“Mitt’s Q-Tip”: Appeal Helps Obama No Matter What The Supreme Court Decides
Irony alert — President Obama gets a boost no matter what the Supreme Court decides on his politically toxic healthcare reform law.
The high court either upholds Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment, imprinting it for history, or it overturns the law, thereby breaking a big stick with which the GOP planned to beat Obama this fall. Should front-runner Mitt Romney become the GOP nominee, what’s left of the stick would more likely resemble a Q-Tip.
Although a final ruling is nearly four months away, oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday called into question the constitutionality of a mandate to purchase insurance. But recall that four years ago, then-Sen. Barack Obama opposed a mandate for the purchase of healthcare insurance when he was running against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Four years ago, Romney, on the other hand, admitted his support for mandates.
Obama ultimately changed his mind, and followed the example then-Gov. Romney had set when he signed healthcare reform into law in Massachusetts in 2006. Both men concluded that conservative think tank Heritage Foundation was correct decades ago in deciding there was no way, without a mandate to buy coverage, to control prices or to protect the taxpayer from uninsured free riders who leech off the government every time they go to the emergency room.
While Romney could control the choice to build elevators for his cars at the beach house he is building in California, he could not control the fact that Obama changed his mind on the mandate, that his law evoked a visceral reaction from the GOP base or that Newt Gingrich and every other conservative who had supported the mandate earlier would flip from the concept and run. Romney, who started running for president in 2006 or earlier as the conservative alternative to John McCain, chose to run after them. Romney tried pivoting by claiming he never intended it to become a national model, yet a Google search proves that effectively false.
Fortunately for Romney, it hasn’t been that tough to keep his stride. Republicans seeking to defeat him in the primary campaign failed miserably to use the best weapon against him — he was given a pass on RomneyCare. But no more. Romney can be sure the Obama campaign will possess the discipline Rick Santorum did not and won’t be distracted from healthcare by messages that send female voters running for the hills. Obama the candidate surely won’t display any weakness or kindness to his rival, or whatever it was that caused former Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty to retreat from his planned attack on “ObamneyCare” and basically kill off his own candidacy for good.
Democratic strategist James Carville said on CNN that the prospect of the healthcare law being overturned might be the best political outcome for Democrats and Obama.
“I honestly believe — this is not spin — I think that this will be the best thing to ever happen to the Democratic Party, because healthcare costs will escalate unbelievably … the Republican Party will own the healthcare system for the foreseeable future.”
Unbelievably cynical. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made the same point almost immediately.
Should ObamaCare be stricken, congressional Republicans will be free to paint the president and his party as socialists who passed a partisan, unpopular, unprecedented intrusion of government into the private sector and ultimately had to be stopped by the Supreme Court from destroying liberty in the United States for all time.
Romney might not want to, as it will only invite attacks on his ambiguous record of supporting insurance mandates. He will probably want to stick to the economy instead, and to hunt for some other sticks.
By: A. B. Stoddard, Associate Editor, The Hill, March 28, 2012
“At The Heart Of An Ideology”: Republicans Are Causing A Moral Crisis In America
There is moral crisis afoot! So say the Republican candidates for president, their pals in Congress and in state houses. Abortion, gay marriage, contraception— contraception, for Pete’s sake — things that so shock the conscience that it’s a wonder The Washington Post can even print the words!
Here’s something I bet you wouldn’t think I’d say: They’re right. There is a moral crisis in the United States. The only thing is — they’re wrong about what it is and who is causing it.
The real crisis of public morality in the United States doesn’t lie in the private decisions Americans make in their lives or their bedrooms; it lies at the heart of an ideology — and a set of policies — that the right-wing has used to batter and browbeat their fellow Americans.
They dress these policies up sometimes, give them catchy titles like Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity.” But they never cease to imbue them with the kind of moral decisions that ought to make anyone furious. Ryan’s latest budget really is case in point. It’s a plan that says that increases in defense spending are so essential, that massive tax cuts for the wealthy are so necessary, that we must pay for them by ripping a hole in the social safety net. The poor need Medicaid to pay for medicine and treatment for their families? We care, we really do, but the wealthy need tax cuts more. Food stamps the only thing standing between your children and starvation? Listen, we feel your pain. We get it. But we’ve got more important things to spend money on. Like a new yacht for that guy who only has one yacht.
It’s hard to point to a single priority of the Republican Party these days that isn’t steeped in moral failing while being dressed up in moral righteousness. This week, for example, they are hoping the Supreme Court will be persuaded by radical (and ridiculous) constitutional arguments to throw out some or all of the Affordable Care Act. Sure, you could argue that it’s really nice to make sure 31 million people who didn’t have health care can get it. Sure you could make the case that lifetime limits are a bad thing, that women shouldn’t have to pay more for health insurance just because they’re women, that the United States shouldn’t be a country where you die because you lost your coverage when you lost your job. But then again, liberty. Let’s not forget liberty. Also, freedom.
It is a very strange thing that the people who lecture most fervently about morality are those who are most willing to fight for policies that are so immoral. They watch Wall Street turn itself into the Las Vegas strip, take the economy down and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods. To that they say, “By God we need less regulation. Get me the hose, I have things to water down!” They see a CEO of a bank or a corporation, someone who passed off all of the risk and took on all of the reward, and they say, “Get that man a bigger bonus! In fact, get him two!”
They see corporate interests flood the political system with unfathomably large sums of money, they see lobbyists defining the terms of debate, and they say, “Now this . . . this is what democracy should look like.”
They see an environmental crisis spinning out of control, the effects of climate change being felt already, the possibility of the biggest natural disaster in modern human history. To which they ask, “Anyone know if we can drill this hole any deeper?”
So yes, Rick Santorum. Yes, Mitt Romney. Yes, Paul Ryan and Republican politicians all over this nation. You are right, as right as you’ve ever been. There is a moral crisis in this country. A horrifyingly, back-breaking, bankrupt-the-core-of-this-nation style crisis. But it isn’t women or the poor or the middle class or the gay community or health-care advocates or environmentalists that are causing it.
It’s you.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 27, 2012
“No Nutritional Value”: A Farewell To Newt
It’s not easy letting him go. Not easy at all. Sort of like swearing off bedtime Ben & Jerry’s: there’s valor and the promise of self-improvement in the sacrifice, but also the sad awareness that the world just got a little less naughty. A little less fun.
No matter. It’s time to cut Newt out of our diets.
He has no nutritional value, certainly not at this point, as he peddles his ludicrous guarantee of $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, a promise that would be made only by someone with his own bottomless strategic reserve of crude. Doubly oily entendre intended.
There were calls for him to desist two weeks ago, after he lost Alabama, which abuts his home state of Georgia. But they fell on a deaf Newt.
There were fresh appeals last week, when he failed to wring even one measly delegate from Illinois on Tuesday and then Louisiana on Saturday. But Newt doesn’t need anything as prosaic as delegates, so long as there’s still pocket lint from Sheldon Adelson and the warmth of Callista’s frozen smile.
If he refuses to quit, we in the news media must quit him. Starve him of his very sustenance: attention. Exert a kind of willpower that we’ve lacked in this primary, which we turned into too much of a circus by encouraging too many clowns.
We’ve begun. As the weekend came to a close, The Times’s Trip Gabriel reported that Gingrich’s “full-time traveling press corps is down to a handful of embedded television reporters.” The Associated Press, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and even Politico had packed up their bags. I envision Newt as a larger, grayer, windier version of the little boy at the end of “Shane,” watching the last of these stubborn scribes recede into the horizon, begging them for one last sweet tweet, promising a tasty sound bite about Trayvon Martin or Robert De Niro or … “The Hunger Games!” There must be some harbinger of cultural decline to rail about there! Do “Hunger Games” contestants use food stamps? Those are always good for a diatribe or three.
I implore Fox News to pull up its drawbridge, CNN to bolt its doors. If a Newt falls in the forest and not a single news anchor listens, can he really hang around?
He says he’s propelled by a desire to promote “big ideas,” but his candidacy has devolved into ever smaller talk and ever more desperate sideshows that drag an already undistinguished debate ever lower. Late last week he actually resurrected the Obama-as-Muslim bile, saying the president’s policies raise legitimate suspicion in voters’ minds.
In truth Newt 2012 has never been a lofty enterprise. Although he loves to tout his intellectualism, he got what brief traction he did for visceral and theatrical reasons, with fits of rage and flights of fancy.
He took off when he lashed out at “the elites,” pretending not to be one of them. He soared when he savaged the news media. He rocketed to a colony on the moon.
And he illustrated a dynamic that will survive this campaign season and that we should all think about: how much the profusion of cable channels, Web outlets, other news platforms and commentary of all kinds (including this column) rewards flamboyance, histrionics and a crowded field. A brash candidate is never more than a bellow away from three minutes of air time or two paragraphs somewhere. The beast is ravenous, and I don’t mean Newt.
Yes, the serial surges of the Republican contest since August had grounding in a fickle electorate and changeable polls. But we eagerly abetted them. En route to our beige destiny of Mitt, we craved color. And showcased it.
Newt is one of the few surviving peacocks, especially if you discount Ron Paul, who’s less peacock than emaciated ostrich — never airborne, head in the sand — and so consistently discounted that no one even bothers to implore him to fold his tent. No one can remember that he pitched one.
It’s time to forget Newt as well. His delegate count is closer to Paul’s than to Rick Santorum’s. His strategy — a generous noun — hinges on a replay of the 1920 Republican convention, which picked Warren G. Harding on the 10th ballot.
The 10th ballot? That’d really send the Republican nominee into the general election with a head of steam. I can see the bumper stickers now. Newt: Battle ready. Ballot hardened.
Great politicians are memorialized with holidays, monuments, libraries. For Newt I think an ice cream flavor is in order, something in the clogged vein of Chubby Hubby or Chunky Monkey, although not so physique-focused. Nutty Professor is too obvious a suggestion, though it opens the door to pralines, aptly Southern.
Maybe Peaches ’n’ Scream? That would honor the state he comes from while acknowledging the state he’s been in — unsubtle, overwrought. Not qualifying for the Virginia primary was a blow akin to Pearl Harbor. The Palestinians are “an invented” people.
Newt is empty calories. A pointless pint of them.
By: Frank Bruni, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 26, 2012
“A Matter Of Basic Values”: Burden Of Proof In The Battle Over Voting Rights
One of the most predictable characteristics of the battle over voting rights in this country, which now largely centers on Republican efforts in a number of states to institute various photo ID requirements, is a very different take on the burden of proof. Again and again, progressives point to the signal lack of evidence of any “voter fraud” problem anywhere. In Texas, the state that has filed suit to strike down the entire preclearance procedure of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because the Justice Department refused to preclear its new photo ID law, there have been during the last two election cycles a grand total of four allegations made to the Attorney General’s office of people ineligible to vote impersonating qualified voters. As Think Progress’ Josh Israel notes, these are pretty damning statistics:
Though [Gov. Rick] Perry has claimed Texas has endured “multiple cases” of voter fraud, even of the paltry 20 election law violation allegations the state’s attorney general handled in the 2008 and 2010 elections, most related to mail-in ballot or campaign finance violations, electioneering too close to a polling place, and a voter blocked by an election worker.
It is unclear how many Texans attempt to illegally check out library books while impersonating neighbors or dead people, each year. But in a state of more than 25 million people, the odds of being even accused of voter impersonation in the Lone Star State are less than one in 6,250,000.
Conservatives typically ignore these numbers and instead of answering “why” new and burdensome voting requirements need to be instituted, ask “why not,” comparing proposed voting hurdles to the identification often demanded for various legal or commercial transactions, or more indirectly, asking why honest people would object to verification of their identities? Others rely on public opinion polls to “prove” the reasonableness of voter ID laws, a particularly shaky argument for conservatives who in other contexts believe unnecessary regulations and mandates are intolerable regardless of public support for their purposes.
Aside from the obvious fact that people in both parties understand these requirements would have a disproportionate impact on people more likely to vote Democratic, this kind of dispute often misses the rather obvious point that many conservatives do not view participation in elections as a fundamental right of citizenship. Occasionally they even admit it, but more often that conviction is simply reflected in how the question of “voter fraud versus voting rights” is framed. Anyone viewing the right to vote as fundamental is most unlikely to support burdens placed upon it without a compelling case to show the burden is necessary. “It wouldn’t hurt you” arguments or comparisons to other transactions that do not involve the exercise of fundamental rights are irrelevant.
No wonder a growing number of conservatives favor repeal of the Voting Rights Act altogether. The reasoning is closely parallel to the now-common-place argument on the Right that the discrimination against people of color is largely a thing of the past, and that exceptional government efforts to fight such discrimination amount to a racist effort to discriminate against white people. If that’s the case, then “why not” make access to the ballot just like any other public service, many of which are conditional on compliance with all sorts of rules?
So while the debate over voting in this country often sounds like a competition of people with competing views of the facts, it’s really not: it’s a matter of basic values, and of the burden of proof borne by those who support or oppose a right to vote.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 26, 2012
“Denied The Right To Vote”: Texas Had ‘Fewer Than Five’ Voter Impersonation Cases Over Three Years
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice blocked a new Texas state law that would institute strict photo identification requirements for all citizens trying to vote. The DOJ refused to grant the law pre-clearance under the Voting Rights Act, noting that the bill would unfairly disenfranchise Hispanic voters.
Supporters of the bill say the law is needed to prevent voter impersonation. Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) argued:
Texas has a responsibility to ensure elections are fair, beyond reproach and accurately reflect the will of voters. The DOJ has no valid reason for rejecting this important law, which requires nothing more extensive than the type of photo identification necessary to receive a library card or board an airplane. Their denial is yet another example of the Obama administration’s continuing and pervasive federal overreach.
How big has the problem been? According to the San Antonio Express-News:
Fewer than five “illegal voting” complaints involving voter impersonations were filed with the Texas Attorney General’s Office from the 2008 and 2010 general elections in which more than 13 million voters participated.
The Texas attorney general’s office did not give the outcome of the four illegal voting complaints that were filed. Only one remains pending, according to agency records.
And as ThinkProgress Justice previously reported, more people than that have been denied their right to vote due to these sorts of strict voter ID laws.
Though Perry has claimed Texas has endured “multiple cases” of voter fraud, even of the paltry 20 election law violation allegations the state’s attorney general handled in the 2008 and 2010 elections, most related to mail-in ballot or campaign finance violations, electioneering too close to a polling place, and a voter blocked by an election worker.
It is unclear how many Texans attempt to illegally check out library books while impersonating neighbors or dead people, each year. But in a state of more than 25 million people, the odds of being even accused of voter impersonation in the Lone Star State are less than one in 6,250,000.
By: Josh Israel, Think Progress, March 26, 2012
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