National Party News

Again: if Ron Paul runs for president, he will be one of three finalists for the Republican nomination. His supporters have loyalty, passion, conviction and organization.

What else did we learn from the CPAC straw poll? With Mitt Romney's strong showing we learned that many conservatives want to win so badly in 2012 that they will not necessarily support the candidate they agree with the most. With Sarah Palin's anemic showing even with her alleged base we learned (again) that a Palin candidacy is a creation of the cable news and pundit imagination.

Hosni Mubarak surprised everybody when he said that he was sticking around until September. Charles Krauthammer predicts that once the mosques adjourn in Cairo later today, there are going to be a lot of very angry Egyptians who are not to going to accept Mr. Mubarak’s decision.

You want to cause a revolution? Raise expectations and then disappoint those whose expectations you raised.

House Republican leaders promised in their pledge to America to cut $100 billion from domestic discretionary non-defense spending. They then tried to explain to their newly elected revolutionaries that they had to prorate those budget cuts to account for the fact that close to half the budget year was done.

The New York Times reports this morning that the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) contest starting tomorrow will begin the season of politics and bring forth those conservatives who desire to run for president in 2012. Undoubtedly it will be a watershed event; possibly a conservative love-fest like Woodstock. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain.

I say that in a disparaging way, as Woodstock sucked. The music was terrible and it was largely a shadow event for those who missed the Summer of Love in San Francisco the year before. It was the definitive moment in which art turned to ideology and the generational culture turned from pensive consideration of Aldous Huxley, Buckminster Fuller, Ina May Gaskin, Tolstoi (“The Gospel in Brief”) and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to MBA school. Virtually every individual at Woodstock then is either a journalist or a lawyer today. The greats recalled today did not attend. They had moved on. And what might be significant in the CPAC event are those who are not there this week.

All that hurtful talk about “Republicrats” scorning them as squishy-brained and sheeplike, a Congress of Easter Peeps despised by up to 89 percent of the country; the middle age, the mid’lin, the mediocre and mauve — what novelist Curtis White called (scornfully) the “middle mind.” Now they who seek to be neither masters nor men have a name: “No Labels.” And it even claims its own generation, a conspicuously multicultural chorus that sits passively in the pew and looks selected by elder churchmen.

But the young’uns don’t seem to be jumping in. Gawker calls it “the most boring political movement of all time.” Maybe they try passing out cookies at the airport. Or how about the phrase, “Have you heard the good news?”

For all the focus on what a victory the tax-cut bill represents for President Obama and what a defeat it represents for liberal Democrats, little notice was paid to the fact that the House GOP has passed its first critical test of governing since winning back control of the House last month.
 
Despite earning the support of genuine conservatives from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), grandfather of the Tea Party movement, the tax-cut package was also opposed by Sarah Palin, followed quickly by Mitt Romney and groups like the Tea Party Patriots. Critics from the outside, of course, are not tasked with the responsibility of casting a vote that could rock the stock market or cost jobs should taxes rise. Read more...

It appears Michael Steele has many pseudonyms — and many that can't be repeated on this G-rated page. But the one that seems best suited, today, is The Man Who Just Won't Quit.
 
Earlier this week, Steele shocked much of political Washington when he called an audible and, instead of gracefully bowing out of his stained chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC) while touting his successes, declared he would run again for the post.
 
Here we go again.

We finance a bloody and expensive war through tax cuts. Earmarks and pork barrel spending reach the skies. The deficit continues to mount. The wealthiest among us and the special interests make out like bandits. The president makes nice with the bankers. The scourge of joblessness plagues the nation.

Am I describing the Bush years with a Republican president and Congress? Yes. Am I describing the Obama years with a Democratic president and Congress? Yes.

The Washington media is reporting on the House GOP’s plan to repeal and replace their promise to ban congressional earmarks. Broken promises by Washington politicians aren’t really news, but the brazenness of reversing their position on earmarks just five weeks after the election grabs attention, as does the fact that the rebellion against the earmark ban is being led by Tea Party favorites.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and others are considering “exemptions” to the earmark ban for pet “transportation projects” and are devising strategies to direct government spending to their pet projects by writing letters and making phone calls to government agencies — also known as “lettermarking” and “phonemarking” — to influence the decisionmaking process. In addition to this movement to return to the era of the Bridge to Nowhere, a notorious Republican-sponsored “transportation” earmark, congressional Republicans are planning to fool the American people by referring to earmarks as “member-directed spending.”

In what is left of the Democratic caucus in the House, there are virtually two parties. I spoke with a liberal Wednesday who wondered why everyone was complaining about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and I spoke to a moderate on Thursday who wondered when his new minority leader (he voted against) and the liberals would figure out just how far out of line their views are from middle America.

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Michael Steele is a very personable guy. He has plenty of charisma. He is likable. He is good on television (from a television producer’s perspective).

And when he was at the helm of the Republican National Committee (RNC), good things happened.

Republicans won the House in historic fashion. They made great strides in the Senate. They have a more racially diverse caucus and a more geographically diverse caucus.

But let’s not kid ourselves.

Steele has been a disappointment as the RNC chairman.