Newshoggers.com

The evoluation of "conservative"

By Dave Anderson:

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is owned by Richard Mellon-Scaife and is slightly to the right of Attilla the Hun and made most of its op-ed writers wear tri-corner hats for the past three years.  The Trib issued their Republican US Senate primary endorsement today, and their write-up illustrates the evoluation of what it means to be "conservative" in today's political environment:

Marc Scaringi is a Harrisburg attorney. He talks of being "fiscally responsible and constitutionally conservative." But one of his mentors was the fiscally confused and constitutionally befuddled Rick Santorum. Next!

What's the Republican electorate to do? Nominate David Christian.

Mr. Christian is a highly decorated Vietnam veteran of Bucks County who went on to serve his country admirably advocating for veterans' issues in and out of government. This self-described "Ronald Reagan Republican....".

In a field dominated by conservative Republican wannabes....

Santorum according to DW-Nominate was a fairly standard issue conservative Republican in Congress since 1995.  And now he is too liberal for the Trib....

Primaries, transitive preferences and general elections

By David Anderson

Primary voters, are by definition, a subset of general election voters.  It is a subset that is not representative of the general electorate, as primary voters as a practical matter are more politically engaged, more ideological and far fewer.  In closed-primary states, they are almost entirely composed of committed partisans and 90% certain to vote for the same party in the general election as they voted for in the primary even if the candidate they preferered in the primary is not their party's general election candidate.

This is true of both Democrats and Republcians.  Primary results don't tell us much about the general election as the issue spaces are very different, the electorates are very different, and the competitors are very different.

In 2008, there were numerous Clinton supporters who argued that her primary wins in Ohio and Pennslvania were definative electability argument winners:

The rout in Ohio happened. Obama has a huge electability problem in the state. He took a total of 5 counties, and lost in 82 counties. Even though he's able to rack up a large number of urban black voters he did terrible among white voters, winning just 34 percent...You don't win a general election in Ohio if you can only win in 5 counties....

This type of analysis was wrong because even during the primary season, the overwhelming majority of Clinton primary backers preference orders went something like this Clinton>rest of the Dem field including Obama>Attilla the Hun>Any potential Republican nominee.  Moderate and conservative Democrats voted as Democrats in the general election.

The same basic dynamic will most likely be in play for Mitt Romney --- most Republican primary voters have not voted for him. On the whole, they voted for more conservative/reactonary but also more disorganized candidates.  The non-Romney Republican primary voters probable preference order today is something like this: Zombie Reagan>Santorum/Gingrich/Paul/> Romney> Zombie Nixon > Obama.

So when a smart blogger like Actor 212 at the Agonist makes the following statement, I cringe:

Indeed, Romney can embarass the hell out of Santorum by taking Pennsylvania. This means two things:

1) It will be the second straight statewide election in his home state that Santorum loses and

B) It takes Santorum out of consideration for the Veep nom. After all, do you want someone on your ticket who can't even guarantee his home state?

Point 1 is relevant, Santorum has been defined as a panty sniffing, free-riding reactionary in Pennsylvania.

He would lose to any vaguely competent Democrat in any statewide race in any year that is even close to politically neutral.  His 18 point margin of defeat in 2006 was the result of running as a reactionary asshole into a massive Democratic breeze, but he still would have gone down by 6 to 8 points in a normal year. Pat Toomey, his corporatist soulmate, won a squeaker by 2 points in the most favorable Republican year in a generation.  Santorum would not be able to help too much in Pennsylvania in the general election.

However Point B is irrelevent as Santorum's ability or inability to win a home state primary has minimal impact on his ability to win a statewide general election in Pennsylvania.  

You Can't Herd Cats

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Who has the worst job.  Barrack Obama is expected to fix an economy that can't be fixed - a bad job.  But then we have John Boehner - he has the job of herding cats - a group of teabillies who's hate of Obama makes economic catastrophe preferable to giving Obama what he needs to avoid catastrophe.  The orange man is discovering you can't herd cats.

Speaker John Boehner postponed the planned House vote on a debt-limit increase late Thursday night, casting new doubt on Congress’ ability to avert a default and further exposing a deep philosophical divide in the Republican Conference.

Four-and-a-half hours after the vote was supposed to begin on the House floor, Republicans announced they would start again in the morning, but the end game remains unclear on this trillion-dollar package. The House Rules Committee was expected to meet later Thursday night to issue a rule that would allow the GOP to bring a new bill to the floor quickly on Friday if the final votes can be secured.

Yes Boehner has the worst job but probably not for long.  In reality he's not trying to herd cats but lemmings.  I would guess that Mr Boehner is looking forward to not being Speaker - there's a lot to be said about cocktail hour and golf. 

Chump Change

By Steve Hynd

OK, here's the deal: the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that the GOP's plan to cut the deficit at the same time as raising the debt ceiling will save a measly $850 billion over 10 years rather than the $1.2 trillion initially promised. That's just a bit more than the annual expenditure on defense's shiny toys and foreign adventures. The CBO says the Dem plan cuts $2.1 trillion over the same period.

So why are we still talking about the GOP plan as a serious option?

Even the Dem plan by Senate leader Harry Reid isn't going to be enough to stave of a downgrading of U.S. credit-worthiness, according to McLatchy:

Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's, when putting U.S. bonds on a credit watch in mid-July for a possible downgrade within 90 days, said they feared that the political stalemate could lead to a solution that didn't significantly alter the course of the mounting U.S. debt. Right now, those fears seem warranted.

Only an agreement that cuts at least $4 trillion over 10 years from the projected rate of debt growth would be seen as "significant."

A downgrade means the government would have to borrow more to pay its bills. State legislatures and financial institutions would find the same thing happening to them. And:

Lots of U.S. lending rates are based at least in part on the interest rates on U.S. government bonds. These include mortgages, car loans and student loans. If there's a ratings downgrade and U.S. bond yields rise, that will spill over eventually into lending rates across the economy. This will add another head wind to the weak recovery.

Jason Rosenbaum is spot on when he explains the GOP's hypocrisy by saying that "Boehner and the GOP will walk away from any plan that doesn’t cripple President Obama." However, neither party's plan is seriously attempting to stave off a downgrade, because neither party is willing to take enough of a knife to bloated military spending and neither party wants to do the one other thing that could possibly get any plan close to that $4 trillion threshold without screwing funding for the poor and elderly entirely - raise revenue by raising taxes.

What both parties are quite willing to do is fund-raise off the political kabuki.

Why is America voting for any of these chumps again?

Insurring against Political Risk (reprise)

By Dave Anderson:

   A reprise of one of my more more relevant posts from January 2009:

Felix Salmon is confused as to why US government debt insurance in the form of collatoral debt swaps (CDS) is priced as high as it is:

if we take a quick and very dirty look at 5-year CDS, and say they're being priced at 60bp, then that means total premiums over five years are 300bp, or $30,000 to protect $1 million of debt. If you assume a 50% recovery rate, then you're basically paying $30,000 to receive $500,000 in the event of default -- which implies a default probability of 6% over five years.
It's hard to see what would trigger such a payout, though. Dean Baker says that "a default event... could include the government temporarily exceeding its debt limit"; I don't think that's true. In order for the CDS to be triggered, I think there would have to be not only an actual payment default, but that default would have to continue for longer than the grace period....
Maybe this is just a form of black swan insurance: buying US government CDS is a way of making money when everything else plunges in value.

The black swan insurance idea is a reasponable explanation. However I would like to offer another potential explanation. It may be insurance against political risk.

Let's go back to 1995 when Gingrich shut down the US government. He was working with a larger majority of anti-government politicians who thought that the American people did not like Medicare, or Social Security or the National Park Service or most functions of government. So he tried to engage in a game of chicken with Clinton to play to his ideological base and had his ass handed to him politically. The public supported Clinton and vulnerable GOP representatives applied backroom pressure for Gingrich to stop.

Now let's fast forward to today. The Republican caucus in Congress has far fewer vulnerable incumbents in it. Most of the vulnerable incumbents in the House and Senate have already been beaten in either 2006 or 2008. The survivors are ideologically more homogenous and further from the median voter position than they have in the past. The current set of Republican incumbents' greatest political threat is usually a primary challenge from the right AND not a general election challenge from a centrist or liberal. The Republican party base is more anti-government today than it was in 1995. So there is a slight but real possibility of internal caucus politics that empowers the hardliners such as Coburn and Infohe to try to shut down the government and default on the US debt.

I don't think this chance is that high, but it exists.

The chance is higher now than it was in January 2009 that internal caucus pressures in the Republican Party will prefer forcing a default than cutting any deal that includes a dollar in additional non-regressive tax revenue.  The fiscal risk in the United States is not fiscal carrying capacity as the US has plenty of space to maneuver against historical standards.  It is political risk of nihilists. 

Conspiracy Theories

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Over at Balloon Juice E.D. Kain has a theory on the birthers and Donald Trump that seems a lot more plausible than the actual birther theories.

In 2008, Obama met with Donald Trump in a secret closed-doors beer summit. There, they hatched a scheme. Knowing that there is a large segment of the American people that is still deeply racist, and that said racism would not emerge blatantly when confronted with the first black president, Obama and his good friend The Donald began crafting a long-con. At the first whiff of birtherism, Obama released most – but not all – of the relevant documentation of his birth in Hawaii, throwing the racists birthers a bone to chew on for the next couple of years. The plan was in motion.

The long-form birth certificate remained under lock and key in Hawaii. As the years went by, the usual suspects on the right trotted out one crazy conspiracy after another. Obama ignored them. Trump waited patiently while drawing as much attention to himself as possible.

Then, in 2011, Trump played his, er, Trump card, launching a wild-eyed conspiratorial presidential bid based almost solely on the birther question. Polls showed that Trump’s popularity was rising, and almost overnight he was polling at first place. A clear front-runner had emerged, and the crux of his campaign was the missing long-form birth certificate. Trump beat that drum as loudly as possible, even sending private eyes to Hawaii to track the runaway birth certificate down. And people loved him for it.

Birtherism, it appeared, had taken over a larger segment of America than anyone had expected. Despite rumors of its death, racism in America was still very much alive and kicking. And now it had its avatar.

Now it was Obama’s move. At the height of Trump’s popularity he released the final, definitive document: the long-form birth certificate – knowing full well that it would do nothing to placate the birthers. However, with so much momentum now behind Trump and a large segment of the Republican base rallied around the cause, there was little the GOP could do to recover and run anything like a legitimate challenge to the president in 2012. The threat of an independent bid by Trump – who could easily self-finance such an effort – was too great.

Obama effectively steered national attention back to the right wing fringe – a fringe, mind you, that is also the largest voting bloc on the right. He also ensured that his good friend Trump was the one spear-heading the movement.

It often seemed that Trump had to be a left wing plant.  He was bringing out the very worst of the Republican Party.  Of course the birthers will not quit but will appear even more unreasonable and Obama will once again look like the reasonable one.

Not That Into Rand or Ryan

Commentary By Ron Beasley

This is the opening week of Atlas Shrugged the movie but it is not a good week for Randian wingnuttery.  Yes, it's a bad movie but it was a really bad book.  It is also a time when Ayn Rand cultist Paul Ryan's budget plan was introduced.  Well Ryan's Randian plan is not too popular.

Tea Partiers may say the government is too damn big, but when it comes to at least two federal entitlement programs, they sing a wholly different tune.

In a McClatchy-Marist poll released this week, 70% of registered voters who identify with the Tea Party opposed making cuts to either Medicare or Medicaid -- the government-run health programs for the elderly and the poor -- to help reduce the nation's deficit. Meanwhile, only 28% of tea partiers said they'd be willing to cut spending on those two programs.

Tea partiers were not alone in opposing Medicare and Medicaid cuts. An overwhelming 80% of all respondents said they opposed such cuts, with a majority of every demographic measured in the survey lining up against them.

Ninety-two percent of Democrats opposed cutting Medicare and Medicaid, as did 73% of Republicans, and 75% of independents.

Of course Ayn Rand herself took advantage of Medicare.  So what's with Ryan?  Is he too wingnut for the wingnuts?  So when will we see Republicans who would like to be reelected throw Ryan under the bus?

 

The Douchebag strikes again

By Dave Anderson:

One of the federal government's core competencies is writing checks.  Another federal core competency is being a very large purchaser of almost everything.  That size can allow the federal government to throw its market weight around to get good deals.  That is why Medicare is cheaper on a per unit basis that private insurance; the federal risk pool is much broader and the federal purchasing power is significantly stronger so providers have to cut the federal government a decent deal over their private market rates. 

However, the federal purchasing power is not always used to efficiently spend money to provide needed or desired services.  The most notable example is the failure to include a public option in PPACA.  Additionally, Medicare Part D has been forbidden by Congress to enter 'next best price contracts' where Medicare would get the best price offered to any client for a particular drug, even if that best price was offered to the Veterans Administration. 

However, durable medical equipment is a category of Medicare Part D expenses that Medicare can seek a good deal on by leveraging Medicare's size to the government's advantage.  Currently, Medicare is working on a pilot program where durable medical equipment is supplied by regional low bidders.  This is projected to save $20 billion or more dollars over the next decade. To me, this is a no brainer as services are provided at the same level but at a lower aggregate expenditure which means either more services can be offered for the same budget, or the same services can be offered at a lower budget.  Either way is a net social benefit. 

However, Congressman Altmire (Douchebag Dem-PA) hates capitalism and loves local political capture through the erection of artificial barriers to competition:

Reps. Jason Altmire, D-McCandless, and Glenn Thompson, R-Centre, have long tried to slow or halt the new Medicare program, which began in January in nine metropolitan areas, including Pittsburgh.

The program, in an effort to cut Medicare Part D costs, has companies offer bids to sell devices like oxygen tanks and power wheelchairs. Medicare selects a group of suppliers for eight categories of devices in each market based on which ones submit the lowest bids.

The device industry is fighting the new program, saying the severe price cuts --- in Pittsburgh, prices have dropped by more than a third --- will force small providers out of business

Economies of scale are saving significant sums of money as Medicare Part D is basically buying commodified products but the inefficient providers are getting squeezed hard and are trying to carve out a protected revenue stream as that is the only way that they can survive when they stomp their feet as they threaten to go Galt on us. 

 

Waterloo

Commentary By Ron Beasley®

I think we all knew that the Republicans would over-reach after the November elections.  We see it to some extent at the Federal level but it's at the state level where it is over-reach on steroids.  I agree with E.D. Kain who thinks that Wisconsin may turn out to be the Republican's Waterloo.

And not just Wisconsin, but also Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and the rest of the over-reaching state Republicans. Governors like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and Jan Brewer are riding on the coattails of the Tea Party, but they’ve become blind to the dangers of their radical policies.

What we are seeing is a Republican Party taken over by the most radical elements within - talk radio and FOX.  The newly elected Republican Governors and lawmakers are trying to ride the tea party wave to in act the policies of their real masters - the billionaire plutocrats like the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch. 

And now conservatives have chosen public-sector workers and teachers as their hill to die on. They have followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and elected Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and various other Tea Party candidates. Heavily funded by big campaign donors like the Koch brothers and other corporate interests, the Republican party has made a concerted effort across the country to take on unions, public pensions, and social services for the poor.

Enabled by a strong school-reform movement within the Democratic party, emboldened Republicans have waged an all-out assault on teachers, public education, and public unions and masked it all in the language of school choice and accountability. And now, in Wisconsin, they have side-stepped the Democratic process and ended collective bargaining rights for public sector employees, even amidst huge protests and popular condemnation.

Republicans have a long history of union-busting and anti-labor rhetoric, but taking on teachers and cops is a big mistake. This blatant effort to weaken the Democratic party will have precisely the opposite effect.

Ronald Reagan was able to successfully demonize the mythical Cadillac driving welfare mom.  The teachers, police and firefighters that Scott Walker attempted to demonize are not mythical and respected by the vast majority of the population.

Cross posted at The Moderate Voice

The disconnect (again)

By Dave Anderson

I'm dittoing Bernard Finel's argument on the COIN tactical to strategic disconnect:

By trying to suggest that local, operational successes can be assessed independently of strategic outcomes he is reinforcing the main problem in our discussions of COIN. Look, good COIN is COIN that defeats the insurgency. Any use of force has to be measured, ultimately, by the political outcomes it achieves. This is particularly true since the nature of these conflicts are intimately political. You can judge whether, say, an amphibious operation was successful based on whether you establish a bridgehead, by the number of losses, etc. But what in the world does it mean to do "good COIN" if insurgent activity or control expands in the process. You just can't assess it independent of the outcomes.

This is a particularly problematic issue because, I would argue, much of what passes for COIN theory reflects little more than the reification of perceived operational needs. If I send troops into a region to fight an insurgency, the only way they can plan operations is with some local intelligence and cooperation. So, in order to allow tactical units to operate, then need to build bridges to the local community, and the best way to do that is by -- on one hand -- offering goods and services and -- on the other -- making collaboration somewhat safer. I get all of that. But what remains unclear to me is how this turns into strategic success, and here I think the theory becomes much, much fuzzier.

COIN as currently practiced by the United States has a massive disconnect between what happens on the ground and the political superstructure and goal sets:

the political costs of the COIN strategy were very high; promises of ten to twenty year wars, consumption of the society's productive surplus, the consistent threat of de-pacification, severe social and domestic political instability and legitimacy threats. These costs could be borne if the theatre of war was critical to the existence and maitenance of a desired social order as these costs were borne in World War Two. However in both examples, especially in Vietnam, the objective loss function was fairly small as Vietnam was a tertiary interest for the United States.

COIN today promises the same type of inputs --- ten to twenty year wars, operational costs of one to two points of annual GDP at a time of structural deficits and domestic fiscal crisis --- with the same type of outcomes --- weak, client states in need of continual support in secondary or tertiary areas of interest.

And shockingly the public of democracies don't like COIN nor do they want to spend those resources for minimal real gains in security that operational and tactical successes may or may not generate.