Todays big Roy Blunt news:

Sen. Roy Blunt, a key Republican political insider, will head Mitt Romney’s effort to secure congressional support for the former Massachusetts governor’s presidential bid, the latest move by the GOP establishment to close ranks for 2012.

According to both Romney and Blunt, this political marriage is based on their mutual concern for “job creation.”  Or is it their mutual concern for “job creators,” as in big corporate campaign contributors?

Then there’s this observation:

A longstanding conservative as well as an establishment figure, Blunt could help polish Romney’s image among both conservatives and Washington insiders.

I think that this means that the Romney camp recognizes that Blunt has managed the essential balancing act between serving GOP corporatist goals and numbly spouting Tea Party bromides. So far, Romney’s efforts to straddle that line looks looks like nothing other than the crassest sort of flip-floppery. My own personal theory about this distinction is that Blunt’s demeanor is so wooden and his delivery so rote that it is taken as unstudied by the literally unstudied Tea Partiers, whereas the glib and relatively animated Romney only excites distrust from the less-polished denizens of Tea Party Land.

It also helps that Blunt never really bothers to explain or justify his past actions; he just grunts and stays on the GOP point du jour. Maybe he can teach Romney to shut up about Romneycare, the forerunner of “Obamacare,” and help him jettison his efforts to justify his abysmal job creation record in Massachusetts. Blunt’s rule is don’t explain, just attack, no matter how crude your weapon, and, so far, it has the  advantage that, as a way to divert attention from his past record, it’s worked.

Blunt and Romney also have one other singular commonality:  They resemble ventriloquist’s dummies popular in the middle of the last century, respectively Howdy Doody and Charlie McCarthy.* This fits well with still yet another narrative attendant upon the announcement of Blunt’s role in the Romney campaign, which is that Romney’s rival, Rick Perry, scares the party establishment silly:

There has been talk in Republican circles that Perry might be too dangerous to run in 2012 because he demonstrates little appeal to independents. Some in the GOP point to 1972, when liberal Sen. George McGovern won the Democratic nomination for president and lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide with long-lasting political consequences.

I can easily imagine that predictable corporate puppets are preferable to the GOP movers-and-shakers – though not necessarily to the GOP base – than the perpetually foot-in-mouth loose-cannon, Rick Perry.

*Sentence edited for clarity.  

No matter what you might think about Claire McCaskill’s policy decisions, you can’t say that she doesn’t make a real effort to learn what her constituents are thinking – Tea Party, independent or progressive. She tours the state and she or her staff take on all comers. Her town hall meetings in the summer of the Tea Party were models of even-handedness. The same was true of almost all Democrats – they boldly went among the raucous and enraged and tried to talk reason – sometimes gently, and sometimes, as in the case of Barney Frank, by showing a little tough love – but few of them ran away from their obligation to their constituents.

However, now that the GOPers who were victorious in 2010 are showing their real colors, threatening to decimate Social Security and Medicare while trying their best to drive our country off an economic precipice in order to preserve tax breaks for the wealthy, what do we see? Folks are not only getting angry, they are more than willing to tell their representatives about it (see for instance this Paul Ryan town hall meeting). The resultant angry constituent meetings have provided a rude awakening for some of the worst offenders. But instead of listening to what people want and ameliorating their offensive policies, many of the GOP congresspersons are busy trying to figure out how to mute the voice of the very people they are supposed to be representing. They want to the minimize the embarrassment their bad policy decisions have caused them.

Take, for example, Colorado’s GOP Rep. Lamborn who has prohibited protesters from congregating outside his office – unless they are supporters. And then there are the cagy GOPers like Paul Ryan (R-Wis), Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) and Chip Cravaack (R-Minn) who have decided to charge admission to their ersatz “town halls” in order to discourage the shows of dissenting opinion (and outright anger) that have bedeviled them recently and might make it into even more embarrassing Youtube videos.

Bear in mind that these folks, none of whom seem to be to aware of the implications of accepting employment as a representative of the people, any more than they understand the implications of the first amendment, are all beneficiaries of the Tea Party. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the Tea Party is made up of folks who  have spent the better part of the last two years spouting off about what the Constitution does and does not mandate. Funny how few of the fringers seem to worry too much about the Constitution when you get down to inconvenient particulars.

Of course, this type of one-sided representation is nothing new for those of us here in Missouri who live in Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-2) district. Brother Todd’s been stage managing his appearances for the benefit of the faithful for the past few years. Given Akin’s extreme positions, his skill with easy to manage video and telephone “town halls” and invitation only events should stand him in good stead during his run for the Senate.

* Slightly edited for clarity.

Seems like Standard & Poors has amplified what it meant by the “political dysfunction” that led it to downgrade the U.S. bond rating from AAA to AA status. From the beginning S&P was pretty specific that much of the problem was the GOP speech impediment that prohibits the use of the words “revenue” or “taxes.” Today, a S&P spokesperson added:

[P]eople in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” said Joydeep Mukherji, senior directior at S&P. “That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.

In other words, all that blather about how default would be no big thing spooked the ratings agency – which, in turn, seems to have spooked the stock market. With this in mind, I ask you to stroll down memory lane and take a look at what some of Missouri’s GOP political leaders were saying at the height of the furor.

Todd Akin (R-2) wagged his metaphorical finger in our faces and declared that default “would shock us as a nation into saying that we really have to deal with this problem,” and “experience what it is like to live within our means.”  I guess we now know that it wouldn’t have been that spiffy after all, but at least Akin got part of his wish. He and his buddies did manage to inflict some wounds on our financial well-being.

Billy Long, that profound financial prognosticator, dismissed the whole issue of default as so much ado about nothing:

Let the date come and go, … That’s going to be on the president,” Long said. “There is money there. He can pay what he wants to pay, and if he doesn’t pay, that’s his bluff.

Based on this tweet, which Michael Bersin has dissected here at SMP, one has to believe that Vicky Hartzler just didn’t read S&P’s statement about why they downgraded the our bond rating or that she missed the good parts:

S&P’s decision to downgrade our credit rating is no surprise: the debt ceiling package wasn’t big enough–one reason I voted ‘no’.

Now what I want to know is who among these folks will conveniently forget what he or she said about default and/or the causes of the S&P downgrade, and who will keep on pretending that S&P has validated the GOP narrative à la Vicky Hartzler?

ADDENDUM:  In regard to the those who welcomed default (via Steve Benen):

A senior administration official said those who simply choose not to believe any of the warnings, “These are the kinds of people who get eaten by bears.

Eaten by bears? We should be so lucky. Here in Missouri we send them to Washington D.C. to make laws.

In response to the GOP-led madness in Washington D.C., Steve Benen asks an interesting question:

… where are the “sane Republicans” willing to “stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst”? Where are Bob Dole and John Warner? Why can’t John Danforth and Colin Powell express their disapproval for what their party is doing? Maybe some of Reagan’s old guard, like Ken Duberstein, could speak up? […]

We’re not talking about GOP officials taking a hard line on some random piece of legislation, or nominating some radical for a key public office. We’re talking about congressional Republicans who’ve decided to play a game of chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States – something no American institution has ever done in more than two centuries – and who are fully prepared to trash the constitutional principle next week as part of a hostage strategy gone horribly awry?

Made me think about the silence of Missouri’s “respectable” GOP establishment in regard to the Tea Party debt ceiling shenanigans. (N.B. “Respectable” as I use it here means there is some sense that the person is at least minimally rational and occasionally sincere. Consequently the Tea Party representatives are excluded.)

Let’s start with Danforth since Benen called him out by name. If you will remember, this is the elder GOP statesman who felt impelled to hold his nose and endorse Tea Party trickster Ed Martin in the last congressional election – so I guess there’s  probably no point looking for integrity from this particular quarter.

Compared to wheeler-dealers like Martin, his opponent in the 2nd district congressional race, Ann Wagner, seems to have some slight sheen of respectability left. But notice how she has rushed to grovel before one of the main instigators of the madness, Grover Norquist?

Don’t even bother to bring up the recently retired Kit Bond.  Not only was he in high pander mode before he retired, most of his pronouncements were so sclerotic that it was hard to take them seriously even when one sensed he was trying to do the right thing. He actually proposed using the debt ceiling to secure budget cuts last April. Hope he likes the mess he’s helped to create.

Roy Blunt? The guy’s sane – and he’s on the record for raising the debt ceiling. He’s also on record for not raising it unless we get insane cuts at a time when the economy is at risk from just such a retraction of federal spending.  So far, when Roy walks a thin line, he’s far more apt to stumble down on the side of a Tea Party pander than common sense. The only hope Blunt offers is that he’s so in hock to his pet “job creators” that he’ll do their bidding in financial matters when push comes to shove.

Who else in Missouri can speak for the traditional GOP establishment? Anyone? What are the odds that any of them have more backbone than the quartet above? Surely there are some Missouri GOPers who put the welfare of the country above the welfare of the party, who will be willing to stand up to the brain-dead morons that the Tea Party sent to Washington?

*Fourth paragraph slightly edited for clarity.

So far Missouri House members Todd Akin (R-2) and Billy Long (R-7) have gone on record with statements to the effect that allowing the United States to default on its obligations would be just jim dandy, wouldn’t do any damage at all, no sir! Of course, this is absolutely, demonstrably not the case.

So why do we care what these insane idiots think? We care because right now, by virtue of their position as part of a GOP majority in the House, they are ready to help their radical GOP colleagues trash the economy and make all our lives much harsher.

Steve Benen describes the current options when it comes to the debt ceiling impasse:

The House could (a) simply refuse to do their duty and cause a disaster on purpose; (b) learn to live with a compromise that raises revenues; or (c) grudgingly accept the McConnell/Reid plan.

As Bennen further points out, (a) is unacceptable and (b), given the current GOP insanity, is likely to be impossible, which leaves the third option, (c), as our only way out of this nasty imbroglio.

And dopes like Akin and Long  are poised to play an important role in determining what happens. According to the WaPo‘s Greg Sargent:

Late yesterday GOP Rep. Joe Walsh, who is backed by the Tea Party, began circulating a letter among GOP colleagues that urges GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor to publicly oppose the McConnell plan and even to oppose it coming to the floor for a vote.

A Senate Republican aide tells me that GOP aides will be closely watching the number of signatures it amasses in order to gauge whether the McConnell proposal can get through the House.

If more than 100 House members sign Walsh’s letter, goodbye McConnell/Reid compromise; if it gets no more than 50 signatures, then we may have a winner that can save the credibility of the United States and avoid catastrophe (or as the President puts it, Armageddon).

I don’t know about you, but I’m emailing and phoning Todd Akin, who, sadly, happens to be my congressional representative, in order to let him know that when things go crash, we’ll know just who to hold responsible and there are lots of voices willing to make that case as publicly as possible for as long as possible. I know it’s not likely, given Akin’s proclivities, but just maybe he’ll think twice before signing on to Walsh’s idiocy.  

In the best day-late-and-a-dollar short style that I seem to be cultivating lately, I began today to make a list of what we all now know about Rep. Brian Nieves (R-26) in the wake of his recent efforts to browbeat and then malign constituents who had the temerity to approach their state congressperson with their concerns. It doesn’t make for a pretty picture and it raises some serious concerns about what it takes to get elected to statewide office.

I’m not talking about the obvious conclusion which Sarah Jo aptly summarized in the title of her recent post on the topic, “Brian Nieves is a ticking bomb.” I myself played around with the idea that Nieves was possibly on the verge of a meltdown after the incident in which he went gunning for Shawn Bell. His lack of equilibrium in that incident netted him one of TPM’s Golden Duke award nominations for best local scandal of 2010. In case you’re not familiar with these awards, they are handed out annually to the “best purveyors of public corruption, outlandish behavior and The Crazy.” So far as I know, Nieves is not especially corrupt.

No, the character traits that Mr. Nieves has most recently revealed are different, perhaps corollary to his generally over-heated disposition, but certainly equally damming in an individual who is supposed to act as a representative of the people:

1. Nieves is, by his own admission,  intellectually incapable of rational argument. He implies that when he abused the elderly constituents who visited his office, he was justified because they are the type of folks who try to “bait” him into a situation where “there’s no way to win the argument.” In other words, if someone makes a point he isn’t capable of refuting, Nieves throws a tantrum. Of course, bolstering the inference that Nieves is a bit too dim to be an effective pol, there’s also the fact that he actually admitted this intellectual failing on video – you can see his musings on the topic here. Sadly, he doesn’t even seem to realize how damming his words are.  

2. Nieves plays fast and loose with the truth. As this video shows, he explicitly tried to coax the co-host of his radio show into falsifying facts. As Adam of St. Louis Activist Hub describes it:

Prior to yesterday’s show, Nieves can be seen coaching Moore to claim that three letters about him acting like a schoolyard bully were from “liberal blogs.” In fact, each of the three letters about Nieves’ bullying was printed in the Missourian, the newspaper for Washington, Missouri. Nieves tells his co-host that, “from a strategy standpoint,” he doesn’t want people to know about the letters in the Missourian and that “there are a lot of old ladies” who “want him to be nice all the time.”

3. Nieves may find elderly men terrifying (see 4 below), but he clearly holds elderly female constituents in contempt, all but labeling them weak-kneed old fools whose persnicketiness would keep a manly man from blowing his top from time to time in the way manly men do. His solution? What the old biddies don’t know, won’t hurt them – or, in this case presumably, Nieves. Proof? See above.

4. Nieves is a coward. Who but a coward would use his family to avoid taking responsibility for his boorish behavior? He also seems to be terrified of an elderly man whose only crime is that he expressed his displeasure at the ugly treatment he received from his state representative.  

5. Nieves just doesn’t know when to stop digging (see also here) – which is, I suppose, just more evidence that the first point about his intellectual capacity was well-made.

Surely, these character flaws can’t come as a total surprise to folks in his district who, presumably, know something about Mr. Nieves. Since he is generally acknowledged to be a Tea Party boy, one has to assume that his personality, bizarre though it may be, strikes a sympathetic note with that particular group.

There certainly seems to be an equivalence between what recent events suggest about Nieves  and what one can infer about the Tea Party based on its rhetoric. Over-inflated bombast? Check. A sense of perpetual grievance at a world that refuses to recognize his/their superiority? Check. Swagger and threat as the preferred means to prevail over others? Check. A very vague understanding of the grandiose abstractions that he/they throw around so liberally? Check. Impatience with demonstrable but inconveneint facts? Check. A possible impediment to the peaceful solution to our real problems? Check and double check.  

PoliticMo reports on Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-2) defensive remarks at Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Joplin about his support for the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare. Akin’s misdirected melodrama and grandiose rhetoric seems to have offered, as usual, fine examples of the comic theater we have come to expect from him:

This thing is really two visions of what America should be. Do we really want to become a sniveling entitlement state, or do we want freedom? That’s the choice that’s before the voters.

Whooee! Who doesn’t want freedom – especially when the alternative is sniveling. Of course, since freedom in this case just means that I’m free to live out my old age without adequate medical care, maybe I’ll be willing to put in an little time sniveling. Especially when I consider the rest of Akin’s whining about the Democratic response to the GOP’s war on Medicare:

“[I]t’s a tactical decision on their part [i.e. Democrats], to ignore the economic problems that we have and then as soon as Republicans try to solve the problem, then they beat us up saying, ‘Oh, you’re going to take old people’s social security,’ ‘Oh, you’re going to take their medicare away,'” Akin said. “What we specifically said in the Ryan budget was that anybody that is 55 or older, we’re not changing it. We’re trying to leave that the way it is, but then as you go down, we have to deal with the runaway entitlements.

“We’re trying to bottom-line them to make them more free enterprise so that it will control the cost growth on them,” he said.

Talk about Chutzpah! Republicans are trying to solve our economic problems? By proposing spending cuts that threaten massive numbers of jobs during a fragile, jobs-challenged economic recovery? By lowering taxes for the obscenely wealthy and paying for these tax cuts by cutting programs that benefit the elderly middle and working class? Explain to me, please, how any of this will help the economy – without making me laugh.

And while you’re explaining that, tell me why GOPers like Akin assume that all they have to do to make the case for a proposed policy is point out that it won’t affect anyone right away (i.e., in the case of Medicare, anyone over 55). If it’s a good thing to do, shouldn’t it be a good thing now? Conversely, if we are asking folks in the future to endure something bad, shouldn’t those older than 55 right now have to make the same sacrifice? If it’s not good enough for me, why would it be good enough for my children and grandchildren? Don’t try telling me that by phasing it in, we will change expectations and, consequently behavior – particularly, if you plan on cutting benefits without actually doing anything to address the underlying issue of spiraling health care costs.

Of course, Akin isn’t too clear on the problems with that free-enterprise thing when it comes to issues of the public good – like health care for the aged, who, if left to free-market mercies, would likely, as a high-risk population, be priced out of the market. Nor has he been paying attention to the drivers of rising health care costs over the past couple of decades – can anyone say private insurance –  you know, that free enterprise thing – run amok?

As DKos‘ David Nir observes, “when you have to start explaining yourself in full-length paragraphs (as Akin tries to do), you’re on the defensive and flailing.” Nevertheless, it’s fun to see the awkward maneuvers Akin and his GOP cohorts try to execute when called upon explain why they voted to destroy Medicare – especially after campaigning on a promise to fight off some imaginary Democratic assault on the program.                

Duane Graham of the Erstwhile Conservative has a treat for fans of low-comedy – his must-read account of the annual Tea Party rally in Joplin yesterday. A choice nugget:

But the sparse crowd-maybe 150 folks-was nevertheless thrown lots of blood-red meat from the speakers, which besides the usual locals, included would-be senator Rep. Todd Akin, who has never met a Democrat who wasn’t also a socialist …

Tea Partiers are beginning to get a rep, I think, whether fairly or unfairly, that has something in common with that of rabid dogs. No wonder so many past attendees found something else to do yesterday. Somebody ought to warn Akin, though, just in case he’s really serious about running for Senate, that it’s still not really safe to abandon that bland front he puts up in order to cajole the more respectable Republicans into voting for him.

Graham really lets go and delivers a laugh riot when he gets to his real target – Billy Long.  Not that Graham needs to do much.  Long seems to be his own worst enemy. For instance, consider Long’s initial response to Graham’s question about why he voted to dismantle Medicare: “We have to do something.”  Perhaps, but if Long feels so impelled to senseless action, couldn’t he confine himself to his House floor rendition of the love call of a back-country auctioneer – which Graham says he replicated in Joplin as part of his good ol’ boy, “just-one-of-the-folks” schtick.

The best part, though, was when, according to Graham, the stunningly oblivious Long pointed out the Bozo figure on his truck’s dashboard, indicating that he uses it to remind himself that he truly is just one of the folks – who, by extension, he seems to consider bozos. Of course, he may just be referring to that cross-section of “we the people” who sent him to Washington.

Rallies in support of Wisconsin’s struggle to preserve the unions’ collective bargaining rights will take place this week in a number of other states. So far as I know, there are no rallies planned in Missouri, although, make no mistake, unions are also under attack here – in spite of the fact that only about 10% of the state’s workforce is unionized. That fact has not stopped GOP pols from  filing numerous anti-worker bills meant to render unions toothless and to chip away at hard-won union gains that benefit all Missouri workers. They are even, God forgive them, trying to roll back child labor laws. If Wisconsin’s Governor Walker prevails, you can bet efforts to dismantle unions in Missouri will intensify accordingly.

We all know that anti-union bias is part of the GOP’s DNA and their union busting activities go way back. Inciting violence to discredit unions has been a part of those efforts since the Hay-Market riots in 1886. Which is why it comes as no surprise that some members of the right flank of the GOP, a.k.a. the Tea Party, are planning to infiltrate pro-union rallies in order to discredit the hitherto civil protest. Here’s the former Tea Party Express chairman, Mark Williams (a charming gentleman who was forced to resign in the wake of some well-publicized racist comments):

… Here is what I am doing in Sacramento, where they are holding a 5:30 PM event this coming Tuesday: (1) I signed up as an organizer (2) with any luck they will contact me and I will have an “in” (3) in or not I will be there and am asking as many other people as can get there to come with, all of us in SEIU shirts (those who don’t have them we can possibly buy some from vendors likely to be there) (4) we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us. […]

Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.

So what is responsible for this anti-union venom? What could lead people to debase themselves in this fashion? There can be no doubt that the redoubled anti-union hysteria on the far right is a function of growing corporate control. It offers one more example of the way that the right wing has managed to conflate corporate welfare with Pavlovian trigger words like “economic freedom,” while stripping them of any relation to the economic security of ordinary citizen.  

Although, in the best shock-doctrine fashion, Walker talks up his state’s fiscal crisis to cover his attack on unions, he has been unable to hide his real agenda. Paul Krugman gets the whole dynamic just right in his column today in the New York Times:

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years – which it has – that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

The link between corporate America’s muscle flexing and Walker’s push to emasculate unions is underlined by the list of his main supporters that has been provided by Think Progress:

So far, Walker has refused to compromise, even though Wisconsin labor leaders are already coming to the table with large concessions. How can Walker press on, even with public opinion beginning to turn against him? Much of Walker’s critical political support can be credited to a network of right-wing fronts and astroturf groups in Wisconsin supported largely by a single foundation in Milwaukee: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a $460 million conservative honey pot dedicated to crushing the labor movement.

What this means, of course, is that Wisconsin is the front line of a major struggle for the future of this country. You better believe, as Wisconsin goes, so goes the rest of the nation – including Missouri – and the corporate interests know it. Given the stakes, what’s a few dirty tricks to a confused and corrupt right wing and their addled Tea Party foot soldiers. It isn’t after all, as if the whole dirty tricks routine were anything new for the corporate proxies who run the Grand Old Party.

Photo by WxMom from Flickr Creative Commons

My husband, who has been a socialist since he was thirteen, announced at breakfast today that he plans to vote for certain Tea Party candidates.

Blink.

This violent about-face comes on the heels of Grover Norquist announcing that he wants to drag into his infamous bathtub … wait for it: the Pentagon budget–you know, that $534 billion monstrosity (well, $533.8 billion actually, but who’s going to quibble over a piddling .2 billion dollars, right?) the budget that every year, in Afghanistan and Iraq, has gone mostly down the toilet instead of into the tub.

For years only a hardy band of liberals in Congress-the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus and individuals like Representative Barney Frank-challenged the bloated military budget. The Republicans, ignoring President Eisenhower’s warning fifty years ago about the military-industrial complex, always gave the Pentagon what it wanted and more, gleefully bashing Democrats as weak-kneed on national security. Since the fall, however, a civil war of sorts has broken out among Republicans over defense, with the dissident faction led by Norquist, the libertarian Cato Institute and a growing group of allies, including some factions of the rambunctious Tea Party movement, backing significant cuts.

According to a well-known conservative activist, in early January House majority leader Eric Cantor quietly circulated to the entire GOP caucus a letter organized by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) that called for the Pentagon’s budget to be put on the chopping block. “We write to urge you to institute principled spending reform that rejects the notion that spending cuts can be avoided in certain parts of the federal budget,” said the letter, written in November to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and incoming House Speaker John Boehner. “Department of Defense spending, in particular, has been provided protected status that has isolated it from serious scrutiny.” The letter was signed by twenty-three people, a Who’s Who of the conservative movement, including Norquist, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Cato’s Christopher Preble, Richard Viguerie, Al Regnery of The American Spectator and many others. Also signing were Lisa Miller of Tea Party WDC and Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, the pro-Tea Party organization led by former House majority leader Dick Armey. That Cantor, who has advocated cutting the military budget, sent ATR’s letter around was seen as a shot across the bow of Republicans who consider that budget a “sacred cow,” as ATR called it.

On January 19 more than 150 Congressional staffers and experts packed a Capitol Hill forum sponsored by Cato at which Norquist and Preble laid out the conservative case for slashing military spending. Preble, with Ben Friedman of Cato, outlined a series of cuts that go far beyond what Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Obama administration have proposed, identifying more than $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade-about a fifth of overall Pentagon spending. “When the Soviet Union disappeared,” said Norquist wryly, “a lot of people on the right failed to notice.” Referring to George W. Bush’s support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for greater military spending, Norquist said too many Republicans support feeding the Pentagon’s appetite “just because Fearless Leader said it’s a good idea.”

Instead, Norquist called for a debate among Republicans over Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan, asking, “What are we doing? Why are we there? How long do we plan to be there?” A week earlier, speaking at a dinner organized by Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation, Norquist cited polling data to support his view that, if debated, pro-war neoconservatives and hawks would lose the argument. “I’m confident about where that conversation would go,” he said. “I think the people who are against that conversation know where it would go, too.”

They must fear such a debate, because a powerful coalition (the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Foreign Policy Initiative (home to William Kristol of The Weekly Standard) is gearing up to challenge the anti-war wingers.

Whether or not my husband could actually vote for Ed Martin, I do not know. It’s not like Claire’s any prize, but Martin? God, he’s such a low life. Anyway, closer to the here and now, nothing will seriously endanger our War Budget this session, even if Barney Frank and Eric Cantor join hands. But the seeds of reality might be planted. I want to see a vocal debate about cutting war, oh excuse me, defense funds. Right now, Democrats are giving away the social safety net store without asking for war spending cuts in return.