Thursday, May 19, 2005

The Nuclear Option   For those of you who are trying to figure out what all the rhetoric is about and who/what to believe in the debate over the filibuster rule, two excellent stories in the Washington Post today lay it out as clearly and objectively as I’ve seen.   Jim VandeHei and  Charles Babington’s article, From Senator's 2003 Outburst, GOP Hatched Nuclear Option, gives you the blow-by-blow as to how we got to today.  Among the things you’ll learn are:   How the nomination of Charles Pickering started all of this. When the Hulk got involved. And  remember those computer files that were discovered by the Republicans on Democrat’s computers? Who coined the term nuclear option? How Chief Justice Rehnquist’s announcement that he had cancer brought the White House into play.   It seems very factual to me, probably because all sources are named, and quoted at times, and they are many of the major players on the Republican side.  Be the talk of the parties this weekend! link   And the op-ed columnist David Broder provides his usual insightful commentary on the bigger picture. Many of the newer Republican senators moved from the House of Representatives, where there are no permanent rules and where the majority party needs to give minimal consideration to the views of the minority. That is why you find a sharp generational split among Senate Republicans on the nuclear option. link And for those of you who wonder why worry about this, as a social marketeer, if you believe that legal advocacy is a useful tool in the box, the stakes may not be any higher.   3:07:33 PM

The Heart of a Nation and Social Marketing   For those of you who are trying to figure out what is going inside the beltway, Ron Brownstein in the LA Times today lays it out for you with the recent Pew survey giving it some context.   A Pew survey released this week found that 39% of Americans gave positive marks to Democrats in Congress, with 41% disapproving of them. For congressional Republicans, the results were bleaker. Of those polled, 35% said they approved of the GOP's performance, with 50% disapproving. Those are some of the weakest numbers the poll has recorded for both parties. The poll was conducted May 11-15 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.   It looks likes its become ideological warfare rather than governing.    A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that disapproval of Congress's performance is higher than it has been since 1994, the year voters swept Democrats out of power on Capitol Hill. Americans have grown gloomier about the nation's direction, the economy and Iraq, and by 65%-17% they say Congress doesn't share their priorities…The survey shows a growing sense of disconnection between official Washington and ordinary Americans. link   For complete results of the poll link   Nothing like convergene of the data.  But in the short term, watch for few new programs and a gridlock to develop over new funding.  For the social marketeers, the ideological grounds for launching new programs or refunding existing ones is likely to even further trump science or reality.  Note this article from yesterday’s Washington Post:   The Bush administration pulled back yesterday from a plan [issued by the CDC] that would have required thousands of grass-roots AIDS organizations working overseas and partly funded by U.S. money to publicly declare their opposition to prostitution and sex trafficking.   For those of you who work in the international, or even domestic, HIV/AIDS prevention arena, imagine the implications of publicly declaring your opposition to prostitution – in many cases, a primary target for  prevention efforts!   These are times that may well test the ethics of many of us – the money or the principle.         10:11:44 AM

© Copyright 2005 Craig Lefebvre. Last update: 6/1/2005; 9:05:25 AM.