“Obeying The Supreme Court Is Optional”: Rand Paul Suggests Congress Can Simply Ignore Roe v. Wade
Earlier today, the National Review’s mailing list distributed an email (which can also be found here) signed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which called for Congress to pass a law effectively rendering a binding Supreme Court decision a nullity:
Working from what the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, pro-life lawmakers can pass a Life at Conception Act and end abortion using the Constitution instead of amending it. . . . Signing the Life at Conception Act petition will help break through the opposition clinging to abortion-on-demand and get a vote on this life-saving bill to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A Life at Conception Act declares unborn children “persons” as defined by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, entitled to legal protection.
It’s not entirely clear why Paul believes Congress has this power, and the email he signed does not provide a fully developed legal argument making the case for such an law. Instead, it appears to argue that Congress can simply grant full legal “personhood” status to fetuses under the 14th Amendment because Roe left open “the difficult question of when life begins.” This is not a correct reading of the Roe decision, however. The Roe opinion is unambiguous that “the word ‘person,’ as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.”
Whether one agrees with this opinion or not, Congress does not have the power to flout the Supreme Court’s constitutional decisions simply because it does not like them. As ThinkProgress explained when a similar proposal was floated last year by Princeton Professor Robert George, “[i]n City of Boerne v. Flores, the Court held that Congress is not allowed to simply declare that the 14th Amendment means whatever they want it to mean and then use that declaration to pass enforcement legislation — Congress can only pass laws enforcing existing 14th Amendment rights.”
Just as importantly, there is something very bizarre about a conservative stalwart like Rand Paul insisting that obeying the Supreme Court is optional at exactly the same time conservatives are trying to impose much of their policy agenda upon the nation by judicial decree. Presumably, Paul would be outraged if President Obama simply refused to obey a Supreme Court decision striking down part of the Affordable Care Act or if elections officials were to ban corporations from trying to buy elections despite the justices’ decision in Citizens United. Yet, if Roe v. Wade is as optional as Paul appears to think that it is, than there is no reason why Obama should feel obliged to obey conservatives’ pet decisions either.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, May 14, 2012
“Unreasonable Benighted Yahoo’s”: Why Mitt Romney Can’t Tell The Crazies To Get Lost
In the cliché of the season, Mitt Romney is supposed to be executing a graceful “pivot” away from the grating extremist stupidity of the Republican primaries, the better to persuade us that he really is a Massachusetts moderate, or a moderate conservative – or at least something less repellent to independent voters than a Tea Party yahoo. He stumbled in mid-pivot, however, when a woman posing a question to him at a Cleveland event on Monday said President Obama “should be tried for treason,” and Romney acted as if he didn’t hear her slur.
The presumptive nominee told reporters afterward that “of course” he didn’t agree with the woman’s remark — as if he had failed to check a box on a form — but his alibi was too late and much too little. When someone slanders the President of the United States as a traitor, the responsible reaction is to respond loudly and forthrightly. Shrinking from the duty to correct the extremism of your own supporters, as Senator John McCain did without hesitation four years ago, is yet another sign of weak character and poor judgment.
Romney’s instinct is to appease the same far right forces that his father George and other conscientious Mormons broke with many years ago, although such fringe ideological obsessions held sway at the highest levels of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. He is entirely familiar with the John Birch Society paranoia and white supremacist bigotry that notoriously defaced Mormonism in those times, both of which exert an unwholesome influence on Tea Party Republicans today. Somehow, he cannot bring himself to speak up when confronted with that old nightmare mentality.
Instead Romney consistently seeks to ingratiate himself with anyone who expresses a distaste for Obama, no matter how demented. The same scenario has recurred again and again, as it did in the town of Bexley, Ohio in early March, where a man who claimed to have a concealed-carry permit asked whether the former Massachusetts governor will “allow me to keep my gun and protect myself and my family and my home and not come and get my gun? Because I want to keep it to protect myself and my wife and my family — and against a tyrannical government, which I think we are approaching and we are in, very close.”
While blandly answering that he “believes in the Second Amendment,” Romney failed to reassure this poor character that we are not, in fact, on the brink of tyranny. Is that what he believes? Of course not, he would reply – but why should he be expected to forfeit some crank’s vote by standing up for decent discourse?
The problem is not that Romney is missing opportunities to reach the benighted yahoos in his party, who are mostly beyond reason. It is that he lacks the fortitude to do so when he thinks honor and honesty might cost him. And it means that if the cranks continue to dominate Congress, as they do now, no moderating voice will emanate from a scared and silent Romney White House.
By: Joe Canason, The National Memo, May 5, 2012
“Campaigning In Fiction”: Mitt Romney’s Campaign Pledges Raise Questions For Conservatives
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is making campaign promises that could produce an economic miracle – or a more predictable list of broken vows.
Romney says he wants to put the nation on a path to a balanced budget while also cutting an array of taxes, building up the Navy and Air Force and adding 100,000 active-duty military personnel. He says he would slash domestic spending and reduce tax loopholes but has offered few details.
His comments raise eyebrows in Congress, long accustomed to easier-said-than-done promises. And even some conservatives have their doubts.
Christopher A. Preble, a vice president for the libertarian Cato Institute, says Romney’s promise to push military spending to 4 percent of the national economy would require dramatic increases that would raise, not lower, the federal deficit.
Citing “the absurdity of Romney’s plan,” Preble wrote recently that the candidate “hasn’t said what other spending he will cut, or what taxes he would increase.”
“Until he does,” Preble wrote, “it is logical to conclude that he plans to pile on more debt.”
Romney says he will avoid that problem by making courageous cuts to federal programs if elected.
“I have three major ways that we can get ourselves to a balanced budget,” he told voters this month in Warwick, R.I. “Number one is to eliminate some programs. Stop, eliminate them. Not just slow down their rate of growth. But look at programs and say, `Too many, too big, too expensive, too ineffective, get rid of it.’ Some programs you’re going to like. I’m going to ask for sacrifice. But the sacrifice will not be taking more from your wallet…. I’m not going to give anybody any free stuff.”
Other Romney proposals would make states responsible for programs such as Medicaid, and reduce the federal workforce by 10 percent “through attrition.”
It’s not uncommon for candidates to promise unspecified spending cuts. Often, however, they find it extremely difficult to fulfill the pledges once elected. That’s one reason the nation’s debt has soared under Republican and Democratic presidents and congresses alike.
Romney has shown little willingness to cut popular programs so far. He joined President Barack Obama, and bucked some House Republicans, by backing an extension of low college loan rates for middle-income students, a $6 billion government cost.
Voters may understand that candidates can’t or won’t keep all their promises.
“You campaign in fiction, and govern in fact,” said Tom Davis, a former congressman who headed the Republicans’ House campaign committee from 1998 to 2002.
He noted that Obama quickly backed off his campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. Obama also pledged to tamp down Washington’s partisan tone and to overhaul immigration laws, neither of which has happened.
Davis said it’s the general thrust of Romney’s proposals that matters most, not every specific item.
“What he’s trying to do is sketch a different vision,” Davis said. Details of how Romney’s proposals will pan out, if he’s elected, “will be determined by Congress and events,” he said.
Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, said Romney’s proposals “are aspirations” more than firm promises. If elected, Romney may have to revisit his current rejection of tax increases and his vow to leave Social Security and Medicare unchanged for current and soon-to-be recipients, LaTourette said.
Romney and Obama “have to come to the realization that a big deal,” which includes tax increases, spending cuts and changes to Social Security and Medicare, “is the only way” to address the nation’s deficit dilemma, LaTourette said.
Romney calls for a host of tax cuts. But independent analysts say they will worsen the deficit unless offset by deep and politically unpopular spending cuts.
Romney would keep the Bush-era tax cuts, and further reduce all marginal income tax rates by 20 percent. He says he would lower the corporate tax rate, eliminate the estate tax, push a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and make $500 billion in unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts in 2016.
He wants wider exploration for energy, including oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR.
Such promises draw loud cheers at GOP rallies. But for decades, Republican-run and Democratic-run congresses alike have rejected ANWR drilling, a balanced budget amendment, deep spending cuts and other mainstays of Romney’s campaign.
Whether these campaign ideas are called proposals, aspirations or promises, they are easier to talk about than to achieve.
By: Charles Babington, The Huffington Post, April 27, 2012
“Compro-What?”: The Republican Definition Of “Compromise”
What is compromise? Getting more of what you want, according to House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia.
Appearing this morning at a policy briefing hosted by National Journal and United Technologies, Price was asked by National Journal’s John Aloysius Farrell (a former U.S. News contributing editor) whether a term in office would make the Tea Party freshmen more likely to compromise.
His response was classic: “Compromising is one thing as long as you’re compromising and moving in the direction of your principles. If you’re compromising and moving away from the direction of your principles, I’m not sure it’s a compromise.”
Of course by definition, compromising means, um, compromising your principles. Here in fact is the dictionary definition of the word: “an adjustment of opposing principles … by modifying some aspects of each.”
One of the enduring themes from the Obama-Tea Party years here in Washington has been on compromise—whether and when it’s a good thing and how one defines it. Polls have consistently shown that liberals and independents want compromise, but conservatives prefer their leaders to stick to their guns. Democrats have exploited this public opinion gap by portraying Republicans, accurately in my view, as being a party of hardliners unwilling to make the kind of compromises necessary to solve the nation’s problems, especially in a time of divided government. See, for example, their unwillingness to seriously consider the revenue side of the deficit problem.
But since “compromise” is a concept popular with swing voters, they feel the need to radically redefine it in a way they can embrace. (It’s kind of like their Medicare plans.)
California Rep. Xavier Becerra, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus was interviewed at the event after Price and was asked what a bipartisan solution to the deficit problem would look like. Here’s his answer: “Bipartisan means that at the end, everyone will hate it, and people will all complain that it hit them to some degree. No one should be left out, as I said, all hands on deck.”
Kudos to Becerra for supplying a reality-based answer and apparently understanding the oldspeak definition of “compromise.”
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, April 26. 2012
“Tantruming Toddlers”: President Romney And The Republican Congress
As we’ve discussed here many times, there a number of factors that make it more likely than not that Barack Obama will win re-election in November. But it’s also quite possible that Obama will lose, and Mitt Romney will become president in January. If Romney does win, chances are that he’ll come into office with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress. That’s because whatever conditions produce a Republican win at the top will also probably allow Republicans to hold on to the House and take the Senate. It’s even possible that Obama could win and Republicans wind up with both houses, since Democrats right now hold only a 53-47 lead in the upper chamber, and they are defending 23 seats in this year’s election, while Republicans are defending only ten.
There’s an outside chance that a big Obama win could allow Democrats to hold the Senate and take back the house, but for now let’s focus on the possibility of a Romney win, which will probably leave him with the benefit of total Republican control. This is an eventuality that we really need to start thinking about, since a Romney presidency would be shaped in large part by his relationship with Congress.
The thought of finding ourselves nine months from now with a President Romney, Speaker Boehner, and Majority Leader McConnell is … let’s say unsettling. But I’m sure they’ll greet their newfound power with humility and restraint, not moving too quickly to roll back regulations, cut taxes for the wealthy, or dismantle social programs. Hah! Kidding, of course—the only question is whether they’ll be literally firing their guns in the air on the floor of the House and Senate, leaving holes in the ceiling that will be a testament in plaster to their triumph for years to come. At that point, Democrats will discover that the filibuster is a really, really good thing.
But there’s only so much they’d be able to stop, and congressional Republicans will be sending a stream of reactionary bills to President Romney’s desk. And let’s be honest: He’s going to sign every one of them. You will not see Romney veto a bill passed by a Republican Congress because it went too far in achieving conservative goals. Not gonna happen.
Which is why, if Democrats are smart, they’ll start a discussion now about how Romney is going to deal with the congressional nutballs in his party. They’ve already started tying Romney to Paul Ryan’s budget plan, but the larger question is how he’ll handle this unruly collection of extremists, who have shown themselves quite happy to hold the government hostage and bring America to the brink of default to serve their agenda.
The White House is now warning Republicans not to renege on the deal they made last year on the budget (which they are showing signs they want to do, by cutting domestic spending more than they agreed to); if they do, there could be a government shutdown in September. That would put all kinds of pressure on Romney to show he can rein in his party’s extremists. If he handles it well, he can demonstrate that he’s a responsible adult who is capable of restraining the collection of tantruming toddlers that is the Republican caucus in the House. If he doesn’t, he’ll show everyone just how chaotic and dangerous a government with Republicans in control of all three branches could be.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, April 19, 2012
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