On Tuesday afternoon, Senate Republicans successfully filibustered a military spending bill that would have repealed the military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy on gay servicemen and women. More than half of the Senate—54 Democrats and two independents—supported the measure (as did Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, who voted no purely for procedural purposes); all the GOPers opposed it. But because breaking a filibuster requires 60 votes, the decisions of moderate Sens. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Scott Brown to join their obstructionist GOP colleagues ensured that gay people would still be unable to serve openly in the military.

The repeal of DADT was one of President Barack Obama's key campaign promises—one that he repeated in his first State of the Union address earlier this year. Now it's a promise that may well wither, especially if Republicans gain control of the House in November. But as usual, the White House did little to publicly pressure Collins, Snowe, or Brown. Obama spent the day before the vote at a fundraiser in Pennsylvania and did little to draw attention to the upcoming vote and the GOP's intrasingence. The White House wouldn't even answer the New York Times' questions about the bill. Vice President Joe Biden, according to the White House, did call Snowe. But Obama did no lobbying of his own. Instead, the pressure politics were left to someone who's never been elected to public office: a 24-year-old New Yorker named Stefani Germanotta—a.k.a. Lady Gaga. 

While Obama was raising money for Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate Joe Sestak, who trails in the polls, Gaga was in Maine, crusading for DADT repeal. The previous week, she had created a YouTube video addressed to the whole Senate that urged repeal. At the time of the vote on Tuesday, it had nearly 1.7 million views. In the days prior to the vote, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs couldn't manage even a single tweet about the fight at hand. And the White House did not use Obama's Twitter feed or the White House blog to highlight the vote. (Organizing for America, the Obama campaign offshoot that works within the Democratic Party, did zap out one email to its millions of grassroots supporters asking them to call Sen. John McCain, a leading opponent of DADT repeal.)

After the vote failed, Gibbs criticized the Republicans for the fillibuster, but hardly in an aggressive manner. At the daily White House press briefing, he voiced frustration with the GOPers and groused that "60 is the new 50" in the Senate. He affirmed Obama's support for ending DADT, noting the president has long opposed the policy. "We're frustrated," he said, vowing the White House will continue to work with the Pentagon to find a way to repeal DADT. (The president cannot undo it totally on his own, given that the policy is enshrined in law, though he could weaken enforcement of it via an executive order.) Asked if Lady Gaga had done more to pass DADT repeal than the White House, Gibbs said no: "We wouldn't be taking on this issue, if not for the president." And he again complained that it is "not healthy" for the nation if it takes a three-fifths vote in the Senate to fund the Pentagon. Yet Gibbs did not display much indignation or passion. He could have angrily accused the Senate Republicans of holding up funding for the troops. But he kept a measured tone. It was as if the White House, in defeat, didn't want to call out the Republicans—and didn't want to make it on to the nightly news shows.

All this suggests the White House isn't particularly enthusiastic about DADT repeal—at least not at the moment (even though large percentages of Americans, including majorities of conservatives and Republicans, support repeal). After all, the administration demonstrated no interest in engaging in the kind of tough, on-the-ground combat mounted by Lady Gaga. This was reminiscent of health care reform battle. The White House spent months courting the support of supposed moderate Republicans like Snowe, Collins, and Iowa's Chuck Grassley. But when Obama hit the road to stump for health care reform, he didn't spend much time in Maine and Iowa. He went to places like Maryland and Minnesota, where the Democratic senators were already solid votes for reform. Adam Green, the cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal pressure group, regards that as a significant miscalculation. If Obama had aggressively stumped in Iowa or Maine—or spent more time in North Carolina, where unpopular GOP incumbent Sen. Richard Burr is facing reelection—he could have applied more pressure on recalcitrant Republicans, says Green. Even if such tactics didn't win over hesitant Senate GOPers, Obama would have at least been conveying a message to Republicans that he was a fighter who would do what he could to punish obstrutionism. (If such a strategy had not succeeded, it would have fared no worse than what actually transpired: the White House wasting months courting Republicans behind the scenes, only to end up with no actual Republican votes for the final bill.)

The Obama administration has not yet figured out how to make Republicans pay a political cost for obstructionism. But the White House has rarely tried to slam Republicans. (When Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a liberal Democrat from Ohio, said he was a solid no vote on the health care bill, Obama was in his district that week to pressure him, and Kucinich flipped.) This week, Lady Gaga did her best with the ladies from Maine. She didn't turn them, but she did succeed in putting them on the hot seat. And after all, she's just a pop star, not the president. But the next time the White House wants to break a filibuster, it might consider going Gaga.

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Things are getting ugly in the Senate Republican caucus when it comes to the Alaska Senate race. Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced last week that she would seek election as a write-in candidate following her loss in the Republican primary to tea-party candidate Joe Miller. But her Senate colleagues have pushed her out of her leadership position and made it clear she's no longer welcome. Today, an email signed by her colleague, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, dug the knife in a little deeper.

"Rather than accepting defeat and working to unite Republicans behind Joe Miller, she has decided to put her own personal interests ahead of everything else," wrote DeMint in a letter to supporters in his role as chairman of the Senate Conservatives Fund, a PAC "dedicated to electing true conservatives to the United States Senate." He also called Murkowski a "big-tent hypocrite" and a "Republican-in-name-only."

Not that Murkowski's been silent on the inter-party warfare. Over the weekend, she said in reference to DeMint, "I don't think that's it's particularly helpful to undercut fellow Republicans." She also said DeMint "has made people uncomfortable," and accused him of having "rattled cages."

DeMint's response? "This might be a fair criticism if she weren't the one running a write-in campaign against Republican nominee in her state," he said. Ouch. His fundraising plea continues:

Principles have never been that important to Murkowski. She supported a massive cap-and-trade energy tax that would permanently destroy millions of jobs in this country. She has waffled on whether she would support repeal of Obama's health care take over. She is one of the worst abusers of the pay-to-play earmarks system. And she doesn't support the sanctity of human life. With positions like these, it's no surprise she's leaving the party.

If Murkowski pulls off her write-in bid (which is a big if, considering the trouble her own campaign seems to have spelling her name), it would sure make for some awkward party gatherings next year, eh?

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I almost feel sorry for Todd Henderson. Last week, the University of Chicago Law School professor took to his blog to complain about how he and his wife, who make north of $250,000 a year combined, are going to suffer under the Obama tax plan. (Under Obama's plan, marginal tax rates for couples who make more than $250,000 would return to their Clinton-era levels. Those couples' overall tax burden would still be lower than it was during the Clinton years. But nevermind all that.) I'm sure Henderson didn't expect that post to lead to his 15 minutes of (internet) fame. But it did.

Prof. Henderson's complaints drew the attention of Berkeley Public Policy professor (and blogger) Michael O'Hare, who called Henderson's post a "truly amazing pasticcio of mendacity, ignorance, and small-minded cupidity." O'Hare's post inspired Brad DeLong to weigh in with a multi-thousand-word smackdown of Henderson. DeLong's post, in turn, earned Henderson an attack from no less than Paul Krugman. I doubt that Henderson expected his post would bring him under fire from former Treasury department official and a Nobel prize-winning economist. (Now Felix Salmon has weighed in, too.)

Judging from a follow-up post he wrote Sunday, Henderson thinks that the fact that Krugman is attacking him proves him right. He seems to be suffering from Krugman Derangement Syndrome, an affliction that's very common on the libertarian right. (He doesn't even engage with DeLong's critique.) Then he compares the government to "a thief" and threatens to stop working (i.e. "Go Galt") if his marginal tax rates go too high ("I can choose to watch the Steelers or help a hedge fund with a corporate law question").

If you check out Henderson's other writing, you'll see the Hayek-worship and criticism of altruism that are endemic among fervent economic libertarians. I emailed Henderson and asked him to elaborate on his view of taxation. Here's what he said:

I don't think taxation is immoral. Taxation is essential to an ordered society. It is a crucial way of altering behavior to get people to bear the costs of their behaviors (e.g., Pigovian or sin taxes). It is also necessary to raise money for government, which is essential for our civilization. As I said in my "10 things," follow up, I'm not an anarchist and I see a large role for government in our society to act where private and market-based actions fail. My point with the thief analogy is just that the issue isn't just amount but what we do with the money and the impact it has on the people being taxed. [I added the link. —NB]

I think the key takeaway here is that Henderson, while undoubtedly rich and clearly libertarian-leaning, still concedes that government is "essential for our civilization" and taxation is "essential to an ordered society." Of course taxes have impacts on the people being taxed, and what the government does with tax money matters. But basically, we're just haggling about price. 

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Add this name to the GOP's wish list of Democratic legislation targeted for rollback or repeal if John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the rest win back the House, Senate, or both: the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

On the heels of consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren's nomination to get the consumer bureau up and running, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said yesterday he'd "revisit" the financial regulatory reform bill passed by Congress in July if Republicans wrest back control of Congress after November's midterm elections. A powerful conservative voice on financial issues, Shelby set his sights on the consumer bureau, an organization he's long opposed. He said at a Reuters conference that the "consumer agency bothers me most." He added, "I thought the creation of it and the way it was created was a mistake."

This isn't the first time Republicans have threatened to uproot already-passed legislation. For months, the party has said it plans to attack Democrats' historic health care reform bill, attacking various pieces if they can't repeal it outright. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), for instance, has offered a new law that would nullify the requirement in the bill that employers offer health insurance to workers or pay a penalty, a centerpiece mandate in the law. GOPers also want to reverse cuts made to Medicare and blunt the effect of a new agency that would identify cost-cutting opportunities within Medicare.

So it's not at all surprising Republicans are going after Obama's other major legislative accomplishment. For them, the creation of the consumer bureau, an independently funded outfit housed within the Federal Reserve, was bad enough; appointing Warren, a polarizing figure disliked by the financial services industry, only deepened the opposition. Said Shelby, "I believe she's got a big ax to grind and she's sharpening that ax. I don't think that you need somebody in a position like that with all these preconceived ideas and I believe she has a lot of them."

All of the GOP's bluster is, for now, just that. But if they really do intend to chip away at the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, it will be an exercise in sheer hypocrisy (not that that's unheard of in either party). After all, Republicans consider themselves the party of the people, looking out for the ordinary Joe. Well, that's exactly who the consumer bureau was created to protect, cracking down on predatory mortgage lenders, check cashers, and more.

What's more, GOPers have complained that the uncertainty surrounding the financial reform bill's passage and implementation is a cause for the economy's sluggish recovery. Employers don't know how the dust will settle, the thinking goes, so they're sitting on cash and not hiring. By that logic, trying to repeal or roll back the bill will only extend that uncertainty—and this time, Republicans will only have themselves to blame.

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