I’ll be doing a Live Chat this afternoon at Noon eastern at TPMPrime. Get your questions in now.
Descending from the Jesuits and their probabilism and the Rabbis and their Talmudic interpretations, official Washington is now deep in a complex exegesis of the Norquist anti-tax pledge. Is it eternal? Is it limited to a single term? If a tax rises in the forest but no one voted to rise it, did it really rise? Read More
Another GOP Rep says he’s abandoning his Norqust no tax pledge. This time it’s Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) who only a year ago was getting harangued by constituents over the pledge.
From the Oneonta Daily Star …
More than a year after he took a pledge to refuse to support any tax increases, newly re-elected Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, confirmed Tuesday he is on a new path — one that does not include embracing conservative Grover Norquist’s push for holding the line on taxes regardless of the consequences.
…
Asked if his decision shows he has evolved to the point he will no longer assume the position of an inflexible naysayer against higher taxes, Gibson told The Daily Star, “I don’t envision signing any pledges now because going forward I have a record that I’m proud to run on that’s pro-growth.”
In a small way, I think this is very significant.
Former PM Ehud Olmert supports Palestinian President Abbas’s move to get observer state status for Palestine at the UN.
There have been signs out of the Netanyahu government over the last few days that all the threats of dire punishment if the PA does this are going to be set aside. Looking at it up close, they seemed to realize that the draconian measures they’d threatening were not only ridiculous but profoundly counter-productive. But take note of Olmert.
If you didn’t know that top Romney strategist Stuart Stevens was a screen writer, you will now. Just so, if you never quite got the whole Clint Eastwood thing, that’s clear too. Because Clint’s probably either going to direct or star in the True History of the 2012 campaign, the treatment for which Stevens has just released.
In this telling, Mitt Romney was nothing but a stone cold rebel. Didn’t fit and didn’t care. He was just going to have fun, keep it real, stick it to the losers and generally blow the doors off the whole place whatever the DC crowd and the insiders and the elites thought. And damn if he didn’t win the whole thing in the end. At least if you’re counting the good people. Sure, he didn’t catch with the poors and the melanin crowd. But c’mon: Who the f’ cares, right? Mitt Romney, the President of Real America.
Top Romney advisor snarks and brags about losing poor and minority voters.
TPM Reader TF chimes in on Reaping the Whirlwind …
It was the email from a fellow Iowan that got me. The deal for me is simple: I am a white, middle age son of an immigrant who ultimately was pretty successful. As his son, I was given every advantage a person could ask for, didn’t take them all and have still been reasonably successful too. I grew up middle class and depending on how you define things, on the brink of upper middle class. I also grew up a Democrat. My parents were Kennedy Democrats and then Johnson Democrats and then Humphrey Democrats. And then the Vietnam War jostled some of those things around for a few years. My father, the immigrant, is fiercely patriotic (and so am I) and his military service combined with his experience as a youth in Europe have made him a very middle-left person.
If you were enjoying your evening last night, you may have missed the day’s biggest development in the fight over the Bush tax cuts. Specifically, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), an influential conservative, is privately and publicly urging House Republicans to do what President Obama wants and extend all of the Bush tax cuts except for those benefiting top earners alone.
I’ve argued that the move makes tactical sense for Republicans, and that’s more or less what Cole’s telling his colleagues: The top income tax cuts are Obama’s leverage. Take them out of the equation and the mix of remaining leverage points (the sequester, appropriations, the debt limit) actually favors Republicans. Read More
TPM Reader JR on reaping the whirlwind …
Josh’s blog posts recently from TPM readers JT, JB, and KE struck a nerve with me, especially the one from KE on being Asian-American and taking it personally when Republicans and conservatives attacked Obama.
I am Indian-American, born and raised in Iowa (my childhood in Ames and Marshalltown and college years back to Ames) to immigrant parents. Obama’s heritage and identity as a racial minority is a big deal to me, no question, and was an attraction to me in 2007…he is the only Presidential candidate ever to get my money in a contested nomination fight, before he was the presumed nominee.