“Loons And Wackos”: In GOP Civil War, It’s Limbaugh vs The Consultants
The last time we checked in with the post-election GOP civil war, Herman Cain was threatening to form a new party to compete with the GOP, Bill Kristol sparked a schism over tax increases, and Grover Norquist, the high priest of anti-tax dogma, was losing his grip on congressional Republicans.
This week, the Republican soul searching and polite recriminations via anonymous quote exploded into an all-out war of words between representatives of two wings of the party that have never gotten along, but largely kept quiet for the good of the conservative cause.
In one corner are the consultants, Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 campaign, and Mike Murphy, who advised Mitt Romney. In the other corner is Rush Limbaugh, the embodiment of the conservative id in human form. We don’t have a dog in this fight as there’s blood on both of their hands, so just sit back and enjoy.
Schmidt threw the first punch in this battle on “Meet the Press” with a left, left combo strike against the right flank of his party. GOP leaders have “succumbed to the base,” he said last Sunday, arguing that “to too many swing voters in the country, when you hear the word ‘conservative’ now, they think of loons and wackos.” As if that weren’t enough, when host David Gregory played a clip of Limbaugh, Schmidt took the bait. “Our elected leaders are scared to death of the conservative entertainment complex, the shrill and divisive voices that are bombastic and broadcasting out into the homes,” he said in a clear reference to the radio host.
A week later on the same show, Murphy tagged in and continued the pummeling, this time calling out Limbaugh by name. “If we don’t modernize conservatism, we can go extinct … we’ve got to get kind of a party view of America that’s not right out of Rush Limbaugh’s dream journal,” Murphy said. He continued to deliver the blows:
“We alienate young voters because of gay marriage, we have a policy problem. We alienate Latinos — the fastest growing voter group in the country, because of our fetish on so-called amnesty, when we should be for a path to immigration. And we’ve lost our connection to middle-class economics. We also have an operative class and unfortunately a lot of which is incompetent … The biggest problem Mitt Romney had was the Republican primary. That’s what’s driving the Republican brand right now to a disaster.”
It’s a rather stunning rebuke from someone who was a top strategist to the Republican Party’s standard bearer just a few weeks ago. And it’s a surprisingly earnest, clear-eyed diagnosis of the party’s problem — its policy — from a leader in a party that has spent a lot of time after the election talking about superficial fixes that won’t change much. (That said, it’s more than a little ironic for him to attack an operative class that doesn’t know how to win considering that he … is an operative who just lost.)
Limbaugh didn’t hesitate to fire back. “What, folks, did I or any of you have to do with the Republican primary? Did not Murphy get the candidate he wanted?” the radio host said Monday. Indeed, Limbaugh is right, at least in that he was never a fan of Romney during the GOP primary.
“All these consultants, do you realize they get rich no matter who wins or loses? Little-known secret,” Limbaugh said (right again). “We need to get rid of conservatism, is what is he’s saying. We need to get rid of all these people shouting stupid conservative stuff,” the radio host added.
Limbaugh then went after Schmidt personally, saying, “I don’t know where Schmidt has a victory to hang his hat on.”
Yesterday, he also put to bed any rumors that he would support tax increases, as he had hinted at earlier.
Schmidt’s membership card to Limbaugh’s conservative movement was revoked four years ago after McCain’s loss and when Sarah Palin seemed to make it her mission to destroy him. So it’s not particularly surprising that he would tangle with Limbaugh. But the addition of Murphy, and the openness and viciousness of the conflict, illuminates the front lines in the civil war as the party tries to remake itself for future elections.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, November 21, 2012
“Good Riddance”: It Wouldn’t Be A burden For The Rest Of The Country If Texas, Alabama And Florida Seceded
As the holidays approach, many of us are faced with a seasonal conundrum: the case of some annoying relative who persists in making various demands on the holiday celebrations (“I won’t come if you serve murdered meat at Thanksgiving!”‘ or “I’m not coming if you invite my ex’s new spouse; they’ve only been married 22 years”). If, as the brilliant novelist Mary Karr has observed, a dysfunctional family is a family with more than one person in it, many of us are faced with these little annual theatrics. And we wonder whether to appease—yet again—or draw the line in the mashed potatoes for once and for all.
And so perhaps it’s time to say this to those residents of (mostly southern) states filing petitions to secede from the United States: Oh, just go, then.
In Alabama, “Derrick B.” has filed papers saying that “We petition the Obama Administration to peacefully grant the State of Alabama to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own new government.” So far, the document has attracted 4,426 signatures, reports al.com. (Oh, and way to stand behind your convictions, Derrick No-Last-Name.)
Would this be such a burden for the rest of the country? It’s not like Alabama is going to be able to mount a military assault against its new foreign neighbor. They would be literally surrounded—a situation that could at once make them feel more secure and more ill at ease. One thing impoverished Alabama would lose is all that cash the federal government gives to the state in the form of Medicaid, food stamps, and other monies. But you really want to go? Godspeed, Alabama.
Then there’s Texas, which was in the news not long ago because a local judge, Tom Head, speculated that there would be civil war if President Barack Obama won re-election, and wondered if he’d have to call out the militia. Perhaps Texans think that because their state is so big, they could make it on their own. Go ahead; it will be entertaining to see Texas deal with southern border issues without federal money or guidance. And even more fun when Texans themselves will have to get passports to come to the United States. Oh—by the way, Texan secessionists, if you manage to come up north and work off the books, you won’t get Social Security or even a living wage. Good luck avoiding the immigration authorities.
And Florida, too, has its secession-minded citizens. Think we’ll miss you, do you? We’re all getting a little tired of your election dramas, made even more irritating this year when Florida wasn’t necessary to determine the winner of the presidential election. And what, exactly, do you think you can export—hurricanes? Don’t forget that international issues—such as refugees coming from Haiti and Latin America—get a little more complicated and expensive when you don’t have the political and financial weight of the United States behind you. But if Floridians can’t bear the thought of a second Obama term, buh-bye.
We live in a country with diverse political opinions, as well as a diverse racial and ethnic makeup. It’s logical that a number of people might be deeply disappointed that their candidate did not win. It is not logical to be so convinced that American civilization as we know it will dissolve that one would actually advocate dissolving the union itself. But hey, if things are that bad, take the advice of the candidate who came in second in the presidential contest. Just self-deport.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, November 12, 2012
“Life Of The Party”: Todd Akin, A Fine Representative Of The Republican Party Of Today
uesday morning, on a tip from American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal PAC that conducts opposition research on Republicans, I clipped and posted videos for Slate’s Double X blog demonstrating some of the paranoid flights of fancy and routine misogyny that have peppered Todd Akin’s speeches on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Akin, who is challenging Democrat Claire McCaskill for her Missouri Senate seat, became infamous after he said that, based on no science whatsoever, pregnancies rarely happen in the case of “legitimate rape.” That remark was hardly out of character; he is indeed every inch the misogynist and denier of reality that his comment suggests.
The videos prove that Akin is wholly the product of the movement conservatism that controls the Republican Party. While he may be a bit freer of tongue than many Republicans, his basic premises don’t differ from theirs: Feminism is evil. Reality can be denied if it conflicts with ideology. Conservatives are the real victims of this shifting, politically correct America, not the various groups of people they oppress and demonize.
In one of the clips, Akin goes on at length comparing abortion providers to terrorists:
The terrorist is a terrorist, and what does that mean? Well, it means he wants to compel you into doing something because you’re so afraid of him. That’s not very similar, is it, to what we believe, that God gives people the right to life and then the right to liberty. The right to liberty is to be able to follow your own conscience without being terrorized by some opponent. So it is no big surprise that we fight the terrorists, because they are fundamentally un-American. And yet we have terrorists in our own culture called abortionists.
Akin is right that terrorists are people who use violence and the threat of it to try to bend people to their political will. The FBI defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” Of course, his accusation that this is what abortion providers do makes no sense. Abortion providers don’t commit acts of violence to get their way. They don’t try to intimidate or coerce anyone. They simply hang out a shingle and invite women who want abortions to come to them. Abortion providers, after all, work in the service of choice.
That doesn’t mean the abortion debate is free of terrorism or other forms of harassment and coercion by those who want people to comply with their political demands. Except that Akin has the roles reversed. Far from being the terrorists in this equation, abortion providers are the victims. Every week, providers in this country have to endure crowds harassing them in front of their clinics under the guise of “protest.” Many providers are stalked by anti-choicers. Their homes are targeted by picketers. “Wanted” posters with their pictures and identifying information have been distributed among anti-choice activists. One doctor who indicated that she planned to provide abortion in the future faced death threats. Clinics are vandalized, broken into, and set on fire. A clinic landlord had to deal with anti-choicers stalking his daughter at her middle school. Doctors have been injured and killed at the hands of right-wing terrorists, most recently in 2009 when George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions, was shot to death at his church in Kansas.
Such coercive actions unfortunately work. Tiller’s clinic shut its doors after he was assassinated. Just this week, a Brooklyn abortion clinic closed because the harassment from anti-choice obsessives had become too much for both the workers and the patients. A study published this month in the journal Contraception demonstrates a correlation between anti-choice harassment and state legislatures passing abortion restrictions. While no causal relationship has been determined, the study does show that aggressive street tactics contribute to an overall atmosphere that makes it hard for providers to operate. As Akin noted later in his remarks, the number of abortion providers has declined in this country. It’s not because they are terrorists, as Akin supposes. It’s because they’re terrorized.
Akin cannot be unaware of this. He has admitted to being arrested for illegally blockading a clinic and trying to physically force women not to exercise their legal right to abortion, which means he was using unlawful force. The victims? Abortion providers and their patients. In 1995, Akin openly praised the 1st Missouri Volunteers, who were headed for a time by Tim Dreste, an anti-abortion activist who led a series of invasions of abortion clinics in 1988. There’s no reason to participate in and support aggressive and often illegal actions against abortion providers unless your intention is to scare them out of business.
Akin’s move of flipping the role of victim and oppressor may sound extreme, but it’s another example of what has become one of the most common rhetorical strategies on the right. In the topsy-turvy world of right-wing rhetoric, billionaires are hapless victims mercilessly abused by the working class. White people are victimized by affirmative action and black people demanding “reparations.” Men are marginalized by evil “feminazis,” and gay people aren’t asking for rights but are trying to destroy “traditional marriage.” In the funhouse mirror of reality that is the conservative worldview, why not just take it to the next level and reverse the role of the terrorist and the victim? The problem with Akin is not that he’s an extremist but that he’s a fine representation of the Republican Party of today.
By: Amanda Marcotte, The American Prospect, October 2, 2012
“Promoting Untrue Choice”: Paul Ryan’s Health Care Proposal Would Shrink The Medicare Doctor Pool
The federal budget proposed by Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, extols the benefits of “promoting true choice” for Medicare beneficiaries.
In truth, though, the Ryan plan would substantially reduce choice for many people on Medicare — by cutting them off from their current doctors.
Doctors see Medicare patients, despite the relatively low payments they receive for doing so, partly because Medicare represents such a large share of the health-care market.
If a substantial number of beneficiaries moved out of Medicare and into private plans, as Ryan proposes, doctors would have much less incentive to see Medicare patients. And the elderly who want to remain in traditional Medicare would risk being stranded.
The evidence suggests that, in time, this problem could well affect a large share of Medicare beneficiaries. To put that evidence in context, though, it helps to first review the history of the Ryan plan.
The proposal has changed since it was presented in 2011. In the original version, traditional Medicare was eventually to be replaced in its entirety by private plans. The Congressional Budget Office found that this shift would raise health-care costs drastically because the private plans wouldn’t be large enough to enjoy Medicare’s leverage in negotiating prices with hospitals and other large providers. The savings that private plans could achieve because beneficiaries would share more of the costs, and therefore economize more, would be more than offset by that loss of leverage — and by the private plans’ higher overhead and need to turn a profit.
Ryan Revision
In response to the devastating CBO report, Ryan revised his proposal. Under Ryan 2.0, private plans would co-exist with traditional Medicare. (The CBO hasn’t fully evaluated the revised plan yet.)
Many supporters argue that the new plan can’t be as big a problem as the old one, since beneficiaries could always choose to remain in traditional Medicare. In health care, however, choice isn’t always innocuous — and can sometimes be harmful.
I have previously described two downsides to expanding private plans in Medicare. First, it would undercut Medicare’s ability to help move the payment system away from fee-for- service reimbursement and toward payments based on value, because no private plan is large enough to accomplish that shift by itself. Second, the mechanism for adjusting premiums to even out the health risks of individual beneficiaries is far from perfect, so plans can easily game the system, raising total costs. In effect, the plans would end up being overpaid.
The reduced choice of doctors for those who remain in traditional Medicare is a third adverse consequence of moving beneficiaries out of the program.
Currently, Medicare beneficiaries almost universally enjoy excellent access to doctors. And the great majority of beneficiaries never have to wait long for a routine appointment, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has found. Roughly 90 percent of doctors accept new Medicare patients.
Doctors provide this access even though they are reimbursed by Medicare at rates that are only about 80 percent of commercial rates — partly because Medicare is such a large share of the market. Which brings us to the concern about the Ryan plan.
Medicare Doctors
How important is Medicare’s market share in influencing physician participation? The evidence is limited, but the best study to date suggests it is significant. In the 1990s, Peter Damiano, Elizabeth Momany, Jean Willard and Gerald Jogerst, all associated with the University of Iowa, surveyed Iowa physicians and examined variation among counties. They found that for each percentage-point increase in the share of Medicare beneficiaries in a county’s population, doctors were 16 percent more likely to accept patients on Medicare. The only other study I know of on this topic, an unpublished analysis by Matthew Eisenberg of Carnegie Mellon University, also found an effect from Medicare’s market share, albeit one that was substantially smaller than the one Damiano and his colleagues found.
About 10 percent of the U.S. population is now enrolled in traditional Medicare, and an additional 5 percent has private Medicare plans. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the Ryan plan would cause another 5 percent of the population to shift, and to be conservative let’s cut in half the Damiano estimate of the impact from that reduction in Medicare’s market share. Then the chance that a doctor is willing to see traditional Medicare patients would be expected to decline by a whopping 40 percent. The share of doctors accepting Medicare would fall from about 90 percent to 54 percent.
To be even more conservative, let’s average the reduced Damiano estimate (already been cut in half and applied only to today’s market share rather than the higher one that will exist in the future when more people are on Medicare) with the Eisenberg estimate. Still, about 20 percent of doctors would be expected to stop accepting Medicare patients.
Supporters of the Ryan approach might argue that fewer people would shift into the private plans, so the impact would not be that great. After all, the existing Medicare program already offers Medicare Advantage plans, so perhaps anyone who wants private insurance already has it. But then, what is the point of Ryan’s Medicare reform?
Another defense might be that the government could simply raise doctor-reimbursement rates to encourage providers to continue treating a shrinking population of traditional Medicare patients. And that’s true. However, Ryan has not included the extra cost in his budget.
So, which is it, Mr. Ryan? Will your plan cause Medicare beneficiaries to lose access to their doctors, or are your budget numbers too rosy because you haven’t counted the extra payments needed to keep doctors in the program?
By: Peter Orszag, Council on Foreign Policy, Business Insider, September 24, 2012
“Michele Bachmann In Danger”: The Voters May Just Pray Her Away
Despite her national fan base and a massive war chest, Rep. Michele Bachmann may be in more danger than most suspect, with a new poll showing her lead diminished to just 2 points. Independent voters have swung against her by nearly 20 points in just two months, from a 4 percent advantage to a 15 point disadvantage. The internal poll, conducted by Democratic pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner at the behest of Democrat Jim Graves’ campaign and shared with Salon, shows that Bachmann’s favorability rating has tumbled since their last survey in mid-June, and finds Graves gaining ground with independents as his name recognition grows.
Overall, the poll shows Bachmann leading Graves 48-46 percent, within the margin of error. The race has moved significantly among independents, with a 20-point net shift toward Graves, from a 41-45 percent disadvantage in June to a 52-37 percent lead now. Among independents, Bachmann’s favorability rating has slipped 4 points while her unfavorability rating has jumped 7 points. Overall, she’s viewed mostly negatively. Among all voters, 40 percent give her a positive job rating, while a sizable 57 percent give her a negative one, with a plurality of 35 percent giving the most negative answer possible — “poor.”
Graves’ campaign manager (and son) Adam Graves told Salon that the numbers show his candidate is well positioned to beat Bachmann. “Obviously, we’re very excited about it. The first thing that’s notable is that obviously her recent comments, the stories that she’s created for herself, have really hurt her among folks in the middle,” he said. Bachmann, who had tried to keep a lower profile after aborting her presidential bid, grabbed headlines this summer for her implication that Muslims in the U.S. government may be secret agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.
As we argued last month, Graves has the best shot at beating Bachmann of any Democrat since the congresswoman was first elected in 2006, thanks in large part to the absence of a third-party candidate. In previous races, those candidates have captured as much as 10 percent of the vote, siphoning votes away from the challenger. While some observers were skeptical that much of that 10 percent would break toward a Democrat, the Graves campaign said the new poll shows clearly that that fear has not materialized, as independents are moving toward its candidate.
The poll also show that Graves’ name ID in the district has jumped 20 points, though he’s still largely unknown at 38 percent. Meanwhile, Bachmann is known by 99 percent of voters. That will make it harder for Bachmann to change people’s perceptions about her, while Graves should be able to influence people who do not yet have an opinion of him. “If every time we pick up 20 percent on voter ID, we pick up 20 percent of the independents, then by the time we’ve reached a place where we’re happy with 80 percent ID or whatever, we realize that we’re going to be in a position to win,” Adam Graves said. ”This race is neck-and-neck.”
There’s been no other public polling of the district, though it’s reasonable to assume that the Bachmann campaign has commissioned its own surveys. The fact that none have been released suggests that Bachmann’s numbers also do not bode well for her. Meanwhile, she underperformed in her Republican primary last month.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, September 10, 2012
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