Sarah Palin Quits - Leaves Questions About Her Future

By now, the speculation about Sarah Palin’s abrupt and startling resignation has been burning up both the Internet and the mainstream media. The conjecture both in newspapers and on the blogs ranges from guesses that she is tired of the public ridicule she and her family have suffered to suspicions that a scandal is about to break. This includes dark mutterings on some of the progressive blogs about possible criminal indictments coming down in Alaska.

Yeah, right. Absent an actual smoking gun, I’m going to go with some more mundane theories about the what and why.

The most common belief is that being governor of a state so far from the mainland – and the main media markets – is limiting to any candidate with presidential aspirations.

If Palin were to finish out her term, it would limit the amount of time she could devote to campaigning for the two gubernatorial races this year – one in Virginia and the other in New Jersey – as well as prevent her from attending prominent party events that would keep her in the national spotlight. It also would curtail her participation in events in early primary states like New Hampshire and Iowa, where candidates have to start laying down their campaign groundwork and building grassroots support early. Time-consuming retail politics is crucial particularly in those two states. Palin may have concluded, correctly, that fulfilling her obligations to Alaska was incompatible with seeking higher office given the vast distance of Alaska to the rest of the nation.

There is a big problem with that line of thought, though. Quitting as governor does not help her build her credentials, even with some conservative Republicans. She already suffers the disadvantage of being viewed by many voters, as well as pundits, as too inexperienced and unprepared to even be vice president. I can’t imagine how quitting before the end of her first term helps her to be taken seriously for national office. It just appears to be too whimsical a move.

But there is another, simpler explanation for her resignation. She may truly no longer be interested in running in 2012. Nevertheless, just because she may no longer be interested in elective office, that doesn’t mean she wants to completely give up the limelight or relinquish her very real influence among Republicans. By leaving the Governor’s Mansion in Alaska, she could easily pick up a spot as a pundit herself. Should she want it, I’m sure Fox News would happily give her a primetime spot and a show of her own. And that could be portable. She could work from a studio up in Alaska. She could take her show on the road and also campaign for other Republicans.

Sarah may no longer crave the presidency, but that doesn’t mean she wants to give up the spotlight. In fact, she could be far more influential, given her popularity with the GOP base, as a talking head and celebrity guest campaigner and fundraiser for other candidates.

Oh, and did anybody mention that she could also make far more money doing so? I’m sure the financial gain is not her main motivator. But it sure does sweeten the pot, if that is what she wants to do anyway.

Specter Defects From GOP

Chris Cilliza, at The Fix, has the story. Arlen Specter just announced that he is switching his party affiliation and will run in 2010 as the Democratic candidate. Specter was facing a stiff challenge from his party’s right, from former conservative representative, Pat Toomey. Toomey was leading Specter among Pennsylvania Republicans by 10 points in early polls. Adding to the precariousness of Specter’s political prospects is the fact that Pennsylvania has become a Democratic leaning state over the last several political cycles. Specter, a long time pro-choice moderate, has been increasingly marginalized as the Republican Party has drifted ever rightward, and this year he was one of three senators who broke with his party’s leadership to vote in favor of President Obama’s $787 billion bailout. Toomey used the right’s dissatisfaction with that vote to launch his challenge to Specter.

Specter issued the following statement

"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary. I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."

He added: "Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

President Obama, who was informed of Specter's decision at 10:25, immediately expressed his support for Specter and said "we are thrilled to have you."

The other obvious fallout from Specter’s defecting to the Democrats is that they are fast approaching a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Once Al Franken is seated, they will have the 60 seats necessary to invoke cloture.

The Further Adventures of the Angry Spud - It's Not Who I First Thought

But I've got another theory.

I was going to do this as an update, but it deserves its own separate post. I got a full denial from my primary suspect in The Angry Potato mystery. Actually, it was an email passed on to me by a third party. I am waiting to see if I can get permission to reprint it, with steps taken to preserve the person's identity.

This, however, leads me to explore my second theory, which now seems more plausible in light of some new posts to that site. I'll get to that in a minute.

Bear in mind, I have no smoking guns. This is all circumstantial evidence based on speculation that seems logical. But I don't have "I've got your IP address and can prove your identity" type evidence. Nor do I care about the actual identity of the individual doing this. I simply love a good mystery and think this type deconstruction of circumstantial evidence is fun. In fact, it's almost as much fun as reading a good murder mystery.

With those caveats, here's my theory. More and more, I'm convinced that if this isn't the work of a disgruntled former blogger on the lefty side, it is a Republican posing as a Democrat. First of all, it's not as if Republicans are strangers to dirty tricks. Neither are Democrats, by the way. But here's why I think this is a GOPer's dirty trick.

First there is motive. They have the most to benefit from sowing seeds of dissension and mistrust among Democrats. The timing is perfect. There have been real fights among progressive bloggers and diarists. So whoever is doing this thinks that now is the time when it would seem plausible that a Democrat had ratcheted it up to the next level.

But if you read between the lines, whoever this person is always somehow makes the Republicans look better than the Democrats. No matter what the issue. When he's not engaging in pure vitriolic ridicule that is. Here's one example.

For background, the post refers to a proposal in Congress put forth by a very conservative Republican representative, Daryl Issa of California, to change the federal law so that if the first lady participates regularly in any policy group, she would be required to announce it and the meetings would have be public.

As Democrats pointed out, this could be viewed as an attack on Michelle Obama because it could be perceived as treating her differently than Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, or Laura Bush. Why this law and why now?

Here's what the angry little spud said:

It’s about time Democrats stop reaching for the race card every time they get confused. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a racist. If I said, “Vivian’s blog is crap,” besides the fact that it’s untrue, does it make me a racist because Vivian is not a potato? But Blogwhore Central immediately jumps to the fact that Obama is black. That in and of itself indicates some deeply widening sense of racism (of otherness). Let me offer a different take on this issue, and Retweet you’re welcome to copy and paste all you want if you can figure out the big-boy words:

Here's the mashed brain spud's spin:

Finally we have a First Lady who is more than a ceremonial garden statue. Michelle Obama has such potential to change our government, and yes our lives as American citizens, that Republicans are pushing to include her policy work within the same transparency framework as the President and Vice President. It’s an excellent opportunity for the better half of our Presidential Duo to elevate the role of the First Lady, and I believe that with Obama’s claim for more transparency, this bill should be embraced and expanded to grant greater power to the Office of the First Lady. And even if Republicans don’t see it that way, and their motives are not as pure, Democrats should take their bill and do something productive with it instead of bitching about motives.

It’s time for the Democratic party to man up and stop the name calling (I don’t count obviously because I’m better than you, and like T-Mac, I made you who you are today), stop the automatic race-card escalation, and take a step back before you start typing. I’m not saying there aren’t racists in every level of our government (there are, and there always will be, especially as we see more minorities reach the highest peaks of power), but for Christ’s sake, take a moment and try to make your point in a creative and original way, instead of just bouncing up and down on the bed yelling “racist.” If anyone has the right to talk about racism, it’s Vivian Paige, and not you white boy. But you’ll notice that the realities of life have helped Vivian develop the ability to disagree agreeably (while not looking like a total crackpot).

First thing to notice is the accusation that Democrats always play the race card against Republicans. Whenever we have a legitimate beef that something might be unfair or racist, the first thing the Republican blogosphere does is jump up and down and accuse us of injecting accusations of racism or sexism. If you read certain conservative blogs, it's a constant complaint against us and a constant theme of theirs. Indeed, I think the whole Angry Potato site is a parody portraying what Republicans think Democrats are, rather than a site that is authentically written by a Democrat.

The other thing I noticed, as a clue, is how genuinely kindly this blogger treats Vivian Paige. Now, I think Vivian is one of the better bloggers on the blogosphere. But she is one of the few progressive bloggers who also gets the genuine admiration of rightwing bloggers. In fact, it's the one area where I actually agree with them and am impressed with their good taste - it's, unfortunately, only a temporary lapse from their usual bad taste :).

Seriously, whoever is doing this site does admire Vivian but has little good to say about almost any other Democrat, including a high school aged Young Democrat. It would be pretty rare for a fellow Democrat, regardless of whom he was supporting in the primary, to post something this nasty about a kid.

It seems another netroots activist (that’s a guy with a blog and a C+ in high school civics) has switched to the T-Mac campaign. That’s like secretly switching someones gourmet coffee with a steaming cup of shit. Here is the dirty details:

Then there is this video that was put up after it was announced that AFSCME endorsed Terry McAuliffe. The video parodies a union boss and uses all the stereotypes portraying him as an obscenity spouting union goon. No Democrat would use that particular video, but I know which prominent Republican blog put it up recently. In fact, it was an RNC generated video, for which the RNC later apologized.

Because the mashed brained spud seems to particularly resent Lowell and Josh and the BC crowd, some have speculated that this is somehow coming out of the Brian Moran camp. But I don't think so because the tiny tatter tot has thrown rotten potatoes at every single Democratic candidate and campaign running - McAuliffe, Moran, and Deeds. In other words, he doesn't actually like any of the Democratic candidates.

In fact, he's spending an awful lot more time trashing Democrats than Republicans. And then, just today, he came up with this beauty that is supposed to be a hit at Republicans from the Democrats' point of view.

Democrats must act now to prevent the destruction of one of their most precious resources. Forget global warming and endangered pelican sperm, I’m speaking to you today about Jeff Frederick. Under Frederick’s leadership, the Titanic that is the RPV is ramming icebergs like an alcoholic drinking perfume snuck into rehab. If something isn’t done soon, Virginia may lose one if it’s most treasured gifts to the Democratic Party. To help you understand what this means, lets imagine an alternate universe.

It’s April 1, 2009, and the RPV has ousted Jeff Frederick along with his entire staff. The announcement goes out that he is replaced by Shaun Kenny. Within the first month, Kenny has managed to create a comprehensive plan to right the ship, including uniting the activists, created a coherent message and a network of bloggers and local party chairs to disseminate this message, and has committed to a return to values. Within another month, people begin to realize that Kenny wasn’t paying lip service to RPV values when he starts releasing guides and instructions to the different parties, including talking points and a comprehensive direction of new ideas and solutions. By the summer, Kenny is so tied into the campaigns that he’s practically a staffer.

By the time the election is over, Kenny has united the party and created a fundraising machine. He has started working on campaigns to bring in minorities and independents who identify with his message and values. In the election, he doesn’t take back the Senate or Governor, but he holds the majority in the House, and starts building a strong base of candidates for the 2010 races. By 2012, Virginia is firmly in the red, the Senate is back under Republican control, and there has been a net change of one or two Congressional seats. The RNC is taking note and pushes Shaun’s message to all 50 states. Once again, the Republican party stands for something that people can identify, it learns to keep its mouth shut and its idiots in the closet, and the tide starts turning nationally.

See, he's not really trashing the Republicans at all. Somehow, in every supposed anti-Republican post he does, they somehow come out ahead. In his posts about the Democrats, we never do. And whoever it is certainly admires Shaun Kenny. I don't know many Democrats who would actually declare Kenny a hero of the Republican Party or care that much who becomes their chairman. That's Republican inside baseball.

And it's why I don't buy for a minute that this comes from a Democrat regardless of which faction he claims to be in. Another reason I don't think it's a Democratic blogger is that there's no Democrat, except for Vivian, who has ever earned this guy's respect, including Jim Webb. I only know of one Democrat left who still dislikes Jim Webb and she doesn't blog.

The Angry Potato also isn't the only site masquerading as Democratic-written. There's another site that claims to be from a Democrat and even from a supporter of one of the candidates. It's called StopPatEdmondson, and I've long suspected that that site also is a Republican dirty trick. It's a twofer. It ridicules and humiliates Pat and harms her opponent, Jody Wagner, by claiming to be one of her supporters. Let me tell you, no candidate would want a supporter publicly saying or writing such outlandish things about an opponent. Indeed, that site embarrases and harms Jody's campaign more than it does Pat's. So, it's easy to conclude it's an enemy of Democrats not one of them.

The dirty tricksters are out in full force this season. And I'd look to Virginia Beach to find at least some of them.

Why The GOP Can't Support Obama's Health Care Reform

Most progressives expect the GOP, especially its conservative wing, to give stiff opposition to any Democratic health care plan. Indeed, Republicans have been promising (threatening) more of the same obstructionism that has so turned off the nation in two election cycles. They are clinging to the hope that if Congress and the new president fail to accomplish the goals they set out to, and thus fail to keep their campaign promises to the public, voters will get so disgusted at them that they will turn back to the Republicans. They've more or less bragged that this is their strategy for regaining control.

Now, Huffington Post writer, Nicholas Graham, reports on just how scared some in the Republican Party are about Democratic reforms, especially about successful health care reform. To make his case, he uses this extensive quote from James Pethokoukis, at U.S. News:

1) Passage would be a political gamechanger. Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."

Basically, Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and Nobel winning economist, made the same point in his recent book, The Conscience of a Liberal. According to Krugman, conservatives will fight tooth and nail to prevent a national health care system because if the government is successful at implementing a program that delivers universal health care, it will give lie to the conservative argument that "government is the problem not the solution."

We actually know, for a number of reasons, the market is not the solution to every social problem, though it does a very good job at delivering consumer goods, which is what it was designed for. But if the government takes over a service that is basically bankrupting large corporations (one of the reasons that manufacturing and other businesses are no longer competitive in the global market is that we are one of the few first world nations that doesn't have government aid in health care delivery) and does it successfully, it discredits the philosophy of the Ronald Reagans, Grover Norquists, Alan Greenspans, Milton Friedmans, Martin Feldsteins, and the whole host of supply siders who insisted that governments were stupid and markets were omniscient.

So, look for tooth and claw resistance to any health care plan put forth by the Democrats. The Republicans in Congress will once again be putting dogmatic ideology and loyalty to party over pragmatism and the good of the country. Unfortunately, doing so is their only key to survival right now.

The Coming of the New Republican Minority and Obstructionism Du Jour

You actually have to give Republicans an A for three things: Sore loserism, continued vows of obstructionism, and sheer arrogant stupidity. They just lost in a debacle of an election. They can't claim it was an illegitimate election where the victor won a mere plurality, as President Clinton did in 1992, when he squeaked out 43 percent in what was a three way race. Indeed, Bush, who claimed "political capital" for his squeaker in 2004, had less claim to legitimacy than Obama's convincing 53% to 46% popular vote and 364 to 163 electoral votes. Obama can claim a genuine mandate for change, which is exactly the platform he ran on. He also had coattails, picking up three new members for the House of Representatives and a new senator from once reliably red Virginia alone. He carried North Carolina and gained a Democratic Senator there too. The public is hungry for genuine change. And it wants the change that Obama promised. There's nothing ambiguous about this, folks.

So what do the vanquished Republicans do?

First they are comforting themselves with a glass of warm venom, nasty recriminations, a refusal to face reality (which is actually nothing new for them) and a vow that the obstructionism which served them so well in the last two years will continue and grow more intense. After all, they may have lost in a blow out; but by God, they still have the filibuster.

So says Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley A. Strassel in a mean spirited piece "How To Block the Liberal Agenda."

Democrats won big on Tuesday but not big enough. The voters' rebuke of the GOP was brutal, though not so cruel as to hand Mr. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid the 60 votes they needed to grease a sweeping agenda. The GOP still owns a filibuster, and that is as big a factor in this new "era" as is our president-elect.

And then she adds

Mr. Obama and his party are meanwhile now the sole political proprietors of a major financial crisis. Revenues will contract, even as Mr. Obama promises tax cuts. That alone may temper ambitions on issues like health care, which Democrats may now have to approach piecemeal. But also expect to see the GOP rediscover a devotion to fiscal responsibility. Any Democratic proposal, for anything, will elicit howls of "deficit spending." Some Republicans are actually looking forward to January.

And let's not forget that the left has spent eight years helpfully showing Republicans how they might make life difficult. Democrats have insisted a filibuster for judicial and cabinet positions is "essential" and that a president "must" consult with the opposition. Mr. Obama himself voted to filibuster Bush picks. They don't call these things "precedents" for nothing. Democrats have also highlighted procedural tools that the right could now use to slow Senate business to a slug's pace.

So yes, it is a new day in Washington. Just don't go thinking it will be an easy one.

Actually, Ms. Strassel is right that it won't be easy. But it's her party that will suffer if it continues to play the childish game of obstructionism. That's not the same as principled opposition, which is not only the right but the duty of the opposition party.

Here's the thing to watch. Kimberley Strassel is signalling a well worn Republican strategy to foist the blame for the economic collapse onto the Democrats from day one. But it won't work because Obama is a pretty smart strategist himself. He's wisely resisting any efforts for him to start calling the shots on an economic recovery plan until he actually has the legal authority to institute the changes he wants. That means he will block the GOP's efforts to cast this as his economic crisis. Nope. After 8 years of Republican misrule, they still own it until January 21, 2009.

Once he's in office, Obama will offer his plan for recovery and with Rahm Emanuel to play bad cop, he will either get it through a Democratic Congress or maneuver the Republicans into looking like they are blocking the will of the people. I think that by picking Emanuel, Obama is signalling that he is willing to play hardball.

I also think it won't be difficult to make the case that Republican free market, anti-government, anti tax policies have failed. Indeed, they caused the problem. Obama is going to come in with a first class economic team to sell a new set of ideas. Now is the time to press for a real challenge to the prevailing conservative economic orthodoxies.

It is not coincidental that only a few months before the election, liberal economic professor and political columnist Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics. He has symbolically displaced the era of Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer. If Kimberley Strassel and the conservative crowd at WSJ want to continue to defend the old orthodoxies so be it. Every time laissez faire economics is tried, it fails. Every time sensible regulation, government action, and public - private partnerships are tried they produce prosperity and security. A return to some Keynsian ideals is long overdue. And heaven help the Republican ideologues who get in the way of genuine progress.

GOP Top Worst Hits - Hatred on Parade

Today, Brave New Films and The Color of Change unveiled this new video, a compilation of the GOP's worst hits. It's a collage of the collected anger currently appearing at Republican rallies, especially when Sarah Palin speaks. It's sad to see the depths of hatred and anger to which the Republican Party is sinking these days. H/t to Huffington Post for the video and for more commentary on it.