majorities

The blindness of the right is mindboggling at times. Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has a post up entitled “Taxpayers to Obama: Keep your hands off our deductions”. Here’s what Ed says:

In his speech on Wednesday, Barack Obama suggested that eliminating some tax deductions might be necessary to close the budget deficit, at least on a means-tested basis.  Gallup’s latest poll taken after the speech shows the political risk in pushing that idea.  Large majorities support the deductions Obama mentioned in the speech, even when told it would help close the federal budget deficit:

But when you look at what part of the Gallup article Ed quotes, you see something totally different:

Americans make it clear they want to keep common federal income tax deductions, regardless of whether the proposed elimination of those deductions is framed as part of a plan to lower the overall income tax rate or as a way to reduce the federal budget deficit. No more than one in three Americans favor eliminating any of the deductions in either scenario. …

Budget plans that call for lower overall tax rates, such as the one proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, would essentially require that popular deductions be eliminated, basically trading off one tax break for another. President Obama’s commission on deficit reduction last December called for eliminating deductions, including the one for mortgage interest, as part of its plan (ultimately rejected) to reduce the federal budget deficit.

Yesterday Michael Steele took to the airwaves and told fellow Republicans who criticize him to “shut up”. Now the backlash starts coming out from Steele’s comments:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele, under fire this week for a string of controversial statements he has made while promoting his new book, has so angered the party's congressional leaders that their aides said they told Steele's handlers to "get him to stop."

Steele, who has been making regular television appearances, said Monday that he did not believe Republicans could win back their congressional majorities in 2010. "Not this year," Steele told Fox News Channel, saying he was just beginning to look at races, even though the party has been recruiting candidates for many months.

Believing that Steele's off-the-cuff remarks threaten to damage the party's brand -- at the very time when Republicans are trying to capitalize on a national political environment that may hurt Democrats -- senior aides to top Republican leaders confronted Steele's staff on a conference call Wednesday.

They don’t like their party leader “going rogue” it appears. But to make the situation even worse for the GOP, this is now costing them money at a time when they are having fundraising problems already:

Some wealthy contributors are shunning the Republican National Committee and donating instead to the other GOP campaign committees or directly to candidates - in many cases because of discontent with the leadership of Michael S. Steele, the party's national chairman.

For years right wingers would taunt out the fact that Democrats were in the minority. That minority was very slim though. Both times Bush won the White House, it was so damn close.

So these same wingnuts who so boldly reminded us of our minority status over the past several years now find themselves in the minority. This isn't by a few percentage points either.

Let me explain:

Eight in 10 Americans favor expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, including large majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.

While the president has raised concerns about the additional cost of expanding S-CHIP, those who favor the proposal say they'd even be willing to pay more in taxes to help the program cover more children.

More generally, the poll finds that only about one in five Americans (22 percent) approve of the president’s handling of health care. That's lower even than his approval rating on Iraq (26 percent).

Ideologues like Michelle Malkin are thumping their chests over the S-CHIP fiasco going on. They have attacked children and basically advocated for abortion because a parent doesn't have insurance (right to life unless it costs money!). That is how pathetic they have become, and now they are in the super-minority. 22% of this country approves of Bush's veto. That sounds about like the FOX audience.

The problem is how these wingnuts approached the whole argument. They told lies to smear a 12 year old who suffered severely from an accident. For example - Malkin has constantly talked about insurance plans for a couple of hundred dollars. Wow! What a deal! Well she does fail to mention the fact that insurance companies will reject pre-existing conditions, such as these children suffer.

From the Gavel:

March 28, 2007

The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

Last week the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote passed an emergency supplemental spending bill. The Senate is poised to pass its version of the bill as soon as later today. Both bills contain much needed funding for our troops and our veterans. Both bills also chart a new course forward in Iraq. Given the importance and urgency of this legislation to our troops and our security, we are quite disturbed by your insistence to veto it. Rather than work with the Congress to develop a bill you could sign, you apparently intend to follow a political strategy that would needlessly delay funding for our troops.

Both the House and Senate versions of this legislation address critical priorities that were either ignored or substantially under-funded by your Administration in the regular budget process. For example, despite the fact that our troops have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq since 2003, your regular budget submission to the Congress did not include funding for either war. Your regular budget also failed to adequately address the urgent veteran’s health care crisis, vulnerabilities in our homeland security, and the needs of thousands of victims of several severe natural disasters. This Congress is taking the responsible course and responding to needs that have been ignored by your Administration and the prior Congress.

The AP has a good article up taking a look at the recent agenda items in Congress:

With votes this week on gay marriage, stem cell research and the Pledge of Allegiance, the Republican-controlled Congress is systematically working through an agenda of conservative causes, eager to mobilize hard-core voters in the months before the midterm elections.

The votes are part of an "American Values Agenda" designed by House Republican leaders to distinguish GOP lawmakers on social issues that are heartfelt by a small but active segment of the Republican electorate. Those voters will be crucial this year when turnout is expected to be low and when Republicans are facing a headwind of public antipathy.

As expected, the House on Tuesday failed to pass a constitutional amendment that would let Congress ban gay marriages. The 236-187 vote in favor of the constitutional change fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority.

[SNIP]

Republicans in the Senate were unable to block legislation Tuesday that would expand federally funded research of human embryonic stem cell lines, a step vigorously opposed by social conservatives. The House passed the same bill last year. But the legislation faces a certain veto from President Bush and the majorities in the House and Senate are not large enough to override him.

In a nod to conservatives, congressional leaders permitted votes on bills that would encourage scientists to find alternatives to embryonic stem cells and to prohibit inducing pregnancies to obtain stem cells from an embryo. Both those measures passed the Senate on Tuesday. In the House, the latter measure passed, but the first bill failed.