Keword Berry

President Bush came to Washington promising to be a uniter, but public opinion polls show that apart from a burst of camaraderie after Sept. 11, 2001, America is more bitterly divided and partisan than ever.




We’ll leave the pundits to pontificate on the politics, and instead explore a more interesting phenomenon: People who see the world in black and white rarely seem to take in information that could undermine their positions.




Psychological experiments in recent years have shown that people are not evenhanded when they process information, even though they believe they are. (When people are asked whether they are biased, they say no. But when asked whether they think other people are biased, they say yes.) Partisans who watch presidential debates invariably think their guy won. When talking heads provide opinions after the debate, partisans regularly feel the people with whom they agree are making careful, reasoned arguments, whereas the people they disagree with sound like they have cloth for brains.




Unvaryingly, partisans also believe that partisans on the other side are far more ideologically extreme than they actually are, said Stanford University psychologist Mark Lepper, who has studied how people watch presidential debates.




Although it is satisfying to think that your side is right and the other side consists of morons, the systematic errors that can be documented in partisan perception suggest something deeper than deliberate tunnel vision. (Last Monday, this space was devoted to the curious phenomenon of the “hostile media effect,” in which pro-Israeli and pro-Arab partisans shown the same TV clips both came to the conclusion that the news accounts were heavily biased in favor of the other side.) What explains these distortions in perception?




“My feeling is, in the political process, people come to decisions early on and then spend the rest of the time making themselves feel good about their decision,” Kaplan said.

Marie Horrigan, Congressional Quarterly:

Conservative firebrand Patrick J. Toomey and the Club for Growth, the fundraising phenomenon that he now runs, are going RINO hunting again this year: stalking what they call “Republicans in Name Only” and targeting a pair of these centrists for extinction in GOP primaries.

He’s pressing hard to achieve one of the group’s still-unfulfilled goals: replacing incumbent members of Congress it views as too liberal with people who adhere to what the group describes as the inviolable conservative tenets of lower taxes and unbending fiscal discipline. This strategy will get its next test next week in the Republican primary in Michigan, where Rep. Joe Schwarz faces a serious challenge in his bid for a second term from Club-backed Tim Walberg, a former state representative who finished behind Schwarz in the primary when the south-central 7th District seat was open two years ago.

Toomey himself represents the high-water mark in the Club for Growth’s effort to get rid of insufficiently conservative Republicans at the Capitol. Two years ago, he gave up his own congressional seat to take on Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania’s GOP primary and came within a percentage point of victory. And in his new role, he has sought to broaden the scope of the group — expanding the roster of races in which it has gotten involved and even finding a Democrat to endorse for the first time ever.

Stephen Moore, the departed co-founder of the group, became famous — and controversial — in political circles for coming up with the idea of going after a few moderate Republican incumbents starting in 2000, which spurred accusations from GOP regulars that he was risking seats held by the party by exacerbating divisions within its voter base. Pennsylvania in 2004 was a prime case in point: After barely surviving the primary, Specter won his fifth term in the fall by 11 percentage points.

Yet despite the splash that it’s made with unsuccessful challenges such as those, the Club has actually had some significant success in pushing conservatives to primary victories in reliably Republican congressional districts. And in his first election cycle at the helm of the Club for Growth, Toomey sought to expand upon this strategy in hopes of growing the Club’s beachhead of influence within the ranks of congressional Republicans.

There were celebrations last week when President Bush renewed key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which eliminated segregation at the ballot box. The act helped form political districts where black voters are in the majority, which sent the first wave of African-American representatives to Congress since Reconstruction — and creating, over time, loyal Democratic voters.




But the renewal overshadowed a quiet but growing debate among Democrats: whether mostly black voting districts in cities like Petersburg — which helped elect the state’s first African-American House member in more than 100 years — should be diluted to spread around liberal voters and help elect more Democrats get to Congress.




While most black politicians and activists agree with the concept of “majority-minority” districts, others say they’re a mixed blessing: By sweeping a concentrated number of black voters into fewer districts, the Voting Rights Act’s unintended effect may be to increase racial polarization and help preserve Republican congressional power.




And like most debates involving race, few want to debate it openly.




“It’s one of those things that are just sort of acknowledged,” said David Bositis , a senior analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies who specializes in race and politics, referring to the idea that majority-minority districts may have helped Republicans.




In redrawing districts in states where their party is in power, Republicans have used the Voting Rights Act as cover to “pack and stack” black voters, Bositis said, cramming them into fewer districts.




Some Democrats, including some African-Americans, believe their party has better odds of retaking Congress if African-American voters are divided among many districts, leaving just enough of a percentage in any one district to elect minority candidates while helping more Democrats run competitively in surrounding districts.

Britain and California are preparing to sidestep the Bush administration and fight global warming together by creating a joint market for greenhouse gases.




British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plan to lay the groundwork for a new trans-Atlantic market in carbon dioxide emissions, The Associated Press has learned. Such a move could help California cut carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases scientists blame for warming the planet. President Bush has rejected the idea of ordering such cuts.




Blair and Schwarzenegger were expected to announce their collaboration Monday afternoon in Los Angeles, according to documents provided by British government officials on condition of anonymity because the announcement was forthcoming.




The aim is to fix a price on carbon pollution, an unwanted byproduct of burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gasoline. The idea is to set overall caps for carbon and reward businesses that find a profitable way to minimize their carbon emissions, thereby encouraging new, greener technologies.