Visual source: Newseum
With President Obama's poll numbers rising, the cagematch that is the Republican primary getting bloodier by the day, and Rush Limbaugh dictating and dominating the Republican narrative, Republicans are finding themselves at a loss, fumbling around for some sort of viable and coherent strategy while staggering aimlessly and ungracefully around from one tactic to the next without any discernable sense of purpose other than sheer survival. In other words, it's been a good week to be a Democrat.
Steven Erickson at The American Prospect looks at the backfire strategy of the Republican Party:
If the Republican Party alienates the independent vote as much as it seems intent on doing, it will be because of a collective disconnect with the rest of the country that barely skirts the sociopathic, and to that end, this has been the month when one of the great political parties of the Western World in the last 200 years, a party co-founded by the nation’s greatest president, revealed itself to be in the grip of a sexual hysteria. Gonzo radiohead Rush Limbaugh’s character assassination of not just one young woman but, by the simplest of extrapolations, tens of millions of women belied once and for all the right’s contention that the recent contraception controversy is about religious freedom. [...]
Just on cravenly political grounds, the response of the right should be more stupefying than it was. John McCain (whose condemnation of Limbaugh has been bracingly unequivocal and dishearteningly rare among conservatives) polled 43 percent of all women voters in 2008. At the rate the Republican Party is going, it will struggle to get 33 percent in 2012, leaving the party to try scaring up seven out of ten men (whom women outvote). That none of this had any apparent impact on Tuesday night’s result, that the candidates showed no more cognizance of what happened these past eight days with the female electorate than they did the Tuesday before or the Tuesday before that, and that Romney’s opportunism was so determinedly unfazed may mean—in terms of Republican prospects in November—that the more things stay the same, the more they change, and not for the better.
Speaking of alienating voters,
Michael Medved at
The Wall Street Journal notes the weird Republican strategy of attacking college graduates:
The angry, populist tone of a seemingly endless battle for the GOP presidential nomination could damage the Republican Party in building a long-term connection with the fastest growing group of swing voters: college graduates. [...]
The segment of the voting population with undergraduate and advanced degrees will continue to rise in 2012 and conceivably could represent a majority of all voters in 2016. This growth trend extends to every ethnic group in the country and represents inarguable good news for the American economy. But it's bad news for clumsy and misguided Republicans who seem determined to hand Democrats the advantage when it comes to appealing to the increasingly educated electorate.[...]
The Republicans can't possibly build a winning coalition by recruiting only college grads any more than they can prevail by connecting exclusively with the currently rich and successful. But if they appeal to future dreams instead of present circumstances, they could easily assemble big majorities. Applauding such aspirations instead of belittling them will enable conservatives to honor the best American traditions of upward mobility. With more and more of our fellow citizens completing college degrees, it's also the only way that Republicans can win.
Reuters reports on the latest GOP scramble:
Representative Jeff Fortenberry, who has introduced legislation on the issue, acknowledged hesitation by some fellow Republicans to take on the incendiary issue. But he said a delay could give Republicans time to recast the issue as a question of religious freedom rather than women's rights.
"We'll keep trying to appropriately frame the debate about this core American principle," Fortenberry said.
"Trying" being the operative word for Republicans. The GOP won't be able to reframe the debate away from women's rights so long as one of their chief mouthpieces -- woman hater Rush Limbaugh -- continues his war on women. They can stand by Limbaugh
or they can try to reframe the debate. The Republican Party can't have both.
Steven Benen, meanwhile, looks at the GOP complaint that President Obama doesn't give them enough photo ops:
Of all the things for Republicans to complain about, this has to be one of the more peculiar.
This is, after all, an election year, and I suspect the president would enjoy the good press that comes with getting something done.
But therein lies the point: the prerequisite to formal ceremonies that celebrate a meaningful legislative accomplishment is ... a meaningful legislative accomplishment. If Republicans want more events in which lawmakers stand by Obama's side as he puts his signature on an important bill, perhaps they should complain less, compromise more, and start sending some worthwhile bills to the White House.
It's not as if Obama is quietly signing major legislation into law in secret.
The New York Times profiles another chapter in Republican hypocrisy:
As part of their broader campaign to repeal health care reform, House Republicans are determined to kill off an independent board that is supposed to help rein in federal spending on Medicare.
Their rhetoric is predictably distorted: charging that “15 unelected bureaucrats” should not be able to “ration care.” In truth, the independent payment advisory board of nongovernmental experts is specifically precluded from rationing care, and Congress, not the board, has the final say on what cuts should be made.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that repealing the board would drive up federal spending on Medicare by $3.1 billion over the course of a decade, but the board is especially important as a longer-term backstop against rising costs. Nevertheless, the repeal bill has already passed two committees, with some Democratic support, and it is likely to pass the full House this month. A repeal bill pending in the Senate seems unlikely to pass, but there are no guarantees in an election year.
And how could we not end today's APR with another episode in the comedic roadshow that is Mitt Romney's primary campaign.
Howard Gleckman at
Forbes explains:
Mitt Romney has proposed massive new tax cuts and promised to balance the federal budget. How will he achieve these seemingly contradictory goals?
For now, he isn’t saying. And, in fact, his campaign has been sending out vague and somewhat conflicting signals about where the money would come from to finance his rate cuts and other tax reductions. [...]
If Romney is promising to curb hundreds of billions of dollars annually in tax preferences while leaving popular middle-class deductions and credits unscathed, he has set a hugely challenging goal for himself. And he owes us an explanation of how he is going to do it—before the election.