jerseyhoya wrote:Very big of Daschle to pull the plug. I think he would have gotten confirmed without too much struggle, but it was a black eye on the transition, and would have taken away from a lot of what he's trying to do I think.

Obama told NBC "I'm frustrated with myself" for unintentionally sending a message that there are "two sets of rules" for paying taxes, "one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks."

"I take responsibility for this mistake," he told Fox News.

jerseyhoya wrote:If Judd Gregg going to Commerce gives me John Sununu back in the Senate in 2010 I will do cartwheels.

Good on John Lynch for appointing a Republican. Really this is Democrats do good things day. Also partisanly one of the best, if not the best, day to be a Republican since November 2004.

We're winning battles for a change. Too bad we had to become irrelevant to reach this point.

dajafi wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:If Judd Gregg going to Commerce gives me John Sununu back in the Senate in 2010 I will do cartwheels.

Good on John Lynch for appointing a Republican. Really this is Democrats do good things day. Also partisanly one of the best, if not the best, day to be a Republican since November 2004.

We're winning battles for a change. Too bad we had to become irrelevant to reach this point.

Hopefully you're feeling better about Obama's bipartisan-cabinet promise these days. Though in the specific case of Gregg to Commerce, I guess it's still a double gain for the Democrats: a more moderate Republican steps in now, and it's an open seat in a Democratic-trending state in 2010 rather than Gregg, who'd have been very formidable.

One thing I just read that really bothers me is that Commerce runs the Census... which means a Republican will get the chance to set the methodology and, not to put too fine a point on it, $#@! over New York City and other urban centers where large immigrant populations and other groups tend to be a bit more wary of strangers with clipboards knocking at the door. That Bush badly neglected advance preparations for the Census--shocking, I know--makes this even more important.

Boring policy stuff, I know.

jerseyhoya wrote:Heh, I wasn't even thinking that.

I told my mom tonight that I want to work for the census bureau for the next year before grad school. This weekend I'm going to look into what exactly it takes to get a job there. Maybe my GOP background won't be a detriment.

Republican Christopher Christie leads Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine by six percentage points, 44%-38%, in the race for Governor, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released early this morning.

Corzine's approval ratings have dropped to an upside-down 41%-50%, and his favorable are upside-down at 41%-49%.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Republican Christopher Christie leads Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine by six percentage points, 44%-38%, in the race for Governor, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released early this morning.

Corzine's approval ratings have dropped to an upside-down 41%-50%, and his favorable are upside-down at 41%-49%.

Usually we don't take the teasing lead until July.

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Republican Christopher Christie leads Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine by six percentage points, 44%-38%, in the race for Governor, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released early this morning.

Corzine's approval ratings have dropped to an upside-down 41%-50%, and his favorable are upside-down at 41%-49%.

Usually we don't take the teasing lead until July.

In some ways, NJ is kind of a reverse of the Presidential election. If the Republicans can't be Corzine in 2009, they probably should just fold up their tents and leave NJ. Christie doesn't have much of a record to run against.

What Corzine needs is some nut true conservative type to challenge Christie in the primary. I wonder if Lonegan fits the bill.

Bakestar wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Republican Christopher Christie leads Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine by six percentage points, 44%-38%, in the race for Governor, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released early this morning.

Corzine's approval ratings have dropped to an upside-down 41%-50%, and his favorable are upside-down at 41%-49%.

Usually we don't take the teasing lead until July.

In some ways, NJ is kind of a reverse of the Presidential election. If the Republicans can't be Corzine in 2009, they probably should just fold up their tents and leave NJ. Christie doesn't have much of a record to run against.

What Corzine needs is some nut true conservative type to challenge Christie in the primary. I wonder if Lonegan fits the bill.

Corzine is truly, beautifully unpopular here in NJ. But the same can be said of pretty much any statewide Democratic leader in the past 10-15 years or so, except maybe fantasy-Gov. Codey, and they just keep winning. There's a first time for everything; but I think it'd take a huge GOP wave to push Corzine out (i.e., Whitman 1994).

I'd actually like a credible Republican party 'cause it'd at least theoretically force the Democrats to be accountable for their piss-poor leadership. And any Republican elected statewide in NJ would be a RINO at worst.

Did the Obama White House err in deferring to Congress? That's the argument that many Democratic strategists are chewing on. A case can be made, however, that giving the House latitude to pass a wild bill was the only way to ensure that the Senate passed a responsible one. The theory here is that the Senate could be played off against the House. Let the House lard up the bill with items having little to do with stimulus and a lot to do with interest group priorities. (According to a well-connected Democrat who is in touch with the administration, "They're not objecting when people say that this is Pelosi's stimulus package.")

Then, let the Senate's natural prerogatives go to work. Pass a bill that retains the core elements of Obama's original plans, but without a lot of the marginalia that proved politically perilous in the House. Without the House's bill as foil, the Senate wouldn't have had a guide, a temporal guide, a political lesson, objective correlatives, whatever -- to react against.

Republicans won a PR battle by imputing a tiny objectionable fraction of the House legislation to the entire bill, which is disingenous and effective. More legitimate objections are the tax cut v. spending mix, although it's a bit curious: the classic idea of stimulus is to have the government spend money.

Werthless wrote:Thinking about it more, I just think the House passed the bill the way they did because that's the bill they wanted. They answer to smaller districts, and they're simply used to trying to strong-arm their projects into the legislation.

TenuredVulture wrote:

Werthless wrote:Thinking about it more, I just think the House passed the bill the way they did because that's the bill they wanted. They answer to smaller districts, and they're simply used to trying to strong-arm their projects into the legislation.

All house districts have roughly the same population. If you're talking about reps from small states, well, that doesn't work at all, because it's in the Senate where small states wield the most influence.