“Impervious To Logic”: Congress Betrays Our Dwindling Faith
The way to stay sane in this city is never to expect too much.
So the soothing mantras of the capital involve admonitions about the art of the possible, the perfect and the good, the zen of baby steps.
Incremental, incremental, incremental.
Still, it is hard to remain calm in the face of the Senate’s failure — its failure as the parents of children murdered in Newtown, Conn., looked on from the gallery — to pass the most modest of measures to curb gun violence.
We tend to speak easily here of how Washington is broken and gridlocked.
But those of us whose day jobs sit at the intersection of politics and public policy don’t completely buy it. We retain ragged shreds of faith that Washington, despite its maddening imperfections, remains capable of rising to at least some occasions.
Except on Wednesday, it didn’t, as the Senate fell six votes short of the 60 required to expand background checks for gun buyers. It is an indication of the perennially warped politics of guns that politicians can more safely support same-sex marriage than background checks. Indeed, what passed Congress in 1994 — an assault weapons ban and strict limits on magazine sizes — is now unthinkable.
The background-check measure proposed by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey is — I’ll refrain from the past tense, because Wednesday’s loss was not the final chapter — so sensible, so pared-down, that the stronger argument against it is that it failed to go far enough, not that it ran roughshod over the Second Amendment.
To review: Under current law, individuals who want to buy guns from licensed dealers must pass background checks. Manchin-Toomey would expand that requirement to in-state gun sales over the Internet (interstate sales are already covered, because the guns can be sent only to licensed dealers for transfer to the buyer), to gun shows and to other commercial transactions.
It would not apply to sales or transfers between family members and friends — notwithstanding the National Rifle Association’s claim that it would “criminalize the private transfer of firearms by honest citizens, requiring lifelong friends, neighbors and some family members to get federal government permission to exercise a fundamental right or face prosecution.”
As Manchin said on the Senate floor, “That is simply a lie. . . . You can loan your hunting rifle to your buddy without any new restrictions. . . .You can give or sell a gun to your brother or your sister, your cousin, your uncle, your co-worker without a background check. You can post a gun for sale on the cork bulletin board at your workplace or on your church bulletin board without a background check.”
Another criticism of the measure — that it “would put us inexorably on the path to a national gun registry,” as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) put it — is even less moored to reality. A national registry is banned under existing law; Manchin-Toomey would layer on a 15-year felony sentence for anyone who tries to implement one.
That leaves an array of other arguments against the measure that fail the simplest tests of logic.
Felons and others ineligible to buy weapons aren’t being prosecuted under the current system. Also, the existing system fails to list numerous individuals already prohibited from having guns. Okay, prosecute the ineligible would-be buyers and fix the list.
Expanded background checks wouldn’t have prevented the Newtown shootings. Okay, but expanded checks might prevent another killer. No single change is going to prevent every episode of gun violence.
Expanded checks would impose a burden on law-abiding citizens without preventing criminals from obtaining guns. Under the existing system, more than 2 million people have been barred from buying guns. Did some of them go on to obtain weapons illegally? Of course. But others were deterred — and in any event the expanded checks would narrow the currently huge loophole that lets felons buy guns without background checks. That some criminals will always break some laws is not an argument against having those laws in the first place.
The depressing aspect of Wednesday’s vote is that the change was so small and the senators so seemingly impervious to logic.
Wednesday’s vote will not end the gun debate. After nearly two decades in which Democrats barely dared whisper about gun violence, the notion of new restrictions has become safe again — to broach, if not to enact. In the aftermath of Newtown, this time was different.
It just wasn’t different enough.
By: Ruth Marcus, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 18, 2013
“Disingenous And Bald Faced”: The NRA Gets Caught Lying Again
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a long-time ally of the National Rifle Association with an “A” rating, appeared on MSNBC this morning and expressed his frustration with the far-right group. The conservative Democrat lamented how “disingenuous” the NRA has become, and criticizing the organization for telling “lies.”
Manchin added, “If you lose credibility — if you don’t have credibility, you have nothing.” If the NRA fails to correct its falsehoods, “they’ve lost everything in Washington.”
Clearly, the NRA will take its chances. Indeed, it’s launching a new ad campaign, claiming that 80% of police officers believe background checks will have no effect on violent crime. Is that true? Actually, no — William Saletan explained today it’s a “bald-faced lie.”
If you read the methodology posted at the bottom, you’ll see that it isn’t really a poll, since it wasn’t conducted by random sampling. It was “promoted” to the site’s members and was easy to flood with advocates of a particular viewpoint. (To give you some idea of how biased the sample is, 62 percent of those who participated in the poll say, in question 15, that if they were a sheriff or a chief of police, they would not enforce more restrictive gun laws.) But set that problem aside. The bigger problem, in terms of the NRA’s ad, is that the poll never asks whether background checks will have an effect on violent crime.
In other words, the NRA isn’t even lying well.
And yet, thanks at least in part to Republican obstructionist tactics, the NRA and their falsehoods are poised to prevail on Capitol Hill anyway.
Saletan added, “The NRA’s ad is a lie. It flunks a simple background check. Senators should ask themselves what else the NRA is lying about.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 17, 2013
“A Shameful Day For Washington”: The NRA Willfully Lied On Guns
Speaking just minutes after a minority in the Senate killed a bipartisan bill to expand background checks on gun sales — something 90 percent of Americans support — President Obama stood in the Rose Garden in front of weeping gun violence victims, including former Rep. Gabby Giffords, to give a searing indictment of the forces that just blocked even this modest reform.
Showing flashes of anger and passion rare for this president, Obama laid into the National Rifle Association and Senate Republicans, saying they “willfully lied on this bill,” especially by erroneously claiming the bipartisan background check legislation known as Manchin-Toomey would create a national gun registry when, in fact, the bill made creating one a felony punishable by 15 years in prison. Even though politicians lie all the time, the word “lie” is almost never uttered in public discourse in Washington, let alone by the president, underscoring his unusual anger.
“Unfortunately, this pattern of spreading untruths about this legislation served a purpose. Those lies upset an intense minority of gun owners and that in turn intimidated a lot of senators,” Obama said. “There were no coherent arguments as to why we shouldn’t do this, it came down to politics.”
He even took a highly unusual shot at four senators in his own party who voted against the amendment to expand background checks out of fears that the gun lobby would come after them, saying, “Republicans had that fear, but Democrats had that fear too. So they caved to the pressure. And they started looking for an excuse — any excuse — to vote no.”
“Too many senators,” Obama said, “failed” their test of leadership. Behind him parents of children killed at Sandy Hook and in other massacres visibly wept.
But he reserved special criticism for Sen. Rand Paul, who said Obama was using gun violence victims as “props.” “Are they serious?” Obama said of Paul’s comments without mentioning him by name. “Do they really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence don’t have a right to weigh in on this issue?”
“So all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” Obama concluded, before promising to try again and asking citizens to put pressure on their members of Congress.
Indeed, after Columbine in 1999, when Republicans in the Senate killed a robust bill to expand background checks, the public outcry was so strong that they immediately backtracked and approved a stronger bill (it later died in the House).
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, April 17, 2013
“Sabotaging Gun Control”: Fighting For His Political Life, Mitch McConnell Has Wayne LaPierre’s Back
I owe Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a minor apology. I said he was being very silly when he demanded an FBI investigation into the recording of a meeting at his campaign office. In fact, the meeting actually was surreptitiously recorded by his political enemies, or at least by a guy who operates a useless “super PAC” that has, thus far, spent a total of $18 on defeating McConnell. McConnell probably didn’t lose much sleep awaiting my apology, though, because the recording, and the news of its provenance, are just about the best things that have happened to the guy since the D.C. circuit court gave McConnell veto power over all of President Obama’s appointments.
McConnell’s very good week might not end up meaning very much, though, if the United States Senate manages, somehow, to pass major legislation on gun control and immigration any time soon. Because whenever the United States Senate manages to accomplish anything, conservatives get very irate with Mitch McConnell for allowing it to happen.
McConnell is reviled by the right-wing activist base, for reasons that, honestly, I don’t quite get. McConnell is up for reelection next year. He is working right now to prevent the possibility of a serious primary challenge. He’s succeeding, so far, but candidates have until next January to make up their minds. That’s a lot of time for some “Ron Johnson type” to emerge.
(It is a bit unusual for a Republican Senate leader to be in such a precarious electoral position. Republicans are generally smarter than Democrats when it comes to selecting leaders who aren’t under the constant threat of losing their next election. Harry Reid has proven himself to be a competent Majority Leader in some ways, but the fact that he answers to Nevada voters makes him quite willing to ignore liberal priorities on any number of issues. McConnell, like many Republican members of Congress, is more vulnerable to a primary challenge than a Democrat, though he’s unpopular enough to need to fear both.)
With 2014 in mind, it’s easy to see why McConnell refuses to meet with Harry Reid, even in private. (That’s also news that McConnell will not mind seeing reported.) And it’s why McConnell is going to do everything in his power to derail the gun control compromise currently being negotiated by Sens. Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey. Politico has a special preview of the horrible amendments McConnell will add in order to blow up the bill:
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is drafting an alternative gun bill that could peel away GOP support, and McConnell may attempt to force votes on allowing guns in federal buildings and national parks, or the creation of a national “concealed carry” standard.
If McConnell wins, if recent history is any indication, he won’t get much credit from the right. If he loses, and a gun bill passes the Senate, he’ll get pilloried. Even if the bill goes nowhere in the House. Doing the (nationally) unpopular thing and sabotaging this very popular bill is basically a no-brainer for McConnell, which is likely why gun control advocates never even bothered to lobby him.
Everything McConnell is doing is about a potential primary election. As Roll Call says, a big part of McConnell’s strategy is to act as much like Rand Paul as possible, because Rand Paul is quite popular. On guns, it’s quite easy for McConnell to back Paul. It’s harder to say, though, what McConnell will do about the immigration reform compromise. Paul supports citizenship opportunities for currently undocumented immigrants. Right-wingers used to call that “amnesty,” and they hate it. McConnell has not yet given any hint of what he’ll do once the “Gang of 8″ finally unveil a proposal.
If you understand McConnell’s actions as purely, nakedly political, and basically devoid of “principle” or even ideology — his purpose in obstructing all Senate business during Obama’s first term was defeating Obama, not advancing conservatism — immigration reform will be an interesting experiment. He could win conservative cred by opposing it — right-wing darling Ted Cruz is making himself the face of opposition to the proposal for a reason — but he may not want to appear in any way opposed to Rand Paul, his most important political ally. (Paul could make McConnell’s decision easier and come out against the proposal. We’ll see!)
So, for the next year and change, the primary goal of the Senate minority leader will be avoiding or winning a primary against a very right-wing challenger. Which is why this bit of news, reported in Roll Call, is so curious. Apparently McConnell gave a secret speech last week to the National Urban League, the venerable black civil rights community organization.
McConnell’s address to the National Urban League, for example, sounded a lot like Paul’s at Howard. According to a source familiar with McConnell’s speech, the leader told the room of black business leaders: “I want to see a day when more African-Americans look at the issues and realize that they identify with the Republican Party.” That message echoed Paul’s at the historically black university.
McConnell also dedicated time to talking about Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., telling the crowd in the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building that Scott is an African-American who has realized the strength of GOP politics. It doesn’t hurt McConnell’s case with the right that Scott also happens to be a tea party conservative.
If the point was to imitate Rand Paul’s speech at Howard University, keeping it so quiet is confusing. (Or maybe it wasn’t a secret and actually it’s just that no one cared to cover it until now.) Conservatives do love it when their heroes tell “hard truths” to unfriendly audiences (like racial or ethnic minorities) but this sounds like a very uneventful address. Maybe Mitch McConnell does care about more than just maintaining his grip on power! Just don’t expect him to demonstrate any other interest when it comes to all Senate business conducted between now and May 2014. The silver lining to that news, though, is that he could end up killing any grand budget bargain.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, April 15, 2013
“Self-Deportation Can’t Be Rebranded”: Wording The Explanation Differently Doesn’t Change The Meaning
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appeared on “Meet the Press” last weekend and said something interesting about the Republican Party and its approach to immigration policy.
“[T]he politics of self-deportation are behind us,” Graham said. “Mitt Romney is a good man. He ran in many ways a good campaign, but it was an impractical solution, quite frankly. It was offensive. Every corner of the Republican Party from libertarians, the RNC, House Republicans and the rank and file Republican Party member is now understanding there has to be an earned pathway to citizenship.”
For those hoping to see comprehensive immigration reform this year, it was a heartening sentiment. It was also mistaken — the politics of self-deportation are still at the core of many GOP contingents.
A pocket of conservatives is lashing out privately and publicly against broad immigration reform and could seriously complicate any momentum for a House deal. […]
Some in the party want to solve the problem much the same way that Mitt Romney did in 2012.
[Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California] said: “You make sure that people who are here illegally do not get jobs, and they don’t get benefits and they will go home. It’s called attrition. I don’t happen to believe in deportation. If you make sure they don’t get jobs and they don’t get benefits, I mean Mitt [Romney] called it self-deportation, but it’s not; it’s just attrition. They’ll go home on their own.”
What I love about this quote is its amazing effort to try to rebrand “self-deportation,” as if the meaning of the phrase can change if the explanation is worded slightly differently. For Rohrabacher, he doesn’t want mass deportation from the government; he just wants to create an environment in which undocumented immigrants’ lives are made so miserable, they’ll “go home on their own.”
Rohrabacher says, however, this is “not” self-deportation, which it obviously is. In fact, he’s describing the policy precisely.
“[T]he politics of self-deportation are behind us”? We should be so lucky.
If I had to guess, I’d say the odds of the Senate approving an immigration bill are quite good — it’s not a sure thing, but the smart money says a reform bill will pass the upper chamber. But whether the radicalized House Republican majority will tolerate a popular, bipartisan bill is a much tougher question.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 12, 2013
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