Only two hours away from the United States and America looked ridiculous. From abroad, we look like a bad reality show with the sans culottes running around. Tea parties are for little girls with imaginary friends. Apparenty, there seem to be alot around. The victory of Christine O'Donnell in Delware is like randomly picking a neighbor to be a nominee for the U.S. Senate. Imagine my surprise when from afar I saw Karl Rove actually accuse a Republican of waging a dirty campaign. After all he is the architect. But he soon came back to support her. The question is whether her victory will solidify the larger story of the Republican Party simply going mad.
I came back to E.J. Dionne wakening from a deep sleep to discover moderates are gone from the Republican Party, something anyone breathing could tell you after the last 18 months. Olympia Snowe, who was a long-time friend of Mike Castle from their days in the House, lamented the diminishing number of moderate conservatives left in both chambers. In her home state of Maine, where she won re-election with over 70% of the vote, the tea baggers have taken over the Republican Party and now 68% of them want a more conservative nominee than Snowe the next time around. The role of Senator deMint in fostering runs against incumbent Republicans is beginning to tick Republicans off. Charles Cook, who had predicted a Republican takeover of both houses of Congress has backed off, saying that the O'Donnell win ends the GOP's chances for a victory in the Senate.
How bad is Christine O'Donnell? Besides the various appearances on Bill Maher's comedy shows, she has been sued by a Farleigh Dickinson University for failure to pay outstanding debts, she accepted a graduate scholarship at Claremont even though she didn't graduate from college until this year, and she paid her rent and personal expenses from campaign funds from the last campaign against Joe Biden. She says she is being followed everywhere and must check her bushes. She keeps her home residence private because bill collectors are after her. And she hasn't had a real job in years. She sounds like Allan Keyes without the minimal qualifications.
She must be bad news. The night she beat Mike Castle, his campaign manager walked across the street to the Coons headquarters and picked up lawn signs for Coons. Christine O'Donnell also has imaginary friends--she claims to have been backed by a Catholic group that simply doesn't exist.
What observers have not mentioned about the five tea bagger candidates for the Senate is that all of them are extreme Christian right-wingers, even Marco Rubio in Florida, who is more of an opportunist. Christine O'Donnell is the most visible extreme Christian after Christian reconstructionist Sharron Angle. Joining Ken Buck, they are absolutists against abortion, even though they proclaim to be small government conservatives. Throw in Mike Lee from Utah and Joe Miller from Alaska and you have candidates that have no ideas about the economy whatsoever.
Another characteristic is that almost all, with the exception of Rubio, avoid debates and the press. This is a deliberate strategy because they want to avoid expsoure to the average voter. Joe Miller on Fox News was a astonishing in his economic illiteracy. He claims unemployment insurance is unconstitutional--something the Supreme Court has actually ruled on. And he claims we are going to face almost $140 trillion in a national debt in a short time--that's ten times the amount we have now. He wants to end Social Security and Medicare. This seems to be a tea bagger perennial.
A Canadian said to me that these people don't care, they've given up. In a way, he is right. They have given up on self-government. That's why there are no standards by which they observe. Lisa Murkowski commented how the tea baggers pumped $600,000 into Alaska to run a campiagn against her totally based on lies. If you check comments out of Ms. O'Donnell's mouth you'll also notice that she is a habitual liar. The same applies to Sharron Angle and the other tea baggers. In their worldview, this simply doesn't matter.
SO AFTER A WEEK, how do the mid-terms look? Nate the Great still has the Republicans taking the house by 223 to 211 but he has blinked somewhat upping the odds of the Democrats retaining control to 37%. The Republicans are now campaigning on de-funding everything that passed in the last Congress--which ups the stakes for Democrats. And if you care about the national debt, keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich will add another 3.8trillion to the national debt. Interestingly, all the teabaggers are for keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy. Paul Krugman had a wonderful op-ed about the selfish rich today.
But what still makes me hesitate is the massive unpopularity of the Republicans as compared to the 1994 wave election. For example, a CBS/NYTimes poll conducted September 15 has Republican approval at 20%. In a Washington Post poll on who deserves to be re-elected, Democrats top Republicans 34 to 31%. But what is most astonishing is that the GOP net favorable is now a negative 25, which means they have fallen by three times since July. And now President Obama is in the campaign mode and Organizing For America has ramped up their operations even more since I left. Remember President Obama has about a 48% approval rating, while campaigning against people with a 20% approval rating. The AFL-CIO just sent out their largest mailing in years to solidfy the Democratic base. Even though there is little more than 40 days left to the election, I think only a small percentage of Obama surge voters can turn the tide. I also have noticed that even the disgruntled Left is getting its act together because they understand the stakes.
President Obama did himself and the rest of us a service by appointing Elizabeth Warren special adviser with the task of creating the new Consumer Protection Agency. But I have a question? What in Elizabeth Warren's speeches make her a "progressive"? I know she appeared at Netroots Nation and frequently on the Rachel Maddow Show. But when is defending the middle class the sole property of "progressives"? The whining from the Republicans about her should tell you how far that party has grown away from the middle class. But nothing Elizabeth Warren has said or written is anything but clear-headed and commonsensical. I read in the Washington Post that her appointment was popular but polarizing. After watching countless interviews and Youtubes of her lectures, I can not think of a less polarizing figure. I think any fair-minded person would see her as a straight-talking person of intelligence and commonsense. Already we have the Wall Street Journal raising doubts about whether she can really create the Consumer Protection Agency because of legal restrictions and other hoo-haa. This reminds me of the constant challenge on anything President Obama does.
For election junkies, Steve Singiser had an interesting post at the Daily Kos "Likely Voters, Unlikely Voters" about the accuracy of polls based on registered voters versus those of likely voters. The conventional wisdom is that likely voter polls favor Republicans, particularly in low-turn out mid-terms. But what Singiser's analysis shows is that likely voter polls generally favor the front-runner. But at the end of the day, his analysis of polls from 2006 and 2008 indicate that polls based on registered voters won 32, polls on likely voters 21 and three were ties. For a full analysis, his post is worth reading because it's conclusion is counter-intuitive to how ,at least, I've been taught to think.
And file this away--I just came across my notes on Hans-Herman Hoppe, who is a favorite of libertarians. When thinking of the tea-baggers, remember Hoppe advocated something called "anarcho-fascism". He wrote "Democracy: the God That Failed". Through in a dab of Christian theocracy and you basically have tea-baggism.
Showing posts with label Olympia Snowe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olympia Snowe. Show all posts
Monday, September 20, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Nuke Monday
To celebrate Virginia Confederate History month, Radio Free America from a Midwest college broadcast Southern garage bands like Ray Tard. The college lost two students in John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry (then part of Virginia.) and John Brown's father was on the board of trustees.
John Kyl's demand that Obama's pick be "mainstream" reminded me of Roman Hruska's defense of Nixon's nomination of a southern judge. "Even the mediocre need to be represented."
President Obama could nominate another friend of his from the Senate. It would be a bold move and he would be replacing a Republican with a Republican. A DailyKos blogger suggested this and it's quite clever. Olympia Snowe--a Greek Orthodox (I think) with immigrant parents and a social liberal. Unlikely to tact right if freed from political pressure. Her heroine is Margaret Chase Smith, the first Republican to take on Joe McCarthy. Very independent. And the Democratic Governor of Maine gets to pick her replacement. It would be a gesture to bipartisanship even though the remains of the GOP consider Senator Snow a RINO. It would put a nail in the "socialist" insanity during an election year. And how are the Republicans going to vote against Olympia?
Scott Brown is hiding from the Boston teaparty that's going to be held with the Baked Alaskan. Larry Sabato pipes in that he's trying to mainstream himself.
Lansing, Michigan was the location for more madness--a arms carrying teabagger rally with "straight pride " shirts being sold. They must be produced from the guys who did the White Pride shirts during the civil rights days. Tea Party chairman Mark Williams said,"We need to purge the Republicans of all weaklings. We're on a Rino Hunt and we're going to drive them to extinction." (RINO is Republican in Name Only)
Mitt Romney's straw poll win was not only facilitated by cash and gift bags but the RNC allowed for two days of voting so that Ron Paul wouldn't win. It's clear that the big money is lining up behind Romney because they feel they can't afford any of the creationists running and that Ron Paul would actually have a shot through his Campaign for Liberty.
Dimitri Medvedev, Obama's new friend, is in town and said that the reason Russian-American relations are better is because Obama is a "thinker unlike some people". The some people was supposed to refer to Dubya.
Since I have little expectations for the Nuke summit, it should be pointed out that the organization has been rather clever. The whole issue of nuclear proliferation has been de-politicised. The idea is to keep nuclear materials--civilian or military--out of the hands of terrorists and to develop individual country plans for lessening nuclear materials just to fuel purposes and disposing spent fuel. The United States just completed its 19th such effort by extracting nuclear materials from Chile during the quake.
For me it's important that pubic education occur on the threat of nukes from anyone. During the 1990s, there developed popular novels in the Middle East, which extolled nuclear war. Most of them were a type of Islamic Science Fiction. Millions bought these sc-fi thrillers and they passed on a belief that if Arab states waged nuclear war against Israel Muslims would be protected from fallout. This lunacy actually made it into the belief system of the Iranians. Rasfanjani gave an interview with an Arab news service, who questioned him about the chances of nuclear war with Israel. His response was that "Only the Jews would be killed, the Palestinians would survive."
While Iran began the quest for nuclear energy during President Khatami's administration, a group of government scientists wrote an environmental impact study of what would happen if a nuclear accident occurred at the nuclear power station that was situated--and still is--on a major earthquake fault line. Their conclusions were that all marine life would die in the Persian Gulf and that whole towns along the Gulf would be radiated and thousands of people would die. The report was censored for national security reasons.
So anything to disseminate the impact of nuclear accidents and war will be useful.
John Kyl's demand that Obama's pick be "mainstream" reminded me of Roman Hruska's defense of Nixon's nomination of a southern judge. "Even the mediocre need to be represented."
President Obama could nominate another friend of his from the Senate. It would be a bold move and he would be replacing a Republican with a Republican. A DailyKos blogger suggested this and it's quite clever. Olympia Snowe--a Greek Orthodox (I think) with immigrant parents and a social liberal. Unlikely to tact right if freed from political pressure. Her heroine is Margaret Chase Smith, the first Republican to take on Joe McCarthy. Very independent. And the Democratic Governor of Maine gets to pick her replacement. It would be a gesture to bipartisanship even though the remains of the GOP consider Senator Snow a RINO. It would put a nail in the "socialist" insanity during an election year. And how are the Republicans going to vote against Olympia?
Scott Brown is hiding from the Boston teaparty that's going to be held with the Baked Alaskan. Larry Sabato pipes in that he's trying to mainstream himself.
Lansing, Michigan was the location for more madness--a arms carrying teabagger rally with "straight pride " shirts being sold. They must be produced from the guys who did the White Pride shirts during the civil rights days. Tea Party chairman Mark Williams said,"We need to purge the Republicans of all weaklings. We're on a Rino Hunt and we're going to drive them to extinction." (RINO is Republican in Name Only)
Mitt Romney's straw poll win was not only facilitated by cash and gift bags but the RNC allowed for two days of voting so that Ron Paul wouldn't win. It's clear that the big money is lining up behind Romney because they feel they can't afford any of the creationists running and that Ron Paul would actually have a shot through his Campaign for Liberty.
Dimitri Medvedev, Obama's new friend, is in town and said that the reason Russian-American relations are better is because Obama is a "thinker unlike some people". The some people was supposed to refer to Dubya.
Since I have little expectations for the Nuke summit, it should be pointed out that the organization has been rather clever. The whole issue of nuclear proliferation has been de-politicised. The idea is to keep nuclear materials--civilian or military--out of the hands of terrorists and to develop individual country plans for lessening nuclear materials just to fuel purposes and disposing spent fuel. The United States just completed its 19th such effort by extracting nuclear materials from Chile during the quake.
For me it's important that pubic education occur on the threat of nukes from anyone. During the 1990s, there developed popular novels in the Middle East, which extolled nuclear war. Most of them were a type of Islamic Science Fiction. Millions bought these sc-fi thrillers and they passed on a belief that if Arab states waged nuclear war against Israel Muslims would be protected from fallout. This lunacy actually made it into the belief system of the Iranians. Rasfanjani gave an interview with an Arab news service, who questioned him about the chances of nuclear war with Israel. His response was that "Only the Jews would be killed, the Palestinians would survive."
While Iran began the quest for nuclear energy during President Khatami's administration, a group of government scientists wrote an environmental impact study of what would happen if a nuclear accident occurred at the nuclear power station that was situated--and still is--on a major earthquake fault line. Their conclusions were that all marine life would die in the Persian Gulf and that whole towns along the Gulf would be radiated and thousands of people would die. The report was censored for national security reasons.
So anything to disseminate the impact of nuclear accidents and war will be useful.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Saturday Coffee--Not Tea--Thoughts on the Week
Neal Gabler in "The Extreme Republican Party" posted on the Boston Globe's blog writes that we have now gone past the time when we can pretend to have two serious political parties in this country--one right of center and one left of center. Both political parties are compromised and corrupted by their ties to Big Money, as witnessed to the nearly $1 billion being poured into the health reform debate; but one political party has gone nuts. In a recent Pew poll, only 23 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans. When I ran the International Republican Institute, Republicans for the first time in my lifetime had achieved a slight plurality over the Democrats with some 45% identification. From a practical political point of view, the current number means you must secure another 28% of the electorate to win--in other words the votes you must ween away from independents and Democrats is more than your entire base. We're almost at the point where Republicans might consider dumping its base to have viability in the future.
The current Republican base is so out of touch with average Americans--the charge they levelled for years at Democrats--that a majority of its members either believe or aren't sure President Obama was born in kenya, believe the House health care bill calls for death panels to euthanize senior citizens, and believe that Obama is responsible for our economic woes (61%!)
How wacked out are the current Republicans? 71% of all Americans believe that global warming is a result of human activity, only 27% of Republicans; while Rasmussen says 55% of all Americans oppose health care reform ( recent polls counter this), 87% of Republicans oppose it and 74% very strongly. Depending on the poll, President Obama's favorability rating is between 50 to 58% but fewer than 10% of Republicans approve.
But this situation gets worse. Only 41 percent of conservatives now identify themselves as Republicans--that's how extreme the Party has become. The recent embrace of birthers, deathers, tenthers, vaxers and liars not only damages the Republicans future chances but seriously blocks the ability of there to be a real political debate in this country. Among the remaining Republicans I know,this paranoid politics also becomes a groupthink. Those not subscribing to the latest lunacy are considered Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) and are not to be trusted. The Republican embrace of the Tea Party nonsense and the Glenn Beck 9-12 project now plunge them into the treacherous waters of insurrectionists, secessionists, white supremacists and theocrats. This is not only dangerous to the country, President Obama personally but also to the Republicans themselves.
The effects of this have been dramatic. Governor Pawlenty, for instance, has announced the desire to embrace the lunacy of Gov. Perry of Texas in saying that the invocation of the tenth amendment might be a way for states to stop health care reform. This is a man who honestly has aspirations for the Presidency. And he would be representing the Party of Abraham Lincoln! The tenth amendment movement is of interest to constitutional scholars only because the doctrine of nullification, which existed prior to the Civil War, has been seriously rebuffed through countless Supreme Court rulings, including one as recently as 2005 and to see people raise this is a red flag to profound historical ignorance. For their part, neo-conservatives, who once pretended to have intellectual interests, have solicited the support of former half-term Governor Sarah Palin to press their support for President Obama's Afghanistan build-up. This is a person married--at least for now--to a former secessionist and who actively accused the President of paling around with terrorists. And somehow she's supposed to have any credibility and importance?
As I wrote in my thoughts on Republican Gomorrah, the control of the Republican Party by the religious right is pernicious enough. Now Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council believe they have a second-wind in organizing the religious opposition to health care reform. Not only are Republicans lying about the facts of bills but the religious community is bearing false witness against the bill as funding abortions, providing illegal immigrants health care, and creating death panels to euthanize senior citizens. The phenomenon of self-proclaimed Christians opposing in the name of religion, not politics, health care reform is mind-boogling. As I have written elsewhere, this is a wicked brew.
The first casualty in war is truth. But for our political system it is vital that we have reality-based debates. We should have learned through a series of policy blunders on both sides that the cold shower of fact-based analysis can lead to a more sober and worthwhile policy debate. The problem of a major political party embracing paranoid politics is that you can have no real compromise if one side lives in a a parallel universe.
Today's Teabag Express demonstrations in Washington raise serious challenges to the legitimacy of the Republican Party, not President Obama. What is it that these people are really advocating? It appears to be a grab-bag of nutty things from tax hikes (even though everyone I know got a tax cut), deficits (ignoring the Republican history of this issue), gun rights (so far Eric Holder has made not a single move in this direction),national service day on 9-11, health care reform, states rights, anti-immigration, upholding the constitution ( why not protest against Dick Cheney?), against cap-and-trade legislation, against the stimulus package, against the bailout of the banks, against support for the auto industry, against ACORN, and against abortion, the grandmother of the cultural wars. This bears alot of similarity to past nativist movements in our history that ranged from the Know-Nothings to the KKK. And, I might add it is profoundly anti-American in ways that the democratic Left never was. To actively target a sitting President only eight months into his term with the purpose of crippling his administration is the height of anti-patriotism.
Astonishingly, the vast majority of the teabaggers appear to be senior citizens--who are on social security, medicare and military pensions--and yet they advocate smaller government and the cut of government programs to help others than themselves. This is a classic generational war by seniors on the rest of society. I'm not sure they are self-conscious about this. Their mantra--"Taking Our America Back"--should disturb people who want to move forward. The last time America seemed normal to these people, and we lived in a segregated world where Ossie and Harriet were parents was under Dwight David Eisenhower, a man the ancestors of the teabaggers hated as a closet Democrat, crypto-Communist and a liberal.
The one aspect that fascinates me about this is the deliberate adoption of what they perceive as the tactics of the Left. Overtly, they are fascinated by Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayres and the Weatherman Underground. We all know they were miserable failures and that no one was persuaded by domestic terrorism--as we also found out with Timothy McVeigh--or even, alas, massive demonstrations. The anti-Iraq war demonstrations often exceeded one million people and their effectiveness was negligible. What the democratic Left discovered was that they had to organize and deal with the real problems of average citizens to have any credibility and legitimacy. The jury is still out on astro-turf protesting, turning out citizens on the corporate dime. It may well be--and I believe this--fantastic for corporate interests but of marginal use for generating real, civil debate.
Alot of commentators of the Left raise the whole issue of race. With the face of the Republican party being almost exclusively white men from the South, who personally have long ties to racist groups, this is entirely legitimate. The Republican Party, starting with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy with rhetoric provided by then speechwriter Pat Buchanan, has exploited racial animosity when it suits it. However, whole sectors of the party were both liberal and progressive on civil rights legislation but they have been wiped out with the demise of the party of the Northeast and Midwest. As I've also written, today's Republicans are banking on short-term gains in 2010 by mobilizing the white anti-Obama vote by playing the race card. How this can benefit the party in the long-run is anyone's guess.
There are no national Republican leaders with the stature or clout to distance the party from the lunatic core, which seems to be their base. I would suggest that the Teabaggers and the Glenn Beck followers are heavily dominated by small splinter parties such as Alan Keyes American Independence Party (old George Wallace's party),the Libertarians, now the LaRoucheites (who are nominally Democrats), White supremacists and neo-fascist groups. It could be one of the most embarrassing baits-and-switches in American political history. This hodgepodge of parties and grouplets has learned more mainstream language and become what Republicans believe are the real base of the party. There was some of this before but the moment when this became a reality was the nomination of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate. A choice to appease the religious right, she brought with it libertarian, secessionist, and pro-militia followers.
The e-mails I receive invoke the American Revolution, an event my ancestors proudly participated in. And we should all remember it's first casualty was an African-American named Crispus Attucks. The extreme gun rights crowd, which is linked to the militias and paramilitary groups, invokes the Second Amendment as the paramount result of the revolution. Allegedly they argue our founding fathers believed a well-armed populace would be check on oppressive government. Well, not so fast. The post-revolutionary America faced a challenge from the Shays Rebellion in Western Massachusetts and when the constitution was ratified our revolutionary founders discovered that a government needed a well-organized militia--in order to suppress insurrections. The Second Amendment cuts both ways but customary beliefs have the left gun rights people the dominent interpretation.
So what colonial master am I supposed to rebel against?--foreign-owned banks and corporations looks like a good start, But that's not what my colleagues have in mind. They stated that our political rights and civil liberties are today threatened more than at any time since the American Revolution. Oh, Really? More than the Civil War? More than the Palmer Era? More than WWII? More than during the Cold War? More than under the Bush-Cheney Administration?
No, our freedoms are threatened by the new Emperor Jones in the White House and his coterie of socialists like--I guess--Ben Bernacke, Rahm Emmanuel,Bob Gates, Kathleen Sebelius, Larry Summers and David Geitner. Here, my friends lose me completely. My problems with the Obama Administration have to do with the maintenance of some of the Bush era restrictions on civil liberties, not any new abuses of constitutional power. And, there is an awesome and deliberate ignorance of these Teabaggers that doesn't realize the U.S. Government represents 30% of our national economy and President Obama has not done all this by himself in eight months.
Can you imagine any of these people who aligned themselves with the Tea Baggers being able to manage the complexities of the world's largest economy and the largest component in that economy? That's the stakes in getting two political parties back to a place where policies can be rationally debated.
I'm usually snarky in my replies. If Obama has achieved all this in eight months, created a socialist America and torn up the Constitution, then we were left with a pretty weak nation when he took over and there's nothing that can be done to reverse it.
One hoped that after President Obama's health care speech and his paramount reasonableness we would have heard some responsible Republican commentary. Instead, the almost universal response was to double-down on the deliberate lying about the president's proposals. This has provoked condemnation of Obama from the Left for maintaining the fiction that any bipartisanship is possible.
At least in the House, they are absolutely right. The President's plan will receive no Republican votes in the House because the leadership is listening to Newt Gingrich's advice that 1994 will repeat itself. In the Senate, Voinovich, Snowe and Collins are the only likely candidates for support for Health Care Reform. Voinovich because he's retiring. The Maine Senators because Collins won in 2008 and Olympia Snowe doesn't face re-election until 2012. And also they represent the last of the Northeast Republicans, who take commonsense positions.
How vile has this become? Former First Lady Laura Bush, a librarian by trade and someone who like her mother-in-law is devoted to reading, supported President Obama's school speech and condemned the partisan attacks on it. For this mild call to civility, conservative blogs attacked her, recalling her past history as a non-active Democrat before she met George W. and went on to attack the most conservative President in my lifetime as a RINO. In the crowd of teabaggers who arrived in Washington for today's festivities, many condemned George W. Bush's domestic policies and his deficit-spending. They called for a true conservative to be President.
But their means appear to be at odds with their goals. It's not the American revolution that is there real model it's the French Revolution. The Republican Base has become the latest version of the Jacobins and we know where that went. The present situation is very dangerous. Leftwing writer Naomi Wolf in The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot wrote movingly of how important it was to keep the Idea of America alive for us and the rest of the world. Whatever imperfections exist in our struggle toward a more perfect union, the idea of America has and continues to inspire the rest of the world. Today, the very idea is being threatened by the parnoid politics that have taken over the Republican Party.
The current Republican base is so out of touch with average Americans--the charge they levelled for years at Democrats--that a majority of its members either believe or aren't sure President Obama was born in kenya, believe the House health care bill calls for death panels to euthanize senior citizens, and believe that Obama is responsible for our economic woes (61%!)
How wacked out are the current Republicans? 71% of all Americans believe that global warming is a result of human activity, only 27% of Republicans; while Rasmussen says 55% of all Americans oppose health care reform ( recent polls counter this), 87% of Republicans oppose it and 74% very strongly. Depending on the poll, President Obama's favorability rating is between 50 to 58% but fewer than 10% of Republicans approve.
But this situation gets worse. Only 41 percent of conservatives now identify themselves as Republicans--that's how extreme the Party has become. The recent embrace of birthers, deathers, tenthers, vaxers and liars not only damages the Republicans future chances but seriously blocks the ability of there to be a real political debate in this country. Among the remaining Republicans I know,this paranoid politics also becomes a groupthink. Those not subscribing to the latest lunacy are considered Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) and are not to be trusted. The Republican embrace of the Tea Party nonsense and the Glenn Beck 9-12 project now plunge them into the treacherous waters of insurrectionists, secessionists, white supremacists and theocrats. This is not only dangerous to the country, President Obama personally but also to the Republicans themselves.
The effects of this have been dramatic. Governor Pawlenty, for instance, has announced the desire to embrace the lunacy of Gov. Perry of Texas in saying that the invocation of the tenth amendment might be a way for states to stop health care reform. This is a man who honestly has aspirations for the Presidency. And he would be representing the Party of Abraham Lincoln! The tenth amendment movement is of interest to constitutional scholars only because the doctrine of nullification, which existed prior to the Civil War, has been seriously rebuffed through countless Supreme Court rulings, including one as recently as 2005 and to see people raise this is a red flag to profound historical ignorance. For their part, neo-conservatives, who once pretended to have intellectual interests, have solicited the support of former half-term Governor Sarah Palin to press their support for President Obama's Afghanistan build-up. This is a person married--at least for now--to a former secessionist and who actively accused the President of paling around with terrorists. And somehow she's supposed to have any credibility and importance?
As I wrote in my thoughts on Republican Gomorrah, the control of the Republican Party by the religious right is pernicious enough. Now Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council believe they have a second-wind in organizing the religious opposition to health care reform. Not only are Republicans lying about the facts of bills but the religious community is bearing false witness against the bill as funding abortions, providing illegal immigrants health care, and creating death panels to euthanize senior citizens. The phenomenon of self-proclaimed Christians opposing in the name of religion, not politics, health care reform is mind-boogling. As I have written elsewhere, this is a wicked brew.
The first casualty in war is truth. But for our political system it is vital that we have reality-based debates. We should have learned through a series of policy blunders on both sides that the cold shower of fact-based analysis can lead to a more sober and worthwhile policy debate. The problem of a major political party embracing paranoid politics is that you can have no real compromise if one side lives in a a parallel universe.
Today's Teabag Express demonstrations in Washington raise serious challenges to the legitimacy of the Republican Party, not President Obama. What is it that these people are really advocating? It appears to be a grab-bag of nutty things from tax hikes (even though everyone I know got a tax cut), deficits (ignoring the Republican history of this issue), gun rights (so far Eric Holder has made not a single move in this direction),national service day on 9-11, health care reform, states rights, anti-immigration, upholding the constitution ( why not protest against Dick Cheney?), against cap-and-trade legislation, against the stimulus package, against the bailout of the banks, against support for the auto industry, against ACORN, and against abortion, the grandmother of the cultural wars. This bears alot of similarity to past nativist movements in our history that ranged from the Know-Nothings to the KKK. And, I might add it is profoundly anti-American in ways that the democratic Left never was. To actively target a sitting President only eight months into his term with the purpose of crippling his administration is the height of anti-patriotism.
Astonishingly, the vast majority of the teabaggers appear to be senior citizens--who are on social security, medicare and military pensions--and yet they advocate smaller government and the cut of government programs to help others than themselves. This is a classic generational war by seniors on the rest of society. I'm not sure they are self-conscious about this. Their mantra--"Taking Our America Back"--should disturb people who want to move forward. The last time America seemed normal to these people, and we lived in a segregated world where Ossie and Harriet were parents was under Dwight David Eisenhower, a man the ancestors of the teabaggers hated as a closet Democrat, crypto-Communist and a liberal.
The one aspect that fascinates me about this is the deliberate adoption of what they perceive as the tactics of the Left. Overtly, they are fascinated by Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayres and the Weatherman Underground. We all know they were miserable failures and that no one was persuaded by domestic terrorism--as we also found out with Timothy McVeigh--or even, alas, massive demonstrations. The anti-Iraq war demonstrations often exceeded one million people and their effectiveness was negligible. What the democratic Left discovered was that they had to organize and deal with the real problems of average citizens to have any credibility and legitimacy. The jury is still out on astro-turf protesting, turning out citizens on the corporate dime. It may well be--and I believe this--fantastic for corporate interests but of marginal use for generating real, civil debate.
Alot of commentators of the Left raise the whole issue of race. With the face of the Republican party being almost exclusively white men from the South, who personally have long ties to racist groups, this is entirely legitimate. The Republican Party, starting with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy with rhetoric provided by then speechwriter Pat Buchanan, has exploited racial animosity when it suits it. However, whole sectors of the party were both liberal and progressive on civil rights legislation but they have been wiped out with the demise of the party of the Northeast and Midwest. As I've also written, today's Republicans are banking on short-term gains in 2010 by mobilizing the white anti-Obama vote by playing the race card. How this can benefit the party in the long-run is anyone's guess.
There are no national Republican leaders with the stature or clout to distance the party from the lunatic core, which seems to be their base. I would suggest that the Teabaggers and the Glenn Beck followers are heavily dominated by small splinter parties such as Alan Keyes American Independence Party (old George Wallace's party),the Libertarians, now the LaRoucheites (who are nominally Democrats), White supremacists and neo-fascist groups. It could be one of the most embarrassing baits-and-switches in American political history. This hodgepodge of parties and grouplets has learned more mainstream language and become what Republicans believe are the real base of the party. There was some of this before but the moment when this became a reality was the nomination of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate. A choice to appease the religious right, she brought with it libertarian, secessionist, and pro-militia followers.
The e-mails I receive invoke the American Revolution, an event my ancestors proudly participated in. And we should all remember it's first casualty was an African-American named Crispus Attucks. The extreme gun rights crowd, which is linked to the militias and paramilitary groups, invokes the Second Amendment as the paramount result of the revolution. Allegedly they argue our founding fathers believed a well-armed populace would be check on oppressive government. Well, not so fast. The post-revolutionary America faced a challenge from the Shays Rebellion in Western Massachusetts and when the constitution was ratified our revolutionary founders discovered that a government needed a well-organized militia--in order to suppress insurrections. The Second Amendment cuts both ways but customary beliefs have the left gun rights people the dominent interpretation.
So what colonial master am I supposed to rebel against?--foreign-owned banks and corporations looks like a good start, But that's not what my colleagues have in mind. They stated that our political rights and civil liberties are today threatened more than at any time since the American Revolution. Oh, Really? More than the Civil War? More than the Palmer Era? More than WWII? More than during the Cold War? More than under the Bush-Cheney Administration?
No, our freedoms are threatened by the new Emperor Jones in the White House and his coterie of socialists like--I guess--Ben Bernacke, Rahm Emmanuel,Bob Gates, Kathleen Sebelius, Larry Summers and David Geitner. Here, my friends lose me completely. My problems with the Obama Administration have to do with the maintenance of some of the Bush era restrictions on civil liberties, not any new abuses of constitutional power. And, there is an awesome and deliberate ignorance of these Teabaggers that doesn't realize the U.S. Government represents 30% of our national economy and President Obama has not done all this by himself in eight months.
Can you imagine any of these people who aligned themselves with the Tea Baggers being able to manage the complexities of the world's largest economy and the largest component in that economy? That's the stakes in getting two political parties back to a place where policies can be rationally debated.
I'm usually snarky in my replies. If Obama has achieved all this in eight months, created a socialist America and torn up the Constitution, then we were left with a pretty weak nation when he took over and there's nothing that can be done to reverse it.
One hoped that after President Obama's health care speech and his paramount reasonableness we would have heard some responsible Republican commentary. Instead, the almost universal response was to double-down on the deliberate lying about the president's proposals. This has provoked condemnation of Obama from the Left for maintaining the fiction that any bipartisanship is possible.
At least in the House, they are absolutely right. The President's plan will receive no Republican votes in the House because the leadership is listening to Newt Gingrich's advice that 1994 will repeat itself. In the Senate, Voinovich, Snowe and Collins are the only likely candidates for support for Health Care Reform. Voinovich because he's retiring. The Maine Senators because Collins won in 2008 and Olympia Snowe doesn't face re-election until 2012. And also they represent the last of the Northeast Republicans, who take commonsense positions.
How vile has this become? Former First Lady Laura Bush, a librarian by trade and someone who like her mother-in-law is devoted to reading, supported President Obama's school speech and condemned the partisan attacks on it. For this mild call to civility, conservative blogs attacked her, recalling her past history as a non-active Democrat before she met George W. and went on to attack the most conservative President in my lifetime as a RINO. In the crowd of teabaggers who arrived in Washington for today's festivities, many condemned George W. Bush's domestic policies and his deficit-spending. They called for a true conservative to be President.
But their means appear to be at odds with their goals. It's not the American revolution that is there real model it's the French Revolution. The Republican Base has become the latest version of the Jacobins and we know where that went. The present situation is very dangerous. Leftwing writer Naomi Wolf in The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot wrote movingly of how important it was to keep the Idea of America alive for us and the rest of the world. Whatever imperfections exist in our struggle toward a more perfect union, the idea of America has and continues to inspire the rest of the world. Today, the very idea is being threatened by the parnoid politics that have taken over the Republican Party.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
After Dinner Coffee--Rt.66 Dark Roast
Well, it passed with 61 votes, including Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter. Now all the progressive blogs are gaming the Republican strategy. The young Cenk at www.theyoungturks.com has done at least two shows on this. Yes, the Republicans want the stimulus package to fail just as Rush Limbaugh said because if it succeeds the Democrats will be a majority for a generation. That's why we hear this endless dribble about FDR not really ending the Depression.
There, however, is a more ideological problem--The Republicans do not want to admit the age of Reagan is over and that new times call for new approaches--they have none. The Republicans have boxed themselves into sillyland by being Johnny One-Notes about taxes. They can not conceive of any worthwhile government spending, except for national defense. That's why you have such nonsense being said by Michael Steele that government jobs aren't real jobs; only the private sector can create real jobs--even if they don't last. The Republicans in town are absolutely delighted by their obstructionism and feel they have their mojo back.
And there are the Bush/Cheney Republicans who worry their ultimate plans for the United States will be rolled back. In the globalization they supported and profited from, the United States ultimately would become the Godfather of A Banana Republic, suffering the disparities of wealth exhibited in developing countries but retaining its clout by being the policeman of the world. Basically, if we follow this to conclusion, the United States will soon look like the former Soviet Union. It would be hyper-crony capitalism, rewarding the financial nomenklatura. Unfortunately, the herd mentality took over among the elites, which triggered the September financial collapse.
One note-- Politico, which is headed by the chairman of the Reagan Library, was quick to respond to Rep. Kanjorski's account of September 18, saying it didn't happen or (cough) not in the numbers he said. He clearly hit a nerve.
Less savvy Republicans still don't get it. Like John McCain, they really believe we are only suffering a recession and therefore the old tools like tax cuts and business incentives will get us back in the swing of things. In fact, the Bush Administration pulled its largest Katrina with the September collapse. Someone should title their memoirs of these years--The Time of Septembers.
Yes, it is also true that the Republicans salted the stimulus bill with their favorite projects, like Bob Bennett's $50 billion for nuclear energy. Part of this was a strategy so that their states will get goodies even if they voted against it.
Two great comments today: Mitch McConnell said that the bill represented 'the Europeanization of America". That needs a Talmudic scholar to interpret. And Mike Huckabee's "the stimulus package is anti-religion." The reason for this is that no construction funds can go to the rehabilitation or construction of those buildings which are or will be used exclusively for religious purposes. So we're going to become secular Europe--the new center of Godlessness. And --cue up McCain's "Lime Green Jello Speech"--"And that's not Change we can believe in."
As long as they have their echo machine--the talk radios and Fox News--providing surround sound to reinforce their positions, they won't change. In the congressional elections in 2010, they will lose more in the Senate but gain some in the House as some Democrats will get caught in affairs or some corruption. Their real gains will be in some state houses--possibly New York, New Jersey and Virginia but that will be a local phenomenon and will not have national meaning.
Barack Obama has many gifts but the one that is fatal to his enemies--is his transparent empathy. Some of us like that fact he speaks in full sentences and talks to the American people as if they could be adults. But it really is the sense he conveys of actually wanting to alleviate the suffering of the American people. This doesn't come off as Clinton's schmaltzy "I feel your pain" but something genuine. As evidenced by the events in Indiana and Florida, that buys alot of good will. And that will make him hard to oppose in the future.
The progressive blogs should avoid the conspiracy theories about Republican politics. They really are as inept as they seem. For the past ten years, they let ideology far outstrip competency and now they are Old Men Yelling At Clouds.
There, however, is a more ideological problem--The Republicans do not want to admit the age of Reagan is over and that new times call for new approaches--they have none. The Republicans have boxed themselves into sillyland by being Johnny One-Notes about taxes. They can not conceive of any worthwhile government spending, except for national defense. That's why you have such nonsense being said by Michael Steele that government jobs aren't real jobs; only the private sector can create real jobs--even if they don't last. The Republicans in town are absolutely delighted by their obstructionism and feel they have their mojo back.
And there are the Bush/Cheney Republicans who worry their ultimate plans for the United States will be rolled back. In the globalization they supported and profited from, the United States ultimately would become the Godfather of A Banana Republic, suffering the disparities of wealth exhibited in developing countries but retaining its clout by being the policeman of the world. Basically, if we follow this to conclusion, the United States will soon look like the former Soviet Union. It would be hyper-crony capitalism, rewarding the financial nomenklatura. Unfortunately, the herd mentality took over among the elites, which triggered the September financial collapse.
One note-- Politico, which is headed by the chairman of the Reagan Library, was quick to respond to Rep. Kanjorski's account of September 18, saying it didn't happen or (cough) not in the numbers he said. He clearly hit a nerve.
Less savvy Republicans still don't get it. Like John McCain, they really believe we are only suffering a recession and therefore the old tools like tax cuts and business incentives will get us back in the swing of things. In fact, the Bush Administration pulled its largest Katrina with the September collapse. Someone should title their memoirs of these years--The Time of Septembers.
Yes, it is also true that the Republicans salted the stimulus bill with their favorite projects, like Bob Bennett's $50 billion for nuclear energy. Part of this was a strategy so that their states will get goodies even if they voted against it.
Two great comments today: Mitch McConnell said that the bill represented 'the Europeanization of America". That needs a Talmudic scholar to interpret. And Mike Huckabee's "the stimulus package is anti-religion." The reason for this is that no construction funds can go to the rehabilitation or construction of those buildings which are or will be used exclusively for religious purposes. So we're going to become secular Europe--the new center of Godlessness. And --cue up McCain's "Lime Green Jello Speech"--"And that's not Change we can believe in."
As long as they have their echo machine--the talk radios and Fox News--providing surround sound to reinforce their positions, they won't change. In the congressional elections in 2010, they will lose more in the Senate but gain some in the House as some Democrats will get caught in affairs or some corruption. Their real gains will be in some state houses--possibly New York, New Jersey and Virginia but that will be a local phenomenon and will not have national meaning.
Barack Obama has many gifts but the one that is fatal to his enemies--is his transparent empathy. Some of us like that fact he speaks in full sentences and talks to the American people as if they could be adults. But it really is the sense he conveys of actually wanting to alleviate the suffering of the American people. This doesn't come off as Clinton's schmaltzy "I feel your pain" but something genuine. As evidenced by the events in Indiana and Florida, that buys alot of good will. And that will make him hard to oppose in the future.
The progressive blogs should avoid the conspiracy theories about Republican politics. They really are as inept as they seem. For the past ten years, they let ideology far outstrip competency and now they are Old Men Yelling At Clouds.
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