It's been a busy week in politics -- even without all the CPAC follies -- so let's get right to it.

In the House, Republican Darrell Issa, who chairs the Investigate Obama Until We Find Something To Impeach Him Over Committee (I think that's what it's called, at any rate...) held a hearing over the alleged abuses at the Internal Revenue Service.

Reportedly, he was recalling Lois Lerner to testify because she was going to answer questions. How do I know this? Because Issa himself told me, on one of last Sunday's political talk shows. But when she did appear, she took the Fifth again. Behind the scenes, her lawyer had been working on a deal with Issa in exchange for testimony, but the deal fell apart. This annoyed Issa no end, and after asking her question after question, he abruptly gaveled the hearing to a close and tried to walk out.

Representative Elijah Cummings tried to speak, but Issa continually cut off his microphone and tried to beat a hasty retreat from the room. Cummings kept on speaking, getting visibly more annoyed at being silenced in such a fashion. Watch the video, it's pretty cringe-worthy.

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The 2014 election season is officially underway.

When I first wrote that opening sentence, I considered adding "[pause for groans]" at the end of it. For many, America's seemingly-unending electoral cycle is a source of cynicism (or worse), while for others it keeps the partisan edges sharp. Your mileage may vary, as they say online.

The biggest race of the week was the Texas primaries, but this firecracker turned into a fizzle, as the major candidates didn't have much problem defeating any of their upstart challengers. The general election race for governor will indeed be one to watch this fall, with Democrat Wendy Davis attempting to turn Texas at least slightly less red, but the primaries themselves didn't provide much in the way of surprises.

Next week, however, there will be a special election for a House seat in Florida, which the winning party (whichever it turns out to be) is going to proclaim as a bellwether for the upcoming 2014 midterms. No matter which side wins, the significance of the victory is likely to be wildly overstated, but that's not going to stop anyone from drawing their conclusions.

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Another good month

For the second month in a row, President Obama had an all-around positive month in the public polls. His job approval average was up, his job disapproval was down, and he has almost completely recovered from the dip his numbers took after the Obamacare website rollout fiasco. This is clear when you take a look at the chart for February:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

February, 2014

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Headlines can be deceptive, so allow me to state up front that I don't mean "oh, those poor poor politicians," or even literally, as in "politicians who don't have millions." I mean it instead in the sense of "the politics of the poor," which could shape up to be a major issue in the upcoming elections. Why this is happening in this election cycle, I cannot really say. Poverty isn't some sort of new thing, after all. But both Republicans and Democrats seem to be showcasing their ideas in a way we haven't really seen since John Edwards trod the hustings.

For whatever reason, the poor may be front and center in the politics of 2014. Even Republicans seem to be worried about how they are perceived on the issue, which is unusual (to say the least). Paul Ryan is set to introduce the Republican answer to President Obama's budget (just released today), and Ryan's been touting it as a new Republican direction on poverty for a while now. The Republican Party famously conducted a "post mortem" of their whole platform after the 2012 election, which advised drastic changes in their approach to (and how they talk about) some major issues. Almost all of this advice was then completely ignored by the party as a whole. Republicans have not noticeably changed the way they either talk about or create policies for a wide range of people (women, minorities, gays, immigrants, young people, etc.), so it is somewhat odd that the poor are actually being addressed by Ryan's new budget.

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Alexis de Tocqueville, at the very end of the first volume of Democracy In America, took a look into his crystal ball and made a prediction for how global politics and power would change in the future. Tocqueville was a Frenchman, of course, and he had also studied English society as well, but he dismissed the biggest European powers of his day and instead concentrated on two newer players on the world stage:

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President Obama is giving an address on the situation in the Ukraine as this is being written, so we're going to wait until next week to draw any conclusions for American domestic politics, just to warn everyone up front.

Instead, we're mostly going to focus on what appears to be an astonishing amount of Republican self-inflicted political wounds from the past week. It's as if someone somewhere gave Republicans an order: "Stick your foot way out, now... ready... aim... fire!" Even when Republicans weren't shooting at their own feet this week, it appears they were conducting a circular firing squad instead. The 2014 campaign, in other words, is off to a raucous start... and it's only February.

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Program Note: I fully admit that sometimes I run repeat articles because I am lazy and don't feel like writing a column. Other times, I am just too busy with real life, or sick. And then there are slow political news days when I just don't have a handy subject to write about.

But then there are times like today, when I repeat an article to do nothing more than metaphorically spike the football in the end zone and do a victory dance.

Ahem.

Eleven months ago, I wrote the following article. For the time it was written, I was going out on a limb. We had just heard the oral arguments in two pivotal cases at the Supreme Court, but the decision was still months away, and nobody really knew how the Supremes were going to rule. Even so, I argued, the tipping point had already been reached on the subject of gay marriage.

I thought that now, immediately after Arizona's governor just vetoed a very discriminatory bill, was a good time to repeat my claims about how the tide had turned. The bill in question is even instructive, because it shows how the anti-marriage-equality folks are grasping at straws -- they are passing state laws in full anticipation of marriage equality becoming the law in the entire nation. In other words, they know they're fighting a losing battle, and they are looking for ways to strategically retreat.

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What follows is a modern-day parable. I think it's important to point that out up front, in order not to cause any undue offense. The scene: the near future, when Arizona (or any other state, for that matter) becomes a bastion of religious freedom by passing laws shielding businesses from penalty for discrimination on the basis of religious belief.

Our heroine, Libby R. Terryan, wakes up to a bright new beautiful world in which citizens and businesses are free to act without governmental restraint upon their deeply-held religious beliefs. Libby breathes in this sweet air of freedom as she gets ready for work. Because of all this intoxicating freedom, Libby finds herself running a bit late.

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President Obama just released a statement from the White House to mourn the passing of comedy genius Harold Ramis. It reads:

Michelle and I were saddened to hear of the passing of Harold Ramis, one of America's greatest satirists, and like so many other comedic geniuses, a proud product of Chicago's Second City. When we watched his movies -- from Animal House and Caddyshack to Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day -- we didn't just laugh until it hurt. We questioned authority. We identified with the outsider. We rooted for the underdog. And through it all, we never lost our faith in happy endings. Our thoughts and prayers are with Harold's wife, Erica, his children and grandchildren, and all those who loved him, who quote his work with abandon, and who hope that he received total consciousness.

That bit at the end refers to a line from Caddyshack (which can be seen here).

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As we enter into what political wonks call "primary season," the next few months are going to prove instructive as to the relative strength in the Republican Party of both the Tea Party and the Establishment Republican factions. The Tea Party rode high in the 2010 election cycle, and was again influential during the whole 2012 race, but one has to wonder if the luster of the Tea Party's shine is beginning to wear off -- even among Republican primary voters. The next few months will tell, as sitting Republicans either win their primaries or are dethroned by their Tea Party challengers.

This will be most important in the Senate races, once again. In the past two cycles, Republican voters have chosen enough Tea Party stalwarts (who then went on to lose very winnable general election races) to have changed the control of the Senate, after all. Some of them crashed and burned so spectacularly that even today we still remember their names and their gaffes (Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin and Christine "I'm Not A Witch" O'Donnell, to name just two). Republicans need to gain six Senate seats, and (just as in 2010 and 2012) they've got a real shot at doing so. If, that is, they manage to pick candidates who can be counted on to not say outrageous things while campaigning.

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