We begin today's roundup with
Michael Brendan Dougherty at The Week who analyzes the GOP's circus of candidates:
A brain surgeon with no particular feel for politics. A business executive who lost the only election she ever entered. And the most famous graduate of Ouachita Bible College, who made a stop in the Arkansas' governor's house before becoming a talk-show host. Just throw Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabee on the pile.
It's already a big pile: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio are official. Jeb Bush is officially unofficial, just as Rick Santorum, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, and George Pataki are. Lindsey Graham and John Kasich are unofficially unofficial. But they are thinking about it! A few of these would-be candidates are sure to find the likelihood of embarrassment too great, and will stop before they officially start. But I'm betting that the first debates will include 10 or more candidates. [...]
There is broad agreement among elite Republicans that the sheer number of serious and unserious candidates may hurt the party. It crams the debate stage, elicits shallow questions, and reduces the nationally televised answers to the tiniest sound-bites or hand-raises. It's bad for the party, and the country. It's also a can't-lose deal for any would-be candidate willing to endure flights to Des Moines and house parties in Nashua.
Dana Milbank writes about Ben Carson's "over-the-top ego":
The video, which Carson’s campaign says was set to the music of hip-hop producer Alexi von Guggenberg, is delightfully over the top. And this is why Carson’s long-shot candidacy should be such an exciting addition to the presidential race. His positions, his provocations and his showmanship are all delightfully over the top. Since coming to prominence a few years ago when he blasted President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, he has called Obama a psychopath, compared the United States to Nazi Germany, and labeled Obamacare the worst thing since slavery. [...]
Carson has little in common with the political class but for one thing: his absolute confidence in his own greatness — as seen again in his kickoff extravaganza. A lengthy, multi-group musical performance preceded his kickoff speech Monday morning at the Detroit Music Hall. The program included “America the Beautiful,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and, of course, a screening of the Rushmore-Lincoln-King-Carson video.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
The Washington Post:
We are as tired of tired sound bites as the next voter, but we would suggest there’s a reason that neither major party has nominated a nonpolitician since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 or, if you don’t count him, Wendell Willkie in 1940. Politics is a difficult and, we’d argue, honorable profession. It is easy to disparage public servants, much harder to reshape the forces pushing them away from solutions (money-raising pressure, partisan redistricting, etc.), and harder still to fashion compromise without abandoning principle. As of today, Ms. Fiorina and Mr. Carson are politicians on the national stage; we look forward to seeing what they can do.
Damon Linker on Mike Huckabee:
Mainstream conservatives mocked the prospect of his candidacy on Twitter, while reformers who've been pining for a populist have been muted.
And the answer, I think, is that on some level smart Republicans understand that populism is as much a problem for the party as plutocracy. [...]
The fact is that the Republican Party has long since become a bizarre only-in-America hybrid of fat cats and rednecks.
Switching topics,
Joe Golden, founder of Collage.com, writes in the Detroit Free Press about changes in the workplace, and specifically, allowing workers to work from home:
Eliminating the office allowed us to recruit across the country, instead of limiting our search to people who live or are willing to move to a limited geographic area. Working from home allows our employees to work where they are happiest and most productive, while giving them control over their own work environment and schedule. It also reduces our overhead so we can invest more in our people. [...] Avoiding a physical office isn't the right decision for all companies – but for many businesses, it could be. Doing something just because "it's how we've always done it" isn't a recipe for success – and it certainly isn't attractive to a rising generation of millennials that companies fight over for talent.
The Des Moines Register asks Congress to clarify non-profit tax exemption:
The term “nonprofit organization” conjures images of food banks and homeless shelters. What doesn’t come to mind: an entity that collects billions in revenue each year and pays millions to top executives. Yet for decades the National Football League has enjoyed a 501(c)(6) designation that allows it to escape paying an estimated $10 million to $15 million annually in taxes. Though the NFL’s teams contribute to the public purse, the central league office does not. So why did it suddenly forfeit this preferential tax status? Speculation abounds. [...] Members of Congress should exercise the authority given to them by voters and change the law so organizations like the NFL do not qualify for tax-exempt status in the first place. They should also require charities to earn the preferential status by providing a clear, defined benefit to the public. A nonprofit hospital, for example, is not required to provide a single penny in charity care.
Tax-exempt status in this country has run amok, while lawmakers propose balancing the federal budget by cutting food assistance and health care to the poor. It’s maddening.
Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:
When Pamela Geller** and her allies organized an “art show” in Texas around the concept of anti-Mohammed cartoons, offering a $10,000 prize, they were hoping to provoke a reaction. They got it. [...] But let’s be honest. The nut cases at either end of the spectrum are each other’s best allies, prodding and provoking each other in hopes of creating a maelstrom that sucks everybody else into their war. Because then they win. The more anger, fear and other thought-throttling emotions they can stir, the more recruits they will find for their own cause. And if it also generates recruits for the other side, that’s fine too.
Because that too moves us closer to the religious war that they itch to foment.