Children And Their Expensive Toys

When Michele Bachmann was invited on Jimmy Fallon's show late last year, his house band played "Lyin' Ass Bitch" as she walked on stage. He later apologized. During a Sarah Palin segment yesterday, CNN played "Stupid Girls" and later expressed regret for any misunderstanding.

An American Classic Begins Today

Talk about burying the lead. Here's how Zach Beauchamp put it at The Dish: "So Santorum up and left, taking with him the last vestiges of interest in the GOP primary." The other way to describe today's events is that Mitt Romney has just won a dazzling victory and set the stage for an American classic.

After the tea party-driven GOP surge in the 2010 elections, it was a foregone conclusion that the far right would dominate the 2012 cycle. Yet all its champions left the arena or were defeated by the establishment choice, the so-called Massachusetts moderate: Palin, Huckabee, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and now Santorum. If the GOP has a "fundamental problem" with dominance by the right, as Beauchamp says and so many pundits have been insisting for months, why has the candidate conservatives liked the least been able to wrap up the nomination by early April?

Continuing to devalue Romney's achievement, Beauchamp writes:

The obvious conclusion is that, assuming Romney loses in 2012, the candidate best positioned to win the GOP nod next time around will be someone with Santorum-esque views with an extra dollop of political talent.

But lack of charisma was never the GOP's problem. It had many talented conservative candidates. Romney demolished them all. Assuming that Romney will lose is also premature, not only because it's April 10 but because Real Clear Politics' composite poll shows him running only 5.3% behind Barack Obama, another stunning achievement given how bruising the primaries have been.

But who's congratulating Romney tonight? Not Democrats, who know he's Obama's least desired opponent. Not conservatives, who never wanted a moderate standard bearer nor even, I suspect, a Romney presidency to the extent that he would reposition his party closer to the center by forging new center-right coalitions in the country and especially on Capitol Hill. While moderates who think he's just been pretending to be conservative are happy, we don't know for sure if their optimism is warranted.

So is Romney moderate or conservative? To me he seems relentlessly opportunistic (which helped him beat all those conservatives) and non-ideological, a throwback to the days of the country club Republican. His cool temperament and refusal to be pigeonholed remind me of the other pragmatic Republican in the race: Barack Obama.

In the fall election (which began today), party propagandists will spend millions calling Romney a wealthy, far-right wing nut and Obama a socialist. But little if any of that mud will stick, and not only because Romney can't very well run against Obama's big-government health care bill (which was patterned on Romney's) nor Obama against Romney's coziness with fat cats (which isn't that much cozier than Obama's). Voters are smart enough to know that both candidates are steely, smart pragmatists. Obama and Romney are primed to give us the hardest fought, most substantive, and possibly closest presidential race since 1960 -- and that's worth celebrating.

GOP Losing Its Will

Michele Bachmann (who I once predicted would be the right-wing dark horse in 2012; never listen to my political predictions) was quoted tonight as saying that Barack Obama's foreign policy made him the most dangerous president in history. George Will (who cut his teeth during the Cold War on the staff of Democratic super-hawk Scoop Jackson) has grown tired of such insubstantial fear-mongering:

Romney says: “It is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” that if he is elected, Iran will not get such a weapon, and if Obama is reelected, it will. He also says that Obama “has made it very clear that he’s not willing to do those things necessary to get Iran to be dissuaded from” its nuclear ambitions.” Romney may, however, be premature in assuming the futility of new sanctions the Obama administration is orchestrating, and Panetta says Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is “unacceptable” and “a red line for us” and if “we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon, then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it.” What, then, is the difference between Romney and Obama regarding Iran?

Osama bin Laden and many other “high-value targets” are dead, the drone war is being waged more vigorously than ever, and Guantanamo is still open, so Republicans can hardly say that Obama has implemented dramatic and dangerous discontinuities regarding counterterrorism. Obama says that, even with his proposed cuts, the defense budget would increase at about the rate of inflation through the next decade. Republicans who think America is being endangered by “appeasement” and military parsimony have worked that pedal on their organ quite enough.

I On Newt

The impression I have of GOP dynamics at the moment is that many conservative activists fear nothing more than Mitt Romney's election. In a second term, President Obama would be a lame duck almost immediately. A President Romney would marginalize conservatives with business-friendly, relatively moderate policies appealing to a congressional coalition of center-right Republicans and centrist Democrats. To avert the wholesale reinvention (some would say restoration) of what it means to be a mainstream Republican, activists backed Palin, then Bachmann, Perry, and Cain. Intentionally or not, they're now flirting with the unthinkable: Nominating the unelectable, namely the attention-challenged Newt Gingrich. Nixon put it best: "The right would rather be right than president."

BTO Watch

Huckabee, Daniels, and Trump are all out. Gingrich? As if. Palin has done little if anything to build an organization. So why isn't Michele Bachmann the top dark horse contender for the GOP nomination in 2012? Dan Rather thinks so.

BTO Watch

Bachmann vs. Obama's Libya war in 2011: "Foolish." Obama vs. Bush's Iraq war in 2002: "Dumb and rash."

BTO Watch

Jonathan Bernstein insists that Iowa's GOP caucus goers are far too serious and substantive to support someone such as Michele Bachmann. We'll see.

Birtherism And The Death Of Decency

Why did Michele Bachmann take the birther pledger in February? Donald Trump in March? Sarah Palin in April? Here's one possible reason:

Only 38% of Republican primary voters say they're willing to support a candidate for President next year who firmly rejects the birther theory and those folks want Mitt Romney to be their nominee for President next year.

Being a birther isn't like disagreeing with Barack Obama on the budget or even calling him a Muslim or socialist. These prospective candidates are accusing him of stealing the presidency by means of felonious fraud. Do they really believe it? If not, they've demonstrated their own unfitness for the job. The stability of the presidency is a vital U.S. interest. Proclaiming to the world that our president holds his office illegitimately strikes me as an unpatriotic act if the accusers don't believe it and are just saying it to seize power themselves.

So I'll be interested in what reporters can learn about how and when Bachmann, Trump, and Palin decided to take the pledge. Here's one hint. Trump's friend and adviser Roger Stone attributes the tycoon's recent success in the polls to his tilt to the birthers and pro-lifers:

The strength Trump is showing in horse race polls is less a function of Republicans admiring him due to him being a prominent successful businessman and job creator - qualifications Trump has not yet exploited - and much more a positive reaction to all his conservative rhetoric in just the last few months.

BTO Watch

Michele Bachmann is raising more money than Mitt Romney.

Remember That '70s Band BTO?

Bachmann Tea party Overdrive.

Which, Mitch?

Kevin Drum (at "Mother Jones") jumps on board The Episconixonian's Daniels in 2016 bandwagon, since if the Indiana governor runs in 2012:

...how does he get through the primaries? When he hops over to Iowa, they'll expect him to denounce sharia law, make jokes about Obama's Kenyan birth, throw himself wholeheartedly into the culture wars, pretend that global warming is a liberal conspiracy, and make dire remarks about the specter of socialism taking over America. In other words, he'll have to act like a public clown, and if he doesn't do it, he'll lose.

I say here, now: In 2012, it's Obama vs. Bachmann.
Hat tip to "The Daily Dish"

Michele, Nobel

The voice of sober Nixonian realism on Libya is Rep. Michele Bachmann, who said in an interview tonight with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren that the U.S. shouldn't have intervened because we're overextended internationally and don't know enough about the anti-Qaddafi rebels or the war's likely outcome.

Trump Plays The Birther Card

Donald Trump, on The View today, said that the president's "probably" a U.S. citizen, then added:

There's something on that birth certificate he doesn't like.

Trump's absolutely right. Barack Obama's birth certificate contains irrefutable evidence that he was born in Honolulu. That's why we'll never see it. Refusing to provide additional proof that Trig Palin is Sarah's son (Oops! Wrong conspiracy) he's a citizen is Obama's smartest move, guaranteeing that some likely Republican candidates (such as Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee and now, it appears, Trump) will continue to maneuver for the birther majority among likely GOP voters. Listening to a birther nominee try to defend (or back away from) the broadly unpopular birther position during the first presidential debate in the fall of 2012 would be the Obama campaign's happiest moment.

Nixon political confidante Roger Stone (above right) has been advising Trump for 25 years, so it's safe to assume he's helping with the talking points. Adding a dollop of birther cred to Trump's good-natured, tolerant populism is the kind of move that enabled Stone to outmaneuver Nixon in-law Ed Cox and engineer the GOP nomination of another plain-spoken loose cannon of a tycoon, Carl Paladino, to run for governor of New York in 2008.

Semifinal Five

Filling out his brackets on behalf of thinking and probably overly optimistic center-right conservatives everywhere, my Nixon brother Hugh Hewitt picks five 2012 GOP frontrunners without including a placeholder for the likes of Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee, whose prospects seem to have improved now that they've coyly arched their eyebrows in the direction of the Obama birthers. Perhaps Hugh thinks that he's got the fringe covered by including Newt Gingrich, whose love gift is of the Muslims-as-Nazis variety.

And where's Sarah Palin in Hugh's morning line? Maybe if no one mentions her, she'll go away.

Con law professor Hewitt even has a talking point for the leader of the pack (Hugh's pick in 2008 as well):

[Mitt] Romney remains the front runner, with strength in staff and fundraising and the experience of having been around this track once before. The "MassCare is Obamacare" trope is old already, though it will be used by his GOP competitors and by the president again and again. The best response remains the true one: An attack on an experiment in Massachusetts is an attack on federalism -- dangerous in the era of the Tea Party -- and that which is allowed to the states -- individual mandates -- is not constitutional when attempted by the federal government.

Haley Mary

As his potential rivals for the 2012 GOP nomination, Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee, jockey for advantage by playing nudge-nudge-wink-wink with the Obama birthers, Gov. Haley Barbour commands the attention of serious people by asking tough questions about Afghanistan.

The GOP's Birther Millstone

The latest likely GOP candidates to take steps to burnish their credibility with the Obama birthers? Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee. They're also now the candidates with the strongest "positive intensity" among Republican voters.

Man From Hawaii, Woman From Mars

I'm among those who believe that President Obama should do nothing more to prove he's a U.S. citizen. The hospital where he was born in Honolulu has properly certified the blessed event. If he provided a massive corroborating file tomorrow, the Birthers would claim that rogue FBI agents had fabricated it in secret labs in the White House basement.

No, Mr. President, leave it alone. It's a no-win issue -- for Republicans.

Michele Bachmann is the latest likely 2012 GOP candidate to take the official Birther pledge. The coded language goes like this: "It's not for me to say that Obama was born in the United States and is a Christian. That's for him to say." It means she's read the new poll revealing that 51% of likely GOP primary voters believe the president's not a U.S. citizen.

Her difficulty is that at most 20% of Americans are living the fantasy, only 14% with any conviction. Those, presumably, would be Bachmann's eagerly sought-after primary voters. Say she (gulp) wins the nomination and is standing on a stage with the president and gets the Birther question. Does she repudiate the pledge and outrage her base or repeat it, thereby amusing, outraging, or even losing great swathes of the 86%?

Plus he'd get to say, "Michele, people tell me all the time you're from Mars, but I refuse to make a campaign issue out of it."