Two excellent posts provide a devastating take-down of WaPo columnist and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson’s dismissal of the notion that Republicans would sabotage needed economic reforms to gain political advantage. Political Animal Steve Benen, who launched the controversy with his post on GOP sabotage, responds to Gerson’s critique with a couple of compelling observations, which may make Gerson sorry he brought it up:

He suggests at the outset that my argument is somehow an attempt to avoid dealing with the “inadequacies” and “failure” of “liberalism.” It’s an odd line of reasoning — Gerson’s former boss bequeathed an economic catastrophe, a jobs crisis, a massive deficit, and a housing crisis, among other calamities. Democratic policymakers, scrambling to address the catastrophic failures of Bush-brand conservatism, have managed to create an economy that’s growing, creating jobs, and generating private-sector profits, while stabilizing a financial system that teetered on collapse. (What’s more, if Gerson believes the size and scope of the Obama administration’s economic agenda are consistent with what “liberalism” has in mind, he knows far less about the ideology than he should.)
…It’s also worth emphasizing that my point about “uncertainty” was meant as a form of mockery. The right is obsessed with the debunked notion that “economic uncertainty” is responsible for the lack of robust growth, so in raising my observation, I noted that it’s the Republican agenda that seems focused on adding to this uncertainty — vowing to gut the national health care system, promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing to re-write business regulations in general, considering a government shutdown, and even weighing the possibility of sending the United States into default.
What’s more, I’m fascinated by the notion that I’m describing a “conspiracy” — a word Gerson uses four times in his column. I made no such argument. There’s no need for secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms; there’s no reason to imagine a powerful cabal pulling strings behind the scenes. The proposition need not be fanciful at all — a stronger economy would improve President Obama’s re-election chances, so Republicans are resisting policies and ideas that would lead to this result.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasn’t especially cagey about his intentions: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president…. Our single biggest political goal is to give [the Republican] nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful.”
Given this, is it really that extraordinary to wonder if this might include rejecting proposals that would make President Obama look more successful on economic policy — especially given the fact that McConnell’s approach to the economy appears to be carefully crafted to do the opposite of what’s needed? After Gerson’s West Wing colleagues effectively accused Democrats of treason in 2005, is it beyond the pale to have a conversation about Republicans’ inexplicable motivations?

In his Plum Line column, Greg Sargent acknowledges that the “charge that Republicans are planning to actively sabotage the economy” may be overstated/unproductive, but notes, in addition to the McConnell quote cited by Benen, Sen Jim Demint’s call to arms: “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Sargent continues:

…There’s no denying that some Republicans did, in fact, make the clear calculation that denying Obama successes at all costs, regardless of the substance of specific initiatives or any willingness on his part to make concessions, was the best way to accomplish this overarching political goal. They said so themselves! It would be interesting to hear Gerson directly engage these McConnell and DeMint quotes and explain why they don’t directly support this general interpretation of what happened in the last two years.

We’ll file that one under “not gonna happen.”

Three conservative memes are unraveling in the wake of the midterms – the notion that the public supports their rigid positions on the deficit, Bush’s tax cuts and DADT. As Ruy Teixeira explains in his November 22 ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘:

On the deficit, conservatives are promoting the idea that immediate drastic action must be taken to shrink government spending and reduce the deficit despite the current economic situation. They are aided and abetted by a chorus from the mainstream media and professional budget scolds. Indeed, to listen to the rising tide of deficit mania you’d think nothing was more important than rapid action on this front.
But that’s not how the public sees it. Fifty-six percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll said they wanted the new Congress to concentrate first on jobs and the economy. Fourteen percent said health care, and a whopping 4 percent said the budget deficit or the national debt.

On W’s tax cuts:

On the Bush tax cuts, conservatives claim that preserving the tax cuts for the rich is a matter of grave national importance that must not be separated from preserving the middle-class tax cuts. Once again, the public’s view is far from that of conservatives. Sixty-four percent of respondents in a recent CNN poll either want to keep only the tax cuts that apply to families earning under $250,000 a year (49 percent) or think all the tax cuts should be eliminated. Just 35 percent endorse the idea that all the tax cuts should continue regardless of how wealthy families are.

Regarding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:”

Finally, conservatives are putting up a last-ditch effort to stop the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which currently prevents gays from serving openly in the armed forces. They may be worried about this change, but the public isn’t. In the same CNN poll just referenced an overwhelming 72 percent favored permitting gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military compared to only 23 percent who were opposed.

So much for the GOP’s midterm mandate regarding three major issues of 2010. Less than a month after the Republicans’ midterm victory, their triumphalist masquerade looks a lot like a farce. As Teixeira puts it to the conservatives: “…You say you want to represent the will of the American people with your newly won power in Congress. Why don’t you start by actually listening to them?”

There are no major surprises in a new study of the midterm elections by Project Vote. Much of the analysis published elsewhere is confirmed in the study, but some interesting trends are highlighted in comparison to the 2006 midterms. Among the findings, which are based on exit poll data and estimates from the U.S. Elections Project and reported here by Steven Thomma and William Douglas of McClatchey News Service:

Senior citizens turned out in force — their turnout was 16 percent higher than in the last midterm election of 2006, and 59 percent of them voted Republican, up 10 percentage points from 2006. While voters 65 and older are 13 percent of the U.S. population, they made up 21 percent of this year’s electorate.[compared to 19 percent in the 2006 midterms] The wealthy voted heavily too. Total ballots cast by people making $200,000 a year or more expanded by 68 percent over 2006, the study found. Those making from $100,000 to $200,000 cast 11 percent more ballots than they did in 2006.

Dems also lost their edge with women voters in 2010, according to the study:

Women voters’ turnout surged significantly over 2006 as well — and the traditional gender gap vanished. In 2006, women voted Democratic by 55 percent to 43 percent for Republicans. This year, women voted 49 percent for Republicans and 48 percent for Democrats.

On a more positive note, the study also confirmed the influence of Latino vote in Democratic victories: “…One striking development helped Democrats in a few races: Hispanic voting surged in several states, helping Democrats win hotly contested Senate races in California, Colorado and Nevada.”

Despite all of the GOP bluster about repealing the Affordable Care Act, the data suggests that such a campaign could boomerang badly, according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, who explains in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’

…Not only are they likely to fail to achieve their goal but they also are likely to become very unpopular in the process. This is because most parts of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, are actually quite popular and any attempt to repeal them could very well turn public sentiment against the repeal advocates.
Consider these data from the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. The poll tested public support for repealing six elements of ACA and found strong majority support for retaining five of the six elements: tax credits for small business to offer health care coverage (78 percent keep to 18 percent repeal); closing the Medicare prescription drug doughnut hole (72 percent keep to 22 percent repeal); providing financial help for those who don’t get insurance through their jobs (71 percent keep to 24 percent repeal); no denial of insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions (71 percent keep to 26 percent repeal); and increasing the Medicare payroll tax on upper-income Americans (54 percent keep to 39 percent repeal). Only the individual mandate was not supported.

Many repeal advocates also have doubts, explains Teixeira:

…Even among those who say all or parts of ACA should be repealed support runs strong for four of the six elements tested: 68 percent for the small business subsidies; 62 percent for prohibiting denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions; 60 percent for closing the doughnut hole; and 55 percent for individual subsidies.

Given the aforementioned data, It seems likely that calls for HCR repeal will morph into “amend, don’t repeal” among many Republicans who value their jobs. As Teixeira explains, “Repealing ACA means taking away key reforms that have very broad public support. And that is likely to displease the public greatly no matter what conservatives think.”

it would be hard to pin-point the exact moment the Republicans pilfered the term “deficit-reduction” from the economic policy lexicon as their exclusive property. But it was one of those rip-offs that was made possible by the lack of vigilance by the victim, i.e. the Democrats. Too often, it seems, Dems have been complicit in framing a “Jobs vs. Deficit-reduction” false choice.
The meme successfully propagated by the GOP is that the only way Dems can balance budgets or reduce deficits is by levying taxes. The subtext is that Dems just don’t know how to cut government spending.
In Friday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt has an article, “OK, You Fix the Budget,” which serves as a backgrounder for the Times’ PDF widget “Get a Pencil: You’re Tackling the Deficit.” As Leonhardt explains,

…Rather than making recommendations, we are laying out a menu of major options, so that readers can come up with their own plan. We have received help along the way from the deficit panel, from Congressional and White House aides and from liberal, conservative and centrist budget analysts. The deficit puzzle on The Times’s Web site is the result.
The ultimate goal is to help you judge the deficit proposals that are now emerging. Do you think they cut spending too much and should raise taxes more? Or the reverse? Are they too aggressive or too meek on military spending? How will they affect income inequality? How might they help or hurt economic growth?

It’s a useful exercise in that it encourages Dems to think about the real-world choices that can help formulate a responsible budget, and more importantly shows that there are various menus of choices involving both budget cuts and tax policy that are acceptable to progressive as well as moderate Dems.
It also underscores the reality that, the non-starter Simpson-Bowles proposals notwithstanding, President Obama did not cave to conservatives simply by convening the deficit panel. Rather, he opened a new arena of progressive-conservative debate and struggle.