Jill Lawrence:
Six ways the House GOP leadership crisis could end
2. The GOP tries for a Tea Party-establishment hybrid. This is the Paul Ryan option. The austere budgets crafted by the former Budget Committee chairman and 2012 vice presidential nominee made him a conservative hero. But Ryan is a deal-maker. His most famous deal, the 2013 budget agreement he worked out with Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, expires Dec. 11 and must be replaced. Dent said Ryan would have to collaborate with Democrats to accomplish anything — but if he does, “he will have his legs taken out by some of his own members.” Already the Tea Party Patriots group has branded him a Ryno (a personalized variation of RINO, or "Republican in name only").
Not surprisingly, Ryan is unenthused about the job. As speaker, he wouldn’t see much of his young family. He’d lose his chance to rewrite the tax code as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He might lose his best shot at the presidency. As the national face of conservatism, he could even lose his Wisconsin House seat. His hometown and home county are heavily Democratic, and though he and Mitt Romney won the district in 2012, it went for Obama in 2008.
Yesterday's list of demands from Ryan (who would run if they are granted) doesn't change the gist of the article, which is not going to shelter Ryan from his dysfunctional caucus.
Charlie Cook:
Even if Ryan assents, however, the path to the speakership might require concessions to the Refuseniks that he would be unwilling to make. One Freedom Caucus demand is to codify the so-called Hastert Rule, requiring that a majority of the chamber’s Republicans support a measure before the full House can consider it. This would change the House to one in which a plurality, not a majority, rules. Nothing could pass the House without approval from 124 Republicans, the barest majority of the chamber’s 247 Republicans, effectively moving the ideological center of gravity to the right. This would further marginalize the House, already the most ideological part of the elected government.
Here’s the dilemma for House Republicans. The Refuseniks have made it clear that they won’t accept an establishment choice, with the possible—though not certain—exception of Ryan. Unstated, but equally true, is that a much larger number of mainstream Republicans won’t accept anyone from the Freedom Caucus or sympathetic to it. Not wanting the tail to wag the dog, they’re unwilling to give in to what they see as a few dozen members taking the speakership hostage. The GOP’s majority is pretty firmly entrenched, but a surefire way to become a minority again is for the House to adopt the Freedom Caucus’s agenda. Keep in mind that the electorate next year, when the presidency is on the ballot, is very different from the older, whiter, more-conservative, and more-Republican voters who gave the GOP an impressive majority in 2014.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Looking for new polls? Kerry Eleveld has the NBC/ WSJ poll and Kos has the rest.
Here's where things stand (as always, less smoothing for a better up to date feel, this one with 6 month trend):
That's a pretty solid lead that doesn't seem to be tightening at the moment. We'll see what happens when Biden gets in, or doesn't.
Molly Ball:
How to Find Out if Joe Biden Is Running for President
Take a nap. Wake up in a month. The end.
Sean Trende:
Conventional wisdom seems to revolve around two theories: (1) He really hasn’t made up his mind, or (2) he’s simply waiting on standby in case something big drops on frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Either is plausible, although the first strikes me as less plausible. If nothing else, Biden is a canny politician, and he understands the difficulties of entering the race this late in the game. I don’t think he’d simply wait around this long without a good reason.
So let me explore a third possibility: Biden is simply intent on avoiding the errors that plagued previous late entrants. If he does end up running, I’d say this was certainly the case.
Here's the Republican side:
Only the 6 who matter are listed, and since it won't be Carly Fiorina, I could have gone with 5.
CSM:
What’s happened to Carly Fiorina’s presidential campaign? She was supposed to be a Republican rising star, propelled upward by her crisp dissection of Donald Trump in the last GOP debate. But her latest poll numbers, at first glance, look awful.
Over the past month, she’s dropped from 9 to 5 percent in Fox News surveys, for instance. She’s gone from 11 to 7 percent in NBC News polls.
Worst of all, she’s cratered in CNN/ORC’s just-released numbers, plummeting from 15 percent in mid-September to 4 percent today.
Digby:
The question remains, though. Why do these people love him so much? I doubt the answer lies in ideology. Rather, this is an emotional attachment and an expression of primal rage. And if you look at the other Republican circus — the House speakership battle — you can see what it might be. Both the Trump voter, the Tea Party regular, the talk-radio crowd and the Freedom Caucus are all saying the same thing: They’ve been lied to by the Republican Party and they’re not going to take it anymore.
For years, they have been loyal foot soldiers for the GOP, putting up with candidates like Mitt Romney, a milquetoast campaigner who changed his political stripes as often as he changed his underwear. They watched George W. Bush screw the pooch in Iraq, embarrassing the party and the US of A in the eyes of the whole world. They waited and waited for the Republicans to fulfill their promises to overturn Obamacare, ban abortion, outlaw gay marriage, eliminate the deficit and kick in the teeth of any tin-horned terrorist who dared to take the name of America in vain. These were all the promises the Republicans ran on. And yet nothing happened. And they don’t understand why.
Byron York:
"The Republican establishment, for the first time, is saying, off the record, this guy can win," noted Joe Scarborough on MSNBC Monday morning. "I've heard that from everybody. I don't hear anybody saying he can't win the nomination anymore."
That doesn't mean Republicans have made their peace with a Trump victory. On the contrary — some are preparing to do whatever it takes to bring him down. Which could lead to an extraordinary scenario in which GOP stalwarts go to war to destroy their own party's likely nominee.
Paul Waldman:
In any case, the theory underlying not just Jeb’s candidacy but also Rubio’s is that eventually, the voters will come around to someone reasonable. They may need to be pushed in the right direction, but they can’t stick with the likes of Trump and Carson forever. The lower-tier candidates will drop out, the voters will coalesce around a smaller number of alternatives, and the choice will become clear, at which point one of the sane candidates will win.
Which could well happen. But by now, we should be wary of assuming anything about this race. How many people expected Trump to do as well as he has for as long as he has? The establishment and his opponents have tried a series of arguments against Trump, none of which have worked. He’s not a real conservative. He’s erratic. He’s ignorant. He’s killing us with Hispanics. If he was the nominee, we’d lose in a landslide.
All of which is true, but so far it hasn’t mattered. Trump is still leading, as he has from almost the moment he got into the race.