“I’m Not One Of Them, I’m You”: How Rand Paul Is Playing The GOP Base, And What It Means For 2016
Anyone who remembers the 2012 GOP presidential primaries knows that the 2016 contest will involve a lot of arguing about who’s the most conservative candidate. Any contender who has strayed from party orthodoxy on anything will have to undergo a sustained campaign of grovelling and humiliation to prove to Tea Partiers, religious conservatives, and everybody else that he will be faithful and true forevermore. This process leaves its participants battered and bruised, diminished in the eyes of general election voters.
But what if placating the right isn’t as hard as it appears? That question is right now being contemplated by Rand Paul, who is running for the White House harder than anybody.
Paul has now given a speech outlining his foreign policy vision (which every candidate is supposed to have). The speech shows just how Paul is navigating the tension between the two competing incentives that will define his candidacy. On one hand, he needs to reassure Republican voters that he’s conservative enough for them, but on the other hand, he also very much wants to be the “different kind of Republican” who will continue to receive glowing media coverage and prove appealing to moderate general election voters.
If you took out the five Reagan references and changed some words and phrases here and there, the speech Paul gave could have been delivered by Barack Obama. The difference between a Republican and a Democrat, apparently, is that the Republican says that we should always be prepared for war, but war should be a last resort, while the Democrat says that war should be a last resort, but we should always be prepared for war. Paul also added the controversial ideas that American values lead the world, and we’re stronger abroad when our economy is stronger at home. And also, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.
The interesting thing is that, despite the similarity of Paul’s ideas to those of Obama, Paul’s speech showed that it probably isn’t all that hard to give GOP voters what they want on foreign policy. All it takes is a little dexterity to push the right buttons, as Paul does in this passage:
Although I support the call for defeating and destroying ISIS, I doubt that a decisive victory is possible in the short term, even with the participation of the Kurds, the Iraqi government, and other moderate Arab states.
In the end, only the people of the region can destroy ISIS. In the end, the long war will end only when civilized Islam steps up to defeat this barbaric aberration.
He takes a policy position many Republicans will disagree with, but leavens it with the mention of “the long war” and “civilized Islam,” giving a nod to the clash-of-civilizations sentiment so common on the right. Mission accomplished.
This is a marked contrast to the domestic realm, where there are many specific positions that are beyond negotiation. You have to support tax cuts, oppose Roe v. Wade, proclaim your hatred of Obamacare, want to Drill Baby Drill, and so on. Paul has stepped outside of conservative orthodoxy on a few domestic issues, such as with his criticism of mass incarceration. But that’s easy to do now, since crime rates have plummeted since then, the issue has receded and base conservatives won’t be angry with him for taking a contrary position. And at any rate, for some time, Paul has been slowly stepping away from the libertarian ideas on domestic issues that GOP voters would find truly objectionable, like legalizing drugs.
On foreign policy, Paul can probably have it both ways: he can say to the media and non-Republicans, “I’m different, because I don’t think we should arm Syrian rebels,” and he can say to Republicans, “I’m not different, because like you, I think Obama is screwing everything up.” It takes a little thought and planning, but it’s far from impossible.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, October 24, 2014
“Part Of A Very Big Problem”: Jim Crow Persists; How Ferguson Case Leaks Revive A Shameful Tradition
On those rare occasions when it makes a real effort to grapple with the raw brutality of Jim Crow, the American mainstream media usually returns to a particular set of images that, by their very nature, are jarring and extraordinary: the burning cross, the hangman’s knot, the Klansman on horseback. This isn’t a bad thing; you can’t understand Jim Crow without understanding the significance of the Klan, for example. But it’s not an entirely good one, either.
The problem with focusing so much on these potent symbols is that it can lead us to a mistaken conclusion: namely, that the only evil of Jim Crow (and U.S. white supremacy in general) was manifested in these menacing, otherworldly forms, rather than in the system’s more humdrum and everyday modes of dehumanization. The problem with the former is easily solved. Today, the burning cross, the noose and the Klansman are all enemies of polite society. But those subtler manifestations of apartheid — the interlocking social networks and political institutions that together worked to disempower black citizens and deny them their rightful place as full members of the community — have proven more difficult to shake.
The proof is all around us, but if you want a more tangible example, the news out of Ferguson, Missouri, is happy to oblige.
After briefly turning the small, hard-luck suburb into the center of the world, the media has as of late been paying much less attention to the story of Michael Brown’s killing, mostly because people on both sides of the controversy have been stuck in an anxious holding pattern, waiting to see if a county grand jury will bring charges against Officer Darren Wilson. Many observers, and seemingly most pro-Brown Ferguson protestors, expect it will not; and many are already positioning themselves to win the war for public opinion that will ensue the moment the charges (or lack thereof) come down.
That’s the tense atmosphere into which the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently dropped two bombs, both of which cited unnamed government sources saying evidence suggests Wilson’s claim to have shot Brown only after the youth tried to nab his gun — and to have killed Brown only after the wounded and unarmed teenager decided to charge him head-on — is indeed the case, in spite of what multiple eyewitnesses have said. As more than a few people noticed, the leaks all seemed to go in a certain direction (Wilson’s). Rather unnecessarily, the Brown family’s lawyer assured the media that the leaks weren’t coming from them. More necessarily, a forensic pathologist quoted extensively in the Post-Dispatch story said her remarks were taken out of context.
At this point in the story, anyone familiar with the dynamics of American race politics would suspect that like countless racially stratified and unharmonious small-town authorities before it, the establishment in Ferguson was doing its damnedest to quash an embarrassing investigation and protect one of its own. Perhaps aware of the likely widespread nature of that view, former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch was swiftly thereafter quoted speculating that the leaks weren’t coming from Ferguson authorities, but rather were the result of the Department of Justice’s machinations. Because the feds recognize that it’s “probably very unlikely” that Wilson will be charged, Fitch said, the DOJ was selectively leaking evidence in order to “let people down slowly” before the announcement of no charges being filed came.
If that sounds a bit odd to you — Fitch’s contention that Attorney General Eric Holder had previously decided to “take over the Ferguson Police Department” is a warning sign — you’ve got some prestigious company. Barely more than a day after Fitch made news, the DOJ was quoted in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere expressing serious unhappiness over the leaks, saying they were “irresponsible and highly troubling” and describing them as “an inappropriate effort to influence public opinion about this case.” Needless to say, Ed Magee, the spokesperson for the county prosecutor’s office, has denied responsibility entirely. “There’s really nothing to investigate,” Magee told the Times. “All we can control is people in our office and the grand jury, and it’s not coming from us or the grand jury.”
As you can probably tell, I’m highly skeptical of the idea that Eric Holder’s DOJ has all along been playing a secret shell game, pretending to enter into the Ferguson maelstrom in order to sideline local authorities it deemed biased and/or incompetent while, behind the scenes, doing everything it could to protect Wilson and discredit Brown. But even if we end up discovering that the Department of Justice was playing both sides, it would make no difference to the bigger, lingering problem Ferguson revealed — the way the legal and political institutions in much of America still treat black American citizens as if they were separate from the rest of the community, a force to be contained, coerced, managed. (In fact, if Fitch is correct, and the DOJ is trying to “let people down slowly,” it would actually strengthen the point.)
More important than these specific leaks, however, is the way that the behavior of officials throughout the power structure of Ferguson have responded to the protestors as if they were a dangerous, alien presence rather than American citizens who have full and equal rights just like the rest. Instead of trying to reach an accord with Michael Brown’s supporters, the Ferguson establishment is trying to preemptively position itself as a victim, hoping it can win the war for public opinion if and when the chaos of this summer reignites. This isn’t because the overwhelmingly white men and women in positions of authority in Ferguson are especially villainous, but rather because Ferguson, like so much of contemporary America, remains very much the town that racist social engineering built, one in which the unspoken assumption is that black people can never be equal members of their own community.
So, to return to my earlier argument about the visuals of Jim Crow, let’s indeed celebrate that the most extravagant symbols of that terrible era — the burning cross, the noose, the Klansman’s hood — are now widely considered to be ugly and taboo. For a country in which, not so long ago, the lynching of black men was considered a source of public entertainment, that’s no small thing. But let’s also keep in mind that in so far as it was a social and political system that fundamentally denied black people membership in the larger community, Jim Crow still persists.
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, October 25, 2014
“Once Again, Guns”: The N.R.A.’s Vision Of The World Is Purposefully Dark And Utterly Irrational
There’s a TV ad that’s been running in Louisiana:
It’s evening and a mom is tucking in her baby. Getting a nice text from dad, who’s away on a trip. Then suddenly — dark shadow on a window. Somebody’s smashing the front door open! Next thing you know, there’s police tape around the house, blinking lights on emergency vehicles.
“It happens like that,” says a somber narrator. “The police can’t get there in time. How you defend yourself is up to you. It’s your choice. But Mary Landrieu voted to take away your gun rights. Vote like your safety depends on it. Defend your freedom. Defeat Mary Landrieu.”
Guns are a big issue in some of the hottest elections around the country this year, but there hasn’t been much national discussion about it. Perhaps we’ve been too busy worrying whether terrorists are infecting themselves with Ebola and sneaking across the Mexican border.
But now, as usual, we’re returning to the issue because of a terrible school shooting.
The latest — a high school freshman boy with a gun in the school’s cafeteria — occurred in the state of Washington, which also happens to be ground zero for the election-year gun debate. At least that’s the way the movement against gun violence sees it. There’s a voter initiative on the ballot that would require background checks for gun sales at gun shows or online. “We need to be laser focused on getting this policy passed,” said Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign.
Think about this. It’s really remarkable. Two years after the Sandy Hook tragedy, the top gun-control priority in the United States is still background checks. There is nothing controversial about the idea that people who buy guns should be screened to make sure they don’t have a criminal record or serious mental illness. Americans favor it by huge majorities. Even gun owners support it. Yet we’re still struggling with it.
The problem, of course, is the National Rifle Association, which does not actually represent gun owners nearly as ferociously as it represents gun sellers. The background check bill is on the ballot under voter initiative because the Washington State Legislature was too frightened of the N.R.A. to take it up. This in a state that managed to pass a right-to-die law, approve gay marriage and legalize the sale of marijuana.
The N.R.A. has worked hard to cultivate its reputation for terrifying implacability. Let’s return for a minute to Senator Mary Landrieu, who’s in a very tough re-election race. Last year, in the wake of Sandy Hook, she voted for a watered-down background check bill. It failed to get the requisite 60 votes in the Senate, but the N.R.A. is not forgetting.
Nor is it a fan of compromise. Landrieu has tried to straddle the middle on gun issues; she voted last year for the N.R.A.’s own top priority, a bill to create an enormous loophole in concealed weapons laws. As a reward, she got a “D” rating and the murdered-mom ad. In Colorado, the embattled Senator Mark Udall, who has a similar voting record, is getting the same treatment.
The N.R.A.’s vision of the world is purposefully dark and utterly irrational. It’s been running a series of what it regards as positive ads, which are so grim they do suggest that it’s time to grab a rifle and head for the bunker. In one, a mournful-looking woman asks whether there’s still anything worth fighting for in “a world that demands we submit, succumb, and believe in nothing.” It is, she continues, a world full of “cowards who pretend they don’t notice the elderly man fall …”
Now when was the last time you saw people ignore an elderly man who falls down? I live in what is supposed to be a hard-hearted city, but when an old person trips and hits the ground, there is a veritable stampede to get him upright.
The ad running against people like Landrieu makes no sense whatsoever. If that background-check bill had become law, the doomed mother would still have been able to buy a gun for protection unless she happened to be a convicted felon. And while we have many, many, many things to worry about these days, the prospect of an armed stranger breaking through the front door and murdering the family is not high on the list. Unless the intruder was actually a former abusive spouse or boyfriend, in which case a background check would have been extremely helpful in keeping him unarmed.
A shooting like the one in Washington State is so shocking that it seems almost improper to suggest that people respond by passing an extremely mild gun control measure. But there is a kind of moral balance. While we may not be able to stop these tragedies from happening, we can stop thinking of ourselves as a country that lets them happen and then does nothing.
Unless your worldview is as bleak as the N.R.A.’s, you have to believe we’re better than that.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 24, 2014
“Shame On Texas And The U.S. Supreme Court”: A Capitulation To Voter Suppressors Everywhere
In allowing Texas’ voter identification law to go into effect, at least for the November election, the U.S. Supreme Court last week showed the nation precisely what it meant in 2013 when its conservatives struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County vs. Holder.
It is hard to chronicle in a short space the ways in which the Texas law, one of the most discriminatory voting laws in modern history, runs afoul of constitutional norms and reasonable standards of justice. State lawmakers rammed through the measure, jettisoning procedural protections that had been used for generations in the state Legislature. By requiring registered voters to present a certain kind of photo identification card, and by making it difficult for those without such cards to obtain one, the law’s Republican architects would ensure that poor voters, or ill ones, or the elderly or blacks or Latinos — all likely Democratic voters — would be disenfranchised, all in the name of preventing a type of voter fraud that does not materially exist.
These lawmakers — and for that matter the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court judges who now have sanctioned the law’s implementation for next month’s election — were shown mountains of evidence on what the law’s discriminatory impact would be on minority communities. Witness after witness testified that the new law amounted to a poll tax on people who had, even in the deepest recesses of Texas, been able for decades to adequately identify themselves before lawfully casting their ballot.
What was Texas’ strongest argument against all this evidence? That a state may establish financial and practical hurdles that preclude the poor from voting so long as it — purportedly — does not discriminate against voters by race. For now, this nonsense is the law of the land in Texas.
And as Congress dithers over an amendment to the Voting Rights Act and state lawmakers continue to churn out legislation on voting that widens the nation’s divides, the high court’s ruling essentially endorses the following judicial construction — a capitulation, really, to vote suppressors everywhere — to be the law of the land in America: That even when a state with a long history of discrimination in voting practices is found to have intentionally discriminated against minority citizens by restricting their voting rights, even when a trial judge says so and even in the absence of a contradictory appellate finding on the scope and effect of that discrimination, the state still is entitled to implement those discriminatory practices in a national election.
The six Supreme Court justices who allowed the Texas law to go into effect did not write a single word about the trial judge’s extensive findings of intentional discrimination in the law’s creation or implementation. The 5th Circuit judges, who overturned that trial judge’s ruling, evaded the vital issue by noting, in passing, that those complicated issues could be resolved later, when the federal judiciary evaluated the case on the merits.
The rationale behind these hollow displays of justice is perverse, saying it would be more unfair now to force Texas to go back to the old voter identification laws, the ones that had worked well for decades, than it would be to require voters to get the new identification the law demands.
The swift passage of this Texas law — it was blocked by the Voting Rights Act until the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County, then began to be hustled through the state Legislature on the very day that case was decided — is unassailable proof that intentional racial discrimination still exists in these jurisdictions. The trial judge so found, in page after page of documentation, that Texas state officials, emboldened by the Shelby County decision, devised a way to make it harder for blacks and Latinos to have their votes counted. Read her opinion for yourself.
Only three justices on the Supreme Court — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — had the courage to call the high court’s ruling the sham that it is. Ginsburg wrote in the dissent that there was ample proof the Texas law discriminates, and no proof that it doesn’t. There was ample proof, she wrote, that state officials relentlessly fought against amendments to the measures that would have ameliorated the discrimination, and no proof that the new restrictions will solve whatever perceived voter fraud problems lawmakers fear. About 600,000 registered voters could be disenfranchised, Ginsburg warned.
Some stoic commentators have noted that the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the Texas law — that the justices may well strike it down next year, or the year after that, when it inevitably comes back to them following a ruling on the merits at the 5th Circuit. I don’t buy it. And even if this court ultimately does strike down this odious law, where precisely do the disenfranchised citizens of Texas in the November election go to get their votes back? Nowhere, which is the point of the Texas law and the ultimate effect of the judiciary’s shameful tolerance of it.
By: Andrew Cohen, The Los Angeles Times; The National Memo, October 24, 2014
“The Same Supply-Side Ideas”: Republicans Have Known All Along That Their Jobs Plan Wouldn’t Work That Well
If you’ve read my work over the past few months, you’ve probably heard me argue that Republicans don’t have a jobs plan. I’ve said it a few times. Never has that point been clearer than in the New York Times Thursday morning, where economists on both sides of the aisle—and even House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman—admit that the Republican “jobs” plan wouldn’t actually help the economy very much.
“Some of those things will help,” Matthew J. Slaughter, who served on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, told the Times about Republican economic ideas, “but, it just struck me as sort of a compendium of modest expectations. If you ask me, ‘What’s your ballpark guess for how many jobs are going to be created?,’ it’s just not many.” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist and former director of the Congressional Budget Office said, “I don’t think any of these are particular game changers.”
The traditional Republican ideas to boost the economy—cutting spending, reducing regulations, and reforming the tax code—represent a misunderstanding of the underlying problems with the economy. Those are all supply-side policies, intended to boost investment and improve productivity. Those aren’t bad goals, of course, but they don’t solve the demand-side issues that are actually holding back growth.
When the Great Recession struck, households cut back on their spending, forcing businesses to fire workers, who then cut back their own spending—thus, a lack of demand. This creates a nasty cycle of reduced spending and job losses. The government’s role in these situations is to fill the hole in demand by using fiscal or monetary policy. We did both and they were moderately successful. But they weren’t sufficient to fill the entire hole in demand and we’ve had a lackluster recovery as a result, made even worse by a premature turn to austerity.
The most revealing quotation in the Times article came from Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Boehner. When asked about the 46 bills that Boehner has outlined as the Republican jobs package—most of which would cut regulations and taxes—Smith said that the bills were not “a cure-all, but they would be a good start for our economy; we need to do more.” In other words, after six years of critiquing Obama’s economic policies, House Republicans still don’t have an economic agenda to fix the economy’s ills.
In some sense, that’s OK right now. The recovery has taken a step forward this year and we no longer need a big jobs package to save the economy (although more infrastructure spending would help). But during the beginning of the Obama presidency that wasn’t the case. Then, we did need a big jobs plan, but Republicans offered the same supply-side ideas they’re proposing now. Based on Smith’s comments, it seems the GOP was aware of this too.
By: Danny Vinik, The New Republic, October 23, 2014
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