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Newt Gingrich has written an article in NewsMax about what he calls “NOT Obama Democrats”. (I am not sure why the “not” is capitalized.):

The first big signal was the 41 percent of the vote Keith Judd won in the West Virginia Democratic primary. Here was a convicted felon sitting in a Texas federal prison with a 17 1/2-year sentence for extortion. When West Virginia Democrats prefer a convicted felon to the president, they are showing they are “NOT Obama Democrats.”

This week the depth of the NOT Obama Democrats was further revealed when John Wolfe got 41 percent of the vote in the Arkansas primary. Wolfe, an attorney whose platform includes repealing Obamacare, actually won 36 counties against Obama’s 39 counties.

The same day, “uncommitted” got 42 percent in Kentucky and actually carried a majority of the counties (66 counties to 54 Obama counties).

This 42 percent is the same percentage Eugene McCarthy got against President Lyndon Johnson in New Hampshire in 1968, and at that time it was considered an earthquake to have that many Democrats repudiate their own president.

Putting that History degree to use, eh? It might be worth mentioning that McCarthy was an actual guy, and therefore somewhat more capable of sustaining his support than “uncommitted”. Obama presumably intends to continue to argue for himself, and no other Democrat is going to argue for him or her self.

I mock Gingrich, but the truth is he’s on to something here; it is an interesting development. He writes: “If the campaign continues in this direction, we may discover that the NOT Obama Democrats will evolve into Romney Democrats by Election Day.”

Doubtful. Romney is unlikely to appeal to these rural voters much more than Obama does. Yes, yes, I know my fellow Liberals are thinking it’s all motivated by “racism!”, but the fact of the matter is that Romney seems like a rich corporate elitist to these voters.I don’t think they’ll like him any more than they do Obama.

Jennifer Rubin looked at these same facts and concluded: “The reason for this, as you might imagine, is that in burnishing his credentials with the left, Obama has hurt himself in the center, even within the Democratic Party.” Yes, of course, the legendary “center”! How could I forget? She next quotes Josh Kraushaar, who gets it even more wrong:

Moderate Democratic groups and officials, meanwhile, privately fret about the party’s leftward drift and the Obama campaign’s embrace of an aggressively populist message. They’re disappointed that the administration didn’t take the lead advancing the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction proposal, they wish the administration’s focus was on growth over fairness, and they are frustrated with the persistent congressional gridlock. Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank, has been generating analyses underscoring the need for Democrats to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters, to no avail. . . .

Yeah, I’m sure the farmers and rural folks in West Virginia and Arkansas are really torqued off that he didn’t do the Simpson-Bowles plan. Rural people hate populism, isn’t that so?

But, to her credit, Rubin does also make one useful observation in that same post. That is that “Romney is the least conservative candidate the GOP had to choose from.”

Is this true? Well, it’s hard to say, what with the flip-flopping and all. But he is certainly not as bombastic and bellicose as Newt Gingrich. And he was Governor of Massachusetts, a very liberal state, which demonstrates he possesses some ability to compromise; something Gingrich would never do.

Was he more liberal than Ron Paul? Difficult question. Ron Paul is extremely liberal on some issues–drugs, for example–but in step with the most reactionary of conservatives on others. It is almost an “apples to oranges” comparison, but I think on the whole, it is fair to say Romney is at least more “mainstream” and “safer” than Paul, whose supporters are often of a more radical bent, whatever their political leanings.

Romney was more liberal than Bachmann, but more conservative than Huntsman. But Huntsman barely even counts, because everyone, including him, knew he didn’t have a chance. So, that leaves only one other candidate for Romney’s “liberal Republican” credentials to be compared with: Santorum. This should be easy enough to prove. We all know Santorum was the conservative wing’s alternative to Romney. Surely, this fact alone proves Romney to be the most liberal of the possible nominees?

As a Congressman, Santorum, economically speaking, could pass for a caricature Democrat. He was for all sorts of government spending programs. As conservatives and liberals alike will attest, he may have been very conservative socially, but his fiscal behavior was entirely that of a Big-Government man.

I have often thought that Santorum would have been quite happy as a Democrat in the 1930s, ’40s or ’50s. He would have had massive government spending programs going, and social issues being more or less unacknowledged. He is, in other words, a Conservative Democrat from the pre-sexual revolution era.

So, Mitt Romney is more liberal on social issues than Santorum–not a difficult task–but more conservative on economic issues. Romney is far more likely to cut spending than Santorum was. So, which guy is more liberal? Well, that’s hard to say, isn’t it?

And we come round to where we started: what is the deal with all these Democrats not voting for the President from their own party? I suspect a lot of them are like Santorum; they want government spending programs, but don’t like Democratic policies on social issues.

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In the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup, there’s a scene where Chico’s character, Chicolini, is on trial. The prosecutor asks, “Chicolini, when were you born?” Chico answers: “I don’t remember. I was just a little baby.”

I’ve though of this line while reading about the latest installment in Breitbart.com’s “vetting” of the President. It seems a 1991 pamphlet from his literary agent described him as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.” Almost everyone is saying it’s a simple fact-checking error. Even Breitbart.com doesn’t claim it as evidence he actually was born in Kenya; rather, they say:

It is evidence–not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.

First of all, this is almost certainly true, as it is true of every other politician. How often have you seen a Presidential candidate, on a visit to Pittsburgh say “Go Steelers! I’ll fight for you in Washington as hard as Hines Ward blocks.” and then the next day in Wisconsin say “You know, my mother’s best friend’s brother had a cousin from Wisconsin, and I’ve always had a soft spot for those Packers. How ’bout Aaron Rodgers, huh?”

So, it’s kind of a waste of time to say “hey, look; this guy presents himself differently according to the situation! He is unfit to be President!” They all do that. Even if this isn’t a typo–and it probably is–it’s not important.

I hate the phrase “dog-whistle” used in regards to politics. It’s often used as a cheap excuse to say “well you didn’t say [awful, usually racist thing], but it’s what you meant.” That’s dishonest debating. But in this case, it seems almost like Breitbart.com is actually saying (aside, to conservatives) “Here’s evidence he was born in Kenya.” (aloud, to world in general) “We’re not saying this means he was born in Kenya; we just think he’s a liar!”

Although, at least the allegation that he was born in Kenya, crazy as it is, would be important if true. (Which it isn’t.) It relates to an actual legal issue of his eligibility to be President. The stated allegation from Breitbart.com, in contrast, is a stupid bit of minutiae even if it’s true.

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It’s making me uneasy how much “social issues”–lousy term, by the way–keep coming up in this campaign. I had hoped that would stop after Santorum got out, but it hasn’t.

In my opinion, this is exactly the formula for an economic disaster: voters so busy worrying about this stuff that they forget the major economic problems the country’s facing. Even if we finally do recover from the recession, as we appear to be, it will be only to revert to the major economic problem of summer, 2008: high gas prices and stagflation. While I feel they are important, I nonetheless believe that a problem like a major stagflation epidemic dwarfs issues like government-subsidized birth control or whether gays can marry.

Although at least those actually are issues. What’s worst of all is how much attention is devoted to what Mitt Romney did 45 years ago in high-school, or what Obama had for breakfast as a kid in Indonesia.

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It’s amazing how President Obama’s stance on gay marriage has “evolved”. Was there ever any doubt what his position was; and that the “evolving” line was a smokescreen to aid him at the ballot box? There wasn’t, at least, not until yesterday.

Most pundits are saying he did it to energize his liberal base. Well, speaking as a member of that base, I don’t feel particularly energized. I already knew where he stood on the issue, and understood that he simply wasn’t saying it explicitly for political reasons. Unfortunate, perhaps, but an understandable move given that gay marriage faces heavy opposition in many swing states.

The whole thing reminds me of the long-form birth certificate incident last year. Everything made sense: Obama wasn’t releasing the long-form birth certificate because that wasn’t what the State of Hawaii gives a person who requests a birth-certificate. The short-form is good enough for everyone else, so why should  it not be good enough for the President of the United States? To go to the trouble of getting the long-form would be to capitulate to conspiracy theorists.

And then he went and released the long-form birth certificate. This muddied the waters, and suddenly what had been a perfectly logical stance on his part became somewhat mystifying. It is much the same thing here: the original plan was quite understandable and rational. Then the sudden, seemingly impulsive change at the strangest possible time. I really don’t know what to think.

It may be Obama has decided to simply “draw a line in the sand”, as they say, and make clear the differences between him and the Republicans. Not an unreasonable idea, though again an odd change of strategy for someone who has typically been a moderate, non-standoffish type.

The thing is, most opponents of gay-marriage had simply taken for granted that Obama supported it. This is because most opponents of gay-marriage are people who will not hesitate in ascribing all manner of things they consider “evil” to the President. By all appearances, they have simply assumed that he is a Marxist, Muslim Kenyan usurper who means to destroy both the economic and moral fabric of the country, and anything he says or does to contradict such claims they assume to be lies or deception. This may indicate to him and his advisers that whatever he may say about gay marriage–or really, anything–is irrelevant to how the public perceives him.

I think Obama is a great President, but sometimes he does have an odd way of timing things. In the end, though, I don’t think this will change anything about the election. I think the fact that he did this suggests he is very confident.

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The big story of the day is that the Obama administration has been using executive power to act unilaterally without the approval of Congress. It’s based on this New York Times story by Charlie Savage:

As a senator and presidential candidate, [Obama] had criticized George W. Bush for  flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals.

But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress.

The first several paragraphs of the article all portray Obama as making something of a reversal; of now doing what he accused Bush of doing. Eventually, in the ninth paragraph, we get the details:

[F]or the most part, Mr. Obama’s increased unilateralism in domestic policy has relied on a different form of executive power than the sort that had led to heated debates during his predecessor’s administration: Mr. Bush’s frequent assertion of a right to override statutes on matters like surveillance and torture.

“Obama’s not saying he has the right to defy a Congressional statute,” said Richard H. Pildes, a New York University law professor. “But if the legislative path is blocked and he otherwise has the legal authority to issue an executive order on an issue, they are clearly much more willing to do that now than two years ago.”

That’s sort of a major difference. It’s one thing to use the Executive’s legally-granted powers aggressively, it’s another to go around the laws of the Legislative branch–“through the dark side”, as the fellow once said. But that’s not really the impression the casual reader, or the reader of headlines, is likely to get.

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Mitt Romney has acquired something of a reputation for trying to be “all things to all people”, that he will say absolutely whatever it takes to get elected. The “Etch-a-Sketch” comment only reinforced this notion. As Andrew Sullivan put it:

It sums up every single worry about Romney in one metaphor: that he is a machine, that he can say or stand for anything, and that, from time to time, depending on which segment of the population he is appealing to, he will simply become something completely different.

It does remind me of another quote by a politician:

I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.

The politician in question was one Barack Obama, in his book The Audacity of Hope.

Republicans are probably thinking that this just goes to prove the existence of the “liberal media”. They would be wrong. What it goes to prove is the power of charisma. Obama’s statement is entirely accurate and, what is more, it is true without any effort on Obama’s part. Whereas Romney has to twist in the political winds, Obama gets stuff projected onto him effortlessly. This is one of the differences between a charismatic politician and an un-charismatic one.

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The RedState article I linked to in the previous post set me thinking. The author, “streiff”, drew an analogy between Supreme Court Justices and referees in sports. This, in conjunction with Obama’s claims about “judicial activism”, reminded me of the old joke about three baseball umpires talking about making calls:

Umpire 1: “I calls ’em like I sees ’em.”

Umpire 2: “I calls ’em like they is.”

Umpire 3: “They ain’t nothing till I calls ’em”

The thing is, the Supreme Court is all three umpires at once. If five of them see it as unconstitutional, then it is unconstitutional. And it’s not known if it’s constitutional or not until they rule on it.

Also, I don’t see how it’s ever possible to know if they’re being “activist judges” or not. Supposing they strike down the health-care law, the ruling will be couched in terms of how they think it violates the Constitution. Now, since this is all a matter of interpretation, it’s impossible to know if they really interpret the Constitution that way, or if they just struck it down because they oppose liberal laws. How can you ever prove the charge of “judicial activism”? Hey, you judges and lawyers out there, I’m asking.

The other cool thing in the RedState article is its mention of the case of Marbury v. Madison. It was the first time that a law was declared unconstitutional. It’s a fascinating case for a host of reasons, but of interest at the moment is that Thomas Jefferson thought that it was an instance of “activist judges”–he didn’t use that phrase, but that was roughly his sentiment. He said it made the Constitution “a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” So, Obama would be in good company if he opposed judicial review.

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Yesterday, President Obama said: “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress”. He also apparently added that the Supreme Court is “unelected”.

Republican writers have been attacking him for this, laughing at how stupid this statement is. After all, Supreme Court Justice is by design an unelected position, and to complain about this is to complain about the whole system. More to the point, it is not in the least unprecedented for the Court to overturn a law passed by Congress. That’s what it’s there for.

So, why did Obama say that? Republicans would have you believe it’s because he’s an idiot, and a sham Constitutional lawyer. But they are, of course, wrong.

This statement of Obama’s is calculated for the ears of low-information voter. The people who don’t pay much attention to politics, or have much knowledge of the system. The statement is calibrated to inflame animosity among this demographic towards the Supreme Court. (Which, by the by, indicates he’s concerned they’re going to overturn it.)

Now, a cynic would say the President is lying to stupid people to win their votes. But this is an unduly bleak way of putting it. As I have said, merely because a person is not well-informed about the political system does not mean that person is stupid. And both sides try to court the low-information vote. Indeed, when any part of the political system is not presently working to the advantage of one party, that party will demonize that part of the system, and the other will praise it. Yet, when circumstances change, and the party that had benefited now suffers from this part of the system, the situation will be reversed. This happens frequently with the filibuster.

In other words, this is a non-story, Obama is not an idiot, and you Republicans will just have to think of something else. Just another day in politics.

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Breitbart.com has published its late namesake’s final piece. The statement on the site claims it is the first step in their quest to fulfill Breitbart’s desire to “vet” President Obama.

His last column concerns a play about the community organizer Saul Alinsky that was staged in Chicago in 1998. Of note, in Breitbart’s opinion, is that then-State Senator Obama appeared on a panel discussing the play after its conclusion. This panel also included various individuals who Breitbart alleges had ties to communism. This, he determines, casts much suspicion on Obama. Then there is the fact that the promotional materials for the event misspell Obama’s name, which, the article seems to imply, is more evidence of his sinister designs.

Then Breitbart, having apparently reasoned

The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the President.

goes on to provide us with a synopsis of it. It is rather a disjointed account, but then, I have not seen the play. Perhaps the fault here is not Breitbart’s, but the dramatist’s. And I don’t quite see the part where I am supposed to be horrified at the idea of the Commander-in-Chief to be watching such a play.

The fact that Obama showed up to talk about some play is not terribly damning, in my eyes. It is true that other people, perhaps quite bad people, showed up as well, but when you are State Senator your job is to curry favor within your district, and you cannot help it if it is the one populated by communist sympathizers. Not that I wish to imply I trust Breitbart’s accusations of communism, but I mean that even if he is entirely right, he has still proven nothing about the character of the President.

He fails to provide any information concerning what Obama said on the panel. He gives a plausible account of his whereabouts, but you can only determine so much about someone from that. Especially a politician, who will go anywhere where they have persuadable voters. If this is what their “vetting” of the President is going to be like, I would say that he does not have much to worry about.

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President Obama–the same President Obama who is allegedly engaging in “class warfare” and supposedly out to tax “job-creators”–has announced a plan to “lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 28%.” Read all about it.

One thing to keep in mind before arguing about what this plan means is that it is a plan that is being proposed. Meaning that if anything ever does come of it, it will probably be completely different than it is now, once all the different interests have hashed it out.

But, just for fun, let’s talk about it. Apparently, idea is that in exchange for these tax cuts, “corporations would have to give up dozens of loopholes and subsidies that they now enjoy. Corporations with overseas operations would also face a minimum tax on their foreign earnings“, according to the Associated Press article.

Okay, but here’s the thing: ultimately whether it comes under the label “taxes”, “loopholes”, “subsidies” or what have you, there is ultimately only one question: do the corporations get more money as a result of this plan or less? I’d like to see some sort of estimated balance sheet that gives some idea whether corporations, if treated as a monolith, win or lose from this plan. I won’t hold my breath, though, because it’s going to be virtually impossible to get good reporting on that.

More to the point, even if you somehow did find that out, we would then have to drill down into the details of which corporations will lose and which will win, and then try to figure out if they’re the right ones. Which is always a gamble, because it’s basically the same problem as trying to pick winners. And then of course, as the AP article points out it is unlikely that any of this will happen in an election year, and thus, even assuming Obama does get re-elected, it’s unknown what the Congress will look like next year.

This is why the idea of getting rid of the whole tax code appeals to people. It appealed to me, in my Libertarian days, until I realized that since taxes in some form are necessary to run a government, there would have to be new one installed, and in the course of installing it, all the same problems would immediately recur.

While we’re on the topic, why is Obama doing this, if such a class-warrior he is? Is he just as beholden to the corporate interests as his Republican opponents. I don’t know, but I know some Democrats who are going to think so.

Long-time readers might remember when I asked the question “was Theodore Roosevelt a socialist?” I said at the time that I thought T.R. “was merely a pragmatist, and found that the easiest way to thwart radical socialism was to allow for moderate socialism.” The same argument could apply here, if we ask “is Obama out to aid the corporations?”* Well, yes, but not as much as the Republicans are. The easiest way to thwart radical corporate tax cuts is to allow for moderate ones.

 

*I did not ask “is Obama a Capitalist?” for reasons which are long and complicated. The short version is that, in my view, very few people can actually be said to be “capitalist”, as almost all countries, governments, and corporations engage in some scheme of artificial wealth redistribution, which, according to some Republicans makes them “socialist”. By their definition, almost everything short of anarchy is socialism. Also, of course, helping corporations isn’t quite the same as being a capitalist, but it’s not being a socialist either.