“The Mitch McConnell Strategy”: The Republican “Just Say No” Approach To Governing
As David Firestone wrote yesterday, the standards for cooperation in Congress have fallen so low that Senators pat themselves on the back whenever they manage to pass legislation. If it seems like an achievement when the Senate does its job — wow! A farm bill! — that’s probably because some of its members are committed to making it as dysfunctional as the House.
Take Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is warming a seat held with distinction by Kay Bailey Hutchison. In about six months in office, Mr. Cruz has devoted himself to opposing everything President Obama wants. (The Mitch McConnell strategy of 2009.)
Mr. Cruz tried to block the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, for example, by demanding that he prove that he wasn’t taking money from America’s enemies. He’s one of several Republicans who’ve tried to nullify agencies they don’t like — such as the National Labor Relations Board or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — by simply refusing to allow votes on Mr. Obama’s nominees.
This week, according to Robert Costa of the National Review, he’s been in Iowa, where he attended a meeting with conservative pastors. “Per pastors/attendees, Cruz told Iowa group this morn that conservatives must not fund the govt — ‘any CR’ — unless O’care ‘fully’ defunded,” Mr. Costa said on Twitter.
In other words, Congress shuts down the government, and presumably defaults on its debts, unless the Democrats agree to kill health care reform.
I presume Mr. Cruz thinks this is a winning strategy — at least among the Tea Party folks and other people on the far right. (Here’s a scary thought: Was he in Iowa because he’s thinking of a presidential run?)
But I’m not sure it’s going to play well with the rest of America, where contempt for Congress, and Congressional Republicans in particular, is evident in every poll. Some staunch conservatives are arguing that “just say no” is not working.
Jennifer Rubin, the right-wing commentator for the Washington Post, wrote on her blog yesterday that the House GOP has to come up with ideas of its own, starting with doing more than trying to delay or repeal “the noxious provisions” of the Affordable Care act:
“Without a GOP alternative to Obamacare, their complaints are empty and their votes unlikely to be taken seriously by voters. It is long, long past the point at which Republicans should have begun crafting and selling their alternative. To be frank, other than the budgets, when it comes to complex legislation (the details of tax reform, health care, education) this House has been weak. Where is the tax plan? Where is the market-based health-care plan? And of course we know they’ve been sitting on the sidelines in the immigration debate.”
Well put.
By: Andrew Rosenthal, Opinion Pages, The New York Times, July 19, 2013
“Peter King For President?”: Republicans Had Better Hope Not
If U.S. Representative Peter King (R-NY) is serious about pursuing the Republican nomination for president in 2016, then the GOP will have a real problem on its hands.
Congressman King’s interest in a White House bid was first reported on Wednesday night by Newsmax. The next day, the Long Island Republican elaborated on his plans in an interview with ABC News.
“I’m going to certainly give it thought. I’m going to see where it goes,” King explained. “My concern right now is I don’t see anyone at the national level speaking enough on, to me, what’s important – national security, homeland security, counterterrorism.”
“The big debate that Republicans seem to have in the Senate on foreign policy is whether or not, you know, the CIA was going to use a drone to kill an American in Starbucks,” he added, in a shot at Kentucky senator Rand Paul. “To me, we should be going beyond that and we should go back to being a party – whether it’s Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush – of having a strong national defense, and that should be, to me, an essential part of the presidential debate. And so far, that’s missing.”
Of course, if national defense has been missing from the presidential debate, it’s probably just because said debate won’t begin for another two years. But if King does insist on bringing the issue to the forefront of the Republican presidential primaries, then that’s very bad news for the GOP.
King’s positions on homeland security and foreign policy line up rather neatly with those of the George W. Bush administration (notably, former attorney general and noted torture advocate Michael Mukasey was the first Republican to go on record in support of King’s hypothetical candidacy). In other words, they are ridiculously unpopular. If voters were clamoring for a return to the Bush era, then Mitt Romney — whose diplomatic and national security teams were stacked with Bush administration veterans — presumably would not have been the first Republican presidential candidate in three decades to lose to his opponent on questions of foreign policy and national security (President Obama trounced Romney 56 to 44 percent among voters focused on the subject, according to exit polls.)
Making matters worse is King’s apparent inability to advocate for these positions without invoking startling racism. If the Republican plan to appear less hostile to minorities isn’t already completely dead by 2016, then a presidential campaign by a man who has declared that “we have too many mosques in this country,” and that “85 percent of American Muslim community leaders are an enemy living amongst us” — among many other racist broadsides against the Muslim community — would certainly deliver the coup de grâce.
Furthermore, a King candidacy would be sure to bring out the worst in his fellow candidates. With a lifetime 75 percent rating from the American Conservative Union, King would draw attacks from the right throughout the primaries; it’s not hard to imagine a fierce argument over King’s support for closing the gun show loophole, for example, becoming the 2016 version of “let him die!”
And none of these issues with a potential King candidacy even touch his decades-long support for a violent terrorist organization.
Happily for Republicans, King is likely just floating a presidential bid as a way to raise both his own profile and money for his congressional campaigns. But if he actually does enter the 2016 race, it would result in another huge blow to the Republican Party’s already tattered brand.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, July 19, 2013
“Are There Any Republicans Against Racism?”: The GOP Can’t Reboot With Bigots In Its Midst
As a matter of history, black Americans — at least those who were allowed to vote — were Republicans for decades after the Civil War. But some found Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal attractive, and most found Lyndon Johnson’s support for civil rights irresistible. They left the Republican Party.
And they’ve stayed away since the 1960s, alienated by the GOP’s Southern strategy of race-baiting and pandering to the prejudices of right-wing neanderthals. If you wonder why black voters believe the Republican Party trades in the rankest bigotry, look no further than the reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict among conservative commentators. It’s been appalling.
Let me be clear: It’s perfectly reasonable to believe the Zimmerman jury arrived at the only acceptable verdict. Many analysts, including some black commentators, have stated that the prosecution simply did not prove its case.
But several conservative pundits have gone well beyond reason, smearing Trayvon Martin, indicting his friends and elevating Zimmerman to sainthood. They’ve shown a callous disregard for the grief that still envelops Martin’s parents. They’ve suggested that whites are more likely to be the victims of discrimination in the criminal justice system than blacks.
And those commentators, luminaries such as Rush Limbaugh, are widely regarded as leading representatives of the GOP. How could it be otherwise when Republican pols kowtow before them, engage them as campaign surrogates and dare not criticize them?
Thoughtful Republicans — the moderates and right-leaning modernists who accept diversity — need to convene a meeting to take their party back and restore the brand to its pre-1960s luster. They ought to name their group “Republicans Against Racism.”
They will have to be prepared to call out and criticize the insensitive claptrap and vitriolic nonsense that gets bandied about not only by Limbaugh, but also by other well-known conservative pundits, many of whom have been in the ugly business of dehumanizing and defaming the young Martin since his death drew public attention last year. They have portrayed Martin as a thug, a drug addict, a predator who deserved to die.
To stick with a prominent example, Limbaugh recently dedicated a show to mocking prosecution witness Rachel Jeantel — whom Martin talked to on his cellphone as Zimmerman followed him. Limbaugh claimed that Martin was a homophobe who “attacked” Zimmerman, believing he was a “pervert.”
Have there been similarly outrageous comments from talking heads on the left? Of course. The verdict has prompted name-calling, hot-headed denunciations and racial demagoguery from a lot of folk who ought to know better.
But there is an important difference: There are precious few significant ties between the Democratic Party apparatus and liberal commentators. When voters think of Democratic leaders, they think of President Barack Obama, who has been quite cautious in his response to the Zimmerman verdict, as he usually is on issues of race. Or they think of Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been more voluble, but equally cautious.
By contrast, a Republican Party in disarray has no clear leaders. After his loss to Obama, Mitt Romney has retired to private life. His running mate, Paul Ryan, has retreated to budget battles. House Speaker John Boehner can barely manage his caucus, much less speak for Republicans on a national stage.
Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and others have happily stepped into the void, presenting themselves as senior strategists for the GOP. And party leaders have allowed them to get away with it.
A few Republicans recognize the problem this poses. MSNBC talk-show host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman, wrote recently that “many conservative commentators were offensive in their reflexive defense of Zimmerman, as well as their efforts to attack the integrity of a dead black teenager.” He concluded that the GOP can’t expect to attract black voters as long as so many of its emissaries are flagrantly and intentionally offensive.
Scarborough is right. Surely there are other Republicans who recognize the dangers of having their party represented by loudmouths who trade in racial hostility.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, July 20, 2013
“The Conservative Struggle Against Demographics”: Republicans Should Spend Less Time And Energy Fighting The Inevitable
Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder said Trayvon Martin’s death was “tragic and unnecessary.” The continuing American tragedy is the lingering racial chasm in American society. The U.S. has a black president and a black attorney general. But Paula Deen uses racial slurs, the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act and an innocent 17-year-old black youth dies because he was black and wears a hoodie.
Tuesday, Hillary Clinton and conservative blogger Erick Erickson weighed in on the Zimmermann case.
Erickson wrote, “Bad choices were made by George Zimmerman and by Trayvon Martin.” It’s easy to pick out the bad choices that George Zimmerman made. He decided not to leave the scene after the Sanford police department dispatcher warned him to get out way and let police officers handle the situation. Zimmerman’s biggest mistake, of course, was his choice to shoot an unarmed boy.
It’s much harder for me to identify the mistakes that Erickson thinks Trayvon Martin made. Was it a mistake for him to decide to buy Skittles? Did he set himself up for death by choosing to wear a hoodie? Or was it his choice to be black? Sorry, being black isn’t a choice, is it?
Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that “no mother, no father, should ever have to fear for their child walking down a street in the United States of America.” Fortunately neither the Clintons nor I had to worry that our teenage kids might be gunned down by a vigilante. Chelsea Clinton and my kids aren’t black.
The debate over immigration underscores the persistence of racial hostility in American society. The racial bias in the fight against immigration reform is palatable. Last year, during a Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, one of the candidates said the word “Mexico” and the crowd booed.
Republicans and their tea party supporters are fighting a rear guard action to keep the United States white. The Census Bureau estimates that white people will be in the minority in the U.S. by 2040. Demographers believe that the biggest state, California, became a minority white state earlier this year.
Some people just can’t stand the idea that white people in the United States are on their way to becoming a racial minority. Republicans worry, with good cause, that the rapid growth of Democratic demographic groups like Latinos and Asians will consign the GOP to political oblivion.
States with 102 electoral votes have voted for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. The comparable Democratic base is 240. 38 of the 102 electoral votes in the Republican base are from Texas and demography threatens the Republican destiny there.
A majority (55 percent) of residents of the Lone State are either Hispanic or black but the GOP still dominates there because Latino political participation is so low. Mitt Romney won Texas by 1.2 million votes in 2012, but at least three million Latino residents eligible to vote didn’t turn out on Election Day. The Texas Democratic Party and a progressive group, Battleground Texas, have just started an effort to mobilize these Latino voters. If that work is successful, the GOP will lose a big part of its already small national electoral college base.
Demography is destiny, so Republicans and conservatives should spend less time and energy fighting the inevitable than figuring out how to attract supporters among the new American majority.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, July 18, 2013
“Just Another Gutless Sniveler”: A Funny Thing Happened On Marco Rubio’s Way To The Nomination
Poor Marco Rubio.
As the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform sink, so go his hopes of establishing himself as the solid Republican frontrunner in the 2016 campaign for the White House.
Meanwhile, the junior Florida senator is under siege from the bug-eyed right wing of his own party. Glenn Beck called him a “piece of garbage,” and even the Tea Party has turned on him. It’s gotten so bad that GOP action groups are putting out commercials saying nice things about Rubio, just to preserve his shot at the presidency.
Unfortunately, immigration reform is the only serious issue on which Rubio has presumed to lead. Otherwise, his time in Washington has been quiet and forgettable.
During the big post-Newtown debate on expanding background checks of firearms buyers, Rubio revealed himself as just another gutless sniveler controlled by the NRA. In the budget battle he offered not a single new idea, only boilerplate attacks on President Obama over the federal deficit (which is now, to the chagrin of Republican presidential hopefuls, shrinking).
Immigration reform was to be Rubio’s golden ticket to the nomination — a young Hispanic candidate from a critical swing state, bridging with Latino voters a huge gap that helped cost Mitt Romney the election last year.
The immigration bill that has finally passed the Senate would add more resources for border security while offering a long road to full citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. The legislation is doomed to crash in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner has been neutered by the hardcore who take their cues from radio screamers like Beck.
Many of those House members disdainful of immigration reform don’t have to worry about their own re-election because they come from carefully gerrymandered districts where the majority of voters are older white conservatives.
As long as the House remains tilted so far right of the nation’s political center, and continues to smother all efforts at moderate compromise, the Republicans have virtually no prayer of recapturing the White House in three years.
This grim obstacle has become clear to Rubio and others seeking to be the next GOP nominee, as well as to some heavy political action groups that have launched an unusual ad campaign in several states.
One Florida ad running on Fox News encourages viewers to phone Rubio and “thank him for keeping his promise, and fighting to secure the border.” The commercial was funded by the conservative American Action Network (these big-money groups always have the word “American” in their name, to show how patriotically unselfish they are).
Another one, Americans for Conservative Direction, recently ran pro-Rubio ads in Iowa, the first major primary state, and also the whitest. “Stand with Marco Rubio to end de facto amnesty,” the commercial proclaimed.
And next month, in one of the grandest hypocrisies of the entire immigration furor, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation is for the first time taking its annual conference away from Washington.
The new site: Orlando. The keynote speaker: Sen. Marco Rubio.
Why is this so funny? Because the Americans for Prosperity Foundation is basically the infamous Koch brothers, Charles and David, those ultra-conservative billionaires who spend their free time and money trying to buy elections.
Paradoxically, their campaign contributions and massive media blitzes helped to install some of the same fire-breathing gasbags in Congress who are now dismantling immigration reform and damaging Rubio’s chances to be president.
That the Kochs would come to Florida and put Rubio center stage illustrates the bewildered desperation now plaguing the Republican Party. Charlie and Dave have seen the sorry poll numbers from 2012, and know they can’t win the White House without a titanic shift of Hispanic votes.
Apparently the strategy is to present a candidate who is heroically identified with pushing for immigration reform, while the brothers continue working backstage to ensure that reform itself has zero chance of becoming law.
Maybe that’s the secret strategy of the GOP leadership, too. The recent burst of political ads isn’t a pro-immigrant pathway so much as pro-Rubio, portraying him as a principled crusader on a sensitive issue.
The aim is to build him up as presidential material and deflect the ridicule from the far right.
For a candidate comfortably positioned in the political mainstream, being called “a piece of garbage” by a clown like Glenn Beck would be a badge of honor, something to brag about.
Rubio’s problem is that he isn’t in the mainstream, and he doesn’t have the conviction to get there. He won’t stand up to Beck just like he wouldn’t stand up to the NRA.
And if the immigration overhaul goes down the tubes, he might be standing in the wings at the next Republican convention, watching someone else get nominated.
By: Carl Hiaasen, The National Memo, July 16, 2013
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