The New Republic

As I said yesterday, I don’t think it’s a mistake at all to try to regard change in White House personnel, especially the Chief of Staff, as a big deal. How well the White House runs can have a lot to do with whether presidents succeed or not.  READ MORE >>

I’ve been convinced for a year now that the future of the public option was bright. Liberal activists love it, which means that Democrats are going to be pressed to support it in contested primaries. It polls well generally, meaning that Dems will feel it’s a relatively safe way to make liberal activists happy. And as a bonus, the CBO loves it, which means that supporting a public option allows liberal candidates to support spending or tax cuts and still claim that their proposals are deficit neutral. READ MORE >>

I hate to make my blogging an all-Bai, all-the-time, debunk-o-fest, but really, sometimes he just asks for it -- and today’s article is also a good peg on which to hang a couple of important points, which I’ll get to below. READ MORE >>

Andrew Sullivan responded to my questions about Palin’s candidacy by asking: And who, I ask again, can beat her? That’s the other side of this equation. Obama did it against the Clintons. Why couldn’t Palin do it against ... no one? Good questions! Time for a speculative post about some of the possible answers. READ MORE >>

Via a nice tweet from Brendan Nyhan, I see that Jay Cost is continuing to try to link the Democrats’ problems (which are, of course, very real) to their decision to act on health care reform: READ MORE >>

Via Ezra, I very much enjoyed Lexington’s discussion (in the Economist) of Framer worship, Founder worship, and Constitution worship (second link is to his print column, which I won’t discuss here until the end, but it’s really highly recommended -- excellent stuff). READ MORE >>

It’s GOP “A Pledge to America“ day. On the politics, see Marc Ambinder, who points out that the 1994 “Contract” didn’t help Republicans then, and the Pledge won’t help, and could possibly harm around the margins, Republicans now. READ MORE >>

If this is true, I'm significantly downgrading my opinion of the Barack Obama presidency: READ MORE >>

Want a little whiplash? Start by reading Jonathan Rauch’s fascinating NJ story about the decentralized, leaderless structure of the Tea Party Patriots. And then head over to the NYT expose on the big-shot GOP consultant making a killing off of the Tea Party Express. Is the Tea Party a grassroots, egalitarian social movement, or a GOP astroturf front group? READ MORE >>

What will happen in Alaska? I think that the early handicapping of the Alaska Senate race, which features primary winner Joe Miller, incumbent Senator/primary loser/write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski, and Democratic nominee Scott McAdams -- is not sufficiently taking into account the inherent potential for random and unstable results. READ MORE >>