[Program Note: No fresh column today, sorry. Instead, here is an article I wrote back at the beginning of February, which was the starting point for the column I wrote yesterday. If this doesn't interest you, there's a fascinating article over at Salon about our real first gay president, James Buchanan. It's an interesting read, but doesn't really point out one aspect of the situation. Much like J.F.K.'s sex life was largely ignored by the press of his day, Buchanan's sex life was also ignored back in the 1800s. The media back then actually enjoyed printing sex scandals, but homosexuality was still a big taboo -- so Buchanan got a pass from the press. Washington gossip certainly knew all about Buchanan and his partner (calling them "Aunt Fancy" and "Miss Nancy"), but this never made it into the newspapers. So if the article below doesn't interest you, I encourage you to head over and learn some history at Salon.]

This column originally ran on February 2, 2012.

Every so often I write an article which is nothing more than the sheerest of speculation, based not on any solid factual foundation but rather on the shifting undercurrents and vagaries of the American political consciousness. Of course, when I do indulge the urge to take such a stab in the dark, I like to identify it as such beforehand, out of respect for my readers' intelligence, and my own sense of journalistic ethics. This is one of those articles -- you have been warned.

The thought which keeps flitting through my mind is whether the Republicans are going to face their own "PUMA" problem this fall. For those who don't remember the term from 2008, PUMA stood for "Party Unity, My Ass!" and was the rallying cry of the non-existent hordes of pro-Hillary Democrats who were reportedly going to cause major disruption at the Democratic National Convention, and then throw the election to John McCain in the fall.

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Is the Republican Party going to have a PUMA problem on their hands during their national nominating convention? I'm not, of course, referring to the possibility that mountain lions will be stalking folks inside the convention center, but rather that a group of folks under the "Party Unity, My Ass!" banner will disrupt what is supposed to be a well-scripted and well-choreographed coronation.

I actually wrote about this possibility way back at the beginning of February, when only four states had voted in the Republican primary season. Back then, the possibility still existed for Newt Gingrich to be the instigator of such a movement. But even then, I admitted that this likely wouldn't happen: "For all Newt Gingrich's bluster, he'll likely drop out of the race long before the convention, which will give the party time to reconcile before they're on center stage."

But the other possible leader of such a factional split I mentioned was Ron Paul. And Ron Paul is not going to go very gently into that good night, so to speak. Ron Paul's supporters are -- very quietly -- making an astonishing (and mostly successful) attempt at gaming the entire Republican Party system. Paul supporters are getting themselves named as delegates to the convention in disproportionate numbers to Paul's actual vote totals. This has so alarmed the state party organizations that they are stooping to some very questionable tactics to stem the Ron Paul tide.

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The filibuster is in the news these days, it seems. Harry Reid recently admitted on the Senate floor that he had been wrong not to follow the push by progressives in his own party to revamp the filibuster rules when he had the chance. Now, it seems, there's a lawsuit which will attempt to convince the Supreme Court to overturn the filibuster as being unconstitutional.

What is striking about that article is the graph, though. For those who argue "both parties play games with the filibuster," this one graph shows how filibuster use has exploded in the last three years. This isn't politics as usual, to put it bluntly. Republicans have taken things to a whole new level.

Putting all of that aside, though, the core question here is if the filibuster were to be changed, what would it change to?

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In a few weeks' time, this column will begin its quadrennial series on analyzing the presidential Electoral College math. Since, as any fifth-grader will tell you, we don't have a national vote for president, tracking the race by means of national polling is almost completely irrelevant to the question of who will be in the White House after next January. The real race happens state-by-state, and we'll be engaging in close analysis of the state polling numbers soon.

For now, I'm just going to go with my gut. Paying little or no attention to actual polling (where it even exists -- it's still mighty early), instead I lay out today the states I'll be watching closely, and how I think the chips will fall in November based only on my gut feelings. If this sort of thing doesn't interest you, well, there's plenty of other stuff on the internet to look at, right?

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We're throwing our usual format away today, because this was a momentous and historic week in American politics, and we thought it needed the entire column to address. Call it an extended rant, rather than talking points. There are two parts to this rant. The first is positive. The second is negative. Then, I (hopefully) change it all back to positive at the end.

Most Impressive

We've had to create a new award today, because our usual Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week doesn't even begin to cover it. Instead, we award President Barack Hussein Obama our first-ever Most Impressive Democrat (On This Issue) In My Lifetime award. We fully expect the MID(OTI)IML award to be a rare one indeed. If the column is still around to issue a second one, we'd actually be (pleasantly) surprised. You'll notice, however, that we did think ahead, as the careful wording means that Obama himself could win a second MID(OTI)IML, if he'd just pick another issue on which to be so downright impressive, in the future. In addition to the big award, we've got several Bravo! honorable mentions to individually hand out, as well.

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Senator Richard Lugar's loss in his Republican primary in Indiana this week continues a trend which has been evident for at least the past two decades in American politics -- the matchup of our political divide with our ideological divide. What this means for the future is really anyone's guess, other than that "R" or "D" after a politician's name is a lot easier to "read" these days.

The partisan divide -- Republicans and Democrats -- has been in place in American politics since the Civil War. For the past century and a half, there have been two main parties in this country. Third parties have popped up from time to time and had measured success, but at the end of the cycle, they usually get absorbed by one of the major parties -- or the third party just fades away into the woodwork.

The ideological divide is a tougher one to trace throughout history, because "conservative" versus "liberal" doesn't fully encompass the different sides of issues these two groups have, at times, taken. In fact, even the use of the word "liberal" is on the wane (mostly being replaced with the re-tread "progressive"), even though the ideals haven't changed all that much. But branding issues aside, this is the true division of our country's politics. What is odd about our current situation is how closely the parties align along this fracture.

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The media -- pretty much all of them -- just got "played," by the Obama campaign. And they don't even realize it yet. What we just witnessed, for roughly the past four days, was not a "breaking story" or even an "evolution" of any sort. What we just witnessed, capped this morning by President Barack Obama's statement of support for gay marriage, was nothing more than the introduction of a new (political) product. It was a "new and improved" product rollout -- nothing more, nothing less.

Before I begin to back that statement up, a personal note. This column is an odd one for me to write, for several reasons. The first is I don't usually like to jump into the fray of "snap judgments" on breaking news story, preferring to let the dust settle a bit before commenting. The second is (believe it or not) I was already going to write about this today -- although the conclusions I would have drawn would have been far different (and mostly wrong), if, say, Obama had released his gay marriage support an hour after I had published what I was going to write. Third, I'm not really going to address the core issue itself -- gay marriage support -- because I'm totally focused on the political/media nexus instead. Lastly, I'm about to use an argument that I never really bought into back when it was a popular argument to make (circa 2008-2009).

During Obama's last campaign, and during about his first year in office, there were those on the Left who would tell you (whenever there was news about Obama doing something inexplicable) not to worry, because he was playing "multi-dimensional chess" while his lesser opponents were desperately trying to play checkers. Obama was the mastermind, the master game-player, in this construct. I never fully bought into this argument, although it was a common one heard back then.

But this time, it's hard to see it any other way. The Obama campaign team just brilliantly snookered the entire media universe -- right, left, and center -- into generating a news frenzy days before a major campaign announcement was rolled out. Imagine, if you will, that none of the past week had happened, and Obama said the same thing today. Well, it would have been a story, but it wouldn't have been a week-long story, perhaps. That's the difference, and that's why Obama's team scored a big coup in the media world.

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Today's article is nothing more, really, than a reading assignment. Just to warn everyone.

Back in February, the New Yorker ran an article which didn't get much attention. It's one of those out-in-the-wonky-weeds political-insider types of article, but even the wonky Left hasn't much noticed it (at least from what I can tell). But the point it makes could actually be a key factor in Mitt Romney's chances this fall. Because Romney's "secret weapon" is none other than the political ad guy who came up with the "Willie Horton" ad, decades ago.

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Has Mitt Romney painted himself into a corner? More and more, that's the question I find myself asking. During the primary season, Romney was forced to tack farther and father to the right, to convince the Republican primary voters he was conservative enough for them to vote for (without worrying about his moderate Massachusetts beginnings). Everyone -- including Romney's own top campaign advisors -- thought that once the primaries were over, they'd just give the Romney "Etch A Sketch" a good upside-down shake, and the slate would be wiped clean for him to tack back to the center for the general election. But is he actually going to be able to do so?

The Republican primaries, for all intents and purposes, are over. Mitt won. But since this has become general knowledge, I certainly haven't noticed Mitt tacking anywhere but far to the right. Perhaps he took a "centrist" position in there somewhere, and I just missed it. Or perhaps, as I started with, he is just now realizing the corner he's painted himself into.

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If you've been hiding under a rock somewhere all week, you may have missed the fact that an anniversary just happened. One year ago this past Wednesday, special operations forces killed America's "Enemy Number One," Osama Bin Laden. When it happened, it was a time for some sober reflection -- and some unsober and spontaneous celebration on the streets. Whether such was a good thing or not, it is what happened.

This week, we marked the milestone in two notable ways. The first was President Obama's campaign team releasing a political ad which suggested Mitt Romney wouldn't have made the same decision Obama did. The second was (shudder) Brian Williams being invited to the White House Situation Room in order to fill our television screens with schmaltz.

I have to admit, I have not yet seen the hour of BriWi (as I like to call him) doing his thing. I did tape it, so I may have the stomach to watch it later, but after approximately 15 seconds of retch-inducing self-congratulation by Williams, I had to leave the room. This sounds like an exaggeration or hyperbole, but sadly, it is not.

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