“Mitch McConnell Digs A Hole, Falls In”: Frankenstein Has Found That His Monster Is Running Out Of Control
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) talked to a local reporter this week about the Affordable Care Act, which he described as the “single worst piece of legislation passed in the last 50 years in the country.” The Republican senator restated his position that “we need to get rid of” the law.
But McConnell also made an off-hand comment that seemed wholly uninteresting at the time: “I mean, there are a handful of things in the 2,700 page bill that probably are OK, but that doesn’t warrant a 2,700 page takeover of all American health care.”
In 2013, with the right’s hysteria over health care seemingly getting worse, the comments are apparently controversial.
In an ordinary political environment, McConnell’s remarks would hardly be newsworthy…. But the political environment surrounding Obamacare is anything but ordinary — with the ferocious Republican assault on the bill, the party’s exaggerated warnings that it will ruin American freedom, and the base’s determination to scrap every last bit of it. So McConnell’s remarks quickly became fodder for his conservative primary challenger, Matt Bevin, who accused the GOP leader’s of “flip-flop[ping] on repealing Obamacare in its entirety.”
“We have to do whatever it takes to repeal Obamacare, and if we can’t repeal it, we have a responsibility to the American people to defund it,” Bevin said in a statement Thursday, responding to McConnell’s remarks. “If Mitch McConnell had ever worked in the private sector, he might understand that. If Senator McConnell is not willing to act to end Obamacare, he needs to get out of the way.”
So let me get this straight. For reasons that have never really made any sense, McConnell described “Obamacare” as the “single worst piece of legislation passed in the last 50 years in the country.” He vowed to “get rid of” the law. He condemned it (falsely) as a “takeover of all American health care.”
And for some Republicans, this position is too moderate and accommodating.
This is silly, but let’s not overlook the larger context: McConnell helped create this mess in the first place. If he’s annoyed by the inflexibility, the senator has no one to blame but himself.
I imagine McConnell was probably trying to offer himself a little general-election cover by saying “there are a handful of things in the 2,700 page bill that probably are OK.” The more the senator says he wants to destroy the entirety of the law — every letter of every page, no matter how effective or popular the idea — the more vulnerable he is to criticisms from the American mainstream.
Would McConnell take coverage away from young adults who can now stay on their family plans through age 26? Would he scrap protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions? Would he end tax breaks for small businesses? Would he end breaks for seniors on prescription medication? McConnell left himself an out — sure, there are some elements he can tolerate, but he still hates the law.
But McConnell is in a red-state primary fight, and it’s apparently a problem to say anything even remotely supportive of the dreaded “Obamacare.”
Sahil Kapur concluded, “That McConnell is being attacked for his remark illustrates the box Republicans have put themselves in while feeding conservatives’ greatest fears about the Affordable Care Act.” So true. GOP leaders, including McConnell, have to realize that they created this monster — they have spent years telling Republican activists and Republican media that “Obamacare” is a communist/fascist/Nazi takeover that will kill the elderly, destroy capitalism, and quite likely end civilization as we know it.
GOP leaders’ rhetoric has never made a lick of sense — Obamacare is a pretty moderate law, built around mainstream ideas that have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support — but McConnell and his allies pushed this garbage anyway, in part to keep the Republican base fired up, and in part because it was good for fundraising.
And now Frankenstein has found that his monster is running out of control. Well, Mitch, you probably should have thought of that before.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 15, 2013
“Misleading Others And Lying To Themselves”: Why John Boehner Has To Keep Making Crazy Threats
You probably read yesterday about the efforts of John Boehner and the Republican leadership in the House to convince the rank-and-file members that shutting down the government until Obamacare is defunded is a Bad Idea, and not a Brilliant Political Maneuver. Robert Costa’s account in the National Review has the basic narrative. It looks, now, like Boehner has succeeded in defusing the shutdown threat. All he had to do was promise something worse. Now we are going to not raise the debt ceiling instead.
As Jonathan Chait points out, replacing the shutdown threat with a default threat is actually much crazier and more potentially disastrous. But Boehner couldn’t get Republicans to agree to just give up on defunding Obamacare this year. He had to promise to exchange their one crazy plan to do so with another one that will go into effect later. And when it is time for that one to go into effect, he will need to find something else to distract them for a little while, until the next crazy plan is ready to go. As Brian Beutler says, we’ve seen this play out over and over again. Boehner has to promise to let Republicans do some apocalyptic thing later in order to get them to avoid doing some apocalyptic thing now. So far we’ve avoided an apocalypse.
But the people Boehner is trying to deal with here don’t see any of these threats as particularly apocalyptic. They don’t really see anything at all that might contradict their ideological stances. The House members Boehner’s trying to walk back from the ledge don’t read the Times or the Post. They don’t care what Brookings or the CBO or CRS say. They believe every “nonpartisan” or “objective” information source to be a part of the vast liberal conspiracy, and they rely for their facts and predictions strictly on sources explicitly aligned with the conservative movement. And those sources are just telling them crazy, untrue things, all the time.
That’s Boehner’s problem: He’s trying to ease his members into the real world, where defunding Obamacare is impossible as long as Obama is in the White House, and where attempts to do so via incredibly unconventional means could have disastrous consequences. What makes his job more difficult is that this reality isn’t acknowledged by most of the conservative organizations his members, and his party’s voters, exclusively follow.
Take Heritage, for years the most influential conservative think tank (it is still in the top five, depending on how you categorize advocacy groups like FreedomWorks). Heritage has been attempting to convince Republicans that a shutdown wouldn’t be such a big deal. Polls commissioned by Heritage say a government shutdown wouldn’t cause anyone to lose their seats, so have at it! The poll, by the way, was conducted entirely in Republican or Republican-leaning House districts.
Now, the venerable Heritage Foundation isn’t saying this. The poll, and the shutdown encouragement, were issued by “Heritage Action for America,” the 501(c)(4) group founded as Heritage’s sister organization in 2010, to take advantage of the new post-Citizens United “almost anything goes” rules for supposed “social welfare” organizations. “Think of it as the Heritage Foundation with teeth,” Betsy Woodruff said in the National Review. So far Heritage Action has been using those teeth to drag the GOP into the world of right-wing fantasy, in which the Farm Bill must be rejected because it does not cut food stamps enough, and the border “surge” amendment to the immigration reform bill must be opposed because $38 billion worth of fences and agents aren’t enough.
For years, the Heritage Foundation’s mission was to craft conservative policy ideas that would both be possible to implement and be broadly popular. School vouchers and welfare reform and tax cuts are all ideas within the realm of the politically possible, and they are also all ideas that have polled quite well at various times. This was effective: Reagan and George W. Bush’s domestic agendas came largely prepackaged by Heritage. But now the organization is using its lobbying arm to just demand total fealty, damn the consequences, to the most extreme form of conservatism possible. That is something of a shift. But it’s a shift the movement has seemingly embraced in the Obama era. Now even supposedly “sober” and “grown-up” conservatives argue that breaching the debt ceiling wouldn’t be so bad — may even indeed be pretty good depending on how you look at it! — and work to convince Republicans that the way to handle demographic change is with strict immigration limits and the militarization of the border, combined with making the party even more dependent solely on white votes.
This is not a left-winger pining for the days of Republican “moderation.” Heritage and the National Review were always very conservative. They were just realistically conservative. Professional conservatives graduated some time ago from misleading others to lying to themselves.
If you want evidence, look at the rapturous praise that greeted the publication of “American Betrayal” by Diana West, a book that argues that … McCarthy was right about everything and that the FDR administration was a puppet regime for Stalin, and that we purposely delayed winning World War II so that the Soviets could have more of Europe when it was finished. The book is just untrue, start to finish. Conservative historian Ronald Radosh — writing in the online publication of David Horowitz, a man who is not unfriendly to wild conspiracy theories about leftists — patiently and at length knocked down nearly every single one of its claims in a review. The book is so silly that Radosh planned to ignore it, but he couldn’t once he saw how the movement had fallen for it:
But I changed my mind after seeing the reckless endorsements of its unhinged theories by a number of conservative individuals and organizations. These included the Heritage Foundation which has hosted her for book promotions at a lunchtime speech and a dinner; Breitbart.com which is serializing America Betrayed; PJ Media which has already run three favorable features on West; Amity Shlaes, who writes unnervingly that West’s book, “masterfully reminds us what history is for: to suggest action for the present”; and by conservative political scientist and media commentator Monica Crowley, who called West’s book “A monumental achievement.”
Hey, there’s Heritage again! And Amity Shlaes, who wrote a book about how FDR made the Depression worse with liberalism. That book didn’t really coherently build an economic case against Keynesianism but because it had a thesis conservatives liked it quickly became popular, and she has been writing for Forbes and the Wall Street Journal ever since. (And Bloomberg View, for some reason.) This West book is just another step away from reality, into the sweet embrace of fantasy. FDR didn’t just make the Depression worse, he also surrounded himself with Stalinists! The far right has been pushing this shit for decades, obviously. It used to be the mainstream right’s job to make sure it only traveled as far as was politically expedient. Now they lap it up themselves.
This is why Boehner is having so much trouble. He can’t live entirely in this wonderful fantasy world. He has to actually raise the debt ceiling and make sure essential government services get funded. All the institutions designed to make his life easier, to corral the voters, activists and even legislators into supporting the agenda and ensuring the future success of the Republican Party, are all too busy make-believing about the 1930s and convincing themselves that they can defeat Obamacare if they simply want to bad enough, to be of any assistance.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, August 15, 2013
“Senate Minority Bystander”: Given The Circumstances, Mitch McConnell Has Earned His New Title
The fight among Republicans over whether to shut down the government in the fall isn’t going away. The Heritage Foundation’s political-activism arm is trying to convince GOP lawmakers that the fallout wouldn’t be that bad; Karl Rove and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sparred this week on Sean Hannity’s radio show over the strategy; and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus are conspicuously contradicting each other.
This is ordinarily the point at which Republican leaders intervene to prevent the intra-party fissures from getting too severe. And for a brief moment yesterday, it looked like that had finally happened.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told a crowd at a health care forum in Kentucky on Tuesday that while he does not like the president’s health care law, shutting down the government over funding it “will not stop” it from existing.
“I’m for stopping Obamacare, but shutting down the government will not stop Obamacare,” McConnell told the audience at Baptist Health Corbin, according to a WYMT-TV reporter at the event.
Good for McConnell. The Kentucky Republican had been content to sit on the sidelines while Republicans tore each other apart on this issue, but yesterday, he finally offered a little straight talk: those who hope to tear down the federal health care system need to realize that shutting down the government will not actually bring them closer to their goal.
This is the sort of leadership that’s been lacking in the GOP in recent weeks, so it was a welcome a development. That is, until McConnell quickly announced he didn’t really mean it.
As news of McConnell’s comments made the rounds yesterday afternoon, the senator’s office confirmed to Greg Sargent that McConnell “did not take sides in the dispute over whether to stage a shutdown confrontation.”
And as it turns out, the office was telling the truth — a local station aired the interview with McConnell, and while he noted that a shutdown would not stop implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the senator did not take the next step of endorsing one strategy or another.
In other words, McConnell realizes that shutting down the government won’t stop “Obamacare,” but he thinks a shutdown may be worth doing anyway. Or maybe not. He doesn’t want to say.
Let’s not brush past the larger context. Soon after McConnell seemed to reject his party’s ridiculous (and probably suicidal) shutdown scheme, McConnell’s office was eager — desperate, even — to assure everyone that the Senate Leader was not, in any way, demonstrating any kind of leadership, or stating an opinion in public. He’s aware of the major dispute among his own followers, but McConnell wants one thing to be perfectly clear: he’s ready to let this division continue, without so much as taking a side.
Maybe he needs a new title. Senate Minority Bystander seems more appropriate under the circumstances.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 14, 2013
“More Sickening Than Stomach Flu”: With The Help Of ALEC, Corporate Greed Is Making Us Sick
The failure of our corporate and political leaders to make sure every worker gets good health care is causing some unpleasant consequences — like widespread stomach flu.
Ill workers often spread illness, because millions of employees who deal directly with the public are not covered by paid sick leave policies. So, when they come down with something like the stomach flu, they tend to drag themselves to work, rather than going to bed until they recover, since staying home means a loss of pay — or even the loss of their jobs.
Low-wage workers in the restaurant industry are particularly vulnerable and, since they handle food, particularly threatening. Nearly 80 percent of America’s food service workers receive no paid sick leave, and researchers have found that about half of them go to work ill because they fear losing their jobs if they don’t. As a result, a study by the Centers for Disease Control finds that ill workers are causing up to 80 percent of America’s stomach flu outbreaks, which is one reason CDC has declared our country’s lack of paid sick leave to be a major public health threat.
You’d think the industry itself would be horrified enough by this endangerment of its customers that it would take the obvious curative step of providing the leave. But au contraire, amigos, such huge and hugely profitable chains as McDonald’s, Red Lobster and Taco Bell not only fail to provide such commonsense care for their employees, but also have lobbied furiously against city and state efforts to require paid sick days.
Ironically, the top corporate executives of these chains (who are not involved in preparing or serving food to the public) are protected with full sick leave policies. For them to deny it to workers is idiotic, dangerously shortsighted — and even more sickening than stomach flu.
But what about our lawmakers? Where’s the leadership we need on this basic issue of fairness and public health? To paraphrase an old bumper sticker: “When the people lead, leaders will follow. Or not.”
Not when the “leaders” are in the pocket of corporate interests that don’t like where the people are leading. Take Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who never met a corporate pocket too grungy to climb into. This story starts in 2008, when the people of Milwaukee took the lead on the obvious need for a program allowing employees to earn a few days of paid sick leave each year, to be used if they fall ill or must care for a sick family member. Seven out of 10 Milwaukee voters approved that measure in a citywide referendum.
Corporate interests, however, sued to stall the people’s will, tying the sick leave provision up in court until 2011. By then, the corporations had put up big bucks to put Walker into the governorship — and right into their pocket. Sure enough, he dutifully nullified the Milwaukee vote by passing a “state pre-emption” law, autocratically banning local governments from requiring sick leave benefits for employees.
Just three months later, Walker’s pre-emption ploy was the star at a meeting of ALEC, the corporate front group that brings state legislators into secret sessions with CEOs and lobbyists. There, legislators are handed model laws to benefit corporations — then sent home to pass them. At a session overseen by Taco Bell, attendees got copies of Walker’s no-paid-sick-leave edict, along with a how-to-pass-it lecture by the National Restaurant Association. “Go forth, and pre-empt local democracy!” was the message.
And, lo, they did. Bills summarily prohibiting local governments from passing paid-sick-leave ordinances are being considered in at least 12 states this year, and Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee have already passed theirs.
Florida’s process was especially ugly. Organize Now, a coalition of voters in Orlando, had obtained 50,000 signatures to put a sick leave referendum on last November’s ballot. But, pressured by the hugely profitable Disney World empire, county commissioners arbitrarily removed it from the ballot.
The scrappy coalition, however, took ‘em to court — and won, getting the referendum rescheduled for a 2014 vote. Disney & Gang scuttled off to Tallahassee this year to conspire with Gov. Rick Snyder and GOP legislative leaders. Quicker than a bullet leaves a gun, those corporate-hugging politicos obligingly delivered a “kill shot” to Orlando voters by enacting a Walkeresque state usurpation of local authority.
By spreading Walker’s autocratic nastiness from state to state, money-grubbing low-wage profiteers are literally spreading illness all across our land.
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, August 14, 2013
“Stop Me Before I Kill Government Again”: Republicans Tying Themselves Into Knots Yet Again
Happy as I am that a bipartisan convergence on sentencing reform just possibly could be in the works, it can’t obscure the more immediate spectacle of Republicans simultaneously trying to identify with and tamp down the “base’s” desire for a government shutdown (or debt default) over “defunding Obamacare.” Greg Sargent nicely diagnoses the malady after watching Reince Priebus tie himself into knots on a Sunday show:
After CNN’s Candy Crowley pointed out some Republicans are challenging the conservative demand for a government shutdown confrontation to force the defunding of Obamacare, Priebus actually responded:
“I think all Republicans are unified on one thing and that is defunding, delaying, getting rid of, eliminating Obamacare. So we have total unanimity on that issue and the question is what are the tactics? And you know, even if you take the position of a Ted Cruz or Mike Lee, basically what they’re saying is we actually are funding 100 percent of the government except for that small percentage of nondiscretionary — excuse me, discretionary funding the Obamacare.
“So Mr. President, if you want to shut the government down because you want to continue to fund this monstrosity that you’ve already admit is half broken, then go ahead. I mean the fact that it’s on the Republican Party I just think is spin from the Democratic Party that you ought not be adopting. I don’t know why you’re adopting that spin….”
[I]t’s not surprising that Republican officials have effortlessly internalized the framing of the coming Obamacare/government shutdown Priebus adopts above. Thanks partly to the GOP leadership’s willingness to lavish years of care and feeding on the base’s preoccupation with Obamacare repeal, large swaths of the party’s base appear to remain convinced that the law is entirely illegitimate and that they need not accept that the law is here to stay. It’s easy to get from here to the conclusion that Obama will be to blame for any catastrophic consequences that flow from the continued showdown over Obamacare; after all, this whole situation was created by Obama’s initial exercise of tyranny (Dems rammed the law through!!!) and is now being perpetuated by his continued tyrannical resistance to undoing it in the face of the popular will.
I’m guessing the next act for “adult Republicans” like Priebus will be to oppose a government shutdown confrontation on grounds that they are saving the country from Obama’s reckless behavior. The truth is that they would be acting to save their own party from the same kind of political disaster the GOP incurred with the same behavior in 1995.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 12, 2013
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