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Correcting Douthat on the filibuster
[Updated with a response from Keith Krehbiel] New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has mounted a defense of the filibuster on his blog as producing centrist outcomes: If you were so inclined, then, you could cite the final vote on both Bush-era bills [the 2001 tax cut and Medicare coverage of prescription drugs] as exhibits
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Twitter roundup
Here are the latest items from my Twitter feed (follow it!): -Rahm Emanuel manages to reinforce the Obama-has-a-big-ego and words-not-deeds narratives in one sentence. –21st century constituent service. -The founder of the Wu Tang Clan is now “the RZA-rector” (via Ben Fritz). -If you missed it, Tracy Morgan’s Fresh Air interview really was one of
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Assessing the 2010 House elections
Tom Edsall quoted me in a Huffington Post article today on the 2010 elections: There are, however, a number of factors that suggest 2010 will be quite different from the Democratic rout of 1994 — the so-called Gingrich Revolution. “First, 1994 was the culmination of the South moving into the Republican column; there’s no equivalent
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Walsh smears GOP dissent as “traitorous”
The anti-dissent campaign switched sides last week as Salon’s Joan Walsh became the first prominent liberal to accuse President Obama’s critics of treason. Between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the end of President Bush’s time in office, Republicans and their conservative allies repeatedly suggested that Democratic dissent against the administration’s policies was disloyal. During that
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Obama as missionary-turned-cannibal
From the department of unusual metaphors: Ross Baker, an expert on the presidency and a professor at Rutgers University, said that Obama's “effort [to promote bipartisanship] was a sincere one.” “It's sort of like a missionary who goes to a primitive tribe and tries to convert them from cannibalism and ends up eating human beings,”
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Fred Barnes: Hack
Fred Barnes in a 2005 Wall Street Journal op-ed: Popularity Isn’t Everything By Fred Barnes …Bush’s popularity dropped in 2003 after the terrorist insurgency spread in Iraq. And except for a blip or two, it hasn’t risen significantly since… Instead, his job performance rating in the Gallup Poll has dipped further… [T]the president has taken
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Missing context on growth in polarization
Journalistic accounts of the rise of polarization like the one in Thursday’s New York Times almost always fail to provide two crucial pieces of context: 1. Partisan polarization has increased relative to the mid-20th century. But as I’ve pointed out many times, that period was a historic anomaly — polarization is actually returning to the
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Orrin Hatch: Badgered by “The Internet”
Orrin Hatch on why the Senate is so polarized — they’re under assault by a communications medium. Apparently, “The Internet is constantly badgering everybody”: “Both parties have become very polarized,” Mr. Hatch said. “A lot of that is because of the stupid ethics rules. We can’t get together at various events. A lot of people
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Twitter roundup
While I’m traveling for the holidays, here are some short items from my Twitter feed (which you should follow!): -TNR’s Jon Chait on the triumph that the health care bill represents. -It’s absurd for Karl Rove to mock Dem. hopes for a “40-year majority” after what he said back in 2000. -Matthew Yglesias notes questions
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Beck suggests Obama committed treason
On Tuesday, the Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldbarb claimed that the Obama administration had threatened Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) with closing Offutt Air Force Base, home of the US Strategic Command, if Nelson didn’t support the health care reform bill in the Senate (Michelle Malkin made a similar claim). Even though this questionable report was based