Visual Source: Newseum
Day 1 of Netroots Nation in Minnesota is about to get underway...
WSJ:
Newt Gingrich’s image as an idea man and party leader positioned him well for a presidential run. But since launching his campaign last month, Mr. Gingrich has seen his support erode among likely GOP voters, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Why do they insist on calling him an ideas man instead of what he is: a philandering out of touch gasbag? No matter, his joke of a candidacy is done. More about this poll later.
David Frum on conservative pay-for-play:
Understand: We are not talking about commercials, separated from the main flow of editorial content. Heritage work is embedded and inserted directly into the editorial flow of the Limbaugh program, as if selected without regard to the money paid.
Also understand: It's not just Limbaugh, and it's not just Heritage.
Because nothing says "authentic" and "real" like conservative talk radio.
National Journal:
Senators leading the charge to repeal $5.4 billion in ethanol subsidies sound cautiously confident they will prevail in next week’s dueling votes. But it won’t be an easy climb to 60 votes: The powerful ethanol industry can point to an alternative bill that shows it’s reforming—and the White House is on board with that effort.
The Senate on Tuesday easily defeated, 40-59, a measure to repeal the subsidies and the corresponding tariff. Its chief Democratic sponsor, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, lamented that the way the measure’s cosponsor, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., forced a vote on their bill rankled Democratic leadership and other members of the party.
“We think we had 60 votes before this all started, and then it started and it became clear we didn’t have 60 votes because of the process that Coburn used,” Feinstein said shortly after the measure failed. When asked if she could get 60 votes next week, she responded: “I think so. If we keep the Republicans and get the Democrats.”
Harold Meyerson:
When Your Base Is Nuts
Each of the non-entrants has reasons for not taking the plunge, many of them compelling. But a larger general barrier looms for any sentient Republican contemplating a candidacy: Today’s Republican Party is so whacked, so loony, so fey in the attic, that winning its nomination requires taking positions that will render the nominee unelectable come November 2012.
NY Times:
Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the [Bush] White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.
Juan Cole:
It seems to me clear that the Bush White House was upset by my blogging of the Iraq War, in which I was using Arabic and other primary sources, and which contradicted the propaganda efforts of the administration attempting to make the enterprise look like a wild shining success...
I believe Carle’s insider account and discount the glib denials of people like Low. Carle is taking a substantial risk in making all this public. I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned.
It certainly seems entirely plausible, given the political environment at that time.
EJ Dionne:
Perhaps I should thank the current crop of Republican presidential candidates for providing me with an experience I never, ever expected: During this week’s debate in New Hampshire, I had a moment of nostalgia for George W. Bush.
Let me note that this was tempered by another response to Bush that I’ll get to. Yet compared with the New Hampshire Seven — and with today’s Republican majority in the House of Representatives — Bush was the reincarnation of Theodore Roosevelt.
Yeah, the Bush administration was awful. And yeah, these guys are so bad, it makes yesterday looks a bit better. But just a bit. The Bush administration was still awful (see above with John Cole.)