OMG. News just in that the death toll in the latest school shooting, this one at an elementary school in Connecticut, has reached 27, eighteen of the victims being children. The shooter, who is reportedly the father of a child at the school, is among the dead.

Kyrie eleison. And pray for the injured and the families of the victims.

It’s becoming something of a progressive article of faith that the increasingly frantic demands by Republicans that the president put specific spending reductions on the table reflect the GOP’s own inability to articulate what they actually want—or at least what they will publicly admit they actually want.

I agree with that assessment, but something else a bit simpler is also going on: given the pressure being constantly placed on congressional Republicans to prove a mere election defeat didn’t reduce their passion for a conservative policy revolution, many, perhaps most, GOPers in Congress need an Obama proposal, or perhaps several Obama proposals, to reject. So they have at least as large a stake in Obama offering a “liberal” fiscal blueprint as do progressives fearing he’ll concede too much. There exists, of course, a sizable bloc of Republican members of Congress who will oppose any Obama proposal—or indeed any fiscal agreement—to the bitter end. This will probably, in fact, amount to a de facto majority of House Republicans if we are talking about a pre-January 1 “fiscal cliff” agreement, given the increasingly popular position that Republicans should “allow” Obama to “win” the tax debate (with a minimum of Republican votes) and thereby “own” higher taxes, keeping their own powder dry for an apocalyptic battle over spending in connection with the debt limit increase just on the horizon.

At that point, most Republicans will still feel the need to denounce one or more Obama proposals, with some determined to oppose them all on grounds that spending should be cut to make a debt limit increase unnecessary, or hitting the limit would have no economic consequences, or whatever. It’s the size of the various blocs of nay-sayers that will ultimately matter.

You can read a game-theory explanation of how this all works by John Patty. But it all revolves around the desperate need Republicans have to eternally cover their right flanks.

It’s a bit of an irony that the long-time front-runner to become Secretary of State—and actually, the front-runner for the job in 2008 had not Hillary Clinton decided to take it—John Kerry, will now be inevitably perceived as someone Obama “settled” for after Susan Rice’s withdrawal from consideration. Aside from his political prominence, and his current position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this is the gig his entire career seems to have pointed towards. And particularly after the Republican freakout over Rice, the odds of his fellow-senators giving him an unusually hard time in the confirmation process are low (though Wingnut World will undoubtedly be full of talk about “global tests.”)

But how good a Secretary of State would he be? In a very positive assessment today, WaPo’s David Ignatius makes this observation:

While Kerry sometimes comes across as stiff, he’s surprisingly willing to challenge conventional wisdom, especially about engaging America’s adversaries. This unlikely contrarian streak would be an advantage, especially because it’s so well disguised: With his stolid demeanor, Kerry would find it easier to take diplomatic chances than other potential nominees, especially the younger, less experienced Rice.

Now as someone who was peripherally in his orbit during the 2004 campaign, I’m not very objective about Kerry, but I must say this particular Ignatius argument comports well with my own observations. When Kerry “went to school” on a topic—I observed this first-hand on climate change—he was an absolute sponge for new information and often sought out people spurned by the “experts.” He would not, of course, be setting U.S. Foreign Policy as Secretary of State, and in fact Susan Rice could wind up with greater influence if she is moved, as is considered possible, to the White House itself. But Kerry has the tools to be an outstanding Secretary of State, and perhaps the perception that he’s someone the president “settled for” may keep him as productively busy as his predecessor.

Even before their victory-dance over allegedly derailing the hypothetical nomination of Susan Rice to become Secretary of State ends, Republicans have to decide whether to follow right up with a similar campaign against former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel’s hypothetical nomination to succeed Leon Panetta at the Pentagon.

In some respects, that means choosing between the GOP’s past and present foreign policy principles.

Only recently has the GOP emerged as the party whose primary foreign policy principles revolve almost entirely around Iran and Israel, with American strength measured almost entirely by the extent to which American policy is identical to that of the Israeli Right. That’s about all that’s left of the aggressive posture of the Bush administration.

So given that sad state of affairs, it’s no surprise Hagel may be found unusually objectionable, as Eli Lake notes at the Daily Beast:

Chuck Hagel, who is reportedly the frontrunner to be the next Pentagon chief, has made a lot of friends in the U.S. foreign-policy establishment and at the top levels of Obama’s inner circle. Even though he is a Republican, Hagel is co-chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. And he has often won plaudits from the elite press for his early opposition to the Iraq war.

The former Nebraska senator has also frequently angered his own party: In 2005, as George W. Bush was beginning his second term, Hagel became the first Republican to oppose John Bolton’s nomination to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The year before, he voted with the Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to begin an investigation into the pre-Iraq war intelligence.

But Republicans aside, Hagel’s real opposition will likely come from the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. While the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) never takes formal positions on nominees, if the group is asked by senators for its view on Hagel, it’s unlikely AIPAC will have a kind word.

A senior pro-Israel advocate in Washington told The Daily Beast on Thursday, “The pro-Israel community will view the nomination of Senator Chuck Hagel in an extremely negative light. His record is unique in its animus towards Israel.”….

The former senator was not only a frequent no vote on sanctions against Iran, but The Washington Free Beacon reported on Thursday that he also serves on the board of directors of Deutsche Bank—which is reportedly being probed by U.S. authorities for possible violations of the very kinds of sanctions Hagel opposed when he was in Congress.

So you can imagine how well that goes over with Republicans whose most recent mantra, as often expressed by their 2012 presidential candidate, that America must never exhibit “any daylight” between its foreign policy posture and that of Bibi Netanyahu, particularly with respect to Iran.

On top of everything else, Hagel is thought to be less likely to identify with resistance to Pentagon cuts than Panetta.

But all these perceptions make Hagel an ideal target for those who want to depict the president as an enemy of Israel, a friend of Iran, and a peacenik happy to turn swords into plowshares. The bigger question is whether Republicans can pull off two straight freakouts over unconfirmed appointments in the middle of the holidays—and the fiscal negotiations. And they’d also prefer to keep the foreign policy focus on what they now refer to simply as “Benghazi,” a subject on which Hagel has not been a visible commentator.

So Hagel poses a bit of a strategic problem for the GOP, aside from the fact that the White House will be able to turn up a variety of past statements of support and appreciation for the man from his fellow-Republicans. From their point of view, the best outcome would be for Obama to look elsewhere for a Secretary of Defense, allowing them to claim victory once again without any real effort.

It’s probably a mistake to treat a post by Jonah Goldberg as reflecting deep philosophical trends within conservatism. But there’s something about his “Here’s an idea: federalism!” (not the actual headline, but very much the tone) piece at NRO that nicely reflects why conservatives so often retreat to “states’ rights” as a political strategy masquerading as a matter of deep principle.

Goldberg suggests that conservatives are doomed to lose national policy debates because they are rigged to favor some sort of action rather than some sort of inaction. So deferring issues to the states, it seems, is a prescription for losing on a more piecemeal basis, or something (Goldberg isn’t real clear about it). He does score his fellow-conservatives for being for federalism only when it’s convenient, by way of urging them to relax about states legalizing pot. More indirectly, his line of argument leads in the direction of resistance to the various corporate lobbies who are eternally for federal preemption of regulations or tax rates on businesses that are tougher than what Washington imposes.

But if you look at history, American conservatives have almost always been hypocritical about “states’ rights,” treating it as fallback position when their national policy goals were thwarted. It was evident in the movement towards Prohibition. It’s evident today in the thinly-veiled intentions of anti-choicers to pursue a national ban on abortions if their interim goal of overturning Roe v. Wade and turning the issue back to the states succeeds. And it was even apparent in what is usually described as the great historic high-point of states’ rights sentiment that led to the Civil War, but that actually revolved around the southern demand that the federal government protect the “property rights” of slaveholders in new territories.

Goldberg says conservatives should be happy to let California become “Sweden with better weather” if its citizens so wish, if it’s part of an overall scheme whereby Texas gets to become “Singapore on the Rio Grande.” Any way you slice it, federal policies and programs will vitally affect either aspiration, which is why letting Texas execute some sort of de facto secession is only possible if the national government abandons its responsibilities towards the Texans conservatives would like to abandon.

Sure, there are many policy decisions best made at the state and local levels of government, and many arguments that can be made about how different levels of government can best cooperate. But pretending “federalism” is some sort of comprehensive governing philosophy instead of a dimension of governing regardless of ideology is a chimera. If that’s the best strategy conservatives can devise, they are in for a long season of incoherence and insincerity, and probably minority status.

It seems, according to Stateline’s Jake Grovum, that the president’s casual “we have to fix that” comment on long voting lines during his November 6 victory speech has put the need for election reform in the spotlight in a way that four years of fights over voter suppression efforts never quite did. But Republican hostility, some knee-jerk “it’s our prerogative” backlash from state officials in both parties, and a federal budget “crisis” that makes new federal spending initiatives problematic, are all conspiring to inhibit progress.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, right? After the 2000 fiasco, the great American electoral non-system, in which states and in many places counties pretty much ran elections however they wanted (unless they were subject to Justice Department scrutiny under the Voting Rights Act of 1965), was going to change for certain sure.

And then, like the world’s cheapest carnival consolation prize, we got HAVA, the Help America Vote Act:

Differences over local control are part of what led to the failure of the last Washington-driven attempt at election reform. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, a measure setting minimum standards for states to reach in addressing some of the more egregious shortcomings in the 2000 election.

But by most accounts HAVA, as the act is known, has proven woefully inefficient. It established the Election Assistance Commission, which currently has all four of its commissioner positions standing vacant and has no executive director, either.

“Basically, HAVA got rid of punch cards,” says Karin Mac Donald, director of the Election Administration Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Otherwise, it accomplished little. “There was so much variability on the local level,” she says.

That variability - both in the enforcement of HAVA’s changes and in the conduct of elections in general - is at the root of much of the problem around the country. Standards on everything from poll workers and polling places to ballot length vary wildly from state to state.

HAVA was meant to address that. But it simply wasn’t tough enough, voting experts say, and it lacked clear, mandated goals for what elections should look like. “It seems there are always so many attempts to please everybody,” Mac Donald says. “There have to be some kind of teeth.”

So please, reformers, if you are going to offer proposals in this area, don’t bother offering HAVA II, another set of vague election guidelines backed by inadequate grants. Personally—and I say this as someone far more sympathetic to state governments than most bloggers—I think running fair and efficient elections is so basic a part of state government responsibilities that no one should have to beg and bribe them to clean up their act (aside from the fact that cost complaints often just disguise a partisan determination to restrict the franchise).

Within the constitutional limitations, the goal should be national voting rights and national standards for election administration. Anything less than that will just lead to another laughable failure like HAVA.

Here’s more Looziana music: Dr. John performing “I Walk On Gilded Splinters.”

Often when I’m in New Orleans I stay indoors during the day to avoid the insane heat. This time it’s just blogging. Here are some final items from the day’s news:

* Hagel reported to be current front-runner for Pentagon.

* Greg Sargent wonders if Republicans even care about public opinion.

* Leahy pressing for clarification on administration’s intentions towards states legalizing pot.

* At Ten Miles Square, Jonathan Bernstein explains why district-based electoral college schemes aren’t going anywhere.

* At College Guide, Daniel Luzer reports on Texas Tech professor who is suing school for denying him tenure because of his opposition to tenure. Rough justice….

And in non-political news:

* Ali G. is back!

Back tomorrow for one more day of bloggy goodness before my week off.

Selah.

The day before Susan Rice’s withdrawal from consideration to become Secretary of State, that great foreign policy thinker Rep. Steve King said this about “Benghazi” (formerly the name of a city in Libya, now the Greatest Scandal of Our Era):

I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is.

This being a comparison, it’s entirely possible King thought Watergate was, as Richard Nixon called it, a “third-rate burglary,” and that Iran/Contra was about treacherous congressional Democrats seeking to rein in the Great Patriot Oliver North as he followed the Higher Law of His Conscience.

But assuming, as is safe, King wanted to convey the almost-inconceivable monstrousness of “Benghazi,” the question remains whether people like him went after Susan Rice in order to fan the flames over “Benghazi,” or created this funhouse mirror distortion of “Benghazi” to take down Rice. It is pretty clear the fundamental motive is to find a post-election “Obama scandal” that allows Republicans to mentally nullify the 2012 elections, but beyond that the sequencing of hysteria is murky. We’ll see soon if Rice’s withdrawal propitiates or feeds this particularly psychotic idol.

So the big news this afternoon is that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice has withdrawn from consideration to become Secretary of State, via a letter to the president that cited the likelihood of a “lengthy, disruptive and costly” confirmation process if she were nominated.

This not-so-subtle reference to the campaign of demonization against Rice being led by Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham is making the political implications of the withdrawal a much more prominent issue than the gig itself. Are Rice and Obama (assuming he had some role in this decision) rewarding bad behavior and guaranteeing its perpetuation? Is Graham going to carry Rice’s letter around the more atavistic precincts of South Carolina as a magic amulet against a right-wing primary challenge in 2012? Was this whole exercise a GOP plot to get John Kerry appointed to State so that Scott Brown can return to the Senate? Will the administration now be constrained to find a woman and/or minority member for the job?

I dunno. The only thing that’s clear to me is that Obama and/or Rice do indeed want to make a fight over this; otherwise, Obama would have chosen Kerry or someone else without the public suggestion that his first choice was taken off the table by Republican nastiness (it’s possible Rice went public without the White House’s approval, but her very close relationship with Obama, and her continuing high position in the administration, make that scenario unlikely); it’s not as though Rice is or ever has been the unanimous favorite among Democratic foreign policy types.

Rice, of course, may just be receiving the courtesy of making the first move to show her loyalty to Obama and the country, while making her tormenters look like the petty and bullying pols they actually are. But you’d have to figure there will be some additional thundering from the Oval Office on the subject before Obama moves on.

At the end of a somewhat muddled meditation on the Greater Meaning of an HRC presidential candidacy in 2012, The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf offers a thought that has probably occurred to a lot of us at one time or another:

What I’ll be most interested to see, if she does run, is how the conservative movement reacts to her candidacy. With relative sanity, insofar as they can’t very well accuse her of being a Kenyan anti-colonialist? With a return to the anti-Clintonian fervor of the 1990s? I suspect the latter reaction wouldn’t play well. Politicians who hang around long enough seem to become inured even to scandals in which they were actually caught red-handed. There isn’t anything so clear cut in Clinton’s past, and if many Americans are like me, the word “Whitewater” would send an involuntary shudder of dread coursing through the population, as if we were collectively told we’d have to re-watch the pre-trial motions from the O.J. Simpson trial while sequestered in a cheap hotel with nothing for diversion but Clinton-era back issues of The American Spectator.

During the primary battles of 2008, a frequently heard argument for Obama (which he reinforced himself by thinly-veiled references to the tired partisan battles of the 1990s) was that conservatives would not freak out and hyper-mobilize against him as they would against HRC, given the Right’s longstanding descriptions of her as a sort of “Red Queen” who inflamed the worst tendencies (yes, including philandering, believe it or not) of her husband.

In the late stages of the 2008 general election, and ever since, Obama’s specific characteristics have been part and parcel of the worst conservative freak-out in living memory. But it’s never been that clear anything about Obama has been much more than a pretext on the Right for demonizing the opposition, whoever it is. After all, if you are in the habit of treating anyone on the center-left as a conscious agent of a conspiracy to enslave the country and expose it to destruction by its enemies that dates back at least to the Roosevelt—if not the Wilson—administration, then you’ll find the “facts,” real or invented, to support your Grand Narrative.

But if HRC is the next Democratic presidential candidate (at a time when all the pressures on the GOP to pull off a big win against the tides of demographics and history have been increased to a high-pitched steamy shriek), it will be interesting to see if our little friends on the Right choose to replay the tapes of past descriptions of her as a emasculating shrew who combines the worst features of the Nanny State with the cold mendacity of a Superlawyer—or comes up with some new Devil-Theory based on “vetting” her anew. Unless or until the time she rules out a presidential run, you can expect to see conservative gabbers hold their very own “invisible primary” over how to talk about HRC.

Thinking about heading either to Acme Oyster House for a shrimp po-boy, or over to Napolean House for the muffuletta (yes, yes, I know Central Grocery is where you are supposed to go for that, but can’t get a sazerac there!). There are better and trendier places to eat in Nawlins, but it’s been a while since I was here, so visits to the Iconics come first.

In any event, here are some mid-day treats for your own consumption:

* New Pew survey latest to show Obama/Democrats with significant advantage on most fiscal-talks topics, especially taxes.

* Kim Jong Un—a.k.a. “The Sexiest Man Alive”—winning Time’s Person of the Year reader poll.

* Dana Milbank throws pity-party for Joe Lieberman’s “sad” farewell from the Senate.

* TNR’s Nate Cohn positively handicaps potential Corey Booker run against Chris Christie.

* TPM’s Ryan Reilly reports former Rep. Duke Cunningham of California released from prison into a halfway house right here in New Orleans.

And in nonpolitical news:

* Baba Wawa names David Petraeus “Most Fascinating Person of 2012,” making it clear his extracurriculars were the reason for the “honor.”

Back after a savory bite.

Speaking of hilarious media accounts, today’s Politico has a piece by Jonathan Allen reporting that House Republican leaders are trying to tamp down rapidly spreading right-wing fury over a “purge” of three conservatives from choice committee assignments by letting it be known that they were punished not for their ideology but for being “a—holes.” Yes, that’s the official term deployed by a spox for Rep. Lynn Westmoreland in explaining the punitive actions. An unnamed source in House circles called the three (Reps. Amash, Huelskamp and Schweikert) the “most egregious a—holes in the House Republican Conference,” so this is a very precise message they are getting out.

I wouldn’t have thought a-holery was against House GOP rules or mores, but maybe there are limits, even in that community. Perhaps they said hurtful things about Speaker Boehner that made him cry.

For a quick fun read, you can’t beat Poynter’s annual listing of notable media errors and corrections. Heading the list, of course, is the dual CNN/Fox News blown call on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare, based on a hasty misunderstanding of the Chief Justice’s initial words in announcing the decision.

The other “winners” range from the hilarious (a misspelling of the word “correction” in a Toronto Sun correction note) to the horrifying (a variety of misidentifications of innocent people as malefactors) to the hilariously banal (a New York Times clarification that Gore Vidal had called William F. Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” not a “crypto-fascist,” in their famous network television encounter in 1968). The British media seem to be over-represented in the list, though it’s unclear whether that’s because they make more mistakes or because they are more inclined to offer entertaining corrections or rationalizations.

My all-time favorite media error was the report by the Athens (GA) Banner-Herald on the election of John Paul II that he would be the “first non-Catholic” pontiff. But this year we did have a photo caption from the Ottawa Citizen with the surprising news that the Titantic had sunk on April 15, 2012.

Enjoy.