IRAQ SPEECH OPEN THREAD.... In about 10 minutes, President Obama will speak from the Oval Office, delivering an address on the formal end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. You can watch the speech right here:

So, what'd you think? The floor is yours.

—Steve Benen 7:50 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (24)

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

* It's probably best to keep expectations low: "President Obama plunges into Middle East peacemaking on Wednesday with two days of summitry he hopes will be the first step in brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement within a year."

* It was nice to see a little bump in consumer confidence for a change.

* No need to panic: "A U.S. government official says the FBI's investigation of two men detained in Amsterdam is finding that it's unlikely they were on a test run for a future terror attack, even as Dutch authorities continued to hold the pair on suspicion of conspiring to commit a terrorist act. The U.S. official says the two men arrested in Amsterdam did not know each other and were not traveling together."

* Tragic, but not surprising: "A veteran of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division says he'd be surprised if the fire at the site of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn. isn't investigated as a hate crime."

* And while Murfreesboro bigots are grabbing headlines, there are some displays of real decency in the community, too.

* Fingers crossed: "The Justice Department has filed its appeal of a federal court ruling that blocked federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, warning that the decision could shut down life-saving research and stall medical breakthroughs."

* On a related note, another hate crime, this time in Seattle, where some moron attacked a convenience-store clerk, saying, "You're not even American, you're Al-Qaeda. Go back to your country." The victim was very likely Sikh, not Muslim.

* A pleasant surprise to see Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) implicitly defend health care reform from a baseless attack from his state's Republican governor.

* On a related note, the popularity of the Affordable Care Act is slipping.

* Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has been disappointing lately, but he swears he's not going into lobbying after leaving the Senate at the end of the year.

* Donald Graham puts his mouth where his money is.

* Great piece from Dahlia Lithwick: "Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows how feminism is done. Again."

* And finally, the right was none too pleased when CBS News published an estimate of 87,000 attendees to Glenn Beck's still-pointless rally over the weekend. Unlike many conservatives, who continue to insist that several gazillion people were on hand, CBS has published a detailed report, explaining how the estimate was calculated. Sorry, conservatives, the network's count seems legit.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

—Steve Benen 5:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (22)

THE COMPANY BOEHNER KEEPS.... Oh my.

On his nationally syndicated radio program Sunday night, hate radio host Bill Cunningham said that he will broadcast his show from the office of Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) on this November's Election Day, and was invited by Boehner himself. "I'm going to do my show that day from the portico of the Speaker of the House's office in the U.S. Capitol. I've been invited there by the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and I'll be the only radio talk show host in the speaker's office, doing my show from the portico overlooking the Washington Monument," Cunningham said. "And I'm going to do it."

And who's Bill Cunningham? This is Bill Cunningham.

Vituperative remarks about President Obama are a staple of Cunningham's radio show. He has attacked Obama as a racist, alleged that the president wants to "gas the Jews," and invoked "six-six-six" and "the beast" in discussing "Barack Hussein Obama." He's adopted the rhetoric of birthers and even made racially charged remarks about Obama's father, stating, "That's what black fathers do. They simply leave."

The poor are also among Cunningham's favorite targets for attack: He has stated that they are impoverished "because they lack values, ethics, and morals," and advocated "beat[ing] the hell outta" homeless people with "a big old cane, Singapore-style."

Ryan Rudominer, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement, "It says a great deal about John Boehner's arrogance and extreme right wing agenda that as he prematurely measures the drapes, he would roll out the red carpet for hatemonger's like Bill Cunningham, who has a history of making despicable comments about Jews, African Americans, and other minorities."

Nothing says "responsible national leader" like inviting a lunatic shock-jock into a congressional leadership office to broadcast on Election Day.

I was trying to think of an equivalent -- imagine if Nancy Pelosi invited ______ to broadcast his show from her office -- but the left just doesn't seem to have comparable unhinged loudmouths.

—Steve Benen 4:45 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (26)

THE LEGISLATION GAP.... When House members complain about the Senate, it's worth remembering that their concerns have real merit. As recently as February, there were 82 bills that had passed the House, waiting for Senate consideration. The number is considerably higher now.

When the Senate returns from its summer break in September, lawmakers will have quite a full plate of legislation to address: 372 bills, to be exact.

That's the number of bills passed by the House that are awaiting action in the Senate, according to an updated list provided to The Hill.... And with the midterm elections in high gear and partisan rancor already poisoning a potential lame-duck session after November, it's likely most of the House-passed bills will stay on the shelf.

A large legislation gap between the House and Senate is not unusual; the Senate was designed, in the famous description by George Washington, as a cooling saucer. But food left out to cool too long will spoil, and so will federal legislation: By law, if a bill is not passed by both chambers in the same Congress, it must be re-introduced in January.

Also note, it's not just the House that's frustrated -- the White House has sent nominations for judges and administration officials to the Senate, and like the House bills, they've gotten stuck, thanks to scandalous Republican abuses and delaying tactics. It's what happens when one petty minority decides to deliberately break a once-great institution.

Of course, once the new Congress is sworn in early next year, this phenomenon will go from embarrassing to farcical, when GOP gains, and likely control of the House, destroy any hopes of legislating before 2013, at the earliest.

—Steve Benen 4:15 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (9)

'YOUNG GUNS' EMBRACE RYAN ROADMAP?.... The House Republican leadership has been reluctant to embrace, at least formally, Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) "Roadmap for America's Future." That's not surprising -- Ryan's plan is both radical and ridiculous, and GOP leaders don't necessarily want to spend the next two months talking about it.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), in particular, has been especially reluctant to say whether he's on board with the Ryan proposal. But it's about to get considerably more difficult to separate the GOP leadership from the radical plan.

In a new book to be released next month, three House Republican leaders include many of the policies and ideas that some in their party have promoted over the last year, as well as a controversial plan to drastically cut the country's entitlement spending.

The proposed entitlement overhaul by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), known as the Roadmap for America's Future, is featured with many GOP solutions for the debt, national security and health care in "Young Guns," according to an early edition of the book obtained by Roll Call. Ryan, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Chief Deputy Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wrote the book.

The three divided the majority of the writing into separately authored sections, but the inclusion of the entitlement plan indicates an implied endorsement by at least some of the GOP leadership. [...]

"It's time we stop deferring tough decisions and promising fiscal fantasies," Ryan wrote in the book. "It's time we tell Americans the truth, offer them a choice, and count on them to do what's right."

Works for me. The truth is, Paul Ryan's "roadmap" is a right-wing fantasy, slashing taxes on the rich while raising taxes for everyone else. The plan calls for privatizing Social Security and gutting Medicare, and fails miserably in its intended goal -- cutting the deficit. As Paul Krugman recently explained, the Ryan plan "is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America's fiscal future."

When Republican candidates embrace this plan to radically transform governmental institutions and Americans' way of life, they're endorsing a Republican vision of governing more extreme than anything we've seen in the modern political era.

Yesterday, Ryan reminded reporters that his roadmap is not the official position of the House Republican Conference, but how long is this shell-game going to last? Can Eric Cantor, whose political action committee is chiefly responsible for this "Young Guns" book, credibly argue that he only agrees with certain chapters of his own book?

The House Republican leadership's Whip and Deputy Whip are publishing a book touting a specific plan. Must we maintain the pretense that the right-wing roadmap belongs solely to Paul Ryan?

On a related note, the book, "Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders," was mocked rather relentlessly on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" earlier, and for good reason.

If you want to see the original, self-aggrandizing video that Cantor's production team put together, it's online here. It's as obnoxiously over the top as anything I've seen from Republicans in quite a while.

—Steve Benen 3:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)

AN UNEASY, UNSUSTAINABLE PARTNERSHIP.... Glenn Beck said the other day, as part of his attacks on President Obama, "People aren't recognizing his version of Christianity."

The irony is, Beck's ostensible allies aren't recognizing his version of Christianity, either.

We've been talking a bit lately about the Beck, who apparently now wants to lead some sort of religious revival, and the discomfort with that within the religious right. The movement is, after all, compromised almost entirely of evangelical Christians, who aren't generally comfortable with Beck's Mormonism.

"I'm a little nervous about that kind of talk," said Janet Mefferd, a nationally syndicated Christian talk show host who said most callers Monday wanted to talk about Beck. "I know he means well and loves this country, but he doesn't know enough about theology to know what kind of effect he's having. Christians are hearing something different than what he thinks he's saying."

If this were simply a matter of politics, it'd be much easier -- Beck, his minions, and the religious right tend to hate America's current leadership in largely the same way, for largely the same reasons. The problem, though, is that their differences are theological -- American theocrats appreciate Beck's madness, but not his LDS membership.

Russell Moore, dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's School of Theology, has publicly expressed his strong disapproval of Christians cooperating with Beck's little crusade, and Moore's comments are already causing quite a stir in evangelical circles. He wrote:

A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they've heard the gospel, right there in the nation's capital.

The news media pronounces him the new leader of America's Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America's Christian conservatives have no problem with that.

If you'd told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But it's not. It's from this week's headlines. And it is a scandal....To Jesus, Satan offered power and glory. To us, all he needs offer is celebrity and attention. Mormonism and Mammonism are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ....

Moore added that it's "sad to see so many Christians confusing Mormon politics or American nationalism with the gospel of Jesus Christ." He looked forward to a "new generation" of Christians "who will be ready for a gospel that is more than just Fox News at prayer."

Ouch.

Meanwhile, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and an active player in D.C. politics, has met in private with Beck, but continues to insist that Mormonism is "not a Christian faith."

The more Beck tries to position himself as a religious right leader for the future, the more these divisions will rise to the surface -- and grow more intense.

—Steve Benen 2:25 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (36)

WHEN A PARTY GOES MAD.... There's plenty of interesting data in the latest Newsweek poll, and I've generally focused on what it had to say about President Obama's standing, the generic congressional ballot, and the economy. Sam Stein highlights a tidbit from the results that I'd overlooked.

A majority of Republicans believe that President Barack Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world," according to a survey released on Monday.

That figure, buried at the very end of a newly released Newsweek public opinion poll, reflects the extent to which a shocking bit of smear and misinformation has managed to become nearly commonplace within the GOP tent.

A full 14 percent of Republicans said that it was "definitely true" that Obama sympathized with the fundamentalists and wanted to impose Islamic law across the globe. An additional 38 percent said that it was probably true -- bringing the total percentage of believers to 52 percent. Only 33 percent of Republicans said that the "allegation" (as Newsweek put it) was "probably not true." Seven percent said it was "definitely not true."

It's hard to overstate how truly insane this is. This isn't, by the way, a matter of the public not knowing what "sharia" means -- the question read, "Some people have alleged that Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world. From what you know about Obama, what is your opinion of these allegations?"

Adam Serwer makes the case that "Americans don't have a very good understanding of what Islamic law is." That's no doubt true. For that matter, the poll results, if accurate, may very well be an extension of just reflexive partisan hatred -- people who hate the president suspect he may sympathize with foreign Islamic fundamentalists, not because it's true, but because they hate him so much they're inclined to believe anything. ("Some people have alleged Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Lrrr, the Omicronian ruler of Omicron Persei 8, who intends to come to Earth to enslave humanity. From what you know about Obama, what is your opinion of these allegations?")

But whatever the rationale, it's hard to get over the fact that Obama Derangement Syndrome has become so pervasive on the right, literally most of the nation's rank-and-file Republicans appear to have gone stark raving mad.

If/when there's a GOP majority on the Hill, Republican officials should probably realize now that this party base will simply not tolerate any kind of constructive policymaking with the White House, making the prospects for a functioning political process next year almost laughable.

—Steve Benen 1:15 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (35)

CHUTZPAH WATCH -- KOCH EDITION.... There's been a fair amount of attention lately focused on David and Charles Koch, right-wing billionaires going to great lengths, mainly through their "Americans for Prosperity" outfit, to bolster Republicans in 2010.

With that in mind, this report from Igor Volsky is pretty striking.

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the "first round of applicants accepted into the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program," a $5 billion program established by the new health care law to help employers and states "maintain coverage for early retirees age 55 and older who are not yet eligible for Medicare." According to the agency, "nearly 2,000 employers, representing large and small businesses, State and local governments, educational institutions, non-profits, and unions" applied and have been accepted into the program and "will begin to receive reimbursements for employee claims this fall."

Ironically, one of those employers is the oil, chemicals, and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries, which as Lee Fang has reported, has also spent millions of dollars opposing reform.

Indeed, a year ago this month, Americans for Prosperity organized crazed rallies in opposition to health care reform, in one instance going so far as to compare the Democratic plan to the Nazi Holocaust.

This is the same group that invested $1.7 million in attack ads, blatantly lying to the American public about the reform proposal, falsely telling the country that Democrats were publishing a socialized, Canadian-style system.

And now the Koch Brothers want in on receiving grants through the same law they fought like crazy to kill.

The right's capacity for shamelessness continues to impress.

—Steve Benen 12:35 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (25)

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.

* Sen. Lisa Murkowski had a back-up plan if the final ballot tally in Alaska's GOP Senate primary went against her: run as the Libertarian nominee. Yesterday, that avenue closed when the Alaska Libertarian Party decided, in an emergency meeting, to deny Murkowski its slot on the ballot.

* In North Carolina, a new survey from Public Policy Polling shows Sen. Richard Burr (R) leading Elaine Marshall (D), 43% to 38%. The pollster's report explained, "The basic contours of the race remain unchanged. Burr is unpopular, while Marshall is unknown."

* A whopping 66% of Nevada voters who intend to vote for Sharron Angle (R) wish she weren't the Republican nominee.

* Retired four-star Gen. Wesley Clark was in Illinois yesterday to endorse Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias (D). Not surprisingly, he called out Rep. Mark Kirk (R) for repeatedly misstating the truth about his military service.

* In the event that anyone in Kentucky cares about the professional backgrounds of their Senate candidates, Jack Conway's (D) campaign is reminding voters that he's been "darn good" at his job as state Attorney General. Conway is facing right-wing ophthalmologist Rand Paul (R), who has never served in public office, in November.

* In Minnesota, an MPR News/Humphrey Institute poll shows former Sen. Mark Dayton (D) and Tom Emmer (R) tied at 34% in this year's gubernatorial race. Independence Party candidate Tom Horner is third with 13%.

* Former representative and convicted felon Jim Traficant has collected enough signatures to run as an independent in Ohio's 17th congressional district this year.

* Following a ruling from the Michigan Court of Appeals yesterday, the Michigan Tea Party, accused of being a Democratic front, will not be on the ballot in November.

* And in 2012 news, as disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) moves forward with his apparent interest in a presidential campaign, he probably shouldn't ask Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) for an endorsement.

—Steve Benen 12:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (5)

GIBBS POSES STRAIGHTFORWARD QUESTION ON IRAQ.... The Republican line of the day seems to be that President Obama, when he was Senator Obama, opposed the surge strategy in Iraq -- and as such, the end of combat operations doesn't count as a success. Or something.

We talked last week about why this argument is misguided, even for the GOP, but the president's team is going a step further, asking these same Republicans to answer a straightforward question.

The White House sought on Tuesday to put the pressure on top Republicans to say whether they support the withdrawal of 90,000 troops this month from Iraq.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs questioned GOP leaders -- in particular, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- to say where they stand on the change in mission in Iraq that resulted in the withdrawal of tens of thousands of U.S. troops from the country.

"I think what the American people would like to know with Congressman Boehner is: Do you support the withdrawing of 90,000 troops that the president is marking today?" Gibbs said Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America."

On MSNBC, Gibbs added, "I think it's going to be interesting to hear from Republican leaders on where they stand on the decision to bring 90,000 troops home from Iraq."

It's an interesting rhetorical ploy. As far as the GOP is concerned, there's no such thing as good news -- remember when they characterized the best monthly job totals in years as "disappointing"? -- and giving credit to the president for anything positive is absurd on its face.

But is it that difficult for the president's Republican detractors to at least be a little pleased when U.S. troops come home?

For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is crediting Bush/Cheney, insisting that Obama's success was made possible by "adopting the Bush administration's plan."

For anyone who takes reality seriously, it's worth noting the facts. It was Barack Obama's vision of a phased withdrawal that shaped the Status of Forces Agreement signed in 2008, and it was Barack Obama's timetable that has brought the troop levels below 50,000 for the first time since the war began.

The GOP may not like it, but that's what happened.

—Steve Benen 11:25 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (11)

PLANNING AHEAD FOR A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN.... The last time Republicans had a great midterm cycle under a Democratic president, they proceeded to shutdown the federal government -- twice. The public, with good reason, blamed the GOP, and party leaders took a major hit in the polls.

In his 1996 State of the Union address, then-President Clinton told lawmakers, "Never, ever shut the federal government down again."

Today's Republican Party seems inclined to ignore the suggestion.

Likely Senate candidate Joe Miller (R) in Alaska told Fox News last week that GOP lawmakers must have the "courage to shut down the government" in order to eliminate government programs he doesn't like. Right-wing CNN personality Erick Erickson said with child-like excitement yesterday, "I'm almost giddy thinking about a government shutdown next year. I cannot wait!"

And sleazy GOP consultant Dick Morris told activists late last week that Republicans should do exactly as Gingrich/Dole did 15 years ago, but this time it'll work out better.

"There's going to be a government shutdown, just like in '95 and '96 but we're going to win it this time and I'll be fightin' on your side," Morris said at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation Conference on Friday in Washington. [...]

Morris sounded a similar note in April, suggesting in a speech the Republicans should force a shutdown over health care funding.

Josh Marshall added yesterday, "Obama's veto pen can do a lot of stuff. He can veto a defunding bill too. The key though is that he's got a government to run and he needs a budget. All of which suggests that this ends up pointing in the direction of a government shutdown type standoff."

Last month, I put the odds of a government shutdown, in the event of a GOP majority, at over 50%. I continue to think that's a reasonable assessment. Indeed, it almost seems likely -- Republicans have decided that President Obama is not to be negotiated with, and there is no acceptable compromise between the White House's position and the GOP's.

Besides, if Republicans are rewarded in the midterms after moving sharply to the right-wing, they'll consider it a mandate for unflinching radicalism. I'd be surprised if they didn't shut down the government.

—Steve Benen 10:35 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (35)

NEW HAMPSHIRE, TOO?.... Following up on the last item, Republicans' chances of winning back the Senate would clearly be better if stronger candidates were surviving GOP primaries. We've seen this over and over again, with races that should have been easy for Republicans -- Kentucky, Nevada, Alaska -- becoming competitive with extremist nominees. As Delaware helps demonstrate, the list isn't quite done, either.

And then there's New Hampshire. Republicans successfully recruited former state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R), who quickly became the frontrunner in the open Senate race. She has a reputation for being something of a moderate, and was well positioned for November.

You can probably guess what happened next. Ayotte found herself in a primary, and quickly shifted to the far-right. All of a sudden, she became open to changing the 14th Amendment; she thought it made sense to reduce the deficit by increasing the deficit; she announced her opposition to Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination for no apparent reason; and she decided that she no longer accepted the notion of man-made global warming.

Asked for one area in which she disagrees with the Republican Party, Ayotte replied, "Nothing comes to mind." So much for being an "independent" voice.

Just as important, though, Ayotte is learning that being merely conservative isn't always good enough when Republicans are demanding very conservative candidates.

This weekend brought a reminder that more insurgents could still sneak through. In a Sunday editorial, New Hampshire's largest newspaper, the Union Leader, endorsed insurgent Ovide Lamontagne, one of four Republicans running in the September 14 primary for the seat now held by Judd Gregg. Lamontagne's bid has seemed hopeless for months, with polls showing him running far behind state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, the state and national GOP establishment's preferred candidate.

But the Union Leader's decision could provide Lamontagne with a spark. The fiercely conservative paper is unusually influential in right-wing circles and it tends to promote its chosen candidates more aggressively than other newspapers do.

The primary is two weeks from today, and the winner will almost certainly face Rep. Paul Hodes (D) in November. If Ayotte falters, Democratic hopes of picking up the seat grow considerably.

—Steve Benen 10:05 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (16)

FAR-RIGHT HORDES HOPE TO BRING DOWN CASTLE.... Republicans will need a net gain of 10 Senate seats if they hope to control the upper chamber next year, and by most assessments, it's a tall order. Some pick-ups, however, almost look like sure-things.

In Delaware, for example, Rep. Mike Castle (R) is one of this year's safest bets, especially in open-seat races. This is a relatively "blue" state, but Castle is a popular representative and former governor, and has a reputation for being a GOP moderate. As a result, when Dems draw up lists of key competitive contests, Delaware doesn't make the cut.

But Castle has a primary challenger, and the Republican base has no tolerance for those who fail to toe the far-right line. Suddenly, there's a "possibility" that Castle "could be the next victim of the purity purge inside the GOP tent."

Christine O'Donnell has, by and large, campaigned outside the media and political spotlight so far this election. But on Monday her efforts to take out Castle in the mid-September primary got a major boost when the Tea Party Express, which spent roughly $600,000 on Alaska Republican Joe Miller's challenge to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, pledged to do the same on her behalf.

The announcement was just the latest in a wave of Tea party momentum to build around O'Donnell's candidacy. The right-wing blogosphere has, likewise, either trumpeted or expressed intrigue in her campaign, disturbed, primarily, by Castle's moderate voting record. O'Donnell herself has pushed the meme, going so far as to pursue the endorsement of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) -- the Tea Party validator in the U.S. Senate -- and to include a picture of herself alongside the poster boy of Tea Party-ism: Florida Republican candidate Marco Rubio. This past weekend, in fact, O'Donnell shot footage at Glenn Beck's Lincoln Memorial rally for future use in her campaign ads.

Castle clearly remains the favorite, but it wasn't too long ago that Lisa Murkowski was expected to cruise past Joe Miller in Alaska, and Charlie Crist was once the prohibitive favorite over Marco Rubio in Florida.

In other words, in this environment, strange things happen. And with the Tea Party Express dumping $600,000 into Delaware to push O'Donnell over Castle, Republican leaders are getting nervous.

How nervous? Enough for party leaders to start letting political reporters know yesterday that O'Donnell "owes back taxes, had her home foreclosed on, and never received a diploma because she didn't pay her tuition."

The primary is two weeks from today, with the winner taking on New Castle County Executive Chris Coons (D) in November. Markos' assessment was exactly right -- if Castle wins the primary, it's a likely GOP pickup; if O'Donnell wins the primary, Dems have reason for optimism.

—Steve Benen 9:25 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (19)

HATCH GETS IT RIGHT ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.... If anyone should be sympathetic to the problems facing Muslim Americans right now, it should be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After all, in many respects, Mormons have endured similar difficulties for many years -- resistance to building houses of worship, questions of whether it's a "real" religion, etc.

It's why, as disheartening as the anti-Muslim activism has been lately, it's been especially disappointing to see prominent LDS members remain silent, and in many instances, even embrace intolerance.

It's also why Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), one of the nation's most prominent Mormons, deserves credit for stepping up and supporting a principle that isn't popular right now. Here's what Hatch told the Fox affiliate in Salt Lake City yesterday:

"Let's be honest about it, in the First Amendment, religious freedom, religious expression, that really express matters to the Constitution. So, if the Muslims own that property, that private property, and they want to build a mosque there, they should have the right to do so. The only question is, are they being insensitive to those who suffered the loss of loved ones? We know there are Muslims killed on 9/11 too and we know it's a great religion.... But as far as their right to build that mosque, they have that right.

"I just think what's made this country great is we have religious freedom. That's not the only thing, but it's one of the most important things in the Constitution. [...]

"There's a question of whether it's too close to the 9/11 area, but it's a few blocks away, it isn't right there.... And there's a huge, I think, lack of support throughout the country for Islam to build that mosque there, but that should not make a difference if they decide to do it. I'd be the first to stand up for their rights."

Good for Hatch. It's easy to defend First Amendment principles when it's popular; one actually has to believe in First Amendment principles to defend them when the political winds blow in the other direction.

I'd add, by the way, that Hatch is the first high-profile Republican official to offer a strong endorsement of the Park51 proposal. My suspicion is, he's also likely the last.

—Steve Benen 8:35 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (30)

THE GREAT GALLUP FREAK-OUT.... Two national generic-ballot polls were published within 48 hours of one another -- Newsweek showed Democrats and Republicans tied at 45% each, while Gallup showed Republicans leading Democrats by 10, 51% to 41%. Guess which one is causing a massive freak-out in the political world?

Pollsters offered some more glum news for Democrats on Monday night: Republicans have their biggest lead ever on the question of which party voters would support for Congress. Gallup's "generic ballot" - a staple of election prognostication - shows Republicans with a double-digit advantage.

In the latest Gallup polling, 51 percent of registered voters say they would vote for the GOP candidate in their district if the election were held today; 41 percent say they would support the Democrat. That represents the biggest such lead for the Republicans in Gallup polls back to 1942, and it marks the fourth straight week they have had the edge on the Democrats, who are seeking to retain control of the House and Senate.

I suppose the historic nature of the result -- it's the GOP's biggest margin since the dawn of time -- is fueling interest, while Newsweek's even split seems less interesting.

But I'd recommend caution when it comes to the Gallup numbers -- not because I'm discouraged by the results, but because the poll itself strikes me as dubious.

Remember, about a month ago, Gallup's generic-ballot showed Democrats jumping out to an unexpected six-point lead -- and I cautioned at the time that overjoyed Dems were almost certainly overreacting to an erratic poll. I have the same concerns now. (And I'd have the same reaction if, a month from now, the same poll showed the GOP's lead evaporating.)

Looking back over the last several months, Gallup's generic-ballot has been all over the place, with no real rationale. In April, the GOP built up a big lead, which then disappeared. In late May, the same thing happened. In mid-June, it happened again. Then in July, Democrats built up their biggest lead of the year, only to see it quickly fade. This week, the results have swung back in the GOP's direction.

The point is, erratic polls with bizarre swings are necessarily suspect. No other pollster is showing these wild fluctuations. Indeed, no other pollster shows Republicans with a double-digit lead. And while we're at it, it's worth emphasizing that Gallup's generic-ballot poll isn't even a generic-ballot poll in the traditional sense -- it's "aggregated data" from tracking polls.

I'm not suggesting that Dems should just ignore discouraging data -- burying one's head in the sand is never wise. For that matter, even if the political world discounts the Gallup data altogether, it seems overwhelmingly obvious that the GOP has all the momentum with two months left before the midterms. If I had to lay odds, I'd say the smart money is clearly on the GOP taking at least the House.

But I still question the value of Gallup's results, and think the political world freak-out is an overreaction.

—Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (24)

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

* Afghanistan: "Two separate roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan killed seven U.S. service members in southern Afghanistan Monday, NATO said. The deaths bring to 14 the number of U.S. troops killed in action in eastern and southern Afghanistan over the past three days."

* On a related note: "Despite the presence of almost 150,000 foreign troops, violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001."

* Biden in Iraq: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived in Baghdad on Monday to commemorate the official end of the United States combat mission and meet with Iraqi political leaders, who have yet to form a government more than five months after the March election."

* New Orleans: "President Obama on Sunday sought to assure this city, battered by two catastrophic disasters in five years, that federal efforts to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina would not waver even as the city struggles with the aftermath of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."

* Consumer spending edges higher: "Americans spent last month at the fastest pace in four months, helped by a jump in demand for automobiles. Consumer spending rose 0.4 percent in July after three lackluster months, the Commerce Department said Monday. Spending fell 0.1 percent in April, rose a tiny 0.1 percent in May and was flat in June."

* Pakistan's flooding crisis also means a food crisis.

* Keeping an eye on Hurricane Earl.

* Agent Orange and veterans: a 40-Year wait.

* We know a fair amount about Bush-era scandals, corruption, fraud, and mismanagement -- but imagine what we'd know if the Bush White House hadn't "lost" so many officials' emails.

* I've been meaning to highlight Jane Mayer's piece on David and Charles Koch, right-wing billionaires going to great lengths, mainly through their "Americans for Prosperity" outfit, to finance Republican efforts in 2010. Frank Rich's column on this yesterday was terrific. (Pay particular attention why comparisons to George Soros are misguided.)

* Daniel Luzer and Justin Peters explore the disclosure/ethics issues involved with the Washington Post's ownership of Kaplan, and its reporting on education policy.

* Fox News had a guest on this morning who believes teen pregnancies stem from lessons on evolution. He was serious.

* And The Onion wins the week with "Local Man Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims." (On a related note, The Onion probably needs to interview the perpetually silly James Tarnato, whose work often defies parody.)

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

—Steve Benen 5:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (13)

'OUT THERE TO TALK ABOUT THE ECONOMY'.... Last week, in the midst of several discouraging economic developments, White House officials recognized the need to sharpen its message a bit. They just weren't sure when.

Yesterday, President Obama was in New Orleans for the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Tomorrow is an Oval Office address on Iraq. Later this week, the focus will be on Middle East peace talks. One official told ABC late last week, "We know he needs to be out there to talk about the economy next week. We haven't yet figured out the way he's going to do that."

So, this afternoon, the president appeared in the Rose Garden to talk up economic policy in general, and chide Republicans for blocking the small-business-incentives bill in specific.

On his first workday back at the White House after a 10-day Martha's Vineyard vacation and a trip to New Orleans on Sunday, Mr. Obama addressed the nation's mounting economic anxieties in brief remarks from the Rose Garden. With the unemployment rate stuck above 9 percent, and the economic recovery all but stalled, he spent part of the morning huddled with his economic advisers.

While he said he and his team are "hard at work in identifying additional measures that could make a difference" -- including extending middle-class tax cuts that are set to expire this year, investing more in clean energy and in infrastructure rebuilding -- the president's most urgent call was directed at members of Congress, who return to work next week.

"This bill has been languishing in the Senate for four months, held up by a partisan minority that won't even allow it to go to a vote. That makes no sense," Mr. Obama said, referring to the small business initiative. He added, "Holding this bill hostage is directly detrimental to our economic growth."

That last point was bolstered by a new USA Today report, which the president made reference to, explaining that about 1,000 small businesses are ready to expand, but are waiting for Senate Republicans to stop playing petty games.

Following up on what we talked about yesterday, though, is there any reason to think the White House may put forward any kind of new economic policies and/or stimulus and/or jobs bill? It's hard to say exactly -- there almost certainly won't be one, ambitious package on the way, but Obama raised the specter of "additional measures."

Specifically, the president said, "[A]s Congress prepares to return to session, my economic team is hard at work in identifying additional measures that could make a difference in both promoting growth and hiring in the short term, and increasing our economy's competitiveness in the long term -- steps like extending the tax cuts for the middle class that are set to expire this year; redoubling our investment in clean energy and R&D; rebuilding more of our infrastructure for the future; further tax cuts to encourage businesses to put their capital to work creating jobs here in the United States. And I'll be addressing these proposals in further detail in the days and weeks to come."

I wouldn't necessarily interpret this as "new economic plan on the way," but it's something to keep an eye on.

—Steve Benen 4:45 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (15)

COURT SMACKS DOWN CUCCINELLI.... Shortly after taking office, Virginia's comically right-wing attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, decided his time would be well spent launching a witch hunt against a climate scientist named Michael Mann. Even for a Republican official known for pushing the activist envelope, this was pretty offensive.

Mann was a scholar at the University of Virginia from 1999 to 2005, before leaving to run Penn State's Earth System Science Center. But in the wake of the "Climategate" nonsense, Cuccinelli decided to launch an investigation, demanding "a sweeping swath of documents," to see if Mann had manipulated climate data during his U-Va. tenure. (some of which was funded through state grants).

Was there any reason to suspect Mann of fraudulent research? Well, no. But Cuccinelli wanted to poke around anyway, just to see what he could come up with. Today, a Virginia judge told The Cooch that he's on the wrong track.

An Albemarle County Circuit Court judge has set aside a subpoena issued by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia seeking documents related to the work of climate scientist and former university professor Michael Mann.

Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occurred in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli's subpoena failed to state a "reason to believe" that Mann had committed fraud.

The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic.....

The judge also explained to Cuccinelli that four of the five grants Mann relied on for his research were federally funded, and therefore out of bounds for the state A.G.'s investigation. Cuccinelli will reportedly try again, reworking his subpoena, while considering whether to appeal today's ruling.

Given the threat Cuccinelli's crusade posed to academic freedom, today's outcome is very good news. In a statement Mann said the judge's order "is a victory not just for me and the university, but for all scientists who live in fear that they may be subject to a politically-motivated witch hunt when their research findings prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests."

As for the bigger picture, I'd add that the list of Cuccinelli's other excesses is getting pretty long. Virginia's A.G. has, after all, been palling around with radicals, recently considered a literacy test for some Virginians wishing to vote, questioned President Obama's citizenship, rescinded legal protections for gays at Virginia universities, argued publicly that it doesn't cost the public any money when he and his office work on a frivolous lawsuit, and, of course temporarily added a modesty shield to Virginia's great seal.

And he's only been in office since January.

—Steve Benen 3:50 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (23)

MAYBE RICK SCOTT'S RUNNING FOR THE WRONG OFFICE.... Shortly before Florida's gubernatorial primary, disgraced former health care executive Rick Scott (R) wanted voters to know one thing: he's deeply opposed to converting a shut-down clothing store in Manhattan into a community center. What does Florida's governor's office have to do with building permits in New York City? Literally nothing, but Scott nevertheless won the primary.

Now, Scott is transitioning to the general election, but his old habits haven't gone away. Pat Garofalo flags Scott's new message:

"Floridians want an answer: Will Alex Sink stand with Obama and let the Bush tax cuts expire, thereby increasing Floridians' taxes, or will she stand with taxpayers and demand Obama work to extend the Bush tax cuts?"

Scott has also touted his opposition to the Bush tax cuts on both national and local television.

And what does Florida's governor's office have to do with federal policymakers setting federal income tax rates? Literally nothing.

I know Scott is new to the world of public service, but this is pretty silly. Either he's deeply confused about the office he's seeking, or he's counting on voters not knowing the difference.

—Steve Benen 3:10 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (18)

WAITING PATIENTLY FOR THE 'GROUND ZERO CHURCH' OUTRAGE.... A radical Christian preacher in Florida named Bill Keller has an idea. Apparently, what lower Manhattan really needs is a "9-11 Christian Center at Ground Zero" that would -- as luck would have it -- be two city blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood.

Justin Elliott reports today that Keller will start preaching two blocks south of Ground Zero this weekend, and hopes to raise $8 million for his proposed building.

To get a sense of where Keller is coming from, consider his project's website, which calls Islam a religion of "hate and death" whose adherents will go to hell. It also says: "Islam is a wonderful religion... for PEDOPHILES!"

Keller is the same pastor who hosted a Birther infomercial that encouraged viewers to send him and a partner donations to advance the Birther cause. His Internet ministry explicitly calls President Obama the new Hitler. He calls homosexuality a perversion. And in 2008, he targeted presidential contender Mitt Romney for being Mormon with a campaign called "voting for Satan."

In short, if critics of the Park51 Islamic community center -- which is explicitly welcoming of all faiths -- truly believe that there is a "zone of solemnity" around ground zero (as Gov. Pat Quinn put it), they should be horrified at Keller's 9/11 Christian Center.

Critics of Park51 insist their opposition is not motivated by anti-Muslim animus. This would seem to offer quite an opportunity, then, for even-handed disapproval. Indeed, it seems like a no-brainer.

Here we have a radical figure, who's lashed out wildly at Americans, intending to build a controversial religious center two blocks from Ground Zero. We don't know where his money will come from, or what kind of zealotry will spread from the building.

I'm entirely comfortable with Park51 and the 9/11 Christian Center being built. If opponents of the former aren't motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry, then the latter should be denounced, too, right?

—Steve Benen 2:10 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (28)

RYAN'S RADICAL ROADMAP FINDS SOME GOP BACKING.... Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) wants Republican lawmakers and candidates to show some courage and endorse Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) "Roadmap for America's Future." So does Jonah Goldberg.

For his part, Ryan, the far-right lawmaker who'll head the House Budget Committee if Republicans take the House, knows he's offered a fairly radical budget plan, and recently conceded his colleagues who agree with him are too nervous to say so: "They're talking to their pollsters and their pollsters are saying, 'Stay away from this.'"

Amanda Terkel reports today, however, that some aren't staying away from this.

-- Martha Roby, AL-2: On June 4, Roby put out a statement criticizing Democrats for refusing to move forward with a budget proposal. "The American people deserve better. They deserve solutions," said Roby. "Conservative leaders like Rep. Paul Ryan are offering real solutions to cut wasteful spending, such as canceling unspent TARP and stimulus funds, cutting non-defense spending back to 2008 levels, and reducing the government workforce. I endorse these solutions and other common sense approaches to start getting our fiscal house back in order." Roby is one of the National Republican Campaign Committee's "Young Guns," the party's top new prospects.

-- Francisco Canseco, TX-23: In a video posted on July 13, Canesco told a questioner that he supports Ryan's alternative budget proposal. Canseco is also one of the NRCC's Young Guns.

-- Andy Barr, KY-6: In a July 15 radio appearance on WVLK-AM 590, a caller asked Barr whether "we can count on you to support the Republican budget." Barr responded, "Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I'm not in Congress now, of course, and I don't have an opportunity to support a particular budget, but that's certainly preferable -- that budget, a leaner budget -- is certainly preferable to the ones that have been offered by the President and the Speaker of the House."

-- Dan Lungren, CA-3:Lungren is already in Congress, but he hasn't yet co-sponsored Ryan's plan. On Aug. 11, Lungren told Ryan that the roadmap was "the best long-term look at trying to deal with our fiscal insanity right now that anybody has done." He refused to say, however, whether he would officially sign on to the bill before the election.

This is, of course, exactly what Democrats have been hoping for.

If you're just joining us, Paul Ryan's "roadmap" is a right-wing fantasy, slashing taxes on the rich while raising taxes for everyone else. The plan calls for privatizing Social Security and gutting Medicare, and fails miserably in its intended goal -- cutting the deficit. As Paul Krugman recently explained, the Ryan plan "is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America's fiscal future."

When Republican candidates embrace this plan to radically transform governmental institutions and Americans' way of life, as these handful have, they're endorsing a Republican vision of governing more extreme than anything we've seen in the modern political era.

That should not only be a crucial component of their campaigns, it reinforces the need for other Republican candidates to state their position on the "roadmap." The question for every GOP hoping to be in Congress next year is simple and straightforward: "The leading Republican on the budget has presented a bold proposal. It's been touted by the Republican leadership, and endorsed by several Republican candidates. Do you agree with that plan or not?"

It's not unreasonable to think voters should have an answer before they head to the polls in November.

—Steve Benen 1:25 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (17)

ENERGIZING MORE THAN JUST THE GOP BASE, CONT'D.... NPR reported last week that experts in counter-terrorism believe the controversy surrounding the Park51 proposal may play "right into the hands of radical extremists." Today, Newsweek finds the same phenomenon.

"By preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor," Taliban operative Zabihullah tells NEWSWEEK. (Like many Afghans, he uses a single name.) "It's providing us with more recruits, donations, and popular support."

America's enemies in Afghanistan are delighted by the vehement public opposition to the proposed "Ground Zero mosque." The backlash against the project has drawn the heaviest e-mail response ever on jihadi Web sites, Zabihullah claims -- far bigger even than France's ban on burqas earlier this year. (That was big, he recalls: "We received many e-mails asking for advice on how Muslims should react to the hijab ban, and how they can punish France.") This time the target is America itself. "We are getting even more messages of support and solidarity on the mosque issue and questions about how to fight back against this outrage."

Zabihullah also claims that the issue is such a propaganda windfall -- so tailor-made to show how "anti-Islamic" America is -- that it now heads the list of talking points in Taliban meetings with fighters, villagers, and potential recruits. "We talk about how America tortures with waterboarding, about the cruel confinement of Muslims in wire cages in Guantanamo, about the killing of innocent women and children in air attacks -- and now America gives us another gift with its street protests to prevent a mosque from being built in New York," Zabihullah says. "Showing reality always makes the best propaganda."

"The more mosques you stop," Zabihullah predicted, "the more jihadis we will get."

I saw Jon Stewart had a segment last week, arguing that we just shouldn't care what guys like this have to say. Americans should do what we think is best, and not obsess over how terrorists may or may not react. I'm tempted to agree.

But the tenor and context of these debates really does affect our national security interests. The Taliban, al Qaeda, and assorted terrorist networks are going to try to recruit followers anyway, and they're going to keep targeting us anyway, but there's nothing wrong with the United States making things harder for them. We can't base our judgments on how some monster might exploit a decision, but if we can honor our principles, stay true to American ideals, and deny the Taliban a victory at the same time, then maybe it's an approach with merit.

Our actions reverberate. When we deny Americans their rights, because some decide they don't like those Americans' religious beliefs, we're not just breaking faith with who we are, we're broadcasting a mistake to the world.

Adam Serwer explained, "The kinetic aspects of the fight against terrorism aren't going to hinge on whether or not the Park51 project gets built, but the larger war of ideas is one where the U.S. can't afford to lose any more ground than it already has."

—Steve Benen 12:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (22)

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.

* West Virginia held its Senate primaries over the weekend. As expected, incumbent Gov. Joe Manchin easily won the Democratic nod, and will face John Raese, who also cruised in the Republican primary.

* Speaking of weekend contests, Louisiana held its Republican Senate primary, which, not too long ago, looked like it might be competitive. It wasn't -- scandal-plagued incumbent David Vitter crushed former state Supreme Court Justice Chet Traylor, 87% to 8%. (No, that's not a typo.) Vitter will face Rep. Charlie Melancon, who cruised past minimal opposition in the Democratic primary.

* As of last week, spending on campaign ads has so far totaled $395 million for this cycle. At this point in the last midterm elections, it was $286 million.

* In Vermont's five-way Democratic gubernatorial primary, a final tally state shows Sen. Peter Shumlin narrowly ahead, but 0.9% of the vote separates him from the second and third place candidates. State Sen. Doug Racine, just 197 votes behind Shumlin, requested a recount late Friday.

* Late last week, Joe Miller, the apparent Republican Senate nominee in Alaska, compared incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski to a prostitute. Miller, soon after, blamed an aide.

* Patriot Majority, an independent expenditure outfit, has a pretty hard-hitting ad targeting Sharron Angle's (R) Senate campaign in Nevada.

* Speaking of Nevada, the latest Mason-Dixon poll of the state's gubernatorial race shows Brian Sandoval (R) with a big lead over Rory Reid (D), 53% to 31%.

* In New Mexico's gubernatorial race, an Albuquerque Journal poll shows Susana Martinez (R) with a six-point lead over Lt. Gov. Diane Denish (D), 45% to 39%. Denish's connection to Gov. Bill Richardson (D), once considered a positive, has become a drag on her support as Richardson's approval rating drops.

* And in exceedingly silly 2012 news, former right-wing U.N. Ambassador John Bolton hasn't ruled out a presidential campaign.

—Steve Benen 12:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (7)

THE SPEED-BUMP ON THE ROAD TO BECK'S RELIGIOUS AGENDA.... The purpose of Saturday's rally at the Lincoln Memorial wasn't exactly clear, but it seemed to have something to do with religion. By one account, the event was "overtly religious, filled with gospel music and speeches that were more like sermons."

"America," Glenn Beck told attendees, "today begins to turn back to God."

Whose God? Well, that's a little trickier. Christian Newswire seemed torn -- they like Beck's hysterical political message, but have real problems with his chosen faith tradition.

Glenn Beck promotes a false gospel. However, many of his political ideas can help America.

Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Mormonism is not a Christian denomination but a cult of Christianity.

The country needs to get back to the simplicity of the Bible. The reason our country is in bad shape is that ministers for the most part do not share the truth. Many endorse false gospels including Mormonism.

Faiz Shakir added that this sentiment isn't isolated.

Brannon Howse, a conservative writer and founder of Worldview Weekend, said, "While I applaud and agree with many of Glenn Beck's conservative and constitutional views, that does not give me or any other Bible-believing Christian justification to compromise Biblical truth by spiritually joining Beck."

"Jesus Christ's Church has universally rejected Mormonism's Anti-Trinitarian theology and its claim that mortals may become God," David Shedlock, an evangelical blogger, wrote on a FreedomWorks forum earlier this month. "Beck asks Christian leaders to 'put differences aside,' but Beck himself daily peppers his broadcasts with Mormon distinctives because he cannot keep his beliefs to himself."

It creates an interesting religio-political dynamic that's worth watching. As we talked about over the weekend, Tea Partiers and related right-wing activists have often been split, just below the surface, between competing factions -- largely secular libertarians who focus on fiscal issues and the scope of government vs. religious-right-style theocrats who are still inclined to fight a culture war. Saturday's gathering seemed to suggest the latter contingent might have the edge.

But then there's the other fissure -- theocrats comfortable with a Mormon's leadership role in their so-called "movement," and theocrats who appreciate Beck's madness, but not his LDS membership.

—Steve Benen 11:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (46)

EXPECT LIMITLESS, RELENTLESS WITCH HUNTS.... When thinking about what to expect from a Republican takeover of Congress, different scenarios come to mind. Sure, any hopes of advancing meaningful legislation are effectively off the table, and the prospect of a government shutdown seems fairly realistic.

But it's the endless investigations that would get tiresome. Politico reported the other day that Republicans "are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority."

Paul Krugman explained today that it's "going to be very, very ugly."

...I'm not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer's new article in The New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Mr. Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we've just seen, he's doing his best to insinuate that Mr. Obama is a Muslim. Again, though, there's an extra level of craziness this time around: Mr. Limbaugh is the same as he always was, but now seems tame compared with Glenn Beck.

And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found. [...]

It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular, we're still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can't afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that's what we're likely to get.

I'd just add one related thought. The Politico piece on the expected witch hunts, highlighting right-wing lawmakers "quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas," offered a list of "six possible committee investigations if Republicans take back the House in November." The possibilities are probably predictable to those who follow current events: a job offer to Joe Sestak, rescuing the auto industry, the New Black Panther Party, ACORN, etc.

That's no doubt accurate, but it's missing a relevant detail: some of the likely investigations will cover stuff that's just made-up. In the Clinton era, House Republicans held hearings on garbage that was manufactured out of thin air, and subpoenas were issued just for the sake of issuing subpoenas.

There's every reason to believe it would be worse in 2011 and 2012.

—Steve Benen 10:45 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (24)

SMALL BUSINESSES WAIT FOR GOP TO STOP PLAYING GAMES.... A month ago yesterday, there was reason for optimism on the small-business bill pending in the Senate. The aid package included tax breaks, new incentives, and an attempt to expand credit through a lending program that utilizes local banks, and with 59 supporters, the Democratic majority only needed one GOP vote to overcome yet another Republican filibuster.

They didn't get that vote. Shortly before the Senate broke for its recess, Republicans threw a bit of a tantrum over the number of amendments they were allowed to consider, and unanimously blocked the chamber from voting on the bill.

The consequences of GOP game-playing are as discouraging as they are obvious.

Small businesses have put hiring, supply buying and real estate expansion on hold as they wait out the vote on a small-business-aid bill that stalled in the Senate earlier this summer.

The much-debated legislation offers tax breaks and waived loan fees. But it also comes with more divisive components, such as a $30 billion fund that would help community banks give loans to small businesses.... Many small businesses had hoped the legislation would pass the Senate by the end of July. With two weeks left until Congress reconvenes, those firms are in a holding pattern.

"I'm still waiting for Congress to sign off on the bill," says Amarjit Kaur, who runs a convenience store and gas station in Wood Village, Ore. She leases her property but has a chance to buy it. With the waived-fee provision, Kaur says she could save about $35,000 on her pending loan.

Keep in mind, the bill doesn't add to the deficit. The only reason Republicans blocked a vote was because they demanded that they be able to offer amendments to the small-business package that have nothing to do with small businesses -- including measures related to border security and Bush tax cuts. They don't really expect the amendments to pass, but GOP leaders hoped (a) that the votes would put Dems in an awkward spot; and (b) the process of considering them would take up more floor time, and make it impossible to consider other legislation this year.

The Democratic leadership balked, so the vote on the bill was put off. And as a result, about a thousand small businesses are ready to expand, but are instead just sitting there, waiting for our political system and the Republican Party to be less ridiculous. (Whether the GOP did this deliberately, worried that small-business expansion before the elections might help the economy and interfere with Republican election plans, is unclear.)

Often, when the political world considers the GOP's scandalous obstructionism on Capitol Hill, we're reminded of an exasperatingly dysfunctional policymaking process. But it's worth remembering from time to time that the nonsense carries with it real-world consequences.

—Steve Benen 10:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (14)

ANGLE EVEN OPPOSED KATRINA RELIEF FUNDS.... In September 2005, with the nation still stunned by the devastation in Louisiana caused by Hurricane Katrina, the Senate took up a $62 billion package in relief funds for the region. The GOP-led chamber -- the Republicans enjoyed a 55-seat Senate majority at the time -- approved the aid bill unanimously.

Had Nevada's Sharron Angle been there, that would not have been the case. She boasted at the time, in the midst of a failed congressional campaign, that she would have voted "no" on post-Katrina relief. Jon Ralston has the story.

During an interview on conservative KLAV radio in 2005, which she once had up on her site, Angle invoked Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, who she claimed said he was voting "no" because the Katrina money was not carefully accounted for. [...]

But Pence actually voted FOR the $62 billion. His "yea" is right there in the congressional record after someone named Pelosi.

The day after the Sept. 8, 2005, vote, even House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told The Wall Street Journal: "It's too important to play politics with. It's too important to second-guess."

I realize the Katrina crisis was five years ago, and for some in Nevada, the disaster has probably faded from view. But Angle's response to the worst national disaster in American history says a great deal about her priorities and values, and should signal what kind of senator she'd be.

—Steve Benen 9:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (10)

THE CRAZY CAUCUS WELCOMES A NEW MEMBER.... Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Ken Buck, Rob Johnson, and Pat Toomey help compose one of the nuttiest slate of extreme Senate candidates we've seen in a very long time, but there can be no doubt that Joe Miller's application to the Crazy Caucus has already been approved.

Miller, of course, provided one of the year's most unexpected results last week, apparently beating incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska's Republican Senate primary. (The official results aren't available just yet, but by all accounts, Miller is favored to prevail once absentee ballots are counted.) If he is the nominee, Miller's extremism pushes the ideological envelope in new directions.

It's easy to check off most of the routine garbage -- Miller has birther tendencies, demands the elimination of all abortion rights (even in cases of rape or incest), wants to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, rejects global warming science, wants to "transition out" Social Security, and is eyeing cabinet agencies for elimination, including the Department of Education.

But it's his constitutional beliefs that help set Miller apart. In July, he rejected the very idea of unemployment benefits, insisting that they're not "constitutionally authorized." This does, by the way, make him more radical than Angle and Paul, who've denounced extended aid to the jobless, but haven't rejected the policy itself as illegal.

Yesterday, on CBS's Face the Nation, Miller went even further. (TP has the video)

BOB SCHIEFFER: You have also taken some fairly controversial, some would say, very extreme positions. First, you say you want to phase out Medicare. You want to privatize Social Security. I have to say there are a lot of people in Alaska who are on Medicare and are getting Social Security. Isn't that position going to be a problem for you in the election, in this general election?

JOE MILLER: Well, yeah, and I would suggest to you that if one thing said the Constitution is extreme then you would also think that the founders are extreme. We just simply want to get back to basics, get -- restore essentially the constitutional foundation of the country, and that means the federal government becoming less onerous, less involved in every -- basically every item of our lives. And what that means is there does have to be some transition.

It's hard to interpret this as anything but Miller characterizing Social Security and Medicare as being at odds with the Constitution -- a position that positions him on the far fringes of American political thought.

I don't want to get too far ahead of the official results -- he's ahead, but there's a chance Miller may not win the primary -- but it's worth pondering whether this guy will actually become a United States senator. At this point, he's the frontrunner.

A new survey from Public Policy Polling shows the right-wing lawyer leading Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams, 47% to 39%. It's worth emphasizing, though, that this offers yet another example in which the radicalized GOP base has created a competitive race where there would otherwise not be one -- Miller's lead is in the single digits, while a Murkowski primary win would have made this race unwinnable for Democrats.

—Steve Benen 8:35 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (22)

POTUS GETS BACK TO WORK.... President Obama sat down with NBC's Brian Williams yesterday, covering a fair amount of ground over the course of 22 minutes. Before I saw the interview, I saw a headline: "Obama blasts lies, disinformation." That's sort of true, but it's not quite how I'd characterize the discussion.

After talking at some length about the problems afflicting the Gulf Coast in general and Louisiana in particular, Williams noted public opinion polls showing significant numbers of Americans questioning the president's faith and birthplace. Obama more or less just shrugged off the nonsense. "The facts are the facts," he said, adding, "I'm not going to be worrying too much about whatever rumors are floating on out there. If I spend all my time chasing after that, then I wouldn't get much done.... I can't spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead."

The president, in other words, treated this is a silly, trivial distraction, which it is.

Asked about the right-wing rally on Saturday, Obama acknowledge that folks are free to "exercise their rights" to speak out, just like everyone else. But the president added that trying times often lead some segments of the population to be susceptible to dubious appeals, so "it's not surprising that somebody like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of the country."

As for the economy, the president gave no reason to think any new, major economic initiatives will be unveiled anytime soon, but nevertheless expressed optimism about the U.S. recovery. I wish I shared the optimism.

—Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (19)

THERE IS NO SECRET 'BIG ECONOMIC INITIATIVE,' BUT THERE COULD BE.... The lead New York Times editorial today begins, "If President Obama has a big economic initiative up his sleeve, as he hinted recently, now would be a good time to let the rest of us in on it."

I agree with the latter half, but I'm not sure White House has hinted about any upcoming economic plan. I'd love to be wrong, but the evidence seems to suggest the president and his team are prepared to move forward with existing policy, coupled with some small-but-worthwhile measures still pending in Congress. The "hint" came on Wednesday, when we learned that Obama and his economic team held a conference call to discuss "the next steps to keep the economy growing," but a closer look suggested those "next steps" are limited to the existing tax-rate plan and the bill with small-business incentives.

Indeed, Jake Tapper reported Friday that the president's team believes, under the circumstances, "there aren't any more major initiatives the administration will push in further attempts to revive the sputtering economy."

With this in mind, the NYT editorial board has some suggestions for the president to consider.

Mr. Obama ... needs to inspire Americans who have been ground down by the economic crisis and Washington's small-bore sniping. He needs to rally the nation around a big idea -- a project that is worth sacrificing for, worth paying for, worth working for. One that lets them know that there is more ahead than just a return to a status quo of lopsided growth in which corporate profits surge while jobs and incomes lag.

That mission could be the "21st century infrastructure," that Mr. Obama mentioned on a multi-city trip this month, "not just roads and bridges, but faster Internet access and high-speed rail." It could be energy independence, with high-tech green jobs and a real chance for addressing global warming. Either of the above would make sense, economically and politically.

Mr. Obama and his economic team had clearly hoped for an economic rebound in time for the midterm elections. They are not going to get it. The economic damage they inherited was too deep, and the economic stimulus they pushed through Congress, for all of the fight, was too small. Standing back is not doing the country or his party any good. We believe Americans are ready for hard truths and big ideas.

Substantively, this sounds right to me. But when it comes to messaging, I'd go just a little further.

If the president were to come out tomorrow to announce an ambitious infrastructure/energy/stimulus plan, focused solely on job creation, Republicans would immediately denounce it as fiscally irresponsible -- we couldn't possibly increase the deficit to pay for this, they'd say.

But in many respects, recent developments have strengthened the hand of stimulus proponents, and it's a dynamic the Obama White House could take advantage of. For one thing, recent polling suggests Americans much prefer investing in job creation to focusing on deficit reduction. I'm suggesting, then, that the president and his party, shortly before the elections, push a popular idea. In theory, that shouldn't require too much arm-twisting.

For another, literally every member of the House Republican leadership -- Minority Leader, Minority Whip, and Conference Chairman -- just this month argued publicly that the economy is more important than the deficit, at least right now. They were talking about defending tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans, but the underlying point was the same -- given the fragile state of the economy, growth and jobs matter more than deficit reduction.

So here's a radical idea: why not call their bluff? If GOP leaders are willing to increase the deficit to improve the economy, the White House can take them up on their offer -- but take every penny Republicans want to devote to tax cuts and invest that money in job creation.

It creates an either/or for the political world and voters to consider. Both sides plan to increase the deficit, so that's no longer the issue. The question is whether it's better to devote the resources to tax cuts for the very wealthy, or use the same resources on infrastructure, energy, and stimulus.

A jobs agenda vs. a Billionaire Bailout.

I realize that the likelihood of Congress passing anything in this environment is, to put it charitably, remote. If Republicans aren't willing to let the Senate vote on extended unemployment benefits, and House Republicans were willing to lay off tens of thousands of school teachers, then winning a vote on job creation is almost certainly impossible.

But why not have the fight anyway? Why not force Republicans to fight against a jobs bill two months before the elections? Why not let the public see exactly what both sides want to do to give the economy a boost, and determine which is preferable?

Why not ask voters which they prefer -- a jobs agenda or a Billionaire Bailout?

—Steve Benen 11:45 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (65)

THE KIND OF 'QUESTION' YOU'LL ONLY HEAR ON FOX NEWS SUNDAY.... Fox News' Chris Wallace featured guest this morning was Fox News' Glenn Beck -- there's something wrong with this incestuous picture -- and the interview eventually covered the activist/rodeo-clown/snake-oil salesman's presidential ambitions.

Wallace brought up the subject, noting "blog traffic" about a "Beck-Palin" ticket. Beck dismissed it out of hand, saying "Not a chance.... I have no desire to be president of the United States, zero desire. I don't think that I would be electable and there are far too many people who are far smarter than me to be president."

But Wallace didn't drop the subject:

"When you've got hundreds of thousands of people showing up to see you, Glenn, that's something, that's worth something... that's people putting their trust in you."

Yes, the host of a Sunday morning public-affairs show, someone with decades of experience in American journalism, seemed to be urging a deranged media personality to consider a national campaign.

Putting aside the dubious nature of the "hundreds of thousands" claim, I thought it was Chris Wallace's job to help explore whether people should "put their trust" in someone like Glenn Beck. Somehow, "Fox News Sunday" didn't get to that one.

When the lines are blurred, if not eliminated altogether, between activism, journalism, celebrity, and commercialism, standards cease to exist.

—Steve Benen 10:55 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (41)

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM BRODER.... From time to time, I note my frustration with David Broder columns, so I suppose it's only fair to give credit where credit is due. His piece today was actually quite wise.

Broder noted that he couldn't make it to Beckapalooza yesterday, but nevertheless shared his memories of having been at the same location 47 years ago, covering the civil rights march for the now-defunct Washington Star.

The columnist noted that, in 1963, there was quite a bit of uncertainty about what to expect that day -- in the media, in the Kennedy administration, throughout "white establishment Washington" -- knowing that protests can "get out of hand" sometimes.

Broder, a 33-year-old beat reporter at the time, quickly realized "that the mood of the day would be fellowship and the spirit one of brotherhood." Attendees, he found, "came to affirm their solidarity and, if you will, their humanity."

Even before a word was spoken -- let alone the eloquent words that have echoed down through history -- it had become absolutely evident from the people themselves that achieving civil rights would be the way to heal, not damage, the country.

I went back to the Star wondering what it was we had been afraid of. And I've remembered this many times since, when people have tried to teach us to fear certain things, such as someone else's marriage or place of worship.

Well said.

—Steve Benen 10:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (11)

BIGOTS TORCH RELIGIOUS SITE IN TENNESSEE.... Opponents of Park51 in New York like to maintain the pretense that their anti-Muslim animus is related directly to 9/11. It's not the community center they're worried about, the argument goes, but rather the proximity to the site of the fallen Twin Towers.

That is, of course, nonsense, as is evident when we see fierce opposition to Muslim Americans elsewhere.

Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb.

Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson.

Special Agent Andy Anderson of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told CBS News that the fire destroyed one piece of construction equipment and damaged three others. Gas was poured over the equipment to start the fire, Anderson said.

"No mosque in Murfreesboro. I don't want it. I don't want them here," Evy Summers told the local CBS affiliate. "Go start their own country overseas somewhere. This is a Christian country. It was based on Christianity."

Saleh Sbenaty, a member of the center's planning committee and a professor of engineering technology at Middle Tennessee State University, noted that Murfreesboro's Muslim Americans have been part of the community for 30 years, largely without incident. But the proposed center has apparently driven local bigots to violence.

Glenn Greenwald, who originally flagged the story, explained, "The arsonists undoubtedly will be happy to tell you how much they hate Terrorism. And how there's a War on Christianity underway in the U.S. The harm from these actions are not merely the physical damage they cause, but the well-grounded fear it imposes on a minority of the American population. If you launch a nationwide, anti-Islamic campaign in Lower Manhattan based on the toxic premise that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11 -- and spend a decade expanding American wars on one Muslim country after the next -- this is the inevitable, and obviously dangerous, outcome."

—Steve Benen 9:45 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (41)

A SHIFT FROM THE SECULAR?.... Almost immediately after Tea Party groups started organizing events last year, there's been an underlying tension between two main contingents. A secular libertarian-minded faction emerged, which focuses almost exclusively on fiscal issues and the size of government. The other is a more religious-right-style bloc, with an emphasis on more socially conservative issues.

There have been simmering tensions between the two for quite a while, but if yesterday was any indication, one side seems to be edging ahead. I still have no idea what, exactly, the far-right zealots actually want, but it now seems to have something to do with religion.

An enormous and impassioned crowd rallied at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, summoned by Glenn Beck, a conservative broadcaster who called for a religious rebirth in America at the site where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech 47 years ago to the day.

"Something that is beyond man is happening," Mr. Beck said in opening the event as the crowd thronged near the memorial grounds. "America today begins to turn back to God." [...]

[T]he program was distinctly different from most Tea Party rallies. While Tea Party groups have said they want to focus on fiscal conservatism and not risk alienating people by talking about religion or social issues, the rally on Saturday was overtly religious, filled with gospel music and speeches that were more like sermons.

Mr. Beck imbued his remarks on Saturday and at events the night before with references to God and a need for a religious revival.

This wasn't a conservative message with religious appeals sprinkled in for effect; it was the other way around. Indeed, Beck and his cohorts laid it on thick. (That Beck is a Mormon -- a faith many Christian evangelicals find theologically problematic -- may not have been widely known.)

But what I think bears watching is whether this shift in emphasis is what activists actually want. A few days ago, when former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman announced that he's gay, the NYT reported that the response was muted because the right is focused on the economy, not the culture war. If that's true, does the right want to be told that the new goal is to turn America "back to God"?

The Tea Partiers' agenda has always been rather fluid, but at a minimum, their priorities have tended to emphasize secular issues like taxes, debt, entitlements, and health care reform. These activists not only showed less of an interest in religious issues, in many instances, they deliberately ignored them. Indeed, for over a year, the theocratic elements of the conservative movement were openly disgusted by the shift in focus.

"There's a libertarian streak in the tea party movement that concerns me as a cultural conservative," the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer said in March. "The tea party movement needs to insist that candidates believe in the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage."

Yesterday didn't tell us much in the way of substance, but the rally certainly wasn't about taxes and the deficit. The question then becomes whether far-right activists are comfortable with being footsoldiers in Glenn Beck's army, bringing America to Glenn Beck's vision of God.

—Steve Benen 8:45 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (30)

JUST HOW BIG WERE THE 'THRONGS'?.... By all accounts, turnout at yesterday's far-right rally at the Lincoln Memorial was pretty strong, but that observation tends to lead to another question: how strong was it?

To underscore how tricky this is, consider two reports from McClatchy. One article said "tens of thousands" of people showed up for the rally, while another said "hundreds of thousands." Same news outlet, same day, covering the same story.

No wonder the National Park Service gave up on offering crowd estimates years ago.

As far as I can tell, the only outlet to publish an even vaguely-scientific headcount was CBS News.

An estimated 87,000 people attended a rally organized by talk-radio host and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck Saturday in Washington, according to a crowd estimate commissioned by CBS News.

The company AirPhotosLive.com based the attendance on aerial pictures it took over the rally....AirPhotosLive.com gave its estimate a margin of error of 9,000, meaning between 78,000 and 96,000 people attended the rally. The photos used to make the estimate were taken at noon Saturday, which is when the company estimated was the rally's high point.

I imagine the right will find this number deeply unsatisfying, but a crowd of 87,000 people really isn't that bad. We are, after all, talking about a rally in late August, held by a media personality with declining ratings, which had no clear purpose or rationale.

It's not a tally that should necessarily strike fear in the hearts of the nation, but it's nothing for conservatives to be ashamed of, either. When 87,000 folks show up for an NFL game in Washington, it's considered pretty good turnout. It looks puny up against the numbers for, say, President Obama's inauguration last year, but the president enjoys far more support than a deranged media personality.

The problem, though, is that supporters exaggerated expectations in the wrong direction. Organizers told the National Park Service they expected 300,000 people to attend. The head of Freedom Works, an allied right-wing outfit, said on Friday he expected between 400,000 and 500,000.

One of these days, these folks will learn how to play the expectations game. For now, they're surprisingly bad at it.

—Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (45)

MOVEMENTS ARE ABOUT SOMETHING REAL…. I tried to keep up on today's festivities at the Lincoln Memorial, but as the dust settles, I find myself confused.

For a year and a half, we've seen rallies and town-hall shouting and attack ads and Fox News special reports. But I still haven't the foggiest idea what these folks actually want, other than to see like-minded Republicans winning elections. To be sure, I admire their passion, and I applaud their willingness to get involved in public affairs. If more Americans chose to take a more active role in the political process, the country would be better off and our democracy would be more vibrant.

But that doesn't actually tell us what these throngs of Americans are fighting for, exactly. I'm not oblivious to their cries; I'm at a loss to appreciate those cries on anything more than a superficial level.

This is about "freedom."

Well, I'm certainly pro-freedom, and as far as I can tell, the anti-freedom crowd struggles to win votes on Election Day. But can they be a little more specific? How about the freedom for same-sex couples to get married? No, we're told, not that kind of freedom.

This is about a fight for American "liberties."

That sounds great, too. Who's against American "liberties"? But I'm still looking for some details. Might this include law-abiding American Muslims exercising their liberties and converting a closed-down clothing store into a community center? No, we're told, not those kinds of liberties.

This is about giving Americans who work hard and play by the rules more opportunities.

I'm all for that, too. But would these opportunities include the chance for hard-working Americans to bring their kids to the doctor if they get sick, even if the family can't afford insurance? No, we're told, not those kinds of opportunities.

This is about the values of the Founding Fathers.

I'm a big fan of the framers' generation, who created an extraordinary nation. But if we're honoring their values, would this include their steadfast commitment to the separation of church and state? No, we're told, not those values.

This is about patriotic Americans willing to make sacrifices for the good of their country.

That sounds reasonable; sacrifices can be honorable. But if we're talking about patriots willing to sacrifice, does that mean millionaires and billionaires can go back to paying '90s-era tax rates (you know, when the economy was strong)? No, we're told, not those kinds of sacrifices.

This is about a public that, at long last, wants to hear the truth from those who speak in their name.

What a great idea. Maybe that means we can hear the truth about global warming? About the fact that health care reform wasn't a socialized government takeover? About Social Security not going bankrupt? About how every court ruling conservatives don't like doesn't necessarily constitute "liberal judicial activism"? No, we're told, not those truths.

Movements -- real movements that make a difference and stand the test of time -- are about more than buzz words, television personalities, and self-aggrandizement. Change -- transformational change that sets nations on new courses -- is more than vague, shallow promises about "freedom."

Labor unions created a movement. Women's suffrage was a movement. The fight for civil rights is a movement. The ongoing struggle for equality for gays and lesbians is a movement. In each case, the grievance was as clear as the solution. There was no mystery as to what these patriots were fighting for. Their struggles and successes made the nation stronger, better, and more perfect.

The folks who gathered in D.C. today were awfully excited about something. The fact that it's not altogether obvious what that might be probably isn't a good sign.

—Steve Benen 7:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (96)

SMART POLICY, SMART POLITICS.... For much of 2009, polls pointed to a discouraging perception among Americans. Given a choice between economic growth and deficit reduction, large majorities -- over and over again -- said policymakers should focus on the latter. There was no real rationale for the majority of the public to be so wrong about this, but different pollsters in different times of the year found the same misguided result.

There were meaningful consequences for the public's wildly flawed priorities. As lawmakers on the Hill saw the polls, for example, the political appetite for investing in economic stimulus disappeared. Nervous Democrats started echoing Republicans about spending cuts, and key legislation wouldn't even get a fair hearing unless the bills were fully paid for. Under the economic circumstances, this was bizarre. But under the political circumstances, lawmakers felt like they had no other choice.

It's worth noting, then, that there's at least some evidence that attitudes have shifted in a more constructive direction. This question in the newly-released Newsweek poll bears special attention:

"Which one of the following do you think should have the higher priority for policy-makers in Washington right now:

37% Reducing the federal budget deficit
57% Federal spending to create jobs
6% Don't know

This strikes me as very encouraging. For many Americans, the "deficit" has become an amorphous concept that they've been conditioned to viscerally reject, and the polling last year suggested this knee-jerk reaction was so strong, deficit reduction was actually perceived as more important than the economy itself.

But the Newsweek poll -- yes, I know, it's only one poll -- wasn't close. Asked which should be a higher priority, the deficit or spending money on job creation, the latter won by 20 points.

Dems on the Hill are afraid to make economic investments because they expect a public backlash. They're nervous enough about the midterms and aren't in the mood to hear another round of "government spending is bad." But here's data showing that spending on job creation is actually quite popular. Republicans would respond by saying the deficit matters more, but that's not where the public is right now.

So why not borrow the money and invest in job creation? Like, immediately?

As for the rest of the poll, President Obama's approval rating is at 47%, the parties are tied on the generic ballot at 45%, and more than twice as many Americans blame Bush than Obama for the country's economic problems.

As for the fight over Bush-era tax rates, a 52% majority believes "Congress should allow the Bush tax cuts for persons in the top two percent income category to expire," while 38% support the Republican line.

I can understand Democratic panic about pushing an agenda that doesn't poll well. But when the majority is already with them, the apprehension is tougher to appreciate.

—Steve Benen 12:40 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (42)

THIS WEEK IN GOD.... First up from the God Machine this week is a push in some religious circles to allow publicly-financed, faith-based service groups to receive taxpayer money -- and still discriminate when hiring.

More than 100 religion-based organizations are protesting a provision in pending legislation that would prohibit them from receiving federal money if they consider a job applicant's religion when hiring.

In a letter sent Wednesday to all members of Congress, the groups contend that the provision would dilute protections they have under the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as under the Constitution.

"Those four lines in the legislation would be a seismic change in bedrock civil rights law for religious organizations," said Steven McFarland, chief legal counsel at World Vision USA, a Christian aid organization that is leading the protest. "The impact would be huge and severely affect our ability to help children and others in need."

The provision is in legislation to reauthorize the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which makes grants to nonprofit social service organizations.

This gets back to a fight we saw in the mid-'90s over a policy called "charitable choice," which was included in the welfare reform package. Religiously-based social service groups -- those who run soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc. -- can apply for public grants to fill public needs. The groups, however, don't want strings attached -- they want taxpayer money, but they also want to be free of employment-discrimination laws.

So, if the Southern Baptists wanted public funds to run a soup kitchen, for example, they might also want to only hire Southern Baptists to work there.

Faith-based groups could always hire and fire whomever they pleased, but this is a little different, because it involves taxpayer money. A church that only wants to hire fellow adherents is fine; a church that discriminates with our money is more problematic.

Expect the fight to pick up in earnest when the House reconvenes and has to vote on the funding bill.

Also from the God Machine this week:

* It's quite ridiculous that steps like these are needed: "Dozens of high-profile Christian and other denominational leaders are defending Obama's profession of faith and criticizing those who would question it. Those leaders, whose ranks include prominent pastors T.D. Jakes and Kirbyjon Caldwell, wrote in an open letter: 'We are deeply troubled by the recent questioning of President Obama's faith. We understand that these are contentious times, but the personal faith of our leaders should not be up for public debate.'"

* As anti-Muslim bigotry seems to spread, and far-right opposition to mosques becomes more common, incidents like these seem more predictable: "The Fresno Bee reports that a brick was thrown through a window of the Madera Islamic center last Friday. There have been repeated instances of hate directed against this particular mosque. Signs have been left at the Islamic center carrying inflammatory messages."

* In Utah, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate this year, is calling for tougher graduation requirements, including a stronger emphasis on math and science. Incumbent Gov. Gary Herbert (R), in a rather shameless display, said Corroon's plan would make it more difficult on Mormon students looking for seminary time. (Utah schools have "release time" programs where students, as an elective, go to nearby churches for religious training.)

* And James Dobson's retirement seems surprisingly active: "James Dobson, founder of the Colorado Springs-based ministries Focus on the Family and Family Talk, announced plans on his 'Family Talk with James Dobson radio show Thursday to form a political action group similar to Focus' CitizenLink." (thanks to D.J. for the tip)

—Steve Benen 12:05 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (10)

FRC HAS IS IT ALL FIGURED OUT.... Interest in former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman's announcement that he's gay seems to have come and gone fairly quickly, but the religious right isn't about to let this go.

Take the Family Research Council, for example. Yesterday, the D.C.-based religious right powerhouse made the bizarre case to its supporters that Republicans would have done better in the 2006 and 2008 elections if only Mehlman had been straight. From its message to FRC backers:

This unfortunate confirmation helps explain the scandalous failure of many in the Republican establishment to vigorously uphold the values and policy positions expressed in the party's platform in 2004 and 2008, particularly the need to protect the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman nationwide. While grassroots activists succeeded in passing marriage amendments in dozens of states across the country, they received little support and even outright resistance from Party officials at the national level, which contributed to the GOP's electoral failures in 2006 and 2008. Now we know one of the major reasons why.

Yes, if only Republican officials hated gay people just a little more, Democrats -- buoyed by unpopular wars, a failing economy, and GOP scandals -- wouldn't have done so well.

That support nationwide for gay rights is growing, not shrinking, is probably a minor detail that the FRC prefers to ignore.

—Steve Benen 11:45 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)

TWO VERY DIFFERENT DREAMS, STRIVING FOR VERY DIFFERENT MOUNTAINTOPS.... I have a meeting this morning that's going to delay my Saturday posting schedule a bit, but in the meantime, as throngs of anti-government zealots assemble at the Lincoln Memorial, I thought I'd take a moment to consider the word "we."

"We," Glenn Beck recently told his minions, will "reclaim the civil rights movement." "We," he added, are "on the right side of history." After all, it was "we" who launched the civil rights movement "in the first place."

It's not altogether clear who counts as part of "we," though presumably it's limited to those who share Beck's twisted view of reality.

Leonard Pitts Jr. explained this week that this isn't just shameless nonsense: "It is obscene. It is theft of legacy. It is robbery of martyr's graves."

Beck was part of the "we" who founded the civil rights movement!? No. Here's who "we" is.

"We" is Emmett Till, tied to a cotton gin fan in the murky waters of the Tallahatchie River. "We" is Rosa Parks telling the bus driver no. "We" is Diane Nash on a sleepless night waiting for missing Freedom Riders to check in. "We" is Charles Sherrod, husband of Shirley, gingerly testing desegregation compliance in an Albany, Ga., bus station. "We" is a sharecropper making his X on a form held by a white college student from the North. "We" is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts of Bonanza, lending their names, their wealth and their labor to the cause of freedom.

"We" is Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, Cynthia Wesley, Andrew Goodman, Denise McNair, James Chaney, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson, shot, beaten and blown to death for that cause.

"We" is Lyndon Johnson, building a legislative coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats to defeat intransigent Southern Democratic conservatives and enshrine that cause into law.

And "we" is Martin Luther King, giving voice and moral clarity to the cause -- and paying for it with his life.

The we to which Glenn Beck belongs is the we that said no, the we that cried "socialism!" "communism!" "tyranny!" whenever black people and their allies cried freedom.

The fatuous and dishonorable attempt to posit conservatives as the prime engine of civil rights depends for success on the ignorance of the American people... This, then, is to serve notice as Beck and his tea party faithful gather in Lincoln's shadow to claim the mantle of King: Some of us are not ignorant. Some of us remember. Some of us know very well who "we" is.

And, who "we" is not.

Beck and his confused followers are claiming a legacy they don't understand. They're trying to lift a mantle that doesn't fit on their shoulders. They're adding their names to the same scroll they tried and failed to destroy.

Beck and his minions don't quite appreciate why they're an embarrassment to themselves, and that's a shame. They can't comprehend why King was a giant, and Beck is a small, sad cynic. They have no idea why America is so much better and stronger than their hate-filled demagoguery.

But as Eugene Robinson explained, "Saturday night, when the event is done, the Lincoln Memorial will still be the place where King gave one of the most memorable speeches of the 20th century. People who came to the rally in search of answers will still be looking. And Glenn Beck will still be a legend in his own mind."

—Steve Benen 8:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (43)

BECK'S FAVORITE RABBI.... Before the show at the Lincoln Memorial could get underway, deranged media personality Glenn Beck helped get the festivities started last night with a "Divine Destiny" religious revival meeting at DC's Kennedy Center. He was joined by the Republican Party's favorite rabbi.

Tonight, at his "Divine Destiny" religious revival, Glenn Beck hosted right-wing Rabbi Daniel Lapin -- presumably as part of his effort to "restore honor."

If restoring honor was the goal, Beck probably should have picked a more credible rabbi.

Daniel Lapin isn't exactly a household name, but in conservative and religious-right circles, he's extremely well known as a go-to guy -- when the right needs a rabbi to bolster its agenda, Lapin is ready to lend a hand, no matter how odious the request. (In one of my favorite examples, radical TV preacher Pat Robertson wrote a book based on post-World War I anti-Semitic conspiracy theory tracts. Robertson sought cover from a Jewish leader, and Lapin obliged.)

Lapin really made his name with the Jack Abramoff Republican lobbying scandal.

Abramoff had been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, an exclusive social organization in the nation's capital. He was worried. Most members have received prestigious awards, and Abramoff lamented that he had not. Would it be possible, Abramoff asked Lapin in an e-mail, for Lapin's group, Toward Tradition, to bestow an award upon him? Abramoff sought "something like Scholar of Talmudic studies" and noted that it would "be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past."

In other words, Abramoff sought awards that he had not earned -- and wanted them back dated. Lapin was happy to comply.

In 2005, the Washington Post explained that Lapin had perfected a type of theological prostitution: "For conservatives searching for biblical foundations for their political positions, Lapin is validation from the original source. His specialty is finding support in the Torah for what turns out to be the current Republican platform: lower taxes, decreased regulation, pro-traditional family policies."

And Beck partnered with this guy as part of an effort to "restore honor."

At some point, hopefully in the near future, some of the well-intentioned folks who've been caught up in this Beck nonsense may realize they've been taken in by a carnival huckster selling snake-oil. They'll feel a little humiliated, which will be the appropriate reaction.

Update: Oh, and don't forget that the radical Rev. John Hagee was also on hand to help Beck "restore honor." He's the end-times preacher who said Hurricane Katrina should be blamed on gay people.

—Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (14)

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

* There seemed to be widespread relief in some corners today that the Fed will save us all, but that's not quite what Bernanke said: "The Federal Reserve will take new action to bolster the economy only if conditions worsen further, Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Friday, adding that he expects a continued economic recovery."

* Pakistan's devastating flooding: "Even as Pakistani and international relief officials scrambled to save people and property, they despaired that the nation's worst natural calamity had ruined just about every physical strand that knit this country together -- roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, electricity and communications. The destruction could set Pakistan back many years, if not decades, further weaken its feeble civilian administration and add to the burdens on its military."

* Former President Jimmy Carter traveled to North Korea to negotiate the release of American Aijalon Mahli Gomes. Carter was successful.

* A Mississippi middle school recently approved a policy whereby class presidents had to be white. Today, the school board changed direction. Good move.

* Where will all the money from Glenn Beck's rally go? That seems like a fair question.

* I liked it better when fire-department budgets were considered untouchable: "Fire departments around the nation are cutting jobs, closing firehouses and increasingly resorting to 'rolling brownouts' in which they shut different fire companies on different days as the economic downturn forces many cities and towns to make deep cuts that are slowing their responses to fires and other emergencies."

* California's state university system may be struggling, but one campus wanted Sarah Palin for a speaking engagement. She demanded $75,000 plus expenses, a hotel suite, first class airfare or a private Lear jet, pre-screened questions, and "bendable straws." She got it, and spoke for about a half-hour.

* Birthers claim to want the president's birth certificate. What do we call those who want proof of the president's baptism?

* Bill O'Reilly admitted, in print, that Fox News is "anti-liberal." Isn't he supposed to maintain the facade that the Republican network is "fair and balanced," regardless of ideology?

* The Weekly Standard's anti-intellectualism seems more sad than offensive.

* Saving for college really isn't cheap.

* Some worthwhile follow-up on the CBO's letter to Sen. Crapo on health care reform repeal.

* And Ahmed Sharif, the NYC cabbie who was attacked this week, said yesterday he's still glad to be a New Yorker. "I feel like I belong here," he said. "This is the city actually [for] all colors, races, religion, everyone. We live here side by side peacefully." Cheers to that.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

—Steve Benen 5:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (20)

HISTORY NEED NOT BE REWRITTEN....As anti-government zealots assemble in the nation's capital for a rally intended to glorify a deranged, self-described rodeo clown, it's worth emphasizing a simple truth: Glenn Beck would have really hated Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beck recently told his minions, "Damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights [movement]. We will take that movement because we were the people who did it in the first place!"

It's hard to overstate how blisteringly stupid this is.

King's "I Have A Dream" speech was 47 years ago tomorrow, and over the years since its delivery, King has taken his place in the pantheon of legendary American heroes. His iconic status was hard-earned, and well deserved. But to argue that the civil rights movement that King helped lead was a product of right-wing activists who hate government and domestic social programs, is to stray so far from reality that it's hard to even capture it with words.

Americans wisely revere the King legacy now, but a half-century ago, Beck's conservative predecessors loathed the civil rights leader. The right-wing snake-oil salesmen whose shtick Beck is borrowing now used words like "communist" and "radical" to dismiss King and his movement.

Ben Dimiero posted a report this week that reminded us not to let history be rewritten.

King forcefully advocated for drastic action by the federal government to combat poverty; supported "social justice"; called for an "economic bill of rights" that would "guarantee a job to all people who want to work"; and stated that we must address whether we need to "restructure the whole of American society" -- all ideas that Beck has vilified.

Beck accuses progressives of trying to rewrite history and implores his followers to read original sources, but a review of King's own words clearly shows that Beck's insistence that he and his followers are the custodians of King's dream and legacy is nothing more than a lie.

Eugene Robinson, in a column that almost expresses pity for the "egomaniacal talk-show host," also reminds us that "Beck's version of history is flat-out wrong."

The full name of the event at which King spoke 47 years ago was the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." Among its organizers was labor leader A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a vice president of the AFL-CIO, who gave a speech describing the injustice of "a society in which 6 million black and white people are unemployed and millions more live in poverty."

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), then an official of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was the youngest speaker at the march. "We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here -- for they have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages," he told the crowd. Referring to proposed civil rights legislation, Lewis said: "We need a bill that will provide for the homeless and starving people of this nation. We need a bill that will ensure the equality of a maid who earns five dollars a week in the home of a family whose total income is $100,000 a year."

From the beginning, King's activism and leadership were aimed at securing not just equal justice but equal opportunity as well. When he was assassinated in 1968, King was in the midst of a Poor People's Campaign aimed at bettering the economic condition of all underprivileged Americans, regardless of race.

"We will take that movement because we were the people who did it in the first place"? If a more pathetic political lie has ever been told, I can't think of it.

—Steve Benen 4:40 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (20)

CHRISTIE GETS HIS STORY STRAIGHT.... Like most states, New Jersey sought Race to the Top education grants from the federal government, but much to Gov. Chris Christie's (R) dismay, his state just missed qualifying for $400 million in funding. That, however, isn't the interesting part.

As it turns out, New Jersey Education Commissioner Bret Schundler submitted mistaken data to federal officials, which appears to have cost the state its grant. Christie this week condemned the Obama administration, saying it was the president's bureaucracy that prevented New Jersey from qualifying.

We later learned that the governor didn't know what he was talking about. The Christie administration claimed that Schundler caught the error, and tried to correct it during a presentation to the U.S. Department of Education, but those mean ol' Obama administration officials wouldn't let him fix it. In reality, as a videotape proved, that was backwards -- the Obama administration caught Schundler's error and asked him to fix it. He didn't, so New Jersey lost out on the funding.

Christie, now having been caught misleading the entire state about what transpired, got rid of his education commissioner today.

And then there's the interesting part.

[Schundler] said he was asked to resign, but he requested to be fired instead so he could collect unemployment insurance.

"I have a mortgage to pay and a daughter about to start college," he said.

So, to summarize, Schundler, a far-right Republican, screwed up and cost New Jersey $400 million in education grants. But his top concern, upon being shown the door, is qualifying for unemployment benefits -- which his far-right brethren don't think should exist.

—Steve Benen 4:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (24)

BROOKS IGNORES ALL THE RELEVANT DETAILS.... Looking back at the debate from early last year, the New York Times's David Brooks wasn't exactly on board with the Republican economic strategy. At the time, President Obama was pushing a major stimulus package to respond to the crisis, while GOP lawmakers wanted a five-year spending freeze.

In early March 2009, Brooks said on national television, "A lot of Republicans up in Capitol Hill right now are calling for a spending freeze in a middle of a recession/depression. That is insane.... [T]hat is just insane."

A year and a half later, Brooks' wisdom on these issues has faded considerably. Consider today's column, for example.

During the first half of this year, German and American political leaders engaged in an epic debate. American leaders argued that the economic crisis was so bad, governments should borrow billions to stimulate growth. German leaders argued that a little short-term stimulus was sensible, but anything more was near-sighted. What was needed was not more debt, but measures to balance budgets and restore confidence. [...]

This divergence created a natural experiment. Who was right? The early returns suggest the Germans were.... The U.S. tried big, but is emerging slowly. The Germans tried small, and are recovering nicely.

Oddly enough, on Tuesday (almost certainly before Brooks' column was written), of his NYT colleagues was describing this very argument as "foolish." From Paul Krugman's blog:

Basically, here's the German story: it's an economy that didn't have a housing bubble, so it wasn't caught up directly in the bust. But it's very export-oriented, with a focus on durable manufactured goods. Demand for these goods plunged in the early stages of the crisis -- so that Germany, remarkably, had a bigger GDP decline than the bubble economies -- but has bounced back since summer 2009.

Be sure to check Krugman's chart.

What's more, Brooks boasts that Germany's unemployment "has come down to pre-crisis levels." What he doesn't mention is that Germany embraced a policy in which the government subsidized employers to keep workers on the payroll, at reduced hours and only slightly reduced pay, instead of laying them off. It's the kind of thing that keeps unemployment rates very low, but Brooks ignores the policy -- a step the U.S. would never consider -- as if it were irrelevant.

Brooks has no excuse for not knowing about this -- it was explored in his own newspaper two weeks ago. The one policy that played a key role in improving the German job market had nothing to do with austerity or balanced budgets, and everything to do with a big-government program called "short work," that would have caused widespread conservative apoplexy if Democrats even considered.

Did Brooks ignore this because it was a factual detail that interfered with his thesis, or did he just not read up on the subject?

—Steve Benen 2:50 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (19)

LIMBAUGH AIMS AT WRONG FOES.... Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh condemned what he sees as President Obama's "arrogance," and said the president is like "some" African Americans who say the "Fourth of July ain't no big deal to me, yo."

I often feel like I need a decoder ring when translating Limbaugh's nonsense, but this one was especially odd. I've never heard anyone, of any race, say the "Fourth of July ain't no big deal to me, yo." I can only assume this is Limbaugh's way of saying African Americans aren't as patriotic as other Americans -- an argument that is as ugly as it is stupid.

But hearing the clip reminded me of something Tom Schaller has written about -- for quite a while, in parts of the deep South, folks just didn't celebrate the Fourth of July. It was apparently a Yankee holiday.

Well into the 20th century, [South Carolina] was the state where black citizens observed the Fourth of July mostly alone. Why? Because -- get this -- the vast majority of whites preferred instead to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, May 10, a practice that continued into the early 50s, which means there are some very senior South Carolina citizens who skipped a few Fourths back in their early years. (Why isn't Sean Hannity asking them to brandish their flag pins?)

Nearly as annoying as Limbaugh's racism is his ignorance.

—Steve Benen 2:05 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (33)

REPUBLICANS LET RALPH REED OUT OF THE PENALTY BOX.... I realize it's been a couple of years -- and some Republicans have surprisingly short memories -- but the Abramoff lobbying scandal left Ralph Reed a humiliated disgrace. It wasn't just some embarrassing misunderstanding; the scandal ruined him. Permanently.

At least, it seemed that way at the time. In a couple of weeks, Reed will host a right-wing gathering called the "Faith and Freedom Conference and Strategy Briefing" in Washington. The former Christian Coalition chief is calling it the "the political equivalent of NFL minicamp."

Yesterday, Reed alerted supporters to the guest list he lined up to speak at the event. It included a lengthy list of heavy-hitters from the media (Tucker Carlson, Erick Erickson, John Fund), GOP strategists (Grover Norquist, Ed Goeas, Patrick Ruffini), Republican members of Congress (J. Randy Forbes, Thaddeus McCotter, Lynn Westmoreland, Tom Price), GOP congressional candidates (Teresa Collett, Anna Little, Star Parker, Tim Scott, Jackie Walorski), two former senators (Jim Talent, Rick Santorum), a sitting governor (Bob McDonnell), a vote-suppressing loyal Bushie (Hans von Spakovsky), and, of course, Karl Rove.

Now, I should note that this is an announced guest-list. Reed may or may not have secured commitments from all of these Republican luminaries, though the materials certainly make it seem as if these are confirmed guests.

And if so, that's crazy. Indeed, let's take a quick stroll down memory lane. Remember this one, from June 2006?

Yet another delightful characterization of Ralph Reed, courtesy of today's McCain report on the Abramoff scandal. This one comes courtesy of Jack Abramoff himself, via his discussion with Marc Schwartz, a public relations representative for the Tigua tribe in Texas.

Let's pick up the report on page 148. Schwartz was evaluating whether the tribe should hire Abramoff as its lobbyist: To Schwartz, Abramoff appeared to have the right credentials. Abramoff claimed to be a close friend of Congressman Tom DeLay. He also discussed his friendship with Reed, recounting some of their history together at College Republicans. When Schwartz observed that Reed was an ideologue, Schwartz recalled that Abramoff laughingly replied "as far as the cash goes."

Or, how about this one?

Ralph Reed, email to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, 1998: "Hey, now that I'm done with the electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."

Or this?

E-mails and testimony before McCain's panel showed that Reed, who once branded gambling a "cancer" on society, reaped millions of dollars in tribal casino proceeds that Abramoff secretly routed to him through various non-profit front groups. Abramoff, a lobbyist for the tribes, paid Reed to whip up "grassroots" Christian opposition to prevent rival tribes from opening casinos.

By any reasonable measure, Republicans should avoid taking this guy's phone calls. Instead, Karl Rove, a Republican governor, five Republican congressmen, and five Republican congressional candidates have apparently agreed to speak at Reed's right-wing shindig.

It's a reminder that there is literally nothing a conservative can do to be permanently excluded from polite company.

—Steve Benen 1:25 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)

DOES BOEHNER REALLY WANT TO DEBATE IRAQ AND THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY?.... As the next phase of the U.S. presence in Iraq begins, and Operation Iraqi Freedom comes to a formal end, it's fair to give some credit to President Obama. It was his vision of a phased withdrawal that shaped the Status of Forces Agreement signed in 2008, and it was his timetable that has brought the troop levels below 50,000 for the first time since the war began.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), meanwhile, has a different take.

House GOP leader John Boehner said on Friday the administration is taking credit for ending the combat mission in Iraq, but that it's the troop surge -- which President Obama opposed as a senator -- that made it possible.

Previewing a speech he'll give on Iraq next week, the Ohio Republican published an op-ed on the conservative Human Events website and released a Web video that credits the troops and the 2007 troop "surge" for turning around the security situation -- and ultimately allowing the withdrawal of combat troops. Boehner argued that Democrats, such as Obama, then-Sen. Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who argued against the surge at the time, were "on the wrong side of history."

There are a couple of angles to keep in mind. The first is that the surge was not solely responsible for improved conditions in Iraq. There were a number of factors -- the Sunni Awakening, which pre-dated the surge; a ceasefire announced by Shiite militia leader Muqtada Sadr; the success of ethnic cleansing efforts in much of Iraq -- that contributed simultaneously. Boehner tends to get confused by policy arguments that don't fit on a bumper-sticker, but to argue that "surge = success" demonstrates a serious lack of depth.

The second is just as important. Boehner thinks he's on the "right side of history" because he supported escalation in 2007. That's among the most ridiculous things Boehner has ever said. Boehner got the war wrong from the beginning. "History" has made clear that this misguided war was a mistake, and Boehner spent seven years as its cheerleader.

Indeed, Boehner, always a little slow on the uptake, was still linking Iraq to 9/11 as recently as 2007. Asked about the thousands of American troops who died in Iraq, fighting an unnecessary war, Boehner called their deaths "a small price to pay." As recently as 2006, Boehner was insisting that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and played a supporting role in executing the 9/11 attacks.

And now the foolish Minority Leader wants to attack those who got the war right as being on the "wrong side of history"? That's pathetic, even by Boehner's standards.

—Steve Benen 12:40 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (17)

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.

* As things stand in Alaska's Republican Senate primary, Joe Miller leads Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) by 1,668 votes. There are, however, more than 20,000 absentee and disputed ballots that have not yet been counted, and that process will begin on Tuesday.

* In Florida, state Attorney General Bill McCollum is unwilling to endorse Rick Scott, the scandal-plagued health care executive who defeated in him in a Republican gubernatorial primary.

* A Mason-Dixon poll in Nevada shows Sen. Harry Reid (D) with the narrowest of leads over Sharron Angle (R) in this year's Senate race, 45% to 44%.

* In Wisconsin, Senate candidate Ron Johnson (R) is basing his campaign on opposition to spending and government intervention in private industry. He keeps getting caught, however, having sought and received federal aid for his business enterprises.

* In Missouri, a new poll shows Robin Carnahan (D) and Roy Blunt (R) tied in this year's Senate race, but there are some legitimate questions about the methodology, which may be inflating the Democrat's support. (thanks to B.G. for the tip)

* Does Sen. David Vitter (R) have anything to worry about in his Republican primary? Not really -- Public Policy Polling showing him easily trouncing his challengers, including retired state Supreme Court Justice Chet Traylor, who seemed like a potential threat.

* Sharron Angle's new attack ad in Nevada goes after Democrats for George W. Bush's mistakes.

* And in Iowa, Rep. Leonard Boswell's (D) opponent seems to have an ugly past: "Republican congressional candidate Brad Zaun was the mayor of Urbandale, Iowa, when he went to an ex-girlfriend's home in the middle of the night, pounded on the windows and called her a slut, according to a 2001 police report."

—Steve Benen 12:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)

ANGLE REFUSES TO WALK BACK 'DOMESTIC ENEMIES' LINE.... On Sharron Angle's list of greatest hits, it has to rank right up there. During an interview in which a right-wing radio host said there are "domestic enemies" serving in Congress, Angle replied that she agreed with the sentiment. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) argued this week, "If she is going to use such rhetoric, she has an obligation to name names and explain to the American people exactly who she thinks is a domestic enemy."

But while the controversy arose a couple of days ago, the interview happened last year. Angle even had a readily available defense -- she could simply try to argue that the provocative remarks came from the host, not her.

Yesterday, the extremist Senate candidate had a chance to walk the whole mess back. As Greg Sargent reported, she declined.

HARRIS: They have gone back to almost a year ago, dug through a conversation you had with my buddy Bill Manders up there in Reno, the big talker up there, where he said that we have domestic enemies and he thinks some of them are in the walls of the Senate and Congress, and you agreed with him. Did you agree with him?

ANGLE: Well, we were talking about what's going on in Congress, of course, and the policies that have come out of Congress, and those policies as we've all seen over the last 18 months have definitely hurt our country.

HARRIS: Yeah, well I agree with you by the way, but I wanted to make sure you got you a chance to clarify that, because I'll tell you the truth, Sharron. I do think we actually do have folks in Congress who truly want to do us harm and see us change from the nation we are now.

ANGLE: There is no doubt that the policies that have been coming out in the last 18 months have injured us, and injured us most specifically here in Nevada.

It would have been so easy for Angle to make this go away. She could have denounced the policies she disagrees with, while adding that she doesn't believe her opponents literally want to harm America.

But that's just not what Angle believes. In her twisted worldview, those who disagree with her are very likely treasonous.

So, I suppose Reid's challenge still stands. If Angle believes there are anti-American traitors shaping federal policy in Washington -- officials deliberately "injuring" the country -- then she would seem to have a responsibility to identify them for public scrutiny.

—Steve Benen 11:25 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (24)

GETTING 'OUT THERE' ISN'T ENOUGH.... Economic growth in the second quarter (April through June) was initially estimated to be pretty weak. This morning, the figure was revised downward -- from 2.4% to 1.6%. It's not only evidence of anemic growth, it points to a trend moving in the wrong direction, after two stronger quarters preceding it.

What's more, it's discouraging news that comes on top of other discouraging news. Just over the last couple of weeks, the reports on home sales were awful, and recovery in the manufacturing sector is also stalling.

On Wednesday, President Obama organized a conference call with his top economic advisers, reportedly considering "the next steps to keep the economy growing." But the White House agenda in the short term is not focused specifically on the economy -- on Sunday, Obama will be in New Orleans for the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and on Tuesday, the president will deliver an Oval Office address on the war in Iraq. Later in the week, the focus will be on Middle East peace talks.

A White House official told ABC's Jake Tapper, "We know he needs to be out there to talk about the economy next week. We haven't yet figured out the way he's going to do that."

I think the sentiment is only partially true. A White House focus on the economy certainly makes sense, and "figuring out" a way to convey that to the public seems wise.

But getting Obama "out there to talk about the economy" isn't necessarily the answer -- that is, unless the president has something new to say. By all accounts, he doesn't.

The White House is pushing its $30 billion small business lending initiative and other measures to stimulate economic growth, such as the elimination of capital gains taxes for small business investments. But advisers say there is little appetite on Capitol Hill for any new spending programs, and limited time in the congressional calendar, suggesting that they feel there aren't any more major initiatives the administration will push in further attempts to revise the sputtering economy.

And that, I fear, is the problem.

The president can get "out there to talk about the economy," and he has a reasonable message to offer -- his policies prevented a catastrophe, created millions of jobs, and made economic growth possible. Had Republicans been in charge at the moment of crisis last year, the evidence is incontrovertible that we'd be in a much worse place.

But the message is also underwhelming. Obama is right, as a factual matter, to tout his economic successes, but in terms of real-world implications, it's wholly unpersuasive to struggling, anxiety-ridden Americans.

I don't want to see the president "out there to talk about the economy"; I want him out there with an ambitious agenda to improve the economy. He won't do that, however, because Republicans won't allow a vote on additional recovery efforts, and panicky Dems thinks voters will punish them for trying to do what works.

I guess that leaves the Fed?

—Steve Benen 10:40 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (34)

PASTS, PROLOGUES, AND PORTMAN.... Of all the statewide candidates doing well this year, I consider Ohio's Rob Portman, the Republican leading in the open U.S. Senate race, one of the more surprising.

While Dems make some efforts to tie various GOP candidates to Bush/Cheney, the task with Portman is altogether different. Portman didn't just occasionally vote for the Bush agenda in Congress, Portman's most recent experience in government was serving as Bush's budget director. When we consider an era in which the Republicans turned huge surpluses into massive deficits, Portman was at the center of the policymaking process.

For that matter, he was Bush's trade rep, in a state where Bush's trade policies aren't exactly popular.

"Rob Portman is the No. 1 George Bush look-alike in the country," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said this week. "I just can't believe the voters are going to choose the candidate who more than anybody else in the whole country represents what got us into this situation."

I can believe it; polls show Portman ahead, despite his background of failure. But what I find the most interesting is Portman's response to the criticism.

After a tour here of the Andersons Inc., a diversified grain, rail and retail company that is a mainstay in northwestern Ohio, Mr. Portman dismissed suggestions that his time in the Bush White House and his image as a trusted adviser to the former president would be a significant liability or that voters would even be concerned about the past.

"What the people in this plant want to know is what you are going to do for me going forward," Mr. Portman said. "That is all they care about, and frankly that's what voters care about."

"The world has moved on," he added. "Maybe the Democrats haven't."

I find this endlessly fascinating. Most candidates seeking high office tell voters, "Look at all that I've accomplished, and vote for me." Portman is telling voters, "Please overlook my record of public service, and vote for me anyway."

"The world has moved on"? I wish we could, but we're still cleaning up the mess Portman helped leave.

The whole strategy is almost comical. I'm trying to imagine an accused thief standing trial, and telling a judge, "Your honor, what matters is what I can do going forward. It's best if we just moved on."

Somehow, I don't imagine that would go over well. I'm not sure why voters in Ohio should be any more persuaded.

—Steve Benen 10:05 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (31)

VITTER FEELING A LITTLE TOUCHY ABOUT CRIMINAL AIDE.... I can see why Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) would be concerned about coverage of Brent Furer, but that's no reason for the far-right senator to try to intimidate Louisiana newspapers.

To briefly recap, Furer is the aide Vitter kept on his taxpayer-financed payroll, despite Furer having held his ex-girlfriend hostage, threatening to kill her, and attacking her with a knife. The right-wing, scandal-plagued senator knew about this, and not only kept Furer on his staff, but tasked him with helping oversee women's issues for the Senate office. Making matters worse, Vitter, when asked about this, appears to have lied. More recently, we learned Vitter used taxpayer dollars to send Furer to Louisiana, apparently so he could defend himself against some of his criminal charges.

Today, Brian Beutler reports that the senator's office seems to have spent some time lately, pressuring local newspapers not to be so harsh about the Furer story.

Vitter gone to great pains to avoid commenting on the scandal, and has sought to publicly distance himself from Furer. But privately, he's been trying to intimidate newspapers into giving Furer what he considers fair coverage.

In what Redman describes as a "somewhat hyperbolic" letter, Vitter's attorneys attacked The Advocate for not dancing around Furer's history.

"We said that Mr. Furer did something -- that he slashed his girlfriend -- and the police report alleges that and when he finally went to court, he ended up pleading down to lesser charges," Redman said. "Furer was never actually convicted of slashing his girlfriend.... We missed an alleged or an accused of."

The Monroe News Star told Brian about a similar recent experience.

This strikes me as a misguided strategy. Vitter has to hope voters are willing to overlook the scandal, and the more he and his team signal their panic over the controversy, and demand "clarifications" from journalists, the more coverage it will receive.

—Steve Benen 9:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (7)

'THESE PEOPLE COULD BE IN CHARGE'.... We've seen Democrats experiment with a variety of campaign themes in recent months. "Party of No" was a longtime favorite, but became less effective when the GOP seemed to like it. "Bush Republicans" and "BP Republicans" have been used, but didn't stick.

With about nine weeks to go before the midterm elections, the DNC is today rolling out what's likely to be its final message. To summarize, the pitch effectively tells the public: Republicans aren't just wrong, this year, they're kind of crazy.

Democrats unveiled this video, titled "These People Could be in Charge," this morning, shining a light on a variety of high-profile GOP candidates. All of those featured appear to be, to varying degrees, stark raving mad.

The point isn't subtle -- voters are supposed to start connecting "Republican" and "crazy." This is a party that doesn't just want to turn back the clock to the Bush/Cheney era; this is a party that wants to scrap New Deal-era pillars of American society, repeal constitutional amendments, eliminate cabinet agencies, purge the GOP of moderates, etc.

That this effort is being launched the day before right-wing, anti-government zealots gather at the Lincoln Memorial is not, I suspect, a coincidence.

What's more, the larger significance is very likely intended to push back against the very nature of the cycle. For months, the Republican plan has been to make the elections a referendum -- if you don't like the status quo, vote for the GOP. The Democrats' task has been to present the midterms as a choice -- you can choose to move forward with Dems, or you can go backwards with a radicalized Republican Party.

It's a direct response to the best scenario Democrats could have hoped for. The GOP brand is still deeply unpopular, but presented with a key opportunity for massive gains, the party has nominated some real nutjobs. Voters who may have been inclined to vote Republican this year may think twice when they consider the weirdo whose name is on the ballot.

At least in theory, that is. We may be looking at a dynamic in which there's just nothing more Dems can do. With a struggling economy and a listless base, GOP lunatics may be poised to win in November no matter how compelling the Democratic message is.

But on the whole, I consider this the Dems' strongest pitch. If the American mainstream is already inclined to be suspicious of the Republican pitch, it's wise to reinforce those doubts by demonstrating just how ridiculously right-wing the GOP has become.

As E.J. Dionne Jr. noted yesterday, "Democrats ... have every interest in turning the election into a philosophical contest, arguing that even unhappy voters cannot trust their fate to a party in the grips of a right-wing revolt."

—Steve Benen 8:40 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (23)

HOPING FOR A CUMULATIVE EFFECT.... The New York Times notes today that there were plenty of "shrugs" in response to Ken Mehlman's announcement that he's gay. That Mehlman, the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign manager and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, relied on anti-gay bigotry as an election strategy makes the news at least somewhat noteworthy, but the NYT report argues that the muted GOP response is the result of a party that cares more about fiscal issues right now.

I'm not at all sure that's true. For one thing, I've seen very little evidence that Republicans' alleged commitment to fiscal issues is in any way sincere. (Indeed, just the opposite is true -- they've repeatedly opposed measures that reduce the deficit, and keep pushing tax breaks for millionaires that would increase the deficit.) For another, the religious right elements of the GOP base was well aware of the Mehlman news, and they weren't happy about it.

That said, what's driving the generally muted response to the news? I suspect it's the result of a changing electorate. If Republicans thought there would be a political upside to bashing Mehlman, they'd bash Mehlman. But Americans -- as evidenced by recent polling on marriage equality and DADT repeal -- aren't responding to these appeals the way they used to.

When the blade of a wedge issue gets dull, it's no longer used.

The angle to this story that I care about is the increasing mainstreaming of the push for equality. William Saletan had this item yesterday.

This is a big deal. Mehlman managed President Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 and chaired the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007. Many influential Republicans have worked with him and respect him. He makes it harder for them to think of homosexuality as a behavior. They now know somebody who is gay. Or, as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it, they now know that they know somebody who is gay. [...]

Ed Gillespie, the RNC chairman who preceded Mehlman, tells Ambinder that "it is significant that a former chairman of the Republican National Committee is openly gay and that he is supportive of gay marriage." Gillespie acknowledges "big generational differences in perception when it comes to gay marriage and gay rights as an agenda, and I think that is true on the Republican side." Discomfort with abortion isn't going away, but discomfort with same-sex marriage is fading. Homosexuality is becoming normalized.

I think that's true, and it's about damn time. To be sure, it's hard to believe we'll find Republicans responding to the news by saying, "Oh, Ken's gay? In that case, I'm prepared to rethink my position on the issue."

What I'm hoping for, however, is a cumulative effect. Dick Cheney supports marriage equality. So does the man who managed the 2004 Republican presidential campaign and the man who managed the 2008 Republican presidential campaign. George W. Bush isn't on board, but his wife is. The same goes for John McCain.

The point is, this is no longer some kind of radical, scandalous position. When Democrats announce their support for marriage equality -- and here's hoping more of them do -- they have far less to fear in terms of a political backlash. They can characterize their perspective as being entirely mainstream, because it is.

—Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (26)

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

* Reversing a month-long trend, the initial weekly jobless claims dropped this week, even beating expectations. While a good week is at least somewhat heartening, the numbers are still way too high.

* Monsters who want struggling families to suffer even more: "The Pakistani Taliban called the presence of foreign relief workers in this flood-ravaged country 'unacceptable' on Thursday and suggested that militants could carry out attacks against members of aid groups."

* What a mess: "The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency.... Mr. Salehi's relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration's policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it."

* Michael Enright, who allegedly attacked a New York cab driver on Tuesday in an insane hate crime, "kept a personal diary filled with anti-Islamic rants."

* Truly nauseating: "In the latest in a spate of anti-Muslim incidents over the last two days, an intoxicated man entered a mosque in Queens on Wednesday evening and proceeded to urinate on prayer rugs, New York police officials said. The man, identified as Omar Rivera, reportedly shouted anti-Muslim epithets and called worshippers who had gathered for evening prayer 'terrorists.'"

* Last August featured town-hall events that became something of a national embarrassment. This August, not so much.

* I'd feel better about Blue Dogs if they didn't joke publicly about Speaker Pelosi's mortality.

* The controversy over how much Sarah Palin was paid by California State University, Stanislaus, earlier this summer continues to simmer, and a state judge wants disclosure on how much the former half-term governor was paid.

* Ed Chen, the former president of the White House Correspondents Association, thinks it was a "travesty of a decision" to award Fox News a seat in the front row of the briefing room.

* Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who is now a Fox News personality, believes the U.S. State Department, working with a moderate American imam on Middle East diplomacy, constitutes "bailing out imams." I'm beginning to think maybe Huckabee isn't very bright.

* E.J. Dionne Jr. on the party of crazy: "The paradox is that a Republican Party in the grips of ideology needs to shift the campaign in a less ideological direction, hoping that voters simply cast protest ballots against hard economic times. Democrats, who are more doctrinally diverse, have every interest in turning the election into a philosophical contest, arguing that even unhappy voters cannot trust their fate to a party in the grips of a right-wing revolt. Once again on Tuesday, Republican primary participants seemed determined to give Democrats that opportunity."

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

—Steve Benen 5:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (24)

'NUTPICKING' HASN'T GONE AWAY.... I'd hoped we were past this.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported news that a Muslim cab driver in New York City had been assaulted by a passenger simply because of his faith. [...]

Today on Fox News, right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin discussed the incident and argued that the real story is not about the hate crime, but rather, the progressive blogosphere. "Something really ugly happened," she said. "Time and again, when something like this happens -- any random incident of violence -- there are people on the left with a knee-jerk impulse to indict the right." As evidence, Malkin pointed to comments left on ThinkProgress.

Note, Malkin wasn't offended by what ThinkProgress wrote; she was offended when she dug through the comments section and found reactions she found distasteful.

Ben Armbruster highlights the fact that Malkin insists she bears no responsibility for what people say in her own comments section, making her entire line of argument rather odd.

But when I say we should be past this by now, I mean this is an old trick for right-wing bloggers that ceased to be interesting years ago.

For a long while, it was a standard strategy -- trawl through liberal comments sections in the hopes of finding provocative remarks. The right then would then take those comments to "prove" that the left is made up of intemperate meanies.

The practice has always been rather self-defeating. In fact, four years ago this month, on this very blog, Kevin Drum came up with a sensible maxim: "If you're forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you've pretty much made exactly the opposite point." Eventually, the practice was even given a name: "Nutpicking."

The practice seemed to die down for a while. I guess Malkin is trying to bring it back?

—Steve Benen 4:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (26)

LOOKING FOR INTELLECTUAL CONSISTENCY IN THE STEM-CELL DEBATE.... A federal court order this week threw a massive curveball at stem-cell research, and it's going to take some time and effort to sort things out. As you may have heard, the ruling will be appealed and Congress will likely hold some hearings, and Nina Mendelson, a professor of administrative law at the University of Michigan Law School, has some helpful insights into what, exactly, the judge did.

In the meantime, the underlying issue is back in the news, and Michael Kinsley notes some of the key inconsistencies in the position taken by those who insist that embryos are people in need of protection.

Half of all pregnancies end in miscarriages, usually in the first couple of weeks, before a woman even knows that she is pregnant. A miscarriage destroys an embryo. If you believe that every embryo is the moral equivalent of a fully-formed human being, miscarriages are like a perpetual natural disaster like a flood or an earthquake, and you should be urging a massive effort to reduce miscarriages as the best way to save millions of human lives a year. As far as I know, there is no such effort going on in the United States or elsewhere.

But perhaps your concern is not the number of slaughtered embryos, but rather the morality of intentionally killing them or -- worse, in your view -- intentionally creating and then killing them. In that case, your attention should be directed to fertility clinics, which routinely create multiple embryos for each human baby they wish to produce. They pick and choose among the embryos that seem healthiest, and typically implant several in the hope that one --and not more than one -- will survive. Every year tens of thousands of human embryos are created and destroyed (or pointlessly frozen) in the everyday work of fertility clinics. There is no political effort to stop this work. President George W. Bush even praised the work of fertility clinics in his speech announcing the policy that virtually halted stem cell research for eight years. Advanced fertility techniques have brought happiness to thousands of couples who otherwise would probably be childless. They are a godsend that no politician would dare oppose.

Of the tens of thousands of embryos discarded by fertility clinics every year, a few are used for stem cell research. Extracting the stem cells involves destroying the embryos, which would be destroyed anyway.

I've long looked for consistency -- intellectual, moral, ethical -- among opponents of stem-cell research, and I've never found any. If someone believes a fertilized egg that has grown to a few dozen cells is a full-fledged human being, deserving of the full protection of the law, then IVF would constitute nightmarish science. Conservatives would be compelled to protest at fertility clinics, and condemn families that try to have babies through the procedure. After all, the IVF process is designed to include discarded embryos.

But no one is making that argument. There's a high degree of comfort level with discarding embryos at fertility clinics, but intense conservative opposition to medical research involving embryos that offer the promise of life-saving science. I've never understood this.

—Steve Benen 4:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (20)

REPEAL THE ACA, INCREASE THE DEFICIT.... Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Healthcare, recently wrote to the Congressional Budget Office with a question. With the midterm elections coming up, and the Republican desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act still simmering, the far-right Idahoan wanted the CBO to flesh out some details about health care reform and the budget.

I don't imagine he was pleased with the response.

This week, the CBO explained to Crapo in some detail that scrapping the law would add nearly half a trillion dollars to deficits over the next decade.

"[Y]ou asked what the net deficit impact would be if certain provisions of PPACA and the Reconciliation Act that were estimated to generate net savings were eliminated -- specifically, those which were originally estimated to generate a net reduction in mandatory outlays of $455 billion over the 2010-2019 period. The estimate of $455 billion mentioned in your letter represents the net effects of many provisions. Some of those provisions generated savings for Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children's Health Insurance Program, and some generated costs.

"If those provisions were repealed, CBO estimates that there would be an increase in deficits similar to its original estimate of $455 billion in net savings over that period."

This is significant, of course, to the extent that Republicans are making promises to voters that don't make any sense. The GOP is allegedly committed to deficit reduction, and at the same time, is committing to scrapping the entire Affordable Care Act, which would in turn increase the deficit.

For some Republicans who really don't know what they're talking about, they'll even combine these contradictory positions simultaneously. Kelly Ayotte, an often-confused Republican Senate candidate in New Hampshire, recently told local reporters that the federal budget deficit is "the biggest threat to our country" right now. Putting aside the fact that this position doesn't make sense, she was then asked how she'd reduce it. Ayotte replied she'd repeal the Affordable Care Act.

In other words, she'd try to reduce the deficit by increasing the deficit.

In related news, Republicans believe accelerators make cars slow down, lighter fluid puts fires out, and light bulbs make rooms darker.

I realize when the GOP talks about deficit reduction, the party's candidates don't really mean it. But as they continue to hit the campaign trail, Republicans should probably at least pretend to explain how they'd go about addressing what they claim to be an important issue. If they say they can achieve deficit reduction through ACA repeal, someone ought to point out how backwards this is.

—Steve Benen 2:55 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (15)

EGOMANIA ON AN UNHEALTHY SCALE.... Glenn Beck's "Restore America" event is itself an extraordinary display of self-aggrandizement. This deranged media personality picks the site and anniversary of the "I Have A Dream" speech to present himself as the leader of a grand movement that will save civilization. Beck even claims, out loud and without humor, to be acting as a vessel of God.

But that was before he released this video to his website, which takes the megalomania to a whole new level. It's four minutes of head-shaking entertainment, and if you're worried about your colleagues hearing you laugh out loud at the unintentional hilarity, you may want to wait until after work to watch it.

Ben Dimiero explained, "Beck humbly places the rally in the context of the moon landing, the Montgomery bus boycott, Iwo Jima, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and other landmark historical events. It also not-so-subtly suggests that Beck is following in the tradition of Martin Luther King (which is a farce), Abraham Lincoln, most of the Founding Fathers, Martha Washington, the Wright Brothers, and other notable historical figures."

Set against music trying a little too hard to be stirring, the voiceover tells viewers, "Every great achievement in human history has started with one person. One crazy idea."

The message isn't subtle -- the one person is Glenn Beck, and the one crazy idea is Saturday's ridiculous rally.

It concludes, "It's time to restore America. Restore the world. It's time to believe again."

Atrios added, "The slightly interesting thing Beck is that he appears to be an insane megalomanic who is self-aware enough to be aware of that fact. It's what allows him to be a huckster clown on top of it."

I'd just add one related thought. I'm trying to imagine what the response would be among conservatives if, say, Barack Obama's campaign in 2008 had tried to do something similar. Imagine if the campaign had organized an event at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of the "I Have A Dream" speech, and then released a video comparing the Obama-led effort to the Founding Fathers, the Moon landing, the civil rights movement, and the invention of airplanes.

Imagine if that same Obama campaign video told viewers, "It's time to restore America. Restore the world. It's time to believe again."

The right would consider this egomania on an unhealthy level, and they'd be right.

And yet, here we are, with Beck, Palin, and 300,000 zealots showing up in D.C. on Saturday.

—Steve Benen 2:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (56)

THE OFF-AGAIN/ON-AGAIN LOVE AFFAIR WITH EARMARKS.... Periodically, the political world's obsession with earmarks becomes fashionable. The word itself is, at least in some corners, synonymous with "waste" and "abuse." John McCain's presidential campaign made it seem as if the elimination of earmarks -- which represents a tiny fraction of the federal budget -- would single-handedly restore fiscal responsibility to Washington.

Indeed, this year, House Republicans announced a self-imposed, one-year moratorium on earmarks, in which all GOP members were supposed to prove their commitment to spending cuts by forswearing the nasty buggers.

In reality, some House Republican requested earmarks anyway. And next year, if there's a GOP majority, the moratorium against earmarks will be over.

House Republicans have banked on voter anger, a sputtering economy and an unpopular president to propel them ahead of Democrats in the polls so far this year.

But now they're trying to lay the foundation for how they would actually govern.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said a House GOP majority will focus on aggressive oversight of the Obama administration, will work to defund the agencies responsible for implementing health care and will push a "zero tolerance" ethics policy. He also said Republicans may roll back their ban on earmarks, as long as the spending items have "merit."

Oh, I see. Good earmarks are fine. It's those bad ones Republicans will frown upon.

The larger significance is appreciating just hollow the GOP's anti-earmark rhetoric really is. Right-wing Senate candidate Ken Buck (R) in Colorado is basing much of his campaign on his opposition to pork-barrel spending, and he's even pledged to refuse earmarks if elected. But this is the same Buck who "has requested at least $5 million in earmarks and grants" for taxpayer-financed projects in the county where's he's been a prosecutor.

Sam Stein reports today on several similar situations with other high-profile Republican candidates.

The right-wing Club for Growth, responding to Republicans' new-found tolerance for earmarks, posted an angry item on its blog: "So now they think they can take back the majority and revert to their old ways and everything will be lovey dovey with the conservative base? Think again."

To be clear, I don't much care either way -- earmarks are not, by definition, wasteful or abusive, and the right's preoccupation with the subject is pretty silly.

But the right should start realizing now that Republicans probably aren't serious about their own rhetoric on this.

—Steve Benen 1:25 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (13)

CLYBURN WON'T VOTE FOR GREENE.... Whether South Carolina Democrats like it or not, Alvin Greene is and will be the party's nominee for the United States Senate in November. He'll face incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint (R), who is now the single safest bet for re-election in the country.

The choice for Dems, then, is whether to vote for someone who, by any objective measure, is not qualified for the job. South Carolina's most powerful, most respected Democrat announced yesterday that he would not.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-.S.C.) said Wednesday he will vote for write-in candidate Mazie Ferguson for Senate instead of Alvin Greene, the state's Democratic nominee.

The AP reports Clyburn will refuse because Greene has been indicted on a felony charge.

Clyburn told reporters a vote for Greene, who was arrested in November on charges of showing pornographic images to a female student at the University of South Carolina, would be inconsiderate to the women in his family.

"Look, I have three daughters and a granddaughter. I think it would be an insult to them if I did that," he said.

There was no wiggle room -- Clyburn told reporters, "No, I'm not going to vote for Mr. Greene."

That seems like a reasonable position for a party leader to take. It's not realistic to think officials of one party are suddenly going to endorse the candidate of the rival party -- that's just not going to happen given the way party politics works. But when responsible patriots look at their candidate, and realize that he/she has no business getting elected, the sensible, conscientious thing to do is announce that this candidate will not receive their support. Clyburn no doubt realizes this will only improve the Republican's vote total, but has concluded he's doing the right thing anyway.

What's noteworthy, then, is how this isn't happening among Republican leaders, who probably realize that candidates like Angle, Paul, and Buck are nearly as ridiculous as Alvin Greene, but who nevertheless enjoy the GOP's enthusiastic support.

I'm not suggesting the NRSC has a patriotic duty to endorse Harry Reid's re-election campaign. But it is interesting that Dems distance themselves from their fringe, unqualified Senate candidates, but Republicans aren't interested in doing the same.

—Steve Benen 12:35 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (23)

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.

* Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) is trailing in primary bid in Alaska by about 1,500 votes, with at least 8,000 more still to be counted. If she ends up losing, Murkowski has the option of pulling a Lieberman and running as a third-party candidate. She told her supporters yesterday that "it ain't over yet, folks" and that she would wait until the absentee ballots are counted before making decisions about her short-term future.

* In Vermont's five-way Democratic gubernatorial primary, just 1% of the vote separate the top three candidates, with all of the precincts reporting. For now, state Sen. Peter Shumlin leads by 213 votes over his next closest competitor.

* Florida Republicans were forced to scrap their "party unity" event yesterday, after GOP candidates decided they still hate each other. On a related note, Bill McCollum still isn't interested in endorsing Rick Scott in the gubernatorial race, citing questions about "his character, his integrity, his honesty" and his fraud scandal.

* In Wisconsin, right-wing Senate hopeful Ron Johnson (R) is vehemently against government assistance to private entities -- except when his own business sought and received a government-issued loan to expand its factory.

* In Ohio, former Rep. John Kasich's (R) gubernatorial campaign presented a plan to streamline business regulations. There's one problem: it's nearly identical to the plan Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland approved two years ago.

* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D) campaign unveiled a hard-hitting new ad this morning, using Sharron Angle's own words to make the Republican candidate look like a lunatic.

* In Colorado, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Republican extremist Ken Buck leading Sen. Michael Bennet (D) by nine, 49% to 40%. The Democrat's campaign will reportedly unveil an internal poll today showing Bennet up by four.

* In Pennsylvania, a new Franklin & Marshall poll shows former Rep. Pat Toomey (R) leading the U.S. Senate race by nine, and state A.G. Tom Corbett (R) leading the gubernatorial race by 11.

—Steve Benen 12:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (6)

OTHER THAN TAX CUTS, PENCE WANTS TAX CUTS.... House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) chatted with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren this week, leading to an interesting exchange.

Van Susteren wanted to get a sense of what Americans could expect from Pence's Republican Party, other than "the usual," when it comes to the economy. She noted that Republicans obviously support Bush-era tax rates, but wondered, other than that, what else Pence might push to improve the economy. He replied:

"Yes, look, the enemy of our prosperity is uncertainty ... the greatest uncertainty right now is -- and you just heard -- you heard the Vice President again kind of defend it in passing, their tax cuts -- their tax increases on the rich -- is this administration actually thinks that it would be a good idea to allow a tax increase on job creators on January 1st, 2011. You know, higher taxes never got anybody hired."

So, asked what the GOP supports in terms of economic policy, other than Bush's tax policy, the chairman of the House Republican Conference responds by reiterating his support for Bush's tax policy (which, by the way, failed miserably to produce the predicted economic nirvana).

It's as if someone bought an ipod, uploaded one song, and hit "shuffle."

Ben Armbruster added, "Given that Pence has been asked repeatedly for new ideas on the economy -- and hasn't been able to offer any -- one would imagine that he could think of something other than "tax cuts," but apparently not.

Remember, Republicans tend to consider Pence one of their sharpest, most important leaders. Seriously.

—Steve Benen 11:40 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (14)

WE DON'T NEED BECK TO 'RESTORE' OUR 'HONOR'.... Deranged media personality Glenn Beck will headline a rally on Saturday, which he says is intended to "restore honor" to America. Funny, I didn't realize American honor had disappeared -- or that we were dependent on a self-described rodeo-clown and his easily manipulated minions to "restore" it for us.

Regardless, Beck chose the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream Speech" for his get-together, and if that weren't quite audacious enough, Beck is also holding his rally at the same location -- the base of the Lincoln Memorial -- where King spoke. (Even one of Beck's Fox News colleagues thinks the choice of locations is wrong.)

Wait, it gets better. Beck not only considers himself a modern-day MLK -- he says he and his followers can "reclaim" the civil rights movement for themselves -- Beck also considers himself as a vessel for the Almighty. The media personality explained on his radio show two weeks ago that his rally is being orchestrated by God to unleash revival upon America. The Restoring Honor event, Beck said, "is Divine Providence. This is the Lord's hand at work. This is a miracle."

This is a delusional, Messianic freak.

But it will likely be a huge success anyway. When organizers applied for their permit with the National Park Service, they said they expect 300,000 people to attend. That may very well happen.

Conservative activists, meanwhile, promise that the rally will show their unity and voice, as last year's 9/12 event did. Jamie Radtke, founder of the Federation of Virginia Tea Party Patriots, predicted an event as much as twice as large as last year's, based on the number of buses that local tea party organizers have chartered. The Richmond Tea Party alone is sending 15 buses -- up from seven last year, she said. [...]

Beck, the third-highest-rated radio personality, has promoted the event relentlessly to his enormous audience. FreedomWorks, the tea party group that staged 9/12, is lending its organizational muscle and grass-roots network.

The numbers don't translate to merit, necessarily, and even if turnout falls short of expectations, Fox News will simply announce that 17 gajillion people showed up anyway.

Either way, the event itself will shine a bright light, once again, on hysterical right-wing zealots and their bizarre leaders. The party that's been taken over by the extremists is feigning ignorance.

Operatives at virtually every Republican committee in Washington claimed little or no knowledge of the event.

They might well have cause to be squeamish: Beck has accused Obama of reverse racism and of having "a deep-seated hatred of white people," and his plan to celebrate the lessons of the civil rights era creates the possibility of confrontations. It could also result in damaging imagery, similar to the photos that emerged from some early tea party gatherings, which Democrats could use to paint Republicans as extreme. That may explain why the event is being met with near-total silence by Republicans.

"In general, people coming to Washington, being organized and active is a good thing," said Doug Heye, a spokesman for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele. "But I gotta be honest with you -- I don't know about any Glenn Beck event."

Democrats aren't passing up the chance to tie the GOP to the rally. "Republicans for well over the past year have firmly embraced the tea party and some of these right-wing fringe groups that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin have rallied around, and these are becoming serious campaign liabilities in the general election," said Ryan Rudominer, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "The fact that they're trying to plead ignorance is just completely absurd."

—Steve Benen 10:50 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (42)

THE WRONG RESPONSE TO A SHOCKING CRIME.... Details of what happened and why are still coming into focus, but from what we now know, on Tuesday night, 21-year-old film student Michael Enright got into Ahmed Sharif's taxi cab in New York City. Enright asked about Sharif's background and faith, before mocking Ramadan. Soon after, Enright starting talking about checkpoints, withdrew a Leatherman knife, and stabbed the driver in the throat, face, arms, and hands.

Sharif, fortunately, appears to be doing fine after receiving more than two dozen stitches. Enright was quickly apprehended by police, and has been charged with second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime, first-degree assault as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon. He faces a possible 25-year sentence.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) invited Sharif to City Hall today, and said, "This attack runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe, no matter what God we may pray to."

Gov. David Paterson's (D) reaction was less encouraging. Among other things, the governor said:

"The potential for this kind of violence is one of the reasons why I have called publicly for a respectful and unifying conversation about the Park51 project. I continue to offer my assistance for an open dialogue that I believe will help to bring New Yorkers together."

Of course, Paterson has said he wants to accommodate the demands of the Park51 critics, even considering state land for the project. In this context, his statement made it seem as if the controversy and the stabbing are connected, and moving the community center would make things better.

As Ben Smith put it, "The argument here: The mosque must be moved because its opponents are crazed, violent bigots who need to be appeased. Sounds like a good compromise."

—Steve Benen 10:20 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (45)

QUOTE OF THE DAY.... Rep. John Fleming (R) of Louisiana was campaigning alongside Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) this week, speaking to a Republican women's group near Shreveport. Fleming did his best to frame the midterm elections in a very specific way.

"We have two competing world views here and there is no way that we can reach across the aisle -- one is going to have to win," said Rep. John Fleming, R-La. [...]

"We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like Western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we're going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation.

"So we're going to have to solve that argument before we can once again reach across and work together on things."

There's all kinds of fascinating angles to this remarkable nonsense, but let's note some of the highlights.

First, for all the talk from pundits that Democrats need to do much more to reach out and compromise with congressional Republicans, Fleming's wildly foolish comments are a reminder that there's just not much Dems can do with the modern-day GOP.

Second, there's nothing in the Democratic agenda that calls for an "atheist society"; Western Europe is filled with countries that have official state churches; and it doesn't make any sense to simultaneously claim to protect "individual liberties" and a "Christian nation." The United States separates church from state. Fleming may want a Christian-style theocracy -- maybe an Iran for the West -- but that's just not how Americans do things.

And finally, Fleming was campaigning with David Vitter. Voters are supposed to chose righteousness by backing the right-wing politician who hires prostitutes?

Postscript: Brian Beutler notes that the godless Democratic heathens have nominated David Melville to run against Fleming in November. Melville is a Methodist pastor.

Update: A friend emails: "Would Vitter be subjected to stoning in Fleming's Christian nation?"

—Steve Benen 9:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (29)

FEAR CAN (AND SHOULD) BE A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR.... The lead Politico story this morning reports on the borderline-panic among leading Democrats about the midterm elections. It's not a pretty picture.

Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.

In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.

Hopes earlier this year that economic conditions would noticeably improve by the fall have given way to a discouraging reality. Dems thought to be in relatively "safe" districts are now seen as vulnerable. The article quoted an unidentified Democratic pollster saying the party's House majority is "probably gone."

The dread is not universal -- some leading party strategists said the crushing pessimism is mostly "inside-the-beltway chatter" -- and the campaign committees are taking steps to help mitigate losses. Politico added, "Republicans have been out-raised and out-spent at the national level and in many of the key races."

But it's nevertheless safe to say that the political winds are picking up, and they're not at the Democrats' backs.

None of this, however, is new. Indeed, many of us could have sketched out the entire article in our heads before reading it. The question the Politico didn't get to is what Democrats plan to do about their predicament.

The article said there are competing strategies about the elections, but Dems "mostly agree there are few good options beyond grinding it out in each individual race."

There may be limited "good options," but there are options. For example there are Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and Dems could use the limited legislative calendar to push strong bills -- job creation, small businesses, repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," energy -- that voters might like, and which might motivate the Democratic base to turn out.

Sure, Republicans will oppose everything, and will very likely prevent votes in the Senate. But there's nothing wrong with putting up a fight, showing voters the party's priorities, forcing the GOP to cast tough votes shortly before an election, and giving the party something to be excited about.

It's better than hoping for the best.

—Steve Benen 8:40 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (36)

MCCAIN IS GONE AND HE'S NOT COMING BACK.... As recently as April, there was some polling suggesting that Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) primary race was down to single-digits. Understandably nervous, the Republican incumbent did what he had to do -- he spent like crazy.

When the dust settled, McCain's strategy worked. He'd spent $21 million on the primary, and ended up getting 56% of the Arizona Republicans' vote. As ridiculous as this may seem, the "septuagenarian maverick paid approximately $74.64 per vote."

Nevertheless, with the primary behind him, McCain can take some comfort in knowing he's very likely to win a fifth term. As for what he might do with this opportunity, David Broder has some advice.

What [the Senate needs] badly is adult leadership, and it's now incumbent on McCain to demonstrate that he is prepared to fulfill this role for both his party and his country. [...]

[N]ow, as the 73-year-old senator prepares for what may well be his final term in a congressional career that began in 1982, the time has come for McCain to look to his legacy -- and conditions are right.

In a Congress in which Democrats have pitiful approval ratings and Republicans even worse, McCain is one of the few names that does not draw instant contempt from the voters. The reputation he established for independence -- for being his own man, no matter what the pressures -- has survived the vagaries of an exceptionally long career.

Sigh.

Over the course of several years, there were so many "what happened to John McCain?" columns that the observation became a cliche. Pundits who adored the conservative senator and showered him with praise struggled to come to grips with McCain's descent into a becoming a bitter, confused, hard-right hack.

If Broder's column is any indication, we should perhaps brace ourselves for a new Village push: "maybe the old John McCain can come back to us?"

He won't. McCain has transformed his persona more than once during his lengthy political career, but by all appearances, the angry, cantankerous ideologue that emerged several years ago is the one we're stuck with. Broder seems to believe this was merely a facade, necessary to win a GOP primary in a "red" state, and now that the primary is over, the previous incarnation of John McCain can once again grace us with his presence.

But there's simply no reason to even hope for yet another transformation. Just last year, McCain seemed like a lock for re-election -- there was no meaningful talk of a primary opponent -- and he nevertheless acted like a spoiled, stubborn, hyper-partisan child. This was, in other words, the real personality.

The McCain that Broder is pining for is gone. Waiting for his return is a fool's errand.

—Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (32)

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

* Coordinated attacks in 13 Iraqi towns and cities kill dozens: "Insurgents unleashed a wave of coordinated attacks across Iraq on Wednesday in a demonstration of their ability to strike at will."

* Really not good: "Sales of U.S. new homes unexpectedly dropped in July to the lowest level on record, signaling that even with cheaper prices and reduced borrowing costs the housing market is retreating."

* Really not good, Part II: "New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods excluding transportation equipment posted their largest decline in 1-1/2 years in July while overall booking rose far less than expected, pointing to a slowdown in manufacturing."

* Relief trickles in for victims of Pakistan flooding.

* The anti-Muslim stabbing of a New York City cabdriver is so shocking, and the details about the alleged attacker so bizarre, one hardly knows where to start.

* President Obama will visit Fort Bliss, Tex., on Tuesday to meet with U.S. troops returning from Iraq. That night, he'll deliver an Oval Office address about the end of combat operations in the country.

* Yemen remains a focus of serious attention: "For the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CIA analysts see one of al-Qaeda's offshoots -- rather than the core group now based in Pakistan -- as the most urgent threat to U.S. security, officials said."

* Alan Simpson, the co-chair of President Obama's Fiscal Responsibility Commission, apologizes for his ridiculous email this week. Paul Krugman isn't persuaded.

* Republicans made dire predictions about the Obama administration's drilling moratorium. As is often the case, they were wrong.

* A Korean cult leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, apparently wants the conservative Washington Times back.

* Congrats to Nate Silver and his team on FiveThirtyEight's transition to the New York Times.

* Daniel Luzer: "The recession has caused parents to save more for college, though apparently it's not working out so well."

* Former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin (R) believes political figures who use the word "retarded" in a private meeting should be fired. She also believes political figures who use the "N-word" on national broadcasts should be protected. I wonder why that is.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

—Steve Benen 5:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (19)

WHITE HOUSE CONSIDERS 'NEXT STEPS TO KEEP THE ECONOMY GROWING'.... President Obama's vacation still has a few days to go, but a president is never fully on vacation, and developments still demand his attention.

Take the economy, for example.

U.S. President Barack Obama held a conference call with his top economic advisers on Wednesday to discuss recent data reports, global markets and economic growth, the White House said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House advisers Christy Romer and Larry Summers took part in the call with Obama, who is vacationing on the Massachusetts islands of Martha's Vineyard.

"The economic team provided an update on the next steps to keep the economy growing, including assistance to small businesses and the extension of tax cuts to the middle class," the White House said in a statement.

The statement added that the discussion "focused on recent data reports, global markets and economic growth." That's not exactly a detailed summary, but then again, I don't expect one under the circumstances.

What seems noteworthy here is that recent events made the call necessary in the first place. The president is, not surprisingly, aware of reports this week that cast the economy in a negative light, and arranging a discussion with his team not only makes sense, it also suggests a degree of concern.

Good. There should be concern. There should be lots of conference calls and strategy sessions and brain-storming and creative thinking. Ideally, there'd be all kinds of indications that leading officials are actively engaged in crafting a compelling economic plan for the very near future.

The White House statement said Obama heard about "the next steps to keep the economy growing." I don't have a sense of what those "next steps" might be, exactly, but here's hoping there are lots of them.

—Steve Benen 4:40 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (35)

A BASE THAT PUNISHES COOPERATION.... Time will tell what the outcome is in Alaska's Republican Senate primary. Tea Partier Joe Miller appears to have the edge, but given the margin, incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski may yet prevail.

But if the upset occurs, and pundits are looking for the larger meaning, they should start with Jonathan Bernstein's insights today.

[N]o matter what the final result, but especially if Miller wins: these primaries are sending a very strong message to GOP pols about the dangers of ever allowing any space to develop between themselves and movement conservatives. And that's true whether or not that's a message that Alaska's primary voters are intending to send (it may be, as I said last night, that the explanation for this election has more to do with the reputation of the Murkowski name in Alaska along with general voter discontent with the economy than it has to do with her actual actions in the Senate): the interpretation everyone's going to hear and believe is that ideological deviation, even very mild deviation, is extremely dangerous to one's electoral health.

Whether it's the New START treaty, or a compromise deal on the budget if the GOP controls at least one House of Congress next year, or any other issue, you can be sure that Republican pols who have to cast tough votes are going to remember Bob Bennett and Lisa Murkowski (and Arlen Specter, for that matter).

Agreed. For all the talk about endangered incumbents, alienated establishment types, and gender advantages in the Republican primaries this year, it seems the most meaningful takeaway of 2010 so far is the willingness of the Republican base -- everywhere -- to punish those open to compromise and constructive policymaking.

Sen. Bob Bennett (R) lost in Utah, in large part because his willingness to work with a Democrat on health care policy was deemed unacceptable to the party's base. Rep. Bob Inglis (R) was trounced in South Carolina because he expressed a willingness to work with people he disagreed with. Florida's Charlie Crist and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter were driven out of the party altogether because they considered it part of their responsibilities to play a constructive role in policymaking.

Also note the inverse. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was growing increasingly unpopular with his party's base, but he cruised to an easy primary win after assuring Republicans he would not cooperate with anyone who doesn't agree entirely with everything he already believes.

I might quibble a little with Jonathan's specifics -- I don't think the GOP base cares enough about New START to punish Republicans over it -- but the larger point seems entirely accurate. Murkowski wasn't a moderate, but she was one of a handful of Senate Republicans who Democrats considered at least somewhat approachable. And now, her career may very well be over.

The message from the base to Republican lawmakers who might consider constructive lawmaking: don't do it. Party activists don't want responsible leaders who'll try to solve problems; they want hard-right ideologues. No exceptions.

—Steve Benen 3:45 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (23)

A MORE PRAGMATIC IDEOLOGY.... In a "Daily Dish" item yesterday, Conor Friedersdorf explored the ways in which someone like Matt Yglesias approaches public policy. Friedersdorf emphasized that Matt does not, conservative rhetoric notwithstanding, having a reflexive preference for larger government:

The desired end of Matthew Yglesias isn't to grow the American state. On some issues, he sees a bigger state as a necessary means to an end he desires (like using subsidies to increase the percentage of Americans covered by some form of health insurance), and on other issues he favors taking power away from the state. It is useful to understand these distinctions, even if you think, as I do, that the federal government should be much smaller than Mr. Yglesias would have it.

It prompted Adam Serwer to note one of my favorite observations.

[T]he idea that conservatives don't understand that liberals aren't ideologically committed to the expansion of government the way conservatives are ideologically committed to the shrinking of government is indicative of the fact that conservative conversations about liberals take place in an alternate reality. Liberals believe that government has a responsibility to help people, especially those at the margins, cope with the exigencies of the free market, but that doesn't mean we're going to support a local height requirement in Washington, D.C., that artificially inflates the price of living space because it prevents the construction of housing with greater density. The means and outcome of policy matters, rather than the size of the role government ultimately plays. Yglesias is hardly unique in that sense.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I believe that conservatives don't really understand the difference.

I continue to see this as one of the fundamental differences between the left and right -- one considers smaller government an end unto itself, while the other cares infinitely more about policy outcomes than the size of government. Liberals and conservatives don't only disagree on political goals, they differ on the kinds of goals worth pursuing.

Paul Krugman had an item on this in April: "On the right, people are for smaller government as a matter of principle -- smaller government for its own sake. And so they naturally imagine that their opponents must be their mirror image, wanting bigger government as a goal in itself. But it's not true. I don't know any progressives who gloat over increases in the federal payroll or the government share of GDP. Progressives have things they want the government to do -- like guaranteeing health care. Size per se doesn't matter. But people on the right apparently can't get that."

No, they really don't. The liberal worldview is not about necessarily increasing the size of government or raising taxes; those mechanisms are only valuable insofar as they reach the desired end-point. For the right, it's the other way around -- the ideological goal is the desired end-point.

I can imagine a scenario in which the president hosts a big meeting with all the congressional leaders, and suggests it's time to review the economic recovery efforts of the last year and a half, looking closely at what worked and what didn't, and then working on what to do next. For Dems, the task would be fairly straightforward -- let's do more of what was the most effective, and less of what was the least effective.

For Republicans, it doesn't work quite that way -- they have ideological ideals that outweigh evidence. GOP leaders could be shown incontrovertible evidence that the most effective methods of creating jobs and improving the economy are aid to states, infrastructure investment, unemployment insurance, and food stamps, and they'd still say tax cuts for millionaires is the better way to go. Why? Because their ideology dictates that government spending is bad, government intervention in the economy is bad, and tax cuts are good.

Jon Chait had a terrific piece on this larger dynamic several years ago.

We're accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.

The contrast between economic liberalism and economic conservatism, then, ultimately lies not only in different values or preferences but in different epistemologies. Liberalism is a more deeply pragmatic governing philosophy -- more open to change, more receptive to empiricism, and ultimately better at producing policies that improve the human condition -- than conservatism.

Now, liberalism's pragmatic superiority wouldn't matter to a true ideological conservative any more than news about the medical benefits of pork (to pick an imaginary example) would cause a strictly observant Jew to begin eating ham sandwiches. But, if you have no particular a priori preference about the size of government and care only about tangible outcomes, then liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy.

Those on the right want to cut taxes, because tax cuts are necessarily good. They want smaller government, because smaller government is necessarily good. They want to privatize public programs because privatization is necessarily good.

The left has no parallel ideological desires (wanting bigger government just for the sake of having bigger government).

The left starts with a policy goal (more people with access to medical care, more students with access to college, less pollution, more Wall Street safeguards) and crafts proposals to try to complete the task. The right starts with an ideological goal (smaller government, more privatization, lower taxes) and works backwards.

—Steve Benen 2:55 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (33)

MAYBE SIMPSON SHOULDN'T COUNT AS A 'SERIOUS PERSON'.... Ashley Carson, executive director of the National Older Women's League, recently wrote an item for the Huffington Post, criticizing former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) for his approach to Social Security. As the co-chair of the White House's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform -- a deficit commission considering changes to Social Security -- Simpson's perspective is of particular relevance right now.

Four months later, the Republican responded to Carson's piece in a frank email to its author. That appears to have been a very bad idea.

His email is peppered with exclamation points and condescension. At one point he urged Carson to read a certain graph, "which I hope you are able to discern if you are any good at reading graphs."

Simpson concludes by implying that leading a major organization dedicated to the interests of middle-aged and elderly women is not "honest work."

"If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security instead of just babbling into the vapors, let me know," he writes. "And yes, I've made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know 'em too. It's the same with any system in America. We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow
with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!"

As a substantive matter, this is ridiculous. As a political matter, it's hard to imagine what Simpson was thinking. And as a matter of basic decency and respect, Simpson's email is a reminder that the former Republican senator probably should have stayed in retirement.

This isn't the first time Simpson's approach to Social Security policy has come into question, but it is the most offensive time. "310 million tits"? Really?

I can appreciate the White House's difficulties when shaping the deficit commission's membership. The goal was to find credible, knowledgeable, sincere officials -- "elder statesman" types, I suppose -- who'd be willing to work in good faith on a bipartisan compromise. It was deemed important for President Obama to choose two co-chairs, one from each party, and all things being equal, Simpson probably seemed like a reasonable choice.

It's unfortunate, but the "bench" of serious Republicans available for a role like this one is depressingly thin.

Six months later, though, it seems increasingly clear that Simpson lacks the judgment and temperament for the job.

—Steve Benen 2:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (37)

ANGLE EYES 'DOMESTIC ENEMIES'.... A couple of years ago, the national scene began to appreciate just how unhinged Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) really is during an appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball." The right-wing lawmaker said there should be an investigation to determine which members of Congress are "pro-America or anti-America" -- offering one of the more blatant examples of modern-day McCarthyism.

Sharron Angle (R), the extremist Senate candidate in Nevada, is apparently thinking along the same lines.

Yesterday, Greg Sargent reported on a radio interview Angle did on the day she launched her campaign last year. During the appearance, Angle "clearly and unequivocally agreed with an interviewer who asserted flatly that there are 'domestic enemies' and 'homegrown enemies' in the 'walls of the Senate and the Congress.'"

That's obviously pretty crazy stuff. As Jed Lewison noted, "[D]oesn't this put her comments about 'Second Amendment remedies' in an even more sinister light?

Not surprisingly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), already pushing the line that Angle is far "too extreme" for the American mainstream, is connecting these revelations to the larger observation.

"Sharron Angle's rhetoric is irresponsible and over the top. Let me be very clear. While I may have some differences of opinion with my Republican colleagues in the Senate, I have never questioned their patriotism. For Sharron Angle to agree that any of them -- Republican or Democrat -- is an enemy of the state is not only an insult to every United States Senator, it's a disgrace to our country. If she is going to use such rhetoric, she has an obligation to name names and explain to the American people exactly who she thinks is a domestic enemy."

That sounds about right. If Angle really is convinced Congress has "homegrown enemies" shaping federal policy, she should elaborate a bit on who these dastardly politicians are. In fairness, the exact words were the radio host's, not the candidate's, but Angle clearly endorsed the sentiment and said she agreed with the charge. Given her other public comments, Angle wasn't just popping off to win some primary votes -- she believes this stuff.

But there's also the larger question of when, exactly, Republican leaders might be willing to put some distance between the GOP and its more ridiculous candidates. E.J. Dionne Jr. noted the other day, "What the current right has [to] offer is far worse than anything Bush put forward, which means that this election isn't even about whether we'll go back into the ditch. It's about whether a movement that's gone over a cliff will be rewarded for doing so. A victory for this style of conservatism will be a defeat for the kind of conservatism the country needs. And that's a worthy matter to put to the voters."

—Steve Benen 1:20 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (15)

UNEXPECTED RESULTS IN THE LAST FRONTIER.... Very few political observers expected a credible contest in Alaska's GOP Senate primary. Incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski had all the advantages, and her opponent was an obscure lawyer, Joe Miller, with Tea Party backing.

As of right now, with 97.9% of the precincts reporting, Miller leads Murkowski by 1,960 votes. We may not get a final resolution for a couple of weeks -- and with recounts, maybe longer -- but it appears that Alaska may be home to one of the year's biggest upsets.

We have some sense as to how Miller managed to do so well, but if reader emails this morning are any indication, there are two larger questions on the minds of many: Who's Joe Miller? And if Murkowski ends up losing, is this Senate seat in play in November?

On the former, Miller, if he is the nominee, would quickly join the ranks of Angle, Paul, Buck, Toomey, and Johnson as the Republicans' "Bizarre Brigade" of 2010. Amanda Terkel had this report a couple of days ago.

In a June 24 interview with local KTVA-Channel 11, Miller avoided answering questions about President Obama's religion and citizenship, simply saying that he isn't running on a "birther platform":

Q: President Obama: Is he an American citizen? And is he a Christian?

MILLER: (Laughter) No comm- Look, President Obama's been elected. I'm not running on any type of birther platform. I will tell you that I am an Alaskan by choice though, and I'm going to put my documents up on the website.

Miller wants to ban all abortion rights, repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, including measures protecting consumers with pre-existing conditions.

And what about the Democrat? Some higher-profile candidates likely skipped the race, assuming Murkowski would run and win, but Scott McAdams, mayor of the town of Sitka (population: 9,000), easily won the Democratic nomination yesterday, and is likely about to receive considerably more attention than he's used to. Christina Bellantoni had this report:

National Democrats tell us privately the Alaska Senate race wasn't even on their radar, until today when Miller's showing stunned Washington. [...]

Democrats tell me that at this point they don't expect to spend money or devote resources to Alaska given they are on the defense in states that are likely to be far more competitive this fall. But don't forget, Mark Begich winning statewide in Alaska in 2008 at one point seemed like a pipe dream. Anything's possible.

Something to keep an eye on.

—Steve Benen 12:40 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (24)

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.

* As Florida's gubernatorial campaign gets underway in earnest, a new survey from Public Policy Polling shows Alex Sink (D) leading Rick Scott (R), 41% to 34%. Independent Bud Chiles is third with 8%.

* Speaking of Florida, remember David M. Rivera, the scandal-plagued Republican House candidate? He won his primary yesterday.

* In Arizona, the Republican establishment rallied behind former state Sen. Jonathan Paton as the strongest candidate to take on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) in November. GOP primary voters ignored Paton and nominated Tea Party favorite Jesse Kelly, much to the delight of the DCCC.

* A state judge will have to decide fairly soon whether the "Michigan Tea Party," which may or may not be a sham organization set up by Democrats, will be on the state ballot in November.

* In Colorado, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has launched its first ad, going after Republican nominee Ken Buck's remarks supporting repeal of the 17th Amendment.

* In Maryland's gubernatorial rematch, a new poll shows incumbent Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) leading former Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R), 47% to 41%.

* In Louisiana, Sen. David Vitter (R) is engulfed in multiple scandals, but voters haven't heard much about them. A new survey from Public Policy Polling will show the ethics-challenged incumbent leading Rep. Charlie Melancon (D), 51% to 41%.

* And while disgraced former Ohio Rep. Jim Traficant (D) has been ruled ineligible for November's ballot, he still has supporters who intend to push his candidacy in court.

—Steve Benen 12:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (9)

FRIVOLOUS HEALTH CARE LAWSUIT FAILS TO BOOST STATE AGS.... Almost immediately after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, several Republican state attorneys general -- all ambitious, all with higher office in mind -- decided that filing a lawsuit challenging the new law would boost their careers.

Among them were: South Carolina's Henry McMaster (R), Florida's Bill McCollum (R), and Michigan's Mike Cox (R). All three ran for governor this year, based at least in part on their "leadership" roles trying to undermine health care reform. As Ben Smith noted today, things didn't turn out well for them -- all three lost in their respective primaries.

McMaster lost to Nikki Haley, whose reform message trumped his series of ads touting his health care fight. Cox, who also put his health care suit on air, lost to a wealthy businessman who ran on a non-ideological platform under the slogan, "one tough nerd." McCollum lost to Rick Scott, and there the message may not be as clear -- Scott was also a leading national foe of the health care bill.

But the suggestion to take from this, I think, is that the "throw the bums out" sentiment shouldn't be mistaken for an argument solely, or even primarily, about policy -- even about health care.

In fairness, the larger pattern doesn't hold up for all of the state AGs involved in the suit. In Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett (R) joined the lawsuit, for example, and he remains the favorite in the state's gubernatorial campaign.

But in March, there was an assumption, especially in Republican circles, that opposition to the Affordable Care Act was political gold -- and the bigger one's role in fighting the Democratic reform package, the larger the political reward. Five months later, those assumptions are looking pretty shaky.

—Steve Benen 11:25 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (7)

NOT ONE OF THE CHOICES.... When it comes to a debate over last year's economic stimulus, there are a few options available to those offering critiques. One could argue, for example, that the stimulus was a strong package that prevented an economic collapse and worked as intended, but should have been bigger and more ambitious to create a more robust recovery.

Or one might argue that the Recovery Act was just fine the way it was shaped; a bigger one never would have passed Congress; and that the economy will slowly but surely keep growing.

As for the right, which didn't want any stimulus and pushed a five-year spending freeze at the height of the crisis, the choices are more nuanced. A conservative could argue, for example, that the stimulus was pointless and the economy would be in the identical shape it's in now had the Recovery Act never passed. A Republican might also argue that a different kind of stimulus -- i.e. using that money exclusively for tax cuts -- would have been more effective. These arguments are demonstrably false, but presumably one could make them with a straight face.

Arguing that the stimulus actually hurt the economy, however, isn't one of the choices -- because it's just too crazy. And yet, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) seemed to make this exact argument yesterday in his big economic speech in Cleveland.

"Right now, America's employers are afraid to invest in an economy stalled by 'stimulus' spending....

"By trying to build a recovery on government 'stimulus' spending -- and failing -- Washington has kept the private sector in bust while manufacturing a boom for the public sector."

I can appreciate how and why the Recovery Act has faced criticism -- I'm in the "way too small" camp, myself -- but Boehner's critique really doesn't make a lick of sense.

The stimulus "stalled" the economy? In what universe is that true? The economy is, to be sure, on shaky ground, but literally just hours after Boehner's remarks, the Congressional Budget Office said the stimulus boosted overall economic growth in the second quarter by as much as 4.5%. Boehner's on firm ground complaining about a "stalled" economy, but blaming that on the stimulus is insane.

Likewise, his remark about the stimulus having "kept the private sector in bust" is just gibberish. Private-sector job growth was in freefall before the stimulus, but started recovering soon after the Recovery Act became law. So far in 2010, 630,000 private-sector jobs have been created -- which obviously isn't enough, but is nevertheless a reality at odds with Boehner's nonsense.

A few months ago, ABC News ran a piece on some economic experts weighing in on the merit of the stimulus -- some were fans, some weren't. But how many economists did ABC find who said the Recovery Act actually hurt the economy? None. It's just not a credible position.

Someone probably ought to let Boehner know. His credibility seems to be getting worse all the time.

—Steve Benen 10:45 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (22)

I CAN'T BELIEVE HE LOST TO THAT GUY.... When it comes to issues and policies, I think Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (R) is wrong about nearly everything. I can't help, however, feel a little bad for him right now.

After 20 years in Congress, McCollum ran for the Senate in 2000, and lost. He ran for the Senate again in 2004, and lost again. In 2010, McCollum looked like he had the gubernatorial field all to himself, and polls showed him as the favorite in November. Then, disgraced former health care executive Rick Scott launched a bizarre primary challenge.

McCollum looked like he was closing strong, and enjoyed the support of the Republican Party and the state's business community, but he came up short anyway -- losing his third statewide bid in a decade, this time to a borderline-criminal who's never shown any interest in public service.

Millionaire businessman Rick Scott's surprise win in the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday left both parties scrambling over how to cope with a candidate who possesses both glaring flaws and considerable assets.

Scott's three-percentage-point victory over state Attorney General Bill McCollum transforms what would have been a relatively bland general election contest between two establishment politicians into a race that will offer a test of outsider strength in a season of intense voter anger.

Rick Scott is, of course, best known as the former head of the Columbia/HCA health-care company that got caught up in a massive fraud scandal in the 1990s -- and nothing says victory in Florida like "Medicare fraud." Scott's firm later pleaded guilty to charges that it overbilled state and federal health plans, and agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines, a record penalty for a health care company. The fines covered fraud perpetrated under Scott's watch, and he was forced out of his job as a result of the scandal.

More recently, Scott used his personal fortune to hire the Swiftboat liars' p.r. firm, and proceeded to launch a breathtakingly deceptive right-wing ad campaign in opposition to health care reform. He is, by the way, also at the center of an ongoing scandal stemming from his alleged fraud in the '90s.

And now he's also the Republican gubernatorial nominee in one of the nation's largest states.

As for McCollum, in his concession last night, he noted that "no one could have anticipated the entrance of a multi-millionaire with a questionable past who shattered campaign spending records and spent more in four months than has ever been spent in a primary race here in Florida."

McCollum has not pledged his support for Scott, and the GOP nominee probably shouldn't be waiting by the phone.

—Steve Benen 10:05 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (21)

MAYBE BOEHNER LEFT OUT THE GOOD PARTS.... If House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) goal was to get plenty of attention by delivering a speech on the economy yesterday, it was something of a success. Boehner's remarks were widely noted, especially the made-for-the-headlines appeal that President Obama replace his economic team.

But if the goal was to demonstrate competence -- or better yet, present a coherent vision of how his caucus would handle economic policy if given a majority -- Boehner fell far short. Indeed, he ended up embarrassing himself a bit.

There's no shortage of thorough fact-checking items -- Boehner, surprisingly clueless about the nation's most pressing issue, said a lot of things that weren't true -- and I'd encourage folks to check out takes from the White House, Wonk Room, Bill Scher, and Media Matters.

But Boehner's problems go well beyond obvious errors of fact. Ruth Marcus' takedown was very compelling.

There are times when I flirt with the notion that the country would be better off with divided government.

If Republicans took control, say, of the House, there would be pressure on both parties to behave more responsibly. The GOP would be pushed to stop carping and posturing, and start governing. Democrats would have political cover to make hard choices on entitlement spending, taxes and the like. As every politician knows, bipartisan cliff-jumping is a safer sport than going solo.

That's the theory. Then there's John Boehner.

The man who would be speaker outlined his agenda Tuesday in a speech to the City Club of Cleveland -- economic policy reduced to, literally, five easy tweets. The Ohio Republican offered up a depressing blend of tired ideas, tired-er one-liners ("We've tried 19 months of government-as-community-organizer") and cheap attacks.

She concluded with a sentiment that I've thought countless times in recent years: "Democrats -- and the country -- would benefit from a responsible opposition party. I'm still looking for evidence of one."

Marcus wasn't the only one who noticed. Politico's Jake Sherman described Boehner's remarks as a "continuous battering of the president's advisers, policies and legacy" and "an attack strategy that is thus far short on Republican vision and long on bashing Democrats."

Yesterday offered Boehner a real chance -- with the spotlight to himself, he could prove he's capable of seriousness; capable of presenting a coherent policy agenda; capable of getting past tired cliches and talking points, and demonstrating a real grasp of substantive policy. It was, then, a missed opportunity for a man who clearly isn't ready to lead.

—Steve Benen 9:20 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (26)

THE LINGERING CONSEQUENCES OF E COLI CONSERVATISM.... You've likely heard about the egg recall that's currently underway, in the wake of at least 1,300 salmonella-related illnesses spanning 22 states over the summer. The Washington Post noted this week that the outbreak highlights the need to fix "the holes in the country's food safety net."

As we learn more about the story, we see that the salmonella problems stem from an uninspected producer in Iowa, with a record of health, safety, labor, and other violations that go back 20 years. Democrats in Washington are nearing approval of a new food-safety bill, but Jonathan Cohn takes a closer look this morning at pending egg regulations, which have been lingering for quite a while.

Cohn notes that the "saga of these standards seems like a case study in how conservative politics and conservative politicians have weakened federal regulation, exposing the public to greater health risks."

It begins ... with the administration of Ronald Reagan. Convinced that excessive regulation was stifling American innovation and imposing unnecessary costs on the public, Reagan's team changed the way government makes rules.

Prior to the 1980s, agencies like the FDA had authority to finalize regulations on their own. Reagan changed that, forcing agencies to submit all regulations to the Office of Management and Budget, which cast a more skeptical eye on anything that would require the government or business to spend more money. The regulatory process slowed down and, in many cases, the people in charge of it became more skittish.

Clinton didn't share Reagan's antipathy to regulation. Prodded by consumer advocates and more liberal Democrats, his administration announced its intention to impose new safety requirements on the egg industry. But that happened in 1999, a year before Clinton left office. When George W. Bush succeeded him, the administration's posture reverted to its 1980s version.

Like Reagan, Bush was skeptical of government interference in the market. And, like Reagan, he appointed officials sympathetic to businesses that wanted to avoid the cost of complying with new federal rules. It was not until 2004, five years after Clinton had proposed the new egg rules, that the Bush Administration issued actual regulatory language. And by 2009, when Bush left office, the administration still had not finalized the rule.

William Hubbard, who was associate FDA commissioner from 1991 until 2005, told Cohn the Bush White House simply wouldn't let the FDA act, because Bush's team was "very hostile to regulation."

This isn't quite new -- we've seen related outbreaks a little too often in recent years, and much of it stems from insufficient government safeguards. Relevant companies are doing what the industry is expected to do -- exploiting loopholes to cut corners and save costs -- but if policymakers simply let the free market guide the food-safety process, the results include the salmonella illnesses we're seeing now.

The answer, then, is a political one -- federal officials need to intervene to do what American consumers cannot do for themselves, in this case, imposing stricter safety regulations. For all the Republican hatred of government regulation -- "I don't want Obama's hands in my eggs!" -- recent developments should turn the anti-government crusade on its head.

A few years ago, Rick Perlstein coined the phrase "E. Coli Conservatism." The importance of rejecting that ideology keeps getting stronger.

—Steve Benen 8:40 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (23)

MULTI-STATE PRIMARIES DEFY MEDIA NARRATIVES.... In political punditry, the desire to identify trends, themes, and patterns is pretty strong. But as the year unfolds, pesky voters keep making the task more difficult.

It's an anti-incumbent year, except for all the incumbents who are doing fine. Tea Party favorites fare well, except where they don't. Candidates with establishment backing are in trouble, except when they keep winning. The candidates with more money excel, except when they're trounced. For every narrative, there are counter-examples that render it largely useless.

And while pundits no doubt find this challenging when telling the public What It All Means, I'd argue it makes for a more interesting election season. Yesterday, for example, offered all kinds of surprises. Let's take the states one at a time.

Florida

Arguably yesterday's marquee match-up was Florida's Republican gubernatorial primary, where polls showed state Attorney General Bill McCollum closing strong. The polls were largely wrong -- disgraced former health care executive Rick Scott won by three points, and will face Florida CFO Alex Sink (D) in November. While Scott's very deep pockets will help Republicans statewide, Dems in the Sunshine State seemed pleased with the outcome. "Florida Republicans nominate for governor a corrupt health care CEO that defrauded taxpayers," said Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee. "Thank you, Tea Party!"

Florida's other big match-up was the Senate Democratic primary, where Rep. Kendrick Meek easily defeated rich guy Jeff Greene, winning by 26 points, despite Greene's aggressive and expensive ad campaign. Meek will take on Gov. Charlie Crist (I) and Marco Rubio (R) in the fall.

Elsewhere in Florida, Blue Dog Rep. Allen Boyd (D) faced a stiff primary challenge from state Senate Minority Leader Al Lawson. Boyd outspent his challenger 10-to-1, but barely eked out a victory, 51% to 49%.

Arizona

The Republican Senate primary was, at one point, expected to be fairly competitive, but Sen. John McCain spent heavily to crush former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, and it paid off -- McCain won by 24 points. (I'd argue the infomercial controversy stopped any momentum Hayworth might have had.) Similarly, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) was, a while back, supposed to face a tough primary challenge, but the state's anti-immigrant law propelled her to Republican stardom, and she cruised to an overwhelming primary victory yesterday.

Elsewhere in Arizona, Ben Quayle managed to win a multi-candidate GOP primary in retiring Rep. John Shadegg's (R) district, despite multiple controversies.

Alaska

In what may prove to be the most important primary yesterday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, expected to easily win her Republican primary, was actually losing to Tea Partier Joe Miller as of early this morning. With 84% of the state's precincts reporting, Miller led, 52% to 48%. Though it's still too soon to call the race, Dave Weigel had an interesting take on how the upset became possible.

Vermont

In one of the nation's most competitive contests, five viable Democratic gubernatorial candidates faced off yesterday, and with 89% of the precincts reporting, it's still unclear who'll win. State Sen. Peter Shumlin leads with 25.1%, followed very closely by state Sen. Doug Racine with 24.9%. Secretary of State Deb Markowitz is hot on their heels with 23.8%, and former state Sen. Matt Dunne is a competitive fourth with 21%. This one might take a while to sort out.

So, what's the larger lesson from all of these results? I continue to believe the moral of the story is that there is no moral to the story.

—Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (19)

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

* Ugly: "Sales of previously built single-family homes plunged in July to their lowest level since May 1995 as job fears trumped low mortgage interest rates and relatively affordable home prices." The drop was 27.2% from June -- twice as bad as economists expected.

* Frank Ahrens tries to make us feel better: "Painful as it is to take in the short term, today's news about the plunge in home sales is exactly what this economy needs for the long run. Think of it as an economic colonic. Not pretty, but necessary."

* Deadly attacks in Mogadishu: "Somali insurgents disguised in government military uniforms stormed a Mogadishu hotel on Tuesday and killed at least 30 people, including six lawmakers, laying bare how vulnerable Somalia's government is, even in an area it claims to control. The insurgents methodically moved room to room, killing hotel guests who tried to bolt their doors shut, Somali officials said. When government forces finally cornered the insurgents, two blew themselves up with suicide vests."

* Here's hoping this news out of the Gulf is accurate: "Petroleum-eating bacteria - which had dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the sea floor -- proliferated in the cloud of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible."

* Former President Jimmy Carter is headed to North Korea in the hopes of freeing Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a 31-year-old Boston resident who was sentenced in April to eight years at a hard labor camp for illegally crossing North Korea's border with China.

* There are now fewer than 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the lowest since the 2003 invasion.

* Shirley Sherrod has turned down a job offer at the Agriculture Department. I can't say I blame her.

* Atrios speaks the truth: "10-year Treasury at 2.51. As I keep saying, at rates this low it's a crime not to borrow crazy amounts and spend it on SUPERTRAINS and fixing bridges and whatnot."

* During her work at the Bush State Department, Karen Hughes worked with Feisal Abdul Rauf -- except she no longer remembers that.

* Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has described Rauf -- an American, a moderate imam, and an ally of the Bush administration -- as "a jihadist." What a buffoon.

* Anyone relying on right-wing blogger Pamela Geller as a reliable source of information is making a foolish mistake.

* Have I mentioned lately how confusing Jonah Goldberg is?

* Daniel Luzer: "Guess who's most likely to finish college? Oddly and surprisingly, it's heavy Facebook users."

* Tea Party activist Mark Williams' bigotry appears to get even worse.

* And finally, a Tea Party group has advised activists visiting D.C. this weekend which parts of the city to visit -- and which parts not to visit. Rachel Maddow and Eugene Robinson took a closer look at the advice in an amusing segment last night.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

—Steve Benen 5:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (23)

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE STEPS ALL OVER BOEHNER'S MESSAGE.... In his exceedingly silly speech on the economy today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) proudly proclaimed, "All this 'stimulus' spending has gotten us nowhere."

And almost immediately thereafter, the CBO made Boehner look pretty foolish.

The oft-criticized stimulus plan boosted the economy in the second quarter by as much as 4.5%, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.

In a report published the same day as Minority Leader John Boehner's criticism of President Obama's economic policy, the CBO said the stimulus law boosted the economy by between 1.7% and 4.5%, lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points and increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million.

This seems pretty significant, so let's look at it from a few different angles.

First, as a real-world matter, economic growth was pretty slow in the second quarter (April to June), but the CBO report makes clear that without the stimulus, it wouldn't have grown at all. In other words, a stimulus helped lead to tepid growth -- the absence of a stimulus would have been significant economic contraction.

Second, this CBO data, like reports from the Council of Economic Advisors and the Office of Management and Budget, should effectively end the debate about whether the Recovery Act did what it set out to do. The stimulus effort was too small -- criticism from conservative Republicans is completely backwards -- but as designed, it was intended to give the economy a significant boost, and save and create millions of jobs. It did exactly that. Anyone who argues otherwise is either not paying attention or is being willfully dishonest.

Third, the White House would be smart to trumpet the CBO report pretty loudly, especially today, but the same political dynamic that's existed for months continues to be a problem -- the stimulus prevented a catastrophe, and Republicans were spectacularly wrong at the moment of crisis, but the economy is still hurting badly. Saying "it would have been much worse" is entirely accurate. It's also entirely unpersuasive in a country burdened by fear and high unemployment.

And finally, by way of a reminder as to how truly nonsensical our politics can be, also note that the economy could use another boost to prevent it from slipping even further backwards. The CBO makes abundantly clear that the stimulus worked in generating growth and creating jobs. So, does that mean we'll get another stimulus to generate more growth and create more jobs? Of course not -- Republicans choose not to believe the data, want less of what worked, and won't allow a vote on the most effective elements of the policy. Voters say they want less spending -- even though more spending would improve the economy -- and congressional Democrats are unlikely to even try to push for more recovery efforts, fearing a public backlash against sound policies that work.

The stimulus worked, and we need more. The country is convinced it failed, and demands less.

We know what the economy needs; we know how to make it happen; and our politics just won't let us get from here to there.

—Steve Benen 4:30 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (20)

ENERGIZING MORE THAN JUST THE GOP BASE, CONT'D.... As conservatives become more animated in their demands that Muslim American face discrimination, it's becoming increasingly important to appreciate the consequences of the right's hysteria. As we talked about yesterday, it's not just the Republican base feeling energized by the "debate."

Frank Rich had a very good column over the weekend, noting, "After 9/11, President Bush praised Islam as a religion of peace and asked for tolerance for Muslims not necessarily because he was a humanitarian or knew much about Islam but because national security demanded it. An America at war with Islam plays right into Al Qaeda's recruitment spiel. This month's incessant and indiscriminate orgy of Muslim-bashing is a national security disaster for that reason -- Osama bin Laden's 'next video script has just written itself,' as the former F.B.I. terrorist interrogator Ali Soufan put it."

NPR reported today that experts in counter-terrorism believe the controversy surrounding the Park51 proposal may play "right into the hands of radical extremists." (thanks to B.A. tip)

The supercharged debate over the proposed center has attracted the attention of a quiet, underground audience -- young Muslims who drift in and out of jihadi chat rooms and frequent radical Islamic sites on the Web. It has become the No. 1 topic of discussion in recent days and proof positive, according to some of the posted messages, that America is indeed at war with Islam.

"This, unfortunately, is playing right into their hands," said Evan F. Kohlmann, who tracks these kinds of websites and chat rooms for Flashpoint Global partners, a New York-based security firm. "Extremists are encouraging all this, with glee.

"It is their sense that by doing this that Americans are going to alienate American Muslims to the point where even relatively moderate Muslims are going to be pushed into joining extremist movements like al-Qaida. They couldn't be happier." [...]

Extremists and radical clerics posted a stream of "I told you so" messages: After years of telling followers that Islam was under attack by the West, the harsh reaction to a simple community center seemed to prove it.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric linked to the Fort Hood shootings and the failed Christmas Day attempt, recently released an appeal to disaffected American Muslims, who may be feeling ostracized by American society. Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation, said the fear is Awlaki will gain more credibility.

"Over the past nine to 12 months, Anwar al-Awlaki has tried to promote this notion that the West, and particularly the United States, will turn on its Muslim citizens," Fishman said. "And some of the anti-Islamic tone that has been going around the country in connection with the mosque debate feeds into this notion that people like Anwar al-Awlaki can take advantage of."

Opposing efforts to improve the economy, willingly providing fodder to our enemies, demanding sweeping changes to our Constitution ... I'm not sure what the United States did to offend conservative activists so much, but for all of our sake, I wish they'd reconsider.

—Steve Benen 3:15 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (33)

TOOMEY HAS BIG PLANS FOR SOCIAL SECURITY.... For all the talk about the various radical candidates seeking statewide office this year -- Angle, Paul, Johnson, Maes, Emmer -- it's easy to overlook former Rep. Pat Toomey, the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania this year.

One recent analysis found that Toomey, based on his voting record, is "considerably" more conservative than Rick Santorum was during his tenure, and had a record more ideologically in tune with notorious North Carolinian Jesse Helms.

To help drive the point home, consider his approach to Social Security, an issue we're apparently not supposed to talk about, and which GOP leaders like to suggest they won't privatize. Toomey was asked yesterday at the Pennsylvania Press Club whether he stands by the privatization scheme he's long favored. "I've never said I favor privatizing Social Security," he replied.

A dramatic flip-flop? No, the issue here is that Toomey just prefers to define "privatization" in a way that doesn't make sense. He doesn't support privatization, Toomey just wants workers to take their money out of the Social Security system, and invest it on their own in private accounts -- subject to swings on Wall Street -- which will support them during their retirement. Toomey even wrote a book with a chapter called, "Transforming Social Security." The first subhead reads, "Personal Accounts Lead to Personal Prosperity."

Some dare call this "privatization"? Imagine that.

Pat Garofalo explained:

[M]ake no mistake, Toomey absolutely favors privatizing a portion of the program, as he makes painfully clear through his advocating that young workers "own" an account. Such privatized accounts would have experienced sharp negative returns in the market turmoil of 2008.

As Josh Dorner noted, a recent CNN poll "found that 59 percent oppose privatizing Social Security and Medicare." 46 percent of voters said such a plan would make them "very uncomfortable" and a further 21 percent had reservations about it. Toomey tries to dress this up by not calling it privatization, but his formula is the same one that was roundly rejected when President Bush tried it in 2005.

Toomey may not feel comfortable with the description of his privatization scheme, but that doesn't change what it is.

Just as an aside, I also noticed that Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine was in Philadelphia earlier this month, throwing her support to Toomey and helping the right-wing candidate raise money. This struck me as a little bizarre -- when Toomey led the Club for Growth, one of his main tasks was destroying moderate Republicans like Collins. In 2009, Toomey even named Collins a "Comrade of the Month" for having supported economic recovery efforts.

For that matter, Collins claims that she wants to see a more moderate Republican Party, with more GOP lawmakers willing to work on bipartisan policy solutions. If she believes that, why on earth would she be in Pennsylvania, going out of her way to support Toomey, an unabashedly far-right ideologue?

—Steve Benen 2:25 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (20)

A CLOSER LOOK AT 'THE VIRGINIA STRATEGY'.... The Wall Street Journal editorial board has an item today heralding Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell's (R) $400 million budget surplus. According to the WSJ, it "proves" the efficacy of the Republican approach, and reminds federal policymakers to "employ the Virginia strategy."

In his ridiculous economic speech today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) also singled out Bob McDonnell for praise, noting how impressive it was to see the Virginia Republican "balance his state's budget ... without raising taxes."

McDonnell himself has started patting himself on the back. Last week, he stopped by the Fox Business Network to boast about the greatness of his "conservative, fiscal, practical approach" to budgeting. McDonnell added his way is a model for reducing the "dependence of people on government." Fox Business described it as "an amazing story."

So amazing, in fact, that it deserves a closer look. Indeed, there's a key detail about Virginia's surplus that Republican leaders and their media outlets hope you'll overlook.

Gov. Bob McDonnell decries rising federal spending, but a handout from Washington is helping him balance Virginia's cash-strapped budget, a fiscal think tank says.

If not for $2.5 billion from President Barack Obama's economic-stimulus program, the state's shortfall would have swelled from more than $4 billion to nearly $5.5 billion, according to the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis.

Michael J. Cassidy, institute president, said yesterday that the federal aid helped shrink the hole by 16 percent, allowing Virginia -- at the height of the recession -- to avert "further cuts to key areas like health care, education and public safety."

For all the Republican praise of McDonnell and criticism of President Obama, this gang neglects to mention that McDonnell's budget surplus likely wouldn't exist were it not for Obama's help.

What's more, also note that while McDonnell depends on the dreaded federal government to pay his bills, he's also playing budget games to make his surplus look bigger than it is, accelerating how the sales tax would count and borrowing from public-worker pension system.

And best of all, the focus is on the wrong metric. McDonnell is receiving praise, not for creating jobs or generating economic growth, but for balancing a budget (which wouldn't be balanced were it not for Obama). But eliminating deficits shouldn't be the goal -- boosting the economy should be the top priority. Republicans are excited about an accomplishment that doesn't matter.

In this case, McDonnell has eyed moves that don't help the economy at all, including putting more state workers out of work, and "slashing services for children and the sick."

Republicans consider this "an amazing story." That's not the adjective I'd use.

—Steve Benen 1:25 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (19)

'LET'S DO AS FOX NEWS COMMANDS, AND FOLLOW THE MONEY'.... "The Daily Show" is known for occasionally skewering Fox News, but some segments are truly special. Last night offered just such an episode.

On "Fox & Friends" yesterday, the Republican network continued in its campaign to destroy the reputation of Faisal Abdul Rauf, the head of the Park51 project that Fox News used to find unobjectionable. As part of the shameless smear, "Fox & Friends" is "following the money trail," asking questions like, "Where is this money coming from? ... This guy has questionable ties."

Former Bush administration official Dan Senor appeared on "Fox & Friends" and pushed a fairly specific angle: "The Kingdom Foundation, which has been a funder of Imam Rauf in the past, the Kingdom Foundation, so you know, is this Saudi organization headed up by the guy who tried to give Rudy Giuliani $10 million after 9/11 that was sent back. He funds radical madrassas all over the world." Brian Kilmeade added, "And he funds this imam."

That's not all he funds.

"The guy" Fox News is so upset about is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who has extended support to Rauf. But Jon Stewart also brought up the inconvenient fact that the largest News Corp shareholder outside the Murdoch family is ... the Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.

"That's right. The guy they're painting as a sinister money force owns part of Fox News. Let's do as Fox News commands, and follow the money:

"This is the proposed 'terror mosque.' We know that it's a terror mosque, because the money may be coming from a bad guy, who definitely owns part of Fox News. Now we know that he's a bad guy, because we just heard it on Fox News. And by hearing it on Fox News, watching Fox News, I'm increasing their viewership, and their advertising rates go up. Now part of that money goes to the bad guy we learned about on Fox, because he's their part-owner, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, allowing him then to 'make it rain,' so to speak, on the terror mosque.

"My point is this. If we want to cut off funding to the terror mosque, we must, together as a nation, STOP WATCHING FOX! It's the only way! Using their reasoning, it's the only way to cut off the revenue stream to these 'bad dudes.'"

That's extremely funny, and an extremely good point. Fox News wants Americans to believe Al-Waleed bin Talal is responsible for funding Islamic radicalism. Fox News doesn't want Americans to know that Al-Waleed bin Talal is also responsible for funding Fox News.

If we should necessarily look askance at projects financed by this Saudi prince, it's only logical to suspect Fox News of wrongdoing, if not terrorist sympathies -- since, after all, some of it's financial backing comes from the same guy funding "radical madrassas" and the Burlington Coat Factory community center.

Also note, during the Fox News broadcast, the various Republican media personalities refused to actually say Al-Waleed bin Talal's name, prompting a delightful discussion on "The Daily Show" about whether Fox News is "staggeringly, achingly, almost inspiringly stupid," or "really fu**ing evil."

Take the time to watch this one. You'll be glad you did. The only decision now is whether to start reflexively referring to Fox News, just as a matter of course, as being financed by questionable Saudi royalty with ties to radicals.

Postscript: Faiz Shakir also notes this morning that the Arab News, just today, published a photo of Prince Al-Waleed "meeting with News Corp executives to discuss how to 'further strengthen the strategic corporate alliance between Rotana and News Corp.'"

They don't even have the decency to hide their dangerous foreign financiers....

—Steve Benen 12:35 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (36)

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.

* It's primary day in Florida, Vermont, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Alaska. Among the statewide races to keep an eye on, other than the Florida contests, are the five-way Democratic gubernatorial primary in Vermont, the McCain-Hayworth contest in Arizona, and the Republican Senate primary in Alaska.

* Just a week after Rep. Joe Sestak's (D) Senate campaign in Pennsylvania won an endorsement from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), the retired three-star Navy admiral won the support this week of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.).

* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D) new ad in Nevada reminds voters that Sharron Angle (R) has opposed an effort to save school teachers' jobs and has demanded that the government shut down the Department of Education. It's part of the "too extreme" message.

* The Arkansas AFL-CIO has announced that it will not endorse a candidate in the state's U.S. Senate race. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) could no doubt use the help, but her hostility towards labor made the union's announcement easy to predict.

* In Louisiana, a poll conducted by WWL-TV and other local stations shows Sen. David Vitter (R) leading Rep. Charlie Melancon (D), 48% to 36%.

* The GOP primary in Florida 24th congressional district is getting so vicious, the chairman of the NRCC said this week, "It makes me sick to my stomach."

* In West Virginia's Senate race, Gov. Joe Manchin (D) appears to be off to a good start, leading John Raese (R) in one recent poll, 54% to 32%.

* In New York, gubernatorial hopeful Carl Paladino (R) has suggested transforming state prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where low-income Americans would be trained in, among other things, "personal hygiene."

—Steve Benen 12:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)

MAYBE STEELE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND MODERN COMMUNICATIONS.... There was a point, before media satellites and the Internet, when political figures found it relatively easy to cater their messages to specific audiences. Candidates and party leaders could offer one message to one constituency, and an opposing message to a related constituency, confident that the contradictory rhetoric wouldn't be noticed.

Those days are largely a thing of the past. Someone probably ought to tell Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.

Last month, the embattled RNC chief was caught distancing himself from his party's line on the war in Afghanistan. This month, Steele suggested to Univision, the nation's largest Spanish-language network, that his party is not fully on board with Arizona's notorious anti-immigrant law. Asked how Hispanic-American voters might respond to Steele's outreach in the wake of Arizona's measure, he replied:

"Well, let's be clear. The actions of one state's governor is not a reflection of an entire country, nor is it a reflection of an entire political party. The governor and the people of Arizona made a decision that they thought was in their best interest, and that's the beauty of a republic, that's who we are. [...]

"We hope, now that this debate is in full bloom, level heads will prevail and that we'll reach a common sense solution with regards to immigration."

To be sure, that's not a total repudiation of the Arizona statute, but it's hard to interpret this as anything but an effort to put some distance between the Republican Party and the state measure.

And that relates back to Steele's larger problem (or one of them, at least). He wants to be able to tell the angry, anti-immigrant right-wing base that the Republican Party is taking bold steps like supporting Arizona's SB1070. He also wants to be able to tell Univision's audience that the Republican Party shouldn't necessarily be seen as anti-immigrant at all. But in an age of modern communications, both groups are now aware of what Steele is telling the other -- and now no one is inclined to trust him.

Amanda Terkel, now writing for the Huffington Post, added, "Most other national GOP figures have defended the legislation and sharply criticized the Obama administration's lawsuit against Arizona."

Quite right. One wonders what they'll think of their party leader's remarks to Univision.

—Steve Benen 11:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (9)

BOEHNER CLAIMS IMAGINARY CREDIBILITY, PRETENDS TO BE A GROWN-UP.... In the early 1990s, John Boehner (R-Ohio) was absolutely convinced that President Clinton's economic agenda would be a disaster. He was wrong. Early on in the last decade, Boehner couldn't have been more certain that President Bush's economic agenda would generate incredible prosperity. Wrong again. And last year, Boehner just knew that President Obama's recovery efforts wouldn't help the economy at all. Strike three.

Boehner, in other words, is one of those rare officials with an uninterrupted track record of complete and total failure. It's reminiscent of the "Seinfeld" episode in which George Costanza realizes that all of his instincts and decisions are entirely backwards, and begins doing the opposite of what he's inclined to do.

Only George recognized that all of his decisions were wrong. Boehner looks back at his two decades of breathtaking misjudgments, and concludes that he's not only credible on economic policy, but he's also in a position to lecture those who are trying to clean up his mess.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, was set on Tuesday to call on President Obama to fire his economic advisers as Mr. Boehner tried to lay out an economic case for restoring Congressional Republicans to power in the November elections.

In a speech to be delivered at the City Club of Cleveland, Mr. Boehner planned to unveil a five-point plan that he said would provide a better economic alternative to the Democrats' current course.

In addition to encouraging Mr. Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts that are set to expire, Mr. Boehner will say the president should seek and accept the resignations of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council.

Reading the text as written for delivery, it seemed like a series of tired talking points, just sewn together. Did you know John Boehner loves tax cuts? And hates cap-and-trade, health care reform, and card-check? Who would have guessed?

Boehner's vision is absurd; his credibility is non-existent; and his policy prescription is a joke. I realize that he's trying to position himself as a future Speaker of the House -- today represents an audition of sorts -- and even had the audacity to include this in his speech: "It's time to put grown-ups in charge. It's time for people willing to accept responsibility."

But that's crazy. Boehner should be begging for forgiveness, not power. If he's willing to "accept responsibility," he can start by acknowledging that his ideal economic agenda -- the one tried from 2001 to 2008 -- was an abysmal failure. Indeed, the centerpiece of what Boehner calls a "fresh start" is an extension of the Bush-era tax policies that led to weak growth, a stunted job market, and a massive deficit.

This "fresh start" is literally just the Bush/Cheney agenda -- Bush's tax rates, Bush's regulatory structure, Bush's domestic policies -- coupled with a vague promise to cut spending somewhere, at some time, affecting someone.

As for putting "grown-ups in charge," maybe now would be a good time to point out that the American Enterprise Institute's Norm Ornstein recently described Boehner and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor as "the Bart Simpsons of Congress, gleeful at smarmy and adolescent tactics and unable and unwilling to get serious."

Boehner genuinely seems to believe that if we just go back to the policies that got us into this mess, maybe they'll work this time. That agenda already failed once, and it doesn't make a lick of sense, but that's no reason not to give it another shot, right? Boehner hopes, in other words, that a national amnesia has swept the land.

And who knows, maybe it has. But for anyone who has a shred of understanding of recent events, Boehner's extended whine today is impossible to take seriously.

—Steve Benen 10:40 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (30)

AN RNC MEMBER BELIEVES HER LYING EYES.... Why do so many Americans continue to believe nonsense about President Obama's faith? Iowa's Kim Lehman offers a fascinating example. (thanks to reader M.M. for the tip)

Iowa's Republican national committeewoman said today that she believes President Barack Obama is truly a Muslim, contradicting his earlier statements that he's a Christian.

Kim Lehman, who is one of Iowa's two national Republican Committee members, may be one of the first national committee members to publicly state she believes Obama is a Muslim.

Don't worry, Lehman has proof. She explained late last week that the president "personally told the Muslims that he IS a Muslim" [emphasis in the original]. Lehman was referring to a speech Obama delivered last year in Cairo, in which the president said, "I'm a Christian."

Lehman went on to say that the speech, emphasizing the need for international cooperation and the need for respect for Muslims throughout the West, "had a sense of embracing or aligning with the Muslims. I don't know. It was unnecessary the stuff he said."

She didn't specify what "stuff" was "unnecessary." She also didn't explain how she came to believe the "sense" that the president was saying something he never said.

Lehman went on to say that her own humiliating ignorance isn't nearly as important as the pressure that should be put on Obama. "He's the one that the news is about. It isn't about me," she said. "Call the president.... Say, 'Are you a Christian or not?'"

We've been through this. Obama told Christianity Today, for example, "I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn't 'fall out in church' as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn't want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals."

The willful ignorance of Republican officials is as ugly as it is bizarre.

—Steve Benen 10:05 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (38)

HALPERIN BLASTS OBAMA FOR TELLING THE TRUTH, CRITICIZING GOP.... In his latest Time column, Mark Halperin expresses his deep disappointment in President Obama and Democrats for criticizing Republicans over Social Security. It seems much of the GOP has plans to undermine, if not completely privatize, the program, and leading Dems -- get this -- hope to tell voters about it.

In a move as predictable as Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, Democrats are using Social Security scare tactics to gain ground before the November election. President Barack Obama is not only tolerating this classic old politics maneuver by his party -- he is leading the charge.

Amid a flurry of Democratic Party news releases and press conferences warning voters that Republicans are targeting Social Security for destruction, the President devoted his radio and Internet address last week to commemorating the 75th anniversary of the signing of the law that created the program. He cautioned that "some Republican leaders in Congress don't seem to have learned any lessons" from the past and are "pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress." This familiar refrain might indeed help the Democrats limit their midterm losses, but Obama's involvement shows that on this issue he is putting party before bipartisanship....

There's a key detail that Halperin largely overlooks: everything Obama said was true. Every word. The leading GOP lawmaker on the House Budget Committee wants to privatize Social Security, and his idea has been endorsed by a wide variety of Republican officials and candidates. In Nevada, Sharron Angle has called for eliminating Social Security altogether, and her position has not be denounced by party leaders.

One high-profile House Republican recently called for the government to "wean everybody" off Social Security. A day later, another House Republican endorsed Social Security privatization. Two days later, yet another House Republican endorsed Social Security privatization. All of this happened just this year.

So, with an election coming up, leading Democrats believe voters should be aware of GOP priorities. Halperin believes that's wrong -- Dems in general and the president in specific shouldn't talk about a campaign issue on which Republicans are vulnerable, because it might make them less likely to compromise on the issue later.

In other words, even in a competitive election season, after Dems identify their rival's key vulnerability, they shouldn't say anything, even if it's true. Instead, as Halperin sees it, Democrats should be making an effort to be nicer to the party that's trying to destroy them, in the hopes that a GOP that's shown no interest in compromise might suddenly become more amenable to a "bipartisan partnership."

I don't understand it, either.

—Steve Benen 9:35 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (20)

THE FED WANTS TO SIT ON ITS HANDS.... When considering the Federal Reserve's principal goals, the obvious focus is on preventing inflation. It's easy to forget that the Fed is also required to pursue full employment -- which would put the national unemployment rate at 4% (as opposed to around 10%, which is where the rate stands now).

It's so easy to forget, in fact, that the Fed itself seems to be paying no attention at all to this part of its mandate. Two weeks ago, with confidence in an economic recovery fading, the Fed agreed to "use the proceeds from its huge mortgage-bond portfolio to buy long-term Treasury securities," which was, quite literally, the least it could do. In effect, the move was an effort to maintain the status quo, not helping the economy grow and not letting it contract.

The Wall Street Journal reports today, however, that even getting the Fed to agree to this exceedingly modest step was like pulling teeth -- suggesting more meaningful steps from the Federal Reserve are off the table entirely. (via Kevin Drum)

The Aug. 10 meeting of top Federal Reserve officials was among the most contentious in Ben Bernanke's four-and-a-half year tenure as central bank chairman.

With the economic outlook unexpectedly darkening, the issue was a seemingly technical one: whether to alter the way the Fed manages its huge portfolio of securities.

But it had big implications: Doing so would plunge the Fed back into the markets and might be a prelude to a future easing of monetary policy, moves that divided the men and women atop the central bank.

At least seven of the 17 Fed officials gathered around the massive oval boardroom table, made of Honduran mahogany and granite, spoke against the proposal or expressed reservations. At the end of an extended debate, Mr. Bernanke settled the issue by pushing successfully to proceed with the move.

The debate over the decision to keep the Fed's $2.05 trillion stock of mortgage debt and U.S. Treasury holdings from shrinking, described in interviews with several participants, set the stage for a more consequential discussion inside the Fed that remains very much alive: what to do next, if anything, about America's stubbornly weak recovery and troublingly low inflation.

In all, of the 17 Fed officials at the meeting, no more than a few voiced support for intervening to improve economic conditions. Even if President Obama's nominees weren't stuck in the Senate, waiting for confirmation, most of the Fed just doesn't want to act.

So, what are we left with? An economy that's struggling badly, a political process paralyzed by Republicans who refuse to allow votes on meaningful economic legislation, a Fed content to sit on its hands, and voters who've been led to believe government spending is "bad."

—Steve Benen 8:35 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (20)

STEM-CELL SETBACK CALLED 'ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATING'.... Legal experts and policy specialists are still trying to sort out the implications of yesterday's preliminary injunction, but by all indications, it's a major blow to American medical research and scientific advancement.

A federal district judge on Monday blocked President Obama's 2009 executive order that expanded embryonic stem cell research, saying it violated a ban on federal money being used to destroy embryos.

The ruling came as a shock to scientists at the National Institutes of Health and at universities across the country, which had viewed the Obama administration's new policy and the grants provided under it as settled law. Scientists scrambled Monday evening to assess the ruling's immediate impact on their work.

"I have had to tell everyone in my lab that when they feed their cells tomorrow morning, they better use media that has not been funded by the federal government," said Dr. George Q. Daley, director of the stem cell transplantation program at Children's Hospital Boston, referring to food given to cells. "This ruling means an immediate disruption of dozens of labs doing this work since the Obama administration made its order."

In his ruling, Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that his temporary injunction returned federal policy to the "status quo," but few officials, scientists or lawyers in the case