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- Barack Obama's remarks today on earmark reform struck me as mostly a statement of the obvious. The president made the essential points that a) earmarks are a sliver of the total budget, b) are typically used by legislators to bring home federal money, and c) have been abused recently but can and will be reformed. Meanwhile, the U.S. House has followed up with its own version of earmark reform, CQ Politics points out the losing battle Republicans are fighting with themselves over the earmark process, and, predictably, 2008's presidential also-ran thinks banning earmarks in their entirety is the only responsible thing to do.
- It's shocking (though hardly surprising) that Republicans are increasingly embracing the "government should do nothing" line regarding economic stimulus. Whether it's the House GOP's "spending freeze" or Mark Sanford's refusal to use stimulus money for anything other than paying down South Carolina's debt, it's clear that the GOP is making a deadly gamble on the economy whose only upshot is breathing political life into their party. Then again, when you read stories that suggest a slow creep of potential waste and inefficiency into the process, you can already imagine the GOP talking points 18 months from now.
- Late yesterday we learned that RNC Chair Michael Steele might face a no-confidence vote after the NY-20 special election on March 31, although others are calling it unlikely. Katon "whites only" Dawson -- suspected to be behind a Steele ouster -- has denied he is angling for the job in the event of a coup. Even if Steele does survives what will his legacy be? President Obama's new media strategist doesn't think too highly of Steele's efforts to use technology to reshape the GOP, and with Steele spending the rest of his time insulting Congressional Republicans (or generically, "The Hill"), it's hard to see how he'll ever focus on rebuilding his party.
- Center-right nation watch, polling edition: The Center for American Progress took an extensive look at ideological self-identification and found that the largest plurality of respondents describe themselves as "conservative" (34 percent), followed by "moderate" (29 percent) then "progressive" (16 percent) and "liberal" (16). Yet when moderates were forced to lean towards either "conservative/libertarian" or "progressive/liberal," the result was a draw (48 vs 47 percent). Meanwhile, Democracy Corps finds that 62 percent of moderate Republicans believe the party is living in the past, and Gallup finds a big upswing in Congress' approval, carried on the backs of Democrats and independents. Dylan is right to observe that the moderate center is shifting to the left, and that redefinition is being assisted -- if begrudgingly -- by columnists downplaying the significance of the Obama administration's sharp 180 away from the Reagan and Bush years.
- The news that The Atlantic's Ross Douthat is taking over William Kristol's old NY Times column slot is very good. Dana is right -- having a real argument with someone you both disagree with and respect is getting rarer these days, and adding a voice like that to the most valuable opinion real estate in the country is not only healthy, but shows good judgment on the Times' part to make the conservative voices on their pages representative of reformists instead of reactionaries.
- Remainders: David Vitter (R-LA) gets testy; public broadcasting seeks $300 million from Obama; shockingly, it turns out Jim Cramer only knows how to pick stocks in bizarro world; Spencer Ackerman wonders why the Obama administration would want to privatize veteran care; two economists make the case that patent and copyright law are stifling innovation; and everybody needs friends, even disgraced former presidents.
--Mori Dinauer
