Republicans

Jonathan Chait points out what I think is obvious:

I continue to believe that the filibuster will be eliminated or curtailed when Republicans gain simultaneous control of the House, the presidency, and more than 49 but fewer than 60 Senators. Conservatives have invested a lot of energy into defending the supermajority requirement in the Senate, but the ideological basis of that commitment is tissue-thin and will disappear as soon as it's inconvenient.

I think people on the Left like Kevin Drum are over-analyzing what uncertainly and certainly really mean to the average GOPer.

It's 'uncertainly' when the agenda isn't GOPer and it's 'certainly' when the GOPers' get their way.

I thought people had figured that out by now. The irony of course is who in their right mind would look at any period of Republican ascendancy in the past 20 years and wax nostalgic over the level of 'certainty' flourishing back then.

Gingrich at the 'Values [sic] Voter Summit':

"On the one front we have a secular socialist machine led by Obama, Pelosi and Reid, and on the other front we have radical Islamists who would fundamentally change this country into a system none of us in this room would recognize."

I don't understand all the chest-thumping by the GOPers concerning the Iraqi surge. They're acting like this was some brilliant victory -- and maybe it would have been if we hadn't been told almost four years earlier that the mission was already accomplished or that even earlier, that this whole thing would be a cakewalk. So sure the Iraqi surge was a brilliant victory -- but only if we ignore all the events leading up to it.

Great post (truly classic) by John Cole on what the Teabaggers really stand for:

Why is this so difficult? The Teabaggers are nothing but the GOP base. They come out and vote GOP most if not all the time. They've been around for a 100 years. They are not a new phenomena -- to claim so, as the MSM does in cahoots with a bunch of GOP operatives, is to perpetuate a sham.

Matt Yglesias on the 'giant failure' of the conservative movement (1964-2009):

In the 45 years since that fateful campaign, the conservative movement managed to gain total control over the Republican Party and to sporadically govern the country. But it’s only very partially rolled back one aspect of the Johnson administration’s domestic policy.

It's the easiest thing in the world to come up with a plan when you're completely indifferent to the final results. That's always been the GOPers' advantage when it comes to HCR: basically they can recommend anything they want since universal health care is not part of their agenda, it's part of ours.

So when one of the GOPers in Baltimore whined (in so many words) 'you're ignoring us -- we have a plan too!', it was great to hear Obama respond:

Came across this gem co-written in 2004 by Peter Orzag then at the Brookings Institute discussing the effects of the 2001 Bush tax cuts:

It is astonishing that, more than four years after the proposal was first made public, the administration has still not released an analysis of the plan's long-term economic effects, or even a statement of how it intends to pay for the tax cuts. Even supporters of the tax cut would presumably like to know the answers to those questions.

It's strange to point out, but apparently the period following 9/11 when paranoia was at its highest, is actually considered by the GOPers as the Good Old Days.