Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Visual source: Newseum

Politico:

President Barack Obama and his allies in two big industrial unions appear poised to make the auto bailout ? begun under President George W. Bush in 2008 ? a central issue of the 2012 campaign.

With General Motors back on its feet ? it announced $2 billion in new investments at 18 GM plants Tuesday ? and losses from the government?s intervention shaping up to be minimal, Democrats hope to punish Republican presidential candidates for their early opposition. The party is building the groundwork for that argument in the key swing states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, and using it to target the blue collar voters whose allegiance Obama has struggled to retain.

Des Moine Register:

With the Iowa straw poll a mere 90 days away, the absence of an obvious leader in the GOP race for the presidency, or even an obvious lineup, has left Republicans in a state of unease - but the uncertainty has also heightened anticipation, insiders say.

"It's wide open, and I think it's extremely unpredictable," said Mary Cownie, a former spokeswoman for the Iowa Republican Party.

Politics insiders in Iowa say the dynamics of the race will make this year's nonbinding event in Ames different from past years: More than anything, it could be a way to get a second-tier ticket punched, or serve as a path to legitimacy for someone who's betting it all on Iowa.

What if Michele Bachmann knocks off Tim Pawlenty? Hmmm...

WSJ:

In the past, Mr. Gingrich has endorsed the central plank of the Obama health plan, and he didn't back off on Sunday. On "Meet the Press," host David Gregory played a 1993 clip where Mr. Gingrich spoke in favor of the individual requirement to buy insurance: "I am for people, individuals, exactly like automobile insurance, individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance, and I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals on a sliding scale a government subsidy so to insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance," Mr. Gingrich said at the time.

That's a pretty good description of what the Democratic Congress passed into law last year. Beginning in 2014, most Americans who don't have insurance will be required to pay a fee, with many, depending on income, getting subsidies to help buy coverage through state-based exchanges. (This is also an indication of how the health-care debate has moved to the right during the intervening years. At the time that Mr. Gingrich spoke, many Democrats were pressing for a single-payer system without private insurance companies.)

On Sunday, Mr. Gingrich said the Obama plan was different because it creates a "Washington-based model, a federal system" with state-run exchanges, or marketplaces, that he said try to "replace the entire insurance system."

But he stuck by his support for the individual requirement to buy insurance, saying people should be required to buy coverage or post a bond to cover their costs should they need care and lack insurance.

That's going to go over really well with GOP teabagger primary voters.

TPMDC:

Outside the House, both Senate Republicans and the 2012 presidential field were slow to embrace the GOP budget, with many politely congratulating Ryan on his effort even as they avoided endorsing his ideas. Not everyone was so polite: Newt Gingrich excoriated the House's Medicare plan on Meet The Press this Sunday, dismissing it as "right-wing social engineering," "radical," and "too big a jump" for the country to take. His open revolt gives Democrats even more cover for their message that the budget is firmly rooted in the party's Tea Party fringe.

Mark Steyn:

If I understand him correctly, his argument is that the salient point about RomneyCare and ObamaCare is not that they're both disasters, but that one's local and the other's national, and that Obama has a one-disaster-fits-all approach to health care whereas Romney believes in letting a thousand disasters bloom. Celebrate diversity!

Steyn is a great example of how wonderfully well Romney's speech went over with the "frothing at the mouth" crowd.

Jonathan Chait:

This looks to me like different pieces of the same strategy. Here's my read of it. In the narrow analysis, Texas is a deeply Republican state. Obama lost it by a dozen points in 2008. It can't possibly help him win in 2012. If he does win the state, which could conceivably happen only in some kind of blowout scenario, he'd easily have enough electoral votes elsewhere to win.

However, there is long-term potential in Texas. The Latino population there is as large a proportion as in California, but it's heavily demobilized. A concerted campaign to register Latino voters could eventually change the dynamic. The catch is that you have to be willing to spend $20 million or so in order to register them -- a huge investment that is hard to justify short term. But Obama might have enough money in 2012 to spare for a long-term investment. And a high-profile Latino Senate candidate like Sanchez could lure a lot of previously unregistered Latinos. The only way to make this work is to create an energizing atmosphere for Latinos.

What's more, Obama does need to mobilize the Latino vote in general, especially in states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida. That's where the immigration push comes in. Obama failed to pass immigration legislation because a coalition of Republicans and red state Democrats killed it. Because the bills never had a high profile vote, though, it looked a lot like Obama simply didn't care. That's why Democrats are making a high profile push now.

Added: EJ Dionne:

Republicans are unhappy with their field of presidential candidates and yearn for someone who will come along to save them. But here?s what the GOP doesn?t want to confront: its problem lies not in its candidates but in itself.

The candidates appear much smaller than they are because the party?s primary voters and core interest groups insist upon cutting them down to size. To win a Republican nomination, a candidate has to move right, recant absolutely any past position that violates the current conservative catechism and never dare to speak the truth that solving our deficit problem will require new revenue ? a.k.a. taxes.

Yes, indeed.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/vmhK0XuNBM8/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up

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