“Hell Bent On Creating Chaos And Crisis”: How Republicans Are Learning To Love The Shutdown
Conventional wisdom is malleable, and it appears that conventional wisdom on the wisdom of shutting down the government is shifting, at least within the Republican party. While the old CW was that it was a terrible idea that Republicans suffered for, and it would be foolish to do it again, the new CW seems to be, “Hey, didn’t we shut down the government and win the next election?”
The other day, influential conservative journalist Byron York began pushing this line, writing that the 2013 shutdown “so deeply damaged GOP prospects that Republicans exceeded expectations in 2014, winning control of the Senate in spectacular fashion and making unexpected gains in the House.” And now, as Dave Weigel reports, Republicans are taking it up:
In [conservative] circles, it’s clear that the president can be stared down on immigration. And it’s clear that a fight, even if it led to shutdown, would be either rewarded or forgotten by voters when they returned to the polling booths in November 2016. The reality of the Affordable Care Act had, after all, ended up winning elections for them in 2014. Why wouldn’t the reality of Obama’s new blunders elect the Republicans of 2016?
It’s all deeply frustrating to Democrats. Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly, whose district’s contractors and federal employees recoiled at the shutdown, had subsequently watched his state reelect its Republican congressmen and nearly knock off its popular Democratic senator. There clearly was no shutdown hangover for Republicans.
“From their point of view, frankly, while it had a temporary impact on their polling numbers, they fully recovered from that and paid no price at all on Nov. 4,” said Connolly as he headed into a vote. “Politicians are all Pavlovian at a very elemental level. What’s rewarded, what’s punished. They look at that, and they think it seems to have been rewarded. It certainly wasn’t punished.”
This is entirely true. Approval of the Republican party took a nose dive in the wake of the shutdown, and though it is still viewed negatively by most Americans, that didn’t stop Republicans from having a great election day. Because as at least some within the GOP understand, you can create chaos and crisis, and large numbers of voters will conclude not that Republicans are bent on creating chaos and crisis but that “Washington” is broken, and the way to fix it is to elect the people who aren’t in the president’s party. That in this case that happened to be precisely the people who broke it escaped many voters. The fact that the electorate skewed so heavily Republican in an election with the lowest turnout since 1942 also helped them escape the consequences of their behavior.
One of the things that interests me here is Weigel’s observation, which I’ve heard from others before, that conservatives believe “that the president can be stared down on immigration.” The fact that they’ve lost these showdowns again and again doesn’t seem to register. They simultaneously believe that Barack Obama is a tyrant in the grip of a mad obsession to destroy America, and that he’s a wimp who will back down if they show some spine.
If that’s what you think, a shutdown becomes a win-win scenario. If you threaten to shut the government down and Obama relents, then you’ve won. If he doesn’t relent and the government does shut down, you’ll win anyway, because that’s what happened before.
It now looks like Obama is going to announce his new immigration policy this week, at which point Republicans will freak out. And we may be seeing the front end of an evolution in their thinking, not just from “Shutting down the government would be bad for us” to “We could shut down the government and be just fine,” but from there all the way to “Shutting down the government would be genius.” Just you wait.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, November 19, 2014
“A Backwards Looking Losing Theme”: The GOP Already Has The Wrong Message For 2016
Let’s “restore” America.
This theme has been an undercurrent of Republican politics since the 2008 elections, when President Obama and the Democrats won control of two of the three branches of the U.S. government. It was also an explicit goal of the Tea Party. Now, it looks like Republicans are testing it out as a slogan for the 2016 elections, including the key presidential contest.
If Jeb Bush runs, and wins, the GOP might mean “restore” almost literally, in the dynastic sense. But mostly the message is that the Republican Party is volunteering to clean up the mess those Democrats made, bringing us back to some idyllic time in America (probably the 1980s).
At The Atlantic, Peter Beinart has an entire article dedicated to “the Republican obsession with ‘restoring’ America,” including its many iterations in today’s GOP politics. “Restore” appears in the literature — both press releases and upcoming or recent books — from 2016 GOP hopefuls Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Mike Huckabee, for example. It is a word that has inherent appeal for those whose politics are conservative, but it also has vaguely sinister overtones for groups that didn’t exactly have it better in the good old days.
The Week‘s resident linguist, Arika Okrent, notes that along with Rubio’s upcoming campaign book American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone, fellow presumptive 2016 presidential hopeful Paul Ryan is “Renewing the American Idea” in his book while Rick Santorum is “Recommitting to an America That Works.” All those “re-” words are “supposed to call up the idea of freshness and new blood,” she muses, “but something about the re- screams ‘do over!'”
The problem with the pledge of restoration is that it is inherently backward-looking. Americans may like the idea of America’s Golden Age — well, some Americans: “older, straight, Anglo, white, and male voters,” in Beinart’s analysis — but what they really want to hear is what a party will do to improve their future.
Democrats learned this lesson in 2004. After trying out a host of campaign themes, presidential nominee John Kerry settled on “Let America Be America Again” in late May. It’s from a 1938 Langston Hughes poem of the same name, and the message to the electorate was that President George W. Bush had broken America, or at least veered it off the right path, and Kerry would resurrect a more idyllic era (probably the 1990s).
Kerry used that line for the rest of the campaign, at times quoting extensively from the poem, and it didn’t work.
This wasn’t the only reason that Kerry lost, of course — he was leading Bush for much of the “Let America Be America Again” phase of the campaign, until “Swift Boat” August — but compare Kerry’s theme with Obama’s 2008 mantras of “Our Moment is Now” and “Hope and Change.” Big difference.
In any case, Republicans should already know that “restore America” is a losing theme. Mitt Romney’s 2012 super-PAC was the poetically nonsensical Restore Our Future. The first substantive section of the party’s 2012 platform was entitled “Restoring the American Dream.” And even the GOP’s “Great Communicator,” Ronald Reagan, couldn’t unseat fellow Republican Gerald Ford with his 1976 speech “To Restore America.”
Nostalgia is great for selling merchandise and rebooted TV and film franchises, but it’s not a very effective political cri de cœur for a national campaign. Republicans have been telling us what they’re against for the last six years — Obama — and if they want to be viable in 2016, they need to spend the next two telling us what they envision for the future.
By: Peter Weber, Senior Editor, TheWeek.com, November 17, 2014
“Speaking Of Asses”: Senator Complains About ‘Dumbass Liberals’
I actually remember the way Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) used to be, back when he boasted about being a “square peg” – a label he used as a shorthand to say he doesn’t always fit in.
The Utah Republican used to actually see value in cooperating with people with whom he disagreed, working with Democrats, for example, on stem-cell research, the DREAM Act, and S-CHIP.
But then he threw it all away. As Amanda Terkel reported, Hatch’s remarks at the Federalist Society’s annual conference are a reminder of the kind of politician he’s become.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) came out swinging against Democrats Friday, telling a room of conservative lawyers that Republicans were ready to give the other party “a taste of their own medicine.”
“Frankly, I intend to win with our candidate for the presidency in 2016, and we will give them a taste of their own medicine,” said Hatch. “And we’re going to win. We’re going to win. These next two years are extremely important. Maybe the most important two years in our history.”
“I get a big kick out of them using the word ‘progressive,’” the senator said of Democrats. “My gosh, they’re just straight old dumbass liberals anyway.”
Classy.
It wasn’t too long ago that Hatch was positioned to become a rare statesman in Republican politics. But that was before his partisan Memorial Day tantrums, his occasional references to hitting people he doesn’t like, and his juvenile whining about “dumbass liberals.”
Those looking for GOP statesmanship will apparently have to look elsewhere.
On a related note, did you happen to catch Hatch’s remarks about immigration reform?
“Part of it is our fault. We haven’t really seized this problem. Of course, we haven’t been in a position to do it either, with Democrats controlling the Senate. I’m not blaming Republicans. But we really haven’t seized that problem and found solutions for it.” […]
“Frankly, I’d like to see immigration done the right way,” Hatch added. “This president is prone to doing through executive order that which he cannot do by working with the Congress, because he won’t work with us. If he worked with us, I think we could get an immigration bill through.”
For goodness sakes, does Orrin Hatch not remember the events of the last two years? With “Democrats controlling the Senate,” a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform bill passed easily, and garnered the support of the business community, labor, law enforcement, immigration advocates, and the religious community. Republicans then killed it.
“I’m not blaming Republicans”? Why not? They’re the ones who chose to reject the legislation. They’re also the ones who promised a more partisan alternative, only to break their word.
“If he worked with us, I think we could get an immigration bill through.” President Obama did work with Congress, and helped rally support for a bipartisan bill. GOP lawmakers killed it anyway.
How is it possible Orrin Hatch doesn’t know this? For that matter, given the circumstances, shouldn’t he be slightly more circumspect about throwing around words such as “dumbass”?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 17, 2014
“The Fable Of Rand Paul”: Less Of A Thoroughbred With Stamina Than A One-Adjective Pony
“The most interesting man in politics” is what Politico Magazine crowned Rand Paul in September, when it placed him at the top of a list of 50 people to keep an eye on. And Time magazine used those exact six words, in that exact order, next to a photograph of Paul on its cover last month.
The adjective bears notice. Interesting. Not powerful. Not popular. Not even influential.
They’re saying that he’s a great character.
And that’s not the same as a great candidate.
You could easily lose sight of that, given the bonanza of media coverage that he has received, much of it over the past week and a half, as journalists eagerly slough off the midterms, exuberantly handicap the coming presidential race and no longer digress to apologize for getting into the game too soon. The game’s on, folks. From here forward, it’s all 2016 all the time.
And in order to keep the story varied and vivid, those of us chronicling it will insist on stocking it with players who break the rules and the mold, who present the possibility of twists and surprises, whose surnames aren’t Bush or Clinton, whose faces are somewhat fresh.
Cue Rand Paul. He gives good narrative.
He’s an ophthalmologist who never held office before his successful 2010 Senate race. He’s got that sporadically kooky dad. He’s a dove in a party aflutter with hawks. And he’s a gleeful nuisance, which he demonstrated when he commandeered the Senate floor for nearly 13 hours and filled Ted Cruz with filibuster envy.
All of that has made him a media sensation. But none of it would necessarily serve a quest for the Republican presidential nomination. At this point Paul is as much a political fable as a political reality, and his supposed strengths — a libertarian streak that appeals to some young people, an apparent comfort with reaching out to minorities and expanding the Republican base — pale beside his weaknesses. They’re many.
And they’re potentially ruinous.
The dovish statements and reputation are no small hurdle. No Republican nominee in recent decades has had a perspective on foreign policy and military intervention quite like Paul’s, and there’s little evidence that the party’s establishment or a majority of its voters would endorse it.
Nor is there any compelling sign that the party is moving in his direction. In the wake of Russia’s provocations and Islamic militants’ butchery, Americans just elected a raft of new Republican senators — including the military veterans Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Joni Ernst in Iowa and Dan Sullivan in Alaska — who are more aligned with John McCain’s worldview than with Paul’s, and that raises serious questions about the currency of his ideas and his ability to promote them. He gets attention. But does he have any real sway?
He himself seems to doubt some of his positions and has managed in his four short years in the Senate to flip and flop enough to give opponents a storehouse of ammunition.
Adopting a stark, absolutist stance, he initially said that he opposed all foreign aid. Then he carved out an exception for Israel.
First he expressed grave skepticism about taking on the Islamic State. Then he blasted President Obama for not taking it on forcefully enough.
His language about Russia went from pacific to truculent. His distaste for Medicare went from robust to tentative.
These adjustments suggest not just political calculation but, in some instances, amateurism. He’s a work in remarkably clumsy progress, with glimmers of recklessness and arrogance, and he often seems woefully unprepared for the national stage.
The most striking example was his assertion in an interview with Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast in September that John McCain had met and been photographed with members of the Islamic State. Paul was parroting a patently suspicious story that had pinged around the Internet, and the problem wasn’t simply that he accepted it at face value. He failed to notice that it had been thoroughly debunked, including in The Times.
At best he looked foolish. At worst he looked like someone “too easily captivated by the kinds of outlandish conspiracy theories that excite many of his and his father’s supporters,” as Mark Salter, a longtime McCain aide, wrote on the Real Clear Politics website.
Paul can be prickly and defensive to an inappropriate, counterproductive degree, as he was when dealing with accusations last year that he had used plagiarized material in speeches, an opinion article and a book.
In a story in The Times by Jim Rutenberg and Ashley Parker, Paul conceded “mistakes” of inadequate attribution. But he hardly sounded contrite. He lashed out at the people who had exposed the problem, grousing, “This is coming from haters.” And in promising to have his aides use footnotes in future materials, he said, “What we are going to do from here forward, if it will make people leave me the hell alone, is we’re going to do them like college papers.”
People are not going to leave him the hell alone, not when he’s being tagged in some quarters as the Republican front-runner, and his struggle to make peace with that is another liability.
But why the front-runner designation in the first place?
In an ABC News/Washington Post poll last month, 21 percent of voters who lean Republican named Mitt Romney as their preferred candidate in a primary or caucus, while 11 percent named Jeb Bush, 9 percent Mike Huckabee and 9 percent Paul. Two other national polls don’t show any growth in support for Paul over the course of 2014, despite all the coverage of him.
In one survey of Iowa Republicans in October, he trailed not only Huckabee and Paul Ryan but also Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon. And in a survey of New Hampshire Republicans, he trailed not only Huckabee and Bush but also Chris Christie.
What really distinguishes him, apart from some contrarian positions that are red meat for ravenous journalists, is that he’s been so obvious and unabashed about his potential interest in the presidency. He’s taken more pains than perhaps anyone other than Ted Cruz to get publicity. He’s had less competition for the Republican spotlight than he’ll have in the months to come.
And that’s given him a stature disproportionate to his likely fate. It has made him, in the words of a Washington Post headline last June, “the most interesting man in the (political) world.” There it is again, that one overused superlative. Makes you wonder if he’s less a thoroughbred with stamina than a one-adjective pony.
By: Frank Bruni, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, November 15, 2014
“GOP’s Sad New Rescue Fantasy”: George W. Bush Presents Jeb Bush 2016!
As if to underscore the GOP’s long-term leadership deficit even as a midterm victory looms, the Bush family announced a new product launch over the weekend: Jeb Bush 2016.
“No question,” son Jeb Jr. told the New York Times, “people are getting fired up about it — donors and people who have been around the political process for a while, people he’s known in Tallahassee when he was governor. The family, we’re geared up either way.” His brother George P. Bush, running for Texas land commissioner, told ABC’s “This Week” that it’s “more than likely” his father will run. “If you had asked me a few years back, I would have said it was less likely,” he said.
So they’re “fired up,” huh? Maybe they think if they appropriate Barack Obama’s old slogan, no one will notice they’re trying to make sure that three GOP presidents in a row will come from the same family. It’s as though Republicans have given up on generating new leadership democratically and are handing it down dynastically from now on.
The project’s cheerleader, according to the Times, is former President George W. Bush, the guy whose own White House victory essentially doomed Jeb’s dreams. Now W. is rallying the Bush forces, boasting about urging his younger brother to run, even while he jokes with Fox News, “I don’t think he liked it that his older brother was pushing him.” Older brother’s famous sadistic streak obviously endures.
The last time Jeb Bush rescue fantasies overtook the GOP, it was early in the 2012 primary season, and party donors were already able to foresee the drubbing they’d endure if either dull Mitt Romney or laughable right-wingers like Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich won the nomination. That time Joe Conason ran down all the reasons a Bush run was likely to be unsuccessful: Not just his uneven record as governor, but the unsavory associates who helped him amass a real estate fortune. Mother Jones took it further last month, with “23 Reasons Why Jeb Bush Should Think Twice About Running for President.”
Then there’s the problem of the tarnished legacies of his father and brother, which didn’t exactly leave Americans, even Republicans, clamoring for four more years.
But now, the New York Times reports, Bush boosters think “President Obama’s troubles, the internal divisions of the Republican Party, a newfound nostalgia for the first Bush presidency and a modest softening of views about the second have changed the dynamics enough to make plausible another Bush candidacy.”
Like all Republicans, Jeb Bush has struggled with a gender gap in his support – the men in his family have been gung-ho about another White House run, while the woman resisted. Now, according to several reports, both mother Barbara and wife Columba have finally given their blessing to Jeb’s project.
So the family is united about the project now. But it’s not just the family, the Times reports. “The larger Bush clan” – three generations of donors, strategists, pollsters, advisers and “friends” – are even more anxious to return to the show. “They’re like horses in the stall waiting for the gate to break,” one family insider explained. “They’re all jumping up and down.”
You know who else is jumping up and down? The party’s right-wing base. Only they’re jumping up and down in anger. Bush’s support for Common Core and some kind of pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (he’s flip-flopped on that one but still has talked about the decision to come to this country as “an act of love,” not just a crime). Bush’s latest crime, according to the right, is saying in 2012 that he would accept a deficit-cutting deal that traded $1 in new tax revenue for $10 in spending cuts.
Jeb Bush fever may be tougher to treat than Ebola. It afflicts GOP leaders with some regularity. Just five months ago, the Washington Post told us party donors were begging Bush to run. But as I noted at the time, 50 percent of Americans the paper polled had just said they wouldn’t vote for Bush under any circumstances. Still donors remain the power that matters when picking a Republican presidential nominee, and it sounds like Bush is now convincing himself the donors know what they’re doing. If he doesn’t run, they’ll be back on the Romney 2016 juggernaut. This is a party that’s out of ideas, and leaders.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, October 27, 2014
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