“The Next Generation Of Birthers?”: Bizarre Ideas Make Their Way From The Far-Right Fringe To The Conservative Mainstream
We tend not to hear much from the “birther” activists anymore. For a while, these right-wing critics were obsessed with President Obama’s birthplace, ignoring all evidence in order to turn a ridiculous conspiracy theory into a cottage industry.
But with the president already thinking about his post-White House plans, and the 2016 election season underway, even the most unhinged conservatives no longer see much of a point in focusing on Obama’s origins. They’re just not going to force him from office.
And while it’s tempting to think the entire strain of nonsense is behind us, TPM reports that this may be wishful thinking. The birther “movement” has effectively surrendered in its crusade against President Obama, but what about some of his would-be successors?
In a column published last week on the conspiracy theory website WND, author Jack Cashill noted that questions had been raised about whether four of the 17 candidates in the GOP field were really “natural born citizens” and therefore eligible to run for President.
Ted Cruz has already dealt with those questions publicly – the Canadian-born senator from Texas renounced his citizenship with that country last summer in anticipation of a 2016 bid – but Cashill also listed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) among those who were suspect.
Though the line between satire and sincerity can seem blurry in far-right media, the WorldNetDaily piece does not appear to be a joke. It starts with a passive-voice classic – “The question has been raised for Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and even Rick Santorum” – and proceeds from there as if this were a legitimate area of inquiry.
It goes so far as to argue, “No one doubts that Jindal was born in the United States, but what is not clear is where the loyalty of his parents lay and whether Jindal is a natural born citizen under the law.”
I’ve read this a few times, and I’ll confess, I’m still not sure what that’s supposed to mean.
And what about Santorum? Why is he included in the mix? Jack Cashill, the author of the WorldNetDaily piece, told TPM, “Because his father was born in Italy and there’s some question as to whether his father was a citizen at the time Santorum was born. That’s a strange case. Only the purest of the constitutionalists would take up that challenge.”
I’m sure Santorum is relieved.
But I’m still stuck on, “The question has been raised.” By whom? When? Why? Cashill told TPM, “Especially in very strict constitutional tea party circles it’s a very lively topic…. It is an undercurrent. It’s not enough to turn an election, but it’s enough to cost like 1 percent of a potential electorate.”
There is, to be sure, a considerable distance between one article on WorldNetDaily and months of scuttlebutt in non-fringe campaign circles. But as we’ve seen many times, bizarre ideas can make their way from the far-right fringe to the conservative mainstream with surprising speed.
There is literally no reason to question the presidential eligibility of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Rick Santorum, but if your weird uncle sends you an all-caps email on the subject, now you’ll know why.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 18, 2015
“Republican Race Is Being Led By A Buffoon”: The GOP Primary Is A Mess. Can Anyone Unite This Party?
Jeb Bush is starting to remind me of someone. Tall guy, former governor, worshipped his politician dad? That’s right, I’m talking about Mitt Romney.
It isn’t just the part about their fathers, or the fact that like Romney, Bush is the representative of the “establishment” and doesn’t get a lot of love from the Tea Party base, or even that he seems to share Romney’s propensity for reinforcing his most glaring electoral weaknesses. (Jeb spent much of the last week explaining how the Iraq War was actually a tremendous success and we just need to bring back the Bush Doctrine, which is a great way to win over the many voters pining for a rerun of George W.’s term in office.)
It’s also that Bush’s only path to his party’s nomination may be to duplicate what Romney did successfully in 2012: use his money (and dogged persistence) to hang around while one ridiculous clown of a candidate after another has their momentary flight then crashes ignominiously to the ground, at the end of which primary voters run out of other options and say, “Oh all right, I guess we’ll go with you.”
All things considered, it isn’t such a bad strategy. And given the sourness of the Republican electorate, there may be no other way to win.
If we look beyond the bizarre candidacy of Donald Trump, the 2016 primary race is looking a lot like the 2012 race. While there were some serious people in that one, just as there are in the GOP campaign today, the overall picture voters got was of a chaotic mess in which a bunch of people you couldn’t imagine being president got an undue amount of attention. Just like now, you had candidates who had been elected to Congress but who had no business running for president. You had amateurs whom voters found attractive because they were different than all those blow-dried politicians. And for a long time, no one was able to move into a clear lead.
At this time four years ago, the only candidates in double digits were Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann. Many of that race’s most amusing developments—Bachmann’s demise, the steep rise then fall of Herman Cain, the same for Newt Gingrich—had yet to occur. Today, there are so many GOP candidates, and other than Trump most of them have the support of so few voters, that it looks even fuzzier. Look at the latest Fox News poll, which shows Trump at 25 percent, Ben Carson at 12 percent, Ted Cruz at 10 percent, and Jeb limping in at 9 percent. Three of those four people are never, ever going to be president. A Reuters/Ipsos poll has Trump at 21 percent, Bush at 12 percent, and nobody else over 8 percent.
The GOP race is being led by a buffoon who, despite his appeal to a certain kind of voter, is widely loathed by the public as a whole, barely pretends to understand the first thing about public policy, and still believes that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Meanwhile, the guys who are supposed to represent the future of the party, like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, are struggling to hold on to the support of one out of every 15 Republicans or so. To call the race a mess would be too generous.
If the party knew what it wanted, it might be able to settle on a candidate who could give it to them. The problem is that it’s made up of people who want different things. There are sober people who just want to find the candidate who can win them back the White House. But there are many more who know a lot more about what they don’t like than whom they might support. For years now, the Republican Party’s leaders (both politicians and media figures) and its voters have been dancing a manic pas de deux of extremism, where the leaders tell the voters to constantly increase their demands and punish anyone who strays from ideological purity, and the voters respond.
No Republican politician could possibly satisfy everyone in the roiling cauldron of anger, suspicion, and disappointment that is today’s GOP. How do you unite a party when the prevalent theme of their internal debate in recent years has been how disgusted they all are with their own side?
You can’t. But someone is going to be this party’s nominee, and it’s likely to be the one who can keep a steady pace while the others flame out. Jeb Bush recently said, “I’m the tortoise in the race—but I’m a joyful tortoise.” It isn’t much of a plan, but it may be the best anyone has. And there sure isn’t a lot of joy going around among Republicans these days.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, August 16, 2015
“Maine Court Smacks Down GOP Governor”: Caught Abusing His Power, Gov. Paul LePage Is In A World Of Trouble
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) is in a world of trouble, which may even lead to his impeachment, after the far-right governor was caught abusing his power to punish the Democratic state House Speaker. An official investigation and civil suit are already underway.
And then there’s his other problem, which in policy terms, is just as serious. The Portland Press Herald reported this afternoon:
Maine’s top court has ruled unanimously against Gov. Paul LePage in his dispute with the Legislature over whether he has more time to veto 65 bills already processed into law, delivering a significant blow to a governor already engulfed in withering criticism and scrutiny seven months into his second term.
The court’s advisory opinion ruled that the governor misread the Maine Constitution when he failed to veto 65 bills within the 10-day period prescribed by law. LePage’s legal team argued that the Legislature prevented the governor from returning the vetoes because lawmakers had temporarily adjourned. However, the ruling by six of the seven justices on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court rejected that reasoning. The seventh justice recused himself and did not participate in the proceedings.
The entirety of the unanimous, 55-page ruling is online here (pdf).
It’s hard to overstate what a disaster this is for Maine’s Tea Party governor.
To recap our previous coverage, the procedural aspect of this gets a little complicated, but in practical terms, LePage thought was giving a “pocket veto” to dozens of bills, letting them expire without his signature.
But that only works when the state legislature is adjourned and no longer in session. When the governor tried this little gambit, Maine’s legislative session was still ongoing.
And when the legislature is still in session, a bill becomes law automatically after 10 days if a governor doesn’t sign or veto it.
In other words, LePage, in his fifth year as governor, thought he was derailing dozens of pieces of legislation, some of which he strongly opposes, but he was apparently allowing them to become law – by accident.
Lawmakers and the state attorney general said those laws had become, well, law, but the GOP governor balked. Now, the state Supreme Court has ruled against LePage, too.
The governor has suggested in recent weeks that he’ll refuse to enforce the state laws he considers illegitimate, though that was before today’s state court ruling. If LePage’s posture doesn’t change, it would seem state lawmakers would have additional grounds for his impeachment.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 6, 2015
“Preparing To Engage In Political Hand-To-Hand Combat”: Chamber Of Commerce Will Go After Incumbent Republicans
One of the things a lot of people have been watching is what the business community – which has typically been pretty conservative – does in response to the Republican dissent into extremism. A lot of the shenanigans pushed by the tea partiers (i.e., debt ceiling crisis) are terribly destabilizing and that is not good for business. We also watched as the business community weighed in on cultural issues when they brought a halt to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana recently.
According to Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman, the Chamber of Commerce has about had enough with the nonsense. It’s interesting to note what finally pushed them to that point. It wasn’t the total obstruction employed by Republicans from the beginning of Obama’s presidency – or even the constant hostage crises they created. It’s something that has come more recently.
The early discussions by top-level Chamber operatives like Rob Engstrom and Scott Reed reflect a broad consensus among companies with business before Congress that the political dynamic needs to change on Capitol Hill.
The theory is simple: The Chamber spent some $70 million in 2014, mostly to help Senate Republicans build their majority. But many of their legislative priorities — immigration reform, the renewal of the Export-Import Bank and a long-term highway bill — have been held up by a clutch of conservative lawmakers in the House.
Apparently these business people thought that by giving control of Congress to Republicans – gridlock would end and some things would actually get done. They put the blame for that not happening on the kind of Republicans who joined the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus and have made Speaker Boehner’s life miserable. And so the Chamber is in the midst of developing a political strategy to challenge them in their re-election.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is gearing up to challenge some House Republicans in primary elections, frustrated after much of its agenda has been stymied by a small pocket of conservative GOP lawmakers.
The influential and well-heeled business group is already eyeing several races, but the plans are still in their infancy and the targets have not yet been decided upon, according to more than a half dozen Republican sources on K Street and Capitol Hill.
The group’s apparent new willingness to engage in hand-to-hand political combat to take out sitting Republicans would represent a major shift for the business community, which has largely shied away from targeting sitting lawmakers.
This will be an interesting story to keep an eye on over the next few months. It speaks to the growing divide in the Republican Party in its march towards extremism. What various entities with traditional ties to the Party do in response will likely tell us whether the GOP can survive and morph into something new or goes the way of the Whigs.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, The Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, August 1, 2015
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