Andrew Kohut:
In my decades of polling, I recall only one moment when a party had been driven as far from the center as the Republican Party has been today.
The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s — radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.
Michael Gerson:
Major Republican donors seem perfectly willing to support the presidential races of quixotic candidates. They foot the bill for television attack ads. They seem less interested in funding the revival of ideas and policy that is a prerequisite to reestablishing a GOP majority. It is a strategic failure of the first order.
Those concerned about the Republican future hope for the arrival of a transformational candidate. But he or she will need something compelling to say.
Hey, GOP? Why change when you are winning? Oh, wait...
The
WaPo wouldn't run with the bogus prostitute story, but they did run with this:
A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).
The WaPo can't confirm any of this, but I ask you: is there any bigger joke of a "journalist" than Tucker Carlson?
More politics and policy below the fold.
Erik Wemple:
Though this blog has written dire things about the Daily Caller, we’re issuing a formal statement of doubt that the Daily Caller underwrote this slime operation. We believe that the Daily Caller was all too eager to publish completely unsubstantiated allegations about Menendez. We believe that it barely lifted un dedo to corroborate these explosive allegations. And we believe that its vow to continue investigating the story amounts to ducking accountability. But we also believe that this bit of mudslinging against the Daily Caller smacks of the same garbage, gossip and character assassination that the Daily Caller should have sniffed out in the beginning. So it sort of deserves this.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns is turning out to be a major player.
Here is their trace the guns project (an argument about why federal and not just state laws are needed.) And here is their state and district background checks poll.
More polling, this from Gallup:
With the Supreme Court set to hear arguments on a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, Gallup finds that Americans generally support giving insurance, tax, and Social Security benefits to same-sex spouses of federal employees.
Greg Mitchell:
Reviewing This Week's Mea Culpas on Iraq: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Hugh Bailey:
"Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." These are words of an extremist.
Only some liberal could come up with this argument, which continues by claiming that any number of prohibitions and restrictions on guns passed by various legislatures, state and federal, are well within the rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
Who could have such obvious disrespect toward the clear meaning of the Founding Fathers?
Unfortunately for the gun lobby, this was the argument put forth by none other than Antonin Scalia, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, considered by many people to be the foremost conservative legal mind in America today.
Chris Cillizza:
For everyone who predicted that the political world had changed post-Newtown, the gun legislation the Senate will debate early next month proves one thing: It hasn’t.
This is wrong at so many levels, including the curt dismissal in the article of important points (background checks matter most, an AWB was never going to pass the Senate this year) and not least of which is the idea that only what happens in Washington DC matters. Gun safety legislation has already passed in NY and CO and is soon to pass in CT. In fact, state level activity is summarized
here:
Most of the movement on gun legislation has been at the state level. Since Jan. 1, a raft of new bills has been introduced, with 574 proposed bills to strengthen gun controls, and 512 to bolster gun rights, according to a new analysis by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which tracks state gun laws. Connecticut alone has introduced more than 100 gun-control measures and as well as a handful of gun-rights bills since the shooting.
And yes, much of it is happening because of Newtown.