“An Intra-Republican Bloodbath”: The 2016 Presidential Race And The Coming Death Struggle Within The GOP
There’s an interesting article in The Hill today about some early 2016 jockeying, and it shines a light on just how important this presidential campaign will be to the ongoing struggle within the GOP. Once next month’s elections are over, things are going to get very intense. Here’s an excerpt:
For the past year, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has been wooing his longtime friend Jeb Bush to jump into the 2016 presidential race, even as he has shunned potential Tea Party rivals like Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Boehner stepped up his lobbying efforts this week, singing the former Florida governor’s praises in a pair of media interviews.
The Speaker’s preference for yet another Bush White House run is partly political, partly personal. He sees Bush as undeniably the strongest, most viable candidate who could pull the party together after a bruising primary and take on a formidable Hillary Clinton, sources said. And the two men are aligned politically, hailing from the same centrist strand of the GOP.
The next presidential campaign will shape how we all understand the eight-year intra-Republican bloodbath that will have lasted through the Obama presidency, in a way that the 2012 election didn’t. While most of the candidates in 2012 spent plenty of time pandering to the Tea Party, none of them were birthed by the movement. All of the real contenders had been around for a long time, some for decades.
In contrast, 2016 will be the first presidential election in which some of the GOP candidates rose to prominence after Barack Obama’s election. Three potential candidates (Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker) first got elected to their current positions during the revolution of 2010, and one other (Ted Cruz) two years later. Even if only Cruz among them is still considered a 100 percent pure Tea Partier, this is going to be a primary race defined by a generational split between those who rode the Tea Party to prominence and those who came to public attention before.
If you’re John Boehner, somebody like Ted Cruz getting the Republican nomination would be a terrible rebuke, not just because Cruz has personally been such a pain in Boehner’s behind (constantly encouraging conservative House members to turn against the Speaker), but also because of what it would say about this period in Republican history. If a real Tea Partier were elected, Boehner’s entire Speakership would look like nothing more than roadkill along the way — the “GOP establishment” had done nothing but resist the inevitable, by trying to keep the Tea Party in check, for too long. On the other hand, someone like Jeb Bush becoming president would mean that all the aggravation Boehner endured wasn’t futile; he held the barbarians back, prevented them from ruining the GOP, and the party came through on the other side by taking back the White House.
On the other hand, nothing would be worse for Boehner and other establishment figures than somebody like Bush getting the GOP nomination but then losing to Hillary Clinton — and short of a Tea Partier winning the presidency, nothing would be better for the base conservatives. Those conservatives could say: Look, we’ve tried nominating old, familiar, establishment Republicans three times in a row now, and all it got us was President Obama and now President Clinton. We can’t repeat the same mistake in 2020. It’ll be an awfully compelling argument to those in the party, even if the counter-argument — that nominating someone like Cruz would be a complete disaster — might be true.
It’s possible that a candidate who successfully bridges the two sides could emerge (for instance, Indiana governor Mike Pence could be that candidate). And the establishment folks are going to try to play down the idea that there’s any “battle for the soul of the Republican party” going on at all, since that’s a battle they aren’t sure they can win. But the battle is real, and its outcome, at least for the next decade or two, could be determined by what kind of Republican gets the 2016 nomination, whether he wins or loses, and more broadly, what kind of GOP we have in coming years.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, October 2, 2014
“Tortured Arguments And Code Words”: Is Karl Rove Really A Hardcore Racist — Or Is He Just Lazy?
Occasionally I’ve heard black people mention that they respect a racist who owns up to his prejudice forthrightly more than a hypocrite who uses tortured arguments and code words. Like many of President Obama’s right-wing critics, Karl Rove still falls into that latter dishonorable category.
But Rove was scarcely subtle in his latest attempt to agitate the drooling bigots in the Fox News audience. (Not every Fox viewer is a white racist, of course, but every white racist with cable watches Fox. As Karl knows.) Last night on Fox, he barked that the president has “a lazy attitude toward the job that he’s got.”
The Republican boss is himself evidently too lazy to come up with a different line of innuendo — possibly involving watermelon, fried chicken, welfare, or basketball. Wait! He actually did use the basketball meme to slam Obama in a Wall Street Journal column in 2008 – and then added, in case any readers missed the point: “He is often lazy.”
Well, Obama was energetic enough to kick the butt of Karl Rove’s preferred candidate in that election and again in 2012, but that hasn’t discouraged Rove, Hannity, Palin, Beck, or a million other wingnuts from repeatedly using that same slur. (Doesn’t that mean they’re all lazy?)
If we have to measure the industriousness of presidents – and it’s a stupid exercise, but they insist – then let’s examine two of their favorites. It is established fact that George W. Bush took more than three times as many vacation days as President Obama, probably more than any president since that other great GOP success, Herbert Hoover. Rove ought to know, since old “Turd Blossom” was largely responsible for foisting the Dubya disaster on his country.
And let’s not forget the late Ronald Reagan, who spent plenty of recreational time at his California ranch — and made sure to take a nap without fail every day. The sainted Ronnie once explained that the White House job wasn’t really too taxing on him because…
[He] had a great routine: he walked to the office before nine and was home in the residence by 5 or 5:30. He ate dinner and often watched a movie with his wife, then went to bed. “I have three guys who mostly run things for me.”
But then Reagan was a white man, which apparently means he’s always working hard, even when he’s napping.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, October 2, 2014
“The Show-Off Society”: In A Highly Unequal Society, The Wealthy Feel Obliged To Engage In ‘Conspicuous Consumption’
Liberals talk about circumstances; conservatives talk about character.
This intellectual divide is most obvious when the subject is the persistence of poverty in a wealthy nation. Liberals focus on the stagnation of real wages and the disappearance of jobs offering middle-class incomes, as well as the constant insecurity that comes with not having reliable jobs or assets. For conservatives, however, it’s all about not trying hard enough. The House speaker, John Boehner, says that people have gotten the idea that they “really don’t have to work.” Mitt Romney chides lower-income Americans as being unwilling to “take personal responsibility.” Even as he declares that he really does care about the poor, Representative Paul Ryan attributes persistent poverty to lack of “productive habits.”
Let us, however, be fair: some conservatives are willing to censure the rich, too. Running through much recent conservative writing is the theme that America’s elite has also fallen down on the job, that it has lost the seriousness and restraint of an earlier era. Peggy Noonan writes about our “decadent elites,” who make jokes about how they are profiting at the expense of the little people. Charles Murray, whose book “Coming Apart” is mainly about the alleged decay of values among the white working class, also denounces the “unseemliness” of the very rich, with their lavish lifestyles and gigantic houses.
But has there really been an explosion of elite ostentation? And, if there has, does it reflect moral decline, or a change in circumstances?
I’ve just reread a remarkable article titled “How top executives live,” originally published in Fortune in 1955 and reprinted a couple of years ago. It’s a portrait of America’s business elite two generations ago, and it turns out that the lives of an earlier generation’s elite were, indeed, far more restrained, more seemly if you like, than those of today’s Masters of the Universe.
“The executive’s home today,” the article tells us, “is likely to be unpretentious and relatively small — perhaps seven rooms and two and a half baths.” The top executive owns two cars and “gets along with one or two servants.” Life is restrained in other ways, too: “Extramarital relations in the top American business world are not important enough to discuss.” Actually, I’m sure there was plenty of hanky-panky, but people didn’t flaunt it. The elite of 1955 at least pretended to set a good example of responsible behavior.
But before you lament the decline in standards, there’s something you should know: In celebrating America’s sober, modest business elite, Fortune described this sobriety and modesty as something new. It contrasted the modest houses and motorboats of 1955 with the mansions and yachts of an earlier generation. And why had the elite moved away from the ostentation of the past? Because it could no longer afford to live that way. The large yacht, Fortune tells us, “has foundered in the sea of progressive taxation.”
But that sea has since receded. Giant yachts and enormous houses have made a comeback. In fact, in places like Greenwich, Conn., some of the “outsize mansions” Fortune described as relics of the past have been replaced with even bigger mansions.
And there’s no mystery about what happened to the good-old days of elite restraint. Just follow the money. Extreme income inequality and low taxes at the top are back. For example, in 1955 the 400 highest-earning Americans paid more than half their incomes in federal taxes, but these days that figure is less than a fifth. And the return of lightly taxed great wealth has, inevitably, brought a return to Gilded Age ostentation.
Is there any chance that moral exhortations, appeals to set a better example, might induce the wealthy to stop showing off so much? No.
It’s not just that people who can afford to live large tend to do just that. As Thorstein Veblen told us long ago, in a highly unequal society the wealthy feel obliged to engage in “conspicuous consumption,” spending in highly visible ways to demonstrate their wealth. And modern social science confirms his insight. For example, researchers at the Federal Reserve have shown that people living in highly unequal neighborhoods are more likely to buy luxury cars than those living in more homogeneous settings. Pretty clearly, high inequality brings a perceived need to spend money in ways that signal status.
The point is that while chiding the rich for their vulgarity may not be as offensive as lecturing the poor on their moral failings, it’s just as futile. Human nature being what it is, it’s silly to expect humility from a highly privileged elite. So if you think our society needs more humility, you should support policies that would reduce the elite’s privileges.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 25, 2014
“No Meaningful Consequences”: Tom Cotton And The Era Of Post-Truth Politics
A couple of years ago, Mitt Romney developed a bad habit. As part of his national campaign, the Republican nominee would attack President Obama over some perceived failing. Then the attack would be fact-checked and be proven wrong. Romney, confronted with proof that he was lying, would repeat the claim anyway, convinced that it didn’t matter whether he told the truth or not. It happened over and over and over again.
It underscored a dangerous development: the era of post-truth politics.
Two years later, the phenomenon hasn’t gone away. In Arkansas last week, Rep. Tom Cotton (R), his party’s U.S. Senate nominee, was caught in one of the most brazen lies of the 2014 campaign season. The right-wing congressman claimed he voted against this year’s Farm Bill because President Obama “hijacked” it, “turned it into a food-stamp bill,” and added “billions more in spending.”
As a factual matter, literally none of this is even remotely true, and fact-checkers came down hard on such shameless dishonesty – all of which might matter if Cotton gave a darn. But as Peter Urban reported yesterday, the congressman just doesn’t care about getting caught.
Rejecting criticism of its latest TV ad, Republican Senate hopeful Tom Cotton plans to keep running the “Farm Bill” message beyond its current ad buy.
“We’ve gotten such great feedback from farmers, taxpayers, and supporters that we’re actually going to increase the size of the ad buy,” said David Ray, a spokesman for the Cotton campaign.
In a local interview this week, Cotton said he’s “proud” of his demonstrably dishonest commercial, adding that the fact-checkers didn’t spend time “growing up on a farm,” so he knows “a little bit more about farming than they do.”
As defenses go, Cotton’s argument is gibberish. One need not grow up on a farm to recognize the basic tenets of reality. The congressman told a lie, he knew it was a lie, he got caught telling a lie, and instead of doing the honorable thing, Cotton has decided he likes this lie.
The public discourse isn’t supposed to work this way. Under traditional American norms, politicians could be expected to spin, dodge, and slice the truth awfully thin, but there was an expectation that a candidate who got caught telling a bald-faced lie to the public was likely to end up in real trouble.
Cotton seems to believe those norms no longer apply – he can get caught lying and pay no real price at all.
In other words, Tom Cotton sees American politics in a post-truth era. He can say what he pleases, without regard for honesty, because there won’t be any meaningful consequences for deceiving the public on purpose.
Is he right? This didn’t work out too well for Romney, but Cotton’s in a much better position to prevail in Arkansas.
Once the standard is set that lying will be rewarded, what incentive will politicians have to be honest?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 26, 2014
“In The Hopes Of Appearing Normal”: New GOP Ad Campaign; ‘Republicans Have Feelings’
Vinny Minchillo, a Republican campaign strategist based in Texas, isn’t the most famous GOP consultant in the country, but he did claim to have “reinvented political advertising” while working for Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign in 2012.
But that was two years ago. In 2014, as Danny Vinik discovered, Minchillo is spearheading an entirely different kind of campaign. It’s called “Republicans Are People, Too.”
RepublicansArePeopleToo.com … aims to combat the partisan rancor directed at the GOP. In short: to humanize Republicans demonized by the left as women-hating, nature-destroying Fox News addicts. A 97-second video on the site informs viewers that Republicans do things that you may not associate with conservatives. […]
Minchillo is now an executive at Glass House Strategy, a public affairs company that specializes in political campaigns – although, despite the upcoming midterms, Minchillo is not advising any campaigns at the moment. That, he says, makes it the perfect time to start a grassroots campaign to change the Republican Party’s image.
The whole video is posted below, and you’ll just have to see it to believe it. The message did not go so far as to say, “Republicans are capable of functioning as well-adjusted human beings,” but that seemed to be the general direction of the message.
Indeed, for those who can’t watch clips online, here’s the entire on-screen text: “Did you know? Republicans drive Priuses. Republicans recycle. Republicans listen to Spotify. Republicans put together Ikea furniture. Republicans are white. Republicans are black. Republicans are Hispanic. Republicans are Asian. Republicans read the New York Times in public. Republicans use Macs. Republicans are grandmas, daughters, Moms. Republicans are left handed. Republicans are doctors, welders, teachers. Republicans donate to charity. Republicans enjoy gourmet cooking. Republicans shop at Trader Joe’s. Republicans like dogs and cats, probably dogs a little more than cats. Republicans have tattoos and beards. Republicans have feelings. Republicans are people who care. Republicans are people, too.”
It’s almost as if we’re seeing a promotional video put together by a group most Americans find repulsive, so its members put something together for YouTube in the hopes of appearing normal.
Indeed, let’s make this plain: if you’re a member of a political party, and you find it necessary to remind the public that your party is capable of human emotion and routine human behavior, then your party may have a very serious problem.
It’s not that Minchillo’s ad is wrong, of course. Obviously, Republicans are human beings living normal American lives. The problem is the overly defensive nature of the argument – if you have to remind the public that Republicans “are people” and “have emotions,” then you’re implicitly suggesting that Republicans’ basic humanity is, at least for some, in doubt.
Jon Chait joked, “It’s just always suspicious when somebody strenuously denies an accusation that has not been made.”
This video http://youtu.be/Iff7mNsGK50 no doubt intended to convey the opposite message, but “Republicans Are People, Too” underscores a branding issue for which there is no easy solution.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 25, 2014
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