Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made yet another Sunday-show appearance yesterday and offered some historical perspective that stood out as interesting. Asked about the disagreement over foreign policy between Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), McCain replied:
“So I’m not particularly interested in getting between Senator Paul and Governor Perry, but I do believe that the things we’re seeing in the world today, in greater turmoil than at any time in my lifetime, is a direct result of an absence of American leadership.”
Now, for McCain, the “absence of American leadership” roughly translates to “we’re not engaged militarily in enough foreign countries,” so this is obviously easy to dismiss.
But to believe the world is in “greater turmoil” than at any time in McCain’s lifetime is an amazing claim. I suppose there’s some subjectivity to this – one observer’s turmoil may be another’s unrest – but John McCain was born in 1936.
I mention this because his lifetime includes the entirety of World War II and the beginning, middle, and end of the Cold War. McCain wants to talk about global “turmoil”? We can have a spirited chat about Hitler taking swaths of Europe while Japan invaded China. That’s “turmoil.” By comparison, today’s global stage is almost tranquil.
McCain added in the same interview, “I would argue that given conditions in the Middle East, this might be more dangerous than any time in the past.”
Really? Any time? Conditions are more dangerous now than during any Arab-Israeli conflict, the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranian revolution, the Egyptian revolutions, every Islamic uprising and civil war of the 1970s, and the rise of al Qaeda?
This is not to say the Middle East is a model of stability right now, but to say that it’s “more dangerous” than at “any time in the past” is a little over the top.
Let’s also note that McCain has made curious historical arguments like these before. In 2008, at the height of his presidential campaign, the senator said the conflict between Russia and Georgia was the first “serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War” – overlooking 9/11, both wars in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, two conflicts in the Balkans, multiple crises in Israel, Darfur, and the rise of a nuclear North Korea, among other things.
But it seems this general train of thought is nevertheless common. The Wall Street Journal reports today:
A convergence of security crises is playing out around the globe, from the Palestinian territories and Iraq to Ukraine and the South China Sea, posing a serious challenge to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy and reflecting a world in which U.S. global power seems increasingly tenuous. […]
The chaos has meant that the Obama administration finds itself in the middle of a second term reacting to rather than directing world events.
Remind me, when was this era in which U.S. officials were capable of “directing world events”? Here’s a hint: there was no such era. This is an ahistorical Republican talking point working its way into a purported news story.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 14, 2014
July 16, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Foreign Policy, John McCain, Right Wing | Cold War, Middle East, Neo-Cons, Rand Paul, Republicans, Rick Perry, World War ll |
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Apparently there’s a contest among Republicans to see who can be more shameless and irresponsible in criticizing President Obama’s foreign policy. So far, Chris Christie is winning.
The New Jersey governor alleged Saturday that “the unrest you see in the Middle East is caused in some measure — not completely, but in some measure — by the fact that this president has not acted in a decisive, consistent way.”
If you disregard the rantings of unserious provocateurs such as Sarah Palin, Christie’s attack represents a new low. He accuses the president of the United States of actually being responsible “in some measure” for violence between Israelis and Palestinians, Sunnis and Shiites, dictators and rebels — conflicts and antagonisms that began, I seem to recall, well before Obama took office in January 2009.
One might assume that Christie offered specific ideas about what Obama should be doing differently. Nope.
The president should be “trying to bring stability to that region by having America be a forceful voice in favor of a democracy like Israel and be condemning, in the strongest terms and in actions, the things that are being done by Hamas against Israel.” All of which Obama has already done.
Asked whether Obama should take some kind of military action in the region, Christie answered, “I’m not going to give opinions on that. I’m not the president.”
Very helpful, Governor. Please return to your intensive study of traffic patterns on the George Washington Bridge.
Other Republicans who, like Christie, are running for president offer equally vague and useless criticisms of Obama’s policies in the Middle East and around the world. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who’s going for the bookish intellectual look these days — he has started wearing glasses and stopped wearing cowboy boots — wrote an op-ed in The Post on Saturday accusing Obama of “confused leadership and passivity” that “enabled groups such as the Islamic State to grow.”
What exactly, in Perry’s view, did Obama do wrong? We’ll never know, I guess, because “the window to shape events for the better passed years ago.” It would have been helpful had Perry let us know at the time he saw that window passing, or perhaps closing, or something.
Perry does suggest there is still time for the United States to provide “meaningful assistance” in Iraq and Syria, including “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sharing and airstrikes.” But he neglects to specify whom we should meaningfully assist: one of the also-ran rebel groups in Syria, the sectarian Shiite-dominated government in Iraq, the Islamic theocracy in Iran . . .
In fairness, Perry’s prime target wasn’t Obama. He was aiming at Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, whose “isolationist” policies Perry sees as a potentially grave threat to our national security. The fact that Paul also poses a potentially grave threat to Perry’s presidential ambitions — he leads most polls for the GOP nomination — is pure coincidence, I’m sure.
Paul responded Monday with an op-ed in Politico, saying of Perry that “apparently his new glasses haven’t altered his perception of the world, or allowed him to see it any more clearly.” He notes that during the 2012 campaign, Perry advocated sending troops “back into Iraq” to counter the growing influence of Iran — but now seems to advocate helping Iran against the Islamic State extremists.
In the Politico piece, Paul refrains from gratuitous criticism of Obama. But in a National Review essay this month, Paul blasted the White House for urging Israel to show “restraint” in responding to the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.
Paul called for a cutoff of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority. He should be smart enough to understand that this would only strengthen the position of Hamas. But perhaps his real aim is to dispel the notion that he is insufficiently pro-Israel.
The Republican critique of Obama’s foreign policy that has achieved the most traction — undeservedly so, in my view — comes from a non-candidate: Mitt Romney. The basic thrust: “I told you so.”
But what was Romney so right about, except the blindingly obvious? That a large, permanent U.S. residual force in Iraq could have prevented the gains by the Islamic State? Of course, but the American public didn’t support keeping troops there and the Iraqi government said no. That it would be better if the “moderate” rebels were winning in Syria? Certainly, but shaping the outcome of that multi-sided civil war would require a robust intervention.
People who see easy options really should have their eyes checked.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 14, 2014
July 16, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Chris Christie, GOP Presidential Candidates, Republicans | Foreign Policy, Middle East, Mitt Romney, National Security, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin |
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Serious lawsuits start with some specific legal grievance – a claim that someone was injured by a defective product, say, or that a search was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment – and proceed from there. US House speaker John Boehner wants to sue the President of the United States – for no particular reason other than his alleged lawlessness – and fill in the details later.
The lawsuit, which a House committee will take up rather seriously on Wednesday, is a frivolous stunt that not only has no chance of succeeding but isn’t even intended to succeed. The belated choice of targets does provide a useful illustration of Republican priorities, though: most notably, registering more outrage at the Affordable Care Act and further attempting to legitimize various fake scandals wafting up from the conservative fever swamp.
Some of the GOP attacks on the Obama administration have had real substantive effects. This suit, however, is analogous to the endless House votes to repeal Obamacare – an impotent symbolic gesture by Republicans frustrated they were unable to deny access to health coverage to tens of millions of American citizens.
By speaking first in general terms about Obama’s alleged failure to “faithfully execute the laws” in favor of usurping the will of Congress, plus the president’s failure to do enough bombing of random foreign countries, Boehner allowed the Tea Party’s insatiable skree machine to fill in its own gibberish legalese. Why focus on one potential impeachable offense when the examples can be nearly infinite? Benghazi! Fast and Furious! Executive orders!
Now that Boehner has actually announced the basis for the lawsuit – and will spend the next two weeks getting it to the floor for another meaningless Obamacare vote – it turns out to be a narrow and almost certainly irrelevant one. The suit will focus on a claim that Obama acted illegally when the administration decided to effectively delay implementation of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act, by declining to penalize employers who didn’t comply in 2014.
In fairness, the argument isn’t unreasonable on its own terms, but to bring a legal challenge in federal court, a plaintiff must have “standing” – Boehner and Co must show that the House of Representatives has been directly injured or otherwise directly affected. Under existing precedents, that’s nearly impossible.
And even if the federal courts were to grant standing, for a lawsuit to proceed, there has to be an ongoing controversy. Since the employer mandate will almost certainly not be delayed another year, the issue is likely to be moot before the lawsuit gets very far, which will result in its getting thrown out. The American taxpayers will have funded a no-hope legal challenge because House Republicans needed to keep their base’s 24/7 scandal-invention machine going – not because there was an actual controversy.
It’s not clear what kind of bill the coming weeks might produce. Conservative legal experts will be happy to give testimony, some of which will be reflected in the final resolution. But the details are fundamentally irrelevant. The federal courts will almost certainly deny that they have jurisdiction, Boehner will have sent politically expedient signals to his base, and the successful implementation of Obamacare will proceed exactly as it would have – as if nobody had ever sued the President of the United States at all. As for the defective product that is the Republican-controlled House, well, the only remedy for the injuries they’ve inflicted is at the ballot box in November.
By: Scott Lemieux, The Guardian, July 15, 2014
July 16, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
House Republicans, John Boehner, Tea Party | Affordable Care Act, Conservatives, Election 2014, Employer Mandate, Executive Orders, GOP, ObamaCare |
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Conservatives are stuck in a perpetual outrage loop. The reappearance of Todd Akin, the horror-movie villain immortality of Sarah Palin, the unseemly celebration of the Hobby Lobby decision – these all speak to a chorus of “la-la-la-can’t-hear-you” loud enough to drown out the voice of an entire generation. Late last week, the Reason Foundation released the results of a poll about that generation, the millennials; its signature finding was the confirmation of a mass abandonment of social conservatism and the GOP. This comes at a time when the conservative movement is increasingly synonymous with mean-spirited, prank-like and combative activism and self-important grand gestures. The millennial generation has repeatedly defined itself as the most socially tolerant of the modern era, but one thing it really can’t stand is drama.
Republicans were already destined for piecemeal decimation due to the declining numbers of their core constituency. But they don’t just have a demographic problem anymore; they have stylistic one. The conservative strategy of outrage upon outrage upon outrage bumps up against the policy preferences and the attitudes of millennials in perfect discord.
We all can recognize the right’s tendency to respond to backlash with more “lash” (Akin didn’t disappear, he doubled down on “legitimate rape”), but it seems to have gained speed with the age of social media and candidate tracking. The Tea Party’s resistance to the leavening effect of establishment mores and political professionals has been a particularly effective accelerant. Palin’s ability to put anything on the internet without any intermediary has rendered her as reckless as any tween with a SnapChat account. Akin’s whiny denouncement of Washington insiders is likely to make him more credible with a certain kind of base voter. The midterms are, as we speak, producing another round of Fox News celebrities, whether or not they win their races: the Eric Cantor-vanquishing David Brat, Mississippi’s Chris McDaniel and the hog-castrating mini-Palin, Jodi Ernst of Iowa.
The fire-with-fire attitude of hardline conservatives has its roots in the petulant cultural defensiveness adopted by the GOP – especially the Christian right – during the culture wars of the 90s. Their siege mentality bred an attitude toward liberals that saw every instance of social liberalization as proof of their own apocalyptic predictions and conspiracy theories. Gay marriage will lead to acceptance of beastiality and pedophilia. “Socialized medicine” will lead to the euthanizing Grandma. Access to birth control will lead to orgies in the streets.
Then came Obama’s election, the Zapruder tape for the right’s tin-foil hat haberdashers – a moment in history that both explained and exacerbated America’s supposed decline. Dinesh D’Souza, the Oliver Stone of the Tea Party, has now made two movies about the meaning of Obama’s presidency. The first, 2016: Obama’s America, garnered an astounding $33m at the box office, and his lawyers blamed disappointing returns from this summer’s America on a Google conspiracy to confuse moviegoers about its showtimes. (Of course.)
The GOP has long staked a claim on The Disappearing Angry White Man, but they have apparently ever-narrowing odds of getting a bite at millennials, who appear to be more like The Somewhat Concerned Multicultural Moderate. This generation is racially diverse, pro-pot, pro-marriage equality and pro-online gambling. They are troubled by the deficit but believe in the social safety net: 74% of millennials, according to Reason, want the government to guarantee food and housing to all Americans. A Pew survey found that 59% of Americans under 30 say the government should do more to solve problems, while majorities in all other age groups thought it should do less.
The Rupe-Reason poll teases out some of the thinking behind the surge of young people abandoning the GOP, and finds a generation that is less apt to take to the streets, Occupy-style, than to throw a great block party: lots of drugs, poker and gays! Millennials don’t want to change things, apparently – they want everyone to get along. The report observes “[m]any specifically identified LGBTQ rights as their primary reason for being liberal”; and “[o]ften, they decided they were liberals because they really didn’t like conservatives.”
But liberals can’t be complacent about their demographic advantage. Their challenge is to resist the impulse to copycat the hysteria that has worked so well for the right historically. “No drama Obama” was the millennials’ spirit animal – his popularity has sunk with the economy, but also with the administration’s escalating rhetoric. Today, under-30 voters show a distinct preference for Hillary Clinton (39% according to Reason, 53% according to the Wall Street Journal), and no wonder: she’s as bloodless as Bill was lusty, as analytical as Bill was emotional. The professorial Elizabeth Warren is the logical (very logical) backup.
Right now, Democrats benefit from both the form and content of conservative message: this next generation is not just inclusive, but conflict-adverse. Millennials cringe at the old-man-yelling-at-gay-clouds spectacle of the Tea Party. Perhaps this comes from living in such close proximity of their parents for so long. If this generation does have a political philosophy, it’s this: “First, do no harm.” If it has a guiding moral principle, it’s simpler: “Don’t be embarrassing.”
By: Ana Marie Cox, The Guardian, July 14, 2014
July 15, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Conservatives, Millennnials, Republicans | Culture Wars, GOP, Sarah Palin, Social Media, Tea-party, Todd Akin |
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) held a wide-ranging press conference yesterday at an event in Tennessee, inexplicably calling the Affordable Care Act a “failure” despite all the evidence to the contrary, and blaming violence in Israel on the Obama administration for reasons that don’t make sense.
But those rhetorical shots were easy, and the fact that there were wide-ranging questions doesn’t necessarily mean there were wide-ranging answers. Time’s Zeke Miller reported that Christie is “making moves to prepare for a presidential run,” but the governor does not “answer questions like a presidential candidate.”
Sometimes the straight-talking governor of New Jersey doesn’t talk all that straight. Gov. Chris Christie casts himself as a decider, steering his state through rough economic waters, while setting himself up for a run for the White House. At the National Governors Association meeting in Nashville on Saturday, Christie lambasted the Obama administration’s Middle East policy and its inability to negotiate with Congress.
But he skipped as many issues as he took on. Just what he would do when faced with some of the nation’s hardest policy challenges remains unclear.
Should lawmakers raise the gas tax to pay for transportation projects? Christie didn’t want to give an opinion. Should unaccompanied minors from Central America be sent back? Christie said he’s “not going to get into all that.” Should the U.S. intervene militarily against Hamas? Christie dodged that, too.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it keeps happening. Christie presents himself as a bold trailblazer, ready to lead his party and his nation, but when asked for his opinions on current events, suddenly the tough-talking governor seems rather shy.
Two weeks ago, for example, Christie was asked for his opinion on the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby/contraception ruling. He refused to give an opinion either way. It followed an interview in which Christie refused to give an opinion on immigration reform, declining to even reiterate support for public remarks he’s already made.
Before that, when the U.S. policy in Syria reached a crisis point, Christie refused to take a stand on that, too.
In an interview earlier this month, the New Jersey Republican actually took some pride in his ability to dodge questions, saying it’s the mark of “a good leader.”
It’s actually the opposite. Good leaders generally aren’t afraid to answer questions about current events, afraid of what one constituency or another might say in response. As we talked about at the time, Christie used to present himself as a no-nonsense straight talker, afraid of nothing and no one. Now the prospect of sharing his take on the major issues of the day makes him uncomfortable.
Is this really the “brand” Christie wants to cultivate in advance of a national campaign?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 14, 2014
July 15, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Chris Christie, GOP Presidential Candidates | Border Crisis, Foreign Policy, Hobby Lobby, Immigration Reform, Infrastructure, Middle East, Republicans |
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