Susan Rice: Victim of racist attacks?

By Ben Cohen: It is hard to watch group of elderly white conservative men attacking a black woman for political purposes and not believe race or gender has something to do with it. Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the UN and next inline for Secretary of State after Hillary Clinton departs, has been subjected to ridiculous accusations from the Republican Party, namely John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Peter King, that she deliberately misled the public in the aftermath of the deadly assault on the US consulate in Benghazi. This culminated in a letter signed by 97 members of congress appealing to President Obama not to consider Rice for Secretary of State.

Rice had suggested in television interviews that intelligence information the White House had received pointed to a spontaneous attack by militants in protest of a US-made anti-Muslim film. Updated intelligence now shows the attack on the consulate was most likely a terrorist attack. However, in evidence given to a congressional committee, former CIA chief David Petraeus stated that the report handed to Rice immediately after the attack did not mention the terrorist link.

A recent CBS News report also completely dismisses the Republican narrative that Rice misled anyone. Writes Michael Tomasky:

The CBS report found the following. It was the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that took the words “al Qaeda” and “terrorism” out of Rice’s talking points for those Sept. 16 talk shows. It found also that both the CIA and the FBI approved of these edits, following standard operating procedure. The report states emphatically: “The White House or State Department did not make those changes.” One source told the network’s Margaret Brennan that the controversy over the word choice employed by Rice has come to the intel world as “a bit of a surprise.” Another source said that there were “legitimate intelligence and legal issues to consider, as is almost always the case when explaining classified assessments publicly.”

Before looking at any of the facts, Republicans waged a vicious campaign to block her nomination to Secretary of State.  It now looks pretty clear that Rice was merely acting on the intelligence she received, leading John McCain and Lindsey Graham to calm their rhetoric down on Rice, and shift their focus to the President.

Were the attacks on Susan Rice racially or gender motivated?

Of course it’s impossible to speculate on exactly what McCain, Graham or any other of the Republicans demonizing Rice were thinking, but it isn’t hard to take a guess. African American Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) believes the attacks on Rice were clearly racially tinged.  He took specific issue with legislators calling Rice ‘incompetent’ in the wake of the interviews. Said Clyburn on CNN’s ‘Starting Point’:

You know, these are code words, these kinds of terms that those of us — especially those of us who were grown and raised in the South — we’ve been hearing these little words and phrases all of our lives and we get insulted by them.

Words like “incompetent” don’t necessarily mean anything by themselves, but as Clyburn pointed out:

Sen. McCain called her incompetent, as well, but he told us that Sarah Palin was very competent to be vice president of the United States – that should tell you a little about his judgment.

And then there’s the gender aspect of the attacks. As Lizz Winstead in the Guardian discovered, the 97 members of Congress who wrote to the President urging him to dismiss Susan Rice as a nominee for Secretary of State don’t exactly have stellar voting record on women’s rights in the workplace:

Let’s take a closer look at who these 97 Republicans are who signed on to this letter (pdf) and set themselves up to judge Susan Rice’s qualifications.

To start with, I went to the website Open Congress and compared the names on the letter to those who voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Well, whadya know? Forty-eight of the 97 who signed the letter also voted against fair pay for women. “But Lizz,” you’re thinking, “that’s only half. What about the other half?” Oh, them. Turns out they weren’t in Congress in 2009. Worse, all but two are from that freshman class, elected in the medieval-term election of 2010, which brought progress to its knees in an attempt to keep women as far away from the deciders’ table as possible.

Whether they consciously understand it or not, there’s an argument to made that conservative white males feel  seriously threatened by educated, professional black women. The power structure in America has long been controlled and dominated by men who look and sound just like Rep. Jon King or John McCain, and they believe it is under attack from minorities. King, McCain and the other Republicans assailing Rice’s character believed they saw an opportunity to take out a minority in a position of power, and they piled on without looking at the facts. MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe had the following to say about the nature and purpose of the attacks on Chris Matthew’s ‘Hardball’:

Frankly, it’s outrageous that there is this witch hunt going on the right about these people of color, let’s face it, around this president. Eric Holder, Valerie Jarrett, now Susan Rice — before, it was Van Jones. This is not about who is hawkish in the same way John McCain is about foreign policy, because if you look at Iran and Libya, Susan Rice checks those boxes. This is a personal vendetta.

Wolffe’s logic is hard to dismiss. There’s a good chance the Republicans saw Rice as a vulnerable figure, and rightly so. Historically, African American woman haven’t exactly been over represented in the workplace, and Rice’s position was always going to be precarious. President Obama, who has been on the receiving end of racial discrimination throughout his professional career, could barely conceal his contempt for the accusations. Just look at the press conference he gave in the aftermath of the debacle:

Whether you agree or disagree with Susan Rice’s politics from a Left or Right perspective, there’s little evidence to show she did anything other than present the facts as she was given them. In other words, she did her job to the best of her ability. Rice subsequently admitted that a mistake had been made and the initial intelligence wrong, and she has been completely forthright about her role in the matter. Mistakes happen routinely in intelligence gathering, and to blame the messenger is not only absurd but downright dangerous. To play politics with issues pertaining to national security is irresponsible and counterproductive. We had eight long years of the Bush Administration politicizing national security issues leading to a complete break down in trust between the government and the public. Now there are grown ups in power who actually take their responsibilities seriously (anyone remember Bush’s appointee John Bolton?), attacking them diminishes their ability to do their important jobs properly.

Susan Rice is clearly a highly accomplished and competent professional, and attacking her for incompetence says more about the attackers than it does Susan Rice.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Grover Norquist: Not so powerful anymore.

Are we finally seeing a ray of light for the future of the Republican Party? From the Guardian:

Senator Lindsey Graham has become the second senior Republican in days to publicly disavow a pledge that handcuffs the party to a policy of no tax rises, raising hopes of a deal over the fiscal cliff.

Speaking on ABC’s This Week, the South Carolina politician said that the only pledge members of either party should make would be one to make sure the country did not go the same way, economically, as Greece. Regarding a pledge against tax hikes that has been signed by most Republicans in Congress – having been promulgated by the conservative lobbyist Grover Norquist – Graham said: “I will violate this pledge, long story short, for the good of the country.”

In the aftermath of the GOP’s defeat in the presidential election of 6 November, Norquist is increasingly seeing his influence on the party decline. On Thursday, senator Saxby Chambliss said he would break the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in an attempt to help avert the automatic triggering of $600bn of spending cuts and tax increases, the so-called “fiscal cliff”.

This act of defiance by two prominent Republicans may seem like a small thing, but given they are confronting 30 years of ideological rigidity, Graham and Chambliss should be given a great deal or respect. It’s going to take many more Republicans coming out of the wood work and telling purists like Norquist to disappear, but every movement starts with one act of bravery, and it looks like we could be seeing the start of one.

It is too early to know whether this will have any effect, but if other Republicans start to challenge the insane orthodoxy that taxes cannot be raised under any circumstance, it may seep into the mainstream of their current ideological platform.

And after that? Who knows? They may even start accepting that climate change is real….

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Governor Bobby Jindal: Making the right noise, but not the right policies

By Ben Cohen: Oliver Willis posted a short but insightful piece on his blog over the weekend outlining the Republicans strategy for getting elected. Titled: ‘Conservatives Realize They Have To Lie About Conservatism To Be Elected’, Willis argued that the only way they can get into office is to basically be dishonest about their policies. He wrote:

The only way for conservatism to win a national election in America is for conservatives to pretend to be centrist or even liberal on several key issues. Being against the actual safety net, as conservatives are, is electoral suicide. Being a totalitarian against a woman’s right to choose, is key to yet another double-digit loss among women voters. On issue after issue, the conservative position is in the fringe.

A Republican presidential candidate will only succeed in the future if he does as Bush did: hide his conservatism or disguise it in progressivism. It speaks volumes about just how hollow your ideology truly is if it can’t stand up in the light, but must instead hide in the darkness like a cockroach.

I’ve made this argument before, that the current model of American conservatism is so extreme that the Republicans have had to create a multi million dollar industry around it in order to get the public to vote for them. Again and again Americans are polled as being to the Left of both parties when it comes to actual policies (most Americans believe in universal health care, the preservation of social security, more stringent tax policies for the rich etc) and the Republicans are now so out of whack that their candidates have no choice but to lie in public about what they believe in.

Mitt Romney had absolutely no problem doing an about turn when it came close to actual voting time – he shored up the Republican base with a lot of rhetoric about killing Muslims, curtailing women’s rights and giving everyone tax cuts, then pretended he didn’t say any of the above when debating President Obama face to face.

Luckily for most of the population, the tactic failed. After getting completely hammered, the Republicans are busy going through the process of redefining themselves. But when you look at the action behind the rhetoric, again, there are no tangible changes.

Bobby Jindal publicly rebuked Mitt Romney’s remarks about losing the election because Obama gave things to poor Hispanic women, telling Politico:

“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that….It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

Needless to say, not many Republicans are out there supporting Kristol on this one. And that’s why their new ideas will be to pretend not to be conservative – the same ones that saw them lose against Obama and will see them lose again in the future.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Richard Nixon: Socialist?(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ben Cohen: I’ve been having a series of arguments with a friend of mine about the competing economic theories in mainstream American politics. My friend takes the view that government is not the answer to America’s economic or social problems, and I take the view that in many cases it is. I’m not a fan of labels, but in the American political spectrum, my friend would be viewed as center right with libertarian leanings, whereas I would probably be classified as a socialist. In America, I’m the odd one out with no one in mainstream political circles outside of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who really represent my views. My friend on the other hand would be right at home in the mainstream of the Republican Party.

In any other industrialized western nation however, I would be considered well within the mainstream. In the UK I’d be fairly mainstream left, in France, the center left, and in Sweden or Norway probably around the center. My friend would be considered far out of the mainstream of political discourse with his views on the role of government in society.

While I don’t want to denigrate my friends views, I think there is a huge misconception in America about where the political center really is, and I believe this makes modern Republican economic theory extremely dangerous. Moderate Republicans today would not only be considered far Right in Europe, but in relation to other Republicans throughout US history. To put it in perspective, the Obama administration is further to the Right on most issues than Richard Nixon’s government was. Writes Eduardo Porter in the New York Times:

The Nixon administration not only supported the Clean Air Act and affirmative action, it also gave us the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the agencies the business community most detests, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to police working conditions. Herbert Stein, chief economic adviser during the administrations of Nixon and Gerald Ford, once remarked: “Probably more new regulation was imposed on the economy during the Nixon administration than in any other presidency since the New Deal.”

Nixon bolstered Social Security benefits. He introduced a minimum tax on the wealthy and championed a guaranteed minimum income for the poor. He even proposed health reform that would require employers to buy health insurance for all their employees and subsidize those who couldn’t afford it.

Just think about how that would go down with politicians like John Boehner or Paul Ryan.

It wouldn’t.

The shifting of the political center is an interesting phenomenon with both Democrats and Republicans offering their competing theories. While it’s unclear why the shift happened exactly, we do know that it has happened. As Porter notes:

The rightward drift in economic thinking becomes apparent in surveys asking about specific issues. In surveys 25 years ago, 71 percent of Americans believed it was the government’s job to take care of those who couldn’t care for themselves, according the Pew Research Center. This year the share is down to 59 percent. And most of the shift reflects a decline among Republicans.

Republicans’ support for labor unions has fallen sharply since the late 1980s, according to Pew’s research, as has their support for protecting the environment. Their drift fits the position of Congressional Republicans, whose views on the economy have been shifting right for the last quarter-century while Democrats’ views have remained roughly still. And as Republicans have moved to the right, economic policy has followed.

The Right believes that its economic theories were better and beat Keynesian economics through the power of free markets and innovation. The Left believes that there has been a concerted effort from the Right to discredit government and minimize its achievements in creating and maintaining economic growth. There is however, a simple way to test the Right’s explanation, and that’s to look at the success of the economy under a neoliberal, orthodoxy and compare it to that under of a more interventionist approach. Sadly for the Right, their argument falls apart pretty quickly. As Noam Chomsky notes, the Bretton Woods system of monetary management that established the highly interventionist rules for commercial and financial relations among the world’s major industrial states from 1945 to the early 1970′s, marked a period of extraordinary economic growth:

From roughly 1950 until the early 1970s there was a period of unprecedented economic growth and egalitarian economic growth. So the lowest quintile did as well — in fact they even did a little bit better — than the highest quintile. It was also a period of some limited but real form of benefits for the population. And in fact social indicators, measurements of the health of society, they very closely tracked growth. As growth went up social indicators went up, as you’d expect. Many economists called it the golden age of modern capitalism — they should call it state capitalism because government spending was a major engine of growth and development.

And when the system fell apart in favor of deregulation and speculation, calamity ensued leaving markets prone to boom and bust, weak economic growth, and spiraling wealth inequality:

In the mid 1970s that changed. Bretton Woods restrictions on finance were dismantled, finance was freed, speculation boomed, huge amounts of capital started going into speculation against currencies and other paper manipulations, and the entire economy became financialized. The power of the economy shifted to the financial institutions, away from manufacturing. And since then, the majority of the population has had a very tough time; in fact it may be a unique period in American history. There’s no other period where real wages — wages adjusted for inflation — have more or less stagnated for so long for a majority of the population and where living standards have stagnated or declined. If you look at social indicators, they track growth pretty closely until 1975, and at that point they started to decline, so much so that now we’re pretty much back to the level of 1960.

The Left’s thesis that the Right embarked upon a sustained effort to discredit regulation, protectionism and intervention is harder to prove, but you only need look at the US corporate media system to see why it is a highly plausible theory. The US media is almost wholly owned by an increasingly small number of ultra wealthy conglomerates (Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom control most of the US media). They are for profit entities that benefit hugely from the US tax code that favors big corporations, and lax anti trust laws that allow them to destroy or swallow smaller companies. It would be suicidal for any of their news outlets to disrupt the status quo and question the system that keeps them in business, so they don’t. Issues pertaining to poverty, unions, international trade agreements and wealth inequality are given little attention in the mainstream media, and for good reason. If the public were aware of the economic injustices foisted upon them from above, they wouldn’t accept it and the system would come crashing down. Corporate media outlets have no interest in this happening, so they don’t report on it.

The mythology that pure free markets are the key to economic success is then repeated dutifully by reporters and news programs over and over again, to the point where many Americans genuinely believe that the collapse of a highly deregulated Wall St can only be rectified with more deregulation.

This mythology is incredibly dangerous when enacted at the highest level of government. We narrowly avoided a Romney Presidency where austerity and tax cuts would have been implemented to solve the country’s problems, but there is a Republican Congress still bent on ensuring government stays out of the economy. The Republicans claim that government spending is out of control, and markets should be allowed to correct themselves naturally. The damage this would cause would be immense, and only the Democrats stand in their way to ensure minimal levels of regulation and intervention.

The truth is, the center needs to be redefined in America if it is to experience another period of sustained, equitable growth, and avoid another crippling recession.

And it can’t go any further to the Right.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Less of this, please (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The looming fight over the ‘fiscal cliff’ promises to be another gigantic sellout of the middle classes and poor. President Obama has talked about a ‘Grand Bargain’ he intends to make with the Republicans in order to stop a set of $1.2 trillion spending cuts and tax hikes that are scheduled to take place on Jan. 1st should Congress not agree on a plan to reduce the deficit. According to most economists, the automatic cuts and tax hikes are very likely to cause a recession, reversing progress made over the past year and a half that has seen economic growth and steady job creation.

As Cenk Uygur writes, Obama has essentially sold out the Democratic base before negotiations have begun:

President Obama has proposed that the Grand Bargain include $4 trillion in savings. He has said over and over again that the ratio would be $3 in spending cuts to $1 in tax increases. This is before his legendarily disastrous negotiating begins. So, let’s do some quick math. According to the president’s own plan that would be $3 trillion in spending cuts, which is significantly higher than the current plan of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts.

Let me add one other fact, if all you do is let the Bush tax cuts expire for people making over $250,000, you would already have $1 trillion in tax increases. And we were told because of this election that was already non-negotiable. That’s what we fought to make sure would happen and the president has guaranteed it. So, what exactly do progressives gain out of this Grand Bargain?

The reality is that this is cost shifting. They are going to move the spending cuts away from defense and on to the middle class and poor by hacking away at Medicare and Medicaid. This is defined as courageous in Washington. What a load of crap. What would be courageous is taking on the rich and the powerful and the large political donors, which is the exact opposite of what’s going to happen.

Uygur hits the nail on the head here – the reality of the ‘Grand Bargain’ is that Republicans get to hold the country to ransom, much like they did with the debt ceiling, and force through savage cuts that will hit the poor and elderly. Obama has yet again started negotiating from the right by outlining cuts to the welfare state and a minor tax hikes for the rich  that would be considered conservative in any other era or country.

Glenn Greenwald (painfully accurately) outlines what the negotiations will most likely look like:

STEP ONE: Liberals will declare that cutting social security and Medicare benefits – including raising the eligibility age or introducing “means-testing” – are absolutely unacceptable, that they will never support any bill that does so no matter what other provisions it contains, that they will wage war on Democrats if they try.

STEP TWO: As the deal gets negotiated and takes shape, progressive pundits in Washington, with Obama officials persuasively whispering in their ear, will begin to argue that the proposed cuts are really not that bad, that they are modest and acceptable, that they are even necessary to save the programs from greater cuts or even dismantlement.

STEP THREE: Many progressives – ones who are not persuaded that these cuts are less than draconian or defensible on the merits – will nonetheless begin to view them with resignation and acquiescence on pragmatic grounds. Obama has no real choice, they will insist, because he must reach a deal with the crazy, evil GOP to save the economy from crippling harm, and the only way he can do so is by agreeing to entitlement cuts. It is a pragmatic necessity, they will insist, and anyone who refuses to support it is being a purist, unreasonably blind to political realities, recklessly willing to blow up Obama’s second term before it even begins.

STEP FOUR: The few liberal holdouts, who continue to vehemently oppose any bill that cuts social security and Medicare, will be isolated and marginalized, excluded from the key meetings where these matters are being negotiated, confined to a few MSNBC appearances where they explain their inconsequential opposition.

STEP FIVE: Once a deal is announced, and everyone from Obama to Harry Reid and the DNC are behind it, any progressives still vocally angry about it and insisting on its defeat will be castigated as ideologues and purists, compared to the Tea Party for their refusal to compromise, and scorned (by compliant progressives) as fringe Far Left malcontents.

STEP SIX: Once the deal is enacted with bipartisan support and Obama signs it in a ceremony, standing in front of his new Treasury Secretary, the supreme corporatist Erskine Bowles, where he touts the virtues of bipartisanship and making “tough choices”, any progressives still complaining will be told that it is time to move on. Any who do not will be constantly reminded that there is an Extremely Important Election coming – the 2014 midterm – where it will be Absolutely Vital that Democrats hold onto the Senate and that they take over the House. Any progressive, still infuriated by cuts to social security and Medicare, who still refuses to get meekly in line behind the Party will be told that they are jeopardizing the Party’s chances for winning that Vital Election and – as a result of their opposition – are helping Mitch McConnell take over control of the Senate and John Boehner retain control of the House.

There’s always hope that Obama will stand his ground, and given his recent hammering of Mitt Romney, he has some political capital to play with. Paul Krugman has written a plea to the President to take a firm stance with the Republicans, and go over the so called fiscal cliff if necessary in order to preserve the President’s standing with his base and save the economy from more unnecessary damage:

President Obama has to make a decision, almost immediately, about how to deal with continuing Republican obstruction. How far should he go in accommodating the G.O.P.’s demands?

My answer is, not far at all. Mr. Obama should hang tough, declaring himself willing, if necessary, to hold his ground even at the cost of letting his opponents inflict damage on a still-shaky economy. And this is definitely no time to negotiate a “grand bargain” on the budget that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory……

This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn’t reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 2013. So there’s time to bargain.

More important, however, is the point that a stalemate would hurt Republican backers, corporate donors in particular, every bit as much as it hurt the rest of the country. As the risk of severe economic damage grew, Republicans would face intense pressure to cut a deal after all.

Meanwhile, the president is in a far stronger position than in previous confrontations. I don’t place much stock in talk of “mandates,” but Mr. Obama did win re-election with a populist campaign, so he can plausibly claim that Republicans are defying the will of the American people.

I’m not holding out a huge amount of hope for this – while I think Obama has been incredibly crafty at handling the Republicans in certain regards, when it comes to negotiating on the economy, he has consistently fallen short and allowed big business and the Republicans to define the terms of the debate. The tax system in America is already dangerously skewed to reward the rich and punish the poor, making debt reduction and economic growth almost impossible. An exacerbation of the status quo could be horrific. Tax cuts for the rich do not create economic growth or new jobs, and slashing spending on medicare/medicaid and social security does nothing other than make the lives of millions of Americans unbearably difficult. Austerity is a recipe for disaster during a recession (see much of Europe as an example of this), and Obama may well be on the verge of undoing the progress he made during his first term.

The Left has to intelligently hold the President to account here and tell him that he must not yield to Republican demands. There’s no need to self sabotage (as Glenn Greenwald/Jane Hamsher etc are likely to do), but Obama should be forcefully reminded about who put him back into office, and what he needs to do to retain their loyalty.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Rush Limbaugh Cartoon by Ian D. Marsden of marsdencartoons.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ben Cohen: Listening to the Right wing fallout after President Obama was re-elected has been absolutely fascinating to say the least. From Karl Rove’s extraordinary meltdown live on election night to Sean Hannity’s one-eighty on immigration, it’s fair to say that the GOP is a party with an extreme identity problem. Most people in the party are aware that they have a huge, huge problem going forward – the population is changing in both color and culture, and they are fast becoming demographically irrelevant. If the Republicans want to have electoral success going forward, they are going to have to find a way to attract women, Latinos and African Americans – groups they lost in overwhelming fashion last week.

The problem is that the party is split into so many extreme factions that it will be close to impossible to unify the party under a new, more inclusive platform. The party is comprised of moderates, Libertarians and Tea Party activists, traditional conservatives, neo cons and evangelical Christians. And while there is considerable overlap, each group have their own objectives that are often at odds with each other. Hardcore conservatives don’t want more immigrants while libertarians and moderates understand the need for reform. Evangelicals will never accept gay marriage while moderates and libertarians would, neo cons want more wars, while traditional conservatives do not, and Libertarians vehemently oppose any tax hikes, while moderates understand it to be an occasional necessity.

Most worrying for the Republicans is the prominence of loudmouth media characters like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh – virulent conservatives who influence millions of voters with their fear mongering rhetoric. Without their stamp of approval, Republican candidates lose a vital marketing tool that can seriously affect voter turn out. Had Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin not gone out to bat for Mitt Romney, it’s likely his loss would have been even worse.

In the wake of defeat, the Right wing noise machine is still out in full force because it is not in the business of self reflection. It is in the business of fear and hate – two tried and tested ratings winners that may destroy the Republican Party, but keep the multimillionaire mega mouths on air for eternity.

Rush Limbaugh went on an epic rant after last Tuesday, sarcastically suggesting that Republicans should advocate pot legalization and start their own ‘abortion industry’. He said on his show:

The youth vote! I tell you what we should do, let’s announce, starting around Christmastime, so that we can get close to being Santa Claus ourselves, let’s announce that we are for the legalization of marijuana, and that as a party we’re in favor of forgiving all student loans . . . Is that how we do it?

All these examples . . . Latinos! We’re not going to get the Latino vote by opening the borders and saying, you know what? Let anybody in who wants to come in.

Women. Let’s start our own abortion industry. Let’s go out and get the women’s vote. I just want you to think, would that work?

Not exactly encouraging. And if you thought that was bad, Mark Levin, one of the most nauseating fear merchants had the following to say about the lessons the Right should take from electoral loss:

We conservatives, we do not accept bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny. Period. We will not negotiate the terms of our economic and political servitude. Period. We will not abandon our child to a dark and bleak future. We will not accept a fate that is alien to the legacy we inherited from every single future generation in this country. We will not accept social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats who treat us like lab rats, rather than self-sufficient human beings. There are those in this country who choose tyranny over liberty. They do not speak for us, 57 million of us who voted against this yesterday, and they do not get to dictate to us under our Constitution.

We are the alternative. We will resist. We’re not going to surrender to this. We will not be passive, we will not be compliant in our demise. We’re not good losers, you better believe we’re sore losers! A good loser is a loser forever. Now I hear we’re called ‘purists.’ Conservatives are called purists. The very people who keep nominating moderates, now call us purists the way the left calls us purists. Yeah, things like liberty, and property rights, individual sovereignty, and the Constitution, and capitalism. We’re purists now. And we have to hear this crap from conservatives, or pseudo-conservatives, Republicans.

This ‘purism’ is a recipe for complete disaster, and the sooner the GOP exiles braggarts like Limbaugh and Levin, the sooner it can reform itself into an electorally viable political party. The problem is, letting go of the extremists means taking considerable short term losses. Republicans draw huge support from fearful white Americans who believe they are in imminent danger from marauding Mexicans, gay couples and black Muslims. They are a reliable voting bloc, and losing their enthusiasm would be very detrimental. Their economic platform has to change too – it can no longer be the party of tax cuts and deregulation at all costs – they are no longer trusted to run the economy and their inability to evolve on the issue is becoming a serious electoral burden. Again, the problem is that changing their economic principles would mean massive short term losses. The party is essentially a mouthpiece for big business, and big businesses want tax cuts. Without big business, there is no money to win elections, making it a hit the party cannot afford.

Is there a way out of this conundrum?

Frankly, it’s hard to envision one. The reforms needed will be incredibly painful and will entail some very serious action from prominent Republicans who will have to confront the militants in the party. Tokenism won’t do going forward – the changes will have to be wide reaching and meaningful – and much of the party will hate them. The Republicans will have to redefine conservatism and market it to the new America. We’ve yet to see any evidence that there is serious intention from party members to do so, making their prospects for 2016 all the dimmer.

In short, they’re screwed, and there’s not much they can do about it.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

During a 2011 Republican debate Mitt Romney outlined his steadfast belief that the function of government should be outsourced to the for profit industry whenever possible. When asked about FEMA, the organization that disastrously handled Hurricane Katrina after the Bush administration chronically underfunded it, Romney repeated that  the federal government should play a minimal role in disaster response. He said:

Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better,

When asked by the Huffington Post whether Romney stood by his comments in light of Hurricane Sandy, Romney’s campaign responded with the following:

Gov. Romney wants to ensure states, who are the first responders and are in the best position to aid impacted individuals and communities, have the resources and assistance they need to cope with natural disasters.

There is a slight problem with this. As Jeff Fecke points out in Truthout:

Romney’s paean to states’ rights ignores the very important role of FEMA in coordinating disaster relief in events that transcend state boundaries. Hurricane Sandy is expected to impact fourteen states and the District of Columbia; its impact stretches from Maine to North Carolina, and from West Virginia to Massachusetts.

Furthermore, FEMA manages disasters on scales beyond the capacity of states to manage them. Hurricane Katrina did over $100 billion in damage to Louisiana in 2005. The entire annual budget for the state is about $25 billion. Simply, states that are hit by devastating natural disasters are usually in no position to manage the crisis by themselves.

The Republicans have continued in their efforts to de-fund FEMA despite its crucial role in massive disaster relief (as witnessed in New Orleans), either believing states can fill in more effectively when they clearly can’t, or not really caring one way or the other.

Either way, gigantic storms like Hurricane Sandy that are set to cause billions and billions of dollars in damage across vast sectors of the country highlight the need for a well funded federal government. The situation will no doubt be politicized in the coming week, but my guess is that it will work in Obama’s favor given his belief in the role of government and make Romney’s fanatic opposition to it a big negative.

It’s sad to make this issue political given the countless lives the hurricane will affect, but the reality is that the effectiveness of the response to disasters like this come down to decisions made in Washington. The Republicans are not interested in maintaining or funding effective federal agencies capable of responding to serious disasters, whereas the Democrats are. That’s the choice this November, and Hurricane Sandy unfortunately highlights the need to make the right decision.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Politicians today could learn a thing or two from JFK. In this excellent speech, the 35th President of the United States lays out a forceful defense of government and its positive role in society:

This is what we need to hear from Obama in the next debate. The poll numbers are really not looking good for the President and he needs to come out swinging big time. How does he do that? By appealing to his base and reminding everyone he’s a Democrat, not a centrist like the (again) re-tooled Romney. Instead of having Obama practice zingers, maybe his team should have him sit in front of JFK speeches for a couple of days in preparation for the debate. It may reignite some sorely missing passion.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast encapsulates what most on the left have been thinking over the past two weeks:

What a fantastic last two weeks these have been. I don’t even mean Barack Obama solidifying his lead over Mitt Romney, although that’s perfectly fine. No, I mean the near-mathematically perfect joy of watching these smug and contemptible creatures of the right dodge and swerve and make excuses and, most of all, whine. There is no joy in the kingdom of man so great as the joy of seeing bullies and hucksters laid low, and watching people who have arrogantly spent years assuming they were right about the world living to see all those haughty assumptions die before their eyes. Watching them squirm is more fun than watching Romney and Paul Ryan flail away.

Tomasky is spot on – it is incredibly satisfying to watch the Republicans melt down so dramatically given the incredible hubris they’ve displayed. The Republicans believed the American public would buy into Romney’s vision for the country, buy into the xenophobic, Darwinistic philosophy that divides the country along racial and economic lines, and it simply isn’t working.

The Romney campaign understands they are in deep, deep trouble and you’re going to see a lot of ‘image makeover’ appearances from their candidate in the weeks preceding November 4th. Barring an alien takeover of Romney’s body, it isn’t going to work and we can just look forward to more awkwardness and uncomfortable appearances from the former governor. Romney is incapable of connecting on an emotional or sympathetic level with voters because, well, he can’t. As Tomasky points out “Americans like Barack Obama. They don’t like Romney.” Pretty simple really.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Newt Gingrich is back! This time backing Todd Akin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You’ve got to give it to Gingrich – the man’s ability to leap from astute political timing to disastrous miscalculation is nothing short of astonishing. Gingrich was once the Republican front runner until his fantasies about moon colonies and the enormity of his intellect soured the public’s attitude towards him, bringing his Presidential ambitions to a rather pathetic close.

In true Gingrich fashion, he has decided to propel himself back into the limelight, this time by backing Missouri senate candidate Todd Akin who famously coined the term ‘legitimate rape’. From the Guardian:

At the first major fundraising event held by the Akin campaign since the Missouri senate candidate was blackballed by the party funders and leaders, Gingrich pledged his support and said he was just the first in a wave of well-known Republicans to stand by Akin.

Republican party leaders have said the controversial remarks have made it impossible for Akin to unseat incumbent US senator Claire McCaskill. They have pleaded with him to step down in time to name a replacement for the election.

Gingrich came to Missouri on Monday to back Akin at a $500-a-ticket fundraising lunch, at which he addressed about 50 of the congressman’s supporters – and earlier, the media.

At at a press conference at a train station in Kirkwood, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, Gingrich said Akin was running a winnable race and made his own prediction – that the national Republican leaders, including Mitt Romney, would reverse track and back the candidate once they “adjust to the reality” that he is staying in the race.

This isn’t of course, anything to do with backing Akin. It is a way of Gingrich getting himself back into the public eye using the tried and tested philosophy that any publicity is good publicity.

Gingrich is utterly shameless in his approach to politics – he’ll use any angle possible to keep himself relevant, this time backing a candidate whose views on female reproductive rights were so medieval he even got disowned by Rush Limbaugh.

What’s next on the Gingrich comeback trail? A duet with Chris Brown? A Lance Armstrong solidarity march?

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below: