Advice for Republicans: Scratch that Itch, Then Move On

Let us assume, hypothetically, that a voter believes that a partial list of persons who would be a better president than Barack Obama -- maybe not that voter's first choice, but just a better choice -- would include Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Howie Mandel (all right, he's Canadian, but POTUS doesn't think one's birthplace is important, why should we?), Khloe Kardashian, David Lee Roth, and the constitutionally qualified population of Flasher, North Dakota.  And that the short list of persons who would be worse would include Michael Moore, Pauly Shore, and Joe Biden.

All right, that's hyperbolic.  But the point is that our hypothetical voter thinks that Barack Obama has been a haahhhrrible president.  Whose defeat later this year is imperative to prevent further damage to the Republic and to begin to reverse the damage already done.

And let's say that our hypothetical voter is a Republican preparing to vote in a primary.  And it's even possible, not necessary, but possible, that our voter voted for the President and is not only disappointed, but feels a little  .  .  .  misled.  Misled by the candidate Obama, misled by the mainstream press.

And our voter is mad and getting madder with each new baffling decision and utterance of the President, apparently composed in the brief intervals between rounds of golf, vacations, smoke-and-cocktail breaks, and parties.  Our voter is reminded of her dissatisfaction daily because the Republicans are lining up to try to take his job, pounding away at him.

Michelle  .  .  .  isn't helping.

But our voter knows our President is a smart guy, a very smart guy, a very smooth guy, a good talker, wears clothes beautifully, handsome, a charismatic presence.  Bad as he's been, he could fool enough people again.  Could win, could well win. 

This is very upsetting to our hypothetical voter.  It makes her mad.

And she starts to think a thought that makes her smile, that gives her something to look forward to. 
She thinks: Newt Gingrich would absolutely dismantle Barack Obama in a debate.  He's brainier, he's a better speaker, he's a master of facts -- and he's nasty.  He would penetrate the President's smugness, his condescension, his scolding pedagogy.  All right in front of him, with the whole nation watching.

Newt?  Newt??  Newt!!

Ahhh.  That feels good.  She taps the touch-screen next to his name, smiles again, and sends her vote to the primary election computer.

It is at this point that your decidedly nonhypothetical Cool Hot Center steps into the frame.

Newt Gingrich and I agree on many things.  You will note that he was on my list of improvements over POTUS.   One thing we disagree on is his suitability as the Republican nominee.    One other thing is the likelihood that come November, more voters will agree with me on this point than with him, and his candidacy will have ensured four more years of the terrifying Obama.

It may feel good to throw in with Newt’s soaring rhetoric and liberal-elite-bashing now, but the man cannot be elected.  He is angry.  Like Tea Party angry.  But the Tea Party is not going to elect the next President, just like mainstream conservatives did not elect John McCain.  Or Bob Dole.  Or even George H.W.  Bush against Clinton. 

I agree with our hypothetical voter that Newt might well demolish POTUS in debate for all the reasons she imagines.  But Newt is a man who is not in control of either his thoughts or his mouth.  Did you listen to his victory speech in South Carolina?  He cannot help calling the President stupid,  which few sincerely believe irrespective of their disapproval of the man.   In expressing incredulity at the President’s decision on the Keystone pipeline, he offered this witless appraisal:  “It’s one thing to say the White House can’t play chess, it’s another to say it can’t play checkers,” he said.  “But tic-tac-toe?”   The crowd was notably silent after this gratuitous shot.   And that wasn’t the only one in those rather dyspeptic remarks.

And he will not be able to control his anger over the course of a difficult national campaign.   He is a guy whose grandiosity is, if anything, more virulent than Obama’s.  Give him a prominent forum, and he switches off the prudent politician’s filter; the controversies start to erupt.  Look what happened when he was in the House of Representatives:    He developed the “Contract with America” and was largely credited with the huge Republican gains in the 1994 congressional elections, ending four decades of Democratic rule.   Good Newt.  Welfare reform – good Newt.  Capital gains tax cut – good Newt.  But things started to fall apart.   There was the government shutdown – ideologically pure, maybe, but hugely unpopular.  Then the ethics charges.  But his main sin was high-handedness born of his megalomania.  He was very nearly removed as Speaker by his own party.  Then came the Clinton impeachment which he relentlessly promoted – another one of those ideologically-driven but ill-handled initiatives that came to disgust a lot of the voting public.  1998 mid-terms – the Republicans lost seats, and his status as the face of the Party was assigned a large share of the blame.  A few days later, he not only resigned as Speaker, but left Congress, having alienated the entire Republican caucus. 

Bad Newt.

People who get most of their information from Fox News and featured links on The Drudge Report may find themselves puzzled as to how President Obama’s approval ratings, dismal though they may be, are as high as they are.  We will put aside the makeup of the 45% (as of this writing) who tell Rasmussen that they “somewhat approve” of his performance.  The point is that this is going to be a difficult campaign for the Republicans.  Newt will run a campaign of resentment and anger; Obama will repeat his vague message of hope and change and comforting paternalism.

There is plenty of cause for resentment and anger over the President’s performance.  But voters are going to weary of being harangued, and they’re going to quail at Newt’s streak of meanness, which they will correctly interpret as a lack of judgment and presidential temperament. 

No, folks, for better or worse, Mitt Romney is the choice if the Republicans hope to bring in the moderate voters who installed President Obama.  Of course he has his problems.  He has flip-flopped (although his most recent flip is in the right direction).  He has mishandled the tax-return issue.  But his campaign is cheerful and optimistic.  He is not burdened by Newt’s seamy personal history.  He may be more moderate than Newt and the Tea Party on some issues but ya know something?  So are lots and lots of voters, and Romney is reliably conservative on the big issues.  He has said one of the most important things a candidate can say to conservatives, and that is that he will repeal Obamacare.   He is well-spoken; he can easily be pictured in the Oval Office, dealing diplomatically with world leaders. 

And he'll do just fine in the debates.

Mitt Romney can beat Obama. (Recent statements by George Stephanopolous and Nancy Pelosi that Romney would be the weakest candidate are dead-solid proof that the Democrats are terrified of a Romney candidacy.)   Newt cannot.  I don’t care what the polls say now – by the time the nation has had months of all-Newt, all the time, enough moderates will recoil and either stay home or vote to give our charming President – he is charming, you know – another chance.

So all you Republican primary voters out there:  Do what you have to do to get the fiery Newton Leroy Gingrich out of your system.  Enjoy it.  Send a message, share your anger.  I would say with the South Carolina rebuke of media elites that reversed his fortunes, Gingrich has been as effective as he is likely ever to be on the national stage.  The itch has been scratched.  Time to put some soothing Romney lotion on it, and get on with the important work of getting America back to greatness.

Tomorrow's Conventional Wisdom -- Today!! (CONCLUSION)

More freshly-minted thoughts – actually, getting a little musty since the election was awhile ago.

[PS:  I've made a strong resolution to post much more frequently in 2011 -- a larger number of shorter observations, interspersed with the longer essays.  I'll be grateful if you'll check in from time to time, even if you don't receive a notification that there's anything new up.  Many thanks.   -- Steve.]

It’s Not the Economy, Other than Secondarily.

I have seen polls where voters said that the economy was their main concern.

I partly believe this. When the pundits talk about the economy, they focus on jobs.

Jobs are important. Real important. If you don’t have one, then jobs are the most important thing.

But most people have jobs. And most people are not extremely fearful that they will lose their jobs. More people than usual, these days, but still a long way from most. I don’t mean to be snotty about this. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose one’s job because of economic conditions. (Heaven forbid one is also incompetent.)

I think that when most people say they are concerned about the economy, I think they mean they are concerned about what our political leaders on the federal, state, and local levels have done and are doing to it, and that it will be extremely difficult to undo. That is, they’re not worried about the current dip – they’ve seen dips followed by booms – they’re worried about the rest of their lives, worried that after years of spending and required future spending by both Republican and Democratic administrations (with the current administration the champeen), the damage will be long-lasting and hard to undo. Deficit spending, spending on nothing, spending on (certain) public employee unions for poor service, corrupt spending, spending to create and enforce niggly regulations, pork spending, earmark spending – and only a little of it actually classifiable as economically productive. So, so much of it is paying bureaucrats to do nothing more than move it around, something markets do so much better and cheaper and with less injury to freedom.

Not my intention to mount a defense of markets versus a command economy, as if they needed one. My point here is that this election was about more than short-term joblessness, to the extent it was about the economy at all. In spite of everything, the public is optimistic. The government has screwed up the economy, by commission (spending) and omission (failure to curb financial sector wrongdoing). They can tell the government to fix it. They just took the first step.

The Peckerwood Factor.

It wasn’t a Republican sweep. There’s not much accounting for California, which continues its descent into economic lunacy. And parts of the Eastern seaboard, they can’t be helped either.

But there were some other losers. Joe Miller in Alaska. Christine O’Donnell in Delaware.

Thereby hangs the danger of the Tea Party. When the population rises, there are lots and lots of slots to fill. Some of the candidates to whom the population turns are going to be peckerwoods, just like some to whom they turned in 2008 were, to put the matter kindly, more liberal than voters cared to see as they swept out the Republicans in that wave of revulsion.

(When I use the term “peckerwood,” I mean a style of conservatism that is reactionary, extremely ideological, and almost aggressively ignorant. Your peckerwoods may vote sensibly, but their manner and rhetoric is, after awhile, offputting and offensive and guaranteed to lose the center that the Republicans need. I do not use it in the 19th and early 20th century sense of poor southern whites.)

And, like the hard libs who slipped through in 2008, some peckerwoods slipped through in 2010.

The Republicans need to keep charge of these types. I don’t have any prescriptions on how that can be accomplished. Not all – I’d say probably only a few – Tea Party-supported candidates are peckerwoods. But they tend to be loud and to draw attention to themselves and paint responsible Republicans with their broad brush.

Beware the peckerwood.

Who Will Lead?

In November many of us got a lot of what we wanted.

Now what?

The Republicans considerably increased the size of their tent in 2010. Who will emerge to lead the party to 2012? Who will step forward to avoid screwing this up?

At this writing, there are no breakaway front runners. An off-the-cuff survey:

Sarah Palin: No. I’m sure I’ll be writing more as time goes by, but let me say it straight out – she is not smart enough. And there’s the odd family life, Bristol making Billy Carter look respectable.  I’m not entirely sure Palin wasn’t born in Kenya. I’m tired of flaky exotics in the White House or near it.

John Boehner: Prematurely orange. I don’t know what to think about his lachrymose tendencies. I know the guy has come up from a hard life, and that’s terrific. But I’ve never heard a public utterance of his that stayed with me. He seemed to think the first two years of the Obama presidency were about lack of transparency. Not impressive.

Michael Steele: Every team needs some really, really good black guys. I’m not sure any team can win these days without excellent black guys. Well, I gotta tell you, the Democrats’ black guy is totally kicking the Republicans’ black guy’s ass. What a mediocrity – I can’t believe the party hasn’t shown him the door. You never see him as a spokesman anymore, and he’s compromised by his profligacy in office. I think the country has really grown up – we’re confident enough in our judgment, independent of race, to kick black guys out of leadership positions in both parties. (I hope.)

Newt Gingrich:  Really smart, really good debater, real knowledgeable, extremely sound on the issues, but hopelessly compromised by his seamy mistreatment of his (former) wife and his condescending manner (former professor, like we need another one of those). He should have Michael Steele’s job. He could be a party leader, just not a national leader.

John McCain: No. His maverick act was always a sham and was exposed in the campaign. And let’s face it, he’s old and seems older than he is.

Bobby Jindal: Not this time. Needs some seasoning before the cameras and some serious sartorial advice. Otherwise, really like the guy.

Tim Pawlenty: The guy gets a lot of attention, but so far I’ve found him pretty Lamar-Alexanderish. Smart but in love with his press clippings.

Rudy Giuliani: A guy who runs as bad a campaign as he ran (or allowed to be run for him) in 2008 has not exhibited a model for national leadership. Having said that, I still like the guy and believe there’s a role for him. But he has to hook up with some professional campaign management that won’t tell him to hide out in Florida for two months while every other candidate is on the news every day.

Mitt Romney: Strong, but he’s going to have to deal with the crisis of Romneycare in Massachusetts.  He should say something like:  "I can't believe how incredibly stupid I was, and I've like absolutely totally learned my lesson, and don't you want a president who learns from his mistakes?"   I don’t think the Mormon thing is a big electoral problem. Is it? Don’t have a feel for it. He needs to get out front on some current issues, though. He’s not going to look good riding Boehner’s coattails. Maybe he’s trying not to peak.

Chris Christie: Look out. A term or two under his impressive belt and he could be a guy. A mountain of common sense.

Michele Bachmann: Never seen her look bad. Like Christie, she could be a great national leader. Need to see more.

Mike Huckabee: A lot to like here. Personable, smart, not crazy-right. I’ve seen it written that his parole decisions could be a problem, but I don’t see it. Right now, my personal favorite. Not without reservations. But he seems like a reasonable man who could more than hold his own with the President in debate, and who could attract . . .

. . . the Cool Hot Center.

Tomorrow's Conventional Wisdom -- Today! (PART 2)

Three more hot thoughts on Politics 2010: 

This Is No Time for Bipartisanship – Let the Bickering Begin; or, Don’t Fear the Gridlock. Most of the American electorate – especially in this election -- doesn’t want the parties to get along. They don’t want the parties to compromise on bad policies. They want good policies. The voters do not agree, of course, on what those good policies are. But we now have a Republican majority in the House, and a Senate that will begin to tilt away from the Obama agenda. And the reason for that majority is because the voters want the Obama/Democratic policies stopped and reversed.

Does anyone suppose that this election was about a craving on the part of voters for bipartisan compromise? No – the majority loathed the results of Democratic hegemony from 2008-2010. They truly want to turn back the clock. They (no, no, not everyone, but the people whose numbers matter) regret their vote for Obama and are counting the days when they can turn him out (unless the Republicans nominate a peckerwood, of which they are surely capable – see later entry re Republicans' peckerwood problem). The Republicans should demand reversal of the last two years of nonsense and should not back down, even at the risk of nothing getting done.

I recall college discussions with pals over whether we would prefer almost any House or Senate candidate we could think of, Republican or Democrat, over a robot who would vote NO on every single vote. (Perhaps exceptions for veto overrides and the like.) Robot always won.

Another exception would be voting yes on certain specialized legislation, such as . . . .

*    *    *

Republicans Must Make Every Effort to Repeal The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” – Policy and Politics.   Stop laughing. Yes, that’s the real name of “Obamacare.” As though it ended up having much to do with patients, protection, affordable care, or care at all. Surely the most reviled single piece of legislation in memory across a broad spectrum of American voters. Legislators could not tell you what was in it. Nancy Pelosi said we’d have to pass it to find out what was was in it. The bureaucracy it promised was gigantic and staggeringly complex. And in the meantime, we were treated to the vision of government social services collapsing economies and spawning beggar classes throughout Europe who demonstrated against any attempt to turn the tide of ruin.

And, of course, the bill itself was dead on arrival save for the legislative bribery it took to pass it.

And what’s happened since?

   --  Employers are cutting back and, in some cases, dumping health care benefits, and passing on higher expenses to employees. 

   --  Analysis after nonpartisan analysis has demonstrated its almost certain nonviability.

   --  President Obama himself admits that his repeated representations that healthcare costs will decrease under his plans may have been, um, untrue.

Almost nobody believes this monstrosity can work or is even beneficial to all but a few, at gigantic expense. To believe that people will tolerate a shrinking doctor class as MDs' rewards for excellence are slashed, while undeserving patients consume vast resources -- well, there are some who do believe that.   Supporters are scarce, and they seldom emerge from what is almost always a tower of academe or cosseted media position.  With each passing week, public support for the thing reaches a new low.

Obamacare doesn’t need fixing. It needs to die, and quickly, before the prospect of the economic and healthcare horrors it will unleash keep one more employer from adding one more employee.

Republican candidates called for repeal during the campaign, and now they need to demand it. Make the case – get the facts out – and work for repeal without compromise. It is the correct policy move.

But would it be politically prudent? The idea of repeal is very popular right now, and, as noted in my previous article, a large majority of Senators up for re-election in 2012 are Democrats. It is not beyond imagining that a strong Republican leadership could round up the votes required for repeal.

Nevertheless, it might well be a lost cause, since the President could veto any attempt at repeal, and Republicans are a Senate minority.  A majority for repeal might not be the necessary majority for override.  And, as we have seen with the recent tax agreement, there are Democrats out there (in this case, socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont) who will filibuster.

Your Cool Hot Center advises Republicans: Let them filibuster. Let them vote against repeal. Let them vote to sustain the President’s veto. As long as you fight the good fight and present a factual, supportable case for repeal – not the peckerwood case, but the sound economic, moral, and policy case, perhaps while acknowledging the need for reform in certain areas – you will be rewarded in November 2012.   If you fight the good fight and lose, all it tells the electorate is that the housecleaning of 2010 was incomplete, and will energize the base for further corrections in 2012.

And, Republicans, if you don’t fight that fight, if you just nibble at the corners of Obamacare, if you try only to “reform” the beast, then you will have justified those souls who are convinced that principle counts for nothing in Washington, that anyone who goes there is inevitably compromised, must go along to get along, in derogation of the best interests of the Republic.

It’s gotta go. It or you.

*     *     *

No, I Don’t Miss George Bush.  And I don’t feel sorry for Wade Phillips.

Tomorrow's Conventional Wisdom -- Today! (PART 1)

In  my first post on the 2010 election I looked back at some of the reasons given for the shocking collapse of President Obama’s coalition.    It was fun to revisit the past two years of liberal incomprehension and error, but it did not meet my personal requirement that I offer the Cool Hot Centrist Nation something other than warmed over punditry of others.  (I frequently warm over my own punditry.)  Herewith, then, some nuggets of what I’m thinking about the next few years and beyond.  Quite a bit of it consists of priceless instruction to the Republican Party.  Starting with:

Don’t Underestimate Barack Obama.   I’ve received criticism from some readers for noting occasionally that the man has some very admirable qualities.  His policies are so bad that the temptation is strong to judge him as a bad man through and through.     Never mind whether this is ungracious – it’s simply wrong.   Barack Obama is smart (see my series on the nature of his intelligence –  Part 1 -- Part 2).   The Republicans should not take for granted that his ego will not allow him to move to the center, will not allow him to offer compromises to Republicans that they will be unable to decline.  I’m not saying that I expect this to happen; I’m not saying that it is likely to happen; I’m saying it’s wrong to assume that it can’t happen because the President lacks the brains to be flexible about his principles.  In fact, it is my expe  ctation that, at least at first, he will continue to press his academic statist agenda for reasons I have set forth elsewhere.

[Note:  This was composed before his recent compromise on taxes.  See?] 

It is the case that he has squandered a great deal of his personal capital through the exposure of his tendency to dissimulate.  But he still cuts an appealing physical figure.  He speaks very well off the cuff and from the lectern; his reliance on teleprompters has been overstated because his oratorical skills were overpraised in the past.  He has a fine speaking voice – must be the smokes.   I’m not being frivolous here – style points count in American politics.  In politics everywhere, for that matter.  Except maybe China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Minnesota.

The economy is likely to get better, as the economy almost always does.

And if he runs again (80%) and is renominated (less certain) he will be formidable in debate against any Republican candidate who isn’t highly intelligent and thoroughly prepared, or who lacks his glibness.  Excuse me a moment – coughsarahpalincough.

I’m serious.  Don’t forget about the debates.  We (by this, I mean I and people who don’t want Obama to win in 2012) need someone who is Obama’s equal in intelligence, grasp of policy, self-assurance, and for lack of a better phrase savoir faire.  (“Charisma” is overused.)   I’m not sure who fits that bill in the current batch of hopefuls, but I know a couple who don’t.   Beg pardon --hackbobbyjindalwheeze.

Raw Numbers Underestimate the Policy Impact of November 2.   The Republican sweep was compelling everywhere except traditional liberal strongholds – the Northeast, California and a handful of outliers that I’ll consider elsewhere.   It included statehouses and local races. 

But the Republicans did not regain the Senate.   As things stand right now, the Senate is 51 Democrat, 47 Republican, and 2 Independent.  The independents are Joe Lieberman (Connecticut) and Bernie Sanders (Vermont).  Sanders is a socialist – no, that’s not a hyperbolic slam, he really is a socialist.   He caucuses with the Democrats. 

Of the 33 Senators up for re-election in 2012, 20 are Democrats.  And of those 20, not all of them are left-crazy, although they might have gone along with what they mistakenly believed was the bulletproof Obama-endorsed legislative agenda the past two years.  These guys aren’t dumb – they see what happened to apparently firmly- entrenched senators like Russ Feingold.  They see Scott Brown sitting in Edward Kennedy’s seat.  Would you expect them to go down the line with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama on hot-button conservative issues?   Would you expect them to ignore the message rising from the entrails of the November 2 slaughter?

Personally, I would not.

It is probably too much to hope that the Republicans can assemble a veto-proof majority to do what they need to do to undo the legislative wreckage of the last two years.  But even with a minority in the Senate, the right-moderates stand some chance of maintaining effective control.

Part 2 will appear in a few days.

Michael Gerson Has Written the Article I've Been Wanting to Write

The Cool Hot Center has been warning Republicans against a too rapid and too close embrace of the Tea Party.  There is a lot to like about insurgent conservatism, and a lot to admire about the Tea Party.  But the Tea Party has -- perhaps unavoidably -- found itself sheltering some extremists, crackpots, reactionaries, and the odd racist here and there.  Michael Gerson's column in today's Washington Post, "Why the Tea Party is Toxic for the GOP", sums it all up.  

The Republican Party in 2010 is not so different from the party that the voters rejected in 2008.   The Democrats are clever to remind people of that.  Can anyone identify the Republicans' position -- as a party -- on any major topic?  Even health care?  Is it repeal?   Do they propose a replacement?  What exactly do they propose to do about immigration?   Michael Steele, Republican chairman, is a weak leader -- let's face it, he's been a complete flop -- during a time when Republicans should be riding high by preempting the Tea Partiers with vigorous and creative proposals.  Instead, it's hanging around outside the Tea Party hoping some of its energy will rub off on it.

If the Republicans represented a vital alternative to the Obama-marginalized Democrats, the Tea Party would have no reason to exist.  It does not, so the Tea Party has rushed in to fill the void and, regrettably, brought with it some knuckleheads.  Some of those knuckleheads are prominent, and that is not good news for the Republicans in November.

Left to Right: Jerry Mahoney, master ventriloquist Paul Winchell,

and Jerry's pal Knucklehead Smiff

I'm looking forward to November, but if Republicans are licking their chops they need to think again.  People do not want peckerwoods running the United States.  Michael Gerson nails it in today's column.

Oh My Lord God Almighty -- It Just Dawned on Me That the BP Blowout Could Save Obama's Bacon -- or, It Takes a Spillage

I woke up one recent morning with a start, possessed of one of those intuitions that you only get when you’re still half-asleep. You know, that brief period in the semidark when you’re beginning to think clearly but all of the assumptions that encrust your daily life haven’t yet reattached themselves to your judgment and your mind works about as freely as it ever does.

And while I lay there, cursing the poodles for whining to be let out for some leakage of their own, I realized that there is at least a fair chance that the BP Blowout could save the Obama Presidency.

There are several preliminary matters to consider:

     • The accident was not his fault, any more than Katrina was Bush’s fault.

     • Like Bush’s response to Katrina, Obama’s response to the Blowout has been diffident and tepid. But rescuing people from catastrophic floods is something that governments have known how to do, and the Bush administration did not distinguish itself. Obama’s dithering does not upset us to the same degree, because governments are not expected to know how to fix blowouts, and nobody at all knows how to solve this problem.

     • The right and the left are taking shots at Obama over the Blowout because they’re mad at him about other things. With good reason, by their lights, but their criticism of him over the Blowout looks like piling on, because of (1) and (2). (But I must say, all the golfing and partying does betray a certain tone-deafness in this guy.)

OK, so preliminarily, we start out with a certain shakiness in the current unhappiness with the Obama administration over the handling of the Blowout. Add to the weakness of the charges against Obama on this score the following:

     • The Blowout has crowded off the front pages – or at least to below the fold – bipartisan and public dismay with the poor policy decisions for which President Obama and the congressional democrats are responsible. When was the last time you heard anything about the health care bill? The latest OMB, CBO, and HHS cost projections? Employers cutting group plans? They’d curl your hair if it ever uncurled after watching children running screaming from tar balls advancing on their favorite vacation beach.

     • Similarly, the public preoccupation with the Blowout disguises the Administration’s continued implementation of its extreme statist agenda through agency regulations, which has only accellerated in recent months.

     • The nomination of liberal Supreme Court Justices was one of conservatives' greatest fears during the presidential campaign, and in recent years nominations have been flash points for highly partisan debate.  But the confirmation process of mediocre ideological-cipher-but-demonstrably-rather-left-of-center Elena Kagan  has excited relatively little media interest.

     • The Republicans are displaying their customary lack of strategic vision in their reaction to the Blowout and the Administration's handling of it.  Their efforts to direct attention to the longer-lasting damage the White House is visiting on the nation through bad policy are lukewarm and diffuse.  Neither the Republicans nor the Tea Party Express have any bright ideas on what to do about the Blowout, and they (and the right in general) are perceived by the public as supportive of Big Oil and, in particular, drilling for crude offshore and in other exotic places.

     • Sooner or later – surely before Election Season 2012 rolls around – the Blowout will have been mostly solved and the cleanup will be well underway. I also suspect we will find, as we did with the Amoco Cadiz and the Exxon Valdez, that, horrendous as the damage was, the sea and shores will heal more quickly than predicted. And just as Obama generated bad feelings with his early failure to do anything about the Blowout, he will get credit for the greatly improving situation. He will have earned neither the obloquy nor the credit, but no matter – the credit will come his way during a time when he will be looking to trade on it for re-election.

So I don’t think the Blowout will be Obama’s Katrina. I think it may well be closer akin to his Operation Desert Storm, a distraction from his failures and weaknesses whose eventual less-fatal-than-imagined resolution will relieve the public to such an extent that it will credit the President simply for standing nearby.

I concede: The foregoing speculation gives President Obama credit for some political foresightedness – he can’t continue to make appalling high-profile policy blunders between White House parties and hope no one will notice.

But as I rest my head on the pillow at the end of a long day, poodles crated for the night after their final wringing-out, the Memsahib switches to the news and I see that Attorney General Holder is suing Arizona for enforcing federal immigration laws, that President Obama has sailed way past President Bush in number of golf rounds played (including almost a dozen since the Blowout), and that they let Joe Biden out to make another speech. The day falls away and slumber's approach is hastened by the sweetdream thought that President Obama’s post-Presidential memoir will be titled My Term.

Who is [Responsible/to Blame (Pick One)] for "Health Care Reform"? Republicans.

I heard John Boehner bemoaning the lack of "bipartisanship" and "transparency" as the Democrats marched the health-care bill to victory.   This speaks volumes about how we ended up with the thing.  If the Republicans think those two flaws are going to rally the public to the GOP in November, they will continue to flail and fail.

Why is there a lack of bipartisanship?  One reason:  The Republicans stank in the voters' nostrils after eight years of their inattention to their their common-sense base, with George Bush as their increasingly charmless poster boy.   That base was and is not conservative across the board, but it was certainly concerned over deficits, the expansion of government, and corruption in the financial markets -- none of which the Republicans showed much concern about.  That Republican base was also alarmed over the primitive communications skills of its leader, and his apparent bafflement over justification for the Iraq war and how to run it.  Republicans then chose a weak, old and old-seeming, fake-maverick, Washington-based presidential candidate who in turn chose a lightly-vetted punch line as a running mate.  Those two could not make a principled case for more of the same, there being no discernable consistent Republican princples upon which a persuasive case might have been made.  Bullet-proof Democratic majorities in both houses were almost inevitable, as was the election of a pretty appealing guy no one really even cared to know too much about, voters and pundits having decided that whatever he was offering had to be better than the shock-and-aw-shucks attitude we saw out of the White House -- and the go-along/get-along Republican leadership.

And by the way:  Who expects "bipartisanship" if real honest-to-god principles of American democracy and the nature of "rights" are at issue?  Don't give me "bipartisanship" that results in agreement on bad law.   If this is truly the polity-destroying development you claim it is, Republicans, and not some run-of-the-mill social tinkering where compromise is desirable and expected, then dammit, don't bleat about "bipartisanship" -- show some fight.  Produce some oratory.  Lead those rallies, don't wait for the Tea Party people to grab this issue. 

No transparency?  Yeah, yeah, I know, Obama promised it and it was a fib, and that's not a good thing, but no one much cares about it.  "Transparency" is one of those issues, like whether Supreme Court nominees should be vetted for ideology or only for minimal judicial competence, upon which the parties routinely, and accurately, accuse one another of hypocrisy.  Lack of transparency is not a persuasive criticism of the health-care bill.

If the Republicans are going to make a comeback, attacking a process they will certainly embrace if and when their day ever returns is simply inept.  Any attack on the health-care bill (and immigration reform, and any other hard-left Administration initiatives, of which we can expect to see even more now that this battle is lost), must be based on the merits, for example:  

     whether universal health insurance and health care is a "right";

     the magnitude of the embedded tax incresaes on earners Obama promised would not see one; 

     whether the deficit-reduction math works in the current bill;

     whether health-care rationing and government interference in health-care decisionmaking is inevitable;

and many more.  Do the Republicans have anyone who can do that?  Apparently not -- we heard some scattered voices in princpled opposition, but they never came together.  Where was Mitt Romney?  Fearful of peaking too early?  Compromised by the health-care program he championed in Massachusetts when he was governor which is rapidly failing?  Did Tim Pawlenty grab you?  Has Bobby Jindal hired a necktie consultant?

Love health-care reform or hate it, you may identify among its founders a compromised and sparsely-talented Republican Party.