NARAL Attack Ad

by

NARAL has come out with the first attack ad against the Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court.  The transcript of the ad is:

Narrator: Seven years ago, a bomb destroyed a women’s health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

Emily Lyons: “The bomb ripped through my clinic and I almost lost my life. I will never be the same.”

Narrator: Supreme court nominee John Roberts filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber

Emily Lyons: “I am determined to stop this violence, so I am speaking out”

Narrator: Call your senators. Tell them to oppose John Roberts. America can’t afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans.

Despite Nancy Keenan’s protestations to the contrary, the ad clearly suggests that Roberts condones violence against abortion clinics.  That is what the line "America can’t afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans" means when you have just flashed a picture of a woman hit by an anti-abortion bomb on the screen and had her say "I am determined to stop this violence, so I am speaking out" on a commercial which is opposing the nomination. 

The text scrolling on the ad indicates that NARAL spins Roberts’ advocacy on Bray v. Alexandria Clinic into support for violence against abortion providers.  That case was about whether the Ku Klux Klan act barred pro-life protestors from obstructing clinics.  The NARAL press release states:

The defendants in the Bray case included violent anti-choice activists Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue; Michael Bray, who had been convicted for his involvement in 10 bombings at health centers in the 1980s; and Patrick Mahoney, a consultant to Operation Rescue. Roberts argued the case before the Supreme Court and said that Operation Rescue’s unlawful behavior did not amount to discrimination against women.

We can put aside the question of whether or not Operation Rescue really supports clinic bombings (I always thought it was a splinter called something like "The Lambs of God").  The ‘unlawful behavior’ in question for the court case was not clinic bombings, but rather political expression.  And it was found by the Supreme Court not to in fact be unlawful under the Ku Klux Klan act–the question in the case.  Now Terry and Bray were indeed among the defendants in the case, but so were every other pro-life demonstrator.  Spinning that into excusing violence against other Americans is exactly  like saying that the ACLU was pro-terrorist because it protected the free speech rights of Muslims.  It will be interesting to see if Democratic leaders take up this line of attack when the confirmation comes around. 

105 thoughts on “NARAL Attack Ad”

  4. yeah, it’s double posted for me too.
    I am in more or less complete agreement with this. If the Democrats’ start using this line of attack I will really furious. (I bet Schumer will, but I expect better of Durbin, Leahy, Feingold, etc.) Arguing that someone has a certain legal right does not imply approval of or excuse for their actions.
    I am writing a paper that makes a legal argument that it was illegal for us to send Muhammad Haydar Zammar to be interrogated in Syria. Zammar is thought to be the man who recruited Muhammad Atta into Al Qaeda.
    If Roberts’ participation in this case shows that his “ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans” then my rendition paper shows the exact same thing.
    I’m really getting sick of NARAL.

  5. The protesters are not “pro-life”. They are anti-abortion. Otherwise I agree with Sebastian. I haven’t been responding to any of the anti-Roberts e-mails I have gotten, and I don’t think the Democrats should fight his nomination.

  6. If everything is as reported, color me with Katherine, Ugh, and every other decent human being. How close to complete irrelevance do you have to be to pull this sort of a stunt? Jeebus. I’m a lot less sympathetic about this than I was about the James Byrd ad (which remained politically dumb).
    Just pathetic.

  7. While I can understand desire of some on the left to engage in the sort of slime and slander that has brought the Republicans such success in recent years, I sincerely hope that the majority of Roberts opponents will reject this tack. Count me with Sebastian, Ugh, Katherine, Lily, and SCMT.

  8. first of all, i agree the ad is idiotic.
    onto the fun stuff…
    Spinning that into excusing violence against other Americans is exactly like saying that the ACLU was pro-terrorist because it protected the free speech rights of Muslims
    since i don’t pay much attention to the day to day posting of the big righty blogs, i don’t know first hand… but, have they ever defended the ACLU against such accusations ?

  10. I don’t know if the Volohk Conspiracy is considered a big righty blog, but he did recently have a defense of the ACLU against attacks from the right.

  11. I don’t know if the Volohk Conspiracy is considered a big righty blog, but he did recently have a defense of the ACLU against attacks from the right.

  12. “since i don’t pay much attention to the day to day posting of the big righty blogs, i don’t know first hand… but, have they ever defended the ACLU against such accusations ?”
    I don’t read the day-to-day posting of the big righty blogs. But I do know that both Andrew Sullivan and Volokh (and if I remember correctly Pejmanesque) have done so.

  13. cleek – I don’t know that it counts as a big righty blog, but Eugene Volokh over at the Volokh Conspiracy recently ran some posts defending the ACLU against similar accusations.
    On topic, I haven’t seen the NARAL ad in question, but from the description given it does sound dishonest and out of line.
    As far as Roberts goes, he’s more conservative than I would like, but he’s not a wingnut, he’s highly competent, and he seems to be honestly dedicated to the law rather than ideology. That’s more than I was expecting from a Bush nominee. I’d vote to let his nomination through. If we’re going to have conservatives in positions of power, best to have honest and competent conservatives (in contrast to most of what we’ve gotten with this administration).

  16. By the way, if you follow the link to “attack ad” in the post, you can see both the press release and if you click on the picture you can see the ad itself.

  18. Sheesh. Supporting the claim that law X does not rule out a certain form of conduct is not the same as supporting that conduct. And the question whether blockading abortion clinics is not only wrong but also a form of discrimination against women actually strikes me as tricky. I would assume that clinic blockaders oppose abortion as such, not abortion performed on women, and if men got pregnant, they’d be blockading them too. The fact that only women do get pregnant means that all the people they try to prevent from having abortions are women, but does that mean that they are discriminating, or that nature is? I would have thought that the legal question could easily be rather difficult, though (to me) the moral question is not.

  19. I agree with Sebastian and the various commenters who have condemned the ad.
    It seems to me to be part of a very bad cycle in our politics. This sort of thing is not only dishonest in itself, but provides an excuse for dishonest ads by others. It leads to screaming matches of the “What about…” any time smear tactics are criticized.

  20. “Supporting the claim that law X does not rule out a certain form of conduct is not the same as supporting that conduct.”
    And really it goes quite a bit further than that. Supporting the claim that law X does not rule out a certain form of conduct is definitely not the same as supporting all conduct by extremists who engage in other types of conduct but who are also a small subset of those who engage in the conduct in question in the lawsuit.

  24. The ad is immoral and unfair. Full stop.
    But then so was “Willie Horton” but Atwater’s tactics helped get Bush I elected. Certainly the anti-choice side has used inflammatory and inaccurate rhetoric, and their tactics have helped them win. I might contend that the violence helped, by portraying the majority as “moderate” on abortion. The calculation must be about whether the costs or negatives outweigh the benefits. It is long past time that liberals made elections in part about judges.
    That discussion has been filthy for years. Need I cite the extensive distortions of judicial positions and opinions on the right from as recently as the Terry Schiavo episode? I hope not.
    The liberals here can say we should be honest and fair and nice, and that will ultimately win the war. They can say it over and over, and take comfort in their personal rectitude while young girls die.
    My personal preference is known. Massive non-violent civil disobedience, in the expectation that our opponents will become violent, and so lose their moderate support. Realizing this will be an even tougher battle than civil rights.
    But choice is lost. Roberts is a futile battle. We should be thinking several
    years ahead.

  25. 2) The ad is hyperbolic and unfair. But IIRC, the original court decision was based on a reasonable expectation of violence and physical confrontation should the picketers be allowed right up to the door, and anecdotal evidence supporting that expectation. So allowing the protesters closer access might indeed lead to violence, and a judge who rules that way should be held marginally responsible.
    3)NARAL should be training women in hundred lots, teaching them discipline and restraint. So if Randall Terry sends 50 to a clinic, NARAL sends 500. Encircle the 50, never touch them, but make it awkward and uncomfortable for them to approach clients. Violence is guaranteed, and then I suspect Roberts, Mr competent non-ideological lover of principle, will revisit.

  26. Well, what you can do is, condemn the ad in a way that makes it clear that it’s the exact same thing as the attacks on the ACLU, argue that they are both wrong for the same reason, and then ask the other side why they don’t do the same time.
    Or you can “Swiftboat them” by running ads that make inflammatory, factual charges that have the advantage of being true–you can use the Swiftboat’s tactics of using a small ad buy to generate free media equally well with true charges as with false ones. That’s not immoral, and there no shortage of such charges to make.
    Anyone quoting Eliot Ness at me can shut up. There is no evidence at all that this sort of thing will be effective for the Democrats. It’s the same damn argument that they use to justify the torture scandals: Zarqawi tortures prisoners, Bin Laden doesn’t follow Geneva, all the rest. The unjustified assumption that because something is immoral it must therefore be effective.
    It is in terrorists’ interests for people to believe that there is no difference between civilians and the military, that there is nothing you cannot do to another human being because your religions are at war and they’re on the other side. It is not in our interests.
    Obviously these things are taking place on a completely different and not comparable scale when it comes to the fight against terrorism and domestic political conflicts at home. But the STRUCTURE of the arguments is close to identical.
    To quote something I said earlier,
    “it is to the GOP’s advantage that campaigns be about sleazy charges rather than politicians’ records. It is to the GOP’s advantages that voters have factually inaccurate beliefs about many of the issues of the day. It is to the GOP’s advtange that voters conclude it’s a dirty business and too depressing to pay attention. It is to GOP’s advantage that the country be deeply divided.
    It is not to our advantage–none of it.
    Also, we don’t really have the stomach for it. We end up with Chris Lehane instead of Karl Rove or Lee Atwater.”
    Playing by Rove’s or Atwater’s rules gets portrayed as hardheaded and realistic, but it’s quite stupid, strategically. It never seems to occur to people that Rove might have written the rulebook in a way that gives an advantage to his side.
    We haven’t yet tried fighting hard, but fighting clean. It’s not been tried, so how can we say it’s failed?
    Instead we run back and forth desperately between a half-a*ssed version of their sleazy tactics, and running to the center and supporting policies we don’t believe as the center moves right. The fundamental problem for the Democrats, aside from the way Congress underrepresents us, is that no one knows what the Democrats stand for. The party’s become terrified of making moral arguments and saying what we actually think, instead of appealing to people’s self-interests and offering bland platitudes that focus group well. This makes it a lot easier for the other side to lie about what we beleive. Lying about the other side will do nothing at all to change this, and we lack the infrastructure for our lies to be as effective as theirs.

  27. The first casualty is decency

    Sebastian Holsclaw blogs on a NARAL attack ad that smears Bush Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts as a supporter of abortion clinic violence for filing an amicus brief in support of the right of pro-life activists to peacefully protest. The tru…

  28. Just a point or two about Willie Horton–the charge about the weekend furlough program for those sentenced to life without parole was originally made by a Democrat–Al Gore to be precise. Second, the implications aren’t the same as the ACLU or Roberts case. In those cases, the implication is that by supporting Right X the ACLU or Roberts is really (secretly?) trying to support dangerous/evil thing Y.
    The worst implication of the Willie Horton charge was that Dukakis was so soft-hearted and compassionate that he put innocents in danger through the policy of his state. Now in the crime-wave 1980s that was certainly a politically tough implication.
    With respect to the frequently mentioned charge that raising the issue of furlough programs was race-baiting, I note again that Gore did it first (which I mention again only because Gore is not typically thought of as someone who engages in anti-black race baiting–suggesting that something else is going on) and that the “Revolving Doors” ad actually shows primarily white people going through the revolving door in the furlough program.
    Willie Horton style ads are an attack on a program and an administrator that implements such a program. Frankly the furlough program was awful and ripe for attack. Hard, but at least within the realm. I can imagine an NAACP ad using the Byrd dragging-death incident that said something like: “Why shouldn’t the people who do this be considered worse than regular murderers?” or something like that. That would be an attack on the policy and a fairish attack on the policy-maker. In reality the NAACP tried to draw a much closer parallel between those who did the killing and Bush–which is why I thought their 2000 ad was out of bounds.
    But this Roberts ad, and the charges against the ACLU made by O’Reilly and his ilk go much further than the Willie Horton or even the NAACP ads. They transform attempts to protect civil rights into full throated support for any action of any person who exercises those rights. That is qualitatively different and if the argument is accepted, ultimately damaging to the underlying civil rights.

  29. Bob, I don’t see anyone saying we need to be nice. Probably not even fair, depending on what that means. Just honest. Your argument seems to me to be the same as the pro-torture arguments of Bush supporters, except that there’s more evidence that slander works than there is that torture works. Being the good guys is about what you do, not about what flag you fly or what you call your party. This isn’t about sports teams.
    Katherine is right. We don’t need to embrace either the bad policies or the immoral tactics of the other side.

  30. I thought the power of the Willie Horton ad was in the picture–the looming big black man, and the emotional response–fear. The harm was the promotion of the racial stereotype of black men as criminals. The words in the ad didn’t matter much. The “substance” didn’t matter at all.
    Also Katherine is right. The Democratic “leaders” in DC are a huge part of our problem. The radical right would not have been able to take over the Republican party and control the nation’s agenda if the Democratic in DC hadn’t created a power vaccumn for them. Part of the problem is that Democrats aren’t concrete enough in our messages and we assume that people know we are patriotic and moral. Repeatedly we fail to respond to moral arguments with moral arguments, religious positions with religious positions, or trumpet our beliefs and loyalties. Meanwhile the right covers their real agenda with moral, religous, and patriotic sloganeering. There is hope however. Outside DC Democrats do know how to run campaigns and talk to people. Schweitzer in Montana is spearheading a campaign to dislodge their Republican Senator, for example.

  31. I thought the power of the Willie Horton ad was in the picture–the looming big black man, and the emotional response–fear.
    That’s just right. Attempting to analyze advertisements based on their text and its overt meaning misses the point completely.

  32. Misleading? Check. Inflammatory? Check. Hyperbolic? Check. Sleazy? Check.
    So why am I having so much trouble working up the appropriate level of outrage? Why don’t I care? I guess because the ad is factually correct. Roberts did in point of fact file briefs “supporting fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber” — exactly the sort of thing the ACLU does all the time. I think this ad is wrong in the way that dropping hamburger wrappers at a toxic waste dump is wrong… It’s just not that big a deal.
    Katherine, I think you’re mistaken that stuff like this has any significant strategic downside for anyone but NARAL themselves. I agree that ceteris paribus “it is to the GOP’s advantage that campaigns be about sleazy charges rather than politicians’ records” but so what? The Cetera is not Pariba. The story is not about facts and records, nor will it be about facts and records any time soon. It is about sleaze and sensation. That is already the field we are playing upon.
    Or do you really think that Dems are about to singlemindedly reintroduce the idea of “policy” into political discourse, despite minority status and the best efforts of the GOP? I sure don’t see any evidence of that.
    On merits I agree with you wholeheartedly. It’s just that my heart isn’t in it. Just another stupid ad, nowhere near as outrageous as things that happen in the white house and pentagon every day, day in, and day out. Just another little lurch when we’re already halfway down the slippery slope.
    Sebastian, FWIW I agree with you as well about how this type of argument undermines civil rights. I just don’t understand why you’re worried about the corrosive actions of O’Reilly and NARAL when people like Cheney and Negroponte are actually in the driver’s seat.
    P.S. Nice tu quoque. Not as subtle as mine, but very tasteful 😉

  33. I don’t see anyone saying we need to be nice. Probably not even fair, depending on what that means. Just honest.
    Exactly.

  34. radish–yeah, a sleazy ad in the scheme of things isn’t that big a deal, and I am all for focusing on the actions of people in power. I’m sure I take this one personally because you could so easily switch the nouns around to apply this argument to me, and I hate whataboutery.

  35. Unsurprisingly, Armando at Kos is defending the ad:
    “Dear Armando,
    Keep up the good work. Your check is in the mail.
    Yours In Darkness,
    KR”

  38. I dunno; I take it seriously (though obviously less seriously than, oh, the war in Iraq, the lack of universal health insurance, etc. etc) because I just hate it when people say, for instance, ‘you defended a murderer in court, therefore you must be in favor of murder’, because apparently they don’t even consider the alternative story: ‘you defended a murderer in court because you believe in our system of criminal justice, in which even murderers are given the chance to defend themselves.” Or: “Justice X found that the interstate commerce clause does not give Congress the power to stop kids from beating up their siblings, and that means that Justice X is in favor of kids getting beaten up.” And I think that anything that reinforces these total misunderstandings of our judicial system is pernicious and wrong and bad.
    About Willie Horton: speaking as someone whose reaction to the nomination of Michael Dukakis was amazement that the Democrats could be that dumb, and who had this reaction because she’s from MA, not despite that fact: I thought there were two things wrong with it. One, it was racist. Two, given any furlough policy at all, it will be possible to find someone who was on furlough and did something awful, if you try hard enough. And in a lot of cases, it will be possible to find a case in which that happened because someone screwed up — since policies are implemented by people, and people make mistakes.
    The real question about a furlough policy is: is it as good as it could be, and do its good effects in any way compensate for its bad ones? If, oh, a million people had been given furloughs under the MA system, and Willie Horton was the only time anything had gone wrong, and if a lot of the other furloughs had been set up so as to make it a lot less likely for the prisoners to re-offend once they got out for good, and this translated into, among other things, fewer people being murdered, then I would think: that’s a good policy. If Willie Horton was representative of furloughed prisoners in general, then it would be a bad policy.
    The info given in the ad, therefore, told me nothing at all about the merits of Dukakis’ furlough plan. But it suggested a lot of things, without providing any backing at all, even the sorts that can be given in a TV spot. I mean: to me it was like running an ad that said, in an ominous tone of voice, “Michael Dukakis has at least one flaw.” That’s consistent with his being the greatest thing since sliced bread, or an emanation of Satan, or anything in between.

  39. “If, oh, a million people had been given furloughs under the MA system, and Willie Horton was the only time anything had gone wrong, and if a lot of the other furloughs had been set up so as to make it a lot less likely for the prisoners to re-offend once they got out for good, and this translated into, among other things, fewer people being murdered, then I would think: that’s a good policy.”
    I think I have to give this one a ‘yes, but’. Yes, but a furlough program that is explained by lowering re-offense rates shouldn’t be applied to someone who has been sentenced to life without parole.

  40. Seb: true. All I meant was that the existence of one horrible outcome tells us next to nothing about the program as a whole. And I hate ads that encourage bad forms of inference, thus my main objection to the NARAL ad.

  41. Bray vs Alexandria
    The SCOTUS opinions. I may be confused about obstruction doctrine, conspiracy and RICO cases, and the current state of the law. Do protesters have to keep a distance, or not?
    ….
    “And I hate ads that encourage bad forms of inference”
    Politics, as currently practiced and practiced throughout history, must make you very unhappy.

  42. Great post from Ezra Klein, commenting on a story at RedState:
    “Well, this is certainly the weirdest parody of Kafka’s Metamorphosis that I’ve ever seen:

    “It would be a frightening thing, to wake up one morning and discover that you were National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).”

    Man, would it ever! If I got out of bed and, instead of feeling my limbs hit the floor, realized I was a widely dispersed set of brick-and-mortar structures, staff persons, liquid and non-liquid assets, and so forth all dedicated to protecting a constitutionally guaranteed right, I’d be totally tripped out.”

  44. And I hate ads that encourage bad forms of inference, thus my main objection to the NARAL ad.
    Only ads?
    [I know bob beat me to it, but c’mon, talk about a straight line…]

  45. No, not only ads. And yes, in case Bob hasn’t noticed ( ;P ), politics as currently practiced does make me unhappy.

  48. Eh, no problem with this as far as I’m concerned. The Democrats are fully within their rights to lie, cheat and slander to stop a nominee even if they don’t like his haircut. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
    I don’t think they will, though, considering how Roberts resembles a Democrat much more than a Republican (as we shall see). Why did Bush nominate this guy again?

  49. Hilzoy:
    “And the question whether blockading abortion clinics is not only wrong but also a form of discrimination against women actually strikes me as tricky.”
    Or, more to the point: when an abortion clinic is blown up, not only are women killed, but any boyfriends/husbands on site as well as any men on the staff. And these people are just as guilty in the terrorists’ eyes as the women having the operation done, of course.

  50. Factcheck.org:

    An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers “supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber” and of having an ideology that “leads him to excuse violence against other Americans” It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham , Alabama .
    The ad is false.
    And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn’t deal with bombing at all. Roberts argued that abortion clinics who brought the suit had no right use an 1871 federal anti-discrimination statute against anti-abortion protesters who tried to blockade clinics. Eventually a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed, too. Roberts argued that blockades were already illegal under state law.
    The images used in the ad are especially misleading. The pictures are of a clinic bombing that happened nearly seven years after Roberts signed the legal brief in question.

    NARAL is going to get some serious blowback on this.

  51. Ford and Rockefeller Foundations offer ACLU $1.15 million to not support terrorism (ACLU refuses)

    The ACLU refused contributions from longtime donors that were concerned about their money knowingly going to the causes of terrorism. Stop the ACLU reported: 
    In October of 2004, the ACLU turned down $1.15 million in funding from two…

  53. Eh, Kevin’s rewrite isn’t particularly any more honest than the original ad:
    Announcer: John Roberts was just doing his job: he was defending conservative ideology for the first Bush administration. But conservative ideology has real world consequences . . .
    Announcer: Call your Senators. Tell them to oppose John Roberts. America can’t afford a Justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans.
    His version insinuates that abortion clinic bombings are the inevitable result of allowing protests near clinics. Which is, of course, baloney. Cantankerous as I can be, I can recognize that 99.99999____% of conservatives will never bomb a clinic, nor will 99.99999____% of abortion opponents, nor will most clinics ever be bombed.
    America can’t afford a Justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans.
    Right. Like the ideology of, say, free speech. And the right to peaceably assemble. Can’t have that.
    Look, I’m a fan of the right to choose abortion. I’m a fan of Roe. But it is the height of dunderheadedness to suggest that one should prefer a justice who supports a right as tenuous as that found in Roe to rights which are explicitly named and protected in the Bill of Rights.

  56. I don’t understand what those links are meant to show? They certainly don’t show that it is good reasoning to argue that supporters of the ACLU support lynching black men if the ACLU supports free speech for the KKK. They don’t show that defending the civil rights of Muslims equates to support for sending airplanes ramming into the World Trade Center and forcing people to choose between jumping to their deaths and being incinerated. Nor do they show that supporting free speech for pro-life demonstrations outside clinics is support for clinic bombings.
    If the left embraces this kind of argument, I am quite certain that the associations between defending free speech for non-pleasing groups of people is going to operate far worse for the left than for the right. So even if you do it purely out of political calculation (which is not the calculus I personally reccommend) it doesn’t make sense to support this style of argumentation.

  57. “I don’t understand what those links are meant to show?”
    I doubt that the people behind those links are making the arguments you attribute to them, but I won’t atempt to characterize their arguments out of fear of misrepresentation. They are simply links. People of good will can make their oown judgements, or trust yours and not bother to follow them.
    Kleiman

  60. I am quite certain that the associations between defending free speech for non-pleasing groups of people is going to operate far worse for the left than for the right.
    You mean it hasn’t been already? Where’ve you been for the past few years?

  61. “You mean it hasn’t been already?”
    It depends on what you mean by ‘already’. If you believe that the proper response to poor thinking is “say what you want” go for it. But that tactic is going to be very detrimental to civil rights protections in the long (or even medium run). People like Bill O’Reilly certainly have used the tactic. I didn’t realize he was the gold standard for useful discussion, but I try not watch him because I find his voice physically painful.
    If you believe that the proper response to poor thinking is “whatever you say is fine” I urge you to revisit the Intentional Design debate.
    But I don’t think you really believe the proper response to poor thinking is ‘live and let live’. I suspect you think that the short-term political advantages make it worth it.
    That is why I am trying to draw attention to the long-term political consequences. Attacks on the ACLU for instance are normally couched in the idea that they are overprotective or hypersensitive–not that they are actively pro-terrorist. The outcome of helping that kind of argument become regularly accepted is unlikely to be good for the country or the left.
    The Willie Horton issue is a clear example. The suggestion (unfair or otherwise) was that Dukakis was so overprotective of prisoner rights that he wasn’t properly protecting the rights of innocent victims. The suggestion was most definitely NOT that he was pro-rape.
    This is much more akin to the idea that those who raised objections to the Iraq war were “objectively pro-Saddam”. That was an illegitimate argument. Right?

  62. Sebastian,
    I’ll defer to Anarch if he had a different meaning in mind, but my reading was that the right has already been demogoguing these types of associations for some time, and therefore you were using the wrong tense in your sentence.
    “This is much more akin to the idea that those who raised objections to the Iraq war were “objectively pro-Saddam”. That was an illegitimate argument. Right?”
    And of course the persons pushing such ideas have been blackballed by all persons of good character. And in a forum like this, no one would think of linking to such persons. Right?

  63. it’s already utterly rampant on the right, Sebastian, including many of those who are up in arms over this ad. Your Senate majority leader tried to make Durbin’s speech illegal because it allegedly endangered U.S. troops. I mean, for God’s sake, it’s not exactly just Rush Limbaugh. That doesn’t mean we should do the same, but I don’t have many illusions about the effects of our actions on the major media and political figures on the other side.

  64. “it’s already utterly rampant on the right, Sebastian, including many of those who are up in arms over this ad. Your Senate majority leader tried to make Durbin’s speech illegal because it allegedly endangered U.S. troops.”
    My Senate majority leader? Score, I finally made it to the top of the right-wing conspiracy!
    And Anarch would welcome that kind of national security issue become a regular feature of all political debate?
    And you might still note a key difference. Durbin was criticized under the idea that his speech endangered the troops. This modern theory of acceptable political behaviour would be that it is ok to criticize Durbin for being a supporter of flying planes into the World Trade Center if he supports the civil rights of an enormous group (Muslims) which contains as a small number who engage in extremist activity (Al Qaeda). That is rather different.
    By the way, I would like to compare the NARAL ad against Roberts to the Republican ads against Ginsburg. But I can’t find any. Did they exist? (Not a sarcastic question, I really want to know).
    “And of course the persons pushing such ideas have been blackballed by all persons of good character. And in a forum like this, no one would think of linking to such persons.”
    Dantheman, do you have someone specific in mind? Because I’m not following your allusion.

  65. And Anarch would welcome that kind of national security issue become a regular feature of all political debate?
    What the heck are you talking about, Sebastian? I never once broached national security in this thread, and for a rather obvious reason: it’s not at all germane.
    Anyway, Dantheman got it right. My remark was simply that you were using future tense (“is going to operate”) when some variation on the past tense (e.g. “has been operating”) was most definitely required.
    It depends on what you mean by ‘already’. If you believe that the proper response to poor thinking is “say what you want” go for it.
    Yes, you really missed the point on that one. Of course I don’t believe that. I’m rather sure you don’t believe that either. So it would have been nice had something been done about this, oh, I dunno, any time during the past five years.
    This might be a bit unfair, but hat you’ve been saying (both in this thread and others like it) indicates that you think this phenomenon — sloppy, propagandistic writing which unfairly ties disparate groups together — is somehow new, or cutting edge, or in some way revelatory. It isn’t. It’s been a feature of the discourse for the past five years* and it’s almost invariably been directed at the left by, to steal Tac’s favorite phrase, your fellow travellers. That you just now seem to be cottoning on to this fact… well, hell, I’m glad to have you on board, but again: where have you been these past five years?
    So feel free to stomp on this ad; I have no vested interest in it one way or the other.** But please also direct your attention to the innumerable examples of “they’re not anti-war, they’re on the other side” UnAmerican BS spewing forth from your fellow travellers. There is, if you’ll pardon the imagery and the pun, a whole shitload more of that and it too deserves a thorough squelching.
    * Yes, I know that in many regards it goes back further. That said, I regard its current incarnation as a new and dangerous metastasization, the societal equivalent of a cancerous relapse.
    ** I stopped following abortion-related debates about five years ago and have never looked back. Thankfully, nothing’s changed since then either.

  66. Sorry, your party’s Senate majority leader if you are a registered Republican; if not the Senate majority leader. I wasn’t trying to hold you personally responsible, I was saying, I don’t think you realize the extent to which you’re unrepresentative. I don’t considering lying about the effects of someone’s actions much different from lying about their intent. In any case opposition to the administration’s detention and torture and Iraq policies is very routinely portrayed as support for terrorism–in a subjective sense–e.g. caring more about terrorists than Americans, loving terrorists and hating America, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, wanting to give therapy to terrorists, etc. etc.–already.
    Supporting the NARAL ad undercuts one’s ability to argue against this sort of thing, but it goes on already and will continue to do no matter how un-hypocritical we are, no matter how airtight an argument we make, etc. People on the left damn well know this, and making an argument that does not acknowledge it won’t be persuasive to them.

  67. “It isn’t. It’s been a feature of the discourse for the past five years* and it’s almost invariably been directed at the left by, to steal Tac’s favorite phrase, your fellow travellers. ”
    Look when drawn broadly, I fully accept that ‘mischaracterizations’ have gone on forever. Nearly all anti-communists got tarred with being McCarthyite at one point or another.
    But this does seem to represent an escalation. A major and (at least by one side well regarded) advocacy group is embracing the “you support the civil rights of a large group you support even the most extreme other actions of its most extreme subgroup” equation. The Willie Horton ad, to take a favorite example, does no such thing. Its implicit equation was that Dukakis’ support for furlough programs was wieghting prisoner’s rights too heavily when compared against other citizen’s rights. It most certainly was not accusing him of being pro-rape. The NRA sometimes suggests that Democrats are stupid for not seeing the value of self-protection with a gun, but they don’t suggest that supporting gun-control laws means you have a secret desire to see more women raped.
    This form of discourse is a huge escalation. And it started taking place on the left even before the Iraq war polarized things. See the NAACP ad in 2000.

  68. “”And of course the persons pushing such ideas have been blackballed by all persons of good character. And in a forum like this, no one would think of linking to such persons.”
    Dantheman, do you have someone specific in mind? Because I’m not following your allusion.”
    Instapundit (who I’ve usually seen at the prime pusher of that meme) is in the blogroll under “Multiples”. So is Andrew Sullivan, who after 9/11 referred to liberals as a potential Fifth Column.

  69. “Sorry, your party’s Senate majority leader if you are a registered Republican; if not the Senate majority leader. I wasn’t trying to hold you personally responsible, I was saying, I don’t think you realize the extent to which you’re unrepresentative.”
    I know, I was making a joke to lighten the mood a bit. Apparently I failed.

  70. If we deleted blogs from the blogroll because we scorn one or more idea they espouse, there’d be precious little left. Glenn Reynolds is no Atrios, and to me, that’s a good thing. There are people who regularly read Kos, “screw ’em” notwithstanding. I don’t necessarily take the fact that someone reads Kos as an endorsement of postmortem crapping on graves.

  71. I don’t even read, much less link to Instapundit. I figure anything important he deals with will be raised in one of the blogs I read, and I don’t want to filter through the huge amount of stuff he links to. I remember Andrew Sullivan going off on Fisk, which I think was entirely appropriate. I also believe he suggested that some on the left might be a 5th column, but he never suggested that everyone who supported anything liberal was pro-terrorist.

  72. This form of discourse is a huge escalation.
    I tend to agree, but strongly disagree on its genesis or taxonomy. To my eye, it began with the Republican assaults on Clinton in the early 90s, whereby people who supported Clinton were somehow morally inferior… not just during the election (where I suppose I can let it ride as a necessary evil) but continuing throughout both his two terms, culminating in the impeachment. That was just the seed, though; it didn’t truly flower until 9/11 and the whole “Dissent=Treason” meme that suffused the right-wing in this country, with its attendant credulity and viciousness. The left-wing ultimately did start hitting back, of course, and the present-day issue of who-did-what-to-who-when-and-how-do-we-stop-it is an interesting, important conversation for another time; but inasmuch as one can (or cares to) define a “first blow” in these hostilities, it came from your side of the aisle.
    And it started taking place on the left even before the Iraq war polarized things. See the NAACP ad in 2000.
    Assuming you’re talking about the James Byrd ad, it did absolutely no such thing either. At no point in the ad did anyone impute motives or rationales to GWB. If you’re talking about the larger discourse surrounding the ad, I’d need to know what specifically you were referring to.

  73. Slarti and Sebastian,
    Generally I agree. I’m just saying Sebastian shouldn’t be so emphatic about how out of bounds these types of arguments are.

  74. There are people who regularly read Kos, “screw ’em” notwithstanding.
    There are also people who don’t, or at least who claimed they wouldn’t. [Whether they’ve held by this standard, I’ve no idea.] Additionally, pressure was put on various Democratic groups to de-link Kos for those remarks, pressure which was successful IIRC. So while your existential statement is correct — there are people who rise above such things, or at least look beyond them — the flip side is also correct — there are people who don’t.
    I’m not sure what relevance this has to the present discussion, though; could you elaborate?

  75. By the way, I would like to compare the NARAL ad against Roberts to the Republican ads against Ginsburg.
    I think a better comparison would be the NARAL ad against Roberts to ads against Ginsburg from socially conservative advocacy groups. Not that I know those exist or how to find them; but I think such a search would be more productive.

  76. If we are going to talk about the historical genesis of unsupported ugly charges being inappropriately applied–I would like to submit McCarthyism charges applied indiscriminately to nearly all anti-communists in the 1980s and racism being charged to nearly all opponents of affirmative action in the 1990s. As for Clinton, the charge that HE was morally deficient was certainly circulating. The charge that his supporters were morally deficient is something I was not aware of. The suspicion that they were politically expedient was certainly circulating, but that is a bit different and certainly not the same as saying that protecting a large group’s civil rights is an endorsement of all possible actions by all possible sub-groups.

  77. Well, I nominate McCarthyism itself, which was used to smear huge chunks of the left, many of whom had vehemently opposed Communism, as Communist.

  79. So what have we established? Was McCarthyism a good thing? I think we all agree no. So is the NARAL ad a good thing? Can we all agree no?

  80. If we are going to talk about the historical genesis of unsupported ugly charges being inappropriately applied–I would like to submit McCarthyism charges applied indiscriminately to nearly all anti-communists in the 1980s and racism being charged to nearly all opponents of affirmative action in the 1990s.
    Even granting these arguendo — and hilzoy‘s quite correct that that’s not even approximately the true genesis in the broader, historical sense — you’ve still missed my point: we’ve entered a new phase of this trope, one with heightened risks and radically different stakes. I don’t recall charges of “treason” or “supporting the enemy/the other side”* or being casually slung around in those time-periods, do you?
    [Well, not against the right; such accusations seem perennial against the left.]
    * With the notable exception of the Iran-Contra cabal who, sadly, deserved it.
    So what have we established? Was McCarthyism a good thing? I think we all agree no. So is the NARAL ad a good thing? Can we all agree no?
    Is one of these things is not like the other? I think we all agree. Are false continuities a bad thing? Can we all agree yes?

  81. “Was McCarthyism a good thing? I think we all agree no.”
    While there are some political commentators who disagree with you (take Ann Coulter, please), I suspect all here would agree.
    “So is the NARAL ad a good thing? Can we all agree no?”
    While we may get agreement that it’s not a good thing, I suspect that there is little agreement that this is a quantum leap to the negative, as you seem to be arguing. I think, like Anarch and Bob M. that this is little different than what’s been passing for political discourse for at least a decade.

  82. By the way, I would like to compare the NARAL ad against Roberts to the Republican ads against Ginsburg. But I can’t find any.

    So the idea is that the left should be using the tactics of 1993 while the right continues successfully to plumb new depths in 2005? Whether such ads exist or not, I don’t think the comparison would be meaningful.

  83. I stand by my earlier claim that the NARAL ad was wrong to equate arguing that X is not ruled out by some law with arguing for X, though I also think that filing an amicus brief that one is under no obligation to file is closer to the line.
    I do not, however, think that this is some sort of quantum leap downwards. For closer parallels, consider the argument (from the late 80s and early 90s) that people who thought that banning burning the flag violated the first amendment were in favor of burning the flag, and that people who thought that mandatory prayer in schools violated the first amendment were against religion. Those arguments were, iirc, made by the GHWBush campaign.

  87. hilzoy: And how we can be talking about escalations in ugliness after the Swift Boat ads, I cannot imagine.
    That’s just the thing. The NARAL ad is an escalation for liberals, which is what makes it so shocking. We expect this kind of thing from the sort of people who called soldiers traitors for criticizing the war and for providing accounts of war crimes.

  88. The NARAL ad is an escalation for liberals, which is what makes it so shocking.
    Could we use a word other than “escalation”? There’s too much of an upward motion associated with something that’s definitely part of a downward spiral. Maybe “descalation”? (:

  90. LizardBreath,
    Please, no. I want the Democrats not to be viewed as the party with flower pots on their heads.

  93. Well, “debasement” seems appropriate, but, I don’t see anything wrong with “escalation” in the first place. I don’t bring any positive associations to the military metaphor.

  95. well, I remember excavating a crawl-space below a house I once lived in. I expected it to be really unrewarding work, but the masochist in me found that I was actually digging myself a basement.

  96. Never heard of a “down escalator”, ral?
    I was recently in an upscale mall, when I saw a sign on a stopped escalator: “Escalator out of order, please use elevator.”
    What is the world coming to?

  97. “You can’t take an escalator to debasement”
    That reminds me of my favorite slogan for a beauty salon: If your hair ain’t becomin to you, you oughta be comin to us

  98. Jon Stewart just had the best line about the NARAL ad:
    “It’s like, if you bought Thriller in the 1980s…”

  99. my comedy central channel has been without sound, and I without my daily show fix, for two days.
    grr. arr.
    They withdrew the ad. Part of me says, “good, this is what makes me glad I’m a Democrat, that people still think there’s certain requirements about honor and truthfulness”. But I will confess that part of me thinks “God we’re such suckers.” I remember how the right wing bloggers reacted to the Swift Boats.
    I want the ad wizards to start coming up with things that are inflammatory and get free media coverage but are also true and can be proved true. It ought not to be that hard. Think of all the underreported stories we’ve complained about.

  100. Katherine, the current Republican tactic for dealing with inflammatory ads is to send letters to the TV stations threatening to sue if the “defamatory” ads aren’t pulled. It often works, though I suppose it generates a little free publicity (until it becomes common enough that it’s no longer news).

  101. I can’t believe the disingenuous crap they spewed upon pulling the ad.
    Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public.
    Uh, no. You wrote a deliberately inflammatory, false and slanderous ad. If you wanted to have a serious discussion you would have written something honest.
    We also regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts’ record.
    Bullsh*t. People construed the ad exactly the way you wanted them to.

  102. Sebastian,
    And for another example of how common this type of false equating of supporting a movement being the same as supporting the actions of an extreme member of it, see yesterday’s post by Eugene Volokh, quoting Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web.

  103. Can’t speak for either Volokh or OJ, but given that the Emmett Till comment comes right before a discussion of the NARAL/Roberts thing, I’d guess this was intentionaly irony. If that’s not the case, I’m completely baffled.

  104. Slarti,
    Judging by Volokh’s latest, he didn’t mean it as irony. He is saying his comments apply to all who justify Iraqi insurgents as people seeking self-determination.

  105. Majikthise Hosting the Circular Firing Squad

    The best part is, the target of the circular firing squad is the circular firing squad — that is, the party disunity railed against in this thread is evidenced by the thread, something I’m sure is lost on none of the participants. It’s like rain on yo…

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