gut feel for how things should be and ability to express it to the average voter.

What makes her interesting is that she's coming at things from odd planes; instead of being a college professor or corporate executive or think-tanker during her out-of-office patch, she is using social media and doing an outdoors show. It doesn't come close to fitting the mold of a presidential candidate, but the molds aren't requirements. They're just the standard way of doing things for typical pols.

If she does run, it will be interesting to see her make her own mold, one that is unlikely to be copied anytime soon, not because it's bad but because of near-unique circumstances. She's taking advantage of being a celebrity in an era that can have people make a media niche out of being famous, regardless of where that fame came from. Her daughter is making the most of the infamy of being knocked up while one's mom was on a presidential ticket, and mom is playing the celebrity card well as well.