The country is moving further and further away from the GOP

By Richard Barry

A new Wasington Post-ABC News poll indicates that 6 in 10 Americans support same-sex marriage and also say that "individual states should not be allowed to define marriage as only between a man and a woman."

The Post-ABC poll finds 61 percent of Americans support allowing gays to marry and 35 percent are opposed. Support is up only slightly from last year but is a reversal from public sentiment a decade ago, when opponents outnumbered supporters 58 percent to 39 percent.

In the short and long run, support for same-sex marriage has grown significantly across demographic and political groups.

Among those under age 30, support has grown since 2005 from 57 percent to 78 percent. Among those 65 and over, it has increased from 18 percent to 46 percent. Support has also risen by double digits across partisan groups, though Democrats and independents have shifted the most.

Equally interesting is that more than 6 in 10 Republicans oppose allowing gay couples to marry, and 71 percent of conservative Republicans, who play an out-sized role in the party’s presidential primaries and caucuses.

Obviously, Republican hopefuls are going to state unequivocally their opposition to same-sex marriage, especially through the nomination process, but even then the language they use and the stridency they bring to the issue will be worth watching.

Certainly I don't believe a Republican can't win the general election while opposing same-sex marriage, but tone will matter, especially among voters who are on the periphery of the issue, accept it as a basic human right, and simply want the country to move on.

Any Republican who really digs in, as Bobby Jindal did today in the New York Times, will find him or herself on the wrong side of history and perhaps ultimate electoral success.

Grovelling for dollars on the campaign trail

By Richard Barry

Maybe I'm too sensitive, but I find it very troubling that some in the media are referring to the spectacle of GOP presidential hopefuls auditioning in front of wealthy donors as things like the "Koch brothers primary" or the "Sheldon Adelson primary."

Perhaps we should assign these "primaries" a date and have said rich people announce their choices with great fanfare. An American Idol or The Voice format would work just fine. Who would be the show host? So many options.

We are supposed to pretend that the scads of money thrown at the winners of these special primaries won't corrupt the democratic process, that the Adelsons and Kochs of the world have as much right as anyone to support their choices in whatever manner they see fit. What fresh nonsense.

If you are keeping track, here's the latest:

Before Iowa and New Hampshire, GOP candidates are competing in the Sheldon Adelson primary, and some will travel to his posh Venetian hotel in Las Vegas this in hopes of winning it. But one candidate — Marco Rubio — has emerged as the clear front-runner, according to nearly a half-dozen sources close to the multibillionaire casino mogul.

In recent weeks, Adelson, who spent $100 million on the 2012 campaign and could easily match that figure in 2016, has told friends that he views the Florida senator, whose hawkish defense views and unwavering support for Israel align with his own, as a fresh face who is “the future of the Republican Party.” He has also said that Rubio’s Cuban heritage and youth would give the party a strong opportunity to expand its brand and win the White House.

Again, the image of a bunch of supposedly accomplished candidates waiting together in the outer room of the great man's compound waiting for an opportunity to beg for cash is more than a little sickening. No?

Chuck Todd realizes there are "too many crazy white guys" in the Republican Party

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Actually, it's a party controlled and dominated by crazy white guys, to take nothing away from the craziness of the non-whites and/or non-guys, and it's not just on reproductive rights, which was the specific issue Todd was initially referencing, but on pretty much everything. But credit him at least for going there:

On MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown," host Chuck Todd asked Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, on Thursday about report commissioned by two conservative groups that found that the Republican party is still lagging behind the Democratic party with women voters.

According to the report, obtained by Politico on Wednesday, women said the GOP was "stuck in the past" and "intolerant." The poll found that 49 percent of women view the Republican party unfavorably and 39 percent view the Democratic party unfavorably.

When asked why the party is doing worse with female voters than in 2010, Priebus argued that the GOP can close this 10-point gap by ramping up outreach and focusing on the economy.

"You know, I'm not sure," Priebus responded. "But I think the point of that poll wasn't reported by Politico. The point was if you looked at it, women were rejecting the Democratic party by 40 percent; they were rejecting the Republican party by 50 percent. I don't think either party can do a victory lap here."

He continued to say that Republicans just need to "fight" for the votes by countering Democratic attacks and pushing conservative economic policy ideas.

Todd pressed him on this.

"But the problem you seem to have is when it comes to women voters, do the -- do the arguments about contraception end up blind -- basically putting the party on mute with those same women voters who may like your economic proposals but say, you know what, there's just too many crazy white guys who have crazy theories about my reproductive system?" Todd asked, adding that Republicans have the same issue with Latino voters and immigration issues.

And climate change and fiscal policy and foreign policy and labor issues and health care and...

Rand Paul is wrong about himself, Democrats, the Republican Party, and 2016

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Rand Paul, riding a wave of egomaniacal hubris given his current position at or near the top of national Republican politics, thinks that Democrats are scared of him:

"I think the American public is coming more and more to where I am and that those people, like Hillary Clinton, who — she fought her own war, 'Hillary's war,' you know?" Paul said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"And I think that's what scares the Democrats the most — is that in a general election, were I to run, there's going to be a lot of independents and even some Democrats who say, ‘You know what? We are tired of war. We're worried that Hillary Clinton will get us involved in another Middle Eastern war because she's so gung-ho.’"

Uh, no, not so much. There are some progressives to the left of the Clintonian Democratic center who don't much care for Hillary, and who certainly object to the warmongering aspects of the Democratic foreign policy elite, but in the end they wouldn't abandon her and the party (even if they voted for a progressive alternative in the primaries). Furthermore, while Americans are, by and large, tired of -- and generally opposed to -- the sorts of military misadventures that Bush and Cheney led the country into, isolationism (or at least non-interventionism) as represented by Paul just doesn't have the level of public support he apparently thinks it does. Besides, Hillary, like Obama, isn't "gung-ho." If you want "gung-ho," just look at Paul's own party, and therein lie the deeper problems for him.

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The end of the Teabaggers?

By Carl 

You may have blinked and missed it. At any rate, tomorrow will be a bellwether for this November, and 2016:

The race has been cast as yet another skirmish in the ongoing GOP civil war, pitting the establishment-backed Tillis against seven tea party challengers. It's true that Tillis has the support of prominent national Republicans -- including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- and the Chamber of Commerce.

But it would be too easy to frame a Tuesday victory for Tillis, if it happens, as a clean win for the newly emboldened Republican establishment. Tillis hasn't been forced to beat back a tea party challenge, because his opponents haven't put up much of a fight. They've also splintered conservative support.

He has two serious rivals for the nomination: Greg Brannon, a staunch libertarian tea party activist who wants to put U.S. currency back on the gold standard, and Mark Harris, a prominent Baptist pastor from Charlotte who spearheaded the 2012 passage of a constitutional amendment that strengthened the state's same-sex marriage ban. Like other insurgent Republican candidacies around the country this year, neither campaign has managed to stir the kind of grassroots passion that propelled so many tea party victories in 2010.

With memories of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock marked indelibly in the consciousness of the Republican Party – along with the "what if?" of two winnable Senate seats thrown away – the GOP establishment must be taking comfort in the fact that they've managed to ostracize and minimize the Teabaggers on this go around.

The follow up question, then, is "quo vadis?" Where are they going? [ed. note: I know, technically it's "quo eunt?" but...]

There's no place in the Democratic Party for them, and any third party bid will be doomed to irrelevance, as Duverger's Law comes into play, even with Koch and Adelson shoveling money into a Tea Party engine, at least at the beginning. They're businessmen. They'll stop the minute it becomes unprofitable.

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Republicans, banking on bigotry, look to resurrect Jim Crow

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republicans like to think of their party as the party of capitalism, patriotism, and faith. In reality, it's the party of trickle-down brutality, xenophobic nativism, and moralistic fundamentalism akin to what you might in, say, Saudi Arabia.

Oh, and the party of bigotry. More and more, bigotry:

Kansas set off a national firestorm last week when the GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would have allowed anyone to refuse to do business with same-sex couples by citing religious beliefs. The bill, which covered both private businesses and individuals, including government employees, would have barred same-sex couples from suing anyone who denies them food service, hotel rooms, social services, adoption rights, or employment -- as long as the person denying the service said he or she had a religious objection to homosexuality. As of this week, the legislation was dead in the Senate. But the Kansas bill is not a one-off effort.

Republicans lawmakers and a network of conservative religious groups has been pushing similar bills in other states, essentially forging a national campaign that, critics say, would legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Republicans in Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee recently introduced provisions that mimic the Kansas legislation. And Arizona, Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Mississippi have introduced broader "religious freedom" bills with a unique provision that would also allow people to deny services or employment to LGBT Americans, legal experts say.

"This is a concerted campaign that the religious Right has been hinting at for a couple of years now," says Evan Hurst, associate director of Truth Wins Out, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes gay rights. "The fact that they're doing it Jim Crow-style is remarkable, considering the fact that one would think the GOP would like to be electable among people under 50 sometime in the near future."

Make sure to read the whole piece at Mother Jones. It's a helpful, and deeply disturbing, look at what's shaping, driving, and dominating the Republican Party in 2014.

How the Republican capitulation over the debt ceiling is good for Republicans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republican capitulation over the debt ceiling, finally agreeing to a clean increase instead of demanding a ransom and thereby threatening national and possibly global economic apocalypse, is indeed a very big deal. There was a great deal of Republican opposition in the House, where the increase required Democrats to join forces with John Boehner and the Republican leadership, as well as in the Senate, where enough Republicans joined Democrats to overcome a Ted Cruz-led filibuster, but at the end of the day the hostage-taking extremists who generally run the Republican Party were put in their place for the good of the country, and, yes, let's be clear about this, for the good of the Republican Party, whose corporate backers demand debt ceiling increases, which of course are good for business, and which would not have fared well in the eyes of the public, nor likely at the polls come November, in the event of yet another crisis.

Indeed, while I applaud this increase, as anyone who cares about good governance and the health of the economy must, there's no denying that it was a smart move for the Republican leadership to do what it did. Because while there will be some initial backlash from the Tea Party base, as well as from Tea Party Republicans in Congress like Cruz, and while those facing primary challenges like Mitch McConnell may have given the party's far right some ammunition, the party now avoids a protracted fight over the debt ceiling that would only have ended badly for Republicans, that would have deepened the already deep division within the party, and that would have been a significant distraction from the current Republican agenda.

And just what is that agenda? Basically, with the midterms in sight, to throw every possible lie and distortion at President Obama, to highlight the make-believe scandals (Benghazi, IRS) and to try to turn voters against Obamacare by scaring the shit out of them with sensationalistic falsehoods. That is, to assault the president with everything last smear at their disposal and thereby to try to turn the midterms into a referendum on the president and his record, as they define it and according to their own right-wing narrative, hoping with low voter turnout dominated by low-information voters they might just turn the tables on their nemesis.

That's really all this is: politics. It isn't a sign that Congress is in any way more sensible now than it was before, and it certainly isn't a sign that the Republican Party is in any way saner. As Frank Rich writes, Republicans remain "a hard-right party that will be happy to once again hold the government hostage to its demands if it gains a Senate majority to go with its House majority in November's midterms," while "yesterday's vote on the debt-limit will be remembered, if at all, as a fleeting pause in the Republican right's Obama-era surge." That sounds about right.

New documentary confirms Mitt Romney lost 2008 election, never became president

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've never liked Mitt Romney. Well, he was okay back when he was a "moderate," back when he was Massachusetts governor, back before he decided he needed to give the far right a massive bear hug in his quest for the presidency, at least if you ignore the cruelty he inflicted while heading up Bain, but 2012 pretty much confirmed that he was, as I kept calling him, from as early as January, a privileged rich douchebag with a plutocratic sense of entitlement, the champion of the rich against the people -- and especially against the "47 percent."

But you know what? Through all that, and despite all that, he's always seemed like a fairly likeable guy. He's a plutocrat, to be sure, but all that right-wing nonsense on social and foreign policy made sense as a shameless appeal to the Republican Party's right-wing mainstream, to both the grassroots base and the movement conservatives whose support he would need to secure the nomination. No, I don't excuse him for embracing the far right, but it was always pretty clear that deep down he wasn't terribly comfortable contorting himself so shamelessly, whatever the political necessity of doing so.

In any event, he is what he is and he's largely gone from the political scene, and so it's both hard and pointless to keep up any level of vitriol against him. There's still a lot I don't like, and he's still -- and will always be -- a privileged rich douchebag, but... whatever. And yet... he is back, sort of. There's a new Netflix documentary, MITT, premiering on January 24, that looks at Romney's two White House runs, in 2008 and 2012 -- the filmmakers followed him on his campaigns for six years. Stunningly, it includes the very moment Romney realized he lost the 2008 election (among many other private and personal moments). Yes, he deserved to lose, and yes, he should have known it was coming, but one can't help but be touched by the intimate sadness of the moment. This was a man who had committed so much of his life to his quest for the presidency, and he had come so far, and so close (if not all that close, actually), and then it was over, just like that.

Anyway, it looks like an interesting film, an intimate portrait of a man who, whatever his privileges, almost made it to the very top but who, throughout, seemed to have traded in his soul, who stopped being human, in a do-whatever-it-takes effort to realize his ultimate political goal. Even if you don't like him, even if you object to everything he is and stands for -- and I object to a lot of it -- you have to admit that there's something tragic about that, and you can see it on his face when defeat finally hits him.

Here's the trailer:

Uncivil war: Tea Party radicalism and the deepening divide in the Republican Party

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You gotta love it when the Tea Party, a movement largely co-opted by an increasingly extremist Republican Party (as it was largely a creation of opportunistic right-wing Republican interests), comes out and calls Republicans traitors for not being extremist enough and for daring to work with Democrats to address the country's problems, subjecting them to primary challenges from the even further right and otherwise driving the wedge deeper into the party's disease-ridden carcass:

A tea party group has launched a campaign to support primary challenges against all 87 Republicans who voted for the deal in late October to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. 

The Tea Party Leadership Fund, a PAC affiliated with the group TheTeaParty.net, began a fundraising push — dubbed the "Primaries for Traitors Fund" — shortly after the shutdown deal passed in the House, and they are now ramping up efforts to find "credible candidates" in each of the districts, said the fund's treasurer, Dan Backer.

"From our perspective, we see this as a signature vote. You can't be a conservative and vote to raise the debt ceiling," Backer said. "I recognize there are some places where voters may actually think that was the right vote. And there may be places where you have an incumbent who wins with 90% of the vote every time and there's not a credible challenger. I recognize that, but we're certainly going to do our best."

Backer says the group has honed in on a few specific members to start: Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, New York Rep. Peter King, North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger, Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany, and most importantly, Backer said, House Speaker John Boehner in Ohio. 

Of course, even Ronald Reagan, like every Republican president, supported debt ceiling raises, but, oh, no matter. These are crazed ideologues long divorced from reality.

And for Republicans like Boehner and so many others, this is what is called making your bed and having to lie in it. Or playing with fire. Or being hoisted with your own petard. Or getting bitten in the ass.

Not that I think it's a great thing that this is what American conservatism has come to -- it's awfully dangerous, given that this is one of the country's two main political parties -- but this is one of those times when you may want to grab some popcorn and settle in for what is sure to be an entertaining ride.

Business will not give up on the GOP

By Frank Moraes 

Martin Longman over at Political Animal has been writing about how the business community might try to take back the Republican Party. He also mentions how they are interested in a third party. You know, all that Third Way bullshit. Now, I think from a practical standpoint, there is absolutely nothing to it. The business community may have backed away from people like Ken Cuccinelli, but that's not because they are freaks and extremists; it's because they see that they are unlikely to win.

But on the broader point, I agree: a lot of business leaders are unhappy with the Republican Party. The problem is that they always have been. In general, they don't like the social conservatism on the right. They prefer the supposed libertarian leanings of the Republicans. So they want to pay less taxes and they want zero regulations. But they also want the crony capitalist side of the party. They want the government to grease the wheels of the market with safe transportation systems, a solid currency, and those lucrative government contracts. So they don't want the Defense of Marriage Act and anti-abortion laws? Big deal! They've been grumbling about this kind of stuff for decades but it's always been a small price to pay for all the goodies the Republican Party gives them.

I understand where Longman is coming from. Having a totally crazy, extremist Republican Party is bad for the Democratic Party. It is bad for America! And I would very much like to see the Republicans become more reasonable. But it just isn't the case that this is going to happen via the "adults" in the party. I get so tired of talking about this, but would someone please show me how it is that the supposedly reasonable Republicans are anything but extremists? The business leaders may want immigration reform, but that's about the only reasonable position they hold. And even there, they want reform that is almost entirely for the benefit of the business community. A decade and a half path to citizenship doesn't show any concern for the actual people. And if the business leaders could get reform without any path to citizenship, they would.

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Americans hate Republicans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Unpopularity, thy name is the Republican Party:

With the Republican-controlled House of Representatives engaged in a tense, government-shuttering budgetary standoff against a Democratic president and Senate, the Republican Party is now viewed favorably by 28% of Americans, down from 38% in September. This is the lowest favorable rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992.

Don't get me wrong, the Democrats aren't exactly knocking it out of the park either. They're at just 43% themselves.

But it's pretty clear that Americans' ire and frustration is targeted -- understandably, justifiably -- at Republicans.

And that the Republicans -- holding the country hostage to their extremist right-wing demands and sabotaging American democracy in the process -- are dragging the Democrats down with them into the abyss, or at least trying to.

The House finally does something right

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Hill:

The House voted unanimously Saturday to retroactively pay back federal workers who are not receiving a paycheck because of the government shutdown.

Members approved the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act, H.R. 3223, in a 407-0 vote, with 25 members not voting.

Workers will not be paid until the shutdown — now in its fifth day — ends. About 800,000 workers have been furloughed. 

Right, it's not federal workers' fault the Republican Party has been taken over by a gang of teabagging zealots and that in fact the whole damn party has come to embrace anti-government zealotry as a core component of its right-wing ideology -- and that these zealots shut down their work.

Though while retro pay is really great, of course, it might be better, you know, for these people to go back to work NOW and get paid when they're supposed to, rather than to have their and their families' lives fucked around with like this.

Speaking of the House, what's crazier, more absurd and nightmarish, it or, well, House?

Shutdown showdown: The Republicans' "doomed spasms"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So here we are. On the verge of a government shutdown. Which is to say, a shutdown of the U.S. federal government.

Yes, the federal government of the most powerful country in the world, a country that prides itself, delusionally, on its grandiose historic exceptionalism, a country that rants and raves about how it's supposedly the greatest country in the world, a bastion of liberty and democracy, is about to be shut down because its federal legislative branch, Congress, is apparently incapable of contributing to the governing of the country, and essentially of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities.

But let's be more precise. It's about to be shut down not just because the system reduces the country to governmental paralysis but specifically because the opposition party is allowing it to happen, and indeed wants it to happen, or at least enough of its members to matter do -- an opposition party with enough clout, given its majority status in the House of Representatives, to make it happen.

And right now it's all because of Obamacare. (I wrote about this the other day.) Yes, Republicans so hate the new health-care law that they're willing to do whatever it takes to block its implementation, whether it's shut down the government or force the country to default on its debts, in the latter case perhaps triggering global economic armageddon.

The rational calculation, given the popularity of the law (and of the president and party behind it) as well as the unpopularity of government shutdowns, is realize that they don't have any real leverage and to concede defeat. But these are Republicans we're talking about. Thinking rationally just isn't what they're about these days. (A separate rational calculation is that the new system will become so popular, and that Democrat will forever be credited for it at the polls, that it's best to try to stop it, or at least delay it, now. But it's still hard to see how they can win this standoff in any meaningful way. Ultimately, they'll be blamed for the shutdown and in any event Obamacare will be implemented.) And so they plow ahead with their far-right ideological agenda, Ted Cruz leading the way, doomed.

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Ted Cruz and the new face of the Republican Party

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Le Parti Républicain, c'est moi.

If you've been following the Obamacare-debt ceiling-government shutdown drama playing out in Washington, you'll know, unless you've got your head up your ass like most Republicans, that it's pretty much a lose-lose-lose situation for the GOP.

Republicans will apparently do anything and everything to try to stop Obamacare -- they object to it on radical-right ideological grounds but also, less explicitly, because they know, or at least the smart ones do, that it will be a boon to Democrats at the polls for years to come -- and that means working aggressively to defund it by threatening a) to shut down the government or b) to block an increase to the debt ceiling. (Yes, they will risk immense hardship and even global economic armageddon to get what they want.)

The problem, for them, is that shutting down the government would be extremely unpopular (they would be hit with the blame for it, as they were in the '90s), while the markets and their own business base would react negatively, to say the least, were the country to find itself unable to pay off its debts. Republican establishmentarians like John Boehner know this and would like to rein in the extremists, but the extremists aren't that easily pacified, not least because the establishmentarians are responsible to a great extent for empowering them -- it's called reaping what you've sown. The establishment was more than happy to align itself with the teabaggers and others on the far right when it meant getting votes, but now it's stuck with a hugely powerful and, within the party, hugely popular base to which it must continue to pay its respects.

In any event, there's really no way out of this mess. Republicans have resorted to hostage-taking in the hopes that President Obama would cave, as he has before, but he stresses that he won't play that game this time around. And, really, he has all the leverage -- he just needs to remain firm. Whether it's a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government running or an increase to the debt ceiling, he'll get what he wants because ultimately Republicans will have to give in to avoid the wrath of the voters at the polls next year. In other words, it's give up the effort to defund Obamacare or commit electoral suicide. (Actually, though, there's no guarantee they'll act rationally and give in. Many of them seem prepared to fight to the bitter end.)

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Republicans are a cult more than a party

By Frank Moraes

Jonathan Chait wonders if any positive information about Obamacare can get through the conservative media blackout, Someone Tell Ted Cruz the Obamacare War Is Over. He isn't alone; a lot of people wonder how it can be that in conservativeworld, all the news is bad. But this is just more of liberal commentators thinking that the conservative movement is just like any other political movement. It is best to think of modern conservatism as cult.

Regardless of what kind of healthcare reform had been implemented, liberals would have been hopefully optimistic that it would work. Most liberals are not that keen on Obamacare, but even if they had gotten the single payer system that they wanted, they would have watched closely to see how it was doing. They would have been pretty sure that it was going to work well, but they would have been ultimately constrained by the facts on the ground.

Conservatives are quite different. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that conservative opinion leaders are quite different. They don't think that conservative policies are the best; they know. So when it comes to Obamacare, they are sure it is going to be bad. They don't need the random bit of positive data to confuse the issue. Anyway, what makes a policy the best is not what works the best as most people would define it. The attack on Obamacare is not even about the ridiculous notion that it will deprive people of "freedom" by making them change their healthcare. (It doesn't do that, anyway, not that it matters.) They aren't even against it because of their generalized hatred of poor people who the program helps. They are against the program because it raises taxes a small amount on the wealthy.

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Eric Cantor now outside GOP mainstream

By Frank Moraes 

It is a funny old world. It seems upside down. It is as if the drunk dozing in an alley has more wisdom to offer that the local pastor. (Which may be true!) And that is the sense that I have today, at least in politics. When Eric Cantor starts sounding reasonable, anything seems possible. But it isn't really that the world is out of balance. Nor is it the case that Cantor is actually being reasonable. As I wrote just a few days ago, the Republican Party has gotten more and more nihilistic ever since Reagan. The critical phrase here is "more and more," because it is indeed getting worse.

Eric Cantor has long been one of the great examples of Republican nihilism. But the Republican Party seems now to have passed him by. Back in April, he put forward a bill to extend health insurance coverage to people with preexisting conditions. The idea was to make the Republicans look good while harming the overall framework of Obamacare. It would at least have put Democrats in a awkward position. It was a great example of old-fashioned political strategy. As much as I may disagree with what he wanted to accomplish, at least he was doing something that might work. The House Republicans would have none of it, however, and the bill was pulled without a vote. Since then, I think they've voted for a full repeal of Obamacare another three times or something.

Yesterday, I learned thanks to Steve Benen that Cantor thinks that a shutdown of the government is a bad thing. Can you imagine?! According to National Review, he said:

To get 60 votes in the Senate, you need at least 14 Democrats to join Republicans and pass a CR [continuing resolution] that defunds Obamacare. Right now, I am not aware of a single Democrat in the Senate who would join us. If and when defunding has 60 votes in the Senate, we will absolutely deliver more than 218 votes in the House.

If it weren't for the arm rests, I would have fallen out of my chair. Is he actually suggesting that shutting down the government for the purpose of "sending a message" is a bad idea?! The next thing you know, Cantor will switch parties. I mean, this short, two data point trend of Cantor's seems to indicate that he has some interest in doing something, and that puts him well outside the mainstream of his current party.

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With seniors turning on Republicans, are Republicans done?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(See also Frank's post on this.)

Carville and Greenberg notice something interesting, and perhaps transformational, going on:

There's something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP. This is apparent in seniors' party affiliation and vote intention, in their views on the Republican Party and its leaders, and in their surprising positions on jobs, health care, retirement security, investment economics, and the other big issues that will likely define the 2014 midterm elections.

We first noticed a shift among seniors early in the summer of 2011, as Paul Ryan's plan to privatize Medicare became widely known (and despised) among those at or nearing retirement. Since then, the Republican Party has come to be defined by much more than its desire to dismantle Medicare. To voters from the center right to the far left, the GOP is now defined by resistance, intolerance, intransigence, and economics that would make even the Robber Barons blush. We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens.

It's never made much sense to me why seniors would vote Republican given the the Republican effort to dismantle the social safety net, the government programs so many seniors rely on, but I suppose there's something to be said for tradition, and of course part of voting Republican is being motivated by fear of change, of the new, of what is young and different.

But the Republican Party is moving further and further to the right, becoming the party solely of anti-government Tea Party types, right-wing Christian fundamentalists, neocon warmongers, and, of course, the Romney-style rich. And for all the post-election talk of rebranding, the Republican Party is doubling down on pushing away minority voters as well, it seems, as anyone else who isn't of this ideological stripe, including seniors generally.

We'll see if this holds next year. Midterm elections are characterized by low voter turnout dominated by an older, whiter electorate. But if Republicans are losing old white people, at least enough of them to make a difference, what hope do they have?

America's imaginary lavish social welfare safety net that exists only in Republican minds

By Marc McDonald 

In America, we hate the poor. We really, really hate the poor. We are indoctrinated from birth to hate the poor. Jesus may have said, "Blessed are you who are poor." But America has no time for that Jesus. Our motto is "Screw the poor."

The Century Foundation

As a result, America has never been big on social welfare programs for the poor. Even during the peak years of U.S. social program spending (during LBJ's "Great Society" years), America had a skimpy social safety net, compared to other industrialized nations.

Compared to generous European social safety nets, America these days more closely resembles the likes of Mexico than a modern First World industrialized nation. Jobless benefits, for example, are far more meager and stingy in the U.S. than they are in Europe. In fact, for one reason or another, millions of Americans don't even ever qualify for jobless benefits. (I know: I was one of them. Years ago, I applied for jobless benefits and was turned down.)

The other pillar of the U.S. social safety net, food stamps, is also very meager. I recall recently playing around with the food stamp eligibility program on a Texas state government Web site. I was curious as to exactly how low one's income had to be in order to qualify. I kept plugging in lower and lower income numbers and kept getting a response page that said, "You earn too much to qualify for food stamps." Eventually, I concluded the Web site must be broken. It was only later that I discovered, much to my amazement, that the Web site was in fact working just fine and the Third World-like wages I'd plugged into the search form were indeed considered too high to qualify for aid.

In short, in America these days, if you're poor, you are screwed.

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Not so long road to GOP authoritarianism

By Frank Moraes 

Last week, Robert Reich wrote an article trying to explain, Why Republicans are Disciplined and Democrats Aren't. Basically he argued that this is because of the kind of people who are attracted to the two parties. Republicans tend to lean toward authoritarianism, and thus it isn't surprising that their politicians would be good at delivering the same brainless talking points over and over and over again. I don't think there is much question of this. When I was a libertarian, I hated the Republican Party and still had a certain fondness for the Democrats for exactly this reason. (Sadly for the movement, most people are exactly the opposite, which ought to tell you all you need to know about libertarianism as a practical matter.)

What confuses me is that according to Reich, it ever was so. He quotes Will Rogers saying, "I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." He likely said that before the first World War. But I'm not sure it means what Reich claims. After all, people normally make that kind of joke about whatever organization they are associated with. But I do think the joke works because Democrats have long recognized themselves in it and Republicans have felt superior for that reason. But is that image correct?

In many ways, the Republican Party has always been conservative. When the party started in the 1850s, it had a very compelling slogan, "free labor, free land, free men." The "free land" part of that referred to the fact that plantation owners tended to own all the good farm land in an area. As a result of this, free (white) farmers were kept down because the system was proto-feudal. But it's clear that the slogan is laser focused on slavery. The first and third phrases are about slavery and the second is about slave holders. The truth is that from the beginning, the Republican Party was very much pro-business, although it is certainly true that business then was quite different from now.

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There's no Tea Party rift

By Frank Moraes 

Ed Kilgore reflected yesterday on the fact that the only real ideological divide in the Republican Party is over national security. That is true, although even Rand Paul has shown himself to be nothing is not malleable when it comes to ideology. But it is true that a large bipartisan minority voted for an amendment to the half-trillion-dollar defense authorization to restrict the NSA's ability to collect telephone metadata on U.S. calls. The final vote was 205-217, so it only barely lost.

Kilgore speculated that there would have been more Democratic votes for the amendment if a Republican had been in the White House. Of course that's true. Even still, I'm pretty happy with the party; they voted in favor of the amendment 111-83 -- that's 57% of the caucus on a bill where the leadership and the White House were very vocal about how it would mean the end of free society and would effectively mean the terrorists won.

On the Republican side, Kilgore is less certain about how the White House control affected the vote. As it was, while Republicans voted for the amendment in large numbers, they did not have a majority. The vote was 94-134 -- that's just 41%. I suspect that had a Republican been in the White House, that number would have gone down to perhaps 30%.

The main question is why some Republicans care about privacy issues while others do not. Kilgore noted, "I certainly haven't figured out any consistent principle... that makes it possible to predict which fire-eating Tea Party conservative these days is frothing for an immediate war with Iran and perhaps domestic profiling of Muslims, and which is worried about excessive overseas commitments or domestic surveillance." For example, Michele Bachmann and Steve King both voted against the amendment.

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