Month: December 2010

Jonathan Bernstein responds in detail.

Drum agonizes:

During the lame duck session, a continuing public dedication to bipartisanship might make sense because there may still be a few bills that he can pass with just a few Republican votes. And it's easier to get those votes if he's not out in the Rose Garden every day telling the world that Republicans are all obstructionist assholes.

But — starting next year that won't be true anymore.

Republicans will control the House, and in the Senate it will take a significant chunk of the GOP caucus to get anything passed. Sweet talking Olympia Snowe will no longer even arguably be a viable strategy. Obama's only hope is to draw dramatic contrasts with Republican orthodoxy, call them out relentlessly on their obstructionism and corporate obeisance, and try to rally public opinion to his side. It might not work, but there's no better alternative.

My view is that this will only work if Obama outflanks the GOP on long-term debt-reduction. He needs to make it the signature reform of his last two years just as health insurance reform was the lodestar of his first two. And they are bookends – united by being tough, difficult questions which need addressing now by a president who can use his bully pulpit to insist on long-term debt reduction in the next two years. When he has more concrete plans for this than the GOP, the tea party heads will explode.

Ed Rollins, who worked in the Reagan administration, isn't a fan of the former half-term governor from Alaska:

Ms. Palin, serious stuff needs to be accomplished in Washington.

If you want to be a player, go to school and learn the issues. Put smart people around you and listen to them. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious. You’ve already got your own forum. If you want to be a serious presidential candidate, get to work. If you want to be an imitator of Ronald Reagan, go learn something about him and respect his legacy.

If you want to be a gadfly, just keep doing what you’re doing.

"People Hate Kim Kardashian's Tweets More Than AIDS," – Max Read, Gawker.

Kos smells blood. Between Pawlenty's clemency for an incestuous sex offender and Huckabee's pardon of a cop-killer and Romney's pioneering of Obamacare on a state level, you begin to see why Palin is still such a strong contender. They are all halibut awaiting their stoning.

Dale Carpenter reads Illinois’ new civil unions bill:

There are a couple of noteworthy provisions in the bill. First, the new status is available to opposite-sex spouses who choose not to marry. This makes the Illinois law different from other civil-union laws, like the ones in California, Oregon, and New Jersey, which generally make the equivalent status available only to same-sex couples on the theory that opposite-sex couples can marry. 

Which means to say it offers marriage-lite, undermining heterosexual marriage in a far more profound way than marriage equality ever would. 

So far, pretty much a wipe-out for the arguments against repeal. But losing the argument often makes McCain dig deeper in. A video summary of the highlights:

James Joyner puts the Republican field in perspective:

In December 2007, few of us thought that Barack Obama had the gravitas to be elected president.  Ditto George W. Bush in December 1999. [Much less a year earlier in both cases — the more apt comparison!]

And, as Nyhan reminds us, there were all manner of reports in late 1991 and early 1992 lampooning the “Seven Dwarfs” who were vying for the Democratic nomination and the opportunity to get trounced by the popular incumbent George H.W. Bush.  By the spring they seemed destined to nominate some boob from Arkansas who was “damaged goods” and “who lacks the trust and affection of a majority of Democrats, not to mention the independents vital for victory.”  But, as some may recall, Bill Clinton went on to not only beat Bush easily but clobber Bob Dole to win a second term.