In an op-ed in Politico today, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has taken a firm stand against Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. And that's great. It's about time that someone took on Bobby Jindal for doing all the stuff Bobby Jindal's been doing lately that Bobby Jindal is just sick to death of. Might as well be Bobby Jindal!

See, today, Bobby Jindal is letting the world know that he is tired of the way the Republican Party keeps on with this relentless, post-2012 election self-critique. "We've had enough," writes Jindal, adding, "Enough, already." In Bobby Jindal's estimation, "excessive navel gazing leads to paralysis" and "at present it looks as if the entire Republican party needs to go to counseling."

The overall level of panic and apology from the operative class in our party is absurd and unmerited. It’s time to stop the bedwetting.

Yeah, well, you'll have to forgive me if I point out that when I test all the dampened sheets for DNA, I get several matches for Bobby Jindal. I mean, it took all of two weeks before Jindal was publicly castigating his party's 2012 standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, who contended that he lost the election because President Barack Obama successfully promised "gifts" to young voters and minorities.

"That is absolutely wrong," Jindal said back in November, adding, "I absolutely reject that notion."

From there, Jindal basically fashioned himself the would-be king of the GOP "rebranding effort." At January's winter meeting of the RNC, Jindal demanded that those in attendance undertake a deep, navel-based pondering, telling his colleagues that they needed to stop being "the stupid party."

"I'm here to say, we've had enough of that," said Jindal, who just constantly has had "enough" of stuff.

"The Republican Party does not need to change our principles -- but we might need to change just about everything else we do," he told those in attendance, seeming to imply that a lengthy period of self-examination was necessary.

And as recently as a month ago, Jindal was still at it. At a Republican Senate Majority Committee fundraiser in Manchester, N.H., Jindal provided a keynote speech entirely centered around GOP self-reflection and self-critique, saying that the party needed "to make some changes." "I think we need to think seriously about where we go from here," said Jindal, suggesting that he was eager to do a lot of serious thinking about where the party should go from there.

Of course, a funny thing happened while Jindal was staking out turf as his party's most serious critic. First, his attempt at "innovating" -- his proposal to eliminate Louisiana's state income tax and replace it with a regressive increase in state sales taxes -- was met with stiff resistance "from the left, the center and the right." His popularity and clout diminished from there.

And so, the man who would rebrand his party has abruptly decided to rebrand himself. And with that comes a new plan for the GOP, which he helpfully laid out in Politico today:

At some point, the American public is going to revolt against the nanny state and the leftward march of this president. I don't know when the tipping point will come, but I believe it will come soon.

Why?

Because the left wants: The government to explode; to pay everyone; to hire everyone; they believe that money grows on trees; the earth is flat; the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing; debts don't have to be repaid; people of faith are ignorant and uneducated; unborn babies don't matter; pornography is fine; traditional marriage is discriminatory; 32 oz. sodas are evil; red meat should be rationed; rich people are evil unless they are from Hollywood or are liberal Democrats; the Israelis are unreasonable; trans-fat must be stopped; kids trapped in failing schools should be patient; wild weather is a new thing; moral standards are passé; government run health care is high quality; the IRS should violate our constitutional rights; reporters should be spied on; Benghazi was handled well; the Second Amendment is outdated; and the First one has some problems too.

"Eventually," Jindal says, "Americans will rise up against this new era of big government and this new reign of politically correct terror." What to do until then?

"Put on your big boy pants," says Jindal, helpfully and substantively.

The short version of Jindal's new plan for GOP renewal, then, is basically 1) attack a bunch of straw men; 2) sit back and chill and enjoy a well-fitting pair of trousers; and 3) profit.

This is a far cry from the Bobby Jindal who suggested "we might need to change just about everything else we do," but I guess Bobby Jindal has had enough of that guy.

READ THE WHOLE THING:
GOP needs action, not navel-gazing [Politico]

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Philip Klein, Washington Examiner
During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney was lambasted by fact checkers for attacking President Obama for going on an "apology tour" in his first year in office. Fact checkers concluded that even though Obama made a number of speeches overseas in which he criticized past U.S. actions and pledged a new beginning, it didn't amount to him apologizing. Later today, Obama is expected to appoint long-time adviser Samantha Power as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. In a 2003 article for the New Republic, Power literally recommended that a new leader apologize for past American...

Nick Gillespie, Daily Beast
Earlier this year, Bobby Jindal, the GOP governor of Louisiana, surveyed the wreckage of Mitt Romney’s sad-sack presidential campaign and told his fellow Republicans that if they ever want to capture the White House again, “we must stop being the stupid party.”While Michele Bachmann’s decision not to run for a fifth term helps the party out on that score, a new report from the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) strongly suggests that another tack would be even more successful: The GOP should embrace its small, youthful, and increasingly...

While his own presidential ambitions fell flat in 2012, Mitt Romney is already looking ahead to how he can help in 2014.

In a Thursday interview with the Wall Street Journal, Romney unveiled how he plans to make a national impact during the upcoming midterm elections. Among the ideas on the table: a book, a summit in Utah and last but not least, stumping for congressional GOP candidates -- with a level of moderation.

"I'm not going to be bothering the airwaves with a constant series of speeches," Romney told the Journal, via TPM.

Three months after losing the general election to President Barack Obama, Romney leveled to Fox News about the rigors of the end of his campaign, calling the experience a "roller coaster" filled with "ups and downs."

On the same day that Romney's WSJ interview went out, his wife Ann appeared on "CBS This Morning," vowing that she had "no regrets" about her husband's presidential run.

CNN has hired Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for President Obama's re-relection campaign, and Kevin Madden, an advisor for Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, as political commentators, CNN's Washington bureau chief Sam Feist announced Wednesday.

The two strategists will appear across the network’s programming including "New Day," the morning show scheduled to launch June 17, the network said in a statement. They frequently made the media rounds during the 2012 campaign, and went head to head with each other on numerous occasions.

CNN's announcement comes after reports that the network was considering bringing back "Crossfire," and was in talks with Cutter about a possible role on the show. In April, the network was reportedly considering reviving the canceled program, and was also in talks with Newt Gingrich about a possible role.

Cutter also recently formed a private consulting firm with two other top Obama aides. “I’ve worked with CNN for many years in the White House, on campaigns and throughout government,” she said via CNN's statement on Wednesday. “They are the best in the business, and I’m thrilled to be joining the CNN team.”

“This is such an exciting time in the national conversation about the direction of our country, with so many Americans looking to CNN for an informed perspective of today’s political debates,” Madden said. “I’m looking forward to bringing my experience of working on national campaigns and Capitol Hill to CNN’s coverage of this national conversation.”

A top liberal SuperPAC in the 2012 election had undisclosed financial ties to the private equity firm Bain Capital — something that some people close to the group say interfered with its core mission of attacking Bain veteran Mitt Romney’s business record.

Former Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney appeared on "The Tonight Show" Friday, where he discussed a number of scandals unfolding in Washington.

Romney addressed the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups in the lead-up to the 2012 election, saying he thinks "a special counsel should be appointed because only a special council can investigate the administration."

"The IRS reports to the Treasury Department, that reports to the president. The buck stops at the president's desk," Romney said. "He's indicated he wants to look into it and has already taken action to remove the head of the IRS.

"The president is saying that, he and his team will look into it. But frankly, they can't investigate themselves," Romney continued.

Romney made it clear he still hasn't warmed up to the idea of Obama as president.

"I'm not a fan of the president, in case you didn't know that," Romney said. "But look, I believe he cares for the country and wants to make America a better place for the American people. But I think he's not being successful as he would have hoped to have been."

Romney also weighed in on the scandal surrounding the talking points on the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the Department of Justice secretly seizing phone records of Associated Press reporters.

Click here for more on Romney's appearance from RealClearPolitics.

Alex Isenstadt, Politico
South Carolinians may not love former Gov. Mark Sanford. They may still have a bad taste in their mouths after his governorship. They may even wonder whether they can entirely trust him.But in the end, they decided he was as good as they were going to get.Sanford completed his return from the political graveyard Tuesday night, easily dispatching Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a deep red district that Mitt Romney won by nearly 20 percentage points.

On CBS's Face the Nation this week, GOP Congressman Darrel Issa held forth once again on the Obama Administration's "failures" surrounding the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya last October. Later this week his Congressional Committee will open hearings.

Other Republicans pontificated about the President's failure to "move decisively" to intervene in the civil war in Syria.

It is increasingly clear that some in the GOP have decided to launch a frontal assault on the Obama Administration's conduct of foreign policy.

Their behavior pretty much defines the term shameless since it comes from the Party whose ideologically-driven agenda very recently created some of the greatest foreign policy disasters in American history.

Why are these attacks so brazen and outrageous?

Let's take Issa's revival of the Benghazi "scandal."

The original Republican narrative about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was premised on the assumption that President Obama failed to recognize that the attack involved "terrorism." This charge is still being made today despite the fact that the President himself - several days after the event - referred to the event as "act of terror."

GOP critics persist in this criticism, not withstanding the fact that the issue was at the center of one of the most memorable moments in one of last year's Presidential debates when Mitt Romney made a major gaff by arguing that the President had failed to recognize the attack as "terrorism" and was then corrected by moderator Candy Crowley who pointed out that the President's account of events was correct.

The GOP critics persist in criticizing UN Ambassador Susan Rice for delivering "talking points" on the Sunday talk shows immediately following the attack that concluded the attacks had resulted from a spontaneous demonstration rather than a planned assault. But those critics continue to ignore that at the time, that was the conclusion of the intelligence community - a conclusion that was later changed based on more complete information.

All you need to do is look at the changing contemporary accounts of the Boston Marathon bombings or the Newtown shootings to understand how first reports concerning violent events often change.

But more to the point, what benefit would the Administration have gained by lying about the circumstances surrounding the events anyway?

Now Congressman Issa seems intent on arguing that the Administration failed to properly secure the Benghazi compound from attack. Of course there is little question that the compound did not have enough security, since several of its occupants were killed. And there are certainly operational lessons that can be learned from these events. But the Republicans conveniently ignore that they had been the authors of cuts in the State Department's security budget - and that the person ultimately in charge of decisions involving the diplomatic mission to Libya was the Ambassador who himself was killed.

What possible reason would the Obama Administration have to intentionally provide too little security to its own Ambassador?

You have to assume that by continuing to pursue the Benghazi "scandal" story the GOP is trying to imply that President Obama is "soft on terrorism," when in fact he has done more to destroy the Al Qaeda terrorist network than the Neo-Cons who surrounded George W. Bush could ever have dreamed - including the demise of Osama Bin Laden.

And Syria? Every day you hear some new GOP spokesman attacking the President for being "indecisive." But as Cokie Roberts pointed out on ABC last Sunday, the moment you ask them what they propose to do, they start dancing around anything specific.

The problem is that there are no great options in Syria. The war in Syria is a battle between the Alawite Shia minority of President Assad and various factions of the Sunni majority. It is also a multi-polar proxy war between Iran and its ally Hezbollah - the Gulf State monarchies -the Muslim Brotherhood political parties that have come to power in Egypt - the moderate Islamic Party that rules Turkey - the Russians - and the United States and its European allies.

In fact, the polling shows that most Americans are thrilled that President Obama has not precipitously thrust America into another war in the Middle East.

America certainly does have an interest in helping to prevent the conflict in Syria from spinning further out of control - and to protect any more innocent civilians from being killed or made into refugees. But all you need to do is look at the unforeseen consequences of previous interventions in the Middle East to understand why the President should be very deliberate in his choice of options.

You can go all the way back to the "brilliant" CIA sponsored coup against Iran's progressive democratically-elected Prime Minister Mosoddegh. That coup restored the monarchy - the Shah of Iran - whose oppressive rule ultimately gave us all the Ayatollah Khomeini and the theocracy in Iran.

Or there was the completely unnecessary, elective War in Iraq that drained our economy of trillions of dollars, cost thousands of American and Iraqi lives, made millions refugees and put an Iranian ally in power in Baghdad.

And it would probably be a bad idea to repeat the Reagan Administration's ill-advised intervention in Afghanistan to support the Mujahedeen fighting the Soviet-backed secular government. By arming the insurgents with Stinger missiles that could down Soviet helicopters we certainly did help hasten the fall of the Afghan government and the withdrawal of the Soviet troops that were backing it. But at the same time we helped to create the Taliban that provided safe haven to Al Qaeda, that not too many years later attacked the United States on 9/11 - and with whom we have been at war ever since.

The United States has no interest in providing arms to factions of the Syrian insurrection that may one day be turned against us, or our allies.

There is some evidence that the secular, democratic forces within the insurgency have become better organized and have begun to consolidate in the Syrian Free Army. And you can bet, that the Administration will pursue additional policy options as a result of the reported use of chemical weapons by Assad's forces. But Al Nusra - an affiliate of the Al Qaeda in Iraq - is still a major presence. The Administration wants to assure that any military aide intended to hasten the departure of Assad increases the likelihood that after Assad's departure, Syria has a chance at becoming a peaceful, democratic society instead of a failed state or hotbed of Radical Islam. That's not "indecisive," that's smart.

Is this President decisive? Just ask the late Osama Bin Laden. Or, speaking of Benghazi, ask the former dictator of Libya, Muammar Qadhafi, what happened when he threatened to annihilate that city's entire population.

In fact, this President has shown himself to be precisely the kind of decisive, smart, cool-under fire leader that you want when the stakes are really high. He has rejected the kind of bull in the china closet bluster that led America into the War in Iraq - and provided a better recruiting poster for terrorists than they could ever have created on their own. Instead, he has focused on developing true multi-national coalitions to accomplish critical missions. And in addition, he understands that the last thing America wants or needs is another war.

There are certainly elements of this Administration's foreign policy that should be changed. But most of those, like following through on his commitment to close the Guantanamo prison, are not the targets of Republican criticism. Rather they result from obstacles erected by Republicans themselves.

In the end, recent Republican attacks on President Obama's foreign policy may be brazen, outrageous and infuriating. But they will have very little lasting political effect. In fact, try as they might, the Neo-Cons who still dominate Republican foreign policy are swimming upstream against a very strong current of public opinion that opposes more wars.

In the last election - for the first time in a generation - Democrats had the political high-ground on foreign policy - both because of the dismal failures of the Bush years, and because of the crisp, decisive and effective performance of President Obama, Hillary Clinton and their foreign policy team during the Administration's first four years.

The next time you see Darrel Issa or Lindsey Graham or Liz Cheney on television attacking Obama Administration foreign policy, ask yourself if we confronted a major international crisis in the Middle East, or Korea, or somewhere we have never dreamed about - who would you rather have responding to that 3AM phone call - George Bush, Dick Cheney and their gang -- or Barack Obama?

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners and a Senior Strategist for Americans United for Change. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.

Joan Walsh, Salon
During the 2012 election cycle I occasionally ran stories declaring that various Republicans being touted as White House material “will never be president.” Sarah Palin after her narcissistic Gabby Giffords meltdown; Newt Gingrich early in his race-baiting campaign; Mitt Romney after his British Olympics screw-up.I batted 1.000 for that cycle, but it was easy. In 2016, Republicans won’t be facing a Democratic incumbent, so somebody has a shot. I recently wrote that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will never be president, due to his out-of-control anger issues, but...

In an interview with HuffPost Live Monday, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera echoed Republican strategist Frank Luntz's controversial leaked comments about talk radio hosts' influence on the Republican Party, telling host Abby Huntsman that right wing talk radio has significantly hurt the GOP.

"I think that right wing talk radio has had enough influence on the management of the GOP that they have helped cripple the GOP," Rivera told Huntsman. "Whoever drafted the party platform for the convention just passed for MItt Romney, they defeated Romney right out of the gate."

Rivera specifically cited Republican party positions on immigration, gay marriage and abortion, calling them "crazy," and implied that talk radio hosts have helped drive the party to the right in pursuit of radio ratings.

"Those are crazy positions to have in this day and age if you want a candidate who's going to be successful," he said, "but they're great positions if you want to [engage in] rabble-rousing and get plenty of calls."

Rivera also addressed his own potential run for office, saying that he is still debating a run for Senate from New Jersey and praising New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Watch the full segment at HuffPost Live.

Amy Sullivan, National Journal
The Grain Exchange Room in Milwaukee’s old Chamber of Commerce building is a dazzling display of Gilded Age opulence. Its ornate faux-marble columns soar three stories high, and an intricately carved balcony overlooks what is believed to have been the world’s first commodities-exchange trading pit. This temple to business and success was a fitting location for Mitt Romney’s victory speech after the Wisconsin primary a year ago, on the night he eclipsed his last remaining rival for the Republican presidential nomination.Romney used the occasion to lay out his...

Joan Walsh, Salon
 We heard it repeatedly during the 2012 campaign and its sad aftermath for the GOP: The party’s silver lining was its “deep bench” of 2016 contenders. Paul Ryan and Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker — they were younger than Mitt Romney; they brought racial and ethnic diversity; Christie would bring a little ideological diversity, too, coming from the almost extinct wing of Northeastern Republicans. 2016 promised to be a bracing, exciting battle for the new soul of the party.So I’ve found it a sad...

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan earned the dubious distinction of garnering just 27 percent of the Latino vote in 2012. This dismal showing not only assured their defeat, but implied GOP difficulties for years to come: Hispanics are the nation’s fastest-growing minority.

Conservative politicians, including Mitt Romney during his presidential campaign, supported legislation mandating drug testing for recipients of federal aid, such as: the unemployed, families in assistance programs -- in general, citizens down on their luck or in trouble. Interestingly, none of these politicians has suggested drug tests for executives whose banks benefit from billions in federal aid and bailouts.

Since 2011 (generally, at Republican insistence):

"Seven states have passed laws mandating drug tests for [welfare] recipients, and in 2012 at least twenty-five other states considered proposals to tie welfare cash assistance, and in some cases also food stamps, to drug tests." (Source: The Nation.)

For example, in 2011, GOP Governor Scott of Florida signed a law requiring all applicants for that state's welfare program to take a drug test. And in 2012:

"Congress passed a law paving the way for states to urine-test the recipients of unemployment benefits ... Since then, sixteen states have considered laws tying unemployment insurance benefits to drug tests." (Source: The Nation.)

And, in 2013, in response to various court decisions concerned that mandatory drug testing violated welfare recipients' constitutional rights:

"Rep. Fincher (R-TN) introduced a bill ... that would require states that want to receive full funding for welfare assistance to force its citizens to waive their Fourth Amendment rights and submit to random drug testing." (Source: ThinkProgress.)

One touted justification for drug-testing assistance applicants is that people who've fallen on hard times because of drug problems shouldn't get a taxpayer bailout. In short, if people can't run their lives, or businesses, because of drug use, they shouldn't be subsidized with government money. And, speaking of people who can't run their businesses without a government subsidy, that does brings us back to our largest banks.

Bloomberg News recently reported that America's largest banks receive a federal subsidy of about $80 billion per year, and that, without this subsidy, they would not be able stay in business. To put the bank subsidy in perspective, federal payments under the welfare programs and food stamps combined are about $70 billion per year.

Looking at the actions of our financial services sector, at least one plausible explanation may be that some bank executives were stoned out of their minds. Consider a few examples:

• The 2008 financial crisis, when, in addition to their annual $80 billion subsidy, our banks needed a $400 billion bailout.


• The collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG.


• Five banks (Ally Bank, Bank of America, Citi, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo) paid $25 billion to settle claims that they "routinely signed foreclosure related documents ... without actually knowing whether the facts contained in those documents were correct." Seriously, you'd have to be high as a kite, incredibly arrogant, or amazingly incompetent to think you could get away with this behavior.


• Money Laundering -- "Credit Suisse, Lloyds Bank, ABN Amro, ING Bank and now HSBC -- have reached settlements in the past couple of years with the U.S. government for billions of dollars in tainted transactions." For example, "between 2006 and 2010, the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, the Norte del Valle Cartel in Colombia and other drug traffickers laundered at least $881 million in illegal narcotics trafficking proceeds through HSBC". Since these banks were doing business, on a large-scale, with drug traffickers, did some bank executives perhaps try samples?

The actions of the financial services industry can only be explained by some combination of bad luck, innocent incompetence, criminal intent, or significant drug use. Unless we ask our bank CEOs (and other senior executives) to "pee in the cup," how will we know whether they "deserve" taxpayer assistance? If this seems far-fetched, it's been widely reported that James Cayne, the CEO of Bear Stearns as it lurched into insolvency:

"Sometimes smoked marijuana at the end of the day ... He also has used pot in more private settings, according to people who say they witnessed him doing so or participated with him." (Source: WSJ, Bear CEO's Handling Of Crisis Raises Issues.)

The banking industry has demonstrated an ongoing pattern of law-breaking behavior, wouldn't be profitable without a massive government subsidy, and is filled with credible rumors that senior bank personnel use illegal drugs. Further, a senior bank executive with a drug problem is in a position to do real damage to our economy, unlike the average person on unemployment insurance. If bank executives don't want to submit to drug testing in exchange for federal aid for their bank, they could always resign.

So why aren't our political leaders demanding that these corporate welfare recipients join other welfare recipients in mandatory drug testing programs? Let me offer a few thoughts:

• Political Donations: No one on food stamps makes substantial political contributions. However, America's financial services industry (broadly defined) donated $650 million to political campaigns in 2012.


• Future High-Paying Jobs: Many of our current political leaders, and their staffs, are tomorrow's highly-paid lobbyists for banks. They might not want to annoy potential future employers.


• Class Bias: Our Congress knows and socializes with bank executives. But how many congressional leaders have shared a meal with a family on food stamps? Or lunched with someone who worked hard for 20 years, lost his/her job in the financial crisis, and now must "pee in a cup" to satisfy the whims of hypocritical politicians?

For a variety of reasons, I believe drug testing of aid recipients is bad policy; the tests are often inaccurate, several courts believe these laws violate our constitutional rights, and so on. But if we're going to require it, let's test our corporate welfare recipients as well as ordinary Americans.

Steven Strauss is an adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Immediately prior to Harvard, he was founding Managing Director of the Center for Economic Transformation at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Steven was one of the NYC leads for Applied Sciences NYC (Mayor Bloomberg's plan to build a new engineering and innovation center in NYC), NYC BigApps and many other initiatives to foster job growth, innovation and entrepreneurship. In 2010, Steven was selected as a member of the Silicon Alley 100 in NYC. He has a Ph.D. in Management from Yale University, and over 20 years' private sector work experience. Geographically, Steven has worked in the US, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. You can follow him on Twitter at: @Steven_Strauss 


WASHINGTON -- President Obama hasn't formally proposed his "compromise" budget plan yet, but the White House can already see cracks forming among its trusted progressive coalition over cutbacks to cherished safety net programs.

On Saturday, organized labor quickly made good on its promise to oppose a White House budget that includes cuts to Social Security and Medicare, with the AFL-CIO labor federation ripping the president's expected proposal with unusually tough language in an email blast to activists.

The email (below) came with the subject heading, "Obama's really bad idea."

"From all reports I’ve seen, President Obama is going to propose a budget plan next week that is unprecedented for a Democratic president," said the email from Damon Silvers, the AFL-CIO's policy director. "It will propose a cut to Social Security benefits for seniors, veterans and people with disabilities."

"It is unconscionable to ask seniors, people with disabilities and veterans who are barely making it to be squeezed even tighter at a time when corporations and the wealthiest 2% are not paying their fair share of taxes, despite soaring profits."

That the AFL-CIO would oppose such a budget comes as no big surprise -- the federation has been saying as much since the day after Obama's election victory over Mitt Romney. But the fact that one of the president's strongest allies is preemptively calling his proposal "unconscionable" hints at some of the withering criticism Obama can expect to come from his left flank.

The president will propose his budget on Wednesday. As HuffPost has reported, it is likely to include a proposal to readjust the way the cost of living is calculated for Social Security beneficiaries. Known as "chained CPI," the switch will effectively reduce payments over time. The budget is also expected to include additional means testing for Medicare.

The budget would trim the deficit by an estimated $1.8 trillion over a decade, with $600 billion in savings coming from revenue and $1.2 trillion coming from domestic program and entitlement cuts, according to the New York Times.

While the inclusion of chained CPI and other cuts strengthen the possibility of a "grand bargain" over the budget, many to Obama's left seem to be questioning the prudence of starting negotiations so close to the middle. Count the AFL-CIO among them.

In his email, Silvers steered activists to a petition and urged them to "tell President Obama: No 'chained CPI and no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or other cuts to Social Security benefits. Period.'

Read the email in full:

From all reports I’ve seen, President Obama is going to propose a budget plan next week that is unprecedented for a Democratic president. It will propose a cut to Social Security benefits for seniors, veterans and people with disabilities.

It appears the proposed cut will take the form of “chained” CPI—a discredited way of calculating annual cost-of-living increases that does not keep up with actual costs, eating into benefits.

But there’s more. The president’s budget proposal also would require middle-class seniors—people who make $47,000 a year and more—to pay higher Medicare premiums.

These cuts are bad policy. And the only way we’re going to stop them is if President Obama and all members of Congress hear that we’re not going to tolerate them. Sign our petition to the president NOW.

It is unconscionable to ask seniors, people with disabilities and veterans who are barely making it to be squeezed even tighter at a time when corporations and the wealthiest 2% are not paying their fair share of taxes, despite soaring profits.

It’s bad policy to make cuts that will weaken our economic recovery.

And it’s wrong, at a time of record income inequality and stagnant wages, to make the gap even worse by undercutting the retirement security of working- and middle-class Americans.

The majority of Americans oppose cuts to our country’s most important family protection programs. It’s time to make some noise about it.

We need to invest in America's working families, not pull the rug out from under them. That starts with repealing the sequester and making corporations and the richest 2% pay their fair share. And that should never, ever include cuts to benefits that millions of working families rely on.

Tell President Obama: No “chained” CPI and no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or other cuts to Social Security benefits. Period.:

go.aflcio.org/No-Cuts-Obama

In Solidarity,

Damon Silvers
Director of Policy, AFL-CIO

Waldman & Fuller, American Prospect
Let it not be said that the GOP doesn't know it has a problem. As Senator Lindsay Graham said last year, "We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term." And in the November election, that became vividly clear. Mitt Romney lost Latino voters by 44 points, Asian-American voters by 47 points, and voters under 30 by 23 points. So in the months since, the Republicans have been racking their brains to come up with ways to appeal to voters who do not happen to be older white men.

Howard Kurtz, The Daily Beast
A new Rasmussen poll shows that Ryan's approval rating has plunged to 35 percent, down from 50 percent last August, soon after he was tapped as Mitt Romney's running mate. What's more, only 52 percent of Republicans view him favorably.Now, you have to take those numbers with a grain of salt. I doubt most people are sitting around thinking about how the Wisconsin congressman is doing. His sinking approval is undoubtedly a thumbs-down on how the GOP is handling the endless budget mess. And among Republicans, Ryan is clearly suffering from disappointment that he did little to...

It's coming down to one number.

Just weeks after the "Gang of 8" bi-partisan senators presented a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform, nasty political storm clouds are forming over Washington.

Of course, it was to be expected that the anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party, principally in the House of Representatives, would oppose any reform. Their position has been clear all along -- the warm embrace of Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" political-suicide speech during last year's election, while an obvious electoral loser of titanic proportions, continues to appeal to the hardliners beyond any strategic consequences to their party.

Supposedly offering Latino assent to these anti-immigrant politicos, Tea Party Rep. Raúl Labrador is leading the effort in the House to destroy immigration reform in 2013. Labrador is fetching for the Nativist wing of the GOP, perhaps hoping to position himself as a "good Hispanic" with appeal to the far-right wing of the GOP that dominates the Republican primaries.

Yet the political landscape was significantly rejiggered by the 2012 election. Unlike President Bush's ill-fated 2007 immigration reform attempt, an effort torpedoed by Bush's own Republican allies in Congress, there is now a dawning realization among mainstream Republicans that passing comprehensive immigration reform this year is matter of institutional survival.

Long-term thinkers like South Carolina's Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Gov. Jeb Bush, two examples of GOP leaders who seek a smart, modern immigration strategy, can read the demographic tea leaves.

As Graham put it, Republicans are "not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long-term."

And here come the political storm clouds. Beyond the Tea Partiers like Labrador, there is another challenge to immigration reform -- the negotiation between Big Business and Big Labor over the number of guest workers visas to be issued.

One of the key pillars of a new immigration system must be a temporary worker visa program. American businesses across a variety of industries have used undocumented labor to control costs and maintain flexibility to increase or decrease their labor force as needed. Like it or not, all Americans, even Raúl Labrador, benefit from the sweat of these undocumented workers.

A temporary visa system would give both American companies and foreign workers the incentive -- and the threat of stiff penalties -- to only hire and work within the legal system. Coupled with a rational green card program, one that gives America the mechanism to Hoover up the best talent from across the globe, the undocumented worker problem would disappear once reform was enacted.

And in a rare occasion of cats and dogs making an alliance, both business and labor leaders announced a partnership in January to push for comprehensive immigration reform. This new alliance gave hope among reform supporters; the rupture between labor and business in 2007 was among the contributing factors to the collapse of President Bush's reform push.

So when recently the big labor unions AFL-CIO and SEIU and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce jointly called for reform, a major impediment to a final deal on immigration was removed.

Or so it seemed.

Sources close to immigration reform negotiations in Congress confirmed to me their worries that Big Labor and Big Business will once again turn on each other and give anti-reformers, like Labrador, a cudgel with which to kill immigration reform once again.

The issue that may blow up the negotiations is straightforward: how many temporary worker visas to issue per year. For the Chamber of Commerce, the number of visas is driven by the projected labor need of its members, while for the AFL-CIO and SEIU unions, the imperative is to protect American workers from potentially overwhelming competition from temporary foreign workers.

And they both have a point. Neither side is making irrational demands. Yet, my sources confirm, their positions on the number of guest workers is far apart -- and threatening the success of an immigration bill that both Big Business and Big Labor say they want.

Even as the negotiation grinds on in the marble halls of Congress, America's fastest growing group of voters watches with a wary eye. As I've written on other occasions, immigration reform is a highly symbolic, emotional issue for American Latinos.

Failure of reform this year will have a significant impact on the 2014 and 2016 elections. At the most basic level, Hispanics' anger with Mitt Romney's anti-immigrant campaign directly contributed to his defeat, and President Obama's re-election.

Now these voters, like the majority of all Americans who support comprehensive immigration reform, want to see results.

So it all comes down to agreement on a number. To Big Business and Big Labor a simple message: Don't screw it up.

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly bashed on Saturday former -- and failed -- Republican presidential nominees Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney, calling them establishment candidates who moved to the center based on advice from consultants rather than embracing conservative values.

"We've had the establishment pick another loser for us," she said of Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, at CPAC. "The fight we have, and the fight I want you to engage in, is the establishment against the grassroots. The establishment has given us a whole series of losers. Bob Dole and John McCain. Mitt Romney."

"Why is it that the establishment has given us this bunch of losers?" she added later.

Schlafly, like some other speakers at CPAC, insisted that Washington, D.C., consultants were in part to blame for Republican losses in 2012. Karl Rove, who founded the super PAC American Crossroads, drew her particular ire for backing so many candidates who lost.

"If you had a football coach with that kind of score, I don't think you'd see him the next year," she said of Rove.

Instead, she said the Republican Party needed to listen to people like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- who ironically was the vice presidential candidate to McCain, the Arizona senator who ran for president in 2008.

One of the bad ideas of the establishment, Schlafly said, is that supporting immigration reform would help the GOP. Instead, it would just give the Democrats more voters, she said.

"The establishment is giving us a lot of bad advice, like we should go for comprehensive immigration reform," she said, adding "comprehensive" and "reform" are just other ways to say "amnesty."

Former President George W. Bush, although he won reelection, was another establishment pick who was damaging to the party, in part because of his push for immigration reform, she said.

"Even when they pick the winners, George W. Bush, they pick somebody who spent more than the Democrats, he added new programs that ... cost the taxpayers money, and he tried to give us open borders," she said.

Schlafly didn't reserve all of her ire for within the party. President Barack Obama was criticized for so-called "Obamaphones" -- cell phones for low-income people and another consistently mentioned topic here -- and his support for day care. "I call it babysitting," she said.

Although she called Romney a "loser," Schlafly channeled his remarks about the "47 percent."

"This is a terrible problem," she said. "We now have about 48 percent of American people who are dependent in whole or in part on handouts from the government for their ordinary expenses. ... We don't want to be a nation of people who are dependent on government."

After the speech, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steel piled on to her remarks about losers, specifically targeting current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

Ask Reince. RT @byronyorkSchlafly at CPAC: 'Why is it that the establishment has given us this bunch of losers?'

— Michael Steele (@Steele_Michael) March 16, 2013

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- It's like the November election didn't even happen.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Friday gave a speech to GOP activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest annual gathering of conservatives. Instead of taking a step back from the daily grind of politics and laying out a new path for the movement based on the lessons learned from his and Mitt Romney's loss in November, Ryan stuck to the same sharp fiscal promises that he and Romney ran on -- and which voters largely rejected -- in the 2012 election.

"Our debt is a threat to this country. We have to tackle this problem before it tackles us. So today, I want to make the case for balance. That case, in a nutshell, is that a balanced budget will promote a healthier economy," said Ryan.

The audience was certainly sympathetic to Ryan's governing philosophy. He's still a star in the Republican Party, and most likely, he didn't have to make the case for a balanced budget to them; they were already on board.

But while some sessions at CPAC have offered introspection on the election losses suffered by Republicans, Ryan chose to keep the focus on his budget, which he unveiled this week.

The plan by Ryan, who is the House Budget Committee chairman, includes $4.6 trillion in cuts over the next decade. It plans to balance the budget in 10 years by slashing Medicare, Medicaid and programs to aid the poor, including food stamps. It would also repeal Obamacare -- a position that Romney and Ryan promoted heavily in the 2012 campaign as well.

"The president says we're in a recovery," said Ryan. "I say we're in critical care. ... We are on the verge of a debt crisis."

"We don't hide behind our beliefs," Ryan added. "We argue for them, because a budget is more than just a list of numbers; it's an expression of our governing philosophy. And our budget draws a very sharp contrast with the left. It says to the people in unmistakable terms: 'They are the party of shared hardship, we are the part of equal opportunity.'"

On Tuesday, Ryan told reporters on Capitol Hill that the election outcome essentially didn't matter.

"The election didn't go our way. Believe me, I know what that feels like," he said. "That means we surrender our principles? That means we stop believing what we believe in? Look, whether the country intended it or not, we have divided government. We have the second largest House majority we've had since World War II. And what we believe in this divided government era, we need to put up our vision."

He also suggested that maybe most voters did agree with the GOP after all.

"Are a lot of these solutions very popular, and did we win these arguments in the campaign? Some of us think so," Ryan said.

Romney is scheduled to give a speech at CPAC on Friday afternoon.

Below, a liveblog of the latest updates from CPAC:

David Corn, Mother Jones
"Scott Prouty." The fellow on the other end of the phone call pronounced his name with hesitation. For nearly a fortnight, he and I had been building a long-distance rapport via private tweets, emails, and phone conversations as we discussed how best to make public the secret video he had shot of Mitt Romney talking at a private, $50,000-per-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida. Now I was almost ready to break the story at Mother Jones. I had verified the video, confirming when and where it had been shot, and my colleagues and I had selected eight...

WASHINGTON -- After secretly filming Mitt Romney's now-infamous 47 percent remarks, a Florida bartender worried how releasing the tape would affect his personal life. He did nothing for weeks after the May 2012 event, wondering what to do. "I actually lost sleep having it in my house -- knowing what I heard," he told The Huffington Post in an interview late last year. "What do you do? Do you throw your life into turmoil?"

The man's life as a bartender was paycheck to paycheck. He was renting an apartment. He said he didn't own car. He didn't have a savings account. He didn't have health insurance. "I don't have close family that I could rely on for support," he explained. "I either pay my bills or I'm homeless."

HuffPost has agreed to withhold the name of the filmmaker until he breaks his silence on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" Wednesday evening, followed by an appearance on HuffPost Live Thursday morning. In interviews over the last several months, he laid out his thinking before and after Romney's speech.

The filmmaker said he spent weeks after the Romney event pondering what to do.

"I'm just one of those people that if something's bothering me I wake up at four in the morning -- just thinking. And it was literally weeks of just, you know, 'Well, hey don't lose your job, just let it sit there.' And, 'Times are tight, jobs are tough and, you know, don't rock the boat, you're happy doing what you're doing and you're about to go into the busy season of work -- you can't afford to fuck this up at all. Don't fuck it up.' But then ... I would wake up and just, it was just that thing that's in your mind that you just can't get out of your mind, you know?"

Along with the potential damage to his stability, the man said he worried how the video might hurt his employers. They were good people, a mom-and-pop operation, he said. They had always treated him fairly. "I felt like I was letting down my employer," he said. "I didn't want to hurt their business."

But knew the election was an important one. He wondered if he would be able to look himself in the mirror if he didn't do something to make sure people saw the tape. He didn't think he could forgive himself if Romney got elected. He decided he had to release the tape.

Once the full tape aired, he said he knew he'd have to quit his bartending job. "I knew I was forfeiting the right to work there," he explained. He said he had bartended events for half the guests at the Romney speech. They all knew him and probably suspected what he had done, he said. He felt like he couldn't just go back to work. "I was worried I was going to end up dead."

"I was the only person in that specific spot," he said of where he positioned his camera that night. "There was no real doubt. I could say that they know. My employers knew and the people I worked with knew that I did it."

No one fingered him.

Releasing the video was worth risk to his wallet, he said. "It's a bigger issue than a part-time catering job," he explained. "I felt like it was my duty. I felt the guy was dangerous, to be honest. ... The one thing I didn't hear in his voice -- I didn't hear an ounce of empathy whatsoever. ... That kind of scared me a little bit."

McKay Coppins, BuzzFeed
Reince Priebus tries to woo black voters with a "listening session" at a black Brooklyn megachurch. At the strip mall across the street, shoppers are still talking about that rich, white guy who ran for president. posted on March 11, 2013 at 6:58pm EDT View this image "ºRepublican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus (L) looks on as Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney works on his iPad aboard his campaign plane on October 29, 2012. Image by Justin Sullivan / Getty ImagesInside a Christian mega-church...