One of the more striking phenomena associated with the oncoming 2016 presidential cycle is the contrast between the massive enthusiasm for former Florida governor Jeb Bush in elite GOP circles and its notable absence anywhere else. But said elites are sometimes blinded by narcissism, and deafened by the puffery of their most prominent tribune, Mark Halperin (now with Bloomberg Politics), who wrote a much-mocked column on the world-historical potential of the Bush boom. I commented on this phenomenon earlier this week at Washington Monthly:

Mark Halperin is one of the most famous, and certainly one of the most richly remunerated, journalists in Christendom–yet is capable of writing graph after graph and page after page of palpable nonsense, expressing not only an indifference to but an active defiance of any objective evidence that transcends the “insider” information he purveys. But the problem here is in considering Halperin a “journalist” in the normal meaning of the term. His niche is to serve as a courtier and a vanity mirror for what Digby so aptly labeled The Village, the small group of elite beltway-centered movers and shakers who want to form the political world in their own image. He writes what Villagers want to read, and is rewarded with unequaled access to their most avaricious thoughts and intentions. And because they do matter in politics, albeit not as much as they would wish, there is a sort of “journalism” going on, but not of the sort that should be taken seriously as reflecting the broader world where activists, constituency groups, and, you know, actual voters have a little something to say about who governs them.
Back when he was flattering and pandering his way to insider influence at The Note, Halperin did a lot to popularize the concept of “the invisible primary,” the elite-dominated pre-election period when presidential candidates seek the money and influence necessary to mount a successful campaign. He remains adept at following that process, but only through the fun-house mirror of his subjects’ wildly inflated self-esteem. Republican insiders are frustrated that the GOP and the entire political system aren’t joining them in a plaintive wail for a third Bush presidency, so in a faithful reproduction of His Master’s Voice Halperin pens a column combining The Village’s ridiculously distorted idea of Jeb’s power and glory with the incredible phenomenon that America might be denied his services.

Personally, I think the acid test for Jeb Bush is whether he’s capable of looking beyond his elite support to the difficult realities of winning a presidential nomination. If he does, though, he probably won’t run.

It’s been obvious that from the elite level to the rank-and-file, Republicans have been reapplying the war paint that had begun to fade a bit during protests against various national security positions of the Obama administration. And it’s also becoming apparent that this could affect the party message and nominating process in 2016, as I noted today at the Washington Monthly.

Yes, it’s suddenly a fine time once again to be a Republican super-hawk, what with the GOP rank-and-file getting back in touch with their inner Dick Cheney, and even Rand Paul getting all macho about “destroying” IS. At that neocon fortress, the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes can’t help but gloat.

The Republican flirtation with dovish noninterventionism is over. It wasn’t much of a fling.

No, it wasn’t.
Hayes quickly warms to the idea that this new mood of joy in blowing thing up overseas as well as at home will be a big factor in 2016. And though he mentions Paul’s back-tracking and some upcoming “big” speech by Bobby Jindal on defense (presumably because his effort to be the most ferocious Christian Right figure in the campaign hasn’t much worked), Hayes has no doubt who the biggest beneficiary will be:
Not immigration reform? Just kidding.

Rubio called for dramatic increases in defense spending. He said the United States should be prepared to send ground troops to Iraq if necessary to defeat ISIS. He argued that the United States must “be able to project power into multiple theaters in the world.” He said that the United States should embrace its role as a superpower and “conduct a multifaceted foreign policy.”

For the first time, I’m seeing a glimmer of how Rubio might be able to overcome the horrendous damage he suffered among conservative activists with his advocacy of comprehensive immigration reform.

The smell of gunpowder in the air in GOP politics has gotten so strong, in fact, that Lindsey Graham is imagining himself as a 2016 presidential candidate.
That ain’t happening, but it’s a sign of the times.

One of the most frustrating recent phenomena for Democrats has been a “false equivalency” meme wherein Republican candidates have been forgiven intraparty pandering to “the base” and congratulated for general election “moves to the center” as though that’s what everybody does. This media tendency has been especially notable in this year’s Iowa Senate contest, where Republican Joni Ernst has benefited from a cynical acceptance of both her extremism and her rationalizations for abandoning it. I dissected and deplored this media vice in a TPMCafe column today:

[Democratic nominee Bruce] Braley has gamely stuck to issues, primarily by hammering Ernst for very unpopular right-wing positions on the minimum wage and Social Security. But he’s also used issues to raise his own “character” issue: the claim that this mild-mannered hog-castrating war veteran woman in the soft-focused ads is actually an extremist. And in that pursuit he’s found plenty of ammunition in Ernst’s record in the Iowa legislature and on the campaign trail, particularly early in the 2014 cycle when she was looking for wingnut traction.
Ernst is crying “unfair,” most notably in an exchange in their first debate last Sunday. Braley criticized her for sponsoring in the legislature a state constitutional amendment establishing prenatal “personhood” from the moment of fertilization, which he accurately said would outlaw now only the very earliest abortions but also IV fertility clinics and several types of contraception. This was Ernst’s response:

“The amendment that is being referenced by the congressman would not do any of the things that you stated it would do,” Ernst said. “That amendment is simply a statement that I support life.”

That’s true in a highly technical sense — perhaps using the reasoning of a trial lawyer — insofar as constitutional amendments don’t inherently create the laws they rule out or demand, but in a more basic sense, it’s just a lie, as Ernst and her campaign surely know. “Personhood” amendments are so extreme they have been routinely trounced when placed on the ballot (twice in Colorado and once in Mississippi). And if sponsoring one of them is a “statement” of anything, it’s a statement of absolute submission to Iowa’s powerful antichoice lobby, in the sense of ruling out any of those weasely “exceptions” to a total abortion (and “abortifacient”) ban.

Ernst’s efforts to escape accountability are more egregious, believe it or not, on other issues:

Democrats [are] calling attention to Ernst’s multiple passionate statements subscribing to the insane, John Birch Society-inspired conspiracy theory that the United Nations is behind land-use regulations of every kind. [But that] is treated as the equivalent of Republicans howling about Braley’s “chicken suit.” The reason, I suppose, is that you can’t criticize a pol for pandering to “the base” during primaries and then “moving to the center” in general elections. It’s just what you do.
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. Extremism is, or should be, a “character” issue. And so, too, should be flip-flopping. Personally, I respect “personhood” advocates for taking a dangerous position based on the logical extension of strongly-held if exotic ideas about human development. I don’t respect those like Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst who try to weasel out of such positions the moment they become inconvenient.
As for Agenda 21, anyone who talks seriously about this twisted hoax should be drummed out of electoral politics for good. But just as bad is Joni Ernst’s excuse for why she’s not talking about it now:

“I don’t think that the U.N. Agenda 21 is a threat to Iowa farmers,” Ernst said in an interview in her Urbandale campaign office. “I think there are a lot of people that follow that issue in Iowa. It may be something that is very important to them, but I think Iowans are very smart and that we have a great legislature here, we have a very intelligent governor, and I think that we will protect Iowans.”

In other words, the conspiracy to ban golfing and force people out of their cars onto bike trails is real, but Iowa Republicans are so vigilant about it that the conspirators have moved elsewhere.

Democrats can and should call Republicans on this kind of crap, but the MSM should pitch in, too, and if they don’t, they deserve the abuse they so often get for cynical enabling of political vices.

Like everyone else in political journalism, I’ve spent months obsessing about the struggle for control of the Senate, and without question it matters a lot. But it’s becoming more and more apparent that if there was just one contest you could choose that might send the right message to the GOP, it’s the Kansas governor’s race, where incumbent Sam Brownback is in big trouble. Here’s how I put it today at the Washington Monthly.

If the Republican governor of a very Republican state loses for undertaking a conservative political and policy revolution, complete with a purge of party “moderates” and reactionary legislation on just about every front imaginable, it may remind Republicans everywhere that there are limits to a meta-strategy of moving to the right, polarizing the electorate, and then winning on money and pure dumb luck. As a huge bonus, among the injured in a Brownback loss would be the Koch Brothers, right there in their Wichita lair….
Brownback has very publicly made his state a conservative “experiment station” and sought to stamp out any dissent in his party, all in the pursuit of a sort of intellectual rogue’s gallery of bad ideas, from supply-side economics to the harshest attacks in the country on reproductive rights. He not only deserve to lose, but his regime needs to be remembered with fear and trembling by Republicans everywhere.

If this sounds like a prayer as much as political analysis, so be it.

Sometimes you read some overseas news and it seems exceptionally relevant to U.S. politics, if not now then in the near future. That’s how I reacted to news from Spain about a sudden about-face on abortion policy, as I discussed today at TPMCafe:

A political party with close ties to religious conservatives wins a national election thanks to unhappiness with the ruling center-left party’s economic and financial performance. Challenged to redeem its platform promising a major reversal of landmark laws making abortion generally legal, the conservative party promulgates a law banning the procedure, with exceptions for rape, incest, and threats to the physical and mental health of the mother. Protests appear and spread as women object to the turning back of the clock. Public opinion surveys show 70 to 80 percent opposition to the new law. And finally, the conservative party’s prime minister relents, puts off implementation of the abortion ban on grounds that it would be reversed at the next change of party control, and instead proposes a face-saving measure providing for parental approval of abortions by minors. Anti-choicers and religious officials are very, very displeased and the governing party could be heading toward disarray.
In case you missed it, that’s what just happened in Spain. And it’s an omen for what might happen if U.S. Republicans regain power in 2016 thanks to general unhappiness with the Obama administration and the results of its economic policies. A long-overdue debt — sort of a balloon payment on an old mortgage — would reach maturity, and the GOP would be hard-pressed not to take some dramatic action on hot-button cultural issues, especially abortion. And the required gesture could be politically toxic. The Spanish law is significantly more liberal than what the national GOP has long been committed to; aside from the significant number of Republicans who oppose rape and incest exceptions to a hypothetical abortion ban, a health exception has long been anathema, and a mental health exception even more so (recall the sarcastic air quotes John McCain used for “health exceptions” in the 2008 presidential debate at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church).

Even if Republicans dodge a confrontation between public opinion and their longstanding commitments to the antichoice movement, the same dynamic applies to other hot-button issues:

The bottom line is that a Republican Party — which like the anti-choice movement itself has long been Janus-faced, publicly focusing on rare and unpopular late-term abortions while never moving an inch from support from a total abortion ban with rare exceptions — would be forced by actual power to choose between a final betrayal of its “base” and an implicit mandate to ignore all that cultural stuff. Even if it’s abundantly clear to all the pundits that a triumphal GOP has gained control of the federal government for reasons that have zero to do with rolling back abortion rights — or GLBT rights, or a “path to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants — there’s also zero reason to assume that President Christie or Bush or Paul or Cruz might not find himself in exactly the position of Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy this week: admitting a big chunk of the party platform is quite simply too hot to handle. If it comes to that, a lot of conservative activists may lose their final illusions.

It’s another way of saying you can’t have it both ways forever.