“Active Inertia” Of A Dying Party: Intellectually Bankrupt, Republican’s Are Pyromanic’s In A field Of Strawmen
Take pity on poor Marco Rubio. You’d be reaching for a bottle of Poland Springs, too, if you had to spit out the dry-as-dust bromides and the well past their sell-by date Reagan-era platitudes that Rubio was forced to expectorate as the Republican Party’s designated responder to President Obama’s State of the Union address last Tuesday.
“More government isn’t going to help you get ahead,” said Rubio, doing his best Ronald Reagan “government-isn’t-the-solution-it’s-the-problem” impersonation. “It’s going to hold you back. More government isn’t going to create more opportunities. It’s going to limit them. And more government isn’t going to inspire new ideas, new businesses and new private sector jobs. It’s going to create uncertainty.”
Later on, Rubio wasn’t content to merely propose we reduce debts and deficits. He had to go all the way to balance the budget in ways that did not involve the choice between “either higher taxes or dramatic benefit cuts for those in need.” Instead, Rubio offered the oldie but goodie that we should “grow our economy so that we create new taxpayers, not new taxes, and so our government can afford to help those who truly cannot help themselves.”
Good grief! Could this speech have been given 30 years ago? Of course it could, says Andrew Sullivan, because it was not a political speech at all but rather a “recitation of doctrine dedicated to Saint Ronald.”
What Rubio gave us on Tuesday, says Sullivan, “was an intellectually exhausted speech that represents the intellectual bankruptcy of contemporary Republicanism” — a series of “Reaganite truisms that had a role to play in reinvigorating America after liberal over-reach in the 1960s and 1970s,” perhaps, but offering little that was new or applicable today.
If reciting these platitudes in Spanish counts as what the GOP thinks it will take to restore the party to political or intellectual relevance, says Sullivan, then “they are more deluded than even I imagined.”
After listening to Rubio, I am in agreement with Josh Barro when he says the Republican Party’s problem isn’t the messenger but its whole economic message. And to fix that, Republicans need to show they are serious about policy — and for “smart government” on a case-by-case basis – and not just demagogues when it comes to government.
Michael Grunwald had the same thought when he said if Republicans really believe they lost the last election “because Romney was a boring rich white guy who alienated Hispanics” then in Rubio they got their chance “to see a charismatic Cuban-American with humble roots but otherwise indistinguishable positions on every issue except for immigration.”
And the result should have had Republicans reaching for drinks stronger than water.
I am not sure what to say when Rubio tried to pass himself off as a regular guy who went through college on federal student loans and has a mother who gets Medicare — but who then speaks for a party committed to cutting, if not eliminating, both.
At the same time, I am left speechless by Rubio’s assertion that Obama has no cause for blaming President Bush for the nation’s debt – at the same time Rubio insists the “real cause of our debt” is the $1 trillion deficit Bush left Obama when he took office — times four. And shame on Obama, says Rubio, that Obama did not immediately undo everything George W. did and reduce the deficit to zero in the middle of the second worst recession in 70 years.
But “that’s why we need a balanced budget amendment,” concludes Rubio, idiotically.
Rubio offered no compromise on gun control, nothing but border security on immigration, drill, baby, drill as an energy policy, not a word on gay equality, and nothing at all about the 60,000 Americans fighting and dying in Afghanistan. And as for climate change, he quipped: “No matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather.” Ha, ha, ha.
Rubio was also like a pyromaniac in a field of straw men insisting President Obama is hostile to the free enterprise economy, believes the economy collapsed because government didn’t tax enough and that the “solution to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more.”
At the same time, Rubio blames the 2008 financial collapse on a “housing crisis created by reckless government policies.”
I used to write speeches for Republicans, and so I suppose I should be indebted to Senator Rubio for providing such a perfect distillation of all the reasons I gave up on the thankless, potentially health damaging task of articulating ideas for Republicans who don’t have any.
By my counting, Rubio is now the third leading Republican (after Governor Bobby Jindal and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor) who’ve gone “over the top” like doomed WWI doughboys as they charge across their barren ideological No Man’s Land in a futile effort to reposition a Republican Party that wants no part of change.
One measure of the heavy lift facing Rubio and Company as they try to pour new wine into old bottles was the reaction of other Republicans to the President’s State of the Union address. Their collective message seemed to be: What a tragedy a perfect opportunity was squandered for the President to declare he’d become a Republican after winning reelection in a landslide.
“He seems to always be in campaign mode, where he treats people in the other party as enemies rather than partners,” said House Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who seemed puzzled Obama had not immediately embraced Ryan’s ideas.
“In the last election, voters chose divided government which offers a mandate only to work together to find common ground,” said Speaker John Boehner who seemed puzzled the President actually thinks like a Democrat. “The President, instead, appears to have chosen a go-it-alone approach to pursue his liberal agenda.”
But the response I loved best came from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who sounded like some slave-owning Southern Oligarch warning the President against offering “another litany of left-wing proposals” or throwing “red meat” to his base because, you know, “the campaign is over” and so the “Republican-controlled House” is back to calling the shots.
You’ve had your fun Mr. President, McConnell seemed to be saying. You won the election fair and square. But now it’s time to face facts. That’s a nice little democracy you’ve got there, Mr. President. But don’t forget, we’re still in charge.
Republicans like to think themselves connected to the disciplines of the free market, with its emphasis on competition, innovation and the relentless “creative destruction” of revolutionary change. Yet, it’s astonishing to me how Republicans at the same time exhibit the sclerosis of what author Chrystia Freeland calls the “active inertia” of dying organizations that fail to adjust to the imperatives of change because “they do what they always did — only more energetically than before.”
By: Ted Frier, Open Salon Blog, February 15, 2013
“The Tone Ain’t The Problem”: The GOP’s Woman Problem Is The GOP
Tuesday night was supposed to be another big step in the Republican rebranding, but it didn’t really turn out that way. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio proved more Aqua- than Superman. And Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the dark horse darling, turned into something of a snooze inducing sleep sheep.
But maybe GOP-ers can take solace from this: it doesn’t really matter. Because what Rubio and Paul did mere hours before their respective turns on the national stage likely did more long-term damage to the GOP brand than any speech could fix.
Our story starts all the way back in 1993. That’s when the Senate Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of then-senator Joe Biden, issued a report showing that women were disproportionately falling victim to some heinous crimes, crimes that were also less likely to be successfully prosecuted. In other words, if you robbed someone you were more likely to face punishment than if you raped them.
This, understandably, caused some pause. How could our criminal justice system be serving women so poorly? And what could be done to fix it?
One option was to continue to work at the state level to make things better, and that’s what some people did. But others looked at the years leading up to the Biden report and recognized that states had been doing the best they could to stop violent crimes against women for decades and their best wasn’t enough. That helped pave the way for federal engagement: the Violence Against Women Act, also known as VAWA. It’s been on the books for 20 years now.
Two days ago, 22 Republican senators decided that was a mistake. And it wasn’t just any group of 22—it featured many of the party’s leading lights: the presidential frontrunner, Rubio; his Tea Party rival Paul; two other Republicans who’ve occupied an increasing share of the national stage: Ted Cruz of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; and the immediate past head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, John Cornyn. They all voted against reauthorizing the law.
Why? Well, they offered all sorts of reasons, but most seemed aimed at the same place: the bill was an overreach. It made the definition of domestic violence too broad. It trampled the rights of defendants. It was doing something best left to the states.
If you think it unusual to hear some of these arguments coming out of the mouths of conservatives, you’re right. Under ordinary circumstances, it’s conservatives who prefer the sledgehammer approach to criminal justice, but here they say that’s the problem. And its conservatives who for decades have done more than anyone else to gut the due process rights of defendants. But now they rally to the cause of those accused of domestic violence? That’s quite a thing.
And sure, we hear the 10th Amendment argument raised just about every time a conservative wants the federal government to stop doing something. But here’s a news bulletin: the reason the Violence Against Women Act came into being in the first place was because the states weren’t getting it done. The 10th Amendment isn’t like putting on ruby slippers. Invoking it over and over again doesn’t make the federal government go away.
In any case, it’s hard not to see something a little less grandiose than constitutional scholarship underlying the Republican efforts. In the Heritage Foundation’s one pager urging a no vote, its authors warn that provisions of the bill will “increase fraud and false allegations [of abuse], for which there is no legal recourse”, and that “Under VAWA, men effectively lose their constitutional rights to due process, presumption of innocence, equal treatment under the law, the right to a fair trial and to confront one’s accusers, the right to bear arms, and all custody/visitation rights.” The bill is intended to protect women from deadly harm, but its pretty evident who the Heritage Foundation is preoccupied with protecting.
Think that’s an unfair characterization? Maybe. But this is a party whose right wing has found reason to oppose equal pay for women; which questioned whether Hilary Clinton was faking an emotional response at the Benghazi hearing; which raised objections to women serving equally in the military; and which seems to have developed a fetish for transvaginal ultrasound. Etc.
Now, to be sure, there were 23 Republicans in the Senate who found it within themselves to set aside whatever convoluted ideological calculations swept up their brethren, and voted yes on Tuesday. And that’s a good thing. But for the party that lost women in the last election by double digits, it’s hardly enough.
If Republicans really want to become more appealing to more of the electorate, here’s some advice: The tone ain’t great, but the tone ain’t the problem. When so many of your party leaders believe what these guys do, to mangle a phrase from James Carville, it’s the you, stupid. You’re the problem.
And you might want to try and fix that first.
By: Anson Kaye, U. S. News and World Report, February 14, 2013
“A Nonpartisan No-Brainer”: Raising The Minimum Wage Is Beneficial For Individuals And Businesses
In Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, President Obama called on members of Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour, something Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) supported during the 2012 election. The president said, “This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank; rent or eviction; scraping by or finally getting ahead.”
Who could argue with that?
Two Republican leaders have voiced their opposition to the president’s proposal. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) agree that raising the minimum wage hurts businesses, claiming that increasing the cost of employment makes it difficult for businesses to sustain themselves and deters them from hiring employees.
A study released yesterday by the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggests otherwise. John Schmitt, who authored Why Does The Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?, argues that raising wages actually has little to no effect on employment. Schmitt offers 11 “channels of adjustment,” ways in which businesses could respond to a raise in minimum wage. These include raising prices on goods and services (offset by higher demand), increase in worker efficiency and effort, and less difficulty in recruiting and retaining employees which “may compensate some or all of the increased wage costs, allowing employers to maintain employment levels.”
Based on the results of this study, small businesses have everything to gain in paying their employees a wage they can live on. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman addressed the myth behind cutting minimum wage during a time of recession back in 2009. “In reality, reducing wages would at best do nothing for employment; more likely it would actually be contractionary,” Krugman said. “Proposing wage cuts as a solution to unemployment is a totally counterproductive idea.”
Larger corporations such as Walmart and McDonald’s that employ 66% of low-wage workers are rewarding their top executives in profitable years with raises, while their low-wage employees are still making minimum wage — a pay level that is not sustainable for many American families. In fact, if minimum wage matched inflation, it would be $10.58 per hour.
As stated in a Huffington Post article, “This would guarantee that workers on the lowest rung of the economic ladder don’t lose purchasing power, but it would also mean fast-food companies and other low-wage employers would have to pay higher wages just about every year, except in rare cases of deflation.”
This type of proposal was already favored in 2010, when the Public Religion Research Institute conducted a poll and found that 67 percent of respondents were in favor of increasing the minimum wage to $10.00 an hour—that includes a majority of respondents who identified as Republicans.
In 2007, President Bush signed the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which easily passed in the House 315-116, including bipartisan support from 82 Republicans. It passed the Senate — with the help of Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — by a 94-3 vote before making it to the president’s desk.
Studies clearly point to the profitable effects on individuals and businesses if earnings per hour are raised to a level where low-wage workers are actually able to support themselves and their families. If Republicans like Boehner and Rubio are truly advocating for their middle-class constituents, then supporting the president in ensuring that workers earn what they deserve — and can live on — ought to be a nonpartisan no-brainer.
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, February 14, 2013
“Who Gains”: Was Rand Paul’s Speech The Tea Party Response, Or Merely The Rand Paul Response?
After the State of the Union tonight, there was the Republican response. And after the Republican response? There was the Tea Party version.
Why does the Tea Party need its own response? It probably doesn’t, considering that the official Republican responder is Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who won a primary against a more establishment Republican thanks to the backing of the Tea Party. But the movement is not a unified group, as they often like to remind the press. Even if the response does nothing for the conservative grass roots movement, it makes perfect sense for those actually involved in it.
The response is organized by Tea Party Express, as it has been for the past three years (Rep. Michele Bachmann gave the first Tea Party response, when she famously failed to make eye contact with the camera). Tea Party Express bills itself as “the nation’s largest tea party political action committee.” This is a little odd, considering it’s not a PAC at all. In fact, as a disclaimer at the bottom of its website and all ads says, Tea Party Express is a brand of a real PAC called Our Country Deserves Better, which is in turn controlled by the Sacramento, Calif.-based GOP P.R. firm Russo Marsh + Rogers.
Like so many people involved in the Tea Party, Russo Marsh + Rogers saw an opportunity to cash in on the Tea Party movement and has done so adroitly, hitting up its members for small donations with incessant email solicitations, often from its numerous associated brands like “the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama,” which help the effort present a broader image.
The PACs started by Russo Marsh & Rogers then take much of the money they raise and — this is where it gets clever — use that money to pay Russo Marsh & Rogers huge consulting fees. The P.R. firm was both the No. 1 and 2 recipients of cash from Tea Party Express in the 2012 cycle, taking in almost $3 million, while the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama gave Russo Marsh & Rogers another $336,0000 (its third largest expenditure).
This is all by way of saying that Tea Party Express has very real incentives to remain relevant and present itself as speaking on behalf of the Tea Party movement.
The story is largely the same for Rand Paul, who is trying to take up the mantle left by his father, former Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, to lead a national libertarian grass roots movement that sometimes aligns itself with the Tea Party. Giving the “official” Tea Party Response lets Paul present himself as a leader of the movement and boost his cache with activists and the media.
So even if the Tea Party movement as a whole gains little from having a Tea Party response to the State of the Union on top of Rubio’s, Tea Party Express and Rand Paul certainly do, and the media is only too happy to play along, as it creates interesting GOP civil war drama and is another thing to write about.
So, what did Rand Paul actually say? Most of it was anodyne conservative talking points, very similar to what Rubio offered.
“Ronald Reagan said, government is not the answer to the problem, government is the problem. Tonight, the president told the nation he disagrees. President Obama believes government is the solution: More government, more taxes, more debt,” Rand Paul said.
“Presidents in both parties — from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan — have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity. But President Obama? He believes it’s the cause of our problems … You heard tonight, [Obama’s] solution to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more,” Rubio said.
“But we won’t be able to sustain a vibrant middle class unless we solve our debt problem,” Rubio said.
“The [debt] path we are on is not sustainable, but few in Congress or in this administration seem to recognize that their actions are endangering the prosperity of this great nation,” Paul said.
You get the idea.
But Rand Paul did break from Rubio in one major place — defense cuts. Congress is currently trying to head off the so-called sequestration, which will slash half a trillion dollars from the Pentagon. Republicans want to stop that, but Rand Paul doesn’t.
“Not only should the sequester stand, many pundits say the sequester really needs to be at least $4 trillion to avoid another downgrade of America’s credit rating,” Paul said tonight.
He also had some stronger rhetoric on immigration than Rubio. Despite being the GOP’s go-to guy on immigration, the Florida senator gave the issue barely a nod: Three sentences, one paragraph, and no specifics. He spent more time talking about his own biography and railing against Obama’s nonexistent plan to hike taxes.
While Rubio suggested that border enforcement would have to come before legalization of undocumented immigrations, Paul was more liberal, here saying, “We must be the party who sees immigrants as assets, not liabilities. We must be the party that says, ‘If you want to work, if you want to become an American, we welcome you.’”
The thing is, it’s hard to say if Paul is really speaking on behalf of the Tea Party here, or just his own idiosyncratic beliefs. There is strong widespread bipartisan belief that the sequester is bad and Rand Paul is likely the only member in the Senate who wholeheartedly supports it, let alone wants to go further.
While some polling suggests Tea Party members agree with Paul on defense cuts, he is at odds on immigration with the grass roots, which tend to be more restrictive than the elites. While the movement presented itself as something entirely new, it is largely just made up of the most committed conservative activists, and they seem to really care about fighting “amnesty.”
So the question is: Was Rand Paul’s speech the Tea Party response, or merely the Rand Paul response? Either way, it was a coup for Russo Marsh & Rogers.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, February 13, 2013
“Marco Rubio Is Thirsty”: Forget About The Dry Mouth, The Real Problem Was What He Said
It’s not his fault, really. Maybe it was understandable nervousness—after all, here he was just a few days after being anointed “The Republican Savior” in a Time magazine cover, following the president, but without an applauding crowd to feed off. Or maybe it was that the room was hot and dry. Whatever the cause, after trying to wipe the sweat from his brow and face for 12 long minutes and repeatedly moving his tongue around his mouth to get some moisture going, Marco Rubio decided he just had no choice but to bend down and grab that tantalizing little bottle of water that lay just out of reach.
So don’t blame him for that, even though he’ll no doubt get plenty of mockery for it today. You can blame him, however, for the insipid speech he delivered, a combination of calumny and cliché that demonstrated just why Republicans are having such problems appealing to voters. Let’s start with this:
Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity.
But President Obama? He believes it’s the cause of our problems. That the economic downturn happened because our government didn’t tax enough, spend enough, and control enough. And, therefore, as you heard tonight, his solution to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more.
OK, so that’s not what the President said in his speech, and hearing from a Republican that Barack Obama hates free enterprise ceased to surprise a long time ago. And though Obama has certainly placed part of the blame for the economic downturn on insufficient government oversight of capital markets, the idea that he ever once blamed it on insufficient spending and taxation is obviously, plainly, absurdly false, a lie by any definition of the term. But that doesn’t surprise, either. What is remarkable is that just a few paragraphs after falsely attacking the president’s motives, Rubio says this: “There are valid reasons to be concerned about the president’s plan to grow our government. But any time anyone opposes the president’s agenda, he and his allies usually respond by falsely attacking their motives.”
Come to think of it, that mixture of dishonesty and self-pity may be just what Republican primary voters are looking for in 2016. And one thing they may also be looking for is the assurance that not only are we God’s favorite country, but life everywhere else is an unending nightmare of opportunities denied and dreams dashed. If so, Rubio is ready to oblige:
This dream – of a better life for their children – it’s the hope of parents everywhere. Politicians here and throughout the world have long promised that more government can make those dreams come true.
But we Americans have always known better. From our earliest days, we embraced economic liberty instead. And because we did, America remains one of the few places on earth where dreams like these even have a chance.
Really? America is one of the few places on earth where people can dream of a better life for their children? Oh, please. The truth is that economic mobility in America is lower than in many similar countries (the result of a decades-long trend, and not Barack Obama’s fault, for what it’s worth). The “only in America” canard is a longtime pet peeve of mine, so I have to ask: why is it necessary to extol our country’s virtues by claiming that those virtues are ours alone? Why is it so hard to say that we value hard work and opportunity, and so do many other societies?
Maybe Marco Rubio is the Republican savior. Lots of politicians have given one crappy speech and then gone on to great things, most notably Bill Clinton, whose speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic convention was panned for being both dull and ponderously long. Before you know it, this one will be little more than the source of the occasional chuckle, and Rubio will rise or fall based on what he does in a hundred other settings. But it just goes to show that with a few rare exceptions (like this one), delivering the opposition’s response to the State of the Union is likely to do your career more harm than good. If Rubio thought he’d be the one to buck that history, he didn’t get much more for his trouble than a dry mouth.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 13, 2013
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