Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Visual source: Newseum

Hendrik Hertzberg:

By the time the President got to his own four-step proposal, which calls for higher taxes on the rich (euphemized as lowering ?spending through the tax code?) the Republican alternative was a smoking ruin. Given the position his own reluctance, until now, to stake out a clear ideological divide had left him in, Obama succeeded in constructing a reasonably solid fortification for the fiscal battles to come. Even Paul Krugman was pleased. Me, too.

Ed Kilgore:

The moral of the story for 2012 is that the presidential campaign trail is brutal and unforgiving?particularly right now, and particularly for Republicans. The early Republican caucuses and primaries will be dominated by conservative activists who want a crusade, not a mere political campaign, and will almost certainly punish candidates who don?t give the impression that they will fight for every vote. This is a very poor environment for a ?draft,? or for a politician pretending to run, reluctantly, out of a sense of civic obligation. Even Ronald Reagan got himself into early trouble in 1980 by campaigning as though voters owed him the nomination, with bands playing ?Hail to the Chief? before every speech. He lost Iowa that year, and had to run a savagely ideological campaign in New Hampshire in order to recover.

Democracy Corps:

Confidence in Washington is at a low. This new survey shows an electorate increasingly doubtful about the economy and country?s direction, the performance of the president and particularly the ?Republicans in Congress.? They are also pretty negative about the Democrats in Congress, the Tea Party movement and above all, the ?Tea Party Republicans.?

The Republican deficit reduction plan does not even win majority support, but when voters learn almost anything about it, they turn sharply and intensely against it. They have particularly grave concerns about the plan to end Medicare and slash Medicaid spending, pushing seniors into the private insurance market and costing them thousands of dollars more in out-of-pocket expenses.

NY Times:

A Valentine?s Day editorial in the official newspaper of the American College of Surgeons has set off a firestorm of controversy that has divided the largest professional organization of surgeons in the country and raised questions about the current leadership and its attitudes toward women and gay and lesbian members.

Sally Kohn:  

It would be one thing if Republicans were negotiating in good faith, recognizing that reasonable minds can disagree on the matters at hand and that each will have to bend. But the GOP has become so extremist that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) made clear after the 2010 elections that his party?s agenda for the next two years was not governing but ensuring Obama?s defeat in 2012. Meanwhile, as they have for years, Republicans have openly shared their desire to shrink government so much that they can, as anti-tax activist Grover Norquist once promised, ?drown it in a bathtub.? Democrats? tolerance of such destructive positions is a sign not of nobility but of pathetic self-loathing.

Ouch.

Chris Cillizza:

Any time a politician find himself on the opposite end of considerable public opinion on a given issue, it?s a dangerous place to be.

Or as former Fix boss Charlie Cook wrote in a recent column about Ryan?s Medicare proposal: ?House Republicans are not just pushing the envelop ? they are soaking it with lighter fluid and waving a match at it.?

Major Garrett:

Translation: the Ryan budget not only tees up a clash over entitlements and tax policy, it sets the stage for another shutdown scenario if the House and Senate can't?as is now widely expected?finish its appropriations work by September 30.

Kathleen Parker:

As the number of Republicans declaring themselves potential presidential candidates has begun to look like a conga line without music, hope lingered that somewhere unnoticed was a brilliant dark horse biding his sweet time.

Wherever pundits and pinots merged, a mantra materialized. Surely, a miracle would occur, and The Candidate would emerge at just the right moment to rescue an ennui-stricken electorate from establishmentarians and their Tea-Partying ankle-biters. Cymbals would sound; angels would succumb to arias; Democrats would quake. And prosperity, world peace and well-adjusted children would follow. But who?

Turns out: The Candidate would be tall and rich and sport a coif that defies party identification. He would be a reality TV star. And his name would be known to all, such that even jaded veterans would slap their foreheads as the obvious became clear. But of course!

The Donald.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/YZTksvXUgQA/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up

health news today latest andhra political news karnataka political news political news video