The debate over healthcare reform has never been notable for civilized, rational discussion free of overwrought charges coming from both sides. Comments that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made recently, coupled with the Republican response, won't do much to help.
On the Senate floor Monday, Reid said:
Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, "slow down, stop everything, let's start over." If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said "slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough."
When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right.
When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today.
That's being portrayed as a direct comparison of people who oppose healthcare reform to those who, for instance, supported slavery. It's not that, not really. But it's pretty close to that line, no doubt deliberately. And Republicans aren't happy about it.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for one, has demanded an apology from Reid. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he's "personally offended." Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, too, says Reid should apologize -- and that Democrats should strip the majority leader of his post if he doesn't.
OK, so it's not actually a scandal, and it's not even at all clear that he was actually admitting to having a fake ID, but there was a funny moment during President Obama's remarks about the Kennedy Center honorees on Sunday night, when he at least jokingly admitted to a youthful indiscretion of sorts.
One of the honorees was Mel Brooks, the director of -- among many other things -- "Blazing Saddles." As he spoke about Brooks, Obama said, "Unfortunately, many of the punch lines that have defined Mel Brooks' success cannot be repeated here. I was telling him that I went to see 'Blazing Saddles' when I was 10. And he pointed out that I think, according to the ratings, I should not have been allowed in the theater. That's true. I think I had a fake ID. But the statute of limitations has passed."
That's not the only funny part of Obama's remarks, which you can watch below. (My personal favorite: "[A]s Mel Brooks explains it: 'Look at Jewish history -- unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So every 10 Jews, God designed one to be crazy and amuse the others.' According to Mel, 'By the time I was five I knew I was that one.'")
Republicans may have been working to co-opt the Tea Parties that have been so popular on the right, but fundamentally the movement always had soem anti-GOP feeling at its core. And while the protests may still end up helping Republicans next year, in part by getting conservative voters, to borrow a phrase, fired up and ready to go, there are some signs that the whole thing could still end up badly for the party.
One of those signs is contained in a poll out Monday from Rasmussen. The pollster asked respondents to imagine that "the Tea party organized itself as a political party," then had them choose between generic Democratic, Republican and Tea Party candidates in their district. Not too surprisingly, the Democratic candidate ended up benefitting from the split, with 36 percent of respondents -- a plurality -- saying they'd vote that way. But in a somewhat shocking result, 23 percent said they'd vote for the Tea Party candidate compared to 18 percent who chose the Republican and 22 percent who said they weren't sure.
When just unaffiliated voters are counted, things are worse for the Republicans: 33 percent chose the Tea Party candidate, 25 percent opted for the Democrat and only 12 percent picked the Republican.
Still, things probably aren't nearly as bad for the Republican Party as this poll would indicate. For one thing, it's hard -- impossible, really -- to imagine the Tea Parties organizing into a single political party in time for next year's midterms. (They can't even keep the protest movement from fracturing.) And polls that ask about third parties always find more support for the third party candidate than he or she ends up with come Election Day.
This is, however, another demonstration of how powerful the Tea Party movement could be in a situation where a moderate Republican's running in a swing district. Call it the Doug Hoffman effect, after the conservative candidate who ended up forcing out the GOP's choice in a Congressional special election held in upstate New York earlier this year.
For a new ad opposing Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and his position on the public option, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is reaching back to some recent history.
Specifically, the spot is a reference to the 2006 election, when Lieberman formed the "Connecticut for Lieberman" party after losing the Democratic primary. Once the party's usefulness was at an end, he gave it up and his opponents took it over in order to have a little fun at his expense. This new ad takes the joke a little further, using the "Connecticut for Lieberman" name to argue that the senator's positions are more about him than about his constituents.
If you worried, even for a second, that the Republican presidential primary might turn boring come 2012, you can rest easy. If nothing else, the possibility that former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., will be jumping into the race should make things interesting.
Santorum has certainly been acting as if he at least wants to keep the door open. He's been visiting early primary states and stumping for other Republicans there, building up a list of favors he could potentially call in down the line. And in an interview with ABC News on Monday, he said he's "absolutely taking a look" at running.
For now, though, Santorum says he's more interested in the short-term future of his party. "I'm doing it in the context that right now, there's, you know, there's very important matters and I want to weigh into those matters as to what the Republican Party stands for in 2010," the former senator said. "I think I've been very clear that, you know, we need to stand foursquare on the traditional values. When I say traditional values people think, ‘Oh that means, you know, social conservatism and the family.' It also means the free enterprise system and that government shouldn't be large and controlling things."
Santorum seems like a long shot to capture the nomination, at best. And were he to get that far, he doesn't seem like much of a general election candidate -- he's just too far to the right for that, especially on social issues. But anything can happen.
From the moment it was announced, the jobs summit that President Obama held last week drew heavy criticism from the right. The mere fact that the White House was holding such a summit in the first place seemed to be offensive to many conservatives. After all, they say, almost nobody in the Obama administration has any background in business.
Last week, Glenn Beck trumpeted the news that less than 10 percent of Obama’s cabinet appointees have actually "had jobs in the private sector." Thursday, in an interview with Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich put that number at 8 percent. A similar statistic has appeared on numerous conservative websites, typically to suggest that Obama’s jobs summit is an absurd conference of government bureaucrats and university eggheads who’ve never created a job in their lives.
Unfortunately for Beck, Gingrich and all the others, their new favorite statistic appears to have little basis in fact.
The claim can be traced back to a Forbes.com column by Michael Cembalest entitled "Obama’s Business Blind Spot." In the article, Cembalest, the chief operating officer of J.P. Morgan Private Bank, presents his findings about the private-sector experience of certain Cabinet appointees -- those he thought most likely to weigh in on the job debate -- for every president since Theodore Roosevelt. The post happened to include a chart, which initially indicated that less than 10 percent of Obama’s appointees had business experience. Forbes.com subsequently altered the graph to show that more than 20 percent of Obama’s Cabinet members have a private-sector background -- but not before it had been gleefully reproduced, in it is original form, all over the right.
To the chagrin of Obama’s conservative opponents, even the adjusted figures are dubious. Excluding lawyers and consultants (as Cembalest did), three of the nine members of Obama’s Cabinet included in the study -- fully 33 percent -- do have private-sector experience. Energy Secretary Steven Chu worked at AT & T Bell Laboratories for nine years, ultimately as the head of their Quantum Electronics Research Department. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, was a managing director at Prudential Mortgage Capital, where he directed the corporation’s $1.5 billion of investments in affordable housing loans. Finally, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar -- on top of his work as Colorado attorney general and a U.S. senator -- was a partner in his family’s farm for over thirty years. Salazar and his wife have also owned and operated a number of small businesses, including a Dairy Queen and several radio stations.
Another three of Obama’s appointees -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke -- all spent part of their careers working as lawyers. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner worked as a consultant at Kissinger Associates, a firm that advises international companies on economic and political conditions abroad.
By this count, seven out of these nine Obama appointees (or 78 percent) do have private-sector experience. Gingrich was only off by about 70 percentage points.
Even the original source of the claim is appalled by what it's become, and has been chastising himself for it. Cembalest told PolitiFact.com that his study was based on "some kind of completely, 100 percent subjective assessment of whether or not a person had had enough control of payroll, dealing with shareholders, hiring, firing and risk-taking that they’d be in a position to have had a meaningful seat at the table when the issue being discussed is job creation."
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
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