Minnesota Poll: Klobuchar Annhilates Everyone, Franken Does Well

PPP has some new polling out, with the main emphasis on Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D) 2012 reelection. And, no surprise, the insanely popular senior senator throttles everyone who could conceivably challenge her, including a whopping 15 point lead against former governor and presidential-wannabe Tim Pawlenty (who hasn't expressed any interest in the race). One might think that Klobuchar's sponsorship of SOPA might have dimmed her star a little, but apparently not.

Possibly more surprising is some early numbers for Sen. Al Franken (D), who isn't up for re-election until 2014. Franken squeaked past Norm Coleman in a 2008 nailbiter, and for that reason has long been viewed as vulnerable given his polarizing public figure and the high-water nature of 2008. But he's actually looking pretty decent, sporting a six point lead over Pawlenty (his most dangerous potential challenger) and a 15 point margin over Michele Bachmann.

I've mentioned before that, while Franken is kind of a dick, he's also been a stellar Senator. And I think a lot of Minnesotans have seen that he's serious about his job and serious about being a legislator, and that's what has him in such a strong political position even as Democratic political fortunes have taken generally taken a turn for the worse since 2008.

Notes After Not Watching the GOP Debate

I didn't watch the GOP debate, so I'm mostly forming these thoughts from reading the conventional wisdom that is floating around the blogosphere. The consensus seems to be that the big winners last night were Romney and Bachmann, and the loser was Tim Pawlenty. To me, that means there is one winner: Mitt Romney. And, much to my surprise, he seems to be committing to the "one sane man" strategy, hoping that the rest of the GOP field shreds itself apart appealing to the Tea Party and Romney ends up shooting up the middle on the strength of the remaining moderates plus folks who still understand that electability is a thing.

Folks keep saying that Bachmann is like Sarah Palin, but with actual campaign skills and the ability to not constantly shoot herself in the foot on television. My comparison, of course, was that Bachmann was like Palin if you injected a metric ton of LSD straight into her eyeballs. The word is that Bachmann managed to acquit herself quite well on stage, sounding professional and well-briefed. And if so, hey, good for her. But I still am dubious she can maintain a gaffe-free campaign, particularly in the general. There's no way she'll win her own state (Minnesota) -- she currently trails President Obama by a landslide 56/35 margin, and her favorables in that state are 33/59. She's not just unproven at winning beyond her conservative suburban Minnesota district, she is proven to be massively alienating to the broader center -- in fact, last year 56% of Minnesotans said they were "embarrassed" by her.

Ultimately, then, while I do think Bachmann could be a primary player, I can't see her actually taking the prize. And that gets us back to where we started -- who else but Romney? If T-Paw can't gain any traction -- and it looks like he can't -- there just doesn't seem to be any other remotely viable candidate in the Republican primary who could bring him down.

Obama's Mideast Speech -- a Followup

Ron Kampeas has a roundup of various Jewish groups' reactions to Obama's speech, which, as one might expect, range quite broadly. I do think it's important to push back against the notion that Obama outraged the Jewish or pro-Israel community -- as Kampeas notes, stalwarts like the ADL and the AJC were quite effusive in their praise of President Obama, and Abe Foxman came out hard against the claim by Mitt Romney and other Republicans that President Obama somehow "threw Israel under the bus."

Meanwhile, the dust being kicked up over 1967 frankly baffles me. I guess I'm not surprised at Netanyahu's intransigence, as Bibi lacks any coherent normative commitments beyond his short-term political interests -- exactly the sort of leadership trait Israel needs right now. Having Bibi Netanyahu as Prime Minister during a crisis for Israel offers historians a wonderful glimpse into how the United States would have managed the Civil War if James Buchanan had remained President. But basically anyone with a pulse already knew that 1967 borders, with swaps, would serve as the basis for any future agreement.

I'm not entirely sure what other basis for borders there could be -- I'm assuming whatever extra territory Bibi thinks he'll get by not "basing" a Palestinian state on 1967 lines he's not planning to compensate by ceding Israeli territory elsewhere, but the acreage of the land in question isn't large enough substantially deviate from 1967 and create an economically viable Palestinian state. In particular, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's statement calling 1967 lines "Auschwitz borders" is horrifically insensitive and trivializing to Holocaust victims, and they deserve to be raked over the coals for it. Meanwhile, as Jon Chait observes, the main existential threat to Israel for the foreseeable future isn't Jordanian tank columns rolling in, but rather not being able to extract themselves from an occupation that threatens to eviscerate their civil society and render the Zionist dream of a Jewish, democratic homeland a distant memory.

And that leads me to my final point. Jeffrey Goldberg sardonically asks why Republicans are misreading Obama's speech, a speech which, by any objective metric, should have been seen as "pro-Israel in a red-meat I-heart-Israel, damn-Hamas, Iran-can-go-to-hell, Israel is the eternal Jewish state sort of way." Goldberg, of course, recognizes that the question answers itself -- Republicans are mischaracterizing the speech because Obama was the one who gave it, and because they see a political advantage in trying to cast the hitherto centrist consensus that existed with respect to the resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict as an attack on Western Civilization.

For years, there has been a tacit agreement with respect to the pro-Israel community -- that while we might disagree about what policies are best for ensuring Israel's long-term viability, security, and liberalism, everyone coming from a genuine position of respect for the state of Israel and its legitimacy as homeland of the Jewish people would be accepted as part of the community. That doesn't include everyone, or every Jew -- there are those who oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish state, and they've always been ostracized (which I don't really mind). But the Zionist, pro-Israel community has always been a big tent, including groups like the modern ZOA, that don't even support a two-state solution, as well as more leftward, Peace Now types.

The conservative response to J Street's emergence has broken that agreement -- they haven't just disagreed with it with respect to policy, but they have engaged in a systematic campaign to declare it intrinsically "anti-Israel", anti-Zionist, and hostile to Israel's very existence. But if those are the new rules -- that a group or person shouldn't be pro-Israel if one honestly believes their policy prescriptions are bad for Israel's future survival -- then I see no reason to concede that folks like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty or Allen West are pro-Israel in any meaningful sense. The policies they lay out place Israel in mortal peril -- possible the gravest danger Israel has faced since 1973. And what's more, I don't think they care all that much about Israel. Yes, obviously, Mitt Romney would think it a bad thing if Israel disappeared tomorrow. But he'd view it as bad because it would represent some sort of lost Western fortress -- an instrumental failure, not something that effects him personally. It doesn't make his life any worse if Israel ceases to be the fulfillment of the Zionist liberal democratic dream. It makes my life worse, and it obviously makes the Israelis' lives worse. But for Mitt? Israel's little more than a symbol, and an expendable one at that.

Again, if the litmus test is a subjective self-assessment of thinking that one's acting in Israel's best interests, then Mitt Romney is precisely as pro-Israel as Barack Obama is. But if we're going to make this a substantive test -- what policies are best for ensuring Israel's continued survival as a Jewish democratic nation -- he fails utterly. And if he wants to start playing on that field, I'm happy to meet him there.

Not Finals Roundup

Jill's on vacation, and I'm not studying. Or blogging. Or doing anything remotely productive. I did walk to Chipotle.

* * *

Four soldiers who died while the media was drooling over Charlie Sheen.

The Islamic radicalization hearings that could have been held, if the committee was chaired by someone serious about Homeland Security, rather than a terrorist sympathizer looking to project.

T-Paw plays footsie with birthers. It's becoming a necessity in the GOP primary -- a majority of likely Republican primary voters don't believe Obama was born in the USA (and another 21% aren't sure).

T.A. Frank on Zuhdi Jasser.

That the New York Times won't call waterboarding torture -- at least, when the US is the one doing it -- is nothing more than cowardice in the face of ginned-up controversy.

Debater's Forum

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) continues his rightward push to best position himself for a 2012 run (am I the only one genuinely curious if he could carry his home state against Obama?). Unfortunately, he's not very good at it -- basically admitting his lawsuit against health care reform is motivated by politics:

VAN SUSTEREN: It doesn’t sort of escape me that the people who have filed are all Republicans, with the sole exception of the attorney general in Louisiana is a Democrat. I think he’s probably the only — is he the only Democrat who has joined this?

PAWLENTY: As far as I know. You know, of course, there’s probably some political overtones to it, but I think it’s also, frankly, Greta, philosophical. We have a group of people like me who view the federal government should have a limited role. There’s a bunch of people who have a different view. And that’s what the courts are for, to hash out these differences. So let’s get it on.

Wait: back that thing up. Courts are there "to hash out differences" regarding philosophical conceptions of the role of government? That's funny, because I could have sworn that's what legislatures were for. Apparently, the "it" Pawlenty wants to get on is some good ol' fashioned judicial activism.

Timmy, Please

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, widely viewed as a rising GOP star, has a plan for getting the budget back into balance:

Balancing the budget will require some tough decisions. Congress must reduce discretionary spending in real terms, with exceptions for key programs such as military, veterans, and public safety. The Congress must also reject costly new spending initiatives, like new health care entitlements.

There is, alas, a problem:

Someone needs to tell Pawlenty that discretionary spending except for "military, veterans, and public safety" is less than $400 billion a year. A real reduction of, say 10 percent (a ridiculous amount but use it for simplicity sake) would save a little more than $40 billion from the baseline and that doesn't come close to doing what needs to be done.

Finish us off, Matt Yglesias:

If I were planning on running for election, I might not be comfortable saying “to deal with the long-term federal budget deficit we need higher taxes and we need to slow the growth of Medicare spending.” But if you’re not willing to say “we need higher taxes and we need to slow the growth of Medicare spending” then you shouldn’t run around talking about the long-term federal budget deficit. There’s really nothing else to say about it.

Fictive Republican budget hawkery strikes again!

Who Could Excite the Right?

The fact that Republican primary voters are being presented with an unbelievably weak field is nothing that hasn't already been said. Every conservative I've talked to, outside a few moderates, is unhappy with their selection. And why wouldn't they? Giuliani is a thrice-married social liberal who dressed in drag, McCain is a party heretic, Thompson is an empty suit, and "multiple choice" Mitt--aside from being a Mormon--has twisted and turned on a few too many issues to really have gained the trust of the base.

So I got to thinking: Who's on the Republican bench that could get the party excited? Some of them might not have a prayer of running, for any number of reasons (one of which is the probability that the Republicans will get thrashed in 2008). But who are some folks who could genuinely get the party excited, in terms of both policy and electability?

Here's a list of five people I think could fit the bill, either as saviors for this cycle, or more likely, as rising stars who will jump in the next time around.

1) Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN): This was the only name that sprung immediately to mind. He's a mid-westerner, so he can run well in Rust Belt states like Ohio. Lugar ran for President in 1996, though he didn't make much headway--still, you have to think he looks significantly better to the base now than he did back then. He's also well-respected by people on both sides of the aisle, known to be substantive on policy issues, and considered a deacon on foreign policy specifically in the Senate. The only question is whether or not he's been too wobbly on Iraq for Republican voter's tastes. However, he's probably got the highest national profile of any of the bunch, right now.

2) Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL): Like Jeb Bush but without the "Bush"! Crist easily won the governorship of Florida in a bad Republican year. Since then, he's displayed a surprising maverick streak, but done so while maintaining his connections with the base. His surprise move to work for felon re-enfranchisement could help him gather some support in the Black community--something the GOP has been desperate for for years. And while Attorney General of Florida, he largely stayed out of the Schiavo mess, which might still raise some hackles on the far right, but at this point probably will be a net boon.

3) Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): He's a conservative hell-raiser, but that isn't necessarily a stroke against him nowadays. He knocked off then-Senator Max Cleland (D-GA) in 2002, an upset stoked by one of the nastiest campaigns in recent memory. If Republicans want to come off the ropes swinging, this could be their guy.

4) Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN): For whatever reason, I still feel like the two-term governor from Minnesota requires more seasoning before he hits the national stage. Nonetheless, he was probably the most vulnerable incumbent GOP governor in 2006 to keep his seat, and he did so against a strong candidate with flying in colors in a state that is trending blue. He's been floated for a VP slot this cycle, but regardless of whether he gets it, I already feel like his hat is in the ring for 2012.

5) Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): He's run for President before, twice, albeit not very successfully. Those two campaigns seemed to turn him off on politics, but he was able to be persuaded to run for Senate in 2002, and since then has steadily risen in the GOP party hierarchy. He's solid, he's loyal, and he's paid his dues. It wouldn't drive anybody wild, but he'd be someone the party could unite behind.