The GOP’s Apology Primary: Love Means Always Having To Say You’re Sorry
In the 2012 Republican presidential race, love apparently means always having to say you’re sorry.
On an array of issues, the field of GOP contenders is facing enormous pressure from an ascendant conservative base to renounce earlier positions that challenged orthodoxy on the right. Their response to those demands could cast a big shadow over not only next year’s Republican primary but also the general-election contest against President Obama.
The emergence of these pressures testifies to a decisive shift in the GOP’s balance of power. The ideas now drawing the most fire from conservative activists–including support for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, a mandate on individuals to purchase health insurance, and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants–all flowered in Republican circles during the middle years of George W. Bush’s presidency, especially among governors.
In different ways, each of these proposals embodied the common belief that Republicans had to broaden their message beyond a conventional conservative argument focused almost exclusively on reducing government spending, taxes, and regulation. Intellectually, these initiatives reflected an impulse to redefine conservatism in ways that accepted a role for government in empowering individuals or promoting market-based solutions. Politically, they reflected the belief that to build a lasting majority, Republicans needed to attract more minority voters, especially Hispanics, and to loosen the Democratic hold on blue states by reclaiming more suburban independents.
At varying points, this tendency operated under different names, including “compassionate conservatism” and “national greatness conservatism.” But the shared belief “was the sense that the Republican Party, in order to revitalize itself, needed to … show that it had modernized,” said Pete Wehner, who directed the Office of Strategic Initiatives in Bush’s White House.
Behind that conviction, Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress in 2003 created an entitlement by establishing the Medicare prescription drug benefit. In 2006, with Bush’s support, 23 GOP senators voted with 39 Democrats to provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
In the states, this instinct produced health care reform proposals from Govs. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California that centered on an individual mandate, as well as initiatives from many GOP governors to promote alternative energy and to impose mandatory limits on the carbon emissions linked to global climate change. Republican governors played driving roles in creating regional multistate alliances to limit carbon emissions in the Midwest (Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota); the Northeast (George Pataki in New York); and the West (Jon Huntsman in Utah and Schwarzenegger). Huntsman joined then-Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona in 2006 to produce a bipartisan Western governors’ plan that favored legalization over deportation for illegal immigrants.
Many hard-core conservatives always bristled at these initiatives. But in those years, they lacked the leverage to entirely suppress them. Now, though, the party’s most conservative elements have clearly regained the upper hand. The tipping point was the election of Barack Obama and his pursuit of an agenda that significantly expanded Washington’s reach across many fronts. His initiatives produced a powerful back-to-basics reaction among Republicans.
The result has been to revert the party’s message toward one focused almost solely on shrinking government. “Obama, by the way he governed, shifted the debate into a much more traditional Democratic-Republican divide over the role of government,” notes Wehner, now a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “That’s pushed to the side or capsized these other issues.”
That dynamic has left the 2012 GOP contenders facing multiplying demands to abandon and apologize for positions they took in what now looks like a brief period of Republican glasnost.
Pawlenty has already apologized for imposing carbon limits in Minnesota but hasn’t yet renounced his parallel support for requiring utilities to generate more of their power from renewable sources, which some conservatives have also demanded. Huntsman, as he considers the race, has abandoned his previous climate policies but not yet walked back his tilt toward legalization for illegal immigrants. Romney renounced his favorable comments about legalizing undocumented immigrants (as well as his earlier backing of abortion rights) during his 2008 run, but he drew a surprisingly firm line this month by reaffirming his support for his health insurance mandate in Massachusetts. Newt Gingrich, who has faced similar complaints about his earlier support for an individual mandate and efforts to control carbon emissions, hasn’t fully tossed aside either.
These maelstroms leave the candidates without many good options. To dig in behind earlier positions promises unending collisions with conservatives (as Romney has now done on health care). But abandoning too many positions under pressure could open the eventual nominee to effective attacks from Democrats. “If these candidates are now sliding back on things they once believed, it raises questions about whether they can be a strong leader,” says Bill Burton, the former deputy White House press secretary who is heading an independent Democratic campaign effort for 2012. If voters agree, the 2012 Republicans may feel sorry later for saying sorry so often now.
By: Ronald Brownstein, Political Director, Atlantic Media, The Atlantic, May 20, 2011
Unions Aren’t The Only Ones Targeted By Gov Walker
Is this really what Wisconsin voters had in mind last yaer?
Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.
Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some – but not all – of the rights afforded married couples.
Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.
With no real understanding of the state constitution or the anti-gay measure approved in 2006, I can’t speak to the merits of the constitutional argument in any depth. But as E.D. Kain noted, “Walker is literally going out of his way to prevent two people in a loving, committed relationship from visiting one another at the hospital. In other words, at what is quite likely a couple’s darkest hour, Scott Walker wants to impose legal restrictions barring two people from being with one another. Imagine that your wife or your husband was in the hospital and you were legally prohibited from visiting them. Is this the role we want our government to play in our lives?”
Doug Mataconis added:
I won’t speak to the legal side of this issue because I’m not up to speed on it, but I really have to wonder what kind of person would seek to prevent two people who are in a relationship from making whatever arrangements they want to allow the other to visit them in the hospital, and what right the state has to tell hospitals that they cannot honor those requests.
Is the GOP hatred for gays so pervasive that they could really be this cold and heartless?
Apparently, yes. Cruelty, in some circles, is a “family value.”
For months, it’s been assumed that Scott Walker’s agenda was primarily focused on punishing school teachers and other state workers. We’re now learning his hostility for some of his constituents is broadening.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly, May 19, 2011
Recall Arizona… From The 19th Century
The dictionary definition of insanity should be changed to spell A-R-I-Z-O-N-A and its state capitol building should be designated as a home for the criminally insane. But lest we kid ourselves, this Arizona insanity has now spread nationwide. Let’s take a tour of the [police] state.
On the educational front, Tucson Unified School Superintendent, John Pedicone, has managed to militarize school board meetings. He has done this because several weeks ago, the high school group UNIDOS, tired of having their Mexican American Studies program targeted for elimination, chained themselves to the school board members chairs, prompting the board to cancel its meeting. For this, the students and others have received death threats. At the subsequent May 3rd meeting, officially, some 100 police officers were deployed to the TUSD headquarters. However, on top of TUSD security guards, including those staffing metal detectors, along with bomb squad officers, helicopters, plus riot squad officers deployed inside and around the building and neighborhood, it is likely that the officers totaled closer to 200.
At this meeting, seven people were arrested for the criminal act of attempting to speak to the board. One elderly and disabled professor, Lupe Castillo, 69, was arrested by some 20 helmeted and shielded officers for attempting to read ”A Letter from the Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. The other arrestees were [secretly] sent to two jails before they were booked and released. In the action inside, dozens of riot squad police physically threw other people out the building, including elders, this while hundreds of MAS supporters outside stood their ground. Then later, the violence, caught on videotape, started behind the building. Police officers in full riot gear began throwing young students, parents and other community members around like rag dolls. Officially, the officers did a great job, commended by the chief of police.
All this is the calm before the storm, precipitated by a 2010 law (HB 2281), purportedly inspired by Martin Luther King Jr, that has declared the teaching of Ethnic Studies illegal. This week, an audit ordered by the state schools superintendent, John Huppenthal, who ran on the campaign to “eliminate La Raza” (the Mexican people) – is scheduled to be released, with expected pre-ordained findings that will declare Tucson’s highly successful MAS program to be out of compliance.
That’s from the sane part of the state. Now, from the insane sector:
This past week, the governor signed SB 1404, a law that attempts to wall the state from the rest of society. Not satisfied with the federal walls that line the U.S./Mexico border, Arizona will soon be embarking upon creating its own wall along the Arizona/Sonora border, financed through online donations and built by prison labor. Being that imprisoning migrants is a growing multi-billion dollar industry, look for the state to employ incarcerated migrants to attempt to build it.
Beyond the state’s 2010 (SB 1070) racial profiling law, this year, state legislators attempted to pass nearly two dozen even more stringent laws, including one that would overturn birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Legislators also attempted to pass two other laws that can only be construed as attempts to secede from humanity; SB 1443 and SCR 1010 were attempts to exempt the state from federal and international laws, respectively.
Most of this legislation is designed to incarcerate migrants and to enrich the private prison industry. The mastermind of most of this legislation is state senate president, Russell Pearce, who in addition to facing a recall, is also embroiled in the Fiesta Bowl “gift” scandal that threatens to bring down he and many of his associates.
And then there’s Maricopa County’s unindicted Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who continues to thumb his nose at the feds with his ongoing racially motivated mass dragnet raids. Recent investigations have found that in eight years, his department has misspent close to $100 million, and that his top commanders targeted “enemies,” confirming he is the most corrupt Sheriff in America. Federal investigations into his activities continue.
Outside of the state, the governor of Georgia recently signed HB 87, joining Arizona, Utah and Indiana in implementing anti-immigrant racial profiling laws. Twenty other states are pursuing a similar return to the 19th century. The good news is that Utah’s HB 497 anti-immigrant law, was recently blocked by a Utah judge, and the DREAM ACT has again been introduced in Congress.
Given recent dramatic events on the international front, it is generally thought that the president can now restore sanity and actually bring about actual immigration reform. Regarding Ethnic Studies, not sure he can do anything about those intent on “eliminating La Raza.”
By: Roberto Rodriguez, Professor, University of Arizona; CommonDreams.org, May 17, 2011
The Dangers Of Repealing Birthright Citizenship
People born on American soil are guaranteed automatic citizenship by a provision found in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This provision, often referred to as “birthright citizenship,” has recently come under intense attack by conservative politicians. Conservative lawmakers in state legislatures throughout the country have introduced bills aimed at blocking children born in the state to undocumented immigrants—as well as professional workers and other noncitizens with long-term visas—from claiming a right to citizenship. House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) has declared his intention to hold hearings on the subject.
Opportunistic politics helps explain the reasoning behind this attack on the citizenship clause of the Constitution. A broken national immigration system coupled with a slow economic recovery characterized by sluggish job growth creates an opening for certain politicians to create short-term electoral gains by demonizing immigrants. Nonetheless, numerous conservative scholars and politicians such as Linda Chavez and James Ho voice grave concerns about the political and policy ramifications of this trend.
A CAP report released this month from CAP Senior Fellow Sam Fulwood III and Director for Immigration Policy Marshall Fitz explains the cascading effect of unforeseen, unintended, and unwanted consequences a retreat on birthright citizenship would set in motion, among them:
- “Big Brother” in every hospital delivery room, a profoundly costly and intrusive process of checking and verifying documents for every baby born in the United States
- A new underclass of less-than-citizens who are marginalized from society and detract from our future economic competitiveness
- Women burdened with childbearing decisions depending on citizenship parentage, endangering the newly born and their mothers in our country
- An America that is suddenly and deeply anti-immigrant—contrary to our historical heritage and core national values and undermining our cherished democratic system, built by and for immigrants
Nevertheless, the matter is not dead in the eyes of some politicians. On January 25, 2011, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and David Vitter (R-LA) introduced legislation to amend the Constitution and restrict citizenship to those newborns who can prove that one of their parents is a U.S. citizen, a legal immigrant, or an active member of the Armed Forces at the moment of the child’s birth.
The Center for American Progress and the American Constitution Society jointly hosted an event earlier this month featuring leading civil rights thinkers who discussed what our nation would look like should the birthright citizenship provision in the 14th Amendment be repealed, as well as its effect on all Americans.
“It’s important to look at the arguments that people are making to repeal the 14th Amendment,” said Fulwood at the event. “It goes to the core of what it means to be an American.”
Margaret Stock, a professor at the University of Alaska, noted that “The 14th Amendment [was the] crowning achievement of the Republican Party after the civil war. … it’s appalling Republicans have proposed this amendment.”
As President Barack Obama said in his speech in El Paso on May 10:
It doesn’t matter where you come from; it doesn’t matter what you look like; it doesn’t matter what faith you worship. What matters is that you believe in the ideals on which we were founded; that you believe that all of us are created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. All of us deserve our freedoms and our pursuit of happiness. In embracing America, you can become American. That is what makes this country great. That enriches all of us.
Amending the 14th Amendment to end birthright citizenship would create a very different America, one characterized by dual classes of residents born here—citizens and less-than-citizens.
By: Philippe Nassif, Center for American Progress, May 17, 2011
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