GOP governors ended their meeting in Texas on Thursday by cautioning the party’s 2010 candidates to go easy on President Obama. “We need to be careful. We need to treat the president respectfully,” said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who chairs the Republican Governors Association, noting that the nation’s first African-American president enjoys a “residuary of good will.” Somehow it’s hard to imagine that warning will be heeded by conservative media or by conservative candidates in red states such as Kansas, where Obama’s approval rating was just 41 percent late last month (in a SurveyUSA poll co-sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12).
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There may be good science behind a federal task force recommendation that women in their 40s don’t need annual mammograms, but it was bad timing for the Obama administration. Coming in the midst of the heated debate about health care reform, the recommendation became instant fodder for those claiming that the government is going to ration health care and get between patients and their doctors. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius responded Wednesday that the task force does “not set federal policy and they don’t determine what services are covered by the federal government.” But that’s unlikely to quell concerns.
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Some questions left over from Thursday’s editorial on the Kansas Coliseum’s uncertain future, in the wake of the Sedgwick County Commission’s vote against negotiating with any developer right now:
– How could the committee reviewing the proposals not take into consideration the fact that its preferred developer, North American Management-Kansas, also is involved in trying to get approval for a Native American casino nearby?
– The public outcry over the proposal last summer to close the Coliseum complex came from the groups that use its pavilions for dog, horse, gun shows and more. Where were the passionate defenders of the Britt Brown Arena? Do they have any ideas for how to keep it open and productive?
The campaign of Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, looked childish and desperate in sending out an e-mail falsely claiming that Senate rival Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, had been endorsed by the Communist Party USA. But as Washburn University political science professor Robert Beatty hoped, perhaps the incident may lead to an intelligent discussion about U.S. policy. Perhaps — though probably not. As Moran correctly argues, decades of U.S. embargoes haven’t brought an end to communist rule in Cuba and actually may have helped prop it up. Lifting some trade and travel bans to Cuba would benefit Kansas farmers and could help spread democracy.
The public is evenly divided on the proposed health care reforms, with 49 percent opposed and 48 percent supportive, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The public also doubts that the reform will help control costs, with 56 percent saying that overall health care costs will go up. But 66 percent support requiring all large employers to provide health insurance coverage or face fines, and 53 percent support a public insurance option (72 percent support one limited to those who lack access to coverage).
The public still favors President Obama over Republicans in handling the economy (52 to 37 percent) and health care (50 to 37 percent), though the gaps have narrowed some during the year. And 61 percent of those surveyed think that GOP leaders mainly criticize Obama’s proposals without offering alternatives.
RealClearPolitics’ Tom Bevan and Mike Memoli have cast their imaginations beyond Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, and drawn up a list of GOP dark horses for 2012: South Dakota Sen. John Thune (in photo), Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn and former Vice President Dick Cheney, and, calling them the “best of the rest,” Gen. David Petraeus and Reps. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, Mike Pence of Indiana and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
Two takes on the prospects of a Sarah Palin presidential nomination in 2012, offered Sunday by participants on ABC’s “This Week” roundtable:
– “She’s a joke. I just can’t take her seriously. We’ve got serious problems in the country. . . . The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination. Believe me — it’ll never happen,” said New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks.
– “You cannot underestimate the degree to which women will be drawn to her story, and that’s who she’s speaking to. These are people who are ignored, who nobody counts into their thinking,” said Gwen Ifill, moderator of PBS’ “Washington Week.”
Meanwhile, only 28 percent of Americans surveyed think that Palin is qualified to be president, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll. And Newsweek is taking heat over its cover photo of Palin posing in running gear.
In 2003, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., made a principled argument against filibustering judicial nominations. “We are really changing the constitutional design of what it takes to basically nominate and approve any judge,” he said. In 2005, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., also correctly argued that “all of the president’s nominees — both now and in the future — deserve a fair up or down vote.” So shouldn’t that mean that they both were among the 10 GOP lawmakers who voted Tuesday to end the filibuster of President Obama’s nomination of U.S. District Judge David Hamilton (in photo)? It should, but they weren’t.
Native Kansan and Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., hopes that lawmakers from both parties will finally declare a truce in their partisan fights over judicial nominations, thus ending such hypocrisy. “The Hamilton nomination would be a good time to do that,” he said. But apparently not for Roberts and Brownback.
Given the conservative challenges in several states against incumbents who are viewed as RINOs (Republicans in name only), would Ronald Reagan, if judged on his record, be pure enough for the GOP circa 2009? Newsweek’s Evan Thomas noted that “Reagan piously gave lip service to the right-wing social agenda while doing nothing to further it by legislation; he also chose George H.W. Bush to be his vice president and allowed the ultrapragmatic James A. Baker III to run the White House.” MSNBC’s First Read blog further observed that Reagan “raised taxes” and “increased the size of the deficit.”
The strong emotions over the now-scrapped proposal for a central-northeast Lord’s Diner satellite extended to the Wichita City Council bench Tuesday, notably with the sharply worded expressions of regret by council members Sue Schlapp and Paul Gray. Now, those who opposed the idea of a soup kitchen at 21st and Grove need to deliver on council member Lavonta Williams’ assurances that the hungry will be fed and the city-owned building will not remain blighted. Calling it probably the “most complicated” issue of his time on the council bench, Mayor Carl Brewer challenged the neighborhood to be as passionate in solving the hunger problem as it was in fighting the proposal. “At the end of the day, we want every citizen that’s in need or that’s hungry to be taken care of,” Brewer said.
Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, was one of nearly four dozen Republican and Democratic House members who submitted statements into the official record about health care reform that were written, in whole or in part, by lobbyists for a biotechnology company, the New York Times reported. Jenkins and Reps. K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, and Lee Terry, R-Neb., used nearly identical words in criticizing the health care reform bill, but each also said: “I do believe the sections relating to the creation of a market for biosimilar products is one area of the bill that strikes the appropriate balance in providing lower cost options.” So not only do lobbyists help write bills, they help write what lawmakers say.
UPDATE: Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., also submitted text written by lobbyists.
It’s not “treasonous,” as the blogosphere has suggested, but President Obama needs to stop bowing to foreign dignitaries. Not only does it look bad for the leader of the free world to bow to anyone, but his bow to Emperor Akihito of Japan over the weekend wasn’t even culturally correct, reported ABC News. One academic with knowledge of the Japanese Empire said the “handshake/forward lurch was so jarring and inappropriate” that it recalled President Bush’s back rub of the German chancellor. Then again, said the unnamed scholarly critic, “if Obama can get the dollar to stop bowing to the yen, I take it all back.” Obama similarly dipped at the waist in April upon meeting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Some of the members of John McCain’s presidential campaign are working hard to refute tales that his running mate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, tells in her book, “Going Rogue.” Former Bush White House and McCain campaign aide Nicolle Wallace, for example, calls everything Palin says involving her “just fabricated.” Give McCain credit for trying hard to remain respectful of Palin and her family, in recent interviews and otherwise. According to NBC, the Arizona senator has specifically asked his former staffers not to do interviews to rebut Palin’s charges.
In a New York Post commentary, former Kansas GOP chairman Kris Kobach described Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try five Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian court as “blatantly political,” arguing that it “jeopardizes the interests of the nation.” Kobach, a former Bush Justice Department official who is running for Kansas secretary of state next year, criticized Holder for “blurring the line between ordinary crimes and acts of war,” for making New York City “an enticing target for terrorists around the world” (wasn’t it already?) and for delaying justice. “Once these terrorists are placed into the civilian justice system, an avalanche of motions from their lawyers will ensue,” he wrote. “Military commissions can avoid these delays.”
All 10 months of the Obama era have been a letdown in the view of Boston Phoenix columnist Steven Stark. He argues that the president has made rookie mistakes, shown a disinterest in governing and been surprisingly divisive. And “in his quest to surpass what he’s done before and reprise his role as the nation’s Moses,” Stark wrote, “Obama appears to be on the verge of an ‘historic’ remake of one-sixth of the American economy, namely health care — despite the fact that a solid majority of Americans oppose the change. Whatever the merits, pushing for major societal change without bringing society along is a guarantee of prolonged strife, and is as unprecedented in its own way as his election was. It is — dare we say it? — very George W. Bush-like in its disregard of the popular will; meaning that, in the ultimate irony, history may pair these two as mirror reflections of one another.”
School districts across the nation are caught between decreasing funding and rising expectations. Ron Steiger, assistant chief budget officer for the Miami-Dade County public schools in Florida, described in an Education Week commentary how his district dealt with a $50 million midyear state funding cut by shrinking the size of the central office staff by 25 percent, relocating employees to the classroom, and refocusing the budget on direct student support and smaller class sizes. “We benchmarked ourselves against other large districts, and made changes that saved millions on transportation, food service and school administration,” he wrote. “We drastically cut overtime and nonessential spending on supplies” — steps that help put the district “in its strongest financial position in a decade,” he said.
It isn’t easy to find ways to use dollars more flexibly, Steiger said: But “to create districts that can flexibly streamline during financial crises, we must start with open and honest conversations about where dollars are being spent, and why. That conversation is difficult and requires a great deal of political will, which, in our case, the superintendent and school board had.”
The following satirical headlines come from borowitzreport.com and theonion.com:
LOU DOBBS LEAVES CNN FOR CARTOON NETWORK
SENATE PASSES BLAME BY VOTE OF 91-8
OBAMA’S DECLARATION OF SWINE FLU EMERGENCY PROMPTS PRO-SWINE-FLU REPUBLICAN RESPONSE
STEVEN TYLER LAID OFF FROM AEROSMITH AS BAND’S JOBLESS RATE HITS 20 PERCENT
FOX NEWS REPORTS: MILLIONS OF GRANNIES FLEE U.S. AS DEATH PANELS LOOM; Glenn Beck: ‘Run for Your Lives’
NORTHWEST PILOTS NOT IN COCKPIT; Found at Home Hiding in Box; ‘Happy Ending,’ Airline Spokesman Says
Unlike the former vice president, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., wouldn’t describe President Obama’s decision-making on Afghanistan troop levels as “dithering,” but Roberts told Topeka TV station WIBW that Obama has “got to get off the dime. He’s got to make a decision.” While Obama goes through one comprehensive review after another, Roberts said, “you’re endangering the support of our allies, who wonder if we’re really going to be there. You’re certainly endangering our relationship with (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai, regardless of what you think of him, and I think you’re endangering a lot of young men and women who are under a great deal of pressure over there and their lives are at stake.”
Kansas’ GOP members of Congress oppose cutting billions of dollars in federal subsidies to privately run Medicare Advantage plans as a way to help pay for health care reform. But Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger says the cuts make sense. “When Congress is looking for savings, this is a very appropriate place to look,” Praeger told the Kansas Health Institute News Service. “I mean, keep in mind, Advantage plans are supposed to be costing less, not more.” Praeger said the private plans currently cost 13 to 14 percent more than traditional Medicare.
