Yesterday I wrote about the conservative effort to convince the news media and others that crazy people were being kept under control by the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party. There’s an even less credible media narrative kicking around that was pursued the same day by Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times: Republican moderates are making a comeback!
If you understandably missed this development, here’s how Hook puts it:

With healthcare legislation mired in partisanship, “tea party” activists on the march and GOP leadership dominated by conservatives, Capitol Hill looks like a parched landscape for the withered moderate wing of the Republican Party.
But green shoots are sprouting in Washington and on the campaign trail. A small band of Republican moderates in the Senate broke a logjam on jobs legislation. They added to their ranks with the arrival of another New England Republican, Scott Brown. And several moderate Republicans are in a good position to win Senate seats in November.

The article is loaded with qualifiers of this dubious proposition, but not enough of them. The jobs bill where “Republican moderates”–including Tea Party favorite Scott Brown–offered a few votes for cloture was a vastly watered-down $15 billion measure that included a payroll tax credit for employers long beloved of Republicans (indeed, that’s why it was in the bill). Once cloture was invoked, 13 GOPers voted for the bill, including such decidedly non-moderate senators as Inhofe, Burr and Hatch. Indeed, the only reason the bill was even controvrsial for Republicans is that it was offered by the Democratic leadership in lieu of a much more expensive and tax-cut laden bill worked out between Sens. Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley that most Democrats intensely disliked. Anyone expecting this development to lead to an outbreak of bipartisanship or a breakdown of Republican obstruction is smoking crack.
Hook’s optimistic spin on “moderate Republican” prospects for election to the Senate is equally off-base. She cites Mark Kirk, Mike Castle, Charlie Crist, Tom Campbell and Rob Simmons as potential additions to the “moderate” ranks. Kirk moved hard right to win his primary, and is running even with his Democratic opponent. Campbell is best known at present as the object of primary opponent Carly Fiorina’s cult favorite “demon sheep” web ad; I’d bet serious money he doesn’t win his primary, and the winner likely won’t beat Democrat Barbara Boxer, either. Simmons is struggling against a well-financed primary opponent, and is trailing Democrat Richard Blumenthal by double digits. Crist is political toast. I’ll grant that Castle is in good shape, and has a quite moderate record (so far). But even if Castle and Kirk win, their election would no more than offset the retirements of George Voinovich and Judd Gregg in the less-than-loudly-conservative ranks. And Hook also doesn’t mention that at least two GOP senators who occasionally cooperate with Democrats, Bob Bennett and John McCain, could get purged in primaries.
As for the forward-looking optimism of Hooks’ “green shoots” metaphor, it should be noted that Castle is 70 years old; Simmons is 67; Campbell is 56; Crist is 53; and Kirk is 50. Even by the geriatric standards of the Senate, this group ain’t exactly the wave of the future. They also don’t look much like America.
Sure, if the Republlican caucus in the Senate expands significantly this November, it is going to include a handful of members who don’t regularly howl at the moon about “socialism.” But any suggestion that the ancient tribe of moderate Republicans is much more than an anthropological curiosity these days is just not credible. It says a lot of the direction of the GOP that the early 2012 presidential favorite of “moderates” appears to be Mitt Romney, who spent the entire 2008 cycle campaigning as the “true conservative” in the race.
If words like “moderate” have any real meaning, it’s not a word that should be applied to any major faction in today’s Republican Party.

‘Tis a shame that no photograph of Jim Bunning’s flipped bird has yet emerged, although the photo on this web page captures the spirit of his attitude, and should do adequately for his legacy and Wikipedia page, where you can also read about his ‘foundation.’ Somewhere, however, in the darker corners of the G.O.P., where strategy is made, Frank Luntz, Ed Rollins and the smarter Republicans should be offering prayers of gratitude that Bunning’s bird escaped the cameras, for it would be hard to imagine a better symbolic representation of G.O.P. obstructionism.
That, however, shouldn’t stop cartoonists from doing their job. Have at it, guys. (They’re just getting started: See here, here and, best so far, here.)
Common sense suggests that Republicans should feel a little uneasy about Bunning punishing unemployed Americans with obstructionist theatrics. But this is not a good year for common sense in the G.O.P., where principled opposition to childish behavior is pretty-much non-existent. Michael Kieschnick puts it well in his HuiffPo post, “Republicans Use Jim Bunning to Say Tough S**t to America“:

…It is one thing to act in such a despicable manner, and quite another to be backed up by one’s colleagues. Surely one of the Republican leaders would have escorted Sen. Bunning off the floor so that a vote could be held. Surely a senior Senator of the same party might have made clear that such behavior is simply unacceptable in the Senate.
But no. No Republican has condemned Sen. Bunning. Indeed, Sen. Cornyn of Texas, in charge of electing more Republicans to the Senate, went out of his way to praise his colleague and said he understood.
Perhaps Sen. Bunning is just a bitter, deluded, old man, who used to be a great baseball pitcher. But he is also the public face of the Republican Senators. The party of no has now simply become the cruder party of tough shit and a raised middle finger.

Perhaps Bunning is running for president of tea party America, where expressions of mindless contempt are celebrated — even when directed toward the working people they claim to represent.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
All across the country, Republicans are fantasizing about a gigantic electoral tide that will sweep out deeply entrenched Democratic incumbents this November. In their telling, this deep-red surge will be so forceful as to dislodge even legislators who don’t look vulnerable now, securing GOP control of both houses of Congress.
But could this scenario really come to pass? That will depend, in part, on what type of Republican Party the Democrats are running against in the fall.
Hence the importance of this year’s Republican civil war. In a string of GOP primary elections stretching from now until September, the future ideological composition of the elephant party hangs in the balance. Many of these primaries pit self-consciously hard-core conservatives, often aligned with the Tea Party movement, against “establishment” candidates—some who are incumbents, and some who are simply vulnerable to being labeled “RINOs” or “squishes” for expressing insufficiently ferocious conservative views.
Below is your guide to this year’s most important ideologically-freighted GOP primaries and their consequences. Confining ourselves just to statewide races, let’s take them in chronological order:
TEXAS, MARCH 2: Today’s showdown is in Texas, where “establishment” Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is challenging conservative incumbent Governor Rick Perry. Perry, who won only 39 percent of the vote in a four-candidate race in 2006, spent much of the last year cozying up to Tea Party activists and occasionally going over the brink into talk of secession. He seemed to have the race against the Washington-tainted Hutchinson well in hand, until a third GOP candidate, libertarian/Tea Party favorite Debra Medina, started to surge in the polls early this year.
Medina’s candidacy once threatened to knock Perry into a runoff or even displace Hutchison from the second spot. But then Medina went on the Glenn Beck Program and expressed openness to the possibility that the federal government was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Still, it’s not clear Perry will clear 50 percent. An expensive and potentially divisive runoff would weaken him against the Democratic candidate, Houston Mayor Bill White, who looks quite competitive in early polling.
INDIANA, MAY 4: In the Hoosier State, right-wingers are flaying each other. Former Senator Dan Coats, a relatively conservative figure with strong “establishment” support, faces three even more conservative rivals in the race to succeed Evan Bayh. Coats is a longtime favorite of religious conservatives and an early member of the evangelical conservative network which author Jeff Sharlet dubs “The Family.” He’s secured early endorsements from D.C.-based conservative leaders Mike Pence and James Bopp (an RNC member who authored both the “Socialist Democrat Party” and “litmus test” resolutions). But his Beltway support has created a backlash in Indiana, and some Second Amendment fans recall that Coats voted for the Brady Bill and the assault-weapons ban. Coats is also smarting from revelations that he’s been registered to vote in Virginia since leaving the Senate, and working in Washington as a lobbyist for banks, equity firms, and even foreign governments (his firm represented—yikes—Yemen).
With the vote coming so soon, hard-core conservatives probably won’t have time to unite behind an alternative; some favor Tea Party-oriented state senator Marlin Stutzman, while others are sticking with a old-timey right-wing warhorse, former Representative John Hostetler. But if they do, and Coats loses, it will probably spur a headlong national panic among “establishment” Republicans, even well-credentialed conservatives who haven’t quite joined the tea partiers. Indiana Democrats have managed to recruit a strong Senate nominee in Congressman Brad Ellsworth, who might hold onto Bayh’s Senate seat.
UTAH, MAY 8: Utah Senator Bob Bennett, the bipartisan dealmaker, is in trouble. He voted for TARP, he has been a high-visibility user of earmarks, and, worse yet, he co-sponsored a universal health-reform bill with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. So right-wingers want his head. Bennett’s defeat has become an obsession of influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson of Red State, and the Club for Growth, the big bully of economic conservatism, has attacked Newt Gingrich for speaking on his behalf.
Bennett’s first test will come on May 8, when delegates to Utah’s state GOP convention will vote on a Senate nominee. If he fails to get 60 percent, he’ll be pushed into a June 22 primary. Bennett faces three potentially credible right-wing challengers, but the “comer” seems to be Mike Lee, a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, who has been endorsed by Dick Armey’s powerful FreedomWorks organization. Since this is Utah, there is no Democrat in sight who is strong enough to exploit such a right-wing “purge.” Bennett’s defeat would only make the Republican Party more conservative, and provide another object lesson to any GOP-er thinking about cosponsoring major legislation with a Democrat.

Read more…

I don’t quite know exactly where this is coming from, but there’s clearly a media effort underway to show that the conservative movement and the Republican Party are reining in “the extremists” in their ranks, presumably in order to look all ready to govern.
Today’s Politico features a long piece by Kennth Vogel detailing claims by various conservative and Tea Party spokesmen that the influence of “the fringe” has been grossly exaggerated by “the Left,” and that in fact unruly elements are being ignored or excluded by the Right’s grownups.
“Birthers,” Birchers and militia types, we are told, are being shown the door, and haven’t been that important to begin with, except in the propaganda of the Left.
The door-keepers in Vogel’s account, however, are not a group that would normally strike you as moderately-tempered unless the bar for political sanity is set very low. One is none other than Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, who told Vogel that activists needed “to control the message and to prevent the tea party movement from being hijacked.” That’s interesting, since Phillips’ recent National Tea Party Convention featured a race-baiting keynote address by Tom Tancredo, another speech by “birther” advocate Joseph Farrah of WorldNetDaily, and a breakout panel headed by Christian Right extremist Roy Moore. Another is dirty-trickster and ACORN conspiracy theorist Andrew Breitbart, who is credited with disrepecting Farrah at Phillips’ event. Still another is Erick Erickson of RedState, that ferocious advocate of strife against “squishes” and moderates of every variety.
If these folk want to keep “the Left” from talking about crazy people on the Right, they might want to make their policing a bit more rigorous than the occasional tip from the coach to stay on the political sidelines. “The Left” did not invent the cosponsorship of the recent Conservative Political Action Conference by the John Birch Society and the militia-friendly Oathkeepers. But more to the point, it’s a disturbing sign in intself that people like Phillips, Breitbart and Erickson are being treated as some sort of “mainstream,” where it’s perfectly normal to call President Obama a socialist, treat Democrats as presumptive traitors, and advocate an array of radical economic and social policies. All the “self-policing of the Right” narrative really shows is how far and fast conservatives have recently moved to what used to be thought of as “the fringe.” It’s cold comfort to learn there is ample frontier territory on the Right that’s well beyond that.

The House Ethics Committee investigation of Rep. (and Ways & Means Committee chairman) Charlie Rangel has gotten a lot of attention recently. But there’s a new development on the House ethics front that merits a closer look than it will probably receive, at least nationally.
Georgia Rep. Nathan Deal resigned his seat today, supposedly so he could concentrate on his gubernatorial campaign. But as a conservative blogger in the Peach State immediately noted, this makes zero political sense except as a way to short-circuit an ethics investigation of a state contract held by Deal that was about to get underway:

Deal is giving up the turnout advantage for being the sitting Congressman while the vote for his replacement takes place. GA law calls for a special election to replace Deal, and assuming the special election clears the field for the general election, having an unopposed incumbent running in the 9th when the primary vote for Governor takes place is a major campaign disadvantage for Deal.
So why would Deal take the hit on turnout?
The House Ethics Committee came down hard on Charlie Rangel last week. The next case up was to look at Deal’s use of his Congressional staff to protect a no-bid State contract here in Georgia. The House ethics committee was due to release their findings in this case any day. Deal’s resignation probably makes this go away.
So, Deal can campaign full time after tomorrow. If he’s no longer a member of Congress, he can’t be on the list of CREW’s most unethical Congressmen anymore.

This is interesting in no small part because Georgia’s crowded Republican gubernatorial primary has become something of a quagmire of ethics issues. State insurance commissioner John Oxendine, who has been the front-runner in the polls for many months, is battling a variety of ethics charges relating to his fundraising efforts among the insurance companies he is responsible for regulating. And several other candidates are struggling to overcome the perception of a cover-up of a recent sex-with-a-utility-lobbyist scandal that ultimately forced state House Speaker Glenn Richardson from office.
It probably doesn’t help that Richardson was replaced in the legislature in a special election last week by another Christian Right activist who has admitted an affair with his mother-in-law during his first wife’s pregnancy.
The broader lesson is that Republicans are not exempt from the ongoing anti-government, anti-incumbent popular mood. While they certainly want to promote the idea that voters are only interested in punishing politicians who support economic stimulus funds or health care reform, there are other sins that do not bear exposure in the current climate. And wherever GOPers are entrenched in office, as they are in much of the Deep South, ethics problems are rarely too far beneath the surface.
UPDATE: Deal’s resignation, currently slated to take effect on March 8, could affect the outcome of the expected razor-thin vote on health care reform, due to occur early in April. If nothing else, Deal’s action should offset the decision last week by Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie’s to resign his House seat for a gubernatorial campaign in Hawaii.

In his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ posted today at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira shows clearly that President Obama was right in saying that the major elements of comprehensive health care reform legislation he is advocating are popular with the public and that the bills in Congress would fare better if the public actually knew what was in them. As Teixeira explains:

…It turns out the president’s claim is well founded. The latest evidence is in a recent Newsweek poll that first asked respondents whether they supported or opposed Obama’s health care reform plan, then gave them a list of key provisions in the plan, and then asked them again whether they supported Obama’s plan.
…Six of the eight provisions get majority support with the highest favorability for the health insurance exchanges (81 percent), requiring health insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions (76 percent), and requiring most businesses to offer health insurance to their employees (75 percent). But the poll also asked about two provisions the public did not like: taxing “Cadillac” health plans and fining individuals who refuse to get health insurance. So Newsweek cannot be accused of cherry picking the plan for only those provisions the public would likely favor.
Before respondents heard the list of provisions, they opposed Obama’s health care plan 49-40. After respondents heard the list they switched to 48-43 support. Obama was right: If the public knew what was actually in the comprehensive health care plans being proposed, they would feel more favorably about them.

And, interestingly, those who keep saying that the public wants to abandon health care reform and move on to other legislation are dead wrong, as Teixeira explains:

…In an early February ABC/Washington Post poll, the public said, by an overwhelming 63-34 margin, that lawmakers in Washington should keep trying to pass a comprehensive health care reform plan instead of giving up.

As Teixeira concludes, ” Amen to that.”

A new DCORPS study, “Turnout and the New American Majority” (PDF) sheds fresh light on the opportunity and challenge presented to progressives by three key groups of the ‘Rising American Electorate’ (RAE), unmarried women, people of color and youth. Subtitled “A Year-Long Project Tracking Voter Participation and Vote Preference Among the Rising American Electorate,” the study includes a survey commissioned by Women’s Voices. Women Vote, conducted between 1/7 and 1/12 designed to track engagement of RAE voters.
DCORPS notes that declining turnout among key segments of the U.S. electorate suggests “a looming problem heading into the 2010 elections” because “turnout collapsed” among RAE groups in the 2009 elections in NJ, VA and the 2010 MA special. In addition, “much of the polling in the summer and into the fall last year, as well as early polling in 2010, suggests a disproportionate problem among these specific voting blocs.”
RAE voters account for a majority of the voting-age population in the U.S. “Because they do not vote at the same levels as other voters, their voices are not always heard by policy-makers.” But the authors conclude that “popular assumptions about dismal turnout among these voters are wrong. It is not inevitable, and it is not tied primarily to the economy. It can change with the right programs and due attention.” Other key findings include:

· As others in the participation community have been warning, turnout among these groups is at risk; this comes after record turnout in the 2008 election.
· It is a mistake to assume that this is all about the economy and disappointment with the slow pace of recovery. Those in the Rising American Electorate least likely to vote are the most optimistic about economic turnaround. Moreover, regression analysis suggests little, if any, predictive value in economic perceptions on enthusiasm for voting.
· This is important because it suggests that turnout is not captive to economic performance. The programs that worked to increase turnout in 2008 and 2006 can still increase turnout among these voters in 2010.
· Democrats face another problem, too; declining levels of support, particularly among youth and unmarried women. The economy likely plays a more significant role in vote preference than in turnout.
· What is key for both parties is getting the economic narrative right. This means speaking to this issue in their terms and focusing on tangible relief efforts they can see and touch, like unemployment benefits and health care reform. But it also means speaking to their hope and desire for change, which has not died since the 2008 election cycle. If anything, these voters want more change, not less.

While the interests of the RAE groups clearly fit within the Democratic Party, the worst thing would be for Dems to assume they will show up in adequate numbers to prevent a rout in November. If we want to hold the House and Senate, motivating and turning out the RAE must be a top priority.

In yet another insightful op-ed article, this one entitled “The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged,” New York Times columnist Frank Rich kicks off an important discussion on a topic, otherwise much-ignored by the traditional media. Here’s Rich on the reaction of conservatives to the February 18th suicide bombing by Andrew Joseph Stack III, the anti-tax terrorist who flew a plane into the IRS office building in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18:

What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it. Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner. That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.
Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, even rationalized Stack’s crime. “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened,” he said, “but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.” No one in King’s caucus condemned these remarks. Then again, what King euphemized as “the incident” took out just 1 of the 200 workers in the Austin building: Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran nearing his I.R.S. retirement…

Sound familiar? Rich continues,

…Had Stack the devastating weaponry and timing to match the death toll of 168 inflicted by Timothy McVeigh on a federal building in Oklahoma in 1995, maybe a few of the congressman’s peers would have cried foul.
It is not glib or inaccurate to invoke Oklahoma City in this context, because the acrid stench of 1995 is back in the air. Two days before Stack’s suicide mission, The Times published David Barstow’s chilling, months-long investigation of the Tea Party movement. Anyone who was cognizant during the McVeigh firestorm would recognize the old warning signs re-emerging from the mists of history. The Patriot movement. “The New World Order,” with its shadowy conspiracies hatched by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Sandpoint, Idaho. White supremacists. Militias.
Barstow confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center had found in its report last year: the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback. And now it is finding common cause with some elements of the diverse, far-flung and still inchoate Tea Party movement. All it takes is a few self-styled “patriots” to sow havoc.

Rich goes on to explain that most pro-terrorists hate the Republican Party almost as much as they hate the Democrats, because they are essentially anarchists. Nor would it be fair to imply that all anti-government activists are pro-terrorist. Says Rich: “They are not to be confused with the Party of No holding forth in Washington — a party that, after all, is now positioning itself as a defender of Medicare spending. What we are talking about here is the Party of No Government at All.”
But Rich does quote a GOP presidential aspirant, former MN Governor Tim Pawlenty, who recently urged an audience to emulate Tiger Woods’s wife and “take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government in this country.” Rich adds:

Such violent imagery and invective, once largely confined to blogs and talk radio, is now spreading among Republicans in public office or aspiring to it. Last year Michele Bachmann, the redoubtable Tea Party hero and Minnesota congresswoman, set the pace by announcing that she wanted “people in Minnesota armed and dangerous” to oppose Obama administration climate change initiatives. In Texas, the Tea Party favorite for governor, Debra Medina, is positioning herself to the right of the incumbent, Rick Perry — no mean feat given that Perry has suggested that Texas could secede from the union. A state sovereignty zealot, Medina reminded those at a rally that “the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

The wholesale government-bashing that became epidemic during the Reagan Administration took root in the conservative fringe until it warped and found tragic expression in Oklahoma City in in 1995. Back then conservatives roundly denounced McVeigh’s act of domestic terrorism. It would have been good for conservatives to denounce with due fervor the domestic terrorist attempt at mass murder that ocurred on Feb 18th.

Amidst all the Republican caterwauling about Democratic intentions to “ram through” final enactement of health care reform via the budget reconciliation process, two very important points have gotten lost. First, reconciliation would not be used to enact a comprehensive bill; that’s already been done in both Houses. It would simply involve a relatively short list of changes to the Senate bill.
But second, and just as important, is this reminder from Brookings Institution economist Henry Aaron (via Jonathan Cohn):

The 2009 budget resolution instructed both houses of Congress to enact health care reform. The House and the Senate have passed similar but not identical bills. Since both houses have acted but some work remains to be done to align the two bills, using reconciliation to implement the instructions in the budget resolution follows established congressional procedure.

Unless provisions of the proposed “fix” of health care reform are adjudged as non-germane to the budget under Senate rules (and they will almost certainly be designed to avoid that problem), then use of reconciliation for that purpose is perfectly appropriate, and only questionable if you think the entire Congressional Budget Act, which provides for simple majority votes on both budget resolutions and reconciliation bills, is questionable. So Republicans who are screaming about this scenario need to be challenged to tell us if they favor repeal of the Budget Act, and an actual expansion of the ability of a Senate minority to obstruct legislation via filibusters.

I do hope the DNC-DSCC-DCCC political ad-makers have their act together, because they are being presented a truckload of amazing material. Just in the last 24 hours we have a Republican U.S. Senator dissing the unemployed and three top conservative media personalities mocking the uninsured.
Ed Kilgore wrote earlier about Republican Sen. Jim Bunning screaming ‘tough shit” in response to an appeal for compassion for the jobless. Bunning is not running for re-election, due to his inept fund-raising skills, but he nonetheless makes an excellent poster boy for ‘GOP Obstructionist of the Week,’ although his fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConell is always a finalist.
Now we got GOP media superstars Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham making merriment from the hardships of people who can’t afford health insurance. Here’s a little bite from Media Matters for America‘s story, “Let them eat applesauce: Right-wing media mock the uninsured“:

…The O’Reilly Factor, radio host Laura Ingraham said she “liked the dueling sob stories, OK? One Democrat was trying to outdo the next on the sob story about how rotten our health care system is. Louise Slaughter won the Olympics of sob stories by saying one of her constituents had to wear her sister’s dentures. OK? It got so bad with the health care system.” She later added, “You had Harry Reid on the cleft palate with his — I mean, the whole thing was ridiculous.”

If Ingraham was trying to replace Ann Coulter as the new Marie Antoinette of the Republican party, she may have pulled it off. The article also quotes Limbaugh, “”What’s wrong with using a dead person’s teeth? Aren’t the Democrats big into recycling?” and Beck’s “I’ve read the Constitution before. I didn’t see that you had a right to teeth.” The article quotes other conservative media personalities in a similar vein.
It seems that the tea party movement has emboldened Republicans to more venomously articulate their contempt for the poor and disadvantaged. The cameras are rolling, and one hopes the Democratic ad-makers are collecting the product.