“It’s All Benghazi”: Many In The Media Consider It Uncouth To Acknowledge The Fraudulence Of Political Posturing
So Representative Kevin McCarthy, who was supposed to succeed John Boehner as speaker of the House, won’t be pursuing the job after all. He would have faced a rough ride both winning the post and handling it under the best of circumstances, thanks to the doomsday caucus — the fairly large bloc of Republicans demanding that the party cut off funds to Planned Parenthood, or kill Obamacare, or anyway damage something liberals like, by shutting down the government and forcing it into default.
Still, he finished off his chances by admitting — boasting, actually — that the endless House hearings on Benghazi had nothing to do with national security, that they were all about inflicting political damage on Hillary Clinton.
But we all knew that, didn’t we?
I often wonder about commentators who write about things like those hearings as if there were some real issue involved, who keep going on about the Clinton email controversy as if all these months of scrutiny had produced any evidence of wrongdoing, as opposed to sloppiness.
Surely they have to know better, whether they admit it to themselves or not. And surely the long history of Clinton nonscandals and retracted allegations — remember, there never was anything to the Whitewater accusations — should serve as a cautionary tale.
Somehow, though, politicians who pretend to be concerned about issues, but are obviously just milking those issues for political gain, keep getting a free pass. And it’s not just a Clinton story.
Consider the example of an issue that might seem completely different, one that dominated much of our political discourse just a few years ago: federal debt.
Many prominent politicians made warnings about the dangers posed by U.S. debt, especially debt owned by China, a central part of their political image. Paul Ryan, when he was chairman of the House Budget Committee, portrayed himself as a heroic crusader against deficits. Mitt Romney made denunciations of borrowing from China a centerpiece of his campaign for president. And by and large, commentators treated this posturing as if it were serious. But it wasn’t.
I don’t mean that it was bad economics, although it was. Remember all the dire warnings about what would happen if China stopped buying our debt, or worse yet, started selling it? Remember how interest rates would soar and America would find itself in crisis?
Well, don’t tell anyone, but the much feared event has happened: China is no longer buying our debt, and is in fact selling tens of billions of dollars in U.S. debt every month as it tries to support its troubled currency. And what has happened is what serious economic analysis always told us would happen: nothing. It was always a false alarm.
Beyond that, however, it was a fake alarm.
If you looked at all closely at the plans and proposals released by politicians who claimed to be deeply worried about deficits, it soon became obvious that they were just pretending to care about fiscal responsibility. People who really worry about government debt don’t propose huge tax cuts for the rich, only partly offset by savage cuts in aid to the poor and middle class, and base all claims of debt reduction on unspecified savings to be announced on some future occasion.
Debt, it seems, only matters when there’s a Democrat in the White House. Or more accurately, all the talk about debt wasn’t about fiscal prudence; it was about trying to inflict political damage on President Obama, and it stopped when the tactic lost effectiveness.
Again, none of this should come as news to anyone who follows politics and policy even moderately closely. But I’m not sure that normal people, who have jobs to do and families to raise, are getting the message. After all, who will tell them?
Sometimes I have the impression that many people in the media consider it uncouth to acknowledge, even to themselves, the fraudulence of much political posturing. The done thing, it seems, is to pretend that we’re having real debates about national security or economics even when it’s both obvious and easy to show that nothing of the kind is actually taking place.
But turning our eyes away from political fakery, pretending that we’re having a serious discussion when we aren’t, is itself a kind of fraudulence. Mr. McCarthy inadvertently did the nation a big favor with his ill-advised honesty, but telling the public what’s really going on shouldn’t depend on politicians with loose lips.
Sometimes — all too often — there’s no substance under the shouting. And then we need to tell the truth, and say that it’s all Benghazi.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 9, 2015
“So Many GOP Options”: Anybody Can Grow Up To Be Speaker Of The House!
I suppose it’s as good a time as any to recall that under the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Speaker does not have to be a Member. And so, you get this entirely non-humorous tweet from a Washington Examiner reporter:
.@newtgingrich says he’d consider interim speakership http://t.co/Zx27iR8qSH pic.twitter.com/sLxKzOSeZd
— Al Weaver (@alweaver22) October 8, 2015
He wouldn’t need any OJT, and all the rumors about his infidelities have long been confirmed, right?
But if you’re going to think “outside the box” for a House Speaker, there are other options, too:
Soeaker Carly Fiorina. would finally have that missing item on her resume–you know, remotely relevant qualifications for the presidency–and could symbolize the fact that just because the House GOP is trying to shut down Planned Parenthood and opposes pay equity is no reason to assume there’s any “war on women” going on.
Speaker Bobby Jindal could draw on his past House experience, and he’d have an excuse to leave Louisiana for good!
Speaker Sean Hannity could cut out the middle-men in Fox News/GOP message communications.
Speaker David Koch could cut out the middle-men, period.
So many options! Who else can you think of, dear readers?
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, October 8, 2015
“Chaffetzed!”: A “Grandstanding Charlatan” Who Seems To Have A Tiny Problem With The Truth
It’s not a real good sign when your name is turned into a synonym for political backstabbling. That seems to have happened beyond retrieval to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who wants to be the next Speaker of the House. Here’s a Tweet from the guy who first lifted Chaffetz from obscurity to power in Utah:
.@GOPLeader McCarthy just got “Chaffetzed.”Something I know a little something about. #selfpromoter #powerhungry
— Jon Huntsman (@JonHuntsman) October 6, 2015
Here’s the essential background from the Salt Lake Tribune’s Paul Rolly:
Chaffetz fell into the chief-of-staff position under then-Gov. Jon Huntsman almost by accident. He had left a sales job with the multilevel marketer Nu Skin in 2004 to be the press liaison for the Huntsman campaign. The campaign manager abruptly resigned. So Chaffetz was promoted to that job, even though his only previous experience in political campaigns was as Utah co-chairman of Democrat Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign in 1988.
It was one of those Peter Sellers’ “Being There” moments for Chaffetz. A Huntsman victory was practically guaranteed, so Chaffetz success was all but certain. His work as campaign manager earned him the lofty role as the governor’s chief of staff.
Chaffetz’s first real public action was to gather a number of veteran employees of the governor’s economic-development office into a room and fire them. He had them escorted out by armed guards.
Huntsman took some heat, but administration officials blamed Chaffetz for how the shake-up went down.
Chaffetz quickly earned a reputation as a jealous guardian of the governor’s time, often telling legislative leaders who wanted an audience with Huntsman that they must talk to him instead.
More than one critic complained that Chaffetz seemed to think he was the governor.
Chaffetz left the job well-before Huntsman’s first term ended amid rumors that fellow staffers wanted him and his power plays gone.
It’s not a good sign when you are compared to the Chauncey Gardner character in Being There, either.
I dunno exactly when Huntsman decided to rethink his opinion of Chaffetz, but it’s likely the absolute latest date would have been in 2012 when his protege endorsed Mitt Romney for president instead of Himself.
At Salon today Digby calls Chaffetz a “grandstanding charlatan” who “seems to have a tiny problem with the truth,” especially during his disastrous interrogation of Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards last week. Odds are, he will return to relative obscurity in a few days. But it’s hard to keep a backstabbing parvenu down for long.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, October 6, 2015
“Why Boehner Failed”: No Particular Genius Is Required To Succeed In Politics, But You Do Have To Be Able To Count
Nothing so became John Boehner’s tenure as Speaker as his manner of leaving it. Subjectively speaking, he has never appeared to believe very much of the arrant nonsense his position required him to utter. An old-school politician who literally grew up working in the family bar, his conservatism is of the traditional Midwestern kind — more Bob Dole, say, than Ted Cruz.
More process and negotiation, that is, than ideological certitude and visionary schemes to purge the nation of sin. To be blunt about it, very few Roman Catholics and none who grew up in a bar could ever believe such a thing possible. Unafraid to let his emotions show as Pope Francis urged lawmakers to compromise for the common good, Boehner may have, in that moment, recognized his own complete failure.
On CBS’ Face the Nation, Boehner expressed his frustration in theological terms. Asked if the fundamentalist-dominated Tea Party faction, which views him as a sellout to President Obama, was unrealistic, he almost shouted.
“Absolutely they’re unrealistic!” he said. “But the Bible says beware of false prophets. And there are people out there spreading noise about how much can get done. I mean, this whole idea that we were going to shut down the government to get rid of Obamacare in 2013, this plan never had chance.”“But over the course of the August recess in 2013, and the course of September,” Boehner added, “a lot of my Republican colleagues who knew it was a fool’s errand, really they were getting all this pressure from home to do this. And so we have got groups here in town, members of the House and Senate here in town who whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they… KNOW are never going to happen.”
No, and shutting the government down in 2015 to get rid of Planned Parenthood has even less of a chance of accomplishing anything other than pointless melodrama, TV face time for the aforementioned Sen. Cruz, and the near-certain election of a Democratic president.
The late Robert F. Kennedy once told a friend of mine that no particular genius was required to succeed in politics, but you do have to be able to count. It’s because Boehner understands that, yet seemingly lacked the intestinal fortitude to abandon the so-called “Hastert Rule,” that his speakership came to such a sad end.
What with Hastert nearing an ignominious denouement of his own — the former Speaker’s lawyers are reportedly negotiating a guilty plea involving hush money paid to a young man he’d sexually molested as a high school coach — you’d think Republicans would want to avoid the phrase, if not the practice.
The act of refusing to let the House vote on any bill not supported by a majority of Republicans not only placed party above country, it also permitted Tea Party hotheads to paralyze the government. In consequence, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin points out, a 2013 immigration reform bill favored by GOP leadership that passed 62-38 in the Senate never even came to a vote in the House.
Supported by such luminaries as Senators John McCain and Marco Rubio, the bill would clearly have passed had Boehner allowed a vote — good for the nation, good for the Republican Party. Alas, to keep his job, Boehner caved to Tea Party nativists. In consequence, Toobin writes, “he suffered the fate of all those who give in to bullies; he was bullied some more.”
This year it was the highway bill — another popular, badly needed, job-intensive piece of legislation also opposed by the Tea Party. The tyranny of the minority, you might call it. If they had their way, we’d all have to buy tractors and bush-hog our own roads.
Instead, Boehner permitted the innumerate faction something like 60 votes to repeal Obamacare — each as futile and pointless as the last, and the very definition of “things they know are never going to happen.”
Another consequence of Boehner’s failure, it should be said, is the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, the blowhard billionaire who appears to have convinced millions of voters who failed to master 8th grade civics that he can solve the nation’s toughest problems by yelling at them.
In stepping down, Boehner secured the agreement of his GOP antagonists to vote for a “clean” continuing resolution that would keep the government funded through mid-December with no demands to defund Planned Parenthood — the latest extreme right publicity stunt. After that, all bets are off.
“November and December are going to be like Dante’s Inferno around here,” New Jersey Democrat Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. told the New York Times.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
A new Quinnipiac poll shows that Republican voters oppose shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood by 56-36 percent. Americans overall oppose the idea by 69-23 percent.
All that’s needed is a Speaker strong enough to put country above party.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, September 30, 2015
“Don’t Cry For John Boehner”: An Old King Who Couldn’t Keep Up With The Palace Intrigue
Don’t cry for John Boehner, Washington.
Oh, no, the Ohioan doesn’t want to stay another day in the Capitol. The House speaker, who announced his resignation on Friday, had brought Pope Francis to address Congress. The soaring visit, a beautiful intermission for the city, represented the zenith of his career. His time as speaker has been a world of hurt – for President Barack Obama, too, who made a serious mistake in trying to work with Boehner early on.
Boehner clearly felt he could give no more. Besides, he’s 65, retirement age. Golf courses are out there. He’s always been more about politics than policy. Now he is like an old king who can’t keep up with palace intrigue. In a way, the pope, whom Boehner wept over, gave him spiritual permission to leave the fray.
For nearly five years, he was a strange bird flying through the halls, the House speaker who could not speak for his House Republican caucus. A rambunctious bunch, the right-wing element openly defied Boehner. He got no respect and as a result, accomplished next to nothing.
Not that Boehner’s a progressive – far from it – but he tried to keep order. The “conservative” rebels, a few degrees away on the ideological spectrum, were not having any sense or sensibility from their leader. In their latest great idea, they are flirting with shutting down the government of the United States over Planned Parenthood funding.
Look how well their government shutdown worked in 2013. The sequester, too, was a painful episode
The right-wing brigade also nurses fond hopes of getting rid of the Export-Import Bank, a perfectly good institution that more than pulls its weight.
The truth is, Boehner is a creature of the politics he practiced since the harsh days of Newt Gingrich’s speakership. He was an acolyte in that Republican Revolution of 1994, and this is what it’s come to: a houseful of angry white men in charge. More disarray is surely on the way.
Boehner, a jaundiced fellow, never took Obama’s outstretched hand. In the old school, when someone is elected president of the United States, it’s sporting to cut the guy some slack. No such luck. Over Obama’s presidency, Boehner refused to give ground on ending the Bush tax cuts, for starters. That set a hostile tone for other fiscal and budget issues.
Obama’s downfall with Boehner was believing he could charm him. That was never going to happen. Their was never any jovial Irish jokes between them, as there was between Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill.
Just yesterday, the speaker started speaking some truth; on the CBS News show “Face the Nation,” Boehner called the destructive right-wing faction “false prophets.” His tongue set free, he got religion. Perhaps he’s darkly hinting, “Be careful what you wish for.” If so, he might be right.
At last, a few words about “the barkeep’s son.” Boehner is too often summed up that way. What’s so great about that? Boehner himself says he’s just a regular guy – this is true. We in the press should not romanticize him. Let’s also remember he has cultural streaks of a Southern good ole boy, coming from the cusp of Ohio that borders the South.
Don’t cry for me, John Boehner, and I won’t cry for you.
By: Jamie Stiehm, U. S. Newsa and World Report, September 28, 2015
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