“GOP’s Wango Tango With Ted Nugent”: Republicans Are Dancing With A Professional, Maniacal, Racist Freak
For well over a year now, Americans have been treated to the spectacle of GOP leaders plotting and planning and searching for clever ways to assure the public that it is not the party of old, angry, testosterone-heavy, and most of all white grievance politics. Granted, this is a delicate task, calling for a thoughtful, multi-faceted approach. But how’s this for a modest starting point: Stop sucking up to freak-show, has-been rocker Ted Nugent?
Honestly, it was sad enough when Rep. Steve Stockman took Ted as his date to the State of the Union address this month. Then again, these days, people pretty much expect that level of adolescent fuck-you from rank-and-file House members. But a leading gubernatorial candidate from our second-most populous state?
Sure enough, there was Nugent in all his unhinged glory, campaigning in North Texas on Tuesday for state attorney general and gubernatorial wannabe Greg Abbott. Texas Dems understandably threw a fit, pointing to some of Ted’s latest ravings, most notably his calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.”
Abbott’s team pushed back limply. Before the appearances, they pooh-poohed concerns about Nugent, praising him as a great patriot. As Abbott’s spokesman informed Politico:
Ted Nugent is a forceful advocate for individual liberty and constitutional rights—especially the Second Amendment rights cherished by Texans. … While he may sometimes say things or use language that Greg Abbott would not endorse or agree with, we appreciate the support of everyone who supports protecting our Constitution.
Likewise, following the rally in Denton, Abbott told reporters:
Sen. Davis knows she is suffering with voters because of her flipping and flopping on 2nd Amendment gun laws. And she knows that Ted Nugent calls her out on her disregard for 2nd Amendment rights. We are going to expose Sen. Davis’ weaknesses on the 2nd Amendment and show that in this area and in so many other areas, she represents the liberalism of Barack Obama that is so bad for Texas.”
Oh, so this is all about Abbott’s love for the Second Amendment? Bullshit. Yes, Nugent is loud and proud about his fondness for playing with guns. But the Texas governor’s race is not about protecting gun rights. Wendy Davis is no Michael Bloomberg here. She has voted to allow guns in cars on college campuses and to put armed marshals in schools. The woman supports open-carry laws, for God’s sake. She may not strut around begging the president to “suck on my machine gun” ala Nugent, but that’s only because she’s not a professional maniac.
Abbott’s snuggling up to Nugent is not about the Second Amendment or the Fourth Amendment or any part of the Constitution. It is about courting and stoking the absolute ugliest, most paranoid, most ass-backwards elements of the GOP coalition. We’re not talking here about garden-variety gun lovers or small-government enthusiasts or evangelical values voters. We’re talking about people who find it quaint when Nugent starts raving about how black people are lazy or how disgusting he finds gays or how Hillary Clinton is a “toxic cunt” and “a two-bit whore for Fidel Castro.” (Media Matters has a sprawling, multi-decade sampling of Ted’s greatest hits here.) We’re talking about people who find it hilarious when Nugent waves his little guns around and froths, “Hey Hillary! You might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.”
A great patriot indeed.
To be fair, Abbott is hardly the only prominent Republican to embrace the unhinged rocker. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the very man Abbott is looking to succeed, asked his good buddy Ted to headline Perry’s 2007 inaugural ball. (With a respectful nod to Texas’s increasingly diverse populace, Nugent showed up clad in a confederate-flag shirt and started talking smack about the state’s non-English speaking residents.) Nor are Texas pols the only Nugent courters. Even poor Mitt Romney sought Nugent’s (grudging) endorsement two years ago.
That said, it was Romney’s—and the broader GOP’s—epic failure that touched off this recent round of soul-searching among Republicans. Sure, the trials and tribulations of Obamacare have given them breathing space of late, but the times they are a changing—along with the nation’s demographics—and Republicans’ cozying up to characters like Nugent is not a recipe for a healthy national party.
The morning after Ted and Greg’s road show, I emailed a handful of Republican strategists. Subject line: “Ted Nugent.” Question: “Why? That’s all I want to know. Why?” Not even the most conservative among them had a serious answer.
As for Gregg Abbott, when pressed by reporters about the appropriateness of his new pal’s comments, the candidate, predictably, claimed ignorance. “I don’t know what he may have done or said in his background. What I do know is that Ted Nugent stands for the Constitution.”
I like to think that Abbott is not actually this stupid. It’s far less troubling to assume that the man likely to become the next governor of Texas is a shameless liar than to imagine that he’d embrace the famously vile Nugent without some vague sense of what made the guy a wingnut celebrity to begin with. (Hint for the would-be governor: It’s not Nugent’s 40-year-old hit song.)
Then again, maybe Abbott really is that clueless. At this point, Nugent has been spouting racist, sexist, generally insane invective for so long that the ugly particulars of any one rant quickly dissolve into his vast sea of lunacy. People tend to roll their eyes and give Nugent a pass because the ranting is seen as just part of his schtick. I mean, he’s the Motor City Madman, right? And, this being America, the guy can say whatever the hell he wants, right?
That he can—and does. But so long as Republicans keep hitching their wagon to a star like Nugent, they really shouldn’t wonder why more and more Americans see the party as defined by an unsettling blend of rage and ignorance.
By: Michelle Cottle, The Daily Beast, February 19, 2014
“We’ve Got A Good Thing Going”: Why Can’t You Miserable Commoners Be Happier With Your Lot?
Venture capital billionaire Tom Perkins may be new to the trolling game, but he made an absolutely spectacular debut when he wrote to the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back warning that resentment toward the super-rich in American society reminded him a lot of the Nazi campaign against the Jews. Then last weekend, he followed that bit of wisdom by proposing that the wealthy ought to get more votes than the unwashed masses, since they pay more in taxes. “The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,” he said in a speech. “But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”
That, you’re probably saying, is abominable. Why not just let the richest one person choose the president? He’s got the most money, so he’s obviously the wisest and has the greatest interest in government, right? Although Perkins might not be too pleased with that outcome, since the richest person in America is Bill Gates, who seems pretty liberal, what with his efforts to improve global health and fight poverty rather than letting the sick and destitute contemplate their well-deserved fate while they gaze up in admiration at their betters.
Okay, so Tom Perkins is kind of a lunatic. But is he a representative lunatic? Do his peers up in the penthouse suite and down at the yacht club think the same things he does, or is he an outlier?
This is actually a difficult question to answer, because while most good surveys ask about people’s income, their scales usually stop at a pretty modest level. Often the final option is “$100,00 per year or more,” which doesn’t allow you to separate the wealthy from the upper-middle-class. Nevertheless, the higher you go up the income scale, the more Republican people tend to be. Take, for instance, the 2012 election results:
Even if those with incomes over $100,000 tilt Republican, there are still plenty of Democrats there. But that’s not really the people Perkins is talking about. The people who arouse his concern are those earning seven, eight, or nine figures a year, and being Republican is only the start (I’m sure there are plenty of Republicans who think Perkins takes his advocacy for the upmarket downtrodden quite a ways too far). I’ve only come across one study that attempted to assess these people’s opinions quantitatively. It’s this one from Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels, and Jason Seawright. The sample of ultra-wealthy people they managed to assemble is pretty small, so we shouldn’t make too many sweeping judgments from it, but the differences with the general public they found are pretty striking:
The days of noblesse oblige are obviously long gone. Fortunately for these folks, it isn’t really necessary for them to get votes proportional to their net worth; the government already works hard for them. Even in the administration of that socialist Barack Obama, the Dow has hit record levels and the wealth of the wealthiest has gone nowhere but up. So things are working out pretty well. Which is why, I’m guessing, most of them would like Tom Perkins to keep his mouth shut. Sure, there may be a few who actually agree with him that the wealthy deserve more votes. But why admit that in public? After all, they’ve got a good thing going.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 19, 2014
“The Importance Of Having Health Insurance”: The 2014 Factor No One Is Talking About — Seniors Are Turning On The GOP
Congressional Republicans have passed a budget, raised the debt limit and punted on immigration reform with one goal in mind. They want to make the 2014 midterm elections about Obamacare.
The party seems to be so confident of this strategy that it doesn’t appear to have any “Plan B,” as The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent continually points out.
While going all-in on the Affordable Care Act makes sense inside the right-wing mindset, where the law is one Fox News interview from disappearing to wherever Mitt Romney was supposed to go, seniors — America’s most reliable voters — may end up leading a backlash against a post-government-shutdown Republican Party that is even less popular now than when George W. Bush left office.
Undoubtably, the poll numbers for the president’s health law remain low months after HealthCare.gov’s bungled rollout — even though it has helped lead the country to the lowest uninsured rate in five years.
But since the 2010 election, after which real, live Americans began gaining health insurance coverage due to the Affordable Care Act, has there been even one election that has been swayed by Obamacare?
Having been the godfather of the law didn’t cost Mitt Romney the 2012 GOP primary. Having signed the bill into law didn’t cost President Obama his re-election. It didn’t stop Democrats from picking up seats in the Senate and the House. Since 2012, Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) was re-elected after accepting Medicaid expansion and Terry McAuliffe won Virginia’s governorship with a jobs plan centered upon expanding Medicaid.
In Florida, Democrat Alex Sink narrowly leads Republican David Jolly in a special election to replace Rep. Bill Young (R-FL), who passed away late last year. As Jolly attacks Sink on Obamacare, Sink defends the most popular part of the law — the ban on insurers considering pre-existing conditions — and attacks Jolly on Medicare.
Republicans exploited seniors’ fears of Medicare cuts in 2010 — then voted for the same cuts when they took the House. They also went a step further by proposing a plan to radically remake the single-payer system that provides health coverage to every American 65 or older.
Jolly, a lobbyist, has never officially endorsed or voted for the plan created by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to turn Medicare into a voucher system. However, nearly every sitting Republican member of the House has.
Ryan’s plan and opposition to Obamacare earned him boos when he spoke at the AARP convention as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012. And it was certainly part of the reason he was barely visible in the last few weeks of the campaign.
And since the 2012 election, Republicans’ standing with seniors has only deteriorated.
“In 2010, seniors voted for Republicans by a 21-point margin (38 percent to 59 percent),” Democracy Corps’ Erica Siefert noted in her post “Why Seniors Are Turning Against The GOP,” published months before the government shutdown.
In the latest McClatchy-Marist National Poll, the GOP only had a 4-point margin over Democrats.
The same poll found that 58 percent of adults 45-59 and 54 percent of those 60 and older had an unfavorable view of the president. However, 73 percent of adults 45-59 and 74 percent of those 60 and older also reported an unfavorable view of Republicans in Congress.
Democrats recognize that Obamacare may be a liability and are circulating talking points that call attention to the fact that “65 percent of voters agree with the statement ‘we’ve wasted too much time talking about Obamacare and we have other problems to deal with.’” This aligns with polls that show again and again that most people would rather keep and fix the law than repeal it completely.
But it’s quite possible that the GOP’s stand on Medicare could ultimately be more harmful to their prospects than Obamacare is for Democrats.
Any Republican who sticks with repeal can be charged with wanting to raise prescription drug prices for seniors. Along with eliminating the closing of the Medicare drug “donut hole,” repeal also would erase subsidies that are potentially helping millions of older Americans afford care.
“I just cried, I was so relieved,” said 58-year-old Maureen Grey after using her new plan — purchased with the help of Obamacare subsidies — to visit a doctor.
Adults aged 55-64 make up 31 percent of the new enrollees in the health care marketplaces set up by the law. A new Associated Press report notes that workers nearing retirement have been hardest hit by the Great Recession and are in the most desperate need of what the law offers:
Aging boomers are more likely to be in debt as they enter retirement than were previous generations, with many having purchased more expensive homes with smaller down payments, said economist Olivia Mitchell of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. One in five has unpaid medical bills and 17 percent are underwater with their home values. Fourteen percent are uninsured.
As of December, 46 percent of older jobseekers were among the long-term unemployed compared with less than 25 percent before the recession.
And those financial setbacks happened just as their health care needs became more acute. Americans in their mid-50s to mid-60s are more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than other age groups, younger or older, accounting for 3 in 10 of the adult diabetes diagnoses in the United States each year. And every year after age 50, the rate of cancer diagnosis climbs.
For many of these Americans, the Medicare guarantee isn’t some distant, theoretical promise. It’s a necessity.
And with Obamacare bridging the gap until retirement, Republicans may find that their decision to make the 2014 election about health care will be as ill-advised as shutting down the government to defund it.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, February 18, 2014
“After Background Checks Were Scrapped In Missouri”: Confirmation That Weaknesses In Firearm Laws Lead To Deaths From Gun Violence
In recent years, advocates of gun reforms have pushed for expanded background checks, arguing that such measures, including closing the gun-show loophole, would improve public safety and reduce gun violence.
On the other end of the policy spectrum is Missouri, which had a background-check system before it was repealed in 2007. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health took a closer look at the impact on public safety in the state after the policy change, and the Washington Post’s Niraj Chokshi helped summarize the results.
The law’s repeal was correlated with a 23 percent spike in firearm homicide rates, or an additional 55 to 63 murders annually from 2008 to 2012, according to the study conducted by researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and to be published in the Journal of Urban Health.
“This study provides compelling confirmation that weaknesses in firearm laws lead to deaths from gun violence,” Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and the study’s lead author, said in a news release. “There is strong evidence to support the idea that the repeal of Missouri’s handgun purchaser licensing law contributed to dozens of additional murders in Missouri each year since the law was changed.”
For context, note that there was no comparable increase at the national level – in other words, it’s not like Missouri saw a spike because everyone nationwide was seeing a spike – and more to the point, the eight states that border Missouri also did not experience a similar increase.
That said, the states surrounding Missouri were affected.
From Chokshi’s report:
Police in border states that kept such laws reported a big spike in guns bought in Missouri that had been diverted to criminals. In 2009, Missouri exported 136 guns to neighboring Illinois and 78 to neighboring Kansas, according to data collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and compiled by Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
When Senate Republicans killed a bipartisan background-check proposal last year, considered in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, one of the more common refrains from opponents of reform was that background checks just don’t make a lot of difference. Even if proponents are well intentioned, the process itself is a feel-good measure with little real-world implications.
The data out of Missouri appears to point in a very different direction.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 18, 2014
“Christie’s Crisis Management”: The Governor Isn’t Navigating Those Perilous Waters Too Well
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has found himself in the midst of several ongoing scandals, and from a distance, it’s not at all clear he’s receiving the best possible advice. Indeed, according to the governor’s own office, Christie aides have gone rogue more than once lately.
There are no doubt plenty of experts in political crisis management who could help steer the governor through these perilous waters, but I talked with a knowledgeable friend this afternoon about the kind of advice Christie needs but doesn’t seem to be receiving.
First, it’s not a good idea for the governor to travel to a tropical resort while New Jersey residents are struggling with another snow storm – causing, among other things, roofs to collapse.
Second, it’s not a good idea for the governor to cancel a town-hall meeting with constituents, citing inclement weather, only to keep his commitment to travel to nearby New York City for a Republican fundraiser for the same evening.
Third, it’s not a good idea for the governor’s office to identify a potentially damaging witness and then go after his high-school antics through the national media.
Fourth, it’s not a good idea for the governor to hire a high-priced lawyer, have the taxpayers pick up the tab, and then sit back as he shamelessly tries to intimidate witnesses.
Fifth, it’s not a good idea for the governor to change his story as the controversies unfold.
Sixth, it’s not a good idea for the governor to keep pretending there may have been a traffic study.
And finally, it might be a good idea for the governor to look busy.
Christie can start by considering some reforms at the Port Authority.
Major structural reforms would require legislative approval in Albany and Trenton, which would be hard but definitely worth a try. New Jersey, for instance, could help matters by enacting the equivalent of a reform law approved in New York that, among other things, required board members to pledge to uphold their fiduciary duties to their agency’s mission, not to their patron in the governor’s mansion. Short of that, the two governors should make changes that could make the authority less political and more professional.
The Port Authority’s 12-member board of commissioners is appointed by the governors, six by each. They should be appointed on the basis of their professional qualifications, not political connections, as so often happens, and held to six-year term limits. Some holdovers have been there for more than 10 years.
Each commissioner should also publicly disclose potential conflicts of interest well before the authority makes its decisions. These potential conflicts should be regularly displayed on the Port Authority’s website. Commissioners have routinely been allowed to lobby for contracts that could affect personal businesses and, only later after the decision is made, would they formally recuse themselves in the official minutes. Their recusal in each case should be announced at the public board meeting.
It’d be a start, wouldn’t it?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 18, 2014
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