“Against Putin, Obama Gets The Last Laugh”: Where Did All The Republicans Go Who Heralded Putin As A Strategic Mastermind?
In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama didn’t name names, but he reminded some of his critics in the Republican Party that their praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin was sadly mistaken.
“Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, as we were reinforcing our presence with frontline states, Mr. Putin’s aggression it was suggested was ‘a masterful display’ of ‘strategy and strength.’ That’s what I heard from some folks,” Obama said. “Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters. That’s how America leads – not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve.”
Obama had reason to feel good – and take a not-so-subtle dig at Putin’s GOP fans. Not only is the American recovery gaining strength, but as Matt O’Brien explained yesterday, Russia’s credit rating was downgraded this week to “junk” status.
[I]f Russia is rated junk, then its companies will be too – which will increase the borrowing costs on their existing debt. It could also trigger earlier bond repayments, which, together with the higher interest rates, could, according to one official, cost them as much as $20 to $30 billion.
And that’s $20 to $30 billion it really can’t afford. Russia, as I’ve said before, doesn’t have an economy so much as an oil-exporting business that subsidizes everything else. But it can’t subsidize much when prices are only $50-a-barrel.
The confluence of economic events unfolding in Russia is amazing: cheap gas, banks in need of a bailout, crashing currency, high interest rates, and an inability to repay debts, all against the backdrop of additional sanctions.
There’s no reason conditions are going to improve in Russia anytime soon and Putin doesn’t know what to do next.
With these developments in mind, I’m curious: where did all the Republicans go who heralded Putin as a strategic mastermind? Where are the Fox News personalities who liked the idea of Putin leading the United States?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 28, 2015
They seem to have fallen quietly lately. Maybe someone should ask them whether they stand by their previous gushing over the Russian autocrat.
“What Is The GOP Thinking?”: The Nation Will Have To Stand By Until Realists And Ideologues Reach Some Sort Of Understanding
There they go again. Given control of Congress and the chance to frame an economic agenda for the middle class, the first thing Republicans do is tie themselves in knots over . . . abortion and rape.
I’m not kidding. In a week when President Obama used his State of the Union address to issue a progressive manifesto of bread-and-butter policy proposals, GOP leaders responded by taking up the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” — a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. But a vote on the legislation had to be canceled after female GOP House members reportedly balked over the way an exception for pregnancies resulting from rape was limited.
The whole thing was, in sum, your basic 360-degree fiasco.
At least there are some in the party who recognize how much trouble Republicans make for themselves by breaking the armistice in the culture wars and launching battles that cannot be won. It looks as if the nation will have to stand by until GOP realists and ideologues reach some sort of understanding, which may take some time.
It’s important to understand that the “Pain-Capable” bill was never anything more than an act of political fantasy. The only purpose of the planned vote was to create an “event” that the annual antiabortion March for Life, held Thursday in Washington, could celebrate.
You might think the demonstrators already had reason to cheer. The abortion rate is at “historic lows,” having dropped by 13 percent in the decade between 2002 and 2011, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The main reason is that there are fewer unwanted pregnancies, which suggests logically that if Republicans really want to reduce abortion, what they should do is work to increase access to birth control.
More to the point, according to the CDC, only 1.4 percent of abortions take place after 20 weeks. This means the bill, if it somehow became law, would have minimal impact.
But it won’t become law, as everyone in Congress well knows. The White House has announced that Obama would veto the measure, if it ever reached his desk. To get that far, the bill would have to pass the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would have to win over enough Democrats to cross the 60-vote threshold, which is highly unlikely.
Theoretically, though, any reasonable-sounding antiabortion measure should at least be able to make it through the House, with its expanded GOP majority. But even in the context of today’s far-right Republican Party, the “Pain-Capable” bill struck many House members, particularly women, as unreasonable.
At issue, apparently, is that, in making exceptions for abortions of pregnancies resulting from rape, the bill specifies that the rape must have been reported to law enforcement. This restriction cannot help but bring to mind the grief Republicans suffered in 2012 over Senate candidate Todd Akin’s appalling attempt to distinguish between “legitimate rape” and some other kind of rape.
Although the House leadership maintained that all was sweetness and light, reporters heard rumblings Wednesday that the bill was in trouble with moderate Republicans, especially women. Then an unusual number of female GOP House members was seen leaving the offices of the majority whip. Then the bill was pulled and a different antiabortion measure — prohibiting federal funding for abortions — was substituted.
I should note that there is no generally accepted scientific basis for the premise of the “Pain-Capable” bill. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has said there is no legitimate research supporting the idea that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks.
I understand that, for those who believe in their hearts that abortion is murder, there is an imperative to do something, anything, to stop it. Some people have similar moral passion about capital punishment or the thousands of lives lost each year to gun violence.
Given that the Supreme Court has decided abortion is a legally protected right, the antiabortion movement has done what it could — made abortions very difficult to obtain in some states where the pro-life position has sufficient support. Hooting and hollering on Capitol Hill do nothing for abortion opponents except fleece them of campaign contributions.
People, we are in an economic recovery whose fruits are not reaching the middle class. We have a crucial need to address U.S. infrastructure and competitiveness. We face myriad challenges abroad, including Islamic terrorism and global warming.
If a renewal of the culture wars is your answer, Republicans, you totally misheard the question.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 22, 2015
“The Ugly Assumptions Driving The Policy”: GOP Governors Recommit To Welfare Drug-Testing Schemes
The Wall Street Journal recently noted that when it comes to welfare recipients, “few” applicants have been caught up in the “drug-screening net.” How few? The piece noted that in Arizona, for example, between 2011 and 2014, over 108,000 people seeking benefits were subjected to drug screen. A grand total of 2 applicants were disqualified due to testing positive.
Note, I don’t mean 2 percent; I mean literally 2 individual people out of 108,408.
In recent years, the idea of imposing drug tests on welfare beneficiaries – which is to say, poor people receiving aid; those who receive corporate welfare benefits are exempt – has become exceedingly popular among many Republicans. The problem for proponents is that the programs keep failing – in practice, in the courts, or both.
And yet, several GOP policymakers just can’t seem to help themselves.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is pushing forward with a plan to make food stamp recipients pass drug tests – a requirement that the Obama administration says violates federal law. […]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (known as FoodShare in Wisconsin), says it’s against the rules for states to require drug testing as a condition of receiving benefits. The federal government could yank administrative funding from states that are out of compliance – a threat the USDA leveled at Georgia over a similar drug testing scheme last year. Georgia backed down.
Walker has been aware of the rule from the start. “We believe that there will potentially be a fight with the federal government and in court,” he told the Journal Sentinel in September.
Indeed, for the ambitious Republican governor, it’s a two-fer – he gets to look “tough” on poor people in advance of his presidential campaign, and at the same time, Walker gets to boast about a big fight with the Obama administration, which will make a nice addition to his presidential stump speech.
Of course, it’s not just Walker. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) recently approved a policy of drug testing welfare recipients, and Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) is an enthusiastic supporter of the idea.
The case against the policy is pretty straightforward. It’s legally dubious for states to require poor people to give up bodily fluids in exchange for benefits they’re entitled to; it’s exceedingly expensive to administer the tests; and wherever these policies have been implemented, they’ve failed to produce much of anything in the way of results.
But as we’ve discussed before, perhaps the most striking problem is the ugly assumptions driving the policy itself. For many, especially on the right, it makes sense to assume those who are struggling are to blame for their plight.
If you’re relying on TANF aid to help your family keep its head above water, maybe there’s something wrong with your lifestyle. If you’ve fallen on hard times and need the public safety net, the state should probably assume you have a drug problem.
Real-world evidence, however, points in a different direction.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 23, 2015
“GOP Wants To Define Rape… Again”: How Lindsey Graham Reawakened The Ghost Of Todd Akin
Ah, Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina senator who says he’s thinking about running for president no doubt thought he was helping the GOP get beyond its meltdown over its 20-week abortion ban bill, which leadership dropped unexpectedly when some GOP congresswomen balked, by asking antiabortion zealots attending the “March for Life” to help him “find a way out of this definitional problem with rape.”
One major issue with the bill was the way it defined rape: a women would have to have made a police report in order to get an abortion under the bill’s rape exception. (Katie McDonough has the details here.) Most rape victims don’t report the crime.
So Graham went to the “March for Life” today and came clean with the group, which is seething over its betrayal by GOP leadership. There’s going to be some kind of rape exception in the bill, and he needs their input to shape it.
“I’m going to need your help to find a way out of this definitional problem with rape,” Graham told the marchers, according to Dave Weigel. ”We need to find a consensus position on the rape exception. The rape exception will be part of the bill. We just need to find a way definitionally to not get us into a spot where we’re debating what legitimate is. That’s not the cause. We’re not here debating legitimate rape. We’re talking about saving babies at 20 weeks.”
So there it is again, the GOP’s lust for getting into the gritty details of defining rape, to make sure slutty women aren’t using rape exceptions to get around various types of abortion bans. That’s what former Rep. Todd Akin was getting at in 2012, when he talked about women rarely becoming pregnant as a result of “legitimate rape,” because “a woman’s body has a way of shutting that whole thing down.” As you’ll recall, instead, women shut the GOP down that November. Republicans don’t want that to happen again in 2016.
The funny thing is, clearly Graham thinks he’s smarter than Akin: he insists he doesn’t “want to get us into a spot where we’re debating what legitimate is.” But he doesn’t seem to understand that the whole effort to “define” rape, which he’s apparently now spearheading, is precisely about deciding whether a woman’s claim of rape is “legitimate” or not.
At its heart, this Republican project is predicated on the belief that women lie about rape, but Republicans can outsmart them. If some Republican women believe that requiring women to make a police report is draconian, then Graham is searching for another way to define a woman’s rape as legitimately deserving of an exception to their 20-week abortion ban.
Rep. Renee Ellmers, who supported the very same bill in 2013, had second thoughts this time around. “We got into trouble last year, and I think we need to be careful again; we need to be smart about how we’re moving forward,” Ellmers told National Journal. ”The first vote we take, or the second vote, or the fifth vote, shouldn’t be on an issue where we know that millennials — social issues just aren’t as important [to them].”
So Ellmers is not exactly the picture of integrity here. She’s not worried about passing a terrible bill that could hurt women; she’s worried about how it looks to millennial voters.
Still, there looks to be a real split between GOP congressional men and women over the issue. Only women came forward to take their names off the bill; then male leadership acquiesced to withdraw it from consideration. Reportedly the party had the votes to pass the bill in the House at least, but Speaker John Boehner and others were concerned about the “optics” of ignoring women in the caucus.
I guess that’s a kind of progress for women’s rights, albeit tiny. But in walks Lindsey Graham to try to mansplain the right way to handle this whole rape “definition,” and even as he thinks he’s helping, he’s making his party’s problems much worse.
I never thought Graham had a prayer of winning the presidency, or even the GOP nomination, but his chances just got a lot worse. Republicans did well in 2014 by avoiding Akin-like controversies over defining rape and holding forth on the intimate workings of women’s bodies generally. It seems they just can’t help themselves, and that’s good for Democrats generally in 2016.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, January 22, 2015
“GOP Thinks The 47 Percent Aren’t Trying Hard Enough”: News Flash, Middle-Class Rowboats Are Taking On Water
Remember the “47 percent”?
During his 2012 campaign for the presidency, Mitt Romney was caught on tape describing nearly half the country in disparaging terms, labeling them moochers who want handouts. They are voters “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it,” he said.
Romney’s remarks — and he stood by them immediately after his election defeat — didn’t just damage him; they also sullied the entire Republican Party, reinforcing its image as the lapdog of the very rich. Even now, as some of its strategists push hard for the GOP to reach out to ordinary working folks, its congressional leaders continue to protect the 1 percent.
If President Obama has no hope for passage of his ambitious program of “middle-class economics,” as he called it during last week’s State of the Union speech, at least he has a plan. His proposals for free community college, increasing the minimum wage and providing tax cuts to families in the middle of the economic spectrum have the advantage of recognizing the reality of income inequality.
So far, his GOP critics continue to resist that reality, sticking to the old Reagan-era bromide that a “rising tide lifts all boats.” Perhaps that’s true, but those middle-class rowboats are taking on water even as the rich float along comfortably in their yachts.
The growing gap between the haves and the have-nots is one of the most critical issues of our time, a dispiriting trend that has struck most Western economies. Because of complex forces, especially globalization and technology, the incomes of ordinary workers are falling further and further behind, even as the rich get, well, richer.
That’s not the fault of Democrats or Republicans, Libertarians or Socialists. Nor did this growing inequality start with the Great Recession. It started way back in the 1970s, as the factories that had powered the middle class started to shut down. American steel mills closed; textile mills went away; automotive plants moved out. The trends have simply accelerated since then, as robots power assembly lines and low-wage workers in places like Bangladesh sew garments once made in Maine and North Carolina.
Even now, in a resurgent economy, many families haven’t regained their footing. Their savings accounts have evaporated. They can’t replace the house they lost to foreclosure. They work two or three part-time jobs without benefits. And even those with full-time jobs aren’t living it up. According to The New York Times, the median weekly wage for full-time workers at the end of 2014 was $796, below the levels in 2009, when the expansion began.
Those workers are hardly moochers. They are struggling to find their way in a world where their skills have less value. They need help from a government that knows its role is to lend a hand, to steady the ladder, to help them find a toehold.
Even Romney, who is making noises about running again, has finally gotten the message. He has at least called for an increase in the minimum wage.
But most Republicans can’t get over the notion that those who haven’t made it simply aren’t trying hard enough, that if you’re stuck on the economic margins, it’s your own fault. Their allegiance to the very rich — people like the billionaire Koch brothers — overrides any concern for the vast middle.
Take their insistence on resisting tax increases for the 1 percent — a plan proposed by Obama to pay for tax cuts for the middle and working classes. Republicans claim any tax hikes would kill the recovery. But that’s not so. George W. Bush’s tax cuts led to no new job growth, while Bill Clinton, who raised taxes, presided over a period of widespread prosperity.
So what do Republicans propose? So far, they’ve pushed building the Keystone pipeline, which would create about 42,000 jobs over a period of two years, but only about 35 permanent jobs. And, of course, the GOP still wants to kill Obamacare, a strategy that would create zero jobs.
That’s not much better than dismissing the 47 percent.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, January 24, 2015
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