Wednesday punditry.
Via Ezra, here's Kombiz comparing R govs and R congressmen:
Not very serious about governance in Congress, are we?
Via Nate, Jonathan Cohn:
Not surprisingly, conservatives are unhappy with President Obama. Somewhat surprisingly, liberals are too--or, at least, a lot of liberal commentators.
This predates Gibbs.
Maureen Dowd:
Anyway, on one shopping expedition, I had a big fight with a roommate, no doubt over whether to get canned or frozen corn, creamed or whole kernel.
We were at a supermarket in a blighted part of D.C. My roommate got furious, stormed off in her car and left me stranded. I called my brother Kevin to come get me. On the way back to school, he offered this advice: "Never pick a fight with the guy who’s driving."
I took that to heart, literally and metaphorically. It has spared me plenty of problems since.
The column's about not settling for clones as friends and acquaintances, and the virtue of disagreement, but the advice is universal.
Harold Meyerson:
The Republican war on the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause is indeed directed at a mortal threat -- but not to the American nation. It is the threat that Latino voting poses to the Republican Party.
By proposing to revoke the citizenship of the estimated 4 million U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants -- and, presumably, the children's children and so on down the line -- Republicans are calling for more than the creation of a permanent noncitizen caste. They are endeavoring to solve what is probably their most crippling long-term political dilemma: the racial diversification of the electorate. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are trying to preserve their political prospects as a white folks' party in an increasingly multicolored land.
Michael Gerson:
It was always the most precarious of political balancing acts -- the liberal uniter. It worked brilliantly as a campaign theme. It has not survived the realities of governing. Obama's liberalism has provoked an intense national debate on the role and size of government, making him a deeply polarizing figure -- an impression, once created, that is hard to reverse.
The trouble with Republican commentators is they are inherently dishonest about what Republicans think (see Harold Meyerson for what Republicans really think) yet act as if what a small minority of the public thinks actually matters. Of course, lying about what Republicans think is how they attract independents, without which they cannot win.
Thomas Frank:
As the right howled "socialism," President Obama took pains to demonstrate his loyalty to the exhausted free-market faith. On trade issues and matters of economic staffing, he loudly signalled continuity with the discredited past. On the all-important issue of regulatory misbehavior—a natural for good-government types—he has done virtually nothing.
The real audacity has all been on the other side. Many Republicans chose to respond to the crisis not by renouncing the consensus faith of the last 30 years but by doubling down on it, calling for more deregulation, more war on government.
That they have partially succeeded with such a strategy in these years of financial crisis, mine disasters, and oil spills is testimony to their political brilliance—and to Democratic dysfunction. As is the burgeoning populist movement that now stands beside the GOP, transforming anger over unemployment into anger over the auto bailout and the good pensions enjoyed by public workers.
That's Frank's last column for the WSJ.