On the very day when Republicans are in the process of dumping their African-American party chairman, word comes from South Carolina (via Jon Chait) that Newt Gingrich is stressing the need for a massive outreach to minority voters.

The midterm win wasn’t enough and Republicans need to aim for winning 40 more House seats and 12 or 13 more Senate seats in the next election, Gingrich said to a crowd at the Marina Inn at Grande Dunes.
“If you’re going to govern in 2013, you’re going to need a really large margin,” he said.
To do that, Republicans need to spend at least 30 percent of their time campaigning to black, Hispanic and other minority communities and emphasize lowering taxes instead of social programs such as welfare.

Quite appropriately, Chait found it hilarious that Gingrich thought Republicans weren’t spending enough time talking about tax cuts.
But it’s a sign of Newt’s myopia that he doesn’t seem to think there’s anything about the GOP’s messaging that might represent a bar to a better performance among minority voters.
Totally aside from Newt’s trumped-up “lowering taxes instead of welfare” choice, minority voters just don’t agree with the fundamental premise of GOP rhetoric that too much government is threatening the country, as noted recently by Ron Brownstein in a column on exit poll findings:

Minorities were almost exactly twice as likely as whites to say that life would be better for the next generation than for their own; whites were considerably more likely to say that it would be more difficult. And on a question measuring bedrock beliefs about the role of government, the two racial groups again registered almost mirror-image preferences. Sixty percent of minorities said that government should be doing more to solve problems; 63 percent of whites said that government is doing too many things that would be better left to businesses and individuals.
The irony in these results is that minorities expressed more faith in both the future and the government than whites did, even though the recession has hit minority communities harder.

And beyond this very different set of perspectives, minority voters aren’t likely to get friendlier with a party that is in the habit of (a) blaming the housing and financial meltdowns on shiftless poor and minority families who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford; (b) screaming about non-existent “voter fraud” any time there’s an effort to help minorites exercise their right to vote; and (c) treating the first African-American president as a dangerous extremist who is consciously betraying the U.S. Constitution.
I’ve never quite shared the assessment of Newt as some sort of strategic genius, but maybe that’s because I’ve been watching him since he was a flaky history professor running to the left of a Democratic congressman in two straight elections back in the 70s.
Still, if Newt and other Republicans are serious about increasing their share of the minority vote, they need to understand that spending more time saying offensive things to minority voters ain’t going to get the job done.

So the Republican National Committee is holding its regularly-scheduled chairmanship election today, and controversial incumbent Michael Steele is almost certain to lose. The question for Republicans is how embarrassing the whole scenario will turn out to be. After all, Steele is a symbol of alleged GOP diversity, and after all, the party did rather well under his leadership.
But it’s also a bit difficult for Republicans to pose as champions of fiscal probity when their national commitee seems to be constantly struggling with money issues fed by questionable spending practices, and without question, some GOPers fear Steele’s camera-friendly visibility, particularly since he’s prone to gaffes.
The front-runner to replace Steele (after a complicated series of ballots) has become Wisconsin Republican chairman Reince Priebus, but he’s been hit with a last-minute rumor campaign suggesting he’s a “plant” by potential presidential candidate Haley Barbour, himself a former RNC chief. This development underlines the sort of internal problems Republicans are going to face in a wide-open presidential cycle where everyone at every moment is suspected of carrying the water for a would-be Chief Executive.
If you are interested in following the RNC decision, I’d recommend you keep an eye on Dave Weigel’s blog at Slate; he’ll be covering it all in detail.

Back in early December, when all the talk was about progressive unhappiness with the president’s decision to cut a deal with John Boehner on the extension of Bush tax cuts, Gallup seemed to offer some empirical evidence that Obama was paying a price with self-identified liberals’ support:

Liberal Democrats remain strong supporters of President Obama, but their approval of the job he is doing has fallen noticeably since the midterm elections. For the first time, it dropped below 80% in the week after the announcement of the tax deal he brokered with congressional Republicans.

Well, whatever was going on then seems to have been an outlier or just a momentary blip. In the last Gallup presidential job approval tracking poll (January 3-9), liberal Democratic job approval ratings for Obama were back up to 87%. And in case you think that poll picked up some sort of backlash to the Tucson tragedy, Obama’s job approval rating among liberal Democrats was even higher, at 91%, the week of December 20-26. Among self-identified liberals in general, the relevant support is at 76%, as compared to 69% in December 6-12. How about African-Americans? 93% now, as compared to 84% in December 6-12.
If there was ever some sort of trend indicating that disgruntlement with Obama was spreading from progressive elites to the rank-and-file “base,” it’s gone away, which should cool the jets of those folk who so recently were calling for a left-bent primary challenge to the president in 2012.

In discussing the 2012 presidential campaign, I’ve been a bit disrespectful of the odds for Republican dark horses who may be big time players in Washington or in the eyes of pundits, but do not exactly walk tall in the places that actually determine presidential nominations.
Now comes Dave Weigel with a timely reminder of just how slowly this presidential cycle is getting underway compared to the situation four years ago:

Here’s a list of all the candidates who had at least announced exploratory committees by this day, four years ago, in the last cycle. I’ve put the details for candidates who did something else — announcing a bid without an exploratory committee, or confirming they’d run — in parentheses.
April 17, 2006: Mike Gravel (announcing a full-on campaign at the National Press Club)
October 30, 2006: Duncan Hunter (announcing he’d retire from Congress and run for president)
November 9, 2006: Tom Vilsack (announcing a full campaign)
November 13, 2006: Rudy Giuliani
November 15, 2006: John McCain
December 4, 2006: Sam Brownback
December 7, 2006: Bill Richardson (telling Fox News “I am running”)
December 15, 2006: Tommy Thompson
December 19, 2006: Jim Gilmore
December 26, 2006: John Edwards
January 3, 2007: Mitt Romney
January 7, 2007: Joe Biden (announcing his intention to create a committee, on Meet the Press)
January 11, 2007: Chris Dodd (announcing a full-on run on Don Imus’s show), Ron Paul

You can soon add another name to that list: Barack Obama announced his exploratory committee four years ago this Sunday.
When Weigel published his post earlier this week, the number of 2012 Republican candidates who had set up exploratory committees was a nice round zero. Yesterday Georgia-based conservative talk show host Herman Cain became the first to set one up.
Now it’s true the number of candidates in the 2008 cycle was inflated by the open presidency, but still, there were 6 Democrats and 8 Republicans in the field by this time in 2007. (For those who think 2008 was atypical, consider 2004; at this point eight years ago, Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman were already announced candidates, while John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards had set up exploratory committees).
It’s not as though the nominating process has become more langorous since then. Yes, we had unusually early contests in 2008 thanks to threats to Iowa and New Hampshire’s duopoly, but those weren’t apparent yet when all those candidates started running, and nothing fundamental about the process has been changed since then. The 2008 Democratic nominee won Iowa and the Republican nominee won New Hampshire. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, we had the latest in a long list of failures of prominent candidacies that adopted the strategy of ignoring the early states and mopping up on Super Tuesday (Rudy Giuliani).
In other words, time’s a-wastin’ for 2012, and the only candidates who can afford to lie in the weeds are well-known retreads or national celebrities, such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin (you could probably add Ron Paul to the list if he runs once again). Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum are already heavily involved in quasi-candidate activity in Iowa, but that’s about it.
At some point soon, then, it will be time for the chattering classes to stop fantasizing about dark horses like John Thune, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence or Chris Christie, unless they get a move on and start making themselves much better known in the early states. That may be impossible for some of them. Some of my progressive buddies are convinced Christie’s going to be a formidable candidate, but I can’t quite see how a first-term governor will find the time to spend a year living in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina without his constituents getting a mite upset.
Moreover, each tick of the clock makes the task of all the dark horses that much harder.
Truth is, a lot of Republicans are less than excited about their potential 2012 field, and are talking up dark horses to make themselves feel better.
But soon enough, all the talk must end, and what you see is what you’ll get.

Nate Silver has an insightful post, “Did Democrats Give Up in the Gun Control Debate?” up at The New York Times. SIlver explores public attitudes toward gun control measures in light of the history of gun control in America and violent crime rates. Silver doesn’t reach any firm conclusions about future prospects for gun control, other than saying ambivalence among Democrats has given the NRA free reign. But his analysis of public opinion is a good read, especially for gun control advocates in their search for a workable strategy. As Silver expalins,

…According to the General Social Survey, conducted intermittently since 1972, the percentage of Americans who think permits should be required before a gun can be obtained has gradually risen (to 79 percent in 2008 from 72 percent in 1972). Background checks for gun owners are overwhelmingly popular, attracting the support of as many as 90 percent of Americans. And while most Americans say they do not want gun control regulations to become stricter, even fewer — about 10 percent — think they should be made more lax.
Still, the overall pattern is reasonably clear. According to Gallup surveys, for instance, the number of Americans favoring a ban on handguns has been on a long-term decline and is now about 30 percent, down almost 10 percentage points from a decade earlier…

Silver then looks at attitudes in light of gun ownership:

…This has occurred despite gun ownership becoming less common. When the General Social Survey was first conducted in 1973, about half (49 percent) of Americans reported having a firearm in their households. But the fraction was down to 36 percent by 2008

And crime rates:

…it is hard to track any sort of one-to-one relationship between crime rates and public opinion on guns. The rate of violent crime increased steadily in the United States for most of the past half-century, peaking in 1991, before embarking upon a relatively steep decline. But support for gun rights generally increased both as the crime rate was rising and then after it began to fall.

Silver discusses the evolution of the gun control policies of the political parties, noting the hardening of GOP opposition to any form of gun control and the weakening of Democratic support, until the election of President Clinton, when the bold language of the Democratic Party Platform of 1996 put it this way:

Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, and George Bush were able to hold the Brady Bill hostage for the gun lobby until Bill Clinton became President. With his leadership, we made the Brady Bill the law of the land. And because we did, more than 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers have been stopped from buying guns. President Clinton led the fight to ban 19 deadly assault weapons, designed for one purpose only — to kill human beings. We oppose efforts to restrict weapons used for legitimate sporting purposes, and we are proud that not one hunter or sportsman was forced to change guns because of the assault weapons ban. But we know that the military-style guns we banned have no place on America’s streets, and we are proud of the courageous Democrats who defied the gun lobby and sacrificed their seats in Congress to make America safer.

After this high water mark of Democratic support for gun control, the Democratic platforms of ’04 and ’08 barely mentioned the issue. “Democrats concluded that the issue was a political loser for them and they stopped fighting back,” as SIlver puts it.
After Tucson, Democrats are at a crossroads where they must decide whether or not it is OK to ignore the fact that high capacity ammo clips serve no other purpose, other than killing lots of people. Silver presents no poll data about attitudes toward banning the sale of high capacity ammo clips, which has been proposed in legislation by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy. It’s highly unlikely that Speaker Boehner and the Republicans will allow the life-saving legislation to move forward in the House.
Progressives and activists should not give up on McCarthy’s bill. As America prepares to celebrate the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, I remember how the holiday legislation languished in congress for more than a decade before it got any traction. Then, sparked by a well-organized citizens lobby launched in 1979, the bill rolled through congress like a well-oiled juggernaut, compelling even a reluctant Ronald Reagan to sign it in 1983. The two relevant points here are that attitudes can be changed, and worthwhile reforms sometimes take a few years. Activists should refuse to be demoralized by defeats in the short run, while mobilizing for victory in the long run. That’s how meaningful gun control to save lives will come to America.

Today’s big political sensation seems to be a video released by Sarah Palin providing her presumably definitive commentary on the shootings in Tucson, the controversy over her PAC’s targeting of Gabby Giffords with what looked like a bullseye on her district, and the broader argument about the possible connection of violent anti-government rhetoric with acts of violence against government officials.
Most of the commentary on the video has focused on her use of the term “blood libel” to characterize accusations of conservative responsibility for the outbreak of violence in Arizona.
The term originally referred to persistent medieval claims that Jews were killing Christian children and using their blood for ritual purposes. Thus, it was suspected, Palin’s longstanding habit of appropriating every available symbol of victimization to illustrate the persecution of herself, her family, and her political supporters had reached a new low.
I personally think it’s more likely that Palin and/or her staff picked up on “blood libel” after it was used (and then endlessly linked to) by Glenn Reynolds in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday to turn the tables on liberal critics of violent conservative rhetoric. Maybe he knew the historical derivation of the term, but there’s no particular reason to assume Palin did; she probably thought, quite plausibly, that it referred to allegations of “blood on your hands” after an act of violence.
In any event, it’s not the “blood libel” reference that struck me about the speech, or the general, predictable effort to deny there was anything at all wrong or unusual about her and other conservatives’ rhetoric towards their political opponents. What was really interesting was how much Palin’s video was framed like a presidential address (disclosure: I borrowed this insight from The American Prospect‘s Mark Schmitt, who mentioned it in a private discussion), from its Olympian tone of reassurance right down to its “May God Bless America” closing. Viewed from this perspective, Palin’s self-exculpatory lines and the accusation of a “blood libel” seem more like a matter-of-fact statement of her viewers’ beliefs than any angrily-intended counterattack against her alleged tormenters
Check out this altar call at the end:

Let us honor those precious lives cut short in Tucson by praying for them and their families and by cherishing their memories. Let us pray for the full recovery of the wounded. And let us pray for our country. In times like this we need God’s guidance and the peace He provides. We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to stifle debate.
America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy. We will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time, to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner, and to unite in the knowledge that, though our ideas may be different, we must all strive for a better future for our country.

Now there’s obviously some red meat tucked into this passage, with the references to “mindless finger-pointing” and “stifling debate.” But that’s not the central thrust, which was bascially to tell “her people” that they were on the side of the Tucson victims, not to mention the angels, and that their political activities were in the best traditions and interests of the country as a whole.
It’s as though she knew “her nation” wouldn’t listen to its dubious commander-in-chief, Barack Obama, when he speaks tonight, and felt it needed its own presidential address to calm fears and restate pieties.
If this is an accurate interpretations of her motives, then it’s a token of the depth of divisions facing America that we can’t unite even rhetorically except by proxy. And it’s also a sign of Palin’s own self-appointed role as not just one of many conservative leaders, but as the voice conservatives have been waiting to hear.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Warning label: This article will make civil libertarians unhappy. Read at your own risk.
We are embroiled, alas, in a politicized argument about the slaughter in Tucson. While most of the charges being flung about rest on a scanty basis (at best), the most important and least contestable facts are getting lost: Jared Lee Loughner was mentally ill when he pulled the trigger, there were multiple signs of his descent into delusion over the past year, and no one did very much about it.
To be sure, the authorities at Pima Community College finally suspended him after five contacts with the police and conditioned his return on clearance from a mental health professional. Police delivered the letter of suspension to Loughner’s home and talked with him and his parents. We do not know what happened next. Perhaps his parents tried to persuade him to seek help and were rebuffed; perhaps they were reluctant to have further involvement with the authorities; perhaps they were too confused or conflicted even to try. In any event, there’s no evidence that he did receive treatment, and according to college officials, he did not attempt to return to school.
The bottom line: No one was legally responsible for taking the next step, and they might well have hit a wall if they had. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the director of the Urgent Psychiatric Care Center in Phoenix said that in the absence of specific threats, parents or authorities might well have failed to meet the tests for involuntary commitment under Arizona law, which resembles laws in most states as well. Liz Rebensdorf, a retired psychologist and an official in the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said, “Unless there’s a crime committed, it’s very difficult to force someone into treatment.” For someone delusional who’s bent on mayhem, that’s too long to wait.
The story repeats itself, over and over. A single narrative connects the Unabomber, George Wallace shooter Arthur Bremmer, Reagan shooter John Hinckley, the Virginia Tech shooter–all mentally disturbed loners who needed to be committed and treated against their will. But the law would not permit it.
Starting in the 1970s, civil libertarians worked to eliminate involuntary commitment or, that failing, to raise the standards and burden of proof so high that few individuals would meet it. Important decisions by the Supreme Court and subordinate courts gave individuals new protections, including a constitutional right to refuse psychotropic medication. A few states have tried to push back in constitutionally acceptable ways, but efforts such as California’s Laura’s Law, designed to make it easier to force patients to take medication, have been stymied by civil rights concerns and lack of funding.
We need legal reform to shift the balance in favor of protecting the community, especially against those who are armed and deranged. This means two changes in particular. First, those who acquire credible evidence of an individual’s mental disturbance should be required to report it to both law enforcement authorities and the courts, and the legal jeopardy for failing to do so should be tough enough to ensure compliance. Parents, school authorities, and other involved parties should be made to understand that they have responsibilities to the community as a whole, not just to family members or to their own student body. While embarrassment and reluctance to get involved are understandable sentiments, they should not be allowed to drive conduct when the public safety is at stake. We’re not necessarily cramming these measures down anyone’s throat: I’ve known many families who were desperate for laws that would help them do what they knew needed to be done for their adult children, and many college administrators who felt that their hands were tied.
Second, the law should no longer require, as a condition of involuntary incarceration, that seriously disturbed individuals constitute a danger to themselves or others, let alone a “substantial” or “imminent” danger, as many states do. A delusional loss of contact with reality should be enough to trigger a process that starts with multiple offers of voluntary assistance and ends with involuntary treatment, including commitment if necessary. How many more mass murders and assassinations do we need before we understand that the rights-based hyper-individualism of our laws governing mental illness is endangering the security of our community and the functioning of our democracy?