P.M. Carpenter

And let's hope he believes it!

I give you the inestimable Speaker of the House, John Boehner, political strategist extraordinaire:

[T]he small part of the reason we didn’t win [in NY's 26th] clearly had to do with Medicare.

And the small part of the reason Gen. Custer didn't win clearly had to do with the Sioux.

I started to go on with other historical analogies framed in utter ineptitude, but why slow such a helpfully delusional mind on such a magnificent roll?

And so it begins

And so it begins. Mine, as I read that which follows, began with a furrowed and disbelieving brow, which grew to a rumbling chuckle, which soon spewed to a belly laugh.

From The Hill:

[M]any party strategists are gearing up to make the popular seniors' healthcare program the focus of races nationwide.

But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the Democrats’ formula won't be so simple.

"This is an issue that emerged in this [NY] district," Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol....

But, she added, "Every race is a different one."

Once every century a party-defining issue rolls around -- 'Union and Freedom' for the Grand Old Party in the 19th century; in the 20th, for Democrats, a New Deal -- and this young century's political definition could have bounded out of the gate as one of continental caring, wrapped in the singular and explosively winning issue of "Medicare."

But instead we're told that "every race is a different one" -- which means muddle, fragmentation, and party indistinctiveness.

Because, you know, some districts have seniors, and others don't; and some districts have at-risk under-55s, and some districts don't.

Unbelievable? Nah. They're Democrats.

Underestimating Palin

University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato reveals a keen political truism when he observes: "Sarah Palin can’t be underestimated."

I'm sure Prof. Sabato meant to conceptually convey that Sarah Palin should not be underestimated, for indeed with her there exists no behavior at which low point one can authoritatively say: Yep, that's it, she's hit absolute bottom.

It just can't be done. One can underestimate her performance with wild and elaborate abandon and yet she'll beat one's lowest expectations every time. In that she resembles Glenn Beck, or Robert Mugabe.  

Yet now come flurries of anticipation, if not exactly expectations, however low, about a Palin presidential run after all. What a stunner that Palin's political stirrings just happen to coincide with the release of a former staffer's expose -- Blind Allegiance -- portraying the Harpy Queen as warm as a viper, as devout as Jimmy Swaggart, and nearly as functionally stupid as Sen. James Inhofe (politics' gold standard of stupidity, never to be out-valued). 

Once the book is no longer a political sensation and literary cause celebre, Palin's stirrings will subside. In this prediction I hope, I pray, I beg every god of political fortune that I'm wrong. The Republican Party needs Sarah Palin. It needs her as its presidential nominee in 2012 and there's not a minute to spare or a legitimate doubt to raise. With Palin at the helm, defining all things GOP, the party would go up in a phantasmagoric fireball of electoral devastation it would never forget -- and never revisit.

So I'll pray for the GOP's guidance under Presidential Nominee Palin, but such a prayer request I doubt even God can grant; He's too busy trying to underestimate her, right along with the rest of us.

Officially cooked

We now know the precise number of safe Republican pols in these here United States, and that number comes in at less than double digits. It is, precisely, nine: four now sit in the House -- Ron Paul of Texas, Walter Jones of North Carolina, David McKinley of West Virginia and Denny Rehberg of Montana; and five are in the Senate -- Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and another Paul, this one Rand, of Kentucky.

This is not to say that all the above are guaranteed reelection or further elevation; only that these nine Republicans, and these nine alone, are unassailable when it comes to villagers protesting what is now not merely the Ryan plan, and not just the House Plan, but yea, verily, the Republican Plan to abolish Medicare.

Pundits are racing hither and yon to cover their forecasting butts: "Remember, folks," or so goes the new conventional wisdom, "that New York district means a 2012 Republican pounding not." Which would be true, if that New York district weren't redder than a New Orleans whorehouse. 

No, Republicans are unquestionably the poundees; the only question remaining is the skill with which the Democratic pounders perform said pounding. Just as unquestionable is that 2012 has already contoured as a national election -- even more so than 1994 or 2010 -- yet there's the perilously atomistic mind of Democratic incumbents and challengers: they -- or so they so often believe -- can do better on their own, with their localized message, even though rescuing the nation's federal safety net is as national a message as a presidential election year could ever hear.

Some hearts quiver and quake when Congress convenes; my heart does the same only when Democrats campaign for it.

Meanwhile, we've always the GOP presidential guessing game to amuse ourselves. No, not the one about the eventual nominee -- which will be Romney, Pawlenty or Huntsman, all essentially indistinguishable -- but the one about where, from day to day, the current crop of contenders stands on the official Republican plan to abolish Medicare.

The Animals' House

This just in: Paul Ryan's private plea to Republican House members, and their choral replies:

(Ryan)

What's this lying around shit?...
What? "Over"?
Did you say "over"?
Nothing's over until we decide it is!
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Hell, no!
And it ain't over now.
'Cause when the going gets tough...
the tough get going! Who's with me?

(Silence)

What the fuck happened to the [Republican Party] I used to know?
Where's the spirit?
Where's the guts?
[Last night] could be the greatest night of our lives...
but you're gonna let it be the worst.

(Chorus)

We're afraid to go with you, [Paul].
We might get in trouble.

(Ryan)

Just kiss my ass from now on.
Not me! I won't take this!

(Chorus)

[Paul's] right.
Psychotic...
but absolutely right.....
[W]e have to go all out.
[T]his situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
We're just the guys to do it.

The would-be half-screwed

A reader emails a good point about this passage of mine, from earlier today: "Those 'scared seniors' who've been showing up at town hall meetings in fits of outrage are not by and large scared for themselves; they're petrified that their children will be be left to the untenderest of the GOP's mercies."

He observes:

Yes, but it's not just that.  I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere... but what about individuals over-55 who are married (or otherwise committed to for the long haul) to people under-55? So Adam, 56, has single-payer for life... but Eve (or Steve), 54, is left to the vagaries of the market? Thus exposing Adam to the very same vagaries?

Integrity

Cory Gardner, a Republican congressman whose Colorado district is -- hello -- demographically akin to NY's 26th, defiantly told Politico today that "We were sent here on November 2 to do the right thing.... We actually have leadership we are trying to pursue, leadership for our country."

Fine. But have you noticed what Republicans haven't been saying since November 2, before which date they belched and bellowed it every second?

Yep, you got it: that they were Washington bound to be The Voice of the People, something so long ignored by brutish Congressional Democrats, what with (claimed the GOP) their unpopular healthcare reform and all. The People, said pre-November Republicans, needed their unassuming voices heard and their humble wishes honored, and they were just the populist pols to satisfy the bubbling demand.

No longer. No, now we hear not a peep about simple, humble, representative government. We instead hear that Republicans are courageous leaders -- meaning they give not one damn about, for instance, public opinion polls expressing near uniform opposition to political profanities like RyanCare.

But, it just goes to what I've routinely said of these boys: Integrity, always integrity.

Inarguably

From The Hill:

Republican Jane Corwin embraced the Ryan proposal, a move that arguably doomed her campaign.

Arguably?

The only argument to arise here is from the use of the word "arguably" in that sentence. What other variable could conceivably account for the doom of Republican Corwin in a deeply Republican district? Not even Jack Davis' third-party presence can: the inescapable conclusion is that Democrat Hochul won because Republican Corwin hemorrhaged her natural votes. As EJ Dionne observed this morning: "Hochul getting this close to half the vote [47 percent] is astonishing in a district where in 2010 the Democratic candidate got just 26 percent of the vote."

Yet the Hill's Bob Cusack is hardly alone. Journalists across the country are gushing modifiers this morning so as to radiate objectivity, when the simple fact of the lethal "Ryan proposal" inarguably explains Corwin's doom.

Diagnosing Paul Ryan

I'm still divided. Either Paul Ryan is merely this nation's clumsiest ideologue or he's the most vacuous politician since William Crawford, who in 1824 ran for the presidency while in a state of stroke-induced paralysis. Of course there might inhere a roughly equal mixture of both, however such aforementioned attributes, like left- or right-handedness, are, generally, singularly dominant.

I lean toward the "clumsiest ideologue" diagnosis, although, again, a diseased vacuity cannot be altogether discounted as an underlying condition. My inclination springs from Ryan's seeming sincerity: "We don’t have that much more time to keep kicking the can down the road because we will have a debt crisis if we don’t start taking these issues seriously," he said after last night's New York implosion.

We can't "keep playing politics and using political weapons against each other" -- ding, ding, ding: possible vacuity alert -- but then just as suddenly he erupted in what I can only interpret as ideological obliviousness: "I think we’re moving forward. We’re unified and excited about taking this challenge to the public."

Oh you poor thing. My dear Mr. Ryan, you just did take your "challenge to the public" -- a partisanly affectionate public at that -- and they handed you back your swollen, reactionary head.

He also doubled back on his own self-righteous admonition about "playing politics." While speaking only a few words away from scolding opposing politicians for plying their trade, Ryan launched into the politically squalid GOP defense that last night was only about fearmongering in the absence of any justified fear:

If you can scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected, that’s going to have an effect. And that is exactly what took place here. So yes, yes, it’s demagoguery, it’s scaring seniors.

No, no, it wasn't -- and Ryan knows it. Those "scared seniors" who've been showing up at town hall meetings in fits of outrage are not by and large scared for themselves; they're petrified that their children will be be left to the untenderest of the GOP's mercies. And last night was their first opportunity to express their outrage in material form.

Ryan is not a stupid man. He's smart enough to inveigle deceptive policy papers from the Heritage Foundation et al and lie like a Palin on stilts. Hence I resist the seemingly confirmed thesis of his vacuity. Still, he's not quite smart enough to hide his ideological clumsiness -- which isn't, after all, that much of a rap on his intelligence, since Edmund Burke himself couldn't sell Ryan's immense turkey of a Medicare plan.

The coming venom

So, the good people of NY's 26th have spoken. And by all accounts it seems they spoke for nation's larger body politic: You pols can monkey with taxes in unintelligible ways or further heat the atmosphere or conduct mindless wars on credit or even cut spending when we most need it, but don't -- we repeat, do not -- mess with Medicare.

The people's message was unmistakable. From an intensely conservative district came a rebuke of the conservative candidate, yet a profound confirmation of conservatism: They rejected the radical change of the contemporary GOP's reactionaryism and they instead embraced the traditional and familiar.

Yesterday's election results will be as grossly misread by some progressives as by some disbelieving Republicans. In their own minds, the voters of NY's 26th didn't choose socialism over right-wing overreach -- although, more than just technically, in reality they did; they voted for the status quo. And that's the electoral reality that cannot be overemphasized. (Whether they'll be just as willing to vote for higher taxes to support the socialism they did/did not support yesterday is an altogether different question, but their vast acceptance and embrace of the entitlement status quo was also vastly undisguised.)

Such is yesterday's conspicuous lesson, which few on the right would sincerely dispute and even fewer would deliberately misinterpret, since misinterpretation could only produce more political humiliation and self-destructive losses. Right?

Perhaps. That is not, however, the advice which instantly shot from the GOP's Department of Strategic Redesign. From Politico, I quote one of the party's designers:

From day one, our members need to be attacking their challenger for supporting the president’s Medicare-cutting health care bill and his plan to ration benefits for future seniors. Paul Ryan was wrong; leaders don’t change polls – scaring seniors changes polls, and we had better be prepared to do it as shamelessly as they did in this special if we want to retain the majority.

So rather than Socratic exchange or rational debate or the pleasantness of a coming synthesis, we are more likely than not about to experience from the GOP the most venomous election in history.

Just one little ol' seat

From Politico:

House Republicans ... are already in pre-spin mode as they get ready for a media barrage following the loss of the New York seat.

"It’s going to be bad, no question about that," said a top GOP staffer. "But it’s not the end of the world; it’s only one seat. There are unique circumstances in this race, and Democrats have not even offered a plan to save Medicare. It’s not the end of the world, that’s for sure."

Reminds me of the German High Command, ca. 1942 onward. Ach, it's only North Africa, not the end of the world. It's only Sicily, not the end of the world ... It's only Italy ... It's only France ... It's only Belgium ...

Of course, maybe High Command will pull out New York after all. But think of the defensive cost, as calculated by DCCC Chairman Steve Israel: "Republicans have been forced to spend more than $3.3 million in a district so Republican that Carl Paladino got 61 percent of the vote."

Inspired stupidity

OK, this is a joke, right? Like Donald Trump's bogus run?

Observes the Washington Post's Amy Gardner: Newt Gingrich announced yesterday that he's "the people's candidate, not the capital's candidate" ... "at a downtown Washington breakfast."

Stupidity like that doesn't just happen. It's inspired.

'Political theatre'

Robert Malley, a former Clinton administration Middle East advisor, just reminded us on MSNBC that Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech to Congress moments ago was nothing but a "political game" and "political theatre," since President Obama never articulated the border-appeasement policy so viciously attributed to him by the propagandistic Israeli leader and his American right-wing jackals.

Every American president since Lyndon Johnson has had to dance the Israeli dance of American outcastism in the Middle East, because of Israel's intractability. Nothing ever changes -- successive Israeli governments make unreasonable demand after unreasonable demand for "peace" on their terms only -- and Obama, quite rightly, has had just about enough. Something must give, and give soon.

Yesterday I noted Andrew Sullivan's eloquent disgust with all things Netanyahu -- his Saturday post in which he wrote that "Yes, there are unshakeable, powerful bonds between the two countries, and rightly so. But emotional bonds are not enough if, in the end, core national interests collide - and no compromise is possible.

"The logic of this seems rather dark to me."

Sullivan delicately omitted the ultimate dark logic, though. Perhaps it's time to start suggesting it: perhaps it's time, that is, to begin omitting phrases such as "rightly so." For we cannot forever remain bonded to a brutal occupier of the genuinely "indefensibly" oppressed -- not in a vast region of such insuperable, vital American interests.

Netanyahu's Big Lie

I can only assume that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has on his political staff a Republican strategist. I'll permit Netanyahu to illumine:

"I want to assure you of one thing," bellowed the PM to AIPAC yesterday. Any agreement "must leave Israel with security, and therefore Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 lines."

An offense founded exclusively on a straw man -- as deceptively GOP as the GOP can get.

If 'ObamaCare' in fact furthers America's commitment to systemic private insurance, call it "government-run healthcare." Medicare's abolition becomes Medicare's salvation. Cost-saving advisory panels are "death panels." A return to Bill Clinton's modest tax rates is "class warfare." Cap and trade is environmental fascism. Raising the debt ceiling of past spending affirms future big spending. 

And 1967's borders -- a return to which Obama never proposed -- are "indefensible."    

What makes this so intensely revolting is that an Israeli prime minister is deploying the Big Lie, a term whose historically grotesque anti-Semitic origin I need not remind anyone of. Yet this is what Netanyahu has reduced himself to: a Rovian, Goebbelsesque tangle of malevolent misdirection and outrageous fabrication.

It just doesn't get more revolting than that.

A Republican burlesque

That the current, snooze-inducing slate of Republican presidential candidates will neither sizably expand nor significantly improve is -- using today's "Arena" as a yardstick -- beginning to dawn on those who would prefer both. "If not Romney/Pawlenty/Gingrich etc., then who?" asks Politico, and some of the answers are smothered less in relish than resignation. Because there is no "If not ... then who."

If, for example, he's serious, then Republican consultant Alex Castellanos provides the best conceivable reason for no Republican to ever hire him as a consultant: "I’m not sure I understand the disappointment with the Republican field" -- which is almost vintage, lipstick-on-a-pig strategery. Almost, but not quite. Were I a Republican consultant, I'd probably dismiss the regnant disappointment altogether and rally whatever known enthusiasm there is instead; and if no such enthusiasm were known, I'd simply make it up, that being something Republicans are naturals at.

But no, Castellanos' implication is that he wants to "understand" the disappointment -- a task so enormous, given this GOP field, it would consume all his waking hours. So he shifts to a kind of offense: "[Obama] has to create a George Bush. He has to create an unacceptable Republican. As long as the Republicans don’t give him that, we’re in the hunt."

Damn, Alex, it's a trifle late for that. Look north, look to New York, look to Buffalo. Read it and weep.

Ford O'Connell, another Republican consultant, asks and answers: "Is the current 2012 GOP crop weak? Compared to what, I would ask." No, that's not a joke. I know, it sounds like one, but it's not ... really. So I'll give Mr. O'Connell a serious answer, starting with merely the postwar era: 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004. Some would add to this list.

There are also Republicans, such as former congressman Pete Hoekstra, who take the blunt approach, knowing that any extended analysis would only sink them deeper: "This field is better than what the critics give it credit for." So shove it. I like that.

Yet, there are the delirious and delusional, too, such as the Ripon Forum's editor, Lou Zickar, who, hands down, is my favorite commentator: "I wouldn’t be surprised to see some additional names added to the list – someone like John Kasich, perhaps." Zickar concedes with Alpine realism that "Skeptics will point to the fact that his disapproval rating currently stands at 49 percent," although he fails to observe that Kasich's approval rating rivals only that of Ayman al-Zawahiri. The other 50 percent of Ohioans have never heard of John Kasich.

Don't you love it? And just think, we've an entire 18 months of this Republican burlesque.