Barney Frank

I was surprised when he announced that he would not stand for reelection next year. Put yourself in his position, though, and his decision makes a lot of sense. Being in the House minority blows and Democrats are unlikely to retake the chamber next year. And if - like most other senior congressman - Frank is concerned about his legacy, he can say he already left his mark with Dodd-Frank financial reform. And with the decennial redistricting taking place, the makeup of his district will change pretty dramatically.

I'm sad to see him go because Barney Frank is one of the most surprising characters in national politics. He's a gay man with a voice like Elmer Fudd but a tongue whose barbs are tipped with acid. In an electoral system where elected officials are expected to speak to voters in a tone somewhere between submissiveness and pleading, Barney Frank isn't afraid to deliver a verbal roundhouse kick to the face when the confronted by a clueless constituent. And in an age when Democrats let Republicans run roughshod over them, Barney Frank has always been an articulate, unapologetic champion of liberal values who never hesitates to tell you why you're wrong. Others might dismiss his abrasive manner as rude, but it takes courage to speak your convictions proudly in the face of opposition.

As soon as Romney clinches the nomination

I'm rededicating this blog to viciously savaging him and his perfect family.

Now Newt is in first place

What a bizarre Republican primary. The frontrunner is remarkable only for being in second place on any given month, behind the likes of Donald Trump (gag), Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain (gag).

"Romney has no core"

Before the Herman Cain snafu (show me on the doll where Herman Cain tried to hire you), the big story was the Obama campaign going negative on Romney, trying to define him as flip flopper à la Bush v Kerry. It's about building a narrative and casting the election as a contest of values.

But it's also about preempting what Romney's campaign must necessarily do in the coming months. The president's advantage over the Republicans (and those are few and far between in this economy) is that he has no primary, while the Republicans duke it out over who is Most Conservative®. Candidates running in a primary always follow the same playbook. Cultivate that base during the primary, and hurry toward to the center for the general. By driving home the point right now that Romney is an opportunist, the Obama campaign hopes to handicap Romney's ability to shift positions in the general, which candidates are always wont to do, and Romney the political chameleon perhaps even more so than the average pol. So this puts Romney between a rock and a hard place: does he morph back into a moderate (again) as any candidate would in the general and risk playing into the Obama campaign's central criticism of his character - or does he stand firm, refuse to walk back the extreme positions he's staked out during the primary and risk losing the center?

It's a good set-up if Team BO pulls it off, and it looks like it's working. Since the last Republican debate, Romney opened himself up to this line of attack by suggesting that he wouldn't hire illegal immigrants because he's running for office, and then wiggled his way out of his previous support for an Ohio union-busting measure that looked sure to lose (and indeed failed badly today).

From today's Huffington Post

i was not aware that any man was able to tear his eyes off of it