Republicans unveiled their "Pledge to America" today. While it's laced with tea party slogans, there's not much to see here.

Here's one analysis:

It's a 21-page slog -- it just seems longer -- whose opening is an equal parts corny and clumsy (I counted two grammatical errors in the first paragraph alone) overreach for high-mindedness. In a desperate attempt to capture the Tea Party's flag-waving zeitgeist, the introduction borrows heavily from the Declaration of Independence -- inserting some phrases wholesale while paralleling the original's litany of charges against George III with indictments of President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats.

One of the arguments forwarded during the health bill debate was that the provisions would get stronger over time, as a constituency for new services developed. I thought it a doubtful assertion at the time (consider that no new government program - yes, a public insurance program - was created) and I imagine folks who argued that assertion are thinking it is doubtful now too. From today's NYTimes:

For starters, Republicans say they will try to withhold money that federal officials need to administer and enforce the law. [. . .] “They’ll get not one dime from us,” the House Republican leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, told The Cincinnati Enquirer recently. “Not a dime. There is no fixing this.”

[. . . ] Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a senior Republican on the Finance Committee, has introduced a bill that would eliminate a linchpin of the new law: a requirement for many employers to offer insurance to employees or pay a tax penalty.

[. . .] Republicans say they will also try to scale back the expansion of Medicaid if states continue to object to the costs of adding millions of people to the rolls of the program for low-income people.

What you will have left is an individual mandate and state based exchanges (with inadequate subsidies.) Would that still be "the biggest progressive accomplishment in 40 years?"

Speaking for me only

Think Progress:

Paul Krugman:

[W]hen the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices. But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

I was reviewing the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's website and their fancy brochure from their "Fiscal Responsibility" summit to see if there was anything there on the rich sacrificing by NOT getting a tax cut. A big nothing. But that silence won't last. Wait till after the election when they demand cuts in Social Security benefits.

Speaking for me only

Do we need to get one ready for weenie liberals? Apparently the Post Partisan Unity Schtick will be nothing but a bad memory -- Obama aides mull calling GOP extremist:

President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said. [. . .] “We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.

(Emphasis supplied.) Weenie liberals are worried:

The party’s House and Senate campaign committees are resistant, not wanting to do anything that smacks of nationalizing the midterm elections when high unemployment and the drop in Mr. Obama’s popularity have made the climate so hostile to Democrats.

That's why Dems will get creamed in November.

Speaking for me only

The debate over the use of the phrase American Talban, which was always absurd, now reaches new heights of absurdity. The American Prospect's Adam Serwer writes:

I've written pieces with the intent of breaking down the very kind of arrogance that presumes the bad acts of our countrymen are different from those of our enemies, so I can hardly be thrown in that camp. I have no problem with pointing out individual instances in which conservative figures embrace the premises behind the arguments of religious extremists; I do it all the time. That doesn't mean that conservatives are "indistinguishable" from the Taliban "in their tactics and on the issues."

Serwer's argument appears to be it's ok if he, or some other American Prospect writer (Serwer, like all of the American Prospect writers, still ignores the fact that the American Prospect published Robert Kuttner's article "American Taliban") makes comparisons of American figures to foreign theocratic reactionaries, but it is not ok if Markos Moulitsas does. Of course, this makes no sense. Alternatively, one could argue that Serwer is saying pointing out one instance where American theocratic reactionaries resemble foreign extremists is ok, but pointing out serial instances of resemblance is not ok. Serwer does not explain this argument, so I'm not sure what reasoning underlies it. And again, since the Kuttner article published by the American Prospect does not focus on a single instance of resemblance, it seems to me that Serwer needs to address why it is ok for the American Prospect to do that which he is condemning. Glenn Greenwald writes:

Politico reports:

Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who heads Democratic campaign efforts, has argued behind closed doors for taking a political issue off the table by giving a short reprieve to wealthy folks before the midterm elections.

(Emphasis supplied.) Chris Van Hollen wants to take the issue off the political table, according to Politico. And he leads Dem campaign efforts. This is why the Dems are going to get creamed in November.

Speaking for me only

Think Progress has the money quote:

BAYH: [A]ll these other issues involving, oh, fairness and things like that can wait.

Bayh is retiring this year from politics. Thank gawd.

Speaking for me only

The list of usual suspects supporting tax cuts for the rich among House Dems is not remarkable. This a group that has been with the Republicans on any number of issues. Having said that, they are preferable to their Republican opponents and I hope they win in November. But they won't fight for my issues so I certainly won't be fighting for their reelection.

But I want to remark on one Democratic Senate candidate who is being fought for by the Netroots. That candidate is Jack Conway, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Kentucky. Conway favors tax cuts for the wealthy. Is Conway better than Rand Paul? No doubt. I hope he wins. But the question is should progressives be fighting for him. When Barbara Boxer (half the amount raised for Boxer as compared to Conway on ActBlue) and Russ Feingold (less than 1/3 the amount raised for Feingold as compared to Conway on ActBlue), two progressive champions, are fighting for their political lives? The answer to me is obvious. No. Progressives should fight for progressives like Boxer and Feingold. They fight for us. Not for Blue Dogs who fight for Republican tax policies.

Speaking for me only

Kevin Drum writes:

O'Donnell is only one candidate, and every professional politician knows that once you get a freight train barrelling forward you can't control every last twist in the tracks. And it's quite possible that the result of the Tea Party freight train this year will be lots of ultra-conservative victories and one or two preventable losses. Is that a reasonable price to pay? I don't know, but I do know that there are plenty of liberals who'd be willing to make that trade in the opposite direction.

[More...]

I’m told by some Dem-leaning pundits that I’m supposed to feel bad that the GOP has gone to crazytown, that this portends unwell for progressive politics. I just don’t really agree. [. . .] People should stop pining for some golden version of the Republican Party, a conciliatory, collegial team of problem-solvers. They’re not coming back. They haven’t been around for a decade and a half. - D-Day

They are who we thought they were! Don't let'em off the hook:

Open Thread.

[Obama] won a mandate for responsible governance in the mold of presidents past. - Booman

I don't agree with the idea Booman espouses - that Obama won a mandate for Clintonism, other than in the sense that Obama won a mandate for fixing the country, especially the economy, something Clinton did. But if President Obama did win a mandate for Clintonism, why can't Dems deliver on the Clinton tax policy?

Apparently, Bill Clinton yesterday responded to the familiar line, this time from Rachel Maddow last March, that Clinton was the "best Republican President ever." Clinton said:

We had 100 times as many people move out of poverty during those eight years [I was president] than the previous 12 years because we had an earned income tax credit, not because we had another traditional anti-poverty program hiring people,” he said.

Certainly true. But if you can name the last President to raise taxes on the rich, you'll also get a prize if you say the "best Republican President" Bill Clinton. President Obama is trying to reinstate Bill Clinton's tax policies. I am with Obama on this one. And he has a mandate for it. He's being let down by Dems in Congress. Personally, I think the President should challenge the Congress, not just the Republicans, on tax policy.

Speaking for me only