Scarborough's rant on Bachmann and why he's (partly) wrong

By Richard K. Barry

Joe Scarborough went off Friday morning on the idea that Michele Bachmann should be considered a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination or for the whole ball of wax itself.

We are talking here about a guy who is a staunch Republican, a former member of the House of Representatives, venting about how disgusted he is that Bachmann is being taken so seriously by members of his own party in the early going.

In discussing her performance during Thursday night's Iowa debates, Scarborough had this to say:

Michele Bachmann's first answer was, I wish the federal government had defaulted. Had defaulted! A week after Americans lost -- some of them perhaps half their pensions. Lost half their 401ks. When trillions of dollars went down the drain with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause, and if anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way... they are out of their minds and they are too stupid to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run a Slurpee machine in Des Moines... Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke...Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.

Okay, that's all very interesting that Morning Joe would go ballistic in this way on one of his party's own. Here is what is more interesting:

He also said that Bachmann was symbolic of a kind of presidential "conspiracy" that always happens in the early stages of presidential elections, where the base pushes for "somebody who is never going to win." And, he continued, the media "run articles on these people on the far right and point for a year about 'look how whacked out the Republican Party is."

But as much as I agree that it is unlikely Bachmann will even get the GOP nomination, let alone come close to winning the presidency, is this really just like other years? Isn't it actually the case that all of the Republican candidates are tripping over each other to prove how crazy, how extreme, they can be and that Bachmann is simply doing a better job of it?

The Democrats best hope is that by the time Romney is the nominee, the debate amongst Republicans will have for so long taken place in crazy-town that there won't be any way to recover - that Romney will have lost the ability to appear sane enough to independent voters - maybe even to a lot of voters in his own party.

Republicans like Scarborough are hoping against hope that this year will be like other years and that by the time things get serious the party will be able to do enough of a course correction to win the White House - that the GOP will be able to distance itself from its more radical elements.

I think Scarborough's anger and frustration is built on the fear that what should be a good chance for the Republicans is being squandered but that we've sort of seen this movie before and things could still work out for the GOP.

But is Joe really being honest with himself?

Yes, Michele Bachmann is an embarrassment to any thinking Republican, but long after she is gone, her impact, and the impact of the Tea Party, will be felt. The very nature of the debate from the right has, by now, been set in stone.

There is no going back and this is not like other years.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Michele Bachmann's failure to understand basic public finance

By Richard K. Barry

Dave Weigle at Slate ran an interesting piece recently about Michele Bachmann's understanding of government finance, or, we should say, her failure to understand it.

Here is Weigle's account of comments made by Bachmann at an event in Iowa:

When Bachmann arrived, she devoted half of her opening statement to the downgrade. The mesage: She could have stopped it.

"For the last two weeks, I led the fight against raising the debt limit," Bachmann said. Increasing the limit "pushed the rating agency over the edge." It was a $2.4 trillion blank check that caused the downgrade.

Make no mistake: The downgrade was Obama's fault: "We were somehow able to get through the Great Depression without a credit downgrade," she said. "Only under this president have we seen a credit downgrade... we are getting that credit rating back. This is to be our goal. That will be our mission.

Is it possible that Bachmann doesn't understand that the downgrade, however unjustified it may have been, occurred because S&P said they were concerned that the U.S. government could find itself unable to pay its bills? And that they might be unable to pay their bills precisely because the debt ceiling might not have been raised?

Is it possible she doesn't get that? And if the answer is yes, this suggests a whole new level of incompetence for this Tea Party darling, if that's possible.

This is on a par with the Wisconsin Tea Party cheering the fact that Democrats have blamed them for the S&P downgrade. In their simple understanding of the world, all we have to do is stop the government from spending money, even its current obligations, and everything will somehow, magically, work out.

I was not around when the United States devised its economic system. I'm pretty sure if I had been I would have suggested some improvements. But this is the system we now have, and I surely would prefer that anyone aspiring to the highest office in the land understand how it works.

It's not much to ask.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

And a mess of Bam's barbecue

By Zandar 

And Fox Nation leaves this in a bag on America's doorstep, lights it on fire, rings the bell and runs (h/t Oliver Willis).

Ahh, the president's birthday celebration had black people at it and didn't create jobs! This is where we are right now, it's a brutally long campaign season, folks... and the rampant, ugly, and now massively overt racism by the GOP and their enablers is only beginning. People ask me how President Obama can put up with such drooling idiocy, and I remind them that the president is never the true audience for shock-jock racism like this.

In a sick way, you have to admire the blue-steel hatred Fox has for the man. When the dog whistles are put away and the megaphones are brought out instead, it's proof that the president's most recent maneuver has demoralized the Tea Party faithful and that it's time to throw the red meat into the pit to get some action going (which gives more "moderate" conservative pundits the chance to pretend to disavow the bomb-throwing to look "centrist and principled").

It must mean, then, that the rank-and-file Tea Party disagree with John "Orange Julius" Boehner's assessment that the GOP got 98% of what it wanted in the debt deal. Indeed, many Americans are furious at the Republicans in the wake of this week's deal and the weeks of hostage-taking that preceded it.

Time both to fire up the base and to take the higher ground at the same time while Eric Cantor blames the extension of federal unemployment benefits for causing unemployment itself, and vows to hold it hostage next.  Always onwards to the next Pyrrhic victory, our GOP friends.

Senator Orrin Hatch bows to the Tea Party

By Richard K. Barry

A lot of people expect Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah to get a challenge from his political right in 2012. In fact, Rep. Jason Chaffetz looks to be the one who will take on the task.

And Chaffetz, should he challenge Hatch for the Republican nomination, will have some juice as the principle author of the "Cut, Cap and Balance" legislation in the House.

Hatch's sin is mostly that he's been around too long. In fact, he's been around so long that he has a history of working with Democrats to actually pass legislation and govern the country in a responsible manner. Of course, that's not allowed if you're a Tea Partier. Working across the aisle is proof positive that you need to be replaced. Chaffetz intends to continue hammering away at Hatch for having done things like vote to increase the debt ceiling in the past and for supporting the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

As Chaffetz has said:

Part of the reason we are in this debt crisis is because 26 times Sen. Hatch had an opportunity to vote no and he voted yes to raise the debt ceiling. Sixteen times a direct vote for yes, and 10 times allowed unanimous consent for the increase in the debt ceiling. That's why, in part, we're in this mess.

(And how many of those debt ceiling increases were under Ronald Reagan? Was it 18?)

Along with Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who is also likely to face a Tea Party challenge, Hatch has just been around so long that there is too much history of his having worked in a bi-partisan manner for the good of the country, of actually having governed. And, like I said, that just won't do if your a Tea Party type.

It's all about right and wrong. They are right and everyone else is wrong and don't get caught so much as smiling at the enemy.

Having said that, there is a real sadness in what is happening to someone like Hatch who has served his country for so long, no matter what one might think of his politics. He's reduced to making cringe-worthy statements like "I'm a Tea Party person," or "The fact of the matter is I've been a Tea Party person I think since before the Tea Party came into existence."

Yeah, right.

How much do you want to bet that Hatch comes close to gagging when he says those words, that he hates what he's being forced to say and do by the insane ideological purity of what has become of the radical right of the Republican Party?

When Hatch says "I'm a Tea Party Person," it sounds very much in tone like what a social misfit might say to prove he is worthy of the notice of the supposed in-crowd, while knowing all along that he shouldn't lower himself in such a way, but he's just so damned terrified of being left on the outside.

This is nothing short of a purging of those who were once the most revered figures in a political movement because they have failed to keep up with the ideological requirements of the new regime. We've seen this before in history and it never ends well.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Billion-dollar coins and exploding options -- oh my!

By Capt. Fogg

Maybe the president can't simply cite the 14th Amendment and raise the debt ceiling, maybe he can -- but does the Constitution provide a paddle? Must he allow the Tea Party to shut down the government as the more mainstream Republicans attempted to do in 1995 during the Clinton administration? 

You remember President Clinton, don't you, the guy that the snickering snarkmongers told us would only serve one term, who would destroy capitalism, plunge us into debt and start fake wars simply to allow him to become a dictator. I'm sure the parallels are coincidental (wink-wink, nudge-nudge).

But Obama, even if if no Clinton ( for better or worse), may still have options, says Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School. The Constitution has as many loopholes as the Tea Party has loonies, although some of them are as arcane as something out of The Da Vinci Code. There's the Platinum Coin Gambit and the Exploding Option Strategy, for instance.

Even so, all may not be lost for 14th Amendment solution protagonists, like Bill Clinton and a few others, says Balkin:

If the president reasonably believes that the public debt will be put in question for either reason, Section 4 comes into play once again. His predicament is caused by the combination of statutes that authorize and limit what he can do: He must pay appropriated monies, but he may not print new currency and he may not float new debt. If this combination of contradictory commands would cause him to violate Section 4, then he has a constitutional duty to treat at least one of the laws as unconstitutional as applied to the current circumstances.

Balkin likens this dispute to recent attempts to topple the president over his ability to use the military to protect the national interest or in emergencies: 

If the courts won't intervene in the Libya affair, they probably won't intervene here.

But regardless of your opinion on the best way to beat back the barbarians, whichever side you think they're on, Balkin's CNN exclusive interview is great reading and gives a glimmer of hope that the Constitution will do what it was designed to do: protect us.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

An overarching backdrop

By Carl 

The Teabagger-infused acrimony over things domestic has implications beyond our borders. Perhaps this is by design: 

In one swoop, Britain has recognized Libya's rebel government, expelled the remaining London diplomatic staff of the Tripoli-based regime, and freed up millions in assets that can now be funneled to the cash-strapped rebel troops.

Amid a weeks-long stalemate, diplomatic activity seems to have stepped up. This is likely partially because Ramadan begins next week, which will force NATO forces to scale down the fighting as most of Libya begins the month-long daily fast. The US and France have already recognized the rebel government.

"This decision reflects the national transitional council's increasing legitimacy, competence and success in reaching out to Libyans across the country," Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday, according to the Guardian. 

As the title of the article states, the U.K. is really taking the lead on the withdrawal from Libya.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's true, the U.S. participation in this NATO exercise has been about as non-existent as a sasquatch (which is real, by the way), and again, my suspicion is that's by design on the part of the Teabaggers.

Three wars, even with one on a limited scale like Libya and one in a draw-down phase like Iraq, is three wars too many for a peacenik like me and two wars too many for an armed force to fight. So it's a good thing the Teabaggers have played the role of Shadow Ministry for Commiepinkohippiefags this time around. I'm glad for that.

And House Weaker Boehner has grasped the Prime Minister for War Opponents like it was a goose for Christmas dinner, rattling the President's cage over the War Powers Act violations, and essentially going nowhere with that tactic. Again, failure is an option for the GOP. Me likey.

It worries me, too. All this fussin' and fightin' over debt limits and War Powers Acts and birth certificates and Messicans has created one overarching backdrop against which any President for the foreseeable future (but in particular, Scary Black Man) will have to contend. The fucking loons of the right wing have managed to turn the once-great America into a joke.

I'm not sure when it started. I mean, you can go all the way back to Joe McCarthy, I suppose. Certainly, Barry Goldwater is worth a look. Ronald Reagan, too.

But somewhere along the thread here, the American right morphed from a set of reasonable people with radical goals into a set of radical asshats with goals best left to Robert Heinlein novels.

In some regards, they fulfill one of the last remaining holes in my theory that Republicans run about a generation behind Democrats.

It goes like this: What Democrats endured as a party in the '60s and '70s, the Republicans only began to experience in the '90s and '00s. And now in the Teens. Party divisions? Democrats saw those flourish in the aftermath of Watergate when it looked like Democrats could maintain a permanent Democratic majority in perpetuity, and everyone wanted a piece of the prize and the squabbling allowed a stealth conservative movement the opportunity to undermine the good works and progress done to that point.

A gradual loss of relevance as a political party, turning into massive jokes during some Presidential campaigns? Look no further than the 1984 Reagan re-election for Dems. Look no further than the 2008 McCain/Palin campaign for the GOP.

A wresting of the party's center with a jerk to the wing? The Dems in 1968. The Republicans in... well, I'd say 1994, but Newt Gingrich's "revolution" looks moderate and centrist by comparison to today's kamikaze. 

All these growing pains -- and we must keep in mind that we are but a stranger in a strange land still, this novel experiment in democracy -- have taken our focus away from what was our purview for decades: our place in international affairs.

Some see this as a good thing and I might concur, but it's the way that we went about it that troubles me. We didn't gracefully exit the world stage, as President Obama put it in his address on Afghanistan, for "nation-building at home." We were dragged away like a mother in a supermarket trying to placate a panicked and tired toddler who demands attention. Or at the very least, candy.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Taking the 14th

By Capt. Fogg

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

14th Amendment, U.S. Constitution
____________

Now, I'm no lawyer, which means that I generally take such statements at face value and have no knowledge of what pretzels they've been twisted into by various courts in various cases, but it seems to me that if congress can't question the validity of our public debt, then congress can't refuse to pay it or more importantly say it's only valid under a certain amount authorized by Congress after they've already deemed it legal. What do you think?

I hate to bring up the Constitution at a time when the Tea Bag Patriots are pretending to worship it while claiming that those who would like to actually conform to it are "shredding it," but the situation is getting serious.

Of course, this whole controversy is about "taking down" the president we elected by a good margin and replacing him with a Tea Party Republican of their choice hell bent not on reducing the debt, but killing Social Security, Medicare, all forms of welfare, and any protection for the public against the health insurance cartel -- and all to make sure people like me can put an extra tank of fuel into the yacht every now and then thus creating jobs in the Bahamas and Taiwan.

After all, they raised the debt ceiling every year a Republican was in office since the beginning of the Reagan administration and authorized Bush's massive debt explosion like a well-disciplined private army. Remember when "debt doesn't matter" was the slogan? No? Well I do.

Obama would be impeached if he blocked debt payments,

says Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and he'd also be impeached if he invalidated the debt ceiling based on the 14th Amendment, says Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) Talk about a poker player with a "tell." Might as well lay the cards on the table.

It's all about impeachment and all about finding some flimsy excuse for forcing the president into a position where they will impeach him if he does and impeach him if he doesn't. No more revolting, I guess, than impeaching one for asking his secretary not to tell his wife he was having an affair. Talk about insurrection and rebellion! No sooner did we lose the Cold War gravy train then we embarked on the Cold Secession.

President Clinton told us recently he wouldn't hesitate to use the 14th to raise the debt ceiling and "force the courts to stop me." You'll remember the attempts to impeach him on any pretext and how the talk of the "failure of the Clinton presidency" preceded the Clinton presidency and how he would certainly be a one-term president and how his tax policies would bankrupt the economy. They hope you won't remember, of course, because we're hearing the same damned bullshit again.

I think the Constitution is clear and I think this idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy,

said Bill Clinton to The National Memo last week. No wonder slimy things like the Newt are challenging the Constitutional basis for even having a Supreme Court.

Meanwhile that extra 3% tax cut I get on anything I earn over $250,000 is going to prompt me to create jobs for those struggling people now paying for the longest, most expensive wars in American history while losing their houses, jobs, and medical insurance, waiting for the voodoo to kick in and save us all -- and all will be fine just in time for a Tea Party president. I can feel it in my bones.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Ex nihilo nihil fit

By Capt. Fogg 

George Packer, writing in the New Yorker about the debt ceiling crisis and the ever more strained fault line running through Washington, reminds us of a quote usually attributed to Vladimir Lenin: "the worse, the better."

I rather think Lenin himself was quoting Georgi Plekhanov's 1917 essay "Three Crises," but whatever the source and however Lenin used it, I tend to agree with Mr. Packer that we're looking at a planned destruction of our economy to serve a revolutionary cause that in some ways, in its ideological blindness to practical consequences, looks so much like the Bolsheviks it might cause liquid irony to condense into caustic clouds and rain down upon us.

Indeed, the worse this manufactured crisis becomes, the more likely it is, at least in the minds of the radical right, to destroy the prospects of Obama and the Democrats as well as our national prospects, leaving the Tea Party, like roaches after a nuclear war, in charge of a withered state sure to become a wildly prosperous unregulated utopia. It seems a fatuous dream, of course, to anyone who has read even a little about the aftermath of the 1917 revolution, but if you've read this far I shouldn't have to point it out. Out of a power vacuum, power comes.

Packer quotes Max Weber, writing only only two years later with regard to "the ethic of responsibility" versus "the ethic of ultimate ends," and it seems that little has changed in the course of human events since then -- at least in American events. The distinction: 

between those who act from a sense of practical consequence and those who act from higher conviction, regardless of consequences,

describes our current struggle -- unser Kampf, if you will. 

These ethics are tragically opposed, but the true calling of politics requires a union of the two.

Is there any doubt about into which group the "tax cuts and deregulation produce prosperity" and "the government is always the problem" people fall? Discussion of practical consequences can't be heard through the roar.

Such a political union is less foreseeable, I think, than at any time in American history that I can call to mind, and a complete rupture or a complete capitulation of the "ultimate responsibility" forces to the anarchists and nihilists may be the only possible outcome. Ex nihilo nihil fit: out of nothing, nothing comes, no longer is supported by science, but in the world of governments and power and people, things are different -- and après ça, le déluge, of course.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Is the Tea Party over?

By Richard K. Barry

Last week, Roll Call reported that organizers of a major Tea Party convention that had been planned for the fall was being cancelled due to low registration.

Organizers had hoped that the event, called the Freedom Jamboree, would provide an opportunity for Republican presidential candidates to court the conservative movement, and, apparently, both Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum had confirmed they would attend.

It seems that the twenty-one local Tea Party groups which began organizing the event did it in order to "reclaim the movement from national umbrella groups and offer an alternative to the annual fall Tea Party rally on the National Mall."

As one of the organizer's told Roll Call, "We were doing it because we were fed up with the infighting that these umbrella groups had done in 2010."

Interesting to note that this is the second Tea Party event cancelled because of lack of interest. Last year, a Tennessee-based group, Tea Party Nation, cancelled an event that was to have taken place in Las Vegas. They had their excuses, but, really, nobody wanted to come.

At a time when Republican politicians are being pushed around by the so-called Tea Party movement, it does beg the question as to who is doing the pushing. If these people can't generate enough interest to pull together a national event or two at the grass roots level, does it mean that we were all correct in our assessment of this thing as an astroturf movement?

The truth is that these things are never that simple. The Koch Brothers / Fox News / Sarah Palin type catalysts have been essential, but movements come into being because a subset of the population is ready for the message. I know some will howl, but the mass psychology of fascism is instructive here.

My point is that I don't deny that the Tea Party has been a mass movement, only that it will have to start organizing itself like a political party, or actually join one already in existence, if it hopes to continue to have any influence.

Yes, there is a reason that political parties exist and that is because it takes so damn much effort to aggregate interest across the country and give it direction. The Tea Party may have claimed pride in the fact that it has no leader, but after a while that just doesn't work anymore.

In the short term, if you throw enough money at any movement, no matter how diffuse, it's going to have an impact, hence the astroturfism of the Tea Party movement. The hard work starts when the "movement" begins to mature and requires centralization and leadership. Eventually that will mean that the Tea Party either folds into the Republican Party or goes away.

Not surprising that one of the organizers of the Freedom Jamboree wrote to fellow activists saying that "[i]t appears the Tea Party horse is riderless, and riding off in all directions at once."

In fact, a basic truth, whether from the left or right, is that social movements can influence politics, but they are not the same as a political organization. They are a blunt instrument without the ability or structure to make the kinds of decisions required by politics -- without the ability to bring it all together.

We are seeing this in Washington now with the debt ceiling negotiations. The Tea Party Caucus can't compromise, can't negotiate because its base is not an organization but rather an idea.

Again, in the short term you can get a bunch of people motivated to show up to mass events for the sake of idea. Many wonderful gatherings have taken place on the premise. But, after a while, you need the organization, you need the party or people will just stop showing up.

Too bad, though, because what this country really needs right now is another convention of colorfully-dressed people doing their best Founding Father impersonations.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

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.

(photo)

Mitch McConnell says no one is talking about not raising the debt ceiling. In other words, Mitch McConnell is lying.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, the Senate minority leader said that "nobody is talking about not raising the debt ceiling. I haven't heard that discussed by anybody." (See clip below.)

But actually, many Republicans are talking about that, including Michele Bachmann. Host Bret Baier pointed that out, but McConnell preferred to ignore that inconvenient little fact. McConnell surely knows what other Republicans are saying, what views are prominent throughout the Republican Party. So who was he referring to, and what was his point? Here's Digby with an explanation:

I'm fairly sure he's talking about the people who are negotiating the deal, not Michele Bachmann. And yes, they all agreed up front that they must raise the debt ceiling. Nobody is seriously contemplating walking away. The President hasn't even made the slightest feint in that direction by issuing a veto threat if they send him something outrageous, so the Democrats aren't even pretending to play that game. And McConnell just let the cat out of the bag (it has never exactly been in) that they don't take the Tea party caucus seriously either.

In other words, this is all just negotiating -- "the trial balloons all show that the 'negotiation' is really over how much cutting -- and in what areas --- each side can agree to," and so all the serious Republicans on Capitol Hill are doing now is "negotiating the spin."

Like Steve M., I disagree. While I think that a deal will likely get done soon, mainly because Obama has agreed to give up so much, McConnell was simply lying, not just spinning:

It's McConnell's job to go on TV and do as convincing an imitation as he can of a reasonable man. More to the point, it's his job to spin any failure to reach an agreement as 100% the Democrats' fault.

Okay, so that's lying + spinning. Digby seems to think that McConnell is actually being open and honest about what's going on in the Republican Party, but it seems to me that he's just preparing for the apocalypse that would follow a failure to raise the debt ceiling -- and preparing to score as many political points as possible off it by blaming Democrats.

"Who us? No, we were never talking about not raising the debt ceiling. We were all for that. But Obama, he just wouldn't compromise, and the Democrats just wouldn't negotiate seriously. It's a lack of leadership on their part. These are tough times and we need to make tough decisions. We were prepared to work out a deal, but they said no, and now we're all fucked. So vote for us!"

I have no doubt that some Republicans, including establishment types like McConnell, think that the Tea Party is insane. But this isn't about the McConnells and Boehners of the party warding off the extremists to get something done for the common good. This is about Republicans refusing to agree even to a deal that would give them almost everything they want, which seems exactly what Obama is willing to agree to at this point, about Republicans walking away from the negotiating table, and about Republicans essentially being held hostage by the Tea Party, which is not just talking about not raising the debt ceiling but which is also prepared to run primary campaigns against anyone who deviates from their right-wing orthodoxy.

Republicans are scared shitless, which is why they haven't agreed to a deal yet, and why they're doing everything they can to pin the blame on the other side, and to convince the media to pin the blame on the other side. Why else did Boehner back away from a comprehensive deficit-reduction package over the weekend? The man fears for his political life. Many Republicans do. 

And they apparently think that the only way they can win this, politically speaking, is to avoid altogether choosing between what must be done (and what the party's financial backers say must be done), namely, agreeing with the president to raise the debt ceiling, and what the Tea Party and various others on the right say must be done, namely, standing ideologically firm and refusing to allow it. Maybe the saner Republicans know that the apocalypse is at hand, but internal political pressures seem to be just as powerful, if not more so. Forget the future health of America. These guys just want to get re-elected. And, again, they seem to think it might just work out for them if they don't choose one or the other, which would mean alienating one side or the other, and instead do what they can to spin the problem as the Democrats' fault.

It's an awfully dangerous game to be playing -- not so much for them but for the country. But it's what the Republican Party is all about these days.

Today is the day for NY-26: Voters head to the polls in special election

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, it's today, at long last, the special election in New York's 26th Congressional District to replace Republican Chris Lee, who resigned earlier this year.

I wrote about the election here and here, but let me explain again what's going on here:

In a heavily Republican district in Western New York, the combination of a Tea Party challenger (Jack Davis) and a Republican who supported Paul Ryan's deeply unpopular anti-Medicare plan (Jane Corwin) have given the Democrat (Kathy Hochul) a great chance to win. Indeed, the latest polling gives Hochul a six-point lead over Corwin, 42 to 35, with Davis in third with 13.

It seems incredible, when you think about it, until you realize that this special election has essentially become a referendum of national proportions and a key indicator for where things might be headed in 2012. It's not all about Ryan and the Republicans' radical right-wing budget plans, as I've written, but there's enough of that to suggest that the Republicans may be in trouble, with voters coming to learn of those plans and turning away in disgust, particularly independents.

Sure, Corwin might very well win a head-to-head race against Hochul, but it would be close (as it is wrong to assume that she would pick up all of Davis's support), and, again, this is a heavily Republican district, a "safe" seat that should stay GOP. It would be enough, in a way, just for Hochul, or any Democrat, to put in a good showing, to make it a competitive race. The fact that she's well ahead in the polls is incredibly significant, both in local and national terms, the local and national essentially merging here.

And the fact that she might just win...

Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. If you're in NY-26, make sure you get out to vote.

Let's hope Hochul, who certainly has our full support, pulls this out. It would be a great victory for her, as well as for the Democratic Party and for efforts to reject the right-wing Republican agenda.

The tragicomedy of Sarah Palin

By Nicholas Wilbur

Sarah Palin turns heads, particularly those decorated with swinging tea bags on tri-corner hats bobbling atop the corpulent bodies of elderly white folks whose granny arms flap in such furious spasms of patriotic applause every time the Mama Grizzly barfs up another profound prophesy of Obama-doom that they'd fly off into the dawn's early light if it weren't for that extra fifty pounds of adipose tissue they gained after making a public stand against government intrusion by scarfing a pallet full of Wal-Mart's Great Value fudge mint cookies during the season finale of Sarah Palin's Alaska.

Palin, on Fox News discussing the potential

 of a 2012 presidential run.

And then there's the Left – the professional, elitist snobs – who so desperately want to ignore the Palin pop-celebrity buzz but can't, and so must justify their addiction by taking the intellectual high road and reading the gossip via a magazine of national repute like The Atlantic.

The very presence in a left-leaning political magazine of a has-been limelight junkie like Palin proves not only the staying power of the Bible-thumping caribou Barbie in this bizarre new political carnival of America but also the selling power of the Palin brand in the high(ish)brow world of publishing. (The Atlantic advertised Joshua Green's feature, "The Tragedy of Sarah Palin," with a gold teaser on the all-black June cover.)

The deep-but-pathetic roster of potential Republican presidential nominees, and the recent announcements by Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, and Haley Barbour not to seek the nomination, gives the media due cause to turn the cameras back on the 2008 vice presidential nominee. For political junkies afflicted with a shameful lust for sleazy right-wing conspiracies but reluctant to scroll through through Palin's Facebook and Twitter posts for dirt, the media's half-hearted crawl back into North Star territory provides us with the sick-but-somehow-comforting reminders of how this country might have looked had soccer moms and NASCAR devotees outflanked sanity in the '08 election.

Green knows the dismal odds of Palin winning the Republican nomination, which is why he was forced to legitimize the tabloid-esque Palin piece by disembarking from reality and entering a hypothetical universe that focused not on what Palin has become since "going rogue" on the 2008 campaign trail, but what she "might have been" and "what she could have achieved" had she "kept her impulses in check" rather than "obsess[ing] over her image," blaming the media for her own unpreparedness, and eventually abandoning the only real chance she had of one day capturing the presidency: her governorship.

Green's abridged jaunt down memory lane seeks to remind America of this half-term governor's extensive executive experience fighting Big Oil and breaking up the "monopoly of power" by working with Democrats to push through a tax hike. Rubbing shoulders with socialists and increasing taxes in order to boost state revenues may not seem like the type of small government conservatism that the national Republican Party would want to advocate in a presidential race against a so-called liberal, but then that perhaps explains the McCain campaign's decision to downplay Palin's record and fill Sarahcuda's speeches with the same vitriolic "full-throttle assault" against their opponent that landed George W. Bush the White House in 2000 and 2004.

Alas, it could have ended up differently. The alleged maverick of the The Last Frontier may not have lost her credibility, humiliated herself, her family and her country; she may not have returned to Alaska to face a full docket of ethics charges and abuse of power investigations; she may not have seen dollar signs in the wrinkled faces of her fanatical fringe following; and she may not have abandoned public service in order to write two books, pimp her daughter out to Dancing With the Stars, join up with Fox News, and star in her own TV show.

But the fact remains, regardless of a star-gazing magazine writer's speculations, that Palin made a choice. If she wanted to govern, she'd have stayed on as governor. Instead, she left office and spent two-plus years mulling a presidential run on live TV, raking in millions of dollars winking into cameras, "refudiating" the "lamestream media"'s "gotcha journalism" tactics and doing whatever was necessary to continue fueling the ignorant passions of right-wing radicalism with talk-radio rhetoric about our socialist president's "downright evil" policies.

As a result, she's rich, famous and just as unqualified and unpopular as she was in 2008.

There is and has always been only one reason Palin has teased the nation by repeatedly reminding the media of the possibility that she might enter the presidential race, and it has nothing to do with her ideas about America, her eligibility, or her odds.

In his crystal ball search of an alternate reality, Green attempts to validate his investigation into a hypothetically less pock-marked Palin legacy by asking, "What if history had written a different ending?"

It's a rhetorical question, of course. We can't travel back in time and change the course of history. But even if we could – even if McCain hadn't been so desperate that he chose to "shock the world with his vice-presidential pick" in order to have a chance at taking first in the 2008 presidential race; even had Palin never made the humiliating descent into the lower 48 – I doubt American politics would look any different today.

The decomposition of Palin's political career wasn't the sole catalyst for the Tea Party's conception, which is to say that in her absence we wouldn't be suffering a shortage of partisan windbags who earn a living beating the ideological drum of revolution. Rest assured, when Palin finally announces that she won't run – and confirms for us all that she's nothing more than a publicity whore who spent two and a half years dipping her toe into the pond of a potential presidential run only for the cash – someone else will be there to pick up the slack in the provocative political soap opera of populist paranoia. 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Ryan's out, Thompson's in for the Wisconsin Senate race

By Richard K. Barry

Last week Herb Kohl (D-WI) announced that he would not seek re-election for his Senate seat, which has probably put it in the toss-up column, and I wrote about some of the people who might be looking to take a run at the thing. Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan said that he would give it some thought and, after having done so, has decided that he will stay put.

In a statement, Ryan said the following:

I believe continuing to serve as Chairman of the House Budget Committee allows me to have a greater impact in averting this debt-fueled economic crisis than if I were to run for the United States Senate. House Republicans have taken bold steps forward in tackling our fiscal and economic challenges - we have led where others have not. I want to keep building on this progress.

Okay, so he believes he can have a greater impact in the House Budget Committee. Whatever. I speculated last week that having Ryan run for the Senate given how toxic his Medicare destroying budget plan is turning out to be would give this divisive issue even more profile -- as if it needed it.

Enter Tommy Thompson, former Republican Governor of Wisconsin and Health and Human Services Secretary, who has now indicated that he is going to run for the seat now that Ryan has taken himself out of it. Problem is that Thompson is something of a moderate, particularly on the issue of Medicare. So, even without Ryan, the Wisconsin Senate race is still going to help keep the issue top of mind.

As Jonathan Chait notes, Thompson not only supports a plan that might have similarities to the Affordable Care Act, as other Republicans have done, he has specifically endorsed Obama's plan itself.

In 2009, along with Richard Gephardt, fellow Board member of America's Agenda: Health Care for All, Thompson wrote:

The health-care bill in the Senate represents another milestone in achieving meaningful health-care reform for millions of Americans. It is now critical that members of Congress work together in a bi-partisan fashion to pass a common-sense, fiscally responsible solution to drive down health-care costs, ensure access to affordable and quality care, achieve efficiency and achieve real savings.

And if that isn't specific enough, Thompson wrote at The Huffington Post in April, noting his opposition to Paul Ryan's Medicare plan, that:

Simply cutting Medicare isn't the answer by any means. Instead, let's focus on the most effective fiscal path forward with the least amount of impact on millions of seniors, their families and our broader economy. In other words, reform Medicare don't cut it.

As Chait states, "The question is whether Republicans want to take the trade-off of winning a Senate seat in return for accepting a high-profile defector from the Obama-care jihad. My guess is they won't."

My guess is that Chait is right, which can only mean a high-profile Tea Party-backed campaign to beat Thompson in a nomination fight -- a fight that will again keep the Ryan plan to cut Medicare front and center.

I still cannot believe that the Republican leadership in Washington didn't fully understand the electoral implications of Ryan's plan to eviscerate Medicare. Are they really that clueless?

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)