“Leveraging Influence”: Why The Koch Brothers Want To Refine The Cato Institute
It seems that the effort by billionaires Charles and David Koch to take control of the libertarian Cato Institute is going poorly. “We are not acting in a partisan manner, we seek no ‘takeover’ and this is not a hostile action,” Charles Koch told Bloomberg News. When you are denying partisanship, takeover ambitions and hostile intentions in one sentence, you probably need to rethink your PR strategy.
The Koch brothers have long supported Cato, which they helped found in Washington in 1977. Recently, however, they have come to consider their creation politically unreliable. In a meeting with Robert Levy, the chairman of Cato’s board of directors, they expressed their intention to remake the institute into a party organ that would aid their effort to unseat President Obama. To do so, however, they need control of the board. They intend to get it by suing the widow of William Niskanen, a recently deceased board member, for control of Niskanen’s shares.
Whether they can pull off this coup is for the courts to decide. But the bigger question is: Why in the world would they want to?
In 2006, the first page of Cato’s annual report included an admiring quote from, well, me. “The libertarian Cato Institute is the foremost advocate for small-government principles in American life,” I wrote.
I am not exactly a libertarian. I’m a technocrat. I believe in the government’s ability, and occasionally its responsibility, to help solve problems that the market can’t or won’t resolve on its own. I find much of Cato’s hard-line libertarianism — to the point of purging Will Wilkinson and Brink Lindsey, libertarians who explored making common cause with liberals on select issues — naive, callous and occasionally absurd. And yet, it’s among a handful of think tanks whose work I regularly read and trust.
That’s because Cato is, well, “the foremost advocate for small-government principles in American life.” It advocates those principles when Democrats are in power, and when Republicans are in power. When I read Cato’s take on a policy question, I can trust that it is informed by more than partisan convenience. The same can’t be said for other think tanks in town.
The Heritage Foundation, for instance, is a conservative think tank that professes to pursue goals similar to Cato’s. Where Cato’s motto is “individual liberty, free markets, and peace,” Heritage’s mission is the advancement of “conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”
In practice, however, whatever the Republican Party wants, so does Heritage. In 1989, Heritage helped develop the idea of universal health care delivered by the private sector through an individual mandate. In the early 1990s, it helped Senate Republicans build that concept into a legislative alternative to President Bill Clinton’s proposed reforms. In the early 2000s, Heritage worked with then-Governor Mitt Romney to implement the plan in Massachusetts. Then, when Obama won office and Democrats adopted Heritage’s idea, Heritage promptly fell into step with the Republican Party and turned ferociously against it.
Similarly, when Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was developing his budget and needed a friendly think tank to run the numbers, he turned to the Heritage Foundation. And boy, it made those numbers sprint. Heritage’s analysis showed Ryan’s budget driving down the unemployment rate to 2.8 percent. When the mockery that ensued proved too much for the think tank to bear, it quietly replaced the analysis with another that didn’t include unemployment predictions.
On policy, I probably agree more frequently with the Heritage Foundation than with Cato. But I can’t trust Heritage. I trust Cato. I don’t agree with its health-care expert, Michael Cannon, who considers universal coverage an absurd and deleterious goal. But I take his analysis seriously, and his critiques have informed my thinking. I’m certainly more skeptical of single-payer programs than I would have been without having read his arguments.
Similarly, I never considered myself particularly concerned with executive power, but in his book “The Cult of the Presidency,” Cato Vice President Gene Healy convinced me that “we begin by looking to the president as the solution to all our problems, and we end up believing he’s the source of all our problems,” contributing directly to Washington’s dysfunction. That has grown into a recurring theme in my writing. This column, for example, bears Healy’s imprint at the top. (I pause here to note that Cato is literally giving away Healy’s book, and you should absolutely accept the offer.)
I never had very strong views on intellectual property, but Cato’s Julian Sanchez — who is a friend — has convinced me that our intellectual-property system has become a protection racket for incumbent firms and is an impediment to innovation.
The list could go on, but the point is this: The Koch brothers’ fortune is estimated at more than $60 billion, a couple of thousand times Cato’s annual operating budget. The brothers have started many advocacy organizations, many of which spend their time — and the Kochs’ money — trying to influence the next election. They could begin another such group, one dedicated to providing campaign-season ammunition, without noticing the expense.
What’s puzzling is why the Kochs started this campaign in the first place. It’s easy enough to see what they hoped to achieve: They would quietly take control of Cato and then leverage its credibility to help elect a Republican president. Unfortunately for them, the cries from inside Cato made the “quietly” part impossible. But it would have been impossible in any case: Cato’s credibility is derived from its independence; it wouldn’t last long separated from it.
What the Kochs have in Cato is an advocacy organization that matters in the years between elections, even when the brothers’ preferred candidate doesn’t win, even to people who don’t share their ideology. Cato is an organization that can have more than a marginal impact on elections. It can have a significant impact on policy and governance.
That’s a level of influence that even the Kochs can’t buy. When two of the right wing’s most influential funders don’t recognize that, it should cheer liberals immensely.
“Inextricably Linked”: Scott Brown’s Mitt Romney Problem
When Republican Scott Brown stunned the political world in 2010 by winning the Senate seat in Massachusetts that Democrat Edward M. Kennedy had held for 46 years, it was Mitt Romney, a former governor of the state, who introduced Brown at the victory party in Boston.
A few weeks later, still basking in the rock-star glow of that unexpected win, Brown returned the favor. He introduced Romney at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference as “one of the Republican Party’s bright lights” and “my very, very dear friend.”
But now, as the two men anticipate tough general-election battles in the fall, their paths are beginning to diverge. Brown, who will face a difficult reelection fight, probably against Harvard professor and former Obama administration official Elizabeth Warren, is working hard to define himself as a “Massachusetts moderate,” hoping to build support among Democrats in the deeply blue state.
Romney, meanwhile, has been working equally hard to escape that label, which his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination have used as a slur against him during the primary campaign.
The likely result is that Brown will be forced into a delicate dance in the coming months to distance himself from a political mentor and his state’s other most prominent Republican politician. It is a twist of irony unique to Massachusetts but one that could hold broad significance to the marquee race.
Recent polls show Brown leading Warren, who has drawn national support because of her outspoken warnings about the excesses of Wall Street. But the November contest is widely considered a tossup, and the electoral math is difficult for Brown.
In the small world of Republican Massachusetts politics, the links between the two campaigns are especially close. Gail Gitcho, Romney’s communications director, once served that role for Brown. Colin Reed, Brown’s chief spokesman, used to work for Romney.
Robert Maginn, chairman of the state Republican Party, who is responsible for helping to get Brown reelected and boosting Romney’s chances if he becomes the party’s presidential nominee, is a Romney ally and a former board member at Bain Capital, which Romney founded.
And both campaigns employ strategist Eric Fehrnstrom to craft essentially opposite messages for the candidates — helping Romney argue that he is a reliable conservative and Brown present himself as an independent centrist.
“It might be easier for Brown if one of these other candidates were the nominee,” said Todd Domke, a Massachusetts-based Republican strategist. “Then he’d just distance himself totally and run as an independent. But he can’t plausibly do that entirely from Romney. The links between them are inextricable.”
Fehrnstrom referred questions to Brown’s campaign manager, Jim Barnett, who said that the campaigns’ overlap is “deep inside baseball” and that Massachusetts voters will support Brown’s moderate approach over what he said would be an overtly partisan turn by Warren.
“I don’t think voters care about the hired help,” he said of the shared consultants. “Massachusetts voters are very sophisticated, and they recognize that Scott Brown is an independent Republican and his own person.”
With movie-star good looks and an everyman image, Brown won the 2010 special election against Attorney General Martha Coakley, in part by rallying a small group of tea party activists behind his promise to oppose Democratic efforts to reform the health-care system.
Since his election, he has sometimes angered those core supporters with his willingness to cross party lines and vote with Democrats on key issues, an increasingly rare trait in Washington as moderates such as Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) prepare to depart.
Some observers say he will use those efforts to present himself to the Democratic state as a different kind of candidate than Romney.
“Scott Brown has to sell himself as very different from Mitt Romney,” said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. “He will have to convey that he’s one of the few people left in American politics who’s willing to cross party lines and be that moderate voice so missing in American politics right now.”
Brown was an early endorser of Romney’s presidential campaign. But a Romney victory in the Massachusetts Republican primary Tuesday was a forgone conclusion — he took more than 72 percent of the vote — which meant that Brown did not need stump for him in in the state in recent weeks.
With the Senate in session, Brown was in Washington on Tuesday and did not attend Romney’s Super Tuesday rally in Boston.
As many as 800,000 more residents are expected to vote in November than took part in the special election that Brown won. Many of them are Democrats who support Obama’s reelection.
To win, Brown probably would have to persuade several hundred thousand people who vote for Obama to cross party lines and support him for the Senate.
With those voters in mind, he is pitching his independence — in contrast to Romney, who has been trying to frame his tenure as Massachusetts governor as “severely conservative.”
“I don’t worry about the party line. I don’t get caught up in petty fights,” Brown told a crowd in Worcester in January as he began his reelection effort.
But in the face of an effort by Warren to nationalize the race, Brown may find it more difficult to distance himself from his fellow Massachusetts Republican than he would from a different nominee.
Warren — who will compete in a primary for the Democratic nomination in September, although no Democrat has mounted a serious challenge — will say that Democrats who support Obama should vote against Brown. Her argument is that a vote for Brown would help Republicans take over the Senate and thwart the president’s agenda — Brown and Romney are no different, she says.
Last week, for instance, her campaign highlighted Brown’s support for a controversial amendment in the Senate that would allow employers to avoid providing insurance coverage for contraception if they hold moral objections to it.
Democrats think that Warren, who helped create the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is the perfect messenger in a campaign that they think will revolve, nationally and in Massachusetts, around restoring a balance between the middle class and corporations and the wealthy. A well-known figure on the left, she is likely to receive support from Democrats nationwide, although Brown starts with a significantly larger campaign war chest than Warren.
“The easiest way to tie somebody to something is with their own words. Scott Brown’s endorsement of Mitt Romney, his long history, their shared staffers and advisers — there’s a close tie between these two guys,” said John Walsh, chairman of the state Democratic Party.
But there are some areas in which Brown could easily draw distinctions with the former governor: He supports abortion rights, favors stem-cell research and backed ending the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gay service members.
Enraging many conservatives, Brown supported the Dodd-Frank financial legislation, which all of the Republican presidential candidates have vowed to repeal.
And while Romney struggles to overcome a reputation as a stiff campaigner uncomfortable with his wealth, Brown has an appealing personal story of overcoming a hardscrabble childhood. He famously drives a pickup truck and wears a barn coat.
When Romney awkwardly told a group of voters in Michigan last week that his wife, Ann, drives “a couple of Cadillacs,” a spokesman for presidential rival Newt Gingrich invoked Brown’s name to mock the former Massachusetts governor.
“Just doesn’t have the same Scott Brown ring to it,” R.C. Hammond tweeted.
Some Massachusetts strategists said Brown’s plan to focus on state issues might be made easier, ironically, by the lack of a competitive presidential race in the state. Because Obama is expected to win Massachusetts easily, all the electoral excitement in the state will focus almost exclusively on the Senate contest.
“Massachusetts voters understand the presidential election is not in doubt in the state. The focus will be on the Senate,” said Rob Gray, a Boston-based Republican strategist who worked for Romney when he was governor. “It could be awkward, but Scott will do what he has to do to distance himself. And depending on the dynamics of the race, it may come to transpire that he does not have to distance himself that much.”
By: Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post, March 8, 2012
“The Pillbox Primary”: GOP Women Being Pressed Into Service To Do What Their Husbands Cannot
It seems time to declare this election cycle the “pillbox primary,” as every day seems to bring a name, idea or concept about women in America that is so vintage it still smells like the mothballs in your grandmother’s attic.
Forget about sluts, the pill, sluts taking the pill or all-male congressional panels — those offenses are so three days ago. Let’s move on to the image of Ann Romney, Karen Santorum and Callista Gingrich cleaning up after their husbands on Tuesday night.
Ann Romney greeted the crowd in Boston with a genuine smile and an I-get-it introduction for her husband. “Do you know what women care about?” she told the hometown crowd. “Women care about jobs. Women care about the economy. They care about their children, and they care about the debt, and they’re angry.”
Darn right, Ann. Would Mitt mind if we offered you up for the brokered convention?
Or Karen Santorum, who just by standing next to Rick Santorum on stage in Steubenville, Ohio, on Tuesday night told voters there’s more to the man than the caricature he has allowed his image to become. Would a lawyer-turned-neonatal nurse like Karen really marry a caveman in a sweater vest, her smile says. Of course not.
And she’s gone one better in the last week, conducting her first national interviews of the entire campaign season to give voters a better sense of who her husband really is beyond someone who calls college graduates snobs, even though he has a law degree and an MBA.
She also revealed herself to be a keen strategist in her own right, telling CBS’s Jan Crawford that she often weighs in on Santorum’s message and suggested he not get bogged down in the contraception issue, advice he obviously ignored.
“My advice to him was stop answering the question,” she said. “Tell ’em, ‘I’m not going to answer this question. Let me tell you what I know about national security. I know a lot about national security.’ ”
For her part, Callista Gingrich has begun introducing her husband at events and even headlining a few of her own, all with a not-so-subtle message that while Newt has had his problems in the marriage department, now that he’s devoted to a brainy, blonde French horn player, how bad could he be?
Should this former Hill staffer and very poised woman really have to try to make up for Newt’s spotty track record? No, but she’s doing it with a smile on her face anyway.
There is a very June Cleaver feeling to all of this that seems below the women being pressed into service to do what their husbands cannot — come across as trustworthy, relatable and aware that the 21st century started a while ago.
A better strategy for the candidates might be for them to listen to their wives — or say goodbye to the women’s vote in November. (You do know women make up 55 percent of voters, right?)
After polls earlier this year showed women voters drifting away from President Obama, an NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll this week showed Republicans have reversed that trend.
They are now losing ground so fast among women that they will have a hard time making it up in the general election. Women now approve of the job the president is doing 54 percent to 40 percent, while the president leads Romney in a head-to-head match up 55 percent to 37 percent among women.
It’s hard to think that the last month in Republican politics did not have nearly everything to do with that.
No amount of sending Ann, Karen or Callista in front of the cameras will make women forget seeing only men discuss contraception for women, or hearing Rush Limbaugh unleash a sickening perversion against a female law student, only to be greeted by silence on the right.
The Republican candidates can turn the tide by leading their party in a better direction — with policies that strengthen the country, plans to improve the future for children, and a little respect in the form of telling Limbaugh that his instinct to talk about prostitutes while the rest of us were talking about health care and religious liberty is making us all wonder what he does in his free time.
Maybe somewhere out there is a woman who can help him clean up his mess, too.
By: Patricia Murphy, She The People, The Washington Post, March 8, 2012
“Honoring The Value Of Owners”: LDS Church-Owned Radio Station Stands By Rush Limbaugh
More than forty advertisers—from Allstate Insurance to Sears—and two radio stations have dumped Rush Limbaugh since he went on the offensive against Sandra Fluke, calling the Georgetown student a “slut” and “prostitute” for her advocacy of insurance coverage for contraceptive medications.
But not KTTH 770 AM in Seattle, Washington; a station owned and operated by Bonneville Communications, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
As protests mounted Monday, a KTTH spokesperson defended Limbaugh, using a boilerplate statement from his syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks:
AM 770 The Truth is committed to providing its listeners with access to a broad range of opinion and commentary. The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue. Radio can be and has been a great platform for a lively exchange of ideas as we seek to provide understanding. In this case, we wish Mr. Limbaugh would have been more civil in his treatment of the topic and his characterization of those involved, but we respect his right, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.
Here are the Limbaugh “opinions” Bonneville-owned KTTH would defend, as voiced on-air February 29 and March 1:
“What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.”
“Can you imagine if you’re her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be? Your daughter goes up to a congressional hearing conducted by the Botox-filled Nancy Pelosi and testifies she’s having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope.”
“She’s having so much sex, it’s amazing she can still walk.”
“Who bought your condoms in sixth grade?”
“So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
All of this in response to Ms. Fluke’s efforts to testify in support of employer-provided health care coverage that includes prescription birth control medicine used by millions of American women not only for contraception but also for cancer prevention and treatment of polycystic ovaries and endometriosis.
LDS Church-subsidiary Bonneville International owns 29 radio stations. It is one of seven religiously-owned or affiliated national radio networks, including the American Family Association network (165 stations), Bible Broadcasting Network (37 stations), Educational Media Association (290 stations), Family Stations (67 stations), Moody Bible Institute (36 stations), and the for-profit Christian broadcaster Salem Communications (97 stations—for-profit Christian broadcaster).
No other religiously-owned or affiliated radio network in the country airs Rush Limbaugh—except the LDS-owned Bonneville International.
In October 2010, LDS/Bonneville-owned KSL radio in Salt Lake City dumped political commentator Sean Hannity, a move some viewed as an effort to align programming with a recently adopted corporate mission and values statement including the following points:
“I honor principles espoused by our owner in the products and services I provide.”
“I promote integrity, civility, morality, and respect for all people.”
“I seek to lift, inspire, and help others find enduring happiness.”
“I seek to instill light and knowledge in my work.”
How does Rush Limbaugh’s crass misogyny (and public humiliation of a civilian) honor the values of its owners?
BY: Joanna Brooks, Religion Dispatches, March 8, 2012
“Ignorance Is Strength”: What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt
One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education. First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education. And after World War II, public support, including the G.I. Bill and a huge expansion of public universities, helped large numbers of Americans to get college degrees.
But now one of our two major political parties has taken a hard right turn against education, or at least against education that working Americans can afford. Remarkably, this new hostility to education is shared by the social conservative and economic conservative wings of the Republican coalition, now embodied in the persons of Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney.
And this comes at a time when American education is already in deep trouble.
About that hostility: Mr. Santorum made headlines by declaring that President Obama wants to expand college enrollment because colleges are “indoctrination mills” that destroy religious faith. But Mr. Romney’s response to a high school senior worried about college costs is arguably even more significant, because what he said points the way to actual policy choices that will further undermine American education.
Here’s what the candidate told the student: “Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And, hopefully, you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”
Wow. So much for America’s tradition of providing student aid. And Mr. Romney’s remarks were even more callous and destructive than you may be aware, given what’s been happening lately to American higher education.
For the past couple of generations, choosing a less expensive school has generally meant going to a public university rather than a private university. But these days, public higher education is very much under siege, facing even harsher budget cuts than the rest of the public sector. Adjusted for inflation, state support for higher education has fallen 12 percent over the past five years, even as the number of students has continued to rise; in California, support is down by 20 percent.
One result has been soaring fees. Inflation-adjusted tuition at public four-year colleges has risen by more than 70 percent over the past decade. So good luck on finding that college “that has a little lower price.”
Another result is that cash-strapped educational institutions have been cutting back in areas that are expensive to teach — which also happen to be precisely the areas the economy needs. For example, public colleges in a number of states, including Florida and Texas, have eliminated entire departments in engineering and computer science.
The damage these changes will inflict — both to our nation’s economic prospects and to the fading American dream of equal opportunity — should be obvious. So why are Republicans so eager to trash higher education?
It’s not hard to see what’s driving Mr. Santorum’s wing of the party. His specific claim that college attendance undermines faith is, it turns out, false. But he’s right to feel that our higher education system isn’t friendly ground for current conservative ideology. And it’s not just liberal-arts professors: among scientists, self-identified Democrats outnumber self-identified Republicans nine to one.
I guess Mr. Santorum would see this as evidence of a liberal conspiracy. Others might suggest that scientists find it hard to support a party in which denial of climate change has become a political litmus test, and denial of the theory of evolution is well on its way to similar status.
But what about people like Mr. Romney? Don’t they have a stake in America’s future economic success, which is endangered by the crusade against education? Maybe not as much as you think.
After all, over the past 30 years, there has been a stunning disconnect between huge income gains at the top and the struggles of ordinary workers. You can make the case that the self-interest of America’s elite is best served by making sure that this disconnect continues, which means keeping taxes on high incomes low at all costs, never mind the consequences in terms of poor infrastructure and an undertrained work force.
And if underfunding public education leaves many children of the less affluent shut out from upward mobility, well, did you really believe that stuff about creating equality of opportunity?
So whenever you hear Republicans say that they are the party of traditional values, bear in mind that they have actually made a radical break with America’s tradition of valuing education. And they have made this break because they believe that what you don’t know can’t hurt them.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 8, 2012
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