Morning Jolt - The Great Chick-fil-A War of 2012

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

August 2, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. The Great Chick-fil-A War of 2012

2. New York Times Call GOP Candidate an 'Intellectual Force,' Also, Hell's Weather Forecast Calls for Record Lows

3. Buckley vs. Vidal: What Might Have Been!

4. Addendum

Here's your Thursday Morning Jolt.

Enjoy!

Jim

1. The Great Chick-fil-A War of 2012

Landmark Mall is a sad monument to past commercial greatness not far from my neighborhood of Yuppie Acres in Alexandria, Va. It has all the classic hallmarks of the 1980s-era shopping malls -- anchor department stories at the extremes, large airy atria, escalators, a food court, a small play area for the kids -- but most of the big-name stores have disappeared. The branches of the big names that are still around -- Macy's, Sears, Victoria's Secret, Bed Bath and Beyond -- all seem to be a bit chintzier and more downscale than the other ones in the D.C. area. And there are a lot of empty storefronts. Most times I've gone there, the mall seems almost abandoned; walking around you feel as if the area survived some great apocalypse and you're witnessing the first tentative signs of human commerce among the survivors.

Upon hearing about Wednesday's "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day," I decided to see how it was playing in my (usually pretty Democratic-leaning) neck of the woods. I think I've eaten at Chick-fil-A twice in my life. The only one in the area is at the previously described post-apocalyptic commercial wasteland that is Landmark Mall, and so I figured I would see little sign of the grassroots effort near me.

Instead, I found a line of eager Chick-fil-A customers stretched through the food court -- easily 50 to 100 people. None of the other food court eateries had more than a few people on line, so it wasn't just a crowded day at the mall.

In case you're not up to speed, I'll let Ed Morrissey set the stage . . .

Fast-food outlet Chick-fil-A started operations 45 years ago in the South, and has been expanding ever since. The owners have a well-known and widely publicized commitment to their Christian faith; Chick-fil-A stores remain closed on Sundays to celebrate the Christian Sabbath. Chick-fil-A's mission clearly underscores those values, as well as traditional customer service goals: "To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."

With that background - which Chick-fil-A promotes on its website -- no one should have been surprised to hear chief operating officer Dan Cathy express his support for a traditional definition of marriage. "We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit," Cathy told two weeks ago. "We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles."

. . . Boston Mayor Thomas Menino sent a letter to Cathy stating that "[t]here is no place for discrimination on Boston's Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it." (Chick-fil-A's website explicitly states that they do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in employment or in commerce, by the way.) A few days later, Menino had to retract that statement, after belatedly discovering that mayors and cities can't discriminate on the basis of political or religious belief.

In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared that Chick-fil-A did not represent "Chicago values," and suggested that Chick-fil-A invest its money elsewhere. Chicago, by the way, has the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation among major cities, so it seems odd that its mayor would tell Chick-fil-A to take a hike for having the exact same position on marriage that Emanuel's former boss - President Barack Obama - held the entire time Emanuel worked at the White House. Even more odd, at the same time Emanuel declared Chick-fil-A fast-fooda non grata, he rolled out the red carpet for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to have his acolytes patrol Chicago neighborhoods. Not only is Farrakhan a well-known anti-Semite, he also opposes same-sex marriage. In fact, Farrakhan publicly blasted Obama for flip-flopping on the issue in May.

Emanuel later backed down, but not one of the local aldermen, who still demanded a pledge from Cathy to quit associating with groups that oppose gay marriage as a prerequisite for a business permit. A councilman in New York made a similar threat. San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee kept his attack on freedom of thought to Twitter, noting that the closest Chick-fil-A outlet was 40 miles away -- and that the company shouldn't try to get any closer.

Ed goes on to point out the obvious: in a free country, any citizen has a right to protest or boycott a business, and any officeholder is free to express their personal support or opposition to the views of a company or its leaders. But once officials start using the power of the state to punish companies for expressing views they disagree with, well . . . that's fundamentally anti-American, and sliding towards a fascist view of how society should operate. Your ability to run your business should not depend upon mayoral approval of your personal views.

The good folks at Twitchy compile the photos and anecdotes of massive crowds at Chick-fil-As across the country.

I'll probably never be an effective ideologo-vore. I like Ben & Jerry's and Oreos too much. As Adam Wilson put it, "Not gonna lie: I'm so hungry I would eat a chicken sandwich without a full inquiry into its politics."

Iowahawk asks, "Does Chick-fil-A oppose marriage between Five Guys?"

Dave Weigel speculates, "Time to ask whether Rahm, Menino and Vince Gray have Chick-fil-A stock."

Exurban Jon laments, "I dream of the day when our sandwiches will not be judged by the color of their politics, but by the contents of their sesame-seed buns."

2. New York Times Calls GOP Candidate 'an Intellectual Force'; Also, Hell's Weather Forecast Calls for Record Lows

Ask yourself if you ever expected to see this headline in the New York Times about a Republican:

Senate Candidate in Texas Is Known as an Intellectual Force

No, really, here's how the Times profiles Cruz after his big win in the Texas GOP Senate primary:

As a teenager, Ted Cruz was an intense and eloquent parser of free-market economics, dazzling Rotary Clubs here in Houston by reciting the Constitution. At Princeton, he was a champion debater and an intellectual leader of a band of conservative students. He was a star at Harvard Law School and clerked for the chief justice of the United States.

But few may have imagined Mr. Cruz, 41, in his newest role, as the Tea Party favorite and Republican candidate for the United States Senate, trading verbal orchids with the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Mr. Cruz earned the nomination on Tuesday in a runoff election after more than a year of sweaty street campaigning, drawing national attention for beating Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the more experienced nominee of the Texas Republican establishment.

"I'd have predicted that he would be a professor, not a politician," said Robert P. George, Mr. Cruz's adviser at Princeton in the early 1990s. Professor George, a noted social conservative, said that Mr. Cruz stood out even among his Ivy League peers as "intellectually and morally serious," writing his thesis on the separation of powers.

"But he's certainly not a shrinking violet," Mr. George quickly added in an interview Tuesday -- to which, Mr. Dewhurst, a wealthy conservative who had the support of Gov. Rick Perry, can attest.

Mr. Cruz's victory in November is all but assured in this heavily Republican state and marks a shift to the right in the already-conservative party here. Political elders and experts who have watched him during his time here as state solicitor general and on the campaign trail predict that he will be an intellectual force in the Congress on behalf of Constitutional limits on federal power. He is expected to join Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and other Tea Party icons as an uncompromising irritant of mainstream Republicans and Democrats alike.

Dave Weigel offers a cynical, but not inaccurate assessment of why Ted Cruz won the primary and is well upon his way to being a superstar of the Right:

Cruz is 42 and Hispanic. Dewhurst is 66 and white. For Dewhurst, this is a golden watch job -- he'd sink into the Senate the way that Kansas's Sen. Jerry Moran did. (So you don't have to google, Moran was the surprise joiner of the Tea Party Caucus who proceeded to lead on exactly zero Tea Party priorities.) Cruz could theoretically serve in the Senate for six or seven terms, chairing the Judicial Committee when President George P. Bush needs some lawyers put into robes. Or he could be picked, in his 40s, as the first conservative Hispanic on the Supreme Court. There is an inescapable logic to nominating Cruz, just as there was logic for the 2004 Illinois Democratic primary voter to pick charismatic, black Barack Obama over drab, white machine candidate Dan Hynes. Hell, I'm already opening a Word file to write my "Cruz wins national attention for prime-time Republican convention speech" story.

3. Buckley v. Vidal: What Might Have Been!

Christopher Buckley writes a short piece in The New Republic about the death of Gore Vidal, who famously had an on-air exchange with his father with featured Vidal calling William F. Buckley a "crypto-Nazi," and Buckley responding, "Now listen, you queer, you stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the godd*** face and you'll stay plastered."

Buckley concludes his piece:

If you look closely at the footage of the 1968 TV contretemps between WFB and Vidal, you'll see WFB trying to rise out of his chair at the moment of maximum heat. If you look very closely, you'll see him physically straining, but something holding him back.

A few days before, he was sailing in Long Island Sound when a Coast Guard cutter zoomed past his sailboat, knocking him to the deck, breaking his collarbone. During the Chicago debates, he was wearing a clavicle brace. It's possible that the brace prevented the moment from being truly iconic.

4. Addendum

Jim Acosta of CNN reports, "Joining Romney Thursday in Colorado: Governors Brewer, Jindal, Christie, Martinez, Fallin, Haley, Perry, Herbert, McDonnell."

Am I the only one who sees a Reality Show/Running Mate Competition coming out of this?