Today’s edition of quick hits:

* A foiled plot: “U.S. officials on Tuesday said that they had foiled an elaborate terrorist plot backed by factions of the Iranian government aimed at assassinating the Saudi ambassador to Washington. At a news conference, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said two Iranians have been charged with conspiracy to murder a foreign official and conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism, among other charges.”

* Quite a breakthrough: “Israel and Hamas, two of the Middle East’s most implacable foes, announced Tuesday they had reached a tentative agreement brokered by Egypt to exchange more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for an Israeli soldier held captive for more than five years.”

* Oops: “Europe’s efforts to stem the sovereign debt crisis suffered an embarrassing and potentially costly setback on Tuesday night when the Slovak Parliament failed to approve the expansion of the euro rescue fund, a development that appeared likely to bring down the government but not to derail the measure…. [T]he country’s leading opposition party said it would be willing to discuss support for the fund after the government fell, pointing to eventual approval of the deal.”

* Occupy activists face arrest in Boston and D.C.

* White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley will give up his post at the end of next year, whether President Obama wins re-election or not.

* A gem of a piece from Dave Roberts: “One sign of Republicans’ success in hyping the Solyndra scandal is that they’ve got everybody calling it a scandal. Despite the turgid atmospherics, though, there still hasn’t been any official wrongdoing established, or even charged. It’s like an optical illusion of a scandal, a trick of the media light. Or, to mix metaphors, a hard candy shell with no nut inside.”

* Good piece from John Podesta and John Halpin, arguing that the U.S. Constitution “is inherently progressive.”

* The Republican “war on voting” has a very significant impact on college students.

* NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) doesn’t want any tax increases on the wealthy and has been an opponent of the Occupy Wall Street movement. So naturally, Ralph Nader, a few weeks after praising Sarah Palin’s intelligence, is advocating a Bloomberg presidential campaign. I don’t think it’s my imagination that Nader is getting crazier.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

The Senate will take up the American Jobs Act tonight, and no one needs a crystal ball to know the bill won’t come close to getting 60 votes. But let’s take a moment to mention exactly what will be voted on tonight.

This is not a vote on final passage of the bill. It’s not even a cloture vote to end debate so that there can be a vote on final passage. Tonight, rather, is on the motion to proceed. The Senate is an awkward institution with often-incomprehensible procedures, but motions to proceed are among the more frustrating wastes of time in this institution.

In effect, what the Senate will vote on tonight is whether they can have a debate on the jobs bill. That’s all this is, a vote to allow a discussion. Republicans will, of course, filibuster the motion to proceed — a concept that would have been considered patently ridiculous not too terribly long ago — even before having an opportunity to filibuster the bill itself.

When members of the Democratic caucus — Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin, and Joe Lieberman — vote with Republicans tonight, they’re not only rejecting a credible jobs bill, they’re also rejecting an opportunity to talk about a credible jobs bill. Republicans and conservative Dems are, as a practical matter, saying that the notion of even debating the American Jobs Act is so offensive, they can’t even allow members to begin the discussion.

A couple of years ago, when the Senate was getting ready to bring a health care reform bill to the floor, Republicans vowed to filibuster the motion to proceed then, too. Nebraska’s Ben Nelson said at the time, “Why would you stop senators from doing the job they’re elected to do — debate, consider amendments, and take action on an issue affecting every American?”

Two years later, he will join every Republican in killing a jobs bill — during a jobs crisis — stopping senators from “doing the job they’re elected to do.”

The latest in a series of debates for Republican presidential candidates starts tonight at 8 p.m. ET, in New Hampshire, and under the circumstances, this one might actually have some significance to the race.

Eight Republicans candidates will take the stage tonight in New Hampshire for the seventh debate of the GOP nomination fight. But, the dynamics of this debate, which is being sponsored by the Washington Post and Bloomberg News will be different for several reasons.

First, the debate is focused exclusively on the economy, which should allow for a more detailed dive into each of candidates’ thinking on an issue that is at the top of voters’ minds.

Second, businessman Herman Cain has gone from an afterthought (at best) in past debates to a centerpiece of this set-to. How Cain handles himself and how former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry approach him will be a fascinating — and new — storyline.

One thing viewers will notice is who’s at center-stage — literally. Where candidates are positioned is determined by polling, so while Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have been standing next to one another in the last few debates, tonight, Perry will by bumped over one slot, leaving Romney to stand alongside his next closest competitor, Herman Cain.

This will probably interfere with Perry’s ability to reach Romney and throttle him, but I’m still cautiously optimistic that the Texas governor will be better prepared to go after the frontrunner tonight. Yesterday’s hard-hitting video from the Perry campaign certainly set the stage for a confrontation. Jamil Smith argued yesterday that Perry should have learned a lesson from Pawlenty — attacking before a debate, then flubbing the offensive during the debate, is a bad idea — and it’ll be worth watching to see just how aggressive the former frontrunner is.

And what about Cain? He vowed earlier today, “I’m going after Romney…. I don’t need to go after Perry.”

Oh, and Bachmann, Santorum, Paul, Gingrich, and Huntsman will be there, too.

With the Iowa caucuses 12 weeks from today, and the race at a fairly volatile stage, tonight might manage to be slightly less sleep-inducing than the last few.

Republicans have been preoccupied for much of the year with those Americans who don’t make enough money to qualify for a federal income tax burden. Some are working-class families who fall below the tax threshold; some are unemployed; some are students; and some are retired. These Americans still pay sales taxes, state taxes, local taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare/Medicaid taxes, and in many instances, property taxes, but not federal income taxes.

This, apparently, annoys the right to no end. It’s why all kinds of Republican officials — including Mitt Romney and Rick Perry — want to “fix” what they see as a “problem,” even if it means raising taxes on those who can least afford it.

This argument is even manifesting itself in a new “movement” of sorts, intended to respond to progressive activists calling for economic justice.

Conservative activists have created a Tumblr called “We are the 53 percent” that’s meant to be a counterpunch to the viral “We are the 99 percent” site that’s become a prominent symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Tumblr is supposed to represent the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes, and its assumption is that the Wall Street protesters are part of the 46 percent of the country who don’t. “We are the 53 percent” was originally the brainchild of Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.org, who worked together with Josh Trevino, communications director for the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, and conservative filmmaker Mike Wilson to develop the concept, according to Trevino.

The overriding message is that the protesters have failed to take personal responsibility, blaming their economic troubles on others.

There are all kinds of problems with the right’s approach here, including the fact that they seem to want to increase working-class taxes and also seem entirely unaware of the fact that it was Republican tax cuts that pushed so many out of income-tax eligibility in the first place. There’s also the small matter of some of those claiming to be in “the 53 percent” aren’t actually shouldering a federal income tax burden at all, but are apparently unaware of that fact.

But putting that aside, take a look at Erick Erickson’s argument, presented in a hand-written message posted to the Tumblr blog: “I work three jobs. I have a house I can’t sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don’t blame Wall Street. Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.”

Just for heck of it, let’s take this one at a time.

The very idea that Erickson works “three jobs” is rather foolish.

Blaming financial industry corruption and mismanagement for Erickson’s troubles selling his house is actually quite reasonable.

If Erickson’s reference to “family insurance costs” is in reference to health care premiums, he’ll be glad to know the Affordable Care Act passed, and includes all kinds of breaks for small businesses like his.

And the notion that victims of a global economic collapse, who are seeking some relief from a system stacked in favor of the wealthy, are “whiners” is so blisteringly stupid, it amazes me someone would present the argument in public.

If there are any actual “whiners” in this scenario, shouldn’t the label go to millionaires who shudder at the idea of paying Clinton-era tax rates?

There’s been at least some discussion this year about the “sabotage” question — whether Republicans are deliberately hurting the country, holding back the economy on purpose, for the express purpose of undermining the Obama presidency. It is, to be sure, a provocative point, and many Democrats have steered clear of it.

But in recent months, the argument has gained mainstream traction, in part because GOP tactics demanded it. This led to a striking email, sent to the Obama for America list this afternoon, from Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Obama/Biden 2012. The message reads, in part:

“The U.S. Senate is supposed to vote on the American Jobs Act as early as tonight.

“It’s a bill that will put people to work immediately, and it contains proposals that members of both parties have said in the past that they’d support.

“But Senate Republicans want to block it. Not because they have a plan that creates jobs right now — not one Republican, in Congress or in the presidential race, does. They only have a political plan.

“Their strategy is to suffocate the economy for the sake of what they think will be a political victory. They think that the more folks see Washington taking no action to create jobs, the better their chances in the next election. So they’re doing everything in their power to make sure nothing gets done.” [emphasis added]

The message goes on from there to talk about the merits of the White House jobs bill, urging recipients to call Capitol Hill. Regardless, this is, as near as I can tell, the first time anyone associated with the president has broached the sabotage question at all.

And that strikes me as rather remarkable.

At least Messina is in good company. Michael Cohen, a senior fellow at American Security Project, apparently following up on a discussion I launched last November, recently said, “We’re far past the point where there is reason to doubt that the GOP is purposely trying to harm” the economy.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, believes “some” Republicans “want the economy to actually fail” on purpose. Paul Krugman recently said in his column, “[I]t’s hard to avoid the suspicion that G.O.P. leaders actually want the economy to perform badly.” Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was recently asked whether it’s possible Republicans would sabotage the economy. “Well, let me be honest,” he said. “It has occurred to me that this is a possibility.” E.J. Dionne Jr., Dan Gross,David Frum, and Andrew Sullivan have all raised the same concerns.

A few months ago, Kevin Drum wondered whether this will ever be “a serious talking point,” adding, “No serious person in a position of real influence really wants to accuse an entire party of cynically trying to tank the economy, after all.”

Given recent events — the debt-ceiling scandal, the GOP-driven downgrade, the Republican rejection of any efforts to boost the economy, the GOP leadership’s letter to Bernanke pleading with him to let the economy suffer, the repeated threats of government shutdowns, tonight’s death of the American Jobs Act — it appears all kinds of serious people are at least entertaining the possibility.

As a result, it at least seems like a question worthy of some debate. Given the circumstances, there’s ample reason for credible observers to at least ponder the possibility and ask Republican leaders for an explanation for their behavior.

On paper, tonight’s vote in the Senate should be one of the year’s biggest no-brainers.

In the midst of a jobs crisis and intense public demand for congressional action, senators will have a chance to weigh in on the American Jobs Act. Most Americans support its provisions; it enjoys strong support from economists; it includes ideas from both parties; and the CBO found it will even lower the deficit over the next decade. All told, the plan would likely add about 1.9 million jobs to an economy that desperately needs them. Opponents have simply run out of excuses.

What politician in his/her right mind is going to reject a sensible jobs bill when unemployment is still at crisis levels? Apparently, the answer is a majority in both the House and Senate.

The House, with a radicalized Republican majority, is almost certainly a lost cause anyway, but the goal has been to get a vote in the Senate first, where at least there’s an ostensible Democratic majority. Republicans, who’ve already effectively broken the institution, will filibuster the jobs bill. Why? Because they’re Republicans, and they don’t believe in giving legislation up-or-down votes.

But if the Democratic caucus sticks together, they can at least ensure that a majority of the Senate is on record supporting the bill. That’s not going to happen, either.

Democrats would need all 53 of their members to vote yes along with seven Republicans, and already three members of the Democratic caucus have said they will vote no. Sen. Joseph Manchin of West Virginia questions the effectiveness of the package, wondering whether we’ll get the bang from the buck. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., both don’t like the way Democratic leaders have proposed to pay for this bill with a new 5.6 percent surtax on any personal income over $1 million. They say that this is not the time to be raising taxes on anyone, including millionaires.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but these members certainly look like cowards. “This is not the time to be raising taxes on anyone”? The plan calls for millionaires and billionaires — and no one else — to pay a little more starting in 2013. Nelson and Lieberman are not illiterate; they surely know the basic details of the bill. But Nelson is afraid of losing next year, and Lieberman is, well, Lieberman, so both will reject a popular jobs bill — and a popular tax increase — during a jobs crisis.

Making matters slightly worse, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) will apparently be in her home state of New Hampshire tonight to pick up an award she’s won. She supports the American Jobs Act, but Shaheen apparently doesn’t intend to show up for work tonight.

Are there any Republicans willing to do the right thing? Even one moderate who may want to create some jobs? No.

As a result, the chances of the jobs bill even getting 50 votes has apparently disappeared.

Pollster Stanley Greenberg told Greg Sargent this morning that Dems who oppose the American Jobs Act are making a big mistake — it will not only hurt the party going into 2012, it will hurt these individual members’ standing with their own constituents.

Some Dems are panicky about 2012; I get that. But here’s a tip Democratic lawmakers may want to keep in mind: voters generally aren’t impressed when Dems vote against their own party’s popular ideas to create jobs.

For every voter — left or right — who’s inclined to blame President Obama for unemployment, the last several weeks have been illustrative. The president has done absolutely everything that could be asked of him — his White House crafted a serious plan; he sold it well to a joint session; he hit the road to present it to voters; and he’s used the kind of arguments the “professional left” has been urging him to make.

And yet, House Republicans are still extremists, Senate Republicans are both radical and obstructionist, and a few Senate Democrats are more comfortable cowering under the table in a fetal position, hoping the GOP isn’t too mean to them.

Obama, in other words, isn’t the problem.

A new Washington Post/Bloomberg poll asked Americans whether they would support or oppose a variety of ideas to reduce the budget deficit. As it turns out, Republicans don’t exactly have their finger on the pulse of the American mainstream.

Several ideas were wildly unpopular, including raising taxes on the middle class, reducing Social Security benefits, and reducing Medicare benefits. But a couple of ideas enjoyed broader support — most of the public approves of reducing military spending and a large majority (68%) wants to see tax increases on those who make $250,000 or more per year.

To help drive the point home, here are the results in the latest homemade chart:

Those popular ideas on the right-hand side of the chart? Those are the proposals Republicans won’t consider. GOP officials are, however, in favoring ending Medicare and raising taxes on the middle class, which doesn’t seem to enjoy similar levels of support.

Perhaps even more interesting, the same poll asked self-identified Republicans the same question, and found that a 54% majority of GOP voters support raising taxes on the wealthy.

And this poll only asked about those at $250,000 and up. The latest Dem proposal would affect millionaires and billionaires — and no one else. It’s likely the Post/Bloomberg poll would have been tilted even more in a progressive direction had it asked about the current Dem plan.

Remember, among congressional Republicans, even talking about raising taxes on the wealthy represents some kind of dangerous “class warfare” that threatens to hurt the economy and pit Americans against one another. The fact that President Obama has actually proposed such a change in tax policy puts him, in the GOP’s eyes, slightly to the left of Karl Marx.

And yet, it appears “class warfare” is pretty popular, both with the American mainstream and with Republican voters.

Also remember, this isn’t new, and it’s not as if this poll is some sort of outlier. Every national poll conducted this year has shown broad support for new tax increases.

GOP officials in Washington like to pretend the public agrees with them on tax policy. Reality shows otherwise.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that won’t necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* A new NBC News/Marist poll in Iowa shows Mitt Romney leading the Republican presidential field with 23%, which is odd given how little attention Romney has paid to the state. Herman Cain is a close second with 20%. The other candidates in double digits are Ron Paul at 11%, and Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann tied for fourth with 10% each.

* NBC News/Marist also asked New Hampshire Republicans and found Romney with a huge lead, running first with 44%. Cain and Paul are tied for second with 13%, and no other candidate reached double digits in the state.

* Another Granite State poll, this one from the Harvard and St. Anselm New Hampshire Institutes of Politics, shows Romney ahead, but not by as large a margin. This one shows Romney first with 38%, followed by Cain with 20%.

* In a very impressive display, Elizabeth Warren’s (D) Senate campaign in Massachusetts has already raised $3.15 million. Sen. Scott Brown (R), meanwhile, raised $1.55 million in the third quarter and has $10.5 million in the bank.

* The new Washington Post/Bloomberg poll shows Romney leading the GOP field at the national level with 24%, with Cain second at 16%, and Perry third with 13%. No other candidate was in double digits.

* In one of the nation’s closest Senate races, a new Quinnipiac poll shows former Gov. Tim Kaine (D) with a one-point lead over former Sen. George Allen (R) in Virginia, 45% to 44%.

* In Wisconsin, Dems formally announced they will launch a recall campaign against Gov. Scott Walker (R). The search for petition signatures will begin in November.

* And on a related note, Wisconsin state Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R), who partnered with Walker to strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights, kicked off his U.S. Senate campaign this morning.

In case anyone needed a reminder about the kind of forces Democrats will be up against next year, the Koch brothers are putting together their plan to help buy the 2012 elections.

The billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch plan to steer more than $200 million — potentially much more — to conservative groups ahead of Election Day, POLITICO has learned. That puts their libertarian-leaning network in the same league as the most active of the groups in the more establishment-oriented network conceived last year by veteran GOP operatives Rove and Ed Gillespie, which plans to raise $240 million.

That’s financing for an awful lot of attack ads, nearly all of which will be dishonest, and which a whole lot of voters will believe.

It’ll be interesting, though, to see whether Democrats are able to make the Koch money toxic. We learned last week that there’s ample evidence that Koch Industries made “improper payments” (read: bribes) to “secure contracts in six countries dating back to 2002.” One of those countries, it turns out, is Iran, which has purchased millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment from the Kochs’ company, despite a trade ban and the U.S. labeling Iran a state sponsor of terrorism. The Kochs’ business also stand accused of having “rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.”

This is the money that’s going to buy elections for Republicans?

Over the summer, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) declared, “Plain and simple, if you do business with Iran, you cannot do business with America.”

Follow-up question for Cantor, who’s accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Koch Industries: those who do business with Iran cannot do business with America, but can they partner with the Republican Party to swing an election cycle?

Gallup released a poll yesterday offering a sense of where the race for the Republican presidential nomination currently stands, at least at the national level. The angle that drew the most attention was Herman Cain’s “surge,” but that’s not what stood out for me. Here’s where the field currently stands:

1. Mitt Romney: 20% (down 4 points from September)
2. Herman Cain: 18% (up 13 points)
3. Rick Perry: 13% (down 16 points)
4. Ron Paul: 8% (down 5 points)
5. Newt Gingrich: 7% (up two points)
6. Michele Bachmann: 5% (no change)
7. Rick Santorum: 3% (up one point)
8. Jon Huntsman: 2% (up one point)

The number of Republican and Republican-leaning voters who are undecided, meanwhile, has doubled over the last month to 20%, leaving it, in effect, tied for first.

Media coverage of this poll generally points to Cain’s numbers, and it’s clear the former pizza company executive is in the midst of a boomlet. Of course, it’s not the first time — back in June, Cain was also running second in a national Gallup and was one of only two candidates in double digits. Soon after, Cain faltered badly.

What seems more interesting, however, is just how weak a frontrunner Mitt Romney really is. Even as Rick Perry’s support collapses, and even when the rest of the GOP field is largely ridiculous, the former Massachusetts governor is still stuck with 20% — down a few points from a month earlier. He’s reclaimed the lead, but he backed into it.

As the Gallup report noted, in nearly every instance since 1959, by this point in the race, the Republican frontrunner enjoyed support of at least 41% before going on to win the party’s nomination. Romney hasn’t even been able to reach 30% in any Gallup poll this year.

How weak a frontrunner is Romney? Tim Pawlenty admitted yesterday he regrets dropping out — and he’s one of Romney’s highest-profile supporters. Hell, Pawlenty’s the national co-chair of the Romney campaign, and now he wishes he were still running against Romney,

Jon Chait recently noted, “I don’t see how Republicans could be making this any more plain. They do not want to nominate Mitt Romney.”

To be sure, they’re likely to nominate him anyway, because there’s no one else worthy of the nod. But when was the last time the Republican Party went into a general election with a nominee so much of the party simply didn’t like?

In news that should surprise absolutely no one, it appears the Murray/Hensarling super-committee isn’t even close to reaching any kind of deal.

After weeks of secret meetings, the 12-member deficit-cutting panel established under last summer’s budget and debt deal appears no closer to a breakthrough than when talks began last month.

While the panel members themselves aren’t doing much talking, other lawmakers, aides and lobbyists closely tracking the so-called “supercommittee” are increasingly skeptical, even pessimistic, that the panel will be able to meet its assigned goal of at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over the next 10 years.

Remember all of those predictions that said the super-committee would fail because Republicans would never go for a compromise that included tax increases on the wealthy? Well, as it turns out, the super-committee is failing because Republicans refuse to consider a compromise that includes tax increases on the wealthy. Try not to be surprised.

Jonathan Bernstein makes the case that a deal could, in theory, come together, and that these preliminary reports of failure may not reflect what’s still possible. Perhaps. But so long as GOP leaders refuse to even consider the possibility of additional tax revenue, it’s hard to imagine these negotiations producing anything meaningful.

All of this offers me an excuse to mention a recent report from Ryan Grim who noted what happens if/when the super-committee comes up short. The fear, of course, is that the “trigger” mechanism would kick in and force a variety of painful cuts policymakers in both parties would like to avoid. The “trigger,” however, wouldn’t get pulled right away, and wouldn’t have to be pulled at all.

The supposed across-the-board cuts aren’t slated to go into effect until January 1, 2013. Put more simply: They might not ever go into effect.

The automatic cuts — known as sequestration — are often discussed in Washington as if they’re certain, an inevitability that Congress won’t be able to prevent. But on the same day those cuts would go into effect, the Bush tax rates, which President Obama extended for two years, are set to expire, leading to an “automatic” tax hike that is treated in Washington as anything but inevitable…. A lame duck Congress would have two months after the 2012 election to stave off the expiration of both that tax policy and the super committee’s “automatic” cuts.

The point of the super-committee was to create a dynamic in which both sides would be eager reach an agreement to avoid dire consequences. But given the circumstances, failure remains an option.

It seems unlikely that there’s a sizable group of Americans who take Lou Dobbs seriously, but he made a comment yesterday that’s worth highlighting.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs falsely claimed that “every major economist” thinks Obama’s American Jobs Act is “a continuation of” the “nonsense” that is “excess confidence in government power to do something over the economy.”

With the Senate poised to move on the American Jobs Act, let’s take a moment to note how completely wrong Dobbs really is.

To say that “every major economist” has dismissed the jobs bill as “nonsense” is precisely backwards — the clear majority of economists believe the American Jobs Act would boost economic growth and lower the unemployment rate.

This isn’t even controversial. The day after President Obama’s joint-session speech, the AP reported, “A tentative thumbs-up. That was the assessment Thursday night from economists who offered mainly positive reviews of President Barack Obama’s $450 billion plan to stimulate job creation.” Economists at the Economic Policy Institute published a very favorable response to the plan, and economists at Macroeconomic Advisers projected that the White House plan “would give a significant boost to GDP and employment over the near-term.”

Two weeks ago, Bloomberg News surveyed a group of major economists and found that they believe the jobs bill would “help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year.” While the economists surveyed had widely divergent estimates, the overall consensus among the experts is that the Americans Jobs Act would create hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs.

What’s more, while Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and CBO chief Doug Elmendorf didn’t explicitly endorse the American Jobs Act, they expressed public support for the concept behind the plan.

In the meantime, independent economists who’ve been asked to look at Republican job-creation ideas have found the GOP measures are largely meaningless and would have no discernible effect.

And yet, there’s Lou Dobbs, insisting that “every major economist” thinks the American Jobs Act is “nonsense.” If Dobbs wants to argue that economists are wrong, fine. If he wants to make the case that economists are relying on the wrong forecasting models, fine. Maybe he could argue that the entire profession has been taken over by liberals.

What he shouldn’t do is pretend fantasy is reality. Most economists, like most of the general public, believes the president’s jobs bill would help the economy. The right may find this inconvenient, but facts are sometimes stubborn.

White House officials, including President Obama, occasionally like to mention how much they agree with Mitt Romney on health care policy. David Axelrod recently said of the Republican frontrunner, “We got some good ideas from him.”

How literal was this sentiment? Michael Isikoff reports this morning on the direct role that Romney’s health care policy team played in helping shape Obama’s reform plan.

Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romney’s landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law, including recruiting some of Romney’s own health care advisers and experts to help craft the act now derided by Republicans as “Obamacare.”

The records, gleaned from White House visitor logs reviewed by NBC News, show that senior White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006, when the Republican presidential candidate was governor of Massachusetts. One of those meetings, on July 20, 2009, was in the Oval Office and presided over by President Barack Obama, the records show.

“The White House wanted to lean a lot on what we’d done in Massachusetts,” said Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney administration on health care and who attended five meetings at the Obama White House in 2009, including the meeting with the president. “They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.”

We’ve known from the beginning that Romney’s Massachusetts plan helped create the framework for the White House’s policy. Indeed, the so-called “RomneyCare” law is practically indistinguishable from the Affordable Care Act, including the controversial individual mandate.

But Isikoff’s report adds a new wrinkle. It was merely embarrassing for Romney when the president and West Wing officials would say they were inspired by the former governor’s health care law, but the realization that Romney’s own policy team was brought in to help point Obama and his aides in the right direction is more problematic for the GOP presidential candidate. It makes it that much more difficult for Romney to distance himself from the health care law the right hates with the heat of a thousand suns, and arguably strengthens the case that Romney has part-ownership over the national reform law.

In effect, Mitt Romney is the godfather of what Republicans call “ObamaCare.” It was Romney’s policy that created the blueprint for Obama’s policy, and it was Romney’s team that served as advisers to Obama’s team.

Given that there’s a Republican debate tonight, I’d be surprised if we don’t hear quite a bit more about this from Romney’s GOP rivals.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) surprised many last week when he got so fed up with Republican obstructionism, he took a rather bold step. Using a ruling from the chair to lower the boom, Reid effectively created a new rule: if a bill has overcome a filibuster on the motion to proceed, and then overcome another filibuster on the floor before a final vote, the minority can’t engage in another de facto filibuster with amendment stunts.

Today, the Senate leader explained the circumstances that led to his decision.

On Thursday morning, we seemed to be on the brink of passing a bill to curb unfair currency manipulation by the Chinese government, a practice that has cost millions of American manufacturing jobs over the past two decades. The bill — which is supported by business and labor interests — had garnered a bipartisan supermajority not just once but twice. With passage virtually assured, the minority reached for the only tool left to try and derail the bill, confronting us with a potentially unlimited number of votes on completely unrelated amendments. Voting on these amendments would require suspending the Senate’s rules — an obscure procedure that hadn’t been used frequently until this Congress and hasn’t been used successfully since 1941.

None of the amendments Republicans demanded were about policy…. Yet still we tried to reach a compromise with our Republican colleagues.

We offered votes on four amendments, and they wanted five. We offered five votes, and they wanted six. Finally, we offered votes on seven amendments, including a vote on an outdated version of President Obama’s American Jobs Act, with which Republicans were seeking to score political points. Still, Republicans refused. They came back with a demand for nine votes that required suspending the Senate’s rules. The same logic that allows for nine unstoppable motions to suspend the rules could lead to consideration of 99 such motions.

These details explain quite a bit.

The Senate minority’s ability to filibuster remains intact, and as the Nevada senator put it, last week’s developments “merely return the Senate to the regular order.”

Senate Republicans, as it turns out, don’t quite see it this way, and have vowed “they will retaliate” for Reid’s interference with their petty, partisan games. And in case you thought the upper chamber couldn’t get any more ridiculous than it already is, rest assured, it can get worse: “Republican aides say their bosses will now be even more reluctant to allow the Senate to conduct routine business by unanimous consent, forcing Reid to gather 60 votes for even the most mundane matters.”

The next question, I suppose, is how much longer policymakers will tolerate an untenable status quo. The Senate wasn’t designed to work this way; it didn’t use to work this way; and it simply can’t work this way.

At a certain level, it may not seem to matter much anymore, since the radicalized House majority makes lawmaking impossible anyway. Even if the Senate could be made less dysfunctional, any worthwhile legislation that would pass the chamber would die in the House, nominations notwithstanding.

But the nation still needs a functioning Senate, and it doesn’t have one. What’s needed now is not retaliation, but reform. If GOP leaders are disgusted that Dems prevented them from using the Senate as a toy last week, they should seek out Democratic leaders for discussions on how to make the institution less ridiculous. This won’t happen — Republicans don’t want to govern; they want to undermine confidence in America’s public institutions — but the possible result is a total breakdown of Washington’s ability to do anything at all.