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- Fareed Zakaria, who usually offers more trenchant political analysis, succumbs to the conventional wisdom on the budget deficit, arguing that "the fate of the U.S. is going to be decided over the next year." In other words, it is the most immediate, important policy decision facing the United States right now. I mean, why bother with boosting economic growth and creating jobs, when all it will lead to is increased revenues which will ... reduce the deficit. And you certainly don't want to combat global warming by putting a price on carbon, because that will lead to revenues ... dammit.
- Jonathan Chait says, "Business sits in the enviable position of having one party that wants to save capitalism and another party eager to slash regulations and the tax burden on the rich," which is why we get to listen to business whine about being treated poorly by our socialist president. Meanwhile, conservative economists think the weak economy is the product of "regulatory uncertainty, closely followed by concerns over the budget deficit and Barack Obama's hostility toward the business community." I get that politics is win-win for business, but are these economists just partisan hacks or just not very good economists?
- There's nothing new on John Judis' list of myths about independent voters, but I like that he put "There is no Party of Independents" at the top. Even before you drill down into the details of independent voting behavior -- they're closet partisans, very few are truly "independent" -- isn't it just intuitively obvious that a group identified by pollsters as anything but Republican or Democrat is going to be politically heterogeneous and lack the coherence that a political party has? Again, I'm glad Judis is making these points, but shouldn't they be so obvious that they're simply assumed when one does political reporting?
- Remainders: Incoming Republican senators think keeping the world awash in nuclear weapons is too important an issue for the current Senate to handle; the conspicuous lack of a Republican "mandate"; and are Democrats going to do the right thing on tax cuts?