The support/opposition split on the health care bill, according to various pollsters:

Rasmussen: 41/56
Newsweek: 40/49
Public Policy Polling: 39/50
Pew: 38/50
Quinnipiac: 35/54
Ipsos/McClatchy: 37/51
NBC/WSJ: 31/46
CNN: 38/58
NPR: 39/55

Through the reconciliation talk, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Reid are sending a very important message to the American people: Shut up.

Heh:

[Heath] Shuler, a Democrat representing the 11th District in Western North Carolina, leads the 54-member Blue Dog coalition of conservative Democrats. He’s also a former NFL quarterback, thus his comments to The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward:

“I was actually surprised that they’re pushing it again. The most important thing is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. We need to focus on jobs. . . . I don’t think a comprehensive bill can pass. . . . I hate to use a football analogy, but first downs are a lot better than throwing the bomb route or the Hail Mary.”

Of course, as Redskins fans know, Heath Shuler tended to get sacked whether he threw for the first down or the Hail Mary. One of my favorite faux-attack ads from Heath Shuler’s 2006 campaign for Congress:

I suppose there’s no harm in Obama folks talking this early about how they’ll run his reelection campaign — where the campaign headquarters will be, who will staff the top positions, etc. But for anything strategic, messages, themes, etc., this strikes me as silly.

We have no idea what the world is going to look like in November of 2010, never mind what it will look like in November of 2012. Some of us strongly suspect that even in 2012, unemployment will be higher than the “normal” 4 to 6 percent range; we don’t know what Afghanistan will look like, what Iraq will look like, what Iran’s nuclear program will look like, whether there will be any additional terror attacks on American soil, just how bad the deficit and debt will be, and so on. There might even be an alien landing, or a health-care bill passed, to pick two outlandish but not impossible scenarios.

This line amused me, though:

The themes for Obama’s campaign are not yet chosen, but a top adviser said not to expect a radical surprise: “He knows who he is.”

That’s not the problem, top adviser; the problem is that now the American people know who he is.

Noted without comment:

Former Congressman J.D. Hayworth of Arizona stopped by the John Birch Society booth at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Washington, D.C. last week and spoke with The New American’s William F. Jasper.

Our magazine wrote recently:

The John Birch Society is co-sponsoring the American Conservative Union’s big annual conference. The Society’s paranoia has outlived the Cold War that inspired it: A recent perusal of its website turned up the same old dreary theories about David Rockefeller and the New World Order, denunciations of the “American colonial enterprise,” and hints that maybe our soldiers should not follow orders in the pursuit of that enterprise. We have no idea what the ACU is thinking but assume that the Birchers are eager to ferret out any Communists in its ranks.

A minor quibble with my friend Ed Morrissey, who’s questioning the plans to move the U.S. embassy in London:

But our embassy in London certainly doesn’t fall into the same security-risk profile as those, and we don’t have a billion dollars to burn on a new one. Or, to put it another way, it seems presumptuous to ask the Chinese to build us a new embassy in London, with or without a moat.

It is, sadly, almost a guarantee: In many countries, if you work in a U.S. embassy, someday someone is going to try to blow up your workplace. I was around that embassy in 2003, after the Iraq War had began, with many lengthy gates and fences and other security measures. Roughly a week after that visit, while President Bush was in the U.K., the British consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, was bombed; in 2008, gunmen tried to shoot their way into the U.S. consulate in Istanbul.

Ed’s a smart guy; he’s heard of “Londonistan”  — the high number of Muslims and those who support jihadism in the U.K. — and we know about the London terror attacks of July 2005. If you asked me to list the 20 most likely terror targets in the next decade, our embassy in London would probably make the list; embassies and consulates in dangerous parts of the world and in cities with Islamist/al-Qaeda presence would dominate those top 20.

Yes, the cost is high; big buildings are expensive, and this one will require top-of-the-line communications equipment, bug-proofing measures, walls strong enough to withstand bomb blasts, etcetera. Maybe it really is too much to spend. But we pretty much know that sooner or later, somebody is going to try to kill as many Americans in this building as possible; this is one of the areas where I’m willing to nod and say, “It’s worth the extra expense.”

On a related note, this move echoes the trend for most American embassies abroad. In most foreign capitals, the U.S. embassy is or used to be downtown or on “Embassy Row” near the rest of the embassies; now the trend is to move them to much more remote locations. This clearly makes the day-to-day business of the embassy tougher, but it moves likely terrorism targets out of densely populated downtown areas where collateral damage is likely to be more severe.

Quinnipiac:

Among all Ohio voters, the Democratic Party gets a 38 – 50 percent unfavorable rating, while the Republicans get a 37 – 46 percent unfavorable score. But voters have a 32 – 23 percent favorable opinion of the Tea Party movement, with 43 percent who haven’t heard enough about it to form an opinion.

In related news, Republican Rob Portman leads both Democrats who are running for Senate: Portman leads Fisher 40 percent to 37 percent, including 39 percent to 27 percent among independent voters; and Portman tops Brunner 40 percent to 35 percent, including 40 percent to 28 percent among independents.

Save Jersey raises a morbid but fair question: under Obamacare, would the chemotherapy treatment of the stomach cancer of 86-year-old Sen. Frank Lautenberg be deemed cost-effective?

I’ve said several times in the past that Sen. Arlen Specter gets defeated in 2010, but that I don’t know whether he’ll go down in the Democratic primary or in the general election.

Franklin & Marshall has new poll numbers out this morning, showing an odd divide between likely voters and registered voters. Among likely voters, Republican Pat Toomey leads by 10 over Specter; among registered voters, Specter leads by 4.

Specter leads Sestak in the primary, 33 percent to 16 percent.

Among likely voters, Toomey leads 38 percent to Sestak’s 20 percent; among registered voters, Toomey only leads 25 percent to 22 percent.

Obviously, these totals include a lot of undecided voters.

As expected, quite a few readers weigh in on the choice between John McCain and J .D. Hayworth in the Arizona Senate primary.

From a reader in Phoenix:

Romney could have just stayed out of the primary contest all together. There was no need to, other than the call that John made to him asking him to give his Mormon followers the nudge in his direction. After what John and Mike did to him in the WVA primary he could have easily said not interested at this time endorsing anybody.

JD’s hill is not as steep as you think, McCain’s support is wide, not deep and that can dry up in the desert heat. The comment about being lied to and Frank saying that was not true is going to show up in the polls in a week or two and as the polls get closer McCain will say something else rather clueless and senile. JD is going to bait him to get an angry response from him and it will happen sometime and then it will be over.

This is not a major policy debate contest, it is about showing that McCain has served his time. It is also about the border and John loses that contest every time. No one is entitled to a lifelong seat. Romney’s statement that it’s hard to think of the Senate without McCain is the problem. Yes the Senate was and will live on without JS McCain. Is JD better or worse than McCain that is to be seen, but he is a different voice and one that will change the dynamic a bit one way or the other.

I have to quibble with the line, “It is also about the border and John loses that contest every time.” I’m not quite so sure; if the border issue were the consistent political winner we wish it was, Hayworth would have won in 2006, and Randy Graf would have beaten Gabrielle Giffords that year. Having said that, we are talking about a GOP primary.

From a reader outside Arizona:

More importantly, McCain is the *better* bet.

You allow, correctly, for “love him or hate him . . .” reactions to McCain and you can count me in the “love him” camp (most days).

I am a *long*time NR reader (’74 to date) and am very aware of the ongoing (perpetual?) agonizing over support for “real” conservative / Republican candidates vs RINOs. But if we as a movement can’t sign up for the idea that you need to embrace people who are with you strongly on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and the weekends . . . but occasionally wander on Tuesdays and Thursdays . . . then we will not get to a majority. 

McCain on global warming and some aspects of campaign finance and immigration makes me sigh, but on national defense, terrorism, judges, taxation, and – importantly – good old American exceptionalism, he is inspirational.  And, as you correctly note, who else would have had the big brass ones necessary to pick Palin?

If J.D. wants to contribute to the hoped-for tidal wave, someone should tell him to win his old seat back, or start a media campaign to get Arizona’s pride (sic) Napolitano fired.

Steve makes a point about McCain’s lifetime ACU rating:

Jim, Huge fan and almost always in agreement but you miss something in expressing surprise at McCain’s lifetime 81.43 rating. From 1997-2008 he never once scores over his average – including four years in the 60s (2008, 2006, 2001, 1998), three years in the 70s (2004, 2002, 1999) and the rest are at 80, with one 81 year.
 
Obviously, to still have that average today he must have done far better in the earlier years. And sure enough . . . 1996=95, 1995=91, 1994=96. From 1987-1996 he only once goes BELOW his 81.43 average, in 1988 with a 80 (which ties his HIGHEST score since the election of George W. Bush.)

Its one thing for a guy to be a constant low 80s for a career . . . but in McCain’s case, the trend is not the conservative’s friend. The Bush win in 2000 changed him, and not for the good.

But another reader thinks McCain no longer has much motivation to shift to the left:

You hit the nail on the head. I love JD, went to church with him and interacted with him on a fairly frequent, a bit deeper than superficial basis for about 1-2 years. Fine guy, wonderful conservative.

But he will never beat John McCain. I do not like John for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is McCain-Feingold) but at the end of the day, John will beat ANY Democrat Arizona has to offer including Janet Napolitano. So, if anything good can come of this it is what you’ve written of and that is that JD is forcing John to the right. And that’s a good thing. He (McCain) might be a SOB but he’s our SOB.

Obviously, some readers have had enough John McCain, and would be happy to see him leave politics:

I am SO disappointed in your column. John McCain is a nice guy and a great military hero, but so what? That doesn’t make a good or great leader. Just look at the job that McCain did running for President. It was a unforgiving disaster. He hardly ever went after Obama with any energy. John McCain needs to retire and the sooner the better.

A lot of intriguing thoughts from this reader, although to be honest, I’m just not certain how much faith I put in the accounts in Game Change:

Keep in mind, according to Game Change, McCain DID pick Lieberman. The plan was for him to announce it the Friday before the convention a la Palin and there wouldn’t have been enough time for any real opposition to form and no one would want to totally blow up the convention over it and ruin the election. McCain was going to pledge to serve one term and he would basically be understood as a transitional figure.

Until . . . Lindsey Graham started running his mouth and spilled the beans about to a number of folks a few weeks ahead of time and the entire conservative establishment basically let McCain know it wasn’t going to fly.

He only backed out at the last minute when he realized there was no way it was going to work at all. It wasn’t because of his conservative instincts. If he could have picked Lieberman, he would have.

Now, you can say picking Palin over Pawlenty, who was the other finalist showed his conservative instincts. Although, if you go back to August 2008 and read what was being written, Palin was presented as an independent Republican and not some conservative fire-breather (which I still don’t think she is). There were all these stories about how she worked with Dems in the Alaska legislature. Newsweek mentioned her along with Janet Napolitano as one of a new breed of women leaders who doesn’t care about ideology and is more concerned about getting things done. She was invited to this conference in LA to discuss it (you can still find the videos out there). Those were the days, when Newsweek actually said good things about her.

In any event, he didn’t pick Palin because she was some conservative warrior. He picked her because Schmidt, Davis, Black and McInturff (the pollster) basically told him that the only chance he had of winning of was that Palin would spike his numbers among white women and Clinton voters while still keeping them high among his base, and that no one else really gave him a chance. His best hope with Pawlenty was topping out at 48% even if everything went right. 

The plan was working and he was ahead until the whole Lehman thing happened and the economy collapsed. Recall the WaPo poll that showed a 20 pt swing among white women.  That’s why he picked her. Not because of any conservative instincts.

I also wonder if his “squish” days are over. I think one of the reasons he did all that stuff was to curry favor with the media for his eventual Presidential run. With his Presidential hopes over, there’s no reason to suck up to the media and play the maverick anymore. 

Other then being in the Senate he doesn’t really have much of a future on the national stage that the media can help him out with. I suspect he’ll be a more doctrinaire conservative from here on out.

It’d be great to see him end his career as SecDef in the Palin Administration in 2013. It’s clear that’s what he really cares about. He never cared about domestic issues or the economy. You could tell. Ironically, McCain would also be a great VP choice for Palin given her need to add natl security/foreign policy heft to her ticket. He’d be perfect in the Biden/Cheney role as the elder statesman with gravitas and natl security exp. I don’t think we’ve ever seen the same ticket back to back, only the names were flipped. She’ll still likely need a Cheney/Biden type.

As for Romney endorsing him, I suspect he doesn’t want to burn any bridges for 2012.  Simple as that.

A reader laments Mitt Romney’s endorsement of John McCain in the Arizona Senate primary against J .D. Hayworth:

I can understand Palin endorsing McCain (dancin’ with the one who brung ya). But now, Romney?

It seems that McAmnesty will once again drag down his party, as numerous old Senators of both parties have done from time to time. Tell me again why I should bother to vote Republican, given that after the party finishes tossing overboard everything of interest to me, all that’s left is tax breaks for the wealthy and waves of immigration (legal or not)? Might as well vote progressive and be done with it.

It’s a free country, and so anyone can call them as they see them. But Romney’s endorsement shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to anyone. For starters, Romney’s making the safe bet; Hayworth starts way behind. His own poll puts him 16 percentage points behind; another poll puts McCain up 20; McCain’s poll puts Hayworth down 29 percentage points. What’s more, the Hayworth-sponsored poll puts McCain almost at a majority, 49 percent. I’m not quite going to guarantee a McCain primary win, but Hayworth faces a steep, tough uphill climb between now and August 24. (I don’t understand how some media sources can write “Like Hayworth, Rubio is giving a powerful incumbent Republican fits in the polls.”)

Is Hayworth more conservative than McCain? Sure, Hayworth’s lifetime ACU rating of 97.56 is about as conservative as they come. But McCain’s lifetime score is a surprising 81.43 – surprising, at least, if your first thoughts about McCain are the campaign-finance reform bill, his work with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform, his vote for TARP, and all of his moments where he “mavericked” away from the rest of the Republican party. But since the presidential election, McCain’s been a pretty persistent opponent of the Obama administration; there’s been some bitter vindication for McCain as every one of the grandiose promises, so central to Obama’s victory, have reached their expiration date.

Also note that with Harry Reid and Senate Democrats pursuing a relentlessly liberal agenda between now and the primary, McCain is not likely to give Hayworth fresh fodder.

Beyond that, McCain can invoke the Sarah Palin card anytime the “he’s not conservative enough” line gets traction. Any Palin fan who grinds their teeth about McCain has to recognize that for all of the Arizona senator’s supposed moderation and inclination to compromise, on one of the biggest decisions of the campaign, he picked Palin. If he was really the hopeless squish that some suggest, he would have gone with Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge or some other pallid centrist.

Beyond that, as much as a right-leaning GOP primary voter may love Hayworth for his consistent, combative case for conservative policies, there’s a strong argument that he fumbled away a winnable House race in 2006, getting only 46 percent in a right-leaning district where George W. Bush carried 54 percent and John McCain carried 51 percent. Style and tone count for a lot, and some voters are repelled by too much table-pounding. Some Republicans contend – plausibly, I think – that a “scandal factor” played a role in his defeat. There’s some argument that Hayworth took his opponent too lightly; Hayworth ended the year with $201,130 in his campaign account and no debt, according to his FEC filing.

Does all this add up to sufficient reasons to prefer McCain? I’m not inclined to that logic, but different conservatives will come to different conclusions.

I laid out my allegedly morbid thoughts on Hayworth’s long-term goals here . . .

My love for bizarre quotes and even odder behavior generated a brief bit of enthusiasm about the return of convicted felon Jim Traficant to Ohio politics, but I’m starting to doubt his seriousness in this endeavor. Sure, he says he’s going to run, and yes, he still has time to file the papers if he’s going to run as an independent. He’s said he’s pursuing that option on CNN.

But there are a couple key decisions that have to be resolved . . . like which district he’s going to run in.

Obama, speaking on the one-year anniversary of the stimulus bill:

But during a recession, when businesses pull back and people stop spending, what government can do is provide a temporary boost that puts money in people’s pockets and keeps workers on the job, cuts taxes for small businesses, generates more demand, gives confidence to entrepreneurs that maybe they don’t have to cut back right now, maybe they can hold steady in their plans and in their dreams. That’s exactly what we’ve been able to do with the Recovery Act.

Apparently confidence is not contagious. The news today:

Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center: “Consumer Confidence, which had been improving over the past few months, declined sharply in February. Concerns about current business conditions and the job market pushed the Present Situation Index down to its lowest level in 27 years (Feb. 1983, 17.5). Consumers’ short-term outlook also took a turn for the worse, with fewer consumers anticipating an improvement in business conditions and the job market over the next six months. Consumers also remain extremely pessimistic about their income prospects. This combination of earnings and job anxieties is likely to continue to curb spending.”

Foolish consumers! Don’t you understand that the stimulus is working?

Look, when Sen. Russ Feingold said that using reconciliation “wasn’t appropriate” in April, he meant it wasn’t appropriate for Republicans to use, not that Democrats couldn’t use it. Now he’s cool with it.

A reader worries about John Tanner and Bart Gordon, retiring Tennessee Democrats who voted “no” on health care in the House, flipping to the “yes” column on the final vote on Obamacare.

I’d add Washington Democrat Brian Baird to that list.

Two other House Democrats who voted no, and who are retiring, are running for higher office: Artur Davis of Alabama is running for governor and Charlie Melancon of Louisiana is running for U.S. Senate. I suspect a “yes” vote on Obamacare would be unhelpful to their aspirations for higher office in those states.

In the past, Gordon has said, “Any health care bill that is ultimately signed into law must not increase the federal deficit or our long-term spending on health care.” The fact that the CBO couldn’t score Obama’s brief summary probably makes this a tough sell for him. Tanner also cited the CBO in his remarks about why he couldn’t support the House version.

Also, from Baird: “To insist that members vote on this legislation without having cost estimates of Medicare and Medicaid impacts by CMS or an estimate of premium impacts from the CBO seems premature and unwise.”

Of course, the Obama administration needs something from them, and thus this means any one of them could be the next Secretary of the Navy.

Rep. Bart Gordon, Democrat of Tennessee, announced his retirement in mid-December.

Nashville Public Radio informs us, “Democrats are still on the hunt for a viable candidate in the race to take the seat of retiring Congressman Bart Gordon.”

The filing deadline for federal candidates in Tennessee is April 1. [Insert your preferred April Fool joke here.]

One of my Delaware guys passes along this word about that state’s House election:

There is still no big name to run against John Carney (D), the former Lt. Governor, but with Mike Castle’s ascendancy in this race, the GOP will likely field a strong candidate to lift down-ballot candidates. Most conservatives are happy that financial developer Tony Wedo declined a run, given that he had a carpet-bagger issue. Speculation continues on drafting former state Senator Charlie Copeland (R-Greenville) for the at-large congressional seat at the State Convention later this spring. Copeland gave up his safe senate seat and announced for Lt. Governor in 2008 just weeks before Joe Biden was selected as Obama’s veep, thus drowning all GOP candidates. Still, even in losing, Copeland outran the ticket, garnered exceptional reviews, and increased his name ID throughout the State. Copeland is young, telegenic, conservative, and smart.

Perhaps nothing recommends the sanity of Charlie Copeland as much as the fact that he doesn’t want the job.

This sentence, deep in the Washington Post’s coverage of the health-care summit, made me shake my head and be glad I’m not a congressional Democrat:

The White House’s best hope — perhaps its only hope — is that Obama can use a masterful performance during the six-hour appearance to “stiffen the spine” of congressional Democrats, one senior official said, persuading them to pass health-care legislation using the mechanism known as reconciliation, which requires a simple majority of 51 rather than 60 votes to prevail in the Senate.

Great, they’ve ordered up another “masterful performance.” I expect copper prices to rise as the administration assembles the biggest, loudest, shiniest cowbell ever.

I think Continetti hit in the right neighborhood, but understated it in this piece. Americans took a leap of faith with Obama, and his first act was the stimulus. And in order to get it passed, no promise was too big for the incoming president. January 10, 2009:

One day after the nation’s unemployment rate was reported to be at a 16-year high, President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday again raised the estimate of how many jobs would result from his economic recovery plan, saying it would create or save three million to four million, nearly 90 percent of them in the private sector . . . Without an economic recovery plan, the report warned, the unemployment rate could hit 9 percent, up from 7.2 percent now. If the plan is adopted, unemployment is still expected to rise but then fall late this year.

In February, Obama said that at the end of the first year, “we can start seeing some significant improvement.” He pledged to make sure “every single dollar is well spent.” We were promised unprecedented accountability. We were endlessly told that the projects were shovel-ready, and then, after it was passed, the impact was always just around the corner. We were also warned, “If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits.”

Of course, unemployment hit 10.2 percent, and while it’s down a bit from there, it’s not certain that it has peaked. Unemployment has increased in the construction sector every month, and you figure if the stimulus had any impact, it would have been in that field. Recovery.gov is full of bad data. And a year later, Obama himself admitted that “shovel-ready” projects aren’t actually ready to start immediately, or anything close to it.

I suspect the decline in Obama’s approval rating in the past year – particularly on the economy – has come from Americans who took that leap of faith with the new president and felt like they endured a crash landing. They just don’t trust Obama’s pledges about the effects of legislation anymore, and that’s why no matter how grandiose and appealing the promises surrounding the health-care bill get, the numbers barely budge.

No matter how “masterful” Obama’s performance is, the health-care bill is likely to remain pretty unpopular, with some corners of the electorate furiously opposed. Obama has to persuade congressional Democrats to ignore their constituents and, in many cases, end their careers over this legislation.

Suddenly Harry Reid’s “Negro dialect” remark seems par for the course:

The Senate’s jobs bill, which passed a key procedural vote last night with the help of five Republicans, could do more than help people get back to work, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggested Monday — it could bring down the rate of domestic violence.

“I met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand,” Reid said on the Senate floor, the Hill newspaper reports. “Why? Men don’t have jobs.”

Even though women are losing jobs as well, “women aren’t abusive, most of the time,” Reid said. “Men, when they’re out of work, tend to become abusive.”

Obviously Nevada ought to reelect the guy, just out of concern for the well-being and safety of Mrs. Reid.

Earlier this month, I noted that [Republican] Bill McCollum began the year with a decisive double-digit lead over [Democrat] Alex Sink for governor of Florida.

Considering how Florida’s been hit with a severe housing bust, unemployment stands at 11.8 percent, and things probably aren’t going to be too much better in November, the Democrats may have picked the wrong year to nominate a bank executive who oversaw thousands of layoffs.

There are a lot of ways Sink could try to defend against this line of criticism from the Republican Governors Association — “it was ten years ago”; “the layoffs were necessary to the survival of the company” –  but I’m not sure how well most of them will play in this political environment.

A reader in Iowa shares a detail relevant to yesterday’s post:

I am from Iowa, albeit across the state from Newton, but wanted to point out something about Obama’s great success story with the wind energy plant in Newton. It is in a closed Maytag washing machine factory, Maytag ended production on Oct 21, 2007, TPI composites, the wind turbine manufacturer, announced plans to build turbine parts there in Dec 2007. What was Obama doing in Dec. 2007? Wind energy investments started long before him.

Well, in December 2007, he was campaigning there.

Beyond that, someone had to tour the facility and declare before the television cameras, “Look at what we see here today.”