Tuesday opinion.
Eugene Robinson:
"End of an era" is an overused trope, but in this case it's appropriate: The last of the old Southern Democrats is gone.
Sen. Robert Byrd had long since repented, of course. The West Virginian, who died Monday at 92, deeply regretted his segregationist past, which included a year as a member of the Ku Klux Klan and at least several more years as a Klan sympathizer. He eventually became a passionate advocate for civil rights, and he was one of the most vocal supporters of legislation making the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday.
Dana Milbank:
"Justice Marshall's judicial philosophy," said Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, "is not what I would consider to be mainstream." Kyl -- the lone member of the panel in shirtsleeves for the big event -- was ready for a scrap. Marshall "might be the epitome of a results-oriented judge," he said.
It was, to say the least, a curious strategy to go after Marshall, the iconic civil rights lawyer who successfully argued Brown vs. Board of Education. Did Republicans think it would help their cause to criticize the first African American on the Supreme Court, a revered figure who has been celebrated with an airport, a postage stamp and a Broadway show? The guy is a saint -- literally. Marshall this spring was added to the Episcopal Church's list of "Holy Women and Holy Men," which the Episcopal Diocese of New York says "is akin to being granted sainthood."
The Republicans are losing Milbank. That is a feat.
Adam Serwer:
A Guide To the Kagan Smears
Republicans have had to work hard to drum up a case against Kagan. Here's what they've got, and how Democrats will respond.
Sentinal (NH) on health reform:
Polls showed that a majority of Americans always supported various elements of the health care bill, if not the bill itself. But a new poll by The Associated Press and the GfK marketing group shows that support for the plan as a whole has risen to its highest level since the survey started last fall. Some 45 percent of respondents favor now the law, while 42 percent oppose it. Only a month ago, opponents were ahead of supporters, 46 percent to 39. People are apparently beginning to understand that the law is an expansion of access to affordable private insurance, not a government takeover or a socialist plot.
As the reforms take effect and that realization spreads, New Hampshire’s Republican senatorial candidates may have to find a different ideological hobby horse to ride into the fall elections. Promising to take away people’s access to health care might not prove as popular as they thought.
Greg Sargent with more on Weigel's firing:
Folks at the traditional news orgs, for good reason, think very highly of Ben Smith. So listen to what Smith says: That these two forms "can flourish side by side, each going places the other is unwelcome, and each correcting for the other's weaknesses."
Time for those who are anonymously dissing this form of journalism to just shut the hell up, let us all do our thing, and let the readers decide. If this type of blogging is not "real" reporting, just ignore it and readers will eventually figure out that the traditional approach is the only one that's genuinely informing them. And the new approach will just wither way. Right?
This remains a big story because of what the dinosaurs in the press don't understand about what being partisan means. To them, non-partisan simply means not pissing off conservatives. Am I exaggerating? No, I am not.
Ezra Klein:
My policy analysis, of course, isn't infallible, and I operate from some principles that conservatives don't find congenial. I hope you read analysts who aren't me. I certainly do. But I'm also hampered because the Republican Party is not, at this moment, a policy-focused institution. That's not because they're bad people. It's because they're out of power, and minority status is thick with incentives for an irresponsible form of opposition. Serious policymaking requires embracing unpopular proposals, and there's no reason for Republicans to do that right now. They want Democrats to sag under the weight of all the unpopular compromises that come from making policies, and then they want to race past the Democrats in the next election.
Ari Melber closes the book:
I wasn’t going to write about Dave Weigel, the talented journalist who left the Washington Post on Friday and joined MSNBC on Monday, because the media has already thoroughly parsed this rather insular media story. But then I read Weigel’s own account of recent events.
Surprisingly, Weigel repeats the very error that drove his traditional media detractors. Weigel’s critics think his mistakes were about objectivity, and apparently he agrees. But this story was not really about bias. It was about negativity and power...
So while many saw Weigel’s fall as a revenge of the inventions – blogs are blurry, Twitter is scary and his colleague’s media listserve was just a press conference waiting to happen – his problem was actually pretty basic. He got caught going negative on people who matter.
