The Day After

I know... it's too soon for this kind of speculation-- but Gabby Orr and Dan Lippman started it... so how couldI resist? And the preliminary fingerprinting began weeks, if not months ago. Orr and Lippman reported at Politico that at his rallies, Señor Trumpanzee argues that "the midterms are about one person-- Donald Trump. 'Get out in 2018,' Trump told a crowd in Missouri last month, 'because you’re voting for me!'" Privately, the illegitimate fake "president" says the exact opposite. This is the person who Gideon Rachman tried to claim is a great historical figure rather than a blundering fool and crook:

According to two people familiar with the conversations, Trump is distancing himself from a potential Republican thumping on Election Day. He’s telling confidants that he doesn’t see the midterms as a referendum on himself, describing his 2020 reelection bid as “the real election.” And he says that he holds House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responsible for protecting their congressional majorities.

According to one person with knowledge of these talks, Trump has said of Ryan and McConnell: “These are their elections … and if they screw it up, it’s not my fault.”

Other sources said Trump is sure to lash out at perhaps his favorite bogeyman of all-- the media-- for allegedly opposing him... [I]n the event of an electoral blowout, Trump is poised to shift the blame a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Look for the White House to say something like, ‘Paul Ryan chose to be a lame duck speaker instead of leaving, which cost Congress the chance to do several things before November,’” said an aide to one GOP member who speaks with the president often.

A Democratic wave would be especially awkward for a president whose brand is success, and who boasts that his record in office is unmatched by any of his modern predecessors.

Already, hints of a distancing strategy have started to creep into Trump’s public comments, even as he continues to crow at rallies that the midterms are a “referendum” on his first two years in office. Trump told the Associated Press recently that some of his supporters have said to him, “I will never ever go and vote in the midterms because you’re not running.”

Inside the White House, aides are resigned to the fact that Trump-- as he has often done-- will follow his gut on how to message any Democratic takeover of the House on Nov. 6. Those around Trump are anticipating lots of unfiltered, early-morning tweets casting blame on everyone but the president.

“It would be a lot of shooting from the hip in early morning Twitter,” said a well-placed Republican source, who added that the White House seems to lack clear plans for post-election messaging.

The themes are already predictable.

“The arc is gonna be he wasn’t on the ballot, and people didn’t fully appreciate his policies and [candidates] didn’t tie themselves enough to him,” said a person close to the president, who was among several sources to say Trump will likely blame the media as well.

...Before he was president, Trump had a philosophy on whether leaders should accept blame: “Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen you’re responsible.”

But once in office, Trump, backed up by his communications team, has shifted blame for setbacks to others-- especially Congress.

...“The president’s rhetoric is what’s actually energized the left, so it would be hard to put it on Congress if we lost the House,” a senior GOP aide told Politico. “But it’s just classic behavior on the part of this president to not shoulder the blame if things go bad, and to definitely take responsibility if things go right.”

OK, so what will the impact of the midterms be on the Republican House leadership, post-Ryan? Trump wants mindless patsy Kevin McCarthy for the top job. But is Trump strong enough to keep McCarthy from being eviscerated by a the far right-- which claims he doesn't share any of their (fascist) values and wants a Gingrich-type disruptor? Or, how much would Trump and McCarthy be willing to give Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and the rest of the Freedom Caucus radicals to get them to play nice? On Sunday, Lisa Mascaro asserted that "win or lose... House Republicans are at risk of plunging into a messy leadership battle... The election is likely to produce a more conservative, pro-Trump Republican lineup in the House, as most of the GOP incumbents at risk of losing hail from moderate-leaning districts and suburbs. Their defeat would probably concentrate more power in the hands of the House Freedom Caucus and its libertarian-leaning allies in rural, traditionally Republican states who doubt McCarthy’s conservative bona fides. Those lawmakers blocked the Californian’s rise when he first reached for the speaker’s gavel three years ago."

Conservatives say the House majority is at risk in large part because Republicans didn’t stand fully behind Trump. They fault their own side for failing to repeal “Obamacare,” build a wall along the border with Mexico and keep other campaign promises. If there’s a GOP wipeout on Election Day, Republicans will probably be eager to boot the current GOP leadership, which could give rise to Scalise or even Jordan’s unorthodox bid.

Paul Ryan's Personal Brand Continues To Stink To High Heaven

Painting by Nancy Ohanian

Washington is a foreign place for iron worker Randy Bryce. But he was there this week-- just before his featured speech at today's big Iron Workers conference on apprentice training in the Detroit area. But the meetings in DC were important. Midwest progressive champions Mark Pocan and Jan Schakowsky introduced him to members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus-- which unanimously endorsed him yesterday. He sat with Wisconsin legend and former congressman Dave Obey getting advice and tips for the coming race against Paul Ryan. There were meetings with groups like the League of Conservation Voters, National Nurses United, the Latino Victory Fund and Planned Parenthood. And he ended his business meetings Tuesday night with... well, Bernie Sanders, of course.

And while he was in DC and then Detroit, actor and progressive activist Mark Ruffalo-- who, like Bryce, was born and grew up in southeast Wisconsin-- endorsed him on twitter... "because when you fall Speaker Ryan has made sure there will be no safety net to catch you." That was helpful. But what do you make out of Trump's far right hand man, Steve Bannon, referring to Ryan as "a limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation." It's certainly accurate, at least metaphysically, which is how Bannon tends to speak. It comes right from Joshua Green, the Bannon expert and author of Devil's Bargain, the story of the Bannon-Trump alliance.

Green wrote that Bannon’s comment on Ryan came during the spring of 2016, when it became increasingly possible that Trump would become the GOP presidential nominee, to the surprise and concern of establishment Republicans. Some of them had floated Ryan as a possible alternative if the party’s convention were to become contested.

“One fleetingly popular scenario to stop Trump from becoming the nominee was for GOP delegates to coalesce around a white-knight alternative at the party convention in July,” Green wrote, noting that Ryan had “emerged as the chattering-class favorite.”

This development, according to Green, “sent Bannon into a panic of his own” and the Breitbart chairman who later that summer would lead Trump’s campaign, began “plotting an all-out war to stop Ryan, of whom he was both fearful and dismissive-- sometimes within the same sentence.”

Ryan has become increasingly unpopular-- both nationally and in his own district. The national PPP survey released yesterday show that the vast majority of Americans disapprove of how he's doing his job as Speaker. They also disapprove of the way Mitch McConnell handles his job as Senate Leader... but McConnell isn't up for reelection ion 2018. Ryan, of course is. The national polling:

But the local polling is even scarier. Ryan's about to get a rare electoral challenge courtesy of someone Wisconsin voters see as authentic and "one of us." Not many people in Janesville, Racine, Kenosha or in the burbs and small towns south of Milwaukee see Ryan as either authentic or "one of us." In fact, the last poll taken of the district's voters, showed them extremely reluctant to vote for Ryan again.

Molly Ball, reporting for The Atlantic yesterday, reported that Republicans aren't turning on Trump yet-- They're Turning On Each Other. "The House is mad at the Senate. The Senate is mad at the House," she wrote. "Various factions in the House and Senate are mad at each other or mad at their leaders. Republican lawmakers have yet to turn on President Trump in any meaningful way. But they’re starting to turn on each other." And Ryan is coming in for a lot of heat. "[A]fter half a year of consolidated GOP control, not a single major piece of legislation has been enacted."

“We’re in charge, right? We have the House, the Senate, and the White House,” one GOP member of Congress told me. “Everyone’s still committed to making progress on big issues, but the more time goes by, the more difficult that becomes. And then the blame game starts.”

The House blames the Senate: At a press conference last week, Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader, waved a chart of 226 House-passed bills that the Senate hasn’t taken up. “We will continue to do our work here, and we hope the Senate continues to do their work as we move forward,” McCarthy said pointedly.

Some new members blame their elders. A freshman congressman from Michigan, Paul Mitchell, got a dozen of his fellow newbies to co-sign an op-ed that urges the Senate to get moving, implicitly calling out their senior colleagues for forgetting what they were sent to Washington to do. “Failure to do so is a failure to follow the will of our voters,” the freshmen wrote in their article published Tuesday.

For its part, the Senate blames the House. A Russia sanctions bill passed the upper chamber with 98 votes a month ago, but it has yet to come to the floor in the House. That prompted Senator Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to accuse the House of “dilly dallying” and “a ridiculous waste of time.”

House leaders say procedural issues and Democrats have tied up the legislation, which the White House opposes. Some members, however, suspect that House leadership is purposely slow-walking the bill to avoid embarrassing the president. A spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan denied that was the case, telling me the White House’s position on the issue was “not a factor” in the bill’s fate.

Though little heralded, the sanctions bill could mark a moment of truth for White House-congressional relations. If sent to President Trump’s desk, the bill would amount to a rebuke of the president’s Russia policy, one he would surely be loath to sign. But given the Russia scandal swirling around Trump, a veto would be explosive. And if the GOP Congress overrode such a veto, the president’s clout would be severely diminished.

Meanwhile, many senators are annoyed with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the rushed, secretive process that produced the health-care bill, and for threatening to cancel their August vacation for a potentially fruitless legislative session. And everyone is annoyed with the House Freedom Caucus, which has also demanded that lawmakers spend next month in D.C.

But everyone is always mad at the Freedom Caucus. Divisions between Republican factions are nothing new; nor is friction between the House and Senate. In an oft-repeated fable, a new Republican member of Congress, eager to go after the “enemy” Democrats, is corrected by an old bull: “The Democrats are the opposition,” he says. “The Senate is the enemy.”

Still, some wonder whether the current sniping isn’t better directed to Pennsylvania Avenue, where the scandal-mired president creates new headaches with every passing day. “We’re a big-tent party, so of course there are divisions,” the member of Congress told me. “But the only thing that could unite the clans is consistent and engaged leadership from the president. And it’s fair to say we’ve gotten mixed signals.”

A House Republican staffer described the fractious mood on Capitol Hill as “Republican-on-Republican violence.” As for why lawmakers don’t train their ire on the real root of their problems, the staffer shrugged: “Maybe it’s just easier to attack people without 13 million Twitter followers.”

We revisit the maxim of Dilbert's PHB, "It isn't a problem if you can give it to someone else"

DILBERT     by Scott Adams

[Click to enlarge]

by Ken

Sometimes readers leave comment that are too interesting to simply let pass into history. So it is with one I only recently noted, added to the post I wrote last Saturday, "When is a problem not a problem? Words to live by from Dilbert's Pointy-Headed Boss," taking off from that day's above-repeated Dilbert strip.

"It isn't a problem if you can give it to someone else."

My employer hosted a series of seminars, open to all who desired to attend, under the group title of "Pass The Monkey". It was literally how to make any problem you discover belong to someone else. In fact, it was strongly encouraged for finding someone else to blame for any problem you encounter.

This destroyed any unit cohesiveness and team behavior we once had in abundance. It became a jungle, where the slickest backstabbers rose in influence, while those who actually got the work done were ignored and derided. Turnover rose dramatically, and to make up for the shortfall, outsourcing and contracting became the norm.

It is only a matter of time before some huge -and of course, "unforseen"- problem causes some serious issues. It won't cause the company to close, but it will hurt when the shareholders are denied a dividend - AGAIN!

Did you get that? The subject of that series of seminars "was literally how to make any problem you discover belong to someone else. In fact, it was strongly encouraged for finding someone else to blame for any problem you encounter."

The only thing more mind-blowing than a company expressing this as a goal is the result described by our correspondent. Of course if you think about it, it's not surprising. But that doesn't make it much less mind-blowing.

#

If You're Wondering When The Republican Party Will Get Back To Normal... This Is As Normal As It's Going To Be For Them For A Long Time

Defiant enabler monkeys give a standing ovation to one of their own as he heads off to prison

I just heard about McCain's humiliating return to his Senate office and how he just stared straight ahead and couldn't look anyone in the eye-- not well-wishers or even his own staff. Once in his office he found that the only visitors were Arizonans requesting the hottest ticket in town, passes for Barack Obama's inauguration.

I don't feel sorry for the Republicans. Even as their standing with the American people continues to tumble drastically, they are all still playing the blame game (McCain's pollster insisted that a reporter put on the record that he thinks GOP pollster Frank Luntz is a "moron" and that he wants to break his bones) and still jockeying selfishly for position. This year the Republican Party's-- not just George Bush's-- unfavorability rating has gone from 49% to an accelerating 61%. They do, however, still embrace the Republicans and their toxic policies and agenda in many of the old slave-holding states and in most of the most backward and ill-educated districts of the Mormon West.

Inside the Beltway elites are weeping for their brother, convicted and defeated Republican felon Ted Stevens today and senators from both sides of the aisle who are likely as guilty of taking bribes as he is-- if not as blatantly-- gave him a standing ovation and tried passing him off as a "distinguished colleague" (that was Harry Reid) rather than a disgraceful criminal. After all, like Lieberman, he is them and they are him. The Senate is not capable of monitoring its own criminal tendencies and there should be some kind of an outside authority to watch this pack of crooks. Six years is too long for their terms-- and too short for prison terms for more than half of them.

Anyway, back to the Republicans' fits and lurches towards some kind of recovery: you're not going to see it any time soon. Almost 60% of them are certain that they've been so thoroughly rejected by normal Americans because the party isn't far right enough! And those are the nuts in charge now. Yes, they want a party run by witch-hunter Sarah Palin, exorcist Bobby Jindal and an assorted array of Klansmen and sociopaths. It's so much easier to let five and dime entertainment figures and hustlers like Ted Nugent, Jimmy Dobson, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly set their agenda for them than actually trying to figure out how to serve the real needs of real American families. Remember, Hitler never won a majority but he was sort of elected. Even as the leaders of the entire civilized world refuse to even shake hands with Bush on his way to obscurity and the garbage heap of history, the GOP is still trying to hang on to a shred of power so they can sabotage Barack Obama's agenda for change-- an agenda to fix what they have lain waste. They seem to be determined to go down dragging the American automotive industry with them and bragging to the public that they will obstruct whatever President Obama tries to do.

What a strange coincidence for the Repugs!

They've learned nothing from the recent drubbings the American people have given them. Corruption hasn't slowed-- a Kit Bond and Roy Blunt operative pleaded guilty today-- and partisan hacks like Kentucky's two reactionary Republicans, McConnell and Bunning, are already plotting obstructionism against the Democrats' and moderate Republicans' attempt to solve the problems in Detroit, problems acerbated, if not caused, by far right Republicans manipulating the tax code to encourage SUVs and discourage fuel efficient vehicles. So reading Politico's post today that the Senate GOP is in a big funk, shouldn't surprise anyone who's been paying a little attention.

Some are in denial. Some want a return to conservative principles. Some want to cut deals. Some want more filibusters.

Others want to jump out a window-- but they’re afraid they’d screw that up, too.

“We probably wouldn’t die,” a Republican Senate aide joked Wednesday. “We’d just lie there, hurt and suffering, which is not too much different from where we are now.”

I suspect there aren't too many DWT readers who want to rush to their assistance, unless it's to offer an NRA-approved method of finishing the job more effectively.

The Republicans’ only glimmer of good news: When Stevens-- the longest-serving Republican in Senate history-- conceded his Alaska race to Democrat Mark Begich on Wednesday, he spared them the unpleasant task of having to expel him from their caucus.

...During a closed-door Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday, DeMint offered proposals to impose term limits on the Republican leader and to restrict how long members can serve on the Appropriations Committee. The resolutions were soundly defeated, but not without bitter exchanges among the Republicans present for the meeting.

Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida said the meeting was “terrible” and “caused consternation” among his colleagues because of the dispute over DeMint’s proposals.

GOP senators met behind closed doors again on Wednesday and did a quick review of their races, with the leadership and defeated incumbents blaming Republican losses on the economic downturn and the president’s call for a $700 billion economic rescue plan.

But even this session brought a clash between GOP lawmakers, as Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana and Kit Bond of Missouri fought over whether Republicans should support a bailout of the auto industry, with Bond supporting it and Vitter opposed.

“Sometimes people don’t like change, but after two disastrous elections, we need it,” DeMint said. “We need to be who we say we are. The most important thing for the party is to mean something again.”

Retiring Sen. John Warner of Virginia-- who will be succeeded next year by a Democrat, former Gov. Mark Warner-- tried to lighten the mood Wednesday with some gallows humor.

Warner told of how he had gone to a straw poll in Virginia with McCain. Warner made a strong pitch for McCain at the event and figured he’d seal the deal by offering to pay for lunch for the whole crowd. When the voting was over, Texas Rep. Ron Paul had won.

In 6 days the Republican rump caucus will have a goodbye party for their departing colleagues-- Ted Stevens, John Warner, Pete Domenici, Elizabeth Dole, Wayne Allard, Gordon Smith, John Sununu, Larry Craig and Chuck Hagel. Other than people who might want to butter up probable Obama appointee Hagel-- and a few like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell who could try getting some local cruising tips from Craig-- I suspect this is one "party" that no one will be too eager to spend much time at.

How Will The GOP Change Its Image-- More Extreme, Less Corrupt? Or Not?

A profoundly conservative and corrupt institution

The GOP is getting a lot of conflicting advise. The lunatic fringe of the congressional party-- like Mike Pence-- has declared that the key to rebuilding the shattered remains of the GOP is for it to become the anti-gay party and focus all the hatred and bigotry the Republicans thrive on in that direction. Perhaps they could start with a ritual excoriation of just re-elected GOP closet queens Mitch McConnell (R-KY), David Dreier (R-CA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), and Adrian Smith (R-NE). Meanwhile David Brady, deputy director of the conservative Hoover Institution has said that the GOP must abandon its "stringently right wing" positions on gay marriage, abortion and immigration or it could be banished to the political wilderness by the American people for decades. He says they've moved too far to the right while those elected officials who have been left behind in the reddest of red districts in the increasingly irrelevant South, say the way forward is more extremism. Congressman Paul Broun (R-GA), who we met earlier, is typical of this group. Republican thinkers, on the other hand, realize the GOP has ceded the center while chasing the extreme right base and that that goes absolutely nowhere-- except in Texas, rural Georgia and places with lots of ignorant Mormons.

"In order for the Republicans to win again they have to drop the anti-gay, anti-immigrant, strict pro-life, no-abortion social positions they have taken," said Brady. "They have to drop those things and move to the centre where the American voters are. Look at gay marriage-- support for gay marriage in America is going up; it's not going down. It's a similar situation if you're pro-life. The majority in America has been pro-choice for a while, and it's not moving anywhere... America used to be roughly divided along the lines of a third Republican, a third independent, and a third Democrat. Now it's 35 per cent Democrat, 28 per cent Republican and the rest independent.

"Let's go and talk about health-care reform. Let's go and … fund programs if they're necessary programs and not get stuck just on the fiscal responsibility... Sarah Palin is not a candidate who can win in a general election. At this point the frontrunners would be [Mitt] Romney, Palin, [Mike] Huckabee. But I think what might have to happen is a governor coming up out of the ranks in the same way that George [Bush] did in 2000."

Another prerequisite the GOP must fill before being taken seriously by mainstream-- if not Mormon-- voters is ridding itself of the endemic corruption that the congressional party has thrived on, especially under the auspices of Tom Delay, Denny Hastert, Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, elected officials who serve the dual role of legislator and lobbyist. Next week, the notoriously corrupt Senate Republicans are going to take a stab at trying to clean house-- at least of their most high profile criminal-- convicted felon Ted Stevens. Whether Alaska's corrupt voting counting apparatus decides he won or lost his re-election bid, most-- though not all-- Senate Republicans want to toss the embarrassing old crook out of their caucus and out of the world's most exclusive club. Many Most of them are as crooked as Stevens and they don't appreciate the spotlight being focussed on their shadowy institution.

The Senate's most right-wing member, rabid neo-fascist Jim DeMint (R-SC) is demanding a vote on kicking Stevens out of the caucus, scheduled for November 18.

“The GOP leadership should be the first to act on this by expelling Stevens from the Republican conference and not assigning him any committee seats,” said DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton. “We should clean our own house.”

It was not immediately clear whether DeMint’s effort would garner support from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.-- who has called on Stevens to resign-- or other GOP leaders.

DeMint’s effort will fizzle unless he lines up another senator to second his ejection motion.

If the effort succeeds, Stevens, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, would be stripped of his seats on the Appropriations and Commerce committees, both of which he once led.

...If the Republican conference chooses to boot Stevens, it would be acting in advance of any disciplinary action from the Senate Ethics Committee, which has been silent on the matter since July 29, the day Stevens was indicted.

Prior to the election, several Republicans, many of them in competitive races, called for Stevens to step down.

It will be interesting to watch the ones who have been re-elected, like Susan Collins and McConnell, each of whom has taken immense sums of tainted money (bribes) from Stevens, change their tunes now that they don't have to worry about being booted out of office for another 6 years.

All That GOP Fingerpointing Is Getting Boring. What's Next-- Palin Blaming McCain?

Most of the country wants to move on to the next act: the one where Obama rescues the damsel in distress (i.e., the economy tied to the railroad tracks). Republicans, however, are still sitting around pointing fingers at each other and trying to figure out who and what to blame-- anything so long as it isn't their reactionary policies-- and who gets to try to put the broken pieces back together again. Like we pointed out yesterday, Eric Cantor, the GOP's extremely right-wing whip replacement for poor old Roy Blunt, blamed the lack of Republican savvy regarding the ole tubez and internets. Even disgraced former House leader Tom Delay thinks he knows how to set things straight for the GOP he helped drive into the ditch. More thoughtful Republicans, like Giuliani advisor John Avlon, says it's the extremism, stupid that has been reflected in the Bush agenda and GOP policies.

Roughly 50 percent of the American people consider themselves moderate, compared with 30 percent who call themselves conservative and the 20 percent who say they are liberal. Independents are the largest and fastest-growing segment of the electorate. The math is clear: To win elections with wide margins in America, you need to appeal beyond your party's base — but that's a lesson that ideological activists hate to hear because it threatens to diminish their influence. Their discomfort is with the concept of representative democracy itself.

Between 1932 and 1952, Republicans lost five consecutive presidential elections. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the most respected man in America, promised to break the losing streak, but conservative activists wanted to nominate "Mr. Republican" — Senate Majority Leader and isolationist Robert Taft. An ugly primary campaign followed, with claims that Ike was the "candidate of effeminates" (a precursor to snide "squish" claims), secretly Jewish (the Muslim whisper campaign of the day) and represented "Republicans for Truman." Ike won the general election easily.

...Obama ultimately won 60 percent of moderate voters, and independents favored him by 8 percentage points. Twenty percent of self-described conservative voters (presumably mostly Democrats) even pulled the lever for him. He became the first Democrat since 1964 to win Virginia and Indiana and swept swing states like Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. He won with a margin larger than George W. Bush ever achieved by reaching out beyond the Democratic base.

The problem for Republicans is compounded by the fact that their base-- older white rural traditionalists-- is shrinking, almost by definition. Whole regions have been lost to the party over the past decade, like historically Republican New England, where not a single Republican representative remains. But still some social conservative activists like Tony Perkins believe that the problem can be solved by moving further to the right in the future-- just as liberal activists in the 1980s believed that the reason Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis lost was that they were not liberal enough. But even the editor of the National Review, Rich Lowry, recognizes that Republicans need to reach the center as well as the right to win in our center-right nation.

Republicans will emerge from the wilderness only when they reconnect with independent and centrist voters who are fiscally conservative but socially progressive and strong on national security. That means modernizing by embracing a big- tent philosophy on social issues that can credibly attract libertarians again. It means regaining credibility on fiscal issues with clear contrasts like a balanced budget and flat tax. It means becoming more diverse and more urban. It means looking to next -generation leaders like Michael Steele, Bobby Jindal, Mark Kirk and Paul Ryan.

Forget for a moment that Paul Ryan is a drooling right-wing loon and instead focus on the recent polls that show that 91% of Republicans have a favorable view of Sarah Palin and 64% of them want to see her as their part's nominee to go up against President Obama in 2012. I think that came out before Emanuel became Chief of Staff, so he can't be blamed for starting that rumor to cause problems for the GOP. Besides, Palin doesn't need anyone to stir up any problems on her behalf.

Yesterday she was interviewed by the Anchorage Daily News, while cookin' up some moose chili and moose hot dogs for the brood, and she certainly said she's in the running to be her party's candidate for president. She also blamed the GOP debacle on everyone but herself. Palin:

I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a 10 trillion dollar debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we're talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing. So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It's amazing that we did as well as we did.

It sure is-- and since I can't ever get enough of this video I'll use this as an excuse to run it again. Please notice the footsies at the very end.