State of the Union

I wonder if Rasmussen can come up with one of its trademark "polls" (quotes intentional...) in time for the GOP response to the speech? They must be scrambling today. "No coffee breaks for you!"

Wow. For a second there, Joe Klein and Glenn Greenwald were writing the same thing. The singularity approacheth.
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I fail to see how launching a jihad to remake the Middle East in our image was Burkean, but the less said about David Brooks, the better.
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As to the larger point, we really need a patriotic, intelligent, conservative opposition party now. It's kinda funny, of course, to watch them flounder about and make America hate them even more (and to watch Jay Newton-Small try to spray perfume on the turd). But it really is terrible for the country.
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There is no indication-- none-- that the GOP base wants sanity, or that anyone in the national GOP wants to act like a grown-up. They're more and more extreme, responding to their delusional, discredited, Limbaugh-loving base. It's a death spiral worse even than the one they created in the US economy.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were Republican votes to be found in support of universal health insurance, especially if the final package offers the business community relief from that burden.
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I wouldn't be so sure. After all, the stimulus that just passed was endorsed by the National Association of Manufacturers. The current posturing has pointedly ignored the needs of the business community and instead pandered to the slogan-friendly base.
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Remember that Eric Cantor told JNS this:
I knew about the endorsements from some of the business groups for sure, but their obligation is not to the voters and the people of this country like mine is," Cantor says. "I feel that my obligation is to be a prudent guardian of taxpayer money."

As he heads into his big budget speech tonight--the rookie equivalent of a State of the Union Address--Barack Obama gets high marks from the public in both the New York Times and the Washington Post polls. The Republican attempt to play politics as usual at a time of national crisis receives low marks. Indeed, a staggering 79% believe that the GOP should expend more effort on finding a bipartisan middle ground with the President, while only 17% believe they should "stick to Republican policies." By contrast, 56% believe Obama should stick to his policies and 39% think he should work harder at bipartisanship.
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why does the media insist upon framing this in terms of "bipartisanship"?
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The American people don't want "bi-partisanship" -- they aren't looking for solutions that are acceptable to both political parties, they want programs and ideas that will work. That is non-partisanship, not bipartisanship.
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The use of the word "bipartisan" is intrinsic to the reductivist nature of the media, in which all issues are simplified and dichotomous. "Bipartisan" allows all questions to be presented from within the "Democratic vs Republican" framework -- and reduces the potential to arrive at solutions to complex problems to discusses of a very limited set of options.
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Americans don't want Obama to be bipartisan -- they want him to come up with the best solutions to our problems without regard to party. They don't want Obama to compromise with the GOP for the sake of compromise -- they soundly rejected the Republican Party and its ideas and philosophies in November. All they don't want to see is an approach to policy whose emphasis is on improving the fortunes of the Democratic Party ("partisanship")

I fear they are going to try to undertake the biggest administrative challenge in American history while refusing to hire the people who can help the most: agency veterans who are registered lobbyists.
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In case Mr Brooks hasn't noticed the very people with the most experience in these matters are precisely the same people who have fu$&ed it up almost beyond repair. The self-serving nature of his call for more of the same is way to evident for anyone to take it seriously.

I guess it is easier to make an argument in the bi-part frame than to engage in outside the box thinking. My neighbour three doors down the street wants President Obama to do something now to get his lab re-financed so that his company can work on their new contract. He is a die-hard Republican and his cussing Cantor is something worth hearing.

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JK: But, in a time of crisis, a half-baked effort is better than no effort at all.
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Pop Quiz: Who said the following, and what was the context in which it was said?

"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

Guesses?

I'm reading Michael Lux's new book, The Progressive Revolution. (He's coming to Virtually Speaking on Thursday. He identifies 11 dramatic moments in US history that generated long last change:
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1. The enactment of the US COnstitution
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2. The Bill of Rights
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3. The set of policies put in place by Lincoln and the Radical Republicans in 1860s
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4. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, that extended the Constitution and Bill of Rights to individual citizens.
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5. The 1877 compromises in the Hayes/Tilden election that ended reconstruction and set the foundation for Jim Crow laws.
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6. Supreme court decision in the late 1800s, creating the Gilded age and suppression of blacks, capped by Plessy v Ferguson
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7. The Progressive Era reforms of the early 1900s, including trust busting, conservation policy, women's suffrage
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8. The New Deal
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9. Civil rights legislation in the 1960s
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10. Medicare and Medicaid
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11. Environmental legislation of the 70s
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The contrast here between conservative and progressive couldn't be starker. Lux points out that the arguments of the 18th century, with Hamilton and the other Federalists echoing Burke while deriding Jefferson as being in bed with the dirty hippies sounds just like what we hear today.
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Progressives favor extended the right vote as broadly as possible, extending rights to individuals, and rule by popular vote.
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Conservatives favor restricting the right to vote to elites, want to reserve rights to those same elites and rule by a select few.
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Progressives base their philosophy on hope, on, as Brooks says,an optimistic belief that extending power and support to everybody will lead to a better, more just society.
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Conservatives base their philosophy on fear, Fear of the rabble, fear of the black, fear of change. The reason they turn to Burke's claim that tradition matters most of all, and change should be held back as much as possible is fear.
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If you look at that list, and which position each side supported,it is hard to make the case for conservatism.
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BTW, Lux is well aware that while Roosevelt was a trust buster and supporter of consumer product safety, he was also a racist. Or that Andrew Jackson what we regard now as some awful things. But they were on the side of progress in the items listed above. And, on the whole, it seems progress is better than adherence to tradition.

FDR.

Link for Lux's book:
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http://www.amazon.com/Progressive-Revolution-Best-America-Came/dp/0470395117

Let us see a budget that truthfully reflects our financial position. We can then do what needs to be done to get out of this mess. We will make mistakes; admit them, make changes and keep going. This climb is going to be long, hard and painful. We need a large dose of reality and a smidgen of hope. Can we have a moratorium on op-ed pieces? Maybe these folks need a dose of unemployment.

Given Obama's insistence on accountability and fiscal discipline, there seems a real opportunity for cooperation here. All the Republicans have to do is shed their archaic obsessive-compulsive attempts to deny the legitimacy of a smart and popular President and come to the understanding that, in a time of crisis, opposition is not a political game, but a solemn responsibility.

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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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At what point are the Villagers going to wake up to the reality that the Republicans want absolutely no part in bipartisanship or cooperation or anything of the sort. They only give a sh*t about one thing, winning elections. Governing is not even in their vocabulary right now. All they want to do is phuck up the country just enough for people to decide that the Democrats are doing it wrong. The polls don't matter and even elections don't matter to these people. After getting thoroughly rejected in the last two cycles their first instinct is to get even more "conservative". The question really is WHEN will the Villagers decide to cover the story as it stands and that is that the Republicans are rallying around obstructing the President as their election strategy, helping the country be damn ed. Ill answer my own rhetorical question, never.

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Yup. Context being the slew of programs and alphabet soup of government agencies FDR created in the effort to end the Great Depression.
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And, on the whole, it seems progress is better than adherence to tradition.
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Well, sure, if you orient the entire discussion around progressivism's greatest triumphs!
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Conservatism will always be essential to democratic policymaking. It stresses the problem of unintended consequences-- you know, like a lengthy insurgency in Iraq, or a killing your party's popularity by kowtowing to a minority of firebreathing ignoramuses.

Glad to see you're reading Sam Tanenhaus. I think he's been the most interesting read lately. The notion of a conservative, alternative "New Class" gelled quite a few things for me. It makes the curious things you find in David Brock and Ron Suskind make a lot more sense. There is no monolithic "reality based community," there are only communities trying to live in reality--which is everybody not living in fantasy (for instance, Fox News viewers and Bill Kristol). The fantasy people want someone like Bush, or someone like Palin. (Or even someone like Joe the Plumber, who is the ultimate movement conservative New Class man: http://crooksandliars.com/node/25248 )

One thing that's interested me is the question of how much of the modern movement conservative style is due to the influence of the ex-Marxists. Here's Tanenhaus from a few weeks back:

[Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson:] “The issues of the moment — income stagnation, climate disruption, massive demographic shifts and health care access — seem strange, unexplored land for many in the movement.”
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In fact these “issues of the moment” have been with us for years now, decades in some instances, but until recently they were either ignored by conservatives or dismissed as the hobby-horses of alarmist liberals or entrenched “special interests.”
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The key word in Mr. Gerson's analysis is “movement,” a term more applicable to moral or spiritual crusades than to the practical matters of governance, particularly governance in a two-party system, where success almost invariably requires compromise, consensus and a mind open to all manner of workable solutions.
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These have not been, historically, the strength of “movement conservatives,” who prefer arguments built on first principles often expressed in supercharged rhetoric.

This supercharged war on "elites" has an almost a mechanistic quality. It doesn't matter what the "elites" are telling you, or the merit of their arguments, they're automatically wrong. It's almost like anything that stands in the way of the dictatorship of the country-and-western proletariat is wrong on its face. So the possibility of spending conservative think tank dollars on actually *researching* climate change is automatically dismissed, and George Will can just pump out another anti-climate change column with stale talking points from the early 90's.

"All the Republicans have to do..."
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Any sentence that begins with these words brings to mind other sentences involving camels and eyes-of-needles...

And when I say "stale talking points from the early 90's," I mean it literally:

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/02/23/george-will-zombie/

Joe, you talk about the polls "rebuking" the Republican obstructionism.

How many polls will it take before villagers understand this? Or will they have to wait for their Republican "sources" to acknowledge this reality?

@sgw: My guess is that the MSM will cover the GOP's obstructionism just like they covered the hate-speech of the '08 elections.
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Recall that the MSM didn't give a sh!t about calling out McCain, Palin or the surrogates for their speechifying until there was irrefutable proof (posters, video, death threats) that the masses were getting out of control.
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The MSM will ignore the GOP's behavior until there is a body on a sidewalk - a major business, industry or state that goes kaputt because a GOP governor refused stimulus funds. Until then, it will be treated as "speculation" that the obstructionists are doing real harm to this country.
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or, maybe when enough newspapers fail...

This seems an unfettered public rebuke of the anachronistic Republican strategy.
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Joe Klein:
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Isn't it really an unfettered public rebuke of Centrist Democrats, as well?

Conservatism will always be essential to democratic policymaking. It stresses the problem of unintended consequences-- you know, like a lengthy insurgency in Iraq, or a killing your party's popularity by kowtowing to a minority of firebreathing ignoramuses.
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Excellent point, Elvis. I'm duly impressed by your intellectual honesty. Well done.

And I predict--fearlessly, of course--that the President will be able to pick off more Republican votes as he moves into specific policy reform areas.
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So you think he's going to get more than three? That's an easy "over" bet to make, even with the Party of No vowing to take its ball and go home.

The American people don't want "bi-partisanship" -- they aren't looking for solutions that are acceptable to both political parties, they want programs and ideas that will work. That is non-partisanship, not bipartisanship.
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Nothing really to add here but an "amen."

Chuck Shumer is pulling Jindal's and Sanford's hole card!
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/02/schumer_to_gop_govs_take_it_or_leave_it.php
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Talk about phucking brilliant. It takes away their chance at grandstanding the stimulus bill. I can't wait to see what they say to this!
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For instance, at least two governors have proposed rejecting a program to expand unemployment insurance for laid-off workers. Economists consistently rank unemployment insurance among the most efficient and cost-effective fiscal stimulus measures; by one frequently cited estimate, it provides an economic return of as high as $1.73 for every dollar invested. Thus, by denying this provision for their residents, these governors are not just depriving some of the neediest Americans of relief in a dire economy; they are undermining the overall stimulative impact of the package.
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No one would dispute that these governors should be given the choice as to whether to accept the funds or not. But it should not be multiple choice. The composition of the package was rightly dictated by economic considerations; we should not let the implementation of the package be dictated by political considerations.