links for 2008-11-24

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday he believed US president-elect Barack Obama could change Washington's position over a hotly contested plan for a US missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.

Asked if he saw a chance of a shift on the issue under Obama, Medvedev told reporters: "I think there are chances, because if the position of the current administration on this question looks extremely inflexible, the position of the president-elect looks more careful."

It’s still odd that someone would see a battle of wits between Katie Couric and Sarah Palin as a fight Couric would win. Jeff Bercovici of Portfolio.com reported in a brief item that Couric revealed in a panel discussion that she boned up with anti-Palin foreign-policy advisors before interviewing the Alaska governor. Peter Kafka of All Things Digital featured this piece of the Bercovici report:

Couric shed some light on her preparation for the interviews: Beforehand, she sought advice from former senator Sam Nunn and Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haas [actually, it’s Haass]. They told her to draw Palin out on her geopolitical worldview and urged her to let the governor speak at length without interrupting her. Maybe she should bring them along with her when she takes over at Meet the Press?

Other conservative groups that loudly backed Prop. 8 are being targeted as too extreme and off-putting by ProtectMarriage.com, which put the constitutional amendment on the Nov. 4 ballot and hopes to help persuade the state Supreme Court to uphold the measure.

"We represent the people who got things done, who got Prop. 8 passed," said Andrew Pugno, general counsel for the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign. "An important part of defending Prop. 8 is eliminating arguments not helpful to our concerns."

Pugno, for example, persuaded the Supreme Court last week to bar the Campaign for California Families from intervening in the court case over the validity of Prop. 8 and the same-sex marriage ban.
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Liberty Counsel is too extreme…..

HH: Rob Neppell, my two ideas, an RNC-approved vendor list, and a requirement no money unless you’ve hired someone from that list. What do you think of that?
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The GOP needs to move now on a coherent message and learn from the Obama campaign on how to deliver it – e.g. You Tube

KR: Well, first of all, let’s put it in perspective. Let’s before the mythology gets out there, Barack Obama got 2.1% more than George Bush got last time, 3.1 points better than Al Gore got in 2000, and 4.6% better than John Kerry got four years ago. I mean, this was, you know, the Electoral College magnified it, but I think a couple of things happened. First of all, there’s a natural desire for change at the end of eight years of one party running the White House. Second of all, our campaign did not inspire people to turn out

In many ways, his point reminds me of a theory I have on how the party’s attitude toward gays will determine our success. It’s not that we’re likely to crack more than 35% of the gay vote (well, maybe 40%). But, to win back the suburbs, Republicans can’t alienate suburbanites. And anti-gay attitudes don’t resonate with families who have known gay people in college –and maybe even in the workplace–and even in their own families.
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Flap disagrees. The GOP wpuld be better off to disassociate themselves from gay marriage and attempt to attract socon Latinos and African Americans. Gay rights is different from gay marriage.
Suburbanites support gay rights but not redefining marriage.

Reagan established the principle. There are three legs to a successful Republican election. There are social conservatives, there are fiscal conservatives, and there are national security conservatives. And if you chop off one of those legs, the whole things falls down. And the problem at that last election was that all three of those legs became loosened and weakened, and the idea that we can get by without any of them at the moment, I think doesn’t bear scrutiny. But certainly, if Evangelicals don’t show up to the polls, Republicans lose, and Kathleen should bear that in mind.