The Rise Of The Tenthers

This is a very important article by Ian Millhiser for The American Prospect. Conservatives have found a new Amendment in the Bill of Rights to glorify, making a grand total of two, as they trash the other eight. Their entire Constitutional theory now rests on the tenth Amendment.

Almost a year after she called for an investigation to discover which members of Congress are "anti-American," Minnesota's nuttiest lawmaker is back. In a recent appearance with Fox's Sean Hannity, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann accused her colleagues of "forg[etting] what the Constitution says" because they are poised to pass comprehensive health-care reform. Not to be outdone, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina told right-wing activists on a conference call last Thursday that health reform violates the 10th Amendment; he also called on state legislators and governors to "champion individual freedom" by resisting the bill. Two Florida lawmakers beat DeMint to the punch, having already introduced legislation to block health reform from taking effect in their state.

These efforts are all part of a movement whose members are convinced that the 10th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits spending programs and regulations disfavored by conservatives. Indeed, while "birther" conspiracy theorists dominate the airwaves with tales of a mystical Kenyan baby smuggled into Hawaii just days after his birth, these "tenther" constitutionalists offer a theory that is no less radical but infinitely more dangerous.

Tentherism, in a nutshell, proclaims that New Deal-era reformers led an unlawful coup against the "True Constitution," exploiting Depression-born desperation to expand the federal government's powers beyond recognition. Under the tenther constitution, Barack Obama's health-care reform is forbidden, as is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty; the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses.

I guess the words "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" don't appear in their pocket Constitutions.

Really, there's nothing new about Tentherism - it's basically nullification prettied up for the 21st century. But of course, nullification was a prelude to eventual secession and Civil War. It's not completely out of bounds to see us headed in that direction.

When George Bush sought to take money out of people's paychecks and deposit them in private retirement accounts, that was fine. Only when a Democrat takes office can the majority of actions of the federal government be seen as not only misguided, but actually in violation of the Constitution. Because conservatives consider it against the natural order of things for them not to control the government and distribute its Treasury to their favored corporate interests, a circumstance with them out of control must be criminal in nature.

This is an outgrowth of the right-wing populism we've seen in reaction to a recession and the uneasiness people feel with job insecurity and an uncertain economic future.

Today, however, the tenthers tap into the same populist outrage that inspired a generation of working-class religious conservatives to enthusiastically vote against their own interests. Fox News star Glenn Beck exhorts his audience to "be a constitutional watchdog for America" by lining up against health-care reform, cap-and-trade legislation, and the stimulus package. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who enthusiastically backed a tenther "state sovereignty resolution," told a right-wing radio host that he is "willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats." Tenther-inspired claims that federal spending violates the Constitution are so common at "tea party" protests that it is impossible to tell where the tenthers end and the tea baggers begin.

In other words, it is all but certain that tenthers will play a significant role in selecting the GOP's presidential nominee in 2012. And if that nominee wins, the tenthers could even come to dominate the administration in the same way that the religious right set its hooks into George W. Bush.

This is the inevitable point where all the anti-government rhetoric of the post-Reagan years was bound to go. Tenthers literally want a government that cannot govern, period. And the movement is growing. Ultimately, this is where the teabaggers meet up with the corporate interests who would thrive in an era of no regulation and no ability for the government to use their power.

But, you know, liberals are the Constitutional "activists."

Who Runs The Death Panels, Again?

It's been clear for a long time that insurance companies make their money off of denying care to those who need it. Under any reasonable standard, that would be credibly seen as insurance company bureaucrats making decisions over a patient's life and death. But we live in America, where any old Alaskan can come up with a phrase and have it repeated endlessly by corporate media, to make the argument that a government-run insurance choice, not the for-profit insurance companies, engage in such behavior.

My friends at Americans United For Change have the evidence on who has created the REAL "death panels".



This Linda Peeno clip comes from Michael Moore's movie Sicko, and so we've known about how insurance companies profit from denying care and allowing people to die for some time. I guess it's impolite for Democrats to actually make this point; Republicans don't have the same respect for decorum.

The truth is that you do not have health insurance, even if you think you're covered. You have a premium that you pay every month, but that does not guarantee that you will be covered if you get sick. It does not guarantee that you can get new coverage if you lose your insurance. It's more a fantasy of coverage than the actuality. Everyone under 65 assumes that their insurance will be there for them when they need it, but ask Linda Peeno - your insurer makes their money on not being reliable.

And if that doesn't convince you, consider the curious truism that most people living under a system of guaranteed care really like it and zealously guard it. There are anecdotal stories, like Harry Shearer's tale of a friend in America versus a friend in Britain, or veteran Jon Soltz, who sings the praises of TRICARE and the VA and has voluminous polling and quality studies to back him up.

But I prefer to look at the case of David Cameron, the would-be Prime Minister of Britain and the head of the conservative Tories. Viewed through the left-right lens in this country, one would assume that the conservatives in Britain, suffering under the National Health Service, would want to dismantle it and return to a private market. There's just one problem; Cameron wants to get elected, and his countrymen, having lived under the NHS for decades, actually appreciate it. At least, that's what you have to conclude from Cameron's words this week:

David Cameron will today face down the Tory right when he pledges to deliver real-terms increases in NHS spending and casts the Conservatives as the party best placed to intensify Labour's "good" reforms.

In an attempt to regain the initiative on health after Tory MEP Daniel Hannan dismissed the NHS as a "60-year mistake" on US television, Cameron will disregard calls from the right for a freeze in spending as a step backwards.

Cameron, who was alarmed by Hannan's intervention during last week's transatlantic row over health reform, will say that only the Tories are offering the NHS a funding guarantee.

"Spending on the NHS cannot stand still, because standing still would be taking a step backwards," Cameron will say in a speech in the north-west of England before visiting an NHS hospital. "That is why we have pledged real-terms increases in NHS spending – unlike Labour – a fact which, to put it mildly, takes the wind out of their point-scoring sails."

You cannot win office in Britain, be you Margaret Thatcher or Tony Benn, without promising to protect and even expand the NHS. That's a measure of customer satisfaction, to borrow a phrase from the business world. I don't see a similar enthusiasm in this country to expand the private insurance market, to take over Medicare, or the VA, or any of the other public programs. At least nowhere this side of Tom DeLay, a disgraced politician who will never have to face voters again. I notice DeLay didn't move to do anything of the sort when he had control of the House and conservatives were firmly in charge of all three branches of government.

The lived experience of Americans who've actually used the health care system is one where insurance companies profit off denial of care, and government-run programs actually work pretty well. Absurd statements like "Get your government hands off my Medicare" only works as a scare tactic because of Democratic weakness in arguing loudly for government that can expand opportunity and access and deliver health care cheaper and with better quality. The rest of the industrialized world has figured this out. They don't like insurance company CEOs having to choose between obscene profits or caring for their customers, because they'll always pick the former. They'll resort to the Limbaugh rule, named after the head of the GOP, who this week told a caller struggling to afford $6,000 to treat a broken wrist: "Well, you shouldn't have broken your wrist."

We can either have that kind of "compassionate conservatism," complete with insurance company death panels, or real compassion. That's the choice in health care reform.

The Real Problem With Obama's Poll Numbers

My big takeaway today is supposed to be that Barack Obama is fading in selling his health care plan, as eroding poll numbers, both on health care and his job approval rating, threaten legislation in the coming year. As references to "Obamacare" rise, some blame the President for a poor sales job with health care legislation. I fault the President, but for different reasons.

Right now Obama is simply a captive to Congressional process. That process is messy, it's easy to view it as negative, and people are in general reacting to the ups and downs that wound the possibility of passing a bill. The President has no bill to go out and hawk because the Congress is deep into negotiations, so he's selling nothing, a difficult task for anyone. You could say that Obama should have just stepped in and laid down the law, but not only has that proven to fail in the 1993-94 Clinton health care plan, but I don't necessarily want executive dictates to trump Congressional process. I think there's a lot of unnecessary bottlenecks in Congressional process, like the undemocratic filibuster and the seniority system for Committee chairs (particularly in the Senate) and the anti-majoritarian nature of the Senate itself. But in general, we don't elect emperors, and checks and balances are by and large healthy, and I'm OK with Congress performing their task of coming up with legislation and the President performing his task of executing it. Obviously he has some input, but I don't want an executive dominating the process. The paradox of this is that, since people generally believe that a President can just walk in and magically implement his policies, his personal approval is getting dragged down by the slog of health care bills in Congress.

The other wall that Obama is running into has been described for years as the Two Santa Claus theory. For 30 years and more, the American people have been sold on the idea that they can have unlimited services and endlessly low taxes. Somehow the lower taxes generate enough revenue to cover all the services they desire. This was part of a Republican ideological project begun by Reagan aides to basically force Democrats into wearing the black hats, and it has turned into doctrine from then on.

By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their "big government" projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn't seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections [...]

Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase – "supply side economics" – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn't because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.

At the same time, Arthur Laffer was taking that equation a step further. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up!

Neither concept made any sense – and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies – but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness [...]

Democrats, (Wanniski) said, had been able to be "Santa Clauses" by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people's taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. The rich, in turn, would use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And that growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.

There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.

The most important numbers in these collections of polls this week are this. People generally still want health care reform and they believe the system is broken. But they also believe that Congress should cut the deficit without raising taxes or cutting spending. With the caveat that we're talking about aggregate data and cannot make specific conclusions about individual beliefs on the deficit, taxes, and spending, this is not the result of one poll but pretty much the standard poll result over many decades, particularly when Democrats are in power and the deficit-industrial complex ramps up their rhetoric. Simply put, Republican fantasy projections have given the country an out to refuse to accept the normal choices that must be made to deal with reality.

If you don't have the time or inclination to obsessively pay attention to issues, I don't see why you wouldn't decide that we should just pay down the deficit but get good services like comprehensive health care reform but do it without raising taxes. It's very untroubling and simple, and if I'm working two jobs or busy with other things in my life it sure sounds like a good deal to me.

I agree that the President needs to do better in selling his plans to the public. A speech in prime-time, not a press conference but an actual speech, complete with Ross Perot graphs if necessary, as Nate Silver advocates, sounds like a good idea. But his problem is more about American political ideology than the ins and outs of this bill. America elected a Democrat because they didn't like George Bush. But they didn't elect a liberal ideology, even if they may agree with it on many points, because a liberal ideology wasn't on offer. Nobody in the Democratic Party has pushed back against the Two Santa Claus theory, or offered up a competing theory of their own, in the thirty-plus years since it was invented. Obama spent the first few months, when he had a honeymoon and his approval ratings were high, assuring everyone that 95% of Americans will see a tax cut, that he was pragmatic and will only go with "what works," and so on. And so when you get to an issue like health care, which does have moral overtones, which does speak to the fundamental rights of a society to ensure care for their sick and bleeding, there's no ideological foundation to fall back upon, no belief that America is worth paying for and those who use the commons to a disproportionate degree need to give a little bit to maintain the societal fabric. So we have an overhaul of health reform to expand coverage to everyone who needs it couched in the terms of cost curves and long term budget projections and constrained by the obsessive desire of deficit neutrality. This does not inspire activists and partisans to action. It does not force any thinking from those susceptible to attacks on "government-run health care" from the other side. And it does not break the underlying principles of the Two Santa Claus Theory. Nobody has fought the dominant wisdom, inside the Beltway and even in the country, and stated plainly that conservatives have lied to the country about economic issues for 30-plus years. The epic collapse of the economy under the Bush Administration provided an opportunity that nobody took.

Unless and until we start challenging conservative ideology and not conservative candidates, we will always have trouble making major changes because the public has swallowed a notion of government that makes no logical or coherent sense.

Anschutz' Folly

Well this couldn't have happened to a nicer billionaire.

A tragedy for his family and a heartbreak to his fans, Michael Jackson's death also represents a blow to the L.A. concert promoter that staked its reputation on and sunk tens of millions of dollars into a lavish comeback that will never happen.

AEG Live billed "This Is It," the sold-out concert series that was to have opened July 13 in London, as the most expensive and technologically advanced arena show ever. It had invested more than $20 million to mount a production that was to have included up to 22 sets, elaborate light shows and high-wire acts. The company, which owns the Staples Center among many other venues, had also set aside 50 nights at its coveted European showplace, the O2 Arena.

With Jackson's death, AEG will have to refund the $85 million worth of tickets that were sold. Gone are the company's expected profits -- an estimated $115 million, according to Billboard -- as well as plans for a global three-year tour that the company had predicted would gross $450 million.

"They are taking a big hit," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of concert-tracking publication Pollstar.

AEG is run by Phillip Anschutz, a right-wing Colorado oil baron who's trying to become the next Rupert Murdoch with his Examiner series of newspapers. I'm not going to weep for him losing $115 million.

The downside is that California probably loses out on a healthy chunk of tax receipts. Good thing we don't need them.

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!

A White Christian Party

Howard Dean got in some trouble for characterizing Republicans that way in 2005. He was merely citing the numbers:

PRINCETON, NJ -- More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are white moderates or liberals and a third are nonwhite.

Blogger is bloggered and won't display images, but the rundown of the poll is here.

This really informs the Sotomayor debate. With conservatives retreating to their ideological corners, it's not hard to expect a certain paranoia to creep in. White conservatives see the world changing and cannot get a handle on it. They believe that this diversity and multiculturalism targets them and their homogenous group, and they imagine that the nonwhite have an unfair advantage over them. It's perverse, but in context I get it.

And the world is only getting more diverse and more tolerant. Hard to see where conservatives go from here.

1989, Another Summer, Sound Of The Funky Drummer

Aside from asking why anyone would do a rap parody 30 years after Grandmaster Flash hit the turntables, I'm actually going to have to give mad credit to the Young Conservative Rappers in this bit for managing to wedge in every talking point from the past 30 years into a 4-minute song.



I don't speak lies, I just spit out da facts
28% the new capital gains tax

Actually, considering that white male conservatives are the real oppressed, persecuted minority these days, it makes perfect sense to hit the streets (of a university library), put on their representin' clothes (suits without ties) and get in the struggle. Fight the power, my brothers.

QED

A lot of people have got to this, but yes, empathy is not some alien notion but a common way of thinking about the role of life experience and how it relates, even to the law, and conservative judges like Sam Alito and Sandra Day O'Connor have invoked life experience and empathy in their judging, including race and gender, and white male conservatives consider themselves perfectly objective automatons uncorrupted by any perspective whatsoever, except when they don't like the law they have to apply under that standard, and then they go on and on about how unfair it all is to white people. This is because they view "the law" as anything reaching their desired outcome, intellectual honesty be damned. It's stupid. You can even play the home game on this.

Not much more to say than that.

They Get Our News

I seem to remember a common complaint during the Bush era that Al Qaeda was watching our TV shows and paying attention to what Democrats have to say, and when they criticized the President, Osama bin Laden rejoiced and threw a party, so everyone had better shut up. That was a go-to argument for the right for a while.

I never much worried about Al Qaeda getting out their rabbit ears and watching C-SPAN. However, unquestionably leaders in Europe read our newspapers and consume our media. And when political leaders run a steady diet of pants-pissing missives about the big bad Guantanamo super-villains and how they can never set foot on US soil, small wonder that Europe, a key player in the White House's efforts to find settlements for detainees scheduled for release, wants no part of them either.

The Obama administration's push to resettle at least 50 Guantanamo Bay prisoners in Europe is meeting fresh resistance as European officials demand that the United States first give asylum to some inmates before they will do the same.

Rising opposition in the U.S. Congress to allowing Guantanamo prisoners on American soil has not gone over well in Europe. Officials from countries that previously indicated they were willing to accept inmates now say it may be politically impossible for them to do so if the United States does not reciprocate.

"If the U.S. refuses to take these people, why should we?" said Thomas Silberhorn, a member of the German Parliament from Bavaria, where the White House wants to relocate nine Chinese Uighur prisoners. "If all 50 states in America say, 'Sorry, we can't take them,' this is not very convincing."

The scaremongering has legs, you see, and politicians everywhere being of a spineless nature, they don't want to face their constituents and explain why released Gitmo prisoners are terrorist masterminds to every portion of America but just fine for their country.

Funny how the same people who shrieked that Democrats were "making us less safe" with their words are now causing an international incident through deliberate lying and severely damaging an American President's efforts to improve foreign relations, huh? I guess politics doesn't end at the water's edge anymore.

Harry Reid has composed himself and acknowledged that some prisoners would be resettled in US prisons. Hopefully this constant agreement with the latest bedwetting scenario on the right has ended, and we can actually face our allies again.

White Man's Burden

The old crazy uncles that the GOP would rather keep in the basement have all burst to the surface, and the craziest of the crazy if Tom Tancredo. His assertion that the National Council of La Raza is "the Latino KKK" not only offends that organization and all Hispanics, but members of the GOP who have appeared at NCLR events and accepted their awards. We truly are seeing the crackup of the white male conservatives.

African-American and Hispanic conservatives who have questioned her judicial philosophy also note the historic nature of the appointment and praise her triumph over economic hardship. White conservatives, on the other hand, have been far more personal and aggressive in their attacks on Sotomayor's record, repeatedly accusing her of "reverse racism" and questioning her intelligence.

White male conservatives, despite polling showing both the public and GOP insiders disagree, are maintaining that Sotomayor is an unqualified bigot.

Pat Buchanan described Sotomayor in a column Friday as an "anti-white liberal judicial activist" as well as a "lightweight" who "covers up her intellectual inadequacy by bullying from the bench."

John Derbyshire, at National Review Online, took admiration for Sotomayor's life story as an intentional insult to him and all other white people:

I get mighty annoyed by the unspoken implication in a lot of commentary that anyone not a member of a Protected Minority must have grown up in a twelve-bedroom lakeside mansion and been chauffered off to prep school with a silver spoon in his mouth. Judge Sotomayor was raised in public housing? So was I. Her mother was a nurse working late shifts? So was mine. When did white working poor people disappear off the face of the earth? Where are the eager listeners to their "compelling stories"?

There's lots more at the link, including Billo chiming in with how "the left sees the white man as a problem." As a white man, I can say pretty directly that I don't. No, but what does seem to be the case is that the right, in particular the white male conservative right, can't stand that their coded attacks aren't working anymore. They have used this playbook for decades, mostly with success, and now the country has changed, gotten more diverse, more interconnected, more tolerant, and they don't know what the hell to do.

Some people, mainly the ones in charge of electing Republicans, have recognized this. But the loudest members of the party, the media hounds, haven't, and they still think they can call Sotomayor a "reverse racist" or a "twofer" and reap the rewards. And when it falls flat, now that the worm has turned, they figure, this all must be because everyone hates whitey.

Funny, several years ago the Democrats rejecting Miguel Estrada as a circuit court judge was supposed to ruin their relationship with Hispanic voters. But there's a difference between rejecting a conservative judge who happens to be Hispanic and rejecting a Hispanic woman who happens to be a judge. They've foregrounded the race and gender attacks, and this side of the GOP is simply ugly to watch.

We Need A Right-Wing Version Of...

I guess it's a true sign of the times. I remember countless conversations about how the left needs their version of talk radio, think tanks, Drudge, a message machine, etc. Now that the right is out of power, they are clamoring for their version of the Huffington Post, their version of MoveOn.org, their version of a Center For American Progress, etc. It's a real reversal.

Two problems with this. One is that the successful versions of grassroots organizations like MoveOn are organic. You cannot say "I'm building a right-wing MoveOn" and then expect everyone to join.

The second is that THE RIGHT ALREADY HAS THESE STRUCTURES. Most of them were built in response to existing structures on the right, and very intentionally so. Wanting to build new ones is nice and all, but rather besides the point. Conservatives have the Heritage Foundation. The American Enterprise Institute. Drudge. Talk radio. About 1,000 judicial organizations. CPAC. And on and on. Their problem is with IDEAS. Well over a majority of the public doesn't like them. And I've seen no indication that any of these new groups would alter any of those unpopular ideas. They still use tax cuts as a solution for everything, and any problem that cannot be solved by tax cuts doesn't exist. Having the 947th organization to promote that discredited idea won't exactly help.

Now, sometimes dressing up bad facts in a new suit can work, and maybe that's all that's going on here. The idea is that the new groups would remove the taint of the Republican Party's troubles. Maybe. But that R next to the name remains a pretty powerful reminder, at least for the next few years. I don't see this paying off in the near term.

Charge of the Whine Brigade

One think you cannot help but notice in the midst of the Republican sojourn in the wilderness these days is how perpetually WHINY they all are. When this gets lined up with their preternaturally arrogant nature, it makes for quite a hilarious combination. Witness for example Smokey Joe Barton, who went in the space of a week from a cocksure trash-talker to a put-upon weakling:

A week ago, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, bet he would have committee chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) “by the nuts” during the markup of landmark climate and energy legislation by the committee:

"He has got a chance to get the votes. If you are familiar with Texas Hold ‘Em poker, he doesn’t have the nuts. It is not a done deal. Nor do I. … We will see which has the other by the nuts next week."

As Waxman steered the markup and Obama announced groundbreaking limits on global warming pollution from automobiles, Barton talked about the CO2 in Dr. Pepper. Republicans were left flailing, accusing Democrats of engineering economic catastrophe one moment and of being the party of big business the next. As his defeat became certain, Barton whined about being “beat time after time after time after time”:

"It’s easy on the majority to keep up a good-faith attitude because you’re winning. . . . It’s not a lot of fun, as you well know, having been in the minority yourself for twelve years, to work very hard and put just as much effort and put just as much focus, and get beat time after time after time after time 36 to 22, 31 to 20, whatever it is."

Barton is the epitome of the modern right-wing: trying to bully the Democrats, and then whining with their persecution complex when they can't pull it off.

Meanwhile, a new report suggests that the allowances in the compromised Waxman-Markey bill will actually protect ratepayers and prevent windfall profits for polluting industries. I'm not sure I believe that, but I know that Rep. Waxman has worked to avoid the pitfalls from Europe's cap and trade program, which did permit what amounted to windfall polluter profits. I certainly hope this is the case, and the report is worth reading.

Anti-Effectiveness Conservatives

Here we go again with conservatives trying to deep-six comparative effectiveness research in medical treatments, throwing up all kinds of horror stories about "Federal Health Boards" that would dictate to people what they can and cannot receive from their doctor. First of all, if we had to pay for the time and effort to manage 300 million individual health care treatment outcomes, we would need more money than exists in the entire world. Second of all, it's completely bogus, as Ezra Klein explains wearily.

The apparent fear here is that the evidence from comparative effectiveness will be, well, used to make treatment decisions. But that can't be quite right. We use evidence all the time. Your insurer won't pay for a leg amputation when your symptom is a headache. Medicare doesn't cover a wheelchair if you're diagnosed with acute constipation. No one whines about that.

The fear, rather, is that the existence of more evidence will somehow qualitative change the way government uses evidence. The government will decree, in other words, that their testing shows back surgery ineffective, and back surgery is now illegal. Put slightly differently:

Step 1: Comparative effectiveness review.
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Authoritarian medical system

It's sort of what would happen if you applied The Road to Serfdom to the comparative effectiveness debate.

The industry's fear is quite different: This is the profit objection. Right now, most research on, say, drug effectiveness is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. That presents obvious advantages for them and problems for us. The concern here is that if they cease controlling the flow of evidence, then new studies will show that certain treatments don't work. For instance: Claritin goes off patent. Generic versions emerge. They're very cheap. Claritin's manufacturer changes the chemical composition slightly and comes up with Clarinex. They apply for a new patent. They sell it at a heavy mark-up. But it probably doesn't work much better. If there's credible evidence out there showing that it doesn't work much better, that's the end of that business strategy.

Business interests are using the ideological objection to scare people into advocating against comparative effectiveness research, so they can maintain their profit motive. I would imagine that the drug industry could care less if we were in a single payer health care system, as long as they got their drug monopolies and increased their profits. They only use the ideological objection to their own ends.

FL-Sen: Better To Support The Stimulus From Outside The Senate

In one of the few bright spots for Republican recruiting thus far, Florida Governor Charlie Crist will announce a run for Senate today. Crist enjoys a high approval rating in the state because of many moderate stances, including a high-profile support of the federal stimulus package. That's EXACTLY the same vote that drummed Arlen Specter out of the GOP. The question is whether the Florida primary electorate will make Crist pay for that. Marco Rubio, the former Speaker of the Florida House, will also run in the primary from the right. And Florida has a closed Republican primary.

Senate Guru reports:

Nationally, the conservative Weekly Standard is promoting Crist's primary challenger, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, as the Republican Obama; also, the conservative Club for Growth has already started a cheering section for Rubio against Crist:

But Rubio could also pick up some powerful supporters in the primary. Following his announcement Tuesday, the anti-tax Club for Growth, which is known for its ability to drive fundraising for candidates it supports, released a statement praising Rubio's entry into the race.

Rubio's "fiscally responsible, pro-growth approach in the State Capitol stands in stark contrast with other elements of the state government, led by Charlie Crist," club President Chris Chocola said.

Meanwhile, within the state borders of Florida, conservatives are downright displeased with what they see as Crist being not conservative enough:

Florida Republican Party circles are hearing increasing talk of conservative dissatisfaction with Gov. Charlie Crist and a possible primary challenge if he runs for the U.S. Senate next year. ...

Some conservatives, never happy with Crist's emphasis on racial diversity, environmental regulation and populist willingness to take on big business, are now saying it openly.

Rubio is already fomenting this sentiment with direct shots at Crist:

"If you agree with Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe on some of these issues, you might as well become a Democrat,'' said former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a Republican who is likely to run for the Senate, whether or not Crist does.

Rubio, the son of anti-Castro Cubans, offers maybe the only conservative profile that could beat Crist in the state. We're seeing one of those "battles for the soul of the party" play out. And then there's the persistent closet talk about Crist, who suddenly married last year when it was rumored that he could get the VP slot next to John McCain.

Simply put, if Charlie Crist can't get elected by Florida Republicans, then their party truly has crawled into a spider hole of denial. Rep. Kendrick Meek and progressive state lawmaker Dan Gelber have jumped in this race on the Democratic side.

The NRSC is taking sides in this race by endorsing Crist immediately. A cold-blooded move based in political reality. What will Rush say?

I Love A Good Republicans In Disarray Story

In the past, when the Republican Party was riding high, the idea that they had a three-legged stool, with economic conservatives, national security conservatives and social conservatives together in a mutually beneficial truce of sorts, was seen as a positive. I always viewed it as a ticking time bomb. It's basically like having Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, Stephon Marbury, Ron Artest and a malcontent to be named later on your sports team. When you're winning, everyone's happy. When you're losing, forget about it. That accurately describes the chaos we see in the modern GOP. Any time they try to emphasize one leg of the stool, those who inhabit the other issue silos get angry. Here's a perfect example - values voters are angry that the Republican rebranding effort doesn't include their views.

The [NCNA's] priorities, which were unveiled at a pizza parlor press conference, include the economy, health care, education, energy, and national security. Notice anything conspicuously absent? Former Gov. Jeb Bush explained the values void by saying it was time for the GOP to give up its "nostalgia" for Reagan-era ideas and look forward to new "relevant" ideas. (Yes, because that worked so well for Republicans in 2006 and 2008!) Bush ignored the fact that abandoning the array of principles that Reagan espoused is exactly what got the GOP into this mess. [...]

Too many Republicans leaders are running scared on the claims of the Left and the media that social conservatism is a dead-end for the GOP. If that were the case, why are pro-family leaders like Mike Huckabee creating such excitement in the conservative base? The Republican establishment doesn't draw a crowd. Governor Sarah Palin does. Also, take a look at the recent Pew Research poll, which showed overall support for abortion in America has dropped eight percentage points in the last year and support for it among moderate and liberal Republicans has dropped a whopping 24%. Based on that, how can the GOP suggest that life is a losing issue? If there were a road sign for the GOP on this new journey, it would read: Welcome to the wilderness. You're going to be there for awhile.

Another example is this self-pitying, gobbledygook letter from one of the teabaggers describing their "movement" as in a "very disconcerting position at the moment."

Ultimately, what happens with malcontents in sports is that the team finds themselves unable to co-exist with them, and they are either released or traded. Get ready for an explosion of hard-right third parties. The Joe the Plumber Party - coming to a stump near you.

Obama Makes It Official

So the President just walked into the press briefing room and announced that David Souter will retire at the end of the term, and Todd Beeton grabbed a piece of his comment:

The process of picking someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone that understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or a footnote in a casebook, it is also how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcomed in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes. I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role. I will seek somebody who shares my respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time. As I make this decision, I intend to consult with members of both parties across the political spectrum and it is my hope that we can swear in our new Supreme Court justice in time for him or her to be seated by the first Monday in October when the court's new term begins.

This gives the President about a month to come to a decision. And it gives conservatives a good bit of time to demagogue and demonize and name-tag whoever gets picked as an ultra-liberal ideologue.

Conservative groups worked into the night Thursday after news broke of Justice David Souter’s retirement to arrange a conference call early Friday morning to talk strategy with representatives of more than 60 groups.

Leaders on the call, such as Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network, told colleagues that one of their first challenges is convincing activists there is a fight to be had.

"One thing to keep in mind is that the left and media will say this doesn't really matter — Obama will just replace a liberal with a liberal,” Long said. “It's a conservative court. We need to push back against that immediately.”

Curt Levy, also of the Judicial Confirmation Network, argued to the nearly 200 activists on the conference call that this can "be a winning issue" for conservatives if they focus on what he called the "right issues" such as same sex marriage, death penalty and the Second Amendment — issues that can split Democrats.

This seems like a one-sided debate, where conservatives whip themselves into a frenzy, and in the end, Obama picks a broadly acceptable moderate liberal who sails through. With 40 votes, it would be odd to see otherwise, provided the Judiciary Committee can move the nominee, considering that silly rule.

The Governor Of Utah Is Too Moderate FAIL

Jon Huntsman, the Republican Governor of Utah, sid this to ABC.

With the party reeling from Sen. Arlen Specter's defection, a prominent moderate Republican governor is warning that GOP leaders in Washington have failed to offer a positive alternative to President Obama's initiatives.

"You can't just say no. You can't just obstruct or obfuscate," Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said in an interview with ABC News. "Instead of just kind of grousing and complaining, it would do us all a whole lot of good if we actually started engaging directly in finding compromises and common ground and shared solutions." [...]

"When you are devoid of the ideas, or the content that would allow you to articulate or paint a better future, you have no choice other than to fall back on 'no, we are not going support it, it cannot be done,'" Huntsman said.

Huntsman is young, wildly popular in Utah, and conservative on all but a few issues.

So of course, he's been excommunicated from the party.

Joanne Voorhees, the chairwoman of the Kent County Republican party in Michigan, has "abruptly canceled" an upcoming fundraiser with Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. (R). Voorhees "said that hosting the moderate Utah governor would mean abandoning the party's conservative principles." The cancellation comes as Republicans are pushing for a more narrow party focused on hard-right principles.

They're really crawling into a spider hole.

Crystal Pepsi

I won't identify the source, but I heard about a meeting between Arnold Schwarzenegger and a Democratic pol where he exclaimed that he figured out politics, and "it's all marketing." Looks like the rest of the GOP agrees with him.

Coming soon to a battleground state near you: a new effort to revive the image of the Republican Party and to counter President Obama's characterization of Republicans as "the party of 'no.'"

CNN has learned that the new initiative, called the National Council for a New America, will be announced Thursday.

It will involve an outreach by an interesting mix of GOP officials, ranging from 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain to Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and the younger brother of the man many Republicans blame for the party's battered brand: former President George W. Bush.

Now there's an idea! The failed Presidential candidate and the brother of the guy who destroyed the GOP brand teaming up to remake the party! Does someone want to tell Republicans that "remake" means something new?

But that's not all! They're also bringing on stage the people who have created the failed GOP brand this year.

In addition to Sen. McCain and Gov. Bush, GOP sources familiar with the plans tell CNN others involved in the new group's "National Panel Of Experts" will include:

*Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former national GOP chairman
*Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
*Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney

It will report to GOP congressional leaders, and among those signing the announcement that will be made public Thursday are:

*House GOP Leader John Boehner
*House GOP Whip Eric Cantor
*House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence
*Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell
*The No. 2 Senate Republican, Jon Kyl
*And the Senate GOP Conference Chairman, Lamar Alexander

It's kind of amusing that Michael Steele, who's, ahem, the leader of the Republican National Committee, doesn't factor into this rebranding effort. Maybe because they've seen his Poochie the radical dog approach to attracting "the kids" to the party.

"You (Brzezinski) wear your hat one way you like to wear it, you know, kind of cocked to the left, you know, 'cause that's cool out West," Steele said. "In the Midwest, you guys (Scarborough) like to wear it a little bit to the right. In the South, you guys (Buchanan) wear the brim straight ahead. Now the Northeast, I wear my hat backwards, you know, 'cause that's how we roll in the Northeast."

I guess they tried to get Sarah Palin aboard as well, but couldn't reach her. When SARAH PALIN is reticent to join you, I mean...

I know that Republicans are never going to believe this, but maybe when they listen on the town hall meetings that will supposedly follow this effort, they can understand that nobody likes them anymore.

Republicans are widely viewed by the public as less competent than Democrats to handle issue ranging from health care to education and energy, according to internal polling presented to top GOP officials in Congress.

The same survey found President Barack Obama holds the support of a significant minority of self-described conservative, independent voters [...]

Democrats were favored by a margin of 61 percent to 29 percent on education; 59 percent to 30 percent on health care and 59 percent to 31 percent on energy. Congress is expected to consider major legislation later this year in all three areas.

Democats were also viewed with more confidence in handling taxes, long a Republican strong suit. The only issue among nine in the survey where the two parties were rated as even was in the war on terror.

Republicans can keep claiming that they "strayed away from their core values" and need to go even more base-crazy in order to win, but the facts don't bear that out.

(Lindsey) Graham scoffed at the notion that the party was suffering because it was not conservative enough.

“Do you really believe that we lost 18-to-34-year-olds by 19 percent, or we lost Hispanic voters, because we are not conservative enough?” he said. “No. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The truth is we lost young people because our Republican brand is tainted.”

And what the party appears to be saying is, let's taint some more!

A Hard Snowe's Gonna Fall

There are two sides to the Arlen Specter party switch. One looks at the Democrats, who are allowing Specter some cover without securing his vote on key issues like the Employee Free Choice Act, previously seen as a deal-breaker. The fact that the Democratic establishment is not only welcoming Specter without extracting certain votes, but trying to shut down any primary challenges to him by allowing Pennsylvania Democrats to decide whether they want him as their Senator, is deeply troubling. I don't like a party shielding anyone from the democratic process, much less a hack like Specter. We can only hope that his complete lack of principles now serve our side rather than Republicans. And hopefully, good Democrats like Joe Torsella will keep up their primary challenge, to force Specter in the right direction.

But there's a second side to this, one showing the complete collapse of the Republican Party, a folding into itself, into an irrelevant regional phenomenon. Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, who sounds way too reasonable to stay in that party for long, gives a decent enough explanation of the state of play:

It was as though beginning with Senator Jeffords’s decision, Republicans turned a blind eye to the iceberg under the surface, failing to undertake the re-evaluation of our inclusiveness as a party that could have forestalled many of the losses we have suffered.

It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of “Survivor” — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party.

Senator Specter indicated that his decision was based on the political situation in Pennsylvania, where he faced a tough primary battle. In my view, the political environment that has made it inhospitable for a moderate Republican in Pennsylvania is a microcosm of a deeper, more pervasive problem that places our party in jeopardy nationwide [...]

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

Sen. Snowe expanded on this today on MSNBC, saying that Republicans need to come to terms with political reality.



Today everyone's looking at the President in his first 100 days, but maybe we should take a look at the Republican Party at this milepost. They've learned no lessons about their essential unpopularity, they keep sowing the seeds of their own destruction, and they keep thinking they'll get somewhere by entirely obstructing a popular President and wearing tea bags on their hats. The Republican base simply opposes progress, and the monster created will not relent. Thus the Party is caught in what amounts to a death spiral, unable to compete nationally and killing itself slowly by inches. The hope is that they go the way of the Whigs and we can have public policy debates under the Big Tent of the Democratic Party, with everything playing out on the center left. I think even the President knows that there's no use extending a hand at this point to the right.

At the core of the misjudgment were poll-driven assumptions made by the president's senior advisers, many of them schooled in politics on Capitol Hill. Several believed that a fair number of Republican lawmakers would rally behind the nation's first African American president at a time of crisis, an assessment that proved wrong when only three GOP senators supported the stimulus measure and not a single House Republican followed suit.

But Obama and his advisers corrected course quickly. Drawing conclusions from a post-mortem analysis that Emanuel conducted of the stimulus battle, senior White House advisers returned to the successful tactics of the presidential campaign, taking the president and his message beyond the Beltway and scaling back his appeals to congressional Republicans. The approach has defined the way he has governed since.

A month after he nearly lost his stimulus bill, Obama faced another critical test in Congress, this time a vote on his $3.5 trillion budget proposal. In preparation, he traveled outside Washington, appearing at town hall meetings, in prime-time news conferences and on late-night talk shows. One senior adviser said the president did not make a single call to a lawmaker seeking support for the budget blueprint, which is expected to gain final approval from Congress today.

"It's kind of like he decided 'I'm the boss,' " said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Don't forget it, Johnny.

...I think they really believe their own bullshit on this. They actually believe losing members of the Congress is a road to victory. They've become so convinced that the people in the heartland agree with them that they've lost all touch with reality.

...Obama is right to mock this silliness.

"When you see, you know, those of you that are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security."

...only 20% of adults self-identify as Republicans. Wow.

Steve Schmidt Throws In His Lot With The Long Arc Of History

Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain's campaign (some would say into the ground) last year, is prepared to call for the GOP to drop their opposition to gay marriage.

Former top McCain adviser Steve Schmidt is planning to use a Friday speech to the Log Cabin Republicans to urge the GOP to drop its opposition to same-sex marriage.

"I'm confident American public opinion will continue to move on the question toward majority support, and sooner or later the Republican Party will catch up to it," Schmidt plans to say according to excerpts provided to ABC News.

Schmidt's push for Republicans to endorse same-sex marriage comes as his party is grappling with a string of gay rights victories in Iowa, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.

The Republican Party is just trapped on this. Young people don't care about this issue and they isolate themselves from the next generation with every fundie-backed denunciation of loving relationships. But their base has become increasingly hostile and fever-pitched, and without the theocrats on the ground they have virtually no one willing to get out the vote for their candidates. They can't take this issue off the table, as much as the Steve Schmidts of the world would want it.

And anyway, Schmidt probably was helped into the light by virtue of his lesbian sister. That's what it typically takes for conservatives to recognize the world outside their cloistered view.