The updates on Glenn Greenwald’s piece (highlighted earlier by John) about Jeff Rosen’s attack on Sonia Sotomayor are truly fascinating. It turns out that Rosen’s brother-in-law is in line to become Solicitor General if Obama names Elana Kagan to the court. And, predictably, the usual suspects—Marc Ambinder, etc.—have jumped on the Rosen piece as a sign that the “respectable intellectual center” doesn’t want to deal with an uppity Latina on the court.
My first question is this: why did the attacks on Sotomayor from the right-center (Halperin, Cohen, TNR) come so quickly and in such a coordinated way?
My other question is this: is Sully’s take on this accurate?
So I will merely note how interesting it is as a media phenomenon. Washington’s old journalistic guard is not yet fully aware that the pool they operate in now is much larger than it was, and the cozy familiarity of it all – the sustenance of reputation, the quiet hierarchy of the Northwest quadrant – is now history. What might have been sent into the ether as a small provocation, summing up a coterie’s assumptions, will no longer be given credence because of its provenance. It will have to make its case in a brutally frank environment. Or fail to.What I mean is this: to what extent have GG and others dented the hegemony of TNR-style wankery?
It’s a simple fact that for the last 20 years, the American political media landscape has been dominated by careerist mediocrities who got where they are by sucking off Marty Peretz or Jack Welch or David Bradley.
Will the next 20 years be any different?
Benen: ALL DRESSED UP AND READY TO COMPROMISE....
Karen Tumulty shares an important anecdote about negotiations over health care reform.When Barack Obama informed congressional Republicans last month that he would support a controversial parliamentary move to protect health-care reform from a filibuster in the Senate, they were furious. That meant the bill could pass with a simple majority of 51 votes, eliminating the need for any GOP support for the bill. Where, they demanded, was the bipartisanship the President had promised? So, right there in the Cabinet Room, the President put a proposal on the table, according to two people who were present. Obama said he was willing to curb malpractice awards, a move long sought by the Republicans and certain to bring strong opposition from the trial lawyers who fund the Democratic Party.
What, he wanted to know, did the Republicans have to offer in return?
Nothing, it turned out. Republicans were unprepared to make any concessions, if they had any to make.
So far, we've seen quite a bit of this when the president and the shrinking congressional minority disagree. President Obama sought a stimulus package, for example, and hoped to win over Republicans with a healthy dose of tax cuts. What did Republicans respond with? Nothing, except a counter-proposal with nothing but huge tax cuts.
The president also wants health care reform. He doesn't want to curb malpractice awards, but he's willing to compromise and make concessions to win over Republicans. What is the GOP willing to compromise on? Not a thing. They want the folks who won the elections and are pushing a popular idea to move closer to them -- in exchange for nothing.
As Matt Yglesias explained, "I think it makes a certain amount of sense for a battered minority party to say to hell with bipartisan compromise, now it's your turn to govern by your ideas and pay the consequences when they fail. But that's not really what's happening here. Instead the minority whines that White House isn't doing enough to compromise, but doesn't actually want any kind of compromises."
Obama drove this point home last week, during the White House press conference.
"[T]o my Republican friends, I want them to realize that me reaching out to them has been genuine. I can't sort of define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn't work, and the American people voted to change. But there are a whole host of areas where we can work together.
"And I've said this to people like Mitch McConnell. I said, 'Look, on health care reform, you may not agree with me that I've -- we should have a public plan. That may be philosophically just too much for you to swallow. On the other hand, there are some areas like reducing the cost of medical malpractice insurance where you do agree with me. If I'm taking some of your ideas and giving you credit for good ideas, the fact that you didn't get 100 percent can't be a reason every single time to oppose my position.' And if that is how bipartisanship is defined, a situation in which, basically, wherever there are philosophical differences, I have to simply go along with ideas that have been rejected by the American people in an historic election, you know, we're probably not going to make progress.
"If, on the other hand, the definition is that we're open to each other's ideas, there are going to be some differences, the majority will probably be determinative when it comes to resolving just hard-core differences that we can't resolve but there is a whole host of other areas where we can work together, then I think we can make progress."
If only Republicans wanted to make progress, reaching out to them would make more sense and produce better results.
Benen: THAT'S RICH...
The Politico has a fairly long piece today on whether President Obama will be able to keep the "well-to-do friends" who supported his campaign last year. The president, the argument goes, might alienate the wealthy with economic proposals geared towards leveling the economic playing field.
One striking, if little-noted, trend of the past presidential election was that Obama won the affluent vote -- those making more than $200,000 annually -- with 52 percent. Moving down the income scale a bit, he and John McCain essentially tied among those making between $100,000 and $200,000.
In 2008, exit polls showed the percentage of voters earning more than $100,000 had jumped to a historic high of 26 percent, compared with just 9 percent in 1996. Obama's strong showing among this bloc reversed a decades-old pattern in which the more money someone made, the more likely he or she was to vote Republican.
But these voters are not being repaid for their support -- more like the other way around.
Mark Penn posed a series of questions, telling the Politico, "If Obama comes down more heavily on them, how will they react? Will their support fade?"
All of this strikes me as overwrought. What is the president accused of doing to the wealthiest Americans? Most notably, he plans to raise their taxes back to pre-Bush levels, and exclude them from policies geared towards the middle class.
If this were some kind of new, post-inauguration proposal, I could see why it might be slightly more controversial. But the point of the article seems to be that wealthy voters may reject the same Obama plans he outlined during the campaign.
In other words, the same people who voted for Obama and his platform might be disappointed if he keeps his promises and does what he said he'd do.
Seems like a stretch.
John Cole: Just Spare Me The “This is America” Crap
I keep getting forwarded this whining letter from a Hedge fund manager:
Unafraid In Greenwich Connecticut
Clifford S. Asness
Managing and Founding Principal
AQR Capital Management, LLCThe President has just harshly castigated hedge fund managers for being unwilling to take his administration’s bid for their Chrysler bonds. He called them “speculators” who were “refusing to sacrifice like everyone else” and who wanted “to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.”
***This is America. We have a free enterprise system that has worked spectacularly for us for two hundred plus years. When it fails it fixes itself. Most importantly, it is not an owned lackey of the oval office to be scolded for disobedience by the President.
I haven’t been talking about this much because I’m not up on the ins and outs of bankruptcy laws, but I’m honestly to the point now that if I were driving down the road, and had to swerve to avoid a skunk or a hedge fund manager, I’d choose the skunk. Every time. I’m sick of hearing the bleatings of their overpaid idiot lawyers being repeated as Capital “T” truth when all they are doing is trying to work the refs in public, and I’m sick of reading their whining opinions about how unfair the world is.
Yes, this is America. And we just spent who knows how many trillions of dollars (God knows, because the Fed won’t tell us) propping up the economy because of what you jackasses did with our free enterprise system. I’m sorry that your pursuit for maximum profit didn’t let you force Chrysler into complete and total liquidation, screwing hundreds of thousands of people out of their pension and their health care, ending hundreds of thousands of jobs in the supply chain and dealerships, and dealing our economy another crushing blow that we just can’t tolerate just so you selfish and arrogant pricks could get more than 30 cents on the dollar on YOUR BAD BET.
Seriously. Here is a website (NSFW if you have sound) for you, for Jake DeSantis, and for the rest of you people. I am genuinely sick of your nonsense. If one of you even whispers “fiduciary duty” near me, so help me Allah I will punch you in the damned neck.
Benen: TEAM PLAYER....
For Democrats, it was annoying to see Arlen Specter, after leaving the Republican Party, vote against the Democratic budget. Matters worsened when he rejected a Democratic measure to help prevent mortgage foreclosures, announced his opposition to the president's OLC nominee, rejected a key component of the Democratic health care plan, and publicly denied he would be "loyal" to his new party.
And given Specter's comments to the New York Times' Deborah Solomon, it's reasonable to wonder if the Pennsylvania senator even understands what it means to be a member of a political party. It generally involves rooting for members of your team to win elections over members of the other team, a point that seems lost on Specter.
NYT: With your departure from the Republican Party, there are no more Jewish Republicans in the Senate. Do you care about that?
Specter: I sure do. There's still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.
In case there's any confusion, Solomon is certain that Specter wasn't kidding.
By late yesterday, Specter had reversed course.
"In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates," he said. "I'm ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I've made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke."
Asked who he's backing now in elections, Specter said, "I'm looking for more Democratic members. Nothing personal."
In other words, a Democratic senator, speaking to the New York Times, simply forgot he was a Democrat and repeated the Republican talking points he'd grown accustomed to. (They weren't even good talking points, since even most GOP leaders concede that Coleman is very likely to lose.)
I don't mean to sound ungenerous; everyone misspeaks from time to time. But in the context of Specter's recent votes, and his opposition to Democratic policies and nominees, arguing publicly that Norm Coleman deserves "justice" is the kind of development that will encourage more than a few Democrats to get contributions ready for Joe Sestak.
- Marshall: Wheels Coming Off?
So was Specter somehow joking when he said he still supports Norm Coleman? A few asked. And we were curious. So Eric Kleefeld asked interviewer Deborah Solomon. And she was sure Specter meant it.
But just as Eric and I were doing the edit we saw a new report that Specter was taking it back, saying he'd misspoken -- or to put it in his words, which really defy elaboration: "I have to get used to my new teammates."
The really weird thing is that you'd figure one of the biggest benefits of leaving the GOP would be not having to pretend to like Norm Coleman anymore. So the whole thing's sort of weird, right?
- Marshall: Doof or Consequences Senate Dems take away Specter's seniority.
Benen: REPLACING ONE MODERATE WITH ANOTHER....
Arlen Specter left the Republican Party when Pennsylvania Republicans rejected his relative moderation. Pessimistic about Pat Toomey's chances, GOP leaders have been scrambling, looking for a credible Republican alternative.
It appears the party has rallied behind former Gov. Tom Ridge (R) as their new go-to guy. Ridge, a two-term chief executive and the first DHS Secretary, is probably the only Republican with a realistic shot at winning the statewide race.
There are, however, a couple of problems. First, Ridge lives in Maryland, not Pennsylvania, and as Rick Santorum can attest, Keystone State voters tend to care about whether their candidates live in the same state as they do.
Second, there's the inconvenient fact that Ridge isn't that much more conservative than Specter. If the party's far-right base found Specter intolerable, Ridge, whose pro-choice views were rumored to have kept him off the McCain ticket, may find himself vulnerable to attacks from the right.
They've apparently already started.
The first shots have been fired: National Review's David Freddoso takes a quick look at Ridge's record as a congressman (1983-95), and finds it worrisome on a number of fronts to conservatives:
While in Congress, writes Freddoso, Ridge "voted to expand welfare eligibility (1984), to fund abortions with public money, and in favor of the fairness doctrine (in 1987)."
"Ridge voted against an early school choice program in 1992," Freddoso continues.
Ridge also "voted against an early school choice program in 1992," the article states. "He also voted for a number of union priorities -- in 1988, he voted to re-hire the air traffic controllers who had gone toe-to-toe with President Reagan seven years earlier and lost."
Conservative Matt Lewis, after noting some of Ridge's controversial lobbying work, questions how Pennsylvania primary voters might react when the former governor's record draws closer scrutiny.
... What will happen when Pennsylvania Republicans find out that Ridge voted for the outrageous Fairness Doctrine in 1987 that would force radio stations to "balance" conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh with liberal hosts?
... What will happen when PA Republicans find out that Ridge went out of his way to oppose President Reagan's Missile Defense efforts, voting against funding for the program numerous times?
... What will happen when voters find out that Ridge voted to send taxpayer dollars to the National Endowment for the Arts to be spent on obscene and indecent work, including child pornography?
It's very early, and there's at least some evidence that Ridge would be heavily favored to beat Toomey in a GOP primary. But given Ridge's occasional moderation, Toomey and other conservative activists are no doubt drawing up plans to make the former governor look like their up-until-recently Republican senator, and they'll have plenty of material to work with.
Benen: RECRUITING STRATEGY....
The New York Times reported the other day that National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas intends to "recruit candidates who he thought could win in Democratic or swing states, even if it meant supporting candidates who might disagree with his own conservative views."
This sounds sensible. Cornyn saw the DSCC and Chuck Schumer boost their numbers using a similar approach, and apparently realized Republicans could do the same thing, even if it caused grumbling with the party's base. "Some conservatives would rather lose than be seen as compromising on what they regard as inviolable principles," Cornyn added.
It's curious, then, that the NRSC chairman seems to be backpedaling.
Senator John Cornyn, the head of the NRSC, appears to be backing off his earlier vow to field more moderate Senate candidates who have a better shot at winning general election. [...]
Asked if he would back conservative Club for Growth president Pat Toomey or the more moderate Tom Ridge in the 2010 Pennsylvania GOP primary, Cornyn made a few pro forma comments about hoping the strongest candidate would win, but said:
"I don't think it's wise for me to tell Pennsylvania Republicans who their nominee should be, so I'm not going to do that."
Obviously, primary voters are solely responsible for choosing their party's nominee. But Cornyn knows full well that the party recruits candidates for a reason, and then supports those candidates -- with varying degrees of subtlety -- to give the party the best chance of success. That's one of the reasons the parties' campaign committees exist.
Indeed, that's precisely why Cornyn indicated to the NYT that he would deliberately recruit less-conservative candidates to compete in less-conservative states. Why back off of that now?
Perhaps someone explained to him the value of maintaining "inviolable principles"?
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