It’s a free country, but the rumored Diaz-Balart–for–Diaz-Balart trade in Florida’s 21st congressional district makes no sense.

To recap, Lincoln Diaz-Balart is retiring, and the Miami Herald reports, “Word is his brother, Mario Diaz-Balart, will run for Lincoln’s seat — a safer Republican district.”

On paper, Mario’s seat is less safe than Lincoln’s, but not by much:

Yes, Lincoln’s 21st district is more compact, a Hialeah-based box west of Miami and Hollywood, Florida, while Mario’s 25th stretches across the southern tip of the state, encompassing much of Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Collier counties. And I suppose it’s easier to campaign and represent a densely populated district close to Miami than one spread out over a large chunk of the Everglades. But when you’ve represented a community for eight years, I think you need a really good reason to say to your constituents, “See you later, I’m off to represent those voters next door.”

I suppose redistricting could theoretically be a factor, but it’s south Florida and at some point you run out of Democratic votes (or you take too many out of currently Democratic seats). If neither of these guys lost when Obama was bringing out the Democratic vote and winning the state by 200,000 votes, they’re not likely to get knocked off.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Republican of Florida, is retiring.

At this point, the only candidate listed running for this seat in 2010 is William Sanchez, who filed with the Federal Election Commission as a Republican on September 28, then filed with the FEC as a Democrat on November 16, and changed his party affiliation to Democrat with the Florida Division of Elections nine days later.

McCain narrowly carried this district, 51 percent to 49 percent, in 2008; Bush carried it 57 percent to 43 percent in 2004. Diaz-Balart’s 58 percent last year was his smallest percentage in his career; he had no Democratic opposition in 2002, 2000, 1996, 1994, or 1992.

From Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics:

The population of the district is 73 percent Hispanic, the highest of any Florida district, and just under 44 percent of residents are of Cuban origin . . . The 21st has the lowest number of registered voters of any Florida district. Overall, this is a Republican district, but one that sometimes votes for Democrats who support the Cuban community’s issues.

UPDATE: Family heirlooms! From the link above:

Word is his brother, Mario Diaz-Balart, will run for Lincoln’s seat — a safer Republican district. That would open up Mario’s seat. There’s no clear front runner for that seat, but state Reps. David Rivera and Anitere Flores are running for a state Senate seat that is almost fully contained in the congressional district.

Has a congressman ever switched districts before? Not triggered by redistricting, I mean?

I suppose the idea is to save on “Vote for Diaz-Balart” signs.

It’s a crowded primary, but this candidate will get particular attention, for obvious reasons:

Rep. Tim Scott, who in 2008 became the first African American Republican in the State House in at least 100 years, is now running for Congress. Scott had been running for lieutenant governor. Scott, the former chairman of Charleston County Council, announced Monday he is abandoning his run for statewide office and is instead taking a crack at replacing U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, who is retiring. The Charleston Post and Courier reports Scott is now the seventh Republican in the race. If elected he would be the first African American Republican in Congress in six years.

While Tim Scott has good odds if he can win a crowded primary, I like the odds for Allen West.

President Obama, on September 25 of last year:

The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.

The news, today:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed Thursday that Iran has produced its first batch of uranium enriched to a higher level, saying his country will not be bullied by the West into curtailing its nuclear program a day after the U.S. imposed new sanctions. Ahmadinejad reiterated to hundreds of thousands of cheering Iranians on the anniversary of the 1979 foundation of the Islamic republic that the country was now a “nuclear state,” an announcement he’s made before. He insisted that Iran had no intention of building nuclear weapons.

So, how’s that accountability going?

Yesterday, a reader asked why I wasn’t listing the expiration dates of Obama’s statements as often as I used to. One is sheer volume, another is that sometimes they’re so widely noted it would be redundant (like the C-SPAN promise), and another is that I’m not sure there is anyone left who would argue seriously that Obama has done a good job of keeping his promises, or that any seemingly resolute statement from the president won’t be changed in the face of political pressure. The closest we could expect would be some variation of, “Yes, but he has kept the promises he meant to keep.”

But every once in a while, Obama is so blatant in his reversals, we have to break it out once more. I’m sure you remember this pledge, and how there were no hedges, no exceptions, no “maybes” in his promise on the campaign trail:

“No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase.”

And now, the tune changes:

President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

I particularly liked the closing line in this short note from Campaign Spot reader Steve:

So, is the President endorsing Fred Smith’s policy solutions of A) maximum expansion of domestic US energy production and B) electrifying ground transportation (i.e. Chevy Volts)? Or is he just endorsing B?

Or maybe, in his best professorial manner, he’s taking a deep draught of his pipe, and saying “You have some very creative ideas, Jim. I would like to read that paper.”

Like most politicians, the President seems to think that there is some magical energy policy solution. I guess that’s because a market based approach doesn’t allow politicians to take credit.

When Steve Jobs debuted the iPad, The Economist portrayed him as if he were a saint. Obviously, that’s tongue-in-cheek, but our culture does celebrate certain CEOs and entrepreneurs – Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffett, Herb Kelleher, Lee Iacocca, Jeff Bezos, etc.  Not only does every politician look in the mirror and see a potential president, I suspect almost every politician looks in the mirror and sees someone who is smart enough to run a Fortune 500 company. This moment in Washington is the culmination of those frustrated egos getting unleashed, getting their chance to seize the wheel and steer the economy, showing that they know so much more than those guys who built those companies . . .

A Democrat has dropped his bid to unseat South Carolina senator Jim DeMint — a.k.a. “Wellington.”

Chad McGowan released the following statement today after announcing that he would be withdrawing his name from consideration for the Democratic nomination for US Senate:

“I’ve come to the conclusion that now is the wrong time for me to mount a successful campaign for the United States Senate. The demands of a young family place a premium on every minute. There is nothing more important to me than my wife and three small children. In order to fulfill my duties as a husband and a father, I’ll be leaving the race for United States Senate effective immediately. A few years from now, the kids will be older and in a phase of life that can tolerate the demands of a successful run. In the meantime, I’d like to thank my supporters for standing tall with me thus far, but ask that they understand that my kids comes first and they need me at home. I am still very much committed to the cause of fixing our broken political system, and will be fighting from the sidelines to defeat Jim DeMint and others who think South Carolina’s best days are behind us.”

In what may be a political first, McGowan will be offering full refunds to every contributor to his campaign. In just a few short months, McGowan had raised almost $250,000.

Then-candidate Obama, one day before Election Day, 2008:

Understand, if we want to meet the challenges of this moment, we need to get beyond the old ideological debates and divides between left and right. We don’t need bigger government or smaller government. We need a better government – a more competent government – a government that upholds the values we hold in common as Americans.

The Washington Post, today:

Two-thirds of Americans are ‘dissatisfied’ or downright ‘angry’ about the way the federal government is working, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. On average, the public estimates that 53 cents of every tax dollar they send to Washington is ‘wasted.’ . . . Public dissatisfaction with how Washington operates is at its highest level in Post-ABC polling in more than a decade — since the months after the Republican-led government shutdown in 1996 — and negative ratings of the two major parties hover near record highs.

Time for the Netroots to explode in rage again. During Obama’s interview with BusinessWeek, he was asked for a specific CEO he admires:

There are a bunch of them. You know who I really enjoyed talking to at our last lunch was Fred Smith of Fed Ex. Very thoughtful. He’s an example of somebody who is thinking long-term. His industry is deeply sensitive to energy prices, and he’s the first one to say that if we don’t start getting an energy policy that’s smart, we’re going to lose in our competition. He’s also very thoughtful about trade that talks about the difficulties they had in some cases with partners around the world.

Fred Smith was also a McCain campaign co-chair, and there was some buzz about him being an under-the-radar possible vice president for McCain. I wrote about him here.

Smith is a bit more tied to right-of-center political causes than one might initially think. He’s a member of the Business Roundtable and the Cato Institute, and is co-chairman of the Energy Security Leadership Council. (John Judis denounced Smith in his book The Paradox of American Democracy as an example of a politically involved business leader who embraces “a kind of irresponsible individualism.”) He served as chairman of the U.S.-China Business Council and the French-American Business Council, was co-chairman of the U.S. World War II Memorial Project, and served on the boards of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Mayo Foundation.

Also note this irony from the beginning of my Fred Smith piece, written in early August:

The overwhelming perception in political circles is that anyone worth considering for vice president is already a household name, or at least well-known in political circles. This has led, in the conventional wisdom, to the dismissal of several rising GOP stars — Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal? Not ready yet. Sarah Palin? Alaska’s too far away and too small a proving ground. Tim Pawlenty? The Minnesota governor is barely noticed on the national scene.

UPDATE: Two readers note another irony:

Don’t forget the bitter fight between UPS and FedEx over how UPS wants FedEx to be covered by the NLRA (Wagner Act) which would inevitably lead to the Teamsterization of FedEx’s drivers instead of the RLA which covers FedEx now. So basically Obama’s favorite CEO is fighting tooth and nail against Big Labor — don’t tell Andy Stern, he might want a refund!

Quinnipiac ladles out more servings of bad polling news for this White House. Obama’s slightly underwater in job approval, with 45 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving; severely underwater on the economy: 41 percent approving, 54 percent disapproving; severely underwater on health care: 35 percent approving, 58 percent disapproving; severely underwater on creating jobs: 37 percent approving, 56 percent disapproving; severely underwater on the budget deficit: 33 percent approving, 60 percent disapproving.

As usual, the numbers among independents are worse.

From the Thursday Morning Jolt, off to the editors and from there to your e-mailbox (if you have signed up):

A Position Defending Bonuses to Bank CEOs Constitutes a Toxic Asset, Right?

Weird. I’m the one who’s barely been outdoors in the past week except to shovel and buy food, and yet President Obama and Paul Krugman are both acting stir crazy.

Obama’s first baffling moment: “President Barack Obama said he doesn’t ‘begrudge’ the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay. The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is ‘an extraordinary amount of money’ for Main Street, ‘there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.’  ‘I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,’ Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. ‘I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.’”

Well, he knows these guys, so it’s okay, I guess. Or maybe Obama’s starting to relate to their circumstances, now that he runs a few car companies.

This administration is showing all of the even-temperedness, careful consideration, and reassuring consistency we’ve come to expect from Jack Torrence in The Shining. (Yes, that was a reference to a snowbound writer, why do you ask?) After Scott Brown’s victory, President Obama suddenly leaped out to the campaign trail again, rolling up his shirtsleeves, pledging to be the most populist populist that ever lived, and shouting the word “fight!” more often than the New York Rangers fans in the blue seats after a cheap shot. A week later, and suddenly he’s shrugging at giant bonuses at bankers that would probably get Henry Paulson’s eye to twitch. This administration’s approach isn’t bipartisan, it’s bipolar.

It’s rather funny to watch Paul Krugman flipping out over Obama’s statement like a 13-year-old girl who’s just seen her favorite American Idol contestant voted off: “Oh. My. God. . . . There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private. And at the very least, you would think that Obama would understand the importance of acknowledging public anger over what’s happening. But no. If the Bloomberg story is to be believed, Obama thinks his key to electoral success is to trumpet ‘the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.’ We’re doomed.”

Tom Maguire: “To clarify the record, A-Rod took steroids, not TARP money
. . . to see Obama flipping and flopping in the breeze like this is embarrassing. I am almost hoping the fix is in – Obama does know these guys, and they may have agreed not to embarrass him by taking ginormous bonuses if he didn’t embarrass them by bashing them about it.  Or maybe Obama thinks he has them on board for some financial reform. But if not, this is a dreadful effort from Obama.  Also troubling is that now he has to engage in some random lashing-out in order to try and regain a bit of street cred with his base. Good luck!”

Dennis the Peasant: “Honestly, though, I’m not surprised at this. As many of you know, last week it was reported that Wall Street wasn’t responding to Democratic fund raising efforts with much enthusiasm. Evidently the Democratic Party’s brain trust was unprepared for Wall Street bankers responding to 13 months of public vilification by keeping their checkbooks closed. Go figure. No doubt some DNC drone rushed over to the White House and informed some Administration drone that the money has stopped flowing. Enter, on cue, the Obama walk-back. The most amateurish presidency – and president – of our age.”

According to his statement of candidacy, Sen. Evan Bayh’s address is the office of his campaign treasurer.

The poor man. I don’t know what happened to his home, but I’ll bet it had something to do with a subprime adjustable-rate mortgage or something.

My reader code-named Number-Cruncher takes issue with the latest poll offering from the Washington Post:

I love reading polls, specifically partisan polls. This latest from the Washington Post is a sampling embarrassment.   Rather than bore you with a long e-mail, here is the bottom line:   Washington Post used the following sample:   Democrats 32 Republicans 23 Independent/Other 38/7 Total 45   Compare that to the 2008 exit Polls   Democrats 39 Republicans 32 Independent/Other 29   So let me get this straight the electorate consists of 1.28 Democrats for every Republican in January of 2010 when in November 2008 that ratio was 1.21.  Said another way, if this poll were indicative of reality, the current landscape is even BETTER for Democrats now than it was in November of 2008. Of course, If that kind of sampling is what it will take to keep Obama over 50%, Obama’s got serious problems!   Democrats can point to this poll all they want (reminds me of how some of us were grasping at straws only 15 months ago with McCain . . . remember Zogby showing the race within 2 or 3 over the weekend?). Truth be told this is a ridiculous poll, and should not be trusted. Any national poll that indicates a sampling of more Democrats today as compared to 2008 exit polls should be tossed out.

Rep. Diane Watson, Democrat of California, is retiring.

I’m not even going to pretend to get your hopes up. This is a D+35 district; in 2008, Republican David Crowley got 12 percent of the vote, as did John McCain.

While we’ll have to see who the Democratic and GOP candidates turn out to be, the political terrain here makes Scott Brown’s bid in Massachusetts look easy.

The Fix, two days ago: “Can Democrats dissuade Dan Coats from running?”

Today, the answer: No. “Former U.S. Senator Dan Coats confirmed Wednesday morning that he will run again for the Senate.”

Just adding a note to Jonah’s column on the Audi ad: Indeed, Cheap Trick did rerecord “Dream Police” as “Green Police,” but judging from the version available on Audi’s Facebook page, they only changed one word; the rest of the lyrics remain the same:

The green police, inside of my head.
The green police, they come to me in my bed.
The green police, they’re coming to arrest me, oh no.

You know that talk is cheap, and those rumors ain’t nice.
And when I fall asleep I don’t think I’ll survive the night, the night.

’Cause they’re waiting for me.
They’re looking for me.
Ev’ry single night they’re driving me insane.
Those men inside my brain.

The green police, inside of my head.
(Live inside of my head.)
The green police, they come to me in my bed.
(Come to me in my bed.)
The green police, they’re coming to arrest me, oh no.

Well, I can’t tell lies, ’cause they’re listening to me.
And when I fall asleep, bet they’re spying on me tonight, tonight.

’Cause they’re waiting for me.
They’re looking for me.
Ev’ry single night they’re driving me insane.
Those men inside my brain.

I try to sleep, they’re wide awake, they won’t let me alone.
They don’t get paid or take vacations, or let me alone.
They spy on me, I try to hide, they won’t let me alone.
They persecute me, they’re the judge and jury all in one.

’Cause they’re waiting for me.
They’re looking for me.
Ev’ry single night they’re driving me insane.
Those men inside my brain.

Quite a few readers argue that the Audi ad is pro-green police, but the lyrics certainly don’t portray them as anything but bad.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has named its first roster of “Young Guns” — essentially, the NRCC sets performance standards, and these ten candidates are performing the best on the trail so far. I decided to check how these young guns are raising cash compared to the . . . er, old knives they’re running against.

Steve Chabot (OH-01): According to OpenSecrets.org, Chabot has raised $704,669, while incumbent Democrat Steve Driehaus has raised a little over $869,000.

Tim Griffin (AR-02) has raised $391,762, and with Vic Snyder’s retirement, the Democrats are still sorting out who their most likely candidate is.

Andy Harris (MD-01) has raised $654,914, while Democratic incumbent Frank Kratovil has raised $1.08 million.

Pat Meehan (PA-07) has raised $791,389, while the top Democratic contender in this open-seat race, Bryan Lentz, has raised $515,279. Interestingly, another Republican, Steven D. Welch, has raised $802,118.*

Steve Pearce (NM-02) has raised $821,505 compared to incumbent Democrat Harry Teague’s $1.06 million.

Martha Roby (AL-02) is one of the few top competitors not keeping up in the money race. She has raised $293,277 compared to Bobby Bright’s $752,061.

Dennis Ross (FL-12) has raised $456,008 in this open-seat race; the most any Democratic rival has raised is $176,451, by Lori Edwards.

Steve Stivers (OH-15) has raised $561,416, while Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy has raised $1.09 million.

Vaughn Ward (ID-01) has raised a respectable $341,176, but the Democrat he seeks to defeat, Walt Minnick, is preparing for the fight, having raised $1.1 million.

Allen West (FL-22): The YouTube sensation is doing quite well, raising $1,220,306, with Democrat Ron Klein having $1.4 million.

UPDATE: A reader notes OpenSecrets has it wrong, and I failed to notice:

Steve Welch was originally running in PA-7 before Pat Meehan dropped his bid for Governor and decided to run in the 6^th (www.welchforpa.com) . Steve lives right on the border of the two districts and switched his campaign to the 6^th, Rep. Jim Gerlach’s district who was also running for Governor before also deciding to run again for his old seat. So, right now Pat is leading candidate in the 7^th, and there will a contested primary in the 6^th between Welch, Gerlach, State Rep. Curt Schroder, and other minor candidates dropping in and out. Primary is May 18^th.

The New York Post reports:

Disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards has reportedly proposed to his baby mama — and plans to buy a posh, $3.5 million beachfront home where they can live together.

Rick Klein of ABCNews is hosting a chat on “who’s most to blame for failures of bipartisanship?”

I responded that I would blame those who expect either of two parties with fundamentally conflicting philosophies to abandon those ideas and worldviews in the name of the “bipartisanship” buzzword. Klein noted, accurately, that Tom DeLay expressed a similar theme in his farewell remarks: “You show me a nation without partisanship, and I’ll show you a tyranny. For all its faults, it is partisanship, based on core principles, that clarifies our debates, that prevents one party from straying too far from the mainstream, and that constantly refreshes our politics with new ideas and new leaders. Indeed, whatever role partisanship may have played in my own retirement today or in the unfriendliness heaped upon other leaders in other times, Republican or Democrat, however unjust, all we can say is that partisanship is the worst means of settling fundamental political differences — except for all the others.”

If a lawmaker thinks a proposal is a bad idea, they shouldn’t sign on out of a misguided sense that comity and decorum require an abandonment of their own judgment. Republicans think that most of Obama’s agenda stinks; most Democrats think that most of the Republicans’ agenda stinks. To contend that either side should suppress their better judgment is to fetishize any agreement that includes folks with both Ds and Rs after their name.

While some might argue that the current makeup of Congress includes too many conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats to come to any serious majority, it’s worth noting that there are still plenty of lawmakers who have proven willing to vote with the other party in the recent past. If a Democrat can’t get Olympia Snowe (lifetime ACU rating 47.8), Susan Collins (49.5) or George Voinovich (69.7) to sign on in the Senate, or Mike Castle (52.2) or Mark Kirk (55.6) or  Dave Reichart (56) to sign on in the House, it’s probably not that appealing an idea. Not every GOP lawmaker is a fire-breather. (Alas.)

Likewise, if a Republican proposal can’t get Ben Nelson (47.2) or Mary Landrieu or Blanche Lincoln or Mark Warner or Jim Webb to sign on, the proposal probably already in trouble.

By the way, I note that Obama keeps insisting that the House and Senate versions of the health care bill are 90 percent similar, and that the differences between the two are minor and not worth delaying passage of a bill. (Pelosi: “We’re talking about the fact that our bills are about 75 percent the same, perhaps 80. The president optimistically says 90.” ) This appears to be a reassuring misestimate.

Considering how the bill is polling, how much the country is more worried about the economy, and how much both Obama and Congressional Democrats desperately need accomplishments to tout, they have every incentive to pass a bill and move on to legislation focusing more specifically on the economy. If the two bills really were 90 percent the same, they would have put together a bill that constitutes that 90 percent and passed it already.

So, just to clarify, Montgomery County and the District of Columbia have temporarily suspended plowing the streets because of snow.

Okay, they’ve suspended because outside my window in Alexandria, the snow is coming down sideways, and I can barely see across the street.