It was just announced that the 2012 Republican National Convention will be held in Tampa, Florida, rather than Salt Lake City, Utah or Phoenix, Arizona, the other two cities that were in the running. Now, it's pretty easy to see why Utah would be contentious, seeing as how Mitt Romney may be the party's nominee. Holding the GOP convention in the heart of Mormonism would seem to be some sort of tacit party endorsement of Romney, in other words. Or perhaps it's just that the conventioneers want to have more fun (and more bars) available to them while they go about the sober (ahem) business of nominating their presidential candidate. But Phoenix is another story entirely. Because I can't help but think that the Republican Party just imposed their own de facto boycott of Arizona, due to the state's recent legislative anti-immigrant fervor.

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What I just wrote could describe tomorrow's "first anniversary" Tea Party rallies. Or it could describe a late-1960s anti-war rally. About the only thing these two historical eras have in common is the age of the driving force behind the protests. In other words, don't look now, but the Baby Boomers are back in the streets.

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Let's be blunt -- this coming year may be Obama's last, best chance to have a successful presidency. Or, at the very least, make any progress at all on his agenda. Because, no matter what happens in the House of Representatives, all it is going to take is Democrats losing one or two seats in the Senate for massive legislative gridlock to descend upon the Nation's Capital until 2012.

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Welcome back to my annual outright theft of The McLaughlin Group's awards categories for the past year in politics. What's that? We're sorry, but out lawyers insist we instead use the phrase "my annual legally-allowable constitutionally-protected parody" instead. So sorry. For those of you who missed it, Part 1 of this column ran last week, on Christmas.

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Al Franken provided the sole moment of humor this week, when he smacked down Joe Lieberman, and for that he deserves an Honorable Mention. Franken, sitting in as the guy with the gavel running things in the Senate, was asked by Joe Lieberman for a few more moments (over his 10-minute limit) to speak, by "unanimous consent." Franken, who later said he was just doing what he was told and keeping a strict 10-minute limit, told Lieberman most emphatically "No," and that he -- in the role of senator -- objected, and Lieberman needed to, essentially (Franken was not this blatant), "sit down and shut up."

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It didn't have to be this way. It really didn't.
The epic struggle for healthcare reform is entering its final days in Washington. And the Democrats (being Democrats) have managed to snatch political suicide from the jaws of legislative victory. But, I keep thinking, it didn't have to be this way. If [...]

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For those of you not conversant in the language of gambling, allow me to explain. When you have a good poker hand you start raising the betting until, at some point, you are said to be "pot committed." This means you've invested such a major portion of your available chips in that hand's kitty (or "pot") that folding is no longer an option for you -- because it would leave you too weak to effectively continue playing. But if another player is equally as confident about their hand, a bidding war will ensue. And, at some point, you just decide the heck with it and push all your chips into the pot. You know that if you lose this hand, you'll effectively be sidelined in the game anyway, so you might as well win as much as you can in the current pot... if the cards turn up in your favor. That's a big "if," though -- because if you lose, you're out of the game. It's a bold and risky move, but one that can pay off in a big way.

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Palin's family owned a Rambler? Shoot, now I have to be nice to her, I guess [Full disclosure: I am a big Rambler fan]. Well, she'll never beat Mitt Romney for Rambler credentials by anyone's measure, seeing as how Mitt's dad George was the head of American Motors Corporation at the time the Rambler was introduced, and was duly called the "Father of the Rambler." But still, the thought of a young Palin rambling around certainly does give her a connection to American families everywhere (of a certain age).

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While the passage of a healthcare reform bill through Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee is the big news today, the even bigger news is that Republican Senator Olympia Snowe voted for it, the only Republican so far to cross the aisle in support of Democratic efforts to pass a bill this year. While Snowe warned today that just because she's voting "yea" today, she might not do so on the final bill, depending on what it looks like. While this may not even matter in terms of getting a bill through, Snowe will now be known as Senator Bipartisan, since with her vote the claim can be made that it is "bipartisan legislation," but if Democrats lose her they won't be able to make this claim. But while courting Snowe for her vote on the Senate floor is the only way to accomplish this, Democrats should also consider courting Snowe on an even more important front: switching parties.

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The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

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