I don't usually link to or even read Politico, but this article is worthwhile in how it implicitly shows what's happening in terms of who does and doesn't win in today's political climate.

A number of these states are going to have crazy buyer's remorse in a year or two. Probably this will be good for Obama, but it still won't be much fun to see Angle or Johnson fouling the Senate for six years. At least it seems like the scumbag Miller is going down in Alaska.

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Decent in-depth look at how Boehner/Cantor/McCarthy are looking to run the House. Takeaways include Boehner looking to give his committee chairman more room to write legislation, seniority will choose chairmen (except when it won't due to PR, money or possible term limit reasons), the top three appear to be singing from different sections of the hymnal at least in where they are focused and Democrats looking for a reason to worry about gov't shutdown will be disappointed to read that not shutting down gov't appears to be one of the only things all three agree on.

No, JH, they're gonna shut it down. And then Obama's gonna draft everybody. Oh, and there's gonna be a terrorist attack, and Bush will use it as an excuse to take over and declare martial law.

Well the new group is 10x as crazy, with the even keeled Newt Gingrich being replaced by excitable firebrand John Boehner as the speaker. And they hate the president much more than the group that impeached Clinton and thought he killed Vince Foster and raped Juanita Broaddrick.

jerseyhoya wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Decent in-depth look at how Boehner/Cantor/McCarthy are looking to run the House. Takeaways include Boehner looking to give his committee chairman more room to write legislation, seniority will choose chairmen (except when it won't due to PR, money or possible term limit reasons), the top three appear to be singing from different sections of the hymnal at least in where they are focused and Democrats looking for a reason to worry about gov't shutdown will be disappointed to read that not shutting down gov't appears to be one of the only things all three agree on.

No, JH, they're gonna shut it down. And then Obama's gonna draft everybody. Oh, and there's gonna be a terrorist attack, and Bush will use it as an excuse to take over and declare martial law.

Well the new group is 10x as crazy, with the even keeled Newt Gingrich being replaced by excitable firebrand John Boehner as the speaker. And they hate the president much more than the group that impeached Clinton and thought he killed Vince Foster and raped Juanita Broaddrick.

And they think that shutting down government really helped them in the following election too probably.

The point really isn't whether or not the incoming Republicans shut down the government or try to impeach the president. The point is whether any of them truly understand what's facing the country in terms of structural problems (current and future budgets, human capital competitiveness, climate, infrastructure) and are remotely prepared to do anything about it.

The Republicans might or might not shut down the government or bring impeachment charges against Obama. But they're mortally certain to try to cut taxes for the very wealthiest, roll back sensible and moderate regulations in every area from finance to mining, beat the war drums against whatever non-white people are haunting Charles Krauthammer's nightmares this season and generally do everything they did from 2001-2006. None of that is likely to work out very well.

dajafi wrote:The point really isn't whether or not the incoming Republicans shut down the government or try to impeach the president. The point is whether any of them truly understand what's facing the country in terms of structural problems (current and future budgets, human capital competitiveness, climate, infrastructure) and are remotely prepared to do anything about it.

The Republicans might or might not shut down the government or bring impeachment charges against Obama. But they're mortally certain to try to cut taxes for the very wealthiest, roll back sensible and moderate regulations in every area from finance to mining, beat the war drums against whatever non-white people are haunting Charles Krauthammer's nightmares this season and generally do everything they did from 2001-2006. None of that is likely to work out very well.

so you're saying the title of our forum is quite apt?

jerseyhoya wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Decent in-depth look at how Boehner/Cantor/McCarthy are looking to run the House. Takeaways include Boehner looking to give his committee chairman more room to write legislation, seniority will choose chairmen (except when it won't due to PR, money or possible term limit reasons), the top three appear to be singing from different sections of the hymnal at least in where they are focused and Democrats looking for a reason to worry about gov't shutdown will be disappointed to read that not shutting down gov't appears to be one of the only things all three agree on.

No, JH, they're gonna shut it down. And then Obama's gonna draft everybody. Oh, and there's gonna be a terrorist attack, and Bush will use it as an excuse to take over and declare martial law.

Well the new group is 10x as crazy, with the even keeled Newt Gingrich being replaced by excitable firebrand John Boehner as the speaker. And they hate the president much more than the group that impeached Clinton and thought he killed Vince Foster and raped Juanita Broaddrick.

The presence of Michele Bachmann alone makes the next Congress much crazier and ultimately harmful to the country than any Congress from the 1990s.

Crazy individuals can't do much harm in the House. They can gum up the works in the Senate however.

I think it'll be interesting to see who really does have control. Bachmann doesn't get a gavel, I think, and thank goodness for that--but she's powerful for some of the same reasons Palin and Limbaugh are powerful: she can get attention, create stories with a few words and raise money.

I take Paul's point about the dubiousness of the statement that Limbaugh has more power than Boehner--but I'm not as sure it's wrong. Certainly it's less politically hazardous to publicly insult Boehner than to cross Rush; just ask the Nazi costume guy, who wouldn't even commit to voting for Boehner as speaker after the minority leader went into action for him. The point is that power doesn't work the way it did even fifteen years ago.

TenuredVulture wrote:Crazy individuals can't do much harm in the House. They can gum up the works in the Senate however.

Sharron Angle and Rand Paul would do nicely.

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:On a whole nother topic--JH, here's a freebie idea for future research--I think the the increase of partisanship that has been observed in Congress over the last few decades has more to do with the fact that there is no permanent minority party. That is, if you were a Republican member of Congress while the New Deal coalition prevailed, you have every reason to work with Dems and compromise--if you didn't, you'd get nothing. Now, however, when you find yourself in the minority (whether you're R or D) you have every incentive to hold out because your minority status is unlikely to be permanent.

It seems so obviously a better explanation than Fox News or Glenn Beck, I'm sure someone has already done this.

TV, Hoya could spark a cross-disciplinary game theory nerdfest with this. Are there practitioners/adherents at Rutgers?

It's a really interesting idea. I'm not entirely sure how to capture it quantitatively though. Maybe someone like Ross Baker could interview a bunch of current and former members about motivations, but I'm having a hard time of thinking of variables that could get past simple correlation.

You could attack the problem in two steps. One, try to come up with model showing the likelihood of the minority party regaining control of their house in something like a probit regression. You'd probably have a number of variables in there such as margin of deficit, polling numbers, economic data, demographic data, etc that are relatively easy to attain. The polling data would be the most difficult data to get, but that seems to be your area of expertise/interest. Two, see if this likelihood value can help predict the level of partisanship seen in a given year, probably represented by the percent of votes in support of party leadership (ie. if Specter voted 90% with Republicans, then that's a more partisan environment than a year where he voted 85% with Republicans.)

My guess is that, yes, likelihood of regaining power in Congress does help predict partisanship levels.

I honestly believe the GOP won't do anything like trying to impeach Obama. If they did, they'd get voted out int two years - the public is sick of it. I think everyone in Congress is on a short leash, and they're foolish to believe otherwise. As for all the talk about crazy Senators, Sharon Angle will be an amusing sideshow, if even that. Rand Paul has some unique ideas, but he's not a bomb thrower. He's a bright guy, and he'll play nice so he's able to move up the food chain towards a committee chairmanship, where he'll have a much better opportunity to influence things.

60 minutes just had a really interesting piece on a proposition in washington to start a 5 percent income tax on people who make over 200,000

CalvinBall wrote:60 minutes just had a really interesting piece on a proposition in washington to start a 5 percent income tax on people who make over 200,000

On top of the 33%-35% they're paying now?

Dilma Rousseff, Lula's protege, won the run-off in Brazil. It was something of a surprise that she didn't win outright in the first round of voting.

cshort wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:60 minutes just had a really interesting piece on a proposition in washington to start a 5 percent income tax on people who make over 200,000

On top of the 33%-35% they're paying now?

state income tax. washington state. there is no state income tax right now.

CalvinBall wrote:

cshort wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:60 minutes just had a really interesting piece on a proposition in washington to start a 5 percent income tax on people who make over 200,000

On top of the 33%-35% they're paying now?

state income tax. washington state. there is no state income tax right now.

Ok- had me worried! I read somewhere Florida may be headed that way as well.

Gallup's final likely voter model has us up 15. I don't think I can put into words how epic election night will be if that is close to being accurate.

Seems pollsters have two different views of how election night might play out. Gallup and the robopollsters predicting Armageddon. Most everyone else sees a big, though not historic night. Will be a lot written that no one here cares about afterward on who was right and way.

arent the dems up 77 now? they could barely get anything done. i mean great for the republicans they win a lot of seats but nothing is going to change.

15%, 55-40%.

And the Dems passed a massive health care bill, 3/4 trillion dollar stimulus, financial reregulation, the house passed cap and trade. If that's barely anything, something would be pretty substantial.

i dont know what those percentages are. and i know they got stuff done. i meant that as more of the public opinion on the matter. who how the republicans have painted it.