| Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty May 30, 2013 Quick note for tonight's Happy Hour at National Review's D.C. office at 233 Pennsylvania Avenue, Southeast: I will be able to make it but will not be able to make the journey from Yuppie Acres, Alexandria, to Capitol Hill until the sitter arrives to watch our offspring. So I think I'll be arriving sometime after 6 p.m., depending on traffic. The festivities are slated to start at 6 p.m. NR's offices are on the third floor; there's a buzzer. The door is tucked between the Capitol Lounge and the Eye Dr. spot in the Google Maps Street View below: 
BOOM: Quinnipiac Sees Obama's Approval Take a Sudden Tumble For a couple weeks, Obama fans have been high-fiving each other, looking at polling numbers and concluding the public didn't really blame the president for any of the scandals engulfing his administration. Well, looks like they celebrated too early: American voters say 76 - 17 percent, including 63 - 30 percent among Democrats, that a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate charges the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. President Barack Obama gets a negative 45 - 49 percent job approval rating, compared to 48 - 45 percent positive in a May 1 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University, conducted before the IRS allegations surfaced. The president's biggest drop is among independent voters, who give him a negative 37 - 57 percent score, compared to a negative 42 - 48 percent May 1. He gets a negative 9 - 86 percent from Republicans and a positive 87 - 8 percent from Democrats, both virtually unchanged. Women approve 49 - 45 percent while men give a negative 40 - 54 percent score. Americans are divided 49 - 47 percent on whether Obama is honest and trustworthy, down from 58 - 37 percent, the last time Quinnipiac University asked the question September 1, 2011. Eric Holder to Media: Come On, Baby, Let's Kiss and Make Up, Off-The-Record When Obama administration officials make decisions that blow up in their face, isn't it fascinating how their spin playbook often requires them to go before the press — often on background — and recline like in a therapist's office and begin talking about how bad they feel about it all? Or more specifically, isn't it fascinating how often they seem to believe that expressing emotional distress about a bad decision insulates them from the consequences of making that bad decision? John Sexton: President Obama is outraged over the IRS scandal. Attorney General Holder is remorseful over the James Rosen subpoena. Former Secretary of State Clinton is exasperated by Benghazi. Lois Lerner is apologetic for the targeting of Tea Party groups. An unnamed White House adviser is chagrined by his own idiocy. All of these emotive responses to scandal have in common that they help insulate the person doing the emoting from any real responsibility. Holder feels bad about what he has done but that's it. He's not leaving office. Secretary Clinton is frustrated that people working for her denied additional security, rewrote talking points and blamed everything on a You Tube video. But "What difference does it make?!" she blurted out during her appearance before Congress. She feels terrible, just don't hold it against her in 2016. President Obama has been on an emotional jag lately. He was outraged by the IRS targeting of his political opponents, is shocked by the subpoena of James Rosen's emails and (implicitly) repulsed by the drone strike that killed a 16 y.o. American citizen on his orders. It's all very shocking and he knew nothing (except when he did) but in those cases he's going to make sure it never happens again. Matt Welch: As I said yesterday, President Barack Obama's big War on Terror speech will be praised by those "who like words." Sure enough here comes The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, who knows all about "the dark side" of the WoT, with an almost perfect encapsulation of the mindset that perpetuates the very conservative warmaking liberals spend so much energy claiming to loathe: One first impression left by President Obama's much-anticipated speech re-casting U.S. counter-terrorism policy is that of the contrast between Bush's swagger and Obama's anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society. It could scarcely be starker. While Bush frequently seemed to take action without considering the underlying questions, Obama appears somewhat unsure of exactly what actions to take. War, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and extrajudicial assassination are just so much better when the president is conflicted about it all! Hey, the president is brooding over all of this, man, isn't that punishment enough? Now Eric Holder wants to chat with Washington-bureau chiefs to smooth everything out. You see, his aides have been telling the Daily Beast that he's been feeling a "creeping sense of personal remorse." Holder wants to discuss this mess and his views on snooping on the press . . . off the record, of course. The New York Times is starting to realize how manipulative this process can get: New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson has announced that her paper will not attend an off-the-record session with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the Justice Department's monitoring of reporters, due to the fact that the meeting is to be conducted "off the record." "We will not be attending the session at DOJ. It isn't appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department's handling of leak investigations at this time," Abramson said in a statement. "Evidently, there will be a future session with department officials on the substance of how the law should be applied in leak cases and I am hopeful that our counsel, David McCraw will be able to participate in that meeting," she wrote. Now, the problem is not off-the-record talks per se; the problem is that Holder has some sort of argument that he wants to make to the reporters that he doesn't want to share with the public at large. He wants to assure them of his respect for their "unfettered" ability to report the news, in a meeting in which they cannot report on anything he says or does. Mind you , he's been caught setting the table for a future prosecution of a reporter for publishing classified information and perhaps committing perjury before Congress, testifying on May 15 that prosecuting a reporter is "not something I've ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy." Of course, subsequent revelations about the Rosen case appear to be a blatant contradiction of that testimony. Now Holder wants to get the press to take it easy on him, and he doesn't want his arguments quoted in the papers. Allahpundit at Warmer-than-warmAir.com writes, "How many off-the-record, on-the-QT, and very-hush-hush meetings have Obama or his lieutenants scheduled with favored members of the media lately? There was the one with the White House press corps on May 10 to talk about the IRS scandal that began as off-the-record but ended up as 'deep background' after people started murmuring about it on Twitter. There was the instantly-infamous one on May 21 in which online Obama-water-carrying glitterati were called in for a consultation on Scandalmania. There was another onelast Thursday with foreign-policy reporters after O's big speech in which he tried to B.S. them about his drone policy having changed when, evidently, it really hadn't. And now here's Holder, willing to talk to the press about how sorry-ish he is for rifling through their phone records and e-mails in pursuit of leakers but not willing to do it in a forum where anyone outside the room will know what he said. Free idea for the media: Why not insist on a televised Holder press conference instead? This whole 'remorse' shtick is pure theatrical garbage designed to save his job. If he's determined to perform, make him perform in front of an audience. Let's see what sort of crocodile tears he can muster when the camera's on." Ace: "Think about the point of a Secret Briefing. By definition, reporters are not permitted to report on it. Right? So what is the purpose? The purpose is to *influence* their reporting, only. To provide background spin. The spin will not be reported, but it will show up in copy." The Bachmann Departure: Addition by Subtraction? With Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota not running for reelection, perhaps it's time to take a second look at James DeLong's May 22 NRO piece pointing out that the Congressional Tea Party Caucus, founded by Bachmann, withered on the vine for much of the past two years: The IRS's targeting of conservative groups raises many questions. Mine is: "Where the heck was the Congressional Tea Party Caucus while this was going on?" The answer is: "Nowhere." And the obvious conclusion is that the present CTPC should disband and clear the field for others. The CTPC was formed in July 2010, with Michele Bachmann as the spark plug and chair. Some tea-party activists were suspicious, fearing that the caucus represented an effort to ride the coattails of the tea-party movement, or maybe to co-opt it rather than help it, and they turned out to be right. The caucus issued fewer than a dozen press releases between its founding and July 2012, after which updates became even rarer. Its website has little content and does not even list current members… As the IRS revelations grow more appalling, the torpor of the CTPC becomes more baffling. As early as 2010, Democratic senator Max Baucus urged the IRS to investigate 501(c)(4)s, and in February 2012 seven more senators wrote the IRS. Both referenced conservative groups, though not specifically the tea parties. For the past two years, though, tea-party stories from the grassroots have been accumulating. In 2012, IRS officials went before congressional committees and lied. CTPC did nothing. All of this mattered. One of the stories of the 2012 election was the superior ground game of the Democrats, whose voters turned out while many Republican sympathizers stayed home. And who were these Republican absentees, by most accounts? They were working-class people and small-business owners, the demographic groups most in tune with the tea parties. These voters could have been reached by the education efforts of the 501(c)(4) organizations that the IRS was aborting. Looking back on Michele Bachmann's four terms in the House . . . What is her legacy? How did she move the ball forward on the issues she cares most about? Because we know she was very, very good at promoting Michele Bachmann. Our old friend David Freddoso is now at the site Conservative Intel, and he summarizes how Bachmann's departure from the 2014 field will free up a lot of conservative donors' cash that was, he argues, not well spent in previous cycles: - In 2012, she raised $14 million for her House race, nearly all of it from small individual conservative donors. That's nearly ten times what the average winning House candidate raised.
- Bachmann spent $12 million of that to win re-election (just barely) to a completely safe House seat that Mitt Romney was in the process of carrying by 15 points. Think about that: She outspent her opponent six-to-one and still won by only 1.2 percentage points in a 15-point Romney district. (Update: It's also worth noting that neither the DCCC nor the DNC reported spending a dime against her in 2012.)
- This was not the first time Bachmann has spent big money on a seat that shouldn't be competitive. In 2010, she raised $13.6 million and spent $11.7 million to keep the seat (also safe then at McCain +9), winning with 52.5 percent over a fractured field.
- Aside from John Boehner (who gave away most of the money he raised to the NRCC and other candidates) and Allen West (who at least was running in a competitive seat), Bachmann raised and spent more money than any other candidate for the House in 2012. (That's not counting the $9 million she raised for her presidential bid.) She was also the record-holder in 2010.
- Bachmann has never received more than 53 percent of the vote, despite having ample resources for party-building and a very Republican district. Eighty-six percent of her campaign donations in 2012 came from out-of-state — a sharp contrast to other House conservatives who might come to mind, such as Steve King, Tom Price, Tim Huelskamp, or Steve Scalise, who all take most or nearly all of their money from local sources.
In a bit of coincidental timing, Bachmann faces a lawsuit that could be nothing or could be something to keep an eye on: "A trial date has been set in an Iowa lawsuit alleging that Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., stole and misused an e-mail distribution list maintained by an Iowa home school group during her failed 2012 presidential campaign. This morning, the seven-day trial in Heki v. Bachmann was scheduled for May 14, 2014, court records show." News Junkie Hipster-ism and 'The Real Scandal' If you'll allow me to quote Matt Welch twice, he articulates an irritation buzzing around the back of my head: pundits' all-too-frequent declaration that whatever scandal is in the headlines is an obviously frivolous and inconsequential distraction, and that they've figured out what we really ought to be talking about if we're serious, thoughtful people. You know . . . "the real scandal," as they incessantly declare. But the real party comes when you search on "the real scandal." So much to choose from! There's "child poverty" (Jesse Jackson, Chicago Sun-Times), "political gridlock" (Ned Barnett, Charlotte News & Observer), "the Republican party's devotion to grandstanding over governance and its preference for slime over substance" (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., The Huffington Post), "secret money influencing US elections" (Ari Berman, The Nation), "that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way" (Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker), that "they let General Electric not pay any taxes" (Michael Moore, HuffPost Live), sex abuse in the military (Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post), and even "the IRS itself" (John Tamny, Forbes). This is like news junkie hipster-ism. "Oh, you're following that news story? Pshaw. I was following that story years ago. The really important story now is [some obscure story they're fairly certain you haven't read about yet]." Now, some of those items are real problems, e.g., child poverty and sex abuse in the military. But only a fool would argue that the existence of one problem automatically de-prioritizes any other problem. Maybe there's a lot of big problems in our government and society that the American people should be concerned about and try to solve or improve. Maybe we really have a lot of scandals going on. The real scandal, you could say, is that we have so many real scandals going on. ADDENDUM: Arthur Kimes spots a bit of a hitch in the arguments of conservative lawmakers who retire before their time: "A. 'Government is too powerful!' B. 'I can be more effective in our effort to limit the power and size of government by working outside of government.'"
NRO Digest — May 30, 2013 Today on National Review Online . . . To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com
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