On April 28, 1938, five thousand people gathered in the Livestock Pavilion in Madison, Wisconsin, to hear Governor Phil La Follette announce the creation of the National Progressive Party.  On the stage, behind the small and studious – looking governor, was an immense banner bearing the party’s emblem — a blue cross in a red circle.  It was a shocking and unmistakable takeoff of the Nazi Party’s symbol — some called it a “circumcised swastika.”  Around the pavilion stood national guardsmen in shiny steel helmets, emblazoned with the party’s jarring insignia.
The old parties were “fumbling the ball,” La Follette told the excited, roaring crowd.  The good intentions of President Roosevelt were being “sabotaged, undermined and humstrunt” by dissension in the Democratic Party, and especially by its reactionaries.  For liberal Americans who longed for change, the National Progressives, he proclaimed, was not a third party but rather “THE party our time.”
The party platform, however, puzzled some observers.  “We are near the end of the road,” La Follette exclaimed.  “The time has come when a new trail must blazed.”  Exactly what kind of trail did he have in mind?  The governor refused to offer “blueprints.”  What kind of progressivism was he offering then?  He ruled out “failed capitalism,” insisting that capitalism had become obsolete.  His brand of progressivism, he said, meant no more “coddling or spoon-feeding of Americans.”  The executive branch needed power “to get things done.”  But he opposed military preparedness and hammered FDR’s naval buildup.
His statements were alarmingly, ominously vague.  “We must have a method and be able to act collectively, but preserve at the same time individual initiaitve.”  In a frightening emotional appeal that made short shrift of reason, he declared that only true believers — “those who come with complete conviction and without reservation” — were welcome in his party.
A darkly shadowed photo in Life of La Follette on the podium with his arm outstretched, as if giving the Nazi salute, captured for many the menacing drift of his party.  When asked about the party insignia, La Follette gave the imrobably explanation that the gigantic X stood for the cross that citizens marked on their ballots, a symbol of their inalienable rights.  Interviewed by writer Max Lerner in his office, where he displayed a photograph of Mussolini, La Follette, who had visited Germany in 1933, spoke admiringly of the Fuhrer’s “positive achievements” and energy.
La Follette’s National Progressive Party managed to inspire some Americans — and it also aroused one former president, Herbert Hoover.  The new party, Hoover slyly remarked, might be just the wedge needed to divide Democrats and return Republicans to power. (*) […]
For his part, Roosevelt was seriously worried about a third party threat, though he joked about the grotesque Nazi resonances of the National Progressive Party.  Writing to his friend William Phillips, the ambassador to Italy, the president described La Follette’s dedication of his new party emblem on a twenty foot wide banner.  “All that remains,” he wrote, “is for some major party to adopt a new form of arm salute.  I have suggested the raising of both arms above the head, following by a bow from the waist.  At least this will be good for people’s figures.”

Roosevelts Purge
Susan Dunn
p 106 – 108

(*) Note that this was Hoover was thinking in 1936 with concerns to Huey Long and the eventual “National Union Party”.

If I were Osama Bin Laden, my next video would be composed of five minutes describing exaggerated TSA “groping” techniques.  That’s all.

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming doesn’t want the START Treaty because it’ll send the wrong message to…

The Soviet Union.

If I had a nickel for every time a US politician referenced the Soviet Union as a current entity over the course of the past decade…
And if I had a dime for every time a US politician referenced the Soviet Union as a current entity over  the course of the past decade in manners that suggested something other than a slip of the tongue, I’d have the same amount of money as I had with the nickels.

This sounds about right.

I swear that this will probably pass the Lame Duck session, that just the correct number of Republicans will come in for Responsibility’s sake and this is a game to make President Obama sweat, and frustrate anything else that could filter through the Lame Duck Session.

I’ve eyed Barrasso a bit, and his name and face has popped up a few times.  He was initially appointed by Wyoming’s last Governor under a rule where the state legislator throws three names to the governor from which to select.  So it is the Democratic governor had his selection of three Republicans.  Who were the other two contenders, and did either of them credit President Reagan for ending the Cold War?

Clever Obstructionism…
Supposedly the Republican group who’d vote to Repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” are hanging out for procedural purposes — for some reason, they really want two weeks of floor debate — because this does something respectable to the Institution, or something.
Or maybe it just drags some time out for the Lame Duck session?
Differences between Truman and the Integration of the Armed Forces and this:  Truman’s policy was unpopular.  (Numbers shift around here in 2010 from 50 to 58 to 70 to 78, depending on exact wordage, and suggestions of possibilities of what “revoking” it means seems to come in with that 78 figure — ie, maybe 50 percent want it lifted to allow gays to serve openly, while a quarter would just as soon have them all court-marshalled.)

Time’s a ticking before the Republicans can finally serve the People’s Prioritized Mission and defund NPR.

Joe Bellis, Reform Party Candidate for the US Senate seat in Kansas, received 1.4 percent of the vote.
His campaign website is loud.
From the assistance on “pro-life” in the top banner, it appears he falls on the “keep pushing social issues” ledger in the great “Tea Party Fiscal Emphasis versus Pushin’ Everything” debate.
Didn’t know there was still a Reform Party, did you?
It’s a ghost ballot line, Bellis sought any number of parties as he…
I taken the conviction of Goldwater, the candor of Truman and the values of Reagan to develop a political philosophy that is unique in today’s politcal landscape.
And stuck up the “United We Stand” gif.

The Reform candidate for governor in Kansas received this write-up:

The scrappy third-party outsider is quietly making a mockery of Kansas politics with criminal charges, the resignation of his top aide, and the world’s worst campaign website.
Maybe he fixed the website, but it’s a whole lot better than Bellis’s.  He outran his party cohort by .4 percent of the vote.

Can someone tell me what “GRP” stands for with regard to candidate Chris Wright of Minnesota?  So far as I can make out, it may be “Grass Roots Party”, But alas:

Chris Wright registered with the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board in December to run for governor. He’s a computer technician and former activist with the (now defunct) Grassroots Party, which focused primarily on marijuana legalization.

Maybe he revived it (see too the Whig Party) to get back to its glory days:

Of course, Wright will undoubtedly find it extremely difficult to get these opinions heard without the backing of a political party — major or minor. His previous run for Governor, in 1998, doesn’t inspire confidence in his prospects: he garnered 1,727 votes, or .1 percent of all votes cast.

He did 400 times better this year.

The Florida Whig Party discusses its 2010 results and 2012 prospects here. 

Here are the Louisiana Senate results:

Randall Hayes Lib.  13,952 1.1%  
Michael Brown Ind.  9,970 0.8%  
Mike Spears Ind.  9,188 0.7%  
Ernest Wooton Ind.  8,164 0.6%  
Skip Galan Ind.  7,471 0.6%  
William McShan Ref.  5,879 0.5%  
Bob Lang Ind.  5,732 0.5%  
Milton Gordon Ind.  4,806 0.4%  
Tommy LaFargue Ind.  4,042 0.3%  
Sam Melton Ind.  3,779 0.3%  

The Reform Party, stick up and kicking, came in Sixth in the Third Party Derby.
And to think, he never updated his campaign website.

After contacting and gaining the approval of the Reform Party of Louisiana, William McShan filed the required documentation to run for one of Louisiana’s United States Senate seats.  Stay tuned as he ramps up his campaign as the HONEST and ACCOUNTABLE alternative to establishment politician David Vitter.

For what it is worth, Carlos Alvarez was this year’s Gubernatorial candidate on the “Peace and Freedom” Party in California — a party with a storied tradition.  Alvarez received .9 percent of the vote.
Just so you know:
CA: What makes the Peace and Freedom Party different from the Green Party?

A lot of third party candidates have this “we” habit.

Iowa Gubernatorial candidate David Rosenfeld of the Socialist Workers Party:

Rosenfeld’s candidacy offers liberals unhappy with Culver’s waffling on worker’s and gay rights a clear alternative. But the Des Moines tire-factory worker’s actions — he doesn’t have a website and hasn’t campaigned extensively — evince a questionable campaign commitment. In addition, his anachronistic, “dictatorship of capital” rhetoric is sure to turn off liberal voters otherwise amenable to a left-wing candidate.
— received .2 percent of the vote, and the Editorial Endorsement section on the Daily Iowan probably missed the point with regards to the “Dictatorship of Capital” rhetoric not matching liberal voters’ concerns — this is all about forming a Vanguard against the Rearguard Reactionaries, baby!

The Iowa candiate,  Jonathan Narcisse, meantime, glories in his victory of Double Digit Results in Every County!

Ben Mitchell, Vermont’s Liberty Union candidate, quit the race late in the election campaign and supported the damned Democrat… he’s no David Rosenfeld in terms of CONVICTION with 10 capital letters.  So he ended up with .2 percent of the vote.  How does this stack up with other Liberty Union candidates? 
Dennis Steele, of the Secessionist Movement, received .8 percent of the vote.  The Movement is a ways off.

It appears that Alan Jacquemotte is the last Natural Law Party (which officially called it quites a a national party organization in 2004) candidate on the ballot.  He received .2 percent of the vote in the Michigan Congressional District 12 race.  He ran on the “Millenium Plan”, which does in a weird way involve the square root of 1 percent solution that the Natural Law Party has always had to establishing World Peace in solving issues of Economic Hardship, though escapes the rubric of “Natural Law Party” and moves over to the “Millenium Party” (which does not appear yet established).  He’s also a 9/11 Truther.

The Larouche org is on a bit of a winning streak, so far as these things go, and in so far as the rubric to define “winning streak” is deigning some influence in spheres Conspiranoid and spheres Anti-Semitic in political discourse.  First, the story of the White House plotting the use of the “25th Amendment” to dump Obama got relayed through Iranian TV onto the Drudge Report.  Indeed, even Kesha Rogers’s pathetic showing in her Congressional race has someone somewhere quoting Ulsterman (be sure to look through the comments for some fun birther youtube clips.)

Then Glenn Beck goes into the George Soros files, and if you will:

In return for his generosity, anti-Semites in the new Hungarian parliament accused him of participating in an international Jewish conspiracy to bankrupt Hungary in order to restore communist rule — despite the fact that Soros had been an ardent opponent of Hungary’s communist regime
Anti-Sorosism first arrived in the United States in the late 1990s, courtesy of renowned crackpot Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche has published a number of articles in his comically misnamed journal, the Executive Intelligence Review, accusing Soros of devious manipulations ranging from an attempt to start World War III to running drugs for Queen Elizabeth II’s drug cartel.
But LaRouche’s audience is small, and most Americans paid little attention to George Soros. In 2003, everything changed. Infuriated by the policies of George W. Bush, Soros sent his philanthropy homeward, donating $23 million to political action groups during the 2004 election. Suddenly, George Soros became the most powerful, evil mastermind in the world.
First, the influential conservative magazine NewsMax ran a story that cribbed LaRouche’s conspiracy theories and accused Soros of secretly plotting a “regime change” in the United States. Then Fox News host Bill O’Reilly discovered that Soros’ foundation had donated to the ACLU and therefore reasoned that the billionaire and the civil liberties organization were conspiring to destroy Christmas.
When former Republican majority leader Tom DeLay ran into trouble for ethics violations, he blamed Soros for masterminding critical coverage by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, Time magazine, and Newsweek. And former speaker of the House Dennis Hastert insinuated to an incredulous Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that Soros got his money from drug operations. (Hastert did not mention Queen Elizabeth II, however.)
Glenn Beck, as usual, trumped them all. He told his audience that Soros has a five-step plan:

Or, if you will, the Iranian Government.  Or The Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad.  The item which is seemingly easiest to trace to Larouche:

Beck: His childhood is shocking, dramatic. He grew up in Nazi Europe. Fourteen years old — he had to help the government confiscate the lands of his fellow Jewish friends and neighbors.
He did not grow up in a strong-Jewish household. His mother was a strong anti-Semite — George Soros’ words, not mine — but when he had to go over and take the lands from the people, his Jewish friends and neighbors who were being sent to the gas chambers — I can’t imagine what that would do to a teenager, anybody, an adult.
Well, what did it do to George Soros? In an interview with Steve Croft, Soros was asked if he felt guilt at all about taking the property from the Jews as a teenager. He responded, no. He also said, quote, ‘I don’t deny the Jews their national existence. But I don’t want to be a part of it.’

Always be wary of how people frame Holocaust Survivor Denial stories, where key parts of quotes can easily be dropped right out to form a weird cousin to Holocaust Denialism.

He is also a thug who is deployed as an economic hitman for the British empire.

Hey!  Join the Club!

There’s something at play with Glenn Beck and the use for the “Loved rounding up Jews” canard (also his mother was an anti-semite, and mind you — Beck ‘I’m a Friend of Israel”) which is illuminated by — er, “Real Zionist News“:

As we explore a sampling of Hitler’s early views on the Jews, we shall discover striking parallels to conditions existing in our own day.
And so begins an essay “illuminating” Hitler’s benevolence toward the right brand of Jewry.  It’s not all that important to read it.  But, if you must:

Jewish propagandists would have us believe that Hitler’s unfavorable attitude toward Jewry was based solely on a “racial” hostility between Aryans and the Jewish people.
But as we examine Hitler’s early views regarding the Jewish Question, we do not find a predominantly racial line of disputation, but rather, a social line of argumentation.
Although the future Führer did identify Jewry as having a “racial character” formed by centuries of Jewish insulation within their host nations, he did not ground his opposition on genetic predetermination. Thus, the accusation that Hitler was a “racist” is a Jewish lie.

[Pause to allow everyone to take a shower after being dumped with this slime.]  This sparks this discussion:

Brother Nathanael:  I have been wanting to do this piece for almost a year.
Finally, after struggling in my mind whether to do it or not AND after months of research on the person of Adolf Hitler, I decided to ‘risk’ it and give it a shot.
It’s time, don’t you all think, that we remove the “Jew-spin” on Hitler and take an objective look at the man and what he was all about?

Donna chestergimli  Dear Brother Nathanael,
I would very much like you to give your opinion of Lyndon LaRouche.
He seems to me to speak out of both sides of his mouth.
But I don’t know. He seems to me to be a very crafty individual. Please let me know.

Dear Donna –
With Lyndon La Rouche you have weed out the wheat from the chaff, that is, the FROTHING of his mouth.
Most get totally EXHAUSTED reading him and that can be a real chore.
BUT – he does have SOME good things to say, although, whenever he wants to attack JEWRY, he stops himself because many of his “admirers” and “disciples” are Jews. +bn

It seems to be a rule of Conspiracism that Glenn Beck’s “discovery” missions will land him here in short order.
(Or, if you’re Ed Asner, you dance over here while donating to the last ever Larouche Presidential fund.)

On some level, the Larouche org should be finding Soros in favor, by the definitions of the rhetoric through the Bush Administration.  After all, the reason he has come to be a bene noir to Conservatives and the “Right” is that he’s taken his “support” of Democratic groups in governments in Authoratarian governments, and his support of liberal / progressive organizations and Democratic politicians (note, though, that he found it a bad investment to donate to any Democratic candidate in 2010 — bad election cycle)  in the US goes to the implication that the “neo-cons” are the equivalent of ex-Soviet dictators.

But there you put political stances in quotes.

Once upon a time, Ron Paul was teamed up with Lyndon Larouche on an imaginary presidential ticket.   (Then again … the forum was urged not to believe the hype of 25th Amendment Fever.)

Now, therefore, when you are dealing with the problems we face today, and we are now on the verge of a fascist dictatorship in the United States! But the ushering in of a hyperinflationary form of fascist dictatorship, which is what’s on the way right now, under the new Congress! And you take a case like Rand Paul: This guy’s a Nazi! He’s a killer. He’s the enemy of civilization. And he simply exemplifies a crew that is now recently elected, which is coming in to take seats in January in the Congress, which are fascist, just in the same degree that Adolf Hitler was fascist! And the attempt is going to be made by these kinds of people, called “Republicans” — because they are Republicans who are also human, these are not; Rand Paul is not a human Republican — he’s a something. They will destroy civilization. Because, for two reasons: First of all, morally. They’re not fit. A society which lives under them is not fit to exist. Hmm? No concession, to a Rand Paul, or what he represents: None! Crush him! Because, if we don’t, we lose our nation. We have to think in those terms.

To recap:  Rand Paul is not a human Republican.  And the Larouchies will not, I repeat WILL NOT be compromising with Rand Paul.

Wow.  This means War.  Rand Paul fans versus Larouchies.  Check it out!

We “tolerated” the LaRouchites’ ‘all hail FDR’ and their BULLSH*T “American Economic” NON-EXISTENT System NONSENSE.

NO MORE.

OUR ANSWER? You want FDR? You want GOLD Confiscation? YOU want Japanese Internment Camps? You want FalseFlag LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose) the likes of Pearl Harbor? You want the NON-EXISTENT Alexander Hamilton, the King George, UK, and Bank of England SPY, and his National Bank System?

I say, YOU Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, whom we have on and off respected your illustrious deconstruction of the City of London banking operation and how they undermine the American Constitutional Republic, have DECLARED YOUR OWN SELF, as the ENEMY of the Constitution and the Republic.

LaRouchites feel they “MUST DESTROY” Rand and what he stands for? Then, WE MUST DESTROY LaRouche, WHENEVER the likes of these idiots http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8 that invariably WILL show up at Rand’s speaking engagements in the future; this Lyndon LaRouche’s declaration PRECISELY MEANS THAT type of confrontation WILL HAPPEN. NOT IF, IT WILL HAPPEN.

Hm.  If it makes it any better, he expressed a fondness for Ron on his last video.  But… as for throwing them out when they yell like that, the Larouchies will just run it like they did the Kesha Rogers meeting at the Houston area Democratic Party meeting.

I gather that they were thrown off balance by the existence of a video camera at their supposed open meeting, meaning that they probably couldn’t discuss what they really intended to discuss, which was probably to pass along orders from some oligarchical agent. When the LPAC members expressed coherent political thoughts, everyone else knew that didn’t belong, and they were ejected by a few likely witches schooled in the art of slimy tactics and confident of the support of organized Satanism, of which Houston is a hotbed, and which recognizes LaRouche as their mortal enemy.

Don’t forget that LaRouche was the

My last post failed to include some thoughts from Walter Lippman, that generation’s David Broder, as the nation ambled through a tedious and pointless election.  Mind you, take as an after-thought the premise that the nation’s pundit class had since the Election of 1946 — Truman was a Dead Man Walking and his Presidency should be written in the past tense.  That’s kind of the least remarkable thing about the premises Lippman was working with:

October 18, 1948.
The concrete issue remaining between Mr. Truman and Mr. Dewey is whether the Democrats or the Republicans are to “organize” the Senate.  What is at stake, or at least what may be at stake, in all this travelling which is so tiresome to the candidates and in all the speechmaking which is so tiresome to the audiences, is not the Presidency, not the House of Representatives, but the Senate.
That is the only substantial reason left why Mr. Truman and Mr. Dewey continue, as the first Marquess of Halifax put it more than two centuries ago, “throwing fireballs to put men into heat.” . . .
There is a very easy way out of this predicament.  A handful of Democratic Senators who are not themselves candidates this year, have only announce that if the control of the Senate depends on a few extra votes, they will abstain from voting and permit the Republicans to organize the Senate.

The reference to the “first Marquess of Halifax” rises Lippman above this political nonsense — why or why can’t Truman and Dewey just pull a Martha Coakley on us and express his disdain for all this “Whistle Stop Tour” nonsense?
The threat that the elections will result in a split Congress — one party holding the Lower Chamber, the other the Higher Chamber, is a “predicament” — I guess a wrinkle in Constitutional Government which threatens its very underpinning somehow or other.  We’re just one stop from a Constitutional Crisis.  To avert it, some Democratic Senators should really selflessly sacrafice their political ambition and give the Republican Party control of the Senate.
 — Really, though, Truman should have resigned two years ago and put Vandenberg in line as his replacement.

Let’s transport Lippman to the year 2010 and have him weigh in on Joe Miller’s struggle to defeat Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.  Some challenged ballots:

Somebody wrote in “USA Murkowski”, right?

Lisa Munkowski?

This is one of those famous protest votes.  The voter was clearly mocking the “Write in Process” by writing the small “w” over the name, which was supposed to be mocking Lisa Murkowski for running in the first place.  As per Joe Miller’s lawsuit, this ballot really should be counted to Joe Miller’s total:
So protest voters were trying to send a message to the candidate. The state has failed to create any guideline or standard that would account for the intent of the voter who intentionally cast a protest vote. To the contrary, the state is indicating that it will now count a protest vote, deliberately cast with a misspelling as a vote for Murkowski. This effectively nullifies the protest and falsely inflates the vote for the write-in candidate. In short, the state has become a super-voter and will override voter intent and recast the votes for the candidate the state chooses.

This is Joe Miller’s last and only chance at elected office, and he’s clinging to it with dear life.  Though:

The lawyers have started leaving, perhaps the surest sign Joe Miller’s chances of becoming the next senator from Alaska are evaporating. With each passing day that election workers in Juneau manually count write-in votes cast for Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, it appears increasingly likely Alaskans spell too well for Miller’s math to work.
Assisted by lawyers sent by the Republican National Senatorial Committee, Miller campaign workers set out to challenge every smudge, stray mark and misspelling they could find on write-in votes that appeared to be for Murkowski.
The plan was to question enough votes to close the 11,000-vote margin by which he trails.
By Saturday, the state had determined that 98 percent of write-in ballots were cast for Murkowski. And although several thousand absentee ballots remain to be counted, it was unlikely Miller could pick up enough votes to win.
Ben Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer brought to Juneau to work for Murkowski, left late Friday. At least three of the seven lawyers the National Republican Senatorial Committee hired to help Miller were gone by Saturday.

Let it be said that there was a way out of the predicament, and it was followed.

We’re in a bit of a silly season with a lot of political commentators that really should know better.  For instance, George Will wrote an editorial saying farewell to President Obama, and it remains to be seen whether he can stand by its sentiments should Obama prevail in the 2012 Election, under the rubric of “changed man, ran counter to quote-in-quote ‘Progressivism'”.

Larry Sabato  and and Alan I. Abramowitz play the game well.

Historically, incumbent presidents who have sought another term have won them by a two-to-one margin. Those aren’t impressive odds. How many of us would bet on a horse with minimal chances like that? Since 1900 only one incumbent president whose party captured the White House from the other party four years earlier (Jimmy Carter) has been beaten. The other incumbent losers—Taft, Hoover, Ford, and the senior Bush—were from a party that had held the White House for two or more consecutive terms. But the key is that Carter and Obama are practically twins; both won the Nobel Peace Prize. Enough said. Moreover, the present moment is unprecedentedly perilous for an incumbent president. There’s really no comparison in the existence of the American Republic, save for about a dozen crises like the Civil War, economic panics, the Great Depression, world wars, and 9/11.

Democrats may also place false hope in the fact that the next presidential election will have a turnout twenty full percentage points higher than we saw in the midterm—probably about 40 million more people than voted on Nov. 2. No doubt these “midterm-missing” voters are disproportionately 18-34 years old and members of minority groups, segments of the population that backed President Obama by margins ranging from 62% to 95% in 2008. Obama can’t seem to get them to cast a ballot except when he’s on the ballot. Well, yes, he’ll be on the ballot in 2012, but they’re likely disillusioned with him, too.

If you were reading that column, and you knew the form well, when you reached the list of quotations, you knew full well the quotes came from 1994…
… or 1982…

or… further down the track toward election date…

And the real reason for playing down this Truman impeachment threat is that (1) it won’t be necessary — the real impeachment is already on its way and will be delivered November 2nd. — John O’Donnell,  August 9, 1948.

President Truman could resign.  That’s specified under the Constitution.  In that event, Republican Speaker of the House Martin would become acting President until Dewey was sworn in on January 20th.  Dewey could be named Secretary of State and, in fact, at least, run foreign policy until he formally took over the Presidency.
—John O’Donnell, September 15, 1948.

I can’t get a good search on this particular columnist and who he was and what he wrote over the years, but I’m guessing that John O’Donnell would go on to fervously praise Senator Joseph McCarthy.

That “Impeachment” quote thing, I guess, is why these days Republicans wait for the second term to pull their “7 hearings a week over 40 weeks” to that end.

For a variety of reasons, tapping at the numbers and the circumstances, Obama has more favorable signs of political life (re: re-election) than did Clinton in 1994.  Reagan, meanwhile, reportedly thought about not seeking a second term, a thought that strikes me as ludicrous for Presidential Egos but has been broached by one of the “Silly Season” news pundits:

If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.

We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.

Couple of freaks.
The “Loss of confidence” is an interesting line, and I don’t quite know what it means.  That his party lost a mid-term election is about the size of it.  But if that’s all it takes — shoot, why not go ahead and throw in the towel and… as I saw one blogger sarcastically muse… resign along with Vice President Biden and enter in President John Boehner?

Naturally, such things have  been suggested before.

Soon after the election, Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas urged Truman to resign from office, even going so far as to suggest that the president appoint a Republican, Arthur Vandenberg, as secretary of state. (Under the law of succession at that time, Vandenberg would be next in line to the White House, since there was no vice president.) A former Rhodes scholar at Oxford, Fulbright  analogized Truman’s situation to that of a British prime minister who had met defeat in a general election after losing a vote of confidence in Parliament. Similarly, Fulbright reasoned, since the 1946 election had been a referendum on Truman’s leadership, he should turn the reins of power over to some prominent Republican, who could work with Congress and so avoid a divided government.
Both Marshall Field’s Chicago Sun, one of the country’s leading liberal papers, and the Atlanta Constitution, long the foremost Democratic newspaper in the South, counseled Truman to accept Fulbright’s recommendation.

So, the Republican Presidential Election…
The first debate in scheduled for the “Spring” at the (where else?) Reagan Library…
I hasten to suggest that for everyone’s sanity, as we watch the Reality TV stars and former “Greatest Strategic Thinkers since Winston Churchill” come for the fore with the middle-road Governors and (weirdly enough) Culture Warrior Senators who lost their last election by some 15 points…
if it’s going to have to be “Spring”, the date is June 20.  For everyone’s sanity.