To get you caught up, here is a collection of USA Today stories that were about gun control.

It’s been widely assumed that Senator Marco Rubio would be on the short list for Mitt Romney’s VP, but today many are startled that Rubio has not been vetted and is probably not even on Romney’s short list for the position.  There are various theories as to why Rubio isn’t being considered by the Romney team, motives ranging from a personal vendetta to some sort of bizarre counter-scheduling maneuver are among the most prevalent in media circles.  I don’t think that Rubio was ever that strong of a candidate however and I’m not alone in this opinion.

Joel Goldstein has written an excellent piece on why Presidential candidates pick the Vice-Presidents that they do.  Some of the general lessons that he points to are that competent Senators usually make for the best Veep picks and rarely do Presidential candidates pick a VP based on their ability to carry a swing state.  Most Presidential candidates pick their VP based on how well it reinforces the narrative of the candidate and how competent that person is to serve in office.

Rarely do campaigns pick Junior Senators from swing states. It happened with John Edwards (D-NC,) but look how well that turned out.  Geraldine Ferraro kind of fit that mold as well, though she lost more as a result of the difficulties of the 1984 election than to any other outside factors.  Generally, you want your Veep to reinforce the narrative that you’re selling to the public.  That’s what Carter did in ’76, that’s what Reagan did, that’s what Clinton did and that’s what Obama did.  There are times when President’s make odd choices like George W. Bush’s selection of Dick Cheney in 2000, Al Gore’s selection of Joe Lieberman, Bob Dole’s selection of Jack Kemp and perhaps most notably, William Henry Harrison’s choice of John Tyler in 1840.  But these are exceptions not the rule.

Mitt Romney is said to be closely considering fellow former Governors for his VP selection and that makes sense because as a candidate you need to feel comfortable with your choice.  Former Governor Tim Pawlenty is being touted as the favorite of Governor Romney’s, which is a bit of a surprise given how poorly he fared in the GOP primaries, but Pawlenty would reinforce Romney’s message of fiscal conservatism and bring an air of general competence to the ticket.  It’s also in Romney’s political nature to go with the safe bet.  Anyone who is expecting Romney to do anything bold simply hasn’t been paying attention.  When Mittens faces a problem he throws money at it and it goes away.  That’s how he’s dealt with almost every major problem he’s faced in his life and that pattern is unlikely to change now.

Still, many saw Rubio as bringing tremendous upside to the ticket if picked and senior Republican strategists like Ed Rawlins, who ran Ronald Reagan’s campaign believe that a failure to make inroads with Latinos could hurt Republicans over the long term.  He is probably right about the demographics, but the selection of Rubio wouldn’t do as much good for Romney’s campaign as many pundits seem to believe.  Mitt Romney wants this election to be about the economy and Rubio doesn’t score any points there.  He’s been in the Senate for less than two years and has little experience outside of Congress.  He could appeal to younger voters, but so could SpongeBob Squarepants at this point, but you don’t see him on the short list for obvious reasons (though he might do well with the those-living-under-the-sea vote.)

There will no doubt be some GOP consternation at the fact that Rubio is not on the short list, but most of this criticism was going to be headed Romney’s way anyway.  Romney is a conservative politician in both policy and practice.  For him to make a bold move at this juncture would not only be uncharacteristic, but could be considered foolhardy.  Romney needs to show that he is competent not that he is audacious.  Romney needs a Vice-President who can stand with him, not someone people need to get to know.  Most importantly, Romney needs someone he feels comfortable with and for Romney that is a tall task.  He is not a normal politician.  He’s lost more races than he’s won and he is absolutely terrible at retail politics.  So it would make sense for him to pick someone who was good at the game of retail politics.  Still, I think it makes the most sense for Romney to pick a Senior Senator with a strong legislative background or a Junior Senator that fires up his base.  That is why I think John Thune and Rand Paul have got to be on the short list.  John Thune is beloved by social and fiscal conservatives and fits Romney’s mold the best of the potential Senior Senators out there.  Rand Paul would shore up a large number of independent voters who are upset that his father isn’t the nominee.  Either way, with these two men Romney has a pick of someone who gets him something.  If he picks someone like Pawlenty it may make Romney look competent, but it will do little else.

The last thing that Romney needs to look at is his path to 270.  If he’s going to win this election he needs to win Ohio and if there were any state that could be more in line with his demographic match-ups in the swing state category I have yet to see it.  Ohio is a must win for Romney and for Obama winning Ohio would seal the deal for his re-election. This is where a Pawlenty selection makes sense for Romney.  Putting Pawlenty on the ticket might help Romney in the Midwest and if Romney can do well in the Midwest he can probably make this election incredibly close, but if Romney cannot win in the Midwest then the question must be asked: where can he win?  A southern strategy no longer guarantees election, a Republican must carry states that a generic Republican normally wouldn’t carry.  That means Romney needs to perform well in the Midwest, the Southwest, or the Northeast and of these choices the Midwest is the one that seems most doable for Romney.  Ultimately it may boil down to Pawlenty or Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH,) in which case, neither selection would come as a great surprise to me.

In 2011, Ohio voters overturned a law restricting collective bargaining rights for public employees unions signed by Governor John Kasich (R-OH.)  In 2012, Wisconsin voters recalled their Governor because he passed a law all but ending collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin.  The situations really are quite similar.  Both laws were unpopular, but the net outcome was vastly different.  Ohio voters decided the law went too far, Wisconsin voters decided that although the law may have been an overreach, so was recalling the Governor.  This is a classic example of understanding the limits of power.

I had a teacher once who explained to me that just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean you need to be entirely disagreeable.  What he was saying was that just because you don’t like someone else’s position on something doesn’t mean that you need to crucify them for it.  What does that accomplish?  It doesn’t right the perceived wrong and in many cases it makes matters worse by using inflaming rhetoric and inciting personal attacks.  This is to say that if you are going to detract from an argument, do so with the grace that you believe your argument has and with the zest that you’d like your opponents to believe you to possess.  Only add your argument if it adds to the conversation.

As many have pointed out to me on Twitter, there is little good that can be attained by grieving over something you have no control over.  In the same vein, there is absolutely no point (other than self-aggrandizement) to gloat and rub the result of a contest in your opponent’s face.  It doesn’t gain you anything and usually only works to harbor animosity among your detractors.  So when I went after Erick Erickson of Redstate.com for his excessive celebration in the post-mortem of the Wisconsin recall election, I wasn’t going after him for his position on the issues, rather I was pointing out that part of the problem in partisan politics is that one side doesn’t merely take a victory lap when they win an election, they take ten.  Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, there is no reason for you to kick your opponent when he is down.  It accomplishes nothing and only further alienates those who aren’t all that fond of you to begin with.

As I deflected attacks from Erickson’s conservative cohorts and explained my position that “just because one side did it once doesn’t make it okay” (a la ‘if your friend jumps off a bridge, would you do it too?)  I realized that Democrats do occasionally do the exact same thing to Republicans after an election.  We shouldn’t be doing this.  Neither side needs to fan the flames of partisanship in order to feel better about themselves.  All sides know how adept each is at the game of politics, however the best proving ground for your tactics is in the political arena and not as a coda to an election that has already been won decisively.  Scott Walker’s advocates should be reaching out to Democrats in this time of triumph by showing humility and grace, instead they showed that they are just as ugly in victory as they were in their means of getting there.

Wisconsin made a mistake in recalling Governor Scott Walker, that much should be clear to all of us now.  What we should have done was have a referendum on the collective bargaining law and dealt a blow to Walker’s administration and his legislative tactics of divide and conquer.  This is a valuable lesson for Democrats that just because thumping your chest feels good doesn’t mean it’s the most effective way to deal with a problem.  What happened in Ohio was that Governor Kasich was so debilitated by his defeat that he has had little luck passing anything else of major significance.  This is the lesson of the Wisconsin recall and it’s a lesson that needs to be pointed out again and again until the organizers of the recall effort understand that their colossal error in judgement that they committed by recalling the Governor was just as much an overstep as the Governor’s reform efforts passed last year.  You can continue to blame the spending, Citizens United, outside interest groups etc.  But until you acknowledge that the number one reason you failed was that citizens simply didn’t believe in the recall (60% believed it should have never taken place) this lesson teaches us nothing.

As I watched the returns come in last night I remember feeling then exactly as I felt as I watched the election returns come in during the 2004 Presidential election.  I didn’t know anyone who voted for Bush, so how could he have won?  I remember sitting at the computer with my dad looking over various returns in Ohio trying to find a mathematical error of some kind, a 2000-like problem in the counting of ballots or something to stop Bush from serving another term.  But now, as I look on and see our political system as it is now, I realize that to give John Kerry the victory in 2004 would essentially be to deny Barack Obama the historic opportunity to be America’s first black President.  I am far too proud of the latter to wish the outcome of the former upon my country.

I was also reminded of something from the 1972 election (which, yes I realize I was not alive for) and it involved a young reporter at the Washington Post.  The woman remarked that she didn’t understand how Nixon could have won because she didn’t know a single person who voted for him.  A friend pointed out to her that she spent all her time in Washington and that all of her friends were liberal.  Slowly this woman began to realize that it was almost impossible for her to know anyone who voted for Nixon because she refused to expose herself to that voting group.  Both of these lessons are important here in the aftermath of the recall election in Wisconsin.  Sure we got beat pretty bad, but a temporary setback doesn’t become permanent unless you let it become permanent.  What you do in victory is every bit as important as what you do in defeat, so let’s show Republicans that they can gloat all they like because we will make the most out of our defeat and make sure that such a calamity isn’t allowed to occur again in November.

If you believe the polls (which I don’t, but for the sake of argument will present nonetheless), then Mitt Romney is your front-runner in Iowa, Ron Paul is in second, and Rick Santorum is in the surging third position.  The reason that I think the polls for the Iowa caucus this year are ridiculous have been pretty well documented.  Check out the RCP average here, The NBC/Marist poll here, TPM average here, and Gallup daily here.  If I had to pick the order in Iowa it would look like this: Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, Jon Huntsman.  I think Paul, Romney, and Perry will all be within the margin of error of one another.  Santorum and Gingrich will be close, Bachman will be in the low single digits, Huntsman will be lucky to get a full percentage point.  Until we see the Des Moines Register numbers tomorrow, which almost always predict the outcome, it’s going to be a bit of a crap shoot trying to pick the winner or even the win, place, show in Iowa.  Caucuses are different than primaries, thus their results are more difficult to predict.

Overall however, if you had asked anyone in the media just a couple of months ago, what Mitt Romney needed to do to sew up the nomination they’d have told you: win Iowa.  Today many are saying that the story would be the placement of the candidates relative to expectations.  That’s a dumb assessment.  It really is.  If Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucuses that means that he out-performed in a place no one thought he could out-perform in.  It’ll mean that he won a state that is reliably conservative and is a good predictor of the nominee going forward.  It means, in short, that Mitt Romney wins the nomination quickly by winning Iowa.  The reason no reliable media outlet is willing to say as much is as big of a story if not bigger than the actual outcome of the Iowa Caucuses.  I call it the 2000 syndrome.  Since the election night debacle of 2000, networks have been terrified of predicting the outcome of an election when there is even a shadow of a doubt as to who is going to win.

You’ve got to ask yourself some simple questions coming out of Iowa: who has the money to win the nomination after Iowa?  Romney.  Who has the organization to win the nomination after Iowa?  Romney.  Who has a national staff in place that can capitalize on a potential win in Iowa?  Romney.  This isn’t difficult people.  If Romney wins Iowa he gets the nomination.  The idea that if Santorum places in Iowa he’ll somehow get a jump somewhere else is so patently absurd that I’ve attempted to debunk it in almost every manner I can think of.  He doesn’t have the money, he doesn’t have the people, did I mention he doesn’t have the money or the organization?  One candidate was able to turn an Iowa upset into a nomination upset and his name was Barack Obama.  He won the nomination because he was incredibly well organized, well-funded, and had amazing charisma.  In case you haven’t noticed, no one in the Republican field is anything like Barack Obama.  Therefore, you will not see history repeating.  You especially won’t see such an anomaly in the Republican party.

Look at the Gallup national numbers:

The big black line going down is Newt Gingrich, the big green line going up is Mitt Romney.  Momentum swings elections more than anything else and right now, Mitt Romney has the momentum.  When you look at the other trends in the national polling data, two other things stick out.  Mitt Romney does well with Independents and Liberals.

That bodes well for Mitt Romney.  Mitt Romney is the only candidate in the field that gets double digits in every demographic group.

That bodes extremely well for Mitt Romney.  Now, you’ve also got to keep in mind that Ron Paul’s supporters are pretty much non-existent in other areas of the country and his momentum is on the down-swing since his racist newsletter came into the spotlight.  Do I need to tell you who that bodes well for?  At this point, I certainly hope not.

Now Mitt Romney might not be the guy that conservatives want to nominate, but he’s the guy they have to nominate.  They have to nominate him because he’s the guy that’s got the organization, the money, the key supporters, the endorsements, the energy, and the staying power to be on the stage for more than a couple of weeks.  We know this because he’s been a candidate for over four years.  Now, when you turn on the news and they tell you that Santorum is going to take New Hampshire by storm or that Newt Gingrich stands a chance in any state except South Carolina, then you should know that you’re listening to the 2000 syndrome manifest itself in some really ridiculous ways.  Rick Santorum will not be the nominee for the same reason that Newt Gingrich will not be the nominee and he will not be the nominee for the same reason Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachman will not be the nominee.  They’re all way too scary.  Romney is about as steady as she goes.  In fact, Romney is about as steady as any computer can go that is keeping up with Mitt Romney.

The takeaway from the Iowa caucuses is going to be this: Mitt Romney is a strong candidate because he plays well with traditional Republican voters and attracts key independent voters.  Remember that many states have an open primary system which means that even registered Democrats can vote in some Republican primaries.  That is only significant if people show up to support Romney or Dems get involved just to screw with the Romney campaign.  I live in Wisconsin where we have an open primary system.  I’ll be voting in the Republican primary because there is no Democratic primary.  I’ll be voting for anyone but Mitt Romney just to screw with the Romney folks and there are lots of “like-minded liberals” as the Ann Coulters of the world like to call us out there.  We don’t like Romney, but we really don’t like Republicans and we’re pissed at Republicans.  We’re pissed to the point that we will show up and vote for somebody we don’t believe in just to screw with the other party and that my friends, is the only way anyone comes even close to beating Mitt Romney.

I’ve never really understood why so many in Washington want to have a fight over fiscal austerity measures right now.  We’re in the middle of a sputtering economy and we can barely get the wheels turning again.  So what does Washington do?  They say “hey, we can do worse than this!”  According to Macroadvisers:

“We estimate that the Reid plan would slow GDP growth (again, statically) by about ¼ percentage point on average from fiscal year (FY) 2012 through FY 2015, with the peak effect being almost ½ percentage point in FY 2013.”

That doesn’t sound like it’s good for the economic recovery, but it’s better than this:

“We estimate that the Boehner plan would slow GDP growth by only about 0.1 percentage point on average over the same period, with the peak effect being a little over 0.2 percentage point in FY 2014.”

In short, economists believe that if you push out some of the cuts, you can minimize the immediate damage to the recovery.  The Simpson-Bowles plan didn’t have any measures that took effect before 2013.  There was a very good reason for that.  We simply cannot afford to put further restraints on our economy.  Rather than heeding this advice, the tea party has doubled down on the alternative, pushing a worst-case scenario as the only scenario worth having.  If we don’t reform Washington, things will get worse, they say.  If we don’t control spending, spending will control us.  They’re right, but only if we continue on our current trajectory.  The deficit becomes less of an issue if we can get the economy rolling again, but that’s not a situation that conservatives are interested in.  That doesn’t serve their fear tactics very well, so they’ve decided that the only way to win their argument is to irreprably damage our economy to the point where someone, anyone other than Obama can come along and claim to have made things better.

Washington’s political institutions are the embodiment of the phrase “the path to hell is paved by good intentions.”  I’ve always believed that people go there for the right reasons, but end up corrupted by the system.   The problem isn’t all that indifferent than the problem the IMF faced when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested for allegedly raping a housekeeper.  The IMF found that it was difficult to operate with its leader behind bars, so they asked him to resign.  Now, DSK may not have committed a criminal act (we can’t and won’t know until the case is prosecuted) but his personal problems prohibited him from doing his job.  Christine Lagarde was elected to take his place and the IMF continues to function.  If only Washington operated like the rest of the world.

Right now, it seems like special interest groups have placed too many pledges on people.  This isn’t a Republican or Democratic problem, it’s not even a problem that’s relegated to Washington’s institutions, but it’s a problem that has become so significant that it makes day-to-day activity nearly impossible.  Back in the ‘90’s, we used to talk about housekeeping chores like raising the debt limit as something that was a forgone conclusion and to a certain degree we still do.

People like Tim Geithner continue to go around and say that we won’t default on our debt.  He’s right, but that’s not what the debate is about.  Ultimately, the executive branch of the United States government is going to figure out a solution to a problem brought about by the legislative branch’s inability to its job.  But, the fact that the legislative branch of our government cannot fulfill its primary function, which is to allocate money appropriately, should lead everyone to the inevitable conclusion that Washington cannot fix problems that at other points in our history we’ve been able to solve.

We have a Congress problem, not a debt or deficit problem.  Congress can’t do what it was elected to do and they should be held accountable for that.  They should be held accountable for taking pledges that lead one to make promises that can’t be kept.  They should be held accountable for forcing a crisis where none existed.  They should be held accountable for blaming everyone but themselves for a problem that exists purely in the Republican party and that problem is leadership.  Should Eric Cantor be the Speaker of the House or should John Boehner?  I don’t know, I don’t care, and you should have resolved this issue before you took the oath of office.

Obfiscating on matters of national importance isn’t leadership.  The problem isn’t just with the leadership in the Republican party, it’s also about the followers.  The followers don’t like their leaders and in many regards would like someone else to be leading them.  That means you should solve your own political problems among yourselves, not bring those problems with you into the bargaining room with the President of the United States about the single most important issue to come up in this legislative session.

John Boehner said he thinks that we won’t default on our debt.  What Boehner won’t say is whether or not he thinks we’re going to exceed the debt limit.  That should really, really scare you.  If it doesn’t, you either don’t understand what the debate is about (our ability to pay off Congress’s prior debt obligations) or you believe in one of the many faulty premises that lobbyists have implanted in the brains of GOP strategists.

One view is that we shouldn’t allow Washington to continue borrowing money until it “gets its fiscal house in order.”  Why?  Do we not have the money?  I could understand not paying someone if you didn’t have the money, but what happen when you do have the money?  That’s like going to a grocery store, buying your groceries and then saying to the checkout clerk “maybe next time.”  Sure, you may be able to leave the grocery store.  Heck, you may be able to leave the grocery store with your groceries, but that doesn’t make what you just did right.

You can make the argument that we “have a spending problem and not a revenue problem.”  That argument is only partly true, however.  We have a spending problem and we have a revenue problem because we are having both problems at the same time we are now experiencing a deficit problem.  That’s what happens when revenues and expenses don’t equal, you end up with a deficit.  But, we shouldn’t attempt to recharacterize this issue as a debt problem.

One can make the argument that our entitlement programs are unsustainable and to a certain degree you might be right, but the idea that we should cut entitlement programs in the future in order to pay for our debts that were incurred in the past is just absurd.  At the height of irresponsibility is a lofty goal that can’t be achieved, so in a vain attempt to get to that goal, the powers at be try to get there using means that aren’t merely unconventional, but amount to a non-serious approach to dealing with the problem you face.  Irresponsibility is defined as being unreliable, untrustworthy, and not answerable for one’s actions.  Members of Congress are saying “hey, we’re answerable for our actions (in the form of elections,) so let’s engage in behavior that is untrustworthy and unreliable as a means to an end.”

We can pay our debts, Republicans agree that we can pay our debts, what they disagree with Democrats about is how we should pay those debts.  Therefore, we don’t have a debt crisis, we have a payment crisis.  Don’t mix things together and act like there’s commonality between the two because the deficit is about previous debt obligations, whereas debts and the budget (which is what this fight is really about) has to do with future debt obligations.  So you don’t believe we should run a deficit higher than 18% of GDP?  Okay, try and pass something that does something about that, but don’t try and pass your budget problems off as a deficit problem because it’s not.

What Republicans and Democrats don’t seem to get about this debt ceiling debacle is that the issue at the heart of this mess has nothing to do with debt, deficits, or even politics, really.  This issue boils down to the heart of the American experiment and that is: “can divided government actually govern?”  History shows us that the answer is “yes,” but if the Congress fails to fulfill its duty to the American people, the answer will be “no.”  This isn’t an issue of Republican or Democrat, it’s an issue of pass or fail, American or un-American.  If you want to see the American economy explode so that you can blame the aftermath on the President, you are un-American.  You are openly rooting for the failure of America.

I got a real stern talking to on Quora about this, so let me be clear that ideology aside, both parties are employing the same tactic here and that’s why it’s failing them so magnificently.  They’re trying to scare the bejesus out of you.  Unfortunately, that tactic only works once if someone’s smart, twice if they don’t learn quickly or possibly three times if you’re dealing with a Republican.  But if you don’t understand that both parties are employing basically the same negotiating strategy here, you haven’t been paying attention.

Now, if you don’t understand that the answer to the underlying question here is ‘no,’ then you’ve never been in a room with Nancy Pelosi.  I understand that many of my readers haven’t held jobs in Congress as Deputy Floor Managers in the U.S. House of Representatives, so let me take you through a better explanation of this.

There is an inherent problem when governing or assembling a team to govern and that is that you can’t control your environment. No one knew the full effects of the economic calamity that was inherited by this President and his administration, no one knew that we’d be facing such staggering unemployment levels this long after economic recovery measures were put in place.

Now, we see an opportunity with the debt ceiling to get something done and as Rahm used to say everyday: “never let an opportunity go to waste” and you’re seeing that with Bill Daley and his guys in action at the White House. It may look like Democrats are extremely bad negotiators, but in truth, they’re just much better politicians.

Understanding the pragmatic and the possible is just as important as understanding the necessary and you saw that today with the President’s statement that he has “bent over backwards” in these negotiations. He really has.

Accepting a raise in the retirement age with Democrats would have been a much harder sell than raising revenues from loopholes with Republicans. All of this goes back to thorough planning though and we did this from 2006-2009, when the President was sworn in.

We had a game plan on health care from day one, now you may not like what that game plan included or didn’t include, but it was extremely effective at getting what we needed.

I understand that on the progressive side, it didn’t achieve some things you guys would have liked like a possibility for single payer down the road or a short term public option in the near term, but it’s established a precedent that can survive the rule of law in the individual mandate and that will be Obama’s legacy.

He’s established a social safety net unseen since Roosevelt and that’s saying something for a Democratic President. Take this quote from Steny Hoyer back in 1996:

“In 1993, a courageous president with vision said we must confront this deficit, for this generation and for generations yet to come. Almost to a person, Republicans rose and said the economy is going to go into the dumpster, unemployment will rise, inflation will rise, and deficits will rise.”

At this point, hopefully some of this is starting to sound familiar. To be clear: the Republican talking points haven’t changed nor has their negotiating strategy. Their strategy is still to scare us to death and then, when we’re down, scare us a little more.

We’re fortunate that we have people in positions of power, like the President, who understand the importance of responsible leadership and the importance of the individual in the American economy.

I can assure you, like Congressman Hoyer before me that Republicans will rise, almost to a person and say that the economy is going to go into the dumpster, unemployment will rise, inflation will rise, and deficits will rise, but repetition doesn’t prove facts, it only proves insanity.