The biggest threat all along was Jon Huntsman. Thankfully, Republicans were too stupid to nominate him.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

After decades of trying, the Manchus finally crossed the Great Wall in 1644, taking Beijing and establishing the Qing Dynasty. They had an easier time of it than Huntsman in the Republican Party.

The WSJ's Washington Wire is reporting that early on the Obama campaign was worried about one really appealing Republican in particular: 

Jon Huntsman is the former Utah governor who took a moderate stance in a GOP field that leaned to the right. He didn't get very far in the Republican nomination fight, but team Obama viewed him as a serious candidate who could pose real problems in a general election. 

"We were honest about our concerns about Huntsman," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said at a Politico breakfast event Tuesday. "I think Huntsman would have been a very tough candidate."

As for the president, he liked Mr. Huntsman enough to appoint him ambassador to China in 2009. Mr. Messina, who was working in the White House at the time, said he helped Mr. Huntsman win Senate confirmation.

"As someone who helped manage his confirmation for Chinese ambassador, he's a good guy," Mr. Messina said. "We looked at his profile in a general election and thought he would have been" a formidable candidate.

Absolutely. In fact, I wrote a post way back in June 2011 called "Huntsman the Formidable."

Don't get me wrong, I never thought it was going to be him. The Republican Party is just too extreme right now, too ideologically absolutist, to go with someone like Huntsman.

This is the party, after all, that tossed aside conservative-but-not-conservative-enough Dick Lugar in Indiana, who would have been a shoe-in for re-election, and ended up with Dick "pregnancies from rape are a gift from God" Mourdock, who lost badly in what this year was a solidly red state, a race that was his to lose. A party that was so uncomfortable with Mitt Romney that it flirted seriously with the embarrassing likes of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum before finally settling, reluctantly, on the guy who would end up losing. It was not going to get behind a guy, however conservative, who refused to kowtow to the far right, who exposed Republican ignorance, who was just too sane and civil for the current Republican zeitgeist.

Not in 2012. Absolutely not. He just had way too many strikes against him, as I noted here:

Not that Republicans will ever nominate him, mind you. They're too stupid to know what's good for them, and Huntsman just isn't the right sort of Republican for 2012, what with the party getting ever more extreme, particularly with the rise of the Tea Party, and old-school establishment figures, not to mention moderates, or those who just aren't conservative enough for the extremists, even those with a single questionable mark on their record, being purged from its ranks by the right-wing Bolsheviks who run the show.

I wrote a post way back in January 2011 called "If I were Obama, I'd be worried about Huntsman." In retrospect, I was wrong. Obama had nothing to be worried about. Huntsman was never really a threat.

I was actually talking up the Huntsman thing even earlier, with a post in May 2009 called "Huntsman 2012?" What did I say then? "Huntsman may make us all a little queasy, but, thankfully, Republicans are just too stupid to know what's good for them."

He was undeniably formidable, as I wrote in June 2011:

[T]here's no denying he's an awfully impressive man. I might even go so far as to say he could very well be Reagan 2.0, or if not that, given how transformative Reagan was for movement conservatism, at least a leading Republican in the Reagan mold. He just seems to have it all, even the somewhat more tolerant and even liberal positions on some social issues that show him to be a man of the times, not a man against the times, a conservative who is open to progress and change while remaining committed to his fundamental beliefs. Perhaps he could be zeitgeist conservative, the forward-looking proponent of conservatism at a time of massive global change.

Alas:

But not likely, not in today's Republican Party, which would likely rather expel him that have him as its leader.

Yes, Republicans really are too stupid to know what's good for them. Which is good for us, but not good for Huntsman, who will have to wait until 2016, or forever, to make his mark in a party that has abandoned him and all those like him.

 

Do you get what I'm saying?

 

Republicans. Stupid. Huntsman. Never.

Rick Perry: worst candidate of 2012

By Richard K. Barry

I didn't do so good, did I?

Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post made up his own award to "honor" the worst candidate of 2012. And although there were many worthy recipients, Mitt Romney among them if you ask me, I agree with Cillizza that Texas Gov. Rick Perry was the worst. In fairness, the main criterion has to be the candidate who created the highest expectations upon announcing his or her candidacy and then failed miserably to live up to advanced billing.

Do you remember how much of a buzz Perry created as he was preparing to launch his bid for the GOP presidential nomination and how quickly he turned out to be a complete fool?

As Cillizza writes:

Remember back to the late summer of 2011. Perry entered the race with what looked like a straight path to frontrunner status. He was a conservative's conservative with a proven record of doing what he said in Texas. He was a fundraising powerhouse. He had a charisma that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney lacked. It was all there for the taking.

Until it became clear that the idea of Rick Perry running for president was very different than the reality of Rick Perry running for president. While Perry began strong with a much-touted appearance in Waterloo, Iowa, that single event wound up being the best moment of a campaign whose trajectory was almost entirely downward.

And then there was that "oops" moment in the debates when he couldn't remember the third federal agency he would abolish if he were to become president, but things were already over for him by then:

He finished fifth in the Iowa caucuses, sixth (with ONE percent) in the New Hampshire primaries and then dropped out of the race before the South Carolina primary. (In a final coup de grace of bad political judgment, Perry endorsed the presidential candidacy of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.)

It's not like the guy was unheard of and had no track record, it was just that when he got on the really big stage, he made a really big ass of himself.

The lesson should be that the idea of any given candidate is very often a lot more impressive then the reality of said candidate once they have to get out there in front real people and cameras and microphones day after day. Ann Romney was right about one thing: running for president is hard.

Loser candidate of the year was Rick Perry, hands down.

Mitt Romney... what the hell?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I won two presidential elections. Well, okay, maybe one. Hehe. So, uh, how's it goin' with you?

So just how badly are things going for Romney? His favorability rating is now lower than George W. Bush's. As Dan Amira writes at New York (in a post from which the above photo is taken -- the last time they were photographed together, over four years ago):

In what seems like an ominous sign of just how bad things have gotten for Mitt Romney, a Bloomberg News poll shows that he's actually less popular now than George W. Bush. This is the same George W. Bush, you may recall, who was a no-show at the GOP convention, hasn't made single appearance on the campaign trail, and announced his endorsement of Romney through a pair of closing elevator doors — all to prevent his supposed toxicity from rubbing off on the GOP nominee. It's like avoiding garlic because you don't want your breath to smell, only to discover that your breath naturally smells like wet dog.

To be fair to Bush, though, his favorability has risen significantly since he left the presidency, mainly because... well, because he's receded almost entirely from the spotlight, and because it's better not to be a politician if what you're looking for is popularity.

Still... lower than Dubya? And even then, how many of those 43 percent actually like him? Isn't it just that he's the Republican candidate for president and that partisan Republicans are saying they like him simply because he isn't Obama? What his real favorability rating? 25 percent? Is even that too high?

What's telling is that Republicans are already doing the "isn't wasn't me" routine, seeking to point the blame elsewhere, anywhere and everywhere else, for the fact that Romney is their candidate -- and a lousy candidate at that, the worst, I wrote a couple of days ago, since Alf Landon in '36. And as Jon Chait notes, no one really wanted him to win:

So, anyway, whose idea was it to nominate Romney? The basic answer is: nobody's. It's true that Romney managed to persuade many conservative activists to support him during, and in the immediate aftermath of, his 2008 campaign. But by 2010, conservatives had moved farther right and left Romney behind. It's not as if the Establishment were pining away for him, either. Most mainstream Republicans spent the cycle pining away for another candidate to jump into the race.

The real split during the primary occurred between conservatives who reluctantly fell behind Romney because they had no alternative (which is to say, the alternatives were such characters as Michele Bachmann, comatose Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum) and those who were willing to support one or all of those characters rather than Romney. Nobody, except Jennifer Rubin and Matt Drudge, actually displayed any real enthusiasm for the man. He won by default.

And so here he is, spinning his wheels on the campaign trail, showing signs of desperation, falling in the polls, looking utterly spent, and sporting a lower-than-Bush favorability rating. 

Needless to say, things aren't going well and aren't looking good. And even though his party has gone completely crazy, if Mitt himself wants to pin some blame, he need only look in the mirror.

Tim Pawlenty jumps ship

By Richard K. Barry 

Yeah, ha-ha. It should've been me.

I don't know if this will get a lot of play, but it sure is a strange item. Here we are, 46 days to the election, and Mitt Romney's campaign co-chair Tim Pawlenty has decided now would be a good time to resign that position to take a job as a bank lobbyist.

According to The New York Times:

Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, is resigning as a national co-chairman of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign to take a job in Washington as a top lobbyist for a group representing banks and financial companies.

Mr. Palwenty's new role as President and chief executive of the Financial Services Roundtable was announced by the organization Thursday morning. In a statement, the group said that Mr. Pawlenty would step down from his role at Mr. Romney's campaign because the organization is bipartisan.

This really is odd. Is it that things are so tense within Team Romney that Pawlenty couldn't wait to get away? Is it that any thought of being rewarded with a cabinet post in a Romney administration is pretty much a lost cause? Or is it just too hard for poor Tim to hang on thinking that if he had only stuck it out, he couldn't be doing any worse than his party's nominee?

Don't forget, he probably was the only credible candidate who could have appealed to the Tea Party right as well as the party establishment and maybe attract enough swing votes. As dull as he would have been as a candidate, it's possible, with the economy in the shape it's in, dull would have worked.

I'll bet he really is shaking his head at the bone-headed decision he made to quit his bid for the nomination when he did.

I almost feel sorry for him. Then again, as a lobbyist for the banks, he'll be making bucket loads of money.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

We don't need no education

By Mustang Bobby 

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) told the Value Voters:

We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.

I know where he's coming from with a comment like that to conservatives. He's not saying that smart people aren't conservative; I know a number of people who are both smart and conservative, and I respect them. And I don't think he's saying that only stupid people are conservatives, either, although there's a lot of circumstantial evidence in that direction. What he's saying is that the average voter doesn't consider themselves to be "elite" or "smart" and therefore he can make the argument that there are more of them than there are of the pointy-headed nerds or Chablis-sipping snobs and intellectuals (which is also a dog-whistle for gays, Jews, and uppity blacks), and the average conservative is better than them. It's its own snobbery; and it's ironic given Mr. Santorum's comment during the primary campaign about President Obama wanting everyone to go to college — "What a snob!"

Anti-elitism is the backbone of conservative populism. The thinking is that the "smart people" aren't the ones who dig the ditches or work in the factories; they have no idea what an honest day's work is like sitting in their ivory tower writing witty blog posts while Joe or Josephine the Plumber who never made it past high school but go to church every Sunday and marry people of the opposite sex are the real Americans, paying their taxes so that welfare queens can ride around in their pink Cadillacs. It makes for a great soundbite.

The problem with that argument is that given the chance, Joe or Josephine would love to have their kids or grandkids graduate from high school and go on to Harvard or the University of Florida, and if they had the chance themselves, they'd probably take some classes at the community college. And if someday they fell on hard times, they would demand that the government give them a hand, too, even if they don't want to acknowledge it (or in this case, even know where it comes from. Speaking of smart...). It's not that they're hypocrites. They have the natural human instinct to try to make things better for themselves... or in some cases, just survive.

By the way, I've spent a lot of time in my life working with what Mr. Santorum considers to be the average conservative voter, and a lot of them were really smart. I knew carpenters and truck drivers who can talk about Shakespeare and philosophy at the grad school level. (I also know a number of smart people who can't figure out how to work the pop-top on a can of soda.) Granted, there are a number of really stupid people out there, too, but as one of my carpenter-philosopher friends noted, "Stupid people don't know that they're stupid, because if they did know, they wouldn't be stupid in the first place."

Mr. Santorum is putting a sweater vest on the old George Wallace racist anti-intellectual outside agitator tropes, and in today's politics, it has a certain appeal. But only to those voters who don't know how stupid they are.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Romney at Bain is fair game

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Outsourcing? Excellent... Now release the hounds!

With the Obama campaign just now starting to get into full swing, and starting to define its opponent (a key task of any presidential campaign), Mitt Romney has taken a lot of heat lately over his work at Bain Capital.

It started during the Republican primaries, if you recall, when his Republican opponents, desperate to fine something to bring him down, used Bain to brand him a job-destroying vulture capitalist -- which he was. He weathered that storm largely because his opponents were so awful, such bad messengers, but also because Republicans, and particularly the extremists who vote in the party's primaries, aren't terribly comfortable with anything that smacks of a critique of capitalism, including of the ugly vulture variety. ("He made a shitload of money destroying other people? Good for him! God bless America!")

But things are much more difficult for him now: Obama is vastly superior to Republicans like Gingrich and Santorum, the campaign's gone national, people are starting to pay attention, and independents and others not on the Republican right are -- oh, how shall I put it? -- less forgiving of Romney's practices. It's not that he's made a lot of money, not that he's been a "successful" businessman, it's how he made that money -- and how he continues to make it given his ongoing ties to Bain (and of course what he's done with it since).

And recently it's been reported very publicly that Bain made a lot of money, with Romney benefitting in huge ways, by outsourcing jobs. As the Post put it:

Mitt Romney's financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On top of that, making matters worse, there's been "aborted fetus-gate," suggesting that Romney and Bain would do anything for a buck (or, rather, millions of bucks).

As far as I'm concerned, this is all fair game. Just as Romney's finances (tax returns, tax shelters in Switzerland and the Caymans, etc.) should be out in the open, so should his work at Bain -- what he did when he was there and how he's continued to profit off its activities in the years since.

And I think it's a winning issue for Obama, who can draw a clear distinction between what he's done to bring the country back from the edge of the abyss and Romney's bloodthirsty business record. And if Romney actually wants to push back on it, defending his record and his tenure at Bain, so much the better:

The Romney campaign will begin to aggressively push back against President Obama's accusations that the Republican was an "outsourcing pioneer" today, a source privy to the the campaign's strategy told BuzzFeed.

As Obama's predecessor might have said... Bring. It. On.

(image)

Raise your hand if you think Santorum is truly sincere in his praise for Romney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I get how politics works, and so I get that what you say during a campaign may not be what you really mean, or that you might not really mean anything, that it may all be situational, and so I get that what, say, Romney's former opponents are saying about him how is vastly different, if not the exact opposite, of what they said back during the heat of the primaries, but this is just ridiculous:

One-time GOP presidential contender and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on Saturday told conservative voters that Mitt Romney's message on social issues was "solid," vouching for his one-time rival before a gathering of social conservative voters.

"I've talked to Gov. Romney, and I have no doubt, and I mean this in all sincerity, I have no doubt he understands the centrality of family. He understands the importance of family for our culture, for our economy, and for our future," Santorum said at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., according to media reports.

Really? No doubt? All sincerity? Please.

This is just the sort of bullshit you expect from any politican, perhaps, but it always seems even more extreme in its Republican form, given that Republicans always seem to fall into jackbooted lockstep behind their leaders, a typical right-wing thing to do, even with less-than-desirable leaders like Mitt, and it shows that Santorum is more partisan than ideologue, a man more of party than of principle, which those paying attention always knew, what with his long career in Republican politics, but which during the primaries was lost when he was spinning himself, with the media playing right along, as a man of great moral conviction.

Don't get me wrong, I do think Santorum is generally consistent, at least these days, now that he's out of office, in his ideological, theocratic extremism, but that just means this pro-Romney cheerleading is all the more transparent. It's all for show -- and it's all about the lesser of evils.

Sure he wants Romney, as he would have any Republican, to beat Obama, but that doesn't mean he likes Romney. Indeed, I suspect he was being more honest when he was slamming Romney, just as Newt and the others were, for being, to put it mildly, insufficiently conservative and not at all the right person to lead the party against Obama.

And -- think back -- he slammed him hard, suggesting even that Romney was really no different than Obama.

Unless Santorum is completely shameless, in a Romney sort of way, there's no way he meant what he said about Romney being "solid" on social issues. Well, unless "solid" means "yeah, okay, I guess he's better than the alternative, and, yeah, I guess I have to say something positive about our guy because I want to have a future in conservative politics and don't want to be seen as disloyal."

And it's pretty clear that's how he meant it.

Jeb Bush is not the future of the Republican Party

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In an early scene of the movie The Contender, President Jackson Evans (played by Jeff Bridges) tells Virginia Governor Jack Hathaway (played by William Petersen) that he, the governor, is the future of the Democratic Party... and always will be.

(It's one of my favorite movie lines ever, one that has broad application: "You're the future of [insert organization name]. And you always will be.)

Jeb Bush has been the future of the Republican Party for a long time now. And perhaps he always will be. It's not clear that his time will ever come.

**********

Jon Chait wrote a post yesterday in which he stated that "[Jeb] Bush is clearly engaged in an effort to position himself as the next leader of the Republican Party.

Chait's argument is essentially that Bush, anticipating a possible Romney loss in November, is "setting himself as the cure" to what ails the party by "publicly urging Republicans to moderate their tone toward Latinos and to embrace immigration reform" and more generally by "follow[ing] the example of his brother's 2000 campaign, offering a great deal of moderation in tone and very little in substance." In other words, Bush, who "speaks fluent Spanish and has a Mexican-American wife," understands that his party is doomed unless it successfully courts the Latino vote and that it can't do that by taking a hardline stand on undocumented immigration of the kind Romney took in courting the party's right-wing base during the primaries.

And Chait thinks this is what Republicans will be looking for in 2016, should Romney lose:

If you try to imagine the Republican consensus after a potential losing election, it will look like this. It will recognize that its harsh partisan rhetoric turned off voters, and will urgently want to woo Latinos, while holding on to as much as possible of the party's domestic policy agenda. And oh, by the way, the party will be casting about for somebody to lead it.

I agree with Chait's assessment that "[t]he Latino vote is both growing in size and seems to be tilting ever more strongly toward the Democrats, a combination that will rapidly make the electoral map virtually unwinnable," but disagree with his prediction of what the Republican consensus would look like. Indeed, on that second point I think he has it completely wrong.

While there's no doubt that Bush would be a formidable candidate in 2016, not least because he would likely have much of the party establishment behind him, including many of the big-time donors (along with the likes of Karl Rove, who organizes those donors), there's also no doubt, I think, that the party will continue to drift rightward with or without Romney in the White House.

A Romney loss wouldn't send a message to the party that it should lose the "harsh partisan rhetoric," whether on immigration or anything else, and certainly wouldn't bring about the return of sensible Republican moderation, or what passed for moderation once upon a time, it would be a clear indication to the extremists in the ascendancy, those purging non-absolutists from their ranks, from Dear Leader Rush all the way down to the grassroots, that the party erred badly in going with what Newt Gingrich called "a timid Massachusetts moderate" and that the way to win in future would be to go with proven ideologues, with true believers of the right.

In other words, a Romney loss wouldn't mean a turn to Jeb Bush, or to a similarly pragmatic and non-absolutist conservative like Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie, it would mean a turn to someone like Marco Rubio. Indeed, the only reason Republicans didn't go with such a conservative this year is that no one -- not Gingrich, not Santorum, not Perry -- emerged as a credible right-wing alternative to the shamelessly pandering Romney.

Sure, Republicans quickly fell into lockstep behind Romney, but that's to be expected of Republicans. It doesn't mean the party likes him. And many in the party will be quick to blame him should he lose, just as they blamed John McCain last time, but worse. You really think Sarah Palin and her right-wing ilk will say to themselves, "Let's get behind Jeb Bush, he's the right sort of bipartisan moderate to lead us after that whole Romney debacle"? Of course not. They'll be out for blood and they'll be looking to nominate one of their own in 2016. (It doesn't help Jeb's cause that he's criticizing today's GOP, even going so far as to say that Ronald Reagan wouldn't be welcome in it.)

Again, this is not to say that Bush would necessarily lose. 2016 is a long way away, and it's possible, if not likely, that the Republican Party as a whole would respond with some sense to a loss in 2012, maybe even that it would come to appreciate the significant demographic shifts that are turning the electorate against it.

But I doubt it.

The party may indeed be looking for someone new to lead it after November. I just have a hard time believing it'll be Jeb Bush, whose time always seems to be right around the corner.

Super June 5, 2012: Recall in Wisconsin, five presidential primaries, and American democracy in action

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Richard K. Barry

MJWS:

We're not going to be live-blogging tonight's rather significant election results -- notably the recall vote in Wisconsin, five presidential primaries (including California and New Jersey, with just one state left after today), and a pile of congressional primaries -- but Richard and I are going to comment throughout the evening, updating this post fairly frequently.

In Wisconsin, exit polls are showing a close race, so close in fact that there may be a recount, with the process dragged out for an extended period, but I think it's pretty clear Gov. Walker will survive. Polls had him up by 3-6 points, and I suspect that's where it'll land. Richard will delve into why this may be, and a lot of it has to do with simple exhaustion after a year of this.

And, I must say, while I detest Walker and have opposed him vigorously, particularly on his assault on unions, I do not generally support the recall of elected officials and do not necessarily think he should be removed from office at this time. That may put me in opposition to many on the left, but recall is actually a right-wing tool to mobilize knee-jerk populism against duly elected democratic representatives. And like him or not, Walker was elected by the people of Wisconsin. If you don't like him, fine, I'm with you, but the appropriate democratic response is not to seek his recall but to work to vote him out of office at the next general election. Which is to say, Walker's opponents will have the opportunity to vote against him in 2014. That may not be soon enough, but that's the way the system works. Sometimes your "enemies" get elected. Sometimes, often, they do things you don't like, even deeply unpopular things. It goes both ways. Deal with it.

This is not to say I wouldn't be happy if Walker were to lose this vote today. I would be, in a way, and I think it would be a good thing for Wisconsin. But the bigger issue here is about the democratic system -- and not about removing Walker from office. And on that level I'm against recall. And those who embrace it now should remember that it can go the other way as well, and that it's a weapon Republicans will not hesitate to use, just as they use impeachment and the filibuster for partisan purposes.

And while Walker may indeed survive today, he and his fellow Wisconsin Republicans did an awful lot of damage to themselves with their assault on unions. It may not be the political suicide I suggested a year ago, but they have mobilized a powerful force against them. It may not be enough today, but it could very well be enough in November, particularly if President Obama is able to prevail in Wisconsin and to benefit from labor support in other tight swing states.

Anyway, Richard wrote about this today as well, and we're pretty much in agreement about both Walker and recall. Before I hand this over to him, I encourage you to check out his posts:

-- "Update on the Wisconsin recall election"; and

-- "Would Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's survival tell us anything useful about the fall?"

**********

RKB:

Just tuning in to CNN, which is reporting that exit polls are showing a tie between Walker and Barrett at 50% to 50%. If this is right, that means the recent polling is off by a fair bit. The average of those polls is around 6-7% in favour of Walker.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, and he looks worried. It's going to be a long night.

Wow, John King is announcing CNN's exit polls on the presidential race. Obama is up significantly, 54% to 42%. Average of recent polls only had Obama up by 6%. I'd have to think that a 12% lead for Obama signals some movement in Barrett's direction. 

**********

MJWS:

Well, this is curious:

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said his campaign is contacting Wisconsin residents to counter reports of a robo-call that says anyone who signed a petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker doesn't have to vote in Tuesday's election.


Barrett, the Democrat challenging the Republican governor, said he has recorded a robo-call of his own telling people that signing a petition wasn't enough and that they do have to cast a ballot, WisPolitics.com reported. There have been a number of reports of Wisconsin residents receiving calls saying that their signature on the recall petition counts as their vote.

Republican dirty tricks? No! Never! (They never do such things, right? Vote suppression isn't a cornerstone of their electoral strategy, right?)

More here.

Oh, in case you were wondering, Mitt -- who is now running unopposed -- has won New Jersey. No need for dirty tricks on the part of his bullying buddy Chris Christie.

**********

RKB:

A few pundits are saying that if Barrett ends up losing by a small margin, there may be some unhappiness with President Obama for not helping out enough. It's the kind of thing that may not matter in any material sense, but it would be fair comment.

Excuse me for being annoyed, but Wisconsin is one of the biggest political stories of the year, and CNN is sharing airtime with coverage of the Queen. Give me a break! Over to MSNBC for me.

At the moment, 16% of polls are reporting and Walker has a healthy lead: 60% to 39%. The problem with trying to make sense of this is that we don't know where these polls are and what has yet to report. John King needs to get on the map and tell us what's going on.

As of 9:45 eastern time, CNN has just updated their exit poll to indicate Walker ahead by a 52% to 48% margin. Who knows? Oh, back to the Jubilee.

There you go. NBC is now calling it for Walker. Well, that wasn't that close at all. Were the exit polls off by that much?

The fact that Obama did well in exit polling tells me that a lot of people are either tired of the recall exercise or don't think it's right to turf Walker after he won a general election.

No doubt Walker will be a bigger star for the GOP, though I am not certain this was a referendum on a conservative agenda. But a win is a win and bragging rights come with it.

Money will be a big part of the story. No doubt about that. There is also no doubt that this result will put Wisconsin in play in November.

That's it for me. Will I be able to survive a full day of conservative gloating tomorrow? I'm not sure.

Good night. 

**********

MJWS:

Yes, that's it from Wisconsin.

One question will be, should Obama have done more -- or, really, just something, anything -- to help the anti-Walker campaign?

I say no. First, he would have been accused of meddling in a state matter.

Second, it's not clear that his involvement would have helped matters. Could he have swayed a few independents? Yes, possibly, but it's unlikely he could have done enough to tip the balance. Actually, given that Walker has survived by a wide margin, wider than the polls were indicated, there's no way he would have been able to.

Third, following on the above, a Walker win would have been spun by Republicans as an Obama loss. Even if he never could have done enough to tip the balance, his involvement would have been seen as a personal failure, proof of his electoral weakness.

Fourth, Walker's win might actually help Obama and Democrats generally in Wisconsin in November, as they'll be able to run against the governor's (and Republicans' generally) extremism. Plus, it's likely that the Democratic base will come out of this recall election energized for a win in November. (Well, that's what I'm hoping, anyway.)

Of course, Republicans will spin this as a glorious victory, and of course that will mean turning it on Obama, but I doubt this will have much impact on the rest of the national campaign. And, again, even with Walker's win tonight, Wisconsin is still Obama's to lose.

Otherwise, Romney has won California! Hardly a surprise given that he has a car elevator there -- and, again, that he's running unopposed.

The other three states voting today, along with Cali and Jersey, were Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Yes, Romney won all three. But what a nice job by Santorum pulling in 12% in SD and 10% in NM. The dream lives.

There were some high-profile Congressional primaries today. We'll get to those in the days to come. For now, that's it for us.

Good night, everyone.

Go ahead and have your Texas primary, if you must

By Richard K. Barry

And the winner is... this guy.

In case you haven't been paying attention (and why would you?), there are still Republican primaries going on to determine who the GOP presidential nominee will be. Okay, we know who that will be, but process is process. God bless democracy.

Having said that, Mitt Romney is expected to get to and beyond the 1,144 delegates he needs thanks to the Texas primary today. It's a big state with 155 delegates on offer.

Yippee! Romney wins the nomination! 

More interesting, as ABC News reports, is the primary to determine the Republican Senate nominee to fill the seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who is retiring. The race is between David Dewhurst, the state's lieutenant governor, and Ted Cruz, the former solicitor general.

Once again we have a candidate, Dewhurst, considered to be an "establishment" candidate, going up against Cruz, who appears to claim the Tea Party designation. The waters do get a bit muddied, though, as Sarah Palin and Jim Demint are with Cruz, while Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry, hardly moderates, are with Dewhurst.

In Texas you need 50 percent in the primary to avoid a runoff, which is, it appears, a threshold that may not be reached. But even if a runoff is required, Public Policy Polling is saying that Dewhurst is in good shape to win the nomination because most of the votes of the likely third place finisher, Tom Lepperts, are poised to go to Dewhurst.

Texas is a reliably red state, so the GOP nominee should have no problem winning the general. No Delaware or Nevada 2010 shenanigans here, and not even 2012 Indiana contortions are likely.

That's right. Texans are going to the polls to choose between red and marginally redder.

Okay, this isn't a very interesting post. Sorry.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

The un-holy Republican triumvirate of 2012: Romney, Trump, Gingrich

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Rome's First Triumvirate was made up of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. (It was an informal alliance and ended in civil war between the first two, with Caesar emerging victorious.)

Rome's Second Triumvirate was made up of Octavius (later Augustus), Mark Antony, and Lepidus. (It was a formal dictatorial agreement and also ended in civil war. Lepidus was exiled, Antony committed suicide after losing to Octavius, and Octavius became emperor.)

There have been many other triumvirates since then, but of course most recently there has been the Holy Triumvirate known as Rush.

These have been of varying degrees of excellence (or lack thereof). I'd probably put Rush at the pinnacle (Today's Tom Sawyer / He gets high on you / And the space he invades / He gets by on you), though if you put aside its warmongering and tyrannical inclinations that first Roman one wasn't bad. (Better than that brutal one with Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Couthon that contributed to the Thermidorian Reaction, anyway.

Anyway, if you want un-holiness in your triumvirates -- non-excellence and super-rich douchebaggery, egomania and bullying blowhardiness, with enough inner turmoil, only barely papered over, to descend into its own form of civil war -- you don't have to look any further than today's Republican Party, with the presidential campaign underway and the party rallying in lockstep behind its un-beloved nominee.

Yes, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, and Newt Gingrich -- look away if you must! -- are actually going to be campaigning together next week, not surprisingly in the cesspool of Las Vegas.

No, this isn't a joke. (Seriously, it's not. It just seems like one.)

But what's funny, if not side-splittingly so, is that these three men hated each other once upon a time, and may still. Just last month, for example, Trump criticized Romney over the latter's profiteering vulture capitalism: "He'd buy companies. He'd close companies. He'd get rid of jobs." This is what the Obama campaign is saying, and understandably so, it's what Republicans like Gingrich and Santorum said when they were in the race, and it's what Republicans are now trying to sweep under the rug, as if none of that had ever been said.

Gingrich didn't pull any punches at all. In January, he sent out a blast to National Review's e-mail list calling Romney "a timid Massachusetts moderate" and calling on conservatives to "stand up and fight."

And of course Republicans generally tolerated Trump when he seemed to be a force in the party but generally considered him a loud-mouthed buffoon (which of course he was, and is).

But now these three are all getting along, or pretending to get along, if only to show partisan unity. (Predictably, the self-aggrandizing The Donald is talking nonsense about being the best veep choice for Mitt.) There's even this hilarious, if not really in a terribly funny way, campaign flier:

 

Yes, Trump as Uncle Sam. Fucking hilarious, no? Just makes you long for the greatest triumvirate of them all...

Jason Segel & Paul Rudd Meet Rush from Jason Segel

Herman Cain's third endorsement goes to... Mitt Romney!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Herm Cain and the Swiss Miss, falling into partisan lockstep behind Mitt

After dropping out the Republican presidential race, Herman Cain endorsed "The People": "We the people are still in charge. That's who I'm endorsing. We're going to have to lead this revolution. We have to take our power back. I'm endorsing the people. The people who started this country." Not exactly the most conservative rhetoric, and not exactly all that meaningful an endorsement. But in its stupidity it lined up with his whole campaign.

Then, a while later, he endorsed Newt Gingrich: "When you find a candidate that basically is running still on the ideas and the ideologies that I was running on, along with him embracing 9-9-9, then it was a no-brainer and I thought that the timing was right." In other words, Newt said he liked his crazy tax plan, which is highly unlikely, and Cain thought they were ideologically similar, though what we witnessed back then was Newt coming to Cain's rescue on policy matters during debates and other joint appearances and Newt using Cain to attack Romney.

Well, we now have Cain's third endorsement, and this time it's for... Mitt Romney: "My endorsement evolved. Early in the process is one thing, but as we converged toward the convention, what we did earlier isn't as relevant. It wasn't a matter of changing my mind." Yes, it's just like it was for Obama and same-sex marriage, an evolution in his thinking. Please. Embracing Romney because he's the guaranteed nominee isn't exactly the same as taking an historic stand on a major civil rights issue.

And, yes, like so many other Romney endorsements, this one lacked conviction. Cain said that Romney is "right on the big issues," but to a simpleton like Cain, or indeed to any Republican, that would pretty much describe... any Republican.

Really, none of this matters. No one cares what Cain thinks about anything these days, including the election, and his endorsement is essentially meaningless, particularly after the ridiculousness of his time on the national stage. He was a joke then, and he remains one, more so even than Trump.

The only even vaguely interesting thing here is what this endorsement says about Romney -- which is, again, that Republicans aren't exactly excited about having him as their nominee. It's just that he's the only one left.

Ron Paul to stop active campaigning

By Richard K. Barry

CNN is reporting that GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul will no longer actively campaign for his party's nomination.

An announcement from Rep. Paul said the following:

"Moving forward, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted. Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have."

Well, that's over.

**********

MJWS adds:

Yes, but not really. Because he's not going away:

Our campaign will continue to work in the state convention process. We will continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future.

Paul and Romney have apparently gotten quite close during the campaign, the former often seeming to be the latter's only friend, particularly when Santorum and Gingrich were tag-teaming him, and Paul will no doubt be an ally (of sorts) going forward, but it looks like he'll continue to be a thorn in the side of the Republican Party. It's just what he is.

Stealth insurrection on the right

Guest post by Infidel753 

Infidel753 was born in New York state, grew up in California, and now lives in Oregon. His area of academic specialization was the Middle East. He is a life-long atheist and long-time liberal with a special interest in social issues and technology. 

(Ed. note: This is Infidel's fifth guest post for us. You can find his first, on the ignorant fundamentalism of the Republican Party, here; his second, on the incoherence of the Occupy Wall Street movement, here; his third, on the parasitism of Romney and Bain, here, and his fourth, on the Republican Party's ancient evil, here. (He's also one of my fellow MBRUers at Crooks and Liars.) -- MJWS)

**********

The Gingrich and Santorum camps have folded their tents, and the Christian Right and the teabaggers have (mostly) reconciled themselves to supporting the despised Romney in order to remove the hated Obama. But below the MSM radar, a stealth insurrection soldiers on.

My observation of the right wing of the internet includes the Ron Paul cult, an alternate reality far more divorced from real reality than the "normal" right-wing bubble is. In that alternate reality, Ron Paul is the only true voice of the people, virtually a messiah -- if he hasn't actually won any states, that's because of deluded voters, or fraud, or media conspiracies. If he gets almost no news coverage, it's not because he's a fringe crank with no chance of winning, it's because of a "media black-out" conspiracy. Think of the kind of person who sits in a remote cabin in Montana writing unreadable pamphlets "proving" that Federal Reserve notes aren't real money, fuming about the Illuminati and the gold standard and CIA mind-control rays*, and gloating about some vague impending "collapse" of society. Now imagine a whole subculture made up of such people. You'll be pretty close.

And the hard-core Paultards are not falling into line behind Romney. They have a plan, and it involves exploiting arcane procedural rules of the Republican party to achieve two goals:

1) Securing enough Paul-loyal delegates, despite the actual popular vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses, to win the nomination for Paul at the convention.

2) Taking over control of the Republican party at the state and local level, the ultimate aim being to take over the party nationally.

For a sense of the mind-set at work, check out the comment threads (more than the actual posts) here and here and here. Mainstream Republicans have started to notice the problem.

Why is this happening now? Paul has run for president before without his cult resorting to such measures. But he's now 76, and this is probably his last shot. And the Paultards are at least as paranoid about Obama as the teabaggers are. Some believe that if Obama wins a second term, he'll become a dictator and there will be no more elections.

What's the likely actual outcome of this insurrection? If Paul did somehow win the nomination, Obama would have an easy victory -- he'd be running against an aging fringe crank whose ideology would horrify most voters once they understood it, while the millions of rank-and-file Republicans who voted for Romney at their state primaries and conventions would be outraged at seeing their votes swept aside by an organized minority exploiting obscure rules and technicalities. Such a scenario is, of course, very improbable. But if (as is likely) the Republican establishment swats down the insurrection and Romney's nomination goes according to plan, the party will have another problem.

You really need to spend some time in the Paultardosphere, soaking in its ambiance, to grasp how utterly cut off from reality these people are. They really think they can do this. And they've been telling themselves for months that Paul must be nominated or the country is doomed. At the convention, when their bubble world is inevitably burst by collision with reality, the shock will be profound. The results could include a massive tantrum disrupting the convention, a third-party run pulling some percentage of votes from Romney, and the Devil knows what else. It probably won't include falling quietly into line behind the nominee.

Romney will likely try to buy off Paul with a major speaking slot at the convention, which he's said to covet. But for all we know, Paul himself may endorse the insurrection and expect it to produce results; and in any case, the cult may not renounce its dreams and fall into line even if the messiah commands it. They're too worked up for that.

Years ago the Republicans made a pact with the Devil, embracing teh crayzee in various forms to win the support of small but fanatical armies of true believers, and lately the Devil has been coming round to collect. O'Donnell and Angle were just the beginning.

[* I don't mean they believe in those specific things, though some of them may -- I'm trying to give a sense of the general mentality. Actual Paultard conspiracy theories are too boring to form any clear impression.]

Romney wins, while North Carolina votes for bigotry and injustice

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For what it's worth, which isn't really anything, Mitt Romney won yesterday's North Carolina Republican primary. (He also won Indiana and West Virginia.)

Meanwhile, in bigger and rather more disturbing news, North Carolinians voted overwhelmingly for Amendment One, a proposed constitutional amendment stating that "marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State."

Which is to say, they voted -- by a 61 to 39 margin -- to enshrine bigotry and inequality in their state constitution.

Same-sex marriage is already illegal in the state. So what was the point? Well, this goes much further.

As ABC News notes, there may be "some uncertainty among legal scholars in the state as to the extent of the law, and what types of partnerships might be affected, as the terminology in the amendment -- domestic legal union -- has not appeared in North Carolina statutes previously," but the intention of the amendment, and of its advocates, is clear.

As Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote before the vote, "this amendment would be the cherry on top of discrimination and threaten all domestic partnerships. There would be no more legal unions between unmarried people, gay or straight. It could take health care benefits away from families, it could take away domestic violence protections, hospital visitation rights, and all the very basic protections of civil unions." (See video below.)

This isn't so much about gay marriage as it is about anti-gay bigotry -- and more broadly about the imposition of right-wing theocracy on the state. There was no need whatsoever for this amendment, but the bigots, with Billy Graham front and center for their cause, have gotten their way.

As Joe summed it up: "Nobody on our side can say we're surprised, but we're all still saddened. And the march towards theocracy and sharia law continues."

North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue, a Democrat, said that passing the amendment would be "bad for business," hurting the state's "brand," but she rightly identified what this was really about, and that's more than just business: The vote on Amendment One was "about civil rights. It's about taking away rights of North Carolinians." It was "our Rosa Parks moment in North Carolina because it's about taking away civil rights."

And now there is a dark stain on the entire state. North Carolinians voted for not just for inequality but for bigotry and injustice -- plain and simple.

Other states are legalizing same-sex marriage and the country as a whole is coming to embrace it, with a majority supportive and the historical trend abundantly clear, but North Carolinians decided to reject progress altogether.

If this was their "Rosa Parks moment," they failed miserably. History will not be kind to them, and nor should we. They deserve our scorn.

While the struggle for marriage equality, for justice, must continue, stronger than ever.