Right Wing Nut House

I write a lot less about media “bias” these days because I’ve come to the conclusion that the topic is overblown.

What some see as bias, I think it more appropriate to chalk up to laziness or even ignorance. That, and the narrow perspective that many reporters bring to their job makes what might be construed as bias to be nothing more than the media cocoon many reporters find themselves in - especially those who write for national publications or on national issues.

Bias can be screened out of reporting through a conscious effort of the writer or editor. Not doing so is simply not being bothered to get it right. I would make an exception for the New York Times which published for 100 years a fairly non-biased, non-partisan product but in recent decades has shown itself to be shamelessly skewed toward the left, and Democrats. I am not talking about editorial leanings at the Times which have been left since the Ochs family took control at the turn of the 20th century, but rather in the “straight” reporting of news where a decidedly partisan point of view is advanced.

That said, I think most charges of left wing or right wing bias are a reflection of which aspects of a story are stressed. This is an editorial rather than ideological decision - usually -but is leapt upon eagerly by those who make a living pointing out bias in media reports.

If you want an example of bias, here’s CNN:

Democrats soften pledge for three-day posting of health bill

No, sorry. Not even close. The Democrats aren’t “softening” anything. They are breaking their promise outright.

House Democrats appear to be softening their pledge to allow the public 72 hours to review the health care reform package online before a House vote. “We will certainly give as much notice as possible, but I’m not going to say that 72 hours is going to be the litmus test,” said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Friday.

“The House bill or Senate bill, as proposed, has been online for some two-and-a-half months, otherwise known about 75 days,” Hoyer added, referring to the November and December dates each chamber passed its version of health care legislation.

But Democrats could vote as soon as next week on a series of changes to the health care package - called a reconciliation bill - and the number two House Republican criticized Hoyer directly on House floor.

“I’m a little bit taken aback that now that 72-hour rule has been completely cast aside, since nobody in the House has seen what’s in the reconciliation bill,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised earlier this year Democrats would make the final health care bill public at least three days before voting.

I can imagine the writer and editor for that story coming up with just the right adjective to describe the Democrats reneging on their 72 hour promise. It must have taken a little bit of thought. Ordinarily, “softening” would mean that the Democrats were thinking of violating their pledge. In fact, they have already decided to do so which leaves “softening” hanging out there in misinformation land.

Deliberate? Can’t see it any other way. Of course, the GOP might shame the Democrats into changing their minds. I wonder if that happens whether CNN will use the adjective “hardening” to describe the Democrat’s position?

Here we go again, conservatives blowing something way, way out of proportion that when smart people think about it, doesn’t deserve all this hand wringing and angst-ridden diatribes on the right. When are conservatives ever going to learn that all this talk about the Constitution is just a distraction? What everyone should be looking at is making sure that everyone has their own set of dentures by passing Obamacare.

I’m talking, of course, about the “Slaughter Rule” where Democrats in the House - in what is really a brilliantly conceived and incredibly ballsy move even though Pelosi is gonadless - won’t even vote on the original health care reform bill passed by the senate and instead, simply “deem” the bill as passed. This will allow the president to sign into law a health care reform bill that will then be amended using reconciliation.

Stick in the mud conservatives are screaming foul. They point to this obscure part of the Constitution to make their case:

U.S Constitution, Article I, Section VII, Clause II.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively…

How quaint. Basing your objections on a 231 year old document is just a little bizarre, don’t you think? How seriously can we take this thing if it doesn’t even mention health care, or global warming, or even amnesty for illegal immigrants?

Oh sure, it’s ok as a sort of guide for government. And there are some really, really neat parts in there, like the First Amendment that says you can’t have any religion anywhere, at any time. And the Fifth Amendment that protects terrorists from incriminating themselves. Those are fine.

But remember, the Constitution is a racist document. It counted slaves as only 3/5 of a person. If that were true, then conservatives would count as about 1/3 of a person. Obviously, if conservatives are going to argue anything based on this document, they are closet Kluxers.

Besides, what’s the big deal about not voting for health care reform? Sure, a lot of people are opposed to it now, but just you wait until all the good stuff that’s in there kicks in. Yeah, it will take a few years but eventually, all you rich people out there - the ones with jobs anyway - will be subsidizing those who, through no fault of their own, didn’t buy insurance when they had the chance. This time, no excuse for you. You will buy insurance or the IRS is going to make sure you pay big time.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why conservatives insist on getting a vote for the original senate bill? This voting thing can be very hard when you’re trying to make history and not enough congressman want to do what our great, great, grandchildren will see as the completion of the welfare state:

A larger question any member of congress reading the op-ed ought to ask himself is “so what?” If reform passes and is signed into law, then immediately Barack Obama’s position in history is secured. When people look back from 2060 on the creation of the American welfare state, they’ll say that FDR, LBJ, and BHO were its main architects, with Roosevelt enshrining the principle of universal social insurance into law and Obama completing the initial promise of the New Deal. Members of congress who helped him do that will have a place in history. Nobody’s going to be very interested in a story like “Mike Ross served a bunch of years in Congress and people were impressed with his ability to win a relatively conservative district; he didn’t achieve very much and one day he wasn’t in Congress anymore.”

Which is just to say that nobody lasts in office forever, no congressional majority lasts forever, and no party controls the White House forever. But the measure of a political coalition isn’t how long it lasted, but what it achieved.

This is very smart stuff from Mr. Ygelsias. “Go for it boys - I’m right behind you! Nothing will happen to me if I cheer you on mindlessly while your political career ends up in the toilet. After all, it’s not ME who will get pummeled in the next election.”

Brave Sir Matt with some sound advice for politicians whose “achievement” may end up sending us into sovereign default, but at least we’ll have stuck it to the rich (and the near rich…and the wannabe rich…and those not rich at all but dream of being rich), while creating a health care paradise where waiting for routine procedures won’t be much longer than a year or so, and old folks will be put in their place and denied treatment better given to a more productive member of society, and thus ushering them off to hospice lickety split where they’ll have a cot and three hots until they croak.

Surely conservatives can see the beauty, the efficiency, the fairness of a system like this. Why muck up the works by throwing up a Constitutional smokescreen when this historical bill will make schoolkids in America forever after repeat the name of Barack Obama in the same hushed, reverent tones they use when uttering the name “Eugene Debs?”

It’s a distraction, I say! A distraction! Concentrate on what’s important - the passage of health care reform that may not do much of anything that Democrats are claiming it will do, but by God, it will be historical.

And that’s what’s important. The libs haven’t had much of a chance to make history lately. They miss the delicious feeling they get when they are immortalized through government action. Of course, they’d never dream of actually, you know, creating something that would immortalize them. That’s so bourgeoisie. Better to be immortalized by ramming government run health care down the throats of the American people so that future generations will, in their minds eye, look back in awe - AWE I tell you — at the lengths to which they went to bring them this…this…achievement!

If we’re lucky, those future school kids won’t even have to worry about a racist, sexist, homophobic, document like the Constitution. It will be long gone and we’ll be well rid of it.

In many ways, I agree and sympathize with Howell Rains who bemoans the loss of journalistic integrity in this Washington Post op-ed. What is truly unfortunate - and a little bizarre - is that Rains only sees a lowering of standards at Fox News.

Is he trying to be funny? Or just very selective in his outrage?

A couple of hard truths along with a little history. Until around the turn of the 20th century, newspapers were wholly owned subsidiaries of political parties. Sure, there were independent voices here and there, crying in the wilderness to, as Rains put it, “afflict the comfortable.”

But the dominant media template of the day was partisan hackery. You had Republican newspapers and Democratic newspapers vying for readership in big cities while the hinterlands weren’t as lucky; people had to settle for usually one editorial voice that dominated a township, or county.

There was no attempt to “balance” opinion and plenty of effort put into spinning the news to make one side look good and the other side appear to be the spawn of Satan. This was the age of the front page editorial screaming bloody murder about something the opposition had done, or failed to do. It was the golden age of political cartoonists who skewered their targets with the nastiest of captions while drawing opposition figures in the most vile, and unflattering ways imaginable.

Ironically, the New York Times - a paper Rains was, at one time, executive editor - sought to change all of that. Always something of an independent voice from its founding in 1856, the Times strove over the years to stay above the fray of day to day politics and concentrate on delivering a reasonably factual product relatively free of bias. When the Ochs family purchased the Times at the end of the 19th century, an even greater emphasis on reporting the news in a style that highlighted the old “who, what, when, where and how” notion of factual storytelling came into vogue. The Times didn’t invent this kind of reporting, but editorially, they mastered it.

They also perfected the crafting of the “why” of a story, usually by separating the carefully wrought opinion of the reporter from the facts reported in the original story. Below the fold analysis of why a story was important contributed to the notion that the Times was responsibly separating journalistic opinion from the raw facts of a story.

Is this what Mr. Raines is talking about here?

Why haven’t America’s old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration — a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: “The American people do not want health-care reform.”

That “rulebook” was trashed nearly 40 years ago. It was ripped to shreds by the Times, the Washington Post, and most other major newspapers in America when Mr. Rains’ precious “standards” of “fairness and objectivity” were tossed aside in order to compete with Walter Cronkite, Huntley-Brinkley, and whoever was the flavor of the month anchor at ABC whose de-objectification of the news was already an art form.

As the viewership and influence of the Big Three TV news shows grew to an astonishing level, newspapers began to die in unprecedented numbers. Afternoon and evening mainstays like the Chicago Daily News, the Washington Star, and the Cleveland Press disappeared altogether while hundreds of other PM publications merged with their more successful morning competition. And the reason most often cited was the arrival on American airwaves of a new brand of journalism - one where images, rather than copy ruled the broadcast. And these images, manipulated by experts to wring drama and pathos out of a story in order to keep America glued to the channel, made a mockery of Rains’ “standards.”

In order to compete with network news, newspapers abandoned straight, factual news reporting and went into the business of using news as a way to convey opinion, infusing “drama” into stories. A young black kid did not kill the old white lady for her purse because he’s a criminal. Racism killed the old lady as surely as if George Wallace had pulled the trigger.

An exaggeration, but nevertheless, the entire concept of “objectivity” had been turned on its head in order to both sell newspapers and satisfy the “new journalism” that was making a mark in publications like Rolling Stone and Village Voice. The young, strongly opinionated writers for those publications and others were the vanguard of new kind of “journalist” who saw newspaper reporting as more than just a means to inform the public about what was going on in their part of the world, but viewed their mission as “reforming” the staid, old institutions of the media in order to promote a decidedly liberal point of view.

Rains has got to know that the New York Times does not report news the same way it did in the 1950’s, doesn’t he?

Whatever its shortcomings, journalism under those standards aspired to produce an honest account of social, economic and political events. It bore witness to a world of dynamic change, as opposed to the world of Foxian reality, whose actors are brought on camera to illustrate a preconceived universe as rigid as that of medieval morality. Now, it is precisely our long-held norms that cripple our ability to confront Fox’s journalism of perpetual assault. I’m confident that many old-schoolers are too principled to appear on the network, choosing silence over being used; when Fox does trot out a house liberal as a punching bag, the result is a parody of reasoned news formats.

My great fear, however, is that some journalists of my generation who once prided themselves on blowing whistles and afflicting the comfortable have also been intimidated by Fox’s financial power and expanding audience, as well as Ailes’s proven willingness to dismantle the reputation of anyone who crosses him. (Remember his ridiculing of one early anchor, Paula Zahn, as being inferior to a “dead raccoon” in ratings potential when she dared defect to CNN?) It’s as if we have surrendered the sword of verifiable reportage and bought the idea that only “elites” are interested in information free of partisan poppycock.

Mr. Rains and the Times surrendered that sword many years ago. It was the network news that accepted the capitulation of newspapers to the notion that objectivity and fairness in news reporting was part of the ancien regime and that in order to stay alive, print media would have to ape some of the worst attributes of bias found in the manipulation of images on TV in order to make them “interesting” or “dramatic.”

Where was Rains during coverage of the Katrina disaster? Where was his outrage at the lack of objectivity and fairness when CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News reported rumors as being true, routinely added political commentary to their remotes, and shamelessly vied with each other to see which outlet could outdo the other in vitriol directed at the government?

Guess that sort of slipped his mind.

In their heyday, 80 million Americans tuned into one of the three network news broadcasts. Their power was incredible. It was they who set the nation’s agenda, deciding as they did which stories merited attention and which could be left on the cutting room floor. A half hour program just didn’t allow for in depth exploration of issues, nuance, or much explanation. And a dry recounting of the facts of a story would have viewers changing channels to something more interesting. Hence, storytelling via images was born - and in order to keep eyeballs glued to their product, news producers would indulge themselves by trying to create controversy, or take words out of context (easy enough to do with so little context given anyway). While copy may have been vetted for obvious bias, images, by definition, were different. Images were show biz and everyone from news executives down to segment producers didn’t want the viewers walking out at the end of the first act.

Rains and his old timers in the newspaper business followed right along, aping their electronic relatives by choosing angles for news stories that highlighted the dramatic impact a story would have on the reader; the goal being, to move the reader emotionally. At times subtle, at times blatant, the reporting of “news” was no longer a craft, but an art form.

Is Fox News any more at fault than CNN, or MSNBC? In the case of the latter, we have the senior vice president of NBC News Phil Griffin making no bones about the ideological nature of their programming:

“The network has evolved a lot in the past few years. We went from doing a little bit of everything to doing lots of politics under Keith from 2003-05. We first began to get traction after the Iraq war started, after ‘Mission Accomplished.’ Then, more and more, politics led the way. When we did well with it in the 2006 elections, we made a decision to become ‘the place for politics,’ as the late Tim Russert dubbed us - and all of a sudden began to take off a little.”

Griffin says that both Olbermann and fellow MSNBC stalwart Chris Mathews “both had a strong point of view about the war — but our strategy then was simply to hire smart people, allow them to have a point of view, and to be authentic. At the same time, we moved even further toward politics and away from trying to be ‘all things to all people.’”

Is Fox any worse than MSNBC? Nitpickers might discover a hair’s width of difference between the two, with CNN and their emotive journalism brand of weepy, touchy-feely storytelling not too far behind.

I agree with Mr. Rains that Fox is a travesty of journalism going by the standards of the 1950’s. But not including CNN and MSNBC, as well as his former employer and hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and the over the air TV networks in his diatribe is ludicrous. Journalism has changed. And Rains is kidding himself if he believes he and his “old timers” are immune from criticism for propagating those changes and foisting their own biases and politics on the rest of us.

Just when you think you’ve seen just about everything in politics, one party or the other bites you in the ass to let you know that authoritarian tactics fit easily and comfortably over the democratic template laid down by the Founders.

It really is seamless at times. Witness the Tom DeLay move to keep the vote on the Medicare drug benefit open for hours (the rules say 15 minutes) while he and Hastert twisted arms, legs, and probably some more private parts of the bodies of GOP members in order to get the votes necessary for passage.

True, a minor glitch in the democratic process - just a little authoritarianism where rules are broken willy nilly for the sake of the momentary goal. There are other examples from the time the GOP ruled the roost in the House and DeLay was a power unto himself. A junior Mussolini that one, complete with the strutting kind of arrogance so beloved of Il Duce.

But nothing in my more than 30 years of observing politics could prepare me for what the Democrats may end up doing in order to pass health care reform:

The twisted scheme by which Democratic leaders plan to bend the rules to ram President Obama’s massive health care legislation through Congress now has a name: the Slaughter Solution.

The Slaughter Solution is a plan by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the Democratic chair of the powerful House Rules Committee and a key ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), to get the health care legislation through the House without an actual vote on the Senate-passed health care bill. You see, Democratic leaders currently lack the votes needed to pass the Senate health care bill through the House. Under Slaughter’s scheme, Democratic leaders will overcome this problem by simply “deeming” the Senate bill passed in the House - without an actual vote by members of the House.

So is this just a partisan take on the matter? They can’t really be serious about passing health care reform by waving a magic gavel, could they?

There is a serious lack of reaction to this story on the left. Perhaps their email list hasn’t been able to reach a consensus on how to respond yet. Maybe they’re as taken aback by the breathtaking, undemocratic nature of the ploy as most of the rest of the planet. John Dickerson of Slate - no flaming liberal but hardly a man of the right - matter of factly lays out the scheme, appearing to applaud its utilitarian nature:

One method for accommodating the situation (first reported in CongressDaily) would allow the House to vote on the Bill B and, after doing so, simply consider the Senate health care bill (Bill A) as passed. There would be no actual up-or-down vote on the underlying bill. This would be the legislative equivalent of the economist’s old trick of assuming a can opener.

Actually, it’s an economist’s old joke, John, not a trick - which I suppose is quite revealing of how seriously you take the idea of the Democrats passing a bill that will affect 300 million Americans and fundamentally alter the relationship between the citizen and the government, and not allow members to express their preference in an up or down vote.

But, of course, that’s the point of this little whiff of Politburo politics; it’s to allow Democratic members to lie through their teeth to their constituents:

This approach would serve two purposes. First, Democrats who think the Senate bill doesn’t sufficiently limit abortion rights would never have to be on record as having voted for it. (Because the Senate abortion language can’t be fixed in Bill B for procedural reasons, some Democratic aides say there is talk about a later bill that would handle these issues.) Second, if the Senate didn’t fulfill its end of the bargain by voting on Bill B—remember, it’s already passed Bill A—then House Democrats would be able to say: I never voted for that crummy Bill A. In fact, I only voted for that nifty Bill B to fix it.

I mentioned this is Politburo politics, which is actually an insult to the commies. At least they have a rigged vote. We don’t even get that on Obamacare.

I think it fairly obvious that Nancy Pelosi does not have the votes, and likely will never get the votes, to pass the senate bill as is. Firedoglake has the latest whip count (based on publicly stated positions) at 191-195 meaning Pelosi needs a near miracle. She needs 24 votes of the remaining 40 “persuadables” to win. And they wouldn’t be talking about “deeming” a bill as passed if she thought there was any hope of achieving 216.

The real sticking point, ironically, is that House Democrats don’t trust their colleagues in the senate to follow through and take them off the hook by ramming House Obamacare amendments through via reconciliation. In fact, the GOP is talking about a weird ploy of their own; they may vote with pro-choice Democrats in the senate to kill any change in the abortion language wanted by Stupak and his gang of 12. If they’re serious, that alone might trigger a revolt among House members who don’t think the senate is serious about reconciliation.

I’m actually excited to see the Democrats try this. What are all those good government liberals going to say? How is the White House going to spin this as a victory for the people when the people’s representatives haven’t even been consulted on the final product?

What are the voters going to think? I don’t think much at all. This is far too arcane a topic to interest anyone but process junkies. By November, the Democrats will have dressed this pig up in a nice prom dress, smeared some lipstick on the porker, and presented it to the American people as a triumph. Many will shrug their shoulders, accept what government is giving them, and move on with their lives.

Voters are going to be a lot more upset with Democrats about jobs and the economy than they will ever get upset with them about how they managed to move this monstrosity through Congress and get it signed into law. But those who might take a dimmer view of this tactic will lament the loss of the fundamental fairness to the minority it represents. We now officially have a tyranny of the majority.

I hope the Democrats don’t complain too much when Republicans pull crap like this on them when they’re back in power.

It is difficult to be on the outside looking in when it comes to the exercise of power. For 8 years, it caused hysterical derangement on a very large slice of the left who tried to promote the idea that George Bush was a fascist, or a theocrat intent on establishing an authoritarian “regime” - the word most often used even by “respectable” liberals. America does not have “regimes” - not now, not then, not ever. But you can’t tell that to liberals who, for 8 long, tiresome years, bored us to death with their paranoid fantasies about George Bush. The draft, the Haliburton nonsense, the “lies” about WMD, the “lapdog press,” the “stolen” elections - all this and more, told and retold on the web, and even sometimes in respectable publications (not to mention the halls of Congress); paranoid delusions that only grew wilder and more sensationally idiotic as time went on.

Nor can you convince many conservatives today that entire segments of their overall critique of President Obama are hysterically exaggerated fantasies, nonsensical assumptions and “truths” that bear no resemblance to the facts. The left today has their own delusions; about conservatives, Republicans, and the motives of both. But it is conservatives who, by pushing these ridiculous fallacies about the president, are swallowing the barrel and pulling the trigger on their chances to rally the country behind them and take back the government.

I have been virtually told that I don’t hate Barack Obama enough; that if I don’t parrot these birdbrained “facts” about the president, I am actually a supporter of his or, at best, a simpleminded dupe who just can’t see what kind of evil man he is.

Worse, by highlighting these imbecilic talking points, or going after cotton candy conservatives and others on the right who are shooting conservatism in the foot with their derangement, I am a traitor. Better to lie and march to the beat of the same drum in order to defeat the forces of darkness who besmirch our republic with their loathsome plans.

Sorry. I don’t do lockstep. Nor am I enamored with illogical, unreasonable, and patently false arguments about Obama that serve only to prove that there are many on the right who have lost themselves in overhyped agitation - a delirium tremens that no amount of Chivas can help.

What really flips my gibbet is that this guy Obama is such an easy target for rational, penetrating criticism. He’s a clown sitting above a dunk tank just waiting for an accurate missile to send him to a well deserved soaking. Instead, so many on the right are missing so wildly they end up smacking themselves in the nose with their own throws.

There is an objective reality in which most Americans live. It’s a place where people are human, not cartoon cut-outs of evil. It’s a place where there is a connection between actions and rhetoric. And it is a place where facts are facts, not exaggerated, paranoid flakes of fancy seen through a broken mirror of ideology and fear.

Here then are 8 popular myths and exaggerations about Barack Obama that are routinely pushed by the right. Having been a comment moderator for three conservative sites, I know them by heart and can attest that at the very least, a large number of conservatives believe this nonsense.

1. Obama is sympathetic to Moooooslims and favors them at the expense of America

This has variations from Obama is a closet Muslim, to Obama wants to establish Sharia law, to Obama is actually a terrorist. One or all of these jumbo baloney sandwiches passes for wisdom among many on the right, including a prominent blogger who is worried that the 2 million Muslims in America are sneaking up on the rest of the 299 million of us and wish to make us all into dhimmis.

2. Obama is a socialist/Marxist.

I put this one to rest right before the election here.

Obama is a liberal. He’s a far left, garden variety, 100%, fully inspected La-La Land lefty. Are his policies “socialist?” Sure. I guess. Some of his policies ape programs initiated by socialist governments. National health insurance for one.

But the same could be said for Social Security, Medicare, and a host of Great Society programs still with us today. The social democracies of Europe that so enamor the left are not “socialist” countries - not by a long shot. The means of production are still in the hands of private citizens, even though those governments - and soon, our own - make it difficult for private enterprise to succeed. It makes no sense to call what Obama is doing “socialist” if you wish to adhere to the strictest definition of the word. And if you’re not going to stick with how a word is defined and make up your own definition, why bother with the English language at all?

It is quite simply an exaggeration to say that the president is a socialist.

3. Obama hates America.

Glad that so many of my friends on the right have been given the gift of insight into someone’s heart.

In truth, the president loves America as most liberals love it; in an abstract, intellectualized manner. It would perhaps be more accurate to say the president loves what America could be, rather than what she is now. I happen to believe you can love both Americas but many on the right are steadfast in their belief that America can do no wrong, while probably the same number on the left believe she can do no right. It is a different kind of love, but a love nonetheless, and to posit that the president of the United States hates his own country is, on its face, absurd.

4. Obama wasn’t born here/not a natural born citizen/is hiding the origins of his birth/is the spawn of the devil/is the antichrist.

Debunked too many times, in too many places to waste any time here except to say that about 30% of conservatives have “questions” about Obama’s origins.

A winning issue for 2010.

5. Obama is deliberately trying to destroy America.

This is a favorite of Rush Limbaugh. The “reasoning” goes, Obama wants to destroy America so that everybody becomes dependent on the federal government for their very lives. This will create a permanent Democratic majority because everyone knows that people who are dependent on government vote for Democrats.

I can’t argue against the notion that the president’s policies have the potential to harm America greatly. I have argued such in the past. If that happened, I am sure the president would be as disappointed as the rest of us. No doubt, he would blame it on Bush.

But there is no politician who would ever deliberately destroy the country that just elected him. Where’s the advantage? I daresay that voters would give a good goddamn about dependency and throw the majority party who ruined their lives out into the street.

This is so absurd on its face and yet so prevalent a notion on the right, is it any wonder I question the sanity of conservatives sometimes?

And then there’s a related myth…

6. Obama is deliberately preventing a recovery.

This is a variation on #5 but the “reasoning” is a little different. Obama needs a “crisis” to pass his agenda.

He’s had a crisis, his agenda lies in tatters, and he is proven so incompetent he can’t even take advantage of the worst economic crisis in 80 years to push through a Congress his party owns lock, stock, and barrel anything except an $800 billion stim bill he didn’t write and had little to do with passing.

7. Obama wants to kill your grandma.

We have Sarah Palin to thank for this one. It is the one myth in the health care debate that refuses all applications of reason and logic, and is persistently advanced despite all evidence to the contrary.

The slippery slope argument is even bogus. It is impossible to connect the dots from A to Z, as I explained here. But Saracudda says it’s true so it must be.

8. Obama goes around the world “apologizing” for America’s sins

If you’re not grown up, or well read enough, or have been asleep for the last 50 years, you know that there are several things that America should be apologizing for. But here, we have a gross exaggeration of what the president was doing by highlighting our shortcomings (I don’t believe the words “apology” or “We’re sorry” ever crossed his lips.)

The president acknowledged errors - at least, errors from his perspective - that America committed not only during the Bush administration, but prior to that as well. He also acknowledged them because his audience perceived our actions to be in error - whether we think them right or wrong.

But almost in the same breath, Obama castigated his audiences from London to Cairo for their reflexive, knee jerk anti-Americanism. Tony Blair and John Howard actually said it much better than he did. But our professorial president used a common rhetorician’s gimmick of forcing the audience to listen to him by agreeing with their perceptions about America and then hammering them for their own shortcomings.

It was an effective technique and certainly won him a lot of friends overseas among the common folk. But it is inaccurate to say that he “apologized” for our past. In fact, he frequently went out of his way to say that he had no apologies for our ideals or principles. It appears to me that many on the right heard what they wanted to hear and closed their mind to the rest. Hence, this myth - as widespread as it is - doesn’t stand up to the facts.

The unhinged nature of some of the criticism directed at the president reflects badly on the entire right. When you consider that Obama is a duck in a shooting gallery that a pie eyed prostitute could hit with her eyes closed, it is a mystery why so many seek to misrepresent and exaggerate what this president has done and what he stands for.

Keep your eye on the target and allow logic and reason to guide your criticisms. Leave behind the paranoia, the fear mongering, and the hysteria. That’s the losers argument. Let objective reality animate your commentary and people will actually start to listen rather than turn you off quicker than a Tim Robbins movie.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Larrey Anderson and James Lewis of American Thinker and Monica Showalter of IDB to talk about the delusions held by Democrats about health care reform and the status of the process as the bill moves toward passage.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

Greg Sargent touting President Obama’s speech in Philly as he tries to “close the sale” on health care reform:

One striking thing about the speech Obama just gave at the big health care rally in Pennsylvania is how many times he stressed that if reform passes, voters will begin enjoying the benefits this year.

Though he didn’t say it directly, it’s an obvious effort to put some spine in wavering Congressional Dems by urging them to understand that they’ll have something to run on this year if they vote for reform. Here’s the key part:

Within the first year of signing health care reform, thousands of uninsured Americans with preexisting conditions would suddenly be able to purchase health insurance for the very first time in their lives.

This year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions.

This year, they will be banned from dropping your coverage when you get sick. And they will no longer able to arbitrarily and massively hike your premiums. Those practices will end.

If this reform becomes law, all the new insurance plans will be required to offer free preventive care to customers starting this year. Free checkups so we can catch preventable diseases.

Starting this year, there will be no more lifetime restricive annual limits on the amount of care you can receive from your insurance companies…

It would change fast: Insurance companies would finally be held accountable to the American people

Before examining the reality, let’s look at the rhetoric. Is it true that those with pre-existing conditions will be able to purchase health insurance “for the very first time in their lives?” Only if the condition existed for their entire lives or came upon them in adolescence before they had the ability to buy insurance. In fact, most pre-existing conditions occur after someone enters adulthood which means the idea that they never had the opportunity to purchase insurance is a crock.

And how about that “free” preventive care? And you wonder why we’re running a $1.4 trillion deficit? Of course, there is nothing “free” about nationalizing insurance or ordering insurance companies to offer a specific coverage. The bottom line is that those who don’t use the health care system will be paying for those who do. I predict this crazy idea hitting the auto insurance industry soon, where those with multiple drunk driving convictions demand the same rate of insurance and coverage as a teetotaler.

It would be more accurate to say that the preventive care coverage is mandated as part of the insurance plan that companies must offer. It is hardly “free” since we’re all paying for it. In short, the customer is paying for preventive care whether he wants to or not. We get a lot of this already from state insurance boards who demand insurance companies cover many procedures the overwhelming majority of policy holders will never use.

But what is the reality of all those goodies we are going to get the first year of Obamacare? An interesting development occurs when sick people pay exactly the same amount for insurance as healthy people; “insurance” is no longer insurance and becomes a government entitlement whose management and cost is farmed out to private industry.

For some reason, insurance companies have an aversion to going bankrupt. Don’t ask me why. They must be old fashioned or something to believe that they aren’t in business to get Democrats re-elected but rather to make a little money for their shareholders. Since that won’t be possible even in the first year under Obamacare, look for insurance companies to be screaming for rate increases in everybody’s premiums which will cause enough heart attacks in customers that Obama will be forced to activate the Death Panels 3 years early just to handle drain on health care resources.

This entire debate has taken a topsy-turvy turn. I’ve got history on my side when I say what Matt Welch says here:

The Senate promised more than $300 billion in such cuts. Furthermore, the CBO scores bills in 10-year windows. So the Senate delayed more than 99 percent of the reform package’s spending until 2014, thus allowing the decade of 2010–2019 to clock in under the magic $1 trillion number. Add to all that chicanery the fact that every major health care entitlement expansion in U.S. history has vastly exceeded initial cost projections, and you have ample reasons for why Americans believed, by a margin of more than 3 to 1, that health care reform would exacerbate rather than improve the deficit.

It should be up to the proponents of health care reform to prove that their schemes will not meet the fate of past entitlements - every single one of them - that exceeded spending projections by laughable margins.

And when I say laughable, I mean real loony toons, cross-eyed Mary, monkey wanking, impossibly incorrect margins:

Congress has a long history of dramatically underestimating Medicare costs. “At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion,” wrote Steven Hayward and Erik Peterson in a 1993 Reason article. “The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was supposedly a ‘conservative’ estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion.”

Why, I say to reform advocates with as much sincerity and passion as I can muster, should things be different this time? What evidence do you have that history won’t repeat itself and we will be embarking on an insane fiscal course that will lead to the actual ruin of the United States? The burden of proof, as I said is on you. History has taken the measure of other entitlements and shown projections of costs to be ludicrous and silly.

With Democrats poised to prevent their labor allies from paying a tax for their gold plated health care plans, their extraordinary nebulous disingenuousness on “waste and fraud” savings to be found in Medicare, and the non-existent “doc fix” that is supposed to save $500 billion over 10 years - how in God’s name can you stand in front of the American people and make a case that this reform bill won’t add to an already out of sight deficit?

You can’t, which means you are either deluding yourselves or Obama and the Democrats are lying outright.

Welch thinks its the latter:

Obama’s dishonesty, by contrast, seems to spring from a different place. As a man who has spent most of his career wowing people with his words and very little of it converting those words into deeds, he has an activist’s gap between rhetoric and reality and a radio broadcaster’s promiscuous carelessness with cutting rhetorical corners. Sure, it’s not technically true that the administration’s day-one lobbying reforms served “to get rid of the influence of…special interests,” as he claimed in a January radio address (to the contrary: federal lobbying in 2009 set an all-time record), but it’s easy to imagine that the president feels his combination of tighter employment restrictions for ex-lobbyists and stricter disclosure requirements for current ones is, in the context of the Manichean fight between “the people” and “special interests,” good enough for government work. The perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good, and the critics who complain are just opportunistic literalists grasping for any club to beat back the march of progress. No need to give them an inch.

But there’s a less charitable explanation too. During the president’s nonstop gabfests before, during, and after the State of the Union speech, he kept repeating the fiction that the medical industry’s “special interests” were significantly to blame for scotching his health care legislation. In fact, the administration and Congress negotiated with those interests every step of the way, receiving crucial buy-in and millions in campaign contributions. Pro-reform lobbyists outspent anti-reform lobbyists on advertising by a factor of 5 to 1. There’s a three-letter word for blaming the defeat of his bill on health care lobbyists, and it rhymes with pie.

In his speech yesterday, Obama picked a familiar target; insurance companies who he thinks the government should hold accountable to their customers:

President Obama struck a populist tone, setting up the health insurance industry as his main target.

“We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people,” he said.

Citing big rate increases for buyers of individual insurance policies in some states — 40 percent, 60 percent, even 100 percent — Mr. Obama sought to focus attention on provisions in the legislation that he said would protect consumers from the worst excesses of insurers, give people more choice among insurance policies, insure most people who do not have coverage, and put downward pressure on health care costs.

Boiling down his proposal to a few sentences, Mr. Obama asked, “How many people would like a proposal that holds insurance companies more accountable? How many people would like to give Americans the same insurance choices that members of Congress get? And how many would like a proposal that brings down costs for everyone?

Obama missed his calling. He should have been an insurance company Customer Service Rep.

Holding insurance companies more accountable might make people feel better when Obama sticks it to them but how does it improve the situation if it drives them out of the business of insuring all but the wealthy in 5 years? Also, the idea that Joe Blow will get the same health care coverage as a Member of Congress is snicker-worthy. If that were true, Members of Congress would be opting in, not passing laws to exclude themselves from the plan. And only a real Pollyanna - or the village idiot - believes that this reform package will “bring costs down for everyone.”

I would like to give Democrats the benefit of the doubt and say that they are actually kidding themselves about what reform will actually do when the rubber meets the road and the plan is being enacted. But I can’t. They know there are horrendous, unsolvable problems, with this bill. They know their cost cutting provisions are bullsh*t. They know it will substantially increase the deficit. They know it will mean less health care for most of us. They know it will mean less innovation in the pharma, bio tech, and other industries. They know it won’t put any downward pressure on the costs of health care. And they know that this massive thrust to control an unbelievable 1/6 of the economy - never before seen in peacetime - is beyond a riverboat gamble that it will work and enters the realm of a wing and a prayer.

They can’t actually believe what they are saying about it, can they? Of course not.

I am one of the few who still see Andrew Sullivan as a conservative, albeit one whose philosophy is made wildly inconsistent by his misreading of President Obama. The reason is evident if you bother to read a lot of what he writes instead of cherry picking his paeans to the president, or react to his potshots at movement conservatives.

Sullivan appears to believe in a modified Burkean conservatism that, at its most essential, preserves what is best about society while embracing change that is logical and acts as a spur to rescue tradition from becoming too hidebound. His is not a conservatism that believes government can improve society so much as intelligent, non-ideological government can create conditions where society can improve itself.

But always, Sullivan tries to convince us that his is a pragmatic conservatism that is completed by supporting the “centrist” Obama and his supposedly non-ideological approach to government. Quite simply, this is a crock.

The reasons for Sullivan’s fanciful portrayals of Obama as a politician who is capable of rising above all the grubby little wars between liberals and conservative partisans are probably complicated. Part of it, I’m sure, is the amount of prestige and personal energy he has put into supporting the president. Beyond that, perhaps Sullivan simply sees what he wants to see in the Barack Obama - a selective and not very astute analysis of who and what this cipher of a man purports to be.

The most hyperpartisan of liberal organizations - Americans for Democratic Action - do not give 100% ratings to a centrist. Neither does NARAL (100%), nor the Citizens for Tax Justice (100%), NEA - Grade “A”, and ACORN (100%).

The flip side is also revealing. If Obama were any kind of a centrist he wouldn’t get a 4.5 conservative rating from the non-ideological National Journal A “0″ on economic policy), an 8% from the ACU,, or another “0″ from the National Right to Life Committee.

Lest there be any doubt, I would recommend that Sullivan apply “the prudence test” to Obama’s legislative agenda. Is the kind of massive dislocation involved in the health care reform bill a prudent way to improve American health care? In any way whatsoever? Any definition of prudence I have ever seen would make what Obama is doing with reform incredibly imprudent. Ditto his cap and trade proposals, card check, and massive, out of control spending. This is not a prudent man and the Democrats are not a prudent party. Prudence being the rock upon which conservatism finds its most pragmatic, and realistic outlet, it begs the question how anyone who lays claim to the “pragmatic conservative” title as Sullivan does can do so with a straight face.

It is intellectually dishonest to make any claim that Obama is non-ideological or centrist based on his votes. Anyone who prefers to judge a politician by what they say rather than how they vote is either too naive to make a living commenting on politics or deviously disingenuous in the extreme. And yet, here’s Sullivan telling us that Obama is what this country needs:

I believe that although Obama is indeed a liberal in the sense that he believes government really can and must improve the lives of its citizens, he is much much more like a real conservative than his detractors on right and left. The change he still represents at home is an abandonment of this ideological, red-blue abstract form of politics toward a realistic, pragmatic, reasonable center. Abroad, he represents an attempt to defuse the dangerously polarizing religious and cultural warfare that is fomenting terrorism, and further fusing religion and politics in so many places across the world. In this sense, I regard him as a vital, indispensable figure standing against the forces of ideology and religious warfare, whose failure could lead to catastrophic consequences for our future.

Is Sullivan paying attention to what is going on in the world? The Israeli-Palestinian divide is worse today than when Obama took office directly as a result of his ill considered lurch toward the Palestinians and his incomprehensible policy of placing pressure on our best ally in the Middle East to make concessions it doesn’t feel it can do safely. Is religious fervor any less in Pakistan today than it was before he took office? Has the progress being made by Islamists in Turkey been blunted by any rhetoric or policy of this administration?

At some point, Sullivan has to wake up and smell the rancid coffee being brewed by the Obama administration overseas. Our president may be personally popular with ordinary people, but his relationships with other leaders leaves a lot to be desired. Good arguments can be made for his outreach to Iran, Syria, and other dangerous regimes (arguments I reject), but there too, we see nothing but abject failure from the president.

Domestically, can Sullivan see no vicious partisanship, no ideological fervor in Obama’s obsession with pushing the imprudent and destructive health care reform initiative through Congress? His insults, belittling, and arrogance toward the opposition is not the mark of someone very interested in non-partisanship. Apparently Sullivan is only listening when Obama makes his claims regarding bi-partisanship and closes his ears to the president’s haughty dismissiveness when those admittedly few ideas emanating from the other side are presented.

His maddening blindness when it comes to the true nature of Barack Obama notwithstanding, Sullivan is still one of the best at getting to the heart of what is wrong with conservatism today. But his decidedly un-pragmatic view of the president taints his otherwise outstanding analysis of the problems of the right. It’s almost as if he has compartmentalized his feelings for Obama so that he can freely dissect conservatism without being burdened with the reality that Obama represents a true anti-conservatism replete with an overly developed ideological worldview that is dangerously augmented by an arrogant belief in his own superiority, going so far as to totally reject the advice of his generals, his cabinet secretaries, and many wise old heads in the foreign policy arena.

I happen to agree with Sullivan that most criticism of Obama from the right is wildly off base, excessively ideological and partisan, while maintaining a curious detachment from the essential conservatism of Burke, Kirk, Oakeshott, and Buckley among others.

Here Sullivan remarks on a point I made last week; that conservatism has changed little, if at all, and that simply because the right’s electoral prospects have improved thanks to the the mismanagement of Obama and the Democrats, doesn’t mean that “victory” will have any meaning beyond the shallow, short term political gains that will probably be realized:

This narrative is a reflexive and easy one; it echoes the inanity of “Who Won The Day?” Politico-style analysis; it has turned political journalism into sports journalism; it avoids historical context in favor of constant cultural and political amnesia. It takes the mind of the American people as an etch-a-sketch, shaken anew every electoral cycle. It infects left and right.

Just look at Frank Rich’s column today, which like MSNBC to FNC, which is the same dynamic, and the same understanding of politics, and its purposes. In this worldview - which is now the worldview in American political analysis - ideology has infiltrated everything, it has saturated public and private, it has invaded even something sacred like religious faith, in which the mysteries of existence have been distilled in writing or even understanding the churches into a battle between “liberals” and “conservatives.”

The right may celebrate in 2010, but what of 2012 and beyond? Without a realistic agenda to challenge the Democrats, conservatives will be dead in the water.

This goes back to my points about conservative governance. A utilitarian, pragmatic approach to government is desperately needed. Only real conservatism can supply that commodity. It is an approach solidly grounded on First Principles without treating the Constitution as the revealed word of God. Flexibility, deftness, a firm handle on the rightful functions of government and the determination to fund those functions - as well as having sense enough to leave the rest to the private sector or individuals - could be a very popular way for conservatives to achieve and hang on to power.

As it stands now, conservatives have boxed themselves into an ideological corner by opposing anything and everything that smacks of a government solution to health care, energy dependence, and the changing role of America in a rapidly changing world. Clinging to a treasured past at the expense of marching boldly into the future is not very conservative. But that is the current state of the right and Sullivan is at his best in articulating those problems.

I don’t know what demon has possessed Sullivan to blind him to President Obama’s obvious and painful shortcomings. But I think more people on the right would listen to him if he could see his way clear to being slightly less enamored of the president’s rhetoric and see this cynical poseur for who and what he truly is.

Adam Gadahn, the first person charged with treason by an American court in 50 years, has been captured in Pakistan.

Gadahn was arrested in recent days, two officers who took part in the operation told The Associated Press. A senior government official also confirmed the arrest. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

IF YOU WERE NOT AUTHORIZED TO RELEASE THE INFORMATION WHY IN GOD’S NAME ARE YOU CONFIRMING IT FOR THE PRESS YOU NINNIES!

An intelligence source confirmed the report to NBC News, adding that Gadahn was detained in Sohrab Goth, a suburb of Karachi, and was later moved to the capital Islamabad.

The arrest is a major victory in the U.S.-led battle against al-Qaida and will be taken as a sign that Pakistan is cooperating more fully with Washington. It follows the recent detentions of several Afghan Taliban commanders in Karachi.

+

Indeed, but whose custody is Gadahn being held? If ours, that’s super good. If Pakistan’s, not so good. We have no extradition treaty with Pakistan and the thought of the government doing any favors for the US would send thousands into the streets protesting. That’s the main reason Pakistan won’t turn over the Afghan Taliban leaders to us - at least, that’s the story they’re sticking to.

Allah (from 2/20):

It’s so hard to tell what’s kabuki and what’s not in these Pakistan/Taliban stories that I’m half-inclined to stop blogging them altogether. For instance, is this proof that the skeptics are right, that Pakistan’s holding the Taliban’s number two as a bargaining chip vis-a-vis Karzai? Or is it just propaganda aimed at the anti-American Pakistani population, with Islamabad fully intending to hand over Baradar et al. to the U.S. in the guise of “deporting them to Afghanistan”? Or could it be that Pakistan’s technically telling the truth about not handing them over while secretly allowing U.S. interrogators full access to the prisoners, a la some European CIA “black site”? (The Times story that broke the news about Baradar claimed that American agents are part of the team that’s questioning him.)

I strongly discount the last, and the Pakistanis have already refused to hand over Baradar to us. The Pakistan Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that Baradar and his friends won’t even be sent to Afghanistan:

The Lahore High Court also banned extraditing four other unnamed Taliban chiefs reportedly seized recently, the BBC reported.

The order was in response to a petition filed by a rights activist to prevent the detainees from being sent abroad.

“The high court has ordered that none of the leaders should be handed over to the (United States) or Afghanistan,” Tariq Asad, a lawyer handling the petition, told the BBC.

“The court has also said that none, other than Pakistan intelligence or security officials, should be given access to the Taliban leaders,” he said.

Details of Baradar’s capture “remain murky,” The New York Times wrote at the time. But officials said that it had been carried out by Pakistan’s military spy agency the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence with CIA operatives helping out.

Apparently, we can’t even question the terrorists anymore.

Even if the operation to capture Gadahn was carried out by the CIA, the fact that the arrests took place on Pakistani soil probably means similar treatment by the courts for the traitor.

So NBC’s ridiculous claim that Gadahn’s capture should be “taken as a sign that Pakistan is cooperating more fully with Washington,” is blowing smoke. A Leopard can’t change its spots and the ISI will not change its nature. While there are some high ranking ISI officers who are friendly with the CIA and cooperate, the organization itself is a fiercely nationalistic arm of the government and sees helping the Americans in any way as a betrayal of Pakistani values. There were almost mass resignations in the military when the Pakistani government was considering accepting the American aid package that contained caveats for where the money must be spent. Congress ordered the cash be used to bolster anti-terrorism capability while the military wanted to use the money to kill Indians by improving their abilities in the Kashmir. The heart of the dispute was that the Pakistani military did not wish to be seen as an American puppet force. A political crisis ensued that threatened the government at one point.

How this capture of another high value target will play out remains to be seen. The fact that Gadahn is an American national might make a difference. But given the sensitivity with which the government has shown toward these situations, I wouldn’t bet on it.

UPDATE: Maybe not

Massive confusion in the press now as one Pakistani intel guy sourced by CBS News says that it is not Gadahn:

Earlier it was reported by Pakistani media that intelligence agents had arrested Adam Gadahn, the American-born spokesman for al Qaeda, in an operation in the southern city of Karachi.

It was further reported by the Associated Press and Reuters that Gadahn had been arrested, sourcing security officials.

CBS News was told by sources in the Pakistan government that it was Gadahn, even after U.S. officials refused to confirm it was the California native for whom a $1 million reward has been posted.

Now, CBS News’ Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad writes that earlier reports the detained individual was Gadahn proved false. According to a Pakistan security official who spoke with CBS News on condition of anonymity, the arrested individual is in fact “a Taliban militant leader who is known as Abu Yahya.”

The official said evidence compiled from an interrogation of the suspect and information exchanged with U.S. officials verified the man’s identify.

The reassessment only added to the confusion surrounding the arrest of a man earlier described by other unnamed Pakistani security officials as Gadahn.

“In the light of our latest information, I can say, this is not looking like Gadahn. But it is still the arrest of an important Taliban militant,” said the Pakistani security official who spoke to CBS News late Sunday.

In the AP story linked above, the reporter quoted a “senior government official” that it was indeed, Gadahn. In addition to AP, Reuters, CBS, the New York Times, and the Washington Post independently confirmed that it was Gadahn.

I am going to eat a huge steak dinner, purposely not watch the Oscars (we will watch LOTR Return of the King instead) and then go to bed.

I hope they have this sorted out by morning.

If the election were held today, I think it likely that both the House and Senate would flip to the Republicans. I have never heard the American people so riled up. And I’m not even including the tea party people. I mean that if you try to talk politics with anyone, the tangible expressions of disgust, anger (even rage), fear, and genuine loathing of Congress and the economic elites that most people feel got us into this mess is evident.

Conventional wisdom - especially on the right - informs us that these attitudes by voters are indicative of a GOP sweep; a can’t miss, ironclad, lock it up and put it in the history books certainty. And if the election were held today, such might be the case.

But the election is still 8 months away. And there are certain factors that could very well work to rob the Republicans of the kind of sea change election that would turn control of one or both chambers over to them.

First, if the Democrats actually get their act together and pass national health insurance, is that automatically the kiss of death, as Howard Dean hinted in remarks earlier this week? Again, conventional wisdom says yes, that the Democrats are toast if national health insurance becomes a reality.

But this fails to take into account a likely rise in premiums by insurance companies that might be used by Democrats to buttress their case that for premiums to come down, the government has to step in. Besides that, polls have shown that individual aspects of health insurance reform - at least as they are explained in the poll questions - are very popular. It should be stressed that the Democrats are not just going to sit idle and do nothing as they watch their majorities slip away. They are going to defend themselves, they have plenty of cash to do it with, and running ads that outline the specifics of Obamacare might change a few people’s minds about it.

And at least some opposition to national health care is because there are those who don’t think it goes far enough. I daresay that this group will not be voting for the GOP anytime soon and will probably - grudgingly - end up accepting Obamacare as passed.

Polls also show that people are almost as mad about the tortuous process used by Democrats to pass reform as they are about the bill in general. Once the bill is passed, the “process” argument disappears and people are free to focus on what the Democrats have done for them. I think the difference between those who support reform and those who don’t will narrow considerably.

This won’t mean that health care reform as an issue will be off the table. It will still play to the GOP’s advantage in that it will drive much of the Republican party to the polls, and anger right leaning independents. But the Democrats have a chance to blunt the worst of the blowback on this and I see no reason why they shouldn’t have some modest success in doing so.

What about the economy as an issue? It is doubtful that employment will rebound much at all between now and November. But as long as things don’t get any worse, there’s a reasonable chance that blame for the bad economy will be a wash between the parties. This CNN poll taken last month reveals 4 times as many people blame Bush for the bad economy than they do Obama.

This is evident if you talk to ordinary people about our economic situation. If you ask someone who is to blame for the bad economy, the overwhelming majority answer “Wall Street” or “the rich.” If you ask specifically which party is at fault, people are apt to get mad at you. They see such a question as a “partisan” question and either say they don’t care, or will split between Obama and Bush. While his positive numbers are down, a surprisingly small number of people I’ve talked to blame Obama.

This is good news for the president because it shows there is still a reservoir of support that he can reclaim if the economy improves a little. We saw something similar in 1982 when the economy was almost as bad as it is today, and Reagan’s approval was hovering around 40%. But few people blamed Reagan for it. The Gipper went on to win 49 states as you recall.

The one area that may really trip up the Democrats is corruption. The recent rash of resignations, retirements, and ethical problems will, if played right by the GOP, undermine the Democrat’s message that they deserve to be kept in the majority in Congress. However, with health care reform and the economy being such significant issues, there’s a decent chance that corruption as an election issue will not resonate quite the same way for Republicans in 2010 as it did for Democrats in 2006.

The one intangible that could make or break the race for both parties is President Obama. His fortunes will rise and fall with the performance of the economy. If the Democrats can manufacture the perception that the country is on the right track, Obama might not be such a drag on local races. The opposite is true, of course, If things are only marginally better, Democrats will suffer.

All of this might be moot anyway and I may be full of it. But I don’t think overconfidence is warranted by Republicans at this point in time. With 8 months to go, there’s a lot of history to be made before Americans go to the polls and figure out which party is more capable of getting us out of this mess.