QUOTE OF THE DAY.... ABC's "This Week" held its usual roundtable discussion this morning, with Elizabeth Vargas hosting a panel of Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, George Will, and Paul Krugman.

The last topic of conversation was introduced by Vargas this way:

"[O]f course, this weekend, we have a brand-new White House social secretary appointed to replace Desiree Rogers, a close friend of the Obamas who is exiting after a bumpy tenure, I would say. Cokie, you spoke with her. She -- she was highly criticized after the Obamas' first state dinner in which she arrived, looking absolutely gorgeous, but in what some people later said was far too fancy a dress, but most importantly, that was the state dinner that was crashed by the Salahis, who walked in without an invitation when the social secretary's office didn't have people manning the security sites."

This led to a surprisingly long chat about Desiree Rogers.

Krugman sat silently while the discussion went on (and on), before eventually interjecting:

"Can I say that 20 million Americans unemployed, the fact that we're worrying about the status of the White House social secretary....

Donaldson responded, "Paul, welcome to Washington."

Look, I realize that not every discussion on a show like this is going to be substantive, sophisticated, and policy focused. Not every post I write for this site is going to highlight critically important issues, either. There's nothing wrong with including heavier and lighter subjects in the same public affairs forum.

But this panel discussion covered exactly four subjects this morning: health care reform, Charlie Rangel's ethics problem, David Paterson's latest troubles, and the fate of the former White House social secretary (and where she's from, what her clothes looked like, what her next job is likely to be, etc.), which hardly seems relevant to anyone who doesn't actually attend social events at the White House.

In this same discussion, there was nothing about the jobs bill that passed the Senate this week, nothing about the incredibly important Zazi guilty plea this week (and the fact that it makes Republican talking points look ridiculous), nothing about Jim Bunning single-handedly delaying unemployment insurance for those who need it.

I wonder, who was the target audience for the discussion of Desiree Rogers, who most Americans have never heard of, and whose White House position has nothing to do with public policy? The general public or the D.C. cocktail circuit crowd?

Krugman no doubt annoyed the show's producers by mentioning the inanity of the subject matter, but he's right to remind his colleagues of what matters. For Donaldson to "welcome" him "to Washington" was insulting -- to Krugman and the rest of us.

WE ALREADY TRIED INCREMENTALISM.... Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) was rewarded for his dishonesty during the White House health care summit with an invitation to appear on ABC's "This Week." He reiterated a point he raised during the bipartisan discussion, and said Congress, as an institution, is simply incapable of passing major legislation on any issue.

"I've watched the comprehensive immigration bill, I've watched the comprehensive economy-wide cap and trade, I've watched the comprehensive health care bill, they fall of their own weight, because we're biting off more than we can chew in a country this big and complex and complicated," Alexander argued. "I think we do better as a country when we go step by step toward a goal."

We talked the other day about one of the reasons this is so unpersuasive. Whether Alexander understands the policy details or not, there are plenty of parts to health care reform, but they're inter-locking. It's easy to say we'll take some steps now, and leave others for later, but to make it so that those with pre-existing conditions aren't discriminated against, for example, we'll need mandates and subsidies. It's like an engine -- the parts don't work unless they're part of a larger whole.

But there's another truth that often goes overlooked. We've been trying to address the problem through Alexander's preferred approach -- incremental, piecemeal reform -- and the system keeps getting worse anyway.

After President Bill Clinton failed to get Congress to pass his health care bill in 1994, Republicans, who then had substantial victories in the House and Senate, worked with him to pass legislation like the health care privacy bill, a children's health insurance program and the Balanced Budget Act, which contained significant changes to the Medicare program. Under President George W. Bush, the Republicans went on to pass a drug benefit under Medicare. "In the space of less than 10 years, you have several major bills," Mr. Butler said. [...]

But President Obama clearly prefers passage of a broader bill. In wrapping up Thursday's session with lawmakers, he and other Democrats warned that an incremental approach was likely to provide too little relief to the people already feeling the effects of a broken system. "It turns out that baby steps don't get you to the place that people need to go," he said.

Alexander keeps saying we should try to do a little bit at a time, overlooking the fact that we've been doing a little bit at a time. He wants to get "step by step"? As Frank McArdle, a consultant with Hewitt Associates explained, "We've had a lot of incremental reforms already."

S-CHIP expansion here, Medicare expansion there. Some insurance reforms here, some expanded access there. This has been the model for 15 years -- since right-wing opposition led to the death of the last attempt at comprehensive reform. Is the system any better as a result of incrementalism? No, it's considerably worse, and deteriorating further with each passing year.

We tried it Alexander's way. Why stick with failure?

In the larger context, I honestly don't know if Alexander is right about what America's institutions are capable of accomplishing. Congress was once able to pass landmark legislation like Social Security and Medicare, but perhaps, in light of Republican obstructionism, Democratic sheepishness, and an effective far-right noise machine, hopes that lawmakers can respond to big problems with equally big solutions are a thing of the past. It's possible we've entered a period in which our challenges are too great, and once-strong American institutions are simply no longer up to the task. We'll have to collectively settle for small ideas from small politicians with small ambitions.

But I nevertheless hold out hope that President Obama and congressional Democrats will prove Alexander and his meek allies wrong. The governing majority can still pass the health care reform package we've been waiting generations for, and prove that the United States can still confront a huge crisis and respond in kind.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF FAILURE.... A little too much of the media analysis when it comes to health care is about political ramifications. The NYT's Reed Abelson did a great job today exploring the real-world consequences if Democrats fail to follow through.

Suppose Congress and President Obama fail to overhaul the system now, or just tinker around the edges, or start over, as the Republicans propose -- despite the Democrats' latest and possibly last big push that began last week at a marathon televised forum in Washington.

Then "my health care" stays the same, right?

Far from it, health policy analysts and economists of nearly every ideological persuasion agree. The unrelenting rise in medical costs is likely to wreak havoc within the system and beyond it, and pretty much everyone will be affected, directly or indirectly.

"People think if we do nothing, we will have what we have now," said Karen Davis, the president of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health care research group in New York. "In fact, what we will have is a substantial deterioration in what we have."

The piece covers some familiar ground, but it's a terrific overview. If reform comes up short, costs will soar, budgets will be pushed towards bankruptcy, the ranks of the uninsured will grow, those lacking coverage will die, premiums will get even more unaffordable, and our economic growth and workers' wages will be stunted.

This isn't some wild-eyed speculation; this is simply a reality that no serious person contests.

When I read pieces like this, I sometimes just shake my head at public opposition to reform. We know the system is broken; we know we pay too much and get too little. We know the Republican attacks against reform proposals are wrong. Given the mess we're in, the demand for comprehensive reform should be overwhelming.

And yet, the resistance to sound ideas is fairly intense.

The efficacy of the right-wing noise machine is really a sight to behold.

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.... For Democratic lawmakers who are on the fence about whether to kill health care reform, research like this should have some influence.

As members of the Obama administration and Congress met on Thursday to try to find common ground on health care, a new report warned that without comprehensive legislation, more than 275,000 adults nationwide will die over the next decade because of a lack of health insurance. [...]

An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 people died prematurely in 2000 because they lacked insurance; the Urban Institute updated that figure to 22,000 in 2006. The new study, by liberal advocacy group Families USA, applied the same methodology used in the previous reports to drill down and calculate, on both a national and state-by-state basis, the latest figures.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg, and the most severe consequence, which is death," said Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy at Families USA. In addition, thousands of other citizens, perhaps millions, are experiencing a reduction in the quality of their lives and their health because they lack insurance, she said.

By now, the reasons to pass a reform package into law should be pretty obvious -- the status quo is a dysfunctional mess that burdens families, strains budgets, and undermines the economy.

But for some, we're literally talking about a life-or-death situation. For adult Americans under the age of 65 -- those, in other words, who can't qualify for our wildly popular socialized-medicine program -- 68 people die every day due to lack of coverage. By the end of the decade, it will be 84 Americans per day.

A growing body of research has explored the connection between a lack of health insurance and an increased risk of death. Uninsured people are more likely to skip screenings and other preventive care, so their medical problems are often diagnosed later, when they are more advanced and tougher to treat. The uninsured are also more likely to skimp on necessary medical care, whether it's prescription drugs to keep their blood pressure in check or surgery to clear up clogged arteries.

"The bottom line is that if you don't get a disease picked up early and you don't get necessary treatment, you're more likely to die," said Stan Dorn, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and the author of the organization's earlier study.

It doesn't have to be this way. No other industrialized democracy on the planet tolerates such cruelty.

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

SHARING TEA.... At first blush, it seems a little silly to hear House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a bold champion of liberalism, suggest she has much in common with "Tea Party" activists, but there's nevertheless something endearing about this message.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has much in common with the Tea Party.... In a "This Week" interview with ABC's Elizabeth Vargas, Pelosi said, "We share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C., as -- it just has to stop. And that's why I've fought the special interest, whether it's on energy, whether it's on health insurance, whether it's on pharmaceuticals and the rest."

Pelosi held to her skepticism about what is behind the movement. "Some of it is orchestrated from the Republican headquarters," Pelosi said. She also added that, "Some of it is hijacking the good intentions of lots of people who share some of our concerns that we have about the role of special interests."

There are multiple factions within this so-called "movement," and it's often challenging to keep track of what it is, exactly, that these activists are so worked up about. Much of the time, the Teabaggers themselves don't really know why they're so angry.

But Pelosi's suggestion that the activists have a fair amount in common with Democrats' progressive ideas is not as foolish as it might seem. The "movement" cares about fiscal responsibility? Then the activists certainly would have no use for Republicans, who added $5 trillion to the debt, left Dems with a $1.3 trillion deficit to clean up, and deliberately decided that they could expand government without paying for it. More recently, the GOP rejected PAYGO and a deficit commission that they proposed. If fiscal responsibility is a top concern, it's entirely reasonable to argue Democrats are the more fiscally responsible party.

The "movement" cares about wealthy interests dictating public policy over the needs of regular Americans? Then the activists certainly would have no use for Republicans, who not only run corporate lobbyists as candidates, but barely make a move without getting lobbyists' permission.

The "movement" cares about taxes? Then the activists certainly would have no use for Republicans, who voted against one of the largest tax-cut packages for the middle class in American history when they opposed the recovery effort a year ago.

The "movement" cares about the size and scope of government? Then the activists certainly would have no use for Republicans, who expanded Medicare and enthusiastically embraced government intercepting Americans' communications without a warrant.

To be sure, much of the Tea Party crowd is well beyond reason, and has embraced delusional and paranoid right-wing fantasies. For these folks, Speaker Pelosi's remarks will likely be laughable.

But for some of the well-intentioned factions, the notion of driving a wedge isn't entirely far-fetched.

AN ELUSIVE HOUSE MAJORITY.... When weighing health care reform's legislative prospects, the political world is accustomed to focusing most of its attention on the Senate. It's the upper chamber where obstructionism is easier, and where a powerful bloc of temperamental center-right Dems wields disproportionate power.

But over the next few weeks, the emphasis should shift. Senate approval of a small, health care-related budget fix with 51 votes should prove challenging, but achievable. Indeed, with senators who've frowned on reconciliation coming around, the odds improve nearly every day.

The House is going to be far more difficult. This became obvious this week, and it remains a major point of concern.

The future of President Obama's health care overhaul now rests largely with two blocs of swing Democrats in the House of Representatives -- abortion opponents and fiscal conservatives -- whose indecision signals the difficulties Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces in securing the votes necessary to pass the bill.

With Republicans unified in their opposition, Democrats are drafting plans to try on their own to pass a bill based on one Mr. Obama unveiled before his bipartisan health forum last week. His measure hews closely to the one passed by the Senate in December, but differs markedly from the one passed by the House.

That leaves Ms. Pelosi in the tough spot of trying to keep wavering members of her caucus on board, while persuading some who voted no to switch their votes to yes -- all at a time when Democrats are worried about their prospects for re-election.

When the House approved its bill in November, it garnered 220 votes. One of the votes came from a moderate Republican, Louisiana's Anh "Joseph" Cao, who has since changed his mind. One came from Florida's Robert Wexler who has since left Congress. Another came from Pennsylvania's John Murtha, who passed away earlier this month.

The Democratic leadership, then, has a very heavy lift to make -- it has to keep every other Democratic vote in earned in November, while convincing a few Dem opponents to change their mind. The NYT piece is filled with discouraging quotes from misguided Democrats who seem to think, for a variety of reasons, that a humiliating failure on health care would be acceptable.

So, is it time for panic? Not really. For one thing, several Democratic leaders, including the Majority Whip, are signaling quite a bit of optimism. Asked specifically this morning if she'll get a majority, the Speaker said this morning, "Yes." It's hard to know exactly how much of this is posturing and how much is sincere, but if reform simply isn't going to come to pass, I suspect the predictions would take on a very different tone.

Also keep in mind, some of the Dems voicing their reluctance may be playing for leverage, hoping to get something in exchange for their votes. On-the-fence members often have different motivations, and not all of them have to do with substantive policy differences.

Regardless, expect to see some movement fairly soon. The White House is poised to announce its proposed "path forward" this week, and the House expects to have a legislative plan in place "in a matter of days."

Post Script: In general, a House majority is 218 votes. Because of the vacancies, the new majority threshold is 217. Just a little something to keep in mind.

DROPPING LIKE FLIES.... In January, much of the media decided that retirements among congressional Democrats were evidence of shifting political winds that will greatly benefit Republicans. In one report from ABC News, Democrats were characterized as "dropping like flies."

In the meantime, Republican retirements not only outnumber Democrats, the GOP total keeps growing.

Another House Republican, Representative John Linder of Georgia, is stepping down at the end of this session, making him the 19th to do so. He announced his decision Saturday morning in his district outside Atlanta.

Mr. Linder, an ally of fellow Georgian Newt Gingrich, was a respected fund-raiser and a reliable Republican vote during his nine terms in the House.... He has been a leading advocate of a national retail sales tax as a substitute for the current tax system and knocked off the conservative Republican Bob Barr in a 2002 primary caused by redistricting. His seat should easily remain in Republican hands.

There's apparently some dispute about exactly how many House Republicans have announced their retirements. Most of the totals I've seen put the number at 19, but National Journal says it's 20. I'm trying to nail down the precise number.

Regardless, the National Republican Congressional Committee is confident that the party will keep the seat in November, and with good cause -- it's solidly "red," with an R+16 partisan voting index.

But it's the larger context that still strikes me as interesting. There are 178 Republicans in the House caucus. There are now 19 House Republicans (and counting) retiring this year, seven more than among Democrats.

As a result, as we talked about a few weeks ago, more than one in 10 House GOP incumbents have decided to give up their seats in a year that's supposed to be a wildly successful one for Republicans.

In fairness, not all retirements are created equal. There's a qualitative difference between stepping down in a competitive district and giving up one's seat in a "sure thing" for one party. When considering questions like the balance of power, retirements are not quite the indicator some in the media would like to believe. This is very likely true in Linder's case -- Dems will struggle badly to compete in Georgia's 7th.

But if you ask anyone at the NRCC or DCCC for an honest opinion, I think they'd agree that when a party is supposed to have the wind at its back, and when that party's leadership is trying to keep retirements to a minimum, having more than 10% of the caucus walk away has to be discouraging.

Indeed, just two weeks ago, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Democratic retirements are a sign that Dems are "running for the hills because they sold out their constituents and don't want to face them at the ballot box."

With GOP retirements outnumbering Dems' -- by a margin that's growing -- are we to also assume that Republicans don't want to face voters at the ballot box?

THE GOP'S SILENCE ON REFORM.... White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters yesterday that President Obama will signal the "path forward" on health care reform next week. He was understandably vague about what that means, exactly, but presumably it would include both procedural and policy details, describing what happens next.

Asked about reconciliation, Gibbs said, "I'm going to let him make a decision, and he'll communicate that next week."

The comments served a couple of different purposes, but perhaps most importantly, this was a message to Republicans: we're getting ready to move. You can decide right now whether to work with Dems, or get left behind. The White House initiated a lengthy and public chat -- now it's Republicans' turn. If the GOP has some thoughts on how it can play a constructive role, it can pick up the phone.

More than 48 hours have passed since the start of the bipartisan summit, and it appears Republican leaders and White House officials haven't said another word to one another about the issue.

In another sign that Obama and Dems have already decided to try to pass reform via reconciliation without Republicans, the White House has held no post-summit discussions of any kind with GOP leaders, Republican aides tell me, suggesting Obama advisers are no longer trying to reach a compromise.

Yesterday Robert Gibbs told reporters that Obama would announce the way forward next week, but he wouldn't confirm that Obama and Dems were moving forward with plans to pass reform under reconciliation rules.

But Senior Republican aides on both the House and Senate side say there has been zero communication between the White House and GOP leadership since the President and Congressional leaders walked out of the Blair House on Thursday afternoon.

"No post-summit discussions," a senior House GOP aide emails. "There has been no substantive outreach from the White House." A senior Senate GOP aide echoes: "No discussions."

This isn't especially surprising. Towards the very end of the summit, the president said, "I'd like the Republicans to do a little soul searching and find out are there some things that you'd be willing to embrace that get to this core problem of 30 million people without health insurance and dealing seriously with the preexisting condition issue."

But we know that Republicans don't want to "do a little soul searching," they don't want to compromise, and they don't want to pass health care reform. There's really nothing else to talk about.

The train is leaving the station. If 217 House Dems and 51 Senate Dems are on board, the nation will finally have the health care reform we've been waiting for since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. If not, reform will die, the crisis will worsen, and Democrats will have committed electoral suicide on a grand scale.

JOBS NOW, DEFICITS LATER.... Lawrence Mishel and David Walker disagree on quite a bit. Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive organization that, when it comes to the economy, generally supports robust public investment. Walker, the former head of the Government Accountability Office, is president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a far more conservative institution that focuses on deficit reduction and cutting the federal budget.

I wouldn't characterize these two as enemies, necessarily, but when it comes to economic policies and the role of government intervention, they don't often see eye to eye.

With that context in mind, I was very pleased to see Mishel and Walker co-write a piece this week with a message policymakers should take to heart: "Address jobs now and deficits later."

President Barack Obama is in a difficult position when it comes to deficits. Today's high deficits will have to go even higher to help address unemployment. At the same time, many Americans are increasingly concerned about escalating deficits and debt. What's a president to do?

The answer, from a policy perspective, is not that hard: A focus on jobs now is consistent with addressing our deficit problems ahead.

The difficulty is that many politicians and news organizations often cast deficit debates as a dichotomy: You either care about them or you don't.

But this is rarely accurate. The fact that the two of us, who have philosophical differences on the proper role of government, find much to agree on about deficits is a testament to the importance of dropping this useless dichotomy and finally talking about deficits in a reasonable way.

Their piece is well worth reading, and it's a shame it got lost in the shuffle this week. In a sane political world, it would be the basis for broad consensus. It's based on common sense: short-term deficits to improve the economy are more than tolerable; they're necessary. The stimulus has pulled the economy back from the brink, but "there is an economic and a moral imperative" to take additional action that prioritizes job creation.

Once the economy is stronger, Mishel and Walker argues, "structural deficits" will require considerable attention, and the budget gaps are "too substantial" to address without "both sides of the ledger: spending and revenues."

"Revenues," of course, means that taxes are going to have to go up eventually, which is anathema to modern Republican thinking -- taxes can't go up, on anyone, ever.

But for serious observers who want to circumvent the lazy and the hacks, Mishel and Walker offer a sensible vision. Policymakers probably won't care -- our process is badly broken; Republicans won't allow votes on worthwhile ideas; Dems are too afraid on ambitious action; and voters have somehow been convinced that what works does not work -- but I'm glad to see the piece anyway.

CRESCENTS BEHIND EVERY CORNER.... Right-wing activist and media personality Frank Gaffney has a real problem with the Missile Defense Agency's website logo. In fact, he thinks it's part of a "nefarious" plot.

Now, he wasn't the first to raise a fuss. Some far-right observers insisted that the agency's logo was made to look too similar to President Obama's campaign logo. But Gaffney went much further, arguing that the "just-unveiled symbolic action" seems to "fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter's authorities call Shariah."

Yes, as Gaffney sees it, when one combines the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo, you get this new image for the Missile Defense Agency's letterhead. It's one big conspiracy, which relates somehow to the president's non-existent affiliations to Islam.

Al Kamen, however, looked into this a bit and found that the agency developed the logo three years ago. In other words, the Bush/Cheney administration was, to follow Gaffney's logic, taking the initial steps towards official U.S. submission to Islam and Shariah law.

It's easy to laugh at the stupidity of all of this, but I think Max Bergmann's point is a good one: "Gaffney is a prominent member of the right wing security establishment. He writes a regular column for the Washington Times, is a frequent commentator on cable television, and runs his own right-wing defense organization. Just this past October, at Gaffney's Center for Security Policy 'Keeper of the Flame' annual award dinner, Vice President Cheney was the featured speaker and recipient of the reward. Other guest speakers included Sen. Jon Kyl and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld."

Right. It's tempting to think some paranoid nutjob with bizarre conspiracy theories is irrelevant in modern American politics. But prominent conservatives consider Frank Gaffney a credible figure.

The mainstream of fringe lunacy is one of the key differences between the left and right in contemporary politics. Both sides have their nutty fringe, but only side thinks its whackjobs are sane.

THIS WEEK IN GOD.... First up from the God Machine this week was a rare White House meeting, between Obama administration officials and prominent atheists. (via Ron Chusid)

President Barack Obama has burnished his Christian credentials, courted Jewish support and preached outreach toward Muslims. On Friday, his administration will host a group that fits none of the above: America's nonbelievers.

The president isn't expected to make an appearance at the meeting with the Secular Coalition for America or to unveil any new policy as a result of it.

Instead, several administration officials will sit down quietly for a morning meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus with about 60 workhorses from the coalition's 10 member groups, including the American Atheists and the Council for Secular Humanism. Tina Tchen, the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and representatives from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments will participate.

Coalition leaders are billing their visit as an important meeting between a presidential administration and the "nontheist" community.

The Secular Coalition for America called the meeting "the first time in history a presidential administration has met for a policy briefing with the American nontheist community."

The Catholic League, which is offended for a living, condemned the gathering. "People of faith, especially Christians, have good reason to wonder exactly where their interests lie with the Obama administration," professional complainer Bill Donohue said. "Now we have the definitive answer." Donohue described attendees as "anti-religious activists" who would like to "crush Christianity if they could."

Also from the God Machine this week:

* The notorious C Street Center, an affiliate of a secretive international Christian network known as the Fellowship, or the Family, draws a new round of scrutiny: "A group of ministers has sent a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service saying that a town house on Capitol Hill that provides inexpensive lodging and meals for conservative Christian members of Congress is not a church and should no longer be granted the tax-exempt status afforded a house of worship."

* And Fox News' resident televangelist refuses to give up. Brit Hume, after using his national platform to urge golfer Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity, reiterated his plea while talking to Bill O'Reilly this week: "Now look, I think, because I'm a Christian and I believe that Christianity is true, that Tiger Woods and his wife Elin would be a lot farther down the road toward forgiveness and redemption if they were both Christians, but they're not."

EXPERTS AGREE: PASS THE DAMN BILL.... If policymakers are still open to advice from experts not on Capitol Hill, this should be taken seriously.

Obviously, not all economists are in favor of the current proposals in Congress. But a pretty impressive list of health economists and other policy experts has released a letter making the following argument:

"We commend the President's pursuit of bipartisan solutions. Yet the summit made plain that it is now time to move decisively and quickly to enact comprehensive reform. We believe that the only workable process at this point is to use the President's proposal to finish the job. After long debate, the House and Senate have passed two similar bills that do crucial things to improve U.S. health care."

Harold Pollack and Timothy Jost pulled together responses from 80 nationally prominent experts, which included some pretty heavy hitters: "Jacob Hacker, Paul Starr, Theda Skocpol, Ted Marmor, Len Nichols, Jon Gruber, David Cutler, Henry Aaron, and many other luminaries from the social sciences, medicine, and public health. People on this list disagree about many things ranging from single-payer to the public option and the taxation of health insurance. We agree about one thing: It is time to finally pass this bill by majority vote in both houses."

The letter and list of scholars who signed on is available in full here.

SHELBY'S BLASE OBSTRUCTIONISM.... In a Congress when Republicans' obstructionist tactics have become scandalous, and a discredited GOP minority has effectively shut down the American policymaking process, Sen. Richard Shelby (R) of Alabama still stands out for his brazenness.

Shelby, you'll recall, placed a blanket hold on several dozen administration nominees, holding them hostage until the senator was paid off in earmarked pork. He eventually backed off, at least in part, though he continues to block Senate votes on three top positions in the Air Force.

CNN's Dana Bash asked the right-wing senator yesterday whether his actions are justified.

BASH: I spoke with Geoff Morrell over at the Pentagon and just asked him what the impact is of not having these three people in place -- one of whom, as you know, is the number two at the Air Force. He said, "Without these people, we're not firing on all cylinders." And he also said, "It does adversely affect the organization."

Are you worried about that? This is a time of war --

SHELBY: The Pentagon is a big place. I don't think one or two will affect anything except on the margins.

BASH: Do you think that the nominees you have holds on are qualified?

SHELBY: Oh, I don't have any idea.

In a sane political world, this would put Shelby in an impossible-to-defend position. In the midst of two wars, the Pentagon wants to fill key Air Force vacancies, and the Commander in Chief has sent two qualified nominees to the Senate for confirmation. If given a vote, the nominees would be easily approved and could get to work.

A Republican senator (1) doesn't care what the Pentagon wants in the midst of two wars; (2) believes vacancies in the Air Force leadership aren't important; and (3) has no idea whether the nominees he's blocking deserve consideration.

I'm trying to imagine the political world's reaction if a Democratic senator had done this in, say, 2002. If the Pentagon said a Democratic block is "adversely affecting" operations during a war, and the Dem said he didn't care, wouldn't that be considered pretty scandalous?

THE INEXORABLY FLAWED PREMISE.... A rather conventional report in the New York Times, which ignores the most relevant detail:

White House officials and their allies in liberal advocacy groups are making an all-out push to persuade Congress and the public that budget reconciliation is a legitimate procedure used often in the last 30 years to pass major legislation, including President Ronald Reagan's domestic agenda in 1981, an overhaul of welfare programs in 1996 and President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said he knew those precedents. But, he said, they amount to "peanuts compared with this total restructuring of one-sixth of the economy."

The whole discussion seems badly off-track. Democrats and other proponents of health care reform have invested so much energy in questioning the merit of the GOP argument -- pointing to all the other times reconciliation has been used, for example -- that they forget to question the premise.

Whether Grassley and his cohorts realize it or not, let's emphasize what the NYT did not mention: reconciliation would not be used to pass health care reform in the Senate. The Senate has already approved health care reform, with 60 votes, through an entirely conventional process. The next time the Senate votes on a reform-related measure, it's very likely to a small budget fix -- not the huge legislative package -- after reform is already finished.

The Democratic arguments in response to Republican complaints are plentiful and accurate, but ultimately irrelevant. The GOP is arguing that it would be outrageous to pass health care reform through reconciliation, but no one is recommending passing health care reform through reconciliation. The other talking points don't much matter when the premise of the Republican argument is proven to be inexorably flawed.

Reader Ron Byers noted that MSNBC's Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews, to their credit, emphasized this point on "Hardball" on Thursday, and I tracked down the video. It's a clip the DNC, the White House, and congressional Dems would be wise to keep in mind.

E.J. Dionne called Todd's observation "superb," adding, "I do not expect what I will call the Todd Clarification to stop Republicans from condemning the Democrats if they get a bill through with the reconciliation amendments. But shouldn't all of us be referring to them just that way -- as 'amendments' rather than as 'a bill'? ... Kudos to Todd for stating a truth that just about all of us have missed."

The next time you hear a Republican (or a reporter) argue that it would be wrong to pass health care reform through reconciliation, remember one critically important detail that's gone overlooked for weeks: the argument doesn't make sense.

GOP REP: BLACKS BETTER OFF UNDER SLAVERY.... Rep. Trent Franks (R) of Arizona has long been one of Congress's most embarrassing members. But this week, the right-wing lawmaker may have reached a new depth.

Franks was speaking with blogger Mike Stark about civility and the public discourse. Unprompted, the congressman started reflecting on the African-American community, and his belief that African Americans may have been better off under slavery than in a legal system that allows legal abortions.

"[I]n this country, we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say 'How brave were they? What was the matter with them? You know, I can't believe, you know, four million slaves. This is incredible.' And we're right, we're right. We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America's soul.

"And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery."

Franks added that he can sometimes say things that are "intemperate," but added, "I don't want to hide from the truth."

Let's consider this the latest in a long line of setbacks for the Republican Party's outreach to minority voters.

As far as the substance of the claim is concerned, Franks significantly exaggerated the rate at which black women terminate their pregnancies. But substance aside, hearing a Republican lawmaker argue, out loud, on camera, in the 21st century, that today's policies are worse for African Americans than the policies of slavery is just mind-numbing.

If Franks's name seems familiar, he's the same right-wing lawmaker who recently described President Obama as an "enemy of humanity," who "acts un-American," and "doesn't want people to see" his birth certificate.

In October, relying on a strange book published by a fringe website, Franks also asked the House Sergeant at Arms to start looking for Muslim "spies" on congressional committees.

A spokesperson for the DCCC responded yesterday, "To compare the horrors and inhumane treatment of millions of African Americans during slavery as a better way of life for African Americans today is beyond repulsive. In 2010, during the second year of our first African American President, it is astonishing that a thought such as this would come to mind, let alone be shared."

I do wonder, though, what kind of leadership post Trent Franks would get if House Republicans reclaim the majority next year.

FRIDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Afghanistan: "Insurgents struck Friday at hotels in the heart of Kabul with suicide attackers and a car bomb, killing at least 16 people -- half of them foreigners -- in an assault that showed the militants remain a potent force despite setbacks on the battlefield and the arrest of more than a dozen key leaders."

* GDP: "The U.S. economy grew at a slightly faster pace than originally thought during the last three months of 2009, according to a government report Friday." The original report pointed to 5.7% growth; the revised report says the economy grew at an annual rate of 5.9% in Q4.

* New York Gov. David Paterson (D) won't seek re-election, but he intends to serve the rest of the year.

* Yoo seems to owe us some emails: "Senior Democrats and watchdog groups demanded Friday that the Justice Department investigate the disappearance of e-mail messages by Bush lawyers who drafted memos blessing harsh interrogation tactics, saying their absence cast doubt on an ethics report that cleared the lawyers of professional misconduct."

* The House ethics committee believes Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) violated House rules "that forbid hidden financing by corporations."

* In related news, the PMA Group probe appears to be complete: "The House ethics committee will clear seven members of Congress in a year-long probe that explored whether they may have violated ethics rules in steering hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to contractors represented by one powerful defense lobby firm."

* It's as if Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) were a walking, talking case study on the desperate need for Senate reform.

* The Obama administration is "planning to use the government's enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers."

* Good advice to House Dems from former Rep. Marjorie Margolies (D-Pa.), who knows a little something about casting tough votes.

* Good to see SEIU's Andy Stern on the White House's debt commission.

* The White House will need a new social secretary.

* Did the Falwell-created Liberty University violate tax law? It sure looks like it.

* Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) hearts lobbyists.

* It's awfully big of the president to be this gracious towards Dick Cheney. Obama obviously has a lot of character, but I'm not sure I would be so classy if I were in his shoes.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

MEET THE NEW WAY FORWARD (SAME AS THE OLD WAY FORWARD).... The road to legislative success on health care reform has been readily apparent for several weeks: the House passes the Senate bill, the Senate approves changes through reconciliation. It's been the pass-the-damn-bill solution since last month's unpleasantness in Massachusetts.

There are still all kinds of variables that make success difficult. Will the House and Senate agree on a compromise deal that bridges the gaps? Are there 51 votes for the reconciliation fix? Are there 217 votes to pass the House?

Let's say, just for the sake of pleasant conversation, that all of those questions can be answered in the affirmative. That may or may not come to be, but let's just say it for now anyway. The next question is which chamber would go first. Time's Michael Scherer had a good item on this today. (via Kevin Drum)

The Senate does not want to go first because Republicans will be able to bottle up the reconciliation process, delaying the vote and making for another ugly sausage making spectacle that Americans hate to watch. If reconciliation takes too long, the thinking goes, then the House will never act, and the whole health care deal will die. But if the House goes first by passing the Senate bill, and the president signs it, then the incentive for Republicans to bottle up reconciliation would be diminished. Health care reform would, at that point, already be law.... Republicans would then be obstructing fixes to the law that would make the bill, arguably, better by getting rid of stuff like the "cornhusker kickback," a much tougher proposition.

Here is where it gets tricky: The House is not going to vote on the Senate bill (even with a separate package of amendments to match the Senate's reconciliation) until it is dead certain that the Senate will act. So how could those assurances be arranged? With the help of C-Span cameras, of course, or perhaps a letter from 51 Democrats vowing to pass reconciliation come hell or high water. Once the letter is read on the nightly news, the House can act, and suddenly the pressure would be on the Senate Republicans. With health care already law, the GOP will have to decide whether or not to spend weeks gumming up the Senate to delay some amendments to that bill.

Remember, as far as the Democratic leadership in the House is concerned, the Senate has to go first. As far as the Senate is concerned, the House has to go first. You see the problem.

The House's reluctance is driven, in large part, by mistrust -- the caucus doesn't think it can count on the Senate to follow through and approve a budget fix through reconciliation later.

But there may be some signals of progress on this front. Speaker Pelosi this morning wasn't quite as insistent on the Senate going first as she has been, and around the same time, Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said it would "help a lot" if a majority of Senate Dems signed a letter pledging to make agreed-upon fixes, just as Scherer alluded to.

Just as important, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and an influential member of the caucus, told MSNBC that "choreography gets a little complicated," but he envisions the process moving forward. "That may require us to pass the Senate bill first, and then send the reconciliation bill to the Senate for them to pass," Miller said. "I think Senator Reid believes that he can put together the votes for that, and then we can have a new, modern health care system in this country that can be signed by" President Obama.

Glimmers of hope poke through the clouds....

NO NEED TO PASS HEALTH CARE THROUGH RECONCILIATION.... If I understand the Republican talking points, which many in the media have already bought into, it's that health care reform is too "big" an issue to be passed through reconciliation.

Some of the slightly-less ridiculous conservative voices will concede that Republicans used reconciliation repeatedly when they were in the majority, but, they quickly add, this is different. Health care is health care. Something so sweeping shouldn't be approved by majority rule.

Let's clear up something really important here, because the political world seems to have forgotten.

No one's talking about passing health care reform through reconciliation. There's no need to pass health care reform through reconciliation -- health care reform has already passed.

You might remember December. The Senate had a very long debate, followed by a Republican filibuster. There was a vote to end that filibuster, which was successful. And on Christmas Eve, senators registered a vote, and health care reform passed, 60 to 39.

No tricks, no reconciliation, no abuses. Just a debate, followed by an unsuccessful filibuster, followed by a vote.

The next step isn't passing health care reform through reconciliation; the next step is passing a budget fix that improves the legislation that's already passed. That, of course, is why reconciliation exists.

The entire GOP talking point is based on a fallacy. If the Democratic plan proceeds, it would not be approving health care reform through reconciliation. That would be pointless -- health care reform already passed without reconciliation.

Tell your friends.

MATALIN'S MENDACITY.... CNN's Mary Matalin's latest contribution to the public discourse:

"As we all know, without boring our audience, reconciliation process was not made for what they are trying to use it here. No one is afraid of it. Go ahead and do it. The president's notion that the people don't understand what this is belied by the polls. They understand what it is. The majority vote is tyranny of the minority."

There's an inordinate amount of nonsense in these 61 words. But since it's representative of the kind of rhetoric we're hearing from more than a few shameless partisan hacks, let's quickly take the three main points, one at a time.

Reconciliation wasn't made for a situation like this? Actually, that's backwards. Health care reform already passed the Senate with 60 votes. Lawmakers are considering some additional budget-related changes. Without boring Matalin, we all know that reconciliation exists for exactly the kind of circumstances Democrats are facing now. That's not a matter of opinion; it's just reality.

"People" understand the details of the Democratic policy? I wish that were true; it's not. To be sure, thanks to a combination of a massive misinformation campaign, inadequate media coverage, and Americans' easily-manipulated fears, reform proposals fare poorly in the polls. But there's plenty of data that shows Democratic plans looking quite popular after respondents are told what's actually in the legislation. Ironically, it's Matalin's argument, not the president's, that is "belied by the polls."

And finally, "The majority vote is tyranny of the minority"? I'm not sure what that means. In fact, I'm fairly certain that Mary Matalin doesn't know what that means, either. If we give the GOP operative the benefit of the doubt, and assume she meant to say that majority rule is the "tyranny of the majority," that's still rather ridiculous. At what point does a majority-rule decision become tyrannical? Should we not approve anything unless the vote is unanimous, so as to prevent oppressive tyranny against those in opposition?

Is it me, or have Republican talking points taken on the air of desperation?

JUDD GREGG WAS RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.... I've been emphasizing this since September, but given its new and timely relevance, I'm glad to see a reminder from Brian Beutler.

Republicans are doing everything they can to convince the media and the public that using the budget reconciliation process to finish health care amounts to the "nuclear option" -- a term that came to fame when Republicans tried to change the Senate rules regarding the minority's right to obstruct judicial nominations.

But the "nuclear option" was a rule change. Reconciliation is part of the Senate rules. And there's perhaps no better person to make that point than Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) -- the Senate Republicans' top budget guy -- who vociferously defended the use of reconciliation when his party tried to use it in 2005 to allow drilling in Alaska.

In March 2005, Senate Republicans really wanted to let oil companies drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Democrats not only opposed the bill, they told the GOP majority that it would need 60 votes to pass the drilling proposal. Gregg said the ANWR issue should be considered under reconciliation.

"The point, of course, is this: If you have 51 votes for your position, you win," Gregg told his Senate colleagues on the floor.

He added, "Reconciliation is a rule of the Senate (that) has been used before for purposes exactly like this on numerous occasions... Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don't think so." Responding to the argument that it's wrong to use reconciliation on a domestic oil drilling measure, Gregg concluded, "We are using the rules of the Senate as they are set up to be used, and that happens to be the rule of the Senate."

Judd Gregg now believes using the rule of the Senate is an outrageous abuse. How quickly they forget.

HOBOS AND HAMMOCKS.... One of the more frustrating political stories of the day is the effort of one far-right Republican senator to block extended unemployment benefits, which will expire on Sunday. It's a reminder, though, that some conservative lawmakers seem to have something against the unemployed.

Take Rep. Dean Heller (R) of Nevada, for example. (via Pat Garofalo)

Heller said the current economic downturn and policies may bring back the hobos of the Great Depression, people who wandered the country taking odd jobs. He said a study found that people who are out of work longer than two years have only a 50 percent chance of getting back into the workforce. "I believe there should be a federal safety net," Heller said, but he questioned the wisdom of extending unemployment benefits yet again to a total of 24 months, which Congress is doing.

"Is the government now creating hobos?" he asked.

This comes just a couple of weeks after Rep. Steve King, a right-wing Republican from Iowa, explained his opposition to extended unemployment benefits: "We shouldn't turn the 'safety net' into a hammock." (via reader B.D.)

Those of you who've lost your jobs and are struggling to find work in a weak economy? Some conservative Republican lawmakers seem to think you're lazy.

The Republican brand of "populism" sure is odd.

IF IT'S SUNDAY.... NBC News is excited to let us know about the "Meet the Press" guest list for this Sunday's episode.

This Sunday: Exclusive! Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

After sparring with his 2008 presidential opponent -- President Barack Obama -- at this week's health care summit, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) sits down for an exclusive interview on this Sunday's "Meet the Press." What, if anything, was achieved at this bipartisan meeting? And how will Democrats and Republicans work together to confront health care reform and all the other challenges facing Washington, including terrorism, the economy and more?

I especially enjoyed the "Exclusive!" with the exclamation point, as if this were a rare, special occurrence -- instead of McCain's fourth "MTP" interview since March.

For those keeping score, this will be McCain's 20th appearance on a Sunday morning talk show since Obama's inauguration. That's an average of 1.5 appearances a month, every month, for over a year -- more than any other public official in the country.

Since the president's took office, McCain has been on ABC's "This Week" three times (9.27.09, 8.23.09, and 5.10.09), "Fox News Sunday" four times (12.20.09, 7.2.09, 3.8.09, and 1.25.09), CNN's "State of the Union" four times (1.10.10, 10.11.09, 8.2.09, and 2.15.09), and CBS's "Face the Nation" five times (1.24.10, 10.25.09, 8.30.09, 4.26.09, and 2.8.09). His appearance on "Meet the Press" this weekend will be his fourth since Obama's inauguration (2.28.10, 12.6.09, 7.12.09, and 3.29.09).

And who, exactly, is John McCain? He's the one who lost the 2008 presidential race badly, and is now just another reactionary conservative senator in the minority. Gregory will apparently ask for McCain's thoughts about health care, despite the fact that the senator's thoughts on the subject appear to fall somewhere between wrong, petty, and ridiculous.

There's just no reason for the media's obsession with McCain. None. Twenty Sunday-show appearances in 13 months? For an un-influential member of the minority? It's farcical.

FRIDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP.... Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* Paterson was out of friends and out of options: "Gov. David A. Paterson is set to announce that he will not seek election in the wake of reports that he and the State Police intervened in a domestic-assault case against a senior aide, according to a person told about the plans. He is expected to make the announcement this afternoon."

* Scuttlebutt is getting louder that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will leave the GOP and run for the Senate as an independent. The governor's campaign described the rumors as "patently false."

* In Illinois, a Research 2000 poll conducted for Daily Kos shows state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) leading Rep. Mark Kirk (R) in their Senate race, 43% to 36%.

* The same poll shows Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) leading his Republican challengers by double digits, in Quinn's bid for a full term.

* A Suffolk poll in Massachusetts shows incumbent Gov. Deval Patrick's (D) support slipping statewide, though he still narrowly leads in a three-way contest. Patrick, who's running for re-election this year, has 33% support, followed by Republican Charlie Baker with 25%, and state Treasurer Tim Cahill, a former Dem running as an independent, with 23%.

* In Nevada, a Mason-Dixon poll shows incumbent Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) still trailing in his primary race against Brian Sandoval (R), but the margin is a little closer. A month ago, Sandoval led by 16 points. Now, his lead is down to seven points.

* In North Carolina, where Sen. Richard Burr (R) is considered vulnerable, a new Rasmussen poll shows him with comfortable leads over his Democratic challengers.

* The race to replace the late Rep. John Murtha (D) in Pennsylvania is still in flux, with former Lt. Gov. Mark Singel (D) unexpectedly quitting yesterday. The leading Dems are now former state Treasurer Barbara Hafer and former Murtha aide Mark Critz.

'BEST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD'.... The notion that U.S. health care system is "the best in the world" is brought up fairly often by conservatives. It sometimes seems as if rhetorical strategy seems premised on appealing to Americans' civic pride -- the American system couldn't possibly be a dysfunctional mess, because it's the American system.

And if it's the best, why bother with reform?

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.), in the official response to the State of the Union, described ours as "the best medical care system in the world." Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) recently called the status quo "the best" system "the world has ever known."

We heard plenty of this yesterday at the bipartisan summit, too. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) urged Democrats not to "destroy the fundamental market system that's made the American health care system the best in the world." Sen. John Barrasso (R) of Wyoming went a little further:

"I do believe we have the best health care system in the world. That's why the premier of one of the Canadian provinces came here just last week to have his heart operated on. He said, 'It's my heart, it's my life. I want to go where it's the best.' And he came to the United States. It's where a member of parliament -- a Canadian member of parliament with cancer came to the United States for her care. They all have coverage there, but what they want is care."

It's probably worth pausing to clarify matters a bit, and appreciating the differences between the quality of the care and the quality of the system.

No one is saying that there's something wrong with America's medical professionals, our technology, our facilities, and/or our ability to treat the ill. The United States has many truly extraordinary doctors, nurses, hospitals, and medical resources.

The point is who has access to this quality care, who can afford it, who'll die because they lack the necessary coverage, who'll get kicked out of the system under rescission, who'll never get into the system because of a pre-existing condition, and whether families, businesses, and government agencies will go bankrupt trying to finance such a system.

And what of the Canadian premier who came to the U.S. for heart surgery? Ezra's response was the right one:

America has about 50 million uninsured people within its borders. Canada has exactly 13 premiers. People should ask themselves a very simple question: Do they think they are likelier to lose their job and fall into the health-care situation of the uninsured or become an influential politician and enjoy the health-care options available to the most powerful people in the world?

If you're a United States senator, America may have the best health-care in the world. But if you're an ordinary person with the same vulnerability to bad luck that we all have, you're better off being in Canada, or France, or Japan, or somewhere that doesn't take your insurance away when Wall Street causes the economy to crash.

MALPRACTICE.... Ask any Republican lawmaker what kind of health care reform provisions they can tolerate, and just about 100% of the time, the first two words out of their mouth will be "malpractice reform."

Here, for example, was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the afternoon session at the health care summit yesterday.

"[T]he point is that we don't have to go very far. There's two examples right now of medical malpractice reform that is working. One is called California and the other is called Texas. I won't talk about California because we Arizonians hate California because they've stolen our water.

"But the fact is that Texas has established a $750,000 cap for non-economic damages; caps doctors at $250,000; hospitals at $250,000; and any additional institution, $250,000; and patients harm to a finding of medical malpractice are not subject to any limitations on recoveries for economic losses. And I hope you'll examine it."

I hope policymakers will examine it, too, because the results of the experiments in California and Texas offer some important lessons.

McCain preferred to ignore California's experience, not because of water rights, but because the caps haven't worked the way conservatives would have liked.

He might also want to re-think the results out of Texas, where victims have repeatedly been screwed, and where costs weren't reduced anyway.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) remarks on this yesterday were pretty devastating. I hope McCain will examine it.

UNDERSTANDING BOEHNER'S LACK OF UNDERSTANDING.... House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) didn't have a whole lot to say at the health care summit yesterday, but when the topic at hand was mandates in the system, the GOP leader took his turn at the mic. Boehner brushed past the subject, and instead asked a few rhetorical questions.

"Mr. President, I told you the day after -- maybe it was the day you were sworn in as president -- I would never say anything outside of the room that I wouldn't say inside the room. I've been patient. I've listened to the debate that's gone on here.

"But why can't we agree on those insurance reforms that we've talked about? Why can't we come to an agreement on purchasing across state lines? And why can't we do something about the biggest cost driver, which is medical malpractice and the defensive medicine that doctors practice?"

It's important to keep the larger context in mind. Boehner's comments came fairly late in the day, which means policymakers had already discussed, in considerable detail, exactly why Democrats and Republicans disagree on insurance reform, across state lines, and medical malpractice. In other words, Boehner wasn't posing these questions in an opening statement, hoping to lay the groundwork for additional discussion; he was posing questions that everyone in the room already knew the answers to.

As Jon Chait noted, "It's like he wasn't even there. Does he not understand what the other side is saying? Does he not care at all? It's not that he's provided an answer to Obama's arguments that I disagree with. He's just totally unable to acknowledge or engage at any level with the arguments presented. You're debating a brick wall."

I suppose the extended debate over the nature of Republicans' arguments -- are folks like Boehner actually dumb or are they just pathologically dishonest -- will never really end. But hearing Boehner's bizarre presentation and ridiculous questions was one of the day's more frustrating, head-shaking moments. He emphasized that he'd "listened to the debate that's gone on here," which couldn't really be true -- if he'd listened he wouldn't have asked the questions -- unless Boehner simply lacked the intellectual wherewithal to keep up.

It was also around that time when I remembered that John Boehner may very well be the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in just 11 months -- at which point I broke out in a cold sweat.

For what it's worth, the president patiently waited for Boehner to finish, before explaining to the GOP leader, "[E]very so often, we have a pretty good conversation trying to get on some specifics, and then we go back to, you know, the standard talking points that Democrats and Republicans have had for the last year. And that doesn't drive us to an agreement on issues."

GOP'S BUNNING BLOCKS BENEFITS FOR UNEMPLOYED.... With unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless due to expire this weekend, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed on a measure to extend the aid. The Senate was supposed to vote last night.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R) of Kentucky, who has occasionally seemed mentally unstable in recent years, had other plans.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) launched a one-man filibuster late Thursday night against a bill with several popular provisions aimed at people hit hardest by the recession. So far, he is succeeding. [...]

Although Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill) is expected to resume attempts to pass the extensions Friday morning, Bunning has said he will continue to object, and with lawmakers gone for the weekend, there is little chance the bill will pass before Sunday.

Unless an agreement is reached today, assistance for the unemployed will run out on Sunday.

This was especially rich: "As the fight drew to a close, Mr. Bunning complained he had been ambushed by the Democrats and was forced to miss the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game."

When one of his Democratic colleagues said it was time for Bunning to stop holding up the Senate, he reportedly said, "Tough shit."

The package also includes extensions of flood insurance, highway funding and small business loans. Bunning insisted that if the financing doesn't come from the economic recovery package, then he'll delay the process as long as possible -- regardless of the consequences.

WITH OR WITHOUT YOU.... The stated goal of the White House summit on health care was to have a conversation. President Obama wanted to talk with lawmakers from both parties about areas of agreement and disagreement. He may have even held out some hope that Republicans would show more flexibility than they've been willing to consider thus far.

But now that the forum has come and gone, there can be no doubt that the White House intends to move forward with its plans for a comprehensive health care reform package.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer posted an item last night, reiterating how the president perceives the state of the debate. Pfeiffer highlighted the merit of the Democratic proposal, rejected a conservative approach to regulations, and said "a problem this big cannot be addressed incrementally." He added:

[W]hile the President appreciated the participation and input of everyone today, he doesn't think we can just scrap a year's worth of work and start over. The millions of Americans that are suffering can't afford another year-long debate. There's too much at stake.

In effect, yesterday was about both sides asking the other a fundamental question. Obama's question for Republicans was, "We're offering a bipartisan, comprehensive package built around principles you claim to support. Are you willing to work with us?" Republicans came with their own question: "Will you throw out all the work you've done and promise to let us kill reform with a filibuster?" Both sides have the same answer to the competing questions: "No."

The difference is, Democrats are the governing majority, and the party's leaders see no reason to make Republican satisfaction a prerequisite for success.

Indeed, the president said as much during his closing remarks yesterday afternoon.

"[W]hat I'd like to propose is that I've put on the table now some things that I didn't come in here saying I supported, but that I was willing to work with potential Republican sponsors on. I'd like the Republicans to do a little soul-searching and find out are there some things that you'd be willing to embrace that get to this core problem of 30 million people without health insurance and dealing seriously with the preexisting condition issue.

"I don't know, frankly, whether we can close that gap. And if we can't close that gap, then I suspect Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner are going to have a lot of arguments about procedures in Congress about moving forward."

As Greg Sargent explained, "Whether Obama and Dems will succeed in passing reform on their own is anything but assured, to put it mildly. But there's virtually no doubt anymore that they are going to try."

Christina Bellantoni added, "Obama's statement and Democratic reactions after the summit were the clearest signal yet that the majority party is charging ahead and abandoning attempts at bipartisanship."

Dems were, of course, given no other choice. Republicans oppose health care reform.

With that in mind, Democrats have two short-term goals: crafting a final package that can (1) get 218 Democratic votes in the House; and (2) get 51 Democratic votes in the Senate. And those head-counting efforts are already well underway.

AN ILLUSTRATIVE SUCCESS.... The New York Times mentioned in passing this morning that the White House health care summit "was a kind of Hail Mary pass, a last-ditch effort to keep [President Obama's] top legislative priority from slipping out of his grasp."

That's probably not the best analogy. When a game is nearly over, a Hail Mary pass is tried in desperation. And if it fails to connect, the team that attempted it loses. But in this case, there's no reason to think health care reform is in any worse shape than it was 24 hours ago. Indeed, by some measures, it might be slightly better off.

It's probably only natural to consider a high-profile event like this by weighing whether it was a "victory" for one side or the other, looking for "winners and losers." I suppose a reasonable case could be made for just about anyone to consider this a "win" -- the president won by making a powerful case for reform, and proving he knows infinitely more about the issue than his GOP rivals. Republicans won by maintaining message discipline and refusing to back down. Congressional Democrats won by having their predictions about GOP intransigence proven right.

But if we put aside that analysis, a more important truth emerges: it became painfully, overwhelmingly clear yesterday exactly what has to happen next.

E.J. Dionne's summary struck the right note.

The Republicans simply don't want to pass comprehensive health-care reform. That is the main lesson of today's health-care summit. It started, as Steve Stromberg pointed out earlier, with the Republicans wanting to talk more about process than about the content of the various health-care bills. It approached an end with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) delivering the core Republican message: "Scrap this bill."

As I argued in a post I put up before the summit began, this discussion would be successful if it simply revealed the stark philosophical differences between the parties. That's exactly what it's done.

No reasonable observer, regardless of ideology, could disagree. We learned, over the course of an entire day, that Democrats and Republicans have wildly different visions on every possible aspect of the debate. As if it weren't enough that the two sides disagree about how to solve various problems, the parties also fundamentally disagree about whether the problems exist and whether there's even any point in trying to solve them.

Jonathan Cohn noted that GOP proposals are clearly, woefully inadequate for addressing key public needs, but Republicans "seem to believe these problems are fundamentally unsolvable, at least in any manner they would find acceptable."

That's not even intended as criticism; it's simply a rephrasing of what GOP leaders said repeatedly. For Republicans, there's a dangerous intersection of practical and ideological concerns -- policymakers could fix dysfunctional aspects of the status quo, but that would mean spending money and imposing new government regulations. And since spending money and imposing new government regulations are bad, the dysfunctional aspects of the status quo must remain broken. QED.

If the goal of the summit was to reach a bipartisan compromise, the event obviously wasn't successful. If the goal was to change policymakers' minds, we can characterize yesterday as something of a letdown.

But if the goal was to air out the various approaches to health care reform, in a candid and transparent way, and realize once and for all that bipartisan compromise is quite literally impossible with an intractable minority that will settle for nothing but failure, I'd call the summit an illustrative success.

HEALTH CARE SUMMIT OPEN THREAD.... It took nearly seven-and-a-half hours, but the bipartisan White House health care summit has wrapped up. I listened to just about every syllable, and I'll try to put together some coherent thoughts on this.

In the meantime, I thought I'd open it up for some discussion.

Did you watch? What'd you think?

Memorable moments?

Were you as impressed as I was in President Obama's depth of understanding of health care policy?

Did anyone get the slightest inkling that Republicans would be willing to compromise on literally anything?

Did the event change the dynamic in such a way to make reform more or less likely?

How will the media cover this (other than to obsess over the president's exchange with John McCain)? Notice anything interesting in the media's coverage thus far?

The floor is yours.

THURSDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* I watched just about every second of the White House's health care summit. One thing I learned: it's hard to write blog posts and listen to health care discussions at the same time.

* Afghanistan: "A U.S. general hailed 'a very historical day, a new beginning' Thursday, as an Afghan flag was raised over the former Taliban stronghold of Marjah and troops began mopping up the last pockets of resistance."

* On a related note: "The Afghan government said Thursday that Pakistani authorities have agreed to hand over several suspected insurgents whom Pakistan has taken into custody, including the Taliban's No. 2 commander."

* The jobs crisis isn't close to being over: "The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance unexpectedly increased last week, a sign that the economic recovery will be uneven as the labor market struggles to rebound."

* More compromise: "The Obama administration is no longer insisting on the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency as a central element of the plan to remake regulation of the financial system. In hopes of quick congressional approval of a reform bill, White House officials are opening the door to compromise with lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy, according to congressional and some administration sources."

* Maryland will recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Good for Maryland.

* Good to see a Democratic lawmaker defend the administration on national security grounds. Too many Dems are still afraid to touch the issue.

* Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) recommitted yesterday to voting with Republicans against health care reform, because he sees the Democratic bill as too conservative.

* Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) is stark raving mad.

* So is Frank Gaffney.

* Republicans really have used reconciliation more than Democrats.

* A tea party may be coming soon to a campus near you.

* Steve M. asks a provocative question: "Are right-wingers even the same species as the rest of us?"

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread -- about issues not related to the summit. I'm going to have a separate open thread on that shortly.

OPPOSING THE IDEAS THEY SUPPORT.... I vaguely recall a time when Dems hoped Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) would be one of the more sensible, reasonable members when it comes to health care talks. So much for that idea.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) -- the Republicans point man on health care reform in the Senate -- has flirted with the idea that requiring people to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. But fully joined the "Tenther" fringe at today's health care summit.

"The high cost of this bill comes from a non-constitutional mandate," Grassley said in an exchange with President Obama.

On the substance, relying on an individual mandate does not increase costs; it lowers them. Grassley's understanding of the underlying policy goals is backwards.

But let's put that aside. Grassley now wants us to believe individual mandates are "non-constitutional." This is the same Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who told Fox News last summer, "I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.... There isn't anything wrong with it."

It's not just Grassley. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Bob Bennett (R-Utah), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) all are on record co-sponsoring a reform measure that included an individual mandate.

The point here is not just to highlight the bizarre inconsistencies of Republican opponents of health care reform. This is also important in realizing why bipartisanship on health care has been quite literally impossible -- Republicans are willing to reject measures they've already embraced, and ideas they themselves came up with.

All the Democratic outreach and compromise options in the world can't overcome the fundamental lack of seriousness that comes with a party that opposes and supports the same ideas at the same time.

PARSING THE MEANING OF THE WORD 'MAJOR'.... House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office issues a statement today claiming that Democratic health care reform proposals "do not implement a single major GOP reform that would lower costs for families and small businesses."

Oh, please.

Three of the 11 pages in the plan Obama released Monday focus on tackling "waste, fraud and abuse," a key Republican goal. Seven of the 14 bolded proposals in that section are credited to a House bill authored by Illinois Republican Mark Kirk.

Another proposal to create a comprehensive database of sanctions against doctors for misusing Medicaid and Medicare was lifted from the Republican Study Committee. Obama took the idea for a real-time database of claims - to more quickly detect possible fraudulent payments - from an amendment that another Illinois Republican, Rep. Peter Roskam, made during a markup in the House Ways and Means Committee.

Boehner's office responded by saying these weren't "major" enough. Seriously.

Look, this is one of the easier points of the debate. The Republicans' "Solutions for America" page lists four health care planks -- and the basic structure of literally all four is already included in the Democratic plan.

The White House devoted an entire section of its site on health care to highlighting the list of GOP ideas incorporated into the Democratic reform package -- and it's not a short list.

Republicans really should find something better to complain about.

A REMINDER ON WHY BIPARTISANSHIP ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN.... One of the key takeaways of the health care summit thus far is a point that's been obvious for 11 months: Republicans aren't willing to negotiate in good faith, and have literally no interest in working towards a compromise on reform. Democrats have been willing to make all kinds of concessions, but the one question the GOP can't answer is, "Name one thing you don't want to see happen, but would be willing to accept as part of a compromise."

My fear is that political reporters are simply confused about the nature of the partisan conflict. Take Carrie Budoff Brown, for example.

If President Barack Obama really wanted to show he's serious about winning over Republicans on health care reform, he could offer up some key concessions at Thursday's summit, like caps on malpractice awards or allowing insurers to sell across state lines.

And if Republicans wanted to reciprocate, they could at least acknowledge the congressional scorekeepers are right -- the Democratic plans cut the deficit in the long term and rein in health care costs.

But that would assume either side is willing to do this.

Heading into Thursday's summit, there's been a lot of talk on both sides about how they're the reasonable ones, willing to meet in the middle -- and it's the other side that's to blame.

But the reality is, both sides have been responding to the overwhelming incentives to play to the home team, and to tailor their positions to seek partisan advantage and political gain.

But this isn't "reality"; it's nonsense. The Politico piece suggests Obama hasn't been willing to entertain GOP-friendly concessions on medical malpractice and insurance sales across state lines.

We already know this claim isn't true. Not only is the inter-state competition provision already a part of the Democratic plan, but President Obama very specifically said he's open to compromise on malpractice if Republicans would be willing to give on something else. They refused.

I've lost track of how many concessions Democrats have made to move this legislation to the middle. At this point, not only are the public option and Medicare buy-in gone, and single payer taken off the table before the discussion even began, but the legislation is loaded with Republican ideas. The package is so moderate, far-right Republicans, by their own admission, agree with 80% of it, and the legislation is almost identical to what moderate Republicans were offering 17 years ago.

Can Carrie Budoff Brown, or anyone else, name a single provision on which Republicans have shown flexibility? I suspect not.

And you know what? That's fine. They're the opposition; they're expected to oppose. The GOP doesn't want to pass health care reform; it never has. The problem is with the expectation that a huge Democratic majority can't even vote on its agenda unless a failed and discredited Republican minority says it's acceptable.

But this simple reality should affect how we look at the debate. Dems are in the majority, and they've practically begged Republicans to work with them, even putting the entire process on hold for months as part of a futile search for even a little GOP support.

To seriously argue that Dems have been "playing to the home team," "tailoring their positions to seek partisan advantage and political gain" is just absurd.

'THE ELECTION'S OVER'.... The discussions at the health care reform summit today have been broken up into sections. When Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took a turn to speak, the subject at hand was supposed to be insurance reform.

But McCain decided to skip the topic, and instead whine bitterly about process. He complained about not having enough transparency; he complained about things President Obama said during the campaign; and he complained about "unsavory" deal-making in the Senate.

The president, appearing a little annoyed, explained, "We're not campaigning anymore. The election's over." Obama added that "we can spend the remainder of the time with our respective talking points going back and forth. We were supposed to be talking about insurance."

When McCain, appearing even more acrimonious than usual, said, "The American people care about what we did and how we did it." The president replied, "They do care about it, John, and I think the way you characterized it would get some strong objections from the other side. We can have a debate about process or we can have a debate about how we help the American people at this point. And the latter debate is the one I think they care about a little bit more."

It's been a consistent problem all morning. Obama has tried, repeatedly, to focus the discussion on substantive policy matters. Republicans have generally responded with talk about process, legislative mechanisms, and the number of pages in the bill.

Knowing media outlets, this exchange will likely be one of the more talked-about developments of the morning (Obama vs. McCain will prove irresistible). And that's a shame, because the substance of this discussion matters infinitely more than the senator's resentment about losing an election.

McCain, like his GOP colleagues, was given a chance to raise meaningful concerns and debate the policy in earnest. But whining is so much easier than governing, and talking points are easier to repeat than arguments about policy.

For some, the election is never over.

THE SECOND OF TWO SUMMITS.... An amusing exchange this morning on MSNBC, between RNC Chairman Michael Steele and the hosts of "Daily Rundown," Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie. Steele had a talking point he was excited about: the White House should have hosted a health care summit a year ago. He apparently had forgotten that it did.

STEELE: This whole dog and pony show that we're about to witness today is something that should have taken place a year ago, when the administration first came in last February and laid out its agenda for health care. This is how you should have started it - bipartisan, public forum, CSPAN, your cameras rolling to capture this and to capture, most importantly, what the American people want. And right now, they want us to start over, and I think we should.

TODD: Chairman Steele, in fairness to them, I mean, it was a year ago that they actually had a summit.

GUTHRIE: On March 5th.

TODD: And it wasn't just the legislative leaders. They brought in folks from the industry as well. And that one was televised.

Steele said that "apparently" that other summit didn't count "because we don't have health care."

That doesn't make any sense.

LET'S TALK ABOUT PREMIUMS.... The White House's summit is about a third complete -- the first two hours felt like 20 -- but there's one point of contention that's come up repeatedly, so it's worth setting the record straight.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) argued, in the Republicans' opening statement, that the CBO found that health care premiums would go up under the Senate Dems' reform plan. President Obama insisted that this wasn't true, and after some back and forth, concluded, "I'm pretty certain that I'm not wrong."

And, he's not wrong at all. Alexander just doesn't understand the issue very well.

Lamar Alexander and Barack Obama just had a contentious exchange on this point, so it's worth settling the issue: Yes, the CBO found health-care reform would reduce premiums. The issue gets confused because it also found that access to subsidies would encourage people to buy more comprehensive insurance, which would mean that the value of their insurance would be higher after reform than before it. But that's not the same as insurance becoming more expensive: The fact that I could buy a nicer car after getting a better job suggests that cars are becoming pricier. The bottom line is that if you're comparing two plans that are exactly the same, costs go down after reform.

You can find a full rundown of the report here.

Let's not forget, though, that the president explained this quite well, and yet, at least three other Republicans -- so far -- have said the Democratic plan would raise premiums.

Now, it's possible that these GOP lawmakers aren't paying attention. Maybe they're lying and hoping we won't know the difference. Perhaps they came with memorized talking points, and weren't able to adapt after reality had been explained.

But it's nevertheless a reminder about why policy discussions with Republicans tend to be pointless. They make claims that aren't true, and after being corrected, repeat those claims again anyway.

THURSDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP.... Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* There have been rumors about a story that would effectively ruin New York Gov. David Paterson's (D) re-election prospects. It was published in the NYT this morning.

* A possible scandal in Florida: "U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio charged grocery bills, repairs to the family minivan and purchases from a wine store less than a mile from his West Miami home to the Republican Party of Florida while he was speaker of the Florida House, according to records obtained by The Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times."

* Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D) of Tennessee tried to connect last night with gay-rights supporters in New York. Given Ford's repeated support for an anti-gay constitutional amendment, it didn't go well.

* In a web video, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is calling out his primary challenger, Rep. J.D. Hayworth for being a Birther. In a GOP primary in Arizona, this may not be effective.

* Sen. Robert Bennett (R) of Utah is already facing a primary challenge, and now that primary field is growing. Former Rep. Merrill Cook (R) will throw hit hat in the ring today.

* In New Mexico, Democratic Lt. Gov. Diane Denish appears to be the frontrunner in this year's gubernatorial race, at least according to the latest survey from Public Policy Polling.

* In Delaware, Rasmussen shows Rep. Mike Castle (R) leading in the open Senate race, leading Chris Coons (D) by 21 points, 53% to 32%.

* Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) will face his toughest challenger ever this year, with Morgan Griffith (R), the majority leader of the state House of Delegates, launching his campaign this week.

INCREMENTALISM VS. COMPREHENSIVE CHANGE.... On health care, a key GOP talking point, outside concerns over process, is more of a meta observation: "comprehensive" approaches to public policy are fundamentally misguided.

Lamar Alexander has been a leading voice on the Republican side for incrementalism. His argument is that the White House erred by trying to pass such a big, sweeping reform bill, and so Democrats and Republicans should instead get together and pass popular parts of reform, one piece at a time. Analysts have pointed out that many reform ideas don't really work on their own; they have to be passed altogether in order to make the system work.

Right. There are plenty of parts to reform, but they're inter-locking. It's easy to say we'll take some steps now, and leave others for later, but to make it so that those with pre-existing conditions aren't discriminated against, for example, we'll need mandates and subsidies. It's like an engine -- the parts don't work unless they're part of a larger whole.

What's interesting, though, is that Republicans used to understand this -- not in some previous generation, but very recently. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said over the summer that "comprehensive" reform is "long overdue."

Around the same time, Republican Sens. Grassley, Kyl, and Enzi agreed that they support moving on a "comprehensive, inclusive" package.

Republicans have discovered that "comprehensive" is suddenly something to avoid, but they only came to that conclusion after the House and Senate already passed reform.

OFF ON A PREDICTABLE FOOT.... If you're watching the White House health care summit, you may have noticed that Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has delivered an extremely long opening statement. I can summarize it for those of you who've missed it: "No. No, no, no. We're not willing to compromise on the legislation, and all we want is to kill the Democratic legislation and start over." Imagine about 17 minutes of that, with a bizarre metaphor about a car show and a de Tocqueville quote.

And expect a whole day of it.

At [today's] White House health care summit, lawmakers from both parties will sit down for six hours and, ostensibly, try to come up with a bipartisan compromise. But for the Republicans, only one compromise is acceptable: Scrap the bills we have and start over.

Minority leaders in the House and the Senate have both called for a total do-over, and other members of the Republican contingent are echoing the line.

In an op-ed today, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle raise a relevant response.

[W]e share the view of Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), who said last September: "We agree on about 80 percent of the issues right now. It's just a matter of hashing out those few areas where we disagree."

That's why we think Republicans should find a lot to like in the proposal President Obama released on Monday. It contains several ideas taken directly from Republican bills, such as letting people save on their premiums if they participate in proven employer wellness programs, a proposal supported by Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.). Or giving states grants to evaluate medical liability models that can improve patient safety, reduce medical errors and bring down liability premiums, similar to a proposal Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) has supported. We know Republicans will support the measures to prevent health-care fraud, such as new background checks for Medicare suppliers and real-time reviews of claims, because they're the ones who wrote them.

The president's proposal also contains insurance reforms that Republicans have supported for years. For example, it would eliminate caps on benefits, a step that has been supported by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). Republicans including Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Richard Burr (N.C.) have backed one of the proposal's key elements: state-based, health insurance marketplaces where families will be able to easily compare insurance policies to find the one that's best for them. The president's proposal would also ban discrimination based on preexisting conditions, a change that Coburn and Burr pushed for insurance plans in these new marketplaces.

I've never heard of a set of talks where one side agrees with 80% of what the other side is offering, and to take the next step, recommends scrapping everything and starting over.

WH SUMMIT UNDERWAY.... And they're off. Here's a feed of the White House's bipartisan health care summit.

CUT SPENDING (BUT DON'T REALLY).... Politicians love to say what they think voters want to hear, and in this climate, that means promising to "cut spending." Folks are usually rather vague about where, exactly, spending should be cut, and there's a very good reason for that.

GW's John Sides published this chart yesterday in a great Salon piece, noting that the American National Election Study asked a national sample in 2012 about various areas of public spending, and whether current funding levels should go up, down, or stay the same. These results reflect the attitudes of self-identified conservatives.

Apparently, conservatives want to cut spending ... except for all of the things the government actually spends money on. They no doubt like the idea of spending cuts, but balk at the particulars. (It's the opposite of health care reform, in which people balk at the general idea, but love the specific policy details that make up the reform package.)

It's a reminder as one of the reasons Republicans failed so spectacularly when they were in the majority and controlled all the levers of government -- the right says "yes" to tax cuts, "no" to spending cuts, "yes" to huge deficits, all while paying lip service to fiscal responsibility. As an approach to governance, it's incoherent and it doesn't work.

What's more, also note that these results were not especially unique. Pew recently asked people if they wanted to see more spending, less spending, or no change on various parts of the budget. The only area that cracked the 20% threshold was "foreign aid," and even here, only 34% support cuts. In literally every other area of the budget, people wanted to see more spending, not less.

It's something voters should try to keep in mind during the midterms. For every candidate who boasts about his/her desire to cut spending, there should be a straightforward follow-up: where? If they can't answer the question, they probably don't mean what they're saying.

* Update: Looks like Sides erred on the chart. The original has been replaced.

SMILE FOR THE CAMERAS.... For quite a while now, the media has pushed for significantly more transparency in the health care reform debate. News outlets have repeatedly reminded Americans of then-candidate Obama's call in 2008 to put "negotiations on C-SPAN."

It's interesting, then, to see one high-profile journalist -- CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller -- complain last night that today's health care summit represents too much transparency.

[B]y putting six hours of highly political talks on television, on one of the most controversial of his policy initiatives, it all but insures there'll be no breakthrough agreement on a health care bill.

If the televised proceedings of the House and Senate are a guide, the summit broadcast will provide six hours of political posturing about the proper role of government in regulating and mandating health care coverage.

In other words, Knoller seems to be calling for more behind-closed-door talks, where negotiations can continue honestly. What's lost in transparency would be made up in candor.

I don't disagree -- I've long thought this push for televised talks is kind of silly -- but hasn't the media been pushing in the opposite direction for months?

It seems as if the White House gets slammed for private, productive talks ("secret" negotiations), and the White House gets slammed for open, transparent talks ("posturing" and "theatrics").

THE INTERNATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF GOP OBSTRUCTIONISM.... Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on the Hill yesterday, and explained to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee that political obstructionism and "gridlock" are undermining the United States on the global stage.

Domestic political disputes are hurting America's image abroad, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented this morning during testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs. The hearing addressed the State Department's fiscal year 2011 budget.

Clinton's remarks were in reference to a number of President Obama's diplomatic appointments that were held up by senators for political reasons over the past year.

"We're now more than a year into a new administration and whether you agree or disagree with a particular policy, a president deserves to have the people that he nominates serving him," Clinton said.

"It became harder and harder to explain to countries, particularly countries of significance, why we had nobody in position for them to interact with," she added.

I imagine it would have to be quite difficult for officials in other countries to understand why key American posts were left vacant for months, or worse, are still empty now. What's the Secretary of State supposed to say, "Well, I'm terribly sorry, Prime Minister, but we have no under-secretary for you to work with because Richard Shelby wants some pork for Alabama"?

Or maybe, "I'd like to refer you, Foreign Minister, to our ambassador, but more than a year after the president took office, only a majority of our Senate approves of the nomination, which means she can't get confirmed"?

Clinton also told the senators, "As we sell democracy, and we are the lead democracy in the world, I want the world to know we have checks and balances but we also have the capacity to move, too."

The consequences of Republicans denying up-or-down votes to key administration nominees go beyond mere annoyance. Deliberately or not, the genuinely scandalous GOP tactics are not only blocking the ability of policymakers to govern domestically, but also undercutting U.S. influence around the world.

"People don't understand the way our system operates, they just don't get it," Clinton added. "And their view does color whether the United States ... is in a position going forward to demonstrate the kind of unity and strength and effectiveness that I think we have to in this very complex and dangerous world."

If only Republicans could get past their petty partisanship long enough to care.

NO MIDDLE GROUND BETWEEN SUCCESS AND FAILURE.... For those of us prone to hand-wringing when it comes to the fate of health care reform, there are still all kinds of things to worry about. Can Pelosi pull together 218 votes? How many members can Stupak keep together to kill reform? Will the Senate get 51 for reconciliation? Will the parliamentarian cause trouble?

But lurking in the background has been another nagging fear: would Dems decide comprehensive reform is just too heavy a lift, and scrap it for some pared-down, scaled-back package that doesn't do much, call it "reform," and pretend it's a victory? To use the football analogy, Democrats, down by five with the clock near zero, would kick a field goal -- they'd still lose but the defeat would look a little better.

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the White House hasn't ruled out this Plan B.

President Barack Obama will use a bipartisan summit Thursday to push for sweeping health-care legislation, but if that fails to generate enough support the White House has prepared the outlines of a more modest plan.

His leading alternate approach would provide health insurance to perhaps 15 million Americans, about half what the comprehensive bill would cover, according to two people familiar with the planning.

The White House isn't just denying the accuracy of the report, by all indications, the president's team is absolutely livid over the article. A Murdoch-owned paper, on the day of the health care summit, seems to be deliberately trying to sabotage Dems' efforts to create some momentum.

So, what's the truth here? It seems the White House, in the wake of the Massachusetts fiasco, drew up a variety of plans, and this watered-down tack was one of the possibilities. But here's the key: President Obama and his team chose not to pursue it, as evidenced by the White House push in support of the president's plan.

Indeed, for Democratic policymakers, this scaled-back approach -- Cohn noted that some insiders call it the "Skinny Bill" -- would likely be a political and policy disaster. It wouldn't solve the problem reform is intended to address; it would demoralize the base that needs the party to finish the job; it would still be the subject of ridiculous Republican lies; it would signal to the electorate that Dems can't govern effectively enough to deliver on their top priority; and it would delay the entire process by several months, likely killing its chances anyway.

Let's be clear: there is no fallback position. Plan B may exist on paper, but not in reality. The House and Senate have already passed health care reform bills, and the president has presented a way to bridge the gap between the two. If it passes and becomes law, Democrats will have delivered a historic success. If Dems come up short, and let this once-in-a-generation opportunity pass them by, it will be a failure for the ages, and the nation will suffer.

As Ezra explained, "At this point, health-care reform either passes or it dies. Democrats are all in on this one. They know it, Republicans know it, and maybe more importantly, they know the Republicans know it. Letting health-care reform fail is indistinguishable from conceding the 2010 election. There's no real fallback plan. If Democrats fall back, they fall."

WEDNESDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Toyota sure is sorry.

* The House passed legislation today to end the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies. The final vote was 406 to 19.

* Don't expect interest rates to go up anytime soon.

* Is it possible that Pakistan has really arrested half of the Afghan Taliban's leadership?

* If you want to watch tomorrow's health care summit, the cable news networks plan on offering all kinds of coverage.

* Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) is once again taking steps to kill health care reform over abortion.

* Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) wants the estate tax to be at the top of the Senate's priority list. Sometimes, these far-right lawmakers really are parodies of themselves.

* Facing congressional resistance, the "Volcker Rule" appears to be in trouble.

* Blackwater would be stripped of its federal funding if it "started registering black people to vote." Nice one, Serwer.

* I often wonder if Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is a secret liberal who says stupid things on purpose to make Republicans look ridiculous.

* When Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) decides to go after Republicans, few progressive voices are as cutting and brutal.

* Birthers are apparently dominant in the Arizona legislature's state House GOP caucus.

* The higher education recession.

* It's hard not to wonder if the Washington Post regrets not looking into Marc Thiessen's record before the paper hired him.

* Remember that chain email that made the rounds about AirTran Flight 297? It was literally unbelievable before, and it's now completely debunked.

* Yes, tragically, Limbaugh's racism can get worse.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

DEM MODERATES TIRE OF GOP TACTICS.... It's going to be difficult to pass health care reform in either chamber, but the trick in the Senate has been generating enough support for reconciliation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that he intends to use the procedure -- that only makes sense, the procedure exists for a situation like this -- but the question is whether his caucus would be comfortable with it.

The answer has been far from clear. Republicans have tried to characterize reconciliation as some kind of "abuse" or "trick," despite the GOP's repeated use of the same procedure when there was a Republican majority. Dems, already nervous, were intimidated by the GOP rhetoric.

Or, at least, they were. At this point, even center-right Democrats are so fed up with Republicans' obstructionist game that their reconciliation reluctance is fading.

"Obviously, if the minority is just frustrating the process, that argues for taking steps to get the public's business done," said Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who was one of the leading voices against the procedure after the Massachusetts election, calling it "very ill-advised." [...]

Bayh's remarks Tuesday came a day after Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) cited Republican obstructionism as a reason why she could embrace the parliamentary maneuver to pass health care reform. Last month, she said she was leaning against reconciliation.

"I'm staying open to see how these negotiations go forward," Landrieu said. "I've not generally been a big supporter, but the Republican Party, the leadership, has really been very, very, very disingenuous in this process."

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said he doesn't prefer reconciliation, but it may be the only way.

"I'd like to see as many votes as possible," he said. "But at the end of the day, with the obstructionism going on at the level that it is, I'm more interested in what's in the package than I am in the process of how many votes it takes to get it through."

Remarks like these obviously aren't guarantees, but Reid only needs 51 votes, and if the likes of Bayh, Landrieu, and even Nelson are warming to the common-sense rationale for reconciliation, it's an encouraging development.

What's more, as Jonathan Cohn noted today, when Senate Dems signal their support for using reconciliation, they "also embolden those House Democrats who fear the bill won't play well in conservative districts or don't trust the Senate to do its part."

THE DEMOCRATS' REPUBLICAN PLAN.... I'd strongly recommend readers check out this fascinating table published today by Kaiser Health News. It compares three approaches to health care reform: (1) the approach presented by President Obama earlier this week; (2) the proposal unveiled by Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) in 1993, and (3) the bill championed by House Republicans four months ago.

It's hard not to notice that Chafee, an accomplished moderate senator before his death in 1999, crafted a reform plan that's very similar to what Democrats have in mind 17 years later. In some ways, they're nearly identical.

And then, of course, there's the plan pushed by Boehner & Co. late last year, which was a rather pathetic joke.

Ezra did a nice job capturing the larger context.

Boehner's bill, by contrast, is far, far more conservative (and useless) than what moderate Republicans developed in 1993. Conversely, the Senate [Democratic] bill doesn't look anything like the Clinton plan itself, much less like the more liberal efforts to expand Medicare to all Americans.

We've got a situation in which Democrats are essentially pushing moderate Republican ideas while Republicans push extremely conservative ideas, but because neither the press nor the voters know very much about health-care policy, the fact that Republicans refuse to admit that Democrats have massively compromised their vision is enough to convince people that Democrats aren't compromising.

I should note, of course, that John Chafee was a Republican when sane, progressive-minded Republicans still existed. He not only wanted to see health care reform, Chafee also supported gay rights and gun control, while opposing school prayer and the death penalty.

Had he survived long enough to see what's become of his party, and just how far to the extreme right it's gone, today's Republicans would have proudly driven John Chafee from the GOP with glee and satisfaction.

Regardless, Ezra's point is an important one. For all the hysterical whining from today's Republican Party and its right-wing allies, the Democratic plan couldn't be any less radical. Not only is it practically identical to what moderate Republicans wanted nearly 20 years ago, but its basic structure is the same as the plan Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle were touting last year.

The fact that Americans have been led to believe the Democratic plan is an example of wild-eyed liberalism -- a notion largely embraced by much of the major media -- speaks poorly of our discourse and capacity to have a meaningful policy debate. It is, however, a reminder of just how effective the right-wing noise machine can be.

QUOTE OF THE DAY.... Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) remains something of a powerhouse in Republican circles, so it seemed noteworthy that he doesn't seem to have much respect for a certain former half-term governor of Alaska.

In a recent interview with Newsmax, Bush was asked whether he thought Palin was a viable candidate for president. Though he had some nice things to say about her "charisma," it was clear that Bush thinks Palin doesn't have the intellectual heft to occupy the oval office. He said that Palin's success depends on her willingness to add a "depth of understanding of the complexity of life we're living in today" to her rhetoric.

"That's up to her," he said. "I mean, I don't know what her deal is, but my belief is in 2010 and 2012, public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity."

First, that seems like pretty tough rhetoric, which is also fair under the circumstances.

Second, it's a shame Jeb didn't think intellectual curiosity was a prerequisite for public leaders in 2000 and 2004.

DECLARE VICTORY AND PASS THE BILL.... I'm not entirely clear on the format/schedule for tomorrow's health care summit at the White House, but I suspect that at the end of the gathering, President Obama will thank the attendees for participating and deliver a brief set of remarks to the country.

Why not just declare victory right there on the spot?

It's not hard to imagine the president explaining, before lawmakers even leave the room, directly to the cameras:

"Americans can be proud of the work done here today. Democrats and Republicans sat in the same room, in an open and transparent way, and had a substantive discussion about how to improve a system that we all agree desperately needs to be fixed.

"The result of these talks is a proposal that all Americans can feel good about. It's a sensible compromise, which will work and make the country stronger.

"No one party or institution in this debate got everything they asked for, including my administration, but that's true of any compromise. Democrats had to make some concessions through this process, but they can feel good about the consumer protections, coverage for the uninsured, and an emphasis on affordability for the middle class included in this compromise. Republicans have been reluctant, but they too can also feel good about the fact that this compromise offers an incremental plan that dramatically reduces the deficit, reduces costs, encourages innovation at the state level, and includes benefits for small businesses.

"This consensus plan will help save Americans lives. It will help our economy grow and be more competitive. It will help guarantee coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. It will rely on a competitive marketplace, without an excessive role for the federal government. Families worried about medical bankruptcy will at long last have some peace of mind.

"The cynics and skeptics said it couldn't be done, but what we've managed to produce today is a triumph of bipartisan policymaking, the result of hard-working officials who put country over party, solutions over ideology. Americans asked all of us to work together on crafting centrist, mainstream, moderate reform package, and that's exactly what we've produced."

Of course, Obama could say this without changing a thing, because this rhetoric already describes the plan Democrats have put forward.

But why not simply say it anyway? Why not offer the Democratic plan as the moderate, bipartisan approach, reframing the package and forcing Republicans to oppose a compromise package that includes their own ideas?

SUCCESS ON ZAZI CASE LEADS TO SILENCE ON THE RIGHT.... The case of Najibullah Zazi continues to be under-appreciated victory for the United States. A deadly attack was thwarted; intelligence was collected; and justice was served. No torture, no military commissions, no need to stray from the legal process. The legal system was followed to the letter, and it worked beautifully.

And conservatives really don't want to talk about it.

The Republicans who most vociferously blasted the Obama Administration for putting the attempted Christmas bombing suspect through the criminal justice system have apparently been silent on another high-profile terrorism case making its way through the civilian system. [...]

Given the GOP outrage over the administration's decision to charge attempted Christmas bomber Umar Abdulmutallab in criminal court, one might have expected a flurry of Republican press releases and TV appearance this week over the handling of the Zazi case.

But the press releases never came, and the TV appearances were never scheduled.

On the Hill, the usual suspects of hysterical conservatives -- Kit Bond, Pete Hoekstra, Pete King -- haven't said a word. And what about their media allies? Even when Zazi's guilty plea became a major development, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity literally didn't say a word about the guilty plea of a man who would have killed innocent Americans in a terrorist attack in New York City.

I guess this was an American story that simply proved un-spinnable to the GOP and its cohorts.

Here we had a serious terrorist threat -- arguably the most important since 9/11 -- and an al Qaeda recruit who was poised to kill a lot of people. The Obama administration thwarted Zazi's plan, took him into custody, read him his rights, and gave him a lawyer.

And the results couldn't have been better for the United States. Zazi will spend the rest of the his life behind bars, but only after cooperating with federal officials and becoming a valuable source of intelligence.

I wonder why Republicans would choose to deliberately ignore this. Don't they want to debate the efficacy of U.S. counter-terrorism policy? Where'd they all go?

AGAINST IT BEFORE THEY WERE FOR IT.... Following up on the earlier item about the Senate approving a $15 billion jobs bill, it's worth taking a closer look at the roll call before moving on.

On Monday, Senate Republicans tried to block an up-or-down vote on a jobs bill filled with tax cuts, which in and of itself is incomprehensible. When it came time to shut down the GOP filibuster, the vote was 62 to 30, with five Republicans breaking ranks to end debate and allow a floor vote on the bill.

Today, the vote on the same piece of legislation was 70 to 28. Doesn't that mean that several Republicans who voted to block the legislation on Monday ended up voting in favor of the legislation on Wednesday? Actually, yes, it means exactly that.

These senators supported a filibuster, but approved of the bill they tried to block:

Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)
Thad Cochran (R-Miss.)
James Inhofe (R-Okla.)
George LeMieux (R-Fla.)
Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
Roger Wicker (R-Miss.)

(Two more GOP senators -- Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Burr of North Carolina -- missed Monday's vote, but joined with Dems today.)

So, we're looking at six conservatives who voted against a jobs bill before they voted for it.

This, alas, isn't especially new. For a year now, Republicans have repeatedly tried to block up-or-down votes on all kinds of bills and nominations, only to vote in support once their obstructionist tactics are defeated. For petty partisans like these GOP clowns to block votes on measures they end up voting for anyway is the height of cynical and pointless obstructionism.

What an embarrassment.

WEDNESDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP.... Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* Mitt Romney is under fire from the GOP's right-wing base for supporting Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) re-election campaign.

* In Pennsylvania, a new Franklin and Marshall poll shows former right-wing congressman Pat Toomey leading both Democratic candidates, Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak, by narrow margins. In both hypothetical match-ups, most voters remain undecided. More importantly, though, 63% of registered voters in the state believe Specter should not get another term.

* In Ohio, a new Quinnipiac poll shows a competitive open Senate race. Former Bush Budget Director Rob Portman leads Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher (D) by three (40% to 37%) and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (D) by five (40% to 35%).

* Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee is running for governor in Rhode Island as an independent, and an early poll shows him as the frontrunner to win.

* Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) is taking more heat in his Senate campaign from members of his own party. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) is launching attack ads against Crist, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has described Crist's support for economic recovery efforts as "unforgivable."

* In Texas' GOP gubernatorial primary, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison seems to think she's going to lose, an assessment borne out by all the recent polls. Chris Cillizza considers why Hutchison, who was supposed to be a strong contender, fell far short.

* DSCC Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said there will be no additional incumbents retiring this year.

* And as hard as it may be to believe, right-wing ophthalmologist Rand Paul, Rep. Ron Paul's (R-Texas) son, appears to be the clear frontrunner in Kentucky's GOP Senate primary. Despite overwhelming party support for Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, yet another poll shows Paul way out in front.

SENATE APPROVES JOBS BILL.... I guess we'll have to take signs of progress where we can find them.

The Senate easily passed a $15 billion jobs bill on Wednesday morning amid hope that the measure could provide a blueprint for other items on President Obama's agenda.

The measure passed 70 to 28, with 13 Republicans joining 57 Democrats in support of the package. One Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against it.

"We've had so much gridlock," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), co-author of a key portion of the bill. Now, he said, "finally we have something" bipartisan to show the public.

Remember, this is a modest, scaled-back jobs bill, made up almost entirely of tax cuts, which Republicans claim to support, in the midst of an employment crisis. And yet, more than half of the Republicans in the Senate voted against the legislation.

The measure now heads to the House, which already passed a bolder, more ambitious, and more effective jobs bill. Will the House settle for the stripped-down Senate version? House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) predicted this morning that it would.

As for the measure itself, it's hard to get too excited about a $15 billion measure, the bulk of which is a payroll-tax exemption for companies who hire workers this year. It also features a $1,000 tax credit for employers who keep new workers on the job for at least a year, and a provision to allow businesses to write off some capital investments.

That said, the Democratic leadership continues to emphasize that this will be the first of several bills related to job creation to be considered in the near future.

RADICALS, RIFTS, AND THE RIGHT.... There was a point, about six months ago, when some reasonably high-profile conservatives suggested Glenn Beck and his minions were becoming problematic. Rep. Bob Inglis (R) of South Carolina encouraged his constituents to "turn the TV off" when Beck starts spouting his nonsense. David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, suggested Beck's rhetoric may be, quite literally, dangerous.

Peter Wehner added at the time that Beck's "interest in conspiracy theories is disquieting" and his daily attacks are "not good for the country."

This week, we're hearing similar assessments again, but for different reasons.

On his radio show yesterday, [right-wing host Mark Levin] added, "Decide what you are. A circus clown, self-identified. Or a thoughtful and wise person. It's hard to be both. You can't wear the clown nose and not wear the clown nose at the same time."

But what's interesting here isn't that Beck is generating a backlash by being insane; he's generating a backlash because he thinks Republicans aren't right-wing enough. For GOP media allies, the message isn't helpful, so Beck needs to be condemned.

Right-wing pundit Bill Bennett wrote, "The first task of a serious political analyst is to see things as they are.... And there is a difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. To ignore these differences, or propagate the myth that they don't exist, is not only discouraging, it is dangerous." The Wall Street Journal's John Fund said that several Republicans "complained that Mr. Beck is indirectly encouraging third-party candidates to challenge them this year, threatening to divide the conservative vote." [...]

Limbaugh also criticized Beck, saying, "I don't know how you can say ... that the Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats. It would never occur to me to say that. I don't know what the objective would be."

So, let me get this straight. Prominent conservative voices don't mind Beck's deranged conspiracy theories, his humiliating ignorance, and his hatred for those who don't think as he does. But these conservative voices mind a great deal if Beck notes that Republicans have an embarrassing record when it comes to deficit reduction, the national debt, government spending, and increasing the size and scope of the federal government's powers -- an observation that happens to be true.

What an odd movement.

NOT QUITE AS UNPOPULAR AS WE'VE BEEN LED TO BELIEVE.... At this point, it's practically a foregone conclusion: the public doesn't much care for health care reform proposals. Thanks to a combination of a massive misinformation campaign, inadequate media coverage, and Americans' easily-manipulated fears, support started strong before waning badly.

But I continue to marvel at national polls that show Americans really do embrace the reform plan once they know what it is. There have been several recent surveys pointing to this trend, and the latest data from the Kaiser Family Foundation bolsters the point.

The latest Kaiser Tracking Poll finds the public still split on health care reform legislation, with 43 percent in favor and 43 percent opposed. However, the poll also finds that majorities of Americans of all political leanings support several provisions in the health reform proposals in Congress and most attribute delays in passing the legislation to political gamesmanship rather than policy disagreements. [...]

"While the intense debate over health care reform has divided the public, it looks like there is bipartisan support on at least some elements of health reform legislation, and more bipartisan support outside the beltway than there is inside," said Kaiser President and CEO Drew Altman.

There's no denying the fact that public perceptions of the existing proposal are negative, and that poses an obvious political problem. But the evidence is just as clear that Americans approve, often strongly, of the various parts of the reform plan -- 68% support subsidies for those who can't afford coverage, 70% support expanding high-risk pools, 71% want to see Congress close the "doughnut hole" in prescription drug coverage, 71% support the creation of an exchange, and 72% back giving tax credits to small businesses.

Of particular interest, also note that 76% of those polled believe it is either important or extremely important that policymakers "reform the way health insurance works." That's a fundamental rejection of the status quo, which spans Americans of every ideology. The notion that the public is afraid of meaningful change simply isn't true.

And for all the GOP talk about killing reform, a 58% majority say they will be either disappointed or angry if Congress decides to stop working on health care reform.

This should, in theory, help stiffen spines a bit among congressional Democrats. The same provisions Dems are fighting for are the same provisions Americans already like. The public has grown confused, thanks to some well-financed professional liars, but when it comes to what Americans want to see happen in a reform bill, Democrats are obviously on the right track.

But the only way for the party to benefit is to move forward, pass reform, and then sell their handiwork. Anything else would be devastating for those counting on reform, and electoral suicide for the governing majority.

RECONCILIATION IS NOT THE 'NUCLEAR OPTION'.... I can only assume we'll be hearing a lot of talk like this.

Sen. Scott Brown yesterday warned the Obama administration against using the "nuclear option" of ramming through Congress a revised $1 trillion health-care bill outlined yesterday by the White House. [...]

"If the Democrats try to ram their health-care bill through Congress using reconciliation, they are sending a dangerous signal to the American people that they will stop at nothing to raise our taxes, increase premiums and slash Medicare," said Brown spokesman Colin Reed in a statement. "Using the nuclear option damages the concept of representative leadership and represents more of the politics-as-usual that voters have repeatedly rejected."

Now, I realize that Scott Brown is not exactly fact-oriented, and he doesn't see it as his job to worry about the substance of public policy, but let's just present a few facts that seem relevant here.

1. Reconciliation is not the "nuclear option." This is the "nuclear option."

2. When a majority of the Senate votes in favor of pending legislation, it's not an example of "ramming" a bill through Congress.

3. Brown's office's description of the Democratic reform is demonstrably ridiculous. It's especially ironic to hear the GOP talk about "slashing" Medicare.

4. Republicans loved using reconciliation when they were in the majority, using it for all kinds of sweeping pieces of legislation, including bills related to health care.

5. Reconciliation exists for exactly the kind of circumstances Democrats are facing now.

Is this really that hard to understand? Probably not, but Republicans are pretending to be outraged, hoping that the public won't know better.

KING FEELS HEAT FOR SUICIDE BOMBER SYMPATHIZES.... There was no shortage of over-the-top rhetoric at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) over the weekend, but there was something about Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) comments that stood out.

Commenting on Joe Stack, who flew a plane into an Austin office building because of his grudge against the U.S. government, the right-wing Iowan seemed oddly sympathetic to Stack's motivation for murdering innocent Americans. One report indicated that King told conservative activists he could "empathize" with the suicide bomber, and encouraged his audience to "implode" other IRS offices.

In general, regular ol' Americans who talk like this -- and defend those who fly planes into buildings -- can expect to have a law-enforcement official stop by for a chat. Steve King, however, is a member of Congress.

King is, however, feeling at least some heat over this. Yesterday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) took King to task on the House floor.

"The fact of the matter is that the gentleman that lost his life in that building, Vernon Hunter, is from -- was from Orangeburg, South Carolina, that I proudly represent in this body," said Clyburn. "He spent two tours in Vietnam and was about the business of carrying out his duties and responsibilities to this great country of ours. If anybody is a hero, it is this victim. And I find it appalling that a member of this body would call his death a noble happening."

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents I.R.S. workers, also called on King to apologize for his remarks, saying the lawmaker showed "an appalling lack of compassion over [Vernon Hunter's] death, as well as a lack of respect for the lives of federal employees nationwide."

Representative King should retract and apologize for his ill-conceived statements concerning the tragic event that took place in Austin and pledge, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, to do everything he can to ensure that the safety of federal employees remains one of our government's highest priorities.

But in order for King to suffer any real consequences for his sympathies for a suicide bomber, the media is going to have focus some attention on his lunacy. Yesterday, Washington Post journalist Ben Pershing told a reader in an online chat that King's comments "probably deserve more attention from the media. They are striking remarks."

To date, the Washington Post has not reported on King's comments at all.

SANTORUM'S SOUND ADVICE.... To say that Democrats are enjoying hitting Republicans on stimulus hypocrisy would be something of an understatement. The Hill noted the other day that the hypocrisy story has given Democrats their "first real traction in weeks" in going on the offensive against Republicans. "For the first time in weeks, Republicans were clearly on the defensive," the article noted.

Local media outlets are starting to pick up on the story (see here, here, and here), and even Republican governors are starting to mock GOP lawmakers for their absurd cash-and-trash rhetoric.

This week, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) appeared on Fox News and encouraged his former colleagues to be more "cautious" on this front.

"I think the facts of the matter of what has happened after the stimulus package passed proved it hasn't created a whole lot of jobs. But then to take money from that package and go out and do photo-ops talking about how many jobs it creates does undermine your credibility. [...]

"Members of Congress having opposed this plan then running out and saying here's money I brought home to the district -- that's not to say your district doesn't get the money. They would whether you do the photo- op or not. But I wouldn't be out promoting it." [emphasis added]

On the notion that the recovery effort "hasn't created a whole lot of jobs," there's ample evidence to the contrary.

But I do appreciate Santorum's more strategic advice. Pretending to hate the stimulus, while loving stimulus funds for one's constituents, does undermine a lawmaker's "credibility," so it's best not to be out there "promoting it." In other words: stop getting caught.

On a related note, Dems have been trying to come up with a name for these Republicans who fall into this category, something easier and more memorable than "group of Republicans who claim to oppose the stimulus but take credit for stimulus-funded projects back home," which is a little clumsy. They seem to have come up with a pretty good one: "highway hypocrites."

DNA'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET.... Is DNA evidence, a forensic tool known for exonerating the innocent, being used to put them behind bars? That's what lawyer and journalist Michael Bobelian argues in the new issue of Washington Monthly.

DNA has a reputation for being virtually foolproof. And, indeed, when fresh DNA evidence is used to confirm guilt of suspects who have been identified though eyewitness testimony or other means, as was traditionally the case, the chances of hitting on the wrong person can be as remote as one in many trillions. But increasingly law enforcement agencies are employing DNA in a new way: to find suspects in cases where the trail has gone cold. In these instances, the chances of accidentally fingering an innocent person can be as high as one in three -- a staggering fact that juries weighing such cases are almost never told.

Bobelian's fascinating piece is online here. Take a look.

TUESDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Rough day for Toyota on Capitol Hill: "The president of Toyota's U.S. operations acknowledged to skeptical lawmakers on Tuesday that the company's recalls of millions of its cars may "not totally" solve the problem of sudden and dangerous acceleration."

* White House officially calls for health insurers to lose their anti-trust exemption.

* Dick Cheney apparently suffered his fifth heart attack yesterday, but is expected to be discharged from the hospital within a couple of days.

* Good to see House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) condemn Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) for his tacit support for last week's suicide bomber in Austin.

* In light of Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) bizarre remarks about having been misled about TARP policy in 2008, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called the conservative senator's comments "pathetically untrue" and "cowardly." Harsh, to be sure, but true.

* California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is unimpressed with his party's talking points on health care policy.

* This may not turn out well: "GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham confirmed Monday he is working with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to break the logjam on closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and bringing the prisoners to trial."

* For crying out loud: "A top Tea Party leader derided Barack Obama as 'our half white, racist president' in an email to colleagues."

* The Navy is prepared to lift its ban on female submarine crew members

* It may seem odd to incorporate YouTube in a college admissions process, but here we are.

* And on a personal note, today is, for lack of a better word, my "Blogoversary" -- I started blogging exactly seven years ago today. Given the relative youth of the medium, I guess this means I've been at it for quite a long while. Whether you've been reading for seven days or seven years, my most sincere thanks for the support.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

WHAT ROBERTS KNEW AND WHEN HE KNEW IT.... We learned a few years ago that the CIA had video documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives who'd been subjected to "severe interrogation techniques," but because of what the video showed, the agency destroyed the tapes. In effect, officials had evidence of a possible crime, so they eliminated it -- which is itself a crime.

Within a few weeks of the revelations, Bush's Justice Department appointed a prosecutor to lead a criminal investigation into the destruction of evidence.

What we didn't know until today is that a far-right senator, Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas, acting in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was apparently made aware of the alleged crimes in a closed briefing in 2003, and raised no objections.

According to a memorandum prepared after the Feb. 4, 2003, briefing by the C.I.A.'s director of Congressional affairs, Stanley M. Moskowitz, Scott Muller, then the agency's general counsel, explained that the interrogations were reported in detailed agency cables and that officials intended to destroy the videotapes as soon as the agency's inspector general completed a review of them. "Senator Roberts listened carefully and gave his assent," the C.I.A. memo says. [...]

Last August, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. directed Mr. Durham to expand his inquiry to consider whether the interrogations themselves broke any law. Mr. Holder noted that in at least a few instances, interrogators went beyond methods authorized by the Justice Department, including threatening Mr. Nashiri with a pistol and a power drill.

Those incidents were also described in the 2003 briefing for Mr. Roberts; when they were described, "Senator Roberts winced," according to the memo on the briefing.

The same document says that Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the Democrat who had preceded Mr. Roberts as chairman, had proposed that the committee "undertake its own 'assessment' of the enhanced interrogation," the C.I.A.'s term for coercive methods. Agency officials told Mr. Roberts that they would oppose allowing any Senate staff members to observe interrogations or visit the secret overseas prisons where they were taking place.

"Quickly, the senator interjected that he saw no reason for the committee to pursue such a request and could think of '10 reasons right off why it is a terrible idea,' " the report says.

Roberts's office denied to the NYT that the senator was aware of criminal conduct, but did not (or perhaps could not) elaborate.

I've long believed Pat Roberts was the worst Senate Intelligence Committee chairman imaginable during the Bush/Cheney era -- the man basically took the position of "whatever Bush wants to do is fine by me" -- but it's nevertheless a little surprising to learn he may have given his assent to a felony cover-up.

A PROCESS TO EMULATE, NOT SCRAP.... Najibullah Zazi represented a serious terrorist threat to the United States, arguably the most important since 9/11. He'd been recruited and trained by al Qaeda; he'd bought bomb materials; and he'd traveled to New York with bomb-making instructions in his laptop.

Obama administration officials thwarted Zazi's plan and took him into custody. Yesterday, in a civilian court, Zazi pleaded guilty on terrorism charges and will spend the rest of the his life behind bars. Given Republican rhetoric and the larger debate, it's worth appreciating just how significant this success story is. It's not just a victory for law enforcement and intelligence gathering -- tools the GOP mocks -- it's also a victory for the legal process the right is desperate to circumvent.

Law enforcement sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation continues, said Zazi began to accelerate his cooperation after authorities charged his Afghan-born father with crimes and threatened to charge his mother with immigration offenses -- options that are not available in the military justice system.

Notice that last part? Zazi was Mirandized and given a lawyer, and he nevertheless cooperated with federal officials and became a valuable source of intelligence. Because we tortured him? No, because we utilized the criminal justice system, rather than throwing him in Gitmo and/or trying him through military commissions.

By sticking to the existing process -- following the same process other modern presidents have followed -- Zazi has shared with officials information about his activities, training, accomplices, and overseas associations.

Adam Serwer emphasized a point that often goes overlooked:

[T]he only reason Republicans are insisting on using military courts in all circumstances is because they "sound" tougher. In practice, civilian courts hand out harsher sentences and are better equipped to handle terrorism cases. They also provide better incentives for providing accurate information on the part of the defendants.

The Zazi case is a textbook example of a process that works. Why anyone would condemn this process and insist on a less effective alternative is a mystery to me.

To think Republican rhetoric in this debate is compelling is to pay no attention to current events.

QUOTE OF THE DAY.... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has heard quite a few cries of late from Republicans about how truly awful it is to vote on legislation by majority rule. I get the feeling he's tired of it.

Reid said reconciliation had been used 21 times since 1981, mostly by Republicans when they were in control of the Senate for the passage of items like the Bush tax cuts. Under reconciliation, Democrats would need a simple majority in the Senate to pass legislation, as opposed to the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

"They should stop crying about reconciliation as if it's never been done before," Reid said.

Following Senate Democrats' weekly luncheon, Reid said "nothing is off the table" but that "realistically, they should stop crying about this. It's been done 21 times before."

Reid added that he recommends Republicans "go back and look at history," at which point they'll realize that GOP majorities used reconciliation "more than anyone else."

I'm delighted to hear Reid explain this to reporters, for a variety of reasons. First, Reid' observations are accurate. I'm old-fashioned, I know, but I find the addition of truth to the debate heartening.

Second, it's something reporters on the Hill really need to hear. If Democrats pursue health care reform through reconciliation, as is extremely likely, the media will be tempted to do what Republicans tell outlets to do -- characterize this as some kind of abuse or legislative "trick." Reid's remarks today, then, were a reminder for reporters who may have forgotten -- Republicans have used reconciliation plenty of times, on plenty of bills. GOP officials who whine about this should, at a minimum, be asked why Dems can't use the same legislative tools Republicans have used.

And third, the "stop crying" rhetoric conveys an image of strength for the majority. The way Reid made it sound, Republicans are whining, while Democrats are trying to govern.

Seems like the kind of message Dems may want to repeat as often as possible.

WH: PUBLIC OPTION LACKS NECESSARY CONGRESSIONAL SUPPORT.... There's been ample speculation in recent days about where the White House stands on the public option, and how far it's willing to go to help make it happen. Last week, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the administration would "absolutely" support the provision if that's what lawmakers decided to pursue, and yesterday, Robert Gibbs said the issue is up to the Senate leadership.

So, why does it seem as if the White House is reluctant to stick its neck out on this? Apparently because the West Wing doesn't think the votes are there.

Gibbs said flatly that the White House doesn't believe there's enough support in Congress to get it passed.

Asked directly whether the President's failure to include the public option in his proposal means he views the public option as dead, Gibbs didn't exactly dispute this interpretation.

"There are some that are supportive of this," Gibbs said. But he added: "There isn't enough political support in the majority to get this through."

It's certainly possible that Gibbs' analysis is correct. In the Senate, public option supporters have quickly put together an impressive group of signatures in support of the provision. But even now, the total is less than half of what's needed -- and Rockefeller's comments yesterday make it seem as if a Senate majority may not materialize, regardless of what the White House signals.

But let's also not overlook the House. In my conversations with aides this week, there's a strong sense that the majority is going to need a few (or more) Dems who voted against reform in November to vote for it now. The White House, then, is very likely thinking about how to shape the reform package to make it more attractive to some of the Blue Dogs whose votes will be necessary to ensure passage.

What's more, I realize that Gibbs's response today seems unexpected, but it doesn't strike me as all that surprising -- if the White House thought the votes were there for a public option, the administration would have included the idea in the proposal unveiled yesterday. The fact that the president's version of reform didn't include the idea should have made it pretty clear that the White House thinks, correctly or not, that public option support remains insufficient.

I should note, though, that Gibbs's comments need not be the end of the public option. The White House is under the impression that the votes just aren't there to pass this specific measure, but if proponents on and off the Hill want to prove otherwise, there's still time to do just that. Gibbs didn't say the president opposes the public option -- Obama has said repeatedly he supports the idea, and would like to see it in the final bill -- he just said he thinks the public option lacks the support it needs in Congress.

If public option advocates want to prove Gibbs wrong, now's their chance.

CBO SEES STIMULUS MAKING A BIG DIFFERENCE.... The independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reports today that President Obama's economic recovery package created up to 2.1 million jobs in the fourth quarter on 2009. Just another little tidbit to consider as part of the larger debate on the efficacy of the stimulus.

During the fourth quarter of 2009, the stimulus added "between 1.0 million and 2.1 million to the number of workers employed in the United States," the CBO said.

The stimulus also boosted the country's economic growth by 1.5 to 3.5 percent during the time period and lowered the nation's unemployment rate by between 0.5 and 1.1 percentage points.

In the report, the CBO noted that economic growth in 2009 was worse than they had predicted at the time that the stimulus was enacted, but that was due to a weaker economy than originally expected, rather than any failings of the stimulus. [...]

The CBO also said that in the fourth quarter the stimulus package increased the number of full-time jobs by between 1.4 and 3 million compared to the number of jobs that would have existed without the package.

Maybe someone should let Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) know; I hear he's confused about some of these details.

WORST. ANALOGY. EVER.... Independent election analyst Charlie Cook believes House Democrats are going to have an extremely bad election cycle this year. He's hardly alone in that regard. But as analogies go, this is awfully foolish.

Cook has, of late, been extremely down on Democrats' chances -- an attitude born, he argued in the interview, of "fundamental, total miscalculations from the very, very beginning" by the White House about the direction to take the country. Cook added that the White House's miscalculations in terms of their agenda were "of proportions comparable to President George W. Bush's decision to go into Iraq."

This wasn't just some off-the-cuff rhetoric gone awry -- Cook seriously believes the decision to pursue health care reform is comparable to the decision to invade Iraq.

I just don't understand this kind of thinking. President Obama took office and began doing exactly what he told voters he would do. Cook believes this represented a "miscalculation" on the White House's part. But what is it Cook would have encouraged the White House to do? Obama was elected by a wide margin to pursue the agenda he presented as a candidate. The president's numbers have dropped in the face of congressional dysfunction and a still-struggling economy, but as of today's Gallup tracking poll, Obama's approval rating is still 51%.

Cook is apparently of the opinion that the president would have been far better off focusing all of his attention on the economy. But this advice that doesn't really mean anything.

The Iraq analogy, though, is what really rankles here. The president was elected, at least in part, to deliver on health care reform. The initiative stumbled in the face of an intense misinformation campaign and conservative obstructionism, but the underlying goal is and has been worthwhile. The truth and policy merit has consistently been on the White House's side.

Conversely, the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary, ran counter to America's interests, and was sold to the public through deception and demagoguery.

To hear Cook tell it, Obama should have never tried to fix a dysfunctional health care system, just as Bush should have never gone to war against a country that wasn't a threat. But that's crazy -- the health care system really doesn't work, and Americans have long demanded a change. Iraq, meanwhile, really didn't have WMD. Is there not a qualitative difference between bringing coverage/security to Americans and invading a country under false pretenses, followed by badly screwing up the occupation? Does it not matter that Bush created a crisis, while Obama inherited one?

Cook has responded to criticism on this by insisting that since the reform push hurt the president politically -- and Iraq hurt Bush politically -- the comparison is sound. Perhaps in an amoral calculation, there's something to this.

But Obama saw a crisis and pushed for a reasonable and effective solution. Bush saw a crisis and made one of the worst, costliest, and deadliest decisions any modern president has made. The former is positioned to improve the nation's interests; the latter undermined them.

Cook sees a superficial similarity. I see a terribly flawed analogy.

THE NON-EXISTENT GOP ALTERNATIVE.... When inviting participants to the White House health care summit, President Obama urged Republicans to "put forward their own comprehensive bill ... and make it available online," just as Democrats have done.

We've known for a while that GOP leaders would ignore the request and not offer a comprehensive bill. The big hint came last week when a spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, "We will not be offering a comprehensive bill." Another senior GOP aide added today that Republicans "fundamentally disagree" with the very idea of putting together a comprehensive bill.

But this only encourages the White House to keep talking about it. Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote an item today emphasizing the importance of giving the public an opportunity to evaluate competing approaches to the problem.

That's why yesterday the White House posted online the President's proposal for bridging the differences between the Senate- and House-passed health insurance reform bills. The proposal puts American families and small business owners in control of their own health care. It makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle-class tax cuts for health care in history, it ends discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, holds insurance companies accountable, and reduces our deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 years.

But you don't have to take our word for it: the proposal is posted right here at WhiteHouse.gov for everyone to examine. You can read through the plan's bipartisan ideas section by section, or you can select your health care status and find out what the proposal would mean for you. You can even submit a question for our policy staff to answer.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/proposal

What you can't do just yet is read about the Republicans' consensus plan -- because so far they haven't announced what proposal they'll be bringing to the table.

In an interesting little twist, the administration has even offered to publish a Republican alternative proposal on the White House website, posting them side by side for Americans to review and evaluate.

The Republicans offered a response yesterday. It wasn't very good.

House Republican Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office urged Gibbs instead to "talk with his boss," who only last month discussed healthcare reform with the chamber's GOP members at their annual retreat.

"Our health care alternative -- the full text of the legislation -- has been available at healthcare.gop.gov for months, which President Obama knows, since he discussed it with us in Baltimore a few weeks ago," spokesman Michael Steel said.

There are three problems with this. First, the GOP alternative is made up of four key areas -- all of which have already been incorporated into the Democratic proposals.

Second, this is the House GOP bill. The goal is to see a Republican proposal embraced by both chambers' caucuses -- an official GOP proposal for the party.

And third, House Republicans posted this months ago. Is it still their plan? Has it evolved or adapted at all? Democrats don't know unless the GOP says so. If this is the Republican plan on health care policy, GOP leaders can present it as such. They haven't.

This is a real area of vulnerability for Republicans, and they know it. Democrats have presented (and passed) a solid piece of legislation that addresses a serious national crisis. It's paid for and it'll work. Republicans have presented ... not a whole lot.

There's a leadership gap between the parties and it's showing.

TUESDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP.... Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) got some good news today when a Quinnipiac poll showed him leading former Rep. John Kasich (R) by five, 44% to 39%."There has been an improvement in voters' views of Gov. Ted Strickland," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "The movement is a few points, but it is consistent across a number of measures."

* In Florida, a new Rasmussen poll shows Rep. Kendrick Meek (D), the likely Democratic candidate for the Senate this year, trailing both Republicans by wide margins.

* With Tea Party activist Jon Ashjian running for the Senate in Nevada, a new poll shows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) in a more competitive position against his GOP challengers.

* Religious right leader James Dobson threw his support to Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) yesterday, further cementing Perry's support with the GOP's right-wing base.

* In related news, the latest survey from PPP shows Perry leading Texas' Republican gubernatorial primary by nine points over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, 40% to 31%. Tea Party activist Debra Medina has seen her support slip, and the poll shows her with 20%.

* Disappointing Republicans in Connecticut, former Rep. Chris Shays (R) announced yesterday that he will not run for governor this year.

* In Maryland, Eric Wargotz is running for the Republican Senate nomination. Wargotz proclaimed over the weekend that he does not believe President Obama "was born in the United States."

* Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D) appears to have the inside edge among Democrats in Indiana's Senate race, but Rep. Baron Hill (D) acknowledged yesterday he's "open to the idea" of running for Senate.

* Former congressman and recently-released felon James Traficant has announced he's leaving the Democratic Party to run for Congress in Ohio as an independent.

STEELE'S CHAMPAGNE WISHES AND CAVIAR DREAMS.... It's been a couple of weeks since RNC Chairman Michael Steele has been the subject of scorn. I hope he enjoyed the respite; it appears to be over.

Republican National Chairman Michael Steele is spending twice as much as his recent predecessors on private planes and paying more for limousines, catering and flowers -- expenses that are infuriating the party's major donors who say Republicans need every penny they can get for the fight to win back Congress.

Most recently, donors grumbled when Steele hired renowned chef Wolfgang Puck's local crew to cater the RNC's Christmas party inside the trendy Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, and then moved its annual winter meeting from Washington to Hawaii.

For some major GOP donors, both decisions were symbolic of the kind of wasteful spending habits they claim has become endemic to his tenure at the RNC. When Ken Mehlman served as the committee chairman during the critical 2006 midterm elections, the holiday party was held in a headquarters conference room and Chic-fil-A was the caterer.

A POLITICO analysis of expenses found that compared with 2005, the last comparable year preceding a midterm election, the committee's payments for charter flights doubled; the number of sedan contractors tripled, and meal expenses jumped from $306,000 to $599,000.

A longtime Republican fundraiser said, "Michael Steele is an imperial chairman. He flies in private aircraft. He drives in private cars. He has private consultants that are paid ridiculous retainers. He fancies himself a presidential candidate and wants all of the trappings and gets them by using other people's money."

Steele's budgetary decisions have been the subject of widespread consternation for months, especially given the fact that the RNC isn't raising the kind of money it should be with competitive midterms coming up. By one account, Steele's spending spree in 2009 left the RNC with its worst election-year cash flow this decade.

It was easier for Steele to justify this spending when he pointed to successful gubernatorial campaigns in New Jersey and Virginia. It's a little more difficult to justify when expense reports point to lavish spending on private planes, limousines, catering, and flowers.

And it certainly doesn't help that Steele is simultaneously using his position to line his own pockets, most notably through his outside paid speeches and a book written in secret.

It's far too early to say with any confidence what will happen in the 2010 elections, but if Republicans fall short of their own sky-high expectations, expect Michael Steele to get all kinds of blame.

APPARENTLY, SIZE MATTERS.... For nearly a year, one of the principal Republican complaints about health care reform is that Democratic proposals are long -- as in, have too many pages to read. It's not really an argument, per se, but for the GOP, physically-large pieces of legislation must be considered bad because ... well, just because.

We've talked about how absurd this is as a substantive matter. But let's also note that these same Republicans are also inclined to complain in the other direction.

A spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner today ridiculed President Obama's health care proposal because it's too short.

"The White House's 'plan' consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States' economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they're complaining that they can't find our plan on their own website? C'mon," said the spokesman, Michael Steel, in an email to reporters.

It's hard to know where to start with something this dumb.

First, health care reform would not "reorganize one-sixth of the United States' economy." It's a $14 trillion economy, and a health care plan that would cost about $90 billion a year. I realize Republicans are bad at math, but this is ridiculous.

Second, Boehner's office probably should have read the 11-page document released by the White House yesterday. It is not a blueprint for an entire overhaul of the American health care system -- it's a description of recommended changes to the House and Senate bills that have already passed. Though the details might be over the GOP's heads, the document is pretty substantive and detailed, and offers more depth than anything Republicans have offered to date.

And third, just as a basic matter of consistency, right-wing lawmakers don't get to complain that reform proposals are too long and too short. Just pick one and go with it.

Regardless, the nonsense from Boehner's office is evidence of the sophistication we're hearing from GOP officials in advance of Thursday's summit at the White House. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was on "Good Morning America" earlier, and described the plan that incorporates Democratic and Republican ideas as "a non-starter." Asked if he thought there's any room for possible compromise, Cantor added, "There can't be."

Since Cantor had already declared that Republicans "will say no to this health care bill," none of this came as especially surprising.

STEVE KING'S SUSPECT SYMPATHIES.... Let's be clear at the outset: I don't think Republicans are terrorist sympathizers. I find it offensive when Republicans say they want to see their party emulate the Taliban, and I find it bizarre when Republicans inadvertently help al Qaeda's p.r. strategy, but I don't think for a second that the GOP is somehow pro-terrorism.

That said, Steve King, a right-wing congressman from Iowa, seems to have a pretty twisted worldview when it comes to these issues.

Last week, Joe Stack crashed a small plane into an office building in Austin, Texas. Stack, apparently a deranged man with a grudge against the government in general, and the Internal Revenue Service in specific, killed at least three people, including himself.

Lee Fang reports that Rep. King seems oddly sympathetic to Stack's motivation for murdering innocent Americans.

ThinkProgress caught up with Rep. Steve King (R-IA) at CPAC to talk about the attack in Texas. Asked if the right-wing anti-tax rhetoric might have motivated the attack, King implicitly agreed, noting that he had been a leading opponent of the IRS for some time. He noted that although the attack was "sad," "by the same token," it was justified because once the right succeeds at abolishing the IRS, "it's going to be a happy day for America."

He sidestepped the question of the legitimacy of the terrorists' grievances, but sympathized by saying that "I've had a sense of 'why is the IRS in my kitchen.' Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back".

Asked specifically if Stack had legitimate grievances that led him to murder, King said he didn't know.

Another report indicated that King told conservative activists he could "empathize" with the suicide bomber, and encouraged his audience to "implode" other IRS offices.

For any American to talk like this is pretty radical. For a member of Congress to say things like this in public points to a truly disturbing development.

Here's the follow-up for King: if a man with grievances against the United States government flew an airplane into a building, killing innocent Americans, and his name was Ahmed instead of Joe, would you be this sympathetic in trying to understand his crime?

TWO STEPS FORWARD ON PUBLIC OPTION, ONE STEP BACK.... The letter to Senate leaders on passing a public option through reconciliation picked up its 22nd and 23rd signatures over the last day, with Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) joining their colleagues.

Far more discouraging, though, were remarks from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), an enthusiastic supporter of the public option, who conceded yesterday he's not inclined to pursue the measure through reconciliation.

"I'm probably not going to vote for that, although I'm strongly for the public option, because I think it creates, at a time when we really need as much bipartisan[ship] ... as possible. "

Rockefeller added: "I don't think you [pursue] something like the public option, which cannot pass, will not pass. And if we get the Senate bill -- both through the medical loss ratio and the national plans, which have in that, every one of them has to have one not-for-profit plan, which is sort of like a public option."

In making his sentiment known, Rockefeller becomes perhaps the most unexpected skeptic of the public-option-via-reconciliation route. The Senator was a huge booster of a government run insurance option during the legislation drafting process this past year.

It's worth clarifying that Rockefeller seems to support approving changes to the Senate bill through reconciliation, consistent with the White House plan presented yesterday, but is opposed to pursuing a public option through this route.

As much as Rockefeller's work on this has been appreciated, his rationale isn't exactly persuasive. He's afraid of appearing "partisan"? Funny, Senate Republicans, who refuse to give legislation up-or-down votes at levels unseen in American history, don't seem to worry much about appearances.

Nevertheless, as a practical matter, Rockefeller's hesitancy may very well make the larger effort impossible. Dems would need at least 50 senators to give the public option a chance, and Rockefeller was considered a likely ally, not opponent.

Unless Rockefeller changes his mind -- or unless he's bluffing as some kind of larger and hard-to-understand strategy -- an uphill climb has gotten considerably steeper.

LIMBAUGH, HEALTH CARE, AND 'REPARATIONS'.... Once in a while, the dog-whistle messages from the far-right are enough to make one's ears bleed. Take Rush Limbaugh, for example, one of the most powerful and influential figures in modern Republican politics.

On his radio show yesterday, the right-wing host condemned health care reform as "a civil rights bill" and "reparations." Seriously.

Limbaugh has spent plenty of time talking about President Obama and "reparations," and has also had plenty to say about health care reform, but as far as I can tell, yesterday was one of those rare instances in which the host combined the two.

I'm going to go on a limb here and describe this as about the most racist thing a major American media personality has said in quite a while. This is about Limbaugh trying -- with no subtlety at all -- to stir up racial fears and anxiety in the hopes of blocking improvements to a dysfunctional health care system, which has repeatedly screwed over a fair amount of Limbaugh's audience.

The racism isn't even restrained. Limbaugh has trashed progressive efforts to improve America's health care system for years, but notice he didn't start talking about "reparations" and comparing reform to a "civil rights bill" until the President of the United States was African American. The nauseating message is about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Ezra added, "It's one of the odder elements of American politics that Democrats have routinely denounced ACORN and MoveOn.org but Republicans feel no compunction to run from this hatemonger."

Quite right. Dems keep fringe liberals at arm's length, but Republicans can't wait to associate themselves with a racist, drug-addled radio personality, who seems to have more influence in GOP politics than anyone. Indeed, when a Republican dares to disagree with Limbaugh in public, he/she invariably reverses course and begs Rush for forgiveness.

Now, I know how easy it is to say, "Democrats should make hay of this." The DNC can't chase after ever bouncing ball, and turn every stupid thing said on a radio show into a national controversy.

But it would be encouraging to see something come of this. Ideally, Republican leaders would be asked a simple question: "Rush Limbaugh sees the health care debate in racial terms, and considers the president's plan 'reparations.' Do you agree?"

THE 'BEGINNING OF A NEW DAY'?.... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) scheduled a vote for yesterday afternoon to end a Republican filibuster of a scaled-down jobs bill, and within a couple of hours of the vote, no one knew how it was going to turn out. In fact, there had already been some second-guessing about Reid's strategy.

But when it came time to vote on ending the GOP's obstruction of the legislation, things turned out better than expected.

Five Republican senators broke ranks with their party on Monday to advance a $15 billion job-creation measure put forward by Democrats, a rare bipartisan breakthrough after months in which Republicans had held together to a remarkable degree in an effort to thwart President Obama's agenda.

The 62-to-30 vote -- two more yeses than the minimum required to get past a procedural roadblock -- cleared the way for the Senate to vote Wednesday to approve the measure, which Democrats said would create tens of thousands of new jobs at a time when the unemployment rate is hovering near double digits and is expected to remain high for years to come.

The roll-call is online. A total of five Republican senators -- Scott Brown (Mass.), Kit Bond (Mo.), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and George Voinovich (Ohio) -- broke ranks and agreed to let the Senate vote up or down on the legislation. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) was the only Democrat to side with Republicans and try to block consideration of the jobs bill.

Given the results, spirits were high in the chamber last night. Before the vote, Reid implored Senate Republicans to demonstrate that they're "serious about legislating." After the vote, he told his colleagues, "I hope this is the beginning of a new day in the Senate."

I hope so, too. But how one interprets last night's developments depends on whether one is a glass-half-full kind of person.

On the one hand, we saw five Republicans -- far more than usual -- break ranks and end a ridiculous filibuster, making it possible for the Senate to approve a jobs bill in bipartisan fashion. On the other hand, only five GOP senators were willing to let the Senate vote on a modest, scaled-back jobs bill in the midst of an unemployment crisis, despite the fact that Republicans actually like what's in the bill.

It's either a rare and encouraging breakthrough, or a relief that comes from the soft bigotry of low expectations.

As for the measure itself, it's a very limited jobs bill, the bulk of which is a payroll-tax exemption for companies who hire workers this year. It also features a $1,000 tax credit for employers who keep new workers on the job for at least a year, a provision to allow businesses to write off some capital investments, and a one-year reauthorization of the Highway Trust Fund.

If this strikes you as too modest an approach to make much of a difference, you have plenty of company. That said, the Democratic leadership re-emphasized yesterday that this will be the first of several bills related to job creation to be considered in the near future.

MONDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Afghanistan: "An airstrike launched Sunday by United States Special Forces helicopters against what international troops believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing as many as 27 civilians in the worst such case since at least September, Afghan officials said Monday."

* Senate vote on jobs bill still set for later today, though whether Republicans will allow senators to vote on the stripped-down bill remains unclear.

* For those keeping score, there are now 21 Democratic senators who support using reconciliation to vote on a public option.

* New consumer protections on credit cards go into effect today.

* The next step on education policy: "President Obama will seek to raise academic standards across the country by requiring states to certify that their benchmarks for reading and mathematics put students on track for college or a career, administration officials said Sunday."

* I can only hope that Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) does not support terrorist acts against the government of the United States.

* Oklahoma's outrageous anti-abortion law has been deemed unconstitutional. Good.

* Foreign militaries that have made the transition to allowing openly gay service members have not endured disruptions. Unless the right thinks the American military is weaker than those foreign militaries, our transition shouldn't be a problem, either.

* The "Volcker rule" picks up endorsements from five former Treasury secretaries.

* Powerful piece from Adam Serwer: "Whereas al-Zawahiri and bin Laden turned to al-Sharif for a method to circumvent the plain language of the Koran, Bush and Cheney went to Yoo and Jay Bybee to circumvent the plain language of the law."

* I still find it hard to believe that the Washington Post hired Marc Thiessen as a columnist.

* ACORN undergoing some pretty significant institutional changes.

* Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) seems to be getting more and more confused.

* Clarence Thomas hasn't said a word on the court in four years.

* Fact checking the Sunday shows.

* Bruce Bartlett makes Glenn Reynolds look pretty foolish.

* Even tenure isn't enough to shield professors from layoffs.

* Fox News hatchet-man Griff Jenkins loves being the ambusher, not the ambushee.

* Alexander Haig dies at age 85.

* Leonard Pitts Jr.: "To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth.... [O]bjective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it's a wall. And you shouldn't have to hit it to find that out."

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

CLYBURN OPTIMISTIC ABOUT REFORM'S FATE.... Following up on an earlier item, there are some entirely legitimate concerns about securing a House majority on health care reform. It's worth noting, though, that the Democratic leader whose job it is to count votes not only seems confident, but made the audacious claim that reform may get more votes next time than the 220-vote majority it got in November.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) ... made his comments just after President Barack Obama unveiled his detailed health plan Monday morning. The move was intended to set the agenda for the bipartisan healthcare summit at the White House on Thursday.

"I do believe that if what I have seen and what I've been hearing is close to being accurate, I do believe that we can get there in the House," he said on MSNBC. "We got there with some people holding out for some things that we have now gotten in the Senate plan and in the president's proposal.

"I do believe there is more fertile soil today than when we first took this up."

At first blush, this seems pretty hard to believe. On second blush, too. Democrats seem more anxious and fearful than they were in November, and they have three fewer votes than they did at the time. A senior White House official said House Speaker Pelosi perceives passing reform as "possibly doable," which isn't exactly a rock-solid guarantee.

But Clyburn is directly responsible for counting votes, and I can't think of any obvious reasons he'd have to exaggerate what's possible.

Are there some Blue Dogs who'll go for the more moderate Senate version? Are there some retiring incumbents who were feeling vulnerable but are now liberated? Might Kucinich decide that a step forward is ultimately better than a step backward?

ZAZI TO PLEAD GUILTY.... I'm sure these encouraging developments will draw criticism from conservatives; I just can't quite figure out why.

Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant who was a key player in what the federal authorities have said was one of the most serious threats to the United States since the 9/11 attacks, is expected to plead guilty to terrorism charges this afternoon, a law enforcement official said.

Mr. Zazi is scheduled to appear before Judge Raymond J. Dearie at Federal District Court in Brooklyn at 2:30 p.m. to plead guilty conspiracy to detonate bombs in the United States, according to the official. [...]

Mr. Zazi, who was born in Afghanistan and was raised in Pakistan and later Flushing, Queens, where he attended high school, was working as an airport shuttle driver in Denver when he was arrested in September 2009.

The federal authorities said he had received weapons and explosives training at a Qaeda camp in Pakistan, bought beauty products that contained the raw materials to build a bomb and traveled to Queens with bomb-making instructions in his laptop on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

His arrest was one of the key national security/law enforcement success stories of the last year, which reportedly is paying dividends beyond just preventing a deadly attack -- Zazi is apparently cooperating with officials and providing intelligence as part of his plea agreement.

Indeed, Zazi has been sharing quite a bit of late, talking not only about his activities, but also his training, his accomplices, and his associations overseas.

U.S. officials now have all of this information without torturing Zazi, and without throwing him in Gitmo.

Indeed, Josh Marshall noted today, "One of the things that never gets mentioned in the endless praise of military tribunals is that their actual record is really bad." So true.

The Zazi case is a textbook example of a process that works -- and it works because it ignores the hysterical cries of Republican hacks. Here's a case in which we stopped a terrorist through law enforcement and intelligence gathering (which the GOP considers an example of "weakness"), read him his rights and gave him a lawyer (which, again, the GOP finds offensive), gained valuable information through torture-free questioning (which the GOP seems to think is impossible), brought him to a civilian courtroom (another thing the GOP finds outrageous), and will soon lock him up in an American prison (which the GOP considers dangerous for some reason).

By any reasonable measure, the only people who find Republicans credible on these issues are those who aren't paying attention.

Post Script: I should note that if the White House wanted to shamelessly exploit this success story to prove a larger point, it'd be just fine with me.

IF ONLY OBAMA'S CRITICS PAID CLOSER ATTENTION.... The Economist believes President Obama would have more legislative successes under his belt if only he'd done more to reach out to his opponents.

It is not so much that America is ungovernable, as that Mr Obama has done a lousy job of winning over Republicans and independents to the causes he favours. If, instead of handing over health care to his party's left wing, he had lived up to his promise to be a bipartisan president and courted conservatives by offering, say, reform of the tort system, he might have got health care through; by giving ground on nuclear power, he may now stand a chance of getting a climate bill.

Matt Yglesias responds by noting one of my favorite anecdotes from the entire debate over health care reform. From 10 months ago:

[R]ight there in the Cabinet Room, the President put a proposal on the table, according to two people who were present. Obama said he was willing to curb malpractice awards, a move long sought by the Republicans and certain to bring strong opposition from the trial lawyers who fund the Democratic Party.

What, he wanted to know, did the Republicans have to offer in return? Nothing, it turned out. Republicans were unprepared to make any concessions, if they had any to make.

I realize The Economist is on the other side of the pond, but if it's going to be reflecting on U.S. developments, it's going to have to do better than this. The White House "handed over health care to his party's left wing"? Of course -- how could we forget the time President Obama sided with Dennis Kucinich on single-payer? Or vowed to veto reform unless it included a public option and Medicare buy-in?

As for the notion that the White House has made concessions on nuclear power, and thus stands a chance at passing a climate bill, this too is mistaken*. In the wake of last week's announcement, Republican senators who agreed with Obama wouldn't even mention his name in their press release, better yet signal a willingnes to compromise on emissions. Indeed, the president has also said he'd accept Republican demands for more coastal drilling, as part of a compromise on a climate bill. In response, Republicans said what they always say, "No." (In truth, they not only said "no," they said, "We're going to block Congress from even voting up or down on the legislation.")

What's frustrating is the notion, too often accepted by the media establishment, that the president has somehow been a rigid ideologue. That's not just wrong; it's insane. On literally every major piece of legislation of the past 13 months, Obama has been willing -- anxious, even -- to work with GOP lawmakers. Republicans have slapped away his outreached hand in every instance.

As Paul Krugman explained today, "Unfortunately, the commentariat seems to be full of people who know, just know, that Obama isn't getting Republican cooperation because he's in the thrall of left-wingers -- and just make stuff up to bolster their case. The truth, which is obvious from every day's news, is that there is nothing, nothing at all, that Obama could offer -- other than switching parties -- that would get him any GOP cooperation."

I don't even think this is controversial. Indeed, Republican leaders would likely agree that this is exactly right.

So, how could The Economist manage to mangle reality so badly?

* edited

CRIST COMES AROUND (AGAIN) ON STIMULUS.... A year ago, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) became one of the highest-profile Republicans to support President Obama's stimulus package, and appeared alongside the president at a public event in the Sunshine State. Since then, supporting economic recovery has become scandalous in GOP circles -- and Crist's career is in jeopardy for having backed the legislation that saved the country from a depression.

The governor, now running for the Senate, has struggled badly to defend his sound judgment in the face of right-wing attacks. At times Crist has even denied supporting the measure he publicly endorsed.

Now, Crist is trying a new tack -- refusing to apologize for being right.

Accepting stimulus money was the "responsible, right thing to do," Crist told reporters at the White House on Monday. "It puts people above politics," Crist said. When asked about whether he had any regrets, Crist said he had "none whatsoever."

"I don't apologize for it at all," Crist added. "It was the right thing to do. We needed the money."

Crist added this morning, "Our economy was going off into the abyss and if we didn't have those monies, we would have had 87,000 people out of work today in the Sunshine State. Twenty thousand of those are educators, and how many people does that translate into in terms of the children they teach?" He went on to describe the idea as "a common sense approach."

Asked about Republicans who say the stimulus hasn't created any jobs, Crist said, "That's not the case in Florida."

To be sure, plenty of Republican governors have reached the same conclusion. Even Republican governors who claim to hate the stimulus actually love the stimulus. GOP lawmakers on the Hill who insist that the stimulus hasn't done any good -- or worse, the recovery effort actually hurt the economy -- have no allies or supporters outside their caucus room and far-right media outlets.

But Crist's renewed support for the stimulus is more interesting than most, because it's hurt him so badly in his Republican primary -- a primary race he's now losing.

Does Crist believe the economy is going to start improving, and he wants to take credit? Is he perhaps positioning himself to switch parties, realizing that Republicans have gone way too far to the right?

One thing's for sure -- up until recently, Crist wanted to pretend he had nothing to do with the stimulus, and now he's embracing it with both arms.

GOP STILL WON'T TAKE 'YES' FOR AN ANSWER.... If you check out the newly-reworked website for the White House's health care reform plan, there's a banner that reads, "Putting Americans In Control of Their Health Care." Underneath it are four areas of interest, including "Republican Ideas."

It's tempting to think that the "Republican Ideas" section would be the area in which the White House blasts GOP critics of reform and mocks them for not even trying to create a comprehensive reform package. Of course, the opposite is true. The headline on this page reads, "Republican Ideas Included in the President's Proposal."

It's clear that the American people want health insurance reform. They aren't interested in Democratic ideas or Republican ideas. They're interested in the best ideas to reduce costs, guarantee choices and ensure the highest quality care. They're interested in ideas that will put them back in control of their own health care.

Throughout the debate on health insurance reform, Republican concepts and proposals have been included in legislation. In fact, hundreds of Republican amendments were adopted during the committee mark-up process. As a result, both the Senate and the House passed key Republican proposals that are incorporated into the President's Proposal. [...]

In addition to the Republican ideas already included in the legislation that's passed the House and the Senate, the President's Proposal incorporates a number of additional proposals that were included in Republican plans that focus on combating waste, fraud and abuse in government.
The President remains open to other policies as well. And the purpose of the Bipartisan Summit is to review all ideas and ensure that the best ideas are included in the plan.

The page includes a lengthy list of Republican proposals that have already been incorporated into the package, and which the president supports.

Now, this isn't exactly new. The Republicans' "Solutions for America" page lists four health care planks -- and the basic structure of literally all four is already included in the Democratic plan.

But this hasn't made a difference because -- you guessed it -- Republicans don't actually want to solve the problem. The only way to satisfy GOP demands on health care policy is to kill the bill and let the problem get worse.

So, what's the point? It's about shaping the debate. Reality should matter, at least a little, when considering GOP talking points, and when Republicans and their allies claim that the reform proposal is "partisan" and that GOP ideas have been "ignored," they're lying.

When it comes to influencing public attitudes, Americans' sense of fairness leads them to think a good comprehensive package would include ideas from both parties. Well, in this case, that's exactly what Democrats are offering.

MORE INFORMATION MEANS MORE SUPPORT.... When evaluating public opinion on health care reform, there's an ongoing debate about how to interpret opposition to proposals. Democrats tend to argue, persuasively, that Americans who oppose reform are basing their concerns on misinformation -- too many people have seen too many misleading attack ads, and it's driving the poll numbers down.

Republicans argue that the public understands the details of the proposal just fine, and they simply don't like what they see. It's not about confusion, the GOP argues; it's about the substance and fundamental elements of the legislation.

There's ample reason to believe the Democratic explanation is the correct one. Take the results of the latest Newsweek poll, for example.

As Democrats struggle to salvage health-care-reform legislation, a new NEWSWEEK Poll shows that while a majority of Americans say they oppose Obama's plan, a majority actually support the key features of the legislation.... The more people know about the legislation, the more likely they are to support major components of it.

When asked about Obama's plan (without being given any details about what the legislation includes), 49 percent opposed it and 40 percent were in favor. But after hearing key features of the legislation described, 48 percent supported the plan and 43 percent remained opposed.

Let's not rush past that too quickly. Respondents were asked what they think about the Democratic plan, and opponents outnumbered supporters. Those respondents were then given information about what's actually in the plan, at which point supporters outnumbered opponents.

In fact, support jumped 10 points among self-identified moderates, eight points among self-identified independents, and 10 points among women.

We've seen this phenomenon before. A month ago, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report noting that while Americans were evenly divided in their feelings about the reform proposal, support for the plan grew when the public learned about the plan's details. And this has been common for months -- over the summer, in the middle of the right-wing freak-out, an NBC/WSJ poll found that 36% of Americans approved of the plan. When the plan was actually described, support jumped to 53%.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Opposition to health care reform has been driven by lies, misinformation, confusion, and fear. But the more Americans learn the truth, the more they like what they hear.

Moving forward, then, Democratic policymakers should have a very strong incentive to finish the job and pass reform -- it's the only way to turn the polls around, kill the caricature, and reap the rewards of a historic victory.

Public opinion is not immovable; Dems just have to give success a chance.

MONDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP.... Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* In Florida's closely watched GOP Senate primary, a new Rasmussen poll shows Marco Rubio building on his earlier leads, and now tops Florida Gov. Charlie Crist by 18 points, 54% to 36%.

* New York Gov. David Paterson (D) announced over the weekend that he will ignore everyone's advice and run for a second term. A new Siena College poll shows him trailing state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (D) in a primary by 42 points.

* Speaking of New York, the same Siena poll shows Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) leading her likely primary rival, Tennessee's Harold Ford Jr., 42% to 16%. Neither are especially well known statewide.

* In Pennsylvania, former Lt. Gov. Mark Singel (D) announced that he will run to succeed the late John Murtha in the 12th district. Murtha's widow, Joyce, will apparently not seek the seat.

* And speaking of the Keystone State, Rep. Jim Gerlach (R) got some good news when his primary challenger, Steve Welch, ended his campaign.

* Dispelling any rumors, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the House's longest-serving member, has announced he will seek re-election.

* Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) isn't retiring, either.

* Former representative and recently-released felon James Traficant (D-Ohio) is eyeing a comeback, but missed a filing deadline for candidates last week. Traficant may, however, still run as an independent.

* And Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R) won CPAC's 2012 straw poll on Saturday night.

WATCH BOTH CHAMBERS.... In general, it seems most of the talk about the fate of health care reform focuses on the Senate. To be sure, that makes some sense -- in light of Republicans' refusal to allow the Senate to vote, up or down, on key bills, it's the chamber that seems more likely to kill legislation.

With reconciliation now on the front-burner, the question becomes whether enough Senate Democrats can stick together and secure a majority.

But let's not forget that the House, which would be required to approve the Senate bill and a legislative fix, is facing a heavy-lift, too. The assumption that the House will be far less of a problem for reform proponents may prove to be wrong.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has signaled to the White House that it's unclear if there are enough votes in the House to pass the Senate bill.

The House version passed in November by a vote of 220-215, but since then three "yea" votes have vanished: Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Florida, retired; Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., passed away; and Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, R-Louisiana, has signaled he will not vote for the final bill.

That puts Pelosi in a starting-off point of 217 votes which is a majority of the current 433-member House of Representatives, but is also a tough starting line.... Pelosi believes passing the bill is "possibly doable," the senior White House official said. "But she may ultimately decide the math is impossible."

There are 255 House Dems, but among them are plenty of opponents of their party's reform efforts. There are Blue Dogs, who may or may not be more inclined to vote for a more moderate bill along the lines of the Senate plan, and there are liberals like Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) who've said they'll oppose Democratic plans that fall short of single-payer.

Moving forward, then, reform advocates will have plenty of phone calls to make -- to both chambers -- and the burden will be on President Obama and congressional leaders to pressure rank-and-file members to get this done. The pitch to Democratic members is probably pretty obvious -- I seem to recall a certain strategy memo a blogger wrote last month -- but antsy lawmakers, some of whom foolishly think failure is less scary than success, may need some reminders.

The alternative is the death of health care reform for another generation.

GAME ON.... As promised, the White House unveiled its health care reform proposal this morning, posting it online in advance of Thursday's bipartisan summit. Here's the 11-page blueprint (pdf) of what President Obama has in mind, and here's the shorter overview.

It's worth noting what the proposal isn't. For example, the White House is emphasizing that the administration materials do not constitute a compromise of the House and Senate bills, but rather, is the president's vision of what to do next. For that matter, the proposal isn't exactly a new comprehensive package, either -- it takes the House and Senate bills, and explains how Obama would like to see them improved in one final piece of legislation.

"We view this as the opening bid for the health meeting," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told reporters, adding, "We took our best shot at bridging the differences."

To that end, Ben Nelson's "Cornhusker Kickback" is gone as a sweetheart deal, and now all states will have the same Medicaid assistance. A Health Insurance Rate Authority, to serve as a check against insurers' rate hikes, would be created. The "donut hole" will be closed. The excise tax is part of the financing, but the eligibility threshold is raised, and implementation delayed until 2018, which should help ease concerns raised by unions.

There's no public option, though there wasn't expected to be one, and its fate will be considered later in the Senate.

Perhaps most importantly, Obama's plan improves the subsidy rates for those who'll be buying coverage, with a more generous package for the middle class than the Senate legislation.

As for legislative strategy, the White House seems fully on board with pursuing reconciliation in the Senate.

"The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on the call.

Pfeiffer said no decision had been made how to proceed, pending the outcome of the summit. But he added that Obama's proposal is designed to have "maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform."

That is the right way to characterize this -- call for an up-or-down vote, and characterize Republican obstructionism as something "extraordinary." If the GOP refuses to play a constructive role, Dems will have no choice but to proceed anyway.

Update: Igor Volsky did a really nice job with a table comparing the three different versions (House, Senate, White House).

GOP STIMULUS HYPOCRISY GETS EVEN MORE EMBARRASSING.... There's a reason Democrats have latched on to the story of Republican hypocrisy on the Recovery Act so enthusiastically -- the GOP is giving Dems a lot to work with.

Two weeks ago, the Washington Times found that "more than a dozen" Republican lawmakers, all of whom insisted that the stimulus package was an awful idea that couldn't possibly help the economy, privately urged the Department of Agriculture to send stimulus money to their states and districts, touting the investments' economic benefits. Last week, the Wall Street Journal moved the ball forward, pointing to "more than a dozen" GOP lawmakers who privately sought stimulus money from the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Forest Service.

Today, Bloomberg News takes this a step further.

Alabama Republicans Jo Bonner and Robert Aderholt took to the U.S. House floor in July, denouncing the Obama administration's stimulus plan for failing to boost employment. "Where are the jobs?" each of them asked.

Over the next three months, Bonner and Aderholt tried at least five times to steer stimulus-funded transportation grants to Alabama on grounds that the projects would help create thousands of jobs.

They joined more than 100 congressional Republicans and several Democrats who, after voting against the stimulus bill, wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood seeking money from $1.5 billion the plan set aside for local road, bridge, rail and transit grants. The $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed last year with no Republican votes in the House and three in the Senate.

Asked for an explanation, Republicans relied on the usual spin, insisting that the money was going to be spent anyway, so they wanted to help their constituents.

But, again, that doesn't change the hypocrisy. These same GOP officials said the stimulus is simply incapable of creating jobs and generating economic growth. But their letters to the administration prove that they actually believe recovery funds are capable of creating jobs and generating economic growth -- in their states and districts. It even leads Republicans to take credit for projects that wouldn't have existed if they'd had their way.

The Hill reported over the weekend that the hypocrisy story has given Democrats their "first real traction in weeks" in going on the offensive against Republicans. "For the first time in weeks, Republicans were clearly on the defensive," the article noted.

With that in mind, expect to hear even more about this as the year progresses.

POWELL ISN'T BUYING GOP SPIN, EITHER.... To the extent that Colin Powell is considered a credible figure on national security and foreign policy -- and for most Americans, he is, notwithstanding his tragic associations with selling the war in Iraq -- I suspect the Obama administration is pleased to have his support.

Yesterday, on CBS's "Face the Nation," host Bob Schieffer noted that Dick Cheney has invested heavily in trying to convince Americans that President Obama "is putting the nation's security at risk." Schieffer asked Powell if there's any truth to the attack on the administration.

Powell recited a series of security measures the Bush administration had put in place, and which Obama left intact. He added that President Obama has increased the effort against the Taliban and has been even more aggressive in targeting al Qaeda. "So," Powell said, "I don't know where the claim comes that we are less safe."

With respect to torture, Powell reminded the audience that even the Bush administration, towards the end of its second term, had "done away" with nearly all of the "extreme interrogation techniques" endorsed by Cheney.

With respect to military commissions, Powell added, "In eight years the military commissions have put three people on trial. Two of them served relatively short sentences and are free. One guy is in jail. Meanwhile, the federal courts -- our Article III, regular legal court system -- has put dozens of terrorists in jail and they're fully capable of doing it. So the suggestion that somehow a military commission is the way to go isn't borne out by the history of the military commissions. I think a lot of people think 'just give them to the military and the military will hammer them.' Well, guess what, officers in the military are obliged to follow the Constitution."

As for a "bottom-line answer," Powell added, "The nation is still at risk. Terrorists are out there. They're trying to get through. But to suggest that somehow we have become much less safer because of the actions of the administration, I don't think are borne out by the facts."

The remarks were a further reminder of the isolated nature of the Cheney wing -- the dominant wing -- of the Republican Party. The Obama administration's positions are enjoying the support of Powell, Gen. Petraeus, Adm. Mullen, the Pentagon, and national security experts from across the spectrum.

On the other hand we have the Cheneys and congressional Republicans, whose record on these issues is littered with painful failures, and whose credibility should be considered laughable among anyone who takes reality seriously.

STIMULATING TALK ON THE SUNDAY SHOWS.... With last week marking the first anniversary of the Recovery Act, there was a fair amount of talk on the Sunday shows about the efficacy of the stimulus. The observations were rather illustrative.

On "Fox News Sunday," Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R) "both agreed that President Obama's stimulus package has made some difference in their states' floundering unemployment rates." On the same program, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) conceded that the recovery effort "probably did have some impact" in creating taxpayer-financed jobs in his home state.

Around the same time, on CNN, Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R) described the Recovery Act as "a package of relief that the states needed urgently," which was "appropriate to stimulate the economy." He added that the president deserves praise for having "reached out ... on a bipartisan basis ... to try to put something together."

But of particular interest was the discussion on ABC's "This Week," when California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) were asked to address the stimulus effort. Host Terry Moran showed the governors a clip of Mitt Romney trashing the recovery initiative, leading to this exchange:

SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, you know, to me I find it interesting that you have a lot of the Republicans running around and pushing back on the stimulus money and saying this doesn't create any new jobs, and then they go out and they do the photo ops and they are posing with the big check and they say, isn't this great? Look what the kind of -- the kind of money I provide here for the state, and this is great money to create jobs, and this has created 10,000 new jobs and this has created 20,000 new jobs. And all of these kind of things. It doesn't match up. So it's exactly--

RENDELL: It's hypocrisy in the highest level.

SCHWARZENEGGER: I think, you know, of my Republican colleagues, but I think it's kind of politics, rather than thinking about only one thing, and this is how do we support the president, how do we support him and do everything that we can in order to go and stimulate the economy, get the economy back, and think about the people rather than politics.

I have been the first governor of the Republican governors to come out and to support the stimulus money because I say to myself, this is terrific, and anyone that says that it hasn't created the jobs, they should talk to the 150,000 people that have been getting jobs in California.

MORAN: Private sector?

SCHWARZENEGGER: Yes, for the private sector and also from the public sector. I mean, if it is teachers, if it is university professors, if it is people that are building infrastructure and stuff like that. I mean in every category, there is jobs that have been created in California, 150,000. This is 150,000 people that are going home today with a check that are providing for the family, that can buy the textbooks for their kids, that are feeling wanted and needed and feeling productive. I mean, a better job, it isn't just a job, it's all of those kind of other things. So I'm happy that we got this money. I'm happy that we have put 150,000 people to work and there will be more people that we will put to work.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think Schwarzenegger is nearly as enthusiastic a proponent of the stimulus as anyone in the administration.

But in the larger context, despite polls and GOP talking points, the growing consensus couldn't be clearer about whether the Recovery Act was effective.

OBAMA TO PROPOSE LIMITS ON RATE HIKES.... One of the political challenges associated with health care reform is making the pitch to those who already have insurance and are largely satisfied with their coverage. The consumer protections are welcome, but seem abstract for many, especially those who don't have pre-existing conditions.

But ample polling data suggests these same Americans are deeply concerned with rising premiums, fears that intensify in light of developments such as Anthem's 39% hike in California.

With this in mind, President Obama is poised to add a new provision to the health care reform agenda. When the White House unveils its reform proposal in about two hours, it will include a new oversight measure on premium increases.

President Obama will propose on Monday giving the federal government new power to block excessive rate increases by health insurance companies, as he rolls out comprehensive legislation to revamp the nation's health care system, White House officials said Sunday. [...]

By focusing on the effort to tighten regulation of insurance costs, a new element not included in either the House or Senate bills, Mr. Obama is seizing on outrage over recent premium increases of up to 39 percent announced by Anthem Blue Cross of California and moving to portray the Democrats' health overhaul as a way to protect Americans from profiteering insurers.

Congressional Republicans have long denounced the Democrats' legislation as a "government takeover" of health care. And while they are likely to resist any expansion of federal authority over existing state regulators, they will face a tough balancing act at the meeting with the president to avoid appearing as if they are willing to allow steep premium increases like those by Anthem.

To be sure, the reform bills already approved by Congress include measures on this point, but the White House proposal would go further -- HHS, state regulators, and an independent commission would review rate increases annually. Hikes deemed "unjustified" could be blocked or amended, and in some cases, insurers could be ordered to issue rebates to customers.

Jonathan Cohn spoke to an administration official who emphasized that the oversight authority "would not pre-empt existing state regulations. The feds would step in only if states did not, or could not, stop high rate increases on their own."

And while some parts of health care reform wouldn't be implemented for a few years, this oversight would take effect this year if the legislation is signed into law.

Sounds to me like a good way to start a huge week on health care reform.

WHO BROKE AMERICA'S JOBS MACHINE?.... Unemployment is the single greatest threat America now faces. Job growth, anemic before the recession, is now non-existent, and promises to be weak for years to come. Some blame foreign competition; others, a lack of investment. But in the next issue of the Washington Monthly, Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman point to a different culprit: corporate consolidation, brought on by decades of weak antitrust enforcement in Washington. Industries from banking to retail to microchips are now so dominated by a few big firms that small businesses -- the source of most new jobs -- have less and less opportunity to thrive, expand, and challenge the behemoths. The result is a less innovative and dynamic economy.

If this argument is right, then it's going to take a good deal more than tax breaks and stimulus spending to get America's jobs machine working again. It's going to require a federal government that will enforce the nation's antitrust laws, bring more competition back into markets, and unleash the creative energies of America's entrepreneurs.

To read Lynn's and Longman's story "Who Broke America's Jobs Machine?" click here.

PETRAEUS NOT READING FROM GOP SCRIPT.... Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, hasn't exactly been helpful to the far-right cause of late. As conservative Republicans have pushed for keeping Gitmo open, torturing terrorist suspects, and ending civilian trials for accused terrorists, the four-star general has voiced his agreement with President Obama's position on all of these issues.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, Petraeus continued to reject the positions of the Republican Party's dominant Cheney-wing, distancing himself from, among other things, torture.

"I have always been on the record, in fact, since 2003, with the concept of living our values. And I think that whenever we've perhaps taken expedient measures, they've turned around and bitten us in the backside. We decided early on, in the 101st airborne division, we just said, we decided to obey the Geneva Conventions...

"In the cases where that is not true [where torture takes place or international human rights groups aren't granted access to detention sites] we end up paying a price for it, ultimately," he added. "Abu Ghraib and other situations like that are non biodegradable. They don't go away. The enemy continues to beat you with them like a stick.... Beyond that, frankly, we have found that the use of interrogation methods in the army field manual that was given the force of law by Congress, that that works."

Petraeus wasn't done there. In another contrast with former Vice President Cheney -- as well as the vast majority of congressional Republicans -- he reiterated his support for closing Gitmo, albeit without a date-specific time frame.

None of this is new. Petraeus, like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, has been on the same page as the Commander in Chief for over a year now. (Petraeus hedged on DADT repeal, saying he'd share his personal opinions with Congress.)

But it is a reminder that the right-wing GOP stands at odds with the American military establishment -- including arguably the decorated general they claim to revere -- on the key national security issues of the day.

It prompted Spencer Ackerman to ask Liz Cheney a question in an open letter. After noting that Petraeus positioned himself far from the positions she holds dear, Spencer wrote:

But hey. You're a former deputy assistant secretary of state! You obviously know better than the man who implemented the surge in Iraq. Why don't you enlighten Gen. Petraeus about all the glories of torture? And since you consider "enhanced interrogation" so necessary to secure the country, perhaps there's a full-page ad you'll take out in a major newspaper?

BROKEN.... If I'd been one of the respondents in this poll, I almost certainly would have sided with the overwhelming majority. But the results just don't tell us as much as they should.

Americans overwhelmingly think that the government in this country is broken, according to a new national poll. But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, released Sunday morning, also indicates that the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed.

Eighty-six percent of people questioned in the poll say that our system of government is broken, with 14 percent saying no. Of that 86 percent, 81 percent say that the government can be fixed, with 5 percent saying it's beyond repair.

CNN fielded a similar poll more than three years ago. At the time, 71% said the U.S. system is broken but can be fixed, 10 points lower than the poll conducted last week.

What the poll doesn't tell us is what matters -- why people have come to this conclusion and what they'd like to see done about it.

I can appreciate the widespread frustration. Paul Volcker, a top economic adviser to President Obama, said last week that he's "very disturbed" by the federal law-making process, which he described as "dysfunctional." Vice President Biden said this week, "Washington, right now, is broken."

All of this is entirely reasonable. What's become of the process is a national scandal, which directly undermines our strength as a country.

But if those who feel that the government is broken don't know and/or understand why, the palpable aggravation is of no value. The key is for Americans -- who neither know nor care about things like "filibusters," "cloture votes," and "holds" -- to appreciate the role congressional Republicans have played in shutting down the American system of government. It's a disgrace that regular folks seem wholly unaware of.

It's also a reminder to policymakers that, while some of the frustration may be ideological, much of it is also the result of the public growing impatient, waiting for progress that isn't happening. Something Obama said yesterday, in the context of moving forward on health care reform, stood out for me:

"What's being tested here is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem. Right now, Americans are understandably despairing about whether partisanship and the undue influence of special interests in Washington will make it impossible for us to deal with the big challenges that face our country."

When folks perceive their government as "broken," I suspect it's because of what the president identified -- a perception that policymakers simply can't solve obvious problems in need of solutions.

It speaks to the need for Senate Democrats to do whatever it takes -- reconciliation, nuclear option, anything -- to get the legislative process moving again.

AN UNEXPECTED HAND FOR REFORM ADVOCATES.... This week, a couple of conservative hosts on the Fox Business Channel seemed deeply concerned about premium rate hikes from California's Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. They weren't troubled by what the increases would mean for consumers -- they were concerned that the increased burden on Americans might make health care reform more likely to happen.

Interviewing an executive from health insurance giant WellPoint, which owns Anthem, Fox's Charles Payne suggested the company should have decided to "wait for this [reform push] to blow over and maybe a year from now try to hike rates."

The industry, however, isn't waiting, and those with individual policies -- folks who buy insurance that their employers aren't providing -- are getting hit the hardest.

Health insurers across the country are dramatically increasing rates and slashing benefits for many of the estimated 17 million consumers with individual insurance policies, while making it almost impossible to obtain affordable alternatives. [...]

Rate increases by insurance companies are a fact of life for the nation's insured, but sharp hikes this year in California have provoked a national outcry that has brought criticism from President Obama and prompted investigations in Sacramento and Washington.

A spokesperson for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's lobbying arm, conceded, "The market is broken."

Think about that. The voice of private health insurers is willing to admit, on the record, that the market-based system that's currently in place -- and which Republicans are intent on leaving intact -- is simply "broken."

Kevin Drum explained that the fix is hardly elusive.

Look: if the chief flack for the health insurance industry says the market is broken, then you have to believe that the market is broken. And it won't fix itself, either. Despite what Republicans pretend to believe when they're in front of the cameras, the way to correct this isn't to deregulate further, allowing insurance companies to raise rates even more freely. It's to broaden the insurance pool by mandating guaranteed issue so that no one gets turned down for a policy; enforcing community rating so that everyone pays a fair price; creating an individual mandate so that healthy people can't game the system by buying insurance only when they get sick; and establishing federal subsidies so that low-income families can afford the premiums. And guess what? That's what the current bill in Congress does.

There can be little doubt that the right will flip out, not only because they oppose solutions to the problem, but also because they've convinced themselves that the fight is over -- and that they won.

I'm still skeptical about whether reform can actually come together in the end, but if it does, and the right is wondering how the package managed to make a comeback, they may want to reflect on the significance of insurers' poorly-timed greed.

MCCONNELL DEFINES 'ARROGANCE'.... Legislative analysis just doesn't get any more superficial than this.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said today that Democrats have been "arrogant" in their push to pass healthcare legislation.

"I think they're having hard time getting the message here. The American people do not want this bill to pass and it strikes me as rather arrogant to say, 'Well, we're going to give it to you anyway," McConnell said on Fox News Sunday.

In terms of public attitudes, the country approves of the reform proposal quite a bit more when Americans actually learn what's in the plan, and get beyond the nonsense spread by people like McConnell.

But McConnell's notion that polls should dictate policy outcomes is just odd. Indeed, it's not even helpful to the Republican leader's own cause.

The conservative Kentucky senator may not realize this, but public opinion generally runs counter to Republicans on most areas of public policy. Republicans don't care -- they have their agenda and they're sticking to it -- and aren't about to let surveys dictate legislative outcomes.

Is it "arrogant" for GOP lawmakers to take positions that run counter to public attitudes? Americans didn't want to see escalation in Iraq in 2007 and Republicans said, "Well, we're going to give it to you anyway." Americans didn't want to see federal lawmakers intervene in the Terri Schiavo case in 2005 or spend time working on an anti-gay constitutional amendment in 2006, but Republicans said, "Well, we're going to give it to you anyway." Americans weren't especially fond of the bank bailout in 2008, but that didn't stop Mitch McConnell from voting for it, effectively telling Americans, "Well, we're going to give it to you anyway."

The inverse is true, too. Americans support reforming the way Wall Street does business, passing a climate bill, and ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." In each instance, McConnell, apparently feeling "arrogant," has decided to tell the country, "Well, we're not going to give it to you anyway."

Even someone of McConnell's limited skills should be able to understand this -- Democrats were elected to tackle health care reform. So, they're trying to do that. This isn't "arrogant"; it's policymakers following through on their promises to the electorate.

BAYH EYES A MORE FUNCTIONAL SENATE.... I've occasionally had less than kind things to say about Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), and the explanation for his unexpected retirement hasn't helped.

But the centrist Hoosier has a fairly long op-ed in the New York Times today, which I found quite compelling. The piece is ostensibly about why Bayh is leaving Congress, but it's actually more helpful in presenting the senator's suggestions for improving the functionality of the chamber.

Bayh notes that despite "challenges of historic import," which "threaten America's future," our "legislative institutions fail to act." That's true. "Congress must be reformed," Bayh added, which is also true.

Some of Bayh's recommendations seem cosmetic and maybe a little hokey -- he talks about "changing the personal chemistry among senators," in part through more frequent interactions and regular luncheons -- but there's probably something to this. The senator also highlights the problems associated with "the current campaign finance system that has such a corrosive effect on Congress," problems which are likely to worsen in the wake of the Citizens United ruling.

But I was especially interested in Bayh's thoughts on the filibuster.

Historically, the filibuster was employed to ensure that momentous issues receive a full and fair hearing. Instead, it has come to serve the exact opposite purpose -- to prevent the Senate from even conducting routine business. [...]

Admittedly, I have participated in filibusters. If not abused, the filibuster can foster consensus-building. The minority has a right to voice legitimate concerns, but it must not employ this tactic to prevent progress on everything at a critical juncture for our country. We need to reduce the power of the minority to frustrate progress while still affording them some say.

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

For this reason, filibusters should require 35 senators to sign a public petition and make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters.

Filibusters should also be limited to no more than one for any piece of legislation. Currently, the decision to begin debate on a bill can be filibustered, followed by another filibuster on each amendment, followed by yet another filibuster before a final vote. This leads to multiple legislative delays and effectively grinds the Senate to a halt.

What's more, the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60. During my father's era, filibusters were commonly used to block civil rights legislation and, in 1975, the requisite number of votes was reduced to 60 from 67. The challenges facing the country today are so substantial that further delay imperils the Republic and warrants another reduction in the supermajority requirement.

I'd prefer to see the filibuster eliminated altogether, but Bayh's suggestions are well taken, and seem more than reasonable.

And it's important that this is coming from Bayh, who, perhaps more than any other lawmaker right now, has the kind of centrist credibility that resonates with the media establishment. As we talked about the other day, his concerns and support for reform position changing the status quo as a necessary, mainstream idea.

Any change at all remains, at best, a long-shot. But Bayh is at least bringing visibility to the issue, characterizing reform as a moderate goal, and (hopefully) helping educate observers about how to improve a dysfunctional system -- broken on purpose by Republicans -- that may very well "imperil the republic."

REID EYES MAJORITY RULE FOR HEALTH CARE.... There's been plenty of Democratic skittishness on using the reconciliation process to complete work on health care reform. That's substantively foolish -- reconciliation exists for exactly these kinds of circumstances -- but there's been Democratic reluctance about how reconciliation might "look." Republicans, Dems expect, will characterize use of the rules as an "abuse" (as opposed to, say, using filibusters and holds to effectively break the American policymaking process).

Fortunately, it appears that skittishness won't stop Harry Reid from doing the right thing.

Democrats will finish their health reform efforts within the next two months by using a majority-vote maneuver in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

Reid said that congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its healthcare bill with only a simple majority of senators, instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster. [...]

The majority leader said that while Democrats have a number of options, they would likely use the budget reconciliation process to pass a series of fixes to the first healthcare bill passed by the Senate in November. These changes are needed to secure votes for passage of that original Senate bill in the House.

That last part is an important detail. Under this scenario, the House would pass the Senate bill, and the Senate would approve "a relatively small" fix, addressing some of the more obvious shortcomings in the Senate bill, through reconciliation.

This, of course, will lead Republicans to freak out, but no one should fall for their crocodile tears. Reconciliation has been used, legitimately, to pass everything from welfare reform to COBRA, Bush's tax-cut packages to student-aid reform, nursing home standards to the earned income tax credit. Not too long ago, Senate Republicans even considered using reconciliation to approve drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It's a little too late to characterize the same procedural measure as some kind of outrage, after Republicans relied on it extensively.

The media, however, may need a refresher. Jon Chait noted yesterday that some political reporters (who ought to know better) are overlooking the differences between "using reconciliation to patch up the Senate bill" and "using it to pass an entire health care bill." Expect, in other words, plenty of misleading journalism as the process unfolds.

As for the bigger picture, it's still easy to imagine the reform initiative coming up short. It's heartening, however, to see that the path forward is getting clearer, and leading policymakers appear intent on reaching that light at the end of the tunnel.

STILL INSULTING THE BRASS.... In case we needed additional evidence, Rick Santorum reminded us yesterday that the days of Republican deference towards America's military leadership are over.

Former Republican senator Rick Santorum accused military leaders on Saturday of having become so "indoctrinated" with political correctness that they can no longer "see straight."

The Pennsylvania arch-conservative was specifically referring to the brass's support of a repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. A long-time opponent of gay rights, Santorum expressed concern that changing the law would sap the readiness and effectiveness of the armed forces. [...]

Addressing how the military leadership, led by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, could now favor a repeal of the law, Santorum raised the specter of brainwashing.

"Political correctness is reigning in the military right now," he said. ""Some people say: [Do] whatever the generals say [on DADT]. I'm not too sure that we haven't so indoctrinated the officer corps in this country that they can actually see straight to make the right decision."

Mark Kleiman noted, "Maybe dissing the brass is good political strategy for the right wing, but I wouldn't have thought so."

But what's especially interesting to me is that prominent GOP voices keep dissing the brass. When Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it's time to let gay servicemen and women serve openly in the U.S. military, conservative Republican senators didn't hesitate to challenge not only the military leaders' judgment, but also their integrity.

The military establishment wants civilian trials for accused terrorists; Republicans don't care. The military establishment wants to see the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay close; Republicans don't care. The military establishment opposes torture; Republicans don't care.

Keep in mind, it wasn't too terribly long ago that Democratic politicians simply weren't supposed to say that Petraeus, Gates, Mullen, and intelligence leaders were wrong about national security matters. Indeed, for Dems to say that they knew better than Petraeus, et al -- that Democratic judgment was superior to military leaders' -- was grounds for mockery, if not condemnation.

But when Santorum insulted the brass, the CPAC crowd was only too pleased to hear it. The leadership of the U.S. military are on the same page as the Democratic establishment, which means they, too, must feel the right's wrath.

THE ACTUAL SOFT-ON-TERROR WHITE HOUSE.... In some circles, a simple, four-word phrase ends all debate: "Do what Reagan did." It's a maxim that tends to be far more effective with conservative activists who don't really know as much about the Reagan administration as they think they do -- folks, for example, who don't realize that Reagan raised taxes in almost every year of his presidency -- but which nevertheless holds sway with most Republicans.

It's especially interesting, then, to consider Reagan's approach to terrorism. Scott Horton noted that Reagan signed the Convention Against Torture, and his Justice Department indicted and prosecuted a Texas sheriff for waterboarding. Horton asked Will Bunch, author of "Tear Down This Myth," about reconciling Reagan's inerrant record with the current GOP line. (via Paul Campos)

It's important not to nominate Reagan for sainthood in the arena of human rights. His "Reagan Doctrine" in Central America, leaving the fight to anti-Communist thugs and death squads that the then-president called "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers," is arguably the gravest moral failing of his tenure. That said, back on U.S. soil, Reagan was far to the left of the 2010 Republican Party on issues such as torture. The convention that he signed in 1988 holds that there is no circumstance of any kind that permits torture, which certainly would include the 9/11 aftermath and related anti-terror efforts today.

But it goes even deeper than that. As I noted in an early 2010 blog post: "Reagan would not have approved of drone-fired missile attacks aimed at killing terrorists; as president, he several times rejected anti-terrorism operations for the sole reason that civilians would have been killed by collateral damage. In 1985, he surprised aides such as Pat Buchanan by ruling out a military response to a Beirut hijacking for fear of civilian casualties; Lou Cannon reported then in the Washington Post that Reagan called retaliation in which innocent civilians are killed "itself a terrorist act." And the idea of trying terrorists in military tribunals as opposed to a civilian court of law? The Reagan administration was completely against that. Paul Bremer (yes, that Paul Bremer) said in 1987, "a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are -- criminals -- and to use democracy's most potent tool, the rule of law, against them."

Try to imagine the reaction if President Obama repeated Reagan's position now.

Just so we're clear, by the standards of Republicans in 2010, George W. Bush was weak on terrorism, and Ronald Reagan's perspective was about as liberal as that of the House Democrats' Progressive Caucus.

I suspect the response from the Cheney contingent is that Reagan's approach seems like that of a radical leftist now, but that's only because he was president before 9/11. Perhaps. But let's not forget that Reagan withdrew from Beirut in 1983 -- a decision Dick Cheney later mocked and blamed for emboldening terrorists.

Republicans just keep moving further and further to the right, so much so that even Ronaldus Magnus looks pretty liberal by comparison.

INTELLIGENCE MATTERS.... In the fall of 2008, as the global economic crisis started to come into focus, then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson spent a fair amount of time talking to lawmakers from both parties. The Republican cabinet member was able to size up the intelligence and credibility of lawmakers in his own party.

Meetings with Senate Republicans were "a complete waste of time for us, when time was more precious than anything" (page 275). Ideas that Republicans do add are "unformed," like Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor's plan to replace TARP with an insurance program. In a rare moment of sarcasm, Paulson goes off on the minority Whip: "I got a better idea. I'm going to go with Eric Cantor's insurance program. That's the idea to save the day" (page 285).

This isn't entirely new. Kevin added that last year, Paulson offered plenty of praise for Democratic officials, but considered Republicans to be "preening, ignorant, ideologues."

Remember, this was Bush's Treasury secretary, commenting on lawmakers from his political party, and reflecting on the fact that they appeared to be complete idiots.

I mention this in part because it's interesting, and in part because it speaks to a larger truth -- congressional Republican too often seem like they are so conspicuously unintelligent, the notion of them being in a position of power and authority during a time of crisis can be rather terrifying.

Years ago, when I was, say, 14 or 15, I had certain assumptions about the political world. I thought, for example, that members of Congress must be fairly bright, regardless of party or ideology. Even those on the far right with whom I disagreed had to be knowledgeable and well informed, I thought, because there they are, shaping federal policy of the United States government.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the moron caucus on Capitol Hill has a few too many members. What's more, it wasn't until I actually worked in Washington that I realized finding a reasonably smart Republican lawmaker was nearly impossible.

This is not to say that all conservative Republicans are dumb. This is to say that conservative Republicans in Congress are dumb, or at least do a surprisingly convincing imitation of being dumb.

It wasn't always this way.

When Reagan and congressional Republicans pushed through a major tax-cut package in 1982, it was based on a coherent economic theory. I think the theory was wrong and the policy was a mistake, but I can appreciate the fact that GOP officials at the time actually thought this through. They did their homework. To borrow a cliche from math classrooms everywhere, they showed their work.

Today, Republican calls for tax cuts are more habitual than intellectual. They can't explain why their proposals make sense or what they hope to accomplish. There's no economic theory or policy analysis. Tax cuts create jobs. Why? Because they do.

And if it were just tax policy, this would be easier to ignore. Tragically, we're dealing with a Republican Party that celebrates ignorance, and has given up on the pretense of substance and depth altogether. As Paulson found, even during a crisis that risked the future of the global economy, Republican lawmakers not only had nothing intelligent to offer, but even trying to communicate with them on an adult level was a "complete waste of time."

This has only gotten worse. Faced with an economic crisis, Republicans demanded a five-year, across-the-board spending freeze -- and they still think that was a good idea. They presented a budget blueprint that offered oddly-drawn charts and no numbers. They see snow and assume global warming isn't real. They know they're against health care reform, but can't explain why with anything more sophisticated than bumper-sticker slogans.

They make arguments, are confronted with evidence that their arguments are wrong, and then repeat the arguments anyway.

At the recent Q&A between President Obama and House Republicans, members repeatedly whined that Democrats refuse to take GOP proposals seriously. The truth, which the president probably felt uncomfortable saying, is that they're right -- but only because GOP proposals shouldn't be taken seriously. They're ridiculous.

Maybe this doesn't matter. There's a strong strain of anti-intellectualism in American life that may appreciate the Republican caucus' inanity.

But I can't help but wonder what happens when confused conservative lawmakers control the levers of government, and the nation needs an immediate, intelligent response to a crisis.

THIESSEN'S THESIS SPREADS.... Complaints from conservatives about President Obama killing too many terrorists are, believe it or not, becoming more common.

It started in earnest earlier this month, when former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, now a Washington Post columnist, argued that the White House is taking out too many bad guys before they can be captured and tortured. The position seems to be spreading.

At a panel on national security policy at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, a prominent lawyer from the Bush administration's Department of Justice said he was concerned that the higher number of terrorist executions taking place under Obama was compromising U.S. intelligence operations.

"Why have executions increased?" asked Viet Dinh, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and one of the authors of the USA Patriot Act. Citing a recent Washington Post article on the increased targeted killing of terrorists, Dinh complained that "the president and vice president expound this fact as a fact that they are actually successful in war."

"That doesn't mean I think they are not illegitimate," he added. "No, we have every right to kill the other side's warriors. But at what cost? When we do not have an effective detention policy the only option we have is to kill them before we can detain them. And if we don't detain them, we don't know what they know and what they are up to."

A few things come to mind. First, we might have a more effective detention policy if conservative Republican lawmakers were slightly less ridiculous about abandoning positions they embraced before Obama took office last year. The factors standing between the country and a sensible policy are fear, demagoguery, and an insatiable desire to score cheap points.

Second, Dinh's timing could certainly be better -- complaining about the Obama administration not capturing enough bad guys seems odd when it comes the same week that U.S. officials played a role in capturing the Taliban's top military commander, two of the Taliban's "shadow governors," and as many as nine al-Qaeda-linked militants in Pakistan.

But looking at the bigger picture, the complaint itself is bizarre. To help reduce the risk to U.S. troops, President Obama has ordered strikes that have killed dangerous terrorists. Of all the things for far-right Republicans to complain about, this has become a new talking point?

As we talked about the other day, consider the alternative. Imagine if President Obama and his team decided that they preferred to take out fewer terrorist leaders and would instead send U.S. servicemen and women into extraordinarily dangerous situations in order to capture more bad guys, in the hopes of interrogating them.

I think any honest person knows exactly what we'd be hearing from the media and Republicans: the president is refusing to kill terrorists and he's needlessly putting the troops in harm's way.

Heads, the right wins. Tails, the president loses.

THIS WEEK IN GOD.... First up from the God Machine this week is a report from radical TV preacher Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, which religious right activists and many on the far-right quickly embraced, but which didn't stand up well to scrutiny.

CBN reported, in an apparent "exclusive," that five Muslim-American soldiers at Fort Jackson in South Carolina "were arrested just before Christmas and are in custody. The five men were part of the Arabic Translation program at the base." If true, it's the kind of development that would likely have broad political and policy consequences. Except, as Marc Ambinder noted, CBN appears to have gotten it wrong.

[T]he Army says it's not true. No one has been arrested. The National Security Council was not aware of any arrests, a spokesperson said.

After the Ft. Hood massacre, the Army increased its counterintelligence presence at Ft. Jackson, a training base, because it is home a large number of non-citizen Muslims recruited under the Army's "09-Lima" translation program.

A few months ago, special agents from the Army's Criminal Investigation Division opened an investigation after receiving a tip that some Muslims at the base had communicated with others overseas, and that a group of Muslim non-citizens had tried to poison other soldiers. That investigation is open -- but no evidence has been found to support the tips, according to the Army.

In a follow-up piece, Ambinder added that the CBN report was "completely wrong," adding, "And in its wrongness, it's damaging because it provides fortification for those who believe that Muslims are infiltrating the ranks of the U.S. Army and intend to poison good Christian soldiers. Indeed, I detect a bit of religious competition in CBN's reporting. After all, it is CBN."

Also from the God Machine this week:

* Gallup reported this week on the states with the highest and lowest rates of church attendance. The results fell largely along regional lines: "Mississippians were the most frequent churchgoers in the nation in 2009, as was the case in 2008, with 63% of residents attending weekly or almost every week. Nine of the top 10 states in church attendance are in the South; the only non-Southern state is Utah, with 56% frequent attendance. At the other end of the spectrum, 23% of Vermont residents attend church frequently, putting it at the bottom of the list of churchgoing states. Other states at the bottom of the church attendance list are in either New England or the West."

* Nearly four out of 10 Texans believe in young-earth creationism, and nearly a third believe humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.

* It's always heartening to see Americans' sense of decency shine: "Last week, the Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Nashville, TN was vandalized with anti-Muslim graffiti....The hate crime came after a local news station aired a controversial, inflammatory report about another local Muslim community. Since the hate crime at Al-Farooq, however, there has been 'outpouring of neighborly support' for the mosque, with neighbors helping to clean up the graffiti.... At least 150 people -- 'including spiritual leaders from several faiths' -- also went to an open house at the Islamic Center of Nashville on Saturday to learn more about the Islamic faith and pledge 'support for local Muslims in the wake of last week's defacement' of Al-Farooq."

NOT BACKING OFF.... With less than a week before the White House hosts a bipartisan summit on health care reform, the forcefulness of President Obama's message on the issue seems to be picking up.

The president appeared at a town-hall event in Henderson, Nevada, yesterday, joined by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D). There were several questions about health care reform, and Obama offered a detailed summary of his thoughts on the matter.

First, he addressed why he decided to take the issue on, talking about Americans "who have lost their job and suddenly they don't have health insurance, somebody in their family gets sick, and they lose their house." Obama went on to talk about soaring premiums for people who already have coverage, the ways in which the status quo drives up the deficit, and the ways in which the current dysfunctional system undermines economic growth.

The president then transitioned to talking about what he planned to do about it.

"What we have said is this: If you have health insurance, we are going to pass a series of health reforms so that the insurance companies have to treat you fairly -- it's very straightforward -- that they can't prevent you from getting health insurance because of a preexisting condition; that they can't put a lifetime cap so in the fine print it turns out that you're not fully covered. So there are a whole series of insurance reforms -- that's number one.

"Number two, we've got a whole series of cost controls. So what we're saying is, for example, that every insurer, they've got to spend the vast majority of your premiums on actual care, as opposed to profits and overhead. We're saying that we've got to get out some of the waste and abuse, including subsidies to insurance companies in the Medicare system that run in the tens of billions of dollars every year. That's not a good use of your taxpayer dollars. And we're working to improve wellness and prevention, as I said before, so that people aren't going to the emergency room for care.

"Now, the third thing, and the thing that's most controversial, sadly, is what we're also saying is we've got to make sure that everybody can have access to coverage. And the way we do that is we set up something called an exchange, where essentially individuals and small businesses who aren't getting a good deal because they don't have the same negotiating power as the big companies when it comes to the insurance market, they can pool just like members of Congress and federal employees do in their health care plan -- they can pool so that now they've got the purchasing power of a million people behind them and they can get a better deal. That can lower their costs. And we'll give subsidies for working families who can't afford it even with lower premium costs." [...]

And, by the way, it would actually save us money in the long term, because all those wasteful dollars that we're spending right now, the experts estimate we'd actually save a trillion dollars by passing it.

He added that Republicans "say that they've got a better way of doing it. So I want them to put it on the table.... I'm not an unreasonable guy."

This morning, the president also devoted another weekly address to health care, emphasizing the "jaw-dropping" premium increases many Americans are facing, and explain that "the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America.... And as bad as things are today, they'll only get worse if we fail to act." He added:

"What's being tested here is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem. Right now, Americans are understandably despairing about whether partisanship and the undue influence of special interests in Washington will make it impossible for us to deal with the big challenges that face our country. They want to see us focus not on scoring points, but on solving problems; not on the next election but on the next generation. That is what we can do, and that is what we must do when we come together for this bipartisan health care meeting next week."

As Jonathan Cohn noted last night, "A president planning to give up on a major reform bill would be unlikely to talk that way."

A FEW TOO MANY FEUDS.... I've never seen "Family Guy." I hear it's pretty crass, but the animated show remains pretty popular, and I know plenty of friends who think it's hilarious. Whatever.

The political relevance of the show grew this week, however, because last Sunday's episode told a Sarah Palin joke. A "Family Guy" actress with Down syndrome voiced a character who was asked about her family. "My dad's an accountant, and my mom is the former governor of Alaska," the character replies.

The former half-term governor considered this mockery of her son with Down syndrome, and blasted the show online and on the air. Yesterday, Andrea Fay Friedman, the 39-year-old actress who did the voice-over work on the show told the New York Times, "I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor."

She added that in her family, "we think laughing is good," and that she was raised by her parents "to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life."

Ms. Friedman continued, "My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes."

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Ms. Friedman, who has also appeared in television shows like "Life Goes On" and "Saving Grace," said she was perplexed by Ms. Palin's criticism.

"I'm like, 'I'm not Trig. This is my life,' " Ms. Friedman said. "I was making fun of Sarah Palin, but not her son."

Who's right and who's wrong here? Beats me.

I do, however, think that Palin has a knack for getting into a few too many feuds.

Palin has feuded with David Letterman and Ashley Judd. She's feuded with her teenage daughter's ex-fiance and Rahm Emanuel and Arnold Schwarzenegger. She's feuded with the National Organization for Women and climate scientists. When beauty pageant contestant Carrie Prejean drew criticism, Palin jumped into that feud, too. Now it's a cartoon on Fox that's drawn her ire.

I suppose some of these disputes may seem more justifiable than others, but the point is, credible national figures don't usually feel the need to launch one feud after another. After a while, the former governor starts to look rather small, especially by engaging in squabbles with television shows and personalities.

Maybe Palin could try an "above the fray" approach sometime?

THE SAD TELEPROMPTER JOKE.... Appearing at CPAC yesterday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) demonstrated the far-right's dry and sophisticated wit, while showing his own attention to detail.

"President Obama was in a grade school classroom speaking to elementary school children and he was using a teleprompter," Pawlenty said Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

"You've got to be kidding me," he added. "That's not a joke. That's a real story."

Actually, it's not. The tale spread by bloggers over the Internet and in some media, including the Comedy Channel's Jon Stewart, blended together two Obama appearances Jan. 19 at the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, to make it appear he used the teleprompter when speaking to a classroom of 30 pupils.

In reality, Obama sat on a chair and spoke with the pupils without the device.

OK, so Tim Pawlenty doesn't know what he's talking about. That's hardly new.

But the fact that the right is still obsessed with this -- often telling teleprompter jokes while literally reading from teleprompters -- has quickly transitioned from odd to sad to pathetic.

All modern presidents have used teleprompters to deliver speeches. It's never been noteworthy, better yet "controversial," until today's right-wing GOP decided it's hilarious -- so much so that, as Pawlenty demonstrated, they're willing to lie about it.

It's worth pondering what, exactly, Republicans hope to accomplish with this. Apparently, the far-right thinks it can convince Americans that President Obama is, what, not as brilliant as he seems? The party that revels in anti-intellectualism and makes heroes of obvious dim-bulbs like Bush and Palin seriously believes the president is dependent on a prepared text to tell him what to say?

These clowns aren't concerned with details like reality, but Barack Obama has been on the national stage for several years now. He's spoken eloquently and intelligently -- without notes or teleprompters -- in debates, town-hall forums, media interviews, Q&As, and assorted appearances. Obama off the cuff is more cerebral than any figure in modern Republican politics.

I'd hoped we saw the end of this inanity a few weeks ago in Baltimore. House Republicans asked Obama what they thought to be really difficult questions. Perhaps believing their own nonsense about teleprompters, GOP lawmakers thought they'd show the president a thing or two. Instead, he made them look ridiculous, demonstrating a mastery of policy details and depth that they couldn't hope to match.

These folks have to realize eventually that to attack the president credibly, they'll have to do better than this.

TORTURE-MEMO AUTHORS AVOID SANCTIONS.... Jay Bybee and John Yoo have effectively been slapped on the wrist.

After five years of often bitter internal debate, the Justice Department concluded in a report released Friday that the lawyers who gave legal justification to the Bush administration's brutal interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of professional misconduct.

The report, rejecting harsher sanctions recommended by Justice Department ethics lawyers, brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration's fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.

Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) found that Bybee, now a federal judge, and Yoo, a Berkeley law professor, demonstrated "professional misconduct" when they authored the Bush administration's torture memos. OPR's ethics lawyers "said the lawyers had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice to the White House in possible violation of international and federal laws on torture."

And while "professional misconduct" findings could have led to sanctions for Bybee and Yoo -- including disbarment -- Deputy Associate Attorney General David Margolis, a career Justice Department official tasked with reviewing the OPR report, overruled the ethics lawyers' conclusion. Specifically, Margolis cited the context of post-9/11 pressure, which led Bybee and Yoo to produce "flawed" advice, but not necessarily advice issued in bad faith.

Margolis nevertheless singled out Yoo for pointed criticism: "While I have declined to adopt O.P.R.'s findings of misconduct, I fear that John Yoo's loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client and led him to author opinions that reflected his own extreme, albeit sincerely held, view of executive power while speaking for an institutional client."

That'll sting, but that's all it will do.

Responding to the report, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said, "Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo may keep their law licenses, but they will not escape the verdict of history."

Given the scope and consequences of their wrongdoing, this hardly seems satisfying.

FRIDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Case closed: "After seven frustrating years probing the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings, the FBI closed the case Friday, concluding a mentally unhinged government researcher acted alone in the attacks that killed five people and unnerved Americans nationwide."

* The mortgage crisis isn't over: "President Barack Obama used a campaign push for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Friday to announce a new fund to support homeowners in five states hit hardest by the housing crisis."

* In fact, the mortgage crisis may be shifting: "A mortgage crisis like the one that has devastated homeowners is enveloping the nation's office and retail buildings."

* Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has a cancerous stomach tumor, but is expected to make a full recovery. He may miss some Senate votes, but intends to keep working throughout his treatments.

* Operation Iraqi Freedom becomes Operation New Dawn.

* When it comes to analysis of the federal budget, deficits, and government spending, Peggy Noonan is almost comically confused.

* The estimable Harold Pollack reminds us how truly ridiculous the Wall Street Journal's editorial page is on health care policy analysis.

* At CPAC, it's apparently not too soon to tell jokes about anti-government radicals flying airplanes into buildings.

* In tough times, states put Medicaid on the chopping block.

* Time for concealed weapons at college?

* In a depressing sign of the times, former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) was booed at a CPAC panel today when he described waterboarding as torture.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

REID AND THE PUBLIC OPTION.... As part of the ongoing look at the push to keep the public option alive, there are, as of this afternoon, 18 Democratic senators urging the party leadership to approve a health care reform bill with a public option through reconciliation.

What does Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have to say about this? First, a little context.

One of the consistent truths of the debate over health care reform is that, in the Se