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“GOP’s New Class Of Jokers”: Meet The “Rising Stars” Of The Dumbest Rebrand Ever

To answer the questions Andy Kroll raised in his Wednesday Mother Jones piece exposing New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez as a terrible shithead — yes, Martinez probably is the next Sarah Palin. And yes, Martinez is also, as Kroll points out, probably the next Chris Christie. Which is to say that she is currently being floated as a great savior of the Republican Party, even though she is terrible.

But while Martinez and some of the “young guns” being scouted by the National Republican Congressional Committee may make for some more demographically representative campaign ads, the policies they have built their careers on are pretty indistinguishable from the sea of white men who have been driving the GOP into the ground. And it’s these policies that matter most to the politically engaged and highly motived voting blocs — unmarried women of color, in particular — who are shaping contentious elections and whom the GOP so desperately want on its side.

A Wednesday report from Politico more than bears this out. While the assault on reproductive rights has certainly galvanized women voters, as Stanley Greenberg and Erica Seifert note, the economy and the social safety net are energizing them, too:

With women Democratic leaders in the House and the U.S. Senate taking the lead, we began to examine the surprising impact of focusing like a laser on the economy and advancing an economic agenda for working women. This agenda is popular among all voters, but it is especially powerful among unmarried women. Hearing that agenda increased the support for a Democratic candidate on our surveys, but much more important, it greatly increased their likelihood of voting.

[An agenda focusing on equal pay, family leave, the minimum wage and the social safety net] increases unmarried women’s likelihood to vote and increases the chance that they will vote for Democrats. In our surveys, after hearing this agenda and also the best policies and messages from Republicans, the two-thirds of unmarried women who say they were almost certain to vote increases to 83 percent. That math could make the difference in November.

Let’s dispense with Christie here — partly because his whiteness and his maleness kind of disqualify him from the “rebrand” the GOP is going for and partly as wishful thinking that his presidential aspirations are legitimately dead — and look at where Martinez and some of the female “young guns” being touted as the bold new direction of the party stand on the issues that have alienated so many from the GOP.

Democrats in recent months have been hammering Republicans hard on the minimum wage and equal pay, and it’s an issue on which Martinez has a mixed record. In March, she vetoed a bill that would have raised her state’s minimum wage to a meager $8.50 an hour. Defending her veto, Martinez chided state Democrats for trying to raise the $7.50 minimum by a whole dollar instead of the 30 cent increase she was in favor of. “I was clear with lawmakers that I support an increase in the minimum wage in New Mexico — one that would put us on a level playing field with neighboring states,” she said at the time, noting that because Arizona pays its workers poverty wages, New Mexico should pay its workers poverty wages.

And while Martinez did sign an equal pay law passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, it hardly gets her out of the “war on women” weeds or makes her an ally to working women. In a measure that was both offensive to mothers and victims of sexual violence (and bizarrely embraced the Todd Akin/Paul Ryan “forcible rape” talking point at its most toxic), Martinez proposed a measure to require women in New Mexico to prove that their sexual assault qualified as “forcible rape” if they wanted childcare assistance for a child born as a result of rape. (After an outcry from advocates in the state, Martinez withdrew the language.)

The “Young Guns” — a GOP recruitment program that categorizes its most promising candidates into “contenders,” “on the radar,” and “young guns” — don’t fare much better. Virginia delegate Barbara Comstock, currently running for Congress and considered “on the radar,” called equal pay measures a “left-wing agenda,” and denounced the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as “partisan.” When debating access to later-term abortion in her state, Comstock declared there was “never” a health reason that a woman would need such a procedure. (This is totally and completely false.)

Arizona “young gun” Martha McSally, currently running for a United States House seat, wants to allow employers to deny their female workers birth control, and — like most of her GOP contemporaries — couches her defense of gender rating in insurance in the language of “religious freedom.” Mimi Walters, a “contender” in California, doesn’t support the inclusion of maternity coverage in health insurance. (How pro-family of her.) Utah “contender” Mia Love defended her party against the “war on women” label by arguing that the GOP — despite working feverishly to defund Planned Parenthood and roll back access to basic reproductive health services across the country — was the party of “choice,” because it wants “more free choice and more liberties” for all.

The names and faces may be unfamiliar to national audiences, but the policies are exactly the same. The hype around Martinez is following the same script that managed to convince the country that Christie is a “moderate.” The “young guns” are more of the same: an army of women who are beating the drum against reproductive rights, fighting equal pay in the states and pulling moves from the same tired playbook.

If it wasn’t such a cliché, I’d say something here about the GOP and the very definition of insanity.

If the party wants to stop its nose dive at the polls with all but an aging population of white voters, they should maybe try to find some candidates whose views and agendas aren’t so disdainful of and hostile to the voters they need to survive. It may also want to stop hailing bridge-burning assholes as the future of the GOP. That might help, too.

 

By: Katie McDonough, Salon, April 17, 2014

April 21, 2014 Posted by | GOP, War On Women | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Spirit Of Goldwaterism”: The Political Events Of Half A Century Ago Have Current Echoes

For all the hagiography directed at Ronald Reagan, I’ve always thought the real idol for the newly radicalized conservative movement of the Obama Era was Barry Goldwater, the original “constitutional conservative.” Mike Gerson agrees, and it worries him:

The 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act is also the 50th anniversary of the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Barry Goldwater, voting against the Civil Rights Act.

Goldwater, his defenders effectively argue, was not a racist, only an ideologue. True enough. He had been a founding member of the Arizona NAACP. He helped integrate the Phoenix public schools. His problems with the Civil Rights Act were theoretical and libertarian — an objection to the extension of federal power over private enterprise.

But some political choices are symbolic and more than symbolic. Following Goldwater’s vote, a young Colin Powell went out to his car and affixed a Lyndon Johnson bumper sticker. “While not himself a racist,” concluded Martin Luther King Jr., “Mr. Goldwater articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racists.” Jackie Robinson, after attending the GOP convention in 1964, helped launch Republicans for Johnson.

In the 1960 election, Richard Nixon had won 32 percent of the African American vote. Goldwater got 6 percent in 1964. No Republican presidential candidate since has broken 15 percent….

Announcing his candidacy, Goldwater had pledged: “I will not change my beliefs to win votes. I will offer a choice, not an echo.” The choice was generally libertarian and Jeffersonian (in its resistance to federal power). The echo consisted of Republicans who had accommodated federal power on the welfare state, civil rights and much else. The energy of Goldwater’s movement was directed against compromised members of the GOP — the RINOs of their time. According to Goldwater, President Dwight Eisenhower had embraced “the siren song of socialism.” Goldwaterites accused the Republican establishment of “me-tooism” and advocating a “dime store New Deal….”

Sound familiar? No question about it.

The political events of half a century ago have current echoes. The spirit of Goldwaterism is abroad among tea party activists. Their ideological ideal is often libertarian and Jeffersonian. A few — Rand Paulâ(R-Ky.) briefly during his Senate campaign; Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) at a recent town hall — balk at accepting the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act. More generally, they believe that the GOP’s political recovery must begin with the defeat of compromised GOP elites. Never mind that those elites, by any historical standard, are conservative….

But it gets worse:

The problem comes in viewing Goldwater as an example rather than as a warning. Conservatives sometimes describe his defeat as a necessary, preliminary step — a clarifying and purifying struggle — in the Reagan revolution. In fact, it was an electoral catastrophe that awarded Lyndon Johnson a powerful legislative majority, increased the liberal ambitions of the Great Society and caused massive distrust of the GOP among poor and ethnic voters. The party has never quite recovered. Ronald Reagan was, in part, elected president by undoing Goldwater’s impression of radicalism. And all of Reagan’s domestic achievements involved cleaning up just a small portion of the excesses that Goldwater’s epic loss enabled.

That’s exactly right, in both respects. The continuities between the Goldwater and Reagan campaigns–and especially the 1976 Reagan campaign that viewed itself as a purge of RINO Gerald Ford–are impossible to ignore, up to and including the signature “Viva/Ole” call and response of the shock troops in both. From within, Reagan’s ascent looked like a consummation of the 1964 crusade, not a correction. But had that impression been more general in the electorate, Reagan would likely not have won, even with all the advantages he had in 1980.

But the “spirit of Goldwaterism” is indeed alive in the activist “base” of the GOP. And 50 years after the original, it’s no more likely that “constitutional conservatism” is the basis for any real popular majority, and its advocates’ disdain for “popular majorities” supplies the final proof.

 

By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, April 18, 2014

April 20, 2014 Posted by | Conservatives, Tea Party | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“For Koch Brothers, All Politics Is Local”: Influencing Even The Most Local Policy Decisions

The Tennessee State Senate brokered a deal this week to move forward with a hotly contested bus rapid transit (BRT) project. The bill will provide the city of Nashville and neighboring Moore County with 7.1 miles of rapid bus transit lanes. But because of the compromise in the Senate, the BRT plan will now face greater oversight: The proposed buses will be allowed to use lanes separate from regular traffic, but will need approval from the state Assembly and by the commissioner of transportation before constructing those lanes.

Prior to Thursday, the Tennessee State Senate had been blocking the bill, in part because of an effort by a group affiliated with noted Republican donors Charles and David Koch.

The Koch brothers, and the Tennessee arm of their political organization Americans For Prosperity, had no explicit economic interest in blocking the bus project from moving forward. Rather, as the Tennessee director of Americans For Prosperity told The Tennessean in March, it was something of a trial run for implementing Koch-backed legislation around the country. “With supermajorities in both houses,” AFP state director Andrew Ogles told the paper, “Tennessee is a great state to pass model legislation that can be leveraged in other states.”

The citizens of Nashville and Moore County, however, are not the first Americans to feel the effects of the Kochs’ “model” legislation.

In a similar example of Koch influence on the local level, in 2012 Americans for Prosperity joined the effort to halt a streetcar project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The streetcar plan would connect the lower east side of the city with an Amtrak station two miles away.

The drive was led by Republican alderman Bob Donovan. After construction was approved by the Milwaukee Common Council, Donovan held numerous press conferences in the attempt to publicize a petition and force a referendum on the streetcar plan.

The effort got a leg up when Americans for Prosperity set up a website, “A Streetcar Named Disaster,” to gather signatures for Donovan’s petition.

Donovan’s union with Americans for Prosperity led other elected officials to question his loyalties. Jeff Fleming, then-spokesman for the Department of City Development, said in a statement: ”We never hear Ald. Donovan complain about his Republican friends cutting Milwaukee’s local road aids, our recycling aids or our state shared revenue, which funds police and firefighters. The alderman is so tight with groups and individuals who love gutting and kicking Milwaukee, you have to wonder where his loyalties are.”

Coincidentally, the streetcar project is a hallmark of Mayor Tom Barrett’s administration. Barrett unsuccessfully ran for governor of Wisconsin in 2010 and again in a recall election in 2012, losing to Republican Scott Walker both times. Walker has a close relationship with Americans for Prosperity, who argue that his anti-union legislation is an example that other Republican governors should follow.

Like the proposed rapid transit plan in Nashville, the Milwaukee streetcar plan has moved ahead over AFP’s objections.

The Kochs’ distaste for government-subsidized transportation did result in one big victory on the state level. In Florida, a large mass-transit plan to bring high-speed rail to the state was rejected after Republican Rick Scott was elected. The plan would have used state and federal funds to connect the cities of Tampa and Orlando, with plans to extend it to other tourist hotspots in southern Florida.

The Koch brothers’ fingerprints were all over Scott’s rejection of the plan. For starters, Governor Scott and the Kochs have a long and storied relationship. Scott, for example, famously attended a secret, invitation only meeting held by the Koch brothers in Colorado soon after being elected Florida governor.

The Koch brothers’ influence over Florida’s high-speed rail plan, however, extends beyond their relationship with Governor Scott.

As Curt Levine, former legislator in the Florida House of Representatives, noted at the time, Scott’s decision to nominate Robert Poole as transportation advisor deftly revealed the Koch brothers’ influence in his administration.

Levine wrote in a 2011 op-ed: “Poole is director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, a right-wing lobby group of road-based transportation industrial interests, including petroleum, asphalt and rubber-tire manufacturers. And, not coincidentally, Reason receives substantial funding by the ultraconservative billionaire Koch brothers. David Koch serves as a Reason trustee.”

Levin further explained that Scott’s decision to reject the high-speed rail plan was based, in part, on a report by the Reason Foundation that urged Scott to reject the plan ”as Wisconsin and Ohio have recently done.”

The fact that Koch-funded groups are influencing even the most local policy decisions should perhaps come as no surprise. As The Nation reported in 2011, the Koch brothers have been funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for years. The council touts itself as an organization that brings together conservative state legislators and members of the private sector to further free-market principles. And ALEC has been living up to that tagline — in precisely the way the Koch brothers want it to.

 

By: Ben Feuerherd, The National Memo, April 18, 2014

April 19, 2014 Posted by | Infrastructure, Koch Brothers, Local Politics | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Feigning Outrage”: Outraised By Grimes, McConnell Rethinks Money-As-Speech

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) has once again outraised Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) in their 2014 Senate race — and all of a sudden, McConnell no longer seems so enthusiastic about the use of money as free speech.

In the first three months of 2014, Grimes raised $2.7 million, edging McConnell’s $2.4 million haul. McConnell still holds a decisive financial advantage in the race; his campaign has almost $10.4 million in cash on hand, more than double Grimes’ total.

That said, McConnell’s campaign has already spent more than $7 million in the 2014 election, only to see a slight decline in his polling numbers. And it seems that the new fundraising totals have made the Republican leader’s campaign defensive.

“The very same ultra-rich liberal elite who bankrolled Barack Obama into the White House are pulling out all the stops for Alison Lundergan Grimes,” spokeswoman Allison Moore told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “Kentuckians know darn well her entire campaign is funded by those who seek to destroy Kentucky values and our way of life and the only way they can accomplish that is by getting rid of the man responsible for stopping them, Mitch McConnell.”

Moore’s implication — that Grimes is wrong for taking money from wealthy out-of-state donors — is rather ironic, considering that few politicians raise money from the “ultra-rich elite” better than McConnell does. According to the Wall Street Journal, as of December 31, 80 percent of McConnell’s campaign contributions came from donors outside of Kentucky (good for a total of more than $9.3 million). And the top donors to his campaign committee — which include Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs — don’t exactly scream “Kentucky values.”

McConnell has also benefited from outside groups that have jumped directly into the race; $3.4 million has already been spent in support of the Republican, according to GOP ad-tracking firm SMG Delta.

Although McConnell’s campaign is now feigning outrage that Grimes has raised big sums from “Obama’s liberal Hollywood friends” like Jeffrey Katzenberg, the senator is generally one of the nation’s most outspoken defenders of outside money in politics. In 2012, McConnell led the opposition to the DISCLOSE Act, which would have required political groups to disclose campaign contributions of more than $10,000. At the time, the minority leader argued that full disclosure could be used as a “political weapon,” enabling the government to unleash “harassment and intimidation tactics” against those who donate to opposition candidates.

Today, it appears that McConnell would like to turn the weapon against the “liberal elite” backing Grimes.

 

By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, April 16, 2014

April 18, 2014 Posted by | Campaign Financing, Mitch Mc Connell | , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Circle Of Scam Keeps Turning”: In The Conservative World, Everybody Gets Rich At Some Stage Of The Game

A couple of times in the past I’ve written about what I call the conservative circle of scam, the way so many people on the right are so adept at fleecing each other. Here’s a piece about high-priced consultants milking the Koch brothers for everything they can get, and here’s one about my favorite story, the way that, in 2012, Dick Morris played ordinary people who wanted to see Barack Obama driven from office (he solicited donations to a super PAC for that purpose, laundered the money just a bit, and apparently kept most of it for himself without ever spending any of it on defeating Obama). The essence of the circle of scam is that everybody gets rich at some stage of the game, with the exception of the rank-and-file conservatives who fuel it all with their votes, their eyeballs, and their money.

Today there are two new media stories showing that the circle of scam is humming along nicely. The first comes from Michael Calderone at Huffington Post, who reports on an interesting relationship between Sean Hannity and the Tea Party Patriots. Here’s how it works: TPP is a sponsor of Hannity’s radio show. Then Hannity appears in TPP’s fundraising appeals, and some of the money generated inevitably goes back to Hannity’s radio show. Then Hannity goes on his Fox News show and talks about the terrific work the Tea Party Patriots are doing. Everybody wins!

The details of Hannity’s contract with his syndicate have never been made public, so I have no idea if he shares in the show’s advertising revenue. But even if he doesn’t, he benefits from keeping that revenue high. Last year he moved from Cumulus, where he reportedly made $20 million a year, to Premiere Radio Networks, which, one would presume, pays him something similar.

The second story comes from Kenneth Vogel and Mackenzie Weinger of Politico, who report that it isn’t just Hannity. A bunch of conservative media figures are in on the action, none gaining more than Glenn Beck, who has been paid an astounding $6 million by the Tea Party group FreedomWorks in recent years to promote its efforts. As Dick Armey, who was ousted as FreedomWorks chief in a recent coup, says, this kind of arrangement “compromises the integrity of the pundit-guru, as it were, and it’s an undignified expenditure of the part of the outfit that’s mining the attention.” Well put, Dick. One does need one’s pundit-gurus to have integrity. But even if they don’t, they’ve still got authority, and that’s what the organizations are paying for: the hosts’ ability to tell their audiences: “This is where you should send your money.” And send it they do.

What’s most interesting is that all of this expenditure is fueling an occasionally vicious internecine battle within the conservative movement. Sure, all these hosts spend much of their time bashing Barack Obama. But they’ve been successfully enlisted on one side of the war between the Republican establishment and the ultra-conservative Tea Party, a war that still rages even if the Tea Party is having somewhat less success ousting incumbent Republicans than it did in 2010 or 2012. Instead of conservative media being a force for unity, one that educates the base on what they should be angry about and where to focus their energy, they’re fomenting division and strife within the conservative coalition.

Would the likes of Hannity and Beck be doing so anyway even if they weren’t getting paid? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s certainly something to see. Remember when the right was a smoothly functioning, terrifyingly unified monolith of opinion and action? I wonder if they’ll ever get that back.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, April 17, 2014

April 18, 2014 Posted by | Conservative Media, Conservatives, Tea Party | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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