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- Of course Senate Republicans are prepared to use "hundreds of procedural objections" to stall a health care reform bill that goes through the budget reconciliation process. Republicans, by and large, don't want health-care reform. They have no alternative legislation, aren't negotiating in good faith on the existing legislation, and so they're going to try to slow it down and stop it altogether using every means at their disposal.
- Keeping the above in mind, was Obama right to leave the details of health-care policy to Congress and not push for a specific agenda until late in the game? Norm Ornstein says yes, convincingly, and somewhat presciently, as Marc Ambinder reports that the administration is about to insert itself into the debate in a big way, clearly describing goals he expects to be in any reform bill that reaches his desk. Although at this point, it might be too late to effectively use the bully pulpit.
- Jon Henke is absolutely correct that to suggest that the Right needs to purge the fringe radicals out of conservative politics, as National Review did to the Birchers in the '60s. But now NR embraces birthers, promotes book-length treatments of Godwin's Law, and generally trades in nonsense, while the Republican party proper does not seem inclined to reward moderates with leadership positions. Their political effectiveness or electoral appeal aside, the Right is destined to become more insular, radical and unhinged in the short term and I don't think reformers like Henke can stop it.
- Dick Cheney, who The Wall Street Journal thinks has a real chance at winning the presidency in 2012 on a national security platform, remains a master manipulator of the media, as Dan Froomkin writes at HuffPo. But the real problem is that news organizations still solicit Cheney's opinion without challenging anything he says, despite the fact that he is serial liar whose public appearances are timed to sow confusion about "partisan" disagreements over such trivial matters as torture and manipulating intelligence.
- Remainders: Glad to see compassionate conservatism is alive and well; Idaho Republicans, it would seem, are from a different world; conservatives are pissed that Western Civilization has been insufficient at thwarting the tyranny of equality; going Galt makes a comeback; and how else to respond to neocon crank Frank Gaffney than with a reference to 1987's Spaceballs?
--Mori Dinauer
