With his poll numbers finally starting to sink under the weight of sexual harassment allegations, the bubble on the Hermain Cain boomlet may finally be bursting.  It is in many ways a reflection of the current Republican Party that someone so frighteningly ignorant on public policy has been the putative leader in the polls for so long.  But the Republicans have desperately been seeking an alternative for the immaculately coiffed weather-vane from Massachusetts.  Since many of the adults (Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Christ Christie etc.) chose not to run, the party has vaulted an impressive collection of  blowhards (The Donald), batshit crazy (Michele Bachmann) and empty shirts (Rick Perry) to the top of the polls, only to see them dragged down by the dead weight of their absence of gravitas.  For a long time it appeared Herman Cain’s Teflon shield would hold.  Thankfully, this nightmare is now coming to an end.

On its face terming a charismatic and successful CEO and former governor of the Kansas City Federal Reserve a Know Nothing would seem odd.  Alas, Herman Cain like most of the other Republican candidates not named Huntsman, Ron Paul or Romney (on non-foreign policy issues), is an empty shirt.  Rarely has a candidate at the top of the polls expressed such total lack of awareness of public policy (domestic or foreign).  This is compounded by bizarre leaps into bigoted Islamophobia, a seeming willingness to electrocute illegal immigrants at the border (which may or may not have been a joke, since Mr. Cain characterized his comments both ways depending on the audience), an ignorance on the constitutional limitations on restricting Congressional activities and the constitutional amendment process, a bizarre financial plan that may have been lifted from the Sim City game, departures into race baiting when it is convenient and finally a proud ignorance on any matters relating to foreign policy.  Then came a barrage of sexual harassment allegations dating back to the 1990s when he lead the National Restaurant Association.  The flailing response from the Cain campaign (even though they had 10 days to prepare for the story’s publication) demonstrated an operation not ready for prime-time.

Seeing the debacle, it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that the Cain campaign for the presidency is a publicity seeking stunt gone awry.  The candidate did not help dispel such rumors last month by disappearing from the campaign trail for a book signing tour.  After all, a half-term quitter from Alaska has provided a blueprint on cashing political celebrity into millions of dollars.  The Clintons have demonstrated just how lucrative life post-presidency can be.

When challenged on his ignorance, Mr. Cain has a few stock answers.  His critics are wrong, he is right and trust him.

The ignorance on domestic policy is bad enough. (Video below):

Foreign policy is worse.  After repeated attacks on his foreign policy credentials he assured us that he is not as foreign policy dumb “as they think”.  Video below:

After making that bold assertion, Mr. Cain provided us the gem below.  This makes Governor Perry’s brain fart pale in comparison and highlights what happens when you get your rote learning jumbled up in your head.  For 5:16 Herman Cain struggles to answer a basic question on a war conducted and concluded in the past six months and to highlight why exactly he opposed Obama’s policy (other than the typical knee-jerk opposition to Obama):

To make it worse, his campaign trotted out the excuse (not for the first time) that the candidate was operating on 4 hours sleep.

This sleep deprived soul should not have his fingers on the nuclear trigger and has no business running for President.

The Herman Cain comedy hour may be coming to a close.  The new hope of the anti-Romney brigade appears to be a former speaker whose passionate patriotism drove him to adultery.  Somewhere Saturday Night Live writers are cheering.

If/when Romney does get the Republican nomination, I have his acceptance speech prepared for him. Video below:

Go for it Mitt…

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It must be dispiriting for the Republican Party elites to watch Donald Trump soar in the polls based largely on babbling birther nonsense.  It underscores a deep satisfaction with a field where the “authentic” candidates are bonkers and the credentialed candidates are chameleons (not just Mitt Romney).  So for now I will spare my keyboard and rely on the parody video mocking them below.  Enjoy:

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Via Joshua Green of the Atlantic: so spoke the only President of the United States to ever lead a union. The reference is to the Solidarity Trade Union that challenged the communist regime in Poland.

This is yet another piece of evidence that the mythology created by the Bircher, Birther and Know-Nothing rump of the Republican Party today does not comport to the reality of their hallowed President.  (Note: In the interest of being fair and balanced one must note that Reagan broke the air-traffic controllers union when they went on strike on the obvious public safety grounds, but as a man who drew his support from blue-collar Democrats did not actively attack the Unions).  The man was no bleeding heart liberal but had the pragmatism to raise taxes when needed, bailed out GM and Chrysler (sound familiar), refused to demonize gays, was willing to cut his losses and withdraw from Lebanon without trying to avenge the dead Marines, was willing to deal with the evil Empire and even Iran, and was willing to genuinely compromise with the Democrats instead of taking a position of “my way or the highway.”  Frankly none of the Republican Presidents since World War II would satisfy the purity test imposed on today’s Republican candidates.

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I have little respect for the intelligence of many legislators, but some of the legislation that has been introduced in the last couple of months is truly breathtaking.

It started with anti-abortion Republicans in Congress trying to limit the Federal funding of abortions by attempting to redefine rape.  Then, a legislator in South Dakota introduced a fetus protection bill so loosely drafted that it could have allowed a pregnant woman’s immediate family to kill anyone (including doctors) who tried to provide that woman an abortion with her permission.  Thankfully the legislator saw the dangers of legalizing homicide of doctors performing still legal acts and withdrew the bill.  Undaunted a Nebraska legislator has introduced a similar bill that will grant such justifiable homicide rights to any third party vigilante.

Then you have Republican legislators in states like Montana discovering their inner John C. Calhoun and trying to pass nullification statues.

But this one takes the cake and is truly beyond belief.  Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin has introduced a bill that would make women who miscarry felons unless they can prove that there was “no human involvement whatsoever in the causation” of their miscarriage.  Such a felony could be punishable by death.  So much for innocent until proven guilty.  Even the infamously misogynistic Taliban never dreamed up such an obscenity.

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As Barack Obama and the Democrats wrap up a successful lame-duck session of Congress, Republicans are howling in outrage that Congress dared do the job for which it collects a paycheck.  Then there is the allegation that the Democrats tried to cram stuff at the last minute.  Of course the last minute cramming was caused by the record number of filibusters that the Democrats had to overcome in the Senate the past two years.

Another thing the Republicans seem to forget when howling about passing lame duck legislation is their impeachment of Bill Clinton in the 1998 lame-duck session after LOSING seats (something that almost never happens to the opposition party in the sixth year of a presidency).  Enjoy the achievements of the most productive Congress in a generation.  The next two years will not be pretty.

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Continuing on a theme of giving credit where it is due we come to Jon Stewart.  After the Republicans filibustered a bill to provide health benefits to 9/11 first responders because of cost (while gifting a far larger giveaway to millionaires) , Stewart responded with a take down of the GOP and the media that some have termed operatic.  The targets were some of his usual foils – the news networks who responded to yet another filibuster with silence, Fox “News” whose 9/11 outrage machine seems to have taken an early vacation and the GOP.  Videos below:

The second video is much more sober.  Stewart sits down with some 9/11 responders needing help to pay for their bills while taking some shots at John Kyl for asserting that working on Christmas was somehow sacrilegious and Mitch McConnell’s teary farewell to Judd Gregg.

The third video is an interview with former Arkansas Governor and presidential candidate (also a Fox “News” host) Mike Huckabee who urges Republicans to vote for the bill.

Stewart’s rage from the bully pulpit seems to have woken up the media and shamed some Republicans.  Below is an unusual video of a Fox anchor breaking the party line and calling out Republicans for their obstruction (other Fox personalities generally blame Congress and not Republicans in the Senate) – well maybe not that unusual since it is one of their rare fair and balanced journalists Shep Smith.

Yet the grinches are still around.  Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn objects to funding the bill by closing a tax loophole and is seeking further review on a bill that has been floating around Congress for most of the year.  He has vowed to block the bill adding to conservative unease on the wisdom of continuing to block the bill.  It also hands Democrats a political softball epitomized by their new video below:

It begs the question whether all this public shaming is sufficient to force Senate Republicans to act rather than merely provide their usual vocal support for 9/11 first responders.

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Jon Stewart closed out his rally Saturday with a impassioned speech (video below) on why America needs to work together.  The speech took some digs at the role of cable TV in fueling the polarization (Read this article for how MSNBC and CNN have tried to catch up with Fox in a race to the bottom).

Unfortunately with the Republican Party measuring the drapes, signalling that it will continue its plan of non-cooperation and that its top priority is making Obama a one term President (an understandable impulse politically but also not surprising for a party bereft of fresh ideas), the plea is doomed.  It takes two to tango.

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The list of deficit peacocks preening their fraudulent fiscal conservative plumes keeps growing.  It is scary to think that a party so detached from reality will shortly be rewarded with a return to power.   Some more examples are noted below:

• The original tea partier Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey when asked for specifics on spending cuts retreated to the standard Republican talking points which will do almost nothing to cut the deficit. Video clip is below:

• Mike Lee the soon to be Republican Senator from Utah wants to slash federal spending by 40% while extending the Bush taxcuts and without cutting Social Security and defense.  Whatever he is smoking must be nice.  It has created a rosy tea party alternate reality.
• Republicans are unveiling a bold plan to expand the deficit by replacing the Paygo rules currently in effect (requiring tax cuts and spending increases to be offset) with “Cutgo” (requiring only spending increases to be offset).  Even though the empirical evidence under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush indicates otherwise, Republicans continue to delude themselves that tax cuts do not diminish revenues.

It is going to be a long long two years in Republican Fantasia.

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After eight year lapse when the Democrats controlled the statehouse, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) quietly declared April 2010 to be Confederate History Month.  This was a practice started by former governor George Allen (he of macaca fame).  For some reason the California bred Allen had a predilection for confederate imagery.  While from my perspective the confederates were traitors who tried to tear apart this nation for a disgraceful motive couched in noble sounding words, I have no deep objection to such an acknowledgement as long as confederate symbols are not glorified and the context of the war is understood.  It is after all a part of the history of the South.  What does bother me is the revisionist movement of the past two decades that tries to minimize the extent to which slavery led to the civil war and the pandering of politicians to the racist fringe.

Revisionists would have you believe that the South fought solely for the cause of states rights.  This is bullshit.  Just like politicians ignore states rights when it suits them, the South had no reservations in infringing of the right of the free states to ban slavery.  The antebellum years were full of attempts like the Fugitive Slave Act that overrode states rights in the North.  But heaven forbid the Union attempting to ban slavery.  That was intolerable.  At the time of secession the Southern states made no bones about the fact that the “states right” at issue was slavery.  This is evident from their declaration of causes for secession where slavery dominates the reason of their departure.  See link.  Mississippi went on to declare “[o]ur position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.”

Even the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens in his infamous Cornerstone Speech, parts of which are quoted below, had no doubt of the part slavery played in the civil war:

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. Read the rest of this entry »

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The news media and liberal blogs have eagerly lapped up the story of the Republican National Committee wooing donors at a “bondage themed nightclub” where topless dancers imitate lesbian sex.  See link.  Even though he was not present, it epitomizes the careless way Steele runs the RNC and his inability to control or monitor spending.  The story was broken by the right wing blog The Daily Caller which also highlighted Steele’s expensive habits.  See link.  Fed up donors are now pushing funds away from the RNC to other outlets.  See link.

The gaffe prone Steele was not what the Republican Party wanted when they tried to project an image of diversity by making him the head of the RNC.  And yet in the short run they are stuck with him for the near future.  See link.  Logistically it will be very hard to force him out and the optics of a diversity challenged party dumping its most prominent minority just before an election would be terrible.  It does not help that Steele is on record saying that white Republicans are scared of him.  See link.  But it is hard to see Republicans putting up with the constant drumbeat of embarrassment emanating from Steele all the way till 2012.  I think the clock has begun to tick on Steele’s leadership of the RNC and it will not be surprising to see him eased out next year.  Whether he goes quietly is another question.  Quiet does not seem to be in his DNA.

It is also another example of the risk of a political party sanctimoniously prosing on about morality.  Once again it brings to mind the paraphrased (the original quote is in Hamlet Act III, Sc. II) Shakespeare quote “Methinks thou dost protest too loudly.”  For example there have been a number of vocally homophobic right wing legislators outed for being gay lately.  For one of the latest see here.  It would be far better if politicians focused on doing their job honestly and stopped using personal morality as a political football.

Meanwhile, the latest RNC scandal was low hanging fruit for Jon Stewart to pick off and he has done so with glee.  Given the subject matter the sketch is a little more risque than usual.  Enjoy…

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One of the more amusing (yet sad) events in the past few months has been to watch Republicans preening as they proclaim their new found desire to trim the budget deficit (ignored in all of this is their contribution in the past 8 years to creating the fiscal straitjacket the country finds itself in).  Of course it is all talk with no plan rooted in reality.  Republicans and Democrats are committed to no cuts in social security and Medicare, an understandable political impulse since pissed off old folks actually vote.  Republicans go further in wanting absolutely no cuts in the military budget (whether the United States can keep spending as much as the next five nations combined is a debate for another day) and absolutely opposing any tax increases (and actually wanting to cut taxes some more).  Somehow the trillion dollar deficit is to be magically erased by trimming the small remaining faction of the budget devoted to discretionary spending.

But as the President pointed out earlier this week, Republican commitment to cutting discretionary spending wanes when Republican districts are impacted.  After bloviating about the stimulus before the revelation of his extra-marital affair, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is now heading to Washington to get more stimulus funds (formerly known as pork) for his state.  See link. But the cake goes to Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama who seems to be trying to validate the caricature of the Party of No by blocking all 70 pending nominations President Obama sent to the Senate for confirmation.  The administration has drawn the Sentor’s ire by axing a couple of home state projects.  See link. As the article shows this is not the only time a Republican Senator has held up a nomination for issues unrelated to the nomination and to secure pork funding (I am sorry, critically needed funding for a dire emergency) in their state.  Shelby has tried wrapping his decision in the flag by citing the national security importance of funding his pet Alabama projects.  But how exactly is national security protected by placing intelligence and diplomatic positions on hold?  See link.

Holds and filubusters have been a problem in the Senate for the while, but lately they have gone out of control providing even more evidence that the Senate is broken.  Shelby’s actions have caused Paul Krugman to bring comparisons to the liberium veto that destroyed the Commonwealth of Poland (See link) causing my brother to joke that the Nobel laureate must have read my blog (See previous blog post on the liberium veto).

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It is in many ways a sad reflection of the nature and structure of American politics, when the televised event that occurred today when the President visited the Republican Party retreat is news in large part because it actually occured (and before the cameras no less).  Others (notably transplanted Briton Andrew Sullivan) have noted the major difference between American democracy and the one in Westminster, where the Prime Minister has to show up for question hour and defend his or her policies to the questions raised by the opposition.  Unfortunately the monarchical trappings of American democracy run deep and many Presidents probably felt it beneath their dignity to subject themselves to a grilling of this sort (which is still light compared to what happens in a parliamentary democracy).

There already has been some chatter that Republican operatives think it was a mistake to give President Obama a chance to call out Republican misstatements in front of the camera. See link.  Hopefully such considerations will not prevent events like this that allow a debate of a rare genuine debate of policy issues (in contrast to the histrionics that are inevitable in the tit for tat cable TV soundbite process) from happening in the future.  After all the Republicans also get their chance to call out the  President for his misstatements, and some did try today.  In other news Fox “News” appears to have cut away more than 20 minutes before the event ended to start playing the Republican party meme that the President was lecturing, leading a good deal of mockery on the liberal blogs.  Cannot wait to see the inevitable Jon Stewart spoof.

A few cherry picked comments I am glad the President managed to get in his response (link to transcript and embedded video is at end of post): Read the rest of this entry »

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James Fallows from The Atlantic posted this interesting chart of Wikipedia showing the expanding level of obstruction by the Republican Party.  See link.

The blue line shows how often the filibuster was invoked and the greenish gold line at the bottom shows how often it was overcome.  With the almost doubling of the filibuster’s usage since the Republicans lost the Senate and then the Presidency (and as has been noted previously in this blog for relatively innocuous items like the military budget) the main stream media like the Chicago Tribune have bought the line that all of this is the fault of Democrats failing to negotiate with Republicans rather than a deliberate Republican strategy of obstruction, epitomized by Republican ideological heavyweight Rush Limbaugh who welcomed Barack Obama into office by wishing for his failure.

If this somehow brings the Republicans back into a Senate majority, as Yglesias notes, the template has been established for the Democrats to return the favor.

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The revelation of Senator Harry Reid’s use of the “n” word while describing Barack Obama’s strengths as a candidate has set off the typical Washington fire storm.  While President Obama has accepted his apology and the Democratic caucus has rallied around Senator Reid the Republicans are crying foul.  They point to the double standard on race that forced them to jettison Trent Lott of Mississippi a few years back (though a lot of the pushing came from the White House in that one).  As others have pointed out,  the situations are not analogous.  Se here, here and here for a detailed explanation on the subject.

But the Republicans are right in that there is a double standard.  It seems unfair but they can look in the mirror for why Republicans (particularly southern Republicans) get so little leeway on race.

As the heirs to the Whigs, the Republican Party was born in its opposition to slavery.  After the civil war the Party of Lincoln could count on the support of the freed slaves.  However, things started to changed under FDR.  The New Deal created a blue collar coalition that included black voters.  By 1956 the Republican share of the black vote was 40% and has been heading down ever since.  However, the addition of Black voters to the Democratic coalition and the resulting push for civil rights fractured the Democratic Party

Southern Democrats who had reestablished control over the region after reconstruction and disenfranchised large portions of the African American population bristled when Northern liberals started preaching civil rights.  The breaking point came during the 1948 Democratic convention when Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey urged the Democratic Party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”  Outraged Southern Democrats walked out and nominated Strom Thurmond as the presidential nominee of the States’ Rights Party (aka Dixiecrats).  Things got worse for them with the election of John F. Kennedy.  But the unkindest cut of all came when one of their own, former Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson rammed through the Civil Rights Act.  According to legend when Johnson signed the Act into law he remarked, “We have lost the South for a generation.”  He was right because the Republicans were waiting in the wings.

Richard Nixon made some clumsy attempts to court black voters in 1960.  After that Republican presidential tickets actively started courting the Southern white vote.  Barry Goldwater stumped against the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Richard Nixon deployed the Southern Strategy, or Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign kicked off in Philadelphia, Miss., site of the ”Mississippi Burning” murders with the message of “states rights” (though as noted in the link some have disputed whether Reagan’s appeal was targeted at Southern whites).  It worked.  By the 1990s the South had turned Republican.  On the flip side, by then the Republican share of the black vote had dropped to the low teens.  By 1992, the Party of Lincoln was the Party of Pat Buchanan and Jesse Helms.

Next the Republican Party turned its attention to destroying its share of the Hispanic vote.  Pete Wilson eagerly embraced Proposition 187 to secure reelection in the 1994 California gubernatorial election.  He won  the battle but the Republican Party lost the war and the Hispanic vote in California.  The home state of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan with its 54 electoral votes is now solidly Democratic.  Even though George W. Bush tried to win  (and in his own elections won) back the Hispanic vote, the racially tinged rhetoric unleashed by the opponents of immigration reform locked up the Hispanic vote for Barack Obama.  Had John McCain not been on the ticket, the Republicans would have lost Arizona in the 2008 Presidential Elections.

This is the current breakdown of minorities in the Republican Congressional caucus:

• African Americans  - zero
• Hispanics – 3 (three Cuban-Americans from South Florida, and even that once loyal Republican community is trending Democratic)
• Asian Americans – 1 (Joseph Cao elected by fluke last year and who will almost certainly lose next year)

For a party that actively courts the Jewish vote, it has only one Jewish member in Congress (Eric Cantor).   Read the rest of this entry »

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“[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”  Article VI of the United States Constitution

The text of the constitution does not help with the realities of Republican Party politics today, as Alabama Republican gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne found out.  In a desperate kowtow to the faithful and to stop attacks by his opponents, Mr. Byrne clarified the following “heretical” quote: “”I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.”

Also submitting to the wrath of the faithful was grocery chain Piggly Wiggly, which felt the backlash from anonymous Internet posters like the following quote in the article linked above: “”Just got a call from a person at my Church letting me know about this.  My family will not be shopping at Ragland Piggly Wiggly stores anymore or anything else they own…. I don’t shop at places that think it is OK to stand next to people who don’t believe the Bible is all true.”

As noted earlier, this is another example of the just how far the theocrats control the conservative movement and the Republican Party.  This does not happen merely in Alabama.  For all the complaints about the assault on Christianity by people like Britt Hume, can you even imagine the furore if a President today emulated John Quincy Adams and took his oath of office on a book of American laws?

The theology is suspect too.  See previous post on the three kings of the nativity here as an example.

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• Frank Rich on the perils to both parties from last week’s elections.
• In spite of Republican demagogue Michelle Bachmann rbinging a mob to intimidate Congress, the House passes health care reform.
• The Washington Post sounds off on the Virginia political system that promptly renders each new governor into a lame-duck.
• A blueprint for how a conservative Republican can win an election by adopting a centrist mask.

In their continuing attempt to whip up inchoate rage (which looking at the demographics of the crowd, appears to be largely based on people upset at the decisive Obama win at the polls a year ago) at the administration’s policies, the Republican leadership joined congresswoman Michelle Bachmann at a so called spontaneous rally before the Capitol today (where the participants were bused in by a rich donor) to “scare” the Democratic leadership into abandoning the attempt at health care reform.  I suppose when your so called health care plan will provide access to only 3 million out the 40+ million uninsured and raise premiums for the unhealthy you have to stage media spectacles like this to pretend you are relevant.  If the spectacle of an elected official busing in a mob to intimidate her fellow elected officials was not offensive enough, you then have the signs displayed by the crowd.

Politicians can be cut some slack for the occasional nitwit holding a sign or saying something offensive at their rallies.  But it is time for the Republican Party to claim ownership of the spectacle their demagoguery helps create.  The signs were visible last year when Sarah Palin was delighting the Republican crowd by accusing Barack Obama of palling around with terrorists.  They were visible at the tea bag protests organized by Fox News earlier this year.  And they were very visible at the protests today, even if John Boehner feigned amnesia.  Possibly the most offensive of the signs on display was this (identified by the folks at ThinkProgress.org).

Way too many people have a tendency to casually toss in comparisons to the Nazis to cheap political points. But seriously? Offering universal health care is equivalent to the what the Nazis did at Dachau and the concentration camps?  I would be inclined to dismiss this again as an isolated nut job if the congresswoman organizing this mob did not have a history of stoking paranoia by suggesting that the census would be used to herd Obama opponents into internment camps and that other benign programs were examples of a reeducation campaign based at opponents,  if the Republican Party’s leading luminaries had not cheerfully used the so called “death panels” as a talking point against the health care bill, if Republican elected officials even today were not questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship and if these signs had not been all too evident at the many teabagger rallies this year (without any challenge from any Republican officials present).  Matt Yglesias is right. These are the wages of a conservative leadership and media that’s consistently tried to drum-up opposition to health care reform not by opposing things that are actually in the bill, but with demagogic opposition to completely fabricated provisions.

During the presidential campaign last year John McCain appeared genuinely shocked at the passions his acolytes helped whip up and even admonished an attendee at his rally who questioned Obama’s patriotism.  Today the entire Republican establishment has abandoned any such attempts and are attempting to surf the maelstrom their rhetoric has stoked up with no thought to the consequences to the social and political fabric of this country.  History shows the difficulty (if not the impossibility)  of doing so unscathed.

• The Democrats may have won NY-23 for the first time in over 100 years, but the conservatives still somehow did not lose.
• A panicked (formerly) moderate Mark Kirk of Illinois grovels before the right wing, to think I kind of liked this guy when I met him 8 years back.
• Maybe he should be scared, designated Republican Party buffoon Michael Steele threatens moderates with dire unspecified retribution, and in vintage Steele fashion backtracks.
• John Cole struggles to understand the math of the Republicans and the media pundits.
• Someone in the media finally recognizes the Republican losing streak in special elections.

The Washington Independent has an interesting read on the emerging right-wing narrative to explain away the embarassing loss in NY-23, particularly amusing since they had convinced themselves that the win was in the bag.

An eventful off year election night.  Republicans take back the Virginia (expected) and New Jersey (closer) governors mansions.  Mayor Bloomberg in New York City has a tougher than expected re-election fight.  And in NY-23 the Democrat Bill Owens won a seat where the Democrats have not represented parts of the district for 159 years.

A few thoughts on this election:

- It is a lousy environment to  be an incumbent.

- Local issues and the economy appear to have dominated and the polling suggests that the voters still approved of Obama but pulled the Republican lever.  But if the economic outlook does not improve next year, all bets are off.

- The Democrats are not impressing voters, but the Republicans are in much worse shape.  Their brand is toxic and even in the Virginia blowout their candidate’s advertisement did not mention his affiliation.  If Democratic approval has declined since inauguration that for Republicans has tanked.

-  While some conservatives may try to spin the Hoffman loss as a victory for “true” Republicans, Newt Gingrich was right.  You cannot create a governing coalition by insulting moderates and independents and catering just to the true believers.  Republicans and the Fox media machine have helped whip up a lot of inchoate nihilistic rage, but they have yet to present a reality based governing platform.  For now the few remaining moderates like Charlie Christ, Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Mark Kirk will be the next targets for the right and the Democrats  will sit on the sideline and enjoy the sight of Republicans tearing each other down.

The election in a couple of days will be interesting to watch.  A couple of days I ago I posted that it appeared that Dede Scozzafava was playing the good party soldier.  Now she has gone ahead and endorsed the Democrat Bill Owens.  While the attention in the election cycle in year following the Presidential election is generally focused on Virginia and New Jersey, all eyes will be on a congressional district in upstate New York.

Will Scozzafava’s supporters bother turning out?  Will they vote for her as a protest against a hard-right candidate from outside the district?  Will they fall in line like the Republican establishment and vote for Hoffman?  Will they gravitate towards Owens who may be closer to their ideological prism to begin with like the local paper which switched endorsements?  And how exactly will this quest for ideological purity help the Republican party cobble together a winning electoral coalition outside the South.  Frank Rich of the New York Times sounds off here.

The official Republican candidate whose campaign is collapsing suspends her campaign for the good of the party, even though her opponents were willing to see the Democrat win instead of a so-called RINO.  It will be interesting to see how her supporters break out for the other two candidates or if they just stay at home.

UPDATE:  It appears that Scozzafava intentionally did not endorse Hoffman to prevent her disgusted moderate supporters from going to the Democrat and possibly avoiding Hoffman’s supporters from being upset if he praised her personally.  Lets see how they plays out and how much support Scozzafava actually draws at the polls next week.

An update on a previous post regarding the Republican civil war in upstate NY.  Buoyed by celebrity support Doug Hoffman is now surging and the official Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava is fading rapidly.  It is now a battle between the right wing conservative and the Democrat.  A Hoffman victory will cheer the Republican base but offers little comfort to moderates like Mark Kirk in Illinois who must not tack hard right in their primary and face a loss in the general election in their centrist states.

A by-election in an upstate New York congressional seat has set off a furious battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party.  Aided by New York’s unusual political setting the race for NY-23 could hint at the continuing irrelevance of the Republican Party or suggest that appealing to the core could lead to political revival.  It started when President Obama appointed the long serving congressman of NY-23 as Secretary of the Army.  The local party nominated Dede Scozzafava to replace him on the ballot.  However, her views on taxes, abortion, and same-sex marriage infuriated the true-believers.  The Republican candidates in New York generally also run on the New York Conservative Party ballot with the votes from each party line added to the candidates total.  A different Conservative Party nominee can take away votes from the Republican.

The Conservatives responded by nominating the markedly more right wing Douglas L. Hoffman whose candidacy has eagerly been embraced by luminaries on the right wing fringe like Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Dick Armey  and Sarah Palin.  This has triggered a full scale mutiny from the base.  Even though the Republicans have held this district since the 1800s, Barack Obama carried it last fall.  Ergo its a classic swing district that could go Democratic depending on the candidate.  Pointing out that the Republican party with its current 20% identification needs to expand its reach has earned even former Speaker Newt Gingrich the derisive appellation R.I.N.O. (Republican In Name Only).  Even though the Club For Growth has dutifully trotted out a poll showing Mr. Hoffman leading, its methodology has been questioned.  At this point the likely result is an unexpected victory for Democrat Bill Owens.

While the Republicans are likely to eat their own in the near future they must ponder if they wish to remain a regional party of white Southerners.  Gingrich is right.  To win a majority you have to appeal beyond your base.  At present the Republican Party is non-existent in New England, fading in the Midwest and struggling in the Southwest after alienating the Hispanic vote.  The Democratic takeover of the House was aided by choosing conservative Democrats in conservative districts (like Heath Shuler in North Carolina) or Senate seats (like Evan Bayh in Indiana).  Ideological purity becomes viable in a state or district aligned to the cause.  Which is why Joe Lieberman who would have probably been fine in Nebraska was given the boot by exasperated Connecticut Democrats (and won largely on Republican votes).  Sticking a hard right conservative in a moderate district appears to be a recipe for long term failure.  The right wing better keep its fingers crossed that Mr. Hoffman does not come in third as most polls indicate.

The previous post on this topic delved back into ancient Indian history.  This one deals with a person still alive and of far more recent vintage.  The underlying thesis of this post is not as likely to be as uncontroversial.  The presidency of his son has done wonders for the image of George Herbert Walker Bush.  However, most of the praise has been directed to his wise decision not to invade Iraq without knowing what regime he would install to replace Saddam Hussein.

The problem with the 41st President was that unlike his predecessor and successor he struggled to connect emotionally with the American people.  Since the Great Depression the failure to capture the emotive aspect of the American presidency can make or break an American President.  With his aristocratic Yankee upbringing and ivy league background, George H. W. Bush never  managed to be a man of the people.  Coming from the now largely defunct centrist wing of the Republican party he also struggled to connect with the religious right and other hard right conservatives who increasingly constituted the true believers of the Republican Party.  The failure to connect with the public and the lukewarm relations with his base resulted in his failure to reap the benefits of the major successes in his term.

On domestic issues his term saw the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Clean Air Act, neither of which did much to endear him with his base.  However, the act that caused him the most grief was his sensible decision to raise taxes to combat the rising deficit.  This required reneging on his unfortunate pledge at the 1988 Republican Convention to not raise taxes and was the straw that broke the camel’s back with the increasingly vocal contingent of supply-siders in his party.  And then there came the recession.  This is where his inability to relate and provide assurance to the public haunted him.  When he protested loudly at the end of the presidential campaign that the recession was over, he was mocked.  The first jobs report after his presidency would show that he was right and that must have stung.  The failure to relate would result in him being the first Republican to not win re-election since Herbert Hoover (ironically Bill Clinton would be the first Democrat to be re-elected since Hoover’s successor Franklin Delano Roosevelt). Read the rest of this entry »