“Crime, Fear, And The Republicans”: Moving Toward The Traditional Toxic Brew Of Race, Ethnicity And White Middle Class Insecurity
From Nixon to Reagan to the first President Bush, Republican campaigns were run like campaigns for sheriff. Nixon ran against unprecedented lawlessness and promised law and order to the silent majority. Reagan remained consistent in his view that “the jungle is waiting to take over. The man with the badge holds it back.” And George H.W. Bush rode the menacing image of Willie Horton, the furloughed rapist, to victory over Michael Dukakis. Then, in 1992, Bill Clinton took time out from his chaotic comeback in New Hampshire to preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally disabled man who had shot out most of his frontal lobe.
Clinton not only took the crime monkey off the back of the Democratic party, he also enacted draconian legislation that has been a key driver in making the United States by far the most heavily incarcerated society in the world: 2.2 million men and women behind bars, disproportionately African-American, Latino, addicted and mentally ill, at an estimated annual cost of $73 billion. Yet over the last quarter century, violent crime rates have been falling, dramatically.
Of course, it can be argued that the decline is the product of mass incarceration, but a recent study by the Brennan Center shows that the effect of increased incarceration on crime rates since 1990 has been limited, and has been non-existent since 2000. Although the Times recently reported “a startling rise in murders after years of declines,” Bruce Frederick, analyzing the statistics for the Marshall Project, found that only 3 of 20 cities have a “statistically reliable increase” in homicide rates.
In an age of hemorrhaging costs and declining crime, fiscally responsible Republicans have begun to make common cause with Democrats to start to shrink the prison-industrial complex. The Brennan Center recently published a collection of essays entitled “Solutions: American Leaders Speak Out on Criminal Justice Reform.” In his contribution, Rand Paul called for investigation of racial disparities in sentencing and argued against imprisonment for non-violent drug offenders, who make up the largest single group behind bars. Ted Cruz decried mandatory minimum sentences, which vests too much power in prosecutors. Marco Rubio declared there were too many federal crimes that were too poorly defined, and too poorly disclosed. Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee all called for compassion for drug offenders and showed interest in drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration.
Then along came Trump, blowing the old Republican dog whistle on race and crime. Ronald Reagan’s “jungle” was encroaching again, this time from the south. Mexicans are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Doubling down when the statistics showed otherwise, Trump said “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” but reiterated that Mexicans coming here “are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.” His website section on issues does not address crime, or indeed any other issue, except one — immigration.
The conservative National Review sees the potential here for a Republican renaissance on fear of crime. In a recent paean to Nixonian nostalgia, “Revive Law and Order Conservatism,” Stephen Eide writes, “So long as the New York Times and anti-cop activist groups continue with their provocations, we can be reasonably confident that more violent unrest is to come. The spectacle of chaos descending on cities long dominated by Democrats obviously plays to the GOP’s advantage.”
He decries conservative attitudes on crime as “notably softer now than they have been in many decades.” Acknowledging that “New York City’s murders hit a 50-year low,” he observes, “there were still more than three times as many as in London, which has about the same population.” Surely that could have nothing to do with robust Second Amendment rights, another cornerstone of the Republican platform. Eide counsels Republicans that a key to victory in 2016 is to “emphasize that we still have a serious crime problem.”
Republican candidates are taking note. On Hot Air, a conservative web site, Scott Walker properly lamented a recent spate of tragic police shootings but blamed them on President Obama. “In the last six years under President Obama, we’ve seen a rise in anti-police rhetoric. Instead of hope and change, we’ve seen racial tensions worsen and a tendency to use law enforcement as a scapegoat.” And Chris Christie threw Bill de Blasio under the bus as well, “It’s the liberal policies in [New York] that have led to the lawlessness that’s been encouraged by the president of the United States,” he said. “And I’m telling you, people in this country are getting more and more fed up.”
Republicans are increasingly positioning the issue as a rift between Black Lives Matter and police unions, between Sanctuary Cities and thousand mile anti-rapist walls. The constructive discourse in recent months about the crushing costs of incarceration, the waste of mandatory minimum sentences, the twin crises of mental health and addiction in prison, the endless cost and delay in enforcing the death penalty has all but ended. In its place, Republicans are moving toward the traditional toxic brew of race, ethnicity, white middle class insecurity and panic about crime.
Get ready for the return of Willie Horton.
By: Eric Lewis, Chairman of Reprieve US, a Human Rights Organization; The Marshall Project, Brennan Center for Justice, September 15, 2015
“Our Lead Exhibit”: Trump Proves Ignorance Doesn’t Matter Much
Our question for the day: Does ignorance matter?
Our lead exhibit — you will not be shocked to hear this — is Donald Trump.
Last week, the billionaire real estate mogul who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination stumbled over a question about terrorism from conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Specifically, he was forced to admit that he could not identify the leaders of Hezbollah and al Qaeda, among other terrorist organizations.
There is a pattern for how Trump reacts when cornered, and he was true to it last week. First, he made the usual vague, grandiose promises about how effective he will be once in office (“I will be so good at the military, your head will spin. … I’m a delegator. … I find absolutely great people and I’ll find them in our armed services”). Then he attempted to kill the messenger, bashing Hewitt on Twitter as a “very low-ratings talk-show host” and a “3rd-rate gotcha guy.”
As has also become part of the pattern, a gaffe that might have totaled another candidate’s campaign seems to have not even scratched the paint on this one. Or, as a Politico headline put it: “Trump bluffs past another crisis.” Indeed, Trump has come to resemble nothing so much as a real world “Sebastian Shaw” — a Marvel Comics supervillian who gets stronger every time you hit him.
After insulting Mexicans, insulting his rivals and insulting Fox “News” personality Megyn Kelly with a tasteless jibe that he claimed wasn’t about menstruation, though it transparently was, Trump continues to lead all contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. Nor is the ignorance of world affairs he betrayed on Hewitt’s show likely to change that.
It’s a fact that speaks volumes about the present state of the Grand Old Party. This is, after all, now the third presidential election cycle in a row in which one of its stars has shown him or herself to be spectacularly clueless on some relatively simple question of presidential readiness.
There is a straight line from Saran Palin in 2008 — unable to give coherent answers to questions about the economy, foreign policy and her own reading habits — to Herman Cain hemming and hawing and shifting in his chair in 2011 when asked about Libya, to Trump bristling and pouting because he was quizzed about major figures in Middle East terrorism.
One is reminded of the old political axiom that people want a president they could imagine having a beer with. And that’s fine. But you’d think they would also want to imagine him or her being able to find North Korea on a map. And, in the last few years, there have been some political contenders and pretenders you suspect could not do it even if you spotted them a hemisphere.
Since when did running for president become a reality show? How does Trump or anyone else figure that a presidential candidate should not be asked hard questions? And what does it say about us that fundamental ignorance about things a president should know does not automatically disqualify one from credibly contending for that office?
Perhaps it says that some of us want the world to be simple, and that they want a president who will not ask them to think too deeply, nor proffer any policy prescription too complex to fit on a bumper sticker.
Perhaps it says that some of us embrace an extremist resistance to social change and are willing to support whoever promises most loudly to drag the country back to an imagined yesterday of purity and strength.
But the world is not simple and never was. And yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.
Does ignorance matter? Well, Donald Trump is still the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.
So obviously, it doesn’t matter nearly as much as it should.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, September 9, 2015
“Defiance Of The Right-Wing Opposition”: Iran Debate; Clinton Steps Up To Oppose The Demagogues
When Sarah Palin joins Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and a motley crew of crazies in Washington this week to rally against the Iran nuclear deal, the speeches are likely to reflect the incoherence of the opposition. None of these right-wing celebrities appears to comprehend its terms, how it was negotiated or – most important – why its failure would probably lead to yet another horrific war.
On that same day, as Cruz, Trump, and Palin blather on about their love of Israel, their hatred for Barack Obama, and their determination to “make America great again,” someone else will step up to support the agreement – someone whose diplomatic efforts laid the groundwork for successful negotiations with Tehran.
That would be Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former Secretary of State and leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Scheduling a major speech on the Iran deal for the same day as the Washington event, Clinton is plainly determined to display her mastery of its details as well as her defiance of the right-wing opposition.
But this speech — which could become one of the best moments in public life — will also prove just how far she has come since the last time she ran for president.
That’s because Iran was the subject of one of the most troubling moments in her 2008 campaign, when she promised to “totally obliterate” that country (and presumably its 70 million-plus population) if the mullahs ever attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon. Having uttered that genocidal threat in response to a provocative question, she reiterated the same bluster a few days later on ABC News’ This Week.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran [if they attack Israel with nuclear weapons]. And I want them to understand that. … I think we have to be very clear about what we would do,” she told host George Stephanopoulos.
At the time, in early May 2008, it wasn’t clear why the Iranians needed to “understand” any such ultimatum, since our own intelligence showed that they neither had nuclear weapons nor were likely to possess such weapons any time soon – and that the Israeli military was (and is) fully capable of nuclear retaliation. Clinton’s harsh rhetoric seemed to be aimed more directly at Obama, her primary opponent, whose aim of negotiating with traditional enemies like Tehran she had denounced as “naïve.”
Those who expected better from her pointed to her Mideast advisors, who advocated an opening to Iran, and to her own previous remarks about the imperative of talking with “bad people” as a sign of strength, not weakness. But at that moment, she seemed to echo John McCain and the “bomb Iran” chorus among the Republicans.
Much has changed since 2008, of course – including the leadership of the Iranian government. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the aggressive Holocaust denier who held the Iranian presidency back then, gave way in 2013 to Hassan Rouhani, a reformer who wants to end his country’s international isolation. Thanks in part to Clinton’s work as Secretary of State, a powerful and unprecedented international alliance enforced real sanctions that finally pushed Iran into serious negotiations. And since those negotiations began, Rouhani’s government has heeded the required limitations on its nuclear activities.
Perhaps Clinton hasn’t changed. After all, she has always believed that diplomacy, aid, and other aspects of American power are just as fundamental to our security as military force. But she has found a balance and a voice that are more vital than ever in a contest against irresponsible politicians, whose demagogy points us again toward war.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editors Blog, Featured Post, The National Memo, September 8, 2015
“Because Hillary Clinton Is Hillary Clinton, Running For President”: Why Nothing Can Quell The Media’s Addiction To Clinton Scandals
If there’s any constant in presidential campaigns, it’s that at the first sign of difficulty, everyone who wants one particular candidate to win has an iron-clad critique of the candidate’s decisions thus far, which goes something like, “If only they’d get their heads out of the sand and listen to what I have to tell them, they wouldn’t be having these problems.” You only have to get two or three partisans in a room (or an exchange on email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to quickly learn that the answers to what the candidate should have done before and ought to do now are as clear as a bright spring morning; it’s just that the candidate and his or her advisers can’t see the wisdom of the true path to victory.
The fact that this complaint is as predictable as the sunrise doesn’t mean it’s always wrong; candidates do screw up, and sometimes there was a better alternative to something they did, an alternative that really would have produced dramatically different results. And the ability to be an armchair strategist is part of what keeps campaigns interesting, just as the ability to second-guess coaches and players helps keep sports interesting.
Right now, Hillary Clinton is the target of lots of this advice, apparently because, 13 months before the actual voting will occur, she hasn’t yet put this election to bed. Anxiety is creeping among the legions of politicians, advisers, insiders, and in-the-knowers (anonymous and otherwise) who will happily share their opinions with journalists looking to populate their “What’s Wrong With the Clinton Campaign???” stories with the thoughts of worried Democrats, an amply populated species. And most of it revolves around the story of her State Department emails, a story that “won’t go away,” as everyone is saying.
“Clinton’s standing has been eroded both by her own shaky handling of the e-mail controversy and by the populist energy fueling the challenge of Sen. Bernie Sanders,” says The Washington Post. “Democratic leaders are increasingly frustrated by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failure to put to rest questions about her State Department email practices,” says The New York Times, in an article for which they spoke to “more than 75 Democratic governors, lawmakers, candidates and party members.” I’ve heard similar things from any number of liberals and Democrats myself.
But here’s a piece of advice: If you find yourself starting a sentence on this topic with “If only she had…”, stop and take a breath.
I say that not because Clinton didn’t do anything wrong. It was plainly a mistake to set up her private email account in the first place, and if she used emails for communication that should have been confined to official cables, then we can criticize her for that. The most informative recent piece I’ve seen on this topic comes from David Ignatius, who notes that the fact that her server was private isn’t actually relevant to the question of classified information passing through it, since employees aren’t allowed to send such information through state.gov emails either. More importantly, multiple officials tell him that classified information passes through non-classified channels all the time; it shouldn’t happen, but it does.
Nevertheless, the important thing to understand about the politics of what’s happening now is this: There is nothing—nothing—that Hillary Clinton could have said or done differently since this became a public issue that could have made this go away, or that she could do now to “put it to rest.”
That’s not because it’s such a dreadfully serious issue, or because the American people care so deeply about the question of State Department email security that they’d never elect anyone to the White House who exercised anything less than the greatest of care with their communications, adhering to not just the spirit but the letter of every regulation. If you asked most voters what this is all about, they’d probably say “Um … something about emails?” No, it’s because Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton, and because she’s running for president.
That means that Republicans will never be satisfied with any answer she gives on this topic, or any other for that matter. She could read Trey Gowdy every email she ever wrote while giving him a foot massage, and it wouldn’t change their conviction that there was still something nefarious hidden somewhere in something they hadn’t seen. She could have personally delivered her server to Roger Ailes’s office on the day the story broke, and it wouldn’t change their determination to figure out what she’s hiding.
Nor will the news media ever be satisfied. Bill and Hillary Clinton have always been treated by a different set of rules than other politicians, one that says that any allegation about them, no matter how little evidence there may be for it, must be presented as the leading edge of what will surely turn out to be a devastating scandal. The New York Times, which despite its reputation as a liberal newspaper has what can only be described as an unquenchable desire to find Clinton scandals whether they actually exist or not, can be counted on to run blaring front-page articles about alleged Clinton scandals without the barest hint of skepticism, no matter how many times their reporting turns out to be based on false tips or bogus interpretations of mundane facts (the phantom “criminal referral” of a month ago was only the latest).
Then once the Times puts out its story, the rest of the media are off to the races, and conservatives just about lose their minds with glee, because this time they’ve really got her. Then inevitably, the alleged wrongdoing turns out to be either nothing at all or too little to care much about. But we only figure that out after Republicans in Congress have launched investigation after investigation, each one the engine for story after story about the scandal that won’t go away.
If you think that how Hillary Clinton responds to all this (Did she say she just “regrets” what she did, or did she actually apologize? Did she seem dismissive? Could she have used different words? Could she have framed the whole thing with this clever argument I just thought of?) would make any difference at all, then you must not have been around in the 1990s.
To repeat, I’m not defending everything Clinton did with regard to her emails, but that’s just the point: This cycle will spin whether she did anything wrong or not, and no matter how she conducts herself once the story breaks.
Eventually, all the facts do come in, and it’s at that point that we can really judge. For instance, multiple investigations of what occurred in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, have shown that it was a terrible tragedy, but there was no “stand-down order,” there was no criminal negligence, and there was no impeachment-worthy malfeasance, no matter how fervently Republicans might wish it. Yet their investigations go on. In fact, at this point it’s impossible to see how anything other than Clinton losing the 2016 election will ever stop them. If she becomes president, they’ll go on investigating it for the length of her time in the Oval Office.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer The American Prospect, August 31, 2015
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