As voters go to the polls in Virginia today, the major buzz among pundits involves George W. Bush’s last-minute appearance for Jerry Kilgore in Richmond last night, which represents a bit of a gamble for both men.Steve Ginsberg and Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post win the prize for the most delicious and malicious framing of a candidate quote in the entire campaign, in this morning’s WaPo account of the Richmond festivities:

The president “is very popular in Virginia. And he’s coming off a successful South American trip,” Kilgore said of Bush’s overseas visit, which drew violent protests.

Funny as it is, this is a serious point. Can W., who’s stumbled through the last several months like a sleepwalker, actually work some turnout magic for ol’ Jerry? Is the late-breaking happiness among conservative activists in Washington over Bush’s surrender to them on the SCOTUS nomination communicable to actual voters?Beats me, but Bush’s decision to zoom into Richmond directly from the dispiriting chaos of his Latin American trip guarantees that the results, whatever they are, will be viewed as in part a reflection of this red state’s attitude towards the man who’s won its electoral votes twice.

Check out this hilarious, Onion-esque lede from Saturday’s Washington Post article about the official White House response to the Fitzgerald indictments and investigations:

President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.According to a memo sent to aides yesterday…. “[T]he White House counsel’s office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher courses on general ethics rules, including the rules governing the protection of classified materials.”

That’s just great. Nearly five years after Bush was elected president on a pledge of “restoring honor and dignity to the White House,” the Bushies are going to get some On-the-Job Training on how to obey the law.But why stop there? Why not order up a “refresher course” on military strategy and post-war reconstruction for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his staff? Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could use a briefing on the evolution of the Western tradition against torturing prisoners. Surely there is a middle-school math teacher in the D.C. area willing to volunteer a few hours to instruct the staff of the Office of Management and Budget in the mysteries of Basic Arithmetic. And everybody in the White House, especially the president, could benefit from a few hours listening to a clinical psychologist discuss the value of Getting Out of Denial and Recognizing Painful Truths.Bring on the flip-charts, the Power-Points, and if necessary, the hand puppets. It’s time to school the White House.

If you’ve been following the Virginia’s gubernatorial contest, which has entered its final stage, you have probably noticed that Republican candidate Jerry (Never Met Him) Kilgore has returned with a vengeance to a message warning Virginians that illegal immigrants are flooding the Commonwealth, spreading gang violence, promoting al Qaeda, and speaking foreign tongues and so forth.It’s certainly predictable. Ol’ Jerry’s losing ground in virtually every poll. His try-em-and-fry-em Death Penalty ads have largely backfired. His party and his president are like millstones around his neck. And he appears to be losing support most lethally in Northern Virginia, where earlier polls had him running neck-and-neck with Democrat Tim Kaine.So not surprisingly, Jerry’s handlers have decided to stake the ranch on the belief that concerns about illegal immigration in Northern Virginia can give their candidate the crucial boost he needs.I’ve written about this issue in the Viriginia campaign here and here, and won’t repeat that analysis today, but if you want to understand why immigration is suddenly a hot topic in the South, and especially in suburbs and exurbs in the South, check out this new article by Clay Risen on The New Republic’s site. As Clay explains, some of the highest percentage increases in immigrant populations are in southern states, including those far from any border. And it’s no surprise that southern Republicans are leaping on this issue in state after state–a trend that will definitely accelerate tremendously if ol’ Jerry wins and the post-election analysis shows anti-immigrant demagoguery was a factor.The main thing I’d add to Clay’s analysis is how risky the deployment of this issue is for the GOP. Ol’ Jerry’s rhetoric (other than the absurd claims of al Qaeda connections) isn’t that far from the kind of talk that backfired on Republicans in California during the 1990s, making their candidates anathema to Latino voters. And it certainly doesn’t fit in well with Karl Rove’s famous focus on these voters as a potential building-block for a Republican majority. But here’s the deal: the southern states where immigrant-bashing is spreading like topsy are places where immigrant populations are large enough to be conspicious, but have not developed into a serious political force of their own.Thus, politicians like ol’ Jerry believe they can use this toxic issue to wedge exurban and rural voters without paying any serious price elsewhere. And without question, Republican pols in the rest of the region will be watching the results very closely, with cookie-cutters in hand.So, my fellow Virginians, if the prospect of four years of lousy and hyper-partisan government isn’t enough to motivate you to get off your butts and send ol’ Jerry into retirement, consider your responsibility to the rest of the country for punishing demagogues and putting the fear of God into those who will otherwise use every nasty tactic that seems to work.

This is one of those days when I opened up the Washington Post and found a large, greasy combo platter of interesting political stories, so I thought I’d do some micro-blogging on a few of them, using the Post headlines and subheadlines.1. Food Stamp Cuts Are Proposed: House Plan Would Affect 300,000.My colleague The Moose is right; this proposed House GOP budget “savings” package should be viewed as the formal tombstone for “compassionate conservatism.” Needing $50 billion in budget cuts, the House Budget Committee went after food stamps for legal immigrants; child support enforcement resources; foster parenting; and school lunch eligibility. They didn’t feel the need to take a second look at five-year costs of $106 billion in new tax cuts; $60 billion in corporate subsidies; $42 billion in congressional-district-specific pork and transportation earmarks; or $23 billion in oil and gas subsidies. It will be interesting to see how many Republican “moderates” refuse to go along with this outrage.2. Rove’s Future Is Debated: White House May Seek Fresh Start In Wake of Leak. This is one of those classic Washington stories where somebody’s lying: The Post’s “sources” say:

Bush’s top advisers are considering whether it is tenable for Rove to remain on the staff, given that Fizgerald has already documented that Rove and Whie House official spokesmen once emphatically denied–that he played a central role in dicussions with journalists about Plame’s role at the CIA and her marriage to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war.”Karl does not have any real enemies in the White House, but there are a lot of people in the White House wondering how they can put this behind them if the cloud remains over Karl,” said a GOP strategist who has discussed the issue with top White House officials.

A bit further down in the story, there’s this graph:

White House communications director Nicole Wallace said there have not been any White House meetings t4o discuss Rove’s fate, and that the senior adviser is actively engaged and “doing an outstanding job.” She said “there is no debate” over Rove’s future.

Hmmm. It appears that either the White House is aflame with a debate about Rove, or there’s no debate at all. Like I said: somebody’s lying, and if I were Rove, I wouldn’t be particularly comforted by official assurances that he’s doin’ a heckuva job.3. Norton Ex-Aides Clash on Lobbyist’s Influence: Lawyer Says He Accused Griles of Aiding Abramoff. Ah, yes, another chapter in the Casino Jack Ambramoff scandal, this time in hearings before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. And it’s another somebody-must-be-lying story, with the Interior Department’s former legal counselor claiming the agency’s former deputy secretary was very involved in advancing the interests of Casino Jack’s tribal clients, and the former deputy secretary saying he did no such thing.4. Consultants To Virginia Candidates Linked To Indicted Lobbyist. In still more fallout from Casino Jack’s troubles, check out this lede from the Metro section: “Two key campaign consultants for Virginia attorney general candidate Robert F. McDonnell established a nonprofit group five years ago that its director now says was used almost exclusively to secretly fund political efforts — including one organized by indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.”McDonnell, long a darling of the theocratic Right, has been getting some negative attention for the shadowy sources of his suddenly massive media expenditures in the down-ballot race. It’s beginning to look like he just doesn’t keep very good company.Speaking of Virginia politics:5. Wilder backs Kaine, plays down differences over 2004 tax package. This headline is actually from the Richmond Time-Dispatch, but it’s potentially a big deal. Former governor and current Richmond mayor Doug Wilder, the first African-American to be elected governor of any state, is one of the country’s craftiest politicians, and deliberately held back his endorsement to the moment of maximum impact. His endorsement of Mark Warner four years ago was definitely a factor in Warner’s narrow win, and his refusal to endorse Don Beyer eight years ago helped bury Beyer.The Wilder endorsement also draws attention to one of the X-factors in the Virginia gubernatorial election next Tuesday. African-American Virginians, who have often given GOP candidates a higher percentage of their vote than in other southern states, might go massively for Kaine to send a message to Jerry (Absolutely No Relation) Kilgore’s buddies across the Potomac in recognition of their fine conduct during the Katrina relief and recovery operation.All in all, it’s been a good day for political junkies and a bad day for the GOP.

In a special election yesterday, Colorado voters approved an initiative relaxing the requirements of TABOR (short for “Tax Payers’ Bill of Rights”), a robo-system of fiscal restraints imposed by an earlier ballot initiative.Over at TPMCafe, I’ve already posted an analysis of the greater meaning of this partial rollback of TABOR, which represents an important rollback of the national conservative effort to force states into a fiscal straightjacket protecting high-income and corporate tax breaks at the expense of public investments.But I’d like to add a personal note.]A few years ago I went to Denver to speak at a Democratic legislative retreat, and thanks to TABOR, it was like travelling to a foreign country.Everyone there carried around little books detailing TABOR provisions. Every policy discussion began and ended with extensive comments about “TABOR compliance.” TABOR had clearly accomplished the main goal of its Washington advocates: radically constraining state legislative powers and priorities, not just in terms of overall spending and revenue figures, but in terms of the basic ability to conduct long-term planning and make long-term investments.In a very real sense, TABOR made the very bright state of Colorado “stupid country,” and its advocates hoped to spread the gospel of fiscal idiocy elsewhere.So yesterday’s vote, whatever else it meant, represented one proud state’s declaration of independence from a scheme that made legislative policymaking impossible, and made the normal process of budgeting irrelevant. And TABOR’s defeated proponents got one more important warning that limiting government without making open and rational choices about what government should do is ultimately a self-destructive and ant-democratic exercise.Hats off to Colorado voters, and for those who worked for the passage of this new initiative. Reforming government is one thing; getting smarter and more effective government for the lowest possible tax levels is always a good idea.But arbitrarily and mindlessly promoting arbitrary and automatic spending cuts, with no real attention to setting priorities for what taxpayers should support, is what TABOR was about. And changing that situation is critical all across the country for Democrats, and democracy.

There’s a big push all over the left-of-center blogosphere and elsewhere (from so many sources that I won’t bother to link to any of them) to capitalize on last week’s indictments and the underlying issues to focus like a laser beam on the administration’s manipulation of the evidence supporting their case for the invasion of Iraq.I understand and agree with the argument that the White House behavior exposed in connection with the Libby indictments helps show the extent to which the administration was willing to say anything and do anything to stampede the country and the Congress to war in 2003.But I don’t understand, and don’t agree with, a strategy that limits the indictment of the administration’s dishonest and manipulative habits to Iraq policy.The Fitzgerald indictments, and all the evidence that’s come out before and after the special prosecutor’s actions, reinforce a vast pattern of administration misbehavior on a vast array of issues, including, but not limited to, the effort to rally the country to launch the Iraq adventure.Democrats have two simple options here:We can insist on obsessively limiting our critique to Iraq.Or we can argue that the behavior of Libby, Rove, Cheney, and Bush himself in this case illustrates the mendacity, incompetence, arrogance, and intimidation strategies of this administration on Iraq, on the War on Terrorism, on the federal budget, on taxes, on Katrina recovery, on health care policy, on the economy, on government ethics, on corporate responsibility, on science policy, on No Child Left Behind, on voting rights, on civil rights–well, on so many issues I can barely list them.Unless you believe that the original decision to invade Iraq is the alpha and omega of American politics–recognizing, of course, that this was a decision on which Republicans were united and Democrats were divided–I really can’t imagine why Democrats would want to pursue the single-issue implications of one more example of the administration’s betrayal of public trust, instead of connecting the dots to every other betrayal.I’ve generally assumed that the one thing that unites all Democrats today is the overriding desire to drive the corrupt and incompetent and ideologically bent GOP from power. That’s why I implore Democrats to keep their eyes on the big prize, and not get dragged off into the self-defeating blind alley of making future elections nothing more than a retroactive referendum on why the country, and many Democrats, supported the decision to invade Iraq.We have a more compelling case to take to the country, which includes, but is hardly limited to, the administration’s failures in Iraq, and we need to make it.

One of the historical oddities of George W. Bush’s decision to nominate Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court is that if confirmed, he will establish a majority on the court of Roman Catholics. This fact hasn’t gotten a lot of comment so far, in part because it is and should be irrelevant to his qualifications, and in part because hardly anyone noticed that Clarence Thomas reverted to his Catholic upbringing in recent years, joining Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Chief Justice Roberts as Catholic members of SCOTUS. Given the brief but intense campaign by some conservative evangelicals to tout Alito’s unsuccessful predecessor, Harriet Miers, as establishing an “evangelical seat” on the Court, you have to wonder how they privately feel about yet another Catholic nomination. My friend Amy Sullivan, that intrepid interpreter of all things religio-political, has been calling around to some of them to see if they’ll open up on the subject, but has so far been met with the usual conservative Talking Points about how great it is to have a SCOTUS nominee who rejects judicial activism and respects Original Intent, etc., etc.Now to be sure, most evangelical Protestants this side of Bob Jones University have discarded most of the hard-line Reformation view of the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon, the Scarlet Woman of the Book of Revelations, and of the Vatican as the most likely address of the Antichrist. And indeed, the detente between evangelicals and Catholics (at least outside Latin America), partly theological, and partly the result of tactical alliances over social and political issues like abortion, has led to one major book with the provocative title: “Is the Reformation Over?”Still, we are not that far away from centuries of bitter hostility between Catholics and evangelicals (including, of course, the heavy involvement of evangelical clergy in the effort to oppose John F. Kennedy’s election on religious grounds), and there remain a host of theological divisions, especially between the conservatives in both communions who are most likely to agree on political issues. There are a sizable number of evangelicals, for instance, (e.g., those in Harriet Miers’ church) who think infant baptism is meaningless, and that even adult baptism is insufficient for salvation unless it involves full immersion. Even though many evangelicals deeply admired Pope John Paul II for his anti-communism and cultural traditionalism, the intensity of his Marian devotion probably troubled them a lot if they thought about it. And deep divisions remain between evangelicals and Catholics on a whole host of liturgical and ecclesiastical issues.None of this, of course, means politicized conservative evangelicals wouldn’t be happy with a Justice like Alito, who on the key constitutional issues they care about, has nearly perfect views. But beneath the surface, you do have to wonder what they think about the heavy representation of their ancient enemy, as contrasted with their own invisibility, on an institution that they regard as one of the commanding heights of American society.Maybe one of them will confess to Amy, and we’ll find out the truth.

The initial reaction to the nomination of Samuel Alito from “The Groups” on the left and right was exactly what you’d expect. Both sides are emphasizing “Scalito’s” right-wing credentials, partly because they are real, but partly because this nomination offers the Judicial Armageddon that the Right in particular wants almost as badly as it wants a seat on the Court.But before we got locked completely into Kabuki Theater, it’s useful to seek out and find a reasonably objective Democratic voice, as representing the likely reaction of Democratic (and perhaps a couple of Republican) senators who voted for John Roberts’ confirmation.As some of you may recall, George Washington University professor Jeffrey Rosen penned an article right after the presidential election analyzing possible Bush SCOTUS picks, and separating them into two camps: “Conservative Activists” (bad), and “Principled Conservatives” (not so bad), with the key dividing line being the jurist’s willingness to defer to legislative decisions and to respect precedents. John Roberts was listed as a “Principled Conservative.” Samuel Alito headed the list of “Conservative Activists.” Here’s what Rosen had to say about him:

Known as “Scalito,” or little Scalia, he is considered less blustering than the big guy, but liberals will undoubtedly balk at his abortion record. In 1991, he dissented from a decision to strike down Pennsylvania’s spousal notification provision–a decision the Supreme Court later upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the decision that reaffirmed Roe v. Wade.What should be far more troubling to Senate Democrats, however, is Alito’s 1996 dissent from a decision upholding the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting the possession of machine guns. Applying the logic of the Constitution in Exile for all it’s worth, Alito insisted that the private possession of machine guns was not an economic activity, and there was no empirical evidence that private gun possession increased violent crime in a way that substantially affected commerce–therefore, Congress has no right to regulate it. Alito’s colleagues criticized him for requiring “Congress or the Executive to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute.” His lack of deference to Congress is unsettling.

Based on his typology, Rosen was outspoken in urging Democrats to support Roberts. I’d be very surprised if he advises Democrats to accept Alito.Obviously Jeffrey Rosen does not have a vote in the Senate, but his views on this nomination are likely to reflect those of pro-Roberts Democrats unless Alito disappoints his supporters with a major de-fanging exercise during his confirmation hearings.Even if Democrats unanimously line up against Alito, they must make a separate strategic decision about how to handle it (especially in terms of deploying a filibuster that could trigger the “nuclear option” and eliminate this tactic for a future that could include yet another Bush SCOTUS nomination, directly endangering huge precedents like Roe v. Wade.)Certainly The Groups on both sides have ulterior motives for the loud expressions of delight and horror they are undertaking today. But boil off the overheated rhetoric, and there’s a real fight brewing over real principles of judicial philosophy with real consequences–a fight George W. Bush seems to have launched with malice aforethought.NOTE: When I published this post this morning, I didn’t know that Michael Crowley, on The New Republic’s blog, The Plank, had beaten me to the punch by quoting the same passage from Rosen’s typology (not surprising, since Rosen’s piece was itself published by TNR). But I wasn’t ripping off Crowley without attribution. Having recently been on a televised panel with Professor Rosen during which we disagreed about Roberts, I had my own reasons for consulting his typology.

George W. Bush is going to name his latest SCOTUS choice at some point today, but in the interim, I wanted to make sure to crow a bit about the increasingly strong possibility that Jerry (No Relation Whatsoever) Kilgore may have blown the 2005 gubernatorial election by going harshly negative against Tim Kaine.The Washington Post released a new poll yesterday that showed Kaine up 47-44 among likely voters, with the internals indicating a strong reaction against the tone of Kilgore’s death penalty ads attacking Kaine, and a strong rejection of Kilgore’s argument that Kaine can’t be trusted to faithfully administer Virginia’s death penalty laws.I’ve blogged over at TPMCafe.com about the Post poll and the Virginia race in general, and won’t repeat my analysis here. But I do find the immediate and semi-hysterical reaction of the Kilgore campaign to the poll quite interesting.As you might expect, ol’ Jerry’s flacks claim the godless liberal WaPo is trying to boost a Democratic candidate with a deliberately slanted poll. Kilgore’s site features a bar graph illustrating WaPo’s underestimation of the GOP vote in Virginia races going back twelve years.There’s only one problem with this claim. Most recently, WaPo’s polling unit has been famous for diverging from other polls in the opposite, and pro-GOP direction, mainly due to an unusually strong screen for likelihood to vote. In fact, the previous Post poll on the Virginia race, back in early September, showed Kilgore up seven points at a time when virtually every other survey showed a dead heat.Jerry’s flacks also argue that unpublished regional breakdowns in the Post poll discredit it, because they show Kilgore struggling in southwest Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, where everyone concedes he will win. But they don’t tell you the Post’s sample, while big enough to show statewide trends, is too small for full regional breakdowns, which is why the paper didn’t publish them (I’m reasonably sure the one regional result they did publish, for Northern Virginia, was created by an oversample, since it’s in their prime circulation area).But here’s my favorite argument from the Kilgore camp about why we should all discount the WaPo poll:

The poll was conducted on Sunday through Wednesday of this past week. A quick glance back reveals that on early Sunday afternoon when the poll began, the Washington Redskins were playing a home game televised across the entire Commonwealth, the Martinsville NASCAR race was being televised and many families were still in church. The poll concluded its interviews on Wednesday night, another big night for church attendance in rural Virginia.

So, the argument goes, WaPo deliberately undersampled fans of football, NASCAR and Jesus Christ. Now obviously, you can’t do a five-day poll that does not coincide with some sporting or religious event, and the planted axiom that anybody who watches the Skins or Martinsville or goes to church is a sure Jerry voter is insulting to say the least. You might as well argue that liberal secularist Democrats were undersampled because last weekend’s fine weather drew them into the countryside for pagan harvest festivals, or because the poll coincided with a rash of NPR fundraising campaigns.Ol’ Jerry’s campaign cannot credibly deny they’ve lost momentum, thanks to their own hubristic addiction to nastiness. And their nasty reaction to evidence of their folly is a good illustration of the GOP candidate’s perilous state.

While perusing today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution in order to wallow in the misery of Georgia’s close loss to Florida, I ran across some interesting polling data, thanks to Tom Baxter and Jim Galloway’s Political Insider column.According to a Republican-commissioned poll conducted on October 18, Ralph Reed, candidate for Lieutentant Governor (the first step towards an intended gubernatorial and perhaps presidential run) is viewed favorably by 11 percent of Georgians, and unfavorably by 16 percent. His name I.D. is 42 percent. Here’s what Baxter and Galloway say about that last number:

If 42 percent know who Reed is, and only 27 percent offer an opinion of him — whether good or bad — then 15 percent are purposely keeping their mouths shut.GOP analysts think Reed may be generating hidden negatives — that Reed supporters who have stuck with their charismatic leader in the past are beginning to have second thoughts. But they aren’t yet ready to voice them.

Interesting theory, eh? But more to the point, there’s the simple fact that Reed is about 39 percentage points away from convincing a majority of the electorate to think favorably of him, after two decades as a big wheel in national GOP circles, and a very successful tenure as state party chief. He’s been an announced candidate for statewide office for several months now, frenetically touring the state with big names ranging from Democratic apostate Zell Miller to Atlanta Braves pitcher John Schmoltz. Yet here he is with a favorable/unfavorable ratio of 11/16 (an earlier poll pegged it at 15/17). Ralph’s 42 percent name I.D. is also a cautionary sign about the extent to which voters pay attention to the obsessions of us political junkies. In addition to all the above attention-getting activities of Reed over the years, there’s the Casino Jack Abramoff scandal, in which Ralph has played a conscpicuous and unsavory role again and again. The Atlanta newspapers and several local television stations have been following the story quite diligently. Ralph’s Republican primary opponent, state Sen. Casey Cagle, and his large network of legislative supporters, have been regularly piling on, suggesting that Reed’s troubles could blow up the whole state ticket next year. Yet 58 percent of Georgians have apparently never heard of the guy.This will obviously change as we get closer to the 2006 elections, but if Ralph Reed hasn’t earned the loyalty of Georgia Republicans–much less the general electorate–by now, he’s got a long, long way to go. And his vast dossier of political skullduggery will continue to serve as a goldmine for opposition researchers in both parties.