“Cleaving Unto Rand Paul”: Did Mitch McConnell Call For African-American Outreach To Republicans?
Last night Roll Call’s Meredith Shiner published a report on Mitch McConnell’s obsessive efforts to head off (or undermine) a right-wing primary challenge in 2014 (perhaps, other observers suggest, from Louisville business figure Matthew Bevin, who is being courted by Kentucky Tea Party activists, or perhaps from some other heavily funded direction.
That’s all interesting to be sure, but here’s what caught my attention in Shiner’s story, as part of a general theme of McConnell cleaving unto Rand Paul for protection:
McConnell has shown a special deference to his freshman partner. He has held multiple votes on Paul’s amendments, even though many of them barely attract supporters in the double digits, sometimes at the expense of veteran lawmakers’ proposals. He has repeatedly been among only a handful of Republicans to vote for Paul’s budget alternative. He hired Paul’s 2010 campaign manager. And aides take frequent opportunities to link the two men.
McConnell’s address to the National Urban League, for example, sounded a lot like Paul’s at Howard. According to a source familiar with McConnell’s speech, the leader told the room of black business leaders: “I want to see a day when more African-Americans look at the issues and realize that they identify with the Republican Party.” That message echoed Paul’s at the historically black university.
Yes, McConnell did his own “African-American outreach” speech the same week as Paul’s, though it attracted about one-tenth of one percent of Paul’s media attention. But check out the direct quote above. Sounds like Mitch is standing pat on the GOP’s merits and asking African-Americans to figure it out.
There are a lot of different ways for a guy like McConnell to send valentines to disgruntled wingnuts. But calling for African-Americans to conduct “outreach” to an unmoving GOP is a new one.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington MOnthly Political Animal, April 15, 2013
“Self-Deportation Can’t Be Rebranded”: Wording The Explanation Differently Doesn’t Change The Meaning
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appeared on “Meet the Press” last weekend and said something interesting about the Republican Party and its approach to immigration policy.
“[T]he politics of self-deportation are behind us,” Graham said. “Mitt Romney is a good man. He ran in many ways a good campaign, but it was an impractical solution, quite frankly. It was offensive. Every corner of the Republican Party from libertarians, the RNC, House Republicans and the rank and file Republican Party member is now understanding there has to be an earned pathway to citizenship.”
For those hoping to see comprehensive immigration reform this year, it was a heartening sentiment. It was also mistaken — the politics of self-deportation are still at the core of many GOP contingents.
A pocket of conservatives is lashing out privately and publicly against broad immigration reform and could seriously complicate any momentum for a House deal. […]
Some in the party want to solve the problem much the same way that Mitt Romney did in 2012.
[Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California] said: “You make sure that people who are here illegally do not get jobs, and they don’t get benefits and they will go home. It’s called attrition. I don’t happen to believe in deportation. If you make sure they don’t get jobs and they don’t get benefits, I mean Mitt [Romney] called it self-deportation, but it’s not; it’s just attrition. They’ll go home on their own.”
What I love about this quote is its amazing effort to try to rebrand “self-deportation,” as if the meaning of the phrase can change if the explanation is worded slightly differently. For Rohrabacher, he doesn’t want mass deportation from the government; he just wants to create an environment in which undocumented immigrants’ lives are made so miserable, they’ll “go home on their own.”
Rohrabacher says, however, this is “not” self-deportation, which it obviously is. In fact, he’s describing the policy precisely.
“[T]he politics of self-deportation are behind us”? We should be so lucky.
If I had to guess, I’d say the odds of the Senate approving an immigration bill are quite good — it’s not a sure thing, but the smart money says a reform bill will pass the upper chamber. But whether the radicalized House Republican majority will tolerate a popular, bipartisan bill is a much tougher question.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 12, 2013
“GOP Deficit Scolds”: By All Means, Cut Social Security, But Don’t Tax The Rich
If the White House’s political goal in calling for Social Security cuts in its budget was to reveal the GOP as the intransigent, uncompromising party in Washington, it’s having the desired effect.
The statements from Republican leaders today in response to the budget are noteworthy, though not surprising: They say we should proceed with Obama’s proposed entitlement cuts but not raise any new revenues by closing any millionaire loopholes. Oh, they don’t put it in those terms. But here’s John Boehner:
While the president has backtracked on some of his entitlement reforms that were in conversations that we had a year and a half ago, he does deserve some credit for some incremental entitlement reforms that he has outlined in his budget. But I would hope that he would not hold hostage these modest reforms for his demand for bigger tax hikes. Listen, why don’t we do what we can agree to do? Why don’t we find the common ground that we do have and move on that?
And here’s Eric Cantor:
If the President believes, as we do, that programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are on the path to bankruptcy, and that we actually can do some things to put them back on the right course and save them to protect the beneficiaries of these programs, we ought to do so. And we ought to do so without holding them hostage for more tax hikes.
In other words, let’s only do the thing where there’s common ground (entitlement cuts) and not do the thing where there is disagreement (tax hikes).
Now in one sense, this can be seen to validate some of the left’s worst fears about what would happen if Obama offered entitlement cuts. Now that he’s formally proposed cutting Social Security benefits, Republicans can describe that proposal as the one area of agreement between the two parties. And it’s true Obama will probably take a political hit for the proposal.
At the same time, though, it’s worth noting that this doesn’t put Republicans in the greatest political position, either. The GOP position — revealed with fresh clarity today — is that we should only cut entitlements but not raise a penny in new revenues by getting rid of any loophole enjoyed by millionaires. GOP leaders try to compensate for this by robotically repeating the phrase “tax hikes” as a negative, but polls show that majorities already understand that Republican policies are skewed towards the rich. The use of the phrase “tax hikes” to obscure what Dems are really calling for — new revenues from the wealthy — didn’t fare too well in the 2012 elections.
And so, if the White House budget was partly intended as a trap, Republicans walked into it, revealing themselves as the only real obstacle to compromise. Indeed, as Steve Benen points out, Paul Ryan helped underscore the point when he struggled to name anything Republicans could support that their base wouldn’t like.
Now, maybe you don’t believe that there’s much political value in staking out the compromising high ground in this debate, because the Very Serious Deficit Scolds in Washington won’t ever award Obama any real credit for doing this. And maybe you believe that offering Chained CPI will do nothing more than make it easier for Republicans to attack Dems for cutting Social Security in 2014 and 2016.
All I can say to that is that the White House views things differently. Obama advisers believe Republicans could just as easily attack him this cycle for cutting Social Security based on his previous support for Chained CPI. They think the lesson of 2012 (remember the failed “he raided Medicare to pay for Obamacare” talking point?) is that Dems can fend off this attack with relative ease. And from what I have been told, they are looking beyond just getting the approval of the Very Serious People. They want to establish a Beltway narrative that GOP devotion to protecting the wealth of the rich is what’s preventing a deal to replace the sequester, in hopes that it will seep into local news coverage of the cuts around the country as the pain of those cuts sinks in, weakening Republicans further.
Chained CPI is awful policy, and I oppose it. On the raw politics of all this, however, only time will tell who is right.
By: Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, April 10, 2013
“Between A Rock And A Hard Place”: Social Conservatives Threaten Revolt Against GOP
Social conservatives are threatening to revolt against the the Republican Party, in the latest sign that the Republican National Committee’s “Growth & Opportunity Project” has little to no chance of success.
The latest Republican to strike a blow against the RNC’s rebranding plan is Tony Perkins, president of anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council. When it’s not pushing absurd conspiracy theories about ACORN and Obamacare, the FRC keeps busy by using pseudo-science to link homosexuality and pedophilia, and endorsing Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” bill, among other fringe right-wing activities. So naturally, Perkins isn’t thrilled with the RNC’s directive that “When it comes to social issues, the Party must in fact and indeed be inclusive and welcoming.”
Perkins has responded to the GOP reboot by directing his supporters to cut off their financial support for the party.
“Until the RNC and the other national Republican organizations grow a backbone and start defending core principles, don’t send them a dime of your hard-earned money,” Perkins wrote in an email to supporters Thursday night. “If you want to invest in the political process, and I encourage you to do so, give directly to candidates who reflect your values and organizations you trust — like FRC Action.”
Perkins went on to theorize that extreme right-wing social policies are not the GOP’s problem, but in fact the solution.
“Instead of trying to appease millennials, Republicans should try educating them on why marriage matters,” Perkins wrote. “There’s an entire group of ‘Countercultural Warriors’ full of compelling young leaders who are all going to the mat to protect marriage.”
Perkins’ boycott call comes just days after a group of 13 right-wing leaders (including Perkins) signed a letter warning the RNC that social conservatives will break away from the GOP if the party fails to reaffirm its 2012 platform, which calls for bans on gay marriage and abortion rights.
“We respectfully warn GOP Leadership that an abandonment of its principles will necessarily result in the abandonment of our constituents to their support,” the letter warns.
Striking a similar note as Perkins, the signatories speculate that “it is the faith-based community which offers Republicans their best hope of expanding their support” among African-Americans, young voters, and other voter groups that have become reliable Democratic bases.
Perkins and his colleagues on the religious right pose a major problem for Reince Priebus and the Republican Party. Social conservatives still make up the majority of the party’s voter base, a fact that is not going to change anytime soon. But these voters are increasingly out of step with the rest of the country on just about every social issue. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds, for example, that 73 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents support legalizing same-sex marriage — up 18 percent and 17 percent, respectively, from 2009. Only 27 percent of Republicans support marriage equality, however, up just 5 percent from four years ago.
There aren’t enough “Countercultural Warriors” in the world to make up for that kind of gap — nor is there any evidence that the GOP’s target groups would even be amenable to being lectured by the party’s right wing.
What’s worse for Priebus is that it’s not entirely clear what more the Republican Party can do to appease social conservatives. As Maddow Blog’s Steve Benen points out:
Why, exactly, do social conservatives feel so aggrieved? On a purely superficial level, the party does not want to be perceived as right-wing culture warriors because Priebus and Co. realize that this further alienates younger, more tolerant voters. But below the surface, Republicans, especially at the state level, are banning abortion and targeting reproductive rights at a breathtaking clip, pursuing official state religions, eliminating sex-ed, going after Planned Parenthood, and restricting contraception. Heck, we even have a state A.G. and gubernatorial candidate fighting to protect an anti-sodomy law.
Indeed, Priebus himself recently penned an op-ed for a right-wing blog accusing Democrats of supporting infanticide by refusing to defund Planned Parenthood. If that type of rhetoric isn’t extreme enough to appease Perkins and his cohorts, then it’s unclear what the GOP’s next step could be.
So the RNC is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It can’t afford to lose the support of its base, but the longer the likes of Perkins and Rick Santorum maintain control of the party’s public message, the harder it will be for Republicans to win national elections.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, April 12, 2013
“Pragmatic Determination”: Sandy Hook Parents Prove The Personal Still Has Power
Before she became a reluctant lobbyist, involuntarily versed in arcane Senate procedure, Nicole Hockley thought that strange word was spelled with an “S” — “closure,” not “cloture.”
But this was before the terrible day that Hockley and her fellow Sandy Hook parents refer to simply as 12/14, before Hockley’s 6-year-old son, Dylan, died in his teacher’s arms.
Now Hockley, a marketing consultant who once specialized in reducing carbon emissions but never dabbled in politics, can speak with fluency about the vote count on the motion to proceed.
“There were growing numbers who were opposing a move to cloture, and very few were standing up against that filibuster,” Hockley recalled of the grim situation when she and other Sandy Hook parents arrived in Washington, having hitched a ride on Air Force One after the president’s trip to Newtown, Conn.
It was a bittersweet perk. “Any other occasion on earth, riding on Air Force One would be the most amazing day of your life,” said Nelba Marquez-Greene, whose daughter Ana, 6, was killed. “But I was riding on Air Force One because my baby was shot in the chest and the neck.”
The Sandy Hook parents asked, deftly wielding the power conferred by tragedy, to meet directly with senators, not staff. But, focused more on gentle, private persuasion than public arm-twisting, they also took pains to conduct the meetings without the customary media entourage. In all, they met with more than a quarter of the Senate, sharing the stories of their dead children and pressing, at the least, for a chance to have the gun proposals debated on the floor.
And by all accounts, the parents of Sandy Hook Promise played an influential, perhaps decisive, role in achieving that goal on Thursday morning, with 68 senators — including 16 Republicans — voting to proceed with debate.
To speak with Sandy Hook parents is to grasp anew the power of the personal in politics. Money may be motivating, fear of losing the next election even more so.
But politicians are people, too. No matter where you may be on the political spectrum in general or the matter of gun control in particular, you cannot help but be moved by the rawness of these mothers’ anguish and the force of their pragmatic determination.
“We’re the middle,” said Francine Wheeler, fingering a necklace in the form of a treble clef, a testament to her slain son Benjamin’s perfect pitch and which contains some of his ashes. “We’re the middle that doesn’t want to infringe on anybody’s Second Amendment but wants to keep kids safe.”
The mothers handed out glossy postcards with heartbreakingly beautiful photographs of their murdered children — Ana Marquez-Greene in her poufy pigtails, Dylan Hockley grinning in a Superman T-shirt, doe-eyed Benjamin Wheeler with his older brother.
To say this is not to be naive about the limits of the capacity of grief to persuade. The threat of a less-than-perfect grade from the National Rifle Association remains potent. The NRA gave lawmakers a pass on this procedural vote; not so, it threatened in a letter, with the next cloture vote, on whether to move to final passage. Unlike most procedural votes, that step will be scored as a “key vote,” the gun group advised, ominously.
And once — if — the Senate acts, the Republican-controlled House presents a potentially insurmountable hurdle. “But they’re parents,” Wheeler said. “The House has lots of parents, lots of grandparents, and I think they’re going to be willing to listen. I have faith that they will.” Wheeler was asked by President Obama to deliver his weekly radio address.
Political activism was not on these mothers’ agendas — not before the massacre and certainly not afterward. “After the murder, brushing my teeth was on my radar,” said Marquez-Greene.
Yet, she concluded, she had little choice but to become involved, “so you don’t have to interview three more mothers two years from now who buried their children due to gun violence.”
To those who dismiss the pending proposal as a pitifully thin slice of a loaf, who mourn the absence of limits on magazine capacity or assault weapons, who fear that the background check rules will remain too porous, the mothers have a, well, maternal response.
“When you have a baby and they start learning to walk and they take that first step and it’s not perfect, do you say to them, ‘Sit down!’ because it wasn’t perfect?” Marquez-Greene asked. “It’s the same with this. This is baby steps, incremental steps. We’re taking the first one now, and we’re going to keep walking.”
By: Ruth Marcus, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 12, 2013
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