The GOP's 'Punish Everything and Everyone' Mentality

I was tempted to write that an LA Times headline -- "Medical help for illegal immigrants could haunt Mitt Romney" -- demonstrates everything that's wrong with today's Republican Party. It hits a lot of the bullet-points; a lack of compassion or mercy, a complete absence of anything approximating common sense, and the belief that every problem can be solved by punishing someone.

The Massachusetts healthcare law that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed in 2006 includes a program known as the Health Safety Net, which allows undocumented immigrants to get needed medical care along with others who lack insurance.

Uninsured, poor immigrants can walk into a health clinic or hospital in the state and get publicly subsidized care at virtually no cost to them, regardless of their immigration status.

The program, widely supported in Massachusetts, drew little attention when Romney signed the trailblazing healthcare law. But now it could prove problematic for the Republican presidential hopeful, who has been attacking Texas Gov. Rick Perry for supporting educational aid for children of undocumented immigrants in Texas.

So undocumented immigrants, including children, should be sick and uneducated. Because a sick and uneducated segment of the populace is just so damned good for a society.

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GOP Supporters' Lynch Mob Mentality

Last night's Republican presidential debate was almost a rerun, in that the candidates repeated many of the lies they told last time around and in that the media's largely ignoring those lies. As always, the talking heads are all atwitter about who won, who lost, who got the best dig, who had the best applause line, etc. Who told the truth is unimportant, apparently.

And there was even the seemingly requisite offensive crowd reaction. Previous debates have featured applause at the death penalty's failure to prevent crimes in Texas (you don't set records for handing out punishments that actually work) and cheering on the death of the uninsured. And now there's this:



That's right, Stephen Hill, a gay soldier currently serving in Iraq got booed. Even some conservatives are getting a little queasy about the debate crowds, although in strictly typical paranoid terms.

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Louie Gohmert's Brainless and Typically Republican Jobs Plan

By now, it should be obvious to even the most casual observer that Rep. Louie Gohmert is not burdened with the curse of genius. In fact, while there may be a lot of competition for the title of Dumbest Member of Congress, Gohmert is definitely a frontrunner. This is the guy who came up with the ridiculous "terror babies" conspiracy theory, who argued that President Obama was in league with the Muslim Brotherhood, and that passage of hate crimes legislation would lead to Nazism, legalization of necrophilia, pedophilia, and bestiality. This is one underachieving mind.

So it should come as no surprise that he has idiotic ideas about what will and won't create jobs. In a headline-chasing maneuver, Gohmert filed a bill titled the "American Jobs Act" before Democrats filed the President's bill by the same name. So now dems can't pass Obama's bill -- unless they change the name to something like "American Employment Act" or the "Jobs for America Act." That should really set them back about thirty seconds. What a crippling blow from a procedural grandmaster.

But it's not Gohmert's pointless poaching of the title that's so demonstrative of his idiocy -- although it's not a bad one. It's his bill itself. Two whole pages legislation is all it takes to get America back to work, according to Gohmert. And it's what's in this simplistic legislation that shows the true depth of Representative Gohmert's intellectual capacity.

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Red State Welfare Queens Revisited

I can't figure out why Democrats and liberal commentators don't talk about this more. Especially now, with the Republican Party scrambling to cut pretty much all federal spending. But, for the most part, they aren't. It's not difficult to understand; red state economies are subsidized with blue state money. In other words, the average red state takes more federal tax dollars than it pays in, while blue states take less. I've written about it before. If we wanted to talk about welfare queens living off the largesse of federal government, Republican states are the queens we'd be discussing.

So what does this say about the economics of Republican state governments? Not good things. The ten poorest states in the nation in 2009 were all red states. What happens in red states is the Republican race to the bottom, where they cut services and spending to lower taxes, in hopes of attracting businesses and jobs. But low taxation isn't the only thing businesses are looking for. They want good schools -- not only for their own kids, but because good schools mean good workers. They want a strong infrastructure to maintain their distribution and supply chains. They want local consumers to buy their products or services. Red states offer none of these things and that is a direct result of the "tax cuts are everything" approach to economics.

All of this comes to mind because of a takedown by Robert Reich of Texas Governor Rick Perry. Perry wants "big government" out of our lives (except for the sex police, of course) and has advocated what Reich calls "fiscal secession" from the federal economy -- i.e., each state is on its own, financially. Leaving aside Perry's hypocrisy here, this would be a disaster for voters in most Republican-dominated states.

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Liberals Need to Take Court Races as Seriously as Corporations Do

The Wisconsin Supreme Court race stretched out through the night and into the early morning. By the time I finally hung it up at about two, it was already clear that a recount was in the cards. As it stands as of this writing, JoAnne Kloppenburg leads incumbent David Prosser -- 739,574 to 739,350. In other words, by next to nothing. Associated Press reports that three precincts are still out -- two in Kloppenburg dominated Milwaukee County and one in Prosser-heavy Jefferson County. So, right now, it seems that Kloppenburg will keep her slim lead and, perhaps, expand on it. Or not. Who even knows?

But it pays to remember that Prosser originally dominated this race with 55% of the primary vote. That means he's gone from shoe-in to losing, if only by a handful of votes. Prosser was going to win this in a walk, then everything got turned on its head. Republican over-reach comes with a price for conservatives.

Despite Prosser's complaints that he was attacked by special interests, Kloppenburg backers were outspent, making this the most costly Supreme Court race in Wisconsin history. Outspent and against a candidate who looked like a sure winner, Kloppenburg was able to close the gap and -- if barely -- overcome it.

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Where a Knock Out was Needed, a Draw was Called

Last night's Democratic debate in Texas ended in what most observers are calling a draw. Clinton managed to get a hit in, but it didn't play. Trying her plagiarism charge for the nth time, Clinton said, "[L]ifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in; it's change you can Xerox."

The statement was rewarded with some booing.

The statement also illustrates a deep problem with Hillary Clinton's campaign -- it seems to be ignoring its own misfires. The plagiarism angle was test-flown in Wisconsin and it crashed. Yet, here she is, trying the failed line again. The campaign is not adjusting.

The reaction of analysts to Clinton's performance in the debate is that things look bad. Political Wire helpfully gathers a few:

Chuck Todd, for MSNBC: "Clinton ended the debate on a VERY conciliatory note and for the first time sounded like a candidate who realized she might not win. It must be an odd position for her but the confidence she exuded for just about the entire debate disappeared there at the end. I wonder if showing some vulnerability might actually help her with some undecided voters."

Marc Ambinder for The Atlantic: "This was the night where we all learned that Hillary Clinton understands the moment in history we are in, and that she is smart enough and gracious enough to realize that her party is more important than personal vanity, that there are things she just cannot say about Obama because it would hurt him in the fall, and that more likely than not, she will not win the nomination."

ABC News' Rick Klein: "If all you're doing as a voter is making a judgment based on this debate, it's easy to come away supporting Clinton. But that's not how the election works -- the fact is Sen. Clinton was looking for ways to recast the debate tonight, and we didn't get that. A few new lines on a few old arguments do not result in any changed dynamics, not by my judgment. If you're an Obama fan, you're generally pleased with the night."

Walter Shapiro in Salon: "The very tentative guess is that Hillary Clinton still managed to inspire voters in Texas and Ohio to look again, perhaps for the last time, at the candidate whom they are poised to jettison in favor of Barack Obama."

The only good news is that last from Shapiro -- and even then, the assessment is that Clinton has one last chance. The problem is that she needs a lot more than that. Not only does Clinton need to win Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania, but she needs to win them convincingly. That seems unlikely.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that the polls in at least one key state are moving in the wrong direction for team Clinton. That poll puts Clinton at 48% in Texas, with Obama at 47%. ABC tells us that Texas is still about 25% undecided. Obama is closing.

"If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be. It's all on you," former president Bill Clinton told voters in Texas.

In Ohio, her margin is wider, but nowhere near a safe win and nowhere near what she needs to win. In that race, Clinton polls 50% and Obama gets 43% -- with a third undecided. As I pointed out earlier this week, Obama owned the undecided in Wisconsin. Ohio's and Wisconsin's electorates are similar. And the amount of time between now and March 2nd is time enough for the Obama ground game to eat up a good chunk of that undecided vote.

As Marc Armbinder suggests, the even Clinton sees the hurdles she must clear and has to be seriously considering the very real possibility that they're too high to clear. In her closing at the debate, Clinton -- albeit indirectly -- spoke about the possibility of her defeat. "Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends," Clinton said. "I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that’s what this election should be about."

If that sounds a little like a concession to you, there's a reason. When John Edwards suspended his campaign, his speech included the line, "But I want to say this to everyone: with Elizabeth, with my family, with my friends, with all of you and all of your support, this son of a millworker's gonna be just fine. Our job now is to make certain that America will be fine."

At this point in time, I don't see this campaign going all the way to the convention. I don't see a brokered convention. And I don't see Texas and Ohio as a "last stand" for Clinton, so much as a "Hail Mary." If she pulls this campaign up and out of this dive, it'll be the political comeback of the last fifty years -- at least. I wouldn't count her out just yet, but I wouldn't put any money on her winning either. Those chips go to Obama.

Last night's debate was considered by most to be the closing arguments in this campaign. Clinton doesn't seem to offer any real changes to her message. At this point, the whole thing looks like Obama's to lose -- which seems unlikely. "The chances of Obama doing something that's going to cause a major problem are about as low as her doing something that will turn it around," Democratic strategist Bill Carrick told AP's Rob Fournier. "When you start pressing to come back, it's usually the person who's behind who makes the mistake."

Still, no one in history has ever had a crystal ball that worked right. The unforeseen is unforeseen for a reason. The Clinton cause is not entirely hopeless, but the grounds for optimism are fading fast.

--Wisco

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