There are many “silly seasons” in politics, when either the absence of real news or the devious interests of “sources” create “stories” that aren’t quite legitimate. We’re definitely in a silly season right now when it comes to the 2012 presidential race. It’s still theoretically possible for late entries to get in, and widespread unhappiness with the Republican field has created a ripe environment for completely baseless speculation about this or that possibility.
Fortunately, Dave Weigel of Slate has done a quick rundown of what he calls the “Why the Hell Not?” candidates, including an indication of their possible motives in promoting talk of a run (often a book that needs publicity). His list includes the famous Rep. Paul Ryan, the not-so-famous Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), retread Rudy Giuliani, and Govs. Rick Perry of TX and Rick Scott of FL. Dave clearly doesn’t think any of them are actually going to run, which may underestimate Giuliani’s ego and the vast encouragement currently being given to Perry to jump in.
But maybe we’ll get lucky and none of them will run. Then we won’t have to re-explain why the Republican Party will not in a zillion years nominate a pro-choice pol like Rudy, no matter what else he allegedly brings to the table, and we won’t have to learn to take seriously Rick Perry’s arguments that just getting rid of inconvenient government programs and regulations has made Texas an economic paradise. As a native southerner, I also fear that a Perry candidacy–which would be predicated on the idea that someone from the South has a big natural advantage–would make me long for Haley Barbour as a representative of the region. Better Foghorn Leghorn than “Adios MoFo!”

This item appeared as part of a column at Progressive Fix.
It’s happened so quickly that its significance may have been obscured, but one of the biggest recent developments in Wingnut World has been the rapid devolution of conservative opinion on the pending debt limit crisis–from demands for hard-line negotiations to outright rejection of negotiations at all, often supplemented by claims that the government doesn’t need new debt authority anyway.
This last phenomenon, which Jonathan Chait and others have been calling “debt-ceiling denialism,” is spreading like kudzu since it was first notably articulated by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) in a January column in the Wall Street Journal. There are different forms of the argument, but the common threads are the claim that the federal government can prioritize the use of revenues in a way that avoids debt default, and the complaint that the whole issue has been manufactured by Democrats to avoid big spending cuts. Toomey attracted 100 House members and 22 Senators to his “Full Faith and Credit Act” legislation that would supposedly avoid a default by forcing debt payments to the top of the spending priority list.
Short of explicit denial that a real breaching of the debt limit would be a bad thing, other conservatives (including presidential candidates Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain) take the parallel position of opposing any increase in the debt limit on grounds that spending (without, of course, any tax increases) should be cut enough to make the increase unnecessary.
The usual reaction in Washington to this sort of talk is to dismiss it as tactical positioning for the “deal” that will ultimately be cut–as “hostage-taking” aimed at maximizing the “ransom.” Perhaps that’s exactly what it was initially. But at some point, arguments that the hostage’s life is worth nothing, or worse yet, that the ransom can be earned precisely by killing the hostage, undermine the very idea of a deal, particularly when refusing to negotiate with Democrats is a posture that conservatives value as an end in itself anyway. Indeed, the trend in conservative rhetoric on this subject is to accuse Democrats of hostage-taking by their adamant refusal to accept vast spending reductions. It’s a dangerous gambit, made even more tempting to Republicans by the fact that debt limit increases are perpetually unpopular among the overwhelming percentage of Americans who have no real idea of the merits of either side of the dispute.
The key question is the extent to which the GOP’s business elites forcefully push back and demand a more reasonable attitude before things get out of hand. That’s particularly urgent since debt-limit deniers and hard-liners alike are getting into the habit of arguing that financial markets care more about spending reductions than any hypothetical default on the debt. Moreover, debt-limit ultras are also playing with fire by systematically eliminating any incentive for the Obama administration or congressional Democrats to make concessions to a credible negotiating partner. Why offer a ransom when the hostage-takers no longer seem to care what you offer? Better to just send in the SWAT team and take your chances.

Pollster Mark Mellman has a brilliant piece of opinion data analysis, “Winning the Medicare Fight,” up at The Hill. Mellman’s post is of interest, not only for those concerned with political strategy and Medicare policy, but also for anyone interested in how to analyze a poll. Here’s some of Mellman’s nuanced analysis of a recent Gallup poll regarding deficit-reduction through Medicare reform, which was hailed by conservatives:

Gallup’s findings seemingly suggested Republican fears were exaggerated. The pollsters’ analysis noted that “Ryan’s plan includes a complete restructuring of Medicare for people younger than 55.” Nevertheless, to Republicans’ evident glee, Gallup reported, “Pluralities of middle-aged Americans as well as those 65 and older prefer Ryan’s plan to Obama’s.”
Republicans took heart from these findings too quickly. Nowhere does the question explain, or even reference, Ryan’s Medicare plan. Respondents were simply asked which was “the better long-term plan for dealing with the federal budget deficit — the Republican plan put forth by Congressman Paul Ryan or the Democratic plan put forward by President Barack Obama?” Voters dividing evenly on which party is better at dealing with the deficit should surprise no one. Indeed, if these numbers contain any surprise, it is that Democrats perform as well as they do on this traditionally pro-GOP issue.

Mellman mines other polling data to test his argument:

According to a Kaiser poll, 57 percent oppose any reduction in Medicare spending to help reduce the federal deficit, and another 32 percent would countenance only “minor” spending reductions. An ABC/Washington Post poll found 78 percent opposed cuts in Medicare spending to “reduce the national debt.”

However, cautions Mellman,

While Republicans, who marched almost in lockstep in support of the Ryan plan, err grossly in taking solace from the Gallup poll, Democrats too have lessons to learn from this poll and other recent data.
First, shorthand rarely works — and certainly doesn’t work here. Vague references to the “Ryan plan” mean almost nothing to voters.
Similarly opaque references to “vouchers” likewise fail to galvanize public anger. According to the Kaiser poll, just 12 percent have any idea what “premium support” means, and an equally anemic 30 percent claim to know what vouchers are in the context of Medicare. In another test, use of the word “voucher” increased opposition to the Ryan plan by a single point. Even “privatization” fails the test. These terms may rally the informed base, but they carry little meaning to the wider electorate.
Second, some of the concepts Democrats find abhorrent are not quite so loathsome to voters. When Kaiser explained premium support — “people choose their insurance from a list of private health plans … and the government pays a fixed amount toward that cost” — voters divided about evenly between keeping Medicare as it is and adopting that alternative.

Mellman also cites an ABC/WaPo poll indicating that 65 percent of respondents opposed a plan in which people over 65 would get a government check to shop for health insurance in the private sector. He adds that the Kaiser poll found 68 percent of respondents opposed, even when informed of the GOP assertion that it would “reduce the deficit, save Medicare and encourage competition.”
As Mellman concludes,

While neither shorthand nor wonky explanation works, clear, crisp arguments do raise voters’ hackles about the GOP’s Medicare plan. The core message focuses on cutting Medicare benefits and putting insurance-company bureaucrats in charge of seniors’ healthcare…This is a debate Democrats can win decisively, but only with an oft-repeated and carefully honed message in place of shorthand and jargon.

Democratic candidates and campaign workers take note. Meeting this challenge in communications strategy could prove decisive in winning both support from seniors and close elections.

‘Birtherism’ is on the decline following the release of the President’s long form birth certificate. But it is nonetheless instructive to consider how the meme was accepted by so many conservatives. Alan I Abramowitz has what is likely be the definitive data-driven post on the subject up at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abramowitz weighs the data regarding the influence of partisanship, ideology and race on formation of the birther meme:

Until now, debates about the influence of racial attitudes on opinions of Obama have been severely hampered by a lack of survey data including relevant questions. However, the availability of a new data set now makes it possible to directly examine the impact of racial attitudes on whites’ evaluations of President Obama.
The data used in this article come from the October 2010 wave of the American National Election Study Evaluations of Government and Society Survey (EGSS). The October 2010 survey was the first of several cross-sectional studies being conducted by ANES in 2010, 2011 and 2012 to test new instrumentation and measure public opinion between the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. The surveys are being conducted entirely on the Internet using nationally representative probability samples. Respondents are members of the Knowledge Networks KnowledgePanel, an omnibus panel of respondents recruited using telephone and address-based sampling methods who are provided free Internet access and equipment when necessary.
Evaluations of President Obama were measured by two questions, a five-point scale measuring positive versus negative feelings about the president and a seven-point scale measuring how strongly respondents liked or disliked him. The correlation between these two questions was a very strong .85, so I combined them into a single Obama rating scale with a range from 0 (extremely negative) to 10 (extremely positive). The mean score on this scale was 5.1 with a standard deviation of 3.6. About a third (34%) of respondents gave Obama a rating of 8 through 10 while 31% gave him a rating of 0 through 2. Thus, opinions of Obama were closely divided and highly polarized.

Abramowitz also notes that “Obama’s approval rating averaged 38% for whites compared with 59% for nonwhites including 85% for African Americans.” Turning to the question of ‘birther’ attitudes, Abramowitz examines the data and adds,

…Racial resentment had a strong impact on beliefs about his place of birth. While recent polling indicates that doubts about whether President Obama was born in the United States have diminished since he released his “long form” Hawaiian birth certificate, the “birther” myth has proven stubbornly resistant to evidence. In fact, 58% of white respondents in the EGSS expressed some doubt about whether Barack Obama was born in the United States including 28% who thought that he definitely or probably was not born in the United States.

Abramowitz concludes that “partisanship and ideology were the strongest predictors of overall evaluations of President Obama and opinions about his place of birth among white Americans” and that “regardless of party or ideology, whites who scored high on racial resentment had more negative opinions of Obama and were more likely to harbor doubts about whether he was born in the United States than whites who scored low on racial resentment.”
Given the tenacity of racial bias among a substantial segment of the public, President Obama’s approval ratings are all the more impressive, as is his ability to calmly navigate around the treacherous shoals of race in America.

The following article by political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo.
The ongoing battle over the federal budget and the role of government in America has certainly clarified the fundamental difference in the visions of the Republican and Democratic Parties — and the progressive and conservative forces within American society.
At the same time, however, the budget battle has also opened up two gaping rifts within the Republican Party itself. The first threatens to do massive damage to the GOP’s election chances in 2012. The second may cause the collapse of its 2011 legislative agenda.
First is the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the “Tea Party” class of GOP “young turks” — who want to go for broke to destroy the New Deal and impose their social agenda — and those elements of the Party whose highest concern is winning general elections.
More “moderate” Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Dick Lugar are terrified of being defeated in primaries by Tea Party insurgents who are eager to take advantage of any deviation from ultra-right orthodoxy. But they know very well that purist right wing positions like ending Medicare and privatizing Social Security are the kiss of death in general elections.
Last week, Newt Gingrich became the poster boy for the corrosive effect of this conflict, as the nation watched him pleading for forgiveness from the right for his characterization of Paul Ryan’s Republican budget as “extremist right wing social engineering.” Even though Gingrich himself remains a hard core right wing ideologue, he has had an experience many of the Tea Party newcomers have not: he knows what it’s like to lose.
Gingrich is smart enough to know that it’s one thing to prevent people from achieving their aspirations — it’s quite another to take something away that they already have — that they’ve already paid for — like Medicare and Social Security. He can read the polls that show almost 80% of the electorate wants Congress to keep its hands off Medicare and Social Security. And almost as many oppose cutting or restructuring Medicaid. Remember that Medicaid not only provides health care for the working poor, and children, but also provides nursing home care — and home care that lets seniors and the disabled stay in their own homes instead of institutions.
Of course it’s not just Gingrich that is caught in the vise between primaries dominated by well-organized right wing ideologues and a general electorate that has no use for candidates who want to abolish Medicare or defund Planned Parenthood. The entire Republican presidential field will have to cope with this virtually unsolvable conundrum every day during the upcoming primary season.
The same difficulty faces GOP Senate challengers and House incumbents. Sixty one D battles for House seats will be fought in districts won by Barack Obama in 2008 — and fourteen were won by Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004. In the 2010 elections, seniors voted Republican by 21%. Now that the Republican leadership and Ryan’s “young guns” have rounded up all but four members of the GOP House caucus and got them — incredibly — to cast a public vote to abolish Medicare — don’t expect seniors to flock to their cause again in 2012.
And in case the Republicans didn’t notice, it’s not just seniors who strongly oppose abolishing Medicare. All of those 45- to 50-year-olds who would be most directly affected and have paid their Medicare taxes all of these years aren’t too happy either.
Before this year is done, many Republican office holders and candidates will feel as though they’re on a political rack. On the one side they will find themselves and their colleagues pilloried at town meetings for voting to abolish Medicare. On the other, they will watch those who are bold enough to distance themselves from the Republican budget “Koolaid,” smacked back into line by Tea Party zealots.
This of course will be great news for Democrats in 2012. Many Republicans are taking the path of the least short-term pain in order to avoid humiliation in a primary. They are refusing to distance themselves from Ryan’s politically radioactive proposals. And of course candidates like Gingrich who try to head for a radioactive free zone — and then have to reverse themselves — look as though they have cast their principles to the winds. In politics, appearing to flip flop — to have no core commitment to values — is often the most toxic quality of all. Remember, Republicans beat John Kerry by — erroneously — convincing many swing voters that he was a “flip flopper.”
Already we’ve seen the power of the Medicare issue to drive swing seniors into the Democratic column. In the Special election for heavily Republican New York’s 26th Congressional District, Democrat Kathy Huchel has actually surged ahead of Republican Jane Corwin in last-minute polling — mainly on the strength of the Medicare issue.
But the Medicare issue doesn’t just move swing seniors. The Republican Budget — coupled with President Obama’s response — has drawn clear lines between the Democratic and Republican visions for our society. That clear distinction has already reinvigorated the Democratic Party base and will serve to rally Democratic turnout in 2012.
Paul Ryan has given Democrats the gift that will keep on giving right through November, 2012.
But the second great conflict in the Republican Party will have an impact in just a few months. That’s the conflict between the real base of the GOP — Wall Street and America’s corporate elite — and the Tea Party bomb throwers who are willing to risk allowing America to default on its debts to advance their ideological goals.
Now don’t get me wrong — much of the Wall Street/corporate CEO crowd would love to abolish Medicare and force draconian cuts in the Federal budget so they could have yet another round of tax cuts and free themselves of “meddlesome” government “regulation.” They would love to be freed to devise exotic trading schemes, sell worthless mortgage securities, decertify unions and slash middle class salaries, defund public education and all of the rest.
But they’re not interested in risking the collapse of the economy, and the markets to get it. They are smart enough to prefer the billions they have in their hot hands, to the risk that their portfolios will plummet in value once again as they did in 2008. And that is exactly what might happen if their erstwhile Tea Party allies force House Speaker John Boehner to play chicken with the nation’s debt limit in order to pressure the Democrats to scrap big portions of the New Deal.
Wall Street is terrified by guys like Illinois’ Republican Congressman Joe Walsh who said that default wouldn’t be so bad — that we should be thinking “outside of the box.” Or Congressman Devin Nunes who thinks that a default would benefit America by forcing politicians to go through a “period of crisis”. These “default deniers” just scare the bejezus out of the investor/CEO class.
But Boehner has a whole flock of these folks in his caucus, and before the default battle is over he may look like a pancake — squeezed by Wall Street on the one side, and by his Tea Party crew on the other.
It is likely that whatever deal to avoid default ultimately emerges from the Biden talks, will ultimately pass with more Democratic than Republicans votes in both houses. That means that the deal cannot contain poison pill proposals that are completely unacceptable to most mainstream Democrats. But that, in turn, may very well be unacceptable to the right-wing ideologues who see the debt-ceiling vote as their one chance to make big changes in the federal budget.
If Boehner allows a vote on such a proposal — and it does indeed pass with more Democrats than Republicans — he is afraid there may be a mutiny and he may no longer swing the big House gavel when the smoke clears.
This kind of division massively weakens the Republican’s bargaining position. As the prospect of default barrels toward us, looming larger and larger in the weeks ahead, the pressure from the Wall Street/CEO gang will grown unbearable.
The fact of the matter is that the Party’s big dogs will not allow Boehner to pull the plug on the grenade that sends the economy back into a major recession and causes markets to plummet. And of course, if they did, the political consequences for the GOP in 2012 would be catastrophic.
Had the Republicans simply continued to scream about deficits (as hypocritical as that may seem) they would have had a much stronger hand. Instead they handed Democrats a politically iconic example of exactly what the world would be like if they had their way — abolishing Medicare.
Now the Party’s candidates and its legislative leadership are divided, confused and in disarray.
In this situation, Democrats and Progressives need to remember one important axiom: when you’ve got them on the run, that’s the time to chase them.

Mitch Daniels’ decision not to run for president next year, communicated to key supporters in the wee hours of Sunday morning, clearly surprised those most in the know about his preparations for a candidacy. Indeed, it seems that much of the elite conservative commentariat that was so visibly pining for a Daniels run is in a state of shock. The public grieving has barely begun. We will soon see writers fond of scolding the public for its addiction to self-indulgences like a social safety net turn and scold the media for scaring Daniels out of a presidential run by speculating about his marital history and its possible impact on the race.
After the rending of garments and the finger-pointing, the Gravitas Lobby could scatter in different directions. Some will panic and beg for another Great Big Adult to enter the race at the last moment–Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, perhaps even Rick Perry, who isn’t necessarily all that adult, but does have the ability to raise money and a record of saying the kind of highly irresponsible things beloved of Tea Party activists, and has a plausible path to the nomination. Others will make their peace with the existing field, and gravitate (no pun intended) to damaged-goods Mitt Romney or smaller-than-life Tim Pawlenty (who is formally announcing his own candidacy today).
We’ll never know if Daniels would have indeed gotten on his Harley and barnstormed across the early primary states exuding the “charisma of competence,” and getting Republicans all lathered up by his austerity message, or would have instead crashed and burned like many candidates in the past who excited elites more than actual voters. But we do know time is beginning to run out on efforts to recruit a dark horse savior for the Republican presidential field.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports on the good news for Dems regarding Ohio voter attitudes towards the GOP’s legislation stripping public worker collective bargaining rights:

A new Quinnipiac University poll of Ohio registered voters documents this opposition. According to the poll, Ohio voters oppose limiting collective bargaining rights for public employees (51-38), do not believe limiting collective bargaining for public employees is necessary to balance the state budget (52-38), oppose banning public employee strikes (58-35), and oppose banning public employee bargaining over health insurance plans (54-38).

And it’s not just about attitudes. Ohio voters are ready for action, reports Teixeira: “Ohio voters also favor repealing the whole law through a referendum (54-36)…Conservatives should get it through their heads that voters don’t support taking rights away from workers, whether they’re in the public or private sectors.”

As you may know, tomorrow is the day the End Times are supposed to begin, according to an odd but pervasive California-based “radio ministry” led by one Edward Camping. Perhaps you’ve even seen the group’s billboards or warning-emblazoned vans.
Now there’s nothing new about what theology wonks call “dispensationalist premillenialism,” which is basically the believe that it is possible to calculate the date of the Apocalypse as described in the New Testament Book of Revelation (which is taken quite literally) with clues from other parts of scripture. Camping himself earlier proclaimed the Apocalypse would begin on September 6, 1994, and then admitted to some calculation errors, since corrected.
There is certainly a ready audience for such predictions. According to the Pew Research Center, 41 percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ will “definitely” (23%) or “probably” (18%) return to Earth by 2050. The total number rises to 58 percent among white evangelicals. Indeed, as is well known, the belief that the State of Israel will play a particular role in touching off the Apocalypse has strong currency in conservative evangelical circles, and is often associated with Christian Right support for an aggressive posture on expansion of Jewish settlement into areas long controlled by Arabs (e.g., Mike Huckabee’s recent claim there is no such thing as “Palestinians” and thus no reason for a two-state solution in the biblical Land of Israel).
Beyond the ranks of believers, doomsday predictions can disturb people prone to anxiety. Salon‘s Steve Kornacki has a post up today about his own vulnerability as a teenager to Camping’s earlier prediction, even though he was neither an evangelical or from a particularly religious background.
Catholic and mainline Protestant sources typically view dispensationalist premillenialism as misguided, beginning with its literal interpretation of Revelation, which is more conventionally interpreted as a warning of coming Roman persecution of Christians utilizing a common ancient literary form. Abuse of Revelation led Martin Luther, early in his career, to propose deletion of the book from the Canon of the Bible.
But even without specific religious sanction, fear of–or longing for–Doomsday are too deeply planted in our culture to go away just because one prophecy or another proves wrong. It takes an awful lot of false alarms to eliminate the human fear of “the fire.”

It’s always a good idea to read National Journal‘s Ron Brownstein, and his column today is no exception. It’s about Mitt Romney’s problems with evangelical voters, which, ironically, could be exacerbated by the withdrawal of evangelical hero Mike Huckabee from the presidential race, making them more available to candidates better able than Huck to put together a majority coalition (e.g., T-Paw).
But what interested me most about the column was Brownstein’s discussion of the deployment of evangelical voters in particular states, supplemented by a nifty map showing the percentage of 2008 Republican primary or caucus voters self-identifying as evangelicals. The numbers for Iowa (60%) and New Hampshire (23%) have been repeated often enough that they should be familiar, but important, too, are the percentages for South Carolina (60%), Florida (39%), Michigan (39%), Virginia (46%) and Texas (60%). File away this map for future reference.

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile’s USA Today article “GOP’s 2012 Game Plan Is to Keep Voters Home” merits a read from Democratic leaders, campaign workers and, come to think of it, rank and file voters who don’t want to find themselves disenfranchised on election day. Here’s an excerpt:

…From coast to coast, the GOP is engaged in what appears to be a coordinated, expensive effort to block voters from the polls….The motivation is political — a cynical effort to restrict voting by traditionally Democratic-leaning Americans. In more than 30 states, GOP legislators are on the move, from a sweeping rewrite of Florida’s election laws to new rules for photo identification in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and more than 20 other states.
As a result, 11% of Americans –21 million citizens of voting age who lack proper photo identification — could be turned away on Election Day. And these people tend to be most highly concentrated among people of color, the poor, the young and the old.

Brazile details some the obstructions being thrown up by Republican-controlled legislatures across the nation, including restricting early voting, fines for voter registration drives and dubious photo i.d. requirements. “What the GOP is attempting to do,” concludes Brazile,” is change the rules of the game, leaving only their players on the field.”
Republicans have engaged in ‘ballot security’ campaigns and other voter suppression activities for decades. But it appears that the effort is now more widespread and deeply-entrenched than ever. Brazile’s warning should be heard and heeded by Democratic organizers, coast to coast.