The Week In Review.

++Be Aware--there really is a Republican debate this coming week.

++Joe Biden says Cruz' success should encouraged all kids that are hated in school. He said President Obama should nominate him to the court so he can have even more vacancies to fill.

++The New York Times has a long piece to day on the huge Bob Dylan archives which will be housed in Tulsa ,Oklahoma near Woody Guthrie's archives. Good read.

++The Sunday Review section is rich in Donald Trump.Maureen Dowd in "Chickens,Home To Roost, has fun watching the Donald,her friend, campaign and the reactions by the Mitt and those who got us into Iraq. A whole page contains reader's reaction to David Brooks reflections on the Donald. Nicholas Kristof writes about "Donald The Dangerous" and Ross Douthat on "The Elements of Trumpism". 

++The New York Times new section has an article on Donald contemplating a run for the state house in New York as a prelude to his run for the presidency.

++The Dailykos has a piece on Trump and the KKK. I would like to remind readers that the KKK was and is not solely a southern phenomenon as we saw this past week with the rally in Anaheim , California that ended in three deaths. 

++Larry Sabato wrote in his Crystal Ball that Donald has won all over the place. He mentioned Alabama and Massachusetts as if that showed a different appeal. But both states are steeped in racism. That's why I think Trump, not Kasich will win Michigan. I remember when people were shocked when George Wallace did so well there. Richard Nixon was petrified of Wallace because the GOP could dog whistle and control racism but people really knew the real deal. The same with Trump.

++Medgar Edgars' brother endorsed Donald Trump this week.

++We have a new strand of conservatism. Caitlyn Jenner endorsed Ted Cruz and wants to be an ambassador for Trans. Now we have Caitlyn Conservatives. Jenner has always been a conservative Republican before becoming a woman.

++The "Future of the Republican Party is supposed to win the Puerto Rican primary today. But the story there is that thousands of former prisoners will be voting in the Republican primary.

++It's Spring training. So that means I can be driven crazy by the Washington Post baseball writers. They got off to a good start by arguing the Nationals should rebuild--and I thought they were trying for a World Series.

++Der Spiegel calls Donald Trump "the most dangerous person in the world" and they should know. The overseas views of the Donald are equally disturbed. The far right party in Sweden even denounced the Donald.

++Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post writes that the rise of Le Pen in France and Trump here in the United States threatens to end NATO and the European Union. Cameron in the UK will hold a referendum on the UK leaving the European Union.

++Is the Republican Party really in crisis as papers have told us. I talked to Republicans I know this past week. I was curious about the lonely Kasich posters near my voting place. One woman I have worked with in the past and now works on the Hill said she was horrified about Donald and said that all her New York relatives,also Republicans,were voting for him. She dismissed Marco as "too wet behind the ears", running too early. She voted for Kasich because of his manner. She also said she was sick and tired of hearing the House members argue ideology and refer to Ronald Reagan. "I worked in Reagan's administration. They don't know Reagan. " 

++I made a joke to someone about a person who had worked in the W administration and that he would be Trump's Mideast envoy, his friend was horrified by the thought.

++But there was blowback from the rightwing security types who claim the Donald is winning because the Republicans didn't do anything against President Obama and what do they expect. These people actually think our military is weakened and that the recovery is fake and the unemployment numbers are cooked up. They resent the hell out of Mitt Romney criticizing Trump when he was supposed to win. It still is holy writ that Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama and that Benghazi should have convinced the American people Obama was a fraud. These people really would prefer Cruz but the Donald will do.

++But the atmosphere is very touchy around here with Republicans grimacing at the Donald's antics. When I suggest Romney might get in the race--""What a two time loser?"

++The splintering of the party is something we should watch. That doesn't mean they can't win.

He Said If The Other Guy Would Run He wouldn't , Now He Won't

++Paul Ryan, he of "dynamic scoring" and Medicare vouchers, said that if Willard "Mitt" Romney ran again for President he wouldn't. Today Paul Ryan announced he wasn't running for President.

++Meanwhile Willard said he was certain to run and would run to the right of Jeb Bush on immigration and taxes.

++Rick Santorum decried Rand Paul and Ted Cruz' lack of experience and lampooned their thoughts of running for President. "They are bomb-throwers." And "Frothy Mix" doesn't know anything about that.

Dems to Participate on Benghazi Panel

++Against my better judgment, Nancy Pelosi will announce Democrats will sent 5 to participate in the #Benghazi Kangaroo Court. Meanwhile, CNN has said they will only cover it when and if something newsworthy appears.

++The Democrats are Elijah Cummings,Adam Smith,Adam Schiff, Tammy Duckworth and Linda Chavez.

++Not to be outdone, Darryl Issa has subpoenaed the entire Justice Department on the IRS investigation.

++Meanwhile Mitt Romney's spokesperson proclaimed that last night's primary victories of establishment Republicans shows Romney is an elder statesman in the Party. Who knows maybe the Benghazi investigation can make him President.

D.C. Comics

So what's doin' on the Hill today. The House will be debating the critical issue of the qualifying standards for the America's Cup. This was after the grueling debate they held on honoring baseball last week. Speaker Boehner told a press conference yesterday that he was focused on Jobs. The reporters laughed. No one in town believes any of the Republican congresscritters want to create a single job or maybe they wouold like to preserve their own.

Today Bishop Willard Romney will be speaking to the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity about his economic policy programs. Earlier this week, he said he was only interested in tax cuts for the middle class. But for Willard that definition is fungible. It refers to the middle rich. And, oh well, the mega rich. Willard wants to eliminate the estate tax, which will provide his hosts--the Koch brothers--with a nice $8.5 billion bonus for their efforts.

We are less than a year away from the 2012 presidential elections. Nate "the Great" Silver calls it 50/50 for Obama's chances. Gallup has Romney 1 point ahead. And other polls show Obama losing a number of states he turned in 2008 but eecking out an electoral victory.

But the carnival show is on the Republican side. Six women now have come forth to accuse Herman Cain of sexual harassment. The betting line projects 9 in total. Outsiders say the man is cooked but his approval rating just soars as every new charge comes forth. It is a fascinating study in masochism to see the Republican base become more attached to a former lobbyist and pizza parlor owner as flaw after flaw gets exposed. Incredibly, the majority of Republicans in Iowa actually believe that his 9-9-9 plan would benefit them. This is especially true of those earning less than $50,000. All economists say that they will pay several thousand more dollars in taxes. But the will to believe is strong.

Herman Cain, who really is the first virtual candidate in American polictical history, has the lead in Iowa and South Carolina. All this, despite the revelations about his days as chief lobbyists for the Restaurant Association, and the glaring fact he doesn't have an organization or a bank rivalling Perry and Romney.

Perry meanwhile denies he was drunk or high in New Hampshire. The audience has been enlisted to testify to the Boston Globe that Perry was just exuberant. There are really political commentators saying that Perry is being brilliant by pretending he's dumb.

Flashback to 2008, even the sorry field of GOP candidates then debated real issues. Do you remember how they thought health insurance reform was important? Or how about the debate on cap and trade and global warming? Today, it is a fallow field with no ideas about anything. Notice how they don't even mention the debt? It's Obama's debt but once we get in--well, the hell with it.

Some observers believe if the GOP takes the White House then they will endorse infrastructure investment and other job creating programs. It's just they want to force Obama out the door. If they voted for Obama's jobs creation program now, then the unemployment rate would be 7% at election time, lower than when he came in. So that's what they are banking on. But I happen to believe they will not embark on any job-creation programs if they take control. I think they will embark on the final looting of America by transferring again huge amounts of wealth to the top 1%. And they will systematically destroy by attrition and cuts all that remains of the social safety net. All of this solely in the name of ideology.

What is so fascinating to watch here in D.C. is how oblivious the town is to the 99er Movement and its growing strength around the country. Conservatives have tried to put down the movement as another hippie protest and Fox News is claiming it has been organized by ACORN. But the reality is that it is growing because the corporations, the banks and their enablers have push the envelope to the point of breaking. When millions of people in a society feel that the game is stacked against them there is pushback. How effective will it be? I don't know. But there is a real threat that our operating economy will actually become totally divorced from our population at large. This could generate a whole new energy in the country, which would have unexpected consequences.

I've lamented the efforts since the 2010 elections to suppress voter turnouts by focusing on minorities and the young. The progress that has been made by making voting easier by 2008 has been dramatically reversed on purpose. If the electorate can be contained, it is believed you can manipulate the results better. This year the Republicans are banking on this. A close election with voter suppression would favor them.

But I've always told foreign democracy movements that rigged elections also provide opportunities. If the winner of a rigged election believes they have a mandate to push an ideological agenda without consultation of the opposition or the people, there will be a backlash that will unravel their control over the system. We actually saw this with the 2008 election. The Bush-Cheney Administration had come to power under dubious circumstances in 2000 and their re-election was clouded by voter manipulation in Ohio. There was actually perceived on a bipartisan basis the need to actually have a clean election in 2008 because of the noxious fumes left by the last two national elections.

Since then the Republican Party has become radicalized in a way unique in my lifetime so much so that elections are merely a formality but nothing of substantive meaning. As evidenced by their behavior since 2008, the Party has narrowed its interest to serve the top .3% of the population. And this is becoming abundantly clear to independents and Democrats.

This overt and very public embrace of economic inequality has triggered the current reaction of the 99er Movement or Occupy Wall Street Movement. What is now being placed at the center of the political debate is the issue of economic democracy. People are asking the uncomfortable questions about our economic system. So far the ideas from this movement are rather modest--a small fee on stock trades, the end of the Bush era tax cuts, and the slight tax hike on those making $1 million or more a year.

In some ways Mitt Romney is right if unemployment were at 6%, these protests may not have happened. What the Mormon Bishop doesn't say is that American corporations are holding over $2 trillion in cash reservers and are not creating jobs and that the top corporations for the last five years have paid no federal income taxes. In fact, they got massive tax refunds. All the while profits have gone through the roof. The Dow still is nearly 4,500 pts higher under Obama than during Bush's last days. This discrepancy between the health of our financial and corporate world and the population at large sparked the 99er Movement.

There will absolutely be nothing accomplished in the American Congress this year. They might as well go home. There is virtually no interest in ameliorating the problem of the American people. So we will watch to see how the movements continue to grow.

Willard Will Pick the GOP's Pockets

The media continues this new meme that Mitt Romney really is a moderate and would not be so bad as President. Earlier in the week people like David Brooks and Michael Gerson tried to portray Mitt as reassuring and not someone to react impulsively. Gerson suggested that Romney has picked a sterling group of economic advisers, who know what they are doing.

This process of Republicans trying to settle on Romney ignores some basic points that the media has failed to notice. Those great economic advisers were the ones used by George W. Bush and were involved with the great fiscal implosion of 2008. Romney announced his foreign policy team right before his Citadel speech, which called for the 21st century to be another America Century. The only problem are that all the foreign policy advisers are those from George W. Bush and those who advocated in the 1990s a New American Century.

In short, Romney is running on resetting America at 2000 and starting out again on George W. Bush's policies. Take for instance Mitt Romney's pledge to repeal Dodd-Franks bill on re-regulating the financial industry. The result would be the mayhem of the 2007 and 2008. Romney basically thinks everything was fine until the market collapse. So after the bailouts, there is no need to correct anything. You just dust yourself off and begin again. And the George W. advisers will help it along.

Romney's speech at the Citadel was frankly horrifying and dangerous. It ignored the last decade and the limitations that are now on American power. Romney's view that our military needs further increases in spending ignores the basic fact that this year our deficit, some $1.3 trillion is exactly equal to the budget for the entire military-intelligence and terrorist complex. If this spending is to increase, then roughly 40% of the federal government would go to these ventures. The rhetoric he used on whether the United States would cooperate with other countries but opts to go it alone is pure George W. There was no consideration of foreign aid or even the Arab Spring. In fact, Romney is on record that there can be no distance between the United States and Israel,a marked reversal of historical American policy, even George W's.

If you examine Romney economic policies, you basically have Paul Ryan on steroids. The United States would be reduced to being a military power protecting the global interests of our corporations. While he is made to look moderate on things like Social Security because of his rivals, he is nothing of the sort. He is pledged to fundamentally change entitlement programs. And the loopiest idea among many of his is a pledge for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, when his own economic plans would run deficits way into the future.

Mitt Romney lucked out at the Values Summit when the head of the Southern Baptist Convention endorsed Rick Perry and called Mormonism a "cult". This allowed Romney to plead for religious tolerance and appear in the Beltway media to be "moderate".

Romney did not speak about his religion but he did make very specific promises to the social conservatives which went unreported. He pledged t overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision to make abortion legal, a decision passed by 7-2. He pledged to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood. He pledge to uphold the Hyde Amendment and expand its application to prevent abortion. He pledged to appoint an Attorney General that would fight to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, even though Reagan appointed judges have ruled it was unconstitutional. He also supported amendments in the states to say that life begins at conception. He also would restore DADT.

Those are very specific commitments. Very specific for a man who can't tell you his position on Afghanistan, for instance. Very specific too for a man that has not articulated how America can compete in the world economically. Or a man who can't support refurbishing our infrastructure.

But if Peggy Noonan refers to Ronald Reagan's days as "When Character was King", what is she to make of Mitt Romney?Writing in the Daily Beast, Matt Latimer documents Romney's own strange and unexamined political journey in "Is Romney the Next Kerry?" Surprising to me, at least, Mitt Romney did not vote for President Reagan or Bush the father. Instead, he actually voted for Paul Tsongas in the Democractic primary in 1992 (?). Mitt also has gone by several different first names in his life including Bill. Latimer documents the encyclopedia of all the political positions Romney has changed during his short political career. The man is a cameleon and no one has begun to bring up all of them because they are so numerous. He makes John Kerry look like a Rock of consistent stands.

The bottom line is that Romney is campaigning on the fact he is white and rich. Whatever else you want to make him out to be is OK by him. He's middle-class, he's unemployed, he's a businessman, not a politician.

I still think he's weird and troubling. The last so-called technocrat we elected as President was a man of real capability--Herbert Hoover. Hoover was a great humanitarian, a pioneering engineer, a business titan. And look what happened with him. Romney is running on warmed over George W. Bush platitudes without any re-examing of those flawed assumptions and he has bought into the whole social conservative agenda. Someone called him the Achilles Heel Incarnate.

At this point our corporate media is buying his line. But the Republican base believes he is a phony. because he is. But there, too, it looks like they are demoralized and are flagging to the base that effort is better spent on the Senate elections.

And he is a Mormon. And that is a cult.

Christie Says No--Joins Long Line of Refuseniks

Chris Christie once again announced he was not running for President this year. Having been courted by Henry Kissinger, the Koch Brothers,Nancy Reagan and George H. W. Bush and an assortment of high rollers, Governor Christie decided he already had a job.

The rumor mill basically had him go through the motions of reconsidering by contacting donors and Republican officials who are dismayed by the current field. Christie's advisers were assessing the time to assemble a major league team for the primaries and how they would fare in New Hampshire. Christie would have to file in about two weeks to run in that primary.

Interestingly enough it was a bunch of Wall Street donors who kept the pressure on Christie. They apparently are disappointed with Bain Capital's Mitt Romney, which is a story to be covered. Romney's own fund-raising this quarter has drooped to about $11 million--compared to an estimated $55 million for President Obama, who doesn't have to compete in primaries.

The list of Republicans not running this year is more impressive than the real candidates. Opting out have been Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee and now Christie. Have you noticed how one respects those who don't run more than those who have tossed their helmuts in the ring? Maybe it's the decision not to run that gives them a tinge of gravitas.

The only marquee name remaining is Sarah Palin, who doesn't have a job. I still believe with Michelle Bachmann's campaign shedding campaign workers and drowning in debt that Palin might give it a go.

A blogger suggested that the Republicans actually want to throw the presidential election because the establishment believes the teabaggers are so crazy that a defeat would allow them to purge the ranks. I like the idea but I tend to doubt it.

Michael Gerson today in the Washington Post started the whitewash of Romney as Mormon issue and argued that evangelicals would vote for a conservative Mormon to beat liberal Barack Obama. But gerson does mention the anti-Mormon literature that circulated in the South last time Romney ran.

Basically, the Republican establishment will try to condition the primary voter to accept Romney. For his part, Romney had a lovefest with Huckabee on Fox News and promised to push a constitutional amendment that personhood began with conception--one of the most retrograde ideas circulated by the religious Far Right. There is no one stopping Romney right now pandering to the extreme Right and he will do this throughout the primary process.

The boomlet behind Herman Cain isn't being matched by big donors. His popularity is more at the expense of Perry's demolition with the accusations of racism and his promise to invade Mexico. Perry still has the money but I'm not so sure with the chicanery with the primary schedule whether he can get back in.

The Brennen Institute issued a report yesterday on the efforts to restrict voters rights in the states. They estimate that this year these restrictions, including Voter ID laws, will affect over 5 million voters. Primarily those affected will be core democratic constituencies.

Politically, this means that in a close election--which this one looks like--the Democrats will be at an enormous disadvantage. Which makes you wonder why any Republican bowed out of this year's election.

The number one choice for Vice President is Florida's Senator Marco Rubio because of the centrality of that state to the electoral vote. The Miami Herald published an expose that the Spanish-language network Univision had promised to quietly kill a report about Rubio's brother if the Senator cooperated in a program. It seems Rubio's brother had been busted for drugs years ago and was a bit player in a Coke and Dope ring in the Florida area. But once this cap is off, expect more stories coming out about the Senator.

BUTCH OTTER FOR PRESIDENT

Gail Collins in the New York Times was writing about the curse of Mitt on the Republican race and stumbled wonderfully on the solution. The Republicans are after a fiscal conservative and who better to carry the banner forward than Rude "Butch" Otter, the governor of Idaho.

Butch Otter provides marketing opportunities for a campaign better than Willard Romney or Newton Leroy Gingrich. Sweatshirts "Vote Otter" or mascot otters for the children. This is an opportunity that certainly the teabaggers would love. Vote the Otter--easy to remember.

Rude "Butch" Otter is the solution for a field that is struggling to find traction and something sane to run on.

So today we have Rick Perry's hunting camp named "Niggerhead", something Herman "Pizza Man" Cain finds insensitive. With Obama cleaning up Islamic terrorists, Rick Perry now wants to show he's tough on Hispanics so he wants to invade Mexico to go after the drug cartels. General Pershing didn't have much luck going after Pancho Villa, who later shows up in the Paco Taibo II mysteries.

Chris Christie is being seen as the Chazz Bono of the Republicans, a Christy Whitman who had a sex change. And, Mark Levin warns us he's a 'warmer", someone who believes in climate change. He also is too "liberal" for Herman Cain because he once entertained ideas of gun control and civil unions for same sex couples. And, besides, Michael Kinsley says he's too fat to be president in these lean times.

And Willard "The Mitt" Romney? Well, wasn't Willard the name of the Big Rat in the movie of the same name? Or didn't Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz captured it about right in Apocalypse Now," Willard, you're just an errand boy...Willard, for some grocery clerks."

Gail Collins is right. Republicans must band together and draft Rude "Butch" Otter for President. President Otter would bring us closer together for the Final Looting of America.

Otter in 2012!!

Searching For The Great White Hope

The triumph of Herman Cain in the Florida Straw Poll and Mitt Romney's in Michigan has triggered a frantic search among Republican donors to find the perfect Great White Hope. Time is running out and conservatives and the base are in a meltdown that they might have to accept Willard Romney as the nominee.

The latest name being put forth is New Jersey's governor Chris Christie who has a 50/50 split in approval/ disapproval ratings. Over the weekend, mysterious TV ads started showing up in the New York metro area in support of Christie. The New York Post editorialized that he should run and Fox News' own Roger Ailes has been pressing Christie for about a year to run. His aides again said yesterday that he wasn't running but former Governor Tom Kean claimed he was seriously thinking about it. Incredibly wealthy donors are now coming out of the closet to say they will financially back Christie.

Rumors have been circulating galore for the past few days. A speech at the Reagan Library on real American Exceptionalism is supposed to be some indicator of intent. Christie's travel calender to Missouri is another.

The fact of the matter is that it is getting down to the wire for Christie, Palin, Daniels to make up their mind. Just as a warning to these folks is Rick Perry's late entry and the immediate problems he faces before he can get his sea-legs. You have to have an organization, a huge war chest and the stamina to run. Perry's fatigue in the debates is now seen as a result of back surgery this summer. So what happens to an obese candidate with serious asthma problems? Chris Christie is a heart attack waiting to happen.

It's not like Chris Christie is going to last as the darling of conservatives, despite his bullying manner and his support from the Tea Party crowd. Even the Freepers are saying that he's just another Christy Whitman with a sex change.

The real problem for Republicans is the notion that Willard "Mitt" Romney would be the "leader" of the Republican Party let alone the President of the United States. Rick Perry was sort of right that the loser of the Florida Straw Poll was Mitt Romney, who has built an organization in Florida for five years and been campaigning there as long and after a strong debate came in third.

It is almost dizzying to consider the shape shifting techniques of Romney over the last few days. Someone will have to be designated the Romney watcher to mark down his various incarnations, let alone policy positions. So here is a candidate with two graduate degrees from Harvard, sons who graduated from Harvard and someone who accepts large donations from Harvard's faculty attacking President Obama for "laying about the Harvard faculty lounge", wherever that is. It's phony. Also Romney watcher Steve Benen of www.washingtonmonthly.com has noted that Republicans successfully attacked John Kerry in 2004 for speaking French but haven't attacked Romney for being fluent in French from his missionary days. And then we have Romney tweeting all the things he loves like Subway, Quiznos and Southwest airlines as if he is just a regular guy. After his pitch as just a conservative businessman flopped, he had to pull out his wife Ann in a display of family pancake making for breakfast. Even his poaching former Obama Wall Street donors only reinforces for Republicans that he is Obama-lite.

I thought the heckler attacking Obama as the Anti-Christ now opens the gate for attacks on Romney's religion and its peculiar stance on Lucifer.

But you know what? After several debates, no one really cares about the Republican candidates. This should be the most alarming thing for the GOP. Herman Cain gets publicity but has as much chance of getting the nomination as Harold Stassen. The lower string of candidates are now along for the ride over the next several months and will only muddy the waters more. The anti-gay folks on the Religious Right are all up in arms over the Google search for Rick Santorum, who also shouldn't be competing. We are going to go through this for months with a dwindling television audience.

By all objective political standards, President Obama is the underdog going into 2012. But as he is rallying the base with eloquent and strong speeches, there is nothing of substance coming from the Republicans. All polls show the public hates Congress, hates the media, hates businessmen, hates Republicans in Congress and has a lower but not completely irrelevant approval rating for the President. If the American people continue to hate everything by 2012, it's anybody's election.

The Morning After the Debate

President Obama is sure to lose says George the Steph, the old Clinton hand. The latest Greenberg poll shows Obama losing to both Romney and Perry. The New York Times is preparing an article speculating whether Obama is clinically depressed. Dick Morris says that Obama is not having fun anymore and that he might not run in 2012 because Republicans will have both houses of Congress. Ralph Nader and Cornell West claim they are trying to recruit a challenger in the Democratic primaries to run against Obama. Polls show slightly erosion in support for Obama among his base--whatever that is. HE's DOOMED.

Then we see the old Barack Obama having a blast in Cincinnati urging Boehner and Mitch McConnell to rebuild the Brent Spence Bridge connecting Ohio to Kentucky. He was joined there with Rand Paul, who was booed but President Obama intervened to say,"No, on infrastructure he's with us." Except for his greying hair, this was the man we saw in 2008 bouncing on stage. Maybe, he's bipolar--who knows. But kudos to Rachel Maddow for pointing out that the man who excited people in 2008 was back. And she noted that he didn't stop the boos for Boehner and McConnell and that the Republicans are whining that Obama is campaigning. And as Chris Hayes noted, no one seems to give the American Jobs Act any chance on the Hill but that President Obama is setting up the debate for the 2012 election.

If anyone is demoralized this morning, it's the Republicans after the performance last night. Bill Kristol in the Weekly Standard headlined his piece "Yikes" because conservatives were flooding e-mails complaining about the debate. One young conservative said,"We come across as being too crazzzy." Indeed. Red State, which backed Rick Perry, was disappointed by his performance. The Washington Punditry claimed Romney won the debate and was the only one who looked sort of like a presidential candidate--that's not saying he looked Presidential. Democrats worried that Romney actually looked better in debate than in the past two years. But the teaparty head Judson Phillips is concerned that Romney really doesn't believe anything. The whole affair set off waves of panic among Republicans who are now asking whether anyone else will enter the fray. Almost all the media commented how the bloodthirsty audiences are stealing the show. Last night, none of the candidates lamented the booing of the gay serviceman in Iraq. Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist, said he had never seen someone who is risking his life for the United States being boo'd.

The Romney team is trying now to tighten up the primary schedule to get a few he will win inserted earlier in the schedule such as Michigan and Arizona. The RNC is totally at wits ends about the primary schedule now. The betting line is Romney-Rubio for the general election.

After Iowa, Michelle Bachmann is history so says her old campaign manager. the reason she is out of money. Ron Paul is having a blast and netted $1 million in a moneybomb last night. He's moved up to third in the polling.

David Weigel said that Rick Perry looked like George Foreman at the end of his bout with Mohammed Ali in Zaire, all punched out. Conservatives are now re-assessing their suport for Perry . But it's probably nothing more than Perry not giving a long speech the day of a debate. He was at Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom freakathon where the speakers spoke in front of a backdrop of the American flag, the Florida flag and the flag of the state of Israel. Conservatives were thrilled by Rick Perry's pro-greater Israel stance on the Middle East but disappointed that he failed to mention it last night.

The fact checkers are having a field day today nailing both Perry and Romney for almost anything they said. But it's unlikely to matter. It's not like the Republican primaries are reality-based.

What came across last night was that the policies of the Scott Walkers, Rick Scotts and John Kasichs of the world are now the ideology of the Republican Party. So you are gearing your appeal on the ideas of the governors with the lowest approval ratings in the country. And in foreign policy, all the candidates were illiterate.

If the nominee is Willard "Mitt" Romney, you have a man that is a large Achilles Heel. Conservatives have often complained that Romney doesn't have any core beliefs. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly has made a hobby from a liberal point of view documenting the different versions of Romney and he has lost count. Romney is a shape-shifter. yesterday he was Middle Class, which he has never been in his life; previous he was the Unemployed, which he has never been, and last night he was just a conservative businessman if you believe a venture capitalist is a real type of businessman in the sense of managing an enterprise. Oh, and he wasn't a politician, only for a short stint as Governor of Massachusetts. Romney has exudes the type of hubris you find among the truly wealthy and that did in John Kerry and Al Gore.

The Obama campaign from Day 1 has believed they will go up against Mitt Romney. I'm not so sure. Some Republican, knowing how controlling the Religious Right is in the party, will have to raise the nature of Romney's Mormon beliefs. If you think Romney is weird now, any discussion of those beliefs will only confirm it. He basically subscribes to a 19th century form of Dianetics. "Do you believe as your religion teaches,Mr. Romney, you can become a God?" This will go over real swell in the Bible Belt. The Southern Baptists have already said they will only vote for a Mormon as a last resort.

So if Willard is the nominee, a few things happen. The Tea Party and the New Republican Base must decide whether their hate for Obama is so overwhelming that they bite their tongue and vote for Romney or will they be demoralized and not mobilize their followers. I think they will be split like the New Left was in its day. I think they will opt to work on local elections. The antipathy to Romney among the Republican base is very, very strong. Romney has a very-well oiled political machine and will have endless pots of money from the corporate donors of the party but generating enthusiasm will be a problem--a much bigger problem for him than Obama trying to ignite his base.

Forget the economy for a moment. Compare Romney on the stump to Barack Obama. Romney can't do retail politics. You can't try to relate your experiences in Detroit to a Ford dealer and brag about how many Cadillacs you own. Whatever doubts people have about Barack Obama, they disappear when he shows up. He has the touch and people go away inspired or at least liking the man. After meeting Romney, you go away scratching your head. Obama still has great reservoirs of good will left, while Romney has none.

If I were still a Republican, I would be as alarmed as the political operatives are this morning.

The Day After--Afternoon Coffee at the Last Manatee

We at the Last Manatee want to warn readers that Teabaggers in Florida want to exterminate the Manatee because it is not protected by the Constitution or are they mentioned in the Bible. You really can't make that up.

The "Cooch" here in Virginia just suffered a mortal blow when the Federal Appeals Court threw out his challenge to the Affordable Healthcare Act , vacating the decision by Judge Hudson that ruled against it. They also threw out Liberty University's suit also. I'm sure some Dominionist could explain why Christian fundamentalists are against healthcare. But, too bad!

So the pundits are trickling in with their comments. The Beltway says that Romney won. I agree if debates were really debates and not theater for different voters. The war whoops from the audience last night came on all attacks on Obama's character and on Rick Perry doubling down on his record of executions in Texas. I like how the Guardian (U.K) was appalled at the bloodthirsty nature of the crowd. On Perry executing an innocent man, a Perry supporter said that was the reason he was voting for him,"It takes real balls to kill an innocent man."

Other observers note the similarity of W debating McCain and how W looked clumsy, ignorant and unaware and we all know how that turned out. Perry just hired W's pollster for his campaign. Perry did not hurt himself with his supporters. Erickson and others expressed dismay but are right that it was his first time out, while for Romney it was his umpteenth debate over two cycles.

Militant Republicans get defensive when the media criticize the ignorance of their candidates and how they speak. This turns into fund-raising fodder and they only defend that person even more, as witnessed by "I am not a Witch" Christine O'Donnell. At the presidential level this rough and inarticulate stuff is a mark of the Alpha Male's machismo. So in Perry's case, it will benefit him during the primaries. One casualty of the night was Michelle Bachmann because the Christian Right, which has been split between the two, has to switch to Perry's maleness and Bachmann will have to be submissive.

I'm ambivalent about Ed Schultz' view that Perry's Ponzi Scheme remarks actually helped him for the primaries and among the young. Karl Rove today is going crazy over Perry's social security remark and Romney's camp sent out an e-mail that "Perry has lost the election." But Comrade Karl is deeply concerned about Florida and that the average Republican primary voter is senile and drools and will be turned off by Perry's remarks and tried to link the Party to it.
First, the spin will be to blame the constant airing of Perry's views as another liberal plot against conservatives and by the hundredth time primary voters hear this they will believe it. However, in a general election, people judge his remarks as evidence of his extreme views, not so much the substance of what he said.

It's interesting to see Rick Perry's debating style, which is in-your face. The Obama campaign had one camera that just recorded Perry throughout the evening, when he was answering and when he was not. Perry is apt to go after Obama once the bell rings for the purpose of rattling him. McCain's camp always felt that McCain made a mistake not taking it to Obama from early on and getting him to either get angry or react. It will be interesting to see whether Perry's style holds up. I'm sure the Obama campaign is now studying all the body language. Perry likes to crowd personal space--like when he moved in on Ron Paul and later Mitt Romney.

Peggy Noonan came up with the most unsual criteria on whether Perry would be judged a success. " If you can imagine listening to him for four years without throwing up in your mouth." Then he's a winner. That's putting the bar rather low.

I think Perry will not wear well. Throughout the night, he showed how nasty he can be and looked menacing. Generally, voters don't vote nasty for President but times may have changed.

Mitt is--well, weird. Last night was probably the best night Romney has had on the campaign trail over two campaigns. His economic plan didn't make sense but none of them ever do. His defense of social security was to show his moderation and compassion.

But there was something that stuck out at me and has always bothered me about Romney--his condescension. He was condescending about Perry and he is always condescending to Barack Obama. During the last campaign, all the other Republicans literally hated Romney personally. It was a visceral thing. It is the characteristic that was the downfall of both Al Gore and John Kerry--this sense of privilege and superiority. If you don't think it exists, remember Romney is expanding his La Jolla beachfront property as his West Coast White House, his version of Reagan's ranch.

I don't know whether Romney's condescension comes from inheriting great wealth and making more or from his Mormonism. Romney is further up the church ladder than the Huntsman family and I wonder if this hasn't worn off. At his level, you are taught you can become a God and your wife a Goddess. If you have been conditioned to this all your life, it's bound to show. Mormons have a self-understanding of themselves as a persecuted minority and history bears them out. But there were mundane reasons for this. The primary gripe by Christians in the 19th century was the Mormons' overt sense of superiority over their neighbors and their fraudulent business practices. Also polygamy was considered rather exotic.

Romney's new tact about Obama saying he's a nice guy but totally inadequate for the job plays well to the Republicans but if you step back, you have to ask what are Romney's qualifications for saying this. Even though his father did try to get the Mormon church to abandon its racism, if you grew up being taught the "Book of Abraham" was a divinely-inspired text which shows that blacks are the people of Ham, it's bound to creep into your attitude toward African-Americans and particularly someone with an African name. His remarks are too condescending by half.

(Historical note, The papyri which Joseph Smith claimed he translated with divine help were later examined by the University of Chicago and found to be ordinary Egyptian funeral papyrii. There was no mention of Abraham or the people of Ham anywhere. This created a scandal in the Mormon hierarchy and they have tried to distance themselves from the book, which is pretty tough since their "prophet" claimed it was divinely inspired.)

Almost all national polls show Romney being the most competitive of Republicans with Obama. By Republican tradition, he should be the nominee, second time out, former Governor, wealthy man. but there are deep suspicions about his character and from conservatives there is disdain for his apparent lack of a strong belief system--or at least a belief system that he could share with other Americans. That's why I think the antipathy to him among conservatives and evangelicals will hurt him in the primaries.

The other winner last night was Jon Huntsman, a self-described Jack Mormon. Utah-born and raised, his grandfather ran a saloon and his mother was a devout Mormon so his religiousity has more of a regional, Western taste to it. John Weaver, his campaign chairman, is trying to find air in the field and focusing on New Hampshire. Weaver is banking on people's disdain for Romney and alarm by the crazy right to provide Huntsman with the opportunity. Because of Huntsman's almost non-existent showings in polls, they had to lobby CNN for his addition to next week's debate. The kiss of death to Huntsman has been his relationship with Obama as his ambassador to China and also his rationality. He scored when he spoke about not signing any pledges on any subject.

The next debate will be on CNN and is cosponsored by the Tea Party Express.

There is one issue that has been hanging over President Obama from the beginning of his presidency--which is the manner and nature of his leadership. I voted for him because of his nature and calm demeanor. I thought the usual Alpha Male bluster and posturing had been ruinous to our country and that a new generation could embrace another style of leadership. But the critiques from the Left and the Right keep demonstrating to me that Americans crave the authoritarian father figure--the decisive leader who will also serve as the paternal figure.

Ultimately, deep down this also gets back to Obama's race because we have been conditioned to accept White Alpha Male behavior as the ideal in the United States. Whites are totally obtuse to this. I like cool and intellectual but a majority of Democrats and Repubicans do not.

But this time the Alpha Male brings to the table a radical Right agenda that has not seen the light of day since the Depression era. We should read up on our Wilhelm Reich, who studied this phenomenon.

The Reagan Debate

Rick Perry,the new Golden Boy, didn't impress me. He looked dissolute and did not have the ruddy Western look that usually sells Republicans. I also felt there was a nastiness to him that I don't think will wear well. But remember this was his first time out. He was coming off the Texas firefires and Obama saving his ass this afternoon with FEMA aid. In time, he should improve as a performer.

But I feel it's going to take longer than party officials expect. This means the Perry people will have to abandon the dream of closing the primary process down by the end of February. Earlier in the day, the audiotape of David Koch telling a collection of millionaire that the battle against President Obama was the Greatest of All Battles mimicking Saddam Hussein. At that meeting was Rick Perry. The Koch Brothers have given funds to Michelle Bachmann and have also championed New Jersey's Chris Christie. I would bet the Koch dream ticket is Rick Perry and Chris Christie, both men being nasty and foul-mouthed.

Willard was trying not to be a floorwalker today and was trying to act "warm." I agree with Josh Marshall he looked positively orange tonight. Perhaps this is the new John Boehner touch. I felt that from a general election point of view, Romney won the debate because of his defense of social secuity and Perry doubled down on saying it was a "Ponzi scheme". For primary voters, this may be a winner but as Karl Rove said earlier in the day Perry's words were toxic.

The first question off the bat was how to get the economy working again. Here we were entertained by Romney, Perry and Huntsman claiming experience at creating jobs. Brian Williams did a good job at elaborating about the negatives of Perry's job record and the proliferation of low-paying jobs in Texas. For the general audience, I thought Romney handled the Bain Capital the best he could and tried to wiggle out of the fact that thousands lost their jobs by his strategies. This was an area where they all zinged each other.

But the general prescriptions for the economy were: lift all the regulations; cut corporate taxes: lower wages; and basically do whatever corporations want. Then Voila, millions of jobs appear. Having heard this so much recently from these characters, the news media should convene the Conference Board or a group of businessmen to answer the specific question:"If these regulations were lifted, how many jobs are you willing to create?";"If your tax rate was zero (as some proposed), how many and how quick would you commit to 2 million jobs?" It seems to me these prescriptions so far are ideological with no basis in fact. If tax cuts and lack of regulations created jobs, we would have had millions added during the Bush years and the first two Obama years because nothing new had been added.

But I fear that the corporate media will continue to allow these guys and gal to keep saying this without any pushback. After the last 30 years, the American public basically believes this to be true but without any evidence. I can see lowering corporate tax rates and eliminating loopholes to enhance revenues but so you have talking points about having one of the lowest corporate tax rates but as I have often written only 26% of our large corporations pay any tax whatsoever.

The attituide to Obama was that he's a nice guy but unfit to lead a great nation such as ours. They had to emphasize Nice because a whopping 70% of Americans, even with his polls dropping, like the President. And they wanted to take the sting out of the teabag racism. Romney is actually the slimiest toward Obama. He is condescending, a trait that caused the Mormons to be shot earlier in our history. He wants to say that Obama was never in the private sector which has a higher moral value than Obama forsaking a high-paying legal salary for work as a community organizer. And Romney again mouthed the sentence that "America needs a President that believes in this country", a more sophisticated way of saying Obama is Other.
A few candidates mouthed the line about Obama always apologizing for America.

Strangely, Newt stood his ground for his previous support of supporting Obama on charter schools and did not back down from saying nice things about the President. Perry, who had called the President a "liar" about the safety of the borders,actually made a point that the President should be congratulated for killing bin Laden.

But overall we are in the situation where are because we did not have a "strong" leader like Ronald Reagan. I thought being at the Reagan Center tempered the remarks of the candidates. Mrs. Reagan was in the audience and I believed they avoided some of their nuttiness from the previous debates.

It was interesting that too much time was wasted on FEMA and Ricky Cantor's belief that FEMA assistance should be conditioned on more budget cuts. There were few takers on this subject. So Brian Williams made a point to call on Ron Paul to talk about why FEMA should be eliminated. Paul also talked about eliminating a whole lot of departments and allowing the private sector to monitor itself.

Deficits were not that high in the candidates' vocabulary this evening. If you listened to them, you would know why. For instance, everyone said they would elimimate Obamacare the first day in office. The Affordable Care Act was the hottest topic of the night. Of course, if you did that, which they can't, this would result in a deficit of $250 billion. If you costed out Romney's economic plan, you would have another sea of red ink. So they all wisely stayed off this. Lucky for Rick Perry because he has a whopping $26 billion in budget deficits.

I felt the optics of the debate were Romney--Perry--Huntsman. And Ron Paul was your crazy uncle in the attic. Newt actually showed up this evening and spoke about the legislation he p;assed and how it applied today. He also tried again his trick of attacking the moderators for trying to get candidates to fight among themselves when they were committed to defeating Barack Obama.

Frothy Mix Santorum actually made a good observation which was that many of the candidates were isolationists and he warned against that. Huntsman vocally said we should be home from Afghanistan. Ron Paul is always against intervention. Rick Parry was challenged on his criticism of interventionism.

They all attacked Obama on Libya. Santorum wrongly said that Obama waited until the United Nations requested him to act. Truth--Obama and Hillary Clinton rounded up a Security Council vote in record time. It was their initiative. None of them really wanted Gaddafi to go. It was a dreary moment.

On the question of the Arab Spring, all of them confused military intervention with democracy promotion. Understandable when you were taught by the Bush-Cheney crowd.

They all said we were in greater danger than before 9/11 because of Obama. I don't think that really sells to the public. They accused Obama of gutting our military, even though defense spending is still obscene. They also said that we used to be the one who policed the world or something to that affect and now we weren't because of Obama. On foreign policy I thought they all sounded like gibberish.

Romney's strange moment I felt when he almost suggested we should enter into a trade war with China. Huntsman went after him on that.

I'm sure the press will have all the bloops and gaffes. Perry is obviously a novice at foreign policy and defense. He doesn't have a clue about what he is saying or its implications. He's being advised by Doug Feith, Rumsfeld old aide. I also think he doesn't want to be identified with George W. at all.

By the end of the Democratic primaries last time, you were weary from hearing the same things. The problem is that we are at the start of this political season and I'm totally fatigued from listening to this. They are all quick studies and have improved. They have all now read the talking points and culled the salient points from the teabaggers but have tried to moderate the rhetoric. So you have to actually think before you realize they are crazy.

For the last few days, I've picked up vibes that Perry doesn't have the staying power. I can't explain. I don't think he personally has a rationale for why he's doing this. There is no burning cause or any sense of principles he's fighting for. Of course, for Romney, this has been his job for over a decade--running for President. So he's comfortable with the process, but not comfortable in his own skin.

Michelle Bachmann is doing this because she believes she's the Queen of the Teaparty.

Don't be surprised if you see some other candidates enter. Overall the field is still weak and Perry didn't show me anything to indicate that he wasn't beatable in the primaries and in the general election.

Romney must be one of the most boring candidates of all time. It's too bad Pawlenty dropped out because now this flaw really is magnified. The other flaw is there doesn't seem to be any strength of character.

Send in the Clowns--2012 Presidential Election

++The good news is that Joe McGinnis' September pub. date for his Palin book will not be in vain. Even Karl Rove is now convinced that Sister Sarah will be running,citing her almost campaign-like schedule. Rumors have her declaring after Labor Day. She couldn't stand Michelle Bachmann getting all the hype as the new Esther, a title she claimed for herself.

++Mitt Romney has his new stimulus plan--a $12 million remodel of his LaJolla estate. He says the present estate is not "adequate" for his family.

++Mitt has doubled down on his corporations are people comment, cutting an ad suggesting he was referring to small businesses and those companies created by inventors like Steve Jobs. He was not referring to all the corporations he put out of business.

++Beltway pundits, who have missed the boat when it comes to picking favorites in the GOP race, now are pushing for Paul Ryan of Vouchercare fame to throw his hate in the ring.

++The GOP establishment is still uneasy about the choices this year. They are conducting focus groups to test the viability of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as a candidate.

++Jon Huntsman under the tutelage of John Weaver has taken the gloves off and lambasted his fellow candidates of providing "zero leadership" on economic issues and claimed the debt ceiling debate was a disaster. He's gone further in attacking today's Republican party as anti-science and blasted Rick Perry for his stance on evolution and climate change. He says America is center-right and that he is running as one and not an extremist like the other Republicans.

++Ross Douthat has embraced Rick Perry because he has a backbone , a killer instinct, and a primal understanding of the right-wing electorate.

++Douhat said that Romney has been campaigning for five years without taking a single courageous stand on anything remotely relevant. He called Romney "a born compromiser" and "a downsizing elitist".

++But Ross is worried that Perry will alienate Americans so the only alternative is Chris Christie, the new American General McArthur in the words of George Will.

++Karl Rove has re-started his career as a political commentator by appearing on Fox News almost three times daily to quietly suggest that there are problems in the Republican field--like Rick Perry. Rove and other Bushies have reacted to Perry trying to diss W and separate himself from the former President. Calling Ben Benarke, the Fed Chairman, a "traitor" and threatening to lynch him was a bit too much for even Karl, who called the statement "unpresidential". Nicole Wallace , another Bushie, said that it's turn for some people in the middle to run.

++Rasmussen polled Republicans after Perry entered the race and the Texas governor raced into the lead with 29% to Romney's 18% and Bachmann's 13%.

++Perry kept on his right-wing talking points, saying that creationism is taught in Texas, that climate scientists made up their findings for money and that our military should have a commander-in-chief they respect. Ron Paul complained that Perry was making him look like a moderate. Perry supporters dutifully sent out e-mails showing him as a pilot contrasted with a college photo of Obama smoking a joint.

++Perry may have to deal with the gay rumors that I noted in another post, but Texas Republicans are countering that claim with stories about Perry's sexual escapades with the ladies. The Ron Paul campaign has run an ad offering a reward for the women to come forward. From the tales of former Perry staffers, the governor makes Bill Clinton look like a Puritan. They call him a "serial adulterer."

++Perry's own "Texas Miracle" is coming under close scrutiny by the Washington Post. Texas is 24th in unemployment and 1 million of the Perry jobs are public sector jobs. At 8.4%,Perry's record is not as good as New York State.

++Perry is already running into ethical and probably legal problems with his SuperPacs, who are not supposed to coordinate their activities with a candidate, which apparently they are. Perry is also facing scrutiny about how someone who has always been a politician got wealthy. At least Romney made his money the honest way--he threw people out of work. Apparently, Perry enjoyed some gifts of stocks and some real estate swaps that made him a millionaire. His pay-to-play policy has enriched his donors and many of those are from the extreme right and are now beginning to share the spotlight.

++The Republican establishment is opening asking whether Perry is electable in light of his statements on secession and his belief that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional. Even the Koch Brothers are hedging their bets. They hosted a fund-raiser for Mitt Romney on Cape Cod.

++Mitt Romney criticized President Obama for taking a vacation and a vacation at that liberal place Martha's Vineyard. The problem is that Mitt Romney was there on the other side of the island fund-raising with fatcats.

++Not one to ever miss a vacation, Newt Gingrich decided to campaign in electoral vote rich Hawaii.

++Karl Rove decided he was looking a little unpatriotic by criticising Republican candidates all week so he blasted President Obama for taking a bus tour through the Midwest. The problem was that the bus was built in Canada. Karl's problem here is that the same bus will be used to escort the Republican nominee around the country when the time comes. And for Sarah Palin, this is a problem because she uses the same model bus for her family vacation/campaign stops.

++The real silly season is now upon us and we should expect more, not less insanity in the next few months.

TPAW Quits Race--First in, First Out

In March, George Will wrote that the next President of the United States would be Barack Obama, Mitch Daniels or Tim Pawlenty. So I guess we're down to one.

Tim Pawlenty didn't just quit because he placed third in the Ames Straw Poll. His campaign had been anemic and his donor base was shrinking if not disappearing. Pawlenty has been running for President since before he left the Minnesota state house. To adapt to the challenging GOP, he twisted himself into a pretzel on issues from global warming, evolution and health care. By the time he actually declared he was no longer recognizable and had lost his working-class narrative. He simply was not designed for Teabaggerland. You knew he had troubles when he was asked,"Why he was running?" He didn't have an answer. And he was incredibly boring on the stump.

Since he didn't register much support among those polled on the nomination, the question is a little moot about who will pick up his supporters.

Instead of Fact-Checking, could the media develop a Truth-Telling index to let us know whether Michelle Bachmann actually says a true statement of fact? So far there is virtually nothing she has said that bears anything remotely connected to fact-based reality.

I thought David Axelrod and Ms. Wasserman-Schultz were lame in attacking Rick Perry's job creation record. It's not good enough to point to the wars and the oil industry to account for Texas' job record. Let's face it Texas at 8% unemployment isn't great shakes compared to New York State. The real response would be that the majority of the jobs he created were in the public sector (true) and most others pay the minimum wage. Is this worth eviscerating our educational systems and the social welfare net for? That's what Rick Perry has done.

The Left bemoans how the Republicans have controlled the whole economic debate, turning it into a discussion on the debt. I think the problem is more serious than that. I think the issue is that after decades of manipulating the media politics has been reduced to pure symbolism. What interested me in the first two years of the Obama Administration were the serious debates on domestic policy. But I like that sort of thing. Most Americans do not want to listen about legislative procedures and they do not understand or respond to the GOP using filibusters more times than at any time in our history to obstruct progress. Basically, we want the sausage made and not to know how it's made.

That's why the next election will come down to appearances and the realm of likes and dislikes. The fact that Mitt Romney actually had a terrible record in job creation and his fortune is built on making people unemployed will not be seen as relevant. It also doesn't matter that he has changed every one of his positions over the years. Nor does it matter that he doesn't know when his economic plan would produce results. Does he look like a President and does the voter identify with him? Or do they really think he's Weird. The same for Rick Perry. Do you go for that Texas act or not? Is doesn't matter that he presides over a Giant Alabama. The same with President Obama. Do you like a cool, rational man and eloquent man as President or not? For Obama, then it will come down to the employment numbers and whether there is any sense there is movement in the economy. Sad but true.

Last Thoughts on Ames Debate

During the 2008 Republican convention I noticed four words missing the entire time "middle class" and "small business". These were the essence of the Republican mantra beginning with Ronald Reagan. Last night in Ames, none of the candidates mentioned either,which is especially troubling when the nation's middle-class is under seige.

Instead, the same day we heard Willard Romney emphatically emphasize that corporations were people too. But the problem here is that corporations often make decisions that are against the best interests of the people or the society at large. While Beltway pundits felt that Romney acted presidential, I found his statements deferring to the generals and to the "employer community" indications that he lacks all sense of what a President is and what are his core principles. As if the GOP took its "double down" message seriously, Rand Paul and Sarah Palin defended the position of corporations as people.

What was interesting was that the Fox News poll immediately after the debate had Newt coming in second. It must be because the audience loves politicians who criticize the media even if it is their own. Newt spent his time complaining about Gotcha questions from the Fox News radical liberals. I guess it doesn't matter. The media is the media so Let's have at it.

Washington pundits generally treated last night's event as if it were serious. No one remarked on how absolutely insane the positions were.

For example, if you are an Hispanic, there was nothing there. Every candidate railed against illegal immigration, even though only four years before the GOP had people who argued for sensible immigration reform. If you were gay, forget about it. All candidates wanted to make marriage a national issue, not a state's one. If you are a woman, forget about reproductive rights. If you are for the environment, watch EPA get eliminated. And if you are a senior, there will be no new taxes to make entitlement reform possible.

The deal breaker was the united front the candidates had on not accepting a deficit deal which consisted of $10 cuts for every $1 in income tax revenues. Even Standard & Poors had to speak today and criticize the candidates for their misrepresentation of why the United States was downgraded. Because the GOP would not accept revenue increases. Remember the question was asked as a plant of an idea--to go for more cuts, more than the House GOP wanted when it comes to tax increases. That's why the questioner was flabberghasted by the rejection. It was supposed to be a new Fox bargaining chip this fall.

Mark Helperin gave Romney an A- and said he could see Romney standing next to Obama for a presidential debate. But Chris Hayes of the Nation pointed out that Romney does good set pieces but is maladroit when it comes to people. There is now a growing assumption in Washington that the nomination is Romney's for the taking.

But tomorrow comes Rick Perry or the Colbert Report's Rick Parry--the A for America, the A for Iowa. Mike Huckabee felt that his timing was awful, raining on Iowa's parade for the straw vote. But others see it as typical political genius--wipe out everyone else's press coverage. If there was a winner to last night's debate, it was Rick Perry. Tim Pawlenty reminded the audience that Michelle Bachmann hasn't accomplished anything and suffers from migraines. And the lesser candidates fought among themselves. Rick Perry is poised to fill the vacuum between the teabaggers and the establishment. Mitt Romney has tried to accommodate the social conservatives by coming out against gays but they know he isn't real.

Mike Papantanio, the leftwing lawyer from Ring of Fire, thinks Perry has played this beautifully. With Herman Cain not so subtly injecting the issue of Mormonism in the debate, Perry's prayer-a-thon, according to Papantanio, was a strategic move by Perry, who is that cynical,to subtly raise the Mormon question in the South. Perry knew the New Apostolic Reformation people would not turn off Southern Baptists and he knew every one of them is religiously against Mormonism. The Bible Belt equates the Mormons with polygamy and sex with young children. Fair or not, that's what Perry is exploiting.

From a money point of view Perry has all the Big Oil locked up. Romney has all the lobbyists locked up. Romney has raised more lobbyist money than all the other candidates combined. While Romney has made in-roads on Wall Street, he hasn't locked up that part of the franchise.

The potentially crippling element to the Perry campaign is that he is hated by the entire Bush clan and their entourage, including Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. One wonders what the trip to Perry by Donald Rumsfeld and Doug Feith was about. Is this a bridge-building exercise?

Rick Perry himself has alot of baggage in terms of his positions on a host of issues. He was for secession only months ago, considers Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional and is against the direct election of Senators. He also is the governor in a state where that position in notoriously weak as we understood in the 2000 elections. Texas has an abysmal record in terms of education and the number of people without health insurance. But in today's GOP those things are probably virtues.

So it's no surprise that Sister Sarah Palin entered the fray today to say she had more authority than Perry did and that she dealt with more substantial issues. Her appearance tomorrow in Ames should be interesting. I can't help feeling that she thinks she should enter the contest. She is really the darling of the Tea Party and she feels she is the reason so many right-wing women got involved in the 2010 elections. Letting Rick Perry steal away her reputation as Esther is just too much. If she is to enter, she has to do it around Labor Day to get on the various primary ballots.

David Axelrod said something stupid today. He will fire anyone who calls Mitt Romney "weird". You almost think Team Obama wants to take on Romney. Last night, Team Obama sensing the absurdity of the event sent out e-mails to get their supporters to watch the debate. I guess the idea was,"If you're disappointed with us, take a look at the insanity that awaits you."

The Ames Straw Poll means absolutely nothing. Candidates buy $30 tickets for people attending. Those who cast their ballots are entertained and fed for free. The total represents a little more than 1.5% of the registered Republicans in the state. The end result may be that Stephen Colbert's Rick Parry might win with the write-in vote. That would be the death knell for this charade.

One last comment--Did any one get it when Romney said he did not know how long his economic plan will take to have results? Boy, that was inspiring.

Not Waiting on Wisconsin

I don't have the stamina to watch the to and fros of the vote in Wisconsin tonight for the six recall elections. As of now, one Republican has been called a winner, two Democrats are in the lead, one race is pretty much tied and two other Republicans look in decent shape. The early votes counted have come from Republican areas. Democrats need three seats to take back the Wisconsin Senate. Scott Walker had predicted all Republicans would win. Over $40 million of ads have flooded into the state from Koch-funded front groups and the such.

This is another election where the old adage of organization versus money is being tested. Wisconsin Democrats scored a symbolic victory by obtaining sufficient petitions to bring the recalls this far. The turnout is estimated to be at presidential election levels--which is huge for an August election.

Now the Republicans have two seats and look good for a third, Democrats are in the lead or very close in the other three. But they have no wiggle room for the rest of the night. This one will be as hair-raising as the Supreme Court race, which went into a recount.

An interesting fact is that 5 of the 6 Democrats challenging the sitting Republican Senators are women. The importance of this election is to gauge the organizing ability of the unions and whether this will give them momentum or stop it for Ohio and Michigan. It should be remembered that the recall movement didn't start until Scott Walker had passed his union-busting bill. Republicans nationally have tried to blame the recalls on unions refusing to give back on pensions but the spark that ignited the fire was Walker getting rid of the rights of collective bargaining. The unions had already given back $1 billion in pensions for the last budget agreement with the previous governor.

Tonight in New Hampshire, there was a special election which showed Robert Perry, a Democrat, win by 58-42 in a Republican district, which had voted the same way but for the GOP in 2010. Perry beat Honey Puterbruch for a seat as a representative in the New Hamsphire legislature. What's important here is that Puterbruch was part of the libertarian Free State Project, the Granite State's version of the tea party.

Andrew Sullivan in the Daily Dish had some interesting observations about the CNN poll, which showed the GOP at historic low levels. Sullivan points out that if the GOP is at 33% approval, then all the independents have abandoned it. He also points out that this would mean that the GOP has a lower approval rating than when Obama won the Presidency. He also points out that the entire approval rating would come from the tea party members alone. He concludes that this shows Obama's genius of getting his enemies to destroy themselves. I wouldn't go that far. But I did notice that Mitt Romney is a bit weird.

There has been more news today about "family values" Lt. Governor Peter Kinder of Missouri, who hopes to run for Governor. Kinder was said to pal around with a porn star and frequent a topless bar that had "pantless parties." Today, stripper Tammy Chapman shared her experiences with Kinder with the Riverfront Times. Tammy said that Kinder was one of her "best costumers" but became obsessed with her. Finally,he asked her to move to his condo and for $200 a pop she would perform private lap dances for him. She finally rebelled because he had the habit of forcing her head onto his groin. She didn't like this and broke up the relationship. But Kinder looks like a keeper for the gubernatorial seat. Maybe it was the "pantless parties" that gave Romney the idea that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.

Remember Randy Hopper, the representative in Wisconsin, whose wife and maid signed the petition for his recall because he was living with a mistress in another district? Well, as of this writing he is trailing in his recall race. I see Democrats clearly winning 2 tonight with one going down the wire.

Mitt Romney said the comments about him today were "disgraceful and desparate". No one had yet to talk about him strapping the family dog to the roof of the car when they went on vacation. Stay tuned.

Political Notes On A Rainy Day

One more time on Cy Twombly. The New York Times had a wonderful long review of his work today as promised. He was nicknamed Cy after Cy Young and was in cryptography during his military service, which probably explains his fascination with coded writing in his paintings. While he lived in Italy most of his adult life,a woman here in Virginia talked on the radio about having dinner with him recently in Lexington, Virginia where he grew up. In the past couple of years, he alluded to his staying in Lexington for months a time.

If you want a good book on his work, including color plates of details of his paintings, Richard Leeman's Cy Twombly, A Monograph (Flammarion) fills the bill. Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish today highlighted Twombly's work approvingly quoting art critic David Sylvester saying that his paintings recalled the marks on one's bed after making love. Interesting observation or fixation as the case may be.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly had a power outage today so he couldn't keep the heat on Williard Romney. At the appropriate time, the Obama campaign should make Steve the head of opposition research of Mitt--he has him down pat. Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune picked up the slack today criticizing Romney's meanderings on the economy. Think Progressive nails him for his statements that the Dodd-Franks financial reform bill went too far but then he couldn't say what was in it. This seems to be a regular pattern with the GOP. They don't even know what's in the Health Care bill for instance.

Benen's writing on Romney reminded me that I find Mitt somewhat creepy and can't put my finger on why. Maybe it's the story of him tying his labrador retriever to the roof of the car when the family went on vacation. Or his recent remark that he loves to read L.Ron Hubbard sci-fi. Maybe it is his Mormonism. One of the more interesting stories coming out of Mormonland is the dislike of the Huntsman clan for the Romneys. Is any reporter going to ask either man how much of the Book of Mormon they believe?

To reacquaint myself with the orgins of Mormonism, I am currently reading Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith", who also declared he was running for President. This book allegedly got Fawn Brodie thrown out of the Mormon religion. But reading it, I was struck how much Glenn Beck with his conspiracy theories resembles Joseph Smith, whose work of fiction/divine revelation contains all the conroversies of the time--anti-Catholicism, the whole Masonic conspiracy and the religious fights within the protestant movement. Smith was literally someone who dug for treasure in Vermont and New York State,reminding us that Beck sold gold on his show. Later he even created a bank and printed his own money. It's actually perfect Beck is a Mormon. His embrace of David Barton makes sense also as Joseph Smith was for a theocracy and didn't believe in the separation of church and state, much like Barton.

President Obama had his first tweeter on-line townhall meeting. He's good at it. He's mastered the form in responding to questions. John Boehner even tried to sneak into the act by asking "Where are the jobs?" He's a good one to ask. At the present rate, the current Congress will go down as the least productive in modern history,surpassing the record of Harry Truman's famous "Do Nothing Congress" of 1948. Compare it with the first two years of Obama's presidency. Which do you prefer?

The Obama Administration would like to play down the possibility of invoking the 14th amendment to resolve the debt ceiling issue. He even avoided the question today in his townhall meeting. But the legal community is beginning to write about this. The question then becomes what is the national debt. According to Republicans, it is what is owed bond holders. To normal Americans, it's everything owed by the government, including Social Security and pension payments. A teabagger in the House vowed that the House would impeach Obama if he invoked the 14th amendment. That would be interesting. The last two Democratic Presidents impeached. Think that wouldn't be a story.

Talk shows are commenting that Wall Street simply is not acting as if there will be a problem. Financial analysts have said they expect the Republicans won't give on tax hikes so the budget cuts will be lower than has been discussed in the negotiations, the ceiling will be raised and we go on from there.

The Washington punditry has finally caught on that the GOP might actually be mad. It's taken them over a year to realize this. Richard Cohen wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post the other day about how the GOP has become the Grand Old Cult. He remarked about the penchant of Republicans to sign on to strange lists like a pledge not to raise taxes, a pledge to prohibit abortion even in cases like incest and rape. Previous positions on climate change have gone by the board. But this town seems genuinely worried that the GOP will continue their hostage-taking because none of the GOP leadership will stand up against the teabaggers. Rand Paul has turned out to be even more unruly than his father,vowing to filibuster the debt ceiling vote until he gets his way on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I don't have the time or inclination to explain why that is an absolutely insane idea.

David Brooks must have just gotten off his book tour and finally realized that the GOP was actually nuttier than he believed. Brooks noted what Michael Steele said last year that the GOP is not fit to govern. Steele had warned Republicans in 2010 that they might win the by-election but they were not ready to lead. Brooks finally woke up to the fact that his party has no regard for academics, scholars and policy analysis of any sort.

What put him over the edge was that the budget deal offered by Obama was a no-brainer to "normal" Republicans--minimal tax hikes and massive spending cuts. David Frum weighed in that President Obama should never have gotten himself into this situation in the first place, offering to negotiate with hostage takers. I actually agree. But Brooks' remarks actually generated push-back from conservative talk show hosts and resident Very Serious Person, Paul Ryan, who touted head Wahhabist Grover Norquist's line about no tax increases. Bloggers have begun to question whether Republicans who take his pledge not to raise taxes are violating their oath of office by pledging their allegiance to a private citizen. Interesting question.

The Willard juggernaut released his fund-raising figures. We were told to expect between $25 and $30 million but the number came in at $18.5 million, less than Romney's take in the first quarter of 2007. Although this puts him light years ahead of anyone else in the field, it underlines how the Romney people play fast and loose with numbers. I guess they got the hang of the new GOP.

A 14-year old blogger going under the tag "Youngprogressive" posted his experience of asking a question of Romney in New Hampshire. He could give Steve Benen a run for his money. The blogger wanted to find out whether there was any moderate left in Romney. He said he hesitated to ask his question in the public forum because Romney was trying to imitate a teabagger. But after the presentation he went up to the candidate and asked him about his statements on repealing "Obamacare" when he had passed a similar program for Massachusetts.

Romney gave his state waiver answer but the youngster started asking him whether he would repeal the section on prohibiting exclusive of insurance for preconditions. Romney said he didn't think so and then the blogger asked about repealing life time caps, which would penalize senior citizens. Romney couldn't give him a straight answer and that's what made the boy conclude Romney was a phoney because he was too afraid of his own party to give a straight answer. Sharp judge of character. It's going to be interesting to see where Romney goes as he has to articulate real answers to real questions.

The Newt is having money woes--the campaign seems to be running a deficit at this stage of the game. I browsed through his American Exceptionalism tonight and just couldn't buy it. Alot of it is just rehashed arguments about how liberals crushed America and that Obama doesn't appreciate the uniqueness of America and basically that we must recapture our sense of our unique destiny as a nation. It's basically an update on his Obama book that criticizes the President for trying to create a socialist, secular society. With assaults on every part of our social safety nets, we might need more socialism at this time.

Pat Buchanan on Morning Joe said that the American Empire is stretched too thin and that it is going down. He gave his pithy isolationist chant that we are borrowing from Japan to defend Japan, we're borrowing from the Middle East to defend the Middle East, we're borrowing from Europe to defend Europe. Actually there is alot of truth in his sentiments. When Eisenhower faced large deficits, he cut defense dramatically. It's being suggested that this is what Panetta's mandate will be . But already the defense industries are mounting an attack against defense cuts, even though the defense budget has tripled since 1999.

Zbig showed up on Morning Joe and because his daughter is co-host, he doesn't get guff. Zbig is the first well-known figure that I can recall that has said that the enormous disparity in wealth in this country is potentially destabilizing. His point was that this glaring social fact raises questions about social justice, fairness and the nature of our society. Failure to address this creates very bad optics that lead people to question other elements of our society. He neglected to say when the tipping point would be but he suggested other such societies experience political violence. I'm glad he said it because outside the Beltway one can sense the deep frustration and anger that is building about the economy and the failure of our political system to respond to the current economic challenges. Poll after poll shows people think that the wealthy must pay a greater share than they do today.

Maybe these right-wing governors elected in 2010 know something about today's American I don't. But how long will people put up with something like Scott Walker in Wisconsin using prisoners to perform jobs once performed by public workers? How long can people tolerate Rick Scott's various give-aways to the private sector when public education in Florida is being eviscerated? And John Kasich's crimes in Ohio are too numerous to list. Does the average American continue to be rolled by these guys or will there be more than just political pushback?

Francis Fukuyama continues on his political rehabilitation. In his latest book, he describes how under the Han dynasty the wealthy actually went so far to protect their privilege and riches as to cause the collapse of China. This chapter is being dissected on the political blogs as a lesson for today's America.

Not helping his momentary rehabilitation, David Stockman, who had been approvingly quoted for challenging current GOP orthodoxy on tax cuts, appeared on the Diane Rheim show and gave a bloodless position on why a debt default might not be too bad a thing. He said that the only way Obama could overcome our economic situation is to eliminate the tax cuts for everyone,including the middle class, and convening the military to say he wanted $250 billion cut over the next five years. In the meantime, Stockman argued that a default would raise interest rates and screw those on Wall Street holding Treasury Bonds but tough. In his scenario, it was just a matter vof math, not human beings.

A book that has nice parallels today is Scott Miller's "The President and the Assassin--McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century"(Random House). Aside from the Lincoln assassination, we tend to forget other political assassinations. The book covers the election of William McKinley over William Jennings Bryan as the first election where American corporations poured money straight from their business into the campaign because of their fear of Bryan's populism. Miller reports on the 100,000 person rally in New York organized by business--the first Freedomworks Teaparty--to rally against Bryan's assault on the gold standard. The financial backing and corporations coming right out and suggesting they would layoff their workers if Bryan won overcame Bryan's lead. If 30,000 votes had switched in key states, McKinley would have lost.

But the other side of the story was that corporations were so dominant in American society that the average American faced little mobility and faced sweeping changes threatening their livelihood. One such man was the assassin Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who was inspired by the anarchist killing of the King of Italy. The assasssination did little but bring Theodore Roosevelt to power, who did embark on efforts to change the situation. The campaign funding laws restricting corporate financing of political campaigns came to past a few years later. Those were the laws overturned by the Roberts Court and we have seen the results.

The Big Man Has Left The Band

**Clarence Clemons, the fab sax player for the E-Street band, had a stroke at his Florida home and his family says it's serious. Big Man get well.

**Harry Camping, the man who predicted the end of the earth and Rapture, also had a stroke at the age of 89. I guess he couldn't wait until October.

**Yes, Gabby Giffords looks great but the Arizona Republic did a piece on how hard her recovery from getting shot point-blank in the head has been. It's looking doubtful that she will be able to take her seat in the House again.

**Poor Bob Dole, no one has told him yet about the nature of his Republican Party. He suggests General Petraeus should run in 2012. He says it's time for another Eisenhower. Petraeus can't run because he believes in contraception and evolution. Besides, the last remaining Eisenhower Republican is Col. Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff.

**It's not looking so good for General Petraeus anyway. It seems of the 4,000 Taliban militants he claims to have captured during the surge in Afghanistan,80% of them were apolitical civilians.

**The auditors report is in. Over $6.6 billion in aid to Iraq is unaccounted for and is believed to have been robbed. This would make it the largest robbery in history--outside of our banks and Wall Street.

**Herman Cain claims that Obama was raised in Kenya. As the President wrote in his memoirs, it took him years to finally get to Kenya.

**Rick Perry, the new potential presidential candidate, blasted President Obama over the issue of abortion,claiming the President was making it an export product of the United States. Perry will be hosting one of the few Christian--only prayer meetings in Texas with the American Family Association.

**A new CNN poll has Romney at 24% and Palin at 20% for GOP favorites.

**For four decades, the great state of Maine has been the leader in the country on same-day voting. The teabag controlled legislature just repealed that law because "democrats have a habit of stealing elections." Missouri has just passed a law that new voters have to register one year before an election to qualify. There are about a dozen other states that are trying to curtail voting rights. In my opinion, this is the most serious threat to Obama's re-election. Republican controlled legislatures around the country are concentrating on suppressing the votes of minorities,students and single mothers. This is a slow-motion process of disenfranchisement and is the most serious development in violating voting rights since the 1965 law.

**Tonight is another Republican debate in New Hampshire. This one will include Romney, Gingrich and Bachmann. I'm taking a by. I've read too much of the Republican so-called plans for the economy I want to scream. If you want to follow analyses of how bad they are, read Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman,Steve Benen and Think Progress. I don't have the stomach for it anymore. The bottom line is that all the Republican programs to date are simply rehashes of their economic plans prior to Hebert Hoover. I may have to start defending Herbert Hoover, who had a small stimulus package.

**The trouble I see is that no one in our media will ask any of the Republicans to explain the empirical results of the last ten years, which show that massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations only impoverished the middle class and didn't create jobs. Instead, we hear Obama inherited a bad economy and made it worse--as if House Republicans with their preoccupation with the war against the uteri porposed anything concrete.

**How far can Romney go with his new "I'm not a bump" ads and his ads with him driving around Detroit and implying its ruins are the result of Barack Obama? Or Tbag Pawlenty with his ads on his nutty plan with GE's Jack Welch saying, "Pawlenty makes alot of sense?" And when are real Christians going to attack Michelle Bachmann, the Christianist candidate, for her program to drop corporate taxes to 9% and increase taxes on the poor and middle class? I guess her Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with social justice, even at a rudimentary level.

**The Republicans are banking on their media machine to create a state of amnesia. And I don't underestimate them. They are already recycling Obama is weak on national security only weeks after he got bin Laden. So by the time of the general election, they will persuade Americans that 2008's global meltdown didn't happen, corporations are hoarding trillions of dollars because they are uncertain about regulation and taxation, and even CEOs deserve their pay because they are the "producers". I hail progressive bloggers who are creating a firewall of reality-based analysis to counter all this but they are like King Canute shouting at the sea.

**Another question I want MSM to ask the Republican contenders,"What are some of the public sector activities they support?" All of them worship the private. Or they should ask how they feel about Abraham Lincoln favoring Labor over Capitol.

**Robert Kennedy, Jr. just ended his march with the unions to protest mountain top removal mining in West Virginia. He has finished a new documentary on how Appalachia has been devastated by this practice and how the area has become polluted. Is he going to protest mining near the Grand Canyon next? I think he's found a boom market.

** David Koch just quit the National Institute for Health because he finally lost his multi-year campaign to keep formaldehyde off the list of carcingens. His company Georgia-Pacific uses it in treating their wood products.

**Speaking of which, Charles and David Koch are hosting another one of their get-togethers of conservative billionaires to discuss how the United States is being facing the greatest threat to its freedom by our government trying to regulate the economy. Maybe they should look in the mirror for real threats. The purpose of this gathering is to raise millions upon millions to seize control of the government and oust President Obama. Charles will start off the two day seminar with a lecture all his own. The meeting raises the profound,philosophical question, "Why do terrorists always get their targets wrong?"

**The new and improved John Birch Society printed a lengthy article in the New American praising Daddy Fred Koch for his pioneering role in alerting America to the dangers of Communists infiltrating our society and government and hailing his stalwart sons.

**As we enter debt ceiling season, let us remember that FDR bought into the pressure by the GOP to cut government expenditures in 1938. That turned out really great.

** While Steve Benen has dissected Romney's failure to create jobs in his life over at the Washington Monthly, Stephen Colbert did this with comic genius in a segment of "the Word" on the Colbert Report.