Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 39

Tax battle lines drawn | Michael Tomasky

So now it's clear as a bell, the GOP position on the Bush tax cuts. From TPM's Brian Beutler:

In a policy speech at the business-friendly Tax Council today, incoming Ways and Means Committee chairman David Camp called the Democratic plan for tax cuts -- a permanent tax cut extension for all income up to $200,000, and a temporary extension for income above that level -- "a terrible idea and a total nonstarter."

"We would be foolish to fall for it," Camp said.

Now, everybody knows what's going on here. Republicans have been clear for months that their long term goal is to make sure all of these rates are extended permanently. But that means they don't want to have a fight in two or three years in which they side with the wealthiest two percent of the country against the Democrats. That's a losing fight, and terrible politics.

But they can't really come out and say that. If you ask a Republican member about this "decoupling" idea, the most common response you'll get is that it's a recipe for future tax increases. The implication is clear -- but good luck getting a more candid explanation.

Okay. So observe what's happening here. First, Camp cleverly slides the number down from $250,000 to $200,000. It's a fair play. The $250K figure refers to households, as I have tried to be careful to stipulate, while $200K is the cutoff for single filers. But $200K sounds less rich than $250K, right? We've been talking about $250K for months now, years really, but I bet you'll see every Republican start using the $200K figure from here on in.

But this is the clearest declaration yet from a GOP player that they'll accept nothing short of permanent extension in the cut for the higher brackets. So let's say they stick to their guns, and the D's stick to theirs. And there's no deal. Then, taxes will go up for everyone Jan. 1.

So this is a throw-down. The R's are saying: go ahead, challenge us, D's. We think you'll blink. And they're probably right, sigh.

One issue here is that in the liberal blogosphere, you read a lot of people writing that majority opinion clearly backs ending the higher-bracket cuts. But actually, it's not so clear. These numbers are from Pew, September 20:

Keep all tax cuts: 29%
Repeal upper-brackets, keep others: 29%
Repeal them all: 28%

Whoa! Where did that repeal them all come from. Those folks have no voice whatsoever in this debate, and yet they're as big a chunk of America as the other two. Yet I don't think even Dennis Kucinich is saying that. Or maybe he is, but you get my point. So here's another case where official Beltway opinion and the terms of the Beltway debate are well to the right of the American people, as was the case with the public option. Bottom line though is that here, people support doing away with the upper-bracket cuts by two-to-one, combining the second and third categories.

That's pretty clear. But wait. From the same poll:

Ending upper-bracket cuts would help the economy: 26%
...would hurt the economy: 39%
...wouldn't affect the economy: 26%

So Republicans can and will bang on the "hurt the economy" point, and it will resonate.

Now: I wonder how all these numbers would change, but especially the second set, if you changed $250K to $1 million: that is, if you subbed in the Schumer-Tomasky ;) proposal. I bet the numbers would be plenty different and would reflect that most people don't much care what Congress does to multi-millionaires (I say "multi" because if a household makes $1 million every year, they are multi-millionaires, not "merely" millionaires).

In sum, and I guess I'm just repeating myself, but: winning this fight at $250K (or at $200K, which is what the R's are going to change it to, pace Brother Camp) is a close call for the D's. Winning it at $1 million should be a no brainer.

If the R's kill a deal defending $200Kers, they'll say they were looking out for small businesses, and a lot of people will buy that, and blame will fall on Obama and the D's. But if the R's kill a deal defending multi-millionaires, I would think the American public would understand which side to blame.

I rest my case now, as I have to take the car to garage. I mean GRAHJ. Not GARE-uj.

US CongressUS economyMichael Tomasky
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Josh busts Politico | Michael Tomasky

This is one of the must-read blog posts of all time, by Josh Marshall about the Politico. Contained within it: everything that goes wrong with the Politico, which I basically respect (and certainly read) but which too often is too eager to Drudge-ify its copy so that Drudge gives them prominent links; and everything that's excellent and necessary about TPM.

And by the way, happy tenth anniversary to TPM. I've been reading it since the beginning. I don't read many things and think, that is exactly what I would have done. But TPM is pretty much exactly the site I would have created. The difference is Josh did, and I didn't.

Anyway, as to the substance of the matter, there are two jaw-dropping things about the story: 1, that Republican aides are today spinning it in a way that is completely divorced from the facts of what actually happened (well, now that I put it that way, I see that it is not remarkable at all); 2, that Politico ran with this so blithely.

I don't want to start a whole debate about the media again. Well, maybe I do. Those of you who insist the media are liberal-liberal-liberal are of course describing things as you honestly see them, but I think you're failing to make a crucial distinction, which is as follows.

The media are generally liberal when it comes to social values. Christian conservatives and tea partiers are indeed painted as a little loopy. Transgendered athletes and so on are generally portrayed sympathetically. No denying that form of general bias.

But when it comes to capital-P Political stories, the capital-P political media have two chief characteristics: one, they mostly go with the flow; two, they want conflict.

In 2008, the flow was with Obama. Now it's mostly against him. In 2002, the flow was decidedly with Dubya. Then, after Katrina, it was against him. These things ebb and flow and even out.

But it's on the conflict front that Republicans actually control the agenda of the capital-P political press, because they're so much better at giving the press conflict. This blind quote from a GOP Hill staffer at the heart of Marshall's beef: that quote gives good conflict.

But read Marshall's post. It's a story that explains a lot about this town.

Barack ObamaRepublicansMichael Tomasky
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The Bloomberg, Scarborough ticket for 2012 | Michael Tomasky

An independent candidacy for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeals. But it would put a Republican in the White House

Howard Fineman has a big story bannered across HuffPo this morning that advances the Bloomberg 2012 story, adding the wrinkle that conservative-ish MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough seems a likely running mate.

Scarborough makes this more interesting because he might be able to get this ticket some Republican votes. Maybe. It's debatable, but it's possible. But it's the key thing, if a Bloomberg candidacy were to become serious.

Why? Because in all likelihood, the only thing a Bloomberg candidacy does – yes, even taking into account that he might spend a few billion – is hand the White House to the Republican. It's simple: at least 40% of the electorate, and possibly 45% depending on the year and the circumstances, is pretty hard-shell conservative, especially on abortion, and other similar questions like the place of gay people in society, and immigration and so forth.

Bloomberg, who, after all, has been running in New York City rather than the United States of America, is generally more liberal on these issues than Barack Obama is. Watch this commercial, about gay marriage, and ask yourself how that'll play in Kansas, let alone down south.

So, that's the bottom line – which Fineman surely knows because he's a smart guy, but didn't get to, maybe just because it didn't really fit in his story. It seems to me about 85% likely that candidate Bloomberg will just split the non-social-conservative 60% of the vote with Obama – and elect President Palin.

Here's where Scarborough comes in and makes things a little more interesting. It's certainly the case that few people base their vote on who the vice-presidential candidate is. However, he would not be a typical veep candidate; some governor no one's heard of, or a Cheney/Biden-style veteran about whom views are already fixed. He's a media celebrity (to political types, anyway). I'm sure far more people know him as a TV host than as the Florida congressman he once was. He has a Q rating.

So, he'd be a very smart choice, actually. And where could he move votes? The moderate south, Virginia and North Carolina. Maybe the Rust Belt to some extent. So, he could help Bloomberg, depending on the circumstances, pick off a few states that wouldn't naturally vote for a liberal New York Jew.

What conditions would have to obtain to make this happen? Fineman:

The already-bitter partisan divide in Congress has to widen; the Republican party has to become a subsidiary of the Tea Party movement; the Democrats must become a rump parliament of liberals; the tone of politics must get even nastier, Jon Stewart notwithstanding; and the economy has to remain enfeebled.

These aren't far-fetched. The big key is the economy of course. That's a real-life factor. The others are political factors, the most important of which would be what the Democrats make of themselves these next two years.

This is one of the reasons I think Pelosi staying in that job is a potential problem. And Obama needs to take this Bloomberg prospect very seriously. Even though I don't think it likely Bloomberg could win, as I said, I do think a Bloomberg run could essentially ensure that Obama loses. You don't play games with a guy who has a few billion dollars to throw around.

There are appealing things about a possible Bloomberg presidency. Someone who got into the White House owing nothing to anyone would obviously have a lot of freedom to call things as he saw them, and the American public would have reasonable confidence that Bloomberg was acting more or less sincerely and not protecting the interest groups that had given him money (none would) or run phone banks for him (none would).

This could help break the logjam in this town. And since Bloomberg is (pssssst!) far more liberal than conservative, he would basically govern as a centrist Democrat, which could mean a little turbulence for unions, I guess, but he'd have far more conservative enemies than liberal ones.

But I still don't see how he gets there. He elects the Republican. I doubt that's a legacy he wants to wear around his neck.

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Bloomberg Scarborough 2012 | Michael Tomasky

Howard Fineman has a big story bannered across HuffPo this morning that advances the Bloomberg 2012 story, adding the wrinkle that conservative-ish MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough seems a likely running mate.

Scarborough makes this more interesting because he might be able to get this ticket some Republican votes. Maybe. It's debatable, but it's possible. But it's the key thing, if if a Bloomberg candidacy were to become serious.

Why? Because in all likelihood, the only thing a Bloomberg candidacy does - yes, even taking into account that he might spend a few billion - is hand the White House to the Republican. It's simple: at least 40% of the electorate, and possibly 45% depending on the year and the circumstances, is pretty hard-shell conservative, especially on abortion, and other similar questions like the place of gay people in society, and immigration and so forth.

Bloomberg, who after all has been running in New York City rather than the United States of America, is generally more liberal on these issues than Barack Obama is. Watch this commercial, about gay marriage, and ask yourself how that'll play in Kansas, let alone down south.

So that's the bottom line, which Fineman surely knows because he's a smart guy, but didn't get to, maybe just because it didn't really fit in his story. It seems to me about 85% likely that candidate Bloomberg will just split the non-social-conservative 60% of the vote with Obama and elect President Palin.

Here' where Scarborough comes in and makes things a little more interesting. It's certainly the case that few people base their vote on who the vice-presidential candidate is. However, he would not be a typical veep candidate; some governor no one's heard of, or a Cheney-Biden style veteran about whom views are already fixed. He's a media celebrity (to political types, anyway). I'm sure far more people know him as a TV host than as the Florida congressman he once was. He has a Q rating.

So he'd be a very smart choice, actually. And where could he move votes? The moderate south, Virginia and North Carolina. Maybe the Rust Belt to some extent. So he could help Bloomberg, depending on the circumstances, pick off a few states that wouldn't naturally vote for a liberal New York Jew.

What conditions would have to obtain to make this happen? Fineman:

The already-bitter partisan divide in Congress has to widen; the Republican Party has to become a subsidiary of the tea party; the Democrats must become a rump parliament of liberals; the tone of politics must get even nastier, Jon Stewart notwithstanding; and the economy has to remain enfeebled.

These aren't far-fetched. The big key is the economy of course. That's a real-life factor. The others are political factors, the most important of which would be what the Democrats make of themselves these next two years.

This is one of the reasons I think Pelosi staying in that job is a potential problem. And Obama needs to take this Bloomberg prospect very seriously. Even though I don't think it likely Bloomberg could win, as I said, I do think a Bloomberg run could essentially ensure that Obama loses. You don't play games with a guy who has a few billion dollars to throw around.

There are appealing things about a possible Bloomberg presidency. Someone who got into the White House owing nothing to anyone would obviously have a lot of freedom to call things as he saw them, and the American public would have reasonable confidence that Bloomberg was acting more or less sincerely and not protecting the interest groups that had given him money (none would) or run phone banks for him (none would).

This could help break the logjam in this town. And since Bloomberg is (pssssst!) far more liberal than conservative, he would basically govern as a centrist Democrat, which could mean a little turbulence for unions, I guess, but he'd have far more conservative enemies than liberal ones.

But I still don't see how he gets there. He elects the Republican. I doubt that's a legacy he wants to wear around his neck.

Michael BloombergUS elections 2012Michael Tomasky
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Trumka says Dems will push for middle-class cut only | Michael Tomasky

Greg Sargent reports on a new twist on the Bush tax cut strategeries:

One of the most powerful labor leaders in the country just said that he's in direct talks with the White House and Dem leaders about throwing down the gauntlet and holding a vote just on extending the middle class tax cuts -- and that all parties involved are seriously considering it.

AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka told reporters moments ago on a conference call that he's been aggressively lobbying the White House and Dem Congressional leaders to hold such a vote. Liberals are pushing for this course of action -- rather than a fake "compromise" on extending all the Bush tax cuts temporarily -- because it would represent a genuinely confrontational approach, forcing Republicans to choose between supporting Obama's tax cut plan and opposing a tax cut for the middle class.

Asked if he had been discussing this vote with the White House and Dem leaders and whether he'd received indications it's a real possibility, Trumka said "Yes" to both.

"We've made our intensions clear," Trumka said. "We've talked to them. No one that I'm aware of has said it's not good strategy."

"We're going to push them," Trumka continued. "We will fight for it."

See, I've been assuming that there wouldn't be any such vote because it's my bet than the Democrats don't have the votes. But every once in a great while ;) I am wrong, so who knows.

It's like this. As we know, we have 60-odd Democrats who lost their reelection bids and will be leaving Congress but will be there to vote on this tax package during the lame-duck session. The vast majority of those 60 are moderate-to-conservative Democrats from reddish to bright red districts. How are they going to vote? For example, let me give you some names:

-Walt Minnick of Idaho
-Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona
-Harry Teague of New Mexico
-John Salazar and Betsy Markey of Colorado
-Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota
-Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota
-Lincoln Davis of Tennessee
-Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania

I could go on and on here, but these names probably mean nothing to you, so I won't. But the point is, these folks and many others like them cast moderate and conservative votes in their careers to varying degrees.

Did they vote that way because they were just scared to do otherwise? Or did they vote that way because that's what they believe? We don't really really know, but presumably some fall more in the former category and others in the latter.

Remember that this is a House of Representatives in which Speaker (still, til January 3) Pelosi can spare 37 defections and still win a vote with 218 yeas. And then, beyond those Democrats who lost November 2, there is the matter of the remaining 190 or so. Is every single one of those Democrats going to vote the Trumka way? I would imagine that most would, but there are several scattered across the south, southwest and Rocky Mountain regions who might not. As many as 10 or 12, I'd say, after a quick perusal of the map. Remember, these folks still have constituencies to answer to.

So I think the Democrats have a very hard time getting to 218 for a vote extending the cuts only for those households under $250K. And that says nothing of the Senate, where the GOP can filibuster. This is why I throw my weight such as it is behind Schumer. But maybe some actual Hill reporters can start pigeonholing these people and asking them. I'm surprised that I've seen little of that kind of reporting so far.

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Obama and self-awareness | Michael Tomasky

Notsofanatic was kind enough to link to (and praise) my latest New York Review piece, but for those of you who didn't notice that, I provide the link here.

They called it "Can Obama Rise Again?", which is apt. The key passage on this question is the last graf:

Counting on Republican overreach isn't exactly what Obama and his admirers had in mind in 2008. But he must now fundamentally rethink the premises of his presidency. He moved into the White House believing that he really could persuade enough Republicans to work with him for the good of a country in crisis. (Nine GOP senators came from states he'd carried.) It was not an absurd belief, but time has revealed it to be a wrong one. Whatever he does or does not say publicly, one hopes that we can safely assume that he has given up any such illusion. But what comes next? It seemed, two years ago, that Obama had a strong capacity for self-reflection and awareness, and for arriving at fresh solutions. That capacity is now open to question. He'd better develop it quickly or his presidency will not recover.

It's the last three sentences, I think, that bear further discussion. I genuinely did believe in 2008 that Obama had a strong capacity for self-critique. Maybe I got that impression from reading his books. In Dreams From My Father, he's constantly questioning and rethinking his previous views. In The Audacity of Hope, he seemed to me to be more frank than most politicians about past errors.

As a candidate, he seemed keenly aware that he didn't want to repeat the mistakes of previous Democratic administrations. But of course, these were other people's mistakes, not his. And now he's made different ones, and I guess some of the same ones.

Anyway, a lot of his wounds are self-inflicted. I wonder every day he understands this. In post-election interviews he mostly admitted to failing to communicate what he was doing, and that was certainly a problem. But it wasn't the extent of it. I understand that there's only so much a president can admit publicly, because it's just fodder for his foes. But in his private moments, does he really think his problem so far has been largely a p.r. problem? And if so, why not change the p.r. team, for starters?

I'd say he has about eight, nine months to shape up and show people that he and the White House can raise their game, in terms of both substance and optics. He needs to make some merciless personnel moves, I think. But most of all he needs to look at the fellow in the mirror and think hard about his miscalculations so far and learn from them. Two years ago I'd have sworn to you he had that capacity, and now I'm not at all sure.

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Pinkerton file: Schumer and taxes | Michael Tomasky

What follows comes from Brother Pinkerton on the subject of my previous post. Having introduced you last week to Jim and the concept, I will now merely present his posts to you with minimal comment on my part, just a brief intro. So, here he is:

MT and Chuck Schumer are probably right in arguing that Democrats would do best, politically, by focusing on raising taxes only for those who make $1 million+ a year. The economic problem with that approach, though, is that earners at that level are the most likely to find tax shelters. The news that Google, for example, pays an effective corporate income tax rate of 2.4 percent is a reminder that nominal tax rates mean little to those who are liquid enough to move capital from loophole to shelter to haven.

And yet on the subject of taxes, I am in the camp of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who declared, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." He was right--we do need taxes to fund our res publica. And so I would happily pay taxes to a "wise and frugal government," as Thomas Jefferson called for in his first inaugural address. Specifically, I would support a government that does the things that the Constitution stipulates, plus pushes the US toward energy independence and technological leadership.

But unfortunately, that's not what we have. And the vast majority of Americans, in both parties, know it. We have a government that increasingly resembles an oligarchy--not just of rich bankers getting bailouts, but also of highly paid government employees making more than ordinary Americans; indeed, those government employees are pulling away, income-wise, from regular folks.

I oppose bailouts for bankers, as well as the excessive engorgement of Washington DC and other political capitals around the country. Yet bailouts and high salaries for bureaucrats are only part of the problem; the even larger problem is that DC has truly become an imperial city--and that is, well, un-republican. That's republican with a small "r." And yet the Jeffersonian republican ideal is being displaced by a system of fixed governmental hierarchy--viz. the new compulsory mandate to buy health insurance--that seems distinctly neo-feudal.

Once again, the great majority of Americans--not just tea partiers--sense this emerging oligarchic reality. In their 2010 book, Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System, pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen cite data showing the wide split between the tiny governing elite and the teeming governed masses. According to their data, for example, 86 percent of the elite believe that the country is "heading in the right direction," compared to just 19 percent of ordinary people who feel such optimism. In addition, 77 percent of the elite say that the political system is not broken, while 74 percent of the mainstream claim that it is.

So what to do? Let's start with some serious crunching down on the size of government, as we are seeing in Europe, where people know about feudalism.

After that, then we can talk about taxes. I'll pay for civilization, but not for neo-feudalization.

US CongressUS economyMichael Tomasky
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Schumer on the mark | Michael Tomasky

You know that I've written that Obama should counter the GOP on the question of the Bush tax cuts with a proposal to raise the top marginal rate back up to 39% only on those households above $1 million a year.

You also know that I've written that I think Chuck Schumer has terrific political instincts.

So guess which Democrat on Sunday talked up a proposal to raise the top marginal rate back up to 39% only on those households above $1 million a year?

Yep.

The one question I'd have about this is that I don't yet know how much it would cost the treasury to limit the tax increases to households above a million rather than above $250,000. I'd reckon it means sacrificing a considerable amount of revenue. I will try to find this out today. Remember, extending the Bush tax cut for households above $250K costs we the people $700 billion in revenue over 10 years. It would certainly be my guess that Schumer's proposal would generate less than half that in revenue.

Still, it would bring in some money. And politically I think it's the right way for the Democrats to go. It boxes the Republicans into what I think Democrats ought to be able to paint as an untenable corner: in this case, instead of defending "small businesses" with incomes of $251,000, Republicans will be forced to defend people who make one million dollars a year. Your average middle-class American may have some fellow feeling toward a successful small business person who makes $251,000. But toward people who make at least a million a year? That's a winnable argument for Democrats.

Indeed, Schumer has painted Republicans into this corner already. From today's Politico:

[Tennessee Senator Bob] Corker and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said they weren't interested in an alternative offered Sunday by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to renew the tax cuts for people earning less than $1 million, rather than $250,000.

"You shouldn't raise taxes on anyone in economic times like these," said Barrasso, a member of the Senate Republican leadership.

Let Barrasso and his colleagues defend that position. Schumer and his can counter that their proposal impacts less than 1% of all households and does something about the deficit.

It's ideas like this that make me glad that Schumer was just named by Harry Reid to run the Senate Democrats' messaging operation.

Meanwhile, liberal House Democrats still might screw this whole thing up. From the same Politico piece linked to above:

Underscoring the absence of party unity, House liberals and progressive groups stepped up their campaign against cutting a deal of any kind with Republicans to temporarily extend the tax cuts for high-income earners — even though the White House has said it's open to compromise.

As I've noted previously, the problem here is that the liberals don't have the votes, definitely in the Senate and probably not even in the House, to back up this no compromise position, so if they stuck to their guns, they'd end up killing any chance at a deal, which would mean taxes would go up on households below $250,000, which could well effectively finish the Obama presidency. I can't believe they'd actually do that, but lots of things happen I can't believe these days.

Finally, let's keep an eye on whether the White House has the sense to back the Schumer plan. No more stupid trial balloons, no shilly-shallying. Just get behind it and negotiate from this position and make the R's defend busting the deficit to help multi-millionaires. How hard is this?

US CongressDemocratsUS economyMichael Tomasky
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You fix the deficit | Michael Tomasky

Online calculators of various sorts are all the rage. I've just played around with two new ones that allow the user to close the US budget gap by choosing certain tax increases and spending cuts. Here is the New York Times', and here is the one from the Center for a Responsible Budget.

And here is one from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which offers fewer options but does include one of my pet projects that the others don't, which is raising the level of taxable income for Social Security taxes such that 90% (rather than the current 84%) of all income is subject to the Soc Sec tax.

I found the Times one the best put together. It offers you a series of choices, explains well what they mean, and keeps a running tab of how much progress you're making, telling you how much of the gap you've closed via spending cuts and how much with tax increases. Using it, I quickly managed to eliminate both the projected 2015 shortfall and the much larger projected 2030 shortfall. Roughly 56% of my savings came from tax increases, while 44% came from spending cuts.

What these things really show, though, is how well-nigh-impossible the situation is. Obviously, I selected some taxes that will never see the light of day in this county: a millionaires' surtax, a carbon tax, and, yes, a payroll tax increase to bring 90% of all income into the taxable category.

And I chose spending cuts that would have a heck of a lot of trouble making it through the political process, including (should I admit this publicly?) raising the retirement age to 68. In any case, taking a look at this calculator will if nothing else make you familiar with how much can be saved by doing what.

The biggest ticket item on this list, which I did not select, would be to cap Medicare growth to GDP plus 1% starting in 2013 - more than half a trillion dollars. Eliminating earmarks, on the other hand, which Mitch McConnell just agreed to in a surprise in a "major victory" for the tea party movement that won't amount to much in dollar terms: just $14 billion, one of the smallest items on the list.

Ezra Klein was more impressed with an older CEPR calculator that shows, as he put it:

This calculator doesn't give you any viable choices. Instead it allows you to plug in the per-capita health-care spending of other countries and then see what happens to our deficit. I've looked at this dozens of times, and I still find it startling: If we spent what high-performing, fully universal systems like France and Germany spend, we'd have no budget deficit.

The joke here, of course, is that a taxation-based system of national health care solves the deficit problem for good. Even a public option would have saved money, around $40 billion or so, because the competition would bring down rates (as many Republicans acknowledged, although they considered this a bad thing, because it was problematic for their friends in the insurance industry; in fairness, a number of Democrats, too). But we aren't allowed to have these things because they're socialism. Come to think of it, the joke's on us, and it isn't very funny.

US economyMichael Tomasky
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More on Cantor (and McDermott and Bonior) | Michael Tomasky

You're entitled to think the Eric Cantor business is no big deal. I note for your information that his office is walking that previous statement, especially the line that I highlighted about the GOP serving as "a check" on the administration for Netanyahu, back today. From TPM:

Rep. Eric Cantor's office is clarifying a statement it put out last week about the meeting between Cantor, the likely next House Majority Leader, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Cantor spokesperson Brad Dayspring told The Washington Post that Cantor's comment to Netanyahu that the new Republican majority in the house 'will serve as a check on the Administration' was 'not in relation to U.S./Israel relations.'

That appears to be the extent of the "clarification." Ridiculous. Why on earth would anyone think Cantor was referring to US-Israel relations? He just meant things like whether Bibi gets an invite to the White House seder, things like that. Sure. Pathetic. Even so, we now know that he knows he makey a boo-boo.

I notice that some of you conservatives wrote in to say, hey Tomasky, what about McDermott and Bonior in Iraq in 2002? Okay, fine. They were wrong to go to Iraq. I'd forgotten about it, but I just whistled up this Stephen Hayes Weekly Standard piece, with which I do not particularly disagree, except the part about George Bush telling the truth about WMD and Saddam Hussein lying about them, when it seems pretty clear from the vantage point of 2010 that the opposite was the case. At any rate Hayes wrote:

At the same press conference, McDermott and Bonior retrospectively revised the primary goal of their trip. (Thompson, who wasn't at that appearance, kept a relatively low profile both on the trip and after his return. He was the only one of the three to emphasize that Saddam Hussein, and not the U.S. government, bears responsibility for conditions in Iraq.) "First of all," said Bonior, explaining the objectives of the trip, "we wanted to impress upon the Iraqi government and the people of Iraq how important it was for them to allow unconditional, unfettered, unrestricted access to the inspectors." It was such an important point that he revisited it later.

"The purpose of our trip was to make it very clear, as I said in my opening statement, to the officials in Iraq how serious we--the United States is about going to war and that they will have war unless these inspections are allowed to go unconditionally and unfettered and open. And that was our point. And that was in the best interest of not only Iraq, but the American citizens and our troops. And that's what we were emphasizing. That was our primary concern--that and looking at the humanitarian situation."

But if the return of inspectors was the "first" and "primary" purpose of the trip on October 2, it wasn't quite as important on September 25. In the joint press release all three congressmen issued before their trip, posted on each of their websites, there were many stated goals, and plenty of criticism of U.S. saber rattling and pounding of war drums. But there was no mention of inspections at all.

Fair enough. Good catch. McDermott and Bonior should not have done what they did. I will note, in partial support of them, that they apparently did not know that Iraqi intelligence underwrote their trip, a fact that the Bush Justice Department evidently confirmed at the time. I could split some hairs and explain why I think what they did wasn't as bad as what Cantor did, but just to prove a point here, I will refrain from doing that.

So, there. I (liberal) said it (Democrats did a bad thing). Will one conservative commenter on this blog step forward to say that Cantor similarly did a bad thing? Why is it so hard? We all draw equivalencies; I do it, too. Examining them is part of the dialogue about who has and lacks moral authority. But if it's all you do, you're just a schoolyard brat, and no one takes you seriously.

US foreign policyMichael Tomasky
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