“Shorter GOP Debate: What Domestic Terrorism?”: Terrorism To Republicans Looks Like Someone Else
About two-thirds of the way through the GOP Debate/Goat Rodeo last night, in the midst of yet another Syrian refugee pile-on, I tweeted, “How about vetting the multiple white guys who committed domestic terrorism in Colorado?”
My friend Tom Sullivan retweeted it with a note, “White college students from CA caused more terror in CO than any refugee ever will.”
Tom, tragically, would know. His son Alex was murdered in the Aurora theater gun massacre.
The debate was billed to focus on national security. You heard lots about Paris and San Bernardino and the threat that shut down the Los Angeles school system Tuesday. Not a word about Charleston. Or Aurora. Or Colorado Springs. Or Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Or Sandy Hook, just a day after the anniversary of what was a most horrific day among so many in the American timeline of mass shootings. A distinction shared by no other developed country, many of whom have seen homeland violence but none with the numbing regularity of ours.
Ben Carson did a moment of silence for San Bernardino – which is appropriate. But nobody said a word about a school full of dead teachers and 6- and 7-year-olds, almost three years to the day since they died.
Terrorism to Republicans looks like someone else. Terrorism to many other Americans looks like someone they know and we know, someone who takes cues from Internet mutterings about baby parts, or a deranged and feeble young man with available mass-killing weapons at home or a white supremacist acting on ramblings from the darkest corners of a disturbed mind.
We actually have met the enemy, which is why there are reproductive health care doctors who go to work wearing bulletproof vests. But Republicans don’t want to talk about it. And frankly, CNN whiffed on bringing it up.
As the scorecard goes, Jeb Bush finally woke up the fact that yes, he is losing to That Guy, the Short Fingered Vulgarian Donald Trump, about four debates too late. As my friend Mike Gehrke put it, Rand Paul actually sounded sane to drunk Democrats. I don’t understand Ted Cruz’s base, but he appeared to speak to it effectively while attacking Rubio for being soft on immigration. Trump blustered his way through as usual, and his supporters don’t care. Chris Christie seems to have adopted Rudy Giuliani’s “noun, verb, 9/11” approach. The air has gone out of the Carly Fiorina balloon to the point she made multiple “pay attention to me” pleas to the moderators.
The penultimate moment of the whole thing may have been when Ben Carson, having sufficiently malapropped “Hamas” into “hummus” last week, dubbed the Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Pubis. Who knew he had a porn name?
Along with domestic terrorism, the other thing notably absent from the campaign was much mention of Hillary Clinton, which suits her just fine. The longer Republicans stay divided, keep bloviating among themselves and persist in throwing duck-face shade on the split screen, the better for Democrats in what will be a hard-fought 2016 election.
By: Laura K. Chapin, U. S. News and World Report, December 16, 2015
“Ted Cruz Doesn’t Seem To Mind”: Cruz’s Cozy Ties To DC’s Most Prominent, Paranoid Islamophobe
The top two Republican presidential contenders share more than a star-crossed bromance: They are also both big fans of an Islamophobic birther conspiracy theorist who thinks Huma Abedin is a sleeper agent.
It’s old news that Donald Trump has a thing for Frank Gaffney, who helms the conspiratorial Center for Security Policy. When the reality television star-turned-presidential frontrunner decided we need to temporarily ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States, he cited a methodologically goofy poll from Gaffney’s group suggesting one quarter of the world’s Muslims support global jihad and violence against America.
Though the Trump megaphone probably gave Gaffney more exposure than he’s ever had, Gaffney has friends in other high places as well: namely, the office of Ted Cruz. But Cruz, might have more to lose than his golden-hued frienemy, since his connections to Gaffney highlights just how hard it may be for him to posture as simultaneously mainstream-friendly and die-hard conservative.
In fact, just yesterday Cruz sent a video message to his buddy’s Nevada National Security Action Summit, in which he praised Gaffney without equivocation.
“I’m so sorry I can’t be there in person,” he said in the video, “but I want to thank Frank Gaffney and the entire team at the Center for Security policy for elevating these critical issues.”
“Frank, a patriot, he loves this country, and he is clear-eyed about the incredible threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz added.
Then he said that Loretta Lynch has implemented a “ban on anti-Muslim rhetoric.”
Nope. That didn’t happen.
On the offhand chance you aren’t a long-time Gaffney watcher, a few things about his resume stand out. For starters, he helped push birther conspiracy theories about Obama, writing in 2008 at the Washington Times that “[t]here is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii.” He argues that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, is a secret agent for the Muslim Brotherhood.
And he floated that a logo redesign for the Missile Defense Agency “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo” and was indicative of “submission to Shariah by President Obama and his team.”
Yipes!
On top of that, Gaffney has long argued that Grover Norquist, who heads the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, is secretly working to help Muslim Brotherhood moles infiltrate the U.S. government.
Big if true.
Because of curious statements like those, many mainstream conservatives have tried to banish him from their movement. He lost access to the CPAC mainstage, for example, and in 2012 got disinvited from a weekly off-the-record meeting of D.C. conservative power brokers.
But while everyone else has run away from Gaffney, Cruz has embraced him.
The video in Nevada wasn’t a one-time thing. Cruz also sent a video message to Gaffney’s July 25 New Hampshire National Security Summit, calling the organizer a “good friend.”
In March, Cruz appeared in person at Gaffney’s South Carolina National Security Action Summit—an event that Breitbart News co-sponsored—where he lavished praise on the birther.
“Frank Gaffney, the one and only,” Cruz said at that event, “you are a clarion voice for truth.”
He also appeared in person at Gaffney’s “Defeat Jihad Summit” in February of this year, where he praised his conspiratorial organization.
“This is an important gathering,” Cruz said at that event. “Let me say thank you to the Center for Security Policy for its leadership, for the Secure Freedom Strategy, a comprehensive serious strategy addressing the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.”
Secure Freedom Strategy is authored by a group called “The Tiger Team” and calls for identifying the Muslim Brotherhood’s operatives, “overt and covert.”
(Cruz’s team didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether he shared Gaffney’s concerns that Norquist is a covert Muslim Brotherhood operative. We will update this story if we hear back from them.)
On Feb. 6, 2014, he and Gaffney sat next to each other to discuss the dangers of an electromagnetic pulse attack at an event Gaffney’s group sponsored.
On September 8 of this year, he appeared on Gaffney’s radio show and said the Iran deal means “we are at a moment much like Munich in 1938, where allowing homicidal maniacs to acquire the military power to murder millions.” He also joined the show on April 22, 2014.
While Gaffney has found favor with Cruz and Trump, he isn’t buddy-buddy with everyone in the Republican presidential field. In fact, he suggested in 2011 that Chris Christie committed “misprision of treason” by appointing a Muslim lawyer, Sohail Mohammed, to the New Jersey Superior Court of Passaic County.
“Mr. Mohammed’s work for the American Muslim Union (AMU), an organization with close ties to Hamas, is what concerns Mr. Gaffney, not his religion,” emailed Alex VanNess, a spokesperson for the Center for Security Policy. “During an interview with Andy McCarthy on his book, Mr. Gaffney simply asked Mr. McCarthy if appointing a person with ties to such a terrorist group amounted to ‘misprision of treason.’”
Cruz and Trump aren’t the only 2016 contenders to legitimize Gaffney. Carly Fiorina sent a video message to the group’s most recent event, and Rick Santorum spoke at its South Carolina summit. But the Texan, by far, has done the most to consistently and publicly praise a guy who thinks Grover Norquist is a secret Muslim spy.
By: Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, December 15, 2015
“Long Past Time We Got A Hold Of Ourselves”: Why Do We Freak Out About Terrorism, Anyway? Here’s Why We Shouldn’t
There’s a new poll out today from the Public Religion Research Institute showing that nearly half of Americans say they’re either very worried or somewhat worried that they or a member of their family will be a victim of terrorism.
You might say that’s understandable, given how much terrorism has dominated the news recently. But the truth is, they’re wrong. On a national scale, terrorism isn’t a threat, it’s a nuisance. We’re having a collective freakout about it right now, and that freakout serves the interests of those who are encouraging it. But we need to take a step back and look at just how dangerous terrorism really is.
Here’s a question we all ought to ask ourselves: When it comes to terrorism, what exactly are we afraid of? I know it seems self-evident — terrorism is scary! — but what exactly is it? If you try to articulate an answer, you quickly realize how infrequently we actually ask the question.
The simplest answer, of course, is that we’re afraid that terrorists will kill people. Okay, so how many people? According to the New America Foundation, since 9/11 there have been 45 Americans killed in jihadist terrorist attacks, and 48 Americans killed in right-wing terrorist attacks. Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that even though these two numbers are comparable, we don’t treat right-wing terrorism as something that requires any kind of policy response or even sustained attention. But you can’t argue that jihadi terrorism is something to be concerned about and afraid of because of the damage it’s been doing. An average of about three people killed per year in a country of 320 million is next to nothing.
So if it’s not because terrorists have managed to kill a lot of people in the last few years, are we petrified of terrorism because terrorists could kill lots of people in the near future? That’s possible. But how many could they kill? Another dozen, like in the San Bernardino shooting? A hundred? Five hundred? Since September 11 we’ve made it much harder to pull off a large-scale, spectacular attack. Terrorists aren’t going to be able to hijack airplanes and use them as missiles. It’s possible that there could be repeats of the San Bernardino shootings, and that’s something to be concerned about. But we have mass shootings in America all the time. Why — again exactly — should we be more concerned about a repeat of San Bernardino than a repeat of Aurora, where nearly the same number of people (12) were killed?
Both were terrible, and both could happen again. But only in the case of San Bernardino does the event cause large portions of the public and elected officials to contemplate sweeping policy change, even up to and including the idea of starting another full-scale Middle East war because we’re so frightened. (Anytime there’s a mass shooting, Democrats push for gun control measures; but Republicans only call for a major policy response when it’s terrorism.)
There are some people who would argue that even if terrorists haven’t killed a lot of Americans lately, and even if it’s unlikely they’d be able to kill truly large numbers of Americans in the future, we still need to freak out about terrorism because a group like the Islamic State represents an “existential threat” to America. But if you get specific in the questions you ask, it becomes obvious that this idea is utterly deranged.
Back in the Cold War, the Soviet Union presented a true existential threat to the United States. It had enough nuclear missiles pointed at us to kill every man, woman, and child in America (and on the rest of the planet to boot). The Islamic State has no such capability. Is the Islamic State going to launch an invasion of the United States, sweep through the nation from Manhattan all the way to Seattle, take control of the whole country, and force America to live under its brutal rule? Of course not. Is it going to launch a coup from inside our government and raise its flag over the White House? No.
So what exactly is it we’re afraid the Islamic State will do to America? Right now I’m not talking about what it could do to Iraq or Syria, because that’s a very different question. What could it do to America? The absolute worst it could do is launch some successful attacks that might kill a dozen or even a hundred of us. And that would be awful. But about thirty Americans are murdered every day with guns, and a hundred die every day in car accidents. Eighty-three Americans die every day in falls, but we haven’t declared a “War on Falling,” and nobody tells pollsters that their biggest fear is that someone in their family will suffer a fatal fall.
If you actually force yourself to think in specific terms about the substance of the threat the Islamic State poses to us, you have to admit that the actual threat is miniscule. So why are we having a national freakout about it now? The answer, I think, lies in the presidential campaign, particularly in the Republican primary. You have a bunch of news organizations following around a bunch of candidates who know that the way to gain the support of their base is to prey on that base’s fears and prejudices. Add in the fact that the front-runner is a demagogic bigot, and you quickly get into a cycle of hysteria: a terrorist attack happens, it’s extensively covered in the media, the candidates seize on it to propose ever more radical policy changes (Keep out refugees! Put troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria! Keep out all the Muslims!) all the while proclaiming that the threat from terrorism is horrifyingly large and growing larger. The media report on their statements, voters get more nervous, and the candidates respond by feeding the panic.
Even outside their campaign coverage, the media give enormous attention to an event like San Bernardino, spending weeks analyzing not just the occurrence itself but who the perpetrators were, what motivated them, what they had for breakfast on the day of the attack, and everything else that can be uncovered. This coverage isn’t problematic in and of itself, but its sheer volume serves to reinforce the idea that terrorism is a huge threat that we all need to be terribly afraid of.
But it isn’t, and we don’t. We should be concerned, and we should take reasonable steps to minimize the risk we face from terrorism, just as we do with all the other risks we face. But right now we’re acting like a bunch of cowards. It’s long past time we got a hold of ourselves.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, December 10, 2015
“Rubio’s ‘Pioneer’ Boasts Crumble Under Scrutiny”: In Living Up To His Own Hype, Rubio Has A Lot Of Work To Do
When Marco Rubio recently spoke to the Jewish Republican Coalition’s presidential forum, he joined all of his GOP rivals in saying nice things about Israel. But the Florida Republican went a little further than most, making a specific claim about his state legislative record. The Tampa Bay Times took a closer look.
“As Speaker of the Florida House,” he said, “I pioneered what became a national effort by requiring the Florida pension program to divest from companies linked to Iran’s terrorist regime.”
It was groundbreaking, but Rubio had nothing to do with creation of the legislation.
There was, in fact, a divestment bill that passed Florida’s legislature, but it was written by a Democrat before passing unanimously. Rubio, as the Republican leader in the House, allowed the bill to come to the floor, but he didn’t “pioneer” the policy. He doesn’t appear to have had anything to do with its creation at all.
Whether the Florida Republican was trying to deceive his audience or whether Rubio simply exaggerated the story in his mind is unclear. But errors like these are emblematic of two problems that represent a distraction for the senator’s presidential campaign.
The first is that Rubio, despite his background as a career politician – he won his sixth election the year he turned 40 – has no real accomplishments to his name. This creates an awkward dynamic in which the GOP lawmaker struggles to brag about his own record, and in the case of the Jewish Republican Coalition’s event, it apparently led him to embellish that record with an accomplishment that was not his own.
The second problem is that this is not the first time Rubio delivered a speech in which he flubbed substantive details in a brazenly misleading way. The week before his “pioneering” fib, for example, Rubio misled an audience about the scope of U.S. surveillance powers.
Around the same time, he misstated his record on “killing Obamacare” and misstated some key details about national security. A month prior, Rubio was caught making claims about his economic plan that were simply untrue.
I don’t know whether this is the result of sloppiness, laziness, or a deliberate attempt to mislead, but Rubio wants to be perceived as some kind of wonky expert who not only speaks the truth, but also understands policy matters in great detail.
If he’s going to start living up to his own hype, Rubio has a lot of work to do.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 14, 2015
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