“GOP Hot Mess”: It’s Almost Enough To Make You Feel Bad For Them, Almost
It’s hard enough fighting a war against the president of the United States, with his bully pulpit and the resources of the executive branch at his disposal. But how can you prevail over him when all your time is spent battling your own comrades? This is the dilemma the Republican party confronts.
It’s happening everywhere. Mitch McConnell, who could plausibly claim to have done more to undermine Barack Obama than anyone else in the country, now faces a Tea Party primary challenge in his re-election race. Yesterday the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee lit into his party’s leadership after the Speaker pulled a bill funding transportation and housing from the floor, probably because they didn’t have the votes to pass it. Two likely 2016 presidential candidates, Senator Rand Paul and Governor Chris Christie, are in a public battle of insults that has all the dignity and gravitas of a grade-school playground slap-fight. Heroes of the right like Ted Cruz pour contempt on their colleagues for knuckling under to liberals, while establishment figures like John McCain fire back with equal derision. And the issue of immigration reform continues to rip the party apart at the seams, with elite Republicans convinced the GOP needs to pass reform if it’s to win a presidential campaign any time soon, and the party’s base (and the members of Congress who represent it) dead-set against anything that looks too kind to undocumented immigrants.
It wasn’t too long ago that Democrats looked at the Republican party with envy, marveling at its ability to keep all its factions talking, thinking, and moving in lockstep. That unity of purpose and action may return one day, but for now, the GOP is a hot mess. It’s almost enough to make you feel bad for them. Almost.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor; Jamie Fuller, The American Prospect, August 1, 2013
“A Corporate Honeypot”: Look Out, Here Comes The New Border-Industrial Complex
“Good fences make good neighbors,” goes the old adage. That civilizing thought refers to such friendly structures as the beautiful rock walls of New England, elegant split rails in the South, iconic whitewashed pickets of the Midwest and even privacy fences in neighborhoods all across our country.
But the neighborly adage definitely did not contemplate the 700-mile, 20-foot-high, drone-patrolled, electronically monitored fence of steel and razor wire that our government has erected across our nation’s border with Mexico, from the tip of Texas to California’s Pacific Coast.
This thing is not a fence, but a monstrous wall of hostility, a deliberate affront to our Mexican neighbors. As Senator John McCain aptly put it in a recent debate on immigration, our Land of the Free has constructed “the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall!”
There are four big flaws with the theory that you can “secure” a border (i.e., keep people from crossing it) by throwing up a big ol’ wall. First, it doesn’t work. A 20-foot wall quickly begets 22-foot ladders — people are innately inventive, and those determined to get in or out will find many ways to do it.
Second, walls create bigger problems than they resolve, for they are deeply divisive. Our Mexican wall is ugly, both literally and in the unmistakable message of contempt it screams nonstop at the Mexican people. It’s generating bitterness toward us — and that turns neighbors into enemies.
Third, that wall has physically ripped healthy relationships apart. For centuries, families, friends, businesses and cities themselves were thoroughly integrated into unified communities across the artificial line drawn on a map.
Fourth, such walls are insanely expensive — so far, Washington has hurled tens of billions of dollars at this one to build, maintain and police it. Enforcement alone costs $18 billion per year. In addition, states have dumped untallied billions into it.
Can these policymakers even spell w-a-s-t-e? Yet the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly in June to waste another $46 billion to build 700 more miles of the hateful wall and double the number of militarized border agents.
Is there no other need in our country for that money? Nothing constructive we might do with it?
But I shouldn’t be too harsh on Washington, for both Republicans and Democrats are beginning to respond aggressively to economic needs. “It has been a tough time,” says one Washington insider, noting with relief that a new spending proposal “could help out.”
Unfortunately, he and Congress aren’t referring to your tough times or helping out with your needs. No, no — they are rushing to the aid of the multibillion-dollar military-industrial complex. The government, you see, has not been getting our nation into enough wars to satisfy the insatiable appetite that Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other war profiteers have for government money. But now they’ve spied a new place they can militarize with their high-tech, high-cost, razzle-dazzle weaponry: yes, that border we share with Mexico.
In recent months, these corporate predators deployed an army of lobbyists to Congress, armed with mass campaign contributions. Targeting the immigration issue, “border security!” is their battle cry. They’ve already conquered the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill, stuffing it with $46 billion for goosed up militarization of the 2,000-mile border. They’ve literally turned the immigration bill into a corporate honeypot. More drones! More electronic gadgetry! More agents needing more weapons, night-vision goggles and other war toys!
Various corporate lobbyists put their specific wish lists directly in the Senate bill. Rather than calling generally for the purchase of certain categories of hardware, it mandates brand-name purchases. For example, the bill requires the border patrol to buy six airborne radar systems from Northrop at $9.3 million each and 15 Black Hawk helicopters from Sikorsky at $17 million apiece.
What we have here is the emergence of a full-fledged monster — a Border-Industrial Complex that literally will tax us with an ever-expanding policy of permanent border war.
How long before they use the cry of “terrorism!” to militarize the Canadian border, too? And what after that? My guess is they’ll want to seal off those pesky antiwar radicals in places like Vermont! Ultimately, they can fence all of us in. Or is it out?
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, July 31, 2013
“The Nature Of His Public Service”: John Boehner’s Plan To Hurt The Country On Purpose
Sequestration cuts, we learned yesterday, continue to undermine the U.S. economy severely, and are quickly losing support of the congressional Republicans who pushed for the policy in the first place. As the GOP budget strategy unravels, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said yesterday the sequester is “unrealistic,” “ill-conceived,” and a policy that “must be brought to an end.”
For now, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) doesn’t give a darn.
Speaker John A. Boehner came before the mics on Thursday, and he made one thing clear: The sequester is here to stay until the White House gets serious about spending cuts.
“Sequestration is going to remain in effect until the president agrees to cuts and reforms that will allow us to remove it,” the Ohio Republican said to reporters in his weekly news conference. “The president insisted on the sequester none of us wanted, none of us like it, there are smarter ways to cut spending.”
It’s frightening how little Boehner understands about this policy. He’s the Speaker of the House, for goodness sake.
First, the president didn’t “insist on the sequester.” That’s just crazy.
Second, if “none of us” want this stupid policy, it’s within Boehner’s power to stop the cuts that are hurting the country on purpose. For reasons that only make sense to him, the Speaker refuses.
Third, Boehner’s argument is that he’ll stop deliberately undermining the country when Obama “agrees to cuts and reforms.” But Obama has already approved $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, and offered Republicans even more. So far, GOP officials have offered no comparable concessions.
And finally, there’s the problem Boehner doesn’t like to talk about: he has no alternative.
In effect, he’s saying, “When Obama agrees to make me happy, I’ll agree to end the pain.” And what would make Boehner happy? He won’t say — Obama is supposed to just offer Republican goodies, in the hopes that the House Speaker will eventually say he’s satisfied and turn off the policy that’s hurting the country on purpose.
Maybe Boehner should take a moment to consider how he defines the nature of “public service.” Does he seriously believe he’s acting in the nation’s best interests by pushing a policy both parties hate and is clearly undermining economic growth and job creation?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 1, 2013
“Mitch McConnell Is Congress: It’s Hard Out There For An Obstructionist Minority Leader
To many people, a poll released today by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling probably came as a surprise. Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader in the Senate, is shown trailing his challenger, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, by a point. But he’s a Republican in a conservative state, and one of the leaders of his party. How could he be in danger of losing?
For starters, Grimes looks to be a serious opponent. Her father is a well-known former state senator, she’s already won a statewide campaign, and she’s made some terrific videos with her grandmothers, tapping into Kentucky’s substantial pro-grandma vote. But that’s not the real source of McConnell’s problems. While one might think that the more important and influential a senator is in national politics the easier time he’d have winning re-election, the opposite is true, especially at a time like this.
Almost 40 years ago, political scientist Richard Fenno identified a curious phenomenon among voters: they hate Congress, but love their congressman. Congress is seen as corrupt, incompetent, venal, beset by infighting among competing interests each driven by its own bad faith. But Congressman Smith? Why, he’s our boy! He went to the same high school as my cousin. I saw him at the Fourth of July parade. He helped my buddy’s grandma get her Social Security check. He got money for the new bridge over the river. That’s a big reason why even when Congress is incredibly unpopular, almost all incumbents-over 95 percent in some years-get re-elected.
And it isn’t just the personal connections that drive this phenomenon, it’s also the media. A friend of mine wrote his dissertation on the way members of Congress are covered in local media, and what he found is that unless you get embroiled in a scandal, the coverage is almost all positive. The local papers and TV stations will run your picture when you cut the ribbon at the senior center you obtained funding for, or seek out your sage words on whatever the issue of the day is, but they rarely write anything critical about you.
But if you’re Mitch McConnell, you don’t get the benefit of that glowing coverage, because you’re in the news all the time for your role in national issues. The people of Kentucky don’t get a different view of McConnell than people anywhere else, and what they see is a guy who, pretty much by his own admission, is one of the prime forces creating and sustaining congressional gridlock and all other manner of Washington dysfunction. Other voters might have the liberty to hate Congress but love their senator, but Mitch McConnell is Congress.
The truth is that McConnell has never been hugely popular in Kentucky. He’s not a particularly lovable guy, even though he is one of the shrewdest and most ruthless politicians you’ll ever encounter. I’d hesitate to bet against him. But don’t be surprised if he ends up losing next year.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 1, 2013
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