“Will The House GOP Stop The War on ISIS?”: If You Hamper The War Effort Of One Side, You Automatically Help That Of The Other
So here, with Congress now trying to figure out what to do about President Obama’s request for funding for the Syrian rebels, we have a glimpse, as rare in its way as an eclipse or a meteor shower, of two Republican pathologies colliding head-on. The first is their biological urge to oppose Obama on all matters. The second is the House Republicans’ chronic eleventh-hour melodramatics about keeping the government funded every September. I could throw in a third—John McCain’s ever-mounting and ever-more-obvious personal bitterness toward Obama—but we’ll lay him aside for today and focus on this joining of the two pathologies, which in the worst-case scenario threatens to derail Obama’s anti-ISIS campaign before it even starts.
Fast background: Congress has to pass a continuing resolution by September 30 or we’ll have a government shutdown again. Actually, in practical terms, it has to pass it within the next few days, because the Jewish holidays are coming and Congress is going on recess so members can go back home and campaign.
In an election year, no one on the GOP side wants to risk a government shutdown (check that—Ted Cruz still kind of does!). The two parties are mostly arguing about the Export-Import Bank, the newest piece of coal for the tea party fire, but that’s the kind of thing they usually agree at the last minute to extend for another six months.
But that was the pre-ISIS state of play. Then we all saw the beheading videos, and fighting the Islamic State became a matter of urgency. Obama had asked Congress for $500 million in aid to the Syrian rebels back in June, but Congress, in its laconic, congressional way, was originally going to wait until next year to get around to that. But now the administration wants that $500 million—which is actually part of a larger $2 billion request that would include other money for operations in Iraq and Ukraine—to be passed now. And it wants it included in the “CR,” as they call it.
As you probably know, the House Republicans met Thursday morning in the aftermath of Obama’s speech to figure out how to proceed. As you probably also know, they didn’t figure it out. Some support Obama’s request—John Boehner does, and the relevant committee chairmen. Others, of course, don’t trust Obama. Some want to keep the Syria money in the CR. Others want to pry it out and have two votes, one on government funding and one on the Syria dough.
What would be the point of this? There is no point. Long Island Republican Peter King said something in Politico about how “it sends a stronger message” if it’s a separate vote, which is nonsense. Can you picture Bashar al-Assad sitting in Damascus talking with a top aide and saying, “Well, I don’t think $500 million is a serious amount of money,” and the aide says, “Gee, boss, I don’t know, I mean, they passed it on a separate vote”?
Please. The only reason to have a separate vote is to diddle the White House around. “Assert congressional prerogative” is the more euphemistic way to put it, but I can guarantee you that if President Romney were asking for this money, the only thing Republicans would be debating would be how many times they could each vote yea. Similarly, the shocking demand among some Republicans for greater action—for ground troops, even—is equally hypocritical. If Obama had proposed ground troops, they’d be hyperventilating about how scandalous it was of him to want to send our troops into harm’s way. They’re just looking for a hook—the handiest excuse to oppose Obama that they can find.
Obviously, passing the $500 million in the quickest way possible is what sends the strongest “message,” as if anyone even cares about such messages. What matters is that the money gets authorized. If the House Republicans pull it out of the resolution and make it a free-standing vote that will happen later, then all that accomplishes is that it gives talk-radio land and the conservative Twittersphere a few days to badger Republicans about casting a pro-Obama vote (and right before an election). And if that happens, and the right finds some excuse to work itself into a lather over this, Boehner may just decide that the easiest thing is to send them home without voting on Syria at all.
In one of his more famous essays, “Pacifism and the War,” George Orwell wrote that pacifism “is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other.” Orwell was writing of course about World War II, which I concede this is not (although I submit that it would be nice to see similar rhetorical restraint from the Republicans, who never tire of invoking Munich when they’re harping on Obama for not being tough enough). But if it isn’t World War II, neither is it the last Iraq War, which was completely unprovoked and based on lies. ISIS has killed Americans, and its threat to the region is clear and obvious. The Islamic State is evil by any measure. House Republicans may not trust the president and may prefer to see all this done differently. But without going as far as Orwell did (he later walked back the essay, after all) we can fairly ask if they want to have done nothing to check the Islamic State’s march.
I actually don’t think it will come to that. Even so, if I were a moderate Syrian Sunni, I wouldn’t be putting in orders for any tactical ballistic missiles just yet.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, September 12, 2014
“The New Campaign Theme: Fear”: Republican Candidates Are Rediscovering How To Use Fear In Campaigning
There’s a new narrative emerging about the midterm elections. After months in which political reporters essentially wrote the same stories over and over with only small variations — it’ll be a good year for Republicans; the Affordable Care Act is a disaster for Democrats; oh, wait, maybe not — we now have a brand-spanking new storyline to play with.
Now, the elections are all about security and terrorism and foreign policy.
Fear is back! Which, of course, is great for the GOP.
There is some evidence that the elections may be shifting on to these topics. But like the threat from the Islamic State, it may be being overhyped by a news media eager for excitement.
One of my theories about the ebb and flow of political coverage is that any new development that promises change is unusually attractive to political reporters. Polls that never change are boring. And if America is about to embark on a new military adventure, then change must surely be in the air.
So we’re seeing a whole raft of articles claiming that the election is now all about security, like this one and this one and this one.
Yes, the news has been dominated by the Islamic State question for the past couple of weeks, and people respond to what’s in the news when they’re asked what they care about (this is called agenda-setting). There is some public opinion data showing more people expressing concern about terrorism.
But the question is: Is there any clear evidence that the public is actually gripped by terror, that the elections are going to look any different next month than they did last month?
If the public were actually terrified, that would almost certainly be good for the GOP. Research has shown that if you make people afraid or remind them of their own mortality, a significant number will gravitate toward Republican candidates. A lot of news stories about shadowy foreign terrorist groups could be enough to do the trick.
A complicating factor, however, is that Congress is pretty much abdicating its responsibility for oversight over the escalation. What’s more, Republican candidates don’t have much to say about what’s going on in the Middle East, as GOP strategists admit:
For candidates, there’s a difficult balance to strike between using the issue to beat the drum against Obama and getting too far in the weeds on actual strategy proposals. Most GOP strategists agree that the way to talk about foreign policy this fall is to make it a broad argument about leadership and stay out of such details as whether or not the U.S. should put troops on the ground.
“I don’t think that many Republicans are going to rush out there with detailed foreign policy initiatives in their own campaigns,” said GOP pollster Wes Anderson. “I don’t think there’s any market for it — what voters want to hear is that somebody is going to take initiative and show leadership.”
Having no actual ideas hasn’t historically stopped Republicans from exploiting an issue, of course. And there are some signs that Republican candidates are rediscovering how to use fear in campaigning (see here or here), which is its own story worthy of examination.
But House Republicans are actually showing surprising unity with Obama on how to respond to ISIS. The disagreements among Republicans over how to proceed seem procedural more than anything else, and they are likely to give him what he wants in terms of training the Syrian rebels, which could undercut efforts by GOP candidates to use this against Democrats. On balance, it’s probably too early to say that the election has been transformed.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, September 12, 2014
“Collaborating With The Enemy”: Can Republicans Be Convinced To Help Improve The Affordable Care Act?
When the Affordable Care Act was passed in early 2010, people made lots of predictions about how its implementation would proceed, in both practical and political terms. While the law’s opponents all agreed that it would be a disaster from start to finish, the law’s supporters were slightly less unanimous, if nevertheless optimistic. Most figured that though there would probably be problems here and there, by and large the law would work as it was intended, enabling millions of uninsured Americans to get coverage and providing all of us a level of health security we hadn’t known before.
And that’s what has happened. But there was one other assumption among the supporters that’s worth examining anew, now that most of us agree the law isn’t going to be repealed. Like every large and complex piece of social legislation, it was said, the ACA would have to be tweaked and adjusted over time. For instance, when it was passed in 1935, Social Security excluded agricultural and domestic workers, just coincidentally shutting most African-Americans out of the program. Those workers were added later on, and other changes were made as well, like adding cost of living adjustments to account for inflation. Medicare, too, has undergone changes both large (like adding a prescription drug benefit) and small. So what are the possibilities for adjusting the ACA in the near future? In the current atmosphere—one not just of intense partisanship, but one in which one party has made venomous opposition to this law the very core of its political identity—can we hope to actually fix the things about the law that might need fixing?
The administration has already made some changes to the law using its executive authority. Most notably, it has delayed the employer mandate; as it stands now, the mandate won’t fully take effect until 2016. As it happens, few people are particularly enthused with the employer mandate in its current form; conservatives have never liked it, and more than a few liberals have their doubts about it. As Mike Konczal recently explained, there’s an alternative:
The employer mandate has been another major roadblock for the ACA. The current “Obamacare” plan requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to pay a part of the health care costs for employees who work more than 30 hours a week, or pay a fine. This is unpopular with employers, and it fuels larger worries that workers are getting their hours capped or that expanding businesses are hitting a major road bump the moment they reach 50 employees.
As the Roosevelt Institute’s Richard Kirsch writes, the way the final House bill tackled this issue was much smarter: Under the House plan, employers that didn’t provide health care to their employees would pay a percentage of payroll as a tax to cover health care. Consequently, there would be no incentive to juke the number of new hires or their hours. Also, current health insurance premiums don’t vary according to an employee’s income, which discourages employers from hiring lower-wage workers. Charging a percentage of payroll for coverage would help companies cover the costs even as the system moves towards the exchanges.
If you were a Republican who cared about this issue, this would be a perfect opportunity to change the law in a way you’d like. It wouldn’t be giving up something to get half a loaf, it’d be giving up nothing to get half a loaf. Democrats and Republicans could agree to change the mandate, whether it’s to more closely resemble the original House version of the bill, or something else. I’m sure that creative legislators could come up with any number of ways to produce the maximum number of people with employer-sponsored coverage—or even, now that the exchanges seem to be working quite well, devise a new way for employees to use them without employers just getting off the hook for providing coverage.
But we all understand the present reality, which is that no Republican is willing to work with Democrats to improve the ACA, even in ways that address particular complaints conservatives have about the law, because that’s considered collaboration with the enemy and would guarantee you the wrath of the Tea Party and a primary challenge from the right. Within the GOP, changing the law for the better is actually thought to be a terrible sin, while making futile gestures in opposition to the law while tacitly accepting its existence in its current form is thought to be the height of ideological integrity.
It’s possible that over time, as the repeal fantasy looks more and more ridiculous, Republicans will begin to grow more open to legislation making changes to the ACA to improve its operation. That’s what logic would dictate, but anything other than fist-shaking opposition to the ACA may remain politically toxic for a long time in the GOP.
But maybe there’s something Democrats can do to affect that conversation. It’s easy for them to just say:
“If Republicans really cared about improving people’s lives they’d join with us to make improvements, but instead they’d rather just have talking points.” It’s even true. But that doesn’t get you anywhere. So perhaps Democrats could try getting more specific. They could come up with whatever they think is the best way to deal with a weakness in the law, like the current form of the employer mandate. Turn that into a bill. Start moving it through the legislative process in the Senate. Force Republicans to answer specific questions about it, like: “Congressman, you’ve criticized the current employer mandate. Tell me why you think this new proposal isn’t an improvement.”
I’m not naïve enough to think that all Republican opposition to improving the ACA is going to melt before the power of those questions. But it only helps Republicans if they can stay vague in their discussions of the law. The more specific the discussion gets, the harder it is for them. And at least you could introduce the idea of Republicans joining with Democrats to improve the law, which is something barely anyone has brought up until now.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 8, 2014
“A Senator Divided Against Himself Cannot Stand”: Rand Paul Disagrees With Rand Paul, Again
Republican condemnations of President Obama’s counter-terrorism efforts are clearly growing louder, but there’s still some disagreements within the GOP itself.
When discussing ISIS and the national-security threat, for example, one prominent Republican senator recently said, “What’s going on now, I don’t blame on President Obama. Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution.”
Another prominent Republican senator later argued the opposite, writing an op-ed that read, “Our recent foreign policy has allowed radical jihadists to proliferate. Today, there are more terrorists groups than there were before 9/11, most notably ISIS…. [W]hy, after six years, does President Obama lack a strategy to deal with threats like ISIS?”
Wait, actually both quotes came from the same guy. Benjy Sarlin highlighted the contradiction.
After expressing reluctance to intervene against ISIS over the summer, Sen. Rand Paul abruptly shifted gears on Thursday and announced that he supports military action to eliminate the Islamist group. […]
Paul’s hawkish turn comes after months of hedging and skeptical comments regarding U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria. Yet Paul boasted on Thursday that as president he would have committed to a grand plan to eliminate ISIS earlier and more effectively than President Obama.
I haven’t the foggiest idea how anyone can take the Kentucky Republican seriously on the issue. Rand Paul seems to have very strong disagreements with Rand Paul, and there’s little hope for reconciliation – one has no use for “interventionists” and the “hawkish members” of his own party; the other is eager to support U.S. military intervention abroad to destroy ISIS.
One has “mixed feelings” about an expansive military operation in the Middle East; the other is outraged by President Obama’s cautious approach to pursuing expansive military operation in the Middle East.
Simon Maloy noted that the same conservatives the senator has spent years disagreeing with about foreign policy are delighted by Paul’s dramatic flip-flop.
In less than a week he went from “let’s be realistic about what we can do militarily” to “destroy ISIS militarily.” The Weekly Standard happily clipped Paul’s remarks under the headline “Rand Paul Supports U.S. War in Middle East to Destroy ISIS.” Neocon pundit Jennifer Rubin — whose Washington Post blog is basically a free-form screed against Rand Paul’s foreign policy — writes today: “Well, welcome aboard, Sen. Paul.”
Of course, the senator’s evolution goes beyond foreign policy. Sarah Smith recently noted that the Kentucky Republican has also changed his mind about federal aid to Israel, use of domestic drones, immigration, elements of the Civil Rights Act, Guantanamo Bay, and even accepting donations from lawmakers who voted for TARP.
And so, I’ll ask again: at what point do Rand Paul’s loyal followers start to reconsider whether Rand Paul actually agrees with them?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 5, 2014
“A Bid To Remain Relevant”: Rand Paul’s Flailing Search For A Hawkish Foreign Policy
Rand Paul this week derided President Obama’s approach to ISIS, then explained what he would do differently if he were president. It turned out, though, that the Republican senator from Kentucky and the president pretty much see eye to eye on the issue.
In a Time op-ed, Paul wrote that he would have “acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS” by launching airstrikes, arming the Kurdish rebels, bolstering Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense, and securing the U.S. border.
One problem: Obama has already done just that, or most of it, anyway. Obama has ordered more than 125 airstrikes in the past month against ISIS; shipped arms to Kurdish forces; provided $225 million in emergency funding for the Iron Dome; and, in the face of GOP obstructionism on immigration, eyed executive action to strengthen the border.
The only area where Paul diverges from Obama is that he would order Congress back from vacation to hear his plan. Given Congress’ apparent reluctance to take on this issue, this is the foreign policy equivalent of Vanilla Ice’s claiming that adding one more note to Ice, Ice, Baby meant he wasn’t ripping off Freddie Mercury.
Paul’s excoriation of Obama is remarkable given that only a few months ago, he explicitly defended the president and blamed ISIS’ proliferation on former President George W. Bush and his gung-ho interventionism.
“I don’t blame President Obama,” he said in a late June appearance on Meet the Press. At the same time, he threw cold water on the idea of a U.S. military intervention, saying, “I’m not so sure where the clear-cut American interest is.”
And as recently as August, Paul wrote a column arguing that hawkish interventionists had “abetted the rise of ISIS.”
On the one hand, it’s not surprising Paul is cribbing the administration’s ideas. Grandstanding aside, almost everyone is pretty much on the same page about how to handle ISIS.
But Paul’s newfound hawkishness is remarkable given his past tendency toward isolationism, which formed the heart of his unique appeal within the GOP. It was also the greatest obstacle to his winning the GOP presidential nomination in a party full of foreign policy hawks.
That dovish position grew even more problematic once Russia invaded Crimea, and once ISIS began swarming across Syria and Iraq. Though Pew last year found Americans’ appetite for foreign entanglements waning, that trend has now reversed, most sharply among Republicans.
Paul is now racing to shed the “isolationist” tag that dogged his proto-presidential candidacy. His Time op-ed even bears the none-too-subtle headline, “I am not an isolationist.”
But Paul is also spitting the same anti-interventionist lines that boosted him in the first place among his war-weary, libertarian faithful. Paul is speaking out of both sides of his mouth, and as a result his Time column reads like a bunch of flip-flopping nonsense.
Paul insists he is merely adapting: “I am not an isolationist, nor am I an interventionist,” he wrote in Time. “I look at the world and consider war, realistically and constitutionally.”
It’s certainly possible for changing circumstances to alter one’s global calculus. But they can just as easily alter one’s political calculus, too. In Paul’s case, it’s hard to see his abrupt about-face as anything but a bid to remain relevant as his party lurches rightward on foreign policy.
By: Jon Terbush. The Week, September 5, 2014
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