Short: Be tough... and evasive

"KILL, KILL, KILL." That's not exactly how this commentary starts, but it gets close:

"...The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP."

The author (John Dickerson, whose reputation hasn't reached my not-completely-politically-obsessed person) wants the president to show up the GOP for being extreme. That sounds familiar somehow...

He also suggests this:

"...he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition's most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party..."

I don't think the GOP is going to help quite so readily in its own destruction. They may have learned to keep their heads down, which is what the Dems have been doing for over a year now. Even in this rah-rah piece, the author doesn't recommend specific policies that Obama should fight for. About that, he stays mum.

I wonder how it works when both sides decide to keep quiet and only speak when the other guys act crazy. It may be quiet for so long that we'll be begging those politician to propose something. Well, other people might beg, but not me. I want to see how this plays out.

Image: pomerateleanoredm310.blogspot.com

Media watch: Breaking story on Democratic senator

It looks like there is a very nasty scandal about to break around Democratic senator Bob Menendez (NJ). The FBI has raided a major donor to the senator, and there are reports that Menendez stayed at a mansion owned by the donor located in the Dominican Republic.

So far, the only major news outlet running the story is Fox News (best write-up by the Philly affiliate), but Daily Caller has been on the prostitution angle of the story since November.

What else is the media saying about Menendez? Huffington Post leads with Menedez' partial denial. I'm reminded of other partial denials, like Anthony Wiener not being able to categorically say it wasn't him in the crouch shot. Of other mainstream outlets, only New York magazine has a story, and it's negative, though it lacks the punch of the Fox story because of the absence of details about the connection between Menendez and the FBI target, Dr. Salomon Melgen.

I wonder whether this story will again show that the MSM is slow to jump on stories about Democrats. However, there is a big difference between being slow and completely ignoring a story. I think the MSM is slow to pick up some stories, but does follow them when there are hard facts about a newsworthy person or situation. I'll have to see how soon this is on CNN, and the major networks and newspapers. It should be soon (just long enough to do fact-checking), or it's a whitewash.

Senator, how much longer do you have?

Same day update. Now CNN.com is running a story.
Day 2 update. Heard the story on NPR in the afternoon. Lots of details, including flights on private planes, donations, prostitution accusations.

Short: The continuing slide of Sarah Palin

I try hard to stay positive even in criticism. Maybe that's why I don't write too often about the latest outrage. I certainly try not to crow over someone's fall. But the latest story about Sarah Palin has been a while in the making.

Sarah Palin will no longer be a Fox News contributor. I've watched a few of her appearances, and I was surprised by how Fox treated her. They would start the interview, she would prattle on mostly about tactical issues, then Fox would cut to some real news and leave her waiting for 20 minutes or more. It's not that she deserves any better. I've never heard her say anything new and insightful. Her speeches and observations always been a chewed-up mess of pre-digested talk radio rhetoric.

So Fox News gives Sarah Palin the heave-ho by way of an insulting contract offer. She says contradictory things in her brief interview published online: conservatives must widen their audience, but then she praises Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Breitbart.com. These are not commentators who are broadening the audience for conservative ideas. Mark Levin and Breitbart.com are proven conservative fabricators who will lie endlessly if they perceive political advantage. Of course they supply conservative spinners like Sarah Palin with a lot of material, so she better be grateful.

For Fox News, it's reasonable to flush out the stable, but I doubt the replacements are better. I'll have to watch to see.

Image: perezhilton.com

P.S. I wish Fox News would flush Juan Williams too as another commentator who spits out only warmed-over analysis. I haven't missed him on NPR in the least.

Short: Massacre averted

One component of gun reform that I'd like to see (based on my experience in mental health) is hotlines for reporting violently obsessed people and mandates for mental health professionals to report their concerns. Get the names into the databases so guns and ammo can't be sold to these worrisome people. Currently, our restrictions due to mental instability are not nearly tight enough. Yes, there is potential for abuse, but there can be an appeals process where a person can demonstrate their sanity and stability.

Here's a story of a family in Florida that reported a family member for having a dangerous arsenal and dangerous delusions. Thank God for the family's actions and for the police SWAT response. But it doesn't take a genius to guess this kicker:

"...the vet may walk out of the crisis stabilization unit after his mandatory seven days and demand that police return his weapons. The judge is not even sure that the state officials... can pull his concealed weapons permit."

There isn't a litmus strip that gun dealers or gun license processors can use to determine that a gun owner will cross the line and become a criminal. We need to use less certain criteria that will sometime deprive non-criminals of access to guns. Why can't we, and the NRA, live with that?

 A different Miami arsenal

Image: es2usa.blogspot.com

GOP disconnect from success

It's going to be slow on the political fronts for a while, but I like that because it gives me more time to reflect. So I started wondering whether a lot of libertarian made good on their threat to stay home in November. I couldn't find anything definitive. Supposedly the "white" vote was lower, but no one can be sure why. Obama had very good GOTV (get out the vote) operations, which the Dems hope he'll keep stoked in the future.

I found a very interesting conservative blogger in my search for info.  He likes to dig into the demographics, but yet he fell for the same tales that other conservatives swallowed--that the polling data was skewed, that Romney had a great ground game (with lots of contacts with potential voters), that people couldn't possibly want four more years of Obama. So there's an interesting mix of hard realism about the fight in Ohio and an optimistic prediction of 331 electoral votes for Romney, including Pennsylvania. His write-up on white voters made me want to read more, so I dug into his general posts and his columns. Unfortunately he makes the usual partisan mistake of underestimating the weaknesses of his side (vague numbers and policies) and overestimating the faults of the other side (terrible economic policies).

When you read about demographics, you'd think the GOP couldn't win another presidential election. Yet the GOP has clear majorities in 27 state capitols compared to Democrats with 19 states. At the state level, the GOP is stronger on reform and budget restraint.

You would think the general electorate would want some of that in the federal government, wouldn't you? I do, so I'm not writing off the GOP nationally. However, they have to figure out how to translate policy success at the state level to the national level, and they haven't done that yet. Not even close.

Image: thegazette.com

Good posts:

• Real Clear Politics on demographics.
• Allahpundit on lessons from the exit polls, like the economy isn't so bad and young people like Obama.
• Gawker on why it's not just demographics, but also policy preferences that contribute to voting patterns.
• A mea culpa from Dick Morris. But why would anyone believe a former Clinton adviser who got caught with a prostitute and now bashes the Clintons and Dems non-stop for fun and profit? That's not analysis, it's vendetta.
• 2012 vote totals by state. Good for seeing how close Ohio actually was.
• A belated find--analysis of which whites didn't vote.

Rant: Justified resentment in the gun debate

I like to launch into my rants, but just note this is a two-parter.

I hate that we have a flood of guns in this country. This country is so inundated with guns that we have shootings in elementary schools, for God's s sake. This is absolutely crazy that you can't trust that your children will be safe despite the amazing safety conscientiousness of the schools.

It's no surprise that a smart guy like neuroscience graduate student James Holmes is able to put together a deadly arsenal. But people without a lot of skills like Jared Loughner and Adam Lanza, or the shooter in my hometown, Jiverly Wong, have had the examples, guns, and ammo available so they could execute mass shootings too. There's something incredibly wrong in society that so many people have the same dream--to shoot as many people as possible, and they also have the means to fulfill the dream. If the NRA and gun owners don't think that is a huge problem that they have hugely contributed to, they are in denial and many innocent lives are lost due to that denial. Stop it already!

Now for the liberals' turn. I hate that liberals try to impose a gun-free utopia despite all the evidence that crime and criminals have no intention of disappearing or disarming! They deny the existence of the responsible gun owner, and the legitimate right to own guns for hunting, self-protection, and sport. Their dreams that there will be no guns has spawned the fear and hyperbolic rhetoric among NRA-types that the government would confiscate guns, and therefore you had better arm yourself to the teeth. This would have been a time to take a "live-and-let-live" approach, but liberals didn't. Their advocacy backfired in a huge way because they wanted to impose values rather that let the world be what is truly is--diverse.

But now I have a third target--the NRA and the gun manufacturers who preyed on gun owner worries to ramp up sales. Enjoy your blood-stained profits.

Image: nj1015.com

Update 5/6/13. A very long personal explanation of why gun owners don't and shouldn't trust gun control advocates. 

Good news from the GOP, Part 2

I didn't get to say this in the previous post, but the GOP's offer to delay the debt ceiling vote for three months seems very significant to me. Obviously the three months aren't significant, but the possibility of a positional or tactical change in the GOP is.

The change I sense is that the GOP is trying to scale back its demands. That's not surprising since they lost the election. However, they didn't scale back their demands in December, or on the basis of pollling all during 2011-2. At first after the election, they still tried to maintain the Bush tax cuts, then tried to maintain all the tax rates, before they finally gave in. Then they vowed to get as many spending cuts as they could in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

A common thread here is what I'll call a "maximalist position." The GOP seems to aim for the biggest payoff they can get. That's normal, I suppose, but contrast that with the Dems, who gave in on tax increases in August 2011, and readily allowed the higher threshold for tax increases during the fiscal cliff negotiations. The Dems haven't held up for the maximum return.

Why are the GOP working to hard to extract the maximum they can from their position? I have a theory. Most of the GOP converted very late to fiscal conservatism, like in the second half of 2008. Having wasted so much time, including their own period of political hegemony (House, Senate, presidency), they had to quadruple their efforts to cut back government.

If this sounds like I'm trying to mock the GOP (and I think it could be interpreted that way), you'll have to take my word that I'm not mocking them. I sincerely believe there was a realization among conservatives that they had slept through their chance to streamline government, but they were awake now, and want to make up for that missed opportunity.

So small government talk went into overdrive. Maintaining the Bush tax cuts and lowering government spending were twin objectives. However, on the spending side there had been a lot of ground lost, with the budget doubling between 2000 and 2009. That can largely explain the desperation of the GOP to fight all spending and to emphasize spending cuts.

My theory has its flaws. Many Republicans don't seem to mind defense spending, and even supported higher defense spending. Increased spending on Medicare wasn't attacked, and savings were criticized instead. The GOP may want spending cuts, but not enough to actually detail what they should be. Frankly, there are a lot of holes in my theory. Perhaps fiscal discipline is only a campaign cry for the GOP. However, there is something about the intensity of the desire to cut spending that this theory captures.

In contrast, some conservatives, in particular Charles Krauthammer, are talking about lowering their sights and trying for fewer cuts. Part of the idea is partisan, to let the Democrats run wild and expose how much they'd love to spend. But another thread may be that some in the GOP are recalibrating what they can achieve, and backing away from the maximalist position. Perhaps if they try to do less, they'll actually succeed in gaining more of their agenda in the near future and in future elections. That would be ironic, to achieve more by aiming for less.

Image: lolriot.com

Extra. Another time I thought the political scene was changing. I was wrong then, but it was fascinating how much did change, but not as I predicted.