“You Can’t Make This Stuff Up”: The Weird Racial Politics Of South Carolina
South Carolina, the cradle of the Confederacy, is represented by African-American Sen. Tim Scott, and has an Indian-American governor, Nikki Haley – both conservative Republicans. Yet any idea that the state is progressing on the racial conflicts that have defined much of its history took another hit on Sunday. That’s when the Haley for Governor Grassroots Advisory Committee, her grass-roots political organization, asked for and received the resignation of one of its 164 co-chairs after his statements on racial purity came to light.
Civil-rights groups and Democrats had been pressuring the Haley campaign, which initially stood by Roan Garcia-Quintana, a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens. But his defense of his beliefs didn’t work out so smoothly. In an interview last week with The State explaining his position on the board of directors of the council, Garcia-Quintana denied that he and the group are racist. The council “supports Caucasian heritage,” he said. “Is it racist to be proud of your own heritage?” he asked. “Is it racist to want to keep your own heritage pure?”
It wasn’t exactly a secret that Garcia-Quintana had ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens, which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a “white nationalist hate group,” a “linear descendant” of the old White Citizens Councils formed in the 1950s and 1960s to fight school desegregation.
In a 2010 Washington Post article on a NAACP-backed report that accused white nationalist groups of trying to align themselves with the tea party movement, Garcia-Quintana talked about his council activism. “There’s a difference between being proud of where you come from and racism. We should be able to celebrate price as Europeans and Caucasians. What troubles me is it seems like if you’re not some kind of minority, you’re supposed to be ashamed of that. . . . As a tea party organizer, all I’m trying to do is to be a community organizer,” he said.
Garcia-Quintana, a naturalized citizen born in Havana, has referred to himself as a “Confederate Cuban.” He is also executive director of the anti-immigration Americans Have Had Enough Coalition, based in Mauldin, S.C., which says it stands against an “illegal alien invasion.”
A Sunday statement from Haley political adviser Tim Pearson said: “While we appreciate the support Roan has provided, we were previously unaware of some of the statements he had made, statements which do not well represent the views of the governor. There is no place for racially divisive rhetoric in the politics or governance of South Carolina, and Governor Haley has no tolerance for it.”
Haley has tried to turn Garcia-Quintana’s departure into a political advantage. She has characterized the forced, if belated, resignation as a sign that Republicans don’t tolerate intolerance, while challenging Democrats, particularly her former and perhaps future opponent, Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, to disavow Democratic political operatives who have attacked her in racial terms. (Phil Bailey, who is political director of the state Senate’s Democratic Caucus, last year called Haley a “Sikh Jesus.” He was reprimanded at a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting and apologized, but not, says the Haley campaign, to her.) The governor has come in for her share of racially insensitive comments, even from members of her own party during her primary race.
This kind of racially divisive back and forth is par for the course. No, you can’t make this stuff up, and in South Carolina, you don’t have to.
By: Mary C. Curtis, The Washington Post, May 28, 2013
“The Use And Abuse Of Freedom”: The Elements Of Words That Explain The Mess We’re In
Last week David Brooks had an interesting column about a couple of studies that surveyed key words in a body of writings. (No, we’re not talking about tax examiners looking for Tea Party among applications.) He describes the “two elements” that he found:
“The first element in this story is rising individualism. A study by Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell and Brittany Gentile found that between 1960 and 2008 individualistic words and phrases increasingly overshadowed communal words and phrases. That is to say, over those 48 years, words and phrases like “personalized,” “self,” “standout,” “unique,” “I come first” and “I can do it myself” were used more frequently. Communal words and phrases like “community,” “collective,” “tribe,” “share,” “united,” “band together” and “common good” receded.
“The second element of the story is demoralization. A study by Pelin Kesebir and Selin Kesebir found that general moral terms like “virtue,” “decency” and “conscience” were used less frequently over the course of the 20th century. Words associated with moral excellence, like “honesty,” “patience” and “compassion” were used much less frequently. The Kesebirs identified 50 words associated with moral virtue and found that 74 percent were used less frequently as the century progressed. Certain types of virtues were especially hard hit. Usage of courage words like “bravery” and “fortitude” fell by 66 percent. Usage of gratitude words like “thankfulness” and “appreciation” dropped by 49 percent. ”
The question I have–and would have tried to answer, had not my attempts to find these studies through google led me to data bases that thwarted my efforts to access the pieces–is this: how did the word `freedom’ do?
One of the biggest changes in my adult life is what has happened to freedom, not just as a word, but as a value. It is, it seems to me, the only value Americans put much stock in. Equality, in which immigrants and labor unions invested so much energy and support and devotion during the first part of the 20th century, now seems a hostage of identity group politics. Freedom is it–it’s what we appeal to for everything, from gay marriage to Wall Street shortcuts to environmental pollution to smoking pot to war (Free Kuwait! Iraqi freedom!) These are the years of freedom triumphant, and boy, if anything explains the mess we’re in, it’s freedom. Try arguing for something in terms of Community, or Sacrifice. Go to Congress and make a case for Majority Rule, and you’ll get an earful from Ted Cruz and Rand Paul about the freedom of the minority to thwart the majority.
More than anyone, Ronald Reagan put us on this path. I can’t imagine a figure who would be able to get us to rebalance our values.
By: Jamie Malanowski, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 26, 2013
“This Is Not 2009”: Democrats Have No Reason To Prematurely Throw Up Their Hands About 2014 Midterm Elections
With the scent of scandal encircling the White House, some Republicans are already licking their chops over the 2014 midterm elections, while some Democrats are pre-emptively licking their wounds.
Not so fast, folks. Retract those tongues.
While it is impossible to predict what might drive voter attitudes in an election 18 months away, there are quite a few signs that 2014 will be nothing like 2010, which produced tremendous success for Republicans.
First, the electorate is less conservative.
In May 2009, the Tea Party had just begun to flex its muscle and feel its power on a national level. Now, the movement has lost momentum.
An April 2012 Associated Press report included a finding from Theda Skocpol, a Harvard professor, that the number of Tea Party groups had fallen from about 1,000 to about 600. And a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week found that the portion of people saying they strongly support the Tea Party, just 10 percent, was the lowest they had recorded since 2011.
Furthermore, according to a Gallup poll released Friday, the shares of Americans describing themselves as economic conservatives and social conservatives are down by more than a tenth since 2009, after having risen sharply following Barack Obama’s election a year earlier.
The portion of Republicans who said their position on economic issues was conservative — the Republican Trojan Horse for a retrograde social agenda — has seen little movement since 2009, dropping just five percentage points, from 75 percent to 70 percent.
(On the other hand, the share of Democrats who describe their positions on social issues as liberal has increased, from 45 percent to 50 percent.)
Speaking of economic issues, the economy is experiencing a resurgence, at least in some quarters.
In May 2009, the United States economy was nearing the end of the Great Recession. The unemployment rate had risen to 9.4 percent from 5.5 percent the previous year. People were losing their homes to foreclosures in record numbers. The Dow Jones industrial average had fallen to about 8,500 from more than 13,000 the previous May. And the deficit tripled from the 2008 fiscal year to the 2009 fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
This had Americans rightfully worried and near-panicked about their economic prospects.
Now the economic picture couldn’t be more different.
The unemployment rate has dropped to 7.5 percent. The Dow is above 15,000 and continuing to set records. The housing sector is rebounding — “Sales of previously owned homes reached the highest level in more than three years, with the share of foreclosure purchases shrinking, as the housing market continued its rebound last month,” according to a report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.
And the deficit is shrinking faster than expected, according to a report released last week by the budget office. The report found that if current laws are unchanged, “Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit this year — at 4.0 percent of gross domestic product (G.D.P.) — will be less than half as large as the shortfall in 2009, which was 10.1 percent of G.D.P.”
This takes almost all of the air out of the Republicans’ economic argument.
Lastly, legislative unease has become about what Republicans haven’t done, rather than what Democrats have done.
By May of 2009, President Obama had already signed the huge — though many still believe not huge enough — stimulus package, Chrysler and General Motors were in need of a bailout and the ball was rolling on the president’s historic health care law.
Conservatives were railing against what they saw as an unprecedented, ominous and ultimately ruinous expansion of government, driven by the president and made possible by a Congress controlled by Democrats.
Now, the tables have turned. Two of the most glaring legislative failures this year have ostensibly been the work of obstinate Republicans: the failure to avoid the sequester and the failure to pass expanded gun background checks legislation. According to that recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, most Americans still disapprove of the sequester’s automatic spending cuts, and according to a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday, 81 percent of Americans still favor the passage of a bill expanding background checks.
The next hurdle will be immigration reform. But Republicans may find a way to derail that legislation, too.
The signs look positive for Democrats this spring. This is not to say that they should prematurely lift their glasses, only that they have no reason to prematurely throw up their hands.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 24, 2013
“Full Speed Ahead”: Republican Overreach Is Coming Soon
A number of people have asked whether the Republicans will overreach in their reaction to the current collection of scandal-ish controversies (by the way, someone really needs to come up with a name that encompasses them all). The answer to that question is, of course they will. Try to remember who we’re talking about here. Overreaching is their thing. Congress will be going home this weekend, and I’ll bet the Republicans are going to come back from their recess reassured that their constituents really, really want them to pursue Barack Obama to the ends of the earth. I’ll explain why in a moment, but in the meantime the National Journal has details on their strategy:
Congressional Republicans head into next week’s Memorial Day recess armed with a strategy designed to keep the controversies that have consumed Washington in the news back home.
Both House and Senate Republicans will focus on the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny as well as the still-open questions about Benghazi. And more and more, they’ll try to tie them together into a made-for-2014 narrative of an unaccountable and out-of-control government.
In interviews on local television and radio programs and with newspapers, Senate Republicans plan to talk about the Obama administration’s “credibility gap.” They’ll throw into the mix Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s request that health industry officials help fund “Obamacare,” a move Republicans call a “shakedown” of the companies she regulates, according to a Senate GOP leadership aide.
Lawmakers will argue that a “lack of details, stonewalling,” and what they call an “ever-changing White House narrative” on both Benghazi and the IRS have led to a trust deficit with the public, a sentiment reflected in recent polls, the aide said.
Part of the aim is to get voters to question how they can trust the administration, and the IRS more specifically, to enforce key provisions of Obama’s health care law after improperly targeting Americans.
This fits into Republicans’ emerging scandal-riding midterm election strategy—one that the GOP’s congressional campaign committees think can blend easily into their anti-Obamacare message to help the party take the Senate in 2014.
When they return from this recess, Republicans are going to be more sure than ever that they’re doing the right thing. Think about what a member of Congress does when he’s home. He’ll be doing those media interviews with friendly talk-radio hosts, for whom outrage is the bread and butter of their programming. He might do a couple of town meetings, and who comes to those? People who like him already (i.e. the Republican base, who will tell him to keep up the scandal-mongering) and people who are pissed off about something. But right now, the people who think the scandal thing is going too far aren’t really pissed off, they’re just kind of disappointed. So they won’t be so inclined to show up. And then the representative will just go around town talking to folks, and once again the ones he’s most likely to hear from are his supporters who want to tell him to stick it to that no-good socialist in the White House.
After a few days of that, he’ll come back to Washington thinking, “Wow, my constituents are really fired up about this stuff. Full speed ahead!”
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 14, 2013
“On Orders From God And The Founding Fathers”: What Ted Cruz Means When He Says He Mistrusts Both Parties
Okay, class, here’s what should be an easy assignment:
What does it mean when Sen. Ted Cruz says the following on budget negotiations (per TPM’s Sahil Kapur)?
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Wednesday defended his objection to initiating House-Senate budget negotiations unless Democrats take a debt limit increase off the table, saying he doesn’t trust his party to hold the line.
“The senior senator from Arizona urged this body to trust the Republicans. Let me be clear, I don’t trust the Republicans,” Cruz said. “And I don’t trust the Democrats.”
On Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) scolded Republicans for blocking negotiations. He was backed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).
“Unfortunately,” Cruz said, “one of the reasons we got into this mess is because a lot of Republicans were complicit in this spending spree and that’s why so many Americans are disgusted with both sides of this house. … And every Republican who stands against holding the line here is really saying, let’s give the Democrats a blank check to borrow any money they want with no reforms, no leadership to fix the problem.”
Does it mean, as political reporters often blandly repeat, that “Tea Party” pols like Cruz are hardy independents who care about principle rather than about the GOP, and represent a constituency that is up in the air?
No, and I might add: Hell no! Cruz specifically and Tea Party members generally, for all their independent posturing, are the most rigid of partisans, and are about as likely to vote with or for Democrats as a three-toed sloth is likely to win a Gold Medal in the 100-meter dash. Yes, they often threaten to form a Third Party, but never do (why should they when their power in one of the two major parties is overwhelming and still growing?), and even more often threaten to “stay home” during elections, but in fact tend to vote more than just about any other sizable bloc of Americans.
So what’s with their inveterate Republican-bashing, if they usually vote and almost always vote Republican?
There are two interconnected explanations. The first is that they want to make it clear that for them the GOP is not a tradition, or a roughly coherent set of attitudes, or a mechanism for civic participation and ultimately the shaping of public policies through democratic competition and cooperation: it’s a vehicle for the advancement of a fixed and eternal set of policies, mostly revolving around absolute property rights and pre-late-twentieth century cultural arrangements. Those who view the GOP as anything other or less than this sort of vehicle are deemed RINOs or “establishment Republicans,” and presumed to be in charge of the party, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
So when Tea Party champions or “true conservatives” or “constitutional conservatives” (three terms for the same people) say they’re not willing to sacrifice their principles to win elections, do they really mean it, and is that the difference between them and those “establishment Republicans” like John McCain that they are always attacking? No, not really. They want to win elections, too, but only in order to impose a governing order that they believe should be immune to any future election, immune from contrary popular majorities generally, and immune to any other of those “changing circumstances” that gutless RINOs always cite in the process of selling out “the base.” And that’s why they are willing to use anti-majoritarian tactics when they are in the minority, and anti-minority tactics when they are in the majority: the only thing that matters is bringing back the only legitimately conservative, the only legitimately American policies and enshrining them as powerfully as is possible.
So from that perspective, sure, they’re conservatives first and Republicans second. But this isn’t a “revolt” against the GOP, but a takeover bid, executed through primaries (e.g., Ted Cruz’s victory over “establishment Republican” David Dewhurst) and the power of money and ultimately sheer intimidation. Ted Cruz won’t “trust Republicans” until they’re all taking orders from people like him, who are in turn simply taking orders from God Almighty and the Founding Fathers.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 22, 2013
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