Bill Scher Archive

The back-to-back Bush and Obama administrations allow us to easily compare the effectiveness of liberal and conservative economic policies. President George W. Bush’s record is highlighted by tax cuts largely aimed at giving the wealthiest Americans more money with which to invest, and a looser regulatory regime on businesses. President Obama implemented the Keynesian-style American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as “the stimulus”), repealed the heart of the Bush tax cuts, greatly expanded the federal government’s role in health care with the Affordable Care Act, and tightened regulations on several industry sectors including finance and energy.

How do their economic records compare?

Let’s start with the big one: jobs. And let’s make it fair to Republicans and only look at private sector job creation – no Democratic cheating by putting all the unemployed on the government payroll!

Bush vs. Obama: Private Sector Job Creation

Bush lost private sector jobs over the course of his eight years (the Wall Street Journal declared it the “Worst Track Record On Record” on jobs), while Obama has created a net of 11.6 million private sector jobs during his presidency, and nearly 15 million if you start counting after the Great Recession Bush handed Obama technically ended in mid-2009.

The Republicans are in a jam. For the last six years, they’ve pledged to repeal Obamacare, but haven’t figured out a plan for replacing it. They are ideologically opposed to government involvement, but they know that taking away the health insurance of 20 million people is politically disastrous. They rail against high premiums, but they know taking away the individual mandate — and taking out younger, healthier customers from the risk pool — would only make premiums go even higher.

But there is a way out. It requires Republicans to prioritize maintaining political power over sticking with ideological principles. But after swallowing Trump on trade, Russia and politically pressuring individual corporations, that should not be a problem.

The solution is three-fold. One, encourage holdout Republican governors to expand Medicaid. Two, increase Obamacare subsidies. Three, call it Trumpcare.

Why would Republicans ever swerve left to improve Obamacare? First and foremost, it would directly benefit Trump voters. Second, Obama, once out of office, can no longer politically benefit; there’s no reason to withhold health care out of spite. Three, Trump would accept it — deep down, he’s always been a single-payer guy.

Republicans, resigned to losing the White House for the third time in a row, and for the fifth time in the last seven elections, are already planning to launch yet another round of partisan investigative witch hunts designed to hobble a Hillary Clinton presidency.

NBC News reported:

…dozens of House Republicans have demanded that a special prosecutor investigate the Clinton Foundation for possible conflicts of interest. Sen. Ted Cruz has called for a “serious criminal investigation” into a Democratic operative featured in a sting video by conservative activist James O’Keefe. And Speaker Paul Ryan promised “aggressive oversight work in the House” of an alleged “quid pro quo” deal between the FBI and the State Department over reclassifying an email on Clinton’s private server.

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who would likely serve as the chief antagonist of a second Clinton White House as chair the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News last week the “quid pro quo” claim alone was worth at least “four new hearings,” claiming it was a “flashing red light of potential criminality.”

Both the FBI and State Department say no quid pro quo took place, and that the incident was a misunderstanding.

The back-to-back Bush and Obama administrations allow us to easily compare the effectiveness of liberal and conservative economic policies. President George W. Bush’s record is highlighted by tax cuts largely aimed at giving the wealthiest Americans more money with which to invest, and a looser regulatory regime on businesses. President Obama implemented the Keynesian-style American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as “the stimulus”), repealed the heart of the Bush tax cuts, greatly expanded the federal government’s role in health care with the Affordable Care Act, and tightened regulations on several industry sectors including finance and energy.

How do their economic records compare?

Let’s start with the big one: jobs. And let’s make it fair to Republicans and only look at private sector job creation – no Democratic cheating by putting all the unemployed on the government payroll!

Bush vs. Obama: Private Sector Job Creation

Donald Trump has been routinely accusing former President Lyndon Johnson of silencing the political speech of churches because he viewed churches as political enemies. This is false. Trump’s presidential campaign may be doomed to defeat, but this smear may live on if it is not vehemently corrected.

The trajectory of this smear is a case study of how conservative misinformation is often injected into the political bloodstream. It starts with a seed of truth then metastasizes into a grotesque lie.

In Trump’s nomination acceptance speech, he said:

I would like to thank the evangelical and religious community because I’ll tell you what, the support they have given me … has had such a big reason for me being here tonight … They have so much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits. An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson, many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views. Their voice has been taken away. I am going to work very hard to repeal that language and protect free speech for all Americans.

Directly lifting from Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign, Donald Trump has declared himself the “law and order” candidate. At a Virginia rally Monday he said, “American police and law enforcement are all that separate civilization from total chaos and the destruction of our country as we know it.” On Tuesday he tweeted, “Crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse.”

Painting a picture of an America drowning in crime-fueled anarchy serves to rationalize incidents of racial bias in policing. While Trump has not defended the actions of the police offers in the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, he has spent more time in their aftermath talking about the need to support police officers in an age of rampant crime, and no time on proposals for police reform.

But Trump’s picture is a false one. Crime is down. Way down. The rate of violent crime is at a 45-year low.

A new The Economist/YouGov poll, showing Hillary Clinton with a five-point lead over Donald Trump, also asked: “Are you confident or uneasy about the following presidential candidates’ ability to deal wisely with international trade?”

The numbers might surprise you:

                                 Confident       Uneasy

Hillary Clinton           40%                47%

Donald Trump           29%                61%

Clinton’s numbers are tepid, but Trump’s are a disaster.

These numbers can be interpreted in various ways. But considering that there have been several polls this year reflecting skepticism about the value on international trade generally, one should not assume that the public is rejecting Trump on pro-free trade grounds. Besides, Clinton joins Trump in opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even if she has been less vocal about it, so there’s no difference there to explain why he polls worse.

Speaker Paul Ryan’s has been rolling out an ambitious legislative agenda, titled “A Better Way,” designed to show that the Republican Party – irrespective of Donald Trump – is brimming with exciting policy ideas and is ready to govern. But The Atlantic finds it akin to a tree falling in an empty forest:

…thus far, Ryan’s beloved agenda—the one his wonkish heart has been dreaming of and laboring over and counting on to define his speakership—has been something of a PR bust, yet another sad casualty of this election cycle’s Trumpsanity.

But chalking up the bust to Trump’s hogging of the media oxygen is too simple. Ryan could have swiped a piece of spotlight if he had anything interesting to offer.

Instead, Ryan served up cold conservative porridge. Nothing that showed any lessons learned from the failed conservatism of the past. Nothing that went beyond hack anti-Obama talking points.

I noted last week that Ryan’s environmental agenda was knee-jerk, anti-regulation rehash that systematically dismissed the threat of climate change.

Last week, CNN uncovered Donald Trump’s 2006 remarks about how he wanted to profit off of a housing bubble:

I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy. You know if you’re in a good cash position, which I’m in a good cash position today, then people like me would go in and buy like crazy. If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know you could make a lot of money.

If you think “I sort of hope that happens” is too equivocal to suggest Trump wanted the housing market to collapse, he removed all doubt in a 2007 interview:

People have been talking about the end of the cycle for 12 years, and I’m excited if it is. I’ve always made more money in bad markets than in good markets.

Trump responded that he eagerness to profit off of other people’s misery is a feature, not a bug: “…this is the kind of thinking our country needs, understanding how to get a good result out of a very bad and sad situation,. Politicians have no idea how to do this – they don’t have a clue.”

You can say this for Donald Trump; he doesn’t delegate the job of attack dog. He likes to scorch his own earth.

In what has to be an unprecedented interview, Trump gleefully shared with the New York Times his innermost thoughts on how he plans to rhetorically fillet his opponent:

Donald J. Trump plans to throw Bill Clinton’s infidelities in Hillary Clinton’s face on live television during the presidential debates this fall, questioning whether she enabled his behavior and sought to discredit the women involved.

Mr. Trump will try to hold her accountable for security lapses at the American consulate in Benghazi … And he intends to portray Mrs. Clinton as fundamentally corrupt, invoking everything from her cattle futures trades in the late 1970s to the federal investigation into her email practices as secretary of state…

…In a telephone interview, he noted that women did not like seeing Mrs. Clinton insulted or bullied by men. He said he wanted to be more strategic, by calling into question Mrs. Clinton’s judgment…

…“Just getting nasty with Hillary won’t work,” Mr. Trump said. “You really have to get people to look hard at her character, and to get women to ask themselves if Hillary is truly sincere and authentic. Because she has been really ugly in trying to destroy Bill’s mistresses, and she is pandering to women so obviously when she is only interested in getting power.”

Donald Trump was riffing on trade, sounding very populists by shrugging off concerns about sparking a “trade war” with China, when he said: “My trade deal is very simple, I am going to make great deals for our country. It might be free, it might not be free.”

Well, which is it? The difference is a big deal.

A “free trade” deal would have little to no rules governing trade. Progressive populist critics of such deals argue free trade deals create a “race to the bottom” in which countries keep wages low and labor and environmental protections light to maximize competitiveness.

A “fair trade” deal seeks to codify a level playing field, so America regulations on wages, worker rights and environment rules can’t easily but undercut by other nations looking to keep the cost of production low. The idea is to lift up standards across the world so workers everywhere benefit.

Trump doesn’t say what principles would drive his negotiation strategy. He mostly just says “I am going to make great deals.”

Of course, since it is Trump, he says a lot of things, and you can pick and choose certain statements to make you believe he is on the same page as you.

Donald Trump has a trick he likes to use when he wants to communicate two different messages to two different constituencies: incoherence.

It doesn’t take much to expose incoherence, yet it seems to flummox media headline writers who are itchy to summarize only one message.

For example, here’s Trump on NBC’s “Meet The Press” last Sunday, talking about the minimum wage [emphasis added].

CHUCK TODD: Minimum wage. At a debate, you know. You remember what you said. You thought you didn’t want to touch it. Now you’re open to it. What changed?

DONALD TRUMP: Let me just tell you, I’ve been traveling the country for many months … I have seen what’s going on. And I don’t know how people make it on $7.25 an hour.

Now, with that being said, I would like to see an increase of some magnitude. But I’d rather leave it to the states. Let the states decide. Because don’t forget, the states have to compete with each other. So you may have a governor –

CHUCK TODD: Right … but should the federal government set a floor, and then you let the states–

DONALD TRUMP: No, I’d rather have the states go out and do what they have to do. And the states compete with each other, not only other countries, but they compete with each other, Chuck. So I like the idea of let the states decide.

But I think people should get more. I think they’re out there. They’re working. It is a very low number. You know, with what’s happened to the economy, with what’s happened to the cost. I mean, it’s just– I don’t know how you live on $7.25 an hour. But I would say let the states decide.

When this exchange was summed up by The Washington Post, the headline read: “Trump, who once opposed minimum-wage hike, says he would ‘like to see an increase.’” Technically true, but highly misleading.

The most recent round of Quinnipiac polls re-ignited Democratic fears that Donald Trump could actually win the presidency. The polls put him ahead of Hillary Clinton by 4 in Ohio, and behind her by only 1 point in Florida and Pennsylvania.

Democrats should not be complacent about the threat of Trump, but neither should they revert to panic at the sight of a single poll. Always beware of outliers.

First, if you average all of the polls in each state taken since March, Clinton holds a 5.6 percent lead in Florida, a 7.0 percent lead in Pennsylvania and a 3.0 percent lead in Ohio. None of states are a lock for Clinton, but the Quinnipiac results are a clear outlier.

(For the record, Bernie Sanders’ average lead over Trump in those polls since March is only significantly better in Pennsylvania: 5.0 in FL, 5.0 in OH, 12.7 in PA.)

Why is Quinnipiac an outlier? One reason is it assumes the electorates in those three states will be more white than in 2012, when a joint effort by the Center for American Progress and the American Enterprise Institute project, dubbed States of Change, projects each state will become slightly less white in 2016.

In Florida, Quinnipiac assumes whites will compose 69 percent of the electorate, two points higher than 2012.

Most political eyeballs are understandably transfixed on the presidential race. But there is much drama brewing in the race for the Senate. And while the unhinged Republican presidential primary may give an impression of a nation gone mad, the way vulnerable Republican Senate incumbents are struggling to hold on to their seats is a reminder that the nation is not in a right-wing mood.

The Senate is within reach for the Democrats in 2016. They need to net four seats (five if they lost the White House, but doubtful they would net five seats while losing the White House). As of today, six Republican-held seats (and one Democrat-held seat) are deemed “toss-ups.”

All the incumbent Republicans in the toss-up states are first-termers representing blue states who were elected the Tea Party-infused 2010 midterm. They’ve never won statewide in a presidential election year where Democratic turnout is expected to rise.

How are Democrats doing in those races? And how are Republicans strategizing to save their seats?

Tenacity and flexibility is helping California workers get a raise.

Despite labor activists having won an hourly minimum wage increase to $10 in the state three years ago, and despite the reluctance for another raise from Gov. Jerry Brown, a compromise between the governor and legislative leaders has been struck for a $15 minimum wage. While “this is not a done deal,” according to one supportive lawmaker, as it has not cleared the state legislature, a lot of ducks appear to be lined up.

The 2013 law that phased in a $10 minimum, reaching the plateau this year, already awarded California the mantle of highest minimum wage state, sharing the prize with Massachusetts. When labor activists this year moved toward putting an initiative on the ballot that would jack the wage floor up to $15 in 2021, Gov. Brown sounded a cautious note: “Raise the minimum wage too much and you put a lot of poor people out of work.”

But activists squeezed Brown by moving ahead anyway, qualifying for the ballot, backed by polls saying the measure would win handily.

Brown, wily as always, sought a compromise to soften the measure and avoid a costly ballot initiative campaign. The “tentative” deal, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, pushes back the phase-in timeframe so $15 is not reached until 2022, with an extra year given to small businesses. Furthermore, the increases could be delayed during economic downturns.

Donald Trump has attracted attention for being the rare Republican who doesn’t promise to cut Social Security. But that doesn’t mean you should trust him on Social Security.

As a general rule, you should not trust Donald Trump on anything, as he offers a constant stream of falsehoods and flip-flops on the campaign trail.

And his comments in Thursday night’s debate about Social Security display the usual ideological incoherence and weasel words we’ve come to expect from Trump.

Trump was given a loaded question from CNN’s Dana Bash: “Social Security is projected to run out of money within 20 years. So specifically, what would you do to stop that from happening?”

(The premise is misleading: Social Security trustees have an “intermediate projection” that the trust fund’s “reserves” would be depleted by 2034, but that doesn’t mean the program “runs out of money” because payroll tax revenue always comes in, though it would mean benefit cuts. Furthermore, the trustees offer two other projections using different economic assumptions, including one in which the trust fund is solvent for at least 75 years.)

A bombshell New York Times report, about how the Republican Establishment has been unable to stop Donald Trump, reveals that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to disown Trump if he becomes the nominee:

…Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton, according to senators at the lunches … Of Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has said, “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” according to his colleagues.

If Trump is so horrible for the Republican Party, why wait?

The Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee could announce today that they will provide no support for Donald Trump in the general election.

After three presidential contests, there is a striking trend in the Democratic entrance and exit polls: Far more Democrats call themselves “liberal” than eight years ago.

In Iowa, the percentage of voters identifying as “very” or “somewhat” liberal jumped from 54 percent to 68 percent. In New Hampshire, the increase was a similar 57 percent to 68 percent. And Nevada saw massive leap: 45 percent to 70 percent.

The dramatic shift in liberal pride is no doubt powered in part by an influx of young voters whose worldview has been shaped by the conservative policy failures that produced the 2008 market crash, and who largely support Bernie Sanders.

But Hillary Clinton holds her own with liberal voters overall. In Iowa, she won 46 percent of “liberal” voters – with 39 percent of the “very” liberal camp and 50 percent of the “somewhats.” In Nevada, Clinton did her best among the left, winning 47 percent of the “very liberal” vote and 46 percent of the “somewhat.” (The Bernie blowout of New Hampshire appears to be colored by his geographic proximity.)

Today, Marco Rubio surrogate Rick Santorum was stumped when asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to name one Rubio accomplishment. Santorum pleaded that Rubio’s short time in the Senate was a period when “nothing got done” so of course he doesn’t have any accomplishments.

He has a point. Rubio’s Senate career was solely when a Democrat was president, and Republicans were mostly trying to block his agenda. Similarly, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton didn’t have a lot of Senate accomplishments when George W. Bush was president.

But for Rubio, pointing a finger at Obama doesn’t exonerate. Because there was one time when Rubio tried very hard to accomplishment something, even asserting a leadership role: immigration reform. Not only did he fail to accomplish enactment of the bill, his leadership was a colossal disaster.

Rush Limbaugh made a startling admission on Wednesday, in the course of discussing the staying power of Donald Trump and the value of the Sarah Palin endorsement: “It’s now out in the open that the Republican conservative base is not monolithically conservative … that’s not the glue that unites them all.”

The proof of that is Trump: “If conservatism were the glue … then Trump would have no chance. He literally would have no chance. Because, whatever he is he’s not and never has been known as a doctrinaire conservative.”

If it’s not philosophical belief and positive ideas, then what is the glue? Per Rush, it is “united, virulent opposition to the left and the Democrat Party and Barack Obama.”

In other words, they know what they hate, but not what they like.

That would explain why the Republican debates have been so bereft of policy ideas and discussion, but loaded with broadsides against President Obama (and Hillary Clinton). If the base doesn’t know what it wants, and doesn’t even agree on the direction in which to go, then proposing detailed plans isn’t going to get you very far.

The back-to-back Bush and Obama administrations allow us to easily compare the effectiveness of liberal and conservative economic policies. President George W. Bush’s record is highlighted by tax cuts largely aimed at giving the wealthiest Americans more money with which to invest, and a looser regulatory regime on businesses. President Obama implemented the Keynesian-style American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as “the stimulus”), repealed the heart of the Bush tax cuts, greatly expanded the federal government’s role in health care with the Affordable Care Act, and tightened regulations on several industry sectors including finance and energy.

How do their economic records compare?

Let’s start with the big one: jobs. And let’s make it fair to Republicans and only look at private sector job creation – no Democratic cheating by putting all the unemployed on the government payroll!

Sen. Marco Rubio has been christened the winner of the last debate by many pundits after staring down Jeb Bush’s attack on his senatorial attendance record. But what did he actually say about his ideas and policies?

Is there any reason for Republican voters to believe he would be their strongest nominee? Is there any reason for general election voters to believe he represents a more modern and rational Republican Party?

Rubio may have blunted Bush’s criticism, but he didn’t really answer the initial question from the moderator, which was:

“You’ve had a big accomplishment in the Senate, an immigration bill providing a path to citizenship [that] the conservatives in your party hate, [which] you don’t support anymore. Now, you’re skipping more votes than any senator to run for president. Why not slow down, get a few more things done first or least finish what you start?”

Rubio’s immigration botch is his biggest weak spot. It’s the one time he tried to exercise leadership as a Senator, and he abandoned the fight at the first sign of difficulty.

Last week I asked “Will Keynes Win The Canadian Election?” He did, resoundingly. The Liberal Party, running on a Keynesian economic platform, shattered expectations and won the prime ministership with an outright majority in Parliament last night.

Liberal Party’ leader Justin Trudeau bet on economist John Maynard Keynes in August with a job-creation plan based explicitly on budget deficits. Both the front-running leftist New Democratic Party and the ruling Conservative Party slammed him for rejecting the principle of balanced budgets.

But Canada is in a recession. Not a huge recession, but enough of one that the voters wanted to see action on jobs. Only Trudeau promised action.

Still, for Trudeau to win election on an explicit promise to create budget deficits is highly unusual.

The House Republicans have a problem. The approximately 50-member strong Freedom Caucus won’t let them govern. Speaker John Boehner decided it was preferable to abandon his post instead of standing up to them. Rep. Kevin McCarthy chose to run away from the Speaker’s race instead of trying to beat them.

Both cited party unity for their excuse. But their decisions avoid the underlying problem: the House Freedom Caucus is a cancer that needs to excised if the party is ever going to be able to function.

Consider that as soon as eyes turned to Rep. Paul Ryan came the calls that the Ayn Rand disciple is not conservative enough.

At Real Clear Politics, I elaborated on the need to stand up to the right-wing bullies instead of bowing to party unity at all costs:

This is like refusing to get chemotherapy because you want your body to be united with your cancerous tumor…

…It’s not as if Boehner doesn’t agree that his right flank has become detrimental to the party. “We have,” he said in that CBS exit interview, “members of the House and Senate here in town who whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know, they know, are never going to happen.”

You might think that three hours is enough time for a presidential debate to offer up ideas on how to grow the economy.

You might think that a group of 11 people with such varied backgrounds – two CEOs, three senators, five current and former governors and one doctor – would have some fresh ideas how to create good-paying jobs.

But this is a Republican presidential debate, so even the CEOs aren’t good at creating jobs.

The jobs part of the debate began with the two CEOS, as CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina: “For voters looking to somebody with private-sector experience to create American jobs, why should they pick you and not Donald Trump?”

Carly Fiorina decided this would be a good time to talk about her checkered six-year stint at HP, her only experience as a CEO.

The Republican-controlled Congress returns from August recess today, having put off its homework for as long as it possibly could.

Republicans have 22 days to come up with a plan to keep the government open for the next fiscal year, and they have not even begun to negotiate with congressional Democrats or the White House over how big the budget should be.

When, or if, that problem is resolved, Republicans will soon face another deadline. Failing this past summer to reconcile House and Senate differences over a long-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund, Congress must do something or else the fund goes offline on October 29th, making it impossible to fund any new transportation projects.

And then, in all likelihood, the debt ceiling will be need to be lifted sometime in November or December, a basic housekeeping function that Republicans recoil from whenever a Democrat is in the White House.

When voters gave Republicans full control of the Congress last November, Republican leaders promised them a professionally run institution.

Donald Trump’s ability to say offensive things and continue to rise in the polls has cowed other Republicans from attacking him directly for his bad behavior. Jeb Bush and Rand Paul have begun challenging Trump’s conservative bona fides, a sensible attack line in a Republican primary. But some comments are so beyond the pale that to ignore them is unconscionable, regardless of the political implications.

In Boston this week, two men beat a homeless man with a pipe, broke his nose, bruised his ribs and peed on him, while saying “Donald Trump was right. All these illegals need to be deported.”

Trump’s response hours later was abhorrent: “it would be a shame . . . I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”

Republicans used to brag about their “deep bench” of governors, diligently solving problems in contrast to the dysfunction happening in Washington. No more. All four sitting governors running for president — Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal and John Kasich are struggling in the polls, eclipsed by those so outside the Beltway that they lack any governmental experience: Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina.

Why are Republican voters falling under the spell of these neophytes? Because under the rules of modern conservatism, holding the responsibility of the governor’s mansion is a lose-lose proposition. Either you must pursue insane right-wing goals that inevitably backfire, or you remain within the parameters of sanity and get dismissed as a “RINO.”

As I recounted today for Real Clear Politics Christie, Jindal and Walker fell into the trap of the former.

Jindal went on a tax-cutting frenzy, only to spark a massive budgetary crisis and a legislative revolt. Jindal responded by proposing massive education cuts, driving his approval rating down to the 30s. Just this month, he capitulated, accepting a budget that closed the budget gap primarily with increase revenues.

Christie tried to show off the conservatives he could crack down on union pensions and hold the line taxes. Instead, his refusal to raise taxes meant he couldn’t hold up his end of the pension deal. Now New Jersey has suffered multiple credit rating downgrades, as has Christie’s approval rating.

Last week I wrote that the GOP is on track to lose the Latino vote yet again. On the day Republicans face up to this problem, they at least know what they have to do: suck it up on immigration reform.

But Republicans have a bigger demographic challenge looming over them, one of which they are less cognizant, of which they will have harder time accepting, and of which the solutions are less obvious: the Republican “secular problem.”

In the Bush Era, pundits were fond of lording over Democrats that they suffered from a “God problem.” But ever since Democrats won the 2006 midterms, I have been writing that the opposite was true.

The 2006 exit poll data showed that Democrats crushed Republican among voters who went to church “a few times a year” (60-38 percent) and “never” (67-30 percent), while the Republican margin among those who attended church “weekly” was slashed from 16 points in the previous midterm to seven.

Pope Francis is preparing to deliver a major “encyclical,” or address to clergy, that declares preventing a climate crisis to be a moral imperative. This will be a landmark moment: the marriage of faith and science by one of the world’s most influential religious leaders, bolstering international talks to forge a global agreement by the end of the year.

Obviously, the man must be stopped.

At least that’s what the climate science deniers at the Koch Brothers-funded Heartland Institute think. Failing to recognize that the jig is up, Heartland representatives flew to the Vatican this week, and infiltrated a press conference tied to the church’s climate summit that is a precursor to the encyclical.

The Heartland boys were sad when their disruptive and disingenuous questioning was ignored. “Papal heavies shut down an awkward question at a Vatican press conference,” one whined afterwards. Another Heartland rep tried scolding the Pope, saying “The Pope has great moral authority but he’s not an authority on climate science.”