What happens when you become a frontrunner: National Review says/reports that Scott Walker "used to support amnesty."
http://t.co/...
— @Taniel
Catherine Rampell:
Scott Walker’s yellow politics
Scott Walker is right: It’s time for more Americans to get comfortable peeing in cups. Our nation’s fiscal health may depend on it.
I’m referring, of course, to taking a drug test as a condition for receiving government benefits. Walker, the Wisconsin governor and a likely 2016 Republican presidential contender, made this a centerpiece of his recently announced state budget.
Jonathan Cohn:
Why Scott Walker's Views On Evolution Are Totally Relevant
Scott Walker doesn’t want reporters to ask him about his position on evolution. That’s one more reason why they should.
Byron York:
Scott Walker's bumpy evolution education
But Walker learned a few lessons. First, there's no protection from out-of-the-blue questions. Second, Republicans, as Webb suggested, get special treatment when traveling abroad. And third, it doesn't matter if a candidate wants to talk about cheese and industrial sand, he's never the one setting the agenda.
Walker won't talk about evolution, Jeb Bush today told reporter he'd wouldn't discuss Iraq War. this is gonna be fun.....
— @EricBoehlert
More politics and policy below the fold.
Jonathan Bernstein:
NBC’s Perry Bacon Jr. has a devastating account of Christie’s standing in the invisible primary:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is facing growing skepticism from influential Republicans about his likely presidential run, with many in the party privately expressing doubts that he has any chance of winning the GOP nomination and some of Christie's former backers unwilling to say they will support his campaign.
Add to that a Politico survey of insiders in Iowa and New Hampshire that contained nothing positive for Christie. In fact, he isn't mentioned in James Hohmann’s write-up. Then there are polling numbers in New Jersey showing Christie solidly underwater and falling in his home state.
There’s also Christie’s weak polling nationally among Republicans, summarized by Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight under the headline “Everybody Hates Chris Christie.”
Huh. Who could have seen that coming?
@DanEggenWPost @philiprucker @ktumulty you don’t need to, Jeb. the public will do it for you.
— @DemFromCT
Jonathan Kay:
The Toronto Star is the best investigative newspaper in Canada. In recent years, it broke Jian Ghomeshi, Rob Ford, the ORNGE scandal, and numerous other stories. To their credit, editor Michael Cooke and publisher John Cruickshank clearly take this sphere of journalism seriously, and have ploughed millions into these investigations. (Lawyers’ bills alone are enormous for stories such as these.) Without the Star, Jian Ghomeshi might still be the host of Q, Rob Ford might still be mayor of Toronto, and Chris Mazza might still be running Ontario’s air ambulance service.
So it says something that even the Star could have botched a story as badly as it did on February 5, when it splashed a gruesome banner across its front page, entitled “A wonder drug’s dark side.” The drug in question—the vaccine Gardasil—is indeed a wonder drug. By preventing human papillomavirus infections clinically associated with deadly cancers (of the cervix, most notably), the vaccine can help save hundreds of Canadian lives every year—not to mention many tens of thousands of lives around the world.
Dr Jen Gunter:
7 questions the Toronto Star must answer about their Gardasil story
This botched job by the
Toronto Star is how people become vaccine hesitant. They have a lot to atone for, which they haven't yet done properly.
Brendan Nyhan:
Unfortunately, good insurgent issues are hard to find. Inequality doesn’t look like a winner for Republicans in this election. That’s why Mr. Bush, like Mr. Dukakis, has struck some analysts as sounding like a technocrat — he can’t run on the economy and doesn’t have a good alternative issue or trait to emphasize (unlike his brother George, who successfully ran as the Not Clinton candidate in 2000).
Regardless of the political consequences, though, the G.O.P. embrace of income inequality does offer one substantive benefit: creating a bipartisan debate in which Democrats are forced to consider different approaches like the proposals offered by Marco Rubio, another 2016 contender. The first step in addressing inequality is admitting that we have a problem. Now, at least, both major parties have done just that.
Lawrence O. Gostin in
JAMA:
Parents express a wide spectrum of concerns, including the right to raise their children, give informed consent, and the freedom of religion or conscience. A small fraction of parents categorically oppose vaccinations, but many others are concerned primarily with state mandates. For these parents, a “nudge” may be all that is required, such as being informed of the science and making exemptions for immunizations more difficult to obtain. The uptake of vaccines, moreover, is associated with perceived susceptibility to and severity of childhood diseases. The catch-22 is that because vaccines are such powerful tools of prevention, individuals are less inclined to vaccinate their children because they rarely see vaccine-preventable childhood diseases.
Michael Cohen:
REPUBLICANS REALLY hate Obamacare.
They’ve voted to repeal it, defund it, or change it 67 times in Congress. They’ve raised Supreme Court challenges and blocked efforts on the state level to expand its reach.
All this is well-known to even the most casual political observer. Less appreciated, however, is the human cost of GOP obstructionism. A five-year effort to kill Obamacare is literally killing Americans.
Update on
a topic we have been following:
The Gardasil Girls: How Toronto Star story on young women hurt public trust in vaccine
Update II:
Public editor criticizes the Star's Gardasil story
Scientific evidence has concluded the HPV vaccine is safe and effective so why did Star publish a story that raised alarms about its safety?