Who's On First? Perry? Christie? The Mormon?

The most talked about political column in the last week, New York's In Praise of Extremism doesn't need such a provocative title to ask the question about the uselessness of Obama's determined bipartisan muddle. From the very beginning of his Administration the Dark Forces-- Emanuel, Messina-- have operated under the premise that liberals would have nowhere else to go so Obama could appeal ever rightward. They were counting on the Republicans nominating something so grotesquely outside the mainstream that even a mediocre Obama could scrape together a mediocre reelection. No one's imagination conjured up an image of an America where a bipartisan consensus was no longer achievable-- something Obama (perhaps delusional in his faith that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America”) has been really, really, really either slow to recognize or slow to act on. "From the moment Obama arrived at the White House," writes Rich, "the Beltway elites have been coaxing him further down the politically suicidal path of appeasement and inertia even as his opponents geared up for war."

The election is still thirteen months away, but in certain coastal circles, the quadrennial wailing has erupted right on schedule: “If that man gets in the White House, I’m moving out of the country!” This time that man is Rick Perry, who might have been computer-generated to check every box in a shrill liberal fund-raising letter: a gun-toting, Bible-thumping, anti-government death-penalty absolutist from Texas. And this time the liberals’ panic is not entirely over-the-top. Perry isn’t a novelty nut job like Michele Bachmann. He’s the real deal. It’s not implausible he could win his party’s nomination and prevail in enough swing-state nail-biters to take the presidency. He could do so because the times and the politician are in alignment. A desperate and angry country is facing the specter of a double-dip recession with zero prospects of relief from a defunct Washington. Perry is the only viable declared candidate-- as measured by organizing savvy, fund-raising prowess, poll numbers, and take-no-prisoners gubernatorial résumé-- hawking an unambiguous alternative to the failed status quo.

...This is the harsh reality Obama has been way too slow to recognize. But in his post–Labor Day “Pass this jobs plan!” speech before Congress, the lip service he characteristically paid to both Republican and Democratic ideas gave way to an unmistakable preference for Democratic ideas. Soon to come were his “Buffett rule” for addressing the inequities of the Bush tax cuts and a threat to veto any budget without new tax revenues to go with spending cuts. When he tied it all up in a Rose Garden mini-tantrum pushing back against the usual cries of “class warfare,” it was enough to give one hope. No, not 2008 fired-up hope, but at least the trace memory of it. Should Obama not cave-- always a big if with this president-- he might have a serious shot at overcoming the huge burdens of a dark national mood and flatlined economy to win reelection.

So why can't the Republicans coalesce around a candidate? Romney is that compromise/compromised candidate Bachmann (and his wing of the party) keep warning about. And-- although no one mentions it in polite company-- he's a Mormon that large bigoted swathes of the Republican coalition will support on the same day they decide to support Satan. Perry has proven himself not just too extreme but too unprepared for prime time. Yesterday, his wife-- a woman who reportedly caught him porking Texas Secretary of State Geoff Connor-- was in Iowa trying desperately to fight back against a developing media narrative that Perry is toast. She... wasn't helpful to his cause.

The wife did acknowledge her husband’s lackluster debate performance.

“I think he would tell you that the other night was not his best performance,” she said. “But he’s only going to get better.”

“I think when you have seven arrows being shot at you, and you’re the one person in the middle, then 30-seconds rebuttal doesn’t give you a lot of time.”

Meanwhile, Perry also tried to allay any concern over the governor’s stances on illegal immigration. The Texas chief executive, his wife said, stands against illegal immigration, favors a “boots on the ground” approach to stem it along the U.S.-Mexican border and has fought against the flow of drugs and weapons across the border.

But the governor’s defense of a Texas law that provides in-state tuition rates to the children of illegal immigrants has irked many conservatives.

On that, the wife set about “setting the record straight.”

“Some have attacked Rick on this issue. ...so I want you to be armed with the facts,” she said. “In Texas, we only offer in-state tuition to residents of our state who have attended a Texas school for a minimum of three years and have earned a high degree. Children in the country illegally must be pursuing their citizenship in order to get an in-state rate. It is not a subsidy.”

Perry continued: “When Washington has failed to secure the border, has shown no sign of dealing with the millions that are here illegally, states like Texas are left with one of two choices: either we take care of those populations or they get on welfare which is a greater cost to our taxpayers. Or we give them the opportunity to graduate from a Texas school the opportunity to be a contributing member of society.”

And that brings us to the newest great white hope-- yeah, Herman "the Hermanator" Cain lasted about a minute and a half-- New Jersey loudmouth and bully Chris Christie who knows, if few Republicans know, that his record (on immigration and half a dozen other factors) would never hold up to the bloodthirsty fascist mob that boos and cheers like the crowd at a Roman gladiatorial circus. This Christie:



Is he really "reconsidering?" The Koch Brothers-- who can finance him and probably think they can reprogram the teabaggers in their deep pockets-- are sure he is.

When Texas Gov. Rick Perry, currently the front-runner in the Republican presidential nomination contest, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made a pilgrimage in June to a Colorado gathering of wealthy right-wing donors convened by billionaires Charles and David Koch, one man clearly impressed the brothers much more than the other.

Introducing Christie, who delivered the keynote address to the Koch Industries gathering, David Koch gushed. "With his enormous success in reforming New Jersey, some day we might see him on a larger stage where, God knows, he is desperately needed," said Koch, according to secretly recorded audio files of the event obtained by Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog.

...Uniting a small group of big-money donors, dubbed the "Draft Christie Committee" by New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore, are two things: a hatred for labor unions and a desire for a Republican win in November 2012, something they seem unconvinced that either Perry or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney can deliver.

There's little doubt that Christie is reconsidering his earlier decision to stay out of the presidential race. "It's real," former N.J. Gov. Thomas Kean told Robert Costa of the National Review Online. "He's giving it a lot of thought. I think the odds are a lot better now than they were a couple weeks ago." Kean, says Costa, is an "informal adviser" of Christie's. Yesterday, Christie hit the stump on behalf of Republican candidates-- something he does a lot-- in addition to traveling to California to deliver what was billed as major speech in Simi Valley last night.

When, during the question-and-answer session that followed the speech, an audience member asked Christie if he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, the governor first chided the audience for not getting to the subject until the second question, but refused to say he wasn't running.

He pointed them to the video above at Politico-- which is captioned that... he's reconsidering. Yesterday's Washington Post bit, pointing out that if he "isn’t a candidate for president or at least considering it, he’s doing a great impression of someone who is." They were impressed that he took a direct swipe at Perry-- and at a place he's most vulnerable among the right-wingers who have propelled him to frontrunner status-- going after Perry’s contention that anyone who opposes in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants is “heartless."