“What Was Our Republican Leadership Thinking?”: Pretending To Care, The GOP Has A Decision To Make
Republicans Sens. John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, and Lindsey Graham kicked off the first in a series of public events yesterday, intended to highlight the apparent dangers of deep, automatic defense cuts due at the end of the year. The first event was in Ayotte’s home state of New Hampshire, where the lawmakers spoke at BAE Systems, which stands to lose thousands of jobs from reduced government spending.
At the event, McCain said:
“This was generated by Congress, and the president has a legitimate point when he says, ‘Well, Congress is the one that came up with this cockamamie idea, and so,’ as he said the other day, ‘let them wiggle out of it.’ Well, I understand that logic and there’s something to it.”
Yes, actually, there is. In fact, Graham told reporters yesterday, “What was our Republican leadership thinking when they agreed to the concept of sequestration?”
I’ve been wondering the same thing. McCain, Ayotte, and Graham are traveling from swing state to swing state, railing against the proposed defense cuts, which many Republicans blame on President Obama. But as the tour continues, is it too much to ask that the political world remember that these cuts were the GOP’s idea?
As we’ve discussed, as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, policymakers accepted over $1 trillion in cuts that would be implemented if the so-called supercommittee failed. Democrats weren’t completely willing to roll over — they wanted to create an incentive for Republicans to work in good faith.
Republicans agreed: if the committee failed, the GOP would accept defense cuts and Dems would accept non-defense domestic cuts. The committee, of course, flopped when GOP members refused to compromise, which put us on the clock for the automatic reductions that Republicans contributed to the very process they insisted upon.
So why blame Obama? He’s not the one who came up with the debt-ceiling crisis; he’s not the one who recommended the defense cuts; and he’s not the one who refused to compromise during the supercommittee talks.
Indeed, the larger question now is what Republicans prioritize more: defense spending or tax breaks.
Greg Sargent had a good item on this yesterday.
Republicans such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been touring swing states to highlight the looming sequester cuts to defense spending that are set to be triggered by the deficit supercommittee’s failure. They have said such cuts will be devastating to our national security, and have blamed Obama and Dems for the imminent threat.
At the same time, House Republicans will vote this week against the Democratic plan to extend tax cuts on all income over $250,000, because it doesn’t extend the cuts on all levels, including income higher than that.
So here’s the question: If the looming sequester cuts are such a threat to national security, why doesn’t that undermine Republican leverage in the discussions over what to do about the tax cuts?
Right. The looming, automatic cuts are inching closer to reality because Republicans refuse to consider some tax increases as a solution to the debt problem they sometimes pretend to care about. If GOP officials accepted new tax revenue, a deal could come together and these large defense cuts would simply be taken off the table.
But Republicans, at least for now, won’t budge — they want a larger agreement that would eliminate the need for deep Pentagon cuts and they want a deal that doesn’t require any increases on any one at any time.
McCain, among others, pushed the argument yesterday that it’s up to Obama to “lead” by bringing policymakers together and working out a solution. That sounds nice, but it’s foolish — the president has tried this repeatedly, but Republicans won’t compromise. Indeed, even now, McCain is urging Obama to work towards a compromise while McCain’s party simultaneously says it won’t compromise.
And so it’s the GOP that has a decision to make. While they decide, if they could stop blaming the White House for the Republicans’ own idea, it’d make the conversation a lot less ridiculous.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 1, 2012
“Congratulations Republicans”: There Is Actual GOP Voter Fraud In Arizona
When Republican officials nationwide launched an aggressive voter-suppression campaign in advance of the 2012 elections, they did so under the dubious auspices of “voter fraud.” The tactics are necessary, the GOP said, not to rig elections, but to protect the integrity of the process.
The problem, of course, is that actual, real-world voter fraud is exceptionally rare, as even most proponents of voter-suppression efforts are willing to admit. But I’m curious: why is it that when legitimate examples come to light, they always seem to come from one party?
A Pinal County supervisor candidate has withdrawn from the race in the wake of voter-fraud allegations involving a former companion who, records show, has continued to vote by absentee ballot in the five years since her death.
John Enright, 66, had been seeking the Republican nomination for county supervisor of District 5, an area that includes Apache Junction and Gold Canyon.
Enright ended his candidacy last week, but his written statement failed to explain why he allegedly has been voting by absentee ballot for his former girlfriend.
It’s also worth noting that voter-ID laws — the preferred Republican method of cracking down on fraud — wouldn’t have prevented the kind of scheme Enright allegedly used in Arizona.
The news comes on the heels of Republican Charlie White, the former Indiana secretary of state, who was convicted earlier this year of several felonies, including voter fraud. (His crimes also wouldn’t have been prevented by voter-ID laws.)
So, congratulations Republicans, we now have some actual examples of genuine voter fraud. Whether the GOP tries to use these examples to justify voter-ID laws is up to them.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 1, 2012
“The Double Reversal”: Why Did Romney Double Down On Anti-Palestinian Comments?
Mitt Romney has mastered the art of an impressive maneuver worthy of an Olympic gymnast: the double reversal. Within two days he has changed positions twice on why Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live in abject poverty.
After initially walking back his comments attributing Israel’s prosperity and its neighbors’ lack thereof to their respective cultures, Romney has decided to double down, posting an item on National Review’s website defending his statement.
It all started on Sunday, when Romney said the following at a fundraiser in Jerusalem:
The GDP per capita for instance in Israel which is about $21,000 and you compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice a dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States.… Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things. One, I recognize the hand of Providence in selecting this place.
Naturally, some Palestinians took exception to the implication that they are culturally deficient or disfavored by God. Speaking to the Associated Press, Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said: “It is a racist statement and this man doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation.”
Romney ignored the much more obvious culprits than culture, such as security restrictions, in suppressing Palestinian economic growth. As Ashley Parker wrote in the New York Times:
The Palestinians live under deep trade restrictions put in place by the Israeli government: After the militant group Hamas in 2007 took control of Gaza—home to about 1.7 million Palestinians—the Israelis imposed a near-total blockade on people and goods in Gaza. The blockade has been eased, and now many consumer goods are allowed in. But aid organizations say the restrictions still cripple Gaza’s economy. The West Bank, where 2.5 million Palestinians reside, is also subject to trade restrictions imposed by the Israelis.
The International Monetary Fund has observed the correlation between Israeli restrictions on trade and movement in the West Bank and Gaza and economic growth in the territories.
Even the people Romney was trying to compliment, Jews, might have been unnerved. Shalom Goldman wrote in Religion Dispatches, “It’s not only the Palestinian leadership that should be aghast at his remarks. Essentially, what the GOP’s candidate for president was saying is that ‘Jews are good with money.’… Students of Jewish history, and of Christian-Jewish relations, can’t help but being horrified by the tone-deafness of such language.”
Romney responded to the criticism by doing what he always does: he changed his position and lied about what he had said before. In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday morning Romney said, “I did not speak about the Palestinian culture or the decisions made in their economy.… That is an interesting topic that perhaps can deserve scholarly analysis but I actually didn’t address that. I certainly don’t intend to address that during my campaign.”
But by Tuesday night Romney had changed his mind again, deciding that the effect of culture on economic outcomes is, in fact, central to his campaign. At 8 pm National Review posted a commentary by Romney:
What exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth. Many significant features come to mind: our work ethic, our appreciation for education, our willingness to take risks, our commitment to honor and oath, our family orientation, our devotion to a purpose greater than ourselves, our patriotism. But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom.…
Israel is also a telling example. Like the United States, the state of Israel has a culture that is based upon individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a democracy that has embraced liberty, both political and economic. This embrace has created conditions that have enabled innovators and entrepreneurs to make the desert bloom.
Romney redefines cultures to include precisely the external factors—democracy, the rule of law, economic freedom—that liberals would agree are sources of prosperity. So now the Palestinians’ lack of economic freedom, at the hands of the Israeli occupation, is categorized by Romney as somehow a failing of Palestinian culture.
There are countries under no foreign occupation that also lack democracy, the rule of law and economic freedom, and their economies suffer accordingly. But to describe that as a national cultural characteristic—sort of the inverse of American work ethic—is absurd. North Koreans aren’t poor because their culture abhors economic freedom, while South Korean culture celebrates it. They are poor because they live in a totalitarian state that restricts it.
It is hilarious to see Romney pretend that Israel is some Republican paradise of free market policies. While in Israel Romney praised Israel’s healthcare system for being innovative and far more cost-effective than America’s. Israeli healthcare is, of course, completely socialized.
Romney’s intellectual dishonesty aside, it is curious that he even chose to do this at all. Why would he want to extend the life what is widely considered a gaffe? I’ve come up with three possibilities.
§ He wants to show strength. Romney has a well-earned reputation for flip-flopping and lacking core convictions. The current issue of Newsweek features a cover story by Michael Tomasky arguing that Romney is a wimp. Perhaps Romney wanted to show that he is capable of confronting critics and defending his turf for once. The only problem with this theory is that he would have been much wiser to do so on an issue where he had not already backed down.
§ He really believes this. It’s hard to fathom, since Romney seems to believe so little. But it’s the answer I got from every political professional I asked. Perhaps Romney does not lack a political spine but simply has his in an unusual place. Romney clearly lacks convictions on social issues, foreign policy and regulatory questions, so he makes the most politically expedient pander. But he does show conviction on certain vague economic principles. For example, he will not back down from saying that corporations are composed of people and they are not some evil abstraction. Perhaps the idea that economic benefits accrue to societies that are blessed with cultural virtue, rather than advantageous circumstances, is a similarly deeply held belief for Romney. It would make a clear corollary to his view that his own vast wealth is attributable to personal virtue rather than luck or greed.
§ Conservatives really believe this, and so Romney is trying to excite them. Typically, Romney reverses himself under pressure from conservative pundits. In this case, while conservatives were defending Romney’s original statement, there had not been a right-wing backlash against him for going wobbly on it. But perhaps Romney realized that standing on this principle would energize his base. “This is something that conservatives actually believe,” wrote Soren Dayton, a Republican political strategist, in an e-mail. “And, in many ways, it is clear that Arabs do too, reading the UN’s 2002 Arab Human Development Report, in which Arab scholars ask the same question that Romney did. To run away under pressure from Saeb Erekat and the political correctness police would be intellectually bankrupt and counter to a decade of debate within the Arab world itself.” (You can find a summary of the report Dayton references here.)
As the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) observed, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, August 1, 2012
“It’s Not A Gaffe”: When Culture, Context, And Cowardice Collide
Mitt Romney caused quite a stir this week, appearing at an Israeli fundraiser where he argued Palestinians have a weaker economy because of its “culture.” The comments have drawn sharp rebukes on both sides of the Atlantic and made an already-disastrous foreign trip even worse.
What’s more, as Kevin Drum explained this morning, it wasn’t a gaffe. “This was a deliberate pander to the conservative base in the U.S., which pretty strongly believes that the Palestinian culture is indeed corrupt, indolent, and sullen,” Kevin noted. “Romney knows this perfectly well. He was demonstrating once again, in a very concrete way, that he’s no RINO.”
Today, however, Romney insisted with Fox News that he didn’t say what he actually said.
“I’m not speaking about it, did not speak about the Palestinian culture or the decisions made in their economy,” Romney told Carl Cameron. “That’s an interesting topic that deserves scholarly analysis, but I actually didn’t address that. Certainly don’t intend to address that in my campaign. Instead, I will point out are that the choices that a society makes has a profound impact on the economy and the vitality of that society.”
As far as the Republican is concerned, the media is simply engaged in a coordinated effort to “divert from the fact that these last four years have been tough for our country.”
Apparently, Romney’s foreign screw-ups are the result of a pro-Obama media conspiracy.
As you might have noticed, there are a few problems with this.
First, when Romney told Fox he “did not speak about the Palestinian culture,” he’s simply not telling the truth. NBC’s Mark Murray and Garrett Haake, relying on the transcript released by the Romney campaign itself, published a report that removes all doubt. The presidential hopeful was talking about the relative size of national economies, and he made the direct connection to competing cultures.
It’s not even a close call. The relevant portion of the speech is a little long, but since Romney is denying the facts, it’s worth setting the record straight:
“I was thinking this morning as I prepared to come into this room of a discussion I had across the country in the United States about my perceptions about differences between countries. And as you come here and you see the GDP per capita for instance in Israel, which is about 21,000 dollars, and you compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority which is more like 10,000 dollars per capita, you notice a dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States. […]
“I noted that part of my interest when I used to be in the world of business is I would travel to different countries was to understand why there were such enormous disparities in the economic success of various countries. I read a number of books on the topic. One, that is widely acclaimed, is by someone named Jared Diamond called ‘Guns, Germs and Steel,’ which basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth. And you look at Israel and you say you have a hard time suggesting that all of the natural resources on the land could account for all the accomplishment of the people here. And likewise, other nations that are next door to each other have very similar, in some cases, geographic elements. […]
“But then there was a book written by a former Harvard professor named ‘The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.’ And in this book Dr. Landes describes differences that have existed — particularly among the great civilizations that grew and why they grew and why they became great and those that declined and why they declined. And after about 500 pages of this lifelong analysis — this had been his study for his entire life — and he’s in his early 70s at this point, he says this, he says, if you could learn anything from the economic history of the world it’s this: Culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.”
Romney “did not speak about the Palestinian culture”? Please.
For that matter, it’s kind of amusing to hear the former governor suggest news reports had taken him out of context, given that his entire campaign message is based on rhetoric that’s been taken out of context.
As for Romney’s suspicion of a media conspiracy, it wasn’t news organizations’ fault when he insulted the British; it wasn’t news organizations’ fault when he misquoted the Australian finance minister; it wasn’t news organizations’ fault when his campaign kinda sorta gave the green light on a unilateral strike on Iran; it wasn’t news organizations’ fault when he used borderline-racist language at his Israeli fundraiser; it wasn’t news organizations’ fault when he praised a socialized health care system he claims to abhor; and it wasn’t news organizations’ fault when his press secretary said, “Kiss my ass. This is a Holy site.”
Take some responsibility, Mitt. Blaming the media is lazy and wrong.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 31, 2012
“A Mix Of Paranoia And Arrogance”: Mitt Romney’s 20th-Century Worldview
Like a caveman frozen in a glacier, Mitt Romney is a man trapped in time — from his archaic stance on women’s rights to his belief in Herbert Hoover economics.
And now it appears his foreign policy is stuck in the past, as well.
This week, Romney is on a six-day, three-nation tour. The trip comes days after he promised in a speech on international affairs to usher in another “American century.”
What does Romney’s American century look like? His speech and his itinerary tell us volumes.
Romney’s world is one of special relationships, particularly with Britain, Israel and Poland — the three nations he’s visiting. It’s also a world of special enmities — against Iran — and unending suspicions — about China and Russia. For Romney, there are three types of countries: countries that are with us; countries that are against us; and countries that will be against us, sooner or later.
If this seems like foreign policy out of a 20th-century history book — or the George W. Bush neocon playbook — that’s because it is. A President Romney wouldn’t bring about “another American century.” Rather, he would return us to some of the worst policies of the last century.
His worldview recalls the early Reagan years, before the Gipper and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev found common ground on nuclear disarmament — and long before Secretary of State James Baker steered President George H.W. Bush and the country away from a special relationship with Israel that required the United States to take on all of Israel’s enemies. It was in those reckless first years in which Reagan’s policies brought the world close to a nuclear confrontation and led U.S. forces into the deadly trap of confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Romney’s foreign policy smacks of the same recklessness — a belief that being strong means throwing your weight around. Will his embrace of the special relationship with Israel and Reagan-era bravado lead to equally dangerous developments?
Romney’s world also reminds us of the early Bush 43 years, with its mix of paranoia, arrogance and belief in U.S. power that gave us the “axis of evil” and the Iraq war. Remember, it was America’s special friends, Britain and Poland, that headed the list of Bush’s “coalition of the willing” and gave a veneer of international support for that catastrophe. For Romney, the villain is Iran. Will we once again be neo-conned into a disastrous war in the Persian Gulf?
Romney may accuse President Obama of carrying out defeatist policies and accepting American decline. But it is the GOP nominee-to-be and his advisers whose perspective and policies are much too small — and far too backwards — for a 21st-century United States.
Romney’s speech and his trip reveal, in fact, that he has no answers to the critical foreign-policy questions — the questions that will shape the world order, and America’s place in it, in the coming decade:
How to prevent a country like Syria from plunging into an even bloodier sectarian war while keeping the hope of democracy and economic development alive?
How can the United States work with the current world powers — and the rising ones such as Russia, China, Brazil and India — to establish a form of international governance that balances respect for human dignity with respect for international order?
How can the United States engage these countries in dealing with the transnational threats — from mass unemployment to global climate change — that are likely to define the next decade?
And how can the president bring together leading nations to stop the slide toward a new Great Depression?
It is not even clear that Romney knows what these questions are.
Obama, for better or worse, does understand these key questions. To be sure, he has made some patently wrong decisions, such as the escalation of drone warfare, his secret counterterrorism programs and his embrace of growing state secrecy. But the fact that the president has ended one war — Iraq — and started to end another — Afghanistan — is an opportunity to move to a new foreign-policy stance, a new internationalism.
This means rejecting the tendency to measure our nation’s strength by our capacity to destroy — in bullets and body counts and payloads. The real test of our nation’s standing lies in our capacity to build — not just schools and hospitals and bridges but also relationships across rivers and among countries. Indeed, a new internationalism calls not for military adventures, bombs and bases but for international, collective efforts on the issues that truly matter today — eliminating nuclear weapons, rolling back climate change and advancing the health, education, prosperity and human rights of all people.
It has taken four years to wind down the costly wars of occupation of the Bush era. It would be a tragedy to let Romney and his neocon advisers take us back to the failed policies of the past.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 31, 2012
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