A new survey from the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that the kind of personalized fear that drove so much of our politics and policy on foreign affairs through the Bush years is almost completely gone. While there are lots of interesting results in the survey, which was conducted in 20 countries, I want to focus on the answers Americans gave to this question: “What countries or groups pose the greatest threat to the United States in the future?”
The answers suggest a powerful shift in the way Americans are thinking about the world — and show why some Republicans are so unsettled by Rand Paul’s arguments against interventionism abroad. As though the GOP didn’t have enough internal disputes to worry about already, this is one more serious divide within the party, and it shows why Dick Cheney’s reemergence hasn’t exactly been greeted with open arms.
Here are the top eight responses people gave when asked what was the greatest threat to the United States:
Russia: 23%
China: 19%
Iran: 16%
North Korea: 7%
Pakistan: 6%
United States: 2%
Japan: 2%
Al Qaeda: 2%
Answers to a question like this one are going to be affected by what’s been in the news lately. But the most extraordinary number there is undoubtedly Al Qaeda coming in at 2 percent. Only one in 50 Americans considers it the top threat to the country.
One of the defining features of Bush-era rhetoric around terrorism was that it was very personal. Al Qaeda didn’t just pose a threat to the country, it posed a threat to you and your family. You had to take off your shoes at the airport. You were enlisted to be on the lookout for bombs (“If you see something, say something”). You were told by the government to go out and buy plastic sheeting and duct tape so you’d be able to protect your home against a chemical weapon attack.
But the threats people are seeing now are broader and more long term. They’re concerned about what Russia will do to its neighbors, but I doubt too many Americans think Vladimir Putin is going to launch a nuclear missile at their home town. The threat from China is primarily economic. Even the idea of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is a threat mostly to Middle East stability and Israel — but not to us here. Which may explain why there’s sufficient political space for the Obama administration to seek a deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear program.
If this is the world Americans see — one of complexity, with threats of various kinds and some problems that are serious but affect us only indirectly — then the argument Republicans have been making about foreign policy for the last twelve years doesn’t sound quite as persuasive. That argument is, essentially, that the world is still a terrifying place and the only way to handle it is with an unfailingly aggressive posture. In this view there’s barely any such thing as an international conflict that can’t be resolved with the application of American military force in some form (even if it’s not an outright invasion); unintended consequences are never anything to worry about; and the only real danger comes from inaction. This is the Bush-Cheney foreign policy perspective, and it still rules the GOP.
The problem is that the more bellicose faces of that foreign policy, like Dick Cheney himself, make much of the country recoil. Which is why Cheney’s reemergence as a pundit hasn’t exactly had Republicans jumping for joy. It isn’t that too many of them disagree with him on substance, but given his role in the spectacularly deceptive propaganda campaign to sell the public on the Iraq War and the spectacularly destructive war itself, he’s not exactly the messenger they were waiting for.
Meanwhile, the one prominent Republican who questions the party’s foreign policy bellicosity — Rand Paul — is finding himself the target of an awful lot of fire from within his party. Here’s Dick and Liz Cheney going after Paul (“I think isolationism is crazy,” says Dick). Here’s Rick Perry writing an op-ed going after Paul. Here’s John McCain criticizing Paul for wanting “a withdrawal to fortress America.” For his part, Paul says that he isn’t an isolationist, he just wants to set a higher bar for US involvement in foreign conflicts.
Jennifer Rubin argues that Paul is alone in the GOP and the party is actually unified on foreign policy, which might be accurate if you’re talking about prominent elected officials. But the electorate is another story. Assuming Paul runs for president in 2016, this debate is likely to feature prominently in the primaries. And we could discover that there are quite a few Republican voters whose views on foreign affairs go beyond the Bush-era perspective centered around the threat of terrorism and the terror we’re all supposed to feel.
By: Paul Waldman, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, July 15, 2014
July 17, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Dick Cheney, Foreign Policy, Rand Paul | al-Qaedo, GOP, Iraq War, John McCain, Neo-Cons, Rick Perry, Russia |
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This week, the US Department of Justice and the state of Texas started arguments in the first of what will be a summer-long dance between the two authorities over voting rights. There are three suits being tried in two districts over gerrymandering and Texas’s voter identification law – both of which are said to be racially motivated. In its filing, the DoJ describes the law as “exceed[ing] the requirements imposed by any other state” at the time that it passed. If the DoJ can prove the arguments in its filing, it won’t just defeat an unjust law: it could put the fiction of “voter fraud” to rest once and for all.
These battles, plus parallel cases proceeding in North Carolina, hinge on proving that the states acted with explicitly exclusionary intent toward minority voters – a higher standard was necessary prior to the Supreme Court’s gutting of Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) back in January. Under Section 3, the DoJ had wide latitude to look at possible consequences of voting regulation before they were even passed – the “preclearance” provision. Ironically, because the states held to preclearance had histories of racial discrimination, some of the messier aspects of the laws’ current intentions escaped comment.
But meeting that higher standard of explicit exclusionary intent comes with the opportunity to show some of the many skeptical Americans the ugly racism behind Republican appeals to “fairness” and warnings about fraud. Progressives have tried, and mostly failed, to show the institutional racism underpinning the sordid history behind voter ID laws; that may have been too subtle. In courts in Texas and North Carolina, the DoJ will make the jump from accusations that laws have a racial impact to straight-up calling voter ID laws racist.
This ought to be interesting.
The DoJ filing in Texas lays it all out pretty clearly, putting the voter ID law in context of a concerted legislative strategy to deny representation to the state’s growing Hispanic population, including Republicans advancing more and more aggressive voter ID bills over the years. The filing points to the anti-immigrant rhetoric that laced the floor debates over the law, and to the measures taken by the Republican-controlled state house to limit the participation of Democratic minority lawmakers in considering or amending the legislation (the bill was heard in front of a special committee selected by the governor, on an expedited schedule). And, the DoJ notes, lawmakers produced “virtually no evidence during or after enactment of SB 14 that in-person voter impersonation – the only form of election fraud addressed by the identification requirements of SB 14 – was a serious problem.”
Perhaps the most significant piece of context in the voter ID suit is how Texas’s voter ID law came on the heels of the redistricting that the DoJ claims was also racially motivated. In the redistricting cases, DoJ’s allegations of malicious intent have been helped along by the admission of the state that it had malicious political intent. The Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, chose as his defense in that case what only can be called the Lesser Evil Strategy – stating up front that the state’s GOP legislators had ulterior motives, but not the ones that the VRA outlaws:
[R]edistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats … [They] were motivated by partisan rather than racial considerations and the plaintiffs and DOJ have zero evidence to prove the contrary.
Abbott’s smugness – and his apparent faith in partisanship as a permissible and distinct form of discrimination – will take center stage as the DoJ presses on with both suits. In court, Abbott will be asked to prove his ignorance of demographics for the very state in which he is currently running for governor. Out of court, other GOP defenders of the law will have to do more or less the same. And they will need to defend the outrageous details of the law – such has how a concealed carry permit is a permissible form of voter ID but a federally-issued Medicare card carried by an elderly woman is not.
Some people of Texas may support the kind of bullying Abbott has prepared to defend, and most progressive activists are hardened to it, but I think average Americans hate it. Putting malice under a national spotlight might be the best way to turn people against voter ID laws in general.
Right now, Americans support the idea of voter ID laws by huge margins: polls show favorable attitudes toward a generic “ID requirement” to be between 70 and 80%. Approval exists across all demographic groups – even among black voters (51%), one of the groups that is, of course, disproportionately disenfranchised by these laws.
But the reasons that the public supports such laws aren’t the same as the GOP’s reasons for pursuing them: Republicans want to prevent specific types of people from voting; the American public wants voting to be fair. That’s why conservatives have had to hammer so hard on the false narrative of “voter fraud” – to convince everyone that it’s what the laws are really about.
Add context to the “ID requirement” poll question that Americans get behind, though, and public support changes dramatically. A survey in North Carolina (taken as the state was considering taking up an amendment on the issue) found initial support for voter ID to be 71%. Pollsters then drilled further down and came up with numbers that speak to a truly democratic impulse:
- 72% say it’s wrong to pass laws that make it harder for certain people to vote.
- 62% say they oppose a law that makes it harder for people of one party to vote.
- 74% say there should be demonstrated problems before legislators apply a fix.
If nothing else, these results suggests that Abbott’s argument that supposedly party-based redistricting isn’t the free pass – at least, from the public’s standpoint, if not the court’s – that he thinks it is.
In North Carolina, pollsters found that support for the law decreased as the 2012 election neared and voters started to pay attention and become educated on the issue. Voting rights advocates filled yet another suit based on disenfranchising young voters, which could make a further difference. (Way to keep pissing off millennials, GOP!)
That context effect is true nationwide. A different survey found that informing respondents that “Opponents of voters ID laws argue they can actually prevent people who are eligible to vote from voting” brought support for voter ID down by 12 points.
Pollsters have not publicly investigated whether Texan voters would show a similar shift, though it could be significant that support in the state for voter ID has remained at around 66% for the past two years, less than its support nationwide. Of course, 77% of Texas believe “voter ID laws are mainly used to prevent fraud,” an alternate-reality bubble that attention to these cases may just yet pop.
It’s the Department of Justice that’ll have to bring this to pass. The GOP has always easily waved away “systemic” racism charges, like those made under the non-gutted VRA, as either outright inventions or the result of looking for equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities. Making clear the racist intent of voter ID laws will bring the discussion back to where it belongs: on equal opportunities, in the voting booth.
By: Ana Marie Cox, The Guardian, July 16, 2014
July 17, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Racism, Voter ID, Voter Suppression | GOP, Gregg Abbott, Minority Voters, North Carolina, Redistricting, Republicans, Texas, Voting Rights |
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In times past, Sarah Palin’s blunt call for the impeachment of President Obama for his alleged bungling of the border crisis would have been laughed off, as it deservedly should. Simply consider the source to understand why. But Obama didn’t laugh it off. During his recent swing through Texas, without referring to Palin directly, he derisively mocked her impeachment call with the shout to an audience, “Sue me! Impeach me!”
Obama has heard this call before, many times, from the legion of right-wing bloggers, websites, and talk-show gabbers, and from a motley group of tea-party-affiliated GOP House reps. Though House Speaker John Boehner and GOP establishment leaders quickly squash any talk of impeachment, the truth is that the call is very much on their table, for very good cynical, crass, and politically chilling reasons. It’s the perfect ploy to further hector, cower, and intimidate Obama into backpedaling fast from the use of executive orders to get even faint action on his major initiatives on gun control, health care, jobs, education and transportation-spending measures, and of course immigration reform. The GOP-controlled House has repeatedly declared these measures “DOA” the instant they come from the White House. The GOP set this up nicely by hammering away on the myth that Obama is recklessly ignoring the Constitution by skirting Congress and going it alone in wielding the executive pen.
This is a gross falsehood. Obama is near the bottom on the list of presidents in the number of executive orders issued. The last president who issued orders at a lower rate than Obama was Grover Cleveland. GOP Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush issued far more executive orders per day in office than Obama. But then the issue is not, nor has it ever been, executive orders but intimidation, pure and simple.
The GOP knows that crying, “Obama is cavalierly using his executive power to bypass Congress and legislate from the Oval Office!” will trigger a powerful public backlash and reinforce its usual charge against him of dictatorial abuse. It has played this card with maximum skill in its fierce fight to wrest back control of the Senate. In this, the GOP can have it both ways on impeachment. Boehner and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has also sharply dismissed talk of impeachment, can take the high ground on the issue by insisting that their goal is to get more Republicans elected in November — that’s Senate Republicans. But that’s exactly the point of tossing out the word. The hope is that this will stir more doubt and skepticism about Obama among many voters in the key states where GOP senatorial candidates and some House candidates are gunning to unseat Democratic incumbents.
The incessant talk of impeachment has yet another cynical plus for the GOP. It implants the ever-widening notion in the media that Obama is making a mighty effort to impose an “imperial presidency” on the nation. This charge is almost always accompanied by tossing out the words “arrogant,” “indifferent,” and “callous” to describe his alleged thumbed nose at Congress. Boehner played hard on this with his frivolous lawsuit against Obama over the use of executive orders. He self-righteously claimed that his aims were noble and pristine and designed only to protect the rights of the legislative branch against the alleged unconstitutional assault by Obama. This crude campaign to rock Obama and the Democrats back on their heels has gotten traction from a dozen court rulings that have rapped Obama on the issuance of executive orders.
Obama demanded to know how the GOP can sue and impeach him for doing his job. That’s the point. He’s done his job too well. A case in point is the hike in the minimum wage. The GOP adamantly opposes Obama’s proposal to hike the minimum wage. He had absolutely no chance of getting this through the House. Instead he issued an executive order that boosted the minimum wage only to new federal contracts issued, and then only if other terms of a contractual agreement change. This was entirely legal but had little overall effect on the nation’s wage structure. Yet it was significant in another respect.
It was a frontal challenge to the GOP to cease its relentless, dogged, and destructive campaign of dither, delay, deny, and obstruct anything that has the White House stamp on it. There’s always the possibility that the GOP’s loose talk about impeachment could backfire and turn off more voters than it turns on. It could make the GOP look even more rigid, rightist, and desperate to do and say anything to tarnish Obama, even at the risk of making itself look and sound even more ridiculous. The GOP’s hedge against this is to wink and nod at Palin’s call for impeachment while publicly disavowing it but still relentlessly assailing Obama as the “imperial president.” There’s a method to the madness in this ploy.
By: Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Author and Political Analyst, The Huffington Post Blog, July 15, 2014
July 16, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
House Republicans, Impeachment, John Boehner | Border Crisis, Executive Orders, GOP, Immigration, John McCain, media, Right Wing, Tea-party |
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Serious lawsuits start with some specific legal grievance – a claim that someone was injured by a defective product, say, or that a search was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment – and proceed from there. US House speaker John Boehner wants to sue the President of the United States – for no particular reason other than his alleged lawlessness – and fill in the details later.
The lawsuit, which a House committee will take up rather seriously on Wednesday, is a frivolous stunt that not only has no chance of succeeding but isn’t even intended to succeed. The belated choice of targets does provide a useful illustration of Republican priorities, though: most notably, registering more outrage at the Affordable Care Act and further attempting to legitimize various fake scandals wafting up from the conservative fever swamp.
Some of the GOP attacks on the Obama administration have had real substantive effects. This suit, however, is analogous to the endless House votes to repeal Obamacare – an impotent symbolic gesture by Republicans frustrated they were unable to deny access to health coverage to tens of millions of American citizens.
By speaking first in general terms about Obama’s alleged failure to “faithfully execute the laws” in favor of usurping the will of Congress, plus the president’s failure to do enough bombing of random foreign countries, Boehner allowed the Tea Party’s insatiable skree machine to fill in its own gibberish legalese. Why focus on one potential impeachable offense when the examples can be nearly infinite? Benghazi! Fast and Furious! Executive orders!
Now that Boehner has actually announced the basis for the lawsuit – and will spend the next two weeks getting it to the floor for another meaningless Obamacare vote – it turns out to be a narrow and almost certainly irrelevant one. The suit will focus on a claim that Obama acted illegally when the administration decided to effectively delay implementation of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act, by declining to penalize employers who didn’t comply in 2014.
In fairness, the argument isn’t unreasonable on its own terms, but to bring a legal challenge in federal court, a plaintiff must have “standing” – Boehner and Co must show that the House of Representatives has been directly injured or otherwise directly affected. Under existing precedents, that’s nearly impossible.
And even if the federal courts were to grant standing, for a lawsuit to proceed, there has to be an ongoing controversy. Since the employer mandate will almost certainly not be delayed another year, the issue is likely to be moot before the lawsuit gets very far, which will result in its getting thrown out. The American taxpayers will have funded a no-hope legal challenge because House Republicans needed to keep their base’s 24/7 scandal-invention machine going – not because there was an actual controversy.
It’s not clear what kind of bill the coming weeks might produce. Conservative legal experts will be happy to give testimony, some of which will be reflected in the final resolution. But the details are fundamentally irrelevant. The federal courts will almost certainly deny that they have jurisdiction, Boehner will have sent politically expedient signals to his base, and the successful implementation of Obamacare will proceed exactly as it would have – as if nobody had ever sued the President of the United States at all. As for the defective product that is the Republican-controlled House, well, the only remedy for the injuries they’ve inflicted is at the ballot box in November.
By: Scott Lemieux, The Guardian, July 15, 2014
July 16, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
House Republicans, John Boehner, Tea Party | Affordable Care Act, Conservatives, Election 2014, Employer Mandate, Executive Orders, GOP, ObamaCare |
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Conservatives are stuck in a perpetual outrage loop. The reappearance of Todd Akin, the horror-movie villain immortality of Sarah Palin, the unseemly celebration of the Hobby Lobby decision – these all speak to a chorus of “la-la-la-can’t-hear-you” loud enough to drown out the voice of an entire generation. Late last week, the Reason Foundation released the results of a poll about that generation, the millennials; its signature finding was the confirmation of a mass abandonment of social conservatism and the GOP. This comes at a time when the conservative movement is increasingly synonymous with mean-spirited, prank-like and combative activism and self-important grand gestures. The millennial generation has repeatedly defined itself as the most socially tolerant of the modern era, but one thing it really can’t stand is drama.
Republicans were already destined for piecemeal decimation due to the declining numbers of their core constituency. But they don’t just have a demographic problem anymore; they have stylistic one. The conservative strategy of outrage upon outrage upon outrage bumps up against the policy preferences and the attitudes of millennials in perfect discord.
We all can recognize the right’s tendency to respond to backlash with more “lash” (Akin didn’t disappear, he doubled down on “legitimate rape”), but it seems to have gained speed with the age of social media and candidate tracking. The Tea Party’s resistance to the leavening effect of establishment mores and political professionals has been a particularly effective accelerant. Palin’s ability to put anything on the internet without any intermediary has rendered her as reckless as any tween with a SnapChat account. Akin’s whiny denouncement of Washington insiders is likely to make him more credible with a certain kind of base voter. The midterms are, as we speak, producing another round of Fox News celebrities, whether or not they win their races: the Eric Cantor-vanquishing David Brat, Mississippi’s Chris McDaniel and the hog-castrating mini-Palin, Jodi Ernst of Iowa.
The fire-with-fire attitude of hardline conservatives has its roots in the petulant cultural defensiveness adopted by the GOP – especially the Christian right – during the culture wars of the 90s. Their siege mentality bred an attitude toward liberals that saw every instance of social liberalization as proof of their own apocalyptic predictions and conspiracy theories. Gay marriage will lead to acceptance of beastiality and pedophilia. “Socialized medicine” will lead to the euthanizing Grandma. Access to birth control will lead to orgies in the streets.
Then came Obama’s election, the Zapruder tape for the right’s tin-foil hat haberdashers – a moment in history that both explained and exacerbated America’s supposed decline. Dinesh D’Souza, the Oliver Stone of the Tea Party, has now made two movies about the meaning of Obama’s presidency. The first, 2016: Obama’s America, garnered an astounding $33m at the box office, and his lawyers blamed disappointing returns from this summer’s America on a Google conspiracy to confuse moviegoers about its showtimes. (Of course.)
The GOP has long staked a claim on The Disappearing Angry White Man, but they have apparently ever-narrowing odds of getting a bite at millennials, who appear to be more like The Somewhat Concerned Multicultural Moderate. This generation is racially diverse, pro-pot, pro-marriage equality and pro-online gambling. They are troubled by the deficit but believe in the social safety net: 74% of millennials, according to Reason, want the government to guarantee food and housing to all Americans. A Pew survey found that 59% of Americans under 30 say the government should do more to solve problems, while majorities in all other age groups thought it should do less.
The Rupe-Reason poll teases out some of the thinking behind the surge of young people abandoning the GOP, and finds a generation that is less apt to take to the streets, Occupy-style, than to throw a great block party: lots of drugs, poker and gays! Millennials don’t want to change things, apparently – they want everyone to get along. The report observes “[m]any specifically identified LGBTQ rights as their primary reason for being liberal”; and “[o]ften, they decided they were liberals because they really didn’t like conservatives.”
But liberals can’t be complacent about their demographic advantage. Their challenge is to resist the impulse to copycat the hysteria that has worked so well for the right historically. “No drama Obama” was the millennials’ spirit animal – his popularity has sunk with the economy, but also with the administration’s escalating rhetoric. Today, under-30 voters show a distinct preference for Hillary Clinton (39% according to Reason, 53% according to the Wall Street Journal), and no wonder: she’s as bloodless as Bill was lusty, as analytical as Bill was emotional. The professorial Elizabeth Warren is the logical (very logical) backup.
Right now, Democrats benefit from both the form and content of conservative message: this next generation is not just inclusive, but conflict-adverse. Millennials cringe at the old-man-yelling-at-gay-clouds spectacle of the Tea Party. Perhaps this comes from living in such close proximity of their parents for so long. If this generation does have a political philosophy, it’s this: “First, do no harm.” If it has a guiding moral principle, it’s simpler: “Don’t be embarrassing.”
By: Ana Marie Cox, The Guardian, July 14, 2014
July 15, 2014
Posted by raemd95 |
Conservatives, Millennnials, Republicans | Culture Wars, GOP, Sarah Palin, Social Media, Tea-party, Todd Akin |
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