Friday clips

Friday clips

You got a live blog last night so I'm slacking this morning:

Obama's popularity slip is mostly people who didn't back him in the first place, says Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling:

Some people who didn't vote for Obama may have expressed approval for him in the early days of his term because they felt like they needed to give a new President a chance, but the reality is that Obama is setting out to do what he said he was going to do when he got elected, so if you didn't like what you heard last fall you inevitably were going to end up not liking what you heard when he started governing. The higher levels of approval he initially showed, particularly from Republicans, were inevitable going to fall.

At Kos thereisnospoon argues, "Republicans will vote for the final bill because they can't afford to be seen as obstructing on healthcare reform." But I don't buy it; they're about the base and the base is more in the place Craig Robinson describes at Iowa Republican:

If Grassley takes a strong, principled stand against Obama’s healthcare proposal similar to the one he took against Judge Sotomayor or his recent statement about former President Bill Clinton’s visit to North Korea, Grassley will be able to put all of this behind him quickly. However, if he ignores the loud and constant pleas from the Republican faithful begging him to just say no to Obama’s health care proposal, he should expect nothing less than a stiff primary challenge.

Ron Gunzburger at Politics1 (one of the oldest and best political sites dating back to 19freakin97) gives us a great Godfather analogy: "Substitute the Senate Republicans for the Barzini family, and sub in Max Baucus for Sallie Tessio, and, well ... you get my view of what Baucus is doing to health care reform."

And though Gunzburger specifically opts against this outcome, we all know what happened to Tessio:



Notice how the likeable Tessio dies offscreen, while rat-bastard Carlo is slowly garrotted kicking and thrashing on-screen. For the record, Abe Vigoda is still alive.

Closer to home, Karen Kubby looks back at the glory days of 1993-95 when progressives were one vote short of Iowa City council control. Is ANYBODY gonna run for this thing, or am I gonna have to do it myself? Filing starts Monday...