“Delusional In A Deeply Flattering Way”: Time To Elect The Worst Idea?
Our topic today is picking the worst new trend of the political season.
Not including putting the dog on the car roof.
I was thinking more along the lines of candidates who twitter. Or robo-calls from Donald Trump. Or candidates who build home additions with car elevators.
Or “super PACs” funded by billionaires who appear so demented you cannot figure out how in the world they got to be so rich. Actually, the super PACs are the worst trend, hands down.
But since I still have some space here, let me throw in a plug for the terribleness of the idea of Americans Elect.
Perhaps you have not yet focused on Americans Elect. It’s a new-generation political movement that aims to rise above the petty forces of partisan bickering and choose a presidential candidate, along with a running mate from a different party, at an online convention in June.
As a reward, the winning team will receive a presidential ballot line in every state, along with some very cool online technology with which to run their campaign. It’s similar to “Project Runway” except for the most-powerful-job-on-the-globe part.
“This is about change. This is about disruption for good,” said Sarah Malm, Americans Elect’s chief communications officer.
Nobody who has been paying attention for the last several months could possibly object to the idea of disruption. Really, I’d be tempted to throw Americans Elect a vote just to get rid of the Iowa caucuses.
But it’s too dangerous. History suggests that this election could be decided by a small number of votes in a few closely contested states. You do not want it to turn on a bunch of citizens who decide to express their purity of heart by tossing a vote to Fred Website.
Plus, the whole Americans Elect concept is delusional, in a deeply flattering way: We the people are good and pure, and if only we were allowed to just pick the best person, everything else would fall into place. And, of course, the best person cannot be the choice of one of the parties, since the parties are … the problem.
“The process has become so toxic and ugly that people don’t even come to the game. We want to open up space for people to come,” said Kahlil Byrd, the chief executive officer of Americans Elect. The group’s leadership seems to be a mix of technology people, financial industry people, and political moderates like Christine Todd Whitman. After trying to run the Environmental Protection Agency under George W. Bush, you can see why Whitman would be looking for a soothing spot to curl up in.
So far, the greatest achievement by Americans Elect seems to be smashing the fantasy that there are all sorts of people out there who would make great presidents if only the parties didn’t stand in the way. The most popular names in the mix are Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman Jr. and Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana whose candidacy was so deeply unsuccessful that he couldn’t even qualify for the debates.
Roemer, the only one of the trio who actually has expressed interest in being the nominee, now appears to be running on a platform that centers on opening up future debates to Buddy Roemer.
Malm thinks other people will raise their hand as the nominating convention gets closer. “We have ballot access,” she said. “Having ballot access is too much of a jewel for someone serious not to try to make the run.”
Getting a presidential ballot line in 50 states is really, really difficult. To do so, Americans Elect has already collected nearly 2.5 million signatures around the country, using the deeply American tactic of paying people to do it.
The source of the money is a little murky. Some names have been made public. Some haven’t. Byrd says that’s not a problem because “the candidates don’t know who the donors are and the donors don’t know who the candidate is going to be.”
If the Americans Elect candidate does make a big splash in November, we will have discovered yet another part of the presidential elections process that loopy billionaires could purchase out of their petty cash. Tired of financing right-wing contenders for the Republican nomination? Buy your own ballot line.
So that’s the down side. On the plus side, there is the opportunity to create a presidential nominee who will promise to bring us all together in a postpartisan Washington.
Which was exactly what Barack Obama said in 2008. You’ll remember how well that worked out.
The thing that makes our current politics particularly awful isn’t procedural. It’s that the Republican Party has become over-the-top extreme. You can try to fix that by working from within to groom a more sensible pack of future candidates, or from without by voting against the Republicans’ nominees until they agree to shape up.
Otherwise, no Web site in the world will cure what ails us.
By: Gail Collins, Op Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 30, 2012
“Assiduously Colorblind” Conservatives: The Worst Racial Demagogues Of The Decade
In Stephen Colbert’s ongoing spoof of conservative punditry, he often insists that he cannot see color. As if to prove that he’s a spot on satirist, Rush Limbaugh has titled a Monday web item about the Trayvon Martin case, “The Left’s Obsession with Race,” wherein he explains to his audience:
This is one of those things I can’t relate to. I don’t look at people and see a race or a sexual orientation or whatever… I don’t see black-versus-white or anything. The left is the ones who do this.
A lot of conservatives honestly believe this — that the left is obsessed with race, while the right is assiduously colorblind, and wouldn’t think about the subject, let alone discuss it in public, if its adherents were in charge. It’s time that someone explain to them why the rest of America isn’t buying it.
The right’s race problem is a lot bigger than its most popular talk radio host, but he’s a good place to begin. Remember when he briefly got a gig as an NFL commentator? If you watch Monday Night Football or Sports Center, you don’t see much critical race theory creeping into the analysis. But bring in Rush Limbaugh and suddenly a conversation about Donovan McNabb’s performance turned into what, if it were submitted as a term paper in a black studies class, might be titled, “How Racial Expectations Affect The Post-Civil Rights-Era Treatment of Black Quarterbacks In Mass Media.” Whatever you think about Limbaugh’s comments, he is the one who deliberately and needlessly brought McNabb’s race into the conversation. He’s also the man who won the 2009 award for accusing more people than anyone else of racism. And the man who responded to an obscure news item about a white kid getting beat up by a black kid on a school bus by saying that sort of black-on-white violence is perfectly kosher in Barack Obama’s America. And who can forget his mocking mimicry of the way that Chinese people speak? If a black talk show host treated whites like Limbaugh treats minorities, conservatives would go ballistic.
But as I said, it isn’t just about talk radio. It’s also about politicians like Newt Gingrich. In his latest foray into racial commentary, he took President Obama to task for his comments about the Trayvon Martin case.
Here’s what Obama said:
I’ve got to be careful about my statements to make sure we’re not impairing any investigation… But obviously this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. I think that every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together, federal, state and local to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened…
My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon. I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.
To me, that’s as pitch perfect as an off-the-cuff statement gets.
Here’s how Gingrich reacted to it:
What the president said in a sense is disgraceful. It is not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe. Period. And trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I find it appalling.
See what he did there? In the course of criticizing Obama for engaging in supposed racial demagoguery, Gingrich implies that the president cares less when white kids are shot by strangers, despite the fact that reading his statement that way is the sort of mistake only an overly literal idiot (or poorly programmed computer) would actually make. Gingrich is no idiot. And he is far too undisciplined to be a computer. Given his insistence that invoking identity is needlessly divisive, he’s certainly a hypocrite. This is a guy who says the best way to understand Obama is through the prism of his alleged Kenyan anti-colonialism; a guy who says that American Muslims shouldn’t be able to build mosques in Manhattan until Saudi Arabia permits churches on its territory; someone who thinks the widespread conservative belief that Obama is a Muslim is both something Obama ought to be embarrassed about (apparently he thinks there’s something wrong with being a Muslim) and that the rumor is Obama’s fault!
It would be one thing if Limbaugh and Gingrich were jeered by fellow conservatives for their long-running forays into racial demagoguery. Instead the prevailing attitude is something like “turnabout is fair play.” Ask a conservative why they don’t call these guys out. The answer is often, “but Al Sharpton is worse.” Even if that were true, the fact that somewhere a liberal is behaving badly hardly justifies the behavior of their conservative analogues; but the uncomfortable truth conservatives refuse to face is that Sharpton’s low point happened two decades ago. Look at the past decade. Limbaugh and Gingrich are the bigger racial demagogues today.
Writing at Forbes, Josh Barro explains what’s wrong with the insistence of some conservatives that Obama’s comments in the Martin case were objectionable:
The claim running through these objections is that black Americans cannot have any special concerns in need of airing. Many of the issues raised in the Trayvon Martin case–was Trayvon Martin singled out for suspicion because he was black? Did race influence the Sanford police’s handling of the case? What is the burden of profiling on young black men?–are therefore off limits.
Barro goes on to say something the right must confront if its ever going to change its reputation on racial matters:
Conservatives, almost universally, feel like they get a bad rap on race. They catch heat when they point out improvements over the last several decades in race relations and in the material well being of minorities in America, even though those phenomena are real. They catch heat when they contend that government programs intended to help the poor have led to problems with dependency in minority communities, even though those critiques are sometimes correct. They catch heat when they criticize Affirmative Action, even when in some cases (as at the University of California) Affirmative Action was clearly dis-serving minority communities.
Why do conservatives catch such heat? It’s probably because there is still so much racism on the Right to go alongside valid arguments on issues relating to race and ethnicity. Conservatives so often get unfairly pounded on race because, so often, conservatives get fairly pounded on race. And this is the Right’s own fault, because conservatives are not serious about draining the swamp… There has been a clear strategic calculation here among Republican elites. Better to leverage or at least accept the racism of much of the Republican base than try to clean it up.
His post, complete with examples and lots more analysis, is worth reading in full. And the conclusion is spot on:
My challenge to conservatives who feel they get a bum rap on race is this. Stand up for yourself and your colleagues when you feel that a criticism is unfair. At the same time, criticize other conservatives who say racist things, cynically tolerate racism in the Republican base, or deny the mere existence of racial issues in America today. The conservative movement desperately needs self-policing on racial issues, if it ever hopes to have credibility on them.
Quite right. It is in fact the case that conservatives are sometimes attacked unfairly on racial matters, and that some conservatives are attacked because they’re obvious racial demagogues. The best “strategy” for grappling with this situation is to just call ’em how you see ’em.
By: Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, March 27, 2012
“Non-Citizen For Life”: The Republican “American Apartheid Dream Scheme”
The Senate GOP seems to be banking on the assumption that Latino voters are stupid, don’t read the fine print — or are not paying any attention at all.
Panicking from a series of polls that show their years of bashing Latinos haven’t been endearing them to Latino voters, prominent Republicans are scrambling for a solution. They seem to have found one, at least for now, in a new attempt by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to rewrite the DREAM Act, the widely popular bill that the Senate GOP derailed in late 2010.
Rubio has come up with a “non-citizen-for-life” concept as he rejiggers the DREAM Act to make it pretty much dream-free. It’s a tough trick: How do you create the illusion of a law that looks like it’s giving something to Latinos, but which the Tea Party knows means nothing?
The authentic DREAM Act offers a path to citizenship for children who were brought to the country without documentation, who graduate from high school and go on to college or the military, allowing them to create a stable life and give back to the country that they call home. Rubio’s dream-free proposal gives these young people a nebulous legalized status, so that rather than become American citizens, they will have permanent second-class status — allowed to live, work and pay taxes in the only country they have ever known, but never permitted the ability to vote or exercise any of the rights of full citizenship.
The real cruelty of this Republican proposal is that it seeks to take advantage of the desperation of some DREAM Act-eligible youth to avoid deportation. The Republican proposal offers them that in the short term, but at the price of second-class status for the rest of their lives. They deserve better. Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way: Not long ago, before the Tea Party drove the GOP’s agenda, the authentic DREAM Act enjoyed the support of many Republicans in the Senate. The GOP has paid the price for abandoning the authentic DREAM Act and promoting numerous anti-immigrant policies. Senate Republicans are living in a fantasy land if they believe they can win back Latino voters by inventing a new second-class status for these young people.
They should take a lesson from history. I went to South Africa over 30 years ago, where the government created many different levels of citizenship as a means to keep an unjust system going in a modern world. In addition to “Whites,” different categories of “Blacks,” “Coloureds,” and “Asians” for South Asians, South Africa had to create the category of “Honorary Whites” to accommodate the Japanese and Chinese. We should learn from the lessons of apartheid and the dangers of creating different levels of citizenship for different people.
That system, thankfully, has fallen, and it has been rightfully judged an historical disgrace, but if today’s Republican Party has considered history at all, they’re not learning the right lessons. Instead of pushing towards more equality for all people, they’ve perfected a method of legalizing discrimination by inventing new classes of citizenship for those on whom they don’t want to bestow full rights, creating a unique and disturbing American apartheid.
Add these new immigrant ersatz citizens to a growing list. Republicans want gay people to have a form of citizenship that doesn’t include marriage rights — and if they had their way gay Americans wouldn’t be allowed to serve their country in in the military either. Muslims can be citizens, but must fight legal and PR battles just to exercise their First Amendment right to the freedom of religion. People who have served their time in jail for felonies are citizens — but in many states, they aren’t allowed to participate in our democracy by voting. And Republican-controlled state legislatures pass laws that make it harder for young people, the elderly, and low-income people to vote – again, all citizens, legislated out of one of their fundamental constitutional rights.
For a party that claims to be interested in limiting government, today’s GOP is surprisingly eager to create new levels of bureaucracy for the sole purpose of depriving some Americans of their rights. Whatever happened to simple? How about an America with equal rights and equal justice for all and a fair path to citizenship for hard-working people who play by the rules?
With the new dream-free DREAM Act, Republicans are trying to create one of their patented new levels of citizenship while pulling a fast one on Latinos and others who care about the fate of immigrants. The problem is, American voters are smarter than they give us credit for — and we know when they’re trying to fool us.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, March 29, 2012
“On The Government Dole”: The Supreme Court And The GOP’s Healthcare Hypocrisy
There’s always hypocrisy in Washington but past and present Republican presidential candidates have used the debate on healthcare to take it to heights unimaginable even in the nation’s capital. This week the Supreme Court heard arguments on the Affordable Care Act and the GOP tried again to cripple Medicare, the federal health insurance program for seniors.
What do Rep. Michele Bachmann, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and Rep. Ron Paul have in common? They were or are candidates for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. They all oppose the Affordable Care Act, and they’re all hypocrites. Michele Bachmann feels so strongly about the law that she has been present in the Supreme Court during the oral arguments this week. Rick Santorum is so hostile to the Affordable Care Act that he took time away from the campaign trail to appear on the steps of the Supreme Court building on the first day of arguments. But Bachmann still enjoys the benefits of the gold plated federal healthcare insurance for members of Congress. Rick Santorum enjoyed the same government health benefits when he was a senator.
All of them say they oppose the Affordable Care Act because they claim it is “government run healthcare.” But don’t panic, because they’re wrong. Since President Obama decided not to fight for a single payer plan or even for the public option, healthcare is still in the deadly clutches of the insurance companies.
Even if the Republicans candidates were right, they have some nerve even making the argument. While they all criticize government run healthcare and Medicare, as members of Congress they took full advantage of the gold plated healthcare insurance provided by the United States government. What the Republicans are really saying is that government run healthcare is fine for them but too good for working families. Since Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul are still members of Congress, they could easily refuse their government run healthcare insurance and go into the private market like everybody else. But don’t hold your breath waiting for them to opt out. Bachmann and Paul are still on the government dole, and so are all the others members of Congress who opposed the Affordable Care Act. Hypocrites all.
Then there’s former governor and former liberal Mitt Romney who also has been very critical of the mandate in the new federal health insurance law. But the healthcare reform bill that he signed into law in Massachusetts has the same government mandate for everyone to have health insurance that is in the Affordable Care Act. After the reform bill became law in the Bay State, Romney said it was a model for the rest of the nation. Well he was right. Romneycare became Obamacare.
It’s not really surprising that Romney supported the insurance mandate in Massachusetts. The mandate was originally a Republican idea. Even Newt Gingrich supported the mandate in the 1990s. Republicans felt that people who didn’t buy health insurance were freeloaders. When people who don’t have health insurance are hurt or get sick, they go to emergency rooms and hospitals bill the taxpayers for the cost of treatment. The idea is that uninsured people should take financial responsibility for their own actions. That sounds pretty conservative to me, but it’s still a good idea.
So why do politicians like Romney and Gingrich oppose the mandate after they supported it. They thought it was a great idea when conservative think tanks developed it, but once a Democratic president used their idea in his bill, it became radioactive.
Rick Santorum is right about one thing. Mitt Romney will have a lot of trouble trying to explain why his mandate was such a good idea and why the president’s mandate is such a bad idea.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, March 29, 2012
“Block The Vote”: The Republican War On Voter Registration
Republican state legislatures aren’t only trying to prevent voting at the polling place, they are also stopping people from becoming registered voters in the first place. These same laws that require voters to present state issued photo identification at the polling both—nominally aimed at preventing voter fraud—also sometimes contain provisions that are placing onerous requirements and stringent limitations on third party voter registration efforts.
The targets are national and statewide organizations that use volunteers or paid staffers to canvass underrepresented communities to register new voters. Often these voters are young, poor or non-white and thus lean Democratic. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice found, “54 million eligible Americans are not registered to vote. More than 25% of the voting-age citizen population is not registered to vote. Among minority groups, this percentage is even higher— more than 30% for African Americans and more than 40% for Hispanics.” Registration drives typically focuse their efforts on these historically disenfranchised populations, as well as elderly and disabled voters who may have trouble reaching a government office to register. Perversely, as the Brennan Center notes, “Instead of praising civic groups who register voters for their contribution to democracy, many states have cracked down on those groups.”
The excuse is that they wish to prevent fraudulent voter registrations from being submitted. But the result, if these rules are enforced, is that far fewer voters are registered.
In Florida, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, the law has been quite successful:
Florida, which is expected to be a vital swing state once again in this year’s presidential election, is enrolling fewer new voters than it did four years ago as prominent civic organizations have suspended registration drives because of what they describe as onerous restrictions imposed last year by Republican state officials.
The state’s new elections law—which requires groups that register voters to turn in completed forms within 48 hours or risk fines, among other things—has led the state’s League of Women Voters to halt its efforts this year. Rock the Vote, a national organization that encourages young people to vote, began an effort last week to register high school students around the nation—but not in Florida, over fears that teachers could face fines. And on college campuses, the once-ubiquitous folding tables piled high with voter registration forms are now a rarer sight.
The election of 2000 demonstrated how just a few hundred votes in Florida could determine who wins the presidency. Florida’s voter registration law is, of course, facing legal challenges. If the law remains in place, though, it could depress turnout by far more than a few hundred votes.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, March 29, 2012
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