Democratic Strategist

Before Mitt Romney's "The trees are the right height" meltdown, you could say that at least one GOP candidate appeared to be fairly sane, if totally unprincipled in his waffling on every major issue. Now, however, even that exception is in some doubt.

As a result of Romney's unhinged rant, the growing chorus of Republicans calling for a replacement messiah has begun to rattle the rafters. The prospects are not promising, as Michael Tomasky explains in his Daily Beast post, "There Will Be No Saviors for the GOP in 2012."

What the party needs is not simply a new candidate. It needs someone with the courage to stand up and say that the GOP has gone completely off the deep end--and that the party could run an amalgam of Ronald Reagan and Mahatma Gandhi and he wouldn't win as long as the party's inflamed base keeps with its current attitudes. But it lacks such a person utterly. It's a party made up of on the one hand unprincipled cowards, and on the other of people devoted to principles so extreme that they'd have serious trouble attracting more than about 42 percent of the vote.

Tomasky considers the possibility of one of the three most frequently-mentioned saviors, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels, stepping up, and assesses their prospects:

...Here's the problem. First, let's consider the three men named above. What's so savior-y about them? The Bush name? Please. It's better than Nixon, but that's about all that can be said for it. Christie's tough-talking personality? That appeals to people on the right. But it could wear thin. And yes, the avoirdupois factor is an issue. Most Americans don't want a president who looks like that. And Daniels has the charisma of an econ-department chair.

More importantly, each has litmus-test difficulties. Jeb, as Rich Yeselson pointed out over the weekend at the Washington Monthly, is kind of soft on immigration, and there is no single issue that revs the engines of the far right like that one. (Jeb opposed Arizona's immigration law, among other things.) Christie appointed a Muslim judge and said, in a lacerating statement aimed directly at the kind of people who make up the GOP base, that opposition to said judge was based on "ignorance." Daniels, back when he was a potential candidate, was regularly savaged by Rush Limbaugh. These are suddenly going to be right-wing heroes? Others mention Paul Ryan, but they're just being delusional. Ryan would win about the same 15 states Santorum and Gingrich would, maybe 20, but most definitely not the right 20.

Writing at CNN Politics about a 'Plan B' memo circulating in GOP circles, CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger and Senior Producer Kevin Bohn also note the growing desperation in the Republican camp:

...One knowledgeable GOP source confirms that some Republicans are circulating the deadlines and the basic math that would allow another candidate to get into the nomination fight and take it all the way to the convention. More than a half dozen states' filing deadlines have yet to pass. A majority of the delegates to the national convention are still up for grabs. One more factor to be considered: many states are choosing their delegates proportionally, which makes it easier for a candidate pick up delegates without outright winning a state...

...One of the Republicans who has seen the memo said "no one is hoping that this will come to play," regarding a new candidate entering the fray. Yet some Republican partisans feel they need to make some contingency plans depending on the outcome in coming primaries. Other veteran Republicans contacted by CNN dismissed any possibility of another candidate entering the contest at this date.

Tomasky surveys the wreckage and potential 'saviors' and concludes,

"...There is no one who can satisfy the base of the GOP--a cohort so drunk on ideology and resentment that they cheer electrocutions and boo a soldier--and be elected president of the United States. Period...They can't see the obvious paradox--that their lust for the White House is making them submit to all the wishes of a fanatical base, which is exactly what will keep them from winning the White House.

In other words, anyone smart enough to craft and deliver a sensible message isn't going to get any traction with the tea party and wingnuts, who appear to have veto power in today's GOP. Still, we know that someone will be nominated --- just don't expect a lucid moderate Republican on a white horse to appear on the horizon.

Just 8 days ago TDS happily applauded what appeared to be Tom Friedman's decisive break with the "false equivalency" notion that he had previously been peddling - the idea that Democrats and Republicans are equally at fault for political paralysis and that a centrist third party is therefore needed.

Now, however, just barely a week later, in his latest NYT column Friedman has completely reversed himself once again and now repeats exactly the same fallacies he so energetically rejected the week before.

If you lay the two columns side by side the effect is more than a little creepy. It's like watching Gollum/Smegal, the tormented creature with the dual personality in Lord of the Rings, as it huddles down all alone and shifts from one voice to another as first one and then the other personality takes control of its body.

Start by listening to the first of Friedman's two voices -- let's call it Freidman/Gollum - as it argues that the two parties are both equidistant extremes of left and right:

"If [the Republican] candidate is Rick Santorum, I think there is a good chance a Third Party will try to fill the space between the really "severely conservative" Santorum (or even Mitt Romney) and the left-of-center Barack Obama. "

But then here's Friedman's other self - Friedman/Smegal - replying to him that the fundamental problem is the extremism of the Republicans and not both parties equally.

"When I look at America's three greatest challenges today, I don't see the Republican candidates offering realistic answers to any of them...when all the Republican candidates last year said they would not accept a deal with Democrats that involved even $1 in tax increases in return for $10 in spending cuts, the G.O.P. cut itself off from reality. It became a radical party, not a conservative one

We need to hear conservative fiscal policies, energy policies, immigration policies and public-private partnership concepts - not radical ones. Would somebody please restore our second party? The country is starved for a grown-up debate."

But then Friedman/Gollum replies by completely ignoring Friedman/Smegal's point and criticizes the Dems as if they had made no attempts at compromise and should have been able to achieve a "centrist" compromise without any Republican cooperation:

The Democrats..."are still in denial about the need to renegotiate our social insurance contract... [Obama] is not talking about the fundamental reforms in Medicare and Medicaid that we need, and he is not ready to touch Social Security...[he] talks about tax reform, but it is not comprehensive"

Friedman/Smegal then responds to Friedman/Gollum by insisting again that the real problem are the Republicans, that they are simply not willing to seriously negotiate, making even the massive concessions Obama offered last spring useless because the Republicans simply move the goal posts rather than negotiate:

"What we definitely and urgently need is a second party - a coherent Republican opposition that is offering constructive conservative proposals on the key issues and is ready for strategic compromises to advance its interests and those of the country. Without that, the best of the Democrats - who have been willing to compromise - have no partners and the worst have a free pass for their own magical thinking."

Friedman-Gollum ignores his alter-ego and simply repeats the "false equivalency" mantra:

"After months of nutty, gravity-free Republican primary debates, how great would it be to have presidential debates in which a smart independent...was in the middle to challenge both sides and offer sensible solutions"?

Friedman/Smegal rejects this:

"Since a transformed Republican Party is highly unlikely, maybe the best thing would be for it to get crushed in this election and forced into a fundamental rethink - something the Democrats had to go through when they lost three in a row between 1980 and 1988. We need a "Different Kind of Republican" the way Bill Clinton gave us a "Different Kind of Democrat."

Let's face it; eavesdropping on this bizarre internal dialog really is spooky. We hear two utterly different voices coming out of the same body. It's just like watching the dramatic climaxes in all the great multiple personality movies - "Sybil", "The Three Faces of Eve", "Marnie" and "Psycho."

But what could cause a man like Friedman to develop a case of political multiple personality disorder that is so strikingly reminiscent of cinema clichés?

If we look to those same movies for guidance, the apparent answer is that it is always a traumatic event that precipitates the psychic dissociation. Under the shock of a trauma the protagonist cannot face, his or her mind fragments into separate personalities.

In Friedman's case (as with other third-party centrists) the trauma they seem unable to face is the fact that the Republican Party is very clearly and rapidly evolving toward becoming an American version of the post-war French national Front, back in the decades when it was headed by Jean Marie Le Pen. For commentators and others who are deeply nostalgic for the stability and judicious elite conservatism of the post World War II American "establishment" (an establishment that included distinguished "wise men" from both political parties), the implications of the Republican Party's undeniable extremism are so disturbing that today's third party centrists are unwilling to fully accept it. One can almost hear them saying "No, no, it can't really be that bad. Any minute now the GOP will come back to its senses. There must still be "adults" in the Republican Party who will get back in charge and stop all this nonsense. Meanwhile we should all just carry on as if nothing is wrong and that we still have two traditional political parties."

Well O.K. I suppose one can sympathize just a little bit. It's always hard to let go of the past. But let's face it, life isn't always easy and the bottom line is this: Sybil simply couldn't face the fact that her mother was completely nuts. Anthony Perkins couldn't accept the fact that his mother was dead.

And Tom Friedman simply can't accept the reality that the "old" GOP is as moribund as Anthony Perkins long-dead mother, her bones clattering up and down in her rocking chair, and that the "new" GOP is rapidly becoming every bit as batty as Sybil's completely psychotic, wacko mom. That's why he's wandering around in circles talking to himself like his own personal performance of Gollum and Smegal in "Lord of the Rings."

Democratic strategist Mark Mellman posts on "From a referendum to a choice" at The Hill, noting that the GOP's original strategy of making the 2012 presidential contest a "referendum on Obama" is rapidly losing viability, with each of the 4 leading GOP candidates making their less-than-impressive track records an unavoidable concern of sensible voters.

Rubio leads in veepstakes poll of Republican voters conducted 2/6-12 by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind, despite his declaration of non-interest.

If you missed it, like I did, chuckles await you at The Daily Beast in Barbie Latza Nadeau's "Rick Santorum's Communist Clan in Italy." Nadeau writes "On the campaign trail, Santorum often touts his grandfather's flight from Italy "to escape fascism," but he has neglected to publicly mention their close ties with the Italian Communist Party...In Riva del Garda his grandfather Pietro and uncles were 'red communists' to the core," writes Oggi journalist Giuseppe Fumagalli..."

It looks like Dems have a good chance to take the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Richard Lugar. Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly will run against the winner of the Republican primary, in which Sen. Lugar is "being pounded by state Treasurer Richard Mourdock over questions of residency" (Lugar lives in McLean, VA), as Mary Beth Schneider reports in the Indianapolis Star. The Indiana Election Commission will hear challenges Friday to Lugar's appearance on the ballot.

The Supreme Court may take a case which could reverse Citizens United, taking into account the experience of the two years since the ruling, reports Brenda Wright at Demos.

With low Republican turnout in the primaries, caucuses and beauty contests, the effort to get Dems to cross over and vote in the GOP contests is gathering steam. Kos explains the strategy behind "Operation Hilarity: Let's keep the GOP clown show going!" Kos challenges Dems "who live in open primary and caucus states--Michigan, North Dakota, Vermont and Tennessee in the next three weeks--to head out and cast a vote for Rick Santorum." Kos adds, "...If you're squeamish about this, just remember what's at stake--not just the White House, but Nancy Pelosi's gavel and a Senate run by Mitch McConnell. The weaker the GOP standard bearer, the better our chances in November. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have had no problem meddling in our own contests...The Republicans have offered up this big, slow, juicy softball. Let's have fun whacking the heck out of it."

Ayn Randite Rep. Paul Ryan gets a richly-deserved pummeling by The Economist for his sneering at Europe as a supposed exemplar of debt burden: The Economist responds: "The European Union has lower government debt levels than America. Gross government debt in the 27 nations of the EU was 80% of the region's GDP at the end of 2010; in America gross federal debt at the end of 2010 was 94% of GDP. Furthermore, government debt is growing more slowly as a percentage of GDP in the EU than in America, because pretty much every nation in the EU is implementing austerity measures. The general government deficit in the EU-27 in 2010 was 6.6% of GDP. In America the federal deficit in 2010 was 9% of GDP.."

Just what Romney needed to reclaim his creds with Michigan workers ---Trump to the rescue.

Meanwhile, Andrew Romano reports at The Daily Beast: "For much of his presidency, Barack Obama has struggled with working-class whites. But Michigan is providing him with some signs of hope. Thanks in large part to the Obama-Bush auto-bailout package, the state's unemployment rate has plummeted to 9.3 percent from a recent high of 14.1 percent--the swiftest, sharpest improvement in the country. Obama's local numbers have followed suit: his approval rating is now well above water, and he leads Romney by double digits after trailing as recently as November, partly because he has gained ground in Macomb County, the original home of the Reagan Democrats. To win nationally, Obama needs to crack 40 percent (his number in 2008) among non-college-educated whites. If Michigan is a preview of things to come, he stands a good chance of pulling it off."

This post by John Russo, Coordinator of the Labor Studies Program at Youngstown State originally appeared in Working-Class Perspectives which is the blog site for the Center for Working-Class Studies at YSU.

As a professor, I am always interested in teachable moments. When it became apparent in late 2010 that Ohio Gov. John Kasich planned to introduce legislation depriving public sector workers of basic bargaining rights, I told reporters that it was a teachable moment about the role of public sector workers. After all, they were the ones who made all other work possible.

Both organized labor and community groups quickly embraced the idea that Ohio Senate Bill 5 could be a teachable moment. They launched a hugely successful campaign to put a referendum on the bill, Issue 2, on the November ballot, and then led the fight to persuade voters to oppose the issue and overturn the bill. Kasich's attack and the forceful response to it may make it possible for Obama to win Ohio in 2012, despite economic conditions and 2010 election results that would seem to prime the state to swing to the right this time.

Another teachable moment has arrived now that Republicans have introduced Right-to-Work legislation in New Hampshire and passed it in Indiana. Similar legislation may be on the way in Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio. Such moves may well undermine the historic white working-class support of Republicans, and that could bode well for Obama's re-election.

RTW legislation differs from past Republican attacks on unions. As labor historian Joseph McCartin has recently chronicled, while courting union endorsements and union voters, Republicans have pursued strategies that, over the last 30 years, have quietly undermined administrative agencies and government policies that facilitated the formation of unions. The result has been the erosion and marginalization of organized labor and its ability to raise wages, improve workplace safety and health, and advance representative democracy not only in the workplace but in the body politic.

The current RTW legislation is a direct attack on organized labor and its ability to represent the economic and political interests of both the rank and file and those non-union workers whose wages and benefits are enhanced by employers to avoid unionization. No doubt, the role of unions in building and rebuilding economic security and the middle class, advancing workplace rights, and promoting political democracy will be a central part of the curriculum for this teachable moment.

All the current Republican candidates have refused opportunities to speak to union leaders. Instead, they have signed on to the anti-labor agenda, including RTW legislation, proposed by conservative corporations, business groups, and donors. Together with their other economic proposals, they have established a Republican brand that embraces and even celebrates a distorted sense of morality and inequality of income, wealth, and power.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.

When the Obama administration announced last month that religiously-affiliated institutions would be required to provide health plans covering contraception, there was widespread talk that a wedge issue was emerging. Several prominent Catholic liberals were quick to point out that Obama would lose the Catholic vote and seriously damage his re-election prospects. But as Republican politicians gleefully piled on, the evidence for such a dire development--and indeed, for the continued existence of anything you could describe as a "Catholic vote"--has diminished almost daily.

Of course, the White House responded to the Catholic Bishops' furor with a deft maneuver that changed the political dynamics of the issue, offering a compromise that allowed the cost of contraception coverage to be borne by insurance companies, not the religiously-affiliated institutions themselves. This step won immediate praise from the leadership of the Catholic Health Association, Catholic Charities, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. But the split among Catholic elites simply reinforced the more fundamental reality: American Catholics are hardly monolithic, even on issues supposedly touching on the Church's authority and teachings.

Polling of Americans on the contraception mandate controversy has produced significantly varying results, often depending on when the poll was taken and question wording and order. But no survey has shown a significant difference between Catholics and other voters on this issue. (John Sides found some evidence of a drop in approval ratings for Obama among highly-observant and conservative Catholics, but conceded that these are largely already Obama opponents.) Among the many polls, the most credible is perhaps a Democracy Corps survey that formulates the positions of the administration and of the Bishops in their own words. The results show that Catholics support the administration's position by a 49-42 margin--barely distinguishable from the full pool of respondents, who support the administration's position by a 49-43 margin.

This should come as no particular surprise to anyone familiar with the history of U.S. Catholic lay attitudes on issues where the Church hierarchy has taken strong positions. The most thorough recent research on public opinion involving abortion and same-sex marriage--issues where the Catholic Church has clear, unambiguous positions that are frequently communicated to the laity via channels ranging from papal encyclicals to the parish pulpit--comes from the Public Religion Research Institute, which did a major survey examining the views of Americans of differing confessional backgrounds in June of last year. At that time, 56 percent of all Americans and 54 percent of Catholics indicated they thought abortions should be legal in all or most circumstances. Only 29 percent of white evangelical Protestants, however, support legalized abortion--another indication that the anti-choice base in American politics is now more Protestant than Catholic.

To be sure, the same survey shows slightly stronger personal disapproval of abortion on moral grounds among Catholics than among the population as a whole. That attitude, however, is heavily concentrated among Latino Catholics. Forty-two percent of white Catholics consider abortion "morally acceptable," compared to 40 percent of all Americans, while only 17% of Latino Catholics say the same. There is hardly a consenus Catholic position, even on personal attitudes towards abortion.

On same-sex marriage, again, Catholics are more likely to agree with other Americans than with their own leadership. An October 2010 Pew survey showed 46 percent of Catholics favoring legalization of same-sex marriage, as compared to 42 percent of all Americans. The hardcore resistance to gay marriage, on the other hand, is among white evangelicals (who oppose it by a 20-74 margin) and to some extent black Protestants (who oppose it by a 28-62 margin).

Conservatives often argue that support for the hierarchy's positions is much higher among "real Catholics"--meaning those who attend Mass weekly. That's true, but it's not a phenomenon particular to Catholics. According to the PRRI survey, for example, support for legalized abortion varies inversely according to frequency of worship service attendance among evangelical and mainline Protestants, as well as among Catholics. Moreover, Catholics who disagree with the Church's position on hot-button issues do not seem to be suffering from any misinformation about Church teachings (72 percent of white Catholics say they've heard about abortion from the pulpit) or from a bad conscience about their disagreements. Again according to PRRI, 68 percent of Catholics think you can still be a "good Catholic" while disagreeing with Church teachings on abortion, and 74 percent say the same about same-sex marriage.

The more you look at the numbers, the idea that there is some identifiable Catholic vote in America, ready to be mobilized, begins to fade towards irrelevance. In the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections, Catholics voted within a couple of percentage points of the electorate as a whole. It's notable that both the Democratic vice president and the Republican Speaker of the House are Catholics--and that few Americans are likely aware of that fact.

This was not always the case, of course. From the days of Andrew Jackson to JFK, Catholic voters were considered a mainstay of the Democratic Party coalition. Irish and German Catholics were at home in the conservative Democratic party of the nineteenth century, and were supplemented by southern Europeans as the New Deal Coalition developed in the twentieth. While the Catholic attachment to the Democratic Party has persisted to a steadily diminishing extent in state and local elections, the disproportionate pro-Democratic "Catholic vote" at the presidential level abruptly ended in 1972 and has never returned.

To a large extent, that shift has simply reflected the broader ideological polarization of the two parties, which demolished traditional ethnic loyalties. Moreover, the upward mobility and suburbanization of previously urban white Catholics communities has naturally made them more susceptible to Republican economic and cultural appeals, a trend that among Catholics as a whole has been partially offset by the influx of Democratic-leaning Hispanics.

The idea that Catholics no longer behave self-consciously as "Catholics" on hot-button issues reflects the broader reality that they have become hard to distinguish from other Americans in their political behavior. And so whatever happens between the White House and the Bishops, it's not likely to change the reality that the "Catholic vote" looks just like America.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win," is cross-posted from HuffPo.

From the point of view of a partisan Democrat, I can only think of one thing to say about the Republican Party's escalating opposition to birth control: go ahead, make our day.

You have to wonder if the political consultants advising the Republican presidential candidates have lost their minds. In the competition for ultra-right wing voters in the Republican primaries, the Romney and Santorum campaigns have completely lost sight of how their positions on birth control appear to the vast majority of Americans -- and especially to women -- and affect their chances in a general election.

Outside of a very narrow strata of political extremists, birth control is not a controversial subject. At some point in their lives roughly 98% of women -- including 98% of Catholic women -- have used birth control -- either to prevent pregnancy, regulate menstrual cycles and cramps or to address other medical issues.

Last week a PPP poll reported that:

This issue could be potent in this fall's election. Fully 58 percent of voters say they oppose Republicans in Congress trying to take away the birth control benefit that saves women hundreds of dollars a year, including 56 percent of independents.

And a recent Pew Poll says only 8% of Americans believe that the use of contraceptives is "immoral."

Democracy Corps published a polling memo last Thursday that said in part that:

...one of the most important factors powering Obama's gains against likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney has been the President's improving numbers among unmarried women, a key pillar of the present and future Democratic coalition.

Among this group, Obama now leads Romney by 65-30 -- and there's been a net 18-point swing towards the President among them...

The issue of access to birth control is very important among this group.

In addition, the memo went on to say that the battle over contraception could be another "Terri Schiavo moment" where the knee-jerk reaction of right-wing culture warriors runs afoul of Americans' desire not to have government interfering with their most private personal decisions.

And the numbers understate another important factor -- intensity. Many women voters in particular feel very intensely about the birth control issue. It's not just another issue -- it's about their own control of the most personal aspects of their lives.

Notwithstanding these facts, Mitt Romney has come out squarely in favor of the "personhood" amendment that was soundly defeated in Mississippi -- probably the most conservative state in the nation. That amendment would essentially ban most forms of hormonal birth control, like the Pill and IUD, that millions of women -- and their spouses -- rely upon to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

Santorum, in addition to his support of the "personhood" amendment, actually argues that contraception of any sort is immoral.

Both Romney and Santorum have attacked the Obama administration's rule that requires insurance companies to make birth control available to all women with no co-payment no matter where they work.

Their positions are so far outside the political mainstream that they might as well be on the former planet Pluto.

And these are not positions that are peripherally related to voters' opinions of candidates for office. For many swing voters, the GOP's extremist positions on birth control could very well be dispositive determinants of their votes next November.

First, for a large number of women voters, their positions communicate two very important things:

They aren't on my side;

They don't understand my life.

Of all the bad decisions Republican leaders have made during the last year -- and it is a long litany of stupid calls -- it would be ironic if the most self-destructive one turned out to be their suicide attack to destroy the American labor movement.

I say ironic, because last may AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, with the strong support of union leaders, announced at the National Press Club that labor unions were tired of being taken for granted and would no longer provide automatic support for Democratic candidates, who didn't reciprocate by supporting the priorities of the trade union movement. As Trumka said, "If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, then working people will not support them."

He meant it. Union leaders were sorely disappointed by weak Democratic support of measures like the Employee Free Choice Act, which would help strengthen union organizing rights. And there a number of Democratic candidates who received support from unions, but who didn't do much to advance other bread-and-butter union priorities, like fair trade. Trumka and other union leaders understood that Republicans were the primary force obstructing pro-union legislation, but they also felt, with some good reason, that too many Dems, including many 'blue dogs,' caved to the Republicans too easily.

Smart Republicans welcomed this development. Anything that reduced labor support for their opponents they saw as a good thing. Unions provided about 30 percent of the top four Super-PAC expenditures supporting Democrats and about two-thirds of the financial support provided by the pro-Democratic House Majority PAC. But today, unions are facing a very different reality, as Matea Gold and Melanie Mason report in the L.A. Times:

Flash forward to today: Labor appears squarely back in the Democrats' corner for the 2012 election -- pushed there in large part by Republican attacks on collective bargaining rights for public employees.

Those and other anti-union measures are rallying organized labor to the side of its longtime Democratic allies, and not just in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan, where they are battling efforts aimed at curbing union organizing.

The country's biggest unions also have played a central role in helping a network of federal pro-Democratic "super PACs" get off the ground, pouring more than $4 million into those groups in 2011, even as many wealthy liberals kept their checkbooks closed.

And some major labor groups have even inserted themselves into the Republican presidential primaries with ads that take aim at White House hopeful Mitt Romney.

So, not only have Republicans overplayed their hand as legislative obstructionists, souring the public into record-low approval ratings of their party; Not only have they revealed themselves as groveling lapdogs for their wealthy contributors at the expense of working people; Not only has the GOP defined itself, most recently, as the party of extremist opposition to women's reproductive self-determination. Now they have also taken a huge trump card that they could have played to significant advantage -- labor's decision to withhold support from some Democrats -- and compelled the union movement to not only reverse that decision, but to go all in for record union support of Democratic candidates.

Democrats should hold a national "Thank Scott Walker Day." But it's not just Walker; It's Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and Ohio Governor John Kasich and other GOP leaders who have been arrogant enough to think they could crush the union movement with little resistance and no consequences. With classic Republican myopia, they are doubling down, as Mason and Gold explain:

Across the country, state GOP lawmakers -- many of whom were swept into office by the tea-party-fueled wave that dominated the 2010 midterm election -- are aggressively pushing right-to-work laws that would make it harder for unions to collect dues. And in the presidential campaign, Romney has taken a particularly antagonistic posture against what he calls "big labor."

As a result,

"I think we'll be more engaged in 2012 than certainly in the last 20 years," said Mike Podhorzer, political director for the AFL-CIO, a federation of 57 unions. "Working people realize in a way they never have what a threat the current Republican platform is to their well-being."

Organized labor is now expected to match or slightly exceed the estimated $400 million that unions spent to help elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats in 2008, according to Marick F. Masters, a business professor who studies the labor movement at Michigan's Wayne State University.

As the authors note further, one union alone, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, will invest up to $100 million this year to help Democrats. "What's the alternative?" asks AFSCME President Gerald McEntee. The union has already spent $1 million attacking Romney in Florida. SEIU also ran attack ads against Romney in the Sunshine state. The ads represented unprecedented involvement in a GOP primary.

Labor unions are supporting very few GOP candidates who support them. But the pro-Republican pickings for unions are exceedingly slim this year as a result of the GOP's jihad on unions. The AFL-CIO will be more selective in choosing which particular Democratic candidates they support this year. But the GOP's war on collective bargaining has insured that union support of Democrats will be stronger than ever, both in dollars and muscle.

Well, the simple answer is this: an appalling number of "journalists" are pathetically gullible and lazy hacks and will swallow any nonsense a candidates' flack feeds them just so long as it gives them an easy adjective to use to characterize a politician.

The slightly less simple answer is that Santorum's flacks - a group which by the way includes David Brooks and other conservative cheerleaders along with the guys directly on Santorum's payroll -- have run a shell game on the press that the asleep at the wheel reporters don't bother to question.

Just watch how David Brooks plays this incredibly transparent street-corner three-card-Monte trick on his readers and the rest of the press:

Step one: ignore the man's actual personal history (MBA, Lawyer in silk-stocking firm, Politician, Lobbyist) and his parent's actual occupations (Clinical Psychologist, Administrative Nurse) and use essentially irrelevant facts to imply he comes from a hard-scrabble blue collar life and background.

Brooks in Paragraph 7 -- "Santorum is the grandson of a coal miner and the son of an Italian immigrant. For years, he represented the steel towns of western Pennsylvania."

Step two: suggest his political views make him an authentic representative of working class America.

Brooks in Paragraph 11 -- "I do believe that he represents sensibility and a viewpoint that is being suppressed by the political system"

Step three: take steps one and two, add some paragraphs in between them to distract the reader and then flat-out boldly identify Santorum as "working class" and hope nobody notices the quick sleight of hand:

Brooks in Paragraph 12 -- "If you took a working-class candidate from the right, like Santorum, and a working-class candidate from the left, like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and you found a few islands of common ground, you could win this election by a landslide. The country doesn't want an election that is Harvard Law versus Harvard Law"

Absolutely unbelievable, isn't it. Santorum grew up in a middle class home, never worked a single damn day in a factory or hammered a nail in his entire bloody life and all of a sudden he's frickin' Rocky.

Look at these utterly nonsensical headlines: "Santorum fits working class bill," and "Santorum: The Blue-collar Candidate - The former senator touts his working-class roots"

And somebody actually pays the stupid clowns who write this crap as "journalists" who are supposedly reporting the news? Hell, any MSM reporter who repeats this "blue collar" baloney should be instantly fired and replaced with a stenographer who just writes down Santorum's' campaign spin word for word. Come to think of it, the media should just get a bike messenger to carry Santorum's press releases directly to the printing press or news show teleprompter. It'll be much cheaper and a whole lot more honest.

The latest national survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Women's Voices. Women Vote Action Fund shows a Republican Party in deepening trouble and emerging underlying trends that may have shifted the balance for 2012. Barring sudden economic shocks, there is accumulating evidence that we have entered a new phase in the political cycle, substantially more favorable to the Democrats.

This survey sees a collapse of the Republican brand at almost all levels. Negatives associated with the Republican Party have not been this high since right after they lost the country in 2008. Their presumptive nominee flirts with a 50 percent negative rating and may now represent a big drag on the national party.

President Obama nears the 50 percent mark and is now just four points away from what he achieved in 2008. Democrats have newly consolidated the progressive voters of the Rising American Electorate who were responsible for Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008. These voters--unmarried women, young voters, and minorities--dropped off in 2010 and lagged throughout 2011. They have returned in a big way for Democrats, led by a resurgence and re-engagement of unmarried women. Only young voters have not been re-consolidated, which is either a problem or an opportunity.

Seniors, who abandoned Democrats in 2010, have come back two surveys in a row and suburban swing voters watch the Republican primary debate with growing alienation from the Republican Party. The tax issue, a presumptive Republican advantage, has moved dramatically in favor of the Democrats.

These results may not simply be the result of a spot of good economic news and rough news cycles for Republican nominees, but the beginning of long-term structural changes that will characterize the 2012 election cycle.

Recent controversies over Planned Parenthood and contraception will not revive the Republican's standing, indeed, the opposite may be true, as this survey shows voters disagree with them on principle and wonder why at a time of great economic distress, Republicans are consumed with denying birth control coverage for women.

This survey provides fair warning to the Republican Party that they may be losing the country.

Kos makes an important point in his latest post:
In the idealized version of the GOP primary, establishment Republicans would curry favor with their Wall Street pals while sending coded dog whistles to their foot soldiers--on race, immigration, reproductive freedoms, etc. Those dog whistles would motivate the GOP base without revealing their true radical nature to the American mainstream. It was a genius system while it worked, one that saw no parallel on the progressive side.

But the days of the dog whistle are over. The election of President Barack Obama created an entire cottage industry trying to prove how un-American and Kenyan he supposedly is, while Republicans like Rep. Pete Hoekstra run blatantly anti-Asian ads. Republicans laugh about electrocuting immigrants who will cut off your head in the desert if they're not stopped, while passing laws openly hostile to brown people. Attacks on homosexuals have escalated to new hysterical highs as society becomes more tolerant and open to equality [and] while many conservatives were disgusted at sex for pleasure, at least they had the good sense to publicly pretend that their entire motivation was to save fetuses. But of course, that mask is off. What they want is to control female sexuality, and the hell with any candidate who doesn't scream it from the rooftops.

....every day that this race continues is a day in which base conservatives demand their candidates--including that former "moderate" Romney--pledge vocal and overt fealty to an agenda so outside the mainstream, that independents are flocking to the Democratic Party.

Kos is right that this represents a dramatic change, one with potentially substantial effects on the struggle between the two political parties.

From his New York Magazine column yesterday:

The unpredictable Republican presidential race has taken another surprising turn as recent numbers show Mongol warlord Genghis Khan seizing the lead in national polls of likely GOP primary voters. Benefiting from widespread doubts about Mitt Romney's authenticity and ideological commitment, Genghis has changed the shape of the race by sounding sharp populist themes that resonate with supporters of the tea party. "Mitt Romney wants to manage Washington, D.C.," he told an enthusiastic crowd in Scottsdale, Arizona. "I want to burn it to the ground, slay its inhabitants, and stack their skulls in pyramids reaching to the sky."

...Genghis's surge to the top of the polls began after a recent debate in Williamsburg, Mississippi. After moderator Brian Williams questioned if his popular campaign promise to not only defeat President Obama but to enslave his family was racially insensitive, Genghis angrily replied that he enslaves the families of all his defeated rivals, regardless of race. Then, in a dramatic touch that reminded many Republicans of Ronald Reagan's famous I-paid-for-this-microphone moment, he charged down from the stage on horseback, decapitated Williams, and displayed his head before the roaring crowd. At a post-debate focus group led by pollster Frank Luntz, numerous attendees praised Genghis for standing up to, as one attendee put it, "the politically correct media."

Read the whole thing, it'll make your day.

For a revealing take on the warped spirit of the GOP front-runner-in-waiting, check out Ed Kilgore's "Santorum's Rhetorical Surge" at Washington Monthly 'Political Animal.' Kilgore pieces together a disturbing portrait of the candidate, "expressing the rawest right-wing sentiments on the campaign trail" from Dan Popkey's report in the Idaho Statesman. A couple of gems from Santorum's diatribe at an idaho rally:

"We are reaching a tipping point, folks, when those who pay are the minority and those who receive are the majority..."

"Don't you see how they see you? How they look down their nose at the average Americans. These elite snobs!"

"I believe that if we are unsuccessful in this election that we will have failed in that duty and it will have horrendous consequences. ... It will be the end of the great experiment in the order of liberty and freedom."

There's more. But you get the idea. As Kilgore explains, "Seriously, folks, Ronald Reagan didn't talk this way. Barry Goldwater went about half this far and was eternally labeled the most extremist major-party candidate in U.S. history. If in 2008 Barack Obama had used this sort of rhetoric about the electoral stakes of victory or defeat, or the nature of the opposition, he would have been accused of introducing Kenyan Mau Mau tactics to American politics. Even now, he's called a dangerous demagogue for suggesting Wall Street was partially responsible for the recession, or that the richest people on the planet ought to pay higher tax rates than their employees."

A revealing portrait, especially for those who thought Newt was the point man for Republican nastiness. Kilgore concludes of Santorum's splenetic rant, "If Mitt Romney had an ounce of real courage, he'd call him on it." Such are the stakes of 2012.

As progressives face the 2012 elections, they find themselves struggling with a profoundly difficult dilemma.

On the one hand, progressives clearly recognize the extraordinary danger presented by Republican extremism. The possibility of additional conservatives being added to the supreme court is, by itself, more than sufficient reason to conclude that the GOP must not be allowed to win in 2012 but there are equally serious threats to the survival of the New Deal social safety net, to basic worker and citizen rights and, for millions of Americans, to the continued right to vote itself. Both opinion data and progressive commentary show that only a very small fraction of 2008 Democratic voters are willing to sit out the 2012 election or support a Nader-style third party.

At the same time, however, a significant number of progressives also feel that they simply cannot support Obama with anything like the enthusiasm they felt in 2008. Beyond the general sense of disappointment and frustration that many feel with his administration, progressives cite two practical reasons - (1) that they will lose their ability to convincingly advocate for broader progressive change if they appear to be giving unqualified endorsement to Obama and (2) that they will lose all leverage within the Administration itself if they energetically support and work for his re-election without first extracting substantial policy concessions in return.

The solution many progressives have settled upon is a kind of grudging, half-hearted support, laced with criticism. It is typically expressed in the following way: "Well, yeah, I guess I'll vote for Obama. But I sure won't contribute any money or volunteer."

In a recent column E.J. Dionne accurately described the progressive ambivalence:

In traveling around Iowa and New Hampshire over the last few weeks, I have been struck by the number of Democrats and independents who still more or less want Obama to win and deeply fear the consequences of a government dominated by Republicans. But having made this clear, they then bring up the ways in which they cannot summon the emotions on Obama's behalf this year that they felt the first time around.

Some point to disappointment over his failure to confront the Republicans early enough and hard enough. How, they ask, could Obama possibly have expected cooperation from conservatives? Others are frustrated that he couldn't bring Washington together, as he said he would. Still others point to real Obama achievements, including the stimulus and especially the health-care law, and ask why he was unable to sell their merits to a majority of the electorate. And then there are those who wonder why the malefactors of finance have faced so little accountability.

Few of these voters would ever support a Republican, and most will turn out dutifully for Obama again. But a president who won election with 52.9 percent of the vote does not have a lot of margin. He needs to worry not just about issues but also about the spirit and morale of his supporters.

This halfhearted, unenthusiastic view could be clearly discerned in the progressive reaction to Obama's recent State of the Union speech. Progressive commentary included a significant number of opinion pieces with titles such as "Why Did It Take Obama So long," "Semi-Tough" and even "Faux-Populism." While many progressives were pleased, a substantial group was negative, dismissive and disappointed.

Among progressives themselves there is an intense concern that this lack of enthusiasm represents a deeply unsatisfactory and dysfunctional dead-end. All progressives are fiercely and passionately opposed to the genuinely disturbing extremism that has taken control of the Republican Party and want to fight proudly and energetically against the bitter assault on Democrats and progressives that is now underway. But because of the deeply ambivalent way Obama and the 2012 election are framed in much of the progressive discussion, however, they find themselves unable to unite around an aggressive and positive approach.

But what is the alternative? How can progressives actively and passionately participate in the 2012 elections despite their various criticisms and disagreements with Obama?

The history of progressive social movements of the past suggests the answer: progressives themselves should aggressively re-frame what their participation in the 2012 election is actually about. Rather than accepting the definition of progressive participation in the 2012 election as representing unqualified support for Obama as a human symbol and embodiment of all progressive hopes, dreams and values, progressives should re-frame their participation as representing instead their support for something quite different -- for a broad "progressive agenda for change."

This is not a new departure for progressives but rather a return to the traditional progressive approach. It is, in fact, a rather unique historical accident that in the 2008 election progressives united behind a particular presidential candidate before they had united around a clear progressive agenda. This made Obama as an individual rather than a shared progressive agenda the center of the progressive message and organizing in that election campaign.

In previous eras of social change, in contrast, the progressive agenda and the movement to achieve it clearly and unambiguously came before any progressive commitment to any particular political campaign. The rise of the trade union movement preceded Franklin Roosevelt's first campaign, the civil rights movement preceded John Kennedy's 1960 election and the anti-war movement preceded the political campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. In each case progressives had united around a progressive agenda well before they united around a candidate and in every case it was the agenda that embodied the most deeply held progressive ideals and perspective rather than support for any particular Democratic politician.

Obama's recent State of the Union Speech now provides a way to recreate this more traditional -- and profoundly more healthy -- relationship between political candidates and the progressive agenda. Obama defined his State Of The Union speech as a "blueprint" for America but it is more accurately described as the "outline" or "framework" for a Democratic economic agenda. As such, it makes it possible for progressives to advocate and organize support for a broad progressive agenda in 2012 rather than simply for Obama as a symbol and icon.

Down 15 points to Santorum in Michigan in a PPP poll, Romney could ill afford to write an op-ed in the Detroit News blasting the federal rescue of Big Auto and calling himself a "son of Detroit." But that's exactly what he did. As former Governor Jennifer Granholm put it, "He opposed the rescue package for the automakers...Mitt Romney turned his back on Michigan. I would say he stabbed us in the back during our darkest hour and we're not going to forget."

Or, as The Economist puts it in its 'Democracy in America' blog: "ONE of Mitt Romney's problems is that he lays it on too thick. He's not just a conservative, he's a "severe conservative". He feels your pain because he too is "unemployed". And he understands America's car industry because he's a Tigers-cheering motorhead, a true "son of Detroit"...The candidate was born in Detroit, though he grew up in Bloomfield Hills, one of America's wealthiest cities. He probably cheered for the Tigers as a kid, but his position has since evolved. And cars may really be "in my bones", as he claims, but he advocated letting Detroit go bankrupt in 2008...Free-marketeers that we are, The Economist agreed with Mr Romney at the time. But we later apologised for that position..."

Santorum up 7 over Romney in a big, bad bellwhether Ohio. But Romney does better than Santorum with RV's in a head to head with Obama. Go figure.

In collaboration with Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and Mi Familia Vota, the League of United Latin American Citizens announces "strategies to increase the Latino voter registration and turnout; as well as the efforts to defend the rights of Latino voters across the country" and noting that "the Hispanic turnout is expected to be 26% greater than it was in 2008."

A new CNN/ORC International poll indicates enthusiasm among Republican voters is tanking --- a 13-percent decline since October, according to Catalina Camia's article "CNN poll: Republicans losing fire for election" in USA Today On Politics.

Paul Begala writes in The Daily Beast about Bruce Springsteen's new single "We Take Care of Our Own," in which "the Boss is at his blue-collar best," singing "We take care of our own/Wherever this flag's flown." Begala also has a plug for Jonathan Alterman's new book, "The Cause": Begala calls it "an important analysis of postwar American liberalism," featuring a chapter on Springsteen and his vision of America, "one in which working men and women were imbued with dignity, even heroism, where gays were embraced as brothers and sisters, where blacks and whites worked and played together, and where 'nobody wins unless everybody wins." Begala adds, "Something's happening here. From the Boss to Dirty Harry, our leading cultural indicators are foretelling a gritty, gutsy, all-American comeback. If the president is lucky, it will accelerate during Springsteen's upcoming concert tour, build through the Olympics, gain steam during the political conventions, and crescendo in November."

Nate Silver's "Why Obama Will Embrace the 99 Percent" in the New York Times Magazine makes an interesting case that Obama's new populist themes could serve him particularly well in key swing states, if he picks up 10 percentage points among white voters earning less than $50K: "All told, there are 101 electoral votes in swing states that Obama could either put into play or make more secure under the populist paradigm -- well more than the 36 he might lose among Virginia, Colorado and New Jersey...The reason for the imbalance is that most wealthy whites do not live in swing states but in enclaves that the sociologist Charles Murray calls SuperZIPs. Most of these are in states like New York, California, Maryland and Massachusetts that are very far from being competitive. "

At The American Prospect, John Sides argues in "Zombie Politics" that the only significant trend of white workers tilting to vote Republican is in the southern states.

Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily's List, sounds the charge at HuffPo: "EMILY's List -- an organization committed to recruiting, training and electing pro-choice, Democratic women -- is on track to raise more money to than in any previous election cycle. And we now have more than a million members. It took 26 years for us to reach half a million members, but thanks to the Republican Congress, we doubled our membership in just one year. If their policies weren't so dangerous, we would have sent them a thank you note...More women are running for the United States Senate than at any time in our nation's history...We're confident that come November 6, there will be a record number of women serving on both sides of the Capitol.

Lots of speculative buzz out there about possible third party candidates and what they might do to President Obama's hopes for re-election. Theo Anderson, for example, has a post up at In These Times, "Why Gary Johnson Should Terrify the Democrats," arguing that,

The conventional wisdom is that a challenge by a strong Libertarian candidate would hurt the Republican more than the Democrat. But that seems unlikely. Democrats are usually critiqued from the right and pulled toward the center. The pressure coming from the GOP is always in the direction of more defense spending, a more hawkish foreign policy and fewer civil liberties. But what if Democrats are seriously challenged from the left on social and foreign policy-by a self-styled conservative?

The danger for Democrats isn't that Johnson will win a significant percentage of the Left's vote. The danger is that he'll peel away a sizable share of the much-prized independent voters, who tend to be fiscal conservatives and social liberals, and who might feel, understandably, that Obama hasn't played it straight with them. He backed away from his early-career support for gay marriage rights, for example, and endorsed civil unions when he became president. His position is now reported to be "evolving." Does anyone know where it has evolved to, or when he might come to a definite conclusion? Or where he's at on immigration reform? Or on the drug war?

There's no uncertainty about where Gary Johnson stands on those issues. On every one of them, his position is both clear and deeply offensive to the GOP base, which is why he never had a chance of winning the Party's nomination and has very little chance of winning the presidency. But it's exactly why he appeals to independents.

Anderson's rationale seems a little tortured, especially in stark contrast to Johnson's limited charisma. Mr. Excitement he's not, which is one reason he tanked in December, while quasi-libertarian Ron Paul is still a nettlesome factor in the GOP field.

Moreover, Anderson makes the classic mistake of treating Independents as a real-world third force, which they are not, as Alan I. Abramowitz has made clear with hard-headed data analysis on many occasions. From Abramowitz's most recent post at Sabato's Crystal Ball:

...There's an organization that hopes to provide Americans with a centrist alternative to the two major party candidates in 2012. It's called Americans Elect and it has already raised over $20 million...The absence of a high profile candidate is far from the only major obstacle that Americans Elect faces. Attracting media coverage, raising the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to wage a national campaign and securing a place on the ballot in all 50 states are perennial problems faced by third party candidates.

Of course there will be third party candidates on the ballot in 2012, just as there are in every presidential election. But it is unlikely that any of these candidates will approach the 19% of the vote that Ross Perot received in 1992, or even the 8% that he received in 1996.

Third party candidates have not fared well in recent presidential elections: The total vote won by third party candidates has fallen from 20% in 1992 to 10% in 1996, 4% in 2000, 1% in 2004 and 2% in 2008.

There's an important reason why third party candidates have fared poorly in recent presidential elections and why third party candidates are likely to fare poorly again in 2012: partisan polarization. The vast majority of American voters today, in fact well over 90%, identify with or lean toward one of the two major parties. And the vast majority of those identifiers and leaners strongly prefer their own party's candidates and policies to those of the opposing party.

...Over time, the parties have been moving apart. But both Democrats and Republicans are now closer to their own party and farther from the opposition party than at any time in the past four decades. Democrats on average place the Democratic Party exactly where they place themselves while they place the Republican Party very far to the right of where they place themselves. And Republicans on average place the Republican Party exactly where they place themselves while they place the Democratic Party very far to the left of where they place themselves. As a result, very few supporters of either party are likely to be tempted to vote for a centrist third party.

As for "Independents," Abramowitz clarifies the 'threat':

There is one group of voters that might be tempted to vote for a centrist third party: pure independents. These voters, on average, place themselves right in the middle of the two major parties and rather far from either one. But pure independents typically make up less than 10% of the electorate, and they tend to be less interested in politics and less attentive to political campaigns than voters who identify with a political party. There are simply not enough of them and they are too hard to mobilize to have a major impact on the outcome of a presidential election.

None of this is to say that is it impossible for a third party candidate to do significant damage to the Democratic nominee, as many believe Ralph Nader did in 2000. But it is unlikely, especially with the existing possible third party candidates, none of whom appear to have the chops to bust the two-party paradigm.

Ronald Brownstein's "Obama Is Reassembling the Coalition That Swept Him to Victory" at The Atlantic delineates the breadth and depth of the Obama revival:

The Pew survey, closely tracking last week's ABC News/Washington Post poll, shows that in a potential general election match-up against Mitt Romney, Obama's support among many of the electorate's key groups has converged with his 2008 showing against John McCain. In almost all cases, that represents gains for Obama since polls from last year.

Whether the electorate is viewed by race, gender, partisanship or ideology (or combinations of the above), Obama's numbers against Romney now closely align with his support against McCain, according to the 2008 exit polls. Overall, the Pew survey put Obama ahead of Romney by 52 percent to 44 percent, close to his actual 53 percent to 46 percent victory over McCain.

On the broadest measure, Pew found Obama attracting 44 percent of whites (compared to 43 percent in 2008) and 79 percent of non-whites (compared to 80 percent in 2008). In the Pew survey, Obama attracted 49 percent of whites with at least a four year college degree (compared to 47 percent against McCain) and 41 percent of whites without one (compared to 40 percent in 2008).

Brownstein goes on to note an "almost exact" reversion to 2008 figures along ideological lines, with Obama doing the same with liberals, moderates, Republicans, Democrats and self-described Independents. In match-ups with Romney, Obama's support from white men without a college degree is down 5 points from his margin over McCain in 2008, but he has offsetting gains with white women of all educational levels. Brownstein reports that Romney is also tanking with Independents and tea party-followers, mostly because of his inconsistency on issues and his elitist image.

Brownstein concludes that "The deterioration of Romney's personal image, and Obama's improved standing among the groups at the core of his 2008 coalition" indicate that Romney will have tough time reconstructing a winning image --- if he gets the GOP nomination.

One of America's most treasured conceits is that our electorate votes on the basis issues and their interests, which they very often don't do in the real world. A host of other factors come into play, including judgements about character, family tradition, party loyalty and others.

I've often wondered about the role of "likeability," for lack of a better term, in candidate choice. I suspect that, who knows, maybe 5 percent of voters or more cast their ballots for a candidate because they like his/her personality. Sometimes this works to the benefit of Democrats, as possibly in 1960, when JFK got elected, or maybe '92 and 2008, when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, respectively, won.

I don't know of any definitive measures for quantifying "likeability" in a useful way, although there have been a some dicey attempts. In 2007, for example, a Quinnipiac University poll asked respondents about their "preferences for guests at Thanksgiving dinner" The results indicated more Republicans wanted to have Obama over for Thanksgiving dinner than Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, while Dems preferred Giuliani as a Republican guest over McCain and Thompson.

In that same year, an Associated Press/Yahoo survey quizzed the public about their choices for a bowling teammates. As for the most and least welcome bowling teammates, Hillary Clinton was last choice for 39 percent of respondents and first choice for 20 percent of respondents, while Giuliani was favored by 17 percent and opposed by 13 percent.

Neither one of these polls seems a very serious effort to quantify likeability for purposes of voting. Just because you want to have dinner or bowl with a candidate, it doesn't mean they have nailed your vote. But it does seem like there should be a way to measure the phenomenon. There have also been "who was more likeable?" questions in polls to assess debate performance, but not much correlation with voting choices.

The "favorability" ratings in many polls are useful. But a favorable opinion about a candidate can be based on issue positions and job performance, well as personality factors. It's not quite the same thing as 'likeability,' which is hard enough to define, much less quantify. Yet it could be a pivotal factor in a close election.

Obama seems to have likeability, which may be reflected in his substantially higher approval and favorability ratings than his party. He conveys a positive spirit and an appealing, relaxed demeanor, which I doubt can be convincingly quantified. Maybe that's why he was called "No Drama Obama" toward the end of the '08 campaign, while McCain was awash in tense theatrics. The wingnuts' shrill personal attacks against him notwithstanding, my hunch is that Obama's likeability will serve him well again in November.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.

For all those waiting for the Republican primary to end, you'll have to wait a bit longer: On Saturday Rick Santorum became the 11th Republican politician to lead a national presidential nomination poll during the 2012 cycle. And not just by a little--the Public Policy Polling survey showed Santorum with a 15-point (38-23) lead over Mitt Romney. According to PPP, Santorum was trouncing the field in the demographic categories that have looked difficult for putative nominee Mitt Romney from the beginning: Tea Party supporters, evangelicals, and those who call themselves "very conservative." So is this the long-awaited consolidation of the party base around a challenger who can beat Romney? Or just another bump in a predestined road to victory for Mitt?

To answer this question, let's start with the things Santorum has going for him. If his surge in national polls can be attributed to any one factor, it's the familiar murder-suicide scenario: The Romney-Gingrich cage match of Super-PAC-driven negative ads in South Carolina, Florida, and Nevada left Santorum as the only candidate with strongly positive personal ratings. PPP's favorable/unfavorable ratios for the four remaining candidates certainly reinforce this interpretation, showing Romney at 44/43, Gingrich at 42/44, Ron Paul at 35/51--and Santorum at 62/24. With Santorum now dominating the very voter categories Gingrich was winning prior to Florida; with no life-giving televised candidate debates on the immediate horizon; and with Sheldon Adelson showing no signs of writing another gigantic check for his Super PAC, Newt may have run out of steam for the third and final time.

But what's to keep the Romney Death Star from training its guns on Santorum just as it did on Newt (and before that, on Rick Perry)? That's easy: The very conservative opinion-leaders who helped Mitt take down Newt--and whose support he ultimately needs--don't want him to. Already the air is full of public and private pleas to Romney that he go easy on Rick, who unlike Gingrich has not spent several decades alienating powerful conservative leaders one at a time, and doesn't have the glaring marital history and Freddie Mac baggage for opponents to exploit. And any temptation in Romney's camp to go after Santorum with a clawhammer is also inhibited by Mitt's own sinking favorability ratings among both primary and general-election voters. He can't afford much more blowback from going nuclear on an opponent.

Amidst all this bad news for Romney, another PPP survey released on Monday showed Santorum's new national lead spreading to Michigan, a February 28 primary state where Romney, as a local native, was assumed to have a big advantage. Rickymania may also have spread to the other state holding a primary that day, Arizona, where Romney was also thought to be in the driver's seat (in this case because of AZ's sizable Mormon population).

In the end though, Mitt's money may come to the rescue. Even if he doesn't go heavily negative, Romney can use his heavy money advantage to saturate the airwaves in these two states; Santorum can't possibly match that unless his top Super-PAC donor, Foster Friess, drops an unimaginable amount of money on him. And if Romney does stage a February 28 comeback, the road gets much rockier for Santorum. Gingrich is likely to make a final stand on Super Tuesday in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and certainly Georgia, which will make a conservative consolidation for Santorum difficult. Rick won't win Mitt's own Massachusetts and isn't even on the ballot in Virginia. His best shot then would rest on a breakthrough in Ohio--but that's only possible if the money is there.

Perhaps the Pennsylvanian can navigate this series of landmines and slug it out with Mitt until the bitter end. But the qualities that made uber-conservative voters prefer almost everybody else at one point or another have not gone away. He's still the guy who got waxed by 19 points in his 2006 Senate race; he's still the social-issues zealot whose presence on the ticket would mobilize pro-choice and gay-rights activists more than anyone this side of Pat Buchanan; and he's still the one-time would-be Beltway power broker whose intimate connection to ongoing scandals like the K Street Project has barely been mined. Even if Romney can't go nuclear on him, Democrats can--to the point where the supposedly dominant economic issues of this general election could become secondary for many swing voters. That prospect should put plenty of doubt in the minds of Republican primary voters if Santorum ever appears to have a real shot at winning the nomination.

The best indication that the Santorum surge could turn out to be fleeting came on the same day as his startling national survey results, when the annual presidential straw poll at the American Conservative Union's CPAC conference was won by none other than Mitt Romney. Even as the CPAC audience cheered Santorum's culture-war zingers, the secret-ballot went to Mitt. Conservatives may talk like they want another Barry Goldwater, but in their hearts, they'd settle for another Richard Nixon.

In her WaPo op-ed "A make-or-break moment for democracy," Katrina vanden Heuval takes a clear-eyed look at President Obama's approval of Super PAC spending for his re-election, and comes up with a compromise most progressives should be able to endorse. As vanden Heuval explains the dilemma facing Democrats:

President Obama's decision to endorse super-PAC money as part of his reelection effort exposed the enduring divisions within the progressive community between pragmatism and idealism. Robert Reich, for example, put his disappointment bluntly: "Good ends don't justify corrupt means." Jonathan Chait disagreed, writing that "if you want to change the system, unilateral disarmament seems like a pretty bad way to go about it."

The ambivalence is palpable -- and understandable. I've felt it myself. On the one hand, we are seeing our worst fears realized. When the Supreme Court handed down its Citizens United decision, the concern was not just that one party would take advantage of it, but that both parties would decide they had to adapt to it. The president has never held high moral ground on campaign finance (he withdrew from public financing in the 2008 campaign) but his willful, if reluctant, decision to submerge himself further in a system that actively stains our democracy is troubling.

Troubling yes, but unavoidable as a practical matter, vanden Heuval believes:

And yet, I understand his decision. I even reluctantly agree with it. I remember how massively George W. Bush outspent Al Gore in 2000, both during the campaign and the recount. I remember the price that John Kerry paid for staying within the campaign finance system in 2004, leaving him exposed to the Swift Boat attacks in August as he tried to stretch his public allotment over three months instead of just two.

There are times when you cannot win with one hand tied behind your back, when you cannot fight fire only with a philosophical opposition to fire. This is surely one of those times...

And the available remedies are limited:

...The Roberts' court's warped decree leaves us only two long-term exit routes from this growing disaster: pass a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United or shift the balance of the Supreme Court. The first will be difficult under any circumstance; the second will be impossible if Obama isn't reelected.

After all, Obama's loss will likely mean Mitt "Corporations are people" Romney will ascend to the Oval Office. Romney doesn't believe in campaign finance laws of any kind, really; he has defended the Citizens United decision and supports unlimited contributions to candidates themselves. His Supreme Court picks would, at best, solidify the anti-reform regime on the court. At worst, they would tilt it further to the right, enshrining for generations the notion of the sale of democracy to the highest bidder....

"Should the Obama campaign really sit passively and allow Karl Rove to distort our election results again?," asks vanden Heuval. The only sane answer is "no." But she also urges corrective action from the President and progressives:

...If he is going to endorse the use of super PACs, then he should endorse, as a central plank of his campaign, the fight to end them forever...The president seems to understand this. It was heartening, for example, to see him come out in favor of a constitutional amendment to reverse the damage.

"President Obama has identified this election as a "make-or-break moment for the middle class," notes vanden Heuval. "It surely is. But it is also a make-or-break moment for our democracy....It's up to us now to push him...Pragmatism, after all, yields only temporary solutions; our long-term course must be guided by larger ideals."

According to Brian Beutler's Talking Points Memo post "Dems Plot Payroll Tax Cut End Game," Dems will amend the GOP proposal to include extended unemployment insurance and Medicare physician reimbursements. Expect tricky parliamentary chess moves ahead.

In a video released by the White House this morning, President Obama is urging supporters to pressure Congress to extend the payroll tax cut before it expires. Noting that wage earners will have to shell out $40 more per paycheck if the tax cut lapses after February, Obama called on supporters to post at Twitter and Facebook, explaining what they could do with $40 more per paycheck.

Rick Santorum is the only Republican presidential candidate who has ever won a swing state, as he recently bragged. But he is also the only one who lost one by 18 points, and it seems like a good time for Dems to better understand why. Julie Hirschfeld Davis has the skinny at Bloomberg Businessweek. It had to do with a little too much emphasis on "cultural issues" and alienating women, as well as Santorum "moving his family to suburban Virginia, yet still claiming a property tax deduction and tuition reimbursement in Pennsylvania."

At The Daily Green Jim Dipeso, policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection, has a post, "Swing Voters Want Renewable Energy." Apparently there are a few Republican environmentalists, who are not just industry puppets providing cover. Dipeso cites a State of the Rockies Project poll of voters in six states indicating agreement that "renewable energy would create jobs in their states" and 80 percent believed "it's possible to have both a strong economy and to protect land and water." Dipeso also discusses an encouraging Third Way focus group of mid-western and southern swing voters who support moderate government regulation to protect the environment.

Speaking of swing voters, Ryan Lizza's "Obama's Swing Voters" in The New Yorker flags five interesting links. which are "far more informative than much of the horse-race analysis..."

Despite polls indicating most Catholics are not opposed to government funding for birth control, the Republicans continue to parrot the meme that President Obama is somehow dissing their faith. They are also trying to generalize it more broadly with repetition of terms like "Obama's war on religion." Unfortunately, memes don't have to be true to be effective. "Since winning 54 percent of the Catholic vote in 2008, the president's approval rating among Catholics had fallen to 39 percent in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll. And Republicans are eagerly trying to drive that wedge between Obama and Catholics even deeper," reports Hayley Peterson in the Washington Examiner. it appears that the Obama campaign might benefit from more creative outreach to Catholics and other religious groups.

Craig Gilbert reports in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the impact of the Catholic vote in key battleground states. Gilbert notes that "New Hampshire (38%) and New Mexico (36%) had a higher percentage of Catholic voters than Wisconsin (33%) in 2008, according to exit polls." Other battlegound states in which Catholics were a quarter or more of the electorate include PA, FL, MI, IA and CO.

Good to see that the Obama campaign is alert to the importance of the high-turnout senior vote, as evidenced by this excellent YouTube clip, which should be sent to all your senior relatives and friends. Actually there are quite a few YouTube video clips about Obama and seniors here.

Douglas Schoen warns at The Daily Beast that it's "Not Too Late for Americans Elect to Win 2012 Presidential Election," noting that "A recently completed Americans Elect survey found that and voters favor, 58 percent to 13 percent, having an alternative presidential ticket that is independent of the Democratic and Republican parties on the ballot in 2012." Schoen also cites a Washington Post/ABC News poll in November showing even stronger support for an Independent ticket.