“Cruz Channels The Base on IS”: Unfocused Rage Confused With Patriotism
To the casual reader of headlines, what most distinctively characterizes Sen. Ted Cruz’s typically loud rhetoric on the IS challenge and what to do about it is his bizarre focus–which NH Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has also picked up on–on the Mexican border rather than Syria or Iraq as the most important theater of operations against IS.
But in a perceptive piece last Friday, Peter Beinart looked a little more carefully at how Cruz talks about the IS threat and discovers he represents a POV–which he calls “militaristic pessimism”–that favors military strikes without any real political strategy for–or even interest in–dealing with the situation in Syria and Iraq:
Like George W. Bush before them, McCain and Graham are militaristic optimists. They want America to bomb and arm its way toward a free, pro-American Middle East. Cruz is a militaristic pessimist. He mocks the Obama administration’s effort to foster reconciliation “between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad” because “the Sunnis and Shiites have been engaged in a sectarian civil war since 632.” Notably absent from his rhetoric is the Bush-like claim that Muslims harbor the same desire for liberty as everyone else. Instead of mentioning that most of ISIS’s victims have been fellow Muslims, Cruz frames America’s conflict in the language of religious war. “ISIS right now is the face of evil. They’re crucifying Christians, they’re persecuting Christians,” he told Hannity.
Notice the difference. When Sunnis kills Shiites, Cruz shrugs because there’s been a sectarian divide within Islam since 632. But when Muslims kills Christians—another conflict with a long history—Cruz readies the F-16s.
In this respect, says Beinart persuasively, Cruz probably best represents the views of the GOP “base:”
With his combination of military interventionism and diplomatic isolationism, Cruz probably better reflects the views of GOP voters than any of his potential 2016 rivals. According to polls, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to see ISIS as a threat to the U.S. and to back airstrikes against it, but less likely to support arming Syria’s non-jihadist rebels. As Republican strategist Ford O’Connell recently told The Hill, “Ted Cruz is probably most in line with the Republican base in the sense he doesn’t want to have a discussion of Syria versus Iraq. He wants to dismantle and destroy ISIS. Period.”
More than a decade after the invasion of Iraq, this is where the GOP has ended up. Ted Cruz wants to kill people in the Middle East who he believes might threaten the United States. And he wants to defend Christianity there. Other than that, he really couldn’t care less.
There’s an old military saying (variously attributed to Marines or special forces troops, and dating back to the Catholic Church’s 13th-century campaign of extermination against the Albigensians) that probably describes this POV even better than “militaristic pessimism:” It’s “Kill em’ all and let God sort ’em out!” It’s a monstrous but ever-popular sentiment that’s highly appropriate for a political party where unfocused rage is often confused with “patriotism.”
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 23, 2014
“What’s A Speaker To Do?”: It’s Not Looking Good For Boehner’s Anti-Obama Lawsuit
When House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced his plan to sue President Barack Obama for delaying enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, the reviews were swift and negative. Legally, the lawsuit seemed destined for failure. Politically, it looked like a dud that could actively backfire on the GOP.
Two months later, things aren’t looking much better for House Republicans’ quest to scramble the balance of power in Washington.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court tossed out a different lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s employer mandate delay. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons had no right to sue.
Politico’s Jennifer Haberkorn reports:
A unanimous three-judge panel threw out the case only three days after oral argument, a breakneck speed.
The physicians’ group argued that the Obama administration doesn’t have the right to delay the implementation of the employer mandate, particularly without delaying the individual mandate, too. The doctors said they are harmed because when people pay the penalty, they have less income to buy medical care from them.
“The [Supreme] Court has rejected efforts by one person to litigate about the amount of someone else’s taxes (or someone else’s subsidies, which are taxes in reverse),” Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote for the three-judge panel, which also included Judges William Bauer and Richard Posner. All three were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents.
This creates an obvious dilemma for Boehner and the House GOP, who are expected to advance a very similar argument. Making matters worse, their original legal team has jumped ship.
On Friday, The New York Times reported that attorney David B. Rivkin Jr., who had agreed to take the case on behalf of House Republicans, “withdrew from the case under pressure after facing criticism that he had taken on an overly partisan lawsuit.” The report adds that some of Rivkin’s partners feared that the suit would hurt the firm’s credibility, presumably due to its divisive nature and extremely long odds for success.
The new attorney handling the suit, William A. Burck, has recently popped up in the news for helping House Republicans sue Attorney General Eric Holder to turn over documents related to the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal, and for defending former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell in her corruption trial (neither ended particularly well).
So what is Speaker Boehner to do? He could abandon his plan in the name of fiscal conservatism, and save $350,000 for the taxpayers (and his caucus from a lot of embarrassment). But Republicans still have plenty of fundraising to do before Election Day, so expect them to plow ahead — and to refuse to rest until Obamacare is fully implemented.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, September 23, 2014
“Vote or… Just Vote”: We Are Missing Important Voices In Our Democratic Process
It is National Voter Registration Day on September 23, an entire 24 hours dedicated to getting unregistered voters to fill out that voter registration form and commit to voting in this upcoming midterm election. For this civics nerd, it is amazing that this is a designated day. Voting has a holiday besides Election Day.
As someone who has worked in the civic engagement space and is currently running for office, I recognize that I have a more heightened awareness of this calendar date than others. Even if this is your first time getting involved in an election, it is the right time to start.
You’re a woman? Register to vote.
You’re between the ages of 18 to 24? Register to vote.
Republican? Register to vote.
Democrat? Register to vote.
You’re simply eligible? Register to vote.
This can be seen as a self-serving declaration as a candidate for public office, but we are missing important voices in our democratic process.
Regardless of your political leanings or your issues, some organization out there will help you register. As someone who wants to see everyone engaged, there is no problem pointing you in the right direction to the right resources. I’ll start with Rock the Vote.
This election is about the individual voter. It is a guarantee that your registration and vote can and will make a difference. With so many close races and important initiatives across the country, your vote could be a part of a several hundred-vote difference on a candidate or an issue.
Does the form seem long? It is really not that bad. Trouble getting to the polls? You can elect absentee.
The proper retort to what many people feel is do-nothing politics is do-something voting.
By: Christina Gagnier, EdTech CEO. Congressional Candidate, CA-35; The Huffington Post Blog, September 22, 2014
“Page One Of His Playbook”: Karl Rove Has A Democratic Candidate For Governor ‘Arrested’
Karl Rove has committed felonies—uh, not felonies, I mean smears. To avoid any confusion, I’ll repeat: Karl Rove has not been convicted of committing felonies. But he has committed smears (not unlike the one I just committed on him). And, virtually unnoticed by the media, he has smeared again, yesterday on Fox News Sunday.
It was recently revealed that Paul Davis, the Democratic candidate for governor of Kansas, had a most awkward moment sixteen years ago. Police raided a strip club near Coffeyville for drugs and found Davis, then 26 and unmarried, getting a lap dance. He wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing, no charges were brought against him, and even in Kansas, lap-dancing isn’t illegal.
Still, the lap-dance story is fair game for supporters of Sam Brownback, the embattled Republican governor who’s running for re-election. On Meet the Press yesterday, Grover Norquist, for example, interrupted his anti-tax talk to relate the lap-dance incident (“with the naked lady”), which Thomas Frank later shot down as ancient small fry.
But over at Fox, Rove dramatically raised the stakes for Davis, saying that Kansas’s possible future governor had been “arrested”:
The governor’s race in Kansas is close. However, late last week, it was revealed that the Democratic candidate for governor had been arrested—or not arrested, he’d been detained briefly a number of years ago when he was an attorney for a strip joint and the police found him getting a lap dance.
Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace let it slide, presumably because Rove corrected himself. But the “correction” allowed Rove to repeat the word “arrested,” a word that, even when used in the negative, Fox viewers can now associate with Davis and repeat until it seems true. No small thing when many diehard Republicans in Kansas are so disgusted with the devastation wreaked by Brownback’s tax cuts, that they’re actually considering a vote for Davis.
Of course, Rove may have simply made an honest slip of the tongue. But “Bush’s Brain” has a long list of such ambiguous slips.
Most recently, he suggested that Hillary Clinton had suffered a “traumatic brain injury.” Several months after her December 2012 fall, which caused a blood clot, Rove said, “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.” She was hospitalized for three days, not thirty, and later that day Rove tried to deny (while simultaneously reinforcing) his innuendo, saying, “Of course she doesn’t have brain damage.”
“You could believe Rove’s denial—but you would have to ignore virtually his entire political career,” as George Zornick wrote in The Nation. “For decades Rove has been circulating nasty, personal rumors about political opponents and placing them in the public conversation, all while obscuring his fingerprints, making the rumors become the opponent’s problem, not his. It’s page one of his playbook.”
A protégé of the late Lee Atwater, the GOP dirty trickster who once boasted that “states’ rights” and “tax cuts” could be used as code words for “nigger,” Rove has been associated with whisper campaigns suggesting that his clients’ opponents were homosexual (Texas governor Ann Richards in 1994), pedophiles (a Democratic candidate for Alabama Supreme Court, also in ’94), or mentally impaired (John McCain in 2000). “Other rumors tied to the Rove-led campaign” in 2000, writes Think Progress, “included allegations that McCain’s wife had a drug problem and that his adopted Bangladesh-born daughter was an ‘illegitimate black child.’”
Rove is sparing Davis the “mental” and “homo” tags, but having him “arrested” just might do the dirty trick. (And it might help obscure reports, cited by Davis, that the FBI is investigating the fund-raising and lobbying practices of Brownback associates. Brownback has denied any wrongdoing.)As for Davis, a Kansas state representative, he released a statement to Politico on Saturday. “When I was 26 years old, I was taken to a club by my boss—the club owner was one of our legal clients,” he said in the statement. “While we were in the building, the police showed up. I was never accused of having done anything wrong, but rather I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
On Fox, Rove was, once again, in the right place at the right time to say the wrong thing.
By: Leslie Savan, The Nation, September 22, 2014
“Does Ruining A State Reflect Moral Turpitude?”: The Ultimate Question Kansas Voters Will Answer This November
Kansas’ embattled right-wing Republicans probably think they got a divine assist from the revelation that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul David received a lap dance sixteen years ago.
But I dunno. Ruining a state’s fiscal condition, and damaging its schools, as Gov. Sam Brownback has done, not as the indiscretion of a single man “in the wrong place at the wrong time” but with malice aforethought and as the perfect expression of his values, strikes me as worse. Here’s how WaPo’s editorial board put it:
Mr. Brownback has cherry-picked the statistics to suggest that things aren’t as bad as they seem, while arguing that it’s still too early — more than a year and a half after his cuts were enacted — to gauge their full impact. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s bond rating agencies, taking note of plummeting tax revenue and a siphoning off of the state’s reserves to cover current and projected deficits, have weighed in with their own verdict: Moody’s cut Kansas’s credit rating last spring, and Standard & Poor’s followed suit last month….
[S]pending reductions have been sufficiently draconian and divisive that large numbers of Kansans, including more than 100 current and former GOP elected officials, have expressed alarm and are supporting the man trying to unseat Mr. Brownback, Paul Davis, the Democratic minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives. There have been particular expressions of anxiety about cuts to per-pupil expenditures in public schools, which have dropped more than 10 percent since 2008.
Is conducting the kind of “experiment” Brownback has undertaken with such disastrous results an offense reflecting moral turpitude? That may be the ultimate question Kansas voters will answer this November.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 22, 2014
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