“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
“Can You Say “Whig’s”: The Only Thing For Republicans To Fear Is Never Getting Elected Again
Ah, bipartisanship. Can you smell it? Well it’s in the air again, as a group of eight senators (for the love of god, can we not call them a “gang”?), four Democrats and four Republicans, unveiled a proposal for immigration reform. It includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (an even faster one for seasonal agricultural workers, because what, do you expect native-born Americans to spend 10 hours a day bending over in the hot sun?), measures to improve the legal immigration system, and efforts to attract skilled immigrants. The proposal also stipulates that the path to citizenship would only happen after the implementation of stricter border enforcement, but one of the great unacknowledged developments of recent years is that border enforcement is far more vigorous than it used to be. We’ve got more Border Patrol agents making more arrests, and Barack Obama has deported people much faster than George W. Bush did (there were more than 400,000 deportations in 2012, a new record).
Immigration reform is looking rather likely to pass through Congress, and there’s one reason: fear. Republicans are terrified that unless they do something to reverse their abysmal performance among Latino voters in the last election, they could go the way of the Whigs. So even though most of them don’t really want to do it, enough of them could grit their teeth and vote yes on a comprehensive immigration reform package.
And that’s how bipartisanship happens: not when everyone realizes that they love their country more than they love their party, or when the cries of the public for comity in Congress become too loud, or even when a problem gets too big (as it happens, after years of steady increases, the number of undocumented immigrants has been stagnant since the Great Recession hit, mostly because there were fewer available jobs drawing immigrants here). Bipartisanship happens when preferences and raw political interest align to give both parties something they want or think they need. The Democrats have long wanted comprehensive immigration reform, and the Republicans now see it in their interest.
By: Paul Waldman and Jamie Fuller, The American Prospect, 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
“Proud Up-Yours Tradition”: Arizona Bill Would Require Immigration Checks In Hospitals
Republicans have long claimed that there’s no such thing as an uninsured patient in America since anyone can just go to the emergency room for their health care. Sure that’s inefficient and expensive, but a proposed Arizona law might reduce some of those costs by making clear to undocumented immigrants that they’re not welcome in the state’s hospitals at all.
The latest in the Arizona’s proud tradition of “up yours” legislation, H.B. 2293 would require that to would require hospitals to check the immigration status of patients and report undocumented patients to the authorities. Republican State Representative Steve Smith, who’s sponsoring the bill, said that it’s a way to gauge how much Arizona is spending on care for non-Americans:
The local ABC affiliate reported:
“That’s it, we don’t deny anybody, they don’t come in and not get treated, everything stays the same, we just want it documented,” said Smith.
Smith said his goal is to find out the amount of money hospitals spend to treat undocumented immigrants.
He later said that he has “no clue” about whether hospitals would enforce the law. It’s currently in the early stages of the legislative process but if it passed it would likely dissuade undocumented immigrants from seeking health care since their presence in the emergency room would trigger a call to the cops or feds.
“When does this begin or end?” asked Pete Wertheim of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association to the Arizona Daily Sun. “What other industry should be screening their customers for citizenship verification?”
We cannot detain them,” he said of those suspected of being illegal immigrants. And he said not every one of the 1.2 million uninsured in Arizona — people who would lack the evidence of valid health insurance that triggers what Smith’s bill would require — are here illegally.
Smith has also advocated for citizenship checks in public schools.
By: Alex Halperin, Salon, January 27, 2013
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