After what seemed like a decade of 24/7 coverage of the Republican 2012 primary process, news has come out that there are still untold stories.  Apparently, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum negotiated to team up against Mitt Romney.  Ok, this doesn’t sound like a one meeting kind of thing.  It sounds like something that happened over a much longer period of time and something the political press, who are supposed to be “experts” would have picked up on. (And I am not talking about locals who may not cover politics all the time but the national reporters who do.)

Well, the nation was spared such a spectacularly awesome scary ticket because neither man would accept the veep slot. Phew, and the GOP thought the worst thing they had to fear last year was candidates who like to prattle on about “legitimate rape” and whatnot. (As a satire writer, I would have LOVED a GOP ticket with Newt & Santorum, LOVED IT.)

Of course, the other news that probably won’t actually come out (sorry, I cannot think of a better way to put that right now) is that Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) was NOT asked to take the veep slot for Romney because his son is gay.  Portman was a Romney surrogate and the two men spent a lot of time together. The irony is he had a better shot of picking up a state with Portman than Paul Ryan. I have a hard time seeing Romney ever getting Wisconsin.  Yes, I know people don’t base their pick on the VP candidate.  I guess someone if picked Ted Bundy after he was convicted of being a serial killer it would have turned more than a few people off…  Can you imagine the tagline for that campaign?  Smith/Bundy — because no one knows  more about preventing crime than a convicted serial killer!  (Ps.  I am sure some people were also turned off from John McCain because of Sarah Palin but not enough to swing a state or the election.  Note to any GOP readers:  I am NOT implying any Republican would pick Bundy for anything, ever.)

But I digress.

The GOP has been in overdrive trying to “rebrand” themselves.  I was especially impressed with their chairman, Reince Priebus, this morning.  He was asked if they planned to cut Portman’s national funding off now that he has endorsed same sex marriage.  “Of course not!” Priebus said with a fair amount of moral indignation because of course his decision to not defund Portman is the right thing to do based on current polling numbers that show increasing support for marriage equality.

At the Conservative Union conference last weekend, better known as CPAC, there was a session entitled “How do we look less racist?”  My response to the question was “How about you just BE less racist?”  My advice to the GOP is that superficial changes to messaging materials isn’t enough to convince people you care about their issues.  Priebus deserves some credit for starting to reach out to groups that have not either always or recently been the GOP base.

Getting people to believe you care about the things that matters to them requires you understand what those things are.  Reaching out to talk to them may not get you all the way there but it is a start.  Let’s hope the change Priebus is pushing is part of a long term approach and not a policy du jour.

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I feel like the gun control debate often comes down to something eerily similar to that old beer commercial where fans of the beverage either supported the first or second claim and argued about it.  The Second Amendment reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Proponents of gun control measures look to the first part of this while opponents the second.  Now, I have friends who do believe that an assault weapons ban will start us on that slippery slope to banning guns all together.  I do not agree with that (and neither does Supreme Justice Antonin Scalia, as he said in the Heller v. DC decision where he said people can own guns but the government can restrict access to some).

A more in depth look at the ban and the original law’s efficacy is coming today or tomorrow.  Now, I don’t think that not passing the ban is the end of the world — these weapons are used in a very small percentage of gun crimes but I think dropping it from the Senate bill shows a huge lack of courage.  While you are more likely to die on your way to the airport rather than during a flight, a car crash doesn’t wipe out the numbers of people in one event that a plane crash can. (Please, no comments about small aircraft, most of us are not flying in planes that carry four to six people.)  The same can be said of these mass shootings.

Some good news about the Senate bill is that it includes a provision to require universal background checks for gun purchases, which I think is the most important thing we can do.  No, it would not have prevented the tragedy in December but it would have stopped other shootings — the one at Virginia Tech. for instance.  A new Quinnipiac University Poll shows that 85 percent of gun owners support universal background checks.

If some foreign power or entity (al Qaeda, anyone?) came into our country and killed the number of people that we are killing ourselves with guns, we would demand our leaders do something.  We need to respond to this crisis the same way.

• US Senate switchboard:  202-224-3121
• US House of Representatives switchboard: 202-225-3121 

You can call either number to get your Representative or Senator and the latter is often easier to get through to that.  If you don’t know who your reps are, just give the operator your zip code.

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By now you probably have heard that President Obama signed 23 executive orders on gun safety. You might also have heard Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) comments that by signing them, President Obama morphed himself into King Obama and that he plans to introduce legislation to nullify any that “smack of legislation,” because he believes some do.  I reached out to the Senator’s office to see if I could get more information on his proposal or which orders he finds problematic but have yet to receive a response.  I want to be fair to the Senator, I don’t disagree with him on everything so I hope I someone from there will get back to me.

Executive orders are not legislation nor are they directed at the general public.  They are directives for the federal government.  You can read the Congressional Research Service report on executive orders here. After reading through the orders themselves, I saw none that A, look like legislation or B, would impact any current or future/prospective gun owners.  I am not alone in that assessment.  Rich Ungar from Forbes wrote the very same thing here.  He published all 23 of them and concluded:

“It does not appear that any of the executive orders would have any impact on the guns people currently own-or would like to purchase- and that all proposals regarding limiting the availability of assault weapons or large ammunition magazines will be proposed for Congressional action. As such, any potential effort to create a constitutional crisis—or the leveling of charges that the White House has overstepped its executive authority—would hold no validity.”

Now, despite what gun advocates have been saying, no one thinks any one new law will prevent all gun violence any more than current laws prevent all crime but that does not mean enacting provisions such as universal background checks or reinstating the assault weapons ban will do nothing. When one person can walk into a school or movie theatre or place of worship and kill or injure more than 50 people (Aurora), that’s a problem.

But this conversation needs to be bigger — and one reason I am so upset with the National Rifle Association (NRA) is that I agree with some of what they said but their statements advocating addressing violence in movies/video games and dealing with mental health issues were lost in the outrage over how stupid a “press conference” Wayne LaPierre gave.  Yes, we need to deal with mental health parity (one of the much maligned executive orders calls for this) and we should talk about violence in movies and video games — as much as I love the First Amendment, it is no more absolute than the Second but making sure dangerous people do not have access to weapons is a good idea.  We need to start somewhere and closing loopholes that let people with mental health issues or criminal/terrorist background seems like as good a place as any to start.

Note to Senator Rand Paul:  If you want to respond to my questions about your objections to the gun safety executive orders, I will be more than happy to put it up unedited.  Just let me know.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From The New York Times:

President Obama this week will embrace a comprehensive plan to reduce gun violence that will call for major legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases and lay out 19 separate actions the president could take by invoking the power of his office, lawmakers who were briefed on the plan said

Lawmakers and other officials said that the president could use a public event as soon as Wednesday to signal his intention to engage in the biggest Congressional fight over guns in nearly two decades, focusing on the heightened background checks and including efforts to ban assault weapons and their high-capacity clips. But given the difficulty of pushing new rules through a bitterly divided Congress, Mr. Obama will also promise to act on his own to reduce gun violence wherever possible.

Actions the president could take on his own are likely to include imposing new limits on guns imported from overseas, compelling federal agencies to improve sharing of mental health records and directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct research on gun violence, according to those briefed on the effort.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Reuters:

Vice President Joe Biden butted heads with the powerful National Rifle Association on Thursday in his drive to reduce U.S. gun violence, drawing complaints from the lobby group that the White House is trying to limit constitutionally protected gun rights.

Biden sat down for about an hour and a half of talks with an NRA representative and officials from other gun owners’ groups after telling reporters he is likely to recommend background checks for all gun buyers and a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips.

“It is unfortunate that this administration continues to insist on pushing failed solutions to our nation’s most pressing problems. We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen,” the NRA said in a statement after the meeting.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Huff Post:

Vice President Joseph Biden will deliver his recommendations for comprehensive gun violence legislation on Tuesday.

“There is really a very tight window to do this,” he told the press corps during his announcement Thursday.

The recommendations are expected to address a number of angles and topics on gun policy, ranging from the availability of certain firearms and ammunition to data collection between federal and state law enforcement agencies. Biden announced that a top priority would be to create a more thorough system of background checks to prevent those with criminal histories or mental illness from purchasing weapons.

“So far,” he said, there has been “a surprising recurrence of suggestions that we have universal background checks. Not just closing the gun show loophole, but have total universal background checks including in private sales.”

Biden’s recommendations won’t immediately be turned into a legislative proposal. It will be up to President Barack Obama to decide how and when to act. But they will represent the first major step in a delicate legislative process to respond to a series of mass shootings, most recently the killing of 20 elementary-school students in Newtown, Conn.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From NBC News:

President Barack Obama empaneled a new task force led by Vice President Joe Biden to develop comprehensive proposals to address gun violence no later than next month.

In the wake of last week’s shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., the president announced a new initiative that would include members of his cabinet and outside organizations to generate proposals to rein in gun violence. He said that any effort should include new restrictions on guns, but also improved access to mental health services and better management of violence in popular culture.

Obama vowed that the new task force would not be just another Washington commission, shorthand for the groups sometimes tasked with studying an issue or event but which often delay or dilute solutions long past the time when the original impetus for such a panel has passed.

Obama said he had asked Biden “to lead an effort that includes members of my cabinet and outside organizations to come up with a set of concrete proposals, no later than January,” which the president would then push “without delay.”

“This is not some Washington commission. This is not something where folks are going to be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read, and then pushed aside,” the president said. “This is a team that has a very specific task: to pull together real reforms, right now.”

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I was on the Huff Post Live ‘Happy Hour’ show last Friday night discussing the biggest stories of last week. It was a pretty lively back and forth that featured, amongst others, discussions around the big foreign policy let down of the third Presidential debate, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama and whether platonic relationships can ever exist. They use Google Hangout to host the discussions while broadcasting live from their swish studio in Los Angeles, and it works surprisingly well. Anyhow, video is below:

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Watching Mitt Romney lie truly is a sight to behold – he now does it so effortlessly that you have to give him credit. There has been a metamorphosis in front of our eyes over the past year. Romney once appeared like a stiff robot, fumbling lines and committing gaff after gaff while trying to pass off completely contradictory policy proposals to different demographics. It was painful to watch as you got the feeling that even Romney didn’t believe what he was saying. But now it seems he does, and Romney is lying with astonishing ease.

Matt Taibbi points to his first debate performance where Romney finally figured out that he didn’t need to feel guilty about making things up:

From the start of the first debate, Romney has almost seemed liberated, spouting line after line of breathless, ecstatic inventions – things that are, if not lies exactly, at the very least just simply made up out of thin air, and seemingly on the spot, too. The business about the $25,000 “bucket” of deductions which he prefaced, with seemingly half of America watching, with the phrase, “Let’s pick a number”: awesome. Then there was the jobs plan that creates 12 million jobs, another number seemingly plucked out of the ether: it turned out that when asked to justify the number, the Romney campaign cited three studies, none of which came anywhere near justifying claims of a 12 million-job increase…..

Romney’s realized that numbers don’t matter, and past facts don’t even matter that much: he’s run all fall on completely made-up, mathematically-incoherent jobs and tax plans, and not only is he not suffering, he’s made it all the way to a statistical tie with the president (or even a lead, if you believe the Gallup polls), and the presidency is in sight. He’s finally released the burden of all those internal contradictions, and the inventions and devious distortions are coming so fast and so furious now, it’s energized him psychologically, and he seems to be taking flight before our eyes.

I think that Obama’s performance in the second debate successfully highlighted the sociopathic lying Romney has been engaging in, but he’ll have to ram it home again in the next debate to stop Romney from getting away with it. After all, voters are notoriously flaky and they’ll go with the guy offering the rosiest sounding deal. Obama just needs to remind them that purchasing Romney as President is akin to buying the cheap IKEA bed frame. It looks like a real bed, but once you lie down, it falls apart pretty quickly.

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