Governor Sanford *should* resign

Generally speaking, I wouldn't say infidelity necessitates an elected official's resignation (unless they support DOMA or something like that), but the AP reports that the governor spent nearly $40,000 on air travel for five flights to Brazil, sitting in first/business class while he aides sat in coach. And that is grounds for resignation.

"The Jews and Their Lies."

Holy shit. I had no idea Michael Steele and the RNC could be so stupid as to create The Obama Card, a game that allows players to use their Obama credit card to purchase "Anti-semitic, anti-Latino, and overtly pornographic literature - with pictures to boot" (AMERICAblog). Apparently this material helps the public understand just how Obama's spending is destroying our country.

Using a search engine modeled after Amazon's, 'players' search for keywords relating to items they wish to purchase. A search for Jews brings up a set of thumbnail images including, you guessed it, "The Jews and Their Lies." One can also, with proper searching (as done by AMERICAblog), find items like "Sex Secrets of Escorts" and "Porn: Have Anal Sex and Call Her Best Friend for a Threesome". Seriously.

Also hilarious is the fact that certain words are banned: one must use homosexual instead of gay, and the word vagina is banned.

Check out the AMERICAblog post to see screenshots of some of the searches (for some reason Blogger won't let me upload these images).

Jeb Bush will never be president

You almost have to feel sorry for the guy; he is, after all the less incompetent of the two famous Bush brothers, but the name has tarnished his political aspirations forever.

Well, now none of that matters. To be a Republican President you have to be a Republican nominee for president, meaning you have to win a Republican primary.

And if you say it's time to leave Reagan behind, you will never win a Republican primary.

In life, there are no coincidences

OK, so that's a really stupid title. But it's pretty interesting that the same week that the Dems secure their filibuster proof majority (almost - damn you, Coleman!), we have the announcement that Justice Souter is going to retire. So, on to the biggest story that isn't a story, as six months from now the Court will be exactly the same, just younger and woman-ier.

Politically, this is bad news for the Democrats. As laughably horrible as the Republicans were politically in last year's presidential campaign, the Democrats have gotten to just sit back and laugh as they top themselves in the incompetence department this year. As trite as the saying is, the Republicans are a party divided.

But if there's one issue that can unite (some) people under any circumstances, it's nominating people to the Supreme Court - namely, whether or not they are baby-killers.

This is likely to cause some unity amongst Republicans and is good for them in the short term (by short term, I mean possibly long enough to give them a boost in the 2010 elections). Unfortunately for them - and I can't believe I'm saying this - reigniting the culture war is not a good long-term strategy for them, at least until the economy warms up. (Morality is an issue best left for times of peace and prosperity - are no Republicans getting this memo?) And even then - they've got to be careful - (wow, I went to 538 to find an archived article, but it turns out there's Breaking News!) people are starting to get behind gay marriage (please, no jokes). And that's going to be hard to leave out of a culture war, but including it will only move their party farther to the fringes.

OK, I've been meaning to do a separate post on this for a while, but I'll never get to it, so here we go. Long story short, Newt Gingrich is talking about the possibility of trying to create a moderately conservative third party that would move in the Republicans' space (from the left). I can't believe I'm saying this, but Newt Gingrich and Meghan McCain are the best two political strategists on the entire right of American politics right now (they have the best ideas, anyway).

And I have to say - it makes me sad. I would really like to see a stronger Republican party, because one-party rule is never good, no matter who the party is. But I'd like to see a sensible Republican party as well. I guess I'll have to keep waiting ...

WTF moment of the day: Specter switching parties

Update: Sorry about the size of the original picture.


The Huffington Post reports that Sen. Arlen Specter (R.- Pennsylvania) will switch parties and compete in the Deomcratic primary during the 2010 election cycle. Specter said,

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

They just don't get it.

Apparently sarcasm and satire are too indirect and subtle to be understood by those who live in a strict black vs. white, good vs. evil, dichotomous world. Research has now shown, "[...] individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements."

In other words, conservatives don't get the joke.

Socialists are running the country!

Representative Spencer Bachus (R- Alabama) is saving America. Bachus has been working on a secret(!) list of the socialists in the House of Representatives, and he has come up with 17 names! Hmmm...somehow this seems so familiar. Ah, yes, this is the second coming of the (crazy) right-winger Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the (in)famous House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA)! [note: McCarthy was in the Senate and thus was not involved with the HCUA.] Let's hope Bachus is a little less successful than McCarthy and the HCUA.

Prescience bites us in the ass yet again.

"There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other."
-John Adams (1790)

In other news, I highly recommend the book John Adams by David McCullough.

Variations on the theme "Limbaugh Hurts the Nation"

I haven't been posting so much so here's one in the old vain.

To say that what Rush Limbaugh has been doing recently is hurting the country is a rather timeless statement. You could have said it in the early 90's (when Limbaugh was still on the junk and in his prime!), or yesterday, or any time in between.

But now it's a little different. As you probably know, Rush and RNC Chair Michael Steele have had a bit of a skirmish (I love that word) in the media recently, and as a result, Steele is just the latest on a long list of Republicans who have had to apologize to Rush (as Jon Stewart put it, the apology is for "determining that Rush's language is incindiary and ugly," also known as "being familiar with Rush's show").

But this isn't good for anyone. It's certainly not good for Republicans. Cliché as it may be, the Republicans as a party are suffering an identity crisis. They clearly need to move to the center, but most of their centrist Congressman were unseated in November. Add Rush to the mix, and you see the party is clearly on track to lose even more seats in 2010 (you might be able to argue that it's too late to turn this fate around) and is severly hurting their chances for a comeback in 2012, with the White House virtually guaranteed for Obama.**

(Update: I want to clarify: if they keep doing what they're doing, they virtually guarantee the White House for Obama. I am making no prediction about the 2012 presidential race.)

None of this should be particularly suprising, but I would like to argue that this is bad for the nation. The reason is that Democrats are already riding a pretty powerful wave of power that, as I said, will probably only strengthen through 2010. So with our foreign affairs in crisis mode and our economy an order of magnitude worse than that, we've already basically guaranteed that Democrats will retain the White House and both house of Congress through the 2012 elections, meaning Republicans won't have a chance until 2014.

And look: if you have any doubts about how much power the Democrats have right now, just imagine what you'd think and how you'd feel if a newly elected Republican Congress was passing legislation of John McCain's that was of the same magnitude - but a very different direction - than what Obama and the Democrats are doing. And then it becomes clear that, in times like these, weakening the standing of the opposition party is just bad for America.

But then again, Rush has been a specialist in "Bad for America" for quite some time.

Two Thoughts on the Economy

1. For reasons unknown, I have begun to read Rush Limbaugh's stimulus proposal. I haven't gotten far, but in the beginning he sets up a sharp contrast between the "Keynesian" (i.e., Democratic) solution of funding "shovel-ready" projects and the "supply-side" (Republican) solution of tax cuts.

My knowledge of economics puts me in a better place to discuss the Republicans' proposal than the Democrats'. Tax cuts will stimulate the economy to some degree - the more progressive the tax cut, the more short-term relief is brought about. This is because poor people spend the highest percentage of their income, while wealthier people tend to save/invest it. So tax cuts to middle- and upper- class folks will largely be saved, or used to pay down individuals' debts.

So my question is - assuming (and I think I can do so safely) that the average American currently has ballooning debt, is it possible that the tax cut route might actually be better, in that private debts (mortgages, credit cards) could represent a coming crisis that needs to be averted now? Just a thought.

(And I should add, it's entirely possibly that such a proposal wouldn't actually result in Americans making a net payment on their debt, or at least the right Americans paying down the right debts.)

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2. This second thought it much more political than economic, but it's something to watch for: the Republicans need to carve out a voice ASAP if they want a shot at the 2010 elections. So they're going to have to find ways to oppose the Democrats. Thus far, they haven't had a lot of luck.

But with the economy being the number one issue, here's an argument you're going to hear more and more as election day comes ...

Let's say you're God. Let's say unemployment is currently 8%. Let's say without action, it will be 14%, with the Republicans' stimulus it will be 12%, and with Obama's stimulus it will be 10%.

So the Democrats say, "Wow, look at that, we saved a whole lot of jobs!"
So the Republicans say, "Wow, look at that, they didn't create any jobs. In fact, they lost jobs!"

I guess it would have been a whole lot easier for me to say "There's going to be an upcoming argument about jobs saved vs. jobs created." Oh well, you get the point.

One More Reason the Republicans Need to Shift to the Center

Demographic trends are really not in their favor.

How not to bring back the Republican Party

I really wanted a different headline, but it wouldn't fit.

So Chip Saltsman recently distributed a CD to other Republicans with a song parody that is pretty hard not to describe as "racist."  Now look - this is clearly stupid and idiotic, but you never know.  Maybe it was just a joke.  Maybe Chip's new to politics, or doesn't really get involved in the political side of things that often.

In fact, as you probably know, this isn't the case at all.  Saltsman is a candidate to become chairman of the RNC - essentially, a position where one's knowledge of how to handle political situtations is all that matters.  More amazing, though, is the fact that this issue has become something on which (some) Republicans are actually rallying around him!

I don't understand!  Your party just got demolished in an election, and your response is gonna be, "Yeah, I know he didn't realize that race is a sensitive issue in this country, but I still think he's got enough of a pulse on the people to be our party's chief political strategist."  Seriously?!

I don't care what your party stands for or what you think the country stands for - if you don't try to claim the center/moderate ground you're merely endangering yourself as a party.

News Flash: Elections 2010 and 2012 possibly still too close to call

Continuing my series on "Hey, the Republicans aren't going to lose forever," I present this WSJ article about the last time the Democrats won over 360 EVs, 58 Senate seats, and 257 House seats.

Two years afterward the Republicans took the Congress for the first time in 50 years.

What is the Republican Party to do? (Part 47)

If you remember my superboring lecture way back in the day, I compared the left-right spectrum of politics to ice cream stands along a beach.

Looking at the senate, let's start from the left. First off, there's a lot of Democrats. Secondly, there's quite a spectrum of them. There's your Schumers and Kennedys, sure, but there are also Landrieus and Byrds. So let's imagine that the Democrats start at the far left (say point 0) and extend halfway over (point 50).

The Republicans? Well, there's not very many, as you know, and you may also know that the Republican senators who lost were pretty moderate. The ones left are much more often the DeMints and the Chamblisses of the world. So if you start at the far right (point 100) and extend left, you'd probably only go, say, 30 points over (to point 70).

This leaves a 20-pt gap (again, everything is obviously quite arbitrary) from points 50-70 that is up for grabs. I'm not sure if I've presented this in a manner that makes any sense, but if so, you'll see that the Republicans have the option of moving to the right (and into obscurity) or taking up some of that middle, at least for now. If they don't move at least in the short run, there's gonna be a long night in store for them in November 2010.

10 Republicans Who Should Go

I really enjoyed this list of "10 Republicans who should go away."

My personal favorite on the list was Dick Cheney, whose writeup included, "Cheney has always remained largely behind the scenes due to a distinct lack of personality and aura of extreme evil, but wields his influence expertly with his nuanced understanding of the dark arts of politics. Cheney is the epitome of a political hack, a gutless grey blob of a man with a record of detached violence and personal greed."