“The GOP’s Giuliani Disaster”: Why Rudy’s Vile Nonsense Is A Big Problem For Republicans
For millions of American workers, the “pedal to the metal” growth of the labor market means life is about to get better. But for those conservatives and Republican partisans who are looking to 2016 already, a healthier economy means life is about to get worse. Why? Because on the national level, electoral politics tends to operate on one of two channels — one cultural, the other economic. And in a country that’s more ethnically diverse and socially liberal than ever, it’s harder for the right to win if it’s attacking President Obama over issues of identity and culture than if it’s hammering him about dollars and cents.
I’m hardly the first person to recognize the political calculus here. (The GOP establishment wing, in fact, seems convinced that focusing on economics is the only way they can win.) But while this dynamic has been present throughout the Obama years, it’s become more pronounced lately, as criticism of the president has begun to shift away from the unemployment rate, GDP growth and “job-killing regulations” and toward assertions that he isn’t really one of “us.” Or, as ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani put it this week before an audience of Manhattan conservatives, that Obama “wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
The thoroughly odious Giuliani’s whole political career has been built on an edifice of thinly-veiled racism and ferocious demagoguery, so it wasn’t a surprise to see him channel such toxic undercurrents. (And it is similarly unsurprising to see him defend himself by cribbing the “Obama is anti-colonial” argument from Dinesh D’Souza, a far-right provocateur and convicted felon who recently called the president a “boy” from the “ghetto.”) But Giuliani’s incendiary drivel was firmly in step with much of the conservative movement right now, which has begun to nurture a Captain Ahab-like obsession with what it sees as a telltale sign of Obama’s foreign nature — namely, his refusal to describe ISIS as Islamic, and his insistence that extremism, rather than Islamic extremism, is a danger to the globe.
The right’s been banging this drum for years now, of course. But the rumble has predictably begun to sound more like rolling thunder as the medieval sadism of ISIS has become regular front-page news. For example, when the administration held a three-day global conference earlier this week about thwarting violent extremism, leading voices in the right-wing media — like the New York Post, Fox News and Matt Drudge — saw reason to spend untold amounts of time and energy slamming the president for refusing to use those two magic words. The “theory” proffered by talking heads on Fox and pundits at National Review held that Obama’s stubbornness was a result of political correctness. On a more underground level, though, it was easier to see the subtext: He’s a secret Muslim! (The actual reason has gone totally unmentioned.)
If you’re the kind of conservative who likes to think of yourself as more William F. Buckley than Michael Savage, this must all be at least slightly embarrassing. But the problem for the Republican establishment and its sympathizers is that the GOP base’s resurgent Christian ethno-nationalism isn’t merely gauche; it’s politically dangerous. The Giuliani example offers a case in point. Because while most of the folks who were there to hear “America’s Mayor” were generic GOP fat cats, one of the men present was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the current lead challenger to the front-running Jeb Bush. And if I were one of the establishment kingmakers Walker’s trying to seduce, I would have found his handling of the Giuliani contretemps very disconcerting.
Instead of going with the usual soft-touch scolding we expect of a presidential candidate responding to nastiness from one of their own, Walker tried to avoid expressing any opinion at all. He told the folks at CNBC that Giuliani “can speak for himself” and that he was “not going to comment” on whether he agreed that the president of the United States of America hates the United States of America. When he was pressed to state whether he found Giuliani’s remarks offensive, Walker merely answered with some “aw, shucks” cornpone bullshit: “I’m in New York. I’m used to people saying things that are aggressive.”
Needless to say, playing footsie with this kind of bomb-throwing is not going to cost Walker much in the Iowa plains or in the rolling hills of South Carolina. And Walker, who’s no dummy or slouch, seems well aware that he can only win the nomination if he’s as viable in the rarefied air of the Republican establishment as he is among the Tea Party masses. Which means there’s no upside to taking a bat to Giuliani for saying what many, many conservatives — including those at ostensibly respectable outlets — believed already. But that’s exactly the problem that confronts the adults in the GOP: If the economy is good enough to reduce the appeal of a “pragmatic” candidate like Bush, the party rank-and-file will want more Giuliani-style lizard-brained tribalism instead.
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, February 21, 2015
“More About Marketing Than Math”: The Tea Party’s Big Idea To Shrink Government Is A Vacuous Nothingburger
Insurgent political movements are usually built around a big idea, like abolition or workers’ rights. The Tea Party certainly has a big idea: Shrink the government.
Wanting to shrink the government is a perfectly reasonable impulse given the state of Washington’s finances. The federal debt has more than doubled as a share of GDP since 2007, and future spending projects are off the charts. The latest academic evidence suggests an increase in government size is associated with slower annual GDP growth.
It’s easy to see why this shrink-the-government idea is powerful, and how it fueled the Tea Party’s rapid ascent into a rocket-powered force on the right.
However, a big idea alone is not sufficiently enough, in and of itself, to guarantee success. And therein lies the Tea Party’s big problem.
The Tea Party’s blueprint for turning their raison d’être into reality is flawed. Called the “Penny Plan,” it’s a favorite of the Tea Party Patriots, media supporters such as Sean Hannity of Fox News, and fellow travelers in Congress, including possible 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul and — perhaps most importantly — Mike Enzi, the new Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
First devised by Georgia businessman Bruce Cook, the Penny Plan would cut government spending by 1 percent a year until the federal budget is balanced. After that, federal spending would be capped at 18 percent of GDP, to match the long-term revenue trend. Here’s how Enzi touts the plan on his website:
Though only a 1 percent cut, the savings add up quickly to balance the budget. And if it’s done right, where we’re eliminating duplication and sensibly prioritizing, discomfort will be manageable. … Living with 1 percent less is a small price to pay in order to help bring this country back from the brink of catastrophic fiscal failure. [Enzi]
It sounds so simple! Well, it really isn’t.
For starters, the “penny” part of the plan is a gimmick, more about marketing than math. The Enzi version would cut 1 percent a year from total government spending, other than debt interest payments, for three years. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much. But once you factor in inflation, that works out to a 10 percent cut in real terms after three years.
Now maybe that still doesn’t sound like much. But getting such a reduction is tough enough that there are no details in the Penny Plan about what exactly would be cut. To balance the budget in 2018, according to CBO, it would require $540 billion in reduced spending. It can’t all come from reducing non-defense discretionary spending such as foreign aid or scientific research. That part of the budget, just 17 percent, or around $600 billion, is already at its lowest levels since the 1960s as a share of GDP.
That leads to a bigger problem with the Penny Plan: Is it realistic to cap long-term government spending at 18 percent of GDP — well less than the post-WWII average of 21 percent — when an aging population means increased spending on entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security? Remember, most of the spending increase from health-related entitlements and Social Security — 75 percent over the next quarter century — comes from simple demographics, more people getting benefits over a longer period of time. That works out to about 3 percentage points of GDP in additional spending baked into the budgetary cake. Overall, CBO projects total spending at 26 percent of GDP by 2039.
Just keeping long-term spending at its historic average will be a huge challenge, much less sharply reducing it. If you also want to spend a bit more on important public investments such as infrastructure and basic research while keeping military spending constant — well, good luck. Even the GOP Senate’s new balanced budget amendment — which doesn’t calculate debt interest payments as spending — would have a tough time hitting its 18 percent target.
That the Penny Plan offers zero specifics on how to make the numbers work undercuts its seriousness. It would obviously require sweeping entitlement reform — and more. But Enzi, for one, argues that “we should focus on identifying and eliminating all of the wasteful spending that occurs in Washington before we look to other important programs and services.” That’s an evasion, though hardly a surprising one from a party that depends on older voters.
In fact, some on the right are trying to fudge that political reality by distinguishing between “earned” entitlements — Social Security and Medicare — that go to GOP-leaning voters and “unearned” entitlements — such as Medicaid and ObamaCare subsidies — that go to Democratic-leaning voters.
So yes, the Tea Party has a big idea. But it has no idea how to make it happen.
By: James Pethokoukis, The Week, February 19, 2015
“Rudy Giuliani Is A Cretinous Dirtbag”: ‘Obama Never Praises America’ May Be The Single Dumbest Criticism Republicans Have
Not that you needed a reminder that Rudy Giuliani is a contemptible jerk, but the former New York mayor has managed to find his way back in the news in the only way he can, which is to say something appalling. I’m going to try to take this opportunity to explore something meaningful about the way we all look at our allies and opponents, but first, here’s what Giuliani said at an event for Scott Walker:
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said during the dinner at the 21 Club, a former Prohibition-era speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
O.K., so we’ve heard this a million times before, though usually from talk radio hosts and pundits, but less often from prominent politicians. Offered a chance to clarify later, here’s how Rudy explained himself:
“Well first of all, I’m not questioning his patriotism. He’s a patriot, I’m sure,” the former mayor of New York said on Fox and Friends Thursday morning. “What I’m saying is, in his rhetoric, I very rarely hear the things that I used to hear Ronald Reagan say, the things that I used to hear Bill Clinton say about how much he loves America.”
Obama is different from his predecessors in that respect, Giuliani said.
“I do hear him criticize America much more often than other American presidents,” he told the morning show hosts. “And when it’s not in the context of an overwhelming number of statements about the exceptionalism of America, it sounds like he’s more of a critic than he is a supporter.”
He’s not questioning Obama’s patriotism, he’s just saying he doesn’t love America. Got it—thanks for clearing that up. I’m not saying Rudy is foolish and immoral, I’m just saying he’s a cretinous dirtbag. So no offense.
But what I’m really interested in is Giuliani’s explanation that he “very rarely hear[s]” Obama say patriotic things, but he “do[es] hear him criticize America.” It’s safe to say a lot of conservatives feel the same way. They hear these criticisms of America all the time from Obama! But never a word of praise for this country!
It would be great if the next person who interviewed Rudy (or anyone else making the same claim) asked him to name some of these many criticisms of America that he has “heard” from Obama. Because my guess is that he wouldn’t be able to come up with any. What he has heard, however, is other people saying that Obama criticizes America. If you spend a day watching Fox News, you’ll probably hear that assertion a dozen times. The idea that Obama constantly criticizes America, like the fictitious “apology tour” assertion from Obama’s first term, is something conservatives say over and over but almost never back up with any actual evidence.
If pressed, they might be able to come up with times when Obama has said that prior administrations have made mistakes, like the Bush administration enacting a policy of torturing prisoners. But these aren’t criticisms of America per se, any more than Republicans are criticizing America when they say we shouldn’t have passed the Affordable Care Act. If criticizing something the American government did means you’re aren’t a patriot, then the Republican Party is the most anti-American organization in the world today. Al Qaeda has nothing on them.
Perhaps even more revealing is Giuliani’s assertion that he rarely hears Obama praise America. The truth is that like all presidents, Obama heaps praise on America constantly. For instance, here’s a bit of vicious America-hating from his last State of the Union address:
I know how tempting such cynicism may be. But I still think the cynics are wrong. I still believe that we are one people. I still believe that together, we can do great things, even when the odds are long.
I believe this because over and over in my six years in office, I have seen America at its best. I’ve seen the hopeful faces of young graduates from New York to California, and our newest officers at West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs, New London. I’ve mourned with grieving families in Tucson and Newtown, in Boston, in West Texas, and West Virginia. I’ve watched Americans beat back adversity from the Gulf Coast to the Great Plains, from Midwest assembly lines to the Mid-Atlantic seaboard. I’ve seen something like gay marriage go from a wedge issue used to drive us apart to a story of freedom across our country, a civil right now legal in states that seven in 10 Americans call home.
So I know the good, and optimistic, and big-hearted generosity of the American people who every day live the idea that we are our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper. And I know they expect those of us who serve here to set a better example.
Look at any major speech Obama has given, and you’ll find similar passages. But Giuliani isn’t lying when he says he doesn’t “hear” that. The words pass through his ears into his brain, but they don’t register, because he decided long ago that Barack Obama is incapable of such thoughts.
And if you read that passage or any of a hundred like it directly to Giuliani, how would he respond? He’d probably say that, sure, Obama spoke those words, but they weren’t an expression of his real feelings; they were artifice, meant to conceal the sinister truth lying deep within. The words tell us nothing. On the other hand, when Obama says something critical about a Bush administration policy, the words reveal his hatred of America.
To a certain degree we’re all prey to this tendency. Once we’ve made our conclusions about who our political opponents are deep within their souls, we want to accept at face value only their statements that reinforce the view we already have of them. But you’ll notice that Giuliani wasn’t only stating his opinion about what lies in Obama’s heart, he attempted to justify that opinion with a statement of fact. Giuliani’s argument is that he concluded that Obama doesn’t love America because he assessed that Obama so seldom says nice things about America. That’s like saying that you think Tom Brady is a bad quarterback because he hasn’t won any Super Bowls. Maybe you have some other reason why you think Tom Brady is a bad quarterback, or maybe you just don’t like him, but if what you offer as the basis of your opinion is his lack of Super Bowl wins, there’s no reason why anyone should take you seriously.
Not that there was much reason to take Rudy Giuliani seriously to begin with. But he’s expressing beliefs that are not just common but absolutely rampant on the right.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Writer, The American Prospect, February 19, 2015
“Yes, There Are Christian Terrorists”: Putting Religious Violence In Context
“There are still nine Christians here. We will capture them. We will kill them. When we finish here, we will go to the next village and kill the Christians there, too.”
If an ISIS leader made a statement like this publicly, Fox News would probably cut into their programming to bring you a special report about the Muslims’ “religious war” against Christians. Mainstream media outlets would most likely cover it as well.
But that statement was indeed uttered in 2014. Except there was one simple word difference: “Christian” was replaced with “Muslim”. That is exactly what a Christian terrorist said about his militia’s plan to exterminate the remaining nine Muslims in a village in Central Africa Republic (CAR). But, of course, stuff like that doesn’t really make news here in our country.
Or did you hear about the Christian militant who publicly beheaded a Muslim man in the streets of the CAR capital last year? That was actually covered by the US media—in a short Associated Press paragraph buried papers like the New York Times. Anyone doubt that if a Muslim terrorist beheaded a Christian man in the public square it would’ve made the US news?
Any cable news channels cover in depth the Christian marauders in CAR that are – as we speak – ethnically cleansing tens of thousands of the minority Muslim population there? These Christian militants “stage brutal attacks…wielding machetes” and have “burned and looted…houses and mosques.” True, this is part of a civil war, but these violent acts are still carried out by militants who publicly self identify as Christian fighters.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of Christians committing acts of terrorism.
But, of course, when President Obama dared to mention at the National Prayer Breakfast last week that we have seen acts of violence perpetrated by Christians, including during the Crusades, some on the right went on the warpath. Rush Limbaugh called Obama’s words an “insult” to Christianity.
And numerous Fox News anchors were outraged, most notably Eric Bolling, who claimed that the number of people killed in the name of Christianity was “zero.”
To be honest, I do agree with the rightwing pundits on one issue. I do wish Obama didn’t bring up the Crusades to point out the violence committed in the name of Christianity. The last Crusade took place over 700 years ago.
The attacks by the Christian militants taking place in CAR is a far better example of how all faiths have people who wage violence in the name of it. Obama could have also noted the horrifically violent actions of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a pseudo-Christian cult whose announced goal is to impose the Ten Commandants as the law of Uganda. To that end, the LRA slaughtered thousands of men, women and children, raped women, and forced people into being sex slaves over a 25 year period starting in 1986.
Or Obama could have simply focused on the violence perpetrated by Christian terrorists in America. For starters, since 1977 there have been ”8 murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, 181 arsons, and thousands of incidences of other criminal activities” targeting reproductive health care facilities here at home. With few exceptions, there were perpetrated by Christians who opposed abortion for religious reasons.
Lets not forget that Eric Rudolph, who was tied to the white supremacist “Christian Identity” movement, had bombed abortion clinics, a gay nightclub and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, which killed two people and wounded 110. Rudolph’s stated motivation was to stop abortion, claiming our government had “legalized, sanctioned and legitimized” abortion, and thus, “they forfeited their legitimacy and moral authority to govern.”
And there was also the 2009 execution of Dr. George Tiller, who became nationally known for performing late term abortions. His killer, Scott Roeder, was a born again Christian who claimed that he the killing “was justified to save the lives of unborn children.”
Look, I fully understand that some don’t want to believe people of their faith have commited atrocities. I’m Muslim —and I can assure you that when I hear about acts of violence carried out by any Muslim, I’m outraged. Still, I can’t deny that there are Muslims who commit terrorism.
However, with both ISIS and these Christian terrorists, I know that their actions are not based on the tenets of their respective faiths but on their own political agenda. And that is why I won’t call the Christian terrorists followers of “radical Christianity.” There is no such thing, just as there is no such thing as “radical Islam.” But there are radical and violent followers of both religions who commit acts in the name of their respective faith.
Clearly President Obama and I have no intention of demonizing Christians. We’re just trying to put religious violence in context. In fact, like Obama, my mother is a Christian and my father Muslim and I was raised to have great respect for both religions.
But we can’t deny reality. There are people who commit acts of terrorism in the name of every faith, whether it is Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or Islam, even if its just terrorist adherents of the latter that gets all the media attention.
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast, February 15, 2015
“Today’s Anchors Are Overpaid Superstars”: Big Lies, Little Lies, And The Punishment Of Brian Williams
The harshest penalties usually tend to be brutal, vengeful, and excessive – even when the offender is a celebrity journalist like Brian Williams. Suspended without pay from his post as the NBC Nightly News anchor for six months, Williams may be facing the end of his career in television news, which would be roughly equivalent to capital punishment.
Williams is in the public dock for telling a false story about his experiences covering the American invasion of Iraq; the disclosure humiliated him, his colleagues, and his network when exposed. For the time being, at least, he has lost the trust of many in his audience. Enforced absence from the job he loves — and wanted all his life – is a sanction that will sting far more than the barbed jokes, ugly headlines, and lost millions in salary. Off air, he may find time to engage in serious introspection, issue a forthright apology, and hope for redemption.
Troubling as his transgression was, I nevertheless hope for his redemption too.
No doubt my sympathy is spurred by the fact that I have known Williams for a long time, not as a friend or even a newsroom colleague, but as a frequent guest on a nightly cable news show he hosted and, years later, as the author of a magazine profile of him.
What I encountered then was a witty and unassuming guy from south Jersey who kept many of the same friends he had 30 years ago; an exceptionally hard-working correspondent who took reporting seriously; a history buff who avidly consumed books and newspapers to broaden his knowledge; and a dedicated professional who cherished the anchor position as a trust handed down across generations.
He always knew how lucky he was, and he certainly knows how badly he has stumbled. Whether he eventually can regain what he has lost is a matter for him and the suits at NBC to sort out. Inevitably, their calculations will include commercial as well as journalistic values. While that process unfolds, however, he deserves a few words of defense against the eager mob of executioners now swinging the ax with such gusto.
It is ironic, to put it very mildly, that more than a decade after the Iraq invasion, which resulted from official and journalistic deceptions on a vast scale, the only individual deemed worthy of punishment is a TV newsman who inflated a war story on a talk show. And it is irritating, too, that so many of the NBC anchor’s harshest critics are heard on Fox News Channel, where lying is a way of life, as Leonard Pitts, Jr., noted recently.
To recall just one especially pertinent example: Fox host Sean Hannity, who now demands Williams’ head on a stick, repeatedly told TV and radio audiences that “every penny” from his Freedom Alliance concerts would benefit the children of deceased veterans. It was a lie, because huge amounts of the proceeds were squandered on “conferences” and other dubious expenses. But Hannity got away with it because he evidently hadn’t violated any laws.
All the wingnuts ceaselessly barking about how Williams betrayed the vets could not have cared less.
Indeed, it is puzzling that Williams has excited so much frothing anger on the right, where lying and deception are routinely excused, especially about military service. (George W. Bush prevaricated blatantly about his brief stint in the Texas Air National Guard, and Ronald Reagan lied about “liberating” a Nazi death camp — but nobody on the right cared much about that, either.) If anything, Williams is resolutely nonpartisan, and when I profiled him in 2008, he seemed slightly more enthusiastic about John McCain than Barack Obama. The son of a World War II Army captain, he idolized his father and has always venerated Americans in uniform – which may help to explain, along with a muddled memory and an apparent urge to embellish, how he fell into this current difficulty.
So far as anyone has determined, Williams is not guilty of the ultimate crime, which would be filing a false news report. His exaggerations all seem to have occurred on platforms other than the Nightly News. Widely repeated accusations by a far-right blogger that he puffed his award-winning Hurricane Katrina coverage with anecdotes about flooding and floating bodies remain unproven — and there is persuasive evidence supporting his remarks.
It was during Katrina’s aftermath that Williams memorably demonstrated how well he does his work. Vanity Fair was not alone in praising his performance, noting that he “exhibited unfaltering composure, compassion, and grit,” the culmination of decades in broadcast journalism.
Today’s anchors are overpaid superstars, fighting for attention in a world no longer dominated by network news, but none of that is his fault. And in contrast to many of the charming faces on television news programs, he is an actual journalist with a long record of unblemished reporting.
So unless something worse emerges from NBC’s investigation, I share the view of Joe Summerlin, one of the brave veterans who really did survive that Chinook shoot-down in 2003, and publicly refuted Williams’ Iraq tale. His wording wasn’t generous, but his attitude is.
“Everyone tells lies,” the war veteran told the New York Times. “Every single one of us. The issue isn’t whether or not you lie. It is how you deal with it once you are caught. I thank you for stepping down for a few nights, Mr. Williams. Now can you admit that you didn’t ‘misremember’ and perform a real apology? I might even buy you a beer.”
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, February 12, 2015
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