No sooner did Obama announce the Sotomayor pick, then we had the beginning onslaught of conservative reaction. Naturally, the gun rights activists picked up on an obscure ruling of hers that in the world of total, absolute gun rights causes worry. The pro-lifers have already denounced her position on abortion, even though the rulings I've seen raise concerns from a pro-choice perspective. Mitt Romney issued a statement about her purported view of an expansive judiciary. Of course, we have the videotape of her saying judges make policy--which of course is true even though the orginalists claim they don't. And, of course, we have the usual racists who remarked, when Geraldo Rivera supported the choice, "he'd support Charo." Judicial Watch charges Sotomayor herself is racist.
My old executive assistant Jon Karl at ABC claims that the Republicans will try and raise all these objections to delay her confirmation past the August recess. I think that is really political risky. My advice to Democrats is to only answer the barrage of charges if they are obviously slander. Otherwise, watch the Republican self-destruct in opposing the first Hispanic choice for the Supreme Court.
For the next Supreme Court pick, I hope President Obama picks a native American, our oldest minority who has little representation in any branches of our government. To his credit, President Obama has fulfilled almost every campaign pledge to native Americans through the early stimulus packages. Outstanding is the settlement of the Indian Trust case, which Obama promised would be settled at a fair rate. A court pick would elevate the situation of native Americans to the place it deserves.
The California Supreme Court's decision to uphold Proposition 8 comes as expected but nonetheless is disappointing. The Court's decision allows for the legal status of the 18,000 couples who got married when same-sex marriage was legal. And there is the rub. This creates two different classes of gay couples, which will have to be adjudicated in a future court case. The Supreme Court also re-emphasized its position against the discrimination of gays. Sat tuned for either another referendum or a court case.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sonia Sotomayor--Obama's trap
I was for the one legged lesbian radical legal scholar for the nomination to the Supreme Court. I think that would have caused the Republican minds to explode. But never fear it didn't take much. Already the echochamber has launched their attacks on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as an activist, liberal judge, who isn't very bright. The most egregious attack on her is that she is a diabetic. From my own readings of her decisions, which are primarily on criminal procedure and immigration law, she is a Democratic Souter where there is alot of unknown. Mike Huckabee was first off the mark by blasting her activism and the Judicial Confirmation Network rifled off an e-mail calling her "a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written." Personally, I believed she could be a closet anti-choice judge but that doesn't matter in the right-wing world where no Democrats should sit on the bench.
Judge Sotomayor comes to the nomination with more judicial experience than any justice in over 70 years, which might explain why some of her decisions have been reversed--she's written so many. Growing up in a housing project in South Bronx, she read Nancy Drew mysteries and watched Perry Mason on television where she learned that the judge was the most important person on the show. Her father was a tool-and-die maker from Puerto Rico, who died when she was eight. Her mother raised her while serving as a nurse at a methadone clinic. As for her academic qualifications, she graduated from Princeton summa cum laude and then went on to Yale Law School, where she became the editor of the Law Journal. A Harvard professor said she had "a big heart and a brilliant mind."
Incredibly she was the first Puerto Rican judge in American history. Nominated to the federal bench by George Bush, she has already gone through the Senate process once. She's out of West Side Story and Obama's pick puts the Republicans in a hole. An hispanic woman from the working class. The Republicans are losing the woman vote, disparately failing among Hispanics and have all but lost the so-called Reagan Democrats. Any real opposition to her will thoroughly damage the Republicans among these groups. And without them, they are dead meat.
What's interesting about the media discussion is how far the media has gone in buying into the Republican version of what the Supreme Court is or is not. Will Obama change this attitude by the time of the next Supreme Court choice? Remember this choice still leaves the voting structure on the Court the same as when Souder sat.
It is the next choice where the fireworks will really come.
By all accounts President Obama was smitten by Sotomayor when they met last Tursday, someone sharing a life story similar to his own. It is a good first choice by the President.
Judge Sotomayor comes to the nomination with more judicial experience than any justice in over 70 years, which might explain why some of her decisions have been reversed--she's written so many. Growing up in a housing project in South Bronx, she read Nancy Drew mysteries and watched Perry Mason on television where she learned that the judge was the most important person on the show. Her father was a tool-and-die maker from Puerto Rico, who died when she was eight. Her mother raised her while serving as a nurse at a methadone clinic. As for her academic qualifications, she graduated from Princeton summa cum laude and then went on to Yale Law School, where she became the editor of the Law Journal. A Harvard professor said she had "a big heart and a brilliant mind."
Incredibly she was the first Puerto Rican judge in American history. Nominated to the federal bench by George Bush, she has already gone through the Senate process once. She's out of West Side Story and Obama's pick puts the Republicans in a hole. An hispanic woman from the working class. The Republicans are losing the woman vote, disparately failing among Hispanics and have all but lost the so-called Reagan Democrats. Any real opposition to her will thoroughly damage the Republicans among these groups. And without them, they are dead meat.
What's interesting about the media discussion is how far the media has gone in buying into the Republican version of what the Supreme Court is or is not. Will Obama change this attitude by the time of the next Supreme Court choice? Remember this choice still leaves the voting structure on the Court the same as when Souder sat.
It is the next choice where the fireworks will really come.
By all accounts President Obama was smitten by Sotomayor when they met last Tursday, someone sharing a life story similar to his own. It is a good first choice by the President.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Idiot Wind--Tortured Daze
The week was spent with the duelling speeches on national security by President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney and all the media hype with surrogates for the nomenklatura weighing in on everything from closing Gitmo to torture. The GOP claims they have finally secured the upper hand on the first issue of the Obama administration, pointing to the overwhelming defeat by the Senate of funds to close Gitmo and move the detainees to facilities in the United States. Interestingly, the GOP claims that this all was a deliberate strategy and one wonders how much Karl Rove and Dick Cheney mapped this out together. The RNC brought back my youth with a retooled version of the infamous daisy commercial LBJ ran against Barry Goldwater but this time intersplicing sayings by Obama on Gitmo. With cheezy music in the background, we are finally led to the moment with the nuclear explosion heard off camera as in the commercial of old. Reassigning the detainees to supermax prisons where 150 of their comrades are presently serving time somehow will encourage a nuclear attack by someone.
But support for President Obama came from unusual circles--Douglas Brooks writing in the New York Times and Jack Goldsmith writing in the New Republic. Brooks pointed out the obvious that Dick Cheney was arguing for a policy that had long been abandoned by the Bush Administration. That Cheney had lost the bureaucratic debate as early as 2004 on torture and on Gitmo by 2006. He was in fact fighting an old bureaucratic battle that he had lost and by big margins. CIA directors starting in March 2003 and a report by the CIA Inspector General in 2004 basically ended the days of waterboarding because of the lack of concrete results. Throughout the second Bush term, administration officials were trying to close Guantanamo,pleading with foreign governments to take some prisoners and even begging senators to allow the transfer of prisoners onto American soil.
Jack Goldsmith, currently a professor at Harvard Law School and an assistant Attorney General in the Bush Administration and no fan of torture, in his New Republic piece writes at great length about each issue where the Obama Administration mirrors but improves on the past Bush policies. Goldsmith's portrayal of the Bush policies are those without the Cheney domination of 2001-2003.
Most of the Republican talking heads act oblivious to the fact that Cheney's speech at AEI was a radical approach to the issue of terrorism just as his interpretation of the Constitution is a radical and highly unorthodox view held only be a select group of his synchophants and a radical fringe of the Federalist society. Over the last few weeks as the Rove-Cheney strategy took shape it was impossible to avoid noticing that the Republicans had virtually no one supporting the Cheney Doctrine, who were actively serving in the military or who had actually conducted interrogation of the detainees.
The Obama Administration actually had a star-studded roster of people urging the closing of Gitmo: Tom Ridge, Colin Powell, John McCain, Bob Gates, Admiral Mullen, General Petraeus among others. Virtually all professional interrogators appeared on television denouncing the Cheney belief that torture produced reliable,actionable intelligence. But this did not deter Republican politicians and spokespeople like Newt Gingrich from speaking out about how Obama was weakening the defense posture of the United States by abandoning torture.
On Fox News,Greta Van Sustern tried to get McCain to take a potshot at Obama but she failed. McCain reiterated that waterboarding is torture, is against the Geneva Conventions and has been sanctioned throughout our history. He also concurred with all the military supporters for closing Gitmo that the prison was the biggest recruiting weapon for Al Qaeda. He spoke about an Al Qaeda member he met in Afghanistan who pointed out that Gitmo was one of the reasons Al Qaeda could recruit thousands new militants from neighboring countries.
By week's end , the waterboarding is not torture school was dealt a mortal blow when a conservative talk show host out of Chicago was waterboarded and only lasted 6 seconds, proclaiming it was drowning--which it is.
But we have experienced an unprecedented campaign by a former Vice President against a sitting and popular President of the United States. Karl Rove claimed it was because the Obama Administration had attacked the Bush years first. Liz Cheney, the Vice President's daughter, claimed that it was Dick Cheney's fear of persecution of him and other Bush officials that led him to speak out.
I suppose it makes tactical sense for the Republicans to make this a side issue since they have been uniformally obstructionist on anything having to do with the reform of our economic system. For Obama,this constant hammering may deflect his Administration's efforts to secure passage of a health reform bill this year--a defeat that would prove to be devastating for the country, the Democrats and ultimately Obama himself.
But with no election coming up until 2010, it's hard to see the payoff for Republicans unless they wish for another attack on the United States and believe the country would turn to them in its time of need. I believe this is so. Republicans are trying to regain their lost advantage in national security. How else to explain the strange TV-hopping of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich fomenting the argument between Nancy Pelosi and the CIA?
There are problems in Obama's approach from a civil libertarian point of view to be sure but the public sided with him by almost 2 to 1 against Dick Cheney. I'll deal with a number of problems in the Obama approach to terror next week but one has to be more sympathetic than progressives have been to the mountain of problems and the entrenched interests of the nomenklatura on this issue--as well as economic problems.
But support for President Obama came from unusual circles--Douglas Brooks writing in the New York Times and Jack Goldsmith writing in the New Republic. Brooks pointed out the obvious that Dick Cheney was arguing for a policy that had long been abandoned by the Bush Administration. That Cheney had lost the bureaucratic debate as early as 2004 on torture and on Gitmo by 2006. He was in fact fighting an old bureaucratic battle that he had lost and by big margins. CIA directors starting in March 2003 and a report by the CIA Inspector General in 2004 basically ended the days of waterboarding because of the lack of concrete results. Throughout the second Bush term, administration officials were trying to close Guantanamo,pleading with foreign governments to take some prisoners and even begging senators to allow the transfer of prisoners onto American soil.
Jack Goldsmith, currently a professor at Harvard Law School and an assistant Attorney General in the Bush Administration and no fan of torture, in his New Republic piece writes at great length about each issue where the Obama Administration mirrors but improves on the past Bush policies. Goldsmith's portrayal of the Bush policies are those without the Cheney domination of 2001-2003.
Most of the Republican talking heads act oblivious to the fact that Cheney's speech at AEI was a radical approach to the issue of terrorism just as his interpretation of the Constitution is a radical and highly unorthodox view held only be a select group of his synchophants and a radical fringe of the Federalist society. Over the last few weeks as the Rove-Cheney strategy took shape it was impossible to avoid noticing that the Republicans had virtually no one supporting the Cheney Doctrine, who were actively serving in the military or who had actually conducted interrogation of the detainees.
The Obama Administration actually had a star-studded roster of people urging the closing of Gitmo: Tom Ridge, Colin Powell, John McCain, Bob Gates, Admiral Mullen, General Petraeus among others. Virtually all professional interrogators appeared on television denouncing the Cheney belief that torture produced reliable,actionable intelligence. But this did not deter Republican politicians and spokespeople like Newt Gingrich from speaking out about how Obama was weakening the defense posture of the United States by abandoning torture.
On Fox News,Greta Van Sustern tried to get McCain to take a potshot at Obama but she failed. McCain reiterated that waterboarding is torture, is against the Geneva Conventions and has been sanctioned throughout our history. He also concurred with all the military supporters for closing Gitmo that the prison was the biggest recruiting weapon for Al Qaeda. He spoke about an Al Qaeda member he met in Afghanistan who pointed out that Gitmo was one of the reasons Al Qaeda could recruit thousands new militants from neighboring countries.
By week's end , the waterboarding is not torture school was dealt a mortal blow when a conservative talk show host out of Chicago was waterboarded and only lasted 6 seconds, proclaiming it was drowning--which it is.
But we have experienced an unprecedented campaign by a former Vice President against a sitting and popular President of the United States. Karl Rove claimed it was because the Obama Administration had attacked the Bush years first. Liz Cheney, the Vice President's daughter, claimed that it was Dick Cheney's fear of persecution of him and other Bush officials that led him to speak out.
I suppose it makes tactical sense for the Republicans to make this a side issue since they have been uniformally obstructionist on anything having to do with the reform of our economic system. For Obama,this constant hammering may deflect his Administration's efforts to secure passage of a health reform bill this year--a defeat that would prove to be devastating for the country, the Democrats and ultimately Obama himself.
But with no election coming up until 2010, it's hard to see the payoff for Republicans unless they wish for another attack on the United States and believe the country would turn to them in its time of need. I believe this is so. Republicans are trying to regain their lost advantage in national security. How else to explain the strange TV-hopping of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich fomenting the argument between Nancy Pelosi and the CIA?
There are problems in Obama's approach from a civil libertarian point of view to be sure but the public sided with him by almost 2 to 1 against Dick Cheney. I'll deal with a number of problems in the Obama approach to terror next week but one has to be more sympathetic than progressives have been to the mountain of problems and the entrenched interests of the nomenklatura on this issue--as well as economic problems.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Reality is what you can get away with
Credit to the late Robert Anson Wilson, the author of the Illuminatus Trilogy.
With Youtube and the Net, we're treated daily to politicians either reversing positions, downright lying or having tin-ears to the issues of the day. Easy to pin blame if one looks at the world through political lenses but what if there is something more profound going on. James Bamford, an expert on our NSA, writes in The Shadow Factory that the NSA has stored more information in their computers than contained in all the libraries of the world. Alvin Toffler called this period The Third Wave, the information civilization. It is now a cliche to talk about the profound rate of change in the world but no one considers the implications for our economy and political system.
Computer scientist Dr. Jacques Vallee claimed in the early 1990s that information is nearly doubling every 18 months. At Valee's calculations it's possible that by 2012 information will double a million times a second. According to mathematicians, this would mean that everything must become steadily more unpredictable or more or less "chaos". This chaos may be expressed as a breakdown in the society or economy and in violence such as increased wars. Chaos also may be expressed instead as a rapid acceleration toward a more stable and coherent world. This acceleration in information can lead to social and political transformations we can't even begin to foresee.
Robert Anton Wilson foresaw both economic global collapse and recovery as well as breakthroughs in nanotechnology that would make most advanced scientific gadgets cheap. I suppose how we look at this depends on,as William James used to say, our different temperaments.
A few months back I read a piece that the economic recovery will be quicker than in a traditional depression because of the speed of communication, which the author believed was one of the root causes for the sudden collapse of the world financial system and would be one of the causes for its rapid recovery. I hope so.
But it's apparent from the shaningans of our elected leaders that my generation and those older have not assimilated the networld into their behavior. The first 21st century campaign was that of Barack Obama ,mainly because the driving talent in his operation were people who have grown up digital. Now he and his Administration confront trying to manage a system that a younger generation consider antediluvian.
Critics of a younger generation claim they lack concentration, are too easily distracted, am multi-task too much. Don Tapscott is the author of Grown Up Digital, which is his follow-up study of 11,000 young people betweeen the age of 11 and 30. This is the most comprehensive generational study ever conducted and the first on the world's first generation who have grown up completely digital. He disputes the critics of this generation,claiming that their brain chemistry has literally changed from previous generation and that their brains can assimilate these multiple electronic inputs in new creative ways. He believes they are a generation more adept and scientifically knowledgeable than the older generation. They literally know more and are more accomplished with the technology we need for the future.
But then, what happens to the rest of us? Do we have to settle in lifestyles based on ability to assimilate information? Does it mean that whole sectors of our society ,once geared to manufacturing jobs, are beyond redemption and must remain unemployed or underemployed? Have we become a more sophisticated version of an under-developed society? And if the United States-Europe-Asia is the axis of this accelerated information civilization, how then do we cope and deal with areas such as the Middle East where political structures have been created to deliberately slow change and the penetration of information from abroad? Must our foreign policy seek the lowest common denominator?
In a strange way, we are seeing the results of this information acceleration in our own culture wars that are pitting old authoritarian structures and values against more progressive or liberal beliefs. These are all reactions to the future shock.
With Youtube and the Net, we're treated daily to politicians either reversing positions, downright lying or having tin-ears to the issues of the day. Easy to pin blame if one looks at the world through political lenses but what if there is something more profound going on. James Bamford, an expert on our NSA, writes in The Shadow Factory that the NSA has stored more information in their computers than contained in all the libraries of the world. Alvin Toffler called this period The Third Wave, the information civilization. It is now a cliche to talk about the profound rate of change in the world but no one considers the implications for our economy and political system.
Computer scientist Dr. Jacques Vallee claimed in the early 1990s that information is nearly doubling every 18 months. At Valee's calculations it's possible that by 2012 information will double a million times a second. According to mathematicians, this would mean that everything must become steadily more unpredictable or more or less "chaos". This chaos may be expressed as a breakdown in the society or economy and in violence such as increased wars. Chaos also may be expressed instead as a rapid acceleration toward a more stable and coherent world. This acceleration in information can lead to social and political transformations we can't even begin to foresee.
Robert Anton Wilson foresaw both economic global collapse and recovery as well as breakthroughs in nanotechnology that would make most advanced scientific gadgets cheap. I suppose how we look at this depends on,as William James used to say, our different temperaments.
A few months back I read a piece that the economic recovery will be quicker than in a traditional depression because of the speed of communication, which the author believed was one of the root causes for the sudden collapse of the world financial system and would be one of the causes for its rapid recovery. I hope so.
But it's apparent from the shaningans of our elected leaders that my generation and those older have not assimilated the networld into their behavior. The first 21st century campaign was that of Barack Obama ,mainly because the driving talent in his operation were people who have grown up digital. Now he and his Administration confront trying to manage a system that a younger generation consider antediluvian.
Critics of a younger generation claim they lack concentration, are too easily distracted, am multi-task too much. Don Tapscott is the author of Grown Up Digital, which is his follow-up study of 11,000 young people betweeen the age of 11 and 30. This is the most comprehensive generational study ever conducted and the first on the world's first generation who have grown up completely digital. He disputes the critics of this generation,claiming that their brain chemistry has literally changed from previous generation and that their brains can assimilate these multiple electronic inputs in new creative ways. He believes they are a generation more adept and scientifically knowledgeable than the older generation. They literally know more and are more accomplished with the technology we need for the future.
But then, what happens to the rest of us? Do we have to settle in lifestyles based on ability to assimilate information? Does it mean that whole sectors of our society ,once geared to manufacturing jobs, are beyond redemption and must remain unemployed or underemployed? Have we become a more sophisticated version of an under-developed society? And if the United States-Europe-Asia is the axis of this accelerated information civilization, how then do we cope and deal with areas such as the Middle East where political structures have been created to deliberately slow change and the penetration of information from abroad? Must our foreign policy seek the lowest common denominator?
In a strange way, we are seeing the results of this information acceleration in our own culture wars that are pitting old authoritarian structures and values against more progressive or liberal beliefs. These are all reactions to the future shock.
Torture in Stoogeland--a Recap
The Obama Administration has tried to limit the torture issue to the handful of lawyers who wrote the DOJ memos authorizing the policy. Barack Obama himself pulled back from releasing more photos of detainee abuse ostensibly because he feared the reaction in the Middle East would endanger our troops. Likewise, Eric Holder assured the Senate the Administration will not release terrorists into your neighborhood.
However, the Obama Administration's strategy of a "modified limited hangout" is simply DOA. And thanks goes to Dick Cheney for pushing the envelope on this issue during public appearances that probably number more than he gave when he was in an undisclosed location. Kudos also go to Karl "Turdblossom" Rove, who thought it was a dandy idea to try and put the monkey on the Democrats' backs by writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal asking the Nixonian question,"What did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it?" To which Nancy Pelosi responded that the CIA lied to Congress and she was backed up on this by former Senator Bob Graham, who is notorious for his large ego that he keeps minute minute-by-minute diaries of his whole life, something Boy Genius Rove happen to forget in his rush to judgment.
The torture debate has gone where official Washington fears to tread. We can check off the boxes that it was amoral, illegal, unconstitutional, against all our treaty obligations. But torture enthusiasts still hung on to its effectiveness. This week hasn't been a good one for them. On the torture side is Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Liz Cheney,Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Charles Krauthammer, Mary Matalin and now Lindsey Graham, who touted the 500-year old history of torture as if he just read Danniel Mannix's History of Torture.
On the anti-torture side were interrogators from the FBI, Air Force, U.S. Marines and the CIA. Also former Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, weighed in to drop the bomb that the torture policy was not aimed at discovering imminent plots of Al Qaeda against the United States but rather for intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. Kaboom!
The other little details dropped by Col. Wilkerson include the fact that the CIA and others were so scared about prosecutions because of the Abu Ghraib scandal that they stopped the torture policy by 2004, not 2005 as I believed. He asserts that the second Bush Administration was torture free. Previously, he claimed that there were over 100 homicides created by this policy. The same day Wilkerson claimed the second-term had been free of torture, the International Red Cross requested from the CIA notification about 100 people they had listed in the agency's custody but who were missing.
So if torture is such an effective policy, why suspend it? And also why are the Republicans stepping up the pressure on President Obama, who has been desparately trying to limit the areas of investigation, when the question about the policy became moot in 2004? Also, why would you pick a fight with an adversary who can release new information at his own time and pace?
Let's take the Stoogeland Smell test. If you are the intelligence community and you have been embarrassed by the largest intelligence failure since the Trojan horse (WMDs in Iraq), would you not have leaked the amazing successes you had in breaking up the Al Qaeda plots against the United States because of your "enhanced interrogation" program? Former CIA special agent Robert Baer claims this would have been out in a minute. The old saw," You know of our failures but never our successes", has never been true for a Washington bureaucracy in the mass media age.
By walking back the dog, one finds oneself in Cheneyland as he asserts that intelligence confirmed the links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and that 9/11 had some relationship with Iraq. Waterboarding of Abu Zabaidah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the torture in Egypt of Ibn al-Shayk al-Libi had everything to do with producing intelligence to rationalize the invasion of Iraq and to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and nothing to do with actual Al Qaeda plots. Lawrence Wilkerson's recent statements reflect Secretary of State Colin Powell's mortification of using the erroneous information received from al-Libi in his address to the United Nations justifying the invasion of Iraq. This is payback time.
Another man with mud on his face is the respected former Governor of New Jersey, Tom Kean. Tom always was squeamish about using information from detainees who he knew had been tortured in the final 9/11 Commission Report. What he didn 't know until it was inadvertantly revealed in congressional hearings yesterday that the detainees were tortured specifically for testimony to the 9/11 Commission.
Ironically, the torture program modelled after the SERE training did what SERE training was meant to do--create false confessions. By trying to put the monkey on the back of Democrats, the Republicans have created a situation where there will be no alternative for the political world but either appoint a Special Prosecutor and/or a Truth Commission of distinguished personalities. Also, the accusations by the Democrats that the CIA lied in their briefings to Congress compel the declassfication and release of all the documents on these Hill meetings.
Will the American people support people like Dick Cheney when it comes out that the torture program was not meant to protect the country but to create false intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq? Yesterday, also produced the evidence that the Vice President's office itself directly ordered CIA agent Dilfer, the weapons inspector, to waterboard an Iraqi intelligence officer because the Vice President thought Dilfer's interrogation had been too "soft".
And speaking of Karl Rove, since he participated in NSC meetings and possessed top secret clearances, should we not investigate his role in this sordid affair? Historically, Rove had a longer relationship with Dick Cheney than George W.,contrary to the public perception.
So far, we have all the armed forces being on the record that the torture policy was against the rules of war, against our treaty obligations and the constitution. We also have experienced, seasoned interrogators, who actually broke up plots against the United States, state torture was ineffective and too cumbersome to produce worthwhile intelligence. The ticking-time bomb scenario, much beloved by Republicans and Fox news, has been rendered absurd over the past two weeks. And so we are left with no one with operational or military experience supporting the effectiveness or even the worth of torture.
This all leads us far from the moral and legal prohibitions against torture , past the "it works" assertions, past the stage where it was used to protect Americans, into the realm of pure politics. America tortured for a political agenda. Ironically, that has been my experience with torturers and the tortured in the developing world for three decades. Torture is never used to procure intelligence; it's to make a political point. The point can be the sadistic punishment or revenge against someone who dared to resist an oppressive regime or force false confessions to support the ideological agenda and ambitions of the State.
Stoogeland will try to play out of this mess without coming clean. But the odd thing is that it may be prevented from sweeping this under the rug as the political players keep mud-wrestling in ways that only provoke more information, not less. Dick Cheney's impulsive burst on to the scene after years in the bunker only puts him in the frame--it was his program and he owns it. Whether our political system has any courage, will or wit to deal with this is, in my opinion, dubious.
Next time, the U.S .might want to try drugs if it were serious about intelligence.
However, the Obama Administration's strategy of a "modified limited hangout" is simply DOA. And thanks goes to Dick Cheney for pushing the envelope on this issue during public appearances that probably number more than he gave when he was in an undisclosed location. Kudos also go to Karl "Turdblossom" Rove, who thought it was a dandy idea to try and put the monkey on the Democrats' backs by writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal asking the Nixonian question,"What did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it?" To which Nancy Pelosi responded that the CIA lied to Congress and she was backed up on this by former Senator Bob Graham, who is notorious for his large ego that he keeps minute minute-by-minute diaries of his whole life, something Boy Genius Rove happen to forget in his rush to judgment.
The torture debate has gone where official Washington fears to tread. We can check off the boxes that it was amoral, illegal, unconstitutional, against all our treaty obligations. But torture enthusiasts still hung on to its effectiveness. This week hasn't been a good one for them. On the torture side is Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Liz Cheney,Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Charles Krauthammer, Mary Matalin and now Lindsey Graham, who touted the 500-year old history of torture as if he just read Danniel Mannix's History of Torture.
On the anti-torture side were interrogators from the FBI, Air Force, U.S. Marines and the CIA. Also former Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, weighed in to drop the bomb that the torture policy was not aimed at discovering imminent plots of Al Qaeda against the United States but rather for intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. Kaboom!
The other little details dropped by Col. Wilkerson include the fact that the CIA and others were so scared about prosecutions because of the Abu Ghraib scandal that they stopped the torture policy by 2004, not 2005 as I believed. He asserts that the second Bush Administration was torture free. Previously, he claimed that there were over 100 homicides created by this policy. The same day Wilkerson claimed the second-term had been free of torture, the International Red Cross requested from the CIA notification about 100 people they had listed in the agency's custody but who were missing.
So if torture is such an effective policy, why suspend it? And also why are the Republicans stepping up the pressure on President Obama, who has been desparately trying to limit the areas of investigation, when the question about the policy became moot in 2004? Also, why would you pick a fight with an adversary who can release new information at his own time and pace?
Let's take the Stoogeland Smell test. If you are the intelligence community and you have been embarrassed by the largest intelligence failure since the Trojan horse (WMDs in Iraq), would you not have leaked the amazing successes you had in breaking up the Al Qaeda plots against the United States because of your "enhanced interrogation" program? Former CIA special agent Robert Baer claims this would have been out in a minute. The old saw," You know of our failures but never our successes", has never been true for a Washington bureaucracy in the mass media age.
By walking back the dog, one finds oneself in Cheneyland as he asserts that intelligence confirmed the links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and that 9/11 had some relationship with Iraq. Waterboarding of Abu Zabaidah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the torture in Egypt of Ibn al-Shayk al-Libi had everything to do with producing intelligence to rationalize the invasion of Iraq and to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and nothing to do with actual Al Qaeda plots. Lawrence Wilkerson's recent statements reflect Secretary of State Colin Powell's mortification of using the erroneous information received from al-Libi in his address to the United Nations justifying the invasion of Iraq. This is payback time.
Another man with mud on his face is the respected former Governor of New Jersey, Tom Kean. Tom always was squeamish about using information from detainees who he knew had been tortured in the final 9/11 Commission Report. What he didn 't know until it was inadvertantly revealed in congressional hearings yesterday that the detainees were tortured specifically for testimony to the 9/11 Commission.
Ironically, the torture program modelled after the SERE training did what SERE training was meant to do--create false confessions. By trying to put the monkey on the back of Democrats, the Republicans have created a situation where there will be no alternative for the political world but either appoint a Special Prosecutor and/or a Truth Commission of distinguished personalities. Also, the accusations by the Democrats that the CIA lied in their briefings to Congress compel the declassfication and release of all the documents on these Hill meetings.
Will the American people support people like Dick Cheney when it comes out that the torture program was not meant to protect the country but to create false intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq? Yesterday, also produced the evidence that the Vice President's office itself directly ordered CIA agent Dilfer, the weapons inspector, to waterboard an Iraqi intelligence officer because the Vice President thought Dilfer's interrogation had been too "soft".
And speaking of Karl Rove, since he participated in NSC meetings and possessed top secret clearances, should we not investigate his role in this sordid affair? Historically, Rove had a longer relationship with Dick Cheney than George W.,contrary to the public perception.
So far, we have all the armed forces being on the record that the torture policy was against the rules of war, against our treaty obligations and the constitution. We also have experienced, seasoned interrogators, who actually broke up plots against the United States, state torture was ineffective and too cumbersome to produce worthwhile intelligence. The ticking-time bomb scenario, much beloved by Republicans and Fox news, has been rendered absurd over the past two weeks. And so we are left with no one with operational or military experience supporting the effectiveness or even the worth of torture.
This all leads us far from the moral and legal prohibitions against torture , past the "it works" assertions, past the stage where it was used to protect Americans, into the realm of pure politics. America tortured for a political agenda. Ironically, that has been my experience with torturers and the tortured in the developing world for three decades. Torture is never used to procure intelligence; it's to make a political point. The point can be the sadistic punishment or revenge against someone who dared to resist an oppressive regime or force false confessions to support the ideological agenda and ambitions of the State.
Stoogeland will try to play out of this mess without coming clean. But the odd thing is that it may be prevented from sweeping this under the rug as the political players keep mud-wrestling in ways that only provoke more information, not less. Dick Cheney's impulsive burst on to the scene after years in the bunker only puts him in the frame--it was his program and he owns it. Whether our political system has any courage, will or wit to deal with this is, in my opinion, dubious.
Next time, the U.S .might want to try drugs if it were serious about intelligence.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Cheney's magical mystery tour to Crazy Town
Without the unitary theory of the executive to protect him anymore from the vagaries of public opinion, Dick Cheney's incessant tour to sell the virtues of the Bush torture policy baffles the mind. So far, no mature adult has stood up among Republicans and cried,"Silencio!" More troubling is to see Liz Cheney reappear as an apologist for the torture policy and prisoner abuse. Our corporate media loves the show but haven't asked Liz what she knows about torture, water-boarding or even interrogation. The answer is "Nothing." Treating Cheney's appearances as if they are serious, the media neglect to discuss that this may be a man who cried "Wolf" once too often. He assured the American public that Saddam Hussein was partners with Al Qaeda, had restarted his nuclear program and was certain to possess weapons of mass destruction. Almost as looney, Cheney offered his opinions on the Employee Free Choice Act during a Fox news program with Neil Cavuto.
The Hill reports that Republicans believe they can gain traction on national security issues by exploiting Obama's commitment to close Guatanamo within a year. The RNC surfaced an ad that Obama will be releasing detainees into your neighborhood, neglecting to mention our max prisons hold 150 or more Muslim terrorists already convicted in courts of law. Perhaps, this will pan out for the Republican Party, who have been banking on fear as their ticket to ride back into political power.
The Republican embrace of torture and secret prisons is curious in light of the fact that Cheney lost the bureaucratic fight during the Bush Administration. George W. Bush and Condi Rice planned on closing Gitmo in 2006 over Cheney's objections. The process was started then by the release of detainees and repatriation of some to European and Arab countries. Republican candidate John McCain agreed with President Obama that Gitmo should be closed because almost all informed sources agreed that the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were the primary recruiting tools for foreign insurgents in Iraq.
The pathological appearances of Dick Cheney on all the networks and even obscure radio shows in North Dakota defending torture counter the Bush Administration's own policies in the second term, a period when Cheney's star was diminished. The CIA Inspecter General's report of 2004 ,which reviewed the torture program was blunt in calling it what it was and suggested that no impending attacks on the United States were broken up as a result. So-called enhanced interrogation techniques were at least overtly suspended in 2005 and the Bush Justice Department ended up revoking the original legal opinions justifying the program as legally sloppy--to say the least. Dick Cheney is in effect re-arguing a bureaucratic battle which he ingloriously lost.
The Republican full metal embrace of the torture policy is reckless. Dick Cheney's serial interviews reveal a series of moving benchmarks in his defense of the program. First, he asserted that it prevented the planned attack on Library Tower in Los Angeles. Within 24 hours of the remark, this was refuted by a timeline that showed the alleged sources for this plot had not been detained for six months the plot was disrupted. Secondly, he suggested within the last two days that a dirty bomb plot by Al Qaeda was disrupted using these methods. The known plot so far is the shoe-bomber who was picked up when the FBI received information from a detainees without any "enhanced interrogation". Four other alleged plots uncovered by these methods were analyzed in a December issue of Vanity Fair. The former head of British counter-intelligence said one plot was a complete fabrication and the other three were uncovered through local police work. Finally, Dick Cheney claims that Al Qaeda was basically unknown prior to 9-11 and that torture produced a detailed view of the Al Qaeda operations.
These assertions by Cheney and his demands for the declassification of documents are now triggering events which the Obama Administration wanted to avoid, the Democrats are cringing because of their own compliance in acknowledging these programs and Republicans should run for the hills from. The Obama Administration is now declassifying the "Holy Grail" document, the CIA's Inspector General's report on the torture program. As the Cheney deadenders keep hollering, more documents will be declassified. There is nothing coming down the pike which will make the torture program more appealing to the public. In fact, Republicans are just shooting themselves in the foot. As long as attention was focused on three Al Qaeda terrorists, the public has shown a frightening tolerance of the use of torture. But further documents show hundreds of homicides occurred because of the abuse of these methods.
Strangely, no Republican is aware at the degree to which Obama has been protecting them and the various intelligence agencies from exposure and prosecution. From a legal point of view, it is a not all that clear that Obama can in fact guarantee impunity as the CIA Inspector General report states clearly that the interrogators violated the Torture Convention and all federal laws covering war crimes. The latest Republican gambit of blaming the Democrats Nancy Pelosi in going along with this program is going to backfire as House Democrats agreed to investigate this. By trying to portray this as a partisan struggle, Republicans are only pushing the torture issue into the realm of the special prosecutor so that the Obama Administration "de-politicizes" it.
If I were Eric Holder, I would appoint Republican Patrick Fitzgerald as the special prosecutor so that Cheney-ites heads explode.
The Hill reports that Republicans believe they can gain traction on national security issues by exploiting Obama's commitment to close Guatanamo within a year. The RNC surfaced an ad that Obama will be releasing detainees into your neighborhood, neglecting to mention our max prisons hold 150 or more Muslim terrorists already convicted in courts of law. Perhaps, this will pan out for the Republican Party, who have been banking on fear as their ticket to ride back into political power.
The Republican embrace of torture and secret prisons is curious in light of the fact that Cheney lost the bureaucratic fight during the Bush Administration. George W. Bush and Condi Rice planned on closing Gitmo in 2006 over Cheney's objections. The process was started then by the release of detainees and repatriation of some to European and Arab countries. Republican candidate John McCain agreed with President Obama that Gitmo should be closed because almost all informed sources agreed that the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were the primary recruiting tools for foreign insurgents in Iraq.
The pathological appearances of Dick Cheney on all the networks and even obscure radio shows in North Dakota defending torture counter the Bush Administration's own policies in the second term, a period when Cheney's star was diminished. The CIA Inspecter General's report of 2004 ,which reviewed the torture program was blunt in calling it what it was and suggested that no impending attacks on the United States were broken up as a result. So-called enhanced interrogation techniques were at least overtly suspended in 2005 and the Bush Justice Department ended up revoking the original legal opinions justifying the program as legally sloppy--to say the least. Dick Cheney is in effect re-arguing a bureaucratic battle which he ingloriously lost.
The Republican full metal embrace of the torture policy is reckless. Dick Cheney's serial interviews reveal a series of moving benchmarks in his defense of the program. First, he asserted that it prevented the planned attack on Library Tower in Los Angeles. Within 24 hours of the remark, this was refuted by a timeline that showed the alleged sources for this plot had not been detained for six months the plot was disrupted. Secondly, he suggested within the last two days that a dirty bomb plot by Al Qaeda was disrupted using these methods. The known plot so far is the shoe-bomber who was picked up when the FBI received information from a detainees without any "enhanced interrogation". Four other alleged plots uncovered by these methods were analyzed in a December issue of Vanity Fair. The former head of British counter-intelligence said one plot was a complete fabrication and the other three were uncovered through local police work. Finally, Dick Cheney claims that Al Qaeda was basically unknown prior to 9-11 and that torture produced a detailed view of the Al Qaeda operations.
These assertions by Cheney and his demands for the declassification of documents are now triggering events which the Obama Administration wanted to avoid, the Democrats are cringing because of their own compliance in acknowledging these programs and Republicans should run for the hills from. The Obama Administration is now declassifying the "Holy Grail" document, the CIA's Inspector General's report on the torture program. As the Cheney deadenders keep hollering, more documents will be declassified. There is nothing coming down the pike which will make the torture program more appealing to the public. In fact, Republicans are just shooting themselves in the foot. As long as attention was focused on three Al Qaeda terrorists, the public has shown a frightening tolerance of the use of torture. But further documents show hundreds of homicides occurred because of the abuse of these methods.
Strangely, no Republican is aware at the degree to which Obama has been protecting them and the various intelligence agencies from exposure and prosecution. From a legal point of view, it is a not all that clear that Obama can in fact guarantee impunity as the CIA Inspector General report states clearly that the interrogators violated the Torture Convention and all federal laws covering war crimes. The latest Republican gambit of blaming the Democrats Nancy Pelosi in going along with this program is going to backfire as House Democrats agreed to investigate this. By trying to portray this as a partisan struggle, Republicans are only pushing the torture issue into the realm of the special prosecutor so that the Obama Administration "de-politicizes" it.
If I were Eric Holder, I would appoint Republican Patrick Fitzgerald as the special prosecutor so that Cheney-ites heads explode.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The Empty Tent Solution
Or the Republican Ghost Dance
The defection of Allen Specter to the Democrats triggered an orgy of recriminations among Republicans this week. Yes, he was opportunist in changing parties because he faced certain defeat in the Pennsylvania primary to Club of Growth leader Pat Toomey. But Michael Steele had indicated in interviews with Fox News he would fund primary challenges to Specter,Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for their support of the stimulus package.
Olympia Snowe was quick off the mark in commenting that moderates in the party felt like they were cast members of the television show Survivor and declared they were unwanted. In a Washington Post op-ed, former Senator from Maine, Bill Cohen, remarked how the moderate caucus in the party had 25 members when he first went to the Senate and ended with 5, when he left to be Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton. After the crushing congressional defeats in 2006, Olympia Snowe wryly noted that she won with 75% in a blue-collar state but no one from the party asked her how she did it.
The Republican presence in the Northeast has practically vanished. With the defeat of Tedisco in New York's 20th district, there are only 3 Republicans left in the New York delegation. Over the past year alone, over 200,000 former Republicans re-registered as Democrats in Pennsylvania. The party is being eviscerated in the Midwest and on the West Coast. Today, the Republican Party is a regional party, holding temporary sway in the old Confederacy and in the Morman corridor.
This week saw five polls which showed a slight range of 21-22% Americans identifying themselves as Republicans. Independents have won a slight plurality over the Democrats. To be competitive in elections, Republicans will need to win 2/3rds of the independent vote, which looks out of reach with a party that is tightly controlled by its base of now extreme conservatives.
Rather than reaching out, the uniform response by the RNC, the talking heads and conservatives was to urge the removal of Snowe and Collins and John McCain. Freepers urged the removal of Orrin Hatch for his criticism of the Club of Growth; Catholic conservatives the removal of Senator Brownback for his vote in support of Kansas government Kathleen Sebelius. New Gingrich pontificated there was no room in the Republican Party for anyone in support of high taxes, big government and big spending. Bill Kristol claimed Specter's defection was a plus for the GOP.
This debate took place in front of the backdrop of the issue of torture with all the conservatives strongly defended torture with the exception of John McCain. Libertarian James Bovard, writing in Pat Buchanan's American Conservative in 2002, asked, "Have the Republicans become the party of torture, secret prisons and indefinite detention?"
A group of Republicans led by John McCain and Jeb Bush assembled a committee called the Foundation for a New America to seek out opinions on the direction of the party. This group included Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal and other elected officials . But noticeable for their absence were moderates like Christ of Florida,Schwartzenegger of California or the Senators Snowe and Collins. The purpose of the committee was to recreate McCain's hallmark events-- the Townhall meeting.
The RNC unchastened by Specter's defection sent out robocalls, denouncing him for his links to President George W. Bush (!). They also ran a one-day ad that had a southern White voice pretend he was Barack Obama pledging to raise taxes and thanking former Weatherman and current professor Bill Ayres for his support. After pulling this one down, John "the Tan Man" Boehner cut an ad criticising Barack Obama for failing to keep us safe, with eerie music over footage of "jihadists". The problem with the ad was quickly noted by Hispanics, who pointed to all the images of Latinos in the ad and charged the House Republicans with bigotry.
The swine flu outbreak provided another opportunity for the Republicans and conservative talkshow hosts to claim that the transmitters of the disease were illegal immigrants. Neil Boortz on his talk show even went so far as to suggest this was a type of bio-terrorism. This theme ran from Fox News through Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. In fact, the swine flu seems to have originated at farms kept in Mexico by Virginia's own Smithfield Hams.
When Justice Souter sent a letter to President Obama announcing his impending retirement, Republicans claimed this was the event to turn their fortunes around. Within hours, they sent out opposition research on all possible nominess declaring them unacceptable. While Souter turned out to be a moderate civil libertarian, the conservative punditry claimed Obama could only do worse if he appointed a "radical". Souter voted against the Republicans in the Supreme Court case of Bush versus Gore.
Most observers believe that Obama will choose a woman and possibly go for an Hispanic woman such as federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, who was first appointed to the bench by President Bush. Probably liberal in social issues, she appears to be a moderate in business law cases, which she has handled. She has already been denounced as not having "a judicial temperment" by Republicans.
Moderate Republicans such as former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman has begged the litmus test be stopped for the sake of states where the GOP stands a good chance of winning state houses. Conservatives are running a primary challenge against Doug Christie, who runs in the polls ahead of Corzine. In Arizona, one of the most well-known Minutemen is running a primary challenge against John McCain on the platform of stopping illegal immigrattion.
With Republicans at a point lower than after Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964, when they finished at 25% identification, recent polling of issues finds them at a greater disadvantage than before. Proponents of gay marriage now have a plurality of acceptance, legalization of marijuana has gained popularity, pro-choice is still dominant and only a lower--but still a majority--favor greater gun control. Even immigration reform has the support of the majority of the people. It even gets worse, Only 25% of the population do not believe we should do anything about global warming. A vast majority of Americans want health care reform.
What are the odds of Republicans becoming a party that offers constructive solutions to the problems of governance and the economy? I believe slim to none because the very conservative group of elected officials are still as not as extreme as the base. "Our base just hates Barack Obama"said one Washington Republican. Also, Republicans have a very difficult credibility problem in establishing they are for small government, fiscal responsibilty and the lack of government interference with one's personal life. The last fiscal conservative Republican was Dwight Eisenhower. The conservative governments of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush vastly expanded the powers and size of the executive branch and ran up historic deficits. And the social conservatives believe government should interfere in enforcing morality. So why would a voter believe they can trust the Republicans this time?
Conservatives are trying to back away from George W. Bush, who was in fact the culmination of the conservative movement's drive to power. The Bush Administration hired more ideological conservatives than any of the predecessors. Used the powers of the presidency to financially reward the evangelical community's support. Cut taxes to benefit the wealthy conservatives and handed out government contracts to donors like candy. To the neoconservatives, he embarked on a unilateral foreign policy and proclaimed a Pax Americana that other countries would be "forced" to recognize. But like all conservatives forever, they feel betrayed.
There is no self-reflection or self-criticism among the conservative movement at this moment. I think this is because outsiders miss the point. The struggle is ideological and not political. The talking heads are sincere in their desire to purify the party of anyone who is deviant from their ideology. It is a seige mindset. The media is against them--despite having more conservatives on the major networks than at any other time in history--, the judiciary--long since dominated by Republicans--is against them;the American culture is decayed and decadent and against their values; and Washington always betrays them. So you consolidate your power in your remaining outpost--despite disasterous political consequences--the Republican Party.
The point of all this is to overturn the liberal order--eventually--and to thwart American pluralism. Conservatives are now practicing what the Left would recognize as "Vanguardism" and are aiming to create a very authoritarian party. They are flirting with some dangerous elements in their disdain for elections they lose and a federal government that no longer reflects their policies. This is why there is a rise of secessionist sentiments within the Republican party itself--something unheard of before.
Once Republicans recruited evangelicals as candidates they locked in social conservatives and can not jettison them from their platform as the culture has turned dramatically away from their positions. Demographically, this will continue to be the case for the near future. If the party can not tolerate regional differences in this regard, it will enjoy a long winter. What one sees now among elected officials is the most moderate face of the party compared to what I believe is coming. When Republican leaders such as Sarah Palin saying the real America is in small towns, she is inadvertantly admitting that the party has lost its historical base--the suburbs. Rural America is diminishing in size dramatically.
At this moment, there is no road out from the Empty Tent.
The defection of Allen Specter to the Democrats triggered an orgy of recriminations among Republicans this week. Yes, he was opportunist in changing parties because he faced certain defeat in the Pennsylvania primary to Club of Growth leader Pat Toomey. But Michael Steele had indicated in interviews with Fox News he would fund primary challenges to Specter,Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for their support of the stimulus package.
Olympia Snowe was quick off the mark in commenting that moderates in the party felt like they were cast members of the television show Survivor and declared they were unwanted. In a Washington Post op-ed, former Senator from Maine, Bill Cohen, remarked how the moderate caucus in the party had 25 members when he first went to the Senate and ended with 5, when he left to be Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton. After the crushing congressional defeats in 2006, Olympia Snowe wryly noted that she won with 75% in a blue-collar state but no one from the party asked her how she did it.
The Republican presence in the Northeast has practically vanished. With the defeat of Tedisco in New York's 20th district, there are only 3 Republicans left in the New York delegation. Over the past year alone, over 200,000 former Republicans re-registered as Democrats in Pennsylvania. The party is being eviscerated in the Midwest and on the West Coast. Today, the Republican Party is a regional party, holding temporary sway in the old Confederacy and in the Morman corridor.
This week saw five polls which showed a slight range of 21-22% Americans identifying themselves as Republicans. Independents have won a slight plurality over the Democrats. To be competitive in elections, Republicans will need to win 2/3rds of the independent vote, which looks out of reach with a party that is tightly controlled by its base of now extreme conservatives.
Rather than reaching out, the uniform response by the RNC, the talking heads and conservatives was to urge the removal of Snowe and Collins and John McCain. Freepers urged the removal of Orrin Hatch for his criticism of the Club of Growth; Catholic conservatives the removal of Senator Brownback for his vote in support of Kansas government Kathleen Sebelius. New Gingrich pontificated there was no room in the Republican Party for anyone in support of high taxes, big government and big spending. Bill Kristol claimed Specter's defection was a plus for the GOP.
This debate took place in front of the backdrop of the issue of torture with all the conservatives strongly defended torture with the exception of John McCain. Libertarian James Bovard, writing in Pat Buchanan's American Conservative in 2002, asked, "Have the Republicans become the party of torture, secret prisons and indefinite detention?"
A group of Republicans led by John McCain and Jeb Bush assembled a committee called the Foundation for a New America to seek out opinions on the direction of the party. This group included Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal and other elected officials . But noticeable for their absence were moderates like Christ of Florida,Schwartzenegger of California or the Senators Snowe and Collins. The purpose of the committee was to recreate McCain's hallmark events-- the Townhall meeting.
The RNC unchastened by Specter's defection sent out robocalls, denouncing him for his links to President George W. Bush (!). They also ran a one-day ad that had a southern White voice pretend he was Barack Obama pledging to raise taxes and thanking former Weatherman and current professor Bill Ayres for his support. After pulling this one down, John "the Tan Man" Boehner cut an ad criticising Barack Obama for failing to keep us safe, with eerie music over footage of "jihadists". The problem with the ad was quickly noted by Hispanics, who pointed to all the images of Latinos in the ad and charged the House Republicans with bigotry.
The swine flu outbreak provided another opportunity for the Republicans and conservative talkshow hosts to claim that the transmitters of the disease were illegal immigrants. Neil Boortz on his talk show even went so far as to suggest this was a type of bio-terrorism. This theme ran from Fox News through Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. In fact, the swine flu seems to have originated at farms kept in Mexico by Virginia's own Smithfield Hams.
When Justice Souter sent a letter to President Obama announcing his impending retirement, Republicans claimed this was the event to turn their fortunes around. Within hours, they sent out opposition research on all possible nominess declaring them unacceptable. While Souter turned out to be a moderate civil libertarian, the conservative punditry claimed Obama could only do worse if he appointed a "radical". Souter voted against the Republicans in the Supreme Court case of Bush versus Gore.
Most observers believe that Obama will choose a woman and possibly go for an Hispanic woman such as federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, who was first appointed to the bench by President Bush. Probably liberal in social issues, she appears to be a moderate in business law cases, which she has handled. She has already been denounced as not having "a judicial temperment" by Republicans.
Moderate Republicans such as former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman has begged the litmus test be stopped for the sake of states where the GOP stands a good chance of winning state houses. Conservatives are running a primary challenge against Doug Christie, who runs in the polls ahead of Corzine. In Arizona, one of the most well-known Minutemen is running a primary challenge against John McCain on the platform of stopping illegal immigrattion.
With Republicans at a point lower than after Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964, when they finished at 25% identification, recent polling of issues finds them at a greater disadvantage than before. Proponents of gay marriage now have a plurality of acceptance, legalization of marijuana has gained popularity, pro-choice is still dominant and only a lower--but still a majority--favor greater gun control. Even immigration reform has the support of the majority of the people. It even gets worse, Only 25% of the population do not believe we should do anything about global warming. A vast majority of Americans want health care reform.
What are the odds of Republicans becoming a party that offers constructive solutions to the problems of governance and the economy? I believe slim to none because the very conservative group of elected officials are still as not as extreme as the base. "Our base just hates Barack Obama"said one Washington Republican. Also, Republicans have a very difficult credibility problem in establishing they are for small government, fiscal responsibilty and the lack of government interference with one's personal life. The last fiscal conservative Republican was Dwight Eisenhower. The conservative governments of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush vastly expanded the powers and size of the executive branch and ran up historic deficits. And the social conservatives believe government should interfere in enforcing morality. So why would a voter believe they can trust the Republicans this time?
Conservatives are trying to back away from George W. Bush, who was in fact the culmination of the conservative movement's drive to power. The Bush Administration hired more ideological conservatives than any of the predecessors. Used the powers of the presidency to financially reward the evangelical community's support. Cut taxes to benefit the wealthy conservatives and handed out government contracts to donors like candy. To the neoconservatives, he embarked on a unilateral foreign policy and proclaimed a Pax Americana that other countries would be "forced" to recognize. But like all conservatives forever, they feel betrayed.
There is no self-reflection or self-criticism among the conservative movement at this moment. I think this is because outsiders miss the point. The struggle is ideological and not political. The talking heads are sincere in their desire to purify the party of anyone who is deviant from their ideology. It is a seige mindset. The media is against them--despite having more conservatives on the major networks than at any other time in history--, the judiciary--long since dominated by Republicans--is against them;the American culture is decayed and decadent and against their values; and Washington always betrays them. So you consolidate your power in your remaining outpost--despite disasterous political consequences--the Republican Party.
The point of all this is to overturn the liberal order--eventually--and to thwart American pluralism. Conservatives are now practicing what the Left would recognize as "Vanguardism" and are aiming to create a very authoritarian party. They are flirting with some dangerous elements in their disdain for elections they lose and a federal government that no longer reflects their policies. This is why there is a rise of secessionist sentiments within the Republican party itself--something unheard of before.
Once Republicans recruited evangelicals as candidates they locked in social conservatives and can not jettison them from their platform as the culture has turned dramatically away from their positions. Demographically, this will continue to be the case for the near future. If the party can not tolerate regional differences in this regard, it will enjoy a long winter. What one sees now among elected officials is the most moderate face of the party compared to what I believe is coming. When Republican leaders such as Sarah Palin saying the real America is in small towns, she is inadvertantly admitting that the party has lost its historical base--the suburbs. Rural America is diminishing in size dramatically.
At this moment, there is no road out from the Empty Tent.
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