HANNITY: I know the president will say, 'Well, we got bin Laden.' Putting that aside...
LUNTZ: And the public gives him credit for that.
HANNITY: They do. The public does give him credit for that. But it wouldn't have happened if he had his way, and I think that can be proved as well on tape.
Oh, really? That would sure be interesting. You see, if President Barack Obama really didn't want to take out bin Laden, he sure had an odd way of showing it. The easiest way to avoid going after bin Laden would be to say something like -- I don't know ... bin Laden is "one person" and that you "really just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you." Which isn't necessarily the height of awfulness, mind you, there's numerous ways to confront al Qaeda and the threat they represent.
But killing bin Laden, nevertheless, seems for all the world like something Obama was really into doing. As ABC News reported, the president "authorized the development of a plan for the United States to bomb bin Laden's compound with two B-2 stealth bombers dropping a few dozen 2,000-pound bombs" back in March. But when it became clear that this mission would preclude any possibility of obtaining physical evidence to attest to bin Laden's demise, the plan was scrapped in favor of what would become "Operation Geronimo" -- the riskier Navy Seals raid on the compound. And to that end, a replica of bin Laden's compound was erected at Bagram Air Force Base's "Camp Alpha." There, the Seals practiced the raid, making two dry runs in April ahead of the May mission.
This is all a very convoluted and, ultimately, ineffective way of demonstrating that you didn't really give a crap about killing bin Laden, let alone actively not wanting to kill him. Here's a hint: If you really don't want a terrorist mastermind to get killed, you should probably not assign the task to highly trained military professionals, and then give them a practice facility, two stealth helicopters and a hero dog to carry out the task. When you do that stuff, things tend to run, inexorably, in the "let's try to kill bin Laden" direction.
But Hannity says that some "tape" can prove otherwise. (And you know, it's an election year ... there's always some tape that's supposed to be floating around!) I'd be interested in seeing that tape, obviously. But I don't think that's going to happen. Meanwhile, here's a tape of Sean Hannity, a few days after Obama's inauguration, bitching about how Obama had "softened his stance" on killing bin Laden.
Interestingly enough, at one point, Hannity says of Obama's "softened" policy, "Isn't this precisely what President Bush has done? Marginalize bin Laden by chasing him into caves where he's been unable to harm us?" For starters, he wasn't in a cave (as it turns out)! But listening to Hannity praise Bush's approach to bin Laden, I can't help thinking that he sounds like a guy who wouldn't have killed bin Laden, if he had his way.
Dave Dayen today flags an exchange between Fox News White House Correspondent Ed Henry and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, in which the former drives the latter to distraction in a discussion over the White House's new plan to allow certain struggling homeowners refinance their homes in order to help them save some scratch. The vagaries of home loans seem to elude Henry, but from what I know of the White House Press Corps' skill set, I imagine that there are many more of Henry's colleagues who are similarly asea. So let's learn together, shall we?
What the Obama administration wants to do is help current mortgage holders who are upside-down on their mortgages (they owe more than their property is currently worth) reduce their monthly payments and stay in their homes, in the hope that this will stem the tide of foreclosures and soften the real estate market's slide to the bottom. Right now, these mortgage holders are locked into interest rates that could be reduced if they were allowed to refinance their loan at the lower interest rates that are available today. The problem here is one of access -- many of these homeowners are locked out of obtaining refi loans. What the Obama administration seeks to do is allow these homeowners to get around these barriers, provided they have been reliably making payments and their credit scores are above 580.
Okay, let's go to the Henry-Donovan colloquy:
Q: Just a quick — you were saying at the top that basically to make the President’s plan work you’re going to tell financial institutions that they can’t say no to refinancing. How do you actually — how does the federal government tell private institutions, you can’t say no?
SECRETARY DONOVAN: You misunderstood.
Q: Okay.
All right, so first off, the federal government isn't really going to have to force financial institutions to do anything they don't already want to do. See, "refinancing" is just a fancy way of saying "paying off your old loan with a new loan." You took out a mortgage in 2007, and instead of paying it off month by month, you decide you want to pay it off all at once. So you go to a new bank, borrow a gob of money, and use that money to pay off your old loan. The federal government doesn't "force" anybody to "do" anything. The old bank says, "Oh, look! Here is all the money you owe me! I will take that, thank you very much." The new bank, which has just obtained a new reliable customer that pays off her loans, says, "Oh, terrific! Some new money for me!"
You, the customer, are pleased because your new loan has a lower interest rate than your old one had. "Swell," you say. "I don't piss away as much money every month!"
Now here's an important part! The sorts of mortgage loans we're talking about are "prepayable." This means that the mortgage holder, right now, can pay off the whole nut if they had access to the money to do so. (Typically, without incurring a penalty -- this will be spelled out in the mortgage contract.) That's something that Donovan takes the next couple of minutes endeavoring to explain:
SECRETARY DONOVAN: Single-family loans in this country are prepayable, so any homeowner already has the right, even if they’re — if you owe $300,000 on your house and it’s a $250,000 house and you have $300,000, you can go and pay off your mortgage today — right? The issue is they can’t get a new $300,000 loan.
So what this plan would do, the way it breaks through this barrier for these families is to allow them to refinance that loan, to get a new loan that allows them to pay off their existing loan. There’s nothing the existing lender can do today — we’re not changing this at all — the existing lender today can’t stand in the way of a family paying off their existing loan.
Right. Like I said, if the existing lender somehow refused to allow someone to pay off their loan, that would be called "making it weird."
Q: You’re saying if they have $300,000 laying around to pay it off — or how do they do that? I don’t understand.
SECRETARY DONOVAN: They’re going to go get a new loan, and that new loan for –
Q: — the lender is okay with that, is just going to say, this is the rate you’re at right now, it’s fine if you just want to change it?
Not only is the new lender going to be "okay with that," they will use the lower interest rate as a means to attract your business and make money. This is how "refinancing a loan" works. (Also, the customer doesn't "change" the interest rate. It would be awesome if the customer somehow had this power, but that is not how "interest rates" work. What the customer is doing in this arrangement is benefitting from the offer of a lower interest rate that the refi bank is making because it gives them a competitive advantage over the original lender, who lent the money when rates were higher.)
Since lots of banks sell their mortgages to the government, it turns out that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration are currently acting as the "old bank." And Donovan's new program just means the government will allow a broader class of the loans on its books to be paid off. And the government will encourage this by telling all the "new banks" out there that if their customers don't pay back their loans, the government will shield the bank from losses.
This is how the vast majority of the housing market has worked for decades. All Donovan wants to do is let more borrowers do this -- specifically, borrowers whose home values are now lower than the loan they took out during the housing bubble.
Now, if you want to put Donovan through his paces on this policy, there are some avenues of questioning that are open to you. For starters, the incentive for refi lenders here is the loan guarantees. They are great as long as these homeowners maintain their ability to keep making their monthly payments faithfully. But if the economy craps the bed again, or the unemployment crisis ramps up, they could become very fragile, very quickly. Additionally, Republicans in the House and Senate complain that this program amounts to a new spending program, and that the Obama administration has already tried a bunch of different things to help struggling homeowners and none of them have been terribly effective.
Finally, while this refi plan is a modest goal that will save some mortgage holders a few thousand dollars in paying off their existing mortgage, it doesn't alter the larger problem -- these homeowners are still under water, chucking their income into a sinkhole. So, in many instances, it still might be smarter for these homeowners to simply strategically default.
Good morning and welcome once again to your Sunday morning liveblog of televised, politics-related gasbagging. My name is Jason, and congratulations -- you have almost made it through the first month of 2012. And you probably have not had to "suspend your campaign" or "dissolve your super PAC" or "return to Texas to find out that everyone's a lot less into you." And the good news? There is only ONE debate scheduled between now and the end of February. (Note to various media organizations: do not add any, you are not that good at staging them, anyway, thanks very much!)
As always, however, today's show will be thick with 2012 speculation. And, as always, you are free to hang out with one another in the comments, drop me an email, or follow me on Twitter as I struggle to figure out how War Horse got nominated for Best Picture, and whether it can get a Grammy as well.
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
Today, Chris Wallace talks to Newt Gingrich, as well as Newt's favorite right-wing radical social engineer, Paul Ryan. (This probably won't come up between them, because they are not on at the same time.)
Newt, charitably described at this stage as "one of the two frontrunners," when he's actually fallen well behind Mitt in Florida, is very tangeriney today. Honestly, he needs to be careful while in Florida that no one tries to squeeze him for breakfast juice. His face looks so plump and fresh!
Anyway, Chris Wallace wants to know what happened in the past five days that he's gone from being way up in the polls to being way down. Newt explains that Mitt is a bis ol' Moneybags McGee, spending Goldman Sacks of Cash in Florida, making it rain at this club, and the club is the No Newts Allowed Club, hollaback, y'all. "He has a basic policy of carpetbombing his opponent," he says, because Gingrich is Indochina in the late 1960s. He says, "We've actually been pulling away from him in national polls," and that the problem remains that he's splitting the conservative vote with Rick Santorum. (That assumes a lot about Santorum's voters -- they may not have Newt as their second choice.)
He does lament the fact that he's recently won endorsements or support from Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and Rudy Giuliani, and that is too bad, because -- wait...sorry, is he actually celebrating these supporters? Oh, wow. Okay.
"I give the Romney campaign due respect for their sheer volume of negativity and the amount of money they raised on Wall Street," says Newt, who doesn't sound like he's giving them "respect."
Gingrich says he's expecting a close race in Florida, and says that he's doing what he can to convince Floridians that Romney is a liberal. He says he's getting help from Fred Thompson and Todd Palin and Herman Cain...and, you know, those are some amazingly influential people in politics, right? Total Game Changers. "I had no idea what I was going to do with my primary vote, but then that dude on that snowmobile was like, 'Huh, Newt is like a bag of warm jelly! You just stick your hands elbow deep into his guts and it keeps you warm when you're stuck on the tundra!"
Wallace points out this ad that Romney is running in Florida that features Tom Brokaw yakking about Gingrich's terrible career in politics. But it's really crazy misleading and so Gingrich is understandably mad about it.
"The reason I was relatively flat in Thursday's debate is that I don't know how to debate a person who just stands there...and blatantly doesn't tell the truth," Gingrich says. This is kind of a problem! But I recommend you just call him a liar! Say, "Hey, you are a liar!" Play him this Henry Rollins song:
You know, go nuts!
Newt says that when he said "language of the ghetto" he wasn't referring to Spanish-speakers, even though he apologized for his remarks in Spanish, and hey, don't you know that "ghetto" refers to Jewish neighborhoods? How do you like this farkakte explanation, Fox News Sunday?
What's up with Gingrich's war on "elites?" Gingrich says that he is referring to "Romney's key supporters." Newt, he just wants to "change Washington." He is totally not an elite, and he barely knows Washington at all, right? "Hey, what's with all the diagonal roads named after states, am I right?" asks Gingrich, when he becomes President.
Wallace notes that Bob Dole hates Gingrich's crazy stank guts. Newt says simply that the GOP can't nominate moderates because they lose, like Dole lost, ha, ha, suck it Bob Dole. Meanwhile, he was getting the House GOP re-elected, despite the fact that Bob Dole was stinking it up on the top of the ticket. "I think Senator Dole is a quintessential part of the establishment," says the guy who's been on more Sunday shows since I started liveblogging them than Bob Dole has.
Now Paul Ryan is here to talk about the upcoming budget from the House GOP, and to throw shade on President Obama's State of the Union address. Ryan says that the President's policies are divisive and that "fairness and equality," when he talks about it, is nothing but "crony capitalism" and "debt, doubt, and decline."
Wallace points out that with Obama proposing the "Buffet rule" against the backdrop of revelations that Mitt Romney pays an unbelievably low tax rate is sort of at "at its simplest basis, fair." Ryan says it's an over simplification and the tax increases don't cover the spending Obama proposes. (It may be covered by other means, though?) And also, to Ryan's reckoning, it kills jobs -- though I really don't know how much more money we can possibly give "the wealthy who are job creators" unless it actually takes a check from America for "all the money" and made out to "CASH" in order to get people working again.
(That said, the "Buffet rule" is the very model of a piece of election year legislation that's proposed without any worry that it's actually going to become law.)
Ryan says "What we have learned with the President is that he's going to put some poll-tested line in the State of the Union address and there's going to be no follow-up whatsoever." Uhm...is this Ryan's first experience with a State of the Union address? Or politics? Someone should really introduce Paul Ryan to this guy named "Paul Ryan" who is a representative from Wisconsin's 1st District and never speaks but the regurgitated marm that pollsters have spat into his throat.
Ryan is upset about the commissions and Super Committees that the President formed and which Paul Ryan was on, but sucked at, like everyone on those committees.
Paul Ryan, on the Budget Control Act: "If that's the solution to our fiscal crisis, then heaven help us." Uhm...next time just raise the debt ceiling like a normal person instead of turning the matter into some long saga of fictional demagoguery?
Ryan says that he'll be writing the House's budget in March, and it will look like the budget proposals he's made in the past. Wallace points out that the big flaw in Ryan's Medicare reform is that the "premium support" he'll give seniors gets less and less valuable over time, driving up their health care costs. Ryan says, "Yeah, but Medicare is going bankrupt." I've been saying this all along -- Ryan's plan DEFINITELY solves the spending crisis, because it LITERALLY stops paying money to keep retirees alive. But it doesn't "save Medicare" or "make Medicare more fiscally sound."
Naturally, Ryan promises that he'll not change entitlements for anyone who's currently 55 or older, because he needs their votes.
Ryan then goes on to say a bunch of strange things about the IPAB in the Affordable Care Act, on the assumption that you have not read this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this.
Wallace wants to know what Ryan thinks about "the tenor of the campaign." He says that "we need to defend the morality of the free enterprise system." Which sounds to me like he's upset about Newt Gingrich's attacks on Bain Capital. (Ryan has stayed neutral in the race.) He has no "second thoughts" about not running for President himself. (He has far more influence on the policy discussion from a Congressional seat that's easy to win in a re-election campaign.)
Chris Wallace made Ryan a birthday cake, which is an adorable moment from your always adversarial media, right? Ryan won't eat it because he does not eat "sweets." He does agree to cut the cake. Everyone laughs. Ryan is a bit embarrassed. The cake says, "Whatever." And we all understand America a little bit less now.
Is it panel time yet? Yes it is. Today, we have Brit Hume, A.B. Stoddard, Paul Gigot, and well-renumerated speed bag Juan Williams.
Hume says tht it looks like everything is coming up Romney in Florida, and that in South Carolina, the mistake Romney made was assuming that Gingrich was dead in New Hampshire. In Florida, they have beaten Newt over the head with millions of dollars in ads. He says, though, that Gingrich won't be "dead" after Florida because Gingrich is "wily." Like a cartoon ferret!
Stoddard says that the Romney campaign has "gotten it's act together" -- which means they spent a lot of money, polishing their act, which was a "turd" and is not a "gold-lead painted turd served on a silver charger." Also, Romney "stole the thunder" at the Florida debates.
Gigot says that if Romney wins Florida, it puts him in a "strong position" to win because of -- yes! -- MONEY. Newt and Rick Santorum would have to demonstrate that they can win somewhere between now and Super Tuesday. Those contests, however, are not too showy! Williams says that the way February works is going to prevent Romney's competitors from creeping up on him, because the process has been so frontloaded. He notes that the absence of the debates are going to help Romney.
"He's died twice and has been resuscitated," says Wallace, of Newt. But it's debates that have served as defibrillators.
On to the State of the Union address! Gigot says that the SOTU proves that Obama can't run on his record -- it's weird to him that the Affordable Care Act wasn't mentioned a lot during the address, given that (he admits) doctors love it. (I sort of thought that it wasn't mentioned because it had already passed the Congress some time ago? That's just me, though! I guess lots of people expected Obama to show up and bang on and on about a long-since-passed piece of legislation?) He goes on to say that the GOP candidate will lose the long argument if they're incapable of making the moral care for the free market.
Williams says he's stunned to hear Gigot say he'll win that argument (under those conditions). Hume says that in elections like this, certain economic conditions make the electorate more willing to change course, and if the GOP has a reasonable candidate, they can win. He says that the mistake the GOP could make is to pursue the matter simply by nominating "the most conservative candidate they can find." (There is a lot of talking down Newt today!) He reckons that outside of these factors, the President's SOTU will rally his base but not necessarily win an election.
Is a recovery starting to take root? Gigot says it's slow -- not anxiety inducing, but not terribly strong. He says that it will force the GOP candidate to do some case-making about the economy.
Williams is asked about the whole Obama vs. Jan Brewer matter from this week. As Alex Pareene points out, everybody won! Her book sales went up, and Obama probably won the vote of every Hispanic voter in Arizona.
FACE THE NATION
Hey, it's time for the new one hour version of Face The Nation. It will be a lot like the half-hour version of Face The Nation except you won't sit there wondering, "Are they trying to KILL Bob Schieffer?" Things will be chill. There will be time for things. Like talking to Donald Trump and Dave Barry, and...okay, this show is still trying to talk to like, twenty-five people. But that's okay, as long as Bob Schieffer can relax a little.
Donald Trump has apparently said that if the GOP nominates someone who can't win, he will run, and also not win, except he'll not win even more embarrassingly. But more on that later. First, we have an interview with Newt Gingrich.
Schieffer asks if Gingrich hasn't inadvertently made Romney a better debater. Gingrich says that you should give credit for that to Romney's new debate coach, and also Romney lying his face off. POP! Off comes his face and out come lies! Gingrich assures us that the time he paused, in stunned silence, for like an hour at the debate last week, was because of a brain numbing lie that Romney told, with his face.
This lie was over Romney voting for Paul Tsongas. Who out there though that Paul Tsongas would become such a big deal in this election. EVERYONE NEEDS TO ANSWER FOR WHAT THEY WERE DOING FOR OR AGAINST PAUL TSONGAS. We literally cannot proceed until everyone comes clean. TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT PAUL TSONGAS. No, no! Not Paul Simon. He was from Illinois. Though hold that thought, we should find out what was going on there, too!
Dick Gephardt wonders why he doesn't matter to anyone. OH GEPHARDT, you didn't matter to anyone ever!
Anyway, Gingrich will keep running, even if he loses Florida, but that he might win Florida, because Romney is such a lying liar about everything.
Michele Bachmann is here, now, to talk about the race. She says that she does not want to weigh in on whether or not someone is lying or not. She's here to say that the Florida result is going to be "significant across the nation," and well, gee, thanks for that. I mean you don't say? Terrific. ("And from there we'll move in to the caucus states...it's not over," says Bachmann, who is apparently the Siri of banal electoral facts.)
She says that she "always thinks the best" about the GOP candidates and always "ascribes the best motives" to the people who want to make Obama "a one term president," even if they are lying. She wants to be a unifying figure. Schieffer says that Sarah Palin had a lot to say about the matter on Facebook, and Bachmann says, "You know, I'm not going to respond to something that's on a Facebook page. I put myself out here. I don't have statements drawn up by committee and bleated out to the world through a few links being clicked. Okay? I come here. I show up. I put my real face behind these words. I've got nothing to say about anyone who doesn't." HA KIDDING, she doesn't say that, but it would be awesome if someone did, right?
Bachmann says the Tea Party is "infusing" the GOP, like high-quality artisanal bitters. And everyone will unify behind the eventual nominee. It's totally normal, she says, to have candidates wanting to stab needles in each other's eyes. And now Bachmann and Schieffer are getting attacked by helicopters.
Now here's Donald Trump, for some reason. He says he's still thinking about running, because the country is "going to hell in a handbasket." He would run as an independent, on the Celebrity Apprentice ticket. All of the GOP candidates are being nasty and mean and are hurting their chances, unless of course they are not hurting their chances, and are actually getting stronger by being totally awful to each other. So really Trump could go in a lot of directions, okay? Did he remember to plug his show? Kind of. Good enough, I guess.
And that's it from Donald Trump! On, now, to Reince Priebus. ONLY TWELVE MINUTES HAVE PASSED. This show is still bonkers!
Schieffer, citing the Newsweek cover that features Mitt and Newt as Roman gladiators, asks Priebus if he'd ever seen Newt without his shirt on. HOLLA! Okay this show just got awesome! You can literally hear the "Thwish!" sound as Priebus' testicles swim back inside his body at the thought. Or were those mine, making that noise? Either way, we are now at the "Bob Schieffer After Dark" phase of this show.
Priebus says that "this is a primary" and "primaries are tough" and that tough primaries "make candidates stronger" and that "winners come out of tough primaries."
But Donald Trump is worried about it. "F--k a Donald Trump," Priebus says, "Seriously, I can count on zero fingers, the number of s--ts I give about Donald Trump. Trump can seriously go __________ a _________ with his ___________ in __________, and I mean, one of the sticky ones." KIDDING, he did not say this, but wouldn't it be awesome if he did?
Priebus says Obama is Captain Schettino for "abandoning his job and campaigning for President." Schieffer is like, "Huh, wha?" And Priebus has to explain the joke. "You made me think of it with the ships behind you. Bob." So...there's a metaphor that's going to quietly die. (Also, are you not allowed to run for election in an election year? That seems like a pretty dumb standard. If Romney wins, is the RNC going to take the whole last year of his first term off?)
Priebus is asked about Sarah Palin's Facebook page, and he says "She taps into a good point." But I've forgotten what that point was, now, because when's the last time I gave a crap about a Facebook status update? Most of mine are just the things that Tracy Morgan says on 30 Rock.
Priebus says that primaries are tough, man. Has he pointed that out, yet? So it's okay for the candidates to yell at each other and call each other liars.
"We will be back in one minute," says Schieffer.
And we're back with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who is from Florida. She says that she's not enjoying the "extreme Republican field" and their lack of concern for foreclosures and Medicare and anything else related to senior citizens.
Will Rubio end up on the ticket, and if so, will the GOP carry Florida? She says no, and Mitt Romney's priorities are not aligned with Floridians. "As nice a guy as Rubio is, he's not going to be able to salvage these extreme positions."
Some polls says that Obama will win Florida and some say that he will lose Florida. Can you guess which variety the head of the DNC prefers to talk about? You get three guesses.
DWS says that Trump's suggestion that he might jump into the race is "emblematic" of how negative and extreme the GOP nominating race has become. I'd say it's just emblematic of the fact that Trump will vomit his ego-overload into any conveniently located teevee camera, regardless of what's happening in the world.
Okay, so, some affiliates have not yet picked up the full, hour-long version of this show, which explains why there was so much stuffing and teasing in the last half hour.
Now we have Allen West, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Michele Bachmann again. West is wearing an orange tracksuit, because he's come from running a half-marathon, but also because it's the official apparel of people who wake up in the morning already having given up on life, and thus, the official apparel of people who live in Florida. (Have I mentioned that my own parents are trying to move out of Florida? They are. It is like the movie "Escape From New York" except it involves the more frequent use of the word "lenai.")
Anyway, Diaz-Balart is "with Romney" and thinks that big issue is the economy and the Obama administration is a failure and Romney is "the name that keeps surfacing after all the dust settles." West says that he is also focused on the economy -- and can speak on the matter with some greater specificity than Diaz-Balart, who talks in bumper stickers -- but has not picked a candidate to support and is more generically concerned with the legislative branch.
Schieffer says he can't get a fix on what the "GOP establishment" is anymore. Bachmann says that the Republican Party is much better than it was in George Romney's day, way back when, because there wasn't a Tea Party. She says that the Tea Party has been a force for good, but really...if we factor out lawmakers like Justin Amash, the Tea Party Freshmen have been totally subsumed into the establishment. West talks about how he came around to voting on the Budget Control Act and how he had to explain his vote to his Tea Party backers, and, let's not be silly: the reason he voted the way he did is that he's made it to Washington, and it's time to become a clapped out party insider.
And eventually, you become like Mario Diaz-Balart...who is kind of dull, actually? He'll be the guy not invited back to do this show.
Oh, more Donald Trump? Good God, Face The Nation, what Nation are you facing?
Schieffer describes Mar-A-Lago as Trump's "historic private club in Palm Beach." OH WOW, IT MADE HISTORY?
Anyway, here's everything that Trump says in the form of one, long, run-on sentence that's unreadable and strange -- to the extent that if you read it out loud into your bathroom mirror it will summon demons from hell, to scourge your skin and pluck your teeth from your face as you scream in ecstatic, hideous, relentless pain:
Trump says that he loves Newt's debating ability and was stunned that he suddenly started sucking at it, because the people just clapped and clapped but Newt does have some baggage you know but also Mitt is good at some things and maybe his health care reform is a liability, who knows but he's doing well and Newt is also doing well and they are both strong and tough and might win the election or they might not, you know, sometimes Mitt is comfortable about all the money he makes and sometimes he's not, and he should be calm about it because it's the American Dream to make millions of dollars a year from just sitting around, but look it's important that whoever is chosen is able to win and maybe some independent candidate can do it -- not him, necessarily! -- ha, ha, he doesn't WANT to do it, but if you need him to do it, after the show he's hosting is over ends, he'll run...or he'll endorse a candidate who can win, if a candidate who wins emerges, and if not he'll run but he likes doing what he's doing now, which is coming on teevee and confusing people, for the hell of it.
Okay, we are going to have a Florida panel in Florida with Jon Dickerson, Mark Caputo, and Dave Barry. What? They couldn't get Carl Hiassen as well?
Barry says that 2012 has made it depressing to listen to the radio because they are filled with terrible super PAC lies. He snarks, about Trump, "What a courageous patriot."
When did the race shift between Gingrich and Romney? "Tuesday," Caputo says. Okay!
But seriously, he says the Gingrich didn't really come to Florida with much of a plan and after he flailed in the first debate, he didn't really recover. He says that races do tend to tighten up, but Romney's organization has been stellar throughout. And they've been on top of Florida for a long time. "We don't have an election day, we have a hundred election days," Caputo says, noting the prevalence of early voting.
Dickerson says that Newt is going to "lose the opportunity to sell himself" at debates going forward, so if he fails to win Tuesday, it's rough sledding. Barry says that all anyone talks about in Florida is housing and the economy, and he sets Caputo up to note something pretty obvious, which is that: WHY IS NEWT GINGRICH TALKING ABOUT MOON COLONIES? Dickerson says that Romney is back to winning the "general election" electability argument.
MEET THE PRESS
Side note: Rick Santorum was originally slated to be a guest on this show today, until medical complications warranted the hospitalization of his youngest daughter. Santorum has apparently returned to Pennsylvania to spend time with his family. Obviously, I wish him and his family the best.
Okay, so today Meet The Press is going to have a "Mitt Romney vs. Newt Gingrich debate" in which John McCain debates Fred Thompson. This would not be possible without NBC News being able to rely on parent company General Electric to provide a sufficient number of microwaves to warm up all the farina this is going to take.
Also we'll have David Axelrod. Hmmm. Wonder if he'll have something to say about the election? And then a panel with Joe Scarborough, Chuck Todd, and Freddie Mac lobbyist Doris Kearns Goodwin.
OH BOY. McCain and Thompson are actually here, together, in the 2012 campaign season's first Presidential Surrogate Lemon Party. But first, Chuck Todd is here to yammer some poll numbers at us -- there's a slight yelpy catch in his voice and an oddness in his posture that tell me that he really needs to wrap up this segment and then race off to find a urinal.
So, what does Florida mean, to John McCain? He says it means even more in 2012 than it did in 2008, and he's glad that "Mitt's doing so well." Ha, ha...this is awesome, watching McCain pretend to like Mitt Romney, personally!
Thompson says, "Hey, you know if these poll numbers play out, Romney's going to win, how about that." COME ON MAN, SURROGATE! Be a surrogate! Thompson says that the winner won't win a lot of delegates, anyway! And so there will be a long race, right? Hey, remember how well Newt did in South Carolina? That was awesome? Why couldn't have had this debate a week ago, no fair!
Gregory points out that Bob Dole said a bunch of mean things about Newt, and Thompson says this is just "some old score-settling going on," and that's not fair, because a lot of the new critics were "holding Newt's coat" back when Newt was winning in the 1990s.
McCain says that the GOP "had some rather unpleasant experiences with Newt Gingrich." PROBABLY AT GEORGETOWN KEY PARTIES, RIGHT? Also, "earmark corruption" and the "K Street Project." Plus, Newt says the Gipper was a "failure" in the Cold War, whereas Romney is the hero of the Winter Olympics.
McCain says, "enough of the debates" because they've become "mud-wrestling" that drives up everyone's negatives. Also, he hates all the super PACs, and he "condemns the Supreme Court for their naivete" in ruling favorably in the Citizens' United case. "I guarantee you there will be a scandal, there's too much money washing around in politics."
"If you really want to talk about money," says Thompson, "I hear Sheldon Adelson asked Mitt Romney for a loan."
"Reverse mortgages," says McCain.
"Soros," says Thompson.
"Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click!" say the cameras of the National Geographic photographers, gathered here today to document the mating rituals of the American wild coot.
Thompson says that Romney has a million-dollar "attack machine," and if he didn't have that, he wouldn't look so electable. Also, he lies all the time. (Thompson should turn to McCain and say, "Doesn't he lie all the time? Do you remember four years ago, dude?")
Now McCain has to respond to the Facebook page labelled, Sarah Palin. He says he loves Sarah and agrees with her, now that she is squeaky voice inside a social network. But Newt is a egomaniacal Reagan-hater who now attacks people who make money in the private sector.
Gregory points out that back in 2008, McCain said that all of the issues that he now suggests don't matter were entirely relevant. McCain says, "When these things are over, you've got to come together." He also notes that Romney was on McCain's shortlist for vice-president. Why did he opt for Sarah Palin then? The answer is probably on some unreleased tax document, right?
Thompson says that the "underlying issue" is that our country is in "deep trouble" and "on the brink" and the economy "has stopped" (actually, GDP numbers were high last quarter) and the "Obama recession" needs to be countered by someone "courageous and tough" not a "bean counter or data processor." He says that Mitt's capital gains policy "tracks with Obama's" and that he hasn't yet explained the difference between RomneyCare and ObamaCare.
John McCain says, of the Obama-Brewer dustup, that Brewer has a legitimate point in that Obama has not visited the border between Arizona and Mexico, which McCain himself had never given a crap about until it was determined he needed to in order to win an election. (This is probably why McCain really like Romney as a candidate.)
This is McCain's sixty-third appearance on Meet The Press, tying Bob Dole, in a record that is probably meaningful to somebody, somewhere.
Now, David Axelrod is here, to probably say good things about President Obama, I'm guessing?
Axelrod starts my saying that David Brooks is a "great public thinker," so my brain went a little numb there, for a minute.
When it starts tracking again, Axelrod is being harangued by David Gregory to tell America what they'll have "less of," because it's time to make "tough choices." There's always something slightly embarrassing to the human race, whenever Gregory starts off on his "make some tough choices" schtick. "There was nothing to deal with the big drivers of the debt," he mewls. (Those big drivers, of course, are two wars, the Bush tax cuts, and the terrible Part D prescription policy, but that's not what Gregory is talking about. He'd like Axelrod's "tough choice" to be, "Let's give senior citizens' tins of Friskies and call it a century.")
Anyway, Axelrod points out that the White House offered a "grand bargain" of four billion in new cuts, one billion in new revenue, and adjustments to the Medicare eligibility age, and John Boehner liked it, because you'd have to be daft not to, except that daftness had taken root in his caucus and it was scuttled. The fact that this happened remains the biggest story of the past two years that the media refuses to talk about, there's been a general consensus that we're to forget it happened, and I honestly don't know Axelrod restrains himself from showering Gregory with fists.
"It seemed that Mitt Romney ws very much on the President's mind during the State of the Union," says Gregory, proving that not every totally obvious thing in the world eludes him, hopelessly.
Axelrod says that no one is saying that Romney didn't play by the rules, "the question is, are those rules right?...he has these special benefits that the middle class can't avail themselves of."
Gregory wants to know why they just can't rip up the social safety net, because TOUGH CHOICES. Axelrod points out that the middle class' wages and earnings have shrunk over the past many years, probably because of the net effect of decades of political choices that everyone thought would be easy.
Axelrod says that Romney made the same arguments about his private sector experience when he ran for Governor, and then he presided over job losses. Be careful, there! Remember you have to also run on the amazing wisdom of Governor Romney's health care plan!
Can Obama mount the "job destruction" argument against Romney? Axelrod says yes.
Gregory wants to know what the difference between what Bain Capital does and the federal government investing in Solyndra. Do we have a half an hour to patiently explain to Gregory what "private equity companies" are and what a "leveraged buyout" is? In small words? That he can understand?
What does Axelrod think will happen in the race? He thinks it could go on long, that Mitt is a "weak frontrunner" who's only overwhelming Newt by out-spending him. He says that unlike the Obama-Clinton battle, the Romney-Gingrich battle is causing Romney's numbers to go down. (They are, but not as significantly as Gingrich's are. I think that if Romney gets through the primary being called a "Massachusetts liberal" at every turn, Romney's general election "tack to the center" is going to look like he's moving to his right.)
Okay, time for the Scarborough-Todd-Goodwin Panel of Whimsy!
Scarborough says that it's funny to watch all of Romney's advisors are taking credit for making up for their candidate's shortcomings, but really, if he goes back and re-reads the news from the campaign trail as early as June 2011, you'll see that this Romney operation has always been one where the operators have really outperformed their candidate. Now, things get kind of simple, because they are one of two "operations" left...and the other one is Ron Paul's. Gingrich and Santorum are basically running on campaigns made of sticky tape and chicken bones.
Scarborough says that everything is going to go on a long time because various wings of the party are freaking out on each other, and Palin is comparing the DC establishment to Stalin, and it's all bonkers and hurting the GOP.
Goodwin points out that if Gingrich was to agree to an actual "Lincoln Douglas debate," the audience would scream for blood to be shed. (She also says that Romney's privileged experience seems to be of the sort that leaves people to wonder if he's spent any time at all contemplating the lives of ordinary people. File that under: "Uhm, ya think?" But also remember that everyone running for President is crazy affluent and never not getting paid again.)
Chuck Todd says that the phrase "Swiss Bank Account" will become the attack ad of the season. I am still holding out hope for "Slovakian Goat Brothel," but I fear it's losing the moment.
Scarborough says Newt will be back because "February is a down month" and that gives him a lot of time to work with strategists -- except he doesn't have any strategists? And there are no debates to keep him alive? I doubt it.
Todd says, no, Romney and Paul are going to do great, and Newt could go 0-6 going into Super Tuesday, and that's what I would bet on happening. But I wouldn't bet $10,000!
Goodwin assures us that the 2012 GOP race is not anywhere near as nastly as when people were singing really scabrous songs about Martin Van Buren. Hey, everyone, remember that people sang about Martin Van Buren belonged in Hell the next time some jerkwad complains that "blogs ruined the discourse," okay? Or go to the Newseum and watch the exhibit on the Sedition Act? You'll learn that since the nation was founded, its discourse has perpetually been one step from a fen.
"I'm from Los Angeles, I didn't know what this meant," says Dave Gregory, in a phrase that should hang over the set of Meet The Press.
Oh, no. Meet the Press isn't doing that thing where they read Tweeteck and then re-report the content of their own show, which is bad news for anyone counting on that McCain-Thompson slapfight to "go viral."
But that means we are at the merciful end of another Sunday's helping of politics chat. And it's time to...uhm, great...go grocery shopping. Oh, well. Florida primary on Tuesday, catch the fever, etc., and have a great week!
(Jason Linkins contributed to this article. Video produced by Hunter Stuart.)
Every year around this time, we make a huge deal about the president's State Of The Union address because...well, because our political leaders make a big deal about it. From the careful preparations of the president to the rebuttals from the opposition to the genuine enthusiasm expressed by all in attendance, there's a lot to dish about, dissect and discuss. And let's face it -- the State of the Union is basically a long session of case-making from a hopeful commander-in-chief trying to earn the continued trust of the people, often in the form of re-election.
But political science teaches us that these speeches by themselves often don't move the needle of public opinion in a lasting way. And our memories inform us that, for all the work that's put into the effort, we often only remember the odd moment or two. (And often, that odd moment is literally an odd moment.)
This is perhaps as it should be, because it seems that if there's one constant to these orations, it's that they all, in some way, herald a false dawn. We took a look back to State of the Union addresses all the way back to the Nixon administration and found that, often, what you get are flamboyant pledges of Great Things To Come that never materialize and are quickly forgotten. With the help of HuffPost's Hunter Stuart, we've put together a video collage of famous forgotten promises.
I think that the average reader of Adam Davidson's recent piece in the Atlantic, "Making It In America," would likely come away with the idea that the middle class economy, in terms of the job opportunities available to people who play by all those traditional middle class rules of education and responsibility and thrift, is in a period of disruptive change. And that change comes with some dire realities, in which perfectly decent, intelligent, virtuous people -- with a basic drive to apply themselves, work hard, learn on the job, and get promoted -- stare out at the factory floor and wonder what might steal their opportunity: cheap overseas labor or cost-cutting technological innovation. Some of that worry and concern might get passed along to you, the average reader.
But if you're one of those elite thinkers, with nothing but time on your hands to swan around in your own brain-brine, you might derive a different set of conclusions. And if you're Thomas Friedman, you will apparently wrap all of those conclusions into some sort of sunny exhortation for everyone to go out and get extraordinary, man! It's as if the moment calls for the kind of self-help admonition that you might hear from Oprah's couch, or the ballroom of your local Hilton.
In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won't earn you what it used to. It can't when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra -- their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.
But this is, of course, flat impossible. Average is just math, man, a function of the numbers of any specific group. Somebody has to finish first and somebody has to finish last.
Exactly. Another way of looking at this situation -- the non-cloudcuckooland way -- is to say that means and medians still exist, but the standards of living associated with them are just in staggering decline. "Average" isn't "over," it just sucks a whole lot more than it used to. And this has been evident for some time, actually: real average earnings haven't increased in decades. But obviously, this is because everyone is doing a terrible job "finding their extra."
Friedman goes on to describe the some of the ways it's going to become harder than ever to earn a living unless everyone really commits themselves to being some sort of post-modern, "extra"-obtaining superman. For instance, a bunch of M.I.T. scientists are changing the way you'll go out to eat in restaurants, with iPad-like gadgets replacing servers at your local eatery. This seems to me to be a profoundly unpleasant way to dine out -- absent the human touch and expertise of actual human beings, I may as well use the same iPad to cook at home for a quarter of the cost. But Friedman assures us that these devices allow for diners to reach their extra in the form of being able to "make special requests, like 'dressing on the side' or 'quintuple bacon.'"
I honestly don't understand how an iPad suddenly empowers me to do this, since human waiters and waitresses have been taking such requests since restaurants began, but if it truly allows people to reach for their "extra" bacon intake, this could open up new job opportunities in the cardiology sector of the economy. At least until they design a robot that can perform angioplasties.
This is classic Friedman -- dazzled and snowed by whatever shiny technology happens to be dancing in his imagination, he can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be so seduced, and he's utterly immune to considering the concomitant costs involved, other than to say that we frail meatbags had better go out and become a lot more amazing. And this essential Friedmanism leads him right into this train-wreck of a paragraph:
What the iPad won't do in an above average way a Chinese worker will. Consider this paragraph from Sunday's terrific article in The Times by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher about why Apple does so much of its manufacturing in China: "Apple had redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly-line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the [Chinese] plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. 'The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,' the executive said. 'There's no American plant that can match that.' "
Now, when you read that, you'd think for all the world that we're supposed to marvel at the way these Chinese workers have "found their extra." After all, to Friedman's reckoning here, the iPad sets a standard of "above average" that we now need to match, and the "Chinese worker" is even more "above average" than that.
But gosh, doesn't the notion of being woken in the middle of the night, handed a cup of tea and a cookie, and frogmarched onto the factory floor to start resetting iPad screens because some designer in Cupertino realized at the last minute that he hadn't done his job well enough sound like an awful way to live your life? If you're thinking, "Why, yes ... yes it does," then you have reached for your extra today, because one of the same reporters of that "terrific article" that Friedman cites today, wrote another piece yesterday titled, "In China, Human Costs are Built Into an iPad." Here is how the latter piece begins:
The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.
When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.
Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.
From there, it's just a matter of sentences before the reader is fully immersed in a world of third-world wages, child labor, unsafe working conditions, inhuman hours, and fraud. But I'll readily admit, this is just the life of the average Chinese iPad factory worker. In recent years, many of those same workers have done exactly what Friedman suggests and "found their extra" -- by jumping to their deaths.
Again, this is Friedman's schtick. As he bops from one global aerie to the next, absorbing the latest sweet whispers from the mesmeric elites he encounters, there's never a reason to end the pep rally. Everything just looks amazing once you're ahead of the curve. And so institutionalized exploitation becomes, as Chittum puts it, "a force of nature rather than a political choice made by an elite whose interests Friedman represents."
Of course, Apple is staying ahead of the curve in terms of its labor practices as well. Now, those workers who would ordinarily opt to leap off of the tops of the factory buildings will find themselves rescued by safety nets, and no doubt returned to their shift with all deliberate haste. So those who long for the sweet release of prolonged agony that only death can provide are going to have to "find their extra" and innovate as well. Because average is over, dude.
In the continuing annals of Politifact oddness, it seems that during the initial truth-squadding of last night's State Of The Union address, the fact-checking organization took issue with a section of the speech that, frankly, would have been otherwise forgettable. The section dealt specifically with job growth during the Obama administration. The salient point from Politifact's original ruling read as follows:
In his remarks, Obama described the damage to the economy, including losing millions of jobs "before our policies were in full effect." Then he describe [sic!] the subsequent job increases, essentially taking credit for the job growth. But labor economists tell us that no mayor or governor or president deserves all the claim or all the credit for changes in employment.
[...]
Obama is correct on both counts when using private-sector job numbers. But he went too far when he implicitly credited his administration policies.
Matt Yglesias' response to this -- which was the first response I happened to encounter today, though there have been others -- raises the obvious objection, (along with a larger and more useful point Politifact missed):
Really? His exact words were "businesses have created more than 3 million jobs ... they created the most jobs since 2005." That doesn't sound like a president trying to say that he, personally, deserves credit for everything that's happened. Strangely they missed the real boat here, which is that the 3 million jobs created in 2011, through indeed the most since 2005, is actually a low number for an economy with a massive pool of idle labor that needs catch-up growth to regain full employment. What the president said was true, but just underscores the fact that the labor market has been ugly on both the downswing and the upswing.
Our original Half True rating was based on an interpretation that Obama was crediting his policies for the jobs increase. But we've concluded that he was not making that linkage as strongly as we initially believed and have decided to change the ruling to Mostly True.
So, I am left to speculate how this sausage got made in the first place. Let's note that in the original post, Politifact took pains to track down the relevant data that underpinned the claim. For the bulk of the post, they seem authentically concerned with that data. And, on that score, we have this ruling: "Obama is correct on both counts when using private-sector job numbers." What Politifact seems to object to, literally, is that Obama included this statistic in the State Of The Union at all. That's where we get the second, more costly part of the ruling: "But he went too far when he implicitly credited his administration policies."
Here's where we fall in a strange hole. As critics of this post point out, Obama explicitly credited "businesses" for this job growth. But subjectively speaking, by including it in the State Of The Union, it was, indeed, implied that the Obama administration had something to do with it.
But so what? Not for the first time, I'll wonder: "Did Politifact only show up in Washington yesterday?" Because I can assure them that State Of The Union addresses are not known as a venue where a president undertakes a session of searing self-scrutiny. The entire point of these speeches is to frame the administrations' initiatives as success-breeding, in order to make the case for more initiatives, and -- of course -- make the case that the administration should be allowed to continue.
In this case, President Obama stacked up evidence to make a case for an improving economy and thus, his presidency. Not only is this not new to State of the Union addresses, it's not new to political argument in general. It seems to me that Politifact's downgrade is based in nothing more than an utterly banal truth about State Of The Union addresses. You can apply the same standard to all SOTU addresses, and just consider them all to be a little bit falser, if that standard is nothing more than "President X presented some explicitly true facts in order to imply his/her presidency has been a success." (As Yglesias points out, it's more useful in these instances to track down the facts that are omitted.)
Another possible explanation is simply that someone at Politifact was sitting at their computer last night, staring at a blank page, when they finally just shrugged and said, "Screw it, this is half-assed, but I've gotta post about something." Either way, what's been demonstrated in this instance is that Politifact can be criticized into adjusting their ruling. I'm not sure this is necessarily a good thing, frankly! But the bottom line is that this all could have been avoided had a smidge of circumspection been applied.
At the National Press Club tonight, former presidential hopeful Herman Cain delivered the official State Of The Union rebuttal on the behalf of the Tea Party, marking the second time the nascent conservative movement has fulfilled that role. But while Herman Cain improved on the performance of his predecessor, Michele Bachmann, and managed to deliver the standard Tea Party talking points against the Obama administration, he didn't do much to prove the necessity of a Tea Party rebuttal. His critique of Obama was a carbon copy of what every standard issue establishment Republican would say. And there was not much effort to establish anything like a Tea Party platform of policy ideas. In fact, Cain's elocution of a Tea Party platform fell well short of his elocution of his own policy platform.
Cain began the speech with a riff on how badly the Tea Party is disrespected, despite the fact that many people, in his estimation, were "Tea Party people and don't know it." He railed against "media elites" for "marginalizing the Tea Party" -- a curious charge, given the fact that the Tea Party has been wildly and enthusiastically supported by the Fox News Channel, and has already co-sponsored presidential debates with CNN.
Cain moved from there to a broad critique of President Barack Obama and his State Of The Union. He said that tonight's State Of The Union address was filled with "scripted rhetoric, proclamations, and promises of doing things about various problems." More pressingly, Cain said that the speech was filled with "class warfare ... picking winners and losers" and "attacks on businesses and Congress."
Cain next moved into a section of what "we did not hear" in the speech, which for Cain, boiled down to "the real facts about the state of the union." Here, Cain's critique was often effective. Cain is absolutely right that the real extent of the unemployment crisis is masked by the 8.5 percent top line statistic that is commonly referred to as "the unemployment rate." When you add in workers working less than full-time, or who have gotten so discouraged that they've stopped trying to find jobs, the real unemployment rate is much higher. Cain was also correct to note that "economic growth has been anemic." It has, and it will play a major role in determining whether Obama wins a second term.
However, he was on shakier ground when he suggested that our growth rate should be around 5 percent. Tim Pawlenty made the same claim during his presidential run, and if we're being charitable, it was merely ambitious. If we're David Frum, we call it "too good to be true" and a promise he wouldn't, in all likelihood, be able to achieve. And if we're Glenn Kessler, you note that Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton rarely hit 5 percent or more, and never sustained it. (It was also odd that Cain decided to compare the state of our economic growth with that of China, which operates under a command economy that one would presume would be unwelcome by the typical Tea Party member.)
Cain hit on many other points of argument and difference with the Obama administration, blaming the White House for rising gas prices, Obamacare, and the national debt (which Cain said had become "a national disgrace"). But the main point that Cain made about the State of the Union address was that, to his mind, it was "a hodgepodge of little ideas."
"Some of us are not stupid," said Cain. "The state of the union is not good. We want common sense solutions. That's how we do it outside of Washington, and we would like to see some inside of Washington." But here, Cain matched Obama's "hodgepodge of little ideas" with -- well ... with nothing, actually.
Unsurprisingly, Cain signaled an opposition to both government spending and raising revenue. He seemed then, to pivot right to his sweet spot -- the 9-9-9 plan -- by suggesting that Obama's tax reform proposals merely "manipulated around the edges." He then almost came close to discussing "9-9-9" -- the tax code, he said, should be junked outright, and replaced with something that treated "every taxpayer and every business the same." But he went no further than that, making no mention of the plan that defined his candidacy.
It was a disconcerting thing to listen to. Based upon the way Cain has said his candidacy would transform, one expects him to continue to promote "9-9-9" -- along with other "Cain solutions" -- rather confidently and aggressively. It's not certain why he didn't go farther tonight -- if he muted his own message or was restricted from talking about it further -- but the overall effect was self-neutering.
And the glancing mention of "9-9-9" was about the only strongly articulated "solution," despite Cain's insistence on common sense solutions. Cain said that the Tea Party "deserved" a "strong military" and a "brighter future" and probably a pony. And that the Obama administration needed to "stop the class warfare" and "attacking business" and "the blame game" and, most perplexingly, "the racial innuendo." But against the State Of The Union address' call for teamwork and unity and Seal Team Six-like dedication to a mission, Cain's call for people to just be handed what they felt they "deserved" sort of presented the image of the Tea Party as some wealthy, supine dowager, calling for another box of bonbons.
And that was fairly strange, given the fact that the Tea Party has real electoral achievements to tout and a strong record of moving the policy conversation in the Republican caucus in a rightward direction to celebrate. One would have thought, a year after Michele Bachmann's awkward rebuttal, that the Tea Party would have wanted to cite their own contributions to the effort in Washington, instead of deploying all of the passive imagery that Cain chose to place in the center of his oration. Either Cain didn't want to talk about that, or he didn't know enough about it to mention.
Cain ended his rebuttal with a historical reverie about the original Boston Tea Party, a call for a new "revolution," and a reminder to Washington that the Tea Party exists. "Washington is out of touch with the people," Cain said. "We must remind them, we the Tea Party are coming." He closed with a bit of Old Testament iconography: "We know that we are up against Golaith, but we will not become a single David, but an Army of Davids." It was a good image to end on, in that it restored the idea of the Tea Party as a dynamic, active organization. It's too bad that for the larger part of Cain's rebuttal was more in line with Leonard Cohen's famous song about David -- a baffled Cain composing his hallelujah.
Oh, hello, everyone! As you no doubt already know, President Barack Obama will be delivering his State Of The Union address Tuesday night on the teevee. And we know that many of you may choose to use this occasion to get somewhat "chemically altered." We can't blame you! Have you seen the State of the Union? It's pretty vertigo-inducing already! So, to assist you on your adventures with recreational binge drinking, we have prepared for you the official Huffington Post State of the Union drinking game.
In preparing this, we've done our best to account for the sorts of things that are likely to happen, as far as what the president will say, what goals he'll announce, what accomplishments he'll cite, and what part of the pageantry the camera is likely to capture. We've watched a lot of these addresses, so we have a good idea about what is probably going to happen. We also have a good idea as to what will probably not happen. But, as always, these addresses can often feature unexpected moments that get talked about for days after the address.
We've done our best to divine everything that could happen -- but if you get caught by surprise by something we haven't accounted for, we trust the American people to use their best judgment and discretion. As always, however, we encourage you to participate in your country's empty displays of patriotic kitsch safely and responsibly.
What is the State Of The Union?
Take a sip
Obama says: "The State of the Union is strong."
Take a swig
Obama says: "The State of the Union is uncertain, but hopeful."
Pound a shot
Obama says, "The State of the Union is FUBAR. Google it."
Finish the bottle
Obama says, "The State of the Union is "The Hottest State," a novel by Ethan Hawke that I Kindled after Angelina Jolie turned me on to it.
Hot State Of The Union Topics
Take a sip
Obama discusses unemployment, infrastructure spending, deficits, tax reform, the war in Afghanistan, the Arab Spring.
Take a swig
Obama discusses immigration reform, education initiatives, the NATO mission in Libya, high-speed rail, folding the Department of Commerce and trade organizations into one Cabinet-level agency, the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Pound a shot
Obama discusses the use of brutal police tactics on Occupiers, support for marriage equality, Eurozone bailouts, student loan forgiveness.
Finish the bottle
Obama discusses human-animal hybrids, solar flares, poltergeists.
State Of The Union Themes
Take a sip
"The basic American promise."
"This is a blueprint for an economy that's built to last."
"We can't wait."
Take a swig
"This is a make or break moment for the middle class."
"We can settle for a country where there are opportunities for a few, or build a nation where everyone gets a fair shot."
Pound a shot
"To be honest with you, political science pretty much demonstrates that speeches like this one don't really drive public opinion, so can we just talk about that new show 'Homeland'? I mean, wow."
Finish the bottle
"This economy needs the shot in the arm that only strict devotion to Scientology can provide."
Reminder of Accomplishments
Take a sip
Obama reminds everyone about the success of the auto industry, new regulations to hold Wall Street more accountable, health care reform that's helping people who were cut from insurance rolls get life-saving medical care.
Take a swig
Obama reminds everyone that the war in Iraq is over, that Osama bin Laden is dead/al Qaeda is on a path to defeat, that American oil production is at an all-time high, and that he worked with Congress to enact historic deficit reduction measures.
Pound a shot
Obama reminds everyone that he quit smoking, hasn't strapped a dog to the top of the presidential motorcade, and that everyone at Goldman Sachs was really, really sad on bonus day.
Finish the bottle
Obama reminds everyone that Newt Gingrich is a viable GOP candidate.
Goals for the Coming Year
Take a sip
1. Work to help revitalize the U.S. manufacturing sector.
2. Provide support to Afghanistan security forces while executing a sensible drawdown of U.S. forces.
3. Start initiative to spur job training programs for the long-term unemployed.
Take a swig
1. Provide further assistance to Americans dealing with the foreclosure crisis.
2. Continue to work to get states vital infrastructure money for bridges, roads and a power grid.
3. Create a specific plan to achieve bipartisan tax reform.
Pound a shot
1. Support a nationwide student loan repayment model for new college graduates, tied to their post-graduation wage level.
2. Increase offshore drilling permits, along with updated safety regulations.
3. Ramp up aggressive stance with China on trade and currency manipulation.
Finish the bottle
1. Challenge the GOP nominee to seven, four-hour long unmoderated Def Comedy Jams.
2. Charge everyone who put Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close on their Oscar ballot with war crimes.
3. Start smoking again.
Taking On The Punditocracy
Take a sip
Obama: "I know that some say Republicans and Democrats cannot come together to work on behalf of the American people during an election year, but I believe we can and will work hand-in-hand on the most pressing concerns of the American people."
Take a swig
Obama: "I know that some say that the economic recovery I promised never materialized, but the worst is over, and the signs of recovery are everywhere. There is a lot of work to be done, but we will continue to work with Congress to help working families. And if we can't accomplish this together, I will act."
Pound a shot
Obama: "I know that some say that I wasn't born in America, and that I'm a secret Muslim, but as to the rumors that Osama bin Laden is still alive and I intend to appoint him to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors...I say to them, well -- that would be pretty hard for me to pull off."
Finish the bottle
Obama: "I know that some say Lana Del Rey has too thin a body of work and too untested a stage presence to have been given the opportunity to perform on 'Saturday Night Live,' but the truth is that Del Rey is challenging our preconceived notions of the popstar origin story by making an interesting meta-commentary on the pre-fabrication of celebrity."
Historical References
Take a sip
Obama quotes Abraham Lincoln or Harry Truman.
Take a swig
Obama quotes Ronald Reagan or Teddy Roosevelt.
Pound a shot
Obama quotes Dwight D. Eisenhower or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Finish the bottle
Obama quotes Bill Ayers or Herman Cain.
Camera Cutaways
Take a sip
Camera catches any of the following: Harry Reid, Lindsey Graham, Michelle Obama, Eric Cantor, John McCain looking bored.
Take a swig
Camera catches any of the following: Mitch McConnell, Dick Durbin, Paul Ryan, Chuck Grassley, John McCain looking angry.
Pound a shot
Camera catches any of the following: Joe Wilson, Samuel Alito, Dennis Kucinich, Michele Bachmann, John McCain falling asleep.
Finish the bottle
Camera catches any of the following: Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, Adam Scott of "Parks And Recreation" wearing a Letters To Cleo T-shirt, that dog from "The Artist," John McCain with his mouth foaming with blood, John McCain with his mouth foaming with blood from "The Artist" dog.
Audience Reactions
Take a sip
Democrats in the audience take an opportunity to applaud the president's remarks.
Take a swig
Obama makes the wrong pause in the wrong place and gives Republicans in the audience the opportunity to ironically applaud.
Pound a shot
Someone in the audience "pulls a Joe Wilson" and shouts back.
Finish the bottle
Obama is attacked by a trident-wielding back-bencher.
Joe Biden and John Boehner
Take a sip
Joe Biden gamely leads the Democrats in applause. John Boehner occasionally joins in, charitably.
Take a swig
Joe Biden succumbs to some prolonged peal of laughter. John Boehner gives him a look that says, "Jeez, I can't believe I have to sit next to this guy."
Pound a shot
Joe Biden rips his shirt off and waves it over his head, whooping. John Boehner is reduced to tears.
Finish the bottle
Joe Biden is replaced on the ticket by Hillary Clinton. John Boehner is replaced as House Speaker by Eric Cantor. (Also: Biden and Boehner start making out.)
Unexpected Musical Interlude
Take a sip
Obama sings a few bars of "Let's Stay Together" by Al Green.
Take a swig
Obama sings a few bars of "Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do" by Etta James.
Pound a shot
Obama sings a few bars of "Thuggin'" by Freddie Gibbs (feat. Madlib).
Finish the bottle
Obama sings a few bars of "Blades of Baal" by Morbid Angel.
Now that was some exciting action last night. A heavy favorite, with an aristocratic bent, enters the night fully convinced that being crowned the champion by March was completely achieveable, only to end up getting jammed at the very end by a scrappy Southern upstart who everyone thought lacked the money and the machinery to compete. And at Cameron Indoor Arena, too! Amazing! Oh, and also Mitt Romney lost the South Carolina primary.
Yes, hello and welcome once again to an incredibly sleep-deprived version of your Sunday Morning Liveblog, January 2012 Is Killing Us edition. My name is Jason, and today, we will hear from the triumphant Newt Gingrich, who prevailed in South Carolina after reminding voters there of a better and brighter era where you just cold put Juan Williams in his place whenever he opened his mouth. And we'll also apparently hear from Chris Christie, standing in for the emasculated Mitt Romney. And by the way, the news is the Mittens will release his tax returns on Tuesday. This was very hard for him, for reasons we may soon know. Who knows? Anyway, y'all know the drill, feel free to chat it up in the comments, send an email if the mood hits you, and as always you are invited to witness me working out my complicated feelings about America on Twitter.
THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
Bronze medalist Rick Santorum is here, being told that lots of conservatives are going to tell him to get out of the race, by GSteph. Really, though? Santorum says that actually conservatives are "concerned" by the Mitt/Newt choice. "It's a choice between a moderate and an erratic conservative" who loves mandates and chilling on the couch with Nancy Pelosi and amnesty for illegals. He says that he is the guy you won't have to worry about criticizing Paul Ryan's plan or driving his staff away.
GSteph points out that the exit polls in South Carolina found few people who thought he could beat Obama, and twice as many people who believed Gingrich was "very conservative." Santorum says that in Iowa and New Hampshire, the numbers were different, and that Newt had "planted his flag in South Carolina" and that the early races were "baked" much more than "the races going forward."
"Newt finished fourth and fifth," he points out, "where was everybody telling him to get out of the race." Oh, they were there!
On the matter of Gingrich's instability and grandiosity, Santorum says that while Newt is a friend, he has leadership issues -- can't focus, can't stay disciplined. "We need someone who can make Obama the issue in the race, not the Republican nominee." Asked if he was saying Newt couldn't be trusted in the White House, Santorum says that he's a "very high risk candidate." Unfocused and unreliable and prone to episodes where he undermines conservatives. He's really mad at Newt for briefly supporting climate science, instead of frenzied denialist nonsense.
GSteph shows Santorum the super PAC ad that inspired him, at last Monday's debate, to run a pretty bit of punch and counterpunch on Mitt. How will he compete against that sort of big money? Santorum really doesn't have an answer for that question unless he can answer, "I recently came into a multi-millionaire patron," so he launches into a monologue about it being a long race and he has a strong record.
Where will Santorum get his next win? Santorum says that he's just going to "go out and compete" and "pick up delegates" and he'll "have an opportunity to win states."
"Huge" is how he describes the body blow that Romney had to absorb in South Carolina yesterday. I'll say. This time yesterday, my co-workers and I were gushing over our colleague Elise Foley's lede, which read: "South Carolinians say it's the state that picks presidents. Mitt Romney used to say so too." Santorum, echoing Palin, says that "the longer this goes on...the better for conservatives." Maybe Palin can give him her endorsement of the day next time?
And now it's panel time, with George Will, Katrina VandenHeuvel (hereafter referred to as KVH), Matthew Dowd, Amy Walter, and Ron Brownstein.
How is George Will feeling about this? He hates Mitt AND Newt. Seemingly well -- he notes that Mitt Romney's electability argument is pretty specious given the fact that he is really only good at losing. "Mitt Romney's problem is somehow his Romneyness," he says.
Dowd says that the "most consistent thing" in the race is Romney's inability to close the sale in this race. "Maybe it's not his Romneyness, maybe it's his Mittness." Okay, that doesn't really make sense but Dowd delivers the line so hilariously that I'm going to allow it. "He cannot sell himself as an authentic, competent conservative."
KVH says his "bleeding" stems from the tax issue he won't contend with, and the revival of the Nixonian, "southern strategy" stuff isn't helping Romney either. KVH notes that while some Democrats may be cheering Newt's rise, they should consider the ugly politics that come along with it, and curb their enthusiasm.
I don't know what in particular GSteph doesn't like hearing -- maybe it's too early in the morning to hear someone get real about the toxicity of Nixonland-style politics, but he talks over KVH and cuts her off. Dick move, Stephanopoulos. Our reward is we get to watch a video of Gingrich using Juan Williams as a punching bag. Which I only feel a little bad about, on Williams' behalf, because let's face it, being a punching bag is exactly what he's paid to do. He's actually an exceptionally well paid punching bag.
We get to see Gingrich emasculate John King, too, and I also don't feel THAT bad for him because CNN's debates really have been terrible. But let's not pretend that Gingrich was really authentically angry at getting that question. He planned for it, rehearsed a response, knew he's get it, hoped he'd get it, got it, and delivered the rebuke he'd drawn up in debate prep. And his execution was excellent, if I'd been advising him I'd have told him to do the very same thing, but let's not get it twisted: Newt Gingrich was HAPPY that he got that question.
"Debates matter a lot," GSteph says, and then Ron Brownstein says a bunch of demographic stuff that's boring and not worth recapping. Romney "faces a risk" that the "downscale vote" might coalesce around Newt.
"There's a reason that Santorum called [Newt] erratic," says Walter, who adds that with the Bain Capital issue and Romney's inability to answer for it, the problem isn't Bain, it's Romney's dodginess. KVH says that the campaign is giving America an "MRI" of the fundamental problem of income inequality. She notes that Romney's father never forgot to release his income taxes. (If I'm not mistaken, George Romney was the first politician to make a habit of that. Any George Romney enthusiasts out there?)
Dowd's campaign positives? Debates matter, consultants don't. Will offers a "minor dissent," saying that Newt's candidacy is premised on the idea he can outdebate Obama. "We're talking about giving the guy nuclear weapons for eight years, perhaps," says Will. You just KNEW he'd find a way to do Newt dirty, didn't you?
Dowd says that all he was trying to say was that Newt's demonstrated that he's the "strong, decisive conservative" and not Mitt. Brownstein says that the GOP is changing into a downscale party that Romney doesn't connect with. Maybe, Ron, but mind that you don't miss the rest of the country looking too close at South Carolina -- Mitt connected just fine with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.
GSteph says that a lot of people were mystified by the fact that Romney didn't seem to understand that OF COURSE people wanted to look at his tax returns. That did seem a little odd! KVH reckons that Romney's left behind the entire job creator argument, and that his campaign seems not to have anticipated a moment would come when they'd not be the frontrunner. Dowd's skeptical that there's a smoking gun in Romney's taxes, saying that Romney just strikes him as someone who just got it in his head that it wasn't something he had to do and he wasn't gonna do it, by golly! Brownstein says that the contents of his tax returns go to his unsteadiness as a candidate, and I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.
Will points out that a small sliver of a silver lining for Mitt is that Republicans all across the country have woken up this morning to the possibility that Newt Gingrich was going to be at the "top of the ticket" and that is DOOM DOOM GET IN A TOMB for their hopes and dreams, unless they too want to crank up the white-hot anger machine and scorch the planet with hate.
More paneling about politics. Is Florida a "must win" for Mitt Romney? No. Though it has fifty delegates that are winner take all. Walter reminds us that we have two debates next week (ugh) and the same dynamic as the week before. Dowd says that by Tuesday, the race will be tied and Gingrich is heading for a six to eight point win, so for that to change, Romney will have to do something to alter the dynamics of the race. Brownstein says that Florida is slightly more favorable territory to Romney, because it's more "upscale" and South Carolina is more evangelical and more populist.
KVH isn't sure Romney's campaign stump speech section railing against "entitlements" is going to fly in Florida, which is packed to the gills with shambling old people. She may be forgetting that whole thing Romney does where he "tells people what they want to hear" because he's a "transparent liar."
She goes on to say that the debates would matter even more were it not for the super PAC ads. For like the third time today, GSteph cuts her off. George, please, get over your complicated feelings, okay?
More crosstalk.
Dowd says that he's not buying the super PAC hype, saying that it's not that big a difference maker. I disagree -- super PACs are playing a big role in the week-to-week rise and decline of these candidates.
Can Romney come back? Will says it can be "good to have a bad week," and it's better to have one during "spring training." Brownstein says Romney's still the frontrunner, but that Gingrich can gather a coalition of voters to elongate the race. Walter says that poll respondents say that a core of GOP voters "definitely won't vote" for Gingrich, and it's a larger number than those who won't vote for Mitt under any circumstances.
The panel seems to agree that a brokered convention is not in the cards, because the process is largely "self-consolidating." Will says that it's just "hard to believe" that someone won't simply take the number of delegates needed to win.
KVH says that she "expects and wants" to hear Obama expand on his vision for the future in America, that "lays out a different idea of an economy" in his State of the Union. Will figures he'll "steal a plank" from Romney by attacking China, and shift from taxing people who make a quarter of a million in income to just "millionaires and billionaires."
Okay, at least GSteph is starting to cut off everyone else now.
KVH wants Obama to make a case against the banks on behalf of those who were eaten alive by predators in the housing crisis. Dowd points out that he's got very little credibility there, with a chief of staff from Citi and a planned convention speech at Bank Of America stadium.
What about the uptick in good economic news? Walter say that Americans want to see someone who does what they say are going to do...and I think now everyone is just slapping strings of cliches at the teevee camera.
Will offers that Obama has broken a long streak of Democratic presidents who have been perceived as weak on foreign policy and defense -- "he has largely immunized himself there." He and KVH disagree on whether Mitt Romney and Leon Panetta have the same policy on Iran or not. KVH says that the neocons are advising Romney, not Obama. Dowd says that it boils down to macroeconomic trajectory -- "if it's up he wins, if it's down he loses" -- and the scary thing is that the White House is just not in a position to affect the outcomes -- the primary worry is the Eurozone crisis.
Here's This Week's cutesy "Close Up" segment, on math:
THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW
Today, the Apple Genius Bar of politics discusses the mystery that is Mittens, with Major Garrett, Andrea Mitchell, Kathleen Parker, and Neil Swidey.
This was taped on Thursday, so Matthews says "Mitt Romney is still the heavy favorite to win the nomination." LOL. I mean, that's probably still true in spite of everything, but L to the OL power, just the same.
But what could possibly by motivating Mitt Romney to run for President, besides perhaps an unquenchable thirst for power and/or Combos? (You get all the Combos you want at the White House mess as President, ask anyone.) Well Matthews reckons that Romney could be doing it for his dad, to prove that a Romney can win the White House. Or, Romney could be "driven by ideology." Let me know when you figure out what that ideology is! Or! Romney's past career in business built the foundation for a political career. But that's not motive...that's means. Someone, please show Chris Matthews two episodes of Law And Order at random so that he understands the distinction!
Swidey, who is a Boston Globe man, says that Mitt is substantially driven to follow in his father's footsteps. He says that in the past, he's shown Mitt video of his father and watched his "face dissolve" so that you could see Romney's neural circuits and cheekbone armature and "jowl servos" and EVERYTHING.
"It's all psychobabble to some extent," says Matthews, referring to the topic, as well as 76% of all political commentary. Ha! And now Parker says she's bored with the conversation and says she wants to stop talking about the father and son stuff. SHUT UP NEIL SWIDEY, AND YOUR YEARS OF REPORTING! (Though Kathleen is right, it is BORING.) But now Andrea Mitchell says that Romney is hanging his dad's picture all over the campaign bus, so I guess we're back to talking about this.
Swidey says that the words that came to most people's mind when they were asked to describe what it would be like to be Romney's neighbor were "high hedges." Trimmed by undocumented workers!
Chris Matthews loves the term "high hedges." Also "data driven." Is he data driven? Is he literally "Data," from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Will he care for a kitten, play the violin, learn about human emotion? Will he bomb Iran? When Gingrich worries about EMP attacks, does he recognize that the moment may come when terrorists knock President Romney offline?
Hey, is Major Garrett ever going to get to talk, today?
There he is! He says, "yes you can have input and output." So, bring some HDMI cables to your interviews with Mitt.
"He doesn't seem to relate to people" the way his father did, says Mitchell, who built this car called the "Rambler." Maybe George Romney BUILT Mitt! Maybe Mitt is the real rambler! The MIDNIGHT rambler!
Parker says that she's noticed that Romney has an inner circle of devotees that like him very much and that there's just an endearing awkwardness that keeps him from showing fellowship beyond his close circles. Garrett says that personally, Romney's a smart and anatlytical guy. Swidey suggests that Romney falls in a hole when he's on camera, because off camera, he does a better job of connecting to people.
Matthews kvetches that if Romney becomes president, he'll be all analytical and "boring like Barack Obama has become boring." Mofeaux just aren't doing enough to excite Chris Matthews up in this piece! Then he shows people some mock commercial about Mitt Romney using Staples' "That was easy" slogan as his own. Was that supposed to be funny or awkward of forgettable or did an intern working on the show win a bet or get blackmail? OH WHO CARES I'M BORED NOW. [Flounces.]
Matthews says that the GOP super PACs are so far dwarfing the Obama super PAC's in terms of money raised so far. Mitchell says these super PAC's are "new" and they've "changed the political climate." Which, I though we'd already known? Garrett says that big corporations and labor unions prefer the super PAC model because they can seamlessly develop messages, focus group them, and put them on the air without all the nettlesome bureaucracy.
Swidey says that the big question for Obama is does he not adopt the practice that the Supreme Court enabled -- and for which the court earned Obama's rebuke during the State of the Union address.
Here are some things that Matthews doesn't know. Garrett says the SOTU is expected to be partisan, but with Jack Lew in the mix, there's a glimmer of hope that there could be some common ground coming that allows work to get done. Mitchell says that the Hispanic community in Florida is different and more prone to Newt Gingrich's approach to immigration than they are Romney's. Parker tells Matthews that while everyone thinks Romney is perfect because he doesn't drink, he has a weakness for Cool-Whip. (?!?) Finally, Swidey offers that the Bain critique may not offer the Obama administration the cleanest shot at Romney, because they hold both parties responsible for the financial crisis.
Will Obama -- and these are the words Matthews uses, don't blame me -- have "the juice to run a top-speed campaign this year?" Major Garrett says HE WILL HAVE THE JUICE. Mitchell says THERE WILL BE JUICE. Parker says the European economy COULD DRINK THE JUICE. Swidey says some other stuff.
JUICE, PEOPLE. Politics is the Kool-Aid Man, cold busting through the walls of your rec room, with pitchers of sugar water, forever.
MEET THE PRESS
So, today on MEET THE PRESS, Newt Gingrich will lecture David Gregory and if Chris Christie can withstand the gale of condescension, he'll respond on Mitt Romney's behalf. And then paneling!
Gingrich thanks South Carolina for being generous and says that they sent "two messages" last night -- one about the "real pain" of unemployment, and also "anger." Pain and anger. PANGER. DEATH METAL. Newt Gingrich channels your rage tattoos and obliterated your superego with pure id.
Gregory notes, with perhaps a trace of skeptical sarcasm, that Newt -- the longtime Congressman and lobbyist-historian to the stars -- is running as an "outsider." Gingrich says "I was not a lobbyist, you know better than that." No. He was. He was just the kind of lobbyist that doesn't have to register as a lobbyist.
But anyway, he says that Romney is an establishment candidate, and he is a Reagan candidate, who shows up in a footnote in the Reagan diary, but secretly Reagan wishes someone would reanimate his corpse so he could endorse Gingrich. He says that Romney is the guy who doesn't give answers, won't talk about his record, and hides from critics. "The governor is trying really hard to avoid answering anything." And Gingrich's sudden insistence on transparency -- much of what Romney would LOVE LOVE LOVE to find out about Newt is tied up in contracts that require third party permission -- now includes coming clean on RomneyCare, his tax returns, and his famous deleted computers from his days in the Massachusetts statehouse.
Will Newt be satsified with the release of Romney's tax returns? Gingrich says that you want to find out Romney's weakness before he becomes the nominee. He then reiterates his belief that he will outdebate Obama.
Gregory points out that his unfavorable numbers are crazy high, and that plenty of Republican figures think he's erratic and dangerous. Gingrich says that "the establishment should be afraid of a Gingrich presidency" because he'll change everything and make them sad. He also says that everything everyone is saying about Gingrich was once said about Reagan. (Remember when Rick Santorum stood next to Reagan at a debate and basically said "YOU, SIRRAH, ARE A DANGEROUSLY CRAZY MEGALOMANIAC."
And Arsenal has lost to Manchester United, which is the soccer equivalent of having a cathetic removed by tying it to a Ford Taurus and pushing it off a cliff.
Anyway, Gingrich is happy to be considered as a Ronald Reagan figure, which only he considers. And remember, everyone, Gingrich REALLY BELIEVES THIS STUFF. This is the guy whose staff quit on him all at once. Gingrich now says that he wanted to "provoke" his staff in that way. Sorry, that's bonkers! Who runs for President and says, "Wow, look at all these fine people who have generously flocked here to help me, giving up their jobs and free time. I CAN'T WAIT TO RUN THEM OFF TO MAKE A POINT THAT I'LL HAVE TO STILL BE EXPLAINING MONTHS FROM NOW."
Gregory asks if voters should judge his conduct, in terms of his wanting to bang all sorts of ladies, whilst being married to other ladies. Gingrich says sure, and South Carolina said that was all okay. Open marriages for everyone, provided that they are a Reaganesque super genius ideas factory.
Gregory wants to know if Gingrich is going to win independent voters by referencing Saul Alinsky -- Gingrich says yes, because Reagan did it. If it weren't for people like Newt Gingrich, nobody from any other generation other than an ancient one would even know who he is -- as a political figure, his biography and ideas have been as dead as disco for some forty years. Nevertheless, I have to imagine that Ezra Klein is on point here:
Pretty sure Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals' didn't include "become president and focus on negotiating with Congress and major industries."
Mitt Romney is going to release some tax returns. What say you, Newt? "That particular issue is set aside." (We'll see!)
Here's Chris Christie, to defend Romney's manhood. Naturally, he says that Romney is awesome, and has awesomely decided to release his tax returns. Gregory points out that Romney's defense of his decision to not release them (before he flip flopped on that -- CLASSIC MITTENS) was because the Democrats would use it as the ingredients of an attack. (Why imply this?) Christie says there's surely nothing to worry about in the tax returns he hasn't seen because no one's seen them because Romney thinks that someone might see something, point at it, and start making those INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS noises.
Christie reminds Gregory of that time he pressured Romney to release his returns, like any good surrogate would do. He says that last night's result was disappointing, but "you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and fight." Except that I think Romney has a team of footmen who do the "picking up," and the "dusting off" is handled by a space-age dust absorption unit manufactured by Dyson that is not yet street-legal, because of ONEROUS OBAMA REGULATIONS GRRR!
Christie says that he told Oprah that eventually, Mitt will meet the challenge of connecting with humans without leaving the impression that he will crush their small pocket pets with his powerful robot arms.
What's disqualifying about Newt Gingrich? First, he says "we don't need another legislator in the Oval Office," and that we need someone who can "bring Congress together." They have to have run a state and a company. "Newt Gingrich has embarrassed the party," he says, saying that Romney hasn't and won't. "I don't need to regale the country with the entire list" of things that Newt did wrong, Christie says. But doesn't Mitt Romney WANT you to? Because it would help his campaign? I tell you, Chris Christie and Tim Pawlenty are the strangest campaign surrogates ever.
Christie does allow that Gingrich could beat Obama in the general.
OH GOD, Gregory has a "slightly different way" of asking Christie if he'd consider being vice-president. He doesn't. Christie wants to be Governor or New Jersey. And he will, unless he becomes, through some Freaky Friday accident, the Hispanic junior Senator from Florida.
Gregory takes the next five minutes to keep asking the question, and this is Meet The Press at it's best, when it's merely inessential viewing, instead of unwatchable.
Can the President say anything at the SOTU that would galvanize the GOP to work with him? He says the embracing Simpson-Bowles would do it. I doubt that! Obama put a budget plan that involved a $4 to $1 trillion ratio of cuts to revenues, with changes to the eligibility age of Medicare, and John Boehner said, "Hot damn, this would be a great win for us!" and took it to his colleagues, who spoke with one voice, "If Obama says he wants it, then we reject it." The same will be true for Simpson-Bowles. And it would be true for fighting tooth decay. Obama durst not come out in favor of brushing teeth, lest the entire Bible belt collapse under the weight of gum disease expenses.
There are some perfunctory questions about Christie's record as governor, which have all been asked and answered before. He predicts that the "New Jersey Giants" will beat the 49ers today.
Okay, we're panelling with Joe Scarborough and Mike Murphy and Katty Kay and Chuck Todd, who says that "if two weeks ago we'd told you that electability is a key issue you'd have assumed it was going to be a Romney victory." But last night, Newt won the electability argument. It reminded me of a tweet I saw last night, which reminded me of something that's true about politics.
Can I just mention as an ex-pollster that "electability" as something voters consider is an utter myth and invention of pundits?
Anyway, you'd be shocked to learn, I imagine, that Gingrich was seen as the conservative alternative to Romney, by South Carolinians.
Scarborough says that Romney lost because Newt uses the "politics of resentment and grievance" to obscure his record, which is not conservative. He reminds that he called Paul Ryan a "right-wing radical" and says there will be more talk of a brokered convention. (Of that possibility, I'll tell you that Josh Putnam of Frontloading HQ told me on Twitter yesterday, "Not gonna happen.")
Murphy says that Romney has to seize back the momentum at the debates before Florida. Which will be interesting.
Kay says that Gingrich won because the campaign was about "heart" -- voters see Gingrich as a rebel who will channel their anger against Obama. But Gingrich is erratic, with peaks and valleys and personality that he'll need to "keep in check" as Romney runs through all of his monetary and structural advantages.
I am just going to put this out there: most of this analysis is REALLY being strained through a South Carolina prism, and the state's own unique ways actually tell 90% of the story. It's a very sexy prism, because of all the yelling and screaming at debates and the big sexy super PAC fight. But in a few weeks, we'll be in Nevada, and then Colorado, and Michigan and Maine. Those voters won't respond and react the way Palmetto State voters do. Which isn't to say that Newt can't win those states as well. I'm just saying, "PEOPLE. LAST NIGHT DID NOT PRODUCE A UNIFIED FIELD THEOREM THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING."
Opinions that are on the fringe everywhere else are in the mainstream here. Issues long since settled are reopened regularly with the prybars of ancient prejudices. (Ron Paul, of all people, comes down here and blames Roe vs. Wade on the 1960's, and quotes John Adams on why the Beatles sent the country to hell in a bucket. Willard Romney, that old smoothie, yells at a heckler while appearing to be channelling Joe McCarthy.) There is no scar tissue down here, only scabs that open, over and over again.
Willard never really understood this. He never measured the depth of resentment down here and, inevitably, he found it turned against him and he drowned in it. He never saw the diamond-hard identity of the place as an actual opponent. They all came down here talking about the greatness of "America," but they were doing so in the historical home office of national division. In 1780, Tories in this part of the state handed the state back to the British. Fifty-odd years later, John C. Calhoun concocted a theory of American government that nearly came to guns over the tariff, and one that eventually did come to guns over the issue of owning human beings as property. South Carolina didn't ratify the constitutional amendment allowing women's suffrage until 1969. The state's sad history on racial desegregation need not be rehearsed here again, but it was a group of South Carolinians — most notably Harry Dent and, later, Lee Atwater — who invented the method of turning that resistance to racial integration into an anti-government paradigm that made the Republican party a dominant force for over 40 years. Willard Romney was remarkably blind to all of this. He never saw South Carolina as a singular place that is itself alone. He never saw it as anything more than another media market. Goddamn, was he ever wrong.
Chuck Todd says that "everytime Newt's risen, the people at American's Elect get more phone calls." Ha! Well, Jon Huntsman is free now to be that phony organizations' phony candidate!
Oh, we're not done yet? I guess not. Will there be more "fantasy football" where the GOP dreams of getting Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels into the race? Murphy says sure, but Romney could come back and win Florida. If he does, everything calms down. If Newt wins and suddenly everyone goes nuts, there will be even more freaking out, and suddenly Newt Gingrich is turned into some sort of unsympathetic, bizarro version of Ned Stark, beheaded by someone like Haley Barbour, who Scarborough says has called the potential Gingrich presidency a disaster.
Scarborough says that "people like Bill Kristol" is talking about other candidates getting on the ballot in various states, junking up the delegate process, and then "Jeb Bush is dragged kicking and screaming" to the Florida convention. I would love to spend a year liveblogging that level of hilarity, but it's the wish that's just never going to come.
Chuck Todd says BROKERED CONVENTION IS OUT and THIRD PARTY RUN IS IN. So, good news for Gary Johnson!
Meet The Press reports that Meet The Press had an awesome moment today when Meet The Press asked Newt Gingrich a question on Meet The Press. So, Meet The Press is a special little snowflake.
And that's all, thankfully. Time to enjoy the rest of Sunday before next week arrives and brings its five million debates with it. Everyone get excited about Newt Gingrich, I guess! And football! Hope your football team wins today, all right? And I hope everyone has a great week.
At Thursday night's debate, we hoped that the immediacy of the South Carolina primary and a change in debate moderators might yield a different sort of show than the one we watched this past Monday. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a difference.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was still clumsily evading the call to release his tax returns. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was still raging at the questions offered up by the moderators. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was still not being asked any questions. But then came that magical moment when we all gasped, "Holy cow! What dreadful thing is Rick Santorum doing with that microphone?"
Well, it was one heck of a frozen moment. In HuffPost's Ben Craw, it planted a seed of inspiration. And he ran with it, creating a new remixed version of the debate. And then...well, to be honest with you, we actually asked him to -- uhm...tone it down considerably. But that he did! And so we are happy to bring you Thursday night's debate from an alternate reality, in which former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum tries to "make it sexxy," and ends up "making it awkward."
He begins by saying the "larger boob became the norm around the turn of the century, and it shows no signs of deflating" and then contradicts himself a couple of paragraphs later. So I'm not sure what's going on here, but the use of the word "deflating" in the first paragraph should probably be a signal that I'm about to get washed away in a tsunami of boob puns:
Despite the worldwide embrace of enormous knockers, I remain convinced that the pendulous pendulum will, at some point, begin to swing in the other direction. Style is, after all, cyclical in nature. I know what you are thinking: Only a gay man could seriously posit the notion that big boobs might "go out of fashion." However, being d'un certain age, I am old enough to remember when tiny titties roamed the Earth.
You know, hats off to anyone whose life and career inevitably leads to being permitted to write, "I am old enough to remember when tiny titties roamed the Earth." Few earn that sort of privilege, and those that do, often fail to use it. I have longed for the day that sentence might show up in a George Will column, for example.
Anyway, as to answering the question, "Will small breasts make a comeback?" Doonan posits that it all rests in the hands of Rooney Mara and David Fincher:
Images of Mademoiselle Breton's boobies came flooding back on a recent trip to the cinema. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is, as those of you have seen it will be painfully aware, intermittently enlivened with startling bursts of no-holds-barred sado-masochistic porn. Whenever the narrative starts flagging, off come the clothes, and here come Rooney Mara's modest, well-shaped natural chests.
I guess not everyone had the same takeaway from Lisbeth Salander's rape scene as I did!
The search doesn't yield the hoped-for, grail-like items ("no Dick Fuld helicopter gear"), but the swag on display -- eye-confounding paintings, tacky jewelry -- nevertheless conjures up that crash-era nostalgia. The pièce de résistance, a "cheap Fender knockoff" whose nominal value derived from an assortment of autographs from a "random battery of rock eminences," is a fitting tribute to the excess that led to the 2008 crisis -- subprime asset, but check out the counterparties!
Once inside, alas, I realize that I'll be cruelly deprived of artifacts from the high housing-bubble era that I'd been hoping for. There's no Dick Fuld helicopter gear, no obvious selections from the bungalow-sized shoe closet that belonged to the wife of Lehman equity-shop boss Joe Gregory. The collection on display turns out to be a fairly random jumble of tasteless corporate pecuniary display. When I ask a woman behind the jewelry table how much of the stuff in her cases came from the Lehman bankruptcy -- and whether the Lehman shop in question was the Wall Street mothership, or the bank's erstwhile satellite operation in the (real) McLean, she can't help. "I just work for the auction house," she says.
Still, once I let go of my fond reveries of a strictly Lehman-themed, San Simeon-style road show, I realize that the contents of Ballroom A -- which, as another docent explained, originate from "liquidations, U.S. customs, estates, and a variety of different sources" -- furnish plenty of edifying glimpses into the lifestyles of the 1 percent.
The hot scoop of the day, where emeritus members of the Committee To Save The World are concerned, is that President Barack Obama is mulling naming former White House economic adviser Larry Summers to head the World Bank, replacing outgoing Robert Zoellick, whose term will end midway through the year. (This cuts against the previous hot World Bank scoop from last year, where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was rumored to be in the running for the position.)
But, hey! Larry Summers! How does that grab you? And more importantly, does it grab you in a way that threatens to cut off the circulation of blood to your brain?
Nearly everyone in the world says Larry Summers is a brilliant economist. And it's certainly possible to take a glancing look at his recent record in the Obama administration and extract the portrait of a happy warrior for the White House. He argued reasonably against the debt-ceiling default hostage crisis in the face of mounting oppositional insanity and a media that had decided that said insanity was just an interesting side of an important debate. He repeatedly made the casefor additional stimulus at a time when that quest was fairly quixotic. And earlier this year, Summers gave some voice to the concerns of those who feel that the age of austerity is being balanced on their backsides, writing, "[A]t a deeper level, citizens of the industrial world who believe that they live in progressive societies are right to wonder why increasingly affluent societies need to roll back levels of social protection."
And everyone agrees that Summers is brilliant ... just brilliant! So much so, that it seems that whenever anyone has to begin a monologue about Larry Summers, the first few cubic milliliters of breath are always expended on behalfof testifyingto that brilliance. Once that's out of the way, however, what follows is often several paragraphs explaining how Summers is terribly unpleasant to be around and often inexplicably wrong. Just the sort of person you want helping Third World nations restructure their debt and Europe survive its calamitous fiscal crisis!
In his recent book, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President," Ron Suskind rather relentlessly depicts Summers as the pre-eminently dysfunctional cog in the Obama White House's financial crisis decision-machine. This is, on one level, not too terribly surprising -- what the Obama administration inherited wasn't so much the aftermath of the previous administration's policies as it was a decades-long litany of financial deregulation and bad decisions that had Summers' fingerprints all over it. As "Inside Job" director Charles Ferguson put it, "I found Summers everywhere I turned."
Consider: As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy treasury secretary and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial industry. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that caused so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws.
So when Summers joined the Obama administration to ostensibly help the country recover from all of this, it couldn't have been a particularly happy task to wade into all of the wreckage he'd authored. And that comes through, again and again, in Suskind's account. Adam Moss, who (along with Frank Rich) mounted a deep extraction of the book's major plot points, singled Summers out from a dyspeptic wrecking crew that also counted Tim Geithner and Rahm Emanuel, and in so doing, provided one of the more excellent distillations of how Summers was portrayed:
You think the portrait of Geithner is more devastating than the one of Summers? I guess. In that instance you cite, Obama asks to put the dissolving of Citibank on the table, and Geithner simply ignores him, "walking back" the decision, in political parlance. More insidiously, he creates the framework, borrowed from Hippocrates, of "first, do no harm," which effectively cuts off any bold reforms for fear of their potential effects on the market. But Summers is portrayed as an egotistical nut job, single-mindedly determined to get Bernanke's job; when he doesn't get it, he goes bananas. He is supposed to be a conduit for the collective advice of the team, but undermines his colleagues, only passing along advice and information that supports his positions. I was kind of stunned how many officials were willing to go on the record against him.
Peter Orszag relays this eviscerating quote that Summers said to him about Obama during the worst of the economic distress. According to Orszag, Summers says, "You know, Peter, we're really home alone. There's no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes." Later, Orszag says to Suskind, "Larry just didn't think the president knew what he was deciding. Was this [obstruction of the president's wishes] outright and willful?" In other words, asks Orszag, was Summers saying, "I know more than the president flat-out? That strikes me as ... likely." In an amazing memo, Pete Rouse, who would replace Emanuel temporarily as chief of staff, recommends firing Summers for "Larry's imperious and heavy-handed direction of the economic policy process." Romer says Summers made her feel "like a piece of meat."
In the end, nobody's talking to Summers — not even his crony Geithner. Furious that Geithner didn't recommend him for Bernanke's job, he stands Geithner up at a dinner for all the former Treasury secretaries -- Summers is the only living former secretary not there. Geithner says, "Larry would rather be in Davos than at dinner with me." At least according to Suskind, the only person who could stand Summers was Obama, which -- in Suskind's telling -- was a misjudgment that had a rather profound effect on the first chunk of Obama's presidency.
Yes, that hits Suskind's depiction of Summers pretty squarely -- at a time when the nation's middle class was in crisis, Summers spent his time grousing about his own blunted ambitions, gumming up the decision-making process, serving as inter-office underminer, and, of course, not going to dinner with Timothy Geithner. (That's a real garter-popper, where Beltway cocktail etiquette is concerned.)
Simply read the White House's own extraordinary February 2010 "annual review" memo, which top Obama adviser Pete Rouse prepared for the president. Suskind excerpts it in the book and the White House has not challenged its authenticity:
"First there is deep dissatisfaction within the economic team with what is perceived to be Larry's imperious and heavy-handed direction of the economic policy process.
"Second, when the economic team does not like a decision by the President, they have on occasion worked to re-litigate the overall policy.
"Third, when the policy direction is firmly decided, there can be consideration/reconsideration of the details until to the very last moments.
"Fourth, once a decision is made, implementation by the Department of the Treasury has at times been slow and uneven. These factors all adversely affect execution of the policy process."
If Summers' querulousness was driven principally by the fact that he didn't end up at the Federal Reserve, one can view his possible appointment at the World Bank as a sort of "make up call." And who knows, maybe the prestige of that position would be sufficient to mine a previously untapped well of sunny disposition. That's not something that I'd bet on, and the third and fourth paragraphs of Felix Salmon's piece begging Obama not to make this appointment goes to the root of why this is a critical thing to consider in making your World Bank appointment:
The only way to be an effective World Bank president is to be an effective diplomat. Like all CEOs, the head of the Bank reports to a board of directors -- but at the World Bank, the board of directors which meets twice a week. And they’re not friendly hand-picked board members, either -- they’re political appointees who fight their geographical corners, who live full-time in Washington, and who work full-time out of offices within the Bank itself. If you want to get anything done at the Bank, you need to persuade the board to leave you alone and not micromanage every decision you make.
You also need to be an almost superhuman manager. The World Bank has more than 10,000 employees from over 160 countries, with offices in more than 100 countries around the world. The range of cultural expectations they bring to their jobs is truly enormous, and the amount of political jostling and mutual incomprehension which results is entirely predictable. In order to manage this rabble, you need a very high level of cultural and interpersonal sensitivity.
That need for a "very high level of cultural and interpersonal sensitivity" reminds me of the last time the words "Larry Summers" and "World Bank" found themselves inextricably linked. In 1992, Summers, then serving as the bank's chief economist, famously penned a memo that asserted, "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that." As you might imagine, this caused something of a "furor," and Summers' damage control response was to say that he was intending to be "sarcastic." (I guess there was just something about Larry's personality that prevented his satiric pollution memo from being received in the spirit it was intended?)
At any rate, it seems pretty clear that his prickliness, his record of being a source of dysfunction, and that teensy little thing where the policies he supported helped wreck the economy would all disqualify Summers from a position that you can apparently suggest Bono might adequately fill without getting laughed out of the room. Naturally, you don't have to take my word for it, just aska woman. (Speaking of, I can't remember how to say "Oh, for f-ck's sake" in French, but I have to imagine that anyone who happened to be standing within earshot of Christine Lagarde when she heard this news learned it.)
With Romney's GOP rivals now loudly calling for him to release his tax returns, the logical push-back against President Barack Obama is for the White House to finally release his long-form birth certificate. What's that? he already did that? And he's even making jokes about it to Betty White? That's right, it must have slipped my mind.
HENRY: I don't know how many years, maybe you do, George Romney released of his college transcripts, but Republicans like to complain that the president has not released his college transcripts. What is the stated reason for that?
CARNEY: I would refer you to the campaign...I think we've answered this a bunch. The tradition of releasing income tax records for serious potential nominees, and nominees of the two parties is well established. It's not a law. But it's well established. It's one this president abided by when he was a senator. It's one numerous Republicans and Democrats have abided by and we think it's a good idea.
I think we're past the point where it's unreasonable to consider a candidate's college transcripts out of bounds. Rick Perry's grades gave good chortle, so I don't begrudge anyone the chance to experience the mirth that comes from the college records of any of the other candidates. (I got a "C" in child psychology myself -- by all means, point and laugh!) But it's something of an apples-and-oranges comparison: we're not going to learn about any potential conflicts of interest by looking at Obama's grade in Freshman Comp.
That said, "I would refer you to the campaign" is kind of silly! I guess this means that the White House isn't planning some big news conference reveal, like they did with the birth certificate.
Huffington Post | Jason Linkins | February 8, 2012