AU REVOIR, NIEDERMEYER.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I feel sorry for Scott Walker. He's a monster, best known for his scheme to destroy the Wisconsin teachers' union. Conservatives loved that about him, of course, because he was fulfilling their most earnest wish to humble those moocher cloth-ears who dared demand a living wage for work that didn't generate dividends or rightwing propaganda. Also he's been trying to get rid of tenure at the University of Wisconsin, which really sets their hearts on fire. And he loves Jesus and Reagan.

Many conservatives chose to imagine that ordinary people would love Walker just as much as they loved him -- though he always seemed to my unstarry eyes to be in a constant trance state and perhaps developmentally disabled. When Walker was caught eating some barbecue he'd just been serving to people with his latex serving gloves still on, it looks weird to some, but at The Federalist Peter Cook claimed it only looked weird to liberals because they never did an honest day's work -- unlike Walker, who once briefly did marketing for the Red Cross before entering politics. Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review found Walker a perfect candidate for a "Return to Normalcy" campaign "with his homespun tales of one-dollar sweaters, his quiet Midwestern roots, and his down-to-earth everyman appearance..."

Did ordinary people see him that way? It now appears ordinary Republicans didn't even see him that way. Or maybe they did see it, but decided it wasn't enough. Walker was doing okay in the polls until Trump broke out. And suddenly there went Walker's whole reason for being. It turned out his dollar sweaters and latex gloves and his lack of schooly airs weren't what appealed to them -- it was his willingness to be mean to the people they hated; and if you want a candidate to be mean to the people you hate, isn't it much better to have one who seems confident about it? (And if you want one who seems to be in a daze, there's always Ben Carson.) What's the point of ressentiment in a minor key? In April, when Walker tried to excite the crowd by harshing on Mexicans and people found it offensive, National Review's Rich Lowry said, "Walker should take the shots as a compliment, and hopefully, the rest of the field will begin to think and talk about immigration the same way." This was before Trump started calling Mexicans rapists and sweeping the field.

Anyway, now the brethren are wandering away from the scene of the crash with their hands in their pockets, whistling. Byron York was a big booster back in the day. In January he said, "Scott Walker doesn't have to be great on the stump to do well," because  his union-busting was so electifying that "GOP voters will cut him a little slack in the charisma and oratory department." Now, York sees more clearly Walker's "limitations" -- first, there was his "lack of foreign policy chops"; then, said York, "an even bigger problem was domestic policy. [Walker] just wasn't very up on some of the key policy and political issues that a president has to confront..." That wouldn't seem to leave much. Trump doesn't know anything, either, but nobody cares because his ignorance is so dynamic.

Like I said, I wouldn't say I felt bad for the guy, but it must be something to have pandered your ass off for months and then discover that it wasn't enough to be a bully -- you had to act like a bully, too.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM UP TO A POINT.

Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans are getting closer to eliminating tenure at the University of Wisconsin. Here's a column on the matter from David French, formerly an attorney for Christians who complained their colleges were violating their rights, now one of National Review's premier scolds:

As someone who has litigated many, many academic freedom cases, I have profoundly mixed feelings about this move. First, I know and understand that tenure is designed to guarantee freedom, to prevent political pressures from impacting scholarship. It’s designed to preserve academic independence. In fact, tenure has protected a number of outspoken conservative professors (including some of my clients), men and women who would have been fired long ago without tenure protections.

But...

At the same time, however, academic independence is a fiction. In the real world, leftist groupthink dominates academic departments, conservatives are easily weeded out before tenure – mostly through the hiring process itself – and even many (if not most) tenured dissenting professors live “in the closet” to avoid the social and professional consequences of public disagreement on key cultural or scientific issues. The result isn’t freedom but instead permanently entrenched ideological conformity.

Freedom not only isn't free, it isn't even real if it results in too many liberals. French then offers what may look to the casual observer like a defense of tenure...

Yet this same overwhelming conformity means that the immediate consequence of lifting tenure protections wouldn’t be greater diversity but even worse ideological persecution as the few conservative professors would face hostile departments stripped of the bulk of their legal protections. Ending tenure without simultaneously overhauling departments (including departments’ academic missions and hiring practices) simply won’t contribute to the cause of liberty. Yes, it might make it easier to make financially-motivated cuts, but it’s hard to see any short or medium-term increase in true academic freedom.

...but his GOP buddies are probably reading that and saying, "You know, he's right -- we ought to stuff the faculties with wingnuts, then make it easy to fire the ones we don't like!" Whether that was French's intention I leave to you, but read his closing before you decide:

Finally, there are downsides to tenure beyond its effect on liberty. Place any group of people outside of the normal boundaries of accountability, and they are likely to abuse that autonomy. Tenured professors are no exception, with their ranks including a host of colleagues who simply coast on their job security. They care little for teaching, behave horribly towards students and colleagues, and even slack off their research efforts. They occupy seats that could be taken by better, more conscientious teachers and scholars, and no one can move them until they retire or die. While preserving true academic freedom is worth tolerating a limited number of deadbeats, the deadbeats become much less tolerable if academic freedom is failing.

Jeez, why do we have this stupid old "tenure" in the first place? French is insufferable even when he's on the right side -- for example, you can believe Laura Kipnis got a raw deal from Northwestern and still want to sidle away when French says nuh-uh libtards, you're the real enemies of free speech; for many of us that may be a merely instinctual reaction, but French's post today shows why that instinct is absolutely correct.

LONG SHOT.

At National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke has advice for the Republican Party. Along with the usual ObamaHitler schtick, we get this:

...it should by now be obvious to conservatives that the last American Golden Age obtained not during George W. Bush’s rather disappointing tenure, but in the mid- to late- 1990s, when the Republican party ran both houses of Congress and Democrat Bill Clinton ran the executive branch... 

Sure, Jeb Bush is an impressive man. But to nominate him at this moment would be to push Republicans in the wrong direction and to force them into doing something that they should really not want to do: namely, re-litigating – and perhaps even defending – the political decisions that were made between 2000 and 2008... If they are offered a choice between “Clinton” — a name that evokes peace and prosperity — and “Bush” – a name that has been rather run through the mud – [voters] will almost certainly choose the former...

So: If they remind voters of their record and their opponents' record, the GOP is in deep shit. Sounds right.

Cooke's advice is almost as funny. He says the Republicans will "need to work out what exactly it is reacting to within the country’s soul." What might that mean? From the article, a hint:

Exactly who can will hinge upon where the country finds itself by the end of the year. If by early 2016 it has become clear that America is tired of Barack Obama’s celebrity; that Hillary’s status as a permanent member of the elite class is beginning to grate; and that Washington is seen as an out-of-touch club for the rich and the famous, then the Republican party might consider borrowing a slogan from a century ago and offering the public a 1920s style “Return to Normalcy.” With his homespun tales of one-dollar sweaters, his quiet Midwestern roots, and his down-to-earth everyman appearance, Scott Walker would do well running such a campaign — as, indeed, might a John Kasich or a Rick Snyder.

Scott Walker ain't like them rich folks nohow! Lookie this sweater! That'll set the hustings aflame. Elsewhere Cooke writes, "In an ideal world, our elections would be held on paper..." I don't think they can even win the Rotisserie Presidency with material like this.

UPDATE. Commenters remind me that the notion of Scott Walker as a humble People's Friend is made extra hilarious by his recent participation in the "Koch Primary" for the financial support of the libertarian kazillionaires. Also, I see Walker has decided to outflank Bush and Rubio by going full anti-immigrant, which I guess is supposed to be part of the "Return to Normalcy" program Cooke mentions; it must be a great success because Walker's already got people like Rich Lowry whining on his behalf ("Scott Walker, Over the Target, Taking Flak").

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

At first I thought, "O God no Joanna Newsom is trying to sneak back get the spray-bottle" but this song is kind of sticking with me.
•   Jonah Goldberg's column today could have been titled, "I'm not lazy and stupid, you're lazy and stupid!" He says Obama is dumb because he won't admit Islam itself is responsible for the nuts who kill in its name. The President's anodyne ecumenical statement is, in Goldberg's view, the same thing as saying "Michael Jordan didn’t play basketball" or  "We didn’t win World War II" in that, durr, that's stoopid too, right? The analogy invites deeper analysis, so step well back as Goldberg executes his logic-fart:

“No religion is responsible for terrorism,” the president proclaimed, “people are responsible for violence and terrorism.”

Now obviously, there’s some truth to this. We judge people more by their actions than by their beliefs. But reasonable people also recognize that our actions often have a causal relationship with our beliefs. This is hardly a controversial — or even debatable — insight. Orthodox Jews don’t avoid bacon because it tastes bad; they do so because they’re keeping kosher. One cannot intelligently discuss why Mother Teresa helped the poor without referring to her faith. And one cannot discuss why the Islamic State burns, rapes, and enslaves people without taking their religious beliefs into account.

See -- Jews have wacky eating habits, Christians are nice, and Muslims are savage rapist-murders; Q.E.Doritos Cool Ranch! While I attribute the lack of retribution I've suffered for my anti-Mohammed cartoons to global respect for my artistry, I think Goldberg is safe because most non-conservatives can't make out what he's trying to say.

•   Speaking of legacy pledges and the next GOP President, Bill Kristol worries that Hillary Clinton is getting better numbers in the reps-the-future-not-the-past category in a CNN/ORC poll than any Republican Presidential candidate. (Scott Walker's numbers are least bad, perhaps because voters relate his social-net-shredding record to the dystopian future of The Handmaid's Tale or Idiocracy.) Kristol thinks he sees a way out:

Perhaps some new set of concerns in 2016 will overwhelm all the past/future talk. Given the state of the world, that’s quite possible. We could easily have a foreign policy election in 2016. And then people might not mind a steady hand, even if one from the past (think Richard Nixon in 1968).

One thing Americans  seem to have learned from the last clusterfuck in which Bill Kristol had a hand is, let's not do that again. In fact Kristol himself was complaining about "American war-weariness" only last year. Yet now he thinks beating the drum for Gulf War III might get one of his ringers elected. I suppose that's because he has more than average faith in the power of yellow journalism and jingo. After all, he is the editor of the Weekly Standard, which is very influential among people who never read anything they can't get for free on the New York-DC shuttle; that's got to count for something.

•   Whether or not I get to see any of the other big films (see my "On to Oscar" posts), at some point this weekend I'm going to stick my fool neck out, as I have in years past, and predict Sunday's winners. So watch this space! (And the easy way to do this is to get on my Twitter feed, where I announce posts sometime and dish out apothegms.)

•   Yeah it's late and who cares, but there are a few wonderful things about this Noah Rothman Hot Air column defending noted asshole Rudolph Giuliani and the asshole thing he said this week. I mean, it's mostly terrible on the level of Twitchy (look at the sickburn takedown of the media by "Florida-based political operative Rick Wilson"!), but in his flailing Rothman does bang into an interesting defense:

What are we to make of this frenzied attack on Giuliani, in which the whole of the political press reacted as though a man who left office 14 years ago had insulted their mothers?... 

Oh, but he was a leading presidential candidate in 2007, don’t you know? And he delivered the keynote address at the GOP’s nominating convention in 2008. And he’s a frequent guest on cable news, so he must be influential (a claim that could only be made by someone who rarely appears on cable news). But observing Giuliani’s diminished stature today when compared to the last decade renders the media’s reaction even less explicable.

I hope someone in Rudy's retinue told him, "It's okay, chief -- Noah Rothman says it doesn't matter 'cause you're a has-been!" Oh but the very, very, very best is the correction at the end:

An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the chairman of the RNC as Ron Fournier

May your weekend be as serendipitous.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   I thought yesterday's First Things article -- about how, thanks to 50 Shades of Grey, BDSM will lead followers to the Church, thereby reversing the usual pattern -- would be an anomaly. But now I see it's becoming a wingnut-Christian trope, executed today by Mollie Hemingway, who I guess is the new The Anchoress. At least Hemingway starts with a perfectly entertaining review of the film; she finds the sex scenes "pretty tame" and names other BDSM-themed stories she prefers, which as a former Catholic I appreciate. But then:

Anyway — if, as a character written by G. K. Chesterton said, “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God,” let’s ponder what women who are into this awful literature are seeking.

Ugh, that quote again -- and I might have known it was Chesterton, that's how the more high-class God-botherers always announce themselves.

I want to say this before the days when such statements are branded hate-speech worthy of re-education camp...

And the same goes for ridiculous persecution fantasies.

...but a hell of a lot of women would, if forced to choose, prefer to be in a loving committed relationship with a dude than get successively better office jobs on the way to the corner office.

Also, they'd rather go to heaven and lounge on clouds all day than go to your liberal-secular schools. Thereafter Hemingway just spools out the usual bullshit: Girls who try to make something more of themselves than dutiful wifemothers end up bitter hags with frozen eggs; men are boycotting marriage because of bitter hags with frozen eggs; women don't want feminism, they "want to be lost in a relationship, completely submitting to a man who is dangerous enough to need rescue but loving enough to notice what makes them beautiful," etc. Well, one good thing may come of this; in future, Jesus-friendly films like God's Not Dead will have a lot more nudity, and missals may come with bodice-ripping illustrations and Fabio on the cover as Jesus.

•   I don't usually pimp books here, mainly because I'm sub-literate, but I can say this about Dead is Better, by my wife's friend Jo Perry: If you liked my own neo-noir Morgue for Whores (and if you haven't read that, what's stopping you), you'll probably like this. Actually, that's not a pre-condition -- Dead is less grimy and sleazy than my novel, which surprisingly does not make it less interesting. The narrator is a dead guy, murdered, and he's just getting the hang of the afterworld. He figures out how to locomote in his new "frictionless" plane of existence, and even to hitch rides in cars, pretty quickly, but he's slower to make sense of what he's learning about the people he left behind in meat world -- and of the dog, also dead, who appears to have adopted him. Murder, mystery, redemption -- all that. Oh, and very sharp writing. Have a look.

•   It's become de rigueur for conservatives to defend Scott Walker's college performance -- we Charlie Pierce fans call this "the C-plus Augustus maneuver." Jonah Goldberg ups the ante and defends Walker's punt on evolution. Goldberg calls it "Darwinism," a popular schtick among the brethren, and says no fair you're trying to make us look dumb:

To borrow a phrase from the campus left, Darwinism is used to “otherize” certain people of traditional faith — and the politicians who want their vote.

Same thing with those citizens whose Constitutional right to treat epilepsy with leeches is mocked by them there pointy-heads. Then Goldberg gives his own I-din't-come-from-no-monkey speech on grounds of moral grandeur:

Beneath the surface, the salience of evolution as a political football is ultimately about the status of man. Are humans moral creatures whose actions are judged by some external or divine standard, or are we simply accidental winners of an utterly random contest of genes?

A God that works through evolution -- why, it's too fantastic to even contemplate, just like universal health care. How I'd love to see the big courtroom scene in Inherit the Wind re-written for Goldberg -- especially if they replaced Brady's Bible citations with quotes from Animal House and "he who smelt it dealt it."