“Agog At His Magesty”: Grover Norquist Delivers The GOP’s Marching Orders
All hail Grover Norquist!
Bow down, Lindsey Graham. The Republican senator from South Carolina dared to say he might consider supporting a tax increase — but then Norquist paid him a visit on Wednesday. “Every once in a while you have somebody with an impure thought like Lindsey Graham,” Norquist told me. But after their talk, Norquist could report that “Graham will never vote for a tax increase.”
Kneel before him, Tom Coburn. The Republican senator from Oklahoma had toyed with the idea of supporting a deficit-reduction deal that includes some tax increases, before Norquist conquered him. “He had a moment of weakness where he thought you had to raise taxes to get spending restraint,” Norquist said. “He now knows that’s not true.”
Prostrate yourselves, House Republicans. On Thursday, a day after Republican senators hosted Norquist on their side of the Capitol, GOP House members opened up the Ways and Means Committee room so that he could counsel them on The Pledge, an anti-tax edict written by Norquist and signed by all but four House Republicans, most Republican senators and Mitt Romney.
Lawmakers leaving their private audience with Norquist were agog at his majesty. “I agree with him tremendously,” reported Rep. John Fleming (R-La.).
But Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on Ways and Means, had a less favorable view of the spectacle as he stood in the hallway while Republicans in the committee room kissed Norquist’s ring.
“They’re in this committee room to hold royal court for the person who has asked people to take a pledge . . . not their constituents,” Levin complained. “Essentially, Norquist is here to hold feet to the fire when we need open minds.”
Norquist doesn’t dispute that. The tax-pledge effort he began a quarter-century ago is now the defining mantra of the party: no tax increases, no how, no way, no matter the consequences. With the possible exception of Newt Gingrich, Norquist has done more than anybody to bring about Washington’s political dysfunction.
Since he began, the federal debt has increased roughly eightfold. But Norquist still believes that as soon as next year victory will be his — all because of his pledge.
“Because almost all the Republicans took it, it became, actually, the branding of the party,” Norquist told me Thursday.
Although I think Norquist’s approach has been disastrous for the country, I am awed by his success with the pledge. Now Senate Democrats are trying to turn him into the GOP bogeyman of this election cycle.
“The leader of the Republican Party is up here today on the Hill. . . . You know who it is: It’s Grover Norquist,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said at a news conference Thursday, a couple of days after charging, with some validity, that Norquist “has the entire Republican Party in the palm of his hand.”
Norquist didn’t quarrel with the charge, as Fox News’s Chad Pergram put it to him, that he’s giving Republicans “their marching orders.”
“The modern Republican Party works with the taxpayer movement,” he replied, satisfied that “post-pledge, post-tea party, they’re not going to raise taxes.”
That’s probably because Norquist has convinced them that the long-sought victory is just months away. He predicts that Republicans will keep control of the House, take over the Senate, elect Romney president and promptly enact the Ryan budget. “It would be nice if some Democrats join, but it’s not necessary,” he said, arguing that the plan crafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) could clear the Senate with only 50 votes as part of the budget “reconciliation” process.
This seems unlikely. Even if they could use the procedure Norquist favors (anti-deficit rules make this difficult) Republicans would have to make their plan temporary, like the George W. Bush tax cuts. And the backlash is likely to make the Obamacare rebellion look tame. We’d quickly be back in the stalemate.
But Norquist’s loyalists in Congress are holding their ranks, dutifully coordinating talking points with him after their private tutorial Thursday on “how the pledge should be communicated.”
“We have a spending problem, and the taxpayer pledge helps us focus on the problem,” House conservative leader Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters as he departed.
“The problem in Washington is spending,” echoed Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.).
Finally, out came the 55-year-old Norquist, all of 5-foot-6 with a graying beard. He spoke expansively to reporters for more than half an hour, waving off the notion that he might be becoming a PR problem for the party.
“There are significantly more Republicans in Congress since they started taking the pledge,” he said. “The advocates of spending more and taxing more are losing.”
Losing? Or just locked in an unending blood feud?
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, June 22, 2012
“Quiet Room Magical Thinking”: Mitt Romney Pretends Congress Doesn’t Exist
Mitt Romney went before a group of Latino public officials today to offer some remarks on immigration. Calling it a “plan” would be too generous, although there were a couple of details, some of them perfectly reasonable, like giving green cards to people who get an advanced degree at an American university. But the part everyone has been waiting for—his reaction to President Obama’s recently-announced mini-DREAM Act—was pretty disappointing, because it engaged in a kind of magical thinking that has become increasingly untenable:
Some people have asked if I will let stand the President’s executive action. The answer is that I will put in place my own long-term solution that will replace and supersede the President’s temporary measure. As President, I won’t settle for a stop-gap measure. I will work with Republicans and Democrats to find a long-term solution.
I will prioritize measures that strengthen legal immigration and make it easier. And I will address the problem of illegal immigration in a civil but resolute manner. We may not always agree, but when I make a promise to you, I will keep it.
It’s certainly nice to know he’ll be “resolute,” but you may have noticed that getting a major immigration reform through Congress is kind of a difficult thing to do. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both tried to do it and failed. So how is Mitt going to accomplish this feat? He will “put in place my own long-term solution.” Now why didn’t anyone think of that before?
This isn’t something new, of course—most challengers act as though through the overwhelming force of their personality, they’ll sweep away all opposition, bring both parties together, and get things done. The messy details are left for when you’re actually in office. Obama certainly talked that way four years ago. But after all we’ve been through in the last few years, isn’t it incumbent upon a presidential candidate to at least not pretend that enacting large, sweeping legislation that requires bipartisan cooperation on an intensely controversial issue is going to be a piece of cake?
Last weekend, Bob Schieffer asked Romney what he would do about the Obama policy while he was getting his awesome new policy in place, and Romney dodged the question. But no one who knows anything about Congress believes it’ll be anything but enormously difficult.
And it’ll be particularly difficult for Mitt Romney. It isn’t a matter of the complexity of the issue, as it was with health care reform where there were hundreds of small and large details to be worked out. In this case, it’s about the fragile coalition that would have to be assembled to pass immigration reform. I spoke today to a staffer for one of the most influential members of the House on the immigration issue, and he pointed out that there have been comprehensive immigration bills sitting around for ten years. The problem, he said, is the House Republicans. As long as they’re in control, no immigration bill that grants any undocumented immigrant anything other than a swift kick in the pants has any hope of passing. If a President Romney was to pass immigration reform, he’d have to do it with overwhelming support from Democrats and enough moderate Republicans peeled off to get to 218 votes.
But this is Mitt Romney we’re talking about. The guy who is going to have to spend his entire first term convincing conservatives he’s still one of them, lest he face a primary challenge from the right. What do you think are the chances he’d take on a high-profile fight with his party’s right wing, with the odds stacked against him?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 21, 2012
“With Eyes Wide Shut”: Right Wing Spins The Media With “Job-Killer” Claims
The media is indiscriminately using the term “job-killer” to describe government policies and programs, but without verifying or substantiating the claims, according to a new study. Use of the phrase by major media outlets has exploded since President Obama took office and rapidly circulates throughout the press with little or no fact checking of the “job killer” allegations.
“Job-Killing” Rhetoric From the Right
“The news media, by failing to seek to verify allegations made about government policies and proposals, typically act more like a transmission belt for business, Republican, and conservative sources than an objective seeker of truth when it comes to the term ‘job killer,'” its authors found.
The independent study, Job Killers in the News: Allegations without Verification, conducted by Prof. Peter Dreier of Occidental College and Christopher R. Martin of the University of Northern Iowa, reviewed the use of the term “job-killer” in stories from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Associated Press going back to 1984.
The vast majority of the “job-killer” allegations were directed at federal or state government policies to regulate business (particularly policies towards the environment, taxes, health care, and raising the minimum wage). Most of the sources for the “job-killer” charges came from business spokespersons and Republican Party officials, but in around 17 percent of the articles and editorials, news outlets used the phrase without citing a source. In 91.6 percent of the stories about “job killing” government policies, the media failed to cite any evidence or quote an authoritative source to corroborate the claim.
“With little or no fact checking of ‘job killer’ allegations, Americans have no way to know if there is any evidence for these claims or whether they are simply a cynical political ploy used to discredit opponents’ policy ideas,” Dreier and Martin noted.
Indeed, according to the authors, “There is no correlation between the frequency of the phrase ‘job killer’ and unemployment rate. Instead, ‘job killer’ allegations correspond much more closely with political cycles,” particularly during election season and under Democratic administrations.
“Job-killer” allegations were barely used under the Clinton administration and virtually disappeared during the eight years George W. Bush was president — despite job growth under Clinton and job loss under Bush — and skyrocketed once Barack Obama became president. The number of news stories alleging that a particular government policy would be a “job killer” increased 1,156% between the first three years of the George W. Bush administration and the first three years of the Obama administration.
“The cavalier nature in which the ‘job killer’ allegations are reported suggests that term is used loosely by those who oppose government regulations, and they can get away with it because news organizations fail to ask—or at least report – whether they have any evidence for the claims they make,” the study’s authors wrote.
The Wall Street Journal was the most likely news organization to use the phrase with no attribution.
By: Emily Osborne, Center For Media and Democracy, June 22, 2012
“Two Koch’s And A Smile”: Weekend Of Secrecy For Mitt Romney And Big GOP Donors
It’s going to be a big weekend in the world of big conservative money: Both Mitt Romney and billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch are holding hush-hush events with wealthy donors designed to keep the dollars coming in.
Romney’s three-day retreat, which is being held at the Deer Valley Resort in Park City, Utah, is an opportunity for about 700 Romney’s biggest fundraisers to get some face time with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. (Many of them are “bundlers” – wealthy and well-connected individuals who call on their family, friends and associates to max out their contributions to Romney and the GOP – who have raised in the area of $250,000 for Romney.) Some of the biggest names in the Republican Party, and many of the top contenders to be Romney’s running mate, are also coming to Park City: CBS News has confirmed that attendees will include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Republican strategist Karl Rove, former Reagan chief of staff James Baker, Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker.
Republican strategist Mary Matalin, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and former Utah governor Mike Leavitt are among the other big names expected to attend. The Romney campaign would not discuss who is attending the retreat, which is not open to the press. Spokespersons for two top contenders for the vice presidential slot – Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie – told CBS News the politicians were invited but would not attend for scheduling reasons. CBS News has also confirmed that Olympic champion figure skater Dorothy Hamill, who participated in the Romney-run 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, will attend.
Romney was not expected to compete in terms of fundraising with President Obama, who broke records in raising nearly $750 million in the 2008 cycle. But he has largely kept pace thanks in part to his personal engagement with wealthy donors, which has come in the form of dozens of intimate meetings around the country and, as the New York Times notes, invitations to his summer home at New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee. The Romney campaign, which has garnered a reputation for aggressive and prompt engagement with potential donors, outraised the Obama campaign $78.6 million to $60 million in May.
While Romney and his Republican allies are busy cultivating donors in Utah, the Koch brothers will be in San Diego holding a convention designed to help them generate hundreds of millions of dollars to advance conservative causes. At least we think they will: The event is shrouded in secrecy, and neither representatives for Koch Industries nor a number of expected attendees contacted by CBS News would even confirm that it is taking place.
Word got out last week that it was indeed happening, when Minnesota television station owner Stanley Hubbard confirmed its existence – and San Diego location – to Politico. In an apparent attempt to head off protesters and potential infiltrators, organizers and attendees will not say exactly where the convention will be held; a San Diego alternative newspaper is holding a “Find the Koch Brothers Confab” contest in order to figure it out. (CBS News’ attempts to confirm the venue have thus far been fruitless, though we have our suspicions.) Liberals have their own version of the Koch brothers’ confab called The Democracy Alliance, where security is similarly strict; both events are awash in security personnel looking to escort uninvited guests (such as reporters) off the premises.
Organizations tied to the Koch brothers are reportedly planning to spend nearly $400 million on the 2012 campaign cycle, and their conferences are largely designed to garner contributions to the cause. Last year, Mother Jones infiltrated a Koch conference in Vail where Christie was a speaker and recorded Charles Koch thanking donors who had given more than $1 million; the list, which is here, includes more than thirty names. According to a leaked invitation, Koch conferences have attracted conservative heavy hitters such as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, Govs. Jindal and Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Rep. Ryan, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
The semi-secrecy of the Romney retreat and extreme secrecy of the Koch conference mirror the secrecy that currently exists in the world of campaign financing. The Romney campaign, unlike the Obama campaign, refuses to disclose its bundlers, which makes it more difficult for the public to assess what his biggest donors might expect in exchange for their money. The Koch brothers funnel money into groups like Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit “social welfare organization” that does not need to disclose its donors because it is incorporated as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit with the Internal Revenue Service. (More on that here.) And while the super PACs that the Supreme Court freed up to spend unlimited amounts to influence the election do have to disclose their donors, they can simply funnel donations through 501(c)(4) groups – which in many cases are their sister organizations – effectively allowing the super PACs to get around that pesky disclosure requirement. (There is also anonymity on the other side of the spectrum: The Federal Election Commission does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 in an election cycle.)
In this election cycle, the Republicans appear to have a significant advantage when it comes to outside group spending – though because 501(c)(4)s and related organizations only have to file with the IRS once per year, it’s impossible to know exactly how much money is flowing into the system. The Obama campaign, which says it expects to be outspent overall, estimated Wednesday that Romney, the Republican National Committee and the outside groups will spend $1.225 billion on ads alone before November.
Meanwhile, Romney and Mr. Obama continue to spend much of their time traveling the country to attend fundraisers, many of them closed to the press. CBS News’ Mark Knoller reported earlier this month that the president has participated in 160 fundraisers since filing for re-election last April, and he has a number scheduled for next week; Romney, whose campaign frequently holds fundraisers it doesn’t let the media know about, plans to follow his weekend retreat with his big donors in Utah by heading to Phoenix, Arizona for another fundraiser on Monday.
By: Brian Montopoli, Senior Political Writer, CBSNews Political Hotsheet, June 22, 2012
“Humanity Hanging In The Balance”: Healthcare And Justice Scalia’s Broken Moral Compass
The Supreme Court’s highly anticipated ruling on Obama’s healthcare reforms could come any day now. Whatever the verdict, expect much ado about the hotly debated role of broccoli in healthcare and arcane explanations of the Commerce Clause that is at the center of the legal case against the individual mandate. But buried deep in hearings filled with legalese and judicial sparring was a short exchange that illuminates an American ideal that truly hangs in the balance with this decision—the idea that in a civilized society, we do not sit idly by and watch our neighbors die.
The specific back-and-forth in question occurred on the third day of the hearings between Justice Antonin Scalia and Solicitor General Donald Verilli, the administration official charged with defending the law in court. It went like this:
GENERAL VERRILLI: No. It’s because you’re going—in the health care market, you’re going into the market without the ability to pay for what you get, getting the health care service anyway as a result of the social norms that allow—that—to which we’ve obligated ourselves so that people get health care.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, don’t obligate yourself to that. Why—you know?
GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I can’t imagine that that—that the Commerce Clause would —would forbid Congress from taking into account this deeply embedded social norm.
JUSTICE SCALIA: You—you could do it.
If you are not a frequent watcher of the Court and therefore not fluent in the cadences of judicial banter, this short, seemingly banal interchange in an exhaustive debate may not have even registered. The “deeply embedded social norm” that Verilli refers to—in fact seems confused that he has to explain to Justice Scalia—is the norm that dictates that people will step in to aid others who are ailing or in danger of death.
Scalia’s statement that “you could do it [defy these norms]” eerily evoked the appalling moment at the September 2011 Republican presidential debate when the audience wildly applauded Wolf Blitzer’s stunned probing of whether candidate Ron Paul would allow a 30-year-old uninsured man in a healthcare emergency to die. “Yes!” shouted unashamed audience members, turning a presidential debate into something reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum. When Justice Scalia argued against the social norms that Verilli was presuming sacrosanct, he was essentially saying, “Let him die!”
While we’ve grown to expect this kind of mob mentality from a radical right wing whipped up in a Tea Party frenzy, this bizarre display of indifference from a Supreme Court Justice breaks new ground in an evolving culture that seems to prize resistance to any and all government over the compassion that is the essence of civilized society. The right screams often and loudly that President Obama has declared war on the Judeo-Christian underpinnings they hold as American as apple pie. But in fact, it is Justice Scalia, from his exalted perch, who appears intent on vacating the Golden Rule and undermining the parable of the Good Samaritan, both core to Christian theology.
Dahlia Lithwick hit the proverbial nail on the head in her description of Justice Scalia when she wrote in Slate in 2003:
Scalia doesn’t come into oral argument all secretive and sphinxlike, feigning indecision on the nuances of the case before him. He comes in like a medieval knight, girded for battle. He knows what the law is. He knows what the opinion should say. And he uses the hour allocated for argument to bludgeon his brethren into agreement.
Scalia, ever the showman, joked during the March hearings that having to read the entire healthcare law in order to rule on it would amount to cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited by the Constitution. At the same time, he displayed an egregious ignorance regarding which provisions in the bill actually passed. And on the final morning of arguments, Scalia laid his cards on the table when he argued that stripping out the individual mandate would cause the whole law to topple.
The mandate, more descriptively titled the “free-rider clause,” fines uninsured individuals who expect taxpayer-supported emergency services to cover calamities that befall them. It is also the component of the reform that allows insurance companies to affordably cover those with pre-existing conditions. Cutting the mandate, Scalia mused, cuts the heart out of the entire reform and would almost certainly kick the whole matter back to a gridlocked Congress, while millions of lives hang in the balance.
A recent Pew poll shows that approximately 83 percent of Americans are affiliated with an organized faith, be it a form of Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Hinduism or Buddhism. A whopping 78.4 percent of us fall somewhere in the Christian camp. Yet, it is core Christian values that are currently on trial at the Supreme Court.
Perhaps this emotional dissonance is what drives a new poll from the New York Times that shows that only 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing. Once a venerated institution that seemed immune to the partisan squabbles of the other branches of government, the Court has consistently displayed its corporate and right-wing allegiances in decisions that span from 2000’s Bush v Gore when it picked our president and irrevocably altered the course of history (Scalia later told Americans to “get over it!” when asked about the decision) to the 2009 Citizens United decision, the impact of which is being felt acutely this election season. Now, 75 percent of Americans say that the Justices’ political preferences motivate their decision making on the bench.
When healthcare reform passed in 2010, the United States ranked dead last among similar countries in a study comparing cost and quality of healthcare. America consistently spends twice as much for lesser care than its industrialized allies. While the Affordable Care Act left some of the best solutions on the table, it offers real hope to the one in four American adults that go without healthcare each year due to job transitions or other circumstances. So many of our neighbors live in terror that a single unexpected calamity will drive their family into bankruptcy spurred by emergency medical bills. Now, when the verdict comes in, those fellow Americans can add a new fear to their list: that a Conservative Catholic Supreme Court Justice will lead the charge to let them die.
By: Ilyse Hogue, The Nation, June 18, 2012
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