Launched in February to track the expenditures of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Recovery.gov was to be the pinnacle of web-enabled transparency, according to President Barack Obama.

“The site is the tip of the iceberg for the effort that will go into taking spending tracking and accountability to the next level,” one administration official said of their intended level of transparency.

But now, it seem, the administration has failed to deliver on two pledges central to the Obama campaign’s rhetoric: fiscal responsibility and unrivaled transparency.

An acerbic Ed Morrissey asks, “Since when does it cost $18 million for a website, even one with a database requiring updates on a quarterly basis?”

Not often.

FedSpending.org, launched in October 2006 with a meager three-year $334,272 grant from the Sunlight Foundation, is a voluminous online database of all federal grants and contracts. And, unlike Recovery.gov, the website monitors the entire federal budget, and does so at a fraction of the projected cost of Recovery.gov.

Of course, the revelation that the private sector outperforms the federal government is not new. Recovery.org, a project of Onvia, monitors the flow of recovery funds from the federal government to private businesses in real-time, unlike its overpriced government counterpart which reports spending 100 days after-the-fact, thereby enabling wasteful or fraudulent spending.

Onvia’s CEO Mike Pickett estimated in May his company spent approximately $20,000 to build Recovery.org’s tracking infrastructure, a far cry from the inflated contract awarded by Obama’s White House.

By contrast, spending $18 million on redesigning an already-functioning website makes Ted Stevens’ $315 million “Bridge to Nowhere” project appear like a fiscally-sound endeavor.

Assuming, however, that the White House got a bargain on Recovery.gov’s redesign, the public is still, largely, in the dark on both how and where that $18 million will be spent, which, in and of itself, is comically ironic when one considers the intended aim of the website, that is, to provide information to the public to monitor stimulus spending.

Assuming, as the generous people we are, again that the White House got a bargain on Recovery.gov’s redesign and now that Smartronix will make the rebuilding process open and transparent, there is still the troubling issue of why. Why was Smartronix awarded the contract?

The Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso notes an important political connection between the Maryland-based firm and Congressman Hoyer as a potential explanation. Smartronix’s President and Vice President have together given $19,000 to Hoyer’s campaign coffers since 1999, according to FEC reports.

You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours make sure you get a $18 million contract to redesign a government website.

Uneasy with the prospect of the White House awarding offensively high contracts to the politically well-connected, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele goes in for the kill.

“Vice President Biden warned us that there would be ‘waste’ in the stimulus bill. The Obama administration is devoting $18 million dollars to create a government website to show Americans just where their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent. This is unreal and outrageous.”

“If the Obama administration is willing to devote $18 million in taxpayer dollars to a website, imagine what government-run health care will charge taxpayers for an MRI,” he said.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

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“The president had said in the past that he does not believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here,” said Axelrod. “He still believes that, but there are a number of formulations and we’ll wait and see.”

Obama has not always been open to “a number of formulations,” however. In fact, prompted by Republican accusations his tax plan would hurt middle class pocketbooks, Obama was quite adamant he would do no such thing. While campaigning in Dover, NH, Obama said, “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Slow to fulfill campaign pledges or entirely reversing his position on others, the president has come under fire from the most loyal of Democratic Party activists, including the LGBT community and environmentalists, but waffling on his no-middle-class-tax-hike pledge stands to pit the irresolute president against a majority of the American voting public, not just disillusioned splinter groups.

After pressed on whether the president will draw “a line in the sand” by a persistent Stephanopoulos, Axelrod refused to take the bait and align the administration with any such ultimatum.

“One of the problems we’ve had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don’t get anything done. That’s not the way the president approaches this,” he said.

The reason for President Obama’s now-obvious reticence to pursue campaign pledges—or make intractable ultimatums, for that matter—is quite simple. Keeping promises while juggling the competing interests of donors, activists, and voters is no simple feat. If you don’t make a promise, you can’t break it.

Then-candidate Barack Obama promised impossibilities—of a transparent government, of a new politics, of a hopeful and peaceful American—and performed little. Now-President Barack Obama promises nothing and yet he still performs little.

Color me surprised.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

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As a matter of national security in years past Republicans have shown tremendous support for similar measures, however last week they voted en bloc against the $106 billion appropriations bill.

The Democratic Leadership and the DCCC would be content to let the public believe Republicans were “playing politics” with the troops, having voted against the emergency legislation out of pure spite for the president.

Over 100 Republicans voted for the bill when the first iteration—before the $83.5 billion bill mushroomed—reached the floor of the House several weeks ago. But after the Democratic Leadership rewrote the bill to include billions in funding for lawmakers’ pet projects, including an additional $5 billion in funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), virtually all Republicans defected, accusing the Democrats of lacing the emergency war-funding bill with billions of extraneous pork barrel spending.

If a global bailout is to be to debated and funded, it surely does not belong in a war appropriations bill. Democrats know this, just like they knew bailout-averse Republicans would, instinctively, vote against any such measure. And then they realized they had the upper-hand: they held the coveted “you’re-playing-politics-with-the-troops” card.

Calculating Democrats put a hold on the appropriations bill as Speaker Nancy Pelosi scrambled to corral enough votes to pass the bill without Republicans and anti-war Democrats. They did, and their disingenuous strategy to score political points—at the cost of our troops’ safety—was set afoot.

Among the Republicans targeted are Congressmen Ken Calvert (CA-44), Charlie Dent (PA-15), Jim Gerlach (PA-06), Dan Lungren (CA-03), Mike McCaul (TX-10), Lee Terry (NE-02).

As a testament to their lack of due diligence, they also set their sights on a retired U.S. Army National Guard Colonel, Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02).

Military service in Congressman Wilson’s family doesn’t stop there, no. His oldest son Alan McCrory Wilson, a Major in the Army National Guard, spent a year in Iraq. Addison Wilson, Jr., a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, is Lieutenant in the Navy. Wilson’s third son, Julian Dusenbury Wilson, is a Captain in the Army National Guard. And his youngest, Hunter Taylor Wilson, is a current student at Clemson University – where he is, fancy that, a member of the Army ROTC and Army National Guard.

Now if there ever were a legislator who would be chiefly concerned with funding the military—thereby ensuring his own family has the resources they need—Congressman Wilson would be him. And if there ever were a party who would be chiefly concerned with scoring political points by jeopardizing the military, the Democratic Party would be it.

Shame on you, Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Chris Van Hollen. House Republicans were prepared to, and indeed did, pass a troop funding bill. Giving the military the resources they needed was not atop your agenda. As details and your strategy have fleshed themselves out, it has become increasingly apparent you were principal concerned with scoring disingenuous political points.

Shame on you, indeed.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

Yesterday, amid fears neither of those lofty campaign pledges may be actualized, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solomnese penned a stinging open letter to President Obama in response to a brief filed by the Department of Justice that defended DOMA’s legitimacy.

Concerned the President does not view gay men and women as “human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal” to his own, Solomnese mockingly offered to “reintroduce” the LGBT community to their capricious ally in the White House.

After reintroducing gays—as scorned tax payers, donors, and voters—to Obama, Solomnese proceeded to question the president’s commitment to marriage equality for gays. Cautiously optimistic, he asks, “The question is, Mr. President—do you believe that [the brief is] good enough for us?”

“If we are your equals, if you recognize that our families live the same, love the same, and contribute as much as yours, then the answer must be no.”

Gay rights advocates want action, and they want it now.

After having found himself to the ideological right of former Vice President Dick Cheney, no amount of rhetoric, it seems, will rescue Obama from his present malady. But does Obama care?

The exact number of “gay” persons living in the U.S. is quite subjective—some studies arguing one in ten, while others, more accurately, note one in twenty. Gays are, ultimately, an insignificant political group, at least in terms of sheer voting numbers.

The collision of Obama’s shallow campaign promises with gays’ limited ability to affect elections suggests but one thing: Gay outreach and token appeasement will always be subordinate to Obama’s determined outreach to larger identity groups—namely, African Americans, Hispanics, and Evangelicals.

Donors no more?

Strapped for cash with competitive gubernatorial elections on the horizon, the Democratic National Committee announced last week it would host its 10th annual LGBT Leadership Council Dinner featuring former Governor and DNC Chair Howard Dean, Representatives Barney Frank, Tammy Baldwin, and Jared Polis, and Vice President Joe Biden.

According to Americablog’s John Aravosis, the fundraiser is “starting to fall apart over [the] rupture between Obama and gay community.” Citing the administration’s “sickening document,” top gay blogger Andy Towle and LGBT kingmaker David Mixner have both withdrawn from the poorly-timed event.

Scheduled to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the cash-deprived DNC was hopeful the event would emphasize the Democratic Party’s continuing allegiance to the LGBT community. But given its coincidence with Obama’s snubbing of the gay community, the DNC is more likely to witness “Stonewall 2.0” – a pocketbook rebellion against the shallow campaign promises of Obama, and, indeed, the entire Democratic Party.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

Echoing Rubio’s conservative sentiments, the Florida snowbird said his entry into the already-crowded primary was precipitated by the Republican Party establishment’s unacceptable lurch to the left. “I can’t stand by and watch what is happening to our country – and our Party,” Smith said in his online address.

Smith’s new-found moral compass and concern for the direction of his country and of the Republican Party is awfully amusing, of course, given his opportunistic and decidedly vindictive nature.

After mounting a comically unsuccessful independent bid for President in 2000, Smith lost a bitter primary battle to then-Congressman John Sununu two years and two parties later. But unfortunately Smith’s presence on the national scene didn’t end with his ousting.

Hoping he might reemerge as a key political player, ostensibly as a Democrat after having sampled all competing parties, Smith endorsed Senator John Kerry in his ill-fated campaign for President in 2004, citing Kerry’s “courage and character” forged on the battlefields of Vietnam.

To no one’s surprise, Smith fell short – as in, tripped at the starting line – in his 2004 bid for Senate after publicly advocating for Democrat John Kerry’s campaign. Suffice it to say, partisan-aligned Republican primary voters did not positively receive Smith’s defection. His campaign aides have seemingly forecasted a different outcome for 2010, however, hoping the sixty-eight-year-old has finally cast aside his scarlet letter.

But does this carpet-bagging, party-defecting sore loser stand a chance at besting Crist, the establishment favorite, or Rubio, the up-and-coming conservative sweetheart? Not a chance.

Smith will face three considerable obstacles in his path to victory – namely, his notorious disloyalty to the party he now seeks to represent, his opportunistic relocation to Florida, and his likely ineffectiveness in driving the discussion in a field of popular candidates.

Assuming the stars align and Smith can, by some means, overcome the first two hurdles, his campaign will undoubtedly be eclipsed by Crist’s increasing popularity and Rubio’s endearing dark-horse quality.

When Smith loses, and he will, can we expect him to endorse President Barack Obama for reelection in 2012 and permanently sever ties with the ‘leftward lurching’ Republican Party? If only we were that lucky…

UPDATE: Insinuating that Smith is an emissary of the Republican establishment, commenters worry if Smith has been dispatched by Crist allies to dilute Rubio’s base of conservative support.

Had Smith not immediately relocated to Florida subsequent to his entertaining flameout in 2002 this scenario would be more plausible. But after explicitly blaming party elite for his primary loss at the hands of Sununu, it’s incredibly unlikely Smith is taking his marching orders from the Republican establishment. His motives now – like in 2000, 2002, and 2004 – are principally driven by his enormous ego; nothing more, nothing less.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

After obtaining the list of voters who participated in November’s election, the group hired an independent firm who specializes in “death suppression” for direct mailing lists to review the data. The process, which involved matching names and addresses to state death records, bore troubling results.

According to Minnesota statute 201.13, the commissioner of health is to report monthly the name, address, date of birth, and county of residence of voting-age deceased residents to the secretary of state.

Presumably the commissioner of health would not issue incomplete reports (read: no motive), the blame then falls elsewhere – namely, at the feet of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, whose partisan leanings and curious alliance with vote fraud-magnet ACORN are becoming more salient by the day.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann argues the discrepancies unearthed by the group are merely the result of election workers updating the voter database with faulty information and were not instance of voter fraud.

“I would venture—put my reputation on—the fact that there are very few, if any, people impersonating dead people. You’re going to have human error,” he admitted.

But Jeff Davis, president of Minnesota Majority, believes the situation to be far less benign – and legal – than the Ritchie’s staff is willing to admit.

“The first problem with their explanation is that there should not even be deceased individuals on the voter rolls. The second problem with the secretary of state’s explanation is that it basically acknowledges the lack of controls in the way in which voter history updates are being captured and recorded,” he said. Adding, “If the proper controls had been in place, this situation would not have occurred.”

Whether the peculiar case of 2,800+ deceased individuals casting ballots is a matter of fraud, human error, or resurrection is of little importance at the moment.

According to current recount totals, Democrat Al Franken leads Republican Norm Coleman by a mere 312 votes. If the Minnesota Supreme Court rules in favor of Coleman later this month, which most analysts agree won’t be the case, an additional 4,000 votes will be added to the mix.

When you’re down by such a slim margin, like Team Coleman knows all too well, every vote counts. When you live in a democracy, the very hallmark of which is fair and free elections, every vote should count. But when you live in Minnesota, where the chief election officer is a hyper-partisan louse, “every” vote counts, even after you’re dead!

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

Barbour, 61, will be ineligible to seek another term as governor in 2012, but refuses to speak to his political future, saying only that “You can look for me not to run for re-election.”

He will undoubtedly dismiss the candidate-type activity as inconsequential, as spreading the Republican Gospel, but no politician finds themselves in Iowa — the launch pad of every dark horse candidacy — by pure coincidence.

Considered a highly effective organizer and strategist, Barbour was a key architect of the 1994 Republican revolution as chairman of the Republican National Committee.

In the wake of two consecutive Republican losses, GOP power broker Fred Malek hopes Barbour may yet have some ideas how to recapture the Contract with American spirit. “Extremely sound on policies, clear thinking and the best political strategist” the GOP can boast, Malek wrote on his blog, ranking the governor as the third most likely individual to secure the party nod.

A Barbour candidacy isn’t without its challenges, of course.

A typical party insider, Barbour worked for Presidents Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush and ran for the US Senate in 1982. In a field of recycled 2008 candidates, voters may look for a fresh, young face – and Barbour, suffice it to say, will be neither young nor fresh in four years.

In 1991, Barbour co-founded Barbour & Rogers, LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm. 10 years and millions of dollars earned later, Fortune magazine named Barbour Giffith & Rogers the most powerful lobbying firm in American.

Though his commitment to limiting the influence of lobbyists in policy making has been questioned after assuming office, President Obama’s campaign opposition to the Beltway’s entrenched interests – namely, lobbyists – took voters by storm.

Barbour’s successful lobbying career will no doubt serve as the perfect backdrop to Democratic operatives’ feigned outrage and monochromatic grainy commercials vilifying lobbyists. Channeling DNC spokesmen, his nomination would be emblematic of the Republican Party’s indifference on issues of ethics and good governance.

In terms of shallow campaign optics, Barbour’s southern pedigree may do more harm than good, and stands to reinforce the notion of the GOP as the party of old Southern whites at a time when many political insiders are looking to find a new voice outside the Republican stronghold.

It isn’t all bad for the governor and former party chief, however.

An elder statesman and talented party spokesman, Barbour has emerged as a fierce critic of the president. His popularity rising in proportion to the intensity and frequency of his attacks, he bluntly characterized Obama’s policies as “very far left.”

Like other 2012 hopefuls Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford, Barbour subscribes to the conservative orthodoxy but unlike Palin and Sanford, stakes the reemergence of the Republican Party as a viable political force on the shoulders of inclusive, big tent policies. A distinction that will serve him well with independent swing voters, were he ever to make it to the general election.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

In an email to committee members announcing the resolution, conservative stalwart James Bopp, Jr., said President Obama’s foremost intention is to reengineer the American way of life, and will stop at nothing short of restructuring our society “along socialist ideals.”

Bopp hopes their misguided efforts to rebrand the Democratic Party will serve as a galvanizing point in American politics, not unlike “President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ galvanized opposition to communism.”

Not quite.

Unlike the “Evil Empire,” Republicans lost to the Democratic Party in a fair and free election – the hallmark of American democracy – to the tune of 9,500,000 votes. And then, of course, is the fact that we’re not, say, at war and with mutually-assured destruction looming overhead.

The Democratic Party may well be, as Bopp contends, on a slow, steady march towards Socialism, but passing such a resolution would be a four-minute mile run towards generational oblivion.

Nothing revives the party of old white men like some good ol’ Cold War rhetoric. Likewise, nothing will marginalize more independent voters who cast their ballot for a “Socialist” in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan. That’ll get ‘em back in the fold, boys.

Resolving to refer to the opposition as Socialists will not win back the favor of the American people. If this asinine ideological rebuke is to accomplish anything, it will be a concession that Republicans are rhetorically ineffectual. Moreover, it will crystallize the notion that Republicans deserve their minority status.

The language of the resolution is not set in stone, however, and will likely be massaged, according to some committee members with knowledge of the process.

When the resolution passes – I’m told it likely will – the forceful rebuke will have been stricken. But the resolved language is not the problem. Indicative of the Republican Party’s present existential crisis, Republicans are earnestly debating the use of Cold War rhetoric as a means to gain favor with voters.

Such a debate signals a changing tide in the Republican Party. We’re no longer advocates for limited government and a strong national defense. We’re no longer a diverse coalition of voters. We’re no longer the party of optimism, and certainly not of hope.

The Republican Party of 2009 is an antagonistic minority party, wholly incapable of championing our causes of yesteryear. And a childish vote in favor of renaming the Democratic Party is a disgraceful reminder.

UPDATE: The committee adopted a diluted version of Bopp’s resolution this afternoon by a voice vote, dropping the absurd measure to label Democrats as Socialists.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, celebrating his first small victory in successfully managing an intra-party crisis, issued the following statement:

“The Republican Party strongly believes that a government which spends without restraint, incurs record amounts of debt, owns banks and makes cars is not the right kind of ‘change’ America needs. Republicans are united in opposition to the destructive policies of the President and Congressional Democrats. I am pleased that the committee adopted a resolution that focuses on the Democrats’ policies and their destructive effects on America’s economic engine, rather than attempting to rename our opponents. The RNC and the entire Republican Party is moving forward with strength and unity.”

Cross-posted to Skepticians.com.

Reelected in 2008 by a record margin as a moderate Republican in an exceedingly conservative state, party elites and strategists were quick to point to the rising star as a potential challenger to the president.  But given today’s interesting political calculus, the prospect of Huntsman now staging a challenge to Obama is exceptionally low.

Having carved out a reputation as a would-be-modernizer and pragmatic conservative on divisive social issues, Huntsman was right to test the waters. It seems he waded a little too deep for Obama’s comfort, however.

No less than the chief architect of Obama’s campaign David Plouffe has expressed concern over Huntsman’s budding portfolio. While he admits no potential candidate makes him “shake in his shoes,” he concedes the potential of a Huntsman bid leaves him a “wee bit queasy.”

By all accounts, Huntsman stood a good chance at securing the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, if only for the fact that he is the conservative antithesis of Obama: He’s a moderate, young, and attractive politician.  Those are the grounds on which Obama won, and those are the grounds on which they fear he’ll lose it in 2012.

By co-opting Huntsman, Obama will have successfully pacified the lone Republican 2012 challenger, thereby ensuring a stable route to victory.  Then, of course, is the knowledge that he’ll likely receive Republican praise for his gesture of bipartisanship, however politically shrewd it may be.

Obama is an impressively calculating politician, perhaps more so than his former opponent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  As such, he realizes a nomination of this nature will offer Huntsman the last needed ingredient for presidential success: foreign policy bona fides.

Ambassadorships are not token appointments, and certainly not those to emerging economic and military superpowers.  Before he was elected to the Offices of Vice President and later President of the United States, George H. W. Bush served as Ambassador to China from 1974 to 1975.  If Plouffe is “queasy” now, Obama just ensured he’ll be reaching for Pepto with some frequency in eight years.

After running the greatest candidate-centered campaign of history, Obama is principally focused on his reelection campaign in 2012.  It is of little concern, then, that he will have propelled Huntsman to the national stage in 2016 by no doing of his own.  The Obama campaign is interested in building an Obama-coalition, not a Democratic-coalition.  With the candidate gone and the movement over, the 2016 Democratic nominee will be tasked with the unenviable undertaking of reassembling a diverse coalition of voters, one liable to have already fractured when campaign promises were either not met or broken in the course of governing.

If a lasting Democratic majority was not, in fact, built on the heels of the Obama campaign, and Democrats must weather electoral losses in 2016, President Obama will surely take solace in the knowledge that his legacy as a two-term president remains intact.

“Better they lose than I,” I suspect he said to his advisors when mulling this nomination.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

To be sure, when the most-quoted political scientist in the land speaks up, people listen, but has the good doctor misdiagnosed ailing Republicans’ present predicament?

Before arriving at the intricacies of Sabato’s argument, it’s worth explaining the rather amorphic notion of political “realignment,” particularly given the state of reporting on the matter. A political realignment is a dramatic and enduring shift in voters’ loyalties and fundamental perceptions of the parties in government. We have witnessed three such instances, the 1896 election with the emergence of a national campaign, the 1932 election following the nation’s greatest financial disaster to date, and the 1980 election marking the meteoric rise of social conservativism.

The political landscape for 2010 and beyond, as Sabato sees it, will create a lasting Democratic majority, due in part to three giant demographic shifts: The intense preference among younger voters for the Democratic Party is unlikely to fade, with more than 2-1 voting for Obama; accelerated minority voter participation largely benefits Democrats; and professionals – those with post-graduate degrees – have begun to self-identify as Democrats in large numbers.

But not everyone is convinced. Joshua Putnam, a political scientist from the University of Georgia, warns that many, if not most, political scientists will take issue with Sabato’s brash conclusion. He notes that while 2008, in many ways, looks like a realigning election, it’s far too premature to make such conclusions.

“The three groups he discusses were certainly a large part of the Obama coalition.  But that doesn’t necessarily entail a long-term realignment. Here’s the key distinction: Was this an Obama coalition or a Democratic coalition and to what degree do they overlap? An Obama coalition implies that once the president is off the ballot — in midterm elections or in 2016 — that some of this movement could be reversed to some extent depending on GOP candidates and their messaging.”

We can neither see the future, nor is it inevitable. Realignments depend principally on the performance of the party in government. A permanent realignment of the sorts Sabato describes is wholly contingent upon Obama’s ability to accomplish the agenda he outlined in the campaign.

The Obama campaign was the greatest candidate-centered campaign for president in American history. It wasn’t “powered by Hope,” it was powered by his enormous ego and drive for success. Had Obama’s peculiar cult of personality established a Democratic coalition, Congressional Democrats would have earned greater majorities in both Houses, yet they didn’t. Moreover, we’re still at relative parity in terms of partisanship and see essentially a party stalemate in Congress.

It is unfortunate that esteemed political scientists join commenters and journalists in their natural tendency to portray singular elections as an indication of a monumental shift in the electorate. Obama’s campaign did not create a permanent coalition of liberals, moderates, and conservatives – they manufactured a melodramatic reaction to an unpopular president. 2008 was more a referendum on George Bush than a repudiation of Republicans in general.

President Obama, like one-term President Jimmy Carter, will soon learn the power of sharp disapproval of incumbent government in 2012, at which point I expect Sabato will be revisiting this comically premature argument.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

After rebounding from a series of gaffes and provocative interviews, Steele saw NY-20 as a means to change the narrative. He elected to up the ante and raise the profile of the race by investing large sums of money in the race, transferring $280,000 to the New York Republican State Committee, which is to say nothing of the $1,000,000 transferred to the financially-strained Hill committees.

The RNC transfers aside, Steele invested his own personal capital and celebrity in the hopes of assuaging committee members’ fears they elected the wrong guy for the job. Steele bet it all – his reputation and unclear future as party chief – on Tedisco, and now all he has are the shoes on his feet and the shirt on his back.

“We’ve come to play, and we’ve come to win,” Steele said on one of two visits to the district. Of course, it’s likely that Steele honestly thought this would be a Republican victory. And on paper, it should have been. Tedisco was a well-known state legislator and long time resident of the district who was opposite a young, relatively unknown ‘carpetbagger’ running in a district that as recent as 2006, Republicans enjoyed a 15 point lead in voter registration rolls.

Had Tedisco won, NY-20 was a genuine opportunity for Republicans to claim they had exorcised their demons from 2006 and 2008, but now it’s an opportunity for Democrats to manufacture a Republican Party schism by highlighting Steele’s vulnerabilities. Steele’s tenure has been marred by calls for resignation, questionable challenges from old opponents, and a potential vote of no confidence, the last two of which were contingent upon Tedisco losing. Democrats now hope that by embarrassing Steele and drawing attention to Tedisco’s loss they can provoke greater Republican in-fighting. The Democrats obviously don’t want Steele to resign, he is, after all, the gift that keeps giving (elections), but creating the perception that Republicans do is priceless.

When the dust settles, it is expected that Steele will remain in his post, if only for the institutional challenges that make ousting a sitting chairman near-impossible. Nonetheless, he’s treading on increasingly thin ice with committee members. In the hopes of regaining their confidence, he will likely shift his focus to the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, two of three races the beleaguered chairman described as ‘winnable’ by the GOP. The third was NY-20.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

After four years of sparing in the comments section, exchanging several emails, and a few weekend rendezvous, Althouse announced her whirlwind romance in typical Althouse fashion, an emblematic photo essay.

While engagements are generally joyous occasions, not all of Althouse’s fellow bloggers are rejoicing in her impending nuptials.

Upon learning of the news of Althouse’s engagement, The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan ironically adopted the mantle of the marriage brigade, crassly writing, “Ten days of emailing … and she was ready.”

Sullivan, a gay man with a committed partner of 5 years, is one of the most outspoken advocates for marriage equality, a proponent of the notion that all people, irrespective of sexual orientation, are inherently equal. This concept of equality, then, should confer the rights of marriage, proponents of gay rights argue.

Not so, says Sullivan, at least when this concept of marriage equality is applied to what he ostensibly views as frivolous heterosexual unions. Sullivan’s shrewd opposition to Althouse’s marriage is merely a disingenuous excuse for gay rights activists to flex waning political muscle in the wake of Prop 8’s passage.

Ironically, Sullivan is guilty of the same crime of his most socially conservative opponent: He now considers it his responsibility to validate, and likewise invalidate, the unions of others.

It takes a real egotist to make the news of another’s engagement about one’s self. At this rate, Sullivan would wear a white dress to Althouse’s wedding.

Shame on you, Andrew. Your comical egotism aside, the spiteful rhetoric – “OMFG” – likely won’t build the coalition of support necessary for the federal government to recognize your cohabitant as your husband.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

Though not a regular purchaser of lottery tickets, Mr. Amendolaro told the NYDN he purchases tickets when a number catches his eye. After noticing one such number – 054, the last three digits of Madoff’s prison ID – Amendolaro said to himself, “I’m going to be a winner with this guy even though everyone lost money with him.” Adding, “Somebody had to get a little lucky with him.”

A little lucky, indeed. 

After placing a $3 bet once a day for 3 days, Mr. Amendolaro’s “lucky number” came up.  For his petty $9 investment – a far cry from those made by others on Madoff’s investment scheme – Amendolaro will cash in his ticket for $1,500.

No word yet on whether Mr. Amendolaro will pursue similar reparations from Mr. Madoff’s ponzi companion, President Barack Obama. The former swindler, of course, pleaded guilty to securities fraud and robbing American investors to the tune of $65 billion; the latter managed to dupe voters out of $787 billion in one fell swoop.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

In light of Steele’s regrettable GQ interview, AFA President Don Wildmon asked members if the beleaguered Republican chief should resign from his post, declaring the former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland believes “abortion is a choice, and homosexuality is not.”

An overwhelming 94% of the more than 74,500 respondents answered Wildmon in the affirmative. 

Likewise making their displeasure known, prominent social conservative luminaries characterized Steele’s mea-culpa as “very troubling.” Ken Blackwell, who formerly endorsed Steele after withdrawing from consideration for chairman on the fifth round of balloting, sternly instructed his former rival to “re-read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the 2008 GOP Platform … or get out of the way.”

Both Chairman Steele and his socially conservative detractors, the number of which are growing by the thousands at AFA’s website, are sorely misinformed: The role of RNC Chairman is not one of a curator of opinion. Steele’s opinions on abortion and gay rights – whenever he settles on one – should have no influence on the implementation of sound strategies in his capacity as chairman.

Speculating perhaps that the “open,” candidate-centered campaign for chairman manufactured Steele’s present predicament by creating the perception that the candidates’ opinions actually mattered, Phil Klein writes, “in the end, it turned the race into more of a personality contest.”

The premature calls for the forcible ejection of the first African American chairman of the RNC – like those by the AFA’s tunnel-visioned membership – only offer credibility to the maddening circular firing squad meme.

Steele assumed office January 30th, 2008 with the hope he could unite a fractured party and make sense of the current political climate. Rome, as they say, wasn’t built in a day, and similarly, the Republican Party will not be re-built in three short months.

In addition to besting Blackwell, darling of the social conservative movement, Steele also wrestled former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan out of the running.

Despite his ability to mediate intra-party disputes with ease and his reputation as a prolific and unrivaled fundraiser, critics of Duncan often cited his scanty public appearances and interviews as motivation to elect a more polished, camera-friendly communicator. To them I say: Eat your words. In fact, have a second helping.

Cross-posted at www.Skepticians.com.

As it stands now, health benefits are readily available to spouses of federal employees, though as an official for the Office of Personnel Management explains, “spouses,” as stipulated by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, are persons “of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

In accordance with DOMA’s strict interpretation of spouses, gay federal employees are currently denied the opportunity to extend health care benefits to their partners – even if their states recognize them as legally married. This strict definition, they argue, denies gay men and women equal compensation.

The federally institutionalized ‘discriminatory practice’ of denying health coverage to the committed partners ostensibly violates Obama’s socially liberal sensibilities, but President Obama is first a politician looking to get reelected, and second an ally to the LGBT community. Obama understands when it’s politically advantageous to engage in ethnic-, religious-, social-, and regional-based politics, and, perhaps more importantly, when it’s not. The latter being anytime one is actually governing.

In an open letter to the gay community in February of last year, then-Senator Obama promised that he would “never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans,” adding that he was seeking the office of the presidency “to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all - a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters.”

In June of 2007, the Human Rights Campaign submitted their candidate questionnaire to Senators Obama and Hillary Clinton, in which they asked if the two candidates supported an extension of “federal rights, benefits, privileges and responsibility to same-sex couples,” so long as these partnerships met federal standards for commitment and mutuality of interests. Mr. Obama, like Senator Clinton, responded in the affirmative and without additional commentary.

Obama and gay rights groups have not always seen eye-to-eye, however. He previously earned the scorn of gay rights advocates in January with his selection of Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inaugural ceremony. Chastising Obama for his (negligible) olive branch to Evangelicals after a hyper-partisan campaign, HRC President Joe Solmonese characterized Warren’s pick as a “genuine blow to LGBT Americans.”

Can we expect the same anger from gay rights advocacy organizations when President Obama undoubtedly rolls over on them? That remains to be seen as many have earned a reputation as inefectual and too willing to compromise.

If Obama had the political capital his administration claims, social conservatives might have reason to fret (and LGBT Americans a reason to rejoice). They don’t, of course, but even if that were the case, Obama has proved himself to be nothing more than a craven political opportunist who has exhibited no misgivings in betraying his “principles” and “allies.”

An HRC spokesman did not respond to an immediate request for comment on this story.

Cross-posted at www.Skepticians.com.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really subscribed to [the] view [that homosexuality is a choice], that you can turn it on and off like a water tap,” he said in a recent interview with GQ’s Lisa DePaulo. Even going so far as comparing the static nature of sexuality to race, he said, “You just can’t simply say, oh, like, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m gonna’ stop being gay.’ It’s like saying, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m gonna’ stop being black.’”

Steele’s comments, while seemingly refreshing to moderate GOP members, highlight a serious concern among the fledgling chairman’s critics. His proclivity for embarrassing gaffes is forcing the RNC’s skeleton crew to work double-time to salvage what remains of his once sterling reputation as a polished spokesman.

“Lest we forget, communication was supposed to be his strongest suit,” writes an irritated Phil Klein. But why, then, must we be inundated with stories of clearly avoidable mistakes? Klein argues that Steele’s desire to portray a moderate-friendly image at all times, even at the cost of abandoning his own principles, results in the delivery of a “completely muddled message.”

Just yesterday morning Steele and the RNC were faced with the rumors that SCGOP Chair Katon Dawson was quietly gathering support among fellow committee members to hold a vote of no confidence after the NY20 special election, regardless of the outcome. Dawson has since emphatically denied the speculative “anonymous rumor,” but Steele’s comments yesterday will likely serve to embolden his many other rivals.

Greatly working to Steele’s advantage are the institutional challenges to ousting a sitting chairman. According to the rules adopted at the party’s convention earlier last year, Rule 5 states, “The chairman or co-chairman may be removed from office only by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the entire Republican National Committee.” Then, of course, is the public relations challenge to forcibly expelling the GOP’s first African American chairman – a move only the politically tone-deaf wouldn’t wince at.

Steele holds the chairmanship, and barring celestial intervention, that isn’t like to change anytime soon.

The problem for Steele, then, is not the potential for expulsion from his current post, but rather the extent to which these highly-publicized gaffes will upset the party’s fundraising. His predecessor, Mike Duncan, earned a reputation as a prolific fundraiser; consequently committee members will expect similar results from a chairman whose celebrity easily dwarfs the camera-shy Duncan.

Steele’s comments on abortion, of which I add were the most confusing from the GQ interview, will squarely pit him against social conservative activists and donors. And as such, he’s playing fast and loose with the committee’s large and small dolor donor database. March 20th — the release of FEC fundraising reports — will likely be the first of many bad days in the Steele administration, especially if he intends to keep poking the base in the eye with sharp objects.

By way of offering advice to Chairman Steele, a fellow RNC veteran quips, “He should be like Obama and carry his teleprompters wherever he goes.”

For obvious racial reasons, parallels between President Barack Obama and Steele have been drawn many a time. A more honest depiction, perhaps, would be to that of his loquacious side kick, the wordiest man in Washington – Vice President Joe Biden.

UPDATE: Steele’s GQ interview was conducted on February 24th — four days before his spat with Rush Limbaugh. The case can and will be made by Steele’s advisors that this was an early misstep as the new chairman worked to earn his sea legs in a rough squall. Tough sell, if you ask me, for the candidate who was pitched as the most polished Republican communicator among his many competitors for the top GOP post.

UPDATE II: With a new Chief of Staff at the helm of the RNC, Steele will presumably have more time for, ergh, interviews.

Cross-posted at www.Skepticians.com.

After an extremely divisive race for RNC Chairman, Steele, the former Chairman of GOPAC, bested Dawson on the sixth ballot, and political insiders are quick to note the lingering bad blood between the two rivals.

If Goddard’s sources are correct, Dawson won’t be the only top-ranking party official to voice their concern over Steele’s debut month as Chairman. In a memo circulated last week to national committee members, Dr. Ada Fisher, one of three African American members of the RNC and a former Dawson supporter, called for Steele’s resignation, saying he was “eroding confidence” in the national party apparatus to fundraise and remain competitive in a Republican-hostile climate.

The metrics by which Fisher, and ostensibly Dawson, judge Steele – his proposed ‘hip hop’ makeover, and the public flap with Rush Limbaugh – are embarrassingly shallow, particularly so when used as ammunition to call for a chairman’s resignation. As Politico’s Mike Allen explains, ousting a party chairman is no small order, in fact, the likelihood of other members joining Fisher and now Dawson is exceptionally low.

If the call for Steele’s resignation has legs, party members will likely look for leadership on the matter from House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and Utah Governor John Huntsman – the three of which are all potential candidates for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Were there any measurable means by which the committee could judge Steele’s performance, for example, first quarter fundraising, this vote of no confidence would seem less childish, but only slightly so. The first quarter fundraising report, however, won’t be released by the FEC until March 20. “Jumping the gun,” comes to mind.

The two potential scenarios, as I see them:

With disregard for the potential of self-destruction, Dawson forges ahead and continues quietly gathering support for the vote of no confidence in Steele. If Dawson’s motives are pure – remedying a collective lapse in judgment by electing an unprepared chairman – it’s an extremely hard sell given the impassioned race for Chairman, one which left only these two rivals standing on the last ballot. But the media, always loving the racially-tinged stories, will furiously latch on: “All-whites country club member moves to oust first African American GOP Chairman.” The resulting PR campaign would be focused on fending off accusations that the GOP is the last bastion of the Confederacy. It is, of course, not true, but reporters and editors know controversy drives readership, and readership means relevance.

Conveniently positioned as the fall guy by Steele detractors – potentially ex-RNC Chairman Mike Duncan staffers (of which I am one) and campaign supporters – Dawson faces the media’s indignant firing squad. As Dawson, who garnered 71 votes on the final ballot, goes down in flames, followed by his reputation as a proficient and cunning political chief, former Steele competitors begin working the backchannel for support in a post-Steele environment.

Of course, this is all highly speculative at the present moment. The RNC is operating on a skeleton crew, and as Jim Geraghty notes, “The changing of the guard at the RNC means that there are a lot of staffers who were, at one point, well-connected within a national party committee and who are now out in the cold.” Suffice it to say, no one has any real inclination as to what is happening behind the scenes at the RNC or what, if anything, is motivating Dawson to call for the vote.

UPDATE: By way of the National Review’s Campaign Spot, Dawson writes:

“I support Michael Steele. Our Committee elected him knowing that he can lead us during this critical time for our Party. The people behind this anonymous rumor are clearly intent on dividing the Republican National Committee and our Party at a time when we need to be united.”

Scenario two, whereby Steele’s detractors pacify both Steele and Dawson simultaneously, became a very real possibility.

Cross-posted at www.Skepticians.com.

At a gathering of 800 conservative activists at Americans for Prosperity’s “Defending the American Dream Summit,” Wurzelbacher warned of the “long road ahead” as Republicans wander the desert for the next four years without leadership, awaiting the 2010 and 2012 elections.

“Unfortunately we have a chairman up there who wants to redefine conservatism; he wants to make it hip hop, put it in a new package and sell it,” Wurzelbacher griped as he referenced a three week old Steele interview with the Washington Post’s Ralph Z. Hallow. After his historic election, the newly-minted Chairman told Hallow he intended to revitalize the Party’s stale image – one all too often associated with aging, technophobic white men – via an unprecedented presence in print, television, radio, and online outlets.

Wurzelbacher’s reductive critique of Chairman Steele’s agenda serves no one’s purpose beyond his own, as he recently hung up the plunger and boots to publish a book. And to boost sales of this not-so-originally titled book, Fighting for the American Dream, it isn’t surprising that Wurzelbacher would resort to drumming up controversy where none exists, or revive a one which has long since faded into the annals of bad talking points.

After a brief run-in with then Senator Barack Obama, Wurzelbacher was catapulted to the national stage by the McCain campaign as a shining example of the quintessential blue collar, small business owner who was threatened by Obama’s tax system. But his lasting influence – the fact we’re now 4 months out from November 4th but still forced to read the cringe-inducing title “Joe the Plumber” – is explained as such: His current media presence is an unfortunate byproduct of the 2008 campaign, a byproduct I regrettably helped create as an agent of that campaign. We unknowingly created a monster, and I suspect he won’t leave town until he’s chased by angry villagers with pitchforks.

Liz Mair, the former RNC Director of Online Communications, isn’t too pleased, and nails the issue on the head. “The GOP is really becoming a circular firing squad, and an increasingly embarrassing one at that,” she said on Twitter. At a time when the Republican Party should be unified in our opposition to the President, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Read, we find ourselves in a period of ‘all against all,’ each non-descript conservative claiming the mantle of “Leader” and vying for their own book deals. 

But Wurzelbacher already got his book deal; aside from his dignity, he’s got nothing to lose. Oh wait, I suppose he’s already lost that now, too.

The Chairman of the Republican Party is certainly not beyond reproach, but next time Joe, or his publicist, plans a canned, hackneyed attack to regain some media attention in an attempt to sell books, they should take serious pause.

Cross-posted at www.Skepticians.com.

Clearly emboldened by their unanimous “No” votes on the first version, House Republicans, masterfully corralled by Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), held the line yet again. Three Senate Republicans – Arlen Spector (R-PA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME) – broke rank and voted for the President’s stimulus package for fear the situation would become “much worse without this bill.”

Obama’s crusade to saddle future generations of Americans with $1 trillion in debts, notwithstanding stagflation, will result in nothing more than supplementing their paychecks with a disgraceful $8 a week pat on the back.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 equals 5.7% of America’s Gross Domestic Product (GPD), whereas President Roosevelt’s New Deal, at its height of fiscally irresponsible, equaled approximately 2%. The gross spending called for by bill – mandated by Congressional Democrats and President Obama – is equal to or larger than the GDP of 157 nations – all but 14 countries listed in the International Monetary Fund’s database for 2007. Among those countries dwarfed by the unprecedented spending are United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Iran, Taiwan, and Israel.

President Obama, by his own admission, owns this recovery bill, the largest of its kind in US history. “Congress has passed my economic recovery plan –- an ambitious plan at a time we badly need it,” he said in his weekly address this morning. Like FDR’s socially-transformative welfare policies, the implications of this bill’s sheer size and scope will likely not be known for several years, if not decades. But as Americans wake to the sobering reality that we’re now indebted to China, Saudi Arabia, and other hostile foreign creditors for trillions all for naught, Republicans would do well to remember just whose “economic recovery plan” this was.Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

Obama’s message of “transparency” and “reform,” it seems, was nothing more than focus-group tested campaign rhetoric, and his new executive orders are nothing more than a frustrating extension of the like.

The revolving-door of politics, the junior senator from Illinois frequently crowed, would end in his administration. Lobbyists, he added, “won’t find a job in my White House.” His bold opposition to Washington’s entrenched interests took Beltway-apathetic voters by storm, but now, as the difficult realities of elected office greet Obama in the Oval Office, the President has failed to truly deliver the clean break from the last 8 years.

In the two weeks since his inauguration, Obama has issued a staggering seventeen exceptions to his short-lived no-lobbyist dicta. Despite the campaign rhetoric and present hedging, President Obama and his Cabinet-level officials have surrounded themselves with corrupt lobbyists, all of whom are all too willing to sell short the promise of America.

What’s worse then President Obama’s recusal from adhering to his own policy? Congressional Republicans lack both the moral and ideological certitude to block the confirmation of Obama’s lobbyist appointments, or even voice concern over his near-two dozen executive-branch hires. Of course, their lack of conviction should come as no surprise, particularly so when they won’t object to his numerous tax cheat appointments either.

The president’s swift actions to undermine a two week-old ethics policy with a series of waivers and loopholes will not restore America’s confidence in Washington. This Administration’s present nuanced position on lobbyists is a direct result of then-Senator Obama’s over-promising.

Pouncing on the lobbyist issue in May of the general election, Obama said, “Lobbyists aren’t just part of the system in Washington, they’re part of the problem.” Indeed, lobbyists aren’t just part of the system in Washington: Lobbyists are a welcomed, institutionalized element to Obama’s White House.

American voters will soon awake to the sad reality that the candidate who offered the prospect of “change,” a new way of governing, and the ideal of post-partisanship, remains deeply rooted in the ways of the past.

*Cross-posted at Skepticians.com*