“Tea Party Radiation Fallout”: Damned If He Does, Damned If He Doesn’t, Mitch McConnell Has An Obamacare Problem
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has a major dilemma on his hands.
Throughout the past week, members of the Senate’s right wing — led by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Rand Paul (R-KY) — have been publicly lobbying their Republican colleagues to block the passage of any continuing resolution funding the federal government, unless it defunds the Affordable Care Act. The plan is functionally dead in the water — several reliable Obamacare opponents in the Senate have already derided the plan’s obvious flaws (first and foremost among them, that shutting down the government wouldn’t actually halt the Affordable Care Act’s implementation) — but it remains a politically potent symbol in Republican politics.
“There is a powerful, defeatist approach among Republicans in Washington,” Senator Cruz pointedly said on Tuesday. “I think they’re beaten down and they’re convinced that we can’t give a fight, and they’re terrified.”
The remarks were a thinly veiled shot at McConnell, who has thus far refused to take a position on the government shutdown plan.
“We’ve had a lot of internal discussions about the way forward this fall in both the continuing resolution and, ultimately, the debt ceiling, and those discussions continue,” McConnell said on Tuesday. “There’s no particular announcement at this point.”
McConnell may have to make a decision sooner rather than later, however. Matt Bevin, the Tea Party-backed businessman who is challenging McConnell for the Republican nomination in Kentucky’s 2014 Senate election, is seizing on McConnell’s reticence in an effort to outflank the four-term incumbent from the right.
“Mitch McConnell’s rhetoric on defeating Obamacare is nothing but empty promises,” Bevin said in a statement released Wednesday. “Obamacare is a disaster and if we can’t repeal it, we have a responsibility to the American people to defund it.”
“I challenge Mitch McConnell to join me in signing the pledge to defund Obamacare,” he continued. “Instead of playing political games, it’s time to stand up for the people of Kentucky.”
McConnell currently holds a massive lead over the largely-undefined Bevin, but if Bevin continues to attract right-wing support, the race could tighten significantly. If McConnell decides that the risk of shutting down the government for no tangible gain outweighs the risk of prolonged public attack from Tea Party favorites such as Cruz and Lee, then he could find himself very vulnerable in a Republican primary. Although Bevin remains an extreme long shot to steal the nomination from McConnell, a closely-contested primary could do serious damage to McConnell’s chances in the general election.
If McConnell does sign on to the Lee plan, however, it could cause him an even bigger headache. His likely Democratic opponent in 2014 — Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes — is already tailoring her campaign to paint McConnell as a “guardian of gridlock” who exemplifies the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. If McConnell agrees to attempt to shut down the government in a futile effort to repeal Obamacare, that image will be magnified — giving Grimes, who currently polls within striking distance of McConnell — a great political opportunity. Furthermore, due to McConnell’s status as the leader of the Senate Republicans, taking the extremist position could impact all the Republican senators on the ballot in 2014.
Whatever McConnell decides, it will not have a serious impact on the future of the Affordable Care Act. But it will have major ramifications in McConnell’s re-election battle — and could even decide which party ends up in control of the Senate.
By: Henry Decker, U. S. News and World Report, July 31, 2013
“Tapping A Dry Well”: Darrell Issa Seeks New Angle On Discredited IRS Controversy
Remember how the IRS “scandal” first started? The inspector general for the IRS issued a report pointing to special scrutiny applied to Tea Party groups, but ignoring comparable scrutiny of progressive organizations. Why didn’t IG J. Russell George provide a more accurate report highlighting trouble for groups on both sides? According to the IG himself, congressional Republicans told him to paint an incomplete picture on purpose.
The result was something of a fiasco: a controversy erupted to great fanfare, but then collapsed when we realized Tea Partiers hadn’t been singled out for unfair treatment, and liberal and non-political groups faced similar IRS scrutiny. The whole “scandal” was a mirage that quickly faded.
But Republicans don’t want to let go, especially after all the fun they had in May. So what happens now? As Dave Weigel reported, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and his allies now want another “narrowly-focused” investigation from the IG’s office.
In a letter from Issa and Rep. Jim Jordan, the IG is being asked to dig into reports of tax-exempt conservative groups being subjected to audits. Based on information from conservative non-profits like the Free Congress Foundation, the Leadership Institute, and the Clare Booth Luce Institute, Issa and Jordan ask the IG whether any groups were targeted “for audits or examination based on their political beliefs or ideology.” The answers on this in the first investigation were inconclusive, as were the stories, but they should be grist for something. […]
The last couple of months suggest where this is heading. The Leadership Institute is obviously conservative, and run by longtime RNC committeeman Morton Blackwell, but plenty of liberal groups with 501 statuses are run by partisans — and they weren’t audited in 2011 or 2012, were they?
I’ve seen some suggestion that this means the IRS story is “expanding.” That’s a nice spin, but it’s wrong — this isn’t expansion, it’s redirection.
Issa kept trying to tap a dry well, to the point at which most sensible people decided it was time to ignore him. Desperate, the California Republican has begun digging again, assuring the political world that maybe this time he’ll find something useful.
Perhaps Fox and Peggy Noonan will find these partisan antics compelling, but I’m at a loss to explain why.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 30, 2013
“The Hapless And The Helpless”: Groundswell’s White Racial Panic
I was reading through David Corn’s great piece on ‘Groundswell’ which is, depending on your point of view, a working group of conservative activists and journalists working together to coordinate storylines and plan the war against RINOs and progressives or a hapless group of doofuses planning regular meetings to vent about being crapped on by more prominent Republicans. My sense is that it’s sort of a hybrid of the two.
But there’s one section that connects up with my piece yesterday about the specter of white racial panic hovering over the Republican party and how completely unprepared conservative strategists seem to be to deal with it.
Check out this passage …
Notes from a February 28 Groundswell gathering reflected both their collective sense of pessimism and desire for aggressive tactics: “We are failing the propaganda battle with minorities. Terms like, ‘GOP,’ ‘Tea Party,’ ‘Conservative’ communicate ‘racism.'” The Groundswellers proposed an alternative: “Fredrick Douglas Republican,” a phrase, the memo noted, that “changes minds.” (His name is actually spelled “Frederick Douglass.”) The meeting notes also stated that an “active radical left is dedicated to destroy [sic] those who oppose them” with “vicious and unprecedented tactics. We are in a real war; most conservatives are not prepared to fight.”
So basically perhaps the top three phrases associated with the right or the GOP or conservatism signal ‘racism’. In fact, those words themselves communicate racism. According to conservatives themselves. At least give them credit for recognizing the scope of the problem.
But note the solution: rebrand the Tea Party as ‘Frederick Douglass Republicans’. I’m not even going to get into the misspelling. But think about this, a lily-white group, driven to a significant degree by fears about the growing population of non-white voters and the cultural and political changes that’s likely to bring (okay, look, I’m being generous) and naming them the ‘Frederick Douglass Republicans’. That should work splendidly.
I can’t help but note that a couple weeks after this late February meeting was when we saw that epic racial tolerance event at CPAC when the event leader called on conservatives to call themselves “Frederick Douglass Republicans.” The whole event descended into chaos as a group “disenfranchised whites” rose up in opposition to the premise of the gathering and sidetracked the conversation into whether blacks should thank America for their ancestors’ enslavement.
I’m not saying they got the name from the ‘Groundswell’. I think it’s more just an idea – if a fabulously silly one – circulating in conservative circles. But it does give some bracing evidence of the folly of trying to rebrand a lilly-white movement (The Tea Party) which heavily overlaps with the white racial panic faction in American politics after the preeminent civil rights leader of the 19th century.
More to the point it shows just how bereft these folks are in terms of even remotely coming to grips with the changing demographic character of America.
By: Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, July 26, 2013
“An Imaginary Dark Vision Of The Future”: Ted Cruz And His Manufactured Doctrine Of Pretend Paranoia
Texas Senator Ted Cruz has found a new and improved angle with which to push his war against marriage equality in America.
In an interview with Christian Broadcast Network’s David Brody, Cruz raised a full-scale red alert when announcing that gay marriage will put us on the road to placing our First Amendment protections at severe risk.
Seriously. He really said that.
“If you look at other nations that have gone down the road towards gay marriage, that’s the next step of where it gets enforced. It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach biblical truths on marriage and that has been defined elsewhere as hate speech — as inconsistent with the enlightened view of government.”
Fearful that my own support of equal rights under the law for all Americans might lead to the loss of my constitutionally protected opportunity to be as offensive, prejudiced, bigoted and disrespectful in my own speech as humanly possible, I went looking for those ‘nations’ Cruz referred to—nations where same-sex marriage has led to the criminalization of free speech.
Fortunately, Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” was there to show me the way by relaying the sorry tale of Aake Green, a Pentecostal pastor in Sweden who was prosecuted under Swedish law for having some unkind things to say about gay marriage when addressing his congregation.
Writes The Blaze —
“Green’s plight corroborates the worries that Cruz has surrounding America’s current trajectory. In 2003, the preacher (referring to Green) likened homosexuality to cancer during one of his sermons. As a result, he was brought up on charges over these claims — statements that, in America, would currently be protected by the First Amendment… Mr. Green was convicted in June 2004 but allowed to remain free pending appeal.”
Never mind that Pastor Green was acquitted by Sweden’s Supreme Court as a result of a determination that Green’s speech was protected by the European Convention on Human Rights—the superseding law protecting Green’s right to say any ridiculous thing in public he likes. And given that the laws established by the European Convention take precedence over a Swedish law that was in conflict, the Swedish law under which the good pastor was prosecuted was rendered moot and unenforceable leading to no prosecutions of this nature in Sweden since this one, solitary 2005 case.
For that matter, I can find no evidence of any such prosecutions anywhere in the world, despite Cruz’s assertion that his paranoiac premonition is based on the examples of multiple nations.
While Senator Cruz was unwilling or unable to follow the Swedish case to its happy ending when forming his fears for a future without First Amendment rights in America as a direct result of gay marriage —happy endings don’t fit well into Cruz’s doctrine of pretend paranoia—one might have thought that this one-time Solicitor General for the State of Texas would have been able to research the law of his own nation before making his dire prediction.
In the famous 2011 Supreme Court case of Snyder v. Phelps, the free speech rights of the despicable Westboro Baptist Church—the church group famous for crashing funerals so that they may scream terrible things about gay people at grieving funeral attendees—were upheld by an 8-1 vote in the U.S. Supreme Court. In that case, Chief Justice Roberts, while referring to the behavior of Westboro Church members as “vile”, stated—
“We cannot react to [Snyder’s] pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course – to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
Could the Chief Justice’s statement possibly be more on point when it comes to contradicting Ted Cruz’s dark vision of a future with same-sex marriage?
And yet, Senator Ted Cruz, a man whose job was once to argue cases on behalf of his state before that very same United States Supreme Court, wants us to believe that he fears that gay marriage puts us at risk of forfeiting our right to free speech.
Nobody should be too terribly surprised as this is but the most recent expression of Cruz’s political formula guaranteed to send a warm thrill up the leg of right-wing extremists everywhere.
It is a formula as simple as it is winning.
You take a political issue that rattles the right-wing to its core, draw a line connecting the legalization of that issue to the possible loss of a constitutional right—no matter how ridiculous and far fetched the connection may be— and…presto…you’ve got one great political pitch sure to get the attention of those who thrive on the Doctrine of Pretend Paranoia.
This is not the first time Cruz has played this game.
Recall, if you will, that day on the Senate floor when Cruz’s suggestion that background checks before purchasing guns would place us on a path to a national registry for gun owners, despite the fact that the legislation under debate—the Manchin-Toomey Bill—specifically barred such a federal registry.
If you do not recall this, you might want to take a look at Cruz’s debate with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as Schumer highlights the preposterous nature of Cruz’s paranoiac visions of the future.
Just like his efforts to connect same-sex marriage with the destruction of First Amendment rights, in the instance of gun control, Cruz took a piece of legislation that deeply upset his base, despite being popular with the overwhelming majority of Americans, and drew a line to an imaginary consequence.
What happened?
Cruz’s base ate it up and the legislation went down to defeat.
Mr. Cruz’s latest effort to scare the crap out of his right-wing following—no matter how ridiculous the perceived end result of a policy with which Cruz followers disagree with may be—is simply a refinement of the time-honored and highly effective GOP practice of using fear and loathing to inspire votes. All one need do is look at the success of a “death panel” pitch that did so much to skew public opinion against the Affordable Care Act and the effectiveness of this approach is crystal clear.
Of course there was no rational connection between the actual healthcare reform law and the paranoiac prospect of government death panels, but that really did not matter, did it?
Just as Cruz ignored the realities of the Manchin-Toomey background check legislation which specifically barred the national gun registry Cruz claimed to fear, Senator Cruz knew his delusional argument would appeal to the paranoia of his followers; and just as the 2011 Supreme Court case would make Cruz’s paranoid vision of gay marriage leading to the destruction of First Amendment rights nothing short of preposterous, Senator Cruz knows full well that creating fear and loathing, in his own unique style, makes for a reliable game plan as he begins his drive towards the White House.
Let’s hope that, in the final analysis, American voters will see through Ted Cruz’s fully manufactured and dark vision of America—or at least the pretend vision that the Senator wishes to sell us. There are enough ‘real life’ things in this world to be paranoid about without purposely supporting a candidate dedicated to purveying his pretend brand of paranoia in the hopes of frightening Americans into going down dark roads that don’t actually exist.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, July 24, 2013
“Placating The Pyromaniacs”: Don’t Repeal Any Laws, Repeal John Boehner And House Republicans
It would be impossible to name the craziest thing said by a Republican so far this year. This year? This week.
New entrants arrive constantly and the competition is feral. And yet paradoxically they don’t even shock anymore. But one recent Republican remark should arrest you and deserves your contemplation: John Boehner’s statement on Face the Nation Sunday that he and his House Republicans “ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.”
It’s not an outrageous statement in the Obama-wants-to-impose-Sharia vein, but in its way it’s more disturbing. The Republican Party now sees dysfunction as not just an unfortunate consequence of a set of historical factors, something that they might work every now and again to correct. Now, the Republican Party sees dysfunction as its mission.
This, I think you’ll agree, is new. Let’s put it more emphatically. It’s absolutely new in American history. Well, there exists some precedent back in the 1840s and ’50s (also led then by reactionaries who were mostly Southern). But in our modern history, let’s say, since we solved the problem of the peculiar institution and later became the world’s most powerful nation, we’ve been a functioning democracy. There have been many moments of ugliness and sclerosis. But the particular qualities of the American system have generally produced what you could reasonably call governance.
From the start, we were not a parliamentary system, in which loyalty to the party is paramount and demanded. For a range of reasons, individual House members and especially senators have always had more autonomy than legislators in parliamentary systems do. This, along with the facts of our vast geography and diversity of interests, made our parties more flexible and ensured that cross-party ad-hoc coalitions could get laws passed.
We also had a tradition of legislative deference to the president—on foreign policy most of all, but also on domestic issues to some extent. A president’s top few priorities were always given a hearing, and compromise was usually reached. Tip O’Neill didn’t share Ronald Reagan’s priorities by a long shot, but he saw that Reagan won handily and he didn’t use the Rules Committee or any other trick to prevent the new president from enacting his agenda, though of course he did try to alter it. Even Newt Gingrich, after passing as much of his agenda as he could, sat down and talked turkey with Bill Clinton on a range of issues and struck a deal on Social Security and the budget.
I reread the above two paragraphs and I see that I sound a bit like a textbook, and a quaint one at that, one printed long ago. Certainly, the words and sentiments are irrelevant to most of the GOP members of the House. They really don’t care about any of those things. Consider this fascinating, and morbid, little fact: of the 230-odd Republican House members, fully half, 115, have served since only 2010 or 2012. They didn’t come to pass legislation. They came to burn the place down.
Boehner is handing them his trusty Bic lighter. Yes, a man wants to hold on to his job, I understand that. And yes, a speaker shouldn’t necessarily tip his hand on how he feels about an issue—immigration, say—until later in the process. But is Boehner being canny, or a coward? Virtually everything Boehner says publicly is designed to placate the pyromaniacs. And if he’s ever said anything behind closed doors designed to challenge them, they’ve kept it an awfully good secret (which would not happen; it would be leaked within seconds to ensure that he felt the lash of the Tea Partying millions).
They have brought us to a place we’ve never been before: post-governance America. Oh, they have to pass some bills to keep Social Security checks going out, defense contractors being paid, that sort of thing. But passing the minimal number of bills needed to keep the economy from crashing to Middle Earth isn’t the same thing as legislating. Or compromising. Those, they won’t do. As Jonathan Chait notes this week, their “negotiating” position with Obama is this: We’ll raise the debt ceiling for the rest of your term. All you have to do is sign the Ryan budget into law and privatize Medicare. Right.
I don’t see any way out of this. We are stuck here for years. In all likelihood, because of the 2010 gerrymandering, the Republicans are going to control the House at least until 2021. That’s eight. More. Years. And Boehner, let us not forget, is the “moderate” among those in the leadership. Say he lets an immigration vote happen and pisses them off, back to Cincinnati (Cincinnati? What am I saying? He’ll become a corporate lobbyist and buy a nice house in Leesburg.) Then we get Speaker Eric Cantor, or Speaker Paul Ryan. I have trouble envisioning what “worse” could be, but it would most certainly get worse under either of those two.
This isn’t a partisan crisis. It’s a historical crisis. And the political system can’t solve it. We need leaders from other walks of life, especially from the various branches of the business world, to stand up and say to the Republicans that dysfunction cannot be your mission. You must govern. Govern conservatively, but govern. And we need, as I’ve said before, big-dollar organizations that can boot some of these people out of office and replace them with a few Dick Lugars. We don’t need to repeal any laws. Repealing a hundred or so people is what we need.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, July 24, 2013
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