“From Farsightedness To A Laughingstock”: There Are No Mainstream Republicans Left In North Carolina
The national Republican Party is exulting that the “establishment” won in North Carolina’s Senate primary yesterday. That’s only because they have redefined the term “Republican establishment” to include adamant adherents of a far-right ideology.
In yesterday’s voting, state House Speaker Thom Tillis won the right to face Senator Kay Hagan, a Democrat, in November. He beat a series of fringe candidates like Greg Brannon, who believes food stamps are a form of slavery and wants to save the poor by abolishing the Department of Agriculture. But in fact Mr. Tillis is a far more dangerous candidate than Mr. Brannon and the other Tea Partiers. While he generally refrains from nutty soundbites (though not always), he has been quite effective as the point man in the state party’s anti-government project.
As speaker, Mr. Tillis has helped preside over what our editorial last year called “the decline of North Carolina.” State government, we wrote, “has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot.”
Mr. Tillis cut federal employment benefits, and refused to pay back what the state owed Washington, leading North Carolina to become the only state at the time to lose long-term benefits. He cut back on education spending, prompting many talented teachers to leave the state, and repealed the Racial Justice Act, which gave death-row inmates a shot at proving they were victims of discrimination. He allowed new restrictions on abortion, blocked the expansion of Medicaid and rewrote the tax code for the benefit of the rich. He and his colleagues imposed also one of the most restrictive voter ID requirements in the nation, intended to keep Democratic voters, including minorities and the poor, away from the polls.
In February, a state judge blocked a program passed by the legislature to spend $10 million on school vouchers, allowing taxpayer money to go to private and religious schools. But Mr. Tillis and his counterpart in the state Senate tried to implement the program over the judge’s ruling. That led the editorial writers of the Raleigh News and Observer to say last month:
“It really is time to stop calling those who run the N.C. General Assembly conservatives. They are not conservative. They are reckless.”
On top of his actions, Mr. Tillis has made his own share of outrageous comments, suggesting in a 2011 video that Republicans need to get the truly needy to turn against those who are soaking government assistance programs.
“What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance,” he says in the video. “We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice, in her condition, that needs help and that we should help. And we need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government and say at some point, ‘You’re on your own. We may end up taking care of those babies, but we’re not going to take care of you.’ And we’ve got to start having that serious discussion.”
The right-wing project led by Mr. Tillis, which turned a state with a reputation for farsightedness into a laughingstock, has infuriated many North Carolinians, leading to regular protests at the state Capitol. Ms. Hagan will have a great deal of material to use against her opponent in the coming campaign, if she can scale the wall of unlimited money that he and his wealthy supporters around the country are about to construct.
By: David Firestone, Editors Blog, The New York Times, May 7, 2014
“Down Another Political Blind Alley”: Three Reasons Why Reviving ‘Benghazi’ Is Stupid For The GOP
House Speaker John Boehner has made what appears to be the remarkably stupid decision to set up a “select” committee of the House to once again “investigate” the 2012 Benghazi incident in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens was killed.
He apparently believes that another “investigation” of this tragedy will be politically advantageous to Republicans in the mid-term elections — and somehow tarnish the reputation of the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she prepares a potential run for the White House in 2016.
Already the GOP has bet heavily that its obsession with Obamacare will bolster its political position — a bet that increasingly looks like a loser. Now, in its never-ending attempts to mollify the tea party fringe, the GOP leadership has turned down another political blind alley.
There are at least three reasons why their renewed obsession with “Benghazi” is politically stupid for the GOP.
Reason #1: There is no “there,” there. The Benghazi attack has been investigated over and over and there is simply no evidence that there is any scandal to be had at all.
The latest “revelation” is that Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email aimed at helping former ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice frame her description of what happened in Benghazi before she went on various talk shows. Problem is that his suggestions were entirely in line with the talking points produced by the intelligence community — which believed early on that the attack was mainly the result of reaction to an anti-Muslim videotape and demonstrations that had erupted in Cairo in protest.
Of course, it turned out later that there was more to the story — though both The New York Times and the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of the event did in fact confirm that the response to the video tape did play a role — and Al Qaeda did not.
David Corn of Mother Jones pointed out that The New York Times, after a comprehensive investigation, reached this conclusion:
Months of investigation…centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.
The Times continued:
Benghazi was not infiltrated by Al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs…
The violence, though, also had spontaneous elements. Anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.
The Senate intelligence committee report released in January concluded that the attack was, “not a highly coordinated plot, but was opportunistic.”
It went on to say:
It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attacks or whether extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. Some intelligence suggests the attacks were likely put together in short order, following that day’s violent protests in Cairo against an inflammatory video.
And is anyone really surprised that the actual circumstances surrounding the attack were unclear at the outset? The same was true of the circumstances surrounding the Boston bombing and the Newtown shootings that took place right here in the United States — events involving our own law enforcement. That is the nature of chaotic violent events.
The right wing has done everything in its power to turn “Benghazi” into a politically salient scandal without success. CBS’ Sixty Minutes even bought into the right wing narrative when correspondent Lara Logan based an entire story on a tale about Benghazi that turned out to be entirely fictional. The story was fabricated by contractor Dylan Davies in order to sell his book. Ultimately CBS suspended Logan as a result.
On its face, the loss of life at Benghazi demonstrated a breakdown in diplomatic security. That’s why the independent State Department Inspector General did a study of what went wrong and how to prevent a future loss of life. Procedures needed to be changed. But there was never a shred of evidence that any U.S. official did anything intentionally — or because of some political motivation — that caused this event.
And what did the Republicans who are so fixated on embassy security do in response? They actually cut the budget for State Department security.
If you were in the position of making it harder to prevent future attacks like the one at Benghazi would you really want to focus attention on the subject?
Reason #2: The “Benghazi scandal” does not resonate with most voters — except, of course, the extreme right wing.
Republicans counter that polls show a plurality of Americans disapprove of the way the Benghazi attack was handled. In fact, a Huffington Post/You.gov poll show showed 42 percent disapprove and 27 percent approve of the way “Benghazi” was handled by the administration. But of course people are dissatisfied with the way the event was handled — four people were killed.
The real question is whether “Benghazi” is an issue ordinary people care about. The fact is that the Benghazi issue has no political saliency. It never appears on the list of major concerns the voters express might affect their choices in the 2014 mid-terms. That is partially because there is no real “Benghazi scandal.” It is also because ordinary people have much more important questions on their minds like the need to increase their wages and standards of living.
The fact is that “Benghazi” does not have the elements that have made “scandals” of the past — like Watergate or the Monica Lewinski affair — relevant to the voters.
To be politically salient, a “scandal” must include two key elements that are not present in “Benghazi”:
- Real “scandals” do not involve flawed procedures. They must involve actions taken — or not taken — for improper or immoral reasons. There is no indication whatsoever that the American ambassador or anyone in the administration short-changed security in Benghazi to advance their political fortunes or to make money. Instead you have a brave American Ambassador who was willing to risk harm to himself to accomplish his mission but with inadequate security procedures. The ambassador was President Obama’s personal emissary — the last thing he wanted to do was risk his death.
- To have staying power, real “scandals” generally involve a cover-up. The Republicans argue that the administration’s taking points after the event somehow constituted a “cover-up.” But instead they reflected the best information from the intelligence community at the time. Instead of a “cover-up,” what followed was an independent State Department Inspector General report that was very critical of procedures and proposed changes — but found no “scandal” whatsoever.
By reaching out for “Benghazi” the GOP looks desperate for something to talk about. And that’s for good reason. On virtually every other major issue that is really of concern to ordinary Americans, the Democrats have the high political ground — e.g. the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, the power of big money in government, immigration reform, equal pay for equal work, voting rights, reproductive choice, contraception, gay and lesbian rights, and increasingly even Obamacare — which by Election Day could actually help Democrats (especially with turnout).
Reason #3: Do the Republicans really want to turn the conversation to foreign policy?
The GOP launched the Iraq War — the most disastrous foreign policy catastrophe in the last half-century — and they want to talk about competency and honesty in foreign policy?
In fact, some of the same people who regularly go on Fox News to rail on about the “Benghazi conspiracy” helped promote the notion that we were invading Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — the most pernicious lie ever used in recent American politics.
The War in Iraq was an unmitigated disaster — killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, costing thousands of American lives, costing our economy trillions of dollars, and spoiling America’s reputation throughout the world.
Frankly, no self-respecting media outlet should allow any of the people who intentionally lied to the American people about Iraq on the air ever again.
If you were the political party that presided over such a horrific foreign policy disaster would you really want to turn the political conversation to the question of who is best equipped to conduct America’s foreign policy?
Apparently so. It appears possible that the Republican leaders are just as inept at formulating their own political strategy as they were at conducting America’s foreign policy.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post Blog, May 5, 2014
“It’s All They’ve Got”: The GOP Hunt For A Watergate-Scale Scandal Continues
It was no surprise that White House spokesperson Jay Carney spent a healthy portion of his press briefing today talking about the latest White House email on Benghazi that has conservatives on the attack once again. As you’d expect, Carney described the whole thing as “an attempt by Republicans to politicize a tragedy,” adding: Like so many of the conspiracy theories that have promulgated by Republicans since the beginning of this, this one turned out to be bogus.”
Republicans, however, see it very differently. “We now have the smoking gun” on Benghazi, says Sen. Lindsey Graham. And the press is echoing this view. If you do a news search on “Benghazi smoking gun” you’ll come up with hundreds of articles from the last 24 hours. We’re talking about an email by national security adviser Ben Rhodes, written just after the attack in September 2012 and just released. As Dave Weigel demonstrates at length, there isn’t any smoking gun here.
But while the email doesn’t actually demonstrate anything criminal or corrupt, it does show that the silliness of spin goes all the way up near the top — on both sides.
This email is actually interesting, if not for the reasons Republicans want you to believe. The section of Rhodes’ email, written two days after the attack, that has people interested is some bullet points under the heading of “Goals”:
- To convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad;
- To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy;
- To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests;
- To reinforce the President and the Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.
What follows is a series of answers to potential questions about the attack and the administration’s response, always stressing the President’s strength and steadiness and steadfastness and statesmanship. Yes, this is what some of our top White House officials spend their time on.
Now, spinning, and advising others on proper spin, is part of Rhodes’ job. Is there something a little unseemly about that? Well, you might think so. But it’s a bipartisan endeavor, one undertaken in every White House and every member of Congress’ office, where communication staff spend their every waking moment wondering how they can make sure their boss looks good no matter what.
But to Republicans, when the White House does it, it’s not just unseemly, it’s downright criminal. They believe that because they are convinced that Barack Obama and everyone who works for him are corrupt down to their very core. And one of their great frustrations of the last five years is that this president, whom they loathe with such intensity, has not been caught actually doing anything that would warrant his impeachment, at least to that portion of the American public not scanning the skies for black UN helicopters coming to take their guns and force their kids to gay marry a Marxist Kenyan abortionist.
Over the last year and a half since the attack occurred, I’ve gone back and forth on what conservatives really think about Benghazi, in their quiet moments. At times, it has seemed like they genuinely believe that this was one of the worst cases of presidential malfeasance in American history. When I compared it to other genuine scandals, I can’t tell you how many wingnuts have poured into my Twitter feed with, “How many people died in Watergate? Huh? Huh?” When I attempted to patiently explain what Watergate was actually about and why it was such a big deal, they were unconvinced.
But at other times, I’ve gotten the sense that they’re making whatever they can out of Benghazi not because they really believe that they’ll find some criminality if they keep searching, but just because it’s all they’ve got. To their chagrin, this administration hasn’t had a major scandal on the scale of Watergate or Iran-Contra. While scandals like those got more and more serious the more they were investigated, the opposite happened with the ones in this administration: the closer we looked, the more it became apparent that we were talking about simple screw-ups, not corruption and malfeasance. That’s what happened with every one of the mini-scandals, from Solyndra to the IRS to Benghazi. The administration even managed to dispense $787 billion of stimulus money without so much as a hint of theft or double-dealing, which was a pretty remarkable achievement.
If Republicans had anything better to work with to show America that Barack Obama really is the pulsing heart of evil at the center of an administration riven with criminal wrongdoing from top to bottom, they wouldn’t be crying wolf at every new Benghazi email they get their hands on. Even after all this time, the “cover-up” they claim occurred wasn’t actually covering anything up, which is kind of the whole point of a cover-up. Yes, the White House was spinning in those first few days when it was still unclear exactly what had happened in Libya, spinning for all it was worth, to show how “resolute” and “strong” they were. They wanted to make sure no one thought there was any “broader failure of policy.” And did they mention that President Obama is strong and steadfast? Oh yes, he most certainly is. That may be silly, but it isn’t a crime.
By: Paul Waldman, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, May 1, 2014
“GOP’s Comically Inept Obamcare Delusion”: Why They’re So Sad About The Enrollment Numbers
Let’s run a quick thought experiment. The Department of Health and Human Services releases a report claiming that 99.9 percent of all people who signed up for private health plans through Obamacare had paid their monthly premiums. Let’s say this report provided a state-by-state breakdown of the data that conspicuously omitted a number of states. Let’s also say that some of the largest health insurers participating in Obamacare had already provided estimates that were far lower than 99.9 percent. The White House and Democrats across the country wave the report around as proof positive that not only is Obamacare working, it’s succeeding far beyond their most optimistic projections.
What would happen in this scenario? The conservative press would loudly, and rightly, accuse the Obama administration of cooking the books on Obamacare. Darrell Issa would schedule hearings and subpoena documents. Ted Cruz would call on Kathleen Sebelius to resign again. Louie Gohmert would call for impeachment, and Lindsay Graham would ask about the Benghazi talking points. Any media outlet that mouthed the administration’s line would see its credibility take a huge hit.
This is the situation we find ourselves in now, only the parties and the numbers are flipped. The House GOP this week released a laughably incomplete report claiming that Obamacare premium payments came in at just 67 percent. The report omitted states that aren’t part of the federal marketplace (and even a couple that are), relied upon incomplete data, and put out an estimate that was wildly at variance with those of big health insurers, which put payment rates as high as 90 percent. The report was, in the judgment of ACA sign-up tallyman Charles Gaba, a “big pile of crap.”
The crappiness of said pile was, for conservatives in the media, a secondary consideration (if it was ever a consideration at all). The right jumped on this comically inept analysis from House Republicans without so much as a moment’s hesitation. Yesterday I wrote about how conservatives are finding themselves suddenly short of ways to attack the ACA, so they’re seizing on anything they can to try and sustain the narrative that Obamacare is failing. This is a prime example of precisely that.
“The enrollment totals were bogus and worse than expected,” wrote Townhall.com’s Guy Benson. “The widely touted figure of eight million enrollments that Barack ‘Mission Accomplished’ Obama’s been pushing lately is flatly bogus,” was the take at Hot Air. The Weekly Standard, the Daily Caller, National Review – everyone got in on the pigpile.
On one level, you can understand their eagerness, given that the administration has yet to release data on premium payments for Obamacare enrollees, and has instead offered estimates from insurance companies as to how many people paid. But the House GOP’s report is not a good faith attempt to fill that data void. TPM obtained the survey that the Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee sent to insurers to collect the payment data, and according to sources they talked to it “appears designed to yield an unfavorable result.”
The whole point of the exercise seems to have been to get a low number out there for opponents of the law to latch onto. “Once information like this is out there,” observed Jonathan Cohn, “it becomes a permanent part of the conversation. Republicans and their supporters will keep citing it, over and over again. Some will even say it’s proof that Obama is ‘cooking the books’—even if it turns out that it’s Republicans, not the White House, playing games with the numbers.”
While the right keeps fumbling about with bad news of their own concoction, potentially good news about the ACA keeps trickling out. States like Florida and Michigan, which in 2014 will see competitive gubernatorial and Senate elections, respectively, saw huge surges towards the end of the open enrollment period. Over 270,000 Michigan residents signed up for coverage, beating early projections by a hefty 70 percent. The final push in Florida saw enrollment increase 123 percent between February and April, and the state’s final tally came in just under 1 million.
The nationwide enrollment tally, according to newly released HHS data, sits at just over 8 million people.
Again, the payment data haven’t been released yet so these can only be considered preliminary totals, but at the very least they represent a huge comeback for the ACA from the debacles of late 2013. Republicans and conservatives, however, are still desperately trying to bring back the doom-and-gloom from Obamacare’s doldrums, even as the political and policy terrain shifts beneath their feet.
By: Simon Malay, Salon, May 2, 2014
“Let Me Count The Ways”: How Many G.O.P. Racial Pathologies Can Fit In One News Story?
Jonathan Martin’s excellent front-page story in The New York Times on Sunday is ostensibly about T.W. Shannon, the Oklahoma Republican running for the Senate. Shannon is half black and half Native American, and his father is from the Chickasaw tribe, which, Martin explains, is “the most influential tribe in a state where Native Americans are not merely the inheritors of a poignant history but also collectively constitute the state’s largest nongovernment employer outside of Walmart.” This might all seem unexceptional, except for the fact that Martin’s report on Shannon’s candidacy ends up exposing an absurd number of Republican racial pathologies. In no particular order…
1. Suspicion of Dual Loyalty: “‘Btw, the Indians aren’t Oklahomans,’ Robert Dan Robbins, a rancher and prominent supporter of Mr. Shannon’s chief primary opponent, Representative James Lankford, wrote on his own Facebook page. ‘They are a member of their own nation and are suing the state of Oklahoma over water rights and other things as well.’ A Tea Party group, in an open letter about Mr. Shannon, warned, ‘He has too many masters to serve,’ and listed ‘Indian tribes’…among his suspect influences.”
2. Dislike Of Multiculturalism: “Mr. Shannon is more cautious when discussing his background. In an interview…he emphasized that he was ‘very proud’ of his heritage, while carefully noting that it does not define him entirely. ‘I’m an American first, and that’s the most important thing,’ said Mr. Shannon…Mr. Shannon recalled advice from [J.C.] Watts, who told him, ‘If you make it your issue, if you make it the focus of your campaign, then it will be.’ His racial background, Mr. Shannon said, ‘is just one part of my experience — it’s not the defining moment.'”
3. The Party’s Racial Problems Can Be Solved Merely By Running Non-White Candidates: “His name alone!’ Sarah Palin exclaimed at a large, nearly all-white rally of supporters for Mr. Shannon in Tulsa last month. ‘The Democrats accuse us of not embracing diversity? Oh, my goodness, he is — he’s it. He is the whole package.'”
4. Talking About Race Is In Poor Taste: “But other conservatives are plainly uncomfortable with such tactics. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who was also at the rally, said in an interview, ‘Rather than engage in identity politics and smear campaigns, which is the specialty, sadly, of the modern Democratic Party, we ought to be discussing how to turn this country around.'”
5. Skepticism Of Outsiders Who Succeed Too Much: Mr. Lankford [see item 1] acknowledged that the financial backing Mr. Shannon had received from the tribes had given his opponent a boost. ‘They’ve been pretty clear that they want to have a tribal member in the Senate,’ said Mr. Lankford…’Most people didn’t worry about the Indians in part because they were everywhere, they sort of looked like everybody else, they sort of lived like everybody else,’ said Keith Gaddie, a University of Oklahoma political science professor. ‘Nobody cared about Native Americans until they got money.’ [Italics Mine]
By: Isaac Chotiner, The New Republic, May 4, 2014
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