“Sedition In The Name Of Patriotism”: Cynical Opportunists In League With Sectarian Fanatics
On many occasions during the last few years, as I heard talk of secession and nullification, and of defiance of the courts, and of duly enacted statutes representing slavery and tyranny, and of Higher Laws and a Right to Revolution, and most recently, of allegiance to a foreign government–all more or less countenanced by one of our two major political parties–I’ve thought of a historical parallel, as described in one of my favorite books, George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England.
The period in question was just prior to World War I when a Liberal majority government committed by mandate and party alliance to Home Rule for Ireland was obstructed by a Tory minority in alliance with Ulster Unionists which explicitly and implicitly threatened civil war. Here’s how Dangerfield describes a crucial lurch into sedition, when Tory leader Bonar Law traveled to Belfast to pledge allegiance to Ulster and its political leader, Sir Edward Carson, at a huge rally:
At this historical gathering the sedition being preached by Mr. Bonar Law, who led off with a scholarly appeal to Ulster’s worst fighting instincts, was nearly surpassed by Mr. Walter Long. “If they put Lord Londonderry and Sir Edward Carson in the dock,” roared Mr. Long, “they will have to find one large enough for the whole Unionist Party.” Whereat Mr. Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson turned toward each other, clasped hands, and maintained this affecting attitude long enough for the whole assembly to realize that they were doing their level best to look like generals on the eve of battle. And then, while everyone stood with bared heads, Sir Edward released Mr. Law, and strode to the front of the speakers’ stand. “Raise you hands,” he shouted. “Repeat after me–never under any circumstances will we submit to Home Rule.” In the centre of the show grounds there was a signalling tower, with a flagstaff ninety feet tall, and while the audience, and the Marquess of Londonderry, and the Protestant Primate, and the Presbyterian Moderator, with obedient thunder intoned those words after Sir Edward, a Union Jack was broken from the flagstaff. It measured forty-eight feet by twenty-five. It was the largest ever woven. Patriotism could do no more.
Sedition in the name of patriotism should sound familiar today. Just over a century ago in England, the seditionists–aptly described by Dangerfield as cynical opportunists in league with sectarian fanatics–won. The country recovered, but was never quite the same. Are we headed in that same direction?
You have to wonder, as does Paul Waldman today at the Plum Line:
The American political system runs according to a whole series of norms, many of which we don’t notice until they’re violated. For instance, the Speaker of the House can invite a foreign leader to address Congress for the sole purpose of criticizing the administration, and he can even do it without letting the White House know in advance. There’s no law against it. But doing so violates a norm not only of simple respect and courtesy, but one that says that the exercise of foreign policy belongs to the administration. Congress can advise, criticize, and legislate to shape it, but if they simply take it upon themselves to make their own foreign policy, they’ve gone too far.
But as has happened so many times before, Republicans seem to have concluded that there is one set of rules and norms that apply in ordinary times, and an entirely different set that applies when Barack Obama is the president. You no longer need to show the president even a modicum of respect. You can tell states to ignore the law. You can sabotage delicate negotiations with a hostile foreign power by communicating directly with that power.
I wonder what they’d say if you asked them whether it would be acceptable for Democrats to treat the next Republican president that way. My guess is that the question wouldn’t even make sense to them. After all, that person would be a Republican. So how could anyone even think of such a thing?
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, March 10, 2015
“GOP Lawmakers Are Violating The Logan Act”: Playing With Fire; Senate GOP Tries To Sabotage Nuclear Talks
In a practical sense, when congressional Republicans invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deliver a joint-session address, it was part of a larger sabotage campaign. GOP lawmakers, without so much as a hint of embarrassment, are openly trying to derail international diplomatic talks with Iran, and Republicans had no qualms about partnering with a foreign government to undermine American foreign policy.
The GOP gambit arguably marked a new low. But after hitting the bottom of the barrel, Republicans dug a hole and fell just a little further.
A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran’s leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama’s administration won’t last after Obama leaves office. […]
“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system…. Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
Josh Rogin’s report makes clear that the signatories “hope that by pointing out the long-term fragility of a deal with no congressional approval … the Iranian regime might be convinced to think twice” about striking a deal with Americans and our negotiating partners.
The letter was organized by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a right-wing freshman who has spent months bragging about his hopes of destroying any diplomatic agreement intended to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The list of the 47 GOP senators who signed on to the letter is online here. Note, that list features several presidential hopefuls, including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio. (Only seven Senate Republicans decided not to endorse the letter: Lamar Alexander, Dan Coats, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Lisa Murkowski.)
Norm Ornstein noted this morning that he’s “flabbergasted” by the “astonishing breach of conduct.” That’s clearly the appropriate response. But I’m also struck by how dangerous the Republicans’ conduct is.
As we discussed back in January, when the broader sabotage campaign came into focus, there is no real precedent for this in the American tradition. The U.S. system just isn’t supposed to work this way – because it can’t. Max Fisher explained that we’re looking at “a very real problem for American foreign policy.”
The Supreme Court has codified into law the idea that only the president is allowed to make foreign policy, and not Congress, because if there are two branches of government setting foreign policy then America effectively has two foreign policies.
The idea is that the US government needs to be a single unified entity on the world stage in order to conduct effective foreign policy. Letting the president and Congress independently set their own foreign policies would lead to chaos. It would be extremely confusing for foreign leaders, and foreign publics, who don’t always understand how domestic American politics work, and could very easily misread which of the two branches is actually setting the agenda.
The United States and our allies have reached a delicate stage of diplomacy on a key issue, but as far as congressional Republicans are concerned, the United States isn’t really at the negotiating table at all – the Obama administration is. Republican lawmakers not only disapprove of the process, they also feel justified conducting their own parallel, freelance foreign policy, which includes partnering with foreign governments and sending a message to the very rival the United States and our allies are negotiating with.
In other words, for the first time anyone can remember, we’re watching American elected officials brazenly trying to sabotage American foreign policy.
Under the circumstances, it’s no longer ridiculous to wonder whether GOP lawmakers are violating the Logan Act.
As for the GOP’s legal argument to Tehran, Jack Goldsmith added, “It appears from the letter that the Senators do not understand our constitutional system or the power to make binding agreements.”
Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing they fail to understand. They seem equally confused about propriety, U.S. protocols, and how American foreign policy is supposed to work.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 9, 2015
“While In The Neighborhood, Why Not Iran Too”: Republicans Hankering For Ground War Against ISIS. What Could Go Wrong?
It’s been an entire 12 years since we started a war, and apparently the American people are getting a little antsy. A new Quinnipiac poll finds that 62 percent of Americans, including 72 percent of Republicans, favors the use of ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. We should be careful about over-interpreting that, because the question was preceded by another question talking about limited, but not long-term operations for ground troops. But there’s no doubt that the public’s interest in getting some boots back on the ground is gaining momentum; in Pew polls, support for ground troops went up from 39 percent in October to 47 percent in February; in the same poll, 67 percent of Republicans said they supported ground troops.
The reason I focus on the number of Republicans is that I suspect with this increase in support from their constituents, we’re going to hear more and more Republican politicians coming out for what we might call a re-invasion of Iraq, and not just Iraq but Syria, as well. And as long as we’re in the neighborhood, how about some military action against Iran?
Iran is, of course, a separate story. But it isn’t unrelated; once people start advocating a third Iraq war with more vigor than they have been up until now, the idea of bombing Iran won’t seem so outlandish. Back in 2002, when the Bush administration was in the midst of its campaign to convince the public that invading Iraq was necessary lest we all be obliterated by Saddam Hussein’s fearsome arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, a British official described the sentiment among the Bush administration and its allies this way: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”
It wasn’t long ago that the idea of sending ground troops back to the Middle East was widely considered just short of insane. After all, we’d finally gotten out of Iraq, after spending $2 trillion, losing 4,000 American lives, and sending the region into chaos. Why would we want to do it all over again? But now, the idea of doing it all over again seems to be gaining traction.
Just after the end of the first Iraq war, George H. W. Bush closed a celebratory speech by saying: “It’s a proud day for America. And, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” That syndrome was the reluctance of the public (and military leaders) to countenance enormous military adventures in far-off lands in service of vaguely defined goals. So it may now be time to say that the “Iraq syndrome” is dead, if ever it existed.
At the moment, when the Republicans running for president are asked about whether they’d like to send troops to any of these countries, they inevitably reply that “all options should be on the table.” It’s essentially a dodge, though not a completely unreasonable one. They want to signal to conservatives that they’re ready to use force, but signal to everyone else that they’re not eager to do so. But try to imagine what would happen if a Republican wins the presidency next year.
If ISIS isn’t completely defeated, he’ll be under pressure from his supporters to go in there and get the job done, and not in a wimpy way like Obama. Then think about Iran. With Bibi Netanyahu writing their talking points, Republicans will now insist that any nuclear agreement negotiated by this president is by definition weak and dangerous. The very fact of an agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear activities can be the justification for military action. If the talks break down, on the other hand, well that just makes starting a bombing campaign all the more urgent. And of course, they’ll assure us that once we take out the Iranian nuclear program, the people will rise up and overthrow their oppressive government.
It’s all going to sound quite familiar. War will once again be presented as the only way to prevent a bigger, worse war that they insist is coming no matter what. Don’t forget that the Iraq War was offered up by the Bush administration as a pre-emptive strike to prevent the inevitable and not-too-distant moment when Saddam Hussein would launch his war against the United States. While they never said whether the Iraq invasion would come by land, sea, or air, the attack was coming one way or another. In Dick Cheney’s immortal words: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”
Netanyahu says that the Iranian regime is just a bunch of homicidal lunatics who are determined to re-enact the Holocaust. There’s no use negotiating with them, because they’re mad. War is the only way to solve the problem. Anyone who saw the way Republicans were like tweens at a One Direction concert at Netanyahu’s speech on Tuesday know that if he says it, they’ll believe it.
So here’s what I think is going to happen. First, the idea that we need to put troops in to fight ISIS—not on the table, but on the ground—is very quickly going to become something that all Republicans agree on (and if you’re going to do it, do it big—no half-assed mobilization of a few thousand, but a massive deployment). Then they’ll start talking seriously about military action against Iran, sooner rather than later, and that too is going to move rapidly from being a fringe idea, to something that many of them admit should be “on the table,” to something they all agree ought to be done. And by God, we’ll have kicked that Iraq syndrome once and for all.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 6, 2015
“Trying Every Trick In The Book”: Republicans Stop At Nothing To Attack Immigrants
On March 3, the House of Representatives finally voted for a clean DHS funding bill. Much of the media reported that Republicans saw the irresponsibility of their threats to shut down Homeland Security and passed a clean bill. But they didn’t, and no one should lose sight of that.
After trying every trick in the book to scuttle the bill, their leadership allowed the vote to happen, but Republicans never caved. Republicans voted over two to one (167-75) against the bill. It only passed because of full Democratic support.
It’s clear that Republicans will stop at nothing to attack immigrants. The fact that national security was on the line was immaterial: Republicans saw an opportunity to display their animus toward all immigrants, and Latinos in particular, and they took it.
This publicity stunt gave Republicans the chance to pander yet again to the most virulent anti-immigrant members of their party. Take, for instance, William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration and his comments during the heat of the DHS fight in mid-February:
[I] wouldn’t put anything past [the administration, because] the people who are supporting the organized and well-funded illegal alien invasion of our homeland have the blood of many thousands of Americans on their hands that have been killed, injured raped and robbed by illegal immigrants.
Sure, Gheen is a fringe extremist. But what he’s saying is strikingly similar to what we’re hearing from the Republican Party.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the architect of Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” strategy, entertained the suggestion that Obama’s executive actions could eventually result in Latinos conducting an “ethnic cleansing” of their fellow Americans. Sen. Tom Coburn, Rep. Mike Kelly, and Rep. Louie Gohmert have also warned that the president’s immigration policies could lead to violence.
While some in the GOP tried to tell a different narrative — that this was just about reining in presidential excess and not about their being anti-immigrant — the fact is that the entire Republican Party is at fault. Not one House Republican signed the discharge petition to allow even a vote on the Senate’s bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill. And Senate Republicans who backed that bill, including Sen. Marco Rubio, now say they no longer support it. At this very minute, House Republicans are bringing up even more anti-immigrant legislation, including deportation-only legislation and a bill that would drastically change U.S. asylum and humanitarian protections to put domestic violence survivors and victims of human trafficking at serious risk.
Ultimately, it was Ann Coulter who summed up the Republican position on the DHS debate: Undocumented immigrants (she calls them “illegal aliens [who] have killed, raped and maimed thousands of Americans”) pose a greater threat to our nation than does ISIS.” While not all Republicans used language as biting as that, it was crystal-clear that Republicans believe that attacking immigrants, not funding DHS, should be the top priority.
Who would have imagined that a national party, never mind the Republican Party, would be so opposed to finding any solution for the almost 12 million undocumented people already here that they would risk our national security during the dangerous time we are in now? Yet that’s the reality of the GOP today, and it’s our responsibility to hold them accountable.
By: Michael B. Keegan, President, People For the American Way, The Blog, The Huffington Post, March 6, 2015
“Bigotry Is A Core Republican Value”: Missing Selma; The Final Death Of GOP Minority Outreach
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday in Selma, and it appears that after withering criticism and embarrassment, the GOP has decided at the last minute that maybe one of their leaders should actually bother to show up.
But the near miss won’t do much to obscure the message: the GOP has essentially abandoned its minority outreach, at least to African-American voters.
Facing demographic reality after their devastating defeat in 2012, Republicans issued a report saying they needed to consider policy changes to court minority voters. That olive branch lasted a few weeks before their base and its mouthpieces on AM radio urgently reminded them that bigotry is a core Republican value and would only be dismissed at the peril of any politician that didn’t toe the Tea Party line.
Now the party finds itself shutting down Homeland Security to protest the President’s mild executive order on immigration and almost ignoring the Selma anniversary entirely. The minority outreach program is not just dead: it’s a public embarrassment and heaping ruin.
That fact underscores certain disturbing realities for the future. Republicans will double down on the white vote, attempting to gain over 75% of it to put their anti-Hillary into the White House. They will continue to try to disempower cities in favor of surrounding suburbs and rural areas.
And they will continue to try to disenfranchise as many minority voters as possible–one of the reasons why the Selma memorial is so problematic for them. Republicans are actively trying to remove as many minority voters as possible from the eligible pool, and have no interest in being reminded of Dr. King’s struggle to achieve the end of Jim Crow and true voting rights for African-Americans.
The GOP has made it abundantly clear that things are going to get much uglier before they get better. Their base won’t have it any other way.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, March 7, 2015
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