That’s the growing consensus among Republican National Committee members who will automatically attend the party’s national convention this summer and can support any candidate they choose.

Even some members who support other candidates begrudgingly say the math doesn’t add up for anyone but the former Massachusetts governor.

“I would be surprised if Romney doesn’t get the number he needs,” said Jeff Johnson of Minnesota, who supports former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Bob Bennett of Ohio was more blunt.

“Look, Gov. Romney’s going to be the nominee, and he’s going to have enough votes,” said Bennett, who is publicly neutral but said he supported Romney four years ago.

SEE ALSO: Gingrich: It’s ‘Far and Away’ Mitt Romney

Romney’s chief rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, is pledging to stay in the race, hoping a victory in his home state’s primary April 24 will give his campaign new life. But Santorum has fallen far behind Romney in the race for convention delegates, and RNC members are taking notice, even though most are publicly staying neutral, preferring to let primary voters decide the nominee.

The Associated Press has polled 114 of the 120 superdelegates, party members who can support any candidate for president they choose at the national convention in August, regardless of what happens in primaries or caucuses.

In the latest survey, conducted Tuesday to Friday, Romney has 35 endorsements, far more than anyone else but a modest figure for the apparent nominee. Gingrich has four endorsements, Santorum has two and Texas Rep. Ron Paul got one.

RNC members have been slowly embracing Romney. He picked up 11 new endorsements since the last AP survey a month ago, after the Super Tuesday contests. Over the course of the campaign, however, Romney methodically has added endorsements from every region of the country. In the U.S. territories, where voters help decide the nominee but can’t vote in the general election, Romney has dominated.

Romney has endorsements from all three RNC members in Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. He was endorsed by two of the three members in Puerto Rico.

Romney may be struggling among voters in the South, but he was endorsed by two of the three committee members in Mississippi, Henry Barbour and Jeanne Luckey. Romney even has support from Robert Asher of Pennsylvania.

Santorum’s only endorsements are from members in Iowa and Alabama. In Pennsylvania, state GOP chairman Robert Gleason is publicly neutral.

“I talked to Rick the other day,” Gleason said. “He didn’t even ask me to support him.”

Texas GOP chairman Steve Munisteri said he talked to Santorum for about 20 minutes on Tuesday, when Santorum was in the state for a fundraiser.

Santorum told him “what I already believed, which is we’re only a little over the halfway mark and that he thinks he’ll do really well in the Southern states,” said Munisteri, who has yet to endorse anyone.

“He should go into those states as the front-runner,” Munisteri said. “If he can win Pennsylvania, he’d then be able to put a streak of five or six wins together based on all the Southern states holding primaries.”

Seventy-two RNC delegates said they were either undecided or not ready to make a public endorsement. Many said they are eager for the nomination fight to end so the party can focus on defeating President Barack Obama in November.

But most said they are reluctant to ask Santorum to quit.

“The decision to get in or get out of a race is an extremely personal decision,” said John Ryder of Tennessee, who is neutral. “He’s got to decide when he thinks it is no longer politically valuable to continue.”

“It is very hard to see any path for Sen. Santorum to the nomination. It is very hard to see any path for Speaker Gingrich to the nomination,” Ryder said. “But they and their supporters have to make that final call.”

In the overall race for delegates, Romney has 660 and Santorum has 281, according to the AP count. Gingrich is even farther behind, with 135, followed by Paul with 51.

Romney has won 58 percent of the caucus and primary delegates so far. At that pace, he would reach the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination, 1,144, on June 5, when five states, including delegate rich California and New Jersey, hold contests

Santorum met privately Thursday with conservative activists to work on plans to stop Romney’s march to the nomination. The group decided to pressure Gingrich to leave the race, believing that would help unite conservatives behind Santorum.

Gingrich, however, has already scaled back his campaign to the point that he schedules few public events. In the three primaries last Tuesday, all won by Romney, Gingrich got 11 percent of the vote in both Maryland and the District of Columbia and 6 percent in Wisconsin.

Even if Santorum had picked up every vote for Gingrich, Romney still would have won all three primaries.

“It’s over with,” said Bennett, the RNC member from Ohio. “And if Romney carries Pennsylvania, that completes it. He’ll be the presumptive nominee before the end of the month.”

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The Republican presidential primaries have drawn an electorate that is much older and less ethnically-diverse than the rest of the country, exit polls in key states show, a pattern likely to continue as the GOP holds primaries on Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi.

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An analysis of the GOP primary electorate, as first detailed by National Journal’s Ron Brownstein, illustrates the increasing divide between Democrats, who are heavily reliant on support from blacks, Hispanics and voters under 40, and a GOP that is increasingly dominated by older and white voters.

‘LIKE’ NewsOne’s FB Page To Stay Up On Black News From Around The World

For example, in the 2008 general election, 75 percent of voters in Arizona were white, 4 percent black, 16 percent Hispanic. But in the GOP primary last month, 89 percent of voters were white, 1 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic.

In the 2008 general election, there was about an equal number of voters between ages 18-29 and voters over 65 in Arizona. In the recent Republican primary, 23 percent of voters were over 65, while only 12 percent were between ages 18 and 29.

For more on this story, go to theGrio.

The former business executive, facing a woman’s allegation of a 13-year extramarital affair, says a heavy emotional toll on his family – particularly his wife, Gloria, who he has not seen since the charge surfaced – could force him to call it quits. The shift comes as a growing chorus of would-be allies suggests he is no longer a viable presidential contender and Cain himself says fundraising has suffered.

Cain, a top-tier candidate just weeks ago, says he’ll decide in the next “few days” whether to abandon his White House bid, but not before he meets with his wife.

“Since I’ve been campaigning all week, I haven’t had an opportunity to sit down with her and walk through this with my wife and my family. I will do that when I get back home on Friday,” Cain told reporters gathered at his New Hampshire campaign headquarters Wednesday night. “I am not going to make a decision until after we talk face to face.”

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Cain said he had spoken to his wife only by phone since Monday, the day an Atlanta television station reported the woman’s accusation. Since then, aides have crafted a packed campaign schedule with stops in Ohio, New Hampshire, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia and prepared to launch a fresh round of TV ads in Iowa.

Cain was to sit down Thursday afternoon with the New Hampshire Union Leader, an influential conservative voice in the first-in-the-nation primary state. This evening the former pizza executive is scheduled to deliver a business-focused speech at Middle Tennessee State University.

“There were some people who thought that I was finished,” Cain said Wednesday night. “But I’m going to leave it with Yogi Berra’s comment: `It ain’t over till it’s over.’ And it ain’t over yet.”

Many Republican operatives believe Cain’s bid is over whether he pulls the plug or not.

“I don’t see how they walk away from the damage that’s been done and emerge as a viable primary candidate,” said Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP consultant based in Florida. “All these things about Herman Cain keep coming out drip, drip, drip, and they’re not handling it well. And now conservative Republicans have another place to go: Newt Gingrich.”

Dan McLagan, a veteran GOP strategist based in Atlanta, said Cain “is like a zombie at this point: He’s dead but he does not appear to have noticed and has kept on walking.”

“His support is all moving to Gingrich and, at some point, he’s going to look back and see that he is grand marshal of a one-man parade,” McLagan said.

Gingrich has been the beneficiary – in polls, at least – of Cain’s slide in the month since it was disclosed that the National Restaurant Association paid settlements to two women who claimed Cain sexually harassed them while he was its president. A third woman told The Associated Press that Cain made inappropriate sexual advances but that she didn’t file a complaint. A fourth woman also stepped forward to accuse Cain of groping her in a car in 1997.

Cain has denied wrongdoing in all cases.

Atlanta-area businesswoman Ginger White, 46, said her affair with Cain ended this year before he became a White House candidate. He has denied any such affair, and in a letter addressed to “patriots and supporters” called her allegations “completely false” and labeled her “troubled.”

“It’s very disappointing that he would call me troubled and, you know, it’s unfortunate,” White said Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Top aides huddled privately Wednesday to map out a strategy to get past the allegations. He has told his top supporters that his campaign must determine whether he will have the financial and grassroots support to move ahead.

“The day that this latest one hit, fundraising went way down,” Cain told reporters in New Hampshire. “As the week has gone on and this woman who has made these accusations has basically started to contradict herself, our fundraising has started to go back up. It’s not up to the level where it was, but a lot of people are saying, you know what, they don’t believe it.”

In New Hampshire and at other campaign stops this week, he renewed what has become a familiar defense: that he is the victim of attacks by liberals and the establishment, who are threatened by his outsider appeal.

“They want you to believe that with another character assassination on me that I will drop out,” a defiant Cain told a crowd of about 200 Wednesday in Dayton, Ohio. Some responded with shouts of “No!” and “Boo!”

In Iowa, Cain’s state chairman, Steve Grubbs, said he was preparing a busy December schedule beginning with a Dec. 10 debate in Des Moines. And Grubbs said Cain, who has not aired any campaign ads in Iowa since last week, will resume advertising Friday with a new spot that asserts that electing Cain would put a veteran CEO in the White House, not a politician.

“His campaign is strong enough to survive the allegations,” said Michael Farren, 31, an Ohio State University doctoral student in economics, from Pataskala, Ohio.

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“Get your a– in line,” he demanded to the caucus.

The GOP has been quite divided between those who back Boehner’s plan and those — mostly Tea Party members — who argue his plan’s spending reductions are “puny.”

Others have accused Boehner of being a traitor for negotiating with President Obama in possibly increasing government revenues.

Read More At HuffingtonPost.com

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This week is most certainly Media V. Bachmann, as two controversial stories have placed the Minneapolis representative in not-s0-comfortable footing, despite topping Republican favorite Mitt Romney in an Iowa poll.

Leading mental health experts and gay advocates ardently condemned Bachmann and her husband’s Christian counseling center, Bachmann & Associates, for reportedly conducting reparative therapy to convert gays to straight. Though Marcus Bachmann denied the allegations five years ago, recent footage and statements suggests otherwise. An undercover video provided by a group, Truth Wins Out, revealed a therapist from the center conducting therapy on gay clients in efforts to make them straight.

Professional doctors from the American Psychological Association (APA), the nation’s premiere organization for psychologists, said that such therapy not only turns fruitless, but causes far more damage than good.

Bachmann religiously and politically opposes same-sex marriage and views the gay lifestyle as a sin, therefore such reports don’t stray from what is already known of her, and subsequently wouldn’t affect her voter base, as most conservatives, too, oppose same-sex marriage.

For independent and moderate voters, though, Bachmann will find difficulty carving herself as a president who can decisively separate ones religious doctrines from the voice of ones constituents — which should be the foremost sight of any head of state.

However, the most damaging bit of the reparative therapy fracas is Bachmann’s refusal to address the issue during an interview when directly probed by a local Iowan ABC News affiliate anchor. When asked of her opinion on reparative therapy and whether or not it was conducted in her center, Bachmann deliberately dodged the question. Instead, Bachmann provided a standard political sound bite on the presidential election and job creation.

Bachmann’s Response [VIDEO] Below:

http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&content=V2LNC00XB8F280SZ&read_more=1&widget_type_cid=svp

Surely, such an inability to answer direct questions will not sit well with non-Republican voters, nor will it give them any incentive to back her over other candidates. If Bachmann can’t, as a business owner, provide an answer to something this intelligible, what kind of answers will she provide (or dodge) on the economy and legislation as the president of the United States?

Then there’s her stance on the ineffectiveness of single-parent households. Such personal views should have no place in politics, as it isolates a considerable portion of voters who are single parents, or have been raised in single-parent households.

But I digress.

In addition to the gay conversion controversy, Bachmann found herself in the hot seat when she signed an Iowa pledge, engineered by a conservative group The Family Leader, that contained the following in its preamble:

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

Unsurprisingly, the Bachmann camp received backlash for the comment, which many argued was an insinuation that African-American children were better off under the system of slavery than they are today.

Bachmann and her team immediately diffused the incident, avowing that she did not read the preamble, and in fact, the preamble was never included in the vow she signed.

One can only take her word, right?

Nevertheless, The Family Leader retracted the language. Though the storm may have subsided, Bachmann’s recurring controversy seems to have shaken up her once robust campaign trail.

Will the LGBT and African-American communities’ outrage impel voters to reconsider their impression of Bachmann, or will she prove to be a strong force in the upcoming GOP presidential race to the White House?

The saga continues…

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The pledge enjoined GOP presidential candidates to denounce gay marriage, and included a line that read, “Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

The mastermind behind the anti-gay, slave embedded pledge is Bob Vander Plaat, an arguably influential figure in Iowa GOP politics.

Plaats is known as an anti-gay Conservative who many Republicans have extolled, including current Republican presidential candidates, and is considered to have “powerful” influence in the GOP caucuses. The broker for the Iowa GOP was a candidate in the gubernatorial election.

Read More At Omaha.com

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The Daily Beast Reports:

Republican presidential candidates are still vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, of course, but they are mainly going after President Obama’s economic record. That makes sense because the lagging economy is by far the top concern of voters. It also makes sense because with each passing month, the health-care law is woven more tightly into the fabric of American life and becomes more difficult to unravel.

David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, says Republicans will make a mistake if they dwell next year on repealing the law. “The American people want to move forward. If there are problems with reform, fix it. They don’t want to start all over again,” he told me.

The article also reports that Republican candidates would have to not only repeal the bill, but formulate an alternative, which could be difficult.

Read More At TheDailyBeast.com

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The former Governor of Alaska and current celebrity said the only thing that will prevent her from running is her family.

“If it came down to the family just saying, ‘Please, Mom, don’t do this,’ then that would be the deal-killer for me, because your family’s gotta be in it with you,” Palin said.

As for her prospective platform Palin proclaimed, “The people of America are desperate for positive change, and deserving of positive change, to get us off of this wrong track.”

“I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it has to be me, or it can only be me, to turn things around,” she said. “But I do believe that I can win.”

Newsweek Reports:

Whatever decision Palin makes will alter the near-ideal circumstance she enjoys now. From the remove of her cyber-perches on Twitter and Facebook, and the occasional appearance on Fox News (where she is a paid contributor), Palin is able to do plenty of politicking, unfettered by the encumbrances of a declared candidacy. She has no campaign staff directing her course (a famous source of unease during her vice-presidential run) and no press secretary urging her to accommodate what she calls the “lamestream media.” She and Todd are free to keep any schedule they wish. “We don’t advertise where we’re going,” she said that evening, in what might be the understatement of the political season.

Read More At Newsweek.com

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Though Reggie Brown’s Obama impersonation was initially met with laughter and applause at a recent Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, it appeared that the event’s organizers were not so amused when his jokes turned to Republican Newt Gingrich and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Brown’s mic was allegedly turned off, and music was played as he was shown away from the podium.

But the Chicago comedian denies being cut short for anything having to do with his jokes, and insists that his performance came to an abrupt end merely for running longer then time permitted.

Fox Chicago reports:

Event organizers cut him off, turning off the mic and coming on stage to get him, but Brown denies that it was because he went too far.

Brown said he simply went over his time and organizers came up to let him know.

He said he had between 10 and 15 minutes for his performance, and with an introductory video they played for him, he was clocked at 17 minutes. According to Brown, other speakers at the event that went over their speaking time were also reminded to wrap up.

“Not every joke hits,” Brown said. “All-in-all I think it was a great performance, and I got a lot of great feedback.”

Read more at MyFoxChicago.com

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NEW ORLEANS – A Barack Obama impersonator was shown off the stage at the Republican Leadership Conference after his jokes hit a little too close to home.

Reggie Brown’s rendition of President Obama started out as a hit before he began to turn his jokes onto some potential Republican candidates for the upcoming presidential elections.

Organizers cut off Brown’s microphone and played music before he was ushered away from the podium and off the stage.

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Outgoing Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) had a fit on the House floor Monday, when he was prohibited from speaking by a Democratic colleague acting as speaker.

When Buyer, the ranking Republican in the House Veterans Affairs Committee, asked to speak in opposition to a procedural workings of a bill, Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.) shut him down.

“As a sitting member of the House, the speaker chooses not to recognize another sitting member, is that correct?” Buyer asked, according to CBS News.

“There is no one here to object. Buyer continued. “This is why the American people have thrown you out of power.”

The Indiana Rep. who has served since 1992 “then began walking around the chamber angrily, throwing down a folder and muttering that Democrats are wasting time despite the fact that there are many things to be done, including repeal of the health care reform bill,” CBS News reports.

Eventually, Richardson changed her mind and granted Buyer a minute to speak, which brought the congressman back to the lectern to ask, “was treating another member with dignity so hard, madam speaker? I don’t believe it was.”

VIDEO:

Read entire article at HuffingtonPost.com

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There are millions of affluent black suburban households who fit the demographic profile of independents or Republicans. There has been an unprecedented influx of black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean who view the political landscape with fresh eyes. Polls show that on some hot-button social issues, such as gay marriage, many African-Americans are quite conservative. You’d think that somewhere, somehow, the GOP would have managed to get a foothold.

The history of the Republican Party’s estrangement from African-Americans is well known. In 1960, Richard Nixon won 32 percent of the black vote. In 1964, Barry Goldwater — who had opposed the landmark Civil Rights Act — received just 6 percent of the black vote. This dramatic shift made possible Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” which political strategist Kevin Phillips explained to The New York Times in 1970, using some archaic terminology:

“From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote, and they don’t need any more than that,” Phillips said, “but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

In other words, the idea was to capitalize on the racial fears and grievances of Southern whites — by letting black voters drift away from the GOP and even encouraging them to stay away.

Ours is a different era, and I’m not suggesting the old Southern strategy persists in unreconstructed form. The Republican Party’s dominance among white Southerners is not based on the kind of raw, unambiguous race-baiting that we saw decades ago.

What I am saying is the Republicans have made no serious effort to appeal to black voters. Such an initiative would begin with an acknowledgment of the specific problems African-Americans face and a proffer of policies to address those problems. But this would contradict the GOP’s dogmatic stance that government should be severely limited in its ambition.

Democrats, at least, are much better at talking the talk. But is the Democratic Party offering any new idea to eliminate the stubborn, multi-generational poverty and dysfunction in which far too many African-Americans are trapped? Are Democrats addressing the vast gap in wealth between middle-class blacks and their white counterparts?

Given the stakes, I see no real choice for African-Americans but to go to the polls and stick with the Democratic Party. The Republicans haven’t offered an alternative. I wish someday they would.

Read entire article at Pal-Item.com

Sarah Palin is a force to be reckoned with, but the majority of Americans don’t think she’d make an effective President.

A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll released Monday found that despite her star status, 59% of Americans don’t think Palin would be a hit in the White House.

Even among Republicans, just 40% said the former vice presidential candidate would make an effective President.

Read more at USA Today

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House Republican leader John Boehner on Tuesday called for the resignation of President Barack Obama’s embattled economic team, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic adviser Larry Summers.

“It’s time to put grown-ups in charge. It’s time for people willing to accept responsibility,” Boehner declared in remarks prepared for delivery in a speech in Cleveland.

Boehner made his call for a “fresh start” on the economy 10 weeks before the November 2 congressional elections that have been dominated by the sour U.S. economy and near double-digit jobless rate. Republicans are expected to make inroads on the big majorities held by Obama’s Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

“President Obama should ask for — and accept — the resignations of the remaining members of his economic team, starting with Secretary Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council,” Boehner said.

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Obama was certain to dismiss Boehner’s call to replace his fiscal team.

Obama and his economic advisers have been criticized for failing to reduce the jobless rate of 9.5 percent, which they have sought to blame on his predecessor, Republican President George W. Bush.

If Republicans take control of the House, Boehner is in position to be elected as speaker, a post that would make him the chamber’s presiding officer and in charge of setting its agenda.

Read entire article at MSNBC.com

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Black members of the tea party movement on Wednesday rejected charges of racism by the group’s activists, saying they oppose President Barack Obama because of his policies not his skin color.

The members gathered at a Washington news conference in the wake of allegations about its rank and file, heightened by the recent split with a Tea Party Express leader who had posted a letter on his blog written from “Colored People” to Abraham Lincoln. The post suggested that black people would choose slavery over having to do real work.

The black members said the racism that has been attributed to the tea party movement came from outsiders who infiltrated the groups to discredit their work and it should be rejected.

“These people do not oppose Barack Obama because of his skin color. They oppose him because of his policies,” said Lloyd Marcus, a spokesman for the group.

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The NAACP last month approved a resolution condemning racism within the tea party movement and called on activists to “repudiate the racist element and activities” within the political movement.

At the news conference, several members assailed Obama and the Democrats, often in harsh terms.

“Democrats have re-enslaved America,” said Kevin Jackson, president of the Black Conservative Coalition. He said tea party activists, if successful, would reduce the size of government and set in motion another Emancipation Proclamation, the document that President Abraham Lincoln signed that effectively ended slavery.

“This time, even the white folks get freed,” said Jackson, who accused Obama of viewing fellow blacks as “mongrels.”

Other speakers called Democrats white supremacists and elitists. Conservative Moms for America leader Mary Baker said Democrats were pushing “anti-God politics.”

“Destroy America. That’s what the D in Democrat Party means,” she said.

RELATED: VIDEO: New Video Of Tea Party Racists Emerges

Alan Keyes, who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate against Obama in 2004, said the president “got elected on a virulent form of racism” by exploiting his race during the 2008 campaign.

The Tea Party Express, one of dozens of libertarian-leaning and anti-tax groups, organized the meeting with reporters to denounce racism and then accused its opponents of using allegations of racism to censor dissent.

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DALLAS — Sam and Charles Wyly, Dallas billionaire investors known for their support of conservative candidates and causes, made $550 million in undisclosed profits through 13 years of insider trading, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed Thursday.

In a 78-page complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court in New York, the SEC said the Wylys held and traded tens of millions of shares in companies on whose boards they served and “defrauded the investing public” by misrepresenting their ownership and trading of those stocks.

“The apparatus of the fraud was an elaborate sham system of trusts and subsidiary companies located in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands … created by and at the direction of the Wylys,” the SEC complaint stated.

Using this offshore system, the Wylys were able to sell stock worth more than $750 million in four public companies where they served as corporate directors. They also committed an insider trading violation at one of the companies that resulted in an unlawful gain of over $31.7 million, according to the complaint.

In March, Forbes magazine estimated Sam Wyly’s net worth at $1 billion. He has given generously to Republican causes and candidates, including the Swift Boat campaign that helped re-elect President George W. Bush in 2004 by tarring his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry.

The Wyly brothers, with their wives, have donated almost $2.5 million to more than 200 Republican candidates and committees at the federal level over the past two decades, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Both Presidents Bush received donations from the Wylys. Other recipients included current and former Republican senators: Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn and Phil Gramm of Texas; Sam Brownback and Bob Dole of Kansas; Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina; Mel Martinez of Florida; Judd Gregg of New Hampshire; John Thune of South Dakota; and Kit Bond of Missouri.

Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are the Wylys’ investment attorney, Michael C. French of Dallas, who was accused of covering the operation “with a false cloak of legality that was essential both to its concealment and its execution. Another defendant was the Wylys’ stockbroker, Louis J. Schaufele III of Dallas, who was accused of using his position to conceal and misrepresent the Wylys’ control over the securities and making insider trades himself.

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After the NAACP passed a resolution declaring the Tea Party to be a “racist” organization, Tea Party-backed Florida Congressional candidate Allen West held a town hall meeting in Fort Lauderdale to address the concerns of voters. He also wrote blog posts defending the Tea Party, while at the same time attacking the NAACP.

West accuses the NAACP of not continuing the original mission of the organization. He accused them of being racists who have mentally and economically enslaved Black people, and of not being a credible organization in political affairs.

His statements are seen as defamatory and immature, but is there truth to them? You be the judge.

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The Texas Republican Party, that bastion of tolerance, goodwill and forward thinking, just released its policy platform.  I can’t say I was surprised by the contents therein, but nevertheless, I was taken aback by the stunning absurdity emanating from a “mainstream” political party.  And they run the state!  Of course, these were the folks who gave us the revamped Texas Board of Education, with its textbook whitewashing of the slave trade, and its crimes against truth and reason masquerading as legitimate curriculum changes.

So, in its 25-page manifesto, the Texas GOP really provides a clear sense of its convictions.  Some of the positions in the platform are mundane and without distinction, but the devil is in the details.  And for people who claim to be Christians, there’s little Christ and a lot of devilishness in there.

With regard to government power, the platform calls for the elimination of all executive orders, and the repeal of all previous executive orders.  It strongly rejects D.C. statehood and “adding unconstitutional voting Congressional members,” and supports nonparticipation in the census.  Further, the Texas GOP platform opposes affirmative action and reparations based on “discriminatory criteria.”  And the party is against nationalization of land for protecting endangered species or conservation.

In the area of voting rights and elections, the party advocates for the repeal of motor voter laws, re-registering voters every four years, and felon disenfranchisement—a Jim Crow remnant.

Not surprisingly, the Texas GOP supports public displays of the Ten Commandments, and penalties for desecrating the American flag, and the restoration of some Confederate plaque that was removed from the state’s Supreme Court building.

RELATED: Texas Set To Whitewash History In Textbooks

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Social security would be eliminated under the Texas GOP plan, as would what they euphemistically call “ObamaCare.”

Apparently, sex education is a no no, other than the teaching of abstinence before marriage.  And the teaching of multiculturalism is out because Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican, would have wanted it that way.

To round out an astonishing set of policy positions, the Texas Republicans are against any regulations on gun ownership.  Oh yeah, and they declare that this is a Judeo-Christian nation.  And there should be capital punishment for rape convictions (like the good old days).  Deep water oil drilling should resume in the Gulf of Mexico, employers should be able to discriminate, and the minimum wage law should be repealed, they say.  No more birthright citizenship—citizenship by birth would be limited to those born to a U.S. citizen.  Finally, the Texas GOP assert that the U.S. should get out of the United Nations.

Meanwhile, one of the standard bearers of the Texas conservatives, Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), recently created some controversy when he apologized to BP for Obama hooking up that $20 billion fund to pay for damages related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  In fact, Barton called the fund a “shameful…shakedown.” Other Republicans such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Tea Party poster boy Rand Paul expressed their opposition to the fund.

Barton and the Texas Republican Party appear to have a great deal of compassion for the plight of poor behemoth oil companies who wreck the Earth, with oil spills of biblical proportions through corporate malfeasance.  Ultra-conservatives reserve their outrage for the times when they believe the rights of large corporations are infringed.  And they seek to criminalize homosexuality and those who are different.  Yet the Lone Star GOP is not outraged by the crimes committed against the environment, against God’s creation, about which these so-called Christians seem to care jack.

RELATED: OPINION: The GOP’s War On “Ethnic” History

This policy paper represents the culmination of bad political decisions that have turned the Republican Party into the hot mess it has become.  The Texas case is just an extreme example of the problem.  Nationally, the Republicans hitched their wagon to a Southern Strategy that depended on the scapegoating of black people and manipulating white fears for votes.  Fundamentalist Christian conservatives and the religious police were a part of the mix, as were pro-business, anti-tax, anti-regulation right-wingers.  Moderate whites fled the party, as did all but a few token people of color.  So what remains of the base— for the most part— is a dwindling coalition of white nationalists, the morality police and the exceptionally greedy.

Texas—good barbecue, hot weather, and a brutal history of racial violence.  We can add to that one of the most egregious public policy documents in recent memory.  Blue Texans, as you know, your work is cut out for you.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor David A. Love, JD is a writer based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Huffington Post, theGrio, the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book,States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

From CBS News:

The White House slammed former Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado today for his recent remarks suggesting President Obama was not born in the United States.

“If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don’t we just send him back?” Tancredo said at a South Carolina Tea Party rally over the weekend, the Greenville News reports.

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The so-called “birther movement,” questioning Mr. Obama’s origins, began during his presidential campaign. It has steadily persisted through Mr. Obama’s presidency, in spite of overwhelming evidence he was born in the United States — including his 1961 birth announcement, printed in two Hawaii newspapers.

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Can’t we just call them what they really are? I speak of the Tea Party crowd who hates Obama and thinks he’s a socialist, fascist, communist Muslim who was born in Kenya and pals around with terrorists. They have allies in the Republican Party, and enablers on Fox News and rightwing talk radio. And I also refer to those white domestic terror groups — anti-government, anti-tax, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, racist, homophobic, gun worshipers, whatever — who would take matters into their own hands.

I call them all Klan. And why not? They also happen to be the radicalized base of the GOP, those barrel scrapings that call themselves the ultra-right these days. Back to the barrel scraping in a moment.

Some of you may conclude I’m painting in awfully broad brushstrokes here. You’re entitled to your opinion, but I have my reasons, if you just listen.

First of all, the recent images of the unwashed Tea Party faithful threatening members of Congress — of spitting at African-American lawmakers and calling them n*gger, calling a gay lawmaker a f*ggot, and so on — are shocking, although not entirely surprising. Since the 2008 election, empowered by the McCain-Palin rallies, these folks have been on a rampage. They came with their racist placards and Obama monkey dolls complete with nooses. Some arrived with their loaded weapons. Under the banner of “taking our country back,” these people were and still are angry, to be sure.

Those of you who remember the televised images of angry white protestors in the 1950s and 1960s know that this is nothing new. Whenever a black child tried to integrate a school in the Jim Crow South, the teabaggers of their day were out there to show their outrage. Whenever African Americans tried to register to vote or sit at a segregated lunch counter, the same crowd was out there. They came with their fists, their vulgarity, threats of violence and spitting. They, too, wanted to take their country back, and for the same reasons as their twenty-first century heirs. While some of these hotheads limited their protest to the usual rabble rousing, others went the extra mile and engaged in lynching, bombing and other acts of terror.

Meanwhile, the Dixiecrat lawmakers of the day, hoping to curry favor with their Southern Democratic base, gave a wink and a nod to the racial violence. And so, Southern politicians signed the Southern Manifesto and filibustered civil rights legislation. They vowed to fight to preserve segregation, and stood on the schoolhouse steps to defy the federal authorities, in an expression of white Christian nationalism and skin-tone solidarity. The white-collar Klan was on the same page with the down-and-dirty Klan, not to mention the everyday racist on the streets. They all read from the same game plan, and they all knew what to do, a distinct role cut out for each. Some did the dirty work, while others appeared stately, as if to remain above the fray. But the overall goal was to stop black people from becoming full citizens.

Although times are rather different now, the comparisons between the days of the civil rights movement and today are compelling. Amidst the increasing acts of violence, threats of violence and polluted discourse that we are witnessing, Republican leaders are for the most part silent about the hate emanating from their base. Sometimes they are too busy justifying the violence their base represents, if not actively fomenting it. Cynical politicians that they are, they want to harness the Teabagger, Birther and militia hate. This is their ticket to electoral victory, they believe.

And RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Rep. Eric Cantor (R, VA), a black and a Jew, should be ashamed for their participation in this blatant exercise in extremist intolerance called the Republican Party. These two men appear to be among the last vestiges of diversity in the once Grand Old Party, the party that once boasted 1,500 black political officeholders during Reconstruction. Michael Steele claims he is facing scrutiny from the party because of his race, and perhaps he is correct. But as a person of color, Steele cannot cry racism. He cannot claim victimization when he has willingly cast his lot with those who revel in their white skin privilege, and depend on the race card for their bread and butter. In other words, he knowingly assumed the risk.

And exactly why is the Republican base so angry these days? What do they want? Is this really all about taxes and the size of government? And why were they so eager to protect the interests of health insurance companies, who on a daily basis commit grand larceny against the struggling schlubs of America? Corporate lobbyists bankrolled the Teabaggers because low information voters (a.k.a. the ignorant and uneducated) have a propensity to act against their economic self interests. For years, poor whites sided with the wealthy to maintain an economic system that rendered their labor superfluous. And they refused to join forces with workers of color in a collective effort to unionize and raise everyone’s standard of living. They were poor and dumb, but at least they weren’t black, so they thought.

In 2010, the Tea Party anger is depicted in the media as a legitimate beef with the government. But when you look below the surface, they’re really just racist. They want their country returned to them, from the hands of a black boogeyman President Obama. They want the immigrants expelled. Surely they are concerned that over half of the babies born in the U.S. are of color. When the right fringe gains control of school boards, as is the case with Texas, they literally erase all the color from the history books and “can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.” And they oppose taxes and government programs such as health care because they think that blacks and Latinos are the beneficiaries. Rush Limbaugh said himself that health care reform is a civil rights bill, reparations for slavery. This attitude reflects a natural progression of the GOP since the 1960s, when aggrieved racists formed white Christian “segregation academies,” and fled the Democratic Party to make a home in the GOP.

The GOP benefited from a “Southern Strategy” that exploited white opposition to the civil rights movement, and antipathy towards black folks. One of the chief practitioners of that strategy was the late Lee Atwater. He described the Southern Strategy this way:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

This strategy served the GOP very well in past elections, but now demographics are catching up with the party. In a browning America, their base is shrinking. With every race-baiting campaign, more reasonable moderate and liberal whites fled the Republican Party until there were virtually none left. What remains now, for the most part, is a regionalized, ultra-right core, many of whom are racist. And apparently some are violent as well.

Embracing the fringe, the GOP is scraping the bottom of the barrel and courting the troubling and troubled byproducts they find. They do so at their own peril, as now some violent anti-government “Guardians” have sent death threats to Republican and Democratic governors. The recent incarnations of the angry mob have many brand new names, but they’re still the old Klan to me.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor David A. Love, JD is a writer based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Huffington Post, theGrio, the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — Michael Steele was hardly the consensus choice to become chairman of the Republican National Committee, scrambling to the top early last year after surviving multiple ballots in a crowded field.

Mr. Steele’s supporters rallied around him as a compelling advocate at ease making the Republican case on television and someone who would be the first African-American to lead the party. His opponents were apprehensive about Mr. Steele’s equally strong reputation as a showboat, an inexperienced manager given to advancing his own ambitions and prone to bursts of indiscretion. Even as the committee settled on him at the end of hours of balloting, Republican leaders were never quite sure which Michael Steele they would get.

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Fourteen months later, the answer has become clear. At a time when the Republican National Committee is looking to take advantage of Democratic troubles and make gains in Congressional elections, Mr. Steele is commanding attention mostly for questionable expenditures by the committee, lagging fund-raising, staff defections and dismissals, an aggressive round of paid speeches and speaking appearances and politically inopportune remarks.

On Monday, confronting criticism of the committee for picking up a $2,000 tab for donors and staff at a West Hollywood strip and bondage club, Mr. Steele said in response to a question on “Good Morning America” on ABC that he and President Obama were being held to tougher standards because they were black.

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From the Washington Post:

The camera pans across a bucolic river and a sunny cornfield, an American flag flapping in the breeze, as narrator Michael S. Steele waxes about the freedom to dream and achieve. Then, with the Statue of Liberty sweeping into the shot, comes a dire warning that freedom is fragile: Democrats, he says, are “experimenting with America.”

The camera zooms in on a bespectacled Steele, who asks viewers for donations. “Our freedom,” he says with a smile, “it’s worth fighting for.”

The television advertisement, which aired in selected markets last month, is vintage Steele — affable, charismatic and seizing the spotlight. But the ad’s star is not running for anything. He’s the chairman of the Republican National Committee, with a mandate to promote his party rather than himself.

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Steele has put a public face on what had been largely a behind-the-scenes job, hoping to foster what he has called a “hip-hop” Republican renaissance. That high profile has been accompanied by a record of lavish spending and a string of gaffes, leading some party activists to complain that Steele revels in the perks of the office while neglecting some of the onerous work necessary to reclaim majorities in the House and Senate. This narrative grew more damaging last week with the disclosure that RNC staffers approved a $1,900 bill at a Hollywood nightclub that features topless dancers mimicking lesbian sex acts while wearing bondage gear.

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From The Daily Caller:
FEC filings suggest Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,620.71 spent [update: the amount is actually $1,946.25] at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.

[...]

According to two knowledgeable sources, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele also once raised the possibility of using party money to buy a private jet for his travel.

“I know that … regular ongoing use of planes was something that was looked at,” says one person with direct knowledge. “I can’t speak to how serious those inquiries were.” Both sources say Steele considered purchasing a plane outright, or buying fractional ownership in one, through a company such as NetJets.

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Steele’s spokesman, Doug Heye, did not deny that such discussions took place, responding that the RNC never had a “plan” to buy a plane. “I don’t know what somebody might have discussed or might not have discussed.”

While Steele has not purchased a plane, he continues to charter them. According to federal disclosure records, the RNC spent $17,514 on private aircraft in the month of February alone (as well as $12,691 on limousines during the same period). There are no readily identifiable private plane expenses for Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine in the DNC’s last three months of filings.

The RNC explains that Steele charters jets only when commercial service is unavailable, or when his tight schedule requires it. “Anytime the chairman has taken any private travel has been a either to a route that doesn’t exist or because of connections and multiple travel to where he just wasn’t able to do so,” Heye said. Yet Steele’s office repeatedly refused to explain in specific terms the circumstances of the February charter flights.

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From CNN:

Washington — President Obama announced Saturday he will make recess appointments of 15 nominees who are awaiting confirmation by the full Senate.

“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees” to administration posts, Obama said in a written statement that also named the 15 individuals. “But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.

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“Most of the men and women whose appointments I am announcing today were approved by Senate committees months ago, yet still await a vote of the Senate. At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months. I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government.”

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod told CNN’s Candy Crowley on Saturday that the Senate had declined to vote on five of former President George W. Bush’s appointments at this point in his term, compared to 77 delayed appointments for Obama.

“The Republican Party has taken a position where they’re going to try and slow and block progress on all fronts, whether it’s legislation or appointments,” Axelrod said in an interview to be aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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From Politico:

The Republican National Committee has rejected a proposal from its Democratic counterpart to sign a joint “civility” statement, POLITICO has learned.

Various members of the DNC — including Chairman Tim Kaine, Executive Director Jen O’Malley Dillon and Communications Director Brad Woodhouse — contacted their respective RNC counterparts this week in hopes of getting RNC Chairman Michael Steele to co-sign a document with Kaine that, in part, called for “elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry.”

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“We also call on all Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior,” read the proposed joint statement, which came at the end of a week which saw acts of vandalism and threats of violence directed at members of Congress from both parties, but mostly aimed at Democrats who voted “yes” on the health care bill.

Republicans see the statement as an attempt to force them to either reject the statement — allowing Democrats to say the RNC finds the incidents acceptable — or to sign on to something that the DNC would later wield against them.

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WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans learned early Thursday that they will be able to kill language in a measure altering President Barack Obama’s newly enacted health care overhaul, meaning the bill will have to return to the House for final congressional approval.

It appeared initially that deleting the provisions, dealing with Pell grants for low-income students, should not cause major problems for Democrats hoping to rush the bill to Obama and avoid prolonging what has been a politically painful ordeal for the party. Democrats described the situation as a minor glitch, but did not rule out that Republicans might be able to remove additional sections of the bill.

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The president, who signed the landmark legislation into law on Tuesday, was flying to Iowa later in the day for the first of many appearances he will make around the country before the fall congressional elections to sell his health care revamp.

RELATED: PRESIDENT OBAMA SIGNS HEALTH CARE REFORM INTO LAW

Obama was appearing in Iowa City, where as a presidential candidate in 2007 he touted his ideas for health coverage for all. His trip comes with polls showing people are divided over the new health law, and Democratic lawmakers from competitive districts hoping he can convince more voters by November that it was the right move.

As an exhausted Senate labored past 2 a.m. on a stack of GOP amendments, Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told reporters that Republicans consulting with the chamber’s parliamentarian had found “two minor provisions” that violate Congress’ budget rules.

Republicans have been hunting for such violations in hopes of bringing down the legislation. Democrats had also been consulting with the parliamentarian, Alan Frumin, and hoped they had written a measure that would not be vulnerable to such problems.

The two provisions are expected to be formally removed from the bill on Thursday. Manley said he expected the Senate to approve the measure without them and send it to the House. He said Senate leaders, after conversations with top House Democrats, expect the House to approve the revised measure.

The Senate scheduled passage of the health bill for Thursday afternoon. Both chambers are hoping to begin a spring recess by this weekend.

Besides reshaping parts of the landmark health overhaul, the legislation transforms the federal student loan program — in which private banks distribute the money — into one in which the government issues the loans directly. That produces some federal savings, which the bill uses in part to increase Pell grants to needy students.

RELATED: House Passed Health Care Reform – What Happens Now?

Democratic aides said the problematic provisions deal with protecting students from future cuts in their grants if Congress does not provide enough money for them. They violate budget rules because they do not produce savings, one aide said.

The development came as the Senate completed nine hours of uninterrupted voting on 29 GOP amendments to the legislation. Majority Democrats defeated every amendment.

The legislation would change the new health care law by making drug benefits for Medicare recipients more generous by gradually closing a gap in coverage, increasing tax subsidies to help low-income people afford health care, and boosting federal Medicaid payments to states.

It kills part of the new statute uniquely giving Nebraska extra Medicaid funds — designed to lure support from that state’s Sen. Ben Nelson — that had become a glaring embarrassment to Democrats. It also eases a new tax on expensive health coverage bitterly opposed by unions and many House Democrats, while delaying and increasing a new levy on drug makers.

As they began pushing the bill to passage on Wednesday afternoon, Democrats ran into a mountain of GOP amendments. Outnumbered and all but assured of defeat, Republicans forced votes on amendments aimed at reshaping the measure — or at least forcing Democrats to take votes that could be used against them in TV ads in the fall campaigns.

“There’s no attempt to improve the bill. There’s an attempt to destroy this bill,” said an exasperated Reid, D-Nev.

“The majority leader may not think we’re serious about changing the bill, but we’d like to change the bill, and with a little help from our friends on the other side we could improve the bill significantly,” answered Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Senators voted on 29 consecutive GOP amendments between 5:30 p.m. Wednesday and 2:30 a.m. Thursday, when they recessed.

By 57-42, Democrats rejected an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., barring federal purchases of Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs for sex offenders. Coburn said it would save millions, while Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., called it “a crass political stunt.”

Democrats also deflected GOP amendments rolling back the health law’s Medicare cuts; killing extra Medicaid funds for Tennessee and other state-specific spending; barring tax increases for families earning under $250,000; and requiring the president and other administration officials to purchase health care from exchanges the statute creates.

The landmark legislation that Obama signed Tuesday would provide health care to 32 million uninsured people, and make coverage more affordable to millions of others by expanding the reach of Medicaid and creating new subsidies. Insurance companies would be forbidden to refuse coverage to people with pre-existing illnesses, individuals could buy policies on newly created exchanges and parents could keep children on their family plans until their 26th birthdays.

The $938 billion, 10-year price tag would be financed largely by culling savings from Medicare and imposing new taxes on higher income people and the insurance, pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

While it is increasingly frustrating to watch President Obama’s continued overtures to a party that has no intention of working him no matter what he does, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all GOP ideas are bad ones and should be excluded. In particular, tort reform could prove useful to driving down the costs of health care by freeing doctors from the necessity of practicing defensive medicine. Hopefully after these new additions to Obama’s proposal, Democrats can finally stop pandering and get around to actually passing a bill. - NewsOne Staff

From CNN:

Washington — In a last-ditch attempt to craft a bipartisan health care reform bill, President Obama will release a new proposal Wednesday that will include Republican ideas on tort reform and health savings accounts, according to Democratic officials familiar with the plans.

But top Republicans, including House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, immediately said the new proposal is not good enough and reiterated calls for the president to scrap the plan and start over.

The situation is setting up a likely showdown that top Democrats say will end up with the president trying to pass the health legislation with only Democratic votes through the legislative shortcut of reconciliation.

In fact, senior congressional Democrats have privately expressed frustration that the president is spending time at this late date reaching out to Republicans, when it has become increasingly clear the two parties can not settle their differences on this contentious issue.

The senior Democrats said they think the White House should be devoting time trying to win over Democrats, because it’s still not clear they can secure a simply majority in the House and Senate for the president’s plan.

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Obama Trades Barbs With Republicans At Heath Care Summit

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama alternatively courted and blasted Republicans who have impeded his health care plan Thursday, in an extraordinary live-on-TV summit aimed at breaking a partisan deadlock over his top domestic priority.

With the unprecedented, daylong policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public, Obama and Democratic leaders cast the reform they want as critical to tackling an issue that is even more pressing to many Americans — the struggling economy. Republicans fought back, and tempers flared.

“We just can’t afford this. That’s the ultimate problem,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican.

RELATED: Obama Unveils His Own Health Care Reform Plan

Passing a version of the bill that Republicans managed to block despite solid Democratic majorities in Congress also is critical to the president’s political future and that of his party ahead of congressional elections in November.

With that in mind, Obama is trying to boost support from moderate Democratic lawmakers, who could face the wrath of conservative voters if they back their president’s plan.

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“We all know that this is urgent,” Obama said.

At stake is the Democrats’ stalemated legislation to extend coverage to more than 30 million people who are now uninsured.

Polls show Americans want their elected leaders to address the problems of high medical costs, eroding access to coverage and uneven quality. But the public is split over the Democrats’ sweeping legislation, with its $1 trillion, 10-year price tag and many complex provisions, including some that wouldn’t take effect for another eight years — after Obama has packed up and left the White House.

For Obama, the summit is his chance to make a compelling closing argument to the American people. If he succeeds, Democrats will push ahead to pass the legislation with a package of revisions he’s proposed. If Obama falters, another Democratic president will have been humbled by health care. He will have to appeal to both sides to at least give him a modest bill smoothing some of the rough edges from the current system.

Obama lamented the partisan bickering that has stalled the health care legislation. “Politics I think ended up trumping practical common sense,” he said. But, he noted, “everybody here understands the desperation that people feel when they’re sick. And I think everybody here is profoundly sympathetic and wants to make sure that we have a system that works for all Americans.”

And yet, even as he pleaded for cooperation he acknowledged agreement may not be possible. “I don’t know that those gaps can be bridged,” Obama said. “If not, at least we will have better clarified for the American people what the debate is all about.”

Both chambers of Congress passed separate bills last year. But before the two versions could be reconciled, Republicans captured the Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election to replace the late Edward M. Kennedy. That cost Democrats the 60-vote supermajority needed to overcome Republican procedural obstacles and pass major legislation.

Public skepticism about the health care plan was seen as contributing to the Republican victory in Massachusetts, an overwhelmingly Democratic state. With the supermajority lost and Democrats getting nervous, the White House had been expected to shift its attention to job creation, an issue more likely to resonate with voters.

RELATED: Why Racial Disparities In Health Care Persist

Disagreements were not always expressed diplomatically on Thursday.

The forum at one point yielded a testy exchange between the president and his former opponent Sen. John McCain, who complained that Obama reneged on a campaign promise to bring change to Washington for encouraging health care dealmaking behind close doors.

“We’re not campaigning any more. The election is over,” Obama snapped, prompting the Republican to retort that he’s “reminded of that every day.”

Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander challenged Obama’s claim that insurance premiums would fall under the Democratic legislation. “You’re wrong,” he said. Responded Obama: “I’m pretty certain I’m not wrong.”

As with much in the complicated health care debate, both sides had a point. The Congressional Budget Office says average premiums for people buying insurance individually would be a little higher under the Senate legislation, as Alexander said. But the policies would cover more medical services, and around half of people could get government subsidies to defray the extra costs.

With such opposing positions well staked out before the meeting and no signs of them changing, the president and his Democratic allies prepared to move on alone.

Despite losing their supermajority, Democrats can still pass major health legislation by using special budget rules that require only a simple majority. They have been reluctant to use that process so far because it would enrage Republicans and likely further worsen the partisan divide.

Another alternative if bipartisan agreement eludes Obama on Thursday is going smaller, with a modest bill that would merely smooth some of the rough edges from the current system.

The White House developed the slimmed-down health care proposal so the president will know what the impact would be if he chooses that route, according to a Democratic official familiar with the discussions.

The slimmer backup plan was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The summit was held at Blair House, the elegant presidential guest quarters across the street from the White House. Leaders of both parties spoke, with Obama steering the debate as moderator.

It wasn’t a grand, or even particularly comfortable, setting. About 40 senators, representatives and administration officials were crowded around a large hollow square table in a cramped room, perched for the six-hour marathon on wooden chairs with thin cushions. Coffee breaks had been ruled out, so the only pause in the action would come during lunch.

The C-SPAN cable network carried complete coverage, while news operations from cable networks to public broadcasting were making it the focus of their day.

From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — Emboldened by the response to President Obama’s face-off with House Republicans last week, the White House is intensifying its push to engage Congressional Republicans in policy negotiations as a way to share the burden of governing and put more scrutiny on Republican initiatives.

The president has invited members of Congress from both parties for a meeting at the White House next Tuesday, the first of the bipartisan brainstorming sessions that Mr. Obama proposed during the State of the Union address. Republicans will also be invited to the White House this weekend to watch the Super Bowl, as well as to Camp David and other venues for social visits.

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The outreach represents a marked shift in both strategy and substance by Mr. Obama and his allies at a time when Democrats are adapting to the loss of their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate and the president has been losing support among independent voters.

The White House’s goal is to show voters that Mr. Obama is willing to engage Republicans rather than govern in a partisan manner while forcing Republicans to make substantive compromises or be portrayed as obstructionist given their renewed power to block almost all legislation in the Senate.

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Poll: Many Republicans Think Obama Is A Racist, Socialist Non-Citizen

From the Huffington Post:

A new poll of more than 2,000 self-identified Republican voters illustrates the incredible paranoia enveloping the party and the intense pressure drawing lawmakers further and further away from political moderation.

The numbers speak for themselves — a large portion of GOP voters think that President Obama is racist, socialist or a non-US citizen — though, when considering them, it is important to note that a disproportionate percentage of respondents are from GOP strongholds in the South (42 percent) as opposed to the Northeast (11 percent). Also note that this is a poll of self-identified Republicans, which means that independent Tea Party types are not included.

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Nevertheless here are some of the standout figures as provided by Daily Kos/Research 2000:

39 percent of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached, 29 percent are not sure, 32 percent said he should not be voted out of office.

36 percent of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States, 22 percent are not sure, 42 percent think he is a natural citizen.

31 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a “Racist who hates White people” — the description once adopted by Fox News’s Glenn Beck. 33 percent were not sure, and 36 percent said he was not a racist.

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