My letter to Chris Christie on Graham-Cassidy

Graham-Cassidy's sponsors are relying in large part on support from Republican governors to win senators' votes for the bill. Today, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey came out in favor, notwithstanding that CBPP estimates that Arizona stands to lose $1.6 billion in federal funding in 2026 alone under the bill's redistribution formula.

At BlueWave New Jersey, we are calling on NJ Governor Chris Christie this week to defend the state's Medicaid expansion and coverage gains and come out against Graham-Cassidy. I have a letter in today's print Star-Ledger, but it's not online. Here is the text:

Behold the last and worst of the ACA repeal bills, introduced this week by four Republican U.S. senators.The bill ends the ACA Medicaid expansion, ultimately ends all ACA funding to help people gain health insurance, and guts federal spending on all Medicaid programs, which serve 75 million Americans. 

What it looks like when mainstream leaders fall in behind a fascist

It's been terrifying enough to witness a large plurality of Republicans respond to Donald Trump's calls for mass deportations, a ban on Muslims, uninhibited use of torture and terror. It's about equally terrifying  that, "policies" aside, large numbers of Americans would respond to a man whose speech consists entirely of empty boasts and insults. 

It will be more terrifying to watch Republican party leadership fall in behind the blowhard. And Chris Christie -- the kind of garden variety authoritarian bully-boy who in his own right would be constrained by American political institutions -- has started what will probably become a stampede.

Here is how Christie introduced Trump at a rally in Oklahoma City on Friday. The message is simple and moronic: Trump is "strong." American needs a strongman.

Obama's permission structures

Steve Rosen, "a former AIPAC foreign policy chief known for his hawkishness on Iran," gave the Obama administration a backhanded compliment that sheds some interesting light on complaints that "no one fears" Obama.  Regarding AIPAC's heavy-handed backing of the Kirk-Menendez Iran sanctions bill that the administration is dead-set against, JTA's Ron Kampeas reports:

“AIPAC puts a premium on bipartisan consensus and maintaining communication with the White House,” said Rosen, who was fired by AIPAC in 2005 after being investigated in a government leak probe, though the resulting charges were dismissed and he later sued AIPAC unsuccessfully for damages.

Rosen noted AIPAC’s forthcoming policy conference in March; such conferences routinely feature a top administration official — the president or  vice president, the secretary of state or defense. At least one of these failing to appear “would be devastating to AIPAC’s image of bipartisanship,” he said.

My fantasy flashes in the news, flickers, fades

I have fantasized from time to time that Obama would pull a Jan Brewer and refuse to sign any appropriations bills that don't shut off the sequester. Or the (earlier) Chris Christie variant: that he will sit back, crack open a beer, and wait for Congress to send him a budget he can sign.

Therefore, this peek at alleged White House deliberations by the Washington Post's Zachary Goldfarb and Paul Kane set my heart a bit aflutter:

White House officials also are discussing a potential strategy to try to stop the sequestration cuts from continuing, the lawmakers and Democrats said. Under this scenario, the president might refuse to sign a new funding measure that did not roll back the sequester.

But reality came back quick:

No decision has been made.

And this sounds more like Obama:

In which I cozy up to my GOP governor

Gee, I never would have keyboarded such a letter before Hurricane Sandy -- at least, the tone would have been different. Politics!

Dear Governor Christie:

I urge you to take an active role in establishing New Jersey's health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act.  All Americans citizens should have access to affordable care, and the exchange is far likelier to serve the needs of New Jersey citizens effectively if your administration does its utmost to make the exchange work. Indeed, NJ has an effective precursor: when my oldest son was fresh out of college, before the ACA enabled adults under 26 to be covered under their parents' plans, he bought an Amerihealth policy, selecting it from clear information available on a NJ website. It was affordable, adequate coverage. Please help New Jersey take the next step and make more comprehensive insurance available to a wider range of citizens who can't get insurance through their employers.

The GOP needs to end its emotional, knee-jerk, self-serving opposition to a health reform effort modeled on Gov. Romney's successful Massachusetts program. As a party leader, you can  *lead* in this regard. The times they are a-changin for the GOP -- please throw in your lot with its better instincts.

The keynote in Charlotte

The entire Republican convention was built around the lie that Obama asserted that business owners didn't build their own businesses.

Maybe the Democrats should double down and focus their convention on Obama's actual message in that maladroit riff.

Elizabeth Warren, who created the prototype "you didn't build it alone" speechlet, sent an email to supporters late last night that could be the keynote in Charlotte.  Subject line:  We built it together:

Pulping the bully approach to presidential leadership IV

Here is the best evidence yet that Obama's low-profile approach to beginning the long process of budget/tax reform is on target.  Never mind Republicans' alleged glee at his refusal to roll out a grand plan -- they are begging him, Jake Sherman reports, to expose himself:

House Republicans were giddy when President Barack Obama took a pass on entitlement reform in his 2012 budget, ripping him for punting on the future of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

But when they’re pressed for answers about what needs to happen on entitlements, Republicans are punting right back, saying the president needs to take the lead and come up with his own ideas

Before stating their own policy prescriptions, no fewer than a dozen GOP lawmakers and aides Wednesday said that it is Obama’s responsibility to put forth ideas on entitlement reform.

“We need his leadership,” Ways and Means Republican Rep. Wally Herger (Calif.) said. “If it’s something this big to get through, it’s very important for the president to lead.”

Rep. Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said that the “president looks very small if he doesn’t lead on this issue.” Rep. Patrick Tiberi, an Ohio Republican cozy with Speaker John Boehner, said “you can’t have a big issue that impacts Americans without presidential leadership.” And Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), the president of the anti-Obama freshman class, said “quite honestly, he has a responsibility to America” to put forth his ideas and lead.

Mr. President, Republicans have a playbook for you: Over the Cliff, by Hugo First.

Meanwhile, back in the Senate, the WSJ's Jonathan Weisman reports, negotiations continue apace among a new gang of six toward a plan with at least some resemblance to Bowles-Simpson (including, apparently, a lot of magic asterisks). Weisman notes pointedly that two of the six, Dick Durbin and Tom Coburn, are "personally close to President Obama."  Nonetheless, despite further GOP blandishments, the admin is hanging back:

Owens' win in NY 23: bad for Democrats, good for the country?

After basking a bit in the tea partiers' election-night shock when their insurgent darling Doug Hoffman went down in NY District 23, Frank Rich cautions:

The Democrats’ celebration was also premature: Hoffman’s defeat is potentially more harmful to them than to the Republicans....it increases the odds that the Republicans will not do Democrats the great favor of committing suicide between now and the next Election Day.

Quite so. But what may be bad for Democrats in the short term is good for the country.

The country needs the Republican party to step back from the brink. Other mature democracies have fringe parties that play primarily to voters' fears and fantasies, but those parties exist within multiparty systems. In times of stress their vote may approach or crack 20% of the total, and everyone draws a breath and notes the electorate's anger.

We have only two national parties. If one of them shrinks to attract the affiliation of less than 30% of the electorate and retreats entirely into fringe party thinking and tactics, that's dangerous. The tea partiers' lies and paranoid fantasies; their demonization of a reform effort as incremental, cautious, and indeed historically Republican in its genesis as the pending health care bills; their glorification of the willful ignorance of Palin and Bachmann and their rapt attention to transparent demagogues like Beck and Limbaugh, is all fringe party behavior. Those who equate health insurance mandates or voluntary end of life counseling with fascism are themselves potential fascists -- demonizers of opposition, rabid advocates of torture, paranoid fantasists.

If that fringe entirely captures one of our two parties, the next big shock -- a world market collapse like that predicted by Roubini, a major terrorist attack -- could push such people into power. If, meanwhile, new Republican governors in purple states go to work with even a modicum of pragmatism -as Christie at least will have to do -- that could have a powerful demonstration effect for Republican decision-makers.