“Weather Vane Man”: Tracking Paul Ryan’s 5 Different Positions On The Sequester
House Republicans are attempting to blame Democrats and President Obama for “sequestration,” the automatic budget cuts that will begin taking effect on March 1 if Congress fails to avert them. But even as they cast that blame and ignore their own role in creation of the sequester, which wouldn’t exist had Republicans not refused to raise the debt ceiling in August 2011, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is expected to count the sequester’s automatic cuts in the next version of his budget, BuzzFeed reports:
According to two senior GOP aides familiar with Ryan’s thinking on the budget, the Wisconsin Republican and former vice presidential candidate will use the so-called sequester as part of the baseline level of spending for his budget.
Ryan’s position on the sequester has changed multiple times:
1. Helped make the sequester happen. Ryan was among the Republicans leading demands for spending cuts to offset a debt ceiling increase in the summer of 2011, and was among the leaders who refused to consider new revenues in those negotiations. Had Republicans not refused to raise the debt ceiling in the first place, the sequester wouldn’t exist.
2. Voted for plan to create the sequester, then bragged about it. Ryan took credit for the sequester in August 2011, bragging to Fox News that it guaranteed the massive budget cuts Republicans were seeking. “We got that in law,” he boasted. On the House floor, he said the Budget Control Act’s spending cuts were “a victory for those committed to controlling government spending.”
3. Called the sequester “devastating” during the presidential election. Ryan blasted Obama for wanting the sequester’s “devastating defense cuts” to take place during the presidential election, when he was the GOP’s vice presidential candidate.
4. Blamed the likelihood of the sequester occurring on Obama. The sequester “will probably occur” because “the president has not a proposal yet on the table,” Ryan told CBS News last week. “Don’t forget it’s the president who first proposed the sequester. It’s the president who designed the sequester as it is now designed,” he added.
5. Will include sequester cuts in his latest budget.
This is hardly a new strategy for Ryan, who crisscrossed the country blasting Obama for cutting Medicare spending even as he included the cuts in his last budget proposal and made even bigger changes to the program.
By: Travis Waldron, Think Progress, February 15, 2013
“The Real ‘60 Minutes’ Revelation”: Democrats Are Now The Regular Guys, Conservatives Are The Weirdos
I can actually see, to some extent, the point of conservatives’ complaints about the Obama-Hillary 60 Minutes interview. It was softbally, and Steve Kroft’s one real question—to Clinton, about whether she felt any guilt or remorse over Benghazi—she totally didn’t answer. But here, conservatives, is what you are missing and what you need to reckon with. Americans—except you—like these two people. Most Americans look at the pair of them—this black man who is still remote in some ways and this so-familiar woman who is now aging before us and allowing herself to look just a little frumpy—and feel reassured. Most Americans are cheering for them, and hence, most Americans probably wanted a softball interview. We have thus passed an important portal in American politics: Democrats are now the regular guys. Conservatives are the weirdos.
First, about the interview. These are not two of your more forthcoming interview subjects. I’ve never sat with Obama, but I have interviewed Clinton on a number of occasions, including one big 90-minute-or-so sit-down back in 2000. She told me some very interesting things: she likes Thomas Hardy, she was overwhelmed by her visit to the Olduvai Gorge, she takes a keen interest in ancient civilizations, she loves the Three Stooges, and she knows the theme song to The Flintstones. But on policy, she gave me nothing. A total Heisman. My heart sank to the floor as I listened back over the tape and realized that answer after answer wasn’t going to make news after all. Obama is no different. Rare is the interview that finds him saying anything genuinely arresting.
But he did say something interesting to Kroft, and she did too, which was this: they were both wholly believable and ingenuous when they were talking about their own political relationship. When Obama said, in reference to repairing the ruptures of 2008, “I think it was harder for the staffs, which is understandable, because, you know, they get invested in this stuff in ways that I think the candidates maybe don’t,” I thought: that rings really true. And I’d bet most Americans did too.
Obama and Clinton talked, in other words, like mature adults, and they sold it as genuine because it was genuine. And I’d contend that it made most people watching feel something like: Well, these are very smart and self-assured people, and they’re mostly pretty likable, too, and agree or disagree with this or that decision they make or action they take, I feel like my country is in pretty good hands with them. And yes, to invoke the hackneyed litmus-test question—I’d drink a beer, or a pinot, or in HRC’s case a shot of Crown Royal, with them. To everyone but right-wingers, that was the vibe Sunday night—a victory lap, and a victory lap that no one begrudged them.
They’re the real Americans now. It’s not that they have changed, but that America has. The measures for real Americanism are no longer clearing brush, hunting elk, hopping on top of various animals, dropping one’s g’s (in speech, I mean), and speaking in intentionally ungrammatical apothegmatic frontier “wisdom.” The new measures? Not completely sure yet. But we do have now the collective realization that those were fake measures—some Harvey Mansfield–inspired Potemkin Village of “real America.” Also, the collective realization that it’s probably on balance not at all a bad idea for the president not to be “just like us,” which was the folk wisdom of a decade ago, but in fact a little smarter than most of us.
The Republicans? It’s not just the extreme ideology. Of course it’s that, but it’s more. The whole shtick is old. Where once the Middle American ear may have been soothed by that low Cheney rumble belching out its grave assessments of the world situation, today it is accosted by all those caliginous Southern accents warning of socialism and collapse, and thinks: will these people ever shut up? Georgia Congressman Paul Broun told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that Obama “upholds … the Soviet Constitution.” On any given week, I could fill a whole column, or two, with such nuggets. Enough already.
While Obama and Clinton were speaking, so was Paul Ryan, to a conservative gathering, where he said: “There are two ways to respond to defeat: Either you can deny it, or you can learn from it. I choose to learn from it. The way I see it, our defeat is all the more reason to lay out our vision with even more specifics—and with a broader appeal.”
What he’s saying there, and throughout the speech, is that the GOP isn’t going to change its stripes a bit. “Broader appeal” means I suppose better (read: more dishonest) packaging for a bunch of reactionary policies that Americans don’t want.
Conservatives, you can call me and others like me all the names you want, and you can whine about the evil CBS all you want. But Kroft and his network were actually in touch here with the pulse of the country, which wants Obama to succeed and Hillary to go have a nice long rest (and, maybe, get ready for 2016). Meanwhile, even Roger Ailes has gotten sick of Sarah Palin. Get the picture?
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, January 29, 2013
“Paranoid And Delusional”: Republicans Are Lost In Their Own Wilderness
Republicans shouldn’t worry that President Obama is trying to destroy the GOP. Why would he bother? The party’s leaders are doing a pretty good job of it themselves.
As they try to understand why the party lost an election it was confident of winning — and why it keeps losing budget showdowns in Congress — Republican grandees are asking the wrong questions. Predictably, they are also coming up with the wrong answers.
They prefer to focus on flawed tactics and ineffectual “messaging” rather than confront the essential problem, which is that voters don’t much care for the policies the GOP espouses.
In post-debacle speeches and interviews, Republicans sound — and there’s no kind way to put this — paranoid and delusional. House Speaker John Boehner said in a speech to the Ripon Society that the Obama administration is trying to “annihilate the Republican Party.” Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s fiscal guru and failed vice presidential candidate, claimed Sunday on “Meet the Press” that Obama seeks “political conquest” of the GOP.
It is no secret that Obama is trying to advance a progressive agenda. He promised as much in his campaign speeches. Were Republicans not listening? Did they think he was just joshing?
In five of the past six presidential elections, Democrats have won the popular vote. Republicans have done well at the state level and, through redistricting, have made their majority in the House difficult to dislodge. But it’s not possible to lead the country from the speaker’s chair, as Boehner can attest. To have a chance at effecting transformative change, you have to win the White House.
And to win the White House, you have to convince voters that the policies you seek to enact are the right ones. This is what the GOP doesn’t seem to understand.
“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, one of the GOP’s brightest young stars, said in a much-anticipated speech last week at the party’s winter meeting. “We’ve got to stop insulting the intelligence of voters. We need to trust the smarts of the American people.”
That’s all well and good. But Jindal also warned that the party should not “moderate, equivocate or otherwise change our principles” on issues such as abortion, gay marriage, “government growth” and “higher taxes.”
On abortion, there is an uneasy consensus that the procedure should be legal but uncommon; the GOP wants to make abortion illegal, and the party’s loudest voices on the issue do not favor exceptions even for incest or rape. On gay marriage, public opinion is shifting dramatically toward acceptance; the Republican Party is adamantly opposed. On the size of government, Americans philosophically favor “small” — but, as a practical matter, demand services and programs that can only be delivered by “big.” And on taxes, voters agreed with Obama that the wealthy could and should pay a bit more.
“We must reject the notion that demography is destiny, the pathetic and simplistic notion that skin pigmentation dictates voter behavior,” Jindal said. These are noble and stirring words. But the GOP is insane if it does not at least ask why 93 percent of African Americans, 71 percent of Latinos and 73 percent of Asian Americans voted for Obama over Mitt Romney.
If minority voters continue to favor the Democratic Party to this extent, then demography will indeed prove to be destiny. What would be simplistic is to attribute the disparity to the fact that Obama is the first black president, or to the fact that Republicans have been perceived as so unsympathetic on issues concerning immigration. If they want to attract minority support, Republicans will have to take into account what these voters believe on a range of issues, from the proper relationship between government and the individual to the proper role of the United States in a rapidly changing world.
I have to wonder if the GOP is even getting the tactics-and-messaging part right. Michael Steele (now an MSNBC colleague of mine) served as party chairman when Republicans won a sweeping victory in 2010; he was promptly fired. Reince Priebus presided over the 2012 disaster; last week, he was rewarded with a new term as chairman.
But no matter who’s in charge, the GOP will have a tough time winning national elections until it has a better understanding of the nation. If Boehner is worried about being swept “into the dustbin of history,” he and other Republicans need to put down the broom.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 28, 2013
“Oppose, Oppose, Oppose”: Why President Obama Is Right About The GOP
In a revealing interview with The New Republic that was published over the weekend, President Obama laid plain the strategic choice that he believes faces the Republican party heading into 2014 — and beyond.
“Until Republicans feel that there’s a real price to pay for them just saying no and being obstructionist, you’ll probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it,” the president said. “It worked for them in the 2010 election cycle, and I think there are those who believe that it can work again.”
While GOP strategists might dismiss Obama’s analysis of the way forward for their side as overly simplistic, there is considerable truth in what he says. And the direction the party decides to head on that very question will be a telling indicator of the nature of both the 2014 midterm elections and the 2016 Republican primary fight.
Remember back to the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election? Some Republicans, stunned by the breadth and depth of their defeats, began to talk about the need to reimagine the party to fit the modern American electorate.
Then came Obama’s economic stimulus plan and his health care law — not to mention the bank bailouts. The tea party was born and, with it, those within the GOP who regarded the 2008 election as a fluke won the day. The Republican Party united around its opposition to Obama and was rewarded (in spades) for doing so in the 2010 midterm elections.
(Sidebar: Many people — read: Democrats — blame Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) for articulating the “opposition at all costs strategy.” While McConnell did say the goal for the GOP and its voters was to make Obama a “one-term president,” he did so mere days before the 2010 election and, therefore, was not the strategic father, for good or bad, of the oppose-at-all-costs approach. Besides that, what McConnell was saying was that to accomplish the goals Republicans believed in, Obama would have to be removed as president, which is a somewhat indisputable notion.)
Riding high on that “oppose, oppose, oppose” strategy, Republicans galloped into the 2012 presidential election full of bravado and apparent momentum. Then the strategy started to fail. As much as Republican presidential candidates tried to shine a light on Obama and his policies, the debate kept coming back to Mitt Romney, his view of the world and what he would do as president. And Romney never came close to fully articulating that alternative vision.
Now, four years after some Republicans were pushing for a reexamination of what the party believes and why they believe it, it appears as though that reckoning is underway.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), in a speech last week at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, said that “if this election taught us anything, it is that we will not win elections by simply pointing out the failures of the other side.” And already people including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (like Jindal a potential 2016 candidate) are pushing to break the partisan logjam on overhauling the country’s immigration laws.
The question for Republicans is whether that spirit — voiced by Jindal and Rubio among others — holds steady amid what will be an epic fight over debt and spending over these next few months. And it may not. Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, for example, said Sunday that he expects Congress to fail to reach a deal to avoid automatic across the board cuts known as the sequester.
The easiest path for Republicans will be to define themselves wholly in opposition to the president and what he proposes. And, such a path — as demonstrated by the 2010 midterm elections — could well have short-term political benefits.
But to sustain and to thrive as a party, Republicans almost certainly need to cut deals on matters of political necessity (immigration is the most obvious) while simultaneously staking out new ground with a rigorous — and positive — set of policy proposals.
The top leaders of the party are well aware of that reality. But do they have enough control over the rank and file to put it into practice between now and 2014?
Time will tell.
By: Chris Cilliza and Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, The Fix, January 28, 2013
“Makers, Takers, Fakers”: A Major Rhetorial Shift For The Party Of Sneering Plutocrats
Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell “Class warfare!” and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn’t work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades.
As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful.
Consider, as a case in point, how a widely reported recent speech by Bobby Jindal the governor of Louisiana, compares with his actual policies.
Mr. Jindal posed the problem in a way that would, I believe, have been unthinkable for a leading Republican even a year ago. “We must not,” he declared, “be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive.” After a campaign in which Mitt Romney denounced any attempt to talk about class divisions as an “attack on success,” this represents a major rhetorical shift.
But Mr. Jindal didn’t offer any suggestions about how Republicans might demonstrate that they aren’t just about letting the rich keep their toys, other than claiming even more loudly that their policies are good for everyone.
Meanwhile, back in Louisiana Mr. Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state’s income tax, which falls most heavily on the affluent, and make up for the lost revenue by raising sales taxes, which fall much more heavily on the poor and the middle class. The result would be big gains for the top 1 percent, substantial losses for the bottom 60 percent. Similar plans are being pushed by a number of other Republican governors as well.
Like the new acknowledgment that the perception of being the party of the rich is a problem, this represents a departure for the G.O.P. — but in the opposite direction. In the past, Republicans would justify tax cuts for the rich either by claiming that they would pay for themselves or by claiming that they could make up for lost revenue by cutting wasteful spending. But what we’re seeing now is open, explicit reverse Robin Hoodism: taking from ordinary families and giving to the rich. That is, even as Republicans look for a way to sound more sympathetic and less extreme, their actual policies are taking another sharp right turn.
Why is this happening? In particular, why is it happening now, just after an election in which the G.O.P. paid a price for its anti-populist stand?
Well, I don’t have a full answer, but I think it’s important to understand the extent to which leading Republicans live in an intellectual bubble. They get their news from Fox and other captive media, they get their policy analysis from billionaire-financed right-wing think tanks, and they’re often blissfully unaware both of contrary evidence and of how their positions sound to outsiders.
So when Mr. Romney made his infamous “47 percent” remarks, he wasn’t, in his own mind, saying anything outrageous or even controversial. He was just repeating a view that has become increasingly dominant inside the right-wing bubble, namely that a large and ever-growing proportion of Americans won’t take responsibility for their own lives and are mooching off the hard-working wealthy. Rising unemployment claims demonstrate laziness, not lack of jobs; rising disability claims represent malingering, not the real health problems of an aging work force.
And given that worldview, Republicans see it as entirely appropriate to cut taxes on the rich while making everyone else pay more.
Now, national politicians learned last year that this kind of talk plays badly with the public, so they’re trying to obscure their positions. Paul Ryan, for example, has lately made a transparently dishonest attempt to claim that when he spoke about “takers” living off the efforts of the “makers” — at one point he assigned 60 percent of Americans to the taker category — he wasn’t talking about people receiving Social Security and Medicare. (He was.)
But in deep red states like Louisiana or Kansas, Republicans are much freer to act on their beliefs — which means moving strongly to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted.
Which brings me back to Mr. Jindal, who declared in his speech that “we are a populist party.” No, you aren’t. You’re a party that holds a large proportion of Americans in contempt. And the public may have figured that out.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 27, 2013
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