Paul Ryan's newfound interest in revenues (or, what a difference a day makes)

By Richard K. Barry

Is it possible that the S&P downgrading of U.S. debt will be the one thing to convince Republicans that some form of revenue growth, i.e., tax increases, must be a part of their plan for deficit reduction?

Clearly the GOP in Washington has been adamant that the only approach they will consider is to slash and burn government programs while completely ignoring even a serious discussion about the revenue side. And so far they've had real success, as evidenced by the debt ceiling deal.

But then S&P came along and said, apparently with the kind of authority that the business minded Republicans feel uncomfortable ignoring, that revenues have to be in the mix.

In the S&P report there were several mentions of the damage being done to the economy by Republicans unwillingness to consider revenues.

With regard to the debt ceiling deal, S&P said the following: 

• The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. 


• It appears that, for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. 


• The act contains no measures to raise taxes or otherwise enhance revenues. 


• The majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenue.

And, as ThinkProgress reports:

Standard & Poor's indicates that they could improve their rating for the U.S. if "the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners lapse from 2013 onwards," as the Administration is advocating.

It is perhaps not surprising then that House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is now saying that he is open to revenue increases as part of a deal to reduce the deficit, which would be a significant change for the Republicans, who have so far been insistent that they would not support revenue increases.



As part of the debt ceiling negotiations, President Obama proposed several plans that would have cut $4 trillion in spending, but that would also have included modest revenue increases. Every time, the Republicans refused to go along.



In the short term, Republicans have been able to criticize Obama in the abstract, saying that it has been his poor stewardship that has lead to the S&P downgrade. But given the fact that S&P is laying much of the blame at the feet of the GOP for their rigidly ideological rejection of tax increases, the tide may be turning. The GOP may be starting to understand that the facts will clearly suggest they must shoulder much of the blame.



The American people expect politicians to work together for the best outcomes. As hard as the S&P report may have been for Obama this past weekend, the fact that Paul Ryan blinked on the topic of revenues may mean that the current logjam is busting open a bit.



Many of us have been screaming that Tea Party economics is not just bad for equity and fairness and social justice, but that it is also bad for the country's economy as a whole. So, Tea Partiers, if you don't want to listen to us, maybe you'll want to listen to S&P, who may be a lot harder to dismiss as a bunch of socialists out on the campaign trail.



They seem to have gotten Paul Ryan's attention.



(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Louie Gohmert is an idiot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For many, many things.

And certainly, absolutely for suggesting that it's not a coincidence that the debt ceiling deadline (Aug. 2) coincides with President Obama's birthday (Aug. 4) -- or rather with a birthday party scheduled for the day in between:

And I can't help but be a little bit cynical here. Because we find out the president has a big birthday bash scheduled for August the 3rd, celebrities flying in from all over. And lo and behold, August 2nd is the deadline for getting something done so he can have this massive, the biggest fundraising dinner in history for a birthday celebration... Isn't that amazing? The timing of this?

Actually, he can't help but be incredibly stupid. The deadline has nothing to do with Obama at all. It was determined by the Treasury Department and has been recognized by, well, pretty much everyone, including Republican wunderkind Paul Ryan.

Besides, it won't be much of a happy birthday for the president if the country goes into default -- if, that is, the possibility of economic catastrophe is upon us.

(For more, see Steve Benen. It's not just Gohmert pushing this abject nonsense, it's the Heritage Foundation: "The intellectual bankruptcy of conservatives appears to be getting worse." As if that were even possible.)

The GOP: True believers, dissemblers, and keeping score

By Richard K. Barry

I was watching Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty on Face the Nation today. I've written before about how much I believe Pawlenty exudes weakness and how poorly I think he will continue to do in the race. Much of my assessment comes from my sense that he is a pandering fool. And, even at that, he just seems bad at pandering, which is not a good thing for a politician.

ThinkProgress had a piece up today in which they quote Pawlenty as saying that science is split on whether or not sexual orientation is a matter of biology. Whatever. We know that Pawlenty has called into question the science of climate change after having previously accepted it. Clearly science in any form is not the man's strong suit, so I would tend to ignore whatever he might say about it. It's just that whatever he says about anything sounds like an opinion of convenience. Hence the ick factor.

All of this has led me to think about constructing a scale to gauge the extent to which prominent Republican politicians actually believe the stuff they keep saying.

We have been seeing many stories about the power of the hard right flank of the conservative movement, its energy and enthusiasm, and how terrified GOP pols are that they will find themselves on a hit list of one of the more vocal Tea Party groups or media outlets that seem to be calling the shots for the entire Republican party.

As for the scale, a "one" would be a Republican who actually believes all of what he or she says publicly. A "ten" would be someone who believes none of it.

Let's call it the GOP Liar's Index.

Now, since I don't think perfection is possible in this life time, I'm going to say that there are no "ones" and no "tens."

Back to Pawlenty. Maybe he's a "five," stuck in the middle and not sure of anything he has to say, which is what makes him look weak - half believing the conservative orthodoxy and half disbelieving it. Not sure.

Bachmann would have been a "two" a few months ago, but my sense is that she is starting to moderate her public opinions away from what she actually believes. Ironically, in her case, the duplicity isn't to placate the Tea Party but to sell herself to more mainstream Americans. She might be a "four" now.

Romney could be a "seven" as he sits very uncomfortably within a hyper-conservative Republican Party, knowing that he has to sell himself to a lot of people on the right who just don't like him.

I don't know about Huntsman. He might be a "two" or a "three." Not to lionize the man, but he does seem to come across as someone who believes the things he says.

If there are people in the GOP who seem to believe everything they say, I suspect that they both have the last name Paul. Yep, these guys are scary in that way.

Palin? I swear that she is too stupid to really believe anything she says but simply mouths the lines that will get her the biggest applause in front of Tea Party crowds or at Fox News and not, inconsequently, the biggest pay check. I just refuse to care any more about Sarah Palin.

John Boehner? I think this poor SOB could be a "nine." He's a Washington insider. The last thing he wants to do is shut down the federal government or play silly right-wing extremist games on the Hill, but that seems to be the way he has to talk about it all if he intends to keep Eric Cantor from taking his job.

Paul Ryan has to be a "two." Another true believer, as I've written.

I'm only having some fun here. Feel free to tell me who you think is being truest to their own values. But I don't think I've ever seen a group of politicians treading so lightly so as not to alienate a movement within their own party that is simply crazy. I'm just saying that some of them, particularly those Republicans in the Senate and House who might be facing Tea Party challenges from the right, are going to be forced to take positions that don't naturally sit well with them. I'm thinking here of the Hatches and Lugares and Snowes.

I don't want to say that politics is too much about who can lie the best, but in 2012 the GOP is sure going to test that theory.

The bottom line may be that for a Republican to be successful electorally, they would have to be either true believers, i.e, totally out of their freakin' minds, or really good liars about being totally out of their freakin' minds.

You will note that I have studiously avoided giving my scale a top or a bottom. Either way we're screwed.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Paul Ryan's bottle of wine and the devaluation of public service

By Richard K. Barry

I'm enjoying the controversy to do with Rep. Paul Ryan's apparent taste for a fine bottle of wine or two. What I'm enjoying mostly is the indignant response from those on the right, who think this is a trivial matter and nothing to get excited about.

The funny thing is that I agree with them. I happen to value the work done by politicians and despite what many may think, they typically work very long hours, frequently far away from home. A great many are likely foregoing large private sector compensation to tend to the public's business. And, accept it or not, people elected to national office or tapped to work for elected officials at the highest level are usually very talented people.

I don't think politicians and their staff need to live like monks to prove they are one with their constituents. I don't care if they partake of an occasional high-priced beverage.

I know that this is not the common view, which is that they are all incompetent freeloaders living lavishly off the taxpayer's dime, and that their compensation and associated perqs should be extremely modest as a result. I just don't agree.

I don't have a problem with Paul Ryan having an expensive glass of something or other every now and them.

Here's the problem:

Ryan's party has for a long time done everything they can to undervalue public service. When Ronald Reagan said that government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem, he set a tone that comes close to suggesting that politicians and public servants are stealing by the very act of being fairly compensated for their work.

This past week much was made of White House staff salaries. It seems that 141 Obama aides, nearly one-in-three, earn more than $100,000 a year. Twenty-one Obama aides earn the top-dollar of $172,200. This also means that two-in-three don't earn as much as $100,000 a year.

I'm not saying these are not good salaries, only that these are the people who are providing support to those making the biggest decisions about the future of our country. Even if I'm alone on this point, I still think they're worth the money.

And if Paul Ryan has to take a dig or two about the cost of a bottle of wine, he has only himself to blame. His mantra and that of his party serves to devalue public service almost to the point that any compensation seems too much. The assault on public sector unions nation-wide is only one part this narrative. One simply has to listen to most of the garbage that comes out of New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie's mouth to validate that observation.

Yes, Rep. Ryan, you have succeeded in getting people to think very little of the kind of work you have committed your life to do. Hope you feel good about that. Drink up.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Is Paul Ryan drinking his own bath water on Medicare reform?

By Richard K. Barry

I used to work with a very experienced campaign manager, who had a colorful term to describe the phenomenon of politicians or their surrogates actually believing the spin they put on things. This isn't about making a case for something you truly think would be good policy, despite the fact that most don't agree with you. It's about taking a position that has limited support and believing that the majority must be with you simply because you've fallen in love with your own reasoning or, perhaps, because those in closest proximity are always telling you how right you are.

He used to say, "let's be careful not to drink our own bath water."

I thought of this when I read Greg Sargent's post recently about Paul Ryan being in total denial about how unpopular his Medicare plan is. As Ryan said:

Those polls don't describe it well. When the plan is described accurately, it actually polls very well.

Uh, no. That's just not true.

Sargent runs through polls by Bloomberg, CBS, Pew, and The Washington Post, all showing strong opposition to the plan when described as replacing traditional Medicare so that individuals buy their own private insurance with the help of government subsidies. In other words, when the plan was described as exactly what it is, those polled rejected it. To be sure, the language of the question asked varied from poll to poll, but the description of the program was clear and consistent in each.

Only when the question was unclear, as was the case in a New York Times poll, did a plurality support the Ryan plan. Here, when people were asked if they would support a proposal to create "a program in which the government helps seniors purchase private health insurance," they were marginally okay with that idea. But if we aren't talking about replacing the current system, we are not being accurate, which makes the Times response more or less meaningless.

Despite polling that finds privatizing Medicare consistently unpopular, Ryan thinks that Americans would support the idea. Despite proof that when people understand the Republican plan accurately, they reject it, Ryan's thinks the opposite is true.

Honestly, I don't know how to categorize his attitude. Does he truly believe that there is another level of understanding that Americans have not yet realized that will make them supportive of his plan? That something will kick in?

Or does he really know that most don't support his plan but hope that over time he can sway them?

Or does he have such confidence in the fact that he's right about Medicare reform that he has convinced himself that the majority of Americans are already with him? Is he drinking his own bath water?

I actually think Ryan is a true believer, who is only confused by the facts. How else do we explain his comments? Let's just hope he continues to deny reality and that he keeps chugging from the tub he's sitting in and, more importantly, that he has lots of company from fellow Republicans. Now, there's a picture you won't be able to get out of your head for a while.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

How you know Republicans aren't serious about tackling the deficit

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Is it when they fall in line behind their chief budget guru, wunderkind Rep. Paul Ryan, who once said the deficit was "too small" and now supports the Bush tax cuts, and especially those for the wealthy, that are perhaps the greatest impediment to addressing the deficit problem in a meaningful way?

Yes, sure.

But it's also when they pull out of bipartisan budget talks because, really, they have no interest at all in compromise given their extremist right-wing position on taxes:

After House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) dropped out of the talks [yesterday] morning, Senator Kyl was the lone Republican in the group left. And with his withdrawal late [yesterday] morning, the group does not have a Republican negotiator left in the room.

That's right. Zero Republicans. There's what Republicans think of bipartisanship. And about tackling the deficit.

Although, I should say, a few Republicans realize that they have to be at the table and have to work constructively with Democrats to get something done -- or at least have to make it appear as if they're serious:

A Senior Democratic aide says, "Cantor and Kyl just threw Boehner and McConnell under the bus. This move is an admission that there will be a need for revenues and Cantor and Kyl don't want to be the ones to make that deal."

There you go. If only future generations of Americans could express their disgust. They're the ones, after all, who will be left with this mess.

Way to put your country before your partisan agenda, Republicans.

So long, Newt Gingrich. It's been a train wreck.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I never thought The Newt ever had a realistic shot at the Republican presidential nomination, for a variety of reasons that I'll get to shortly. But I thought he'd be in the race at least through the early primaries, if only to reinforce the Gingrich brand that has been so profitable to him.

Actually, I'm not sure if I thought that. Given that there's really no good reason for him to be in the race, it was inevitable that his candidacy would flame out. It was just a matter of when.

Even after he challenged Paul Ryan and the new GOP orthodoxy, though, even after he repented and predictably lashed out at the media, refusing to take responsibility for himself (as usual), even when it was clear that his candidacy was doomned, I figured he'd make it into the summer and then bow out (or middle finger out, or somewhere in between) quietly, without anyone really paying any attention, without any sort of eulogy to his catastrophic campaign.

He may still last that long, but it's over, more or less. The headlines say it all:

Politico: "The Newt Gingrich campaign implosion."

WaPo: "Gingrich presidential campaign implodes."

(The word of the day, kids, is implosion.)

NYT: "Gingrich’s Senior Campaign Staff Resigns."

MSNBC: "Senior Gingrich aides resign campaign en masse."

And from the state where it all begins, and where you pretty much have to make your mark if you have any hope of winning it all:

The Des Moines Register: "Gingrich's entire paid Iowa campaign team resigns."

Etc., etc., etc. His top people in Iowa stepped down, but so did his top people in New Hampshire and South Carolina. This was indeed massive.

Now, was this because his staffers finally came to the conclusion, however obvious to the rest of us, that he has zero chance of winning? And perhaps also because they wanted to back a winner, and to go work for a winner, instead of continuing to ply their trade with a loser?

You'd think so, right?

Well, at the Weekly Standard neocon rag, Fred Barnes claims that the problem was Calista, Newt's (third) wife. Sort of:

Aides to Newt Gingrich have resigned from his presidential campaign in protest of what they felt was a takeover by Callista Gingrich, the candidate’s wife since 2000.

The euphemism offered by departing staffers was they disagreed with Gingrich's "strategy" for the campaign. Indeed, they did disagree. But it was a strategy – a part-time campaign, in effect – that Gingrich's wife favored.

If this is true, it hardly matters that it's Calista who's pushing the strategy. What matters is what the strategy is -- a strategy that pretty much proves that Newt isn't a serious candidate and isn't serious about trying to win the nomination.

And if he's not in it to win it, if I may quote Randy, then what is he in it for? Well, again, it would seem purely for himself, for his brand, to keep his name out there in the media spotlight, to profit from being a national political figure.

This is what he's always been about, ever since he left the House. He's always been tantalizing us, or rather his supporters and others who follow him and erroneously think him a serious man who deserves our attention (like those in the media associated with the Sunday morning talk shows), with the prospect of running for president. That's partly how he's been able to remain relevant, if only to the media, as well as to build his self-serving brand into a sort of mini-empire of profitable egotism.

I was somewhat surprised that he jumped into the race, as I didn't think he would, but his lack of seriousness as a candidate, if less so as a partisan policy advocate, proves the point. This is not about winning, this is about self-promotion, about marketing, about what it's always been about.

For whatever reason, his top people decided it was time to go. And it's clearly not just because of his wife, or even mainly so. Here's Politico:

Gingrich was intent on using technology and standing out at debates to get traction while his advisers believed he needed to run a campaign that incorporated both traditional, grassroots techniques as well as new ideas.

One official said the last straw came when Gingrich went forward with taking a long-planned cruise with his wife last week in the Greek isles.

There you go. His team wanted him to run a campaign that could succeed, while he only wanted to keep his star aloft. Period.

**********

I wrote that I'd get into the variety of reasons he doesn't have, and never has had, a realistic shot at the Republican presidential nomination. But do I really need to?

Aside from the fact that he's an egomaniacal blowhard who's only in it for himself, he has way too much baggage, way too many strikes against him, not least at a time when the Tea Party and other GOP constituencies on the right are imposing litmus tests on all Republicans -- and particularly on those with presidential aspirations.

Newt's a conservative, to be sure, but he's had to make all sorts of concessions along the way, like most legislators do, and he's just not conservative enough for today's Republican Party. Consider what he said about Ryan's draconian, anti-Medicare budget plan. He was right. It is "radical." It is "right-wing social engineering." It is "too big a jump." But look how much trouble that got him into. He may not have such problems to the degree Mitt Romney does, but he has said enough and done enough throughout his career to place him on the wrong side of GOP orthodoxy. All it takes is a single transgression. He is man of many.

For my general take on Gingrich, a more thorough examination of his many flaws, see this post.

**********

For what it's worth, Newt says he's staying in the race. He even took to Facebook to make the announcement:

I am committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring. The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles.

So he's committed to running an unserious campaign with no hope of winning anything. Okay. Whatever.

I suppose he can say his campaign will begin anew, now that he's lost his top people, but there's no way it lasts much longer. He's done.

Wisconsin GOP likely to redistrict Ryan's seat to make it even more red. Taking no chances, eh?

By Richard K. Barry

I have written a few times that Congressman Paul Ryan, of the Wisconsin 1st District, would be wise to forget about any presidential aspirations in 2012 and instead focus on retaining his own seat. In truth, I don't think there is much chance that he would lose it but for the fact that the budget plan carrying his name, which would essentially privatize Medicare, is so unpopular.

Sure, Democrats are salivating over what happened in the special election in the New York 26th, and it will be a good issue to run on, but Ryan has been winning easily for quite some time and has never received less than 63% of the vote.

Again, it's a hard pick-up for the Democrats, though an item today in The Huffington Post did catch my eye. It read:

Ryan's 1st Congressional District stretches along the Illinois border from industrial Racine to the rolling farms of Rock County. Republicans, who control the state legislature, are expected to use redistricting to make it more red, pulling it west away from the bluer communities along the shore of Lake Michigan.

So, while Ryan losing seems a long-shot, the fact that his Republican friends at the Legislature are stacking the deck to help him along to victory is interesting. Maybe they know something we don't know, or maybe they know exactly what we know.

The 1st as constituted now is a swing district, going for Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2008. Governor Walker's budget-cutting measures and assault on public sector unions have certainly helped to make Republicans more vulnerable than they would otherwise be, and then there's that pesky Medicare issue.

To state the obvious, as Kyle Kondik, analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, has done:

It's difficult to imagine that Ryan will lose. But if he does, it will be because there is a Democratic tidal wave. A tidal wave that will have been created in no small part because of Ryan's budget proposal.

If that tidal wave comes, and that's a huge "if," Ryan could be vulnerable. Without his budget plan, we are not even having this conversation. Ryan says that's not a problem for him because his budget is more important than his seat. Okay. I'd be interested to know how many others in the GOP House caucus feel the same way - those who don't typically win with 63% of the vote.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Paul Ryan for president? Maybe not.

By Richard K. Barry

Late last week a lot of people were talking about Paul Ryan possibly deciding to run for the GOP presidential nomination. It's gotten a little quiet since then but I guess he's thinking about it. Apparently he hasn't ruled it out.

I must say that I don't see it. I think Ryan should focus on holding on to his congressional seat given how unpopular his budget is proving to be with its proposal to gut Medicare as I've written.

It was nice to see Jonathan Bernstein at The Washington Post make the case I was at least thinking about when I decided that Ryan's candidacy was a non-starter if he's smart and a real long-shot if he isn't.

Bernstein writes:

There's not a lot of polling on Ryan that I can find, but a recent Public Policy Polling survey in Wisconsin (you know, the state he's from) had him at 41/46 favorable/unfavorable, so in his home state he's fairly well known and not very well liked. Members of the House are almost unknown to the American people, and while pundits and political professionals have been fairly obsessed with Ryan for the last few months, most Americans don't pay close attention to politics, and probably know little about him.

Of course, the other obvious problem with a Ryan nomination is that he’s best known for a massively unpopular Medicare plan, and nominating him would be a fairly insane choice, as it would constitute a massive double down on the plan by the GOP. I’m sure there are plenty of Republicans who find that idea enticing, but presumably there are quite a few who aren’t completely meshugenah. Political scientists usually argue that issues and candidates are usually not all that important as fundamentals such as economic performance. But Ryancare is a different matter altogether: Nominating Ryan would make the election an argument over the GOP's least popular policy proposal, instead of a referendum on the economy, which would be the GOP’s best chance of winning.

It doesn't hurt Ryan to have these sorts of rumors floating around, but there's every chance that he'd peak the day he announced. He has a great position right now; I think he'd be very foolish to jeopardize it with a (very) longshot presidential run.

Yeah, I'm with Bernstein on this one. I particularly like his comment that Ryan would peak the day he announced, which is another way of saying that many people may fancy the idea but the reality is likely to fall far short.

For what it's worth, I'm also just not feelin' it with Ryan. A decided lack of royal jelly, but, then again, the whole field is pretty flat.

If he does get in I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say, but I would be surprised for all the reasons Mr. Bernstein offers.

On the other hand, if he did jump in, it wouldn't be the first time a prospective candidate's ego trumped all reason (pun intended).

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Is Michele Bachmann the savior of the GOP?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

TNR's Jonathan Chait has been providing some of the smartest commentary I've read anywhere on the 2012 Republican presidential race -- and his post yesterday on Michele Bachmann's opportunity was no exception.

As I do, Chait sees Tim Pawlenty as "he only candidate acceptable both to party elites and to grassroots activists," and therefore as a possible "default" winner of the nomination. (I would just note that, to me, Pawlenty is looking more and more hopeless.) Mitt Romney may be the presumptive frontrunner, but there's just no way the party's rabid right-wing base will allow him to be chosen. (Is there?) And given how weak the hardcore conservatives in the field are (Rick Santorum, Herman Cain), Pawlenty may be able to secure enough conservative support to emerge as the alternative either to Romney or to some other "moderate" (in relative Republican terms), like Rudy Giuliani or Jon Huntsman.

But while Pawlenty is trying hard to portray himself as a bona fide conservative, there are just too many holes in his record, not to mention the fact that he's just not that engaging a figure. Which leaves the door open for a genuine right-wing ideologue to step in and secure the conservative vote. Sarah Palin could be that person, but she's highly unlikely to run and in any event doesn't have nearly the support she used to. Paul Ryan is a possibility, but his budget plan, however much Republicans are circling the wagons to defend it as party orthodoxy, is toxic with the general public. I suspect he won't run. There are others, like Jim DeMint, but as Chait points out the one figure who could actually pull it off is none other than Michele Bachmann:

The candidate best positioned to win this constituency is Michelle Bachmann, who I've also been touting as a dark horse. She's been honing her pitch before Tea Party rallies for two years, building a national constituency and a fund-raising base. A Sarah Palin candidacy would probably siphon off too much of her base, but Palin doesn't seem to be preparing to run. And if Palin doesn't run, and an outsider like Paul Ryan doesn't run, then you're looking at a field overloaded with candidates catering to the small pragmatic wing and nearly devoid of candidates catering to the Tea Party base.

*****

[W]hile Bachmann may be even crazier than Palin on questions of public policy, she seems to manage to hold things together as a candidate. She can answer questions from the news media. She is putting together a professional campaign rather than relying on amateur advisors. She takes care to point out frequently that she is a former tax lawyer, and she does not engage in Palin's visceral anti-intellectualism, giving herself the aura of a plausible president, at least in the minds of Republican voters. Bachmann may well combine Palin's most powerful traits without her crippling organizational failures.

It's worth keeping in mind that the 2010 election cycle featured a long series of conservative upstarts shocking the mainstream media by knocking off establishment-approved candidates in nominating contests. Obviously, the nominating contest is a series of state-level nominating primaries generally dominated by an activist base. Right now, the right wing of the party nominating field is a vacuum. Somebody is going to fill that vacuum.

Republicans are desperate to fill it, which is why so many names are being thrown around as possible saviors. But a lot of big names are going to sit this one out, not least because Obama looks formidable, but also because they don't want to have to play to the Tea Party right and its various litmus tests. And so it would take someone who is delusional enough to think that he or she could win, or someone who is so convinced of his or her own righteousness that he or she puts principle before performance, or both. And yet also someone with some serious political skills and the talent to advance the sort of right-wing agenda that excites the base.

Well, that's Bachmann, isn't it? Maybe so. How crazy is that?

Why the GOP is f***ed in 2012

By Nicholas Wilbur 

The future of the Republican Party rests on the shoulders of one candidate. Unfortunately, not even the Republican Party has any idea who that candidate will be. 

The long list of potential, possible, likely and too-stupid-to-calculate-basic odds second-string presidential hopefuls include: a flip-flopping Mormon with a soft spot for government-run health care; a libertarian advocate of legalizing heroin and prostitution; a perpetually stoned former governor from a state most Americans don’t know is part of the union; another Mormon (this one who worked for a socialist as ambassador to communists), a paranoid Constitutionalist whose followers have threatened to rape a high school girl who challenged their candidate’s knowledge of America’s founding documents; an evangelic whose last name has come to mean “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter”; a hopelessly unattractive Minnesotan with no redeeming qualities other than his own self-awareness in admitting publicly that he’s boring; and a pizza maker.

Romney is ready to take on
supporters of Medicare. Other
potential GOP candidates,
 order your red man suits online today

With such a pathetic roster of uninspiring candidates, the Republican Party was more than happy to leave the media spotlight for a weekend as the perpetually campaigning Mama Grizzly from the Upper One state launched a Memorial Day “Rolling Thunder Magical Mystery Bus Tour” along the east coast. Riding into DC on an all-American hog and dressed in full leathers, the still unpopular, still unqualified former half-term governor of the Great Frontier, who sold her soul to Rupert Murdoch in order to prolong her short-lived 2008 Mama Grizzly publicity tour, kept the limelight burning for one last-ditch effort to sell some books and boost her public image before the media finally catches on and permanently turns the cameras away from the publicity hound and onto the real, equally hopeless but nonetheless inarguably “legitimate” candidates for the presidency. The most that will come of this magical bus tour is a Fox News segment on patriotism and motorcycles – and possibly a sequel to Hustler’s 2008 porn flick “Nailin’ Paylin.” (“Nailin’ Paylin Part II: The Bang Bus Tour,” or maybe “Paylin Does Pennsylvania.”) 

Whomever the GOP trots out as the next “savior of the party” better come equipped with a red man suit, a dog-eared copy of “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” and either Scott Brown’s Cosmopolitan centerpiece photographer, Brad Pitt’s personal trainer or Bristol Palin’s cosmetic surgeon – because he’s going to have a lot of heartened hearts to soften before Election Day. 

Between near-riotous town hall meetings prompted by Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to “voucherize” Medicare, the party’s backing of anti-union laws, and the continuous state- and federal-level efforts to defund family planning services and undermine women’s right to choose, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee will face the seemingly impossible feat of convincing retirees, women and laborers – not to mention the unemployed, the LGBTQ community and college students fighting for grants and scholarships – that the GOP cares about more than securing the votes of the Tea Party base. 

Then, of course, there’s the question of party’s post-primary strategy: how will he (or, less likely, she) go toe to toe with the supercandidate (and popular incumbent) Barack Obama, who enters the race with the political equivalent of a Seal Team 6 campaign apparatus? President Obama – the Commander in Chief who captured and killed Public Enemy No. 1, the international uniter, the eloqutionist and the level-headed pragmatist – is already salivating at the prospect of debating a presidential challenger about the fiscal ramifications and social consequences of continuing tax cuts for millionaires, abolishing the health care reforms that stopped insurance companies from dropping coverage on a whim and bankrupting families without mercy, eviscerating the social safety net for seniors and the poor through radical changes to Medicare and Medicaid, holding hostage federal funds for disaster relief to ravaged states until Democrats embrace more budget cuts and every other radically unpopular policy the GOP has pushed since 2010. 

All of this is to say that the candidate Republicans nominate to face off against Obama in 2012 won’t be a candidate who is capable of actually winning. There is no such candidate. Not even in the party’s wildest, homoerotic political wet dream does such a candidate exist. But that isn’t what the 2012 race is all about. If Republicans are smart (a rhetorical question if there ever was one), they’ll take advantage of the free publicity, use the opportunity to train a future leader in the art of presidential campaigns, save the estimated $1 billion they’ll have to spend in order to make a dent in the Obama incumbency, and use 2012 as a primer for the only election race in which they have a fighting chance: 2016.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

The New York 26th special election and what it means for the budget debate

By Richard K. Barry

It's been fun to watch Republicans scramble over the past week to downplay the importance of the Medicare issue in Democrat Kathy Hochul's upset victory in the special election for New York's 26th Congressional District. For the record, Hochul won with 47% of the vote over GOP candidate Jane Corwin, who got 43% and Tea Party candidate Jack Davis, who got 9%.

My favourite conservative spin has been the claim by Erick Erickson at REDSTATE that the results had everything to do with local New York politics and little or nothing to do with Medicare or Paul Ryan's budget plan. In the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove also did his best to suggest that we shouldn't read too much into the results as any sort of supposed referendum on Medicare. Let's face it. These guys need to believe this, else they have a problem.

Yes, there was some vote splitting due to Jack Davis' third party candidacy, although it is always difficult to know where a third party candidate's votes would go had they not been in the race. Would they be split amongst other contenders, or would they just have stayed home?

The bottom line is that Republican Chris Lee won the seat back in November, a mere seven months ago, by a margin of 73.6% to 26.4%. Everyone knows that special elections are indeed special, but those are some pretty big honkin' numbers and you typically would want to look for a defining issue to help you understand what happened when a district flips so decidedly.

So aside from who actually won and who lost, let's not forget that the Democratic vote from 2010 went up by about 20% and the aggregate conservative vote went down by about 20%. Big numbers indeed in a district that has been a stable "keep" for Republicans.

But this is all old news.

Here's some new stuff. A poll has just been released by Democracy Corp indicating that disapproval of Republican House members is in fact surging. They write:

Republican leaders and conservative pundits have spun Democrat Kathy Hochul's upset win in New York's 26th Congressional District as exceptional - with peculiar ballot line, Tea Party independents, quality of the candidates, and Democratic message discipline. But our national poll completed Wednesday (May 25) shows that New York's 26th is not alone. It is an advanced indicator of a sharp pull back from Republicans, particularly those in the House.

Disapproval of the Republicans in the House of Representatives has surged from 46% in February to 55% in April and to a striking 59% now. Disapproval outnumbers approval two-to-one; intense disapproval from three-to-one. For the first time in more than a year, the Democrats are clearly even in the named Congressional ballot - an 8-point swing from the election. This period captured the introduction of the Republican budget plan and vote by the House - and voters do not like what they see.

There are really just a few basic truths in politics and it is remarkable how clueless Republicans have been in understanding one of them. I am almost embarrassed to repeat it, it's just so obvious, but here it is: A lot of people like the idea of lower taxes and a reduction in services as long as they don't think that it will be "their" services, "their" programs, "their" entitlements that will be cut.

When the voters in the NY-26th started to clue in that a very identifiable and important program was on the chopping block, they didn't like it. And if Democracy Corp's poll is any indication, voters in western New York are not alone.

Simple, simple, simple.

Here is where all of this goes for me: Voters need to get real about the kinds of programs, services and entitlements they think our collective public action should provide (that means government) and start to think about how we pay for it, including plans to increase much needed revenue (that means taxes).

It's one measure of how successful conservatives have been in framing the budget debate that we seldom hear quoted the sage comment by early 20th century Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. that "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

It's easy to spin one lonely special election; let's hope this starts us on the way to reframing the budget debate across the entire country. That would be courageous.

(Cross -posted to Lippmann's Ghost)

Elephant Dung #33: Snowe and Collins to vote NO on Ryan budget plan

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

As the recent Gingrich vs. Ryan brouhaha revealed, the Republican wunderkind's budget plan, including its Medicare-slashing component, has become, despite its widespread unpopularity, Republican orthodoxy from which deviation/dissent is not tolerated. (If you do happen to dissent even just a smidge, the party's Bolsheviks will do their utmost to purge you from their ranks.)

And yet it's obvious that many Republicans are having their doubts. The result in NY-26 yesterday, in a way a referendum on Ryan's plan that was a resounding NO, shows that Republicans are vulnerable, and many are distancing themselves from the plan, if not outright opposing it already. Fear of voter revolt, it seems, may just overcome the party whip.

And that appears to be especially true in Maine:

Maine's Republican senators will vote against the House Republican 2012 budget authored by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, with Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe in opposition to the House GOP-proposed Medicare changes.

Snowe confirmed her opposition [yesterday] afternoon during a Capitol Hill interview, while Collins reiterated a position she first made known last month.

Senate Democratic leaders are expected to call up the House GOP budget for a Senate floor vote later this week, probably Thursday. Collins and Snowe join a small but growing group of Republican senators – including Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and possibly Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – who have announced they will vote against the proposal to partially privatize Medicare, the federal health care program for seniors, and hand over authority to run Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor, completely to the states in the form of a block grant program. 

To be fair, both Collins and Snowe are on the more moderate, more sane side of the party and aren't exactly the sort of right-wing hardliners who have been falling head-over-heals for Ryan. And Snowe, who is facing a Tea Party challenge in 2012, would seem to have every reason to reach out to the right, but isn't. So maybe, just maybe, this is a matter of principle for them, not political opportunism.

Still, what we're seeing here, and not just in Maine, is what I'll call The Great Republican Exodus of 2012. It isn't really exodus from the party but rather exodus from the new party orthodoxy, from the new right-wing Republican mainstream. As more and more Republicans come to see how unpopular the Ryan plan is, and how vulnerable it makes them, more and more of them will do what Collins and Snowe and Murkowski and Brown are doing (and what it looked like Gingrich was doing), which is rejecting it as way too extreme.

Yes, this too is opportunism. The fear of a voter revolt, of losing moderates and independents and possibly even losing safe Republican seats, apparently outweighs, for them, the fear of a Tea Party challenge and of being attacked by their fellow Republicans and in the conservative media for being un-Republican and anti-American.

Still, it's the sort of opportunism that makes them look respectable, and obviously more appealing to voters in states like Maine and Massachusetts (if not necessarily Alaska). This will be one of the dominant stories over the next year and a half, this divide in the Republican Party between those on Ryan's side and those who, for whatever reason, have had enough, with a large gray area in between for those who want to hedge their bets and have it both ways.

Enjoy.