“Quite The Candidate”: Ben Carson Stands By U.S., Nazi Comparisons
Remember neurosurgeon-turned-conservative-activist Ben Carson? He’s apparently still around, still making needlessly provocative remarks, and still moving forward with his presidential plans.
In fact, Ben Terris reported from Iowa yesterday on a Carson event in Des Moines.
He’s inside this meeting hall, before a sellout crowd of nearly 400 people at the Polk County Republicans’ end-of-summer fundraiser, to discuss bullies of a different order. He wants to talk about the “secular progressives” in the news media, politics and academia who will stop at nothing to change the nation as we know it. He also wants to do this in Iowa, while raising money for local Republicans, coinciding with the start of his new PAC, which will “lay the groundwork” should he decide to run for president. […]
He speaks softly, almost as though he’s reading a child to sleep. But this is a scary story. If Republicans don’t win back the Senate in November, he says, he can’t be sure “there will even be an election in 2016.” Later, his wife, Candy, tells a supporter that they are holding on to their son’s Australian passport just in case the election doesn’t go their way.
Just so we’re clear, the implication here is that Carson believes President Obama, tyrant that he is, may not allow elections in 2016. It’s why Carson’s family is preparing to flee the United States, just in case.
As for Carson arguing earlier this year that contemporary American life as “very much like Nazi Germany,” the right-wing doctor told Terris, “You can’t dance around it…. If people look at what I said and were not political about it, they’d have to agree. Most people in Germany didn’t agree with what Hitler was doing…. Exactly the same thing can happen in this country if we are not willing to stand up for what we believe in.”
I guess that means he’s not sorry?
Fox News’ Chris Wallace said yesterday that Carson, himself a Fox contributor, probably doesn’t have a “serious chance” to actually be elected president, but Wallace added he’d “love” to see Carson run anyway.
It’s not clear why.
For those who’ve forgotten Carson’s rise to Tea Party notoriety, Carson last year equated homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality. He soon after started comparing the Affordable Care Act to slavery, before comparing Americans to Nazis.
I swung by the page Right Wing Watch set up to document Carson’s more notable remarks and I was amazed at some of the recent entries. Carson said political correctness contributed to Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, and those who protested the shooting reminded him of Hamas.
Last month, Carson characterized the debate over marijuana legalization as a distraction from Benghazi. Seriously.
He’ll be quite a candidate.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 29, 2014
“Policies And Attitudes, That’s Just How They Roll”: Why Republicans Can’t Solve Their Problem With Women Voters
I’ll give Republicans credit for this: they keep trying to figure out why their party remains unappealing to large and important groups of voters. They’ve been mulling over their problem with Latino voters for some time, and now Politico has gotten a hold of a study commissioned by some GOP bigwigs to figure out why women keep giving more of their votes to Democrats:
But in Washington, Republican policies have failed to sway women — in fact, they appear to have turned women off. For example, the focus groups and polls found that women “believe that ‘enforcing equal pay for equal work’ is the policy that would ‘help women the most.'”
“Republicans who openly deny the legitimacy of the issue will be seen as out of touch with women’s life experiences,” the report warned, hinting at GOP opposition to pay-equity legislation. It’s the policy item independents and Democrats believe will help women the most.
The groups suggest a three-pronged approach to turning around their relationship with women. First, they suggest the GOP “neutralize the Democrats'” attack that Republicans don’t support fairness for women. They suggest Republican lawmakers criticize Democrats for “growing government programs that encourage dependency rather than opportunities to get ahead.” That message tested better than explaining that the GOP supports a number of policies that could help fairness for women.
The last time a Republican presidential candidate won a majority of women’s votes was 1988, and it’s hard to see it happening again soon unless there’s a huge blowout. While it’s all well and good to investigate the issue to try to understand it in as much detail as possible, I have some bad news for Republicans: This isn’t a problem they’re going to be able to solve.
That’s because both their policies and their attitudes are working against them. It isn’t just that Republicans oppose reproductive rights, though that doesn’t help. And it isn’t just that they oppose mandating contraceptive coverage in insurance, though that doesn’t help either. It’s that when they articulate those policy positions and others like them, they can’t keep themselves from doing so in the most hostile, contemptuous ways imaginable. That doesn’t apply to all of them, of course; maybe not even most of them. But any debate about an issue affecting women in particular is 100-percent guaranteed to feature at least a few prominent conservatives, including those who have their own radio and television programs, saying loudly that the women who disagree with the Republican position are sluts and whores. That’s just how they roll.
Karl Rove can say to his compatriots, “Let’s ease up on the ‘legitimate rape’ stuff, fellas,” but unfortunately for him and the other people who spend time thinking about the GOP’s challenges, a party can’t speak with one voice. Whenever a discussion starts about an issue like equal pay, everybody gets to weigh in, from the most sober senator to the most rabid Tea Partier to the most hateful talk radio host. And since we now have a highly developed outrage industrial complex, the appalling comments will be repeated and distributed, ensuring that everyone hears them. And even when they aren’t being outright offensive, Republicans are more likely to communicate their believe in condescending, outdated gender norms.
All of which means that the idea that Republicans are none too friendly to women is constantly reinforced, in ways both substantive and emotional. If you’re a woman, you’re not happy when the Republican party blocks equal pay legislation. But when you then hear some of them try to argue that the wage gap isn’t really a problem in the first place, and maybe you should just be staying at home with your kids anyway, well that’s going to really piss you off. And having a bunch of GOP bros tell you that they’re the real pro-women party because they don’t want people to depend on government isn’t going to go too far to change that.
Now take all that, and imagine what the atmosphere will be like if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee in 2016. There will be a tsunami of misogynistic hate directed at Clinton, which we know because she’s always generated a particularly ugly brand of male sexual panic in conservatives. If she’s actually threatening to become president, it’ll be worse than ever. In the face of that, the Republicans who try to argue that their party has something to offer women voters are going to get laughed right out of the voting booth.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 28, 2014
“They Have No Good Answer”: New Hobby Lobby Fix Puts Republicans In A Bind
In response to the Hobby Lobby case, the White House has implemented a fix to allow institutions and corporations who object even to a funding bypass on contraception coverage for employees. The fix is an overly complex workaround necessitated by the Supreme Court’s bizarre ruling that corporations have 1st Amendment religious rights, and can enforce those rights by refusing not only to provide contraception coverage, but even to enter into an agreement by which the government would provide contraception coverage for them.
The case puts conservative legislators in a bind: most people do not, in fact, believe that corporations should have religious rights. Most people don’t believe that contraception is a bad thing, or that employers should get to interfere in whether an employee’s insurance can cover contraception.
Republican lawmakers who claim to be moderates on reproductive rights are especially challenged. Many Republicans who claim to have a more tolerant philosophy on reproductive freedom nevertheless cast votes that align with their more extreme partisan counterparts, and paper it over by saying that they aren’t trying to ban abortion or contraception, but simply that they’re trying to make it “safer.”
The Hobby Lobby case removes that cover. Either you think it’s OK for corporation to decide not to cover birth control out of extremist religious objection, or you don’t. Take the case of Jeff Gorell, Republican Assemblymember in California and candidate for Congress against freshman Congresswoman Julia Brownley. Gorell calls himself “pro-choice” even though he has a 0% rating with Planned Parenthood, and a 90% rating from the California Pro-Life Council. He has been silent on the Hobby Lobby case despite repeated requests for comment. There’s even video of him stonewalling a questioner on the subject.
My tweets to both the NRCC and Mr. Gorell have also gone without response.
They’re silent, of course, because they have no good answer. If Mr. Gorell and Republicans like him all across America stand with Scalia and Alito on Hobby Lobby, they will betray themselves as far too extreme for the voters of their districts. If they disagree with the ruling, their rabid Tea Party base will stay home or actively nip at their heels from the right.
So they just hope the issue will go away and people will stop talking about it. It won’t, of course. Republicans across the board will eventually have to take a stand on whether they think corporations should have the religious right to prevent their employees from receiving birth control coverage.
By: David Atkins, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 23, 2014
“A Good Deal For Him”: Rick Perry Is Basically Charging Texas Taxpayers $4 Million A Week For His Presidential Ambitions
On Thursday, the first Texas National Guard troops arrived at the U.S. border as part of Operation Strong Safety, Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) unilateral border-security mission. And before rallying the border-bound troops at Camp Swift outside Austin on Wednesday, Perry had spent part of the week in Iowa, making not-so-subtle intimations that he will be coming back a lot before the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses in 2016.
It’s hard not to see those events as intimately connected. And sure, sending the National Guard to the border will probably get Perry some extra votes in the Iowa caucuses. But Iowa won’t be footing the bill.
Perry says that he had to send 1,000 National Guard troops to the Rio Grande Valley because the federal government isn’t doing enough to keep out “narco-terrorists” and illegal immigrants. The influx of 63,000 unaccompanied children since October, which has slowed significantly in the past few months, is a “side issue,” Perry said on Wednesday. “You now are the tip of the spear protecting Americans from these cartels” and “their tentacles of crime, of fear,” he told about 90 National Guard members, specifically mentioning the danger drug traffickers posed to Iowa, South Carolina, and a state that doesn’t have an early presidential caucus or primary, North Carolina.
Democrats are openly and directly accusing Perry of sending down the National Guard for no other reason than his presidential ambitions. Perry took umbrage at that suggestion: “The idea that what we’re doing is politics versus protecting the people of Texas, the people of this country is just false on its face.”
But what other explanation is there, really? The border crisis that has grabbed everyone’s attention is a “side issue” that Perry insists he isn’t sending the troops to address. And the 63,000 young, mostly Central American migrants really are a problem for Texas — but a humanitarian problem, not a military one. The U.S. Border Patrol is struggling to house and care for these children, and some number of them will surely end up in Texas schools and social services programs.
The $17 million to $18 million a month that Perry is spending to fund his open-ended border operation looks shakier when you consider what the National Guard will be doing: Watching. The troops will have the authority to detain, but not arrest, immigrants. But mostly they are going to be manning watchtowers and truck-mounted surveillance equipment.
The Associated Press spoke with Rodolfo Espinoza, the police chief of Hidalgo, a Texas town a mile from the border where the first wave of National Guard troops landed. The two police towers that the troops took up watch in Thursday “have cameras that can pan the area and record activity,” the AP‘s Christopher Sherman noted, though Espinoza said it’s more useful to have people in the towers. “It is good to have them,” Espinoza said, adding, “I think the only way you could secure the river is if every 10 yards you had someone standing there. It’s impossible.”
So who was crying for military reinforcements? The border-county sheriffs wanted more money, not National Guard troops. And at a July 29 hearing on the cost of Perry’s operation, the heads of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and Texas National Guard — Steve McCraw and Maj. Gen. John Nichols, respectively — said they had not recommended that the governor deploy the National Guard, though, as the Houston Chronicle puts it, they were “appreciative of his idea.”
Now, that’s not to say nobody wants the National Guard at the border. The idea is very popular among Republicans nationwide, especially conservative and Tea Party–aligned Republicans who vote in primary elections. In a mid-July CNN/ORC poll, for example, 76 percent of Republicans said the main focus of U.S. immigration policy should be “stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and for deporting those already here,” versus 49 percent of independents and 35 percent of Democrats.
In fact, a few days before Perry announced his National Guard deployment, a group of conservative and Tea Party activists met in Austin and publicly criticized him for his inaction, specifically urging the governor to send troops to the border. It’s easy to see how a politician with his eye on 2016 might leap at the opportunity to please this group, even if his “solution” actually does nothing to truly address America’s immigration problem. It’s the optics that matter.
But back home, Texas Republicans are concerned about how Perry is paying for this. The governor redirected $38 million from a DPS allocation for radio equipment to finance the operation; $7 million of that is to pay for the beefed-up DPS presence in the valley and $31 million is for the National Guard deployment.
That money is expected to run out sometime in October, and Perry’s plan to get the federal government to pay for his operation seems a little quixotic, given that Congress is doing almost nothing these days, and will probably do even less in the run-up to the crucial midterm elections in November. That means Texas taxpayers are on the hook.
“The border has got to be secured — we’ve got to stop this,” said state Sen. Jane Nelson (R), the chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee, who doesn’t oppose the deployment. But “month by month, we’re draining state resources that should go to education, should go to highways, should go to water, and we can’t do it forever.”
It should be noted that Texas taxpayers also pay for Perry’s trips to Iowa (and Israel, and the Bahamas), but even at the height of his last run for president, in 2011 and early 2012, the bill for his security detail was only $400,000 a month. (A ruling this week by state Attorney General Greg Abbott — the GOP nominee to replace Perry as governor — means Texans will no longer get a detailed accounting of Perry’s security expenses, despite a 2011 state law mandating their release.)
Look, $18 million a month — or $216 million a year, if extended — is a small slice of the state’s $100 billion annual budget. But if Rick Perry’s low-tax, low-service Texas is so frugal that it can’t find enough money for things like transportation infrastructure and education — things that are important to the state’s continuing economic growth — it’s hard to argue that Operation Strong Safety is much of a good deal for anybody but Rick Perry.
By: Peter Weber, Senior Editor, The Week, August 15, 2014
‘From Embattled To Pitiful”: Boehner Has A New Pitch To Defend Congressional Ineptitude
About a year ago, a reporter started to ask House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) about Congress’ “historically unproductive” term. “That’s just total nonsense,” he snapped, before the question was even finished.
In reality, it wasn’t nonsense at all, and the question appears even more apt now. The fact remains that this is the least productive Congress since clerks started keeping track nearly a century ago.
Soon after, Boehner switched gears and tried to turn the argument around – sure, he said, Congress isn’t legislating, but that’s a good thing. According to Boehner, Congress “should not be judged by how many new laws we create,” but rather, Congress “ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.”
This effort to rebrand failure also posed a problem: Congress hasn’t repealed laws, either. By either standard, the legislative branch was failing miserably.
But the hapless House Speaker clearly remains sensitive about Congress’ ineptitude, which seems to have led him to an entirely new argument: Congress isn’t working, but the Republican-led House is awesome.
As he began his annual month-long, 14-state bus tour this week, the Ohio Republican left many of the red-meat issues that rev up his base back in Washington. Instead, he’s trying to promote a different message: Republicans are doing the legislating while everyone else is slacking off. […]
“When you hear all this stuff about the Congress, understand there are two bodies in the Congress,” Boehner said during a morning fundraiser in Bolingbrook, a suburb of Chicago. “One is working our rear ends off, and frankly, you’d be surprised all the stuff we do is done on a bipartisan basis. [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid didn’t even try to pass a border bill that we passed last Friday.”
And it’s at this point when the House Speaker made the transition from embattled to pitiful.
Boehner may feel slightly embarrassed for creating an accomplishment-free legacy for himself, and he’s no doubt frustrated by the fact that Congress’ approval rating has fallen to levels unseen since the dawn of modern polling, but this latest tack to rationalize failure is laughable.
Consider the example Boehner himself is using: the GOP-led House passed a “border bill,” while the Democratic-led Senate ignored it. Proof of House Republicans working their “rear ends off”? Not for anyone who was actually awake and watching Congress last week.
The House’s “border bill” was a ridiculous joke that even Boehner didn’t like. The Speaker pushed an entirely different bill; his own members decided to ignore his weak leadership (again); causing Boehner to give up and tell right-wing extremists to write whatever they wanted, without any regard for whether it would become law.
It was a pathetic effort to ram through a symbolic gesture, not a legitimate effort to pass a real bill. That Boehner is using this as a great example of how effective House Republicans are helps prove the exact opposite point.
On the surface, it stands to reason both sides are going to blame the other – in this do-nothing Congress, the Democratic Senate wants voters to blame the Republican House and vice versa. None of this is surprising.
But there’s an objective truth available to anyone who wants to see it. This Congress could approve immigration reform, tax reform, ENDA, and a minimum-wage increase, among other things, were it not for the no-compromise, far-right party dominating the U.S. House. That’s just the reality.
Boehner, taking orders instead of giving them, has approved a bunch of symbolic, partisan bills that no one, including Republicans, expect to become law, but that’s not governing – it’s self-indulgent posturing. Until the Speaker is prepared to acknowledge the difference, Congress will remain a national embarrassment.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 7, 2014
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