The WSJ is the voice of the DC-New York GOP establishment, and that voice was crackling with anger and tears on Tuesday.

Let's just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been re-elected: Republicans deserve to lose.

Well, yes. They deserve to lose because they've learned nothing from spectacular failures of the Bush/Cheney years and are doubling down on every right-wing fetish: Even lower taxes! Even more wealth inequality! Even more war! Even fewer regulations! Let's deport 12 million people! Let's bring back child labor!

But I digress.

Above all, it doesn't matter that Americans are generally eager to send Mr. Obama packing. All they need is to be reasonably sure that the alternative won't be another fiasco. But they can't be reasonably sure, so it's going to be four more years of the disappointment you already know.

But won't Newt beat Obama in the debates?

A primary ballot for Mr. Gingrich is a vote for an entertaining election, not a Republican in the White House.

Ouch. But...but...don't we need a businessman to create jobs?

On the evidence of his campaign, Mr. Romney is a lousy CEO.

Oh, snap! And the big finish!

...the U.S. will surely survive four more years. Who knows? By then maybe Republicans will have figured out that if they don't want to lose, they shouldn't run with losers.

Just brutal.

Cheer up, WSJers! There's got to be a Bush lying around somewhere for 2016. In the meantime, please note that Newt and Willard are advocating exactly the same policies you've cheered on for decades.

Suck it up.

Open thread below...

This is why we can't have nice things. When a top campaign official not only admits, but boasts about spinning propaganda in the form of a campaign commercial, we're lost. Thomas Edsall of the New York Times got this straight from a top operative for the Romney campaign:

“First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”

Of course ads are intended to persuade. But that doesn't really mean they should lie. As Heather pointed out, this was Lawrence O'Donnell's central point in his rewrite of the original ad. And Digby is even more pointed about it:

I'm not sure why we should be shocked by these Romney operatives taking credit for a dishonest campaign ad since operatives do it all the time, but I guess it's just the arrogant openness about their rank dishonesty that makes it remarkable:

[...]

Those Romney operatives aren't fools and they know they can get away with lying as long as the press decides they can get away with it. Whether it's because they want Romney to be the nominee or because it fits with their narrative about Obama or some combination of the two, they are very likely to let this pass or even allow it to become part of the CW, thus kicking in Cokie's Law, which says "it doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's out there." Fact checking only matters if the press wants it to matter.

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Earlier this week Pew Research published the results of a study of how media -- broadcast, print and blogs -- have covered the 2012 candidates for President. One candidate in particular had remarkable numbers, particularly when it came to how much of the coverage was negative, versus positive. Who was it? Bachmann? Perry? Cain? If you guessed any of those three, you guessed wrong.

One man running for president has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment of all, the study found: Barack Obama. Though covered largely as president rather than a candidate, negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-1. Those assessments of the president have also been substantially more negative than positive every one of the 23 weeks studied. And in no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the president positive in tone.

These are some of the findings of new work by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism that combines PEJ’s ongoing weekly content analysis with computer algorithmic technology developed by Crimson Hexagon. In combination, the two research methods assess coverage across more than 11,500 news media outlets each day. A separate analysis also tracks the level of discussion and tone across hundreds of thousands of blogs. The study covers the 23 weeks from May 2, when candidates began to announce, to October 9, one week ago—that first phase of what might be called The Media Primary.

The blogosphere, it turns out, is proving a much rougher environment than the news media for candidates, including contenders associated with the Tea Party movement. But one candidate has emerged as the winner of the blog primary so far—Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

But wait, there's more. Guess who keeps getting happy, happy glowing coverage?

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Tonight is the Big Republican Debate on Fox News. Candidates appearing are Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich. And of course, ever present in this debate will be the corporate "persons."

Fox will be livestreaming it here, or you can follow my live-tweets on Twitter.
Discuss. :)

I may chime in on Twitter @JohnAmato

President Obama had some opinions on the 2012 field of Republican candidates. I think my favorite was his message for Michele Bachmann.

Michele Bachmann is here, though, I understand. And she is thinking about running for President, which is weird, because I heard she was born in Canada. [laughter] Yes Michele, this is how it starts.

Tim Pawlenty:

He seems all-American, but have you ever heard his real middle name? Tim Hosni Pawlenty? What a shame.

Jon Huntsman:

Now, there's something you might not know about Jon. He didn't learn to speak Chinese to go there. Oh, no. He learned English to come here.

On Mitt Romney:

There's a vicious rumor floating around that I think could really hurt Mitt Romney. I heard he passed universal healthcare when he was Governor of Massachusetts. Someone should get to the bottom of that. And I know just the guy to do it. Donald Trump.

The Donald Trump comments are about as funny and as withering as anyone could get without descending into the nasty zone. Watch those to see what I mean.

As annoyingly insular as these events are -- and they are -- they're also an opportunity for the President to use humor as a way of disarming ongoing and aggravating personal attacks with some humor and some class, which he really did quite nicely.

Mitt Romney's editorial in USAToday is absurd on many levels, but it's a shrewd political move for a guy who wants to pull the Tea Party away from Sarah Palin's grip. Among the more ridiculous things he says:

In this, as in so many other arenas of government policy, unemployment insurance has many unintended effects. The indisputable fact is that unemployment benefits, despite a web of regulations, actually serve to discourage some individuals from taking jobs, especially when the benefits extend across years.

Let me translate: The unemployed are lazy, on-the-dole idiots who won't work as janitors at McDonald's. I refer him to Susie Madrak's pointer to Slacktivist's elegant and passionate retort as evidence of how wrong he is.

In order to twist his way out of the pickle he's in, he suggests "individual unemployment savings accounts". No, really. He does.

To remedy such problems we need a very different model, perhaps establishing individual unemployment savings accounts over which employees would exercise direct control when they lose their jobs, or putting in place financial incentives for employers to hire and train the long-term unemployed.

Let me see if I have this right. In order to prevent government spending on the unemployed he is proposing...government spending in the form of tax incentives? And this will somehow save money how? Of course it won't and he knows that, but it plays like a waltz with the Tea Party who is all about individual responsibility and the like.

There's more nonsense there, but you get the idea. In order to be viable, Romney will have to run sharply right to cut Sarah Palin and her fans off. He will likely succeed. He will present himself in 2012 as an intelligent, well-spoken candidate and possibly co-opt the faith community in an effort to minimize his Mormonism, which hurt him badly in the 2008 election. He will count on sustained Tea Party anger, mostly whipped into a frenzy by the likes of Judson Phillips, FreedomWorks, and the architects of manufactured outrage as a basis for snagging media minutes and sound bites.

And if he is elected, he will disappoint them all while doing enough harm to this nation that it may not be reparable.

Mitt Romney, who is the GOP insiders' favorite to win the GOP nomination in 2012, went on Greta Van Susteren's show the other night to talk about how much better a job he would be doing than President Obama. But Greta also brought up the, um, *delicate* subject of the Tea Parties.

Of course, we're now becoming accustomed to the Romney flip and flop maneuver. He had it on display here.

First, he was for the Tea Parties ...

Romney: I think it shows a great deal of energy and passion on the part of the American people to say stop, we're going the wrong way, enough already, let's get things right in America. And America is headed in the wrong direction -- this growing government, the increase in taxes, the more intrusivesness of government has made a lot of people very angry, and they want to see change in Washington. They want to see the Washington politicians that have been voting for this kind of intrusive government thrown out of office. And I think it's a good thing. I think Washington politicians need to understand, there's a lot of focus and energy around what's happening, and people aren't going to take it a lot longer.

Afore he was agin' 'em ...

Romney: Well, if there were a third party, and a real intent to create a strong third party, that would obviously be very damaging to the party it drew the most votes from, and if it were a Tea Party party, why, that would certainly be from conservative Republicans. I don't think that's going to happen. I think people recognize right now we're not talking about politics, we're talking about the country.

This is a really critical time for the country, both globally and in terms of our safety and security, but also economically. And if we divide the conservative vote, and therefore hand over to the Democrats more years of single-party rule and Barack Obama another four years, we would have a very different country at the end of eight years of Obama rule.

And I don't think in the final analysis that anyone is going to put their personal political aspirations above the needs of the country.

Maybe I need to clean out my ears or something, but it sure sounded to me like he was saying that voting out Obama transcends politics -- it's a national-security issue. If that's what he said, well, wow.

President Obama has been getting a lot heat since the announcement that the 2016 Olympics would not be coming to the United States. The right has rejoiced in our loss, and Fox News and other right wing media have gone berserk with stories about the Chicago Olympic Committee, and false claims of cronyism and corruption.

Lost down the memory hole was the shame and scandal that tainted the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Eventually led by Republican Mitt Romney and his cronies, the 2002 games were plagued by fundraising woes, bribery scandals -- and the committee was also heavily infiltrated by Glenn Beck's Mormon Church:

Romney communicated his intention to take full command of the Olympics on his first day on the job in February of 1999. A century and a half after his ancestors trudged through Emigration Canyon to help pioneer the valley as a land of the righteous, Romney arrived in a cheerless ballroom in a Salt Lake City hotel. Immediately, he raised a rhetorical scythe at the trustees of the scandal-tainted organizing committee.

Much of the damage seemed to stem from decisions made by two previous executives on the Salt Lake City organizing committee, chief executive Thomas K. Welch and vice president David R. Johnson, who embraced the tacit form of influence peddling that greased the international selection process for Olympic sites.

Vowing not to be defeated again, Welch and Johnson funneled through the committee more than $1 million in gifts to numerous IOC delegates for the 2002 Games - a stunning trove of booty that included cash, college tuition, medical-care payments, jobs, lodging, beds and bedding, bathroom fixtures, Indian rugs, draperies, doorknobs, dogs, leather boots and belts, perfume, Nintendo games, Lego toys, shotguns, a violin, and trips to ski resorts, Las Vegas, and a Super Bowl in Miami. Almost no request from an IOC member went unmet.

Shamed by the scandal - in which 10 members of the International Olympic Committee would resign or be expelled for accepting gifts from the Salt Lake committee - Utah's power brokers believed they needed a new CEO wise in the ways of business, the law, and Mormonism.

Enter Mitt Romney, his buddies and the Mormon Church:

Almost as soon as Romney took the job, however, the Mormon Church's role in the Games became a source of contention - a dispute exacerbated by Romney's request for an additional $8 million in loaned property and cash from the church, among other contributions.

Utah's wealthiest businessman, Jon Huntsman Sr., the father of Utah's current governor, assailed Romney for exploiting his ties to the church. Huntsman himself is prominent in the Mormon Church, which is officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

''We've got a chairman who is active LDS, now we've got a present CEO who is active LDS,'' Huntsman was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune as saying of Garff and Romney. ''They claim they're going out [to] really scour the world to find the best person, and Mitt brings in one of his cronies to be the COO. Another broken promise. Because we've got three LDS folks who are all cronies. Cronyism at its peak. ..... These are not the Mormon Games.' Read on...

Romney came in after the initial bribery scandal, but created plenty of controversy of his own.

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I do like Chris Cillizza's The FIX column for the WaPo on most days and he's been very helpful via e-mails, but what was up with his man-crush on Lindsey Graham after watching him on MTP? Graham is a constant figure on the talk-show circuit and has been for a long time, so I really find it surprising that Chris would almost call him " A New Republican Leader?"

Dispirited Republicans looking for national leaders amid a wash of scandals that have dominated national news over the last fortnight got a bit of good news on Sunday with an inspired performance on "Meet the Press" by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R).

Graham, who spent the 2008 election cycle as Sen. John McCain's loyal sidekick, appeared alongside former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the GOP frontrunner in advance of 2012, and managed to stand out.

Why? Because unlike other Republicans who seem to be so fixated on scoring political points on President Obama, Graham was willing to point out where his own party had strayed while also making a reasonable argument for GOP ideals...read on

All he's every been is a yes man for John McCain ever since I can remember who seems jacked up on Red Bull most days when he's in front of the cameras. I'd like Chris to answer the question I posed on Sunday: Why was he on NBC at all when he clearly is compromised when talking about Gov. Mark Sanford -- because he's Godfather to several of his kids? Maybe that was the reason Chris thought that he seemed a bit more humble than usual? Huckleberry was really close to Sanford and had to be torn up inside over Sanford's affair, but it really didn't stop him from taking shots at President Obama even when he tried to compliment him.

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