The Dish

Michelle Cottle hopes journalists won't pull punches:

Liz Cheney is a particularly dangerous combination of sweet-as-sugar looks and savage instincts. Going at her as roughly and directly as she does her opponents could backfire. But cutting her any slack–or sitting by as media types coo, gurgle, and make patronizing goo-goo eyes at her–is a good way to wind up stuck in the undercarriage of her SUV. Those who disagree with Liz's political vision would do well to start figuring out the right blend of non-brutish ruthlessness to deal with her. Because the most disturbing thing about Dick's little girl is the overwhelming sense that she is just getting warmed up.

The MSM wouldn't get all intimidated by a mere Cheney, would they? Oh noooo.

I hear increasingly positive things about the campaign to keep marriage equality in that state (and HRC deserves praise for helping). This ad is not coy; it’s not afraid; it’s real and it’s true. Treating people as if they deserve the straight argument, not hiding behind euphemisms, not running from our reality, even if it may mean a little temporary discomfort. People respond to conviction, not equivocation, in civil rights struggles. So this is encouraging news:

Megan:

I think it is more likely is that [healthcare] passes, and fails spectacularly. There are too many moving parts, and if any of them breaks, the whole thing rapidly starts to spin out of control and eat a gigantic hole in the deficit. If it does break, I think that Democrats keep control of Congress just long enough to explain why they keep having to enact whopping new tax increases every few years. Republicans don't need to improve their message. They just have to wait for Democrats to recover their reputation as tax and spend politicians who woefully underpredict the cost of everything they propose.

Reihan:

Among Democrats and liberals, there is a belief that Republican opposition to the various Democratic proposals represents a kind of "nihilism," and that because Baucuscare resembles proposals offered by liberal and moderate Republicans in the 1990s, today's opposition is obviously unprincipled if not insane. My sense is that we've learned a great deal about health reform over the intervening period, and that, as Christensen, Grossman, and Hwang have argued, it is disruptive competition that promises substantial improvement in the cost and quality of medical services over time. I'm increasingly convinced that the only way to move in this direction is to create a system of universal catastrophic coverage and universal health savings accounts, as proposed by Martin Feldstein and a number of others. The emerging consensus among congressional Democrats moves us in a very different direction, towards a highly centralized, highly regulated system that will give entrepreneurs very little room to dramatically improve care. With that in mind, I don't think opposition is "nihlistic"; rather, I think it's responsible.

Holy crap this is cool:

Bruce Bartlett marks the release of his new book “The New American Economy: The Failure Of Reaganomics And A New Way Forward” with a must-read post. His courage in confronting “conservative” dogma is rare and inspiring. If conservatism means a practical adjustment to events, with the intention of keeping the whole show on the road as coherently as possible, Bruce is dead-on. Well, you know what I think by now. Read his book. He wants Supply Side Economics to declare victory and go home:

Many of my friends believe I have abandoned supply side economics and become a Keynesian. (Among conservatives there are few insults more damning than to be labeled a “Keynesian.”) But as I try to explain in my book, my views haven’t changed at all; it’s circumstances that have changed. I believe that my friends are still stuck in the 1970s when tax rates were considerably higher and excessive demand (i.e., inflation) was our biggest economic problem. Today, tax rates are much lower and a lack of demand (i.e., deflation) is the central problem. I really don’t understand why conservatives insist on a one-size-fits-all economic policy consisting of more and bigger tax cuts no matter what the economic circumstances are; it’s simply become dogma totally disconnected from reality.

Nor do I understand the conservative antipathy for Keynes, who was in fact deeply conservative. He developed his theories primarily for the purpose of saving capitalism from some form of socialism. Same goes for Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose biggest economic mistake, I believe, was not that he ran big budget deficits, as all conservatives believe, but that he didn’t run deficits nearly large enough until the war forced his hand. (I discuss these points in columns here and here.)

Read the whole thing.

Playing one of the Washington's current parlour games, Massie explains why the general shouldn't run for president in 2012:

A 2012 campaign seems exceedingly improbable. For that to happen, Afghanistan would a) have to become a disaster, b) Petraeus would have to resign, blaming Barack Obama for failing in his duty and c) the public would have to back the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs rather than the President…I suspect many senior officers at the Pentagon would be horrified if this were to happen. It would politicise the military and place enormous strains upon the chain of command, not just now but in the future too, driving a wedge between the military and the civilian population. Even Douglas MacArthur realised he couldn't credibly run for the Presidency.

I'm against hate crime laws – every single one of them. I also understand and respect the argument for them, even as I strongly disagree. But what you cannot coherently hold is that there should be hate crime protections for people of faith and no hate crime protections for gays. Even if you believe, erroneously, that homoesxuality is a choice, so, obviously, is religion. The GOP's current position – against hate crime laws only when they apply to gays (even with strong guarantees of freedom of speech and religion) – is pure animus. It's bigotry – and it's coming from the very top.

In honor of Truman and Eddy, a rottweiler and a beagle puppy … play:

Rod Dreher writes:

I can't say that I'm all that surprised over Democratic foot-dragging on gay rights. The Republicans did the same thing when they held all the power in Washington. Back when they held the Senate and the White House, it was the best chance they'd ever have to pass out of the Senate and to the states an amendment to constitutionally define marriage as one man and one woman. The GOP pretty much ran on this in 2004, but when they had their best, and probably last (given the demographic shift in the pipeline) chance to protect traditional marriage in the Constitution, they balked. The president, an Evangelical Christian and social conservative, only gave it half-hearted support, and the Federal Marriage Amendment died in the Senate. The Republican Senate. And now Democrats who care about this issue are discovering what their Republican counterparts on the other side found out: that deep down, neither party establishment wants to deal with this thing. It involves forcing them to make choices they'd rather not make.

I fear he's correct; but this is not necessarily a dreadful thing. Issues like civil rights are not easily translated into swift federal action. They take shape and form in the realm of ideas first, then in culture and society. Soon, they percolate in the courts and popular initiatives, to be played by principle-free opportunists like Rove, and only in the end, make it into federal law. The Democrats, for their part, do not just remember 1993; they remember Johnson. Both analogies are anachronistic. But the fear endures.

Which is why it is so vital to counter that fear with clarity and hope.

Inverness, California, 6 pm