Weigel

People have been joking about a Scott Brown comeback ever since he started lagging Elizabeth Warren in the polls. If Barack Obama won again, then, voila -- there'd be a special election to replace Secretary of State John Kerry! Popular former Sen. Scott Brown would be teed up for a comeback versus any Democratic comer!

And here we go.

I will leave the analysis of Kerry's foreign policy to colleagues like Fred Kaplan. The Secretary doesn't freelance much further than the administration wants him too, but Kerry's used his perch in the Senate to push for climate control legislation. I intend to remain a skeptic about that until and unless the skepticism becomes logically impossible. Brown polls far ahead of his possible, less-known Democratic foes? Sounds like 2011, when Brown polled far ahead of his possible, less-known Democratic foes, and 2009, when popular Attorney General Martha Coakley polled far ahead of her possible Republican foes.

But I wonder why Democrats didn't take another opportunity to play with the law and cancel a special election this year. Massachusetts used to give the governor the power of senatorial appointment, allowing a candidate of his choice to fill out however much of a term remained until the next general election. (In 1961, Democrats chose a placeholder for JFK's seat. Ted Kennedy won it in the 1962 general election, then had to win it again in 1964, the start of the next term.) In 2004, anticipating a possible Kerry presidency, state Democrats quickly passed a law taking this power away from the governor -- a guy named "Mitt Romney" -- and calling for a quick special election. In 2009, Democrats belatedly realized how they'd be screwed if the late Ted Kennedy's seat remained open for months. No senator, no ability to break filibusters. So they changed the law again, allowing the governor to pick an interim senator again, until voters got to the special.

There might have been a window for this stuff in November. Now, with Kerry going to State, it would probably be gauche to change the law. And it would deny the GOP the only possible upside of helping elevate this guy.

Jonathan Weisman's piece on the great GOP fail last night is the one you need to read. National Journal has more pathos and color, so read that one too.

In the wake of the disaster, Roy Blunt writes that it would be nice to extend those tax rates for income under $250,000. This was obviously written before the debacle, but it represents a continuing shrug.

Noam Scheiber profiles Maya MacGuineas, deathless paladin of the deficit scolds.

During the House Republicans’ experiment with refusing to raise the debt ceiling last year, MacGuineas issued a press release stating that “[t]hreatening to blow up the nation’s credit rating and potentially the economy should not be seen as a legitimate negotiating strategy.” She then added: “At the same time, failing to use this debt ceiling ‘hammer’ to force serious fiscal reforms would be a dangerous lost opportunity.” It was a bit like condemning hostage-taking in the strongest terms, then warning that failing to use hostages to, say, secure a Palestinian state would be downright irresponsible.

Tim Murphy investigates the survivalism industry.

David Greenberg pages back through actual history to debunk the silly idea that Robert Bork was the first Supreme Court nominee to be rejected for ideological or political reasons.

And Pitchfork is out with its 50 best albums of 2012. Despite being old and uncool, I own or have listened to 32 of them.

I spoke too soon when I pointed to the "best" take on the Republican meltdown in the House. The most deeply-reported look at the mess comes from Robert Costa, who hung around to get detailed descriptions of Boehner's strategy -- running to assistant whipes, asking if there was a way out, giving up. Costa's is the only take that hints at Republican evolution. The key: Sad Republicans who had no idea it would go this way. There were "audible gasps of surprise" during Boehner's minutes-long "I surrender" meeting. There were angry drinks down the road.

Since the meeting lasted only a few minutes, several members, such as Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, missed the session. As Huelskamp, a leading “Plan B” adversary, rushed to get there, he saw a stream of his colleagues leaving. They were on their phones with aides and family members, sharing the news. They’d be coming home for the holidays since the House was in a state of chaos. Some of them, however, seemed bewildered by the turn of events. They walked slowly down the basement hallway, whispering with other members. One freshman asked a senior member, “Are we really not coming back?” The senior member simply nodded. Almost everyone avoided the press. Feelings were raw. Representative Steve King of Iowa, a frequent Boehner critic, looked at me, shook his head, and said, “I have nothing to say.”

One theory of possible ramifications is that Boehner will find it even harder, in 2013, to win back these people. They've grown more confident that the market won't implode, and that voters will be angry at the president, not them, if the economy starts to teeter. But they need to have ice grills for a few months. Costa's reporting suggests that they can't pull it off.

But maybe I'm too quick to dismiss the possibility that a weak Boehner becomes the target of a coup. The other day, when Costa and I (and lots of people) were asking Republicans about next moves, Costa asked Rep. Dave Schweikert whether there'd be such a move against Boehner.

"One thing at a time," he said.

In a move that really should have surprised fewer people, House Republicans fumbled and bumbled their way to an impasse on their "Plan B" tax plan. Shortly before 7 p.m., they narrowly won a vote on the "sequester replacement," the bill that replaced defense spending cuts with cuts to social services. Having lost 22 members on that vote, unable to lose any more on the tax portion of the plan, they retreated into a conference meeting and basically gave up. Boehner prayed. Boehner cried.

I'll have a longer piece tomorrow, about all the predictable #fail that went into this debacle. For now, I just notice that 22 Republicans voted no or "present" on the "sequester replacement," the part of Plan B that was offered up to sweeten the pot for conservatives. Only three of them -- Joe Walsh, Jeff Landry, and Ron Paul -- are leaving Congress. The other 19 will be there to make fresh hell for Boehner.

My colleague Matthew Yglesias characterizes the "sequester replacement" Plan B bill as a "Christmas tree" for conservatives, packed with stuff they can't get any other way. You can read the bill at this link, a few hours before Republicans try to pass it. (Remember when there was going to be 72 hours to read every new bill? Oh, the halcyon days of 2011.)

This is basically true, though because this sequester replacement is largely identical to the one passed in May, not many people noticed. Among the highlights:

Ending the co-ops created by the Affordable Care Act. This was a sort of replacement for the beloved "public option," money available to private insurers willing to create new affordable programs.

Ending the Prevention and Public Health Fund created by the Affordable Care Act. Like it sounds.

Ending the Home Affordable Modification Program. This was the big federal attempt to bail people out of bad mortgages; Republican say it failed, and it should go.

Tort reform. It folds the GOP's model for this, the HEALTH Act, into the budget cut.

Cutting funding for job retraining. It falls from $90 million to $79 million.

As Yglesias says, the main importance of this stuff is to highlight what Republicans will demand in the next, real round of negotiations. How do you buy off the votes? With cuts to social services, unspooling Obamcare, things like that. I asked outgoing Rules chairman David Dreier which of these things might be negotiable, and he didn't name any right away. "These are items that Democrats have supported in words, if not in votes," he said. Indeed. The May version of this bill got only 218 total votes, losing most Republicans.

Like the little kid said in Poltergeist, they're back:

State Reps. Robert Godshall (R-Montco) and Seth Grove (R-York) want Pennsylvania to divvy ups its electoral college votes by congressional district... in their co-sponsorship memo, they essentially concede that Pa. is no longer a competitive presidential state.

“I believe that the Congressional District Method will increase voter turnout and encourage candidates to campaign in all states rather than just those that are competitive,” the two wrote. “Most importantly, this method of selecting presidential electors will give a stronger voice to voters in all regions of our great Commonwealth.”

Here's the problem: The line about giving a "stronger voice to voters in all regions" is simply untrue. Under the current system, a voter in Rep. Chakka Fattah's Philadelphia district counts as much as a voter in Rep. Mike Kelly's western PA district. In 2012, there happened to be more voters who agreed with that Fattah-district voter, and thought Barack Obama, not Mitt Romney, should be president.

Under a congressional district system, under Pennsylvania's current district map, the voter in the Kelly district counts more than the voter in the Fattah district. Urban voters and voters in the Lehigh valley were packed tight into five districts. Mitt Romney easily carried 12 districts; the last was a close win for Obama. So, had this system been in place, more Pennsylvanians would have voted to make Obama president, and given him only eight of the state's 18 electors. The rural voters who chose Romney would have secured him 10 electors.

A reader introduces me to newly elected Texas Rep. Kyle Kacal, a Republican.

Kacal, who lives on a 2,400-acre ranch in Brazos County, said he wouldn't support a proposed bill instructing residents how to secure their assault weapons.

"People know what they need to do to be safe. We don't need to legislate that -- it's common sense," he said. "Once everyone's gun is locked up, then the bad guys know everyone's gun is locked up."

Kacal echoed a common nationwide argument that guns don't kill people, people kill people.

"I've heard of people being killed playing ping-pong -- ping-pongs are more dangerous than guns," he said. "Flat-screen TVs are injuring more kids today than anything."

In all honesty, if this true, I want to see the peer-reviewed study.

Midway through today's deja vu Senate Democratic press conference about the fiscal cliff, there was a helpful moment of face. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the master of the party's "blame it on the Tea Party" message, produced a chart from the morning's Washington Post. Schumer always has charts. But there wasn't enough time to maker a poster out of the new chart, which demonstrated only a small fiscal gap between the White House's proposal and John Boehner's.

"I was told in second grade to hold it under my chin and face the room and face the room like this," said Schumer, rotating so cameras could capture him. "Ms. McGowan, P.S. 197."

Sen. Harry Reid tapped Schumer on the shoulder. "You're a lot older, though. Which chin?"

Reporters basically ignored the chart and got leaders to re-re-re-state their position. It is this: Democrats have narrowly passed a bill that would extend all of the Bush tax rates on income below $250,000. That bill can't legally be the basis of a final compromise -- fiscal bills must originate in the House -- but Democrats refuse to move any current Republican House bill.

"Until Republicans pass our bill, there is nothing to discuss," said Reid. "We are not taking up [Plan B]."

"The president has promised a veto," said Sen. Dick Durbin. "The majority has promised, no vote in the Senate."

"We've sent them what we're willing to pass," said Schumer. "They're not getting anything [else]."

This is still confusing. Here:

- This summer, House Republicans passed a bill that would extend all of the Bush tax rates ("no tax increases for any Americans") for a year.

- Around the same time, Senate Democrats passed their bill.

- This month, Democrats in the House filed a discharge petition -- the only way the minority can get a bill on the floor -- to allow a vote on the Senate Democrats' bill. It would take a 2/3 vote of the House to pass this.

- This week, House Republicans revealed "Plan B," which splits the "fiscal cliff" solution into two bills. One permanently extends Bush tax rates for income under $1 million, and one is a sequester replacement.

- While any eventual compromise will originate in the House, Democrats refuse to allow any current Republican bill to serve as its basis.

It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? There's a good reason.

The lurching, wheezing progress toward the fiscal cliff so closely resembles the final days of the debt limit battle that it's starting to get ridiculous. One of the House GOP's last moves, in that fight, was the passage of a conservative, dead-in-the-Senate debt limit hike. Republicans had been ready to pass Cut, Cap, and Balance. It rose the debt limit only by including a Balanced Budget Amendment, spending caps at 18 percent of GDP, and cuts as large as the overall hike. But Boehner et al tried to corrall the votes for a less-extreme plan. They spent days. They finally gave up close to midnight, and the next day agreed to rejigger the "compromise" in a way that saved conservative face.

Smash cut to this morning. Republicans now say they will pass "Plan B," which has been split into two bills. The Permanent Tax Relief for Families and Small Businesses Act of 2012 extends all of the Bush tax rates, but applies the old top rate -- 39.6 percent to income over $1 million. The Spending Reduction Act of 2012 replaces the "sequester" with cuts that don't affect defense spending.

But they won't vote on this until tonight. Sometime. Current thinking: 7:30 p.m. or so. Why? Look to Erick Erickson, who says that 35 Republicans are currently "no" votes. Republicans can only lose 23 votes and pass either bill -- any more, and they need some Democrats to vote with them.

Shortly after 11 a.m. today, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called reporters into a hallway near the chamber to discuss the plan. We were standing about a hundred paces away from the Capitol rotunda, where the late Sen. Daniel Inuoye was lying in state, when Cantor announced that both bills would pass. But they can't pass the Senate.

My exasperated response to Charlotte Allen's "tough men and/or kids could stop gun massacres if they bum-rushed the shooter" column got around, as exasperated blog posts tend to do. It's inspired some similarly exasperated emails, many of them arguing that a soft liberal would, of course, have no idea that feminization is responsible for our slow responses to crises. This was the most interesting of the emails, slightly redacted to clip the back-and-forth in which I said the emailer was "prokecting."

While the men who drove TOWARD the University of Texas, rifles in their trunks, to take on Charles Whitman weren't engaging him in hand to hand combat, they were at least responding the way normal men used to do, and succeeded in confusing him and making his eventual capture easier.

Grown husky men were "quickly cut down" running into the Twin Towers as well. Time was, men felt it was their duty to lay down their lives for others, especially women and children. Death before dishonor and all that.

Take another Canadian case. A disturbed man took over a Greyhound bus and while the other passengers watched in shock and horror, attacked a young male passenger. They fled the bus naturally, but many many the police outside the bus _allowed_ this crime to go on for hours, giving the perp time to kill and partially eat the victim, because "procedure" or "regulations." Or simply sheer wimpiness.

Or what about the police who stood on the British shoreline while someone drowned recently. Their alibi? "Health and safety" concerns.

Cuz gosh, they might drown. i.e. be "cut down" to use your words. And gee, I might be hit by a car if I cross the street...

All this adds up to, yes, a feminization of institutions where risk is to be avoided at all costs; dumb rules are imposed to make like as much like a little girl's tea party as possible; and men's traditional, instinctive roles are mocked and in some cases, forbidden.

These are all flawed arguments. Charles Whitman's guns included: "a 35 caliber Remington rifle, a 6mm Remington rifle with a scope, a 357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver, a 9mm Luger pistol, a Galesi-Brescia pistol, a 30 caliber M-1 carbine and a 12-gauge shotgun." None of these weapons could be fired as quickly as an AR-15 Bushmaster, and none contained as many bullets in single clips or magazines. The Canadian case discussed in this email involved a man with a knife, which does make some of the critic's argument -- people didn't display courage in a confined space against a non-projectile weapon.

But almost none of this is pertinent. If there's any debate about gun laws in the offing, it's going to be about the extended clips and high-powered weapons. Diehard opponents of these laws like to think up scenarios in which brave armed men could quickly shoot back at someone with superior weaponry. ("Whether on the street or during a home invasion, violent criminals often move in pairs or packs. Realize that you will never shoot as well as your score at the range when you are under the unbelievable stress of a life-or-death encounter.") They seldom seem to read through the facts of a massacre and explain how someone with arms might have fought back -- often, people on the scene were armed, and could not or did not fire back.

One other thing. The push for concealed carry laws, and for more laws allowing weapons in public places, was kicked off by the 1991 Luby's massacre. Susanna Hupp, who had left her gun in her car, spent the next decade lobbying for, and winning, passage of concealed carry laws. In that case, correctly, the facts on the ground informed the policy response. Why, then, do the "people should'a manned up" theorists ignore all the facts of Newtown?