As the 112th Congress gets down to business, a major element of the Tea Party agenda, deficit reduction, seems to have already been reduced in scope, now seemingly becoming the object of negotiation and political theater. Having reached the halls of Congress it's a bit ironic to see such a major plank of the Tea Party platform slipping away so soon. It reminds one of that old Paul Simon refrain: "Slip sliding away, slip sliding away. You know the nearer your destination, the more your slip sliding away." According to Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Many people knowledgeable about the federal budget said House Republicans could not keep their campaign promise to cut $100 billion from domestic spending in a single year. Now it appears that Republicans agree." This new found reluctance to enact budget cuts is a function of several factors. First, the federal fiscal year is already one third over so the amount of time left to affect meaningful cuts is greatly reduced. Second, lacking control of the Senate effectively stymies any attempt at drastic budget reductions over the next two years. Moreover, there is a reluctance on the part of Senators on both sides of the aisle to enact deep budget cuts during a time of severe recession as such measures may derail the weak but building recovery. Again to Calmes: "a House vote would put potentially vulnerable Republican lawmakers on record supporting deep reductions of up to 30 percent in education, research, law enforcement, transportation and more." This degree of debt reduction would take millions of dollars out of the economy in the short run in spite of the longer term concerns about debt levels. While we can't ignore the deficit problem indefinitely, any attempt to reduce the simulative effects of government spending in a weak economy may be just to risky for those currently occupying the halls of power. Thus the new line coming out of Republican leaders on Capitol Hill is that the $100 Billion number was a hypothetical figure to begin with. So much for a radical new day in Washington.
Then there is the fact that many of the proposals favored by the Republicans may do little if anything to rectify the budget deficit issue. According to Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo: "Republicans' deficit reduction platform, which may have helped catapult them into the majority, is about to run headlong into a hard reality: Many of their key policy goals will increase the deficit dramatically. To get around this fact, they've included measures in their new rules package to exempt some of their biggest legislative priorities from deficit consideration. Among the exceptions, which the House is likely to consider in the 112th Congress, are the health care repeal bill, the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, an AMT patch, extending the estate tax, and more.... The health care law, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will reduce the deficit by $143 billion through the end of the decade, and more so in the decade after that. Thus, repealing the law will blow a similarly sized hole in the deficit." Likewise a recent editorial appearing in the Washington Post comes to a similar conclusion. Quoting from "New pay-go rules reveal GOP's misplaced priorities"; "ARE HOUSE Republicans serious about dealing with the deficit? You could listen to their rhetoric - or you could read the rules they are poised to adopt at the start of the new Congress. The former promises a new fiscal sobriety. The latter suggests that the new GOP majority is determined to continue the spree of unaffordable tax-cutting. The ominous signs come in the wording of the new majority's version of its pay-as-you-go rules, which normally require that new programs or tax initiatives be covered with cuts to other programs or new revenue. In the GOP concept, pay-as-you-go applies only to spending programs. When it comes to tax cuts, it's all go, no pay. Taxes can be cut, and the national debt increased, without any offsetting savings." Now granted it was not the newly elected Tea Party backed lawmakers who engineered this shift in strategy, it's their new found partners within the Republican establishment. Thus it would appear that we are on the verge of a three way fight in the halls on Capitol Hill between the Democrats and the G.O.P., and between the G.O.P. and the Tea Party. That begs the question, what does this mean for the future of the Tea Party agenda and the movement's ability to produce the single most important product a party creates, policy.
As the first day of the 112th Congress came to a close, two veteran political observers in Washington, both appearing on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, took stock of the new Congress, its Tea Party contingent and what could be expected going forward. Norm Orenstien of the conservative American Enterprise Institute said that the Republican Party had the "freedom" to pass whatever they wanted to in the House so as to attempt to undo the legislative achievements of the past two years. However, they also know that anything too radically to the right won't survive the Senate or the President's veto pen. That said, all that the newly radicalized lawmakers could accomplish was to "bollix up the health care debate and the legislative process", to paraphrase Orenstien. Presidential historian, Michael Beschloss, cautioned that it was unwise to read too much into the stunning Republican victory of 2010. Beschloss pointed out that while the Tea Party crowd ran for office on a radically rightwing agenda, the historical record shows that undoing the type of legislation just enacted doesn't happen too often. Pointing to the G.O.P.'s similar victory in 1952, Beschloss said that while this victory was freighted with ideas such as dismantling Social Security and rolling back the Soviet Union militarily in Eastern Europe, none of that ever came to pass. In fact the Democrats regained Capitol Hill and basically held onto it until the election of 1994. Likewise Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal in her "after action report" on the 2010 election pointed to the fact that last November's results don't politically guarantee anything: "History doesn't inspire optimism. Over the past 100 years, every time a president two years into his first term lost Congress, he went on to re-election: Truman in '48, Eisenhower in '56, Clinton in '96. Newt Gingrich even wrote a book, "Lessons Learned the Hard Way," about the GOP mistakes in the wake of 1994. It boiled down to Republicans over-promising and under-delivering-becoming the foil off of which President Clinton was able to skillfully pivot away from his own liabilities." Thus we are about to witness some of the most interesting politics, political theater and political oratory to come onto the American scene since the end of the Second World War. At the very least is should be interesting as well as colorful.
The recent firing of Juan Williams by NPR for comments made on the Fox News and his affiliation with that network has created an interesting sidebar to this now all too familiar affair. The renewed scrutiny of NPR for its alleged liberal bias has resulted in an interesting byproduct. That byproduct is an increased level of attention now being paid to Fox, its parent the News Corp., and its wealthy conservative CEO, Rupert Murdoch.
The practice of allowing candidates to solicit campaign contributions while appearing on Fox News is a significant departure from what is generally considered television news broadcasting. Mr. Murdoch has abided this practice along with his own well-publicized million dollar contributions to Republican campaign organizations and other efforts to promote positions on the far right. That raises a fundamental question: Is Fox a legitimate news organization or has it morphed into something between a news organ and a political action operation even to the point of being considered a shill? A shill is defined as: "a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty." A political action committee is defined as:"a type of political committee organized to spend money for the election or defeat of a candidate." Mr. Murdoch has a record of promoting conservative ideas no matter what the cost. He has continued to prop up the conservative "The New York Post" in spite of its staggering losses to the tune of between $15 million to $30 million. According to Business Week magazine: "The Post has lost so much money for so long that it would have folded years ago if News Corp. applied the same profit-making rigor to the tabloid as it does to its other businesses." What then is the purpose of the continued support of a newspaper the commentary of which often resembles old-fashioned agitprop? There can only be one logical explanation and it's because the Post represents Mr. Murdoch's primary organ for presenting the conservative line in what is one of the bluest regions in the country and he is willing to spend whatever it takes to do so.
The argument that Fox News has become somewhat of a political operation is more than apparent when one examines the following evidence. Former Ohio Republican Congressman and now candidate for Governor, John Kasich, appearing during prime time on "Hannity" was given time to solicit campaign contributions while on the air saying:" If you have extra nickels or dimes, please send it our way." According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times this is not the first time Kasich has used an appearance on Fox to raise money for his campaign. Quoting Stelter: "The channel was the subject of an election complaint in Ohio because Mr. Kasich was able to ask for money and display his Web site address during an interview in August on "The O'Reilly Factor," Fox's biggest prime time talk show. Mr. Kasich used to host a weekend show on Fox, and Mr. Murdoch has called him a friend." Moreover Stelter points out that Fox employees have engaged in more direct political action both on and off the air: "Sometimes the most outspoken of the Fox hosts go out and raise money directly. Mr. Hannity has headlined several fund-raisers for Republicans this year. And just last week, Mr. Beck donated $10,000 to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce to defend it against criticism from President Obama - and challenged his radio listeners to donate as well." Beyond these various forms of political action is the fact that several likely candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination are presently on the Fox payroll or regularly appear on the network, including Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.
When you look across the political spectrum to Fox's chief rivals: MSNBC, CNN and NPR you see several object lessons in how competing news organizations have different values. Political action at MSNBC, for example, is much more constrained, to the point that there is very little deviation from what could considered legitimate news reporting and commentary. Again quoting Stelter: "All this political activity has spurred at least a little bit of hand-wringing at the channels. NBC News, which operates MSNBC, recently reiterated its rule that employees may not engage in political activity, but said it had carved out an exception for some MSNBC hosts." To date whatever exceptions exist at MSNBC, they are not even remotely close to the on the air solicitation of funds, public activities related to fund raising by network commentators or the employment of prospective presidential candidates on the network's payroll which is presently the case at Fox. At NPR political activity of any variety is virtually nonexistent. In the final analysis what we have witnessed at Fox News is the evolution of a news organization into something beyond what is commonly considered political reporting and commentary into something short of a political action committee, a sort of quasi-political news organ if you will. That said shouldn't the Fox News Network scrub the subtitle of "Fair and Balanced" from its headline banner seeing as it can no longer legitimately make that claim in light of the fundamental transformation that has taken place within the Fox organization?
MINNEAPOLIS-Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is advising Republican candidates on November's ballots to frame the choice for voters between Democrats as "the party of food stamps" while selling the GOP as "the party of paychecks."
...
"Most Americans would like to get a paycheck," Gingrich said. "Most Americans would not like to be forced to have food stamps handed out by liberal Democrats."
But, as 'twas said back in Truman's day, "To live like a Republican, you need to vote like a Democrat":
The red line is actual job growth under Bush. The blue line is what job growth would have been, at the rate of job growth under Clinton. So, tens of millions more jobs under a Democratic president. But it's not just the number of jobs. It's also the little matter of income, as I pointed out last year in the following chart from "New Census Data--Same Old Bad Bush Economy--Only Moreso":
Those at the top got hurt most in dollar terms. So much for voting their self-interest. Tax cuts really aren't that great when your income is actually declining, as another chart from that same diary showed:
Maddow & Olbermann were both on fire last Wednesday night, and I just wanted to underscore and expand upon something else Maddow dealt with: the fact that Newt Gingrich is basically just a cheesy scam artist at this point in his life. Or maybe he always was, and now he's simply stipped everything down to the basics. Here's an excerpt of her segment on him:
Just because he doesn't have a real job, does not mean that Newt Gingrich isn't making a lot of money in politics. The closest thing he has to a job is heading up the organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future. What is American Solutions for Winning the Future? What does it do? Mostly, it promotes Newt Gingrich. An AP analysis determined that American Solutions has spent nearly all of its money raised over the last two years on administrative expenses and personal expenses, including chauffeur services. Newt's group raises money to spend money and it spends money on raising more money. It's a Newt Gingrich promotional vehicle. Also, it's sort of a chain letter scam.
You may remember we first got worried about Newt's organization last fall, when they reportedly tried to give a fake scam business award to a strip club in Texas. The owner of the strip club got a very nice letter from Mr. Gingrich. The letter said she had been selected to receive an entrepreneur of the year award at a special dinner with Newt Gingrich himself in Washington. All she had to do was send a check immediately for $5,000. which she did immediately. Then Mr. Gingrich's group rescinded the invitation and award saying they did not realize they sent it to a gentleman's club. we got to create the best graphic we've ever created, "Live Newt Girls"....
Sam Stein, a reporter of the Huffington Post has unveiled the newest iteration of Newt Gingrich's moneymaking sham operation. Now, Newt Gingrich has moved on to trying to hustle doctors under the ruse of opposing obama care. It turns out that reporter Ssam Stein's mom is a doctor. She's a doctor who was selected to receive a totally awesome super exclusive award from Newt Gingrich. Mr. Stein inquiring mind that he is, called up the number listed on the letter for more information, and wouldn't you know it, his mother's awesome doctor award was going to cost her $5,000.
This fake $5,000 doctor award is being marketed in the same way as last year's fake business but not strip club award. That's the invite sent to the strip club owner on the left. On the right, the invite that went out to Sam Stein's doctor mom. They both have handwritten notes to the award recipients in exactly the same handwriting. Exactly the same handwriting. It looks like handwriting, it's a font. It's a cheesy, made-to-look-like-handwriting font. And it's the same font from scam to scam from year to year.
The reason I quote it at some length is that I want to give the flavor of it--and that cheesy handwritten font, which was really pretty impressive back in 1985 or so (back when Gingrich probably first used it), is just the sort of telling detail that gives the full flavor of Newt's Glen Garry Glenross charm.
What's most pertinent from a functional perspective is that Gingrich's operation gives the appearance of being a sort of incidental spin-off of something much more serious--Gingrich's ever ongoing crusade to save Western Civilization (from people not named "Newt Gingrich" evidently.)
But, in reality, the incidental spin-off is all there actually is to it. You are being given a prize paid for by you by an organization that gives prizes to people who pay for them themselves. This is the scam, and it is very much like a chain letter: There's no there there, only the constantly perpetuated belief that there's something there.
This is also a sort of kissing cousin to a ponzi scheme.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a diary, "Three-Card monte politics", in which I commented on a Think Progress resport, "Tea Party Leader Dick Armey: Social Security Is A Corrupt 'Ponzi Scheme'". Now, I'm a great believer in over-determination and multiple causality, so I would never suggest that this is the whole story to what's going on here. But it does seem quite evident that ponzi-like manipulations come quite easily to Republican politicians in our day and age, and that accusing others of their own sorts of actions comes just as easily as well.
Gingrich Calls For Federal Ban On Shariah Law In US
Evan McMorris-Santoro | September 18, 2010, 12:05PM
The second morning of speeches at the Values Voter Summit here in DC was dominated by a man who is swiftly becoming the nation's spokesperson for Islamophobia -- former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Fresh off the release of his Islam-focused film "America At Risk," Gingrich told the crowd at VVS that it's time to take federal action to prevent Shariah Law from infiltrating courtrooms in the US.
"We should have a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States," Gingrich said to a standing ovation from the audience. The law will let judges know, Gingrich said, that "no judge will remain in office that tried to use sharia law."
Gingrich made a not-so-subtle reference to the right wing meme about freshly-minted Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan which claims that Kagan is "sympathetic" to Shariah and -- as some suggested during her confirmation hearings -- might allow it to be recognized as law in the United States.
But beyond the Kagan hit, Gingrich's anti-Shariah talk inserted him directly into the most extreme end of the Islamophobic push-back against mosque projects all over the country.
Opponents of Islamic building projects in New York City, Tennessee and Temecula, California and Florence, Kentucky have often raised fears that the goal of Muslims seeking to build new houses of worship is to slowly make America comfortable with Shariah before using political power to allow it to become the law of the land.
Of course, there is zero evidence of sharia law having any influence on American law. And zero chance that it could have any such influence, not least because of the First Amendment, and the separation of church and state. But that's not the point. As the above report makes clear, the purpose of this absurd meme is to "justify" the bigoted attacks on American Muslims exercising there First Amendment rights. As a matter of history, religious minorities have always been the staunchest opponents of imposing religious doctrines on others, for a very simple reason: They're the minority, stupid!
OTOH, global warming--which could wipe out entire low-lying countries and whose reality is supported by the entire peer-reviewed scientific community--is not a problem according to all the GOP Senate candidates, according to Think Progress:
GOP Senate Candidates Oppose Climate Science And Policy
by Brad Johnson, ThinkProgress Wonk Room Climate Editor
A comprehensive Wonk Room survey of the Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate finds that nearly all dispute the scientific consensus that the United States must act to fight global warming pollution. In May, 2010, the National Academies of Science reported to Congress that "the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change" because global warming is "caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for - and in many cases is already affecting - a broad range of human and natural systems."
This finding is shared by scientific bodies around the world. However, in the alternate reality of the fossil-fueled right wing, climate science is confused or a conspiracy, and policies to limit pollution would destroy the economy.
Remarkably, of the dozens of Republicans vying for the 37 Senate seats in the 2010 election, no one supports climate action, after climate advocate Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) lost his primary to Christine O'Donnell. Even former climate advocates Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) now toe the science-doubting party line.
Many of the Senate candidates are signatories of the Koch Industries' Americans For Prosperity No Climate Tax pledge and the FreedomWorks Contract From America. The second plank of the Contract From America is to "Reject Cap & Trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation's global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures."
The pervasive disconnect from reality wxhibited by this juxtaposition indicates that today's GOP is operating more like a cult than a traditional political party.
"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.
There's been a lot of chatter this morning about Newtie's comments touting Dinesh D'Souza's absurd new book, The Roots of Obama's Rage setting forth the idea that Obama inherited some sort of African Colonial philosophy from the father he never knew. (It's in the blood dontcha know.) I know this has absolutely nothing to do with race on Newtie's part because racism in America is dead and Republicans would never try to exploit it anyway, certainly not by promoting the idea that that Obama is a primitive angry black man. He's just being his usual "intellectual" self, giving us all (poison) food for thought, sort of like when he blamed liberals for Susan Smith drowning her children.
And yes, that does make me want to do yet another post on Newtie's neo-KKK proclivities, but it's not my idea of comic relief. That comes a little farther down where digby quotes from the Booklist review of D'Souza's earlier book. She writes:
D'Souza once again turns his eye for social criticism to liberals, this time asserting their responsibility for the rise of anti-Americanism abroad and perhaps even the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The cultural Left in the U.S., by pressing for sexual freedom for women and gays through birth control, no-fault divorce, and support for gay marriage, has not only undermined American culture but also provoked the ire of religious conservatives in other nations, most prominently Islamic fundamentalists. Contrary to President Bush's assertions that terrorists and their supporters hate American freedom, D'Souza asserts that what they really hate is our licentious culture. He notes that American conservatives have more in common with Islamic Fundamentalists than with American liberals.
Whaaaa? "American conservatives have more in common with Islamic Fundamentalists than with American liberals." Hey, isn't that pretty much the very same thesis that Markos has which is causing conservatives all across the land to label him a hater and all the gentlefolk in Versailles to roll their eyes like like a pair of dice in the Paradise Inn at 4 AM in the morning?
As Sarah Palin would say, "You betcha!"
And the Publishers Weekly review is even more to the point:
Conservative pundit D'Souza (Illiberal Education) roots the blame for the 9/11 attacks in the left wing's "aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family" in this mostly lucid but unconvincing argument. Pointing to Hillary Clinton, [inarticulate Bush supporter] Britney Spears and [closet Britney fan?] Noam Chomsky, he decries those who have teamed up with Hollywood and the U.N. to foist an irreligious, sexually licentious, antifamily liberal culture-epitomized by Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues and gay marriage initiatives-on a Muslim world that rightly reviles it. By deliberately attacking Islamic values, the left tacitly allies itself with al- Qaeda in its effort to defeat Bush's war on terror and thus discredit conservatism at home [???], he asserts. But D'Souza's claim that Islamic extremists are inflamed solely by America's music videos and feminists-not its U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or American support for Muslim dictators-is too single-minded. For example, he paints Abu Ghraib poster-girl Lynndie England as the personification of liberal sexual depravity, without acknowledging that the U.S. Army sent her to Iraq, not the left. Charging that liberals aid terrorists while sympathizing with the terrorists' culturally conservative worldview, D'Souza's critique of American cultural excess trips over its own inconsistencies.
Jeeze "mostly lucid"??? If that's "mostly lucid", I don't think we really need any gibberish to fulfill our minimum daily requirement for like the next ten years.
Back in the old days, it was so simple: Liberals were more like socialists than conservatives were. And socialists were sort of like Communists without the tanks, nukes or Gulags. Ergo, liberals were all secret Commies at heart. It's nice, neat and simple. No fuss, no muss. Nowadays, not so much. But this is ridiculous!
No wonder they decided to go with this whole "secret Muslim" thing. It's much less complicated and free from all the booby traps that "Booby" D'Souza keeps falling into every time he turns around.
By threatening to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday, Terry Jones is holding the world hostage to his insane hatred, threatening to unleash intold violence. He is, in effect, a terrorist. He seeks to intimidate and coerce through the threat of violence and the generation of hatred and fear. And, as Rachel Maddow explains below, he is only able to do this because of a climate of hatred and fear that's been deliberately created over the years by a number of extremist political figures, most notably, Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich is whipping up hatred and fear towards Muslims and Islam today. But it's merely a matter of political convenience. He will target anyone he finds convenient. In mid-1990s, starting just before he became Speaker, Gingrich bkamed liberals, welfare recipients and the welfare state for all manner of horrors, real and imagined. For someone who spoke endlessly about "personal responsibility", he had an amazing ability to shift the blame for a series of horrific murders off of those who actually committed them, and onto vaguely defined groups of people defined by Gingrich as the enemies of "normal Americans. Consider some of the most striking examples (these aren't available online, to my knowledge, but can be found in databases such as Proquest or Lexis/Nexus):
Gingrich: Make Ground Zero A National Battlefield To Stop The Supposed Mosque
Rachel Slajda | September 2, 2010, 6:26PM
The majority of New Yorkers want the developers of Park51, known to its opponents as the "Ground Zero mosque," to voluntarily move the community center further from Ground Zero -- but the majority also acknowledges the developers' right to build there if they want.
Newt Gingrich doesn't feel that way. In a radio interview today, he said he wants the national government to step in and stop the developers from building the Islamic community center by whatever means necessary.
"I think the Congress has the ability to declare the area a national battlefield memorial because I think we should think of the World Trade Center as a battlefield site; this is a war," he said, apparently thinking that if Ground Zero was a national park, Park51 would be restricted from building near it.
And if that fails, he said, the state government should step in and use its considerable power to stymie the development.
"The Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo, could intervene because frankly he has the ability to slow it down for decades if he wants to."
Ah, yes! Newtie was just like Haley Barbour, part of the GOP's "New South" that had nothing to do with segregation, no siree!
There is, of course, a precedent for this not-so-colorblind interpretation of "states' rights." It's called the "Fugitive Slave Act." It basically said that non-slave states had no rights at all to stop the invasion of slave state terrorists.
Ain't Newt grand? Jefferson Davis would be so proud!
(Glenn Beck is FAR from the only show in town when it comes to mobilizing rightwing shock troops. Others have been at it a whole lot longer than he. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The Christian Right has often sought to stay the hand of God, angry with our failings as a nation, by 'standing in the gap' at large prayer rallies and pleading for mercy. They have made a special point of doing so in the run up to national elections since 1980, praying for godly government and righteous candidates, and this year is no exception. The beneficiaries are almost always Republicans and this year is probably no exception in that regard as well. But there is also an ominous element that mostly transcends parties and is on vivid display as we enter the fall campaign season.
On Labor Day weekend, Lou Engle, head of the fiery neo-Pentecostal group, The Call, is leading a worship service in a sports arena in Sacramento, California and a "solemn assembly" at the state Capitol the next day.
Since I took a course on logic in college, let me help Newt and Sarah and the rest of the right-wingers on this logic problem:
Just because some religious fundamentalists are terrorists, it doesn't mean they all are. The idea is a logical fallacy.
Can we get clear on this? Just because there are Christian fundamentalists who shoot abortion providers, it doesn't mean all Christians or even all Christian fundamentalists shoot abortion doctors. Just because a Christian fundamentalist blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City doesn't mean all Christian fundamentalists want to blow up federal buildings. Just because there are Christians who picket the funerals of dead soldiers with horribly offensive signs doesn't mean all Christians are the kind of depraved people who would do the same. And just because some Islamic fundamentalists are terrorists doesn't mean all followers of the Islamic faith are terrorists as well.
To equate the two in my first three examples above is an affront to the millions of Americans who are good people and faithful Christians, and I am deeply offended on their behalf at such an idea. To equate the two in my last example as Gingrich, Palin, and all the rest are doing is not only a violation of our most basic rules of logic, it is dangerous to our national security, as Bob Creamer so cogently argues here. Even George W. Bush, with all of his macho "bring it on" posturing recognizes that our country should appeal to moderate Muslims.
Beyond logic and common sense about what is good for national security, the conservatives are getting in bed with bigots in no less a disgraceful way than conservatives did with Southern segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s. Russell Kirk once wrote of his hero of conservatism Edmund Burke that Burke "was not ashamed to acknowledge the allegiance of humble men whose sureties are prejudice and prescription". And conservatives like Barry Goldwater and William Buckley and Ronald Reagan happily joined the Southern "state's rights" crowd in opposing civil rights legislation. Over time, they pretended such blatant pandering to the worst kind of racism never happened, or tried to whitewash it. James J. Kilpatrick, who died this week, said later that he only opposed integration because he was afraid of the violence that might erupt, but in fact he penned columns with titles like "The Hell He is Equal", and passionately supported the entire culture of Southern white mass resistance- state's rights, nullification, interposition: all of those doctrines of John C. Calhoun that led us directly into the Civil War a century before.
A generation from now, as the shock of being impacted by the same terrorism that the rest of the world has been subjected to for decades fades, and as more Muslims emigrate to the U.S. and become a part of our culture, this kind of inflammatory bigotry will be whitewashed the same way by conservatives. For now, however, they are wallowing in it, rolling around with the pigs of bigotry.
In the meantime, while these conservatives pander to the worst kind of prejudice, the rest of us will try to grapple with the tough economy and the other big problems this country actually faces.
There have been plenty of tremendous and troubling leaps made when trying to express outrage over the Islamic Center proposed near Ground Zero (this weekend with Sarah Palin, who called it the "9/11 mosque" on Twitter, for example), but Newt Gingrich may win the award for most offensive analogy.
Building the mosque near Ground Zero, says the former Speaker, is like putting a Nazi sign near the Holocaust Museum.
Gingrich has made this comparison for a couple days now, including this morning on Fox & Friends, when he said:
The folks who want to build this mosque, who are really radical Islamists, who want to triumphfully (sic) prove they can build a mosque next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists. Those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community. They're trying to make a case about supremacy... This happens all the time in America. Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor.
Of course the folks behind the Cordoba House Cultural Center aren't radical Islamists. They're exactly the opposite. As Wikipedia notes about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the spiritual leader and driving force:
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, (born in 1948, in Kuwait) is an Arab-American Muslim imam, author, and activist whose stated goal is to improve relations between the Muslim World and the West.He has been Imam of Masjid al-Farah, a New York City mosque, since 1983.
He has written three books on Islam and its place in contemporary Western society, including What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America, and founded two non-profit organizations whose stated missions are to enhance the discourse on Islam in society. He has condemned the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic and called on the U.S. government to reduce the threat of terrorism by altering its Middle Eastern foreign policy. Author Karen Armstrong, among others, has praised him for his attempts to build bridges between the West and the Muslim world.
His congregation is Sufi, the mystical branch of Islam, about as far away from fundamentalists as its possible to be.
But in Gingrich's bigoted mind, all Moslems are radical Islamists. That is the very essence of his bigotry: "They" are all the same: evil. For no reason. Just because they are. And he's not just some guy. He's the former Speaker of the House, and a serious potential candidate for President in 2012. In the GOP world, he's as heavyweight as it gets.
Newt is a bigot and he is the face of the GOP.
And not just the clown face of Sarah Palin, but the "serious intellectual" face, as has been for nearly 20 years now.
What's more, at the same time that Newt's spouting his bigoted hatred, other conservatives are busy trying to whitewash themselves and their movment, in a continuing effort to deny their racist past, as well their present. For example, the pseudo-intellectual James Taranto at the WSJ:
When it comes to protecting America, Newt Gingrich is a pitiful wimp! Oh, sure he's posturing to protect us against Sharia law:
"And one of the things I'm going to suggest today is a federal law which says that no court in the United States under any circumstances is allowed to consider Sharia as a replacement for American law. Period."
But how many starships does the Muslim world command, anyway? What about the real threats to America and American law? What about the Kingons, Cardassians, and Romulans?
You think I'm joking? Does Cardassian law sound like a joke?:
Cardassian society had the most rigid and, to the Federation, incomprehensible of all legal systems. Every suspect was guilty before even appearing in court, their sentence already spelled out - almost always either death or imprisonment in a harsh labor camp. The criminal was given a Conservator, equivalent to a public defender, except that the Conservator was not supposed to win but to prepare the criminal for a moving confession of guilt on the floor of the court. The accused was also permitted an advocate, the Nestor, to advise them during the trial. The Chief Archon, or judge, of the court played to a televised audience, their duty not to judge the prisoner's innocence or guilt, but rather to give an emphatic display of the futility of crime on Cardassia and reinforce the public's trust in the judicial system. (DS9: "Tribunal", "The Die is Cast")
By the 24th century, the government of Romulus was dependent upon the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret police, to maintain order and stability among both civilians and the military. The Tal Shiar was known for its brutal tactics, which included routine kidnapping, torture, and assassination. Many Romulans fear even expressing dissenting opinions as not to spark the interest of the Tal Shiar.
And the Klingons? They simply fight to the death!
So what will Gingrich do to defend America from these brutal legal systems? Nothing at all! Worse still, he even denies the very existence of any threat!
This breathtaking disconnect from reality is typical of what we've come to expect from Republicans. Just look at the comparative Google hits results:
Sharia Law: About 878,000 results
Klingon: About 3,120,000 results
Romulan: About 702,000 results
Cardassian: About 294,000 results
I rest my case.
BREAKING! Gingrich has now come out in favor of replacing the US Constitution with the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition! Film at 11!
In a recent Washington Post article titled "A Good Time to be a Conservative"; Mr. Kristol made a bold assumption, claiming the "center of gravity" within the Republican Party would shift farther to the right, propelled in that direction by a collection of conservative personalities from beyond the Beltway. Indicating a lack of faith in the G.O.P.'s elected leadership, Kristol says: "Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party's big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill. The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots." Kristol's logic is derived from two polls. First, the Gallup Poll of October 26, 2009 that puts the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as conservatives at 40 percent, and an earlier Rasmussen Poll indicating that the only 2012 Republican presidential prospects polling double digits are Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. When one looks inside the numbers, it would appear that there are more than a few flaws in Mr. Kristol's math and intuitive reasoning.
The Gallup results show that the net increase in the percentage of people identifying as conservatives had taken place within that subset of the electorate classified as independents. Quoting Gallup: "Changes among political independents appear to be the main reason the percentage of conservatives has increased nationally over the past year: the 35% of independents describing their views as conservative in 2009 is up from 29% in 2008. By contrast, among Republicans and Democrats, the percentage who are "conservative" has increased by one point each." In spite of the shift in independents identifying as conservatives, the actual percentage of voters who identify with the G.O.P., which is the defacto conservative party, has fallen to historical lows. The latest political identification polling results available on Pollster.com reveals that just 25 percent of those polled identify themselves as Republicans. That percentage improves when registered and likely voters are polled, but the G.O.P. still trails the Democrats here as well. To date, had independents firmly embraced the principles of the conservative movement generally or the G.O.P. in particular, the percentage of voters identifying as Republicans would show a marked increase and so far that is not the case. I would argue that the shift to the right among independent voters is far from solid and is conditional, being subject to a set of factors that will likely change by the time of the 2012 election. In fact an even newer Gallup Poll reveals just how transient independent political attitudes actually are. That poll: "Race for 2010 Remains Close; Democrats Recover Slight Lead", which came out on December 14 states: "The current generic-ballot results are similar to those Gallup found in July and October of this year, and indicate that the Republican gain observed just after the Nov. 3 elections was not sustained. Shifts in candidate preference for Congress typically occur primarily among independents, whose "unanchored" status makes them much more vulnerable to short-term events in the political environment than are those who claim allegiance to either major party." I would go beyond the latest Gallup findings to suggest that the number of independents identifying as conservatives will decrease proportionately to the degree to which the G.O.P. moves to the right, especially if the Republican Party finds its public image welded to the personalities of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party crowd.
In his reliance on the results of the above cited Rasmussen Poll, Mr. Kristol is in effect betting the house on a collection of would be candidates that, in spite of polling in the double digits, leave much to be desired when it actually comes to getting elected. Kristol is one of Sarah Palin's most passionate cheerleaders, but in suggesting that the future of the conservative movement might lie in the fortunes of Ms. Palin, he seems to be gambling on a horse not worth the wager. Mid-December poll results from both Pollster.com and Polling Report.com show Palin registering an unfavorable rating of 48 percent. An ABC poll of November 15th showed that 53 percent of respondents would not vote for Palin with 60 percent saying she was not qualified to be president. More damaging still is a CBS poll of November 15, which revealed that 62 percent of those Republicans polled felt that Palin lacked the ability to be an effective president. At the time of Palin's resignation from elected office, Republican strategist Mike Murphy opined: "If the Sarah Palin we perceive today wins the nomination in 2012, the G.O.P. will lose. Most Americans don't think Palin is ready to be President. The base loving you is not enough to get you elected." Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, reflecting on Palin's resignation said: "She really alienated women and the college educated on both coasts and that is not how you rebuild the Republican Party." The reality is that the Republican Party cannot hope to win without the support of independent voters, whom Palin clearly alienates and whose ranks are, according to Pew Research, now at a seventy-year high. Recently, two Republican heavyweights: Haley Barbour, former Chairman of the RNC, and Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) both declined to endorse a 2012 Palin presidential bid when they appeared on MSNBC and Fox News.
In spite of the fact that Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have double-digit support among Republicans, none of them breaks a 40 percent favorability rating among voters generally, except Huckabee. However, Huckabee's 40 percent approval rating was registered before Maurice Clemmons, an inmate pardoned by Huckabee, gunned down four police officers in late November. That said, we might see a decline in Huckabee's overall standing in the polls. Poll numbers aside, in the 2008 Republican primaries, Huckabee was only able to win in the south and thus his viability as a national candidate is questionable. Furthermore, Huckabee's past equivocation on the topic of evolution works to his detriment when it comes to appealing to that large segment of the population that believes in science as well as religion. Mitt Romney, as a result of his Mormon faith, had problems with the evangelical base of the G.O.P., which plays a crucial role in the early primary states of Iowa and South Carolina. Moreover, Romney may well run into formidable headwinds from the far right as a result of his relatively moderate approach to politics and policy positions. Newt Gingrich, who's favorable ratings are the lowest, at 14 percent, has a closet full of skeletons of his own which led in 1998 to his stepping down as the Speaker of the House and his departure from Congress altogether. Needless to say these issues will surely be resurrected and they will be in the forefront of the debate in the event that Gingrich becomes a serious presidential contender.
It is in his rather absurd suggestion that the G.O.P.'s center of gravity might travel further to the right as a function of the influence of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the Tea Party Movement, that Kristol, having slipped his moorings to reality, has embarked on what can only be considered a voyage of political fantasy. Neither Limbaugh nor Beck are particularly compelling personalities beyond the realm of their audience. Both traffic in the sensational, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction with their primary purpose being incendiary commentary rather than legitimate hard news analysis. The media watchdog, Media Matters for America has compiled fifty-three pages of citations detailing Limbaugh's distortion of facts or their deliberate misrepresentation for political purposes. For Glenn Beck there are forty-two pages. The latest NBC/WSJ poll (June 2009), which I was able to find on Limbaugh's popularity, showed that 50 percent of those responding viewed him in a negative light. A similar poll in September showed Glenn Beck registering a positive rating of just 25 percent. In spite of the fact that both Limbaugh and Beck have a committed following, accurately measuring the true size and composition of their respective audiences and the extent to which they actually reflect more than a thin slice of this country's political spectrum is almost impossible. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post attempted to plumb the length and breadth of Limbaugh's audience and therefore his influence, in a March 2009 article: "Limbaugh's Audience Size? It's Largely Up in the Air." Relying on interviews with media industry sources, Farhi claims that Limbaugh's audience fluctuates between 14 to 30 million, depending on the issues of the day. Quoting Michael Harrison of "Talkers Magazine", Farhi puts Limbaugh's average audience at 14.25 million listeners per week, which is just under 5 percent of the population. Glenn Beck's audience is far smaller and his largest audience to date was roughly 3.4 million viewers on September 15, 2009, which amounts to just 1.1 percent of the population.
When it comes to the Tea Party Movement, it is equally difficult in coming to an agreement as to just how many people are involved here and to what extent they really reflect more than a microcosm of American political life. According to the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, a pro-Tea Party group, just 578,000 people participated in the 2009 April Tax Day Protests. Their website does not display figures for the July 4th protests nor does FreedomWorks.com or any other pro-Tea Party website that I came across. The largest number I remember seeing is in the neighborhood of 215,000 protestors. Regarding the September 12th Washington D.C. protest rally, Talking Points Memo described the turnout as follows: "FreedomWorks, the main organizers of the Tea Party event in Washington this past weekend, has dramatically lowered its estimate for the size of the crowd at the event from 1.5 million, a number the group now concedes was a mistake, to between 600,000 and 800,000 people -- though this is still substantially more than the tens of thousands that most mainstream media outlets have estimated, and which FreedomWorks wholeheartedly rejects." Thus if we add up the total attendence at all three Tea Parties, using the higher estimates, we come up with a gross attendence of roughly 1.6 million or just one half of one percent of the population.
What the math reveals is that the actual number of people who either participate in Tea Parties or who listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, presumably many do both, is a rather small percentage of the overall population, even considering that portion that would identify as conservative. That said, its a bit of a strectch to assume that such a statistically insignificant number of people is either enough to move the Republican Party further to the right or that it is likely to do so.
There is one final flaw in Kristol's analysis and that is his ignoring the rising tide of moderates within the party that are opposing any suggestion that the G.O.P. needs to be purified of any moderate tendencies via litmus tests that even Ronald Reagan would fail, that political orthodoxy should be the face of the G.O.P. or that Republicans can only win elections when they embrace ultra conservative ideas. The now formidable array of moderates seeking to stem any drift to the far right encompasses a spectrum of Republican notables from sitting Senators to strategists and political commentators including: Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Bob Inglis, Mickey Edwards, Christie Todd Whitman, Newt Gingrich, Tom Ridge, Colin Powell, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Kathleen Parker and a host of Republican strategists. Gingrich, appearing on Meet the Press (5/24/09) stated that the G.O.P. has to be "broad enough to incorporate divergent views and can't be purged to the smallest conservative base." Tom Ridge stated that the G.O.P. "needs to be less shrill and less condeming of those who don't hew to a far right view." Following the departure of Arlen Specter from the Republican Party, Olympia Snowe, in a New York Times editorial opined: "There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and contiuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities." At an April debate over the future of the G.O.P. Lindsey Graham made the following observation: "We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough. If we pursue a party that has no place for someone who agrees with me 70 percent of the time, that is based on an ideological purity test rather than a coalition test, then we are going to keep losing." I could go on, but anyone who has been paying any attention to the civil war within the Republican Party knows that there are more than enough voices and intelligent arguments being made to more than call into question the logic and wisdom of people like Bill Kristol and their fanciful notions that the redemption of the G.O.P. lies in the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or the rank and file Tea Party participant. All one has to do is examine the results of the 2009 off-year elections and what is evident is that where Republicans won elections, in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, they did so by running moderate campaigns that played to the centrist voter. In contrast, the great and financially costly effort by the far right in trying to influence the congressional election in New York's 23rd Electoral District resulted in a conservative failure with a Democrat capturing a seat held by the G.O.P. since as far back as the Civil War.
Over the course of his career, William Kristol is a man who has backed more political losers and also-rans than winners and it would be nothing less than disastrous for the Republican Party to heed his advice or put any stock in his predictions. Kristol worked for former Secretary of Education William Bennet, the voice of personal responsibility during the Reagan Administration, who subsequently lost much of his credibility when he admitted to losing over a million dollars in Las Vegas slot machines. He was Vice President Qualye's Chief of Staff. Kristol managed the failed Senatorial campaign of Alan Keyes in 1988 and Keyes would go on to fail twice more in seeking a seat in the Senate and then two more times when running for president. Kristol championed the pardon of Scooter Libby and the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, a decision that McCain's staffers would later admit to be his single biggest mistake. But it is in an examination of Kristol's unabashed cheerleading for the War in Iraq that his predictive abilities are revealed to be so totally lacking. It was Kristol who predicted that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power would unleash a chain reaction of democratic reform across the Middle East that to date has failed to materialize.
Bill Kristol represents that desperate sort of conservative that can't abide the dynamics of political change wrought by the election of Barack Obama. Likewise, the relatively rapid decline in the influence of Neoconservatives since the 2004 election can't bring him much joy either. To my mind, Bill Kristol falls into that category within the Conservative Movement that is firmly wedded to the notion that their orthodox ideology is the only one acceptable for America and that anything else is either politically irrelevant or treasonous. Kristol's faulty logic gives rise to the notion that he is engaged more in wishful thinking than objective political analysis. His prediction as to future direction of the G.O.P. amounts to nothing more than a political "Hail Mary pass" in hoping beyond hope, that somehow or other the Republican Party can be moved to embrace the orthodoxy of the far right. In my opinion, having watched him over the past decade and read his articles, he seems to be increasingly assuming the role of a shill for ultra conservative ideas, becoming as a result less objective in his political analysis. Republicans would be well advised to part company with Mr. Kristol, least they find themselves facing a future of continued electoral defeat and a decline in the party's appeal among that now indispensable factor in American politics, the unaligned independent voter.
Newt Gingrich on the House floor during the health care debate -- March 16, 1994:
Mr. GINGRICH.
I agree with my friend, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt]. I want to reach out in a bipartisan way to pass the bill. I praise the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Bilirakis] and the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Rowland] for a bipartisan bill. I praise the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Grandy] and the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Cooper] for a bipartisan bill. They are starting in the right direction to reach out.
How did that work out?
So why is Sen. Mark Warner one of the many Democrats playing right into Newt Gingrich's hands? From Lowell Feld, who interviewed Warner this weekend for Blue Virginia:
Senator Warner appears committed to at least attempting bipartisanship (what he likes to call "radical centrism"), at least with a few "moderate" Republicans like Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), Charles Grassley (IA), and Michael Enzi (WY). Warner makes a strong case for getting a health care reform bill that's at leaest somewhat bipartisan so it can't easily be dismissed as "Democratic health care reform." Also, Warner wants health care reform that has enough bipartisan buy-in that it actually lasts.
When I was a law student at UVA, I campaigned for Mark Warner during his successful 2001 gubernatorial run -- and actually campaigned for him in 1996 during his first Senate run too. So I have a warm spot for him.
But this is ridiculous.
First, this strategy plays right into the hands of Gingrich and others who want to kill the public option and kill reform.
Second, announcing the need for "bipartisanship" during the stimulus fight gave away Democrats' leverage in negotiations -- it told Republicans they might as well drag their feet because Democrats wouldn't pass a bill until they agreed.
That resulted in a worse stimulus than just forcing Republicans to vote on a Democratic plan. States like Virginia got less money than needed -- and now the watered-down elements of the stimulus are held against Democrats, not Republicans. If we pass a water-down health care reform, and consumers feel screwed, which party will they blame?
And third, why on earth would Warner walk away from a Democratic branded health care plan if it was good for the public? If Republicans want to be the party of no health care reform, ceding the ground to Democrats -- fine. Let them wander the wilderness for a couple more decades.
Democratic politicians, please -- stop playing right into the hands of Gingrich and other reform opponents. Stand on principle. Follow Sen. Jay Rockefeller's lead. Say that if Republicans won't do the public's work, Democrats will do it without Republican votes if that's what it takes.
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