Why Are Bobby Jindal And Sam Brownback So Unpopular With Voters In Their Deeply Red States?

Last week there was a minor news buzz about how unpopular Bobby Jindal has become among Louisiana voters, 60% of whom agree he's doing a lousy, unsatisfactory job. His approval rating had plummeted in less than a year from 51% to 38%, coincident with his embrace of the ideologically-driven Austerity agenda for his state-- state cuts to higher education and health care, plans to privatize the charity hospital system and the governor’s proposed state tax overhaul, the last of which is especially hated. 63% oppose the plan to abolish personal and corporate income taxes and raise state sales taxes, while only 27% support it.

There may be an even more hated governor lurking in the fringes-- and he was chosen to give the weekly Republican Party radio address yesterday, Kansas reactionary Sam Brownback, who, like Jindal, has seen his approval rating disappear as he decided to use his state as a laboratory for failed European Austerity agendas. And of course, he actually used the speech to tout his unpopular tax policy as something everyone ought to try. Like Jindal he's trying to eliminate the state income tax and the services it pays for.

A poll just over a month ago shows that Brownback and his Austerity agenda so unpopular among Kansas voters, that he could have troubling winning reelection in 2014. His approval rating, 37%, is even lower than Jindal's.

Brownback has a negative -15 job approval rating, with 37% of Kansas voters approving and 52% disapproving of his performance as governor. 72% of moderates disapprove of his performance as well as 30% of Republicans and 66% of independents.

Brownback’s plan to phase out the state’s income tax is almost as unpopular as he is, with 48% of voters opposed and 37% supportive. 65% of moderates and 56% of independents oppose the plan. Even 34% of somewhat conservative voters and 28% of Republicans are opposed to the proposal to overhaul the income tax.

And then there's the Republican War Against Women, in which Kansas is a major battlefront and in which Brownback in a leading general. Friday night the Republican-dominated state legislature gave final approval to the worst anti-Choice legislation-- clearly unconstitutional-- in the country, declaring that life begins at fertilization. It passed in the House 90-30 and in the Senate 28-10. Brownback will sign it and it takes effect on July 1.

The declaration that life begins at fertilization is embodied in "personhood" measures in other states. Such measures are aimed at revising their constitutions to ban all abortions, and none have been enacted, though North Dakota voters will have one on the ballot in 2014.

But Kansas lawmakers aren't trying to change the state constitution, and the measure notes that any rights suggested by the language are limited by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. It declared in its historic Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that women have a right to obtain abortions in some circumstances, and has upheld that decision while allowing increasing restrictions by states.

Thirteen states, including Missouri, have such language in their laws, according to the National Right to Life Committee.

Sen. David Haley, a Kansas Democrat who opposed the bill, zeroed in on the statement, saying that supporters of the bill were pursuing a "Taliban-esque" course of letting religious views dictate policy limiting women's ability to make decisions about health care and whether they'll have children.

And in the House, Rep. John Wilson, a Lawrence Democrat, complained that the bill was "about politics, not medicine."

"It's the very definition of government intrusion in a woman's personal medical decisions," he said.

Brownback has signed multiple anti-abortion measures into law, and the number of pregnancies terminated in the state has declined 11 percent since he took office in January 2011.

I'm going to just take a guess that many of those poll respondents who have made Brownback one of the least popular governors in America, are women.

Sodom Has Always Gotten Bigger Headlines Than Gomorrah

I just started re-reading Max Blumenthal's "bestiary of dysfunction from the dark heart of the Republican party," Republican Gomorrah. Blumenthal's introduction starts with a letter he uncovered from one of the last good presidents-- and certainly the last good Republican president-- Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower, a big fan of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, was worried that Americans could turn to the kind of fascism being offered by far right Republicans like Joe McCarthy (R-WI) because it offered them a way to abdicate civic responsibility and avoid the stresses inherent in free choice (democracy). In the 1959 response to a dying veteran, Eisenhower wrote “I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed. Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life.” He went on to explain to the vet that Hoffer had pointed out "'that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems-- freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.' The authoritarian follower, Eisenhower suggested, desired nothing more than insulation from the pressures of a free society." In a 2009 NY Times OpEd, Blumenthal explained Eisenhower's prescience in seeing the takeover of the GOP by the Tea Party.

Alluding to Senator McCarthy and his allies, Eisenhower pointed out that cold war fears were distorted and exploited for political advantage. “It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.”

...In closing his letter, Eisenhower praised Biggs for his “fortitude in pondering these problems despite your deep personal adversity.” Perhaps it was the president’s sense of solidarity with a fellow soldier that prompted him to respond to Biggs with such care; and perhaps it was his experience as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe that taught him that the rise of extreme movements and authoritarianism could take root anywhere-- even in a democracy.

Four years on an "Eisenhower Republican," David Brooks, a kind of a duck out of water in GOPville, refuses to accept that the fascist elements have taken over the GOP. He called for A Second GOP in his Times column yesterday. Brooks starts with the irony of Bobby Jindal-- currently abolishing a progressive income tax for a regressive sales tax in his state while whining the GOP must not continue to be the party that gives things to the wealthy at the expense of everyone else-- calling on Republicans to stop being the stupid party, to stop insulting the intelligence of the American people. Brooks wants to embrace opportunists and ideologues like Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz but even he recognizes they're at the bottom of what ails the party, not a part of a real solution to Republican dysfunction.

[S]o far, there have been more calls for change than actual evidence of change. In his speech, for example, Jindal spanked his party for its stale clichés but then repeated the same Republican themes that have earned his party its 33 percent approval ratings: Government bad. Entrepreneurs good.

In this reinvention process, Republicans seem to have spent no time talking to people who didn’t already vote for them.

Change is hard because people don’t only think on the surface level. Deep down people have mental maps of reality-- embedded sets of assumptions, narratives and terms that organize thinking. Since Barry Goldwater, the central Republican narrative has been what you might call the Encroachment Story: the core problem of American life is that voracious government has been steadily encroaching upon individuals and local communities. The core American conflict, in this view, is between Big Government and Personal Freedom.

While losing the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, the flaws of this mentality have become apparent. First, if opposing government is your primary objective, it’s hard to have a positive governing program.

As Bill Kristol pointed out at the National Review event, the G.O.P. fiercely opposed the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law but never offered an alternative. The party opposed Obamacare but never offered a replacement. John Podhoretz of Commentary added that as soon as Republicans start talking about what kind of regulations and programs government should promote, they get accused by colleagues of being Big Government conservatives.

The next problem with this mentality is that it makes it hard for Republicans to analyze social and economic problems that don’t flow directly from big government. For example, we are now at the end of the era in which a rising tide lifts all boats. Republicans like Mitt Romney can talk about improving the overall business climate with lower taxes and lighter regulation, but regular voters sense that that won’t necessarily help them because wages no longer keep pace with productivity gains.

Americans are still skeptical of Washington. If you shove a big government program down their throats they will recoil. But many of their immediate problems flow from globalization, the turmoil of technological change and social decay, and they’re looking for a bit of help. Moreover, given all the antigovernment rhetoric, they will never trust these Republicans to reform cherished programs like Social Security and Medicare. You can’t be for entitlement reform and today’s G.O.P., because politically the two will never go together.

Can current Republicans change their underlying mentality to adapt to these realities? Intellectual history says no. People almost never change their underlying narratives or unconscious frameworks. Moreover, in the South and rural West, where most Republicans are from, the Encroachment Story has deep historic and psychological roots. Anti-Washington, anti-urban sentiment has characterized those cultures for decades.

It’s probably futile to try to change current Republicans. It’s smarter to build a new wing of the Republican Party, one that can compete in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic states, in the upper Midwest and along the West Coast. It’s smarter to build a new division that is different the way the Westin is different than the Sheraton.

The second G.O.P. wouldn’t be based on the Encroachment Story... Would a coastal and Midwestern G.O.P. sit easily with the Southern and Western one? No, but majority parties are usually coalitions of the incompatible. This is really the only chance Republicans have. The question is: Who’s going to build a second G.O.P.?

The GOP needs more than a difference akin to a Sheraton and a Westin to appeal to normal voters and if Brooks took over his blinders long enough, he might realize that the conservative force he's asking for is, alas, Obama's Democratic Party. But David Frum and some of his pals decided to take up Brooks' argument and run with it. "The new and more thoroughly conservative Republican Party," he asserts, "is not a healthy beast."

Some data points:

In the six presidential elections of 1968 through 1988, the GOP averaged 52.5% of the vote. In the six presidential elections of 1992 through 2012, the GOP crossed the 50% mark only once.

The grand Republican win of 2010 was the product of unusual circumstances: more than one third of all votes cast were cast by voters over 60, the oldest electorate in any election since 1982. That circumstance was unlikely to repeat itself in 2012, and it didn’t.

In 2012, the GOP ran on the most conservative platform since 1964. It lost the presidency by almost 5 million votes, just under 4% of the popular vote. It lost the Senate. It held a diminished majority in the House only grace to gerrymandering: Democratic House candidates won more total votes than Republican candidates.

Predictions are difficult, especially about the future. But we can say this. Republicans draw their voting strength from categories likely to shrink in the years ahead: voters born before 1952, non-Hispanic whites, voters without a college degree.

The new, immoderate Republican Party is therefore unlikely to succeed better in the near future than it has in the recent past.

Wasserman Schultz & Israel-- Brooks doesn't need anything more conservative than these two clowns

"We've Got To Stop Being The Stupid Party" ... And Squishes

But Jindal was talking about Todd Akin, Allen West and Richard Mourdock, not Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, and Eric Cantor. And, worse, the real problem is a Republican Party base that has been brainwashed by Fox and deranged Hate Talk Radio hosts-- Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, G. Gordon Liddy, Mike Gallagher and Bill O'Reilly-- that is electing even crazier and crazier candidates in their gerrymandered, closed little worlds of reality-denial. (Even a right-wing extremist like Texas Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz admitted yesterday, while advocating for the privatization for Social Security, that "If you watched Fox News, you thought Romney was going to win with 70%." They have a world of their own. Even the ones who play sane people on TV are out of their minds.

Just look at the Republican House freshmen; almost every single one of them is more reactionary and less reasonable than the House Member they replaced. Connie Mack (R-FL) may have been a nut but Trey Radel was a Hate Talk Radio host himself! Cliff Stearns was a lockstep right-winger but Ted Yoho's first month in Congress saw him advocating for citizens to be able to freely buy heavy military equipment so they can protect themselves... from the U.S Army! And where there was no incumbent-- lots of new districts having been created in the Old Confederacy-- Republican voters picked secessionists and radical anti-government sociopaths like Steve Stockman (R-TX), a militia freak and former congressman who was run out of office as a domestic terrorist for his connections to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He's baaaaack! And the first words out of his mouth: Impeach Obama! Here's a list of the new Members who are measurably further to the right than the incumbent they replaced or the district representatives whose policy agendas are closer to Benito Mussolini's than to Dwight Eisenhower's.

• Tom Cotton (R-AR)
• Juan Vargas (D-CA)
• Ted Yoho (R-FL)
• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)
• Trey Radel (R-FL)
• Doug Collins (R-GA)
• Jackie Walorski (R-IN)
• Thomas Massie (R-KY)
• Andy Barr (R-KY)
• Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI)
• Richard Hudson (R-NC)
• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)
• Mark Meadows (R-NC)
• George Holding (R-NC)
• David Joyce (R-OH)
• Markwayne Mullin (R-OK)
• Jim Bridenstine (R-OK)
• Scott Perry (R-PA)
• Keith Rothfus (R-PA)
• Tom Rice (R-SC)
• Randy Weber (R-TX)
• Roger Williams (R-TX)
• Steve Stockman (R-TX)
• Chris Stewart (R-UT)

All these new crackpots in Congress is worrisome, not so much for the Democrats as for GOP leaders trying to present their party as vaguely mainstream. Boehner is being torn apart by the conundrum and was whining about it again this week. He says he's not going to negotiate with Obama anymore-- as if to pacify the radical right newcomers.

Boehner has spoken only sparingly with the press in the last month, but during his Ripon Society appearance he was remarkably candid about the problems that his approach caused with members of his conference. More than half of the conference voted against both the fiscal-cliff deal and a subsequent bill providing aid to states affected by Hurricane Sandy. Boehner suffered 12 Republican defections during his reelection vote as Speaker early in January.

“You have no idea the suspicions and the undercurrents that it caused, frankly, a lot of my members,” Boehner said of his negotiations with Obama. “It really has, in fact, caused somewhat of a breach that I’ve been in the middle of trying to repair.”

Boehner attributed the suspicions to the younger members in the Republican ranks who are not familiar with his voting record in the years before he took the Speaker’s gavel.

“Some of our members don’t realize that while I may be a nice enough guy, and I get along with people, when I was voting I had the 8th most conservative voting record in the House,” he said. “But a lot of our newer members-- they don’t know that. And so, you know, they think I’m some squish, that I’m ready to sell them out in a heartbeat, when obviously, most of you in this room know that that ain’t quite who I am.”

Last week in Charlotte, when GOP leaders met for a damage control reassessment look back at what's gone so terribly wrong, they came to the conclusion that if they're goingt o win future elections they have to cut back on the war against women-- or at least stop talking openly about how rape isn't that bad. Delusional, they claimed that their message is fine and that the problem has been some bad messengers who explain the message badly. So again, it was all Todd Akin's fault; nothing wrong with Wisconsin senior Senator Ron Johnson at all. Nor with South Carolina Congressman Jeff Duncan. Normal Americans will just love these stalwart Republicanos! “We don’t need a new pair of shoes; we just need to shine our shoes,” said West Virginia national committeewoman Melody Potter. And Romney shoulda/coulda won. “It’s not the platform of the party that’s the issue,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday after being easily reelected to a second, two-year term. “In many cases, it’s how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said... It’s not about ideology…The people on the left are the people on the left, and they ask us to come to them-- which is absurd… Obama’s a hard core left-winger. I want him to compromise with us on our terms.” I guess he hasn't checked the polls lately on how the vast majority of the American people feel about the issues.

Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) announced they're retiring in 2014. Georgia should be an easy hold where the GOP doesn't even need to break a sweat to win and Iowa should be a good pick up opportunity. But who is the GOP base going to nominate for these two jobs. In Georgia the likeliest nominees are off the scale of craziness-- ex-drug addict and John Bircher Paul Broun, pro-rape lunatic Phil Gingrey and Georgia Peach Lynn Westmoreland. There's an extremely mediocre Democrat in an Indiana Senate seat-- as unlikely as that seems-- because the GOP base nominated someone just like Broun, Gingrey and Westmoreland last year. In Iowa, the GOP base prefers lunatic fringe, unelectable extremist Steve King to vaguely maninstreamish conservative Tom Latham. The Democrats have a mainstream candidate already, Bruce Braley, who could probably beat either one of them, but will beat Steve King by double digits.

Ohio Republican Party chairman thinks the GOP will win if they figure out how to do Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and lard up their robotic, off-putting talking points with mentions of cool, shiny things like iPads.

A big focus of the four-day session, which wraps up Saturday, was adopting a more positive attitude-- and smiling!-- when interacting with voters and reporters. New Hampshire chairman Wayne MacDonald said party leaders need to work on “not being sour-pusses on television or the radio”-- that there is a way to be firm and assertive without being mean-spirited. “Nobody is saying the Republican Party has to change our beliefs in any of our platform planks,” he said. “This party wants to serve everybody that believes in our principles.”

Sure, that's what American voters want, smiley thugs telling them what to do with their private lives! And, by the way, Allen West is publicly asserting that he's not crazy and he claims he's not bitter about having lost his House seat after just one term. That's because, he said, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln only served one term in Congress each. Republicans, do you really want to stop being the stoopid party? Stop your war against women, your war against the LGBT community, your war against working people, your war against immigrants and your war against democracy... and pay attention to Robert Reich; Obama doesn't:

SUNDAY CLASSICS SCHEDULE NOTE FROM KEN

 Yes, even though Sunday Classics is on hiatus, there is as promised a post coming up today, focused on the monologue of Verdi's King Philip II of Spain in Don Carlos. Alas, like the king I found myself up all night with dawn breaking through -- and still not done. So the post should make it up at 2pm PT.

#

While Barack Obama Embarks On A Courageous Plan To Rebuild America, The Republican Party Gropes In The Darkness For An Identity

The difference is just style and presentation

As more and more Americans get to know President Obama and get a feel for what he's trying to accomplish and how he's trying to go about it, two important dynamics have come into play-- or into conflict. The president's popularity keeps growing among regular Americans. And the far right of the Republican Party has become increasingly desperate, deranged and unhinged. After CPAC this weekend, it looks like Rush Limbaugh is their national spokesperson-- regardless of what the nervous nellies Inside-the-Beltway feel about the party being represented by a drug-addicted Hate Talk Radio clown whose extremism turns off far more people than it attracts. Wanting America to fail is now all but official GOP policy. Where do the sociopath messages from wild-eyed fanatics like Ann Coulter, John Bolton, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann end and those of Republican elected officials trying to portray themselves as part of the mainstream-- a Mitt Romney or a Chris Smith say, who also spoke at CPAC-- begin? Republican presidential hopefuls Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and Jon Huntsman were smart to avoid the NutFest. Huntsman spoke for whatever strain of sanity is left in the GOP when he disassociated himself from the trained seals dominating CPAC and the zombie-like fanatics for whom that annual extravaganza is produced. He compared the current state of the GOP to the post-Thatcher Tories in the U.K.

They went two or three election cycles without recognizing the issues that the younger citizens in the U.K. really felt strongly about. They were a very narrow party of angry people. And they started branching out through, maybe, taking a second look at the issues of the day, much like we’re going to have to do for the Republican Party, to reconnect with the youth, to reconnect with people of color, to reconnect with different geographies that we have lost. You cannot succeed being a party of the South and a couple of Western states. It just-- it isn’t long-term sustainable.

Right now Huntsman is a lonely centrist voice in the desert. As we saw this weekend, defeat at the polls in November has moved the extremists in control of the GOP to marginalize itself even further. They now have the luxury of working out their problems on their own because they're now a sideshow that barely matters. Most Americans now see Republicans in Congress in as negative a light as they see the banksters and corporate crooks who finance them. This week's performances by Bobby Jindal and Rush Limbaugh were two more nails in the coffin.

Yesterday President Obama explained to the country-- to the 90% of people not interested in what Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michele Bachmann are doing to entertain neo-fascist activists and Birchers at CPAC-- when his budget is "a threat to the status quo in Washington."

“I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November. That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I’ll be fighting for in the weeks ahead.”

He has his work cut out for him. Above and beyond all the rhetoric and ratings-pursuing cable TV news fireworks, what President Obama is proposing really is a paradigm shift in the relationship between government and governed in this country, a realignment of financial an economic forces that will help bring a balance between the selfishness and greed-driven right-wing and the rest of society. His budget is none-too-subtle declaration of war on the powerful special interests that have so thrived during the presidencies of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II that they almost completely dominate every aspect of our country, a domination that has created the worst economic catastrophe for ordinary Americans since the last time the Republicans were able to pull this off (in the 1920s).

"The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long," Obama said in his weekly radio and video address. "But I don't. I work for the American people."

He said his ambitious budget plan, unveiled Thursday, will help millions of Americans, but only if Congress overcomes resistance from deep-pocket lobbies.

"I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they're gearing up for a fight," Obama said, using tough-guy language reminiscent of his predecessor, George W. Bush. "My message to them is this: So am I."

Some analysts say Obama's proposals are almost radical. But he said all of them were included in his campaign promises. "It is the change the American people voted for in November," he said.

Nonetheless, he said, well-financed interest groups will fight back furiously.

Insurance companies will dislike having "to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that's how we'll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs," the president said. "I know that banks and big student lenders won't like the idea that we're ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that's how we'll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won't like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that's how we'll help fund a renewable energy economy."

Passing the budget, even with a Democratic-controlled Congress, "won't be easy," Obama said. "Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington."

I'm just finishing up Thomas Frank's phenomenal newest book, The Wrecking Crew-- How Conservatives Rule. It was written while Bush was in the White House and, obviously, about Bush's time in the White House, although it speaks to the problems societies everywhere and in all times have faced when dealing with governments controlled by and exclusively serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful, i.e.- right-wing government. I don't recall a single mention of Barack Obama. But I sure hope he and his advisors have read it. As he shifts towards summation mode he talks about the right's "longing for permanent victory over liberalism," as in Karl Rove's, Jack Abramoff's, Adolph Hitler's and Grover Norquist's obscene fantasies about permanent right-wing rule.

In country after country, business elites have come up with ingenious ways to limit the public's political choices. One of the most effective of these has been massive public debt.

Naomi Klein, a journalist who has traveled the world documenting the great shift to the right, finds that in case after case, the burden of enormous debts-- often piled up by dictatorships or other noxious regimes-- has forced democratic countries to accept a laissez-faire system that they find deeply distasteful. Regardless of who borrowed the money and the appalling ways in which it was spent, these debts must be repaid-- and repaying them, in turn, means that a nation must agree to restructure its economy the way the bankers bid: by deregulating, privatizing and cutting spending.

It very much looks like Barack Obama is willing to differentiate himself from Bill Clinton in as much as he does not plan to follow this script. His budget flies in the face of the right's playbook in a way we haven't seen since FDR had to face the Republican Depression.

The American version of the debt trick is the vast federal deficit that magically reappears whenever conservatives take the driver's seat. It's effects have been far less traumatic than in the third world, but they nevertheless push the country in the same direction: deregulation, privatization and social spending cuts... Republicans have ridden to power again and again promising balanced budgets and howling against deficits-- government debut was "mortgaging our future," Ronald Reagan admonished in his inaugural address-- but once in office they proceed, with a combination of tax cuts and spending increases, to balloon the federal deficits to levels far beyond those reached by their supposedly openhanded liberal rivals. So mechanically and so predictably do they embark on this course that it has basically become part of their identity, their brand. Vote Republican and watch the deficit grow.

Frank goes on to recount the unfortunate history of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton economic minuet, pointing out how Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman, was quite candid about what the right was trying to accomplish by running up debilitating budget deficits. "Once the tax cuts had been enacted, the conservatives would have the 'craven politicians pinned to the wall. They would have to dismantle [the government's] bloated, wasteful and unjust spending enterprises-- or risk national ruin." Alan Greenspan explained "Stockman's Revenge" to the newly elected Bill Clinton, whose reaction was "You mean to tell me that the success of the program [remember that Clinton was a kind of populist before he became a corporatist] and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?"

Before long, though, Clinton himself was a convert, and he readily sacrificed his populism on the alter of deficit reduction. He contracted out; he got tough with the federal workforce; he even considered privatizing Social Security in his own centrist way. In his second term he ran the government on a balanced budget for four straight years.

And then, act 3: George W. Bush proceeded immediately to plunge the budget into deficit again. Indeed, after seeing how the Reagan deficit had forced Clinton's hand, it would have been foolish for a conservative not to spend his way back into the hole as rapidly as possible. That deficits defund liberalism was no longer just a theory; it was historically tested reality, a plan that got results.

Besides, think of the possibilities that opened to our conservative friends as they realized they were now free to tax-and-spend their way deep into the red. Oh, the earmarks they could hand out to people working on privatizing outer space or building experimental jet airplanes. All the different ways they could reward the right lobbyists, the right consultants, the right contractors. And after they'd burned through the bank account and brought on the crisis, think of the points they could win by screaming about too-generous "entitlements," the insolence of publicly funded art, and all the fat and lazy bureaucrats who needed a pay cut.

If, along the way, all this idiotic spending happened to bump up public cynicism toward deficit spending a notch or two-- why, that's just gravy. "It's perfectly fine for them to waste money," says former labor secretary Robert Reich, summarizing the conservative viewpoint. "If the public thinks government is wasteful, that's fine. That reduces public faith in government, which is precisely what the Republicans want." It's not just sabotage; it's win-win sabotage, a charming addition to win-win incompetence and win-win corruption.

Aside from the Reaganesque lies he interjected about his completely false personal saga of heroism in the face of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, Bobby Jundal tried using these memes in his disastrous speech last week. Government, he claimed can't do anything right. Well he is partially correct. Republican government can't. And for now, most Americans have got that figured out and the lunatic ravings of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and congressional extremists isn't going to shake their faith in Obama. If he succeeds in his bold initiatives, they're finished for at least a decade if not two or three. They know it and they will stop at nothing to make him fail, regardless of how devastating that is to America.

All of the vested interests in the status quo-- from Big Insurance to America's self-entitled plutocracy-- will put everything they've got into the coming battle. And their Republican handmaidens are sharpening their knives and fitting their brass knuckles. If you watched ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos this morning you may have been as cheered as I was to hear Obama's brilliant young OMB head Peter Orszag, unveil a potent weapon that can be used to defuse the Republicans' filibuster-everything tactic. If Reid invokes the budget reconciliation process to deal with the budget-- as he should-- the Republicans won't be able to filibuster and even if a couple of far right Democrats like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu or Blanche Lincoln defect, the budget will still pass handily-- with or without the 3 mainstream Republicans. I can hear Miss McConnell, Kyl, Cornyn and the rest of the obstructionists bellowing now!

[U]sing budget reconciliation to pass policy proposals is controversial, even among some Democrats who believe doing so strains Senate rules and tradition.

The Obama blueprint calls for major changes in both energy and healthcare policies that is likely to engender significant opposition from Republicans and business lobbies. The reforms are expect to win widespread support from Democrats and more left-leaning constituencies.

The budget plan calls for a cap on carbon emissions, for example, and projects $645 billion in revenues from an auction of pollution permits that a variety of business groups, including oil companies, large manufacturers and utilities, would have to purchase.

On healthcare, the plan calls for a $634 billion reserve fund to pay for a first step on healthcare reform.

The president would pay for it in large measure by raising taxes on wealthy people and businesses by about $1 trillion over 10 years.

Republicans on Sunday criticized the document as a return of big government that would dramatically raise the deficit without providing the needed jolt to the economy.

The budget is "proposing massive tax increases on people and on businesses that can’t afford to pay them," said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who also appeared on This Week.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Jon Kyl said the budget was "terrifying" in its policy implications and "mind-boggling" in its numbers.

But Orszag defended the $3.6 trillion budget plan by saying the plan cuts taxes for 95 percent of all working Americans.

"I just reject the theory that the only thing that drives economic performance is the marginal tax rate on wealthy Americans and the only way of being pro-market is to funnel billions and billions of dollars of subsidies to corporations," Orszag said.

Gives a little oomph to the "Bring It On" response we heard from the Obama Administration last week in regard to lobbyists and obstructionists claiming they would eviscerate the budget.

McCain's Trip To Louisiana Cancelled Due To Oil Spill, Hurricane and Bobby Jindal Telling Him To Go Play With Mitt

oops

If you've gotten any of the approximately 1.8 million robocalls from Republican front organization Freedom's Watch, you have heard how Democrats are the cause of high gas prices because they didn't authorize more off shore drilling. (Unmentioned are the millions of acres of leased lands that the oil companies will neither drill on nor give up for companies that want to drill on them.) In any case, McCain, who has gotten the biggest pay-offs this year from Big Oil ($1,003,618 so far), has been one of the loudest proponents of unregulated off shore drilling, even where oil spills would destroy fishing industries and tourism. McCain claims the technology is so advanced that there in no longer a danger of oil spills, something that leaves industrial scientists with their jaws agape.

To show what he means, the ole coot decided to steal some thunder from what is expected to be a tumultuous reception for Barack Obama in Berlin and show up, dramatically, at an off shore drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana. (This was also being teased as a running mate selection trip-- with Bobby Jindal in tow, until Jindal who, like everyone else knows that Bush and Rove have forced McCain to accept Romney-- until Jindal said he wanted nothing to do with McCain's transparent games and politely and quite publicly said "Thanks but no thank, pops.")

So wasn't he embarrassed when Louisiana reported a serious oil spill. McCain had also claimed, falsely, that oil platforms are so safe that even the worst hurricanes couldn't hurt them. Between Jindal dissing him, the oil spill in Louisiana and a moderate hurricane, McCain decided to "postpone" his trip and sit around and pout about Obamamania.

BLANCO WON'T RUN FOR RE-ELECTION AS GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA. BREAUX EXPECTED TO ANNOUNCE TOMORROW

As expected Governor Kathleen Blanco, who many in Louisiana blame for the state's problems in coping with the effects-- before and after-- of Hurricane Katrina has announced she will not run for re-election. The Bush Regime and its media allies have done all they could to push the blame for its own massive failures on to Governor Blanco. A far right GOP congressional hack, Bobby Jindal, is the Republican front-runner for his party's nomination.

An old time Democratic pol, former Senator ">John Breaux, now an Inside-the-Beltway lobbyist (as well as a quintessential DLC good ole boy) is likely to be the Democratic nominee and is thought to be able do what Blanco could not: beat Jindal. Republicans have claimed that Breaux is no longer a resident of Louisiana and ineligible to run.