“Misleading The People”: The Deeper Problem With Media Acceptance Of Republican Irresponsibility
Alarms are going up all over the progressive commentariat about the early signs of Beltway complacency–particularly in the MSM–about Republicans threats to wreak holy havoc on the economy by taking the debt limit hostage to their spending demands (more for the Pentagon, less for everything else).
TNR’s Alec MacGillis, quoting WaPo’s Greg Sargent extensively, lays out the complaint most efficiently:
It is striking to what degree the Washington establishment has come to normalize Republican hostage-taking of the debt limit, to see it as a predictable and almost natural element of the political landscape. Greg Sargent argues convincingly why this is a problem, noting that the debt ceiling must be raised to pay for past spending, and should not be used as a chip in negotiating future budgets: “In the current context, conservatives and Republicans who hold out against a debt limit hike are, in practical terms, only threatening the full faith and credit of the United States — and threatening to damage the economy — in order to get what they want. Any accounts that don’t convey this with total clarity — and convey the sense that this is a normal negotiation — are essentially misleading people. It’s that simple.”
What bears stating even more strongly, though, is how far we’ve come from 2011, when the Washington establishment viewed the Republicans’ threat of credit default as the utterly brazen and unprecedented step that it was. Even those who supported the gambit recognized it as a newly deployed weapon.
I agree with all that, and with MacGillis’ assessment of early media coverage of the debt limit fight as just another episode of the usual partisan follies.
But there is a deeper problem that makes adequate media treatment of GOP posturing very difficult: an inability to grasp and explain the underlying radicalism of conservative doctrine on federal domestic spending. Exhibit One, of course, was the frequent refusal to understand the fundamental change in the role of the federal government that was the object of the Ryan Budget, particularly its first iteration. And rarely did major MSM writers and gabbers bother to suggest that immediate implementation of the Ryan Budget via the budget reconciliation process would have been the predictable result of an election where Romney won and Republicans won control of the Senate.
But Exhibit Two, and far more relevant today, is the baseline for conservative positioning on the debt limit, the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge, signed by Mitt Romney himself in 2011 and championed by the powerful House Study Committee, to which 165 Republicans in the 112th Congress belonged (there’s no updated list for the 113d, but there’s no reason to think the RSC has lost its grip on the House GOP Caucus).
I’ve gone through this a number of times over the last two years, but will once again post the basics of the CCB proposal:
1. Cut – We must make discretionary and mandatory spending reductions that would cut the deficit in half next year.
2. Cap – We need statutory, enforceable caps to align federal spending with average revenues at 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with automatic spending reductions if the caps are breached.
3. Balance – We must send to the states a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) with strong protections against federal tax increases and a Spending Limitation Amendment (SLA) that aligns spending with average revenues as described above.
And the whole idea of this proposal (and the specific subject of the CCB Pledge) is to make any vote for a debt limit increase strictly contingent on all three planks of the proposal, which means a radical and permanent reduction in federal spending, far beyond anything contemplated in the Ryan Budget.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, Jabuary 4, 2013
“Not Even Close”: Conservatives Can’t Win At The Negotiating Table What They Lost At The Ballot Box
The final, final results from the 2012 presidential election are now in. While we already knew President Obama won (and the House certified that result today when it tallied the electoral votes), it’s worth revisiting the final totals and reminding ourselves of one important fact: It wasn’t particularly close.
Sure the election was widely expected to be a nail-biter, but it wasn’t. But in the days and weeks afterward you still heard the occasional GOPer insist that it was—see Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling last month saying it was a tight, 51-49 race, for example.
Here are some final stats about Obama’s victory, courtesy of Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux:
Obama got 51.1 percent of the popular vote to Mitt Romney’s 47.2 percent, a four point margin. (Let’s all pause for a moment and savor the fact that history will show that Romney won … 47 percent.) That’s a wider margin than George W. Bush won by in 2004 (51-48), when pundits on the right like Charles Krauthammer declared that he had earned a mandate.
That makes Obama the first president to crack 51 percent since Dwight Eisenhower more than a half-century ago. (Sorry, conservatives, Ronald Reagan only reached 50.75 percent in 1980.)
Obama won 26 states and the District of Columbia, piling up 332 electoral votes. You can think of it another way: There is no state in Obama’s column which would have swung the election to Romney had he won it. In other words, if Romney had pulled a stunning upset and won California’s 55 electoral votes … he’d still have lost.
There were only four especially close states in the 2012 election. Only Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia were decided by less than 5 percentage points. (Note: Romney won one of them, North Carolina; had he swept those four states … he’d have still lost the election as Obama totaled 272 electoral votes in the rest of the country.) Four is the smallest number of close states in a presidential election since Reagan trounced Walter Mondale nearly 30 years ago.
So no matter how you slice or dice the election results, this was not a close race. It wasn’t a landslide, but it wasn’t a coin flip. The voters selected Obama and his vision over Romney and his, and they did it decisively.
And you can layer onto that the fact that, against all expectations, Democrats picked up seats in the U.S. Senate and also in the U.S. House. And while the GOP did retain control of the House, nearly 1.4 million more people voted for Democratic House candidates than for Republicans. 1.4 million—remember that figure the next time someone says Americans voted for divided government last year.
All of which brings me to a great point that the Maddow Blog’s Steve Benen made yesterday. He noted that South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham vowed that the upcoming fiscal fights, over raising the debt ceiling at the end of February and over funding the government a few weeks later, would be “one hell of a contest about the direction and vision of this country.”
Benen writes:
…what Graham and too many of his allies seem to forget is that we already had “one hell of a contest about the direction and the vision of this country.”
It was a little something called “the 2012 election cycle,” and though Graham may not have liked the results, his side lost.
Memories can be short in DC, but for at least a year, voters were told the 2012 election would be the most spectacularly important, history-changing, life-setting election any of us have ever seen…
Election Day 2012, in other words, was for all the marbles. It was the big one. The whole enchilada was on the line. The results would set the direction of the country for a generation, so it was time to pull out all the stops and fight like there’s no tomorrow—because for the losers, there probably wouldn’t be one.
Obama won. Republicans lost. And, again, it wasn’t especially close.
So it is not only tiresome but more than a little undemocratic for conservatives to suggest that, having lost at the ballot box, they should be able to dictate the direction and vision of the country at the negotiating table.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, January 4, 2013
“People Are More Than Numbers On A Page”: The Healthcare Lessons Mark Kirk Learned From His Stroke
Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.
But how many of us actually do that? At least by choice?
Over a year ago Sen. Mark Kirk suffered a debilitating stroke. And his medical condition has sparked his interest in the experience of people on Medicaid. Kirk reminds me of the character William Hurt played in the movie The Doctor, a tale of a physician with no bedside manner who suddenly cares about his patients, once he himself becomes the patient, suffering with cancer.
Well D.C. isn’t Hollywood and Senator Kirk’s stroke was not something manufactured by Hollywood studios. The Illinois Republican had an opportunity he now realizes not everyone who suffers a stroke has: the opportunity to get his life back. Senator Kirk had that opportunity this week as he returned to Capitol Hill for the first time in a year, joining the new 2013 Senate.
Kirk’s illness made him realize that the unlimited medical care, access, and not to mention ability to have as many rehabilitation sessions as he needed to have a complete recovery from the stroke he suffered, is not available to most people, especially the poor—those who are on Medicaid. In the state of Illinois, if you are on Medicaid, you are only eligible for 11 rehab sessions following a stroke.
In an interview with the Chicago Sun Times, Senator Kirk said, “Had I been limited to that [referring to the 11 rehabilitation sessions], I would have had no chance to recover like I did. So unlike before suffering the stroke, I’m much more focused on Medicaid and what my fellow citizens face…I will look much more carefully at the Illinois Medicaid program to see how my fellow citizens are being cared for who have no income and if they suffer from a stroke.”
Senator Kirk has, by no choice of his own, walked a mile in another’s shoes…but not entirely. As a senator, he benefits from the very best medical care. He had undoubtedly the best doctors and access—and that access included unlimited rehabilitation sessions—as many as he needed. Each of us is unique and individual—our bodies respond differently one from another, even if we share the same illness or injury.
Although it is admirable that Senator Kirk has woken up to the reality that so many Americans face daily and struggle with so frequently, it’s sad that it took a stroke for him to come to this realization. So we must ponder the question: Does every GOP member of the House and the Senate need to become ill or have a family member become ill to fully understand that it is not only a right, but a necessity that any American have access to not only healthcare, but more so, proper healthcare? What type of society are we if only the rich are allowed to survive such things as a stroke? Or dare I say, only a politician?
Senator Kirk realized this. I know there are those critics out there who feel that Kirk is tapping into a group of potential voters that the GOP has largely ignored, and the GOP largely voted against legislation which would help this group of people.
As a liberal, a progressive, and a Democrat, who is married to a physician and who believes that all of us are truly created equal and should have equal access to the best medical care possible, it saddens me that it seems only when it affects an individual or someone they love, especially those politicians on the right, that they can see what we on the left have been speaking of: fairness.
It isn’t fair that a senator has a stroke and returns to work one year later, when so many in Illinois and elsewhere may not be able to return to work or their lives as they knew them; and some don’t survive at all.
Senator Kirk at one time, as his colleagues, never looked at the people behind the term ‘patient,’ for they were just numbers to slash in cutting spending. Let’s hope that those in the GOP don’t need to suffer as Senator Kirk did to come to the realization that people hurting and in pain are more than numbers on a page.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, January 4, 2012
“Chris Christie Enables The Crazies”: Sorry, East Coast Republicans, This Is Your Party Too
Spare me, Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor delighted political reporters with his theatrical excoriation of the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives after Speaker John Boehner refused to allow a bill funding aid for people affected by Hurricane Sandy to come to the floor for a vote this week.
This would be the same Christie who, in September 2012, headlined a fundraiser for Iowa congressman Steve King, who is not just one of the craziest members of the GOP crazy wing, but who also announced a month later that he probably wouldn’t vote for relief money for Sandy victims for the same reason he refused to vote for federal aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina: Because he was pretty sure people spent the relief money on “Gucci bags and massage parlors.” This is a man Christie wanted to win reelection, in order to help Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives, so that they could continue ignoring the priorities and desperate needs of liberal, urban coastal states like New Jersey.
If people don’t want John Boehner controlling — or attempting to control — an arm of the federal government, the answer is to not support Republicans at almost any level of government. It’s that simple. The reason Boehner is speaker is because Republicans at the state level in various states controlled redistricting, and did such a good job of it that it would require that Democrats nationwide pull off a 7-point popular vote victory in the next midterm in order to win even a slim House majority.
Every Republican — including New Yorkers Michael Grimm and Peter King — who fundraises and campaigns for the Republican Party is responsible for what the Republican Party does with its power. While the “crazies” have nearly complete political control of the party, much of the money still comes from rich coastal “moderates,” and Chris Christie is so important to the party as a symbol of moderation (shouty bullying moderation but moderation all the same) that the GOP gave him a prime-time speaking slot at the national convention. The Christies enable the crazies.
The reason a bunch of knuckle-dragging idiots and far-right radicals were able to kill the Violence Against Women Act is because there are effectively no consequences for doing things the moderates disapprove of and huge consequences for doing things the right wing doesn’t approve of, and that is going to remain the state of affairs in the Republican Party until the supposed grown-ups stop supporting the Republican Party. Everyone who remains in the party is responsible for the worst abuses of the conservative movement, from voter suppression to fiscal nihilism to refusing to send money to people whose houses were destroyed months ago.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, January 3, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 