its time for the right to come out of the closet

interesting.

“It’s interesting that people say the right has taken over the Republican Party — but no one can say what we’ve done,” Mr. Reagan said. “We’ve been closeted for the last eight years; it’s time for the right to come out of the closet.”

Does this mean that the right is now going to support gay marriage? If Bush was the right in the closet is Michelle Bachmann what happens when they are free? If so im a little scared. The right isnt losing young people because they arent conservative enough and they wont win them because young people are so afraid of deficit spending. My advice? give up on the antigay stuff and the abortion purity test. You might be surprised how many people that could bring back.

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The Man of Steele

Most of the coverage of Michael Steele has focused on the prospect of increasing diversity in the republican party. what apparently has been lost in the shuffle is that he is not a good political strategist. his take on the stimulus bill is classic for how short sighted it is.

"[T]he goose egg that you laid on the president's desk was just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful."

Steele apparently lives in the same bubble that all house gop members live in where hoover is king. Steele lives in a world where factual evidence is completely and totally ignored. For example,

Steele couldn't praise [House Republicans] enough, and at times, he was at a loss for words. "You and I know that in the history of mankind and womankind, government -- federal, state or local -- has never created one job," he said. "It's destroyed a lot of them."

Putting aside the fact that Steele was at one point the Lt. Gov of Maryland, someone actually employed by the government, to claim government does not create jobs is insane. The basic essence of a job is being paid to do something. The government pays millions of people to do things. When we buy military supplies or pencils we need someone to make those and the government is enabling their employment with those contracts. The entire military is employed by the government. Marine, Sailor, Fighter Pilot, all are government jobs.

I would like to give Steele the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant something that makes sense but really i dont know what it is. the traditional conservative argument is that the private sector is the most efficient and best creator of jobs not that government is incapable. apparently steele's leadership is taking them to the next level.

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Is there a price for obstructionism?

Steve Benen has a post up regarding the failure of the GOP to consider moderating after its heavy rejection at the ballot box this year. The post progresses as you might expect with a quote from a moderate followed by the absolute rejection of that quote my the rest of the GOP. What is interesting though is the update,

Post Script: The Times piece added, "It remains to be seen how aggressively Republicans will try to wield the filibuster threat. They have recently signaled they will fight Obama's economic recovery plan if it moves too quickly. But there are political risks if the GOP is seen as obstructionist at a time when voters are clamoring for economic relief and change."

Maybe, but that risk existed in the last Congress and Republicans didn't care. And if the GOP leadership is convinced that it has to be even more conservative to win in the future, their embrace of obstructionism may be unaffected.

To say the Republicans did not care is an understatement. Here is a chart produced by Nate Silver at 538 to show the progression of the filibuster over time.




As you can see the filibuster and the cloture vote have exploded in the most recent congress. The GOP was also decimated in the most recent election. The problem is that they did not lose this election in any part because of the obstructionist tendencies they displayed. The framing of the filibuster is such that the media reports it as a failure of the Democrats to get enough votes to pass a bill. This has essentially raised the threshold for passing legislation from 51 votes to 60 votes. Yglesias explained the dynamic perfectly last year,

It seems, though, that the GOP has decided that if they use filibusters to obstruct congressional action that the press will keep reporting this in a "congress fails to do X" kind of way rather than a "GOP obstructionism" kind of way, which makes filibusters a win-win for Republicans.

The evidence points to the idea that there is in fact very little to no price being paid by the GOP for obstructing the Democratic senate. The biggest threat that the obstructionist Senators face is that they fail in their reelection bids but the Dem gains were so great in the last election it is hard to imagine that the GOP continues to lose more senate seats next time around based on obstructionism. The most obstructionist senators are coming from the most conservative states so the odds of them getting tossed out is not very high.

The conservatives are going to continue on the obstructionist path until something changes to stop them. The options for that are basically two fold. the first is to simply get rid of the filibuster all together. The argument for this is that the passing of legislation already has enough road blocks to keep the bad legislation out. I am dubious about this especially because of the recent passage of the FISA bill but its not like the filibuster was effective in stopping that. it seems like it is only employed to stop things progressives might actually like.

The second option is to require that the GOP actually filibuster. Currently they just announce that they are filibustering something and Reid treats it as a real filibuster. Instead we might like to see the GOP up there reading the phonebook for 48 hours and reenacting Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. That would change the media reporting to the actual filibuster instead of the failed vote for cloture. As added bonus it would be entertaining as hell.

Of course now that we have a Democratic president the Republicans might be a little more wary about blocking popular legislation. As long as the focus is placed on the failure of the dems and Obama to do anything about our situation the Republicans can continue to block to their hearts desire without any price.

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Gop still has no clue where they are going.

Matt Taibi has a piece in rolling stone on the McCain campaign that is classic Taibi. Biting, sardonic and generally painfully true. It lays open the GOP of 2008 as party without a plan and without a clue.

They lost in every way imaginable, on every political front. The symbol of their anti-gay crusade, Colorado congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, was beheaded. The party that had made so much hay running against Mexicans saw noted anti-immigration crusader Bill Sali of Idaho ousted along with several other members of the Immigration Reform Caucus. The GOP's grasp on the so-called "moral values" issue likewise went up in roaring flames, with Rep. Vito Fossella of Staten Island the poster child — his morals were once so perfect that he refused to be seen with his gay sister, and now he's a national joke, bounced after being caught drunk driving and having unprotected, babymaking sex with a married Air Force officer.

The ironic thing is that the destruction of the Republican Party was a two-part process. Their president, George W. Bush, did most of the work by making virtually every mistake possible in his two terms, reducing the mightiest economy on Earth to the status of a beggar-debtor nation like Pakistan or Zambia. This was fucking up on a scale known only to a select few groups in history, your Romanovs, your Habsburgs, maybe the Han Dynasty, which pissed away a golden age of Chinese history by letting eunuchs take over the state. But John McCain and Sarah Palin made their own unique contribution to the disaster by running perhaps the most incompetent presidential campaign in modern times. They compounded a millionfold Bush's legacy of incompetence by soiling both possible Republican ideological strategies going forward: They killed off Bush-style neoconservatism as well as the more traditional fiscal conservatism McCain himself was once known for by trying to fuse both approaches into one gorgeously incoherent ticket. It was like trying to follow the recipes for Texas 10-alarm chili and a three-layer Black Forest chocolate cake in the same pan at the same time. The result — well, just take a bite!

I witness the whole pathetic mess summed up a week before the election, on a baseball field in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The campaign has scheduled an outdoor rally, with a joint appearance by McCain and Palin, at this crucial moment in the race. But now there is driving snow and sleet, trees downed on roads all around, and the campaign — with no alternate indoor plan — is forced to cancel the event at the last minute. I watch as locals keep pulling up to the field, looking for the candidate, a lonely, rain-soaked "Country First" banner whipping back and forth above the stage. The whole scene captures the essence of the McCain run perfectly: Instead of a plan, they had an endless succession of dumb ideas scrapped at the 11th hour in favor of even dumber ones.

It was like that all election season. McCain kicked off his campaign with a stump speech that emphasized his inspirational personal story and experience. Then he picked someone even less experienced than Obama as his running mate and switched to a strategy of attacking his opponent's relationships with people like Bill Ayers. When that petered out, he switched to a new line of attack, trotting out the socialism business and claiming Obama was running for the office of "redistributionist-in-chief." The McCain camp tried running against the press, they tried running against Washington, they tried running against the Bush administration, they even tried running against the "liberal feminist agenda" — the latter just a few weeks after Sarah Palin called herself a feminist.

That was then and this is now. Certainly the GOP must have learned from the disaster that was for them the 2008 election. Umm well no. When democrats went out of power many of them said it was because they acted too much like republicans. they sacrificed core beliefs for some ill defined belief that america is a center right country that hates everything the dems stood for. These people were right that acting too much like republicans was a bad idea because the american people already agreed with the dems position on issue after issue. the dems were literally taking the less popular stances out of fear.

Republicans have a different problem in that the vast majority of americans dont agree with them or their core beliefs. still that has not stopped people from advocating the purge like Katon Dawson, the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party,

Renew our commitment to our Party’s timeless principles...by reconfirming our commitment to be the party of smaller government, lower taxes, individual freedom, strong national security, respect for the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, the importance of family and the exceptionalism of America.

How many more elections must one party lose before it makes a real change? we might have a chance to find out.

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No Honeymoon for Obama

The election of Barack Obama to the office of the presidency with the margin that occurred has sparked talk of a mandate. This has in turn sparked conversation about priorities and what obama is going to do first and how he is going to use the mandate before it runs out. The time frame given for Obama to get something done has merged with talk over Obama's first hundred days in office based on a "honeymoon period" where congress would be afraid to oppose such a popular president. This talk is wildly off base.

The American Prospect has an article up right now that discusses patience. Patience in acting and governing. It dovetails well with the point i am trying to make which is that Obama will not have a honeymoon period so he should not count on one but use his typical long term strategy to make the best out of his entire term.

Obama will need a full reservoir of that same patience in the White House, because he'll face similar frantic pressure and second-guessing. He will be surrounded by a crippling crowd of people and groups convinced that if their own No. 1 cause isn't enacted in the first 100 days, it will never happen. The conventional wisdom about the presidency is very much the same as the advice Obama was given in the primaries: Move quickly. Overwhelm the forces of the establishment. Use the momentum of the election to achieve the biggest things possible. You'll never be more powerful than on Jan. 21.
...
For all the romance of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first 100 days, history suggests that presidents do not get a mandate as a mechanical function of their electoral margin, but in fact they build it over time. They earn it not by winning but by governing. They assemble coalitions and use them again and again, and build institutions and make them work. While many good policies and necessary emergency measures were passed in the first 100 days of the New Deal, the innovations that lasted -- those that defined politics until Reagan -- came later, after FDR had consolidated power, forced the Supreme Court to accept a new set of assumptions about government's role in the economy, and won the 1934 mid-term election. Similarly, Reagan did not win a decisive mandate for conservative policies in 1980; rather, like Obama, he was the beneficiary of a coalition made up of equal parts support for his conservatism and revulsion at the previous administration's incompetence. It was not until August 1981, when he assembled bipartisan coalitions to pass his budget- and tax-cutting plans, that Reagan can be said to have had a mandate for conservative policies.

This is not to say that there aren't things that need to be done immediately, such as economic stimulus, closing Guantánamo, and a plan to get out of Iraq. But the changes that will bring about a new political era call for a more patient and steady approach.

Like Roosevelt and Reagan, Obama has the opportunity to become what the political scientist Stephen Skowronek calls a "reconstructive leader," a type that he notes often follows a failed presidency. "John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan -- these repeated historical pairings ... suggest nothing so much as an intimate connection between manifest incapacity and towering success in presidential leadership," Skowronek wrote the year George W. Bush was elected. Reconstructive leaders "are party builders; they use their authority to consolidate a coalition that will support the new agenda and dominate electoral politics."

Obama is acutely aware of the need for careful planning to achieve success. He is constructing a team of people designed around legislating and governing. He is also an organizer at heart and good organizers understand the value of patience and laying a good foundation before acting. Current indicators point to Obama trying to do what the TAP article suggests, a party and national restructuring presidency.

I mention that Obama should not focus too much on the first 100 days because he is not likely to find that time period more friendly than any other. The GOP minority is committed to fighting him on pretty much everything. People like John Kyl are ready to try and filibuster any judicial nominee and are committed to fighting a bail out of the auto industry.

Senators Richard Shelby of Alabama and Jon Kyl of Arizona said it would be a mistake to use any of the Wall Street rescue money to prop up the automakers. They said an auto bailout would only postpone the industry’s demise.

“Companies fail every day and others take their place. I think this is a road we should not go down,” said Mr. Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

“They’re not building the right products,” he said. “They’ve got good workers, but I don’t believe they’ve got good management. They don’t innovate. They’re a dinosaur in a sense.”

Mr. Kyl, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, added, “Just giving them $25 billion doesn’t change anything. It just puts off for six months or so the day of reckoning.”

There is no talk there of letting a president Obama go forward unopposed because he was just elected and we know the gop does not believe that obama has received a mandate,

When Franklin D. Roosevelt won his second term for president in 1936, the defeated Republican candidate, Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas, won only two states, Maine and Vermont, and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress by wide margins.

But Obama's win was nothing like that. He may have opened the door to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities.

The Democrats fell several votes short of the 60-vote filibuster-proof Senate that they were seeking and also failed to get rid of a key Senate target: Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Republicans, though discouraged by the election's outcome, believe Obama will be hard-pressed not so much to enact his agenda but to keep his popular majority, which he considers centrist, as he moves to enact ultra-liberal legislation, particularly the demands of organized labor.

Obama is going to have to fight the GOP every step of the way. He will take his time and map out a strategy that he best believes will deliver success over his entire term. he gets 4 years in office so why would he waste all but the first 100 days? he wont.

Obama is committed to long term thinking. Everyone has probably heard his quote about how we cant solve global warming with him changing his light bulbs. He views the solutions to our problems as solvable only through collective action sustained over time. Instant fixes are not sufficient to deal with out problems. The notion that Obama, a cautious and pragmatic person is going to commit to the first 100 days or bust idea is wrong. He has no honeymoon period so dont look to see him acting as if he does.

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Into the Wilderness

The Republican Party and conservatism in general really is fascinating right now. Taking glee in their circular firing squad and subsequent cannibalism is going to bring a smile to the faces of many liberals. The election is not over yet but the all signs point to an obama victory and when that happens, on the scale it looks like it might happen, conservatives and the republicans are going to be as farther out in the wilderness than either party has been in the modern political era. The reasons are easy to spot.

When David Brooks wrote his now famous column excoriating the GOP for chasing away the people who demanded and respected ideas he illustrated the greatest problem with modern conservatism. Modern Conservatism as it has evolved has entered the last stages of its society, its civilization.

Picture them as a civilization where at one point there were a number of people inventing things. These people were advancing conservatism for the rest of the conservative society. A conservative enlightenment. They invented the backbone of the society in the southern strategy, tax cutting, abortion, gay rights, "patriotism", regulation bad. What have become the traditional republican wedge issues were once shiny and new. They were invented by people like Nixon and Buckley who were very smart regardless of what you think of their morals.

These ideas became the cars, the tv's, the computers of conservative, the houses. They were things that everyday conservatives used as a basis of their lives. Now however all of the inventors are gone. Instead we have people like Rove who do not actually invent anything but are good at using what has already been invented. They can use what they have but cant build anything new. So they stay in the same buildings, use the same tvs, use the same cars even as those start to get very old and to break down. Now though nobody is around to fix them. its the idea that everyone can drive a car but if it all went to hell not many people could build one from scratch.

The failure of the modern conservative to understand how to build new things, new ideas is exemplified in the McCain campaign. McCain is unable to weave the various pieces of conservatism that he has into a coherent economic vision. his failure in the banking and financial crisis is going to cost him the election. He had a certain set of tools left to him by the proto conservatives but they were not enough to deal with the situation at hand and so mccain has sunk.

So the conservatives civilization has collapsed like europe into the medieval period. they will be headed into the wilderness with the task of building a new society with new ideas. they need the big thinkers the inventors again if the want to get back into power. i doubt they realize this any time soon. every indication is that instead of abandoning some of the obsolete cars etc they are clinging to them even tighter.

I suspect though that there is a small number of national or state level republicans who understand the fundamental need to do something new. they look a lot like mike huckabee. Huckabee is at least someone who is putting out new ideas to frame the future of the republican party. Economically populist while socially conservative. we have to keep an eye on them while they trek off into the wilderness to restart their civilization.

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Palin's Political Future

I am going to go out on a long and thin limb and say that John McCain is not going to win the presidency and that sarah palin will not become his vice president. So where would that leave her especially in light of the recent troopergate report? Conservatives, well some of them anyway, seem to think she has the chops to make a run in 2012. These people see her as the ultimate GOP candidate who cannot fail in her quest for the presidency do to her small town, ultimate americaness...or something. Others like kos see a future where Gov. Palin is having a tough reelection campaign for the Governorship of Alaska before she ever gets a shot at the top job. I have to go with the later.

The arguments for a palin 2012 run are generally based on the palin effect at the height of the convention bounce. If you have heard Pat Buchannon speak about Palin you can understand this line of thought. Palin did connect with everyone and everyone loves her. She turned it around for mccain but the economy went south and that turned the poll numbers. Without that unforeseeable economic news Palin would be celebrated as Hugh Hewitt intended

"The idea was to tell the story behind the effect that Sarah Palin has had on this election and how it is and why it is that she has basically turned the election around for McCain and why it is that she is resonating with so many people in the country," he said. "The intent was to finish the book by a week after the election, and to have it out before the inauguration."

Was that the plan regardless of who won?

"The book obviously presumed [a McCain-Palin victory]," Mr. Yates said, "but the theory was that her impact on this election will have a lasting effect regardless -- that she's not gonna go anywhere, that she's just gonna be a figure in G.O.P. politics going forward."

the topic of a palin in 2012 was addressed by Chris Cillizza in the Wapo shortly after her debate performance and he provides an excellent rundown of the conventional wisdom on this topic.

Palin's performance last night -- particularly her willingness to stand by conservative principles on things such as gay marriage and do it with a smile (and even a wink) -- further endeared her to not only conservative opinion makers but the rank and file GOPers who will play an outsized role in picking the next nominee of the party in 2012 if McCain comes up short in 32 days time.

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What Palin did last night is bring her own national prospects back from the brink of disaster with a performance that -- while occasionally exposing her decided lack of knowledge on certain issues -- managed to keep her star ascendant for a party that may well be looking for a new face to lead it on Nov. 5.

Palin is clearly likable, charismatic and telegenic. In an insta-poll conducted by CNN, more than eight in ten people who watched the debate said she did better than they had expected while just seven percent said she had done worse. Asked which candidate was more likable, 54 percent chose Palin while 36 percent opted for Biden.

The CNN poll also showed the obvious weaknesses that Palin must address between now and 2012 -- or whenever the next time the Republican presidential nomination is open. Less than half (46 percent) of the sample said they thought Palin was qualified to be president while 53 percent said she want not. (Interestingly, those numbers were largely unchanged from a pre-debate poll in which 42 percent said she was qualified to be president and 54 percent said she was not.)

And so, judging from the polls, Palin's image to the average American is as a likable Republican who probably needs a bit more seasoning. Sub out "Republican" for "Democrat" in that last sentence and you have the general sentiment about former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards following his 2004 run for president and subsequent vice presidential bid alongside Sen. John Kerry (Mass.).

Clearly this is an incredibly shallow treatment of the situation. Cillizza cites the 80%+ number who felt she did better than expected but that should not have been hard given all she had to do was avoid becoming a drooling post-lobotomy patient wandering around the stage. I mean her expectations were so low 3rd graders would exceed them. Palin basically received an A for effort and a thanks for participating trophy.

The poll numbers indicate that people felt she was not that bad but still unqualified. The crux of the cillizza argument is that after losing palin can go off and learn a couple of national issues to come back next time and try again. She can come back and be a super serious candidate with lots of gravitas overcoming the "perception" that she is unqualified and unable to lead. However, we need to take a closer look at this argument that she is still connecting with the public and that everyone likes her.

If we take a look at the dkos daily tracker her current favorable unfavorable levels are at -20. Looking at the internals of the poll only 36% have a favorable opinion of her while 56% do not. That would take some serious rehab before she is legitimate contender on a national stage. Her numbers are held up by the die hard gop support for her otherwise she would be at bush levels. John Edwards was never that unpopular. Regardless of what people may have thought at an earlier point in time palin is not well liked. In fact i would go so far as to assert that a good portion of the country reviles her.

The advocates for the 2012 palin run are also ignoring the fact that palin has become a national joke in many ways. Everyone in the country can tell she has little to no clue what is going on. They know she refuses to do press conferences and that the only interview she can do is with sean hannity or the afore mentioned hugh hewitt. This of course plays right into the victimhood ideology she likes to use but that only work with her base and not the rest of the country. she will have a diehard base of support but not be able to reach beyond that.

Palin will not be able to escape the legacy of the mccain campaign. her role has been as the attack dog. she is the person most identified with the spreading of the ayers attack and with inciting the rapid gopers to a potentially dangerous level. Her image is that of a sarcastic, small minded person. There are more than enough quotes from this election cycle to prove it.

Palin will also be unable to shake the troopergate report. a side effect of waging a war against the media is that when you want to have a particular thing spun in your direction they become less inclined to do so. McCain gets away with this because he spent years cultivating the press and convincing them he was a great guy who deserved respect. Palin simply went straight to the hate. She has no reserve of good will among the media personalities. So instead of the troopergate report being labeled as partisan it gets the bipartisan label it deserves. It is known as the "partisan troopergate report". Their spin is undercut from the get go. it is now public record that palin "violated the public trust" and abused her power.

The palin 2012 idea also relies on palin doing something she has heretofore been unwilling to do, be professional. Palin has yet to demonstrate an ability to inspire confidence in her capacity to learn what is required of her. By this i mean that everything we know about her has shown she is more interested in the perks and attention than in the actual job of governing. She just does not appear dedicated enough. In a post Bush world i think it will be much tougher to get by without a demonstrable depth of policy on something. Cillizza seems to think palin can go away and learn this but i dont see any evidence of her willingness or ability to do so. Remember that she has to overcome the already established perception she is a ditz.

Most of these arguments are why a potential 2012 run would be a failure. However that does not eliminate the possibility of an attempt. The conservative movement still loves her and that more than anything else makes her a future player. We saw how effective huckabee could be with just the religious base. He effectively drew mccain right on many issues and created the meta narrative that mccain has base problems that eventually forced him into the palin pick. Conservatism can never fail you can only fail conservatism. So look for a doubling down on exactly what is driving people away from the party, sarah palin.

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Connections for McCain

one of the things i think make a big difference in how a person lives their lives is their ability to make connections. Not just personal connections, those are essential, but also cause and effect and relationship connections. I find that many of the most incisive and though provoking articles and comments are those that facilitate the connection of two ideas that people would otherwise view as unrelated. Most often for me this seems to present itself in glaring inconsistencies. when i see something that appears inconsistent, like sarah palins call for massive governmental oversight preceded by a demand for government to get out of the way, i cant help but point out that those wont go together.

Spotting the interdependency of ideas and actions and then synthesizing that into something for others to read is not an easy task. Often you can end up with the, "well duh", posts. Generally though the post that connect two things people overlooked provoke the most thought and debate. My favorite example right now is the efforts of john mccain to roll back the observable vitriol that marks his campaign rallies. McCain is getting credit from pundits and people in the blogosphere for this effort. Some have latched onto it as proof that mccain really is an honorable and decent man troubled by the tactics he is "forced" to pursue.

I of course see this entirely differently based on several things. The first is that McCain instigated all of this with his 100% negative campaign. He chose to use Ayers etc instead of campaigning on ideas. As David Brooks pointed out the Republican party is no longer the party of ideas or intellectual thought. It cannot be surprising that the candidate of a party without ideas runs on a platform without ideas. McCain is wholly complicit in the campaign strategy he has chosen. The crowning glory of this was actually the convention with the GOP speeches that went after Obama on all of the same topics as we see splashed across the headlines.

Second with how mccain is polling the people that still go to mccain rallies are those diehard of diehards. There has been talk of Obama butting against the ceiling of his support. This means that McCain would be scrapping the bottom of his. This bottom was always going to be the craziest of the right. The people who will look for any excuse to vote against obama, against any dem candidate. so we really see the base, the core of the gop without the veneer of moderate conservatives usually in front of the cameras.

What does it mean that the conservative movement has run out of ideas? it means the movement is dead. that entire branch of conservatism is dead. it has been tested in governance and has failed and yet mccain, instead of running on the glittering maverick brand, ran with the movement. It does not say much for mccain that he was unwilling to take charge and lead in a new direction when it became obvious the old direction was a dead end. Sadly he apparently fell victim to the mantra, conservatism cannot fail, you can only fail conservatism.

this failure and the failure of the mccain campaign will obviously lead to one of two possibilities, the gop continues to double down on the social emotional direction or reforms to something along the lines of mike huckabee. a populism mixed with social conservatism.

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Not Chicken Littles on the right.

Here is the opening of the chicken little story..

Narrator: Chicken Little was in the woods one day when an acorn fell on her head. It scared her so much she trembled all over. She shook so hard, half her feathers fell out.

Chicken Little: "Help! Help! The sky is falling! I have to go tell the king!"

Narrator: So she ran in great fright to tell the king....

When people in the blogosphere use the chicken little characterization they do so when people run around yelling that the sky is falling. The key though is that it is not really falling on them. It is a gross overeaction that leads to the end of the story...

Narrator: So they ran with all their might, until they met Foxy Loxy.

Foxy Loxy: "Well, well. Where are you rushing on such a fine day?"

Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey (together) "Help! Help!" It's not a fine day at all. The sky is falling, and we're running to tell the king!"

Foxy Loxy: "How do you know the sky is falling?"

Chicken Little: "I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head!"

Foxy Loxy: "I see. Well then, follow me, and I'll show you the way to the king."

Narrator: So Foxy Loxy led Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, and Turkey Lurkey across a field and through the woods. He led them straight to his den, and they never saw the king to tell him that the sky is falling.

By overreacting and screaming doom chicken little runs into her own demise. She panicked and it cost her dearly. I thought this little reminder was in order because the left is starting to label the right chicken littles.

Update II: Jonathan Martin, meanwhile, is doing an excellent job of reporting the denouement of McCain in Michigan and Virginia. Such is the epidemic of Chicken Little-ism. Many Republicans, never inoculated, are succumbing. (And none of their bloggers have figured out the coveted recipe in the cure!)

"How on earth are we to get people to work for McCain here, when he has already, publicly, in the media, given up on Michigan?" says one GOP leader up there.

“He didn't take threat seriously soon enough,” said a GOP leader in Virginia.

Tomorrow is the last day for new voter registration in both states. It will be interesting to see how the final results might bring more panic.

The problem here should be obvious. THE SKY IS FALLING. The right are not chicken littles because chicken little was not operating in reality but the bloggers and people on the right are coming to reality. There pronouncements of doom are in line with reality based observations of the race. They are more like Jorel from superman who was right that the planet was going to blow up. Their world is coming apart.

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Give Away is the New AUMF

Andrew Sullivan promoted this from Pethokoukis, on his blog,

Newt Gingrich said voting for the bailout will break against candidates in 2010 and beyond when voters see how destructive it is to the economy. And that's the thing. While the bailout, if Paulson and Bernanke are to be believed, may prevent a financial meltdown, it will not by itself return America to prosperity. The labor market is clearly weakening, and is the last thing to turn around once an economy does regain momentum. So there's a good chance that a perturbed public, currently down on the bailout, will view it as an expensive flop by the time the midterm elections roll around. They will hold its supporters accountable.

The basic thinking here is that the give away becomes the AUMF vote. That 2010 will look very similar to 2006 when the country was so tired of the incredible violence in iraq that it revolted and severely punished the party in power. This is getting at something important that has been brewing in the liberal blogosphere since the inception of the Paulson Plan, Digby's THE TRAP. While Digby is applying this more towards the current election and the possibility of McCain running against the bail out to beat Obama the long term implications are there.

We will see the rebirth of the phony fiscal conservative image before our very eyes as our brave POW hero, John McCain, takes on the great malefactors of wealth while the soft, liberal elites behave like toadies to the rich. It's a neat trick for a man who owns seven houses and thirteen cars, but in America, you can be a multimillionaire and still be a man of the people as long as you drink a beer the right way.

Kilgore concludes that the Democrats must demand Republican votes in congress including John McCain's. But I don't see the mechanism for doing that. After the campaign he's run, I don't think we can rely on his "honor." So, the Dems can ask, but the Republicans will find a reason to do what they think will benefit them politically. And that is to sufficiently separate themselves from Bush and the congress that they can realistically be perceived as the real change agents.

The GOP and its ideology has failed in governance. Conservatives like to think Bush is not a real conservative but really he is just a natural extension of Reagan without the speaking skills. Given this problem what they need is a reset. They need a catalyst that can return them to their roots, a puritinization. The possibility exists that this bail out proposal could be that event.

The first thing to note is that it fits with preconceived notions about the worst of democratic party excess on spending. A traditional complaint that conservatives have against dems is that they spend too much money on the people who dont deserve it. If any one ever deserved to be bailed out less than the ibankers who knowingly too huge risks with instruments they could not even understand they probably committed a war crime. It looks like the dems are just throwing money at a problem, wasting it.

That no one actually seems to think this will work is also a problem. How can the dems line up behind something people said would not work? At least with iraq people were being told it would go great. Here it is all based on a "slap" mentality. Slap the markets and they calm down and somehow start to properly value their paper. People are not going to get behind that idea.

Opposing a big give away would be inline with traditional gop rhetoric. Ideologically the GOP should be against doing anything. Their position is that the free market is the best instrument to make economic decisions. The government should have a minimal role in the economy. 700 Billion is not a minimal role. Because it is so inline with traditional gop rhetoric it will not be a hard sell to the american people that the gop philosophy was the correct one. If the bail out flops it would be used as evidence that the republican ideology in its true form is right and that bush did indeed pervert it somehow. It would be seen as the republicans coming home to principle after the Bush years, they have seen the light etc. It worked for McCain with the Keating 5 right?

Another major point is that this is not the first time Dems are led into a disastrous policy by their own political cravenness. Iraq already happened. It is a classic case of fool me once shame on you foll me twice shame on me. Fool me three times and im an idiot. The country has an extremely low opinion of Bush. The country trusts him about as far as the distance between the nucleus of an atom and its valence shell. Still, the dems are willing to proceed in linking to him and following his dictates without revealing exactly what information they are acting on. The country will not tolerate that. In legal terms this is a minimum of negligent legislation. A reasonable person would know better.

When i say that the dems are linking themselves with Bush i should probably assert that they are also making this bill their own as much as they ca without scrapping it and starting over. They want to tack on all the provisions they can but the core is still the bush plan that pulled 700 billion out of nowhere. If you want to make it easy to run against you put your brand all over this bill.

The other consequence of this bill that is coming to light is that it should prevent any democratic agenda spending agenda should Obama win. That is the new media narrative that has begun to permeate the discourse. Much like '92 the dems are supposed to be the responsible ones and to hold off on the things like health care or education or SCHIP because the country just cant afford it. It is a perfect story for the GOP to run on should the dems actually try to do anything. Everything will be too expensive after the Dems irresponsibly spent all the money on the bail out.

The issues with this bail out are many and the up side is miniamal. given these conditions does it really even make sense to do this? I know the dems are trying to get some minimal cover from the GOP but really everyone will label them the driving force behind this in 2010.

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Buying Off the Youth

It is a little old at this point but i just saw it and thought it deserved some higher profile. If i could possible do that then it is worth writing about. There are two distinct attitudes when it comes to elections. The first is the Democratic one, where everyone is encouraged to vote and exercise their civic rights. The second is the GOP model where only rich white land owners should vote. To further their goal of lowering the participation of the non-landed class the GOP thinks they might have found a way to keep the pesky kids -off their lawn- at home.

Republicans can keep young voters who support Democratic nominee Barack Obama at home by giving their young relatives and friends gift cards to iTunes and Starbucks that are good only on Nov. 4, election day.

“That’s the only way to keep them away from the polls,” said Kellyanne Conway, president of The Polling Company, during a breakfast with the delegates at their hotel near the University of Minnesota.

Can you imagine what people would say if we said that we could keep say, African Americans, from voting if we offered them some fried chicken? Hmm thats not tolerance we can believe in.

It is possibly the stupidest idea ever. Neither of the items would prevent young people from going to the polls. The polls are open all day. Gift cards by their nature are good for more than one day. This is about the stupidest most demeaning thing i have read in a while.

So please by all means send those itunes cards my way. It will be so nice to have when i vote against McCain.

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The Future of the Republican Party pt 1.

I am a democrat but i am also a political junky. I find it intriguing to think about a way to guide the GOP to victory that is not based on the politics of division. I tend to think it would be fairly easy given how cowardly the Dems run typical campaigns. The key is that lying is not punished. This allows you to try and co-opt any Democratic positions you might want and try to explain why they are actually GOP positions. Also, when i engage in this idle speculation i try to imagine ways to realign the electorate. Is there a way to grab a significant chunk of the population away from the other side without losing your voters, or at least not so many as would not be covered by additions?

It is with this in mind that i turn to the piece in the NYT entitled, The vanishing Republican Voter by David Frum. Frum does work for the conservative think tank, American Enterprise Institute but that does not mean he could not have some interesting insights into the GOP mindset and the possible future of the Republican Party. There are two basic premises to his thinking.

1. As a general rule, the more unequal a place is, the more Democratic; the more equal, the more Republican.
2.There is a widening equality gap.

These two things lead to the conclusion that the GOP is in some serious trouble in the future. He lays out the case that the GOP needs to be much more concerned about inequity, not from a moral perspective, but from a political one. They just wont have voters unless they make a fundamental change in how they approach elections. His suggestion seems to be that they do something about the inequity, just enough so that people feel they can vote with their social values and not the pocketbook.

Resentment of “elites” is a major theme of conservative talk radio. “Who’s looking out for you?” demands Bill O’Reilly, as he excoriates “media elites” who vacation in the Hamptons, Aspen and the Virginia horse country.

But O’Reilly’s question has recoiled upon its onetime beneficiaries. Who is looking out for the Fox-viewing public? For most of the Bush administration, G.D.P. grew strongly, the stock market boomed, new jobs were created. But the ordinary person experienced little benefit. The median household income, which rose in the ’90s, had only just caught up to its 2000 level when the expansion ended in 2007.

there is a major issue that goes unaddressed here. The big money interests support the GOP precisely because they give them the best policies. The gearing of their focus towards the rich and the corporate is what gives them a media advantage. To suddenly start throwing that, and the money that comes with it, away seems far fetched. To his credit Frum finds a way around actually paying employees more. In true Republican fashion he goes supply side. If we dont pay more we will lower supply costs.

What the middle class needs most is not lower income taxes but a slowdown in the soaring inflation of health-care costs.

It is very true that helping get everyone health care. Frums proposal of eliminating employer based health care and shifting totally to a market approach similar to car insurance is not something i really favor. Over all it is an interesting approach to the problem.

Personally i just do not think that this is enough. Frum makes assumptions about inequity that i dont know hold true. He basically says that no one would vote democratic if people were more equal. I think the better point is that the dems would lose a lot of voters if people were making more money related to expenses. Frum is saying that if prices had not gone up no one would have cared about the fact that the rich make a whole lot more. The problem is that prices always go up. they dont stay the same so predicating your argument on that is specious. That is frums idea about how to keep the party alive. My own will be part II.

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McCain Taps Palin for VP

So the political world was shocked today by the announcement that Sarah Palin, the first term governor of Alaska, was John McCain's pick for VP. The net has been in a serious upheaval trying to determine exactly what McCain was thinking with this pick. Why her what does she bring to the table that no one else did? In my own opinion it is a completely cynical pick.

Kevin drum laid out what he believes to be the McCain camp thinking.

Their thinking is that she's a hard-right conservative who appeals to the base (David Brody was just on CNN telling us that Christian conservative leaders were high-fiving each other over the Palin pick), but not a famous hard-right conservative who's going to scare off independents. Soccer moms will like her. She's inexperienced, but no one can hold that against her this year — and anyway, her lack of a track record also means she doesn't bring a lot of baggage to the campaign. She's got great anti-corruption cred. She's young and vibrant and has an attractive family. Joe Biden will have a hard time going on the attack against a woman. She's unknown, but frankly, to most low-information voters (i.e., to most voters), all VP picks are unknown.

I think that is pretty solid over all. What i would say though is that there is a lot more to this pick. The first thing to note, this is not McCain's pick. This is a pick done by his staff and advisers. This was a pick designed to mollify the right. I think the McCain campaign has made a fundamental decision about the candidacy. They are not winning. I would be very interested to see the internals of the campaign polling. They must be losing the independents badly.

I say this because the Palin pick is an effort to reinvigorate the far right who have been rather unenthusiastic up to this point. The far right, the true believers, are the ones who hit the pavement to run GOTV drives and voter registration. They are the foot soldiers of the party. McCain is looking at voter registration defficits in many key states. He is way behind in campaign infrastructure. He needs these people to turn out the base. With Obama consolidating Dem support and winning a big chunk of the remaining indys McCain needs every drop of his base.

We know for a fact that McCain has met Gov Palin only three times. He does not know her. He has a group of people he goes back decades with like Joe Lieberman. He has high profile tested national politicians like Romney. Instead he chooses someone virtually unknown not only to the country but to him. That tells you who made the pick.

Palin is already being defined in the media as someone not ready for prime time. She is a former beauty pageant runner up, a first term governor. She has several quotes that portray her as less than sharp. She is being painted as a lightweight someone picked for interest groups and not to be president if McCain is incapacitated. It is that possibility that draws a great deal of fire. It reinforces the idea that McCain is not running a campaign serious about fixing American problems.

The only way this works for McCain is if she comes out and just blows people away. If she is like Obama at his 04 convention speech the pick has a chance at being genius but other than that i think it hurts mccain in the long run.

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Tire Pressure Debate was Very Important

The debate about the effectiveness of Barack Obama’s proposal that we all perform routine auto maintenance was considered by many on the left to be somewhat of a farce. Everything pointed to Obama being correct that that action, performed by enough people, would be more effective than off shore drilling. In contrast, the GOP thought that they saw a potential opportunity here. In fact, they were so excited that many on the left were left perplexed as to why. They were wrong, all the evidence said so. To understand why the GOP thought they had a winner requires that one change your entire world view and think like a Republican. Step one, assume the American people are either stupid or lazy or both.

Stupid and lazy do not necessarily have to go together, but they often seem to. Republicans have made a living since Nixon feeding the American people the easy solution and Americans have been too lazy to question that solution. What the easy solution usually is, is a new technology or decisive action. A one shot breakthrough that solves the problem or greatly reduces it. What makes it easy is not that it is easy to think these up (its actually really hard to find a successful one) but that it requires little or no work on the part of the public at large. The American public has no responsibility to do anything to treat the problem others will do it for them.

The idea that the solutions to our problems comes in single leaps and bounds made by people other than us has taken a deep root. The root is so deep that people feel like they have no ability to influence big problems because the answer is too complex, too big, too hard. Republicans exploit this feeling whenever possible. The situation is so great, they claim, that they need more power, more tools, more leeway to deal with those problems. Their proposed solution using these tools is always a straight cause and effect chain. Easy to understand and horribly oversimplified their solutions are always clean and neat tied up with a bow. Combine the desire to exploit laziness with the need for easily understood yet sexy, flashy, decisive, action and you have the foundation for the GOP. That combination is why the love supply-side solutions.

Think about the way the GOP deals with issues like the War on Drugs. They spray the fields of Afghanistan to kill poppies and the rain forests of Columbia and South America to kill Cocaine farms. To solve the problem with drugs we just need to eliminate the drugs wherever we find them. Seems simple, no drugs=no drug users? Not surprisingly their solution is a failure, colossal waste of money and is helping to feed the Taliban in Afghanistan. Think about the proposed solutions to the problem of high gas prices. First was the gas Tax Holiday. This was a solution that was aimed at reducing the cost of supplying the gas by removing a tax on it. Endorsed by no one it has gone nowhere. Next was the proposed increase in off shore drilling. This proposal seemed perfect in every way for the GOP.

The first good thing about off shore drilling from a GOP viewpoint is that it is supported by a vast majority of Americans who don’t seem to really understand it. A combined 83% of Americans believe “federal laws that prohibit increased drilling for oil offshore or in wilderness areas” are contributing to high gas prices. A combined 69% support “increased offshore drilling”. The second thing that the GOP loves is that it is a simple supply side solution. Need more oil? Let us just go drill for some more. This is not something the average person can do. It is a solution out of their hands and it requires that they let the GOP do what is wants to get it done. It seems like a big action in keeping with what people expect solutions to be. Third, it lets their friends and contributors make money. Always a hallmark of GOP policy, the potential use of the public resources to increase the wealth of a few private citizens is present. The expansion of power, cheap political points, making money, it is the perfect solution from a GOP point of view.

The fact that off shore drilling is so perfect, from the GOP point of view, means that attempts to discredit it as a viable solution become about more than just the one policy. That attack is a threat to the entire GOP way of life. Showing that the simple act of properly inflating your tires does more to solve the problem than the big sexy solution makes the GOP uncomfortable. The best hope for the GOP is to destroy the idea before it can take hold. Treating it as a stupid and inadequate solution is how they chose to go about doing that. Creating the meme that Obama proposed inadequate solutions to big problems is a benefit if it works. It reinforces the lightweight attack and could become something on par with Al Gore the exaggerator. Obama not big enough for the challenge.

It is also important to note that energy policy was not the main policy argument of the Democratic Primary. this means that the Dems did not saturate the country with their energy plans and claim that as a primary issue for the election. Towards the end of the primary there was a brief fight over the Gas Tax Holiday but to many it was clear that Clinton had lost and the campaign had already moved beyond real policy debate between the two camps. The Dems spent 15 minutes debating whether the health care plans should contain a mandate or not during a debate in the primary and we have not heard a peep about it since. The relative silence on energy issues has left the Republicans a small opportunity to claim a domestic issue. It appears it is an opportunity they could not seize.

Notice I never mentioned that the GOP thought off shore drilling was a real solution, only the best political one. Steve Benen summarizes nicely why this is

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about all of this, and he said I was overly concerned with facts and truths. Republicans win elections because they don’t care — in a case like this, the only thing anyone will remember is the stunt/prop, not the fact that they were blatantly lying and blatantly wrong.

That may very well be. Indeed, it probably points to a vicious cycle — Republicans make up a lie. We point out how insane the lie is, and feel better about being smarter than Republicans. Voters, not knowing better, believe the lie. Satisfied with the reward, Republicans feel encouraged to make up a new lie, which again leads us to point out how insane the lie is….

Obama’s proposal is also indicative of the liberal world view in general. Complex solutions designed to solve complex problems. Liberal solutions are not made up of one component but many that, taken as a whole, do a credible job of solving issues. Think about the way democrats have been criticized for campaigning. They are notorious for presenting ten point plans and policy papers long on detail and short on sexy. The best term is U.B.E., ugly but effective. The plans would have positive impacts but lack sex appeal. If Americans actually start to realize that the liberal way of doing things works, not so sexy and much more complex, then the GOP is screwed. It will not be easy to accomplish this and the liberal success in the Tire Inflation Debate is only a start. The GOP thought they had a winner in the off shore-drilling stunt, the fact that such a seemingly perfect political opportunity went awry will only make them more desperate. Its hard to believe that something that seemed so stupid was actually a victory for the liberal world view.

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NYT hardcore concern trolls on FISA

I am constantly amazed by the White House’s ability to multitask when it wants to achieve its horrific agenda. One thing I thought we had finally found a victory on was the FISA legislation. Here was something we could at least be somewhat proud most of our Dems showed a vertebra or two. It appears that some of our Dems may be getting nervous, at least that’s what I get from the NYT who wrote a text book concern troll article on a possible “compromise”.

The opening paragraph gives an indication of what tone the article is going to take.

With Congress at an impasse over the government’s spy powers, Congressional and intelligence officials are bracing for the possibility that the government might have to revert to the old rules of terrorist surveillance, a situation that some officials predict could leave worrisome gaps in intelligence.

“Some officials predict could leave dangerous gaps in intelligence” is code for Republicans might not get to protect their corporate allies. Reverting to the old FISA would not be the worst thing to ever happen. If it were then the president would be willing to accept a short term extension to prevent any possible increase in risk. Instead, he is holding his breath still waiting for the Dems to cave. This idea of “dangerous gaps in our intelligence” has been revealed as false. Remember the White House FISA Facts Sheet?

MYTH: Even if the critical tools provided by the Protect America Act expire, the authorizations already in place to monitor terrorist communications will leave the Intelligence Community with all the tools it needs to continue current surveillance and begin new surveillance on any terrorist threat.

FACT: If Congress lets the Protect America Act expire without passing the bipartisan Senate bill, the Intelligence Community’s ability to obtain vital foreign intelligence information, including the location, intentions, and capabilities of terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets abroad, will be weakened.

The Times itself ran a piece in February that pointed out the fact that there will not be any serious gaps.

The lapsing of the deadline would have little practical effect on intelligence gathering. Intelligence officials would be able to intercept communications from Qaeda members or other identified terrorist groups for a year after the initial eavesdropping authorization for that particular group.

If a new terrorist group is identified after Saturday, intelligence officials would not be able to use the broadened eavesdropping authority. They would be able to seek a warrant under the more restrictive standards in place for three decades through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

What happened? Where did the disconnect come from? They used to know that the Republican arguments were bogus but now they are running articles concern trolling for the Republicans. The article goes down hill from here. The next three paragraphs are just wrong.

But government and Congressional officials said in interviews that they saw it as a dangerous step backward. A return to the old rules, they said, would mean that government lawyers, analysts and linguists would once again have to prepare individual warrants, potentially thousands of them, for surveillance of terrorism targets overseas.

Telecommunications companies would also have to spend considerable time shutting down existing wiretaps, and then start them up again if ordered under new warrants, officials said. In some instances, the broad orders given to the companies starting last August cover tens of thousands of overseas phone numbers and e-mail addresses at one time, people with knowledge of the orders said. A senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration was concerned that reverting to the older standards and requiring individual warrants for each wiretap would create a severe gap in overseas intelligence by raising the bar for foreign surveillance collection.

In some cases, the government might simply be unable to establish in court why it suspected that a foreign target was connected to terrorism. Part of the problem, officials said, is that communications going from one foreign country to another sometimes travel through a telephone switch on American soil and, under some interpretations of the older rules, could not be tapped without an individual warrant.

Are you kidding me? There are two highlighted problems here. The first is that it would just be too much work. That is really the argument in the first two paragraphs. It is not that it is especially hard or a major hurdle it is just more work. The second argument is contained in the last paragraph. The second argument is that they might not be able to show a reason to tap the phones.

The bar is not particularly high. There hasn't been a single FISA warrant turned down since 9/11. You don't even need to have the warrant before you start wire-tapping the suspected terrorist. You get three whole days to prepare a warrant after the fact. There really is no reason that they would be unable to get a warrant from the FISA court unless they really have zero basis to get the warrant in the first place. If they cannot establish a link to terrorism in a secret court designed to hide secret sources then they have no basis for the warrant.

The Times goes all out to raise the concern level on this. They get quotes from some very impartial and impressive sources like Mukasey and unnamed Dem staffer probably working for Jay Rockefeller.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has described the idea of reverting to the older standards of foreign surveillance as “unthinkable,” adding, “I still hope and actually think that it won’t happen.”

Even some Democrats, at odds with the White House for months over the surveillance issue, said they were worried about the summer situation. “Until August, we’re O.K.,” said one senior Democratic Congressional aide involved in the negotiations. “After August, we’re not O.K.”

If it is so unthinkable that this legislation expires then pass the extension. It is not that big an impasse. If the fate of America is uncertain then the Republicans should simply help the extension pass. The White House and the GOP were really confident that the Dems would end up caving but when that did not come to pass they found themselves in a bad position, victims of their own hubris.

Officials said that even at the start of the year, when it became apparent that Congress might allow the temporary surveillance law to expire, intelligence officials took no steps to try to go to the secret intelligence court and renew the one-year authorizations from last August so that they would have extra time.

Some people still hold out hope that the Dems will cave and that the Republicans will get their way. Examples of these people include Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, and Senator Christopher S. Bond. Both have been working hard to ensure that ATT (as well as President Bush and their own asses) are well protected.

“I was hoping we’d made progress,” said Mr. Bond, who has been the White House’s point man in the talks. “But the longer this drags on — I’m not so sure.”

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee and is heading negotiations for the Democrats, declined to be interviewed, his office said. He said in a statement that “it has taken many months of difficult negotiations to get to this point, but I’m increasingly optimistic that we’re on the verge of a deal.”

Seriously no deals. Bush is almost gone why give in now? The Dems have finally done one thing that the American people elected them for and Rocky wants to give it all away. As always the motivation behind the potential Democratic capitulation is fear. Fear of being labeled “soft”. Soft on terror or crime or drugs or Iran, whatever it is being soft on it is seen as a major weakness and the accusation is something the DLCers seem to run from.

As hard as the White House has pushed, Democrats may have even more at stake. They acknowledge not wanting to risk reaching their national convention in Denver in August without a deal, lest that create an opening for the Republicans and Senator John McCain, their presumptive presidential nominee, to portray themselves as tougher on national security — a tried-and-true attack method in the past — just as the Democrats are nominating Senator Barack Obama.

There will be no opening if they stand tall. Anything backed by Bush is immediately suspect these days and Bush has gone to great lengths over his desire for immunity. The instances where Dems assert themselves on National Security have been rare. They need to become common. The GOP has proven that they cannot be trusted with the security of our nation. Capitulating on FISA would be a major step backward for the Dems and America. Another question might be why the NYT is concern trolling for the Republicans.

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