“You Did Build That”: As Trump Embarrasses Them On Immigration, Republicans Have No One To Blame But Themselves
The always excellent Greg Sargent makes a great point this morning at the Plum Line: Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for the quandary Donald Trump is putting them in.
Just as Southern conservatives could have saved themselves from looking like racist neanderthals desperate to keep a symbol of hate and slavery flying over their governments by taking action of their own accord, so too could the GOP have stood up for immigration reform and put the kibosh on a xenophobic huckster like Trump. But it was not to be:
Really, now — nobody could have predicted that if Republicans failed to pass immigration reform when they had the chance in 2013 and 2014, it would become a major issue in the 2016 race, in ways that are alarming GOP strategists. Yet, shockingly, here we are.
Donald Trump’s foray into the immigration debate has now sparked a flare-up between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. And some Republicans are openly warning that Trump’s comments threaten to do severe damage to the GOP brand among Latinos.
Of course they will, and for good reason. Trump is merely saying in front of a microphone what millions of Republicans across the country say behind closed doors and anonymously in online comments sections. That Trump’s vicious beliefs are widely shared among conservatives is precisely the reason why otherwise business-friendly Republicans eager to win back a greater share of the Hispanic vote could not see their way to passing immigration reform, for fear of Tea Party challenges from the right.
Republicans in leadership could have simply told their nativist base to pound sand, but that might not have been an option: after all, merely sneezing the wrong direction on the issue may have cost Eric Cantor his seat. Either way, the GOP has only itself to blame for the Trump debacle. They had the opportunity to nip this in the bud and take the tough stand to pass immigration reform. They chose not to, and now they’re reaping the whirlwind.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, July 12, 2015
“The Idiot Thug Running Maine”: Maine’s Ultra-Conservative Governor May Have Finally Messed With The Wrong People
Last week, members of the Maine legislature’s Government Oversight Committee unanimously called for an investigation into Tea Party Governor Paul LePage. At question is whether or not he inappropriately—and potentially illegally—abused his control over the state’s budget to force a charter school to fire a political opponent.
The “combative” governor, as The New York Times called him—which is New England shorthand for “asshole”—hasn’t so much protested his innocence as he has thumbed his nose at the bipartisan committee’s authority.
In a letter to Beth Ashcroft, the director of the oversight group, his counsel cited the legally-binding “You’re Not the Boss of Me” doctrine.
“The Governor and the exercise of his discretionary executive power are simply not subject to OPEGA’s jurisdiction and/or oversight,” the letter explained. “If members of the Legislature wish to ‘investigate’ the Governor, they should look to the Constitution for the authority to do so.”
They might do just that. Six state lawmakers recently said they would begin looking into the process of impeachment over the imbroglio, in which LePage has been accused of withholding more than $500,000 in state money from Good Will-Hinckley—which, sadly, isn’t a straight-to-DVD sequel, but rather a charter school for disadvantaged children.
LePage admits to demanding that the school sever ties with recently hired president Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves. Fearing the substantial and immediate loss of funds, the school promptly did just that. Eves, a long time political foe, has said he’s considering a lawsuit against the governor.
He might have to wait in line.
Joining the chorus calling for LePage’s sizable head on a buttery roll is the Portland Press Herald, who outlined other instances in which LePage has toed the line of propriety. This time, at long last, the paper’s editorial board argues, he’s gone too far.
“If this is allowed to stand, the governor could intervene in the legislative process at will by using the full power of the state to threaten the livelihood of anyone who doesn’t vote his way,” the state’s largest paper wrote.
For those unaccustomed to the darkened corners of the Maine political process, the larger question might not be what LePage is up to now, but how he ever got elected in the first place—let alone re-elected four years later in 2014. His rap sheet of bizarre, brazenly unilateral proclamations would be funny—if there weren’t, say, the futures of disadvantaged children at risk.
Actually, even if you ask state representatives, it’s still funny. Even Democratic Representative Pinny Beebe-Center—one of the lawmakers considering an impeachment investigation—admitted as much, telling the Bangor Daily News that LePage has given the state a bad name.
“We’re the laughingstock of the country,” she said of the man the right-wing politics site Politico called “America’s craziest governor.” “This is lower than low.”
As any lobsterman can tell you, the lowest depths are even deeper than you’d ever imagine, and if you trawl them long enough, you’re bound to dredge up something unsavory. For LePage that sort of thinking doesn’t seem to be just a metaphor, but an actual governing policy.
Back in 2011, LePage garnered headlines when he memorably told the NAACP that they could “kiss his butt” after saying he would not attend Martin Luther King Jr. Day events around the state.
“They are a special interest,” he said of the NAACP. “End of story. And I’m not going to be held hostage by special interests.”
LePage accused the group of playing the race card, then materialized an entire deck of his own, and kicked over the card table for good measure.
“And if they want, they can look at my family picture. My son happens to be black, so they can do whatever they’d like about it,” he said. The LePages took a Jamaican teen, who they did not formally adopt, into their home about ten years earlier.
Speaking of his children, critics of LePage called his hiring of his 22-year-old daughter to a $41,000 staff position shortly after he was elected “brazen nepotism” that would be “illegal in most states.” Then again, considering how he attempted to unsuccessfully make the legal working age 12 instead of 16, 22 is nearing retirement age.
Perhaps, you might be thinking, LePage is simply in favor of the concept of hard work? Only as long as it’s not organized labor. One of his earliest appearances on the national stage came when he demanded the removal of a mural dedicated to the history of the labor movement in the state, saying that it was disrespectful toward corporations.
And then there are the governor’s efforts to weaken environmental laws. LePage controversially overturned on a ban on bisphenol A in baby bottles, something that, at worst, the porcine governor cracked, might mean “some women may have little beards.”
Naturally, all of his farcical exploits have been dutifully documented by the state’s press, which has rankled LePage so much that he tried to order state employees not to talk to the Press Herald, an institution which he joked at one point he’d like to blow up.
Another instance of LePage’s infamous sense of humor came when he referred to a Democratic state legislator’s proclivity toward symbolically anally penetrating citizens without the courtesy of any lubrication.
As for his new-found concern for the well-being of Maine’s school children, LePage had some bracing advice for them a while back. “If you want a good education, go to an academy,” he said back in 2012. “If you want a good education, go to private schools. If you can’t afford it, tough luck—you can go to the public school.”
Unfortunately, if LePage gets his way, there might not be any money left to go toward those public schools, as seen in his most recent foray into the Austerity Bucket Challenge. LePage’s efforts to completely eliminate the state income tax, which generates around $1.7 billion in annual revenue, came to national attention earlier this year when he found himself in a pissing match with Maine’s most famous resident, Stephen King. The plan was defeated last month, but LePage has remained steadfast, saying he’s considering initiating a public referendum on the matter.
So how does such a spittle-lipped, gaffe-prone, “business-first” governor get elected in the traditionally mild-mannered state of Maine? It’s complicated, but it essentially comes down to two factors: Maine’s peculiar electoral voting system, and its polarized identity.
LePage’s election in 2010, which he won with just over 1 percent more votes than the next runner-up in a three-way race—and only 39 percent of of the total vote—was emblematic of just how little of a statewide mandate the governor ever really had.
Alex Steed is a columnist for the Bangor Daily News who wrote last week about how frustrated he’s become explaining what the deal is with LePage to people outside of Maine. He tells The Daily Beast that it’s confounding that LePage managed to pull off another slight victory in 2014 “despite having become known for telling the NAACP to kiss his butt and warning school children against the dangers of reading newspapers.”
“Those things actually happened,” he says.
Chris Korzen, a political activist and former head of the group Maine’s Majority, an organization dedicated to “highlighting the disconnect between LePage and Maine voters,” says LePage got elected for two reasons.
“Many if not most voters hunger for leaders who are strong and decisive, who don’t kowtow to outside interests, who aren’t afraid to tell it like is and be themselves. LePage is all of that,” he says.
“Secondly, the Democrats have utterly failed to communicate a coherent vision for Maine’s future, and have instead focused much of their time attacking the governor and cutting back-room deals. The bottom line is that Democrats have not given the people what they want—and LePage has. Whatever misgivings they may have about LePage are outweighed by the lack of a suitable alternative.”
Despite all of that, Steed says, Lepage found his way back in office in 2014 when voter turnout was high because of a referendum on, of all things, trapping bears.
“This was widely known as the ballot question about whether or not it was cool to bait bears with donuts and then trap them,” he said. “This rallied the outdoorsmen to come out to the ballot in huge numbers, particularly in Northern Maine, and while out, they voted for LePage, the most conservative candidate. This speaks generally to a complex and layered scenario, of course, but in short, he owes his second term, which he clearly perceives as a mandate even against his own party, to the lack of a runoff voting system, and trapping bears with donuts.”
That’s about as good of an explanation for the duality of Maine’s voting bloc as any. In short, there are two Maines: the place people around the country think of when they imagine it—the Vacation State of craggy shores and sea-side lobster shacks. And there’s the other Maine, basically the South of the North.
There’s the Maine you picture when you want to send someone a postcard from vacation, and the one that you picture when sending a ransom note from an abandoned hunting shed.
In other words, it’s a liberal’s worst nightmare. LePage’s frequent sparring partner, Stephen King— who addressed the latest controversy on Twitter recently—knows a thing or two about those.
“Paul LePage has become a terrible embarrassment to the state I live in and love,” he wrote. “If he won’t govern, he should resign.”
It’s not hard to imagine LePage inviting King and those who agree with him to direct their comments in the vicinity of the nearest toilet bowl. If only he weren’t dragging the rest of the state into it as well.
By: Luke O’Neil, The Daily Beast, July 6, 2016
“Paul LePage Is Facing Impeachment”: Why The Tea Party Hero’s Luck May Have Finally Run Out
Even among the gaggle of hopping mad reactionaries swept into power by 2010’s Tea Party wave, the unbridled anger of Paul LePage, the former businessman who is currently in his second term as Maine’s governor, has always allowed him to stand out.
If the average Republican was outraged, for example, you could count on LePage to be incensed. If the average Republican was ignoring people of color, LePage was responding to their concerns with an invitation to give a specific part of his body a kiss. If the average Republican pandered to Fox News’ geriatric and terrified viewers, LePage offered them nothing less than the personification of their collective id.
All of which is to explain why it’s not a complete shock to read from the New York Times that state legislators in Maine are considering the nuclear option of impeachment. He’s a twice-elected conservative in a state that leans increasingly toward centrist Democrats, but watching his administration has often felt like getting a window into an alternative universe where Bill O’Reilly runs a state government. So now that Republicans in the Legislature have effectively abandoned him, the talk of canceling the Paul LePage Show mid-season actually makes sense.
If you’re one of those vanishingly few number of people who don’t pay close attention to Maine politics, however, you probably think this sounds excessively dramatic. You probably haven’t heard of LePage; so can he really be that bad? It’s not as if he did something truly remarkable, like destroy his state’s public unions or engineer gridlock on the world’s busiest bridge. It’s true that LePage doesn’t have many legislative accomplishments of significance. But to view him solely through the bills he signs — or, increasingly, vetoes — is to look at Maine’s historically genteel politics through the wrong lens.
Not unlike New Jersey’s Chris Christie, another Republican governor in an even bluer state, most of LePage’s troubles can be summed up in one word: temperament. Simply put, the guy is a walking firestorm of pettiness, fury and resentment. Infamously, one of the first things he did upon taking office in 2011 was order the removal of a pro-worker mural from the state’s Department of Labor. He said the painting suggested the government had an anti-business bias. The story earned LePage negative attention from the national media. The whole thing was gratuitous and stupid.
Taking down a mural is, obviously, not a big deal. I bring it up, however, because I think it’s a useful case-in-point for understanding two important elements of LePage’s personality. One, the severity of his lack of judgment; and two, how the overriding, distinctive feature of his approach is one of thoroughgoing meanness. For example, here’s how LePage tends to talk about his opponents — who are, in many cases, members of the general public: They’re idiots, liars and spoiled little brats; they’re corrupt, spineless and like the Nazis. He’s attacked Democrats in the state Senate with homophobia; and he’s joked about having his critics shot.
Maine’s comparatively sober-minded GOPers, perhaps the final representatives of a long New England tradition of Republican moderation, put up with LePage for years. As has been the case all over the country, the more confrontational and ideologically rigid elements of Maine’s GOP were better-organized than the other factions. And at least LePage cut taxes. But now that the governor has responded to his 2014 reelection by trying to ram through an elimination of the state’s income tax; and now that LePage promised to veto any bill that comes his way — be its author Republican or Democrat — until Democrats allow a referendum to that end, they’re feeling differently.
What Republicans are now realizing is that LePage’s kind of anti-government conservatism is in truth profoundly authoritarian. They probably knew this already, but new allegations that LePage had threatened to deny a charter school state funds unless it fired a political rival has made it impossible to ignore. The governor has all but declared war on the Legislature itself, and he has ground much of state government into a veto-induced halt. When combined with his machine-style tactics against the charter, these assaults on the state’s balance of power have given Republicans the cover they need to go after one of their own. Thus the talk of impeachment.
Saber-rattling is easy, though; so I wouldn’t be surprised if LePage ultimately finishes his second term. Then again, very little about the political career of Paul LePage, a man who’s earned the title of “America’s craziest governor,” has gone as one would expect. It certainly would be better for Maine — and the whole country, really — if LePage’s Fox News-style politics eventually brought him to an ignominious end, but a significant chunk of Maine voters evidently like having Bill O’Reilly as their governor. The Paul LePage show goes on.
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, June 30, 2015
“The Hard, Cold Politics Of Neo-Confederacy”: Now Fly Under The Flag Of “Constitutional Conservatism” With Tricorner Hat Of The Tea Party
Even as a lot of conservatives advanced dumb revisionist histories whereby no Republican had ever expressed sympathy for the Confederacy and its symbols, RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende offered a clear-eyed analysis of the politics of the matter in recent decades, and while I don’t agree with all his conclusions, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Long story short: Trende argues that the “flag” controversy became a big deal during a relatively brief period when the older downscale rural white southerners who care about it were up for grabs (at least in non-presidential contests) between the two parties, and is now coming to an end because Democrats have lost them and Republicans can now take them for granted.
Because Democrats no longer see any electoral payoff in talking to guys with Confederate flags in the back of their pickup trucks, they no longer have any incentive to make even weak gestures toward keeping the flag around. Progressives are freed from their need to keep up their awkward dance with rural Southerners for the sake of maintaining some degree of power in the South (a dance that dates back at least to FDR’s reluctance to endorse anti-lynching laws). Polarization has forced them – and freed them – to explore new paths to power.
At the same time, it’s important to realize that most prominent Southern Republican politicians have roots in either the suburban or old establishment Democrat wings of the party. I doubt if Nikki Haley or Bobby Jindal grew up with much affection for the Confederate flag. The same goes for Mitch McConnell – who entered politics in Jefferson County (Louisville), an old Union town whose Republicanism was strong enough that it almost voted for Herbert Hoover in 1932.
The examples Trende offers of this dynamic include one with which I am very familiar: Zell Miller coming out for a “flag” change in 1993 and then losing badly among white rural voters in 1994. Cause and effect are not easy to untangle here, however. Miller was already going to lose a lot of support in rural North Georgia in 1994 because in 1990 he benefited enormously from a “native son” effect–North Georgia had rarely produced governors in a state long dominated politically by South Georgia “black belt” pols–that would not appear a second time. He also had an alternative strategy for a majority, based on his education initiatives, and in fact, he won in 1994 because some of his rural losses were offset by suburban gains. All of this is consistent with Trende’s theory that “polarization” eventually took the “flag” off the table, but real politicians had real risks and decisions to make.
As for Trende’s idea that neither party has had any interest in defending the Confederate heritage once Battle-flag-loving rural whites died off or became part of the GOP “base,” I think he misses the broader resonance of neo-Confederate ideology, which isn’t just about battle flags and whistling Dixie. As I argued at TPMCafe earlier this week, all sorts of notions associated with the Confederacy, from absolute state sovereignty and absolute private property rights to a hostile/paternalistic attitude towards African-Americans, remain active elements of hard-core conservative ideology. That they may now fly under the different, red-white-and-blue flag of “constitutional conservatism”–complete with the tricorner hat of the Tea Party–doesn’t change that.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, June 25, 2015
“We Must Examine Our Own Prejudices”: Removing The Confederate Flag Is Easy; Fixing Racism Is Hard
When the Republican National Committee chose Tampa as the site for the party’s 2012 national convention, it seemed quite fitting—Florida being a red state and all, and one in which evangelical fervor mixed freely with the brand of Tea Party vindictiveness epitomized by Governor Rick Scott.
As I traveled to the city limits, destined for a motel reserved for any C-list, left-wing journalists covering the confab, the taxi I occupied exited the highway on a ramp dominated by perhaps the largest thing of its kind I had ever seen. Hoisted on a 139-foot pole, this Confederate battle flag measures 30 feet high and 60 feet long. That’s a lot of cloth, and the day I viewed it, it whipped violently against the winds stirred up by Hurricane Isaac, who mercifully defied predictions by remaining offshore.
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sight of the immense flag; whoever had placed it there clearly meant to make a statement, and not one of peace, love, or understanding. When I recaptured my ability to speak, I stammered to the cab driver, who was black, “What on earth is that?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “They put it up a few years ago,” he said. He drove past it pretty much every day, he said.
It was 2008 when the flag first ascended the pole at the junction of I-75 and Interstate 4 on June 3, the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the short-lived Confederate States of America, a day observed in many Florida localities as a holiday. In what may or may not have been a coincidence, Barack Obama was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination. (Hillary Clinton would suspend her campaign four days later.)
The land on which the flag stands was owned at the time by Marion Lambert, a proud member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and who since donated the parcel to the group. According to a June 21 report in the Tampa Bay Times, Lambert called the flag “a catalyst for a mental movement.”
“The reason we put that flag up is to start people thinking,” he told the Times.
He said this as white people across America began debating whether the white murderer Dylann Roof, who gunned down nine black people in a church rooted in the rebellion of enslaved people, is a simple racist or a mentally ill one. In Lambert’s “mental movement,” Roof is, at the very least, an army of one.
Roof’s actions, combined with photographs of him bearing the treasonous battle standard, have touched off a furious cry to rid the land of the symbol of one of America’s original sins (the other being the genocide of the land’s indigenous people). While it would be lovely to never gaze upon such a disgraceful emblem again, the rush to do so is fast becoming a diversion useful to those who seek to continue the nation’s long denial of its own bloody history of race-based oppression, which will do nothing to forestall the growth of racism in its lesser-seen forms.
Yes, it is a big deal when even Republican governors and luminaries—including the party’s last presidential nominee—call for the removal of the flag from state capitols and public buildings, a phenomenon unthinkable a decade ago. But party leaders also know it’s what needs to happen in order for the party to survive, since millennials are not terribly keen on displays of racial hatred.
But allowing the removal of the flag to stand as the sole answer to the Charleston massacre would let the North entirely off the hook for its own brand of racism, often every bit as brutal, if occasionally more subtle, as that displayed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans—or an almost entirely white Republican Party entertaining speech after speech at its Tampa national convention peppered with the Jacksonian language of “makers” and “takers,” and throwing the old welfare-queen card in the face of a black president.
But the white people of the North have plenty to account for, too, in the construction and maintenance of a racist society. I grew up in a New Jersey town that no black person dared to drive through. It was a nearly all-white town; we had one Chinese family, and two or three Latino families. No real estate agent who valued his or her job would show an African American buyer a house there. The cops in the Township of Clark were notorious for pulling over African American drivers seeking to enter the Garden State Parkway from the on-ramp that put our town on the map. And Clark was hardly an outlier among the burgs of the Northeast; it was just crassly obvious in its redlined bigotry.
You can take down all the Confederate flags in the country, and you won’t change a thing in Clark, or the thousands of towns just like it above the Mason-Dixon Line.
Nor should the progressive movement be let off the hook, despite its vociferous and righteous cry against the racist evil channeled by Dylann Roof the day he went on his murderous spree. In organizations not specifically focused on matters of race, it’s rare to see a black person in leadership, just as it’s rare to see women lead progressive organizations that are not specifically feminist. Until that changes, the underpinnings of a racist society remain intact. Until that changes, the false and evil narrative that claims those of African descent to be a lesser race lives on in the recesses of our minds, shaping the nation to its confines.
So, yes, remove the Confederate flag—that standard of dehumanization, treason, and murder—from our sight. But proof of our intention demands great change in the way in which we lead, the way in which we live, the way in which we think; we must be willing to truly open the riches of progressive society and culture to all. To do that, we must—each and every one of us—examine our own prejudice, and be determined to transcend it. Then the real work of a just society can begin.
By: Adele M. Stan, The American Prospect, June 24, 2015
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