“A Painful Ritual”: Rand Paul, Not So Independent After All
Rand Paul is discovering that being a libertarian-ish senator with a knack for getting the press to pay attention to your sometimes slightly-contrarian views is one thing, while running for president is something else entirely. Paul has moved to paint himself as an outsider and independent thinker in advance of 2016 — but he’s now learning that taking positions that challenge even secondary elements of Republican doctrine is not going to fly.
When there’s a party consensus, a presidential candidate can only contradict it as long as no one’s paying attention. There’s no such thing as an independent-thinking presidential candidate; only one who is sticking to positions he hasn’t yet renounced, but will eventually. Ironically, it’s the GOP, whose members work so hard to characterize themselves as outsiders beholden to no one, where orthodoxy is most strictly enforced.
Paul has now been confronted with the fact that back in 2011 he proposed ending all foreign aid, which seemed like a good idea for him at the time — after all, did you know that most foreign aid goes to…foreigners?!? Egad. Foreign aid is quite unpopular, in part because people wildly overestimate how much we spend on it.
Paul’s problem: The largest recipient of foreign aid is Israel, which gets about $3 billion per year in American taxpayer money. We might want to debate whether Israel really needs that money from us. But that’s not a debate we’re likely to have any time soon, and is sure as heck isn’t a debate anyone’s going to have in a Republican presidential primary, where “supporting Israel” has become an article of dogma.
So Paul had to backtrack. He tried to argue: “I never really proposed [cutting off aid to Israel] in the past.” That could only be true under some elaborate and tortured definition of “really” or “proposed.” In fact, Paul had even made those points about Israel being able to fund itself without our help. But he won’t be saying that kind of thing anymore.
For someone who has built his political brand on being different than other Republicans — by virtue of being a quasi-libertarian and a relative newcomer to politics — this must be a painful ritual to have to enact.
Two months ago, Paul might have brushed off a question about Israel by saying vaguely that we have to look at all parts of the budget to bring down spending. But with Israel on the front pages, he has to line up behind the rest of the party and pledge to support Israel forever and in every way. If the party is genuinely divided on an issue, a candidate has some room to move; this is true of government surveillance, where Paul takes a more libertarian stance than some other Republicans. But once there’s something approaching a consensus, as there is on Israel, dissent will not be tolerated, no matter what you might have said in the past.
Almost all the 2016 GOP candidates are going to portray the race as a contest between a bunch of establishment Washington insiders and one independent outsider (who just happens to be whoever is telling you this — nearly all of them will try to make the claim). But very quickly, they will all have to jump through the same hoops and take the same pledges, even if in some cases it means renouncing their previous positions. By the time it’s over this process will make them substantively almost identical, whatever minor differences they had at the outset.
So if Rand Paul wants everyone to think he’s an independent-minded outsider, maybe he should forget about using issues to do it. Maybe he ought to get himself a ranch and a cowboy hat. It’s worked before.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; Published at The Plum Line, The Washington Post, August 5, 2014
“Choose Your Grifter”: There Are Distinctions Between The Swindlers In The Republican Party
Steve LaTourette used to be a congressman from Ohio who was closely aligned with Speaker John Boehner. Now he runs a Super PAC called “Defending Main Street” that tries to serve the Chamber of Commerce’s interests against the nihilists in the Tea Party who don’t even want to maintain our roads and bridges. As part of that gig, he writes articles (see, e.g., Politico). Despite taking money from people to do something that he can’t actually do (beat back the nut-jobs) he has decided to divide the GOP into two factions, one of which he disapprovingly labels “the grifters.”
Historically, grifters have taken many shapes. They were the snake-oil salesmen who rolled into town promising a magical, cure-all elixir at a price. The grifter was long gone by the time people discovered the magical elixir was no more magical than water. They were the sideshow con men offering fantastic prizes in games that were rigged so that no one could actually win them. They were the Ponzi scheme operators who got rich promising fantastically high investment returns but returning nothing for those sorry investors at the bottom of the pyramid.
Over the last few years we have seen the rise of a new grifter—the political grifter. And the most important battle being waged today isn’t the one about which party controls the House or the Senate, it’s about who controls the Republican Party: the grifting wing or the governing wing.
Today’s political grifters are a lot like the grifters of old—lining their pockets with the hard-earned money of working men and women be promising things in return that they know they can’t deliver.
There are distinctions between the swindlers in the Republican Party, that is true. There’s a difference between the paranoid ramblings of Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Louie Gohmert and the fundamentalist stylings of real thieves like K Street Project organizer Rick Santorum and U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce Freedom Support Award winner Sam Brownback. The first group acts crazy and gets a bunch of small donations. The latter group acts like pious little brats while they’re lining their pockets with massive corporate donations, if not outright bribes. But, it’s okay, because they’re more religious than you are.
They’re all grifters.
Government spending is where they seem to differ, with the first group looking to cash in by not spending federal cash and the latter group looking to direct that cash into private sector entities that reward them with big donations and lucrative second careers. But the record shows, both under Reagan and under the latter Bush, that the GOP deficit spends like mad when they have the power to control where that spending goes. Will the next time be any different?
Not if Steve LaTourette and his benefactors have anything to say about it.
And, yet, the traditional Republican type of grift, where you decry federal spending until the moment you actually control it, is vastly preferable to the new kind of grift which is based on paranoia and a more virulent kind of racism.
I’d tell you to pick your poison, but you don’t get to decide.
By: Martin Longman, Ten Miles Square, Washington Monthly, August 4, 2014
“The Increasingly Confusing World Of Campaign Finance”: Koch-Backed Small Business Front Group Added To ALEC Board
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a big business-funded group that claims to be the “nation’s leading small business association,” has joined the corporate board of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or “ALEC.” It marks perhaps the final step towards the NFIB abandoning any pretense of being a nonpartisan representative of small business owners.
ALEC has been described as a “corporate bill mill” that allows big business interests to peddle influence with ALEC’s legislative members — who are almost entirely Republican — and push “model” legislation that tends to benefit the corporate bottom line or advance an ideological agenda. The NFIB has long been an ALEC member, and this week joined the ALEC corporate governing board, which meets jointly with the ALEC legislative board and helps set the agenda and fundraise for the organization.
The announcement of the NFIB’s board membership came the same day the New York Times revealed that the the health insurance lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), laundered $1.6 million through the NFIB’s dark money advocacy arm in 2012 to attack Democratic Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas. This is on top of the $850,000 that the insurance group gave to NFIB the year before.
The New York Times wrote:
“The largely hidden role of the for-profit health insurers highlights the increasingly confusing world of campaign finance, as nonprofit groups such as the National Federation of Independent Business and its Voice of Free Enterprise program can keep their donor lists secret and then present their carefully fashioned message, financed in large part by big business, as if it is coming from, perhaps, a more sympathetic voice.”
Even the small business owner featured in the NFIB’s ad, John Parke of Little Rock, Ark., said he didn’t know the message was being bankrolled by the insurance industry — but says he should have been told.
“It is relevant to understanding who is sponsoring the message,” he said.
AHIP represents dozens of insurance companies, some of which are ALEC members, such as Guarantee Trust (which chairs ALEC’s Health & Human Services Task Force) and State Farm (which is also part of the ALEC corporate board).
Yet the insurance lobby donation wasn’t the NFIB’s biggest grant in 2012, which is the most recent year that records are available. The biggest donor to NFIB and its affiliated groups was the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners, an outfit that Politico described as “the Koch brothers’ secret bank.” Freedom Partners gave NFIB and its affiliates $2.5 million in 2012. NFIB received an additional $135,000 that year from another Koch funding outfit, the Center to Protect Patient Rights.
A Koch representative also sits on the ALEC corporate board.
A small business owner who joins the NFIB pays $195. Which means the Koch network’s donations to NFIB in 2012 was the equivalent of over 13,500 individual memberships. AHIP’s money amounted to more than 8,200 memberships.
Which raises the question, who does the NFIB speak for?
Small business owners run the gamut politically. Around a third say they are Republican, one-third Democrats, and one-third independent. Yet the NFIB’s political spending has not been representative of the small business owners it claims to represent. Its political donations go almost entirely to Republicans. And the NFIB’s funding sources place it squarely within the right-wing infrastructure.
The NFIB’s partisan and big business ties became evident in 2010, when it launched the lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. That year, Karl Rove’s dark money outfit Crossroads GPS gave the NFIB $3.7 million. The Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation (which also donates to ALEC) chipped-in an additional $100,000.
Prior to the healthcare lawsuit, the biggest contribution to the NFIB from an outside source was $21,000.
By: Brendan Fisher, PR Watch, The Center for Media and Democracy, August 1, 2014
“The Cogs In The Wheel”: With Midterms Approaching, Voters Must Return To Senses
The boys and girls of Congress are returning from summer camp — er, Capitol Hill — to their real homes where they will 1) raise money and plead to be returned to camp; 2) stress how much they hate the nation’s political polarization; and 3) pledge never to compromise their beliefs.
Folks, there is no way to escape their blandishments unless you do not go out in public, especially to a county fair, parade or political rally. You’ll also have to refuse to answer your phone or open your front door. And do not power up your TV or car radio until the middle of November.
“Midterm election” may sound innocuous. This year it is a synonym for blood sport.
When President Barack Obama assumed office in 2009, he had a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. In 2010, Democrats lost the House, and gleeful Republicans decided to make Obama’s life miserable.
House Republicans attempted to block anything he proposed. They did very well. They shut down the government at a cost of $24 billion. They proudly have passed the fewest number of bills in recent history, even those that 90 percent of Americans want, such as keeping guns out of schools. They voted to repeal Obamacare at least 50 times. They are hoping to sue Obama successfully for not enforcing Obamacare to the letter of the law even though, obviously, they don’t really want him to enforce it. Lately, some have begun talking blithely about “impeachment.”
Chafing to kick Obama around even harder, Republicans have vowed to win control of the Senate this November.They may succeed.
Upset at the prospect of being a lame dog for two more years and having no friends in Washington except his Portuguese water dogs, the president of the United States is counter-attacking. That means he will attend just about any Democratic fundraiser White House aides can locate by GPS. (Word to church groups and PTAs: Now might be the time to invite POTUS to your next gathering.)
Republicans had a field day pointing out that Obama refused to go to the southern border to see the plight of unaccompanied children streaming across but went to Colorado to play pool and raise money. Never mind that Republicans have blocked every Obama attempt to try to fix the broken immigration system.
So guess what is going to be a big rallying cry for Republicans this November? The broken immigration system.
And guess what the second GOP battle cry will be? The need to get all those millions of Americans who now have health insurance to agree they should give it up.
Everybody is angry with the political system because it is broken, results in the tyranny of the few over the majority, fails to help people who really need it, fills the coffers of the richest and preserves the status quo.
Oddly, the Tea Partyers who hate government the most are clamoring the loudest to be given government paychecks so they can cause more havoc such as refusing to raise the debt limit (thus destroying what remaining good faith the U.S. has). They also want to cut off more aid to the working poor and refuse to fix crumbling roads and bridges.
Millions of voters fed up with the impasse in Washington (where nothing of strategic importance is being done) will elect and reelect the cogs in the wheel. The lost battle for civility only got more hopeless when Tea Partyers realized that dumping vitriol (and untruths) on moderate opponents is one of the best ways to get a hand in the public till.
Voters, return to your senses. Do not elect or reelect anyone who wants to refuse to pay debts America already has incurred. Do not pull any lever for someone who proudly promises never to compromise (without it, politics is meaningless). Do not send to Washington anyone who tells you how much he/she hates government. Do not give your precious vote to anyone who labels the other side evil, treasonous, demonic or stupid. (Well, stupid is OK.)
And it’s OK, too, this August to shake hands with a politician with sticky cotton candy on your palm.
By: Ann McFeatters, Op-Ed Columnist for McClatchy-Tribune: The National Memo, August 1, 2014
“Legislative Interpretations”: Did Those Republican Judges Ever Go To Law School?
Six federal judges ruled Tuesday on the legality of subsidies being provided for low-income subscribers under so-called Obamacare. The two with solid Republican credentials found the program illegal.
With all due respect to these members of the esteemed federal bench, I have to question whether they really went to law school – or, if they did, whether they ever tended a class in legislation. Because if they did, they should have been aware of two fundamental principles of legislative interpretation: (1) courts should defer to the obvious intent of the legislature; and (2) they should also defer to the interpretation of legislation provided by the administrative agency charged with its enforcement.
The statute provides for health exchanges in the states to run the program, and provides a back up for federal exchanges to administer them when the states decline to participate. The statute includes a provision that allows the Internal Revenue Service to provide tax subsidies to those enrolled in the “state” exchanges.
It is clear that Congress never expected 36 states (mostly those controlled by Republican governors or legislatures) to opt out. It should be equally clear that Congress never intended to deny subsidies to those citizens living in opt-out states.
But the two Republican judges sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, blindly adopted the bizarre argument of the law’s challengers that under a literal reading of the statute only state enrollees were entitled to the subsidies.
On the same day, another federal appeals court sitting in Virginia unanimously ruled the other way. In that decision, Judge Andre Davis ridiculed the argument adopted by the two majority judges in D.C. He wrote that “[plaintiffs want to] deny to millions of Americans desperately needed health insurance through a tortured, nonsensical construction of a federal statute whose manifest purpose… could not be more clear.” But that was precisely the “tortured, nonsensical” position taken by the D.C. duo to the dismay of their colleague, the senior judge on the D.C. Circuit, Harry Edwards.
Then comes the Chevron doctrine. Chevron is a long-standing doctrine established by the Supreme Court that it was the obligation of courts when interpreting statutes to give deference to the interpretation of the statute by the administrative agency entrusted by Congress with its implementation.
In this instance, it was the Internal Revenue Service which had primary responsibility for implementing the health care subsidies. But the D.C. majority ignored the IRS interpretation.
To be fair to the D.C. majority, there is another doctrine which they chose to follow. It is called “textualism,” and its primary exponent is Justice Anton Scalia, the legal guru of conservatism. And this principle seems to say implement the clear terms of the statute no matter how absurd – or “nonsensical” – the result. But as Scalia’s critics like to point out, he generally invokes that principle only when it brings about a result he is ideologically comfortable with.
Obviously, these cases will have to be reconciled by the United States Supreme Court. And, fortunately for the millions of persons entitled to health care subsidies in the 36 states with federal health exchanges, Scalia’s “textualism” does not have a lot of adherents, even among his conservative colleagues on the high court.
By: Frank Askin, Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers Law School-Newark; The Huffington Post Blog, July 30, 2014
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