The Miami Herald

Joe Ricketts has decided not to spend $10 million on hate. Good call.

Carl Hiaasen

Ricketts is a billionaire, having founded TD Ameritrade, a company that promotes online stock trading by ordinary folks. You’ve seen the commercials on television.

Up until a few days ago, a circle of well-known Republican strategists had been coaching Ricketts to use his wealth to make America hate President Obama.

They’d seen the polls showing that the president is generally well-liked, even by many voters who don’t approve of his economic policies. In the most recent Gallup survey, Obama likeability rating was 60 percent. Some Republicans believe that Mitt Romney, whose likeability ratings are dismal (only 31 percent), has no chance of victory unless Obama’s image is dragged down.

However, unlike Romney, the Ricketts assault team had no misgivings about playing the race card. According to the New York Times, a game plan recently presented to the Ricketts family rather glumly conceded that voters “still aren’t ready to hate this president.”

The challenge, it said, is “to inflame their questions on his character and competency, while allowing themselves to still somewhat ‘like’ the man  . . .” Yet the scheme was far more ambitious than traditional doubt-sowing. The goal was to portray Obama as a radical black man with radical views of America as extolled by a cranky old minister.

All this was leaked in detail to the Times, and Joe Ricketts wasn’t pleased about that. Nor, one would imagine, were the shareholders of TD Ameritrade.

Not to mention the very diverse fan base of the Chicago Cubs. The team is 95-percent owned by the Ricketts family.

Supervised by a veteran GOP ferret named Fred Davis, the political operatives advised the the elder Ricketts to bankroll a media blitz focusing on Obama’s onetime pastor and spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

Obama publicly severed his ties with the African-American clergyman before the 2008 election, after inflammatory excerpts from Wright’s sermons came to light.

At the time, Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, refused to let his advisers use Wright’s comments to bash Obama. McCain strongly felt such campaign commercials were inappropriate, and would be viewed as race-baiting. But some of McCain’s advisers, including Fred Davis, felt the Arizona senator had missed a golden opportunity to smear his opponent.

Four years later, they saw another chance with Joe Ricketts. The title of the no-longer-secret proposal: “The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End his Spending for Good.”

A sample: “The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way.” We’re talking TV commercials, billboards, full-page newspaper ads. And here’s the clincher: These sharpies want to fly 8,500-square-foot aerial banners back and forth for hours over the site of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

The convention-goers, they assured Ricketts, will be “jolted.” Please, Joe, don’t unleash the banner planes — not the same diabolical, cutting-edge tactic used by beer companies at Daytona Beach!

In a political season that promises a surplus of low blows from both sides, the Ricketts Plan was scripted in the gutter.

Cliff Schecter

Meanwhile, mostly to the north of these states, “The United States of Canada,” was born, where Senator John Kerry windsurfed his way to victory. For those well versed in American history, the state-by-state breakdown possessed an eerie resemblance to another more somber map: That of the free states, slave states and territories permitting slavery just before the Civil War.

President Barack Obama shook up this equation somewhat in 2008, winning back some antebellum “free states” in the Midwest (Iowa, Indiana, Ohio). He also carried Southern (Virginia, North Carolina, Florida) and Southwestern (Colorado, Nevada) swing states that have seen their electoral leanings migrate leftward due to a large influx of Hispanics, youth and Northeastern snowbirds retiring to their environs.

Yet, it is still somewhat dispiriting to look at the map from pre-1860 and realize how relevant it is today, when predicting who will have racially-tinged immigration laws, collective bargaining rights, kill-at-will Stand Your Ground laws or comedy clubs where people actually laugh at Jeff Foxworthy.

In fact, as blue states move in the direction of progress while those of a more crimson hue embrace antediluvian delusion, it would almost be irresponsible not to wonder what, if anything, will hold the United States together in 20 years time?

The answer used to be simple: the federal government. But with a right-wing assault on the very concept, from Justice Scalia’s self-satisfied, blarney-based reading of the Constitution that state’s rights make might, to the Republican default position that the federal government has no role in protecting women from workplace discrimination or violence, times have clearly changed.

This is not hyperbole. Two thirds of the Republican Senate Caucus voted against reauthorizing The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) last week, because according to Senator Mike Lee of Utah, “…the real danger is of the federal government unduly interfering with the ability of states and localities to address activities and concerns in their communities.”

Of course, if you were a woman and potential victim of a violent assault you might see things differently. You might — and I’m just spitballing here — view “the real danger” as coming more from someone about to beat or kill you than the federal government’s “interfering.” But hey, all 31 Republican Senators who opposed VAWA were men, so you know, no worries bro!

While Oklahoma and Tennessee were working on legislation to actually ban the teaching of global warming and evolution, Connecticut was abolishing the death penalty. While “Republican legislators in Texas have voted to eliminate funding for any women’s healthcare clinic with an affiliation to an abortion provider — even if the affiliation is merely a shared name, employee, or board member,” the California state legislature is pushing to liberalize abortion laws, increasing the eligible pool of those able to assist a woman in exercising her right to choose.

Meanwhile, Arizona, not one for being shy about their crazy, has passed legislation (which is clearly unconstitutional) saying, “life begins at menstruation” for potential mothers-to-be. I hear next they’re looking to change the standard to “when she has that gleam in her eye” or after the first Milwaukee’s Best at a frat party.

States have a common history, but a very different view of it. We do share language, but then again, we also share a basic dialect with New Zealand. Blue states might even start questioning why their tax dollars disproportionately fund red, welfare-hating, “welfare” states that take in more federal dollars than they send back to Washington.

Of course the only answer is to push back against assaults on the federal government. Just as it was needed to end slavery and enact civil rights, is the only force that can give this country a common cultural understanding of what is acceptable and what being a democracy means.

We must either defeat the ideology of anti-government zealotry ascendant among today’s right-wing Randroids, or I don’t see what will be holding us together a generation down the road.

Cliff Schecter is the President of Libertas, LLC, a progressive public relations firm, and the author of the 2008 bestseller “The Real McCain.” Email Cliff at cliffschecter@gmail.com/.

French President Nikolas Sarkozy just became the latest politician to lose his job because he wouldn’t let economic experience – or political common sense – sway him from the path of austerity.

Will Sarkozy’s downfall help Democrats learn what he never could? Democrats should

Richard (RJ) Eskow

consider Sarkozy’s fate a cautionary tale – and a call to action. If they rally around the cause of growth, jobs, and optimism, the nation will benefit and they’ll rewarded at the polls.

But if they keep pushing their own brand of “austerity lite,” they – and we – will have gained nothing from the lessons of Europe. iI won’t matter how much more extreme the Republicans are. Democrats, who hold the White House and the Senate, will still be seen as the party in charge – the one that presided over a terrible economy and, if the “Grand Bargainers” have their way, the one that cut popular government programs.

They’ll also run the risk of paying the same price Nikolas Sarkozy paid.

The Austerity Democrats

This should be the Democrats’ moment, a time to make political gains in the most honorable way possible: by fighting for what’s right. Today’s radical Republicans want to destroy government and slash the very spending that’s needed to rescue the economy. The GOP is even rejecting the common-sense spending on roads and bridges embraced by past Republicans from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. As austerity measures eviscerate Europe’s economy and undermine the political popularity of its leadership, this should be the Democrats’ finest hour.

Unfortunately, too many Democratic leaders have preferred to echo the austerity rhetoric of their Republican opponents – and of Europe’s embattled leaders. The President’s last debt deal with John Boehner was a milder version of European austerity, and it slowed our country’s tentative growth. And yet he’s reportedly pushing for another “Grand Bargain,” leaving him with a muddled economic message, and Americans in a prolonged state of fear.

Even Nancy Pelosi, a long-time stalwart of traditional Democatic liberalism, said that she would vote for the “Simpson/Bowles” plan, a set of personal opinions about deficit reduction which wassubmitted by the co-chairs of the Deficit Commission after they failed to lead it to a successful conclusion.

The Simpson/Bowles plan is nothing more than an American blueprint for repeating Europe’s failed policies.

The Right Time to Go Left

These Democrats should have taken a cue from the surge in popularity the President enjoyed after he began fighting for jobs – jobs that can only be created through government spending. But they didn’t seem to get the message. The President still repeats the meaningless conservative analogy between governments and families – that governments should “cut their budgets in tough ties, just like families do when they sit around the kitchen table …”

Nonsense. A better analogy, although still imperfect, would be between government and a business … a store, let’s say, that has good workers and good merchandise, but no customers Nobody’s shopping there because the showroom is falling apart and it’s running low on inventory. The only way for that business to get back in the black tomorrow is by spending more today.

It’s called “investment,” and it’s nothing more than common sense. That’s what our government needs. Polls show that the public understands this common-sense solution.

Too Clever by Half

But too many Democrats seem to think they don’t have to fight for jobs or spending to get us through these tough times – that they just have to be less extreme than the other guys. And they seem to have the too-clever-by-half notion that they can offer “bargainss” which the Republicans won’t take, proving themselves to be more “reasonable” than the other guy.

One problem with that idea is that the Republicans might take their deal, as Boehner did last year. A bigger problem is that they’re repeating the false austerity mantras of the right instead of explaining what’s really happening, leaving the public confused and in despair.

But the biggest problem with that idea is the economy itself. More sluggish performance from the economy will sow more doubt on the President and his party while spreading even more pain among the general population.

Nowhere is the madness more self-evident than on the topic of Social Security. Its trustees’ latest projections are seen as proof that the program’s benefits must be cut, in classic austerity-economics fashion. But the lion’s share of the changes to its long-term fiscal projections were due to an ongoing recession caused by … austerity economics!

The Summit

Next week former President Bill Clinton, whose “triangulating” brand of Democratic centrism places him slightly to the right of Sarkozy economically, will join radical right-wing Rep. Paul Ryan for the second time at a “Fiscal Summit” funding by conservative billionaire Pete Peterson and his foundation. Even more disturbingly, Clinton will be joined by a key Pelosi aide, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, as well as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (who will also be making a return appearance).

Will Democrats use the “Fiscal Summit” and other upcoming events to challenge the failed austerity policies of Europe’s leadership, or to mimic those leaders by leading us down the same road?

If it’s the latter, they’ll cause incalculable harm to our economy – and their political futures.

Poison

Austerity economics imposes sharp cuts in government spending in an attempt to restore economic growth. That’s like putting leeches on a patient to draw the blood out: Instead of curing the disease it makes it much, much worse. Any lingering doubts about that have been dispelled by Europe’s experience , where it has turned struggling economies have been turned into shattered economies.

And now Sarkozy’s fall has given us yet more confirmation that the austerity which he co-promoted with Germany’s Angela Merkel is a political career-killer. (Gallic pride made it impolitic to point out that France was clearly the junior partner in that duo, with Sarko playing Bob Hope to Merkel’s Bing Crosby.)

Now he’s paid the price. But Sarkozy’s not the first to fall, and he won’t be the last. Two leaders have already been defeated in Greece because they bowed before the austerity diktats of European power brokers. In the latest round of elections there, where democratic processes were initially all but overruled by the international financial sector, Greeks repudiated that country’s externally imposed, “bipartisan” austerity consensus by soundly rejecting all the major political parties.

Would-be Washington “centrists,” take heed.

Great Britain’s Austerian Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition felt the pain this week too, as Labour made massive gains in local elections throughout England, Scotland, and Wales.

The “fiskalpakt” that the Germans are pushing on their reluctant continent is even becoming political poison in Germany itself, where Merkel’s center-right coalition just took a drubbing in a state election.

That’s not just a repudiation of economic policy. It’s a rejection of the false “bipartisanship” that’s forged when political insiders from the right and the mild left come together to follow unpopular policies dictated from powerful unelected forces.

As the guy in the cell phone ads used to say: Can you hear me now?

Warning Signs

Let’s hope so. Because another disturbing trend to come out of Europe reflects an age-old pattern: When people feel fearful financially they turn in ever-larger numbers toward xenophobia, racism, and rage. The most dangerous situation in Europe today is probably the one in Hungary. The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban shows all the signs of incipient totalitarianism, fueled by and reinforced by its practice of using thinly-disguised code words to reinforce hostility toward any citizen who is not “ethnically Hungarian.”

Even after Greece’s “bipartisan” leaders trampled on the public’s needs and preferences, this week’s election results were still somewhat shocking. The Socialists led other Greek parties for many years and won 44 percent of the vote in 2009. But this time around they trailed a party called “the Coalition of the Radical Left,” which won between 15 and 17 percent of the vote to its 12 or 13 percent. That may be understandable, since the increasingly bland parties of European socialism have lost their bite – but what’s truly frightening is the rise of the anti-immigrant and Nazi-saluting “Golden Dawn Party,” which achieved its first Parliamentary presence with 5 to 8 percent of the vote.

In France the racist, far-right party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, now led by Le Pen’s more telegenic and less blunt daughter Marine, performed exceptionally well in the first round of this year’s elections. Sarkozy openly appealed to xenophobia himself in the runoff. Had Ms. Le Pen not urged her supporters to abstain from voting, his ugly race-baiting appeals might very well have worked.

It can’t happen here, somebody’s probably saying. But it can – and we’re already seeing the warning signs. Our elected officials have an obligation to do the right thing for the sake of our social order, as well as our economy.

Showtime

Republicans are already using our poor economic performance to argue that Keynesian economics and stimulus spending don’t work, when the exact opposite is true: We’re doing better than parts of Europe because we did have some stimulus spending, but it wasn’t enough. Call our policy “austerity lite” – but if we switch to the hard stuff we’ll have a hangover that will last for generations. And if the Democratic Party doesn’t clearly and forcefully map the case for the policies we really need, the President and his party could find themselves following in Sarkozy’s footsteps.

At last year’s Fiscal Summit Bill Clinton repeated the austerity-economics claptrap of the right, especially on Social Security, telling the radically right-wing Rep. Ryan that Republicans and Democrats should “break out of theology” and push for “bipartisan cooperation.” Now Nancy Pelosi’s saying she would have voted for the draconian Simpson/Bowles plan, which is more of the same austerity madness.

If we hear more austerity talk at the “Fiscal Summit” rom party leaders like Clinton, Administration officials like Tim Geithner, and Pelosi ally Chris Van Hollen the result will be disastrous – for the economy, for ordinary Americans, and for the electoral prospects of Democrats everywhere. It would mean that the lessons of Europe, and the fate of Nikolas Sarkozy, has taught them nothing.

It’s almost showtime. Will the Democrats meet the moment and fight for the future – or follow in Sarkozy’s footsteps and walk blindly toward the failures of the past?

With the stroke of a pen, Connecticut Gov. Danniel P. Malloy abolished the death penalty last week making that state the 17th in the country to abandon capital punishment.

In the last five years, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Illinois also have repealed the death penalty. California voters will decide the issue in November.

Also last week, with pen in hand, Florida Gov. Rick Scott eliminated funding for the crucial Florida Innocence Commission created by the Florida Supreme Court to study wrongful convictions and advocate for reform. It’s set to expire in June.

Since 1973, an incredible 140 people in 26 states have been released from death row after evidence emerged of their innocence. Florida leads the list with 23 innocent people who were wrongly condemned to be executed.

Given the enormity of what’s at stake, and the knowledge that innocent people have been executed for crimes they did not commit, Florida cannot afford to do without the Innocence Commission.

Since July 2008, when the state’s Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Act took effect, a dozen claims worth millions of dollars have been filed by innocent people imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit, another indicator of the grievous mistakes we know are made in the criminal justice system.

The high cost to taxpayers of death row appeals — $1.26 million per case, according to Amnesty International — and the financial and emotional burden on victims’ families, who often attend hearings for years, is onerous.

Last year, the legislature appropriated a miniscule amount of money for the commission — $200,000. Another $114,000 came from a Florida Bar Foundation grant. Absent ongoing support, the commission was set to expire in June.

Meanwhile, North Carolina, California, Connecticut, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are among 10 states continuing to learn and right wrongs through the work of Innocence Commissions.

For years, Connecticut’s Gov. Malloy supported the death penalty, but had a change of heart. He said the growing list of people sentenced to death, and later found to be innocent, was impossible to ignore. Ultimately, ending the death penalty was the only way to prevent injustice in a fallible system.

The Florida Innocence Commission, with Orange/Osceola Chief Judge Belvin Perry, Jr. at the helm, was tasked with studying false eyewitness identifications, interrogation techniques, false confessions, the use of informants, the handling of forensic evidence, attorney competence and conduct, the processing of cases and the administration of the death penalty.

“We cannot ignore what must be done in order to improve our ever-evolving criminal justice system,” Perry wrote in an interim report. “We must continue to be vigilant in seeking and maintaining the spirit of cooperation between the courts, law enforcement, and other agencies in identifying issues and implementing solutions.”

The death penalty is slowly on its way out in this country. Unfortunately, Florida must first elect a governor and political leaders courageous enough to end this government-sanctioned murder.

The Florida Innocence Commission should be kept in place as the check and balance on a flawed system that administers our society’s ultimate penalty.

Without constant oversight, all we are left with is the same criminal justice system that wrongfully convicted these individuals in the first place.

In the town of Zion, Illinois, mostly known as the birthplace of Gary Coleman, but also the place where my family resided for years, there is a law on the books that arrested anyone who spat on the sidewalk. Back in the 1950s, it was actually enforceable. Nowadays, it is ignored, yet the law is still on the books.

Mad as hell and not going to take this anymore!

While it took decades for that law to be negated, it only took Florida’s Fair Districts laws less than two years to become totally invalid. And uneducated and ill-informed Florida Supreme Court, just hours ago, ruled that the Florida State Senate map, which could leave Lakeland, Daytona Beach and Gainesville without senate representation from their towns, has passed.

In a number of articles on this website, we have stressed not only the invalidity of the plan, but the fact that the Florida Supreme Court is absolutely oblivious to the law. The plan that has been validated has 21 safe Republican seats, thus making it impossible for Democrats to “have a chance” to take back the Senate. Apparently, the simple-minded court could only handle the “appendage” issue and lacked the mental capacity to expand their thinking to other aspects of the law.

Either they aren’t that bright, or they are blatant partisans. I feel it is a mixture of both.

Not only has the ruling today been a blow to the Fair Districts law, it has now set legal precedent regarding future redistricting. Since the Florida Supreme Court says, in this ruling, that gerrymandering is absolutely valid in order to favor one political party (which the law specifically says cannot happen), any future gerrymandered maps can use this ruling as their legal precedent. Basically, the Fair Districts law died on April 27th, 2012.

But now the ruling has come in. And while we are all disappointed in the court’s lack of understanding of anything regarding redistricting, we need to move on. So, what do progressives and Democrats need to do from this point on?

First, we cannot dwell on this ruling. It has been handed down and there is nothing we can do about it. Every day that we exert energy discussing this plan, we are taking time away from working to defeat Republicans. We now have a plan, we know what we have to do, and we have to “work the plan”.

Second, Democrats need to figure out what seats, while slightly Republican, are possible pickups for Democrats over the next ten years. For example, the Seminole County Senate district as well as the Orange-to-Lakeland district aren’t shoe-ins for the Republicans.

This brings me to my third point…Democrats need to start recruiting quality candidates and start pumping a ton of money into these races. If we want to take over the marginal districts, we need to show a strong commitment to winning them. And while we are moving in that direction, we must continue and not slow down. In Central Florida, we have seen the best slate of candidates running for State House and State Senate since 1992. We must build on this, we must raise more money and we must strike the fear of God into the GOP.

Fourth, we need to start being Democrats! There has always been this “oh, we need to be more moderate” way of thinking in the Democratic Party since the early 1990s. And where has this gotten us? Exactly, with super-majorities for the Republicans in the House and Senate as well as all of the Constitutional Offices. “Moderate” means that a candidate has no soul. It means that it is hard to differentiate between the Democratic and Republican candidates. And when a candidate runs a “moderate” line, nobody is rallied to vote for them. In addition, voters can’t tell you about “moderate” candidates and what they stand for. Candidates can be good progressives, but also have a level head as well, like Congresswoman Kathy Castor.

Here in the State of Florida, Republicans have given us more than enough issues in which we can contrast our views of the future of Florida. Let’s use those. Let’s not do the “oh, I’m almost like my Republican opponent, but pro-choice.” Let’s take on the AIF and the Republican establishment. The AIF and our Progressive ratings of some of the Democrats in the Legislature is absolutely embarrassing! It is time to saddle up, come up with our plan of attack, and take these Republican on head-to-head. Are you ready to do it? I sure the hell am!

Fifth and finally, the most important race for Democrats to win in the next two years is the Governor’s race. Luckily, we do have some good candidates, if they decide to run. And, luckily, a lot of Republicans are actually drinking the Rick Scott Kool-Aid. There is still a slight possibility he could be the GOP nominee. And if he is, we should win easily.

There are two important reasons why Democrats need to work “double hard” on the Governor’s race. First, the reason we are discussing this issue in the first place is because of the Supreme Court’s ruling. If Democrats win the 2014 Governor’s race, then the 2016 race becomes even more important. In 2016, Charles Canady, Jorge Labarga and Ricky Polston are up for retention. If the voters vote “no” to retain those justices, the process of replacing those judges would take place immediately. In addition, two justices, R. Fred Lewis and James Perry, will have mandatory retirement.

This means the Democratic governor, elected in 2014, will have the final say and will, hopefully, be able to appoint progressive-minded judges, if the Florida Judicial Nominating Commission offers any. The entire face of the court could be changed, and the Supreme Court retention races should be a very high priority for progressives.

The second reason that a Democratic governor is important is because legislative races, in many cases, mirror the gubernatorial race. When did the Florida House and Senate start to switch? When Jeb Bush came within an eyelash of defeating Lawton Chiles. If we can perform a stellar campaign on the gubernatorial level, then qualified candidates in marginal Republican districts can pull off the win.

If today’s ruling didn’t energize you as a Democrat or a progressive, it should have. We always talk about how we feel we are being treated “unfair”. And a pure violation of the Fair Districts law is about as unfair as hell.

Let me steal the most famous quote from the movie Network…”I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

You should be as well. Time to tighten up your boxing gloves and fight. If you don’t want to fight, get out of the ring. If you do want to fight, welcome aboard!

Alan Grayson

This was not some passing fad. This went on for 2,700 years, throughout Asia and Europe, and then the New World.

The leeches actually were grown on leech farms. Doctors bought the leeches in lots, and kept them in an earthenware jar with little breathing holes in it. Whenever a patient “needed” one, the doctor would apply it to the patient. And then the leech would suck the patient’s blood out.

Yuk.

So, basically, whatever was wrong with you, the doctor would attach a blood-sucking parasite to you, and that was supposed to make it better.

And that actually sounds very much like the right-wing’s economic policies. Whatever might be wrong with the economy, let’s just drain all the blood out of it, and see if that helps.

Unemployment? Let’s cut teacher jobs. Deficit? Let’s cut police and firefighter jobs. Trade imbalance? Let’s cut sanitation and public transport jobs. Banking crisis? Let’s cut nursing jobs.

Just bleed that sucker.

Yesterday, in the New York Times, Paul Krugman described right-wing economics in a similar way: “suicide by economic crisis.” The greedheads who run Europe are exploiting the economic crisis in weaker countries like Greece and Spain to wipe out pensions, benefits, unions and public healthcare everywhere. They don’t just want to tear the social safety net. They want to nuke it.

The saddest thing about that is all of the pain that it inflicts on the vulnerable and the needy. But the next saddest thing is this:

It just doesn’t work. Bleeding a patient with leeches doesn’t make him healthy. Even if you bleed him dry.

And now the greed-heads are coming for us, with their Ryan Budget and their Medicare vouchers and their Social Security cuts and their Medicaid block grants and their student vouchers and their privatization. Now, they’re coming for us.

Well, here is my answer:

No.

Now get lost, you leeches.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

 BY THE MIAMI HERALD EDITORIAL

Stand Your Ground. If only the details of the law were as straightforward, as resolute as its name. However, the tragic shooting of Miami Gardens teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford has revealed for all the world to see how confusing, how inconsistently applied, how abused it is. None of that serves the cause of justice.

Meet Nathan Fletcher, candidate for mayor of San Diego.

He will lose, at least if the polls are right. But he has raised a minor stir through a video posted online a few days back. In it, he explains his decision to leave the Republican Party and identify henceforth as an independent. “I don’t believe we have to treat people we disagree with as an enemy,” he says. “I think we can just say sometimes we disagree. . . . I’ve fought in a war,” adds Fletcher, a Marine who served in Iraq. “I have seen the enemy. We don’t have enemies in our political environment here.”

Leonard Pitts

Fletcher’s decision has been scorned by observers from both parties as a desperate gamble by a guy trying to shake up a flagging campaign. Maybe it is. But that doesn’t denigrate the essential truth of what he said, and in particular, that word he used: enemies.

It is a telling term. After all, one might negotiate with an “opponent.” One only contends against an “adversary.” But one seeks to destroy an enemy.

And it makes you wonder: Is that really the way we the people see ourselves? The evidence of recent years suggests that it is. The so-called culture wars — a battle of ideas and ideals concerning abortion, faith, gay rights, gun rights, Muslim rights, global warming, healthcare, immigration — are fought with splenetic bile that would have been unthinkable not too very long ago.

But that was before a congressman heckled a president, before guns were brought to presidential appearances, before a radio host called a college woman a “slut,” before someone set a fire at the construction site of a Tennessee mosque, before “I want my country back” became a rallying cry. It was before there grew this gnawing sense that we do not know each other anymore, that the extremes are pulling the center apart.

Nor is Fletcher the only one to notice. Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican moderate, announced her retirement a little over a month ago, blaming the dysfunction and polarization of American politics.

One is tempted, in the spirit of moral equivalence, to ascribe blame for this polarization to both parties, but that is simply untrue. For all their sins of ineptitude, infighting, cynicism, and even occasional name calling, it is not the Democrats who have gone off the ideological deep end.

The party has not championed same sex marriage or gun confiscation, much as some of its constituents might want it to. It compromised on healthcare and the Bush-era tax cuts, much as some of its constituents wish it had not.

No, it is the GOP that has abandoned the center and embraced ideological extremism as a virtue. It is telling to hear its candidates use “moderate” as an epithet and argue over who is the most “conservative,” as if the word contained some pixie dust of common sense and moral rectitude. It is sobering to realize that Ronald Reagan, patron saint of modern conservatism, would be unelectable by the standards thereof: He raised taxes and was known to compromise with political opponents — not “enemies” — to get things done.

That was then. His party has since engaged in a 30-year flight from the center that reaches its nadir — at least, let us hope it’s the nadir — in this era of tea party incoherence, faith-based policy, fear mongering and tax pledge tyranny. This era when compromise is both lost art and dirty word and some Americans see other Americans as enemies — an era in which there is something lonely and foregone about pleading with an angry nation that this is not how it is supposed to be.

As one Republican once put it, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.”

For the record, Nathan Fletcher did not say that. Abraham Lincoln did, 39 days before the beginning of the Civil War.

Richard Cohen

2008 presidential campaign. The decision to do so was absolutely correct. With her selection as John McCain’s running mate, American politics lost its way — and maybe its mind as well.

The movie portrays Palin as an ignoramus. She did not know that Queen Elizabeth II does not run the British government, and she did not know that North and South Korea are different countries. She seemed not to have heard of the Federal Reserve. She called Joe Biden “O’Biden” and she thought America went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein, not al-Qaeda, had attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Not only did she know little, but she was determinately incurious and supremely smug in her ignorance.

At the same time, she was a liar. In the movie, she was called exactly that by McCain’s campaign chief, Steve Schmidt, who came to realize — a bit late in the game — that one of Palin’s great talents was to deny the truth. When confronted, she simply shuts down — petulant, child-like — and then sulks off.

Palin objects to this characterization — as does McCain — but the movie has been endorsed by too many of Palin’s top campaign aides to put its veracity in doubt. Some of them had come to revile the Alaska governor — enough to leak some awful facts but not quite enough to go public. Had the election been really close, I wonder if they would have run out into the street yelling that Palin — a heartbeat away from the possible presidency — was a monster. Everybody loves their country. Some people love their careers even more.

All this is now history, I want to say. But then I must instantly correct myself. ApresPalin has come a deluge of dysfunctional presidential candidates. They do not lie with quite the conviction of Palin, but they are sometimes her match in ignorance. As with Palin, it seemed hardly to matter. Herman Cain for a while was a front-runner. He had a nonsensical tax plan, zero knowledge of foreign affairs and had never held elective office. Yet, for a brief but terrifying moment, many Republicans were saying he should be the next president of the United States.

Michelle Bachmann told a touching fib about vaccinations and Rick Perry did not know squat about who governs Turkey, a NATO ally and a vitally important Middle East power. He got wrong the number of justices on the Supreme Court — he said eight — and could not remember a Cabinet department he had vowed to eliminate.

Rick Santorum knows his stuff, but his stuff includes a wild denunciation of John F. Kennedy’s famous speech about the proper role of religion in public life and a characterization of President Obama as a snob for extolling the value of college. Newt Gingrich has the wattage to be president, but so does Hannibal Lecter, if you get my drift. As for Ron Paul, he appears to be running for president of some theme park.

I have excluded Mitt Romney from my list of fools and knaves. (He has other problems.) But there once was a time when Romney would not have stood out as the only candidate who knew something about the issues that confront a president. Since Palin, though, ignorance has become more than bliss. It’s now an attribute, an entire platform: Vote for me, I know nothing and hate the same things you do.

Palin is no longer an anomaly. McCain didn’t choose her for her intellectual or experiential qualities, nor because he was geographically or ideologically balancing the ticket. She was an antiabortion woman with a pulse: Enough! She, like the out-of-nowhere Obama, had the stuff of celebrity — the snap, the dazzle, the self-assurance, the sex appeal. She didn’t need to dance with a star. God told her she already was one.

So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these no longer may matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.

Ten years ago John Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority, which argued that a variety of demographic trends spelled doom for the Republican Party.

Kevin Drum

Unfortunately for Judis and Teixeira, Republicans ignored their demographic doom and won a convincing victory in 2004. But hey, that was due to 9/11 and Iraq and the war on terror, and who could have predicted that? Then Democrats chalked up big wins in 2006 and 2008 (whew!), but in 2010 Republicans came roaring back. But hey, that was because of an epic recession, and who could have predicted that? Any day now, those demographics are going to kick in and Republicans will be doomed once and for all. Honest.

I am, obviously, being a smart-ass about this. In fact, as Jon Chait writes today in “2012 or Never,” the demographic trends that Judis and Teixeira wrote about really are continuing apace. Smart Republicans are well aware of this, and they’re especially well aware that one of the biggest demographic trends working against them is the growth of the Latino population. So a few years ago, as a way of peeling off some Latino votes from the Democrats, they took a stab at passing a moderate immigration bill. Unfortunately, their base went into a full-bore revolt and began demanding a harsher anti-immigrant policy instead of a more moderate one. As Jon says, this was about like publicly announcing an electoral suicide pact on national TV.

And it gets worse. At the same time that Republicans are deliberately adopting policies that spell long-term disaster, they’ve also adopted an uncompromising all-or-nothing political strategy that appeals to their existing base but has cost them dearly in the form of short-term Democratic victories. A more moderate party could have stopped or watered down health care reform, but instead they got Obamacare. A more moderate party could have struck a historic spending deal with Obama, but instead they got nothing. And like lemmings going over a cliff, virtually all of them voted for Paul Ryan’s budget roadmap, which was extremely unpopular with most voters. What’s going on?

The way to make sense of that foolhardiness is that the party has decided to bet everything on its one “last chance.”…Grim though the long-term demography may be, it became apparent to Republicans almost immediately after Obama took office that political fate had handed them an impossibly lucky opportunity. Democrats had come to power almost concurrently with the deepest economic crisis in 80 years, and Republicans quickly seized the tactical advantage, in an effort to leverage the crisis to rewrite their own political fortunes.

…During the last midterm elections, the strategy succeeded brilliantly…In the long run, though, the GOP has done nothing at all to rehabilitate its deep unpopularity with the public as a whole, and has only further poisoned its standing with Hispanics. But by forswearing compromise, it opened the door to a single shot. The Republicans have gained the House and stand poised to win control of the Senate. If they can claw out a presidential win and hold on to Congress, they will have a glorious two-year window to restore the America they knew and loved, to lock in transformational change, or at least to wrench the status quo so far rightward that it will take Democrats a generation to wrench it back. The cost of any foregone legislative compromises on health care or the deficit would be trivial compared to the enormous gains available to a party in control of all three federal branches.

Jon doesn’t actually offer any evidence that this is what’s motivating Republicans, and likewise, I can’t really marshal much evidence that he’s wrong. But I have a hard time buying this. If I’m reading him correctly, he’s saying that Republicans know they’re doomed, and they’re deliberately adopting a catastrophic long-term strategy in the hopes that one last hurrah will be enough to keep America conservative even if they do lose every election for the next 20 years.

But this simply doesn’t pass the human-nature test. I can’t peer into the souls of Republicans, but I don’t get any sense that they believe themselves to be doomed. People just don’t think that way. Rather, I get the sense that they’re true believers who think that, deep in its heart, America agrees with them.

This also doesn’t pass the common sense test. Even if Republicans do win control of all three branches, they aren’t going to win 60 seats in the Senate. They aren’t even going to come close. So if they try to roll back the New Deal, or whatever their plan is, Democrats will filibuster it. Republicans have already shown them how, after all. The GOP will certainly be able to move the dial a bit if they win in November, but there’s no way anyone in the party thinks they can “lock in transformational change” over a two-year period with 52 votes in the Senate.

Basically, I just don’t think there’s a huge mystery to be solved here. When Democrats lost to Reagan, they nominated first Walter Mondale and then Michael Dukakis before finally tacking to the center and putting Bill Clinton in the White House. That was a 12-year stretch. Britain’s Labour Party spent a decade moving left before they finally tacked back to the center after losing to Margaret Thatcher. It took them 18 years to finally regain power. Republicans have only been in the wilderness for either four or six years, depending on how you count. If it takes until 2016 for them to come to their senses, that would be a pretty normal progression.

Republicans don’t think they have one last chance before the fat lady sings them off the stage. They’re just reacting emotionally to a big defeat by convincing themselves that they were rejected because they hadn’t been true enough to their principles. That happens all the time. They’ll come around eventually.