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- A very strange conversation between four Brookings senior fellows, alluded to yesterday. Jonathan Rauch starts with the observation that despite ideological calcification, the country's problems are too big for one party to handle alone, and thus what President Obama really needs is "Speaker Boehner." In response, Thomas Mann and Henry Aaron politely note that this is a pretty crazy point of view, rewarding Republicans for their single-minded pursuit of dealing Democrats policy defeat, particularly on the country's biggest problems, which was of course the reason Rauch gave in the first place for pursuing divided government. Then Isabel V. Sawhill comes along and judges the previous arguments to be all well and good, but the only way to fix Washington is to wait for "a leader who is able to articulate the need for more sensible and pragmatic solutions. Such a leader would start a movement of like-minded citizens that eventually culminates in a third party win of the presidency." It would seem that contrarian ideas are now indistinguishable from the conventional wisdom.
- If you had suggested back in, say, August 2009 that Republicans leaders should "calm their followers," I would have agreed with you. But While Republicans should be doing the same thing today, is there any reason to believe it would be effective? Besides, wouldn't this just be viewed as Republicans conceding to the notion that the Tea Partiers are a bunch of unhinged right-wing extremists? Wouldn't those turncoat RINOs suddenly face a backlash from their own followers? No, I think it's safe to assume Republican leaders will continue to condemn violence and push the Cantor-Gingrich line that Democrats need to take "moral responsibility" for angering the public. They were just asking for it.
- As I was saying yesterday, the reason I believe the right-wing criticism of Barack Obama's foreign policy is based more on fatal misunderstanding rather than outright deception is because of the ridiculous premises they bring to their critiques. For instance, here's National Review editor Kathryn Jean Lopez endorsing a suggestion from Rush Limbaugh that "Israel should just change its name to Iran." Matt Yglesias sees this as evidence of the dimwittedness of Lopez and Limbaugh, but what's happening here is that Limbaugh is making a dog-whistle joke that assumes the listener buys into the premise that Obama is appeasing Iran and abandoning Israel. Without buying that (obviously incorrect) premise, the joke makes no sense and it looks like the mental exercise of someone who lacks a functioning brain.
- Remainders: Nobody could have predicted that the Tea Partiers hold utterly incoherent opinions about government socialism; the delay in implementing health-care reform, as Krugman reminds us, was to sate Congress' love of large, arbitrary numbers; state-level carbon pricing has thus far not led to the destruction of capitalism or America; the White House is aware of all Internet traditions; and I wish I could get a $5 million advance to transcribe political gossip.
--Mori Dinauer
