The Paul Ryan Budget: Why The GOP Is Still The Party Of The Rich
On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wisc.) released the House GOP budget, which was greeted with no small amount of incredulity for being almost exactly the same as the economic platform that he and Mitt Romney ran on in 2012 — a platform that was roundly rejected by voters who decided to go with President Obama’s proposals instead. But Ryan, retreating into rhetorical vagueness, claims to see the matter differently. “Are a lot of these solutions very popular, and did we win these arguments in the campaign?” he said. “Some of us think so.”
As has been recounted in depth elsewhere, the Ryan budget would, in all likelihood, lead to massive cuts in aid for the poor, while dramatically reducing tax rates for the wealthy. It’s hard to say with any certainty because, as Dana Milbank at The Washington Post puts it, “There are so many blanks in Ryan’s budget that it could be a Mad Libs exercise.” However, an independent analysis last year of the Ryan-Romney plan, which is similar in structure, showed that the math doesn’t add up without draconian spending cuts and closing tax loopholes for the middle class.
The smart money is that Ryan doesn’t believe his plan has a chance of passing a Democratic-controlled Senate, let alone Obama’s desk. It changes Medicare into a voucher program, strips Medicaid of a guaranteed source of federal funding, and repeals ObamaCare. “In a real way the whole thing is a sop to rank and file conservatives who haven’t come to grips with that reality,” say Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo.
Indeed, Ryan may have angered the right wing by including the fiscal cliff deal to raise taxes on the wealthy as part of his budget projections. “You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage,” says Joshua Green at Bloomberg Businessweek, “but some conservatives don’t agree that Ryan’s budget is a shockingly right-wing ‘lightning rod’ proposal — they think it’s too liberal. And they’re deeply disillusioned by what they view as Ryan’s breaking faith with the conservative movement.”
But even if Ryan’s budget dies in Congress, the fact of the matter is that it is out there, outlining the Republican Party’s economic and fiscal priorities. “Budgets are statements of values,” writes Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic. “And with this budget, Ryan, once again, has revealed what Republican values are: Cutting taxes, primarily to benefit the wealthy, while savaging programs on which the poorest Americans rely.”
In the end, with Ryan’s budget, it will only be that much harder for the Republican Party to shed its image as the party of the rich, a reform that several conservative commentators have argued is absolutely essential to winning back power. Indeed, the Ryan budget shows that Republican officials are gambling that a makeover on immigration and social issues may be enough to turn the tide — a theory that Democrats will surely be glad to test in the next election.
By: Ryu Spaeth, The Week, March 12, 2013
“Politics Overwhelming Policy”: It’s Good Politics To Oppose The Black Guy In The White House
There’s a growing number of Republican-run states accepting Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, at least at the gubernatorial level, but South Carolina isn’t one of them. Gov. Nikki Haley (R) ruled out the possibility months ago, despite the pleas of South Carolina hospital administrators and public-health officials.
In fact, physicians in South Carolina are still hoping to change the state’s policy against Medicaid expansion, lobbying legislators this week on a White Coat Day organized by the South Carolina Hospital Association. Will it succeed? Consider the take of one insider.
Rep. Kris Crawford, a Republican from Florence and also an emergency room doctor, supports the expansion but expects the Republican caucus to vote as a block against the Medicaid expansion.
“The politics are going to overwhelm the policy. It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now, especially for the Republican Party,” Crawford said.
As it turns out, “the politics” were so successful in “overwhelming the policy” that Crawford himself voted against the policy he said he supports.
Kris Crawford, a Florence emergency room doctor, says he thinks South Carolina should accept billions of federal dollars to help pay the health care costs for poor people — also known as Obamacare.
There are only two problems: Crawford is a Republican, and he is a member of the state House of Representatives. So on Tuesday, when it was time to vote on whether to accept the money, Crawford voted not to accept it.
For what it’s worth, Crawford still supports Medicaid expansion as part of “Obamacare,” and regrets the way his party is concerned more about the “political argument” than the “policy discussion.”
So why did he vote with his party? Crawford cited procedural concerns, and wants the issue to be considered outside the state budget process. He intends to propose separate legislation later this year.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 14, 2013
“Deception And Self-Deception”: The Beatings Will Continue For The GOP Until Morale Improves
Some of you may recall that the day after last November’s elections, I published a fairly extensive piece at TNR answering the question of whether a chastened Republican Party would now proceed to undertake an internal criticism-and-self-criticism process similar to that which among Democrats led to the rise of Bill Clinton and his two consecutive presidential victories:
The short answer is “no.” (And I’m tempted to say the long answer is “Hell, no!”)
I then went through the various factors that led to the “New Democrat” movement in the Donkey Party–particularly the leadership of elected officials and a mass base for something different–and how they were all largely missing in the contemporary GOP.
Today at the Daily Beast a guy with a much better pedigree than mine for making these comparisons has weighed in on the subject: Progressive Policy Institute president and Democratic Leadership Council co-founder Will Marshall. And though he goes into far greater detail than I did of the conditions that created the DLC and the Clinton presidency, he reaches the same conclusion:
[E]lected Republicans seem AWOL in the fight to take back their party. On the contrary, House Republicans seem as intransigent as ever, even as polls show that Americans increasingly blame them for the fiscal impasse in Washington.
This underscores the key difference between Democrats in 1989 and Republicans in 2013. The DLC spoke to, and for, a Democratic rank and file that was considerably more moderate than [the] party establishment. For Republicans, however, the “base” is the problem, not the solution. Radicalism rises from the grass roots. The Tea Party-Club for Growth axis is still eager to punish ideological deviation, threatening to “primary” GOP officeholders who show the slightest inclination toward compromise. And it’s not just intimidation: thanks to a combination of geographic sorting and gerrymandering, many House Republicans can truthfully claim to be faithfully representing their constituents who sent them to Washington to pull down the Temple, not to do deals with Democrats. That’s why the House stands for now at least as the Proud Tower of unbending right-wing orthodoxy.
With the “base” and elected officials (not to mention the vast noise machine of activists and gabbers) alike embracing every available excuse for maintaining the GOP’s ideological totems, the handful of wonks and scribblers calling for a fundamental reexamination of those totems are laughably outgunned. Marshall doesn’t specifically note the complicity of the MSM in mis-describing the various “rebranding” and “better messaging” projects of the GOP as something far more consequential than they actually are. But that, too, encourages the deception and self-deception that keeps Republicans from facing the music, and helps, as Marshall does observe, prevent a divided federal government from functioning on a whole host of issues. Thus:
[I]t will probably take more GOP losses to convince conservatives that they need to build majorities within an actually existing America, not the America of their dreams.
Listen to the speakers at CPAC the next three days, and ask yourself if you hear any serious talk of conservatism itself being a political problem. I’d be shocked if you do. These people just need the honesty that comes with chronic defeat. That won’t be easy for those who still think of Barry Goldwater’s calamitous loss in 1964 as a moral victory.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 14, 2013
“CPAC’s Guest List”: The New March Madness That Still Relies On Extremism And Extremists
It’s getting very hard to keep track of who is and is not allowed in the conservative movement these days. The issue of how much smaller the tent is getting always comes to a head at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, at which warring factions fight to keep each other off the guest list. In 2011, prominent anti-gay groups boycotted because the gay Republicans of GOProud were allowed to cosponsor the event. Last year, GOProud was banned but white nationalists and anti-Muslim extremists were allowed.
The guest list for this week’s conference is even more byzantine. Following last year’s bad publicity, the white nationalists have been disinvited. And anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller has been denied a panel slot, which she claims is because CPAC’s organizers are “enforcing the Sharia.” You know things are getting bad when CPAC has fallen to Sharia.
But excluding white nationalists and an anti-Muslim extremist doesn’t mean that CPAC has suddenly become a friendly and open-minded place. This year, gay groups did get a consolation prize: a rogue, unofficial panel “A Rainbow on the Right.” But don’t look for any rainbows inside — the conference still bars gay Republican groups from its official proceedings. And even without Pamela Geller, the conference will keep its strong anti-Islam tilt, hosting speakers who routinely attack American Muslims. And it’s not just gays and Muslims. New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who vetoed a marriage equality bill in his state, has been deemed too liberal to speak at the CPAC. So has Virginia’s Gov. Bob “Transvaginal Ultrasound” McDonnell, who apparently became some sort of leftist radical when he agreed to raise taxes to fund his state’s highways.
So who was conservative enough to make the cut for CPAC? War on Christmas analyst Sarah Palin, unhinged former congressman Allen West, and orange birther crusader Donald Trump, for starters. Mitt Romney has also been invited — presumably holding on to the right-wing makeover he underwent for his presidential campaign — though he loses top billing to his former running mate Rep. Paul Ryan.
In many ways, CPAC is caught in exactly the same bind as the Republican Party. The party’s leaders know that to survive in the long-term it must moderate its positions and expand its base. But they’re still in the grips of an extremist fringe that just won’t let that happen. Last year, fringe candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock helped sink the GOP’s hopes of gaining seats in the Senate. This year, strategist Karl Rove has threatened to launch primary challenges against fringe candidates in an effort to keep the party relevant. But in doing so, he’s provoked the anger of the Tea Party, whose leaders correctly note that they’re the only reason the GOP has any power at all right now.
This year’s CPAC can be seen as a preview of the 2016 Republican presidential primary. The party’s main movers and shakers are trying to keep their base happy by turning away leaders like McDonnell and Christie who have deviated, in however small a way, from the party line. But they’re also trying to hide some of the most disturbing aspects of their party’s fringe.
McDonnell got snubbed for daring to fund a transportation bill. In his place, CPAC will highlight Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who led the legal charge against the Affordable Care Act and who is running to be McDonnell’s successor. White nationalists and Pamela Geller were ousted for being too far off the fringe, but Donald Trump, who’s devoted himself to claiming that the nation’s first black president isn’t a real American, is a highlighted speaker.
As hard as CPAC’s organizers may try, their guest list is still a mess. But the problem isn’t just the guest list, it’s what they’re serving. They’re trying to represent a movement — and a party — that wants the American people to think they got the message while still relying on extremists and insisting on a rigid orthodoxy. That’s a tall order for any party. And they can’t have it both ways.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post Blog, March 13, 2013
“Poetic Justice”: How A Bartender Helped Decide The 2012 Election
If Mitt Romney had taken a moment to thank the wait staff at a Boca Raton fundraiser last year, he may now be president, or at least could have removed one of his biggest obstacles to the White House: the so-called 47 percent tape that clouded the last two months of the race.
The anonymous person who filmed the tape turns out to be a bartender with a local catering company who is coming forward now that the election is over. He’ll reveal his identity tomorrow in an hour-long interview on “The Ed Show” on MSNBC, but in an interview with the Huffington Post Tuesday night, he suggested that he was disappointed that Romney never thanked the wait staff, as Bill Clinton had years before at a different event the same bartender happened to staff. Ryan Grim and Jason Cherkis report:
Romney, of course, did not speak to any of the staff, bussers or waiters. He was late to the event, and rushed out. He told his dinner guests that the event was off the record, but never bothered to repeat the admonition to the people working there.
One of them had brought along a Canon camera. He set it on the bar and hit the record button. The bartender said he never planned to distribute the video. But after Romney spoke, the man said he felt he had no choice.
The tape came to define Romney and was the fodder for several ads, giving the candidate a noticeable dip in the polls. Even when he recovered after Obama’s disastrous debate performance in Denver, the tape remained a weight around his neck.
Romney probably still would have lost without the tape, and maybe the bartender would still have revealed the video if Romney came back and shook his hand, but there’s some poetic justice in the idea of an hourly worker bringing down a presidential candidate for dismissing the importance of his vote.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, March 13, 2013
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