Category: Republicans

Class Warfare & Tyranny

A number of years back, during the Bush administration, a New York Times columnist (I believe it was Paul Krugman, but haven’t been able to find the article) wrote a piece that began with the recounting of a story of a group of aggrieved peasants in some eastern European country raiding the house of the local noble who owned their land, murdered him and his family, and razed his land, all in predictably gruesome fashion. This, the columnist described, was a meaningful instance of class warfare, wherein the poor and the rich were quite literally locked in battle. In contrast, Democratic proposals at the time to not extend tax cuts to the super-rich were not class warfare in any meaningful sense of the word. The value of this column and this story was that it called to question the lunacy of describing relatively minor disagreements on taxation policies “class warfare,” a term that the GOP and the press were happily using.

When I read a piece like the one in today’s Times on the growth of rightwing Tea Party activism in the face of an African-American Democratic President, I wish Krugman or whoever it was would write a column about actual tyranny. Reporter David Barstow describes the evolution of a retired woman in Idaho as such:

The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival, as it was in the Massachusetts Senate election, or for division. But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny.

Teabaggers may think they are “bracing for tyranny,” but there is no reasonable explanation that tyranny is coming to America. I get that Barstow is just repeating what he’s hearing from his subject, but the paper of record shouldn’t be helping to further such an inflammatory and falsifiable claim as President Obama is moving the US towards tyranny. Perhaps a reminder of what tyranny looks like would be a helpful reminder for both political reporters and the Teabaggers themselves.

Hypocrisy

Working in politics, I’ve become increasingly unimpressed by charges of hypocrisy. When you look at the arguments surrounding how Democrats should strategize on the filibuster and whether there should be vocal pushes for “up or down votes,” it is not convincing to me that one party or the other has no standing to critique a particular course of action because four years ago they held the opposite position.

That said, Glenn Greenwald has identified a truly despicable instance hypocrisy by pro-torture, anti-habeas corpus Republican bloggers in their ginned up outrage over the rule of law in Haiti.  There’s a big difference between political positioning changing with time and applying righteous indignation for the preservation of judicial proceedings if and only if they apply to Christian Americans.

Epic Stupid

Anti-ACORN hit man James O’Keefe was arrested by the FBI yesterday with three other individuals for trying to tamper with the phones in Senator Mary Landrieu’s office, presumably with the intention of wiretapping the phone lines. Of note is one of the other people arrested, Robert Flanagan, is the son of the US Attorney in Louisiana. I find it hard to believe that the son of a US Attorney isn’t being pressured by his family to come clean about the full extent of the conspiracy surrounding tapping US Senators’ phones. And that’s where the real interesting stuff should start to come out.

O’Keefe has been employed by right wing publisher & wingnut welfare patron Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart put out this bizarre and specific statement in response to O’Keefe’s felony arrest.

“We have no knowledge about or connection to any alleged acts and events involving James O’Keefe at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office,” said Breitbart. “We only just learned about the alleged incident this afternoon. We have no information other than what has been reported publicly by the press. Accordingly, we simply are not in a position to make any further comment.”

The questions that emerge from this are:

  • Did Breitbart know about O’Keefe visiting other Senators’ offices?
  • Did Breitbart know about other wiretapping incidents?
  • Did Breitbart fund O’Keefe’s alleged felony in any way beyond salary?

I have to imagine that there is a very good chance that Breitbart or other members of his staff were party to this conspiracy to wiretap a US Senator. And that is some serious, serious trouble. At minimum, O’Keefe and Breitbart’s attacks on ACORN should be viewed as fully discredited (as if they weren’t already).

Republican Amnesia

Rudy Giuliani, 1/9/10:

“What [Obama] should be doing is following the right things Bush did. One of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said.

Former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino, 11/24/09:

“We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term”

Clearly the GOP knows that if they repeat the same lie enough times, it will become the truth. What’s so bizarre about this selective form of amnesia is that the imminent and present threat of terrorist attacks within the United States is a driving force for the Republican raison d’etre in the early 21st century. Without 9/11, the Republican security state and war machine can’t get rolling, let alone stay rolling. Without the threat of Al Qaeda, the GOP would only be able to foster fear in the US populace with the threat of a gay man marrying your son.

What’s so depressing is that it looks like the hosts of Today let Rudy get away with as bald-faced a lie as can be told in America today. George Stephanopoulos let’s it go un-rebutted and even his blog entry on the exchange does not point out the Giuliani lied to him and to his audience.  Your media, ladies and gentlemen, still not liberal.

Stupid Amendments

Steve Benen, writing on the Republican strategy to slow health care reform legislation through amendments, notes:

Ordinarily, amendments are proposed to improve the bill. It’s what makes the Republican amendments pointless — even if their measures pass, they’ll still oppose reform. But the GOP caucus is nevertheless lining up hundreds of possible proposals. They’re also strategizing about having amendments read word for word to slow the process down even further.

Of course this is largely the strategy that was used by conservative Democrats in the House as well. To wit, the Stupak amendment made the House health care bill markedly worse and twenty-three Democrats who voted for it still opposed the whole bill.

The Republican Senate amendment strategy sucks, just like the House Blue Dog amendment strategy sucked. The challenge for Democrats will be to make sure that the press and the public understands that the Republicans, like these 23 House Democrats, are not legislating in good faith when it comes to health care reform and, as such, there amendments should be given no attention.

Eviscerating Republican Bills of Attainder

Alan “Big D” Grayson’s exchange with Georgia Republican Paul Broun is pretty remarkable. First, Grayson absolutely schools Broun on the unconstitutionality of bills of attainder. Broun is reduced to repeatedly reading off of a talking points memo – on camera – to try to respond to Grayson’s Socratic line of questioning. Second, Grayson has yet again shown what it looks like when a Democrat stands up for his beliefs and defends an ally (ACORN) from unwarranted and in this case unconstitutional attack.

Glenn Greenwald has a great post looking at the legal precedents relating to bills of attainder and why Grayson is so spot-on in his analysis.  Glenn deconstructs the argument made by Broun and other anti-ACORN Republican members of Congress. Here’s where he arrives:

For those who want to ignore the actual law and insist that it’s not “punishment” for Congress to prohibit specific people from receiving discretionary government benefits (such as government contracts), it should be the case that you’d have no Constitutional objection to bills which provide for the following:

* Only registered Democrats, but not registered Republicans, shall be eligible for unemployment benefits.

* Any individual belonging or contributing to the NRA shall be permanently barred from government employment.

* Anyone who has been employed by Blackwater at any time during the past decade — including those who performed contracting services for said corporation — shall not be permitted to participate in the Medicare or Medicaid program.

* Any organization which helps more Republicans than Democrats register to vote shall be barred from holding tax-exempt status.

* Any person or company providing services, or entering into contracts with, Fox News shall be barred from receiving government contracts.

By the reasoning of Rep. Broun and his defenders, such measures cannot be unconstitutional because Congress is not “punishing” anyone here.  Nobody has the “right” to receive unemployment benefits, or be employed by the government, or to have government-provided health care benefits or to receive special tax-exemptions.  Those are purely discretionary benefits which the Congress is free to dole out, or not dole out, as it wishes.  Nobody who is singled out by the Congress can possibly complain that they are being unconstitutionally “punished” merely because Congress has decided to deny them these discretionary benefits.  Is that what anti-ACORN crusaders are prepared to defend?

There are days where it must be truly embarrassing to be a Republican member of Congress. I’m guessing yesterday was one of them.

Fox News Started This War

Media Matters has a great video, posted above, rebutting the idea that the Obama administration has started a war on Fox News. As anyone who’s actually waged Fox or paid attention to what they say and do, it’s clear that the war has been waged by the characters at Fox News for the entire tenure of the administration. Only now is the White House taking steps to push back on their smears and attacks, which come straight from the Republican Party’s talking points. Fox News is not a media outlet. It is a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and should be treated as such.

Fox News, Opposition Party

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters has a long piece on the development of Fox News from quasi-news outlet with strong partisan bend to full-time political opposition outlet, with no distinction between the opposition put forth by Fox News pundits and Fox News “reporters.” I’ll be honest – a lot of the content Media Matters produces goes straight into my “Tell Me What I Don’t Know” file. Right wing pundits are smearing Democrats? Yep.Fox News reporters consistently get the facts wrong? Still! They do yeoman’s work, but a lot of the time it feels like Media Matters is just shooting fish in a barrel.

But Boehlert’s piece today documents an incredibly important phenomenon — the development as Fox News as the political leader of the American right, as seen in particular by the Tea Party protests and Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project. Boehlert brings together a similar analysis put forth by Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Alter and Hendrik Hertzberg. These voices are important, for as Boehlert notes, the reason Fox News has been able to devolve into the leader of the Republican Party is because other members of the press — outlets like Politico and the New York Times — continue to white wash Fox’s abject partisanship. It’s “the façade of journalism” that has let Fox take its aggressive role. At some point, that façade must come down.

The World According to Wingnuts

Barack Obama has only been in office for about nine months, but in that brief time the leading voices of the Republican Party have provided the rest of us with a telling system for evaluating what is good and what is bad in the world.

Earlier this month we learned that when America loses, it is time to cheer. Erick Erickson of RedState, one of the true leaders of the online right and an elected official in Georgia to boot, celebrated Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympics. He wrote, with great prescience:

Hahahahaha.

I thought the world would love us more now that Bush was gone.

I thought if we whored ourselves out to our enemies, great things would happen.

Apparently not.

So Obama’s pimped us to every two bit thug and dictator in the world, made promises to half the Olympic committee, and they did not even kiss him.

So much for improving America’s standing in the world, Barry O.

Maybe now perhaps we can hope he will mature a bit on the issues of foreign affairs. But I doubt it.

And today, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in international relations, including taking major strides towards ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Obviously this doesn’t quite jibe with Erickson’s forceful conclusion that Obama hasn’t improved America’s standing in the world.

One would think that Erickson would welcome the arrival of what he wanted to see Obama do – improve our standing in the world. Sadly, you’d be wrong. And so we arrive at the second lesson from Greater Wingnutia during the Obama administration: you should get upset when America wins.

Erickson chimes in:

I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news.
…

So in less than two weeks of entering office, Obama did something to qualify. What was it? Not closing Gitmo? Continuing the Bush administration’s policies in the War on Terror but no longer using the name? Or pronouncing a policy of abject American capitulation to our enemies?

The Peace Prize reaffirms it s a joke. But now a sad joke.

Not surprisingly, while Erickson leads the way in booing America’s success, he is by no means alone. Greg Sargent has compiled a number of rapid responses from top Republican bloggers and pundits, all expressing their profound discontent that America has succeeded. Republican Party chair Michael Steele was not one to be left out of the America bashing, issuing this petulant statement in response to our national success:

“The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’  It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights.  One thing is certain – President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.”

Clearly the Republican Party is well represented by its leading voices online, as there isn’t an inch of daylight between Steele’s churlish sentiments and Erickson’s hyperventilating temper tantrum.

Sargent also notes that while there is a bevy of Republicans loudly booing this great day in the history of American foreign relations, they are putting forward the same response as another frequent critic of the United States of America…the Taliban.

“We have seen no change in his strategy for peace. He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan.”

There you have it.  The only people who are booing America’s success as loudly as the Republican Party are the fucking Taliban.

Your modern Republican Party, ladies and gentleman.

Update:

Joining the Republican Party and the Taliban as the only people vocally condemning Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize…wait for it…Hamas!

But Islamist movement Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since routing pro-Fatah forces from the narrow coastal strip in June 2007, said the award was premature.

“He did not do anything for the Palestinians except make promises,” said Hamas spokesman Samir Abu Zuhri. “At the same time, he is giving his absolute support for the (Israeli) occupation.”

The GOP, the Taliban and Hamas… all you need to know folks.