Is Eric Hovde the new Ron Johnson?

Larry Kaufman on the GOP Senate primary in Wisconsin.

But Ron Johnson did not have to fight off Tommy Thompson, the former governor who chose not to go for a Senate seat when it required ousting an incumbent. It's an easier seat to get in the general election because the incumbent is retiring, but that makes the primary more contentious.

Is Thompson up for that fight? Or is he just assuming we know him and like him? So far...

... Thompson is a no-show for debates and often "phones in" speeches at the events he does attend. There's a growing sense that Thompson is acting like he's entitled to the job...

When is the Senate primary anyway? It's August 14, after the recall elections, which are June 5th. Kaufman tries to predict the post-recall political climate:

If Gov. Scott Walker loses, dispirited GOP voters will be far more likely to hunker down and cast a "safe" vote for Thompson to take on Democratic challenger Tammy Baldwin. 

Really? Wow. GOP folk go completely beta? Gotta win something.

But in the more likely case where Walker wins, the surge in Republican confidence would favor candidates like Hovde running on a stronger and more forthright fiscal conservatism. Wisconsin's open primary could also favor Hovde, since he's a fresh face with more crossover appeal than his opponents.

Why wouldn't they cross over and vote for whoever is the weakest candidate to face Baldwin? These open primaries are a bitch.

IN THE COMMENTS: Original Mike said:

Thompson clearly doesn't have it in him anymore. He should step aside. 

If the GOP had a brain, all the other candidates would step down and endorse Hovde. Don't you think? There's only one declared candidate on the Democratic side, the primary isn't until August, and it's an open primary.

"Predictable Althouse is predictable."

Says a familiar lefty commenter, provoking me to say:

Does that include the idea — see Ipso Fatso, supra — that I'm surely going to vote for Obama?

I love that I'm so obviously totally for him and against him.

Somebody please explain.

It's really quite weird. My regular right-leaning readers keep seeing me as secretly devoted to Obama, no matter what mockery I indulge in. They think I'm just trying to trick them into thinking I've got what I like to call cruel neutrality. And yet the left-leaning readers assume I loathe Obama.

What's so annoying about this is that I want to write things that are fresh and surprising. And seeming to be both for and against Obama should work for that end, and yet it doesn't, because everyone seems to assume I'm on the side that they are not. They think I'm predictable — but which way?

Oh, maybe I should be the opposite of annoyed. Pleased. Because I'm not giving anybody what they want, and yet people — some people, who are they? — keep reading. To be denied what you want and still want more from that source... I'm going to be happy to be that source.

Cruel neutrality, baby.

Pete Fornatale "was at the forefront of the FM revolution, along with WNEW-FM colleagues..."

"... like Scott Muni, Rosko, Vin Scelsa, Dennis Elsas, Jonathan Schwartz and Alison Steele (who called herself “the Nightbird”). They played long versions of songs, and sometimes entire albums, and talked to their audiences in a conversational tone very different from the hard-sell approach of their AM counterparts."

That meant so much. Maybe you had to be there back then to understand how this mattered, but I'm sad to say goodbye to Pete Fornatale, who died of a stroke yesterday, at the age of 66.

As a sophomore at Fordham University in 1964, he persuaded the school’s Jesuit leaders to let him do a free-form rock show on what was officially an educational station....

Mr. Fornatale came on board in 1969 and quickly moved to the center of New York’s music scene. He gave early exposure to country-rock bands like Buffalo Springfield and Poco. He did one of the first American interviews with Elton John, and got a rousing ovation when he brought a rented surfboard to Carnegie Hall for a Beach Boys show. He introduced Curtis Mayfield to Bob Dylan at a Muhammad Ali fight....

One of Mr. Fornatale’s signatures was playing songs that followed a theme. It might be colors, with a playlist including the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” and Joni Mitchell’s “Blue.” Or it might be great inventions, as when he celebrated the 214th anniversary of the United States Patent Office. Or the theme might simply be radio....

Radio.

What's the best position for a 2012 candidate to take on the Arizona approach to immigration enforcement?

The Obama administration fought this law, in what culminated in an embarrassing performance at the Supreme Court this week. And Chuck Schumer's saying that if the Supreme Court upholds Arizona's law, the Democrats in Congress will rise up and kill it. But polls show that a big majority of Americans — and about half of Hispanic-Americans — support what Arizona has done — even after extensive efforts by the Democrats+MSM to make us all feel as though only terrible, racist people think Arizona's okay.

And I just want to remind you of something that you may have forgotten: the reason Barack Obama was able to overtake Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. What was the issue that tripped her up and gave Obama the opening to look like the sensible, moderate person?

But it was a question about driver's licenses for “undocumented workers'' – the politically neutral terminology for “illegal aliens'' which she prefers – that created the most trouble for Clinton during last night's two-hour debate of the Democrats staged in Philadelphia....

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has proposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, NBC moderator Tim Russert reminded Clinton. “You told the Nashua, N.H., editorial board it makes a lot of sense,'' he said. “Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver's license? ''

“ Well, what Gov. Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of this administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform,'' she said. “We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally. They are undocumented workers.

We know all about Spitzer trying to "fill the vacuum," but let's not digress into the subject of prostitution in this post.

“They are driving on our roads,'' she said. “The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others is just a matter of the odds. It's probability. So what Gov. Spitzer is trying to do is to fill the vacuum.

Ahem. I'm trying not to get distracted!

“I believe we need to get back to comprehensive immigration reform because no state, no matter how well-intentioned, can fill this gap,'' Clinton continued. “There needs to be federal action on immigration reform. ''

“Does anyone here believe an illegal immigrant should not have a driver's license?'' Russert asked the other six Democrats assembled on stage.

Damn! I miss Tim Russert! Here's video. I love the point — at 2:53 — when she complains that "everybody" — i.e. Tim — is playing "gotcha." Because he got her. And that's the moment when she loses.

After that point, it looks as though they are moving on to the next topic: protecting children — children! — from — horrors! — the Internet. We got a laugh watching the now-disgraced John Edwards scramble to: Children? Protect children? I would. But he shifts back to the immigration topic, not to take an actual position himself, but to attack Hillary for taking more than one position, and after all the years of "double-talk from Bush and from Cheney...  America deserves us to be straight.'' (Yeah, be straight, John. Tell it to the jury.)

And then Barack Obama gets his chance. At 4:10, the moderator (Brian Williams) calls on him: "Senator Obama, why are you nodding your head?"

“Well, I was confused on Sen. Clinton's answer,'' Obama said. “I can't tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important.

“You know, one of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face,'' Obama said. “Immigration is a difficult issue. But part of leadership is not just looking backwards and seeing what's popular, or trying to gauge popular sentiment. It's about setting a direction for the country, and that's what I intend to do as president.''

That's obviously total mush, but he sounds calm saying it. He's pushed to take a position and — caught — he says that Spitzer has "the right idea... because there is a public safety concern":

"We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer. That doesn't negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.''

So he agrees with Hillary's first position.  I had forgotten that. I can't remember how this issue played out and why it hurt Hillary so much and helped Obama. Maybe it was simply that she lost her cool and sounded dishonest, and he lucked into an opportunity to seem solid and competent.

Could you give me the street address so I can Google map the directions?

That's my response to this really cool invitation I just got in the email — I am so psyched! — from Michelle Obama:

Ann --

Barack and I know how hard so many of you are working on this campaign -- and we're grateful for it.

But sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too.

That's why I hope you'll take us up on the chance to join Barack at George Clooney's house on May 10th for what will be a pretty amazing event.

Chip in with a grassroots donation today, and you'll be automatically entered to join them:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Barack-and-George

Thanks for all you do,

Michelle

Oh, hell. Chance to join Barack... Key word: chance. Send money and you're entered in a raffle for an invitation. It's all a big crap shoot. Remember when the key word for Obama was: hope. And: change. They changed one letter in "change" and now it's: chance.  

Come on, baby, won't you take a chance...

There's another key word in that email. It's: you. In this sentence: "But sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too." Sometimes you just need to have a little fun, too. You, lowly peon, in addition to... me and my glamorous husband and my gorgeous Hollywood friend. You may need, but you're only going to get it, if you win the crap shoot, which you've got to be in to win, so give us money, because that's what we need. We have plenty of fun, and we want to have more, but we need what you have: money. Or to put that in email-friendly form: a grassroots donation.

What's grassroots about making a donation in response to the First Lady of the United States luring you to a movie star's party?

Dog dinners.

For the first time, a Supreme Court opinion uses the word "feminist."

The case is Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland, which came out this year on March 20th. There are 19 other Supreme Court opinions where the word "feminist/s" appears, but only in the name of an entity like "the Feminist Majority Foundation" or the "Feminists for Life of America" or (once) in the name of a cited law review article.

The article is "The Victim In a Forcible Rape Case; A Feminist View," cited for the proposition that "Rape is very often accompanied by physical injury to the female and can also inflict mental and psychological damage," in the case that says it's cruel and unusual punishment to impose the death penalty for rape. Interesting, isn't it, that it took "A Feminist View" to see that "Rape is very often accompanied by physical injury"? Often? Accompanied? Rape is a physical injury! "Can also inflict mental and psychological damage"?! Can? Do you really have to hedge it?

Anyway, the actual use of the word "feminist" occurs in a dissenting opinion written by Justice Ginsburg. She is explaining why she thinks that Congress had power under §5 of the 14th amendment to enact the self-care provisions of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. To fit the §5 doctrine, the law needs to be portrayed as some kind of remedy for a 14th Amendment rights violation, but both males and females use sick leave, and getting sick leave doesn't seem to be about alleviating unconstitutional sex discrimination.

But Ginsburg says the law had roots in a California effort to require pregnancy or childbirth leave to women:

The California law sharply divided women’s rights advocates. “Equal-treatment” feminists asserted it violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act’s (PDA) commitment to treating pregnancy the same as other disabilities.... “Equal-opportunity” feminists disagreed, urging that the California law was consistent with the PDA because it remedied the discriminatory burden that inadequate leave policies placed on a woman’s right to procreate.

So the first time a Supreme Court Justice uses "feminist," she's talking about 2 types of feminists, the "'equal-treatment' feminists" and the "'equal-opportunity' feminists." Ginsburg refers to the debate between the 2 factions about whether gender-neutrality or special accommodations better served the interests of women. For example Prof. Eleanor Holmes Norton testified that if employers "provide something for women affected by pregnancy that they are not required to provide for other employees [it] gives fodder to those who seek to discriminate against women in employment."



By the way, the word "feminism" only appears in one Supreme Court opinion, and that was back in 1968, in a case called Ginsberg v. New York. (Ginsburg... Ginsberg... just a coincidence.) But the word appears only in quoted material in the appendix to a dissenting opinion by Justice Douglas (who didn't agree that the state could prosecute a man for selling a "girlie" magazine to a minor). Douglas quotes J. Rinaldo, "Psychoanalysis of the 'Reformer'":

In our own day we have reached another of those critical periods strikingly similar in its psychological symptoms and reactions, at least, to decadent Rome. We have the same development of extravagant religious cults, Spiritism, Dowieism, "The Purple Mother," all eagerly seized upon, filling the world with clamor and frenzy; the same mad seeking for pleasure, the same breaking and scattering of forms, the same orgy of gluttony and extravagance, the same crude emotionalism in art, letter and the theater, the same deformed and inverted sexual life.

Homo-sexualism may not be openly admitted, but the "sissy" and his red necktie are a familiar and easily understood property of popular jest and pantomime. It is all a mad jazz jumble of hysterical incongruities, dog dinners, monkey marriages, cubism, birth control, feminism, free-love, verse libre, and moving pictures. Through it all runs the strident note of puritanism. As one grows so does the other. Neither seems to precede or follow.

Crazy stuff. Dog dinners, monkey marriages, cubism, birth control, feminism, free-love, verse libre, and moving pictures....

Man, I need to do word searches in the Supreme Court opinions more often.

Dog dinners. I did not go looking for that.