The loyal opposition

Madame Cura recently received a "REGISTERED" survey with an accompanying letter from Michael Steele. The purpose of the survey, Mr. Steele writes, is "to gauge where you and other grassroots Republicans stand on the critical issues facing our nation."

Now, Madame Cura is not a Republican. She's not registered with either party, hasn't given money to a Republican group, and doesn't subscribe to any particularly conservative publications (ArtNews?). So one can only guess that this appeal from Steele is not intended for hard core, "grassroots" Republicans, but rather those not aligned with the party. And what independent voters wouldn't be moved by this sort of thing?

There is so much about the Obama agenda that most Americans do not know, thanks to the non-stop, swooning coverage of the ultra-biased media.

But with your help, we are going to expose the Obama agenda for all Americans to see so that we create a groundswell of opposition.

Indeed. Fortunately Steele will blow fresh air through the fog of the "ultra-biased media."

That's why we are asking where you stand on Barack Obama's promise to raise taxes...

...On his plans to give amnesty to illegal immigrants, which could lead to billions of dollars of government handouts and possibly bankrupt Social Security...

…And how do you feel about Obama’s efforts to nationalize health care and have it run by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.?

Those are Obama’s top priorities!

All "sic."

One thing is for sure certain, Michael Steele is depending on most Americans not knowing much "about the Obama agenda," because it gives Steele an opportunity to peddle bullshit.

To wit, the questionnaire itself, peddling all notion of rightwing craziness, tea party conspiracy theory, and standard red meat for the base. A sample:

Do you support amnesty for illegal immigrants?

Should English be the official language of the United States?

Are you in favor of granting retroactive Social Security eligibility to illegal immigrants who gain U.S. citizenship through an amnesty program?

Are you in favor of the expanded welfare benefits and unlimited eligibility (no time, education or work requirements) that Democrats are pushing to pass?

Do you believe that the quality and availability of health care will increase if the federal government dictates pricing to doctors and hospitals?

Now, I'm pretty sure even in Michael Steele's fever brain does he or anyone else in the RNC believe in this for a moment. So I guess I'm just shocked, shocked, to find cynical appeals to xenophobia, class warfare, and fear in a fund-raising letter from the GOP.

Oh, and my favorite from the party that has for so long been the fierce defender of workers' rights:

Do you support Democrats' drive to eliminate workers' right to a private ballot when considering unionization of their place of employment?

If Republicans think that running on a platform of obstruction to a non-existent "agenda" is going to be a winning strategy, this should be an interesting year.

Centrism all tarted up like liberalism

Nate Silver looks back at the year in post-partisanship and finds it wasn't what he expected. Instead of a centrist sheen on fairly liberal policies, we've gotten centrist policies effectively painted by Republicans to look like Social/fascism. Nevertheless, he has some good advice.

I absolutely acknowledge that the White House has inherited an exceptionally difficult situation, one made much more difficult when the economy continued to bleed 700,000 jobs per month in January through April. Many of the problems that they have encountered, I would not have seen coming, and many of the mistakes that they have made, I would have made too.

But the Democrats do have the benefit of hindsight now -- and they ought to take advantage of it. For one thing, they need to be very careful about rewarding Republican nihilism. The best case is when you can simultaneously achieve both a policy and a political victory. More often, especially given the structural constraints imposed by the Congress, you'll have to settle for one or the other. But I would be very careful about any course of action which concedes victory to Republicans on both levels. Mistakes were made along the way to health care reform, but you've paid the political price for health care: now pass the fucking thing.

As for the rest of the policies in your portfolio, take an inventory and figure out which have the votes to pass right now (through reconciliation where prudent), which can't be passed no matter what, and which could be achieved but will require some expenditure of political capital. And then on the other axis, wargame everything and figure which it would be to your benefit to have an extended public debate about (this would almost always be for political theater rather than policy reasons), which you should put up to vote, but as quickly as possible, and which ought not to see the light of day.

I know: easier said then done. But henceforth the Democrats, from the White House on downward, have gotten a remarkably poor return on the investment of their political capital. The failures are more tactical than strategic. But to do what Democrats usually do, and crawl into a shell in the face of adversity, is not advisable.

The trouble -- if that's the word -- is that Obama isn't there to play political theater. He appears to genuinely and sincerely believe he can get important stuff done, and he knows he doesn't (and didn't when he took office, remember) have 60 votes to get anything through the Senate without Republican support. As such, he's got an awfully hard row to hoe. Republicans may not have a single coherent idea about repairing our economy, but they can see the monthly jobs reports and they know this thing ain't turning around quickly. They figure they can ride out the remainder of this Congress on nothing more than nihilism and the Sunday Talk Shows and still achieve big gains in November, relying on the amnesia of the American people (and pundits). Cynical, certainly. But no one knows the political benefits of a well-tended cynicism better than the political heirs of Richard Nixon.

Republican economic illiteracy

As with so many issues, one is left to wonder if Republicans are cynically pushing an issue they know not to be an issue or if they are just ignorant -- in this case of basic economics. We are deep into a trough of massive trade imbalances, and yet the latest Republican meme is that Obama is destroying the country by way of a weakening dollar. I suspect, in the case of Palin and Drudge, the answer to the question is a little bit of both: they are cynical and ignorant.

As a party, they must be kept as far away as possible from governing this country.

Why does John Boehner hate America, and George Bush

John Boehner believes the 2016 Olympics should be in Rio where I suppose he can improve his spray on.

House Minority Leader John Boehner torched President Barack Obama Wednesday for his European trip to pitch the Chicago Olympics bid, criticizing the president for "going to go off to Copenhagen when we've got serious issues here at home that need to be debated."

Obama's trip has been maligned by most Republicans as the health care overhaul remains in a continued state of flux in Congress and the top general in Afghanistan awaits word on a troop increase.

Well, in fairness to John, it is 2009. It's not like August 2008 when the world was in the midst of unparalleled peace and prosperity.

They play us for rubes. Every day.

Centeragious and Obama's "outreach"

With all due respect to Mr. Krugman, this idea that Obama "negotiated with himself" which then resulted in a weaker stimulus bill than he could have otherwise gotten...well...I'm not getting that. Yes, he encouraged and wanted "bipartisanship," but there was no way the bill was going to get past the threat of a filibuster without a few Republican votes, not to mention the "centrists" in the Democratic side of the aisle as well. If you want to place blame, blame the "centrists" who, as Krugman, Bard-like, puts it, "extracted their pound of flesh" in order to maintain their "centrist" bona fides. One of them even more or less admitted they weakened the bill.

Beyond that, Obama has again illustrated that he's looking beyond the daily/nightly news cycle. And he's looking beyond this stimulus bill. By reaching out to Republicans he didn't invite an ineffective, weak stimulus bill, but by doing so he did look reasonable and made Republicans look obstructionist. And when it became clear that Republicans weren't going to play ball and were instead going to rehash the last eight years of terrible economic direction, he and his administration changed the tone, to devastating effect.

All of that -- the outreached hand followed by the stern lecture when the hand was refused -- may just have furthered his mandate, at least when it comes to handling the economy.

"Now tell me what kinda fuckin' luck I got"

Got nothing, other than Obama's VP list got one name shorter today.