News Nuggets 849

DAYLEE PICTURE: A winter scene in Stirlingshire in Scotland.  From the Daily Mail of the UK.

U.S. Fires 1st Drone into Pakistan Since Strike that Killed Pakistani Troops; 4 Militants Dead from the Washington Post
"An American drone strike killed four Islamist militants in Pakistan, the first such attack since errant U.S airstrikes in November killed two dozen Pakistan troops and pushed strained ties between the two nations close to collapse, Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday."

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, Iran Nuclear Expert, Dead In Car Bomb from the Associated Press via the Huffington Post
"Two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and his driver Wednesday, reports said. The slayings suggest a widening covert effort to set back Iran's atomic program."

Beijing and Tehran's Coming Divorce (Ilan Berman) from the Wall Street Journal via Real Clear World
"Is China finally coming around on Iran? For years, Beijing's steady backing has helped the Iranian regime frustrate international efforts to isolate and penalize it for its nuclear ambitions. This month, however, there are heartening signs that China is reassessing its longstanding strategic partnership with the Islamic Republic."

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in High-level US Talks from Agence France Presse
"Washington has been reaching out to the Brotherhood in a nod to Egypt's new political reality, with Islamists poised to dominate the first parliament since a popular uprising ousted veteran president Hosni Mubarak in February. US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns "will meet leaders of the (Brotherhood's) Freedom and Justice Party at their headquarters in Cairo," FJP spokesman Ahmed Sobea told AFP."

Obama Builds on His Mojo (Justin Frank) from Time Magazine
"The President continues to discover that confronting aggression doesn't destroy his drive to be bipartisan — it strengthens it."

Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension from the New York Times 
"Friction between the rich and poor is the greatest source of tension in American society, according to a new survey."

Blue Collar GOP: Not Your Father’s Republican Party (Matthew Dowd) from ABC News
"While many still say the Republican party’s base is that of Wall Street and corporate America and big business, the real base of the Republican Party has become much more about working class (especially white males) in rural and small town areas of the country.  This is where there is a great appeal of Sarah Palin’s and Ron Paul’s populist rhetoric attacking big government and corporate corruption and Wall Street excess.   This is where a big part of the anger of the Republican Party is and of the Tea Party movement. If the attacks on Romney related to Bain are done effectively and consistently and wrapped in a broader argument questioning his authenticity, it could really hurt him..."

The Meaning of Mitt (Michael Kranish and Scott Helman) from Vanity Fair 
"Mitt Romney has long been a front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination—even if no one really knows who he is. Digging into the candidate’s record as a Mormon leader, his business deals at Bain Capital, and that infamous car trip with the family dog strapped to the roof, Michael Kranish and Scott Helman pierce the Mitt bubble in an adaptation from their new book, The Real Romney, to find that the contradictions, question marks, and ambivalence go deeper than his politics."

The Republican Contest from the Editorial Board of the New York Times  
"The Republicans ritually denounced President Obama as hostile to capitalism, disdainful of individual enterprise and lacking in ideas for reviving the economy. All they had to offer were economic ideas that not only are inadequate for that purpose but were instrumental in creating the nation’s current economic problems."

Mitt Romney, The Man They're Settling For (Howard Fineman) from the Huffington Post
"His campaign slogan could be, "Romney: Because He is Available, Plausible and Not Entirely Objectionable." And it's working. Why?"

Haven't We Lived Through This Primary Before? (David Weigel) from Slate 
"I'm thinking of a Republican primary. It starts with a candidate (John McCain/Mitt Romney) who ran once before, came in second place, and won over the party's elite class without winning over its base. Other candidates, understandably unwilling to accept this, line up: An under-funded social conservative (Mike Huckabee/Rick Santorum), an elder statesman who's walked to the altar three times (Rudy Giuliani/Newt Gingrich), a libertarian who wants to bring back the gold standard (Ron Paul/Ron Paul). The conservative base is displeased. In the year before the primary, it pines for a perfect candidate. At the end of summer, on (September 5/August 13), it gets him: (Fred Thompson/Rick Perry). The dream candidate immediately rises to the top of national polls, but collapses after lazy, distaff debate performances... The Republican base looks at the wreckage and shudders. It can never allow this to happen ever again."

The Perfect Storm That Could Sink Romney’s Hispanic Vote Hopes from Talking Points Memo
"... the primary is about to spread to the rest of the country where the Latino vote is significant. Once in the general election, that vote becomes crucial. But Romney is not on track to win over the requisite number of Latino voters, who will be key to winning swing states like Florida, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. Moreover, the Democrats may have stumbled into a neat situation that could give them an unusual boost."
All of this (and more) virtually ensures that Florida senator Marco Rubio will be the first person Romney invites to be his VP later this year.

Below, we see what some notable conservative commentators are saying: 
Never has a Winner Looked so Beaten (John Podhoretz) from the New York Post
"Perplexing but true: Mitt Romney is on the glide path to the most easily secured nomination a Republican presidential candidate has ever had — while being one of the weakest major candidates either party has ever seen. ... Romney has been the only serious candidate in the race. ... But nobody loves him. No one is inspired by him. He cuts an impressive figure and is clearly very intelligent, but he is a man without an ideological core."

The ABR Underground (John Heilmann) from New York Magazine
"A grassroots movement is growing among Republicans. Its motto: Anyone But Romney. Can it make the front-runner fall?"

RINO Romney Is the Least Electable (Peter Ferrara) from American Spectator 
"Given his background and who he is as a rich Wall Street takeover artist, he personally may be right about that. Who is going to take seriously a Wall Street millionaire calling for tax cuts for millionaires? That is why he personally is not a good vessel for carrying the Republican standard this year. He is actually a perfect caricature for the neo-Marxist class warfare arguments of Obama and the Occupy Wall Street rabble. That is one reason why Romney, in fact, is the least electable."

Conservative Activists Scramble to Stop Mitt Romney from the Washington Post
"A near-panic has taken hold among some core conservative activists, who are now scrambling to devise a strategy to deny Mitt Romney the Republican presidential nomination."
Too late.  I think the way this GOP primary season has gone further underscores the diminishing influence of the Tea Party both in terms of its hold on the GOP establishment and on on the American public generally. I find it astonishing that, given how much time and money Romney has spent in Iowa and NH, he really gained so little in real numbers over time and compared to 2008 -- and yet he is still (seemingly) walking away with the nomination!  Tea Party and social conservatives (both the candidates and the voters) showed themselves to be breathtakingly incompetent and incoherent and very easily divided by the most transparent political tactics.  It is deeply ironic that, here we are in the great era of the Tea Party -- and yet the nominee (Romney) has virtually nothing in common with those voters!  Where this becomes especially interesting is when you look at the BIG MESSAGE the Romney folks have settled on for the general election: "Obama doesn't believe in America's greatness."  As I noted yesterday, this message is exceptionally lame for all kinds of reasons -- but one reason I didn't mention was that it's a message that really only resonates for the hard right-wing.  In essence, the Romney folks are going to spend God knows how much of their general election time continuing to try to buy the loyalty of the GOP base.  As a CENTRAL ELEMENT of their strategy going forward, they have already concluded that they will need to on-goingly shore up Romney's support on the right.   They will not be able to move cleanly to the center.  Stunning.

And then there's this:
Mitt Romney: Questions About Wall Street, Income Inequality Are Driven By 'Envy' from the Huffington Post
"Romney -- who won the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night -- attacked Obama for promulgating the "politics of envy" during a Wednesday interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's "The Today Show." Though his attack was mainly directed at the president, Romney's "envy" remark came after Lauer asked about the concerns of "anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country." "I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare," Romney said."
Here again, as with the "I love to be able to fire people" line -- even in context, what a stupid thing to say in the current economic climate.  What does he think -- that somehow this will buff up his image with the white working class, the folks who are now the bedrock of the GOP (see the story above)?  As I have noted here, I used to assume (and many continue to assert) that Romney is a pretty bright egg.  I'll certainly concede that he is smarter than Bush and his GOP rivals -- but I suspect that (at least when he is allowed to rome free in public) he is not nearly as smart as many have said.