Washington Post political correspondent Ezra Klein shook up the erudite politisphere last week when, in an essay for The New Yorker and then in a reprise during guest-hosting duties on MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes”, he put forth the mysteriously uncommon yet surprisingly obvious assertion that presidential speechifying can actually have a net negative effect on  administration success, as opposition politicians are actually heavily incentivized to ensure the failure of their across-the-aisle rivals.

Klein sought to dispute the historical wisdom that “the power of the president is the power to persuade,” arguing that grand speeches from the executive actually do his platform a disservice, since the other party cannot reasonably be expected to offer “bipartisan” support to a group of people whose successes inversely affect their own re-elections. The bigger deal a president makes of any one issue — witness, in recent months, Obama’s failed pursuit of the American Jobs Act; or, in years past, President Bush’s colossal efforts and, ultimately, failure at privatizing Social Security — the more vigorously opposition lawmakers are encouraged to oppose it. In this polarized environment, policy wins for one party can be directly interpreted as failures for the other; so pols stymie the efforts of their rivals regardless of any potential benefits.

Klein pays particular attention to the way in which a president’s message can backfire, as opposition figures are put in the clear position of 1: supporting their rivals and, thereby, losing; or 2: torpedoing rival legislation and improving their own political futures. But we think this analysis, while certainly interesting, misses the wider implications: that U.S. politicians personally benefit from weakening America, when to help the country would mean also helping party rivals and hurting themselves.

The two-party system has many flaws, but none quite so damning as this: Americans suffer as a direct result of the petty machinations of our two grand political parties. This is how, under Obama, Republicans have suddenly reversed their beliefs on, for instance, the insurance mandate in health care, originally developed by right-wing think tanks and backed by all manner of establishment R’s: To support it would mean supporting the president, so they thought up reasons to dislike it. And similar things happened with cowardly Democrats under Bush.

So long as we vote for D’s and R’s, we suffer. Because no matter which party wins, Americans inevitably lose.

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Then there’s Newt Gingrich, whose second-place finishes on Tuesday invalidate his so-called Southern strategy, predicated on the historian’s ability to sweep the more conservative U.S. states. The feisty former Georgia congressman failed to deliver wins in the region presumed to be most receptive to his patented big ideas — like moon colonization and helping poor children by giving them jobs cleaning schools. Regardless, Gingrich reiterated his intentions to stay in the race all the way, posing a serious threat to Santorum’s prospects, which fare much better given a one-on-one battle with Romney.

OK, but where does that leave us? Well, the same place we were before, mostly. Despite his losses Tuesday, Romney’s math argument, while not exactly inspirational, does hold a certain unassailable logic: Unless something big happens to change the race’s dynamics — like, for instance, Gingrich deciding to suck it up and drop out — it remains unlikely for Santorum to top Romney in delegates. And, again, the name of the game is 1,144; any candidate that reaches this number of delegates will automatically be declared the Republican presidential nominee. Estimates put Romney way out in front.

There’s another possibility, though less remote. If none of the candidates hits the magic 1,144 number, the nomination will go to a brokered convention, where party leaders will be forced to decide the nominee themselves. This is the outcome Gingrich favors. “I believe that after the primaries are over it will be obvious the so-called front-runner in fact didn’t get there, and from that point we will be in a whole different conversation,” Gingrich said in defeat. A conversation, presumably, involving child janitors and space fantasies.

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Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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As Republicans fought to win over Southern hearts and minds Tuesday, a pair of polls pointed toward a dramatic slide in support for President Obama, setting the Interwebs on fire with theories, complaints and cheers.

A New York Times and CBS News poll, the more drastic of the two, showed that the president’s approval rating had dropped to a 2012 low of 41 percent, down a precipitous 9 percent from the same organizations’ February poll. The apparent drop puts a crimp in the emerging narrative, as of the new year, that a handful of positive economic reports  had put Obama on track to improve his numbers and take the election in November.

Of course, the report set off the race to find out why exactly this poll decline had occurred. From the left, Jonathan Chait at New York Mag claimed a change in Obama’s rhetoric (specifically, use of the phrase “America is back”) might be to blame. On the right, The Daily Caller found a possible culprit in the ongoing national debate on reproductive freedom, which reporter Mickey Kaus perceived Democrats as clearly losing. There were many others: Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein attributed it to statistical noise, while the Post fingered a rise in gas prices.

But for our tastes, it doesn’t get much clearer than the revelation, brought to our attention by the good people at The People’s View, that the population samples between the two NYT/CBS polls diverged in one telling way:?The latter one included far more Republican primary voters, a group of people much likelier to oppose President Obama than the average voter.

Perhaps the takeaway is simply that polling — that great headline-generating beast — is actually widely misused and poorly understood. (Have any of our readers ever been polled? We haven’t.)?Expect more on this in the future.

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You might be a redneck if you’re voting in the Deep South primaries in Alabama and Mississippi Tuesday. (We mean no offense by this; more on it in just a bit.) Of course, there are many possible neck colors among the Southern voting populace, but Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are probably hoping for the darkest crimson as they attempt to convince conservatives that they best represent old Dixie ideology in an effort to amp their flagging candidacies.

Now, we belong to the camp that sees Mitt Romney as the inevitable GOP presidential nominee. That’s based on the potent combination of his superior (estimated) delegate haul and his advantages in establishment support and, the real vote-buyer, campaign cash. But math and numbers have never had strong support among the Republican base, so we’re guessing that today’s elections will exist outside of this framework.

Romney understands his campaign’s failure to gain serious conservative traction in the South, with its large evangelical demographics. (He admitted that the contests were “a bit of an away game” for him.) As such, he’s stooped to Gingrich-levels of obvious pandering, telling a Mississippi audience last week that he’s “learning to say ‘y’all’ and I like grits, strange things are happening to me.” He’s also enlisting the support of You Might Be A Redneck luminary Jeff Foxworthy. (See? Foreshadowing, not hate speech!)

What makes the whole situation even more cringeworthy, though, is this: There is some evidence to suggest that these deceitful tactics might actually work. According to Public Policy Polling data, a near-plurality of likely Republican voters in Alabama and Mississippi hold seriously questionable views on Barack Obama, including the pervasive belief that the president is in fact a secret Muslim. It’s not a huge leap to imagine that a group of people so fundamentally opposed to Obama that they believe this sort of unsupported fallacy might actually fall victim to the irreconcilable idea that Romney may truly be representative of the Deep South, with its historical poverty and, yes, love of grits.

The Not-Romneys must be hoping that the South asserts its famous independence and refutes Mitt’s awkward vote-shopping. It’d take a huge upset to change the campaign narrative. But then, stranger things have happened.

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Rick Santorum added to his delegate count during the weekend with an overwhelming victory in the Kansas caucuses, taking more than half of all votes. But contests in Wyoming, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, won by Mitt Romney, reinforce the new campaign reality: No matter how well any of the not-Romneys do, the math matters, and ultimately the numbers will decide the nominee.

See, the candidates are vying to secure enough delegates — done by winning states and/or congressional districts in the various elections — to win nomination before the August convention, and the magic number is 1,144. A candidate who secures that number of delegate votes will be declared the presidential nominee to take on Obama in November. Overwhelmingly, it’s looking like that candidate will — eventually, inevitably — be Romney.

This is no idle claim, but rather a fair analysis of the numbers. Following this weekend’s contests, Romney assumed an estimated count of 454 delegates to Santorum’s 217. (Gingrich and Paul claim fewer.) In other words, Romney has more than twice the number of his closest competitor; and with most upcoming elections awarding delegates proportionally, an alternate scenario looks improbable.
Santorum downplayed the delegate gap on “Meet the Press” yesterday after host David Gregory argued he’d need to win 61 percent of upcoming elections to overshoot Romney. “These numbers are going to change dramatically,” Santorum said. “A lot of these delegates are uncommitted.”

Santorum’s latter point is true enough; at this time, delegate counts are merely estimates and anything could, supposedly, happen. But his former point may be a decimal off: With Gingrich committed to “going all the way to Tampa,” the numbers just don’t add up. And numbers, unlike presidential hopefuls, don’t lie.

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Fresh on the heels of the “Stop Limbaugh” campaign — backlash to the talk-show host’s use of mysogynistic rhetoric in the national debate on women’s health care — comes a report released Thursday by watchdog group Southern Poverty Law Center alleging an explosion of radical right hate groups since the election of President Barack Obama.

According to the SPLC, the growth in extremist organizations — specifically those of the so-called Patriot movement, which perceive the federal government as the most existential of enemies — can be attributed to the convergence of a pair of important national events: Economic dislocation following the 2008 financial collapse and the evolution of racial politics as the country, in that same year, elected its first black president and as minorities see their share of the U.S. population rise.

The Patriot movement, SPLC explains, had been on the decline in the years between 1996 and 2008.
“There’s a lot of populist rage out there,” says Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the SPLC. “Demonizing propaganda and conspiracy theories have been pushed into the political mainstream, often by politicians or other well known public figures.”

Each of the three leading Republican presidential contenders has made public comments framing Obama as some sort of “other” figure out to destroy America. Newt Gingrich lambasts the president’s “Kenyan, anti-Colonial mind-set.” There’s Rick Santorum’s recent comment on Obama’s “phony theology.” And Romney thinks the historic executive simply “doesn’t understand America.”

It’s no surprise that quotes like these would incite fear and detachment in the electorate. Look forward to even more of the same as Republicans pivot from attacking each other to taking down the president.

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While the Republican candidates battle each other over the dubious distinction of most likely to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, and as they relentlessly — and, if we must say, factlessly — attack the president over alleged weaknesses in foreign policy, they ignore how the Obama administration has been busy radically rewriting constitutional powers of the executive.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday finally got around to explaining, sort of,  the president’s supposed justification for assassinating U.S. citizens abroad. “Due process” — the constitutionally enshrined right of Americans to basic legal protections, like not being killed by the CIA?in your sleep, for instance — is not necessarily the same as “judicial process,” he said. In other words, we are not actually guaranteed, as many had previously thought, the right to a fair trial before being judged guilty and terminated. Or, as Stephen Colbert parodied Tuesday night: “Due process just means there’s a process that you do.”

The administration simply wants us to trust that they will not abuse their newfound powers of execution. Bizarrely, the right wing is OK with this; or rather, judging from their public statements, they (the non-Ron Paul presidential candidates, at least) find the policy not quite extreme enough. Even more bizarrely:?Democrats don’t seem particularly stressed over it either.

Here we see how party loyalty distorts independent belief: If this was a Bush — or, God help us, a Romney, Santorum or Gingrich — trying to pull something like this, Dems would be frothing at the mouth. Instead, they cheer this erosion of individual liberty.

But Obama won’t be president forever. U.S. politics are reactionary: Even if Obama wins re-election, we’ll have a Republican executive soon enough. So while the GOP pushes the limits of extremism, let’s not lose sight of extremity in the White House. The next tenant may not be quite as trustworthy.

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We speak of late conservative media prankster Andrew Breitbart, who shook the political landscape with his “Big” Web exposes (bringing down, among other résumé highlights, Rep. Anthony Weiner in the infamously eponymous Twitter scandal) and then shocked the world with his sudden death last week. Breitbart had been planning more Big things before he died, and the website he founded, Breitbart.com, relaunched late Sunday with a new design, is proudly carrying his torch.

So it is that Breitbart’s editors have printed his final column, “The Vetting, Part I: Barack’s Love Song to Alinsky,” which they describe as “a story that should swing the first hammer against the glass wall the mainstream media has built around Barack Obama.” The site explains:

“Andrew wanted to do what the mainstream media would not. First and foremost: Andrew pledged to vet President Barack H. Obama.” Well, it’s about time!

Breitbart’s swan song focuses on Obama’s alleged connections with communist activists in ’90s-era Chicago; specifically his association with a play, “The Love Song of Saul Alinsky,” after one 1998 performance of which the then-senator participated in a panel discussion. The stated aim here is to shine some light on Obama’s “true political will,” which he claims “the American public remains largely ignorant of.” As such, he provides a detailed — and ostensibly terrifying — list of the other speakers on the panel that night, a group of communist individuals. In this way, he hopes to tarnish the Obama legacy as one of unabashed psychotic leftism.

Were that it was! But if Obama’s a communist, he must be pulling a long con. If anything, he’s proven himself to be frustratingly moderate, taking for instance a very conservative path toward health care reform — righties supported similar proposals before the president embraced them as a means of reaching concensus — and angering lefties in the process. Was it all an elaborate ruse for re-
election? If so, why not just enact his communist policies in term one? What long-term goal could disguising himself as a severely centrist executive possibly serve Obama’s supposed Marxist overlords?

Of course there is none, and no reasonable evidence to suggest that the president is some sort of secret radical. (Again, we wish.)

Then there’s this: Mitt Romney’s father, a former Republican governor, apparently liked Alinsky enough to work with him politically. How long until Breitbart’s media empire tackles the secret motivations of Big Romney?

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Today is Super Tuesday — in which  the four remaining Republican presidential candidates will vie for their slice of the proportional delegate pie —  and you know what that means: Endless speculation on the outcome of today’s votes. We’d hate to disappoint.

Super Tuesday, historically the day on which the largest amount of delegates is awarded to primary candidates, is a bit stunted this year: In 2008, 24 states held contests on the heroically designated day, with 41 percent of total party delegates at stake; this year, only 10 states are participating, representing 419 delegates, or 36 percent of the total needed to win the nomination, 1,144. The following states already held votes: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.

Of the above-listed states, the one that will likely get the most media coverage is Ohio — and not just because, like this great nation herself, it’s both round (on the ends) and high (in the middle). As pundits will repeat ad nauseum, Ohio is a bellwether state: No Republican nominee has ever become president without winning it. It also represents the second-largest delegate haul of the day, with 63 to Georgia’s 76. Moreover, the diverse state is seemingly up for grabs, as opposed to the Southern state where Gingrich thinks he dominates: According to a recent ReutersIpsos poll, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are in “a dead heat” in the Rust Belt swing state, tied with 32 percent support from likely voters.

Regardless of who wins which states, however, Super Tuesday won’t dramatically change the campaign narrative. Even if Romney wins all 419 delegates, for instance, a virtual impossibility given proportional allocation, he’ll have shored up only 612 delegates, around half the total necessary. And Rick Santorum, whose campaign gathered impressive momentum after triple wins in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri last month, is at a disadvantage given a pair of missteps — failing to secure a spot on the ballot in Virginia, meaning he cedes those 46 delegates to Romney and Ron Paul, and also not qualifying in some Ohio congressional districts. Gingrich, for his part, has been waiting for this day, though exactly why is not perfectly clear: Even if he dominates in Georgia he’ll still only have 93 delegates, about equal to Santorum’s total as of today.

All of which is to say that Super Tuesday isn’t shaping up to be particularly spectacular for any of the candidates — except, perhaps, for Romney; who, with his already commanding lead and (bruised though it may be) mantle of inevitability, may be able to scoop up enough votes to ensure his slow-but-steady eventual nomination.

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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Mitt Romney won the day on Tuesday (following Santorum’s surprise February hat trick) with a pair of much-needed wins against his Republican primary opponents.

Or did he?

In Arizona, at least, Romney carried the day, collecting all 35 delegates in the state’s winner-take-all contest. But in Michigan — the candidate’s home state, where his father once governed and held an executive position at local job provider AMC — the win was murkier. There, Romney prevailed by a slim 3 percent margin, despite a significant money and ground advantage. And aside from the theoretical effect of his win-mentum, the fact is that the pair will mostly split the state’s delegate votes.

So where does that leave us — and them? Pundits are mixed on whether the lack of a delegate majority will force a brokered convention, but next week’s Super Tuesday may clear that up. In the meantime, we present some pertinent stats below to help inform your opinions.

Election by the numbers

46
Romney won an estimated 46 delegates on Tuesday to Santorum’s estimated 13. (The Santorum camp claims 15, but the final count will take a little while to sort out.)

14
Due to GOP?sanctions related to Michigan’s state party moving its primary to before Super Tuesday, however, only 14 of Romney’s estimated 21 Michigan delegates will be able to vote. Likewise for
Santorum:?Only 12 of his MI?delegates can vote at the national convention.

$100,000
Romney handily carried Michigan voters earning $100,000 or more annually — taking this influential demographic by a 14-point margin. On the other hand, Romney lost out among voters making less than $100,000 and those who have not attended college.

1,144
In order to win the nomination, a candidate will have to secure 1,144 delegate votes by the August convention in Tampa — a majority of the total 2,286 delegates. Fox News estimates candidates’ current delegate shares as follows: Romney 209, Santorum 96, Newt Gingrich 32 and Ron Paul 19.

3 to 1
Democratic voters pulled the lever for Santorum in Michigan by a 3-to-1 margin. Whether that was due to the Santorum camp’s controversial robocalls — in which they called Democrats, encouraging them to come out and vote against Romney and, of course, for Santorum — remains unclear. Nearly 10 percent of voters in the open primary identified as Democrat, according to exit polls.

36%
On Super Tuesday — next Tuesday, March 6, 2012 — voters in 10 states will hand out 419 delegates to the Republican candidates, representing more than a third needed by any one candidate to secure the party’s nomination.?Georgia alone will award 76, which Newt Gingrich — of the perpetual comeback and fall-back-down continuum — hopes to claim, having served as the state’s Congressman for 20 years.

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What a world of difference a week and a half can make!

Well, the whole narrative may — but most probably won’t — change today when with any luck the winner(s) of yesterday’s two qualifying contests, in Michigan and Arizona, are announced. The results are expected to arrive too late for us to do any substantial analysis today; we’ll save that for tomorrow, and leave the guesswork to the experts.?

Experts such as poll analyst Nate Silver, who thinks Michigan — Romney’s home state, though one he’s antagonized by strongly opposing Obama-led auto bailouts that seem to have led to a strengthened local industry and the saving of millions of jobs — could go either way. Most polls, meanwhile, show Arizona leaning strongly in Romney’s favor.

Regardless of who wins, though, the campaign environment isn’t likely to undergo a drastic change. Will an unrealistic double-rout by Santorum compel Romney to cede the race to his rival? Not likely.
Nor will the more plausible double Romney win convince Santorum et al that they’ve missed their chance. Ron Paul is still playing the long game, hoping to pick up enough consolation delegates to buy some more establishment support for his libertarian ideas. And then there’s Gingrich: Educated guessing on the future intentions of that guy likely eludes even experts like Silver.

With Super Tuesday a week away, we may yet be on the cusp of some serious political momentum; if, that is, voters agree enough to elevate a single candidate. If not, a brokered convention may be on the horizon — a looming possibility that could, perhaps, be one GOP mystery more unfathomable than even Gingrich himself.

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Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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The exchange system — the network of state-administered markets that the act creates —is the central component of Obamacare, and it provides surprising insight into the law’s approach to state rights, consumer choice and regulated markets.

The exchange system is like an imaginary supermarket that only sells health insurance. To be sold on the exchange, an insurance plan must clearly display its “nutritional facts” to make comparison shopping easier. Each plan must also abide by basic quality standards designed to ensure that every plan sold on the exchange provides an adequate range of coverage for the price. For instance, plans on the exchange must spend at least 80 percent of premiums on health care, instead of things like executive pay, marketing or corporate jets. The exchange excludes plans that deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and puts limits on plans that try to charge more for riskier customers.

In addition to federal regulation, each state can adjust the rules of its own exchange and offer a state-level “public option” to compete on the exchange. With a federal blessing, states can even band together to create regional exchanges. Under the Act, a state can opt out of the exchange system entirely, if it can create an alternative health insurance program that achieves equal or better coverage for the same cost.

But why would any self-respecting insurance company want to play by these new rules and participate in the exchanges? Because only plans on the exchange are eligible to receive the new federal health insurance subsidies.

For those who do not receive coverage through their employer and spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care costs, Obamacare provides a tax credit sufficient to bring those costs below 10 percent — provided one’s health insurance is purchased on the exchange. By 2019, $113 billion in subsidies will be up for grabs each year on the exchanges, according to CBO estimates. Only by competing with the other plans on the exchange can insurance companies hope to get their hands on those juicy federal dollars.

The exchange system is a true capitalist’s solution to the health insurance problem. It creates a regulated marketplace where for-profit, nonprofit and public insurance providers alike compete on the merits for customers who can easily compare the costs and benefits of each plan. And the exchange system gives states the flexibility to experiment with alternatives, while challenging them to compete with one another.

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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Republicans, however, have begun pulling ahead of Democrats in trustworthiness on the budget, according to a new AP-GfK poll released Thursday. While President Obama and the Republican primary candidates have both promised to balance the budget, Americans seem to find those promises easier to believe when they’re made by Republicans.

But Americans’ trust in Republicans is misplaced. According to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget comparing the various fiscal proposals of the Republican primary candidates, only Ron Paul has proposed policies that would reduce projected U.S. debt over 10 years, by 9 percent of GDP. Under Newt Gingrich’s plan, debt would actually increase by a whopping 30 percent of GDP, while Rick Santorum would increase the debt by 20 percent of GDP. Mitt Romney’s plan would increase debt by only 1 percent, but remember — the candidates have promised to drastically cut the debt, not merely to increase it by less.

What about President Obama? According to CRFB’s analysis of his newly-released 2013 budget, the President’s plan also reduces the debt by 9 percent of GDP — the same as Ron Paul. That’s right — the President and Ron Paul are the only two candidates whose policies have any positive balancing effect on the budget at all. At best, Romney’s plan merely maintains the status quo, while Gingrich and Santorum make things significantly worse. 

So, to the 69 percent of Americans who care deeply about balancing the budget — don’t be so trusting. Candidates love to run with scissors, but few are willing to put them to good use.

Follow Michael J Frosch on Twitter @michaeljfrosch and @metropolitik

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages. 

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The new plan proposes lowering corporate tax rates from 35 to 28 percent across the board. This alone doesn’t tell us much, however, because the current 35 percent figure is the nominal rate — the number on the books before all the deductions and subsidies are factored in. For instance, after accountants were finished punching the very last equals sign last year, total corporate taxes were only 12 percent of profits — significantly less than the nominal 35 percent rate.

Though the plan argues for lowering the nominal rate, it would also eliminate the multifarious loopholes and subsidies in the existing corporate tax code that are responsible for the massive gap between nominal and effective rates and have led, the administration argues, to economic “distortions that hurt productivity and growth.”

Strange, then, that the plan — in its very next paragraph — inexplicably proposes carving out a brand new subsidy/loophole that would create a special effective tax rate for manufacturing sector corporations, dropping the proposed 28 percent nominal rate even further to “no more than 25 percent.”

The inconsistency is obvious — “distortions hurt economy, subsidies create distortions; therefore, let’s create a new subsidy!” And not just any subsidy, but a subsidy for the manufacturing sector, which Republicans won’t hesitate to characterize as a payout to unions. Here, I’ll just do it for them to get it over with: “This President says he wants to stop distorting the economy, but he’s happy to distort the economy even further — so long as it helps his cronies in the United Auto Workers.”
So effective is the plan at exposing its own vulnerabilities that one begins to suspect it may secretly be the first step in a government takeover of criticism.

As a final insult, the plan concludes by promising to simplify tax filing for small businesses “so that they can focus on growing their businesses rather than filling out tax returns.” Thank you, Obama administration, for taking all the paperwork out of running a small business. Now I can finally throw away my reading glasses and replace all the sales contracts, invoices, loan documents, commercial leases and regulatory compliance logs with various gentlemen’s agreements, firm handshakes and unwavering eye contact.

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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By “pro-growth tax policies,” Romney probably means net tax cuts for
corporations and the rich, not tax increases. Nevertheless, Mitt Romney
does appear to be arguing that cutting government spending can hurt the
economy.

It seems Mitt Romney is trying to have his Krugman and eat it too.

Economist Paul Krugman has long argued
that our protracted economic mess is a liquidity trap caused by
insufficient aggregate demand.

To put it another way, families lost so much net worth after the
financial crisis that they can no longer afford to buy as much stuff.
Consequently, businesses refuse to grow because they might get stuck
making a bunch of stuff that no one can afford to buy. So they don’t
hire new people or give anyone a raise, which of course perpetuates
everyone’s inability to buy more stuff.

Cutting government spending worsens the problem, because what little
spending money families have left is preserved by government programs
like Medicare, Medicaid and federal college loans. Some people rely on
government jobs, such as police, firefighters and teachers. Every
spending cut to these and other programs further reduces total demand
for goods and services in the economy.

Or as Krugman put it, in response to Romney: “Yep, slashing spending
in a depressed economy depresses the economy even more. And if you
don’t have to … you should wait until the economy is stronger.”

Instead,
Krugman argues that the government must kick-start demand (and, in
doing so, private sector growth) by borrowing a bunch of money and
spending it on projects that not only put extra spending money in
people’s pockets, but get them to actually spend it instead of saving
it.

Tax cuts for the wealthy don’t accomplish the latter. Corporations
are already sitting on $2 trillion in unspent cash, and studies of the
Bush tax cuts indicate that the wealthy tend to save their tax cuts.
Sadly,
both parties find the concept of spending our way out of recession to
be so violative of common sense that few in Washington are courageous
enough to lend their full-throated support to Krugman’s proposals.

Even President Obama’s economic advisors — who privately agreed that
a return to full employment would likely necessitate a much larger
stimulus — were so wary of trying to sell Congress on the
counterintuitive wisdom of Krugman’s arguments that they removed the
strongest argument for a larger stimulus from their final recommendation
to the president.

So it was that Mitt Romney, momentarily and perhaps entirely by
accident, gave a false glimmer of hope to those who watch in dismay as
the president and the Republican candidates race to outdo the other’s
proposed spending cuts.?And Washington cheers while Rome burns.

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Santorum believes that climate change science is a hoax, and this week he offered some of his reasoning. He explained that “man has dominion over the Earth” and “unlike the Earth, we’re intelligent and we can actually manage things.” But environmentalists, Santorum says, view man “just like any other species out there.” They spend too much time “worshiping the Earth” and not enough time worrying about “man and his light.” 

So, Rick Santorum rides in cars, flies in airplanes, protects his family’s health with modern medicine, receives his campaign funding through a worldwide electronic banking system and communicates with voters via TV and the Internet — while simultaneously believing that his incoherent extrapolations from the book of Genesis are an admissible argument against science?

These wonders of modernity would be impossible if millions of scientists, each devoting their lives to the discovery of counterintuitive truths, had not persevered in convincing a skeptical world that its traditional understandings of how things worked — reeking of superstition and religious dogma — were bitterly mistaken.

What Santorum fails to understand is that climate science is no different than the rest of science — it is produced by the very same research methods and rigorous evaluative standards as all other science. In fact, this is precisely what makes something “science,” and not speculation, religion or, dare I say, politics — it’s called the scientific method.

When a scientist claims to have used the scientific method, the other scientists make no leaps of faith. Instead, they scrutinize every aspect of the research and hunt relentlessly for the smallest mistake, for any remotely questionable data. Only after the vast majority of a researcher’s peers, each poring over not only the research itself but every criticism of it, can find no flaw in the researcher’s adherence to the scientific method — only then — can the findings be cautiously said to have produced a scientific fact.

C­limate change research has undergone the same rigorous review process as research that has led to the space program, the prevention of polio, the Internet and even the carbon fuel extraction and consumption techniques that scientists now identify as a primary cause of climate change.

The fact that “97.5 percent of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change” have reviewed such research without objection should motivate even someone as ignorant as Rick Santorum to pause, if only momentarily, to consider whether he is truly willing to gamble the fate of the world and all of God’s creatures on his unsubstantiated gut feeling that either (1) all of these scientists are, on just this one topic, somehow mistaken, or (2) Jesus will arrive in the nick of time and, sailing across the bubbling oceans atop the last dwindling slab of glacial ice, whisk the righteous away to a better place where there aren’t any consequences for one’s actions — or for one’s beliefs.

Follow Michael J. Frosch on Twitter @michaeljfrosch & @metropolitik.

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But whether this trend will continue depends on the moderator, CNN’s John King. Will he allow the debate to be framed by the dangerous propaganda that has pervaded much of the reporting on Iran, or can he force the candidates to confront surprising new intelligence on Iran that vindicates Ron Paul’s pleas for restraint?

Sadly, the former scenario is far more likely. Even as the military-industrial complex continues to point its apocalyptic priapism at Iran, many in the media are sharing in the fluffing duties.

ABC’s Diane Sawyer and  Brian Ross claim to have evidence that Iran is waging “a kind of shadow war” around the world, and that “Jewish places of worship in at least 10 U.S. cities have been told they could be targets.” Not only do they neglect to mention who exactly is issuing these warnings, turns out that the “evidence” they claim to have is nothing more than the speculative accusations of Israeli officials, who have blamed three recent bombings in Georgia, Thailand and India on Iran. Sawyer and Ross also fail to mention that, according to official investigators of the India bombing, the evidence appears to implicate a Sunni group within India that is completely unconnected to Iran.

Similarly, NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski boldly proclaims that the U.S. will be “the world’s first line of defense,” now that “Iran has already threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz,” and “Iranian leaders have threatened all-out war!” To his credit, Miklaszewski at least mentions in passing that Iran has “threatened all-out war” only if Israel were to drop bombs on its nuclear facilities, and that Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz only in response to U.S. economic sanctions. What Miklaszewski doesn’t bother explaining is that these economic sanctions would involve cutting Iran off from the international banking system, through which it receives payment for its oil exports — a devastating blow to its economy.

But most importantly — he fails to mention that the U.S. military does not actually know whether Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

That’s right — on Feb. 5, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, told Congress that Iran has not yet made the decision to “go ahead with a nuclear weapon.” And this weekend, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN that “a military strike against Iran would be premature, because it is unclear that Tehran will actually use its nuclear capabilities to build an atomic bomb.”

If this news surprises you, you aren’t alone. According to a CNN poll from 2010, 71 percent of Americans mistakenly believe that Iran already has nuclear weapons. But instead of seeing this as a rallying cry to correct the dangerous misperceptions of ill-informed Americans, many in the media instead choose to push the false narrative that war with Iran is becoming ever more inevitable.
One can only hope that John King will do his best to prevent Romney, Santorum and Gingrich from perpetuating that false sense inevitability in tomorrow’s debate.

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages. 

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So it was that Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, convened a room full of holy men to get to the bottom of how, exactly, the Obama administration’s insurance mandate infringes on employers’ rights to restrict women’s full access to reproductive health options.

(Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University student whose health plan lacks contraception coverage, was forwarded by Democrats as a lone female voice on the panel, but Issa declared her “not qualified” to testify with the eminently qualified male panel on issues of birth control and menstrual cramps.)

Beyond the obvious absurdity of excluding women from a discussion on reproductive rights, the evidence from Obama’s presidency simply does not support right-wing claims of an administration war on religion. In reality — you know, the world in which statements one makes are borne out by actual facts? — Obama has been very friendly toward religious institutions, handing out hundreds of millions to faith-based charities through budget items and stimulus measures. 

More important, however, is the fact that Catholic scripture does not specifically condemn birth control — and therefore the insurance mandate. Though Pope Pius XI, in 1930, argued that opposition to contraception had doctrinal support, recent church authorities disagree.

All people have a right to personally decide matters of faith. But forcing beliefs on others — exactly the crime bishops and GOP?legislators put on Obama’s head — is not a right. Republicans have a point, though: There’s a fine line between religious freedom and religious tyranny. They simply mistook which side of it they were on.

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Wait just one minute. We hate falling into The Trap — the two-party conundrum in which we end up defending Democrats against outright lies and mischaracterizations despite our longstanding dissatisfaction with that party — but we’re going to bite on this one. Just who is waging war on whom, here?

Republican noisemakers — including most of the current presidential candidates as well as leading legislators and right-leaning news pundits — have framed the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure reproductive health care for all women as an attack on religious liberty; this despite an accommodation ensuring organizations like the Catholic Church (which benefit enormously from federal largesse) have absolutely no role in providing female health services.

Mitt Romney — who as Mass. governor presided over a similar insurance mandate system, even requiring Catholic hospitals to provide morning-after pills for rape victims — decries “the Obama Administration’s attacks on religious liberty.” Sarah Palin also calls it “a war on our religious liberties.” Rick Santorum says Obama is “hostile to people of faith.” Donald Trump says “[Obama] loves radical Islam.”
Considering these comments — and many, many others — it certainly does seem that a war has been declared, though not the one these thought leaders would have us believe. See, there’s an interesting quirk about religious liberty that these titans of the right seem to consistently overlook:?That is, it necessarily applies to even non-Christian religions.

So when Newt Gingrich — who said last week that he would “repeal every act of religious bigotry put in by President Obama” — tells voters he would only hire Muslim workers after they pass a strict loyalty test, he shows himself as the true religious bigot. And when Trump accuses Obama of consorting with Islamist extremists, he actually implies that religious freedom is indeed high on the president’s priorities (ignoring the fact that his statement has no basis in reality). Santorum’s religious hypocrisy is revealed in his forceful denunciations of Sharia law — even as he pushes his own brand of Christian law on the nation. Palin strongly opposed building a mosque in New York City. Romney does not think “a cabinet position would be justified” for any Muslim.

Those most loudly accusing Obama of religious intolerance are in fact the most intolerant of all! Their concerns reflect only their incredibly narrow beliefs. Marginalizing one religion while playing the victim card over their own supposed persecution, these people don’t care about liberty for anyone but themselves: They want to establish America as a Christian nation that imposes Christian beliefs on all. That’s religious war.

Follow Brayden Simms on Twitter @metropolitik

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

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Has Mitt Romney’s alleged mantle of inevitability revealed itself to be a cloak of invisibility? That depends on whether you take pollsters at their word.

Three new polls give credence to the latest campaign narrative: Rick Santorum is unpredictably leading the Republican primary pack. The latest of these reports, one commissioned by CBS/New York Times, shows Santorum capturing 30 percent of GOP voters, with Romney taking 27 percent, Ron Paul at 12 percent and once-front-runner Newt Gingrich at a lonely 10 percent. (Earlier this week, Public Policy Polling data gave Santorum a 15 point lead, with Pew putting his lead at a much closer 2 points.)

Santorum, long considered a long shot, lays claim to four of nine total nominating contests so far. But is the social conservative just the latest not-Romney come lately? Only time will tell, though our guess is that Romney is likely dusting off the ol’ super PAC attack machine he used with such brutal efficiency against Gingrich.

Unfortunately for Mitt, Santorum is just as un-Gingrich as he is un-Romney: He lacks the toxic baggage of the former speaker, and his consistent conservatism doesn’t require him to get tangled in his rhetoric as he touts his righty credentials.

Romney defined

Sex columnist Dan Savage popularized the idea of Google-bombing when he forever linked Rick Santorum and frothy lube mixture. Now “Romney” has his own gross Web definition.
   
From spreadingromney.com comes the following new definition, now the third result when one Googles “Romney”: “Romney 1. To defecate in terror.”
   
The term refers to an incident in which the former governor allegedly strapped the family dog to the top of a car for a long road trip, then simply sprayed down the whole car to clean the rooftop waste.
   
Animal lovers protested the candidate at this week’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

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The president’s proposal is a combination of spending cuts, tax hikes on the wealthiest earners and stimulus measures. “There is pretty broad agreement that the time for austerity is not today,” New White House Budget Director Jack Lew said. “We can’t cut our way into growth,” Obama reiterated yesterday.

The GOP, however, holding firm on its no-tolerance policy toward new taxes (meaning budget revenues must come exclusively from cuts to popular government programs like Social Security and Medicare) must not have gotten the memo. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan said Obama’s plan would result in “America drowning in debt” and “slower economic growth.” House Speaker John Boehner called it “a gloomy reflection of his failed policies of the past, not a bold plan for America’s future.”

Of course, everyone in Washington knows the Obama budget proposal has zero chance of actually getting passed as-is by the Republican-led Legislature. With most GOP politicians tied into the Grover Norquist no-tax pledge, assent on the budget issue would equate to professional suicide.

The Obama proposal can therefore be seen as a political tool, another weapon in the president’s arsenal as he takes his case to the American people for a second term. And the president needs all the arms he can muster: With experts predicting a nasty general election fight in which Wall Street dollars overwhelmingly favor whoever ends up opposing Obama, Big Money is set to play an outsized role in the November elections.

“We can’t have Washington stand in the way of America’s comeback,” Obama said yesterday. Perhaps, it would’ve served the president to also mention the competing visions of Wall Street and Athens.

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The latter win is surprising in that Romney has struggled to convince voters of his true conservative credentials, due mostly to his former role as governor of the historically liberal state of Massachusetts.
Yet somehow Romney —  described as “liberal” and “moderate” by certain primary opponents — wowed the activist crowd. Rick Santorum, who lost the poll by 7 points, has a theory:?Romney, he claims, like Paul before him, rigged the vote, “because he just trucks in a lot of people, pays for their ticket, they come in and vote and then leave.”

Sarah Palin, who made a splash at CPAC with populist speechifying, also remains skeptical of Romney’s conversion. “I am not convinced [of Romney’s conservatism] and I don’t think that the majority of GOP and independent voters are convinced,” she told Fox News yesterday.

Romney, for his part, seems aware of this weakness. At his CPAC speech on Friday, he made extra sure to hype his conservative cred, using the word “conservative” (or a close variation thereof) 25 times in the 26-minute address. “I was a severely conservative Republican governor,” he told attendees.

Some right-wingers — including Rep. Paul and radio host Rush Limbaugh — were particularly confused by the “severely” line, but we weren’t. “Severe,” as readers can see in the box to the left,  refers specifically to “unnecessary” extremes, “grave” epidemics like sickness, “rigid” ideas and beliefs, and those people and things known for “causing discomfort,” “distress” or
“unpleasant violence.” Sounds remarkably on the money.

What’s it mean?

According to the Web linguists at dictionary.com, “severe” is not exactly the most positive descriptor.
   
se·vere, adjective:
1. harsh; unnecessarily extreme: severe criticism.
   
2. serious or stern in manner: a severe face.
   
3. grave; critical: a severe illness.
   
4. rigidly restrained in style, taste, manner, etc.; simple.
   
5. causing discomfort or distress by extreme character or conditions, as weather, cold, or heat; unpleasantly violent, as rain or wind, or a blow or shock.

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Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages. 

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Last week was dominated by news of the Komen For The Cure controversy, in which the breast cancer fundraiser’s decision to defund women’s services provider Planned Parenthood erupted in a firestorm of Internet outrage, culminating in the resignation of the principal agent behind the politically motivated move.

Now, Republican politicians are making big noise about a mandate, connected to Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, requiring employers to provide preventative care for women. Because the Catholic Church has taken a strong stance against this rule — claiming that their hospitals and universities ought to be uniquely free of the employer requirement — House Speaker John Boehner has promised to kill the “unambiguous attack on religious freedom.” Mitt Romney similarly hit Obama for imposing his “secular vision on America,” also pledging to block the law. Rick Santorum has even implied that the requirement puts America on the path toward the guillotine, whatever that means. And Tea Party star Sen. Marco Rubio, at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, drew loud applause in strongly rebuking the measure.

It does seem, though, that Republicans are going against the grain here, with majority support for the mandate even among Catholics. (One statistic claims 99 percent of American women have made use of contraception. That’s a huge voting bloc!)

Beyond that, criticism of this law is simply wrongheaded. For one, the allegedly new mandate has actually been federal law for more than a decade, following a December 2000 ruling by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finding those who refuse to provide such care in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (Under the EEOC interpretation, if an institution offers preventative care — including men’s medications such as Viagra — then it also must offer birth control coverage.)

But more importantly, mandating that employers provide such basic care for employees is no restriction of religious freedom. Catholic hospitals, which employ plenty of non-Catholics, have no religious freedom; Catholics do, and if they don’t want to use contraception that is their
federally sponsored right.

Republicans have now introduced several bills to restrict women’s access to family planning services, including a bill by Rubio that could impact millions of women — or, put another way, millions of voters.

UPDATE: The Obama Administration has compromised with the religious groups opposed to the Act. Now, insurers will be required to step in and provide birth control coverage when an employer refuses to include it on religious grounds.

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.

Illustration: Billy Becerra/Metro

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Former Sen. Rick Santorum was the decisive winner on Tuesday night, coming from a widely presumed third place to sweep all three Republican contests — in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado — as he took advantage of presumptive front-runner Mitt Romney’s complacency and “I’m-not-Romney” rival Newt Gingrich’s Gingrichness to whip his base into a vote-crushing froth.

Or was he?

One might expect a parade of positive headlines for Santorum the day following such an overwhelming rout, and indeed there were some such. Many campaign reports, however, painted the Santorum wins as further cementing Romney’s chances of scoring the nomination even as they do damage to his sense of inevMittability. (Yeah, we went there.)
Confused? Read on.

For one, Romney backers point out that all three of Tuesday’s contests were nonbinding. What this means practically is that delegates — whose votes the candidates need to secure in order to become their party’s nominee — will not necessarily be awarded along voting lines. Though it can be expected that delegates will be roughly similar to vote tallies, no one knows for sure.

Perhaps more important, though, is how the Santorum sweeps throw a fat wrench in Gingrich’s Anyone But Romney momentum. The former House speaker, who has been pushing hard to force this mantle upon himself, performed even worse than Romney on Tuesday, and that’s saying a lot. Gingrich has now won one contest to Romney’s three and Santorum’s four. Romney wins so long as the not-Romney crowd continues to split that base.

Of course, it would be a huge miscalculation  to write off the message sent by these voters, that being a reaffirmation of one of the 2012 campaign’s most puzzling truths: Despite his presumed victory, massive organization and perfect hair, many voters seem to really dislike Mitt Romney. A recent poll actually shows many voters saying they like him less the more they know him. And they’ll
only come to know him more in the coming months.

The challenge for conservatives will be to coalesce around a single opposition candidate before they end up knowing more than they can stomach.

Follow Brayden Simms on Twitter @metropolitik

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages. 

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Obama got nailed pretty hard yesterday over his decision  to embrace super PAC donations for the upcoming November elections. Specifically, the president’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, urged supporters to contribute to Priorities USA Action despite critical comments the president has made about campaign finance and the  Supreme Court’s super-PAC-expanding Citizens United decision.
The backlash was fierce. Democrat Russ Feingold criticized the president as “dancing with the devil” in endorsing “what is effectively a legalized Abramoff system.” (Abramoff infamously served hard time for lobbying abuses.) Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American Crossroads, the
super PAC run by Republican operative Karl Rove, called it “a brazenly cynical move.” (Readers are advised to take this latter analysis with a shaker of salt; American Crossroads is, after all, an organization whose sole purpose is smearing, and ultimately defeating, the president and other
Democrats in November.)

Cries of hypocrisy stem from disparaging remarks the president has made about Citizens United, most recently some feisty rhetoric from his State of the Union address last month when he said the 2010 ruling “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.” Similarly, in an August 2010 address, Obama urged Americans that “we can not allow a corporate takeover of our democracy.”

Messina addressed the above sorts of complaint in pointing out that Obama will be facing down hundreds of millions from opposing super PACs. “Our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it stands,” he wrote. And considering recent funding disclosures, the reality for Obama is not good. Though the president leads Mitt Romney in non-PAC fundraising, big-money donors on the right have outdonated their left-wing counterparts by almost four times, leaving Obama and his party vulnerable to attack.

Of course, Obama campaigned on ending the corrosive influence of money in politics. Four years later and he’s made no visible attempt to fix this problem. Now he needs more money.

Whether or not you hold Obama accountable for this concession to work within the system he has built his reputation on spurning depends partly on whether you value victory over ideals. The president’s campaign argues it’s more important to utilize the legal fundraising options that will be available to his opponents than to stake a claim on this important issue — and thereby die by it. Is the move hypocritical? Definitely, especially considering he’s already done the staking. But if Obama really wants to preside long enough to change this law, he’ll need to win re-election first.

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There’s never enough space on these tiny pages to address the true day-to-day breadth of U.S. politics. As such, we take a break from the minutia of single issues to delve deeper into the minutia of the campaign at large. Here we present a few interesting stories from around the Web for your quick and painless digestion.

Campaign 2012: Get FED

Reagan tax guru breaking the spell

“Why the GOP should stop invoking Reaganomics”, washingtonpost.com.

Bruce Bartlett laments the Republican trend toward a no-tolerance policy on taxes,
especially in light of references to right-wing icon Ronald Reagan. He writes: “But as the person who drafted the 1981 Reagan tax cut, I think Republicans misunderstand the premises upon which Reagan’s economic policies were based and why those policies can’t — and shouldn’t — be replicated today.”

“I don’t think you’ll ever find me talking about an age of austerity.”

“Gingrich: Austerity Is Wrong For America,” TPM.

Newt Gingrich, fresh off of decisive losses in Nevada and Florida, has come out as a “pro-growth conservative,” opposed to so-called austerity measures aimed at cutting social programs. Gingrich sets himself apart from the party establishment, which has been fairly consistent in pushing deficit cuts and restricting spending in general.

$15,000

“Records Show Ron Paul Trips Paid Twice,” rollcall.com.

According to document review by Roll Call, Rep. Ron Paul may have double billed some campaign expenditures — to both taxpayers and campaign-linked nonprofit organizations. Current estimates put the total amount bilked at some $15,000.

Who polls the pollsters?

“WaPo/ABC ends sample transparency in national polling,” hotair.com.

Ed Morrissey points out the problems with a new poll showing Barack Obama with a 50 percent approval rating and a national lead over Romney. Washington Post and ABC News have apparently stopped reporting the party affiliation of poll participants. Morrissey calls the poll, in this time of decreased institutional trust, “worthless.”

25+%

“Romney Actually Did Worse In 2012 Nevada Caucus Than He Did In 2008,” wonkette.com.

Romney seems to have lost a lot of support in Nevada between 2008 and today: He received more than 25 percent fewer votes in that state this year. But then, only 33,000 voters showed up last week, well below party estimates. Romney supporter and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu has an explanation for the low numbers: “When turnout is down … people are satisfied with … the candidate that’s winning.” Yep, when they love you, they stay home.

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Mitt Romney’s electoral win in Nevada has allowed the former governor to take some of the rhetorical pressure off Gingrich and focus his message more clearly toward the true conservative goal of the 2012 elections: annihilation of the Obama presidency.

In his Sin City victory speech, “Gov. Mormon” (as CNN anchor John King accidentally addressed him that night) took aim at Obama’s economic record, criticizing the president’s stimulus for not bringing unemployment below 8 percent, among other specious failures, saying that “President Obama demonizes and denigrates almost every sector of our economy.” Be gone, devil!

Yet the message resonates. In a recap of the speech, the L.A. Times cites one Romney supporter, retired airline pilot Larry Bleitz, as saying the following: “I’d take anybody over Obama. The man is a traitor and an American hater.” Bleitz’s wife, Mieke, chimed in:?“Right now, I feel that the U.S. is actually more socialist than Canada.”

This sort of attack has been viciously employed from the moment our nation’s first biracial president assumed the presidency. Unfortunately, it’s complete nonsense.

Far it be from us to stifle legitimate Obama critique (for confirmation of our nonbias on this front, please see our weekend column, “Seeing through Obama’s transparency”), but the economic data simply refute these claims.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Obama’s stimulus measures boosted the GDP and added millions of jobs. (Multiple analyses confirm this assessment.) GDP has had positive growth since 2009, payroll statistics show 16 straight months of job growth, and the unemployment rate is down.

All this while faced off with an opposition openly committed toward sinking the president’s re-election chances at the expense of the U.S. economy.

Look, we don’t love Obama, but it’s important to bring this conversation back to reality — where the only America-haters are those distorting the data and the true traitors want America, to fail.

Just how socialistic is Obama?

According to findings from the political analysts at Voteview, President Obama is actually the most moderate Democratic president of the post-WWII era, despite some very loud opinions to the contrary. By contrast, former President George W. Bush was found to be the most conserva-tive president in that same era. In a series on political polarization, Voteview data show how U.S. politicians have moved farther apart from each other in the past hundred-plus years, with the steady disappearance of true moderates.

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This turn was affected by a pair of timely circumstances. First:?During a discussion this week about the upcoming November presidential election, a pal made it clear that he wasn’t particularly enamored with President Obama; that he hoped for a change of leadership; and that he was unequivocally going to vote for a second Obama term.

This logical leap is a quirk of U.S. politics, where the two-party system ensures most people vote within the presumed cone of electability. If, as occurred most damagingly in 2000, a third-party vote ends up working in favor of the candidate one deems the less-acceptable of our two establishment evils, it is judged as having been wasted. Why, this dear friend asked, risk the election of a Romney or a Gingrich when we can rest safely in the dissatisfaction of another relatively-less-awful Obama term?

Which brings us to circumstance No. 2: The American Civil Liberties Union? this week filed a lawsuit against Obama administration agencies in an effort to learn the legal justification for the government’s policy of targeted assassinations of American citizens — including al Qaeda terrorist Anwar Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, in Yemen.

(Note that the ACLU has not attempted to subvert this sort of killing, but merely to discover the legal basis for its use, including, according to an ACLU blog post, “the process by which the administration adds Americans to secret government ‘kill lists.’”) 

Following drone strikes in fall 2011, the ACLU and others including The New York Times filed several Freedom of Information Act requests with the government, but to no avail. The Obama
administration, once hailed by the president’s press secretary as being “the most transparent … ever,” is, in the ACLU’s words, treating the “targeted killing program [as] so secret that they can’t even acknowledge that it exists.”

To many, this will all seem quite acceptable. Mercilessly attacking and killing our sworn enemies is nothing but the mission statement of America in a post-9/11 world.

B ut a difficulty arises when the enemies we’re clandestinely killing happen to be U.S. citizens. There may be no more distressing executive overreach than the power of the president to secretly select and execute Americans with absolutely no judicial oversight. Couple this with the fact that the president routinely trots these killings out as evidence of his leadership in the war on terror and you’ve got a contradiction more stark than Romney following up his “I’m not concerned about the very poor”?gaffe with an endorsement from Donald Trump.

Sure, these issues could actually get worse under Republican leadership, but honestly how much worse could it get? Obama wants to have his cake and kill it, too: to campaign as a liberal, lead as a moderate and reign as a tyrant.

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On CNN yesterday, Romney said the following: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich; they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Romney thinks America’s poor don’t deserve his concern due to our federal safety net. Unfortunately for the nation’s neediest citizens, his proposals seem aimed at unraveling that net. According to a Tax Policy Center analysis, for instance, the wealthy would be the overwhelming beneficiaries of his tax plan — with the lower classes picking up a larger share of the tab — due to a proposed reduction in the corporate rate, elimination of the capital gains rate and a repeal of the estate tax, among other regressive ideas. When tax incomes then drop, politicians are going to look for ways to make up the difference from this social net — programs like Social Security and Medicaid. Romney has also endorsed the Paul Ryan budget proposal, which cuts some $3 trillion from such low-income programs.

Recently released fundraising data also incline one toward skepticism over Romney’s claim that he’s not out to help the rich. Considering that his super PAC received $17,947,952.77 from a scant 181 contributors, one can see that the very wealthy make up Romney’s donor base — the implication being that

Romney will likely seek to repay this generosity by helping to enrich them even further.  

Moving on, let’s parse Romney’s claim that he’s concerned about the 90-plus percent of struggling Americans, what he would presumably think of as the middle class. (Here we see how, despite claims to the contrary, the Occupy movement has impacted mainstream debate.) According to various estimates, this crucial segment of the American population may actually comprise between 25 percent to 66 percent of households. Assuming a very conservative estimate of 66 percent, with the rich making up the so-called 1 percent, that leaves a third of Americans who can write off any specific Romney concern — 33 percent of the country apparently subsisting on a social net that the presumptive Republican  nominee will surely attempt to dismantle while presumably attacking the left over “class warfare.” Classy.

See, as Romney himself is countering, context does indeed matter. But then, with Gingrich campaigning against Obama the “food stamp president,” the context in this contest is not exactly heartening.

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One of the big stories this campaign season has been the monumental effect of super PACs on electoral outcomes. These organizations have in recent months taken a firm grip of the national narrative, utilizing their supposed disconnect from campaigns to push an increasingly negative tilt. In honor of last night’s filing deadline for year-end campaign reports, we present some of the more interesting super PAC facts.

Follow the money

$1,142
Texas governor and former presidential candidate Rick Perry spent more than $1,000 per vote.

71%
Nearly three-fourths of all political contributions to Our Destiny PAC, the super PAC backing failed candidate Jon Huntsman, came from Huntsman’s billionaire father. For those doing the math, that’s $1.9 million of fatherly love.

$10M
Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, has something even better than a filthy rich father:?A filthy rich casino mogul! The Newt-backing Winning Our Future PAC has so far received $10 million from Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, which stands among the largest-ever campaign donations.

$1M+
The super PAC of TV satirist Stephen Colbert has raised more than $1 million from a range of donors including Pat Magroin, Ibin Yerkinoff and Frumunda Mabalz.

$15.3M
Romney and his Restore Our Future super PAC have spent vast sums in Florida in the past month. As a point of comparison, John McCain spent $11 million on ads in the entire 2008 Republican primary race.

92%
Super PAC funds tainted the airwaves in Florida:?Nearly all of this year’s primary ads in the state were negative.

$51M
American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-led super PAC, raised $51 million in 2011 to be put toward defeating Obama in November.

GET FED

Because sometimes you only need to skim the headlines:
   
“Bachmann raised little in campaign” Politico

“Romney: We Played Fair in Florida!” Daily Beast
   
“Newt Gingrich Robocall: Mitt Romney Forced Holocaust Survivors To Eat Non-Kosher Food”
The Huffington Post
   
“The Caucus: Gingrich Sued Over Use of ‘Eye of the Tiger’” NYTimes
   
Super PACs Now Dominate GOP Primary Campaign Spending” Mother Jones
   
“How Mitt Romney stole Newt Gingrich’s voice” Slate Magazine
   
“Sarah Palin PAC fundraising craters” POLITICO.com
   
“Why Newt Will Have A Hard Time Being 2012’s Hillary” TPM2012
   
“PayPal co-founders fund pro-Paul Super PAC” Reuters

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