Sen. Snowe, writing from the Federal Reservation for Moderate Republicans up in Maine, opines in the Times:

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

I couldn’t agree more. We can’t continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand. Rather, we should view an expansion of diversity within the party as a triumph that will broaden our appeal.

The GOP’s drift to the far right reaps what it sows:

Veteran Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party on Tuesday, Sen. Harry Reid said.

The Specter party switch would give Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate majority of 60 seats if Al Franken holds his current lead in the disputed Minnesota Senate race…

Specter… has been part of a dwindling group of GOP moderates from the northeastern part of the country.

One wonders what will remain of the two remaining GOP moderates up in Maine; will they continue to tilt at windmills within the GOP’s shrinking tent, or will they follow Specter and further the blueness of Blue England?

Fox “News”(sic) anchor Shepard Smith seems not to have gotten the memo from his corporate superiors.

(audio NSFW)

Dear George Will,

For some reason, I read your insufferable biweekly column in Newsweek, which is either about how campaign-finance reform is against the First Amendment, or how baseball is emblematic of our national character, or both.

For some reason, I have also just read your latest screed against America’s most pressing current issue: adults wearing denim.

Denim. Complaining about how kids are wearing jeans instead of suit pants is like complaining about the Beatles and their mop-top haircuts and their senseless rock-and-roll music.

You’ve demonstrated just how in touch you are with this classic quote:

For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don’t wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Good taste can also be defined as taking social cues from someone who’s been alive since 1987.

Apparently your problem with denim is that it is associated with youth, and it’s therefore inappropriate for grown-ups to wear it. You compare the wearing of jeans to the watching of animated entertainment, even though animation nowadays is aimed at all age groups. Granted, I wouldn’t expect you to know this, since animation in the Astaire/Kelly era was either Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny, and not groundbreaking, Oscar-winning film. Similarly, you criticize anyone over 18 who plays video games, an entertainment industry that’s also reached complexity and maturity. I suppose we could instead sit out on our front porches in our seersucker suits and listen to the Brooklyn Dodgers on the AM radio instead, but nowadays, we grownups are able to enjoy video games — ones that have us socializing and interacting with one another, instead of passively sitting in a chair, listening to a narrator describe a slow-paced sports game.

In short, please enjoy a nice, piping-hot cup of STFU.

Sincerely,
Jeff

Over at Talking Points Memo, Robert Reich refutes a bunch of right-wing myths about taxes. An excerpt:

No one likes to pay taxes, so tax day typically attracts a range of right-wing Republicans, kooks, and demagogues, all of whom tell us how awful we have it. Herewith a short citizen’s guide (that is, a citizen’s guide that’s short rather than a guide for short citizens) responding to the predictable charges:

1. “Americans pay too much in taxes.” Wrong: The United States has the lowest taxes of all developed nations.

2. “The rich pay too much! The top ten percent of income earners pay over 72 percent of all income taxes!” Misleading: The main reason the rich pay such a large percent is they’ve become so much richer than the bottom 90 percent in recent years. If you look at what they pay as individuals — the percent of their incomes over and above the highest rate below them — you’ll see a steady decline over the years. When Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president, the marginal rate on the highest earners was 91 percent (after deductions and tax credits, closer to 50 percent); by 1980 it was still up there, at 70 percent (an effective rate of closer to 45 percent); under Bill Clinton, it was 38 percent (an effective rate closer to 28 percent).

He also provides this anecdote:

An acquaintance from law school, now a partner in one of Washington’s biggest and wealthiest law firms, explained to me one day over lunch how he and his partners use tax rules to create offsetting taxable gains and losses, and then allocate the gains to the firm’s foreign partners who don’t pay taxes in the United States. That way, they keep the losses here and shelter their income abroad. I noticed he had an American flag lapel pin. “You’re supporting our troops,” I said, referring to his pin. “Yup,” he replied, entirely missing my point.

True patriotism isn’t cheap. It’s about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

Wow. David Shuster, filling in for Olbermann, manages to faithfully report on the Republicans’ opposition to Obama’s tax plans, while simultaneously providing a delightful subtext for those in on the joke.

After Bill O’Reilly ranted and screamed about Ebert’s newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert took O’Reilly to town.

I understand you believe one of the Sun-Times misdemeanors was dropping your syndicated column. My editor informs me that “very few” readers complained about the disappearance of your column, adding, “many more complained about Nancy.” I know I did. That was the famous Ernie Bushmiller comic strip in which Sluggo explained that “wow” was “mom” spelled upside-down.

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham writes in this week’s issue:

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

Read on.

Shortly before the first signs of the stock market collapse, the Bush administration made a crucial decision that has propelled an estimated one to two million workers into stock-heavy retirement funds.

Many of the funds in which workers were automatically enrolled dropped more than 25 percent last year, while a more conservative investment strategy rejected by the Bush administration would have resulted in a gain of 4.7 percent.

The administration’s decisions came in response to a congressional mandate to encourage more workers to participate in company-sponsored retirement savings plans. The Bush administration came up with a rule that enabled businesses to automatically enroll their workers in tax-free 401(k) retirement plans.

If the workers failed to specify how they wanted their money invested, the company would be required by law to place their retirement money in investment funds that, for the most part, relied heavily on stocks. The administration specifically rejected calls for a more conservative investment option.

Read on at the Boston Globe.