Some supposedly well-informed writers attempt, at the dawn of this election year, with an apparent straight face, contend that the incumbent president “as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name.”  They get away with this because our supposedly even-handed legacy media choose not to report stories which, if they had occurred while there was a Republican in the White House, might generate real headlines.

And now when the president decides to kill a pipeline project which would require no additional outlay of federal funds, but would create jobs, reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil and thus decrease our energy costs, the folks at ABCNews have chosen to dwell on what was once called the “politics of personal destruction.”  As Conn Carroll puts it in the Washington Examiner:

There is only one story all conservatives should be talking about today: President Obama’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline. Like House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, they should be contrasting Obama’s opposition to profitable, privately funded infrastructure, with his unequivocal support for taxpayer funded boondoggles like Solyndra and high-speed rail.

Instead, we are going to be talking about one of Newt Gingrich’s ex-wives, who gave a devastating interview to ABC News earlier this week, which they reportedly will air tonight.

Our friends at ABC aren’t just going after Newt.   They’ve also produced an empty and biased atory on Mitt Romney and Tax Havens. (Via Glenn Reynolds who has a lot of good links and commentary on the hit piece.)  Wonder if this was timed to distract from the Keystone Pipeline decision.  I mean, heck, Obama had until February to make up his mind.  Think maybe he did so now when the focus is on the contest for the Republican presidential nomination?

And isn’t ABC the very network that brought on a former Clinton official who, in a recent Republican debate (as our reader V the K put it) bombarded “Republican candidates with questions about social issues” so they could claim “Republicans are obsessed with/only want to talk about social issues”?

Take a gander at Yahoo!’s front page:
No mention of the pipeline decision. Or of the dribble of news about Solyndra and the politicized funding of “green” technology companies.  Solyndra isn’t the only such company facing financial problems after receiving federal cash.

Seems the only way to promote the image of a scandal-free Obama administration is to focus on the past misdeeds of and sensationalized reports about Republican candidates.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin’s analysis helps us see why the White House announced the decision this week (instead of waiting to give the project more serious consideration):

If it were not for the three-ring circus (apologize to circus owners everywhere) in the Republican primary, today would be really rotten news day for the White House. As suspected, the decision to put off the Keystone XL pipeline is turning into a mini-disaster, even in Democratic ranks.

Read the whole thing!

Every time your Democratic friends and interlocutors accuse the House Republicans of being an obstructionist “do-nothing” chamber of Congress, remind them of this fact: as of today, December 27, 2011, it has been 972 days since Senate Democrats passed a a budget.

And during that nearly three-year period, the president’s party enjoyed a supermajority in that legislative chamber for two full years, with a filibuster-proof majority for almost seven months. January 24, 2012, the same day as the president’s State of the Union address will mark the 1,000th day since the chamber his party controls has passed a budget. Wonder how many media outlets will remind us of that fact.

Oh, and “annual budgets cannot be filibustered.”

It took House Republicans only 104 days after returning to majority status in the House to pass a budget.

Now, to be sure, the president did propose a budget for FY 2012 and it did come up for a vote in the Democratic-majority Senate.  Problem is is that it didn’t garner a single Democratic vote.

Do hope we see more scrutiny of the Democratic budgetary failure in our mainstream media.  But, I’m not holding my breath.

Yesterday, when writing about candidate Barack Obama’s pledge, if elected to meet, the then-leader of North Korea, Jim Geraghty quipped that many

. . . of us are pleased that this promise reached its expiration date . . . but one would like to think that any future presidents would not need to be disabused of the notion that their personal charisma and reasonableness could win over unhinged hostile dictators.

Geraghty’s quip reminds us yet again that part of the Democrat’s appeal was that his supposedly superior temperament would provide the cornerstone for the change his election would herald.  Only problem is, save for the reactions of those to the charismatic candidate’s speeches, no one could provide much, if any, evidence that this man had ever used the power of his personality to reconcile opposing parties or effect real reform.

And his charm and reasonableness certainly haven’t helped transform hostile dictators threatening the United States and oppressing their citizens into benign despots making peace with the U.S. and relinquishing their control over their societies.

In his post yesterday on the House (Republican) bill “to extend the FICA tax holiday”, John Hinderaker explores some issues left unexplored by a mainstream media which seems sometimes all too eager to repeat the administration’s defense of its policies — and criticism of Republicans.

He reminds us that the payroll tax, part of which has been on holiday pays for a popular program:

There are two things going on here, one superficial and one relatively profound. On the surface, this is all about politics. The Democrats, after decades of posing as the guardians of Social Security, have carelessly and out of political expediency undercut the financing of that program in a manner that is likely to be critical. Their only purpose is to be able to characterize Republicans as tax-raisers on the middle class. The Republicans properly refuse to take that bait and instead are going along with the Democrats’ “destroy Social Security first” ploy. This effectively takes the payroll tax extension out of play as a political issue, no matter how the Democrats may try to spin it.

But there is something more serious going on as well. If the payroll tax holiday extension passes–and both parties are now on record as favoring it–the dam will have been breached, and Social Security will be massively insolvent, not at some point in the future, but today.

Read the whole thing.

Seems like this is a tax cut the Democrats aren’t paying for.  (Recall how much the incumbent faulted his predecessor contending that Republican didn’t pay for the policies enacted under his watch?) And wonder why we don’t see more scrutiny of the administration’s insistence on taking money out of Social Security.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  V the K reports some interesting news and offers some insightful commentary:  ”Nancy Pelosi claims that Congress shouldn’t even try to pay for the payroll tax cut extension. So, if deficit spending doesn’t matter, why are they so hot to raise taxes?”

Good question.

From one of the revolving lists of headlines this morning on AOL (“news” content provided by the Huffington Post):

You’d think stories about a federal government program selling guns to Mexican druglords (without informing the Mexican government or putting tracking devices on the firearms) would be just a tad more newsworthy than a Republican presidential candidate’s eating habits.

But, then again, maybe these folks are following the lead of the New York Times which, in reporting on Mr. Romney’s hair, seemed to be following the lead of magazines covering celebrities and the entertainment industry.

Seems we at GayPatriot are not the only ones taking notice.  Bruce shared this tweet with me:

Barracuda Brigade reported:

On Tuesday, the former House Speaker spoke to St. Louis radio host and Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch about this saying, “It’s a little sad to see a paper the quality of the Washington Post stoop to…the National Enquirer approach to life” adding they “would rather worry about rumors about conservatives than facts about the President”

The Republican candidate was referring to the tweet we mentioned here. Can you imagine what the president’s poll numbers would look like if our friends in the MSM subjected him (and his team) to the same time of scrutiny to which they subject Republicans on a regular basis?

Do wonder how much effort our friends at the New York Times have put into investigating the various scandals swirling about the Obama administration, you know, like politicized hiring at the Justice Department, steering subsidies and loan guarantees to “green” companies with Democratic connections, selling guns to Mexican drug lords . . . .

Maybe their reporters are just too busy covering other issues, like, you know, important things, like, well . . .

. . .  Mitt Romney’s hair.

By far his most distinctive physical feature, Mr. Romney’s head of impeccably coiffed black hair has become something of a cosmetological Rorschach test on the campaign trail, with many seeing in his thick locks everything they love and loathe about the Republican candidate for the White House. (Commanding, reassuring, presidential, crow fans; too stiff, too slick, too perfect, complain critics.)

Thanks to my oldest nephew for the tip.  Guess this is just more newsworthy than the various Obama scandals.

If I had access to Lexis/Nexis, I would love to do a search for how the media covered Barack Obama four years ago as he began his surge in polls (of candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination”. As he emerged as the leading “non-Hillary” candidate, did scrutiny of his record increase?

When Michele Bachmann surged in Iowa polls, when Rick Perry entered the presidential contest, when Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll, they were all subject to greater media scrutiny. Now as Allysia Finley reports in this morning’s WSJ.com’s Political Diary (available by subscription), former Speaker Newt Gingrich is now getting the once (again)-over:

Now that Mr. Gingrich is rising in the polls, these issues [concerns about his record] are likely to come back to haunt him. We’re also likely to learn more about his marital problems, ethics violations and lucrative work as a consultant for Fannie Mae. Mr. Gingrich has hitherto gotten a pass on these issues because of his irrelevancy. Now that he’s getting more traction, he should prepare for heavier fire.

Why is it that when Democrats get more traction, they receive media adulation, yet Republicans need prepare for “heavier fire”?

Earlier today, Bruce e-mailed me this tweet, “OMG! Bush told Halliburton to delay announcing layoffs until after the ’06 elections!!!????”  Therein, @robertcurlin linked a Washington Post article that has gotten a lot of conservative tongues wagging:

The Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections, newly released e-mails show.

Solyndra, the now-shuttered California company, had been a poster child of President Obama’s initiative to invest in clean energies and received the administration’s first energy loan of $535 million. But a year ago, in October 2010, the solar panel manufacturer was quickly running out of money and had warned the Energy Department it would need emergency cash to avoid having to shut down.

The new e-mails about the layoff announcement were released Tuesday morning as part of a House Energy and Commerce committee memo, provided in advance of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s scheduled testimony before the investigative committee Thursday.

Read the whole thing.   “Yeah — that’s odd,” Ed Morrissey offers in a mock deadpan:

The DoE requested that a privately-held corporation withhold important financial information from investors until the day after a national election.  But that’s just a coincidence … right?  Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

This means that the DoE knew that Solyndra had begun to fail, and that the cash they provided as part of Barack Obama’s job stimulus wouldn’t actually create jobs.  (more…)

“It would be wonderful,” an Olympian observer wrote on Friday

. . . to see President Obama grilled as the Republicans were Wednesday night in Michigan.What exactly will you cut in the entitlement programs? How will you solve the foreclosure crisis? And we’d like you to answer in 30 seconds while we look at you with the sweet-natured gaze of a cop at a crime scene.

Those who say the debates are hurting the Republicans may be right. There is a freak-show element. But seeing Republicans repeatedly walk through fire may in the end make them seem far more impressive than the Democrat who doesn’t have to. People notice the disparity. And this isn’t a bad time in history to see would-be leaders get nailed, and fight back up.

Reading this in the first two paragraphs to Peggy Noonan’s most recent column made me wonder when Democrats get the tough questions the “moderators” from the mainstream media address to Republicans.

Recall the contrast between the fawning interview then-CBS Anchor Katie Couric gave to the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2008 contrasted to the aggressive posture she adopted to his Republican counterpart, asking the latter tough (and leading) questions about her running mate’s advocacy of regulation, ignoring the former’s revelation of his historical ignorance.

Note how Barney Frank gets all flustered when people pose him tough questions, assuming right-wingers put a student up to ask about the career politician’s role in the financial crisis or walking off set when a CNBC reporter challenged him on his talking point, becoming belligerent when Bill O’Reilly reminded him how enthusiastically he promoted Fannie Mae?

In 2008, did reporters ask Barack Obama how he could have sat in the church of a hateful pastor for twenty years without once ever asking him about his multi-faceted bigotry?  Or his radical associations?  Or about the legislation he sponsored — and promoted — to forestall the financial crisis?

Peggy is right.  The scrutiny will make the eventual Republican nominee a stronger contender against a failed incumbent.  But, our media have, alas, not challenged said incumbent on his failures as they would a Republican on his record — and policies.

NB:  Peggy’s piece is well worth your time, both for a warning she offers Republicans as well as for her paragraph on Herman Cain’s “guts.”

It’s not just CNN.  Glenn Reynolds sums it up:

THE SOLYNDRA-OBAMA TIES: “While everyone else in the political universe is chasing down rumors about Herman Cain making women uncomfortable, Fox News got down on the real scandal: President Obama giving a half-billion dollars of public money to a major campaign donor.”

Wonder how many stories Politico ran on Solyndra or Fast and Furious where the best that can be said for the Attorney General is that he’s incompetent.

Although, we can’t confirm the accuracy of the allegations against Herman Cain, we do know one thing:  the Republican’s alleged dalliances didn’t cost taxpayers a dime.  And yet day in and day out, our news media promote the story as if our government weren’t in debt, the Democrat Senate had passed annual budgets in the last 925 days, the economy were booming and the world beyond our shores was calm.

CNN has become the Cain “News” Network with “breaking news” at the top of every hour (at least when I’ve been watching) on the latest woman to claim he made untoward advances toward her.  All this coverage has buried stories with real relevance to our system of government and our national economy.  Reuters reported last night that a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) with which one Democratic Congressman wanted to “roll the dice” is asking for more money from the federal government:

Fannie Mae, the biggest source of money for U.S. home loans, on Tuesday said it needed a further $7.8 billion in federal aid to stay afloat as a shaky housing market widened its third-quarter loss to $5.1 billion.

The government-controlled firm also attributed the deeper cash drain to losses on derivatives used to hedge its exposure to interest-rate swings and on expenses related to home loans made prior to the 2008 financial collapse. In the year-earlier quarter it had a loss of a $1.3 billion.

Fannie Mae has now drawn $112.6 billion in bailout funds from the Treasury Department since being seized by the government in 2008 as mortgage losses mounted, and it has returned $17.2 billion to taxpayers in the form of dividends.

Now, just a few months ago, we learned that said Congressman, a Mr. B. Frank, helped his boyfriend “land a job at [the] mortgage giant . . . in the early 1990s at the same time Congress was writing legislation to improve oversight of the lender“.  This wasn’t the first time Barney used his position to help a boyfriend.

We don’t know if Barney’s relationship caused — or even contributed to — the mortgage meltdown.  What we do know is that the story generated a little buzz for a few days and then died.  Barney bent over backwards to defend Fannie Mae, an institution at the heart of the financial crisis, a government-backed enterprise which continues to beg for cash from the federal treasury. (more…)

There are many things I would rather blog about than the Herman Cain proposal.  Newt Gingrich delivered a stellar performance in his debate with Herman Cain.  Mitt Romney released a bold plan to tackle federal spending, confront the debt and reform entitlements.  And yet the media have turned the coverage of the candidate into a circus.  So, we blog to put such sensationalism into context.

Barack Obama has been president for two-and-three-quarters years and we still don’t know the specifics of his plan to confront the debt — or reform entitlements.  Meanwhile, his White House stonewalls on Solyndra, refusing to provide documents requested by Congress.  And it’s not just Solyndra.  The White House won’t “cough up requested info” about other troubled companies receiving federal loans.

Now, we read that the White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley is turning

over day-to-day management of the West Wing to Pete Rouse, a veteran aide to President Obama, according to several people familiar with the matter. It is unusual for a White House chief of staff to relinquish part of the job.

Emphasis added.  ”Congressional Democrats,” reports Will Rahn

had criticized Daley, a former commerce secretary under President Clinton, for what some described as his imperfect understanding of the legislative branch, and his tense relationship with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. This stood in marked contrast to his predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, a former Democratic congressman who is now Mayor of Chicago.

This is pretty big news, yet on Memeorandum, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, it is relegated to the middle of the page far below the stories on Herman Cain’s accuser. (more…)

In a post today on PJmedia, Alexis Garcia notes how in all the media hullabaloo over the Cain kerfuffle, “we’re losing focus on the narrative.” (Well, maybe that’s the point.)  She lists several issues raising issues related to the administration’s actual record in office that have not received the same scrutiny this “scandal” without specifics has generated

Two of the items on Miss Garcia’s list parallel issues on my list of questions for Politico (to see how much attention they devoted to scandals involving Democrats).  Since posting that piece, I’ve begun to wonder about other issues which the left-leaning journal has all but ignored, say, Joe Biden’s fabrications in the 2008 vice presidential debate.  Did Politico address those (some commentators identified those fabrications)–and inquire into the then-36-year Washington veteran’s pattern of making things up?

Now, today, the lawyer of one of the woman accusing Mr. Cain has come forward to tell us that he won’t tell us anything, leading Stacy McCain to quip that “Lawyer ethics” meanings holding “a press conference to announce that you don’t want to discuss your smear-job against your client’s former boss.”  As Jim Geraghty puts it, the lawyer in refusing to specify the charges, “is arguing, ’I won’t say what he did, but trust me, he’s guilty of wrongdoing.’“

This is one heckuva way to run a witch hunt.

From the National Restaurant Association (NRA), we learn two (very) salient facts:

1. “Mr. Herman Cain disputed the allegations in the complaint.”
2. “The Association and Mr. Bennett’s client subsequently entered into an agreement to resolve the matter, without any admission of liability. Mr. Cain was not a party to that agreement.”

So, we’ve got Cain disputing the allegations, the lawyer for the accuser refusing to specify the allegations and confirmation that Mr. Cain was not party to the agreement, suggesting the NRA was more interested in resolving the matter than in disciplining its then-employee.

Even without specifics, Politico has run 90 stories on the kerfuffle. (more…)

Over at the Corner, Mark Steyn sees the Cain kerfuffle as just another media-generated distraction from the real issues in those (already) overlong campaign:

What ought to make America “uncomfortable” is that it’s broke and it’s heading for collapse. But, judging from the preoccupations of our media, very few Americans are discomforted by that.

Read the whole thing.

Seems there is a strange serendipity between the Decmocrats’ desire to keep the focus on the Republican candidates’ purported pecadilloes and the the media’s coverage of the said candidates, photoshopping a picture of one, turning over a rock on the property another leased, pulling out the smelling salts when the spokesman for yet another puffs on a cigarette.

This is not to say there are not real problems with the plans put forward by the candidates in question — or to belittle the flaws in their approach or the stands they have taken, but to wonder at the coverage of this campaign.

The nation has a sour economy, our federal government is running massive deficits, administration scandals go unreported, energy developers can’t access our nation’s abundant resources while bureaucrats impose rules on entrepreneurs making it more difficult for them to remain in business, much less create new jobs and those covering the campaign act like they’re envious of reality-show producers.

In an environment like this, it’s no wonder charismatic candidates without records rise to to the top.

Jim Treacher picks up a detail in the Politico report on Herman Cain, “The story has four credited reporters, but the lead is Jonathan Martin.”  (Via Instapundit.)

Four credited reporters?

Four credited reporters and they couldn’t provide specifics about the allegations?  It takes the conservative media to do that.

Tongues are waging in the media — and across the blogosphere — about two women who, in the 1990s, accused Republicans presidential candidate Herman Cain of “inappropriate behavior.”

When we talk about these things, it seems the inappropriateness of the the behavior depends on the political affiliation of the accused.  A Republican who jokes about pubic hairs on soda cans (even when this story has not been corroborated) acts inappropriately and should be universally condemned, but a Democrat who rapes a woman, well, that’s just not news.

Look, I don’t know the truth to these allegations and will wait for the women to come forward before judging the candidate (about whom I already have some serious concerns and whom I do not intend to support in the California primary).  Perhaps when the hype dies down, the facts will come out.

Color me cynical, but given the eagerness of our friends in the mainstream media to destroy any charismatic Republican, well, I think there’s more smoke than substance to this story.   As we learned in the 1990s when the media tried to bury the story of a corroborated accusation of rape against a sitting Democratic president, our media have become fascinated by the story of a Republican farting inappropriately during a business meeting, yet disinterested in a Democratic candidate carrying on an affair while professing to be a loyal husband to a wife dying of cancer.

As Glenn Reynolds wrote earlier today quoting Roger Simon:

Politico And Cain: The Return Of The High-Tech Lynching. “It took the mainstream media nearly a year to catch up with the John Edwards Affair, but only weeks into Herman Cain’s narrow frontrunner status for the GOP nomination, the goodfellas at Politico are letting the uppity black conservative have it.” Ouch. But let’s correct the record: They weren’t slow to cover the John Edwards story. They covered up the John Edwards story. Keep rockin’!

Can you imagine the headlines we would have read in 2007 had the legacy media devoted the same amount of scrutiny to Barack Obama then they are offering to Cain now (and recently offered to Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry)?

UPDATE:  Reminding us that the article contains “a fair amount of unsourced innuendo,” Simon asks if there’s “any way we can ever know the truth of this? Probably not since the parties are said to have agreed to remain silent for a five-figure payment, a paltry amount in this day and age.”

FROM THE COMMENTS:  SoCalRobert tells us that through the 1990s, he was instructed “that this sort of thing is irrelevant. Only right wing religious fanatics pried into the personal lives of politicians.”  Wonder why they didn’t say that at the outset of the 1990s when the entire liberal punditocracy not to mention a majority of Democratic Senators went apoplectic over allegations that a female employee claimed her conservative Republican boss told her about some pubic hairs he found on a can of coke.

While I appreciate Herman Cain’s charisma and his Reaganesque ability to articulate the small government/personal freedom message that has animated our party at least for the last thirty years, I have several concerns about the personable businessman and do not back him for the White House nor do I share my co-blogger’s enthusiasm for the candidate.

In many ways, I see his appeal on the right in the 2012 cycle as similar to Barack Obama’s appeal to the left in 2008 cycle.  Both are charismatic men, running as outsiders to the political establishment.

Only Cain has made clear his commitment to conservative principles in his campaign while Obama obscured his advocacy of big-government notions in his.  And Cain has a record of accomplishment in the private sector — with the concomitant executive experience.  Oh, and the media has scrutinized the Republican’s record with a fine-toothed comb while paying little, if any, attention to Obama’s.

Hugh Hewitt sums it up:

Herman Cain is fun, and he’s generally right.  He has enormous energy and a sense of humor.  He may not be ready to be president, but he was certainly ready to run for president, just like then Senator Obama in 2007. The big difference is that in 2007 MSM supported Obama’s ambitions and that in 2011 MSM pushes back against Cain’s, reflecting the media elite’s valuing of Obama’s Harvard Law/University of Chicago credentials, time in the Illinois State Senate and cup-of-coffee years in the U.S. Senate much more than Cain’s decades in the private sector. (more…)

In yesterday’s WSJ.com’s Political Diary (available by subscription), Dorothy Rabinowitz forecast that the “saga of the painted-over rock on the Perry family hunting grounds will roll on a few more days before it’s displaced by some other invented scandal”. Yeah, our media do seem more transfixed with such invented scandals (provided they involve a prominent a Republican) than they are with real scandals involving the incumbent Democratic President of the United States.

Indeed, it seems that Mr. Perry has already been subject to more scrutiny over his recreational activities than Barack Obama received about his voting record (or absence* thereof), his political associates (and associations) and his theological choices. Indeed, save for the conservative blogs, Jake Tapper’s inquiries and a journalist or two at CBS News, the mainstream media seem unusually indifferent to a variety of scandals swirling inside the incumbent administration.

1. The collapse of Solyndra and the guaranteeing of loans to energy companies enjoying “cozy relationships” with leading Democrats. No wonder the administration is trying to distract us, suggesting Republican opposition to solar subsidies is based on “defeatism.”
2. Gunrunner or Operation Fast and Furious, where the White House deems it “reasonable” for media to ignore a story about our government authorizing and facilitating the sale of guns to murderous Mexican drug cartels.  And where the Attorney General appears to be, um, well, misrepresenting his knowledge of the program.
3. The raid on Gibson Guitar.  (We could almost call this the converse of Solyndra, holding companies whose executes donate to Republican candidates to a higher standard. With Solyndra et al., the Democratic administration doles out federal benefits out to their friends. Here, they use the full power of the federal government against those not deemed friendly enough.)
4. Politicized hiring in the Justice Department’s “career civil service ranks” where the president’s political appointees are trying to ensure that new (supposedly non-political) hires share the administration’s ideological outlook.

Wonder if beyond Jake Tapper and Sharryl Attkisson at CBSNews, anyone in the mainstream media will give these stories the treatment the Washington Post accorded a hunting camp with an offensive name in Texas or the Bush Administration exercising its constitutional authority in firing a handful of U.S. Attorneys.

Seems like we’ve got a “little homework assignment” for the mainstream media.

—–

*Or, should I say “presence” thereof.

From Glenn Reynolds, we learn that Responsibility for debt talks shifts to Congress, away from Obama.   According to the Hill, House Speaker John Boehner . . .

. . . .  told his colleagues that any deal will be a product of congressional leadership – not a compromise struck with the White House, the Republican source said, noting that “strategically not working with the president, but with the Senate could be better for him.”

Boehner was backed up by Democratic leaders Reid and Pelosi, when he said to Obama, “Mr. President, I need to deal with the House and the Senate because we [the White House and Congress] aren’t getting anywhere,” the source said.

Seems to get something done, the Ohio Republican knows he needs to get out of negotiations with the White House.

Given that the House has passed both a budget and a plan to raise the debt limit, we do know the House Speaker’s bargaining position.  But, we still don’t know that of the Democratic leadership.  It’s been 816 days since Harry Reid’s Senate passed a budget and that chamber still hasn’t voted on a plan to raise the debt ceiling.

Do wonder if any members of MSM will ask any Democrats this weekend in various talk shows to spell out their plan to raise the debt limit. And not like Wolf Blitzer did in querying the DNC Chair, offering her various hypotheticals without challenging her to offer specifics, but instead to point to the specific plans they’ve put forward and on which they’re ready to vote.

Seem the GOP already has another debt ceiling plan on tap.