Harris, California’s Democratic attorney general, is leading in polling, fundraising and name ID in the race to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is retiring. But her inclusion on lists in publications like USA Today and the New York Times as a possible replacement to Antonin Scalia — the conservative Supreme Court justice who died over the weekend — is leaving observers in doubt.

“It would surprise me if she were very high up on the list,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. “I just don’t think it makes sense at this point, particularly since she is the frontrunner for the Senate.”

Why Harris Doesn’t Make Sense

Harris has little incentive to accept a nomination if it were to be offered by President Barack Obama since the nominee is not likely to get confirmed.

The U.S. Senate has the Constitutional responsibility to advise and consent to Supreme Court justices and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., issued a statement within hours of Scalia’s death saying the Senate won’t confirm a replacement until after the November presidential election, leaving Obama with little leverage.

But Bebitch and others agree that if and when he nominates someone, it would make sense for the nominee to have already been confirmed by the Senate, like a federal judge, so that Democrats could say: “Look, you already voted for this person once.”

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch — who Scotusblog argues is the most likely choice — also already survived a Senate confirmation. But neither Harris nor Lynch have judicial experience, which would likely be seized upon by opponents.

There’s no requirement that justices have judicial experience, but they usually do. With the exception of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, the Senate hasn’t confirmed a nominee without judicial experience since the early 1970s.

“Her lack of judicial experience would give opponents an easy rationale for opposing her,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. “And by choosing a partisan political figure, Obama would enable opponents to accuse him of politicizing the court.”

Senate Race

It would be very difficult for someone to complete the tasks required of a Senate candidate while being subjected to a Senate confirmation process, so Harris would likely be forced to choose one or the other, and again, there’s little benefit to accepting the nomination in this instance. But just being mentioned helps her campaign, said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University Los Angeles.

“Getting on a list of 10 is always a plus for a candidate,” said Sonenshein.

But if she were to be nominated, and if she were to accept, it would likely throw the Senate race into turmoil, as Democratic candidates would rush in to challenge Rep. Loretta Sanchez, an Orange County Democrat, and two former CAGOP chairmen.

“There are only a few weeks until the filing deadline, and Democrats would be scrambling to find a better candidate than Loretta Sanchez,” said Pitney.

How This Plays Out In The Senate

Obama and Senate Democrats don’t have too many options if McConnell holds true to his word. Sooner or later, Obama will send a name to the Senate, and the Judiciary Committee will have to decide whether it’ll consider the nominee or refuse to play along.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats would label McConnell and Republicans as obstructionists — in press conferences, in campaign ads and in floor speeches. With the balance of power in the Senate hanging precariously on the 2016 election, and with an open presidential election, this will be one of the most politicized issues going forward.

Since the Senate operates largely on unanimous consent, Democrats would likely object at most, if not all, turns, thereby “shutting down the Senate,” predicts Jim Manley, a former top advisor to Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

“The idea that a president with 11 months to go doesn’t have the right to nominate a replacement for a crucial Supreme Court seat is absolutely outrageous,” said Manley. “So I assume that the caucus will demand retaliation.”

Meanwhile, at the state level, the GOP is in about as good shape as it has been in decades. It controls 30 of 50 governorships and the legislature in 26 of 50 states, with de facto control in a 27th state (Virginia); Democrats control 19 legislatures. This GOP surge isn’t just in traditional GOP and swing states. In Michigan — Michigan, the birthplace of the belligerent trade union movement — the state has of late adopted right-to-work laws.

As National Public Radio analyst Achy Obejas — a die-hard liberal — puts it, Republicans have “a surprisingly healthy farm team network.”

Surveying this landscape, what does a veteran Los Angeles Times political reporter conclude? The Republican Party is in danger of falling apart. Doyle McManus actually had an op-ed over the weekend headlined “Is the GOP self-destructing?”

Strife-ridden GOP’s popularity a verdict on Obama

McManus’ thesis is that the battle between what might be called the Ted Cruz/Rand Paul and the Mitch McConnell/Chris Christie wings of the Republican Party is so acute that it has the party, at least in Congress, in constant chaos — unable to agree on how much to challenge President Obama and how far to go on such issues as raising the debt ceiling, undermining Obamacare, etc.

But this strife, while paralyzing GOP efforts to operate coherently in Washington, is interesting for a far different point than the one put forth by McManus: It makes the party’s state-level strength and 2014 prospects are all the more remarkable.

The hard numbers show that after four and a half years of Barack Obama, the Republican Party is in generally strong shape at the state level and doing all right in Congress — despite a lack of coherence on really big issues, and despite a bigger fissure than ever between libertarians who don’t care about social issues and cultural conservatives who want a never-ending war over these issues. Sen. Paul has also illustrated the party’s militarism is by no means uniform in 2013.

So the Republicans have all these headaches — yet they are still doing well by every measure of elected officials outside of the presidency.

That certainly points to a deep dissatisfaction with the Obama status quo.

I am not a Republican. I’ve voted for the GOP nominee twice in the last 24 years, preferring protest votes. But I certainly buy the Republican critique that the media is in the tank for Obama. That’s why we see stories that suggest the GOP is falling apart because of its mass internal dissension when the far more accurate and interesting story is that the party is doing fine in the most crucial stat of all — elected offices held — despite its semi-civil war.

By John Seiler

This morning my first paycheck of the year was plunked into my bank account. The amount is sharply down from my Dec. 31 paycheck.

The government robbed me again.

This was part of the “fiscal cliff” deal that President Obama promised would increase taxes only on the rich because, as he and so many others insisted, “they need to pay their fair share.” But 77 percent of Americans got hit with the tax increase.

The Republican leadership also agreed to this assault on taxpayers, beginning with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

If Republicans can’t stop tax hikes, then what good are they? Of  course, they needed the money for the special interests that own them.

The tax increase means that Obama, Boehner and McConnell believe that 77 percent of Americans are filthy rich and so in need of tax increases to “pay their fair share”!

Coincidentally, one of my credit cards just raised my credit limit. I’ve been a good boy. If I were the government, I then would continue my previous spending by borrowing the money. I could call it “Personal Quantitative Easing.” Time to live it up!

Instead, I’m responding by cutting all the expenses I can. No more eating out. Cancel Netflix. Cancel cable TV when the contract runs out. End all extraneous purchases.

Doing so will damage the economy because those people won’t get my trade. So they’ll be worse off. Once again, government robbery ripples throughout the economy. The tax increases from the president and Congress don’t just hurt the taxpayer/slave (in this case, me), but everybody the taxpayer/slave supports by spending that has to end.

This also is another good reason to consider leaving California. If I did so, I would escape to a state with no state income tax and strong protection of the Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms.” Probably Texas.

By Katy Grimes

I hope you don’t need $1,635, because that is what the average tax increase will be on the majority of Americans.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 80 percent of American households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 will be out more than $1,600 next year. And that’s just the starter.

The much hyped last-minute fiscal cliff deal negotiated Jan. 1 between Vice President Biden, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and President Barack Obama, cuts only $15 billion in spending but increases tax revenues by $620 billion. The 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts is no deal for Americans.

The tax increase is primarily due to the expiration of a payroll tax cut, according to the Tax Policy Center in Washington.

While the bill, known as the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, will protect millions of middle-class taxpayers from tax increases set to take effect this month, it will increase tax rates on wages and investments for households making more than $450,000 a year.

This is the first time in more than 20 years that a huge tax increase has been approved with GOP support.

The measure, which addressed the tax increases while holding off sequestration cuts and the debt ceiling, passed with the support of 85 Republicans, including the Speaker who took the unusual measure of casting a vote, and 172 Democrats.

The Deal adds to the deficit

The smelly Senate deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” will add approximately  $4 trillion to the deficit, according to new  the CBO, and achieves minimal deficit reduction in the early years.

“For a family making median income, they’ll notice an additional $3,500 dollar income tax increase,” Fox News reported. “27 million Americans will be subject to the alternative minimum tax, and additionally, the death tax will increase to 55 percent for estates of $1 million and over.”

The extension of lower tax rates for taxpayers, and the addition of only a patch to the insidious Alternative Minimum Tax would add more than $3.6 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, the CBO said.

Other individual, business and energy tax extenders will add another $76 billion to the deficit.

The latest extension of unemployment benefits will cost $30 billion.

The “doc fix”, a one-year payment patch for physicians who treat Medicare patients, would add $25 billion to the deficit through fiscal 2022.

Pork-laden deal

One of the most egregious aspects of this bad deal is how much pork was stuffed into the bill.

* Perks for Hollywood: special expensing rules for certain film and TV productions

* special tax-exempt financing for New York Liberty Zone, an area around the site of the World Trade Center.

* extension of American Samoa economic development credit

* Green energy — nearly a dozen provisions in the bill would extend green credits and green incentives for plug-in electric vehicles, energy-efficient appliances, biodiesel and renewable diesel, and other alternative energy initiatives.

* The legislation also would kill the part of Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act designed to let millions of elderly and disabled people get help at home rather than be placed in institutional care, which tends to be more expensive.

Democrats acknowledge that the insurance initiative known as the Community Living Assistance Services and Support program, or CLASS, is financially flawed but they had argued it should be fixed rather than ended.

The House voted to repeal that provision 11 months ago.

* No $8 per gallon milk: the “dairy cliff” was avoided. Measures to prevent a steep increase in milk prices were averted.

I can hardly wait.

See the Final Vote Results