Winter Cold, Independent Voters Turn Up the Heat

Weekend reading for independent voters:

• LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Independent voters should unite, be heard (Peter Chura, Las Vegas Sun)
• What’s Next, Mr. President? (By DAVID BROOKS, NY Times)
• Iowa Poll: More Iowans cut across party lines, lean toward 'progressive' (BY THOMAS BEAUMONT, Des Moines Register) hemselves as moderate than conservative and liberal combined, and nearly half say they're part of the state's growing pool of independent voters.
• Q&A: Braley says progressives must ’speak truth to fear’ - Democrats need sense of urgency about making sure their voices are heard (By LYNDA WADDINGTON, Iowa Independent)
• The evolving general electorate (Atlanta Political Buzz Examiner, Michael Francis) What may be a more foreboding portent for Democrats, though, is the recent small shift by so-called independent voters. 
• Zugzwang: Democrats’ 2010 Dilemma - Curbed enthusiasm. (BY GARY ANDRES, Weekly Standard) So should Democrats and President Obama pursue an activist agenda and please the party base, or pull back the throttle and play small ball to attract independents?  They can’t do both.  Welcome to Zugzwang. One reaction is paralysis – a little bit of this, a little bit of that.  It feels like movement, but to the outside world, it looks like you’re stuck. [FROM Wm Saffire: ''You have used a word,'' replied the grandmaster, ''for a position in which each player would obtain a worse result if it were his turn to move than if it were not. It occurs only in endgame situations or in composed problems.'']
• GOP numbers drop in new report (By JIM MILLER, Press Enterprise/Sacramento Bureau)
• Poor little rich girl (By Richard Mays/Heber Springs AR Sun Times) In a hypothetical race between [Blanche] Lincoln and Republican U.S. Representative John Boozman, the poll shows Boozman winning (at least at this moment in time) by a margin of 56 percent to 33 percent. Among independent voters – of whom there are an increasing number in this age of discontent with both major political parties – the margin was an even larger 66 percent to 20 percent.
• Obama's bipartisan play comes as independents turn their backs (By: Heather Hunt, Special to The Examiner) President Obama's new embrace of bipartisanship may be an effort to help end the crash in support for his administration among independent voters.
• Politics A to Z: Bipartisanship, Blizzard Edition (By ADAM NAGOURNEY AND JEFF ZELENY, NY Times/The Caucus) EXCERPT
• Obama Can't Change Crazy Voters--Or Crazy Politicians (By Robert Schlesinger, US NewS & World Report)
• Republicans May Benefit From Discontent, Poll Shows (Adds Charlie Cook remarks in the fourth, eighth and ninth paragraphs.) (By Kate Andersen Brower, Business Week)