Wow:
The new Washington Post/ABC news poll has all sorts of intriguing numbers in it but when you are looking for clues as to where the two parties stand politically there is only one number to remember: 21.
That’s the percent of people in the Post/ABC survey who identified themselves as Republicans, down from 25 percent in […]

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Bill Maher, hilarious:
Look, I get it, “real America.” After an eight-year run of controlling the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, this latest election has you feeling like a rejected husband. You’ve come home to find your things out on the front lawn — or at least more things than you usually keep out […]

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Politico headline today:
Reid to liberals: Back off
This, in response to liberal interest groups targeting moderate Dems in an attempt to force them to support Obama’s budget. 
Whatever. What strikes me about this is the fact that you’ll never, ever see the headline:
Cantor to conservatives: Back off
I mean - wasn’t that what the whole Limbaugh/Michael Steele bizness was […]

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Been a very busy week for a variety of reasons, which means I’ve missed a bunch of things that otherwise would have shown up here - for which I apologize to you, the paying customer! Er…
Anyway. Joe Hainthaler had something on this earlier in the week: Arlen Specter saying that he might wind up running […]

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Or, why the GOP really is hosed:
Consider some of the components of the new demography. Between 1988 and 2008, the minority share of voters in presidential elections has risen by 11 percentage points, while the share of increasingly progressive white college graduate voters has risen by four points. But the share of white-working class voters, […]

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Good lord. As noted in the Santorum video thread, GOP National Committee Chairman gave an interview to GQ Magazine - Josh Marshall tells us the interview was done Feb. 24, before the Rush kerfluffle - in which he said he was pro-choice, though he thinks states should be able to decide whether to permit abortions on […]

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Funny. Conservative writer Ramesh Ponnru opines in Time Magazine that Rush is good for the GOP:
It is not a smart battle for the reformers to fight. Most of their differences of opinion with Limbaugh do not really rise to the level of principle. (Whether global warming is happening and what risks it poses are empirical […]

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And so now GOP chairman Michael Steele is the latest conservative sycophant to go running to Rush, begging for forgiveness.
Is it me, or is your Republican Party becoming a one-man show here - a veritable cult of personality, in which Limbaugh indeed calls the shots, and none may cross Limbaugh?
Pretty Stalin-esque.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTjKWq9Gges

I know your anger
I know […]

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Methinks they don’t get it:
Top Republicans charged President Barack Obama with driving the United States toward socialism on Friday, opening an ideological attack on his big spending plans.
While the tough rhetoric was certain to rev up hard-line Republicans — many of whom regard “socialism” as anathema to American life — it was unclear how much […]

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In which we present this TPMDC post … with, you know, the appropriate snark where applicable:
Michael Steele sure has an interesting idea for how to rebrand the Republican Party: Loudly announcing at CPAC that they messed up, and pledging to do better now.
“Tonight, we tell America: we know the past, we know we did wrong. […]

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With apologies to one Area Man…
Michael Steele is promising a drastic makeover of the Republican Party’s image — and he really means it!
“We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles,” Steele told the Washington Times. “But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”
“It will […]

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California:
The roots of California’s inability to address its budget woes are statutory and political. The state, unlike most others, requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Legislature to pass budgets and tax increases. And its process for creating voter initiatives hamstrings the budget process by directing money for some programs while depriving others of cash.
In […]

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This one just slays me:
You would think with Louisiana staring at a possible $2 billion budget shortfall next year, Governor Bobby Jindal would anxious to get a hold of the state’s nearly $4 billion cut of the federal stimulus package.
But, instead, the republican governor appears to be a bit weary of democrats bearing gifts — […]

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Via conservative blog PowerLine - of all places - comes a report from Rasmussen that Specter’s vote on the stimulus package could “cost him” in Pennsylvnia:
Just 31% of Keystone State voters say are more likely to vote for Specter because of his position on the stimulus package while 40% are less likely to do so.
A […]

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Via Sullivan, Jim Manzi provides a rational conservative argument against/about the stimulus, but which will be immediately rejected by his target audience for one reason and one reason only:
3. Reduce the military budget by reducing military commitments. The United States is increasingly a nation among nations. This will likely become ever truer as the economic rise […]

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Krugman makes a good point yesterday, putting it all in perspective:
the stimulus plan … [will] cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq
Think about that. It’s too much money to spend to try and revive the economy!
But in Iraq? It’s not […]

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Regarding this report on the Gregg withdrawal, Sullivan writes:
Their clear and open intent is to do all they can, however they can, to sabotage the new administration (and the economy to boot). They want failure. Even now. Even after the last eight years. Even in a recession as steeply dangerous as this one. There are […]

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And these are the moderates!
Collins Friday morning circulated a roster proposing $88 billion worth of net cuts from the measure. She proposed eliminating money in the bill for K-12 education while boosting funding for Pentagon operations, facilities and procurement by $13 billion.
You know, if Susan Collins wants to bring down the overall cost of the […]

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Nate Silver on how the purification of the Republican Party makes it even less appealing to those who don’t take their marching orders from Rush:
Self-described conservative Republicans represent only about 20 percent of the population. This base is not necessarily becoming smaller; it’s still alive and kicking. What is true, however, is that the (1) […]

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Larison - a conservative! - on the GOP’s no-no-no:
Indeed, the sudden unanimous opposition of House Republicans to this bill mainly accomplishes one thing, which is to remind everyone of how gutlessly the Republican leadership acquiesced to whatever the Bush administration wanted and how they only managed to discover some interest in resisting massive expenditures when […]

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