“Retreating Entirely Into Their Own Little World”: GOP Debate Flat-Earthers Would Rather Just Talk Among Themselves
The defining essence of today’s Republican Party is that it lives in its own reality with its own set of “facts.”
You know this well enough. On the planet most of us inhabit, huge tax cuts for the rich hurt the economy and compound the deficit. The Earth is warming, and man-made carbon emissions have a lot to do with it. Evolution is a fact that happened and is still happening. On GOPEarth, tax cuts for the rich help the economy and reduce the deficit. The Earth isn’t warming, and even if it were just a little, it’s nothing to do with us. Evolution is just a theory.
It’s all fantasy, and all promulgated partly out of deluded belief but mainly for the benefit of Republican politicians’ benefactors and shock troops—in the three cases above, for the über-rich, for energy and oil companies, and for religious-right voters. And because of the way discourse in a democratic society works, if one party decides that it believes and wants to peddle empirically untrue things, well, provided it gets enough people to believe and repeat those things, the rest of us have no choice but to take those arguments seriously and engage them and quarrel with them. So we waste a lot of time in this country “debating” things that in every other advanced democracy in the world are settled matters of fact.
But now Reince Priebus may be doing those of us on mother Earth a favor. With his astonishing admission Monday that anyone allowed to ask a question of a Republican presidential candidate at a debate ought to “care or give a rip about the Republican Party,” the GOP chairman is unwittingly hastening the arrival of the day when the flat-earthers can just talk among themselves and the rest of us don’t really have to pay attention.
It’s an incredible statement in the way it imposes a precondition of support for the party before a person is even allowed to ask a question. Now, there may be a reasonable role for ideological journalists to be on a debate stage. I’d love to participate in a Democratic debate. But not so I can lob them softballs. Rather, I’d ask them tough questions that it would never occur to Anderson Cooper to ask, because I’m immersed in liberal thought and policy debates in a way he isn’t, and I have a pretty strong sense of what kinds of questions might get them off their talking points. So there’s a role for that. But that of course is not what Priebus meant. He meant lickspittles.
On the surface, the Republican anger over the debates is about a series of somewhat picayune questions about format, like these, which were set forth in a letter from GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg to the networks (Will you commit that you won’t “show an empty podium after a break/describe how far away the bathrooms are”?)
While Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasich all said Monday that they would not sign the letter, even I would agree that Republicans have a couple of legitimate gripes on some of these format questions.
The format of having the top 10 (or 11) candidates debate and leaving the others to the kids’ table has been ridiculous from jump street. Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum, both of whom have actual policy knowledge, aren’t any less serious than Chris Christie and John Kasich just because they’re a point or two behind them but within the margin of error. From the start, it should have been two groups of eight or nine, randomly drawn from a hat (although, interestingly, the campaigns did not agree Sunday that this should be the practice going forward).
They’re right that the CNBC debate was chaotic. And they’re right that questions aren’t fairly distributed. Underlying these two problems, especially the latter one, is a hard economic fact that the networks won’t acknowledge and which Republican free-marketeers are unlikely to condemn. These debates, especially with Donald Trump in the picture, are far less about civic edification than they are about ratings and the ad rates that can be charged when Trump-scale audiences tune in who naturally enough want to see more of Trump than they do of Mike Huckabee. Did CNN expand that GOP debate to three tedious hours so the public would learn more, or so that the network could rake in one extra hour’s worth of ad revenue? Let’s not kid ourselves.
But at bottom, the Republican complaints about the debate process aren’t really about these format issues. They’re about GOP resentment that the questioners don’t share the candidates’ ideological presumptions and don’t see the debate as a PR opportunity for the party; which is to say that they’re about this insular reality that Republicans and conservatives have created for themselves in which everyone who doesn’t reflexively agree with a long list of litmus-test assumptions about the world, many of them provably untrue, is a liberal and an enemy of freedom and all the rest.
So now, with Priebus’s words Monday, they’re edging close to retreating into that reality in a way that would have been unimaginable a few years ago but that we may yet see. Picture this: Hillary Clinton wins the presidency. In 2019, Republicans start contemplating running against her and start thinking about primary debates. First off, they may not even have them at all (a blessing in a way, though not really a triumph for democracy). But if they do have them, is it far-fetched to think that there will be only two, and that they’ll be limited to, oh, the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Tea Party Network? After all, remember, it’s C-effing-NBC they’re mad at—the network that helped create the Tea Party! Remember also that Fox made them furious back in the summer, when Fox moderators asked tougher-than-expected questions. Pretty soon their own mothers won’t even be allowed to ask them questions (especially Jeb Bush’s).
Priebus doesn’t seem to have thought through one basic fact: If the Republican Party really sues the political media for a debate divorce, then the political media will be under decreasing obligation to take the party’s barmy positions seriously, and they can talk on their networks about their world, and the rest of us can talk in every other outlet about the real world. It’s sad, but not as sad as having to take all their whining seriously.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, November 3, 2015
“Reading The 2016 Tea Leaves”: GOP Candidates Shaping Up To Be No Match For Hillary Clinton
Pull up a chair and step into my political therapy and prediction parlor.
Jeb Bush, let’s start with you. It’s over. Seldom has the nation’s political class expected so much promise – and seen and heard so little – from a presidential contender.
On Aug. 31, in this space, I declared the former Florida governor “unelectable.” Few pundits and pollsters grasped that at the time. Except for Maureen Dowd, who just published a sharp-edged elegy for Jeb in The New York Times. She’s the leading observer of the Bushes in the wild in Washington, Florida, Texas and Maine.
All I knew was that Jeb had nothing smart, witty or winning to say. My friends and I were gobsmacked that there was a Bush we liked less than the warmongering George W. Bush, who left the country trashed just like his Yale fraternity house. Jeb’s dreary, dutiful campaign came across like peeling an onion and ending up in tears.
His frail father, the 41st president, recently restated the Bush philosophy in a note to Jeb: “Go win.” Letting down “Poppy” (George H.W. Bush’s nickname) will be the the unkindest cut for Jeb.
But entitlement and mediocrity don’t sell well a second time around the block. Clueless Jeb thought his last name was an asset and found no fault with “my brother.” That’s how he was raised in the competitive family jock compound, from mother’s milk on: Bushes win, whatever it takes. (Case in point: Florida in 2000.) Sorry, but he deserves to lose before the first ballot is cast for boring us silly.
Jeb feels doubly betrayed, first because the party could not save his place, his rightful first place in the race. Second, young Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida rebuked him in the last debate for making a snide remark about Rubio missing Senate votes. (Jeb managed to insult France, too.) That was utterly devastating moment for Bush, shaking up his blue-blooded order of things. Refusing to defer, Rubio met his mentor as an equal on the field of battle and drew blood. Anything but nimble, if Jeb can’t nail an opponent for missing votes (a cardinal sin), then let him be gone. In Donald Trump’s words: “You’re fired.”
Now it’s your turn, Sen. Rubio, the new media darling, because that’s how fickle we are. I’ve actually watched him in the Senate, when he shows up, and can tell you he is seen as a show horse, not a workhorse. That’s a quaint distinction, but it’s as if it were invented for Rubio, who has done virtually nothing of weight. There were high hopes in 2013 that he might build a bipartisan immigration bill, but he did not have the legislative chops to make that happen. Simply put, Rubio does not command enough respect among his 99 colleagues to do something big in a divided body. Lately, his open scorn for the job is hurting his Senate Q score even more.
Now comes Sen. Ted Cruz, another young, southern Republican in the running. He is probably the least-liked senator, known for his tea parties of one on the Senate floor and his insults and barbs across the aisle. He even “dissed” his own majority leader, Mitch McConnell, which is just not done in public. Cruz doesn’t care. He was a champion debater at Princeton and clearly loves politics as a blood sport. He’s also shrewd enough to cast his lot with Trump, who looks like the jovial Muffin Man next to Cruz.
Brighter and meaner than Rubio, still Cruz shares something important in common with him. They’re both children of Cuban immigrants. Fidel Castro’s influence still reaches down to the children of the exiled generation, who have dominated the political scene in Miami. They hold important seats in Congress, too, always a vehemently conservative coalition. And I mean, even more reactionary than your average elephant. Most prominent Cuban-Americans in national politics are still acting out in anger (or reacting) over the Castro revolution. That event happened more than 50 years ago, before Rubio and Cruz were born. Let’s move on, shall we?
It’s ironic that just as President Obama unlocks the door to diplomatic relations with Cuba, there are two candidates to succeed him that have been shaped by furious anti-Castro feeling as an article of political faith. It would be sad if this hostility reached the level of the White House.
To wrap up, Vice President Joe Biden was wise not to go to the deep end of the pool and run for president for a third time. He will be 73 this month. While many swooned for him, fellow scribes, I wrote weeks ago the likable Biden was not really electable, either. I won’t go into all that again.
Let me count the most important reason Biden was right – getting in history’s way. They call the zeitgeist wind Hillary Clinton, and my muse is reading it right so far. Let’s say this from the parlor: She is going to blow them all away.
By: Jamie Stiehm, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, November 2, 2015
“Trouble In The Ranks”: GOP Debate Revolt Falls Apart
John Kasich, Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie have all refused to sign the GOP letter proposing debate changes, their campaigns said Monday night.
“We are declining to sign the letter,” Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf told The Daily Beast. “We’re happy the group decided to agree with us to not alter the Fox debate. As the governor of Ohio he is used to answering tough questions all the time.”
Schrimpf clarified that by “group,” he meant all the representatives for the campaigns in attendance at the meeting. He did not respond when asked who all was in attendance.
When reached for comment, Christie’s communications director Samantha Smith pointed The Daily Beast to comments Christie made on Fox & Friends this morning. “Stop complaining,” Christie said. “Do me a favor, set up a stage, put podiums up there, and let’s just go. Okay?”
Carly Fiorina didn’t even attend the meeting on Sunday night. Deputy Communications Director Sarah Isgur Flores shared an email with the Daily Beast that she sent to Ben Ginsberg, the lawyer running the closed door session. Flores claims that they skipped the meeting and opted for dinner at Applebee’s instead.
“Our campaign choose not to attend your closed door meeting last night,” Flores wrote. “We had dinner at the Applebee’s in Pella, Iowa instead.
“These debates are an important chance for voters to see conservative candidates under pressure and over time. We have consistently and successfully discussed our concerns with the networks and the voters–and not behind closed doors like the political class seems to like to do. We encourage each of the campaigns addressed here to do the same.
“As we have expressed publicly, we encourage the RNC to sanction conservative networks such as the Blaze and One America News to host and moderate a debate. We do not care whether it’s 67 degrees or our green room isn’t as plush as another candidate.
“Team Carly will not be signing this letter.”
The letter features stipulations for future debates, including guaranteed opening and closing statements of at least 30 seconds for each candidate. It threatens that candidates will back out of debates if the demands are not met. Donald Trump similarly rejected the letter earlier today, reportedly opting to negotiate directly with the television networks in question.
Ben Carson’s campaign, which was the principal architect of the meeting, has not responded to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
By: Gideon Resnick, The Daily Beast, November 2, 2015
“Pursuing An All-Purpose Teflon Uniform”: Rubio Assaults The MSM, Which Loves Him
Speaking of Marco Rubio… a big part of his boffo performance at the CNBC debate the other night was his claim that the MSM had become a “Democratic Super-PAC,” with the supposed evidence being its cover-up of HRC “lies” about her behavior after Benghazi! “exposed” by Trey Gowdy’s committee. Yea, verily, the MSM went “around saying it was the greatest week in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”
Now before you even unpack this pack of–well, mischaracterizations–it’s worth noting in passing that it wasn’t just the MSM that adjudged HRC’s appearance before the Benghazi! Committee as a triumph for her over her inquisitors; conservative commentators generally agreed.
Beyond that, as WaPo fact-checker Glenn Kessler concluded, Rubio, not HRC, is the one with the Pinnochios on this subject.
After untangling and refuting Rubio’s claims, Greg Sargent has a pungent interpretation of what Rubio is trying to accomplish here:
It’s important to understand that the claim that the hearing is what unmasked Clinton’s “lie” is crucial to the story Rubio is trying to tell, a tale told to the GOP base…. The narrative that the media deliberately obscured this on Clinton’s behalf helps discredit media scrutiny of Rubio’s own distortions, and that scrutiny will in turn likely be converted into evidence that Rubio poses a dire threat to Clinton — the liberal media perceives this threat, and thus wants to tear him down. But the highest-profile foundational claim Rubio has thus far offered to support this narrative structure just doesn’t hold up.
In other words, Rubio’s pursuing an all-purpose teflon uniform against any slings and arrows that come his way from the MSM, which is obviously shilling for Hil. But here’s the thing: Best I can tell, at this very moment the MSM is busy all but crowning Rubio the Republican nominee. So why is he all but calling them Enemies of Freedom? It could be that GOP rank-and-file media hatred has assumed quasi-religious proportions, and he’s just exploiting it. Or maybe there really is some dirt on Rubio that could soon come out.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, October 30, 2015
“It Never Pays To Give Bullies What They Want”: Will The Press Recognize The Existential Threat And Fight Back, Or Buckle Under?
It should astonish even the jaded that Republicans are calling CNBC, that stodgy home of supply-side Wall Street cheerleading, an agent of the left.
Still apoplectic at being asked some basic questions at the debate, Republican candidates are doubling down on their freakout.
Ted Cruz is flat-out calling CNBC debate moderators “left-wing operatives” and demanding that right-wing radio hosts moderate their debates, instead.
Donald Trump, who openly lied during the debate about what is on his own website, called debate moderator John Harwood a “dope” and a “fool.”
All of this after Republican candidates spewed forth one of the most embarrassing explosion of lies ever witnessed during a television presidential debate.
The press is facing an existential threat. With Republicans increasingly unashamed to tell grandiose lies and respond to any press criticism with derogatory insults and whines about media bias as well as blackmail threats to cancel appearances if the questions are too tough, the press must decide how to respond on two fronts. First, it must decide how to present an objective face while acknowledging that both sides do not, in fact, behave equally badly. Second, it must determine whether it will continue to ask the tough questions that need answers regardless of the threats made by the GOP, or whether it will meekly submit to the demands for kid-glove treatment.
If the press chooses to assuage and give comfort to the GOP, it will lose what little credibility it has left. The Republican base will never accept mainstream journalists as fair arbiters–but the rest of us will lose what little respect we still have for them. If the press stands up to the bullies and calls out GOP tactics and untruths for what they are, they will gain in respect what they lose from conservative hatemongers in the perceived objectivity department.
The choice is clear: stand strong and call out the lies as they are, or fall further into the abyss as the Republican Party ramps up its threats and insults. It never pays to give a bully what they want, unless the bully has absolute power over you. The GOP does not hold that sort of power over the press. Indeed, the GOP has far more to fear from the press than the other way around.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, November 1.2015
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