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Here’s the best comment posted on this video on YouTube: “If Mitt Romney is elected president, we will all be like Seamus the Pooch riding on the top of the car.” The commenter is referring to the time Romney strapped his dog to the top of the family car for a drive to a vacation destination.

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We’ve seen all the outrageous comments, one-liners and sniping between candidates. Now let’s see where the candidates stand on issues like public employee unions, child labor and Social Security! Play the game, then sign up below to receive email updates and text alerts.

A year ago, congressional Republicans were an exuberant bunch. Riding high after massive midterm gains, and with President Obama’s approval ratings faltering, GOP leaders and rank-and-file members felt very good about themselves, their standing, their agenda, and their future.

A year later, Republicans aren’t smiling quite as often. Thanks to their style of “leadership,” the GOP-dominated Congress has seen the bottom fall out of its public support, while Obama’s numbers steadily improve. Republicans haven’t gotten anything done, and probably won’t have anything to show for the entire Congress by the end of the year.

This has not gone unnoticed by the GOP lawmakers themselves, and Jake Sherman reported late yesterday that Republicans are now fighting amongst themselves over just about everything.

A year to the day since Ohio’s John Boehner and 87 eager freshmen took Washington by storm, House Republicans are bruised from battle, irritated with each other and have lost trust in their leadership.

The president whose agenda they came to Washington to stop is vowing to spend the year scoring political points against Republicans now, and they don’t have much leverage against him. […]

All told, the House Republicans are going into 2012 weaker and more divided than when they took control of the chamber a year ago. […]

Around the leadership circle — comprising Boehner, Cantor, Whip Kevin McCarthy and their allies — there’s more disunity, grumbling and finger-pointing than there has been all year.

Reading the piece, I’m not at all clear how this gets better. The party doesn’t have a policy agenda, per se, and has no credible shot at completing a legislative wish list. There’s no strategy, no message, and no policies that (a) enjoy broad caucus-wide support; and (b) might stand a chance of passing.

There are disagreements among the rank and file, among the leaders, between the leaders and the rank and file, and between House Republicans and Senate Republicans. Within the caucus, there’s reportedly “a growing deficit of trust.”

Not only is this a recipe for failure, it’s also the kind of dynamic that may ultimately put John Boehner’s job in jeopardy.

For what it’s worth, the piece has a tidbit of good news: apparently House Republicans just want to get the payroll-tax-cut fight out of the way, and don’t intend to re-litigate the fight that proved to be fiasco for the party in December. That suggests the one item on the White House’s 2012 to-do list may come together after all.

Regardless, House Republicans will gather for a Baltimore retreat later this month to ponder a course for the rest of the year. By all accounts, their discussion will be ugly.

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Steve Benen joined Washington Monthly in August, 2008 as chief blogger for the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal.
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This is republished from The Washington Monthly.

In the iconic Christmas film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” an angel offers the beleaguered main character, George Bailey, the stark choice between a hometown named for a cruel banker or one created by and for the middle class.

The banker’s town, Pottersville, is filled with bars, gambling dens and despair.  The people’s town of Bedford Falls is made of hope, hard working middle class families, and their homes financed by the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan.

The film’s happy ending is the people of Bedford Falls banding together to rescue George Bailey and the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan that had given so many of them a leg up over the years. Republicans seek a different conclusion.  They find middle class cooperation and community intolerable. They want the banker, Henry Potter, with his “every man for himself” philosophy to triumph. In the spirit of their self-centered mentor Ayn Rand, Republicans are trying to disfigure America so she resembles Pottersville.

A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers’, uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. At one point in the film, George Bailey explains this concept to frightened depositors who are trying to withdraw their savings during the panic that led to bank runs in 1929.

Bailey urges the townspeople who had crowded into the building and loan office to withdraw only what they need, not empty their accounts. “We have got to stick together,” he tells them, “We have to do this together.” A building and loan doesn’t function without trust and cooperation.

It works well for Bedford Falls. The mortgages it provides help working people move out of the Potters Field slums and into Bailey Park, where homes well kept by their owners increase in value.  Despite the success, Potter condemned this practice, saying it was based on “high ideals without common sense.” He criticized the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan for granting a taxi driver a mortgage after Potter’s bank had rejected his application. Potter scoffed at such practices, asking if the building and loan was a “business or a charity ward.”

This is exactly what Republicans do. They describe beloved American programs like Medicare and Social Security as charities – using the euphemism “entitlements.” Like mortgages from the Bailey Building & Loan, Medicare and Social Security are not charities. They’re the American people depositing and pooling their money for the benefit of the American community.

The GOP tries to destroy programs like these that aid the middle class, the vast majority of Americans – the 99 percent – while Republicans protect tax breaks and special perks for the rich – the one percent, the Henry Potters. (more…)

We may be at an interesting inflection point.

- Large majorities have had it with Congressional dysfunctionality.

- Influential Republicans like Mitch McConnell are recognizing the above and view it as a threat to their party.

- Reasonable conservative voices are writing smart pieces that seem to be reaching for hybrid positions on social and economic issues. See here and here, for example.

- The latest debacle — the fight to extend unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut — appears to have demonstrably hurt the Republicans and helped the Democrats (especially the president), and one might expect that ensuing fights will redound similarly, i.e., the public appears to be internalizing the meme that the Democrats are fighting for the middle class while the Republicans are fighting for the rich. Politically, this is a dangerous possibility for Republicans, especially in an election year.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not suggesting a Kumbaya moment is in the offing. There are still irresistible forces in play here; the Tea Party members of Congress are, I suspect, if anything, even more pissed off and ready to wreck more havoc when they get back. A wounded tiger is a dangerous tiger. (more…)

The author of this great work — ThinkProgress — needs financial help. If you’re willing, here’s a link.

Progressives had some fun last week with Frank Luntz, who told the Republican Governors’ Association that he was scared to death of the Occupy movement and recommended language to combat what the movement had achieved. But the progressive critics mostly just laughed, said his language wouldn’t work, and assumed that if Luntz was scared, everything was hunky-dory. Just keep on saying the words Luntz doesn’t like: capitalism, tax the rich, etc.

It’s a trap.

When Luntz says he is “scared to death,” he means that the Republicans who hire him are scared to death and he can profit from that fear by offering them new language. Luntz is clever. Yes, Republicans are scared. But there needs to be a serious discussion of both Luntz’s remarks and the progressive non-response.

What has been learned from the brain and cognitive sciences is that words are defined by fixed frames we use in thinking, frames come in hierarchical systems, and political frames are defined in moral terms, where “morality” is very different for conservatives and progressives. What lies behind the Occupy movement is a moral view of democracy: Democracy is about citizens caring about each other and acting responsibly both socially and personally. This requires a robust public empowering and protecting everyone equally. Both private success and personal freedom depend on such a public. Every critique and proposal of the Occupy movement fits this moral view, which happens to be the progressive moral view.

What the Occupy movement can’t stand is the opposite “moral” view, that democracy provides the freedom to seek one’s self-interest and ignore what is good for other Americans and others in the world. That view lies behind the Wall Street ethic of the Greedy Market, as opposed to a Market for All, a market that should maximize the well-being of most Americans. This view leads to a hierarchical view of society, where success is always deserved and lack of success is moral failure. The rich are the moral, and they not only deserve their wealth, they also deserve the power it brings. This is the view that Luntz is defending. (more…)

MTV needs to stop giving that creepy vampire guy and moony human girl in the “Twilight” series the “best kiss” prize in its annual movie awards because it’s Republicans who truly earned the trophy for the big wet smooches they lay on the 1 percent.

Just think of the GOP lovin’ that went into the Bush tax breaks that gave millionaires more than $125,000 a year and the middle class less than $1,000. Or the arduous embrace signified by cutting the capital gains tax to a rate lower than that on middle class income.

The GOP is a faithful lover to the 1 percent, steady and true. Last week, Republicans found themselves confronted with a choice between raising taxes on the 99 percent or on the 1 percent, and the GOP spared the millionaires. The GOP’s fidelity to the 1 percent is so strong that Republicans wavered on their promises – never raise taxes – and principles – tax cuts don’t have to be offset. As a result, the 99 percent is beginning to feel more than a little spurned by the GOP.

Since the days of the Bush breaks in 2001 and 2003, Republicans consistently have said that tax reductions stimulate the economy and the lost revenue needn’t be offset. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, asserted, for example: “You should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.”  The GOP didn’t pay for the Bush breaks, a decision that dramatically increased the deficit, which Republicans now say the 99 percent must pay by suffering slashed government services.

Similarly, Republicans have loyally upheld their solemn pledge to lobbyist Grover Norquist to never, ever raise taxes. Last year, for example, they GOP refused to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, contending that would be a tax increase, not the end of rates intended to be temporary.

To recap: The GOP vowed never to raise taxes. The GOP defines an expiring temporary tax cut as a tax increase. And the GOP believes tax reductions don’t have to be offset.

To serve the 1 percent, however, Republicans discarded all of that supposedly sacrosanct philosophy during last week’s struggle over extending the temporary payroll tax cut. Congress voted last December to decrease for one year the payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent, putting an extra $1,000 in the hands of 160 million workers during a recession to pay bills. (more…)

What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? I’ve been listening to Republican candidates in an effort to discern an overall philosophy, a broadly-shared vision, an ideal picture of America.

They say they want a smaller government but that can’t be it. Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government’s powers of search and surveillance inside the United States — eradicating possible terrorists, expunging undocumented immigrants, “securing” the nation’s borders. They want stiffer criminal sentences, including broader application of the death penalty. Many also want government to intrude on the most intimate aspects of private life.

They call themselves conservatives but that’s not it, either. They don’t want to conserve what we now have. They’d rather take the country backwards — before the 1960s and 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Act, Medicare, and Medicaid; before the New Deal, and its provision for Social Security, unemployment insurance, the forty-hour workweek, laws against child labor, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve.

They’re not conservatives. They’re regressives. And the America they seek is the one we had in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. (more…)