CBS News reports that Rep. Pelosi may attempt to bring a “more liberal” form to the House’s final health care bill:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is planning to include in the bill a tax on wealthy Americans, as well as a more robust government-run health insurance plan (or “public option”), abandoning the compromises leaders in a key committee worked out with the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, according to Roll Call.

The original tri-committee health care bill introduced in the House would have raised taxes by 5.4 percent on taxpayers making more than $1 million a year, but some Democrats have opposed the measure.

The original House bill also included a public option that moderates in the House Energy and Commerce Committee made less robust. The Blue Dogs in the committee worked out a deal with committee leaders to make a public option negotiate payment rates with medical providers — instead of dictating them. This is intended to put a public option on a “level playing field” with private insurers. Pelosi, however, reportedly plans to peg public option payment rates to Medicare payment rates.

She risks killing the bill by seeking these changes, unless she and the rest of the Democratic leadership can round up Blue Dogs worried about re-election. By the way, what happened to her claims of bipartisanship and the President’s calls for compromise?

FiveThirtyEight.com published two interesting articles today. The first, written by Nate Silver himself, deals with the impressive favorability ratings Glenn Beck managed in the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll:

Buried in the cross-tabs of the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is a question that takes a temperature reading of Glenn Beck. Beck actually makes out pretty well. While just 24 percent of Americans have a favorable view of him (13 percent strongly so), only 19 percent have an unfavorable one (14 percent strongly). That leaves 57 percent who either don’t know Beck or are indifferent toward him.

This compares quite favorably to, for example, Rush Limbaugh, who was the subject of a similar question in the NBC/WSJ poll in June. Limbaugh was regarded favorably by 23 percent of Americans, but unfavorably by 50 percent — including 37 percent who held a strongly negative view. This is not a new problem for Limbaugh, incidentally, who has been roughly this unpopular since at least 1995.

The difference between Beck and Limbaugh is that Beck is much more of an anti-establishment figure. I have posited before that running perpendicular to the traditional liberal-conservative spectrum is an establishment/anti-establishment spectrum; Beck is conservative but anti-establishment. And that may be working out pretty well for him, since the country seems to be becoming more anti-establishment too.

Silver then goes to define and peg Beck as a PoMoCon – post-modern conservative. This is an interesting read worth your time.

The second FiveThirtyEight piece, penned by Andrew Gelman, sets forth a positive prediction regarding next year’s Congressional midterms:

The current state of the generic polls gives the Democrats .412/(.412+.377) = 52% of the two-party vote. Going to the graph, we see, first, that 52% for the Democrats is near historic lows (comparable to 1946, 1994, and 1998) and that the expected Democratic vote–given that their party holds the White House–is around -3%, or a 53-47 popular vote win for the Republicans.

Would 53% of the popular vote be enough for the Republicans to win a House majority? A quick look, based on my analysis with John Kastellec and Jamie Chandler of seats and votes in Congress, suggests yes.

It’s still early–and there’s a lot of scatter in those scatterplots–but if the generic polls remain this close, the Republican Party looks to be in good shape in the 2010.

P.S. Is there any hope for the Democrats? Sure. Beyond the general uncertainty in prediction, there is the general unpopularity of Republicans; also, it will be year 2 of the presidential term, not year 6 which is historically the really bad year for the incumbent party. Still and all, the numbers now definitely do not look good for the Democrats.

Good news, especially when coming from a liberal source!

Also today, Chris Cillizza called attention to a different part of the aforementioned NBC/WSJ poll (the one covering Glenn Beck):

That’s the percentage [49%] of people who say the government is doing “too many things better left to businesses and individuals” in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, the first time that number has surpassed those saying the government “should do more to solve problems” in their data since December 1997.

While the number saying government outstrips the number saying it should do more (45 percent) only narrowly, the trend line on the question in the NBC/WSJ poll is interesting.

As recently as February, a clear majority — 51 percent — said government should be doing more while 40 percent said it was doing too much. Roughly two years ago, a whopping 55 percent said government should do more as compared to 37 percent who said it should do less.

You have to go back more than a decade to the early days of Bill Clinton’s second term — and roughly a year removed from his declaration that the “era of big government is over” — to find a majority (51 percent) saying that the government is doing too much.

…Watch the next few NBC/WSJ polls to see where public opinion heads on the question. If the trend line continues downward, it could well provide fuel for Republican arguments about the need for more divided government in the 2010 midterms.

In addition to illustrating the fickle nature of the American public, this poll suggests that 2010 and 2012 could become a happy time for conservative candidates.

I’d like to conclude by offering some personal thoughts on Gov. Palin’s speech today:

While I still hold mixed feelings about the Governor (love her potential to become a Reaganesque strong leader, advocate of Conservatism and effective communicator, but question her relative inexperience and, sometimes, her record), I have to say her speech really impressed me. As many have noted, she appears to have begun positioning herself not as a Christian Right warrior (the image she – in my opinion – undeservedly attracted during her time as VP nominee) but as a classical liberal. A few particular things she said today lead me to this postulation. First, from the New York Times (yes, that New York Times):

A number of people who heard the speech in a packed hotel ballroom, which was closed to the media, said Mrs. Palin spoke from notes for 90 minutes and that she was articulate, well-prepared and even compelling.

“The speech was wide-ranging, very balanced, and she beat all expectations,” said Doug A. Coulter, head of private equity in the Asia-Pacific region for LGT Capital Partners.

“She didn’t sound at all like a far-right-wing conservative. She seemed to be positioning herself as a libertarian or a small-c conservative,” he said, adding that she mentioned both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. “She brought up both those names.”

Mrs. Palin said she was speaking as “someone from Main Street U.S.A.,” and she touched on her concerns about oversized federal bailouts and the unsustainable American government deficit. She did not repeat her attack from last month that the Obama administration’s health care proposals would create a “death panel” that would allow federal bureaucrats to decide who is “worthy of health care.”

Cameron Sinclair, another speaker at the event, said Mrs. Palin emphasized the need for a grassroots rebirth of the Republican Party driven by party leaders outside Washington.

…Melvin Goodé, a regional marketing consultant, thought Mrs. Palin chose Hong Kong because, he said, it was “a place where things happen and where freedom can be expanded upon.”

“It’s not Beijing or Shanghai,” said Mr. Goodé . “She also mentioned Tibet, Burma and North Korea in the same breath as places where China should be more sensitive and careful about how people are treated. She said it on a human-rights level.”

Mr. Goodé, an African-American who said he did some campaign polling for President Obama, said Mrs. Palin mentioned President Obama three times on Wednesday.

“And there was nothing derogatory in it, no sleight of hand, and believe me, I was listening for that,” he said, adding that Mrs. Palin referred to Mr. Obama as “our president,” with the emphasis on “our.”

Mr. Goodé, a New Yorker who said he would never vote for Mrs. Palin, said she acquitted herself well.

“They really prepared her well,” he said. “She was articulate and she held her own. I give her credit. They’ve tried to categorize her as not being bright. She’s bright.”

And second, from the Wall Street Journal:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fired a shot at the Federal Reserve in her coming-out speech in Hong Kong today, blaming the central bank for the current crisis and disagreeing with the idea that the Fed should have a greater role in preventing the next crisis. It was an echo of fellow Republican and Texas congressman Ron Paul, who has led the charge in Congress to perform an audit of the Federal Reserve with an eye to eventually eliminating it.

“How can we discuss reform without addressing the government policies at the root of the problems? The root of the collapse? And how can we think that setting up the Fed as the monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform?” she said. “The words ‘fox’ and ‘henhouse’ come to mind. The Fed’s decisions helped create the bubble. Look at the root cause of most asset bubbles, and you’ll see the Fed somewhere in the background.”

More generally, Mrs. Palin took the tack that the financial crisis occurred because government got in the way of free enterprise.

“Lack of government wasn’t the problem, government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn’t fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to,” she said. “The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who as I say, couldn’t afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks. So many to be blamed on so many different levels, but the fact remains that these people were responding to a market solution created by government policies that ran contrary to common sense,” she said

I happen to believe this Sarah Palin could, if she decides to run in 2012, win over Independents – especially those of the Tea Party variety – and capitalize on the feelings of disenfranchisement and angst brewing among much of the American public. And, as someone fond of Austrian economics, I relish her criticism of the Fed. Forgive me for shooting for the stars, but on a grander scale, with more performances like this (in addition to more thoughtful op-eds) and a realization of the oft-speculated Palin-Rudy alliance (and perhaps ticket), the Governor could very well build a coalition composed of Conservatives of all three stool legs, libertarians (many of whom feel frustrated with Pres. Obama spurning their anti-war leanings) and conservative-leaning Independents. Is it just me, or does that sound extremely similar to the Reagan coalition? Here’s to hoping for more of this Sarah Palin!