Ya Gotta Admit, They're Good

From the people who built the Overton Window from hand-crafted glass, we have the sensible moderate conservative alternative.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, host Chris Wallace asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about the controversy, noting that in 1991 Gingrich defended a similar speech by then-President George H.W. Bush by saying, “Why is it political for the president of the United States to discuss education?” Gingrich replied that if it’s “a totally positive speech” that parents can see “in advance” (which they can), then “it is good to have”:

GINGRICH: My daughter Jackie Cushman just wrote a column in which she said, “if the president gives a speech as a parent to students to encourage them to learn and stay in school, it is a great thing for him to do.” It was a good thing for Ronald Reagan to do. It was a good thing for George H. W. Bush to do. And I’ve been communicating with Arne Duncan and the team at the Department of Education. I believe this is going to be posted, people are going to be able to see it in advance, it’s going to be a totally positive speech, and if that’s what it is, then it is good to have the president of the United States say to young people across America: Stay in school, study and do your homework. It’s good for you and it’s good for America.

First of all, Newt Gingrich's daughter writes columns. Maybe she should do a pundit road show with Bill Kristol, Meghan McCain, John Podhoretz, Jonah Goldberg, Liz Cheney and Jenna Hager Bush about the dangers of affirmative action.

Second, here comes the sensible Newt Gingrich, riding in to denounce the hysteria and position himself as a serious, brave conservative who only concerns himself with real-world issues like the threat of an electromagnetic pulse attack and using lasers to wipe out North Korean missiles. Now we can make way for the parade of liberal DC columnists like Joke Line and Richard Cohen lauding the bravery of conservative heroes like Gingrich, boldly going against the attacks of his own party supporters. (Hey wait, here they are!) Maybe this will kick off his Presidential campaign in 2012, although he'll have to get past early adopter of the "Obama's education speech is fine" gambit, Joe Scarborough.

Being able to assert that it's OK for the President of the United States to give a "stay in school" speech to children is about the lowest bar anyone in politics will ever have to surmount. If that's evidence of conservative sanity, then whoever said "the soft bigotry of low expectations" was a genius. Now Gingrich and Scarborough and whoever else can get on with their attacks on Obama's government takeover of health care and efforts to make America vulnerable to Evil Terrorists. At least they aren't too crazy.

I'm reminded of the Chris Rock routine:

Niggas always want credit for some shit they supposed to do. A nigga will brag about some shit a normal man just does. A nigga will say some shit like, "I take care of my kids." You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! What kind of ignorant shit is that? "I ain't never been to jail!" What do you want, a cookie?! You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!

Who Pissed In Dana Rohrabacher's Corn Flakes?

Dana Rohrabacher has been out front in yipping about the need for the President to rhetorically confront Iran, a stupid idea given our history in the region, and the opposite of what actual Iranian dissidents and experts like Shirin Ebadi, Trita Parsi and Akbar Ganji suggest. As OC Progressive notes, he is undermining the protests and demonstrations by giving credence to the complaint of the ruling regime that foreign interests are intervening in their election. By saber-rattling, like in the passage of a resolution in support of the protests and then wielding it as a club to criticize the President for not being belligerent enough, you just play into the hands of the regime. And Rohrabacher and his colleagues never had this kind of commitment to human rights when it involved the systematic, needless torture of detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. In fact, Rohrabacher called those cruel, inhumane and degrading tactics fraternity hazing pranks - when Dick Cheney orders them. When the Iranians or North Koreans order them, it's a whole different ballgame.

But I have to step back and admire - and kind of marvel - at Rohrabacher's comments yesterday about the Uighurs, a group of 18 Muslims held at Guantanamo for seven years without charges, despite having been proven to commit no acts of terrorism or crimes of any kind. Several were released to Bermuda this week, amidst clamoring by many conservatives, in particular Newt Gingrich. But Rohrabacher smacked the former House Speaker down pretty hard on this point, decrying him for raising needless fears. It's idiosyncratic, of course, because it's Rohrabacher, and it mostly constitutes a conspiracy theory about the Chinese government. But embedded in the madness are some true statements about Republican fearmongering and overhyping of threats.

ROHRABACHER: And also, right off the bat, I’d like to express my deep appreciation to the leader in Bermuda — it’s Premier Brown — for his courage to do what is morally right in this situation. He’s demonstrated, I think, the best of democracy. That’s what leadership is all about: being willing to take such tough stands. I’m sorry that our own leadership here at home, and even in my own party, seems lacking at this moment. [...]

Much to my dismay, some pundits in the Republican party have fallen for this bait and are lumping the Uighurs in with Islamic extremists. The Bush administration did not help matters. It held Uighurs in Guantanamo as terrorists, and they did this, I believe, to appease the Chinese government in a pathetic attempt to gain its support at the beginning of the war against Iraq, and also to ensure China’s continued purchase of U.S. treasuries. Many, if not all, the negative allegations against the Uighurs, can be traced by to Communist Chinese intelligence, whose purpose is to snuff out a legitimate independence movement that challenges the Communist party bosses in Beijing.

No patriot, especially no Republican who considers themselves a Reagan Republican, should fall for this manipulation, which has us do the bidding of a dictatorship in Beijing.

In the hall of shame, of course, is our former speaker, Newt Gingrich. His positioning on this should be of no surprise — and is of no surprise — to those of who, during Newt’s leadership, were dismayed by his active support for Clinton-era trade policies with Communist China.

Video here.

Would that Rohrabacher would listen to his own words when saber-rattling against Iran. That moment of clarity - all right, about 1/3 of a moment - ought to be repeated.

Oh yeah, and George Packer is a media royalist buffoon.

The Big Big News About A Random GOP Fundraising Event

This Sarah Palin-Newt Gingrich dust-up over who gets to speak at some Republican fundraising dinner, and the fact that people aren't just talking about it but CONSUMED with it, shows you how Washington is wired for conservatives. Not one American gives a crap who speaks to a bunch of well-heeled conservatives at a dinner in DC, but the chattering class is all a-twitter. It may be a bit of fun to watch useless conservative muckety-mucks fight with one another, but it adds absolutely nothing to anyone's life.

Which of course is why Hardball led with it today. With Nixon's Jew counter Fred Malek as the main talking head. The junior high students in the Village media think that which Republican passed which note to which other Republican in the back of the class is the most fascinating thing ever. Good thing 6 million people haven't lost their jobs in the last 18 months or anything, because surely that would give them something else to talk about!

Wired For Conservatism

E.J. Dionne is one of the first traditional media journalists, to my knowledge, to openly state that the media tilts to the right, in the context of how the chattering class leaps at any utterance from the Newt Gingrichs and Rush Limbaughs and Dick Cheneys of the world, and he explains how this distorts the debate in Washington and what people pick up in the cultural milieu.

If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don't. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.

The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He's the guy who nominates a "racist" to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America's defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama's economic policies to those of Juan Peron's Argentina [...]

This was brought home at this week's annual conference of the Campaign for America's Future, a progressive group that supports Obama but worries about how close his economic advisers are to Wall Street, how long our troops will have to stay in Afghanistan and how much he will be willing to compromise to secure health-care reform.

In other words, they see Obama not as the parody created by the far right but as he actually is: a politician with progressive values but moderate instincts who has hewed to the middle of the road in dealing with the economic crisis, health care, Guantanamo and the war in Afghanistan.

Dionne goes on to describe a panel he witnessed Tuesday with Jared Polis, Donna Edwards and Raul Grijalva - three of the most progressive members of Congress, but three whose names aren't in the Village Rolodex, and whose views have almost no impact on the way the debates in Washington are presented to the public. That doesn't mean they don't have power and importance - their decision along with the Progressive Caucus to pool their power and force the public option into the health care debate was masterful - but it confuses the way Obama is presented, and the space to criticize him from the left. Edwards explained this very specifically:

Polis, Edwards and Grijalva also noted that proposals for a Canadian-style single-payer health-care system, which they support, have fallen off the political radar. Polis urged his activist audience to accept that reality for now and focus its energy on making sure that a government insurance option, known in policy circles as the "public plan," is part of the menu of choices offered by a reformed health-care system.

But Edwards noted that if the public plan, already a compromise from single-payer, is defined as the left's position in the health-care debate, the entire discussion gets skewed to the right. This makes it far more likely that any public option included in a final bill will be a pale version of the original idea.

Her point has broader application. For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media's discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives.

And actually, this SUITS Obama. If he wanted to pick his enemies, he's much rather have Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney than Jared Polis, Donna Edwards and Raul Grijalva. For one, the public has a fairly definitive opinion of those conservatives, at least relative to Obama, and the President wins those debates without saying a word. For another, Obama has no need to move from the moderate center if the Beltway criticism doesn't approach him from that perspective. His choice of advisers and policy options clearly put him in that moderate mainstream of the Democratic Party, and it's where he feels - has always felt - the most comfortable.

The media has an interest in defining the terms of the debate, indeed a self-interest, given the conglomerates that they are. When ABC News gives the same amount of space to Sean Hannity as they do to the Secretary of State, implicit in that editorial decision is the fact that Hannity has spent many years as part of the ABC Radio Network. When business stories betray a perspective more sympathetic to corporate America than the working class, the very fact of the corporate behemoths that populate modern media bear a lot on that decision. But these decisions also enable Obama to operate without equal pressure from all sides of the policy argument, essentially a free hand. This may keep conservatism alive, but it also co-opts the Democratic Administration by giving them the only pressure they consider important - pressure from the right.

Gingrich Concedes The Point; Will Others?

It's very interesting to me that Newt Gingrich dialed down his description of Sonia Sotomayor as a racist, even if, in context, he didn't. Surely we know how this works - we saw it last week with the President. Obama took one step back on Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment, conceding the point but also set it in context, but it set off a flurry from the commentariat, claiming that Obama "caved," etc. Now Gingrich does essentially the same thing, conceding the point but adding a whole bunch of context actually keeping his claim alive that Sotomayor is a racist. And while this gives Republicans space to welcome the return of civility to the debate, it keeps them on the defensive and in a reactive position as well. Clearly calling Sotomayor a racist wasn't exactly working out for them, so they had to defuse that. But the backpedaling is historically the kind of thing Republicans NEVER do. Could they be understanding the damaging nature of their rhetoric?

Of course, Gingrich isn't alone, and there are plenty of other ways for Democrats to continue to exploit this and put the pressure on. In fact, Gingrich's admission, despite its fatuousness, gives them more ammunition - "even Newt Gingrich disavowed this," etc. For example, will Republicans be made to answer for Pat Buchanan's comparison of Sotomayor to white supremacists? In the distant past, Buchanan was a symbol for a particular strain of xenophobic ugliness. Now he's a respected member of the media community and that "liberal" network MSNBC. Will he be held to account?

Given Pat Buchanan's history of clear bigotry - most recently demonstrated in his reminder last night that he supported and continues to defend a white supremacist - there really isn't any good reason for MSNBC to continue putting him on the air. The man is a bigot, plain and simple. In light of the hot water MSNBC has gotten into in the past for bigoted comments by its employees, you would think they would want to distance themselves from the likes Buchanan.

But what's really extraordinary is that MSNBC brings Buchanan on air to talk about race issues. It gives Pat Buchanan a platform from which to call other people racists. Granted, if there's someone who knows racists better than Pat Buchanan does, I can't think of who it would be. But his is not the kind of expertise MSNBC should be inflicting upon its viewers.

...by the way, this is completely divorced from the larger debate over Sotomayor's confirmation, which is assured. The "fight" is a bit of a shadow play for the base. But conceding the point doesn't help that cause.

...the Chairman of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, won't retract the racism charge. Wedge away, Democrats.

...This also brings up a larger question about that liberal network MSNBC. Giving space to an out-and-out bigot like Pat Buchanan, who's on that channel more often than the peacock, reflects really poorly on them. Not to mention the three hours of unadulterated horseshit in the morning.

The Morning Joe crew was on an anti-union tear this morning, claiming the union label on a company means "sell." Mika Brzezinski went so far as to say of unions: "They cripple the system that makes a company work." Collectively, the journalists on Morning Joe couldn't name a single "successful" unionized company.

This says more about their qualifications to discuss public policy and labor relations than it says about unions. To pick just one obvious example, UPS is unionized -- and the company made more than $3 billion last year. That's "billion" with a "b," and those are profits, not revenues.

Oh, what the heck, let's take one more example. GE is one of the world's largest companies; in 2006, its revenues were greater than the gross domestic products of 80 percent of UN nations. The company made more than $18 billion in 2008 -- again, billion with a b, and again, those are profits, not revenue. All that despite (or, perhaps, because of) the fact that 13 different unions represent GE workers.

Oh, and GE owns NBC-Universal, which owns MSNBC, which pays Joe Scarborough a handsome salary (and the unionized workers who help get his show on the air considerably less.)

Scarborough, you recall, is the former GOP Congressman who represented Michael Griffin pro bono, the man who killed abortion provider Dr. David Gunn, in his murder case.

Behold The Professional Cable News Guest

Newt Gingrich decided to show his expertise in California politics in the Washington Post today, arguing that the special election defeat was a triumph for anti-tax reformers. With only 1 of the 5 propositions defeated on the ballot having anything to do with taxes, and that one tied to a right-wing spending cap, and 2 of the others defeated to ensure the safety of VOTER-APPROVED TAXES FOR SPECIFIC PROGRAMS, it's a curious notion.

But Newt Gingrich knowing nothing about California just matches his lack of knowledge about really anything. And despite this, he continues to get a large megaphone to spread his disinformation.

It’s a really strange situation. If were an editor looking for an op-ed from a conservative point of view about the California budget crisis, I would turn to one of the members of the California State Senate, or to one of the members of the California State House of Representatives. If I wanted an op-ed from a conservative point of view about the implications of the California budget crisis for national politics, I think I would turn to one of the 19 different Republican members of the United States House of Representatives. But the Post went with a former House Speaker from Georgia, who last held elected office about ten years ago.

If I wanted a conservative politician to go up against Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number two Democrat in the United States Senate, my first choice would be Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who’s Durbin’s opposite number. But of course Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the top GOP dog, would be a great get too. Failing that, there are 37 other Republican Senators you can ask. And there are lots of conservatives in the House leadership who might have an enlightening point of view on whatever it is they’re up to. But Meet The Press went with a former House Speaker from Georgia, who last held elected office about ten years ago.

Matt Y. goes on to note that other former House leaders don't get nearly the kind of platform that Gingrich does. On Rachel Maddow's show the other day, The Nation's Chris Hayes mentioned that he sees Gingrich in green rooms all over town, and that he wonders what the hell he does all day.

I guess all it takes is running a newsletter and lying about your efforts to potentially run for President some day, and you too can be on the teevee 24 hours a day. As long as you're Republican.

The Rare Reverse Kabuki

I don't know who fed the media this point, or maybe they just couldn't ignore the wealth of hypocrisy surrounding the right-wing hissy fit over Nancy Pelosi, but they have started to inexplicably push back. It started last week when Marcy Wheeler noted that Pete Hoekstra, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of providing insufficient briefings and even lying to Congress, regarding a separate investigation. In the interim, a host of elements of the CIA's story started to fall apart - their briefing record document included people who weren't in the meetings, people who lacked the security clearance to attend, and even stated Porter Goss was briefed in 2005 when he was the Director of the CIA at the time. The invaluable ThinkProgress dug up a copy of the letter Hoekstra sent to the CIA, and added this:

Similarly, in 2007, Hoekstra described a closed-door briefing by representatives from the intelligence community (including CIA) on the National Intelligence Estimate of Iran’s nuclear capability, saying that the members “didn’t find [the briefers] forthcoming.” More recently, in November 2008, Hoekstra concluded that the CIA “may have been lying or concealing part of the truth” in testimony to Congress regarding a 2001 incident in which the CIA mistakenly killed an American citizen in Peru. “We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress,” Hoekstra said of the incident.

Maybe this was simply the easiest way for journalists to understand the emptiness of the hissy fit - Hoekstra said "lied," too - but for some reason they're off and running with this today. Wolf Blitzer confronted John Boehner with this and he had to concede the point. Newt Gingrich tried to play this off when called on it by Diane Sawyer, of all people, but it didn't work ut too well for him.



(not that anyone should give a crap what Newt Gingrich thinks.)

And here comes none other than Arlen Specter, calling 'em how he sees 'em with respect to the CIA:

Sen. Arlen Specter took the opportunity Wednesday to defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has come under fire in recent weeks over a controversy surrounding when she was told of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques being used by the CIA.

“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say ‘candid’; that’s too mild — to honesty,” Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency’s involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair.

I have no idea why the worm turned today, but this controversy is basically over. The CIA's theory is full of holes, and the Pelosi spat has turned into he said/she said, with the media willing to explore Republican hypocrisy on the issue.

Of course, defusing this time bomb has an added benefit - it ends any rising calls for investigations, perhaps starting with what Pelosi knew but encompassing the entire breadth of the torture regime from top to bottom. The Village certainly wants no part of that. So they had to play rough with Republicans for a couple days. It's almost a Kabuki dance in reverse - the media pretends to delve deep and fact-check precisely to pre-empt anyone else getting to actually delve deep and fact-check.

Pretty sharp. Meanwhile the whole "we tortured detainees to justify the war in Iraq" storyline has faded off into the distance as well. Maybe Jonathan Landay will drop yet another McClatchy bombshell soon.

Common Ground In Education

I don't consider it all that unusual to see Barack Obama meeting with Newt Gingrich today. First of all, Obama does this all the time, and my ability to be shocked by it has worn thin. I'm more concerned with results and support leaders talking to people with whom they don't agree. Second, the subject of the meeting (which also included Al Sharpton and Michael Bloomberg) was education reform, and I've long said that this is an area where Republicans ought to work with the President, especially because they're on the same side. The President supports charter schools, he supports high standards, he supports some kind of merit pay, he comes down on the reform side of the debate between reformers and teacher's unions, and so do his top advisors, like his Secretary of Education. They may not like Obama ending the privatization of the student loan system and making Pell grants permanent, but there's a substantial amount of common ground there.

As for fearing the elevation of Newt Gingrich, I don't think that keeps anyone in the White House awake at night. Nobody really likes him out in the country.

Newt Gingrich's Burning Desire To Start Two New Wars

Good thing Newt Gingrich isn't fanning flames of discord between the United States and Israel or anything.

Former US House speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state, ahead of his address that day to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference.

"They are systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we've ever seen," the leading Republican politician told The Jerusalem Post, referring to news reports about the administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"There's almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world," he said.

He called US President Barack Obama's program of engagement on Iran a "fantasy," and his Middle East policies "very dangerous for Israel." He summed up Obama's approach as "the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter."

That's just incredibly irresponsible talk, and Gingrich followed it up by comparing talking to Iran with talking to Hitler, as well as calling for two more wars in Iran and North Korea.

He comes from the serious, big-thinker wing of the Republican Party.

These are the views that did nothing but push Iran and North Korea further toward a nuclear weapons program under Bush and Cheney. They are both bad for American security and Israeli security. And they come on a day when, oddly enough, Middle East hopes were raised by Hamas' insistence that they have stopped rocket attacks, and their claim that they seek only a Palestinian state under 1967 borders (which intimates that they accept the existence of the Israeli state). Peace in the Middle East would harm Republican fortunes electorally, so they would rather sow belligerence, discord and terror.

I signed this J Street petition supporting the Obama Administration's agenda in the Middle East instead of failed policies that make us less safe. You should too.

Rudderless Ship

These days, political opposition leaders either aren't respected enough or don't have a big enough megaphone to "lead" a party. They inevitably have to work at their Congressional job, so they aren't the ones heard by the public throughout the day giving opposition arguments. Democrats didn't exactly have one "leader" during 2002-2006, and Republicans don't have one now. Sadly for them, the people who have the biggest megaphones are frequently absurd. Newt Gingrich talks about the scourge of smiling with the enemy, when he has a picture on his wall of him and Ronald Reagan talking about A JOKE REAGAN TOLD GORBACHEV. Rush Limbaugh demands so much fealty and yet is so radioactive that Republican pols keep falling into the trap of criticizing him only to have to apologize later (we're literally talking about five times this has happened now). You have Dick Cheney all over television defending the indefensible Bush Presidency. And overall, the party has nothing but rhetorical weapons to use in their battles against the President.

“Rhetorically, Republicans are having a very hard time finding something that raises the consciousness of the average voter,” said Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who recently lost a bid to became national party chairman.

Workaday labels like “big spender” and “liberal” have lost their punch, and last fall, Senator John McCain of Arizona and Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska gained little traction during the presidential campaign by linking Mr. Obama’s agenda to socialism.

So Mr. Anuzis has turned to provocation with a purpose. He calls the president’s domestic agenda “economic fascism.”

“We’ve so overused the word ‘socialism’ that it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago,” Mr. Anuzis said. “Fascism — everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.”

When a politician finally gets to open his mouth, he ends up saying something like Obama's choice for a federal judgeship is a secret Muslim.

These are the reasons why Republicans are less popular than Venezuela. The only people speaking for the GOP right now are extremely distasteful to the broad mass of citizens, and they are saying increasingly ridiculous things. They may lock up the angry white male vote for 30 years, but that's not enough to build an electoral coalition.

Smiles: The Latest, Greatest Threat To Global Survival

The fauxtrage of the day concerns Barack Obama doing this country the terrible dishonor and shame of shaking a foreign leader's hand. IMPEACH NOW

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tore into President Barack Obama Monday for his friendly greeting of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying Obama is bolstering the "enemies of America."

Gingrich appeared on a number of morning talk shows comparing Obama to President Jimmy Carter for the smiling, hearty handshake he offered Chavez, one of the harshest critics of the United States, during the Summit of the Americas. [...]

Two Republican senators, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and John Ensign of Nevada, joined in the criticism Monday, with Ensign calling Obama's greeting of Chavez "irresponsible."

Worse, he was smiling! Smiling!!!1!!eleventy! How dare he sell out this nation with his facial expressions! Why, it's positively... well, Reaganesque.



Fortunately, the President was having none of this today.

Venezuela is a country whose defense budget is probably 1/600th of the United States’. They own Citgo. It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States. I don’t think anybody can find any evidence that that would do so. Even within this imaginative crowd, I think you would be hard-pressed to paint a scenario in which U.S. interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela.

I think mockery remains the only option for dealing with these people. We have hard evidence of torture at the highest levels of government, we have a broken economy, we have a crisis in health care and climate change. And the Republicans, still acting like the normative goal of political parties are to win the news cycle, throw up a "Obama didn't wink the way I wanted him to wink" or "Obama bent his knee when you shouldn't bend your knee and as a result we're all going to be killed or forced into burqas" every day. I don't know that there's another, more reasonable response than pointing and laughing.

Also, the media actually doesn't have to follow this story. They deserve a lot of the blame as well. They don't have to answer Newt Gingrich's phone calls.

A Stroll Through The Teabags

This isn't turning out entirely well for the right. Even the roundup piece on the AP includes this balloon-puncturing nugget.

The tea parties were promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington and led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, a lobbyist whose corporate clients including Verizon, Raytheon, liquor maker Diageo, CarMax and drug company Sanofi Pasteur.

The group's federal tax returns show its educational and charitable arms received more than $6 million in donations in 2007, the most recent year for which returns are available.

Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich have no possible claim to leading a grassroots movement, though Armey did helpfully explain to the protesters what teabagging is, which at least should help their sex lives. This is corporate underwriting to harness populist sentiment. And the results have been ugly, like with this Fox News reporter exhorting his charges to "wake up and fight the fascism."



Or this.



"He's a fascist." "Why?" "Because he is."

I still haven't figured out what this protest is all about, but it sure is entertaining. Elsewhere, teabaggers threw tea over the White House gate, causing a lockdown while protesters shouted "Death to the President." This is an echo of teabaggers sending tea bags to Congressional offices and having them mistaken for hazardous materials. And here are some pictures - my favorite being "cut taxes, not defense," which just shows no recognition of how government or money or really anything works. Oh yeah, and this.

Robert Gibbs could only sigh and remark that the White House just passed the largest middle-class tax cut in American history, which is true and about all they really should say at this point, given their position of authority. I think Thomas Frank put it best:

Unless it rains today, thousands of average people will stand up across the land, declare their mad-as-hell-ness. Look for folks to holler for lower estate taxes and a replacement for Sarbanes-Oxley. They will put on three-cornered hats, wave "don't tread on me" flags, and imagine that they are channeling the spirit of Tom Paine as they do their part to ease the troubles of the economy's winners.

And Fox News, which plans to cover the tea parties, will no doubt hail this plastic populism as the realest kind of social uprising, a movement that is the rightful expression of this year's discontents [...]

The conservative movement, too, has long been a master of this maneuver. From the days of Richard Nixon to those of Sarah Palin it has described itself as a rebellion of Middle America against elitist liberals; as a nation of Joe the Plumbers rising against interfering bureaucrats.

It has little patience with traditional populism of the anti-big-business sort. Looking around on the Web site of the D.C. pressure group FreedomWorks, for example, I came across a denunciation of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's "small-minded populism" written in January 2008 by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, now FreedomWorks's chairman. Mr. Huckabee's offense was his claim to favor "Main Street, not Wall Street," thereby implying, Mr. Armey sputtered, "that the interests of the two are not in alignment. . . ."

As the mad-as-hell come together to proclaim their outrage, all the well-known earmarks of right-wing populism will no doubt be present. Leadership, in certain instances, will probably be furnished by one of the many well-known, well-funded Washington pressure groups. The ideology will be strictly Manichean: "government" and "freedom" in a zero-sum cage match, light versus darkness, with a victory for one being automatically a setback for the other.

Other than that, the tea partiers' stance on the issues is a little mysterious. But outrage is outrage, the party organizers probably figure; who will know the difference?

Great stuff.

...not that numbers are everything, but the biggest claim I've seen is that 60,000 people have turned out nationwide for this thing. 500,000 people rallied for immigration reform just in LA, and without any right-wing money or infrastructure, besides. Of course, I saw very little coverage of those rallies compared to the teabagging. And the disconnect from the traditional media is sadly predictable.

...Go Nancy!

PELOSI: What they want is a continuation of the failed economic policies of President George Bush which got us in the situation we are in now. What we want is a new direction. … This [tea party] initiative is funded by the high end — we call call it astroturf, it’s not really a grassroots movement. It’s astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class.

Go-To Source

I know that whenever I seek guidance on whether a policy is Catholic or anti-Catholic, I hit up the twice-divorced guy who was committing adultery while chastising the President for doing the same, thus breaking two of the Ten Commandments at the same time.

I mean, he seems like the best judge to me. After all, he's going to become a Catholic on Saturday, meaning it's all fresh in his head.

I apologize in advance for giving a crap what Newt Gingrich says or thinks.

Wolverines!!!

Only through the lens of Republican Party up-is-downism can a "success" like Eric Cantor be studying the "success" of Newt Gingrich:

As Republican whip, Mr. Cantor succeeded again on Friday in denying the White House the support of a single House Republican on the stimulus bill. That was a calculated challenge to the president, who, in his weekly address on Saturday, hailed the bill as “an ambitious plan at a time we badly need it.”

Mr. Cantor said he had studied Mr. Gingrich’s years in power and had been in regular touch with him as he sought to help his party find the right tone and message. Indeed, one of Mr. Gingrich’s leading victories in unifying his caucus against Mr. Clinton’s package of tax increases to balance the budget in 1993 has been echoed in the events of the last few weeks.

“I talk to Newt on a regular basis because he was in the position that we are in: in the extreme minority,” he said.

Newt Gingrich went from the Republican Revolution to having to resign as Speaker within four years, losing a Presidential election and a midterm in the process. The long-term result was an ideological retrenchment in the Republican Party that has confined them to regional backwaters. This is the MODEL for GOP success. And so they marched into the slaughter, allowing themselves to vote in unity against the largest middle-class tax cut in American history, and to go all early '80s with maybe the most pathetic backslapping-for-nothing video in the history of modern politics. As Jason Zengerle notes:

[I]t's basically a litany of every tired, failed GOP buzzword (from ACORN to golf carts), all set to the tune of ... Aerosmith.... [Y]ears from now, when historians are trying to sort out what went so terribly wrong with conservatism in the early twenty-first century, I really hope this little video doesn't get overlooked.

That SNL skit this weekend wasn't all that funny, but it did capture the conservative echo chamber pretty well. They are too busy high-fiving to see the rest of the country laughing at them.

By the way, Mr. Cantor, you know less about Winston Churchill than you do about Newt Gingrich. See Josh Marshall for that one.

A Revealing Window Into The Minds Of Washington

In the wake of the Daschle mess, there are a lot of possibilities for both HHS Secretary and the newly created "health care policy czar," ranging from the sublime - Dr. Dean - to the ridiculous - anyone else that the corporate-owned media can come up with.

You have Marc Ambinder and Karen Tumulty ringing the bell for Mitt Romney, because he "can claim the provision of universal health care as a resume line." Which isn't true at all, he sought to derail MassCare at almost every opportunity, it bubbled up directly from the state legislature, and the usual fallacy of attributing everything to the executive is at play. By the way, if you want to go that route, you could mention that Howard Dean provided universal health coverage for children and pregnant women, and unlike Romney he actually drove the policy and did it well before MassCare ever started.

Then Craig Crawford offers up Newt Gingrich, ferchrissake:

Gingrich? Now before you lefties have a collective heart attack, think about it. Something as big as overhauling our entire health care system will be tougher to get done on a purely partisan basis. There are Republicans who want to play.

As much as it would infuriate liberals, picking Gingrich would be a hyper-bipartisan move. Would it confound the GOP into submission on health care? Maybe not, but it would be a bold move to change the political dynamics that has killed reforms in the past.

This is the stupidity of Washington on full display, being conned into thinking a movement conservative like Gingrich would want to do anything but derail an Obama Presidency, believing that bipartisanship for its own sake is the highest good known to man, etc. And Obama has enabled this to a large extent, and now in many ways he's trapped by it, as Republicans use the "bipartisanship" talking point to block fundamental change.

The history-making moment unfolded in the White House press room on January 23, when the topic open for questioning was President Obama's proposed economic stimulus package and whether the administration, which was hoping for a bipartisan effort on the legislation, would be disappointed if the bill passed with little Republican support. And that's when Todd asked if Obama would veto his own bill if it didn't garner enough Republican votes.

If nothing else, though, Todd's absurd query helped highlight the unheard-of double standard that's been constructed by the press specifically for the new Democratic president with regard to the pressing issue of bipartisanship. Virtually all the news accounts are stressing the same story: If there's little or no bipartisan support for Obama's stimulus package, then it's Obama fault, and his fault alone. (No surprise, the media narrative echoes the latest GOP talking point, as dutifully pushed by RNC writers like Peggy Noonan.)

A bit ironic, isn't it? While addressing the issue of bipartisanship (i.e. "involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties") the press holds only one party accountable: the Democrats. Apparently, that's how the press now views the issue of bipartisanship -- it's something Democrats must bring to fruition.

Meanwhile, by the grand poohbahs in DC, Dean is seen as "too partisan" even though he won in Vermont with 70% of the vote including lots of Republican support, was elected chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association, and was a deficit hawk who balanced budgets in Vermont even though he wasn't constitutionally obligated to do so. But he's out of bounds.

Blago Follies

I'm trying to avoid the more hyperbolic outer reaches of the cable news talkers on the Blagojevich mess, but there are a few new developments in the case that merit a word or two. First, while impeachment proceedings are moving forward in the Illinois House, Democrats appear to have deep-sixed the idea of a special election, and I think that's a mistake.

At the Capitol, (House Speaker Mike) Madigan canceled plans to consider a special election to fill Obama's seat, saying Democrats are split over the best way to fill the vacancy. The move sparked harsh criticism from Republicans.

"Why is it, when the whole world is watching, you can't change your ways at least for one day and let democracy rule?" asked Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Greenville.

The GOP happens to be right. The people should be allowed to decide on this - it's consistent with democracy and reform. In a perfect world nobody would get appointed to serve in the US Senate. Let them battle it out with the voters. In addition, I don't think it necessarily follows that the Blagojevich scandal would even threaten whatever Democrat made it through a primary - presumably those most impacted by the connection to Blago wouldn't get through the primary to begin with - but I'm not in Illinois, so I can't be certain. What I DO know is that seeming to fear voters is the quickest way to get booted on your keister when this seat is inevitably up for a vote. There's polling out showing that 66% of Illinois voters favor a special election. Not listening to them is a bigger impediment to a new Democratic Senator than putting it to a vote.

Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson Jr. appears to have been moonlighting as a narc when he wasn't in the Congress:

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (CNN) — Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. — who was cited in a criminal complaint against Rod Blagojevich — has been an informant for at least a decade with the U.S. Attorney's office, and has informed on the embattled governor of Illinois, though not in the case currently under investigation, Jackson spokesman Kenneth Edmonds told CNN Tuesday.

In addition, two sources close to Jackson told CNN that, in 2002, Blagojevich — then running for governor of Illinois — solicited a $25,000 campaign donation from Jackson, which he did not get.

At the time, Jackson's wife, Sandi, was a candidate for the job of director of the state's Lottery Commission, a post she did not win, the sources said.

After Blagojevich took office, in early 2003, he told Jackson something to the effect of, "You see what $25,000 would have done?" the sources said.

This will do wonders for his image, which was tarnished by being named "Candidate #5" in the initial complaint.

Finally, I'm not sure what to make of Newt Gingrich's condemnation of Mike Duncan and the RNC for going after made-up Obama-Blagojevich ties.

I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

The recent web advertisement, “Questions Remain,” is a destructive distraction. Clearly, we should insist that all taped communications regarding the Senate seat should be made public. However, that should be a matter of public policy, not an excuse for political attack.

In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.

Digby thinks that Newtie has learned his lesson from pushing the Clinton impeachment and almost losing the majority, and that the press is doing the GOP's job for them so there's no need to pile on. I think it may be simpler than that. Duncan is in the running for RNC chair and Gingrich may simply favor a different candidate. Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele is on the record saying that Newt supports him. He may just be taking Duncan down a peg, and putting the failures of the past two election cycles on him. I hardly think that Gingrich is avoiding slash and burn politics.

Help Me Obi-Wan Gingrich, You're My Only Hope

Pardon me while I snicker.

In serious conversations among Republicans since their election debacle Tuesday, what name is mentioned most often as the Moses, or Reagan, who could lead them out of the wilderness before 40 years?

To the consternation of many Republicans, it is none other than Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012, but there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.

Wow, this would be frightening. The guy who shut down the government because he couldn't get a good seat on Ar Force One? Surely he wouldn't crack under pressure. The guy who went from leader of the Reagan revolution to resigning in disgrace in four years? Surely he has the staying power to lead.

Please don't do this, Republican Party. I don't know how we'd compete against gimmick politics and outdated beliefs that the country is still center-right. Don't make us compete against Newt.

(Did I hold the straight face?)

Random Bits

Because I can't totally think straight in between checks for poll numbers and early exits (which you shouldn't pay any attention to), here's some stuff I'm reading, in convenient bullet-point form:

• Conservative hero John Shadegg is paying felons and sex offenders to do his GOTV work.

• Great article by Paul Waldman on Why We Vote. And you can match it up with this older story, also from The American Prospect, from Scott Lemieux about why federal elections should be under federal control. The "irrationality" of voting when one person can't make much of a difference is magnified when you're in a safe state with virtually no electoral activity. Those who hate the National Popular Vote idea say that it would change the rules so candidates would only campaign in a few big cities, but that's just patently false. It's too expensive to do that. What it would do is force a national strategy of local get-out-the-vote activities, where neighbors meet neighbors, and civic engagement is enhanced, and the country is better for the exchange. Furthermore, we have to do something about these different states with different standards, voting on a Tuesday for no discernible or defensible reason, etc.

• Newt Gingrich is an idiot who doesn't understand the free market at all. Pricing carbon emissions would necessarily get those energy producers to find smarter and more efficient ways to create and deliver energy. And that wouldn't be a tax, but (finally) the recognition of the serious externalities of carbon.

OK, now off to biting fingernails...

Republicans In Disarray

It's worth understanding that the failure of the bailout package in the House was a failure of leadership, as I said last night. Nobody has confidence in the political system, and the political class closest to the people revolted. There's no trust and no belief, and so a popular uprising is the result. There will be incumbents falling that you never expected in November, if challengers figure out how to channel that anger. While the support of the bill was mixed, the opposition was quite vocal and almost nobody believed that regular people would get anything out of it.

But putting aside whether or not you wanted the bill to pass, this failure is more pronounced on the Republican side. The facts are that 2/3 of their caucus voted against the plan, after the leadership assured everyone that they would get half their side. Their leadership scrambled and tried to blame it on a partisan speech given by Nancy Pelosi, which their own membership later denied.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) threw cold water on a key rationale House Republican leaders have been employing this afternoon to explain why they couldn't deliver more GOP votes for the Wall Street bailout package.

At a Monday afternoon press conference, GOP leaders argued that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) cost the measure a dozen Republican votes by delivering an overly partisan floor speech in support of it.

But Bachmann, speaking at a Republican Study Committee press conference, told reporters, "I want to assure you that was not the case. We are not babies who suck our thumbs. We have very principled reasons for voting no."

Other conservatives said the same thing, and by the end of the day, even the leadership was backing away from this alibi.

The larger point is that nobody's in charge of the Republican Party anymore. Their President and their current standard-bearer urged a yes vote and they couldn't get it. And the "elder statesman" of the conservative base, Newt Gingrich, apparently stabbed leadership in the back:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was working aggressively behind the scenes to defeat the Wall Street rescue plan minutes before he himself released a public statement in support of the package, NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on Tuesday.

Gingrich was whipping up votes for the opposition, Mitchell said, apparently without the knowledge of the current GOP leader, John Boehner, who was responsible for recruiting enough support from his caucus to help ensure the bill's passage. Ultimately, the GOP was only able to rally roughly a third of its members.

"Newt Gingrich," she said on MSNBC, "I am told reliably by leading Republicans who are close to him, he was whipping against this up until the last minute, when he issued that face-saving statement. Newt Gingrich was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal, not only that it was a terrible deal, it was a disaster, it was the end of democracy as we know, it was socialism -- and then at the last minute [he] comes out with a statement when the vote is already in place."

Indeed, as Mitchell noted, shortly before the bill's failure, Gingrich "reluctantly" came out in favor of its passage: "Therefore, while I am discouraged at the final collapse of the Bush Administration, and frustrated by the Democrats' passion for the taxpayer's money, I would reluctantly and sadly vote for the bailout were I still in office."

Wow. That's just chaos. A lot of time we Democrats think that the GOP strategist class is a collection of evil geniuses, plotting away and cleverly setting up their opponents over and over. Actually, they might just be jockeying for power and headed toward a purifying self-destruction, without acting solely with the Democrats in mind. I think you're going to see new leadership elections on the Republican side after the elections, as more moderates retire or lose their races, and the conservative wackjobs consolidate their power with a smaller base. Expect more backstabbing and treachery between now and November. This is the picture of a political party in crisis.

Newt on the Tire Swing

For some reason I'm on Newt Gingrich's press list. Check out his response to McCain suspending his campaign. It's hysterical:

Today john McCain showed what it meant to put country first.

He put everything on the line to try to put together a bipartisan sizable economic package to replace the failed Paulson bailout package.

This is the greatest single act of responsibility ever taken by a presidential candidate and rivals President Eisenhower saying, ‘I will go to Korea .’

Every House and Senate Republican should join him in seeking the best ideas and the best solutions from across the country.

This is the day the McCain-reform Republican Party began to truly emerge as a movement which puts country first, solutions first, and big change first.

...rrrrright... making sure you're preening in front of cameras when you have nothing to do is the "single greatest act of responsibility ever taken."

Newt's acting like McCain would be singularly responsible for creating a bill, marshaling House Republicans in support and getting Bush to sign it. It's fantasyland.

I know I'm supposed to be skeptical and read between the lines and think Newt is some mad genius, but this sounds crazy. Totally crazy.

Also, this is looking more and more like a gambit to get the Vice Presidential debate cancelled.