I like the honesty:

Said Barbour: "And if I decide to run for President, I won't know what the answer is, either. But I will know this: if I run for President, what you see is what you get, and I am from Mississippi, I do have a southern accent. I was a lobbyist and a pretty damned good one. And I'm very proud -- we were talking before the show came on -- I am happy about my life. I've got a great marriage. I've got great family, and I've had a great career. Wouldn't do anything differently."

"And I will tell you this -- the next President of the United States on January 21, 2013 - - is going to start lobbying. He's going to be lobbying Congress, he's going to be lobbying other countries. He's going to be lobbying the business community. He's going to be lobbying the labor unions, the governors, because that's what Presidents do, and I feel like it's an advantage for me to have the chance to do that."

The unconvincing aspect of this is that you want to make sure the president is actually lobbying for different things than what the business lobbyists are lobbying for.

Republicans are promising the change the way the House works if they win a majority. But this reflects a basic confusion about purposes:

If Republicans win the House in November, John Boehner and his top lieutenants say they’re ready to spread the power.

Look for a return of committee influence in preparing legislation — re-establishing the authority of diminished chairmen — and an easing of the hammerlock that leaders of both parties have exercised.

They make clear that they plan not only to change the top-down management style of Speaker Nancy Pelosi but also to pare back the excesses and power plays that occurred during the 12 years of Republican control under Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay.

“We will restructure the House,” said Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “We will empower the public. We will have more open debate.”

Allowing more open debate and transparency is one kind of reform. Removing power from the leadership and devolving it to committee chairman is a completely different kind of reform. Indeed, the two are often at cross-purposes. Democratic reformers from the 1950s through the 1970s, and Republican insurgents who won the House in 1994, both saw reform and transparency as requiring less power for committee chairmen. After all, these chairmen have little accountability and tend to be very tight with the lobbyists most intersted in their committee's work.
 

Empowering chairmen is probably a bad idea all around -- bad from a public interest standpoint, and bad from the standpoint of a party trying to push a coherent agenda.

[Guest post by Noam Scheiber:]

Per this excellent Times story, it appears that Palin's opposition to just-defeated Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski stems not from ideological differences or even tactical disagreements but ... a personal slight:

Many people expected Ms. Palin to run against Ms. Murkowski herself once 2010 arrived, but Ms. Palin made a point of saying she would not. Fresh off the newfound fame created by the 2008 presidential campaign, she created a political action committee and made a show of donating to Ms. Murkowski’s campaign in early 2009.

A few months later, Ms. Palin stunned the state by resigning. Ms. Murkowski, rarely confrontational, passed succinct judgment.

“I am deeply disappointed that the governor has decided to abandon the state and her constituents before her term has concluded,” she said.

By the following spring, Ms. Palin was backing Mr. Miller [in the GOP Senate primary for Murkowski's seat], an ally for several years, and she had reframed her initial support for Ms. Murkowski.

“With no one willing to challenge the political machine at the time, and amid rumors that I would challenge Lisa Murkowski for the U.S. Senate, SarahPAC contributed to Lisa’s campaign,” Ms. Palin wrote on Facebook in June. “As she and I discussed, this was an attempt to reassure the senator that I, as Alaska’s governor, had no intention of jumping into the race.”

As it happens, this change of heart fits a pattern that pretty much explains Palin's entire political career. If you dig hard enough, you almost always find some perceived slight--usually at the hands of some member of the establishment (or what passes for the establishment in Palin's mind)--behind every decision Palin has made to run for office or oppose another politician. There really isn't much more to it than that.

Nate Silver and Jonathan Bernstein have good follow-up posts on this conservative idea that health care reform is the main reason why Democrats are in danger of losing the House. Let me add a couple thoughts.

First, to show that an issue is unpopular for Democrats does not mean that the issue in question, rather than the economy, is the cause of the party's woes. One of the things that happens during a terrible economy is that people turn against the president and his program. So, no question, people think Obama has expanded government too much. But during the 1982 recession, people thought Ronald reagan's anti-government program was too right-wing. And during the 1991 recession, people thought George H.W. Bush was doing nothing. Whatever the president does is going to be seen as too far to the right, too far to the left, or too little. So to show that a particular issue polls badly for the president during a recession does not prove that the president would be in good shape if he had a didfferent position on that issue.

Second, the argument that health care is the Democrats' political problem does not think very rigorously about the alternative. Actually, there are two conservative arguments here. the first, made energetically by right-wingers last Spring, was that Democrats would be wise to abandon health care reform even after passing it through both houses. That was a transparently ridiculous argument.

The more plausible case would be that they should never have taken up health care in the first place, and used their time pushing some kind of economic stimulus issue. I still have trouble buying this case. There's an issue of keeping faith with the base. It's also the case that the public may have made problems with Obama's plan, but it never wanted to do nothing on health care. Indeed, Republicans made strenuous efforts to convince the public that they merely wanted to start over and craft a better health care plan. It was a dirty lie to accuse them of favoring stalemate. This suggests that doing nothing on health care would also have alienated large swaths of the public.

Moreover, a recent Gallup poll shows that Democrats fare about evenly (+1) versus Republicans on health care -- it's one of the only issues where they don't have a disadvantage:

At the same time Americans trust republicans a lot more on the economy. None of this is reason to think spending less time on health care and more on "the economy" -- where it's not clear the Democrats could have passed anything substantial -- would have helped.

Good column by David Wessel on the Republican economic plan, or lack thereof:

Polls suggest Republicans have a good chance of taking the House of Representatives this fall and a slim shot at the Senate. So what would a GOP congressional majority do to revive the U.S. economy?

Republican rhetoric offers little help. To the quiet discomfort of a few GOP politicians and several who advise Republicans on economics, this year's campaign, so far, has little of the substance that accompanied the 1994 Republican renaissance with then-House leader Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America."

The only sure thing is that if President Barack Obama is for it, Republicans are against it.

Wessell goes on to record the total lack of any econom ic program from the house GOP. The intellectual basis for this position is supplied by paul Ryan, who says, "We are not Keynesians. We don't believe in demand-side stimulus. We're going to stop the spending spree." This is worth highlighting. Ryan is expressing a genuine strand of right-wing thought, albeit one held by a small minority of even right-wing economists, that has come to the fore during the current recession. It holds that efforts to stimulate demand durign a liquidity crisis are totally futile.

It's a fairly fringe view, and one that has had little purchase in the GOP before 2009, and had essentially no support during the 2001 recession. But it's also worth noting that this view totally comports with the party's political interests. The largest factor in the party's political success in 2010 and 2012, by far, is the economy. republicans have no incentive to support policies that would stimulate growth. Now, they probably don't want to walk around thinking that their role is to deepen the recession. That's where the newly vogue anti-Keynesian policies come in. It provides a handy intellectual framework to justify self-serving behavior.

Again, I don't think this is a conscious decision to cynically embrace a doctrine for pure political expediency. My usual read of these things is that people allow themselves to genuinely believe whatever idea that dovetails with their self-interest.

Ben Smith has a good catch that reveals Glen Beck's race-conscious mindset: 

Per Glenn Beck, this post is by "The ONLY guy to actually get it!"

The guy, a pseudonymous writer on the conservative blog Chicago Boyz, writes that Beck is trying to make cultural, not political, change, "building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom."

The notion that race politics are at the center of the current conservative revival is something typically advanced on the left, and rejected on the right, but here Beck and his interpreter seem to embrace that view, putting race politics at t core of Beck's strategy:

Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence...

I think the idea on display is not exactly racism. It's the notion that race is a Democratic trump card, that Obama won in large part because of his race. It's the premise that has led Republicans at every turn to oppose Obama by trying to find their own minority, as if race were the only salient characteristic of Obama's rise.

-- Matt Yglesias has me dead to rights here.

-- Molly Worthen explains how to defend incivility in politics.

-- Jonathan Bernstein says Harry Reid should get credit for hanging on to Joe Lieberman. 

This is an actual news story, not an allegory for the Iraq war:

WHEN his wife screamed there was a spider in the house, Chris Welding sprang to her defence, nearly killing himself in the process.

The IT engineer chased the spider into their bathroom in Clacton, Essex, England.

Wielding a flammable aerosol can, he sprayed the spider as it cowered behind the toilet pan and then lit a cigarette lighter to see if he had killed it.

However, the flame ignited the gas and caused a massive explosion blow Mr Welding off his feet and into the hall, causing severe burns, and lifting the loft door off its hinges. ...

A fire brigade spokesman said firemen found no evidence of the spider, dead or alive.

"We're not entirely sure whether the spider got away or not but there was no sign of it at the scene," said the Essex Fire Service spokesman.

I have actually used this method to kill spiders on many occasions.

The Koch Foundation is -- surprise! -- paranoid and self-pitying:

What concerns us and what should concern every American is a coordinated effort by anyone - government, media outlet or private citizen - to intimidate and silence people who lawfully challenge and debate government policy.

Really? Having a critical feature story written about you is a "coordinated effort" -- between a reporter and her editors, maybe? -- to "intimidate and silence people"?

I shouldn't be surprised, but it's interesting how pervasive this kind of mentality is among ideologues of all stripes. When my side makes sharp political commentary, it's lawfully debating policy. When your side does it, it's intimidation and silencing.

Hal Scherz, a doctor and president of the right-wing lobby "Docs4PatientCare" writes in today's Wall Street Journal that he and members of his group are posting letters in their waiting rooms warning patients of the horrors of the Affordable Care Act and urging repeal:

The letter states in unambiguous language what the new law means:

"Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world."

The funny thing is that the language here almost perfectly mirrors the American Medical Association's hysterical warning about the horrors that would follow the establishment of Medicare:

The AMA’s campaign against the King-Anderson version of Medicare was a complex, extensive, and well-financed lobbying tour-de-force. Many aspects of the WHAM campaign were very public and visible. The AMA placed advertisements in major newspapers and funded radio and television spots, all deploying the usual red-brush of “socialism,” and even the specter of jack-booted federal bureaucrats violating “the privacy of the examination room.”

The AMA enlisted Ronald Reagan, who recorded a plea against Medicare that doctor's wives played for their neighbors and husbands' patients. In it Reagan warned that, if Medicare passed, "one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free." Now, of course, it is Medicare itself that represents that sacrosanct principle of liberty, and the extension of health insurance coverage to thirty million Americans who now lack it the dark specter of socialism. The conservative response to liberal social reform is an endless cycle of hysteria and amnesia, with every next step a dagger in the heart of the free enterprise system, but every previous such warning forgotten.

The most comical part of the letter may be this bizarre juxtaposition:

This doctor's office is non-partisan—always has been, always will be. But the fact is that every Republican voted against this bad bill while the Democratic Party leadership and the White House completely dismissed the will of the people in ruthlessly pushing through this legislation. ...

Please remember when you vote this November that unless the Democratic Party receives a strong negative message about this power grab our health care system will never be fixed and the doctor patient relationship will be ruined forever.

They really seem to detect no credible issue whatsoever ever with declaraing their fealty to nonpartisanship in one breath and then urging patients to vote Republican in the other.

Martin Wolf invokes an interesting counter-factual:

Suppose that the US presidential election of 1932 had, in fact, taken place in 1930, at an early stage in the Great Depression. Suppose, too, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had won then, though not by the landslide of 1932. How different subsequent events might have been. The president might have watched helplessly as output and employment collapsed. The decades of Democratic dominance might not have happened.

I think that's correct. It's also a useful lesson for liberal who compare President Obama with President Roosevelt. The latter's political success owed an enormous debt to the fact that he took power after the economy had hit bottom and begun to rebound. Indeed, Obama's situation is more like an election that took place in 1929, leaving him to take the oath of office in early 1930, just as the bottom was falling out.

Wolf proceeds to lacerate Obama for failing to act boldly in response to the crisis:

But this time was different: the crisis brought Barack Obama to power close to the beginning of the economic collapse. I (among others) then argued that policy needed to be hugely aggressive. Alas, it was not. I noted on February 4 2009, at the beginning of the new presidency: “Instead of an overwhelming fiscal stimulus, what is emerging is too small, too wasteful and too ill-focused.” A week later, I asked: “Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times. They are times of great danger. Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it. Today, it can offer solutions; tomorrow it will have become the problem. Today, it is in control of events; tomorrow, events will take control of it. Doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much.” This was right.

The direction of policy was not wrong: policymakers – though not all economists – had learnt a great deal from the 1930s. Sensible people knew that aggressive monetary and fiscal expansion was needed, together with reconstruction of the financial sector.

But, as Larry Summers, Mr Obama’s chief economic adviser, had said: “When markets overshoot, policymakers must overshoot too”. Unfortunately, the administration failed to follow his excellent advice. This has allowed opponents to claim that policy has been ineffective when it has merely been inadequate.

This is a more arguable point. I have some more thoughts on this debate in my forthcoming TRB column. The short answer: It's highly debateable whether Obama could have gotten a larger stimulus through the Senate.

Here there be monsters:

Ohio police say a Toby Keith fan named Forrest Frankenstein threatened them and beat his head against a partition in their cruiser after his arrest.

The 39-year-old Frankenstein appeared Monday before a judge who asked why he "went crazy" at the Aug. 27 concert in Cincinnati. Frankenstein replied that he had been drinking and didn't really remember anything.

Frankenstein, of Hamilton, is being held on $80,000 bond on counts of menacing, disorderly conduct and vandalism.

Yes, that is the real, unaltered photo.