“Witchy Woman”: Republicans Line Up To Rip Michele Bachmann
They were long afraid to do it, but now conservatives have their knives out for Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Senators in her own party, congressional candidates, a lawmaker in her state’s delegation and leaders of the House Republican Conference are all lambasting the Minnesota Republican for saying the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said merely floating the idea that Huma Abedin — a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — has family ties to the radical Middle East group is “pretty dangerous.”
“I don’t know Huma, but from everything I do know of her, she has a sterling character,” Boehner told reporters Thursday. “And I think accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous.” Later on CNN, Boehner said he expects to speak to Bachmann soon.
Bachmann’s accusation came in a handful of letters to intelligence and national security agencies raising questions about the Muslim Brotherhood. The letters, also signed by four other Republicans, specifically mentioned Abedin, accusing her late father of having ties to the Brotherhood.
Boehner declined to entertain a reporter’s question about whether he would toss Bachmann off the Intelligence Committee, where she’s privy to highly classified information. Behind the scenes, leadership aides said they were shaken by the comments from someone as prominent as Bachmann.
And Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, was described by several sources as incredibly angry when he heard of the incident.
The Republican backlash against Bachmann started with Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) statement on the Senate floor Wednesday, saying she had made “sinister accusations.”
Rep. Jeff Flake, a conservative Arizona lawmaker running for Senate, tweeted “Kudos to @SenJohnMcCain for his statement on Senate floor yesterday defending Clinton aide. Well said.”
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) added: “Rep. Bachmann’s accusations about Sec. Clinton aide Huma Abedin are out-of-line. This kind of rhetoric has no place in our public discourse.”
Even the Minnesota delegation is dispensing with its characteristic niceness. Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim who served in the state Legislature with Bachmann in St. Paul, said it’s not personal, but Bachmann is out of line.
“It’s not right to question the loyalty of fellow Americans without any evidence,” said Ellison, whose district is based in Minneapolis. “I object when people do that.”
Bachmann has said her letters “are unfortunately being distorted.”
And while she did not specifically mention Abedin in a follow-up comment, Bachmann is not backing down from her premise of looking into threats from the Muslim Brotherhood: “I will not be silent as this administration appeases our enemies instead of telling the truth about the threats our country faces.”
She elaborated during an interview Thursday with conservative radio host Glenn Beck.
“She is the chief aide … to the Secretary of State,” Bachmann said of Abedin. “And we quoted from the document, and this has been well reported all across Arab media, that her father, her late father who is now deceased was a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, her brother was a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and her mother was part of what’s called the Muslim Sisterhood.”
Yet more and more Republicans seem to feel more comfortable coming out publicly against Bachmann now — perhaps because she’s no longer engaged in a presidential primary and has returned to the House as a rank-and-file lawmaker.
Ed Rollins, her former presidential campaign manager, said in a post on Fox News’s website that Bachmann has “difficulty with her facts.”
Former New Jersey GOP Gov. Christine Todd Whitman wrote in POLITICO’s Arena, that “the sort of unfounded attack unleashed by Congresswoman Bachmann and her [colleagues] brings back painful memories of a low point in our history.”
Former Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, a recently retired Florida Republican, said “Michele means well but she sometimes doesn’t let proven facts get in the way of a possibility of having national television coverage.”
“Michele would be better served by having competent staff to check out these accusations before she goes out there sometimes appearing to be a ‘bomb thrower,’” Brown-Waite wrote on POLITICO.
Bachmann’s fundraising prowess remains impressive, but requests for donations seem dire. One last month was labeled “URGENT note from Michele,” and urged folks to pony up for her reelection effort against a self-funder who she said “will be able to keep pouring in millions of his own money to defeat me.” Her opponent is Jim Graves, a Minnesota businessman.
“My opponent just released his financial numbers and it will blow you away. His net worth is approximately $111 million. Yes, you read that correctly. One hundred and eleven million dollars,” according to a fundraising email June 26.
She remains a top House fundraiser, bringing in $1.8 million in the second quarter, bringing the total in her campaign account to $1.72 million. At this point in the previous cycle, she had $2.4 million on hand.
The question many Republicans and Democrats alike ask is whether her district — outside St. Paul — truly cares about issues like the allegations she made regarding Abedin.
“They know what she says, they know what she does,” Ellison told POLITICO. “Her district knows her. They know her well. We came into this place together. My district knows me, her district knows her. I guess they either like what she’s saying or they don’t dislike it enough to get rid of her. That’s it.”
By: Jake Sherman, Politico, July 19, 2012
“Safeguarding Privilege”: The Hidden Meaning Of Rush Limbaugh’s Apology
During his long career as the most famous talk radio host in modern history, Rush Limbaugh has only rarely apologized for his rhetoric — so when he does, it’s worth pondering the contrition’s deeper meaning. Was his apology last week for calling a Georgetown student a “slut” just a shrewd move to undercut a potential defamation lawsuit? Was it a frightened response to an intensifying backlash from advertisers? Does it prove the power of the liberal political organizations that have an ideological ax to grind against Limbaugh?
The answer to all those queries is yes — but none of those factors is the genuine news of the matter. Instead, what makes Limbaugh’s apology so important is its context. Capping off other similar brouhahas from across the mediasphere, Limbaugh’s mea culpa — however insincere — is significant because it is proof that America may be both setting some basic standards for political discourse and rejecting the right-wing shrieks about “censorship” and “political correctness.”
Consider what preceded Limbaugh’s apology. Only a few weeks ago, MSNBC announced it had terminated its relationship with Pat Buchanan, who had become a television mainstay despite the Anti-Defamation League documenting his long record as an “unrepentant bigot.” Just prior to that, Los Angeles radio station KFI suspended two hosts for calling Whitney Houston a “crack ho”; CNN suspended commentator Roland Martin for his homophobic Super Bowl tweets; and MSNBC suspended liberal host Ed Schultz for calling a competitor a “right-wing slut.” And before that, there was the seminal big-bang moment that kicked off the whole trend: the removal of Glenn Beck from Fox News — a decision that traced its roots to an advertiser boycott after Beck insisted that President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred of white people.”
In all of these examples, as with Limbaugh’s “slut” comment, the speech in question set off a firestorm not just because it was ideologically extreme, but also because it was indisputably inappropriate. To paraphrase the jurisprudential terms surrounding pornography, it crossed the line from merely offensive to overtly obscene.
Of course, this kind of slander was tolerated for decades without so much as a peep of objection from the media powers that be. Thanks to that silence, talk radio and cable television came to be wholly defined by such political obscenity — a development that made spectacularly lucrative careers for hate-speech demagogues.
That downward spiral seemed destined to continue because any time there was even a hint of protest, the conservative movement’s powerful media intimidation machine trotted out self-righteous rants against “political correctness” and odes to the First Amendment. Looking to manufacture its own insipid version of “political correctness” that crushes dissent, this machine typically portrayed conservatives as victims, marshaling anti-censorship arguments to insinuate that bigotry, anti-Semitism, homophobia and sexism are somehow entitled to a constitutionally protected place in major media outlets.
Not surprisingly, this same argument is now being made by conservatives in defense of their disgraced heroes.
“He has every right to his ideas, as we all have the right to our own,” wrote conservative Cal Thomas in an emblematic screed criticizing MSNBC for firing Buchanan. “It’s called free speech.”
It’s certainly true that all Americans have a right to their own ideas and to advocate for those opinions on their own. But having one’s ideas broadcast to millions of Americans over the public airwaves by major media corporations is not a right. It’s a privilege.
Limbaugh’s apology, made under pressure and designed to safeguard his privilege, concedes that indisputable truth. In doing so, the talk-radio icon is implicitly acknowledging a welcome change — one in which media executives, advertisers and the larger American audience are finally declaring that privileges can be withdrawn from those who violate the most basic standards of decorum.
By: David Sirota, Salon, March 9, 2012
“A Divine Blessing”: The Wrong Way To Respond To A Storm
Hurricane Irene obviously has the attention of millions of Americans, but some are handling the threat better than others. On the right, some of the rhetorical responses haven’t cast conservatives in the best light.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul wants to eliminate FEMA; congressional Republican leaders are reluctant to approve emergency disaster relief; and Fox News is running pieces like these, calling for the elimination of the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service.
As Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast, news stations bombard our televisions with constant updates from the National Hurricane Center.
While Americans ought to prepare for the coming storm, federal dollars need not subsidize their preparations. Although it might sound outrageous, the truth is that the National Hurricane Center and its parent agency, the National Weather Service, are relics from America’s past that have actually outlived their usefulness.
The Fox News piece touts private outlets, including AccuWeather, without alerting readers to a key detail: these private outlets rely on information they receive from the National Weather Service. Indeed, the NWS makes this information available to the private sector for free, since the NWS is a public agency and the data it compiles is public information.
The Fox News item goes on to say, in reference to the Weather Service, “It issues severe weather advisories and hijacks local radio and television stations to get the message out. It presumes that citizens do not pay attention to the weather and so it must force important, perhaps lifesaving, information upon them.”
This is not, by the way, a parody.
Glenn Beck, meanwhile, told his radio audience on Friday that Hurricane Irene “a blessing. It is God reminding you — as was the earthquake last week — it’s God reminding you you’re not in control. Things can happen.”
This divine “blessing” has already killed at least eight people.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 28, 2011
The Deeply Crazy In Virginia’s Obamacare Lawsuit
As my Philadelphia Phillies idled through a two-hour rain delay Thursday night, I curled up with some light reading: a Texas Review of Law & Politics article by the legal team, led by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, that’s challenging the new healthcare individual mandate in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
It’s fascinating stuff.
Cuccinelli and co. follow a long trail from the 18th century British jurist William Blackstone to the Dred Scott case to the New Deal to the present day. The conservative team, at first, makes a tight, prudential case against the Obamacare mandate that I, in my nonprofessional capacity, happen to favor.
In their words:
No existing case needs to be overruled and no existing doctrine needs to be curtailed or expanded for Virginia to prevail on the merits. Nor does Virginia remotely suggest that the United States lacks the power to erect a system of national healthcare. Virginia expressly pled that Congress has the authority to act under the taxing and spending powers as it did with respect to Social Security and Medicare, but that Congress in this instance lacked the political capital and will to do so. No challenge has been mounted by Virginia to the vast sweep and scope of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Instead, only the mandate and penalty were challenged because the claimed power is tantamount to a national police power inasmuch as it lacks principled limits.
In plainer, get-to-the-point English: We grant you the social safety net established under the “Roosevelt Settlement.” We recognize Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. We even grant that this power could conceivably deliver universal healthcare. But for Pete’s sake, don’t try to include “inactivity”—that is, not buying a health insurance plan on the private market—under its purview.
Because, once you regulate the act of doing nothing, what’s left to regulate?
Er, nothing.
Thus, does the state’s power to tax and police become theoretically unlimited?
But, later in the body of the piece, Team Cuccinelli begins to play other, more presently familiar cards. Glenn Beck fans will recognize the faces in the rogue’s gallery: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, progressive philosopher John Dewey, and others who, this argument goes, created the post-New Deal legal and philosophical edifice.
Wouldn’t you know it, this welfare-state stuff constitutes a violation of natural law—which, ipso facto, means economic laissez-faire—and a lurch into moral chaos. Echoing the newly popular Hayek, Cuccinelli’s article asserts the primacy of economic rights while characterizing as relativistic the not-exclusively-liberal jurisprudential argument that personhood and dignity precede the marketplace. (Last I checked, I’ve never seen an unborn baby sign a contract.)
Come conclusion time, the piece sounds eerily like it’s not merely advocating the curtailment of an otherwise defensible attempt to advance the national interest, but rather like a full-throated libertarian manifesto:
The Progressive Meliorists had argued that they should be accorded constitutional space in which to make a social experiment, agreeing in turn to be judged by the results. The New Dealers carried the experiment forward. Seventy years later, results are in suggesting that the experiment is living beyond its means. The statist heirs to the experiment say that it cannot and must not be curtailed, so now they claim this new power.
Social Security and Medicare—an experiment! Just a temporary, 70-year blip on the radar!
So, in 46 pages, we proceed from modest and reasonable to deeply crazy.
It behooves us to ask, what’s Cuccinelli’s endgame?
I think we’ve seen this movie before.
By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, August 18, 2011
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