Well Now Here’s Your Problem, Doc

President Obama gave a speech this week to assembled Associated Press editors (among other news professionals) and cited obnoxious Both Sides Do It™ false equivalence in political media narratives as a contributing factor to the problems in fixing our broken government.  As Tim Murphy of MoJo points out, the inevitable AP fact check of President Obama’s speech is rife with…yeah, you see where this is going, right?

President Obama delivered a fiery (as we journalists like to call such things) speech to a gathering of newspapers editors in Washington on Tuesday, chiding Mitt Romney for using words like “marvelous” and knocking GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “social darwinism.” It was, by most accounts, a sign of what’s to come from the campaign over the next seven months. Let’s hope this fact-check of the speech from the Associated Press isn’t also a harbinger of the future. (“It’s not even 10 A.M. and we already have a ‘worst of the day’ winner,” tweets Pema Levy.) The problem with the piece, by the normally solid Calvin Woodward, is that it doesn’t really check any facts (inflated jobs figures, spending increases, that kind of thing). Instead, it suffers from a massive glut of false equivalence.

It’s like the AP did this on purpose or something.  I give it Five Pinocchios On Fire.

As a candidate, Obama campaigned on a public option. Progressives were devastated when it was nixed from the Affordable Care Act—to the extent that some refused to support the final bill. Instead, Obama went with the market-driven approach favored by the Republican governor of Massachusetts. Why? Well, in part because Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley suggested there would be “broad bi-partisan support” for such a solution. Can you really knock someone for moving to the left when they started off on the left and ended up where the center used to be?

The fact-check goes on to rebuke Obama for accusing Republicans of wanting to toss out lots of economic regulations (something Republicans want to do) by pointing out that Romney himself doesn’t want to literally eliminate every federal regulation—only a lot of them, including the Dodd–Frank Wall Street reform package, which was designed to prevent a repeat of the practices that led to the 2008 crash. But Obama didn’t actually say Romney wanted to eliminate all federal regulations—only a lot of them.

A sense of nuance is helpful when writing about Washington politics—and nuance, incidentally, is something campaign speeches generally lack. But fact-checks are for objective facts, not subjective arguments about what does and doesn’t constitute excessive deregulation. Pieces like this sort of defeat the point.

No, pieces like this have always been the point of “fact-checking”.  PolitiFact and the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler do it all the time.  The entire point of stuff like this is to conflate objective fact checking and subjective refereeing and leveraging the credibility of the former to justify making calls on the latter.  Hence, we get “Even PolitiFact says X is wrong about Y!” when X is a subjective judgement call and not an objective fact check.  That is a cottage industry in DC, if not your raison d’être of being a Villager.  PolitiFact and Kessler are far from alone in this respect.

It’s how we end up with “Lie of the Year!” and such.  There’s danger in conflation like that, as anyone who might, say, want to ever see the tax dollars they paid into the Medicare system again would tell you.

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Beats working

Young, well-funded conservative activists hard at work, pretending they are decent people:

Young, bearded, a bit scruffy, a young man walked into a community organizing office in East Harlem, lugging a heavy bag. A little nervous, he said that his name was Melvin Howting, and that he worked for an environmental company in New Jersey and had a few questions about how to organize a union.
He wanted to know how to get higher wages. And, oh yes, he had another question: If he formed a union, could his fellow workers join with the employer to shake down politicians for more money?
At this point, Rhea Byer-Ettinger, an organizer for Manhattan Together, felt her internal baloney detector go on red alert. “Beep, beep, beep,” she said. “I said to him: ‘Well, that’s not how we work. Tell me, why are you asking me about that?’ ”

For several years, young conservatives have made a cottage industry of going undercover and trying to goad people working at perceived liberal institutions — like Acorn, NPR and Planned Parenthood — into saying something stupid. Trained by well-financed foundations, these dirty tricksters pose as pimps, sex traffickers and Muslim activists and record conversations surreptitiously. Then they release videos that have often been heavily edited. Of late, conservatives have set their sights on the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national organizing group founded by a hard-bitten, inventive organizer named Saul Alinsky. He campaigned to clean up the slums around the Chicago meatpacking district and fought segregation and abuses by banks. He has been dead and buried for 40 years, but mention of his name — Alinsky! Alinsky! Alinsky! — sets conservative Republican activists and presidential candidates to twitching.

So. That’s what conservative activists are up to. Bothering liberal organizers who are actually working. Following the organizers around, lying incessantly and transparently, making nuisances of themselves.

On that note, I thought I’d bring you up to speed on voter protection efforts in Ohio. I got the first voter protection organizer contact of the 2012 election today, recruiting volunteer “election protection” lawyers for 2012.

I’m pleased the people who are doing all the work coordinating this are on it so early because I have the feeling 2012 is going to be a very difficult year for democracy enthusiasts in Ohio. I suppose they could be following conservative activists around, surreptitiously recording them and then editing the tape and feeding that deliberately misleading and edited tape to child-like, credulous national media outlets rather than working, but they’re not.

I actually sat down and read Saul Alinsky this past year, because noted conservative intellectual Professor Newt Gingrich recommended I do so (or that’s what I thought he said: it was hard to hear what with all the screaming at those debates) and I really enjoyed Alinsky’s book. I still have no earthly idea why young conservatives are so terrified of community organizers. They’re just not a scary group of people, in my experience.

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Dazed And Confused

Greg Sargent asks why Mitt Romney is embracing the Paul Ryan Jump Off The Cliff economic plan so tightly.

Ryan fires up the base on both sides like nothing else, which is why Republicans like Romney want him in the role of hero, and Dems want him in the role of villain. But what about swing voters? Dems seem confident that the Ryan vision is absolutely toxic among them. And yet, as Jed Lewison notes, Republicans seem equally confident that Ryan’s radical vision — or “bold,” if you prefer — is a political winner this fall.

Nonpartisan observers say Ryan’s plans amount to a huge giveaway to the rich at the expense of exploding the deficit. Polls suggest that huge majorities favor preserving Medicare’s traditional function, and reject Ryan’s reforms. And yet the amount of influence Republicans have accorded to Ryan over the GOP’s fiscal policies, worldview, ideology, vision, priorities and direction is really kind of extraordinary. They’re going for it.

They’re going for it Greg because they’re counting on your employers at Kaplan, Inc. and the other Village media outlets to sell the Ryan Plan as not only morally desirable but absolutely necessary economically over the next several months and well beyond.  It worked for the Bush tax cuts and Medicare drug benefit giveaway.  It worked for Afghanistan and especially Iraq.  Those cost us trillions but were sold as the right thing to do.

The Ryan/Romney Austerity Plan will be no different.  It will be the reason why, should the GOP gain control of the Senate, that the filibuster will be done away with and the President will get a nice shiny austerity budget.  Selling that Romney will sign such a budget into law will be the big talking point.

Meanwhile, austerity is destroying the EU and UK right now.  All indications are they are back into a recession with no real hope of getting out.  These guys want to make sure we’re next.

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Whip Me, Beat Me, Call Me Trash, Kick Me With High Heels

Most of the time I try to avoid the worst of the worst in our media, but sometimes I am in the mood for a little psychic pain. When those urges arise, my go to columnists are Charles Lane at the WaPo and Bobo at the NYT. Many of you will think I should probably go to Halperin, but he’s just so stupid it doesn’t cause me the physical pain that Lane and Bobo do. As far as I am concerned, no one can deliver the kick to the gut that Charles Lane can pack in one of his Both Sides Do It masterpieces. Here’s one of my recent favorites, which I have bookmarked so that whenever I start to feel good about myself or the country, I can read it and be brought back to earth:

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of war.

The Democratic National Committee accuses the GOP of a “Republican War on Women,” to go along with its “war on working families” (according to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee) and “Paul Ryan’s war on seniors” (Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky).

Various Republicans accuse President Obama of waging “war on religious freedom” or even, in the words of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, “a war on religion.” According to the Republican National Committee, the president is also waging “war on energy,” the sequel, apparently, to what the House Republican Leadership has called “Democrats’ war on American jobs.”

***

Amid the fog of blog posts,Twitter, Facebook, talk radio and the rest, only hyperbole has a chance to break through. Even so, many, if not most, people tune out the parties’ “war” propaganda. The shriller it gets, the less seriously they take it. For any given individual, this is a mentally healthy response.

Multiplied across the entire electorate, however, the effect may be more corrosive. To the extent that sensible citizens tune out politics, they abandon the field to people who are receptive to constant cries of war, war, war — people who are prepared to think of their opponents as enemies.

When you think of someone as an enemy, it’s harder to contemplate trusting, respecting or cooperating with him or her. Indeed, those behaviors start to look like treason, instead of what they really are: the minimum requirements of democratic life.

On his Web site, Frank Luntz, the erstwhile GOP propagandist whose credits include rebranding the estate tax as the “death tax,” tells potential clients about “transforming mere words into an effective arsenal for the war of perception we all wage each and every day.”

According to Luntz, “We all submit to the power of language, whether we know it or not.”

My fear is that he’s right. All the more reason to stop the wars.

Tell me, after reading that, are you conflicted as to whether you should grab the scotch and slowly drink yourself to death, or just grab a handgun and end it quickly. No one, in my estimation, can bring it like Chuck. He’s the worst of the worst. He’s the Michael Jordan of false equivalence.

At any rate, what columnists have the same impact on you?

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Dear Senator McDougle…

Via commenter mamayaga, this diary by Lowkell at the Boehner Coloured Satan is well worth a read.

As you no doubt have heard by now (unless you’ve been out of the country, living under a rock, or comatose), Virginia Republicans – and Republicans around the country –  have been on a rampage in recent months with regard to telling women, as well as their doctors, what should and should not be done to/with their bodies. Is it ironic or just pathetic that many of the leaders in this effort have been men like Virginia State Senator (and Republican Caucus Chairman) Ryan McDougle (R-Mechanicsville) ? You decide. Anyway, it appears that McDougle’s support for trans-vaginal ultrasound legislation has not gone over too well with at least a few folks, judging from the raunchy comments being left on his Facebook page. Enjoy! :)

*”Hey, since you’re so interested in my health, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been really horny lately because I’m ovulating. But don’t worry; I won’t engage in dangerous heterosexual sex that could result in a pregnancy. This is because I’m a really fat and hairy Lesbian and I plan on having sex with women for the rest of my life, the really butchy dykey kind. The current object of my affections, and central character in the majority of the sexual fantasies at the moment, is Alison Bechdel (pictured below). Thanks for showing me the light in regards to my own sexual health, in affirming that having sex with men in more trouble than it’s worth. The fact that women are sexier anyway, it just a happy coincidence.”

This is clearly the kind of thing that happens when the civil conventions of our society start to break down.

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Sex, lies, and videotape

The Fonz does his best “both sides do it” routine, e.g. Chris Matthews called Hillary Clinton “Nurse Ratched,” and “Madame Defarge”, so that proves liberals (we all know how awesomely liberal Chris Matthews is of course) are just as sexist blah blah blah.

Here’s the thing: Rush’s “slut” comments were over the line but it was the “sex tape” comment that really creeped people out. I think it creeps people (or at least me) out so much that they don’t want to refer to it at all. It’s like that bad episode of Law & Order SVU that you had to turn off 20 minutes in.

The right can spew all the false equivalences they want, but Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin a “twat” (while reprehensible) just doesn’t compare with Rush Limbaugh’s sick sex tape fantasies.

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Regrets

Boo hoo:

Over the weekend, Sen. Lisa Murkowski learned the hard way not to get between women and birth control. Back from Washington, D.C., for the start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, the senator kept running into female voters who wrote in her name in the last election—moderate women who did not always vote Democrat or Republican. These women were coming unglued.
The reason: Murkowski’s support for a measure that would have allowed not just religious employers, but any employer, to opt out of providing birth control or other health insurance coverage required by the 2010 health-care law for moral reasons.
“I have never had a vote I’ve taken where I have felt that I let down more people that believed in me,” she said.
She’d meant to make a statement about religious freedom, she said, but voters read it as a vote against contraception coverage for women. The measure was so broad, it’s hard not to read it that way. I suspect Murkowski saw that, but for reasons she didn’t share with me, voted for it anyway.
But when I talked to Murkowski, her position had softened. She said she voted for the Blunt Amendment (proposed by Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt), to send a message that the health care law needed a stronger clause for religious conscience. It was supposed to be a vote for religious freedom, she said, but to female voters back home it looked like a vote against contraception. The language of the amendment was “overbroad,” she said.
“If you had it to do over again, having had the weekend that you had with women being upset about the vote, do you think you would have voted the same?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
She called the Blunt Amendment a “messaging amendment” that “both sides know is not going to pass.”
I asked if during her weekend in Anchorage, she’d thought at all about Rush Limbaugh, who recently said a lot of unsavory things about a Georgetown University student testifying for birth control coverage, including that she was expecting taxpayers to pay for her to have sex.
“I think women when they hear … mouthpieces like that say things like that they get concerned and they look to policymakers,” she said. “That’s where I feel like I have let these women down is that I have not helped to give these women the assurance they need that their health care rights are protected.”

I’m just going to give you the text of the Blunt Amendment again, because the truth is Murkowski didn’t protect anyone.

providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor,issuer, or other entity offering the plan;

“Overly broad” is an understatement. The amendment she vocally supported and voted for would allow any employer to assert any religious or moral objection to any provision of health insurance coverage.

The amendment she voted for would have gutted federal (and state law) guarantees people in her state have now, regarding mandated health insurance coverage. She took people in Alaska backward, to less health care security. There is absolutely nothing in that amendment that would have barred any employer from declining to cover a whole range of health care services to a whole range of people. When Blunt was questioned on this, his one and only “assurance” was that federal courts would sort out what was a religious or moral objection. That’s an admission that the amendment itself offered no protection, and, again, these are protections people have now, under current federal and state law.

Murkowski regrets her vote because she’s finding out it’s politically unpopular. Did she not read and understand the amendment? What happens the next time she wants to “send a message” and actually passes a law?

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And now for something completely different

Yes, as you all know, I love slagging conservatives.  The concept that being decent in their personal relations somehow mitigates the damage they do to the rest of the world is bullshit.

Not abusing your spouse and children is the floor for reasonable behavior, not the fucking goal.  So yeah, I enjoy a little schadenfreude when one of them rages himself into an early grave with the assistance of booze and cocaine.  I get a little happydance going when one of them, having lost the ability to see his dick, not only steps on it, but grinds it into the ground over and over and over again.  That’s just the kind of guy I am.  And when a couple of c-listers try to come by and play the sadface troll in order to pick up some extra credit from the wingnut welfare circuit, I enjoy slapping them around a bit too.

But there has to be more to life than all that, fun as it is.  We don’t want to end up like those fools, now do we?

So I pet my dog.  She makes me a better person.

This is an open thread.

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Birtherism still going strong

Both sides do it:

-In Tennessee only 33% of GOP primary voters think Barack Obama was born in the United States, while 45% do not.
-In Georgia 40% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 38% do not.
-In Ohio 42% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 37% do not.

I’m still shocked that no serious people have latched on to britherism, in a contrarian “I’m no Glenn Beck fan but when you look deeper you’ll see there really are reasons blah blah blah”. I guess there’s still time.

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The trust deficit

Long, detailed poll from Kaiser on public opinion on health care (pdf). Read the whole thing, but these are the parts I found interesting:

At least at this point in the still developing general election campaign, President Barack Obama is trusted by larger shares with the future of both Medicare and the ACA than any of his Republican challengers: roughly six in ten say they trust the President, compared to roughly four in ten who say they have at least some trust in Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Rick Santorum or Rep. Ron Paul, and three in ten who have at least some trust in former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Among independents, President Obama garners trust from higher shares than any of the Republican candidates on both Medicare and the ACA, with no GOP candidate in particular standing out.

Translation: Obama has almost twenty points on any Republican re: trust on both the ACA and Medicare.

I am not surprised. How anyone trusts Mitt Romney on anything at this point is beyond me. I think every statement he makes should be recorded, so people can compare his positions from day to day.

Contraception:

Even as the debate rages, the basic policy retains majority support: six in ten (63 percent) Americans say they support the requirement that health plans include no‐cost birth control, while a third (33percent) oppose it. Although the policy is targeted at a benefit provided to women, the survey suggests there is no large gender gap on the issue. Two‐thirds of women (66 percent) back the requirement, similar to the six in ten men (60 percent) that support it

Instead, the fault lines are much wider by party identification and by age. Overall, almost twice the number of Democrats (83 percent) as Republicans (42 percent) back the no‐cost birth control requirement. The same gap appears even if you narrow the analysis to women only, with 85 percent of Democratic women backing the no‐cost contraception requirement, compared to 42 percent of Republican women. And as the debate over contraceptive coverage has become more politicized during recent months, the proportion of Republican women who oppose the requirement has risen, from 39 percent last August to 53 percent now. Meanwhile, most independent women (67 percent) are in favor of the plan.

Seems like an easy political decision for Democrats. 63% overall support, with 85% of Democratic women supporting contraception coverage, and 67% of women who self-identify as independents supporting contraception coverage.

Republican women oppose contraception coverage, and they discovered they opposed it much, much more once they found out Democrats supported it, but they weren’t voting for us anyway.

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Andrew Breitbart is still dead

That big thing he was claiming to have that was going to change everything?  The one kept going on about before he ragegasmed himself to death?

It seems to be a site redesign.

And not even a very good one.  All of the sites, Big Government, Big Hollywood, Big Peace, all redirect to Breitbart.com  It looks like the internet circa 1998 with a news aggravation aggregation feed.

So we have survived Breitbartocalypse II, The Reanimation.

Open Thread

UPDATE: H/T to commenter Dave that Breitbart’s site has hit the new redesign.  It looks they stole CSS from Daily Kos’ advertising background thingamjig and stole Talking Points Memo’s CSS for the foreground.  Still no video of Obama eating kittens at Harvard or whatever they were claiming to have.  And yes, their big blockbuster story is that Barack Obama went to see a play about Saul Alinski 14 years ago.

I shit you not.

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Speaking of “Both Sides Do It” Nonsense

This condemnation of Rush by the WaPo editorial board is a masterpiece in the “both sides do it” genre:

IN A DEMOCRACY, standards of civil discourse are as important as they are indefinable. Yet wherever one draws the line, Rush Limbaugh’s vile rants against Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke crossed it. Mr. Limbaugh is angry at President Obama’s efforts to require the provision of contraception under employer-paid health insurance and the White House’s attempts to make some political hay out of the policy. His way of showing this anger was to smear Ms. Fluke, who approached Congress to support the plan, as a “slut” seeking a government subsidy for her promiscuity.

Like other “shock jocks,” Mr. Limbaugh has committed verbal excesses in the past. But in its wanton vulgarity and cruelty, this episode stands out. Mr. Limbaugh’s audience, and those in politics who seek his favor as a means of reaching that audience, need to take special note.

We are not calling for censorship. Nor are we suggesting that the ostensible policy issue here — mandatory provision of contraception under health insurance paid for by religious-based institutions such as Georgetown — is a simple one. Those who questioned President Obama’s initial decisions in this area — we among them — were not waging a “war on women,” as Democrats have alleged in strident fundraising appeals.

What we are saying is that Mr. Limbaugh has abused his unique position within the conservative media to smear and vilify a citizen engaged in the exercise of her First Amendment rights, and in the process he debased a national political discourse that needs no further debasing. This is not the way a decent citizen behaves, much less a citizen who wields significant de facto power in a major political party. While Republican leaders owe no apology for Mr. Limbaugh’s comments, they do have a responsibility to repudiate them — and him.

House Speaker John Boehner took a step in that direction Friday: “The speaker obviously believes the use of those words was inappropriate, as is trying to raise money off the situation,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in an e-mail Friday morning. But there’s no moral equivalency between the Democrats’ hyperbolic but abstract “war on women” line and Mr. Limbaugh’s targeted attack. Mr. Boehner and others of his stature need to say unequivocally that such gutter rhetoric has no place in their party or in American politics.

Incivility is not a one-way street in America. Far from it: Mr. Limbaugh’s left-wing equivalents have trashed any number of conservatives over the years. Conservatives have a point when they protest that the “mainstream media” don’t always heed their legitimate grievances.

Yet under the influence of Mr. Limbaugh and his ilk, the Republicans risk coming before the voters in 2012, and after, with nothing but grievances. This is what former Florida governor Jeb Bush was trying to tell his fellow Republicans when he observed, apropos of a recent discourse in the GOP primary: “It’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective, and that’s kind of where we are.”

For the good of U.S. political culture — or at least its own political self-interest — the GOP must distance itself from Mr. Limbaugh. In response to listener complaints and, apparently, the promptings of its own corporate conscience, Sleep Train Mattress Centers has quit advertising on Mr. Limbaugh’s show. Dare Republican leaders show less decency?

Who is the left-wing equivalent of Rush Limbaugh?

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He’s Learning

Doug Mataconis:

James Joyner has expressed the hope in several recent posts here at OTB that the Republican Party will return to sanity at some point. Even if it takes an election cycle or two, I hope he’s right because the one thing this country needs desperately is a strong two-party system populated by opposing parties that at least accept the idea that compromise is necessary. Right now, one of those parties has rejected that idea entirely and the current state of Congress is testament to the results of that attitude. But the blame for the current state of the Republican Party doesn’t just lie with Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum. It lies with the party leaders and conservative pundits who let them get away with what they’ve managed to do over the past five years.

This is the first time I can remember where Doug has written a complete post, accurately depicting the Republican lunacy, and avoided any foray into “both sides do it” nonsense.

I’m so proud I think I’m going to cry.

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Pulling One Snowe-ver On Us

Jon Chait argues this morning that Sen. Olympia Snowe’s surprise announcement that she’s quitting the 2012 race is really nothing the Dems should be cheering, because all indications are that the real reason behind her bowing out is that Americans Elect and their Sensible Centrist shenanigans are afoot, judging from her outro statement.

This sounds exactly like the kind of rhetoric emanating from Americans Elect, the third-party group that believes that both parties should put aside partisanship and come together to enact an ever-so-slightly more conservative version of Barack Obama’s agenda. Moderate retiring senators often deliver lofty, vacuous paeans to bipartisanship on their way to a lucrative lobbying career. But Snowe’s statement seems unusually specific (“unique opportunities to build support for that change from outside the United States Senate”) about her intent to do something.

I suspect it may not be coincidental that David Boren, the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma and oil industry lickspittle, came out for Americans Elect today. The group is set up so that its presidential and vice-presidential candidates need to come from opposing parties. The process is set up to, at least putatively, allow the voters to choose the ticket. But Americans Elect and its well-heeled funders have maintained tight control over the proceedings to ensure their envisioned ticket pairing establishmentarian insiders can prevail over candidates like , say, Ron Paul who might be able to actually win an open vote.

Snowe and Boren would make for the kind of ticket Americans Elect is looking for. Is that the plan?

Americans Elect is definitely designed to take votes away from one candidate and give a “less than 50% popular vote but 270+ electoral vote” situation, which will faithfully be interpreted by the Village as a “you don’t have a mandate so you’d better listen to us” win.  That would be more effective if used against Barack Obama, but I’m not entirely convinced that the Americans Elect ticket would hurt only the President, especially given Romney as the GOP nominee.

On the other hand if you believe that there’s going to be a brokered convention leading to a crackpot wingnut non-Romney nominee however, Americans Elect is exactly the vehicle that could give that nominee the win in November.

On the gripping hand, Romney keeps winning the GOP primary voters whose motivation is solely defeating Barack Obama.  It’s also very possible that the anti-Obama vote will line up behind Romney, and with Americans Elect in the mix, it could be enough to put Mitt in the White House even with an otherwise depressed GOP base.

And yes, Snowe would have won re-election easily, unlike Arlen Specter or Evan F’ckin Bayh or Joe Lieberman.  She bailed for a reason, and Cohn’s argument as to why makes sense.

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That Whole Respectful Disagreement Thing

Digby is dead right when she raises all kinds of alarm bells about the Dems’ number 2 guy in the House, Steny Hoyer, talking to Our Centrist Third Way Betters about deficit reduction legislation.

In a speech hosted Monday morning by Third Way, Hoyer revealed that he and other lawmakers are looking for the right moment to introduce a bill that would achieve the sorts of deficit reduction goals that have eluded Congress and the White House thus far.

“Members of both parties, and on both sides of the Capitol, are working to ensure that the next time we find ourselves at an impasse — which could be sooner, rather than later — we will be ready, with a legislative package in hand to address our debt and deficit in a comprehensive, long-term way,” Hoyer said.

Hoyer declined to discuss the specifics of this bill, but suggested it would deal with spending and tax policies of all kinds. He and his colleagues face one key problem: there’s a lot of white space on the legislative calendar this year, and that means they’ll have a hard time leveraging unwilling members into action.

If, however, he can get members of both parties to vote in significant numbers for this bill — including broad Republican support for higher taxes — it would have significant implications for both Congressional elections, and the ultimate policy direction the government takes when it ultimately does lock in a deficit reduction plan.

Yeah, I trust Steny Hoyer about as far as he can throw me.  He serves a useful purpose as long as Nancy Pelosi is the one calling the shots, but if Hoyer had his druthers, we’d be up to our necks in Blue Dog crap with no pooper scooper in sight.   My issue is with Digby’s characterization at the end:

I’m beginning to think we should elect the most crazed Tea Partiers we can find and encourage them to hold fast and never pass any bill that President Obama might sign. With Democrats like Hoyer around, it’s probably our only hope.

Ironically if that’s Colbertian satire, it’s not funny, because that’s basically what 2010 proved when voters did exactly that in the House and in state legislatures across the country in a redistricting year (hindsight and all.)  If she’s being truthful, it’s even less funny and for the same reason.  Yeah, we need better Democrats than Hoyer, and the bar for that is “breathing and recognizes President Obama as the leader of the party and will not piss on him repeatedly in public” and all, but c’mon.

First of all, there’s no way Hoyer’s deficit reduction foolishness means he’s going to get anything done that the President can sign as bi-partisan anything during an election year.  Republicans aren’t serious about deficit reduction at all (see the payroll tax cut) and if anything, they want to increase the deficit in order to push up a debt ceiling fight from 2013 to as close to October as they can (again, see the payroll tax cut).

Secondly, giving the President something the centrists will get tingles over in an election year is not something the GOP is going to allow, period.

And finally, the irony this is that “electing the most crazed Tea Partiers we can find” is how we got into this entire mess we’re in right now.  No matter what President Obama signs, it has to go through Congress and the Sausage-Making Process™ first.  The key there is getting more and better Dems.

I know, I’m reading way too much into this, but it’s not like the stakes aren’t Mt. Everest high.  So far, the joke’s been on us for the last fifteen months, or do we really think that having birth control, affirmative action, and separation of church and state reviewed is a good idea or something?  Maybe there’s more pressing issues than what Steny Hoyer might “give away at the table” right now, people.  Just an observation.

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