Posted on by the coffee philosopher

How Soon Is Too Soon To Say A Candidate Has Already Blown It?


The common wisdom is torn on this topic. Memories of Bill Clinton, in his persona as the ‘Comeback Kid,’ are still fresh. Yet pundits and prognosticators look at the disastrous opening weeks of  Newt Gingrich’s nascent presidential campaign and want to write him off without delay – and feel they have good reason to do so.

So which is? Are Clintonesque comebacks still viable? Or can we say, more than a year out, that things are over?

I am pondering this because of the whole Haridopolos radio meltdown.

The Republican primary is not until the end of  summer next year, more than fourteen months away. How much do missteps and mistakes that happen this early matter?

My suspicion: more than they used to.

People didn’t plug and pay attention as early during the day’s of the great comebacks, but with noughties and the rise of the internet, the people who decide primaries (which have lower turnouts than general elections and attract more ideological voters) are paying attention much earlier.

Haridopolos’ rejection of the Ryan plan (which has become a Republican litmus test), plus his little radio embarrassment, while be replayed over and over again and links will be embedded in countless e-newsletters, tweets, Facebook status updates, and blog posts on conservative sites from now until the primary.

It is, I think, too soon to say that Haridopolos can’t recover, but it is not to soon to suggest that this won’t haunt him from now until the end of the primary, nor is it too soon to say that Haridopolos’ odds of emerging have gone down dramatically. Before, he was the odds on favorite. Now… not so much.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Hasner Looking Stronger in Republican Primary


Recently, Haridopolos had an embarrassing meltdown on the radio as he engaged in some really shameless prevarication on the Ryan plan. If you haven’t listened to it, you really have it – you can find the clip here.

Ryan waffles like the unnatural progeny of Belgian breakfast food and Mitt Romney and his voice, frankly, sounds like a little girl. It ends with the radio host hanging up on him on account of Haridopolos being so spineless.

The state senator did finally issue a statement through a spokesperson that he doesn’t support the Republican plan to replace Medicare with vouchers.

While that was the right call for the general election, it may kill him in the primary.

Because I just can’t see George LeMieux actually winning this thing, I think this benefits Adam Hasner. And just a few days after this little meltdown, Hasner announces a pretty good coup:

Mel Sembler, Florida’s most well known Republican fundraiser and bundler, will be his finance chair.

Sembler isn’t the force he was ten years ago, but I can guarantee that Haridopolos and LeMieux would have loved to have him on their team.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Ezra Pound: Canto XXXIV


In the Thirty-Fourth Canto, inside of a triangle:

“CITY
OF
ARRARAT
FOUNDED BY
MORDECAI NOAH”

And just below that:

These words I read on a pyramid, written
in English and Hebrew.

And before that, even, this throwaway remark:

Mr Noah has a project for colonizing jews in this country
And wd. like a job in Vienna….

The Canto, with early allusions and references to Napoleon and Russian campaign, mostly consists of fragments by and about the generation of American statesmen that followed the Revolutionary Era – John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams (it wasn’t clear if “Quincey” in the Thirty-Third Canto was truly him, but here we see the abbreviation J.Q.A.)

Am I letting the doubts inspired by Kenneth Rexroth’s remarks overwhelm my ability to appreciate one of the great and epic works of High Modernism?

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Novels for Young People That You’re Not Supposed to Take Seriously When You Grow Up


A while back, I wrote about how Ayn Rand’s novels are really meant for alienated young people to read and then move on from once they’ve grown up.

Recently, I read this piece about a particular person’s commonsensical journey away from Rand.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Ezra Pound: Canto XXXII


The Thirty-Second Canto continues the theme of the American Revolution and Founding Fathers (though John Adams, this time).

It opens in a very interesting juxtaposition. Adams says that “The revolution… Took place in the minds of the people.” But then follows with a list of war materiel, thereby contrasting that intellectual view of revolution with the actual necessities of winning military victories, as any violent revolution must do.

Towards the latter half of the Canto, he appears to mock the unpreparedness of the old European monarchies for the coming changes, ending with what I take to be a metaphor for the wars that rocked Europe in the nineteenth century and possibly also the First World War (not that WWI didn’t rock Europe, but whether Pound’s eye was fixed so far forward).

                   A guisa de leon
The cannibals of Europe are eating one another again
                  quando si posa.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Ezra Pound: Canto XXXI


The Thirty-First Canto is all about a series of missives sent by Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and other.

As per usual, Pound focuses on logistics and financial exchanges, including several references to slaves and slavery, though I can’t quite figure out if he is trying to make a particular statement with them.

Knowing as we do, Pound’s obsessions, I wonder whether he is attempting to chronicle the moment when the United States became entangled in finance and interest payments (would he call any such things usury, I wonder?).

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters


Way back in 1998, I was writing a thesis on a book by an obscure Southern apologist for slavery named Edmund Fitzhugh. His tract was published under the title of Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters.

I was researching why it was that Fitzhugh’s particular apologetics not only did not gain traction within supporters of slavery, but inspired intense criticism and were dismissed as quickly as they had appeared.

What did I see but this little gobbet from The Atlantic talking about that very book.

Ta-Nehisi Coates commented on what I (and indeed, anyone else who ever read the book) saw, and that was weird strain of proto-communism inherent in the book.

Oddly enough, for a slavery apologia, it rejected the most overtly racist aspects of other apologias (though any argument in favor of a system that kept Southern blacks in bondage is inevitably going to be racist). He did not see Africans as inferior or particularly suited for slavery (as many apologias argued). He argued for slavery in the abstract and even explicitly said that slavery would have been just as “good” had a different group been targeted for slavery. Which also goes to the core of his curious argument (and where the strain of proto-communism came from) – which was an economic argument (most apologists used, odd as it may seem today, moral and religious arguments, not economic ones).

Posted on by the coffee philosopher · 2 Comments

Poor Tim Pawlenty


I used to give Tim Pawlenty (T-Paw!) good odds of winning the GOP nod. He was the closest thing running to a generic Republican (and generic Republicans were polling far better against Obama than any actual, live Republican). He was so generic, in fact, that the only memorable thing about him was the Fisher-Price Baby’s First Mullet that he shaved off when he thought McCain might actually pick him instead of an Alaskan grifter.

How wrong was I?

Republican voters would clearly rather affix their hopes and Republican opinion makers their brief attention spans on a plastic Public grocery bag floating down the Hillsborough River than on Tim Pawlenty.

Let’s look at who they have rallied around instead of Pawlenty.

Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor famous for screaming at kindergarten teachers and video taping his tantrums in order to post them on Youtube.

Mitch Daniels, the short, boring, and balding architect of the Bush deficits.

Haley Barbour, a corpulent former lobbyists who sometimes likes to say that Jim Crow era racist organizations weren’t as bad as all that.

Paul Ryan, the man (and I use the term loosely – he looks like he won’t reach the age of consent for another two years) who single handedly torpedoed GOP poll numbers by releasing a plan designed alienate the only age group McCain actually won.

The current soup du jour is the recessionist from Texas, Rick Perry, who is also rumored to have the most firmly coiffed toupee in Austin.

Besides their gender and basic skin tone, the main things this motley crew has in common is that none of them are running for President and none of them are Tim Pawlenty.

Republican voters overwhelmingly despise the very core of Mitt Romney’s being and many suspect him of belonging to a cult (he doesn’t, by the way).

And Mitt Romney is kicking Pawlenty’s mulletted a–.

Herman Cain, whose claim to fame is getting 30% of the vote in a Senate primary and also being the CEO of a pizza chain no one cares about, is poised to overtake T-Paw in the polls.

Pawlenty looks like he’s going to be the Chris Dodd of Republican candidates. I have a great deal of respect for Senator Dodd and he’s a polite and accessible man in person, but his presidential campaign managed to be ignored and personally disastrous at the same time.

Sorry, Tim, but next November, instead of challenging Obama for the future direction of America, you will be taking calls on your rural Minnesota radio show and teaching classes at a correspondence college.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

On the Economy


If you’re not reading the new blog by economist Jared Bernstein, On the Economy, well then… why the heck aren’t you?

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Bookstores Replaced by Wal-Marts?


A depressing vision of the future is on display here.

Wal-Mart replacing bookstores? Sad on several levels, including the fact that I won’t shop at Wal-Mart.