Why the hell is Obama willing to give away so much just to get a debt ceiling deal done?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

At his press conference yesterday, President Obama said that it is still possible "to construct a package that would be balanced, would share sacrifice, [and] would involve both parties taking on their sacred cows." He is confident that a deal will get done by August 2, the drop-dead date for raising the debt ceiling, but he wants a major deal, a grand bargain, not some temporary solution that isn't really a solution at all: "Pull off the band aid. Eat our peas."

Bullshit, Mr. President.

What he really means is that Democrats need to take on their "sacred cows," specifically Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, while Republicans will essentially be allowed to get away with giving up almost nothing at all.

And it's insulting to refer to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (and entitlement programs generally) as "sacred cows." These aren't partisan pet projects, these are core components of America's already weak safety net. They aren't "Democratic" programs, they're universal, non-partisan, and popular programs deeply entrenched in American life.

But Obama doesn't seem to care. Republicans won't have to eat their peas, nor will the wealthy or any other major Republican constituency. If any pea-eating is required, any sacrifice, it will be put squarely on the heads of those who actually need these programs.

Shared sacrifice? Please.

Oh, sure, Obama is pushing the Republicans on taxes:

At the presser, Obama laid down a firm line for the first time: There will be no deal unless the GOP gives ground on revenues. Previously, Obama had hammered the GOP for protecting low tax rates and loopholes that benefit the rich, but he had stopped just short of saying he couldn't back a deal which didn't bring in new revenues.

But this time, asked directly whether he would support a deal if the GOP didn't give ground on revenues, he said No.

"I do not see a path to a deal if they don't budge — period," Obama said. "If in fact Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are sincere, and I believe they are, in that they don't want to see the U.S. government default, then they're going to have to compromise."

Bullshit again, Mr. President.

Obama may demand a budge, but he'll accept a small one just to get a deal done, one that unfairly demands far more from his own side.

Are McConnell and Boehner sincere? No, they're just torn between two competing factions in the GOP, the corporate interests who fund the party and who want the debt ceiling raised (because they know the horrible consequences of not doing so) and the Teabaggers and others on the right who oppose any debt ceiling race, demand massive and hugely unpopular spending cuts, and will run primary challenges against any Republican who violates their extremist tenets.

Obama is offering them so much -- including raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 and reforming (i.e., cutting) Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- but they still won't compromise. Indeed, what they're saying now is that just agreeing to raise the debt ceiling is enough, that that's their compromise. Which is ridiculous, of course.

And, of course, they're bluffing. They need to do a deal -- and need to raise the debt ceiling. Their corporate backers demand it. They're just holding firm to extract more and more out of Obama, and successfully it seems, as he's proven more than willing to give them more and more.

Why not just hold firm on his part? Why not call their bluff?

It may be that Obama is just some sort of centrist who wants to get some long-term deal done not just for the country but for his legacy. But he's also playing politics, as they all are, trying to win independents for 2012. If he can show that he's serious about getting a long-term deal done, and about dealing with the debt in a serious way, particularly in opposition to an obstructionist party that has no interest in agreeing to a fair deal, he may just cement his prospects for next year, in a good way, many in his own party, progressives objecting to giving away so much, be damned.

Actually, though, it's all about the politics. Here's what's happening:

-- Obama has positioned himself roughly in the center, given away a lot and now demanding that Republicans give up something significant in return. If they do, he'll get his deal and Republicans will face the wrath of the Tea Party, the party dividing in upon itself heading into 2012. If they don't, he can point to them as the obstacles to a deal, as partisans who refused to compromise even when he was offering them so much.* (And, if need be, he could go the constitutional route, however fraught with difficulty that would be.)

-- Meanwhile, Republicans realize that the only way to get through this without self-destructing is to avoid choosing between their corporate interests and the Tea Party. If they get a deal done, it will only be because Obama has given up even more, including on revenue (which Republicans want to be neutral in any deal). If they don't, they'll try to pin the blame on Obama for refusing to meet their supposedly reasonable demands, even if they were anything but reasonable.

I do see what Obama's doing here. It's what he's done all along, from issue to issue. He's agreeing to concessions in the name of compromise and then taking the high road while Republicans dither over whether to make any concessions of their own. If they do, Obama can present himself as the guy who got it done, as a non-partisan leader who brought both sides to the table and put country before partisanship or ideology. Voters, and especially independents, seem to like that. If they don't, he can present them as extremist and obstructionist. This is what happened on health-care reform and it's what's happening now on the debt ceiling.

In some sense, more power to Obama. If he can make the Republicans look bad, great. But at what cost? And couldn't he be doing this without giving up so much in the first place? He surely knows that Republicans are torn. He should have used that to his advantage instead of conceding point after point and alienating many in his own party, including many of his supporters. I get that he wants to get a deal done. He certainly doesn't want to be the president if and when the country defaults. Even if he could make the political case against the Republicans, just being in the Oval Office at a time of potential economic apocalypse could be enough to bring him down for good. And maybe he just doesn't want to risk playing a blame game after the fact. Just as he surely knows that Republicans are torn, surely Republicans know that his position isn't much better.

But still.

Obama has handled this whole issue badly and is now in a position of having to give up a lot just to get anything done. It didn't have to be this way. I call bullshit on much of what he's saying, but I really do hope he knows what he's doing.

**********

* More to this point, see Krugman from last Thursday:

Now, this might just be theater: Mr. Obama may be pulling an anti-Corleone, making Republicans an offer they can't accept. The reports say that the Obama plan also involves significant new revenues, a notion that remains anathema to the Republican base. So the goal may be to paint the G.O.P. into a corner, making Republicans look like intransigent extremists — which they are.

But let's be frank. It’s getting harder and harder to trust Mr. Obama's motives in the budget fight, given the way his economic rhetoric has veered to the right. In fact, if all you did was listen to his speeches, you might conclude that he basically shares the G.O.P.'s diagnosis of what ails our economy and what should be done to fix it. And maybe that's not a false impression; maybe it's the simple truth.

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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.)

The GOP's continuing angst over spinning Medicare reform

By Richard K. Barry

The Republican Party is continuing its bizarre approach of suggesting that it is being smeared when its opponents correctly represent its plans to gut Medicare -- this time in New Hampshire.

As Roll Call reports:

A day after launching an attack ad against New Hampshire Representative Charles Bass, two liberal groups have released new polling that suggests that the Republican is deeply unpopular just seven months after his election.

Just 29 percent of likely voters in New Hampshire's 2nd district approve of Bass' job performance, according to a survey conducted May 31 and June 1 by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling on behalf of Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Sixty percent of New Hampshire respondents said they oppose cutting Medicare. And 69 percent said they support raising federal taxes on those with incomes over $250,000 a year "to save programs like Social Security and Medicare."

The ad (see below) features a New Hampshire social worker who claims to have voted for Bass in the past but will not again as she calls GOP plans for Medicare reform "an attack on New Hampshire families like mine."

We note that while Bass did hold the seat from 1996 to 2006, his successful campaign to regain it was only accomplished by less than 2 points in 2010, an election that saw the GOP surging across the country. In other words, at the best of times this would be a hard "hold" for Bass and these, likely, are not going to be the best of times.

So freaked out is Bass that he asked the New Hampshire TV stations airing the ad to take it down because, in his view, it incorrectly asserts that Republicans will "end Medicare" The stations have refused, which has prompted the groups responsible for the piece to increase their ad buy.

In a letter obtained by Greg Sargent at The Washington Post, Bass makes his case to the TV stations. He writes:

The Budget Resolution as approved by the U.S. House of Representatives does not end Medicare. In fact, the Budget Resolution makes no changes at all to Medicare for current or near retirees, as none of the Medicare-related provisions in the Budget Resolution would even take effect until 2022. This fact makes the Advertisement especially misleading, as the woman featured in the Advertisement is a current Medicare beneficiary, and would not have her Medicare benefits ended, or even changed in any way, under the Budget proposal.

Additionally, the Budget Resolution ensures that Americans aged 54 and younger will still have Medicare when they retire by implementing a new, sustainable model of Medicare. This version of Medicare would actually require insurance companies to guarantee coverage for seniors.

The main argument is that the claim that Republicans would "end Medicare" is "blatantly and wholly false, and has been deliberately crafted to mislead and frighten voters."

To this, Sergeant replies that:

[T]here are plenty of people making the opposite case. That the GOP plan does, in fact, end Medicare. The argument is that the GOP plan would do away with the current, single payer, government-run system that guarantees payment for your major health care costs as you head into retirement. The GOP proposal would replace this with a system in which government gives premium support - that could over time fall short of health care costs - to seniors to purchase their own private plans. In other words, the new plan does away with a program called "Medicare" and replaces it with a different program - and, hence, "ends it."

Finally, as Paul Krugman writes:

The plan would replace our current system, in which the government pays major health costs, with a voucher system, in which seniors would, in effect, be handed a coupon and told to go find private coverage.

The bottom line is that stating that the Republican proposal would end Medicare as it currently works is a very defensible stance. The GOP can call their plan anything they like, a ham sandwich if they want to, but they can't and shouldn't be allowed to call it Medicare. It is not what people think of when they think of Medicare.

What is important about this discussion is that it begins to provide an outline of the GOP/Democratic Party positions on Medicare that are likely to feature so prominently in the 2012 election. It doesn't look like the GOP is going to want to or be able to walk away from this kind of thinking, and if the best they have to offer by way of explanation is contained in Bass' letter, I can see why they would be worried.

One of the older adages in politics and one of the best is "if you're explaining, you're losing."

Here's the ad that has Bass so exercised:

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Living in pain is easy; dying with dignity is hard -- a review of How to Die in Oregon

By Edward Copeland

In 1994, Oregon became the first state to allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to the terminally ill so they wouldn't have to endure all sorts of crippling pain and the assorted loss of functions and powers that turned lives into something that could hardly be called living anymore. Tonight, HBO premieres the great documentary How to Die in Oregon, which personalizes the law, telling the stories of several Oregonians who weigh the option of whether or not to end their suffering. It's a powerful, emotional film that hits particularly close to home for me. It's also something everyone should see, especially in a time when compassion and rationality on a wide variety of issues seem to be in short supply.

Sometimes it's difficult when reviewing a movie — narrative or documentary — such as How to Die in Oregon that you know will deal with issues that are important to you. It makes critical distance harder to have. On the other hand, if you feel the film (or play or TV show for that matter) botches the presentation, you're liable to be harsher than you would be otherwise. Thankfully, that's not the case with How to Die in Oregon.

The documentary opens with a home movie of Roger Sagner, who became the 343rd person to have his suffering ended legally after the passage of Oregon's law. As his lethal dose of Seconal gets mixed for him, his volunteer from Compassion and Choices, the advocacy group that helps most people with their final act, asks him the two questions that they are required to: "Do you know you have the right to change your mind? and "What will this (drink) do to you?"

Sagner answers very quickly, "It will kill me and make me happy." He then gives his last words, first of love to his gathered family members, and then his final statement:

I thank the wisdom of the voters of the state of the Oregon for allowing me the honor of doing myself in on my own volition to solve my own problems.

What I wouldn't give if the wisdom of Oregon voters could somehow be bottled and slipped into the entire country's water supply, since we have a short supply of rational-thinking adults. Oregon also legalized medical marijuana, which has shown great progress in easing the pain for people such as myself who have multiple sclerosis, but then again 15 other states and the District of Columbia have joined Oregon on that law. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in a state which has a governor and legislature doing its damnedest to drag us back to the 19th century, prior to its and which on the last General Election ballot had as a priority a state question making sure that no state judge used Sharia law in making rulings.

When Oregon voters approved its Death With Dignity law, only the countries of Switzerland and the Netherlands had legalized the practice. Since then, forward-thinking voters in Washington state and Montana also have approved such laws. Worldwide, Luxembourg is the only country to legalize it since. Worldwide, debates go on everywhere, but they always run into the same opposition, usually from churches and the religious, who most of all should watch How to Die in Oregon and maybe they'd understand this is about compassion — and isn't compassion a basic tenet of most religions?

The film was directed, produced and photographed by Peter D. Richardson and won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentaries at this year's Sundance Film Festival. I don't know its competition, but How to Die in Oregon definitely proves award-worthy. Richardson establishes an amazingly intimate rapport with the film's interview subjects. His main focus stays with a 54-year-old woman named Cody Curtis who successfully beats liver cancer once only to have it return stronger and with a six-month death sentence attached, making Curtis face the idea of taking the lethal dose when the cancer returns.

Given an expiration date and knowing what kind of pain she faces, Cody decides that she won't let cancer and doctors control what remains of her life and she sets a date to take the lethal dose, which gives her an unexpected sort of freedom, even though her entire family isn't happy about it, especially her son Thomas, who asks his mom if she won't struggle for herself, can't she struggle a little for him?

Thomas moves past that, but that's what prevents laws such as Oregon's from being the law everywhere — friends and family, partly out of love but out of selfishness as well — can't bring themselves to accept the idea of their parent or child or whomever choosing to die, even when they witness the amount of pain that person goes through for long periods of time and know deep inside that it only get worse and that person's life will not end well under any scenario.

Before we meet Cody, the film introduces us to Sue Potter, a seven-year volunteer for Compassion and Choices and one of the group's most active. We see her make one of her first stops to a man lying in be, obviously having a particularly bad day. Potter explains to him that she's there to talk with him because he's contacted the group about ending his life.

"End my life? I'm already in life," he tells her. "I've already ended life. I want to exit life."

Potter explains what it's like for people who get to these conditions. "These people have lost so much control and they'll tell us repeatedly that they want the medicine for control."

The actual process requires filling out a form with the extremely long title REQUEST FOR MEDICINE TO END MY LIFE IN A HUMANE AND DIGNIFIED MATTER. It requires the signatures of two witnesses attesting that the person seeking the lethal dose is of sound mind.

As Cody Curtis says at one point in the documentary about having the lethal prescription in her house, should she need it:

It's very comforting to know they're here. I don't have to go through any more bureaucracy... They're here when I decide... It's not like when I'm in the hospital and they tell you, "You have to have another CAT Scan" or "We're taking you down for another procedure." It's my choice when to take them and whether to take them. My volunteer has told me I'll know and I'll just have to trust her on that. I'll know when my life isn't worth living anymore.

While the film keeps Curtis as its center, it has plenty of time for sidetrips to other dying people, interview subjects such as Derek Humphry, author of the once controversial book Final Exit, as well as Seattle's Nancy Niedzielski who leads the campaign for a similar law in Washington.

Niedzielski's story really illustrates the need for such laws. Her husband Randy was diagnosed with brain cancer. Nothing doctors could give him would alleviate the pain and the condition got so bad sometimes his eyes would literally pop out of their sockets. Randy finally decided to end treatment, since none of it was going to save his life or ease his pain. He went to a hospice and asked if they could help him do what they could to end his life quickly, but the hospice workers said they couldn't because that was illegal in the state of Washington. Randy told them that he would move to Oregon so he could take advantage of the Death With Dignity law, only he was told that he was so weak and near death by then that he wouldn't survive long enough to establish Oregon residency, a requirement of the law. His last request was that his wife change Washington's law and she helped lead the campaign for two years until its passage in 2008.

You get to see the usual opposition as when Nancy serves on a phone bank and gets an opponent of the law's passage and actually challenges the caller on what so many people don't seem to understand on any issue: They are free to think it's wrong, but why do they think their belief should be imposed on everyone else? Why is the idea of choice (and I'm not using it in terms of the abortion debate here) so revolting to them? You also see Nancy interviewed for a radio program where the host calls what she is seeking "assisted suicide," a term which offends Nancy and most others who support Death With Dignity. Nancy tells him that suicide is when someone who is otherwise healthy and would live for many more years decides to end his or her life because he or she is clinically depressed. Unfortunately, in the 47 states that don't have this law, that's how they treat people who are in chronic pain: as if they are just depressed and need shrinks and medication, like a teenage boy whose girlfriend just dumped him.

It also has something to do with what you hear in passing in a segment that plays excepts of the Washington debate on talk radio where a man talks about having to be placed in long-term care and how it's eating up his inheritance. Not that I ever had a fortune in savings, but I've watched it evaporate thanks to my medical costs. It doesn't help that my sole income is Social Security Disability Insurance and for two years running, Social Security recipients have been denied cost-of-living increases under the argument that the rate of inflation hasn't been high enough to justify it. Of course, this hasn't prevented Congress from giving themselves cost-of-living hikes to their six-figure salaries both of those years.

Then there is Medicare. Part A the "hospital part" is free, but if I wanted Part B, I would have to pay a premium which would be deducted from my meager Social Security check. On top of that, one of my doctors won't take Medicare patients and others are threatening not to because of talk that their fees might be reduced. Therefore, I didn't take Part B, staying on the health insurance that was funded by my employer who still considers me an employee on long-term disability, even though I receive no salary. The government tries to blackmail you into taking Part B, telling you that for each year you don't sign up, the premium will increase a certain percentage for every year you didn't. As far the increasing number of doctors who refuse Medicare patients, Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out last week that in 1960, before Medicare, the average family doctor's salary was $10,000. Just four years after Medicare's enactment, that average had increased to $24,000. Today, that average is something around $130,000 a year. For specialists, it's about $333,000 a year. And these poor babies fear cuts. By the way, Part A, the "hospital part" only covers you if you are admitted to a hospital. If you have outpatient procedures at a hospital or are taken to an emergency room at a hospital, that doesn't count. That's Part B.

The entire health-care industry, with the government as co-conspirators, opposes laws such as Death With Dignity because they want to bleed everyone dry first. The system for people who are chronically ill but not terminal actually is set up so that you really can't get financial help unless you are broke first. That's what they want: It's how the system is set up. Pardon my digression. I'm writing this to praise a wonderful documentary on an important topic.

Oregon isn't immune from this either. How to Die in Oregon also tells the infuriating story of Randy Stroup, a 53-year-old uninsured man diagnosed with prostate cancer who had to depend on the Oregon Health Plan. After his first treatment, his doctor recommended stronger chemotherapy and the health plan sent him a letter denying the treatment, but giving him a list of other options, including the Death With Dignity Act. This was a man who wasn't terminal and could be saved.

"To think they'd put a price tag on my life," Stroup said, "by saying they'd pay to kill me but they wouldn't pay to help me." Sounds very reminiscent of when Arizona recently cut their program for people awaiting transplants. One way or the other, it all comes down to money in the end.

The center of How to Die in Oregon and much of its power belongs to Cody Curtis' story. After setting a date to take the medication, she find a happiness and freedom. Instead of everything revolving around her impending death, it becomes about life again and she ends up not taking it on the date she set and actually living beyond the six months she was told and with few signs of the pain she feared. It's as if she's been given a gift and gets more time with her husband and children, but eventually the cancer does kick in with its pain and complications. As she had said before after her brush with the disease, it's a relief to know the medication already is there in her house when she needs it and it's up to her to choose when that time is. Director Richardson's choice in filming the conclusion of Cody's story proves both perfect for the documentary and for Cody as well.

From beginning to end, Richardson's compelling documentary takes you on an emotional roller coaster. It would have been easy to turn How to Die in Oregon into a propaganda piece supporting Death With Dignity laws, but he just lets his subjects talk and the audience has the experience. No embellishment is necessary.

How to Die in Oregon premieres on HBO tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern/Pacific and 7 p.m. Central. Truly, it should not be missed. 

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)

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.

Craziest Republican of the Day: Rob Woodall

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Speaking at a town hall back home, Rep. Woodall (R-GA) basically told a constituent worried about possible cuts to Medicare to go fuck herself:

"The private corporation that I retired from does not give medical benefits to retirees," the woman told the congressman in video captured by a local Patch reporter in Dacula, Ga.

"Hear yourself, ma'am. Hear yourself," Woodall told the woman. "You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, 'When do I decide I'm going to take care of me?'"

Large portions of the crowd responded enthusiastically to the congressman's barb, with some giving him a standing ovation, underscoring the fierce divisions within the electorate.

This apparently is one place where slashing Medicare is popular -- or at least among Republicans.

Seriously, though how is this about someone like Woodall taking care of himself? As a Congressman, he has excellent health insurance. But what about this poor woman? According to Woodall, she shouldn't rely on the government, just herself.

Ohhhhhhh. So that's it!

I had no idea one's health was a matter of choice. I also had no idea that health insurance was not just available to everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions or any other factors, but affordable even to a senior likely on limited income.

I'm not sure "crazy" is the right word here. Woodall, a good and loyal Republican, is obvously an ignorant, insensitive bastard.

(Karoli has more at C&L, as does Steve Benen at Political Animal.)

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In your face, Teabaggers! (redux)

By Carl 

The standard mantra of the Republican party has been to cut entitlement programs and keep taxes low because that's what the rabble want, right? 

Uh-huh! 

While well aware that there were political risks, many Republicans went into this year convinced that the rapid growth of the national debt had changed the public mood when it came to tackling the entitlement programs, starting with Medicare, the biggest driver of projected future deficits. In an ambitious budget plan written by Representative Paul D. Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, House Republicans embraced a proposal that would convert Medicare into a subsidized program for the private insurance market.

Even after Tuesday night's loss in the New York special election, in a district Republicans had held for decades, some Republicans remain chin out, calling the Ryan plan much needed medicine that the public will eventually embrace.

Others up for reelection, and some of those running for president, will not firmly commit themselves one way or another. And a small but growing number are saying no. 

The "loss" the Times refers to is the victory of Democrat Kathy Hochul over a split GOP ticket of Jane Corwin and Jack Davis, a Teabagger in one of the most conservative districts in the country, much less New York State. The percentage split 47-43-9, makes the race seem closer than it was. In truth, the Republican budget proposal was defeated 56-43 (adding Davis' and Hochul's totals together, which, as Nate Silver points out, ain't too far from the truth).

Damn. Even President Obama couldn't pull off that stunning a victory! And to top it all off, Corwin had visits from John Boener and Eric Cantor to try to salvage her campaign, all for nought. Talk about rubbing noses in it!

So there's a strategy here for Democrats to take back the House, believe it or not, but it's going to require quite a bit of work and quite a bit of money to offset the Citizen's United debacle. For one thing, the first step is the one already being contemplated: Force an up-or-down vote in the Senate on Medicare reform.

And there's not a ghost of a chance this could be filibustered away. After all, it's the centerpiece of the Republican legislative agenda. Can you imagine a Senator being dumb enough to tell Paul Ryan to fuck off?

Even voting against the plan will raise hackles for Senators like Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, who will undoubtedly face a tough, Koch-financed primary challenge for re-election if they do.

Sort of fun watching these asshats twist in the wind. When you don't get it, you deserve to have it stuffed down your throat, I suppose.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Newt Gingrich vs. reality

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As The Newt tries more and more to distance himself from his anti-Ryan remarks, he's just making himself look worse and worse -- more and more desperate, more and more pathetic, more and more like a loser who won't be in the race much longer.

He's already lashed out at the media, the standard Republican refrain, but now he's actually denying that he said anything controversial:

Newt Gingrich said today that he wasn't referring to Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) Medicare plan when he uttered the words "right-wing social engineering" last Sunday -- a comment that has earned the former House speaker a barrage of criticism that ultimately let him to call Ryan and apologize.

In a live interview with Rush Limbaugh Thursday afternoon, Gingrich said he hadn't actually criticized Ryan's plan in his Sunday appearance on "Meet the Press," and that he wasn't referring to the Wisconsin congressman when he said those words.

"It was not a reference to Paul Ryan. There was no reference to Paul Ryan in that answer," Gingrich told Limbaugh, who was in the process of gently grilling him about why he used those words in the NBC interview.

Limbaugh asked Gingrich why, then, did he call Ryan to apologize for the remark, if it wasn't made in reference to Ryan.

"It was interpreted in a way which was causing trouble which he doesn't need or deserve," Gingrich said. "My answer wasn't about the budget, and I promptly went back to say publicly that I would have voted for the Ryan budget."

Oh, but The Newt was clearly referring to Ryan's anti-Medicare plan. It's right there in the transcript, or you can just watch it. 

In other words, he's lying to us -- to you. And he must think you're incredibly stupid if he thinks this nonsense will work, that you'll actually take him at his word despite all the evidence against him.

So he's a man of ideas, huh? Really, he's just an egomaniacal buffoon who will say anything, no matter how utterly ridiculous, to save his political ass. Sometimes he's right, like when he calls Ryan's plan "radical" and "right-wing social engineering." But most of the time he's just spewing shit.

Organizing to beat Republicans, one freshman at a time

By Richard K. Barry

One of my favourite political stories of the year thus far has been about the letter that House GOP freshmen sent to President Obama encouraging him to reject "playing politics with key issues facing the country." This was code language for asking that the President not draw attention to the fact that Paul Ryan's budget plan will destroy Medicare as we know it -- that he not "use it" against Republicans in a partisan way.

The fact is that House Republicans voted almost unanimously last month in favour of the Ryan budget that would reform entitlement programs, including creating a voucher program for Medicare recipients to buy private insurance. As we know, all hell broke loose from there. Public opinion polls are showing that most Americans are not impressed with this approach to the point that Democrats may steal a special election in New York's 26th Congressional District at the end of the month, an otherwise strong Republican seat, mostly on the strength of voter concerns about this proposed 'restructuring' of Medicare.

In other words, House GOP freshmen, many of whom owe their seats to wild misrepresentations of Obama's own health care plan, are begging the president not to make partisan hay out of the precise and undisputed meaning of this unpopular Republican plan.

Are they out of their fucking minds?

I must say that I was pleased to see that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been targeting Republican members of Congress, who are back in their home districts this week, on this very point.

According to The New York Times, the Committee:

has 20 Republican-held Congressional districts in its sights this week, hitting voters with automated phone calls denouncing the House Republican plan to revamp the nation's Medicare program and arming those who want with signs to protest at town hall meetings across the country. 

A web site sponsored by the campaign committee lists town hall meetings scheduled to be held by Republicans, mostly freshman, during the week. The group encourages voters to show up -- as many did during the Easter recess -- to protest or ask pointed questions of the members about their plan for Medicare, which would convert the program into one that subsidizes future retirees in private insurance plans.

This is in fact my favourite kind of politics -- organizing people to show up and ask questions of the other side in a good-faith exercise intended to elicit only the truth. If forcing new Republican members of Congress to speak the truth to their own constituents on their plans for Medicare reform is what this new class thinks of as "playing politics," I am at a loss for words.

Good on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. More of this please.

(By the way, the picture above is of newly-elected Republican Representative Nan Hayworth from NY-19, the district where I was born and raised. Democrat John Hall lost the seat to Hayworth in November. I'd like to get it back.)

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Gingrich vs. Ryan ends with a KO for Ryan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Gingrich slammed Ryan, calling his anti-Medicare plan "radical."

Ryan retaliated, suggesting that Gingrich is just like "the left."

Other right-wing Republicans, like Nikki Haley and Rick Santorum, sided with Ryan and piled on Gingrich.

And Gingrich, tail between his legs, humbled and humiliated, apologized to Ryan.

This is how it works in the GOP.

**********

I can't say I ever admire Gingrich, but I understood, or thought I understood, why he took the risk of criticizing Ryan's plan (and, for all intents and purposes, the Republican plan). It was opportunistic, a transparent (or so I thought) attempt to situate himself between the party's right-wing mainstream and grassroots on one side and the somewhat more moderate (and rather more pragmatic) establishment on the other, recognizing that Ryan's plan is deeply unpopular, including among many Republicans, and a likely vote-loser in 2012.

But it was also a shot at the leading Republican wunderkind of the day as well as at what has become a key element of conservative orthodoxy, and for that The Newt got crushed.

Elephant Dung #32: After Gingrich slam, Ryan retaliates

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

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

Earlier today, I blogged about The Newt's criticism of Republican wunderkind Paul Ryan's anti-Medicare plan as "radical," a not-terribly-surprising establishment pushback against an increasingly unpopular right-wing effort.

Well, you knew that wasn't the end of it, and Ryan snarkily pushed back today, retaliating on right-wing talk radio:

With allies like that, who needs the left? 

Ah, so you see, if you're not with him -- Ryan, that is -- you're against him. And if you dare criticize his Medicare-destoying aims, you're really not much of a Republican, and certainly not acceptable to the sort of right-wing Tea Party orthodoxy that Ryan represents. Welcome to the Bolshevism of the Republican Party. If you dissent in any way, you're attacked and purged.

Ryan probably won't run for president, but The Newt is already in the race and, sensing the tide turning against Ryan, is astute enough to distance himself from his plan, a vote-loser in 2012. Or, at least, that's what I think The Newt is up to. He can stress his conservative bona fides on other issues, specifically on the "culture wars," where he can be adequately nativist/jingoist. But as he is trying to have it both ways by appealing both to the more sensible establishment and to the insane Tea Party wing, he isn't about to take up an issue that is backing Republicans into a corner. As risky as it may have been to come out publicly against Ryan, it was something The Newt had to do.

But we certainly haven't heard the last of this, not with Ryan still such a prominent figure (and media darling), and not with the Tea Party holding so much sway at the grassroots level of the GOP. And it certainly should be fun to watch Republicans go after each other like this over an issue that not long ago seemed to be energizing the party and giving them something to fight for in the budget battles with the Democrats. 

That was never going to last, not once people started paying attention to the actual details of the Ryan plan, and now, with Gingrich contra Ryan (and Ryan pushing back, and Santorum attacking Gingrich), we're seeing one of the major splits in the Republican Party begin to deepen. And it's only going to get a whole lot uglier.

Elephant Dung #31: Gingrich slams Ryan's "radical" Medicare 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.)

Yes, believe it or not. Appearing yesterday on Meet the Press (watch clip below), The Newt called Republican wunderkind Paul Ryan's Medicare-slashing plan "radical." And he didn't mean it as a compliment:

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," he said when asked about Ryan's plan to transition to a "premium support" model for Medicare. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."

As far as an alternative, Gingrich trotted out the same appeal employed by Obama/Reid/Pelosi — for a "national conversation" on how to "improve" Medicare, and promised to eliminate "waste, fraud and abuse," etc.

"I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options," Gingrich said. Ryan's plan was simply "too big a jump."

He even went so far as to compare it the Obama health-care plan. "I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change."

I get that he's against the Affordable Care Act -- all Republicans are, even though it's just the sort of market approach they once favoured, and it's more or less what they offered as an alternative to "Hillarycare" back in the '90s -- but against the sort of massive Tea Party-friendly budget-cutting so popular on the right nowadays, particularly when the targets are entitlement programs that generally benefit those who need help the most? What the hell? Isn't Gingrich a conservative? Isn't he a loyal Republican and dogmatic ideologue?

Well, sort of. When you think through his criticism of Ryan's plan, you start to see that it actually makes a lot of sense. While Republicans, spurred on by the Tea Party, have been talking big about massive budget cuts, the more sensible among them realize that such cuts, including to Medicare, would be massively unpopular. And Republicans have been getting slammed at town halls across the country. Ryan may be a wunderkind, and almost all Republicans in the House may have voted for his plan, but he's essentially backed his party into a vote-losing corner.

And Gingrich, I suspect, gets this. (Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He's not completely delusional.) Because while he's certainly a partisan, he's actually more shameless, unprincipled opportunist than dedicated ideologue. (Consider how he was for the military action in Libya before he was against it. The only consistency to his diametrically-opposed positions was that they were both anti-Obama, just at different times.) This will hurt him with the Tea Party grassroots of the GOP, but he's no doubt betting that it helps him with the more practical as well as somewhat more moderate establishment, which is also opportunistic enough to see that Ryan's plan likely won't help the party at the polls next November -- and that, indeed, could very well hurt it immensely, pushing independents back to the Democrats, perhaps even leading to a wave the other way.

I'm not sure I agree with Andrew Sullivan that the Newt may "surprise this campaign season" with more such unorthodox views. Again, I think this makes a lot of sense of you look at what The Newt may be trying to do. The big names in the race so far are relative moderates like Romney and Pawlenty (perhaps soon to be joined by Daniels and Huntsman). With Huckabee out, no one has yet emerged as a serious candidate on the right (sorry, Santorum), but someone will, perhaps an unelectable crazy person like Michele Bachmann. Given his long, sordid background, Gingrich is perhaps trying to keep a foot in both camps, sufficiently conservative to pick off right-wing votes while also being enough of an establishmentarian to woo moderates and others in the party who, while certainly conservative, actually want to try to win in 2012.

It's hard to see him pulling it off, but it's possible given such a lackluster field. And while he'll have to make sure he stresses his conservative bona fides (as he did on Friday when he basically called for the return of Jim Crow-era poll tests to disenfranchise what to him and the GOP are undesirable voters), taking a stand now against Ryan's deeply unpopular plan might actually benefit him in the long run. It didn't take courage, after all, just a politically astute sense of the prevailing winds.

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All eyes will be on the newly open Wisconsin senate seat in 2012

By Richard K. Barry 

It's getter harder and harder to contemplate how the Democrats hold onto the Senate in 2012. As we have been saying over and over again, 33 seats are up for grabs. 21 of these are Democratic seats (two additional independents caucus with the Dems) and, of course, only 10 are GOP seats.

On Friday, Herbert Kohl, Democratic senator from Wisconsin, announced that he would not be seeking reelection in 2012, which probably pushes this one into the "toss-up" category. That at least is where the Cook Political Report now has it.

No sure thing in politics, but Kohl got 67% of the vote when he last ran in 2006, which was his fourth win in a row so his reelection wouldn't have been a bad place to put your money.

So here we go. Kohl is the fifth Democrat to announce that he was not running again. The others are Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Jim Webb of Virgina. Joe Lieberman is one of the aforementioned independents, who caucuses with the Democrats, who is not running.

One of the possible Democratic candidates that has to come to mind is Russ Feingold, who had been a senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011 before being defeated by Republican Ron Johnson in the 2010 election by a margin of 52% to 47%.

For the moment, Feingold is taking things slow, but pressure will no doubt build as Democrats try to figure out how they hold the seat. In any case, there will be no shortage of interested candidates.

On the other side of the aisle, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan is already considering making a run for the vacant seat. In some classic "political speak" he said he is going to:

take some time over the next few days to discuss the news with my family and supporters before making a decision about how I'm best able to serve my employers in the First Congressional District, our state and our nation.

Translation is that he will be burning up the phone lines to make sure he can raise the money needed to win, maybe do some polling to see how he's doing statewide, and otherwise get a read on how good his chances of victory might be.

This will be interesting, though, if Ryan runs and gets the nomination. Gov. Scott Walker's assault on public-sector unions has already guaranteed that there will be a national focus on Wisconsin come 2012. Ryan's budget with its radical plan to end Medicare as we know it will surely put more focus on him regardless. His entry into the senate race would only add fuel to the fire that Democrats are likely to stoke from now until election day. I think that might work for the Democrats, actually. I can't imagine that a lot of Republicans are going to want to see a high profile senate race in Wisconsin with a debate about Medicare constantly on the front pages of national newspapers and in other media.

Herbert Kohl is 76 years old and I doubt that his decision to step aside reflects any concerns on his part that the seat can't be held. My guess is that if the Democrats are in any shape at all in 2012 and Obama is running the kind of campaign we know he can run, they should be okay. That's a lot of "ifs" but that's where my money is today.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)