“No Pleasing Some People”: Republicans Mad That The President They Despise, Obstruct, And Lie About Doesn’t Call More Often
Iowa senator Chuck Grassley is something of an odd character. As I’ve said before, he used to be considered a reasonable moderate, but in the last couple of years he has basically turned himself into a Tea Party wingnut, combining the ideological extremism, face palm-inducing stupidity, and general craziness that makes that political movement so charming (although I was recently informed that even a couple of decades ago, before Grassley began publicly yelling at clouds, people in the Senate privately considered him kind of a nut).
Today, The Hill reports that Grassley, who has spent the last five years floating conspiracy theories, impugning Barack Obama’s motives, and telling truly vicious lies about his policies, is upset that Obama doesn’t call him more often. Seriously.
In 2009, Obama basically had Grassley on speed dial, calling him frequently during negotiations over an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system. Grassley at the time was one of three Republicans on the Group of Six, which also included Sen. Mike Enzi (Wyo.) and former Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine).
“During that period of time, the president would call me on my cellphone and talk to me. I don’t know if it was a half a dozen times or a dozen times, but enough so you remember he called you,” Grassley said.
The relationship unraveled after a meeting at the White House in August 2009.
“We had a meeting down at the White House about Aug. 5, 2009 — the six of us — and he asked me this question: ‘Would you be willing to be one or two or three Republicans voting with the Democrats to get a bipartisan bill?’ and I said, ‘No,’ ” Grassley recalled.
“I never had a phone call from him since,” Grassley added.
So Grassley told Obama flat out that he would never vote for a health care bill, no matter what—and Obama stopped bothering to win his support. Amazing! But that’s not even the whole story. At the same time, Grassley was out telling constituents that the Affordable Care Act contained death panels that would “pull the plug on Grandma.” And for some reason, the president no longer found it worthwhile to massage Grassley’s ego.
And it isn’t just Grassley. Other Republicans are upset that Obama has abandoned his “charm offensive” meant at finding bipartisan compromise on things over which Republicans have made clear they will never compromise. Republicans are appalled, appalled I tell you, that Obama is going out and making speeches arguing for the policy changes he’d like to see. “I preferred it when he sat down for dinner with Republicans,” huffs Sen. Lamar Alexander, who presumably is now eating alone, gazing at an 8×10 photo of him and Barack Obama in happier days, their arms around each other’s shoulders as they share a tender moment, just before Alexander joins every other Republican to filibuster every bill the president supports.
You might be able to argue that Republican behavior over Obama’s tenure has been defensible. They dislike him intensely, but more importantly they disagree with his policy priorities, so they very consciously adopted a strategy of total and unwavering opposition to everything he wants to do, not only because they object to the particular goals but because they calculated that by obstructing and hobbling him they could make future political victories more likely. Fair enough. But you can’t choose that path, and then complain that the president isn’t working hard enough to win you over, when you’ve already made it quite clear you won’t be won over. It’s as though a salesman came to your door and asked if you might be interested in buying aluminum siding, and you immediately began screaming in his face that he’s trying to destroy your home and you’d never buy his siding in a million years, and then started swinging a baseball bat at him, and when he retreated, you turned to your spouse and said, “That guy didn’t even try to win me over—what a jerk!”
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 6, 2013
“Consider The Source”: The Women-Folk Screwed Up American Education With Their Uppity Ways
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant appears to have crossed the Todd Akin Line in an online discussion at WaPo today, as WaPo’s own Valerie Strauss reports:
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said Tuesday that America’s educational troubles began when women began working outside the home in large numbers.
Bryant was participating in a Washington Post Live event focused on the importance of ensuring that children read well by the end of third grade. In response to a question about how America became “so mediocre” in regard to educational outcomes, he said:
“I think both parents started working. The mom got in the work place.”
Bryant seems to have instantly realized he’d stepped in it (and/or a frantic staffer signaled to him off-camera), and so he started qualifying and back-tracking without retracting his remarks. And so they remain on the record.
Is it unfair for us progressive gabbers to pounce on him? I have somewhat mixed feelings. Sure, politicians say things they don’t mean to say from time to time. But it’s not exactly my job to help the likes of Phil Bryant stay on message. So the simple approach in trying to decide if a “gaffe” like Bryant’s is significant is to consider the source. After all, Todd Akin himself in his famous and politically fatal ruminations on rape was echoing a very familiar meme of the anti-choice movement, in defense of a position (no exceptions to an abortion ban for victims of rape and incest) that he continued to maintain without interruption before and after the “gaffe.” It was fair to say that although he regretted his failure to confine the remark to entirely friendly audiences, he was honestly if inadvertently giving us a glimpse into his world-view, and that’s always relevant, particularly when you are talking about someone who would very much like to deny women the right to choose.
So what about Phil Bryant? Are there reasons to suspect he’s prone to the view that the women-folk screwed up American education with their uppity ways?
Well, there was this incident back during the 2009 battle over a “personhood” initiative (banning all abortions, all “abortifacients” like Plan B, and arguably many forms of regular old contraception) that turned out to be too extreme even for Mississippi voters (as reported at the time by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal):
Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant said Monday that “Satan wins” if voters reject Initiative 26 that defines personhood at fertilization.
“This is a battle of good and evil of Biblical proportions,” the Republican gubernatorial nominee told a pro-26 rally attended by about 30 supporters at Tupelo City Hall.
Bryant appeared with American Family Association’s Rev. Donald Wildmon, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Alan Nunnelee in support of the initiative.
Cristen Hemmins of Oxford, an opponent, attended the event with four other anti-26 advocates. Hemmens, who was raped and shot twice during a kidnapping as a college student, asked Bryant, “Why can’t you men have any sympathy for women like me?”
Bryant told her he is sympathetic to situations like hers but said he believes “that the child has some rights, too, even in that condition.”
Does this perhaps create a soupcon of reasonable suspicion that Bryant believes in an eternal social order dictating that women just need to get used to second-class citizenship and focus on their reproductive duties? Call me unbalanced if you wish, but I think it does. And since the jesuitical practice of hiding one’s true views as a tactical matter is very commonplace among Christian Right types, I think we are at least entitled to consider Bryant’s remarks today as a valid data point.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 4, 2013
“Beset By Condescending Outsiders”: Michael Bloomberg’s Gift To Arkansas’ Pro-Gun Sen Mark Pryor
In the unlikely event that Mark Pryor wins re-election as Arkansas’ senior U.S. Senator in 2014, he should send New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg a thank-you gift. Something like a sugary 44-ounce Big Gulp or a case of Dr Pepper. Offering His Honor a 30.06 deer rifle would be churlish.
Unlike liberal groups who scared up a primary opponent for former Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln in 2010, predictably helping her lose to a cookie-cutter GOP conservative, Bloomberg’s group Mayors Against Illegal Guns has given the beleaguered Democrat, well, a target to shoot at.
Angered with Pryor’s Senate vote against broadening background checks for gun sales—one of four Democrats to do so—Mayors Against Illegal Guns has been running TV ads in Arkansas citing the murder of state Democratic Party chair Bill Gwatney by a deranged gunman in 2008.
Narrated by former Democratic Party official Angela Bradford-Barnes, the commercial expresses the disgust of just about every Arkansas Democrat I know with what they saw as Pryor’s cowardly vote. “The Caspar Milquetoast of Arkansas politics,” one acerbic columnist dubbed him.
“When my dear, innocent friend was shot to death, I didn’t blame guns,” Bradford-Barnes says, “I blamed a system that makes it so terribly easy for criminals or the dangerous mentally ill to buy guns.”
Pryor has said that he found the politicizing of his friend’s murder “disgusting.” Maybe he did.
Tactically speaking, the problem with the Bloomberg ad is that just about every Democrat I know lives either in Hillcrest, basically the Upper West Side of Little Rock, or in the college town of Fayetteville—completely atypical of Arkansas voters generally. They can be as disgusted as they like. But they have exactly nowhere to go.
Blanche Lincoln carried Hillcrest handily against Rep. John Boozman in 2010. She lost statewide 58 to 37 percent.
President Obama also carried Pulaski County (Little Rock) in 2010; Mitt Romney won Arkansas by 24 points.
So you can see Pryor’s dilemma. Meanwhile, the billionaire-coddling Club for Growth (or “Club for Greed” as former Gov. Mike Huckabee once called it) has also been hammering the Arkansas Democrat with TV ads blaming him for President Obama’s supposedly runaway spending.
But more about that to come.
Do I think Pryor’s vote against background checks was cowardly? I did then. However, Democrats like The Daily Beast’s Mike Tomasky, who cite polls showing strong majorities of Arkansans favoring universal background checks, may be overlooking the difference between a mild preference expressed to a telephone pollster and a conviction strong enough to hold against a barrage of paranoid NRA propaganda.
Can a majority of Arkansans be convinced that bogeyman Obama is coming to confiscate their guns? I wouldn’t bet against it in Arkansas or any state it borders upon—Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee or even Missouri.
Simply put, fear and loathing of President Obama has reached cult-like proportions across the region, and there’s little Mark Pryor can do about it before November, 2014. Almost everywhere you go—dentists’ offices, auto dealers, fitness centers, airports—the waiting room TV is tuned to Fox News, and people are swallowing it whole.
So more than a year early, Sen. Pryor has come out swinging against his dream opponent: Michael Bloomberg. Even though no Republican rival has yet declared, he’s begun airing a 30-second TV spot complaining that, “The mayor of New York City is running ads against me because I opposed President Obama’s gun control legislation.”
The commercial ends with the Senator striking a belligerent pose: “No one from New York or Washington tells me what to do,” he growls. “I listen to Arkansas.”
Take that, limousine liberals! As much as the vote, it was the impression of weakness that may have been Pryor’s greatest liability. Months of unanswered Club for Growth ads also didn’t help.
Now the question is whether he can carry the fight to his presumptive, albeit undeclared GOP opponent Rep. Tom Cotton, the favored candidate of the aforementioned Club for Greed. Also of GOP kingmaker Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, whose greatest hits as a political prognosticator include the Iraq War and Sarah Palin.
The hand-picked selection, that is, of another passel of New York/Washington elitists. A superficially appealing candidate with impressive credentials, Cotton also appears to be a stone right-wing zealot who not only voted against federal disaster aid for storm victims, but recently proposed a law punishing relatives of lawbreakers—parents, siblings, aunts and uncles—for their transgressions. In a word, a crackpot.
Basically, Pryor’s got to portray himself as an advocate of the Arkansas Way—a moderate Democrat like his father, former Sen. David Pryor, like Dale Bumpers, and Bill Clinton—a just-folks pragmatist beset by condescending outsiders, and one who’ll fight for you as hard as he fights for himself.
A longshot? Definitely. But it’s been done before.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, June 5, 2013
“Maybe It’s Just A Coincidence”: Chris Christie’s Self-Serving Senate Election Calendar
So Chris Christie’s announced the schedule for a special election to replace the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, and short of appointing himself, he’s taken the route most likely to serve his own political interests. Here’s NBC’s report:
Christie announced at a press conference that he had opted against appointing a successor to Lautenberg to serve until the 2014 election, and scheduled a general election on Oct. 16. The primary will be held in August. Christie also said he would appoint an interim senator to serve between now and November, though he explained that he had not decided on that temporary appointee yet.
With this decision, Christie is potentially helping create the conditions for a big win in his re-election contest against Democrat Barbara Buono this November. Without a contested Senate campaign happening at the same time as his own re-election, turnout among Democrats is likely to be far lower, allowing Christie to run up the margin of victory in a race he is already a big favorite to win.
That, in turn, could make him look like a more formidable presidential candidate in 2016 should he choose to run.
Beyond that, it gets Christie off the hook of an obligation to appoint a senator that pleases both his party’s conservative “base” (not just in New Jersey, but nationally) and a general electorate, and gives the former a decent shot to get a conservative senator into office via a low-turnout special election. That will probably, however, be viewed as a consolation prize to right-wingers who wanted him to appoint one of their own to the seat right on up to November 2014 (a legally dubious proposition).
And there’s another problem:
Christie’s decision to hold a special election in October could also be a gamble, leaving the governor open to criticisms of making a self-serving decision and causing a hefty financial cost to the state that could run as high as $24 million for the special election.
Christie said he wasn’t aware of what the cost would be – but in typical Christie fashion, said it didn’t matter.
“I don’t know what the cost would is, and quite frankly I don’t care,” he said. “The cost cannot be measured against the value of having an elected representative in the United States Senate when so many important issues are being debated this year.”
Blah blah blah. Rationalizations aside, Christie looked at the angles and did what was best for Chris Christie. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 4, 2013
“Your Tax Dollars At Work, Or Not”: Marco Rubio Wants To Amend The Constitution To Repeal Obamacare
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) proposed a constitutional amendment Tuesday that, if approved, would nullify Obamacare’s individual mandate. The amendment is the latest in a string of failed GOP attempts to repeal Obamacare, which many Republicans still view as unconstitutional.
The “Right to Refuse” amendment would make any laws that tax Americans who fail to purchase goods or services unconstitutional, targeting the Affordable Care Act’s stipulation that nearly all Americans must purchase health insurance. The amendment was introduced by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) in the House in February.
In a press release, Rubio cited the recent Internal Revenue Service scandal as one of his reasons for introducing the bill:
“ObamaCare is a disastrous policy that is not only destructive to job creation, it will also unleash the corrupt and scandal-ridden IRS on taxpayers simply for not buying health insurance,” said Rubio. “We should put our faith in the American people to decide what goods and services they want to buy, not have Congress dictate it and have the IRS empowered to harass Americans to make sure they do it.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Obamacare’s individual mandate could be considered a tax, and therefore was upheld under the constitution. But that hasn’t stopped many Republicans from claiming Obamacare is unconstitutional — the act has survived at least 37 repeal attempts since Republicans took control of the House in 2011, the most recent repeal vote occurring in mid-May. Since news broke in May that the IRS flagged certain conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny, several Republican leaders have used the scandal to question whether the IRS can be trusted to implement Obamacare.
Constitutional amendments are far more difficult to pass than bills — amendments proposed by Congress require a two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate. With a Democrat-controlled Senate, Rubio and Palazzo’s amendment would have difficulty achieving even a simple majority. Rubio has been billed as a rising star in the Republican party and likely 2016 presidential candidate, but his fervent opposition to Obamacare — along with several other positions — show that his views don’t stray far from the status quo of the Republican party.
By: Katie Valentine, Think Progress, June 4, 2013
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