“Kicked To The Curb”: Republicans’ Self-Hatred Swells To The GOP Vs. Its Own Base
Does any modern political party besides the GOP hold a huge segment of its base in contempt? I’ve written a lot about how Republicans have failed to make inroads with Latinos, young voters or women since their 2012 defeat, but what’s really interesting is the way they continue to deride many of their older, white, working-class voters, too.
When Mitt Romney insulted “the 47 percent” of Americans who pay no federal income taxes, he failed to notice that the vast majority of them are white, most of them white seniors, the most reliably Republican voters in the country. A large portion of the people Paul Ryan describes as “takers” – vs. productive “makers” – are likewise older whites. And although Ryan and his party want to turn Medicare into a voucher program – run by exchanges, much like the Affordable Care Act – they tried to hide that fact during the 2012 race because it was hugely unpopular with their base.
The latest insult came from former senator and 2012 presidential runner-up Rick Santorum. On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday Santorum complained that the Affordable Care Act has meant that “sicker, older” people are getting health insurance (h/t Crooks and Liars.) Santorum told Candy Crowley and former Gov. Howard Dean:
Well, let me just add that one of the solutions that President Obama tried to accomplish was to let people keep their own insurance. It turns out that a lot of insurance companies are actually allowing that to happen, and that could cause even more problems for Obamacare, because that means fewer and fewer people getting into the exchanges. And the ones who, at least to date, it’s just facts Gov. Dean, the ones in the system are much older.
I talked to one insurance company today, a third of their enrollees are over sixty years of age. That is not how an insurance system would work, but those are the people signing up and the folks who can keep their plans because they’re more customized and lower cost, will now. And the folks who are going to get into these exchanges are going to be probably sicker, older, and as a result, premiums are even going to go higher.
First of all, it’s not clear Santorum is right about this. Some states are seeing unexpectedly high proportions of younger people sign up for coverage. In Kentucky, 41 percent have been under 35; in California, it’s 22 percent, which is proportionate to their share of the population. Still, the enrollment rate in California is highest for people over 55. That’s not surprising, or permanent: Based on the experience of Massachusetts, older people tend to sign up for coverage first; younger enrollees do it closer to the deadline.
But assuming that Santorum isn’t wrong (admittedly a leap), what is he saying? That people over 60 who don’t have coverage shouldn’t be able to get it? We know these people are white, and presumably – since they’re not eligible for Medicaid, which covers many of the poor and unemployed — they’re working people. But Santorum says “that’s not how an insurance system should work.”
Luckily Howard Dean was there to disagree. “I think it’s great that we’re insuring people who can’t get insurance that are over 55 and 60,” he told Santorum and Crowley. “That’s what this is supposed to do.”
Of course, if insurers are unhappy with their older customers, Rep. Alan Grayson has an answer: his “Medicare for All” bill, which would allow anyone who wanted to to sign up for Medicare instead of a private insurance plan. Back during the ACA debate many liberals wanted to see that option, but it was vetoed by insurance interests. Opening up Medicare to people 55 and older would help stabilize the program – although they’re the older edge of the ACA pool, they’d be younger and healthier subscribers in the Medicare pool – and provide an alternative for those priced out of or under-served by the private market.
Still, the big news this weekend was that the federal website that lets most people access insurance exchanges, Healthcare.gov, is mostly fixed. That’s why Santorum was reduced to railing against those takers in the GOP base. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace attacked the ACA as “income redistribution.”
And, of course, Santorum insisted that the ACA’s troubles raised questions about “the president’s competence.” Dean wasn’t having that either.
“That’s right-wing talking points against this president,” Dean replied. “From day one, they’ve tried to undermine him as a human being … I lose my patience with this nonsense. I do believe that the facts are going to be determined by what happens on the ground. Three months from now, a lot more people are going to have health insurance, and a lot more people are going to be happy with all this.”
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, December 2, 2013
“The Religious Right Is A Fraud”: There’s Nothing Christian About Michele Bachmann’s Values
Last week, the nation’s capital was host to Value Voters 2013 Summit, a three-day political conference for predominantly religious conservatives. Among the smattering of social and economic issues at hand, the overall tenor of the Summit focused on eliminating Obamacare, expanding the tangible presence of Christianity through the public arena and military and preventing the proliferation of easily available birth control and abortion. In speeches, lunches and breakout sessions, American’s Christian Right worked out strategies to bring the values of the federal government in line with their preferred Christian ethical dictates, using democracy as their chief tool.
It isn’t unusual for Christians living in democracies to use the vote to express their ethics, and to shape government to do the same. That the moral and ethical preferences of a given society should inform government is a foundational principle of democracy, after all. And American values voters are far from the first Christians to undertake the project of bringing their government’s policies in line with Christian ethics: European Christian parties have aimed to do the same for decades. But between American Christian voters and their European counterparts, a curious departure opens up: while European Christians generally see the anti-poverty mission of Christianity as worthy of political action, the American Christian Right inexplicably cordons off economics from the realm of Christian influence.
By all means, the American Christian Right is willing to leverage government authority to carry out a variety of Christian ethical projects, especially within the arena of family life. Michele Bachmann would make abortion illegal, and Rick Santorum has stated on multiple occasions that he supports laws against homosexual intercourse. But Christian politicians in the United States curtail their interest in making the gospel actionable when it comes to welfare. While the government should see to the moral uprightness of marriage, sex and family, the Value Voters 2013 Summit was notably bereft of talks on living wages, labor rights or basic incomes.
The notable exclusion of poverty from the Christian agenda would doubtlessly puzzle European Christians, whose support of Christian ethical approaches to family life have always been paired with a deep and vigorous concern for the poor. And, unlike their American counterparts, European Christians haven’t been willing to leave poverty up to individual charity or the market to handle. Quite the contrary: Just as public morality is an arena fit for intervention by a Christian-informed government, so too is welfare. Consider the British Christian People’s Alliance 2010 election manifesto, a document intended to explain the imminently Christian party’s policy goals:
“The Christian Peoples Alliance believes that Britain will return to economic prosperity when government chooses instead to put human relationships in right order. This requires power, income and wealth to be redistributed and for greater equality to be achieved. These are deeply spiritual convictions and reflect a Biblical pattern of priorities…By the end of the next Parliament, the CPA will establish the reduction of inequality as a national target, so that the ratios of the incomes of the top 20 per cent are reduced to no more than five and a half times the incomes of the bottom 20 per cent.”
The CPA election manifesto goes on to explain that their aversion to inequality arises from a uniquely Christian concern for the health of human relationships, which suffer under the weight of massive social inequality. Their position on inequality is hardly an anomaly among European Christian parties. In fact, the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), a confederation of Christian parties from different European nations operating within the European Union, states very similar goals in its own programme:
“Social justice is a fundamental Biblical teaching and Christian-democrat notion. Social justice demands an equal regard for all. That implies a special concern for the needs of the poor, refugees, those who suffer and the powerless. It requires us to oppose exploitation and deprivation. It requires also that appropriate resources and opportunities are available. In this way, we meet the basic requirements of all and each person is able to take part in the life of the community.”
Toward that end, the European Christian Political Foundation, which is the official think tank of the ECPM, recently commissioned a publication entitled ‘After Capitalism’, which is summarized thus:
“‘After Capitalism’ seeks to rethink the foundations of a market economy and argues that the Bible’s central theme of relationships is the key to rebuilding a system that promotes economic well-being, financial stability and social cohesion.”
It is notable that the multitude of parties that make up the EPCM are not necessarily leftist or wholly liberal parties. They do not generally align themselves with openly socialist parties in their home countries, though their policies toward welfare and equality would likely be branded as such by American Christians. And so the question remains: If European Christians feel the anti-poverty mission of Christianity is as worthy of political action as the ethical values relating to family life, why doesn’t the American Christian Right feel the same?
Economic policy seems a strange place to wall off consideration of Christian ethics, but when it comes to policies that would expand welfare programs or extend particular benefits to the poor, the American Christian Right recoils, and tends to fall back on the rhetoric of personal accountability and individual liberty in matters of charity. But as European Christian parties have shown, limiting economic justice to the arena of charity is a political choice. If the government has a moral role — which the American Christian Right certainly believes it does — then why shouldn’t it participate in the same forms of care individual Christians are obligated to?
No principled reason can be given for the distinction the Christian Right draws between harnessing the state to pursue social objectives and harnessing it to pursue economic objectives. It is a uniquely American distinction as far as Christian politicking goes. What the distinction reveals is that so-called values voters are just a particular flavor of right-wing political culture, one that opts for Christian language and rhetoric when communicating its message. But in that case, it is their freestanding political commitments that inform their Christianity, not the other way around.
The answer to this riddle is therefore not so mysterious. Although nominally interested in harnessing the state to pursue Christian social objectives, the American Christian Right is not detached from the culture it has developed within. Their politics is not one that is Christian in origin; rather, it originates from the same place all other right-wing politics originates, but mobilizes Christian rhetoric and meanings post-hoc to justify its goals.
By: Elizabeth Stoker and Matt Bruenig, Salon, October 15, 2013
“The End Of The Evangelical Era”: The Stamp Of Approval Of Christian Conservatives Has Become Far Less Meaningful
Saturday, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz, two of the many candidates whose names are being bandied about for the 2016 presidential race, made a pilgrimage to Iowa to speak at the Family Leadership Summit. There, as part of a nine-hour marathon of speeches to an audience of 1,500 evangelical Christians, Cruz and Santorum joined a host of conservative politicians and public figures—including Donald Trump, that standard-bearer of wingnuttery—in lambasting Obamacare, the Internal Revenue Service, and the GOP establishment. Pastor Rafael Cruz, father of Senator Cruz, spoke vividly and at length about liberals’ attempts to turn the country into a socialist paradise. “Socialism requires that government becomes your god,” he said. “That’s why they have to destroy the concept of God. They have to destroy all loyalties except loyalty to government. That’s what’s behind homosexual marriage.”
More than highlighting the candidates and issues that will drive the 2016 primaries, the event illustrates the waning influence of Christian conservative leaders like Iowa’s Bob Vander Plaats, the summit organizer. Most GOP contenders will seek a blessing from multiple evangelical heavyweights—Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, to name a few—but these are, increasingly, empty rituals. Even if the aging scions of the Christian Right can agree on the best GOP candidate (which, in 2012, they struggled mightily to do), their stamp of approval is far less meaningful for evangelical voters than it was two decades ago.
At the summit, Congressman Steve King, the Iowa arch-conservative, encouraged pastors to defy the Internal Revenue Service, which forbids religious leaders whose churches have tax-exempt status from speaking out on partisan issues, and preach politics from the pulpit. Ted Cruz mocked his Republican colleagues for their failure to repeal Obamacare and suggested that the U.S. reform its tax code by dismantling the IRS. Santorum scolded moderate and libertarian Republicans for abandoning social issues like same-sex marriage. These are red-meat issues for older conservative Christians, but could hurt Republicans among younger and more moderate evangelicals. For example, a recent poll from the Public Religion Research Institute showed that a slim majority of young white evangelical Protestants supports same-sex marriage.
Other potential 2016 candidates are already in Vander Plaats’ sights, even if they were absent at the summit. Texas Governor Rick Perry attended last year’s Family Leadership Summit and Vander Plaats has spoken approvingly of Senator Rand Paul. Notably, however, Vander Plaats is less enthusiastic about politicians with even a whiff of moderate sympathies; he decried Senator Marco Rubio’s bipartisan work on immigration reform, saying there was “no way” Iowa evangelicals would vote for him in 2016. He also had critical words for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; according to Vander Plaats, Christie’s conservative credentials aren’t strong enough to capture the nomination.
George W. Bush was the last Republican candidate who was considered sufficiently socially conservative to garner approval from evangelical leaders like Robertson and Jerry Falwell and still win a general election. In January 2012, faced with the prospect of Mitt Romney—a moderate and a Mormon—as the presumptive Republican nominee, 150 members of the evangelical old guard gathered on a ranch in Texas to reach a consensus on the best alternative to Romney. After mulling their alternatives in the motley GOP field, which included Bachmann, Santorum, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich, the leaders endorsed Santorum, a Catholic with a strong emphasis on social issues and a sharp contrast to Romney the business maven.
Their followers’ response, in the primaries that followed, was mixed. Romney’s eventual nomination remained almost certain; conservative evangelicals’ support for Santorum only helped delay the inevitable until May. But in the general election, nearly eight in ten evangelicals voted for Romney.
“The days of evangelical leaders crowning political princes are well behind us,” says Robert P. Jones, the CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit public opinion research organization. “Evangelicals are still a huge part of the GOP base, but they’re no longer taking their cues from a handful of well-known leaders.”
Keeping the spotlight on Iowa is one of the best ways for Christian conservative leaders to retain some influence over the nomination process. But preserving their foothold will be an uphill battle. To Vander Plaats’ chagrin, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, a Republican, is threatening to do away with the Ames Straw Poll, an event that’s traditionally been important for party fundraising, saying that it has “outlived its usefulness.” The Straw Poll, which was first held in 1979, has been a crucial way for the Christian Right to advance their agenda in the presidential race since 1988, when Pat Robertson pulled off a spectacular first-place finish, setting the tone for the rest of the primary. If the Iowa Republican Party scraps the event, Vander Plaats says, his group is ready to fill the gap with another Family Leadership Summit in 2015. But it wouldn’t be the same kind of media magnet as the Ames Straw Poll, which offers fried butter on a stick as well as GOP candidates.
The extreme rhetoric that revved up the crowd this past weekend isn’t likely to resonate as strongly among mainstream GOP voters or even more moderate evangelicals. If the Family Leadership Summit is any guide, the efforts of potential 2016 candidates like Ted Cruz to secure evangelical leaders’ support—and, by proxy, Christian conservatives’ votes—will define the margins, not the center, of the GOP race.
By: Amelia Thompson-Deveaux, The American Prospect, August 13, 2013
“An Angry, Extreme, Harsh Nut”: Why Rick Santorum Isn’t The 2016 GOP Frontrunner
In just about every presidential election since 1980, the Republican Party has nominated the runner-up from the previous contest. In 1980, 1976 almost-ran Ronald Reagan won the GOP nod; in 1988, Republicans went for 1980 second-placer George H.W. Bush; in 1996, it was Bob Dole, who came in second in 1988; 2008 brought us John McCain, the No. 2 in 2000; and the 2008 runner-up, Mitt Romney, was the nominee in 2012.
Who came in second place in the 2012 Republican primaries? Rick Santorum. The socially conservative former senator from Pennsylvania is giving every indication that he will run again in 2016, says Byron York at The Washington Examiner, “and yet now, no one — no one — is suggesting Santorum will be the frontrunner in 2016, should he choose to run.” Why not? And is everyone wrong to write him off?
This week, Santorum is visiting Iowa, York points out, “where Republicans are excited about Sen. Ted Cruz, where they’re curious about Gov. Scott Walker, where they want to hear from Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rand Paul and other new faces.” The media is curious about those new faces, too. But Santorum won 11 primaries and caucuses — including Iowa’s — for a reason, York says.
Each of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates had their moment in the lead, but “Santorum was the one who came closest to a position on the economy that might appeal to middle-income voters alienated by both parties,” York says:
At nearly every stop, Santorum talked about voters who haven’t been to college, who aren’t the boss, who are out of work or afraid of being out of work. And then, when millions of those very people stayed away from the polls in November…. Briefly put, Romney lost because he failed to appeal to the millions of Americans who have seen their standard of living decline in recent decades. Of all the GOP’s possible candidates, Santorum has the most cogent analysis of that loss, and a plan to avoid repeating it in 2016. [Washington Examiner]
In many ways, York makes a compelling argument. “Based on resume, Santorum is a much more plausible presidential candidate and potential president than [Pat] Buchanan or [Steve] Forbes,” the also-rans of the 1996 campaign who were nothing more than a blip in 2000, says Pete Spiliakos at First Things. But Santorum is being lumped in with them instead of Dole and Romney and McCain. “He really isn’t getting the respect he deserves.”
There are some reasons for that, Spiliakos concedes. Santorum didn’t run a very tight campaign, he would often ramble in his primary-night speeches, and in the debates he would sometimes lose his temper and couldn’t “seem to avoid getting into self-destructive arguments.” But these are things that “could probably be mitigated with more money and staffing to take care of the nuts and bolts and help him prepare remarks,” Spiliakos says.
Of course, not everyone is on board with the Santorum-as-frontrunner argument. Santorum’s fund-raising problems in 2012 weren’t an accident, says Daniel Larison at The American Conservative. His strident social conservatism on birth control and abortion turned off even some Republicans, and even York’s boosting of Santorum’s focus-on-the-little-guy economic message misses just “how allergic many in the GOP are to anything that sounds like economic populism.”
Throw in Santorum’s foreign policy vulnerabilities — he’s “fanatically hawkish in a party that is moving gradually in the other direction,” toward Rand Paul — says Larison, and its pretty clear that “if you wanted to invent a politician who could alienate several different parts of the Republican coalition all at once, you would design someone like Santorum.”
In the end, says James Joyner at Outside the Beltway, “Santorum may be ‘open’ to running for president again but he’s not the front-runner. Indeed, he’s simply not going to be the nominee.” Yes, there was that brief moment, right after the Iowa caucuses, when “Santorum seemed like a plausible nominee,” but he pretty “quickly revealed himself to be an angry nut trying to tap into petty resentments.”
Santorum simply comes across as harsh and extreme, even to die-hard Republicans. While it’s true that the GOP has a tradition of nominating the guy whose “turn” it is, my strong guess is that, as when George W. Bush was nominated in 2000, none of the candidates from last time around will be relevant. Mitt Romney almost certainly won’t run again. Santorum hit his ceiling in 2012…. I don’t have any sense who the 2016 nominee will be this far out. The party is still sorting out its identity, which the 2014 midterms may or may not contribute to solving. But I’d bet good money that it won’t be Rick Santorum. [Outside the Beltway]
By: Peter Weber, The Week, August 8, 2013
“How Stupid Do They Think We Are?”: Women Can Love Puppies And Oppose Men Who Think They Should Control Our Bodies
I feel like a 12-year-old trying to explain why Muffy is no longer dating Binky, but here goes:
National Right to Life has broken up with Cleveland Right to Life because Cleveland Right to Life wants to amend its mission statement to ban same-sex marriage — in Ohio, mind you, where same-sex marriage is already banned.
Think of it as the “So there!” initiative — in case any gay people in Ohio missed the 2004 “We mean it!” voter referendum that stripped them of rights they never had.
Welcome to my little patch of Wackadoodle Land.
National Right to Life says it’s focused on eliminating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. After all, there’s only so much energy in a day, and we womenfolk have been a handful ever since we got the right to vote. Trying to take away women’s legal rights in 2013 is exhausting work. Embarrassing, too, when your loudest spokesman is the former and possibly future Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum.
There’s a new YouTube video of Santorum making the rounds. This time, he accuses liberals of making it hard for conservatives to shower in Texas.
“What the pro-choice movement does is they just don’t focus on their little issue,” he said. “They focus on everything they do and every aspect of their lives. They make it uncomfortable for students who come to Austin to shower at a Young Men’s Christian Association, YMCA, gym, because they live it. They’re passionate. They’re willing to do and say uncomfortable things in mixed company. They’re willing to make the sacrifice at their business because they care enough.”
Then he went on to talk about the American Revolution.
I am reminded of a male reader’s letter during last year’s Republican presidential primaries. “I do not understand,” he wrote, “how a lady who can be so sweet to her puppy can be so mean to Rick Santorum.”
Oh, yes, you do.
What Santorum failed to mention — but the Austin Y later explained in a statement — was that the young men showed up for showers wearing T-shirts telegraphing their support for legislation outlawing most abortions. The Y director asked them not to return because the organization tries to offer a partisan-free environment.
“So,” you might ask, “what does same-sex marriage have to do with abortion rights?”
Silly you, having a point. You never are going to fit in with this crowd.
Cleveland Right to Life President Molly Smith explained the anti-gay agenda this way to The Plain Dealer: “How can you be for the child if you are not for the family?”
Fascinating question in light of the largest study of children with same-sex parents, by the University of Melbourne, which showed they do as well as — and sometimes better than — children raised by heterosexuals.
Lead researcher Dr. Simon Crouch said that’s because gay families deal with more challenges (hello-o-o-o-, Cleveland Right to Life), which makes their children more resilient.
“Because of the situation that same-sex families find themselves in, they are generally more willing to communicate and approach the issues that any child may face at school, like teasing or bullying,” he told a reporter.
Experience has taught me to expect a few emails insisting this study doesn’t count because it’s about foreigners. They’re Australians. Home of Ugg boots. You don’t get more American than that.
Cleveland Right to Life board member Jerry C. Cirino told The Plain Dealer that he, too, supported the same-sex marriage ban: “We know it is not only important to protect the rights of a child to be born. … We should also care about the child after they are born.”
Again, no explanation as to how same-sex parents hurt children. Surprising, considering local Right to Life chapters’ fondness for fun fake facts that find their way into Ohio laws that can’t survive constitutional challenges. National Right to Life is sick of that, too. Ask them about Ohio’s “heartbeat bill.” That went well.
Nevertheless, let’s look on the bright side. Finally, Cleveland Right to Life claims to be in the business of looking out for the children they insist women must bear. Surely, those press releases are on the way calling for universal health care, affordable day care and a living wage for all working parents.
How stupid do they think we are?
Again, I’m reminded of that male reader. I responded to his initial email by explaining that we women are complicated creatures capable of holding more than one thought in our heads. We can love puppies and oppose men who think they should control our bodies.
The reader was unimpressed. “Well,” he wrote, “now you just sound like my wife.”
Well, yes. We’re everywhere.
By: Connie Schlutz, The National Memo, August 8, 2013
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