DNC hits Gingrich, GOP ending Medicare litmus test

The literati at the DNC weigh into the Gingrich/Ryan kerfuffle and simultaneously make both Newt and every GOPer who thinks Gingrich was insufficiently obsequious to Ryan look nuts. Obviously this video is a falsehood.

As Dan Pfieffer said on Twitter, "ending Medicare as we know it is the new GOP litmus test." Read More......

Ryan's budget & the primary

David Brooks writes of Paul Ryan's budget & proposed privatization of Medicare:

The Ryan budget will not be enacted this year, but it will immediately reframe the domestic policy debate.

His proposal will set the standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this discussion. It will become the 2012 Republican platform, no matter who is the nominee. Any candidate hoping to win that nomination will have to be able to talk about government programs with this degree of specificity, so it will improve the G.O.P. primary race.

While I was inclined to agree with Brooks about Ryan's budget being picked up by the 2012 Republican field, it looks like it isn't actually going to be the case just yet. Ben Smith has a statement from Tim Pawlenty which puts distance between himself and Ryan's proposal:

Thanks to Paul Ryan in Congress, the American people finally have someone offering real leadership in Washington. President Obama has failed to lead and make tough choices his entire time in the White House. While the budget is going to be debated for several months to come, the more immediate issue we face is President Obama’s plans to raise the debt ceiling next month. That's a really bad idea. With over $14 trillion debt already, we should not allow Washington’s big spenders to put us further in the hole. We must get our fiscal house in order with real spending cuts and with real structural reforms that stop the spending spree before it bankrupts our country.

Pawlenty is essentially saying that Ryan's budget is serious, but isn't buying into it fully as his message vehicle for talking about the debt and spending cuts. Of course, Ryan's budget aims to solve the problems Pawlenty is saying, so this may be Pawlenty seeking to have his own brand with no substantive difference in policy. If you look at what little substance there is in Pawlenty's statement, it reads awfully like Ryan's premise.

I think the way to assess David Brooks' assertion about the coming ubiquity of Ryan's budget proposal within the GOP primary is to look for the actual substance and not for candidates' issues pages saying, "I will implement Paul Ryan's budget." Campaigns have to grow their own candidate's brand and that's harder to do when you're merely a cipher for a colleague's ideas.

Update, 2:46pm:

Both Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum have made favorable comments in response to Ryan's budget proposal. Read More......

2012 & collective bargaining

Over at Daily Kos, Chris Bowers has identified a number of key opportunities for Democrats emerging from the fights taking place in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New Hampshire and beyond over collective bargaining rights.

Force every GOP Presidential candidate to go on record against collective bargaining rights. Finally, holding the election in 2011 can still greatly benefit Democrats in 2012. Since the Ohio referendum will happen in the midst of the Republican Presidential nomination campaign, and since every Republican candidate will want to appeal to the party's hard-right base and elites, every single one of them will go on record opposing collective bargaining rights for public workers. This would not necessarily have been the case in 2012, when the GOP nominee would be able to offer up vague answers on the issue. As such, a 2011 referendum could actually have a bigger impact on 2012 than holding the referendum in 2012, since it will make the stakes in the 2012 election crystal clear to millions of public employees around the country.

This is right. New Hampshire and Ohio are places important to both the GOP primary and the general election; Wisconsin is a state that has recently experienced a Republican surge (though it pretty clearly looks like a fleeting one). While governors in Wisconsin and Ohio have made large, public attacks on unionized public workers, there has been a huge volume of national attention to their actions. Unfortunately for the GOP presidential field, these assaults on workers is costing newly-elected Republicans key support. Police and firefighter unions are moving away from the Republican Party in places where these attacks are under way. These islands of Republican support within the sea of organized labor can be important parts of any candidate's field operation. So the primary field is faced with a tough choice: to stand with extreme anti-labor ideologues in governors' mansions around the country against a public backlash puts what little union support they might win at risk. In case you haven't noticed, cops and firefighters are some of the best political messengers; this is not a risk any Republican presidential candidate should take lightly.

Update (1:43pm, 4/1/11):
Speaking of candidates hating on unions, Michele Bachmann, Paul Ryan, & Mike Pence just voted against stripping union-busting provisions from the FAA reauthorization bill. Read More......