Limbo

Clinton’s Bet for 2012

2012-01-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

This chunk of an interview with former President Bill Clinton comes from the February 2012 edition of Esquire magazine. The interviewers are Charles P. Pierce and Mark Warren.

ESQUIRE: Who do you think the next president will be?

CLINTON: I think Barack Obama will be the next president. I think he will win. Because I think that whatever feelings the American people have about their own conditions and however much they may wish he had moved more quickly, I think that they will conclude that it takes a long time to get out of the kind of economic distress we were in and that his direction and policies are more likely to move us out of that than if they give the White House and the Congress to a party that will give them more of what they just had.

I think that the rapid decrease in popularity of the Republican governors in places like Florida and Ohio and Wisconsin will help him.

It shows you how inexact the voting process is, and how people vote for candidates based on some fleeting rhetorical impression or their sense of the connection between that election and their own circumstances, rather than listening to what candidates actually say they intend to do. Because every one of those governors is just doing what they said they were gonna do.

But I think that the president will win. He’ll be able to talk about the difference in the auto industry between when he took office and the way it is now. I think he’ll be able to talk about much more progress in certain sectors of the economy, and he’s going to have a very strong national-security record to run on, so he won’t be vulnerable there. In fact, the Republican may be more vulnerable than he is there. So even though the conditions of the country are difficult, I expect him to win. And I also think, based on what happened in 2008, that once he gets an opponent in the general election, I think except for Fox and the conservative outlets, the media will tilt back toward him. The coverage won’t be as anodyne and evenhanded as it has been.

You’ll find the complete Esquire exchange here.

Just Some of Obama’s Accomplishments

2012-01-26T13:47:00.001-08:00

Click on the image for an enlargement.

(Courtesy of the Americans Against the Tea Party Facebook page.)

READ MORE: “Obama Heaps Mockery on Romney’s ‘Envy’ Charge,” by Greg Sargent (The Washington Post).

Same-Sex Marriage Votes Coming Together

2012-01-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

With Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire’s recent backing, it looks as if Washington might soon take the important step of legalizing same-sex marriage. As the Associated Press reports:

As lawmakers held their first public hearing on legalizing same-sex marriage, a previously undecided Democratic senator on Monday announced her support for the measure, all but ensuring that Washington will become the seventh state to allow gay and lesbian couples to get married.

The announcement by Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, that she would cast the 25th and deciding vote in favor of the issue came as hundreds of people filled the Capitol [in Olympia] to advocate for and against gay marriage. ...

The state House is widely expected to have enough support to pass gay marriage, and Gov. Chris Gregoire publicly endorsed the proposal earlier this month. If a marriage bill is passed during this legislative session, gay and lesbian couples will be able to get married starting in June unless opponents file a referendum to challenge it. Opponents have already said they will.

The Political Carnival notes that “Gay marriage foes [attending the hearing] wore buttons that said ‘Marriage. One Man. One Woman.’” The blog goes on to quip: “The buttons should have added, ‘… at a time.’ See: Gingrich, Newton Leroy.”

So Much for Romney’s Iowa Win

2012-01-19T18:08:00.000-08:00

Well, as it turns out, former Senator Rick Santorum may have beaten Mitt Romney in Iowa’s Republican presidential causes vote, after all--but we will never be 100 percent confident of those results. As The Des Moines Register reports,

There are too many holes in the certified totals from the Iowa caucuses to know for certain who won, but Rick Santorum wound up with a 34-vote advantage.

Results from eight precincts are missing--any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney--and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday.

GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts, although not all the changes affected the two leaders. Changes in one precinct alone shifted the vote by 50--a margin greater than the certified tally.

The certified numbers: 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney. The turnout: 121,503.

“How, exactly, does Iowa maintain a system in which results from eight precincts simply vanish?,” wonders Steve Benen of Washington Monthly. “I don’t know, but I hope folks will keep this in mind the next time state officials insist they’ve earned the right to go first until the end of time.”

READ MORE: “Oh, by the Way, Mitt Probably Lost Iowa,” by Steve Kornacki (Salon); “He-Said He-Said: Santorum and Romney Camps Trade Barbs Over Iowa ‘Concession’ Call,” by Eric Kleefeld (TPM); “R. Money: Can Romney Overcome His Wealth and Connect with Middle-class Americans?,” by John Dickerson (Slate).

I Consider This Very Sad News

2012-01-19T08:10:00.001-08:00

The headline really tells it all: “Photography Pioneer Kodak Files for Bankruptcy.” But here’s more from the Reuters report:

Eastman Kodak Co., the photography icon that invented the hand-held camera and helped bring the world the first pictures from the moon, has filed for bankruptcy protection, capping a prolonged plunge for one of America's best-known companies.

The Chapter 11 filing may give Kodak, which traces its roots to 1880, the ability to find buyers for some of its 1,100 digital patents, a major portion of its value.

It may also help Kodak continue to shrink a business that still employs 17,000 people, down from 63,900 just nine years ago.

I grew up on all things Kodak. My first camera was made by Kodak. It’s hard to imagine that company disappearing.

READ MORE: “So Long, Kodak. And Thanks for All the Pics,” by Dave Knadler (Dave’s Fiction Warehouse).

Not Exactly a “Man of the People”

2012-01-18T17:34:00.000-08:00

From The American Prospect:

Mitt Romney’s off-hand revelations about his low tax rate and high speaker fees, combined with his growing list of Clueless Things Only a One-Percenter Could Say, raise a fundamental question: Is it possible for an elitist Republican to win a presidential election? Starting in the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon adapted George Wallace’s right-wing populism to Republican purposes, the GOP has won national elections by appealing to blue-collar and middle-class whites as the rhetorical champions of anti-elitism. From Nixon’s dog whistles about “crime” and “forced busing” to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens to George W. Bush’s fake ranch and regular-guy patter, the party of the rich has won the White House by posing as exactly the opposite—the natural home of good ol’ boys and gals. Only one Republican nominee has conveyed a sniffy air of privilege--George Bush I, who beat a hapless Democratic technocrat in 1988 only to be crushed by the one-two punch of plain-speaking Ross Perot and “Putting People First” Bill Clinton the next time around. No wonder Romney’s campaign is giving Maureen Dowd, along with many a worried Republican, “acid flashbacks to Poppy Bush.”

READ MORE: “Romney Parks Millions in Offshore Investments” (Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire); “Confirmed: More on Romney and His Offshoring,” by Greg Sargeant (The Washington Post).

Snow Day!

2012-01-18T10:55:00.000-08:00

We don’t see much of the winter white stuff anymore, here in Seattle. So every time the snow falls, Seattleites want to go out and walk around a bit, just to be reminded of what it was like in their childhoods, when they made snowmen and sledded and clutched steaming cups of hot chocolate just to warm their fingers.

Weather forecasters predict the snow we received here overnight might last only a day or two, before rains wash it away. Therefore, I had to step outside myself this morning and snap off a few photographs, like the one above.

Too bad this snowfall didn’t happen three weeks ago, in time for Christmas. But better late than never.

“When Mitt Romney Came to Town”

2012-01-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

The much-anticipated 30-minute film attacking Mitt Romney as a “corporate raider” and sponsored by a Newt Gingrich-aligned Super PAC can now be seen online.

FOLLOW-UP: Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) is now backing Romney on the campaign trail, and trying to help blunt attacks on the candidate’s history as a businessman who made millions of dollars off closing companies and firing workers. So he’d probably prefer that you forget the “three separate instances” in which McCain--then fighting for the Republican presidential nomination himself--“went after Romney on his record at Bain [Capital] in 2008.” Read more here.

READ MORE: “‘King of Bain’: 6 Questions Answered About Anti-Mitt Romney Attack Ads,” by Gloria Goodale (Christian Science Monitor); “GOP Frets Gingrich’s Attacks Will Damage Romney in November General Election,” by Justin Sink (The Hill); “Why Romney Might Lose” (Taegan Goodard’s Political Wire); “Can Mitt Feel Pain?,” by Bob Moser (The American Prospect); “GOP Nomination Process 2012 … Via 2008 … Via 2004,” by Justin Gardner (Donklephant); “Haven’t We Lived Through This Before?,” by David Weigel (Slate).

I Remember, Too

2012-01-10T18:57:00.001-08:00

As Mitt Romney celebrates his winning the New Hampshire primary election tonight, despite being unable to crack 40 percent approval (not a very impressive result from his five years of campaigning for the presidency), he and every other Republican running for national office this year should know one thing: I will not be voting for you, because I remember who got this fine country into the mess it is in today--Republicans.

On November 2, 2012, I’ll be casting my vote to re-elect Democratic President Barack Obama.

READ MORE: “Four More Years?,” by Jim Winter (Edged in Blue).

Something to Sink Your Teeth Into

2012-01-10T11:26:00.001-08:00

If you haven’t been keeping up with It Couldn’t Happen Here ..., a short-run blog devoted to the 1970s TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, then you’ve definitely been missing out on some fun stuff. Yesterday’s focus was on the UFOs-oriented episode, “They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be ...” (see here and here), while today’s posts look at Episode No. 4, “The Vampire” (written by David Chase!), which inevitably alludes back to the 1972 Movie of the Week that started the whole Kolchak craze, The Night Stalker.

It Couldn’t Happen Here ... promises to follow all 20 Kolchak episodes, one every weekday. Which should take us at least through the month of January.

Programming Note

2012-01-08T16:05:00.001-08:00

Tonight looks very promising for American TV viewers. The sophomore season of that popular British historical drama, Downton Abbey, will debut at 9 p.m. ET/PT under PBS’ Masterpiece Classic umbrella. And ABC-TV’s underappreciated series, Pan Am, returns at 10 p.m. for the first of at least three new episodes. Since these shows are going to overlap, may I recommend that you record one and watch the other?

Good for Gregoire

2012-01-04T14:46:00.000-08:00

Washington Governor Christine Gregoire took an important step toward marriage equality, Reuters points out,

announc[ing] her support for gay marriage legislation on Wednesday, potentially putting the state on track to become the nation’s seventh to fully recognize same-sex unions.

Democrat Gregoire, in the final year of her second term, is backing legislation to be introduced before the Washington state legislature, which reconvenes next week.

“It is time in Washington state for marriage equality,” said Gregoire at a media conference in the state capital of Olympia. “It is time, it's the right thing to do.”

Six U.S. states currently allow same-sex marriage: New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa. Gay marriage is also legal in the District of Columbia.

The Seattle Times has more on Gregoire’s decision.

Post-mortem: The Iowa Caucuses

2012-01-04T11:59:00.001-08:00

When all of the ballots were finally tallied from last night’s Iowa Republican caucuses, former Massachusetts Governor Willard Mitt Romney came out on top--but by only eight votes. As Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen observes this morning, Romney beat Rick Santorum “30,015 to 30,007--a difference of about one-tenth of one percent--in the closest Iowa caucus ever.”

While Santorum and Romney were jockeying for first place in the Hawkeye State, Jason Easley of PoliticusUSA wrote:

The winner of tonight’s Iowa GOP caucuses is destined to beat Bob Dole’s record for the lowest amount of support for a winning candidate ever.

No matter who wins Iowa one thing will be perfectly clear: Republican primary voters have never been more unhappy with their options than they are in 2012. All through 2011, the media was trumpeting the enthusiasm among Republicans for the 2012 election. If Republican enthusiasm ever did exist, it has almost certainly been killed by the group of candidates who are battling for their party’s nomination.

The winner of tonight’s Iowa Republican caucuses will finish with 25% of the vote, which will set an Iowa Republican record for the least amount of support for a winning candidate. The previous record holder was Bob Dole in 1996 who won Iowa with 26% of the vote, and we all know what happened to Dole the following November.

Benen offers some more perspective:

Yes, the votes were tallied and the former one-term governor gets the bragging rights, but therein lies the point: there’s not much for Romney to boast about here. After five years of near-constant campaigning, Romney managed to get fewer votes in Iowa last night than he did in his first campaign. He also picked up the dubious honor of the weakest win in the history of the caucuses--no victor has ever managed to finish first with less than 25% of the vote until last night.

After spending nearly $4.7 million, most of it towards the very end of the contest, these are not results Romney should be proud of.

Santorum, meanwhile, comes out of the Hawkeye State with a long-sought title: the anti-Romney. Whereas Romney’s trajectory is underwhelming and reinforces doubts about his limited appeal, the former Pennsylvania senator closed stronger than anyone thought possible, and leaves Iowa with undeniable momentum, and a compelling pitch to GOP voters who don’t want to vote for a dishonest flip-flopper who only discovered his right-wing beliefs when pollsters told him it would advance his ambitions.

I don’t think many people believe that Santorum can go the distance on this one, actually capturing the Republican presidential nomination this year. Ed Kilgore spells out Santorum’s dilemma:

Santorum is theoretically someone who could inherit the strong anti-Romney vote in the GOP. But he's not very well-equipped to do so. Having spent virtually all his time in Iowa, he has no organization elsewhere, and whatever money he can raise on the basis of winning, placing or showing in that state will be dwarfed by Romney's resources. And despite his apparent victory in the “true conservative” subprimary, he has little natural appeal in the southern states where any challenge to Romney must emerge and thrive. For all his success with Iowa evangelicals, he's a Catholic, with none of the One-of-Us pull in South Carolina and Florida that 2008 Iowa winner Mike Huckabee had. And as recent diatribes by RedState proprietor and southern conservative opinion-leader Erick Erickson showed, Santorum’s record as a longtime congressional insider and supporter of “Big Government Conservatism” is going to be a real problem for him when the campaign goes South.

Yet the former Pennsylvania senator can certainly play spoiler. Noah Schrieber has a good analysis of this in The New Republic:

Now, the press will dwell on Romney’s vulnerability. We’ll point out that, despite his best efforts, three-quarters of the Republican primary electorate still won’t give him the time of day. Though he’ll almost certainly still win New Hampshire, the margin will be smaller than it otherwise would have been, perhaps much smaller. Santorum may well come out of New Hampshire with more momentum than Romney, since the bar there is so low for him, and since the boost he gets going in will be much bigger after fighting Romney to a draw in Iowa. That creates real danger for Romney as the two men head into South Carolina, a state where social conservatives predominate and Mormons struggle.

Can Santorum ultimately deny Romney the nomination? Probably not. As many others have pointed out, he just doesn’t have the resources and organization to go stride-for-stride with Romney over the long-haul. He also has a record of outlandish rhetoric and K-Street sleaze that will surely be picked over in the coming weeks. But even if Santorum can’t stop Romney from becoming the Republican nominee, he can probably stop him from becoming president. He can do this by prolonging the primary contest by a month or two and deepening the ambivalence toward Romney within the GOP. In the coming weeks, Republican voters will be hearing a lot more about Romney’s intellectual paternity of “Obamacare” and his serial flip-flopping on social issues.

Improbably, Santorum’s secret weapon in this effort will be Newt Gingrich. Newt made his contempt for Romney glaringly obvious in his concession speech last night, suggesting that bloodying the former Massachusetts governor more than suffices as his rationale for staying in the race. Now Gingrich gives Santorum the great luxury of Romney hit man for which Santorum can’t be held responsible. (It goes to show that if you’re going to shoot at an unserious candidate, as Romney shot at Newt in Iowa, you’d better kill him.)

For Santorum, the question is whether he’s savvy enough to capitalize on his post-Iowa opportunities. Can he stay sunny and positive while Newt (and, in New Hampshire, Jon Huntsman) rough Romney up? Or will he have a fall into the shrillness that sometimes gets the better of him, as when he criticized Romney on health care during last year’s debates? Will he be able to appeal to blue-collar Catholics in New Hampshire who might be just as concerned about the loss of manufacturing jobs as they are about abortion? Can he fuse together Tea Partiers and social conservatives?

Today’s announcement by the congenitally absurd Minnesota congresswoman, Michelle Bachmann, that she’s “suspending” her presidential campaign after a last-place finish in Iowa will probably play to Santorum’s advantage; her radical-right, evangelical backers aren’t likely to jump on Mormon Romney’s bandwagon. It would have been even better for Santorum had Texas Governor Rick Perry--who’s done nothing to distinguish himself (at least in a positive way) on the campaign trail--had followed Bachmann out the door; Romney benefits from having more, not fewer, rivals to divide the majority vote against him within his own party. However, Perry says he’ll remain in the race, despite finishing in fifth place last nigh. Don’t expect him to stick around for long, though; Perry’s once seemingly strong momentum (remember how he was supposed to be the GOP’s winning anti-Romney contender?) has been blunted, and he’s likely to bail if he can’t win big support in the South Carolina GOP primary on January 21. Meanwhile, Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas)--who captured third place in Iowa--boasts a pretty well-organized and lean campaign structure, and seems capable of bedeviling Romney to the last. Oh, and Gingrich? Well, the disgraced former House Speaker may become Romney’s worst nightmare, as he travels about his home region, the South, trash-talking Mr. Flip-flop at every turn.

Romney had hoped to secure the GOP presidential nomination early, with decisive primary and caucus wins. It looks now as if his candidacy will be severely crippled in advance of August’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

That’s good news for President Obama, who has no challengers going into early September’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. And, dare I say, it’s good news for the future of the United States as well.

READ MORE: “Last Warning for the GOP,” by Dalitso Njolinjo (The Moderate Voice); “Santorum’s Demi-Victory Hangs the 2012 For-Sale Sign,” by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire); “Iowa Results Show Romney’s Weakness Even Against GOP ‘Unelectables,’” by Paul Begala (The Daily Beast); “Gingrich Floats Idea of Anti-Romney Alliance” (Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire).

Even Santorum Can Best Romney?

2012-01-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

According to the Iowa GOP’s real-time caucus map (displayed above), failed former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has just beaten failed former Governor Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses in a squeaker of a race. If those results hold, Romney can expect to be pounced on by the media, beginning tomorrow, for failing to live up to his own announced expectations.

HISTORY-CHANGING UPDATE: “So Much for Romney’s Iowa Win,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Limbo).

READ MORE: “Barack Obama: Iowa Caucus’ One Big Winner,” by Howard Fineman (The Huffington Post); “What the Iowa Caucus Results Tell Us About the GOP’s Chances of Unseating Obama,” by Shaun Mullen (The Moderate Voice).

No Time for Complacency

2011-12-30T06:02:00.000-08:00

Jim Messina, the manager of President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, has released a video that explains various paths the president can take to claiming the 270 electoral college votes he’ll need to achieve an important second term win. As PoliticusUSA points out, there’s a message here beyond that of mere strategizing:

The Obama campaign is trying to guard against complacency. They saw what happened in 2010 when Democrats didn’t bother to show up. They see what is happening right now with the president’s improving poll numbers and the improving economic outlook. Most importantly, they see how weak the Republican field is.

So far the race for the Republican nomination has been such a farce that it would [be] easy for an Obama supporter to look at the GOP field and think that none of those candidates could possibly defeat Obama, but the truth is that a repeat of the 2010 election is possible if the Obama Democrats don’t come out to vote in 2012. Messina was trying to debunk the stories about Obama potentially having a billion-dollar war chest, because he knows that grassroots organization, not fundraising, is why Obama won in 2008.

“The fact that the Obama campaign released this type of video right before the year-end fundraising deadline,” writes PoliticusUSA’s Jason Easley, “indicates that they are not only trying to finish the year strong on the fundraising front, but they are concerned about complacency.” The last thing the United States needs is a flip-flopping, Big Business suck-up like Willard Mitt Romney winning the White House because Democrats weren’t attentive or active enough to ensure that Obama wins in November 2012.

The futures of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body, and abortion rights, as well as preventing a war against Iran all depend on keeping Republicans out of the White House and defeating their efforts to increase their control over Congress.

Now is definitely not the right time for American liberals and progressives to sit on the sidelines and hope that other people will make the smart decisions for us.

“African-American History Is All Around Us”

2011-12-29T17:54:00.000-08:00

Dr. Quintard Taylor Jr. is a professor of American history at the University of Washington in Seattle and the creator of BlackPast.org, “an online reference center [that] makes available a wealth of materials on African-American history.” He was interviewed this morning on Weekday, a KUOW-FM radio program hosted by Steve Scher, and I found myself not only drawn to Taylor’s discussion of his Web project, but later provoked to look up the site and see what it has accomplished thus far.

You too can listen to Scher’s interview with Taylor here. (The show begins after a bit of National Public Radio news.) And Black Past--with its sections on African-American History, African-American History in the West, and Global African History--is simply a click away here. I look forward to seeing more of what Taylor and his staff of volunteers can produce in the future.

Creature Feature

2011-12-29T15:22:00.001-08:00

Break out the porkpie hat and cassette tape recorder again, along with the garlic cloves and silver bullets, because that monster-hunting investigative reporter, Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin), is back! Online, at least.

Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri, who recently wrapped up work on their blog To the Batpoles!, an episode-by-episode recap of the 1960s ABC-TV mega-hit Batman, are readying the launch of It Couldn’t Happen Here ..., a new limited-run blog focused on ABC’s 1974-1975 cult favorite, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and the two earlier teleflicks--The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973)--that introduced Kolchak.

It Couldn’t Happen Here ... will open for business here on January 1.

Only the Best for You

2011-12-22T18:39:00.000-08:00

I’m sorry to have let Limbo go pretty quiet over the last couple of weeks, but my attention has been drawn away to writing and editing many of January Magazine’s “Best Books of 2011” reviewlets. In case you haven’t noticed yet, those compilations of favorite reads have now been posted.

I was primarily responsible, as I have been over many years now, for putting together the crime-fiction section. This year, it features 34--yes, you read that right, 34!--recommendations of books published during the last dozen months. Because there are so many books, they’ve been broken down into two separate posts, part I here and part II here.

In addition to these picks, January Magazine is offering inventories of favorite books from 2011 in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, art and culture, cookbooks, books for children, science fiction and fantasy, and biography. Details about the magazine’s annual selection process are available here. Enjoy!

The Sound of One Hand Folding

2011-12-22T17:08:00.000-08:00

Good news for President Obama and middle-class Americans, who were about to suffer a tax increase as a result of Republican intransigence. From The American Prospect:

House Republicans finally waved a white flag over the payroll tax cut extension this afternoon—but not before they’d given President Obama what The New Yorker’s John Cassidy aptly called an “early Christmas present.”

And just the one he wanted and needed: a nice big boost to his re-election prospects. The White House’s crafty handling of the Tea Party’s latest hissy fit, along with Obama’s recent turn toward a more populist economic message, has boosted his approval ratings to 49 percent and given him a seven-point edge over his closest Republican rivals, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, in one recent national poll. That’s basically the same lead he held over John McCain in the late stages of the 2008 general election. The standoff was doing so much damage to Republicans that even McCain and Gingrich and The Wall Street Journal had begun calling for House Republicans to give in--and in Gingrich’s words, “to do it calmly and pleasantly and happily.” But for the president’s purposes, of course, “grudgingly” is even better.

Steve Benen offers his own assessment, in his Washington Monthly blog, of the GOP’s sudden caving:

With nine days to go, it appears all but certain that the payroll tax break--as well as a clean extension of unemployment benefits--will be extended for two months. Between now and then, a conference committee will be tasked with working on a deal for a full-year extension.

What changed [John] Boehner’s mind? Or more accurately, what changed Boehner’s mind again? The Speaker, as recently as Saturday, wanted to pass the Senate compromise and send his caucus home for the holidays. They rebelled and the leader quickly became the follower.

By some accounts, this happened again today. House Republicans--Wisconsin’s Sean Duffy, Arkansas’ Rick Crawford, Pennsylvania’s Charlie Dent, among others--started breaking ranks after getting an earful in their local districts. GOP lawmakers who wanted to fight the Senate Braveheart-style came to the conclusion, “Maybe that Senate bill isn’t so bad after all.” When his members reversed course, the Speaker again took his cues from them, rather than the other way around.

If Boehner were a stronger, more effective House Speaker, this fiasco could have been easily avoided. He could have told his caucus this was a fight they were likely to lose, so passing the Senate bill quickly was the smart course of action. But he couldn’t--Boehner takes orders; he doesn’t give them.

It’s what helps make this story a disaster, not only for Republicans in general, but also for John Boehner personally. As he surrenders this afternoon, Boehner becomes The Speaker Who Has No Clothes.

READ MORE: “Obama Benefits from Republican Civil War,” by Eugene Robinson (The Washington Post); “Why the Republican Crack-up Is Bad for America,” by Robert Reich; “Making Obama ‘a Legitimate Tax Cutter,” by Steve Benen (The Washington Monthly); “GOP’s Payroll Tax Cut Debacle Helps Dems with Moderates” (The Democratic Strategist).

Sharp in the Unconventional Sense

2011-12-18T21:35:00.000-08:00

This is the best characterization I’ve heard yet of scandalized former U.S. House speaker, Republican presidential contender, and sometime GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich:

“[Ronald] Reagan had a certain charm and gentility. Gingrich is like what would happen if Reagan had been abandoned as a child, and raised by a family of cactuses.”

-- Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show

READ MORE: “Newt and the Revenge of the Base,” by E.J. Dionne (The Washington Post).

Blame Where Blame Is Due

2011-12-15T12:02:00.001-08:00

Given the unwillingness of Republicans to take any active role in boosting the U.S. economy over the last year, and the fact that George W. Bush left the country in the poor financial state that it’s had to endure since 2008, these findings from the latest Pew Research survey should come as no surprise:

The Republican Party is taking more of the blame than the Democrats for a do-nothing Congress. A record-high 50% say that the current Congress has accomplished less than other recent Congresses, and by nearly two-to-one (40% to 23%) more blame Republican leaders than Democratic leaders for this. By wide margins, the GOP is seen as the party that is more extreme in its positions, less willing to work with the other side to get things done, and less honest and ethical in the way it governs. And for the first time in over two years, the Democratic Party has gained the edge as the party better able to manage the federal government.

Read more about this survey here.

READ MORE: “Poll: It Isn’t Both Sides’ Fault,” by Timothy Noah
(The New Republic).

A Choice of Charlatans

2011-12-14T09:31:00.001-08:00

In an article for New York magazine’s Web site, Jonathan Chait distinguishes the two weak but nonetheless front-running Republican candidates for president this way:

Romney is the handsome swindler who plots to win your mother’s heart and make off with her fortune. Gingrich is like the husband who periodically gets drunk and runs off to spend a week with a stripper in a low-rent motel but always comes home in the end. Which one would you rather see your mother marry?

Read the whole article here.

From the Pot Calling the Kettle Black Department

2011-11-27T13:20:00.000-08:00

How ironic it is that Republican Willard Mitt Romney should have criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry for flip-flopping on issues back in 2004, when he himself has recently demonstrated a much more egregious absence of core principles. Thank goodness for video records like this.

(Hat tip to The Political Carnival.)

Context Is Everything

2011-11-22T15:49:00.000-08:00

Mitt “Flip-flop” Romney’s campaign has a new advertisement out, quoting President Barack Obama as saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” The problem is, Obama didn’t make that statement. Ever. As a White House candidate back in the fall of 2008, however, he did talk with voters about his Republican rival, John McCain, saying at one point, “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’”

In other words, Romney has attributed McCain’s words to Obama.

When confronted with this misrepresentation of facts, Romney’s people actually tried to defend their actions, telling CBS News: “He did say the words. That’s his voice.”

“This is a truly remarkable response,” writes Greg Sargent in The Washington Post. “The Romney camp is explicitly saying it’s totally fair game to take an opponent’s words out of context in a way that completely changes their meaning, simply because the actual words in question did come out of the speaker’s mouth. As many have noted today, the Romney ad’s decontextualizing of Obama’s words is so egregious that it amounts to a lie. Yet here a Romney adviser is claiming that this is fair game, because he said those words.”

Well, turnabout is fair play in the political arena. So Think Progress today unveiled a new ad of its own, using various Romney statements against the GOP presidential contender. After all, “He did say the words. That’s his voice.” Click on the video below:

Think Progress’ comeback to Flip-flop Mitt’s acknowledged deception is comical. But it’s sad that Romney has already resorted to such crap. It ought to make voters think: If you can’t even trust Mitt as a candidate, how could you ever trust him as president?

READ MORE: “‘That’s His Voice,’” by Steve Benen (The Washington Monthly); “Campaign in 100 Seconds: Romney’s Contextual Harassment,” by Michael Lester (TPM); “Gingrich vs. Romney: One’s Too Safe, the Other’s Too Dangerous,” by John Dickerson (Slate); “Why It’s Going to Be a Long Year,” by Steve Benen (The Washington Monthly).

Shots Heard ’Round the World

2011-11-22T15:17:00.001-08:00

It was on this date, 48 years ago, that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. Or at least, that’s what most people believe.

READ MORE: “The Grassy Knoll,” by Gary Phillips (FourStory)