“An Unpatriotic Strategy”: In Their Baseless Persecution Of Susan Rice, Republican Reputations Are Sinking
With the Republican right persisting in baselesss persecution of Susan Rice, the UN Ambassador who may replace departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, they have left President Obama little choice but to move ahead with her nomination. If he backs away from Rice, in the face of what he has called false accusations against her, that display of weakness would undermine his second term before it begins.
The opposition to Rice is cobbled together from the remnants of a failed “October Surprise” election gambit, which began when Mitt Romney sought to smear the president by using the tragic attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. In the election’s aftermath, Senate Republicans have fixated on Rice, whom they accuse of misleading the public in television appearances several days after the Sept. 11 incident.
Rice’s supposed offense was to downplay the likelihood that the attack had been perpetrated by al Qaeda terrorists or their local allies, while underlining the idea that it had been inspired by an anti-Muslim video on the Internet. On ABC News’ This Week, she repeated almost precisely the talking points provided to her by the CIA:
Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated. We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to — or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo.
And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in — in the wake of the revolution in Libya are — are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there. We’ll wait to see exactly what the investigation finally confirms, but that’s the best information we have at present.
In those remarks, Rice clearly warned against drawing any conclusions from the preliminary information then available. Nevertheless, Senate Republicans led by John McCain (R-AZ) have sought to defame her as a liar, a fool, or worse. The latest insult came on Tuesday from Senator Kelly Ayotte, a junior Republican from New Hampshire with no significant national security experience and little evident grasp of the facts. Tagging along with the embittered McCain and his reliable sidekick Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ayotte made an unprecedented threat to put a “hold” on Rice’s nomination if Obama sends it up to the Hill – the first time in memory that a senator has deployed that privilege against a prospective nominee to head the State Department.
Exactly what the right suspects about Benghazi isn’t clear. Initially, Republicans seem to have hoped that talking up al Qaeda would somehow help Romney and damage Obama. Not the most patriotic strategy, but that was their plan. What they supposedly suspect now remains obscure. Graham mutters darkly that he is “disturbed,” while McCain claims to be “troubled.” The blustering Ayotte has now locked herself in a bunker with these volatile characters, whose motives and behavior are hardly above suspicion.
Whatever their problem, knuckling under to such a puerile challenge would represent an unacceptable defeat for the newly re-elected Obama.
Properly, the Benghazi incident is under investigation by the FBI and the CIA as well as Congressional committees – and what those probes appear to have established so far is that the security arrangements at the consulate never came within the specific purview of the White House. The CIA almost certainly made mistakes and omissions in protecting the consulate, and sadly paid for those errors with the lives of courageous agency officers who died there trying to protect the State Department staff when the compound came under sustained assault from heavily armed jihadi militants.
The notion that Rice or any other administration official intentionally misled the public already has been thoroughly debunked by David Petraeus, the resigned CIA director. Petraeus told a closed-door hearing on Capitol Hill, attended by McCain, that Rice had faithfully followed the declassified talking points provided by US intelligence agencies. (McCain promptly fled from reporters when that hearing ended.) Although the president himself had referred to the Benghazi attack as an “act of terror” in the White House Rose Garden, specific information about potential terrorist suspects remained classified for sound investigative reasons.
It isn’t hard to imagine what McCain would say if Rice had accidentally blurted out classified details of the Benghazi probe prematurely on television. In fact, it isn’t necessary to imagine, because not so long ago, he angrily accused the White House of revealing classified information. But in fact, the only damaging leak in the Benghazi matter emerged from the hyperactive mouth of Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.
Perhaps McCain, Graham, and Ayotte should instead spew their bile on Issa, who has actually abused his authority and trifled with national security. They would be better off, because their reputations — and not Rice’s — will be irreparably damaged if they continue to pursue this vendetta when the president sends up her nomination.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, November 28, 2012
“The Politics Of The Nones”: The Demographic That Should Keep Rove Awake At Night
Imagine a demographic that has doubled its share of the population over the past two decades, is up by 25 percent over the past four years, and now accounts for as many as one in five Americans. Imagine that this demographic votes disproportionately for one political party—to the tune of 70 percent for Obama versus 26 percent for Romney in the 2012 election. Sounds like a demographic that ought to be of interest to politicians, journalists, and activists, right?
That demographic consists of people who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or religiously unaffiliated—the “nones,” as they’re sometimes called. And it hasn’t attracted anywhere near the attention it deserves in the postgame analysis of the 2012 election.
A quick Google search turns up 64,000 results concerning the GOP’s “Latino problem” that became evident in exit poll data on Election Day. Latinos represented around 10 percent of the electorate in 2011, up from nine percent in 2008, and they voted for Obama at a rate of 71 percent. But it’s the nones that should be keeping Karl Rove up at night. Pew put them at 12 percent of the electorate in its exit poll data, and at 19.6 percent in its earlier general survey. (The difference appears to have more to do with polling methodology than with voting habits.)
The Public Religion Research Institute, in a study published on November 15, pegs the religiously unaffiliated at 16 percent of the electorate—and they figure that 78 percent of the category went for Obama. Crucially, like Latinos, the nones are young. One in three Americans under 30 are religiously unaffiliated—four times the rate for the over-65 cohort that keeps Rove in business. This isn’t a trickle, it’s a tsunami.
Google also shows that there’s no shortage of interest in the Republican Party’s “white problem.” The white electorate, long the bread-and-butter of Republican victories, has declined from 81 percent in 2000 to 72 percent in 2012. But if you look under the hood, the Republicans’ white problem is worse than these numbers suggest. For one thing, Romney’s white majority mostly came from racking up huge margins among Southern and rural whites, while Obama actually captured majorities of whites in many blue states and blue urban areas.
The most interesting way to divide whites in America, however, may not be by region, but by religion—or lack thereof. White evangelicals, according to Pew, were as red in 2012 as they’ve ever been. They went 78 percent for Romney, up from 74 percent for McCain. The bad news for the Republicans is that, according to Pew, the evangelical share of the population continues to erode—from 21 percent in 2007 to 19 percent in 2012—while the number of the religiously unaffiliated is rising—from 16 percent to 20 percent over the same period. In other words, “nones” and evangelicals are equivalent in numbers.
One explanation for this change in America’s religious complexion is that white Christians are aging: 72 percent of voters over 65 are white Christians, compared to only 26 percent of voters under 30. Pew also tells us that most of the unaffiliated are white—and that much of their growth has come from the white population. That said, lack of religious affiliation is also common among Asian Americans: while 42 percent of Asian Americans identify as Christian, 26 percent report themselves as religiously unaffiliated, in a significant increase over the general population, and 73 percent of Asian Americans voted for Obama.
Like any group of this size, the religiously unaffiliated aren’t monolithic. About a third self-identify as atheists, while the rest say they are agnostic, “spiritual but not religious,” or simply uninterested in religion. They are spread fairly evenly across education and income levels. And they’re politically diverse when it comes to economic ideas. But they do seem to largely agree on one thing: that mixing religion with politics is a bad idea.
Which brings me back to the recent election. If the statistical data seem unreliable, just think back on the extraordinary nature of the debate in 2012. Never before have the culture wars been fought so forcefully on both sides. While the spectacle of Republicans declaring holy war has become old hat, this was the first election in which one of the parties explicitly endorsed same-sex marriage; this was the first election in which one party defended a woman’s right to reproductive freedom without apology or hesitation; and this season also saw the passage of a number of same-sex marriage ballot initiatives, as well as the election of the nation’s first openly lesbian senator.
Some on the right could scarcely believe that this is what America really wants. “Millions of Americans looked evil in the eye and adopted it,” wrote Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver in his post-election commentary. He has a point—except that, for the majority of Americans, the “evil” they looked in the eye was the one they rejected on November 6. Others on the right, like the Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, did get it: “It’s not that our message—we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong—didn’t get out. It did get out… It’s that the entire moral landscape has changed. An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them.”
So why haven’t the “nones” gotten the political respect they deserve? Part of the answer is that discrimination against nonbelievers—a large portion of the unaffiliated—remains an acceptable form of bigotry. More than half of Americans continue to say that they would never vote for an atheist for president—many more than will cop to being unwilling to vote for a black or gay person. Politicians are reluctant to associate themselves with such a seemingly toxic group.
The other part of the problem has more to do with a failure of the imagination on both sides of the religious divide. “Nones” (as that unfortunate label suggests) are typically represented by what they are not. They—or at least many of them—do not believe in God, they are charged with lacking “values,” and are suspected of not really being American. But this is nonsense. The unaffiliated do have beliefs, just not necessarily about theistic entities; they have just as many “values” as any other group; and their presence is firmly rooted in American history in helping create the world’s first secular republic.
Although the unaffiliated should not be conflated with atheists, it’s worth concentrating on them as they’re clearly the most feared subcategory. When atheists support same-sex marriage, for example, it’s not because they don’t believe in marriage, it’s because they believe in love and commitment. When they insist on removing creationism from public school curricula, it’s because they believe in the power of science and reason to improve the human condition. And if one should really need proof that atheists are as moral as any other group, they can call in some studies, or look at the growing body of research suggesting that humans’ sense of morality is hardwired and innate.
The politics of the nones in America remains to be written. This diverse group seems united primarily in its members’ opposition to the toxic blurring of religion and government. But if trends continue, perhaps we can look forward to the day when the word “values” is no longer used in political campaigns as a code word for bigotry.
By: Katherine Stewart, Religion Dispatches, November 26, 2012
“A Cherry On Their Sundae”: Behind The GOP Game On Susan Rice
This point bears emphasizing, I think. I suspect that the Republicans want to block Rice because they want Obama to name John Kerry because they believe that Scott Brown can win that seat back. And as I’ve written before, he probably can, in my admittedly somewhat removed view (but also in the view of certain Bostonians I’ve consulted on the matter)
McCain and Graham have other motivations: getting a scalp, keeping phony impeachment hopes alive, etc. But let’s not forget that these guys are politicians, and senators, and they think of politics and the Senate first. One less Democrat in the Senate would make for a nice little cherry on their sundae.
Which raises another point that deserves attention. If Harry Reid is going to push filibuster reform next January, why should they not include a provision that the minority can’t filibuster certain categories of major appointments? The number of vacancies in this administration, judgeships and other key positions, is mind-boggling, and it reached the point where the administration simply stopped trying to fill positions because some wingnut senator was placing a hold on every single nomination.
This too needs exposure to the old harsh disinfectant. But if Ayotte really puts a hold on Rice, I spect that’ll get lots of attention. Swell move by the party allegedly trying to reach out now to nonwhite voters eh?
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, November 27, 2012
“Old Habits Die Hard”: Cutting Taxes Doesn’t Cut It For Republicans
If the GOP pushes the economy over the fiscal cliff, the party will go over too. The longer Republicans push for tax breaks for bankers and billionaires, the more trouble they’ll get themselves into. Republicans have enough problems morphing into the Tea Party, now the GOP is becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fortune 500.
The Election Day national exit survey demonstrates the fact that the GOP doesn’t have a good message for Americans who worry about the economy. The voters have spoken and the poll tells us what they have to say about the economy and taxes. Republicans will not like what they hear.
Voters heard the questions that Mitt Romney asked about the president’s handling of the economy, but the GOP nominee didn’t follow up with the answers. It should have been a plus for the challenger that almost half (45 percent) of the voters felt the economy was “not so good.” However, a majority (55 percent to 42 percent) of these distressed voters actually went for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Another illustration of the GOP’s failure to address middle class economic concerns was that nine of 10 voters (90 percent) who gave the economy a positive rating voted to re-elect the president but only six out of every 10 (60 percent) voters who gave the economy a negative rating voted for his challenger.
Cutting taxes doesn’t cut it for Republicans. There were more voters who worried about unemployment (38 percent) and rising prices (37 percent) than there were who were concerned about cutting taxes (14 percent). The good news for the GOP was that voters who worried about taxes voted overwhelmingly for Romney. The bad news was that there were too few of these voters to make much of a difference in the outcome. Along the same lines, almost half (47 percent) of the voters wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy and another small group (13 percent) favored raising everybody’s taxes. That’s six out of 10 voters who are open to raising taxes to stabilize the economy. Only a third (35 percent) of the voters wanted to hold the line on taxes.
The failure of Romney and the GOP to come up with anything but cutting taxes leaves Republicans in the lurch. Nature abhors a vacuum and the party’s neglect of jobs and inflation gives voters the chance to fill that vacuum with their feelings about the last Republican president. This isn’t good news for Republicans because a large majority (53 percent to 38 percent) of the electorate blames George W. Bush not Barack Obama for the condition of today’s economy.
Voters want to fight a class war and the president’s populist approach to the economy is just what they wanted. Trickle-down economics was a disaster for Romney and will continue to tarnish the Republican brand if the party doesn’t craft a more comprehensive economic message. More than half (53 percent) of the voters feel that the American economic system favors the rich and only a third (34 percent) think the system is fair to all Americans. A majority (55 percent to 39 percent) of voters also believe that Romney’s policies would have favored the rich over the middle class. A fifth (21 percent) of the voters wanted a president who cares about people and those voters supported the incumbent overwhelmingly (81 percent to 18 percent).
The party’s fixation on taxes means the GOP is riding a one trick pony into the ground. The debate on taxes only focuses attention on the GOP’s inability to come up with anything new. Old habits die hard so President Obama doesn’t have to worry that Republicans will come up with something that works better.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, November 26, 2012
“We The People Are Watching”: It’s Time For The GOP To Stop Saying ‘No’ And Start Compromising
New polls have bad news for the GOP when it comes to the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
The public is more interested in the budget negotiations than any other news story—even the Petraeus sex scandal, according to a recent PEW survey.
Americans have also decided in advance who will be to blame if the budget negotiations fail and we enter 2013 without a deal to avoid across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts—the GOP.
According to a new CNN poll, 45 percent of Americans say they will blame the Republicans–compared to the 34 percent who would blame President Obama. That margin of 11 percent is nearly four times the edge that gave the president his re-election. And 53 percent have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.
Why is the public so prone to blame Republican members of the House and Senate?
Maybe they’ve been paying attention.
Indeed, 7 out of 10 say the GOP has not done enough to compromise with the president. They made stonewalling their strategy in 2009 and have basically not any made exceptions since — except when they were tricked into doing so. A vast majority of Republicans in Congress have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge that basically means they’re unwilling to compromise—though some senators have started to back away from that once-firm commitment.
Voters also agree with Democrats on the issues — 56 percent say taxes on the wealthy should be kept high. And even Republicans agree by an 8-percent margin that any deal should include tax increases along with spending cuts.
“77% believe that their personal financial situation will be affected if the government goes off the fiscal cliff,” said CNN polling director Keating Holland.
Four years of Republicans hyping the fear that the deficit will personally hurt individual Americans has been effective. But, as The New York Times‘ Paul Krugman writes, “…the clear and present danger to the American economy isn’t that we’ll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is, instead, that we’ll reduce the deficit too much.”
The president has the upper hand in the negotiation and the GOP’s weakness is demonstrated by the fact that they have a member of the losing Republican ticket on their negotiating team.
But will that be enough? Can this GOP say “yes” to a deal that doesn’t punish the middle class? If past is prologue, the odds aren’t good.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, November 26, 2012
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