On the Fiscal Cliff, Republicans Got Nothin’

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Daniel Gross, writing for The Daily Beast:

The reality should be seeping in to viewers of the Sunday shows that the Republicans don’t have a game plan. They don’t have a single, specific proposal to avoid the fiscal cliff. And even if they had one, they don’t have a roadmap to get there. They keep expecting Obama to come back with something more to their liking, which they’d also reject. Many Republicans literally don’t understand what is happening. Sen. Charles Grassley tweeted over the weekend that he was frustrated that President Obama hadn’t embraced the recommendation of the Bowles-Simpson Commission. Apparently, he is one of the many people in Washington who doesn’t understand that Bowles-Simpson recommended letting the Bush tax rates on the wealthy expire, while also proposing to cap or eliminate deductions primarily enjoyed by the wealthy. Above all, the Republicans have yet to grasp that the field is tilted against them. Republicans have every reason to expect, based on their scouting of past Obama performances, that he will start moving toward them and then, essentially, bargain with himself. But now he doesn’t have to. Right now, the policy choice isn’t between an Obama proposal the Republicans abhor and a preferred Republican proposal. No, the choice is between an Obama proposal the Republicans abhor and the fiscal cliff, which Republicans would like even less and the Democrats could live with for a while. The Republicans are losing, and time is running out. But instead of putting the quarterback on the field and rolling out an aggressive two-minute drill, they seem to be preparing to punt. I really get the sense that our team is winning this fight. Perhaps the first four years of the Obama administration were him building up his list of 'been there done that' situations that he can now look back on to make the right political situations this next go-round. The next four years of the Obama administration might be like the last four of the Clinton one (in terms of the economy I hope, not the scandals).

What Has Gone Wrong For GOP Candidates?

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Nate Silver, at Five Thirty Eight :

More moderate Republican candidates, like Mr. Brown of Massachusetts and Mrs. McMahon of Connecticut, have increasingly sought to distance themselves from the national Republican brand, and sometimes also from the Republican presidential ticket. Some of these theories are speculative, to be sure. A large number of Senate races remain in play: of the several states in which there has been a shift against Republicans in the polls in recent weeks, perhaps only Florida seems completely lost. But if the trend continues, the question may no longer be whether Republicans can win the Senate — but how vulnerable they are to losing the House. Read the entire piece. Let's home this trend continues.

Study Shows Fox News Viewers Less Informed on Major Stories

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From John Gruber, on Daring Fireball:

[Not a joke](http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/21/fairleigh_dickinson_publicmind_poll_shows_fox_news_viewers_less_informed_on_major_news_stories.html)

Study shows that Fox News viewers are less informed on major stories than people who neither watch news shows nor read newspapers regularly. From the article, written by Josh Voorhees on Slate: According to a new poll (PDF) from Fairleigh Dickinson University, if you watch Fox News you are significantly less likely to know the correct answer to that question than if you mostly avoid news shows and newspapers all together. After controlling for factors like partisanship, education, and other demographic factors, the pollsters found that Fox New viewers were 18 points less likely to know that the revolt was successful than their non-active news consuming counterparts. Fox News viewers were also 6 points less likely to know that the Syrian uprising has yet to succeed.

Conservatives, In Defending Hermain Cain, Deny That Sexual Harassment Exists. Really.

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Dahlia Lithwick, writing for Slate:

I have no idea what Herman Cain did with the two, or maybe three, or possibly now four women who have raised allegations of improper sexual behavior about him. I don’t know whether any of them will come forward and run the risk of being labeled a slut for their efforts to do their jobs without being treated like pole-dancers. I do know that—as Amanda Marcotte so eloquently explained this week—the very same people who insist that we don’t know what actually happened all those years ago seem to know exactly what happened: nothing. Sexual harassment is now nothing. Welcome to the era of gender harassment denialism. The harassment skeptics claim that harassment, like racism, used to exist but is now over. Twenty years ago, when charges were leveled at Clarence Thomas, supporters of the accused refused to take the accuser seriously. Now supporters of the accused refuse to take the accusation itself seriously. We have gone from not knowing what sexual harassment is to not believing it still happens. All in less than 20 years. Remember, we don’t know what happened, beyond the fact that several employees came forward with complaints and received cash settlements. That’s not a lot of information. Cain defenders could have stopped there. Instead, great swaths of them have opted to assert that there could never be a valid sex discrimination claim because the whole thing is just a racket. And they went even further: The same folks criticizing the National Restaurant Association employees who came forward with claims that they were uncomfortable in their workplace are willing to deploy the most archaic and gender-freighted stereotypes to get there. Sexual harassment can’t be “real” because the women who claim it are money-grubbing, hysterical, attention-seeking tramps. Read the rest of the piece, if like me, you want your blood pressure to skyrocket.

Republicans Against Science

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Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times:

Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.