“Not So Braveheart”: Paul Walks Back His Disavowal Of Voter ID Laws
Well, that was quick. Barely three days after his comments suggesting that Republicans need to get off the voter suppression kick if they ever wanted to appeal to minority voters, there’s this “clarification” from the director of his PAC (via Dave Weigel):
Senator Paul was having a larger discussion about criminal justice reform and restoration of voting rights, two issues he has been speaking about around the country and pushing for in state and federal legislation.
In the course of that discussion, he reiterated a point he has made before that while there may be some instances of voter fraud, it should not be a defining issue of the Republican Party, as it is an issue that is perhaps perceived in a way it is not intended. At no point did Senator Paul come out against voter ID laws.
So it’s fine to push voter ID laws and (presumably) otherwise try to keep minority folk from voting. But just don’t make it a “defining issue of the Republican Party,” which I am reasonably sure not a single person has suggested.
For dessert, the walk-back statement uses the “federalism” dodge, an old favorite of the Paul family on controversial issues:
In terms of the specifics of voter ID laws, Senator Paul believes it’s up to each state to decide that type of issue.
That’s also true of felon disenfranchisement laws and for the most part criminal justice reform, topics on which Paul sees no constitutional bar to a U.S. Senator discussing.
For a brave truth-teller succeeded to the leadership of his father’s Revolution, Rand Paul is sure gun-shy when it comes to defying the conservative movement/GOP CW.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 13, 2014
“How Karl Rove Plays The Game”: ‘Turd Blossom’ Has A Well-Earned Reputation For Sleaze, Dishonesty, And Ugly Campaign Tactics
In December 2012, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fainted, suffered a concussion, and was hospitalized with a blood clot. Because her injury delayed her congressional testimony on Benghazi, conservative media quickly launched a conspiracy theory: Clinton wasn’t really injured, Fox News and others said, she was merely faking it to avoid talking about the attack.
Even for the right, this was bizarre. Clinton’s injury was not only real, she also had no incentive to mislead – her committee testimony was simply rescheduled.
In a curious twist, Republicans have shifted gears. Arguing that Clinton’s injury was faked is now out; arguing that Clinton’s injury was extremely serious is now in. Karl Rove is leading the way.
He said if Clinton runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012.
The official diagnosis was a blood clot. Rove told the conference near LA Thursday, “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.”
Rove repeated the claim a number of times to the audience.
The man George W. Bush affectionately referred to as “Turd Blossom” has a well-earned reputation for sleaze, dishonesty, and ugly campaign tactics, and this fits nicely into his established pattern of behavior.
We can note, for example, that Clinton was in the hospital for a few days, not 30. We can also note that Clinton wore glasses because of the temporary “double vision” she suffered after she fainted, not “traumatic brain injury.”
But this isn’t about reality. This is about Karl Rove playing a game – one that he thinks he’s good at.
As reports about his comments generated chatter throughout the political world. Rove told Karen Tumulty, “Of course she doesn’t have brain damage.”
Of course.
Rove added that he believes Clinton suffered “a serious health episode” and she’ll “have to be forthcoming” about the incident if she runs for national office again.
But why say any of this? Every major presidential candidate releases medical records, just as a routine part of the process, so if the former Secretary of State throws her hat in the ring, Clinton already knows her health background will be scrutinized, just like every other candidate.
So why bring it up? Because Rove wants to raise doubts about the Democrat widely perceived as the strong potential candidate in the race.
Rove could go after Clinton’s record, but substantive debates aren’t his style. He could go after Clinton’s agenda, but she isn’t even an announced candidate, so there is no platform to attack.
And that brings us to targeting Clinton’s fitness for office. The next time she forgets a detail or flubs a word during a Q&A, we’re supposed to think about the seed Rove planted in the political world’s mind: an older candidate with a brain injury.
It’s cheap and politics at its most obnoxious, but then again, those are adjectives Rove is probably accustomed to hearing by now.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 13, 2014
“Why This Part Of Your Culture?”: A Question About Southern Culture And The Confederate Flag
Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing for Michael Boggs, a conservative Georgia state judge whom President Obama nominated for a federal judgeship as part of a deal to get Republicans to allow votes on some of his other nominees. (Lesson: Obstructionism works, so keep doing it!) Boggs got grilled by Democrats over some of the votes he took as a state legislator, including one to keep the Confederate stars and bars as part of the Georgia state flag. Which gives me the opportunity to get something off my chest.
Before I do though, it should be noted that there are plenty of white Southerners who wish that their states had long ago put the Confederate flag issue behind them, and agree with us Yankees that it’s a symbol of treason and white supremacy, and not the kind of thing you want to fly over your state house or put on a license plate, as you can in Georgia.
Boggs claimed in his hearing that he was offended by the Confederate flag, but voted for it because that’s what his constituents wanted. In other words, he’s not a racist, just a coward. Fair enough. But to Southerners who say, as some inevitably do, that the Confederate flag in particular, and Confederate fetishism more generally, reflect not support for slavery or white supremacy but merely an honoring of southern “culture,” my question is this: Why this part of your culture?
Because there are a lot of great things about Southern culture. There’s music, and food, and literature, and a hundred other things you can honor and uphold and celebrate. Why spend so much time and effort upholding the one part of your cultural heritage that is about slavery?
Couldn’t you just let that one thing go? To say, we love our culture, and we’re going to continue it and share it with you. But the slavery thing, and the treason against the United States thing? Let’s just put that where it belongs and get on with building a future. We can talk about the Civil War, and seek to understand it in all its complexity. We can teach our kids about it. But we’re not going to put the Confederate flag on our license plates anymore. Would that be so hard?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 13, 2014
“His Policies Speak For Themselves”: Rand Paul Can Try To Be His Party’s Bill Clinton, But He’ll Never Be President
Rand Paul continues to fling any turd he can find at the Clintons for pretty obvious reasons.
The first-term senator from Kentucky has to do something to show the GOP establishment he can be competitive in a general election, and he’s trying to keep the former president out of his home state’s Senate race so that Rand didn’t sell out to Mitch McConnell for nothing.
There’s no doubt that the younger Paul is a savvy tactician. The proof of this is that he’s ironically trying to follow Bill Clinton’s path to the presidency by staking out a series of “Sister Soulja moment“-like strategic breaks from his party.
Last week, he noted that the GOP’s repulsive attempts to stop minorities from voting are “offending” people. Paul was the first Republican to call out Ted Nugent’s “sub-human mongrel” slurs against President Obama. And he’s built lots of credibility with civil libertarians on the right and left by focusing on “drones,” which has become a code word for “civilian casualties,” which happen to be down under this president, along with military casualties and wars.
Though Paul’s own drone stance is complicated by the fact he thinks it’s cool for a drone to take out an American suspected of robbing a liquor store, his non-interventionist tendencies and willingness to negotiate with Iran do all Americans a favor, providing a hedge against the far right’s recent destructive tendencies toward war.
These anti-war stands will also lead to a deluge of attacks funded by hundreds of millions of dollars should he become competitive in the 2016 Republican primary, which has been designed to give Jeb Bush the nomination, should Jeb want it.
However, these stands are not why Paul will never be president. America is as nearly non-interventionist as he is these days. His Aqua-Buddha past and support for ending some of the drug war have seeped into the mainstream, too. Rand probably can even get away with a dad whose “institute” publishes the work of 9/11 truthers.
What voters won’t tolerate are Rand Paul’s key actual policies:
- He released a budget that calls for the immediate privatization of Medicare and Social Security along with raising the retirement age;
- He favors a flat tax, which would cut taxes for millionaires and raise them on the middle class;
- He supports personhood, which would ban all abortions and some forms of birth control, a stand so unpopular it was even defeated in Mississippi.
Bill Clinton’s strategy was to make the Democratic Party appear more moderate. Rand Paul gets that rhetorically, perhaps.
But single women aren’t going to elect a president who would appoint Supreme Court justices who believe a fertilized egg has 14th Amendment rights. The middle class and seniors aren’t going to trade the Medicare promise for more tax breaks for millionaires. One decent comment on voter ID isn’t going to erase Paul’s opposition to immigration reform — just as one trip to Detroit won’t make him an “inner city” hero.
The usual caveats apply. The economy could go bust or we could find out that #Benghazi is worse than Iraq, 9/11, Watergate, Iran/Contra, Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy combined.
But Democrats have a natural advantage in 2016, and Rand Paul would take that advantage and put it on steroids.
UPDATE: In a statement to Slate‘s Dave Weigel, Rand Paul’s Super PAC director backed off the senator’s criticisms of voter ID laws: “At no point did Senator Paul come out against voter ID laws. In terms of the specifics of voter ID laws, Senator Paul believes it’s up to each state to decide that type of issue.”
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, May 13, 2014
“Marco Rubio Disqualifies Himself”: ‘Hey Man’, There’s A Difference Between Climate Science And Meteorology
If American presidents need to prove a basic ability to accept facts, then Senator Marco Rubio of Florida—who’s publicly mulling a run — just disqualified himself from competition.
In an interview with ABC on Sunday, days after the release of an alarming White House report on the present and future effects of climate change on the United States, Mr. Rubio said:
“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”
There’s something almost cute about the last part of that sentence — a hedge he can bring out in a general election if he’s accused of willful stupidity. I’m not a climate-change denier, he might say, I just don’t think scientists are giving us an accurate picture.
Does Mr. Rubio think scientists are lying? Or that they don’t know what they’re talking about? Either way, what leads him to believe that the “portrait” of climate change offered by scientists is inaccurate?
Previously, Mr. Rubio told a GQ reporter “I’m not a scientist, man”—when asked about the age of the earth. (He went on to say we may never know “whether the earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras”).
Yet he sounded science-y, if not scientific, when — on Sunday — he argued that “our climate is always changing. And what [scientists] have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and — and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that’s directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activity.”
He believes that climate scientists have made a schoolboy error, and that he—Marco “not a scientist, man” Rubio — knows better.
This is particularly funny since Mr. Rubio felt the need to point out last week that President Obama, who does believe in climate change, is “not a meteorologist.” Mr. Rubio may or may not know that there’s a difference between climate science and meteorology; but, setting that aside, he’s evidently aware — when it suits him — that there’s a difference between scientific and political expertise.
Rubio defenders might argue that it doesn’t matter whether or not the senator thinks “human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate” — so long as he’s willing to do something about those dramatic changes.
He’s not.
“I don’t agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow, there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate,” he said on Sunday.
Later he added, “I have no problem with taking mitigation activity. What I have a problem with is these changes to our law that somehow politicians say are going to change our weather. That’s absurd.”
Here’s the kicker: Mr. Rubio sits on the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and the Subcommittee on Science and Space.
By: Juliet Lapidos, Taking Note, Editors Blog, The New York Times, May 12, 2014
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