By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 7, 2012
“Republicans, The Post-Truth Party”: GOP Think’s They Can Get Away With Lying Because They’re Sure They’ll Have Enough Money
The acceptance speeches by Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney at the GOP convention were only slightly more grounded in reality than Clint Eastwood’s conversation with an empty chair. Ryan is infamous for his pack of lies, from the attempt to blame President Obama for the closing of a Wisconsin GM factory that began shutting down during the Bush presidency, to the fantasy that Ryan’s austerity agenda is about something other than gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to enrich Wall Street speculators and the insurance industry.
The acceptance speeches by Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney at the GOP convention were only slightly more grounded in reality than Clint Eastwood’s conversation with an empty chair. Ryan is infamous for his pack of lies, from the attempt to blame President Obama for the closing of a Wisconsin GM factory that began shutting down during the Bush presidency, to the fantasy that Ryan’s austerity agenda is about something other than gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to enrich Wall Street speculators and the insurance industry.
Romney was just as bad, with a rambling rumination on how much he wished Barack Obama’s presidency had “succeeded.” Coming from the man who tried to scuttle Obama’s successful interventions to save GM and Chrysler, and who spent the rest of the president’s first term organizing a campaign to displace him, Romney’s line wasn’t remotely believable.
The Republican Party is not fretting about fact-checkers. Far from it; the GOP has now fully entered the netherworld of post-truth politics, from the wholesale denial of climate change to spreading fairy tales about Obama’s welfare policy (see Betsy Reed, page 4). Romney and Ryan know they’re going to need big lies to win. That’s pathetic, but it could work—especially if the mainstream media continue to evade their basic duty to call the GOP on these whoppers (see Eric Alterman, page 10).
This poses a real challenge for the Democrats, who can’t get bogged down in the minutiae of every Republican lie—there are just too many of them. Democrats must instead go big, and tackle the GOP agenda, which at its core is dedicated to a massive redistribution of power and income toward the 1 percent, who already have more of both than at any time in the past eighty years. The central lie of the Republican campaign is the claim that the wealthiest country in the world is so broke it cannot fund school lunch programs or Pell Grants, but not so broke that it would ask billionaires to pay taxes or put the Pentagon on a diet. The best way to unmask the GOP is not with charts and graphs. It must be done with economic straight talk. We must explain why Romney and Ryan are lying—because their agenda is so unpopular (as well as unworkable and dangerous to the nation’s recovery). And we must offer a vision for job creation, infrastructure investment and an uncompromising defense of the social safety net.
Democrats should not stop there. On the question of campaign finance reform, they’ve made a good start. Obama has joined more than 100 Congressional Democrats in suggesting a constitutional amendment to address the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. These and other Court decisions let corporations and wealthy individuals buy elections with campaign spending that follows no rules and respects no demand for transparency. Obama and the Democrats are hardly pure when it comes to campaign money. But the distinction between the GOP, which has embraced Citizens United, and a Democratic president who would overturn it could not be more stark.
The reason Republicans think they can get away with lying is that they’re sure they’ll have enough money—and enough Super PAC support—to outspend the truth. That’s a scary prospect, best countered with a blunt, unapologetic condemnation of the influence peddlers—and those like Paul Ryan who are most willing to be bought. Franklin Roosevelt had to deal with a similar circumstance in 1936 when, after a difficult first term, he sought re-election as the champion of the great mass of working and worried Americans. Facing the forces of the Wall Street speculators, big bankers and their amen corner in the media who were arrayed against him, FDR didn’t flinch: “We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob,” he declared. Barack Obama should be equally blunt about the need to chase the money- changers from the political temple. And, unlike Paul Ryan, he’d be telling the truth.
By: The Editors, The Nation, September 5, 2012
“Truly Transformative”: Why The Stimulus Made America Better Off Four Years Later
President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on February 17, 2009, with the hopes of jump-starting a depressed U.S. economy and initiating his agenda for healthcare, energy, and education. Larger in constant dollars than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, Obama’s stimulus is one of the most misunderstood pieces of legislation in U.S. history, says Time journalist Michael Grunwald. The author of The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era recently spoke to U.S. News about why Republicans were so successful in their campaign against the bill, and why Americans don’t understand how truly transformative it was. Excerpts:
Why did Obama pursue the Recovery Act?
The economy had fallen off a cliff, and in the past, this idea that when the private sector shuts down, the public sector needs to step up was totally uncontroversial. Bush had passed a stimulus bill with overwhelming bipartisan support when the economy started to go soft in 2008. All the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates had their own stimulus plans in 2008. Mitt Romney’s was actually the largest. And House Republicans, including Paul Ryan, voted in 2009 for a $715 billion alternative to the stimulus that was quite similar to President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus. It was never really clear how the Republican plan could be good public policy and how Obama’s pretty similar policy was radical socialism.
While the Recovery Act was partly about recovery, it was also really the purest distillation of what Obama meant when he talked about change we can believe in, in terms of transforming energy, starting to reduce healthcare costs, reforming education with things like Race to the Top, and then the largest infrastructure investments, the largest middle-class tax cuts since Reagan, the largest research investments ever. That’s the new New Deal.
Why does the stimulus have such a bad rap?
First, you have to say that the Republicans did a brilliant job of completely distorting the substance of the bill. They turned this into an $800 billion boondoggle that was full of levitating trains to Disneyland and mob museums and snow-making machines in Duluth and all kinds of nonsense that wasn’t actually in the bill. They’ve been very disciplined and unified in portraying this as just a big mess. This thing was just hard to sell at a time when the financial earthquake had hit but the economic tsunami hadn’t reached the shore. It wasn’t like when FDR took office after three years of depression, so everybody knew it was Hoover’s depression. But Obama took office during a freefall, and January 2009 was the worst month for job losses. And then he passed the stimulus, and then the next quarter was the biggest jobs improvement in 30 years, but it improved from absolutely hideous to just bad, and it’s hard to sell a jobs bill when the job situation is bad.
What was the value of programs that weren’t necessarily shovel-ready?
After a financial meltdown, the recoveries are always going to be long and slow. That’s one reason the money was spread out over several years. Right up front they wrote big checks to states to help governors balance their budgets without doing mass layoffs of public employees and mass cutbacks of Medicaid spending on the poor. Tax cuts went out quickly to get money into people’s pockets. So all that stuff was obviously shovel-ready; you just shovel the money out the door. Then you had some stuff that really wasn’t supposed to be all that shovel-ready at all, like building the world’s largest wind farm or bringing our pen-and-paper healthcare system into the digital age, or building high-speed rail lines. It was always understood that those were going to take longer. The idea was that even if it wasn’t shovel-ready, it was shovel-worthy.
How are Republicans using the stimulus against President Obama?
Republicans had always supported stimulus up until January 20, 2009, and most of what’s in the stimulus were things that had always enjoyed plenty of bipartisan support. Highway spending and unemployment benefits and middle-class tax cuts and even clean energy, but of course Republicans had decided before that that they were in absolute lock-step opposition. They couldn’t have clean bipartisan support. They had to portray him as a radical partisan.
Why should Mitt Romney read this book?
What Republicans can learn from this is that a lot of the things they’ve been trashing as big government nonsense have actually had an effect.
Are Americans better off than they were four years ago?
I think the answer is yes. What people forget is just how catastrophic our situation was four years ago. Gaining 150,000 jobs isn’t that great, but it’s way better than losing 800,000. And that’s always going to be the difficulty for Obama: selling the notion that things could have been worse, and that things were worse.
By: Teresa Welsh, U. S. News and World Report, September 7, 2012
“Hope And Change 2012”: Building On An Existing Narrative With A Forward Vision
The man who ran on hope and change didn’t walk away from them. He redefined them for the long haul.
And a president who has been accused of being a collectivist and a socialist didn’t abandon a vision of shared burdens and purposes. He replied forcefully with a call for a renewal of citizenship, “the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations.”
“We, the people, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights,” he declared, “that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom that only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.
Rarely has an American election been defined by such a sharp clash of philosophies. When Obama told a fired-up Convention crowd that the contest will involve “the clearest choice of any time in a generation” and “a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future,” he was not exaggerating. On Wednesday, he took the Republicans’ new radical individualism head on.
Obama’s was a speech aimed less at shaking up the campaign than in building on an existing narrative. The president did not defend his economic record. He left that to Bill Clinton. He did not even promise rapid recovery. On the contrary, he told voters: “I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick and easy.”
Indeed, he seemed to reach back to John F. Kennedy’s call on the nation to ask not what the country could do for them, but what they could do for the country. “As citizens,” Obama said, “we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating work of self-government.”
And thus his redefinition of hope and change. Faced with assertions that he can no longer inspire the elation he called forth four years ago, Obama challenged those who had supported him to stay in the fight for the longer-term and do the work required for saving their original vision.
“If you turn away now — if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn’t possible…well, change will not happen,” the president said. “If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are making it harder for you to vote. . . .”
Of course, this is an election, not a philosophical exercise, so Obama was concrete about his differences with Mitt Romney and the Republicans’ vision of a spare government that would ask even less of the already successful. He criticized his foes on Medicare and Social Security, on their refusal to accept any deficit plans that included higher taxes on the wealthy, on education spending and tuition aid.
“Over and over, we have been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way; that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing,” he said. “If you can’t afford health insurance, hope that you don’t get sick. If a company releases toxic pollution into the air your children breathe, well, that’s just the price of progress.”
And he mocked the GOP’s diagnosis of more tax cuts in all economic circumstances: “Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!”
In defining his vision for “moving forward,” Obama spoke more of goals than of policies, highlighting an expansion of manufacturing, energy independence, education and job training, and climate change, an issue that has largely been absent from the public discussion since 2010.
Politicians usually run campaigns based on what they will do, or have done, for voters. Obama will certainly do his share of this, and did some of it Thursday.
Yet his heart seems not to lie in transactional politics. He prefers challenges to promises, obligations to privileges, reason to emotion. “The path we offer may be harder,” he said, “but it leads to a better place.” This is not a typical campaign pledge. It implies neither ease nor comfort but burdens worth bearing and responsibilities worth shouldering. It is still a form of hope, but one that requires far more than going to rallies and cheering.
“A Sensible Plan, An Obstructionist GOP”: The American Jobs Act One Year Later
On September 8, 2011 — exactly one year ago tomorrow — President Obama delivered an important speech to a joint session of Congress. In it, the president unveiled a proposal he called the American Jobs Act.
You may recall the economic circumstances at the time, and how similar they are to 2012 — though job growth looked strong in the early months of the year, the summer proved disappointing. Obama sought to shift the national conversation away from austerity and towards job creation, and presented a sensible plan, filled with ideas that have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support.
Independent analysis projected the American Jobs Act, which was fully paid for, could create as many as 2 million jobs in 2012.
I mention this now because what happened a year ago is incredibly relevant to what’s happening now. This morning’s jobs report was disappointing, and we know exactly how the political world will digest the news — if the job market is underperforming, it’s Obama who’ll get the blame.
There’s not much I can do to change the course of that conversation, but if we’re going to play the blame game, we should at least try to keep some semblance of reality in mind.
The American electorate was clamoring for action on jobs; the Obama White House crafted a credible plan that would be helping enormously right now; and congressional Republicans reflexively killed the Americans Jobs Act for partisan and ideological reasons.
With this recent history in mind, how are we to assign responsibility for high unemployment? Should we condemn the person who threw the job market a life preserver, or those who pushed it away? Or put another way, are we better off now as a result of Republican obstructionism and intransigence, or would we have been better off if the popular and effective job-creation measures had been approved?
By any reasonable measure, the GOP argument, which will be trumpeted loudly today, is completely incoherent — they were wrong a year ago and now we’re paying the price.
As we talked about in June, for Republicans, when there’s discouraging economic news, Obama deserves all the blame. When there’s good economic news, Obama deserves none of the credit. Job losses in 2010 were Obama’s fault; job gains in early 2011 and 2012 have nothing do to with Obama; and tepid growth in the spring of 2012 are back to being Obama’s fault again.
Remember learning the “heads I win, tails you lose” game as a kid? It’s the GOP’s argument in a nutshell — whether the president deserves credit or blame for a monthly jobs report is due entirely to whether the report is encouraging or not.
But even this doesn’t go far enough in explaining the absurdity on display. If we’re going to assign blame to Washington policymakers for the state of the nation’s job market, how is it, exactly, that Congress bears no responsibility at all? This is, after all, a Republican-led Congress that has plenty of time to fight a culture war — I’ve lost count of the anti-abortion bills that have reached the House floor — but has shown passive disinterest to the jobs crisis.
Follow this pattern of events:
1. With the job market struggling, Obama unveils the American Jobs Act, a State of the Union agenda filled with economic measures, and an economic “to-do list.”
2. Republican lawmakers ignore the proposals, and the job market deteriorates.
3. The GOP then blames Obama for the failure his policies, which Congress didn’t pass.
The accepted truth this morning is that weak job numbers are absolute, concrete, incontrovertible proof that the president’s jobs agenda isn’t working. News flash: we aren’t trying Obama’s jobs agenda.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 7, 2012
“A Choice Between Two Supreme Court’s: This November, A Chance To Vote On Citizens United
In today’s polarized political climate, there are a few things on which American voters overwhelmingly agree. For all our disputes, we can find common ground in this: we’re completely fed up. About 80 percent of us don’t think Congress is doing a good job. Only about one third of us view the federal government favorably. In a precipitous drop, less than half of Americans have a favorable view of the Supreme Court. Across all political lines, 75 percentof Americans say there is too much money in politics, and about the same percentage think this glut of money in politics gives the rich more power than the rest in our democracy.
Interestingly, another thing that most Americans have in common is that 80 percent of us have never heard of Citizens United v. FEC, the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. Our feelings of frustration with Washington are deeply connected with the widespread, and entirely founded, suspicion that our elected officials aren’t representing voters, but are instead indebted to the wealthy interests that pay for their campaigns. This distrust has only deepened as politicians and the courts have handed over more and more power to those with the deepest pockets.
Citizens United is only the most famous of the recent spate of Supreme Court decisions aimed at eliminating hard-won campaign finance regulations. In fact, shortly before Citizens United, the George W. Bush-created right-wing bloc of the Supreme Court issued major rulings that had already begun to undermine decades of federal clean election laws.
And we are only partway down the slippery slope. It keeps getting worse as the Supreme Court gradually dismantles state-level clean elections laws, as it did in Arizona, and clarifies that its sweeping decision in Citizens United applies to states as well, as it did in Montana. Indeed, it won’t be long before this or some future right-wing Supreme Court cuts to the chase and lifts the century-old ban on direct corporate contributions to political candidates, one of the most basic checks we have against widespread corruption.
Believe it or not, this November, we’ll have the chance to vote on whether this slippery slope continues, or whether we stop it and roll it back. Each of these regressive campaign finance rulings has had a monumental impact on our democracy. It’s easy to forget that they have been made by one-vote 5-4 majorities of the Supreme Court. That means we’re just one Supreme Court vote away from stopping the trend in its tracks — and even reversing it. Although Mitt Romney has flip-flopped on many issues, he’s crystal clear about how he feels on this issue and exactly what kind of judge he would appoint to the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. He has said he believes “corporations are people” and he means it. He’s promised to nominate more Supreme Court justices like the ones who handed down Citizens United. And his chief judicial adviser, former judge Robert Bork, is legendary in his opposition to individual voting rights while advocating expansive corporate power. On this issue in particular, President Obama has been very clear and comes down unambiguously on the opposite side. Look no further than his Supreme Court picks so far. Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have consistently resisted the right-wing court’s radical transformation of our democracy. In fact, his nominees now represent half the votes in the High Court who are standing up for democracy against “government by and for” the highest bidder.
Some 2008 Obama voters may not be thrilled by the last four years. Some may even be considering giving Mitt Romney a chance, despite their misgivings. But no matter who your candidate is, what issues you care about or on what side you come down on them, most importantly your vote this November will likely determine the Supreme Court for a generation. If Romney has the opportunity to replace one of the more moderate Supreme Court justices, the Court’s far-right majority will not remain narrow. The votes will be there to dismantle any remaining limits of money in politics for the foreseeable future. Conversely, future Obama appointments give Americans the chance to halt this downward spiral and the opportunity to reclaim our democracy.
Whatever the issues you most care about, this November’s election will be a choice between two Supreme Courts. And the two alternatives could not be more different. Quite simply, this is the chance that the overwhelming majority of Americans — who recognize that there is too much money in politics and that it is corrupting our government at every level — finally have to vote on it.
Will we seize this opportunity?
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, September 6, 2012
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