I don't know exactly which meetings Alexander is talking about, but as it happens, I was working for the then-chairman of the National Governors' Association, the late Georgia Democratic Gov. George Busbee, when he was leading "federalism" discussions with the Reagan folk in 1981. Most governors at the time, regardless of party, were interested in what was called a "sorting out" agenda that would federalize some programs and devolve others; this was a favorite topic in particular for Arizona's Democratic Gov. Bruce Babbitt, who like to talk about "states' rights for liberals." Babbitt wanted a "grand swap" in which Washington would become responsible for all health care and "welfare" programs in exchange for state assumption of transportation, education and criminal justice, areas in which they were already the major funders and policymakers. My own boss had a similar approach, but was mainly concerned to head off the kind of one-way abandonment of federal responsibility that most conservatives had in mind when they talked about "federalism."

Whatever they told Alexander, that was pretty much the tendency of the Reaganites of the day. Reagan's famous OMB director, David Stockman was interested in a "swap" that would have devolved cash income support, food stamps, and health care for the poor in exchange for the feds taking responsibility for the health care needs of seniors who were "dual-enrolled" in Medicaid or obtaining long-term care subsidies. It was basically a "swap" of old folks for poor folks. The governors weren't buying it, and in any event, the Reagan administration was simultaneously pursuing a budget that would "cap" federal Medicaid payments, basically intitiating the kind of gradual shift in responsibility for the program to the states that Paul Ryan is pursuing in a more comprehensive way with his proposal to turn Medicaid into a "block grant." As it happened, the Medicaid "cap" was one of the few budget proposals Reagan lost on in 1981.

Best as I can recall, this was the high-water mark of national Republican interest in taking over Medicaid, and it obviously was lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut. It's only gotten worse sice then. It is striking that ol' Lamar is talking about a federal takeover of Medicaid even as he joins other Republicans in violently opposing ObamaCare, since one major feature of ObamaCare is a significant increase in federal responsibility for Medicaid (via higher match rates for new enrolees), and for the health care needs of low-income families generally.

The bottom line is that Alexander is really living in the distant past if he thinks his party will support federalization of Medicaid (unless they get the idea they can starve or abolish it). The prevailing sentiment in the GOP, as reflected in the Ryan budget, is to move towards devolution of all current federal-state programs to the states, via rapid funding cuts to non-defense discretionary programs and by turning Medicaid and food stamps into block grants (along with big funding cuts). Matter of fact, Alexander voted for the Ryan budget himself. Maybe he explained that little contradiction in the portion of his op-ed still behind the paywall. Or maybe he's just having a senior moment.

As has been the case in the past, the Voter Guides also cover ballot initiatives in some detail (with pro and con analysis and fiscal analysis, along with full texts), and also offer candidates who agree to spending limits an opportunity to publish statements making their pitch, which is very helpful in obscure local races.

California is the fifth state in which I have been registered to vote since I turned 18, but the first to offer anything like the Voter Guides. With the radical shrinkage in state and local political coverage available through any sort of media, I honestly don't know what I'd do without them, and I'm obviously in a position to be better informed than the average voter since I spend most of my time reading and writing about politics. And I get better informed each cycle: just now I discovered I could opt out of receiving the Voter Guides in the mail and just read them online, saving this environmentally stressed and cash-strapped community the necessity of killing more trees.

The state also provides the opportunity to register as a voter-by-mail (about half of California voters take advantage of this), which means you automatically receive a mail ballot for every election.

So despite the Golden State's incredible level of political and civic dysfunction, and the extraordinary low esteem in which the public holds virtually everyone in politics and government (believe me, it's far worse than anywhere else I've lived), it's by no means the worst place to be a political junkie, or even an informed voter. That's particularly true this year, when the airwaves are not being befouled by the kind of massive, mindless campaign ads Meg Whitman ran in 2010, which made me avoid broadcast television for months.

I am curious to hear what people in other states are doing these days to stay informed on local politics, since the rapid disappearance of media coverage is happening everywhere. Let me know in the comment thread if you have anything interesting to share.

Gotta say, folks, this news bears the aroma of desperation, or at least procrastination. Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS has just committed to buying $25 million in ads during the next month, matching the Obama campaign's ad blitz. Not to be intimidated, Democratic Super-PACs are talking about raising some serious jack in September. In case it's slipped anyone's mind, the election is in November, and I suspect an awful lot of ad time will be off the table by September.

Timing aside, I can see the logic of using the convention for a fundraising blitz. The event offers a unique concentration of political and non-political celebrity talent--sort of like the anterooms off the House and Senate floors, only with some of the lobbyists replaced by media stars. I mean, where else can you get half the Senate Democratic Caucus to take turns rattling the cup with five or six Oscar-winners?

But the bad news is that the Super-PACs will be competing for the attention of big money people with an awful lot of other events. Virtually every organization even vaguely connected to Democratic politics will throw parties and/or briefings; most convention attendees spend half their time attending these events and the other half wrangling invites and gossiping about it all (or so I've heard--I typically work 18-hour days at the convention, trapped in a speech rehearsal room or in some rabbit-warren of a script-writing cubicle, hoping against hope that I can swipe lunch off some politician's food cart). The very features of a convention that make it an ideal place for money and star-power to come together also make it a logistical nightmare.

But hey, I guess it's good the money-hustlers have some idea of how they will get within shouting distance of conservative money this year. Obviously Democrats will be less dependent on Super-PACs than the GOP, having an incumbent president and also a much stronger small-donor base, not to mention superior ground resources. But it would be helpful to ensure that Democratic Super-PACs aren't in a position of "competing" with Rove and company by dominating the critical 2:00-3:00 a.m. time slot.

* Hilarious: George W. Bush releasing book this summer providing his sage advice on economic policy.

* Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback comes to rescue of "pharmacists of conscience," signing bill allowing them to refuse to fill prescriptions for drugs they "reasonably believe" will terminate pregnancy. Time to get lawyered up.

* Interesting: Politico op-ed boosting Bobby Jindal for Veep co-authored by Grover Norquist.

* Mitt Romney plays the idiotic Clinton Card again. Sue him, Big Dog!

* TAP's Jaime Fuller profiles Montana Senate race as test of power of Super-PACs, who are heavily spending to beat Jon Tester.

And in non-political news:

* Smart phones finally match dumb phones in sales.

Back after I make a few calls on my dumb phone.

This outcome reveals a key fact about the post-Citizens United landscape. We are going to see a lot more outcomes like this one. Outside money matters more in Congressional races than presidential, and more in primaries than general elections. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but for better or worse it’s the world that we live in now. And as we’ve just discovered, a single donor can be responsible for the election of a general election Senate candidate — or even, if Fischer wins, a Senator.

Jonathan's alluding to the latest-minute $200k buy made by Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts for two ads, one boosting Fischer (who was already surging in the polls) and the other drawing attention to ethics issues involving long-time front-runner Jon Bruning. $200k will buy you some serious time in markets like Omaha. And it will in other down-ballot, low-cost political venues shortly before the general election. Just as importantly, it's generally accepted that paid broadcast media is a bigger deal anyway in down-ballot races where the candidates are not as well known and voter allegiances are more fluid.

Nebraska also shows that the strategic deployment of outside money can be critical. At another corner of WaPo, Jennifer Rubin claims that Fischer's win shows "Money is overrated," because "Fischer was outspent $440,000 to Bruning’s $3.6 million." This ignores outside money entirely, but more fundamentally, ignores the dynamics of the race. The heavy attacks on Bruning financed by pro-Stenberg groups like the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservative Fund pretty much neutralized Bruning's own spending without helping Stenberg, putting the unscathed Fischer in a position to benefit from Ricketts' perfectly-timed salvo.

Perhaps it's just a matter of Nebraska's proximity to Kansas, but this phenomenon reminds me of the very first time I became aware of the power of last-minute spending by shadowy "independent" groups: in 1996, when a previously unknown entity called Triad Management (which turned out to be a vehicle for the Koch Brothers) dumped money into late attack ads on Democratic Senate candidate Jill Docking and turned what looked to be a close Docking win into a victory for Republican Sam Brownback. Docking basically didn't know what hit her until it was too late. I fear we will see a lot of this sort of thing in October, particularly in places where big wallets carry a super-sized wallop.

There's a lot of tricky timing involved in this scenario. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has indicated it might be possible to go without a debt limit increase until early next year, which could decouple both the Bush tax cut expiration and the Pentagon sequester from the debt limit increase unless Republicans can find some way to force the issue. It's also likely the election results will affect the dynamics significantly. Would House Republicans want to present a president-elect Mitt Romney with a debt limit crisis? Or would they try to kick the can into 2013, and if so, would Democrats cooperate?

In any event, it's a mite strange that Boehner is raising the threat so early. At TPM, Congress-watcher Brian Beutler examines various reasons he might be doing so, and concludes it's mostly about the familiar pressure Boehner faces from a radicalized conservative movement that keeps him on a very short lease:

Boehner’s big announcement Tuesday was almost certainly conceived in the same cramped box his unruly conference has kept him in since the first day of his speakership. His conservative members are still bloodthirsty, and untrusting of the leadership. He’s had countless fights with them blow up in his face over the past year and a half, and they’ve defected from some of his key, successful initiatives by the dozens. To make matters worse for him, his party is expected to lose House seats in November. If Boehner’s fighting for his speakership, this is a way to make a final appeal to the radicals in his party.

But there are wheels within wheels in the GOP radicalization machine. Boehner's not the only GOPer having to deal with chronic mistrust from movement conservatives: the legendary House GOP class of 2010 is being accused of creeping RINOism as well, as evidenced by a new Club for Growth "study" (really just a subset of its annual rating of Member of Congress according to the Club's litmus tests) that's getting lots of attention in the wingnutosphere. Here's the Club's ominous rhetoric about the "study:"

In the 2010 election, 87 freshmen House Republicans came to Washington pledging fealty to the Tea Party movement and the ideals of limited government and economic freedom. The mainstream media likes to say that the freshman class is the most uncompromising group of fiscal conservatives in history...but just how Tea Party are they? Did all 87 freshmen always vote to cut spending and limit the size of government, or did some of them vote like the big-spending R.I.N.Os of the past?

You can see where this is going. And sure enough, plenty of '10ers were given mediocre scores by the Club. I wonder if they might have had Allen West--whose score was a lukewarm 64%--in mind when they suggested that "in many cases, the rhetoric of the so-called 'Tea Party' freshmen simply didn’t match their records.

Wingnut commissar Erick Erickson's reaction to the "study" was illuminating:

I’m afraid if the tea party is not much more successful in primarying Republican candidates and then having those guys practice what they preach, the GOP is within a decade of going the way of the Whigs.

In any event, a manufactured debt limit crisis linked to absolutist fiscal demands is the single most important ideological signal available to House Republicans to show their hearts are in the Right place. The bigger picture is that the rightward trend in the Republican Party hasn't stopped, and won't stop after the elections, no matter what happens. A presidential/congressional victory will represent that great gettin' up morning when all the promises to "the base" have to be redeemed. And as in 2006-2008, a defeat will be interpreted by the ascendant Right that yet again, Republicans have betrayed their "conservative principles," a spin that will be made even easier by the nomination of "moderate" Mitt Romney and the congressional leadership of Boehner, who has been caught again and again showing an inclination towards marginal levels of responsibility. Eric Cantor (2011 Club for Growth score: 55%) isn't much better. Time for more purges, and more pressure for Republican officeholders to prove their good faith by dragging the federal government and the economy to the bottom of hell.

At the risk of spoiling their fun, I'd commend conservatives to a quick reading of the latest Gallup finding on who Americans think is going to win the presidential election. 81% of Democrats, 58% of independents, and even 24% of Republicans, think Obama's going to win. The percentage of Democrats who think Romney will win--the presumed subject of all this gloating over Obama supporters giving up all hope after the soul-crushing experience of reading a CBS/Times poll--is at 12%.

To be clear, none of this matters in terms of the actual outcome of the election, particularly this far out when decisions to vote or not to vote haven't been made. But Republicans are really wasting their time if they spend much of it fantasizing over the alleged despair of their opponents.

Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling, which did a last-minute poll illustrating Fischer's surge into the lead, offered this analysis yesterday:

This race reminds me a lot of the 2009 Democratic race for Governor of Virginia where front runners Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran beat each other up, plunged their favorability numbers, and allowed Creigh Deeds to come out looking like a saint in comparison. Deeds just kept on picking up momentum and ended up winning by an even larger margin than expected.

Given Bruning's huge early lead and the aggressive pounding he took from the Club for Growth and Jim DeMint's Senate Conservative Fund (who both backed Stenberg), I'd say the contest was more like one of those classic murder-suicide cases, such as the 1998 California Democratic governor's race, where Al Checchi did nothing but run negative ads on Jane Harman, making lightly-regarded Gray Davis the nominee. It's a reminder that negative campaigning is risky when multiple candidates are in a race but not all are targets.

In case anyone's looking at Fischer and seeing Sharron Angle or Christine O'Donnell or a Richard Mourdock--you know, a Tea Party-fed upset producing a wacko nominee who may be vulnerable in the general election--Jensen's analysis makes it clear that ideology is not what drove her primary campaign. The PPP poll actually showed Bruning enjoying his highest favorability numbers among "very conservative" voters, while Fischer was most popular among moderates. If she's any crazier than all the other Republican candidates running around calling themselves "true conservatives" and attacking each other for even thinking about cooperating with Democrats, it's not evident just yet. But Bob Kerrey's campaign needs to get in gear and define her for a general electorate that doesn't know her that well.

I glanced at the Wikipedia page on Little Feat lead singer and guitarist Lowell George this morning, and learned that his first band, The Factory, appeared on episodes of F Troop and Gomer Pyle USMC. Before forming Little Feat, George was briefly a member of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. I did not know these things. Anyway, enjoy.

* TNR's Alec MacGillis achieves brilliant levels of snark in his take on the ignominous direction of Americans Elect. The art, with St. Thomas Friedman featured, is wonderful as well.

* At RCP, Cathy Young raises the disreputable banner of Naomi Schaefer Riley yet again. Is this really the best martyr you can find, folks?

* Boehner threatens another debt limit revolt if Democrats even dare to suggest letting Bush tax cuts expire.

* Sarah Posner says Obama reaping what he's sown in backlash of some of his evangelical "advisors" against him for supporting same-sex marriage.

* At College Guide, Daniel Luzer explores the hazy rules of acceptability for commencement speakers at Catholic colleges--even within the state of Massachusetts.

And in non-political news:

* Ellen DeGeneris to receive Mark Twain Award for American Humor. Ellen, and JC Penney, vindicated.

Time to deal with other obligations. I'll be back with a video at 5:00 AM PDT tomorrow morning.

Selah.

In an earlier post I happily piggy-backed onto Ezra Klein's demolition of Brooks' column on Obama's "ESPN masculinity." But I can't seem to find anyone similarly dealing with Gerson, who has compared recent religious remarks by the president with Mitt Romney's Liberty University commencement address, and came up with the counter-intutive claim that Mitt's a subtle and stylish theologian while Obama's a ham-handed Bible-thumper.

Like I said: Oh, brother.

I've already recorded my impressions of Romney's Liberty speech, and while I'll agree with Gerson that it "gave evidence of creative, lively intelligence somewhere near the center of the Romney campaign machine," I would strongly disagree with his conclusion that Mitt was expressing some restrained, respectful attitude towards those who examine the mysteries of faith and reach different conclusions than his own about the political implications. Indeed, the "creative, live intelligence" in the Romney speechwriting shop was mainly exhibited by Mitt's ability to make subtle but unmistakable appeals to those who think there is a clear, absolute religious obligation to wage perpetual culture wars by voting for conservative political candidates--regardless of differences in theology.

I mean, really: much of Romney's brief speech was a paen to Liberty's patron, the late Jerry Falwell. Was there anything restrained about his willingness to draw a straight line from the Bible to the ballot box? Then there's Chuck Colson, touted by Romney as the very model of someone who ignored theologicial differences in the pursuit of what Gerson hilariously calls a "moral ideal" that is "ethically rich." Colson's great political project was the relentless pursuit of an evangelical-Catholic alliance to wage partisan war on legalized abortion and the legitimacy of same-sex relationships.

I personally think there's a strong case that what Gerson calls Romney's "deft references to evangelical heroes" were actually shrewd dog-whistles to those who equate legalized abortion to slavery, the liberal "regime" with Nazi Germany, and church-state separation with persecution of Christians. But even if you disagree, I just don't see any appeal to broad-minded tolerance in Mitt's peroration that goes any further than asking evangelicals to ignore his entire LDS belief system in order to make common cause with him in the culture-wars and the 2012 elections.

Still, it's Gerson's attack on Obama as some sort of grinning, witless left-fundamentalist that leaves me in awe:

Agree or disagree with the policies Obama recommends, his arguments can’t be called sophisticated. They are the liberal political application of a “What Would Jesus Do?” wristband. In a mirror reflection of the religious right, Obama has a tendency to engage in partisan proof texting — which is divisive in service to any ideology. Saying “I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount” is a claim of divine authority that short-circuits democratic debate. Even when Obama changes his political views, Jesus somehow comes around to agreeing with him.

No, Michael, Barack Obama emphatically does not have a "tendency to engage in partisan proof texting" of scripture. He is famed for, and in fact has been frequently attacked by conservatives because of, his "tendency" to stress doubt as the proper attitude of faithful people confronted with political and cultural conflicts.

I've read an awful lot of books about Nixon, some very good, some mediocre. When it comes to Nixon as a historical figure, and as a personality, I can't really imagine anyone much improving on the interpretive genius of Garry Wills' sympathetic Nixon Agonistes, published long before Watergate (indeed, despite or because of Wills' obvious pity for his subject, the book landed Wills on Nixon's Watergate-era "enemies list"), or of the far darker 2008 tome by Rick Perlstein, Nixonland (which, as it happens, I reviewed for the Monthly).

Aside from all the reading, I was a college student and low-level political activist (a 1972 precinct chairman for George McGovern, as it happens) during Watergate, and lived through the whole thing. But that's actually what makes the Mallon book intriguing, in Malanowski's telling of it: it focuses not just on Nixon or the people most immediately involved in Watergate and the coverup, but on ancilliary figures, from the First Lady to cabinet members, who watched the whole nightmare from the perspective of watching their own lives unravel:

It’s noteworthy that all of these characters are in their forties and fifties, the great middle passage of life where too many youthful dreams have died and too many youthful vanities persist. When the crisis erupts, this potent mix imprisons them, keeping them tied to the tracks as the train approaches. As we see these folks watch the last of their prospects melt with the ice cubes in their drinks, we feel for them as we have never felt for them before.

I have to say, what I most recall about Watergate is just how weird the whole thing felt at the time, even from my distant perspective; things came out every day that you just couldn't imagine, even if you were a cynical Nixon-hater, occurring at the top levels of national leadership. I never had quite that feeling of OMG, is this actually happening? again until November/December 2000, when it was every day's wakening reality.

So even as I resolve to read Watergate: A Novel, it would seem its best audience would be people who did not experience the latter days of the Nixon administration, and would benefit from a cold plunge into how it felt at the time to various very interested parties. But read Malanowski's review first, and see what you think.

So let me whet your appetite with a brief precis of the cast of characters who brought us the Citizens United decision:

* Citizens United co-founder (along with Willie Horton-ad legend Floyd Brown) and longtime president, David Bossie, who first drew national attention as part of a Senate investigation of the trumped-up Whitewater case, and then worked for the notorious crank Dan Burton in a wide-ranging House fishing trip through all things Clintonian, managing to get fired by Burton at the insistence of Newt Gingrich after he got caught doctoring evidence. The "documentary" that was the subject of the entire Citizens United litigation was the fruit of Bossie's ambition to make a lot of money while continuing his service to the right-wing Cause.

* Citizens United's original attorney, James Bopp, whose roots were in the anti-choice movement, traditionally bitter opponents of any and all restrictions on campaign financing (as you might expect from people who think their opponents are today's Nazis, carrying out a new Holocaust). Bopp probably gained his greatest national notoriety as the sponsor of a 2009 RNC resolution to refer to the "other party" as the "Democrat Socialist Party." It failed, but was most definitely the wave of the immediate future in conservative agitprop.

* Bopp's successor once the case made it to the Supreme Court, former Solicitor General Ted Olson, the successful attorney in Bush v. Gore, the only recent decision matching Citizens United in its breaktaking audacity and immediate consequences. As Toobin explains, even a seasoned legal warrior like Olson (now probably best known as the Koch Brothers' attorney) had to be schooled by Chief Justice Roberts in how to reframe what was originally a narrowly focused appeal to a FEC ruling into an opportunity to all but destroy campaign finance laws dating back more than a century.

* Justice Anthony Kennedy, described by Toobin as representing a radical departure from his swing-vote predecessor, the minimalist Sandra Day O'Conner, acting not as a "moderate" but as "an extremist--of varied enthusiasms." Kennedy wrote a sweeping concurrence aiming at the destruction of campaign finance laws even before the plaintiffs were asking for that action--a concurrence that ultimately became the majority opinion thanks to:

*Chief Justice John Roberts, the central character in Toobin's tale, who saw the opportunity for a radical decision and carefully led plaintiffs and justices alike to that destination.

But then I discovered Ezra Klein had demolished the piece far more effectively than I could have:

“If you look at the fundamentals,” writes David Brooks, “the president should be getting crushed right now.”

The rest of the column is an attempt to explain why President Obama isn’t getting crushed right now. Brooks settles on Obama’s “version of manliness that is postboomer in policy but preboomer in manners and reticence.” But the premise of the column is wrong: If you look at the fundamentals right now, the president should not be getting crushed. In fact, he should be slightly ahead, which is pretty much where he is in most polls.

Brooks never actually defines what he means by “the fundamentals.” The evidence he provides in his column is mostly an assortment of recent poll results related to how voters feel about the economy, Obama’s plan for the economy, and Obama’s view of the role of government.

After explaining why Brooks' measurements of "the fundamentals" are arbitrary and potentially very misleading, Ezra cites the real "fundamentals:"

Obama is the incumbent. The economy is growing at a moderate pace. There’s no serious third-party challenge. We’re not losing massive numbers of soldiers in a foreign war. And when you look at those fundamentals, the reality is this: Incumbent presidents very, very rarely lose under those conditions.

But Ezra's burden here isn't to defend his particular model of what "the fundamentals" would suggest about the outcome of the race, but simply to burn down the straw man Brooks has built based on the poorly substantiated claim that Obama oughtta be toast without his "ESPN masculinity," which Brooks claims to find attractive but which sounds to me like a curse (who on ESPN is a model of this preboomer/postboomer hybrid? Lou Holtz? Craig James?).

Here's Ezra's broader point:

[T]his is one of my pet peeves in political commentary: Pundits take political situations that can be explained through the fundamentals and then attribute them, without any evidence, to the telegenic characteristics of individual politicians or the messaging decisions made by their campaigns. Then, a few years later, the fundamentals turn around, and suddenly our great communicator has forgotten how to give a speech or run a campaign — or vice versa.

Or, more to the point, pundits like David Brooks can deny an election outcome any substantive meaning if it suits his purpose.