At the very least, these are the most high-profile, bipartisan votes of the year in the Senate: 1. Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation, for which nine GOP Senators voted yes 2. Expanded funding of “cash for clunkers,” for which seven GOP Senators voted yes (Accenting the bipartisanship of the latter vote, Missouri’s two Senators split, but not as you might expect: Republican Bond voted “yes,” and Democrat McCaskill voted “no.” You gotta love Missouri;...

Good for you, Mr. President: “The President discussed how the current tone and culture in Washington made it more difficult than it has been in the past to work in a bipartisan fashion. In particular, he singled out Republican Senators who are trying to work in a bipartisan fashion even in the context of a vocal minority in their party who doubt that the President was born in the US. In this context about the less productive tone of the debate in Washington, he said he didn’t like to see...

With her pleas for a more moderate, more mainstream GOP, Christine Todd Whitman has long been one of my favorite Republican voices — and she’s at it again, according to a report from Chris Cillizza late yesterday. Case in point: Whitman criticizes her party for their recent debate over Obama’s “cap and trade” energy policy, noting that the Republican attacks centered on dismissing the proposal as “cap and tax” rather than offering solutions of their own....

Writing for The Daily Beast, John Avlon argues that the Blue Dogs and their counterparts in the Senate are “Obama’s best friends.” Attacked as villains by liberals and accused of slowing down the legislation’s passage, they are the unsung heroes of health-care reform. They are not trying to kill Obama’s initiative; they are trying to save it. H/t The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.

As Members of Congress prepare for what might be their favorite time of year — the extended August recess, scheduled to start tomorrow for the House; and August 8 for the Senate — they do so with a flurry of progress on health care reform but not the hoped-for, full-chamber, final votes on definitive bills. Accordingly, during this recess, I hope one or more of our elected officials — or their staff, or the countless “interests” vying to get their attention on health...

Joe noted this finding at the end of his earlier post, but I thought it deserved its own, dedicated shout out. From today’s NYT … Over all, the poll portrays a nation torn by conflicting impulses and confusion. In one finding, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the cost of their own health care would eventually go up if the government did not create a system of providing health care for all Americans. But in another finding, 77 percent said they were concerned that...

From the transcript of Lois Romano’s interview with the Congressman for the WaPo, these remarks can be found a little more than halfway down the Web page: … our forefathers never envisioned that a handful of staff write a bill and you rush it through a committee without reading it and you rush it to the floor without reading it, and you pass it just because you’re a Democrat and Democrats told you to do that. I mean, that was not what our founding fathers envisioned, and that’s...

From an event Monday night in the St. Louis area, hosted by Sen. McCaskill’s staff, h/t Jake Wagman … Agree or disagree with him (and I’m much more in the latter camp than the former), you have to admire this young man’s focus, stage presence, and ability to electrify a crowd. (Move over, Sarah Palin. Oh wait … she already did.) Picking up on one of this young man’s points: Can anyone provide links to the sources wherein Jefferson, Madison, and/or Franklin...

Why doesn’t this happen more often, on more issues?

Vice President Biden takes to the pages of today’s NYT, defending the administration’s stimulus spending. In doing so, he writes: … the [Recovery Act] was intended to provide steady support for our economy over an extended period — not a jolt that would last only a few months. Ed Morrissey, with a little help from others, jumps on this dismissal of “jolt” as a descriptor of the Recovery Act’s intent — and cites multiple prior instances when Biden and his...

This shout-out goes to one of TMV’s very own, Dennis Sanders, in his post published earlier today on the Gates-Crowley kerfuffle: I have long believed that liberals tend to be too sensitive on racial issues, to the point that no one can talk about them or they become excuses for people of color to indulge in victimhood. But I also think that conservatives tend to be too dull to the experience of blacks in America and the scars that we still carry with us concerning the legacy of racism. White...

Consistent with memes given voice in David Brooks’ column yesterday — ref. here and here — the WaPo’s Michael Gerson writes: It is difficult to imagine that an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress will do nothing on health reform. But as deadlines slip, and moderate arguments gain in momentum, the legislation is likely to disappoint liberal Democrats in several ways. William Galston of the Brookings Institution — who kept an eye on moderate congressional opinion as part...

Playing Solomon, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) suggests flexibility on insurance coverage of abortions as one possible compromise to a heated meme in the reform debate. Elsewhere, Conor Friedersdorf suggests that rather than taxing the rich to be pay for health care reform, why not simply “un-support” them? (Note to Conor: Intriguing idea, but just in case no one else nitpicks it: I think those “vouchers to subsidize the cost of transitioning to digital television” are no longer...

I’m guessing the good folks at CNBC are more than slightly concerned that the recent agreement between California’s governor and legislative leaders could kill interest in their special tonight, the production of which probably cost them dearly and has likely been in the works for weeks, if not months. I’m guessing this concern is prevelant at the network because we received an email from NBC Universal this afternoon (CNBC’s parent), “explaining” that the aforementioned...

I offered my take earlier today. Ann Althouse seems to agree — with Brooks, me, and others — that Obama is more of a pragmatist than Pelosi’s Congress,* but he needs to stand up and prove it. … I cling to the belief that Obama has the ability to save us from the destructive path Congress has chosen for itself. But will he use it? How much of an ideologue is he anyway? We’ve come this far, and still we don’t really know. Is he, at heart, the committed leftist...

I could not agree more with a David Brooks column than I agree with the one published in today’s NYT. The premise, in short: It was interesting to watch the Republican Party lose touch with America … It’s not that interesting to watch the Democrats lose touch with America. That’s because the plotline is exactly the same … They [each] have their own cherry-picking pollsters, their own media and activist cocoon, their own plans to lavishly spend borrowed money to buy votes. In...

Full disclosure: My other job gives me ample reason to interact with Blue Dog Congressman Mike Ross and his staff. Accordingly, I’m hardly an objective source. Still, I genuinely like this guy — which is something I can’t say about all elected officials and their staff, whether or not I have a reason (or obligation) to interact with them. So, why do I like Ross? Here’s one reason: He stands up for what he believes, and he doesn’t cater to leadership, if he thinks...

The problem with polls (or maybe it’s the reporting of poll results) is that they ask (focus on) too many closed-loop questions. For instance: “Do you approve of the way the President is handling health care reform?” The answers to such questions lend themselves to neat and tidy conclusions — perfect blog fodder — such as Chris Cillizza’s suggestion today that the President is losing the support of Independents on health care reform. However, what such data —...

The former New Jersey governor attempts to sweep ocean waves with a broom. Give him credit for trying: … the 74-year-old Kean spoke wistfully about growing up in a Washington where the two parties worked together in (almost) perfect harmony. He began with stories of his father, a congressman of 20 years who was a top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee during the ’50s. “The committee chairman used to come to the house,” Kean recalled. “And they’d sit there, and over...

Read this: A democracy is essentially about determining the course of our nation together. To do that, it helps a lot to have a good citizenry. A good citizenry is informed, serious about things that are worth taking seriously, and not liable to be led off course by demagogues. (Everyone doesn’t have to be like this, but you need a critical mass of people who are.) But I’ve always thought that a good citizenry is also composed of people who assume, until proven wrong, that many of the...

From yesterday, actually: Responding to a comment from David Walker, the former head of the Government Accountability Office, that “You can’t cut [costs] by expanding coverage” to the nearly 50 million uninsured, Mr. Summers said, “We’ve rejected that view.”

Here’s a candidate for understatement of the year: Many people are anxious for Congress to finalize a health care reform bill that both chambers can live with and send to the President for signature. Despite my past-month handwringing over the costs of such legislation, I entirely understand and empathize with the anxiety of those “many people.” Take the case of a family I know quite well: Their only child is now a legal adult, but he still qualifies as a dependent because he’s...

No, it’s not a trend. No, we should not try to paint every Republican with the same brush. Yes, every party (every movement) has its crackpots. Regardless, this made me giggle. Granted, it was an uncomfortable giggle, and maybe not a giggle at all. More like a snarky … snicker/smirk, or something like that.

In New York on business, I picked up a copy of today’s Financial Times and read (among other things) this commentary. Its rather chilling conclusion: [Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert] McNamara described 11 errors in Vietnam: every one was also made in Iraq and Afghanistan. … in 1969, Forbes wrote that the time had returned when investors were going to talk about products, not earnings curves. Forbes spoke at least 40 years too soon. McNamara began his memoirs with a quotation from...

Confession time: I’m still all over the board on the health care reform debate. I share the cost concerns of the cost concerned. I share the coverage concerns of the coverage concerned. I like the “cooperatives” idea; but I’m not opposed to the “public plan” idea, especially if it can be honestly structured to “compete on a level playing field with private insurers,” as suggested by Sen. Schumer and seconded by Sen. Specter. Better yet, “the...