THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 4/26/12 [Last Ever Edition!]

STUDENT LOAN FIGHT: This week, President Obama has been campaigning at full throttle for Congress to act to prevent student loan interest rates from rising. “At issue is a 2007 law, set to expire on July 1, which keeps the interest rate for federal Direct Stafford Loans at 3.4%. If Congress fails to act, the rate will double, affecting more than 7.4 million students, who'll face, on average, an additional $1,000 in debt.” The Dems are going all out on this not only because the law is set to expire soon and requires congressional action, but because they realize they can trap the Republicans on something that is obviously popular. And it’s starting to work: Romney has already tried to Etch-a-Sketch his way through this one, going out of his way to express his support for extending the lower rates, despite telling a student just a month ago that he shouldn’t expect any government help with his loans. The GOP is scrambling to respond. Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) expresses the radical view that the government should have nothing to do with student loans whatsoever: “America has got the equivalent of the stage three cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in.” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), however, is trying to walk a more delicate line, claiming that it is the Democrats who are responsible for the impending rate increase -- because they had the audacity to lower them five years ago. He tweeted this week: “Student loan rates set to double because Democratic-controlled Congress voted to double them.” Despite the flaws in Boehner’s logic, his office is running with this line of criticism. "The rising cost of tuition is a serious problem for students and their families,” Boehner’s spokesman said this week, “so it's unfortunate that Washington Democrats put in place a law that would double student loan rates.” As Steve Benen points out, the exact same thing could be said about the Bush tax cuts, which also contained an expiration date. “It would be every bit as accurate for me to say, ‘It's unfortunate that Washington Republicans put in place a law that would increase federal taxes by trillions of dollars over the next decade.’ If one is true, the other true.”

Now the House GOP has announced that it will move its own bill to extend the loan rates, and pay for it out of a “slush fund” included in Obamacare. “Which Obamacare ‘slush fund’ is being referred to here? Speaking to reporters this afternoon, John Boehner clarified that the ‘slush fund’ in question is the law’s $17 billion account that the Health and Human Services Secretary can use to fund prevention and public health programs.”

NO, OBAMA’S USE OF EXECUTIVE POWER IS NOT THE SAME AS BUSH’S: Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a cover story suggesting that President Obama is amassing executive power, and that it’s hypocritical given his previous criticism of his predecessor’s use of executive power.  You had to get halfway through the first page before you get this very crucial caveat: “But for the most part, Mr. Obama’s increased unilateralism in domestic policy has relied on a different form of executive power than the sort that had led to heated debates during his predecessor’s administration: Mr. Bush’s frequent assertion of a right to override statutes on matters like surveillance and torture.” And that’s a pretty important distinction! Where Obama has tried to use executive and administrative authority to move on priorities that Congress refuses to touch, it’s important to remember that Bush simply flouted the law, and insisted that, in certain realms, the president was not bound by law at all. Further, as Mary Lederman points out, every instance cited by the Times (except for the recess appointment) of Obama using executive power are “instances in which the Executive has acted pursuant to what it views as delegated statutory authority” -- delegated, of course, by Congress itself. This is a far, far cry from Bush’s invocation of a “unitary” executive. “[W]hat [Obama] has done, while Congress fiddles, is simply to use the imperfect authorities conferred upon him by earlier, less stubborn legislatures. That is, indeed, a notable emphasis in the second half of the term, worthy of a story. But it is nothing like the assertion of ‘unilateral’ executive power, let alone the ‘flouting’ of Congress or the adoption of his predecessor's constitutional views.” Let’s not forget this very crucial distinction, and let’s avoid hasty comparisons to his lawless predecessor.  

ROMNEY, REBOOTED: On Tuesday, Romney won a bunch of primaries in the northeast, and declared the primaries over and himself the nominee. He took the occasion to debut the latest version of his stump speech (one writer counts it as the 97th “pivot” of his campaign), which spent 8 paragraphs on his biography of success, 8 paragraphs attacking Obama, and wrapped up by detailing his vision of a thriving middle class and a free-enterprise economy driven by free people loving their freedom to be free in a free world. (Seriously, here’s the quote: “I have a very different vision for America, and of our future. It is an America driven by freedom, where free people, pursuing happiness in their own unique ways, create free enterprises that employ more and more Americans.”) He declared once Obamacare was fully in place, “we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.” (If only Marx had known it was that easy!) The speech was shocking light on anything resembling a detail, or even a vague idea of how to achieve Romney’s “very different vision for America.” Ezra Klein: “If this speech was all you knew of Mitt Romney -- if it was your one guide to his presidential campaign -- you'd sum his message up as, ‘vote for me: I think America is great.’
Romney never makes the turn to how he would achieve this America. Believing in it is apparently enough.” Steve Benen delves deeper:

Romney reached out, for example, to "the mom and dad who never thought they'd be on food stamps," without acknowledging that he supports slashing funding for food stamps. He spoke repeatedly about "unfairness" in the economy, without mentioning he supports some millionaires and billionaires paying a lower tax rate than most of the middle class. He talked about rising debt without noting that he has no way of paying for the massive tax breaks he's sworn to pass. He said he'd rescue "grandparents" without acknowledging that he intends to turn Medicare into a voucher program, push partial privatization of Social Security, and bring back the Medicare prescription drug "donut hole."

Benen is fairly incredulous at Romney’s closing lines, telling his audience that once upon a time -- but no longer -- we could be proud to be Americans. He accurately notes that, if a Democrat were ever to have said such a thing, we would spend the next six months arguing whether he really loved his country and questioning his patriotism (remember Michelle Obama’s “first time in my life” gaffe?). “And yet there was Mitt Romney, effectively arguing that the only way to have national pride is to give him power.” Jon Chait argues the whole speech is just another example of Romney treating voters like idiots.

SCOTUS CONSIDERS ARIZONA IMMIGRATION LAW: On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over Arizona’s notorious immigration law, four parts of which have been suspended after a federal district judge ruled them unconstitutional. The Court appeared inclined to uphold the most controversial part of the law, which requires state police to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest whom they suspect may be here illegally. In a Verrilli-Clement rematch, the government argued that the Arizona law was preempted by federal law, meaning that the states don’t have authority to regulate immigration in the federal government’s stead. Dahlia Lithwick watched the argument, and writes that Verrilli told the Justices that state action like this could interfere with the federal government’s foreign relations powers. “‘Well, can't you avoid that particular foreign relations problem by simply deporting them?’ Verrilli tries to explain that this could cause considerable friction between the United States and Mexico, to which Scalia shoots back: ‘So we have to enforce our laws in a manner that will please Mexico?’” (You’ll find it absolutely shocking that Scalia was less than sympathetic to the plight of undocumented immigrants.) The whole argument was premised on the fiction that the law does not have anything to do with race and does not implicate racial profiling -- a premise the government imposed when it decided to challenge the law only on preemption and not on racial discrimination. Before Verrilli could even open his mouth yesterday, Chief Justice Roberts set the stage: “I just want to make clear what this law is not about,” Roberts said. “No part of your argument has to do with racial or ethnic profiling, does it?” Adam Liptak notes that if this challenge fails, other advocates may try to bring suit again based on racial discrimination, what many critics consider to be the real problem with the law. The Justices appeared less comfortable with other portions of the law, including extra penalties on employers who hire undocumented immigrants; the decision may very well uphold only parts of the law, and could end up with a messy 4-4 split on some issues, since Justice Kagan recused herself from the case. SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston sums up:

At the end of the argument in Arizona v. United States (11-182), though, the question remained how a final opinion might be written to enlarge states’ power to deal with some 12 million foreign nationals without basing that authority upon the Scalia view that states have a free hand under the Constitution to craft their own immigration policies. The other Justices who spoke up obviously did not want to turn states entirely loose in this field.  So perhaps not all of the four clauses would survive — especially vulnerable may be sections that created new state crimes as a way to enforce federal immigration restrictions.

The Court will hand down its decision most likely in June, right around the time we’ll find out if they’ve decided to throw millions of people off their health insurance. Fun times!

Awesome Take-Down of the Week: Conor Friedersdorf examines GOP darling Marco Rubio’s pronouncement that George W. Bush “did a fantastic job.” And Friedersdorf is equally incredulous that in Rubio’s “major foreign policy address” today, he never once mentioned Iraq. “The Senator from Florida has given a lengthy address about the wisdom of American intervention without so much as acknowledging the most consequential foreign intervention that we've undertaken in decades.”

Crazy Fact of the Week: The Romney campaign spent over $76.6 million in the primary, more than all his competitors combined. When SuperPac spending is factored in, that total jumps to $122 million.

Farewell, Newt: We hardly knew thee. 

Fun Video of the Week: President Obama slow jams the news.

Bonus Fun Video of the Week: A brief history of President Obama’s self-deprecating humor.

Bonus Bonus Fun Video of the Week: An epic rant about Beltway culture. If you’ve lived in DC and worked in politics, surely much of this will ring true.

Must-Read of the Week: Rolling Stone interviews Obama: “I think the general election will be as sharp a contrast between the two parties as we've seen in a generation.” (When asked about marriage equality, he replied, “I'm not going to make news in this publication.”)

Bonus Must-Read: Florida Gov. Rick Scott gives us a preview of what America under Romney rule might look like. 

THAT’S ALL SHE WROTE: Well, friends, it’s been a wonderful 18-month run, but my time to hang up the keyboard has come. I hope you have enjoyed reading these missives a fraction as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. It began as and always remained a self-serving project: It was the most efficient way I could conceive of to get my friends to talk with me about the political stories I found interesting, to laugh at the videos I found funny, to shake their fists at the developments I found outrageous. So thanks for joining me in that endeavor. It has been so much fun to shout at you through the computer screen this last months, and to hear your responses and feedback and criticisms. As we get fully immersed in this election season, I hope you’ll all stay engaged, outraged, hopeful, and energized. Though I can’t comment publicly, and though I can’t knock on doors or send checks or hang up posters, I’ll be fighting the good fight, in my own head and with my own vote, at least. I hope you will be, too.