Are you still puzzled by the extremist rhetoric of Republican pols in this era of domination by the Tea Party Movement (a.k.a., the GOP’s radicalized conservative base)?
A new 13-state survey from the University of Washington’s Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality finds some especially illuminating characteristics of self-identified Tea Party folk that helps explain the unusual heat of their political utterances. Asked if they subscribed to the proposition that “Barack Obama is destroying the country,” 71% of Tea Party Conservatives said “yes” while only 6% of other conservatives agreed.
The 6% represent the kind of conservatives who were until recently typical in the Republican Party–perhaps deeply convinced their opponents were terribly wrong about all sorts of things, but not really believing the whole country was going to hell in a handbasket. This essentially reflects the difference between people who view themselves as part of a democratic conversation over the future direction of America, and people who have adopted a separatist and proto-revolutionary posture.
Never underestimate what the latter group is capable of doing.

As you probably know, former congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, the first (and to this day the only Democratic) woman to appear on a major-party presidential ticket, died this weekend. Her renown was limited by the dismal performance of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket in 1984 (which was by no means significantly her fault), by the chronic aroma of scandal that pervaded her husband’s business career, and by several post-1984 political missteps, culminating in her brief role as Fox News’ favorite PUMA in 2008.
You can read all sorts of assessments of Ferraro’s life, career, and significance. But my favorite is Adele Stan’s memoir at TAP of what she meant to a young feminist from a working-class ethnic Catholic background much like Ferraro’s.
The barrier she broke really mattered, and her memory continues to serve as a reproach to the Democratic Party for its failure to nominate a woman to its national ticket since then–or to the top spot, ever.

At the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen has done an important post on the rise of radical anti-public-school sentiment among conservatives.
The belief that public education is an illegitimate exercise was until recently a rare fringe phenomenon mainly confined to the more tedious of libertarians, to home-schoolers angry at having to pay school taxes, and to occasional outbursts from Jim DeMint.
Now hostility to public schools is breaking out all over:

[T]his talk is picking up in right-wing media. CNSNews’ Terry Jeffrey argued a few weeks ago, “It is time to drive public schools out of business.” Townhall columnist Chuck Norris has begun calling public schools “indoctrination camps.” Townhall columnist Bill Murchison argued last week that the American middle class has pulled its support for public education.

And in Iowa, probable 2012 presidential candidates are pandering to home-schoolers, a significant force in Mike Huckabee’s 2008 Caucus win in the state, by attacking public schools.
This does not, of course, mean there’s any immediate threat to the future of public education, but this new spirit of conservative radicalism does make it a lot easier for Republican politicians to take less radical but still destructive positons on the subject, from attacks on federal funding to equalize educational opportunities, to private school voucher initiatives, to efforts to break teachers unions. After all, if a sizable and influential portion of your party’s electoral base cheers proposals to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education as a way-station to elimination of state and local government support for schools, why not throw them a dog whistle more often?
Given the massive public support for public education, exposing the growing radicalism of the GOP on this issue is both a responsibility and an opportunity for Democrats. Retaking the mantle of genuine “school reform” aimed at improving the performance of public schools would, of course, help boost Democrats’ credibility to do so.

The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll for February 2011, (conducted 2/3-6 and 2/8-13 by Princeton Survey Research Associates, has some excellent news for supporters of the health care reform legislation passed last year. It’s also a big downer for the GOP repeal advocates, as is clear from responses to two of the pollster’s questions in particular:
Asked, “What would you like to see Congress do when it comes to the health care law?,” 30 percent agreed that “They should expand the law,” while 20 percent said “They should keep the law as is.
Only 19 percent agreed that “They should repeal the law and replace it with a Republican‐sponsored alternative and 20 percent said “they should repeal the law and not replace it.” 10 percent selecting “don’t know/refused.”
It gets worse for the repeal advocates:
Asked “Some lawmakers who oppose the health reform law say that if Congress isn’t able to repeal the law, they should try to stop it from being put into place by cutting off funding to implement it. Whether or not you like the health reform law, would you say you approve or disapprove of cutting off funding as a way to stop some or all of health reform from being put into place?,” a decisive 61 percent said they “disapprove of cutting off funding, and only 34 percent supported cutting off funding. 5 percent responded “don’t know/refused.”
So, after all of the fussing and Republican chest beating about how the American people want to repeal or cut off funding for the Health Care Act, half of Americans want to keep the bill the way it is or expand coverage, and only 39 percent support any kind of repeal. And a hefty majority opposes cutting off funding to kill the legislation.
There’s a lot more for Dems to be encouraged about in the Kaiser poll, which is one of the more respected polling outfits in terms of method and question-framing. For example, 7 of 8 provisions polled well, most extrememly well. Only the requirement that everyone purchases health insurance or pays a fine was opposed by a majority.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
This week, Tim Pawlenty formally launched an exploratory committee to run for president. His path to the GOP’s 2012 nomination is reasonably clear: He will try to become everybody’s second choice in a field full of deeply flawed candidates, and there’s a fairly convincing case that he’ll succeed. Strikingly, though, this case for T-Paw in 2012 is essentially the same as the case that was made for Pawlenty as John McCain’s running-mate in 2008. He was a pleasant guy from a battleground region of the country, with a successful state-level political career, who didn’t offend any of the major veto-wielding factions within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. He also had a suitably all-American biography and once devised a slogan–“Sam’s Club Republicans”–that nicely reflects what Republicans like to think about themselves.
But it’s also useful to remember why John McCain did not in fact put the Minnesotan on his ticket: When it came down to a choice between Pawlenty and an obscure Alaskan named Sarah Palin, it was obvious that Pawlenty didn’t move the needle in terms of the GOP’s prospects for victory. “Pawlenty was credible and acceptable, but once the convention was over he would disappear,” thought McCain’s advisers, according to one insider account. Palin, on the other hand, was the “high risk, high reward” candidate, who would energize the GOP base. You see which one got the nod.
Of course, the situation was different from today. McCain was trailing in the polls when he made that decision, and choosing Pawlenty as a running-mate would be a very different calculation from choosing him as a presidential nominee. Yet there are nevertheless some lessons to be drawn from McCain’s choice, which highlight Pawlenty’s weaknesses as a candidate: Yes, his ability to appeal to all factions within the conservative movement might help Pawlenty in the “invisible primary,” where party elites attempt to set the field and tip the scales for their favorites. These elites seem to be hoping that if they choose someone who appeals to all sides, and cuts a profile as close to “generic” GOP candidate as possible, they will have a winning hand next year. But are the conservative activists who actually dominate primary and caucus events really in the mood for a safe, unexciting choice? Or are Tea Partiers in the mood for a crusade, led by someone who can energize them as Palin was meant to do in 2008? Will a political movement that perceives itself as “taking the country back” from socialists and baby-killers really find its general in a man so unremarkable that he was described in a sympathetic home-state magazine profile as “The Cipher”?
This problem goes deeper than the usual questions about Pawlenty’s “charisma.” He is, by most accounts, a personable guy who can connect well with all sorts of people, a quality that will serve him well in one-on-one retail campaigning. But the real issue is whether he is “big” enough for the role of the next Ronald Reagan–is he a redemptive figure who seems like he can lead this most exceptional country back onto the path of righteousness? This is an unusual requirement, but to conservative primary voters, who are long aggrieved by what they perceive as endless betrayals at the hands of Republican politicians, it is an essential quality that Pawlenty hasn’t definitely shown he possesses.
You get the sense that Pawlenty and his handlers understand this problem, and are working on it in ways that may or may not succeed. His recent habit of shouting his way through speeches (as wonderfully explained by Jesse Zwick for TNR) appears to be in part motivated by the need to show activists that he is “one of us,” and as outraged by the ongoing destruction of America from within as anyone. And then there are his amazing Web ads–part Transformers, part Triumph of the Will–which are designed to convey the sense that Pawlenty’s campaign is part of a gripping national drama comparable to the country’s other great turning points. These ads have become hilarious fodder for Stephen Colbert:

But they have the very serious goal of elevating Pawlenty from the non-offensive “safe choice” of party insiders into a sort of Maximum Leader for whom conservatives will snake-dance to the polls next year in order to vindicate their long-frustrated ambitions.
This gambit, handled as it is now, exposes Pawlenty not only to liberal ridicule, but to the risk that he will be perceived in the end as a Wizard of Oz–a nebbish pretending to be a world-historical figure via the use of smoke and mirrors and amplification. Yes, in theory, he could win the nomination much as McCain did, through a demolition derby that incrementally eliminates his opponents. But it’s clear that he still has a lot of very tricky rebranding to do–and for your typical Iowa Caucus-goer, conscious of his or her responsibility to choose or reject candidates, and yearning now more than ever for a leader who is larger than life, T-Paw’s modest “generic” charms may simply not be enough.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Writing in 1977 on the topic of humanitarian interventions, a noted political philosopher had this to say:

[W]hen a government turns savagely upon its own people, we must doubt the very existence of a political community to which the principle of self-determination might apply. … When a people are being massacred, we don’t require that they pass the test of self-help before coming to their aid. It is their very incapacity that draws us in. … Any state capable of stopping the slaughter has the right, at least, to try to do so.

Returning to this topic in 1999, he observed that “the greatest danger most people face in the world today comes from their own states, and the chief dilemma of international politics is whether people in danger should be rescued by military forces from the outside.” The problem, he argued, is not that individual states are prone to engage in such interventions, but the reverse: There have been “a lot of unjustified refusals to intervene.” It is, he said, “more this neglect of intervention [by individual nations] than any resort to it that leads people to look for a better, more reliable, form of agency.” And he offered a number of reasons why humanitarian interventions conducted under U.N. auspices might well meet this standard.
I agree with this distinguished scholar, who is (as you may have guessed) Michael Walzer. And that is why I disagree with his recent critique for TNR of our intervention in Libya.
Walzer begins his case against the administration with three prudential points. First, it’s unclear what the purpose of the intervention is, and therefore what the endgame might be. Second, the attack lacks significant Arab support. And third, technical passage of the enabling resolution in the U.N. Security Council should not obscure the breadth of international opposition, which includes not only the usual suspects (Russia and China) but also an important ally (Germany) and two of the most significant rising democracies (India and Brazil).
I could quibble with each of these propositions, but, as Walzer and I agree, that would divert us from the core issue. As he says, “[n]one of this would matter if this were a humanitarian intervention to stop a massacre.” But, he contends, “that is not what’s happening in Libya today.” That depends on what he means by “stop.” As the revolution faltered and government forces surged east, Qaddafi made a blood-curdling speech about the fate that awaited the residents of Benghazi. His threat to hunt them down “alley by alley” has been set to music and has become his supporters’ unofficial anthem.
On any impartial global index of leaders’ veracity and trustworthiness, Qaddafi would rank near the bottom. But in matters of organized brutality, there’s every reason to take him at his word. At the very least, there’s a very real possibility of mass reprisals and killings that would dwarf the slaughter at Srebrenica. That brings us to the nub of the matter: Were we required to wait until the slaughter began in order to “stop” it, or are we allowed to intervene to prevent a humanitarian disaster that is probable but not absolutely certain? The example of Rwanda suggests that if outside parties wait until the murder begins, it may be too late to halt it before many thousands have died. I don’t understand the basis for Walzer’s conclusion that unlike Rwanda, the threat to innocent life in Libya is not “extreme” enough to justify we what are doing.
All things considered, then, there is good reason why the impending fall of Benghazi moved President Obama to act. Bill Clinton has stated more than once that his failure to intervene in Rwanda was–morally and humanly speaking–the worst decision of his presidency. I agree. If I had been sitting where Obama was sitting last week, I would have acted as he did to prevent what could have been a similar stain on my administration. To be sure, there’s a chance that this wouldn’t have happened, even if we hadn’t intervened. But would we have been morally justified in taking that chance?
Yes, there are costs and risks. But let me use a philosopher’s example to clarify the issue. Suppose you’re a skilled swimmer walking along a beach. You hear a cry for assistance and observe someone struggling in the water a hundred feet offshore. Although it’s highly likely that you can bring the endangered swimmer safely to shore, there’s a small chance that you can’t, and a smaller but not negligible threat to your own safety. You also know that no one else can act with equal odds of success. Would it have been right to walk on by?
Since Kant, we have been familiar with the proposition that “ought implies can.” But in some circumstances, the reverse also holds: “can implies ought.” Our massive, ongoing investment in military capacity has a range of consequences for defense and diplomacy. It also has moral consequences. Because we can act in ways that others can’t, we are not as free as they are to ignore threats that we have the power to abate.
Having said this, let me grant a point Walzer rightly makes: Humanitarian protection is one thing, regime change quite another. This is a distinction that Obama also makes. No doubt his ringing and (many believe) unwise declaration that Qaddafi must go has muddied the waters. But while it may be complicated to say that our military intervention is bounded by the requirements of civilian protection and that we will use non-military means to bring about Qaddafi’s fall, it is not on its face incoherent.
Let me grant, as well, that the endgame is murky at best. There’s a non-trivial possibility that Qaddafi will be able to hang on to power in a substantial part of Libya. If so, we and our allies may have committed ourselves to protecting “Benghazistan” against retribution for the indefinite future. We’ve seen that movie before. Let’s hope this one ends better.

Politicians change their minds about things all the time, for good and bad reasons. But just this last week we’ve witnessed a couple of the most amazing 180 degree turns in recent memory, from two guys who want to become president.
In terms of political impact, the biggie was probably Mitt Romney’s latest effort to deal with the albatross of his Massachusetts health reform plan, with its undeniable organic connection to ObamaCare. Now he’s become the maximum supporter of total state control of health care policy, saying he’d grant 50 state waivers to the Affordable Care Act the day he took office.
Trouble is, as Greg Sargent pointed out yesterday, Romney’s on record touting his health reform plan, and specifically the individual mandate that’s made it toxic to conservatives, as a model for national health care reform. Apparently not so much now.
The irony here is that Romney is flopping around like a fish in a net to avoid the one really big flip-flop that’s probably the only thing that could ultimately save his presidential candidacy: a flat-out, I-was-wrong repudiation of the Massachusetts health plan.
Meanwhile, in a more blatant action, Newt Gingrich went almost overnight from screaming at Obama for failing to intervene in Libya on humanitarian grounds to screaming at Obama for taking his advice. Slate‘s Dave Weigel, a conservative-watcher who is not at all naive, called the reversal “breathtaking.” Well, that’s one word for it.

It was disgusting enough when Republican Governors and state legislators in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio launched a campaign to squash public employee unions. Now we have Governor of Maine Paul LePage escalating the war against working people to include elimination of public art that celebrates the dignity of honest toil. Here’s a report from former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich:

Maine Governor Paul LePage has ordered state workers to remove from the state labor department a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history. Among other things the mural illustrates the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston. It also features the iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” who in real life worked at the Bath Iron Works. One panel shows my predecessor at the U.S. Department of Labor, Frances Perkins, who was buried in Newcastle, Maine.
The LePage Administration is also renaming conference rooms that had carried the names of historic leaders of American labor, as well as former Secretary Perkins.
The Governor’s spokesman explains that the mural and the conference-room names were “not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.”
Are we still in America?

As Reich points out, there is no mystery about LePage’s diss of Frances Perkins:

She and her boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, came to office at a time when average working people needed help – and Perkins and Roosevelt were determined to give it to them. Together, they created Social Security, unemployment insurance, the right of workers to unionize, the minimum wage, and the forty-hour workweek.

In other words, all the things today’s GOP wants to take away from working people.
If you were wondering how lame the Governor’s defense of his executive order gets, this CNN report provides a sample:

To underscore the point, the governor’s office recently released a written complaint from a visitor to the state’s labor office to the Portland Press Herald.
“In this mural I observed a figure which closely resembles the former commissioner of labor,” the visitor wrote, according to the newspaper. “In studying the mural I also observed that this mural is nothing but propaganda to further the agenda of the Union movement. I felt for a moment that I was in communist North Korea where they use these murals to brainwash the masses.”
The letter writer identified himself as “A Secret Admirer,” the newspaper reported.

Don’t be surprised if it is later revealed that the “secret admirer” is a fat cat contributor. The people of Maine can be forgiven if they point out that the governor’s job description does not include “groveling lackey for big business.”
The mural, created by artist Judy Taylor, (see it here) was selected by a jury of the Maine Arts Commission. It presents a moving tribute to working people, but it’s certainly not as controversial as Diego Riviera’s 1933 mural on the wall of New York’s RCA Centre, which was removed by Nelson Rockefeller’s order.
Yeah, I know. It’s just a mural. But the incident does suggest that there are few indignities some Republican Governors will not suffer to demonstrate their inordinate fondness for labor-bashing — even if it means censorship.

Two observations in the blogosphere caught my eye today as reflecting insights that are pretty obvious once you read them, but not so obvious that you hear them a lot.
The first, by Paul Waldman at TAP, is a meditation on the familiar quandry of progressives about how to deal with the venom and unreasonableness of the contemporary Right:

The venom can itself lead one to conclude that those with whom we disagree are beyond help and reason. But that doesn’t offer proof that one should get meaner in response. It’s possible to believe that one’s opponents are a horrifying band of moral monsters and simultaneously believe that calling them that out loud and refusing ever to compromise with them doesn’t do your side much good. There’s little evidence that the nastiest line or the most unrestrained questioning of motives produces more political victories. And no matter how much you hate the other side, they aren’t going anywhere.

Nope. You can only try to beat them and then hope they get a grip.
Meanwhile, at TNR, James Downie addresses a question much on my mind as a non-foreign-policy specialist trying to keep up with current events:

[W]hy should bloggers have to take positions, especially on issues as complicated as foreign interventions? Why can’t one offer opinions and observations without taking positions? Surely one can opine, for example, that the Arab League’s growing dissatisfaction with the no fly zone hurts the intervention whether or not he or she supported, or opposed, or supported then but now opposes, or is unsure about the intervention. Similarly, I can comment on the race for the GOP nomination without ever taking a position on any of the candidates.
No, bloggers do not have to take positions. There is no law or principle that requires writers to say, no matter how much or how little expertise they have, “This is what should be done. This is the right thing to do.” One could argue, perhaps, that taking no position is a position in itself, but then “no position,” “I don’t know what to do,” and “I am not too sure” are positions all too rarely taken.

I realize this site is devoted to helping Democrats think through strategic issues, and the question of whether they have a moral responsibility to oppose a military intervention carried out by a Democratic president is clearly worth asking. But as to the answer, “I am not sure,” in part because it’s so difficult to discern how the intervention is actually working out, and I am generally loath to add my own voice to the vast and perpetual chorus of the president’s critics without certainty.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As events abroad rivet the media’s attention, the outlines are being drawn for a fiscal debate that will shape both the 2012 election and our economic future. Over the past few weeks, important documents have appeared which make it clear that the situation is extremely dire–but also that the public is unaware of, or in denial about, the trade-offs needed to remedy our predicament. The only solution is for President Obama to engage with Congress and begin educating the public by explaining why we need not short-term spending cuts, but long-term fiscal balance. And he needs to start now.
Several days ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its preliminary analysis of the fiscal impact of the president’s FY2012 budget proposal. Its findings were not pretty. In no year between now and 2021 would deficits fall below 4 percent of GDP. Over the next decade, enacting the president’s proposal would create deficits totaling $9.5 trillion, $2.7 trillion more than the cumulative deficit in CBO’s baseline budget. Federal debt held by the public would double from $10.4 trillion to $20.8 trillion, 87 percent of GDP, and annual interest on the debt would rise from 1.4 percent of GDP to nearly 4 percent. Even if the share of the debt held by foreign investors and governments does not increase over the next decade, CBO’s projection suggests that we’ll be shipping fully 2 percent of our GDP (almost $500 billion) overseas each year by the end of the decade, just to pay the interest on foreign holdings of U.S. government debt.
Whatever one may think about the size, timing, and appropriateness of short-term budget cuts, the CBO report adds precision to the common view that our long-term fiscal course is unsustainable. If you believe, as I do, that the best approach melds continued short-term fiscal ease with long-term restraint, then moving toward the long-term discussion as soon as possible is essential, for the simple reason that there’s no viable political path to the former that is not linked to the latter.
It’s clear that President Obama could do more to make this a reality. During the same time period, 64 senators–32 Democrats (60 percent of their caucus), 32 Republicans (70 percent of theirs)–sent a letter to President Obama urging him to “engage in a broader discussion about a comprehensive deficit reduction package.” Referring to the work of the president’s own fiscal commission, the letter went on to define the meaning of “broader”: “Specifically, we hope that the discussion will include discretionary spending cuts, entitlement changes and tax reform.” While some observers have dismissed this demarche as odd or inconsequential, it is anything but that–especially in these polarized times. Beyond the adjective “broader,” the most important words in the letter were a verb and a noun. By “engage,” the senators meant, “Mr. President, please get off the sidelines and get personally involved, because this process can’t succeed without your active participation.” And by “discussion” they meant an ongoing face-to-face dialogue, not occasional presidential monologues with little follow-up.
Meanwhile, the public is agitated but unsure how to solve the problem. On March 21, Gallup issued its latest survey of public concerns, and the economy remains at the top of the list, with 71 percent reporting that they worry about it “a great deal.” The budget deficit/federal spending is a strong second, at 64 percent. Notably, there is a wide gap between Democrats and Independents on this issue: While Independents rank spending/deficits second on their list, behind only the economy, these fiscal issues don’t appear at all on the Democrats’ list of top concerns.
Yet as a gap in the latest Pew Center survey underscores, regarding our fiscal condition as a serious problem is one thing, but endorsing a serious remedy is quite another. By a margin of 2 to 1, the public favors cuts in domestic spending. That’s where support for fiscal stabilization ends. American are split down the middle (47 percent in favor, 49 percent opposed) on cutting military spending, they reject changes to Social Security and Medicare by 65 percent to 30 percent, and they oppose raising taxes by a similar 67 percent to 30 percent. Compared to six years ago, support for cutting discretionary spending, domestic and military, has risen significantly, while opposition to tax increases hasn’t budged.
For the most part, these sentiments cross party lines. Seventy-five percent of Democrats oppose changes to Social Security and Medicare, but so do 61 percent of Independents and 59 percent of Republicans. Seventy-six percent of Republicans oppose tax increases, as do 67 percent of Independents and 61 percent of Democrats. Seventy-one percent of Republicans favor cuts in domestic spending, but so do 60 percent of Independents and even 54 percent of Democrats. The only area of significant disagreement is defense, where 57 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Independents favor cuts, compared to only 33 percent of Republicans.
No budget analyst who has mastered fourth-grade arithmetic believes that we can regain control of our fiscal future solely through reductions in discretionary spending. The Pew survey makes it clear (if further evidence were needed) that public concern about the problem far outruns public understanding of its sources and scope. As I have argued, the only way to change these public attitudes is to level with the people about our fiscal situation and educate them about the true choices we face. This task is essential and long overdue. But if former professor Obama isn’t willing to take the lead, it’s hard to see how an informed public discussion can ever begin.