Republican Party

This Actually Happened

The Republican audience, reminded of the 234 individuals executed during Rick Perry’s tenure as Texas governor, actually applauded:

This doesn’t strike me as a pro- or anti-death penalty issue. It’s one of basic human decency. Punishment — any punishment — isn’t a joyful answer to crime. It’s one to be dispensed solemnly, with cognizance that another’s life has to be ruined, whether by imprisonment or by death, for society’s benefit. I don’t expect Ned Stark (YouTube), but I do demand respect for lives taken.

That said, I don’t believe a reasonable man can support the death penalty in a world full of cases like Claude Jones’.

Our Republican Endorsement

Today, let’s take a break from negativity. In the Republican Primary, this site endorses Jon Huntsman.

Mr. Huntsman will never win the nomination. He rejects creationism and climate denialism. He has the diplomat’s ability to speak to other cultures in their own terms, instead of the cultural hegemon’s insistence that they speak to him in his. In short, he rejects everything it means to be a Republican in the modern era. And by taking on the Republicans’ fringe, and its increasing pretensions to dominance, he shows no sign of stopping.

It’s this very commitment to centrism, and reasonable solutions, that together entitle him to the very position he’ll never occupy. Lesser men start from the center, and swerve right when it gets tough: McCain, for example. Huntsman shows every indication of sticking to his guns, even though it’ll cost him the nomination, to make a point about the way politics should be. For that, we applaud him.

To be clear, I at least could not support the Ambassador in a general election. The “flat tax,” and the notion that the poor should start paying taxes before the rich should pay more, remain wrongheaded and at odds with the facts (pdf). But a look at today’s political atmosphere makes clear that extremism begets extremism: when we first determine to forsake compromise, and set out to destroy one another rather than govern, we unlock Pandora’s box. It’s what happened in Wisconsin, and we can only fix the national problem by agreeing to govern together from the center again. Huntsman appears to understand as much, in a way that no other Republican does.

For that, he’s condemned to be an afterthought in a primary that’ll be defined by the Palins, Perrys, and Bachmanns, not by the Lugars and Huntsmans. That’s the Republicans’ loss — none of the former set have even a shadow of a shot in the general — but it’s the country’s loss, too. We deserve an election about ideas, not one where the Republican (wrongly) considers his opponent a foreign-born socialist, and the Democrat (probably correctly) considers his an intellectually bereft ideologue.

The Republicans’ Self-Inflicted Defeat, Part 1

I’m often warned against (mis-)underestimating the Republican Party. I mean sure, they’re at least partially a pack of deranged extremists, and maybe those are the elements that command true media attention. But the party leadership, the ones that truly matter, well they’re a more reasonable bunch, right?

We may now be forgiven for concluding otherwise. Though I’m not one to set much stock by the Iowa Straw Poll — any vote where Ron Paul ends up second is probably not a good predictor of future events — apparently Tim Pawlenty is. Citing his third place finish, he just dropped out of the race.

That’s one moderate, electable candidate felled by radical theocrat Michele Bachmann. Who’s next?

Update: Wonkette nails it.

Make-believe Republican candidate Tim Pawlenty ended his candidacy today in a desperate bid to convince voters he had been running for the GOP nomination.

Theocratic Constitutionalism & the Hollowness of Republican “Freedom”

How disconcerting to have one’s Christian name used as a Twitter tag to describe the aspirations of seven men and one woman, none of whom will ever be President.

Still, yesterday’s debate gave a fairly good idea of what each candidate means when they use words like “liberty” or “freedom,” and expressions like “states’ rights.” Rick Perry comes closest to a coherent, limited-government synthesis, when arguing that the Tenth Amendment should protect each state’s right to make mistakes about the definition of marriage, subject only to the peoples’ right to amend the Constitution to say otherwise. As we’ve explained before, that’s actually not at all contradictory.

Compare this with Rick Santorum.

Sullivan explains: according to Pennsylvania’s favorite son, “freedom does not mean the freedom to violate the eternal, unchanging ‘laws of nature,’ as defined by the Catholic church.” Put another way, the laws of God perforce supersede the laws of man, and should be enforced by both man and by God.

Now, Santorum is obviously wrong on the law. The Constitution leaves no room for implied theocracy. If religious mores may be used in molding the law — something that’s perhaps improper in a pluralist society, but certainly not illegal – they do not become the law absent affirmative enactment, subject to constitutional limitations. But isn’t he also wrong on his theology? Believers should hope to see God’s will done, but Santorum posits an interference with temporal affairs rejected by Christ himself, and by early church fathers (St. Augustine of Hippo, in his City of God: “Two cities have been formed by two loves. The earthly, by the love of Self; the heavenly, by the love of God.”) Santorum’s view seems definitional of today’s more militant Christian fundamentalism, where a takeover of all secular institutions approximates a religious commandment, a Christian jihad, albeit one which precludes violence in most iterations. But it’s also plainly at odds with what Christianity was originally supposed to be.

It’s also in conflict with the larger fundamentalist community. The Skousenite view — formerly an aberration confined to the far-far-right of the Mormon church, now more mainline fundamentalism, post-Beck (cf.) — holds that the Constitution is a “divinely inspired” document. Per Skousen, because the Constitution was formed by God’s will, the limits of the document are the limits of God’s will for human government. Per Santorum, the Constitution incorporates God’s law into the background, as a sort of external limitation preventing the constitutional recognition of certain rights and liberties.

Both views should terrify, and both are clearly wrong. But both are finding increasing incorporation into the Republican party line. God help us all.

Newt Gingrich Takes Courageous Stand Against Medicare, Civil Rights

In a Constitution explicitly premised on limited powers, the Tenth Amendment reservation of unallocated rights to the people or the states is essentially a “truism” — a restatement of a result that was already obvious to any careful reader. Put another way, the Tenth Amendment ”added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716, 733 (1931); see also U.S. v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941) (“There is nothing in the history of [the Amendment's] adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory . . . or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted.”). Basically, it’s a rhetorical flourish, a redundant system more fashionable than functional. An aesthetic affectation, like nipples on men. A vestigial reminder of something done better elsewhere. It’s like our national appendix, only less useful, and more dangerous when misunderstood.

Misunderstood, for example, by Newt Gingrich, who wants to somehow “enforce” this creature to “resist expansive federal laws” by methods either incomprehensible and unconstitutional, like ”annulment by judicial review.” Huh?

Best not to dwell on the function, which will almost certainly never materialize. Instead, let’s look at the form. In the roll-out, Gingrich bills his “Team Ten” as a way to restore an idyllic past that, honestly, never existed:

Back then, there was a general assumption that life was mostly lived in your local neighborhood. But then you suddenly had a huge increase in government, followed by what Lyndon Johnson called the “Great Society,” — although I would call it bureaucratic socialism.

Yeah, to Hell with… Wait, what? Apparently, tea party revisionism has reached a new fever pitch of delusion. Let’s step back and analyze the evils of the Great Society, which Gingrich would apparently unwind as unconstitutional “socialism.” Classic components listed below, with some Johnson-era creations marked with by asterisk to represent longtime conservative bogeymen:

1. Civil Rights Act (1964)
2. Voting Rights Act (1965)
3. Social Security (1965)
4. Medicaid (1965)
5. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (1967) [think "Sesame Street" and "NOVA"]
6. The Smithsonian Institution (founded 1800s, endowed by Congress 1930s, funded and constructed in its current iteration 1966-late ’70s)
7. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1971)
8. Wholesome Meat Act (1967) [think "Grade A," etc.]
9. Truth-in-Lending Act (1968)
10. Endangered Species Preservation Act (1966)*
11. Clean Air/Water Acts (1970/72)*

Disappointment

Saddled with an opposition that relentlessly avoids the appearance or actuality of substance, and which tries at every turn to push the country farther right than their thin mandate should support, even at the expense of the country’s fiscal integrity, this President has somehow continued to speak in substantive, positive, centrist terms.

After the hard-right tilt of the Bush years, and corresponding translation of all debates into culture war terms, that even-temperedness is at least a little of what I signed up for: a President for the country, not for an outspoken and increasingly violent political faction. Even where the price is, essentially, the loss of political effectiveness, it’s a little nice to occupy the high ground. So the following comes as a surprise:

Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee. [. . .]

A senior Obama adviser was even more cutting, suggesting that the Republican’s personal awkwardness will turn off voters.

“There’s a weirdness factor with Romney and it remains to be seen how he wears with the public,” said the adviser, noting that the contrasts they’d drive between the president and the former Massachusetts governor would be “based on character to a great extent.”

And a serious disappointment. If the Republican succeed at bringing Obama down to their level — where personal attacks and clever catchphrases substitute for leadership — they will have finally, and actually won. Centrism and statesmanship will be dead and buried, by both sides. And we’ll have nothing to show for that great loss, while the Republicans will have engineered a country convinced that “liberty” means nothing more than tax cuts and “freedom” from the social safety net.

If nothing else, though, this strategy leak signals a tone change, an awareness that the President’s current messaging strategy isn’t working. That’s good. But instead of embracing the lowest common denominator, the Administration should consider what’s actually working, what isn’t, and most importantly, what they actually have to lose. For example, the most frustrating element of the past three years has been the GOP’s remarkable ability to pin positions on the White House more extreme than those it actually advocates. By playing the centrist game in response, we get the worst of all worlds, suffering undeserved blows from the right, deserved blows from the left, and bewildered indifference from the center.

Well, “if we’re going to be walking into walls, I want us running into them.”

It’s long-past time the President attempted even-tempered and intellectual solutions to the world’s problems, and delivered them in a strident, confident tone, backed by the courage of our convictions. This IS the “tea party downgrade,” and it threatens to be the tea party double-recession — not because of Boehner’s caucus and its reckless disregard for the consequences of fiscal zealotry. But because we’ve allowed the right to define the terms of the debate for the better part of a half-century, on the mistaken premise that modern tax policy is some liberal lie at odds with a history of “freedom.” This while simultaneously giving a pass to the real enemy — supply-side economics — a disproven aberration that’s left the rich less taxed than ever in American history, shifted the burden to the middle, and left us too poor to fix the current crisis, itself a product of runaway deregulation. The last time so many Americans were out of a job, we put them to work reinventing the country. We electrified the Tennessee River Valley, rebuilt the interstate, and poured manpower into science and industry, to the point that we could fight (and win) the greatest war in human history. Instead, today, we view investing in ourselves as some sort of sin — and let Republicans use a deficit they built to somehow excuse themselves from their responsibility to fix the damn thing. Why?

President Obama should ask that question, rather than indulging in the kind of namecalling expected of our honorable friends opposite. The Republicans have left us to play the part of the prodigal son, coasting off our fathers’ victories. We need a paradigm shift: life will be hard again, but we can win through it if we give up the myths that’ve allowed the rich to get richer on the nation’s dime, and the preoccupations that’ve convinced some that it’s more important to worry about their God than our country.

If Obama won’t even try to accomplish that shift — but instead buys into the type of politics that have abetted this decline all along — then he truly does not deserve his second term. Although I suppose the Republicans will deserve it even less.

Let it never be said that I am unequal in criticism.

Common Sense

You’re a financial institution, who just issued a newly married couple their first mortgage, to help pay for their new house. Everything’s going well until one day, going over security camera footage, you see that at midnight before the last payment came due, the husband & wife had come into the public lobby of your bank, and argued loudly about whether they should even continue to pay you at all.

Eventually, they decided to pay, of course. But only after a long and angry debate, where it actually looked like the couple might default. You’re not sure why they came so close to not paying. But, it looks like one of the newlyweds wanted to ignore their responsibility as a couple, based on some matter of principle, and probably to gain an upper hand in the marriage.

Puzzled, you play the security tape back again. You wonder, what happens next month? Thank God that one of them has some understanding of financial responsibility, but… how much longer can will balance of power hold?

Two weeks later, the couple comes in to ask for a loan to pay for a new car. What do you do? How much interest do you charge — a little or a lot? And who’s most to blame for your decision?

Exactly.

Backbenchers with Pretensions to the Front

The whole debt ceiling thing seems to be winding up, as we knew it would, at the eleventh hour. Apparently Republicans are quite content to push the financial system to the brink of ruin, and endure partial slides in all markets, just to make an idiotic point. Even as the crisis terminates, let’s investigate what we’ve learned. Turns out, very little.

Senator Rubio’s (R-FL) speech on the debt ceiling apparently marks him as a future Republican leader: impassioned, well-informed, and with a coherent vision. I don’t see it. I see a well-spoken ideologue, true. But also a junior Senator clearly outclassed by a senior.

Justifying his party’s extremism, Rubio apparently takes solace in the fact that then-Senators Biden and Obama made speeches to similar effect the last time the debt ceiling came up. Both pledged to — and did — vote against an increase. But the difference, which Kerry appreciates and Rubio ignores, is that neither Obama nor Biden were party leaders at that time, and neither ever had the chance to actually force the issue. Their votes were symbolic, with little to no actual effect on policy. To the contrary, Republicans have allowed themselves to be ruled by their doctrine, without regard to any supervening responsibility.

What Biden and Obama did is appropriate backbencher behavior; but not appropriate majority behavior. You see, when a party comes into power, we generally expect responsibility to humble and mediate each individual member’s partisan impulses. Like Jeff Toobin observed about conservatives on the Supreme Court, it’s easy to talk about big doctrinal changes when in dissent, but comparatively rarer for the same Justice to, when given a chance, actually pull the trigger and initiate a sweeping legal change.

Republicans display no such restraint. And, more worryingly, they don’t appear to appreciate that they should. In unbroken line, from Bush to Boehner, Republicans have displayed no squeamishness about taking a mandate, no matter how small, and running as far right with it as absolutely possible. It’s divisive, bad for the country, unpatriotic, and counterproductive. Our politics isn’t really designed to accommodate such willful disregard of the middle. Whether acted out on the large- and the small-scale, this type of behavior has a way of eroding decency and tearing communities apart.

And as long as it continues, no matter how well Rubio speaks — without pause, break, or “um,” which is actually quite impressive — he’ll still look like an ideologue, and the bumbling Kerry will still, comparatively, look like a statesman.

The New Orthodoxy

Here’s the good news: Grover Norquist, of far-right “think tank” Americans for Tax Reform, agrees that letting the Bush tax cuts lapse would not count as a “tax hike,” would not violate his group’s “no taxes” pledge, and therefore needn’t be a sticking point for Republicans seeking to avoid excommunication from this particular new branch of conservative theology.

Here’s the bad news. For some reason, we care.

It’s a bizarre, nonsensical politics that finds Republican members so wedded to their base that the pronouncement of an extremist advocacy group should factor into the calculus of not just members of the party fringe, but party leadership, too. Imagine Planned Parenthood demanding  – just when the health care bill was up for passage — that Democratic members oppose Senator Baucus’ compromise bill, which largely prevented federal funding from being spent on abortions. And imagine they backed up the demand with the credible threat of a primary challenge for each and every member deviating from the party line. We’d say the Democratic Party had been coopted by interest groups, and was letting the health of the country suffer just to preserve a particular point of liberal orthodoxy.

Why won’t we say that here? The Bush tax cuts were never anything more than the product of an overly rigid orthodoxy, entered into without any semblance of concern for the larger economy, over the objections of Alan Greenspan, whose silence on the bill was procured, but never earned. If Republicans actually put “country first,” or valued a balanced budget over some absurd tenet of faith, members shouldn’t have to be off the whip to put fiscal sanity before such ideologically motivated recklessness.

But instead, here we are, with a partisan hack calling the shots as we purport to navigate back towards solvency.

The GOP “Blinks”: or, Short-Term Cave for Long-Term Gain?

Liberal sites rush to accuse the Republican Party of “blinking” in the debt ceiling negotiations, for the Party’s apparent willingness to hand President Obama the unilateral power to hike the debt ceiling, provided he agrees to submit to a series of votes on each hike immediately before the 2012 election. Essentially, Republicans would hand Obama a substantive victory, in allowing him to keep the United States from defaulting on its debts, in exchange for a political victory, and the ability to keep debt and finance sharply in the public eye through election season.

Republicans have — in a way — “caved.” But I don’t think the move is anywhere near as cynical as some of my peers seem to believe. Remember, if the Republicans win big in 2012, on the backs of these (assumedly) unpopular votes, they receive the ability to make massive cuts, and unwind any financial decision President Obama makes between now and then. If they don’t expect to win, yes, this is a cynical ploy. But if they reasonably expect to win because of these votes, it’s just a remarkable example of effective big-picture thinking.

But, take a look at this primary field. Any expectation that Republicans “win big” in 2012 is patently unreasonable. So it’s hubris, not cynicism!