Pauline Kael Syndrome

This John Boehner quote, where he says he hasn't met one person who supports the public option, reminds me of the famous quote that has been attributed over the years to Pauline Kael, though there's compelling evidence that it was apocryphal. The quote usually goes like this: Kael was told that Nixon bested George McGovern in a landslide in 1972, and Kael replied, "How can that be? No one I know voted for Nixon!" It's often used by Republicans to prove how East Coast elites who read or write for the New York Times are so out of touch with everyday 'Murcans.

In this case, it's the conservative who is deeply out of touch with American needs and desires. Like the stereotype of Kael, for Boehner to say that proves he self-selects a very narrow band of people as his companions, the sample of which bears no resemblance to the public at large. And people have rightly pounced on the quote. Here's a testimonial from a woman in Boehner's district, from Oxford, Ohio, who has consistently argued for a public option to Boehner's office. Health Care for America Now is gathering signatures of people who support a public option in the hopes that Boehner will meet with one of them. And Americans United fit this into a narrative of an out of touch Republican leader:



It was simple to find statistics like 57% of Ohioans supporting a public option, to throw into avid golfer Boehner's face. Even garlic lovers slammed Boehner for calling the public option as unpopular as a garlic milkshake (I've been to Gilroy, CA, home of the Garlic Festival, and everyone there swears by the garlic ice cream and milkshakes).

The narrative has really started to turn. It's the Republicans who look out of touch and out of ideas to deal with America's health care crisis. Alan Grayson started this ball rolling. And John Boehner's Pauline Kael impression cemented it.

...the Facebook group, "Hey John Boehner, I'm an American and I support a public option!" has over 1,000 members in the first five hours, and is growing.

...The Progressive Campaign Change Committee also has an ad up and is encouraging Boehner to meet with folks in his district.

The Rare Reverse Kabuki

I don't know who fed the media this point, or maybe they just couldn't ignore the wealth of hypocrisy surrounding the right-wing hissy fit over Nancy Pelosi, but they have started to inexplicably push back. It started last week when Marcy Wheeler noted that Pete Hoekstra, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of providing insufficient briefings and even lying to Congress, regarding a separate investigation. In the interim, a host of elements of the CIA's story started to fall apart - their briefing record document included people who weren't in the meetings, people who lacked the security clearance to attend, and even stated Porter Goss was briefed in 2005 when he was the Director of the CIA at the time. The invaluable ThinkProgress dug up a copy of the letter Hoekstra sent to the CIA, and added this:

Similarly, in 2007, Hoekstra described a closed-door briefing by representatives from the intelligence community (including CIA) on the National Intelligence Estimate of Iran’s nuclear capability, saying that the members “didn’t find [the briefers] forthcoming.” More recently, in November 2008, Hoekstra concluded that the CIA “may have been lying or concealing part of the truth” in testimony to Congress regarding a 2001 incident in which the CIA mistakenly killed an American citizen in Peru. “We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress,” Hoekstra said of the incident.

Maybe this was simply the easiest way for journalists to understand the emptiness of the hissy fit - Hoekstra said "lied," too - but for some reason they're off and running with this today. Wolf Blitzer confronted John Boehner with this and he had to concede the point. Newt Gingrich tried to play this off when called on it by Diane Sawyer, of all people, but it didn't work ut too well for him.



(not that anyone should give a crap what Newt Gingrich thinks.)

And here comes none other than Arlen Specter, calling 'em how he sees 'em with respect to the CIA:

Sen. Arlen Specter took the opportunity Wednesday to defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has come under fire in recent weeks over a controversy surrounding when she was told of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques being used by the CIA.

“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say ‘candid’; that’s too mild — to honesty,” Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency’s involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair.

I have no idea why the worm turned today, but this controversy is basically over. The CIA's theory is full of holes, and the Pelosi spat has turned into he said/she said, with the media willing to explore Republican hypocrisy on the issue.

Of course, defusing this time bomb has an added benefit - it ends any rising calls for investigations, perhaps starting with what Pelosi knew but encompassing the entire breadth of the torture regime from top to bottom. The Village certainly wants no part of that. So they had to play rough with Republicans for a couple days. It's almost a Kabuki dance in reverse - the media pretends to delve deep and fact-check precisely to pre-empt anyone else getting to actually delve deep and fact-check.

Pretty sharp. Meanwhile the whole "we tortured detainees to justify the war in Iraq" storyline has faded off into the distance as well. Maybe Jonathan Landay will drop yet another McClatchy bombshell soon.

It's Comical To Say John Boehner Knows What He's Talking About

Sadly, the Minority Leader of House Republicans is not the first to relate global warming to cow farts, although when Crazy Dana Rohrabacher did it I believe he used dinosaur flatulence as the example instead.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That's my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide.

This is just comically wrong, and we can all laugh about it, but this is dangerous to our future and our economy. As Joe Romm notes, "Anti-science conservatives are now the cement shoes on the American people, pulling us down into the ocean hot, acidic dead zone." If you want to know why we haven't progressed on renewable energy or fuel-efficient cars or green technologies, look no further. Here are some real-world consequences.

China’s leaders are investing $12.6 million every hour to green their economy. Other countries are equally energetic in their embrace of alternative energy technologies; they are setting targets and investing billions of dollars to spur the development of entirely new markets in wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, energy efficiency, high-speed rail, and other clean and innovative solutions to global warming.

The United States, too, is poised to transform its economy to create millions of new jobs and help create a cleaner, safer planet by investing in a green, renewable-energy based economy. The Obama administration wants to unleash the ingenuity of our private sector to rein in pollution and put millions of Americans back to work. Yet China is spending twice as much as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spends to lay the foundations for a green energy economy, despite the U.S. economy being 1.5 times as large as China’s. And across Europe and Asia, other governments have diversified their energy portfolios and encouraged entrepreneurs to start and expand clean and renewable energy companies.

As venture capitalist John Doerr recently pointed out in his testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, “If you list today’s top 30 companies in solar, wind and advanced batteries, American companies hold only 6 spots. That fact should worry us all.”

Read that whole thing. We're simply falling behind the rest of the world in the industry that will lead the 21st century. And know-nothing, status-quo obstructionist conservatives are the reason why. Clinging to the dirty industries of the past only makes us a fossil. I think the Obama Administration and most Democrats know this and want to fix it, but time is running out and anti-science troglodytes like John Boehner aren't helping. He says that his party has a plan but that plan merely is to obstruct any progress.

...Just to show you the sense of urgency here, one company wants to bury emissions under the ocean. And people are listening to them.

"It does not have, in the sense of a traditional budget, numbers..."

The President and his team walked into the worst economic crisis in decades, beset on all sides by naysayers and unhelpful ConservaDems looking to frustrate their agenda, and with the populist anger over the AIG bonuses and a perceived coziness with Wall Street, the pitfalls are large and ominous. A smart political opposition could take this environment and turn it to their advantage.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, we don't have one of those. We have one actual political party and a conservative know-nothing rump faction which literally has absolutely no ideas about how to capitalize on this political moment. They released a budget plan today without numbers. No, really.



When Contessa Brewer is made at you for not being sufficiently serious, you really have a problem. This got so comical that John Boehner had to admit that he'd get back to everyone with an actual budget sometime later on.

There certainly was no hard budgetary data in the attractively designed 18-page packet that the House GOP handed out today, its blue cover emblazoned with an ambitious title: "The Republican Road to Recovery." When Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) was asked what his goal for deficit reduction would be -- President Obama aims to halve the nation's spending imbalance within five years -- Boehner responded simply: "To do better [than Obama]."

When pressed further by reporters, Boehner promised that Republicans would release their actual budget within the next few days and pointed a finger back at the president.

If you really hate yourself, you can read this hash of a plan. This one was too easy for the DNC to mock:

DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan, not surprisingly, took a swing at the ball that Republicans set on a tee: "I'm all for changing the way we do business in Washington, but proposing a 'budget' that doesn't use numbers may be too much for me. After 27 days, the best House Republicans could come up with is a 19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate. There are more numbers in my last sentence than there are in the entire House GOP 'budget.'"

Ezra Klein has the best line:

It's reads like what would happen if The Onion put together a budget. "Area Man Releases Proposal for 2010 Federal Spending Priorities."

Maybe there's a real opportunity for the Green Party once the Republicans truly sink into utter irrelevance?

...even more hilariously, half the leadership team opposed this non-budget and had to be forced into supporting it.

Better Wingnuts, Please

I understand the concept of the loyal opposition, and when my party was in that position I urged them to oppose a bit more. But I don't think it's in any way hypocritical to ask that, if Republicans must oppose, they can come up with better ideas than calling for a spending freeze at a time when only government is spending. I mean, Herbert Hoover wouldn't have gone this far.

And of course, this is at the level of the Minority Leader of the US House. The spiritual leader of the party is busy taunting that Ted Kennedy is about to die. And when you get into the individual wingnuts, you have the completely insane Birther faction.

A federal judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit questioning President Barack Obama's citizenship, lambasting the case as a waste of the court's time and suggesting the plaintiff's attorney may have to compensate the president's lawyer.

In an argument popular on the Internet and taken seriously practically nowhere else, Obama's critics argue he is ineligible to be president because he is not a "natural-born citizen" as the Constitution requires.

In response last summer, Obama's campaign posted his Hawaiian birth certificate on its Web site. But the lawsuit argues it is a fake and that Obama was actually born in his father's homeland of Kenya, even though Hawaiian officials have said the document is authentic.

"This case, if it were allowed to proceed, would deserve mention in one of those books that seek to prove that the law is foolish or that America has too many lawyers with not enough to do," U.S. District Judge James Robertson said in his written opinion.

I mean it. We need better wingnuts. The times are too challenging. Somebody take over the Republican Party. I beg of you.

Amazingly, Negotiating With Ourselves Didn't Work

I know this is going to floor you, but the GOP is not satisfied with $300 billion in tax cuts in the economic recovery package, and Obama's extended hand of friendship was bitten off.

Just days after taking office vowing to end the political era of "petty grievances," President Obama ran into mounting GOP opposition yesterday to an economic stimulus plan that he had hoped would receive broad bipartisan support.

Republicans accused Democrats of abandoning the new president's pledge, ignoring his call for bipartisan comity and shutting them out of the process by writing the $850 billion legislation. The first drafts of the plan would result in more spending on favored Democratic agenda items, such as federal funding of the arts, they said, but would do little to stimulate the ailing economy.

Yep, the entire bill gives $800 billion to Robert Mapplethorpe, according to the GOP, and also the Dems are trying to beat up on those poor noble bankers (Republicans en masse voted against releasing TARP money to those same bankers, so I don't know how they'll pull off this "protect the bankers from tax-hiking libruls" trick, though consistency isn't their goal):

The House bill also would reverse a controversial change in tax regulations that the Treasury Department made last year at an estimated cost of $140 billion in lost revenue. The change, intended to encourage bank mergers, allows banks to shelter their own profits from taxes based on losses at companies they acquire. Treasury made the switch without public notice or congressional approval.

Here's the very sensible Republican alternative, that would just end taxes for a while and make everyone happy.

As expected, the GOP alternative focuses primarily on tax cuts over increased federal spending. After their meeting with the president, Republicans continued to express concern over the spending in the $825 billion package, even though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Congress would likely meet Obama’s mid-February deadline.

Instead of a tax credit for individuals making $75,000 or less or families making less than $150,000, Republicans would like to reduce the tax rate by 5 percent on those Americans in the lowest tax brackets, from 15 percent to 10 percent and 10 percent to 5 percent [...]

If they had more of a say in the bill, Republicans would also like to allow small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their earnings to "free up funds for small businesses to retain and hire new employees," according to talking points released after the meeting.

Republicans in the House would also like assurances in the bill that Congress will not raise taxes to pay down the $550 billion in federal spending laid out in the Democrats' bill.

In order to stabilize the housing market, Republicans would also like to grant a $7,500 tax credit to homebuyers who put down 5 percent on the purchase price of their home [...]

Boehner, in remarks on the White House driveway, warned that “government can’t solve this problem.”

I don't want to say that every tax break should be stricken from this package. Expanding eligibility for the child tax credit seems like a good idea, as does the higher education tax credit for tuition and textbooks. Getting money to those who will spend it is the point of a stimulus, and targeting funds at the low end of the income ladder makes some sense.

But when you start out saying that any bill must have 80 votes, OF COURSE the other side isn't going to leap at the first proposal. Going halfway at the beginning of the negotiation is a terrible strategy, not to mention the fact that the Republican caucus is far more conservative and unwilling to do anything but feed more tax cuts to their buddies when that's the worst stimulus multiplier there is.

Obama is still saying the bill will pass by President's Day, so it's possible he's seen the failure of extending the hand of friendship and will now just plow ahead. But we're still stuck with legislation that may be insufficient to get the economy going. Learning this negotiation lesson would be a plus, but it's an awful big price to pay.

...my advice would be to offer the best possible plan that would get the votes needed necessary to pass instead of some fantasy of an 80-vote threshold, banking off the public goodwill with both the President and the concept of funding infrastructure, which even Frank Luntz recognizes the public is demanding and would pay higher taxes for.

Strategic Drift

Whether it was a kabuki dance or just the Democratic majority in the Senate finding its power or, amazingly, the essence of deliberative democracy, the Obama recovery plan looks to have gotten a facelift:

President-elect Barack Obama tried Sunday to shore up support in Congress for his ambitious economic policies, with his top advisers offering concessions on his economic-stimulus proposal and preparing to detail conditions for how the incoming administration will spend the second half of the $700 billion financial rescue package.

Emerging from a two-hour meeting in the Capitol with Obama advisers Lawrence Summers and Jason Furman, Senate Democrats praised the President-elect's team for agreeing to make changes to its stimulus proposal based off of concerns senators raised last week at a meeting with the president-elect’s senior aides.

The Obama team told about 35 Senate Democrats gathered at Sunday’s meeting that it would grow the size of an energy-tax incentive package and modify proposed tax credits for individuals and for businesses that hire new employees, according to meeting attendees. Also, with lawmakers raising concerns that the first half of the $700 billion of the financial rescue law was badly mismanaged, Obama’s team signaled it would lay out precisely how it would spend the second half of that package, which Congress is expected to consider as soon as this week.

“It’s very clear they’ve listened, they’ve heard and that they’re moving to respond,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, who questioned previously whether the tax credits in the stimulus package were enough to encourage new jobs. “It was very, very healthy. They’re not defensive, not arguing back, they’re listening, they’re attempting to hear and they’re responding.”

It's good to have a negotiation drift to the left. The right is focused on deficit reduction, which is interesting, considering that eight years of Republican policies brought record budget deficits and a booming national debt. They've all converted into fiscal hawks at just the right time!

The hope is that they will remain irrelevant. It is not worth getting 80 votes in the Senate if the cost is a million jobs because too much money goes to tax cuts.

By the way, watch that new TARP program. If done right, that could have a positive effect on the economy as well.

...A few weeks ago, John Boehner asked for economists - on his website, publicly - who opposed the recovery plan to sign onto a document. He hasn't found one former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers - not one Democrat, and not one Republican.

Good luck with that, John.

Lovable Loser

House Republicans apparently think that losing 50 seats over two cycles is change they can believe in, as they signed up John Boehner as Minority Leader for two more years, resisting a challenge from Dan Lungren.

While Randy Bayne considers this a bright spot for Bill Durston and his effort to beat Lungren in 2010, I have the opposite view. Being Minority Leader would have put a major target on Lungren's back. Now he can slink back into quiet anonymity and not raise the ire of his constituency, which is rapidly growing more Democratic.

On another note, how can House Republicans possibly think that Boehner has done a good job these last two years to warrant a return engagement? Fortunately, that's their problem.

CA-03: Lungren's Going For It

The rumors are true. Dan Lungren is going to mount a leadership challenge to John Boehner, with a vote expected this week.

Brilliant. It's fitting that the Republicans could pick as a leader a guy who couldn't get 50% in his own district. Bill Durston, already slated to run in 2010, could become a very important figure for the next two years.

CA-03: I Know, Let's Put A Threatened Incumbent In Charge

This is hilarious:

California Rep. Dan Lungren is considering a challenge to House Minority Leader John Boehner for his leadership position.

Several House conservatives have courted Lungren in the past two days, seeking change in leadership after demoralizing losses in Tuesday's election and two years of tussling with Boehner over earmarks, spending and most recently the $700 billion financial rescue package.

I know that Republicans are deeply in denial and all, but Dan Lungren? He didn't break 50% in his Congressional election on Tuesday, winning by only 13,700 votes, and if anything, the district is trending away from him. The registration advantage is a thin 2.2%, and after two years of more organizing that's likely to be even. And Bill Durston is going to run for a third time in 2010.

Republicans in Democratic-trending districts often win by making few waves in Washington and running away from party ID. There is absolutely no chance that a House Minority Leader could do that. He'd be well-known to the district and the nation. Whether successful or not, every Democrat and Democratic-leaning independent would know where Dan Lungren stands on the issues. There wouldn't be any low-information voters left. And national groups would be encouraged to knock off the Republican leader in the House. Remember that Durston got pretty much no meaningful help from any progressive organization in 2008 and still managed a close 5-point loss, improving his position by 13 points from one election to the next.

Please, oh please, Republican caucus, do this. Let's see Dan Lungren have two years in the spotlight before we knock him out.

Aftermath of a Hangin'

Following up on John Boehner's Hang Speaker Pelosi comment, Democrats are certainly trying to make the Republican Minority Leader pay. Hoyer, Emanuel, Clyburn, Schakowsky, and Wasserman-Schultz are all out with comments, joining the early outrage from George Miller and this one from Ed Markey:

Assertions of physical violence toward the Speaker of the House have no place in the halls of Congress. Period. After a week stuck in an echo-chamber of their own making, this group of Republicans has turned ugly. Democracy is about settling differences through debate, without violence. It is unfortunate that the Minority Leader allowed violence to creep into his overheated rhetoric.

Checking Google News, the Politico, Roll Call, The Hill and the Chicago Tribune's politics blog have stories up about this. In other words, this hasn't broken through yet.

And I just don't think it will. Because after all, we're talking about a Republican threatening violence to a Democrat. This doesn't raise eyebrows in Washington. It just doesn't.

(to say nothing of the violence against women aspects)

Hang Her High

This is ridiculous, and while I know that Democrats are generally disinclined to hissy fits, they ought to show some backbone and rally behind their Speaker on this one, simply to change the conversation.

Responding to questions over whether Pelosi could call a special session - which Democrats insist won’t happen - and vote on other issues that Republicans may not want to face, such as an expansion of childrens’ [sic] health insurance programs, which President Bush and GOP congressional leaders have opposed.

“She’s gonna bring us back and not deal with it? The American people are gonna hang her,” Boehner said. When pressed further, Boehner said it would “be fine, as long as we get a vote on our bill.”

Reps. Miller and Markey have released statements, but of course the difference between the Republican hissy fit and the Democratic hissy fit is that the media reports on the Republican one. The hope here is to discredit these stammering GOP fits from now on.

Look, occasionally political figures and officials are going to say intemperate things. They’ll generate criticism, which is often deserved. But since being relegated to minority status, Republicans, most notably Boehner himself, have been in high dudgeon at the drop of a hat, as if their delicate sensibilities and virgin ears can’t bear to hear a Democrat say a discouraging word.

Given this, Boehner can’t be too surprised if the umbrage wars start moving in his direction — he did, after all, talk publicly (albeit metaphorically) about violence towards the House Speaker.

IOKIYAR is a defense, but it’s not a compelling one given Boehner’s repeated hysterical fits every time he hears a Dem say something that sends him looking for a feinting couch.

A lot of the problem with Democrats in Washington is that they're unwilling to be as stupid as media coverage demands. My preference is that they run this on a loop on the House floor but unfortunately it's a better bet that screaming "the Minority Leader called for the hanging of the Speaker" will be a squeakier wheel to get the grease.

Republicans Vote Against Lowering Gas Prices

Even though I don't think it's the entire story, there's certainly SOME speculation in the oil futures market that is driving up the price. Ian Welsh has a pretty good explanation of this. And so to see the Senate block consideration on a bill that would rein in speculation in the market, a few days after voting 94-0 to move it forward, is just embarrassing, and really shows where the loyalties of the Republicans lie - with the speculators and with the oil companies that benefit from the speculation.

The DSCC puts it all together in a press release:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell voted against a bill today to lower gas prices by curbing excessive speculation in energy markets. Experts have noted that speculation is driving up the price of a barrel of oil, and a recent House committee report revealed that speculators – institutional investors buying contracts with no intention of taking delivery of oil – now account for 73% of all trading of crude oil contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up from 37% in 2000.

"Mitch McConnell had an opportunity to lower the price of gas today, but instead he voted with the speculators who are profiting from Kentuckians' pain at the pump," DSCC spokesman Matthew Miller said. "Mitch McConnell's constituents deserve better than a politician who sides with Wall Street speculators over Kentucky families."

McConnell voted against legislation to guard against price manipulation just one day after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced its first case against a trading fund in the agency's probe of crude oil market manipulation. The bill will eliminate so-called "dark markets" to increase transparency and accountability in commodities trading, strengthen the CFTC's enforcement capacity, and close the "London Loophole" so all U.S.-based trading of American commodities is subject to American regulation.

And the only action the Republicans want to take to relieve the burden of high gas prices is more drilling and spilling, and they'll lie through their teeth to do so, that the wildlife "wouldn't care" about giant oil rigs going up in their backyard (in that case, let's put one behind John Boehner's house). Of course, that drilling and spilling will only advantage- you guessed it, giant oil companies.

It's all so transparent...

Sense Of Proportion

So the technical glitch on the farm bill was cleaned up, and Bush's veto officially overriden. The intent of the Congress and the President is obvious, but due to Constitutional procedure they might actually have to vote on this turkey AGAIN. Can we move ahead a couple hundred years at this point? Bill text is already available online. Can't that be the text the Congress "sends" over to the President, and can't the President do what he wants with it? If you want to keep having bill-signing ceremonies, that's fine, but why do we have to act like we're still using quills and horseback here? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Meanwhile, is it at all possible to take John Boehner seriously?

Democrats said the matter stemmed from a clerical error. But Republicans pounced on the "fiasco," which they said would require a temporary extension of the current farm bill.

"What's happened here raises serious constitutional questions -- very serious," said Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "I don't see how we can proceed with the override as it occurred."

Yes, some clerk forgetting to insert Title III of the bill is a "serious constitutional question." The President nullifying federal laws through signing statements, torturing prisoners in violation of international law, rendition, indefinite detention, spying on Americans without a warrant in contrvention of the 4th Amendment, eliminating habeas corpus, planting military propagandists in the press and lying about the WMD threat used to take the nation to war... these are mere technicalities.

Puh-leeze.

The Coming Republican Dissolution

The MS-01 pickup is truly a game-changer, and bodes extremely well for the fall. I don't know if the additional Democrats mobilized by a competitive Presidential primary in Mississippi in March played a factor or not, but this was a 62% district for Bush, and we didn't just win, but we won by 8 points. With high turnout for a special election - over 100,000 voters. November looks very strong, as Kos diarist dweb8321 points out with 26 supporting reasons, many of which I've noted here in the past (McCain still hasn't polled above 45% nationally, he can't break 75% in these primaries when he's not running against anyone, Bob Barr, etc.)

Now, the Republicans made a big mistake by trying to run against Barack Obama in this seat instead of Travis Childers, something I think they'll alter for the fall unless they are stupider than I thought. Tom Cole of the NRCC basically sounded the alarm last night.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, sounded an alarm for all GOP candidates "to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall" while lashing themselves to the presidential candidacy of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

"The political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general. . . . Time is short," Cole said in a statement.

House leaders like John Boehner are already trying to co-opt Obama's "change" message for Republicans - which shows you how appealing McCain's message of less jobs and more wars is. Trying to ride the coattails of the opposition party's President doesn't seem to me like a winning strategy, either, but I'm not going to spend too much time trying to help the GOP out with one. "Don't call yourself Republicans and/or impeach Bush" spring to mind. Oh, and change your leadership - that's change you deserve!

Will the election of Travis Childers, and self-described "conservative Democrats," have a positive effect on progressive policy? First, Childers got himself elected on getting out of Iraq, fully funding education and "taking care of his mother" who has breast cancer. Those aren't incompatible issues with mainstream Democratic issues. In addition, the House is almost totally a majoritarian body. Nancy Pelosi has kept her caucus almost 90% of the time because she brings up for vote those bills that can hold the caucus. The more Congresscritters in the caucus, the more confidence she can have to hold the votes. So it doesn't matter exactly what Travis Childers supports, but what Pelosi can get away with. I'd like to see her try and get away with more, but with the Emanuel/Hoyer faction acting as saboteurs that's not going to happen.

But the other thing is that politicians move with their electorate. By electing progressives in the House - which we have a legitimate chance to do in November - the caucus will move to the left, particularly on economic grounds (both Childers and Don Cazayoux have strains of economic populism). And as the country goes center-left, politicians will strive to keep up.

In Praise of Pelosi

This new House ethics panel was a long and tough fight, and it needs more teeth like subpoena power, but it's notable that finally, an independent board will be investigating and passing judgment on members of Congress, rather than the members themselves. This was a big issue for Nancy Pelosi, and she spent a year trying to get this through, with a lot of resistance from both sides of the aisle. Pelosi has actually been effective; lots of legislation has run aground in the Senate, but in general she's been able to get her agenda passed. Of course, the House is a majoritarian institution, making it easier. But Pelosi's achievement should not be discounted.

And anyone that can cause this response:

"If you have a single ounce of self-preservation, you'll vote no," implored Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) last night.

...is OK in my book.

UPDATE: Looks like John Boehner is going to cry and whine his way to the finish line on this one.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner made clear Wednesday that he sees little likelihood of joining Speaker Nancy Pelosi anytime soon to name members of a new outside ethics board the House has reluctantly agreed to create.

“I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind would want to serve on this outside panel because of the fighting that’s going to occur, not by members but by partisan groups on both sides who are going to want to file frivolous complaints,’’ Boehner said Tuesday during floor debate over the proposal to create the Office of Congressional Ethics.

Boehner aides said they didn’t know how the leader would proceed in trying to work with Pelosi on a joint list of six appointees for a panel whose creation he bitterly opposed. Minority Whip Roy Blunt , R-Mo., said the decision on how to proceed belongs solely to Boehner, R-Ohio. “The leader is the person who has to make that decision. I’m going to let him make it,’’ Blunt said.

Nice profile in courage from Blunt there.

The Stellar GOP Field

Yes, they've come up with another fantastic list of candidates for the 2008 election, fresh off of such 2006 luminaries as Mistress Strangler Don Sherwood, Frequent Frat Party Guest John Sweeney, and of course, Maf54. So who's stepping up to the plate this year?

First off, we've got Stormin' Norman Coleman, our favorite Brooklyn-born Senator from Minnesota, whose campaign sent out a form letter to the editor criticizing his potential opponent, our favorite Minnesota-born challenger Al Franken. Problem was, his supporters sent it to multiple newspapers without changing the text whatsoever, leading the campaign to have to apologize for astroturfing.

A new entry for the GOP, a rising star if you will, is former University of Missouri running back Brock Olivo, who is running in the 9th District in Missouri. And hey, he's got some qualifications:

"Not only was I football player, but I also was in social studies class, and I have a passion for how this country works," Olivo said.

I actually have more of a problem with "not only was I a football player," as if that should be part of the reason to elect him.

And then there's the potential candidate in South Dakota's Senate race, whose story is so deranged that Markos Moulitsas devoted a whole column to him for The Hill:

Folks often joke about the blood-sucking parasites that infect politics, but the gibes about politicians and lobbyists are usually just that — jokes. Yet the charge gets uncomfortably close to being literal when discussing former South Dakota lieutenant governor and potential Senate candidate Steve Kirby.

Following the sale of his prominent Sioux Falls family’s surety bond company, Kirby branched out into more exotic business terrain when he founded Bluestern Venture Capital in 1992. Among Bluestern’s portfolio companies was a Massachusetts-based biotech firm called Collagenesis — a company whose business model couldn’t have been more foreign to the stolid world of South Dakota surety bonding.

Collagenesis specialized in processing donated skin off cadavers into cosmetic surgery products, and was subject to a blistering five-part investigative series by the Orange County Register beginning on April 17, 2000. “Burn victims lie waiting in hospitals as nurses scour the country for skin to cover their wounds, even though skin is in plentiful supply for plastic surgeons,” read the lede of the Register report. “The skin they need to save their lives is being used instead for procedures that could wait: supporting bladders, erasing laugh lines and enlarging penises.”

Suffice it to say that penis enlargement represented a slight departure from the Kirby family’s traditional business of bonding hard-working Sioux Falls mason contractors.

That's almost fictional, given its metaphorical possibilities: a Republican literally profiting off the skins of the dead.

These are the best and the brightest, people. And somehow John Boehner thinks it surprising that his comrades can't get off their dead asses and raise money for this gang.

Good Judgment

It says something about the Presidential nominee of the Republican Party that the unctuous used-car salesman of a Minority Leader is tougher on corruption than he is. While Boehner has called on indicted Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Culture of Corruption) to resign after the grand jury came back with charges of fraud and money laundering, McCain has decided that he's going to hang back. This is fine if you're a potential juror, but not if you're a Presidential candidate who claims to have the highest integrity, and this guy is a member of your leadership team and a US Representative who's supposed to hold sacred the public trust.

McCain seemed surprised when asked in Indianapolis for his reaction to the indictment, choosing his words carefully, shaking his head and speaking slowly.

"I'm sorry. I feel for the family; as you know, he has 12 children," McCain told reporters on the presidential campaign trail. "But I don't know enough of the details to make a judgment. These kinds of things are always very unfortunate. ... I rely on our Department of Justice and system of justice to make the right outcome."

Look, McCain's running a national campaign, he doesn't need to be that up to date on the latest of every case. However, the Renzi allegations have been out there since 2006, and McCain, in fact, went back to Arizona to defend him at that time. So he's at least familiar with this, and yet he'd rather not presume any manner of judgment. That's because his judgment wasn't very good to begin with.

Meanwhile, emptywheel, as she's wont to do,
has put together a very good timeline of the Renzi case. It should be noted that Paul Charlton, the US Attorney who originally investigated this situation, was one of the 9 US Attorneys fired by the President in 2006. In fact, Renzi's Chief of Staff called Charlton's office and asked him about the indictment shortly before he was fired. So this could be some sort of vindication for Charlton, although DoJ definitely slowed down the investigation as much as they possibly could.

Actual Progress on Stimulus

So it looks like the Republicans have backed off the effort to use the economic downtown and the need for a stimulus package in a Shock Doctrine way to try and make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

"I think there is a way to come to an agreement," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in an interview. "Not having an agreement is a lose-lose." [...]

A member of the GOP rank-and-file, Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska, expressed the feelings of both parties when he said: "People expect us to act." If Democrats and Republicans can get together, he said, it will "let people know we can do something here."

Perhaps the most striking illustration of how much these developments were changing the atmosphere on Capitol Hill was the readiness of Republicans to step back from their long insistence that Congress make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Such tax cuts have been central to GOP economic policy for more than two decades.

Now Republican leaders say they are ready to put off action.

"It's impossible for me to believe that [permanent tax cuts] would be part of the agreement, as much as I would like to see that happen," Boehner said.

I think the overriding sentiment of the rest of this Congress has to be a limit to future harm. Making the tax cuts permanent would be intolerably harmful for fiscal responsibility. And with the downturn already underway (these Q4 banking numbers are awful), there's no need to just raise the future structural deficit problems any further.

And good for Ben Bernanke for saying this so clearly.

To elaborate a bit, Bernanke's basically saying-without-quite-saying that any stimulus package that Congress passes shouldn't include making permanent the Bush tax cuts. He's not taking a stand on the tax cuts per se, but instead saying that whether or not it's a good idea is a separate issue from any short term stimulus package. They're two different issues - short term stimulus and long run structural - and they should be seen as such.

This stimulus package is by no means a done deal. But it won't make a bad problem worse and put the next President in a deeper hole. That's progress.

Rep. Jerry Lewis: Choosing His Committees, Choosing His Opponent?

Now for the reason I turned to Novakula in the first place (yes, he's a partisan hack, but his sources are typically impeccable). This weekend he reported on maneuvers within the House GOP caucus to keep Jerry Lewis in his post as the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, despite being under federal investigation. You'll recall that Minority Leader John Boehner stressed ethics and honesty when elected by the caucus, and even demoted John Doolittle from Appropriations when the FBI raided his house. There would appear to be a double standard, and reformers within the Republican Party are pissed.

The GOP leadership was so frazzled by this column that they sought to spin it on Friday, before it was even published. They denied that the meeting ever occurred. However, Lewis is still the ranking member of the Committee, so those denials only go so far. So it appears he'll remain in that position throughout his re-election effort. And that effort has Howie Klein pissed:

It also looks like he's gotten the same shill candidate, Louie Contreras, who didn't run against him in 2006 to be his "opponent" in 2008-- and the state of Art Torres' California Democratic Party is so pathetic that they won't even lift a finger to look into it.

So Lewis, probably the single most corrupt man in Congress, has the Republican nomination locked up and the Democratic nomination rigged. All he has to do is not get indicted. He's spent over a million dollars in legal fees to keep that from happening.

Contreras actually jumped into the comments of that post and claimed that State Superintendent Jack O'Connell was supporting him. He isn't. The San Bernardino Sun claims Tim Prince is running, though he earlier said that he would only run if Lewis didn't. I can add that there will be an additional "mystery candidate" in this race, and for now, that's all I can say. (Tee-hee!!)