Tag: mickey kaus

I wonder if Charlie Cook is having that dream.

You know, the dream where you’re trying to warn somebody, but they can’t hear you, and they keep blithely going onward towards their doom:

Talking with a conservative House Democrat from the South recently, I commented that it must be horrible to go home and get beaten about the head and shoulders by angry constituents. He added, “And then come back here and get beaten up in my own caucus.”

Via Kaus. Although Charlie Cook’s solution (redistricting reform) won’t actually solve the Democratic Party’s problem for it.  The reason why?  Because the aforementioned ‘conservative’ and ‘moderate’ Democrats obey their exceedingly liberal leadership, and those leaders are almost certainly going to keep getting elected, redistricting or no. Continue reading I wonder if Charlie Cook is having that dream.

Mickey Kaus has a Journolist thread.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit and Hot Air Ace of Spades HQ [sorry!] readers. I’m tempted to use this to tout something of mine, but a colleague needs the help more right now.

Mickey Kaus has published a Journolist thread.  One that is chock-full of precisely the sort of frank opinions and observations that will abruptly come to an end in all future Journolist threads.

Three thoughts:

  1. If Mickey has a Journolist thread, he may very well have several Journolist threads.  After all, betrayal really only hurts the first time.
  2. When the Journolist members sit down to contemplate who has embarrassed them in such a fashion, they may want to spare some disapproval for Spencer Ackerman, who started this war.
  3. Building off of #2: don’t fuck with Mickey Kaus.


Crossposted to RedState.

Mickey, you almost seem *surprised* that Obama gutted welfare reform.

Bless your heart, but why?

(Via Instapundit) Now that Kaus can actually read the debt bill that the Democrats just passed – a courtesy delayed to everybody who wasn’t a lobbyist – he’s kind of alarmed that his political party has decided to cater to its base by bringing back rules that encourage the formation of a permanent underclass. His major practical objection:

3) But the reference to liberalism isn’t irrelevant, because the now-undermined welfare reform was the key to rebuilding confidence in (liberal) affirmative government. As Bill Clinton recognized, voters may well have been willing to let government spend, but they didn’t trust old style liberals not to spend in actively destructive ways, like subsidizing an isolated underclass of non-working single mothers with a no-strings cash dole. It’s a 75-25 values issue. Work yes. Welfare no. Even if welfare spending was only a tiny portion of the liberals’ spending agenda, it poisoned the rest of it. Only when Clinton’s New Democrats put an ostentatious “time limit” on welfare and required work did they regain the public confidence necessary to increase other kinds of spending (on work-related poverty-fighting benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, day care and Social Security, for example.)

A reemerging “welfare” issue is a potential killer, in other words, for Obama’s big remaining plans, especially health care. If Dems seem determined to reinstate dependency–or at the least blind to the dangers of dependency–voters aren’t going to trust them to spend trillions on universal health insurance and fortified pensions. It’s hard to believe Obama doesn’t realize this. Continue reading Mickey, you almost seem *surprised* that Obama gutted welfare reform.