“You Made Your Bed, Now Sleep In It”: Hey Republican “Grown-Ups”, Ted Cruz Does Not Care About You
A small contingent of the more Tea Party-ish Republican senators has decided to shut down the government unless “Obamacare” is “defunded.” (Or, at least, they plan to threaten to shut down the government.) Defunding Obamacare is not really as simple as it sounds. The ACA involves a lot of “mandatory” as opposed to “discretionary” spending, so you can’t really effectively repeal the program through the Continuing Resolution. (Here’s Karl Rove explaining the issue.) The plan was Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) idea, but its current most vocal proponent is Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a very smart man who purposefully talks like a very crazy man, because he understands how to become a celebrity in the modern conservative movement.
Cruz doesn’t care if the plan makes sense, either as policy or even as political tactics. If he cared about passing conservative legislation, he wouldn’t spend all of his time purposefully angering his Republican colleagues. If he cared about the Republican Party’s national image and reputation, as opposed to his own image within the conservative activist community, he would have offered rhetorical support for immigration reform, as Rand Paul did. Cruz is in it for himself and himself alone. A majority of Americans want the GOP to be more conciliatory and moderate. A majority of Republicans strongly believe that the party must be even more conservative.
So if all the “grown-ups” — the respectable, professional Republicans — tell Ted Cruz not to do something, he is going to be even more dedicated to doing that thing. This week, all the respectable, professional Republicans told Ted Cruz not to try to shut down the government over Obamacare.
Karl Rove said it, in a Fox News editorial. His argument is that no matter how awful Obamacare is, a shutdown will hurt the party. He is correct. (The important point about Rove is that he is a professional liar, but he is one whose motivation — helping the Republican Party win and hold on to as much power as possible — is sincere.) But Cruz doesn’t care about the party.
Jennifer Rubin — who has clearly detested Cruz for a while now — has been relentless in her attacks on Cruz and his shutdown caucus. This has actually been a tad inconvenient, because one of Rubin’s favorite pols right now is Marco Rubio, who supports the Lee/Cruz plot. Rubin has done her best to dissuade him.
Charles Krauthammer called the Lee and Cruz plan “nuts” and “yet another cliff dive as a show of principle and manliness.” Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, who has an opinion column in the Washington Post for some utterly unfathomable reason, is similarly opposed.
To all these critics, the only reasonable response is, hope you enjoy this bed you made for yourselves. Ted Cruz is the right man for the decadent decline stage of the conservative movement, which has always encouraged the advancement of fact-challenged populist extremists, but always with the understanding that they’d take a back seat to the sensible business interests when it came time to exercise power. The result has been a huge number of Republican activists who couldn’t figure out why the True Conservatives they kept voting for kept failing to achieve the creation of the perfect conservative state once in office. That led to an ongoing backlash against everyone in the party suspected of anything less than perfect ideological purity. Meanwhile all the crazies got rich simply for being crazy. There’s no longer any compelling reason, in other words, not to act like Ted Cruz, and the result is Ted Cruz.
And if Ted Cruz is reading, all of these columns are only going to strengthen his resolve. Just look at this amazing conservative Facebook image macro shared by Gawker’s Max Read: Cruz is in the company of batshit far-right folk heroes like Allen West and Oliver North, people revered as much because of the disdain they inspire in both liberals and professional conservatives as for their actual beliefs or accomplishments.
Ted Cruz just won the Colorado Christian University 2016 straw poll and he will be a featured guest at Erick Erickson’s “RedState Gathering.” It’s working. Your “logic” won’t interest him.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, August 2, 2013
“Coverage Like A Hospital Gown”: Mitch McConnell Shouldn’t Assume For A Moment That Rand Paul Has His Back
Greg Sargent notes today that three highly influential “constitutional conservatives” in the Senate, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson, have gone out of their way to pass up opportunities to endorse Mitch McConnell in his 2014 primary against the previously almost unknown Matt Bevins. So, too, are the Club For Growth and the Senate Conservative Fund. All these individuals and organizations are obviously hoping to use the implicit threat of backing Bevins–and thus “nationalizing” the Kentucky race and making McConnell the new Dick Lugar or Bob Bennett and Bevins the new Richard Mourdock or Mike Lee–to influence McConnell’s behavior as Minority Leader in the Senate. The minute any of them endorse McConnell, this leverage is gone.
Meanwhile, Rand Paul has endorsed his senior colleague, even though McConnell tried to kill off his political career in 2010. But it hasn’t been enough to take McConnell off the table as a target for exactly the sort of insurgency Paul himself represented when he took on McConnell’s little buddy Tray Grayson.
So other than ensuring that Paul wouldn’t join the Matt Bevins bandwagon, what good is Rand’s endorsement actually going to do for McConnell going into 2014? Will his Paul’s Kentucky supporters pay attention to his position on the race? Or will they assume it was just a collegial gesture, and view what out-of-state “constitutional conservatives” say as the indication of what he’d really do if he could do what he wanted?
I dunno, but if I were ol’ Mitch, I wouldn’t for a moment assume Rand Paul had my back. The “coverage” may be like a hospital gown, where it’s flapping in the breeze even as people passing you in the hallways laugh at your exposed posterior.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 2, 2013
“Shunning People Away”: Kansas Secretary Of State Kris Kobach’s Bold New Plan To Keep People From Voting
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has become a national figure by advising other states on how to implement anti-immigrant and voter suppression measures, has come up with a new creative way to make it harder for Kansans to vote: barring those who register to vote with a federal form from casting ballots in state elections.
Back in June, the Supreme Court struck down an Arizona elections law that required those registering to vote to show proof of citizenship beyond what is required by federal voter registration forms. In Kansas, Kobach has been struggling to deal with the implementation of a similar proof-of-citizenship law, which has left the voting status of at least 12,000 Kansans in limbo.
These voters, many of whom registered with the federal “motor voter” form at the DMV, were supposed to have their citizenship information automatically updated, a process that was delayed by a computer glitch. Kobach then suggested that these 12,000 voters be forced to cast provisional ballots – a suggestion that the state elections board rejected.
Now, the Lawrence Journal-World reports, Kobach has a new idea to deal with the problem that he created. The paper reports that Kobach is considering a plan to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision in the Arizona case by creating two classes of voters. Under this plan, those who register with a federal form would be allowed to vote only in federal elections until they produced the state-required citizenship documents. Those who meet the state registration requirements would then be allowed to vote in state-level elections.
In Kansas, a new state law requires proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Kobach, a Republican who pushed for that law, said he is considering a proposed rule change that would allow those who use the federal form to register to vote to be allowed to vote in federal elections, such as presidential and congressional contests. The federal voter registration form does not require proof of citizenship documents, but includes a signed sworn statement that the individual is a U.S. citizen.
But those people would not be allowed to vote in state elections, such as contests for governor, other statewide offices and the Legislature.
Those who register to vote by providing proof of citizenship will be able to vote in both federal and state elections under the proposal.
Voting rights advocates in the state are understandably skeptical:
Dolores Furtado, president of the League of Women Voters of Kansas, said she would strongly oppose such a plan.
“It won’t work,” Furtado said. “When we can’t handle registrations, the process of applications and processing registrations, how are we going to separate ballots?” she said. “This is creating a problem. Whenever we make things complex, people shun away.”
When the elections board rejected his provisional ballots plan, Kobach was taken aback, saying that those who register to vote with the motor voter form aren’t likely to vote anyway, so disenfranchising 12,000 of them wasn’t “a major problem.” That seems to be his justification for the two classes of voter plan as well. According to the World-Journal, “Kobach said few Kansans register to vote using the federal form, so it shouldn’t affect too many voters.”
By: Miranda Blue, Right Wing Watch, August 2, 2013
“Kill The Law, Kill The Patient”: The Most Insane Conservative Anti-Obamacare Gambit Ever
In a last-ditch effort to stop Obamacare, Tea Party groups are trying to sabotage the healthcare law in a way that could leave young people without coverage and increase insurance premiums for everyone else. It assumes that the end of “repealing Obamacare” justifies the means of potentially years of worse health.
The gambit, as explained by Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post, is to convince young people to eschew the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges and the subsidies they offer in order to destabilize the insurance risk pools. And now the leader of the effort is talking to Salon about the idea.
First, some background. The “plan,” such as it is, works like this: Young people tend to be healthier and thus cheaper to insure, so they essentially subsidize the cost of older and sick people. If enough young people don’t sign up, and the pool is mostly older and sick people, costs will skyrocket. A price “death spiral” is health policy experts’ biggest fear with the law, but it’s exactly what the conservative groups want to artificially induce, thus dooming the law.
To that end, conservatives are trying to rally young people to skip the healthcare exchange and pay the fine for violating the individual mandate to have health insurance. They’re making their case with GIFs, Op-Eds and a campaign to burn Obamacare draft cards (which don’t actually exist, but can be downloaded from FreedomWorks’ website for later incineration). Americans for Prosperity is even considering setting up kiosks at Universal Fighting Championship matches and college football games to tell people not to enroll.
But, if this gambit is successful, wouldn’t that lead to millions of young people living without health insurance, and older and sick people paying higher health insurance premiums? And since Obama will never repeal his signature law, we’re talking about at least three years of intentionally inflicted misery, all for a shot at repealing Obamacare sometime in the future and replacing it with something that doesn’t even exist yet. What about the human toll?
We asked Dean Clancy, the vice president of FreedomWorks who is spearheading the effort. “Yes, we would like to hasten the collapse of the exchanges, but the purpose is not to drive up anybody’s insurance. The purpose is to get this law defunded or delayed so we can get to a patient-centered system,” Clancy said in a telephone conversation Thursday evening. “Without young people, Obamacare can’t work.”
Regardless of intention, wouldn’t it have the effect of driving up premiums? “I would not say it will drive up premiums for older Americans, I would say it will allow premiums to rise,” he said. “It would allow premiums to rise faster than they otherwise would if everybody bought the overpriced coverage, including the younger, healthier people.”
And what about young people who currently lack insurance – 90 percent of whom will qualify for subsidies in the Obamacare exchanges — what should they do? “You can get coverage outside the exchanges,” Clancy said, pointing to catastrophic care plans, healthcare savings accounts, or even Medicaid.
Even without the subsidies, which are only available through the exchanges, Clancy said, it would still be cheaper for young people to pay the fine and go their own way. “We encourage people to go for a health savings account with a high deductible policy, and to pay cash for repeat medical expenses. It’s a great way to save money and helps the system be more efficient,” he said. Plus, there’s always free-riding: “And they have to take you when you get sick, that’ll be in the law now.”
What if you get in a car accident or something and don’t have time to sign up for insurance? A pause as he consulted with the communications director, who was also on the call. “In that case, you may incur some costs,” Clancy acknowledged. “You may have to deal with, as people do today who don’t have funds available, paying it back in installments, or uncompensated care, or you can sign up for Medicaid.” In other words, you’re on your own. Most uninsured people can’t afford medical bills.
“Just to be clear, we’re telling people: ‘Do what you think is best for you,’” he added. “But understand that if Obamacare continues, you’re going to have to pay more and more to get less and less.”
For Judy Feder, a prominent health policy expert at Georgetown who supports the health reform law, this approach is “crazy.” “It’s not even killing the patient to save the patient — it would stick with killing the patient. They just want to kill the law, which doesn’t save anybody,” she said.
It’s hard to overstate how nihilistic this plan is. If the scheme succeeds — which it will not, since more than enough young people are saying they’ll purchase insurance through the exchange — not only would some people lack good health coverage they’d otherwise be entitled to, but costs would be higher on everyone else. “It is as outrageous as you say it is,” Feder confirmed.
This is basically the “Cloward–Piven strategy” Glenn Beck always rants about, but 1) applied to healthcare instead of the economy, and 2) real.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, August 2, 2013
“I Have A Black Friend”: Move Over Climate Deniers, Here Come Racism Deniers
So much for having a national conversation about race.
Conservative commentators claimed they’d welcome an honest discussion about the thorny issue in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict. But within moments last week of President Obama offering up his personal reflection about the trial and how the killing of Trayvon Martin had been viewed within the African-American community, right-wing voices responded with almost feral anger and resentment.
Among those most incensed by Obama’s thoughtful reflections was Jennifer Rubin, who writes for the Washington Post. She called Obama’s comments “disgusting.” Furious at America’s first black president for discussing the topic of race following a passionate trial verdict (he’s “not a good person,” Rubin stressed), the columnist lashed out at Obama for addressing a problem she claimed is no longer even relevant to the American experience.
Lamenting that Obama’s won’t allow people “get out of this racial archaeology,” Rubin claimed Americans are “held prisoners forever in a past that most Americans have never personally experienced.” (Fact: “Most Americans” haven’t personally experienced anti-Semitism, but that doesn’t stop Rubin from crusading against what she sees as outbreaks of it.)
Rather than addressing the substance of Obama’s comments about how “the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away,” Rubin simply dismissed the idea that racial prejudice has to be talked about, let alone discouraged, anymore. Like Prohibition and the Red Scare, racism apparently represents a distant chapter in America’s past.
Rubin is hardly alone in her proud and public denial.
That right-wing refutation has been found on the fringes of the conservative movement for years, if not decades. And skeptics have often tried to downplay the significance of the problem, insisting that liberals use the issue to attack their political opponents. But in recent weeks, much the way the denial of global warming has become a conservative cornerstone, the blanket denial of the existence of racism has been mainstreamed and embraced as an empirical far-right truth: Racism against minorities has been relegated to America’s past. It’s now filed under “archeology,” as Rubin put it, something historians and academics might study one day.
Noting the dubious trend, the Chicago Tribune‘s Rex Huppke recently quipped that saying racism is over is the new way of saying you have ‘a black friend.’
That desire to scrub racism from American society, or more precisely the desire to claim racism has been scrubbed from American society, has only accelerated since the completion of the Zimmerman trial. With a not-guilty verdict in hand, commentators have used that as further proof that Zimmerman did nothing wrong the night of the killing and that the whole controversy was a case of drummed-up anger over non-existent racism.
On his Forbes.com blog, Peter Ferrara of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based conservative think tank, reported “racist attitudes” no longer “have any power or influence in American society.”
None.
During an O’Reilly Factor discussion this week, National Review‘s Heath McDonald attacked the media for being dedicated to the “myth” that racism is “the thing holding blacks back.” On National Review‘s site, McDonald had dismissed as nonsense the claim that the U.S. “criminal-justice system discriminates against blacks.”
And Breitbart’s John Nolte announced on Twitter, “I like living in a country where a black president elected twice complains about racism.”
Yes, that really does capture the purposefully shallow depths of the conservative debate, or “discussion,” about race: Because there are numerous rich and successful black entertainers and athletes (and one U.S. president), that confirms the claims of the racism deniers. (So says Ted Nugent.)
But the fact that the person who now sits in the Oval Office experienced being following around in stores to make sure he didn’t steal things, and who heard car door locks click as he walked by, is indicative of the persistent problem of racism.
By the way, the irony here is thick: The claim that racism in America no longer exist often comes from the same right-wing sites whose comment sections for years have functioned as cauldrons of openly racist commentary and insults. (See the duplicitous ugliness here, here and here.)
Why the recent rise in deniers? Just as climate denial fits a larger political agenda, so too does the denial of racism. In the long term, the denial will likely be used as justification to wallow in even more name-calling and demagoguery by conservatives; to lash out at civil rights leaders as “race hustlers” and “pimps.” After all, they’re trying to eradicate something that doesn’t exist, right?
But it was the circumstances surrounding the Martin killing that forced the deniers to the forefront in the short term. As Orlando Sentinel columnist Beth Kassab wrote last year, there was “no good way for gun proponents to spin the death of an unarmed teenager.” Indeed, the Martin killing didn’t fit the far right’s usual narrative about violence and minorities and how white America is allegedly under physical assault from Obama’s violent African-American base.
So Martin became the conservative media target and the denial charge became central to the 16-month smear campaign against the victim, portraying him as courting a death wish via his allegedly thuggish behavior.
As Michelle Goldberg wrote for Salon last year when the conservative press began blaming the unarmed teenager for being shot, “some on the right are deeply invested in the idea that anti-black racism is no longer much of a problem in the United States, and certainly not a problem on the scale of false accusations of racism.” (Goldberg dubbed these advocates “anti-anti-racists.”)
Consequently, she wrote, “If you don’t want to believe that racism is a problem in the United States, it helps to believe that Martin had it coming.”
Today, a chorus of conservative voices insist racism isn’t a problem and that Martin had it coming.
By: Eric Boehlert, The Huffington Post, July 26, 2013
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