You can say this about conservatives in the United Kingdom: they are a lot more upfront about the unhappy impact of their policies, per this report from the New York Times’ Julia Werdigier and Steven Castle:

Britons, many already weary of government austerity budgets that some economists blame for impeding the country’s recovery, are going to have to wait even longer for relief.

The architect of the austerity program, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, told Parliament on Wednesday that the government had missed one of its self-imposed debt-cutting targets and would have to extend the belt-tightening into 2018, a year longer than previously promised.

Although Mr. Osborne maintained that the debt reduction plan was still on track, his presentation drew heckling and laughter from some opposition lawmakers, particularly after he argued that new tax measures would show that “we’re all in this together.”

These announcements involving regularly delayed relief from austerity are reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s famous play, Waiting for Godot, which features endless variations on this conversation between two characters:

ESTRAGON: He should be here. VLADIMIR: He didn’t say for sure he’d come. ESTRAGON: And if he doesn’t come? VLADIMIR: We’ll come back tomorrow. ESTRAGON: And then the day after tomorrow. VLADIMIR: Possibly.

Perhaps austerity will end the day after tomorrow—or after the elections currently scheduled for 2015.

Greg Sargent offers an important reminder today of a certain item that is being heavily ignored in MSM coverage of the fiscal talks:

The $1.6 trillion in tax hikes in the White House’s fiscal cliff proposal is the main focus of the political argument right now, but the plan also contained an array of economic stimulus measures, such as $50 billion in infrastructure spending to create jobs. And Republicans are balking not just at the tax hikes on the rich, but at the call for more stimulus spending, too, claiming that more spending to create jobs will widen the deficit.

So perhaps it’s time for a reminder: This election wasn’t just about taxes and the deficit. It was also about whether government should invest more in job creation. And the electorate’s verdict was: Yes, it should.

But this is not just a matter of making sure the conversation includes stimulus proposals from the White House. It’s also essential to the Big Picture. Before, during and after the Great Recession, the GOP’s fiscal agenda has been focused on austerity. Yes, they’ve promoted tax cuts and have railed against Pentagon cuts, but not for any reason having to do with the short-term fate of the economy; they are for lower taxes and higher defense spending in all seasons. Beyond that, the GOP’s jobs agenda always has been and presumably always will be based on the magical argument that lower domestic spending will “free up” resources which the private sector will quickly turn into Boom Times (which would be more compelling if said private sector wasn’t already sitting on vast resources in the form of unrecycled profits), and the even more magical argument that the dynamism of the economy is being inhibited by excessive regulation and by po’ folks who’ve decided to live on “welfare” instead of helping the job-creators out by working for minimum wages. With the exception of Ramesh Ponnuru, moreover, virtually every Republican thinker and policy-maker in site also believes in tight money.

Since Republicans are promoting the eternal Republican formula for their idea of economic growth, is there any particular reason to think (a) it’s particularly appropriate for economic conditions like today’s, or (b) that they’re open to other job-producing ideas? No. When it comes to public-sector economic activism, it’s austerity today, austerity tomorrow, austerity forever!

The evening before Paul Ryan rolled out the new compassionate rhetoric of a GOP that cares about poor people and just wants to give them wings to fly, a very different message was being retailed by three former governors of New Hampshire at a conservative fundraiser and grouse-fest in the Granite State.

The headliner, of course, was former Chief Spokesman for the Mitt Romney campaign, the ever-genial John Sununu, who offered this assessment of why Mitt lost:

“They aggressively got out the base of their base, the base of their base that’s dependent, to a great extent economically, on government policy and government programs,” Sununu said during a forum with two other Republican former governors, Steve Merrill and Craig Benson, at Concord’s Grappone Conference Center.

Benson was a bit more explicit:

Benson said the GOP could have better connected with voters by making clear the stark differences between Democrats, who “believe in a nanny state,” and Republicans, who believe in the power of the individual to achieve prosperity.

“For those people that believe that the government can do a better job, here’s what they do a better job of: They get people addicted, in some cases, to the fact that maybe they don’t need to go out and make their own future. They get people addicted to the idea that maybe they can’t do something on their own.

Guess it’s just a matter of bad timing.

So Paul Ryan and Mark Rubio regaled the audience at last night’s Jack Kemp Foundation’s award dinner with what might be called a two-pronged attack on the GOP’s present political problems. Ryan spent most of his time expressing great empathy for people—especially poor people—outside the current GOP voter coalition, clearly aiming to distance himself and his party from all the Randian talk about “the 47%” and “the takers” that used to be part of his own rhetoric brand. And Rubio, battling the widely held impression that he and other Republicans are empty suits with no ideas for governing, essayed something of a conservative think tank data dump.

Unfortunately for Rubio, his speech was a really old conservative think tank data dump. To the uninitiated, it sounded like he had a lot of new ideas. But it was mostly an assortment of chestnuts: expanded HSA’s and interstate insurance sales for health care; back-pack vouchers, private-school tax credits, and student loan transparency (along with an end to “discrimination” against online educators, which is code for laying off the for-profit schools) for education; congressional vetoes of regulations; and a bunch of vague shout-outs to fine work of the the small battalions of civil society. With the possible exception of the snuggle-bunnies aimed at for-profit colleges, the whole speech could have been delivered ten years ago. But in all fairness, it was more substantive than 95% of Mitt Romney’s speeches during the 2012 cycle.

Ryan’s speech was very light on policy but heavy on rhetorical repositioning. In remarks that might have been aimed at his own self, he scolded conservatives for failing to make sufficient efforts to explain to poor people why conservative policies were good for them. It was very much the same rap, with slightly different framing, that he offered earlier this year in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute about how essential it was for the “moral fiber” of poor people to liberate them from the “complacency and dependency” associated with government assistance.

What was missing, of course, was any admission that conservative policies might fail poor people even more dramatically than all that soul-destroying government-provided food, medicine, and housing. And despite the occasional ritualistic reference to the need for some sort of social safety net, and of course injunctions to his audience to support private charities, there was nothing that would disabuse poor people that Ryan’s main weapon for poverty-fighting was to abandon people in order that they might experience the bracing rigors of self-reliance.

I understand there is a big psychological difference between a conservative politics based on class warfare and active hatred of those people, and one that lovingly tells those people it’s time to bootstrap themselves up the economic ladder via marginally subsidized access to private health insurance or religious schools (where they might improve their “moral fiber,” of course). For some conservatives (e.g., the late Jack Kemp himself), the latter attitude might well be entirely genuine. But what links Rubio’s and Ryan’s speeches is that all the deep thinking and charitable sentiments today’s Republicans want to profess seem always to lead back to the same old crappy policies. Furrowing one’s brow or yelling “Love you, man!” at poor people doesn’t make a whole lot of real-world difference.

I don’t know exactly how many shopping days are left until Xmas, but am trying to maintain a hard-earned reputation for ignoring it all until the last possible minute. News-cycle blogging is good for that. Here are some mid-day news bites.

* RightWingWatch’s Brian Tashman has some truly looney-tunes quotes from homeschool lobby chieftain Michael Farris on the disabilities treaty Senate Republicans killed yesterday.

* New ABC/WaPo survey shows 57% of Americans support HRC presidential bid in 2016. Her job approval number is 68%.

* Sheldon Adelson says he’s pro-choice, pro-immigrations and favors “socialized health care.” No wonder he personally kept Newt Gingich’s presidential campaign afloat for months.

* New York Times’ Eduardo Porter examines trajectory and implications of new organizing efforts aimed at lowest-wage workers.

* Douthat defends his reference of low-population-growth societies as “decadent.”

And in non-political news:

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dies at 91.

Back in a bit. But check out this very interesting video for Brubeck’s “Unsquare Dance.”

Matt Miller has a column today at WaPo suggesting that the pattern of successive “fiscal cliffs” might extend indefinitely until such time as the American people make up their minds between the progressive and conservative governance models:

Here’s the scenario. Recall that all this started in the summer of 2011, when gridlock in the debt talks and the later breakdown of the supercommittee led to creation of the cliff we now face. It seems almost certain that any new deal that is struck, either before January 1 or some time afterwards, will involve some minor near-term “action” or “down payment” combined with the creation of a new fiscal cliff of unpleasant consequences to be triggered sometime in 2013 if a broader deal on tax and entitlement reform is not reached.

This, because a divided Washington needs “a forcing device” to instigate action.

But what will have changed later in 2013 to produce a different outcome? Arguably nothing. And so we have the prospect of another deal with illusory progress later in 2013, along with the creation of the next forcing device. Which eventually forces the next sham deal and the creation of the next forcing device.

And so on. Endless forcing devices that force the creation of new forcing devices. Cliffs that bequeath future cliffs.

Yeah, that seems more than a little likely, particularly if the widespread predictions of economic calamity prove illusory.

[T]he truth is that — unlike the banks’ situation on the eve of TARP, or Greece running out of cash — the debt situation we face is not urgent in the near-term. In the near-term our problem is slow growth and desperately high unemployment. So markets and creditors, despite some year end jitters, might find they can grow accustomed to a new equilibrium level of hijinks and theater in Washington (so long as the self-induced recession the cliff threatens is kicked down the road, as it will be).

No, if we do enter the Endless Cliff, it may be that only elections have the power to shock us out of it. Americans may have to try one party rule (and its Senate corollary, filibuster reform) to align our officials’ parliamentary behavior with an ability to govern and be held accountable.

What’s refreshing about Miller’s column is that he attributes the gridlock not to childishness or reflexive partisanship but to trends within both parties holding them to philosophically semi-consistent positions. I don’t know that this has been true of Democrats recently (it certainly wasn’t the last time voters gave them robust majorities in Congress plus control of the White House), but it probably is now. We’re at a point now where the very policies the two parties most violently oppose—significant tax rate increases and “entitlement reforms” that make “entitlements” more or less just a set of additional discretionary programs—are at the heart of what the Beltway Deficit Hawk folk are demanding as the first points of agreement towards setting the parameters of fiscal policy for the foreseeable future. You don’t have to accuse pols of being cowards or knaves for resisting that course of action.

And it’s also important to note that “the American people” haven’t “chosen” divided government in order to force the two parties to the table to accept the dictation of Beltway Fiscal Hawks. The sizable majority of voters agree with party leaders. More of them agree with the position of Democrats than of Republicans, which is why Obama has an advantage right now. But the constituency for tax-increases-on-everybody-plus-gutting-entitlements is tiny.

The sooner the chattering classes figure that out, the sooner we can begin exploring the true options. Perhaps the parties will change their positioning, but it’s very unlikely (viz. the phony “struggle for the soul” going on in the party that lost the last two presidential elections). Figuring out ways to keep the federal government functioning and the economy moving forward while awaiting a more definitive electoral reckoning (along with reforms to make majority rule in Congress easier) could be a first, not last, resort.

As aficionados of conservative punditry probably understand, there is no recent staple of right-wing journalism hardier than the Dysfunctional California meme. The Golden State, were are told, illustrates the Grecian Formula of Ruin that progressives are determined to impose on the entire country: greedy union bosses conspiring with growth-hating environmentalists and deadbeat minorities to despoil pristine suburbs, destroy agribusiness, drive out private capital, and sink the state into bankruptcy, counting on their socialist allies in Washington to bail them out by looting the hard-earned dollars of virtuous red-state producers. Joel Kottkin has been writing this same story for decades now; it’s also Victor Davis Hanson’s Great White Whale.

Imagine the cognitive dissonance created on the Right by this lede from Matthew Garrahan in yesterday’s Financial Times:

After a decade marred by ballooning budget deficits, rising unemployment and swingeing cuts in public services, California’s economy may have finally turned a corner.

The state was hit hard by the financial crisis, with the rate of mortgage foreclosures and unemployment much higher than the national average. Regular budget deficits forced the state to slash public services and two years ago it even had to offer IOUs to its creditors in lieu of cash.

But jobs growth in the Golden State, an economy larger than those of India or Russia, has outpaced the national trend in the US in recent months. California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office is projecting a $1bn budget surplus by the 2014-2015 fiscal year, as $6bn of new tax revenue is due to flood into state coffers after voters passed a staggered tax increase on individuals and families earning more than $250,000 and $500,000 a year.

Now this could turn out to be an excessively optimistic assessment, for several reasons, among them the pent-up desire for more than moderate spending increases on education (where austerity measures have bitten deeply over the last few years in particular) and corrections.

But the very idea that California is headed anywhere other than straight to Hell is a problem not just for Grecian Formula enthusiasts like Kottkin and Hanson, but for all conservatives whose use of the Golden State as a cautionary tale in national fiscal and economic debates is in danger. You mean tax increases on the wealthy might actually help, not hurt? Horrors!

So I expect that we’ll see an enormous amount of pushback against the California Rebound story, replete with predictions that the job-creators of the state will immediately pick up and move to Texas, where policymakers understand that economic growth is inherently incompatible with unions, environmental protection, and the coddling of low-wage workers, who ought to be damn grateful for everything they get. And no hippies, either!

This lede from WaPo’s Neil Irwin sums up the strange dynamics of fiscal cliffsmanship better than anything you’ll find:

In Washington, debate over the “fiscal cliff” is cloaked in apocalyptic warnings of soaring tax rates and a crashing economy. On Wall Street, the tone is different: All will be fine.

The stock market has been little changed in the past three weeks, with few wild swings. That comes despite the Jan. 1 deadline when tax hikes and spending cuts are to go into effect unless politicians reach a deal to avert them.

Irwin goes on to air two very different theories of the divergence between rhetoric and market behavior: one is that investors assume a deal will be struck despite all the angry words being thrown about and the recent reports of renewed gridlock. And the other is that there really ain’t no “fiscal cliff” to begin with, but just yet another checkpoint in the long twilight struggle over taxes and spending.

In either event, the relative stability of markets has to be a bit embarrassing to Beltway fiscal hawks, who must be privately hoping for a stronger whiff of catastrophe, or at least some menacing rhetoric from Wall Street to match their own. What good is a “fiscal cliff” anyway if it doesn’t drive those approaching it into a panicky accession to the pre-ordained “bipartisan” solution of extended Bush tax cuts and an end to those ruinous entitlement?

“Wall Street and Washington are different worlds and speak in different languages,” said Chris Krueger, a political analyst at Guggenheim Partners who acts as something of a translator between those two worlds.

At some point, we’ll find out which world is closer to reality.

New York’s Gabriel Sherman has a fine scoop on some internal decision-making at Fox News, but I fear he’s missing the big picture here:

The post-election soul searching going on inside the Republican Party is taking place inside Fox News as well. Fox News chief Roger Ailes, a canny marketer and protector of his network’s brand, has been taking steps since November to reposition Fox in the post-election media environment, freshening story lines — and in some cases, changing the characters. According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has issued a new directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris.

Thanks to their high visibility in the 2012 cycle, some MSM and progressive observers seem to be making the mistake of associating Rove and Morris with right-wing influence in the GOP, and assuming that taking them down a notch in FoxLand means some sort of new conservative pragmatism. Are we forgetting who these men are? Rove was the author of every single violation of “conservative principle” by George W. Bush that has enabled wingnuts to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the bitter fruits—substantively and politically—of the Bush/Cheney administration: No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Rx drug initiative, comprehensive immigration reform, and in general Big Spending and Big Government Conservatism. And given his role as the “quarterback” of the entire Super-PAC/501(c)(4) money blitz in 2012, Rove is also nicely positioned to take the fall for a “Republican Establishment” that failed to make ideology and “vetting” the centerpiece of the anti-Obama drive. As for Dick Morris—well, he’s the same unprincipled self-promoter he’s always been.

Putting Rove and Morris “on the bench” is precisely what you would expect from conservatives looking for a way to shift blame after another electoral defeat. The idea that it means Fox is coming to grips with the error of its ideological ways is leap of logic and faith unjustified by anything we’ve seen so far.

Not being privy to the internal deliberations—much less the private thoughts—of Republicans, I have no way of knowing whether Speaker John Boehner and his right-wing critics are engaged in a very public Mutt-and-Jeff routine designed to convince the White House that Boehner’s pathetic “counter-offer” fiscal package is so brave that it should be seriously considered—or if instead there’s a real fight brewing within the GOP.

But yesterday’s statement by the chief potentate of movement conservatives, Jim DeMint, a man with a lot more real power over hearts and minds than John Boehner, sure created a credible threat of a right-wing revolt against the permatanned Speaker:

“Speaker Boehner’s $800 billion tax hike will destroy American jobs and allow politicians in Washington to spend even more, while not reducing our $16 trillion debt by a single penny,” said Senator DeMint. “This isn’t rocket science. Everyone knows that when you take money out of the economy, it destroys jobs, and everyone knows that when you give politicians more money, they spend it. This is why Republicans must oppose tax increases and insist on real spending reductions that shrink the size of government and allow Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.

“Big government is the cause of our debt crisis, not the solution. Washington has a spending addiction that is shackling our children and grandchildren with unsustainable debt. Conservatives fought for a balanced budget amendment last year precisely because we knew the political establishment in Washington would never stop their tax and spend addiction without it. However, if neither party leadership is going to put forward a serious plan to balance the budget and pay down the debt, we should end this charade.”

By “charade,” DeMint seemed to be referring to “negotiations.” His position, as reflected in the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge that he forced leading Republicans, including Mitt Romney, to take during the last cycle, basically lashes the GOP to a position of rejecting any debt limit increases until such time as a balanced budget constitutional amendment with a permanent percentage-of-GDP limit on revenues and spending is at least on the table. He surely knows that will never in a billion years happen so long as there is a center-left party with any power whatsoever, so his basic posture is to hold out until Republicans have enough power to dictate fiscal policy entirely. Don’t laugh: it came close enough to happening on November 6.

Some of DeMint’s little friends are also looking beyond the “charade” of negotiations with the White House to figure out how to gain operational as well as psychological control over the congressional GOP. RedState’s Erick Erickson wants to prepare right now to take out Saxby Chambliss and Lindsay Graham in 2014 primaries for their temerity in following Boehner’s lead:

Conservatives are either going to hang together or separately. Right now they are getting played because Boehner, McConnell, and the like are sure the conservative movement has become a paper tiger. And, to be honest, conservatives have shown them this is true.

The only way to change it is money or primary challengers or, better, both. Citizens United showed it doesn’t really work as the critics said it would in the Presidential cycle. But it worked in 2010 for conservative activists against the establishment.

Conservatives now need to work even harder in 2014. Either start blowing stuff up or shut up. Complaining just reinforces that conservatives are paper tigers.

It’s possible, of course, that without explicitly cooperating with each other the Boehners and the DeMints can both have their way: conservatives will let Boehner reach a deal with the White House; won’t work that hard to side-track it; and will privately welcome this development as the final lever for the final, gloriously bloody RINO purge going into or out of 2014. In that respect, what sounds like a vicious intramural “revolt from the Right” will effectively operate as a decision to delay said revolt until the next election season.

Stayed in a dream state for a while after the alarm went off this morning, and this is about the only musical offering I can come up with to reflect the mood. Here’s P-Funk, on French television no less, performing “Atomic Dog.”

Political news Between the Holidays continues to follow a pattern of brief bursts followed by crickets. But here’s what we have for the end of the day:

* Dick Armey quits FreedomWorks in an apparent huff, but those who know exactly why ain’t talking so far.

* Louisiana Republican congressman’s Shreveport Subway shop allegedly denied service to couple after they admitted they were Muslims.

* NRDC lays out aggressive strategy for using Clean Air Act powers to greatly reduce carbon emissions from power plants.

* At Ten Miles Square, Keith Humphreys reports evidence that primary care at community health centers serving low-income Americans is actually superior to that of private-practice doctors.

* At College Guide, Daniel Luzer discusses turmoil over proposed pay raise for new chancellor of UC Berkeley.

And in non-political news:

* McRib is back on December 17!

I’m off to Home Depot rather than a watering hole (it’s only 2:45 here in Cali, of course), but it’s Happy Hour for some of you.

Selah.

Public Policy Polling clearly decided to have some fun in its first post-election national survey. Take it away, Tom Jensen!

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.

Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States. 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren’t sure.

During the “secession crisis” of 1861 that ultimately led to the Civil War, the crucial “swing” category of people in many southern states where those referred to as “conditional Unionists,” who did not favor immediate secession but opposed any use of coercion to restore the old Union. Is that where 19% of today’s Republicans stand?

Meanwhile, interest in big Grand Bargain deficit reduction plans that we have been told are essential to the survival of the Union remains relatively low:

As much of an obsession as Bowles/Simpson can be for the DC pundit class, most Americans don’t have an opinion about it. 23% support it, 16% oppose it, and 60% say they don’t have a take one way or the other.

The 39% of Americans with an opinion about Bowles/Simpson is only slightly higher than the 25% with one about Panetta/Burns, a mythical Clinton Chief of Staff/former western Republican Senator combo we conceived of to test how many people would say they had an opinion even about something that doesn’t exist.

The chattering classes are having a lot of fun on Twitter as we speak filling in the details of Panetta/Burns. Next up perhaps they can explain the ghostly presence of ACORN.

It’s not a big post-election issue, but for the record, Nate Silver does a nice job at FiveThirtyEight of sorting out the problems with internal campaign polling.

One problem is fairly obvious: internal polls deliberately released to promote the perception that a candidate is winning or gaining support. These should be handled with fire tongs as pure spin, since that’s how they are being used, particularly if campaigns are opaque about the sample they are polling and the methodology utilized. I remember a gubernatorial race in Georgia many moons ago where a campaign during the late stages of the race released absolutely nothing but bottom-line numbers from their internal polling (which for all we knew were entirely made up), showing its candidate regularly making gains towards a runoff spot. The local media pretty much bought it, and lo and behold the candidate squeaked through to a runoff spot.

But Nate goes on to observe that even polls kept private (or inadvertantly leaked) can be dangerously skewed:

A pollster working within a campaign may face a variety of perverse incentives that compete with his ability to produce the most accurate possible results to his candidate. He may worry about harming the morale of the candidate or the campaign if he delivers bad news. Or he may be worried that the campaign will no longer be interested in his services if the candidate feels the race is hopeless.

Groupthink and confirmation bias are also risks in any organization, particularly under the stress of the end stages of a political campaign.

So should the campaigns simply give up on conducting their own polls - and instead base their decisions on the forecasts issued by Real Clear Politics or FiveThirtyEight?

If internal polls were solely used to diagnose the state of the horse race, then there might be an argument for this — at least in presidential elections, where the public polling is normally quite reliable.

But the campaigns also use internal polling for message testing and a variety of other purposes. And they may desire a more granular take on the race than the public polls provide — for example, in an effort to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement in a particular media market, or among a particular demographic subgroup. Pollsters like Mr. Newhouse are an important part of campaigns, and most of them do their jobs well.

Campaigns should foster organizational cultures in which their pollsters are enabled to provide the most value.

Campaigns might consider how pollsters are compensated; they could tie some of the pollster’s compensation to the accuracy of its final polls, for instance.

Those are excellent ideas. But Nate makes one more comment worth noting:

But most important, campaigns would be wise not to have their pollsters serve as public spokesmen or spin doctors for the campaign. Campaigns have other personnel who specialize in those tasks.

The role of the pollster should be just the opposite of this, in fact: to provide a reality check such that the campaign does not begin to believe its own spin.

I don’t know what Mark Penn’s relationship with Hillary Clinton is like these days. But if it’s still strong, and she runs for president in 2016, she should probably reconsider her 2008 decision to let Penn in front of the cameras regularly as her “strategist.” Aside from the fact that he was, by most accounts, not the most effective public spokesman, his real value to her should have been confined to polling and truth-telling, not public spin or (as was widely reported) the leader of a campaign faction engaged in vicious internal struggles.