“Touching On White Privilege”: President Obama’s Moment Of Introspection Evokes A Conservative Tsunami Of Bile
Today, Barack Obama did something he has only done a few times in the years he has been on the national stage: He talked about race. In an extemporaneous statement to White House reporters, Obama discussed the reaction to the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. He spent the first third of his remarks talking about where African Americans were coming from, in an implicit plea for empathy from white Americans. He didn’t accuse anyone of ill will, but he did in effect say, “Here’s how black people are feeling and why,” in an attempt to explain the sources of people’s disappointment and pain. After that, he talked about what government might do to make these kinds of tragedies less likely—training for police officers, and perhaps a rethinking of “stand your ground” laws if they make conflicts more likely. He ended on a hopeful note, saying, “as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race.”
We’d challenge conservatives to pick out a single sentence in Obama’s statement that they could say was unfair to white people, or encouraged anything other than greater mutual understanding. But all too predictably, some conservatives showed once again that empathy is something they are either utterly incapable of or simply find politically inconvenient. There is no anti-Obama rage like the rage he provokes on the right when he brings up race. It doesn’t matter what he says. No matter how humane, how encompassing, how careful—should Obama ever so gently suggest that race is something with which we as a country still struggle, a tsunami of bile is inevitably directed his way. If you weren’t on Facebook or Twitter to see it today, count yourself lucky that your faith in your fellow Americans wasn’t brought down a notch or two by all the ugliness. If you had read that reaction without actually seeing what Obama said, you would have thought he marched into the press room in fatigues and a beret, shouting “Black power! Black power!” and talking about hunting down whitey.
We suspect that the part of his talk that irked conservatives the most was this: “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often. And you know, I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.”
The reason that this particular plea for empathy and understanding can generate such an angry reaction is that it touches on white privilege. It’s easy to say, “Well I’m no racist,” but it’s harder to acknowledge that if you don’t get followed when you walk into a store, if you don’t have people lock their doors when you walk by, if you don’t see women clutch their purses when you enter an elevator, if you aren’t subjected to frequent “stop and frisks” by the police because they say you made a “furtive movement,” and if you don’t worry every time your son goes out at night that the wrong person will consider him a criminal and initiate a series of events that leads to his death, then you’re the beneficiary of a society still infused with racism. To be told, even by implication, that you benefit from an unequal system? That’s just intolerable.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 19, 2013
“Populism Needs To Be Popular”: Not A Viable Political Strategy For Conservatives
Having already posted my thoughts on the problems associated with the Republican Party adopting some ideology or message of “libertarian populism,” I will note in passing Ramesh Ponnuru’s succinct rejection of the idea that combining hostility to state subsidies for big businesses and other special interests with the traditional conservative hostility to state “redistributive” efforts on behalf of the needy will work electoral magic.
It was not until Monday that Tim Carney, a libertarian-populist writer (and a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute), got around to publishing a manifesto for the group. It is a document that contains several good ideas — but not a viable political strategy for conservatives.
The main focus of Carney’s work is that big government and big business collude at the expense of the little guy, and he recommends that Republicans run against that collusion in order to win working-class votes. In particular he wants them to break up the big banks, end corporate-welfare programs, clean up the tax code so that powerful interests no longer profit from it, and end regulations that protect established businesses from competitors (regulations that stifle food trucks, for example). He would also cut the payroll tax and end government policies that favor employer-based health insurance.
I’m sympathetic to most of the items on Carney’s list — and those on the list that fellow populist Conn Carroll has compiled. Taken together, though, they do not seem to amount to a winning political platform. A Republican party that took on the U.S. Export-Import Bank might improve its image a bit, but how many Americans really care enough about the issue to change their votes based on it? Nor does freeing the food trucks seem like it would win many votes, however right it might be as a policy matter….
Cutting the payroll tax, unlike most of these ideas, would tangibly affect most people’s lives by raising their take-home pay. If Republicans proposed it, though, they would surely be accused of jeopardizing Social Security and Medicare, which seems like a rather large political defect. Other Carroll proposals, such as ending student loans and the mortgage deduction, seem likely to be unpopular even at first glance.
Republicans ought to propose conservative answers to the concerns that are uppermost on most voters’ minds. The libertarian-populist method seems to be to start with the solutions and then to imagine that voters have the relevant concerns. And while many of the proposed solutions have great potential appeal to conservative voters, few would do much to expand their ranks.
In other words, if you want to sell a political party highly resistant to change a “new” ideology of “populism,” it had better be popular. Because it’s not, you typically find Republicans taking the easier route of defending government programs that benefit their own constituencies against the claims of those people. I don’t think it’s a winning formula in the long run, but it’s more promising than pretending the voters Republicans need would be happier if government stayed out of their lives altogether.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 18, 2013
“Flapping In The Wind”: For John Boehner, It’s Job Security Vs Legacy
House Speaker John Boehner stopped by the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on Thursday afternoon to pitch a gathering of the National Association of Manufacturers on the Republicans’ plans for jobs and growth.
“While my colleagues and I don’t have the majority here in Washington,” the speaker vowed, “we will continue to pursue our plan.”
Or will they?
Not an hour after those words were uttered, Boehner’s House Republicans dealt him the latest in a series of humiliations. Sixty-two Republicans defied him and voted against the farm bill, defeating a major piece of legislation Boehner had made a test of his leadership by pushing for it publicly and voting for it personally — something speakers only do on the most important bills.
The dispute this time was over food stamps and agricultural subsidies, but the pattern was the same: House leaders lost Democratic support by tilting the bill to satisfy the Republican base, but a group of conservative purists remained upset that the legislation didn’t go far enough.
Much the same dynamic confronts Boehner as the House prepares to take up immigration legislation next month. A similar set of pressures has kept Boehner from negotiating a long-term budget deal with the White House.
In all instances, Boehner faces a choice: his job or his legacy. He can enact landmark compromises but lose his job in a conservative coup. Or he can keep his job but get nothing much done.
With a few exceptions — the “fiscal cliff” deal, Hurricane Sandy aid — Boehner has chosen job security over achievement. He did it again this week on immigration, announcing that he doesn’t “see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have a majority support of Republicans.”
That promise, which is essentially the same as saying he won’t allow the House to take up legislation that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, puts him on a collision course with the Senate, where a fresh compromise on border security negotiated by Republican Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.) and John Hoeven (N.D.) make it likely that chamber’s legislation, which includes citizenship, will have a large bipartisan majority.
Boehner’s stance blocking an immigration compromise may preserve his speakership, but it would keep his party on what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) calls a “demographic death spiral” as Latino voters shun the GOP. Beyond the party, Boehner’s position raises the likelihood of failure on another high-profile issue for a Congress that continues to reach new lows in public esteem. Gallup last week found Americans’ confidence in Congress at 10 percent, the lowest ever recorded for any institution.
And that was before Thursday’s farm bill debacle, which saw lawmakers debating all manner of parochial items — olive oil, hemp, Christmas trees, shellfish, even a dairy amendment involving Greek yogurt sponsored by the aptly named Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) — before killing the whole bill.
The bill, which had been awaiting action for a year, was never going to get much Democratic support because of $20 billion in cuts to food stamps. But Republicans lost what support they had on Thursday when they passed an amendment, opposed by all but one House Democrat, adding new work requirements to the food stamp program. That left only 24 Democrats on board, not close to enough to offset the dozens of Republicans who wanted the deeper cuts demanded by conservative groups such as the Club for Growth.
The agriculture committee chairman, Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), pleaded on the floor for colleagues to “put aside whatever the latest e-mail is” and vote with him. “And if you don’t,” he added, “they’ll just say it’s a dysfunctional body, a broken institution full of dysfunctional people.”
After the farm bill went down, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) came to the floor to blame Democrats for the collapse — an argument that might have made sense if Republicans hadn’t just forced through an amendment Democrats called intolerable.
Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the minority whip, reminded Cantor that “25 percent of your party voted against the bill . . . and your side’s going to continue to blame us that you couldn’t get the votes on your side.” Hoyer invoked Newt Gingrich’s 1998 speech calling conservative holdouts in the House “the perfectionist caucus.”
Gingrich did indeed call the Republican hard-liners perfectionists and “petty dictators.” He soon lost his job as speaker, in part because of that remark, but by then he had reached compromises with a Democratic president that righted the government’s finances.
It’s an example Boehner would do well to recall.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, June 21, 2013
“Unfair And Partial”: Federal Judge Edith H. Jones Says Minorities Are Predisposed To Crime
Judge Edith H. Jones of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is facing serious allegations this week after controversial remarks the jurist made at Federalist Society in February. According to the conservative group, there is no transcript of recording of Jones’ speech, but affidavits from attendees point to deeply problematic language from anyone, least of all a sitting federal judge.
According to the [ethics] complaint, Judge Jones, 64, who was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, and who until recently was the chief judge of the Fifth Circuit and mentioned during Republican administrations as a possible Supreme Court nominee, said that “racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime.”
One of the affidavits accompanying the complaint is from Marc Bookman, a veteran death penalty lawyer in Pennsylvania, who attended the lecture. He quoted Judge Jones as saying, “Sadly, some groups seem to commit more heinous crimes than others.” When asked to elaborate, Judge Jones “noted there was no arguing that ‘blacks’ and ‘Hispanics’ far outnumber ‘Anglos’ on death row and repeated that ‘sadly’ people from these racial groups do get involved in more violent crime,” the affidavit said.
A variety of civil rights organizations and legal ethicists this week filed a complaint of misconduct. An affidavit from James McCormack, the former chief disciplinary counsel for the Texas bar, added that he believes Jones “violated the ethical standards applicable to federal judges under the Code of Conduct for United States judges.”
Making matters slightly worse, this wasn’t the only offensive comment Jones made at the event.
Judge Jones is alleged to have said that the defenses often offered in capital cases, including mental retardation and systemic racism, were “red herrings.” She also said, according to the witnesses, that Mexicans would prefer to be on death row in the United States rather than in prison in Mexico.
It would appear that defendants have reason to question whether Jones is a fair and impartial arbiter of justice. Indeed, if I were a criminal defense attorney, and my client’s conviction rested in part on a ruling from Jones, I’d probably have new grounds for an appeal.
The matter will reportedly be reviewed by the 5th circuit’s chief judge. It’s a controversy worth watching.
Postscript: When Jones was on a very short list of jurists then-President George W. Bush was considering for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, the Washington Post published this brief profile, noting, “Known as a strong and outspoken conservative, she has written opinions that called into question the reasoning behind the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, has been an advocate for speeding up death penalty executions, and is a vocal proponent of ‘moral values.’ She also wrote a 1997 opinion throwing out a federal ban on the possession of machine guns and has been an advocate for toughening bankruptcy laws.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 5, 2013
“Hoping No One Will Know The Difference”: Conservatives Shift Gears On IRS To “Income Tax Audits”
Something odd happened to Barack Obama’s approval rating last week: nothing. With a bunch of controversies swirling about the administration, one might think Americans would be thinking less of his performance. Yet the latest polls from Gallup and CNN both show his job approval essentially unchanged, at just at or above 50 percent.
So far anyway, these “scandals” are, like most scandals, an almost completely partisan phenomenon. Yes, there are some—Watergate, Iran-Contra—where the facts are so damning and undeniable that even the president’s own party can’t help but acknowledge them. But Benghazi and the IRS are not Watergate or Iran-Contra. Perhaps they’ll turn out to be, if we find out something completely shocking. Perhaps we’ll discover that Barack Obama is on tape personally ordering the Cincinnati IRS office to put the screws to Tea Party groups, just as Richard Nixon was on tape ordering his aides to get the IRS to audit his political opponents. But that hasn’t happened yet.
So conservatives are trying something new. If you were paying close attention the last couple of days, you saw them bringing up a new charge, one unrelated to the actual controversy: IRS income-tax audits. At first glance that may seem strange. After all, there hasn’t been any evidence that anyone was audited because of their political beliefs or activities. This controversy is about political groups being given undue scrutiny when they applied for 501(c)(4) status as “social welfare” organizations. The part of the agency that carries out those reviews doesn’t audit individuals’ tax returns. Yet here was Peggy Noonan, claiming “The IRS scandal has two parts. The first is the obviously deliberate and targeted abuse, harassment and attempted suppression of conservative groups. The second is the auditing of the taxes of political activists.” The “evidence” for Noonan’s explosive charge is that she read about a couple of conservatives who were among the 1.5 million Americans who were audited by the IRS last year (read Nate Silver for more on how unbelievably stupid Noonan’s allegation is). Here‘s an account of the weekend’s Virginia GOP convention, at which a whole slate of Tea Partiers was selected to run in November’s elections there: “By being here today, every one of you has just signed up for an audit by the I.R.S.,’ Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, said in a keynote speech. ‘You are officially now on the White House enemies list.'”
We’ll be hearing more of these stories. Because after all, if 1.5 million Americans were audited last year, plenty of them were conservatives. And plenty of those will be happy to tell their stories to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Peggy Noonan. “I signed up for my local Tea Party, and not six months later the IRS came after me!” they’ll say. Some of these stories will be told in high-profile forums, and others in more obscure outlets; for instance, here’s a conservative writer telling her tale of oppression to the Catholic News Agency. During her audit, she says, “They only wanted to talk about who was paying me to do my writing.” Really? “Hendershott said that the questions were not explicitly political, but she interpreted them to mean the agency was ‘wanting to know if there were individuals or groups who wanted me to write to advance their cause.'” Maybe. Or maybe because she’s a writer and they were auditing her income taxes, they were asking her who paid her to write because that’s where she gets her income. Just tossing that out there.
It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here. On one hand, nobody likes the IRS, so people are ready to believe the worst about the agency’s activities. On the other hand, getting your 501(c)(4) application subjected to unusual scrutiny is not something most people can relate to. Even worse, the reporting that’s emerging about the IRS office in Cincinnati (see here) paints a picture not of some coordinated effort at political oppression, but of a bunch of overworked, ill-trained people who barely understood the standards they were supposed to apply to these applications and didn’t get the support they needed from Washington. They ended up acting inappropriately, but it wasn’t a criminal conspiracy, and it didn’t reach up to the heights of power.
For conservatives, that’s not a very satisfying story. But they know that everyone fears getting their tax returns audited. So why not just tell everyone that’s what happened?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 20, 2013
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