“Yes Virginia, You Have A Problem”: Virginia’s Ballot-Access Debacle
Virginia will hold its Republican presidential primary on Super Tuesday (March 6), it would appear to be one of the more important contests. But the state’s unwise ballot-access laws have ensured that Virginia will be largely ignored.
By late Thursday, it looked as if Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry had collected the necessary signatures and would join Mitt Romney and Ron Paul on the Virginia GOP ballot. On Saturday morning, we learned otherwise.
Newt Gingrich will not appear on the Virginia presidential primary ballot, state Republican Party officials announced Saturday, after he failed to submit the required number of valid signatures to qualify.
The announcement was made on the Virginia Republican Party’s Twitter account. On Friday evening, the Republican Party of Virginia made a similar announcement for Governor Rick Perry of Texas.
Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum also came up short, which leaves Paul and Romney as the only GOP candidates whose names will appear on the primary ballot.
For Gingrich, this is a rather awkward setback. He expected to do very well in Virginia — Gingrich has, after all, lived in the state for many years — and assured supporters on Thursday that his name would be on the ballot. Complicating matters, the Gingrich campaign responded to the news by saying it would “pursue an aggressive write-in campaign,” not realizing that this is forbidden under Virginia election law.
Oops.
Making matters slightly worse, Gingrich’s campaign director posted an item to Facebook that said, “Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action.”
Yes, after having been denied a ballot slot, Gingrich’s thoughts turned to Pearl Harbor. There’s a good reason I describe the disgraced former House Speaker as a lousy historian.
But this story is about more than just Gingrich’s failure. The larger point is that Virginia has ridiculous ballot-access laws, which will exclude five of the seven Republican presidential candidates from even appearing on the state’s ballot. If all seven had qualified, Virginia would have been home to a spirited contest — with candidates making many appearances, buying plenty of ads, and making lots of state-focused promises.
By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 26, 2011
An Open Letter To Sen Ben Nelson: Please Don’t Seek Re-election!
According to the Lincoln Journal Star, Senator Ben Nelson has not yet decided whether or not to run for reelection. Consider this my open letter to the distinguished Democrat from Nebraska: Please, please, I beg you, Senator Ben Nelson, do not run for reelection.
“I’ll sit down with my family to discuss the future,” Nelson said Tuesday during a telephone interview. “They are my sounding board. I value what they say.”
Nelson said he will weigh his family’s views along with a personal judgment on “whether I believe I have a role to play in dealing with a very divided Congress in a very divided country, whether I could be constructive in finding some solutions, whether I am convinced I can be a positive force for the following six years.”
Senator Nelson, you have never been a “positive force” during your time in office thus far, and it seems unlikely that you will become one at any point in the next six years.
Please, retire quietly, or even with an alternately self-righteous and self-pitying editorial about the death of “bipartisanship” and “civility” and”Senate decorum.” Promise to devote yourself to good deeds outside of office and then get rich lobbying for the corporate interests that currently sponsor you, I don’t care. Just get out of office, because you’ are horrible. You’re a miserable excuse for a senator. You have made millions of people’s lives worse in real and tangible ways, and you will continue to do so as long as you remain in the United States Senate.
You opposed capping ATM fees because you are so old and rich and stupid that you have never used an ATM. “I know about the holograms,” you said in your defense, because you’re a useless fool.
You joined the cadre of “centrist” Democrats who attempted to sabotage every major legislative priority of the Democratic Congressional majority, and you went back and forth on the public option before definitively coming out against it and the hugely popular “Medicare buy-in” compromise. Then you won a sweetheart Medicaid funding deal solely for Nebraska that almost killed the entire healthcare reform bill and led to everyone in the country calling you venal and corrupt.
And you opposed a measure to stop federally subsidizing usurious private student loan providers — calling a money-saving anti-corporate welfare proposal “a government takeover of student lending” — because you think representing the interests of usurious lending institutions that donate millions to your campaigns is actually an example “being constructive” and “finding solutions.”
You supported the Stupak Amendment, voted for the anti-gay marriage amendment, and supported the Iraq war. You supported both horrible, wasteful Bush tax cuts.
You have no major legislative accomplishments, either. Not one! I can’t name a single important bill you ever sponsored or co-sponsored and I suspect most other longtime Senate observers could, either. You are a failure as a Senator with no legacy to speak of beyond trolling your own party, repeatedly.
Consider this an official endorsement of your retirement from politics. Please go crawl into a hole.
Yours,
Alex
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, November 2, 2011
“Descending From The Mountaintop”: House Republicans Keeping The Faith
After preaching for weeks about the urgency of Washington taking action to create jobs, lawmakers decided to put their mammon where their mouths are. And so on Tuesday evening they descended from the mountaintop and came forth to anoint a jobs bill of biblical proportions:
“H.Con.Res 13 — Reaffirming ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States.”
The grace of this legislation, taken up on the House floor, was not immediately revealed to all. “In God We Trust” has been the nation’s official motto for 55 years, engraved on the currency and public buildings. There is no emerging movement to change that. But House Republicans chose to look beyond the absence of immediate threats and instead protect the motto against yet-unimagined threats in the future.
The legislation “provides Congress with the opportunity to renew its support of a principle that was venerated by the founders of this country, and by its presidents, on a bipartisan basis,” supporters claimed in their analysis. “This Congress can now show that it still believes and recognizes those same eternal truths by approving a resolution that will allow today’s Congress, as representatives of the American people, to reaffirm to the public and the world our nation’s national motto, ‘In God We Trust.’ ”
The infidel opposition took a rather different view. “We are focused on jobs measures,” said Brian Fallon, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “The House Republicans will hopefully get the message to do the same, God willing.”
In a dissenting analysis of the legislation, a group of House Democrats took a similarly skeptical stance. “Today we face the highest budget deficit in our nation’s history, a national unemployment rate of nearly 9 percent, and an ongoing mortgage foreclosure crisis,” they wrote. “American forces are deployed in combat on several fronts. . . . Yet, instead of addressing any of these critical issues, and instead of working to help American families keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables, we are debating whether or not to affirm and proliferate a motto that was adopted in 1956 and that is not imperiled in any respect.”
Then there’s the matter of whether Republicans violated their own promises by bringing up a ceremonial resolution and taking the God bill to the floor without a hearing. House GOP rules forbid suspending House rules to pass a bill if it “expresses appreciation, commends, congratulates, celebrates, recognizes the accomplishments of, or celebrates the anniversary of, an entity, event, group, individual, institution, team or government program.” (It might be argued that God, though an entity, is exempt from the provision.)
So what, pray tell, are Republicans up to? They can tell their constituents that they are doing the Lord’s work in the devil’s town. Because it is still too early to complain about efforts by the ACLU to snuff out Christmas, the In-God-We-Trust legislation provides a stand-in straw man. There’s certainly some appetite for this: Internet rumors proliferated after President Obama’s inauguration warning that he was seeking to remove “In God We Trust” from U.S. coins.
But it also conveys an impression to independent voters that, at a time of economic crisis, Republicans continue to focus on God, gays and guns.
Of course, there may be innocent explanations for the In God We Trust bill. “God” and “job” are both three-letter words with the same vowel. House Republicans may have been confused by the similarity, much like the dyslexic agnostic who wonders if there is a dog.
Notably, the House majority saw no need to protect the nation’s other motto, the one from the Great Seal of the United States that also appears on currency: e pluribus unum. But give the GOP credit for its tenacity: To continue to pursue social policies even while the nation cries out for economic relief requires the patience of Job — not to be confused with jobs.
In support of the God bill, the legislation’s champions quoted John F. Kennedy: “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” But they left out a better-known Kennedy passage, from his inaugural address: “let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 1, 2011
“In God We Trust”: In Congress We Stagnate
The House Republican leadership is determined to keep the chamber’s schedule to important matters, freeing up congressmen to do more important things, such as attend committee hearings and spend time in the district. That is largely a good idea, as long as it doesn’t keep members from spending time together and learning to work together.
What, then, possessed House leaders to allow the following onto the Tuesday schedule for bills to be considered “under suspension” of the rules?
“Reaffirming ‘In God We Trust‘ as the official motto of the United States and supporting and encouraging the public display of the national motto in all public buildings, public schools, and other government institutions,” the resolution says.
Seriously? Is there any practical importance of this resolution? They surely can’t force schools or even government institutions to display the motto. Schools in particular might be reluctant to do so, rightly worried about offending students and their families who worship different gods or no God at all. Let them worship learning. Let them trust in scholarship and study.
But that isn’t the point of the resolution—and bills considered “under suspension” (meaning they didn’t got through the committee process and require a supermajority for passage) don’t tend to have serious policy implications. They are all about campaigning, often to convince a voter group—in this case, religious voters—that Congress is on their side. And they are also meant, at times, to convince voters that the other party isn’t on their side.
If Congress wants to earn the trust of voters, it might try something that requires a bit more heavy lifting—passing legislation meant to create jobs, for example, or coming to a compromise on legislation to avert the automatic cuts in domestic and defense spending set to occur if the so-called “super committee” cannot find an alternative. “In God We Trust” might be a nice slogan on a coin. But when it comes to healing the ailing economy, the vaunted phrase is barely worth the dime it’s engraved on.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, November 1, 2011
The GOP Conundrum: An Aversion To ‘Too Many Facts’
Republican pollster Ed Rogers recently reflected on “the psychology of GOP activists,” most notably in the context of the presidential nominating contest. (via DougJ)
Our team wants someone authentic, creative, fresh, bold and likeable. And we don’t have much tolerance for too many facts or too much information. In politics, a bumper sticker always beats an essay. Cain’s 9-9-9 is a bumper sticker; Romney’s economic plan is an essay. Perry’s rationale for giving the children of undocumented workers in-state college tuition rates is an essay. No hand-outs for illegal aliens is an effective bumper sticker.
It may seem rather insulting to rank-and-file Republican voters to hear a prominent GOP pollster say they have an aversion to “facts” and “information,” but that only makes Rogers’ candor that much more refreshing. His assessment may be mildly impolite, but it seems fair given what we’ve seen in Republican politics of late.
My larger concern, though, isn’t limited to Republican voters’ discomfort with evidence. The real problem, it seems to me, is that these voters are represented by Republican policymakers who also “don’t have much tolerance for too many facts or too much information.”
I continue to believe the radicalization of the Republican Party is the most important political development in recent decades, but it’s accompanied by a related trend: GOP officials who simply don’t take public policy seriously.
With Rogers’ assessment in mind, it’s tempting to think Republican lawmakers in Congress, for example, simply dumb things down for public consumption. They avoid depth of thought because these officials know their supporters “don’t have much tolerance for too many facts or too much information.”
But are they dumbing things down or are the shallow sound-bites a reflection of their own limited understanding of contemporary debates?
It would seem this dynamic contributes to the “wonk gap” — which has been evident for quite some time — leaving us with conservative “experts” who don’t even fully appreciate the details of policy debates in their own fields.
I’m reminded of something Jon Chait wrote in January, after National Review published a defense of a health care policy argument that was, on its face, ridiculous.
Most people are not policy wonks. We rely on trusted specialists to translate these details for us. This is true as well of elected officials and their advisors. Part of the extraordinary vitriol of the health care debate stems from the fact that, on the Republican side, even the specialists believe things that are simply patently untrue. As with climate change and supply-side economics, there isn’t even a common reality upon which to base the discussion.
Paul Krugman added at the time the wonk gap goes well beyond health care: “Monetary policy, fiscal policy, you name it, there’s a gap…. [T]o meet the right’s standards of political correctness now, you have to pass into another dimension, a dimension whose boundaries are that of imagination, untrammeled by things like arithmetic or logic.”
The issue is not just someone on the left thinking those on the right have the wrong answers. Rather, the issue is the lack of intellectual seriousness on the right, making it impossible to get beyond the questions. Much of this, I suspect, is the result of an entire party that doesn’t “have much tolerance for too many facts or too much information.”
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 31, 2011
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