Clearing the Desk of Debris

Washington is actually pleasant with Congress out of session.

The Republicans are scurrying around to meet tomorrow to figure out how to minimize the damage from their votes for the Ryan Budget Plan. Apparently, word has come from the hustings that the natives are angry with plans to eliminate Medicare and Medicaid. The plan of hoping that the geezers are so selfish they won't mind as long as they got theirs apparently hasn't succeeded. It's the geezers who know what the Republicans are planning and don't like it.

Gary Bauer, one-time Christian Right candidate for President,says that everyone should get down on their knees and be thankful America is a Christian nation.

Gordon Robertson, son of, says that since President Obama was raised as a Muslim (he was not), he could be enlisted to help "other" Muslims to convert to Christianity.

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Conference says that people who question where Obama was born or whether he is a Muslim are "nuts and emotionally unbalanced". I'm surprised he came out that strongly since he opposes President Obama.

Congresscritter Allan West, who last week described President Obama as a low-life socialist organizer says that "liberal women are neutering American males." I'll have to ask my liberal wife whether that's true.

Haley Barbour called it quits in the presidential race. After setting up the organizational apparatus, Haley decided that he didn't have the fire in the belly. I never thought he could make a strong run of it because of his drawl. But Haley had the organizational genius to mount a credible campaign as well as the access to money from his lobbying days. GOP observers claim this lets Mitch Daniels enter the race as he didn't want to run against his friend.

As for Mitch, whom the Beltway pundits see as representing a true believer on deficits, his strength is also his weakness. Remember he was the OMB director who blew Clinton's surplus. He was one of three people credited by President Bush for the tax-cuts which created the road to nowhere. And Daniels under-estimated the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars by about---$2 trillion. Not the greatest advertisement for fiscal responsibility.

Mitt Romney gets loopier by the minute. The other year he gave a foreign policy speech at Heritage where he argued for steep increases in defense spending and almost declared war on China. Then in his hardback campaign book, he praised President Obama's stimulus package; then in the paperback he re-wrote these passages to blast it as having created no jobs--saved or created about 3 million. But who's counting? Today,he blasted President Obama for engaging in the largest "peacetime" spending binge in American history. His whole op-ed made it seem America was not active in any war--let alone 3 hot ones. These are not the words of an adroit politician. The words "Empty Suit" rapidly come to mind.

Meanwhile, the new darling of Fox News, the Christian Right and the teabaggers, Donald Trump says that President Obama wasn't qualified to attend Ivy League Schools. What are the odds the Donald's investigators will bill him for going to the Hall of Records in Hawaii to read the same birth certificate as the AP reporter. Donald also says that Bill Ayers wrote "Dreams of my Father", another right-wing favorite. Bill Ayers'comment is "I hope you enjoy your time in the Twilight Zone." But the Donald has the support of Meghan McCain and is going to Vegas--naturally--to test how he does with the GOP there.

Meanwhile, more on Fox News' exclusive that President Obama is waging a war against Easter. Steve Benen over at Washington Monthly has followed this all day, including the poor White House press officer answering questions about this. Apparently, it's not only President George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan never signed proclamations about Easter but no President in modern history has. And I am sure if you really wanted to probably none have. Except maybe the Thomas Jefferson of David Barton's revisionist dreams.

Meanwhile, reporters are going to have their job cut out for them when covering Mike Huckabee. Apparently, he has destroyed all records of his time as governor of Arkansas and his sermons while a Baptist preacher. Some note he has very delicate problems with explaining away some of his sons "illegal" activity. My advice--don't run. Plus, observers note the jovial bass-player is personally nasty and quick to anger.

I watched President Obama's campaign manager talk about his 2012 campaign plans. A few problems I see. First, the Republicans now have $120 million in the bank from undisclosed corporate donors. We know the Koch Brothers have pledged $66 million. And that's only now so early in the campaign cycle. The second is that like 2008 the Obama campaign intends to expand the voter base. It was wonderful in 2008 when they captured two-thirds of new voters. But after the 2010 mid-terms, several states are imposing voter suppression laws, particularly aimed at killing off the first -time voter. Basically the strategy of getting more younger voters, Hispanic and minorities will run up against the new voter suppression strategies. And the third, if you look at the map behind him on the video, many of the blue states are now purple, which is another negative factor. But followers of President Obama on Facebook now exceed 1 million. Early in the 2008 campaign, he topped this by a small amount.

The Race for 2012--Continued

Charlie Cook has come out saying that the Republicans will hold the House in 2012 and take back the Senate. But he said that his discussions with top Republican strategists indicate that President Obama will win re-election. With a wing-nut Congress that would be interesting if not absurd. James Carville's Democracy Corps has polled and found that voters have buyers' remorse and that GOP freshmen in the House are so vulnerable that the Democrats have a chance to win back the House. Others dispute this saying that redistricting totally favors the Republicans and that buyers' remorse may not turn into votes.

A Pew Poll shows that President Obama beats the generic Republican rather handily and that specific Republican names don't help much either. Public Policy Polling of swing states show Obama winning his states but not with some of the large margins he experienced in 2008. That's one of the reasons that Republican strategists believe they will have a lock on Congress because the Presidential coat-tails will not be so long. The actions of the Midwest Republican Governors have swung the region's direction back to the Democrats and may help save a few Senate seats.

One of the fascinating things to observe is that the approval ratings of the most visible Republican potential candidates have seriously dropped since 2009. The suggestion is that the more people know them the less they like them. I'm not one of those who believes this race is totally wide open as some have suggested. Basically, I believe it is a Huckabee versus Romney contest at this point.

For the first time, Gallup has Mike Huckabee taking the lead over Mitt Romney. The results of the full poll are fascinating.

19% Mike Huckabee
15% Mitt Romney
12% Sarah Palin
10% Newt Gingrich
6% Ron Paul
5% Michelle Bachmann
4% Mitch Daniels
2% Haley Barbour
2% Rick Santorum
2% Jon Huntsman
2% Gary Johnson
1% Donald Trump

Notice the absence of Tim Pawlenty, who announced his exploratory committee this week. Evangelical Christian Tim Pawlenty just finished his stint as Governor of Minnesota, creating the largest deficit in their history. Pawlenty is known among hunters for gut-shooting a deer and letting his aide clean up after him because he had to go to a fund-raiser.

People claims that Haley Barbour has a good shot because he is well-known for his fund-raising and his ability to exploit every loophole in campaign finance laws. Barbour has been out in Iowa this week pledging to reinstate DADT to avoid the battlefield dangers of an "amourous mindset." The return of DADT has been pledged by Gingrich,Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty.

Mitt Romney facing criticism for his Romneycare program in Massachusetts is going to stay away from Iowa because his handlers fear he will be ambushed by the social conservatives, who dominate the Caucus. He claims he will be creating a strategy that focuses on New Hampshire, Nevada and Florida. However, he will be risking his front-runner status if he stays away from too many primaries.

If there is an emerging pattern to the Republican race, it is that it will be fought over "values" issues and not the economy. With House Republicans and Governors sabotaging the recovery, they are betting that a sour economy will doom President Obama. However, they risk the voters actually waking up and discovering the implications of their actions by then.

The key component of the Republican strategy is the ability to raise astronomical sums of money from people like the Koch Brothers and Rove's billionaire donors to overwhelm the Democrats. The second part is being implemented by the Republican Governors, who are implementing Voter ID laws that will dramatically affect the ability of the young,minorities and the poor to vote. Republicans are hoping they can suppress these key constituencies, who vote overwhelming for Democrats but more importantly for President Obama. A big liability for Republicans is the new census figure showing that Hispanics have grown to 50 million people and are now the largest minority in the country. With the immigration laws proposed by the Republicans in over two dozen states,their one-time dream of capturing the Hispanic vote has faded.

The most interesting new possible candidate is Donald Trump. Trump epitomizes Republican economics at this point in time. Trump inherited a fortune from his father, leveraged enormous debt from it, declared bankruptcy several times but paid 10cents on the dollar, each time increasing his wealth, and actually managed to let a casino go bankrupt. In many ways, he is the most suitable candidate of them all.