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Will Palin or Liberals Hit Democrats Harder on Healthcare?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 24, 2010 Comment (13)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I wrote my column this week (which you can read first in our digital weekly edition) on the drive for ideological purity that is infecting both political parties. Specifically, I noted, MoveOn.org got pledges for more than $1 million before the big healthcare vote to support primary opponents for Democrats who voted against the new law. My point was that if a political party has pretenses toward being nationally competitive, it must have some philosophical flexibility. Policies popular in New England might be politically untenable in the South, and vice versa.
That, I argue, is why liberals' drive to end Blanche Lincoln's senate career is ultimately self-defeating: If they manage to nominate a strong liberal the likely result is a reliably conservative Republican being sworn in next January.
So the question for MoveOn and other liberal groups is: If they do in fact back primaries against apostate Democrats, who will they gun for?
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Party of Nuts: Poll Shows GOP Thinks Obama is Muslim, Socialist
Tweet Share on Facebook March 24, 2010 Comment (73)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Almost one in four Republicans suspect that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. That's one of the most astounding findings from a notably stunning new online poll from Harris Interactive. Majorities of Republicans also believe that Obama is a socialist (67 percent), that he wants to take away Americans' guns (61 percent), is a Muslim (57 percent), has done "many" things that are not constitutional (55 percent), and wants to turn the country over to a one world government (51 percent).
In fairness to the GOP the poll indicates that the country generally seems to have become a bit unhinged. Overall, 40 percent of Americans think Obama's a socialist, 32 percent think he's a Muslim, and one in four think that "he is a domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitution speaks of."
As the noted small businessman and family values maven Norman Bates once said, we all go a little mad sometimes.
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Could Healthcare Reform Become a GOP Political Liability?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 22, 2010 Comment (113)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This much we know: Barack Obama scored a big victory last night, both in terms of policy and politics; Republican leaders think that they've just been handed a poll-studded cudgel with which to hammer Democrats in the fall, though David Frum's GOP Waterloo theory is getting a lot of buzz (including from Jack). He posits that the healthcare bill is conservatives' "most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s" not only for reasons of politics, but of enduring policy.
I think there's a bit more to be teased out about the politics: Republicans look at the polls and see an unpopular bill (42-51 favor/oppose, according to pollster.com's average of polls) that has been foisted upon an unwilling nation. But polls are snapshots and public opinion evolves. Right now broad public opinion and the GOP base's opinion, most notably the Tea Party activists, are broadly aligned--neither group much likes the bill. But what happens for the GOP if the trends diverge?
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House Vote to Pass Healthcare Vindicates Obama's Leadership
Tweet Share on Facebook March 21, 2010 Comment (54)The House of Representatives passed the Senate's comprehensive healthcare reform bill this evening, meaning that the only obstacle standing before President Obama's top legislative priority is how long it takes to pull together a signing ceremony. Depending upon which side of the mind-numbing House debate you listened to, this bill either spells the end of liberty, the economy, and America generally, or is the swellest piece of legislation this side of the New Deal. The Daily Beast has a helpful summary of what is actually in the bill, which you can read here, so you can decide for yourself.
What is beyond dispute is that for the second time in his term, Barack Obama has written himself into the presidential history books: The first black president is also the first chief executive to achieve large scale healthcare reform. Not bad for 14 months work.
And make no mistake, while Nancy Pelosi rightfully deserves huge credit for this (and got it in today's New York Times and Politico), this is Barack Obama's victory, and the fruit of his leadership.
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Republicans Bluffing on Abortion in Healthcare Bill Too?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 19, 2010 Comment (26)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I wrote earlier about how Senate GOP threats to kill the reconciliation bill seem like so much bluffing--are they really going to fight against the repeal of the "Cornhusker Kickback"? There are new reports today that these may not be the only hollow threats coming from the GOP attempting to scare Democrats.
TNR's Jonathan Chait has the outlines of a deal House leadership might cut with prolife Democrats to secure their votes for the healthcare reform bill: Prolifers would vote for the bill on Sunday and in exchange they would get a vote at a later date "to codify the Henry Hyde language ensuring that federal money does not subsidize abortion." Needless to say, Republicans are trying to sink such a deal by saying that they would vote against it.
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The Senate Republicans' Coming Healthcare Reform Problem
Tweet Share on Facebook March 19, 2010 Comment (46)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Senate Republicans have placed a big bet on the notion that they can scare wavering House Democrats into voting down the healthcare bill by promising to run any fixes off the Senate process rails. The idea is that House Democrats would be left holding politically toxic backroom deals like the so-called "Louisiana Purchase" and "Cornhusker Kickback." But as I argued last week Senate Republicans would be hard pressed to actually follow through on their threats, lest they become the defenders of these deals.
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Duncan: NCAA Should Ban March Madness Teams With Low Grad Rates
Tweet Share on Facebook March 18, 2010 Comment (8)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The full March Madness tournament tipped off today and by day's end the field of 64 teams will have been winnowed by eight. But Education Secretary Arne Duncan would like to see the field narrowed even before anyone takes the court. In fact if the NCAA had already adopted Duncan's proposal--that teams which fail to graduate 40 percent of their students be barred from postseason tournaments--a dozen of the 64 teams would have been barred from the tournament, including the University of Kentucky, which has a 31 percent graduation rate.
Duncan first floated this idea back in January, so we asked a couple of experts to weigh in on its merits. Ben Miller, an analyst at Education Sector, a think tank here in D.C., makes a strong case for the Duncan position, deploying a really shocking set of statistics about the poor academic records of some of the big schools. Marc Isenberg, who has advised high school and college athletes and written a couple of books in this area, comes at the argument from a different perspective. Instead of punishing poorly performing schools, he argues, we should simply drop the pretense that these athletes are amateur and should treat them like the pros they are.
Both pieces are thought-provoking; take a look at them while you're marking down the upset that you neglected to pick in your bracket.
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Bipartisan Healthcare Hypocrisy on Reconciliation, 'Deem and Pass'
Tweet Share on Facebook March 16, 2010 Comment (22)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Usually it takes years for the political parties to flip and flop on the politics of process (see Republicans and reconciliation or Democrats and self-executing rules), but the frenetic final days of the healthcare debate have brought Democrats and Republicans to states of legislative cognitive dissonance. Both sides are now simultaneously for and against that elusive political action, the "up or down vote."
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On Healthcare, Do Swing Democrats Think Voters Are That Dumb?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 15, 2010 Comment (25)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Democrats are reportedly pondering a parliamentary trick in the House by which they would pass the Senate version of the healthcare bill without actually voting on it. According to Ezra Klein, Nancy Pelosi is going with a "deem and pass" strategy: "Rather than passing the Senate bill and then passing the fixes, the House will pass the fixes under a rule that says the House 'deems' the Senate bill passed after the House passes the fixes." This way House Democrats unhappy with the Senate bill and apprehensive about defending it on the campaign trail would not technically be on record as having voted for it. Call it "Healthcare Wars: The Phantom Passage."
Seriously? Apparently so.
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Poll: Daylight Savings Time 2010 Not Worth the Hassle
Tweet Share on Facebook March 13, 2010 Comment (44)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Tonight we "spring forward," meaning the loss of a precious hour of sleep in the name of energy conservation. (Daylight Saving Time--there's technically no 's' at the end of the middle word, though most people put it there so I'm following the herd in my headline--was first implemented to save power during the First World War.) But does it work? And is it worth the hassle?
The first question has engendered a long running debate which I'll address in a second. Rasmussen reports provides an answer to the second question with a poll released today showing that 47 percent of Americans--a plurality--believe that Daylight Saving Time just isn't worth the hassle.
