“What Is The GOP Thinking?”: The Nation Will Have To Stand By Until Realists And Ideologues Reach Some Sort Of Understanding
There they go again. Given control of Congress and the chance to frame an economic agenda for the middle class, the first thing Republicans do is tie themselves in knots over . . . abortion and rape.
I’m not kidding. In a week when President Obama used his State of the Union address to issue a progressive manifesto of bread-and-butter policy proposals, GOP leaders responded by taking up the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” — a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. But a vote on the legislation had to be canceled after female GOP House members reportedly balked over the way an exception for pregnancies resulting from rape was limited.
The whole thing was, in sum, your basic 360-degree fiasco.
At least there are some in the party who recognize how much trouble Republicans make for themselves by breaking the armistice in the culture wars and launching battles that cannot be won. It looks as if the nation will have to stand by until GOP realists and ideologues reach some sort of understanding, which may take some time.
It’s important to understand that the “Pain-Capable” bill was never anything more than an act of political fantasy. The only purpose of the planned vote was to create an “event” that the annual antiabortion March for Life, held Thursday in Washington, could celebrate.
You might think the demonstrators already had reason to cheer. The abortion rate is at “historic lows,” having dropped by 13 percent in the decade between 2002 and 2011, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The main reason is that there are fewer unwanted pregnancies, which suggests logically that if Republicans really want to reduce abortion, what they should do is work to increase access to birth control.
More to the point, according to the CDC, only 1.4 percent of abortions take place after 20 weeks. This means the bill, if it somehow became law, would have minimal impact.
But it won’t become law, as everyone in Congress well knows. The White House has announced that Obama would veto the measure, if it ever reached his desk. To get that far, the bill would have to pass the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would have to win over enough Democrats to cross the 60-vote threshold, which is highly unlikely.
Theoretically, though, any reasonable-sounding antiabortion measure should at least be able to make it through the House, with its expanded GOP majority. But even in the context of today’s far-right Republican Party, the “Pain-Capable” bill struck many House members, particularly women, as unreasonable.
At issue, apparently, is that, in making exceptions for abortions of pregnancies resulting from rape, the bill specifies that the rape must have been reported to law enforcement. This restriction cannot help but bring to mind the grief Republicans suffered in 2012 over Senate candidate Todd Akin’s appalling attempt to distinguish between “legitimate rape” and some other kind of rape.
Although the House leadership maintained that all was sweetness and light, reporters heard rumblings Wednesday that the bill was in trouble with moderate Republicans, especially women. Then an unusual number of female GOP House members was seen leaving the offices of the majority whip. Then the bill was pulled and a different antiabortion measure — prohibiting federal funding for abortions — was substituted.
I should note that there is no generally accepted scientific basis for the premise of the “Pain-Capable” bill. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has said there is no legitimate research supporting the idea that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks.
I understand that, for those who believe in their hearts that abortion is murder, there is an imperative to do something, anything, to stop it. Some people have similar moral passion about capital punishment or the thousands of lives lost each year to gun violence.
Given that the Supreme Court has decided abortion is a legally protected right, the antiabortion movement has done what it could — made abortions very difficult to obtain in some states where the pro-life position has sufficient support. Hooting and hollering on Capitol Hill do nothing for abortion opponents except fleece them of campaign contributions.
People, we are in an economic recovery whose fruits are not reaching the middle class. We have a crucial need to address U.S. infrastructure and competitiveness. We face myriad challenges abroad, including Islamic terrorism and global warming.
If a renewal of the culture wars is your answer, Republicans, you totally misheard the question.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 22, 2015
“Mike Huckabee Pushes For An American Theocracy”: An Ayatollah Wannabe With A Barbaric Concept
Mike Huckabee sounds like quite the Ayatollah wannabe:
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said during an appearance Thursday on a Christian television show that he’s thinking about running for President to help the nation know where laws come from: God.
“We cannot survive as a republic if we do not become, once again, a God-centered nation that understands that our laws do not come from man, they come from God,” he said on the show “Life Today.”
When Huckabee added that he wasn’t demanding a theocracy, host James Robison said, “We have a theocracy right now. It’s a secular theocracy.”
“That’s it!” Huckabee said, describing the current political order as “humanistic, secular, atheistic, even antagonistic toward Christian faith.”
There’s an interesting discussion to be had about whether rights come from God or from man. Or, in more secular terms, whether rights are inherent or rather endowed by society. The Founders tended to come down on the side of inherent rights; I rather believe that they’re endowed by society, in part based on technological progress. For instance, given the easy availability of modern air conditioning, I believe that failing to provide basic climate controlled rooms to prisoners constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. I also believe that women have a right to birth control. That’s a controversial position to be sure, but one on which reasonable people can disagree.
But regardless of one’s view of rights, it’s an entirely different story to say that laws come from God. There is no secular way to interpret that comment. Laws cannot be inherent–only values can. Laws are at best the imperfect and often arbitrary attempted codification of our values. They are the imperfect rules we agree to live by, codifying our rights and binding us in an orderly society and (hopefully) protecting us from the wrongdoing of others. The notion that laws come directly from God is frankly a barbaric concept relegated in most parts of the world to the most backwards theocracies and the enemies of Western pluralism.
It matters little if Mike Huckabee is as dangerous as he sounds, or if he’s playing that way to appeal to the scariest parts of the Republican base for his own presidential aspirations. His notions are frankly unAmerican, and belong more in Riyadh or Tehran than in Washington, DC.
By: David Atkins, The Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 24, 2015
“GOP Wants To Define Rape… Again”: How Lindsey Graham Reawakened The Ghost Of Todd Akin
Ah, Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina senator who says he’s thinking about running for president no doubt thought he was helping the GOP get beyond its meltdown over its 20-week abortion ban bill, which leadership dropped unexpectedly when some GOP congresswomen balked, by asking antiabortion zealots attending the “March for Life” to help him “find a way out of this definitional problem with rape.”
One major issue with the bill was the way it defined rape: a women would have to have made a police report in order to get an abortion under the bill’s rape exception. (Katie McDonough has the details here.) Most rape victims don’t report the crime.
So Graham went to the “March for Life” today and came clean with the group, which is seething over its betrayal by GOP leadership. There’s going to be some kind of rape exception in the bill, and he needs their input to shape it.
“I’m going to need your help to find a way out of this definitional problem with rape,” Graham told the marchers, according to Dave Weigel. ”We need to find a consensus position on the rape exception. The rape exception will be part of the bill. We just need to find a way definitionally to not get us into a spot where we’re debating what legitimate is. That’s not the cause. We’re not here debating legitimate rape. We’re talking about saving babies at 20 weeks.”
So there it is again, the GOP’s lust for getting into the gritty details of defining rape, to make sure slutty women aren’t using rape exceptions to get around various types of abortion bans. That’s what former Rep. Todd Akin was getting at in 2012, when he talked about women rarely becoming pregnant as a result of “legitimate rape,” because “a woman’s body has a way of shutting that whole thing down.” As you’ll recall, instead, women shut the GOP down that November. Republicans don’t want that to happen again in 2016.
The funny thing is, clearly Graham thinks he’s smarter than Akin: he insists he doesn’t “want to get us into a spot where we’re debating what legitimate is.” But he doesn’t seem to understand that the whole effort to “define” rape, which he’s apparently now spearheading, is precisely about deciding whether a woman’s claim of rape is “legitimate” or not.
At its heart, this Republican project is predicated on the belief that women lie about rape, but Republicans can outsmart them. If some Republican women believe that requiring women to make a police report is draconian, then Graham is searching for another way to define a woman’s rape as legitimately deserving of an exception to their 20-week abortion ban.
Rep. Renee Ellmers, who supported the very same bill in 2013, had second thoughts this time around. “We got into trouble last year, and I think we need to be careful again; we need to be smart about how we’re moving forward,” Ellmers told National Journal. ”The first vote we take, or the second vote, or the fifth vote, shouldn’t be on an issue where we know that millennials — social issues just aren’t as important [to them].”
So Ellmers is not exactly the picture of integrity here. She’s not worried about passing a terrible bill that could hurt women; she’s worried about how it looks to millennial voters.
Still, there looks to be a real split between GOP congressional men and women over the issue. Only women came forward to take their names off the bill; then male leadership acquiesced to withdraw it from consideration. Reportedly the party had the votes to pass the bill in the House at least, but Speaker John Boehner and others were concerned about the “optics” of ignoring women in the caucus.
I guess that’s a kind of progress for women’s rights, albeit tiny. But in walks Lindsey Graham to try to mansplain the right way to handle this whole rape “definition,” and even as he thinks he’s helping, he’s making his party’s problems much worse.
I never thought Graham had a prayer of winning the presidency, or even the GOP nomination, but his chances just got a lot worse. Republicans did well in 2014 by avoiding Akin-like controversies over defining rape and holding forth on the intimate workings of women’s bodies generally. It seems they just can’t help themselves, and that’s good for Democrats generally in 2016.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, January 22, 2015
“What Joni Ernst Tells Us About GOP Politics”: The ‘Perfect Choice’ To Serve As The Voice Of The 2015 GOP
Delivering an official response to a president’s State of the Union address is a difficult, thankless task, which often doesn’t go especially well (see Jindal, Bobby and Rubio, Marco). A president generally enjoys an august platform, interrupted repeatedly with standing ovations, while the response usually features a politician standing alone, struggling to read from a teleprompter while speaking to a lone camera.
With all of this in mind, Republicans have made their choice in advance of President Obama’s speech next week.
Newly elected Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst will deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, Republicans announced Thursday. […]
Ernst, who beat Democrat Bruce Braley decisively in November, told reporters she is “humbled and honored” to have the opportunity to deliver the address. The announcement was made at a Republican legislative retreat in Hersey, Pennsylvania.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the right-wing Iowan, just one week into her congressional career, the “perfect choice.”
And at a certain level, it’s easy to understand why. Ernst is a telegenic speaker who just won a competitive U.S. Senate race in an important battleground state. Given that congressional Republican leaders are dominated by white men, it stands to reason that the party would prioritize diversity for this national address.
But if Joni Ernst is now the “perfect choice” to speak on behalf of the Republican Party in 2015, it’s worth appreciating just what this choice tells us about the state of GOP politics.
For those who’ve forgotten, or perhaps didn’t follow Iowa’s U.S. Senate race closely, Ernst was arguably the most extremist candidate to seek statewide office in 2014. As readers may recall, Ernst endorsed banning abortions and many forms of birth control; nullifying federal laws she doesn’t like, privatizing Social Security; and impeaching President Obama. She argued that Saddam Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction and people on Medicaid “have no personal responsibility for their health.” She dismissed the very existence of a federal minimum wage as “ridiculous” and credited the Koch brothers for the strength of her candidacy. She endorsed enough conspiracy theories to qualify her as the head of a Glenn Beck fan club.
At one point, Ernst expressed support for arresting federal officials who try to implement federal laws the far-right doesn’t like, and later, she added that she likes to carry a loaded firearm with her everywhere, in case she needs to defend herself – “whether it’s from an intruder, or whether it’s from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.” [Update: A reader also reminds me of the time Ernst referred to the president as a “dictator,” as well as her outrageous rhetoric during the Ebola scare.]
The moment she was elected, Ernst instantly became one of the most radical U.S. senators, not just of this current Congress, but in recent American history.
As the 2014 campaign wound down, and revelations about the Republican’s bizarre nuttiness grew more serious, Ernst decided to stop talking to mainstream news organizations in Iowa altogether. She won soon after by nearly nine points, despite her extremism and despite her confusion about the basics of current events and public policy.
Ernst is the “perfect choice” to speak for Republicans? Really? Why would GOP leaders consider that a development to be proud of?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 15, 2015
“The Courts’ Baffling New Math”: By What Logic Do Hundreds Of Thousands Of People Simply Stop Counting?
The Supreme Court of the John Roberts era gets one thing very right: It’s one of the most free-speech-protective courts in modern history. There is no purveyor of semi-pornographic crush videos, no maker of rape-aspiring violent video games, no homophobic funeral protester, no anti-abortion clinic counselor, and no filthy-rich campaign contribution–seeker whose rights and privileges will not be treated by the court with the utmost reverence and solicitude.
This is important and vital, and one doesn’t want to slag the court for the boundless attention and care it lavishes upon the most obnoxious speakers in America. After all, the First Amendment is kind of the constitutional gateway drug, the portal to the rest of the Bill of Rights. And without securing meaningful protection for the rights to speak, assemble, worship, and publish, so many of our other rights might be illusory. Great. Stipulated.
That makes it extra weird whenever the assorted (lets call them largely “conservative”) justices of the Roberts court, and judges on lower courts across the land, turn their attention to the protection of other rights—equally crucial but perhaps less sexy—like, say, the right to vote or to obtain an abortion. That’s when the nameless, faceless rights seekers all blur into oblivion, a great unwashed mass of undifferentiated shadow people. And that is when some judges find it all too simple to bat these rights away with a stroke of the pen.
In the past few weeks, it’s been astonishing to contrast the regard afforded to individual speech rights with the cavalier dismissal of other, equally precious hallmarks of democracy.
There was no better reminder of this phenomenon than watching the justices simply write off the voting rights of what may well amount to 600,000 Texas voters, many black and Latino, last weekend, in the wee hours of the morning, without stated reasons or written opinion. As Richard Hasen has explained, after a nine-day trial, a district court determined that there were “hundreds of thousands of voters potentially unable to get IDs because they were hours away from the government offices issuing IDs.” The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was not much bothered by the fact that hundreds of thousands of Texans would be forced to travel for hours to obtain proper ID for the midterms, and the Supreme Court agreed. Meh, what’s a few hundred thousand disenfranchised voters when you have “electoral integrity” to protect?
This is of course the same 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that, only weeks earlier, was not much bothered by the prospect that 900,000 women in Texas will soon live more than a 150 miles away from the nearest clinic offering a safe and legal abortion, or that 750,000 would live more than 250 miles away, if Texas’ draconian new abortion restrictions are allowed to stand and a majority of reproductive health clinics must shut down. For now, at least, the Supreme Court has blocked the law, in another unsigned order. But the staggering lack of concern for not just hundreds, not just thousands, but tens or hundreds of thousands of women was all over the 5th Circuit’s opinion.
The 5th Circuit evinced a kind of Marie Antoinette approach to individual justice in these cases. When it shut down access to both voting and abortion in Texas, it indicated without precisely saying so that as long as citizens have fast cars and flexible work schedules, they are not burdened by Texas’ regulations. And seemingly there are no Texans without fast cars and vacation time in their view. At oral argument in the case about the shutdown of 20 Texas clinics, Judge Edith Brown of the 5th Circuit heard that abortion clinic closures would leave the Rio Grande area without any providers, forcing women who live there to drive 300 miles round trip to Corpus Christi. The judge sniffed, “Do you know how long that takes in Texas at 75 miles an hour? … This is a peculiarly flat and not congested highway.”
Looking at the 5th Circuit’s screwy fractions earlier this month, Amy Davidson noted that it’s astonishing on its face that the judges who agreed to shut down Texas reproductive health clinics would deny one-sixth of Texas women reasonable access to a clinic. More astonishing still is the fact that the judges were perfectly aware that this burden would fall most heavily on women without cars, who couldn’t afford to take several days off work to travel to distant clinics. And that was OK. These facts of life affected their conclusions not at all.
The idea that judges would simply vaporize the interests of hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters is perhaps just as amazing. By what logic do thousands of abortion-seekers and would-be voters simply stop counting?
A panel of judges on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals was similarly unfazed by the possibility that 300,000, or 9 percent, of Wisconsin voters would be disenfranchised by that state’s new voter ID law. Whether it’s 500,000 voters or 300,000 voters or almost a million women, these numbers are just not capable of moving the judicial heartstrings.
Perhaps these hundreds of thousands of people—a seeming multitude to you and me—are dismissible because they are poor or minorities or just women, or in any event people who don’t drive really fast cars. As Judge Richard Posner painstakingly explained in his dissent in the Wisconsin voter ID case, the cost of obtaining the appropriate documentation to vote under the new Wisconsin law is somewhere in the range of $75 to $175. Adjusted for inflation, he noted, that is higher than “the $1.50 poll tax outlawed by the 24th amendment in 1964.”
There’s an equally obvious and far more troubling problem with the math on the other side of the ledger, as Michael Hiltzik points out, where people are worried about infinitesimal percentages of potential fraud. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker defended his state’s voter ID law by claiming it is worthwhile whether it stops “one, 100, or 1,000” illegal votes. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, another big fan of voter ID, similarly argued recently that a glitch that would result in the disenfranchising of 12,000 people wouldn’t be a “major problem” because they represent a “tiny percentage” of Kansas’ voters. Walker and Kobach pooh-pooh the disenfranchisement of tens or hundreds of thousands of state voters in order to fight the scourge of vote fraud, of which there were seven incidents in Kansas in the past 13 years, and two documented in Texas. It’s not just bad that real votes and real abortions are blocked to deter an imaginary problem (vote fraud and botched abortions). It’s that even if the problems were genuine, the math still wouldn’t work.
It’s utterly baffling, this new math. Math that holds that seven incidents of vote fraud should push hundreds and thousands of voters off the rolls. Or that hundreds of thousands of women can be denied access to safe abortion clinics, supposedly to prevent vanishingly small rates of complications. I don’t know how we have arrived at the point where members of the judicial branch—the branch trusted to vindicate the rights of the poorest and most powerless—don’t even see the poor and powerless, much less count them as fully realized humans.
This brings us back to the First Amendment, seemingly the only right that truly counts anymore in America. Why has the constitutional right to be heard all but overmastered the right to vote or legally terminate a pregnancy? Maybe the court is still capable of hearing even as it loses the ability to see? Or maybe the powerful voices of Fred Phelps, Shaun McCutcheon, and Anthony Elonis—the creatures who rightly are allowed to say and do horrible things in the name of free speech—count for more than the hundreds and thousands of voiceless voters and abortion-seekers who are seemingly not even important enough to name?
By: Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, October 24, 2014
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