“The Battle For The Republican Party”: Just Another GOP Pity Party, Looking For Sympathy In All The Wrong Places
Imagine what would happen if:
• The budget deal passes the Senate with a handful of Republicans;
• Immigration reform passes the House and something is agreed upon by the Senate;
• In 2014 the House lead expands;
• All Senate incumbents defeat their right-wing challengers and the GOP takes the Senate;
• If not a grand bargain, then a modest bargain with some entitlement reform is passed; and
• One or more tea party favorites run in 2016 and lose decisively to a mainstream GOP nominee who wins the presidency.
Well, that would be a triumph of the center-right and the demise of the tea party, at least from an electoral and governance standpoint. It would reaffirm the GOP as a national, if not dominate, party. And it would move the national agenda significantly to the right since the GOP would hold both houses of Congress and the White House.
One can see, then, that what is of tremendous benefit to mainstream Republicans (and to the agenda of conservative reform) puts the tea party professionals — those inside the Beltway right wingers who gain glory and make money by attacking Republicans and blocking legislative compromise — largely out of business. Sure, they remain active participants in electoral politics, even more active critics and occasional contributors to national policy debates, but they no longer have the influence to either elect or primary candidates. They become merely gadflies and kibitzers.
That is one possible scenario that plays out over the next few years. One can see how the interests of mainstream and tea party conservatives collide and why, for example, the recent budget deal was a threat to the latter. The enemy (not of conservatism) but of the right wingers who depend on controversy, resentment and defeat is center-right governance. Functional government of the center-right saps the interest in throwing the “traitors” out. It discourages primaries from the right. It dulls the interest of donors.
It is important to distinguish here between conservatives who largely embrace the modern Reagan and post-Reagan agenda (best exemplified these days by GOP governors) and right wingers, those whose volume is always turned to high, see politics as all-or-nothing, want to take the country back to the pre-New Deal or even pre-Progressive era, and aim to freeze the United States demographically by keeping immigrants out and socially by refusing to accept changed beliefs on topics like gay marriage. The entities and politicians (the Heritage Action, angry talk radio, Sen. Ted Cruz crowd) that populate the second group flourish when the GOP is in the minority, so defeat is their ally.
The contrast between the two groups is evident in the trajectory of Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), pre- and post-shutdown. His ideology didn’t change, but his tone, outlook and purpose sure did after he saw the destruction wrought by the shutdown. He moved from the group that relishes defeat and delights in spreading resentment to the group that wants to govern. I’d suggest in the wake of the shutdown, and now the budget deal, we will see more conservatives follow Lee’s lead.
Now, there is another scenario, maybe less likely but certainly possible over the next few years:
• The budget deal passes the Senate with no Republicans;
• Immigration reform never passes the House and nothing is agreed upon with the Senate;
• In 2014 the House GOP lead stays the same or shrinks;
• Some Senate incumbents defeat their right-wing challengers, but others do not and the GOP doesn’t take the Senate;
• No bargains are struck for the remainder of the Obama term; and
• One or more tea party favorites runs in 2016, one wins the nomination and loses decisively to Hillary Clinton while the GOP House majority is lost as well.
In that case we return to an era of Democratic rule and the GOP becomes a marginal player on the national scene. It is impossible, I would suggest, for the country to be governed mostly, let alone entirely, by the GOP if the tea party contingent triumphs within the GOP. The people who brought us the shutdown do not reflect the desires, outlook and views of a majority of the country. When presented with that alternative, the lion share of the country will choose the Democrats time and time again.
Which one will it be? It’s up to GOP office holders, candidates and voters.
By: Jennifer Rubin, Opinion Blogger, Right Turn; The Washington Post, December 16, 2013
“An Ideological Hurdle They Can’t Clear”: Why There’s No Republican Health Care Plan
Where’s the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act? The question is generally best suited for milk cartons – it’s pretty clear GOP officials would love to “repeal” the federal health care law, but we’ve been waiting for years to know what they’d “replace” it with.
This observation is an ongoing point of annoyance for the right, which is quick to argue that a variety of Republicans have presented reform plans of their own. Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist and Patrick Gleason push the argument in a new Politico piece, and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) made a related case in the Republicans’ official weekly address over the weekend.
“There are common-sense, bipartisan solutions to our health care problems that don’t require ObamaCare’s wholesale government take-over of the system,” Toomey said. “Now, in a nutshell, we can make insurance more accessible, more affordable, and more responsive to individuals and families. And put patients and their doctors in charge of health care decisions, instead of politicians and government bureaucrats.” […]
Toomey did not mention a specific proposal, but he voiced support for allowing people to transfer insurance from job to job and purchase it across state lines.
And just like that, we’re reminded all over again why Republicans love to attack what exists, but struggle to craft a credible alternative of their own. Toomey still doesn’t quite understand that the Affordable Care Act is not a “wholesale government take-over” of the health care system, and more importantly, can’t get past the “nutshell” phase of the GOP’s rival policy.
In fairness, it’s worth emphasizing that Republicans did present something resembling a health care plan in 2009. Following up on our previous coverage, GOP officials missed a series of self-imposed deadlines in 2009, but eventually threw together a half-hearted joke – the GOP “policy” largely ignored the uninsured, did nothing for those with pre-existing conditions, and offered nothing for those worried about losing coverage when it’s needed most.
As Matt Yglesias noted at the time, the Republican approach to reform sought to create a system that “works better for people who don’t need health care services, and much worse for people who actually are sick or who become sick in the future. It’s basically a health un-insurance policy.” And as ThinkProgress added, the CBO crunched the numbers and found that the Republican alternative would leave “about 52 million” Americans without access to basic medical care.
Pressed for some kind of alternative to Obamacare, this was the best congressional Republicans could do.
Since then, GOP lawmakers have periodically stepped up with alternatives, all of which looked pretty similar. Indeed, a few months ago, when the Republican Study Committee said they’d finally put together an “Obamacare” rival, Ed Kilgore predicted before its unveiling that the policy would feature high-risk pools, interstate sales, tax credits, tort reform, and entitlement reform. A couple of hours later, the RSC unveiled its proposal and it was … exactly what Kilgore predicted it would be.
Months later, Toomey used his party’s weekly address to reiterate support for the same cliches.
The result is a stunted debate. We don’t have two competing approaches to solving a problem that has plagued the nation for decades; we have one party with a solution and another party that hates the solution but has no serious alternative. And this isn’t likely to change anytime soon – NBC’s First Read reported two weeks ago, “House Republicans wouldn’t commit Tuesday to offering their own formal alternative to the Affordable Care Act, instead vaguely describing their preference for a ‘patient-driven health care system.’”
As for why Republicans have no rival plan, as we discussed in September, there’s no great mystery. Every credible, effective solution requires some combination of regulating the private insurance market and investing in broader coverage for consumers. There’s just no way around that, and as a result, GOP officials are left with an ideological hurdle they simply cannot clear.
And so Republicans spin their wheels, condemning a policy that they used to like – remember, the basic ACA blueprint was a conservative approach to health care reform – while pretending to have an alternative they can’t identify in earnest.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 16, 2013
“The Cross And The Coin”: Why Conservatives Just Don’t Get Pope Francis’ Anti-Poverty Crusade
On Sunday, Pope Francis matter-of-factly announced that he was not actually a Marxist, telling Italy’s La Stampa, “The Marxist ideology is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.” It was an incredible thing for a pope to proclaim about himself, especially since it was directed at one particularly loud group of critics: U.S. conservatives.
Since outlining his vision for the Catholic church in late November, Pope Francis has endured an amount of criticism from the American right wing commensurate only with the praise piled on by the remainder of global Christianity. For most, Francis’ moving exhortation to spread the gospel and engage personally with Jesus was a welcome and invigorating encouragement. But for many right wing pundits in America, Francis’ call to relieve global poverty through state intervention in markets was unconscionably troubling.
Francis’ message likely raises American conservative hackles because the American right wing has invented such a convincing façade of affinity between fiscal conservatism and Christianity over the last few decades. Though free markets, profit motives, and unrestrained accumulation of wealth have no immediate relationship with Christianity, the cross and the coin are nonetheless powerful, paired symbols of the American right wing. Catholic conservatives thus must carve a way around Francis’ difficult insistence that governments be harnessed toward the relief of poverty, not the creation of it.
A popular conservative criticism has thus been to accuse the Pope of having an unhealthy, non-theological affinity for the political left. Rush Limbaugh labeled Francis a “Marxist” for that reason, while Fox News’ Adam Shaw wrote him off as akin to President Barack Obama, derisively noting that “anti-Catholics in the left-wing media are in love with him.” Ross Douthat at The New York Times put the same argument more delicately, writing that Francis’ “plain language tilts leftward in ways that no serious reader can deny.”
It is no surprise that aligning Francis with the whole of the political left brings with it the arguments right wing critics usually lob against liberals: That the left is corrupt on the moral issues, such as abortion and gay marriage; that the left is incorrect as to how poverty comes to exist; and that the left means to replace Christian charity with soulless, dependency-producing state aid programs. Between Limbaugh, Shaw, and Douthat, Francis has been accused of each of these errors, all in an effort to drain the religious content from Francis’ message in order to dismiss him as just another leftist.
But the reality is that this method of criticism does little more than demonstrate the ordering of right wing priorities: Though they accuse Francis’ message of rising from an unduly political place, their arguments rely on a uniquely American political frame rather than a Christian one. Limbaugh, Shaw, and Douthat may claim to object to Francis as Christians, but they argue against him first and foremost as conservatives invested in the free market.
Douthat, for example, argues that global capitalism has been responsible for an overall reduction in poverty. But Francis’ exhortation never called for an elimination of capitalism, only that states, as creations of humankind, be structured so as to alleviate the poverty that arises after capitalism has done its work. For Francis, all institutions created by humanity — and yes, distributions of wealth are created, not spontaneous — must be intentionally shaped to further just goals. Since Francis’ notion of justice is informed purely by the teaching of Christ, just goals include establishing an equitable distribution of wealth that alleviates poverty and contributes to peace.
That Francis’ right wing Christian critics are informed by a uniquely American belief in the moral neutrality of markets and distributions is especially clear when they’re compared with their European Christian counterparts, whose intellectual traditions differ broadly from what Thomas Nagel has called America’s “everyday libertarian” approach to politics. When Pope Francis was still Cardinal Jose Bergoglio, the British party known as the Christian People’s Alliance stated the following in their 2010 platform:
The Christian Peoples Alliance believes that Britain will return to economic prosperity when government chooses instead to put human relationships in right order. This requires power, income, and wealth to be redistributed and for greater equality to be achieved. These are deeply spiritual convictions and reflect a Biblical pattern of priorities… [Christian People’s Alliance]
It would be disingenuous to label the British Christian People’s Alliance a left wing party: They’re opposed to abortion and support the teaching Christian values in public schools. But because they are firstly a Christian organization, their sentiments regarding the distribution of wealth track perfectly with those expressed by Francis, as is the case with numerous European Christian parties. This is because for the Pope as well as Christian groups organized outside of the American tradition, the primacy of Christian ethical thought is applied to all aspects of human existence, markets and the distribution of wealth included.
But the sanctity of markets is a foregone conclusion for his right wing critics. Their politics precede their religion, and their criticisms belie their accusation that Francis is the one who displays an overly strong affinity for politics. So far, no serious theological arguments have been raised by the right wing contra Francis, and I doubt any will be raised: For the Pope’s conservative critics in the U.S., the first concern is not religious.
By: Elizabeth Stoker, The Week, December 17, 2013
“We Don’t Want Nothing Out Of This Debt Limit”: Paul Ryan Says He Isn’t Done Holding The Economy Hostage
In the spectacular Republican burnout at the end of the October government shutdown, it was easy to miss that America came within just hours of a full economic meltdown.
The brinksmanship over the demand to defund Obamacare or at least completely maim it lasted for 16 days and cost an estimated $24 billion. But if the standoff had gone on just another day longer, the debt ceiling would have been breached, causing economic chaos.
It’s difficult to predict what kind of damage the economy might have suffered, because no Congress had ever been stupid enough to default on our debts on purpose. The debt limit crisis of 2011 cost the stock market thousands of points and stunted job creation for months. There wasn’t a similar effect in 2013 because Wall Street assumed the GOP was crying wolf, and they were right.
But one mistake, one procedural error, one coup against a congressional leader could have sparked the beginning of a default. And many economists believe the results would have resembled the 2008 financial crisis — but worse.
As she’s sold the budget deal she negotiated with House Republicans that doesn’t extend the debt limit, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has said, “We have brought certainty and stability.”
And the economy does seem to be more stable since the GOP capitulated in October. “The volatility of the U.S. dollar in the last 90 days fell to 4.93 percent on Dec. 13 from a yearly high of 7.34 percent in September as a shutdown and debt ceiling crisis loomed, according to the Bloomberg U.S. Dollar Index that represents 10 major currencies weighted by liquidity and trade flows,” Bloomberg‘s Derek Wallbank and Kathleen Hunter noted.
But Murray’s partner, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), seems intent on disrupting that stability.
“We don’t want nothing out of this debt limit,” he told Fox News Sunday.
In other words, House Republican demands are forthcoming. The last time they put together a list of such demands, it was an insane laundry list of right-wing wishes cribbed from the Koch Brothers’ letter to Santa. Somehow being the party held responsible for the greatest financial crisis in a half-century has given Republicans the freedom to boldly threaten a return to such a crisis again and again, without fear of destroying their party.
The president offered, in return, nothing. Obviously regretting setting the precedent that the economy could be held hostage, President Obama has vowed never to negotiate over the debt limit again.
With Republican factions warring with themselves and everyone in Washington seeing their approval ratings shrink, would they dare play chicken with the economy as the midterm elections rapidly approach?
Paul Ryan knows he can’t afford not to at least seem as if he’s willing to do so without losing the Tea Party support that makes him such an asset to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). And the president knows he can’t afford to give in.
The result is that another crisis has been averted, but a far worse one looms.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, December 16, 2013
“Affluenza”: The Latest Criminal Defense For The Spoiled Rich
There’s a tired and persistent canard that criminals end up going without punishment for their violations because they convince lawyers and judges that they were so victimized as children by poverty or abuse that they can’t possibly be held accountable for their own behavior. This is hardly the case; in fact, the opposite is true. Indigent defendants have little recourse if they are assigned substandard public representation, and juries hardly identify with a poor kid or a black kid thought to be up to no good. That was represented pretty clearly in the acquittal of George Zimmerman (“George,” one juror referred to the defendant after that trial, as though he were a pal and neighbor). Zimmerman had shot and killed an unarmed African-American teenager, but the jury appeared to identify with the shooter more.
And one look at the appalling result of mandatory-minimum laws shows that drug offenders, in particular, are being subject to absurdly long prison sentences. A first-time offender found with 5 grams of crack can be subject to a minimum five-year sentence; add on some trumped up “conspiracy” as part of the continuum of drug sales, and the incarceration could jump to a mandatory minimum of 20 years. Jack Carpenter sold medical marijuana to dispensaries in California (where it is legal), but was still sentenced to 10 years behind bars by a federal judge.
Forget about avoiding prison because you had it tough as a kid. And don’t even try the “Twinkie defense,” the contention that you were so amped up on sugar you couldn’t control yourself. A Texas teen has taken miscarriage of justice one further, avoiding punishment for killing four people because of what his lawyer called “affluenza.” In other words, the 16-year-old Ethan Couch is such a spoiled brat because his rich parents never bothered to put any limits on him. Therefore, it was argued, even though his blood alcohol was three times the legal limit when he drove his truck 70 mph in a 40-mph zone – killing four people and seriously injuring two more – how could we possibly expect him to have done otherwise? He was never properly parented by his wealthy family, and so how could he be expected to know right from wrong?
The argument sounds like something out of a TV legal drama, added in to display the occasional absurdities of the legal system, especially in cases where the defense attorney is desperate and has absolutely nothing else to argue. But horrifyingly, in this case, it worked.
Couch was sentenced to probation. So much for a 24-year old woman whose car had broken down on the side of the road, along with the mother and daughter who came to help. And so much, too, for the pastor who also stopped to help the stranded motorist. They’re all dead. And two of Couch’s passengers are seriously injured; one of them, also a teen, is now paralyzed. Couch earlier this month pleaded guilty to four counts of intoxication manslaughter and two counts of intoxication assault causing serious bodily injury.
Before sentencing, a defense-provided psychologist, G. Dick Miller, said Couch would not benefit from jail, but rather from therapy. “This kid has been in a system that’s sick. If he goes to jail, that’s just another sick system.”
There’s a sickness to the system here. And it won’t be solved by the $450,000-a-year rehab center Couch will be attending, courtesy of his parents. And he’s learned his lesson anyway – that the rich don’t live like you and me. They aren’t held to the same standards of personal accountability, either.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, December 16, 2013
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