“GOP’s New Plutocratic Populism”: A Bizarre Vision Of The Working Class
Fresh off his victory over Tea Party challenger Matt Bevin, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell headed to the American Enterprise Institute Thursday to make himself over as a GOP populist. The party, as you’ve heard, has decided it needs “middle-class outreach” – since it’s given up on outreach to women, Latinos, African-Americans and the LGBT community – and thus some intellectuals and politicians have tried to craft “a middle class agenda.”
While the party should continue to stand for the free market and business interests, McConnell said, it had to face facts: “For most Americans whose daily concerns revolve around aging parents, long commutes, shrinking budgets and obscenely high tuition bills, these hymns to entrepreneurialism are as a practical matter largely irrelevant. And the audience for them is probably a lot smaller than we think.”
That, you’ll recall, was the takeaway from Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, where the plutocrat’s self-satisfied slogan “You built that!” was meant to mock Obama’s declaring that nobody builds a business entirely alone, but seemed to mock anyone who drew a paycheck, which is most of us.
But what is the tangible help McConnell and his friends are now offering to middle-class families? Very little, it turns out. McConnell had the audacity to present his union-busting National Right to Work Act as a pro-middle class reform, ignoring the way the labor movement actually built the middle class from the 1940s through the 1970s. Oh well.
The AEI event also included Sens. Mike Lee and Tim Scott, along with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and writers like Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru and Reihan Salam, who contributed to a collection of essays on the new middle-class agenda called “Room to Grow.” They talked about helping single mothers, tackling student debt and ending corporate cronyism. But they offered very few ideas that would make a difference, and their good ideas are strangled by GOP orthodoxy. Lee wants to develop a package of tax cuts and credits for the middle class, for instance, but it adds $2.4 billion to the deficit so he hasn’t worked out his numbers.
The Utah Tea Party favorite also proposes to help the middle class while cracking down on the poor: Since he believes poverty programs create a “disincentive to work,” he wants to cut them and step up work requirements for those who do get help. “We don’t want people to have to make that kind of awful choice” between welfare and work, Lee told a reporter, so we’ll cut back welfare and make it harder to access. Bless his heart.
Ending corporate cronyism seems like a place the two parties might find common ground, but every time Democrats and a few Republicans put together a proposal for cutting the tax loopholes that make the tax code so unfair, conservatives squash it.
Still, let’s give the folks behind “Room to Grow” credit for trying, again, to buck the prevailing pro-plutocrat direction of their party. In the conservative Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti praised the agenda, but offered a caveat. “I do not doubt for a moment that if the Republican Party adopted Room to Grow as its platform tomorrow, then both the GOP and the country would enjoy a better future,” he wrote. But he remembered a similar reception for Douthat and Salam’s widely praised “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save The American Dream,” and concluded the GOP “is no closer to embracing the ideas of Salam [and] Douthat…than it was when we celebrated the publication of ‘Grand New Party’ at the Watergate in 2008.”
Continetti deserves credit for explaining exactly why that is:
The outreach Republicans make to single women and to minorities inevitably repels the groups that give the party 48 percent of the popular vote—Christians and seniors and men. As has been made abundantly clear, 48 percent of the popular vote does not a presidential victory make. But 48 percent is not quite something to sniff at either. That number can always go down.
So if the GOP can craft an agenda that it can sell to Christian senior men, this middle-class thing is a go. Otherwise, it’s going to have to wait for people with the courage to sacrifice part of that 48 percent to get to 51 percent.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, May 23, 2014
“Dooming Itself”: Focused On The Present, The GOP Has No Future
The vast majority of Republicans have bought into the quick hit, short-term strategy and catered to the right wing. Maybe they believe that Republicans can do a quick pivot, plug in the smoke machine and gloss over the actions of the party after November.
But, right now, Republicans believe that deep-sixing immigration reform, decrying climate change, angering women by ignoring equal pay for equal work and keeping the tea party happy by fighting equal rights for gays and lesbians, will all be forgotten in the coming years. Instead, they believe that by focusing on high profile hearings on Benghazi and the IRS they can motivate their base, ride to victory in November and not pay the consequences down the road.
Their biggest ploy, of course, is the ideologically rigid opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Many Republicans believe that this law will actually work in the long run, be tweaked and improved, and widely accepted by Americans – not unlike Medicare, which was initially opposed, and then became one of the most important and popular reforms of the 20th century. It is my view that Republicans will rue the day when they termed ACA Obamacare. Can you imagine if the Republicans had called Medicare, Johnsoncare? What a boon for Lyndon Johnson that would have been! The difference, of course, was that by 1965 many Republicans had come to their senses and supported Medicare.
My basic point is that the short-term strategy of the Republican Party is going to harm them in the long run, particularly by 2016. They have succeeded over the last three elections at being perceived as anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-young people. Not to mention anti-middle class. By allowing the extreme right to make their political tent smaller and smaller they risk being a serious minority party in future elections, especially in presidential years.
The simple demographics should allow reasonable Republicans to convince their party that this strategy is short-sighted and will come back to bite them. When President Clinton was elected in 1992, the electorate was 87 percent white, in 2012 the electorate was 72 percent white. States like Texas will be in play in the future unless Republicans change their tune. Young people, women, the LGBT community, as well as minorities, who have been voting overwhelmingly Democratic, will continue to do so because of Republicans’ positions on the issues and their seeming insensitivity to their concerns.
I hate to give advice to my Republican friends but their current strategy may sound good for a few months but you will pay the price big time down the road. The sooner you break with the Limbaughs and the Coulters the better off you will be.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, May 23, 2014
“Magnolia Melee”: This One Could Be A Mystery Right Down To June 3
There will be eight states holding primaries on June 3, the largest number of the year. But there are only two holding one of the competitive GOP Senate primaries that are the talk of the cycle. And with Joni Ernst increasingly looking like a sure winner (either in the primary or in a subsequent state convention) in Iowa, the big contest is the one where for some time now handicappers have figured the Tea Party folk have the best chance of beating a Republican incumbent, in Mississippi.
Insults from activists notwithstanding, it’s hard to call Thad Cochran a RINO with a straight face. He has a lifetime rating of 79% (over six terms in the Senate) from the American Conservative Union, and a 72% lifetime rating from the Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity. He’s been endorsed by the National Right to Life Committee, as well as by such mainline conservative groups as the U.S. Chamber.
But he’s not one to indulge much in conservative fire-breathing, and he belongs to an older generation of conservatives who saw no problem with getting as much out of the federal budget for a very poor state like Mississippi as possible. As a senior appropriator (and ranking GOP member of the Ag Committee, still important to big growers in Mississippi), he’s done his job. He’s also 76 years old, and has been in Congress since 1972.
So like Richard Luger in 2012, Cochran was an obvious target for an ideological purge, and the biggest of the right-wing outside groups, the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund, have heavily invested in Chris McDaniel, a state legislator and former nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host. Citizens United is about to join the crusade with some late ads.
There’s been relatively little polling on the race, but there is evidence McDaniel has been gaining on or even moving ahead of Cochran, who has the support of the very conservative State GOP leadership, including Gov. Phil Bryant and former Gov. Haley Barbour. Nobody quite knows how or whether to factor in the bizarre incident that’s been unfolding since Easter, when a “constitutional conservative” blogger close to the McDaniel campaign took pictures of Cochran’s disabled wife in a nursing facility as part of an effort to suggest he’s having an affair with a staff member. Nobody’s proved the McDaniel campaign had any involvement beyond telling the blogger to take down the offensive post when it briefly appeared. And normally in cases like this you’d think the underlying smear would get out there and do some damage even it purveyor was discredited. On the other hand, nobody’s going to much believe that Cochran, insofar as he is not Strom Thurmond, is some sort of septuagenarian lothario.
Barring some reliable late polling, this one could be a mystery right down to June 3. Since Cochran isn’t likely to have a personality transplant and start shrieking about The Welfare or Common Core like the Chamber’s candidates in North Carolina and Georgia, this could be a true and interesting test of whether a state whose Republican voters are both atavistically conservative and heavily dependent on Uncle Sugar will vote their furies or their needs.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 22, 2014
“The GOP Is Still Swallowing The Tea”: The Tea Party’s Extremism And Obstructionism Live On
What’s happening in the Republican primaries is less a defeat for the tea party than a surrender by the GOP establishment, which is winning key races by accepting the tea party’s radical anti-government philosophy.
Anyone who hopes the party has finally come to its senses will be disappointed. Republicans have pragmatically decided not to concede Senate elections by nominating eccentrics and crackpots. But in persuading the party’s activist base to come along, establishment leaders have pledged fealty to eccentric, crackpot ideas.
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, who easily won his primary this month against a weak tea party challenger, said Tuesday that there isn’t “that big a difference between what you all call the tea party and your average conservative Republican. We’re against Obamacare, we think taxes are too high, we think the government’s too big.”
That doesn’t sound so crazy. But is it reasonable for Republicans to keep voting to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act — more than 50 times, so far — knowing full well that they have zero chance of success? Does it make sense, if taxes are excessive, to refuse President Obama’s invitation to begin serious talks about tax reform?
If Boehner wanted to be honest, he’d have said that his party is in favor of posturing and is opposed to reality.
As for the “government’s too big” part, this traditional GOP mantra has become — thanks to the tea party — a weapon of spite, not a statement of policy. No to extended benefits for the unemployed. No to struggling families who need food stamps. No to underprivileged kids who need Head Start. No to a long-overdue increase in the minimum wage. No to undocumented immigrants who want to contribute more fully to our society. No to sorely needed infrastructure projects that would make the U.S. economy more productive and competitive.
The victories by establishment-backed Republicans in Senate primaries hold no promise that the party is ready to stop throwing tantrums and begin governing. They do ensure, however, that Democrats will have few, if any, “gimme” races this fall. None of the GOP contenders nominated thus far is likely to self-immolate in the manner of, say, Christine O’Donnell, a tea party favorite in Delaware who memorably had to run a campaign ad in 2010 clarifying that “I’m not a witch.”
Well, maybe one candidate has the potential for a pratfall: Monica Wehby, a pediatric neurosurgeon who had establishment support in winning Oregon’s Senate primary this week, was accused of physically attacking her ex-husband in 2007 during a messy divorce. She faces incumbent Democrat Jeff Merkley in November.
Elsewhere, the potential for GOP looniness has been minimized. In Georgia, the tea party’s favored candidates, Reps. Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey, were both dispatched Tuesday. The establishment’s favorites, Rep. Jack Kingston and businessman David Perdue, will square off in a July 22 runoff. Either will present a tough challenge for Democrat Michelle Nunn, who still has a fighting chance, polls indicate, to steal a seat from the Republican column.
Polls also show Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a surprisingly close race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes. McConnell handily defeated Matt Bevin, a challenger with tea party support, in Tuesday’s primary. But in what devolved into a contest of more-conservative-than-thou boasting, McConnell — by nature a dealmaker — promised, essentially, no deals with Obama.
The tea party is claiming a victory in college president Ben Sasse’s victory over Shane Osborn in the Senate primary in Nebraska. But there was no discernible difference between the candidates’ positions on the issues — they fought mostly over who was more determined to waste time and energy trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And Sasse, despite his protestations to the contrary, is actually a polished Washington insider.
Nothing I’ve seen in the primary results so far suggests that the Republican Party is tempering its views or weakening its implacable opposition to anything the Obama administration proposes. To the contrary, the GOP slate promises to display a remarkable degree of far-right ideological purity. Republican candidates simply cannot risk being called “moderate.”
Democrats can, though. The Republican Party’s move to the right opens political space for Democratic incumbents and challengers trying to win in red states. Candidates such as Grimes and Nunn can emphasize local issues while maintaining some distance from Washington — and, in the process, make Republicans play defense.
Democrats must not let voters be fooled. Yes, tea party candidates are going down. But the tea party’s extremism and obstructionism live on.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, May 22, 2014
“Tea Party vs Establishment”: Who Won The GOP Beauty Pageant In Georgia?
You’ve probably heard that the GOP establishment won big in Tuesday’s Republican primaries, with Tea Party favorites losing out to candidates backed by business groups. Take Georgia, for example, where an 11-term congressman and a businessman worth at least $12 million will now embark on a nine-week runoff, while the two nuttiest candidates were easily weeded out, having secured less than 10 percent of the vote apiece.
What the establishment “won” in Georgia is a future nominee that will be easier to sell to voters in the general race against Michelle Nunn, the Democratic pick. The GOP’s first place finisher, David Perdue, is a telegenic management consultant and a former executive at Dollar General Reebok. He rose to the top of the heap via a campaign ad that depicted his opponents as crying babies. “Help me change the childish behavior up there,” Perdue said, while onscreen squalling infants crawled across on the grass in front of the Capitol. His opponent in the runoff will be Jack Kingston, a political veteran with support from the Chamber of Commerce and conservative figureheads like Sean Hannity.
What happened last night in Georgia was a beauty pageant, not a contest of meaningful political distinctions. Degrees of polish aside, there were few substantive differences between the establishment and the Tea Party candidates. Perdue sold himself as “the outsider” and a “hard-core conservative.” He doubts climate science, opposes gay marriage, wants to get rid of Obamacare, and has called raising the minimum wage “backward thinking.” He’s promised to oppose Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader. Herman Cain, the Tea Party choice in the 2012 presidential primary, said on his radio show that Perdue “looks like a mirror image of Herman Cain.”
Though his deep ties to Washington are fodder for attacks, Kingston is no moderate. He suggested that children should sweep floors in exchange for school lunch meals. He ran an ad—set it in some alternate America plastered in Help Wanted signs—bashing welfare recipients for “choosing a handout rather than a hand up.” He talked up his support for the Fair Tax, a regressive national sales tax scheme. He pledged never to stop fighting Obamacare. He’d like to repeal Dodd-Frank. He has a staunch conservative record in the House, voting for things like a “fetal pain” bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks.
One thing that did distinguish Kingston and Perdue from their competitors was the amount of money behind them. Perdue used more than $2 million of his own money ahead of the primary, and has said he doesn’t know if there’s a limit to how deep he’ll reach into his own funds. Kingston attracted the most outside funding, with the Chamber of Commerce spending some $1 million in ads to support him.
So who lost in Georgia? It wasn’t the Tea Party, which succeeded in turning the contest in Georgia—and many others across the country—into a race to the right. If the terms Tea Party and establishment mean anything now as features of a candidate, they are distinctions in marketability, financing, and rhetoric, not of ideology. As Matt Kibbe, president of the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, told The Washington Post, “Everybody is running against Obamacare and against overspending in Washington. It wasn’t always like that with the Republican establishment. I don’t even recognize [Kentucky Senator Mitch] McConnell from where he was a few years ago.” The establishment candidates beat the wingnuts by showing up at the same party, but in better suits.
In Georgia, it was the voters who lost. Turnout was anemic, down by tens of thousands from 2010 even among Republicans. The choices before them were narrow, the airwaves full of attack ads. Most of the money spent by outside groups—upwards of $4.6 million—went to advertising, dwarfing direct campaign contributions by a nearly four to one ratio. Now Georgians will get another nine-week dose of the same, as Kingston and Perdue duke it out.
By: Zoe Carpenter, The Nation, May 21, 2014
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