Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
One of the most-linked posts on Memeorandum this morning is Cornell lawprof William Jacobson‘s post explaining why he hates the health care reform bill that we’re one step closer to enacting into law. Yes, it is that bad. The Democrats are about to put in place the legislative, regulatory and bureaucratic infrastructure for a complete [...]
My late evening was going well. The struggling Dallas Cowboys had somehow overcome their annual December swoon and were leading the theretofore unbeaten New Orleans Saints by three touchdowns early in the fourth quarter. The Saints scored two quick touchdowns and the Cowboys’ basket case kicker Nick Folk missed a chip shot field goal but [...]
I agree with Josh Marshall that the parallels between 1994, when the Republicans shocked the world by taking over both Houses of Congress two years into the presidency of a charismatic Democrat, and next year are “significantly overstated.” He’s right, I think, that “The main cause of the Dems 1994 rout was structural.” He argues, [...]
Progressives are increasingly frustrated that, despite having won the presidency by a comfortable margin and having solid majorities in the House and Senate — where they have a “filibuster-proof” 60 votes — they still can’t enact the policies they want. Matt Yglesias says “smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the [...]
Think Progress‘ Ben Armbruster thinks he has Mike Huckabee in an inconsistency over the value of a Republican “big tent.” At a fundraiser in Canada last weekend, Huckabee stated definitively that the “big tent” will “kill the conservative movement“: HUCKABEE: One of the things that concerns me is that in the United States there’s a [...]
Taegan Goddard passes along a new survey from Public Policy Polling: Lindsey Graham has more crossover appeal than almost any other US Senator in the country. He’s also one of the least popular Senators within his own party. Such is the product of being a rare politician with any bipartisan instincts in these highly polarized [...]
There is a growing pocket of Republican skeptics of the war in Afghanistan, Reihan Salam contends, and they could cause serious problems for President Obama. Alas, his argument is short on examples and long on speculation. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican known for his independent streak, has made a conservative case for withdrawal. And [...]
Last fall, a commenter at Dave Schuler’s Glittering Eye blog made an observation to the effect that Barack Obama’s progressive supporters were enthusiastic about him because they believed everything he said whereas the so-called Obamacons assumed he was lying on the matters with which they disagreed. (The original was pithier but, alas, I failed to [...]
Steve Benen is a bit disappointed that I didn’t “follow [Charles] Johnson’s lead and reject what’s become of the contemporary political right” in my post responding to his departure. In particular, he thinks I’m too easy on the conservative fringe groups and understate their hold on the movement. I continue to think this is a [...]
Via Taegan Goddard, I see that the latest Daily Kos/Research 2000 tracking poll show that Republicans are markedly more excited about the 2010 election than Democrats. QUESTION: In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote? [...] Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + [...]
Josh Marshall argues that bad picks by Democratic governors in filling vacant seats make it harder than necessary to retain those seats. I was just looking at this run-down of recent polls by Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling. The upshot is that while it seems extremely unlikely Republicans could regain control of the senate [...]
Nick Schultz points us to this interesting graphic on the private sector experience of presidential cabinets: The chart “”includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.” If this [...]
Steve Green: “If there really was a Party Of No, I would so join.” Indeed. via Glenn Reynolds
Glenn Beck has a plan. Actually, the Plan. Which he reveals on his website. Today, I have stopped looking for a leader to show us the way out because I have come to realize that the only one who can truly save our country…is us. To change America’s course we need to change ourselves, our [...]
A CNN poll released today finds that “opinion about which political party is responsible for the severe economic downturn is shifting.” According to the survey, “38 percent of the public blames Republicans for the country’s current economic problems. That’s down 15 points from May, when 53 percent blamed the GOP. According to the poll 27 [...]
Pollster Glen Bolger (a founding partner at my wife’s firm) looks at the data in the Virginia governor’s race and concludes that Barack Obama hurt Democrat Creigh Deeds. At the end of tracking, we added some questions paid for by the Republican National Committee specifically to measure the Obama effect. [...] The dominant national issue [...]
Jodi Rell, the “Republican” governor of Connecticut, has announced that she will not seek re-election. In a surprising announcement, Mrs. Rell, 63, did not immediately give a specific reason for her decision, saying only, “At some point, you know inside that it is time to begin a new chapter in life.” Her announcement came during [...]
The House passed a trillion dollar bill that will force Americans to buy health insurance, force even small businesses to provide health coverage, and require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. (The last, as I have previously argued, makes it something other than “insurance.”) Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray for WaPo: Hours after President Obama [...]
The loss of a Republican seat in NY-23 under highly unusual circumstances notwithstanding, yesterday was a good day for Republicans. After crushing defeats in successive elections, they won back the Virginia governor’s office in a blowout and knocked off a billionaire incumbent governor in New Jersey despite having their vote split between two candidates. I [...]
The special election to fill New York’s 23rd Congressional District seat vacated by the appointment of Republican John McHugh as Secretary of the Army has taken yet another bizarre twist. Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava dropped out over the weekend, causing great celebration on the part of Republicans like Michelle Malkin, who termed her “radical leftist [...]
A new Pew survey shows a rather steep “Partisan Knowledge Gap,” with Republicans and Independents generally better informed than Democrats. Mary Katharine Ham finds this quite amusing and also notes that, “if the polling had gone the other way, the NYT would shout it from the rooftops.” She provides examples of the mainstream press doing [...]
IOZ (whose identity is apparently a mystery) sums up a recent debate that’s been brewing on several of the blogs I frequent: When Kerry Howley made the irrefutable and yet quixotic point that any proper concern with liberty, whether practical or, ahem, merely philosophical, must grapple with the strictures of cultural mores and social conventions, [...]
While a majority still supports criminalization, more Americans than ever think marijuana should be legal, according the latest Gallup survey. Lydia Saad (a family friend) provides the analysis: Gallup’s October Crime poll finds 44% of Americans in favor of making marijuana legal and 54% opposed. U.S. public support for legalizing marijuana was fixed in the [...]
Olympia Snowe and other wayward Republicans will be subject to strong persuasion but no punishment from the caucus, Senate Republican leaders tell Politico. Mitch McConnell and his deputies in the Senate Republican leadership are responding very cautiously to Olympia Snowe’s decision to become the first GOP vote for a Democratic health care reform bill. That’s [...]
Erick Erickson is angry at liberal Republican Olympia Snowe’s announcement yesterday that she’d sign on to the Baucus version of health care reform in exchange for a seat at the negotiating table. Olympia Snowe has sold out the country. Having been banished to our world after Aslan chased her out of Narnia, Snowe is intent [...]
Paul Krugman continues to demonstrate that brilliance in one field doesn’t necessarily translate into sound insights into others. He’s upset that some Republicans took pleasure in President Obama’s embarrassment in not landing the Olympics for his adopted Chicago and their cynicism in positioning themselves as the defenders of Medicare in order to fight his health [...]
A NYT/CBS poll finds that President Obama’s approval remains strong but support for his handling of key policy issues is dipping. The Republicans are not, however, gaining much ground. At 56 percent, his approval rating is down from earlier in the year but still reasonably strong at this point compared with recent presidents. More Americans [...]
Vice President Joe Biden told a partisan crowd that, if the Republicans win the House back in 2010, it would be “the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do.” Karen Travers for ABC: Biden said Republicans are pinning their political strategy on flipping these seats. “If they take them [...]
A meme is developing among a handful of Progressive blogs, with Media Matters, Hullabaloo, Discourse.net, and Brad Blog all complaining that the Washington Post and NYT gave A1 treatment yesterday to the 9/12 protests while relegating anti-war marches in 2002 and 2005 to the inside pages. Steve Benen follows up and observes, There are competing [...]
Republican Bob McDonnell enjoys a rather sizable lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds in his race for Virginia’s governorship. But the Washington Post, which went after George Allen with amazing fervor in his 2006 race against longshot Jim Webb, is doing what it can to fix that. First, it ran a series of articles about a [...]
Bruce Bartlett explains why he’s not a Republican anymore using a time-honored refrain: He didn’t leave his party; his party left him. While he now considers himself an “independent,” he’s more than non-partisan; he’s “anti-Republican.” Why? I still consider myself to be a Reaganite. But I don’t see any others anywhere in the GOP these [...]
US News blogger Peter Roff speculates that Mitt Romney will run for the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Such an announcement would likely be embraced immediately by the Republicans, who would like almost nothing more than to deny Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada his new, hard-won, 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority. As a self-funding candidate [...]
Taking a page out of Soloman’s playbook, Congressional Democrats have a brand new plan for passing health care reform. The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions [...]
Stephen Green notes Colorado’s colorful political history. I keep having to remind people that Colorado was never, ever a Red State. We’re a purple state. Deep purple. “Deep Purple” as in the band, as in weird. We like our Republicans to be small-government conservatives, and we like our Democrats deeply strange. It’s true. Look at [...]
When Republicans controlled the presidency and had strong majorities in the House and Senate, I often read calls from bloggers on my side of the aisle for purging the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) from the ranks. After all, the likes of Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chaffee were a giant pain in the butt and [...]
Yesterday’s Gallup poll finding that the town hall protests are having the desired effects of gaining sympathy for the protestors and increasing doubts about health care reform efforts is getting a lot of attention. Those results don’t surprise me, however. (They do surprise Mickey Kaus.) What is interesting is this: Frank Newport: There is a [...]
Mike Rappaport “hates” David Brooks and finds him “a despicable character.” Why? He lets John Hinderaker explain: Brooks . . . knows where his bread is buttered. He makes his living as a “conservative” who can reliably be counted on to sell out conservatives and Republicans at every opportunity. In this instance, Hinderaker is reacting [...]
David Frum frets that conservatives might be in for a Pyrrhic victory in the health care fight if they define winning as “beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself.” [W]e’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) [...]
Bill Maher has a piece at HuffPo arguing that Americans are a bunch of idiots who should just shut up and let people who know what they’re talking about make decisions on tough issues like health care reform. [T]ake the health care debate we’re presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can [...]
This map resulting from a Gallup poll on party identification is making the rounds: The lede from Jeffrey Jone’s write-up: An analysis of Gallup Poll Daily tracking data from the first six months of 2009 finds Massachusetts to be the most Democratic state in the nation, along with the District of Columbia. Utah and Wyoming [...]
The latest NPR poll, conducted by Democrat Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Republican Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies (Disclosure: My wife is COO) finds President Obama’s approval barely over the majority mark and serious doubts about his health plan. The pollsters found 53 percent approving of the president’s handling of his job, [...]
Patrick Ruffini has used considerably fewer than 140 characters to make an interesting point: “Obama Health Care = Bush Social Security.” The analogy is a strong one. You will recall that President George W. Bush, fresh off re-election in 2004 pledged to use his “political capital” to pass a major reform of the Social Security [...]
Yet another rehash of the factoid that “states that went Republican in November accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 2006″ causes John Sides to commit social science. Welcome to another episode of “The Ecological Fallacy”! Once again: you cannot infer the behavior of individuals — Democrats and Republicans [...]
As President Obama settles into his fifth month in office, his personal popularity remains high but his job approval is slipping drastically, according to a new NYT/CBS News poll. A substantial majority of Americans say President Obama has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit, according to the latest New York Times/CBS [...]
There’s been much back-and-forth since Wednesday’s tragic shooting of a guard at the Holocaust Musuem about the rise of right wing extremists and the need for the federal government to treat them as a threat. Inevitably, we’re seeing the perennial “their extremists are worse than our extremists” debate. Oddly, we’re even seeing some “No, he’s [...]
Marc Ambinder has compiled a list of “The Six Top Conservatives Obama Listens To.” As several of those who saw the link via Twitter have noted, arguably none of them are conservatives: The Mainers, Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe Dick Lugar John McCain David Brooks Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith A perfectly fine list [...]
Citing Chris Hayes‘ Nation essay on Democratic-leaning activist groups working to scuttle key progressive programs, Kevin Drum laments “the biggest threat to the Democratic agenda these days isn’t the Republican Party. It’s the Democratic Party.” But, of course, the same could be said for the Republican Party. (Or, for that matter, the Libertarian Party.) We’ve [...]
A Gallup poll released yesterday finds that, “More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are [...]