“June Is GOP Throwback Month”: Republicans Are Not Trying Very Hard To Escape Their Past
The right has long seemed stuck in the 1980s, ever basking in Ronald Reagan’s warm glow and policy solutions. This month it seems conservatives have decided to switch things up and temporally relocate themselves to the 2000s, if just for a little while.
So a giant squirrel is following former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton around the country on her book tour. Seriously. The Republican National Committee has dispatched someone in a bright orange squirrel costume to appear at her book events. The costume, Mother Jones reported this week, is left over from a similar 2008 publicity stunt in which the party used the squirrel to illustrate its concerns about ACORN, the now-defunct voter mobilization group. There was a logic to it then – squirrels and acorns – but now it’s as if someone at the RNC was cleaning out a closet, came across the squirrel suit and thought to themselves: Well, we can’t let this beauty go to waste. So the squirrel now wears a T-shirt which reads, “Another Clinton in the White House is Nuts.”
That sentiment neatly channels one of the early, sanctimonious premises of the George W. Bush presidency – the idea of Clinton fatigue, that the country didn’t want any more of the 42nd president, that “America wants somebody to restore honor and dignity to the White House,” as Bush put it while campaigning for the office. That somebody at the RNC thinks describing a return to Clintonism as “nuts” indicates that that particular delusion hasn’t been dislodged in the intervening 14 years. Remember that when he left office Bill Clinton enjoyed a 66 percent approval rating, according to Gallup. And just this week a Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg poll found that he is easily the most admired president of the last quarter century, with 42 percent of respondents naming him the most admired chief executive in that time. That’s light-years ahead of President Barack Obama (18 percent), the Bush who succeeded Clinton (17) and the one who preceded him (16). Peace and prosperity will do that for you.
Of course the Bush presidency reoriented itself after 9/11, and we’re getting a flashback of those years as well, thanks to the collapse of the Iraqi armed forces in the face of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (an al-Qaida splinter group) and the civil war in Syria. So the whole neocon cast that devised the original Iraq fiasco have crawled out of the GOP memory hole apparently intent on proving the old Karl Marx-ism that history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce. “This is about preventing another 9/11,” former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on MSNBC this week, having updated his talking points not a wit from the first time he advocated sending armed forces into Iraq. Writing on The Weekly Standard’s website, Fred Kagan and Bill Kristol argue for air strikes and ground troops as “the only chance we have to persuade Iraq’s Sunni Arabs that they have an alternative to joining up with” al-Qaida or facing government death squads. Truly nothing persuades people of our benevolent intentions like bombing and invading their country. We’ll be greeted as liberators – just like we were the first time, right?
But the award for abject lack of self-awareness goes to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who wrote with his daughter in The Wall Street Journal this week: “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
Meanwhile back in the original Bush country – Texas – the 43d president’s gubernatorial successor this month channeled one of the uglier aspects of the 2004 presidential campaign, shameless gay-bashing. Recall the role played in the Bush re-election campaign of riling up the social right with state level campaigns against gay marriage. Speaking in San Francisco last week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry compared homosexuality with alcoholism, saying that both afflictions can be resisted with a sufficient amount of will power. This sort of noxious comparison might have been unremarkable a decade ago, but times have changed and rapidly, with polls now showing majorities of Americans favoring marriage equality, for example. In 2014 it draws rebukes like this one, from CNBC host Joe Kernen: “I don’t think gay marriage leads to cirrhosis of the liver or domestic violence or DWIs.” Yeah, there is that.
Perry seems to have gotten the message, telling reporters at a press lunch on Thursday that he – and the GOP in general – shouldn’t get “deflected” onto social issues like the nature of homosexuality. “I stepped right in it,” he said.
Adjusting to rapid change can be hard, doubly so for conservatives whose ideology inherently resists it. Perhaps the best recent example of that emerged this week from North Carolina. State House Speaker Thom Tillis, the GOP Senate nominee, told “Carolina Business Review” in 2012 (the interview was ferreted out this week by Talking Points Memo) that “the traditional population of North Carolina and the United States is more or less stable. It’s not growing. The African-American population is roughly growing but the Hispanic population and the other immigrant populations are growing in significant numbers. We’ve got to resonate with those voters.” When asked whether Tillis was characterizing whites as the state’s and the country’s “traditional population,” his spokesman said no, that he was merely referring to “people who have been in North Carolina for a long time.” This is transparent nonsense. He contrasted the “traditional” population with, among others, the African-American population, which I’m fairly certain has been in the Tar Heel State for some time now.
But take a step back and look past the offensive content: Tillis was answering a question about his party’s inability to appeal to minorities, so when he talked about non-“traditional” voters he was doing so in the context of wanting to “resonate” with them. If this is the right’s idea of reaching out, it’s going to be a long decade for them – no wonder they’re trying to C.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, June 23, 2014
“Paul Lunges For The Reagan Mantle”: His Government-Shrinking Visions Just Might Be A Problem
Yesterday I wrote skeptically about Ross Douthat’s “spitballing” scenario whereby the two parties could undergo a role reversal on foreign policy in 2016 with “interventionist” Hillary Clinton pushing GOPers towards “non-interventionist” Rand Paul. Today we have Paul’s own effort to use the Iraq crisis to re-frame the partisan debate over foreign policy, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
It’s pretty audacious: according to Paul there’s the Bush Republicans who got Iraq wrong before 2009, the Obama Democrats who got Iraq wrong after 2009, and then his own self, right all along, as the sole disciple of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy.
Saying the mess in Iraq is President Obama’s fault ignores what President Bush did wrong. Saying it is President Bush’s fault is to ignore all the horrible foreign policy decisions in Syria, Libya, Egypt and elsewhere under President Obama, many of which may have contributed to the current crisis in Iraq. For former Bush officials to blame President Obama or for Democrats to blame President Bush only serves as a reminder that both sides continue to get foreign policy wrong. We need a new approach, one that emulates Reagan’s policies, puts America first, seeks peace, faces war reluctantly, and when necessary acts fully and decisively.
Paul defends this hypothesis with lengthy exegesis of a famous 1984 Cap Weinberger speech laying out criteria for military action. It was, in fact, extended by the so-called “Powell Doctrine” often touted as the justification of the limited-war nature of the First Gulf War, but that made Powell’s stamp of approval on the 2003 Iraq War so important.
So Paul’s attempt to appropriate the Reagan mantle in foreign policy will be sharply contested by “Bush Republicans” of all varieties. Beyond that, there’s one problem with Paul quoting Weinberger worth pondering. Cap was less famous for his “doctrine” than for his persistence in securing the highest level of defense spending imaginable. In his endlessly fascinating account of the budget wars of Reagan’s first term, The Triumph of Politics, David Stockman all but calls Weinberger a traitor for his mendacious and successful efforts to trick Ronald Reagan into double-loading defense increases into his seminal 1981 budget proposal. This is one part of the Reagan-Weinberger legacy Paul will probably not want to emulate. And it matters: the most obvious way to convince reflexively belligerent Republicans that he’s kosher despite opposing various past, present and future military engagements would be to insist on arming America to the teeth. But Paul’s government-shrinking visions would make that sort of gambit very difficult. And try as he might, it will be very difficult for Paul to make a credible claim Ronald Reagan stood tall for taming the Pentagon.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 20, 2014
“Dick Cheney, Did You Really Want To Go There?”: He Was Wrong In Every Prediction He Made About The Iraq War
The infinitely valuable Yiddish word chutzpah is defined as “shameless audacity” or “impudence.”
It’s singularly appropriate for the astonishing op-ed from former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. It’s not every day that a leader of the previous administration suggests that the current president is a “fool” and accuses him of intentionally weakening the United States.
“President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch,” the Cheneys write. Are they charging our president with treason? “President Obama,” they write, “is on track to securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.”
Squandered our freedom?
“Only a fool,” they say, “would believe American policy in Iraq should be ceded to Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.” As if this is what Obama is doing — and as if it weren’t the invasion Cheney so passionately supported that vastly strengthened Iran’s hand long before Obama took office.
The Cheney polemic would be outrageous even if our former vice president’s record on Iraq had been one of absolute clairvoyance. As it happens, he was wrong in almost every prediction he made about the war.
On March 16, 2003, days before the war started, Cheney sat down with the late Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press” for what still stands as the most revealing of the prewar interviews. Cheney was adamant that “to suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations cease, after the conflict ends, I don’t think is accurate. I think that’s an overstatement.”
“We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,” he famously said and proceeded to play down the very sectarian divisions that are plaguing the country now. Russert asked: “And you are convinced the Kurds, the Sunnis, the Shiites will come together in a democracy?” Cheney replied quickly: “They have so far.” He went on:
“If you look at the opposition, they’ve come together, I think, very effectively, with representatives from Shia, Sunni and Kurdish elements in the population. They understand the importance of preserving and building on an Iraqi national identity. They don’t like to have the U.S., for example, come in and insist on dealing with people sort of on a hyphenated basis — the Iraqi-Shia, Iraqi-Sunni — but rather to focus on Iraq as a nation and all that it can accomplish as a nation, and we try to be sensitive to those concerns. I think the prospects of being able to achieve this kind of success, if you will, from a political standpoint, are probably better than they would be for virtually any other country and under similar circumstances in that part of the world.”
Ah yes, regime change would work out just fine — better than fine. “Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad,” Cheney had told the Veterans of Foreign Wars seven months earlier. “Moderates throughout the region would take heart.” Plus a bonus: “Our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced.” This was the war that would cure all that ailed us.
Thanks to the Cheney op-ed, we can see how Obama’s hawkish critics are out to create a double standard. Whenever they are called out for how mistaken they were about Iraq in the first place, they piously lecture against “relitigating the past” and say we must instead look forward. At the same time, many of them feel perfectly free to trash the president in extreme and even vile terms.
I am all for looking forward and trying to find an approach that squares the many contradictions we face: of needing to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria while also pushing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to stop pursuing anti-Sunni policies that are empowering the forces we need to turn back; of being on the same side as Iran in Iraq’s current emergency but on opposite sides over Syria; of wanting to avoid steps that will make things worse while not being paralyzed; and of not plunging into the middle of a Shiite-Sunni civil war while trying to stop the region’s descent into chaos.
Obama sees these contradictions and says he won’t act rashly. You don’t have to agree with Obama’s every move to prefer his prudence to the utter certainty that “we will be greeted as liberators” and to a habit of underestimating the costs of military action.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, June 18, 2014
“Often Wrong, Never In Doubt”: John McCain Ran Off The Rails A Long Time Ago
John McCain bugs my esteemed predecessor Brother Steve Benen in the way that Bobby Jindal bugs me: a public figure whose regular production of baloney seems to have eluded the MSM to an extent that the acute observer goes nuts now and then. So when McCain attributed his and Lindsey Graham’s influence among fellow-Republicans on foreign policy issues to the fact that the Amigos “have had long experience and haven’t been wrong,” Steve responded with savage precision:
Two weeks ago…McCain complained about the prisoner swap that freed an American POW despite having already endorsed the exact same plan. After getting caught, McCain falsely accused his critics of “lying.” He then suggested the detainees were “responsible for 9/11,” which didn’t make any sense.
Soon after, the senator told a national television audience, “We had literally no casualties there in Iraq during the last period after the surge was over.” That’s ridiculously untrue.
McCain then argued that militants holding prisoners don’t kill Americans, followed by the senator leaving policy briefings before they’re done so he can repeat false talking points for the cameras.
McCain then demanded that the suspected ringleader of the 2012 attack in Benghazi be brought to Guantanamo Bay, telling reporters, “It’s where we put terrorists when we apprehend them.” In reality, (a) that’s not even close to being true; (b) sending Abu Khattala to the detention facility probably wouldn’t be legal, and (c) McCain doesn’t seem to remember his own position, which is that the Guantanamo prison be closed.
McCain is convinced he hasn’t “been wrong”? These are just the more notable mistakes from the last two weeks.
Lord knows how many more Sunday Show appearances and heavily reported interviews McCain can make between now and the end of his current term in 2016. Each will represent both a torment and an opportunity for Steve, unless the rest of the media finally get hip to the fact that the 2008 presidential nominee ran off the rails a long time ago and shows no interest in finding his way back.
McCain perpetually calls into mind a quotation attributed to former U.S. Treasurer Ivy Baker Priest: “I’m often wrong, but never in doubt.”
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 19, 2014
“How Dumb Do We Have To Be?”: Should We Listen To Those Who Were Wrong On Iraq In 2002?
Last week, I wrote a post over at the Washington Post expressing amazement that so many of the people who were so spectacularly wrong on Iraq in 2002 are now returning to tell us what we should do about Iraq in 2014. While it went out under the headline “On Iraq, let’s ignore those who got it all wrong,” I didn’t actually argue specifically that they should be ignored, just that we shouldn’t forget their track records when we hear them now (although I did allow that seeking out John McCain’s opinion on Iraq is like getting lost and deciding that Mr. Magoo is the person you need to ask for directions). Then yesterday, after Dick Cheney popped up with a predictably tendentious criticism of Barack Obama, I wrote another post on the topic of our former vice president, and here I did get a little more explicit about how his opinions should be greeted, after running through some of his more appalling howlers:
There is not a single person in America — not Bill Kristol, not Paul Wolfowitz, not Don Rumsfeld, no pundit, not even President Bush himself — who has been more wrong and more shamelessly dishonest on the topic of Iraq than Dick Cheney.
And now, as the cascade of misery and death and chaos he did so much to unleash rages anew, Cheney has the unadulterated gall to come before the country and tell us that it’s all someone else’s fault, and if we would only listen to him then we could keep America safe forever. How dumb would we have to be to listen?
Is there a bit of over-enthusiasm with which people like me are attacking the return of the Iraq War caucus? Maybe. Part of it comes from the fact that a decade ago, those of us who were right about the whole thing were practically called traitors because we doubted that Iraq would turn out to be a splendid little war. And part of it comes from the fact that the band of morons who sold and executed the worst foreign policy disaster in American history not only didn’t receive the opprobrium they deserved, they all did quite well for themselves. Paul Wolfowitz became president of the World Bank. Paul Bremer, Tommy Franks, and George Tenet—a trio of incompetents to rival the Three Stooges—each got the Medal of Freedom in honor of their stellar performance. Bill Kristol was rewarded with the single most prestigious perch in the American media, a column in the New York Times. (The drivel he turned out was so appallingly weak that they axed him after a year.) The rest of the war cheerleaders in the media retained their honored positions in the nation’s newspapers and on our TV screens. The worst thing that happened to any of them was getting a cushy sinecure at a conservative think tank.
But Jonathan Chait sounds a note of dissent on the idea that all these people should simply be ignored, and I think he probably has a point:
When you’re trying to set the terms for a debate, you have to do it in a fair way. Demanding accountability for failed predictions is fair. Insisting that only your ideological opponents be held accountable is not fair. Nor is it easy to see what purpose is served by insisting certain people ought to be ignored. The way arguments are supposed to work is that the argument itself, not the identity of the arguer, makes the case. We shouldn’t disregard Dick Cheney’s arguments about Iraq because he’s Dick Cheney. We should disregard them because they’re stupid.
In my Cheney post I did make some attempt to address his argument about Iraq, but it was rather hard to find, because like most conservatives, he (and daughter Liz, with whom he co-wrote that op-ed) are silent on what they would actually do that Barack Obama is not doing. But when it comes to the war brigade, we can do both: We should keep recalling their past blunders, and look thoroughly at what they’re saying now. They can and should be accountable for both their past and their present. The latter is showing no greater promise than the former did.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 19, 2014
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