“In Dire Demographic Straits”: The GOP’s New Voting Laws Are Nothing Less Than A War On Democracy
Can someone please explain to me why the New York Times’ top story from this past Sunday hasn’t provoked nationwide outrage?
Allow me to provide a handy summary: Having spent the last several years trumping up unsubstantiated charges of voter fraud in order to justify new laws and regulations making it more burdensome to vote in poor and minority (read: Democratic-leaning) districts around the country, the Republican Party has now changed tactics. In the name of enforcing the “uniformity” of voting rules, Republican governors and legislatures in a number of swing states have begun to increase the obstacles to voting still further. Some states are requiring that would-be voters show birth certificates or passports (which many poor people don’t possess), while others are curtailing the days, times, and places available to vote (which is particularly onerous for poor people who have little workplace flexibility and often lack transportation).
Let’s leave aside the spectacle of Republicans, usually our most fulsome champions of local control, suddenly banging on about the need for statewide uniformity in voting rules.
What’s far more noteworthy (and frankly pathetic) about these moves is that they’re a tacit acknowledgement by the Republican Party that it’s in dire demographic straits — and that one of the key pillars of its ideology over the last half-century is crumbling right before our eyes.
Ever since Richard Nixon claimed to speak for the “silent American majority,” the GOP has identified itself with the real America, the true America, the America of morals and faith and common sense, as opposed to the ersatz America of secular liberalism made up of judges, professors, journalists, and other elites who control the commanding heights of culture from decadent enclaves in New York and Hollywood. These elites have a pernicious influence and do a lot of damage, Republicans have maintained, but they’re vastly outnumbered by the real Americans who find their natural home in the GOP.
This ideology of righteous majoritarianism received intellectual validation from the first generation of neoconservatives, who wrote during the 1970s about the emergence of a “new class” of liberal professionals whose moral outlook differed from that of the rest of the country. Then, the ideology contributed to the rhetorical populism of the Reagan Revolution. Later, in a purer, high-octane form, it fueled the rise of right-wing talk radio, Fox News, and the rest of a conservative media infrastructure that exists to continually feed the flames of partisan fury through a potent mixture of flattery, demonization, and identity politics. “YOU are the real and righteous Americans,” these outlets tell their loyal listeners and viewers day after day, year after year, “and THEY are illegitimate, immoral imposters who have usurped political power.”
The story was always an exaggeration, but it once had a certain plausibility. Reagan won re-election in 1984 with 58.8 percent of the vote. Millions of his supporters were lifelong New Deal and Great Society liberals who jumped parties to become the fabled “Reagan Democrats.” It seemed for a time like the silent American majority had finally found its voice.
But then the numbers started heading south. George H.W. Bush succeeded Reagan with a softer 53.4 percent of the vote, and then went on to lose his bid for re-election in 1992. His son notoriously made it to the White House in 2000 despite losing the popular vote; four years later he won a majority — though, with only 50.7 percent of the vote, just barely. And it’s been downhill ever since.
The grassroots of the GOP and its media cheerleaders like to attribute the party’s losses in 2008 (McCain, 45.7 percent) and 2012 (Romney, 47.2 percent) to the party’s foolish decision to go with presidential candidates who were compromised conservatives. If only they’d chosen real Republicans!
But this is a self-serving fantasy. As John Judis and Ruy Teixeira have been arguing for years, with each election cycle providing confirmation of their thesis, the Republican Party faces a possibly intractable demographic problem — with its core voters (older white men) becoming an ever-smaller proportion of the electorate. This means that in the country’s only national election contest (the presidential vote), the popular margin is likely to swing increasingly in the direction of the Democratic Party. Unless, of course, Republicans can keep Democrats from voting.
But what about the GOP’s success at holding on to the House of Representatives in recent years? That, too, is a product of anti-democratic manipulation. The Democrats actually received more overall votes in House races in 2012 but failed to win control of the chamber because the GOP has used state-level redistricting to cram ever-greater numbers of Democrats into smaller numbers of districts, effectively decreasing their political power relative to their raw numbers.
Charming, isn’t it?
But also pitiable. Having built an ideology around the conviction that it speaks axiomatically for the real American majority, the Republican Party has become incapable of coping with evidence to the contrary — and willing to do just about anything, including subverting democracy, to maintain that fiction.
Republicans should be ashamed of themselves — and the rest of us should be disgusted.
By: Damon Linker, The Week, April 1, 2014
“Indefensible By Any Measure”: Ted Nugent And How The Conservative Press Can’t Hide Its Hate Streak
It’s too soon to tell whether Ted Nugent’s noxious career as a conservative pundit reached a tipping point this week, but the moment he called in sick to CNN and backed out of a scheduled interview with Erin Burnett as Republican politicians denounced him might soon be seen as a flash point for the fading rock star and the incendiary brand of hate rhetoric he’s been cashing in on for years. It might also be viewed as a key stumbling moment for the conservative media, which have been unable in recent years to establish any sort of guardrails for common decency within the realm of political debate.
Increasingly reliant on bad fringe actors like Nugent to connect with their far, far-right audience, the conservative media have built up Obama-bashing personalities who no longer occupy any corner of the American mainstream. Yet Nugent enjoys deep ties with Republican campaigns all across the country. When those ties receive media scrutiny, they cannot be defended.
National Rifle Association board member Nugent found himself at the center of a campaign controversy this week when he was invited to two public events for Texas Republican Greg Abbott, who is running for governor. Of course Nugent, a former Washington Times columnist who now writes for birther website WND, recently called President Obama a “communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel” and has a long and vivid history of launching vile attacks on women. (He’s called Hillary Clinton a “toxic c**t.”)
Following waves of condemnations for the association, and a torrent of critical media coverage, with reporters and pundits wondering why a gubernatorial candidate would voluntarily campaign with someone who spouts “insane and racist talk,” as CNN’s Jake Tapper put it, Abbott claimed he wasn’t aware of Nugent’s history of racist and misogynistic comments. If so, Abbott’s campaign staff is utterly incompetent. (The “subhuman mongrel” comment, unearthed last month by Media Matters, was highlighted by a number of outlets at the time, including on MSNBC.)
It’s likely Abbott and his staff did know about Nugent’s dark rhetoric, since that’s all he traffics in. But because that kind of hate speech has become so accepted and even celebrated within the bubble for right-wing media, they failed to see the danger of embracing it.
Following the ill-fated campaign events, which made national headlines, Abbott has defended the decision to bring Nugent to the state, claiming that in Texas politics Nugent remain popular. But if inviting Nugent to become an Abbott surrogate was so clever, why did likely Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul step forward to denounce Nugent and his “offensive” Obama commentary?
Why did Abbott’s fellow Texan, Gov. Rick Perry “recommend” Nugent apologize? And why did Nugent back out of his CNN interview just two hours before taping?
As the media scrutiny settled on Nugent, even staunch conservative Republicans have been unable to defend him — his commentary over the years is just too vile. If the Abbott campaign didn’t directly insist on the CNN cancellation (Nugent cited illness), it’s fair to say his aides were greatly relieved that Nugent didn’t fuel the story for another 24-hour news cycle via an extended CNN interview where no doubt more confused Nazi analogies would have been aired. (CNN’s Wolf Blitzer had already condemned Nugent’s comments, noting that the phrase “subhuman mongrel” bore resemblance to “untermensch,” which is “what the Nazis called Jews … to justify the genocide of the Jewish community.”)
And then there was Fox News, Nugent’s longtime ally in the pursuit of Obama demagoguery, and where just last month Bill O’Reilly welcomed Nugent. As Abbott’s self-inflicted wound deepened this week, and as news outlets all across the country addressed the clumsy campaign association, Fox News went silent. Not only refusing to defend Nugent, Fox wouldn’t even cover the burgeoning controversy.
The network — which was happy to give Nugent a softball interview just two weeks ago — still hasn’t mentioned the firestorm over his campaigning with Abbott.
Ted Nugent has been practicing his brand of openly vile hate for a very long time. And with each passing year of the Obama administration he’s been welcomed deeper and deeper into the heart of the conservative media machine. This week’s Abbott uproar was instructive in that the bright spotlight shone on Nugent helped remind people just how radical, dangerous and out of touch that movement has become, and how that hate cannot be hidden.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, February 21, 2014
“And Idiots They Are”: Once Again, Conservative Media Treat Their Audience Like Idiots
Dinesh D’Souza is one of a number of people who has made a good living over the years trafficking in anti-liberal screeds, culminating in his book The Roots of Obama’s Rage and follow-on film 2016, in which he charges that President Stokely Charmi—excuse me, President Barack Obama is consumed with anti-white racism, hatred of America, and generalized fury because he’s living out the “Kenyan anti-colonialism” of the father he barely knew. It’s a story pitched to the deranged, but there’s a healthy market for that in the right, as we know.
So when D’Souza was charged by a U.S. Attorney with violating campaign finance laws with a straw donor scheme, it wasn’t surprising that some conservatives ran to his defense. You might think they’d take the opportunity to attack the law as unjust, particularly since D’Souza’s lawyer all but admitted his guilt, essentially saying that sure, he violated the law, but he only did so out of friendship for the candidate in question and not for corrupt purposes (“Simply put, there was no ‘quid pro quo’ in this case, nor was there even any knowledge by the candidate that Campaign Finance Rules may have been violated. Mr. D’Souza did not act with any corrupt or criminal intent whatsoever. He and the candidate have been friends since their college days, and at worst, this was an act of misguided friendship by D’Souza”). But no.
Instead, you get the conspiracy theories, which Ben Dimiero helpfully gathered here. Matt Drudge tweets, “They are going after the Obama critics with indictments. VA Gov. Now Dinesh D’souza. Holder unleashing the dogs…” Nationally syndicated radio host and frequent Fox news guest host Laura Ingraham says the indictment “is more about stifling political dissent and intimidating other people from speaking out than it is about any real serious allegation of wrongdoing.” Rush Limbaugh, the most successful radio host in America, tells his listeners that the Obama administration is “trying to criminalize as many Republicans and conservatives as they can.”
To be sure, plenty of conservatives think that’s ridiculous. But think about the argument here: Do these folks actually believe that the Attorney General of the United States is sitting around with his aides and says, “I’ve had enough. That D’Souza? I want him taken down! He’s been a thorn in our side for too long.” Then he places a call to the White House. “Mr. President? Good news. I think we found a way to get Dinesh D’Souza.” “Thank God!” replies Obama. “He could destroy this entire presidency if we don’t deal with him.”
The answer is, of course they don’t think that. But they think their audiences do. They think the people who read their web sites and listen to their radio shows are so stupid that they’d believe there’s a conspiracy at the highest levels of the federal government aimed at…Dinesh D’Souza.
The left’s media stars may be far from perfect in a variety of ways. But one thing you can say about them as a group is that they don’t assume their audience is made up of idiots.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, January 24, 2014
“Ricocheting Around The Conservative Media”: How A Wildly Misleading Obamacare Horror Story Is Born
Far too many breathless news stories about insurance plans being “canceled” or people facing “sticker shock” fail to convey even the most basic context: this is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the individual insurance market, which covers between 5 to 6 percent of the population.
Some of those people – mostly younger, healthier people who, because they’re in the top third of the income distribution aren’t eligible for subsidies – will have to pay higher premiums for more comprehensive coverage, even if they don’t want to. This can cause real economic hardship, and that’s a legitimate issue.
But it’s still an issue that will affect only a small slice of the population. Jonathan Gruber, a health care expert at MIT, estimates that around half of those six percent won’t experience any real change. “They have to buy new plans, but they will be pretty similar to what they had before,” he told Ryan Lizza. “It will essentially be relabeling.”
Gruber adds that most of those plans being canceled run afoul of a provision of the law banning any policy that requires people to pay more than $6,000 per year in health care expenses – plans that may lead to medical bankruptcies, the number one type of bankruptcy in the US.
That leaves about three percent of Americans who may face that tough situation where they have to pay more for coverage they may not want.
That’s not the impression you’d get from most media sources, and certainly not from the law’s ideological foes. Avik Roy, for example – a conservative columnist for Forbes who has not exactly distinguished himself for his honesty in the debates over Obamacare – has a piece today that’s remarkable both for its mendacity and its alarmism.
Roy’s headline is, “Obama Officials in 2010: 93 Million Americans Will be Unable to Keep Their Health Plans Under Obamacare.” And his claim rests on a very simple bait-and-switch…
“The [administration’s] mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled.
Note that “…and get canceled” are Roy’s words, not those of the Obama administration in 2010. And those words are completely misleading – falsely suggesting that tens of millions of people will feel a real impact like that three percent discussed above.
That an insurance plan is “grandfathered” only means that it has been in existence, with minimal changes in benefits or cost-sharing, since before the law was enacted. Roy would have his readers believe that all these plans will be “canceled,” but most group plans lose their grandfathered status by coming into compliance or through other changes that are routine in our insurance system and always have been. All grandfathered plans will lose their status over time, meaning for the most part that, as Gruber put it, they’ll be ‘relabelled.’ Nobody will notice these “cancellations.”
In fact, large-employer plans don’t even have to conform to those coverage requirements (they do have to follow certain other rules). And the share of workers in grandfathered plans has been shrinking for several years – from 56 percent in 2011 to 36 percent this year – yet we only started hearing about this as an issue in the past few weeks.
In the small-group market, some plans may need to add a missing benefit – maybe pediatric dental and vision care, for example – and premiums will rise accordingly, but that’s a far cry from Roy’s spin.
The reality, according to a 2012 study by the Urban Institute, is that “95 percent of those with some type of insurance coverage (employer, nongroup, public) without reform will have the same type of coverage under the ACA .” Maybe a different plan name, but the same type of coverage.
Yet one can be certain that Roy’s claim that 93 million Americans will be harmed when their insurance policies are “canceled,” while misleading on its face, will be ricocheting around the conservative media, taken as prime evidence that Obamacare is ruining millions of lives when, as Jonathan Gruber puts it, 97 percent of Americans are either untouched by the law or are clearly winners.
By: Joshua Holand, Moyers and Company, Bill Moyers Blog, October 31, 2013
“No, Chris Lane Is Not Trayvon Martin”: Right Wing Media Prefers To Hide Behind A Veil Of Intentional Ignorance
The white conservative media believes it has its own Trayvon Martin in the case of Chris Lane, an Australian baseball player who was killed in Oklahoma, where he had been studying, by three black teenagers in an apparently random act of violence (note: there’s actually some question as to the race of one of the three teens, the driver, who faces lesser charges).
Rush Limbaugh called it “Trayvon Martin in reverse, only worse.” The Drudge Report, where black-on-white crime always gets top billing, has been prominently featuring news about the case for several days. Former Tea Party congressman Allen West weighed in, tweeting, “3 black teens shoot white jogger. Who will POTUS identify w/this time?”
Jesse Jackson tried to extend an olive branch, tweeting that he was “Praying for the family of Chris Lane.” But armed with that, Fox News is now demanding that President Obama weigh in, just as he did for Martin’s case. “I thought it was at least good of Jesse Jackson to step up,” Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade said today. “I haven’t heard anything from Al Sharpton [or the White House],” he added. His colleagues agreed.
(For what it’s worth, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday that he wasn’t familiar with the case.)
As the right sees it, the president’s silence confirms the narrative shared by everyone from Glenn Beck to Allen West to Maine Gov. Paul LePage to Sean Hannity — that Obama is racist against white people, and that the media is, too, or at least duped into doing the bidding of allegedly racist black leaders like Sharpton, or something.
It’s incredible that in 2013 we’re really arguing about this, but from Henry Louis Gates to Travyon Martin — when the conservative media made George Zimmerman the Real Victim of the supposed anti-white lynch mob — we should expect nothing else. And it’s equally striking, yet also not particularly surprising, that Fox and Limbaugh and the rest really don’t seem to comprehend why the Trayvon Martin case became a thing.
It’s not that difficult to understand so we’ll spell it out: It was not only that a light-skinned Zimmerman killed an unarmed black teenager — but also that police didn’t do anything about it. The killing was horribly tragic, as is Lane’s senseless murder, but if Zimmerman had actually been arrested for the shooting, the sad reality is that far fewer Americans would know his name. But that’s not what happened. Instead, police let Zimmerman go under Florida’s “stand your ground” law. It smacked of institutional, state-sponsored racial favoritism of the worst kind. It was only after public outcry that state prosecutors took over the case and pressed charges. Some could argue that Zimmerman didn’t need to be convicted for justice to be done, but he did need to stand trial.
Likewise with Henry Louis Gates, the famed black professor who was arrested while he was trying to get into his own home in Cambridge, Mass., after he misplaced his keys. That’s not how police are supposed to operate, and that’s why Obama weighed in.
Lane’s murder is an entirely different matter. It’s disgusting, but the police did their job. They arrested three suspects, and vowed to try to throw the book at them. That’s how it’s supposed to go. Murder is sadly quotidian in a gun-soaked America, and this is, sadly, another, if particularly senseless, one.
If you want to actually understand race relations in this country, you need to understand the difference between these cases. But the right prefers to live behind a veil of intentional ignorance where the only kind of racism that exists today is black people disliking white people.
Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, August 22, 2013
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