Reacting to Wikileaks' release of American diplomatic cables, neither liberal nor conservative bloggers were too surprised over the messages’ actual content. But their views were less definite when it came to questions over the value of publicizing such information, the motivations of the leakers and the ease with which the cables were accessed by even low-ranking military officers.

Balloon Juice's John Cole suggested that the United States government shouldn't be too surprised such private information was leaked, given its own recent surveillance history.

This dump will just be viewed by many as an attempt to hurt the United States. I have a hard time getting worked up about it- a government that views none of my personal correspondence as confidential really can’t bitch when this sort of thing happens.

AMERICAblog's Chris in Paris characterized the leaks as a byproduct of the "lack of transparency in politics, which is not just a U.S. issue."

The decisions that our political leaders make could definitely benefit from the public being made more aware of what is going on with tax dollars... If politicians are ready to ask individuals to justify every last cent received by the meager social welfare system in the US, it's fair to ask the same from the government. The information may make many uncomfortable, but that is no reason to keep everyone in the dark.

The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen was not as sure as some other liberal bloggers that the leaks were at all a positive development for the country.

I'm not convinced that the release of these secret materials -- some have begun calling it "Cablegate" -- will be too devastating to international diplomacy, though it certainly makes the State Department's work much more difficult, especially in the short term... I would, however, like to know more about the motivations of the leaker (or leakers). Revealing secrets about crimes, abuses, and corruption obviously serves a larger good -- it shines a light on wrongdoing, leading (hopefully) to accountability, while creating an incentive for officials to play by the rules. Leaking diplomatic cables, however, is harder to understand -- the point seems to be to undermine American foreign policy, just for the sake of undermining American foreign policy. The role of whistleblowers has real value; dumping raw, secret diplomatic correspondence appears to be an exercise in pettiness and spite.

Conservative bloggers like Hot Air's Ed Morrissey were more surprised that the information being leaked was accessible to low-level officers like 22-year-old Pfc. Bradley Manning, who, according to an online conversation between Manning and a fellow hacker, "would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’ … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing."

Oh, please. Tell me that Manning was an encryption genius that spent years cracking some Pentagon code to access the mainframe while rappelling into an antechamber deep in a basement and into a Situation Room. Do not tell me that a corporal was allowed to carry a rewriteable CD into a secure communications area by labeling it as a pop music mix tape. I’ve been in uncleared defense contractor sites with better security than that.

That’s the real scandal. Rewriteable CDs are an obvious security hole. It’s almost as obvious as tape recorder or camera. And if Manning thought of it, there are probably more who have done similar sorts of thefts, perhaps for other ends, which may be even more problematic. After all, we know what Manning got; it’s being splashed all over the New York Times and other publications around the world. Who knows what China, Russia, or Iran may have learned by now?

Red State's Moe Lane wrote in defense of privacy when it comes to world diplomacy.

While I will happily ding President Obama for both his wrong actions and for not living up to his own side’s previously-established standards of behavior, this line of attack by Wikileaks is made up of pure garbage designed to weaken both my country and my government. The President needs his ambassadors to know what he wants; they need to be able to tell him what he can get. So it’s stupid to not be blunt and forthright in private about matters that require a softer public touch. It’s even more stupid for Wikileaks to keep publicly attacking the USA like this.

A few names are surfacing in the blogosphere today on some wide-ranging topics: will Joe Lieberman go red? Was Jon Kyl's home-state project request an earmark? Did Bristol Palin's loss on Dancing With the Stars give the lie to a Tea Party conspiracy?

On Sen. Lieberman, the left and right both responded to a Politico item today on his 2012 prospects.

The Connecticut senator and Democratic exile hasn't made up his mind whether to seek a fifth term, Lieberman and those close to him say. But if he does, the GOP ticket appears to offer his best shot at reelection.

Writers on both sides of the spectrum concluded that if he does switch, he should do it soon.

Liberal blog Balloon Juice's John Cole:

Knowing Joe, he would not be content to switch to the GOP without a grand pronouncement that the party left him, so if he does switch, it will probably be early next year, and he will just cherry-pick some issue that he knows the Democrats are going to win on, whine about it, and then announce that he can in good conscience no longer remain a Democrat. The only question is what the issue will be…

Conservative blogger Jim Geraghty at NRO:

Would Connecticut Republicans even want another six years of Joe Lieberman? They may have embraced him in 2006 against vehemently antiwar Democrat Ned Lamont when their own nominee was a long-shot also-ran, but that was a stimulus, a TARP, and an Obamacare ago. Republicans are in a different mood now, and the issue matrix motivating the public has changed.

Considering how many were willing to embrace Linda McMahon, how many of Connecticut’s GOP primary voters would prefer a genuine Republican, and urge Lieberman to hang up his hat after a long and distinguished career? (Lieberman is 68.)

If Lieberman is going to switch parties, probably better to do it sooner rather than later.

On news that Jon Kyl received $200 million to settle an Indian tribe's water rights claim against the government, Liberal bloggers like Daily Kos' Susan Gardner expressed mock surprise that the much-touted conservative earmark ban is already showing cracks.

Prediction: The next two years are going to see endless disputations about what the word "earmark" means. It's going to look like a convention for the Oxford Freakin' Dictionary in Republican congressional press offices, and it's all going to be staged in order to convince the Tea Party gang that no, really, this particular goodie brought back home is most definitely NOT a dreaded "earmark." It's an … um … "project" or "expenditure" or "investment"….

Both Gardner and the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen point out that the spending would seemingly benefit the state's economy. According to the AP, the project "in Kyl's measure would be used to construct and maintain a drinking water project on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, including a dam, reservoir, treatment plant and delivery pipelines."

But, Benen concluded, that's not the point.

Kyl just threw his support to a sweeping moratorium on earmarks, which apparently didn't quite last a week. And the larger point is that we're likely to see this quite a bit.

And conservative blogs paid lip service - sometimes reluctantly - to the outcome of last night's Dancing With the Stars finale.

Hot Air blogger Allahpundit's post, which he called "Sadly Obligatory," last night (before the results came in):

I don’t want to post it, I have to post it. For three reasons: (1) After multiple HA items about the idiotic excesses of anti-Bristol sentiment, you deserve closure; (2) the prospect of war on the Korean peninsula is attracting a few dozen comments per post while the prospect of war among DWTS voters is attracting a few hundred, in which case let’s go where the traffic action is; (3) the possibility of Bristol winning and ushering in some sort of media/liberal rage apocalypse is real, and therefore newsworthy. Anything could happen if she pulls it off — Twitter crash, major metropolitan riots, maybe even an impromptu White House presser in which The One calls for calm and proposes a beer summit between Bristol and Jennifer Grey.

And NRO blogger Katrina Trinko led her post with this headline - giving voice to rumors that Tea Bag/Sarah Palin supporters were voting in droves to keep Bristol in the competition: "Rightwing Conspiracy Fails to Give Bristol DWTS Win."

Sen. Mitch McConnell's reversal on a Congressional earmark ban garners a variety of reactions - and headlines - from the right and the left.

"McConnell Does About-Face on Earmarks," is how NRO's Daniel Foster characterizes the news.

McConnell defended his own previous earmarks, and subtly worked in the point he’s been trying to make along with Senator Inhofe that the earmark fight is largely symbolic. But smartly, he framed his change of heart not as a politically convenient flip-flop, but as a response to the wishes of the American people.

Barbara Morrill at liberal blog Daily Kos writes, "McConnell blinks on earmarks," noting the senator said he was heeding the message voters sent him in the midterm elections.

Assuming the voters are named DeMint and have been waging jihad over less than 1% of the federal budget in what many see as a power move against the current Senate Minority Leader. And look who blinked.

"McConnell Caves on Earmarks," is The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen's headline.

For what it's worth, I should note for context that the moratorium, in addition to leaving spending largely unaffected, also won't stop the Democratic majority from continuing the practice, forcing GOP senators into a position in which they'll have to vote against popular appropriations bills that happen to include earmarks.

Also note, the moratorium won't have the force of law and couldn't be formally enforced -- so Republicans could just go ahead and request earmarks anyway.

It's not exactly heartening that the first major Republican initiative after the elections is largely meaningless, and intended to do little more than improve their standing in the polls.

There was discord within both the liberal and conservative blogospheres over the proposals from the president's deficit commission, which was publicized today. In some cases, both liberal and conservatives bloggers were supportive of the report, like conservative blogger Kevin Williamson at NRO and left-leaning Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan.

Williamson:

I am surprised that the president’s deficit-reduction panel has produced such a sensible set of proposals: Eliminating tax write-offs while lowering tax rates is a big tax hike — a $100 billion-a-year tax hike, maybe more — but it is the right kind of tax hike, in my view. The simplification of tax filings for most Americans will provide additional private savings in the form of lower compliance costs. Raising the Social Security retirement age, reducing Medicare payments, capping federal revenues, chopping into discretionary spending — all are welcome. I do not think that the authors have “harpooned every whale” as Alan Simpson put it (Obamacare still haunts the fiscal depths), but it’s a very solid start, one that Republicans can pick up and run with.

Sullivan:

I've quickly scanned the Simpson-Bowles draft proposal and find it extremely encouraging. It really does hit what the Dish regards as key themes for a new fiscal order: 1986-style tax reform (largely removing deductions and lowering rates); serious defense retrenchment; focusing social security on the truly needy and raising the retirement age; hard cost-controls in Medicare; a real populist attack on government waste.

It reads like the manifesto the Tea Party never published. Every detail needs thinking through and debate. Much of it is way over my head in terms of the specifics of government programs and the ability to cut them. But the core proposal is honest, real, and vital. I recommend you download and read both documents.

Other bloggers, including Bob Stein at NRO, listed what he liked and disliked about the report. Among his findings;

Here's what I like:

Trying to reduce spending as a share of GDP to 21 percent — very commendable for a centrist group.

Civil-service retirement-benefit reductions; requiring greater contributions for the government’s defined-benefit plan; making the benefit formula less biased in favor of older workers.

Indexing the retirement age in Social Security to longevity — very good. Bravo.

Here’s what I don’t like:

Although the plan says it would try to cap revenue as a share of GDP at 21 percent, there is nothing in the plan that would do so. Gradually, productivity will push a larger share of income into the higher marginal tax brackets, resulting in higher revenue relative to GDP.

Social Security solvency is achieved over 75 years only, rather than over the infinite horizon. This means that in ten years, when the 75-year window includes, at the back end, a ten-year window where solvency does not exist, we will again be back in 75-year insolvency.

The plan calls for increasing the tax base for Social Security. This is a large tax
hike for many workers.

Some liberal bloggers, however, flatly condemned the report.

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen noted some of the lower-profile suggestions in the proposal.

Some of my favorites -- and by "favorites," I mean ideas that I found astounding, not ideas I actually approve of -- include the elimination of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, the elimination of subsidized student loans, new costs imposed on veterans for their health care, cutting schools on military bases, and new entrance fees at the Smithsonian.

Sorry, you freeloading school kids.

And to think, 14 out of 18 commission members weren't ready to endorse this. Imagine that.

Also keep in mind, the cuts could be less severe in the Simpson/Bowles model if only they cut taxes less. But this plan calls for dropping the top marginal rate to just 23%. Under Clinton, it was 39.6%. Under George W. Bush, it was 35%.

I've seen some suggestions that the report, such as it is, should be considered "controversial." But that's not quite right. It's better to call this what it is: hopelessly irrelevant.

Daily Kos' Joan McCarter was equally pessimistic.

The recommendations of the chairs--from the big tax cuts to the decimating of the federal workforce--just don't fit the reality of the current economy with high unemployment, the loss of equity of so many retirees and near retirees in the one major asset most held--their houses, and the wage stagnation that has resulted in the great income equality in the nation. That's not even addressing the costs of two wars and the Bush tax cuts.

The left and right sides of the blogosphere comment on the news that Sen. Mitch McConnell is staging a "behind the scences" attempt to defeat a conservative plan to ban earmarks.

From Politico:

In a series of one-on-one conversations with incoming and sitting senators, McConnell is encouraging his colleagues to keep an open mind and not to automatically side with [Sen. Jim] DeMint, whose plan calls on Senate Republicans to unilaterally give up earmarks in the 112th Congress, according to several people familiar with the talks.

Liberal blogger John Cole at Balloon Juice finds the potential Republican rift over earmarks "awesome," making two points.

Two things about this are awesome. The first is that these guys have so little respect for the tea party that they can’t even wait a week to rub the rube’s noses in it. I mean, it is just great. Every idiot who spent the last year pretending the tea party and the lunatics they had nominated were anything other than the lunatic fringe of the GOP should just be summarily ignored. It’s really one of the greatest cons/re-branding efforts of all times.

Second, I love that the GOP is still so un-serious that earmarks are the hill to die on when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Earmarks are a nothing-burger when it comes to the budget- less than 1% of the federal budget. That’s still big money, but it is nothing when your party ran on a platform of cutting taxes for the rich and re-instating Medicare Advantage and fainting at the notion of defense cuts. Making a big stink about earmarks while supporting all the other irresponsible things the GOP wants to do is akin to ordering four double whoppers for lunch, and then removing the pickles on each, “cuz you’re on a diet!

Conservative blogger Erick Erickson at RedState takes issue with the notion that earmarks are "nothing-burgers" and the other pro-earmark arguments.

Yes, earmarks amount to a small percentage of the budget and compared to the enormity of the entitlement crisis of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid they are miniscule. But as Jeff Flake and Tom Coburn have said before, earmarks are the gateway drug to higher spending. If a politician thinks his reelection bid is in jeopardy because he won’t be able to deliver a bike path or high-speed rail project to his district, it is inconceivable to think that that same politician will sign up for allowing people to redirect their FICA taxes to personal accounts or slow the growth of Medicare. Earmarks erode the ability to say no to more government, and they corrupt often-good politicians with the enjoyment and the power of directing other people’s money to those who come to them and ask.

Yes, Congress does have the power to spend money, but the vast majority of earmarks are spent on completely unconstitutional projects and activities. Lets take some of the earmarks requested by Senator Jim Inhofe (who we hear has been on quite the war path lately in defense of earmarks). Did the Founders really envision the federal government paying for developing curriculum in the Tulsa public schools for students at risk of dropping out ($195,000) or a river ferry boat program in Oklahoma City ($1.7 million) or an 'engineering incubator' in Norman ($137,200)? What clause of the Constitution do those fall under exactly?

Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway's attack ad, which uses Republican opponent Rand Paul's college-age "Aqua Buddha" incident to question his faith, sparked a debate among liberal bloggers over whether the ad's implications - that Paul holds a disdain for Christianity left over from his youth - are a legitimate political attack or hit below the belt on issues that should be irrelevant to a Democratic candidate.

The blog of the left-leaning New Republic featured a post by Jonathan Chait, who wrote that the ad is the "ugliest, most illiberal political ad of the year."

"I actually don't doubt the implication of the ad, namely that Rand Paul harbors a private contempt for Christianity. He's a devotee of Ayn Rand, who is a fundamentally anti-Christian thinker. And much of Paul's history, which he is frantically covering up in an attempt to pass himself off as a typical Republican, suggests among other things a deep skepticism about religion.

"The trouble with Conway's ad is that it comes perilously close to saying that non-belief in Christianity is a disqualification for public office. That's a pretty sickening premise for a Democratic campaign."

Washington Monthly's liberal blogger Steve Benen also seemed to think that the attacking of a Republican candidate's religious beliefs was not in keeping with the Democratic ethos, suggesting that the ad is a desperate attempt to get a lead on Paul in the polls.

"I have no idea whether something like this will be effective. Kentucky's cultural conservatism and strong evangelical majority may respond well to the message, and reinforce fears about Paul's personal oddities. (The point is spelled out plainly in the ad's conclusion: "Why are there so many questions about Rand Paul?")

"Still, I much preferred when Democrats didn't attack rival candidates over their religious beliefs."

Balloon Juice's Doug J seemed to think the ad missed its purpose completely.

"I have to admit, this anti-Rand Paul ad kind of makes me want to vote for the guy. Got to be the funniest ad I’ve ever seen, though I don’t think that’s intentional. But what do I know about Kentucky politics?"

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of Daily Kos, wrote on his blog that the ad was fair game, as a candidate's personal beliefs were as relevant to their political credentials as their policy stances.

"I can see why Chait and other progressives might be a bit upset, as the ad attacks Rand Paul for his irreligious beliefs.

"Personally, I see nothing wrong with it. Voters are less concerned with issues than values when casting their ballots, and for many voters, religion speaks to the candidate's values. I may not like it, but it's a democracy, and the notion that the source of a candidate's values are off-limits is patently absurd.

"Sure, that means that as an atheist I would never get elected in Mississippi or Alabama or Kentucky, but so what? No one has a right to electoral office, and in a democracy, you have to sell yourself to the voters. In many places, religion is part of the package."

Bloggers took President Obama and Vice President Biden's recent comments, in which they expressed frustration over low voter enthusiasm, as a symbol of mutual disillusionment between voters and the West Wing.

Liberal blogs chastised the leaders for trying to blame voters for their predicted midterm losses, while conservatives looked on as the battle of the base continued.

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen wrote about President Obama's comments in Rolling Stone that "it is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election." Benen divided those disaffected voters into two main parties, and discussed the ways to reach those groups: "those who believe the president's accomplishments have been inadequate; and those who are struggling badly in this economy, and expected conditions to be better than they are under Obama."

For those in the "inadequate" camp, the president's pitch may or may not be persuasive, but I think it should be. We talked recently about the accomplishments of the last 21 months, so I won't rehash the list again, but I continue to believe it's a record that's as impressive as anything we've seen in modern times. What's more, I'm not at all convinced it was within the president's power to make these milestone breakthroughs any stronger. The accomplishments can and should go further, but for the Democratic base, that should mean getting more engaged, not less.

Reaching that final group seems to be a tougher sell. The administration's economic policies have made a huge difference, but the status quo is still woefully unacceptable. It's not necessarily up to the president alone to grab hold of the economy and make it better, but there have been missteps and the frustration is understandable.

I suppose the pitch Democrats can make to these voters is: it can and will get worse if Republicans win, and would have been much worse had the GOP gotten its way.

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong seemed to fall under the group that thinks Obama's accomplishments have been inadequate, writing that his Rolling Stone interview "made him sound like the Whiner In Chief, not a confident President."

Its unbelievable that Obama thinks he's accomplished '70 percent' of his promises. What a crock. The guy has no personal sense of accountability at all, its rather embarrasing.

You can pretty much tell that the whole point of his doing this article was to point a finger of blame, and set up the WH story for the upcoming mid-term loss... All very coordinated. But what's interesting about it is how detached Obama himself is from the exercise. It certainly isn't motivating. Its not uniting. It tilts more to the lecturing side. He's apparently already standing up, has been so all along, and has nothing to do with the problem of there being a lack of principle.

AMERICAblog's John Aravosis took issue with Biden's comments on MSNBC last night when talking with Lawrence O'Donnell, host of "The Last Word." During the interview, Biden said that "there's a new majority, 60 votes," which prevented Democrats from, in some cases, getting legislation passed, and in others, getting it passed through normal channels, like health care reform.

Two problems with that line of argument. First, George Bush did just fine with a 55 vote, and even a 50 vote, majority in the Senate. Why couldn't Obama/Biden do just as well with 60? ... Rather than lecturing Democrats about how unreasonable they are to be upset with the President for constantly negotiating with himself, Biden would do better having a talk with his boss, and asking him why George Bush was so effective at passing his agenda, at kow-towing Democrats, and at thwarting opposition filibusters, when Bush had far fewer numbers than Obama has now in the US Senate.

The conservative side also noted the apparent conflict between the White House and voters, as vocalized by its two chief spokesmen.

Daniel Foster of NRO satirized the president's listing of his legislative accomplishments during his Rolling Stone interview:

Obama tells Democrats to 'wake up' and gaze upon his works.

And on Biden, Hot Air's Allahpundit wondered why the liberal base hasn't been more incensed that members of the West Wing seem to continue to slam them for wanting to see more accomplishments and not being fired up enough about the midterms.

"As much as I enjoy this hot internecine blue-on-blue action, I can’t blame rank-and-file lefties for being annoyed with Team Barry. If anything, their reaction thus far has been remarkably subdued."

Bloggers on the left and right had plenty to say about the the Republican party's new "Pledge to America," which, as First Read wrote earlier, divided conservative circles with some criticizing the proposal as being light on new policy recommendations.

National Review Online, whose editors came out in support of the document today, posted several additional defenses of the agenda.

Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition head who was connected to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, compared and contrasted the pledge with the 1994 House Republicans' Contract With America, noting that he was "privileged to work closely with Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and their compatriots" on the contract.

My only criticism then and now is that there didn’t seem to be second act. After the first 100 days and the flurry of floor votes on the ten items in the Contract, the GOP fountainhead of ideas seemed to be a spent volcano. The lesson: Next time, make sure the agenda envisions 100 months, not 100 days.

That is why the House Republicans’ Pledge to America is so encouraging. It’s big, brash, and bold, calling for everything from disarming Iran and winning the wars and the subsequent peace in Iraq and Afghanistan to repealing Obamacare. This is a tall order. Good. Governing is a marathon, not a sprint, and Republicans now grasp that reality.

Seth Liebsohn, a fellow at the Claremont Institute, suggested Democrats should be envious of the plan.

If I were a Republican voter, I'd be saying, "Yes, this is what I want." If I were an independent, I'd be saying "Yes, this is what I think." If I were a Democrat, I'd be saying, "Damn, I wish we had this." The last one is the most true, I think: The Democrats have nothing like this -- all they have are really bad numbers and indicia; they do not have a convincing blueprint that shows the way out of the mess or doldrums that people believe they created. They get occasional assurances from the White House and President Obama, but they don't ring right and are not convincing. They have nothing -- not even op-ed writers -- to help them see what is right about their philosophy of governance right now. Whatever our chances were for November, they just increased.

And NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez posts a few reactions from readers, including this one:

I like it. Those who say it isn’t enough need to understand that it is just a beginning. Also, any time the young guns and Boehner can get face time works for me. It forces the media to acknowledge that the Republicans are not what Pres. Obama accuses them of. They are no longer the “party of no,” but the party of “here we come!”

On the liberal side, AMERICAblog's Chris in Paris panned the Republicans' inclusion of their oft-repeated call to permanently extend all Bush tax cuts, including those to the wealthiest Americans.

"Who really needs to pay for expensive giveaways to the wealthiest Americans anyway? Hasn't that been the ongoing Republican plan anyway? Looks like they're not the only ones who can't figure out what "change" is supposed to mean. Details, details. Who needs 'em?"

Balloon Juice John Cole's shared the same sentiment of "nothing new to see here."

The GOP has released their new “Pledge for America,” and surprising no one, it looks like the prescription for the future is tax cuts, missile defense, gay-bashing and fetus worship, and investigating ACORN the White House.

Linking to the classic song "We Don't Get Fooled Again," (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss), Cole continued:

Sadly, America no longer listens to the Who. I, for one, look forward to the new regime of tax cuts for Jesus.

Daily Kos' DemFromCT singled out the provision intending to repeal and replace the entire health care bill, which includes the popular law forbidding insurance companies from dropping patients with pre-existing conditions.

The blogger excerpted from a New York Times story on one family who benefited from the new law.

Bill and Victoria Strong’s 3-year-old daughter, who has a degenerative condition, can now be covered by health insurance that does not have a lifetime cap on benefits.

So the Republicans want to repeal these measures and tell the Strongs their daughter is out of luck? Good luck with that.

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen concluded that the agenda demonstrates Republicans' rhetorical strenth and policy weakness, but that the imbalance between the two skills may not matter in the runup to the midterms.

Today, the House GOP will release a "Pledge" that simply doesn't make any sense to those who take reality seriously. It's a reminder that the Republican Party just isn't good at this sort of thing. It excels in attack ads, smear campaigns, and media manipulation; but the GOP struggles badly, to the point of comedy, when asked to do substantive work.

Ultimately, it may not matter. Voters are frustrated by a weak economy, and so Democrats are very likely to lose badly in November, even if they're being punished for trying to clean the GOP's mess. But electoral success for Republicans in the fall need not translate to an endorsement of this "Pledge." It's a transparent sham.

White House chief economic advisor Larry Summers’ departure from the White House raises questions from liberal and conservative bloggers on how he left and whom the White House will recruit to replace him.

Writing at conservative blog National Journal Online, J.D. Foster, senior fellow in the economics of fiscal policy at the Heritage Foundation, wondered whether Summers’ resignation, and those of other former White House advisors, was due to incompatibility with President Obama.

“Summers may win few popularity contests, but he is near universally acclaimed as one of the finest economic minds of our time. Word of his resignation raises the question: If Summers is so smart, how does one explain the administration’s economic policies?

…

It may turn out that Obama’s chief economic adviser was not Summers, or Orszag, or Romer. Perhaps all three were frustrated to learn that, from the start, Barack Obama’s chief and ultimately sole economic adviser has been Barack Obama. It would explain the frustrated departure of the illustrious three. It would explain the administration’s economic policies. And it would explain the unease of so many Americans who tell pollsters that Washington’s economic policies are fundamentally headed in the wrong direction.”

Hot Air’s Allahpundit also questioned the reasoning given for Summers’ departure.

“Supposedly, it’s because Harvard has a “strict two-year leave policy” for professors’ sabbaticals that Summers has to leave now. Really? They wouldn’t bend the rules for a former president of the university so that he can go on advising the president of the United States? If that’s true, how come we didn’t hear about Summers’s plans to leave long, long ago?”

Liberal bloggers don’t mourn Summers’ leaving. Writing that Summers helped further Obama’s “conservative economic agenda,” AMERICAblog's Chris in Paris at wrote that Summers’ replacement would not mean a change in policy.

“We may be in for an even more conservative economic agenda. Should that be the case, there's really even less reason to support this administration.”

Among the replacement candidates for Summers mentioned at the liberal OpenLeft: New York Times economic columnist Paul Krugman, economist Joseph Stiglitz, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and Elizabeth Warren, the new special assistant to the President and Treasury Secretary for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Bloggers take aim at Democratic critiques of the Tea Party today, as one liberal standard-bearer praises the group and Democratic voters in New York and Washington demonstrate, as one conservative blogger sees it, the kind of party-splitting sentiment that many political observers say is dividing the GOP on ideological faultlines.

Balloon Juice's DougJ responds to a quote by former Vermont governor and DNC chair Howard Dean that “I actually approve of most of what the tea party is doing… I think it’s great to have individuals reach out to take their own responsibility for their own [future] and lashing out against government that has really forgotten them."

I think it’s fair to say that DC elites have forgotten about the unemployed. But teatards (this is the same study I linked to before) are not disproportionately unemployed or economically disadvantaged.

Much of Bush’s 2004 re-election strategy involved firing up the teatard base (they weren’t called that before but it’s the same people).

Conservative blogger James Richardson at Red State criticizes Democrats for ousting D.C. mayor Adrien Fenty, "whose pragmatism earned him national praise," and re-electing Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, "a 20-term legislator for Congress whose ethics probes had become a symbol of corruption and a clarion call for term limits."

With all the speculation that the GOP had been torn asunder by the Tea Party movement in its bid to refashion the party in its own image, one might be inclined to believe, wrongly, that anecdote. One splashy headline after the next has fomented the expectation that the lunatics had stormed the hospital, with loony policies abounding: Social Security to be phased out; the Department of Education to dissolve; and the 14th Amendment to be repealed.

But it was not the Republican Party that caved Tuesday night to deep-pocketed labor unions or willfully overlooked a career of stunning ethics violations in its intraparty contests in Washington and New York City. That’s the kind of change in which President Obama’s Democratic Party believes - though if generic ballot polls are an accurate indicator of the national mood, it’s not the change for which Americans signed up in 2008.

There are several big primary races happening tomorrow, but the one getting the most buzz is the Delaware Senate match up between Rep. Mike Castle and Tea-Party-and-Sarah-Palin-backed Christine O'Donnell. Conservative blogs were split between supporting Castle's pragmatism and O'Donnell's ideology, while liberal blogs observed the implosion of what was supposed to be an easy Senate takeover for the GOP.
 
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey called the race a "tough decision" for Republican voters who think Castle would be too liberal in the Senate, but who also doubt O'Donnell's ability to win a general election.

If control of the Senate comes down to this race, and it very well might, would it be better to have a Republican squish holding the seat and give the GOP control of the Senate floor and all the committees, or to hand it to either Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer for the next two-year period in which we’ll see at least one Supreme Court retirement and Obama still attempting to push through his radical agenda?

Internal divisions at Red State over who to support in the primary demonstrate the rift this race has caused between mainstream and anti-establishment Republicans.
 
Hogan at Red State chooses O'Donnell at any cost.

Maybe O’Donnell cannot win the general election. So be it. For those who think getting a Republican majority back in the Senate is the solution to our problems, you miss the naked reality that we had a sizable majority and it was liberal pukes like Castle, and the supposed conservatives who empowered them, who drove the Party and the nation into a ditch, handing the reins to nutjob leftists in the process.
 

Red State's Dan McGlaughlin came out in favor of Castle, but suggested that his choice was the lesser of two evils and not reflective of his choices for conservative candidates elsewhere in the country.

"We’re not talking about a generic conservative candidate like O’Donnell, but O’Donnell herself. O’Donnell’s not a veteran state legislator like Scott Brown or Sharron Angle, or a former federal judge like Joe Miller, but a repeat candidate with no real experience at any level of government. I’m all for citizen legislators, but my point is that she really has nothing to fall back on to convince skeptical voters that she’s a serious person. And O’Donnell has had a series of problems the past few weeks, from a trainwreck radio interview where she was caught fibbing about having won some counties against Joe Biden in 2008, to a disastrous effort on her behalf to claim that Castle was gay, to a series of hit pieces on her financial and other woes." 

The Washington Independent's Steve Benen wrote that O'Donnell's competitiveness against Castle is a boon to the Democratic candidates.

If I had to put money on the race, I'd say Castle still manages to eke out a win when primary voters head to the polls tomorrow. But I thought Sen. Lisa Murkowski would win in Alaska, too, and it's proving to be one of those years for the Republicans' far-right base.
 
If you're thinking that New Castle County Executive Chris Coons, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is enjoying all of this, we're on the same page."

Think Progress notes that Sen. Murkowski called Castle to warn him that the Tea Party will come after him "with everything they've got," according to The Hill. 

Indeed, the GOP establishment seems to have taken Murkowski’s warning to heart, coming out stronger against O’Donnell than any other major tea party challenger. Last week, the Republican Party of Delaware released a statement calling O’Donnell “reckless,” “hypocritical,” and “dishonest.” A few days before that, Delaware GOP Chairman Tom Ross derided O’Donnell as a “troubled perennial candidate” who is “not electable in Delaware or anywhere else for that matter.” The state party doesn’t even list O’Donnell as a candidate on its website. 

Former OMB director Peter Orszag's inaugural New York Times column, in which he expressed reluctant support for extending the Bush tax cuts for two years before ending them altogether, is still being rehashed by some liberal and conservative bloggers.

In an interview with the Washington Post's Greg Sargent today, Orszag clarified his position, saying it was not meant as a defense of tax cuts for the wealthy.

"The point I was trying to make is that we can't afford the tax cuts over the medium term, and they shouldn't be made permanent -- but the middle class tax cuts should not expire today... If the price to be paid for that a temporary extension of the upper income tax cuts, my view is that we should reluctantly accept that," Orszag told Sargent.

Liberal blogger John Cole at Balloon Juice responded to Orszag's statement, highlighting the fact that Orszag advocates a tax cut extension because he thinks they could be more effective politically, not policy-wise.

Orszag’s position in his piece yesterday was evident to anyone without an axe to grind or headline to sell- he thinks extending the tax cuts on the wealthy are a bad policy, but he would suck it up and accept it to keep the middle class cuts in place. The only way to read Orszag’s op-ed yesterday and come away with the coverage we got yesterday was to, well, ignore what he actually said in the op-ed and start salivating about conflict.

But I’m kind of used to that by now.

On the conservative side, NRO's Michael G. Franc didn't doubt that Orszag's motivation for supporting a temporary extension was political. He did, however, trip over a sentence from Orszag's original article in which Orszag explains why all tax cuts should eventually expire. He excerpts the following paragraph:

How much savings is plausible on the spending side? Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will account for almost half of spending by 2015. Even if we reform Social Security, which we should, any plausible plan would phase in benefit changes to avoid harming current beneficiaries — and so would generate little savings over the next five years. The health reform act included substantial savings in Medicare and Medicaid, so there aren’t further big reductions available there in our time frame. (Emphasis added.)

Franc urged readers to "replay that last sentence again." He wrote:

So, a permanent, multi-hundred billion dollar tax increase hangs over every American taxpayer like the sword of Damocles precisely because President Obama and his allies in Congress used up all the potential savings from two of the big three entitlement programs — Medicare and Medicaid — to pay for Obamacare? The mere existence of Obamacare, we are now told, means all of us — included those with far less than $250,000 a year in income — will be saddled with higher taxes forevermore. And there is no other way to solve this fiscal mess? How convenient! Why didn’t Orszag and other administration officials in the know shout this rather salient fact from the rooftops prior to the final vote on Obamacare? Think it might have affected the outcome?

Guess we just have to score any future tax increase as yet another cost of Obamacare. Or, better yet, repeal the darn thing.