“Republicans Need To Wise Up”: It’s Not Their Uninspiring Candidates Or Unsound Tactics, It’s Their Unpopular Ideas
The biggest problem the Republican Party faces is not uninspiring candidates or unsound tactics. It is unpopular ideas.
This reality was brought home in last month’s election. It’s playing out in the struggle over how to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” And we’ll see it again in coming fights over immigration, entitlements, inequality and a host of other issues. Here’s the sad thing: Republicans get this stuff so wrong that Democrats aren’t even forced to go to the trouble of getting it right.
There will be those who doubt the sincerity of my advice to the GOP, since my standing as a conservative is — justifiably — less than zero. But I’ve always believed in competition, if only to prevent liberals from becoming lazy and unimaginative. One could argue that this is already happening.
Take the question of what to do about undocumented immigrants. The Republican Party takes an uncompromising line against anything that could be construed as amnesty — any solution that provides “illegal” immigrants with a path to citizenship. Much has been made of the impact the immigration issue had in the election, as Latinos voted for President Obama over Mitt Romney by nearly 3-1.
It is obvious to sentient Republicans why the party cannot afford to so thoroughly alienate the nation’s largest minority group. What the GOP seems not to grasp is that the party’s “send ’em all home” stance is way out of line with much of the rest of the electorate as well.
A Politico-George Washington University poll released Monday asked voters whether they favored “an immigration reform proposal that allows illegal or undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship over a period of several years.” That would be amnesty, pure and simple — and a whopping 62 percent said they were in favor, compared to 35 percent who said they were opposed.
You might expect Democrats, then, to be pushing hard for a straightforward amnesty bill. But they don’t have to. Because Republicans are so far out in right field on the issue, Democrats haven’t actually had to do anything to reap substantial political benefits. They’ve just had to sound more reasonable, and less hostile, than Republicans, which has not required breaking a sweat.
On the central fiscal-cliff question, the GOP is similarly out of step. The Politico poll found that 60 percent of respondents favor raising income taxes on households that earn more than $250,000 a year. The Republican Party says no — and thus allows itself to be portrayed as willing to sink the economic recovery, if necessary, to ensure that tycoons can keep their pantries stocked with caviar.
Where is the incentive for Democrats to get serious about fiscal matters? As long as the GOP remains adamant on what many Americans see as a no-brainer question of basic fairness, those who believe in progressive solutions get a pass.
The truth is that raising top marginal rates for the wealthy is probably as far as we should go on the tax front right now, given the fragility of the recovery. The best thing we could do for the country’s long-term fiscal health is spur the economy into faster growth, which will shrink deficits and the debt as a percentage of gross domestic product.
That said, it’s hard to imagine long-term solutions that don’t eventually require more tax revenue from the middle class as well as the rich. But why should Democrats mention this inconvenient fact when Republicans, out of ideological stubbornness, are keeping the focus on the upper crust?
The same basic dynamic plays out in the question of reforming entitlements. Republicans proposed turning Medicare into a voucher program; polls show that voters disagree. The GOP seems to be falling back to the position that the eligibility age for the program should be raised. Trust me, voters aren’t going to like that, either.
Nor, for that matter, do voters like the GOP’s solution for the millions of Americans who lack health insurance, which Romney summarized as, essentially, go to the emergency room. A smart Republican Party would stop focusing exclusively on how government can pay less for health care and, instead, begin to seriously explore ways to reduce health-care costs. A smart GOP would acknowledge the fact that Americans simply don’t want to privatize everything, which means we need new ideas about how to pay for what we want.
Faced with an opposition that verges on self-parody, progressive thinkers are mostly just phoning it in. This won’t change until somebody defibrillates the GOP, and we detect a pulse.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 10, 2012
“Never Ever, Ever, Ever…”: Grover Norquist’s Pledge Used To Be Politically Expedient, Now It’s Not
A few words to ponder as we sail toward the fiscal cliff. Those words would be: “That was then, this is now.”
Strip away the false piety and legalistic hair-splitting offered by Republican lawmakers rationalizing their decision to abandon a pledge that they will never ever, ever, ever vote to raise taxes, and that’s pretty much what the explanation boils down to.
Rep. Peter King says he understood the pledge, propounded by the almighty Grover Norquist and his group Americans for Tax Reform, to obligate him for only one term. Apparently, he thought it had to be renewed, like a driver’s license.
Sen. Lindsey Graham says that if Democrats agree to entitlement reform, “I will violate the pledge … for the good of the country” — a stirring statement of patriotism and sacrifice that warms your heart like a midnight snack of jalapeño chili fries.
In other words: bull twinkies. If you want the truth of why a trickle of GOP lawmakers is suddenly willing to blaspheme the holy scripture of their faith, it’s simple. The pledge used to be politically expedient. Now it is not.
This is not, by the way, a column in defense of the Norquist pledge. The only thing dumber than his offering such a pledge was scores of politicians signing it, an opinion that has nothing to do with the wisdom or lack thereof of raising taxes and everything to do with the fact that one ought not, as a matter of simple common sense, make hard, inflexible promises on changeable matters of national import. It is all well and good to stand on whatever one’s principles are, but as a politician — a job that, by definition, requires the ability to compromise — you don’t needlessly box yourself in. Never say never.
Much less never ever, ever, ever.
So this revolution against “he who must be obeyed,” however modest, is nonetheless welcome. It suggests reason seeping like sunlight into places too long cloistered in the damp and dark of ideological rigidity.
But it leaves an observer in the oddly weightless position of applauding a thing and being, simultaneously, disgusted by it. Has politics ever seemed more ignoble than in these clumsy, self-serving attempts to justify a deviation from orthodoxy? They have to do this, of course, because the truth — “I signed the pledge because I knew it would help me get elected, but with economic ruin looming and Obama re-elected on a promise to raise taxes on the rich and most voters supporting him on that, it’s not doing me as much good as it once did” — is unpretty and unflattering.
In this awkward about-face, these lawmakers leave us wondering once again whether the vast majority of them — right and left, red and blue, Republican and Democrat — really believe in anything, beyond being re-elected.
There is a reason Congress’ approval ratings flirted with single digits this year. There is a reason a new Gallup poll finds only 10 percent of Americans ranking Congress “high or very high” in honesty and ethics.
Lawyers rank higher. Advertisers rank higher. Even journalists rank higher.
This is the sad pass to which years of congressional grandstanding, fact spinning, cookie-jar pilfering and assorted harumphing and pontificating have brought us. And while a certain cynicism toward its leaders functions as a healthy antigen in the body politic, it cannot be good for either the nation or its leaders that so many of them are held in plain contempt.
The moral malleability exemplified by the likes of King and Graham will not help. Perhaps we should ask them to sign a new pledge: “I will always tell you what I think and what I plan to do in plain English, regardless of whether you like it or it benefits me politically.”
But no lawmaker would make that pledge. And who would believe them if they did?
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, December 10, 2012
“Something To Talk About”: The Deep, Real Spending Cuts Already Passed
The prospect of cutting Medicare benefits in a “fiscal cliff” deal has prompted an outcry from concerned liberals. But whether or not legislators actually end up raising the Medicare age or paring back Social Security payments, domestic benefits and services—ranging from veterans’ health care and low-income housing to Head Start programs—are going to get squeezed over the next 10 years.
Last year’s debt-ceiling agreement included $1.5 trillion in cuts to discretionary programs through 10-year spending caps that are already in effect. According to a new analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the domestic programs subject to the spending caps will face a $615 billion shortfall if they keep their benefits and services at 2012 levels. If such, they’ll be forced to scale back unless Congress decides otherwise—and right now, the Republicans want even less money spent on these domestic programs, not more.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’s Richard Kogan breaks down the impact of the new spending caps:
We estimate that, with the funds available under the caps, the federal government will fall about $350 billion short over the next ten years of delivering the same level of benefits and services for NDD programs as it did in 2012. This is because: (1) the costs of a number of key programs, especially VA medical care, are projected to grow substantially, and (2) Congress relied on certain temporary savings measures to meet the 2012 caps that it cannot repeat in the future. Furthermore, it would take an additional $265 billion over the next ten years to account for general population growth, which affects NDD programs ranging from Head Start to home-delivered meals for the elderly. In total, it would require $615 billion above what the caps allow to maintain the same level of benefits and servicesper person as in 2012.
It’s a good reminder of the trade-offs that we have already made in the name of deficit reduction, which have received little attention amid the hand-wringing over the fiscal cliff. And, as Kogan points out, these domestic programs still remain vulnerable to further cutting. House Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) has already proposed $300 billion in further cuts to discretionary programs, though he hasn’t specified how they’d be carried out. And unlike the defense programs that face big cuts, these domestic programs don’t have deep-pocketed industry lobbyists to help shield them.
By: Suzy Khimm, The Washington Post Wonkblog, December 9, 2012
“Heritage Diagnosed, Severe DeMintia”: On The Far, Far Outer Reaches Of The Conservative Movement
For nigh on forty years, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation have been doing a good-cop/bad-cop routine—make that a bad-cop/really bad-cop routine. Yesterday, Heritage decided to double down on bad, with stained-glass windows.
Up until now, the Heritage Foundation has done a fairly competent job of disguising itself as a “think tank” where sobersided “scholars” write unreadable “policy papers” with “executive summaries.” But by appointing Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, as its new president, Heritage risks “rebranding” itself as a full-bore, revival-tent, Jesus-saves belief tank of the Christianist right.
DeMint inhabits the outer reaches of movement conservatism pretty much across the board, but his greatest passion seems to be reserved for what are delicately termed “social issues.” On questions of sexual identity and behavior, he is a forthright bigot and a prude. Shortly before the 2008 election, speaking at a Dominionist “Greater Freedom Rally,” he summarized his position thusly:
If someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom. And he holds the same position as an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend. She shouldn’t be in the classroom.
Last year, he indicated that his belief in small government is rooted in the theory that there is a fixed and limited amount of space that can be occupied by the government and the deity combined. The size of the public sector and the size of the Almighty are inversely proportional to each other. It’s an iron law, a zero-sum game:
I’ve said it often and I believe it—the bigger government gets, the smaller God gets.
DeMint appears to believe that there is a similarly inverse, zero-sum relationship between science and Christianity. He is a notorious global-warming denialist and creationist. And he is an enemy of the very idea of public education. At the “Greater Freedom Rally,” he explained why:
The thing that we’ve conceded as a people that we’ve got to fix, is turning the education of our children over to the government…. Let ’em go to a school where they can learn that God created this earth—because we know he did. Scientists more and more are—are being trapped or backed into this whole idea. As they see the whole genome experience, experiment, or they research all the DNA, they realize that this had to be created. It could not have happened by accident. It’s impossible. So we can go out with confidence that we are created, we are given unalienable rights, and God has blessed this country beyond anything we could have imagined. And he’s put us in charge of this vineyard we call America.
DeMint’s garbled reference to genomes and DNA, by the way, was apparently a confused allusion to Francis Collins, the former director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, whom President Obama appointed to head the National Institutes of Health. Collins is an evangelical Christian, but, like all reputable scientists, he rejects creationism, including its “intelligent design” variation, and does not believe that global warming is a hoax engineered by liberal scientists motivated by a fanatical ideological preference for government regulation of private business.
The big Washington story of the moment is the battle between conservative Republicans and very conservative Republicans over whether or not to hold the economy hostage in order to prevent marginal income-tax rates on the top two per cent from reverting to the slight higher Clinton-era levels. A parallel story over the next few years may be the quiet struggle between A.E.I. and Heritage for Republican hearts and minds. A.E.I. may have the advantage when it comes to minds, but Heritage is where the hearts are. Heritage was founded in the first place because the older organization was considered too squishy. Even so, badthink has sometimes crept in. It was Heritage, you may recall, that invented the “individual mandate” that became the basis of Obamacare and, earlier, Romneycare. DeMint is unlikely to tolerate any such outbreaks of left deviationism at Heritage. Under him, its grip on the organ of G.O.P. emotion can only strengthen. Its grip on the organ of reason, such as it is, is apt to fare less well.
By: Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker, December 7, 2012
“Hostage Takers, Act II”: GOP To Hold Debt Ceiling Hostage Again As Leverage For Medicare Cuts
On Sunday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) conceded that Democrats have won the debate on raising taxes on the richest Americans and said that he would likely vote to increase rates on the top 2 percent of Americans in order to shift the debate to cutting entitlement programs and improve the GOP’s leverage in the debate over how to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.
During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Corker explained that if Republicans “give Obama a 2 percent increase,” the party can then hold the debt ceiling hostage in order to secure real cuts in spending:
CORKER: The Republicans know they have the debt ceiling, that is coming up around the corner, and, the leverage is going to shift, as soon as we get beyond this issue. The leverage is going to shift, to our side where hopefully we’ll do the same thing we did last time and that is if the president wants to raise the debt limit by $2 trillion we get $2 trillion in spending reduction and, hopefully, this time, it is mostly oriented towards entitlement and with no process. […]
[Obama] has the upper hand on taxes and you have to pass something to keep it from happening. We only have one body. If we were to pass, for instance, raising the top 2 rates, and that’s it, all of a sudden we do have the leverage of the debt ceiling and we haven’t given that up so the only way the debt ceiling.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has indicated that the GOP plans to use that leverage by demanding more spending cuts, but the move will result in great economic costs. In 2011, Republican demands nearly led to a credit default and ultimately cost taxpayers “$18.9 billion over 10 years, due to elevated interest rates between January and August 2011.”
Obama slammed the GOP’s strategy during a meeting with business leaders last week. “The thinking is the Republicans will have more leverage because there will be another vote on the debt ceiling, and we will try to extract more concessions with a stronger hand on the debt ceiling,” Obama told members of the Business Roundtable. “That is a bad strategy for America, it’s a bad strategy for your businesses, and it is not a game that I will play.”
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, December 9, 2012
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