This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
John McCain had a very good primary election night on Tuesday, crushing the once-feared right-wing challenger J.D. Hayworth by a ­­­­24 percent margin. And there’s not much secret to how he did it: In addition to benefiting from Hayworth’s own self-inflicted wounds, McCain dominated by turning away from some of his signature commitments from the past. Politico’s David Catanese nicely summed it up in a piece on the “heavy price” paid by McCain to win re-nomination this year:

Once the sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy–a stance that hurt him with conservatives–McCain moved in a different direction this year. He switched his emphasis this summer to border security, embraced Arizona’s controversial hard-line immigration law and, in an ad, called on the federal government to “complete the danged fence”–three years after dismissing the notion of a border fence in a Vanity Fair article titled “Prisoner of Conscience.”
Four years ago, McCain also told students he supported repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military. But in May, the former war hero and Navy prisoner of war promised to filibuster any bill including that change that landed on the Senate floor.
He sidestepped the climate change debate this year despite once being a Senate leader on the issue and he’s even distanced himself from the term that once seemed central to his political brand–his “maverick” trademark.
Hayworth, the primary election opponent McCain has spent a small fortune pummeling as inept, corrupt and even stupid, has seized on the apparent contradictions.
“Mr. campaign finance reform … the guy who used to lecture us about the evils of money … thinks he’s going to buy off Arizona,” Hayworth told POLITICO. “Maybe it’ll work. Hey, they spent $20 million.”

McCain’s defenders would probably argue that he’s never been anything other than a “Goldwater conservative,” as he likes to call himself, and on some issues, that may be true. But there is no way to deny that the John McCain who gave the conservative movement a near-death experience in 2000 and then trod a genuine maverick path until at least 2004 is virtually unrecognizable in the senior senator from Arizona today.
Still, Catanese is off the mark in attributing this devolution to McCain’s battle against Hayworth. McCain has been moving rightward pretty steadily since at least the moment he decided to run for president again in the 2008 cycle. And in this metamorphosis, he has accurately reflected trends in his party.
Many observers, particularly liberals, have been shocked by the dramatic rightward march of the GOP since November 2008, with all its thundering against Barack Obama’s “socialism” and its outstretched hand to the virulently anti-government Tea Party movement (which is largely composed of faithful Republican voters). It’s not often, after all, that a political party reacts to two consecutive electoral calamities by moving further away from the political center.
Yet this shouldn’t be a surprise. Well before 2008, it had become a deeply entrenched habit among “movement conservatives” to explain any Republican electoral failure as a result of the party’s insufficiently rigorous featly to conservative ideology. And this is exactly how they interpreted the decline of George W. Bush and the congressional GOP after his 2004 re-election. At both the elite and rank-and-file level, conservatives quickly decided that Bush and Rove and DeLay had betrayed them. Consider this report from the Washington Post in early 2006:

Disaffection over spending and immigration have caused conservatives to take flight from President Bush and the Republican Congress at a rapid pace in recent weeks, sending Bush’s approval ratings to record lows and presenting a new threat to the GOP’s 12-year reign on Capitol Hill, according to White House officials, lawmakers and new polling data.
Bush and Congress have suffered a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year, a trend that has accelerated with alarming implications for Bush’s governing strategy.
The Gallup polling organization recorded a 13-percentage-point drop in Republican support for Bush in the past couple of weeks. These usually reliable voters are telling pollsters and lawmakers they are fed up with what they see as out-of-control spending by Washington and, more generally, an abandonment of core conservative principles….
“The problem in my mind, and the only way to explain the very significant erosion is just a disgust with what appears to be a complete abandonment of limited government,” said former Republican congressman Pat Toomey, who runs the conservative Club for Growth. Toomey said commitment to smaller government has been the unifying idea for most elements of the GOP coalition since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “Republicans have finally had enough,” he said, a sentiment echoed by several other conservative activists and lawmakers.

There was a temporary renewal of conservative support for Bush after the 2006 elections, mainly attributable to his decision to defy the electorate with a “surge” in Iraq (a policy heavily identified with John McCain, to his own benefit among conservatives). But in general, on the right, the belief only intensified that Bush had betrayed the cause by accepting and even advocating higher domestic spending. He had championed a larger federal role in education and health care (with his Medicare prescription drug benefit), while also engaging in a maddening effort to buy Hispanic votes with “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. All of these initiatives, of course, were part and parcel of Karl Rove’s efforts to build a Republican majority by placating the conservative base while strategically reaching out to key categories of swing voters. To conservatives, it looked like the swing-voter tail was wagging the conservative dog.
By the beginning of the 2008 cycle, the revolt was fully underway, a phenomenon disguised in part by the early prominence of well-known “moderates” Giuliani, Romney, and McCain in the presidential field. In reality, Giuliani was going nowhere; Romney had repositioned himself as the “true conservative” in the race; and McCain ultimately won through a perfect storm of his opponents’ mistakes and misfortunes. Still, McCain didn’t sound very “mavericky” during the primaries; he was already backing away from cap-and-trade, campaign finance reform, and comprehensive immigration reform, mainly emphasizing his championship of the Iraq “surge.”
It was during the general election, however, that the tension between McCain’s need for swing votes and ever-increasing pressure from conservatives to turn right reached its peak .In that context, his choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate made perfect sense: She was “mavericky” all right–as it would soon be phrased–yet she was also not only acceptable, but downright exciting to hard-core conservatives, particularly the right-to-life movement that essentially scuttled McCain’s hopes of picking Joe Lieberman. Then, during the campaign, when you might have expected McCain to take his conservative votes for granted while lusting after moderate independents, he instead turned even more noticeably to the right, framing his message around Joe the Plumber, attacking Obama’s tax proposals as an attempt to “spread the wealth,” and even dabbling in the ACORN conspiracy theory of the housing meltdown that was popular on the right-wing talk show circuit. Even that wasn’t enough red meat for conservatives, who at one point started shouting at McCain at his own rallies, demanding more talk about Obama’s “radical” associations and socialistic policy proposals.
Indeed, in every important respect, these were the birth pangs of the Tea Party movement. That movement obtained a distinct identity in early 2009, but it was fundamentally a cadre of conservative activists who had been radicalized during the traumatic experience of the 2008 campaign and its unhappy result. To conservatives, of course, it was no mere coincidence that even as McCain and Palin were going down to defeat, the Bush administration and its congressional allies were executing one final betrayal of the cause by proposing and helping to enact TARP and other “bailouts.” This sealed the GOP ticket’s fate, but just as importantly, rid conservatives of any sense of responsibility, political or moral, for Bush’s sins. With the inauguration of Barack Obama, conservatives were also freed from any responsibility to govern the country, and soon embarked on a two-front war against the new “socialist” administration and the “RINOs” who enabled it.
In all these developments, John McCain has been a richly symbolic figure, not least in how he achieved last night’s victory over J.D. Hayworth. The standard-bearer of the GOP, who has been drifting rightward largely in synch with his party since at least 2008, decided to adopt wholesale the Tea Party rhetoric and issue positioning that has swept the Republican universe during the past year. McCain’s win may be described by some of the less thoughtful pundits as a victory of the GOP establishment over the Tea Party movement. But, in reality, it represents Republicans’ final surrender to conservative demands that date back for decades. In that respect, John McCain is not just the symbolic head of his party: He remains its leader in substance, having fully adopted the mores of a conservative movement that’s won its long cold war against what Barry Goldwater called “moderation in the pursuit of justice.”

It’s ludicrous to lump together Democratic and Republican primary voters from five states in four time zones and expect them to deliver some sort of “message,” but since that’s how lots of media folk tend to look at elections, let’s consider the “signals” sent last night.
In FL, in a mild upset, Rick Scott defeated Bill McCollum for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Scott, as you may recall, is the guy who decided to spend his golden parachute from the HCA-Columbia for-profit hospital chain becoming a right-wing anti-“ObamaCare” celebrity, and then governor of his adopted state. Between himself and his wife, he’s spent about $50 million on this race so far, and it was just enough to hand the ultimate Party Stalwart McCollum his third loss in a major statewide race. McCollum did take some serious bark off Scott’s hide, particularly in terms of reminding Floridians of the gigantic Medicare fraud fines paid by HCA-Columbia, which will save Democrat Alex Sink a great deal of time and money during the general election.
Meanwhile, Scott’s doppelganger, billionaire Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene, did not fare so well, losing to congressman Kendrick Meek by a 57-31 margin.
The other major upset, or at least potential upset, is way out in Alaska, where former judge Joe Miller, who benefitted from a late push by Sarah Palin, may be in the process of running Lisa Murkowsi right out of the Senate. Miller’s up by three percentage points with a lot of absentee ballots left, so we may not know who has won the nomination for a couple of weeks. It appears Miller got a lot of help from the presence on the ballot of an anti-abortion initiative, which attracted a bit turnout from social conservatives, who’ve never much cared for the pro-choice Murkowski.
In non-upset news from Arizona, John McCain had little problem beating J.D. Hayworth, certainly not after he repudiated much of his own “maverick” legacy during the primary campaign. Another “Establishment” figure, Ben Quayle, survived the embarassment of association with an off-color internet site where he used to post using the name of a porn star from Boogie Nights, and won the GOP nomination for Congress in Arizona’s 3d congressional district.
In Oklahoma, a church camp counseler demolished the Club for Growth’s candidate in a Republican congressional runoff after the latter tried to paint the former as soft on Muslims.
And in my favorite primary up in Vermont, as Democrats gear up for a “unity rally” at Noon today, it’s still not clear whether Peter Shumlin or Doug Racine is the party’s gubernatorial nominee; with 17 precincts still unreported, Shumlin has a lead of just over 200 votes. For those of us who applauded the unusually civil tone of this highly competitive five-way primary, it was good to know that turnout greatly exceeded expectations. Knavery in politics is not invariably rewarded, nor is virtue always punished. It just seems that way sometimes.

It’s another big primary day, with contests on tap in Arizona, Florida, Vermont, Alaska and Oklahoma (a runoff). You can read my pithy analysis of all these primaries over at FiveThirtyEight.
Here, though, I’d like to mention an extraordinary contrast in the tones exhibited in two primaries: the Democratic gubernatorial race in Vermont, and the Republican gubernatorial and Democratic Senate primaries in Florida.
The tilt in Vermont has many of the ingredients that often create nasty-fests. It’s very close, with all five candidates being viable, and most handicappers suggesting a four-way dead heat. There are some notable differences in the candidates, though they mostly agree on the issues of the day. Activists in Vermont’s famous Progressive Party (which to the delight of Democrats, has decided against running its own gubernatorial candidate this year) seem attracted to state senate president pro tem Peter Shumlin and former Lt. Gov. Doug Racine. Secretary of State Deb Markowitz and state senator Susan Bartlett have long been considered “centrists.” Though he’s been in public office, former Google exec Matt Dunne could have probably played the “outsider” pretty hard.
But this has been, best as I can tell, an exceptionally civil primary, with lots of debates, lots of substance, and lots of concern for party unity going forward.
Compare that to what’s been going on down in Florida, where both major parties have been torn apart by self-funders and the reaction to them. Rick Scott, a recent transplant to the state, parachuted into the Republican governor’s race not long before qualifying ended and began beating his chest as a self-proclaimed conservative outsider aligned with the Tea Party movement, and soon broke every spending record in Florida history. Poor old Bill McCollum, who’s trudged along in the party harness for decades, losing two Senate races but finally winning statewide as Attorney General in 2006, didn’t know what hit him. But even when it looked like Scott had left McCollum for dead, the Attorney General’s backers (which included former governor Jeb Bush and virtually the entire state party establishment) plotted a comback, and soon McCollum and the 527’s associated with him savagely went after Scott on his former company’s massive Medicare fraud fines. As McCollum climbed back into contention (he now leads in several late polls), both candidates’ negatives soared, and what originally looked like a Republican cakewalk in November’s now a dead heat.
But unfortuntately, the dynamics of the Scott-McCollum race have largely been replicated in the Democratic Senate primary between congressman Kendrick Meek and billionaire investor Jeff Greene. Like Scott, Greene barged into the Senate race very late with an open checkbook, and in an ad blitz that’s ultimately cost $23 million, Greene moved quickly into the lead. As noted in an earlier post here, Meek was spared much of the demolition work on Greene, thanks to media reports of Greene’s loosey-goosey lifestyle, complete with jaunts around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea with BFF Mike Tyson, and at least one apparently accidental jaunt to off-limits Cuba. Greene has fought back with charges that Meek and his mother, former congresswoman Carrie Meek, are, basically, crooks, but it hasn’t worked other than to lower the tone of the contest even more.
People who oppose campaign finance reform should take a long look at what’s happened in Florida this year and explain why it’s essential to the First Amendment to let wealthy people with virtually no connection to a constituency come in and turn elections into chainwaw massacres. But money-equals-speech fans aren”t the only culprits. Many political professionals love nothing more than to find a clueless self-funder who will write lavish checks while either deferring to the pros or flaming out quickly. Jeff Greene’s first chief strategist was the legendary Joe Trippi; his eventual replacement was Tad Devine, who was John Kerry’s general election campaign manager in 2004. It’s likely both men did enough research to realize that their candidate’s background doomed him to destruction, but in the meantime, the livin’ was easy; too bad the floundering Greene had to throw mud at Kendrick Meek as he sank in the polls.
All party primaries can’t be as civil as Vermont’s, but Lord-a-mercy, must so many of them be like Florida’s? Maybe so, as long as money talks so loud, and mud’s the only way to get the free media attention money can’t buy.

In her ‘The Notion’ post, “Fight Tea Party Voters with Fresh Voters,” The Nation’s Laura Flanders has some good news for Democrats, who may be getting discouraged by downer opinion polls. Apparently the Justice Department’s decision to finally enforce the National Voter Registration Act is having a significant impact. Flanders explains:

In a handful of swing states where voting rights groups have sued and won in recent years, the result is impressive: hundreds of thousands of low-income people, two-thirds women, registering since 2008.
In Missouri, where John McCain beat Barack Obama by less than 4,000 votes, nearly a quarter-million voter registration applications have been filed by Missourians while applying for state public assistance benefits since August 2008. In Ohio, where George W. Bush beat John Kerry by nearly 119,000 votes in 2004, low-income Ohioans filed 100,000 voter applications in just the first six months of 2010.
Project Vote, Demos, The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the local civil rights groups who sued these states and won (forcing turnarounds at state public assistance agencies) have been waging a lonely fight to implement the National Voter Registration Act. The 1993 law requires a range of state agencies, not just motor vehicles, offer voter registration services.
That fight became a little less lonely in June, when, for the first time, the Justice Department announced it would start enforcing the NVRA’s voter registration mandate. This April, 40 million Americans applied for Food Stamps. If 10 percent of those people registered to vote – a smaller percentage than seen at Missouri public assistance agencies after settling its NVRA suit – the nation’s voter rolls would grow by several million…The numbers from Missouri and Ohio dwarf the size of the largest tea party rallies. Already, right-wingers fear these voters and NVRA compliance, commenting on websites that poor people should not vote for any number of ugly reasons…

Turnout and voter registration are not the same thing. But, if Democrats pay a little more attention to turning out these ‘fresh’ voters, it could insure that we retain control of the House and Senate. As Flanders concludes, “…Instead of obsessing about the tea partiers — give those newest voters some good reason to use that vote!.” Less nail-biting about unfavorable polls and putting more time, sweat and money into our midterm ground game will serve Dems well.

This item is a guest post from the National Security Network’s Executive Director, Heather Hurlburt, and its Director of Outreach, Ryan Keenan. The views expressed herein are their own.
The “Ground Zero mosque” debate of recent weeks has claimed several casualties: Muslim-Americans’ confidence in their homeland and its Constitution, Howard Dean’s credibility on the left, and, as Peter Beinart wrote, the U.S.’s ability to lay claim to intellectual generalship in a global “war of ideas.” But perhaps less-noticed was a body blow to the 2012 presidential hopes of Newt Gingrich.
Early on, he had signed up to headline a fear-mongering rally at the site of the proposed Cordoba House on September 11 with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, conservative media luminary Andrew Breitbart and far-right Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. But an onslaught of opposition from all ends of the political spectrum led Gingrich to withdraw, leading his staff to deny he had ever intended to appear – though the announcement on Wilders’ website that the anniversary “will witness two eagles” suggests otherwise.
Make no mistake about it: This appearance was about the 2012 Republican presidential race, not the “Islamization of America.” In order to win the Republican nomination, Newt needs to get past religious conservatives’ reservations about his personal life. He must reel in Tea Partiers to whom his credentials make him part of the Establishment; gain the blessing of that same establishment; and court neoconservatives without scaring off independents.
For Newt in 2012 – and for far too many GOP candidates in 2010 – rhetoric about Shariah law, “Ground Zero mosques” and “Terror Babies” is a tempting “us”-vs.-“them” narrative that papers over an ugly little secret.
As much of the national narrative leading into November’s midterms has been division and disappointment among the Democratic base, on national security there are unnoticed but enormous policy and ideological differences within the Republican base. The nativism of the Tea Party movement and the neo-isolationism of Ron and Rand Paul directly contradict the priorities of mainstream Republicans and neoconservatives. Only with difficulty can conservatives embrace the Pauls, with their opposition to the Iraq invasion, skepticism on the Afghanistan war and waffling on issues of detainee treatment. As Ann Coulter said earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “if Ron Paul supports it and it’s not about foreign policy, I’m for it.” [Emphasis added].
Tea Party-driven candidates add another layer of challenge. Dan Maes in Colorado thinks the UN is using bicycles to take over his state. Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck brags about turning down Dick Cheney’s offer of a Pentagon job. Sharon Angle in Nevada spent six years in the American Independent Party, the Nevada branch of the Constitution Party (with whom a variety of other tea party-oriented Republicans have links). The foreign policy platform of the Constitution Party deserves quotation in full:

The only constitutional basis and purpose of foreign policy is to serve the interests of this nation. We should not be the world’s police-man. We pledge our only allegiance to the American Republic. We shout a resounding “NO!” to any one-world government or so-called New World Order. Not one whit of American autonomy may be surrendered to any international organization or cartel of nations. We oppose entangling foreign alliances. The United States [sic] should withdraw from the UN and NATO and bring home our overseas forces. We should review all existing treaties to determine which go beyond constitutional limits. Those that do should be rescinded.

These differences can be managed in an off-year election dominated by an endless trickle of bad economic news – if your opponents allow you to manage them. The strategy is simple: Limit discussion of Afghanistan (see for example the reaction to RNC Chairman Michael Steele, whose comments track public opinion as closely as any public official pronouncements of late). Pick some hardy perennials that get the base riled up – thus the GOP in-district playbook’s emphasis on missile defense, military spending, borders, terrorists and Iran. (The Obama administration and Democratic Congress have increased spending on all those things, in fact. But who’s counting?)
But to emerge in a crowded field to unseat the commander-in-chief two years from now, it’s tempting to try something a bit more daring: a new culture war. Gingrich’s soundbite — “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia” — gives religious and social conservatives the “Christians under attack” narrative we remember from fights over abortion, gay marriage and Teri Schiavo. This time, the “them” refers to Muslims, not liberals – at a moment when 46% of Republicans tell a Time pollster that Obama is a Muslim. For the Tea Partier, the message is slightly different. Although one would think freedom of religion would logically be appealing to people who brag about constitutionalism and limited government, spinning this as an outside “them” intruding on American soil “us” hits the nativist nerve of a movement with leaders like Mark Williams who think Muslims worship a “monkey god.”
Third, this line plays to the neoconservative obsession with power and the Middle East. It creates an image of American impotence with “them” (Muslims) intruding into American society and “us” not being able to build a church or synagogue in Saudi Arabia. And finally, the fact that it involves 9/11 and Ground Zero loops-in Independents.
There’s just one problem – as Gingrich’s precipitous retreat from the rally shows. The public’s position on this is far more nuanced, combining a discomfort with the unfamiliar with an awareness of the deep constitutional issues that the debate raises. In a recent Fox News poll, by a 53% to 41% margin, Independents believed it was “wrong” to build the mosque. But in the same poll, by a 69% to 29% advantage, Independents believed the group had the right to build the mosque. A CNN Opinion research poll of the nation at large shows similar numbers with a 70%-29 % margin opposing the construction but 64% supporting the developers’ right to build it. This week a spate of respected Republican, Independent and national security voices spoke out to warn that the debate harms our social cohesion, our Constitution and our national security.
Can a presidential candidate lie down with the animalistic motivations behind the current spate of hate-filled rhetoric, Koran burnings and disgraceful retreats from our Constitution without waking up with a potentially-fatal case of the fleas? It looks as if Gingrich has decided the answer is “no.” Others in his party might want to learn from his example – and Democrats as well as Republicans might want to think about what it means when one of our two major parties’ national security platform can be summed up as, “build missile defense, not mosques.”

It’s one of the great ironies of this political era of discontent that some of the most exceptional indicia of economic inequality in recent American history are being accompanied by a populist backlash against income redistribution, even in its most time-honored forms.
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, who wrote an important analysis of latter-day conservatism and it impact on political discourse in Off Center, have returned with a book on the politics of inequality: Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
I’ve done a full review of this book for the Washington Monthly, and you can check that out at your leisure. But the book is useful in two major respects: (1) It focuses not just on the ever-growing divide in wealth and income between the top and everyone else, but between the top-of-the-top and everyone else, a process that has been largely immune to the economic vicissitudes of the last decade. (2) It makes a very strong case against the assumption that this sort of inequality is the “natural” product of market forces, rather than the artificial results of government policies deliberately promoted for that purpose.
I tend to think that Hacker and Pierson undestimate the deep-seated, non-contrived extent of anti-government sentiments among Americans, and the contributions of poor public-sector performance in abetting them, but all in all, their book is a very valuable contribution to our understanding of the politics of the economy today and yesterday. It’s a book that will probably make you mad–but in a constructive way. It’s certainly an appropriate read for the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

There’s quite a boom market right now for theories about what Barack Obama’s done wrong, and/or what he could or should have done right but didn’t. The most impressive of those, as noted here the other day, was by John Judis, who makes the case that a “populist” approach could have positioned Obama and the Democratic Party much better for the midterms and for 2012.
Matt Bai of The New York Times also penned an influential piece arguing that Obama’s focus on legislative accomplishments has fatally interfered with his ability to project big national political messages.
Now comes Ezra Klein with a succinct rejoinder to anyone trying to essay some single-bullet theory explanation of Obama’s political standing, or where it might be if he had adopted a different strategy.
Ezra begins by tartly noting that we’ll never know what might have happened in some parallel universe where Obama did what Judis or Bai think he should have done. But using objective measurements against the only recent presidents who took office in similar circumstances–Carter, Reagan and Clinton–Obama’s approval ratings look reasonably good:

Obama’s current approval rating of 44 percent beats Clinton, Carter and Reagan. All of them were between 39 percent and 41 percent at this point in their presidencies. And all of them were former governors who accomplished less legislatively than Obama has at this point in his presidency. That seems like a problem for Bai’s thesis. At least two of them are remembered as great communicators with a deft populist touch. That seems like a problem for Judis’s thesis.

Indeed. But Ezra goes on to make a point about the midterm results we are anticipating that’s become something of an obsession for me: the Democratic “losses” in the House everyone’s talking about are from the base of a strong Democratic majority. With the sole exception of 1934, the first midterm after the beginning of the Great Depression, and 2002, the first election after 9/11, every new president since Theodore Roosevelt has seen his party lose House seats in the first ensuing midterm.
But “gains” and “losses” are always relative. All 435 Members of the House are up for re-election. If Democrats lose 37 seats, they will have won the midterms, albeit by a reduced margin from 2006 and 2008.
All in all, while theories of what Obama woulda shoulda coulda done are interesting and sometimes informative, context is still essential in understanding the extent to which his actual conduct in office has or hasn’t damaged his political status. As Ezra concludes:

There’s plenty to criticize in Obama’s policies and plenty to lament in his politics. But when it comes to grand theories explaining how his strategic decisions led him to this horrible — but historically, slightly-better-than-average — political position, I’m skeptical. There are enormously powerful structural forces in American politics that seem to drag down first-term presidents. There is the simple mathematical reality that large majorities are always likely to lose a lot of seats. There is a terrible and ongoing economic slump — weekly jobless claims hit 500,000 today — that is causing Americans immense pain and suffering. Any explanations for the current political mood that don’t put those front and center is, at the least, not doing enough to challenge the counterfactual.

Selah.

It was pretty alarming when Pew released a poll earlier this week showing that the percentage of Americans who believe the president is a Muslim has actually increased in recent months from 11% to 18%. But then came a Time Magazine poll actually conducted this week in the midst of the Muslim-bashing frenzy involving the “Ground Zero Mosque,” showing 24% of Americans–and 46% of Republicans–beleving the president is a Muslim. It’s about time to conclude this phenomenon has transcended the Americans-believe-funny-things meme that dismisses findings of this nature as simply a reflection of the gullibility or suggestibility of low-information voters.
But the really maddening thing is that Obama–who in my own opinion is one of the most profoundly Christian politicians in memory–is getting blamed for this belief on grounds that he hasn’t made a sufficient display of his faith. Here’s Josh Gerstein at Politico:

When he came to Washington as president, many expected Obama would select a new church or sample many different ones. But in more than 19 months he’s been in office, he has been seen heading to the golf course more than to church.

No one, of course, doubted Ronald Reagan’s religiosity even though he never affiliated with a church in Washington. And the famously pious George W. Bush wasn’t much seen in churches as president, either.
As for playing golf on the Sabbath, I’m reminded again of the time when the wife of “Mr. Republican,” Sen. Robert Taft, was asked where her husband worshipped on Sunday mornings. “Burning Tree,” she blurted out, referring to the congressional golf course.
In this as in many other respects, Barack Obama is being held to a different standard than most politicians, but I guess that’s just his cross to bear.

CNN Senior Political Editor Mark Preston has a post up at CNN.com’s ‘Political Ticker,’ reporting on the Republicans’ campaign to sink Democratic midterm candidates by linking them to ‘Obamacare.” Preston notes that Democratic candidates are treating the GOP effort as a distraction, trying to refocus voters on economic issues, which the Republicans generally ignore, lacking any alternatives, other than offering tax and spending cuts as a panacea. Preston highlights the spending behind the GOP propaganda campaign:

A new analysis by Campaign Media Analysis Group for CNN shows that federal and state political candidates have spent $24 million on anti-health care reform television commercials since Congress passed the bill in late March. Over the past 30 days alone, more than $6 million has been spent on TV ads attacking the law, and there is no sign these commercials are going away…Of the $24 million spent so far criticizing the health care law, Republicans have run $11.3 million worth of commercials where the term “Obamacare” is used – a not so subtle attempt to link Democratic candidates to a president who suffers from a disapproval rating of 51 percent.
“Based on the advertising and messaging, this is clearly being used by Republicans as a wedge issue,” said Evan Tracey, president of CMAG and CNN’s consultant on political TV ad spending. “The GOP is using the passage of the bill against Democrats in a growing proportion at both the state and federal level.”
In contrast, the CMAG analysis shows that $6.3 million has been spent on pro-health care reform TV ads since Congress approved the legislation.

The Republicans may be wasting their money. Recent Polls indicate that the health care issue now ranks well behind the economy among voters priorities. And, as TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira recently noted in his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ post,

On the health care reform law, the most recent Kaiser Health tracking poll now has 50 percent voicing a favorable reaction to the new law, versus just 35 percent unfavorable. This reverses a 44-41 unfavorable verdict from two months ago.

In addition, other polls indicate that many who disapprove of the Affordable Health Care Act wanted the coverage to be broader, with a greater investment and role for the federal government, and they are not likely to be receptive to the Republicans effort to gut the legislation entirely.
Sure, it’s possible that the GOP could do some damage with their ads. But it may not be a cost-effective investment, or to use an Econ 101 analysis, the opportunity cost of not investing the dough in promoting their competitive candidates could be substantial.
Democrats ought not invest too much of their midterm financial resources, nor media face time, in defending the health care Act. But it would be a perfectly legitimate investment for the federal government, particularly HHS, to produce and distribute public service ads and interviews with experts on the legislation for television, radio, print media and the internet debunking the distortions being promulgated about the Act and explaining why is a good law. This is not pending legislation; it’s the law of the land, and the federal government not only has the right to explain the Health Care Reform Act to the public; it has a duty to do so. This law can save countless lives and help millions of people with their health care struggles, and the government has an obligation to help citizens understand it better. And, as Teixeira explains, concerning the findings of another Kaiser Health tracking poll back in the Spring,

…As the poll shows, the public does not currently believe they have enough information about the new law to clearly understand how it will affect them personally. Just 43 percent say they now have enough information to make this judgment, compared to 56 percent who say they don’t. Thus, more information could presumably make a difference to current feelings about the Affordable Health Care Act.

Yes the GOP would whine and howl about using government resources for what they believe to be a partisan cause. Tough. And yes, Republican-friendly media probably wouldn’t take the Affordable Health Care Act PSA’s or interviews, but many stations would, as might PBS and NPR. It would be a shame, bordering on political negligence, if the Administration failed to seize this opportunity. This is one of those times when it might be useful to ask WWFDRD — “What would FDR do?”

I don’t know what Jonathan Chait (who has undertaken what he calls the Boss Hogg Oppo Research Project) will do with today’s big sloppy wet kiss of an article about Haley Barbour in today’s Politico, penned by Jim VandeHei, Andy Barr and Kenneth Vogel. Personally, the adoring prose about Barbour’s ability to shake down corporations for campaign dollars made me alternatively chuckle and shudder. Check out this passage:

Barbour, who runs the Republican Governors Association, has more money to spend on the 2010 elections — $40 million — than any other GOP leader around. And in private, numerous Republicans describe Barbour as the de facto chairman of the party.
It’s not just because he controls the RGA kitty but, rather, because he has close relationships with everyone who matters in national GOP politics — operatives like Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie and other top Republicans running or raising cash for a network of outside political groups. Together, these groups are essential to Republican hopes of regaining power because Democrats are cleaning their clocks through more traditional fundraising efforts.
The political class, in particular, is consumed with Barbour’s behind-the-scenes endeavors — this week, with the $1 million he got from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Yet the reality is that Barbour has been uniquely adept at leveraging concerns about President Barack Obama into huge contributions from many others. Bob Perry, the Texas businessman who funded the Swift boat attacks in the 2004 campaigns, has given more than twice as much as News Corp…..
“He’s clearly the top political strategist and political operative of his generation,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former RNC chief of staff. “He is without peer when he is raising money.”

Barbour’s Mammon-power is so awesome, in this account, that it’s almost inevitable he will run for president in 2012, his fame spread across the land by the likely harvest of GOP gubernatorial wins in November, fueled by the RGA. On that note, I was particularly amused by the testimony to Barbour’s greatness offered by hapless Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, saddled with a disaster of a gubernatorial nominee and a right-wing third party revolt. He sure does need a heapin’ helping of Haley’s money.
The article does include what’s known in the trade as a “to be sure” graph, briefly acknowledging the counter-argument to the writers’ hypothesis before going on to brush it aside:

[T]he obstacles to a Barbour candidacy are substantial. A portly Southern conservative who represented tobacco firms and made millions building a lobbying firm isn’t the ideal profile for a Republican nominee in this or any political environment. In recent polls, Barbour is stuck in low single digits, way behind Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.

Instead of meditating on those rather formidable problems, the Politicos return to still more admiring details about Barbour’s rules-bending fundraising techniques.
Now I used to look at the prospect of a politician like Haley Barbour gaining real political power as follows: “Well, could be worse. Yes, he’s venal and mean-spirited, but at least he’s smart. How bad could it be?”
Then Dick Cheney became vice president, and the limits of brainpower became rather obvious.
If, as appears likely, Barbour does move towards a serious presidential run, his background will offer an extraordinary opportunity for dumpster-diving. It’s not just the ethics stuff, either, or Barbour’s devotion to the interests of the very rich. Long before he moved to Washington and became a mover-and-shaker, Barbour was the leader of the right wing of the Mississippi Republican Party. That requires some serious wingnuttery, and as Chait observes, a long paper-trail of associations that will not look good in the twenty-first century.
I realize that the Republican field for 2012 is not terribly impressive, and that many GOPers long for a candidate who is both a hard-core conservative and a demonstrated party loyalist. But it may take even more money than Haley Barbour can raise to make Americans want this man to become president.