“Abandoning The Pretense Of Seriousness”: GOP Motivations Have Nothing To Do With Governing
The new House Republican leadership team, facing its first real test yesterday, failed miserably. They backed a bill that ostensibly addresses the humanitarian crisis at the U.S./Mexico border, but the bill died before it even reached the floor. Rank-and-file Republican lawmakers had rejected their own party’s bill.
But instead of leaving town for Congress’ five-week break, GOP lawmakers met this morning to work something out, and by all appearances, Speaker John Boehner and his team effectively told right-wing members, “Tell us what you want and we’ll say yes.” The result is a new bill, set to pass this afternoon.
House Republicans are taking a second shot at passing a border funding package Friday after party leaders failed to whip enough support among conservatives and were forced to pull legislation Thursday. The new version of the bill will add $35 million to offer states that dispatch National Guard service members to the border, adding up to $694 million in emergency funding relief to cope with the flood of unaccompanied minors streaming into the United States.
Unwilling to leave Washington without first passing a border package, lawmakers aim to vote on the revised legislation Friday along with a separate vote on legislation to undercut laws protecting young undocumented immigrants.
To appreciate what the House GOP has come up with, note that Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), two of the fiercest opponents of the bill that died yesterday, think this new proposal is awesome.
[Update: King told Roll Call, “The changes brought into this are ones I’ve developed and advocated for over the past two years. It’s like I ordered it off the menu.”]
The agreement conservative Republicans reached with very conservative Republicans can charitably be described as a bad joke. This legislation wouldn’t address the humanitarian crisis in any meaningful way, and really doesn’t even try.
The Washington Post’s report conceded the legislation “would do little to immediately solve the crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border but would allow [Republican lawmakers] to go home and tell voters that they did what they could.”
In other words, the post-policy House majority is putting on a little show this afternoon. Even marginally informed observers will recognize this as pointless theater, but GOP members won’t care because the point of the exercise will be to create a talking point – one that no fair-minded person will believe anyway.
Some of the details are still elusive, but reports suggest that the right was satisfied when Republican leaders agreed to advance provisions that not only support deportations of Dream Act kids, but also blocks current Dreamers who are already benefiting from the Obama administration’s DACA policy from renewing their participation in the program.
As a practical matter, this makes the bill more of a far-right fantasy than an actual plan. The motivations behind it have nothing to do with governing. Indeed, the very idea is laughable under the circumstances – it’s not as if the Speaker’s office has been in communication with Senate Democrats and the White House, looking for some common ground on a proposal that could become law.
Rather, Boehner, bruised and embarrassed, gave up. The goal this morning was to craft a new plan that makes far-right extremists happy. And that’s precisely what they’ve done.
Of course, the charade would be easier to pull off it weren’t quite so transparent. Republicans will spend the next five weeks saying, “See? We did our jobs!” it will be painfully obvious that their claims are as misleading as they are demonstrably ridiculous. For GOP lawmakers to have done their jobs, they would have had to agree to a serious proposal that related in some meaningful way to the task at hand.
That is clearly not what’s happened.
As for the road ahead, Sahil Kapur reports, “The plan is to have two votes: the first one is on the supplemental and tougher border language to swiftly send home children coming from Central American countries. If that passes, there’ll be a second vote on the bill to end the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and stop the president from granting legal status to anyone in the U.S. illegally.”
If Republicans get on planes this evening feeling good about themselves and their accomplishments, they’re not paying close enough attention. They’ve become the Cruz/Bachmann/King Party – which is exactly the opposite of what party leaders had in mind at the start of this Congress.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 1, 2014
“The Sanctimonious Fakers”: Border Crisis Tests Religious Faith — And Some Fail Badly
Flamboyant piety has long been fashionable on the political right, where activists, commentators, and elected officials never hesitate to hector us about their great moral and theological rectitude. Wielding the Scriptures like a weapon, these righteous ’wingers are always eager to condemn the alleged sins of others but reluctant to examine their own. They seem to spend far more time on posturing and preening than spiritual reflection. Rarely does anyone call them out on their failures to fulfill their proclaimed devotion because, in this country, that is considered rude.
But occasionally, something happens that separates the people of faith from the sanctimonious fakers. With thousands of defenseless children now gathered on America’s southern border, seeking asylum from deprivation and deadly violence, something like that is happening right now.
Nobody in the House of Representatives is more vociferous about her reverence for God’s word than Michele Bachmann (R-MN) –the Tea Party queen bee who often has said she believes that America is a “Christian nation.” When Bachmann opened her mouth on television about those hungry and fearful children, she demonized them as “invaders” and incipient criminals who could be expected to rape American women and break American laws.
Then there is Bachmann’s colleague Louie Gohmert (R-TX), whose religious zeal is so overpowering that he cannot restrain himself, even during House proceedings – like that committee hearing last month when he proclaimed his belief that anyone who doesn’t accept Jesus is destined for hell. But when the subject is the innocent kids at the border of his home state, most of whom are girls under 13 years of age, Gohmert speaks of “invasion” and urges the governor of Texas to unilaterally initiate a state of war. Like many of his fellow far-rightists, he stokes rumors that these children are harbingers of disease and gangsterism.
So does Phil Gingrey (R-GA), a medical doctor who went so far as to accuse the young migrants of bringing the Ebola virus – seen only in Africa — with them from Central America. And so does Sandy Rios, the religious-right talk-show host who speaks of the “hope” that the Lord bestowed on her, but warns that we should treat the border children like “lepers.” And so does Ann Coulter, the Church Lady who suspects that all those kids, no matter how small, probably belong to the murderous MS-13 narcotics syndicate.
Now among the theological ideas shared by many of these figures is a fondness for the Old Testament, which they routinely quote to justify cruel strictures against gays, women, and anybody else they wish to suppress. At the moment, however, these Biblical literalists ought to be studying the very plain instruction of Leviticus:
“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
More recently, Pope Francis laid down a clear edict on the border crisis that springs from his own Biblical understanding, urging Americans to “welcome and protect” the children arriving on our border. (He didn’t mention anything about immediate deportations.) The Holy Father expressed deep concern for the “tens of thousands of children who migrate alone, unaccompanied, to escape poverty and violence…in pursuit of a hope that in most cases turns out to be vain”.
“Many people forced to emigrate suffer, and often, die tragically; many of their rights are violated, they are obliged to separate from their families and, unfortunately, continue to be the subject of racist and xenophobic attitudes,” he said. Francis went on to say that only development and security in their own countries would ever stem the flow of migrants heading northward – and that in the meantime, the rest of us should abandon “attitudes of defensiveness and fear, indifference and marginalization.” Attitudes like those displayed by goons waving flags and guns and “Go Home” signs, who don’t care whether these little strangers live or die.
Where are the real Christians? Where are the true people of faith? They may be found in houses of worship near the border and around the country, where people of all political persuasions realize that they are called to feed, clothe, shelter, and heal God’s children, even when they arrive on a bus without papers. If there is a kingdom of heaven, it is these generous souls who will be admitted when they reach its border.
The hypocrites will be sent somewhere else.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, July 18, 2014
“Still Relying On Their Race-Baiting Playbook”: The GOP’s Massive 2013 Mistake, How The Party Ignored Its Terminal Illness
We did a whole “Hardball” hour Friday on how the GOP ratcheted up the crazy this year. Chris Matthews made me break down Rep. Steve King’s crazy anti-Mexican “calves the size of cantaloupes” slur, and I was forced to wonder why he’s thinking with such a sculpter’s eye for detail about another man’s calves, while otherizing him into a beast of burden, not quite human. Way to go for that Latino vote in 2014, GOP.
But the long list of crazy made me realize that despite the RNC autopsy that kicked off 2013, looking at ways to make sure it wasn’t merely the party of “stuffy old men,” the GOP apparently learned nothing from its 2012 drubbing. With the stumbles of the Affordable Care Act, that might seem OK, and there will be no penalty for their year of dithering and race-baiting. Rep. Michele Bachmann says the ACA’s problems make Republicans “look like geniuses,” and while it’s easy to mock her non-genius, her party looks better politically than it did a month ago. Polls show a dizzying swing from October, when the GOP’s not-genius government shutdown put Democrats ahead in generic 2014 balloting. Now some polls have Republicans in the lead.
Still, it may turn out that the ACA troubles were a brilliant Democratic plot to distract Republicans from their demographic terminal illness, and convince them that the Kill Obamacare playbook is all they need for 2014. Republicans have made absolutely zero progress in reaching out to any of the demographic groups – women, young people or Latinos – that the RNC’s autopsy agreed they had to, in order to stay alive as their older white base ages into that great Tea Party rally in the sky.
I know, Oprah got in trouble for suggesting that racism will ease when this generation of racists, well, dies. I wrote in my book that it makes me uncomfortable to hear allies suggest we just need to wait for old white Republicans to die off – they’re talking about a lot of people in my family. Yet it’s striking to me how comfortable Republicans seem relying on their ancient race-baiting playbook, and ignoring the country we’re becoming.
It’s easy to mock Steve “calves the size of cantaloupes” King. He’s a doofus. But Sen. Ted “I won’t study with people from the minor Ivies” Cruz is just as bad, and arguably worse.
National reporters and pundits collude in the GOP’s denialism. The National Journal’s Alex Seitz-Wald, a Salon alum, wrote a piece I wish I had, showing how many times Republicans and their media enablers have asked “can Obama recover” from this or that real or imagined catastrophe. From the BP oil spill to this seeming “dithering” over Syria, Obama’s presidency has been written off as terminally ill before, only to recover, again and again. (Actually, the first use of “Can Obama recover?” Seitz-Wald finds was on CNN’s Larry King after the Jeremiah Wright mess blew up in May 2008. Needless to say, he recovered that time too.)
Now if only his colleagues Josh Kraushaar and Ron Fournier would read Seitz-Wald, because they are making the National Journal the hub of breathless “Can Obama recover?” reporting.
Certainly Obamacare seems to be recovering, albeit slowly. Ezra Klein, who kicked off liberal wonk panic about the ACA in October, thinks Obamacare is “turning the corner,” and will gradually ramp up, perhaps a month behind schedule but not too late for a successful Jan. 1 rollout of new insurance plans. And this amazing Washington Post story, about Kentuckians, many of them presumably Republicans, lining up for ACA coverage shows that when a state wants the program to work, it can work. A 35-year-old father of five with diabetes, who’d never had health insurance and had racked up $23,000 in hospital bills, rejoiced when he got enrolled. “Well, thank God,” he said, laughing. “I believe I’m going to be a Democrat.”
I don’t think Democrats should be celebrating just yet. A lot can still go wrong, and there’s an industry devoted to finding and surfacing (or exaggerating or even concocting) scary Obamacare stories. Still, listening once again to Sen. Ted Cruz (on “Hardball”) warning that people will become “addicted to the sugar” of ACA subsidies is a reminder of how the Tea Party leaders actually hate the Tea Party base. They’d privatize Medicare and Social Security and deny Mitch McConnell’s constituents health insurance. It’s amazing that Oprah gets grief for talking about when the Tea Party’s racist base will die, when leaders like Cruz are the ones who would literally hasten that day.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, December 1, 2013
“Making The Tea Party Feel Better”: Republicans Finally Admit What The Shutdown Is About
The conservative media began to report strange rumblings from Republicans on Wednesday, the second day of the government shutdown. Suddenly, Tea Partiers were saying that the government shutdown wasn’t about Obamacare, though they refuse to vote for a continuing resolution passed by the Senate because all their amendments related to the Affordable Care Act have been stripped out.
What is the shutdown about, then? What do Republicans want?
“We’re not going to be disrespected,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) told The Washington Examiner. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”
I repeat: “And I don’t know what that even is.”
It’s reminiscent of a classic scene from The Godfather II, when Fredo Corleone explained to his brother Michael why he was angry at being passed over by his father: http://youtu.be/2X9E9n6GHC8
Stutzman is a member of the so-called Suicide Caucus, 80 members of the House who signed a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) urging him to pursue a strategy of defunding Obamacare in exchange for funding the government. But given that this strategy could never work and the government is now shut down, Tea Partiers want “something,” but they “don’t know what that even is.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday night, “This is about the happiest I’ve seen members in a long time because we’ve seen we’re starting to win this dialogue on a national level.”
Despite a new poll showing that show more voters blame Republicans and nearly three-quarters didn’t want a shutdown, Bachmann is still sure Republicans are finally winning.
Now they just need to figure out what they’re winning.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, October 3, 2013
“A Functioning Government Is A Problem”: Shutdown Isn’t Symptom of Tea Party Ideology, It Is Tea Party Ideology
It’s easy to wonder how a group of people hired to do one job — simply to keep a country running — could be bungling it so terribly. That is, until you remember that a powerful faction of those people were never interested in doing that one job in the first place.
Today’s government shutdown, hitched to an unrealistic laundry list of demands, isn’t a symptom of Tea Party ideology — it is Tea Party ideology. The Tea Party and its allies in Congress have never been interested in using the government to solve problems. Instead, they believe that a functioning government is a problem in itself. And they are willing to risk untold damage to the country in order to get their way.
In previous partisan budget disputes, at least we’ve had the comfort of imagining that neither party wanted to completely destroy the government. Not so this time.
The Republican Party under Tea Party control is in such denial about reality that it is willing to deal a blow to the nation’s economy just because it can’t believe, and won’t admit, that it lost the last two presidential elections. They’re also hoping that their antics will play to their advantage in future elections, deliberately planning votes they hope will back vulnerable Senate Democrats into tight corners.
Just look at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who somehow has managed to wrest control of the Republican Party after less than a year in the Senate. Cruz explained during his long imaginary filibuster last week that “if we listen to the American people, the vote would be 100 to 0 to defund Obamacare.” Apparently, holding a national election in which the candidate who created Obamacare handily defeated the candidate who wanted to repeal it doesn’t count as “listening to the American people.”
In fact, Cruz told us (and then shamelessly denied that he had told us) that those who criticize his defunding efforts are just like Neville Chamberlain, who wanted the British people to “accept the Nazis” and “appease them.”
Rep. John Culberson of Texas went even further, likening Republicans threatening to shut down the government to the 9/11 heroes on United Airlines Flight 93: “I said, you know like 9/11, ‘Let’s roll!'”
Rep. Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, likened the all-out fight to defund Obamacare to helping free Americans from drug addiction, saying, “President Obama can’t wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency on more government health care.”
This is the alternate reality that is driving the government shutdown.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce — far from a liberal group — has warned that a shutdown will hurt business. Wall Street is skittish. Even the majority of Americans who oppose Obamacare don’t want to see it fail. In all, Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to the plan to shut down the federal government to block the implementation of the ACA. A Quinnipiac poll this week found that 72 percent opposed the shutdown.
Now even Republican members of Congress are coming out to say that the shutdown is nuts and that it’s entirely the fault of a party that’s letting the Tea Party take the reins.
The Republican establishment and big business groups like the Chamber worked to get Tea Party senators and congressman into power and encouraged the rigid anti-government ideology that fueled the movement. They got what they paid for. Unfortunately, the rest of us are now paying too.
By: Michael Keegan, The Huffington Post Blog, October 1, 2013
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