Which Party?

Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes that Hillary Clinton

is the nominee because the Democratic Party, which used to fight about great issues of war and peace, of the deeper meaning of foreign and domestic policy -- it was a vital thing -- is now kept together by one central organizing principle: the brute acquisition of power, and holding on to that power no matter what. The worst members of the party appear to care almost nothing about what that power is used for, how it will be wielded to achieve higher purposes. They’re just making a living. They’re just on a team....

The Democratic Party and its lobbyist/think-tank/journalistic establishment in Washington have long looked to me to be dominated by people devoted mostly to getting themselves in the best professional position and their kids into Sidwell Friends School. They want to be part of the web, the arrangement. They want to have connections, associates, a tong. They want to be wired in.

But Steve M. counters with

 Is this Democratic Party you recognize? We're at the end of an eight-year democratic presidency. What do you remember about it? A concern with the rights of women, LGBT people, and non-whites. An effort to bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows. A struggle to wrap up two wars, even if that struggle was often one step forward and two steps back. An end to government-sanctioned torture. A slow process of trying to close Guantanamo. A nuclear deal with Iran. Increased taxation of the rich. And, of course, Obamacare. 

Really? None of that qualifies as "fight[ing] about great issues of war and peace, of the deeper meaning of foreign and domestic policy"? Preventing the privatization of Social Security and Medicare, which Democrats have done successfully for the past generation, doesn't count? Denouncing the racism and anti-Muslim bias of the opposing party and its nominee this year -- that doesn't count?

It should, obviously, and the current Administration's concern for the rights of women, non-whites, LGBT people, and illegal immigrants, and even its effort to shut down government-sanctioned torture have led to the point at which Donald Trump now has a serious chance of winning the presidency.

Noonan's claim that the Democratic Party "is now kept together by one central organizing principle: the brute acquisition of power, and holding on to that power no matter" is a splendid example of psychological projection. As one commenter wrote Steve,  "Conservatives can't look at themselves in the mirror, and see their own failings. So, they project those failings onto liberals and Democrats."

In January, the Director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project explained his organization has "been on the ground" in five (Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kansas, Texas, Ohio) of the ten states which recently had enacted restrictive voting laws ranging "from new hurdles to registration to cutbacks on early voting to strict voter identification requirements"  (map below from the Brennan Center).

On Wednesday, US District Judge Loretta Biggs, presiding over a lawsuit filed against the State of North Carolina by the NAACP, said the process used by some counties to purge voting rolls sounds "insane" and "like something that was put together in 1901." The arguments come four months after a federal court "struck down much of a 2013 elections law, saying the GOP-controlled General Assembly had disproportionately targeted black voters. The  ruling lengthened in-person early voting by a week and eliminated a photo ID requirement for in-person voting."   That  Court then ruled

Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.... We can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent.

Of course, a problem does exist- the vote of African-Americans. They overwhelmingly vote Demcoratic and threaten the Party which actually does exist for "the brute acquisition of power, and holding on to that power no matter what."







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Reagan: Lowering The Bar Like No Other

When Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6) died in 2004, Peggy Noonan, the late president's speechwriter columnist for The Wall Street Journal (of course), penned a love letter to the ex-president. She remarked

It's not hard to imagine him now in a place where his powers have been returned to him and he's himself again -- sweet-hearted, tough, funny, optimistic and very brave. You imagine him snapping one of those little salutes as he turns to say goodbye. Today I imagine saluting right back.

And those were the most nuanced things she had to say about the 'ol lug.  While still a great writer and yet with the WSJ, Noonan is bold enough neither to condemn Donald Trump's nastiness nor to praise him. Instead, she comments

The only thing I feel certain of is how we got here. There are many reasons we’re at this moment, but the essential political one is this: Mr. Obama lowered the bar. He was a literal unknown, an obscure former state legislator who hadn’t completed his single term as U.S. senator, but he was charismatic, canny, compelling. He came from nowhere and won it all twice. All previously prevailing standards, all usual expectations, were thrown out the window.

Mr. Obama lowered the bar. He did, she no doubt believes, especially as compared to her hero, the 40th President.   Of the latter's 1980 campaign pledges, she once adoringly (as always, elegantly) wrote: "Done, done, done, done, done, done, and done. Every bit of it."

I don't know about Reagan's campaign pledges but I have little doubt he accomplished what he set out to do.  With a chart he credits to the Center for American Progress, Thom Hartmann explains

when GM was our largest employer and our working class were also in the middle class, CEOs only took home 30 times what working people did. The top tax rate for all the time America’s middle class was created was between 74 and 91 percent. Until, of course, Reagan dropped it to 28 percent and working people moved from the middle class to becoming the working poor.

Other policies, like protective tariffs and strong labor laws also help build a middle class, but progressive taxation is the most important because it is the most direct way to transfer money from the rich to the working poor, and to create a disincentive to theft or monopoly by those at the top.

History shows how important high taxes on the rich are for creating a strong middle class.

If you compare a chart showing the historical top income tax rate over the course of the twentieth century with a chart of income inequality in the United States over roughly the same time period, you’ll see that the period with the highest taxes on the rich – the period between the Roosevelt and Reagan administrations – was also the period with the lowest levels of economic inequality.

You’ll also notice that since marginal tax rates started to plummet during the Reagan years, income inequality has skyrocketed.

Even more striking, during those same 33 years since Reagan took office and started cutting taxes on the rich, income levels for the top 1 percent have ballooned while income levels for everyone else have stayed pretty much flat.

Aided by another chart from the Center for American Progress, Hartmann noted that union membership started to decline in 1967 but began to plummet in the first Reagan Administration.

The plunge was no coincidence.  In an interview last year, Joseph McCartin, Professor of History at Georgetown University, recalled

Labor was a prominent power in 1981. When the air traffic controllers went out on strike 33 years ago yesterday, on August 3, 1981, the labor movement was still seen as a central force in American government and politics. Both parties, Republican and Democrat, saw labor that way.

It was an important moment in American history, though, because Ronald Reagan was in the first months, really, still, of his presidency. He'd been inaugurated in January, 1981. And he was in the middle of rolling out what we call the Reagan revolution. And Reagan wanted to really turn back the clock, you might say, to an approach to American government and politics that was pre-New Deal. And part of that meant reorganizing the relationship between government and the labor movement.

The PATCO strike happened at this important turning point in American history, and it left a very profound legacy, because, as you say, Ronald Reagan first threatened those strikers to return to work within 48 hours of their walkout, and when they did not, he fired them. Not only did he fire them; he permanently replaced them. And with that action, he sent a powerful message that many employers even in the private sector acted upon after that, and it was a period of getting tough with the union movement that a really marked a profoundly important turning point.


The confluence of the beginning of the Reagan presidency and the downturn of economic indicators is stunning. Dave Johnson displays three graphs (the first from Emmanuel Saez via whitehouse.gov, the third from Federal Reserve Z-1, Bureau of Economic Analysis): the increasing share of total income flowing to the top 10%; the decline in the U.S.A.  personal savings rate; the decline in savings of the American people.

President Reagan got "tough" with PATCO and declared "They are in violation of the law, and if they do not report to work within 48 hours,they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated."  As the media and the right, including Peggy Noonan, swooned, the legend of the swashbuckling, macho president was born. Organized labor, and the workers it represents, hasn't been the same since. Or as Noonan herself would put it: done, done, done, done, done, done, and done.

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IRS Obsession

It's the trumped-up scandal that won't quit.

It's not Benghazi, but even more ridiculous.  Bill O'Reilly asked President Obama about it in the interview (video, below) broadcast on the Fox network before the Super Bowl.   Former Reagan speechwriter, syndicated columnist, and This Week talking head Peggy Noonan wrote about it in her most recent column when she argued

In the past five years many Americans have come to understand that an agency that maintained a pretty impressive record for a very long time has been turned, at least in part, into a political operation. Now the IRS has proposed new and tougher rules for grass-roots groups. Cleta Mitchell, longtime attorney for many who've been targeted, says the IRS is no longer used in line with its mission: "They're supposed to be collecting revenues, not snooping and trampling on the First Amendment rights of the citizens. We are not subjects of a king, we are permitted to engage in First Amendment activities without reporting those activities to the IRS."

Wonkette's Gary Legum wants to tell Noonan and

Cleta Mitchell, attorney for some conservative groups, that part of the IRS’s revenue collection duties includes determining whether applicants claiming to be social-welfare organizations in order to get tax-exempt status are actually political action groups. It is ridiculous that the IRS is charged with doing this, but you can blame the conservative Supreme Court and its terrible campaign finance rulings for unleashing a flood of grifters. You’re not all goddamn special snowflakes exempted from the rules simply because you think you should be. 

But that didn't stop George Will Monday on GOP News from bizarrely equating the IRS flap to two gigantic scandals:  "Bret, we've had three major scandals in the last forty years. Scandals are a dime a dozen in this town – sexual, financial and all the rest. Three big ones involving the distortion and abuse of institutions. Watergate, Iran-Contra and the IRS."

The weapons of mass destruction fraud, including Condoleezza Rice's 'mushroom cloud' invention, didn't manage to make the cut.  But the IRS did, even though late last June Sam Stein found revelations which

greatly complicate the political scandal that has engulfed the IRS over the past few weeks. An inspector general report in mid-May revealed the tax agency had screened conservative groups with words like "tea party" in their name when considering applications for tax-exempt status. Lawmakers from both parties quickly denounced the creation of such "Be On The Lookout," or BOLO, lists. Republicans in particular argued the finding proved the IRS was trying to tip the scales of the election during the heat of the campaign.

Now it appears the agency's BOLOs were applied to organizations across the ideological spectrum. The IRS also screened groups advocating on behalf of Israeli settlements who were applying for non-profit 501(c)(4) status -- a criterion that may on its own prove politically toxic.

A request for comment from the IRS was not immediately returned. The news of the progressive BOLO was first reported by The Associated Press.

John Shafer, manager of the tax-exempt division in the IRS Cincinnati office had told congressional investigators that BOLOs were applied not for purposes of punishing conservative groups, but to ensure that similar organizations were being categorized and screened by the same group of IRS officials. The concern, he said, was that two different tea party groups would get two different decisions on non-profit status. So, the Cincinnati office developed filters to make sure that everything was categorized as cleanly as possible, he said.

Democratic staffers on the House Ways and Means Committee released a copy of a BOLO list Monday that showed the word "progressive" was one of those a filters.

When House Ways and Means Democrats released additional BOLO lists soon thereafter, groups advocating both limiting government and "expanding government" were included, as were "Green Energy Organizations."  

 Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday released 15 additional IRS BOLO lists dating back to August 2010. The information on those lists further suggests that the tax agency was indiscriminate (albeit tone-deaf) in its screening of groups seeking tax-exempt status.

In Feb. 8, 2012, for instance, the BOLO list included groups advocating limiting government as well as those advocating "expanding government.” The full file reads as follows.

Political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, $ocial economic reform / movement. Note: typical advocacy type issues that are currently listed on the Case Assignment Guide (CAG) do not meet these criteria unless they are also involved in activities described above.

IRS BOLO also seemed to target liberal-leaning groups starting June 15, 2012, when it listed "Green Energy Organizations" as something to flag. The concern, according to the file, was that these groups wanted 510c3 status for supplying green energy to other groups.

The IRS at the same time flagged conservative-leaning groups for screening. Starting July 11, 2012, it began spotlighting organizations dedicated to paying down the national debt. That continued until April 19.

Last May, Joan Walsh observed

so far no one has identified a single conservative group that was denied status in the controversial review, though some faced bureaucratic hurdles and had their tax-exempt status delayed.

In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to have its status denied happens to be aprogressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. 

Under questioning from O'Reilly, Obama responded as well as he could as head of the federal government, maintaining employees in the Cincinnatti office "did not know how to implement" the applicable law and noting there has been "no smidgeon of corruption."  It would have been almost masochistic for him to point out that liberal groups were scrutinized to roughly the same degree as conservatives.  A defense of the federal government employees as simply doing their job as they were directed probably would have been untenable.

Still, it is a reminder that not all nonsense from the GOP comes from those "tea party" groups, upon which Chuck Schumer, some of his Democratic colleagues, and many members of the mainstream media focus as the right-wing threat to common sense.  Peggy Noonan suggesting the IRS trampled on the First Amendment or George Will comparing it to secretly selling arms to a terrorist regime holding American hostages reminds us that Repub propaganda can come from its mainstream figures unattached to the tea party movement.









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Flogging Flagrant Firearm Fantasies


Pretty slick, those Republican spokespersons. On ABC's This Week, Peggy Noonan remarked

Here's where I think the problem is, I think Congress is attempting to act in a way that ignores a central fact. The central fact is that nobody in America really trusts Congress. If you're Congress, and you admit nobody really trusts us, then you make simple, discreet, five-page bills, not these big comprehensive things that involve assault weapons, and this and that, and putting it forward and then having everybody, say whoa, I'm not sure I trust you.

The reason Americans don't trust these big bills is because they think so much mischief is hidden inside.

But if you're paying attention- and the former speechwriter for President Reagan banks on people not doing so- you have noticed that the leader of the Senate, a Democrat, decided against including an assault weapons ban in federal gun control legislation.  

That firearms provision would have made a firearms bill more comprehensive, though more likely not to gain passages.    By contrast, on Thursday, the GOP-controlled House voted

... to approve a temporary measure to keep the government funded through the end of September. Government shutdown averted.

But it turns out the continuing resolution didn't just address spending. It contains six measures that limit how federal agencies deal with guns.

These are the first gun-related provisions members of Congress have passed since 20 first-graders were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. And while all of the public discussion is about new gun controls, these so-called policy riders very quietly do the opposite.

"There was very little discussion," says Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky. Rogers is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which produced the bill that contains these riders. One of them dates back to the mid-1990s; the others have been around for seven or eight years, regularly included in spending bills like this one, without any debate.

"These are not new. These are general provisions that we've carried for a long time," Rogers says.

What is new is that the continuing resolution makes four of these riders permanent.

According to Zach Beauchamp of Think Progress, the riders

1) Limit enforcement tools against crooked dealers. One rider would prevent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents from shutting down gun stores due to “due to a lack of business activity,” arguably a sign of criminal sales.

2) Shield gun dealers who “lose” their guns. This legislation precludes any federal law that requires gun retailers to count their guns and submit the results as a mechanism of determining whether any weapons have been lost or stolen.

3) Interfere with ATF gun trace reports. The ATF is now mandated to include, in any reports concerning its tracing of guns back to crime, that trace data “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crime.” Academic work on guns has used trace data to firmly establish that several firearm regulations effectively prevent the spread of guns to criminal.

4) Expand the class of protected guns. According to Roll Call‘s John Gramlich, the fourth permanent law would “place a broad definition of antique guns and ammunition that may be imported into the United States.”

Many Democrats, facing a Hobson's choice, voted for the measure.  That included perhaps the House's most aggressive advocate of gun control measures, Carolyn McCarthy of New York, who lamented "What's tough on this particular vote is do we shut the government down?"

But the GOP still aggressively pursues its disinformation campaign. On the same program on which Noonan appeared, the issue of expanded background checks on firearms purchases prompted Karl Rove to claim

Let's be clear about this — this was prompted by the Sandy Hook murders. Those guns were legally purchased with a background check. This would not have solved something like that. Let's be very careful about quickly trampling on the rights of people. And look, you want to get something done?  Then stop scaring people.  Don't say we're going to keep a registry of all of these guns ..

Fortunately there to correct the GOP strategist was ABC's Terry Moran, who responded "Stop scaring people? You're scaring people with this Orwellian sense that black helicopters and the government, if we register guns, they're going to confiscate Americans' guns. That kind of paranoia..." A moment later, Moran confronted Rove with ."Who is going to confiscate all of the guns in America?"
 
Alas, Moran was not around earlier when Rove falsely claimed "We're talking about, in this instance, having a registry where if a grandfather wants to give a treasured shotgun to his grandson, or granddaughter, he has to register with the government and go and get approval as the government to give that gun to his grandchild."  Section 937 (f) (1) of the Fix Gun Checks Act of 2013 excludes family members.

Accuracy, though, is not an asset but a bug of the Repub campaign against gun safety measures. Rove makes things up to frighten people while Noonan implies that people distrust Congress because it adds provisions to make bills "comprehensive."  Alex Pareene observes

One fun fact about Peggy Noonan is that she always sounds like she is telling small children a story she is making up as she goes along. She is very good at performing “thoughtfulness,” and then saying airy garbage. Noonan said that the president’s poll numbers are “deflating” because “a number of people think the White House is playing games” on the sequester, and “also there is Obamacare.”

But they have in their promotion of a culture of death a powerful ally, one which always has their back.   The anti-law enforcement provisions included in the continuing resolution which funds the federal government through September were heavily promoted by the National Rifle Association, faithfully fulfilling its role as the criminals' lobby in the United States Congress.



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The Strange Concept Of One Country



The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on two cases pertaining to same-sex marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8.  Associate Professor of Law Margaret Ryznar at Indiana University, blogging at The Huffington Post, explains

In United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court will determine the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law in 1996 by President Clinton. Section 3 of DOMA provides that the word "marriage," as used in any federal law or regulation, means only a union of a man and a woman. This includes laws that govern veterans' benefits, tax adjustments, Social Security, and many other benefits...

In 2008, the California Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage because it violated the guarantee of equal protection in the California constitution. Later that same year, California voters approved a ballot measure -- Proposition 8 -- amending the state constitution to specifically disallow same-sex marriages.

A federal district court, having jurisdiction to hear federal constitutional issues, found Proposition 8 to violate the United States Constitution because California had effectively given same-sex couples the right to marry and then taken it away again. The court determined that taking away a right only from a minority group -- which the state had no legitimate reason for doing -- violated the equal protection guarantee in the United States Constitution. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and the proponents of Proposition 8 sought review by the Supreme Court.

Cultural conservatives are trying to plug up the dam, hoping for an indecisive decision which would enable some states to maintain a prohibition of same-sex marriage.  On GOP News Sunday, both Rand Paul of Kentucky and long-time conservative activist Gary Bauer seemed resigned to decisions which would not maintain federal prohibition of same-sex marriage.  The Senator stated

I've always said that the states have a right to decide. I do believe in traditional marriage, Kentucky has decided it, and I don't think the federal government should tell us otherwise. There are states that have decided in the opposite fashion, and I don't think the federal government should tell anybody or any state government how they should decide this. Marriage has been a state issue for hundreds and hundreds of years.

DOMA is complicated, though, because DOMA does provide protection for the states from the federal government. But, then, you're right, part of it federalizes the issue.

I think there's a chance the court could strike down the federalization part of it. I think the way to fix it is maybe to try to make all of our laws more neutral towards the issue, and, I don't want the government promoting something I don't believe in. 

Bauer, who has staunchly advocated traditional marriage and opposed abortion rights since the beginning of time, explained

Yes, Chris, well, look, you don't advance limited government by being an anti-democratic movement that is attempting to take this issue away from the American people. What the brief is asking for and what the groups waiting outside the Supreme Court are asking for, is for unelected judges to deny the people of the states the right to decide what marriage is in their state...

I would prefer every state in the union keep the definition of marriage that's prevailed in Western civilization for a couple thousand years. That doesn't look like that is going to happen.    So, I certainly at this point would prefer the people of the states to make the decision, as they have.

Over at This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the cultural weather vane known as Peggy Noonan maintained

Yeah, Americans don't take it well and don't accept it as a resolution when their black robed masters in Washington decide to put on them what they decide is the right thing. One of the great sins of Roe versus Wade, the abortion decision of 40 years ago, was that it decided everyone has to do it one way, instead of leaving it to the states.

It seems to me it is certainly in line with conservative political thinking, but I think it would be acceptable certainly to liberal thinking, that when there are these gnawing, disagreeing questions going on in America, if you can't solve it here, you can say everybody can solve it down there. Let's state by state make their decision. You will immediately have New York having some of the most liberal decisions on this issue.

You will perhaps have Utah or Arkansas, having less liberal decisions. Work questions out that way as much as possible.

That is a crock.  The Justices in Roe v. Wade did not determine "everyone has to do it one way." States were permitted to enact some, limited, restrictions on abortion in the second trimester and in the third trimester even prohibit it if the life and the health of the woman were protected.  As the map (below) from Wikipedia illustrates, approximately 20 states (yellow) have no waiting periods before an abortion can be obtained, with the others having waiting periods of less than 24 hours (blue), 24 hours or more (red), or waiting periods which currently are enjoined (grey).  There are similar variations among states in ultrasound requirements, parental notification and consent, and fetal homicide laws.

Noonan's disinformation was echoed by Karl Rove on the same panel, when he said "And maybe should not have imposed one national view from the court." That runs counter to Rove's assertion a moment earlier that a GOP presidential candidate in the next cycle might, as Stephanopoulos put it, say "flat out I am for gay marriage."

Admittedly, it is more likely a Repub candidate will state he or she is in favor of same-sex marriage than will oppose tax cuts for billionaires, support closing loopholes which create incentives to move jobs overseas, or support effective restrictions on Wall Street predators. But no one will say he/she is actually for same-sex marriage.  And permitting such a union will be advocated far less than will leaving matters to the individual state, which will become part of the GOP platform.

Stephanopoulos noted

And interesting, Jim Messina, even the president is not willing to go quite that far yet. I sat down with him two weeks ago and he went farther than he ever had before in saying that gay marriage is a right guaranteed by the constitution, basically said he can't imagine circumstances in a state where a ban could be upheld, but still not going quite that far in enunciating the straight constitutional principle.

Of course, he is not willing to go quite that far yet.  After all, it's not as if we fought a war some 150 years ago- in part over states rights- which, history books claim, the Union won. He may believe gay marriage is a right guaranteed by the constitution, but states should have a right to deny that constitutional right.

The Court ought to decide there is, or there is not, a constitutional right to marry a willing adult, irrespective of gender.  One hundred fifty years after a civil war which decided slavery but apparently little else, center-right politicos like Noonan, Rove, and Obama still can't wrap their arms around the concept of a United States of America.





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Introspection Needed



Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter and current columnist and pundit, had some pointed criticism of her party's presidential nominee on Tuesday.   She paid, as is her wont, homage to her first love, writing "Reagan in 1984 used to put out his hand: “Come too, come walk with me.” Come join, come help, whatever is happening in your life.'"  She believes, however, that Romney's campaign should recognize

The big issue—how we view government, what we want from it, what we need, what it rightly asks of us, what it wrongly demands of us—is a good and big and right and serious subject. It has to be dealt with seriously, at some length. And it is in part a cultural conversation. There’s a lot of grievance out there, and a sense of entitlement in many spheres. A lot of people don’t feel confident enough or capable enough to be taking part in the big national drama of Work in America. Why? What’s going on? That’s a conversation worth having.

I think there is a broad and growing feeling now, among Republicans, that this thing is slipping out of Romney’s hands. Today at a speech in New York with what seemed like many conservatives and Republicans in the audience, I said more or less the above. I wondered if anyone would say, in the Q&A, “I think you’ve got it wrong, you’re too pessimistic.” No one did. A woman asked me to talk about why in a year the Republicans couldn’t lose, the Republican candidate seems to be losing.

I said pre-mortems won’t help, if you want to help the more conservative candidate, it’s a better use of your time to pitch in with ideas. There’s seven weeks to go. This isn’t over, it’s possible to make things better.

Republicans are going to have to right this thing. They have to stabilize it.

It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one. It’s not big, it’s not brave, it’s not thoughtfully tackling great issues. It’s always been too small for the moment. All the activists, party supporters and big donors should be pushing for change. People want to focus on who at the top is least constructive and most responsible. Fine, but Mitt Romney is no puppet: He chooses who to listen to. An intervention is in order. “Mitt, this isn’t working..."

Romney doesn’t seem to be out there campaigning enough. He seems—in this he is exactly like the president—to always be disappearing into fund-raisers, and not having enough big public events.

But the logic of Romney’s fundraising has seemed, for some time, slightly crazy. He’s raising money so he can pile it in at the end, with ads. But at the end will they make much difference? Obama is said to have used a lot of his money early on, to paint a portrait of Romney as Thurston Howell III, as David Brooks put it. That was a gamble on Obama’s part: spend it now, pull ahead in the battlegrounds, once we pull ahead more money will come in because money follows winners, not losers.

If I’m seeing things right, that strategy is paying off.

Romney’s staff used to brag they had a lower burn rate, they were saving it up. For what? For the moment when Americans would rather poke out their eyeballs and stomp on the goo than listen to another ad?

Also, Mr. Romney’s ads are mostly boring. It’s kind of an achievement to be boring at a moment in history like this, so credit where it’s due: That musta taken effort!

When big, serious, thoughtful things must be said then big, serious, thoughtful speeches must be given. Mr. Romney is not good at press conferences. Maybe because he doesn’t give enough, and so hasn’t grown used to them, and confident.

He should stick to speeches, and they have to be big—where America is now, what we must do, how we can do it. He needs to address the Mideast too, because it isn’t going to go away as an issue and is adding a new layer of unease to the entire election. Luckily, Romney has access to some of the best writers and thinkers in the business. I say it that way because to write is to think, and Romney needs fresh writing and fresh thinking.

Two days later, Noonan followed it up with a column in which she again slammed Mitt Romney's campaign, this time asserting it needed someone like Reagan campaign manager (and anti-semite, by the way) James A. Baker III, who

broke up power centers while at the same time establishing clear lines of authority—and responsibility. When you screwed up, he let you know in one quick hurry. But most of all he had judgment. He delegated, and only the gifted were welcome: Bob Teeter, Dick Darman, Roger Ailes, Marlin Fitzwater. He didn't like hacks, he didn't get their point, and he knew one when he saw one.

A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn't about individual entrepreneurs. It's people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.
Mitt Romney needs to get his head screwed on right in this area. Maybe advice could come from someone in politics who awes him. If that isn't Jim Baker then Mitt Romney's not awe-able, which is a different kind of problem.

To Peggy Noonan, veteran Republican pollster and corporate strategist Steve Lombardo (whose views Noonan approvingly cites), and so many others, the problem is strategic and personal.    Romney, she says, "should be surrounded by the most persuasive, interesting, and articulate members," such as Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, Susana Martinez, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan, of his party.

Spare me.  Although the nominee isn't likable, the problem isn't personality.   Although Romney erred in allowing himself to be recorded denigrating almost half of Americans, the problem isn't strategic.  The problem is not the candidate- it is the candidate's party. CBS News reports

Senate Republicans blocked legislation Wednesday that would have established a $1 billion jobs program putting veterans back to work tending to the country's federal lands and bolstering local police and fire departments.

Republicans said the spending authorized in the bill violated limits that Congress agreed to last year. Democrats fell two votes shy of the 60-vote majority needed to waive the objection, forcing the legislation back to committee.   

Supporters loosely modeled their proposal after the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps used during the Great Depression to put people to work planting trees, building parks and constructing dams. They said the latest monthly jobs report, showing a nearly 11 percent unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, merited action from Congress.

The vote came on a proposal to waive a procedural rule obstructing passage of the legislation, dubbed the Veterans Job Corps Act of 2011.   While every Democrat supported the measure, all but five Republicans opposed it.   They expressed concern over "politics" (I'm shocked, shocked, to find that politics is going on in here!), the budgetary impact, or that Senate rules would be put aside for passage, a common Senate practice.  Further, bill sponsor Patty Murray of Washington State stated that the program, according to a New York Times editorial, would be financed by "recovering more money from delinquent Medicare providers and forcing tax deadbeats to pay up before receiving passports."

One would expect a little more from a party than to express undying loyalty to "the troops" and then voting against them when it gets a chance.   Or maybe not, given its unofficial slogan has become the chant of "USA! USA!," especially when drowning out Americans expressing a contrary point of view.
  
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars," Cassius (not this one) said in Julius Caesar.   Mitt Romney's problem is neither him, nor in messaging, but in the policies and actions of the party, circa 2012, he represents.






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Obama Not A Man

At firedoglake.com, blue texan quoted her as writing "the health-care protesters have to make sure they don’t get too hot, or get out of hand. They haven’t so far, they’ve been burly and full of debate, with plenty of booing. This is democracy’s great barbaric yawp." He/she concludes

This is the first time I've seen racism and death threats described as 'great.'

Media Matters.org recognized that

she whole heartedly defends the mini-mobs and berates Democrats for having the nerve to push back rhetorically (and) ignores the death threats issued to at least one Congressman. She ignores that members of Congress now routinely have to be escorted to their cars by police after mini-mobs unleash their wrath (and) lectures the White House that nobody in the administration--nobody--should be using Nazi references in the context of the health care debate. Ever. This, of course, one day after Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck both accused the White House of acting like Nazi's (sic).

At his Daily Dish blog, the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan noted

She is not terrified by massively escalating healthcare costs, which are bankrupting the government and the private sector. She doesn't mention these once in her know-nothing column. She just channels the "feelings" of others and wants that to guide public policy. She does not mention the crises on many people's lives because of our current healthcare system. In fact, there is not a scintilla of a constructive proposal in the column - just an amorphous sense that anything that costs money shouldn't happen now....

And who is the "she" they are referring to? None other than Wall Street Journal columnist and former President Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, having penned an opinion piece on August 7, 2008, invoking all the usual villains to rationalize the angry mobs which have disrupted town hall meetings called by Democrats in their home districts last week. Nancy Pelosi (the favorite Repub target), the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, the AFL-CIO, and even Noonan's favorite Democrat, Barack Obama.

Funny, though. Criticizing Pelosi for criticizing demonstrators for criticizing Obama, Noonan charges "for normal people, it's not all about Obama." Later, she upbraids the President, who should

should call in his troops and his Congress and announce a rethinking. There are too many different bills, they’re all a thousand pages long, no one has time to read them, no one knows what’s going to be in the final one, the public is agitated, the nation’s in crisis, the timing is wrong, we’ll turn to it again—but not now. We’ll take a little longer, ponder every aspect, and make clear every complication.

The President, she seems to be saying, is weak- he hasn't been able to "call in his troops" and order them to do as they should. There is a faint odor about this coming from Ms. Noonan.

From New York Magazine, "Looking For Mr. Right" is a compendium- as of mid-2004- of Peggy Noonan's Greatest Hits, and below a couple of quotes, the first in the longer version about President Reagan, the second about Reagan and President George W. Bush that didn't make the list.

But you know, that’s how I think a lot of people felt when Reagan was in the White House: Daddy’s home. A wise and brave and responsible man is running things. And that’s a good way to feel.

The charismatic figure Mr. Bush follows is the last big American president, the last who had the massive presence of a battleship, Ronald Reagan.

There is an obvious pattern in Noonan's elegant prose, including “Men are back. Manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our country ... I am speaking of masculine men, men who push things and pull things and haul things and build things ... Manliness wins wars.”

Noonan loves masculinity. Hard, muscles ripplin' masculinity. And unless President Obama reins in those wimpish, liberal, renegade Democrats, he just doesn't cut it for her.

Obama is unlikely to demonstrate such manful manliness. He doesn't need to. He has Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to do that, as Jane Hamsher points out. And with Emanuel, the President aims to go 14-0 on legislation. Even if he has to sacrifice genuine health care reform to do it.