“Texas Jerk Ted Cruz”: Joe McCarthy May Have Simply Been Many Years Ahead Of His Time
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) can barely contain his glee at being criticized for being a jerk, as reflected in this Reuters report from Corrie MacLaggan.
First-term Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on Tuesday staunchly defended his aggressive, in-your-face style that already is raising eyebrows in Washington and has led a Senate Democrat to suggest his tactics reminded her of McCarthyism.
“Washington has a long tradition of trying to hurl insults to silence those who they don’t like what they’re saying,” Cruz told reporters on a visit to a Texas gun manufacturer. “I have to admit I find it amusing that those in Washington are puzzled when someone actually does what they said they would do.”
Employees at LaRue Tactical near Austin cheered the senator enthusiastically during his appearance.
Cruz, 42, raised eyebrows in Washington by aggressively criticizing former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, during a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing.
Cruz angered lawmakers in both parties by suggesting, without giving evidence, that Hagel might have taken money from countries such as communist North Korea.
Charges that Cruz was being a lying bully were, of course, all mixed up with claims that he wasn’t being a good do-be freshman Senator who waits his turn and kisses up to those with more seniority. You get the impression his colleagues think he should have to earn the right to behave like Joe McCarthy.
But in any event, how much would Cruz pay to get that kind of reputation outside the Senate itself? Congress’ job approval rating is stuck in the mid-teens. He’s a member of a party that has raised hysterical unfounded attacks on the opposition into a virtually obligatory exercise (one of his critics, Lindsey Graham, was as unhinged in dealing with Hagel as Cruz himself), and part of an intra-party faction that thinks the GOP has been repeatedly betrayed by the civility (sic!) of its elected representatives. There is virtually no down-side to his current behavior.
Come to think of it, Joe McCarthy may have simply been many years ahead of his time.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, February 20, 2013
“If You Can’t Beat’em, Change The Rules”: Georgia Republicans Seek Repeal Of The 17th Amendment
In the latest example of the GOP’s selective reverence for the Constitution, six Georgia Republicans are trying to end the election of U.S. senators by popular vote — just as a new poll shows that the GOP’s footing in the state’s upcoming Senate election is less secure than previously thought.
The Douglas County Sentinel reports that state representatives Dustin Hightower, Mike Dudgeon, Buzz Brockway, Josh Clark, Kevin Cooke, and Delvis Dutton — all Republicans — have introduced a resolution to repeal the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 17th Amendment, which was adopted in 1913, mandated that senators be elected by popular vote; before its passage, senators were selected by state legislatures.
Cooke, who authored the resolution, told the Sentinel “It’s a way we would again have our voice heard in the federal government, a way that doesn’t exist now.”
“This isn’t an idea of mine,” he added. “This was what James Madison was writing. This would be a restoration of the Constitution, about how government is supposed to work.”
Successfully repealing the amendment would require two-thirds approval by both houses of Congress, followed by ratification by at least 38 states — giving the Georgia lawmakers next to no chance of accomplishing their goal. After all, most voters would prefer to keep the power to elect their own representatives — especially considering the pervasive corruption that has characterized the election process within state legislatures.
Still, the timing of the move is interesting. Coincidentally, on the same day that the Sentinel reported on the Republicans’ repeal plans, Public Policy Polling released a new poll showing that the GOP is in real danger of losing another Senate seat in 2014.
Despite the fact that Democrats have not won a major election in Georgia in 13 years, PPP finds that the race for the seat currently held by retiring Republican Saxby Chambliss is a complete toss-up. Democratic congressman John Barrow trails five likely Republican candidates — U.S. Representatives Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey, Tom Price, and Jack Kingston, and right-wing activist Karen Handel — by an average of just 0.4 percent.
If former senator Max Cleland (D) jumped into the race, he’d start out with a lead over all five Republicans.
Republicans should be deeply troubled by their weak numbers in Georgia, ostensibly a deep-red state. If they lose Chambliss’ seat, it would all but end their hopes of capturing a Senate majority in 2014. The six Georgia lawmakers’ solution to the problem appears to be taking the decision out of voters’ hands, which fits a broad pattern of Republican behavior since the 2012 election. Once again, the party’s prevailing strategy appears to be “If you can’t beat them, change the rules.”
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, February 20, 2013
“Kings Of Comity”: Dear John McCain, Ted Cruz Isn’t What’s Wrong With The Senate, You Are
The Senate runs, as the wise old men who make up the majority of that institution would tell you, on comity. Recently, Sen. Ted Cruz, who has been in the Senate for about 10 minutes, has been accused of disrespecting the Senate’s tradition of comity. He has been accused of “engaging in innuendo” by repeatedly insinuating that Chuck Hagel is somehow in the pocket of evil foreign powers, and he is also said to have engaged in the even worse crime of talking too much even though he’s just a freshman.
Here’s Politico with the shocking details:
Behind closed doors, some Republican senators report that Cruz, in his stone-cold serious prosecutorial style, speaks at length when it’s far more common for freshmen to wait before asserting themselves — particularly ones who were just sworn in.
Absolutely appalling, how he insists on acting as self-impressed as his more senior colleagues. Politico also reports that Cruz was rude to Chuck Schumer on a Sunday show, which just isn’t done. After Cruz’s hostile questioning of Hagel, McCain publicly rebuked the Texas senator, something McCain only does to practically everyone who annoys him in any fashion. “All I can say is that the appropriate way to treat Senator Hagel is to be as tough as you want to be, but don’t be disrespectful or malign his character,” Mr. McCain told the New York Times.
Yes, Ted Cruz has obviously not yet learned that the Senate runs on comity. Except the problem is the Senate isn’t running at all, and hasn’t been for some time now. It was not running before Cruz got there. His arrival changed nothing.
Ted Cruz has indeed been acting horribly, lobbing McCarthyite smears and generally playing it up for the rubes back home. Last week, stories and columns ran, effectively simultaneously, in Politico, the Times and the Washington Post, all with the same basic message: Ted Cruz is being a dick. It was almost as if someone was trying to send him a message!
But Ted Cruz being a dick isn’t what has prevented the Senate from accomplishing anything. Ted Cruz’s rudeness isn’t what’s led the Senate to stop performing even its most basic tasks, like confirming uncontroversial agency heads and judges. Ted Cruz’s loudmouthed Senator Asshole routine is not what’s wrong with the Senate. What’s wrong with the Senate is grandstanding buffoons like John McCain who think comity is actually more important than accomplishing anything.
Lindsey Graham told Politico what he says to all new senators: “You’re going to be respected if you can throw a punch but you also have to prove you can do a deal.” Here’s what Lindsey Graham doesn’t ever do: a deal. Graham is a peerless negotiator, but he also always backs out of every deal at the last second because he cares more about the act of negotiation than he does about accomplishing goals through legislation. Ted Cruz didn’t blow up immigration reform on multiple occasions. Ted Cruz isn’t why senators like McCain and Graham decide to stop supporting things they used to support, like cap-and-trade, because of political cowardice or petty grievances over vote scheduling or something.
Because senators refuse to see themselves as unimpressive party hacks, they relish the power that comes with being seen as someone who makes “deals.” And the best way to exercise that power is to negotiate until legislation is objectively worse at accomplishing its supposed objective and then declaring with anguish that you cannot bring yourself to support the result of your negotiation. That is considered very impressive senator-ing. What Lindsey Graham wants is for Cruz to vote exactly the way he’s voting now (when the Senate bothers to vote), but for him to also spend a lot more time pretending he might vote a different way.
The Senate doesn’t work because Mitch McConnell uses every rule at his disposal to block the Senate from working, and he’s allowed to do this because Democrats respect the tradition of Senate collegiality so much that they refuse to end the rules that empower the minority to politely block all Senate business for no reason.
Not long ago, the Wilson Center’s Donald Wolfensberger praised the “gentlemen’s agreement” Harry Reid got instead of filibuster reform as a sign of a new comity golden age.
This year’s failed reform efforts produced headlines such as, “Filibuster Reform Goes Bust” and “Filibuster Lives.” The reality, however, is that the reformers’ bold ploy did force the hand of the bipartisan leadership to work out agreements that will enable the Senate to operate in a more functional and conciliatory manner. That bodes well for getting some important things done this year, even on the eve of what will be a contentious election season.
And then of course Republicans responded by filibustering the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of Defense, a move that was both unprecedented (while a Cabinet nominee has failed an up-and-down vote, none have been actually filibustered) and pointless (because he’ll eventually still be confirmed, in a few more days). They did it because they could, more or less, and while Ted Cruz was one of the loudest voices for the filibuster, it only actually happened because of kings of comity John McCain and Lindsey Graham. They were outraged over Cruz’s out-of-bounds questioning of a Cabinet appointee they then filibustered.
Meanwhile Republicans are still all trying to nullify the Consumer Financial Protection Board, but for the most part they are doing so politely so it is not considered a shocking breach of etiquette or whatever.
Ted Cruz is what’s wrong with the modern Republican Party — he’s an extremist who says outrageous things specifically to be seen as disrespecting “Washington elites” — but what’s wrong with the Senate is just about every other senator, most of whom think their first duty is to be incredibly respectful of one another while never evincing any concern whatsoever for the real-life consequences of their inaction on nearly every single one of America’s most urgent problems, from unemployment to catastrophic climate change. And their tradition of deference to one another, and their high esteem for the broken institution they are members of, is what stops them from doing anything to change the way they don’t do business.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, February 18, 2013
“Completely Unhinged”: John McCain Is Lost In A Fog Of Partisan Rage
Looking back at the tragic and deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last fall, we know quite a bit about what happened. We also know, thanks to an independent investigation, that “Republican charges of a cover-up” were “pure fiction.”
But as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) argued yesterday, he can’t be bothered with facts — he has a partisan vendetta to pursue.
For those who can’t watch clips online, “Meet the Press” host David Gregory pressed the Republican senator on the unsubstantiated charge that the Obama administration has engaged in a “massive cover-up.” Gregory asked a simple question: “A cover-up of what?”
McCain, just a few days after explaining how important it is not to be “disagreeable,” became unusually belligerent, asking the host whether he cares about the deaths of four Americans.
Gregory tried to get an answer anyway, responding, “You said there is a cover-up. A cover-up of what?” McCain, unable to think of anything substantive, said, “Of the information concerning the deaths of four brave Americans.”
Even for McCain, whose capacity has deteriorated sharply in recent years, this was a pathetic display.
Remember, McCain has had several months to think about this. He’s sat through classified and unclassified briefings. He’s participated in a series of congressional hearings. He’s (presumably) read the results of independent investigations, and had his own questions answered, verbally and in writing.
And yet after all of this, McCain is not only ignorant of the basics, he doesn’t understand his own conspiracy theory. The senator, after pondering the issue since September, still believes there’s an elaborate “cover-up,” but doesn’t know why he thinks this.
The exchange on “Meet the Press” wasn’t awkward; it wasn’t bizarre; it was alarming.
This was the point at which it might have dawned on everyone watching, including journalists who still consider the senator credible on foreign policy and national security, “Good lord, John McCain has no idea what he’s talking about.”
I hate to be a stickler for such things, but as a rule, when the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee accuses the White House on national television of orchestrating a cover-up as part of a terrorist attack, it’s not too much to ask that the senator have some idea what he’s talking about.
But in this case, McCain is simply lost in a fog of his own partisan rage. At this point, the man doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand, and worse, he just doesn’t care. McCain no longer thinks it matters that he can’t back up his accusations; he simply wants to keep making them. And if you press him for details he should understand, the increasingly unhinged senator will suggest you’re indifferent to the deaths of Americans at terrorists’ hands.
Why? Because he’s John McCain.
Incidentally, this was McCain’s fourth Sunday show appearance of the new year — that’s four appearances in seven weeks — which suggests he’ll have another opportunity to answer similar questions in a national setting very soon.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 18, 2013
“When Republicans Were Problem-Solvers”: The Idea Of Politics As All-Ideology, All-The-Time Is A Relatively Recent GOP Invention
We interrupt this highly partisan and ideological moment with some contrarian news: President Obama is not the only politician who thinks that expanding access to pre-kindergarten is a good investment.
In Alabama, Republican Gov. Robert Bentley urged a 60 percent increase in preschool funding in his state, with the goal of having a universal preschool system in place within 10 years. “I truly believe by allowing greater access to a voluntary pre-K education,” Bentley declared this month in his State of the State message, “we will change the lives of children in Alabama.” The state Bentley leads is not a notoriously liberal place.
In Michigan, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder just proposed a large increase in preschool funding — from $109 million this fiscal year to $174 million in 2014 and $239 million in 2015.
Nobody should pretend that the president has found in pre-K education the key that will unlock bipartisanship. Right out of the box, Andrew J. Coulson of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom told the New York Times that Obama’s plan “just doesn’t make any sense” while Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, sounded a skeptical note in saying the president “needs to explain how this program will be different.”
But by today’s partisan standards, Kline’s comment was remarkably restrained. So it’s worth pausing to wonder if we might be slowly opening an era when Republicans will be feeling a little less pressure to mouth tea-party attacks on government and more incentive to say that they, too, want to solve problems that concern the vast majority of Americans.
In pushing universal pre-K, Obama made a shrewd choice in both political and policy terms. There are enough studies to show that early childhood education programs make a real difference, which is why Republicans such as Snyder and Bentley embrace them. And Obama is structuring his initiative to work with the states to build on what many of them are already doing or would like to do.
This beachhead of cooperation might also serve as a reminder to Republicans that the idea of politics as all-ideology, all-the-time is a relatively recent invention. Education reform was a thoroughly bipartisan cause in the 1980s. Governors such as Democrats Bill Clinton in Arkansas and Richard Riley in South Carolina and Republican Lamar Alexander in Tennessee teamed up to push for higher standards. Alexander, who is now in the Senate, was willing to raise taxes to finance his education initiatives.
There is also the tale of Tommy Thompson, who as governor of Wisconsin in the 1990s tried to broaden health insurance coverage with his “BadgerCare” program. Early in the debate over Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Thompson called it “another important step” toward achieving reform.
Thompson had to eat those words when he sought the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate last year in the face of tea party opposition. The rebuke of Thompson from Chris Chocola, president of the conservative Club for Growth, was representative. “The world has changed since he was elected to office,” said Chocola, who had endorsed one of Thompson’s primary opponents. “Now we’re talking about how much less we’ll spend rather than how much more we’ll spend.” That was right-wing ideology speaking.
Thompson survived the primary but was then defeated by Democrat Tammy Baldwin. While liberals cheered Baldwin’s victory, there was something poignant in Thompson’s losing, in part because he traded in his problem-solving past for a new anti-government disposition that didn’t really fit him.
Despite the abuse of the rules on Chuck Hagel’s confirmation, you sense that Republicans such as Thompson and Alexander (there are many others) are exasperated with the view that the only point of seeking public office is to shrink government. But it will take considerable courage for such Republicans to move their party back to a time when conservatives and progressives did not have to disagree on everything — when causes such as helping 4-year-olds to learn and thrive could encourage politicians to lay down their arms at least momentarily.
There are other issues that ought to be like this: training and education programs to restore mobility and ease inequalities; immigration reform; and at least parts of Obama’s agenda to curb gun violence. But progress will require conservatives to give up certain recent habits and remember when they, too, believed that government could successfully remedy some of the nation’s ills.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 17, 2013
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