AE just threw in the towel officially. It’s worth noting that there was no email or Facebook post to the loyal grassroots folks about their decision, just a statement on the website. Another example of their disregard for the people who put so much heart and soul into this.

We’re in CD2, hence the confusion. Lincoln is the capital, and is CD1.

Campaign financing is a bit of a joke given what the commission actually has done. It is even a bigger joke when you see what Super Pacs can do…

For obvious reasons, most foreign banks are simply dropping their US customers or not taking them in the first place. FATCA is already making it more difficult for Americans to live, travel, or do business overseas even though it’s not in full effect yet. Expatriates and those working overseas are already getting slammed.

My guess is they wanted to call it FATCAT but ran out of acronymic suffixes to add on.

What is FATCA?

I think a special shout-out should also go to Tom Coburn – he is pretty conservative on a lot of issues, but several times he has had the willingness to say enough is enough rather than always toe to the same tired partisan or ideological lines.

If you don’t want people taking their money AND THEMSELVES out of the US to legally avoid high taxes, quit taxing them so hard that they find it necessary to do so.

One question i think we need to answer for ourselves is “can I distinguish between a waffle and an authentic shift, or should all shifts be considered waffles?”

The more shifts someone has, the more prone I am to perceiving waffling. Multiple substantive shifts on any single issue is a red flag of unprincipled opportunism. Opportunists that too often seek to have things both ways (John Kerry and Mitt Romney come to my mind here) develop a deserved reputation for waffling.

One corollary worth mentioning: I sometimes read waffling as a signal that an issue is a low priority: the politician gets caught telling each audience what it wants to hear because he or she isn’t motivated by it, subconsciously sees it as a distraction that gets whatever treatment sweeps it away.

When it comes to Mitt Romney, I don;t think he’s especially passionate about the social issues in any way that matches socon zeal. I think he cares about values related to personal character and virtues and work ethic, but not in the angry one-size-fits-all way that we see in the wings.

As president, I find Obama to be in the same ballpark. My view is that all Presidents quickly become pragmatists: they start to care first about specific changes, and the political statements and positions become mere vehicles towards those ends. The job is so broad-ranging and demanding that abstract ideology becomes a luxury. A fantasy even.

It becomes about wanting to extend unemployment or hike the debt ceiling. Or quietly keeping afloat some states that are in real trouble. Or putting out a brushfire overseas. Or sending a clear signal to the world in the wake of a violent challenge. Or passing whatever form of a prescription drug benefit bill can be gotten through congress.

Ever since Bush1, I have found myself developing substantial empathy for every President just because every day he finds himself at the mercy of so many assholes and so much abject need and so many demands.

On the other hand the practical argument would be that you do what you have to do to get nominated/elected since the greater good of being elected outweighs the lesser evil of not being honest. Besides, most voters understand that some degree of dishonesty is how the game is played. Both Obama and Romney play that game.

I guess ideally we all get on the same page, ie either we accept that everybody waffles and changes their positions and that is OK, or else we will hold all candidates accountable equally for playing a political game at the expense of transparency. What usually happens of course is that different candidates are held to different standards depending on the political persuasions of who is doing the critiquing. I’m certainly not immune to that myself.

I hope you are right that socons will face authentic enduring pushback. But many laps round the election cycle tell me that the overwhelming majority of elected Republicans are sure that they must pander or die.

It’s encourage that you are finding variance on youtube. However, there’s a pretty big audience disparity. Small numbers, and internet handful, find what suits them on youtube, and as likely as not, that sates them. Discontent dissipated.

It would be interesting to see an expose that compares what the various Tea Party organizations have done over the last few years (how much is it top-down, how much is it bottom-up) vs the Ackerman/Byrd top-down approach.

What were conversations like in the real or virtual backrooms of the AE hierarchy? Did they have real conversations about real world situations? Did they have fabricated conversations where they were always deceiving themselves and each other as well as lower level people in the organization?

Come to think of it, the Reform Party had a similar problem. I remember their state parties always complaining that the Dallas headquarters (Perot) wanted total control over everything.

I haven’t heard anything from the Obama campaign about this particular story, however, so I think Obama is going to focus on economic issues…while his supporters push the whole “war on women” argument.

Had they done the things I mentioned above, they’d be fine. If they clean house and bring in new leadership, they should make it to next year.