Obama the Centrist

President Barack Obama took on the Paul Ryan GOP budget, which defunds services to the middle class and needy Americans to fund still more tax cuts for the rich without specifying where budget deficit reduction will actually come from, in a strong speech today:

Chiding Republicans for not learning anything from the failure of trickle-down policies that defined the last decades, Obama attacked the GOP budget head-on. “They have proposed a budget so far to the right it makes the Contract for America look like the New Deal,” he said. “In fact, that renowned liberal, Newt Gingrich, first called the original version of the budget radical. He said it would contribute to right-wing social engineering. … This is now the party’s governing platform. This is what they are running on. One of my potential opponents, Gov. Romney, has said he hopes a similar version of this plan from last year would be introduced as a bill on Day One of his presidency.”

...

“There’s oftentimes the impulse to suggest that, if the two parties are disagreeing, they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle,” Obama cautioned the room full of reporters. “And an equivalence is presented, which reinforces people’s cynicism about Washington in general. This is not one of those situations where there is an equivalence.”

The president noted that a similar theme has played out on other key issues, including cap-and-trade and Obama’s own health care law, both of which were first proposed as conservative alternatives to liberal approaches to environmental and health care reforms.

“Suddenly, this is some socialist overreach,” Obama joked.

“It is important to remember that the positions I’m taking on the budget and a host of other issues, if we had been having this discussion 20 years ago, or even 15 years ago, it would have been considered squarely centrist positions,” Obama said. “What has changed is the center of the Republican Party.”

Amen, brother. Greg Sargent does a nice job delineating the three main political objectives of the speech:

1) Obama cast the Romney-Ryan-GOP approach as not only radical and extreme, but as a proven failure.

2) Obama defended government activism as not just morally right, but as a way to facilitate economic growth.

3) Obama framed the choice as one over who sacrifices to fix the deficit.

Full explanations via the link above. One can only hope President Obama is reelected in November, if for no other reason than to defeat the most ideological, partisan, unrealistic budget proposal by a major political party in my lifetime. Per the facts.

Here's the speech:

Don't blow it, America.

Super Bowl Sunday Political Notes

My father would be happy to know the Giants won today. He was a fan during so many terrible years, and now...dynastic.

The ads run during the Super Bowl all seemed short on imagination, but one stands out. Chrysler and Clint Eastwood came together for something that feels rather like an Obama campaign ad, especially in light of Mitt Romney having written an editorial at the time of the auto bailout that advocated for letting the American car companies die:



Clint's known to be an Republican but one who could care less about abortion or gay marriage issues, somewhere between Eisenhower and Libertarian. Whether he'd ever vote for Obama, I wouldn't wager, but nonetheless this seems to dovetail with the campaign.

As for Mitt, I've thought for a long time that the best GOP move would be to nominate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and corner the Libertarian vote. I don't expect that to happen, but Rep. Paul is gathering forces this run that will surely be handed to his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in four years. This expectation is why I do not believe Rep. Paul will mount a Third Party Presidential bid this year. With the spread of Rep. Paul's message between now and then, and his son's relative youth, I expect Sen. Paul will be a bigger threat to win the nomination in 2016 than his father is now.

The other choice for the GOP would be to choose an actual hardline Conservative candidate, i.e. former Senator Rick Santorum. He's for immediate war with Iran, he's against contraception let alone a woman's choice for her own body, what's not there for a staunch rightwing Republican to like? That way, if a "true" Conservative loses, the GOP would have some soul-searching to do and (at least if they're rational) come back more "moderate" in 2016, even if only in messaging.

Instead it appears they're getting Willard Mitt Romney, who's talking like a full-blown reactionary but is suspected of Liberalism. So if/when Mitt loses to President Obama, the hardcore Republicans will just say they should have gone even more Conservative, no soul-searching required.

If I were a Republican operative in the current situation I'd say, fine, let it be Mitt, whatever, as long as he's stays rich and writing checks. Mitt has enough money to fund zillions of dollars worth of consultants, ad agencies, speechwriters, campaign staff, etc. He's a 2012 gravy train for professional GOoPers. Take his money -- I'm sure it's as green as Teresa Heinz-Kerry's in 2008 -- and get paid for the cycle. Less likely that'll happen with Newty.

As for Obama's election strategy, to circle back to Clint and Chrysler:

US Vice President Joe Biden spelled out a blunt reelection message for his boss President Barack Obama on Tuesday -- "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive."

Simple, direct, and even a little more imaginative than 9/10ths of this year's Super Bowl ads.

Willard

Willard Mitt Romney beat back Newt Gingrich in Florida by outspending him 5:1, hiring a new debate coach, repeating his "God Bless America" speech ad nauseum and, of course, by incessant bold-faced lying regarding the President.

Willard bought his Republican Presidential Primary win in Florida with $15,000,000 in ads (between his campaign and his SuperPAC). He spent, roughly, $21 per voter. What interesting is that 92% of all the ads for this race were negative -- and only 0.1% were pro-Romney:

The bulk of the ads were run by Mr. Romney and his PAC, Restore Our Future, which spent a combined $15.4 million on television and radio advertising in Florida. That compares with $3.7 million for Mr. Gingrich and his allies, according to an analysis by a Republican media strategist not working for either candidate.

The tone and content of the commercials were almost as lopsided. Of all the spots that ran in Florida for the last week, 68 percent were attacks on Mr. Gingrich, Kantar Media found. Only 9 percent were favorable toward him.

Ads assailing Mr. Romney accounted for 23 percent of the political commercials that were broadcast. Yet less than 0.1 percent were pro-Romney, Kantar found. That sliver of a figure was because of one ad the Romney campaign broadcast in Spanish, which featured Mr. Romney’s son praising his father’s leadership abilities.

That's right, the only pro-Romney ad wasn't even broadcast in the English language.

So what's Willard's "positive" vision for America?:

And I'm going to stand and defend capitalism across this country, throughout this campaign. I know we're going to get hit hard from President Obama, but we're going to stuff it down his throat and point out it is capitalism and freedom that makes America strong.

"Stuff it down his throat." You kiss your wife with those lips, Willard? I mean, unless you're a dyed-in-wool Obama hater, what's to like about this guy?:

When Romney ran for the presidential nomination and lost in 2008, the share of Americans who saw him positively never topped 30 percent. By last month, that number had dropped to 24 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Romney took a beating last week in South Carolina over his business career at Bain Capital and his taxes -- and so did his image among voters. A Washington Post poll released Tuesday, three days after Romney lost the South Carolina primary, found a 17 percentage-point drop over two weeks among independent voters who viewed Romney favorably.

That's right, Willard Mitt Romney. The more you see him, the less you like him.

Mitty Mitt Mitt

Ah, Mitt. Seems you may have removed Newt Gingrich's rationale for the GOP Presidential nomination tonight -- Newt is not the greatest debater since Lincoln-Douglas after all.

As for your own rationale, that somehow you have the phenomenal business acumen that will make you a better President than Barack Obama...not so much:

• You claim you have not even seen the campaign ad with your own voice saying you approved it. Not exactly stellar detail-oriented CEO work -- it's impossible to imagine Steve Jobs, for instance, making that same mistake. Might even be a campaign finance law violation.

• You finally release your taxes after claiming your campaign's personal finance disclosure form was enough...and it turns out you lied left accounts off of that form.

How bad is it?

A review by the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau found that at least 23 funds and partnerships listed in the couple's 2010 tax returns did not show up or were not listed in the same fashion on Romney's most recent financial disclosure, including 11 based in low-tax foreign countries such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg.

The campaign has stressed that Romney has paid all required U.S. taxes on his foreign funds.

Many of the funds are affiliated with Bain Capital, the Boston-based private equity firm Romney ran for 15 years. Several others are apparently unrelated offshore entities with mysterious names such as Babson 2006-1, which is based in the Cayman Islands, and Barracuda Investments, which has an address in Dublin, Ireland, but appears to be solely owned by Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm based in San Francisco.

Again, is (a) lack of attention to major (not minor) details ill-becoming of a CEO and downright dangerous in a President, (b) an attempt to obfuscate for some yet-to-be-uncovered reason, meaning we'd have an untrustworthy President or, worse, (c) you're some kind of crook, and one who would immediately under investigation upon taking office.

So what's the great rationale for a Mitt Romney candidacy now, other than generic Republican Obama hate?

Anyone?

SOTU 2012

President Obama's State of the Union address last week managed to make the Republicans seem very, very small. All they can do is squawk about "class warfare" where Obama says "fairness," what was always the Bill Clinton position - play by the rules, fair is fair. Here's the highlights as chosen by Talking Points Memo:

On the GOP side, wha???:

The nationwide survey of registered voters shows that only 26 percent of respondents believe Romney has strong principles, while 61 percent believe he will say anything.

From Rupert Murdoch's very own Twitter handle, it appears that Romney may be losing the biggest GOP Primary of all -- the Murdoch Primary:

Romney's tax returns might kill his chances. See Republican establishment panic now!

Maybe Rupert is realizing what I've been saying all along, that Romney is a terrible General Election candidate (and is doing more poorly that he should be with his own party) and is choosing to go with the most entertaining possibility, the one that will stir things up, get ratings for his outrageousness and fire up the viewing base all the way to his own destruction:

“By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American,” he said. According to Newt, the base would be used for “science, tourism, and manufacturing” and create a “robust industry” modeled on the airline business in the 20th century.

From there, Gingrich suggested moving towards a Mars mission by the end of the next decade. He proposed setting aside 10% of NASA’s budget in prize money for private research into interplanetary exploration.

“I accept the charge that I am grandiose,” he said. “Because Americans are instinctively grandiose.”

Obama last night was a relief after the antics of these nerve-wracking crazies.

Lastly, there was the moment where he embraced now Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who resigned from Congress in a very moving official ceremony today:

It's not that hard to make Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) cry, but this is one I felt with him.

Here's to a triumphal return, a few years down the line.

More Popcorn, Please

For those of us on the other side of the aisle, and for late-night comedians everywhere, Saturday's South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary results could not be better. Newton Leroy Gingrich, a race-baiting legend-in-his-own-mind, a man with whom his former colleagues have bad reviews, a serial adulterer and griftician, beat the supposedly "electable" Willard Mitt Romney. Across all income groups -- except voters earning more than $200,000/year. Not exactly a Man of the People. Along with Iowa now having moved from Romney to Rick Santorum's win column, more bad news for Mitt:

Just a week ago, Mitt Romney's lead over Newt Gingrich was 23 points. And now in the wake of the stunning South Carolina Newtmentum result (Romney didn't drop, but Newt surged), Gallup's Sunday national poll tracker puts Romney at 30 and Gingrich at 25.

Hell, his marginal tax rate is probably higher than his lead now. The key South Carolina takeaways, from Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics:

1) There is no good news buried in here for Mitt Romney.
2) This is worse than George W. Bush’s loss to John McCain in New Hampshire.
3) Analysts are kidding themselves if they say Romney is the inevitable nominee.

Fred Barnes, conservative columnist, says Romney needs a Big Idea. But unlike Barack Obama, who's big idea of One America began at least two years before he ran (with his national introduction speech at the Democratic National Convention), Romney is not coming into this campaign with any big ideas, just his now cracked aura of capability and electability. As Michael Walsh asks at The Corner, "What's the Rationale Now?"

With Newt’s big win tonight, the glaring weakness of Mitt Romney now stands revealed for all to see. Hopefully including Mitt. Because if this wasn’t a wake-up call for Team Romney, he’s a totally hopeless candidate.

All along, I’ve thought he was a pretty hopeless candidate, with too many weaknesses and very few political strengths. Stripped of his Iowa “win,” his record as a candidate is basically 2–4, with wins as Massachusetts governor and, this cycle, in the New Hampshire primary (as a semi-favorite son), but losses to Ted Kennedy, McCain, Rick Santorum, and now Mr. Newt.

This loss is a bad one. Not only did he blow a sizable (and, as it turns out, illusory) lead, he finds himself right back where he started this campaign, stuck at around a quarter of the vote. If that’s “electable,” the GOP is in serious trouble.

Now the Gingrich campaign is cocky and energized:

Kevin Kellems, one of Gingrich's top advisers, said that "Gov. Romney’s campaign is now showing real signs of being off-balance and nervous. There must be a reason for it."

When asked for specific signs of anxiety in the Romney campaign, Kellems responded by email, "among others, Gov. Romney's inability to answer basic questions about his taxes without bouncing around the podium like an overcaffeinated high-schooler being put on the spot by his parents."

And Romney is starting to "take the gloves off" on the way to the Florida Primary vote a week from Tuesday:

He called Gingrich a “failed leader” as Speaker who “had to resign in disgrace” and criticized his work as a highly paid consultant for Freddie Mac in his years out of office. “He said he was just a historian there,” Romney said. “I’d like him to release his records there.”

For frustrated Romney fans, the Newt attacks couldn’t come soon enough.

“Tell it it to him in the debates!” one person shouted as Romney began his attack monologue.

“Take the gloves off, Mitt!” another hollered.

Newt's crowd is a bit more...Confederate. At last night's victory speech:

Newt: ...Just think about how radical he would be in a second term.
Audience: No more years!
Newt: So I have a proposal (interrupted)
Audience: No more years!
Audience: String him up!

What's going on here is that Romney is a politician of a Republican mode that doesn't really exist anymore, trying to run as the type of Republican which has ascended ever since Reagan was elected - the Southern Convervative Republican. George W. Bush, with all his time in Texas, could play it; Romney cannot. On one hand, he really believes all the lies and trash he spew, in which case he's really no better than Newt. On the other, he's saying what he thinks he needs to say to win, which means he's untrustworthy and, in essence, following rather than leading.

My only word of caution to those on the Left who are gleeful at the prospect of a Gingrich nomination, be careful what you wish for because that does put him atop one of the two major U.S. political parties, meaning there's still a chance he could be our next President, i.e. in the case of a disaster.

On the other hand, as I don't see Romney having the same core integrity Obama has in 2008 during his long bout with Hillary Clinton for the nomination, I don't think the long Primary process benefits him. It keeps him from being able to pivot early enough to more centrist rhetoric and tarnishes him with working class Americans due to the nature of the attacks.

Aside from his fundamental problems as a candidate, Romney's side may have made a fatal error when their SuperPAC went hard after Gingrich in Iowa TV ads. Not only did Romney turn out not to win Iowa (when the dust cleared), it made Newt change his rhetoric from "speak no ill of a fellow Republican" a la Reagan's 11th Commandment to total attack.

And that's the one thing Newton Leroy knows how to do.

Choices, Choices

The choice.

This guy:

This guy:

Or this guy:

Music to my ears.

Frothy

Willard Mitt Romney may end up squeaking out a win in Iowa with the smallest winning percentage in GOP history (worse than Bob Dole's 26% in 1996), but it's going to be cold comfort. He's not feeling like a leader, more like a shill, who's has yet to be fully challenged over his bald-faced lies about his eventual opponent, a President who kills terrorists with efficiency and is presiding over a slow but clear recovery.

While I have no love for Rick Santorum's political views, he deserves credit for his late surge to second, almost first place in Iowa. Massively outspent, he did the retail politics right, visiting every single county in Iowa. Will the evangelicals nationwide coalesce around him as they did in Iowa? Or is Romney simply the next in line, which is always the GOP nominee? With the Bush political team behind him, the most professional organization and all the money in the world, including Mormon money, it's hard to imagine he won't be debating Obama next fall.

Bye-bye Rick Perry, who had tons of dough but screwed the pooch spectacularly. Michelle Bachmann says she'll go on but she won't have the money or organization -- then again, not much of what comes out of her mouth is ever true.

As for Newt, who a few weeks ago said it would be hard not to imagine him as the nominee, the fall has been swift and swiftboated by the Romney PACs, and I think it will be irreversible.

Ron Paul, of course, will keep going with the most committed volunteers and supporters of the bunch. If they GOP establishment doesn't treat him right, it could be all the way to a third party candidacy, giving Obama that landslide I've been predicting.

Any chance Mittens would make Ron his Veep?

A Solid Endorsement

I have as many problems with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) as Andrew Sullivan and am not with him on as many issues, but he was right on the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. He's not a liar, he's not a GOP/FOX grifter and he's not an authoritarian. I've said for a long time that he would be the smartest nomination the Republicans could make, a real statement that would crystallize issues.

It's a little scary that Sullivan has written his endorsement so well today, just as he did for Obama four years ago, the first such endorsement I saw and the piece of writing that influenced me to really look at Obama, take him seriously as a candidate. Hopefully, we stay the course for four more years. Obama's the best Republican President since Eisenhower, and I'm hoping since Theodore Roosevelt by the end of his second term.

Here's a few key paragraphs that I agree with:

And I see in Paul none of the resentment that burns in Gingrich or the fakeness that defines Romney or the fascistic strains in Perry's buffoonery. He has yet to show the Obama-derangement of his peers, even though he differs with him. He has now gone through two primary elections without compromising an inch of his character or his philosophy. This kind of rigidity has its flaws, but, in the context of the Newt Romney blur, it is refreshing. He would never take $1.8 million from Freddie Mac. He would never disown Reagan, as Romney once did. He would never speak of lynching Bernanke, as Perry threatened. When he answers a question, you can see that he is genuinely listening to it and responding - rather than searching, Bachmann-like, for the one-liner to rouse the base. He is, in other words, a decent fellow, and that's an adjective I don't use lightly. We need more decency among Republicans.

And on some core issues, he is right. He is right that spending - especially on entitlements and defense - is way out of control. Unlike his peers, he had the balls to say so when Bush and Cheney were wrecking the country's finances, and rendering us close to helpless when the Great Recession came bearing down. Alas, he lacks the kind of skills at compromise, moderation and restraint that once defined conservatism and now seems entirely reserved for liberals. But who else in this field would? Romney would have to prove his base cred for his entire presidency. Gingrich is a radical utopian and supremely nasty fantasist.

I don't believe Romney or Gingrich would cut entitlements as drastically as Paul. But most important, I don't believe that any of the other candidates, except perhaps Huntsman, would cut the military-industrial complex as deeply as it needs to be cut. What Paul understands - and it's why he has so much young support - is that the world has changed. Seeking global hegemony in a world of growing regional powers among developing nations is a fool's game, destined to provoke as much backlash as lash, and financially disastrous as every failed empire in history has shown.

I'm supremely grateful to Rep. Paul that he's not an Obama-hater. He's a gent, which is more than I can say for every other GOP Presidential candidate, other than Gov. Jon Huntsman (who should keep spending as little as possible in his training run in prep for 2016). Romney is establishment trash, with no vision for running a compelling campaign, let alone a Presidency. And Gingrich is anti-establishment trash, all for him, grifter class. His hypocrisy has more integrity than Romney's. It's like Tony Soprano -- this is what he does.

Obama-Paul. A tighter race than either Willard or Newton?

For the Win

The endorsement that really counts:

Boston, MA - Mitt Romney today announced the support of conservative activist Christine O’Donnell.

“Christine has been a leader in the conservative movement for many years,” said Mitt Romney. “Christine recognizes that excessive government threatens us now and threatens future generations, and I am pleased to have her on my team.”

That's right, the one who says she's not a witch.

Meanwhile, Mitt lost a vote:



Either Romney really is so bigoted as to deny this gay ex-serviceman his rights, or he's such a soulless panderer that he no leader at all.

In any case, it all may be moot soon. Gingrich is more than the not-Romney flavor of the moment, he's the winner of the not-Romney sweepstakes. At least he'll make Richard Nixon look like a professional in the General Election.

Guess who's benefited most for the GOP debates -- and has the best organization in Iowa: BHO.

Remember this from four years ago?



Still gives me chills when he says, "They said this day would never come..."

Can I Get a Mitt-ness?

Another week, another GOP Presidential Debate. And I use that term, "Presidential," loosely. The big news from the debate as well as the past week is the Romney campaign heading into freak-out mode as Newt Gingrich has taken virtually all the Herman Cain support and emerged as the frontrunner -- the last "Not Romney" standing and the one who looks like he's going to win unless something big happens quick.

The base doesn't love Mitt, and the more he panders the less attractive he seems overall. He not only sent out all the surrogates to bash Newt last week (not hard -- he was a disaster as Speaker of the House and those who served under him are all telling that tale), he's even stooped so low as to enlist the satanic Ann Coulter as a surrogate. Time to draw a pentagram on the floor, Mitt, light a candle in the middle and call forth Beelzebub.

The moment that sparked a million tweets in last night's debate was Mitt getting so fed up with Rick Perry quoting his book back to him that he offered a $10,000 bet to settle the matter. Because he's one with the American Middle Class, and we all put $10k on the table when someone says something we don't like. It went like this:

As one YouTube commenter notes:

fyi, a $10,000 bet amounts to .00005 of romney's net worth. so if you had a net worth of $400,000, that would amount to a 20 dollar bet.

So now Gingrich has landslide leads in GOP polls for two early Primary states, South Carolina and Florida, and is chipping away at Mitt's firewall, New Hampshire. And the upshot of all these debates, poll shifts and Republican exposure:

Turning to the general election, President Obama’s standing has improved in Florida, always a key presidential battleground state.

Forty-six percent of registered voters in the state approve of his job, which is up five points since October.

In hypothetical match-ups, the president leads Romney by seven points (48 to 41 percent) and Gingrich by 12 points (51 to 39 percent).

In South Carolina -- a reliable Republican state in presidential contests -- Obama’s approval rating stands at 44 percent, and he holds narrow leads over Romney (45 to 42 percent) and Gingrich (46 to 42 percent).

That's right: if the election were held today, President Barack Hussein Obama beats both Willard Mitt Romney and Newton Leroy Gingrich in that bastion of the Confederacy, South Carolina.

Maybe in his second term he'll really be able to hit the gas for this great country.

Those Funny Candidates and the Convention

Gotta love Michele Bachmann Turner Overdrive:

According to a tweet from NBC News’ Jamie Novogrod, Bachmann responded to the recent raiding of the British embassy in Iran, by saying that if she was President, she would close down the U.S. embassy there.

There’s just one problem: The U.S. has not had an embassy in Iran ever since the Iranian hostage crisis, when revolutionaries from the budding Islamic state held 52 Americans for 444 days.

But that was so long ago, how is she expected to remember??

How about Rick Perry White:

The Associated Press carried the following report on a speech he gave to a crowd at Saint Anselm college in New Hampshire:

[H]e appealed to students who will be at least 21 before Election Day to vote for him. As for those younger than 21, he merely asked them to work hard on his behalf. Doesn’t he want their votes, too? It turns out Perry didn’t know or had forgotten that the voting age in America is 18. The flub caused some whispers in the crowd.

No biggie. In Texas what really matters is the drinking age!

And, finally, Jon Stewart goes all out on Herman "Adam Raised A" Cain, who finally gets nailed on the consensual affair:

The Daily Show

Bachmann was never a serious contender, she just had her flash paper moment before confirming to the Republican electorate exactly what everyone else has known for years. She's not a reliable in the political sense. Or the honesty sense.

Cain was another flash, maybe on route to a Vice Presidential candidacy (take that, Barry Obama!) but that won't happen now. Oooh yeah.

And Perry is most interesting of them all, because he's a very successful politician in Texas, the second largest state in terms of both population and landmass, right near the end of the qualifying period he came riding high to save the day, and all leading up to this, earlier in the year, David Axelrod and the Obama Campaign was always very excited whenever anyone mentioned Perry, then not on the heavy radar, as a possible candidate.

It clear that the Obama Campaign was relishing the idea of running against Rick Perry. And maybe they knew something that wasn't general knowledge, like how much Rove and the Bush people hate Perry going back to when he was Lt. Governor under W. Because his implosion as like a series of Japanese nukes going off one after each other, the last revealingly stupid moment just getting to the dying embers before he did something else even more obviously not ready for any 3:00am calls.

We'll miss these clowns when they're gone for the race, but they'll be sure to pop back up again at the GOP Convention next summer, and if Newt does indeed win, or Ron Paul (which would be the smartest Republican choice, the apotheosis of Ayn Randianist), they'll get Administration positions. I always thought Herman Cain was running for Secretary of Commerce, anyway.

Newt will be funny in a different way -- he's got such a sure sense of self, he can instantly rationalize his way out of any of his shenanigans. I think Newt vs. President Barack would be a classic -- Newt as replay/last gasp of the 1990's vs. an Obama who looks all the more young and together because of the contrast. Newt shut down government and then failed to even make that work. Barack has been working his ass off to make government work, from healthcare to terror defense. His gotten a bill passed and taken out Bin Laden et al.

Could he possibly beat Newt by ten percentage points (55%/45%) or better? Could Newt make John McCain look like an Electoral College overachiever?

As for Mitt, don't worry about him:

As Mr. 1%, I now don't expect him to win the nomination -- unless he turns his trajectory around very, very quickly, and not just with the Bush wing of establishment old-school, but with the rank and file Republicans. Remember, if Mitt becomes President, the clock turns back a generation.

Then there's one other possibility. If the Tea Party is strong enough, and Newt manages to damage his electability profoundly (I say 70% chance) by the Convention, you could see a true political rarity, the brokered convention, most famously held by the 1924 Dems, torn apart by the rural/urban Prohibition conflict. In this case it's the Reagan deal with the Southern Religious Right, come home to roost in Tea Party garb, versus the money side, the hawks and the hardcore Libertarians. Aside from the hawks, the other two can get along on the Libertarian cry for smaller government.

Which is exactly what the Paulites a waiting to have happen.

OWS Changes the Conversation

The payroll tax cut used to be a Republican idea, but now that President Obama is for it, they're against extending it. That is, until Occupy Wall Street made clear the division between the 1% and the 99%:

If Republicans block the measure, as expected, Democrats would paint them as the party of the rich.

Trying to get ahead of the game, McConnell proclaimed Republican support for the payroll tax cut extension and told reporters his party would soon propose its own ideas for covering the cost of the tax cut.

"The Democrats put them in a box," said Andrew Taylor, a North Carolina State University political science professor. "I think many Republicans realized this is a bad side of the argument to be on."

Thanks to the protesters, there's media buzz highlighting the GOP's behavior and allegiances. It's common knowledge now, nothing anyone can obfuscate with rhetoric. And you know #OWS matters when the new GOP frontrunner, Newt Gingrich, calls on President Obama to repudiate the movement and its message of wealth inequality.

As Robert Reich tells us, the Basic Bargain holding our society together and creating growth in the 20th Century has been torn apart by greed and must be restored:

For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.

That basic bargain created a virtuous cycle of higher living standards, more jobs, and better wages.

...

The latest data on corporate profits and wages show we haven't learned the essential lesson of the two big economic crashes of the last 75 years: When the economy becomes too lopsided -- disproportionately benefiting corporate owners and top executives rather than average workers -- it tips over.

In other words, we're in trouble because the basic bargain has been broken.

...

Corporations don't need more money. They have so much money right now they don't even know what to do with all of it. They're even buying back their own shares of stock. This is a bonanza for CEOs whose pay is tied to stock prices and it increases the wealth of other shareholders. But it doesn't create a single new job and it doesn't raise the wages of a single employee.

Nor do the wealthiest Americans need more money. The top 1 percent is already taking in more than 20 percent of total income -- the highest since the 1920s.

American businesses, including small-business owners, have no incentive to create new jobs because consumers (whose spending accounts for about 70 percent of the American economy) aren't spending enough. Consumers' after-tax incomes dropped in the second and third quarters of the year, the first back-to-back drops since 2009.

The Dems are proposing to pay for the payroll tax cut with a surtax on millionaires -- affecting 0.2% of the U.S. population.

I hesitate to ask what 1%-favoring counterproposal GOP will come up with themselves.

Clowntime Still Ending

Here's yesterday's GOP frontrunner attempting to recall U.S. foreign policy:



Herman, we hardly knew ye. Good luck on the rest of your book tour.

Just like every two weeks, there's a new GOP frontrunner. I kid you not.

Newt.

Send in the Clowns

It's Mitt's to lose. Rick is shrinking next to him, the size difference, better hair (for the first time, Rick looks like he's wearing a toup), Herman Cain is entertaining and running for Secretary of Commerce, Michelle Bachmann is disappearing, Newt and Rick are hanging in by dint of experienced stubbornness, Ron Paul will always have a seat at the Primary table, who knows what speaking spot the Party Elders give him at the Convention.

The idea of Obama running against Mitt Romney for ten months is hilarious when you think about it. Presidential elections are, in large part, for who you want to see on TV for four years. The lead role in the biggest serial of all. I'll be shocked if Mitt doesn't wear out his welcome by May.

He holds his own here, but oh that smiling scold:

Astonishing how little John Huntsman has mattered. It's not that he's too left, it's that he was spectral, a ghost of a candidate, does not bode well for 2016 for him. He even disappeared tonight altogether, not at the debate. Goodbye.

Watch Perry flop so quickly, even with $17 million in his Q3 haul, is more gratifying than I ever expected. Lots of hat.

Backstabbers in their Midst

Great Josh Marshall piece on the instant implosion of the New Gingrich campaign barely days after its announcement. His biggest mistake doesn't seem to be calling President Obama the "biggest food stamp President" which is just heinous with identity politics, but that he called Paul Ryan's Medicare elimination plan "Conservative social engineering" and "too radical" for America. (Hey, that sounded like surprising sanity to me.) It's been a particularly wild firestorm:

And now it comes out that this afternoon Newt was compelled to personally call Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to apologize for questioning and criticizing Ryan's Medicare phase-out plan. And his spokesman publicly stated that Newt apologized. Publicly. On the record. Voluntarily.

I mean, wow. Watching TV just now, I see that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is now lashing out at Gingrich as some sort of GOP health care policy traitor.

What's breathtaking about this isn't just the reckless ridiculousness. That's Newt's trademark. But I can only imagine Newt's mortification. This is a man of no little ego. Whatever else you want to say about Gingrich, he is a genuinely historic figure in the history of American politics. And he's called on the carpet and has to apologize to these newcomers who couldn't have been out of their 20s when he was in his early 90s heyday?

I can only imagine.

It's all about fear, as Josh points out, which is exactly what Obama was saying in the last election (and Bill Clinton the decade before that): hope vs. fear. And all the GOP are terrified, mainly of their own Party. After all, Dems don't scare them. Case in point, per TPM:

"If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we'd listen to them," former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman told Time in a new interview. "I respect science and the professionals behind the science so I tend to think it's better left to the science community - though we can debate what that means for the energy and transportation sectors."

The reaction to that little nugget was about as you'd expect.

Never mind that Huntsman also backs off his past support for cap-and-trade in the interview, or that he basically says that while climate change is a problem, it's not one that America should deal with until after the economy recovers (both standard GOP talking points). It's his basic understanding of the concept that human-caused climate change is real -- and even worse, that maybe something should be done to stop it -- that caused a stir on Tuesday.

...

Over at RedState, Daniel Horowitz wrote that Huntsman's views on climate change's human origins were just another piece of the Huntsman which conservatives have found less than palatable thanks to his moderate views on gay rights (he's for civil unions) and the uncomfortable fact that until this month he was a full-fledged member of the Obama administration.

The interview Huntsman gave to Time "can only mean that he is seeking the VP nomination for a Mike Bloomberg ticket," Horowitz wrote.

Fear of betrayal, core of Conservative paranoia.

Hence purity tests.

Crazy Like on Fox

Is the GOP fragmenting before our eyes, or is this a process by which they eventually unite behind, say, former Utah Governor John Huntsman?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is Republican Partying like it's 1995, doing his best to appeal to the red meat, most cranky and insulting individuals in his party, but is also rejecting the Paul Ryan Medicare elimination plan. Which John Boehner now claims he's resurrecting with a new "message"...after his House GOP freshmen begged Presdent Obama in a three-page letter to let them be forgiven for having voted for the wildly unpopular Ryan budget plan.

Former Governor Mitt Romney is losing the support of GOP elites, who are finally realizing what we've known all along: unelectable due to his Massachusetts health care reform success (yes, that's how crazy his party is) as well as his appearance of either phoniness or the aloofness of wealth.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is the next Mitt Romney and the pre-John Huntsman, except that he's acting like Hamlet (or Mario Cuomo) about making a decision, possibly due to issues with his wife, which is also (x3) an issue for Newt Gingrich.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is now running and telling everyone he would not have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act on property rights grounds (generally libertarian utopianism) and compares both Social Security and Medicare to slavery. Yes, comparing the institution of forced servitude and genocide with making sure we don't have poverty-stricken grandmothers like we did before these programs were enacted.

Donald Trump...is a contingency over at NBC, which would probably like to replace him in his own series anyway.

And former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's "heart says no" (as in I just bought a really huge new house and love doing my TV show platform to pay for it). I assumed that as he bought the multi-million dollar home and has been putting weight back on again (business meals?) he wasn't running.

My father used to say that you have to be slightly crazy to want to be President. It's that kind of job. Does this make Mike Huckabee now the most sane of the top tier viable Republican Presidential candidates?

And what does that say about the 2011 Republican Party?

Truthless

I'm not sure why anyone takes Newt Gingrich seriously anymore. The guy didn't last as a politician, as a leader of his party, as a husband, but maybe he seems like an intelligent source in comparison to his Republican colleagues. Guys like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and even Eric Cantor aren't dazzling anybody with their intellect. They feel like second-stringers.

So Next goes on The Daily Show to promote his co-written novel about George Washington and they don't even talk about the book except in a glancing reference. Instead, he does what we've come to expect from The Party of No. He lies. Then, when confronted with his lie today, he lies again:

Newt Gingrich tried on Wednesday to brush off the glaring gaffe he made this week on "The Daily Show" when he insisted that the Bush administration was right to read shoe bomber Richard Reid his Miranda rights because he was an American citizen.

But in doing so, the former GOP House Speaker only dug his hole deeper.

In a post on his Twitter page, Gingrich explained that when he made the Reid comment to the "Daily Show"'s Jon Stewart his reference was actually to Jose Padilla. Reid, after all, is a British citizen -- Padilla is American.

But Gingrich wasn't done there. In a dig at the Obama White House, he added to the tail end of his tweet: "Treating terrorists like criminals wrong no matter who is Pres."

That's a standard GOP talking point, and yet when President Bush moved the Padilla case from a military setting to the criminal system, it was Gingrich who came to his defense despite conservative howls of protest, a Democratic source points out.

I wish they'd just admit that they're not being patriotic with their war on the Obama Administration's war on terrorists. Why don't they just say, "we just need some way to wedge him out of there in 2012, and we'll say anything to do it!"

Or maybe they're just waiting for the Bernie Saunders treatment:

"I really don't like being lectured on deficits when you (Sen. Gregg) and many members of your party (Republicans) helped cause the situation we are in right now."

~snip~

"Please, please, spare the lectures on deficit reduction."

Say it, Bernie:



Maybe there's truth coming from the teabagger movement. Oops, as a committed conservative who went to their party last weekend writes, their relationship with reality is even worse:

Steve Malloy, author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life, kicked off the first full day of conference proceedings by warning that Obama and his minions are conspiring to control every aspect of Americans' lives—the colors of their cars, the kind of toilet paper they use, how much time they spend in the shower, the temperature of their homes—all under the guise of U.N. greenhouse-gas-reduction schemes. "Obama isn't a U.S. socialist," Malloy thundered. "He's an international socialist. He envisions a one-world government."

I consider myself a conservative and arrived at this conference as a paid-up, rank-and-file attendee, not one of the bemused New York Times types with a media pass. But I also happen to be writing a book for HarperCollins that focuses on 9/11 conspiracy theories, so I have a pretty good idea where the various screws and nuts can be found in the great toolbox of American political life.

Within a few hours in Nashville, I could tell that what I was hearing wasn't just random rhetorical mortar fire being launched at Obama and his political allies: the salvos followed the established script of New World Order conspiracy theories, which have suffused the dubious right-wing fringes of American politics since the days of the John Birch Society.

And their truthless queen, we all know...well, she's had enough publicity so I won't add another link to her train.

Ames Results

The GOP hold a "straw poll" in Iowa every Presidential election cycle, a vote entirely meaningless in determining the Primary winner, meaningful only in publicity terms, from whence to maybe solidify a position, get a good idea to drop out, or make a name for oneself.

The results are in from the Ames Iowa Straw Poll, this first test vote, and while Mitt Romney spent a load of time and money to win it, he may have hurt his cause by only winning with 31% of the vote. This is significant because other frontrunners Giuliani and McCain chose to conserve their resources and not participate, ditto crypto-candidate Fred Thompson.

To put it in perspective, back in 1999 George Bush won it with 31% as well, against very credible candidates. From Liz Mair:

In other words, Mitt Romney, playing a field uncrowded by other presidential heavyweights, only managed to pull off the same percentage as Bush did in 1999, when Bush was competing against the likes of Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Dole (who were treated as credible candidates at that time-- Patrick Ruffini notes that Steve Forbes threw millions at the straw poll in 1999, something Huckabee clearly did not do this year, and something that Romney apparently did). So, while a win for Mitt is a win, him taking 31% isn't really that much of a big deal. In some ways, when he was competing against a number of go-nowhere candidates, you might have expected him to do better.

So who actually scored at this circus-like event? The guy I originally bet on to win the nomination (before his fundraising efforts came up shallow), Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. While I disagree with Huckabee on many issues (i.e. evolution), and can't stand when he goes with canned material like recently on Colbert, he's actually got a pulse, per this video. And he plays highly credible electric bass.

Per my post yesterday, Newt can get in and maybe even win the nomination. But, in my view, Huckabee would be the only threat in a general election. And maybe this meaningless poll is his start.

Repuglicans

How screwed up is the GOP right now? I mean, more than I've already covered this week?

This was a banner day.

It turns out Rudolph Gall-iani will literally say anything he thinks will get him elected, especially if it involves climbing on the corpses of 9/11 victims or the shoulders of those who cleaned up afterwards:

Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, Giuliani said, "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Do those workers agree with him?

Fire Captain and Giuliani foe James Riches, whose firefighter son died on 9/11:

"That's insulting and disgraceful. He's a liar. I was down there on my hands and knees looking for my son."

Queens paramedic Marvin Bethea:

"I personally find that very, very insulting," he said..."Standing there doing a photo-op and telling the men, 'You're doing a good job,' I don't consider that to be working."

Ironworker Jonathan Sferazo who spent a month at ground zero:

"He's not one of us. He never has been and he never will be. He never served in a capacity where he was a responder," Sferazo said.

Oh, he's tried to backtrack. So sad, so lame.

An isolated incident of exaggeration? Not so, per Wayne Barrett in The Village Voice:

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11:

1. 'I think the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is, I have more experience dealing with it.'

Turns out he lies about the minimal, unsuccessful terrorism prosecutions he even touched when he was a U.S. Attorney.

2. 'I don't think there was anyplace in the country, including the federal government, that was as well prepared for that attack as New York City was in 2001.'

No, turns out NYC was much worse than the Pentagon, no unified command, no high-rise plan, bad communications killed firefighters, lackadaisical response to 1993 WTC bombing.

3. Don't blame me for 7 WTC, Rudy says.

(Do.)

4. 'Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.'

The worst kind of typical GOP scummy smearjob.

Clinton was the President who ordered daily briefings on Al Queda and other terrorist threats. Bush cut them down, missed "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States." 9/11 happened on Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld's watch. Then they blew our lead in Afghanistan by attacking Iraq, with Rudy's full and continued support. This after Rudy blew the preparations in NYC.

Meanwhile the Dems consider terrorists criminals rather than soldiers, meaning you don't do asymmetrical warfare and get your ass handed to you by an enemy you often can't see, who can disappear into a population...like a criminal.

Rudy understands...nothing.

5. 'Every effort was made by Mayor Giuliani and his staff to ensure the safety of all workers at Ground Zero.'

Ask them.

Will this cave in on Rudy? Who the heck else do the GOP have to go with? McCain is polling below Obama amongst Iowa Republicans. Mitt's fundraiser are johns or crooks. In fact, "None of the Above" is leading the GOP field in Iowa:

None of the Above has polled higher than Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and all the other Republican presidential candidates, reflecting a lackluster field that isn’t catching on with the American people.

What else is there to loathe about the GOP?

- David Brooks reveals that no one likes the current President -- even Republicans.

- Bush and Giuliani want to regress our tax system further.

- They are traitors who leak secrets when politically advantageous for them.

- They will have to bring back the Draft.

Oh, and their President Cheney is desperately trying to plunge us into WWIII.

Prediction:

Newt Gingrich will enter the race, solely on the basis that he has the smarts, nerve and ego to run against the current President. He will wipe out at least two of the three supposed contenders now, maybe even go head-to-head with Rudy. Whichever one wins will not win the General Election, unless there is some act of violence which tips the equation.

Newt will, however, unleash a huge Republican rank & file rage against the current Administration, and he may be able to ride that wave to a nomination.

The trick will be to blame the officeholders and not the overall Republican ideology, but GOP faithful will want to be fooled into that, and are probably laying the groundwork already. Bifurcate the leadership away from Karl Rove. Scoop 'em up.

It's the only strategy that can take on and beat None of the Above.