“The Greatest Fraud”: How The NRA Hijacked The Republican Party
There are few better ways of grasping how far the Republicans have abandoned the middle ground, where they used to win elections, than the way their leaders have become agents of the gun industry. Conservatives used to consider themselves law-abiding citizens who put great store by the permanence of institutions, by the rule of law, and by the traditional caution and common sense of the sensible majority. Such devotion to stability, continuation, and moderation explains why so many conservatives were alarmed when the social revolution of the Sixties erupted. Suddenly, it seemed, everything was on the move. Children no longer believed in the wisdom of their elders, nor obeyed the unwritten rules that had guided every previous generation. The days of everyone knowing their place and remaining in it were overthrown and it appeared that anarchy had broken out in America.
Nowhere was this more evident to traditional conservatives than in the way African-Americans responded to the civil rights legislation enacted by Lyndon Johnson. Instead of being grateful for the overdue democratic changes wrested from reluctant Southern lawmakers, a significant number of African-Americans demanded more profound change. There were riots in Los Angeles, Detroit, and other major cities which were met by calls from conservatives for tighter gun controls. The Black Panthers, dressed as soldiers and carrying guns, as was their right under the Second Amendment, demanded that African-Americans be allowed to live in a separate self-governing state. In May 1967, 30 Panthers took loaded rifles, shotguns, and pistols into the California State Capitol to protest against new gun control laws. The California governor, Ronald Reagan, declared: “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”
After John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King were assassinated, Johnson joined with conservatives to pass the federal Gun Control Act that stipulated a minimum age for gun buyers, restricted traffic across state lines to federally registered gun dealers, limited the sale of certain destructive bullets, required guns to carry serial numbers, and added drug addicts and the insane to those, like felons, who were already forbidden to own guns. When it transpired that Lee Harvey Oswald had bought the rifle that killed the president mail order from the pages of the National Rifle Association magazine, the NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth backed an end to mail-order sales. “We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States,” he said.
In the mid-Seventies, the NRA switched from being a moderate organization backing moderate gun controls into a radical body that promulgated an absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment with a new motto: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” It was this originalist interpretation of the Second Amendment that led Warren Burger, the conservative, constructionist chief justice appointed by Richard Nixon to declare on PBS in 1991 that the NRA had perpetrated “one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word fraud – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. … [the NRA has] misled the American people and they, I regret to say, they have had far too much influence on the Congress of the United States than as a citizen I would like to see. And I am a gun man.”
Today the Republican Party remains in hock to the NRA leadership and through them to their paymasters in the gun-making industry. The NRA runs an official list, like the old Communist Party, of preferred candidates and grades them according to their adherence to the strict constructionist interpretation of the Second Amendment. If a candidate fails to offer total support for absolutist gun rights, the NRA funds a campaign in the next party primary to unseat them. Polls suggest, however, that the NRA leadership no longer represents the wishes of its members towards moderate gun controls, and since the Sandy Hook massacre of schoolchildren, the extremism of NRA leaders like Wayne LaPierre, whose tin-eared response to the shootings so jarred voters in all parties, suggests the existence at the top of the organization of a self-serving, superannuated elite that no longer commands the confidence of its rank and file.
Gun rights activism is just one strand of Republican extremism out of kilter with moderate Republicans and middle ground independent voters who decide elections. In the mid-Seventies, while Second Amendment fundamentalists were starting to blacklist GOP candidates who would not support their hard line, the party was also transformed by the rise of radical Christian fundamentalists, whose literal reading of scripture led them to adopt social conservative positions on abortion, race, and homosexuality. These changes coincided with the arrival of neo-conservatism, a body of theory that saw America as not just the world’s policeman but the harbinger of democracy everywhere with a particular brief to counter radical Islam. Until then it could be argued, citing two world wars, Korea and Vietnam, that the Democrats were the war party and the Republicans the party that put America first. Since the neo-cons that notion has been turned on its head by the persecution of two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which were to be abandoned after an inconclusive outcome.
Around the same time, economic notions that had ensured unprecedented prosperity under Eisenhower and Nixon gave way in the GOP to fiscal conservatism – absolutist ideas about the money supply and reducing public spending that George H. W. Bush derided as “voodoo economics.” Since 2009, libertarian insurgents that in the GOP primaries last year accounted for about 10 per cent of party activists have extrapolated careful budgeting into demands for minimal government. Since Tea Party protestors entered the GOP in numbers in 2009, they have instituted further restrictive demands upon Republican candidates, diminishing the discretion of elected officials by directing them to obey pledges not to raise taxes.
Once a moderate party protecting old fashioned values, since the mid-Seventies the Republicans have adopted extreme positions that are alien to the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Nixon and Bush Sr. A party proud of its pragmatism is being driven by dogmatic theories imported by unbending ideologues such as Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek. On guns, abortion, immigration, women’s health, homosexual rights, home schooling, and a host of other issues, the once inclusive Republican Party has lost its one-nation tradition and supplanted it with a hotchpotch of sectarian interests policed by a coalition of narrow, theory-driven mavericks, curmudgeons, libertarians, radicals, and eccentrics.
The GOP is deeply divided, a split that conservative commentators like Charles Krauthammer attribute to fast footwork by President Obama. Other conservatives, such as Bill O’Reilly, think the party will find it hard to put itself back together by the time of the next presidential election, never mind the mid-terms in two years. Citing the way Obama and Bill Clinton arrived from nowhere to save the Democrats from an unpopular ideological stance, Krauthammer believes the Republicans will be saved by an as-yet unknown savior. Four years is, indeed, a long time in politics, but it may take far longer than that to purge the party of its popular perception as a redoubt for gun-toting, women-loathing, gay-hating, xenophobic, war-mongering anarchists.
By: Nicholas Wapshot, Reuters, January 18, 2013
“A Beginning, Not A Conclusion”: Showing Resolve, President Obama Pushes Republicans Toward Surrender
Watching his Republican adversaries in the House of Representatives tiptoe gingerly away from another destructive confrontation over the debt ceiling just before his second inaugural celebration, President Obama must feel a measure of satisfaction. Yet this is a beginning, not a conclusion. The hopes of the nation that re-elected him depend on whether he understands why he is winning – and how he can continue to prevail.
The formula for success was simple enough: He wouldn’t relinquish fundamental positions on taxes and spending. He stopped pretending that the old bipartisanship is currently possible on Capitol Hill. He refused to negotiate under threat from the Republicans. And he called their bluff on the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling.
Adopting those firm positions, he persevered despite the usual deluge of complaint from commentators, politicians, editorial boards, and other Beltway sages, who predictably roasted him for behaving as if he meant what he said during last year’s campaign. Not surprisingly, however, the popular majority admires him and ignores his critics.
Of course, there is nothing new here: Americans prefer a political leader who displays a touch of grit, even if they don’t fully agree with that leader’s views or actions. Establishing a determined and principled persona is vital; compromise can come later.
Certainly Obama’s power has been enhanced by his election victory — a victory achieved by stiff resistance to the Republican agenda and willingness to fight back. Except for the second debate, when he reverted to old habits of vacillation and diffidence, the president showed steel during the campaign. And since Election Day, he has remained consistently decisive.
The rewards of steadfastness can be seen in the polls. Gallup shows a 7-point climb in his approval rating since last August, from 46 percent then to more than 53 percent last week. Rasmussen shows a climb of roughly 10 points during the same period, with a corresponding decline in disapproval. In the CNN/Time surveys, the president’s margin of approval has risen from 3 points last August to 12 points today. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 61 percent regard him as a “strong leader,” 58 percent agreed with his view of the debt ceiling – and 67 percent say that congressional Republicans haven’t done enough to compromise with him on important issues. In all these polls and others, the public voices an exceptionally low opinion of Congress — and especially of congressional Republicans.
The Republicans still mutter threats about the budget, but their slow-motion surrender resulted directly from a growing perception of Obama’s resolve. He should continue to stare them down, unblinking, unless and until they abandon the Tea Party tactics of obstruction and blackmail.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, January 19, 2013
“Time Is Running Out”: The GOP Needs To Figure Out Its Position On Entitlement Programs
The White House’s weekend ultimatum that Congress either lift the debt ceiling cleanly or take responsibility for default puts Republicans in a bind over their goal of reforming entitlement programs.
In ruling out all executive options, such as minting a high-value platinum coin, the White House put the onus on congressional Republicans to agree to raise the nation’s borrowing limit — without spending cuts or strings attached — or permit the first ever credit default.
President Obama has steadfastly rebuffed their calls to cut social spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, and Democratic leaders support his position.
“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” said Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney.
“The President and the American people won’t tolerate Congressional Republicans holding the American economy hostage again simply so they can force disastrous cuts to Medicare and other programs the middle class depend on while protecting the wealthy.”
That leaves Republicans in a difficult position vis-à-vis their promise not to raise the debt ceiling without improving the long-run solvency of programs like Social Security and Medicare.
If they propose safety net cuts that Democrats oppose, they risk political blowback. If they back off, conservatives will accuse them of surrender on a top priority.
The situation has left Republicans flummoxed. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) lashed out at Democratic leaders after they sent a letter Friday calling on President Obama to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally if Republicans block congressional action.
“The Democrat leadership hiding under their desks and hoping the President will find a way around the law on the nation’s maxed-out credit card is not only the height of irresponsibility, but also a guarantee that our national debt crisis will only get worse,” McConnell said in a statement. He swiped Democrats for refusing to offer “any plan to break the spending habit that’s causing the problem.”
Republican leaders understand the risks of pushing near-term entitlement cuts without Democratic buy-in. During the fiscal cliff battle, they abstractly demanded scaling back entitlements but avoided putting specifics on paper. House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) failed fallback plan didn’t touch entitlements.
As he did then, McConnell is again calling on Obama to put forth a debt ceiling plan with spending cuts, in effect suggesting that the president be the one to call for scaling back the safety net.
The other option, backing down on entitlements, is also problematic after Republicans demoralized their anti-tax base by swallowing some $620 billion in tax increases to resolve the fiscal cliff. In accepting the deal, GOP leaders assured conservatives that the debt ceiling was where they would make their stand on retirement programs.
Achieving meaningful savings requires making unpopular cuts beyond what’s been considered recently. Policies under discussion in prior negotiations included reducing future Social Security benefits via Chained CPI and gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Both amount to benefit cuts that the public opposes. And the savings they’ll produce would only address a fraction of the programs’ long-term solvency problems.
That’s the GOP’s dilemma in a nutshell: fulfilling their promise to their base requires pushing for something highly unpopular. And this time, not only are Democrats diligently refusing to provide them political cover, but forcing the issue would also require Republicans to court severe economic consequence as their price of political victory.
By: Sahil Kapur, Contributor, Business Insider, January 15, 2013
“White Districts And White Sensibilities”: The Real Problem Republicans Have, They Don’t Want To Change Their Policies
You may have heard that in the incoming Congress, white men will constitute a minority of the Democratic caucus for the first time. That’s an interesting fact, but it’s only part of the story. At National Journal, Ron Brownstein and Scott Bland have a long, Brownsteinian look at how “the parties glare across a deep racial chasm” not only in the members of Congress themselves, but in the people they represent. “Republicans now hold 187 of the 259 districts (72 percent) in which whites exceed their national share of the voting-age population. Democrats hold 129 of the 176 seats (73 percent) in which minorities exceed their national share of the voting-age population. From another angle, 80 percent of Republicans represent districts more heavily white than the national average; 64 percent of House Democrats represent seats more heavily nonwhite than the national average.”
The implications for the GOP of the fact that most of their members represent mostly white districts are profound, touching on the continuous interaction between individuals and policy. Politicians are shaped by their political environments and the things they have to do to win, and the fact that most GOP members represent overwhelmingly white districts means that as they rise through the ranks, the time they’re going to have to spend talking to and listening to non-white people is going to be limited. Brownstein and Bland talked to some of the few Republicans who represent more diverse districts:
But even some House Republicans from racially diverse districts worry that many of their colleagues representing more monolithically white areas aren’t doing enough to court minorities. “Honestly, I don’t believe they are,” says Rep. Joe Heck, who won reelection in a diverse district outside Las Vegas.
Heck says he’s established beachheads among minority voters by working first with ethnic chambers of commerce. “For me, meeting with the members of the chamber was a door to building relationships with members of those communities,” he says. Then he hired aides to coordinate outreach to Hispanic and Asian constituents; during his campaign, he organized coalitions in those communities. “When I’m home in the district, we would do entire outreach days, visiting multiple Hispanic businesses, even ones outside of my district.”
As it happens, Joe Heck is an extremely conservative Republican. But he does all that outreach because he has no choice. And over time, that will make him more understanding of, and sensitive to, the concerns of people who aren’t white. It means that he’ll have a better awareness of the things that piss Hispanics off, and learning how not to piss different kinds of people off—with both substance and symbolism—is a big part of politics. This is important for both sides, and with a variety of constituencies. For instance, one of the first things you learn working on a Democratic campaign is that every piece of printed material you produce, from brochures to door hangers, has to have on it the tiny union “bug” that shows it was printed at a union shop. If it doesn’t, you can be damn sure you’ll get some angry phone calls from union members and representatives, because they notice. Republicans have I’s to be dotted and T’s to be crossed for their own constituencies as well. But somebody coming up through Republican politics in an overwhelmingly white district won’t have to learn, for instance, what pisses off Hispanics. So when they talk about immigration their speech is peppered with terms like “illegal aliens” that Hispanics find, well, alienating.
The advantage Democrats have is that nobody has to teach them how to talk to white people, because you learn that no matter where you live. It’s the same reason colleges don’t offer courses in White History or White Literature—you’re already learning it. Yes, there are subgroups of whites whom you can fail to understand, but it’s a lot less likely that you’re going to alienate them and end up losing the White House because of it.
So the real problem Republicans have isn’t that they don’t want to recruit minorities, because they do. They don’t want to change their policies to do it, of course, but they’re pleased as punch when they find someone like Tim Scott or Ted Cruz, a real-live minority who also happens to be rabidly right-wing, whom they can hold up as an example. Their problem is that they don’t know how to attract minority voters, because where most of them come from, they don’t have to.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, January, 15, 2013
“Fundamentally Stupid And Dangerous”: The GOP Debt Ceiling Strategy Is “Hostage Taking”
Paul Krugman on Sunday accused the Republican leadership of holding the country hostage.
The Nobel-Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist argued that congressional Republicans are “threatening to blow up the world economy” if they don’t get their way in the debt-ceiling debate. After a difficult fiscal cliff battle, President Barack Obama said he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling, but Republicans have said they won’t authorize an increase in the country’s spending limit without major spending cuts.
“We should not allow this to become thought of as a legitimate or normal budget strategy,” Krugman said on ABC’s “This Week.” “This is hostage taking.”
Krugman has made similar statements in the past, particularly when defending the idea of minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin to avoid the debt ceiling crisis — a loophole the White House ruled out Saturday. In a blog post earlier this month, Krugman argued that Obama should be ready to mint the coin because it offered a “silly, but benign” solution to the crisis. The alternative: Putting the nation’s ability to meet its financial obligations at risk, an option that Krugman described as “both vile and disastrous.”
“The debt ceiling is a fundamentally stupid but dangerous thing,” Krugman said on “This Week.” “It’s incredibly scary, this is much scarier than the fiscal cliff,” he added later.
If Congress does nothing to raise the debt ceiling, the U.S. could lose its ability to meet its financial obligations by as early as February 15, according to a recent report from the Bipartisan Policy Center. Republican leaders and the White House came to an agreement earlier this month to address the so-called fiscal cliff, a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that economists warned could have plunged the country into recession.
By: Jillian Berman, The Huffington Post, January 13, 2013
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