“Imaginary Armies Of Voices”: The “American People” Who Only Exist In Ted Cruz’s Head
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz spoke seemingly endlessly about Obamacare yesterday and today, repeatedly demanding that Washington listen to “the American people.” But to which people exactly is Cruz listening? And is he willing to follow his own advice?
I ask because the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows that an astonishing majority disapproves of the kind of shutdown-showdown tactics the tea party legislator is pushing in his effort to stop the Affordable Care Act. According to the Times:
Eight in 10 Americans find it unacceptable for either President Obama or members of Congress to threaten to shut down the government during budget negotiations in order to achieve their goals, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Fewer than 1 in 5 think the stalemate between Mr. Obama and the Republicans in Congress is acceptable.
These results jibe with a host of other polls showing that Americans want cooperation in Washington and don’t want a government shutdown. But that’s precisely what Cruz and House Republicans are threatening to do with their “defund” stand: shut down the government unless President Obama and Senate Democrats grant them a win by extortion that the American people – the real ones, not Cruz’s imagined armies – denied them at the ballot box less than a year ago.
And it also bears repeating that for all of Cruz’s sanctimonious blather about how Congress should be more attuned to “the American people,” he flatly opposes their will on other critical issues. As I wrote last week:
For example 86 percent of Americans support background checks for people buying guns; on immigration reform, 64 percent of Americans support the comprehensive bill that the Senate passed and 78 percent support a qualified path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. … For those keeping track at home, those figures are more impressive than the 50-something opposed to Obamacare – perhaps no one has told Cruz, Lee et al. about these judgments from “the American people?”
So which “American people” is he talking about exactly? And will he listen to the ones that exist outside of his imagination?
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, September 25, 2013
“Letting The Debt Ceiling Cave In On Seniors”: Republican Actions Could Well Spell Disaster For Them In The Mid-Term Elections
Democrats used to be able to count on the senior citizen vote. After all, it was FDR who created Social Security and Lyndon Johnson who created Medicare. But, hello, that was about 75 years ago and 50 years ago, respectively! Times do change.
As I like to scream at my Democratic friends, the post-65 generation were Ronald Reagan voters and had zip to do with FDR and LBJ.
As most now know, the only age group to support John McCain was the 65+ crowd and Romney beat Obama handily among seniors in 2012. Romney got 56 percent of the senior vote and McCain go 53 percent to Obama’s 45 percent in 2008.
The 45-64 group was very close in 2008 and Romney narrowly won it in 2012. And this was when Obama was the first Democrat since Carter in 1976 to receive more than 50 percent of the vote.
So what is my point?
Republicans have taken serious hits for their efforts to shut down the government and their possible refusal to raise the debt limit. In my blog post last week, I quoted Ronald Reagan on the debt limit. He got the message; he never drank the Kool Aid on that one.
But here is a very serious problem for the Republicans. If they really go through with their draconian plan, sure it hurts everyone, hurts the economy big time. But who does it especially freak out? You got it, senior citizens.
Why? The retired and those who live on fixed incomes and who have to draw on their retirement accounts get hammered. The last time the Republicans even threatened to hold the debt limit hostage in 2011, the stock market went down 17 percent.
Let me repeat that: After the debacle of 2008 and the economic meltdown, the stock market took a 17 percent hit for one reason and one reason only – Republicans doing what Reagan had warned against. Plus, the U.S. credit was downgraded, which was unprecedented.
Seniors can’t afford to have that happen again and they know it – their 401(k)’s can not become 201(k)’s. The crash in 2008 and the double digit hit in 2011, if repeated, will affect those who are retired and those planning on retirement, and that is about 50 percent of the voters. If Republicans lose substantial numbers of those who are over 50 years old, it won’t just impact their chances of winning the presidency, with the changing demographics of race and ethnicity, but it could well spell disaster for them in the mid-term elections as well. Republicans could lose the House and not make the gains they want in the Senate.
Republicans may think they are going strong with their base of tea party radicals bashing the Affordable Care Act, but nothing impacts voters as much as watching their monthly savings and retirement statements tank.
Seniors and upcoming retirees watch their stocks and bonds and IRAs and 401(k)’s like a hawk and if Republicans get the blame for big losses, trust me, they will feel it big time at the polls next November and for many Novembers to come.
Shutting down the government and defaulting on our obligations are not just bad policy, but they are really bad politics for the Republicans. They simply cannot afford to watch their advantage with the 50+ age group evaporate.
The real question is will the Republicans come to their senses? It is not a sure bet.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, September 23, 2013
“If Liberals Hate Something, It Must Be Terrific And Effective”: Those Obamacare Rape Ads Are A Scam On Conservatives
I suppose I have to talk about the creepy anti-Obamacare ads that everyone, or at least all the liberal bloggers, are talking about today.
Look, folks: this is a very obvious scam.
This is not about stopping the ACA.
This is about money.
Oh, for the donors, it’s presumably about stopping Obamacare.
But for the people putting together the ads, unless they are incredibly stupid and naive, it’s almost certainly about raising money from those donors. And, perhaps, making a name for themselves (or a bigger name — I’m not looking to see who is responsible) within the conservative movement.
These ads could not be better designed to do one thing: to get condemned by liberals. Thus impressing easily scammed conservative marks, who tend to really believe that if liberals hate something, it must be terrific and effective.
This campaign is not designed to convince young people to “opt out” of Obamacare. It’s part of a “campus tour” supposedly designed to convince those young people to go without insurance, but that’s transparently a fraud; traditional-aged college students, the ones who are supposedly being targeted, aren’t really the customers that matter (it’s their older brothers and sisters…yes, some traditional-age college students may purchase their own insurance under ACA, more than was the case before, but it must be a fairly small group).
No, there are real efforts to undermine the law — harassing the “navigators,” pressuring the NFL and others not to publicize it, and more — but this campaign isn’t one of them.
Will it have any effect on actual consumer behavior? I doubt it. But it is worth noting that if it does “work” at all, it’s going to work on the people who respond best to the affect evoked by the ads: in other words, people already primed and ready to hate Obama(care), people already primed and ready to hate the government of the United States, people primed and ready to suspect the very worst of the program. And do note: the way it “works” is by convincing them to go without health insurance.
So basically: if you’re a rich conservative who isn’t very smart about how you give your money, this ad is designed to pick your pocket. If you’re a non-rich conservative, you might get duped into some foolish behavior, but that’s just acceptable collateral damage. For everyone else, it’s an occasion for (to be fair, entirely justified) outrage, I suppose, but basically it’ll come and go without any real effects.
Hey, I know: we’re not supposed to question motives. I believe that. So I’ll say again: it’s possible that these ads are not a scam, but a real political campaign undertaken by seriously naive and stupid operatives. Just as it’s possible that the people doing the “defund” campaign sincerely believe that a government shutdown threat would achieve that, as opposed (as Jamelle Bouie and others pointed out) just finding it an effective money-raising tool). I have to admit, however: that’s not what I think is going on.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, Washington Monthly, Ten Miles Square, September 20, 2013
“The Obamacare Swindle”: Republican Grifters Using Defunding To Raise Money From Gullible Tea Partiers
House Republican leadership does not want a government shutdown over Obamacare, but the agitation of conservative activists might make one inevitable.
That’s not good news for Republicans. After the debt ceiling crisis in 2011, congressional approval ratings dipped to their lowest ever, with Republicans taking a huge hit; in one survey, 71 percent of respondents disapproved with the GOP’s handling of the debt limit. In another, 68 percent said the same (PDF).
Conservatives must know they have nothing to gain politically from taking this stance, which raises the question: why do it? One answer, as suggested by the National Review’s Robert Costa in August, is money. Tea party organizations, he writes, “aren’t worried about the establishment’s ire. In fact, they welcome it. Business has boomed since the push to defund Obamacare caught on. Conservative activists are lighting up social media, donations are pouring in, and e-mail lists are growing.” [Emphasis mine]
To illustrate the point, Heritage Action for America—the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank—has a standing website devoted to collecting donations. “Conservatives in Congress have proposed using the fight over a key budget bill, called the continuing resolution, to strip funding from this law. But Establishment Republicans and special interests in Washington are resisting this plan,” it explains. But there’s no reason to panic: “You can ensure Obamacare is defunded,” it asserts. All it takes is a small donation to Heritage. “Time is of the essence. Please donate now to ensure we have the resources to fight and win.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, this particular push had raised over $327,000, and it’s no stretch to assume that other, similar efforts have raised as much if not more cash. To wit, the Senate Conservatives Fund—a political action committee devoted to electing “true conservatives to the United States Senate”—also has a specific website that collects donations for Obamacare repeal. It asks supporters to “Join Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in the fight to stop Obamacare” with a small contribution. The same goes for the National Liberty Federation, a Tea Party group that wants to know if you have a few dollars to spare in the fight against Obamacare.
Of course, no matter how much money these groups collect, the Affordable Care Act is here to stay. And they know it. “Even they admit privately that they won’t succeed in defunding Obamacare,” notes The Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial urging “kamikaze” Republicans to give up their self-defeating crusade against the law. As President Obama said in a speech on Monday, “the Affordable Care Act has been the law for three-and-a-half years now. It passed both houses of Congress. The Supreme Court ruled it constitutional. It was an issue in last year’s election, and the candidate who called for repeal lost.” Simply put, there is no conceivable scenario that ends with Obama dismantling his signature legislative achievement.
It should be said that the most fervent opponents of the Affordable Care Act are Republican base voters. Of those who “always” vote in GOP primaries, notes the Pew Research Center, 53 percent oppose the law and want lawmakers to make it fail. When they demand action—as they have for the last four years—Republican politicians and conservative activists have a choice. They can try to channel this anger into something constructive, or they can cynically use it to boost their own prospects. For lawmakers like Ted Cruz and organizations like Heritage Action, the choice was simple: Give them what they want, even if it’s doomed to fail.
If there were no money involved, I’d call this a misguided bid for relevance. As it stands, the effort to defund Obamacare is a lucrative business. Which is why it continues to go forward, even as the odds for success dip to the quantum level. For the lawmakers and groups spearheading this movement, Tea Party voters aren’t dedicated citizens as much as they are gullible customers; ripe targets for their brand’s commercialized outrage.
Ted Cruz may style himself as a leader, but the reality is that he and his fellow travelers are just the latest in a long line of shameless grifters. And like the presidential campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain, this grift will continue for as long as there is money to earn, and Republican voters to con.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The Daily Beast, September 18, 2013
“A Self Righteous Verbal Tick”: Ted Cruz Doesn’t Speak For “The American People”
Can we please leave “the American people” out of the debate over defunding the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare)? I’m not talking about the citizens of this great nation, but rather the politically self-righteous verbal tick our elected officials and commentators employ in an effort to invest in themselves the authority of the electorate.
So for example, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the “defund” ringmaster, said earlier this week that while his grand idea has little chance in the Senate, “House Republicans must stand firm, hold their ground, and continue to listen to the American people.” And on Fox News on Wednesday night, Cruz praised “House leadership for listening to the American people,” adding that, “We’ve got to respond to the American people.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Cruz said, “needs to listen to” – you guessed it! – “the American people.”
Appearing on the same show, Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee declared that “the American people are coming together, and they’re standing together and they’re saying, please defund this law.” He went on to praise House Speaker John Boehner for standing “with the American people. We now need to stand with him and with the people and defund this law.” And so on. (Boehner’s House this morning actually did pass a continuing resolution which would keep the government open through Dec.15 while defunding the Affordable Care Act; the bill stands no chance of passing the Senate.)
It must be bracing to carry a mandate to speak on behalf of the American people … even if, as is the case with Cruz, Lee and their tea party pals, they don’t have anything of the sort. Instead they have the insufferable pretension of one: They alone speak for the people because, well, they say so. Their belief in their own popular righteousness recalls Mr. Dooley’s definition of a fanatic: someone who “does what he thinks th’ Lord wud do if He knew th’ facts iv th’ case.”
And from whence does their mandate to speak so authoritatively for “the American people” derive? Cruz referenced an Internet petition which garnered 1.3 million signatures. “Look, today’s decision is a victory for the American people,” he said. “Those 1.3 million Americans … that went and signed that petition and spoke out.” That might explain the difference between the American people and Cruz’s “the American people”: He defines the term as people who share his radical agenda.
More broadly Cruz, Lee and company would presumably point to polls showing that Obamacare remains broadly unpopular. But that reflects, charitably, a superficial knowledge of the polling. Take the Pew Research Center/USA Today poll released earlier this week. Fully 53 percent disapprove of the Affordable Care Act as opposed to only 42 percent who approve. (The Real Clear Politics average of polls has 38 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving.) But dig deeper and you’ll find that that 53 percent is split over how to deal with the law they don’t like – more than half of them, 27 percent, want pols to try to make the law work; a lesser number, 23 percent, want to see elected officials try to make it fail. In other words something like one-quarter of the actual American people stand with Cruz, Lee and the rest of the fanatics. Some mandate.
This is not an unusual result. Even a laughably skewed poll which Heritage Action – the activist branch of the Heritage Foundation – commissioned to bolster the “defund” push found that 52 percent of Americans (or more precisely 52 percent of Americans in a selection of 10 GOP-leaning House districts) think that implementation of the law should go forward, while only 44.5 percent favor repeal. This makes intuitive sense: Not everyone who dislikes the law does so because they’re conservative; some portion of the law’s critics is progressives disappointed that it wasn’t more liberal.
But there are a couple of more important points to be made about polls. For one thing, the most authoritative poll taken in the last year occurred in November, at great expense. It had a sample size of more than 125 million and the results were not particularly close: The candidate who campaigned on repealing Obamacare lost by four percentage points – nearly five million votes – to the fellow who signed Obamacare into law. You’d think that if the American people saw stopping Obamacare as a cause worth fighting for “with every ounce of breath we have,” as Cruz put it Thursday, they might have so indicated at the ballot box. And yet Cruz, Lee and their cronies seem to see in this result a mandate from “the American people” (if not the American people) to obstruct the law to the maximum extent, even to the extent of shutting down the government to stop it.
And while the tea party right’s fidelity to the will of “the American people” as expressed by more recent public opinion polls is admirable, it takes on a far more self-serving aspect when considered in light of other polls which left people like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee unmoved. For example 86 percent of Americans support background checks for people buying guns; on immigration reform, 64 percent of Americans support the comprehensive bill that the Senate passed and 78 percent support a qualified path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Oh, and 71 percent of Americans oppose shutting down the government, according to a poll conducted over the summer for House Republicans. For those keeping track at home, those figures are more impressive than the 50-something opposed to Obamacare – perhaps no one has told Cruz, Lee et al. about these judgments from “the American people?”
The list goes on. The fact is, as I have written over and over and over and over, there are a number of prominent issues where the GOP seems immune to the charms of “the American people.”
And to be clear, this is not a partisan problem. Pols in both parties are promiscuous with the desires of “the American people,” while none have a monopoly on it. So let’s agree that it’s time to retire “the American people” – or more specifically their demands and expectations – from the political lexicon.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, September 21, 2013
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