We’re going to be arguing about this one for a while, and when we’re done the historians will be mulling it over in their books about the Obama presidency. My guess is that they are going to have tough time making it understandable to readers who wonder– “How in the hell did a liberal Democratic president with a healthy majority in both houses of congress, agree to a deal that extends Bush’s tax cuts for the rich?”
Some will shrug it off, “perhaps he wasn’t that liberal after all.” Others may liken him to General McClellan, Lincoln’s reluctant warrior-chief. The more meticulous historians will walk their readers through the tight timetable Obama was dealing with and the certain senate filibuster the House-passed tax bill the President preferred was facing, before finally settling on the least-bleak option he had.
Arguably, the President’s clock management and bully pulpit deployment should have been better. And jeez, couldn’t he at least have forced the GOP to eat a tax hike for millionaires at a time when corporate profits are shattering records? (Not that it would have reduced the budget deficit much). And as Paul Waldman notes in The American Prospect, the offer of a federal pay freeze now looks even more like a moral and strategic blunder.
What is undeniable, however, is that our politics are dysfunctional when a sharp Democratic president with healthy majorities in both houses can’t pass a moderately progressive tax bill. A lot of smart progressives are sharply critical of Obama’s leadership on the issue, including Paul Krugman, who sees the deal weakening the President’s re-election chances and Katrina vanden Heuval, who makes a persuasive case that it was more a problem of limited presidential will and vision than one of structural limitations.
I come down sympathetic to Obama, although I doubt that this was the very best deal he could get. Ezra Klein, on the other hand, makes a plausible argument that it certainly isn’t the worst case scenario. He didn’t, after all, accept permanent tax cuts for the rich. And as Jonathan Bernstein emphasizes in his New Republic post, “The Tax-Cut Deal Is Actually a Win for the Democrats,” Dems did deliver on tax cuts for the middle class.
None of this will matter much if the economy confounds the pundits and somehow comes roaring back before July or August, ’12, in which case Obama will begin to look like Clinton on steroids. Not bloody likely, but investment in manufacturing has been sluggish for a long time now, so a little hope is not out of the question.
Where we go from here is an all out effort to enact the remaining Democratic priorities, including DADT, the Dream Act and any other doable reforms we can cram into the agenda before Boehner takes over the House. With these reforms enacted and added to the Obama Administrations accomplishments thus far, along with some discernable economic gains, he’ll have a record to run on.

For some reason, Politico today did a big feature on Mike Huckabee’s interest in a 2012 presidential run, said to be a 50/50 proposition. The only real downside involves money. Huck woud have to give up his Fox show and his paid speaking gigs to run, and he’s not a very rich man by Republican standards. Just as importantly, given his infamous inability in 2008, to raise enough money to rub two quarters together, he does not appear to be spending a lot of time hanging out with the kind of people who could raise him some serious jack or dump tons of money into “independent” ads on his behalf.
If he does run, Huckabee has some very serious advantages that would not only give him a chance, but would create strategic headaches for his primary opponents. He would be the early frontrunner in Iowa, where he won last time despite being vastly outspent by Mitt Romney He also did well in South Carolina, and has boosted his odds (already bright if he again gets the support of Senator-Elect Marco Rubio) in Florida by moving there. And he has a guaranteed national base in the Christian Right.
How should Democrats feel about Huck? He has a surprising reservoir of good will from many progressives in part because he’s not a snarler, and in part because he was the rare Republican who didn’t routinely defend Wall Street or pretend the economy was just great in 2008 (qualities that alienated him from the GOP’s Economic Royalist wing). But look a little deeper, and Huckabee shares every obnoxious position Republicans have taken since they lurched heavilty to the right after 2008, in addition to his better-known hard-core stand on cultural issues like abortion and gay rights. There’s also reportedly a rich lode of crazy stuff in his large library of sermons, which presumably oppo research types are plumbing as we speak.
Huck’s been doing relatively well in trial heats against Obama, but it’s not clear the public really knows that much about him beyond his genial personality and his weight-loss saga. In the meantime, his threat to enter the race has got to be maddening to those conservative poobahs looking for some oxygen for a dark horse like Daniels or Thune or Pence. Even if Huckabee doesn’t do that well, he will soak up votes wherever he runs, and showed in 2008 that he’s got the stamina to run a campaign on fumes. I wouldn’t count him out, particularly if he gets another clear shot to beat Mitt Romney in Iowa.

Those who think it’s some sort of partisan exaggeration to say that today’s Republican Party has moved into some pretty extreme ideological territory should pay some attention to the latest conservative craze in state capitols and even in Washington: the so-called Repeal Amendment.
The bright idea here is to amend the U.S. Constitution–if necessary by a state-called Constitutional Convention–to allow two-thirds of state legislatures to nullify federal legislation whenever it pleases them.
Here’s how Dahlia Lithwick and Jeff Sesol of Slate characterize the Repeal Amendment:

There is so much wrong with the Repeal Amendment that it’s difficult to know how to begin to respond. The Constitution is–by design–a nationalist document. It is also–again by design–an anti-democratic document. American history reveals precisely what happens when state or regional interests are allowed to trump national ones, and the Constitution has been at its best (for example, the Reconstruction Amendments) when it has addressed (and, better yet, resolved) that tension.

They don’t even get into the potential issues with a constitutional convention, which according to some scholars, cannot be limited to any one issue and could fundamentally rewrite the Constitution.
But crazy as it is, the Repeal Amendment is getting some real momentum, not least because it’s been embraced by the number two Republican in the U.S. House, Eric Cantor:

[J]ust two months after the proposal was a twinkle in a Virginia legislator’s eye, the leadership of nine states is showing interest, and the popularity of the amendment’s Web site (they have them nowadays) has “mushroomed.” And this week, completing the proposal’s rapid march from the margins to the mainstream, Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah introduced the amendment in the U.S. House of Representatives, pledging to put “an arrow in the quiver of states.” The soon-to-be House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, said this week that “the Repeal Amendment would provide a check on the ever-expanding federal government, protect against Congressional overreach, and get the government working for the people again, not the other way around.” Fawning editorials in the Wall Street Journal and chest-heaving Fox News interviews quickly followed.

This is just nuts, and defenders of the sweet reasonableness of the GOP need to acknowledge it.

Senate Republicans probably have the leverage (via filibuster) to kill the House passed bill exempting those earning over $250K from tax cuts. But conservatives are “utterly uninterested” in the public’s public’s views concerning their key tax and budget proposals, explains TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages:

…Poll after poll shows that only a small minority–about a third–want to keep the tax cuts for the rich while everybody else wants to let them expire. The latest evidence comes from a Roper/AP-CNBC poll. Thirty-four percent in that poll wanted to keep the tax cuts for everyone including the rich, while 64 percent wanted either to just keep the tax cuts with incomes less than $250,000 (50 percent) or end them for everyone (14 percent).
Conservatives’ devotion to tax cuts for the rich also shows their lack of seriousness about tackling the deficit problem. Ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would save $700 billion over 10 years but those savings are obviously far less important to them than their ideological antitax, pro-wealthy agenda.

Teixeira adds that conservatives are loving the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission’s proposals to gut social programs, especially Social Security — contrary to the strongly-held views of the public:

…In the same poll the public vigorously opposed the proposal to raise the Social Security retirement age to 69. Just 28 percent favored this idea while 64 percent opposed it.

As Teixeira concludes of conservatives in congress, “…Their real commitment is to their ideology–an ideology of cutting social programs, opposing taxes, and rewarding the rich. It’s certainly not to reducing the deficit and even less to the wishes of the American public.”

Writing in HuffPo, TDS contributor and Board of Advisors member Alan Abramowitz has a compelling rebuttal to the GOP meme that their midterm victories signal a massive rejection of progressive principles and policies. Abramowitz, author of The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy, crunches data from the Gallup News Service Governance Poll, conducted 9/13-16, and explains:

…While Americans often support conservative principles in the abstract, large majorities of Americans continue to support an active role for government in addressing a wide variety of societal needs and problems.
…On matters of principle, Americans in 2010 leaned strongly to the conservative side. For one thing, self-identified conservatives greatly outnumbered self-identified liberals: 43 percent of Gallup’s respondents described themselves as conservatives compared with 37 percent who described themselves as moderates and only 20 percent who described themselves as liberals. In addition, when asked about the role of the federal government in dealing with the nation’s problems, fully 58 percent of Gallup respondents felt that the government was “trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses” while only 37 percent felt that the government “should do more to solve our country’s problems.” Similarly, those who felt that there was too much government regulation of business and industry outnumbered those who felt that there was not enough government regulation by a 50 percent to 28 percent margin. Finally, 59 percent of Gallup’s respondents felt that the federal government had too much power compared with only 33 percent who felt that the federal government had the right amount of power and a miniscule 8 percent who felt that the federal government had too little power.

Then Abramowitz addresses the respondents’ views on “specific societal needs and problems,” and finds,

…94 percent of the public felt that government should have major or total responsibility (4 or 5 on the scale) for “protecting Americans from foreign threats.” National security is one of the few areas of government responsibility that typically receives overwhelming support from Americans of all partisan and ideological stripes.
It is perhaps more surprising, given Americans’ endorsement of broad conservative principles, that 76 percent of Gallup’s respondents felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “protecting consumers from unsafe products” or that 66 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “protecting the environment from human actions that can harm it.” And it is perhaps even more surprising that 67 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “preventing discrimination,” that 57 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “making sure all Americans have adequate healthcare,” that 52 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “making sure all who want jobs have them,” or that 45 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “providing a minimum standard of living for all Americans” (versus only 33 percent who felt that government should have little or no responsibility in this area).
Even a policy as radical by contemporary standards as “reducing income differences between rich and poor” drew the support of 35 percent of Americans (versus 45 percent who did not see this as an appropriate responsibility of government). The only area where the large majority of Americans rejected a substantial role for government was “protecting major U.S. corporations in danger of going out of business” which drew the support of only 19 percent of the public.

All in all, hardly the slam dunk preference for conservative polices McConnell, Boehner and other Republican leaders say most Americans embrace. Further,

It wasn’t just liberals who supported governmental activism. Even self-identified conservatives frequently endorsed governmental activism on specific issues. For example, 63 percent of conservatives, along with 84 percent of moderates and 87 percent of liberals, supported a substantial role for government in the area of consumer protection. And despite strong opposition to recent healthcare reform legislation by conservative pundits and politicians, 33 percent of conservatives, along with 71 percent of moderates and 81 percent of liberals, supported a substantial role for government in ensuring access to healthcare.

Abramowitz devises an interesting scale depicting support for government activism among various demographic groups as indicated by the poll, and concludes,

Despite the dramatic gains made by the Republican Party in the 2010 midterm elections, support for activist government remains very strong in the American public. Evidence from the recent Gallup News Service Governance Poll shows that today, just as in the 1960s, Americans tend to be ideological conservatives but operational liberals. They endorse conservative principles in the abstract, but support efforts by government to address specific societal needs and problems. These findings suggest that attempts by congressional Republicans to weaken or eliminate government programs in areas such as consumer rights, health care, income security, and environmental protection would be politically risky. While such policies might appeal to the conservative base of the Republican Party, they would almost certainly be unpopular with a majority of the American public.

Abramowitz makes the point that Ideological Conservative Operational Liberal (ICOLs?) voters have been a significant segment of the electorate for decades — which, come to think of it, may help explain why Republicans seem to prefer broad brush liberal-bashing to analyzing opinion data issue by issue.

One of the most interesting subdramas in the rise of the newly hyper-conservative GOP has been the role of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who has regularly been praised by his colleagues for substantive brilliance, but whose substantive brilliance they have often given a wide berth.
Ryan, as you may recall, produced the only thing within shouting distance of a congressional GOP budget blueprint this last year, his “Road Map for America’s Future.” The praise it received on the 2010 campaign trail faded pretty steadily as Democrats promoted awareness of the fact that said Road Map contained pretty radical changes to Social Security and Medicare (particularly since fighting cuts in the latter program had become a major GOP talking point).
Now Ryan is back in the spotlight, partly because he’s been a member of the Bowles-Simpso deficit commission (and one who rejected the commission report on grounds that it ratified ObamaCare), and partly because the post-election afterglow has given him some standing to talk big about the willingness of his fellow Republicans to embrace big cuts in popular federal programs.
Brian Beutler of TPM documents Ryan’s return to prominence as follows:

“The third rail is not the third rail anymore,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the incoming House Budget chairman, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast roundtable with reporters yesterday. “The political weaponization of entitlement reform is no longer as potent as it used to be, and the best evidence is this last election.”
Ryan and several other influential Republicans have found new confidence in the idea that the public would support entitlement cuts. Several candidates, Ryan said, won elections in tough districts on policy platforms modeled after his controversial — and conservative — Roadmap for America’s Future would would privatize social security and turn Medicare into a voucher system….
When I asked incoming Speaker John Boehner at his press conference yesterday whether he shared Ryan’s view of the new political landscape, Boehner suggested that the tide really had turned.
“I do believe that the American people expect us to have an adult conversation with each other about the serious challenges that face our country,” he said. “When you look at the promises that us Baby Boomers have made to ourselves, it’s clear that our kids and grandkids can’t afford those promises. We have to have this conversation. We ought to do it respectfully, we ought to do it honestly. But it’s time to have the conversation, and I think the American people are expecting us to come forward with a conversation.”

Now there’s a big difference between “having a conversation” about doing something very unpopular, and proposing to do it, so if I were Ryan, I’d view Boehner’s statements of support as little more than a permission slip to become a mine canary. As House Republicans get closer to that fateful day when they have to draft a budget resolution, however, it will eventually become a matter of embracing Ryan’s blueprint, coming up with something else, or just deciding to cook the numbers dramatically, with or without the help of some sort of supply-side delusion that cutting taxes for wealthy “job creators” solves all problems.

The official release of the Deficit Commission report was one of those events that could be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. No, the report did not receive the 14 commission votes necessary to trigger a vote on its recommendations by Congress. But it obtained 11 votes, including influential representatives of both parties (e.g., Tom Coburn and Dick Durbin), and certainly solidified the impression that Democrats and Republicans alike think (or at least say) that deficit reduction is an urgent national priority.
But will any of the specific recommendations made by the commission gain traction, in isolation from the overall package? That’s very hard to say, since very few of them seem to have genuine bipartisan support, and instead depend on a balance of ideas repugnant to one of the two parties. Ezra Klein does a good job of identifying “best” and “worst” ideas in the proposal. But the horsetrading value of an idea in the context of partisan gridlock isn’t necessarily related to its rationality; a matched set of “bad” ideas that are least objectionable to Democrats and Republicans could be easier to sell. And that’s the problem with “bipartisan solutions” in a partisan era.

As Bill Galston points out, there’s no longer much doubt that deficit reduction has become a very large public concern over the last year. It’s a separate question as to whether Americans are willing to support actual spending reductions or tax increases proposed by either party, and thus whether there is really a popular base for a deficit reduction compromise. But no one should argue any longer that the whole subject is just being cooked up by elites.
Still, the current extend-the-tax-cuts debate in Washington demonstrates pretty conclusively that deficit reduction is not, in fact, the preeminent value of either party in Congress. Both are pursuing a path guaranteed to increase long-term deficits and debt. And since the wealthy benefit disproportionately from an income tax rate reduction in the lower brackets (that’s how marginal tax rates work), even the Democratic approach elevates tax cuts for “all Americans” (to use the Republican battle cry) over deficit reduction.
Matt Yglesias sums up the ironic situation well:

[T]here’s no debate in Washington about whether rich people should get a permanent tax cut. Nor is there any debate in Washington about whether rich people’s tax cut should be financed by long-term borrowing. Nor is there any debate about whether rich people should get a bigger tax cut than middle class people. But we “can’t afford” unemployment insurance, we “can’t afford” to pay bank regulators competitive salaries.
We have a bipartisan consensus that the short-term deficit should be made smaller and the long-term deficit should be made bigger even when all the economic logic points in the opposite direction.

Now Republicans, of course, dispute that we’re talking about “tax cuts” at all, and maintain that failing to extend the Bush tax cuts represents a tax increase, even though the reversion to earlier rates has been established in current law from the beginning, and even though the original rationale for the Bush tax cuts was to “rebate” unnecessary revenues when the federal budget was in surplus. But that’s just another way of saying that low tax rates, particularly for those “job creators” at the top, are an end in themselves for Republicans, crucial in every fiscal or economic circumstance, and thus far more important to them than deficits-and-debt.

Many progressive Democrats are still grumbling about President Obama’s participation in the ‘Slurpee Summit’ with Republican leaders, some of whom have proclaimed the destruction of his presidency as the mother of all GOP priorities. These progressives feel he is being suckered again, not without reason, since there are zero indications that Republicans are negotiating in good faith or willing to give up anything at all to cut a deal.
I hope I’m not in denial here, but I have to believe Obama was not being suckered. He knows the Republicans aren’t interested in negotiating, but he feels he has to do bipartisan kabuki for one or more of three possible reasons: 1. polls strongly indicate the public wants Republicans and Democrats to work together, and even a gesture in that direction is better than no outreach; 2. The Slurpee Summit provided an opportunity to raise public awareness of the GOP’s obstructionism, thereby advancing support for holding the line on letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy; and 3. If he must cave, his bipartisan gesture makes it easier for him to cave a little, instead of total capitulation.
The alternative, almost too grim to contemplate but predicted by some observers, is that President Obama will capitulate on tax cuts for the rich because he feels it is his only chance to get other legislation passed in the lame duck session, after which his options diminish severely.
Wince-provoking as was Obama’s apology for not not adequately reaching out to Republicans during his first two years in office, it just may prove to have been a clever opening move. A little humility can become the image of a politician in trouble and enhance his cred as a leader who negotiates in good faith, especially when the other side tends to express disagreements in bilious diatribes. Obama’s proposed freeze on pay for federal workers, however, may look even worse if he caves on extending tax cuts for top earners.
Now the my-way-or-the-highway Republicans are threatening to obstruct all legislation, unless the Bush tax cuts are renewed for the rich. Public opinion data suggests they are on shaky ground. Undaunted, Speaker Pelosi is reportedly preparing a vote on keeping the tax cuts for those earning less than $250K only.
She is on more solid ground in terms of public opinion. There are surveys which indicate that most of the public believes top earners should pay more taxes, such as the Gallup/USA Today poll conducted 11/19-21, which found that respondents favored new limits for “how much of wealthy Americans’ income is eligible for the lower rates” over keeping the “tax cuts for all Americans regardless of income” by a margin of 44 percent to 40, with 13 percent favoring allowing the tax cuts to expire. So, 57 percent of those polled oppose keeping the Bush tax cuts at current levels for the wealthy.
The Republicans, however, are practicing impressive message discipline, always inserting “job-killer” before the term “tax hikes,” and jabbering about how the rich need the Bush tax cuts renewed because they are all hard-working small business folks who, shucks, just want to hire more workers with their hard-earned incomes. Dems can sweeten the expiration of upper income cuts in public perception with a significant tax incentive for small businesses to hire and retain workers.
As has been noted repeatedly since the midterms, polls indicate quite clearly that much of the public has limited faith in the GOP to do what is right for the country, even though midterm voters wanted to punish the majority party. Regarding bipartisanship, a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted just before the midterms found that 56 percent of respondents (66 percent of Democrats, 47 percent of Republicans, 52 percent Independents) agreed that it was more important for “politicians in congress to work with members of the other party and make consensus policy” than to “stick to their principles and hold to the issues they campaigned on.” (38 percent agreed, 29 Dems, 48 Republicans, 39 Independents)
It’s helpful to know that bipartisanship has substantial public support. But it would be good if some poll would shed a little more light on public perceptions about which party is making the most credible bipartisan effort. An August Ipsos/Public Affairs poll indicated that 28 percent of respondents blamed Democrats more for “the fighting between parties and branches of government,” while 36 percent blamed Republicans more. It would be even better to see what opinions about bipartisanship failure do to influence candidate choice. The responses to that one could be very helpful in formulating Dem strategy leading up to 2012.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Back in March, Gallup found that while Americans named unemployment and the economy as the most immediate problems, they regarded the federal budget deficit as the most important future problem. Apparently the future is now. On the eve of the president’s deficit commission report, Gallup released a survey that asked a random sample of adults the following question:
If you had to choose, which of these would be the best approach for Congress and the president to take in dealing with the U.S. economy?
Here are the answers:
Reducing the deficit and debt 39
Increasing taxes on the wealthy 31
Cutting taxes 23
Increasing stimulus spending 5
And here is the partisan breakdown (Democrats, Republicans, Independents):
Reducing the deficit and debt 24 49 42
Increasing taxes on the wealthy 52 11 30
Cutting taxes 12 35 23
Increasing stimulus spending 9 3 4
Some points of interest:
* Support for additional stimulus has collapsed, even among Democrats.
* Of the general public’s top two choices, “reducing the deficit and debt” is rejected by three-quarters of Democrats, and “increasing taxes on the wealthy” by nine-tenths of Republicans.
* Independents track overall sentiment very closely.
The conventional wisdom is that Americans accept the goal of deficit reduction but not the steps needed to achieve it. That may turn out to be right. But Gallup found that fully 75 percent of Americans believe failing to address the costs of Medicare and Social Security would create major economic problems for the United States in the future. When asked what we should do about this, the responses were:
Cut benefits, not raise taxes 19
Raise taxes, not cut benefits 30
Combination of both benefit cuts and tax increases 46
There is, it seems, at least a public plurality in favor of the kind of approach that allegedly “elitist” and “out of touch” experts and commissions typically recommend.
I’m not–repeat, not–claiming that the people are always right. But the midterm election was a massive protest against a political system that seemed not to be paying attention to what the people were saying. Before the major parties decide to default to their entrenched preferences–upper-income tax cuts for Republicans, down-the-line defense of entitlements for Democrats–wouldn’t it be a good idea to try listening a bit more attentively?