If Newt Doesn’t Implode, Could the GOP Stop Him?
One question posed by the bizarre rise of Newt Gingrich is whether or not he will implode in the Spinal Tap drummer pattern experienced by every other candidate who has challenged Mitt Romney. A second question is whether, failing that, the Republican Party can actually stop him. A third question is whether the Party actually wants to stop him. Let’s consider them in order.
Gingrich is notoriously erratic. But we are only six weeks away from the Iowa caucuses. It is possible that Gingrich manages to hold it together between now and then. And should he win Iowa, he may challenge Romney in New Hampshire (possibly with some help from Jon Huntsman), or at the very least gain enough momentum to overcome him in South Carolina and beyond.
Even assuming away any future meltdown, Gingrich is laden with personal and ideological baggage. Yet he seems to have perfected a smart strategy for deflecting any hostile attention: Attack the media. Gingrich’s incessant and often unprovoked media-bashing is one of the keys to his success. It converts every question about him into a tribal contest between conservatives and the hated Other.
The possible flaw in this strategy would be if right-wing media decide to go after Gingrich. Newt would be in trouble if Fox News started to harp on his marital history or past support for cap and trade. That could happen if Roger Ailes and various party poobahs emerge from their mountaintop castle and decide to anoint Mitt Romney as the nominee.
That would be the obviously sane course of action. Both observable evidence and common sense suggest that Romney would make a far stronger candidate. But Republicans have been disregarding political common sense with increasing frequency. Having the whole House vote for a budget that cuts taxes for the rich and privatizes Medicare yet stands no immediate chance of passage is not a smart idea. Nominating Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell is not a smart idea. There is less and less of a sense that those mountaintop castle meetings are actually working the way they’re supposed to.
At one level, it seems completely insane to not nominate Romney. Yet there is a logic to it. The worst thing that can happen to you as a party is for your president to compromise away your agenda, and party unity is far easier to organize in the opposition. The Republicans can block any plan to put a price on carbon emissions by President Obama. All the purists and all the party loyalists will vote as a block to stop it.
But suppose President Romney decides he wants to tackle cap and trade? He’ll split the party between purists, who will vote against Romney’s climate plan, and loyalists, who would be happy to vote for a Romney-endorsed plan, which they would oppose if put forward by Obama. And then support for cap and trade will be marginalized as a position, just as opposing any Medicare drug benefit was marginalized after George W. Bush supported it. In the long run, keeping your party together is more important than winning. You can always come back from a loss, but you can’t come back from apostasy. Another way to put that is, as a liberal, I’d much rather have a Republican president dedicated to a flat tax than a Democratic president dedicated to a flat tax.
Now, the tricky thing with Gingrich is that he is not exactly a perfect vehicle for right-wing purity. But if you view Gingrich’s positions as a graph, with erratic spikes to the left (support cap and trade!) and to the right (fight the secular socialist machine!), the general thrust is still one of maximal partisan conflict. If I’m a Republican, I worry a lot less about Gingrich selling me out than Romney selling me out.
By: Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine, November 18, 2011
Newt’s Freddie Mac Lobbying Whopper
At Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate in Michigan, Newt Gingrich was asked by the mostly on-the-ball CNBC panel about his work on behalf of housing giant Freddie Mac. For the former Speaker of the House, it was a bit of a welcome-back moment; for the last few months, he’s been so much of an afterthought that moderators haven’t even bothered with his own personal history and resume.
But Gingrich had an answer ready. He denied the lobbying charge, and then, via Benjy Sarlin, offered this spirited defense:
I offered advice. My advice as an historian when they walked in and said we are now making loans to people that have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything but that’s what the government wants us to do. I said at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible. It turned out unfortunately I was right and the people who were doing exactly what Congresswoman Bachmann talked about were wrong.
It’s pretty self-evident, though, that Gingrich wasn’t hired as a consultant because he was an untenured history professor at North Georgia College in the late 1970s. He was hired because, as a former Speaker of the House, he had a lot of influence with a lot of imporant people. An AP investigative report from 2008 framed Gingrich’s role as that of a political operator, greasing the wheels on Capitol Hill. Key section
Efforts to tighten government regulation were gaining support on Capitol Hill, and Freddie Mac was fighting back.
According to internal Freddie Mac documents obtained by the AP, Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), and Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) spent the evening in hard-to-obtain seats near the Nationals dugout with Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin and four of Freddie Mac’s in-house lobbyists. Both were members of the House Financial Services Committee. The Nationals tickets were bargains for Freddie Mac, part of a well-orchestrated, multimillion-dollar campaign to preserve its largely regulatory-free environment, with particular pressure exerted on Republicans who controlled Congress at the time.
Internal Freddie Mac budget records show $11.7 million was paid to 52 outside lobbyists and consultants in 2006. Power brokers such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were recruited with six-figure contracts. Freddie Mac paid the following amounts to the firms of former Republican lawmakers or ex-GOP staffers in 2006…
Pushing back, Freddie Mac enlisted prominent conservatives, including Gingrich and former Justice Department official Viet Dinh, paying each $300,000 in 2006, according to internal records.
Gingrich talked and wrote about what he saw as the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model.
Gingrich made a pretty penny as a consultant in the 2000s. As CPI reported, the former Speaker’s consulting firm took in $312,000 from the ethanol lobby in 2009. Presumably, they weren’t paying him for his historical insights.
By: Tim Murphy, Mother Jones, November 11, 2011
The Intransigent “Do Nothing GOP Congress” And Election 2012
The Republicans in Congress have made a wager. They’ve bet the political ranch that they will destroy Barack Obama’s chances for re-election if they can block his proposals to produce jobs.
In fact, it’s the GOP that could lose big when the votes are counted a year from now.
Republicans completely control the House. In the Senate they can use the filibuster to prevent anything from passing.
Last week, for the third time this fall, Republicans successfully blocked Obama’s jobs program in the Senate. Of course this came as absolutely no surprise, since Senate Republican Leader told the world earlier this year — in no uncertain terms — that his top legislative priority was to prevent the re-election of the president.
McConnell, and his House counterpart, John Boehner, don’t lose a wink of sleep over concerns that their intransigence harms the economic prospects of everyday Americans. In their view, the worse the economy gets, the more likely the voters will be to boot President Obama out of the Oval Office.
But a good case can be made that these guys will end up being too clever by half — that in fact they are providing fuel for precisely the argument that could defeat them in 2012.
McConnell and Boehner are right that it is very hard for an incumbent president to win re-election in a bad economy. And unless something dramatically changes, most Americans won’t think much of their own economic circumstances when Election Day rolls around next year.
So next year’s election will turn largely on one question: who does the American people hold responsible for what will likely still be a lousy economy?
Republicans are relying on the simple proposition that the guy in charge — the president — is to blame. But every day of intransigence increases the odds that in fact, they themselves will get the rap.
In 1945 Vice President Harry Truman became president when Franklin Roosevelt died in office. After the War, Truman presided over a substantial post-war recession that helped make him “unelectable” in the eyes of most pundits and politicians. GDP dropped by a whopping 12%. His political viability was complicated further when the Democratic base split into three parts. A portion followed Progressive Henry Wallace and much of the Southern Democratic white vote (the south was a Democratic base at the time) supported Strom Thurmond’s segregationist Dixiecrat Party. In the April before the election, Truman’s overall approval rating in the Gallup poll was just 36%.
But, Truman barnstormed the country, traveling 21,000 miles on a “whistle stop” tour where he decried the “do-nothing Republican Congress.” Though the economy began a modest improvement in 1948, no one — but Truman himself — believed he had a chance to defeat Thomas Dewey — a former Governor cut out of the same elite cloth as Mitt Romney. Truman won.
Obama can do exactly the same thing. Even assuming that the economy continues to experience only modest improvements over the next year, the Obama campaign can lay the lack of progress where it belongs — at the feet of the “do-nothing Republican Congress” that is intent on stalling economic recovery for their own political gain.
And where Truman’s 1946 recession was largely the result of the post war demobilization, Obama can rightly claim that this economic disaster was the product of precisely the same Republican policies that his opponents intend to re-instate if they regain control of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Not only has the GOP refused to support Democratic measures to put Americans back to work, their alternative “jobs program” features no direct, measurable job creation whatsoever. Instead it relies on the same “trickle down” economic theory that didn’t create one net private sector job in the eight years before the Great Recession – and the same unwillingness to rein in the big Wall Street banks that led to the worst financial collapse in 65 years.
But that’s not all. Everyone agrees that the Republican House Majority was swept into office last November precisely because of the terrible economy. But instead of job creation, they’ve busied themselves focusing on trying to defund Planned Parenthood, protecting Americans from the imaginary threat of Sharia Law, and fending off non-existent attack on the use of “In God We Trust.” The Republican controlled House hasn’t voted on a single job creation measure since John Boehner and his colleagues took power last January.
In the deliberations of the “Super Committee,” Republicans have been completely unwilling to give on the fundamental question of whether millionaires should be asked to pay to put America’s economic house in order. The view of the Republican leadership is that — in addition to defeating President Obama — their principal mission is to act as guard dogs for the exploding incomes of the top 1%.
In the upcoming fight over the next fiscal year’s appropriation bills, there is every indication that the Republicans will demand that riders be attached limiting the power of the EPA and restricting funding for contraception — which surveys show is used by 98% of American women.
Battles like these will do nothing but strengthen the Democratic narrative that the GOP leadership is focusing on bread and circuses for its base, while it intentionally blocks measures that could provide jobs to construction workers, fire fighters, cops, teachers and millions other out-of-work Americans.
Then there is the House schedule. Last week the Boehner team published a House schedule for next year intended to guarantee that very little gets done. The House will be in session only 94 days in all of next year (including many days where votes are postponed until 6PM) and will continue its habit of going into recess virtually every third week. Yet another example of a “do-nothing Republican Congress.”
It’s no accident, that while the polls show that most officials in the American government have fallen into disrepute for their failure to get the economy moving again, Congressional Republicans win the prize for negative ratings. Gallup shows Obama’s approval ratings beginning to edge up — from a very low 38%, up to 43%. Some other polls show it rising to 47%. The average rating from Real Clear Politics currently stands at 45.4%.
Meanwhile, Congressional job approval ranges from 9% to 16%, with a Real Clear Politics average of 12.7%.
The recent Democracy Corps poll shows that favorability for Republicans in Congress trails the Republican Party as a whole, Democrats in Congress, the Democratic Party as a whole, and President Obama.
On the other hand, the president’s agenda itself is overwhelmingly popular. His jobs bill is supported by the vast majority of Americans — and becomes more popular the more voters hear about it. When its provisions were explained, 63% offered their support in the October Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. That’s why it’s so important for the White House to continue pressing Congress to pass the bill as a whole — and to focus on its individual parts.
Funding jobs for teachers, firefighters and cops is very popular. Repairing deteriorating schools is very popular. Building roads, ports and airports is very popular. Providing unemployment benefits for those who are out of work is very popular.
And paying for it all by taxing millionaires and billionaires has the support of two thirds to three fourths of Americans — including a majority of Republicans. An October National Journal poll found 68% of voters support the Democratic proposal for a surtax on millionaires to pay for the jobs bill.
In fact, the whole 99% versus 1% message frame that has dominated the airwaves since everyday people began Occupying Wall Street — is very popular — as are the president’s executive actions to improve the economy without Congressional approval.
And what is unpopular? The Republican plan to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers – that is really unpopular. In fact, most polls find that 70% of voters oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit.
Creating jobs, making the 1% pay their fair share, and protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be the defining symbolic issues next year — and on every one of them Democrats hold the high political ground and Republicans have to walk through the valley of political death.
Finally, of course, is the matter of whom the Republicans will nominate as an alternative to President Obama. Unfortunately for the GOP, Presidential elections are not always referenda on the incumbent — they are choices between two living, breathing people — and in this case two clearly distinguishable futures for our country.
The conventional wisdom holds that Romney is the Republican’s strongest contender. If he is — which I doubt — he is no Rocky Balboa.
There are two lines of attack on Romney that are toxic:
He clearly has no core values.
When voters accuse someone of being a typical “politician” they mean someone is a candidate who has no center — who decides what he believes depending entirely on the political winds. Romney could serve as the dictionary definition of “politician.” He has done “one eighties” on everything from abortion rights to health care. He is a political weathervane whose guiding principle is only one thing: what will advance the political career of Mitt Romney?
In 2004, immediately before the election, Gallup showed George W. Bush with an approval rating of 48% approval to 47% disapproval — not much different than President Obama enjoys today. But a not very popular Bush won re-election — largely by convincing large numbers of swing voters that John Kerry had no core values, that he was a flip flopper. They succeeded even though Kerry was a war hero and had a strong record of standing up for what he believed. How much easier will it be to convince everyday Americans that Romney has no core values – since he doesn’t.
Romney is the poster boy for the 1%.
He feels like the guy who fired your brother-in-law. He is in fact the guy who, some time back, gathered his crowd of young Wall Street hot shots around him after he completed a big deal at Bain Capital and posed for a picture with money dripping from their mouths and pockets and ears. He’s a guy who made his fortune dismantling companies and firing workers.
Of course, none of these facts are intended to make Progressives complacent — far from it. None of them guarantees we will win in 2012 — only that we can.
For the first two years of the Obama Administration, Progressives took a lot of ground.
There was:
Health Care for All Americans
Wall Street Reform
Avoiding another Great Depression
Saving a million jobs in the American auto industry
Expanding Medicaid
Eliminating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Expanding Children’s Health
Environmental Reform
Expanding Labor Rights
Expanding Civil Liberties
Equal Pay for Equal Work
Now Obama is ending the War in Iraq.
But last fall the Empire struck back. All of the corporate, special interest money fought back with a vengeance. It fought back because that’s the nature of change. The forces of the status quo don’t just roll over and play dead. They do everything they can to hang onto their money and power and privilege.
Now we have to hold our ground and prepare a winning counter offensive — and it won’t be easy, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that magnifies the power of corporate cash.
But if they win — if America has President Romney or Perry or Cain, Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner — they have made it crystal clear what they will do. They will return America to the Gilded Age. They will roll back the twentieth century — they will rip apart the entire social contract.
They will privatize Social Security, destroy Medicare, emasculate the labor movement, cut taxes further for corporations and the wealthy. They will create new radical conservative facts on the ground that they hope will entrench conservative power for generations.
But they believe their real key to victory is lack of enthusiasm among Progressives. They believe that Progressives — and many in the Democratic base — will stay home next November.
They will be wrong.
That’s because over the next year, the progressive forces in America will rise to the battle. In their own way, the Occupy movement has already shown that Progressives will stand and fight.
They will rise to the battle because they realize that the 2012 election is not just about two people running for President. It is about a moral question. It’s about two competing sets of values. It’s all about how we see ourselves as a nation — as a society. It’s about whether we will be a society based on the precepts of radical conservative social Darwinism, or a society rooted in the progressive values that have always defined the promise of America.
We will not allow them to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
We will not allow them to destroy the American labor movement.
We will not allow them to destroy the middle class.
We will not allow them to destroy the American dream.
And we will remember a central lesson of history: that before change happens it seems impossible. And after change happens it seems inevitable.
American history — human history — is the story of ever-expanding human freedom. There may be ups and downs, but when you back up from the big chart of history, the trend is up.
I believe that our time is no exception — that next year — in this crossroads election — we will do what is necessary to assure that America once again recommits herself to create a brighter future for the next generation than those that went before.
That’s what the revolutionaries that created this nation did. That’s what the soldiers who fought and died to defend it did. That’s what the sit-down strikers who created the labor movement did. That’s what the freedom riders who fought for civil rights did. And that is precisely what we will do again in 2012.
By: Robert Creamer, Political Organizer, Strategist and Author, Published in The Huffington Post, November 7, 2011
Voter Fraud: The GOP Search For A Non-existent Problem
Earlier today I dared the Internet to send me examples of voter fraud — particularly of a scale that would justify erecting barriers against whole groups of voters through photo ID requirements and other such pernicious nonsense.
The Internet obliged, weakly.
A few readers reminded me that the conservative columnist Ann Coulter was accused of voter fraud in 2009, for voting by absentee ballot in Connecticut in 2002 and 2004 despite the fact that she was living in New York. The Connecticut Election Commission investigated, but decided to take no further action since Ms. Coulter was a registered voter in the state and did not vote elsewhere. I never imagined defending Ms. Coulter, but this does not seem like a threat to our democratic way of life.
Lots of people on Twitter directed me to posts on the right wing blog Red State, which put together a handy compilation of examples (apparently just for me). First among them was the case of the 2003 Democratic mayoral primary in East Chicago, Indiana, in which campaign workers for the incumbent paid voters to cast absentee ballots. Red State also mentions the investigation of a Troy, NY, city council race, a series of ballot “manufacturing” cases in Alabama, and an alleged plot by three poll workers to throw a 2005 state senate election in Tennessee to the Democratic candidate, Ophelia Ford.
Suspend the elections! Demand genetic fingerprinting at the polls!
If that’s the worst that’s out there, I’m sorry, but I’m still not afraid of voter fraud. Counting all the Alabama incidents separately and throwing in Ann Coulter, that brings us to a grand total of eight cases. That is most certainly not a national crisis requiring action from the government. (It’s an odd reversal, come to think of it: Liberals insisting the government butt out, conservatives demanding it butt in.)
Besides, from what I can tell every one of the Red State incidents revolved around corrupt poll workers or local officials or some other functionary messing with absentee ballots. That’s an age old problem but one that voter ID laws will not fix.
I’m still not seeing evidence of large numbers of individuals impersonating someone else to cast a ballot or voting despite the fact that they don’t meet eligibility requirements. Surely they must be out there, or the anti-voter-fraud lot would not be so up in arms.
So, just for fun, let’s consider an example that my Twitter followers did not cite. As the Times editorial board noted in October, Kansas’ secretary of state, Kris Kobach, pushed for an ID law on the basis of a list of 221 reported instances of voter fraud in Kansas since 1997. But when The Wichita Eagle looked into the cases, it found that they were almost all honest mistakes: “a parent trying to vote for a student away at college, or signatures on mail-in ballots that didn’t precisely match those on file. In one case of supposed ‘fraud,’ a confused non-citizen was asked at the motor vehicles bureau whether she wanted to fill out a voter registration form, and did so not realizing she was ineligible to vote.”
Maybe I’m still missing something really big (and no, not the 1960 elections or whatever LBJ may or may not have got up to in Texas more than 50 years ago). Or maybe voter ID laws, as the saying goes, are a solution in search of a problem.
By: Andrew Rosenthal, The Loyal Opposition, Published in The New York Times, November 7, 2011
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