“Mitt’s Q-Tip”: Appeal Helps Obama No Matter What The Supreme Court Decides
Irony alert — President Obama gets a boost no matter what the Supreme Court decides on his politically toxic healthcare reform law.
The high court either upholds Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment, imprinting it for history, or it overturns the law, thereby breaking a big stick with which the GOP planned to beat Obama this fall. Should front-runner Mitt Romney become the GOP nominee, what’s left of the stick would more likely resemble a Q-Tip.
Although a final ruling is nearly four months away, oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday called into question the constitutionality of a mandate to purchase insurance. But recall that four years ago, then-Sen. Barack Obama opposed a mandate for the purchase of healthcare insurance when he was running against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Four years ago, Romney, on the other hand, admitted his support for mandates.
Obama ultimately changed his mind, and followed the example then-Gov. Romney had set when he signed healthcare reform into law in Massachusetts in 2006. Both men concluded that conservative think tank Heritage Foundation was correct decades ago in deciding there was no way, without a mandate to buy coverage, to control prices or to protect the taxpayer from uninsured free riders who leech off the government every time they go to the emergency room.
While Romney could control the choice to build elevators for his cars at the beach house he is building in California, he could not control the fact that Obama changed his mind on the mandate, that his law evoked a visceral reaction from the GOP base or that Newt Gingrich and every other conservative who had supported the mandate earlier would flip from the concept and run. Romney, who started running for president in 2006 or earlier as the conservative alternative to John McCain, chose to run after them. Romney tried pivoting by claiming he never intended it to become a national model, yet a Google search proves that effectively false.
Fortunately for Romney, it hasn’t been that tough to keep his stride. Republicans seeking to defeat him in the primary campaign failed miserably to use the best weapon against him — he was given a pass on RomneyCare. But no more. Romney can be sure the Obama campaign will possess the discipline Rick Santorum did not and won’t be distracted from healthcare by messages that send female voters running for the hills. Obama the candidate surely won’t display any weakness or kindness to his rival, or whatever it was that caused former Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty to retreat from his planned attack on “ObamneyCare” and basically kill off his own candidacy for good.
Democratic strategist James Carville said on CNN that the prospect of the healthcare law being overturned might be the best political outcome for Democrats and Obama.
“I honestly believe — this is not spin — I think that this will be the best thing to ever happen to the Democratic Party, because healthcare costs will escalate unbelievably … the Republican Party will own the healthcare system for the foreseeable future.”
Unbelievably cynical. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made the same point almost immediately.
Should ObamaCare be stricken, congressional Republicans will be free to paint the president and his party as socialists who passed a partisan, unpopular, unprecedented intrusion of government into the private sector and ultimately had to be stopped by the Supreme Court from destroying liberty in the United States for all time.
Romney might not want to, as it will only invite attacks on his ambiguous record of supporting insurance mandates. He will probably want to stick to the economy instead, and to hunt for some other sticks.
By: A. B. Stoddard, Associate Editor, The Hill, March 28, 2012
“At The Heart Of An Ideology”: Republicans Are Causing A Moral Crisis In America
There is moral crisis afoot! So say the Republican candidates for president, their pals in Congress and in state houses. Abortion, gay marriage, contraception— contraception, for Pete’s sake — things that so shock the conscience that it’s a wonder The Washington Post can even print the words!
Here’s something I bet you wouldn’t think I’d say: They’re right. There is a moral crisis in the United States. The only thing is — they’re wrong about what it is and who is causing it.
The real crisis of public morality in the United States doesn’t lie in the private decisions Americans make in their lives or their bedrooms; it lies at the heart of an ideology — and a set of policies — that the right-wing has used to batter and browbeat their fellow Americans.
They dress these policies up sometimes, give them catchy titles like Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity.” But they never cease to imbue them with the kind of moral decisions that ought to make anyone furious. Ryan’s latest budget really is case in point. It’s a plan that says that increases in defense spending are so essential, that massive tax cuts for the wealthy are so necessary, that we must pay for them by ripping a hole in the social safety net. The poor need Medicaid to pay for medicine and treatment for their families? We care, we really do, but the wealthy need tax cuts more. Food stamps the only thing standing between your children and starvation? Listen, we feel your pain. We get it. But we’ve got more important things to spend money on. Like a new yacht for that guy who only has one yacht.
It’s hard to point to a single priority of the Republican Party these days that isn’t steeped in moral failing while being dressed up in moral righteousness. This week, for example, they are hoping the Supreme Court will be persuaded by radical (and ridiculous) constitutional arguments to throw out some or all of the Affordable Care Act. Sure, you could argue that it’s really nice to make sure 31 million people who didn’t have health care can get it. Sure you could make the case that lifetime limits are a bad thing, that women shouldn’t have to pay more for health insurance just because they’re women, that the United States shouldn’t be a country where you die because you lost your coverage when you lost your job. But then again, liberty. Let’s not forget liberty. Also, freedom.
It is a very strange thing that the people who lecture most fervently about morality are those who are most willing to fight for policies that are so immoral. They watch Wall Street turn itself into the Las Vegas strip, take the economy down and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods. To that they say, “By God we need less regulation. Get me the hose, I have things to water down!” They see a CEO of a bank or a corporation, someone who passed off all of the risk and took on all of the reward, and they say, “Get that man a bigger bonus! In fact, get him two!”
They see corporate interests flood the political system with unfathomably large sums of money, they see lobbyists defining the terms of debate, and they say, “Now this . . . this is what democracy should look like.”
They see an environmental crisis spinning out of control, the effects of climate change being felt already, the possibility of the biggest natural disaster in modern human history. To which they ask, “Anyone know if we can drill this hole any deeper?”
So yes, Rick Santorum. Yes, Mitt Romney. Yes, Paul Ryan and Republican politicians all over this nation. You are right, as right as you’ve ever been. There is a moral crisis in this country. A horrifyingly, back-breaking, bankrupt-the-core-of-this-nation style crisis. But it isn’t women or the poor or the middle class or the gay community or health-care advocates or environmentalists that are causing it.
It’s you.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 27, 2012
Mitt Romney Supported Everything The GOP Hates About Energy, And Then Some
Stop me if you’ve heard this attack: There’s a presidential candidate out there who wants high gas prices to force the government to finally increase regulations on cars, persuade Americans to stop driving those beastly SUVs, nudge people toward clean electric cars — all with the goal of combating climate change. And don’t even think about lowering gas taxes to help car owners out at the pump: That’s just a gimmick. Take a moment and guess which politician is behind these positions.
If you guessed Mitt Romney, you are correct. And his long history of enviro-friendly rhetoric during past surges in gas prices is proving awkward as he slams the White House for taking similar positions today.
The best example yet is probably an audio clip dug up by Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, purportedly from a 2007 town hall, that contains in just two minutes just about everything Republicans hate about Democrats on energy.
In it, Romney is asked how he feels about requiring higher fuel-efficiency standards from car companies. He says he would consider them, explaining that the government has not required high enough efficiency standards in recent years and that loopholes encourage people to drive SUVs. Not only that, he’s rooting for high gas prices to help get the job done.
“The CAFE requirements have not worked terribly well over the last 20 years in part because they haven’t applied to trucks, so America has moved more and more to trucks and SUVs,” Romney said. “So the average fuel economy over the last, I think it’s 20 years, has been almost flat. I’m hopeful that with $3 gasoline being charged by Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad and Putin and others that you’re going to see Americans slowly but surely move to vehicles that are far more fuel efficient and you’ll see our manufacturers start competing on the basis of fuel efficiency.”
Today Romney proudly touts his opposition to fuel efficiency standards on his website, telling one conservative radio host that car companies’ woes came after “the government put in place CAFE requirements that were disadvantageous for domestic manufacturers.”
There’s more from that town hall. Romney specifically praised hybrid cars and electric car technology — now widely mocked on the right — as a potential solution. Romney himself has called the plug-in Chevy Volt “an idea whose time has not come” on the campaign trail and joked this month that “you can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.”
But back in 2007: “I sure hope that you’re going to see more and more hybrids and much better fuel economy,” Romney said. “Plug-in cars, electric cars with better battery technology, might be a way of reducing our emissions.”
This was in line with other past Romney statements that surfaced this week in which he urged Americans to channel the reality of high gas prices into support for alternative energy and conservation. The New Republic noted that Romney specifically opposed cutting the gas tax in his state in 2006 during a spike in oil prices for that very reason.
“I don’t think that now is the time, and I’m not sure there will be the right time, for us to encourage the use of more gasoline,” Romney said then. “I’m very much in favor of people recognizing that these high gasoline prices are probably here to stay.”
Today Romney insists that gas prices are the White House’s fault, even as the overwhelming consensus among experts is that it’s out of the government’s hands, and says that more drilling will help fix the problem. And he wants Obama to fire anyone in his administration who thinks that there are benefits to higher gas prices.
“This ‘gas-hike trio’ has been doing the job over the last three and a half years and gas prices are up,” Romney said last week, referring to Cabinet members Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson. “The right course is they ought to be fired.”
Even Romney’s own energy advisers are reluctant to back him up on his claims this week. Two of them, Glenn Hubbard and Greg Mankiw, have supported taxing energy in order to decrease emissions that contribute to climate change. In other words: increasing gas prices for the sake of the environment. That’s to the left of the Obama administration.
Romney surrogate John Sununu defended Romney’s 2006 and 2007 positions to TPM on Monday, suggesting that the governor was merely putting an optimistic spin on a lousy time for gas prices.
“I think if you look at those interviews what he was saying is we ought to take advantage of the terrible situation,” he said. He added that Romney, then and now, supports both “the production side of energy, where the governor is absolutely committed, and the conservation side” as part of the solution to America’s energy problems.
But add it all up, and Romney and his advisers are on record minimizing the government’s ability to influence gas prices and supporting many of the same goals and policies espoused by Democrats to help promote energy efficiency and combat climate change. Just as his health care bill’s similarities to the Affordable Care Act have made him vulnerable to attacks, Romney’s latest energy offensive might open him up to more of the same charges he’s faced throughout his campaign — that he’ll say and do anything to get elected.
By: Benjy Sarlin, Talking Points Memo, March 26, 2012
“A Tsunami Of Anti-Union Legislation”: The GOP’s State And National Assault On Labor Rights
The past 15 months have seen a remarkable assault by the GOP on federal labor rights.
Republicans have introduced numerous bills designed to undermine the National Labor Relations Act, all with wonderfully deceptive names suggesting they would strengthen the rights of ordinary workers: Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act, Employee Rights Act, Jobs Protection Act, Employee Workplace Freedom Act, Secret Ballot Protection Act, National Right to Work Act, Truth in Employment Act, National Labor Relations Reorganization Act, and others.
Republicans on the federal level have also attempted to defund and abolish the National Labor Relations Board, subjected its Democratic members to repeated subpoenas and requests for information, protested President Obama’s recess appointments to the board, joined lawsuits by corporate and anti-union organizations and threatened Congressional Review Acts – which could happen within weeks – to block the implementation of new board rules streamlining union certification elections and requiring notice posting on federal labor rights.
Rarely, if ever, has the board, and the rights it enforces, been subjected to such relentless attacks. And the attacks continue. While impressive, this assault on federal labor rights pales in comparison to what has been happening – occasionally in full view, but mostly with little notice – at the state level. Almost everyone knows about the 2011 legislation stripping public sector workers of collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and Ohio, and Indiana’s 2012 “right-to-work” (RTW) legislation, which outlaws union security agreements.
However, the sheer number of anti-union bills supported by GOP-controlled legislatures demonstrates the breadth and depth of the party’s anti-unionism. So what is happening in the states?
In addition to Indiana, at least 18 other states have considered RTW measures. South Carolina and Tennessee passed bills strengthening RTW legislation that has been on the books for six decades, while another RTW state, Virginia, attempted to write RTW into its constitution. And last week, the New Hampshire House passed a RTW bill identical to one vetoed last year by the state’s Democratic governor. Other states that may act on RTW this year — sometimes over the wishes of the GOP establishment — through legislation or ballot initiatives include Maine, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio.
In addition to high-profile bills in Wisconsin and Ohio, at least 13 other states have considered legislation that would eliminate or restrict public sector collective bargaining. New Jersey eliminated public sector bargaining over health benefits, Oklahoma outlawed collective bargaining for municipal employees, and Tennessee replaced bargaining for public school teachers with “collaborative conferencing.” And at least 14 states have considered legislation that would ban public employers from deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks, thereby making it difficult for unions to finance their basic activities. Last week, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed a measure prohibiting public schools from deducting union dues from the paychecks of teachers and other employees.
Many Republican legislatures have promoted bills that, while not directly attacking labor rights, are clearly intended to weaken unions, including unions in the building trades and public schools. 14 states have introduced legislation restricting Project Labor Agreements, and 11 have bills attacking prevailing wage laws, both of which protect building trades standards.
At least 28 states have considered charter school and voucher bills that would weaken public school unions, and others have bills privatizing most schools services, along with bills privatizing transportation, water supply, port authorities, airport security, liquor distribution, prisons and prison medical services, Medicaid delivery, state park vendors, kindergarten development and evaluation, and every municipal service imaginable.
At least 10 states have introduced so-called “paycheck protection” measures, which are designed to place strict limits on the use of union dues money for political purposes, while placing few, if any, restrictions on corporate political spending. Alabama, Arizona and North Carolina passed paycheck measures in 2011 – though all three bills have been challenged in the courts – while California and New Jersey have upcoming paycheck ballot initiatives.
Deception dominates in the messaging on state bills. California’s paycheck ballot initiative is ludicrously misnamed “Stop Special Interest Money Now.” Backers of the bill, the ultra-conservative Lincoln Club of Orange County, co-produced “Hillary: The Movie,” which led to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The Lincoln Club welcomed Citizens United as a “victory for free speech,” but now claims that its measure is a balanced effort to remove all special interest money from state elections, to the extent allowed by federal law. In reality, it would undermine the ability of unions to engage in core political activities but have almost no impact on corporate political spending.
This type of obfuscation is central to Republicans’ anti-union strategy. If the party were unable to hide behind deceptive messaging, it would be exposed as a front for the American Legislative Exchange Council and other extreme organizations.
And finally: not one new job has been created by this tsunami of anti-union legislation.
“How The GOP Got Catholicized”: The Alliance Of Ultra-Conservative Catholics And Tea Party Evangelicals
There was a time when the Republican Party was strictly for White Anglo Saxon Protestants. It was an alliance between Country Club Episcopalians and twice born followers of the Old Time Gospel, all firmly opposed to mass Catholic immigration from Europe. The nativism of the GOP drove Catholics into the welcoming arms of Al Smith, Jack Kennedy, Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Party.
But this year’s GOP front-runners are a Mormon and two Catholics — Rick Santorum (a cradle of Italian descent) and Newt Gingrich (a convert). Roughly one-quarter of Republican primary voters are Catholic. Notable Catholic GOP leaders include John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Christine O’Donnell, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. Six out of nine justices of the Supreme Court are Catholics, and five of them are Republicans.
The GOP is undergoing a quiet process of Catholicization. It’s one of the reasons why this year’s race has focused so much on social issues — and sex.
Republican outreach to Catholics began in the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon tried to entice blue-collar “white ethnics” to the GOP by taking a tough stand on abortion. Nixon told members of his staff he was tempted to convert to Catholicism himself, but was worried it would be seen as cheap politics: “They would say there goes Tricky Dick Nixon trying to win the Catholic vote. …”
Nixon genuinely admired the Catholic intellectual tradition and its ability to provide reasonable arguments to defend conservative values at a time when they were undergoing widespread reappraisal. That certainly made the Church an invaluable partner during the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s.
When the Moral Majority was established in 1979 to oppose things like abortion and homosexual rights, its evangelical founders did their best to include Catholics. Despite the organization’s reputation for being the political voice box of televangelists and peddlers of the apocalypse, by the mid ’80s it drew a third of its funding from Catholic donors. Leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson consciously used the Moral Majority (and, later, the Christian Coalition) as an exercise in ecumenical coalition building.
Falwell and Robertson were fans of Pope John Paul II and his resilient anti-communism. But they also recognized, like Nixon, that the Catholic Church had a vast intellectual heritage that could be drawn upon when fighting the liberals. For example, when debating abortion, evangelicals had hitherto tended to rely on Scripture to make their case. Catholics, on the other hand, had been integrating the concept of “human rights” into their theology since the 1890s.
Under Catholic influence, the pro-life movement evolved from a zealous, theology-heavy rationale to one more couched in the language of human dignity and personhood.
By 2000, Catholic social teaching was a core component of the Republican Party’s “compassionate conservatism” agenda. Karl Rove targeted religious Catholics on behalf of George W. Bush, while the president made a big play of his social traditionalism. In the 2004 election, Bush beat John Kerry among Catholics, despite the fact that Kerry described himself as a faithful Catholic who never went anywhere without his rosary beads.
Crucially, Bush’s victory among Catholics was made possible by his margin of support among those who attend Mass regularly. Catholics who said they rarely went to church plumped for Kerry. The election heralded a new split within the politics of the communion, between religious and ethnic Catholics. Indeed, it could be argued that just as Republican Protestants have become a little more Catholic in their outlook, so conservative Catholics have become a little more Protestant in theirs.
Take Rick Santorum. Santorum is part of the John Paul II generation of Catholics who reject most of the liberalism that swept the church in the 1960s. He is a member of a suburban church in Great Falls, Virginia, that (unusually, nowadays) offers a Latin Mass each Sunday with a Georgian chant sung by a professional choir.
The church has a “garden for the unborn” and has boasted as worshipers the director of the FBI, the head of the National Rifle Association and Justice Antonin Scalia. Santorum is also an outspoken admirer of Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of the conservative lay organization Opus Dei. Opus Dei encourages among its members a work ethic and an effort to “live like a saint” that is strikingly similar to the values and mores of New England’s Puritan settlers.
Santorum’s political theology has thus moved him so sharply to the right that it’s sometimes difficult to culturally identify him as a Catholic. In a March 18 survey, less than half of GOP Catholics actually knew the candidate was himself a Catholic. That might be one of the reasons why Santorum consistently loses to Romney among Catholics in primaries, even during his landmark victories in the Deep South. In contrast, he does very well among evangelicals.
We might speculate that what is emerging is an alliance between ultra-conservative Catholics and tea party evangelicals. Its politics might be antediluvian, but it’s an ecumenical breakthrough and a cultural revolution at the grass-roots level.
The coalition’s mix of Catholic moral teaching and evangelical fervor has oriented the 2012 GOP race toward fierce social conservatism. During the debate over Obama’s contraception mandate, it was the Catholic conservative leadership who provided the moral objection, but the evangelicals who produced most of the popular opposition to it. And it is evangelical support that has elevated Santorum to his current status in the race. With its ability to shift the agenda and win primaries, the emerging Catholic/evangelical political theology is the most striking conservative innovation of this turbulent campaign season.
By: Timothy Stanley, The Daily Telegraph, Special to CNN, CNN Election Center, March 23, 2012
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