Vijay Reddy

I agree I'm showing my relative youth and I do understand where you're coming from. Nixon, Ford and even Reagan era GOP legislators were fiscally as profligate as the Dems. I'll clarify that my 'absolutist' argument refers to the post-'Contract with America' GOP. In fact, if it was once kosher for a Ronald Reagan to go along with an EITC expansion, then why be a hardass now? Why not step outside of the Grover Norquist box and do a Simpson/Bowles type deal? Maybe the top marginal rate halfway between 35% and 39.6%?

We have 63% say don't raise taxes but I recall polls with higher numbers for "don't cut Medicare, SS" etc. So what we have is "63% say don't raise MY taxes but I'm ok with raising taxes for the guy who lives in that mansion up the road and drives a Mercedes"

This election may have wiped out the "US is center-right" cliche but we are nowhere near a Western Europe style welfare state. Things like Medicare and Earned Income Tax Credit have been around for decades, so it's not like the pre-Obama, we had this ideal constitutional state to begin with. Fighting the creeping state expansion is still worth about the same now as it was in 2008, right? A simple thought experiment: Let's stipulate that the Latino, African-American and other minorities are irreversibly in the tank for the welfare state. That still leaves >70% of the country. I'd compare that population to someone recuperating from a really bad illness and the death of a loved one. The issue is that the GOP comes across as an a-hole boss who tells the guy - "Tough $hit - either you get your rear-end to work tomorrow at 8 AM or you're fired." In contrast, the Dems tell the guy "In our company, you're guaranteed 6 weeks of paid 'recovery' time and if that isn't enough we'll give you more." I still believe that the guy is fundamentally a hard worker and wants to live off his hard work, but if only he hears a less strident tone from one side. Maybe the boss can give him two weeks off instead of being absolutist.

A minor nit - "Tea Party" used to refer to fiscal conservatives who were sick and tired of the moocher class. I'm not sure when the Tea Party movement got hijacked by absolutist Social conservative types.

FCO, That was an awesome post. Please do share the politician's reply.

I'm not sure any Republican said that but the strident tone, placards in GOP rallies etc. send a message. The audience reaction to Rick Perry's statement during the primary debates comes to mind. On a similar note, chants of "let him die" that we heard during the debates is another one of those "push people away" messages.

I detest the dependent culture as much as the next guy but writing off a huge segment of the country as the unreachable "brown demographic" seems self defeating to me. If you want to draw out themes from last night's results, it can be argued that the GOP won where it focused on fiscal issues, even with hardline 'restructure Medicare' themes and sidestepped divisive social issues. E.g. Retaining the House when the Dems were blasting ads against those who voted for the Paul Ryan budget. In contrast, wherever social issues were in the forefront (Mourdock, Akin), GOP struggled to compete. Several members of my extended family are US citizens and many would be in the "naturally Republican" category (high income, self-made types), but what I've heard over the last few months is a visceral discomfort with the GOP types who wear their religious/social 'purity' on their sleeve. A cousin of mine and his wife had a child through in-vitro and they noted that the "personhood" amendment initiative would have meant that they'd have been condemned to a childless future. A high-school classmate of mine who is a doctor in a semi-rural exurb told me not long ago that he was sick of his local GOP types constantly pushing for Creationism/ID type things in the school curriculum. My sense is that the GOP can no longer pretend to have a coalition of fiscal and social conservatives because the current primary system filters out anyone who is not 100% socially 'pure' and in-fact forces any primary candidate to take weird and extreme stances to prove their 'purity'. That comes with a cost - it sends a message to the 'non-pure' that they are not welcome.

Romney has conceded apparently

Looks like the GOP lost a golden opportunity to flip the Senate thanks to the Rape Caucus stalwarts like Akin and Mourdock.

It'd be ironic if Romney ends up with 47% of the vote

Fox News is turning funereal. Is O going to win that big?

Fox News seems to have a lot of frowny faces when talking about Exit polls. I recall a similar situation in 2004 when exit polls were saying Kerry won but we know how that turned out. Still, my sense is that things don't look good for R/R

RIP to the fallen 25 of the best trained fighters all in one Chinook for what operation? Reports so far don't say that they were after some high value enemies. This is an effing shame and a tragedy for both the US and ANA.

My read on this is that the IAF wanted the US to give its best offering, not just platforms facing retirement if it were to put up with the intrusive post acquisition US dealings. On the civilian side, there was a lot of political pressure applied on the air force at least to include one of the US platforms in the shortlist. But if a US platform was included and the Russians were out, Moscow would be furious. As a result, the govt decided to let the IAF go by the book and present its choices. The IAF leadership was close to losing its patience with the civilians for dragging this thing along. There was no indication that US dealings with Pakistan had anything to do with this particular decision. I'm told that the Rafale is all but finalized. The Indian foreign secretary was in France earlier this week on a hush hush visit. The IAF has a lot of respect for the Mirage 2K and likes working with the French - who may charge a premium but don't ask any political questions nor do they have any qualms in dealing with anyone. This may not be a major setback to Indo-US ties. Institutional relationships take a long time to develop especially with a historically independent minded country like India.

Awesome. It's based on this book written by a guy who went to the same alma mater as me. The title "Five Point Someone" refers to the ubiquitous GPA. The IITs use a scale where 10.00 is the top score and a GPAs in the 5s means you probably won't graduate. Interestingly, the time frame of that book is right around when I attended school. Some of events in the book and the movie appear to be adapted from real events, E.g. the guy who hooks up with a head professor's daughter, the student who commits suicide because of a hardass prof. Even after so many years, I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming that I was late for a test or worse.