Republicans keep acting like they have a mandate to butcher social programs and shut down the government in pursuit of that objective. But the latest Bloomberg News Poll data indicates quite the opposite, as TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in this week’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages. As Teixeira explains:

The survey asked about a number of domestic areas and found opposition to cuts in eight different areas. Views ranged from 77-21 opposition to significantly cutting education programs to 50-46 opposition to significantly cutting funding for public television and radio.

The news for Republicans got even worse when respondents were asked about their views about a implementing a government shutdown to force spending cuts:

…By an overwhelming 77-20 margin, the public favors compromise over spending cuts to avert a shutdown rather than holding out for deep cuts even if that means shutting down the government.

As Teixeira puts it, “Conservatives may think the public is simpatico with their antispending crusade. The facts suggest otherwise.”

Ezra Klein has a short, but provocative Newsweek post “Do We Still Need Unions? Yes: Why they’re Worth Fighting For,” which opens up a long-overdue dialogue. I like Klein’s opening grabber, which presents the danger and opportunity:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s effort two weeks ago to end collective bargaining for public employees in his state was the worst thing to happen to the union movement in recent memory–until it unexpectedly became the best thing to happen to the union movement in recent memory. Give the man some credit: in seven days, Walker did what unions have been trying and failing to do for decades. He united the famously fractious movement, reknit its emotional connection with allies ranging from students to national Democratic leaders, and brought the decline of organized labor to the forefront of the national agenda. The question is: will it matter?

Klein goes on to limn some of the specific benefits of unions — higher wages, safety, addressing workplace grievances and the weekend. He could have added the 40-hour work week, overtime, workman’s comp, holidays, health insurance and pensions, to name a few others we take for granted — none of which would be a reality today for millions of workers without the leadership of organized labor. I’m sometimes amazed how many presumably intelligent people I meet who diss unions in a knee-jerk way seem unaware of this important history — apparently it’s not well-taught in public schools, nor even colleges nowadays.
Klein also notes the important socio-political benefits of unions in the U.S. — checking corporate economic domination, lobbying for working people instead of corporate profits, fighting for a broad range of legislative reforms that benefit even unorganized workers and serving as the largest source of support for progressive candidates. Any further weakening of unions would be disastrous for America in this regard.
As part of the Change to Win movement a few years ago, there was an ongoing discussion about the kinds of reforms needed to modernize trade unions and broaden their membership options, as critical to increasing labor’s numbers and strength. I was looking forward to this dialogue eventually bearing some fruit. But it seems instead to have withered on the vine. Hopefully the Wisconsin protests will encourage invigorating this discussion in a more pro-active direction.
There’s a chance Klein is right that Walker may have inadvertently done a good thing for unions, by rallying them and their supporters and awakening progressives to the reality that organized labor’s survival is at stake. The law of unintended consequences occasionally works for the good.
But the trade union movement’s weak public relations outreach is puzzling. In this age of streaming video, where is Labor’s television station, or even nation-wide radio programs? Where are the academy-award nominated documentaries about labor’s pivotal contributions to American society? How about some public service ads educating people about union contributions to social and economic progress in America?
It’s no longer enough have labor leaders do guest spots on news programs and talk shows. a much more aggressively pro-active p.r. and educational effort is needed. That commitment, coupled with an effort to modernize union recruitment and membership could help insure that union-busting politicians like Walker don’t get the chance to do their worst.

Democratic candidates and campaign workers gearing up for ’12 statewide races, particularly those facing wealthy Republican opponents, should take a couple of minutes to read the L.A. Times analysis of campaign spending and budgeting in the race for the California governorship. The article, by Seema Mehta and Maeve Reston, provides a highly instructive breakdown comparing not only expenditures, but the timing of outlays for the Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman campaigns, as indicated by recently-published financial disclosure reports .
Of course the caveat is that the California campaign was extraordinary in that Whitman set records for spending and she also had a tough primary campaign. In addition, “Brown entered the race with $100 million of name ID,” as Whitman campaign consultant Rob Stutzman put it. What is instructive, however, is how the Brown campaign marshalled its far more limited economic resources, and his strategy may provide a useful template for underfunded Democratic candidates nationwide. Here’s an excerpt:

Meg Whitman vastly outspent Jerry Brown on virtually every facet of the 2010 contest for governor. From focus groups and consultants to private planes and lavish fundraisers, Whitman campaigned like the billionaire she is, spending $177 million to Brown’s $36 million.

The article goes on to compare Brown’s and Whitman’s expenditures for travel, direct mail, signs, event staging, consultants and staff. But the most important revelation:

But in one key area — television advertising — the Democrat nearly kept pace with Whitman during the final sprint of the campaign, allowing him to make his case to voters before they cast ballots…”By holding our fire, we were competitive in the final month and almost equal in the final four weeks,” Brown’s campaign manager, Steve Glazer, said.
…As is customary in California campaigns, both candidates poured the bulk of their money into communicating with voters through television and radio advertisements. Whitman spent more than $120 million — two-thirds of her campaign treasury — producing and airing commercials. Brown spent for that purpose nearly three-quarters of the $40 million he raised. Between Sept. 1 and Election Day, Whitman spent $40 million buying airtime to Brown’s $29 million. But much of Brown’s spending occurred in the final month, allowing him to maximize his efforts precisely when voters were preparing to cast ballots.

So even in cutting-edge California, home of the digital vanguard, television still rules as the primary conveyance of political persuasion. The L.A. Times analysis does not take into account the quality of the candidates’ ads and Whitman’s image problems. But it does indicate that, investing heavily in air time during the final campaign weeks can offset an opponent’s overall economic advantage.

The Sunday centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birthday will be an occasion for MSM paeans to our 40th President. The hagiographic tributes will probably be lead by his former speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, who set the stage with her 2002 memoir, “When Character Was King,” the gold standard for unbridled Reagan-worship. A fact-focused distillation of the contrarian view follows:

1. Time magazine reports that documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, as President of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan and first wife, Actress Jane Wyman, “provided federal agents with the names of actors they believed were Communist sympathizers.” Yes, “believed.”
2. A former supporter of FDR and the New Deal, Reagan began dissing “big government” after taking a lucrative job as spokesman for General Electric.
3. Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Running for Governor in 1966, he reportedly said, “If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so.” Be surprised if this is noted on Meet the Press this Sunday.
4. Reagan appointed Justice William Rhenquist to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, despite testimony that Rhenquist not only advocated segregationist views, but had personally participated in “ballot security” campaigns to prevent African Americans from voting in 1962 and 64.
5. In 1976 Reagan complained about a “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy a T-bone. He had also made frequent disparaging mention of a “welfare queen” driving her cadillac.
6. In 1980 he launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town most famous for being the place where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. Reagan seized the opportunity to declare “I believe in states rights” in his speech. It’s hard to see him as anything but a divisive figure in terms of race relations. And then there was that yucky Bitburg cemetery tribute to Nazi soldier “victims.”
7. Reagan became the chief mouthpiece in the effort to defeat the initiative that became Medicare, warning listeners in a recording he made for radio, that if they didn’t write to their congressional representatives to prevent it “we will awake to find that we have so­cialism. And if you don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” As President, he did a flip-flop, and protected Medicare.
8. Unemployment averaged 7.5 percent during Reagan’s presidency, according to BLS statistics.
9. Despite President Reagan’s vocal support for tax cuts, he signed bills providing tax hikes in every year from 1981-87, with most of the burden falling on the middle class, reportedly doubling the tax for those earning less than $40K per year..
10. Reagan’s two terms produced an uptick in federal income tax receipts (1980-89), from $308.7 billion to $549 billion.
11. No President ever dissed government spending more than did Reagan. Yet, federal Federal spending grew by 7.1 percent annually during the Reagan Administration, according to budget statistics. Reagan often portrayed himself as the soul of fiscal responsibility. But Under Reagan the national debt nearly tripled, from $997 billion to $2.85 trillion.
12. The Iran-Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration provided covert arms sales to Iran to fund military aid to Nicaragua’s Contras to overthrow a democratically-elected government in violation of U.S. law, resulted in 14 indictments among Reagan staff members, and 11 convictions.

The most treasured of Reagan myths is that he single-handedly ended the Cold War, staring down the evil empire like Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon.’ Scant mention is made of the fact that he was given a huge, pivotal gift in the person of his adversary, Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the saner leaders of the 20th century. Most presidents would have done what Reagan did, which was keep military spending high until the Soviets caved. Crediting Reagan with ‘courageous’ leadership here is a bit of a stretch.
I’m sure President Reagan had his good points, and we can be assured that they will be repeated ad nauseum on Sunday. He was certainly an excellent orator and highly effective in implementing the conservative agenda in many respects. And he did achieve major progress in nuclear arms control. But it will be surprising if hard-headed critiques of his presidency will get a fair hearing, which is important given the centrality of the Reagan myth in Republican propaganda.
In his WaPo wrap-up review of three documentaries about the Reagan years, Hank Stuever acknowledges that the ’80s did produce a lot of grand rock and pop music. However, his selection of the emblematic song for the Reagan era, “Seasons in the Sun,” which was popular during Reagan’s tenure as California Governor and concludes one of the documentaries, brings a queasy chill. I envision a bunch of Bohemian Grovesters in drag or lederhosen or whatever they don at those gatherings, remembering the Reagan era, swaying tankards and warbling “We had joy, we had fun. We had seasons in the sun.” And I’m awfully glad it’s no longer morning in America.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The Republican Party–and indeed much of the media establishment–is living in a fantasy world when it comes to 2012. To hear most of the pundits and soothsayers tell it, the presidential nominating contest is still a long way off. The GOP heavies we’ve been talking about since 2008, such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Tim Pawlenty, are all terribly flawed: Mitt’s got his RomneyCare; Newt has been a national pariah; Huck has money problems; Palin is toxic outside her base; and T-Paw induces narcolepsy. But the entire presidential field will change, we are told, when a white knight (possibly handsome, possibly not), comes riding in to save the day. Everything will be different when Mitch Daniels enters the race, the argument goes. You’ll stop scoffing when Mike Pence gets here!
To which I say, look at the calendar. The truth is that if the Republicans’ Galahad is going to save the day, he needs to announce before midnight, and midnight is fast approaching. As Dave Weigel recently pointed out, at this point four years ago, 15 would-be presidents (eight Republicans, seven Democrats) had launched exploratory committees or announced candidacies. And eight years ago, by this time, five Democrats–all of the major candidates other than Wesley Clark–had at least formed exploratory committees, and two had formally announced. Today, in contrast, only the radio talk-show host Herman Cain has launched an exploratory committee. All of the other potential candidacies remain notional and virtual, built around leadership PACs, buzz-generating book tours, and flashy travel announcements.
The simple fact is that, for a white-knight candidate to actually win the nomination, this kind of virtual campaign is not enough. Consider the hurdles that a real, substantive presidential bid must surmount. The first contest of the election takes place on March 11, when the Iowa branch of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition holds a candidate “forum,” which is another word for “debate.” And the first major event in the 2012 cycle–the Ames, Iowa, Republican Straw Poll–is scheduled for August 13, 2011, less than eight months from now. It is not what you’d rightly call an optional event for anyone who wants to win or place in the 2012 Iowa Caucuses. The straw poll is this election cycle’s major fundraiser for the Iowa GOP, and its sponsors are making it abundantly clear that anyone who skips Ames might as well skip the Caucuses. This event requires either a big operation that will bus eager Republicans to Ames, or the kind of passionate team support that Mike Huckabee had in Iowa in 2008. It cannot be dialed in.
Right now, only four putative candidates can afford to ignore this ticking clock: Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, and Palin. Each has enough name ID, or prior experience on the presidential campaign trail, that they won’t be hurt by waiting until just prior to the straw poll, or even later, before going official. And there are currently two others, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum, who are already spending enough time in Iowa to prepare for the first contest. (Another possible candidate, Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann, will soon dip her toes into the Iowa waters, buoyed by a personal connection to Iowa’s own fire-breather, Representative Steve King. Particularly if Palin takes a pass on 2012, Bachmann could be quite formidable.) For everyone else, time is a-wasting. It’s hard to imagine any of the potential white knights–John Thune, Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence, Haley Barbour–becoming credible, much less formidable, unless they take the plunge very soon.
It’s not just about Iowa: New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney has a big early lead in polls; and South Carolina, where two of the big dogs of Tea Party-era conservatism, Jim DeMint and Nikki Haley, could have a big impact via endorsements, require early attention too. Despite all the changes the Republican Party has undergone, its nomination contest remains a state-by-state slog in which a few key victories are dispositive. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, whose failed 2008 candidacy vividly demonstrated once again how futile it is to pretend you can ignore the early states altogether, or ask Fred Thompson, a powerful on-paper candidate who couldn’t overcome his own unwillingness to campaign like a wolverine in heat.
Barbour, Daniels, Thune, and Pence may walk tall in Washington, and they can raise money quickly, but they are not particularly well known to the rank-and-file outside their own states. Barbour has to spend time overcoming the poor impression made by his recent clumsy defense of civil-rights-era Mississippi. Daniels has infuriated social conservatives–who dominate the Iowa Caucuses, and who are obsessed with overturning the state’s gay marriage law–by calling for a “truce in the culture wars.” If he is to have any chance at all, he needs to decamp to Des Moines immediately and spend the next several months begging them for forgiveness. Thune has to work to show he’s something other than handsome and inoffensive. And Pence may or may not be running for governor of Indiana. If any of them wants to score a win on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, he will have to confront these p.r. problems and begin campaigning seriously more or less now. Otherwise, we should all admit that the field of legitimate contenders for the Republican nomination looks like this: Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, Palin (or Bachmann in her absence), and Pawlenty. Talk about anyone else is just a sign of denial.

When I heard in the wake of the Tucson shootings that Jim Clyburn had said something about bringing back the “Fairness Doctrine” (the long-lapsed FCC regulation requiring that broadcasters offer “equal time” to controversial political content), I literally groaned aloud. “Oh God,” I thought, “that’s all it will take to keep that conspiracy theory alive for another year or two.”
Sure enough, Rush Limbaugh and company were off to the races, as reported by Politico‘s Keach Hagey:

When some liberals called for reining in harsh political rhetoric after the Arizona shootings, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) took it one step further. He called for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, in what was widely considered an attempt to clamp down on talk radio.
A week later, those calls have abated, and no one is seriously pursuing the idea of returning to the long-defunct policy, which required media on the public airwaves to present both sides of controversial political issues. Not Clyburn, not another Democrat who echoed his call for regulatory remedies, Rep. Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), and not the Federal Communications Commission, whose chairman opposes reinstating the policy.
But you wouldn’t know it from listening to conservative talk radio.
Conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are rallying their listeners with a very old — and very successful — battle cry, accusing the left of trying to curb their free speech.
“So believe me, I wouldn’t be surprised, folks, if somebody in the Obama regime or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressperson has already written up legislation to stifle and eliminate conservative speech, and that legislation is sitting in a desk drawer someplace just waiting for the right event to clamp down because that’s what all this is,” Limbaugh said Monday, in his first show since the shooting. “And every time an event like this happens, they get into a trial run in hopes that this is the one that they can succeed in shutting us all down.”
This theme remained a constant on talk radio, conservative blogs and Fox News throughout the week….

Never mind that the “threat” is totally not-happening. Never mind that even if the Fairness Doctrine were brought back, it would involve “equal time,” not the suppression or elimination of conservative gabbing. Never mind that even in that remote contingency, it would only apply to the increasingly less-dominant broadcast media, not to “speech.” And never mind that when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect, there was plenty of conservative advocacy abroad in the land.
Rush’s lurid suggestion that the Obama administration was looking for “the right event to clamp down” and that Clyburn was cleverly and with vast secret backing conducting a “trial run” by bringing the subject up represented a bit more than the now-habitual effort to make purveyors of extremist rhetoric the victims of the Tucson tragedy. He was stopping just short of the analogy which you can see in comment threads all over the right-wing blogosphere: that “the Left” is looking for a “Reichstag Fire” with which to justify a totalitarian takeover of the country, just like you-know-who did back in 1933.
No informed and sane conservative believes this crap, even for a moment. But Rush and Glenn and Sean–not to mention the authors of countless viral emails shrieking about the Fairness Doctrine for at least two years now–play with fears of imminent totalitarianism regularly, and it’s about time folks on the Right called them on it. Aside from unnecessarily scaring the folks who hear and trust this stuff, it must be noted that such fearmongering has the collatoral effect of stimulating the sort of insurrectionary sentiments that genuine totalitarian threats might legitimately raise. And it’s an especially bad time to be doing that.

A virtual who’s who of conservatives – from George Will and Marc Thiessen to virtually every well-known conservative media figure and blogger has now reacted with outrage to the idea that violent rhetoric by conservatives had anything to do with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Many, in fact, reverse the accusation and claim that they are the victims of a new “McCarthyism” or a “blood libel” when critics suggest that violent rhetoric by conservatives in any way contributed to the crime.
On the currently available evidence, Jared Loughner appears to be psychotic and delusional and not a typical right-wing extremist. However, it would be interesting to ask the conservative “who’s who” if they also believe that violent right-wing rhetoric had nothing to do with the following 21 attacks or thwarted attacks that left 8 innocent people dead
(list from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence)

July 27, 2008–Jim Adkisson shoots and kills two people at a progressive church in Knoxville, Tennessee, wounding two. Adkisson calls it “a symbolic killing” because he really “wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book,” but was unable to gain access to them.
April 4, 2009–Neo-Nazi Richard Poplawski shoots and kills three police officers responding to a 911 call to his home in Pittsburgh. His friend Edward Perkovic tells reporters that Poplawski feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on its way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon.” Perkovic also commented that Poplawski carried out the shooting because “if anyone tried to take his firearms, he was gonna’ stand by what his forefathers told him to do.”
May 31, 2009–Scott P. Roeder shoots and kills Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. The FBI lists Roeder as a member of the Montana Freemen, a radical anti-government group. In April 1996, he had been pulled over in Topeka, Kansas, for driving with a homemade license plate. Police found a military-style rifle, ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder, and two 9-volt batteries in his car.
June 10, 2009–James W. von Brunn, a convicted felon and a “hardcore Neo-Nazi,” walks into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and shoots and kills a security guard. Von Brunn believed that Western civilization was going to be replaced with a “ONE WORLD ILLUMINATI GOVERNMENT” that would “confiscate private weapons” in order to accomplish its goals.
June 24, 2009–Hal Turner, a New Jersey resident and white supremacist blogger/radio host, is arrested again after calling for the murder of three Republican-appointed jurists on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals who had issued a June 2 decision upholding handgun restrictions in Chicago. Writing on his blog, Turner says, “Let me be the first to say this plainly: these judges deserve to be killed,” and includes photographs, phone numbers, work addresses, and room numbers of the judges, as well as a map of Chicago’s federal courthouse which points out its “anti-truck bomb” pylons.
January 12, 2010–Mark Campano of Cuyhaoga Falls, Ohio, pleads not guilty to charges of possessing destructive devices not registered with the federal government. Law enforcement are called to Campano’s apartment in November 2009 after he accidentally detonates a pipe bomb and loses parts of two fingers. They find 30 pipe bombs, 17 rifles and handguns, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in the dwelling. Campano’s next-door neighbor states, “He was always trying to get me and another neighbor to listen to anti-government tapes and watch anti-government videos … He was some kind of radical, and he didn’t believe in the government.”
February 18, 2010–Joseph Stack of Austin, Texas, flies a single-engine plane into an office building containing nearly 200 IRS employees, killing one and wounding 13. In a suicide note, Stack lays out his grievances with the federal tax agency, stating, “The law ‘requires’ a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not ‘duress’ than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is … Violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.”
March 19-22, 2010–During consideration of health care reform legislation by the U.S. House of Representatives, vandals attack Democratic offices in Pleasant Ridge, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Tuscon, Arizona; Niagra Falls, New York; and Rochester, New York. Mike Vanderboegh, the former leader of f the Alabama Constitutional Militia, takes credit for the violence after posting a blog on March 19 that states, “If we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democratic party headquarters across this country, we might just make up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.” Several Democratic members receive death threats, including Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), who is told snipers will “kill the children of the members who voted YES”; Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who receives a message saying, “You’re dead; we know where you live; we’ll get you”; and Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO), whose staffer is told by a caller, “Better hope I don’t run into you in a dark alley with a knife, a club or a gun.” House Minority Leader John Boehner, speaking about Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), says he “may be a dead man.”
March 29, 2010–Nine members of the MIchigan-based “Hutaree” Christian militia are arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempting to deploy weapons of mass destruction. The group had allegedly plotted to kill a law enforcement officer and then detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) during the officer’s funeral procession. The group targeted federal officials, members of the law enforcement “brotherhood” and other participants in the “New World Order.”
April 1-20, 2010–Walter Fitzpatrick, a member of American Grand Jury (AGJ), attempts to effect a citizen’s arrest on grand jury foreman Gary Pettway at the Monroe County courthouse in Madisonville, Tennessee, and is arrested. Nineteen days later, on the day that Fitzpatrick is scheduled to face trial, Oath Keepers member Darren Huff is pulled over by Tennessee state troopers as he attempts to drive to the courthouse to arrest county officials he calls “domestic enemies of the United States engaged in treason.” Huff is armed with a Colt-45 handgun and an AK-47 assault rifle with 300-400 rounds of ammunition. He is indicted on federal charges of traveling in interstate commerce with intent to incite a riot and transporting in commerce a firearm in furtherance of a civil disorder.
July 18, 2010–California Highway Patrol officers arrest Byron Williams, 45, after a shootout on I-580 in which more than 60 rounds are fired. Officers had pulled Williams over in his pick-up for speeding and weaving in and out of traffic when he opened fire on them with a handgun and a long gun. Williams, a convicted felon, is shot several times, but survives because he is wearing body armor. Williams, a convicted felon, reveals that he was on his way to San Francisco to “start a revolution” by killing employees of the ACLU and Tides Foundation. Williams’ mother says her son was angry at “Left-wing politicians” and upset by “the way Congress was railroading through all these Left-wing agenda items.”
November 3, 2010–James Patock, 66, of Pima County, Arizona, is arrested on the National Mall in the District of Columbia after law enforcement authorities find a .223 caliber rifle, a .243 caliber rifle barrel, a .22 caliber rifle, a .357 caliber pistol, several boxes of ammunition, and propane tanks wired to four car batteries in his truck and trailer. Patock former neighbor in Arizona reported that, “He hated the president. He hated everything. He said if he got a chance he would shoot the president

(Note: an alert commenter has pointed out that there is evidence that Laughtner was familiiar with various ideas of right wing groups associated with the Patriot movement See the link Here)

In assessing the political fallout from the Tucson slayings, one of the few things that could be done to prevent further such tragedies is for traditional media — primarilly television, newspapers and radio — do a better job of calling out politicians who flirt with violent rhetoric.
A few traditional media reporters did express some concern when the rhetoric of violence began to escalate months ago. But more vigilance is clearly needed. Any political figure who even vaguely suggests physical violence against another political opponent ought to be hounded by all media until they apologize for it.
Nor am I including the blogosphere, because quite a few progressive bloggers have done a good job of calling politicians into account for violent rhetoric. The problem is most politicians still feel free to ignore the progressive blogosphere, which exerts its influence more indirectly than does TV, newspapers or radio. Public figures get more worried when a meme adversely reflecting on them gets discussed on the nightly news, morning talk shows. op-ed columns and radio reports.
There is plenty of discussion going on right now in the MSM about the role of violent rhetoric on the part of political figures like Sarah Palin. In six months, however, I would be surprised if Beck, Limbaugh and others are still coolling their propensities for referencing physical harm to their political opponents. The question is, will the MSM, not just the progressive blogosphere, make them account for it?
I’m not going to make the case here that a “violent climate” caused the tragedy. Others have done that about as well as it could be done (see Olbermann here, for example). Regardless, a huge majority of Americans would agree that political leaders need to tone down the ad hominem attacks, at least to the point of not using gun-related imagery in talking about how to deal with political adversaries. Certainly there is no downside to doing so.
I don’t buy the false equivalency argument that progressives have been as guilty as conservatives in suggesting physical violence against political opponents. There may be a couple of examples, but nothing as outrageous as the incidents Vega discussed yesterday. But if we get bipartisan agreement on nothing else, let it be that even vague references encouraging physical violence against political opponents be immediately and loudly condemned by leaders of both parties.
But I would hold Dems to account for weak leadership on gun control, which has become a sort of ‘third rail’ for office holders. I don’t expect most Democratic office-holders to lead the charge for a broad range of gun control measures. Regretfully, America has not yet reached the point where sane gun control reforms can be broadly enacted. But this tragedy certainly underscores the need for a ban on high capacity ammo clips, as has been proposed by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), who lost her husband to gun violence and saw her son seriously injured by it. That, at the very least, should be doable.

Despite the persistent myth that the Republican rank-and-file are all patiently waiting to be told by Great Big Grownups which leader to follow in 2012 (you know, a Great Big Grownup candidate like Mitch Daniels or Haley Barbour or John Thune) there’s remarkably little evidence that conservative activists, the true rulers of the GOP, are converging behind any particular candidate.
For a good indication of the landscape, check out the reader poll recently conducted at the highy influential right-wing site RedState. It was set up like a sports playoff, with sixteen possible candidates being matched up one-on-one in a series of rounds. It’s interesting that three of the four candidates with regular double-digit support levels in state and national polls got knocked out in the first round: Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich. The current DC Establishment heartthrob, John Thune, was also retired in the first round, by none other than John Bolton (!). The poll ultimately came down to Sarah Palin and radio talk host Herman Cain, with the latter narrowly winning among more than 18,000 ballots cast.
Now I don’t mean to suggest this result means a whole lot in itself, as is made obvious by the stellar showing of Cain, who is not that well known outside Georgia (significantly, Erickson’s home state). But this is a pretty good indicator that serious activists are still looking around for a champion, and may not agree on one before the actual contest gets underway.