alternative hippopotamus

Hair Boy:

We are beginning to see signs that Mitt Romney might be preparing to pull out of the Republican race.

Everyone is looking for tea leaves from the campaign, and we’ll know more about the governor’s state of mind when we hear from him at CPAC today. But in the last 24 hours, I have noticed a dramatic drop-off in the number of emails I have received from Team Romney. This is no small thing. Every reporter will tell you they receive reams of emails from the Romney campaign. But the last one I got was at 1:47 p.m. yesterday, advising me of Romney’s campaign schedule in Maryland. Before that, I last received on at 8:37 a.m., advising me of Romney’s CPAC speech.

As I often tell people, the reason it’s important to read NRO, aka the Village of the Damned, aka Monkeys Flinging Poo, is not because they’re superb conservative writers. It’s because they’re a direct line to the Bushies. And, to the next generation of Republicans in power.

Update: Mitt quits. Josh Nelson has the best line thus far:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

Funny, I thought he dropped out because he wasn’t gaining any traction and was squandering his bank account.

Rick Perlstein points out that the failure to over-ride the S-CHIP veto is both a vote against our children and our military:

The consequences of the conservative strategy of obstructing every piece of popular legislation that would improve the lot of ordinary Americans spread like kudzu. The Military Times points to one that escaped most of our notice. Did you know that the House attached to its reauthorization and expansion of SCHIP an amendment to “expand family leave rights for people caring for wounded service members”? That it “was endorsed by a bipartisan presidential commission”?

Here’s how it works:

Under the approved legislation, which lawmakers are calling the Support for Injured Servicemembers Act, spouses, parents, children or next of kin of service members who suffered serious injury or illness while on active duty could get up to six months of unpaid leave, in addition to vacation, personal or sick leave, to help with the care of the injured service member. Employers could require certification of how the time off was used.

Current law provides only 12 weeks of unpaid leave and does not extend the time off to parents, siblings or other relatives who could end up being the closest living kin of a severely wounded service member.

While I type this the gang at NRO are high-fiving themselves. K-Lo has just put up this quote from Roger Hickey. It’s safe to assume that it’s been using derisively (the K-Lobster labels it “Also for the Starkly Outrageous File”):

One hundred and fifty-six House Members declared themselves enemies of children and families with this vote. Ignoring the will of the people, a conservative minority in the House sustained the president’s veto and denied nearly 5 million children access to health insurance. Upholding the president’s veto is only the latest obstruction to progress by Washington conservatives.

An overwhelming majority of Americans support populist reforms, but conservatives have repeatedly used filibusters and vetoes to block this progress and then they hypocritically blame others for a lack of congressional action. The record is clear. Congressional conservatives and the president are the culprits who have stood in the way of a new progressive direction for our nation. Our children will pay a steep price for their cruel politics.

Ross Douthat has an amusing post up on TPM Cafe. My favorite line in bold:

In 1980, the face of tax cuts was Ronald Reagan, whose devotion to smaller government no one would question, but who was flexible enough to raise taxes in certain circumstances, and to tell the American public that his goal was not “to do away with government, but “to make it work—work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back.” Today the face of tax cuts is Grover Norquist, a Beltway performance artist who brags about drowning government in a bathtub. What began as a majority-making insight - that the rich are the engine of American economic growth, and that overtaxing them both diminishes their economic liberty and diminishes everyone else’s prosperity - has curdled into the minority-making zealotry on display in this Norquist quote […]

Too funny!

Thing is, I think it’s either naieve or disingenuous for Douthat to take the notion of Republicans wanting “smaller government” at face value. They certainly don’t want a smaller Congress or Supreme Court, or military, or FBI, or NSA, or FAA. What they want is a reversal and removal of any programs associated with FDR, Johnson, or Kennedy. And Nixon, at least the EPA. They’re pretty sure that Carter never did anything to begin with, and for all I know they’re right. Clinton was sufficiently big business that no real harm was done.

More concisely “smaller government” is a euphemism for an end to:

• liberalism
• the middle and lower classes

On anything else they’re willing to negotiate.

I’m very much enjoying Jonathan Chait’s excerpt of The Big Con in the New Republic. It gives you a feel for what carnival hucksters the supply-side economists are, but does it in a way that’s not heavy handed.

I wanted to point out a quote that’s not to the central point of the piece, but one that bears mentioning:

A generation ago, Republican economics was relentlessly sober. Republicans concerned themselves with such ills as deficits, inflation, and excessive spending. They did not care very much about cutting taxes, and (as in the case of such GOP presidents as Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford) they were quite willing to raise taxes in order to balance the budget. While many of them were wealthy and close to business, the leaders of business themselves had a strong sense of social responsibility that transcended their class interests. By temperament, such men were cautious rather than utopian.

I’d like to offer a small correction based on my understanding of that generation of Republicans. Well, my observation of one of them, my grandfather, but one I see repeated in biographies of business and political figures of the early to mid 20th century. Within many spheres such men tended to be cautious. But within the area of which they made the bulk of their fortunes, they were very much utopian. From knowing how my grandfather was about things, I would say that it wasn’t money that drove him primarily. It was the idea of bringing his vision of Washington into fruition that was the primary motive. Money was a way of keeping track.

When Chait says that they “had a strong sense of social responsibility that transcended their class interests,” I strongly agree. It was the notion that unto whom much is given, much shall be required that formed their view of responsibility towards society. A better world through commerce and industry, would be more or less the common denominator of this generation.

Alas, this breed of Republicanism is as dead as the dodo bird.