“State Passes Anti-Abortion Bill Described As ‘Insane'”: Don’t Policymakers In Oklahoma Have Real Work To Do?
Republican policymakers in Oklahoma are aware of the fact that they cannot simply ban all abortions. The Supreme Court has already considered flat prohibitions and deemed them unconstitutional.
Oklahoma’s GOP-led legislature has nevertheless concluded that it can ban doctors from performing abortions. Tulsa World reported today:
The Oklahoma Senate on Thursday sent Gov. Mary Fallin a bill that would make it a felony to perform abortions in Oklahoma, despite a federal court case legalizing it.
Senate Bill 1552, by Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, would also allow the revocation of medical licenses for physicians who perform abortions. The measure passed by a vote of 33-12 with no debate.
The article added that there’s one physician in the state Senate, Republican Ervin Yen, who characterized the legislation as an “insane” measure that would invariably face a court challenge.
Of course, it will first have to be signed into law by Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R), who recently received some good advice from the editorial board of the New York Times: “For years, anti-abortion forces have relied on onerous regulations on providers to limit abortion services and lied about their true purpose because they know that a vast majority of Americans support a woman’s right to choose and that the Supreme Court has affirmed that right for more than four decades. Governor Fallin would save everyone the time and expense of litigation by vetoing the bill.”
Keep in mind, by approving a policy that’s obviously unconstitutional, and which is certain to fail in the courts, state lawmakers are asking Oklahoma taxpayers to foot the bill for a political exercise that will serve no practical or policy purpose.
But just below the surface, there’s another nagging question: don’t policymakers in Oklahoma have real work to do? Why invest time and resources in a culture-war bill that will inevitably be struck down?
During a debate in the state House over the anti-abortion proposal, state Rep. David Brumbaugh (R) told his colleagues, “Everybody talks about [Oklahoma’s] $1.3 billion deficit. If we take care of the morality, God will take care of the economy.”
This, evidently, was the prevailing attitude, which is why Oklahoma will soon have an unconstitutional ban on doctors performing a legal medical procedure, but won’t have a balanced budget.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 19, 2016
“Clinton vs Trump: A Shift In Gender Roles”: This Campaign Has Come Down To Fear vs Getting Things Done
One of the criticisms we’ve heard often about President Obama is that he doesn’t do enough to show us that he feels our pain. That has been a staple of pundits like Maureen Dowd who wrote this about the President during the Gulf Oil Spill in 2010.
Once more, he has willfully and inexplicably resisted fulfilling a signal part of his job: being a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting what Americans feel so they know he gets it.
That critique resurfaced over his two terms, most notably during the Ebola scare and the attacks from ISIS. It tends to place more emphasis on reflecting America’s feelings than it does on the actual “signal part of his job” – taking action to address the problem.
I thought about that when I read the report from Greg Sargent on his interview with Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Joel Benenson, about how she plans to take on Donald Trump in the general election. This part is revealing:
“This isn’t about bluster. It’s about having real plans to get stuff done. When it comes to the economy, Hillary Clinton is the only candidate with plans that have been vetted and will make a difference in people’s lives.”…
A certain species of fatalism has taken hold among our political classes in general and among Democrats in particular. The idea is that, because Trump has successfully broken so many of our rules…it must mean he has a chance at blowing apart the old rules in the general election, too.
And so, you often hear it suggested that Trump can’t be beaten on policy, since facts and policy positions no longer matter; that he is going to attack in “unconventional” ways, so there is more to be feared;…and that he has some kind of magical appeal that Democrats fail to reckon with at their own extreme peril.
That might be what this campaign comes down to – a contest between someone who is trying to reflect our feelings of anger and fear and someone who is determined to tackle the challenges we face as a country.
Beyond the importance of us getting that one right, it strikes me that these two candidates have completely flipped the script of who might be expected to take which side of that argument. When I was growing up, it was the Eisenhower Republicans who claimed the mantle of being the policy wonks to the Democrats who – even as rabble rousers – were the purveyors of peace and love. Whether you see that through the prism of Mommy and Daddy parties or the Myers/Briggs binary of “thinking vs feeling,” the roles between Republicans and Democrats have been completely reversed.
But the bigger cultural dynamic will come from having a woman be the thoughtful wonk and the man being all about the bluster of feelings. That is why I found the comedy of Samantha Bee to be so prophetic when she said this about the Republican presidential hopefuls as a group: “I don’t mean to sound sexist, but I think men are just too emotional to be president.”
That is a huge shift in our perception about the genders. It might help explain why so many voters still have trouble “getting” Hillary Clinton – she’s not playing the traditional woman role (just as Obama challenged the stereotypes about the angry black man). When she talks about breaking down barriers, one of the big ones she’s challenging is that a woman can be a thoughtful, intelligent leader.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, May 18, 2016
“Delivering Remarks On All Four Nights”: Trump Is Going To Make The GOP Convention A Big, Stupid Reality-TV Show
Earlier this week I made the case for abolishing national political party conventions on the grounds that they serve no real function and follow entirely archaic patterns that no longer make much sense.
Well, it’s obviously too late to kill off these quadrennial snoozers this year, but leave it to Donald J. Trump to undertake the next best thing: transforming the Republican convention into a cheesy four-day TV special featuring maximum exposure of his own self. If by necessity it’s going to be an empty spectacle, it doesn’t have to be a boring empty spectacle, does it? Nosiree, according to a report from Politico:
“This is the part of politics he would naturally enjoy, and he wants to control it 100 percent,” said a high-level Trump campaign source. “This is a massive television production and he is a television star.”
And the star isn’t about to be confined to a single Thursday night acceptance speech.
Whereas the vice presidential nominee has generally spoken on the third night of the convention and the presidential candidate has taken the stage on the fourth and final night, Trump is considering a scenario that puts him on stage, delivering remarks on all four nights, reaching millions of potential voters, and driving ratings, according to one source.
Recall that presidential nominees did not even appear at conventions until FDR broke that taboo in 1936. As for appearing prior to the acceptance speech, there are only two precedents I can think of: Ronald Reagan showing up in 1980 to announce George H.W. Bush as his running mate (or, to be more precise, to preempt out-of-control speculation that former president Gerald Ford would join the ticket and perhaps create a “co-presidency”), and Bill Clinton’s brief live remarks each evening from a train hurtling toward the Chicago convention site in 1996.
Framing the whole event around the maximum number of prime-time speeches by the nominee simply pushes the devolution of conventions to a logical end — an event that’s entirely about the nominee and not at all about the party. And the good thing about nominating a candidate the entire party Establishment opposed is that he’s probably not going to let the traditional courtesies afforded to other politicians of his party get in the way of the convention’s show-business potential. It’s not like any of these birds lifted a finger to help Trump win the nomination, right?
Once you get rid of all the precedents, there are plenty of ways to exploit the convention for drama and high ratings:
And Trump plans to create news events too, not just line up speeches by up-and-coming members of the GOP. He’s toying with unveiling a running mate at the convention rather than before. He’s even considering whether to announce his would-be Cabinet.
Ah yes. One could imagine the darkened arena, and then the dramatic voice-of-God PA announcer intoning: At attorney general, 5-foot-11, 300 pounds, out of Mendham, New Jersey — Chriiiiiiiis CHRISTIE! as flares shoot up from the arena floor and the New Jersey governor trots onto the floor wearing a warm-up suit with TRUMP emblazoned across the front and back.
For journalists and others who have to cover politics extensively, a Trump convention is like a consolation prize for the loss of the contested convention we were all so happily anticipating. The big difference is that to prepare you’d probably best watch some old XFL broadcasts instead of immersing yourselves in convention rules and procedures. Brainwork will be strictly optional.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, May 18, 2016
“House Republicans Want To Impeach Someone, Anyone”: Republicans Get Serious About Impeachment, But Not Obama’s
Quick quiz: when was the last time the U.S. Congress actually impeached an appointed executive branch official? It was 1876 – 140 years ago – when the House impeached Ulysses S. Grant’s War Secretary, William Belknap, over corruption allegations.
Nearly a century and a half later, House Republicans appear eager to give Belknap some company. The Washington Post reported yesterday:
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced a resolution on Wednesday to censure IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, raising the stakes in the GOP war against the tax collector days before a hearing on whether to impeach him.
The four-page resolution seeks Koskinen’s resignation or removal by President Obama and calls on the IRS chief to forfeit his federal pension.
Chaffetz, the far-right chairman of the House Oversight Committee, explained in a statement yesterday, “I view censure as a precursor to impeachment.” He added a few weeks ago, “My foremost goal is impeachment and I’m not letting go of it.”
No, of course not. That might be responsible.
By any sane metric, the idea of congressional impeachment against the IRS commissioner is bonkers. House Republicans are apparently still worked up about an IRS “scandal” that doesn’t exist, and though Koskinen wasn’t even at the agency at the time of the alleged wrongdoing, GOP lawmakers want to impeach him because they disapprove of his handling of the imaginary controversy.
Given that the year is half over, Koskinen won’t be in the job much longer – he’ll likely leave office when the Obama administration wraps up – and there’s no credible reason to believe the Senate will remove the IRS chief from office, why bother with impeachment? Politico reported something interesting yesterday:
Two weeks ago, in a closed-door meeting with Paul Ryan, Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows gave the speaker an ultimatum: They would force a House vote to impeach the IRS commissioner — unless he allowed the Judiciary Committee to take action against John Koskinen instead.
The two founding members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus had been working behind the scenes for well over a year to take down Koskinen for accusations that he obstructed a congressional investigation. GOP leaders and senior republicans, however, had never been keen on the idea, fearing it was ultimately futile and that the spectacle would backfire on Republicans.
Right-wing lawmakers would not, however, take no for answer. Jordan and Meadows vowed to force an impeachment vote onto the floor unless House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) signed off an impeachment hearing in the Judiciary Committee, and the Republican leader relented. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
But given the fact that Koskinen hasn’t actually committed any impeachable offenses, it’s hard not to get the impression that many House Republicans want to impeach someone, anyone, just for the sake of being able to say they impeached someone.
As we discussed last fall, congressional Republicans have spent years talking up the idea of impeaching President Obama. At various times, GOP lawmakers have also considered impeaching then-Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. In October, one Republican congressman said he’s eager to impeach Hillary Clinton, and she hasn’t even been elected.
I continue to believe much of this is borne of partisan frustration: Republican investigations into Benghazi and other manufactured “scandals,” including the IRS matter itself, have effectively evaporated into nothing. That’s deeply unsatisfying to GOP hardliners, who remain convinced there’s Obama administration wrongdoing lurking right around the corner, even if they can’t see it, find it, prove it, or substantiate it any way.
Unwilling to move on empty handed, impeaching the IRS chief will, if nothing else, make Republican lawmakers feel better about themselves.
But that doesn’t change the fact that this partisan tantrum is indefensible. Koskinen took on the job of improving the IRS out of a sense of duty – the president asked this veteran public official to tackle a thankless task, and Koskinen reluctantly agreed. For his trouble, Republicans want to impeach him, for reasons even they’ve struggled to explain.
It’s ridiculous, even by the low standards of this Congress.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 19, 2016
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