“The GOP Has Learned Nothing”: A Party Letting Its Base Lead Where The Rest Of America Dares Not To Follow
You’d think the conservative base would have learned its lesson in 2010, when, in a fever pitch of epic magnitude, it nominated Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck, Sharron Angle and Joe Miller to run for the U.S. Senate. Suddenly, what looked like a prime opportunity for Republicans to flip the upper chamber and send Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., packing turned into an example of a party letting its base lead where the rest of America dared not follow. Or perhaps in 2012, when Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock was sunk by an extremely ill-advised and incorrect rape comment.
However, one look at the gubernatorial ticket in Virginia shows that the tea party’s dream is alive and kicking. Not only has the party nominated Ken Cuccinelli for governor – who believes that the entire social safety net is “despicable, dishonest, and worthy of condemnation“– but it has added Rev. E.W. Jackson to run for Lieutenant Governor.
Amongst Jackson’s greatest hits are calling gay and lesbian Americans “sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally”; claiming that the infamous 3/5ths clause of the Constitution was “anti-slavery”; saying that Planned Parenthood is akin to the Ku Klux Klan; and claiming that the agenda of the Democratic party is “worthy of the Antichrist.”
This was not supposed to be the plan. Though Cuccinelli is an avowed culture warrior and tea party darling, he has been staying away from those issues on the campaign trail, instead focusing on jobs and the economy. But as Jamelle Bouie explains at the American Prospect, Jackson’s inclusion on the ticket is going to make that strategy a lot harder to pull off:
Ken Cuccinelli’s plan for winning the Virginia gubernatorial race is straightforward. Avoid outspoken statements on social issues—the same ones that alienate most Virginians but excite his rightwing base—and focus the campaign on jobs and growth.
So far, he’s done exactly that. Of his three television advertisements, for example none mention abortion or same-sex marriage … E.W. Jackson, the newly-minted GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, throws a huge wrench in this strategy.
As Tim Murphy detailed at Mother Jones, Jackson was able to grab the nomination because Virginia’s GOP eschews a traditional primary in favor of “a one-day nominating convention packed with grassroots activists.” And those activists, as they have across the country, clearly have little regard for such parochial concerns as electability in a state that voted for President Barack Obama twice and is represented in the Senate by two Democrats. “These kinds of comments are simply not appropriate, especially not from someone who wants to be a standard bearer for our party and hold the second highest elected office in our state,” said the current Republican Lt. Gov., Bill Bolling, when asked about Jackson. “They feed the image of extremism, and that’s not where the Republican Party needs to be.”
Of course, Cuccinelli and Jackson may very well win. (They are running against Terry McAuliffe, after all, who doesn’t inspire much in the way of excitement.) Stranger things have certainly happened.
But in the long run, consistently nominating extreme social warriors, when the country is shown to be consistently going the other way on social issues, is only going to hurt the GOP’s actual policy goals. For proof of that, go say hello to Majority Leader Reid or google how the repeal of Obamacare is going.
By: Pat Garofalo, U. S. News and World Report, May 22, 2013
“Sorry, Republicans, Nobody’s Getting Impeached”: GOP Can’t Resist Elaborately Feigned Theater That Blows Up In Their Face
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when every jackleg news organization in Washington — that is, virtually all of them — was feeding out of Kenneth Starr’s soft little hand like a Shetland pony.
Having recently left the country for a few weeks of media deprivation therapy, I returned to find excited pundits comparing President Obama to Richard M. Nixon on the basis of three transparently bogus White House “scandals” that make Starr’s fabled “Whitewater” investigation look like the crime of the century.
Once again, the word “impeachment” is in the air, as excited GOP congressmen dream of driving a Democratic president from office. Once again, the nation appears to be headed for a fun-filled summer of televised hearings, elaborately feigned indignation, and predictions of dramatic revelations that either never materialize or blow up in their sponsor’s faces.
With luck we might even see something as funny as the day in 1995 when a partisan S&L regulator who’d planned to market Hillary Clinton-themed “Presidential BITCH” t-shirts from her government office fainted dead away under cross-examination. The witness had to be carried from a Senate hearing room, never to be heard from again.
Deeply committed to Whitewater humbug, the New York Times, Washington Post and TV networks contrived not to notice.
The good news is that couldn’t happen again. Today, the ill-fated L. Jean Lewis’s swoon would be all over YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Sure, she’d get her own Fox News talk show, but rationally consequent citizens wouldn’t have to watch. The Internet has lessened the ability of scandal entrepreneurs in the Washington media to control the flow of information to the rabble.
Sure, the Internet empowers crackpots. But it also enables in-house bloggers like Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein to bring facts and arguments into the online pages of the high-dollar press that could be censored out of the “mainstream” as recently as the Clinton administration.
So nobody’s getting impeached on this tripartite nonsense, OK?
Anyway, let’s take them one at a time:
One: Regarding IRS “targeting” of right-wingers, I’m planning to rename my little one-man cattle operation “Tea Party Patriot Farm.” With that on my Schedule C, the IRS won’t dare to audit my tax returns. I’ll be free to deduct not only feed bills and veterinary expenses, but pizzas, movie tickets, six-packs, whatever. My recent train ride across France? Studying French cattle husbandry techniques at 180 mph.
But see that’s the thing. Contrary to a thousand indignant screeds and editorial cartoons, no aggrieved Tea Partiers got audited, fined, or jailed. Instead, they saw their applications to turn their political hobbies into tax-free scams — oops, charities — delayed for a few months, on the quite reasonable assumption (from an IRS functionary’s point of view) that an organization named for a political party might actually be one. Boo hoo hoo.
The IRS was politically idiotic, no doubt. But until somebody tracks this to the White House, it’s a big nothingburger.
Meanwhile, my man Charles Pierce quotes the Nixon White House tapes to remind us how a real crook uses the IRS: “Now here’s the point, Bob: please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats,” Nixon said. “Could we please investigate some of the [unprintables]?”
Two: Then there’s The Great Benghazi Cover-Up. As this column pointed out last December, it’s largely a matter of selective quotation. Nobody at the CIA or State Department who had a hand in preparing Susan Rice’s “talking points” on the Sunday shows knew with any certainty who organized the attack.
And it’s worthwhile pointing out that they still don’t know.
However, if “extremist elements with heavy weapons” doesn’t say “terrorist” to you, Rice got more specific on CBS’s Face the Nation: “Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself,” she said, “…is one of the things we’ll have to determine.”
In the interest of keeping this phony scandal alive, everybody’s pretended for months that Rice never said that. Meanwhile, CBS News’ Major Garrett has reported that partial CIA emails leaked to him by Republican sources turned out — after the originals were released — to have been doctored to cast suspicion upon the State Department and Hillary Clinton. He didn’t identify the leakers.
But when people resort to faking documents it’s a good clue that no real evidence of wrongdoing exists. The end.
Three: As for the Associated Press flap, the Los Angeles Times reports that its “disclosure of a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen last year compromised…an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists.”
If true, that’s perilously close to treason. In which case the Justice Department had every reason to subpoena AP phone records after other means of finding the leaker’s identity failed. Sorry, but journalists have no rights that trump those of ordinary citizens in a serious criminal investigation.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, May 22, 2013
“Counting On Public Confusion”: Sen Jeff Flake Hopes Dissembling Will Solve His Gun Problem
A month after Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) joined his GOP colleagues in killing a bipartisan background-check bill, the rookie senator is still struggling with the political fallout. This ad from Mayors Against Illegal Guns is the latest to put Flake on the defensive. Watch on YouTube
Flake’s strategy, at least for now, is built entirely on dissembling.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) is pushing back against attack ads that say he broke his promise to support passing new gun laws.
“If you are anywhere close to a television set in Arizona in the coming days, you’ll likely see an ad about gun control financed by NYC Mayor Bloomberg,” Flake wrote Friday on his Facebook page. “Contrary to the ad, I did vote to strengthen background checks.”
I can appreciate why the ads have gotten Flake’s attention, but this “vote to strengthen background checks” rhetoric is exactly the sort of thing that rankles. Flake must realize how misleading this is, but is counting on public confusion to make his political troubles go away. It’s cynical, and the public deserves better.
Indeed, it’s apparently become the standard strategy for every Republican senator facing pushback from his his/her constituents — Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) is pulling exact same stunt.
Let’s set the record straight once more.
Flake’s pitch — “Contrary to the ad, I did vote to strengthen background checks” — is technically true. It’s also true that Flake filibustered the Manchin/Toomey compromise on background checks that enjoyed broad public support. So, Flake is relying on semantics games as a defense for doing the wrong thing? Yes, that’s exactly what he’s doing.
As we’ve discussed before, conservatives are relying on specific definitions of words and phrases that don’t quite line up with what everyone else is talking about. As Sahil Kapur explained recently:
There’s a critical distinction to be made between universal background checks, a robust policy that would require criminal checks for virtually all gun purchases — and a more milquetoast proposal to beef up mental health information in existing databases. The former is championed by gun control advocates and experts who say it would have a significant impact. The latter is supported by the NRA and does nothing to make it harder for criminals to buy firearms at private sales or gun shows, where background checks are not required by law.
It’s obviously an important clarification. The right is generally comfortable with improving the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, by integrating mental health records, for example. When Flake endorses stronger “background checks,” this is what he’s talking about, not closing the gun-show loophole.
Flake is counting on voters losing sight of the distinction.
Just as important, though, is the unstated concession: Flake is feeling defensive, which gives away much of the game. Under the NRA’s worldview, which Flake supports and defends, there’s nothing for conservative senators to be embarrassed about — by crushing expanded background checks, Republicans are taking a stand against tyranny. Voters love freedom and need not fear electoral consequences for voting the way the NRA demands.
Or so the argument goes.
But Flake’s cynical defense suggests that below the surface, he knows the NRA’s boasts about the political landscape aren’t true.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 20, 2013
“Timely Injustice”: Florida Is Not Killing People Fast Enough
At great political peril, George Ryan did the right thing.
Not to canonize the man. After all, the then-governor of Illinois was later imprisoned on corruption charges.
But that doesn’t change the fact that, in 2000, stung that 13 inmates had been exonerated and freed from death row in the previous 23 years, Ryan committed an act of profound moral courage, imposing a moratorium on capital punishment. In 2003, in the waning days of his term, he one-upped himself, commuting every death sentence in his state.
Recalling what Gov. George Ryan once did provides interesting context as Floridians and death penalty opponents around the country wait to see what Gov. Rick Scott will do.
Florida’s chief executive has on his desk awaiting his signature — or, dare we hope, his veto — a piece of legislation called the Timely Justice Act, passed by his state legislature in the apparent belief Florida is not killing people fast enough.
There are 404 people awaiting execution in Florida. We learn from a report by my colleague, Mary Ellen Klas, that 155 of them have been there longer than 20 years, and 10 have been there longer than 35 years. The average wait: 13 years.
The act would require the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days after a review by the state Supreme Court. Execution would have to take place within 180 days. Additionally, the bill bars attorneys from using certain defense strategies. Granted, it also contains provisions favorable to inmates, including one penalizing lawyers who provide ineffective counsel, but that fig leaf does not mitigate the danger of a bill that, in effect, creates a fast track to the death chamber.
This measure, I feel constrained to point out, is brought to you by the same legislative body that brought you the ill-conceived Stand Your Ground law that has lately led people to call Florida the “gunshine state.” This latest sop to frontier justice is necessary, we’re told, because, as an editorial by Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers puts it, delayed executions are “an affront to justice — especially for victims’ families.”
Beg pardon — and I know this will be controversial — but I’m tired of hearing what we owe victim’s families. I speak from no deficit of compassion for them. I am, for goodness sake, a member of a victim’s family, albeit his extended family. R.I.P., Ted McCoy, my brother-in-law, who was murdered 20 years ago in Los Angeles.
That said, there’s something … uncomfortably barbarous in this idea that we as a society owe those families blood as recompense for the pain they have endured.
More to the point, there’s this: Since the death penalty was reinstated in the mid-’70s, Florida has executed 75 people. But it has exonerated 24, many of whom spent more than a decade on death row. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Florida has the highest error rate in the country.
So how can a state that gets it wrong at least one time in every four want to speed up the process? Does no one care about the increased likelihood of executing someone who committed no crime?
We are always called upon to be solicitous of the pain suffered by victims’ families. Where is our solicitude for innocent people, wrong place, wrong time, people — usually indigent people of color — who are rushed, perjured, bumbled, erred and “oopsed” onto death row? Why does their pain affect us less? Why are they less deserving of our compassion? Are they not victims, too?
To his lasting credit, Illinois’ former governor came to recognize capital punishment as the moral sinkhole it is. It is probably too much to hope Florida’s governor will do the same. But at a minimum he must veto this mistake in waiting. The bill his legislature has sent him imposes something that may indeed be timely.
But it sure as hell is not justice.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, May 20, 2013
“Pulitzer Prize Creative Fiction”: Thomas Pickering Dissects Congressional Follies, Media Coverage, And ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
No doubt the degraded quality of congressional oversight astonishes Thomas Pickering, the distinguished American diplomat who oversaw the State Department’s Benghazi review board — although he tries not to say so too directly. For his demanding and difficult effort – only the most recent in a long history of public service under both Republican and Democratic administrations — Pickering has found himself under sustained attack by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the excitable partisan who chairs the House Government Reform Committee.
Last Friday, Issa subpoenaed Pickering to deliver a taped deposition to the committee behind closed doors, without offering a public chance to answer the charges already lodged by Republicans against the Accountability Review Board report authored by Pickering and retired admiral Mike Mullen.
Immediately prior to this latest skirmish, Pickering spoke with The National Memo about the ARB report, political maneuvering by the administration’s adversaries, and media coverage of the Benghazi “scandal.” Asked whether he had ever experienced or seen anything resembling Issa’s conduct, Pickering said, “No, I haven’t.…I suspect that on this particular issue, this guy [Issa] is driven by whatever will maximize his capability to be tough on the administration. This seems to be one effort he’s kind of landed on to make that happen. But I’m only guessing here,” he added.
Meanwhile, Pickering hasn’t noticed much attention being given on Capitol Hill to the extensive recommendations that he and Mullen made to improve security in dangerous posts around the world. “I can’t tell you whether anyone [in Congress] has sat down and examined them and wanted to have hearings on [the recommendations]” – instead of the notorious “talking points” developed by the White House last September. “So far I haven’t seen any evidence of that.”
For Pickering, the subpoena issued by Issa must be especially confusing. Ever since the Government Reform committee announced its planned hearings on Benghazi last winter, its leadership has repeatedly failed to establish a time when the review board chairman — perhaps the most important witness – could testify. Although at first Pickering says he thought they were “genuinely interested” in getting his testimony, he became “increasingly less inclined” to appear before the committee “as the thing became more politicized.”
Before the May 8 hearing, he made a final effort to arrange to testify publicly. But via the White House and the State Department, he learned that his presence was not desired. Before Issa issued his subpoena to Pickering on Friday, he and Mullen had sent a letter requesting an opportunity to testify publicly – and said that they are “not inclined to give testimony in a closed hearing before that [happens].”
Having listened to Issa and others take potshots at him, Mullen, and their report for several weeks, Pickering wants to rebut some of the misinformation they have propagated, for the record. He wants to address claims that the military “could have relieved or in fact changed the situation by sending men or equipment or both the night of the event” – and specifically assertions by Gregory Hicks, the former Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, that four Special Forces soldiers should have been dispatched to Benghazi from Tripoli. Pickering says those four officers would have arrived in Benghazi too late to help and were needed in Tripoli anyway to treat the wounded, who were brought there after the Benghazi attack.
“The third question that has come up,” said Pickering, “is why we didn’t investigate the Secretary of State” and her deputies. The “simple and straightforward answer” is that “they played no role in the decision making which was relevant to the preparations for meeting the security crisis in Benghazi,” and the role they did play on the night of September 11 “was fairly clearly portrayed to us by other people who attended the meetings, and we had no questions about it. We thought that what they did made sense and fit exactly what should have been done.”
What Pickering may mention, if and when he does testify in public, is the role of Congress, which he considers primarily responsible for underfunding the protection of diplomatic posts abroad. Fortunately, legislative idiocy has not prevented the redirection of almost $1.5 billion in funds to improve security in dozens of posts, both physically and with additional security officers and Marine guards.
Aside from the weak oversight of Congress, Pickering also seems critical of the media coverage of Benghazi. In preparing to chair the Accountability Review Board, Pickering said, he “asked for, received, and read all of the press reporting that the State Department could find and put together for me, covering the events in Benghazi and the aftermath, from the initial attack right through to the day we submitted our report.”
He undertook this required reading because “I thought there would be useful ideas, leads, analyses that had to be taken into account. What I found in general was a very significant amount of wild, and I think fictionalized, made-up kind of information…
And in effect much of this alleged a kind of betrayal of those people, in one way or another, all of which I thought bordered on Pulitzer Prize creative fiction but didn’t bear any relationship to what we were able to determine, both from the documentary evidence, from the extensive film footage that we had an opportunity to review carefully, and of course the interviews we had with people who were on the spot.” Indeed, Pickering believes that the ARB report is “the best compilation I’ve seen of what actually took place.”
Pickering won’t comment on the “talking points” controversy, which wasn’t relevant to the ARB investigation. But he resents broader allegations by the Republicans and their allies in the media — in particular “the allegation that I would be engaged in a cover-up…I hope people feel that I’m a more honest and hopefully more dedicated public servant than that. “
“Our interest was to do everything we could to find out what happened,” Pickering said, “and then on the basis of that [investigation] to make as clear recommendations as we could to help the State Department and other agencies so that it wouldn’t happen again. That was our motive, that was the driver, and that’s where we went. Any effort to cover up would have been a betrayal… We did everything we could in terms of the national interest in saving future lives.” He believes it is vital to defend the credibility of the report and prevent it from being undermined. “That’s why I’m interested in talking to the American public now, because I think the report is a good report. And so far I haven’t heard anything that I believe we didn’t consider carefully.”
As for his critics, “I would hope they would read the report. If they have, maybe they need to read it again.” He laughed. “Both Mike Mullen and I believe that it’s important that we have this opportunity, either through Chairman Issa or some other committee, to deal with the people who have concerns about the report and tell them how we were thinking and why we reached the conclusions we did.”
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, May 19, 2013
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