Apparently the Democrats’ new dodge on the runaway national debt is to claim that the deficit is going down.

This argument relies on the public not knowing the difference between the deficit and the debt.

The deficit is a one-year figure– how much money we spent in the past year, after we had spent every last cent that came in through taxes, fees, fines, and other payments to the government. Last year it was $1.1 trillion; this year we’re supposed to be breaking out the party hats because it might be “only” $900 billion or so.

The debt is the total amount we owe, based on all of the annual deficits adding up, year after year. That figure is $16.7 trillion – $16,708,225,460,175.14, if you want the precise figure.

Looking at the inflation-adjusted numbers for our annual deficit, year by year . . . $500 billion used to be considered a really big annual deficit. We hit that in 2004; unadjusted for inflation, it came in at $413 billion. Back in 1991, the year’s deficit came in at $453 billion. So a half a trillion was the pre-Obama all-time high.

Now look at the Obama era:

2009: $1.5 trillion

2010: $1.36 trillion

2011: $1.32 trillion

2012: $1.1 trillion

In other words, the best Obama has done is twice as bad as it’s ever been.

Sure, some of this is because tax payments are down as the Great Recession stretches on and on… but a lot of it is because the federal government went on a spending spree starting with TARP and the stimulus, a spree that has only slowed slightly.

But Sen. Dick Durbin and other Democrats will continue to cry, “The deficit is going down, all is well! All is well!”

Do you perceive Ann Romney as a “mudslinger”? Politico does.

Democrats have, in fact, been taken aback by Ann Romney’s venture into the mudslinging of the campaign — instead of floating above the fray. She has given endless TV interviews — some of them a bit testy — and seems quite comfortable attacking the president. Most recently, Romney said “it’s time for the grown-up” to take over the country, blamed the Obama campaign for her husband’s low standing among Hispanics and boasted that Mitt Romney was going to save the country.

“Michelle Obama could never get away with saying those things,” said a Democratic operative who has worked with spouses in presidential campaigns. “There would be an uproar.”

That’s mudslinging?

Is the crack, detail-oriented management style of Joe Biden, the pouting obstinacy of Attorney General Eric Holder, the eyes-closed, “the system worked!” wishful thinking of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the “Because I say so” fiats of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the sexual-harassment allegations at ICE, the randiness of the U.S. Secret Service, and the wild Vegas trips of the General Services Administration really best described as characteristic of “grown-ups”? Does anyone at Politico want to stand up and say the years 2009–2012 represent the pinnacle of wise, mature, and strong leadership in our federal government?

Isn’t the Obama campaign attempting to persuade Hispanics that Mitt Romney doesn’t like them? Didn’t the DNC vice chair say of Romney, “This gringo doesn’t speak our lingo”?

Doesn’t every presidential candidate believe he’s going to save the country?

From the first Morning Jolt of convention week . . .

Coming This Week: Democrats Behaving Badly!

Massachusetts Democratic-party Chairman John Walsh, discussing GOP Sen. Scott Brown at a breakfast meeting Monday: “He’s a regular guy. I mean, he spent a couple million dollars folding towels on TV to prove he’s an honorary girl. We appreciate that.” This was a reference to a television ad of Brown’s, in which he is seen folding laundry.

Finally, an actual example of the war on women!

“In the excitement of getting the convention underway and getting the message out about how important it is to reelect President Obama and elect Elizabeth Warren, I made a statement about Scott Brown that I regret, “ Walsh said. “I apologize for that remark.”

Well, that’s probably just those reckless Massachusetts Democrats shooting their mouths off. I’m sure those California Democrats are much more level-headed . . . oh, wait . . .

Reuters: “A top California Democratic official on Monday compared Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to Nazi Germany’s infamous propagandist Joseph Goebbels, drawing rebukes from both parties the day before the Democratic Party’s nominating convention formally begins.”

Ryan told “a bold-faced lie and he doesn’t care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie,” Burton told reporters.

“That obviously doesn’t reflect the views of the campaign,” said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt. “That doesn’t have any place in the political discourse in Charlotte.”

“I get where Burton is coming from,” tweets Josh Barro. “This morning, a flight attendant told me she was out of Diet Coke and I compared her to Goebbels. It happens.”

Which would you rather have? A media that is so biased against your side of the aisle that they jump up and down and scream bloody murder over any error or potential error, or a media that is so in the tank for your side that your party’s leaders have grown completely complacent, to the point of reckless, in their public comments?

Before you say you’d prefer bodyguard-style media coverage, keep in mind that with that approach, you end up with leaders like Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I mean… the cream doesn’t exactly rise to the top in that scenario, does it?

Obviously, I’m not a Democrat, but if I were, I’d like to think I would want to be led by the likes of Virginia Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, maybe former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

So one cheer for media bias: It helps Republicans weed out the weakest links . . . sometimes.

Greg Sargent transmits the next charge against Paul Ryan: “Dems are now going to launch a new offensive hammering home a simple point: Under the Romney/Ryan plan, health care costs for current seniors do go up.”

Er… have any of these Democrats looked at health care costs for everyone since Obamacare was enacted?

Health insurance costs for families are up considerably: “Kaiser’s survey found that annual insurance premiums to cover people through their employers average $5,429 for single people and $15,073 for a family of four in 2011. Those rates rose 8 percent for single people and 9 percent for families. In 2010, premiums rose just 3 percent for families from the previous year.”

Then there’s the price hikes in the current year: “The cost to cover the typical family of four under an employer plan is expected to top $20,000 on health care this year, up more than 7 percent from last year, according to early projections by independent actuarial and health care consulting firm Milliman Inc.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute projects medical costs will increase 7.5 percent for 2013, a rate they characterize as “relatively flat growth.” The National Business Group on Health projects a similar figure: “With the cost of employer-provided health care benefits at large U.S. employers expected to rise another 7 percent next year, employers are eyeing a variety of cost-control measures including asking workers to pay a greater portion of premiums but also sharply boosting financial rewards to engage workers in healthy lifestyles, according to a new survey by the National Business Group on Health, a non-profit association of 342 large employers.”

Of course, all of these rates of increase are much more dramatic that the rates of increase in inflation, wage growth, and other economic indicators: “The projected growth rate of 7.5 percent for overall healthcare costs contrasts with expectations for growth of 2.4 percent in gross domestic product and a 2.0 percent rise in consumer prices during 2013, according to the latest Reuters economic survey.”

Apparently the Obama message will be, “Don’t vote for Romney and Ryan, because they might fail to control the increasing cost of health care as badly as we have!”

What the heck? The Washington Post reports:

Democrats are making increasingly explicit threats about their willingness to let nearly $600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher taxes for the nation’s wealthiest households. Emboldened by signs that GOP resistance to new taxes may be weakening, senior Democrats say they are prepared to weather a fiscal event that could plunge the nation back into recession if the new year arrives without an acceptable compromise.

And this from the party led by the man who called his opponents “hostage takers.”

The optics of the day:

David Axelrod is insisting that results showing a 7-point Scott Walker win last night is bad news for Mitt Romney.

Bill Clinton said in a CNBC interview, “there’s a recession,” and his spokesman had to issue a statement explaining he didn’t really mean it.

The Greek government is declaring “government coffers could be empty as soon as July, shortly after this month’s pivotal elections. In the worst case, Athens might have to temporarily stop paying for salaries and pensions, along with imports of fuel, food and pharmaceuticals.”

Obama will spend today and tomorrow doing fundraisers in California.

And the RNC is showcasing Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s declaration that the Wisconsin recall would be a “dry run” of the Democrats get-out-the-vote operations.

It’s not that surprising that Obama and the Democrats are in trouble. What is surprising is that he and his fellow party leaders are absolutely convinced that they’re not in trouble.

The midweek edition of the Morning Jolt features Occupy protesters who want to blow up bridges in Ohio, reports of disturbing leaks about President Obama’s trip to Afghanistan, and then this continuing outrage . . .

Democrats Are Still Comparing the Tea Parties to McVeigh

Say, do you remember that time the Tea Parties tried to blow up bridges? Oh, that’s right, the dangerous Tea Partiers never did that sort of thing.

But that hasn’t stopped Democrats from insisting that the Tea Parties are quite comparable to the most dangerous domestic terrorist in recent memory:

The chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party is refusing to back down from comments he made likening convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to tea party activists.

Chairman Wallace Collins on Tuesday described McVeigh as an anti-government “right winger” and said he sees tea party activists in a “similar vein.” He previously told a Fox News reporter that if McVeigh were alive today, he would likely be a member of the tea party.

Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman Matt Pinnell described Collins’ comments as “offensive and despicable” and demanded an apology.

Collins refused to apologize and says Pinnell is trying to politicize his comments.

Hey, pal, when you’re comparing your political opponents to mass murderers . . . your comments are already pretty well politicized.

Now . . . this is an awful, out-of-line comparison to make anywhere. But to do so in Oklahoma, not too long after the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing . . . well, with leadership like this, it is not surprising that the Democrats got completely wiped out in 2010: “The day began with Democrats holding eight of the 11 statewide elected non-federal positions. It ended with Republicans elected in all 11 statewide posts, along with six-seat GOP gains in both the state House and the state Senate.”

Of course, associating Tea Partiers with a maniac who blew up a day care center is nothing new for Democrats.

Rep. Brian Baird, August 2009: “[Baird] said a ‘coordinated national effort’ to disrupt public meetings with shouts and demonstrations, which he said Republican leaders were ‘egging on,’ was reminiscent of the kinds of things that drove Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.”

President Bill Clinton, April 2010: “With the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing approaching, former President Bill Clinton on Thursday drew parallels between the antigovernment tone that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today, saying government critics must be mindful that angry words can stir violent actions.”

Vice President Joe Biden, August 2011: “Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having ‘acted like terrorists’ in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.”

I liked this column written by Charles Lane after a New York Times columnist accused conservatives of “waging jihad”:

. . . Terrorism is not defined by ideology or objectives; it is defined by methods. Terrorists are people who commit acts of physical violence, or threaten them, to influence politics. Tea Party members of Congress, by contrast, ran for office, got elected, and are now casting votes in the national legislature according to what they promised and what their constituents want. In the debt-ceiling debate, they played hardball politics in pursuit of their principles, as they see them.

If there’s any violence, or threat of violence there, or any law-breaking at all — much less a “jihad,” I can’t see it.

There are real terrorists out there: Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, Iran’s rulers. Yet some of the same people who are slapping the “terror” label on the Tea Party and condemning Obama for dealing with them also advocate outreach to Mideast terrorists, if not to negotiate with them, at least to understand of what makes them tick.

The Democratic party continues its bold stand against hateful rhetoric, such as the C-word, this time in Alabama:

An Evening with Bill Maher

March 17, 2012 Chairman’s Reception at 7pm 

Performance at 8pm

Come join Alabama Democrats at the Von Braun Center Concert Hall in Huntsville for an Evening with Bill Maher. 700 Monroe Street Southwest, Huntsville, AL 35801.

Tickets are $100 and include admission to the pre-event Chairman’s reception and prime seating at the performance.

Paid for by the Alabama Democratic Party. P.O. Box 950. Montgomery, AL 36101. (334) 262-2221. (800) 995-3386.

Now, if every Republican officeholder is expected to comment on and denounce Rush Limbaugh for using the S-word, why isn’t every Democratic officeholder expected to comment on and denounce Bill Maher for using the C-word?

“Oh, he’s just a comedian.” No, he’s a Democratic-party fundraiser. Maher donated $1 million to Obama’s SuperPAC.

Why is one acceptable, to the point where Maher is still welcome to headline fundraisers, but Rush is supposed to be persona non grata?

UPDATE: I see the technical geniuses at the Alabama Democratic Party are trying to hide this little embarrassment by taking down the web page for this. But there are a few problems.

1) Gentlemen, it’s kind of hard for you to insist you have no ties to Bill Maher if the URL “http://aldemocrats.org/bill-maher” now redirects to your home page, instead of to the image above selling tickets to his show.

2) That’s why I grabbed an image of that page, with the URL “http://aldemocrats.org/bill-maher” visible at the top, because I suspected you would be dumb enough to think that if you took down the page, it would make this glaring hypocrisy and double standard go away. Taking down a web page does not erase evidence of its previous existence. Ask Nir Rosen how that works.

3) Oh, look, it’s a Google cache of the page.

4) Oh, hey, let’s look at the announcements on AL.com, an Alabama news site, from February 20:

The Alabama Democratic Party will host an evening with comedian and political commentator Bill Maher in Huntsville on March 17. Tickets are $100 and include admission to a chairman’s reception prior to the event. For more information, contact the party at 800-995-3386.

The days of Soviet-style editing of past declarations to fit current desired realities is over, fellas. Man up.

Ron Brownstein becomes the latest big media voice to recognize that whatever the flaws of the eventual GOP candidate, President Obama will run for reelection in a country that, in many places, really doesn’t approve of the job he’s doing:

In sum then, Obama in 2010 could reach an Electoral College majority by carrying states where his approval rating stood at least at 46.6 percent, something that would be difficult but hardly impossible. To reach a majority based on the 2011 results, he’d need to carry states where his approval stood at 43.7 percent or above. That’s a much more daunting prospect.

There are lots of reasons why the Gallup numbers could be more a snapshot of the past than a forecast of the future. Obama’s approval rating has generally run slightly lower in the Gallup tracking poll than in most other surveys. More important, his ratings have generally ticked up in most recent polls as Americans have expressed somewhat more optimism about the economy’s trajectory, and he has shifted the Washington debate away from deficit-reduction toward jobs and tax equity; those improvements would not be heavily reflected in these numbers. He’s also generally polling above his approval ratings in head-to-head match-ups against the leading Republican contenders-who have seen their favorability ratings decline amid their fierce primary struggle. But even with all those qualifications, these Gallup numbers show how much work awaits the Obama campaign, not only in states at the border of the emerging Democratic coalition like Virginia, Florida and Nevada, but some, like Pennsylvania and Oregon that have been part of its core since 1992.

The argument of President Obama and his fans is that in 2012, the country will face “a choice, not a referendum on Obama.”

It’s a familiar refrain.

After New Jersey and Virginia: “Elections not a referendum on Obama.”

After Scott Brown’s victory: “A top adviser to President Obama rejected assertions that Tuesday’s vote was a referendum on the president or Democratic policies, and instead took a shot at Coakley.”

On the eve of the 2010 midterms: “I don’t see that it’s a referendum necessarily on the president.”

Last September: “Gov. Cuomo is rejecting talk that the NY-9 race between Democrat David Weprin and Republican Bob Turner is actually a referendum on President Obama.”

For three years now, we’ve been told that Democratic losses are not reflective of the president, and that each contest does not reflect disappointment or frustration or anger with the president, because his name wasn’t on the ballot. Well, come November 2012, his name is on the ballot, and Democrats have to hope that the mysterious strange, inexplicable, anti-Democrat mood that cropped up shortly after Obama took office and keeps manifesting in the most unlikely of places somehow doesn’t appear again.

If today’s polling news is gloomy for Republicans, it’s not that much cheerier for Democrats, either:

Favorable views of the Democratic Party have fallen to their lowest since the Reagan landslide of 1984. Even fewer Americans see the Republican Party positively, and Americans by 2-1 say they’d welcome an independent alternative for president.Being open to a third-party candidate is a far cry from actually voting for one. Still, 61 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll respond  positively to the idea of an independent running for president against the two major-party nominees. Thirty-two percent say no thanks.

If having a choice is largely uncontroversial, the results nonetheless underscore the level of interest in alternatives – and the extent to which the two main parties are struggling for popularity a year from the 2012 election. The public now divides, 48-46 percent, in favorable vs. unfavorable views of the Democratic Party.

And the GOP fares even less well: Fifty-three percent see it negatively, 40 percent favorably.

A strategist told me recently that of all demographic groups, Republicans are currently the least satisfied – because in their minds, they worked their tails off in 2010 to elect conservative Tea Party Republicans to Congress, and yet they see so little change in Washington as a result.

In the ABC News-Washington Post poll, 38 percent of self-identified “somewhat conservative” voters see the GOP unfavorably; 30 percent of self-identified “very conservative” voters see the GOP unfavorably. Only 21 percent of self-described liberal voters see the Democratic Party unfavorably.

In an acknowledgement that their national convention will in effect, ask the American people to retain a leader who has presided over the first downgrading of the national credit rating in history, the Democratic party announced today that their convention logo will honor the Obama legacy of red ink:

Okay, not really. But if you squint your eyes, the actual logo does look a bit like it:

Politico, this morning:

President Barack Obama’s health care law has high negative ratings, and they’re not getting any better. But House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan has high negatives, too — and they’re not healing either.

It’s almost enough to suggest that the two plans will just cancel each other out as liabilities in 2012, with the Democrats and Republicans fighting to a draw as they try to scare voters to their side. The big health care question of the election would be: Whose albatross is bigger?

In all likelihood, though, the Ryan plan may be more damaging to the Republicans than the health reform law is to the Democrats. That’s because voters have more of a history of switching their votes over Medicare than they do over health care in general, according to independent health care experts.

I’m not sure that past history is quite so illuminating on this front, partially because we’ve never had legislation like Obamacare before. We have never had legislation that directly effected the health care of every American like this; we’ve never had a law that required every American to purchase health insurance from a private insurer before, we’ve never had a roughly 50-50 chance that the Supreme Court will strike it down as unconstituional before, and we’ve never had promises so quickly broken (“If you like your plan, you can keep your plan“). We’ve never seen legislation trigger mass layoffs by U.S. medical device manufacturers and moves to shift operations to China. At least on this scale, we’ve never seen legislation whose primary selling point that it would save money suddenly become a financial liability so fast.

But if we are insistent upon looking at past history, we notice that the two recent GOP landslides of recent memory – 1994 and 2010 – both had a Democratic president’s attempt to dramatically change the health care system front-and-center in it.

In the Politico story, they write, “That doesn’t mean most Americans want it repealed, though. A Bloomberg poll in June found that 35 percent of Americans want to get rid of the law, but 51 percent want to ‘see how it works’ — perhaps with small changes — and 11 percent want to leave it alone.”

But support for repeal, as measured by Rasmussen on a weekly basis, is remarkably consistent. No more than 43 percent have ever opposed repeal (and it has been as low as 32 percent) and no less than than 47 percent have ever supported repeal (and that figure has been as high as 63 percent). The most current split is 55 percent supporting repeal, 39 percent opposing repeal.

However, the article does make the intriguing point that if Obama were to agree to even modest Medicare cuts as part of a future deal with the Super-Committee (or whatever they’re calling the bipartisan group assigned finding another $1.5 trillion in savings), it complicates the Republicans-want-to-push-granny-off-the-cliff narrative:

…now that Obama has put some big Medicare changes on the table as he tried to negotiate with Republicans — such as raising the eligibility age, increasing premiums and changing deductibles and co-payments — some Democratic operatives are worried that the tables will become unturned.

“I definitely think it muddies the waters,” said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg. “I do think that no matter what happens, things have gotten murkier.”

How badly could a pre-election Medicare savings deal muddy the waters? A June poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that most seniors think it’s more important to keep current benefits in Medicare and Social Security than to reduce the deficit. But the difference was especially lopsided among older voters who are Democrats or lean Democratic: Eighty-one percent of those seniors said it’s more important to leave their benefits alone.

By the way, what are those big Medicare changes that Obama put on the table? Paul Krugman writes, “according to many reports, the president offered both means-testing of Medicare benefits and a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility.” A good step if true, but you can’t get credit for being a bold reformer if you insist upon proposing all of the most unpopular ideas in secret behind closed doors.

Ross Douthat and Jeffrey Goldberg are far too kind to today’s Democratic party.

Douthat: “Imagine, for a moment, that these were George W. Bush’s policies at work. A quest for regime change in Libya, conducted without even a pro forma request for Congressional approval. A campaign of remote-controlled airstrikes, in which collateral damage is inevitable, carried out inside a country where we are not officially at war. A policy of targeted assassination against an American citizen who has been neither charged nor convicted in any U.S. court. Imagine the outrage, the protests, the furious op-eds about right-wing tyranny and neoconservative overreach. Imagine all that, and then look at the reality. For most Democrats, what was considered creeping fascism under Bush is just good old-fashioned common sense when the president has a “D” beside his name.”

Goldberg: “These last eight days, as well as the last 10 years, suggest to me that there is only one American foreign policy; this default foreign policy is interventionist, moralistic, and militarily robust. Everything else is commentary.”

A less charitable interpretation is that in a dangerous world, there is a clear set of policies that is required to protect the country, but only one party is honest about it.

When Democrats are not in the White House, they will scream bloody murder – in some cases, quite literally – and do everything they can to stop those policies, denouncing them loudly and pledging to repeal them. They will argue that the same or better results can be achieved by a more dovish set of policies, either out of cynicism (they have no intent to really change the policies once elected) or naivete (for example arguing for a  “global test” for U.S. action, believing foreign leaders really do care deeply about the safety and security of Americans). If it is the former, they do everything possible to undermine public support for difficult policies that they, deep down, know are necessary.

They will even argue that the very concept of a “war on terror” is merely a “political phrase” and refer to the administration as a “gang.”

By contrast, when the Republicans are not in the White House, they will offer general support with occasional muted gripes; this may not be terribly relevant because the Democratic president may not even bother to ask Congress for authorization for his overseas wars kinetic military actions.

From Wednesday’s Morning Jolt:

The audio of Mitch Daniels, found here, will be a bit of a Rorschach test for conservatives; I suspect a few will see a governor with a set plan to enact education reform pushing aside a separate issue that could poison the well for any bipartisan compromise. And I suspect a lot will see him as just another RINO.

For those whose instinct before today was to dismiss Daniels as just another RINO, I wish you had the chance to sit down and listen to him talk about policy. I recognized from day one my tastes weren’t necessarily going to match that of a majority of Republican primary voters. But to my initial impressions, Daniels seemed, in some ways, to be the perfect anti-Obama. He’s actually run things like the Office of Management and Budget and the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Indiana.

He worked for Reagan as chief political adviser and liaison to state and local officials. He’s worked in the private sector with some significant success at Eli Lilly. He worries about details. He says “we have to means-test the hell out of” entitlements once deemed untouchable. He tells people who he ought to be courting all kinds of things they don’t want to hear. If you consider the Obama-as-messiah hype of 2007-2008 to be a new national low point in serious political discourse, the candidacy of Daniels looks like a big bucket of ice water splashed on the dreamy electorate looking for magic wand solutions.

But when your state’s Democrats decide to throw a tantrum worthy of my toddler and high tail it across the state line like Smokey and the Bandit, you have to call them out on their crap. No constitution, state or national, includes an “I’m taking my bat and my ball and I’m going home” amendment. This is not political discourse or protest or an innovative tactical maneuver. These are refusals to abide by the established rules, laws, customs and traditions of the American political system: small-scale, temporary secessions.

And if you think I’m mad about these stunts, I’d note that the word that best describes many of my readers’ views on them is . . . Qaddaffi-esque.

As mentioned over on Campaign Spot, I thought I understood what Daniels was saying with the “social issue truce” talk; picture the most politically self-destructive synonym for “prioritization” you can imagine. Look, we all know the guy who takes the oath on January 20, 2013 is going to face a stack of problems that will make January 2009 look like the good old days. If the next Republican president manages to avoid Debt Armageddon, restore the economy to low unemployment and real growth, and keep any of the world’s maniacs from killing Americans, I’ll be doing cartwheels. And if we ever reach that economic and foreign policy Nirvana, then we can really put the pedal to the metal on trying to nurse our sick society to something resembling decency and traditional values.

But recent evidence suggests that the Democratic establishment, in Washington, in Madison, in Indianapolis and a slew of other states have reached a point where they cannot be reasoned with. They don’t know where the money will come to fund everything they want. They don’t really care. But they’ll be darned if they’ll let anybody apply the brakes to the gravy train that has been so good to them — er, I’m sorry, the high-speed-rail gravy train that’s been so good to them.

The editors of the Washington Post would prefer that their local governing class act like the District of Columbia Democratic Party and their local government were distinct. Alas, that seems to be too much to ask:

NO ONE WOULD think it okay for the Republican Party to hold a partisan candidates’ debate in the Capitol rotunda. Democrats would know better than to use Dirksen office space to stuff party fundraising envelopes. The line between proper use of government resources and party politics is pretty clear. Except, it seems, in the District of Columbia.

Here, one-party rule has resulted in such coziness between government and party officials that the use of District facilities for partisan events apparently has become business as usual. Last week, for example, the D.C. Democratic State Committee held a forum in the old Council Chambersat the District-owned building at One Judiciary Square for candidates seeking an at-large city council seat soon to be vacant… No one can quarrel with the desire to open up the process to the public – but in a government building? It’s indefensible; D.C. law naturally prohibits the use of District government resources for campaign-related activities.

What’s most troubling is that no one seems to bat an eye at the practice. How else to explain the brazenness of the party to showcase on its Web site a picture of members seated at a table in the John A. Wilson Building stuffing invitations to the party’s annual Kennedys King Gala? A Democratic Party official said the party sought permission through proper government channels and that it’s not unusual for the party to use public facilities.

When they say “public facilities,” I wonder if they mean facilities open to the public, or government-owned facilities…

Will the last Georgia Democrat to leave the state party headquarters please turn out the lights?

The Democratic defections continue in the Georgia Legislature.State Rep. Bubber Epps on Monday became the latest Democratic state lawmaker to switch his allegiance to the Republican Party . . . Epps is the eighth Democratic state lawmaker to switch sides since the Nov. 2 general election. Republicans now hold 113 seats in the 180-member House. Democrats control 64 seats, there is one independent and two seats are open.

Well, that’s just Georgia. It’s not like it’s happening in . . .

The chairman of the Texas Democratic Party says he believes State Rep. Allan Ritter’s decision to switch parties and join the Republican Party is “not a principled decison.”

Ritter confirmed to KFDM News Saturday that he’s switching from the Democratic to Republican Party and will make an announcement Tuesday in Austin, expected to be attended by Governor Rick Perry and a number of other GOP leaders and colleagues from the legislature.

Okay, so it’s happening in Georgia and Texas. It’s not like Democrats are fleeing the party all over . . .

Central District Public Service Commissioner Lynn Posey ditched the Democratic Party Wednesday as the governor and a long line of other elected officials welcomed him into the Mississippi GOP.

“The Democratic Party’s continued swing to the left has left me completely out of sync with that party and I feel I must switch to the Republican Party whose philosophy is way more in line with mine, and I also think more in line with the majority of people in the Central District,” Posey, 55, said during an event at the Republican Party headquarters in Jackson.

Gov. Haley Barbour said he’s “very pleased” Posey switched parties and will run for re-election in 2011 as a Republican.

“You’re seeing more and more of that happen right now and I believe he won’t be the last,” Barbour said.

Okay, Georgia and Texas and Mississippi. But not . . . oh, heck.

State Rep. Noble Ellington of Winnsboro, a prominent Democrat for more than 20 years in the state House and Senate, says he is likely to switch to the GOP.“I’m 95 percent sure,” he said Wednesday.Two state senators — John Alario of Westwego and John Smith of Leesville — recently switched from the Democratic Party. Alario, a former two-time House speaker and a fixture in Democratic state politics for nearly four decades, said he made the change official last week. Ellington said he will probably make his final decision early next month.“I think at this point it would probably be hypocritical for me to remain in the Democratic Party because I find myself farther and farther away from what has become the liberal philosophy of the national party,” he said. “My way of thinking, which falls along a more conservative line, has been shrinking within the party.“At least nationally, the Republican Party seems to fit my philosophy more than the current Democratic Party.”

Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana . . . Clearly, this is a phenomenon contained to Southern states . . . like, er, Indiana:

CEDAR LAKE — Two of the town’s elected officials have switched parties.

Clerk-Treasurer Amy Sund and Councilman John Foreman have declared they are joining the Republican Party, Lake County GOP Chairwoman Kim Krull said in a news release.

“With the huge wins we had last month and the organization we are putting together I am sure we will see more people interested in joining the Republican Party,” Krull said.

We hear a lot about how the GOP isn’t competing well in the Northeast at all. But in the South, the Democrats are turning into the farm team for the state Republican parties.

I mentioned on Friday that “the only congressional Democrats who understand the message of 2010 are the ones currently cleaning out their offices.”

Pollster Glen Bolger sends along these results:

There is strong support for keeping the current tax rates/extending the tax cuts instead of raising taxes/letting the tax cuts expire.Throughout the survey, we split sampled language on the issue. Half of the respondents (N=500) heard many questions that asked about plans to “extend the tax cuts or letting the tax cuts expire” while the other half heard many questions that juxtaposed a choice of“keep current tax rates or raise taxes.” Generally, the “keep current tax rates” language tested better than the “extend the tax cuts” language. Overall, 65% support extending the tax cuts, while 29% prefer to let the tax cuts expire. A stronger 83% would vote to keep current tax rates, while 14% would vote to raise taxes.

I know some pollsters have shown better results for the Democrats with different wording. But as I mentioned Friday, few surviving Democrats on the Hill will voluntarily contemplate the notion that the American people have decided the problem is not that they’re undertaxed but that Congress overspends. The Democrats look at our high unemployment, lousy growth rate, and dismal long-term financial outlook and prefer to conclude that the problem is “out there,” where all those greedy taxpayers live, instead a little bit closer to themselves.

In this morning’s Jolt, there’s a lot about WikiLeaks and the ups and downs — mostly downs — of soft power, i.e., “weakness with a publicist” — but there’s also a bit about politics:

Yeah, Brian, You Guys Are a Bunch of Real Heroes

As I may have mentioned, almost every Thursday night I appear on Cam & Company heard on SiriusXM’s Patriot Channel and over the Internet at NRANews.com. Cam and I grab dinner before the show and often rant about the world of politics; one of the concepts we’ve discussed is certain politicians’ willingness to “rule a Kingdom of Crap” – and as you can probably guess, we’ve used more off-color terms. The idea is, certain power-hungry narcissists don’t really care whether their policies work, as long as they expand their power. They take the old saying about preferring to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven literally. They’re comfortable ruling a declining nation as long as they’re the ones doing the ruling, and they’re not willing to give up power for the sake of a better, stronger, freer, healthier nation.

A retiring Democrat, Brian Baird, insists his party’s philosophy is the precise opposite, that the Democrats love America so much that they embrace wise, politically difficult policies that end up costing them their seats: “Addressing the economic collapse of 2008 and the subsequent passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Baird told The Hill, “Had we wanted to, we could have let the president, President Bush… stew in his own juices.” Baird insisted Democrats did the right thing passing TARP, which was signed by President Bush in the fall of 2008. Most Democrats in Congress backed it while it faced more resistance from the GOP. “We could have said, ‘The economy is going to collapse. The world is going to go into a depression. You’re going to get the blame and your party is going to get the blame because you’re in power and we are going to ride this into the majority for the next 40 years.’ That is what the Democrats could have done.’”

Presume for the sake of argument he’s right. But where was that darn-the-consequences, let’s-do-what’s-hard-but-necessary approach to the deficit? To entitlement reform for Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid? Why did Obamacare turn into everything Democrats wanted (down to the Cornhusker Kickback!), nothing they didn’t (tort reform) and why was it hammered through along partisan lines? And how much is he willing to defend every decision associated with the ever-morphing TARP proposal? Was the provision guaranteeing bonuses at AIG really necessary? How about GM and GMAC?

And Don Surber wonders, “9.8% unemployment is saving the economy?”