“A Symbol Of Defiance Between GOP Lawmakers”: Will Republicans Shut Down The Government To Spite Karl Rove?
Most Republicans in Congress agree on one thing: Obamacare needs to go. How to get rid of the health care law, however, is a bit more complicated.
The GOP is split between those who believe the sole way to combat The Affordable Care Act is by opposing all fall spending bills that contain funding for the law—resulting in a government shutdown – and those who believe in any strategy that will not involve such extreme action.
Leading the government shutdown movement is Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), arguing: “If you fund this thing, you own it.” In Lee’s world, Republicans who do not believe closing the government is the appropriate measure to combat the Affordable Care Act are automatic backers of the law.
Lee’s intricate plan involves the GOP-controlled House passing a bill funding the government, which would contain a rider from Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) that would defund the Affordable Care Act — and leaving the ultimate decision to shut down the government or pass the bill with that rider included up to Senate Democrats.
“Would they choose to shut down government? Or do the right thing?” Lee asked of Senate Democrats.
This is a plan that Republican political consultant Karl Rove quickly rejected. According to Politico, Rove “concluded Lee’s effort would backfire and be a replay of 1995, a government shutdown often blamed on the GOP.”
Still, Lee and other Tea Party lawmakers, including Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), believe a government shutdown is the only option. Lee referred to any strategy besides his as an example of Republicans “caving.”
Rove warned, “This is the one strategy, the one tactic that might be able to guarantee that the Democrats pick up seats in the Congress in 2014.”
Rove’s comment echoed a similar thought from Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), who called the effort “self-defeating.” Other Republican leaders have termed it “silly” and “stupid.”
According to the Washington Post, several GOP leaders have realized that Rove’s approach may not be an effective way to prevent the government shutdown. Publicly condemning the strategy can easily backfire; tackling it openly, as Rove did, has already resulted in those in favor of the shutdown painting its opponents as scared and weak Obamacare backers, not willing to “defeat Obama tyranny.”
The Rove-Lee debate on Sean Hannity’s radio show proved that even with Rove pointing out just how ineffective, counterproductive and unnecessary a government shutdown would be, Lee’s position won’t change; instead, it grows more steadfast. Rove’s words serve as Lee’s evidence that the Republican Party is too “weak-kneed” to make a move against the president, and the only way to prove to Rove and other GOP leaders that they are actually impeding the Republican Party, rather than strengthening it, is, perhaps, to call for a government shutdown.
As long as Republican leaders fight publicly, they provide those in favor of the shutdown their greatest argument: Republican leadership is weak, and it’s time to take a stronger and more combative stance against Obamacare, even if it means closing down the government. Suddenly, a shutdown is seen as the ultimate measure of GOP loyalty and leadership.
The government shutdown has become more than just a position on Obamacare; it is a symbol of defiance between GOP lawmakers.
If Rove — or any Republican, for that matter — keeps publicly calling out the strategy’s obvious idiocy, he is just pushing his more conservative counterparts in Congress to go through with the effort.
Because of this, several GOP leaders have begun to lobby House Republicans privately, rather than openly bash their strategy.
National Review’s Robert Costa reported that, “House insiders say Boehner and Cantor had talked much of their conference away from the edge,” and Republicans are “now confident that House Republicans will not tread into a shutdown battle with the Obama White House.”
Just a week ago, Rubio argued that the government shutdown was “no longer an ideological thing,” and he’s right. Now it is a deeper split in the already divided GOP.
By: Elissa Gomez, The National Memo, August 13, 2013
“We Only Discriminate For Partisan Reasons”: Texas Struggles To Defend Discriminatory Voting Policies
It’s been about three weeks since the Justice Department, relying on what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, went after voter-discrimination policies in Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court may have severely damaged the VRA, but the Justice Department nevertheless argued that when “intentional voting discrimination” is found, changes to voting rights cannot be permitted to continue.
This week, as Adam Serwer reported, Texas submitted a brief presenting their defense.
Texas didn’t discriminate against minority voters. It was only because they were Democrats. And even if it did, the racial discrimination Texas engaged in is nowhere near as bad as the stuff that happened in the 1960s.
These are some of the arguments the state of Texas is making in an attempt to stave off federal supervision of its election laws. In late July, citing the state’s recent history of discrimination, the Justice Department asked a federal court to place the entire state back under “preclearance.” That means the state would have to submit its election law changes in advance to the Justice Department, which would ensure Texas wasn’t disenfranchising voters on the basis of race.
The arguments from Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) administration are pretty amazing, especially considering federal courts already found Texas’ election policies discriminatory as recently as two years ago, before the Supreme Court intervened.
As Kevin Drum explained, Texas’ first argument, as pushed by state Attorney General Greg Abbott, “is that, sure, Texas has tried to discriminate as recently as 2011, but their efforts were overturned by a court. So that means there are no current violations, and thus no reason to grant any kind of ‘equitable relief.'”
The second argument is the half-glass-full tack. As Serwer put it, “[T]he state claims, even if Texas did discriminate, and the state stresses that it did not, it was nothing as bad as ‘the ‘pervasive,’ ‘flagrant,’ ‘widespread,’ and ‘rampant’ discrimination that originally justified preclearance in 1965.’ So as long as Texas skies aren’t alight with flames from burning crosses, what’s the big whoop?”
But it’s the third argument that’s truly amazing.
From the brief filed by the state:
DOJ’s accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats….The redistricting decisions of which DOJ complains were motivated by partisan rather than racial considerations, and the plaintiffs and DOJ have zero evidence to prove the contrary.
Got that? Texas wasn’t trying to discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities; Texas was simply trying to discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities who vote for Democrats.
In other words, Texas’ defense is that state policymakers were trying to crush the Democratic vote, and this led to inadvertent discrimination against African Americans and Latinos. As such, the argument goes, Texas was motivated by crass partisanship, and not racism, so the discrimination doesn’t really count.
Any chance this might be persuasive in court? Brenda Wright, a voting law expert with the liberal think tank Demos, told Serwer, “I don’t think it’s going to work, frankly. The mere desire to achieve partisan advantage does not give Texas a free hand to engage in racial discrimination. If the only way you can protect white incumbents is by diluting the voting strength of Hispanic citizens, you are engaging in intentional racial discrimination, and the courts will see that.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 13, 2013
“And Then There Were Three”: Was A Documentary Filmmaker The ‘Mastermind’ Behind The Snowden Leaks?
Peter Maass of The New York Times has published a long article detailing how documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras helped Edward Snowden leak thousands of classified documents detailing the National Security Agency’s global surveillance apparatus.
What it makes clear is that Poitras’ experience protecting her information enabled Snowden to begin providing documents, and her skills as a filmmaker facilitated him identifying himself.
Basically, Poitras had a much larger role in Snowden’s leaks than previously known. Here’s what we learned:
“I keep calling [Poitras] the Keyser Soze of the story, because she’s at once completely invisible and yet ubiquitous,” Greenwald, referring to the character in “The Usual Suspects” played by Kevin Spacey, a mastermind masquerading as a nobody, told Maass.
When Greenwald began conversing with Snowden in April after he had met with Poitras in New York and installed encryption software on his computer. (Poitras began speaking with Snowden in January, and he got a job as a NSA contractor for Booz Allen in March.)
At that point, Maass writes, their work “was organized like an intelligence operation, with Poitras as the mastermind.”
Greenwald said of Poitras: “None of this would have happened with anything near the efficacy and impact it did, had she not been working with me in every sense and really taking the lead in coordinating most of it.”
Poitras wouldn’t say when Snowden began sending her documents, but she initially received many more than Greenwald (who received about 20).
In May “Snowden sent encrypted messages telling the two of them to go to Hong Kong” and told them that he wanted to go public with his identity.
Glenn Greenwald discovered the top secret order compelling Verizon to hand over all of its call data to the government during the flight to Hong Kong.
Poitras and Greenwald didn’t speak with Snowden between parting ways after he outed himself on June 9 in Hong Kong and early July. He had traveled to Moscow on June 23.
So it’s now clear that the Snowden saga wouldn’t have played out as it has without Poitras.
The article also indirectly touches on a primary mystery: What happened to Snowden between the time he outed himself and when he got on a plane to Moscow two weeks later?
On June 23, with the help of an Ecuadorian travel document obtained through WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Snowden landed in the jurisdiction of Russia’s intelligence services (i.e. FSB). He has since been granted temporary asylum and began establishing his life in Russia.
During this time he has been speaking with Poitras and Greenwald — he answered questions from Maass over encrypted chat — but otherwise he has been lying low while his FSB-linked Russian lawyer has been speaking for him.
Consequently, the significance of Snowden’s arrival in Russia is still unknown.
By: Michael Kelley, Business Insider, August 13, 2013
“Shifting Winds, Changing Landscape”: Eric Holder Steps Up, GOP Stands Down On Sentencing Reforms
If you missed Rachel’s segment last night on Attorney General Eric Holder’s dramatic announcement on sentencing in drug crimes, it’s well worth your time. Indeed, by any fair measure, yesterday may be one of the most important days of the Obama administration’s second term, at least insofar as criminal justice is concerned.
Holder declared what many have long argued: too many Americans convicted of non-violent drug crimes are stuck in too many prisons for far too long. It’s a policy that costs too much, ravages families and communities, and has no practical law-enforcement rationale. That the Attorney General is using his prosecutorial discretion to circumvent mandatory minimums is an incredibly important step in the right direction — it’s the kind of move that will put fewer Americans behind bars for low-level, non-violent drug crimes.
What I was also eager to see were the next-day reactions, most notably from the right. Would Holder face a backlash from Republicans? So far, no. The conservative Washington Times ran this report today:
Grover Norquist, a conservative libertarian Republican and founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform … [claimed] that the Holder directive simply cribs from legislation by Democratic Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, along with Republicans Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky, that would give federal judges greater discretion in sentencing certain drug offenders.
In the House, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, and Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, Virginia Democrat and ranking member on the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, terrorism, homeland security, and investigations, also have introduced legislation to reduce recidivism and federal prison costs through post-sentencing risk assessments and other evidence-based programs developed by states.
Mike Huckabee responded to the AG’s announcement by saying he “finally found something I can agree with Eric Holder on.”
As best as I can tell, not one member of the congressional Republican leadership in either chamber criticized Holder’s decision in any way.
And that matters enormously.
As we discussed earlier in the summer, in the not-too-distant past, the conservative line on these issues lacked all reason and nuance. The right wanted more prisons, more prisoners, harsher sentences, an aggressive “war on drugs,” and no questions. To disagree was to invite the “soft on crime” condemnation. As the nation’s prison population soared to unprecedented levels, the right simply responded, “Good.”
The landscape has, however, changed rather quickly. Twenty years ago, if an Attorney General from a Democratic administration had made this announcement, conservatives would have condemned “letting drug addicts onto our streets.” Yesterday, such reactionary, knee-jerk reactions were muted, and among prominent Republicans, non-existent.
On the surface, this gives the Obama administration some breathing room — Holder and other officials will realize they can adopt common-sense measures without facing political fury and instigating a national uproar. But below the surface, the response suggests more systemic reforms may yet be possible — the A.G.’s move represents progress, but Congress will have to act to make more sweeping changes.
And for the first time in recent memory, that now seems realistic. As Greg Sargent explained yesterday, as the political winds shift on this issue, the “soft on crime” attacks “no longer have anywhere near the cultural potency or political relevance they once did. As a result, “this may now be an area where compromise is possible.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 13, 2013
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