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- Lost in all the ink spilled over whether Rahm Emanuel is wrecking the White House, offering shrewd advice, or even being responsible for the rise of the tea partiers is an overwhelming consensus: Rahm Emanuel is the center of the political universe. I find this very strange since, in his capacity as White House chief of staff, Emanuel has myopically performed the duties of a White House chief of staff. All the rest about the boundless reach of his influence feels like a desperate attempt to render an unintelligible political situation intelligible.
- Ron Paul's victory in the CPAC straw poll Saturday (full results [PDF] here) only tells us about the people who attended CPAC, right? It doesn't shed any light on the future of conservative Republican politics, does it? Actually, it does. It tells us that Republicans will never nominate Ron Paul as their presidential candidate. Paul spoke at CPAC mostly about his opposition to America going to war. But the rest of the conservative movement loves its never-ending war on terror, and Republicans have no problem with extravagant spending on never-ending war, and frankly prefer it when that spending isn't even really on the books.
- Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who bears the distinction of losing re-election by being a Republican despite being popular with his constituents, has a by-the-numbers opinion piece in the Times where he muses that maybe he and other like-minded centrists might form a third party and run for president, just like Abe Lincoln! You see, there's just too much partisanship in Congress, and by failing to secure bipartisan support for the ARRA, Barack Obama set the tone for the rest of 111th's session. I could use my space here to mock this further, but I'd like to pivot and ask op-ed page editor Andy Rosenthal why he thought this would be of interest to the Times' readers. Seriously, what is the big idea here?
- According to Republican Tom Price, a Republican takeover of the House this year would enable the party to truly tackle health-care reform because "the majority of members in our conference will have been there three terms or fewer -- so it's a different mindset." To be sure, all that new Republican blood in Congress in 1994 was barreling toward a serious effort to reform our health-care system, but of course Bill Clinton had to ruin everything by getting to third base, which forced Republicans to shift their focus. Price then elaborated on the GOP's solutions: "The big takeaway from our conference that is important to tell the American people is that the status quo is unacceptable. We simply believe that the solutions put patients and doctors in charge, not the government." The wonkiness, it burns!
- Weekend Remainders: It is quite baffling why some reasonable conservatives can't recognize that the vast majority of their movement are stark raving mad; the Washington Examiner demonstrates how to generate an alarming headline out of an uncontroversial issue; for Tom Coburn, the reason to get elected to a legislative body is to produce zero legislation; lest you forget that Christian conservatives consider women as little more than vessels for men to sire testaments to God's glory, you can usually find some Republican to remind you; and I couldn't begin to explain why anyone would take anything Glenn Reynolds says seriously.
--Mori Dinauer
