Saturday punditizing, the "cheer up" edition.
CBS News:
On extending Bush-era tax cuts at home, he said, "I want to make sure that taxes don't go up for middle-income families on January 1. That's my top priority." He reiterated that he opposes a permanent extension of those tax breaks for the wealthy.
"I'm not going to negotiate here in Seoul on those issues, but I've made very clear what my priorities are," he said.
NY Times on the GOP 2012 Presidential auction race:
The generous giving to the state PACs is just one aspect of the 2012 money race, which is well under way. In recent months, many of the candidates-in-waiting have been actively cultivating the kinds of major donors needed to finance expensive presidential bids.
Mr. Romney has been by far the most assertive, according to interviews with a half-dozen top Republican fund-raisers, already pushing for commitments from major donors should he formally decide to run.
Let's skip the vote and offer the position to the highest bidder. Think of the savings!!
Charles Blow:
Democrats still searching for a silver lining to the waxing they took last Tuesday can cheer up a bit. According to a new poll, the public may already be experiencing a bit of buyer’s remorse about the choices they’ve made, and Republicans seem to have unrealistic expectations about what their leaders will be able to accomplish.
Gail Collins:
Finally, I believe that the president will pick the right course on the deficit.
Unfortunately, before we go any further, we are going to have to discuss the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which is led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson.
Until this week, I had expected to be able to go through my entire life without ever having a single thought about Erskine Bowles.
He’s a businessman best known for having been deputy chief of staff for President Bill Clinton. And now that I think of it, I do remember that at some point in the 1990s, I entertained a fleeting question about what kind of name Erskine was.
Simpson, the better known co-chairman, is a former senator who is famous for his witty remarks, such as referring to the AARP as "the greedy geezers of America" and calling Social Security "a milk cow with 310 million tits." In other words, he is exactly the sort of person who gives being colorful a bad name.
Jonathan Bernstein:
I assume I can’t really blame William Galston for the headline of his piece arguing that ACA sunk the Democrats, but while the article happily doesn’t use the word "proof", it is at any rate not a conclusive argument.
The real answer, I’m afraid, is that we don’t know the effects of health care reform on the elections.
Susan J. Douglas:
As we brace ourselves for much self-righteous braying from the carotene-infused Mr. Boehner, let’s take a moment to remember the few things that actually did go right in this election. Crazy people, political illiterates and deep-pocketed moneybags were soundly rejected by the electorate. Christine O’Donnell, the "I-am-not-a-witch" candidate, lost badly and cost the Republicans that Senate seat. Sharon Angle, who advocated privatizing Social Security and Medicare, proposed using Scientology to rehabilitate felons, and bragged to high school students that she couldn’t tell the difference between Asians and Latinos, also lost, despite huge amounts of out-of-state contributions in support of her bid. (Turns out the money couldn’t trump all those indistinguishable people of color who marched straight into the voting booth to pull the lever for Reid, who is about as charismatic as egg albumen.)
Ted Koppel:
To witness Keith Olbermann - the most opinionated among MSNBC's left-leaning, Fox-baiting, money-generating hosts - suspended even briefly last week for making financial contributions to Democratic political candidates seemed like a whimsical, arcane holdover from a long-gone era of television journalism, when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.
Ted's not a big fan of cable tv.