Visual source: Newseum
NY Times editorial:
A direct assault on Dodd-Frank would be so blatantly biased toward banks that it would be sure to provoke a public backlash. So the Republican plan is to delay and disrupt reform. The effort is partly ideological — an insistence that regulation is unnecessary, no matter the evidence to the contrary. It is also a campaign fund-raising ploy, because Wall Street will reward the opponents of reform. Of course, Democrats are themselves not indifferent to Wall Street campaign cash, which raises the question of how effectively they will counter the Republicans’ aims. Here are areas to watch.
Paul Krugman:
Recently William Cronon, a historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, decided to weigh in on his state’s political turmoil. He started a blog, “Scholar as Citizen,” devoting his first post to the role of the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council in pushing hard-line conservative legislation at the state level. Then he published an opinion piece in The Times, suggesting that Wisconsin’s Republican governor has turned his back on the state’s long tradition of “neighborliness, decency and mutual respect.” So what was the G.O.P.’s response? A demand for copies of all e-mails sent to or from Mr. Cronon’s university mail account containing any of a wide range of terms, including the word “Republican” and the names of a number of Republican politicians.
If this action strikes you as no big deal, you’re missing the point. The hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear.
Cronon's piece was featured
in Abbreviated Pundit Round-up on 3/24.
EJ Dionne:
The battle for the Midwest is transforming American politics. Issues of class inequality and union influence, long dormant, have come back to life. And a part of the country that was integral to the Republican surge of 2010 is shifting away from the GOP just a few months later.
Republican governors, particularly in Wisconsin and Ohio, denied themselves political honeymoons by launching frontal assaults on public employee unions and proposing budgets that include deep cuts in popular programs.
Democrats in the region are elated at the quick turn in their fortunes. A few months ago, they worried that a region President Obama dominated in 2008 was turning against him. Republican triumphs in Wisconsin and Ohio, as well as in Indiana, Michigan and Iowa, all pointed to trouble for the president.
Now, for reasons having more to do with decisions by GOP governors than with anything the president has done, many voters, particularly in the white working class, are having second thoughts.
Unfortunately, the only way for the country to get how extreme the GOP is these days seems to be to elect them.
Kaiser Health News summarizes the health reform bill seen through the Democratic and Republican partisan lens. Guess what? They don't agree.
Mark Blumenthal:
A new poll of 50 competitive congressional districts by the Democrat-sponsored polling organization Democracy Corps finds "the new Republican majority very much in play," but much recent punditry argues the opposite -- that Democrats face long odds to reclaim the House of Representatives.
Although caution is in order when seeking to predict an outcome that is still 19 months away, there is some truth in both perspectives. To understand why, consider the recent postings of various pollsters, pundits and statistical modelers:
More partisan lens disagreement. I'm shocked—shocked to find gambling in this casino.
Spiegel:
Sunday's defeat in Baden-Württemberg is a huge blow to Angela Merkel and her party, showing just how deeply opposed Germans are to nuclear power plants. Commentators say the chancellor will still be able to hold on to power. Some predict she will woo the Greens to clinch a third term in 2013.
"Fallout from Japan" is tasteless as a headline, but I think I've spotted it used
now and again.