By Krystal Ball, on Mon Feb 6, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET Over the past month, we’ve launched a new tradition at The Recovering Politician: a great virtual debate on the issues of the day among our recovering politicians; with provocations, rebuttals, responses, and defenses. Our first discussion focused on presidential leadership; our second on legalizing marijuana; our third, Tim Tebow; and our fourth, expanded gambling.
This week, the RP stirs up the mix with another controversial subject: the morality of gambling The RP starts off with his provocative article from The Huffington Post. Tune in every half hour to read what other RPs have to say.
SPOILER ALERT: There will be fireworks.
 Krystal Ball’s Provocation
Whatever loyalty former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had to the Republican establishment was destroyed when it dropped the anvil on him after his South Carolina victory. Whatever goodwill Newt had toward former Gov. Mitt Romney evaporated in the blitz of negative ads that stole his chances for a win in Iowa. Now what’s left is Newt’s utter contempt for Mitt Romney. Newt will not be vice president. He will not be in the administration. He will not be fawned over by the Republican establishment like Gov. Mitch Daniels or Rep. Paul Ryan. All that’s left for him is a deep desire for revenge. This is not a happy state of affairs for the GOP.
I attended Newt’s rally with Herman Cain in Tampa this week. While it’s true that the blunt, Gadsden flag-bearing crowd at the rally go together with Mitt Romney about as well as ice cream and anchovies, they are ultimately Republican base voters who will come back into the fold. It is independent voters who may turn away from Mitt Romney and never look back. While Newt may not have the money that Mitt Romney does, he knows how to use the media and is a master at framing negative attacks. Already he has leveled much harsher critiques of Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital than Democrats would be able to pull off and it has been effective. Governor Romney’s business experience, supposedly his strongest selling point, is now as likely to be viewed favorably as unfavorably by independents. This is an attack that is less resonant in a Republican primary, but is plenty effective among swing voters.
Read the rest of…
The RPs Debate the GOP Mudfest: Krystal Ball Provokes
By Jeff Smith, on Fri Feb 3, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET Our own contributing RP Jeff Smith recently appeared on The Brooklyn Politics Show to offer some advice to former New York State Senator Carl Kruger, who was recently sentenced to a hefty prison term for bribery.
From Sheepshead Bites:
Instead of shelling out thousands of dollars on a prison consultant before pleading guilty, former State Senator Carl Kruger could have just talked to someone who was in his shoes a couple of years ago.
Formerly incarcerated Missouri State Senator Jeff Smith appeared on The Brooklyn Politics Show to talk about his time in prison, and he offered a piece of advice to soon-to-be-sentenced Kruger.
“My main piece of advice for him would be to just go there and be positive and finds way he can help other inmates. There’s lots of ways you can help people and burnish your reputation in there so that you have an easier time and you can continue doing good,” said Smith. “I’m sure when he first got into public service, he did it probably for the right reason and then things got mixed up a little bit”…
Check out the interview – Smith is an entertaining speaker with insight into an experience few of us (hopefully) will share.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Feb 3, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET  “Happiness is knowing who to blame,” a friend of mine used to facetiously joke–especially when he was trying to nudge me into taking responsibility for a situation I was complaining about–and trying to blame someone else for creating.
I thought he was right then…and still think he’s right.
What he was really saying is that seeking to resolve frustration by blaming others only creates the temporary illusion of happiness–or relief. It’s not real and won’t last.
A better approach is thinking hard and honestly about what role I played–so I can own my part in an unpleasant predicament.
When I do that, I at least have some hope of changing things.
f it truly is another person’s fault, chances of changing that person—and then of that person changing the offending situation– leaves chances of things improving looking pretty bleak.
So, it seems, the more I am focusing on finding my role in displeasing areas of my life (instead of seeking out others to blame), the more hopeful I feel.
So maybe the saying should be “Hopefulness is knowing where I am to blame.”
By Jeff Smith, on Thu Feb 2, 2012 at 4:30 PM ET  It does bring him closer to the nomination, due in no small part to his uncanny good fortune. Let’s review.
The woman who rose meteorically to take the Iowa straw poll collapsed upon the entrance of a governor who offered the veneer of tea party rhetoric as strident as hers, but had the backing of mega-donors from the state with more Republican money than any other outside California.
That governor, who was thought to be his leading conservative opponent, turned out to have spent about as much time preparing for the campaign as my students spend preparing for pop quizzes.
When the governor’s lack of preparation became obvious, he was replaced briefly as the national frontrunner by a former pizza executive who made the governor look like Thomas Jefferson.
Read the rest of…
Jeff Smith: Is Romney the GOP Nominee?
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Feb 2, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Thought for the day.
This comes from a story I’ve retold many times. It’s a good story and may or may not be true. I just can’t recall clearly. But it’s plausible it happened the way I recall.
But, as the saying goes, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
So, here goes…
When I was a boy I collected baseball cards. The cards had quotes by the players on the back. My favorite was a quote be Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee, outspoken and colorful pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. Lee was quoted as saying,
“Sometimes I pitch myself down 3 balls and no strikes, just to make it interesting.”
I was fascinated by that quote. I loved it and saw something in it that was profound–yet funny.
Do you do this in your life? Out of boredom, create a difficult situation you must extricate yourself from–just to “make it interesting?” Just for the adrenaline rush?
I have to admit I do on occasion. And I regret it…and am going to try not to do that today.
By Artur Davis, on Thu Feb 2, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  The defining issues of our time ought to be why an economy with all our underlying strengths takes two years to generate a million jobs (for a stretch in 83 and 84 it was taking all of a month); or why we trail a significant portion of the developed world in educational excellence; or why we are yielding the first generation of 18 to 35 year olds who will under-perform their parents in relative earnings; or why the dropout rate in an advanced society like ours, that puts no barriers on public education, remains so stubbornly high.
Economic inequality does belong on the list – middle-income work generates too little reward and both parties seem flat out of ideas on how to roll back poverty -but it is not, as the president suggests, a function of government having aligned itself with the powerful. Instead, inequality is one more symptom of an abundant nation not performing at full capacity.
 A dramatic hike in upper income taxes tomorrow wouldn’t move the needle an inch on the inequality front.
On the politics of it all, the president’s rhetoric always shines and its a sound contrast to Republicans who are struggling to defend the merits of the modern economy. As substance, its another sign of liberalism spending more time defining the past than solving the future.
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Feb 1, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Dad jeans? I don’t think so.
My teen daughter took me shopping a few days ago for some real jeans. The kind that looks like they’ve been run through an industrial grinder, splotched with bleach and carefully torn and tattered at the edges.
You know, the cool kind.
Actually, they call them “distressed” jeans. Although I’d never thought of it this way, it’s nice to have a pair of jeans that match my sense of self. Distressed. It’s edgy and yet congruent.
I’m 48 and not willing just yet to resign myself to wearing dark shoes, white socks and shorts or dad jeans.
So, how did it work for me?
Did I look like a 25 year old Zac Efron (who I found out last night my wife secretly thinks is really cute but she doesn’t know I know)?
According to my wife, “no” to any comparisons to Zac Efron (who in my opinion uses far too few letters to spell his name, I’m guessing for affect….so I could live with that).
But “yes” as to making me look younger. “Not a day over 45 according to Rebecca.”
That was just enough to whet my appetite. Tomorrow I may change how I spell my name to Jon Brn. I’m already feeling 42 just thinking about it.
By Jeff Smith, on Wed Feb 1, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  $15T of debt, $1T+ annual deficits, and the co-frontrunner for the presidential nomination of the allegedly fiscally conservative party is advocating a moon colony. You really couldn’t make this up.
Call me zany, but I just don’t get Newt’s strategy of doing everything possible to feed into the caricature of him painted by his opponents. Fortunately he can pontificate about moon colonies while his Adelson-funded SuperPAC labors at the last minute to generate a ground game that his official campaign spent a year neglecting.
If I were him, I would be doing everything possible to come off like a solid, grounded, trustworthy person ready to roll up my sleeves and offer very specific policies to facilitate job growth. But then, I thought his campaign was over last June, so what do I know?
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jan 31, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Today in Sunday School we discussed discipleship and how hard it must have been to follow Jesus’ call.
I was assigned to read the verse about Peter denying Jesus three times and asked what would I have done in his shoes, if called by Jesus to drop everything (family, friends, business) to follow Jesus.
Tough spot to be in.
It’s church so, on the one hand, the pressure is on to give the Christian and obvious answer.
On the other hand, it’s church so you better be truthful.
And what if the two conflict?
My answer was that I would have said, “Yes, sign me up! I’m on board….all the way!”
And then later in the day, when no one was looking, I would slip off.
People (including other disciples would wonder, “Where the heck did John go? He was here earlier.” I’d stay gone long enough for the group to move to the next town.
And I’d show up where I left the group the next day. I’d blame Peter for giving me the wrong date and time to meet (pointing out that Peter’s seemed a little off the beam lately with all the denial stuff and I’ve been worried about him and praying for him).
I’d further blame the rest of them for leaving without me. I’d remind everyone I was one of the first to sign on and cite my enthusiasm at the time…..and disappointment for being left behind.
If you hadn’t figured out by now, I went with the “honest” answer over the “most Christian sounding” answer.
I did add –and this was my “save,” sort of. I would quietly monitor the group for several weeks. If after that time it looked like they were completely legit, I’d make a surprise appearance, act like I’d been trying to catch up with them for several weeks and become a loyal disciple once and for all.
By Artur Davis, on Mon Jan 30, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
Artur Davis‘ First Reponse
[The RP’s Provocation, Artur Davis’s Rebuttal #1; Ron Granieri’s Rebuttal #2; Natasha Dow Schüll’s Analysis; Spectrum Gaming Group’s Analysis; Jason Grill’s Rebuttal #3; The RP’s First Defense; Jason Grill’s First Response]
I would add just a little to Jonathan’s arguments against sports gambling, which I think are entirely correct. The NCAA struggles to police the rules that exist today; it is a notoriously weak investigator without subpoena power, and I cant’t imagine the strains it would face if policing the ties between amateurs and more powerful, more nationalized gambling interests were part of it’s charter.
It’s worth examining the question of why the current regime of legalized sports betting in a few jurisdictions doesn’t pose the same risks. In fairness to Jason Grill’s case, there are enormous sums of gambling money at work today, and it’s been over 25 years since there was a bona-fide betting scandal in college sports. The true answer is that we don’t know what changing the scale of sports betting would do to incentivize corruption; in my mind, however, that’s a strike in it’s own right. If we guess wrong, the likelihood is an irreparable stain on amateur athletics. It’s also likely that, as I have argued in the context of legalizing marijuana, criminals are far more likely to bend their business model to profit from looser regulations, than they are to forfeit a lucrative market altogether.
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The RPs Debate Gambling: Artur Davis Responds
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Krystal Ball’s Provocation
