The Plum Line

* Profiles in courage: Anthony Weiner finally breaks his silence on the Islamic center -- in a letter to Mayor Bloomberg. Weiner says government shouldn't block the project but doesn't take a real stand beyond that.

Weiner "honors" Bloomberg for taking a "powerful" stance, without endorsing the sentiment that made Bloomberg's position so powerful.

* Indeed, Weiner seemed to play both sides, suggesting it's legit to probe the financing of the mosque, the stance of the project's critics.

* Maggie Haberman, on Weiner's letter: "I'm not really sure what the purpose of doing this letter was, since all it does is highlight that Weiner is taking both sides, instead of taking neither."

* Last word on the Weiner mess: What happened to the feisty and gutsy liberal hero that shouted at Republicans on the House floor the other day? It's beyond sad that some evidently see it as a huge political risk to stand up for the right of Muslim New Yorkers to study their heritage somewhere on the lower half of Manhattan.

* No repeat of last August! Sam Stein reports that the White House and top Dems are deeply engaged in charting a strategy to win the summer.

* Mitch McConnell says Dems are in the same situation now that Republicans were when they had the majority and the Bush albatross was dragging them down.

* Headline of the day, from CNN: "Will Bush-bashing help Democrats win over weary voters?" Expect lots more like that...

* It's not all about her: Sarah Palin signals she'll be lending her fundraising clout to the GOP effort this fall, which is no small thing.

* Jon Ralston, who's been hounding Sharron Angle, comes through with another report on some very bizarre associations.

* Eric Kleefeld wonders whether Angle would use, or even touch, any computer hardware produced by Intel Corporation, given that it supports gay rights.

* But is Angle making under-the-radar gains? Jim Geraghty reports that Angle's campaign has quietly been sinking some surprisingly big money into ads, countering Reid's ongoing blitz.

* Justin Elliott wonders why we haven't heard a peep about the fact that Muslims have been praying inside the Pentagon since 9/11.

* And Markos Moulitsas hits one of this blog's pet points: No matter how much Dems scream about GOP obstructionism, it works politically for Republicans on several levels.

What else is happening?

With a major battle over the Bush tax cuts looming this fall, top Democrats are formulating a strategy that rests heavily on making the case that letting the tax cuts expire is in fact a Republican tax hike -- because the GOP set the sunset date to begin with, aides tell me.

The strategy is an effort to turn the table on Republicans, by turning their primary argument against them. Republicans have aggressively framed the debate in advance by denouncing Dem plans to let the Bush tax cuts expire -- even those for the rich -- as a massive Dem tax hike that will further crush the faltering economy.

But Dems are planning to hit back hard by pointing out that Republicans are the ones who built in the sunset date of December 31, 2010 for the Bush tax cuts, all in order to conceal their true long term impact.

"Any tax increase is a Bush tax increase because the Republicans sunsetted the tax cuts to hide their true cost -- which will add nearly $700 billion to the deficit," a Democratic aide says, previewing the coming strategy.

Democratic aides hope this will resonate with another key argument: That the GOP's zeal to keep the tax cuts show Republicans don't care about the deficit.

To prove their point, Democratic aides have poured through the record and dug up quotes of Dems warning that Republicans had installed a sunset date in order to obscure the true impact of the tax cuts.

In the wake of today's disappointing jobs numbers, a bunch of people around the Web have been lamenting that Dems will take it on the chin for the bad economy even while Republicans have done everything they can to block Dems from implementing their solutions.

That's true. But there's another layer of perversity to consider here that makes the situation even worse: The sputtering recovery is actually making it tougher politically over time for Dems to take new steps to solve the problem. The sluggish recovery has undermined public confidence in the Dems' general approach to solving the problem, making Dems more reluctant to attempt the next round of ambitious solutions. That, in turn, insures that the jobs numbers remain grim. And so on.

As Josh Marshall notes today, it's getting tougher to avoid the conclusion that Dems erred badly by not passing a larger stimulus package:

[I]t was always clear there was only going to be one real bite at this apple. And it just wasn't enough. Why the White House predicted a max out at 8.5% unemployment I'll never know since that was not only a politically unhelpful number, it was also deeply unrealistic. I suspect a lot of Democrats are going to go down to defeat because of it.

What makes this even worse is the perverse dynamic I noted above. Republicans have pursued a very deliberate strategy to feed public pessimism about Big Government's ability to lift us out of the doldrums, pointing to the sputtering recovery as proof that the Dems underlying philosophy has been discredited.

The result is that it's even less likely that Dems will risk taking "another bite at this apple," as Josh puts it. The public doesn't focus on the details, and the failure to pass an ambitious enough stimulus has ensured that the Dem solution fell short of expectations, which paradoxically has left the public increasingly pessimistic about govenment spending as the best means to fuel the recovery. That in turn led Dems to conclude that further ambitious government action is politically unfeasible.

In other words, Dems won't reach for the sword that can cut this Gordian Knot. As bad as GOP obstructionism has been, Dems may also be caught in a trap of their own making.

UPDATE, 2;03 p.m.: I perhaps should have been clearer that the stimulus has clearly made things better than they otherwise might have been. The point is that perversely enough, its falure to meet expectations risks undermining confidence in the governing philosophy underlying it, making further action harder. I've tweaked the above to clarify.

Sharron Angle has taken some extreme positions, but this one is remarkable even by her standards: She said on a candidate questionnaire that she would refuse political contributions from a private company that backs equal rights for gays and extends benefits to partners of gay employees.

Angle laid out this position in a candidate questionnaire that she filled out for the Washington-based Government is not God PAC.

In question 35A of the questionnaire, Angle was asked:

Would you refuse PAC money from those who are fundamentally opposed to your views on social issues?

Angle checked the Yes box. The questionnaire then asked:

In reference to question 35A, Intel Corporation supports "equal rights for gays" and offers benefits to "partners" of homosexual employees. Would you refuse funds from this corporate PAC?

Angle again checked the Yes box.

The questionnaire was first obtained by the Associated Press, which did a story about it without noting this question and answer from Angle. The AP story noted other eyebrow-raising answers in the questionnaire, such as her support for clergy making political endorsements.

A copy of the full questionnaire is right here. The answer to the question on gays was first noted in passing by Nevada Journalist Jon Ralston.

Angle's position is striking. It's one thing to oppose gay marriage, or to oppose equal rights for gays. It's quite another to refuse to accept campaign contributions from a company that chooses of its own free will to support gay rights or extend benefits to partners of its own employees.

The Republican strategy has been to seize on the ailing economy to feed public pessimism about the ability of Big Government to fix the economy -- and to revive the old canard that government is the problem, not the solution -- and Republicans are pointing to today's disappointing jobs numbers to press the case.

Here's Eric Cantor:

"For the last 18 months, Republicans have focused on cutting spending and creating jobs offering better alternatives than the Democrat majority. Now, President Obama is set to preside over one of the largest tax increases in American history, but there is a better way. Washington has a spending problem, and the policies of the Obama Administration and the Pelosi/Reid Congress have caused the size and reach of the government to explode. What the President touts as the 'Recovery Summer' is built upon the misguided notion that government expansion creates prosperity, when in reality it creates debt and deficits. We need to cut spending immediately and House Republicans, whom have already offered hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts, will continue to fight against the Democrats' spending spree and for enabling small business people to invest and grow so that we can get America working again."

And here's Michael Steele, with a backhanded barb at Timothy Geithner's ill-timed Op ed entitled "welcome to the recovery":

"For the millions of Americans who are unable to find work, this White House's empty cheerleading rings hollow. President Obama has been more focused on growing government than growing jobs, and it shows. The cumulative effect of his $2.5 trillion health care takeover, his overreaching financial regulatory bill, and his looming small business tax hike has created a climate of uncertainty that has left employers unable to expand their payrolls. If persistently high unemployment, crushing debt, and a continued assault on the private economy is the 'recovery' President Obama is welcoming the American people to, Congressional Democrats will be the ones getting a pink slip in November."

Republicans are pressing the case that Dem spending and regulatory policies are to blame for impeding the recovery, in hopes that voters forget what landed us in this mess in the first place. Dems appear to have decided that more government action to create jobs is not politically feasible, forcing them to gamely insist that the current policies have put us on the road to recovery. But then bad jobs numbers -- and the reality on the ground -- allow Republicans to argue that Dems are out of touch with how badly their policies are failing, feeding a sense that they aren't in touch and aren't in control.

If the Dem argument is that we can't hand the keys to Republicans because they drove us into a ditch last time, the Republican argument is that Dems had their shot at driving and have lost control of the wheel -- and don't even know it.

* Another jobs report, another spin war: It's due out this morning, and economists forecast some 87,000 lost last month and an unemployment rate ticking up from 9.5 percent to 9.6 percent.

"Nonsense": Senator George Voinovich on the GOP claim that tax cuts for the rich aren't a cost: "You don't need to pay for them? To me, that's nonsense."

Most of the division over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts has been among Dems, but Voinovich's broadside is the first hint of GOP opposition to the extension.

* Indys giving up on government? At the start of the Obama presidency independents were very receptive to an expansive role for the Federal government in our lives. Now the conventional wisdom is that indys are giving up on Big Government. This seems like a dynamic worth digging into a bit more deeply. Paging Nate...

* Dems keep milking that state aid: The DNC goes after John Boehner's suggestion that cops and teachers are "special interests" with a web video featuring teachers hitting back, another sign of how intent Dems are on milking their successful passage of billions in state aid -- over GOP opposition -- for maximum political gain.

* But: No end to the skittishness as some vulnerable Dems grumble that the vote for state aid could be a political loser that reminds voters of Dem overspending.

* The alternate reality known as the U.S. Senate: Mitch McConnell congratulates himself for successfully filibustering the Senate to a halt, but when Al Franken makes a few funny faces in his direction, McConnell erupts in fury at this unacceptable breach of Senatorial decorum.

* But: In fairness, Franken did apologize and does seem to think he stepped over the line.

* Didn't some folks predict this would happen? The DSCC prepares to slash the amount of campaign cash it's giving to Blanche Lincoln, as it becomes clearer that she's likely a goner.

* But...but...Obama is Spock! Now that the Gulf spill has been halted, Peter Baker notes that it may not have destroyed Obama's presidency after all, and points out that (unlike other major crises) Obama has been able to continue moving forward with his agenda.

* Also in the above link: Many will dismiss this as spin, but Rahm Emanuel argues that the public, in retrospect, may decide it isn't a big deal that Obama didn't respond to the spill by pounding the podium with rage or by weeping hot tears into the Gulf.

* Never again: Joe Klein lashes himself mercilessly for his passing support of the Iraq invasion and doesn't hide behind the phony-baloney argument that it wasn't clear at the time that the war rationale was transparent BS.

Klein writes: "The issue then was as clear as it is now." Refreshing.

* Toomey on the fringe? The Joe Sestak campaign is out with a new Web video that hits Pat Toomey for his ties to Angle, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin. Fun stuff, though it's unclear who the audience is here or what kind of resonance this has for Pennsylvania voters worried about the economy.

* And Sharron Angle's holy war continues: Now it emerges that she believes clergy should be allowed to endorse political candidates and that gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt children.

What else is happening?

* Elena Kagan is confirmed by the Senate, 63-37, almost exactly the margin everyone has predicted for months. Which makes you wonder what all those hearings were really for in the first place.

* Harry Reid decries GOP tactics as the "Charlie Brown theory of government," a reference, of course, to Lucy and the football.

* Paul Kane reports that Mitch McConnell stanunchly defended the filibuster today because it enabled him to practically grind the Senate to a halt to block Obama's agenda, and vowed more of the same.

* Here's some video of McConnell saying that if Obama wants compromise, he needs to move to the "center right."

* Steve Benen translates McConnell's idea of compromise: "I'm willing to compromise with you, unless it means you getting some of what you want, in which case, forget it."

* But: McConnell says there are some potential areas of common ground. For instance: Deficit reduction.

* A small problem for Illinois Dem Senate candiate Alexi Giannoulias? The NRSC is circulating video of Dem Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago telling local news he's "not sold" on Giannoulias as of yet.

* Takedown of the day: Ezra Klein versus Chris Dodd over the latter's puzzling opposition to filibuster reform.

* Matt Yglesias keeps hitting the crucial point that the current level of filibustering is a recent development, and filibuster reform would be restoring what once was closer to the norm.

* Bold pronouncement of the day: William Saletan says Newt Gingrich's anti-mosque campaign has allied him with Osama Bin Laden.

* John Boehner says the Dem ethics travails may not have a big impact on the midterms.

* Brian Beutler gets inside the murky workings of the White House deficit commission and finds that GOP opposition to tax increases is making entitlement cuts more likely.

* Daily Kos is back in the polling game after hiring the Dem firm Public Policy Polling, which will be of interest to insiders, since Daily Kos has a history of surveying under-polled races and conversation-driving topics.

* And Palin Nation is an irony-free zone: Sarah Palin claims, wait for it, that we're in our current fix because Obama wasn't thoroughly vetted before the election.

What else is happening?

I'd be genuinely curious to know how David Broder would answer the following question: How much are Republicans to blame for the current dysfunction in the Senate?

Broder has a column today entitled: "The Senate, running on empty." He says the real problem is "the absence of leaders who embody and can inculcate the institutional pride that once was the hallmark of membership in the Senate." And:

Its best leaders have been men who were capable, at least on occasion, of rising above partisanship or parochial interest and summoning the will to tackle overriding challenges in a way that almost shamed their colleagues out of their small-mindedness.

Many forces -- from the money chase, to the party realignments, to the intrusiveness of 24-hour media -- have weakened the institutional bonds of that Senate. But it is the absence of the ethic embodied and enforced by its leaders that is most crippling.

Jon Chait dismisses this diagnosis, arguing convincingly that the problems are institutional and historical. But for the sake of argument, let's assume leadership is the problem. Shouldn't we say which leaders are to blame?

The words "Mitch McConnell" don't appear in Broder's article. The words "Harry Reid," however, do appear in passing, when Broder writes that Reid "threw in the towel on energy legislation." Broder points to this as another sign of Senate dysfunction. But he doesn't say anything about the lockstep GOP opposition to energy legislation that was partly responsible for forcing Reid to throw in the towel.

Yes, Republicans said Dems were to blame for GOP opposition to energy reform because Dems didn't do this, that or the other thing. Maybe Broder agrees with this. Maybe he thinks Republican opposition was indefensible. The point is, he doesn't say.

On MSNBC just now, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen made it explicit:

Dems will argue that the ethical travails of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters prove that Dems are making good on their promise to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Congress. Even if it's their own who are swirling around that drain.

Also: Van Hollen rolled out another line of attack: He contrasted the Dem leadership's response to the Rangel mess favorably with the GOP leadership's proposal in 2004 to change the rules to allow Tom DeLay to remain in a leadership post if he were charged by a grand jury.

Republicans have signaled that they will pound away relentlessly at the Rangel and Waters affairs as proof that Dems failed to clean house. Asked if this is a liability, Van Hollen answered:

"We've actually strengthened the ethics process. The reason people are hearing about the cases of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters is because we put in place accountability measures to make sure that we have high standards and that people are held accountable to those standards.

"If you recall back when the Republicans are in charge, and Tom DeLay was about to be indicted, the Republicans actually weakened their rules. They changed their rules to say, even after he's indicted, he can still be the Republican leader.

"We were very clear. Charlie Rangel is not the chair of the Ways and Means Committee. He stepped down as a result of allegations. And now we're going through what is a very much strengthened process, with more outside oversight."

In other words, Dems are hoping to make lemons into lemonade.

That seems to be one of the core political questions in the wake of the overturning of Proposition 8. How can the president continue opposing gay marriage while supporting the decision to strike down Prop 8, on the grounds that it's "discriminatory," as the White House said in a statement last night?

Making it more dicey, the White House statement also said that the president continues to push for "full equality" for gay and lesbian couples. How can that not include support for gay marriage?

This morning, senior White House adviser David Axelrod struggled to defend this position on MSNBC. Here's what he said:

"The president opposed Proposition 8 at the time. He felt that it was divisive. He felt that it was mean-spirited, and he opposed it at the time. So we reiterated that position yesterday. The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control. He's supports civil unions, and that's been his position throughout. So nothing has changed."

But as John Aravosis says, everything has changed.

Here's another problem: In the interview with MSNBC this morning, Axelrod clarified that Obama believes that gay marriage is an issue for states to decide, and it's true that Obama opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, which codified a federal ban on gay marriage.

But as Michael Shear notes, his administration has yet to actively seek a repeal of DOMA, and is acquiescing to Congressional leaders who insist that the current political reality dictates that repeal is impossible. And his administration continues to defend DOMA in court against appeals.

Also: Obama has in the past claimed there's no inconsistency between opposing Prop 8 and opposing gay marriage by arguing he thinks gay marriage is wrong but we shouldn't be prohibiting it legally.