Rise against the Republican plutocratic agenda

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republican Party is, when you get right down to it, a party of greed and cruelty wrapped up in theocratic moralizing. (It's hardly any wonder that Donald Trump is doing so well, nor that Franklin Graham, one of the party's chief theocrats, is saying such nice things about him.) And perhaps the core of the Republican agenda, more important than the social conservatism, is tax policy that benefits the rich, both individual and corporate, at the expense of everyone else, that punishes everyone else, and especially the poor and others most in need of help, for not being rich.

This has been the case for a long time, but increasingly, it seems, in these difficult economic times and with the American economy (and American hegemony) in such dire straits, likely never to recover, let alone to be what it once was, Americans are waking up to what Republicans are all about and expressing their opposition. The Tea Party expresses the rage of the right, anti-government rage that complements the Republican agenda. This new opposition, garnering less media attention, expresses not the counter-rage of the left, nor even rage at all, but a genuine concern for fairness, compassion, and fiscal sanity in American politics.

Here's Think Progress:

All across America, a Main Street Movement has broken out to defend the middle class against right-wing attacks on labor rights and basic public services. In recent days, this movement has turned on GOP House members who voted to effectively end Medicare and turn seniors over to private insurance companies when they approved Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) radical budget bill.

On Tuesday, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) was the latest congressman to face the ire of Main Street America during a town hall event with constituents who stopped being polite and started getting real.

First, constituents explained they were upset that Ryan's plan would cut off people under the age of 55 from Medicare. Then, others directly challenged Duffy about defending tax breaks for the wealthy for voting to effectively replace Medicare with a voucher system.

Ryan himself, supposedly a courageous advocate for fiscal sanity but really just a right-wing extremist whose focus is on tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cuts to programs for the poor, was challenged by his own constituents the other day. And Republicans are facing significant criticism over their support for Ryan's Medicare-slashing plan.

I suspect we'll see more and more of this. Or, at least, I hope we do. It's time for Americans to say enough is enough to the greed and cruelty of the GOP.

Here's the Duffy clip:

Marco Rubio, perfect Republican?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've described Haley Barbour as the perfect Republican, given his corpulence (he's got the right Republican look), his racism, his anti-abortion extremism, his fealty to corporate profiteering, his corporate lobbying (and even his lobbying for Mexico, more proof that like a good Republican he puts money before all else, including nativist xenophobia), his reality-denying corporatism, his pro-Confederacy views, and his white Southern roots.

But, you know, he's only the perfect Republican in reality.

And, let's face it, Republicans don't really live in reality but rather in a world of their own self-aggrandizing delusions.

And in that world, the perfect Republican may well be Marco Rubio, who in a Wall Street Journal op-ed the other day wrote this drivel:

Whether they admit it or not, everyone in Washington knows how to solve these [fiscal] problems. What is missing is the political will to do it. I ran for the U.S. Senate because I want my children to inherit what I inherited: the greatest nation in human history. It's not too late. The 21st century can also be the American Century. Our people are ready. Now it's time for their leaders to join them.

As Jon Chait wonders:

Do you get the feeling that "Marco Rubio" is not an actual human being at all but some kind of computer program designed by the Republican Party? Imagine they had the technical know-how to create a candidate like this. What would they come up with? They'd come up with Marco Rubio, a cinematically handsome Latino from Florida who hews to the Tea Party line while spitting out patriotic cliches that sound as if they were programmed like a computer.

Yes, I suspect they would, which is why Rubio has already been tagged as their primary up-and-coming star, a certain presidential candidate (if not president) of the future.

Republicans apparently hope they can pull a fast one on the American people, putting before them a guy who doesn't look Republican (i.e., like Haley Barbour) but who is ideologically in line with the new right-wing mainstream of the GOP, that is, who is ideologically the perfect Republican.

Don't let them fool you.

Elephant Dung #23: The Tea Party threatens John Boehner

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.) 

Jon Chait had a post the other day arguing that John Boehner has no choice, if he knows what's good for him, but to shut down the government.

Basically, Boehner is in a tough spot. (No, don't feel sorry for him. It's what he gets for being where he is.) He has to try to appeal to independents and moderates if he wants to maintain/maximize the GOP's electoral prospects for 2012, which means compromising with Democrats on the budget, but he also has to try to appeal to the Tea Party wing of the GOP, a significant part of its right-wing base, if he wants to avoid a full-scale rebellion against his leadership (which could also harm the party's electoral prospects), which means refusing to compromise and allowing for a government shutdown:

What is the downside to a shutdown? Republicans get less popular, have a lower chance to win the presidency in 2012, and maybe a higher chance of losing the House as well. What is the downside to cutting a deal? GOP backbenchers revolt against Boehner and depose him as Speaker of the House.

If I'm Boehner, I'm more worried about the guns pointed at my back then the guns pointed at my face. A shutdown increases the small chance that he goes from Speaker to Minority Leader in 2013, but a deal increases the chance that he goes from Speaker to (R-OH) in 2011. The right-wingers do not trust Boehner, and he has very little slack. He also lived through a series of purges and attempted purges in the late 1990s, always taking the form of purists complaining that the leadership had gone soft.

Boehner's top priority is probably staving off internal revolt. That means shutting down the government.

In other words, if he puts his own personal/political self-interest first, he'll appease the Tea Party. That may be so, and he may well do that, but the question isn't just what Boehner will do but what the Tea Party will do to him. And it may not matter what he does -- or, at least, what he does just may not be good enough. The Tea Party already has a bull's-eye on his head:

The tea partyers who helped drive GOP gains in the last election are rallying in the city they love to hate Thursday, urging Republican House leaders – Speaker John Boehner above all – to resist the drive toward compromise in the protracted fight over the federal budget. Even, they say, if that means Congress fails to do its most important job: pay for the government.

And if Boehner opts instead to agree to a deal with President Barack Obama?

"You're going to see massive amounts of (GOP) primaries" in next year's election, said Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots. If the Ohio Republican strikes a budget deal that doesn't cut spending enough, Meckler said Wednesday, "he is going to face a primary challenge."

Boehner, like the rest of the party leadership, has been appeasing the Tea Party all along. But he's also, to his credit, something of a realist in terms of what is and is not doable in Congress:

"We control one half of one third of the government here in Washington," Boehner told reporters at his weekly briefing. "We can't impose our will on the Senate. All we can do is to fight for all of the spending cuts that we can get an agreement to."

He's right, but that isn't going to cut it with the Tea Party. The threats may be enough to keep Boehner from compromising too easily, but compromise he must if he is to avoid a repeat of the Gingrich fiasco of the '90s, when Republicans shut down the government, took most of the blame, and paid for it at the polls. All of this proves once again that the purists in the Tea Party have no clue about governance and are holding the GOP, and its leaders, to impossible standards. And, ultimately, the party will pay for it.

What the Teabaggers think they can gain from this isn't clear, but it seems that they'd rather be "right" (in their own minds) than win. So far, since the emergence of the Tea Party as a major force, Republicans have been more than willing to kowtow to its demands. Indeed, the GOP has fully embraced the Tea Party, and the two have more or less merged into one (though, of course, the Tea Party has always been heavily Republican and decidedly right-wing in its ideology). But how long will that last? At what point will Republicans, who, after all, have elections to win if they actually want to accomplish anything significant, shed this albatross that is clearly bringing them down? 

It may not happen soon, not with all the mutual co-opting that has taken place so far and will the enormous enthusiasm the Teabaggers have brought to the GOP, stirring up a party that seemed catatonic after the '08 election. The Tea Party is just too influential a part of the GOP right now, and that isn't about to change. But I'm just not sure the relationship is tenable, not with the Tea Party threatening any Republican who deviates even slightly from its right-wing orthodoxy, even solid conservatives like Orrin Hatch and successful leaders like John Boehner.

It would probably take another massive defeat or two for Republicans to get the message and run the other way, but, with the party purging itself of insufficiently conservative members and the Tea Party leading primary challenges against those who deviate from its extremism, it is likely that the GOP will nominate more and more unelectable candidates, increasing the likelihood of just such a defeat.

Not that I object to the GOP nominating unelectable candidates. I'm all for it! So let's all enjoy this while we can.

Cowards and conservatives: Much ridiculous ado about Ron Schiller, NPR, and James O'Keefe's latest right-wing scam

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There has been much ado today -- I'm late coming to this, but I haven't been feeling well -- about NPR being caught in yet another gotcha sting by right-wing activist James O'Keefe and his ironically-named Project Veritas.

Basically, if you haven't heard the details yet, NPR executives Ron Schiller and Betsy Liley had lunch with two men posing as representatives of the so-called Muslim Education Action Center Trust, a fictitious philanthropic organization backed by the Muslim Brotherhood. The group, the two men said, wanted to give $5 million to NPR because, they said, "the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere." During the lunch, Schiller went off on Republicans and conservatives, saying, for example:

-- "The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian – I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move."

-- On the Tea Party: "It's not just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America, gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

That's about it. O'Keefe got it all on video, and now the story's flying around the Internet, with the anti-NPR ire of the right ramped up to new levels of vitriol.

Let me address the above comments first:

-- The Republican Party is indeed socially conservative and deeply theocratic. On the whole, it seeks to impose right-wing, fundamentalist Christian "values" on the country. One might object to Schiller's assertion that such evangelical fundamentalism isn't "Christian," but Schiller is right.

-- Schiller does somewhat misrepresent the Tea Party. While there are indeed racist elements in it, it is for the most part an anti-tax, anti-government, hyper-libertarian movement.

Undeniably, there are xenophobic and anti-Muslim strains in the Republican Party, significant if not dominant strains, but they are to be found more among the paleo-conservatives (and some neoconservatives), as well as within the party "establishment," not really, or at least not exclusively, among the Tea Partiers. (Rand Paul isn't really the problem here, it's more the likes of fear- and hatemongers like Pete King.) Still, the Tea Party is overwhelmingly white, pro-gun, and "middle" American. It may not be as racist as Schiller suggests, but it's certainly scary.

Okay, so what else did Schiller say?

-- "What NPR did I'm very proud of. What NPR stood for is a non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news. Our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her personal opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist. They can no longer fairly report. And the question we asked internally was, can Juan Williams, when he makes a statement like that, can he report to the Muslim population, and be believed, for example? And the answer is no. He lost all credibility and that breaks your ethics as a journalist."

I didn't necessarily think Williams should have been fired on the grounds that what he said crossed the line -- though I certainly would have supported firing him for his long record of being a shoddy pundit -- but it's not like Schiller said anything outrageous in defending NPR's decision.

-- "I think what we all believe is if we don't have Muslim voices in our schools, on the air... it's the same thing we faced as a nation when we didn't have female voices."

And? There is widespread anti-Muslim bigotry in America right now, most of it stoked and espoused by the right, and there should indeed be "Muslim voices in our schools." That doesn't mean that "our schools" should be Muslim, though conservatives are also stoking fears of a Muslim takeover and the imposition of Sharia law, just that Muslims in America are part of the American fabric.

-- NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding."

This was perhaps the most controversial thing he said, but only because it contradicts NPR's official position. If it's just his opinion, so what? He should have avoided talking corporate policy, and shouldn't have spoken for NPR given his dissenting view, but that's an error of judgement, nothing more.

So can we move on? Conservatives will make a big deal of this, but they were already anti-NPR, and, as far as I'm concerned, Schiller's remarks don't amount to much.

Well, let's address a few points first:

-- NPR has commented officially on the matter already:

The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept.

We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for.

Mr. Schiller announced last week that he is leaving NPR for another job.

In other words, NPR was not about to take the money, quickly distanced itself from Schiller's remarks (going so far as to call them appalling), and further distanced itself from Schiller, who had already announced that he was leaving NPR to take a job elsewhere.

-- I am actually somewhat appalled the NPR called Schiller's remarks appalling. Again, is what he said really so bad, so outrageous? Fox News people, including on-air personalities, say far worse all the time. NPR has different (i.e., higher) standards, obviously, but it seems to me that NPR is going too far the other way, trying to defend itself from any and all possible association with partisanship. And for what? For the small amount NPR takes in federal funding every year?

-- NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) said Schiller's remarks were "deeply distressing to reporters, editors and others who bring fairness, civility and respect for a wide variety of viewpoints to their work every day." They may have been, and may still be -- how should I know? -- but Schiller was a fundraiser and was not involved with NPR content. So it's not like it was an editor or reporter, or executive responsible for such matters, was caught saying such partisan things.

-- Schiller himself has already apologized:

While the meeting I participated in turned out to be a ruse, I made statements during the course of the meeting that are counter to NPR's values and also not reflective of my own beliefs. I offer my sincere apology to those I offended. I resigned from NPR, previously effective May 6th, to accept another job. In an effort to put this unfortunate matter behind us, NPR and I have agreed that my resignation is effective today.

Again, why this embarrassing self-flagellation? Were his remarks really "not reflective" of his "own beliefs"? So what? And whom exactly did he offend? Republicans? Tea Partiers? Anti-Muslim bigots? Why does he need to apologize to them? Perhaps he should have apologized to NPR to openly objecting to corporate policy, at least in terms of federal funding, and perhaps he should have admitted that he spoke too freely, but more than that was hardly necessary.

And yet here he is, along with NPR itself, issuing one big mea culpa while conservatives point fingers, sneer, and gloat.

Please. Does he have no self-respect? Does NPR have no self-respect? Do we liberals have no self-respect?

I'm sick and fucking tired of the double standard. Conservatives can say whatever the hell they want, going so far as to promote extremist views on every media channel they can get hold of, but liberals have to bend over backwards to apologize for even the slightest hint of bias. It's truly and utterly pathetic.

And, in this case, it's coming from a guy who was already on the way out! (And a cowardly NPR just kicked him out the door sooner.)

-- As John Cole puts it in his usual blunt way: "The latest scoop from the wingnutosphere is that some former NPR fundraiser thinks that the teahadists are nuts and that the GOP has been hijacked by crazy people. This is being spun as some grave sin, when in reality it should be met with a resounding -- 'No shit.'"

My thought exactly.

Question of the Day

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there are now over 1,000 active hate groups in the U.S.

-- How many of them support the Republican Party, lean Republican, or are actively involved with the GOP?

As Mark Potok, the editor of the SPLC's Intelligence Report, explains:

Far-right extremists remain highly energized, even as politicians across the country co-opt many of the radical ideas and issues that are important to them. This success in having their voices heard in the political arena, where they have long occupied the fringe of conservative thought, might eventually take the wind out of their sails, but so far we're not seeing any sign of that.

Hardly surprising, what with the GOP moving further and further to the right and turning the radical right into its new mainstream as it descends deeper and deeper into extremism and madness.

Haley Barbour and the KKK: A perfect Republican match?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The other day, I withdrew my support for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

It was a difficult and sad thing to do, and it's not a decision I made lightly. I came to it only after serious reflection and delirious soul-searching. I want what's best for the Republican Party, after all, and I really thought that Barbour, the seemingly perfect Republican, was the best.

But, you know, if you support and lobby for amnesty for illegal immigrants, if you show even the tiniest speck of humanity towards the many hard-working people who just want to make a better life for themselves in America, as well as for their children, you're just not a good enough Republican, and you certainly don't deserve the lofty, Reaganesque honor of being your party's nominee for the highest office in the land.

But maybe I was too impulsive. Maybe I didn't think the thing through. Maybe I didn't give Boss Barbour enough credit.

Maybe -- yes, maybe -- I was wrong. And maybe I need to send him a big fat apology.

Because he really is a great Republican, and it took something he said just this week to remind me of that:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday he won't denounce a Southern heritage group's proposal for a state-issued license plate that would honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Barbour is a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate.

Questioned by reporters Tuesday after an energy speech in Jackson, Barbour said he doesn't think Mississippi legislators will approve the Forrest license plate proposed by the Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The group wants to sponsor a series of state-issued license plates over the next few years to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War - or in its words, the "War Between the States." The Forrest license plate would be slated for 2014.

Mississippi NAACP president Derrick Johnson said it's "absurd" to honor a "racially divisive figure" such as Forrest. Johnson has also called on Barbour to denounce the license plate idea.

Asked about the NAACP's stance Tuesday, Barbour replied: "I don't go around denouncing people. That's not going to happen. I don't even denounce the news media."

As Jonathan Chait notes, it would appear that, for Barbour the news media are even worse than the KKK. Such crazy anti-media sentiment certainly reinforces his Republican cred.

But it's also his refusal to denounce the effort to honor not just a major Confederate figure but a leader of the KKK that really sends his star back into orbit. While he said that "there's not a chance it'll become law," and hence that there won't be a state-issued licence plate (though it's not clear if he himself supports the idea or if he just thinks the Mississippi legislature won't approve it), it's that refusal that supersizes his Republican cred.

No, he's not perfect. Alas. There's still that "amnesty" blip, and he won't be able to run away from that, just as Romney won't be able to run away from health-care reform in Massachusetts.

But he's a good Republican, a very good Republican, and very much a model for how Republicans should conduct themselves. I doubt he'll run, and maybe he's not Teabagger enough for the far right, but the party could do a lot worse, and I really hope all Americans, especially independents who may need some help deciding between the two parties, come to identify him with the Republican Party.

He deserves no less. And neither does the GOP.

(photo)

How the GOP is a party of words: Promises are promises are promises...

By Nicholas Wilbur

Transitions are always difficult. If you're a Republican, Change® is particularly tough to swallow – which is why the GOP spent the last two years projectile vomiting on anything that tasted like "Progress" and throwing filibuster tantrums whenever Congress debated a bill on Capitol Hill.

They swept the midterm elections, nonetheless, not with a strong record – or any record at all – but by riding the coattails of the anti-government prattle of the Tea Party patriots who flooded the mainstream media with sensational circus theatrics and apocalyptic prophesies of the country's imminent demise were Democrats to remain in power.

The seemingly sane but obviously stubborn Republicans teamed up with Tea Party candidates and capitalized on the nation's fears and doubts by crafting a national message so bold it could not be ignored, even by liberals, who, for good or ill, were transfixed. Traditional Republicans, as the media has since dubbed the non-Tea Partiers, touted a "repeal and replace" strategy to undo the alleged devastation wrought by the Obama Administration and his Democratic Party minions in Congress. The Teabaggers, as the left-wing media dubbed the ideological extremists, did their part by peppering the rhetoric with threats to amend the Constitution and deny citizenship to brown people, abolish the IRS, and defund the departments of interior, commerce and education that these Fox News junkies believed had become a black hole for taxpayer dollars. 

But Republicans knew they couldn't continue riding in the back of the leadership bus through 2011. With majority control of the lower branch of Congress, there was a sudden expectation that these new leaders would actually lead, that these new lawmakers would actually make laws. Bitching and whining and obstructing the legislative process at every turn would not suffice with majority status in "the people's house" of Congress. 

They had to appear, at least on the surface, that they were worthy of the government paychecks they received.

And so, after a year-long campaign focused on accusing Democrats of ignoring the main concern of the American people – job creation – Republicans got right down to business upon entering office. Sort of. 

They amended the House rules to require that all bills brought to the floor include a constitutional citation of lawfulness. They rescinded the already limited voting rights of delegates from D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and elsewhere. They required that all bills include spending cuts to offset any costs needed for implementation of the newly-proposed legislation (exempting, of course, tax cuts for the rich and their repeal of President Obama's health-care law). And they changed the House schedule to give every lawmaker one week off for every two weeks worked. 

That was just the beginning. 

As they settled into their new positions of power, Republicans showed their dedication to the financially strapped American working class by introducing... a bill to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, a bill to abolish the IRS and eliminate the income tax, and another bill that would redefine rape. 

Having promised to cut $100 billion from the federal budget this fiscal year, Republicans drafted legislation to free up a whopping $61 million (yes, million) in the budget by abolishing public financing for presidential elections. Most recently, they voted on what amounts to an office memo, a skeletal outline, a very rough, very unspecific, and very ambiguous House Resolution that calls for $32 billion in cuts.

Not exactly landmark legislation. Not legislation at all, in most cases. In fact, the only significant piece of legislation proposed thus far by Republicans has been the health-care repeal bill, which, given its chances of becoming law, wasn't much of a bill at all. They spent the last year promising to "repeal and replace" the 2,000-plus-page law known by conservatives as "ObamaCare," but the "replace" portion of the promise was conveniently absent from the two-paragraph repeal bill passed in the House. As they knew it would, this faux legislation failed in the Senate.

So here we are one month into the new Congress, with Republicans still reeling from a landslide victory over Democrats in the midterm election, and what do we have to show for it? 

Nothing. 

And looking back, we should not be surprised. We all saw this coming. 

After "shellacking" Democrats in the midterm elections, Republicans returned to Washington intent on "saving millions of taxpayer dollars." They began this quest by attempting to eliminate grant funding for public radio. The $3.2 million in projected annual savings was pittance, they knew, and doomed to failure, as they eventually saw. But they tooted their horns and banged their drums nonetheless, eventually blaming liberals for offering government handouts to Not Pro Republican media outlets. Next in line: banning earmarks, another pittance estimated to save $16 billion a year. That fell flat when Republicans realized that banning earmarks meant they could no longer fund infrastructure projects in their home states. There were also targeted efforts to deny unemployment benefits, thwart the judicial "interference" in cases where employees are raped on the job, and kill a bill to award health care to 9/11 first responders. 

The last two months of the 111th Congress saw more of the same blind Republican opposition that had defined their presence in Washington, really, since Democrats won the majority in 2006. In the final days of 2010, Republicans followed up their backward opposition to the DREAM Act and the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" by fighting vigorously against even the no-brainer nuclear arms treaty with Russia, New START. 

They railed against excessive government spending (without acknowledging their role in the unpaid-for prescription drug program, the Bush tax cuts, and the two wars that created a $1.3 trillion deficit by the end of Bush's second term), but then balked when it came time to identify specific spending cuts. Perhaps in their most egregious display of hypocrisy, Republicans threatened to shut down the government if President Obama and the Democrats didn't get on board with the GOP priority of extending Bush's tax cuts for another two years. 

It worked. The rich kept their disproportionate tax breaks, but the result didn't quite live up to the Republican Party's pledge to cut spending back to 2008 levels, as outlined in their "Pledge to America" campaign manifesto. Conversely, it cost about $100 billion more than the 2009 economic stimulus bill they so loathed. 

The empty promises, the lofty and impractical goals, the "repeal and replace" agenda that has thus far come up empty on both fronts – these have all proven mere strategies in a shell game of hallow rhetoric meant to brainwash taxpayers into thinking that their new leaders in Washington are well-deserving of the $174,000 (plus health care benefits) that we pay them for representing We the People.

The naysayers and witch hunters of anything smelling of liberalism have demonstrated that they are not patriots defending against Socialism as much as they are stalwart defenders of the Bush-era status quo. The people loved them for it throughout the last congressional session, they praised them for it throughout the campaign season, and they turned out in swaths to reward them for it at the ballot box on Nov. 2, 2010. Now a month into the 112th Congress, Republicans are enjoying their highest popularity rating in years.

Republicans interpreted the last election as a mandate against the progressive agenda. Voters, they said, showed unequivocally that they wanted whatever was the opposite of progress and change. 

This is about as close as it gets.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.) 

***********

Background photo of John Boehner from National Journal.

Republican favorable/unfavorable chart from Gallup.

Elephant Dung #11: The Tea Party prepares for 2012 takeover of GOP

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

To an extent, the Republican Party and the Tea Party are the same thing.

The latter isn't politically independent, even if a small minority of its members are, it's solidly Republican. And the Tea Party has become such a major part of the Republican Party that it's hard to tell the two apart.

To be sure, there are a number of Republicans, mostly in what has been the party "establishment," who aren't Teabaggers, but that number, and their power, appears to be in decline.

To put it another way, the Republican Party and the Tea Party (which, again, is mostly Republican anyway) have embraced each other. Now, another word for "embrace," in this context, is "co-opt," as each sees the other as its vehicle for electoral success. The Tea Party needs the Republican Party, and vice versa.

But, hugging notwithstanding, the relationship is not always amicable, not least with the Tea Party trying not just to co-opt the Republican Party but to take it over and control it. The Tea Party doesn't just want to be one of the Republican Party's main components but its dominant force. It doesn't want the Republican Party to be an umbrella party (like the Democratic Party) with multiple perspectives and policy positions within it, but a rigid ideological party of Tea Party dogma.

It wants the Republican Party, that is, to be the party of Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and the rest of the Teabaggers who ran last year to varying success. And, to that end, and drunk on delusion, it's gearing up for 2012:

Leaders of more than 70 Tea Party groups in Indiana gathered last weekend to sign a proclamation saying they would all support one candidate — as yet undetermined — in a primary challenge to Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Republican who has represented the state since 1977.

They are organizing early, they say, to prevent what happened last year, when several Tea Party candidates split the vote in Republican Senate primaries, allowing the most establishment of the candidates to win with less than 40 percent.

The meeting in Sharpsville was hardly the exception. Just three months after the midterm elections, Tea Party organizers are preparing to challenge some of the longest-serving Republican incumbents in 2012.

In Maine, there is already one candidate running on a Tea Party platform against Senator Olympia J. Snowe. Supporters there are seeking others to run, declaring that they, too, will back the person they view as the strongest candidate to avoid splitting their vote. In Utah, the same people who ousted Senator Robert F. Bennett at the state’s Republican convention last spring are now looking at a challenge to Senator Orrin G. Hatch.

The early moves suggest that the pattern of the last elections, in which primaries were more fiercely contested than the general election in several states, may be repeated.

They also show how much the Tea Party has changed the definition of who qualifies as a conservative. While Ms. Snowe is widely considered a moderate Republican, Mr. Hatch is not. Mr. Lugar, similarly, defines himself as a conservative.

Ah, but that's not good enough anymore.

You can't just be a "conservative," you have to be a Tea Party conservative, a right-wing extremist like Rand, Angle, and O'Donnell, predominantly on economic issues (where the insane views of Ayn Rand are standard fare) but also on social ones (the Tea Party may be known best for its views on "limited" government, but it's extremely conservative, if not generally theocratic, on social issues as well, even allowing for hyper-libertarian exceptions like Rand).

And if even an Orrin Hatch isn't good enough, well, you know just how far to the right the Tea Party is -- and would like the Republican Party to be.

So are we headed for an ugly, internally divisive Republican primary season, with Teabaggers challenging any and all Republicans who don't meet their far-right standards, including established conservatives like Hatch?

Hopefully. Let's see what these Teabaggers are made off -- and let's watch the Republican Party reap what it has sown. 

Bring it on.

Elephant Dung #10: Tea Party slams Reince Priebus, RNC

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Well, that didn't take long, did it? Reince Priebus has only been RNC chair for a few days and already the Tea Party is trying to knock him down: 

While Priebus boasted, during his campaign for RNC chairman, of his good relations with Wisconsin tea party groups, the leaders of those groups give his tenure mixed reviews, with some accusing him of giving only lip service to the movement while stacking the deck against its candidates, shutting them out of the process or working to absorb them into the GOP.

"Priebus will do whatever it takes to co-opt the tea party movement," said Mike Murphy, chairman of a tea party-allied 527 group called The Republican Liberty Caucus of Wisconsin, founded in late 2009.

In the midterm elections, Murphy's group supported tea party candidates, including some who were undercut by the state GOP, which largely ignored long-shot tea party candidates and endorsed the primary rivals of others at its May convention — months before the primary election.

"He didn't allow for conservative voices that didn't jibe with the establishment view and if he charges down that course (at the RNC), the tea party people will wake up and it may very well split up the Republican Party" coalition that powered the GOP's 2010 landslide, said Murphy.

Interviews with eight other Wisconsin tea party leaders since Priebus's election Friday as RNC chairman revealed similar misgivings about Priebus's handling of the party endorsement process, which they saw as emblematic of the clubby establishment politics that the tea party has railed against since the movement burst onto the scene in April 2009.

Priebus is hardly some wishy-washy moderate. He may be an insider, but his politics are on the far right (and hence well within the mainstream of the GOP).

And yet the Tea Party still doesn't like him? Why?

Well, because he didn't turn the Wisconsin GOP over to the Wisconsin Tea Party, obviously, even if he was more than willing to embrace Tea Party politics.

And that's the key here, you see. The co-opting goes both ways.

The Tea Party accuses the GOP of trying to co-opt it, and, sure, the GOP has very much been trying to do just that, that is to say, to capitalize electorally off Tea Party support, but the Tea Party is also trying to co-opt the GOP, to take control of it and use it to win elected office.

The Tea Party presents itself as against the establishment, but what it really wants is to became establishment itself, specifically within the Republican Party. To put it another way, it wants the counter-establishment to be the establishment. It denies this, of course, but its pursuit of control of the Republican Party, and its pursuit of power generally, would seem to refute its credibility.

Of course, most, if not all, revolutionaries -- and I use the term broadly when referring to Teabaggers, most of whom are either right-wing Republicans or otherwise right-wing anti-government types who are Republican in spirit -- desire power, not merely the overthrow those in power. Simply put, they want what others have, and often want it badly enough to resort to violence. (Read Hannah Arendt.)

I get it. 

But let's stop pretending that the Tea Party is really all that distinct at this point from the GOP. They may not be one and the same, but they need each other and feed off each other, and they're moving closer and closer all the time.

In this case, Priebus is surely more than happy to open the doors of the GOP as wide as possible to the Tea Party. But even that won't be enough. The Tea Party won't be happy until it takes over, until Priebus and the "establishment," however right-wing, bow to its every command.

It's an uneasy relationship, but it's the essence of the Republican Party.

Who the hell is Reince Priebus?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Why, he's your new RNC chair!

With Michael "gaffe-fest" Steele out of the way, after a memorable two-year term of one embarrassing (for him and his party) moment after another, Priebus, previously the GOP party chair in Wisconsin before working for Steele at the RNC, stormed to a win in the seventh round of voting yesterday afternoon to capture the top spot at the Republican National Committee.

So let the Reince Priebus era begin!

Think Progress has a helpful overview of just who this guy is and what he's all about: 

– Priebus's law firm sought funds from Obama's stimulus package: Connecticut GOP chairman Chris Healy noted that Priebus's Wisconsin law firm helped its clients obtain federal stimulus funds, citing the fact that Priebus's name was attached to the "Stimulus and Economic Recovery Group." Priebus immediately responded to the story, claiming he had never worked with his firm's "Stimulus and Economic Recovery" group. 

– His law firm says the recently passed health care bill is constitutional: Priebus's law firm not only says the law is constitutional, but has touted its benefits to clients. 

– Implicated in voter caging: While Priebus was chair of the Wisconsin GOP, the state party engaged fomented voter fraud conspiracies and hatched a voter caging plot with well-funded right-wing allies to suppress minority votes. One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross said, "When voter suppression allegations have surfaced in Wisconsin for the past decade, the name Reince Priebus isn't far behind."

– He has the backing of many of the Barbour clan: Henry Barbour, a committeeman from Mississippi and the nephew of Gov. Hale Barbour (R-MS), enticed Priebus into running for the RNC chair. Also, Nick Ayers, a close Barbour associate and executive director of the Republican Governors Association, reportedly gave behind-the-scenes support to Priebus, leading many to believe Priebus would favor Barbour for president in 2012. Priebus responded by saying, "I'm not Haley's choice, I don't think that Haley has any horse in the race, and he's made that pretty clear on the record."

– Priebus had close ties to former chairman Michael Steele, then stabbed him in the back: Priebus was Steele's general counsel and frequently served as Steele's top liaison to committee members. In a memo sent to RNC members, Connecticut Party chairman Chris Healy said that Priebus is partly responsible for the RNC's poor performance. Commenting on Priebus' run, Steele recently said, "It's disappointing, you would hope that the bonds of loyalty were thicker than they apparently were."

– Priebus mistakenly called for Obama's execution: In a media conference call about Osama Bin Laden, Priebus slipped and accidentally called for the "execution" of Obama three separate times. "My guess is he would believe that Obama should be executed and he oughta be treated as a war criminal," Priebus explained. 

And this is from his Wikipedia page:

In the December 1, 2010 RNC candidate forum, Priebus provided a few details about his politics. He said he believes the RNC is "part of" the Tea Party movement; believes in the Christian God and stated that if he were elected as RNC chair it would be through God's blessing; believes it is the Republican Party's mission to "save our country, to save our party, and to take back the White House"; believes someone who is "pro-abortion, pro-stimulus, pro-AIG ... might not be a Republican"; and believes that being pro-life is "paramount" to the Republican Party platform. He wants to ban earmarks and to require photo IDs to vote. He opposes the legal recognition of same sex marriage.

So... he's a self-aggrandizing hypocrite and opportunist who's connected to Haley "perfect Republican" Barbour, who has been involved in racist voter suppression, who, like his former boss, is fully capable of making appalling gaffes, and who is an ideological extremist who adheres to far-right (but mainstream GOP) positions on social and economic issues and loves the Tea Party?

Wow. Does it get any better than that?

Political rhetoric and political violence: Are conservatives like Palin to blame for the Arizona shooting?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In the wake of yesterday's deadly shooting in Arizona, the assassination attempt on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, with fingers being pointed (justifiably, I think) at the likes of Sarah Palin (and the Tea Party, as well as much of the Republican Party), much of the talk today is about political speech:

Do Palin and others deserve any of the blame for what happened yesterday? More broadly, what is appropriate and what isn't?

At Slate, Jack Shafer defends "inflammatory rhetoric and violent imagery," criticizing those, like Keith Olbermann, who are calling for American political rhetoric to change. Shafer writes:

Only the tiniest handful of people -- most of whom are already behind bars, in psychiatric institutions, or on psycho-meds -- can be driven to kill by political whispers or shouts. Asking us to forever hold our tongues lest we awake their deeper demons infantilizes and neuters us and makes politicians no safer.

At The Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz, another media-focused pundit/apologist, takes a somewhat more balanced approach, noting that such violent rhetoric, while "highly unfortunate," is hardly new. He writes:

Let's be honest: Journalists often use military terminology in describing campaigns. We talk about the air war, the bombshells, targeting politicians, knocking them off, candidates returning fire or being out of ammunition. So we shouldn't act shocked when politicians do the same thing. Obviously, Palin should have used dots or asterisks on her map. But does anyone seriously believe she was trying to incite violence?

To a certain extent, Kurtz is right. And it isn't just in politics. How often do we hear military terminology used in sports? Take the NFL, where winning the war in the trenches is part of every game. But to a certain extent, he is also deeply naive. Palin may not explicitly have been trying to incite violence, but the reality is that words have consequences. This is hardly a new observation, but it bears repeating.

(Update: I realize I'm being way too nice to Kurtz here. His piece, like Shafer's, is appallingly smug. For a sound critique, see Sullivan.)

When you whip up a frenzy and try to mobilize the mobs who follow you unthinkingly, as Palin did during the '08 campaign and again last year, you plant seeds in the minds of those who may not quite get what you're doing, who may not appreciate all the various nuances of political speech. Even if we give Palin and others on the right the benefit of the doubt and allow that all they were doing was trying to rally their "troops" to vote, the possibility, if not the likelihood, remained that one or more of those "troops" would misinterpret the message.

Palin may not have been talking about killing Giffords when she put her in the crosshairs, but it's hardly a stretch to think that others might take her literally. And when you add to that the obsession with guns that animates so much of the right, including both the Tea Party and the Republican Party -- think back to the guns that showed up at health-care town halls a couple of years ago -- what you end up with is a cauldron of potential violence just waiting to explode.

In a perfect world, or at least in a world of universal rationality, Shafer may well be right. We should all be mature enough to understand the context of political speech, including that which is inflammatory and violent. But we don't live in such a world, and the fact remains that all is takes is one person with a gun, or whatever other weapon, to turn whispers or shouts into a bloodbath.

What's more, this isn't just about speech but about ideology as well. It's not just that Palin put Giffords and others in the crosshairs, targeting them, or that military terminology is prevalent specifically on the right, but that conservatism today, as reflected in both the Tea Party and the Republican Party, is exceedingly violent. It isn't just about limited government, it's about conspiracy theories rooted in anti-government, and specifically anti-federal government paranoia. It isn't just about the right to bear arms, it's about owing guns en masse, carrying them in public (whether concealed or right out in the open), and flaunting them (and also using them) as political protest.

All of this, too, is in that cauldron, and it's threatening to bubble over for years. From time to time it has, and what happened yesterday was just the most dramatic incident so far. It could very well get even worse.

As I do not in theory disagree with Shafer and Kurtz, I do not necessarily disagree with Olbermann (see his comment below) and others who are calling for political speech to be more responsible. I certainly do not want this to be yet another Janet Jackson moment, with a single incident (however tragic, in this case, unlike the mere exposure of a nipple) leading to gross over-reaction. Remember when 9/11 was supposed to have been the end of irony? Of course it wasn't. People moved on. And there will continue to be violent political rhetoric even after this.

No, what I worry about is not so much political speech itself but that speech, when violent, combined with a similarly violent political ideology, as we find on the right today. That's when it gets dangerous, and when, as we have seen in the past, long before yesterday, it can get literally violent.

No, let's not over-react, but let's not just dismiss what happened yesterday as merely the violent outburst of an insane individual acting alone, haunted by demons disconnected from political reality. The context and the discussion need to be broader, absorbing not just political speech on its own, which can usually be justified, but the context of that speech, the ideology behind it and the climate in which it is expressed.

It may still be far too early to pin the blame on anyone or anything in particular, but it's pretty clear, I think, if we do consider speech alongside ideology, that our fingers ought to be pointing at Palin and all those like her on the right, which is to say, at much of American conservatism today, including the Tea Party and the GOP.

We must not allow them to get away with what they're doing. And they should not be allowed to get away with claiming that they had nothing to do with it.

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Pawlenty calls Palin a "force of nature"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Appearing on Nightline this evening, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty made it pretty clear that he's running for president in 2012. He said he hasn't made "a final decision," but that would appear to be a mere formality.

Asked about Sarah Palin, a possible (if unlikely) Republican primary opponent, he praised her (as any GOP hopeful must, given her "influence") and said she's a "force of nature."

So is an earthquake, of course, and while Republicans generally still adore her, at least among the Tea Party base, she's very much a fault line within the GOP, and there's a good reason why many in the establishment, while being careful with their words, have already come out against her.

Pawlenty isn't an idiot. He surely knows she's toxic -- not just with the party establishment, but, as the polls show, more broadly with the American people. But of course he has to bow to her in the hope of ultimately securing her support.

The GOP is very much the Party of Palin, after all, as much as it is still the Party of Rush, and her force, no matter how toxic, will help shape its future, at least over the next couple of years, as her star shines.

And that should put a smile on every Democrat's face.

Bring it on, Darrell Issa, you dangerous idiot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Buckle up. The Republicans are back, and gavel-wielding Darrell Issa, dangerous idiot extraordinaire, is about to lead the House down into the valley of the damned:

Rep. Darrell Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high-profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.

According to an outline of hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is also planning to investigate how regulation affects job creation, the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis, recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown. 

Yes, that's right, Issa is threatening to investigate pretty much everything. Full of partisan hyperbole and what appears to be a complete disregard of history (and reality), he has called Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times," later clarifying himself by broadening that attack to the Obama Administration generally. (Because, as you know, Obama covered up a third-rate break-in at a D.C. office building, sold arms to Iran and redirected the funds to Latin American fascists, and lied his way into a disaster of a war in the heart of the Middle East.)

In response to that comment, the Post's Ruth Marcus wrote that "[i]f Issa believes this, he is deranged. If he doesn't and is saying it anyway, he is dangerous." (Via Benen.) I would suggest that he is both deranged and dangerous, all wrapped up in right-wing ideology, very much the quintessential House Republican. Benen has more:

To justify his allegations of corruption, Issa told CNN yesterday, "In saying that this is one of the most corrupt administrations, which is what I meant to say there, when you hand out $1 trillion in TARP just before this president came in, most of it unspent, $1 trillion nearly in stimulus that this president asked for, plus this huge expansion in health care and government, it has a corrupting effect."

As is too often the case, Issa is deeply confused. First, the TARP bailout was a Bush administration proposal supported by the Republican leadership in both chambers. The Obama administration made sure American taxpayers were paid back, and lowered TARP's price tag to almost zero. If Issa sees this as evidence of "corruption," someone should have bought him a dictionary for Christmas.

Second, the stimulus wasn't $1 trillion -- I wish it had been -- and there was nothing corrupt about it. Similarly, arguing that health care reform has a "corrupting effect" doesn't make any sense if the effect of the law features no corruption.

Of course, Issa doesn't understand the meaning of corruption. To him, apparently, anything with which he disagrees is "corrupt." And he's not just "deeply confused," he's completely stupid, getting even the simple facts wrong.

But this is what the Republicans are about -- and what they will prove to be about in the House. Instead of governing, or helping to govern, they will be investigating and obstructing, doing everything in their power to prevent the president and Congressional Democrats, who of course still have a majority in the Senate, from governing. I realize that the concept of the "loyal opposition" is more parliamentary than presidential, but this sort of Republican partisanism is disloyalty to the extreme -- disloyalty to the American people.

So why do I say, Bring it on?

Because I'm more than happy to let the Republicans expose themselves for what they are, a party of extreme right-wing politics, extreme partisanism, and absolute obstructionism, a party that is completely out of control, a party that, spurred on by Issa's gavel, wants to drag the country down into the gutter.

And because the American people, and particularly all those much-ballyhooed independents, are supposedly against this sort of thing. Because they want Washington to get to work, and to work for them. Because they don't much care for such partisanism, for such bickering, for such paralysis.

Because the American people need to know what the Republicans are all about.

You've heard that the GOP is the Party of No, or even the Party of Hell No. But it's more than that. It's a party that, having lost in 2006 and 2008, simply cannot accept the will of the American people, the outcomes of American democracy. It's a sore-loser party, a party of bitterness and resentment, a party of anger and vengeance, a party of cynicism and hypocrisy, a party completely divorced from reality, a party out for itself at the expense of all else, including the needs of the American people at this time of ongoing economic difficulty.

So, yes, Darrell Issa, bring it on! Show us just how deranged you and your party really are.