Since the House ain’t having it, the deal is going to have to be renegotiated in part, unless of course, the my-way-or-the-highway caucus of the GOP prevails. In that event, the tax fight in the next congress will make the health care battle look like patty-cake.
For the sake of argument, let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume that there are some grown-ups hiding in the GOP shadows who get it that they won’t look like wimps if they compromise a little. Maybe Scott Brown or Richard Lugar or some other Republicans in the Senate are thinking “Hmmmm, maybe it’s time for a little adult supervision…Maybe voters are ready for different leadership from our side. Darth Boehner is already tripping. Mitch thinks he’s Patton. I could look pretty good as the lead dog voice-of-reason Republican for a bipartisan solution.”
I know it sounds crazy, because we haven’t seen any Republicans demonstrate a sincere bipartisan spirit for many, many months, if not years. There are no “red dogs” or anything resembling the “gypsy moths” of earlier decades. Plenty of Dems have no problem breaking party ranks, but it’s hard to name even one prominent Republican who has shown a willingness to do so on major votes.
Republican leaders are proud of the party discipline they have demonstrated in 2010. But they may be approaching the point where their strength is poised to become a weakness and look more like indefensible rigidity. All polls indicate a majority/plurality of voters oppose tax cuts for the rich. The GOP could reap most of the backlash if congress bogs down in another prolonged, acerbic conflict. Some Republicans have to be thinking that they could look a lot better by giving a little here and there to make the deal palatable to enough Democrats. A sure win-win outcome is a lot better than gambling on a we-win-they-lose scenario, especially when public opinion data favors the opposition.
If some Republicans rise to this challenge, it’s likely that enough Dems will be open to tweaking the numbers a little here and there. Just for openers, let’s suggest having the Bush cuts expire for those earning over $500K, and cranking up the estate tax rate to 40 percent, kicking in at $3 mill. (If no deal is negotiated before the new year, the estate tax rate is scheduled to increase to 55% for over $1mill, and the Republicans emphatically don’t want that. We do have that leverage.) The Republicans would undoubtedly respond with a counter-offer.
Whatever the magic figures may be, it’s time to stop playing chicken and start negotiating in good faith until we find the numbers that both houses of congress can live with.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
While tout Washington is furiously debating the deal between President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership, it’s time to look ahead. Assume that some form of the deal survives the cross-fire and is enacted into law. What then for the president?
There’s one thing we already know for sure: the agreement will light the fuse on a bomb timed to explode at the height of the 2012 presidential campaign. Unfortunately for Obama, taxation is an issue on which Republicans have long enjoyed an advantage in the court of public opinion, a situation not likely to change anytime soon. On the other hand, the president could not accept a permanent extension of all the Bush tax cuts without destroying the possibility of long-term deficit reduction.
There’s only one way out, which fortunately combines good policy with good politics. Obama should seize the initiative by moving comprehensive tax reform to the center of his agenda. He could argue–correctly, in my view–that the current tax code is far too complex, treats millions of average families unfairly, and constitutes an impediment to economic growth. Building on an emerging bipartisan consensus, he could go on to advocate a plan that broadens the base of the system while reducing rates–a formula that applies to both individual and corporate taxes. And he could challenge both parties to join with him to make a reformed code the law of the land during the 112th Congress.
So conceived and framed, tax reform serves both of the long-term goals–economic growth and fiscal restraint–that Obama must promote as the heart of his domestic agenda. Embracing it would enable him to move back on offense and to become the transformative leader he clearly wants to be. And if he places himself at the head of an initiative with substantial appeal across party lines, he could also begin to redeem the promise of a more cooperative, less confrontational politics that first brought him to national notice and helped him become president.
This is one of many reasons why the 2011 State of the Union address may well be the most important speech of Obama’s presidency. If he is able to chart a new course toward growth and fiscal sanity and back it with specifics–starting but not ending with tax reform–he will improve not only his own prospects, but the nation’s as well. If he does not–if the speech devolves into the kind of routine laundry list that Winston Churchill once dubbed a “themeless pudding”–the chances of gridlock and drift will rise, and so will the prospects of a return to unified Republican governance in 2013.
By the end of January, we’ll find up whether Obama and his advisors have been able to raise their game. The stakes could not be higher, and the time is short.

It’s too early to tell anything definitive just now, but there is definitely a possibility that Democratic and Republican opponents of the deal struck by the White House and GOP congressional leaders can combine forces to kill it.
Progressives avid for this to happen do need to ask themselves a simple question: then what? It’s not like the collapse of the deal is going to place Obama or other Democrats in a time machine where they can start all over in mobilizing public pressure on congressional Republicans to support their own position. Given the strength of conservative opposition to the deal, GOPers are not about to recut it to make it more acceptible to Democrats, particularly if any extension of top end rates and any compromise on the estate tax are off the table. Besides, Republicans are about to take over the House and increase their numbers in the Senate; time is on their side.
If Democrats are considered in media accounts the prime factors in killing the deal, Republicans may well be happy to play a waiting game, refusing to extend unemployment benefits (much less provide additional economic stimulus through a payroll tax holiday or extension of low-income refundable tax credits) and blaming any economic or political fallout on divisions among Democrats. A tax logjam will also provide a convenience excuse for the GOP to continue to obstruct votes on DADT and the START treaty.
So are progressives willing to pay that price for the principle of not extending upper-income tax cuts? I’m asking this question honestly; personally, I consider ever-worsening economic inequality the great undiscussed issue of our time, and think the abolition of estate taxes would be morally obscene. But those who urge a course of action that makes these positions non-negotiable have a responsibility to game-plan this out a bit in terms of real-life consequences. “Fighting” is not a strategy; nor is “drawing a line in the sand.” No rebellion is going to change the Obama administration’s handling of the 2009 stimulus bill or the 2010 health reform bill. And you can’t make the tax issue a no-brainer: yes, Obama did promise to oppose extension of tax cuts keyed to the top bracket, but he also promised, much more vocally, to extend the rest of them, so he’s going to have to break a promise anyway you look at it.
In other words, it would be a shame if all this progressive anger at the president is really just retroactive, and about the public option or “card check” or the size of the stimulus or Afghanistan, because the issues bound up in the tax deal are very real and immediate, and by no means symbolic. So they should be part of the discussion, as should any thoughts the president might have about how he intends to regain some political initiative after the big Democratic Congress of the last two years officially becomes a thing of the past.

Michigan was without a doubt one of the states that made the Rust Belt such a disaster for Democrats during the midterms. Republicans picked up two U.S. House seats; gained control of the state House to take over total control of the legislature; and won the governorship by a 58-40 landslide.
It’s interesting, then, that a new PPP poll of Michigan looking ahead to the 2012 presidential election shows Barack Obama beating all the big GOP names, even Michigan homeboy Mitt Romney. Obama leads Palin by 21 points; Gingrich by 15 points, Huckabee by 12 points, and Romney by 4 points. For grins, PPP even tests Obama against newly elected Republic Gov. Rick Snyder, and the president leads that one by 11 points.
Dave Weigel thinks this is probably all about the popularity of the Auto Industry Bailout in Michigan. I’m sure that’s an element of it, but just as importantly is the fact that we are talking about a different electorate voting on a different contest with different candidates in play. Get used to seeing this kind of poll in the future.

Now that the president has cut a deal with congressional Republican leaders on the extension of Bush tax cuts and related matters, it will be helpful for progressives to keep some perspective on how they react.
The objection heard most often before and once the deal was struck was mainly about tactics and psychology: why wasn’t the White House willing to hang tougher in negotiations, creating the credible threat of all the Bush tax cuts expiring? Was the president letting Republicans bully him? Will he ever learn? etc., etc.
There’s actually been less focus on the deal itself than about its existence and timing. There are not actually that many Democratic politicians who would have been happy (or would have admitted to being happy) about the total expiration of the tax cuts, which without any doubt would have been unpopular, and would have been indelibly identified with any future downturn in the economy. “Deficit hawks” are the only cheerleaders for a general increase in tax rates at the moment, and they’re not the ones angry at the president today.
What the deal did achieve is probably the maximum degree of short-term economic stimulus available in the current political environment, thanks to the inclusion of one of the very few stimulus measures popular on both the left and right, a payroll tax “holiday.”
As for the principle of the high-end Bush tax cuts being vindicated by this deal, it’s worth noting that Obama was able to maintain some of the increases in refundable tax credits (the EITC and the Child Tax Credit) that were in the 2009 stimulus legislation. Refundable tax credits have rapidly become a major demon-figure in conservative ideology of late, so it’s significant these items stayed in.
The total costs and benefits of this deal actually can’t be measured until we see if it cleared the way for action during the lame-duck session on DADT and Start, and also assess its impact on the economy.
But if a deal had to be struck–and I understand some progressives thought any deal was too high a price to pay–then I’m with Ezra Klein, this one doesn’t look that bad.

We’re going to be arguing about this one for a while, and when we’re done the historians will be mulling it over in their books about the Obama presidency. My guess is that they are going to have tough time making it understandable to readers who wonder– “How in the hell did a liberal Democratic president with a healthy majority in both houses of congress, agree to a deal that extends Bush’s tax cuts for the rich?”
Some will shrug it off, “perhaps he wasn’t that liberal after all.” Others may liken him to General McClellan, Lincoln’s reluctant warrior-chief. The more meticulous historians will walk their readers through the tight timetable Obama was dealing with and the certain senate filibuster the House-passed tax bill the President preferred was facing, before finally settling on the least-bleak option he had.
Arguably, the President’s clock management and bully pulpit deployment should have been better. And jeez, couldn’t he at least have forced the GOP to eat a tax hike for millionaires at a time when corporate profits are shattering records? (Not that it would have reduced the budget deficit much). And as Paul Waldman notes in The American Prospect, the offer of a federal pay freeze now looks even more like a moral and strategic blunder.
What is undeniable, however, is that our politics are dysfunctional when a sharp Democratic president with healthy majorities in both houses can’t pass a moderately progressive tax bill. A lot of smart progressives are sharply critical of Obama’s leadership on the issue, including Paul Krugman, who sees the deal weakening the President’s re-election chances and Katrina vanden Heuval, who makes a persuasive case that it was more a problem of limited presidential will and vision than one of structural limitations.
I come down sympathetic to Obama, although I doubt that this was the very best deal he could get. Ezra Klein, on the other hand, makes a plausible argument that it certainly isn’t the worst case scenario. He didn’t, after all, accept permanent tax cuts for the rich. And as Jonathan Bernstein emphasizes in his New Republic post, “The Tax-Cut Deal Is Actually a Win for the Democrats,” Dems did deliver on tax cuts for the middle class.
None of this will matter much if the economy confounds the pundits and somehow comes roaring back before July or August, ’12, in which case Obama will begin to look like Clinton on steroids. Not bloody likely, but investment in manufacturing has been sluggish for a long time now, so a little hope is not out of the question.
Where we go from here is an all out effort to enact the remaining Democratic priorities, including DADT, the Dream Act and any other doable reforms we can cram into the agenda before Boehner takes over the House. With these reforms enacted and added to the Obama Administrations accomplishments thus far, along with some discernable economic gains, he’ll have a record to run on.

For some reason, Politico today did a big feature on Mike Huckabee’s interest in a 2012 presidential run, said to be a 50/50 proposition. The only real downside involves money. Huck woud have to give up his Fox show and his paid speaking gigs to run, and he’s not a very rich man by Republican standards. Just as importantly, given his infamous inability in 2008, to raise enough money to rub two quarters together, he does not appear to be spending a lot of time hanging out with the kind of people who could raise him some serious jack or dump tons of money into “independent” ads on his behalf.
If he does run, Huckabee has some very serious advantages that would not only give him a chance, but would create strategic headaches for his primary opponents. He would be the early frontrunner in Iowa, where he won last time despite being vastly outspent by Mitt Romney He also did well in South Carolina, and has boosted his odds (already bright if he again gets the support of Senator-Elect Marco Rubio) in Florida by moving there. And he has a guaranteed national base in the Christian Right.
How should Democrats feel about Huck? He has a surprising reservoir of good will from many progressives in part because he’s not a snarler, and in part because he was the rare Republican who didn’t routinely defend Wall Street or pretend the economy was just great in 2008 (qualities that alienated him from the GOP’s Economic Royalist wing). But look a little deeper, and Huckabee shares every obnoxious position Republicans have taken since they lurched heavilty to the right after 2008, in addition to his better-known hard-core stand on cultural issues like abortion and gay rights. There’s also reportedly a rich lode of crazy stuff in his large library of sermons, which presumably oppo research types are plumbing as we speak.
Huck’s been doing relatively well in trial heats against Obama, but it’s not clear the public really knows that much about him beyond his genial personality and his weight-loss saga. In the meantime, his threat to enter the race has got to be maddening to those conservative poobahs looking for some oxygen for a dark horse like Daniels or Thune or Pence. Even if Huckabee doesn’t do that well, he will soak up votes wherever he runs, and showed in 2008 that he’s got the stamina to run a campaign on fumes. I wouldn’t count him out, particularly if he gets another clear shot to beat Mitt Romney in Iowa.

Those who think it’s some sort of partisan exaggeration to say that today’s Republican Party has moved into some pretty extreme ideological territory should pay some attention to the latest conservative craze in state capitols and even in Washington: the so-called Repeal Amendment.
The bright idea here is to amend the U.S. Constitution–if necessary by a state-called Constitutional Convention–to allow two-thirds of state legislatures to nullify federal legislation whenever it pleases them.
Here’s how Dahlia Lithwick and Jeff Sesol of Slate characterize the Repeal Amendment:

There is so much wrong with the Repeal Amendment that it’s difficult to know how to begin to respond. The Constitution is–by design–a nationalist document. It is also–again by design–an anti-democratic document. American history reveals precisely what happens when state or regional interests are allowed to trump national ones, and the Constitution has been at its best (for example, the Reconstruction Amendments) when it has addressed (and, better yet, resolved) that tension.

They don’t even get into the potential issues with a constitutional convention, which according to some scholars, cannot be limited to any one issue and could fundamentally rewrite the Constitution.
But crazy as it is, the Repeal Amendment is getting some real momentum, not least because it’s been embraced by the number two Republican in the U.S. House, Eric Cantor:

[J]ust two months after the proposal was a twinkle in a Virginia legislator’s eye, the leadership of nine states is showing interest, and the popularity of the amendment’s Web site (they have them nowadays) has “mushroomed.” And this week, completing the proposal’s rapid march from the margins to the mainstream, Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah introduced the amendment in the U.S. House of Representatives, pledging to put “an arrow in the quiver of states.” The soon-to-be House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, said this week that “the Repeal Amendment would provide a check on the ever-expanding federal government, protect against Congressional overreach, and get the government working for the people again, not the other way around.” Fawning editorials in the Wall Street Journal and chest-heaving Fox News interviews quickly followed.

This is just nuts, and defenders of the sweet reasonableness of the GOP need to acknowledge it.

Senate Republicans probably have the leverage (via filibuster) to kill the House passed bill exempting those earning over $250K from tax cuts. But conservatives are “utterly uninterested” in the public’s public’s views concerning their key tax and budget proposals, explains TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages:

…Poll after poll shows that only a small minority–about a third–want to keep the tax cuts for the rich while everybody else wants to let them expire. The latest evidence comes from a Roper/AP-CNBC poll. Thirty-four percent in that poll wanted to keep the tax cuts for everyone including the rich, while 64 percent wanted either to just keep the tax cuts with incomes less than $250,000 (50 percent) or end them for everyone (14 percent).
Conservatives’ devotion to tax cuts for the rich also shows their lack of seriousness about tackling the deficit problem. Ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would save $700 billion over 10 years but those savings are obviously far less important to them than their ideological antitax, pro-wealthy agenda.

Teixeira adds that conservatives are loving the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission’s proposals to gut social programs, especially Social Security — contrary to the strongly-held views of the public:

…In the same poll the public vigorously opposed the proposal to raise the Social Security retirement age to 69. Just 28 percent favored this idea while 64 percent opposed it.

As Teixeira concludes of conservatives in congress, “…Their real commitment is to their ideology–an ideology of cutting social programs, opposing taxes, and rewarding the rich. It’s certainly not to reducing the deficit and even less to the wishes of the American public.”

Writing in HuffPo, TDS contributor and Board of Advisors member Alan Abramowitz has a compelling rebuttal to the GOP meme that their midterm victories signal a massive rejection of progressive principles and policies. Abramowitz, author of The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy, crunches data from the Gallup News Service Governance Poll, conducted 9/13-16, and explains:

…While Americans often support conservative principles in the abstract, large majorities of Americans continue to support an active role for government in addressing a wide variety of societal needs and problems.
…On matters of principle, Americans in 2010 leaned strongly to the conservative side. For one thing, self-identified conservatives greatly outnumbered self-identified liberals: 43 percent of Gallup’s respondents described themselves as conservatives compared with 37 percent who described themselves as moderates and only 20 percent who described themselves as liberals. In addition, when asked about the role of the federal government in dealing with the nation’s problems, fully 58 percent of Gallup respondents felt that the government was “trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses” while only 37 percent felt that the government “should do more to solve our country’s problems.” Similarly, those who felt that there was too much government regulation of business and industry outnumbered those who felt that there was not enough government regulation by a 50 percent to 28 percent margin. Finally, 59 percent of Gallup’s respondents felt that the federal government had too much power compared with only 33 percent who felt that the federal government had the right amount of power and a miniscule 8 percent who felt that the federal government had too little power.

Then Abramowitz addresses the respondents’ views on “specific societal needs and problems,” and finds,

…94 percent of the public felt that government should have major or total responsibility (4 or 5 on the scale) for “protecting Americans from foreign threats.” National security is one of the few areas of government responsibility that typically receives overwhelming support from Americans of all partisan and ideological stripes.
It is perhaps more surprising, given Americans’ endorsement of broad conservative principles, that 76 percent of Gallup’s respondents felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “protecting consumers from unsafe products” or that 66 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “protecting the environment from human actions that can harm it.” And it is perhaps even more surprising that 67 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “preventing discrimination,” that 57 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “making sure all Americans have adequate healthcare,” that 52 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “making sure all who want jobs have them,” or that 45 percent felt that government should have major or total responsibility for “providing a minimum standard of living for all Americans” (versus only 33 percent who felt that government should have little or no responsibility in this area).
Even a policy as radical by contemporary standards as “reducing income differences between rich and poor” drew the support of 35 percent of Americans (versus 45 percent who did not see this as an appropriate responsibility of government). The only area where the large majority of Americans rejected a substantial role for government was “protecting major U.S. corporations in danger of going out of business” which drew the support of only 19 percent of the public.

All in all, hardly the slam dunk preference for conservative polices McConnell, Boehner and other Republican leaders say most Americans embrace. Further,

It wasn’t just liberals who supported governmental activism. Even self-identified conservatives frequently endorsed governmental activism on specific issues. For example, 63 percent of conservatives, along with 84 percent of moderates and 87 percent of liberals, supported a substantial role for government in the area of consumer protection. And despite strong opposition to recent healthcare reform legislation by conservative pundits and politicians, 33 percent of conservatives, along with 71 percent of moderates and 81 percent of liberals, supported a substantial role for government in ensuring access to healthcare.

Abramowitz devises an interesting scale depicting support for government activism among various demographic groups as indicated by the poll, and concludes,

Despite the dramatic gains made by the Republican Party in the 2010 midterm elections, support for activist government remains very strong in the American public. Evidence from the recent Gallup News Service Governance Poll shows that today, just as in the 1960s, Americans tend to be ideological conservatives but operational liberals. They endorse conservative principles in the abstract, but support efforts by government to address specific societal needs and problems. These findings suggest that attempts by congressional Republicans to weaken or eliminate government programs in areas such as consumer rights, health care, income security, and environmental protection would be politically risky. While such policies might appeal to the conservative base of the Republican Party, they would almost certainly be unpopular with a majority of the American public.

Abramowitz makes the point that Ideological Conservative Operational Liberal (ICOLs?) voters have been a significant segment of the electorate for decades — which, come to think of it, may help explain why Republicans seem to prefer broad brush liberal-bashing to analyzing opinion data issue by issue.