memeorandum: How Should Dems Manage the Healthcare Repeal Circus? (Kevin Drum/Mother Jones)

5:35 PM ET, January 20, 2011

Top Items:

A number of the House GOP's leading conservative members on Thursday will announce legislation that would cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be by far the most ambitious and far-reaching proposal by the new majority to cut federal government spending.

Discussion: The Hill, Hot Air, No More Mister Nice Blog, Wake up America and AmSpecBlog

Washington Examiner:
Can't reduce federal spending? Here's a plan to cut $2.5 trillion by 2021

Discussion: Cubachi, Whiskey Fire, Liberty Pundits Blog, The Foundry and Big Government

Paul Bedard / US News:
House GOP Lists $2.5 Trillion in Spending Cuts

Discussion: Don Surber and Hit & Run

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
REPUBLICAN STUDY COMMITTEE LAYS DOWN A RADICAL ‘MARKER’ …

Discussion: The Hill and TPMDC

The Politico:
Republicans lay out $2.5 trillion in cuts

Discussion: Outside the Beltway

David Weigel / Slate:
House Conservatives Introduce Spending Cuts: $2.5 Trillion Over Ten Years

Discussion: AmSpecBlog, RSC and FrumForum

Mark Weaver / 630 WMAL:

Michelle Obama's ‘Get Moving’ Program Linked to Pedestrian Deaths — WASHINGTON — The Governors Highway Safety Association says pedestrian deaths increased in the first half of 2010 and the First Lady's program to get Americans to be more active could be partly responsible.

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit, Wake up America, Mediaite, The Impolitic, No More Mister Nice Blog, Pirate's Cove, The Powers That Be and Rumproast

Amanda Carey / The Daily Caller:

First Lady's anti-obesity campaign could be causing more pedestrian deaths — Pedestrian deaths increased sharply during the first half of 2010, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). The reason may be First Lady Michelle Obama and her “Let's Move” campaign.

Discussion: TPMMuckraker, GHSA, Talking Points Memo, Hullabaloo, Guardian, Wonkette and FrumForum

Scott McCabe / Washington Examiner:
Exercise, iPods could be causing pedestrian deaths

Discussion: Mother Jones, The Atlantic Online, Washington Monthly, Gawker, TBD All News and The Incidental Economist

TBogg: Michelle Obama Wants To Death Race 2000 Kill Your Fat Ass

James Joyner / Outside the Beltway:
Michelle Obama “Linked” to Pedestrian Deaths

Discussion: Hot Air, Detroit News, JustOneMinute, Mediaite, The Atlantic Online and USA Today

The Fix:

A three-way pileup atop 2012 GOP presidential race — Former Govs. Mike Huckabee (Ark.), Sarah Palin (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Mass.) make up the top tier of the 2012 Republican presidential field, according to a new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News.

Discussion: Ben Smith's Blog, GOP 12, Weigel, Conservatives4Palin, Lone Star Report Blog, PoliticsPA, Right Turn, Public Policy Polling, Outside the Beltway, Swampland, CNN, Taylor Marsh, Daily Kos, The Moderate Voice and msnbc.com

Tom Jensen / Public Policy Polling:

Obama looking stronger — PPP's monthly look ahead to next year's Presidential race finds Barack Obama in his best position against the major Republican contenders since 2009. — The GOP hopefuls who would make it most competitive against Obama continue to be Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, each of whom he leads by 5 points.

Discussion: Firedoglake, msnbc.com, GOP 12, The Politico, Taegan Goddard's … and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

First Read / msnbc.com:
First Thoughts: Are the political winds changing?

Discussion: The Plum Line, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, GOP 12 and The Other McCain

Sabato's Crystal Ball: Presidential Possibilities

Lbentzterp / CNN:
Huckabee's book tour lavishes attention on Iowa, South Carolina

Discussion: ABCNEWS, GOP 12, Ben Smith's Blog and The Page

Dan Friedman / The Atlantic Online:

GOP Can Force a Senate Vote on Repeal — While the health care repeal that the House passed Wednesday has little chance of passage in the Senate, Republicans will probably succeed in eventually forcing a vote on the measure — albeit with at least a 60-vote threshold.

Discussion: NationalJournal.com, Salon and AmSpecBlog

Kevin Drum / Mother Jones:

How Should Dems Manage the Healthcare Repeal Circus? — It's a slow day, so let's do some political strategizing. Here's what the LA Times has to say about yesterday's vote in the House to repeal healthcare reform: … Here's my take: Democrats are nuts to take this attitude.

Discussion: A plain blog about politics and Ezra Klein

Myglesias / Yglesias:
Senate Democrats and Health Care Repeal

Discussion: Prairie Weather

Wall Street Journal:
The Repeal Vote — An historic repudiation of an entitlement that is only 10 months old.

Discussion: Hit & Run and Right Turn

Jennifer Epstein / The Politico:

Rick Santorum plays race card on President Obama — In eye-brow raising comments, possible presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is questioning how President Barack Obama - as an African-American - can support abortion rights. — Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania …

Discussion: Little Green Footballs, NJDC Blog and FrumForum

David Brody / The Brody File:
Rick Santorum Responds to Brody File on Comment About President …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Salon, CNN, LifeNews.com, AmSpecBlog, TPMDC and GOP 12

Tim Alberta / Hotline On Call:
Santorum Plays Race Card Against Obama

Discussion: Politics Daily, TPMDC, Good As You, AOL News, Washington Post, Washington Monthly and PoliticsPA

The Note:

SPOTTED: Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan Waiting for Jury Duty — ABC News' Devin Dwyer reports: If you thought Supreme Court justices are exempt from jury duty in their local courts, think again. — Justice Elena Kagan was spotted among a crowd of prospective jurors huddled in a waiting lounge this morning at D.C. Superior Court.

Discussion: Law Blog

Eric Lichtblau / New York Times:
Advocacy Group Says Justices May Have Conflict in Campaign Finance Cases

Discussion: Crooks and Liars, Commentary, Common Cause, National Review, Ben Smith's Blog, The Huffington Post, The Politico, Law Blog, The Caucus, Patterico's Pontifications, Wonk Room, ThinkProgress, Raw Story, FrumForum and Prairie Weather

Gail Collins / New York Times:

Goodbye to a Guy Named Joe — On Wednesday, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut announced that he won't be a candidate for re-election in 2012. Normally people look particularly appealing when they're promising to go away. This time, not so much. — “I can't help but also think about …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, CNN, A plain blog about politics, Opinion L.A., Commentary, Connecting.the.Dots, Daily Kos, The Impolitic, Balloon Juice, Swampland, First Draft and The New Republic

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
LIEBERMAN GETS FOREIGN POLICY AND FEMINISM WRONG AT THE SAME TIME. …

Discussion: TalkLeft, The Huffington Post and Commentary

Eric Schmidt / The Official Google Blog:

An update from the Chairman — When I joined Google in 2001 I never imagined—even in my wildest dreams—that we would get as far, as fast as we have today. Search has quite literally changed people's lives—increasing the collective sum of the world's knowledge and revolutionizing advertising in the process.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, VentureBeat, Felix Salmon, DealBook, Fortune, Engadget, Switched, ReadWriteWeb, New York Times, TechCrunch, Runnin' Scared, This Just In and Poynter, more at Mediagazer »

James Taranto / Wall Street Journal:

Palinoia, the Destroyer — What's behind the left's deranged hatred. — Why does their hatred of her burn so hot? — Ask them, and they'll most likely tell you: Because she's a moron. But that is obviously false. To be sure, her skills at extemporaneous speaking leave much to be desired.

Discussion: Don Surber, The Other McCain, The Mahablog, Mediaite, Conservatives4Palin, Classical Values and Power Line

Ezra Klein:

If Obama wants to be bold, he should be bold — Peter Baker has a lot of juicy tidbits about the frequent infighting and petty spats that split the White House economic team over the past two years, but the individual who comes off worst in the article is not Larry Summers or Christina Romer or Peter Orszag or Rahm Emanuel.

Discussion: ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*, TalkLeft, Booman Tribune, The Huffington Post, Grasping Reality …, Commentary, The Caucus, The Moderate Voice and Felix Salmon

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:

Delusions of world-historical grandeur — One thing that is endlessly amusing about the contemporary right is their comical lack of historical proportion, their frequent tendency to compare their current situation to the plight endured by history's leading victims of oppression, persecution, and genocide.

Discussion: No More Mister Nice Blog and TPMDC

Steve Benen / Washington Monthly: AN UNSHAKABLE PERSECUTION COMPLEX.... I missed the speech yesterday …

Scott Conroy / Real Clear Politics:

Palin Putting Out Presidential Feelers in Iowa — DES MOINES, Iowa — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has tasked her aides with quietly gauging her level of support for a potential presidential campaign by making inquiries to a select pool of likely allies and grassroots activists in Iowa, RealClearPolitics has learned.

Discussion: New York Times, Outside the Beltway, The Politico, Hot Air, The Note, Conservatives4Palin, GOP 12, TPMDC and National Review

Dana Blanton / Fox News:

Fox News Poll: Most Say Prayer Helped Save Congresswoman Giffords — Nearly 8 in 10 American voters say they believe prayers helped Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords survive the Tucson shooting, according to a Fox News poll (Reuters). — Nearly 8 in 10 American voters say they believe prayers helped Arizona …

Alex Seitz-Wald / ThinkProgress:

Police Seize ‘Large Amount’ Of Weapons From Blogger Who Praised Gifffords Shooting: ‘1 Down And 534 To Go’ — Police in Arlington, MA this week seized a “large amount” of weapons and ammunition from local businessman Travis Corcoran after he wrote a blog post threatening U.S. lawmakers …

Discussion: YourArlington.com, Robot 6 and CBS Boston

The Hugh Hewitt Show:

Karl Rove begins to handicap the next presidential and Senatorial cycle — HH: Joined now by Karl Rove, author most recently of Courage And Consequence. Karl, Happy New Year to you. — KR: Same to you. How are you? — HH: I'm great. I've got to ask you about this state dinner …

George F. Will / Washington Post:

Hubris heading for a fall — It takes a worried man to sing a worried song, and in a recent speech that seemed like Larry Summers's swan song, the president's now-departed economic adviser warned that America is “at risk of a profound demoralization with respect to government.”

Discussion: ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*

Jeff Zeleny / New York Times:

Obama to Close Political Office and Start 2012 Campaign — WASHINGTON — President Obama will close the office of political affairs at the White House, aides said, restructuring his organization to prepare for his re-election campaign, which is to start building a fund-raising and grassroots operation based in Chicago by late March.

Discussion: The Fix, Lynn Sweet, CNN, Ben Smith's Blog, Taegan Goddard's …, Political Punch and msnbc.com

Murphy / The Beast:

The 50 Most Loathsome Americans of 2010 — Charges: The A.Q. Khan of the culinary world, her secret recipes are demonstrably more dangerous to America than a nuclear armed North Korea. When not delighting delusional hicks on “Huckabee,” she's cooking up coronary-clogging treats like the …

Discussion: Liberty Street, Althouse and Pharyngula

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

A Racy Show With Teenagers Steps Back From a Boundary — MTV executives have a new hit drama on their hands, featuring the sexual and drug-fueled exploits of misfit teenagers. They also have something else — a fear that coming episodes of the show may break the law.