Marco Rubio has a dream ... that President Obama is the one blocking immigration reform

Marco Rubio endorsed the guy who said Arizona was a model for immigration policy As if Marco Rubio's half-baked concept of a Republican DREAM Act weren't enough of a joke in its own right, on Thursday he tried to blame President Obama for the fact that House Republicans have already killed it even before its arrival. The White House, Rubio said, is "actively trying to torpedo my efforts" to build Republican support for an initiative on immigration.

But as the White House reminded Rubio today, Republicans are the ones blocking progress on immigration'and they couldn't be opposed to Rubio's proposal because he hasn't actually offered any details to oppose.

'The notion that somehow the president or Democrats would be the roadblock to any progress on immigration is ridiculous,' a White House official told TPM. 'If this proposal fails, the reason will be the Republicans.'

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied Rubio's charge that the White House has been 'actively trying to torpedo my efforts' on a compromise DREAM Act, as Roll Call reported. The aide said the White House would need to see an actual proposal before weighing in.

'We can't speculate on what may or may not be in the proposal. There is no proposal,' the official said. 'So there's nothing that we can be trying to torpedo.

Indeed, notes TPM's Sahil Kapur, the White House is open to legislation that would grant legal status to immigrants while work continues on compressive immigration reform. But the chance of Republicans even agreeing to that? Nil, with or without Rubio. Just ask John Boehner.

Conservative Jones, citizen journalist!

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Former Republican Party chairman furious over reminders that Mitt Romney was wrong about bin Laden

The Obama campaign video that has Republicans so mad Like John McCain last week, former Bush aide and current Romney adviser Ed Gillespie is hopping mad that the Obama campaign dared to remind voters that the president was right and Mitt Romney was wrong about Osama bin Laden:

Appearing on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Gillespie was asked for his reaction to a video clip in which Vice President Joe Biden last week told a campaign audience 'Thanks to President Obama, bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. You have to ask yourself: If Gov. Romney had been president, could you have used the same slogan in reverse?'

Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, responded: 'This is one of the reasons President Obama has become one of the most divisive presidents in American history. He took something that was a unifying event for all Americans ' an event that Gov. Romney congratulated him and the military and the intelligence analysts in our government for completing the mission in terms of killing Osama bin Laden ' and he's managed to turn it into a divisive partisan political attack.'

There's really nothing in the world that's easier than rebutting this argument. Republicans milked the horror of 9/11 for everything it was worth, not just to win at the ballot box, but also to justify an entirely unrelated war. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is claiming credit for having brought the guy behind the 9/11 attacks to justice'and pointing to the entirely accurate fact that Mitt Romney severely disagreed with the strategy that brought it about. And unlike Republicans, the Obama campaign isn't turning this into an issue of patriotism, which actually does divide the country: they've raised this as a matter of policy.

But maybe the best response to the howls of outrage from Republicans about "politicizing 9/11" comes from Mitt Romney himself:

Rudy Giuliani will appear at an event with Mitt Romney on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the assault on Osama bin Laden, a campaign aide confirmed to CNN.

Yeah, Mitt Romney is so desperately against politicizing 9/11 ... that he's going to mark the anniversary of bin Laden's death by campaigning alongside Rudy 911iani.

GOP Madness, 2012, Round 1, Match 8

Without giving away too much, I'll just say that there are no more Michele Bachmann candidacies in this tournament. So with both of her entries having lost, we won't be seeing her in the second round ... much like her real-world performance.

A moment of silence, please.

The bracket thus far is here. Today's contestants:

1. NEWT GINGRICH'S MOON BASE!

Newt Gingrich had put a damper on Mitt Romney's inevitability strategy by winning the South Carolina primary in mid-January. If he could win the next contest a bit to the south in Florida, he might have a real shot at the nomination. So what does Gingrich do to try and win that Florida vote? He talks about moon bases.

[A]t one point early in my career I introduced the Northwest Ordinance for Space, and I said when we get ' I think the number was 13,000 ' when we have 13,000 Americans living on the Moon they can petition to become a state [...]

I will as President encourage the introduction for the Northwest Ordinance for Space to put a marker down that we want Americans to think boldly about the future and we want Americans to go out and study hard and work hard, and together we are going to unleash the American people to rebuild the country we love.

By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the Moon, and it will be American.

However cool a moon base might be, fact is that Gingrich is a Republican. You know, the party that is anti-science, anti-government spending and anti-education. Coming from a Democrat, such a goal might appear laudable if overly optimistic (or unrealistic) given our current fiscal situation. But from a Republican, that Florida pander got all the scorn it deserved.

But wait! There's a punchline. From the same speech:

I want you to help me both in Florida and across the country so that you can someday say you were here the day it was announced that of course we'd have commercial space in near-space, that of course  we'd have a manned colony on the Moon that flew an American flag, and of course we'd be moving towards Mars by the end of the next decade.

Indeed, where were you on Sept. 25, 2011, when Gingrich's pomposity expanded to astronomical size? I was on YouTube, furiously digging up this clip:

2. RICK SANTORUM TELLS PUERTO RICANS TO SPEAK AMERICAN

Rick Santorum "campaigns" in Puerto Rico Rick Santorum is coming off a gangbuster week, having won primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, and a caucus in Kansas. There is just one state ahead on the calendar, Illinois. The polling shows him behind, but if he can close the gap and win the state, well, that could be the knockout blow he needs against Romney. So does he get his ass to Illinois and camp out in the state the full week? Nope. He decides to play in an irrelevant weekend primary in Puerto Rico. (A fair amount of delegates, sure, but no momentum value.) Since he is Catholic, he figures, he'll win the Catholic island.

As Santorum headed down to Puerto Rico, I joked:

How much will GOP candidates talk about English as the Official Language while campaigning in Puerto Rico?
' @markos

One day later, I went from comedian to psychic.

"Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law," Santorum said. "And that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language."

Of course, there's no Constitutional requirement that English be a principal language.

While Santorum said it was not the role of the president to advocate for Puerto Rico's statehood, he said, 'To me, it doesn't make any sense to be in America and not want to be a state and have full rights as a United States citizen.'

Puerto Ricans are United States citizens.

Turns out insulting the voters isn't a sound political strategy. Santorum lost 83-8, lost his momentum, and lost critical time in Illinois, where Mitt Romney spent his time wisely.

Toilet trainwreck

The Washington Times kills off journalism for good

From the Washington Times, who republished it from World Net Daily because yes, the Washington Times is so ridiculous a news outlet that they have to crib stories even from the darkest opium dens of internet conspiracy, I present to you the most insane sentence ever passed off as an actual news story:

Medical examiners in Los Angeles are investigating the possible poisoning death of one of their own officials who may have worked on the case of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who died March 1, the same day Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced probable cause for forgery in President Obama's birth certificate.

The death of all American journalism was confirmed at 5:42 PM on Sunday. It is survived by two children, Farce and Insanity. In lieu of flowers the family asks for donations to send members of the Washington Times to somewhere where they can get the help they so sorely need.

Mitt Romney's stimulus problem

"I sure hope people forget I wanted a stimulus plan too" (Brian Synder/Reuters)
  Mitt Romney on Friday, slamming the stimulus at Otterbein University ... which received funds from the stimulus:

$787 billion of borrowing. It could have been entirely focused on getting getting the private sector to buy capital equipment, for instance. That puts people to work. Or to hire people. Instead, it primary protected people in the governmental sector, which is probably the sector that should have been shrinking.

Aside from the irony of Romney attacking the stimulus at an institution that benefited from it, his remarks reveal the contrived nature of his attack on the stimulus.

For starters, Romney basically got what he says he wanted. Over the last two years, the private sector has added 4 million jobs while the public sector has lost more than 500,000. That shrinkage of the public sector has been the biggest economic problems we've faced during that time. The problem is that state and local governments have faced a funding shortfall thanks to declining revenue, and because the stimulus'and subsequent jobs legislation'didn't do enough to help them bridge the gap, they were forced to shrink.

In February, Romney himself implicitly acknowledged that this is a problem:

"If you just cut, if all you're thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you'll slow down the economy," he said.

But despite that fleeting concession to reality, Romney's official position is still that the proper response to recession is to cut government spending. Earlier in February, Romney had visited a Colorado metal company to make exactly that point ... but like Otterbein, the company had also received funding through the stimulus.

But it's not like every place Mitt Romney visits to slam the stimulus has received stimulus funds. Earlier this month, he gave a speech at a factory in Ohio that hadn't received stimulus support. Of course, the factory was closed'and it had closed under George W. Bush. Naturally, Romney blamed President Obama, even though the factory produced drywall, for which there won't be much demand until new housing construction starts growing again. And the reason Obama was to blame? The stimulus.

So when Mitt Romney visits an institution or business that's doing well and received support from the stimulus, then the stimulus was bad. And when Mitt Romney visits a business that closed under Bush, the the stimulus was bad. And when Mitt Romney says the stimulus should have focused on the private sector and allowed the government sector to shrink and it turns out that's what has happened, then the stimulus is still bad.

So what would Mitt Romney have done? Well, here's what he said in December, 2008 (my emphasis):

The Fed should continue to expand the money supply. And, it should confirm that it will not tolerate deflation ' the pain of inflation pales in comparison.

That being said, a stimulus plan is needed without further delay, and there are some things that Republicans should insist on.

[...] The Democrats may want to wait for Obama, but the country needs action now. Republicans can ' and must ' play an important role in shaping a stimulus bill that makes sense for America and lays a foundation for future prosperity and growth.

So yes. What Mitt Romney wanted was a stimulus. Which he now says is the worst thing ever.

Eric Cantor-affiliated group encourages non-Republicans to vote for Dick Lugar in primary

Things are beyond desperate for GOP Sen. Dick Lugar at this point, facing the fight of his life in the Republican primary. With Treasurer Richard Mourdock poised for an upset, and with a key outside group abandoning Lugar to the wolves, one minor player is trying one last desperation heave. The Young Guns Network, affiliated with House Majority leader Eric Cantor, is putting out mailers encouraging non-Republicans to vote for Lugar in Indiana's open primary:

As my colleague Barb Morrill put it, it's like Operation Hilarity without any hilarity.

Romney spokesman claims credit for Obama auto rescue Mitt repeatedly slammed

"Let's get one thing straight: It's not flip-flopping. It's lying." (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Mitt Romney tells two basic types of lies: the kind where he's feeling awkward and unpopular and is just trying to make his audience like him more, for even an instant, and the brazen, ridiculous, intentional campaign lie. The latter case is where we get a campaign predicated on the idea that you just shake the Etch A Sketch and no one will notice. Just as the idea of the Etch A Sketch originated with Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, so do some of the most blatant lies. That's certainly the case with Fehrnstrom's new attempt to claim that President Obama's rescue of the American auto industry was all Mitt Romney's idea:

"[Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that," Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said.

"The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney's advice."

Fehrnstrom's position is that because Romney called for managed bankruptcy in November 2008, and months and months later Obama did have the auto companies go through managed bankruptcy, Romney deserves credit for Obama's success. There are, as you might imagine, a few tiny problems with this position. First, the auto companies, the people who worked on the auto rescue in the Bush and Obama administrations, and economists outside the process agree, contra Romney, that managed bankruptcy only became possible because of the aid the government gave the auto companies between the time Romney suggested immediate bankruptcy and the time they actually entered that process. What Romney advocated at the time he advocated it has been widely discredited by economists in both parties. No private capital was available to make managed bankruptcy possible; in fact, Bain Capital, the company Romney ran for most of his career, refused to invest.

Second, Romney has continued saying that President Obama rescued the auto industry in the wrong way. In February, he wrote a Detroit News op-ed to that effect. He actually wrote "The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better." Subsequently, challenged on that at a debate, he said "Those monies they put in beforehand were'it was wasted money." But two months and a shake of the Etch A Sketch later, we're supposed to start believing that President Obama did the right thing ... but only because Mitt Romney told him how.

It's not just that Mitt Romney is, personally, a habitual liar. Though he certainly is that, the real issue is that his campaign is calibrated around the idea that blatant mendacity won't be penalized by the media or the Republican base, so lying is an acceptable and politically safe way to try to appeal to independent voters.

Mitt Romney tries to Etch-A-Sketch away his opposition to bin Laden strategy

Nearly five years ago, then-Senator Barack Obama said that if he were president and had actionable intelligence that high-value al Qaeda targets like Osama bin Laden were within Pakistan, he would take action with or without the cooperation of the Pakistani government'and Mitt Romney slammed him for it:

"I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours... I don't think those kinds of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort," Romney told reporters on the campaign trail. [...] Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is one of the Republican front-runners, said U.S. troops "shouldn't be sent all over the world." He called Obama's comments "ill-timed" and "ill-considered."

Despite that criticism, Barack Obama kept his promise four years later, giving the order that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden. That order carried significant political risk, but it was the right call. Yet now that Obama's position has been vindicated, Mitt Romney is trying to erase history:
Romney on if he'd go after bin Laden: "Even Jimmy Carter would have would have given that order"
' @EmilyABC via Seesmic If that's true, it's only because Mitt Romney has never been president. And if Mitt Romney had been president in May of 2011, Osama bin Laden would still be alive. It's as simple as that.

9:48 AM PT: Oh, and does anybody believe for a second that if the raid had turned out badly that Mitt Romney wouldn't be clubbing President Obama with it just like Republicans did with Jimmy Carter?