I have been enjoying reading Conor Friedersdorf on Andrew Sullivan's website. He appears to be one of the few bloggers that is rational, persuasive without being over the top in the delivery. He has an interesting article on why the right's talk show radio host miss when they stereotype progressive bloggers. Yglesias is the example;

Why does he [Yglesias] favor some policies that conservatives like? And can we identify more of them for the sake of strategic alliances? We'll never know if, upon learning that he is a liberal, we automatically presume that he is a "statist," or even more absurdly, that he prefers tyranny to liberty. Those are unserious buzz words that sell books, not a realistic portrait of American liberals, a group that encompasses many people farther right than Mr. Yglesias.

My politics are probably reasonably similar to Yglesias's and where I differ with him, he often makes a persuasive argument in favor of his policies. Then again there are other bloggers from across the spectrum which make similar persuasive arguments. Government is not so ideologically strict and focused in its efforts that there isn't room for several approaches to see which works best and provides the greatest result.

So why is the talk show circuit and its daily outrage unable to interact with people like Yglesias in a reasonable way? I have largely ignored talk back radio because I consider it unserious and too apt to hide behind, "Its just entertainment" when it acts in a morally repugnant way - like that is an out for immoral behaviour.

So is it purely for the purpose for the selling advertising, and the cult of media that surrounds these hosts, such as books, etc. They do interact politically and do support the talking points of the Republican Party nearly verbatim in a majority of instances. It is hard to separate them from the politics they represent for this reason.

Talk back radio also has a large following and is very profitable, not only for the hosts themselves that sell themselves in a media cultish manner, but also for the stations and media operations that support them. It is probably for this reason that talk back radio will not change.

It is too profitable and the mechanism to achieve that kind of return is well defined. You do the Glenn Beck thing and claim 'oligarhy (sic)' on a white board that links a Democratic President to Al Queda via the most tortuous of paths. Like the formula that sells action movies with certainty, I doubt talk radio has any impetus to change.

The political sign in this photo says; "Deakin. For US Senate. Tea Party Activist. Republican." One of the interesting aspects of US political campaigns is how these signs pop up at every intersection and along roads where the is public or dormant property. They are respected as a legitimate part of the political process as they are never defaced.

In Virginia it was common for these signs to be in people's front lawns. Activists would come around and canvas houses and one of the questions would be, "Can we put our sign on your front lawn." In Virginia political season was usually very colorful with signs everywhere.

Arizona is different. People do not put them in their front lawns, but more intersections have these signs as a result. Which is an interesting distinction between the two states.

This sign is interesting as it openly says, "Tea Party Activist" while equating it directly with the Republican Party. The Tea Partiers are a direct faction within the Republican Party. It is impossible to separate the two. It is kind of like the NSW Right in the Labor Party in Australia rather than the Greens or Australian Democrats with are arguments with in the Left of Liberalism.

The Center For American Progress has some easy to understand graphs which track the percentage of nominees approved in the Senate by each President.

The first inference is that the Republican Party's filibustering and obstructionism has affected the number of appointees and nominations that Barack Obama has been able to get through. In modern Presidential history this is around half as many as previous Presidents, even unpopular ones, have been to get nominated.

The effect is reaching down into the lower federal courts as well. The lower courts often have a large back log of cases to see and are overloaded as is. This cannot be helping.

The article argues that is occurring because of the rules in the Senate around filibustering. From the article:

The Senate's arcane rules require nominees to clear several procedural hurdles before they can be confirmed. Most importantly, the Senate must agree to a "motion to proceed" to debate that nomination, and they have to take a confirmation vote at the conclusion of debate. Senators can filibuster either the motion to proceed or the confirmation vote itself.

Once a filibuster is broken, Senate rules still permit up to 30 hours of floor debate before taking a vote. The minority can therefore filibuster both the motion to proceed and the confirmation vote itself, and require up to 60 hours of floor debate before confirming a single nominee.

There are still another forty eight Obama appointees waiting Senate approval. Interestingly the increase in filibusters and the filing for cloture came during President Bush's time in office when the Democrats took control of the Senate. It started prior to Barack Obama becoming President. So it looks to be primarily politically motivated. I can't find any graphs or information that show how much cloture has been used to break filibusters since 2008. Most end on that year.

It is difficult to take the US Republican Party, or their independent off-shoot, the Tea Party seriously at the moment. Given the previous eight years under the Bush Administration and the Congress of Hastert and Delay, I still consider them unfit to govern and they have done nothing recently to make me change my mind on that.

This article argues that Cheney's "Deficits don't matter" sound bite is honest on his part as the Republican Party has been particularly destructive to the deficit when they have been in power;

Of the roughly $11 trillion in federal debt accumulated to date, more than 90 percent can be attributed to the tenure of three presidents: Ronald Reagan, who used to complain constantly about runaway spending; George Herbert Walker Bush, ... George W. Bush, whose trillion-dollar war and irresponsible tax cuts accounted for nearly half the entire burden. Only Bill Clinton temporarily reversed the trend with surpluses and started to pay down the debt ...

During the time of the second Bush Administration the Republican Party held Congress in both the lower house and Senate. The outcome there was no different. Currently the argument is that economically the US requires more government money to be shoved into the economy to fight off recession.

The US Federal Reserve is kind of unique in having a dual political role, maintaining steady inflation, and keeping unemployment low. Whereas the central banks in Australia and New Zealand only have inflation on their plates. So a political argument in the United States is to print money to increase spending.

Cheney meant deficits don't matter politically. You can run horrible deficits up and spend as you see fit and there will be no electoral ramifications for it. His argument was that Reagan proved this. This makes the political pressure the Republican Party is putting on the Obama Administration's economic policy to keep deficits down less powerful.

Then again, the Democrats in Congress have been relatively decent in their economic policy and their spending - short of the wars in the Middle East and the Bush tax cuts which are due to expire.

When Australia was newly federated the Labor Party shared the most policy with the Deakinist Liberal Party. They formed alliances in the early days even. However, the first Labor Parliamentarians acted like the wheeling dealing politicians of old and were quickly wedged or maneuvered out of parliament by the other parties and politicians.

As a result the Labor Party developed the pledge whereby Labor politicians would vote the same way as the Labor party executive determined. This changed Australian politics entirely as Labor was now a voting bloc. Judith Brett writes:

The insurmountable barrier between the Deakinite Liberals and the Labor Party was not Labor's policies not its attitude toward the state, but the nature of the party's organization: the demands which it made on its members to subordinate their own views and judgements to the collective will of the party and the implications this had for parliamentary government.

The problems Labor's organisation posed for the Liberals was particularly apparent in Labor's hostility to alliances. Labor simply refused to play the parliamentary game as it had hitherto been played, and parliamentary leaders found themselves stalled at every turn as they tried to put together workable majorities in the usual way.

This voting as a bloc in the way the party executive requires is known as the pledge and has led to Australian politics being dominated by absolute party discipline. The conscience vote - which Labor does not allow - is the rarity and exception. The horse trading that the American Congress would do where party dissent was tolerated is unheard of in Australia. It is becoming rare in the United States too though. James Fallows commented that in an overhead conversation in Congress:

"GOP member: 'I'd like this in the bill.'

"Dem member response: 'If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?'

"GOP member: 'You know I can't vote for the bill.'

"Dem member: 'Then why should we put it in the bill?'

While the Republican Party only has enough votes for a filibuster in the Senate in order to stop bills coming up for debate, that is a more a convention than a constitutional or legislated rule. But it does seem to show that the Republican Party is able to maintain party discipline - I am not sure where from though; there is no Executive in power and I don't see the US party structures outside of Congress as that strong. The recent purity test was ignored for instance. So I am not sure where it is coming from.

More A speech by Petro Georgiou describes the history of the pledge.

More Cyclical link to John Barrdear who argues that it is fund raising enabling this.

Obama met with the Republican party in Baltimore, made a speech and answered questions off the cuff. I don't fully understand what the event was, but it appeared to be some official Republican party retreat. Obama is skilled at talking and thinking on his feet, easily the equal of a parliamentary leader and the ease which with they talk in the hub-bub of a Westminster style parliament; consequently the Republicans came up lacking but not as badly as they have in the media in the past. From the transcript:

So I am absolutely committed to working with you on these issues. But it can't just be political assertions that aren't substantiated when it comes to the actual details of policy, because otherwise we're going to be selling the American people a bill of goods.

I mean, the easiest thing for me to do on the health care debate would have been to tell people that, "What you're going to get is guaranteed health insurance, lower your costs, all the insurance reforms, we're going to lower the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, and it won't cost anybody anything." That's great politics. It's just not true.

So there's got to be some test of realism in any of these proposals, mine included. I've got to hold myself accountable, and I guarantee the American people will hold themselves - will hold me accountable if what I'm selling doesn't actually deliver.

The US system of Congress does not have the absolute party discipline that the Australian Washminster or British Westminster systems do. In Australia the absolute discipline in brutal; Labor has a pledge and even in the Liberal Party conscience voting is an exception rather than the rule. During the Bush years the Republican Party honed its congressional discipline under DeLay and Hastert. Money and influence adapted to power, along with an absolutist base, and led to the closest thing America has seen to Labor's pledge.

There appears to be some hold over from that under the Obama Administration and the Republican Party is largely maintaining discipline. At least in Congressional votes. Most of Obama's speech and his replies were focused on the frustration at the Republicans for not cutting deals where both sides can gain something out of legislation and do something positive for the United States; or even provide good governance.

Personally I think the Republican Party is currently unable to govern, and has not been able to for the last decade. I don't know when sanity will return to the party, but I am still not seeing anything that would suggest it.

Update: Video of the speech and questions.

Mark Thompson argues that before the Republican Party can provide good governance it must shed a leg from the the three legged stool. The legs are nationalistic conservatism, economic conservatism and social conservatism. Currently Thompson sees that the three strands do not have sufficient cross-sections that they can agree on what constitutes good governance.

Thompson notes that not being able to provide good governance is different to being able to win elections. The Bush Administration was very competent and successful at winning elections. It was woeful at governance. Thomson writes:

Where I think Frum and Douthat, and to a lesser extent Postrel, go wrong is in the assumption that "salvageable" means "capable of winning elections."

The old coalition will remain capable of winning elections, if only because of the inertia of our two-party system. Where it is unsalvageable, however, is in its ability to govern well on a federal level once it is in power unless and until it can chop off one of those legs and replace it with a leg that is currently compatible with the other two.

If a leg must go I hope it is the social conservatives. It is the arm of conservatism I find the most repugnant. Thompson thinks that the Republican Party will be in the wilderness for a considerable time:

[R]ealignments don't happen overnight, and until this one is complete - which will take a good decade or so, I suspect - I don't see movement conservatism being in a position where it is capable of governing competently beyond existing as a possible legislative check against Democratic overreach.

Prior to the Republican party gaining a majority in the House in the early 1990s the Democrats dominated the legislative for nearly forty years. The current back and forth between the two parties in the House and Senate is a very recent thing. The modern history of the legislative in the US has been one of slow oscillations with long periods of party dominance.

The US Republican Party has no legitimacy. After the last eight years of horrifically bad governance, they have no political claim to policy, to governance, or even rational politics. They are a broken and illegitimate party that is echoing an ever tighter and smaller constituency.

It is sad to see a party that should have a legitimate view and say in American politics become one that has sabotaged itself so completely that it follows politics which leave it unable to govern or even contribute meaningfully to good governance.

The stimulus bill is rife with political calculations, supposedly the economic ills are sought to be blamed on Obama with cynical calculations of when jobs will kick in from the money; alternatively the Republicans are rediscovering their principles after fourteen years of majority government and cutting back on spending despite their recent history of wild and profligate full speed ahead on the printing press.

But all those are more talking points for a mass media which requires the drama of a political horse race rather than any definition of good government or empirical policy. The problem is far deeper than that though.

Liberal democracies tend to follow the dictum that bad governance has political consequences. The US Republican Party failed to provide good governance and has left itself politically and publicly illegitimate.