By George, Sherrod Brown an authentic lefty?

 When we spotted a headline on the Beacon Journal's op-ed page that said "Sherrod Brown,  authentic progressive," it appeared to be an accurate  reference to the authentic  Ohio Democratic senator.  So imagine my shock when the columnist was George Will.  Was he really paying homage to the guy that he described as  a "leftist"?

No dear reader, he wasn't. Instead he cleverly  used Brown, as  "rumpled"  and "hoarse" as he may be,  as a wedge to get at his real target: um, gender-crazy Democratic activists who are clamoring to nominate Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren in 2016.

( I will dispense with professional courtesy at  this point and refer to the sniffy conservative columnist only as George because any sentence beginning with his surname  sounds ungrammatical, as in "Will wrote..." or "Will asserted...")

From a point early in his gender diatribe, George  slams both women as phony or theatrical leftists and offers up Brown as the "authentic progressive" to fill in the blank at the top of a hypothetical Democratic ticket.

Oh, the subject has come up more than once.  Brown  deflected an  insistent question from MSNBC's Chris Matthews, saying he is "quite happy where I am but, thank you".   And to the Huffington Post he said: "I have no interest.  I mean zero interest.  I love what I do.  I think if you want to be a really good senator you shouldn't   be looking over your shoulder and running for president. Zero interest.  I appreciate the question but no thanks."

Nothing, of course, is ever final in politics, particularly in George's  tantrums against female lefties.   And Brown's intense fund-raising efforts for Democratic candidates across the land does cast him as an authentic team  that more than a few  of his colleagues will remember down the road.

But George has a widening reputation for his erring punditry.  Item:  Romney would win in a landslide!    So George's readers might conclude that Brown is in fact  an authentic  crypto-right winger.  In this instance, however, we'll stick with the headline. Thanks anyway,George.

With Cordray, GOP haste could make waste

Irony can always find a home in the political world.  When, for example, Republicans on Capitol Hill determinedly stalled President Obama's nomination of  Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren as director of the new U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,  she finally said, "To hell with it" and went off to Massachusetts to run for the U.S.Senate.

She defeated Scott Brown, the Republican incumbent, which, to the GOP's dismay,  cost it  a seat.  Do you think that in retrospect it would reconsider the trade-off that produced such  unintended consequences?

That Potomac vignette of the GOP's mulish  rejection of Warren could play out with a different setting this year.  The ruling by the all-Republican  three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals  disqualifying Obama's three appointments  to the National Labor Relations Board will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.  But some observers  are saying that it could also affect former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray's recess  appointment  to the consumer's group after another Republican blockade on Capitol Hill.

If so, in the scheme of things, he would be without a job. It might even encourage him to return to Ohio to challenge Gov. Kasich's re-election bid.  Cordray is a name mentioned in most recaps of the potential Democratic field and, so the reasoning goes, could be the strongest tie-breaker  within his party's field.

I'd say that in the Republicans'  haste  to say no- no- no, they're getting somewhat careless these days  about their own welfare. It has often been shown that haste makes waste.

Note:  My column on the Columbus Dispatch travelogues covering  Kasich in Davos has been posted on Plunderbund

Landslide Romney on the march!

ONE OF THE things we've noticed in Landslide Romney's response to issues is that he seldom thinks before he talks. It's sort of a daring frontier quick-draw style that shoots first and asks questions later. So it was on Mitt's post-Iowa blast at President Obama's announcement in Shaker Heights that he had appointed Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - a hitherto leaderless government watchdog that dyspeptic Republican lawmakers have likened to Willie Sutton inside Wall Street's bulging vaults.

Upon hearing of the appointment of the former Ohio Attorney General, Romney erupted that the move was "Chicago-style politics at its worst". Having spent some time in Chicagoland and reporting on dead bodies of hoodlums exported from Gary, Ind., it's obvious to me that Romney knows very little about Chicago-style politics - a city that runs very well. Very little. Besides Obama's many opponents four years ago were using the same insults and nothing came of it.

On many other questions hurled at the president, Romney has a nanosecond response: "He's failed!" But he never really defines failure other than resorting to it as a form of verbal gadgetry so spare of moving parts that nothing more need be said.

As for GOP complaints that Obama was guilty of abusing recess appointments,

ThinkProgress provided some curious information. During his presidency, Reagan

Augustus made 240, contrasted to Obama's 28 during his first term in office. Reagan raised taxes in seven of his eight years and...well, let's not get into that right now,

P.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican from Romney's home state, has congratulated Obama for the appointment. But as everybody knows, Brown is trailing Democrat Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who withdrew from consideration for the consumers' job after Republicans stonewalled her for being too antagonistic to the one percenters.

Cordray: The GOP threatens a filibuster

IN THE CURRENT chaotic state of the Republican Party, intelligence is never equated with public office. And so here we are , on the verge of another rejection of Richard Cordray, the former Democratic Ohio attorney general who had the terrible fortune to run for reelection in 2010 when Republicans of all measures waltzed into office, some whose only credentials were that they were the Other Party in bad economic times. Which is why we have a Republican, Mike DeWine, as our attorney general despite the fact that every major newspaper in the state had endorsed Cordray. (When the history of DeWine's term of office is finally written, he will be remembered primarily for having vigorously opposed the healthcare reform law.)

Cordray, exceptionally intelligent (Oxford scholar) , honest and progressive, has since been nominated by President Obama to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a product of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Law. When the confirmation of Cordray comes up in the Senate on Thursday, few Republicans say they will support him. But as everyone except a few Eskimos north of the Arctic Circle must know by now, anything that smacks of consumer protection at the expense of the financial industry is ghoulish. The GOP's price for their support: Across-the-board restrictions on the bureau's regulatory power. It would mean that Cordray would be all dressed up with no place to go.

Ah, the Republicans insist that it has nothing to do with whether it's Cordray or some parish priest. It's the threat of regulating their friends' daily bread.

But the aginners had better be careful about what they filibuster against. Obama's previous choice, Elizabeth Warren, pulled out under heavy attacks on her liberal reputation by the other side. (And we thought it wasn't the person but the agency that worried her opponents!)

She decided to run for the Senate in Massachusetts against Republican Sen. Scott Brown. It could cost the GOP a senate seat. She's running slightly ahead of Brown. Will this be an unintended consequence?