The Scott Walker Recall & the "Ron Johnson Strategy"

He claims not to have used it:

Gov. Scott Walker said he didn't take advantage of the early period for unlimited fundraising triggered more than a week ago and was waiting until tomorrow to start his official push against the recalls.

A early recall filing from "Close Friends to Recall Walker" allowed Walker to begin raising unlimited dollars prior to the official Nov. 15 start planned by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

"I've made it clear our focus is on the 15th," Walker said in a press conference. "We haven't done anything in response to the early recall paperwork."

Walker did cancel a fundraiser in Kansas this weekend, so that statement might be technically true, but the fact is that no one will be able to know until the campaign finance reports are filed.

But that still doesn't explain why his team opened the fundraising window in the first place.

The next few months are going to be nothing short of a fucking nightmare, a nightly six o'clock news headache. The recall hasn't even begun and we're already talking about sham candidates, fake petitioners destroying papers and now DDS attacks (which are in many ways the digital equivalent to phone-jamming). God only knows what other tricks are in store.

I have no idea whether the Walker recall is a good idea or not. A few weeks ago, I thought the numbers against Walker just aren't bad enough to warrant the time and energy needed to wage a scorched Earth campaign against him. Then again, that just might be the political reality we're all living with these days.

Today, I think it's, at best, a 50/50 proposition. Let me reiterate that again: at best. Walker's special jobs session was a disaster. His clown car of Workforce Development Secretaries is embarrassing. There's been no negligible measurable decline in unemployment despite unspeakably divisive policies. Basically, Walker's mouth wrote (unemployment) checks during the campaign that his ass can't cash while governor.

Nevertheless, no matter how flawed the Dem strategy may (or may not) be, the Wisconsin GOP's may be worse. Right now, I would think that the GOP's best game plan would be to get the recall over with as soon as possible, but doing this would suggest that they think otherwise:

Fitzgerald says Republicans will wait until after Democrats turn in their recall petitions in January to decide whether to launch any recall efforts of their own.

Any court challenge could possibly delay election day. Whether that's a good thing for Republicans is debatable. Personally, I would think they would just want to get it over with as soon as possible and before any further developments in the ongoing John Doe investigation, which may very will be the X-factor in this entire equation. Also, the last thing Walker needs is 3-6 months of bad economic numbers.

Honestly, who knows what's going to happen. Recalling legislators has not gotten any easier (regardless of what editorial boards may think). The final results will likely be razor thin. But this isn't just a "no confidence" vote for Walker. The Dems need to find a candidate. Walker is much better with an opponent than he is doing pretty much anything else. I would personally find it hilarious if the Dems could find a blank slate who had a very small paper trail and just decided to keep a low profile during the entire campaign. Someone who hid out and avoided any pretense of answering tough questions or developing a coherent program for his term in office.

An empty suit who took advantage of voter rage alone.

That would be pretty amusing.

Recall Lessons

The Recess Supervisor has five post recall take-away points that are worth looking at, all of which are worth discussing.

1. You can't beat something with nothing. The first thing the Democrats need is a probable candidate.

Couldn't agree more. This year's recall extravaganza has been relatively easy on the Dems messaging machine in so far as they were at liberty to treat Scott Walker like a pinata without worrying about negative attacks on their own tent pole candidate, but eventually they're going to need to have a figurehead to rally around.

With Feingold now out of the equation, the RS looks at Ron Kind (point #2) and David Obey (point #3) as potential candidates. Ron Kind does seem to be the logical choice for a front-runner. He's telegenic, has a carefully-crafted moderate image and can fund-raise in DC and through the Harvard alumni network, etc. We could go on, but the bigger issue that some Democrat needs to step up and become the face of Walker opposition. To date, no one has done so.

Here are three other nominees who could fill that role -- all three of which have enormous problems. The first is Jon Erpenbach, who ably took on the role of chief communicator for the "Wisconsin 14." In many ways he would seem to be perfect for the role, but it seems he will instead focus on running for Congress next year in Tammy Baldwin's soon to be vacated seat. The next is Tom Nelson, who is of course spying an opening to potentially take advantage of in Outagamie County. It's not the best place to launch a campaign or to organize a movement, but it does put some distance between him and the mess in Madison. Nelson, however, does not come without his own baggage.

Last, but not least, is Candidate X -- and I'm going to label he or she as such because, frankly, I'm not sure she or he exists.

Right now would be the perfect time for someone with few (if any) ties to Madison to take the initiative and run a-pox-on-both-your-houses populist campaign that doesn't fight Scott Walker per se, but goes after "business as usual in Madison as it is conducted by the Walker administration." This candidate would be free of an of Madison's taint and could credibly say that they don't bring the partisan baggage to the Governor's mansion of a decade of political knife-fighting, that they could world with both sides of the aisle, because they weren't around when both sides did everything they could to dissolve their working relationship. This person would be a business-owner or local office-holder (a mayor or county executive) who has the resources or savvy to become an opposition.

Several people come to mind who could potentially become Candidate X, but in each case they have the resources, but lack the willingness (or vice versa). So, as I said early, I'm not sure that this person exists, which is too bad, because the only person with the ability to tell both parties to shut up and act like adults is the Governor, and the current Governor can not and will not do so.

The last two point the RS makes are more debatable. Here's #4:

If the Democrats recall Scott Walker but lose the election, it is a virtual certainty that they will lose again in 2014. At some point - if it hasn't already begun - Democrats will lose support in the middle among people who are tired of them forcing voters into a perpetual campaign. For as much as Democrats think average people dislike Scott Walker, I assure you they dislike the commercials, the IE robocalls during dinner, the door knocking by out-of-state volunteers, and the junk in their mailboxes way more. 

I'm not convinced this is true. Remember, there will be at least two whole years between the latest Walker recall effort and his next re-election bid, during which there won't be as anywhere near as much electioneering as we've seen in the last 8 months. That's an eternity.

Also, there's not a whole lot of good news waiting for Walker on the other end of the defeating a recall. According to the state's latest jobs figures, Walker will fall about 50,000 jobs short of his goal of 250,000 jobs in his first term. Most economists do not have rosy outlook for the next few years. It's entirely possibly we could be in the depths of another recession by November 2012 and the wave of populist anger that Walker rode to power might sweep him out to sea.

Let's continue to say that Walker does survive a recall. Throughout his career Walker has never demonstrated an ability to work cooperatively with the opposition. In 2012, the WisGOP may have to defend, in one or another, as many as 17 state senate seats. There's a good chance that the Dems will reclaim that part of the legislature. If that happens, the budget negotiations the following year will be catastrophic. Democrats will have no motivation for passing a budget that doesn't throw them enough of a bone that leaves Walker supporters grumbling. If that doesn't happen there will be work stoppages, lay-offs, furloughs, thousands of voters inconvenienced. The sloppiness of Jim Doyle's final budget was one of the last straws that broke his administration -- don't be surprised if the same illness ends Walker's.

That being said, I will completely contradict myself regarding this very point at the end of this post. 

Then there's the RS's last point:

Don't underestimate the wishes of Obama's political team. In all likelihood, after all the signature counting, challenging, and assorted lawyering up, a gubernatorial recall ends up on a November ballot. That race will likely dominate the presidential election in terms of interest. The question for Team Obama is whether that helps him or hurts him in Wisconsin. If their determination is that it hurts Obama, or is a wild card with which they don't want to risk dealing, there could be pressure on DPW and other left-leaning interest groups to let it go and move on. 

That's a pretty bold prediction, one that assumes, oddly enough, that the WisDems cand find a credible candidate to take on Walker and the GOP can find an candidate that will be able to take on Obama (Mitt Romney, who we think will win the nomination after a ten car pile up at the finish line, won't cut it).

Then there's the highly possible Perfect Storm Scenario: Paul Ryan is on the national GOP ticket. What that does to a November gubernatorial recall race in Wisconsin is anyone's guess, but suffice it to say that both races will be fubar in Wisconsin. We'll know the answer in about 54 weeks.

Last is something that I haven't seen a single commentator or blogger or pundit or belligerent radio douche mention as one of the real, big picture take-aways from the recalls. It's a point that tends to get brushed aside as too obvious to mention:

Wisconsin voters like incumbents.

I mean we really like incumbents. The two recall races the did result in successful turnovers were both under extraordinary circumstances. This should be an important lesson to the folks who will eventually run the Recall Walker effort: they need to convince voters that the recall is necessary before running against Walker. If the recall occurs in November they might get away with skipping this step by bundling it up together with the normal election cycle, but this isn't a state that has a recent history of deposing holders of important offices shortly after their initial elections. Dave Obey was in office for 40 years. Tommy Thompson was governor for like 14 years. Tom Petri (remember him?), 30+ years. Russ Feingold managed to hang on for 18 years. Herb Kohl is up to 25, I think. Scott Walker has an enormous "natural" advantage as the incumbent and there really isn't an easy answer for how to overcome that.

There have been some absolutely horrible governors that have held office in the last 100 years, or since the recall became an option. The two governors that were successfully recalled were actually in their 5th years in office. That bodes well for Scott Walker. Voters prefer to wait for their elected officials' contract to expire before trying to bounce them. I don't think Recall Walker will have much trouble getting the requisite signatures to force an election, buut they are going to have a very difficult time getting enough votes and the polls.

Kim Simac's Theological Postmortem of her own Campaign

Check out Kim Simac's Northwoods Patriots site today and you'll find an amazing post by a "anonymous" submitter whose writing style coincidentally resembles Simac's own.

Then, when you're done, please read Abe Sauer's look at the Tea Party after two years on the trail.

That will be all.

MORE: Evidently, that will not be all. PPP has an early GOP presidential primary poll in the field and the two biggest winners are the two candidates who wear their religiosity on their sleeves. We should all sit down and have a nice long talk about this phenomenon sometime soon.

Rick Perry's Welcome Party

Has a presidential candidate ever walked headlong into an opposition research buzzsaw upon announcing his candidacy like Rick Perry has?

Perry made his announcement Saturday afternoon after weeks of telegraphing his intentions and in the last 72 hours there's been a torrent of research drops since. There's Perry and

• Gardisil

• the Trans-American Superhighway conspiracy

• Shitty college grades

• the Al Gore-supporter

• Jobs numbers

• Not well-liked by the House of Bush

• Crazy religious views

• is gay

• huge benefits to donors

Did I miss anything? Oh yeah,

• Executing the innocent man

Usually candidates get a few days of goodwill after their announcements, but that didn't happen with Perry. A lot of that probably has to do with Perry's late entry into the race and the fact that most people saw him entering months ago, but has their ever been anyone who had this much thrown at him all at once?

Obviously, this isn't going to be the end of it. There's more out there, not including the gaffes Perry has yet to make.

Perry is, as his native Texans have been known to say, all hat and no cattle. Sure, his Texas alpha male macho schtick might play south of the Red River, but it gets really old really quickly north of it.

MORE: Jesus, I just glanced at Memeorandum and found two more things Perry must contend with:

• Salty language and an upcoming book

• Barbaric boarder control policies (face it, Perry's insinuating the drones are armed)

"A kids’ area was set up in the Jose Cuervo Cantina on the stadium’s south side."

Cuervo and kids: a winning combination.

The Islamophobic Hard Right Really aren't any Different from 9/11 Truthers

This is a rather refreshing slice of sanity from Chris Christie:

At this juncture, it may be more efficient to highlight which interactions between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and the media are not newsworthy. The Republican’s appointment of Muslim-American Sohail Mohammed to a state bench this week ruffled some feathers among some who fear the threat of Sharia Law, but when asked about those concerns, Gov. Christie made clear he had no patience for such “ignorance,” calling the complaints “crap.”

“Ignorance is behind the criticism of Sohail Mohammed,” he told a reporter asking about the complaints that he may be inadequate to be a judge because he defended Muslim Americans who were wrongly arrested post-9/11. “He is an extraordinary American who is an outstanding lawyer and played an integral role in the post-September 11th period in building bridges between the Muslim American community in this state and law enforcement,” Gov. Christie argued, adding that he was “disgusted, candidly, by some of the questions he was asked… at the Senate judiciary committee.”

But it was a follow-up question on the fear of Sharia Law that set the governor off. “Sharia Law has nothing to do with this at all, it’s crazy!” he cried. “The guy is an American citizen!” He concluded that the “Sharia Law business is just crap… and I’m tried of dealing with the crazies,” adding with disgust and frustration that “it’s just unnecessary to be accusing this guy of things just because of his religious background.”

(For those on the left who fail to see the appeal of Christie's bullying tactics, you have to admit it's kind of nice to see when he's making your point for you. That, and he is governor of a state known for its Darwinian principles of social management.)

Unfortunately, Christie's views are apparently the minority view in the GOP. Do check out Eli Lake's extended assessment of the current crop of GOP presidential contender's foreign policy philosophies. Among the more outlandish segments of the piece is this nugget from supposedly serious candidate Tim Pawlenty's camp:

“[Michelle Bachmann] really gets it that there is a stealth jihad by radical Islamists in this country,” says Sarah Stern, the president and founder of the Endowment for Middle East Truth. Stern recalls a conversation that she had with Bachmann in the congresswoman’s office in October 2010. Stern says Bachmann was talking about “the depth of radical Islam in Minneapolis.” (Minneapolis was the site of a longtime operation by Al Shabab to recruit Somali-Americans to fight in Somalia.) “She actually said, ‘Right here, coming to a theater near you, we have stealth jihad in Minnesota,’” Stern told me approvingly.

[...]

BACHMANN’S VIEWS on sharia are apparently popular enough that Tim Pawlenty—who planned to run as the conservative alternative to Romney, but has found himself eclipsed by Bachmann—has felt the need to nod in the same direction. In March, Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Pawlenty campaign, told Politico that the governor personally shut down a sharia-compliant finance program in Minnesota, because “the United States should be governed by the U.S. Constitution, not religious laws.” And, when I asked Conant whether his candidate believed there was a threat to the Constitution from sharia, he said yes. “He does think there is a threat from sharia or any religious law or international law of undermining U.S. law and the Constitution,” Conant explained. “The threat is the courts would look to sharia law instead of the U.S. Constitution, and the governor would vigorously oppose this.”

I have to give Conant, an ex-editor of the Badger Herald, a lot of credit for being able to utter such remarkable bullshit with a straight face, especially given just how much this nonsense is just how couched it is in race-baiting and xenophobia. I understand this is standard operating procedure to bring base voters to the polls by creating boogie men -- and both parties do it -- but this particular bout of chest-pounding is particularly strange given Bachmann and Pawlenty's Minnesotan origins.


It's fairly well-known by now that the Twin Cities have a large Somali ex-pat population. The numbers aren't necessarily huge, but the community tends to stick out in a largely homogenous state. Lake omits this detail in his story. It should come as little surprise that an organization in the homeland, especially a bad one, looks to recruit and fund-raise from ex-pats abroad--the IRA, after all, was raising money in New York and Boston up through the 1990s. Ipso facto, according to Pawlenty and Bachmann, sharia law is slowly taking over the North Star State.


Lake also reminds his readers of the Frank Gaffney, the Islamophobic nutcase whose rantings are quickly becoming more and more unhinged with each passing day. As Luck would have it, Gaffney is currently espousing the utterly unsubstantiated theory that the manifesto of the murder responsible for the recent mass killings in Norway was planted as part of a "false flag operation" by the Muslim Brotherhood.


I bring this up because the phrase "false flag operation" should trigger a few alarms among people, like myself, who have a morbid curiosity with how conspiracy theories evolve and travel among the 9/11 Truther lunatic jetset. "False flag operations" are the conspiracy theorists' equant -- the abstract construction Ptolemy used to prove the universe revolved around the Earth. It should seem a little odd that two camps with diametrically opposed views are now adopting the same tactics to advance their respective points.


Or should it? Since Osama bin Laden was killed earlier this year it seems like the folks who have spent the last decade screaming like Cassandra of the imminent takeover of Islam now seem wrong. But when crazy people are given evidence that demonstrates the wrongness of their convictions, they don't change their minds: they double down. The next step is usually to apply their twisted worldviews to other areas and thus construct entirely new conspiracy theories from whole cloth, something noted Islamophobe Pamela Geller did three years ago when she gave mankind the Barack Obama is really Malcolm X's bastard son theory. Pretty soon Geller, Gaffney, Robert Spencer et al. will have constructed an entire alternative world history filled to the gills with enough conspiratorial nonsense to make even Moulder and Scully roll their eyes.


When we went looking for the reasons why Kevin Barrett believed all the crazy shit he believed we found that the common denominator underlying each pillar of his worldview was antisemitism. Somehow or in some way, whatever point Barrett tries to advance all comes back to the Jews. For the Islamophobic right, it's the same story, only with Muslims and couched in the delicate language of a think tank white paper:

Ever since 2003, when the thrust of the War On Terror stopped being the defeat of America’s enemies and decisively shifted to nation-building, we have insisted—against history, law, language, and logic—that Islamic culture is perfectly compatible with and hospitable to Western-style democracy,” McCarthy has written. “It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.

That extract from the Lake piece was written by Andrew McCarthy. It appeared in National Review earlier this year and its the very sentiment Chris Christie denounced at the very beginning of the post. At best, McCarthy's statement is a willfully negligent of the history of Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan (not the best example, I know, but one whose variables do more to explain the why democracy has trouble taking root in the Middle East as opposed to other parts of the Muslim world) and, the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia (see also Bangladesh, Mali and Senegal). At worst, it's a throwback to the kind of racist justifications used in defense of colonialism during the 19th century.

And it's an opinion pervasive among just about every GOP presidential candidate, except Mitt Romney, who perhaps better than any of his colleagues understands what it's like to be a religious minority whose faith is poorly understood by the rest of the country. One of the most important things George Bush did during his entire presidency was reach out to the Muslim community immediately -- and I mean without hesitation -- after 9/11 and then continue to make the distinction between radical and mainstream Islam. There's no question that prevented a deluge of suspicion and recriminations in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks. I seriously doubt that most of the GOP candidates running for President would have done the same thing.

Then again, maybe this burgeoning pillar of GOP foreign policy is a reaction to Bush's efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East, a way for the party to collectively wipe it's hands clean of the failure. It's the exact opposite of neocon theory that democracy would quickly flower in Iraq, all it needed was a push. But the current crop of GOP White House hopefuls seem to have taken away a stunningly simplistic lesson from the misadventure in Iraq: Islam and democracy don't mix. It's only a matter of time before we start getting a revisionist account about how the Iraq invasion would have worked if not for the stubborn Muslims who just couldn't seem to grasp the concept of freedom.

Again, I don't know if this is just an issue the GOP uses to whip the base up into a frenzy or if they actually believe this drivel (or even if there a difference between the two anymore), but if notion that democracy and Islam are incomparable is as influential an idea as Lake claims, it will not be long before wild-eyed nutters will be sounding like Kevin Barrett, only they'll be doing it from behind a lectern during a presidential debate. Maybe only then this idea will finally sound as stupid to their ears as it should.

“It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

From Politico:

Veterans of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s unsuccessful 2010 primary challenge to [Gov. Rick] Perry recalled being stunned at the way attacks bounced off the governor in a strongly conservative state gripped by tea party fever. Multiple former Hutchison advisers recalled asking a focus group about the charge that Perry may have presided over the execution of an innocent man — Cameron Todd Willingham — and got this response from a primary voter: “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

 If you aren't familiar with the mind-blowing details of the Willingham case, best learn yourself here.

Scott Walker's Free Fall Among Female Voters

We Ask America is one of those newish polling firms that shows up every now and then with a Wisconsin-related poll and it's most recent is probably the most interesting it's conducted to date. Here's a take-away from the poll:

As we’ve seen before, there are few sitting on the public-opinion sidelines when it comes to Walker or the president. However, there appears to be a pronounced gender gap, with men siding more for Walker and against Obama. This gap is wider than we’ve witnessed in presidential approval ratings in other states–but Wisconsin has always marched to it’s own drum beat. In past privately conducted Wisconsin-based polls, we’ve seen men’s shift of opinion precede those by  women, but there have been some exceptions to that trend so it is unclear that will happen here. Locals at least partially attribute the continued bad numbers among females to the governor’s war with unions representing teachers. [Emphasis in the original.]

And here are the numbers:

APPROVE	DISAPPROVE	NEUTRAL/UNSURE
Scott Walker	45.15%	52.62%	3.92%
By Gender
FEMALE:	36.70%	60.55%	2.75%
MALE:	53.72%	44.58%	1.70%

[Sorry for the crooked labeling -- copying and pasting these things are a pain.]

Walker is tanking with women and hard. This is an enormous problem for Walker since last fall he only lost Wisconsin women by 3% during an election when women accounted for only 50% of voters. (As we've noted before, women made up 53% of voters in 2006.) Walkers numbers with women are so bad that only a repeal of the 19th Amendment could give him a chance at surviving recall, even if the gender split among voters remains the same as it did in 2010.

We've been harping on the importance of women voters in Wisconsin for a few years now. We may have been wrong about specific female candidates, but we sure as hell haven't been wrong about female voters. If women show up to the polls, Scott Walker is doomed; as long as they don't, he has a better than fighting chance.

Don't We Have Enough Postmodernism in American Politics Already?

From the legendary exploits of one Charles Nesbitt Wilson; some-time Congressman, full-time bon vivant:

It is speculated that Wilson first entered politics as a teenager by running a campaign against his next-door neighbor, city council incumbent Charles Hazard. When Wilson was 13, his 14-year old dog entered Hazard's yard. Hazard retaliated by mixing crushed glass into the dog's food, causing fatal internal bleeding. Being a farmer's son, Wilson was able to get a driving permit at age 13, which enabled him to drive 96 voters, mainly black citizens from poor neighborhoods, to the polls. As they left the car, it is speculated that he told each of them that he didn't want to influence their vote, but that the incumbent Hazard had purposely killed his dog. After Hazard was defeated by a margin of 16 votes, Wilson went to his house to tell him he shouldn't poison any more dogs. Wilson cited this as "the day [he] fell in love with America."

It's actually a very touching story, one the demonstrates perfectly the ability of the weakest among us to triumph over the strongest in a democracy ... with the help of a little hustle, of course.

Somehow, I don't think this will turn out nearly as charmingly.

Palin's Shelf-life

Just some follow up on the Palin story from last night:

Palin's celebrity is largely based on her potential to one day be President. Her celebrity and earning power declines as this potential diminishes. Under these circumstances, Palin was at her most powerful (and potentially lucrative) the day John McCain introduced her as his running mate. Since then, however, her approval numbers have steadily declined. Given that her entire shtick is to stay true to core values and principles, it's highly unlikely that she will in any way evolve beyond her current pithy provocations and rote conservative talking points.

Basically, Sarah Palin as a consumer product has a shelf-life.

Our guess is that the upper end of her expiration date is between six and eight years. Why that long? Because her fans will forgive her for not getting into the 2012 race for the White House for any number of reasons -- bad electoral year, liberal media blah blah blah, family issues, etc. -- but when she doesn't show up to run in 2016, even her biggest supporters will notice her window has closed.

Every year between now and then her song and dance will get a little older, more predictable and will mean a little less. She may cater to a consumer that values brand loyalty above all else, but she can't play herself off as an anti-establishment figure from inside the establishment year after year before folks start to look for another "rogue."

Of course, if she does run in either 2012 or 2016 and loses, then it's game over.

Sarah Palin will never be President -- no matter how worried Andrew Sullivan might be of the possibility . The more people get to know her, the more they come to realize that. This means that she has a short amount of time to make as much money as possible as quickly as she can. That means as many $100,000 a pop speeches as she can schedule, as many TV opportunities as come her way, book deals, etc.

It's a good place to be in a lot of ways, and there's definitely a possibility that as the media environment continues to segregate into thinner niches that she'll find an audience that won't tire of her. But there's very little inclination she's willing to play by anyone's rules but her own and at some point in time her value as a commodity won't be worth the trouble in catering to the wishes of others. When that happens she'll finally recede into the background like so many other VP runners-up before her.

Ambinder on Palin

Agreed.

Romney to the Rescue ...?

We here at the Chief believe that the only legitimate GOP 2012 White House candidate is Mitt Romney. Needless to say we're pretty interested in hearing about how he's going to react to an HCR package, of which David Frum says: "The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994."

It's exactly as bad as one would expect:

America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power.

[...]

It will create a new entitlement even as the ones we already have are bankrupt. For these reasons and more, the act should be repealed. That campaign begins today.

There's going to be a race to the bottom for the GOP nomination in 2012 and Romney already knows how to win it -- the question that remains is will he know how to recover from it during the general? The answer is almost certainly no and only compounds a problem we discussed yestserday.

Good Idea/Bad Idea

Good Idea: Paul Ryan '12

He's got just as much gravitas and national security experience as any of the other usual GOP suspects and it could only enhance his profile. A good showing in the primary could lead to a VP nod. There's far more upside for him than down.

Bad Idea: Ed Schultz '10

That just sounds desperate.

Good Idea: Salazar '10

The bolo tie/cowboy hat combo would be missed in DC.

Funky Idea: Secretary of the Interior Arnold Schwarzenegger

Watched "The Last Action Hero" the other day: totally underrated movie.

Kick-ass Idea: a Lost amusement park

Like, ten times better than the Lord of the Flies boarding school I sent my kids to.

The Puerto Rican Paul Ryan?

Except Fortuno seems to be actually doing what Paul Ryan keeps talking about...

Without Question the Most Shameless Flip-Flop in Contemporary American Politics

Lou Dobbs may have just set a land speed record for quickest political career.